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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Imprudence, by F.E. Mills Young
+
+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: Imprudence
+
+Author: F.E. Mills Young
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2011 [EBook #38171]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPRUDENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Imprudence
+By F.E. Mills Young
+Published by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, London.
+This edition dated 1920.
+
+Imprudence, by F.E. Mills Young.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+IMPRUDENCE, BY F.E. MILLS YOUNG.
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+"Now came still evening on."  The fading light, warm and faintly glowing
+from the last rays of the May sun, lay with a lingering mellowness upon
+the fields, upon the light green of leafing trees, upon a white froth of
+late blackthorn blossoming in the hedges, upon the straggling township
+nestling in the hollow, and upon the tall red-brick chimneys dominating
+Wortheton--dominating the souls sheltering beneath the clustering
+roofs--dominating and subjugating brain and mind and body by the might
+of their crushing omnipotence, by the strength of wealth and industry
+and established order--gaunt chimneys, rising out of the green mist of
+the trees, grotesque, symbolic landmarks--index fingers witnessing in
+obelisk-like ugliness to the power and importance of successful
+commercial enterprise, to the dignity of capital and the drab necessity
+of labour, to, in short, the disproportionate values in most existing
+things.
+
+In the evening light, between the lengthening shadows flung by the
+hedges along the dusty road that leads to Wortheton, a girl walked
+listlessly, a girl whose youth was marred by a look of world-weary
+wisdom, as much at variance with the young face as the tall brick
+chimneys with the harmonious beauty of the landscape.  But for that
+look, and the sullen expression in the brown eyes, the girl would have
+been beautiful, as the scene was beautiful, and the soft primrose light
+upon the uplands; but the buoyant elasticity, the hope, and the
+freshness of youth, these were lacking; there remained only the pitiful
+fact that in years the girl was in the springtime of life and in
+experience more matured.
+
+As she walked, her sullen gaze shifted furtively from the township below
+to the fair open country, growing momentarily dimmer and greyer as the
+light in the sky paled.  A gap in the hedge revealed a narrow path
+between giant elms, and a cool shadowed coppice where the bracken fronds
+rose stiff and closely curled, and dark ivy twined thickly about the
+tree trunks.  The girl turned aside into the coppice and, with the
+fugitive instinct of hiding from the light, penetrated its shaded
+depths, and paused and leaned her arms against the gnarled trunk of a
+sheltering beech tree, and rested her head upon her arms in dry-eyed
+tragic sorrow.
+
+In a fork of the leafy branches overhead a bird had its nest, sitting in
+brooding satisfaction upon its delicate speckled eggs.  The intrusion
+startled it from slumber: the round eyes betrayed a suspicious
+uneasiness, and the soft warm body nestled closer over the eggs it
+protected.  Quaint thing of feathers and bright-eyed watchfulness and
+maternal instinct, with no sense of anything beyond the supreme
+importance of hatching those little speckled eggs--drawing its
+unconscious comparison by the pride of elemental right to the
+disproportion in values in this as in other matters, happy in its
+prospective motherhood, peering timorously through the green tracery
+sheltering it, home at the unhappy prospective human mothers with
+resentful eyes lifted curiously to observe its brooding content.
+
+So still the girl remained, gazing upward into the deepening shadows
+that the little feathered mother lost her fear; the sharp anxiety faded
+from the round bright eyes, which never relaxed their unwavering
+vigilance even when the shadows, gathering closer, enveloped the still
+figure of the girl and wrapped her about with a hazy indistinctness that
+made her one with the landscape, a thing of indefinite outline and
+colouring, breathing, sentient nature in harmony with inanimate nature,
+immovable and silent as the tree against which she leaned.
+
+So night settled silently over Wortheton, and a wanderer stole home in
+its kindly shade.
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+In the big ugly morning-room at Court Heatherleigh six people sat
+engaged with different degrees of interest on six ugly pieces of coarse
+material which were being fashioned into serviceable garments for the
+poor.  The poor were an institution in Wortheton and so was charity:
+both, like the big chimneys dominating the town, were things of usage;
+all were in a sense interdependent, and had their headquarters at Court
+Heatherleigh, which was the big house and belonged to the owner of the
+big chimneys--the owner of most things in Wortheton, from the ugly brick
+cottages in which his employees dwelt to, one might say, the employees
+themselves.  The Trades Unions had not penetrated the select privacy of
+Wortheton as yet.  If occasionally a voice was uplifted in discontent
+and hinted at these things, it was speedily silenced; and life flowed on
+tranquilly as it had before the grumbler raised his foolish protest; and
+his place knew him no more.  But each whisper was as a small stone flung
+in a mill stream; and stones follow the law of aggregation till
+eventually they dam the stream.
+
+The six busy workers in Court Heatherleigh morning-room were the six
+daughters of Mr Graynor, and their ages ranged from somewhere about
+fifty to eighteen.  Besides the daughters, two sons had swelled the
+family.  The younger of these had married indiscreetly, and died
+indiscreetly with his wife somewhere abroad, bequeathing an indiscreet
+son to his father because he had nothing else to leave behind him,
+having departed from the family tradition that the end and aim of life
+is to acquire wealth.  He had acquired nothing beyond a wife and son;
+but he had loved both these, and been beloved in turn, so that,
+according to his views, he had prospered well: according to his brother
+William's views, he had been a fool.
+
+William carried on the family traditions, and would eventually succeed
+his father as owner of the big chimneys, the family mansion, and the
+guardianship of his numerous sisters.  He was not married.  No one
+expected him to marry; he did not expect it of himself.  No woman worthy
+of William's attention had ever adventured across his path.
+
+Of the sisters, Miss Agatha Graynor, who was the eldest of the family by
+several years, took the lead in all things, social and domestic, and
+ruled the household with a despotism that not even old Mr Graynor had
+been known to question; though his wives--he had married twice--had
+never been permitted such absolute authority.  In his youth he had been
+as despotic as Agatha; but he was an old man now, and weary; and his
+daughter overawed him.  The one being to whom he clung was his young
+daughter.  Prudence, the only child of his second wife; and after
+Prudence, his scapegrace grandson, Bobby, then at college, held possibly
+the strongest place in his tired affections.
+
+They were two very human young people, Prudence and Bobby, with a
+contempt for the Graynor traditions, and lacking the Graynor pride and
+self-complacency, and all the other creditable characteristics of an
+old, influential, commercial stock that had owned the greater part of
+Wortheton for generations, and had come to regard themselves by reason
+of local homage as personages of high importance in the land.
+
+Prudence made one of the working party from a matter of compulsion;
+charity of that nature bored her, and she hated sewing.  Since leaving
+school, where her happiest years had been spent, Miss Agatha had imposed
+many irksome duties as a corrective for idleness: a healthy youthful
+desire for pleasure and recreation affronted her; if she had experienced
+such desires in her own youth she had forgotten them: possibly she had
+not experienced them; people are born deficient in various respects and
+in different degrees.  Miss Agatha had always been Good: her young
+half-sister was lacking in piety, and suffered from warm human impulses
+which not infrequently led her into trouble and subsequent disgrace.
+Also Prudence was pretty; the other five Miss Graynors were plain.
+
+The pretty, bored little face bending over the plain sewing showed
+mutinous in the sunlit brightness of the quiet room; the small fingers
+were hot, and the needle was sticky and refused to pass through the
+coarse material: it bent alarmingly, and, in response to a savage little
+thrust from a determined steel thimble, snapped audibly in the silence.
+Miss Agatha looked up with quick rebuke.
+
+"Not again, Prudence?  That is the second needle this morning."
+
+She hunted in her basket for a fresh needle, and passed it down the line
+to the rebellious worker in displeased silence.  Prudence's blue eyes
+snapped dangerously, but she made no spoken comment.  She threaded the
+new needle languidly, and then sat with it in her idle hands and stared
+through the open French window to the inviting stretch of green lawn,
+dotted with brilliant flower beds, which made tennis, or any other game,
+thereon impossible, which was the reason, Bobby was wont to assert, why
+his aunt insisted on their remaining.  Bobby and Prudence would have
+made a clean sweep of the bedding-out borders if they had been allowed
+their will.  Miss Agatha, looking up and observing this idleness, was on
+the point of remonstrating when the door opened opportunely to admit a
+visitor, and Prudence's delinquencies were forgotten in the business of
+welcoming the arrival.
+
+"My dear Mrs North!"  Miss Agatha exclaimed, surprised, and rose
+hastily and shook hands with the vicar's wife, who, warm and a little
+flushed, greeted her effusively, and nodded affably to the train of
+nondescript sisters, who all rose and remained standing until the
+new-comer was seated, when they reseated themselves--all save Prudence;
+she edged a little nearer to the open window, prepared for escape at the
+first favourable moment.
+
+"Such an astonishing thing has happened," Mrs North was saying
+breathlessly to the monotonous accompaniment of the diligently-plied
+needles.  "That girl, Bessie Clapp, has come back.  I saw her myself in
+her mother's house."
+
+Miss Agatha's thin cheek became instantly pink.  She turned in her seat
+and regarded her sisters with grave solicitude in her eyes.
+
+"Priscilla, Alice, Mary, Matilda, _and_ Prudence, leave the room," she
+said.
+
+Four needles were promptly thrust into the unfinished work, and the four
+sisters, who were echoes of Miss Agatha, and the youngest of whom was
+thirty, rose obediently and followed slowly Prudence's more alert
+retreat.  When they had passed beyond sight of the window Miss Agatha
+turned apologetically to her friend.
+
+"Of course," she explained earnestly, "I couldn't discuss that subject
+in front of the girls."
+
+Mrs North, realising the delicacy of the position, generously
+acquiesced.
+
+"It was a little indiscreet of me," she allowed.  "But I was never so
+astounded in my life.  And the girl's mother actually defends her.  She
+talks about `her own flesh and blood.' ...  As though that makes any
+difference!  I knew you would be shocked.  It's such a scandal in the
+place.  And to come back... where every one knows!"
+
+"She can't stay," said Miss Agatha decidedly; and her thin lips
+compressed themselves tightly, locking themselves upon the sentence as
+it passed them.  She pushed the work on the table aside and looked
+fixedly at the vicar's wife.  "We can't tolerate such a scandal in
+Wortheton.  We have to think of the people at the Works.  That kind of
+thing... it...  We must set our faces against it."
+
+"Of course," Mrs North agreed doubtfully.  "That's why I came to you."
+
+Every one came to Miss Agatha when an unpleasant situation had to be
+faced: she faced it so resolutely, with the inflexibility of justice
+untempered with mercy.  Sin was sin.  There were no intermediate shades
+between black and white.  Sin had to be uprooted.  The moral prestige of
+Wortheton demanded that all which was "not nice" must be eliminated from
+its community.
+
+And in a dingy room in a dingy little house in a dingier side street, a
+girl with a beautiful face was thinking in her passionate discontent how
+good it was to be a bird--a small feathered thing in a nest among the
+branches of a fine old tree--anything rather than a human being.
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+Prudence leaned with her arms on the sill of her bedroom window, looking
+out on the night-shadowed garden and the white line of the road beyond
+its shrub-hidden walls.  This was the best hour in the twenty-four--the
+hour when she could be alone; for the bedroom, which once had been a
+nursery, was all her own.  The other Miss Graynors, with the exception
+of Agatha, shared rooms; but the little half-sister who had occupied the
+nursery alone for so many years was permitted to regard this haven as
+still hers: no one sought to dispossess her, though the room was large
+and had a south aspect, while Miss Agatha's room faced north.  But Miss
+Agatha was not averse from a northern aspect; and the room had the
+advantage of commanding a view of the servants' quarters, so that she
+was enabled to watch the coming in and, which was still more important,
+the going forth of these dependants, whose seemly conduct she made her
+particular care.
+
+Many people besides the poet have discovered that the pleasantest place
+in the house is leaning out of the window.  Prudence knew that.  From
+early spring to late autumn, and occasionally on fine frosty nights, she
+leaned from her window and thought, and felt, and dreamed dreams of
+romance and beauty, and of a life that was fuller than the life of
+Wortheton, a life beyond the seclusion of the walled garden, beyond the
+white winding road, the tall chimneys, and the dull succession of busy
+dreary days--days which commenced with morning prayers at seven-thirty,
+followed by breakfast at eight, by work, by an hour's walk before lunch,
+a little district visiting, the receiving and returning of calls, tea at
+five, a dull formal dinner at seven, and family prayers at half-past
+eight.  Then nine o'clock and merciful release, and that good hour,
+sometimes longer, when she was supposed to be in bed and which she spent
+leaning out of the window, dreaming her girlish dreams.  We all know
+those dreams of youth, though some of us forget them.  They are just
+dreams, nothing more; but none of life's realities are half as good as
+those inspiring idle fancies which illumine the drabbest lives in the
+imaginative days of youth.  The dreams of youth are worth all the
+philosophy, all the wisdom of the ages; and when they arise, as
+Prudence's arose, out of a spirit of dissatisfaction with existing
+things, they do not necessarily add to the dissatisfaction, but catch
+one away from realities in a flight of golden thought.
+
+To-night, however, Prudence's mind was not concerned so much with
+personal matters as with the story of the girl of whose return she had
+heard that morning, the girl who was not good, and who was to be
+banished from Wortheton for fear that her example might contaminate
+others.  Prudence wondered whether Wortheton were more susceptible to
+contamination than most places; otherwise the sending forth of the black
+sheep, who after all belonged to Wortheton, were to inflict an injustice
+on some equally respectable town.  Black sheep cannot be banished to the
+nether world; they have to reside somewhere.
+
+The details of the girl's case were known to Prudence.  All the secrecy
+and silence of Miss Agatha's careful guardianship availed little against
+an inquiring and sympathetic mind and somewhat unusual powers of
+observation.  Prudence at eighteen was not ignorant.  To attempt to keep
+an intelligent person ignorant is to attempt the impossible.  Miss
+Agatha did not shrink from impossible effort: furthermore she confused
+the terms ignorance and innocence, and in her furtive avoidances
+contrived to throw a suggestion of indelicacy upon the most simple of
+elemental things.  Many well-meaning persons bring disrepute in this way
+on things which should be sacred, and utterly confuse the mind in
+matters of morality with the disastrous result that, bewildered and
+impatient, the individual not infrequently breaks away from conventional
+caution and adopts a line of indifference in regard to decent
+restraints.  Life cannot be run on lines of suppression any more
+successfully than on the broader gauge of a too liberal tolerance.
+Restraint has to be practised; and it is the right of the individual to
+be taught to recognise the necessity for this with the encouragement of
+the practice.
+
+Miss Agatha's narrow creed proclaimed that the girl had sinned, and must
+therefore be thrust forth; Prudence, in her impulsive youth, felt this
+decree to be ungenerous, and, had she dared, would have championed the
+sinner's cause before all Wortheton.  She did not fear Wortheton, but
+she was afraid of Agatha--Agatha, who, at the time of Prudence's birth,
+was older than Prudence's mother, and who had domineered over her mother
+and herself until the former's death, which sad event occurred when
+Prudence was five years old.  She remembered her mother only dimly, but
+she hated Miss Agatha on her mother's account as she would not have
+hated her on her own.  The mop of golden curls which, with the wide blue
+eyes, lent to Prudence's face a guileless and childlike expression,
+covered a shrewd little brain.  It was no strain on the owner's
+intelligence to discern that Agatha was jealous of her, had been jealous
+of her mother before her, on account of their father's preference; and
+it occasioned her much inward satisfaction to reflect that not even
+Agatha had the power to lessen his love for her: she was the child of
+his old age and the light of his eyes.
+
+"I've half a mind," she said to herself, and rested her dimpled chin on
+her hands and stared into the shadowy distance, "to tell him about
+Bessie.  If I asked him to interfere and let her remain, he--might."
+
+She did not feel very positive on that head; Mr Graynor was after all a
+male edition of Agatha.  Nevertheless, she would at least make her
+appeal.
+
+"I wonder..." she mused, and thought awhile.
+
+"I suppose she was very much in love," was the outcome of these
+reflections.  "I wonder what it feels like to be very much in love."
+
+Prudence's world had not brought any of these experiences into her life.
+She never met any men, save her father's friends and William's, none of
+whom were calculated to awaken sentiment in the breast of a girl of
+eighteen.  The youngest of these was a man of forty, a nice kind old
+thing, who brought her chocolates, and pulled her curls before she put
+her hair up.  Since the hair had gone up he had ceased to pull it, and
+he did not bring her chocolates so often; his kindliness had become more
+formal; but she liked him rather better on that account; the teasing had
+sometimes annoyed her.
+
+Like most girls, Prudence allowed her mind at times to dwell on the
+subject of love and marriage.  The older girls at school had discussed
+these subjects freely: one of them had professed an undying passion for
+the drawing-master, who was married, and had asseverated before an
+admiring audience in the playing-field that she would cheerfully ignore
+the wife and run away with him if he asked her.  He had not asked her.
+He had indeed been entirely unaware of her devotion, and had regarded
+her as a rather dull pupil.  Prudence had considered her silly.  Also
+she held a belief that emotional excitement was not love.  She was not
+very clear in her thoughts what the term love expressed exactly; but she
+believed that when it did come love would be a big thing.  She did not
+consider it in relation with marriage: marriage was a contract, often a
+convenience.  She would have been glad herself to marry, merely to
+escape from Agatha and Wortheton.  When a girl was married she could at
+least fashion her own life.  And Prudence loved children.  She envied
+Bessie Clapp her coming motherhood more than she pitied her on account
+of the social ostracism entailed thereby.  Prudence's ideas on morality,
+never having been wisely directed, inclined to exalt the beauty of
+motherhood and to ignore the baser aspect of crude and illicit passions
+selfishly indulged.  It is not the maternal woman who brings children
+into the world with a selfish disregard for the shame of their nameless
+birth.
+
+While Prudence leaned from her window and thought of love and
+motherhood, she became abruptly and amazedly aware of a figure in the
+road beyond the high wall--a man's figure, tall and straight in the
+moonlight--walking with a purposeful air down the hill towards the town.
+The man glanced up at the lighted window in which the girlish form was
+brightly framed, and broke off abruptly in the middle of a bar he was
+whistling softly, paused for the fraction of a second, and then went
+swinging on down the hill.  He was a stranger; Prudence recognised that;
+there were no young men, except the factory employees and the tradesmen,
+in Wortheton.
+
+"I wonder," she murmured to herself, and leaned further out to look
+after the vanishing figure, "what it feels like to be in love..."
+
+A sudden sense of chill touched her.  The moon vanished behind a cloud,
+and a little cold breeze sprang up and played on her bare neck and arms.
+The garden showed dark with the white light withdrawn, dark and
+deserted.  A shadowed loneliness had fallen on the spirit of the night.
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+"I want," Prudence said in her soft appealing voice, "the sum of fifty
+pounds."
+
+Mr Graynor looked not unnaturally amazed.  Prudence's wants had never
+assumed such extravagant proportions before: it puzzled him to
+understand what she could possibly require to necessitate the demand for
+so large a sum, and, because he had only a few hours earlier refused to
+listen to another outrageous request of hers and told her a little
+harshly that there were matters with which she should not concern
+herself, he hoped, despite a general reluctance to part with money, that
+this further demand was one he could treat more generously.  He put a
+large shaky hand on her curls and tilted her head back and smiled into
+the wide blue eyes.
+
+"Fifty pounds, eh?" he said.  "That's a big sum, Prue."
+
+"You'll let me have it?" she asked, and clasped her hands round his arm.
+
+"That depends," he answered, "on what you want it for."
+
+"I'd rather not tell that," she said slowly.
+
+Mr Graynor removed his hand.  Secrecy savoured of a want of candour; he
+could not allow that.
+
+"I can't give you a cheque without knowing what you purpose spending the
+money on," he said firmly.  "It's a big sum for a little girl--even for
+finery.  You mustn't develop extravagance."
+
+Prudence braced herself and faced him a little defiantly.
+
+"It's not for me," she said.  "I don't need anything.  But you are
+sending the Clapps away, and they've nowhere to go and no money.  That
+isn't just; it's--wicked."
+
+His face hardened while he listened to this sweeping indictment, and he
+turned away from her with an air of sharp annoyance.
+
+"You are extremely foolish, Prudence," he said.  "Leave these matters
+which you are not able to understand to your elders.  I forbid you to
+mention this subject again."
+
+Prudence was defeated but not subdued.  She accepted the defeat, but she
+had her retort ready.
+
+"Very well," she said, as she moved towards the door.  "Then I'll just
+pray hard night and morning that God will befriend Bessie Clapp.  When
+you see me kneeling I hope you will remember."
+
+Then she was gone; and the old man, staring with his dim eyes at the
+closed door, reflected uncomfortably that Prudence was growing strangely
+annoying.  She was, as he also recognised, growing extraordinarily like
+her mother.  Of course, he told himself, unconsciously self-deceiving,
+he had always intended to see that these people were sufficiently
+provided for.  It was not necessary for his youngest daughter to point
+out his duty to him.
+
+So Prudence was not really defeated; though she was denied the
+satisfaction of knowing of her victory.  Mr Graynor's subsequent
+generosity amazed the recipients no more than it amazed his eldest
+daughter and William, both of whom entirely disapproved of a munificence
+they deemed unnecessary and an encouragement in wrong-doing.  But old
+Mr Graynor, furtively watching Prudence's golden head bowed over her
+clasped hands during the evening prayers, bowed in almost aggressive
+supplication, knew that he could not view it thus night and morning with
+a deaf ear turned to her appeal for succour for the friendless.  The
+good-night kiss he gave her was, had she but known it, an answer to her
+prayer.
+
+Prudence retired to her room that night in a state of antagonism towards
+every one.  She knew herself to be in disgrace.  Agatha treated her with
+chill disapproval, and William ignored her.  It was William's invariable
+rule to show his displeasure by treating the object thereof as though
+she did not exist.  Prudence had been ignored before: she did not resent
+this; it amused her.  William, when he attempted to be dignified, was
+altogether ridiculous.
+
+He maintained the dignified role throughout the next day, and laboured
+under the delusion that his pompous disregard was impressing his young
+sister with a proper sense of the enormity of her indiscretion; a belief
+which suffered a rude awakening at luncheon, when Prudence threw off her
+ill-humour and emerged from the large silences in which she had
+enwrapped herself to participate in the unenlivening talk carried on
+fragmentally by the various members of the family.  She had watched
+brother William, who was a big man and corpulent of build, as she had
+watched him for many years, with an amazed dumb criticism in her look,
+unfasten with big deliberate fingers the two bottom buttons of his
+waistcoat and the top button of his trousers on sitting down to lunch
+for his greater convenience and the more thorough enjoyment of his food.
+He performed this office regularly, with the formal solemnity of an
+important rite.  Prudence had come to regard it as William's grace
+before meals.  She sometimes wondered what ran through the serious minds
+of the portly whiskered butler and the elderly parlourmaid, who
+ministered to the family needs under his direction, daily privileged to
+witness this public tribute of respect to the good things of life.
+Perhaps they regarded these manifestations of epicurean nicety, as
+Agatha regarded them, as becoming in William as a man and the
+prospective head of the house of Graynor.  It was an inconsistency in
+Agatha's prudish nature to consider that men might do things which could
+not be tolerated in the other sex, and that whatever William did must of
+necessity be seemly.  In Prudence's opinion, William's table manners
+were gluttonous and disgusting.
+
+"A man called on me at the works this morning," William observed,
+addressing his father, who latterly stayed much at home and left the
+control and worry of business largely to his son.  "He had a letter of
+introduction from Morgan.  I asked him to call at the house this
+afternoon in time for tea.  His name's Steele."
+
+"You should have asked him to dine," Mr Graynor said.
+
+"Time enough for that after you have seen him," William returned, and
+for some reason, which he would have been at a loss to explain, his gaze
+travelled in Prudence's direction and rested for the space of a second
+on her listening, eager face.
+
+"I've seen him," Prudence said.  "He's quite young."
+
+William raised his eyebrows; Miss Agatha's head came round with a jerk;
+several other heads jerked round likewise, and every one looked at
+Prudence.
+
+"I saw him from my window," Prudence explained, unabashed by the general
+interest, "striding down the hill.  His back looked nice."
+
+William sought to ignore the interruption and the interrupter, and
+addressed himself exclusively to his father.  But it was useless.
+Prudence, having broken her silence, refused to be excluded from the
+conversation, and expressed the flippant desire to see the face
+belonging to the nice-looking back.
+
+Had it been possible to banish her young sister to her bedroom, Agatha
+would have done so; but Prudence lately had shown a growing tendency to
+break away from control, and she was wise enough not to put a further
+strain on the weakening strands of her already frayed authority.
+Therefore Prudence was in the drawing-room when the stranger called--
+indeed, she was the only person present so far as he was concerned.  He
+paid her far more attention than Miss Agatha deemed necessary or in good
+taste.  The manners of youth, as each generation which has left youth
+behind unfailingly recognises, are sadly deteriorating.
+
+As for Prudence, she admired the front view as greatly as she had
+admired the back.  Mr Philip Steele was eminently well-favoured.
+Prudence considered him handsome.  She had met so few men that anyone
+who escaped middle-age and stoutness appeared to her in the guise of
+masculine perfection, provided only that his face was strong.  Steele's
+face matched with his name, sharp, clear-cut, firm of jaw.  And he was
+clean-shaven.  William wore a beard.  Hair on a man's face was
+patriarchal.
+
+Tea was brought in by the butler and deposited on a table in front of
+Miss Agatha; and the young man, seizing the opportunity when his
+hostess' attention was thus engaged, demanded of Prudence in a
+confidential undertone:
+
+"I say, wasn't it you I saw leaning from a window two nights ago?"
+
+"Yes."  Prudence looked at him with a frank laugh in her blue eyes.  "I
+saw you pass.  It must have been gorgeous, walking down there in the
+moonlight."
+
+"It was pleasant," he said without enthusiasm, and added with a return
+smile: "I was thinking how jolly it must be up there where you were,
+looking out on the quiet fragrance of the night."
+
+And then they both laughed happily, though there was manifestly nothing
+to laugh at.  Miss Agatha, disapproving of this mutual enjoyment, called
+Prudence away to make the tea; whereupon the young man followed her to
+the tea-table and hovered over it, wishful to be of use.
+
+"One teaspoonful for each person and one for the teapot," Miss Agatha
+directed precisely; and the visitor wondered with resentment why on
+earth the old girl didn't make the brew herself.
+
+"I hope you'll like our tea," she said, when, having handed round the
+various cups, Steele returned to the table for his own.  "We give
+eighteenpence a pound for it.  We drink it for an example."
+
+She did not explain why, nor for whom, the example was deemed necessary.
+Steele sipped his tea, and tried not to looked amazed, and assured her
+that it was jolly good.  Then he wandered back to Prudence's side,
+openly curious as to her relationship in regard to the others.
+
+"I say," he murmured--"don't think me rude--but where do you come in?"
+
+Prudence scrutinised him for a perplexed moment, at a loss for his
+meaning; whereupon he suggested with a smile:
+
+"Niece, perhaps?"
+
+"Oh!"  The gay little laugh, which so irritated Miss Agatha's ears,
+broke from her lips once more.  "I see.  No.  I'm Mr Graynor's youngest
+daughter... by his second marriage," she added, with just a hint of
+malice in her voice.
+
+The young man grasped the position.
+
+"I'm getting hold of it," he said, a sympathetic light in his eyes.
+"The thing puzzled me.  I couldn't place you.  You don't seem to fit
+in."  Then he said with a kind of inspiration, as though the idea had
+suddenly presented itself to him: "You don't fit in, you know.  Your
+place rightly is leaning out of a window.  That's how I shall always
+picture you."
+
+It was an extraordinary talk, and altogether delightful.  Prudence
+enjoyed his visit tremendously.  But when he left, Miss Agatha reproved
+her sharply for pushing herself forward and monopolising the visitor.
+
+"He monopolised me," Prudence contended.  "I retired into corners, and
+he followed."
+
+"You made yourself conspicuous," Miss Agatha said, "and behaved
+altogether in a forward and unseemly manner."
+
+Prudence had occasion later to regret this success in which she had
+triumphed at the time; Mr Philip Steele had not succeeded in winning
+general favour, and so never received the invitation to dine.  He did
+not possess sufficient nerve to present himself at the house uninvited,
+or he would have called again for the pleasure of meeting Prudence.  He
+did meet her, but the encounter was accidental.  It was all the more
+enjoyable on that account.  They met where there were neither walls nor
+interruptions, where they could talk without reserve and laugh
+unrestrainedly, with only the mating birds to hear them, and the soft
+wind to catch up and echo their mirth in the tall trees overhead--a
+joyous meeting, with the springtime harmony about them, and the
+springtime gladness in their hearts and eyes.
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed Steele, when he vaulted a stile and came upon her,
+picking primroses from the hedge.  "This is a piece of luck!"
+
+Prudence looked up from her occupation.  The sunlight was in her
+surprised blue eyes, in her hair; it shone on her white dress, and on
+the pale wilting flowers in her hand.  The effect of her was dazzling--a
+white shining thing of milk and roses against the soft greens of the
+bank.  He had sprung upon her unawares, and it took her a little while
+to recover from her astonishment.  And yet she had been thinking of
+him--thinking how agreeable it would be if the event which was now
+realised could only befall.  She had been guilty of loitering, of
+watching the field-path furtively, and wishing she knew which direction
+he took when he walked abroad.  And now he stood before her, gay, and
+unmistakably pleased, with a laugh in his grey eyes which expressed his
+satisfaction.  He had been thinking about her as she had been thinking
+of him, and wishing that he had made better use of his time that
+afternoon, and discovered her favourite haunts.  It was all right now;
+they had found one another.  That was good, because on the morrow he was
+going away.
+
+"You'd never guess how hard I've been wishing I might happen upon you
+this morning," he said as they shook hands.  "It looks as though wishing
+had brought its reward.  I'm rather a believer in telepathy.  Something
+of what has been in my mind must unconsciously have transmitted itself
+to yours.  Have you given me any thought, I wonder?  I've given you so
+many," he added, observing her blush.
+
+"I was thinking of you at the moment you appeared," Prudence answered
+with audacious candour.  "You see, William mentioned at breakfast that
+you were leaving to-morrow.  I wondered why you came?  So few people
+come here--except commercial travellers."
+
+"There are one or two at the hotel," he said, laughing.  "Save that they
+possess enormous appetites, I haven't observed them particularly.  The
+landlady informed me that they are very exclusive.  I came on the firm's
+business--Morgan Bros.  We're woollen too, you know."
+
+"Yes I know.  Mr Morgan stays with us sometimes."
+
+She regarded him with renewed interest.  It was a little disappointing
+to discover that he followed the same occupation as William; she had
+placed him in her thoughts amid more romantic surroundings.  The
+factory, despite its financial magnificence, struck her as rather
+sordid.  He became aware of the criticism in her eyes and smiled in some
+amusement.
+
+"I'm just a paid man," he volunteered.  "Nothing very gorgeous about my
+position."
+
+"But that's an advantage," she said, and smiled in sympathy.  "At least,
+you can leave."
+
+"True.  I never thought of it like that.  My principal concern has been
+to evade leaving; it has loomed so very imminent at times.  I say, let's
+sit on this stile in the shade of that jolly elm and talk.  You're not
+in a hurry, are you?"
+
+"No," answered Prudence, who knew that she ought to be at home sewing in
+the morning-room, knew also that she had not the smallest intention of
+going back now.  "I'm not in any hurry.  It's--pleasant here."
+
+"Yes, isn't it?  I don't think I have ever seen prettier country than
+this.  You were gathering primroses?"
+
+"Just a few late ones."  She held the bunch up and surveyed their
+drooping beauty.  "It's almost a pity; they looked so sweet in the
+hedge."
+
+"They look sweeter where they are," he said quite sincerely, though
+obviously without sufficient reason for the comparison; the primroses
+were so unmistakably dying.  "Put one in my button-hole, will you?  It
+will recall a pleasant morning."
+
+She complied without hesitation, laughing when the task was accomplished
+because the flower drooped its head.
+
+"A bit shy," he commented.  "It is going to raise its face and smile at
+me when I put it in water, later."
+
+"Will you really do that?" she asked.
+
+"Why, of course.  You don't suppose I would allow a gift of yours to
+fade into a memory?"
+
+"But it will fade," she insisted, "in spite of your efforts.  All these
+pleasant things fade so swiftly."
+
+He turned more directly towards her and looked into her eyes.  She had
+taken off her hat, and sat with her shoulders against the tree and
+looked steadily back at him.
+
+"Yes," he admitted; "that's uncomfortably true.  But something remains."
+
+"Something?"  Her eyes questioned him, wide childlike eyes with a hint
+of womanhood lurking in their blue depths.  He drew a little nearer to
+her.
+
+"Something," he repeated--"subtle, intangible--an emotion, a memory...
+Call it what you will...  Some recurring brightness which is to the
+human soul what the sunlight is to the earth--a thousand harmonies
+spring from the one source.  My primrose will fade, but for me it can't
+die; nor will the kind hand that gathered it and placed it where it is
+be forgotten either.  There are things one doesn't forget."
+
+"I suppose there are," acquiesced Prudence, her thoughts by some odd
+twist reverting to William's table manners.  "Sometimes one would like
+to forget."
+
+"I shouldn't," he averred--"not this, at least."
+
+She roused herself with a laugh.
+
+"I was thinking of other things--I don't know why--horrid things.  Are
+you one of a large family?"
+
+"No," he answered, surprised.  "I'm an only son--and rather a bad
+investment.  Why?"
+
+"There are eight of us," said Prudence--"counting Bobby."
+
+"Who is Bobby?"
+
+"He's a dear," she answered, as though that explained Bobby.  "He's at
+college: when he leaves he will have to go into the factory; and he
+hates it so.  But there isn't any help for it.  He is the only Graynor
+to carry on."
+
+"I don't think his case calls for sympathy exactly," he remarked dryly,
+with a contemplative eye on the tall red chimneys, an eye that travelled
+slowly over the wide spring-clad countryside and came back to her face
+and rested there in quiet enjoyment.
+
+"You don't know," she returned seriously, "how the kind of life we lead
+here stifles an imaginative person."
+
+"You find it dull?" he said.  "I suppose it may be.  Most country towns
+are dull."
+
+"The country isn't to blame," she explained; "it's the routine of dull
+business, dull duties, dull pleasures, and duller people.  You've no
+idea...  How should you know?  Virtue, as practised in Wortheton, is a
+quality without smiles, and enjoyment is sinful.  Instead of idling
+happily here I ought to be at home sewing garments for the poor, like
+the others are doing.  I shall be reproved for flaying truant... and I
+don't care."
+
+She laughed joyously.  Steele, ignoring the larger part of her
+communications, leaned towards her, intent on bringing her back to a
+particular phrase that stuck in his memory.
+
+"Are you happy sitting here--with me?" he asked.
+
+"I'm always happy," Prudence replied calmly, "when I've some one to talk
+to who isn't Wortheton."
+
+"Oh!" he said, a little damped.  "So that's it?  Well, I'm happy sitting
+here talking with some one who is Wortheton."
+
+"I'm not up to sample," she said, amused.  "If you want local colour,
+call at the Vicarage--or take William as a specimen.  Wortheton is
+earnest in woof."
+
+She looked so pretty and so impish as she drew her invidious comparisons
+that Steele was unable to suppress a smile of sympathy.  Her criticism
+of her brother was wanting in loyalty; but he could find in his heart no
+blame for her: he did not like William, possibly because William had so
+pointedly refrained from extending further hospitality to him.  The
+young man had counted on an extension, and was disappointed.
+
+"You'll shake the dust off your feet some day," he hazarded, and thought
+how agreeable it would be to assist in the escape.  Visions of scorching
+across country in a motor with her beside him floated pleasantly through
+his brain.
+
+"Some day," she returned a little vaguely, and looked pensively into the
+distance.  "Yes, I'll do that...  But it's so difficult to find a way."
+
+"Time will solve that difficulty, I expect," he said.
+
+She glanced towards him brightly, a look of expectant eagerness shining
+in her eyes.  He felt that when the opportunity offered she would not be
+slow in seizing it, and was unreasonably angry at the thought of his own
+uncertain prospects, which offered not the faintest hope of his ever
+being able to hire, much less own, the necessary car in which to scorch
+across country with anyone.
+
+"You say such nice, encouraging things," she observed.  "I hope time
+won't be long in solving the difficulty.  It would be horrid to be
+forced to live here until I am middle-aged."
+
+"I'm afraid you will be disappointed when you get out into the world,"
+he said.  "Life is pretty much the same elsewhere as here, I take it.
+It is what we make it--largely."
+
+"It is what other people make it for us--largely," she mimicked him.  "I
+could have quite a good time if I was allowed to.  When Bobby is home we
+do contrive a little fun, but it generally ends in disaster.  They sent
+him back to school a week before term commenced once.  Agatha managed
+that.  It is always Bobby who reaps the blame; I am punished
+vicariously."
+
+"I call that vindictive," Steele said.
+
+"We called it that--and other things."  She smiled reminiscently.  "It's
+odd how these little things stick in the memory.  I never sew without
+recalling that exasperating week when I broke needles maliciously six
+days in succession.  I break them occasionally now--in memoriam."
+
+He laughed aloud.
+
+"I don't fancy Miss Graynor gets it all her own way," he said.
+
+Prudence swung her hat by the brim and gazed up at a patch of blue sky
+between the trees.  A little frown puckered her brow.  She had ceased to
+think of Agatha; her mind was intent on the man beside her, the man who
+was merely a new acquaintance and yet seemed already a tried and
+sympathetic friend.  She liked him.  She wished he were staying longer
+in Wortheton.  She wished William had invited him to spend his last
+evening at Court Heatherleigh.  Strictly speaking, courtesy demanded it;
+but William was not always courteous.  She held a well-founded belief
+that William sought to punish her by this omission; and it pleased her
+to reflect that she was in a sense getting even with him through the
+present informal meeting.  She promised herself the satisfaction of
+relating her morning's experience at lunch for his and Agatha's
+delectation.  They so entirely disapproved of such harmless pleasures.
+
+"If you've really nothing to do," she said, "let us go for a stroll in
+the woods.  It's lovely there; and we can talk...  I feel like a recluse
+enjoying an unexpected holiday: I want to make the most of it.  And I
+love to talk."
+
+"So do I--with some people," he returned in his level, pleasant voice,
+and lent her a hand to assist her down from the stile.  "It's as well to
+be hung for a sheep as a lamb, don't you think?  Why not enlarge on the
+idea?  I know a shop where we can procure quite edible pasties.  If you
+are agreeable, I could fetch provisions, and we can picnic in the
+woods."
+
+"But that's a capital idea," said Prudence, with a careless disregard
+for developments, which further evidenced the emancipation Miss Agatha
+already foresaw.
+
+"There'll be such a row," she said cheerfully, as they walked across the
+fields side by side.  "It was just such another excursion that Bobby was
+sent back to school for."
+
+"For a little thing like that!"  He laughed.  "Well, they can't send me
+back to school anyhow, and I have a comfortable feeling in my mind that
+you'll be able to keep your end up.  Miss Graynor would be wise to
+recognise that her day is done.  I'll return with you and take my share
+of the censuring.  With luck I might be asked to stay to tea."
+
+This audacity amused them both.  There was gladness in the spring day,
+the gladness of irresponsible youth, the gladness of life in its promise
+with the hope of its fruition unfulfilled and undaunted.  The two gay
+young hearts, in their mutual pleasure in one another, were in tune with
+the brightness of the May morning; and the two gay young voices rang out
+in clear enjoyment and awoke the echoes in the shady woods.
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+It detracted somewhat from Prudence's enjoyment when, having lunched
+delightfully off viands which would have met with less favour eaten off
+a plate from an ordinary dining-table, having subsequently strolled
+about the woods, engaged in botanical and other research, it abruptly
+occurred to her that it was time to return home.  The thought of going
+home was less pleasant with the prospect so imminent.  Picnicking in the
+woods with a comparative stranger was, she felt now, a sufficiently
+unusual proceeding to make explanation difficult.  Neither Agatha nor
+her father would view the matter in the light in which she saw it--
+simply as a pleasant excursion breaking the monotony of dull days.  The
+necessity to account for her absence at all annoyed her.
+
+"The drawback to stolen pleasure," she announced, regarding the young
+man with serious eyes in which a shade of anxiety was faintly reflected,
+"lies in the aftermath of nettles; while not dangerous, they sting."
+
+"By Jove! yes," he agreed.  "The little matter of going back has been
+sitting on my mind for the last ten minutes.  The thing loses its humour
+when no longer in the background.  I'm really horribly afraid of Miss
+Graynor."
+
+"You need not come," said Prudence generously.
+
+"Oh!  I'm not so mean a coward as to back out," he said.  "It's up to me
+to see it through with you.  After all, the excursion was at my
+suggestion.  And it was worth being stung for by all the nettles that
+ever grew.  Besides, I want my tea."
+
+"You'll be lucky if you get it," she returned.
+
+"Come now!" he urged.  "Let us take a charitable view, and decide that
+they will dispense generous hospitality.  Upon my soul, I don't see why
+they shouldn't be charmed to receive us.  The Prodigal, you know, got an
+amazing reception."
+
+"Yes," she laughed.  "I think possibly we'll get an amazing reception
+too.  Please, if you don't mind, I would rather you took that dead
+flower out of your coat."
+
+"They would never suspect you of putting it there," he protested, with a
+feeling of strong reluctance to do what she proposed.
+
+But Prudence insisted.  She knew that when William's eye fell on that
+withered memento her guilty conscience would give him the clue to its
+history.
+
+"In any case," she added diplomatically, "it adds a look of untidiness."
+
+And so the primrose never had the opportunity of lifting its head in
+water.  Before discarding it, Steele was seized with the idea of placing
+it between the leaves in his pocket-book; but after a glance at the
+pretty, serious face of his companion he decided against this and left
+the dead flower lying in the bracken at their feet.
+
+"The first brush against the nettles," he remarked, and smiled at her
+regretfully.  "I'm braced now.  That first sting hurt more than any
+other can."
+
+The further stings proved embarrassing rather than hurtful.  When Steele
+entered the drawing-room at Court Heatherleigh with Prudence he was made
+uncomfortably aware of the surprised gaze of five pairs of curious
+feminine eyes all focussed upon himself, and, advancing under this
+raking fire, felt his amiable smile of greeting fade before Miss
+Agatha's blank stare of cold inquiry; her reluctantly extended hand, its
+chill response to his clasp, reduced him to a state of abject humility.
+He found himself stammering an apologetic explanation of his presence.
+
+"I just looked in to say good-bye," he began awkwardly.  "I had the good
+luck to meet Miss Graynor this morning--"
+
+"I presume you mean that you encountered my sister, Prudence?"  Miss
+Graynor interrupted him frigidly.
+
+He flushed, and felt savage with himself for being betrayed into the
+weakness.
+
+"I met Miss Prudence--yes, and persuaded her to show me the woods.  You
+have some very beautiful scenery about here; it seemed a pity to miss
+the best of it, and this was my last opportunity.  I made the most of
+it," he added with a touch of audacity which Miss Agatha inwardly
+resented.
+
+"We've had a delightful time," Prudence interposed defiantly, and turned
+as her father entered the room and forestalled his reproaches with a
+light kiss on his unresponsive lips.  "I've been picnicking in the
+woods, daddy," she said brightly.  "And now we've come back--for tea."
+
+She made this announcement in the tone of a person who does not intend
+to be denied.  Miss Agatha remarked tartly that it was not the hour for
+tea, and Mr Graynor, ignoring the hospitable suggestion, reproved her
+for her long absence.
+
+"You caused me considerable anxiety," he said.
+
+Prudence expressed her contrition.  Steele added his apologies, although
+in his heart he felt there was nothing in the adventure to apologise
+for.
+
+"I am afraid the fault was mine," he said.  "The suggestion originated
+with me.  I was thoughtless enough to overlook the fact that you might
+be worried."
+
+"The thoughtlessness was on my daughter's side," Mr Graynor answered.
+"She is fully aware that her absence from luncheon would cause anxiety.
+She should have invited you to return with her instead."
+
+Prudence flashed a surprised smile at him.  To have done what he
+proposed was the last thing she would have dared to do.  Had she given
+the invitation she would have been reproved quite as severely for taking
+the liberty as for absenting herself without permission.  The privilege
+of independent action involving promiscuous hospitality was vested
+solely in Agatha and William.
+
+Matters appeared to have reached a deadlock.  Steele had nothing to say!
+Prudence had nothing to say!  Miss Agatha had no desire to help the
+situation by bridging the silence; and Mr Graynor had nothing further
+to add to his reproof.  He seated himself.  Since Miss Agatha remained
+standing Steele had no option but to do the same: he felt increasingly
+awkward, and wished he had taken advantage of Prudence's permission and
+remained out of it.
+
+"Sit down, sit down," exclaimed Mr Graynor suddenly, with an accession
+of ill-humour as he became aware of the general strain.  "Why is every
+one standing?"
+
+His intervention scarcely relieved matters.  Steele said he thought he
+must be going, and murmured something about an early start on the
+morrow; he had merely called to make his adieux.  Miss Agatha's prompt
+acceptance of this explanation for the brevity of his visit was not
+flattering; but Mr Graynor, awakening tardily to a sense of the lack of
+cordiality, protested against his leaving so hurriedly.
+
+"William will be in presently," he said.  "You had better wait and see
+him.  And we'll have tea.  I see no object in deferring tea, Agatha,
+until a given hour."
+
+"Prudence," Agatha commanded, "ring the bell, please."
+
+Steele attempted to forestall the girl; their hands touched as each
+reached out to press the button.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" he murmured under his breath, and caught her eye and smiled
+dryly.  "It will require something more efficacious than dock leaves to
+counteract these nettles."
+
+She drew back without replying, but her face was charged with meaning,
+and he detected the hidden laughter in her eyes.  It was well for her,
+he decided, that she could find anything to laugh at in the dismal
+situation; for himself he would gladly have escaped and sacrificed the
+tea; a whisky and soda would have suited him better at the moment.
+
+The tea, when it came, caused little unbending, but it provided a
+legitimate excuse for moving from Miss Agatha's side, and it gave him an
+opportunity for a few minutes' talk with Prudence, a disjointed,
+embarrassed talk under the close observation of the rest.  Steele was
+conscious of those watchful eyes, of the listening hang in the
+conversation when he approached the girl.  Prudence also was conscious
+of this silent manifestation of vigilant criticism on the part of her
+family; but she had reached a stage of recklessness which moved her to
+openly disregard the condemnation in Agatha's eyes when Steele, having
+handed the cake to her, remained beside her for a few minutes, and held
+her in conversation.
+
+"I have been reconsidering what you said in the wood," he observed,
+"about the influence of others in regard to the enjoyment of life.  You
+were entirely right."
+
+"Given the opportunity, I knew I could prove my case," she answered with
+the same amount of caution in her tones as he had used.  "But you
+mustn't talk to me now, please; I'm in disgrace."
+
+"So am I," he replied.  "I wonder if you will be looking out of a window
+to-night?"
+
+"I expect so."
+
+"I prowl about most nights," he said, and scrutinised her face intently
+to observe the effect of his words.
+
+"I know.  I've seen you."
+
+"It is regrettable," he remarked, "that the upper story of a private
+house is usually inaccessible.  Won't you have another piece of cake?
+No!  Miss Matilda, may I fetch you some tea?"
+
+The maidenly breasts of the four Miss Graynors, who were pale
+reflections of their eldest sister, were pleasantly stirred by Steele's
+punctilious courtesy.  They were envious of their young half-sister,
+whose temerity had led her into the indiscretion of spending an entire
+morning in the society of a member of the opposite sex.  It does not
+follow that a life which has known no romance is innocent of romantic
+aspirations.  Miss Matilda, spare and prim and slightly grey,
+experienced a vague sense of loss and of resentment against her single
+state when she met Steele's smiling, youthful eyes, and reflected that
+no man's glance had ever rested upon herself with that look of pleased
+interest which she observed in Steele's face whenever it was turned in
+Prudence's direction.  Prudence, of course, was pretty and young.  Miss
+Matilda's girlhood lay behind her, but it had known none of the delights
+that her virgin heart longed for in the secret chamber which she seldom
+unlocked even for her own inspection.  The emotions that lay concealed
+there were unbecoming in a modest woman whose function it was to be
+pious and dutiful in the acceptance of her lot.
+
+It was possibly due to these hidden emotions that Steele found Miss
+Matilda's society less depressing than her sister's, and he clung to it
+tenaciously until the entrance of brother William assigned him as by
+right to the position of audience to the ponderous conversation of this
+man of limited intelligence and no humour.  William would have failed to
+understand that a man, even when young, would rather talk with a woman
+than be talked to by himself.  The manner in which his sisters effaced
+themselves in his presence was a tribute to, as well as a recognition
+of, his masculine superiority.  It was the want of a proper appreciation
+on his youngest sister's part in this respect that so frequently made it
+necessary for him to assert his dignity before her.  He was angry with
+her now, and he passed her with his face averted, righteous indignation
+in his frown and in the set of his shoulders.  Steele felt that it would
+be a pleasure to kick him; but when he detected the mischievous
+wickedness in Prudence's eyes, William's dignity became a matter for
+amusement rather than annoyance; the man was so obviously an ass.
+
+"The weather," William observed, as he took his tea, waited on by two of
+his sisters despite Steele's efforts to relieve them, "shows signs of
+breaking.  The barometer has fallen."
+
+"The country needs rain," Miss Agatha remarked in tones of satisfaction.
+
+And for the next few minutes the advantages of a good downpour and the
+benefit therefrom to the garden as well as to the farmers, was discussed
+in detail: the watering of the borders, it transpired, fully occupied
+the gardener's time each evening as a result of the dry spell.
+
+Bored beyond measure, Steele took an abrupt leave, and declining
+William's invitation to take a stroll round the grounds in his company,
+seized his hat and fled.
+
+"She'll never stick it," he reflected, as he banged the gate and hurried
+away down the road like a man pursued.  "She can't.  She'll do a bunk,
+one day.  I would in her place."
+
+And Prudence, defenceless in the drawing-room, meeting the brunt of
+William's anger, and the reproaches of the others, determined in her
+rebellious soul that if release did not come in some legitimate form
+before she was twenty-one, she would on acquiring that age obtain it for
+herself.
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+The moonlight fell softly on Prudence's bright hair, touching the curls
+lovingly with a wan brilliance that, paling their shining gold, added a
+purer sheen to replace the beauty stolen by the night.  Its light was
+reflected in the blue depths of her eyes, eyes which took on the misty
+darkness of the night sky so that the moonbeams felt at home therein and
+lingered there confidingly.  She leaned far out of the window, and the
+fragrance of some early gloire de Dijon roses was wafted towards her on
+the night breeze.  A scent besides that of the roses stole up to her out
+of the shadows--the scent of cigarette smoke, too close under her window
+to suggest that the smoker was beyond the wall that shut off the garden
+from the road.  Prudence had watched the smoker enter the garden; she
+watched him now throw away his cigarette among the flowers in one of the
+borders as he advanced, and she heard his voice speaking softly to her
+out of the gloom.
+
+"Can't you come down?" he asked.
+
+"Not unless you have come provided with a rope ladder," she replied as
+softly.
+
+"By Jove!  I never thought of that.  But you aren't locked in?"
+
+"Not in the sense you mean.  But locked doors would be trifles compared
+with the opposition I should encounter if I attempted to join you.  I'd
+love to come out; but it's impossible."
+
+"Is there any likelihood of our being overheard?" he asked with caution.
+
+Prudence laughed quietly.
+
+"Every likelihood," she answered.  "I don't think I mind."
+
+Steele stood under cover of the wall of the house.  There were no lights
+in the windows on that side; he had observed that on former occasions;
+the library, where Mr Graynor sat every evening with William, faced the
+other way.
+
+"Then I'm going to run the risk and stay and talk with you," he said.
+
+There was a strange intimacy in the situation that appealed to Prudence.
+The adventure of the morning was as nothing compared with this stolen
+interview.  The insufficient light of the moon, and the distance which
+divided them, added a touch of romance which she found pleasantly
+exciting.  To gaze down upon his upturned face and the uncertain outline
+of his form below stirred her imagination; and the necessity for
+caution, occasioning them to lower their voices to whispers, gave to the
+utterance of the most trivial speech the flavour of intimate things.
+She leaned down nearer to him.
+
+"It's rather like Romeo and Juliet, isn't it?" she said.
+
+"That ended rottenly," he replied, and laughed.
+
+"So will this probably.  What made you venture inside?"
+
+"Isn't the reason obvious?" he returned.  "I thought I had prepared you
+for my visit at tea.  It wasn't possible for us to say good-bye like
+that.  I'm sorry I got you into that mess."
+
+"You didn't," Prudence assured him gently.  "I knew how it would be.
+I'm not regretting--anything.  Stinging nettles cease to hurt when the
+rash subsides.  William is furious.  We don't speak."
+
+"That must be rather a relief for you."
+
+She dimpled suddenly.
+
+"He doesn't think so.  When I apologise I am to be taken into favour
+again.  So, if he keeps to that, it is likely to be many years before we
+interchange remarks."
+
+"What an egregious ass he is," Steele commented.  "Never mind that now.
+We don't want to discuss him.  I came to-night to beg a favour.  Will
+you write to me sometimes? ... and may I write?  I don't want to lose
+touch altogether."
+
+"I can't promise that," she said, and fingered a rosebud below her
+window, snapping its stem in nervous preoccupation.  "All our letters go
+into a box at the post office and are sorted before we receive them.
+They would not allow me to correspond with you."
+
+"Could we not arrange a little deception," he suggested, "by means of
+which you could collect your own letters from the post office?"
+
+But this idea did not commend itself to Prudence.  She might be a rebel,
+but she was honest, as courageous people usually are; anything in the
+nature of deceit repelled her.  "I should not care to do that," she
+said.  Her answer pleased Steele, although it defeated his purpose.  He
+had hoped to follow up this pleasant friendship begun under such unusual
+and difficult conditions.  It was the quality of conspiracy and quick
+intimacy which made the acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to
+him.  He was more than half in love with her already; and it galled him
+to reflect that with his present uncertain prospects he was no match for
+this daughter of a wealthy man.  He could not have afforded to marry had
+other conditions proved favourable, which they did not: Mr Graynor
+would scarcely have welcomed a son-in-law with a salary of under two
+hundred a year.
+
+"I am afraid that settles it," he said in tones compounded of a mixture
+of emotions.  "I wonder if ever I'll have the good luck to meet you
+again?"
+
+This remark pulled Prudence up sharply.  She had never considered the
+question of his going out of her life; the suggestion thus forced on her
+unwilling attention hurt.  Abruptly the knowledge came to her that she
+did not wish to lose his friendship.  She had not considered the matter
+of his going away seriously: she had taken it for granted that the
+business that had brought him to Wortheton would bring him again; no
+doubt had crossed her mind as to a further meeting--now that the doubt
+was implanted a vague distress seized her, bringing with it a sense of
+desolation.  She realised that when he was gone she would miss him,
+would feel doubly lonely by comparison with this bright break in the
+monotony of her life.
+
+"You'll come again?" she said quickly.
+
+"It's possible," he answered, "but not in the least likely.  It was just
+a chance that brought me this time.  The firm sends a more important man
+as a rule.  If I come again you will soon know of it.  I shall make my
+first appearance under your window.  In the meanwhile you will quite
+possibly have forgotten my existence."
+
+"Amid the distractions of Wortheton!"  Prudence retorted.  "That's very
+probable, isn't it?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I won't hear a word against Wortheton if it keeps your memory green,"
+he returned.
+
+"It fossilises memory," she answered.  "Every little event that has ever
+befallen is stamped on my mind in indelible colours--drab colours for
+the unpleasant event, and brighter tints for the pleasant in comparison
+with their different degrees of agreeableness."
+
+"And this event?" he questioned.  "These stolen moments?  In what colour
+is this event painted?"
+
+"I'll tell you that when we meet again--perhaps," she answered.
+
+"Oh please!" he persisted.  "I want to know now."
+
+Prudence laughed softly.  He detected a slight nervousness in her mirth,
+a quality of shyness that gratified his eager curiosity, conveying as it
+did that the girl was not insensible of his influence and his unspoken
+homage.
+
+"You see," she said, and blushed warmly in the darkness as she leaned
+down towards him, "it is all a confusion of splashes of moonlight and
+brighter splashes of sunshine.  There aren't any colours on the canvas
+at all."
+
+"I'm contented with that," he said... "a luminous impression!  Your
+fancy pleases me.  My fancy in connexion with you will picture always a
+rose-bowered window set in a grey stone wall--just a frame for you, with
+your moonlit hair and eyes like beautiful stars.  Always I shall see you
+like that--inaccessible, while I stand below and gaze upward."
+
+This extravagance led to further admissions.  He managed very clearly to
+convey to his silent listener that his feeling for her was of quite an
+unusual quality, that he cared immensely, that he had no intention of
+letting her drop out of his life.  He wanted to see more of her and was
+fully determined to do so.  He made her realise that unless she
+disclaimed a reciprocal liking he intended taking her silence for
+acquiescence.  He spoke so rapidly, and with so much concentrated
+passion in his lowered tones, that Prudence only vaguely comprehended
+all that his eager words attempted to convey.  She was apprehensive of
+discovery, and, rendered doubly nervous by this clandestine love-making
+and the fear of interruption, could find no words in which to reply.
+She wanted time to think: the whole situation flurried her; and her
+heart was beating with a rapidity that made articulation difficult.
+
+"Oh!" she said...  "Oh!  I didn't know...  I didn't understand..."
+
+"Well, you understand now," he answered.  "Prudence, give me one word--
+one kind word to carry away with me... dear!"
+
+There followed a pause, during which her face showed dimly above him,
+with eyes shadowed darkly in the wan light.  She leaned towards him.
+
+"Ssh!  Good-bye--dear!" she called back softly.  And the next thing he
+realised, even as her words floated faintly down to his eager ears, was
+that he was standing alone in the darkness, gazing up at the place where
+she had stood and from whence she had vanished with startling and
+unaccountable suddenness.
+
+Later Steele walked back to the quaint little hotel where he was
+staying, confused by the hurried sweetness of her farewell as she
+withdrew from her position at the window with a caution that suggested
+unseen interruption.  He had stepped forward with noiseless haste to
+secure a rose which fell from her window, and carrying it with him, made
+his way silently out of the garden.  He was never certain whether the
+falling of the rose had been accidental, or whether Prudence had dropped
+it for him as a token and a reminder; but because her hand had gathered
+it, he lifted it in the moonlight and touched its cool fragrance
+reverently with his lips.  The act made him consciously her lover.  The
+rose became a symbol--a bond between him and her.  Just so long as he
+kept it he knew that her influence would dominate his life, and his
+memory of her retain its warm and vital quality, so that she would
+remain a beautiful inspiration amid the sordid worries of uncongenial
+things.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+"I heard you," Miss Matilda said in tones of immense reserve to her
+youngest sister on the following morning when they met on the landing at
+the top of the stairs, "talking from your window last night."
+
+Prudence blushed brightly.
+
+"Then it was you who came to my door?"
+
+"Yes."  Miss Matilda kept her maidenly gaze lowered to the carpet.  Her
+expression was guilty, so that one might have supposed that she, and not
+the defiant young woman whom she accosted in this unexpected way, had
+engaged in clandestine whisperings overnight.  "I was afraid Mary might
+wake.  You were a little imprudent, I think."
+
+Prudence laughed.  The gently spoken reproof sounded like a play on her
+name.
+
+"You are a dear," she said, and felt more kindly towards this sister
+whom she so little understood.
+
+Had Miss Matilda proved less pliant to Miss Graynor's moulding she might
+have developed into an ordinary human being; but she had gone down under
+Miss Agatha's training, had imbibed the family traditions until she
+became saturated with the Graynor ideals and lost her own individuality.
+In her heart she sympathised with her sister's indiscretions; but her
+mind condemned this conduct as unseemly and unbecoming in a girl of
+refinement.
+
+She went downstairs in advance of Prudence, and throughout the reading
+of the morning prayers her pink distressed face witnessed to its owner's
+shame in being a partner to this flagrant deception.  She was shielding
+her sister against her conscience: no accessory to a criminal offence
+could have felt more wickedly implicated.  And Prudence did not care.
+She was so utterly reckless that she had not bargained even with Miss
+Matilda for her silence.  It had not occurred to Prudence that anyone
+could be mean enough to inform against her.
+
+With the finish of breakfast Miss Agatha commanded her presence in the
+morning-room, and provided her with sufficient work to occupy her fully
+until the lunch hour; and Prudence sat near the open window with her
+sewing in her lap and looked out on the garden with faintly smiling
+eyes, recalling the overnight interview while she watched the gardener a
+few yards off trimming a border of wallflowers which since the previous
+day had been trampled upon inexplicably.
+
+"It must have been a dog from outside, Simmonds," Miss Agatha remarked
+from her position at the window.
+
+Simmonds, stooping over the despoiled border, presented an
+uncompromising back to her view.  He grunted something, of which the
+only word that Miss Agatha caught was "tramps."
+
+"In that case," she said with decision, "it is a matter for the police."
+
+The smile in Prudence's eyes deepened, and Miss Matilda's downbent face
+took on a brighter shade of pink.  There is no end to the embarrassment
+which follows upon duplicity.
+
+Luncheon brought William and a further sense of enormity.  William
+appeared somewhat obviously not to see his youngest sister; she had
+become, since answering him with unpardonable rudeness in the
+drawing-room yesterday, amazingly invisible to him.  That he was aware
+of her presence was manifest by the care with which he avoided looking
+in her direction, and by the calculated offensiveness of his speech in
+referring to the absent Steele.
+
+"I am glad to say that bounder Steele left by train this morning," he
+announced with unpleasant emphasis, as soon as the usual attention to
+his buttons, which allowed for a more expansive ease, left him free to
+indulge in the amenities of the table.  "I hope Morgan won't send a man
+like that again."
+
+"Edward Morgan usually comes himself," Mr Graynor observed.  "But for a
+touch of bronchitis he would have come.  He is subject to chest
+trouble."
+
+"Well, of course," said Prudence, with the sisterly intention of
+annoying William who was senior to Mr Morgan, "he is getting old."
+
+Edward Morgan was the man who, with heavy playfulness, had pulled her
+curls in the days of her childhood.  Despite the fact that she rather
+liked him, she looked upon him as almost elderly; he had seemed to her
+elderly at thirty.
+
+"Don't be absurd," interposed Miss Agatha sharply.  "Mr Morgan is in
+the prime of life."
+
+Although he would have enjoyed the business of squashing her, William,
+in his determination to ignore Prudence's existence, was compelled to
+let the remark pass unchallenged.  He addressed himself pointedly to his
+father on matters appertaining to the works, while the five Miss
+Graynors interchanged commonplaces, and Prudence was left to the
+satisfying of a healthy young appetite, and her own reflections, which,
+judging from her expression of pleasant abstraction, were more
+entertaining than the scrappy conversation to which she paid no
+attention.
+
+At the finish of the meal Miss Agatha created a diversion by requesting
+William to call at the police station to report that tramps had been
+loitering on the premises and had made havoc of the flowers in the
+borders.  William required to be shown the borders, which he inspected
+with an air of pompous vexation, describing the damage as scandalous and
+an outrage, to the secret amusement of his youngest sister, who observed
+him critically from the French window of the drawing-room, which looked
+upon the borders in question.  William was aware of her presence and of
+the smiling impertinence of her glance.  It may have been the sight of
+her standing there in her scornful indifferent youth that accounted for
+the connecting thought which caused him to lift his eyes with swift
+suspicion to the window above the despoiled bed.  Prudence, intercepting
+the upward glance, felt her cheeks suddenly aglow.  For the first time
+since their disagreement he looked her fully in the face; then, with a
+change of expression that was a studied insult, he looked away.
+
+"I don't think it is the work of a tramp," he said.  "But I will inform
+the police.  If anyone is caught loafing about the premises I'll run him
+in."
+
+And Prudence, gazing upon the outraged dignity of his retreating back,
+laughed with considerable enjoyment.
+
+"If only he could see how ridiculous he looks!" she mused, and stepped
+out upon the path, and gathered a wallflower head, which with an air of
+bravado she pinned in the front of her dress.
+
+She regretted that she could not write to Steele and inform him of the
+havoc he had wrought and the distress this caused the family.  She wrote
+instead to Bobby, describing in detail the whole surprising event of
+Steele's visit and its result; and Bobby, whose letters she was
+permitted to receive uncensored, commented briefly upon the episode and
+added that he would jolly well like to punch the fellow's head.  Bobby's
+incipient jealousy was always taking fire when anyone loomed on
+Prudence's horizon with a prominence which threatened to eclipse his own
+popularity; and this matter of Steele, it occurred to him while reading
+Prudence's frankly worded enthusiasms, was more serious than anything
+that had transpired hitherto in the youthful experiences of his aunt.
+There was just sufficient Graynor blood in his veins to excite
+resentment in him at the thought of Prudence hanging out of the window
+to talk with any fellow in the night; but he was wise enough not to put
+that on paper.  His want of sympathy, however, disappointed Prudence.
+For the first time in her life she caught herself wondering whether
+there was a latent possibility for Bobby of development upon his uncle's
+lines.  But she put this idea aside as absurd; Bobby was the son of his
+father, and his father had flung off the family yoke early, and gone
+away and married a penniless girl of no family, and never repented.
+That was what Prudence admired most in him, that he had never solicited
+the forgiveness which was not voluntarily extended.  That was how she
+would act in similar circumstances.
+
+When in due course Bobby came home for the summer vacation, Prudence
+made a strange discovery; she could not, she found, discuss Steele with
+him.  It had been easy to write, with the excitement of the experience
+fresh in her memory, of the pleasure of Steele's visit and the stresses
+that ensued; but in the interval she had thought much about Steele, and
+missed him increasingly; and now she found it not only difficult but
+impossible to speak of him without constraint and a certain shyness
+foreign to her nature and oddly disconcerting.  When Bobby referred to
+the fellow she had written to him about, she disposed of the matter
+briefly.
+
+"Oh, that!" she said.  "That's ancient history.  Lots of duller things
+have happened since and put that in the background."
+
+"The new curate!" suggested Bobby, grinning.  "The chap who is
+fluttering the dovecots on account of his being unmarried.  You devoted
+several letters to him, I remember.  What's he like?"
+
+"He's a little man in a big coat and a big hat," she answered.  "What
+can be seen of him is quite nice, but it isn't much.  There must be a
+brain of sorts under the hat, but it's little too.  His chief
+idiosyncrasy is that he fancies himself all brain.  Mrs North is trying
+to marry her daughter to him."
+
+"And he prefers you," commented Bobby... "naturally."
+
+Prudence smiled wickedly.
+
+"He says it is the duty of a curate with only his stipend to depend upon
+to marry a woman of independent means.  I think myself he will marry
+Matilda.  He would like to belong to the family; the factory attracts
+him."
+
+"Money-grubbing little worm!" said Bobby, who was barely a year younger
+than Prudence and presumed on that account to set aside her more
+responsible relationship.  "I wish he would marry Aunt Agatha.  That
+would be something of a lark."
+
+"Poor little man!" said Prudence.  "He's not so impossible as all that.
+And he is horribly afraid of her.  She makes him stammer."
+
+Bobby laughed outright.
+
+"We're all horribly afraid of her.  That's the funny part of it.  And
+yet, you know, if one turned round and cheeked her she'd crumple up.
+I'll do it one day."
+
+Prudence regarded him with increased respect.
+
+"I hope I'll be there," was all she said.
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+Bobby made the acquaintance of the curate very soon after that talk.
+They met for the first time at the vicarage garden party, which,
+according to an invariable rule, was held on Mrs North's birthday.
+This enabled the vicar's wife to display her birthday gifts, exciting by
+their numerical strength rather than their quality envy in the breasts
+of those guests less favoured in the matter of tokens of esteem on the
+important day which by right of precedent we appropriate to ourselves,
+and causing embarrassment to the more neglectful of her visitors by this
+reminder of a custom ignored.
+
+She made little self-depreciatory remarks in displaying these absurd
+articles, which wore in most instances an appearance of having come from
+some bazaar stall and a dejected air of expectation that eventually they
+would return thither by reason of their uselessness, and be sold and
+resold at extortionate prices for charitable ends.
+
+When one tired of viewing the gifts one wandered about the garden and
+admired the flowers, and a few of the younger people played tennis.  The
+vicar hovered on the outskirts and smiled with remote affability upon
+every one.  He discussed eighteenth century art with anyone who would
+listen to him.  He claimed to be an authority on eighteenth century art,
+and possessed a few pictures which he had dug out of second-hand
+dealers' shops and bought for a trifle on account of their doubtful
+authenticity.  He led the way triumphantly to his study where these
+treasures were hung, and discoursed learnedly on Humphreys, and other
+artists of that period, while he showed his canvasses to a listless,
+uninterested, and uninformed audience, who had seen most of them before.
+One crude portrait, that resembled a bad imitation of the Hamilton, he
+pronounced to be a Romney.  No one believed him.  It is doubtful whether
+he believed it himself; the dealer who had sold it to him had lied
+without conviction.  But the possession of even a questionable Romney
+afforded him a sense of artistic importance.  His collection was, he
+asserted, very valuable.  He had insured it for a figure which would
+have tempted many people to the mean crime of arson: there were moments,
+when the vicar was harassed and the Easter offering had proved
+disappointing, when he gazed upon this comfortable asset lining his
+walls and decided that if Providence saw fit to raze his dwelling to the
+ground he would bear his loss with Christian fortitude and take a
+holiday abroad on the proceeds.
+
+Bobby, as one of the younger guests, enjoying also the doubtful
+privilege of being one of the two bachelors of the party--the other
+being the curate--was spared a review of the pictures and carried off to
+the tennis court by Mable North and several middle-aged spinsters, who
+cheated themselves into the deception that because romance had not been
+met in their youth, youth lay before instead of behind them, and saw in
+every unattached male a suppliant for their favour or an object for
+their womanly sympathy.  Why country parishes beget these women remains
+an unsolved problem, but that they do beget them is very certain--women
+who cherish sickly sentimentality beyond the time for its decent
+interment and who look down on their sturdier sisters of a busier
+atmosphere as unsexed for putting the impossible aside and seeking a
+justification for their existence in an independence apart from these
+things.
+
+Bobby played several sets of tennis with various partners of doubtful
+efficiency, opposed to the curate with a similar inadequate support who
+beseeched him plaintively to take her balls whenever they pitched a yard
+from her racket.  And then the two young men insisted upon a rest, and
+sat on a bench a little apart from the feminine element and took stock
+of one another.  Prudence and a dispirited-looking woman of uncertain
+age played a set against Mable North and the Sunday-school lady
+superintendent, who was stout and forty and of a practical turn of mind.
+She rather preferred playing in a feminine foursome.  The curate had
+eyes only for Prudence.  It is doubtful whether he knew who else was on
+the court.
+
+"Your cousin is so graceful," he remarked to Bobby in an undertone.  And
+Bobby, interrupted in the business of observing the curate's infatuated
+glances, brought himself up sharply and allowed his surprised gaze to
+follow his companion's.
+
+"My--Oh! my aunt.  Yes, she's ripping, isn't she?"
+
+"The relationship seems so absurd," the curate said, with his eyes on
+Bobby's long legs.  "I always confuse it."
+
+"Yes," Bobby agreed.  "I might as well be a grandfather as she my aunt.
+There's not a year's difference between us."
+
+He offered his cigarette case to the curate, who declined the invitation
+to smoke.
+
+"It is such a mistake to drug the brain," he said.
+
+"It's so difficult," Bobby returned cheerfully, "to know whether one has
+a brain to drug."
+
+"Oh!  I don't think anyone can have any doubt about that," the curate
+returned seriously.
+
+"No," Bobby agreed.  "It is generally the other people who entertain
+doubts."
+
+He lighted himself a cigarette and slipped the case into his pocket.
+
+"Prudence smokes--like a furnace," he added--"whenever she gets the
+chance."
+
+Smokes! and surreptitiously!  The curate was horrified.
+
+"You are joking surely?" he said.
+
+"Not much of a joke, when I have to supply the fags."  Bobby looked
+amused.  "We have to be mighty close about it.  _I_ am not allowed to
+smoke in the Presence."  So he designated Miss Agatha.
+
+"But we moon about the garden at night and enjoy ourselves."
+
+"Well played!" cried the curate enthusiastically, and ignored Bobby's
+confidence in his warm admiration for Prudence's spirited return.  "That
+was very neatly placed indeed," he said.
+
+"Prudence is a very deceptive player.  She always scores through
+trickery," Bobby observed, and watched the effect of this remark on his
+disapproving listener.  "Nothing very brilliant about her play, you may
+note; but she wins all the time."
+
+"She is so very graceful," the curate said again, as though this quality
+was accounted a virtue in his estimation, as probably it was.
+
+"He's an awful ass, Prue," Bobby confided to her later.  "And I've
+spoilt your matrimonial chances by telling him you smoke."
+
+Whereupon Prudence laughed sceptically.
+
+"As though I couldn't counteract that by allowing him to convert me from
+the evil practice," she said.
+
+"I think you are an abandoned little wretch," Bobby said, and dismissed
+the subject.  It was so very evident that the curate as a rival for
+Prudence's favour was a negligible quantity.
+
+"Pretty tame, these old tabby meetings," Bobby remarked presently.  "Why
+don't they do something in this benighted hole?"
+
+"That's what I am always wondering.  I am looking to you to come home
+and wake the place up."
+
+"Paint it red?" he suggested, grinning.
+
+"Paint it any colour, save the drab hues which at present disfigure it.
+There isn't any earthly reason why people should remain satisfied to be
+so dull.  What are you going to do when you come home to settle?"
+
+"Well, the first thing I shall do will be to marry--in order to get away
+from the Court," he replied with decision.  "I refuse to be aunt-pecked
+any longer than necessity demands."
+
+"Does that include me?"  Prudence inquired with irony.
+
+"You!  Oh Lord!"  He threw back his head and laughed.  "You can come
+along and share my emancipation."
+
+"Thank you."  Prudence's small chin was elevated, her lip curled
+disdainfully.  "I shall contrive my own emancipation," she said.
+
+"How?" he asked, suddenly interested.
+
+"By marriage also," she answered, and laughed and broke from his
+detaining hand and fled indoors.
+
+Bobby looked after her in perplexity.
+
+"By Jove!  I had forgotten that chap," he reflected, and recalled her
+earlier confidences with suddenly awakened suspicion and a mind not a
+little disturbed.  He had been joking.  Possibly Prudence had been
+joking also.  But Wortheton without her would be a drear hole, he
+decided; and Wortheton and the factory were his ultimate and inevitable
+lot.
+
+And yet he did not wish her to remain unmarried.  His five spinster
+aunts and the unmarried women he had met that afternoon, hovering
+hungrily about the little curate, sickened him.  Prudence had no place
+in that gallery.  She was altogether too fine and too clever to be
+wasted in the narrow seclusion of this life which she led with such
+evident distaste.  Of course she would marry and go away.  That was the
+chief point; she would go away.  It didn't after all seem to matter who
+the fellow was, so long as he was a decent sort of chap and could
+provide for her an appreciate her qualities of beauty and intellect.  If
+he didn't appreciate her--so Bobby philosophised--it would be a case of
+out of the frying-pan into the fire; but whoever it was got into the
+flames, the young man felt comfortably assured it would not be Prudence.
+She would contrive her emancipation more thoroughly than that.
+
+"I wish I had asked her more about that fellow," he mused.
+
+But he recognised that the time for asking questions was past.
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+"I've been thinking," Bobby remarked one evening to Prudence, when they
+strolled up the road together in the dusk, "about our talk the other
+afternoon; and I've come to the conclusion that it's not the fault of
+the place, it's our own fault, that we find life dull.  One place is
+much like another.  Either we want too much, or else we are dull in
+ourselves and can't get the enjoyment out of life that is there for our
+taking.  That's what I make of it anyhow."
+
+Prudence considered this.
+
+"Possibly I want too much--I think I do," she said after a while.  "And
+so do you.  We are the children of our age, Bobby; we've learnt to think
+for ourselves; when one begins to think one ceases to accept things
+unquestioningly.  I'm alive to my finger tips.  I want to enjoy.  I am
+not satisfied merely to exist; a worm does that.  I want to experience
+life to the full.  Don't you?"
+
+"I suppose I do," Bobby agreed--"when you put it that way."
+
+Prudence was triumphant.
+
+"There you are, you see.  It's just the way a thing is put.  For the
+moment you almost convinced me that the discontent lay in myself, and
+now I convince you that there is substantial ground for discontent.  No
+one should remain quiet under dissatisfying conditions; we should each
+strive for individual liberty.  Youth is the time in which to do things,
+and youth passes quickly.  When we are old we cease to strive because
+the spirit of adventure leaves us; but the hunger for the things which
+we have missed remains.  And that makes us bitter."
+
+"How do you know?" demanded Bobby, with a cynical smile for her youth.
+
+"Know!" she repeated, and faced him, her eyes alight and scornful.  "One
+has only to look around and note the disappointed, dull, sour people one
+meets; people who have had their chance and missed it, because they
+reasoned as you do; people who have not possessed courage or initiative,
+but in whose blood the desire for enjoyment has worked as surely as it
+works in ours.  Do you suppose Agatha has never wanted to marry and
+manage a man and a home of her own?  Do you suppose Matilda doesn't
+hunger for children, and Mary for a lover?  Didn't daddy desire love?
+He married twice, and the second time at least was not merely a matter
+of expediency.  I'm colder perhaps, harder anyway.  I don't want
+anything but just to get away from Wortheton and live my own life
+independently, and order my days as I please."
+
+Bobby stared at her open-mouthed, bereft in his astonishment of the
+power of speech.  Prudence suddenly laughed.
+
+"You old thing!" she cried.  "I've properly scandalised you.  Why do you
+set my thoughts working along these lines?  You are just a boy."
+
+"Oh, shut it!" he ejaculated.  "You aren't much older."
+
+"A girl is a lot older than a boy," she said.  "She apprehends life more
+fully; your sex, until you are a responsible age, is just out for fun.
+But there's a time limit to one's capacity for enjoyment.  In a few
+years I shall settle down to the routine, whatever it is that offers;
+and if I haven't had my good time, I'll just be a discontented dull
+reflection of the others.  I know.  And I'm going to guard against
+that."
+
+"But how?" he persisted.  "What do you mean to do?"
+
+"I haven't thought that out," Prudence answered after a moment for
+reflection.  "I don't know that I should confide in you if I had."
+
+He smiled at that, and stopped and lighted himself a cigarette.
+
+"I don't care what you do," he said, and added cheerfully: "I only hope
+you will have a good time.  You know you're awfully pretty, Prue, and--
+and interesting, and all that."
+
+"Am I?"  Prudence laughed again, and there was a note of satisfaction in
+her mirth.  "I thank Providence that I am pretty; it makes things
+easier.  But if I were plain I should still insist on my good time.  It
+doesn't necessarily include the homage of man.  That's a side issue.  It
+is sometimes a means to an end, but the end is the thing which matters.
+I want my own individual life."
+
+"I don't want any own individual life like that," Bobby confessed in
+thoughtful seriousness.  "I want a home of my own, of course, and--a
+wife, and all those jolly things."
+
+"At seventeen?" she scoffed.
+
+And then he confided to her that he had met the divinity he hoped to
+marry at the home of a school chum.  She was nearly as old as he was,
+and she was quite prepared to marry him as soon as circumstances
+permitted.  She was a ripping good sort and very high spirited.
+
+"You had better invite her to stay at Wortheton before the ceremony,"
+Prudence advised him.  "If that doesn't put her off, you'll be sure of
+her genuine affection anyway."
+
+"I'm sure of that now," he returned confidently.
+
+"You've made good use of your time," was all she said.
+
+His words, the ring in his young voice, called up a mental picture of a
+strong clear-cut face looking up at her in the uncertain light of a
+moonlit night in May.  She felt that somehow Bobby had outdistanced her.
+
+"Here we are," she exclaimed abruptly, "you and I, mooning, as we've
+mooned for years whenever the vacation came round.  When we were
+children we mooned along and talked of splendid things--the things we
+meant to do, the positions we could create for ourselves in a world that
+was open and defenceless to our attacks; and now we moon sentimentally
+and talk of love instead."
+
+"But that's splendid too," he affirmed with young enthusiasm.
+
+"Is it? ...  I wonder.  I think perhaps it's just a little disappointing
+also... moonshine, like the rest."
+
+"Rot!" said Bobby elegantly.  "Something's changed you, Prue--or some
+one...  Which?"
+
+"The curate perhaps," Prudence returned flippantly.  "Marriage with him
+would not be moonshine exactly, but it would be a trifle dull--just the
+distractions which the parish offered, and on Sundays his sermons to
+listen to."
+
+"There would be stimulation in the way of jealousy," Bobby suggested
+helpfully.  "Think of all those women who work braces for him and lounge
+slippers.  You'd have to compete, you know."
+
+"They cease all that when the curates marry," Prudence returned with
+disgust.  "If they only kept it up there would be some excitement
+offering; but they don't."
+
+She turned and began to retrace her steps.
+
+"Goodness knows how we got on this topic!  Your brain is love-sick,
+Bobby, and you're infecting me.  If my memory serves me, there have been
+three ideal girls in your life already--and one of them was Mabel
+North."
+
+"Oh! that," said Bobby, colouring, "was all rot.  This is the real
+thing."
+
+"It's always the real thing till the newer attraction comes along.  You
+needn't resent that; it's true not only in your case.  We are unstable
+as the waters which start from infinitesimal raindrops and run down in
+flood to the sea."
+
+Bobby chuckled.
+
+"Your image doesn't apply aptly to every one," he said.  "One can't
+think of Uncle William in connexion with all that broiling strife."
+
+"Oh!"  Prudence made a gesture which conveyed fairly adequately her
+contempt for the person referred to.  "Some raindrops form into puddles,
+and the puddles cheat themselves into believing that they are the sea,
+and ridicule the idea of any expansion beyond their own muddy limits.
+William's is a complete little destiny in itself.  And he never suspects
+the mud at the bottom because he never stirs it up."
+
+"How can you be sure of that?"  Bobby inquired.  "You are taking it too
+much for granted that the old boy's life is lived on the surface.  He
+takes his annual holiday."
+
+"Well!" said Prudence, and turned her head and surveyed his grinning
+countenance with mixed emotions.  "That's the most evil suggestion I've
+heard from you.  I'm not fond of brother William, but I think you ought
+to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+He only laughed.
+
+"There's a bit of the old Adam in him as well as in the rest of us, I
+imagine," he said, and drew her hand within his arm affectionately.
+
+Thus, walking closely, they pursued their way along the dim country road
+which their childish feet had trodden and made familiar in its every
+aspect; which knew too the steadier tramp of their adolescent youth, and
+which in the near future was to know but seldom the lighter tread of the
+girl, whose feet stirred the unconscious dust that in the years ahead
+would lie undisturbed by her passing, when, in the pursuance of her
+destiny, the confined vista of her childhood, with its sense of security
+and dulness, should have become an elusive memory of drab and peaceful
+things.
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+With Bobby's return to college, life for Prudence reverted to the old
+dreary routine of ceaseless exasperating duties and increasingly
+curtailed liberty.  She had a strong suspicion that the sisterly
+supervision which she was conscious was being exercised was carried out
+at brother William's suggestion.  Although there was no one, with the
+exception of the curate, to tempt her to indiscreet behaviour it was
+very obvious that she was not trusted to venture abroad without one of
+her sisters to chaperon her.
+
+Prudence found this irksome at first, and set herself, sometimes
+successfully, to evade their united vigilance; but after one or two
+apparently accidental encounters with the curate, who appeared
+astonishingly in the most unexpected places and joined her on her stolen
+walks, she accepted the new development with a meekness which agreeably
+surprised her family, and discomfited the curate.
+
+It was the curate's quietly resolved manner, his air of exaggerated
+conspiracy, that drove Prudence to this unusual submissiveness.  She
+knew quite well that the little man was making up his mind to propose to
+her, and she did not wish to give him the opportunity.  Her decision was
+taken abruptly, after meeting him one day on the high road along which
+she was walking briskly with her back to the tall chimneys and her face
+to the wind and the little village which lay half-way between Wortheton
+and the junction town which connected it with the busier world from
+which it held aloof.  The curate was cycling from the opposite
+direction.  He was due to attend a meeting within the half-hour and had
+barely time to arrive at the appointed place; but when he came face to
+face with Prudence he alighted nimbly from his machine, and, pulling off
+a heather mixture glove, extended an eager hand.  For a moment she
+allowed him to hold hers in his grip, and found herself wondering while
+she faced him which of his admirers had knitted the gloves for him.
+Then she withdrew her hand and remarked, for the lack of something more
+interesting to say, that the wind was boisterous.
+
+"Yes," he said; "you have it against you.  Why not face about?  It's a
+great help at one's back."
+
+This suggestion Prudence considered artful without being brilliant.  She
+had no desire for his company on the return journey.
+
+"I love to feel it in my face," she said.  "And since you prefer it
+behind it is well we are travelling in opposite directions."
+
+But the curate was not to be disposed of so easily.  He turned his cycle
+and fell into step beside her.  Prudence was taller than he; he was
+obliged to look up from under the wide brim of his hat when regarding
+her, a reversal of the usual order which occasioned him secret vexation.
+
+"One so seldom gets a chance of seeing you alone," he said.  "I suppose
+it is because you are so much younger that your sisters make so much of
+you.  They care for you tremendously.  It is beautiful to observe their
+devotion."
+
+This view of her family's watchful mistrust as a manifest sign of their
+devotion was new to Prudence and afforded her amusement.  She wondered
+whether he was altogether sincere in what he said, or if he were
+indulging in unsuspected satire.
+
+"I find it a little trying sometimes to be the family pet," she returned
+demurely.  "The position is rather like that of the cat of the house
+which gets called indoors when it would prefer to remain in the garden.
+I wonder myself at times why the cat obeys the summons."
+
+He experienced a little difficulty in following her train of thought.
+
+"It's thinking of the milk, I suppose," he suggested, whereat Prudence
+laughed.
+
+"I dare say that explains it--economic dependence explains many
+uncomfortable things.  I haven't much sympathy with the domesticated
+cat," she added.  "She should ignore the call, and remain in the garden
+and eat birds."
+
+"Surely," he said, a little pained, "you wouldn't wish it to do that?
+It's so cruel."
+
+"So is eating mutton," she answered flippantly; "but we all do it."
+
+He digested this for a moment, found no adequate answer, and turned the
+conversation.
+
+"I was thinking of you as I rode," he said, in tones into which he threw
+an inflection of tenderness which she could not fail to detect.  "I
+scarcely dared to expect so much happiness as to meet you like this.
+You are a tremendous walker.  Do you realise how far you are from home?"
+
+He still hoped to induce her to turn and walk back with him.  He would
+be late for his meeting in any case.  He was too mentally flurried to
+decide how he should explain the defection: he was not very ready at
+invention; but the sight of Prudence's fair indifferent face drove him
+to the verge of recklessness; no consideration at the moment was strong
+enough to tear him from her side.
+
+"The farther the better," Prudence answered.  "I am walking into the
+sunset."  She turned her face to the westering sun and the warm glow in
+the sky that lit its declining glory.  "When I turn about I see only the
+chimneys; they blot out everything for me."
+
+"But one can't see them from this distance," he insisted, and paused and
+looked back to verify his statement.
+
+Prudence smiled faintly.
+
+"I can," she said.  "I see them even in my dreams."
+
+"I think myself they look rather fine," he said.  "The red bricks
+against the trees are arresting."
+
+"Yes," she agreed, and smiled at him more directly.  He felt that he had
+struck a happy note and was unnecessarily elated.
+
+"All great industries appeal to me," he continued as they walked on
+again.  "I'm tremendously interested in the factory--and in the
+workpeople.  They are so human and yet simple.  I enjoy working among
+them.  And Mr Graynor is so generous.  The workpeople think very highly
+of him.  I have been very happy in my labours since coming here."
+
+Prudence, missing the guile in this, looked at him in astonishment.
+
+"Really!" she said.  "You are easily pleased."
+
+"You think so?"  He drew a little nearer to her; his disengaged hand,
+hanging at his side, brushed lightly against hers.  "I don't think that
+myself.  But you see I have met much kindness here, and--forgive my
+saying so--it is such a happiness in itself to know you.  I doubt
+whether you understand what a priceless pleasure that is to me."
+
+"It is very flattering of you to say so," Prudence broke in hastily, and
+not so much turned the conversation as jerked it into an impersonal
+channel.  "Look at that gorgeous splash of red on those clouds.  Isn't
+it just as though they were catching fire?"
+
+"Yes," he said in a flattened voice, feeling the rebuff; "it's very
+fine."
+
+"Isn't it?  And that warm light on the trees...  You can see it
+spreading along the branches.  They're all aglow.  If it could only
+last!"
+
+"`The light of the whole world dies when day is done,'" quoted the
+curate sentimentally, and gazed in rapt admiration upon her face which
+was all aglow too, but owed nothing of its colour to the sunset.  "You
+look like one inspired," he added.  "I wish I could sketch you as I see
+you now."
+
+Prudence made an impatient movement.
+
+"I don't believe you care a bit for beautiful scenery," she said.
+
+"I do," he assured her eagerly.  "I admire everything beautiful.  I...
+Never mind the sunset now.  I'm thinking of you.  I can't think of
+anything else.  I want to--"
+
+"Oh!" she interrupted, with a note of sharp relief in her voice, and
+turned an embarrassed face in the direction of a solitary pedestrian,
+who appeared opportunely round a bend in the road, and slowly advanced,
+bearing a bundle in her arms, which at first the girl failed to
+recognise for an infant, wrapped in an old shawl.  "There's some one I
+want to speak to," she said, and blessed Bessie Clapp for her timely
+appearance--"some one I know."
+
+"I'll wait," he said, still resolute though considerably ruffled at the
+interruption.
+
+Prudence regarded him frowningly.
+
+"No," she insisted, "you mustn't wait.  I want to see her alone.  I
+shall walk back with her."
+
+"That isn't altogether kind," he said--"to dismiss me.  But I may see
+you another time?"
+
+He held out his hand and waited.  If he expected a direct answer to his
+tentative suggestion, he was disappointed.  Prudence shook hands
+hurriedly, murmured a breathless good-bye, and left him to mount his
+cycle and ride in unclerical mood to his neglected meeting, where he
+accounted for his unpunctuality by confessing to a puncture which he
+omitted to explain was caused by a thorn which he had painstakingly
+placed in the road and ridden over when a quarter of a mile from the
+town.  Which proves what an amount of trouble a conscientious person
+will take in the insincere evasion of a direct lie.
+
+Prudence meanwhile advanced to meet the girl in the road.  As the
+distance between them decreased she discovered that what the other
+carried in her arms was not an inanimate bundle, as she had supposed,
+but a little child.  Instantly her interest quickened.  The unexpected
+appearance of Bessie Clapp had seemed to her merely opportune at a
+moment when any diversion would have been welcome, but the sight of
+Bessie with a baby in her arms--presumably her own baby--caught her
+attention away from her immediate concerns and brought the other's
+affairs into greater prominence.  She had always believed that this girl
+had been hardly dealt by, and no one had ever considered it worth while
+to enlighten her.  Prudence's sense of justice was in arms, and her
+liking for Bessie, whom she had known from childhood, awoke anew at
+sight of the beautiful tragic face with its look of passionate
+antagonism.  She halted in the girl's path and accosted her with
+disarming friendliness.
+
+"I'm so glad to meet you," she said.  "I thought you had left this
+neighbourhood altogether."
+
+"There are some as would like to make me leave," said Bessie Clapp, her
+dark unsmiling gaze on the fair tranquillity of the younger, happier
+face.  "I've been badgered enough.  We'm living in the little village
+down over the hill."
+
+"Just five miles away!  And I never knew."  Prudence bent suddenly over
+the bundle in her arms.  "Is this your child?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; he's mine."
+
+There was proprietorship but no pride in the admission.  It was
+Prudence's hand which pulled the covering away from the tiny face.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and half drew back, and then bent again compassionately
+over the ugly little mottled piece of humanity in the beautiful young
+mother's arms.  "I've never seen so young a baby before.  What do you
+call him?"
+
+"He isn't christened," the sullen voice responded.  "I've no patience
+with those silly customs."
+
+"But," began Prudence, and looked perplexed, "he'll have to have a name
+of his own some time."
+
+"We call 'im William," the young mother volunteered.  "There's no need
+for cold water splashing over that.  If 'e don't like 'is name later on,
+'e can change it."
+
+Prudence, steering away from the subject, replaced the shawl over the
+little face and impulsively held out her arms.
+
+"Let me carry him," she said.  "I'd love to; and you are tired.  Where
+were you taking him?"
+
+"To the farm yonder, among the trees.  I get milk for 'im there.  'E's
+been weaned these three weeks."
+
+The exchange from the girl-mother's arms to the younger arms extended
+eagerly to receive their burden was effected silently.  Prudence walked
+on proudly, bearing her unaccustomed charge with a sense of new
+responsibility suddenly acquired.  She loved the feel of the little warm
+body against her heart; the nestling pressure of this soft helpless
+thing, which lay so confidingly within the shelter of her arms, roused
+in her the strong protective maternal instinct which is every woman's
+heritage.  In her pity for its puny helplessness she forgot the sense of
+shock which the first glimpse of the repellently ugly wrinkled face had
+occasioned her, forgot the circumstances of its unfortunate birth, and
+the more recent revelation that it had not been received into the
+Church, was not in any sense of the term a Christian; she realised only
+that she held in her arms that most wonderful of all things, a new
+generation; and felt in her heart the warm glow of protective love for
+this weak little morsel of humanity, born into an unwelcoming world--a
+love child who was denied love.  The unfair conditions of the child's
+birth awoke her utmost compassion.  She felt resentful against its
+unknown father, against the injustice of the world's judgment, which
+throws discredit on maternity rather than on illicit love.  The greatest
+crime of this unwedded mother, Prudence recognised, lay in the fact that
+she had brought a child into the world.
+
+"He must be a great comfort to you," she said gently.  "A baby makes up
+for a lot."
+
+Bessie Clapp laughed harshly.
+
+"Ban't many as think like you," she said.  "They wouldn't agree with you
+at Court Heatherleigh."
+
+And Prudence, thinking of Agatha, and Matilda's pink shocked face, of
+brother William's austere principles, and her father's cold disapproval
+at the mere mention of Bessie's name, could not contradict this.  They
+would have been scandalised, and she knew it, could they have seen her
+walking with this outcast, and carrying the outcast's baby in her strong
+young arms.
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+The meeting with Bessie Clapp set Prudence's mind working in new
+directions.  She realised, with an immense pity and a growing wonder for
+the complexities of human emotions, that this girl, whose motherhood had
+come to her in circumstances which the world surrounds with contumely
+and disgrace, had no love for the child of her unlawful passion.  She
+had allowed Prudence to discover that.  But for the fear of consequent
+punishment, she had admitted with bitterness that she would do away with
+the baby.  She confessed too to a hatred of its father.
+
+Prudence wondered whether this unnatural dislike for her own offspring
+resulted from the shame with which its birth had covered her, or was the
+inevitable consequence of the revulsion of feeling which had swept from
+her heart every kindly emotion which must have drawn her once towards
+the man she now professed aversion for.  The man who had injured her had
+a lot to answer for.  If ever it lay in her power to hurt him in return
+it was fairly certain that she would not hesitate to use her
+opportunity.  The silence which she maintained in regard to his name was
+no guarantee of a wish to shield him; it suggested rather a caution
+which awaited its hour to strike.
+
+The meeting left Prudence with a feeling of depression.  It did not
+decrease her pity, but it lessened her liking for the girl to discover
+her attitude of bitter resentment against the helpless mite she had
+brought into the world.  And it set her thinking about marriage in a new
+light.  Was it possible to cease to love a man one had loved once
+passionately?  And could a woman grow to hate the children of a loveless
+marriage?  If these matters were beyond the control of human will power,
+it seemed that it might be so.  Here was an example of it anyway, though
+it might be a bad example.  Until that talk with Bessie Clapp it had
+never occurred to Prudence that a woman could dislike her own child.  It
+was one of the inexplicable problems of life.
+
+Prudence reached home to discover that she was late.  Miss Agatha met
+her in the hall, already dressed for the evening meal, which was the
+most important function of the day, and at which no one was expected to
+put in a tardy appearance.  Miss Agatha glanced from the warning face of
+the great clock at the foot of the staircase to the sweet flushed face
+of her young sister, and from thence to her dust-soiled shoes.
+
+"Where have you been?" she demanded.  "Don't you see the time?"
+
+"I'll hurry," Prudence answered.  "It won't take me three minutes to
+change.  I've been for a tramp."
+
+"You have a deceitful habit," Miss Agatha admonished her, "of slipping
+away from the house without informing anyone.  If you were less selfish
+it might occur to you that your sisters would like to accompany you
+occasionally.  I can't understand why you prefer to walk alone."
+
+"I shall be late," Prudence said, with her foot on the stair, "if I stay
+to go into that now."
+
+And with a rebellious face she ran upstairs, leaving Miss Agatha, aghast
+and indignant, looking up from the foot of the staircase after her
+vanishing figure.  Prudence was getting altogether out of hand.
+
+"She tramps the country," William affirmed on learning the trouble,
+"like a factory girl.  I won't have my sister making herself so
+noticeable--mooning about the lanes and hanging over stiles.  It--it
+isn't respectable."
+
+"I wish," Miss Agatha said, meanly shifting responsibility, "that you
+would put your foot down.  If you were firm she might possibly respect
+your wishes.  I can do nothing with her."
+
+"M'm!"  William coughed gently, and assumed an expression which he hoped
+conveyed the air of inflexibility he deemed suited to the responsible
+position thus conferred on him.  "I'll see to it," he said; and felt
+relieved when the gong sounded in advance of Prudence's entry, and so
+deferred the moment for exercising his authority.
+
+He was less confident than Agatha that firmness on his part would
+produce the result desired.  He had in mind the occasion when he had
+insisted upon an apology before the resumption of fraternal relations
+with his young sister.  He had maintained a dignified silence until the
+thing threatened to become ridiculous, and still the apology had not
+been forthcoming: he had been forced to capitulate; and the memory of
+that defeat rankled.  But the lesson had been salutary in so far that it
+discouraged him from straining his authority to a point whence it
+aggravated to open revolt.  Defiance was a quality which defeated
+William's statesmanship.
+
+Prudence came running down the stairs as the rest of the family crossed
+the hall on the way to the dining-room.
+
+"You ran it pretty close, Prue," her father said, as she took the last
+couple of stairs at a jump and landed laughing beside him.  He patted
+the little hand she slipped within his arm.
+
+"You are precisely two minutes late," Miss Agatha observed.  "I think
+you might have made a greater effort to be punctual."
+
+"I might, of course, have slid down the banisters," Prudence retorted.
+
+"Tut, tut!"  Mr Graynor patted the small hand again in gentle reproof.
+"You are tomboy enough without scandalising us to that extent."
+
+Save that he held his head a little higher on passing behind her to his
+seat at table, William disregarded her presence, a sign by which
+Prudence recognised that she was once again in disgrace.  It occasioned
+her therefore something of a shock when William approached her later
+during the evening and requested a few minutes of her time.  He had
+something of importance, he announced, which he wished to say.  This
+request in its unexpectedness deprived her for the moment of breath.
+She was attracted by his speech and puzzled.  She found herself
+wondering amazedly what kind of confidence William intended to repose in
+her.  William found her silence embarrassing; he had expected her to
+give him a cue.  He cleared his throat, nervously fingering the
+arrangement of his tie.  Prudence began to feel sympathetic.  She
+believed he was about to confess to some romantic attachment, although
+there was not, so far as she knew, any woman of their acquaintance
+likely to inspire sentiment in him.  If William were in love, that might
+account for his preoccupation during dinner.
+
+"Please give me your whole attention," he said, which was a superfluous
+remark even for a commencement; it was so obvious that he was receiving
+what he asked for.  "It is a little difficult for me, a little--ahem!--
+embarrassing to say what I wish to say in view of your inexperience."
+
+This confirmed Prudence's suspicion.  She smiled at him encouragingly.
+
+"Oh!  I expect I'll understand," she said kindly.  "It's nice of you to
+tell me, anyhow."
+
+He was taken aback, and he showed it.  He had never known Prudence so
+amenable before; her attitude discountenanced him slightly.
+
+"I am glad you take so sensible a tone," he returned; "it makes my task
+easier.  I do not wish to find fault; your conduct is indiscreet rather
+than blameworthy.  You ought to realise that it is not seemly for a
+young girl in your position to tear about the country as you do.  I am
+not sure that in a factory town it is altogether safe.  In any case it
+gets you talked about.  It distresses your sisters; it distresses me.
+It lays you open to misapprehension.  Why should you wander about the
+roads alone?"
+
+"Oh!  Is that all?"  Prudence's smile had changed in quality; kindliness
+made way for irony.  "How do you know I do wander alone?"  William
+reddened angrily.
+
+"I should be sorry to insult you by supposing the contrary," he replied
+with restrained annoyance.  "No one in this house credits you with being
+other than thoughtless.  Your behaviour shows a great want of
+consideration for your family."
+
+"It wasn't until to-day that I realised you were all so devoted to me,"
+Prudence returned with suspicious meekness.  "I have yet to get
+accustomed to that idea.  So much family affection is embarrassing."
+
+"If you are going to adopt that outrageous tone," William observed with
+a resumption of dignity, "I have nothing further to say."
+
+"Don't worry about that," Prudence reassured him.  "You haven't left
+much unsaid.  You have filled my mind with a lot of new ideas that make
+it feel like a rubbish heap.  If the roads are not safe for a girl to
+walk along, it is time some one saw to it that they were made so.  As
+for being talked about, no one with a decent mind would make matter for
+talk where there was none.  Are you quite sure, William, that your own
+mind doesn't need a little tidying up?  Your workpeople at least are
+your responsibility.  If you have any dubious characters among them,
+turn them away--as you turned away Bessie Clapp."
+
+William's face was crimson.  He rose and stood looking down at her with
+the look of a man who feels himself deeply insulted.
+
+"You forget yourself," he said.  "How dare you mention that woman's name
+to me?"
+
+"I have held that woman's child in my arms to-day," she answered
+quietly.  "I think perhaps that gives me the courage."
+
+He bent swiftly and caught her by the shoulder.
+
+"So that's how you spend your time?" he said, staring into her steady
+eyes.  He emitted an ugly laugh and pushed her roughly from him.  "A
+decent-minded girl would shrink from such contact."
+
+She smiled coldly.
+
+"It is only the decent mind that does not fear these things," she
+answered, and turned away from the look in his eyes, which was not good
+to see.
+
+It was by a great effort at control that he refrained from striking her.
+He spluttered for words.  Confronted with her cool disdain, anger
+overcame him.  He felt himself at an immense disadvantage.
+
+"You are impossible!" was all he could find to say.
+
+Prudence, thinking over the scene later, while leaning from her window
+with the night wind cooling her heated face, wondered what was wrong
+with herself that this spirit of antagonism should flame forth at the
+slightest provocation.  Why could she not endure William, and suffer his
+little homilies with patience?  Why should Agatha's constant
+fault-finding irritate her to the verge of desperation?  If she were
+possessed of a vein of humour, she told herself, these things would
+merely afford amusement.  But they did not amuse.  They were slowly
+souring a naturally sweet disposition.
+
+Big tears welled in the blue eyes, hung for a space on her lashes, and
+fell like silver dew upon the rose-leaves beneath the sill--hot tears
+that sprang from the well of discontent which had its source in a vain
+longing for unattainable things.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+The troubles of youth are none the less real because to riper age they
+appear trivial in the retrospect.  In the constant fret against the
+irksome restrictions of her life Prudence's sunny nature fought under
+unequal conditions, with the result that the sun suffered many an
+eclipse.  In one of these depressed moods she wrote to Bobby to the
+effect that she felt unequal to holding out until he came home for good,
+and that if matters did not improve the desperation of the situation
+would drive her to elope with the curate.
+
+"The sole consideration which deters me," she added, "is that Jones is
+such an impossible name."
+
+"What's in a name?"  Bobby wrote back airily.  "You're safe, old girl,
+if you jib at a little thing like that."
+
+The curate, failing to meet Prudence alone and wearying of being fenced
+with, took a mean advantage of her at the annual Sunday-school treat,
+and secluding her in a corner of the playing-field with her class of
+infants, set the infants running races and came rather abruptly to his
+point.
+
+"I love to watch you with little children," he remarked with
+disconcerting suddenness.  "You have such a wonderful sympathy with
+them."
+
+"I like children," she answered guardedly; and tried to gather the
+babies about her; but the curate was throwing sweets for them, and they
+preferred scrambling for these to clinging to teacher's hands.  There is
+a time for everything.
+
+"So do I," he said, attentively scrutinising her averted face, and
+admiring the fine colour in her cheeks which a new quality in his voice
+had brought there.  "Children in the home make home beautiful."
+
+He swept the field with his glance, and decided that his chance was
+short-lived and might not come again.  He plunged desperately.
+
+"I want to marry," he said, hurriedly, and threw a further quantity of
+sweets to the children and turned more directly towards her.  "I have
+been waiting so long for an opportunity of saying this to you that you
+will forgive me if I seem a little abrupt and choose my time
+inopportunely.  I never see you alone now.  You cannot have failed to
+observe how deeply in love I am.  You are so sweet and gentle that I
+feel you will be kind.  I want a little encouragement."  He paused
+expectantly.  "I may go on?" he asked, when she took no advantage of his
+hesitation.  "You will give me a little hope?"
+
+Prudence turned her face and met his eyes fully.  There was no
+possibility of mistaking his meaning.
+
+"No, please don't," she said.  "I don't want you to say any more.  I
+hoped you would see it wasn't any use.  I'm sorry."
+
+The curate although a vain man, had never felt very confident of winning
+her.  He wanted her quite urgently; but he was not so deeply in love
+with Prudence as he was with himself, and the certainty of defeat
+wounded his pride more than it wounded his feelings.  He had no
+intention of giving her the satisfaction of being in a position to say
+that she had refused him.  He dissembled meanly, congratulating himself
+on the clever ambiguity with which he had worded his proposal.
+
+"I am sorry you have formed that opinion," he said, trying to keep the
+chagrin he felt from betraying itself in his voice.  "You are so much
+with her that I believed you would enjoy her entire confidence, and I
+was vain enough to expect a little encouragement.  But I am not going to
+accept your opinion as final.  I shall make my appeal to her.  Perhaps I
+ought to have done so in the first instance; but a man feels naturally
+diffident at these times."
+
+The play of expression on Prudence's face while she listened to his
+stilted sentences was remarkable.  He would have been very obtuse if he
+believed that he succeeded in deceiving her.  It was very evident that
+she apprehended him very clearly.  A little smile hovered about her
+mouth when she replied to him.
+
+"If it is Matilda you allude to," she said, with an ambiguity equal to
+his own, "I wish you all the success you deserve."
+
+He raised his hat gravely and left her, carrying the bag of sweets with
+him, to the manifest disgust of the staring infants; and Prudence,
+watching his hurrying little figure making its purposeful way through
+the different groups in search of his unconscious quarry, laughed
+quietly and without malice, despite his ungenerous effort to humiliate
+her.
+
+"Now I shall have a new enemy in my brother-in-law," she reflected.  "He
+is marrying the chimneys.  But Matilda will be too grateful to him to
+resent that."
+
+Matilda was grateful.  She was sufficiently overcome with the honour
+thus conferred on her to satisfy even Mr Jones' colossal vanity.  Mr
+Jones accepted his triumph with becoming condescension; to describe his
+air as elated would be misleading.  His manner towards his affianced
+wife, who was several years his senior, and had never been handsome, was
+benevolently patronising.  His courtship was business-like, and free
+from those affectations of silly sentiment so unsuited to his calling.
+If Miss Matilda regretted the lack of lover-like attentions, she
+concealed her disappointment, clinging insistently to the belief that
+everything that Ernest did was right and dignified.  It would have been
+unbecoming in a clergyman to be demonstrative.
+
+"I used to think," she confessed to Prudence in a moment of rare
+confidence, "that it was you he admired.  You remember how he used to
+persist in accompanying us on our walks, and how he talked principally
+with you?  All the while he was thinking of me.  He told me so.  Isn't
+it wonderful?"
+
+"He has the sense," Prudence answered, and kissed the flushed face
+kindly, "to realise that you will make the best wife in the world for a
+clergyman."
+
+And she thought of Bobby's epithet, "money-grubbing little worm," and
+decided that it aptly fitted Ernest.
+
+Bobby chaffed her about the curate, affecting to believe she had
+suffered a disappointment.
+
+Prudence did not confide in him the tale of the curate's duplicity;
+loyalty to Matilda kept her silent on that subject.  But her wrathful
+disgust was roused on the day of Matilda's wedding, when Mr Jones,
+claiming the privilege of a brother, caught her unprepared in the hall
+and kissed her unsuspecting lips.
+
+"If you ever take such a liberty with me again," she said, white and
+angry, "I will make you the laughing-stock of Wortheton."
+
+He assumed an air of dignity while conscious of looking ridiculous.  Her
+words, her tone in uttering them, lashed him into a rage of hatred that
+cured him finally of any tender thought he had cherished in regard to
+her.  He spoke of her later to his wife as ill-mannered and ungentle of
+temper, a description which, while holding it to be ungenerous,
+occasioned Matilda considerable comfort.  She had felt uneasily jealous
+of Prudence at times, even during the days of her brief engagement.  Mr
+Jones had shown such predilection for the society of the younger sister
+that Matilda, like Leah, was made to realise the humiliating position of
+the substitute.  Her faith in his uprightness did not allow of
+disbelief; besides which his ill-natured criticism of her young sister
+carried conviction; his tone expressed cordial dislike.
+
+"Fuller acquaintance with her reveals her more objectionable qualities,"
+he said.  "I believed her to be a nice, simple girl, but she is
+certainly not that."
+
+"Prudence is very warm-hearted," Matilda said weakly in defence of the
+absent.  "But father spoils her a little."
+
+"He makes a fool of her," was the bridegroom's unclerical retort.
+
+Thus Matilda left the home of her childhood, seated beside her husband
+in the carriage which was to take them to the junction, and to the back
+of which Bobby, with a sense of the eternal unfitness of things, had
+tied one of Matilda's discarded shoes.  Not even the thought of the
+comfortable dowry which went with the gentle Matilda had the power to
+lighten Mr Jones' lowering countenance during the long drive to the
+station, and Mr Graynor had behaved with quite surprising generosity in
+the matter of settlements.  The hard ring in Prudence's voice, when she
+had threatened to make a laughing-stock of him, the expression of
+disgust on her white face, hit his pride hard.  And he dared not offend
+her further from the wholly unnecessary fear that she would put her
+threat into execution.  He knew that he had paid her marked attention,
+and that Wortheton was aware of his preference.  If she chose to spread
+tales about him they would not lack credence.
+
+His frown deepened when he felt his wife's gloved hand timidly feeling
+for his; then he roused himself with an effort and responded to the
+gentle pressure of her fingers.
+
+"It's nervous work getting married," he said, with an uneasy laugh.
+"The fuss and the crowd... every one staring.  Phew!"
+
+Matilda sympathised with him; she had felt nervous also.
+
+"I'm glad it's over--oh! so very glad--and happy, dear."
+
+"Blithering ass, isn't he?" was Bobby's cheerful comment, when, turning
+from watching the vanishing carriage, he found Prudence beside him,
+looking unusually tall and womanly in her bridesmaid's dress of soft
+blue, with a hat with cornflowers in it shading her face.  "Come along,
+and drink to their connubial bliss in another bumper of champagne."
+
+He filled her glass for her and one for himself.
+
+"Cheer up," he cried, and raising his glass, grinned at her over the
+brim.  "There are more Joneses than one in the sea.  You needn't sport
+the willow so openly.  It's indecent.  Here's to their health, wealth,
+and happiness!  It will be wealth for him, anyway--cute little beast!"
+
+Prudence became aware of her father surveying them from the doorway with
+a tired smile on his bored and worried face.  He had slipped away from
+his guests, who lingered aimlessly on the lawn, and followed them
+indoors.  She persuaded him to take a seat beside her and drink a glass
+of his own very excellent champagne.
+
+"It's jolly good stuff.  You did them awfully well, sir," said Bobby
+enthusiastically approving.  "We've given Wortheton something to think
+about.  It'll be Prue's turn next."
+
+"There's plenty of time for Prudence," Mr Graynor said--"plenty of
+time."
+
+He found himself looking at her in her unfamiliar dress, surprised, as
+Bobby had been, by the womanliness he realised for the first time.  It
+disconcerted him.
+
+"Weddings are a nuisance; they upset the household," he said.  "I wish
+all these people would go."
+
+"They are like the wasps," said Bobby; "they'll hang about so long as
+the grub's there.  I'll go out and clear them off."
+
+He left the room by the window.  Mr Graynor looked after him, and
+meeting Prudence's eye, exchanged a smile with her.
+
+"The assurance of youth!" he remarked.  "You and I, we've had enough of
+them, Prue."  He regarded her again more attentively.  "That blue dress
+is very becoming to you, my dear."
+
+Prudence flushed warmly.  His appreciation recalled to her mind the
+light of admiration in the curate's eyes, his quick hungry swoop towards
+her, the eager furtiveness of his kiss--the first time that a man's lips
+had touched hers, other than the members of her family.  But he belonged
+to the family in a sense--a wretched little hanger-on, catching at the
+overflow from the Graynor pockets.
+
+"If it is becoming, I don't believe you like it very well," she said.
+
+"It makes you look old--perhaps that's why," he answered, and thought
+with regret of the little girl who had given place to this tall and
+gracious young woman.
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+Matilda's departure from the family circle made strangely little
+difference.  She had made no particular place for herself in the home
+which she had occupied for thirty years, had established no claim on any
+member of her family.  If anyone missed her, it was Prudence: Matilda
+had been the most amiable of her elder sisters; but she had never been
+in any sense of the word a companion.  The first Mrs Graynor's family,
+with the exception of the younger son, were none of them companionable;
+they were self-contained and reserved, and lacking in those qualities of
+individuality and initiative which make for the breaking away from
+tradition and the following a line of one's own.  Matilda was naturally
+submissive.  She had submitted uncomplainingly to Agatha's rule all her
+life; and she left one submission for another, and, in accordance with
+the dictates of the marriage service, which Prudence considered
+degrading and Matilda thought beautiful, became subject willingly to the
+dominating and not particularly chivalrous authority of her husband.
+Had Mr Jones succeeded in winning the sister whom he had coveted, he
+would have found this comfortable arrangement of relationship reversed.
+There was no aptitude for submission in Prudence.
+
+On one point after Matilda's marriage Prudence was firm: she refused to
+be chaperoned on her walks by one of the remaining sisters.  Matilda's
+presence she had suffered as a protection against the curate's advances;
+since these advances were no longer to be dreaded, she refused to be
+shadowed in future, and in order to escape from the annoyance took to
+cycling, a form of exercise which none of the elder Miss Greynors would
+attempt.
+
+Her cycling took her far afield, and brought many new pleasures into her
+life.  Miss Agatha tried to veto the idea; but Prudence, backed by her
+father's permission, and in possession of a fine new machine which he
+bought for her, defied opposition and rode forth whenever the weather
+permitted in quest of new experiences.  Sometimes she met with
+adventures, and got into unexpected and informal conversations with
+strangers encountered surprisingly in little outlying villages where she
+dismounted to rest and quench her thirst.  Cycling in its early stages
+is very thirsty work.  She never mentioned those experiences at home;
+not that she was naturally secretive, but she held a strong conviction
+that such harmless amusement would meet with disapproval; and life had
+taught her that it is wisest to avoid unpleasantness.
+
+And once she met with an accident.  That had to be admitted because it
+could not by any means be suppressed.
+
+It was a silly sort of accident, which an experienced rider might have
+averted; and it left her injured in temper as much as physically hurt.
+The bicycle suffered the greater damage.  She was free-wheeling down
+hill with a broad open road ahead and nothing more formidable to pass
+than a leisurely farm cart, crawling up the steep incline, accompanied
+by an amiable sheep-dog which, until the cycle came abreast with it, was
+ambling comfortably within the shade at the back of the cart.
+Apparently the sight of the girl on the cycle excited it.  It rushed
+forward unexpectedly and, barking vociferously, got in front of her
+wheel.  Prudence swerved violently in order to avoid it, overbalanced
+herself, and, before she quite realised what was happening, found
+herself in the road inextricably mixed up with her crumpled machine.
+The dog, its feet planted deeply in the white dust, barked in enjoyment
+of this new kind of game.
+
+The farmer pulled up his horse, and looked down upon their grouping with
+an expression of stolid amiability.
+
+"'E won't 'urt 'ee," he called out reassuringly, and whistled to the
+dog, which, disregarding its owner, continued to bark gleefully at the
+debris.
+
+Prudence lifted a face pale with indignation to the speaker.
+
+"'E won't 'urt 'ee," he repeated, and in case she needed further
+reassurance, added comfortably: "'E's done it afore.  'E's that
+friendly.  But you needn't be afraid; 'e won't hurt."
+
+"Afraid!" she ejaculated, and sat up and looked around for her hat.
+"He's done all the mischief he can.  Get down, please, and wheel my
+machine as far as the cottage.  I'll have to rest."
+
+It dawning upon the man for the first time that the lady was annoyed
+with him, he proceeded to obey her instructions, curiously little
+resentful of her anger.  While Prudence painfully regained her feet he
+righted the disabled cycle, and, after a glance at his horse to assure
+himself of his intention to stand, half-wheeled half-carried the machine
+to a cottage at the bottom of the hill, and propped it against the wall
+of the house.
+
+"'E's that friendly," he reiterated, gently admonishing the dog which
+accompanied them delightedly.  "'E always runs up to folk like that.
+'E's done it afore.  But 'e wouldn't 'urt anyone.  It's just
+friendliness."
+
+Prudence found nothing to say.  She was already ashamed of her heat; but
+the man's amiable indifference exasperated her.  This was due, not to
+any want of consideration, but to rustic obtuseness.  He was urgently
+anxious to reassure her in regard to the dog; ladies were scared as a
+rule of dogs; he was also desirous of returning to his cart, the horse
+having views of its own about standing.  He knocked on the cottage door,
+quite unnecessarily; two girls, who had witnessed the accident, having
+already appeared in the entrance.  One of them was laughing
+immoderately, as though she considered the affair a huge joke, enacted
+for her special amusement; the other, and older girl, favoured her with
+a reproving look.
+
+"Young lady's met with a accident," the man explained.  "The dog done
+it; 'e's that friendly.  She wants to rest a bit."
+
+He left it at that, and hurried back to his cart.  The elder girl
+invited the stranger to come inside, and the younger, following them,
+stood in the doorway, laughing.  Prudence showed her annoyance.
+
+"It wasn't so funny as you seem to think," she said, surveying her from
+a chair in indignant surprise.
+
+"I know," the girl replied, her laughter trailing off into spasmodic
+giggles.  "I don't know what makes me keep laughing.  But it was funny
+seeing you in the road, an' the bicycle an' all.  It made me fair
+screech.  I'm glad you're not hurt."
+
+"You'd like a glass of water, I expect?" said the older girl; and the
+younger, as if desirous of atoning for her misplaced merriment, hurried
+away to fetch it.
+
+"I don't know how I shall get home," said Prudence, who was more
+concerned with this difficulty than with her bruises, although these
+were more considerable than she had thought at first.  She had wrenched
+her ankle badly.  "I'm ten miles from Wortheton, and my machine is
+twisted hopelessly--even if I could ride it, which at present I don't
+feel equal to doing.  Could I get a conveyance near here?"
+
+"No," answered the girl.  "There's nothing but that cart that's gone on.
+I don't know what you'll do."
+
+They were not very helpful people, and there was no other house within
+sight.  Prudence began to fear that she would be hung up there for the
+night.  She wondered whether for a consideration the girl who had
+laughed so immoderately would walk to the nearest village and secure
+some sort of conveyance.  She regretted that she had not commandeered
+the cart of the man whose dog was responsible for the mishap, but events
+had been too hurried to allow her time to realise the difficulties of
+getting home in her damaged condition.  She appealed to the girl, who
+still stood surveying her with a wide grin of amusement, and who seemed
+by no means eager to undertake the mission.  She looked out along the
+dusty road and up the steep hill, down which Prudence had sped to her
+undoing, and hesitated; then she picked up a hat which was lying on a
+chair and remarked that she would go up the road a bit and see if anyone
+were about.
+
+Prudence sat on in the room, waiting in the company of the sister, with
+a blank feeling of hopelessness for the next event.  This when it befell
+was so altogether unexpected that at the moment when she first caught
+sight of a motor, with the girl who had set forth on her reluctant
+search seated in the back, she almost discredited her senses.  But the
+motor came to a stop in the roadway before the house, and the other
+girl, springing up and going to the window, remarked explanatorily over
+her shoulder:
+
+"It's Major Stotford in his car.  That's a rare bit of luck for you.  I
+suppose Lizzie stopped him.  She's got a cheek.  He's lord of the manor
+over to Liscombe.  It's all his property about here."
+
+Lizzie burst in in great excitement.
+
+"It's all right," she cried; "the Major'll drive you.  Only you must be
+quick; he hates to be kept waiting."
+
+She ran out again, and stood in the road staring admiringly at the
+rather heavy, handsome man who remained at the steering wheel, and only
+looked round when Prudence, walking with an unmistakable limp, emerged
+from the house, with the other girl behind her, and approached the car.
+With his first casual glance at her the look of indifference gave
+immediate place to an expression of very real interest.  What he had
+expected he hardly knew, certainly not what he saw.  He raised his cap,
+and with an alertness he had not yet displayed, left the wheel and
+opening the door of the car stepped into the road.
+
+"I don't know how to thank you," said Prudence.  "It's most awfully kind
+of you to come to the assistance of a stranger.  I fear it will trespass
+on your time.  I live at Wortheton; that's ten miles from here."
+
+"Wortheton!" he said, and smiled charmingly.  "My time is not so
+valuable that so heavy a call upon it need worry you.  I'll sprint you
+home under the half-hour."
+
+He held the door for her and helped her up.  Lizzie had occupied the
+back seat, but plainly he preferred to have Prudence beside him.
+
+"Is that your cycle?" he asked.  "You _have_ had a spill."
+
+"Yes.  It will need to visit the doctor before I can ride it again," she
+said, and turned a look of regret on the damaged machine.
+
+"So will you, by the look of things," he remarked, and scrutinised her
+more closely.
+
+Prudence leaned down to take her farewell of, and recompense the
+sisters, who, sober enough now, watched the proceedings with interest.
+
+"I'll send out for the cycle to-morrow," she said.
+
+But Major Stotford saw no necessity for leaving the cycle behind.
+
+"It will go in the back all right.  We might as well take it along," he
+said, and lifted it into the car.
+
+Lizzie, considerably more obliging than heretofore, lent a hand.  When
+he had settled the machine he took his seat beside Prudence.
+
+"Anyone we pass will conclude that I've run you down, and that I'm
+taking home the pieces," he said, smiling at her with curious intimacy,
+as the car took the long hill, and the girl leaned back white and weary
+against the cushions.  He drew a flask from his pocket and handed it to
+her.  "Don't look so horrified.  If you could see the colour of your
+face you would realise as surely as I do that this is what you need.
+Take a good pull at it and you'll feel better."
+
+"I begin to believe that the lamp on my bicycle must once have belonged
+to Aladdin," Prudence said with a quiet little laugh of enjoyment.  "I
+rubbed it to some purpose in the dust of the road.  Whatever I require
+appears."
+
+Major Stotford laughed with her.  The thought in his mind, which he was
+careful not to express in words, was that she carried the magic within
+her.  He leaned forward and altered the pace of the car, which had been
+running at top speed.
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+"And now," Major Stotford remarked, as he turned in at the gates of
+Court Heatherleigh and drove slowly along the smooth gravelled path
+which led to the house, "for explanations.  Beastly things,
+explanations, eh?  Can't see the necessity for them myself."
+
+He scrutinised the white face which, even in its pallor, and despite the
+worried expression which he observed settled upon it as they drew near
+her home, looked extraordinarily fresh and sweet.  He had enjoyed the
+ten mile drive exceedingly.  Had he not believed that his companion was
+enduring more discomfort than she would allow, he could have wished that
+the distance had been greater.  He was a man who appreciated feminine
+society, and he had derived considerable pleasure as the result of an
+act of careless good-nature from which he had not anticipated enjoyment.
+It had been a new and agreeable experience.  He determined that he
+would see her again.  The slight service he had been able to render her
+gave him that much right at least, he decided.
+
+The door was flung wide, and the butler came down the steps with concern
+written large on his discreet features.  He opened the door of the car.
+Major Stotford alighted, shouldered the man authoritatively out of the
+way, and assisted Prudence to the ground.  She leaned on his arm
+heavily, and he saw her blue eyes darken with a look of pain.
+
+"I'm sorry; my ankle hurts."
+
+She turned from him to the waiting servant; but Major Stotford,
+anticipating her request, lifted her in his arms and carried her easily
+up the steps and into the hall.
+
+The butler, following quickly, got ahead of this intrusive stranger
+whose proceedings he did not altogether approve of, and threw open the
+drawing-room door.  Major Stotford entered with his burden, and after
+one swift comprehensive glance which took in the fact that the room was
+untenanted, and located the sofa at the same moment, carried Prudence to
+it and laid her gently down among its cushions.  He stood over her
+inquiringly, anxiety in his look and the hint of a smile in his eyes.
+
+"Come now!  We're all right, eh?" he said, and felt in his pocket for
+his flask, thought better of it and withdrew his hand again empty.
+
+Prudence made an effort to sit up and laughed nervously.
+
+"It's so stupid," she said, "A little thing like that!  It's nothing
+really."
+
+She was immensely relieved that no one save Graves had witnessed their
+arrival.  It would have alarmed her father, and scandalised Agatha, to
+have seen her carried in like a baby.  Major Stotford's helpfulness had
+been in excess of what was necessary, she felt; with the aid of a strong
+arm she could have accomplished the journey herself.
+
+"I've given you a lot of trouble.  You've been awfully kind to me," she
+said.
+
+Before he could reply, Mr Graynor entered, concerned and fussy,
+followed by Agatha, who wore an expression of protest, and suggested
+frigid disapproval in the very rustle of her skirts.
+
+"I always knew how it would end," she exclaimed.  "This doesn't in the
+least surprise me."
+
+"Oh! it isn't the end," Major Stotford put in with a twinkling of
+amusement.  "These little annoyances happen at the beginning.  I don't
+think there are any bones broken."
+
+Mr Graynor bent anxiously over Prudence and laid a hand on her hair.
+
+"You've had an accident.  Are you much hurt?" he asked.
+
+"It's nothing really," she said, ashamed at the general fuss in front of
+a stranger.  "I had a spill--a silly little spill which jarred my ankle.
+Major Stotford very kindly motored me home."
+
+Mr Graynor glanced swiftly at the person referred to.  His anxiety
+partially relieved, he found time to give attention to the man who had
+not only brought his daughter home, but was, he imagined, responsible
+for the accident.  Major Stotford, taking advantage of the pause, set
+about correcting this impression, which he had foreseen as likely to
+follow his share in the proceedings.
+
+"I was fortunately near the spot," he said.  "Miss Graynor rode over a
+dog in the roadway, and unluckily it was not the dog which got hurt.  It
+seldom is on these occasions.  I brought home the wreckage."
+
+"I am sure I am very much obliged to you," Mr Graynor said, but with
+such a lack of graciousness in his manner as to cause Prudence surprise
+and distress.  Major Stotford's helpfulness had been more valuable than
+he realised.  She glanced at her new acquaintance with a quick bright
+flush.
+
+"I know I am.  If it had not been for Major Stotford's kindness I should
+have been stranded for the night with no possibility of communicating
+with you at a wretched wayside cottage ten miles away.  I've trespassed
+enormously on his time, and given quite a lot of trouble.  But I enjoyed
+the ride."
+
+He laughed pleasantly.
+
+"I enjoyed it too.  And you make too much of my services.  They were
+nothing.  I trust the foot will soon be well, and that the injuries are
+as light as you would so bravely have us believe."  He addressed himself
+to Mr Graynor.  "If you like I'll leave word at the doctor's on my way
+back.  You'll want to call him in, I expect."
+
+"Thank you, there is no need to trouble you further," Mr Graynor
+returned stiffly.  "I can send."
+
+"I have already sent," Miss Agatha interposed; and Major Stotford turned
+to look in her direction, as if recalling the presence of one he had
+temporarily forgotten.
+
+"Then that's finished," he said; "and it only remains to unload the
+car."
+
+He spoke with a certain cold hostility in his voice which did not escape
+Prudence's ear.  It hurt her.  She could have wept with vexation at her
+father's want of gratitude and courtesy to this man who had proved so
+good a friend to her in her need: she felt that she wanted to apologise
+to him for the rudeness of her family.  Then she became aware of her
+father speaking again in the same politely distant tones as before,
+thanking the other man coldly for the trouble he had been put to, and
+assuring him that the bicycle had been removed by the servants.
+
+"You should not have burdened yourself with that too," he added.  "You
+place me under a heavy obligation to you which will leave me always
+indebted."
+
+"My dear sir," Major Stotford interrupted, "you are in no sense under an
+obligation to me; please disabuse your mind of that idea."
+
+He cut short further expressions of gratitude by advancing to the sofa
+and shaking hands with Prudence, who, as if desirous of atoning for the
+general lack of warmth, gave him both her hands on a simple girlish
+impulse.  He took and held them with no show of surprise.
+
+"Thank you so much," she said, a soft appeal in eyes and voice which he
+was quick to note.  "I just want to say how much I enjoyed the drive and
+your kind care of me.  I'm very grateful to you."
+
+"You are setting such a premium on ordinary courtesy that I begin to
+believe it must be a rare quality in these parts," he said jestingly,
+with what sounded to Prudence a faintly sarcastic humour.  He had
+assuredly not been given particular evidence of the quality beneath that
+roof.  "But if you insist on regarding my small service so graciously I
+do not feel inclined to quarrel with you on that score.  I can only
+repeat that I am glad I happened to be on the spot.  Good-bye.  Take
+care of the ankle.  It will tax your patience, I expect."
+
+Mr Graynor accompanied him into the hall, and invited him into the
+library for refreshment, which he declined.  Prudence listened to their
+voices outside, listened to the motor drive away, and turned with a face
+pale with indignation, when her father re-entered the room, and
+reproached him with having displayed so little gratitude to a man who
+had acted with such ready kindliness towards her.
+
+"I felt ashamed," she said.  "You were barely civil."
+
+"You forget yourself, Prudence," Agatha said.  "Father was quite civil.
+There was no need to gush--you did that."
+
+"And if I did," Prudence cried, exasperated, "you two forced me into
+doing so."
+
+Mr Graynor had crossed to the window, where he remained with his back
+towards the room, paying little heed to their wrangling.
+
+"I wish it had not been Major Stotford who rendered you the service," he
+said presently, and faced about and approached the sofa with an
+expression of worried annoyance on his face.  "I am sorry this has
+happened."
+
+"Why?"  Prudence sat up straighter and punched the cushions viciously.
+"Why?" she repeated aggressively.
+
+"Because--"
+
+"Do you think it necessary to explain these matters to a child?"  Agatha
+interrupted tartly.
+
+Prudence laughed angrily.
+
+"I'm not a child," she said.  "You can't keep my mind for ever on a
+leading string."
+
+"I think you are unnecessarily excited," Mr Graynor said in displeased
+tones.  "I doubt whether that is good for you in your present
+condition."
+
+"Being thwarted is not good for me in my present condition," Prudence
+retorted, but with greater calmness.  "You aren't being fair to me.  Why
+should it be a matter for regret to you that Major Stotford should do me
+a service?  He hadn't much choice.  No man, who wasn't a brute, could
+have acted otherwise in the circumstances."
+
+"No," Mr Graynor admitted.  "It was simply unfortunate.  Major Stotford
+is a man whom I do not care to have in my house, whom I would not choose
+as an associate for my daughters.  He has an evil reputation."
+
+"Evil!"  Prudence sounded a note of incredulity.  "In what sense?" she
+asked.
+
+"There is no need to soil your ears with his history," Mr Graynor
+replied.  "His wife divorced him two years ago.  I understood he was
+abroad."
+
+"Oh!" said Prudence, and felt oddly chilled by this revelation.
+
+She had liked the man, had hoped that the acquaintance so informally
+begun would develop pleasantly on ordinary lines, a hope which she
+realised very certainly could never be fulfilled.  Further intercourse
+would be forbidden her.  Though had the road been open to a pursuance of
+the acquaintance Prudence herself would no longer have wished to follow
+it up.  The colour had gone out of the pleasure and left a neutral-toned
+picture in its stead, a picture of life in its least lovely aspect, with
+the sordid streak of self-indulgence trailing its disfiguring smudges
+across the canvas.  Was nothing that was pleasant altogether fine?  In
+this complex meandering of human destinies was this mean streak, which
+spoilt the fine grain of the wood, discoverable in each separate
+individual?
+
+Prudence lay back against the cushions feeling utterly weary and unable
+to cope with the rush of swift emotions which flooded her mind.
+Reaction followed upon the period of excitement.  She was conscious only
+of the pain in her foot.  No one had thought of removing her shoe.  She
+had loosened it in the car; but the foot had swollen and felt too big
+for its covering.  She made an effort now to remove the shoe, whereupon
+Agatha, capable but unsympathetic, came to her assistance.
+
+"You ought to have done that before," she complained petulantly, and to
+her own surprise, as well as to her sister's, broke down and cried
+weakly.
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+Though not serious, Prudence's injuries confined her to the house for
+some time.  It proved an irksome time for the members of her family as
+well as for herself.  She was not patient, and it exasperated her to be
+compelled to lie on the sofa, unequal to rising from it and running away
+when her sisters, from a sense of duty, installed themselves near her
+couch with the sociable intention of keeping her company.  They insisted
+on her occupying herself with some sewing as a relief to the tedium of
+enforced inaction.  Prudence hated sewing, and made a demand for books;
+whereupon her sisters in turn read aloud to her the works of Miss
+Nouchette Carey, which were familiar to Prudence from childhood, and
+bored her exceedingly.  She wanted something more stimulating; something
+which did not depict Wortheton ideals and sentiment.  But the more
+modern writers were banned as unwholesome, and the poets were
+discredited on account of an erotic tendency to idealise passion and
+adorn sensuousness with an exalted language better suited to more
+spiritual qualities.  Or so Miss Agatha thought.
+
+"The merit of a book," she affirmed, "depends upon whether it stands the
+test of being read aloud without causing embarrassment to the reader and
+to the audience."
+
+"Books never embarrass me," Prudence said, "but occasionally they bore
+me.  I don't care to read about people who lead the stodgy kind of life
+we lead."
+
+"Life is not stodgy," Agatha reproved her.  "And it is the same
+everywhere."
+
+"God forbid!" ejaculated Prudence, and thereby brought a storm of
+horrified reproach upon her head.
+
+On occasions Matilda arrived and spent an afternoon or morning with her,
+such an altered Matilda that she appeared to Prudence in the guise of a
+stranger.  Matilda had emerged since her marriage, and from being a mild
+reflection of her eldest sister, reflected now Mr Jones quite brightly
+and unconsciously.  She echoed him in a feminine note, and quoted him
+with unintentional inaccuracy, but with sufficient likeness to recall
+the original with unpleasant vividness to Prudence's mind.  Usually Mr
+Jones was too busy to accompany her.
+
+"The vicar leaves so much to him," Mrs Jones explained.  "Ernest hopes
+to move from Wortheton shortly."
+
+"I understood that he was greatly attached to his work here," Prudence
+said.  "He likes the factory and the people."
+
+"He has hopes of a living," Matilda confided, lowering her voice.
+
+"Oh, a living!  That's another matter.  You'll be quite important."
+
+Matilda looked a little doubtful.
+
+"It's a very poor living," she confessed, "even if he succeeds in
+obtaining it.  No clergyman without private means could accept it."
+
+"I see."  Prudence did see, very clearly.  She smiled suddenly.  "How
+grateful he must feel to you," she added.
+
+Matilda resented this very much in the manner Prudence decided in which
+Mr Jones would have resented it.
+
+"That matters only in regard to this particular living," she said.
+"Ernest would succeed in any case; he is so clever."
+
+Prudence's accident, with the unfortunate complication which had
+effected Major Stotford's entry upon the scene, was used by Agatha,
+backed by brother William, as a sufficient reason against future
+cycling.  Agatha went to an immense amount of trouble in her efforts to
+gain her father's veto against Prudence riding again.  She persuaded him
+to get rid of the bicycle as the surest means of avoiding fresh
+misadventures; and rendered him so nervous with her gloomy forebodings
+that he did consent to part with the bicycle; but he reserved his veto
+against riding until he saw how Prudence viewed a possible prohibition.
+He could not deny her pleasure merely because the idea of her riding
+made him nervous.  Bobby had met with accidents when he first cycled;
+but it never had been suggested that Bobby should give up riding from a
+fear he might break his neck.
+
+The damaged cycle was disposed of; William saw to that.  Agatha
+undertook to inform her sister; she also sought to prevail with her to
+give up the exercise.  She enlarged upon her father's anxiety, so
+injurious in the case of a man of his years, and pointed out to Prudence
+that duty demanded this sacrifice of her pleasure to his anxious love.
+
+Prudence heard her out in silence, a stony silence which betrayed
+nothing of the rage that burned within her breast.  With the finish of
+the oration her chin tilted aggressively.
+
+"This is your doing," she said.
+
+"It is father's wish," Agatha replied.  "The bicycle was sold by his
+orders."
+
+"Oh!"  Prudence exclaimed, with a gesture of impatience.  "I know.
+What's the good of talking?  I am sick of all this pretence of anxiety.
+You hate me to have any enjoyment.  You never rest--you never have
+rested, from seeking to make my life colourless and dull.  You are
+satisfied only when you keep me sewing, or working in the parish.  Well,
+I won't sew any more--for fear I prick my fingers, and I won't work in
+the parish either from a nervous dread of having my morals contaminated.
+If I can't do the things I like, I won't do the things I don't like
+either."
+
+Miss Agatha's anger, if more controlled, was every whit as great as
+Prudence's.  She gazed down upon her sister where she lay upon the sofa
+with eyes of cold dislike.  Always they had been antagonistic.  She had
+resented her father's second marriage bitterly, and had disliked his
+young wife: the earlier resentment, and the dislike for Prudence's
+mother, influenced her largely in her antagonism towards the child of
+the marriage, the child who was dearer to their father than any of his
+other children, and who was so unlike the rest.  But she had, according
+to her own view, conscientiously done her duty by her young sister: the
+accusation of jealous injustice stung her; she felt that she had not
+merited that.
+
+"You are wicked and ungrateful," she said.  "You display a great want of
+control, and an unchristian spirit.  I hope that later, when you have
+given yourself time to reflect, you will regret what you have said.  I
+confess I don't understand you."
+
+"No," Prudence rejoined.  "You never have understood me.  I don't
+suppose you ever will."
+
+"You are not," Miss Agatha answered shortly, "so complex as you
+imagine."
+
+Having nothing further to say, and feeling irritated by the laugh with
+which her rebuke was received, she closed the interview by leaving the
+room.
+
+But the matter was not ended.  Prudence had no intention of allowing it
+to rest there.  She meant to have it out with her father.  He had given
+the bicycle to her; he had no right to dispose of it without consulting
+her.  The business of having it out with him in private was not easy of
+accomplishment; she seldom saw him alone, and pride restrained her from
+broaching the subject before the others.  Matters were complicated by
+the arrival of Mr Edward Morgan, who, to Prudence's secret
+disappointment, came himself on his firm's business instead of sending a
+subordinate.  Prudence had very vividly in her memory that former
+occasion when Steele visited Wortheton.  She recalled their different
+meetings, few in number but strangely pleasant and familiar; recalled
+too the stolen interview with Steele under her window.  She longed to
+speak of him to Mr Morgan; but self-consciousness tied her tongue and
+made mention of his name too difficult.  She waited in the hope that Mr
+Morgan would allude to the young man's visit.  But Mr Morgan was not
+accommodating.  He had as a matter of fact almost forgotten Steele's
+existence, had entirely forgotten that visit of Steele's to Wortheton
+over a year ago.  Steele had left Morgan Bros, shortly afterwards and
+gone abroad: that, so far as Edward Morgan's interest in him was
+concerned, was the finish.
+
+It became plain to Prudence, and to the members of Prudence's family, as
+the days passed and Mr Morgan showed no haste to depart, that he was
+becoming more than ordinarily interested in herself.  He had known her
+for years.  As a child she had delighted him; as a girl he had found her
+amusing; but the woman in her came as a startling revelation, and
+carried this middle-aged and rather serious-minded business man out of
+his immense abstractions and his rather cumbersome habit of reserve.
+
+He became surprisingly alert and attentive to Prudence's whims.  He was
+quick to lend a hand when she left her sofa; and he sat beside the sofa
+in the evenings, and played chess with her, and taught her card games.
+William's amiable efforts to draw him into conversation with himself, or
+to entice him into the library, met with no encouragement.
+
+"It's dull for your sister, not being able to get about," he explained.
+"We've got to amuse her."
+
+He did amuse her; and he earned her gratitude at the same time.  It was
+a new and agreeable experience to be considered first and consulted
+deferentially and made to feel oneself of some importance.  He bought
+her chocolates and books, books such as Miss Agatha did not approve of,
+and which Prudence read with avidity.  She shared her chocolates, but
+she kept the books to herself.
+
+"If you only knew what pleasure you give me," she said, on receiving a
+volume.  And Mr Morgan, looking pleased, answered quietly:
+
+"That's what I want to give you--pleasure."
+
+The next day he gave her another book.
+
+"I don't read novels myself," he explained.  "But I demand the best, and
+place myself unreservedly in the bookseller's hands.  Generally they
+know what is worth reading."
+
+Prudence confided in him her trouble over the cycling veto, anticipating
+sympathy, and was disappointed in him because he sided with the family
+in their objection to her riding.  He did not approve of cycling for
+ladies, he said.  That struck her as a very antiquated prejudice.
+Cycling for women was so general until motoring became more popular.
+
+"If father would give me a car," she said, "I should prefer it."
+
+"Better have a pony carriage," he advised, "if you intend driving it
+yourself.  Safer and pleasanter, really."
+
+"How stodgy!" she said, and laughed.  "That's much too slow."
+
+It was regrettable, she reflected, that he was so elderly; and she
+wondered what he had been like as a young man, and why he had never
+married.
+
+The answer to that question was that, until he met her as a woman, he
+had never known love.  He knew it now.  And he recognised it for the one
+passion of his life--a disturbing passion on account of the disparity in
+their ages.  This disparity he recognised as a barrier, but a barrier
+which might be overcome.  It is a barrier which many people surmount and
+not always unsuccessfully.  None the less the undertaking is attended
+with risks, and the risks are worthy of consideration.  The ideal
+marriage is based on equality in essential things.  Contemporaneous
+ideas and sentiments lend themselves most readily to sympathy.  Without
+sympathy and understanding a perfect relationship cannot exist.  The
+individual of forty who fails to recognise this fact deserves no
+compassion when he strikes the rocks ahead.
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+Edward Morgan came into Prudence's life again at a time when the dulness
+and restriction of her home were peculiarly galling, when her spirit was
+in fierce revolt against the petty tyranny of Agatha's rule, supported
+by William's influence and strengthened by their animosity towards her,
+which seemed to her daily to increase and to make anything like amicable
+relations impossible.  Before this powerful bond of opposition Mr
+Graynor, old and incapable of sustained effort, gave way against his
+volition, slowly but surely deputing his authority in domestic affairs
+as he had deputed his business authority to his son, and retiring more
+and more within himself, content, if not harassed with a knowledge of
+unpleasantness to leave to his family the arrangement of their affairs.
+That in this way he treated his young daughter unfairly did not occur to
+him.  He had no idea that Prudence was unhappy.  Yet, had he reflected
+he must have recognised that it was a powerful combination arrayed
+against her, a combination which he himself felt unequal to opposing.
+But he belonged to a past generation.  When the autumn leaves cling to
+the tree beyond their time they hang sear and useless before the push of
+the new verdure: and he had hung on till it seemed that the seasons had
+forgotten him and time refused to detach him from the bough.  He was a
+little weary of hanging there overlooked and forgotten while another
+generation ripened to decay.  He saw his children entering upon their
+autumn, and almost forgot the time when they, like Prudence, were in the
+springtime of life.  When one reaches the winter of life one realises
+life's sadness; for the hope of spring, and the contentment of summer
+belong to the days that are numbered.  One lives necessarily in the
+present and looks back upon the past; the future belongs solely to
+youth.  In Edward Morgan's love for Prudence was repeated his own
+middle-aged romance.  His married life with his young wife had been too
+brief to prove its unsuitability.  He only remembered that that short
+time had been a happy time for him.  And he liked Morgan; he would be
+satisfied to accept him for a son-in-law.  Prudence was young for him,
+he recognised that; but, he argued, middle-aged men frequently married
+young girls, and such marriages were not always unsuccessful.  The
+middle-aged suitor seldom pauses to reflect that if a younger man
+appeared upon the scene his matured experience would stand him in no
+good stead; a girl does not often marry a man many years her senior from
+any happier reason than that nothing better offers.  To a girl a man of
+forty appears elderly.  This is natural.  Age, like everything else, is
+relative in either sex.
+
+Prudence was flattered by Mr Morgan's attentions and grateful for his
+consideration.  She did not love him.  She had a very clear idea what
+type of man could inspire love in her.  It was an entirely different
+type from Mr Morgan.  But marriage with Mr Morgan opened a way of
+escape from uncongenial surroundings.  If she missed this opening it was
+very possible that an opportunity might not occur again.  She made up
+her mind, as Steele had known she would do, to seize it when the moment
+offered.
+
+She made one final attempt, however, to gain news of Steele.  One day
+when she was alone with Mr Morgan she summoned all her courage and
+inquired after Steele.
+
+Mr Morgan showed surprise at her question, and paused a moment for
+reflection before he was able clearly to recall the facts about the man
+to whom she referred.  It seemed to be a matter of astonishment to him
+that she should be acquainted with Steele.  Steele had left Morgan Bros,
+a year ago, he told her.  He had gone abroad, to Africa, he believed.
+He revealed an uncertainty as to his movements and a lack of interest in
+them which exasperated Prudence.
+
+"So many young men emigrate to the Colonies nowadays," he said.  "New
+countries attract them.  They don't settle down in England."
+
+"There are better openings in new countries, I suppose," she said in a
+dispirited voice, which she strove to render indifferent.  "A man with
+enterprise ought to get ahead in the Colonies."
+
+"A man with enterprise possibly might get ahead," Mr Morgan allowed; "a
+man with capital assuredly would."
+
+"Don't brains reckon as capital in new countries?" she asked.
+
+"Brains are an asset in every country," he answered; "but credit at
+one's bank is the surest passport to success anywhere.  So far as I
+remember, Steele was unfortunate.  He did not leave us under any cloud;
+but there was a default in his department, and he had to make good.  I
+imagine he emigrated with only the necessary means for landing."
+
+"Oh!" said Prudence, and regarded Mr Morgan, who was reputed to be a
+millionaire, with a diminution of respect.  He could better have
+afforded to lose the money.  To have allowed a man who, while
+responsible, was not culpable in the matter of the deficit to make good
+was ungenerous.  "I wish you had not told me that."
+
+He looked astonished.
+
+"You could have borne the loss," she said.
+
+"Business cannot be run on quixotic lines," he answered.  "Besides,
+every man of honour accepts his responsibilities."
+
+He was quite right; she knew that; all he said was perfectly just.  But
+a woman seldom reasons on lines of strict justice.  She would have liked
+Edward Morgan better had he been generous rather than just.  Instead she
+went to bed feeling angry with him and compassionate towards Steele.
+Why, she wondered, had she forbidden Steele to write?  And why had he
+obeyed her so implicitly?  He might in any case have sent her a line of
+farewell before sailing.  She would not have cared had the whole family
+seen it if only she had received that small assurance that he
+remembered.
+
+Perhaps he did not remember.  Perhaps when he left Wortheton he had put
+her out of his thoughts.  There was no reason why he should continue to
+bear her in mind when circumstances had taken him out of her life and
+separated them so widely.  There were fresh interests now, new scenes,
+to engage and distract his attention.  The Wortheton episode had played
+an unimportant part in his life.  Such episodes, she knew, were frequent
+in most men's lives, and stood for no more than they were, pleasant
+interludes breaking the monotony of everyday things.
+
+Then her thoughts strayed reminiscently to that stolen interview under
+her window; and she recalled things Steele had said to her and the
+manner of their utterance; and it seemed to her by the light of those
+half-forgotten memories that he had acted disloyally in going out of her
+life so completely.  He _had_ betrayed an interest in her.  And he had
+stirred up a corresponding interest in her breast.  He had no right to
+do that and then to pass on and forget.
+
+Two days later Edward Morgan returned to Derbyshire.  It had been his
+intention to propose to Prudence before returning.  He had had an
+interview with Mr Graynor, and had ascertained that his suit was viewed
+favourably by her father; but Prudence herself was a little difficult
+during those last two days; and Mr Morgan did not feel sufficiently
+confident of success with her to put his happiness to the test.  Her
+variable moods disconcerted him.  It did not occur to him to seek an
+explanation of her decreased kindliness in anything that had passed
+between them; and so he failed to trace his fall in her esteem to the
+information he had given her in regard to Steele.  That unfortunate
+relation had opened up a wider gulf than he would have believed
+possible, as a more generous account would, while raising him in her
+esteem, have decreased the influence of the absent Steele.  Now the
+balance weighed in Steele's favour; and Mr Morgan was made
+uncomfortably conscious of a lack of response to his tenderness from the
+girl he hoped to marry.
+
+On the evening before he left he had an interview with her alone.
+
+It was a matter for amusement with Prudence to note the frequency of
+these private audiences.  Hitherto the family had relegated her to the
+background; now, with an amazing discernment for matters calling for
+their united supervision, they withdrew from the drawing-room, melting
+away with such tactful unobtrusiveness that Mr Morgan firmly believed
+in those numerous domestic obligations which engaged so much of their
+time, and very willingly submitted to be entertained by the sister whose
+accident incapacitated her from taking an active share in their doings.
+On the whole he was well satisfied; and he approved of the doctor's
+prescription of rest as the only cure for the damaged ankle.
+
+"I'll send you some more literature when I get back," he said, sitting
+facing her in the dusk, with what remained of the daylight falling on
+his broad strong face.  "I expect the sofa will see a good deal of you
+for a week or so longer.  The trouble of these matters is the
+disproportionately long time they take to mend.  On the next occasion
+when I visit Wortheton I shall hope to see you walking about with the
+best."
+
+"I should hope so," Prudence said, and laughed.
+
+"Oh!  I don't mean to absent myself for a specially long period," he
+said, and looked at her with the light of a steady purpose in his eyes.
+"I'm wanting you to say that you will be glad to see me again.  I should
+have liked to have heard you express some regret at my going now."
+
+He paused, but Prudence, who was nervously playing with a flower which
+he had brought in from the garden for her, did not immediately reply.
+She was not sure what might follow an expression of regret from her.
+She did not feel regret; and she had a very definite desire in her mind
+to avert a direct proposal.
+
+"I shall be very pleased to see you when you come again," she said at
+last.
+
+Mr Morgan smiled faintly.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to rest content with that," he said.  He put out
+a hand and laid it over her hand--the hand which held the flower.  "Do I
+seem old to you?" he asked.
+
+Prudence looked up at him with wide surprised eyes.  He was looking back
+at her with a steady kindly smile that made her nervous.
+
+"Not so _very_ old," she answered; and felt her cheeks flaming as she
+saw the quick colour stain his face.
+
+He sighed.
+
+"A little fatherly, eh?" he said, the smile returning.  And he wondered
+whether she would ever learn to her distress how cruelly youth can hurt.
+"Well, I'm not young.  I'm forty-two.  I want you to accustom yourself
+to that knowledge before I come again.  When I come again I shall have
+another lesson to teach you."
+
+He spoke lightly; and with the lessening of his earnestness and the
+removal of his hand, both of which Prudence had found embarrassing, she
+felt relieved and was able to smile back at him with something of the
+old frankness.
+
+"If you teach then as kindly as you have to-day," she said, "I shall
+prove a dull pupil if I do not learn it readily."
+
+"You give me hope," he said.
+
+He scrutinised her for a moment very closely, made as though he would
+speak, surprised a startled apprehension in her eyes which nearly
+resembled fear, and thought better of it.  He got up rather suddenly and
+walked to the fireplace and stood staring unseeingly into the empty
+grate.
+
+"I'll be patient," he said.  "Perhaps you will have prepared your mind a
+little to receive that lesson by the time I return."
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+It was the wisest thing which Edward Morgan could have done to go away
+and leave what he had it in his mind to say unsaid.  Prudence missed him
+after he left, missed his kindly attentions, the quick thought for her
+comfort which forestalled her wishes, his pleasant companionship.  He
+was a man who, if somewhat earnest, perhaps because of this earnestness,
+talked well on most subjects.  He was neither brilliant nor very ready
+of speech.  The quality Prudence liked best in him was his habit of
+treating her as an equal; he did not pursue the tactic of talking down
+to her.  The latter was one of William's unamiable eccentricities, and
+it annoyed Prudence the more because William at his wisest was never so
+profound as to be beyond the comprehension of the most ordinary
+intelligence.
+
+In Mr Morgan's presence William's attitude towards her changed
+considerably; following Mr Morgan's departure the increased deference
+of his manner moderated slightly since no definite proposal had
+resulted.  William suspected that his sister's chances were not so
+secure as he had believed.  She was foolish enough, he decided, to lose
+this excellent opportunity of making a brilliant marriage.  William was
+not so anxious to see his sister married as he was desirous of forming
+an alliance with the house of Morgan Bros.  If she brought the matter
+off she would win his approbation and his unbounded respect.  Something
+of what he felt on this head he managed to convey to her in an indirect
+manner which he considered tactful.  He felt that his approval would
+have considerable weight with her.
+
+"Morgan appears to have enjoyed his visit," he remarked to her; "he was
+sorry to go.  He is an uncommonly good fellow.  I like him."
+
+"He's a kind old thing," said Prudence with a gleam of mischief in her
+eyes.
+
+"Old!  Nonsense!"  William squared his heavy shoulders and regarded
+himself complacently in the overmantel.  "He's a younger man than I."
+
+"Well, yes."  Prudence surveyed William's grey hairs with
+uncomplimentary attentiveness, surveyed his corpulent figure, and
+smiled.  "He's forty-two.  I have his own word for that."
+
+"A man isn't old at forty-two," he said.
+
+"He looks old though."
+
+"When a man has passed his first youth," William observed sententiously,
+"he is--ahem!--more interesting, more reliable.  He knows what he wants.
+I confess that Morgan inspires in me both confidence and liking.  One
+can respect a man who has proved his worth."
+
+"He has proved an aptitude for making money," Prudence allowed.
+
+"Isn't that proof of worth?"
+
+"It suggests sound business acumen."
+
+"With industry and perseverance," he insisted.
+
+"Generosity is finer than these qualities."  She was thinking of the
+unfortunate confidence relating to Steele.
+
+"You at least have not found him lacking in that quality," he said,
+surprised.  "He has showered gifts on you."
+
+"He has been very generous to me," she admitted, and laughed with a ring
+of scorn in the mirth.  "There is small merit in being generous when it
+pleases one to be so."
+
+He stared at her in amazement.
+
+"I think you are strangely wanting in gratitude," he said.  "Few people
+with the very sufficient grounds which you have for recognising a man's
+generosity would display so grudging an acknowledgment.  Morgan was most
+appreciative in his praise of you.  He revealed a very deep--regard for
+you."
+
+William surveyed his half-sister with the doubtful scrutiny of a man who
+failed to discover what it was in her which attracted other men: beyond
+her looks he could discern no particular charm; and her looks were not
+in his opinion remarkable.
+
+"I have heard more impassioned avowals," she returned.
+
+"From whom?" he demanded instantly.
+
+"Perhaps I have only imagined them,--or," and she patted the cover of
+one of Mr Morgan's gifts and laughed, "met with them in books."
+
+"There is a lot of pernicious trash written," observed William.  "It
+puts ideas in girls' heads."
+
+"You wouldn't wish even a girl's head empty of ideas, would you?"
+
+"I would wish it empty of nonsense," he answered sharply.  "A woman
+should be satisfied to look after her home, and--all that."
+
+This being non-committal and liberal of interpretation, Prudence let it
+pass unchallenged.  She was so familiar with William's ideas about woman
+and her place in the scheme of things, and appreciated his opinion so
+little that she was satisfied to leave him to the undisputed enjoyment
+of his views.  It was William's own misfortune that he could never
+emerge from the rut into which he had floundered.  He had long ago
+persuaded himself into the belief that his rut was the open road.
+
+Feeling that he had said sufficient to add the weight of his approval to
+the balance in favour of Mr Morgan, William left his sister to digest
+his words; and subsequently informed his father that he entertained
+small doubt that if Edward Morgan did Prudence the honour of asking her
+to be his wife she would accept him.  He believed she would appreciate
+the compliment of such an offer.
+
+Prudence herself was less confident.  She was indeed so undecided that
+the respite allowed her came as a relief.  It gave her time for
+consideration of the matter.  She did not love Edward Morgan; but he
+held open the door of freedom, and she feared that if she missed this
+opportunity of passing through, it might never open for her again.
+
+There followed a period of waiting and uncertainty and general boredom,
+during which the ankle grew well and she was able to leave the sofa and
+walk in the garden.  It was then that the loss of her cycle became once
+more a source of acute annoyance.
+
+"You had no right to sell it, daddy," she complained; "it was mine.
+You'll have to buy me a new one."
+
+"I hoped you wouldn't care to ride any more, Prue," he returned
+evasively.  "It isn't safe.  You may break your neck next time."
+
+"I may, of course.  I stand a greater chance of doing so if you won't
+buy me a machine, because I shall hire; and hired cycles aren't
+reliable.  Of course I shall ride again.  Your advice is as preposterous
+as telling a child who has learnt to walk that it must revert to
+sedentary habits.  It wouldn't, you know, however nice a child it might
+be."
+
+She drew him towards her by the lapels of his coat and kissed him on
+either cheek.
+
+"You'll get me a new cycle, daddy?--just like the last?"
+
+Mr Graynor yielded.  When Prudence coaxed, looking at him with that
+light in her blue eyes, she recalled her mother so vividly to his mind
+that he could not resist her.  It were easier to vex Agatha than to
+disappoint Prue.
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+Summer was on the wane and autumn was busy early colouring the leaves.
+Edward Morgan had intended returning to Wortheton before the finish of
+the warm weather; but many things prevented him from carrying out his
+wish; and the weeks went by without any sign from him, save the regular
+arrival of the monthly parcel of books, which Prudence as regularly
+acknowledged, writing a frank girlish letter of thanks, which took
+longer to compose than the subject matter warranted.  The difficulty of
+writing those letters increased with each repetition of the performance.
+He never wrote to her.  He did not even address the parcels; they came
+direct from the bookseller.  Had he sent a few friendly lines with his
+gifts it would have made the task of acknowledgment easier.
+
+Each time that he received one of these brief inconsequent epistles Mr
+Morgan opened it eagerly and hastily read it in the always vain hope of
+finding the wish expressed therein that he would fulfil his promise to
+revisit Wortheton.  But Prudence made no mention of this matter.  And he
+locked the letters away in a private drawer and waited in patient
+hopefulness for the next.  The next letter invariably roused similar
+emotions and brought further disappointment on perusal.  Mr Morgan
+proved of his own experience that being in love is not a happy condition
+of mind.
+
+On the whole Prudence enjoyed the possession of an undeclared suitor: it
+gave her a sense of importance, a sense too of future security.  She
+could regard with indifference the acid rigour of Agatha's authority and
+brother William's pompous displeasure.  William had been extremely
+annoyed by the arrival of the new bicycle, and had made unpleasant
+observations about Prudence's roaming habits and her propensity for
+making casual and undesirable acquaintances.  It was very evident that
+William considered that his sister rode abroad in quest of these
+adventures.  His insinuations exasperated her, but they did not shake
+her determination to ride when and where she pleased.
+
+It was soon after the arrival of the new cycle, when she was enjoying
+her first long rides after the accident, that she met again the man
+whose kindness to her lingered pleasantly in her memory, despite the
+shock of disillusion which had eclipsed much of the brightness of the
+recollection.  The encounter sprung upon her unaware.  She had neither
+expected nor wished to meet Major Stotford again.  But when he overtook
+her in his car, and stopped the car a few yards ahead of her and waited
+for her to come up with it, there was no doubt in Prudence's mind as to
+what she ought to do.  She ceased peddling and alighted.  Major
+Stotford, who was alone, opened the door of the car and stepped into the
+road beside her.
+
+"A piece of good luck!" he said, shaking hands.  "I've often wondered
+about you.  There is no need to ask if you have quite recovered.  So
+they let you ride again?"
+
+"They didn't want to; it was a fight," Prudence said, and laughed.
+
+"Yes!" he said, smiling too.  "I imagined you would have difficulty.
+I'm glad you won.  They didn't tell you, I suppose, that I called to
+inquire a few days after our adventure?"
+
+"No; they didn't tell me," she replied, and flushed slightly.  "It was
+very kind of you.  I didn't know."
+
+"I thought possibly it might not get to your knowledge," he said coolly,
+and surveyed her flushed face with keen appreciation.  "I was not
+allowed to see you, but was privileged to interview your brother
+instead.  I have never approved of substitutes, and discovered on that
+occasion no good reason for reconsidering my prejudice.  I'm delighted
+to meet you again anyhow."
+
+His frankness embarrassed Prudence; but she recalled his kindness and
+the service he had done her, and felt further vexation with her family.
+
+"I'm glad too," she said, playing nervously with the little bell on her
+handle-bar.  He took hold of the handle-bar also and became immensely
+interested in the machine.
+
+"It's a new one, isn't it?" he said.  "Surely the other wasn't past
+repairing?"
+
+"I don't know.  They got rid of it."
+
+"I see."  His eyes twinkled.  "And you compelled them to make good.
+They have done it quite handsomely.  Your persuasive powers must be
+considerably greater than mine."
+
+"I threatened to hire," said Prudence, and immediately realised on
+hearing him laugh that this admission was disloyal to the family.  She
+lifted her eyes with a flash of pride in them to his smiling face.
+"Father is always generous," she said.  "He wouldn't trust the old cycle
+again, though the spill was entirely my fault.  I'm cautious in regard
+to dogs now."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, the smile deepening.  "Caution is a quality which the
+wise cultivate.  Possibly had I not considerably neglected it I should
+have been more successful--socially.  But these things are so dull."
+
+He took his hand off the handle-bar and straightened himself and looked
+down at her with a quick resolve in his face.
+
+"We managed to find room for the old cycle," he said.  "I don't see why
+there need be any difficulty in stowing this away.  What do you say?
+Will you drive with me?"
+
+For the fraction of a second Prudence hesitated.  She did not want to
+drive with him.  She knew that if she agreed she could not speak of it
+at home: there was something a little shameful in doing what must of
+necessity be done secretly.  But the memory of that former occasion on
+which she had been glad enough to make use of his car was in her mind,
+and made a refusal to accept the present invitation appear pointedly
+ungracious.
+
+"You would rather not?" he said reproachfully.
+
+Prudence made up her mind on the instant.
+
+"Thank you, I should like it.  But couldn't we leave the bicycle
+somewhere and pick it up on our return?"
+
+"We could," he said.  "That's not a bad idea.  There's an inn a quarter
+of a mile along the road.  I'll drive on so that you shan't be smothered
+in dust, and you follow; then we'll house the bicycle and go for a joy
+ride."
+
+He re-entered the car and drove off; while Prudence, waiting for the
+cloud of dust which he raised to subside, stood beside her machine,
+dismayed at the realisation of what she had consented to do, and
+considering whether it would not be wiser to head her cycle in the
+opposite direction and ride home.  But reflection showed her the
+impossibility of acting in so ungracious a manner.  She should have
+declined his invitation in the first instance; to evade the engagement
+now was unthinkable.
+
+When she arrived at the inn it was to discover that Major Stotford had
+made the necessary arrangements; it only remained for her to relinquish
+her cycle to the man who stood ready to take it, and climb to her seat
+in the car.  Despite a determination to enjoy herself and banish
+disquieting thoughts, Prudence was conscious of feeling not entirely at
+her ease with her companion.  She could not have explained this sense of
+mistrust.  There was nothing in Major Stotford's manner to arouse it;
+she decided that possibly it resulted from what she had learned in
+regard to his private life.  That ugly story coloured all her thoughts
+of him, and revealed him in an unfavourable light.  She had not met this
+type of man before.
+
+Nevertheless he interested her.  He talked well.  And he was so
+manifestly enjoying himself and showed such eagerness to please her that
+Prudence made an effort to shake off her uneasiness and share his
+pleasure in the excursion.  But when he stopped at a little village some
+miles further on and took her into a place where they catered for
+tourists, the old disquieting feeling came back intensified; and she
+knew that she was not enjoying herself, that she shrank from appearing
+in public with a man whose acquaintance she had been forbidden.  There
+was no longer any doubt in her mind that she had acted indiscreetly.
+
+"I would rather go on," she said.  "I don't want tea, and I mustn't be
+late."
+
+"We shan't be here many minutes," he replied.  "And you must have
+something.  Rushing through the air gives me an appetite.  I'll get you
+back in good time, if I have to exceed the speed limit.  We've been
+doing that already."
+
+He carried his point and led her within.  They were shown into a little
+room where a table was laid for tea.  There was no one else in the room,
+though from across the passage voices were audible and the sound of
+clinking china in proof that other travellers were taking refreshment.
+Major Stotford looked about him critically, flung his gloves on a chair,
+and advised Prudence to sit down and rest.
+
+"I'll go and order something to eat," he said.
+
+Prudence, who was standing near the window, looking out on a regiment of
+tall hollyhocks and a group of flaming dahlias blooming in the little
+garden, made no response; and he left the room, closing the door behind
+him.
+
+With the closing of the door she faced about, feeling extraordinarily
+like a person trapped.  It was absurd of course; but her heart beat with
+uncomfortable rapidity, and excitement flushed her face and lent a
+brightness to her eyes.  She moved about the room restlessly examining
+the gaudy prints on the walls and the hideous design of the Brussels
+carpet; but was unable to fix her attention on anything, and wandered
+back to the window again.
+
+There was a flavour of wrong-doing in this adventure which troubled her.
+The fear of being found out loomed with ugly insistence in the
+foreground of her ideas.  She wished he had been satisfied simply to
+drive with her.  This unforeseen development with its intimate
+suggestion of confidential relations vexed her.  Intuition told her that
+in the circumstances he should have refrained from taking this step.
+
+Then the door opened again to admit him.  He came in, confident and
+smiling, and joined her where she stood at the window.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+Prudence poured out the tea while Major Stotford sat with his back to
+the light, attentively observant of her actions, causing her
+considerable confusion by the intensity of his regard, and by the fact
+that he had fallen upon a quite unusual silence and seemed content
+simply to sit and watch her.
+
+"We must hurry," she said, handing him a cup.  "If I cause them anxiety
+at home through being late they will make such a fuss about my cycling
+in future."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" he murmured.  "What a nuisance a family can become.  I wish
+you were an orphan."  He stirred his tea slowly, and smiled at her.
+"You are living up to your name.  Do you know, when I first heard it, I
+thought it strangely unsuited."
+
+"I suppose you think me imprudent?" she said, without looking at him.
+
+"No; not that," he hastened to assure her.  "But Prudence is such a
+Puritanic appellation.  It suggests a nun.  I'm not sure on the whole
+that I don't prefer Imprudence.  It's purely a matter of taste."
+
+"Never mind my name," she said, and looked vexed.  "You are not the
+first to discover its unsuitability.  Will you have another cup of tea?"
+
+"I haven't started on my first cup yet," he answered, and lifted it to
+his lips to conceal his amusement.  "You _are_ in a hurry.  See here!"
+He placed a gun-metal watch on the table beside his plate.  "We'll give
+it ten minutes.  If you attempt to finish under you will ruin your
+digestion.  I would, if permitted a choice, allow half an hour for tea
+and another half-hour for digestion; but since that doesn't fit in with
+your wishes, I sacrifice mine.  Try this plum cake; it's rather good.
+The woman who runs this place was formerly a servant of mine, and her
+plum cakes are excellent."
+
+He cut the cake into generous slices.  Prudence took a slice and
+pronounced it as good as he had promised.  Although she had declared
+that she was not hungry, with the food before her she discovered a very
+healthy appetite.  Her spirits began to revive.  After all, it was
+rather jolly having tea in this quaint place, with the autumn sunshine
+streaming in through the little window and falling brightly across the
+tea-table, till the honey in its glass pot shone like liquid amber, and
+the dahlias, which Major Stotford had removed from the centre of the
+table because they obstructed his view, were ruby red against the snowy
+cloth.  The sunlight fell too upon the man's dark hair and showed it
+thinning on the top and about the temples.  Prudence noted these things
+with interest.  She wondered what his age was, and decided that he was
+older than he appeared.  She began to feel more at ease with him.  He
+ate surprising quantities of cake in the limited time at his disposal,
+and dispatched several cups of tea.  At the expiration of the ten
+minutes he returned the watch to his pocket and rose briskly.
+
+"Time's up," he said, coming round to her seat and standing over her
+with his hand on the back of her chair.  "I think I deserve thanks for
+my self-sacrifice, don't you?"
+
+Prudence would have risen too, but it was impossible to do so without
+coming into collision with him.  She wished he would not stand so close.
+
+"I can't see where the self-sacrifice comes in," she replied.  "You made
+an excellent tea."
+
+He laughed and leant over her chair, so that their faces were on a
+level.  The expression in his eyes startled her.  She jerked back her
+chair quickly and stood up, but immediately his hand slipped to her arm
+and held her.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I think you are a little afraid of me."
+
+"Let me go--please!"  She was thoroughly alarmed now.  The old
+uneasiness gripped her.  She experienced again the sensation of being
+trapped.  And his eyes frightened her.  They held hers with strangely
+compelling force, and there was a look in them such as she had never
+seen in a man's eyes before--such as she had never imagined human eyes
+could express.  "I wish you--wouldn't look at me--like that."
+
+The grip on her arm tightened.  He drew her close to him, and his other
+hand came to rest on her shoulder, slipped round her shoulders and held
+her.
+
+"Look into my eyes," he said.  "Don't be frightened.  There is nothing
+to be frightened about."
+
+"Oh, please!" said Prudence, near to tears.  "Let me go."
+
+"In a minute," he returned softly.  "I've something to say first.  You
+shy child, what are you afraid of?  I've a great affection for you.  You
+are the dearest, sweetest little girl I have met for many a long year.
+I want to be friends--now and for ever.  And I'm going to seal the
+compact right here."
+
+Swiftly with the words his clasp of her became vicelike.  It was useless
+for Prudence to struggle against him.  Her resistance served only to
+strengthen his resolve.  He crushed her to him, set his lips to hers,
+and kissed her--kissed her with a passion that was as a flame which
+burned into her soul.  Then he released her; and she fell back with a
+gasp of anger, her face white, her eyes ablaze with rage and
+mortification.  She leaned with her clenched hand upon the tablecloth,
+panting and inarticulate.  He turned to give her time to recover, picked
+his cap up from a chair, and faced round again deliberately.
+
+"I couldn't help it," he said; "you were so sweet.  I've been wanting to
+do that all the time.  Don't look so tragic.  I won't offend again."
+
+"How dare you?" she breathed; and with difficulty he forced back the
+smile that threatened to break over his features.  That was exactly what
+he had expected her to say, what he had known she would say, as soon as
+she found any voice to speak with.
+
+"I don't know," he said.  "Upon my soul, I don't know how it happened.
+I'm sorry--to have annoyed you.  I'm not sorry about anything else.  I
+had to kiss you."
+
+"I want," Prudence said, with a faint sob in her voice, "to go home."
+
+"You aren't angry with me?" he said, and became suddenly humble.  "You
+aren't going to punish me?  I'm really ashamed of my roughness.  Forgive
+me.  Say you forgive me.  I will not offend again.  Please..."
+
+"I will never willingly speak to you again," Prudence said.  "If I had
+any means at all of getting back without you I wouldn't drive with you
+now.  Please don't say any more.  Let us start at once."
+
+"You are as hard as a piece of flint," he said, "for all your sweetness.
+I didn't think you could be so unkind.  Come then!"
+
+He opened the door for her and followed her into the passage.  From
+across the passage the sound of merry voices broke upon their ears.
+Major Stotford glanced in the direction from whence the sounds came, and
+then glanced curiously at Prudence.  She walked on, very erect and
+quiet, with a white chilled face, and a hurt look in her eyes, seeming
+to notice nothing.
+
+Once during the drive back he broke the silence which up to that moment
+had endured between them since they had taken their seats in the car.
+He had been driving at top speed; but they were nearing the inn where
+they had left the bicycle, and he slowed the car down and turned his
+face towards his quiet companion.
+
+"Prudence," he said, "you aren't for keeping it up, are you?  I've
+apologised.  I'm really awfully sorry.  Let bygones be bygones, won't
+you?  I wish I hadn't made such an ass of myself.  You surprised and
+delighted me.  I didn't think you'd take it like that."
+
+"Major Stotford," Prudence returned with her face averted, "I have never
+given you permission to use my name."
+
+He reddened angrily, turned his attention to the steering and made no
+response.  Nothing further passed between them.  He let the car out,
+taking, with a recklessness that at another time would have made the
+girl nervous, the sharp curves of the winding road.  Had they met any
+traffic along the road his driving would have caused an accident, as it
+was he nearly ran down a cyclist whom they overtook, and who saved
+himself and his machine by riding into the hedge.
+
+Prudence's heart stood still on perceiving the cyclist.  She had taken
+one swift look at him as they rushed past, had met his eyes fully, eyes
+in which indignation yielded to amazement and a most unflattering
+criticism as they rested upon her face, which from white flamed swiftly
+to a shamed distressed crimson in the moment of mutual recognition.
+
+The Rev Ernest Jones extricated himself and his bicycle from the hedge
+and pursued the racing car.  Why he pursued it he could not have
+explained; he had certainly no hope of overtaking it, and he had no idea
+that the car would come to a standstill shortly after passing him.  He
+discovered it half a mile further on at the bottom of the hill, with
+Major Stotford standing beside it, and Prudence in the road, holding her
+bicycle which the man at the inn had brought out for her.  These
+proceedings were nothing short of astounding.  Mr Jones felt they
+needed explaining.  He put on a fresh spurt, and in a cloud of dust rode
+almost into Prudence, and alighted.
+
+Major Stotford uttered an exclamation of disgust and started to beat the
+dust from his clothes, while Prudence silently regarded her
+brother-in-law, and he in turn surveyed the general grouping with
+manifest disfavour in his curious eyes.
+
+"You are riding home," he said to Prudence, not in the manner of a
+question, but simply stating a fact.  "I will accompany you--when you
+are ready."
+
+"I am ready now," she answered, and led her bicycle into the middle of
+the road.
+
+Major Stotford, still beating the dust from his clothes, did not look
+round.  Mr Jones held his bicycle ready; he had no intention of
+mounting until he had seen Prudence in the saddle.  Instantly with the
+placing of her foot on the pedal, Major Stotford swung round and
+approached her.  He held out his hand to her.
+
+"Just for appearances," he said in an undertone.  "You must...  It's too
+silly... parting like that--before him."
+
+She shook hands gravely.  He put his hand to his cap and stepped back.
+
+"Good-bye," he called after her.  "Sorry you couldn't come for a longer
+spin.  I'm off to-morrow."
+
+He paid no attention to Mr Jones, who was already in pursuit of
+Prudence, and ringing his bell fussily; he turned his back on him and
+went into the inn for the purpose of washing some of the curate's dust
+from his throat, reflecting while he did so that, had Prudence been more
+reasonable, she would have avoided the parson.  Despite the fact that he
+felt annoyed with her, he regretted the complication of the meeting
+which he foresaw would create new difficulties for her.
+
+"He'll tell of course," he mused.  "He's the sneaking sort of little cad
+who feels it his special mission in life to use the lash where he can.
+Well, she ran into it, poor little Imprudence!"
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
+
+Mr Jones was spared the necessity of describing the conditions under
+which he had met Prudence by Prudence's own frank confession immediately
+on her arrival at the house.  She was either too proud to appeal to Mr
+Jones' generosity, or she did not credit him with the possession of this
+quality.  He had quite expected an appeal from her, urging him to
+secrecy in the matter, and was a little uncertain as to the attitude he
+should adopt.  But he was fully determined to improve the occasion with
+spiritual advice and a little brotherly reproof; also he intended that
+she should thoroughly appreciate his magnanimity in shielding her from
+the consequences of her very indiscreet behaviour.  And she spoilt his
+pleasing role by refusing to give him the cue.  This annoyed him, and
+showed him plainly that his first duty was to his father-in-law, who had
+every right to be informed of his daughter's indiscretions.  He followed
+Prudence into the drawing-room, the sense of responsibility sitting
+heavily upon him, and was received by Mr Graynor and by his
+sisters-in-law with marked cordiality.
+
+"You should have arrived earlier," Agatha said.  "The tea is cold.
+Where is Matilda?"
+
+"I didn't come from home," he answered.  "I've just cycled in from
+Hatchett.  I've had tea, thanks."
+
+And then Prudence's bombshell was delivered.
+
+"So have I," she said.  "I met Major Stotford, and we had tea at a
+Cyclists' Rest."
+
+"You _did what_?"
+
+On any other occasion the scandalised horror in Agatha's voice would
+have roused Prudence to a defiant retort; but the afternoon's experience
+had subdued her spirit; she felt too crushed and miserable to resent her
+sister's amazed anger, or to heed the exchange of significant glances
+between the others.  She was dimly aware that her father rose and
+approached her, but the pained displeasure of his look left her unmoved.
+It did not seem to her to matter particularly what happened, or what
+they thought of her; she was past caring about such things.
+
+"I thought I had given you quite clearly to understand that I did not
+wish you to pursue the acquaintance with Major Stotford," Mr Graynor
+said.  Prudence's eyes fell.  "I believed I could trust you," he added
+reproachfully; "and you don't even respect my wishes."
+
+"I will in future," she answered with unusual meekness.  "It seemed
+ungracious to refuse after his kindness."
+
+"More particularly when it was against your own inclination," broke in
+Agatha.
+
+Mr Graynor raised a protesting hand.
+
+"Not now," he said.  "We will speak of this later."
+
+And with a word of apology to Mr Jones, he left the room.  Prudence
+followed him into the hall.
+
+"Daddy, I'm sorry," she said, and caught at his sleeve; but, for the
+first time within her memory, he repulsed her.
+
+"I don't want to hear any more," he said.  "You have annoyed me
+exceedingly."
+
+He went on, leaving Prudence to realise the enormity of her conduct, and
+the hopelessness of expecting forgiveness in this quarter.  She had
+offended him deeply.  She ran upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom
+and sought relief from tears.
+
+The exasperating part of the affair lay in the wholly unnecessary
+attitude of inflexible veto adopted by her family.  Prudence was not
+likely to repeat her mistake.  Experience teaches its own lessons, and
+her experience had been sufficiently humiliating without any additional
+disgrace.  She bore for a time with this state of affairs: when the
+general hostility became insupportable she set her mind to work to
+discover a remedy.  As a result of this mental activity, Mr Edward
+Morgan received one morning the letter for which he had so long and so
+patiently waited.
+
+Mr Morgan read the letter in the privacy of his office, smiled, re-read
+it, examined it from all angles, and promptly proceeded to answer it, a
+light of satisfaction illumining his features as he wrote.
+
+And yet there was in the briefly worded note not much that a man could
+have twisted into any meaning conveying particular encouragement;
+nevertheless, the invitation for which he had waited had come at last;
+that sufficed for Mr Morgan.
+
+"It is so dull," Prudence had written.  "When are you coming to pay your
+promised visit?"
+
+His answer read:
+
+  "My dear Miss Prudence,--
+
+  "I was delighted to get your letter.  It would be selfish on my part
+  to say that I am rejoiced to know you feel dull; but at least I cannot
+  express sincere regret since the admission is followed by what I have
+  been hoping for ever since we parted--your permission to visit you
+  again.  I am coming immediately.  I was only waiting for just this
+  dear little letter.
+
+  "Yours very truly,--
+
+  "Edward Morgan."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Prudence when she read this letter, and bit her lip in
+vexation, her face aflame at the thought that she had taken the
+irrevocable step, and brought very close the moment for the great
+decision of her life.
+
+She knew that he would ask her to marry him, that he would take her
+consent for granted; and, although in sending the letter she had decided
+upon taking this step, now that the thing was upon her she felt
+reluctant and afraid.
+
+"You've done it now," she told herself, for the purpose of stiffening
+her resolution.  "You ought to have realised your doubts sooner.  It is
+impossible to draw back."
+
+Impossible to draw back!  The finality of the phrase gripped her
+imagination with the startled sensation of a lost cause.  She had burnt
+her boats.  The prospect ahead was not entirely lacking in fascination;
+but she wished none the less that some kind of raft might discover
+itself on which she could retreat conveniently if the alternative proved
+very distasteful.  The thought of being kissed by Mr Morgan, as Major
+Stotford had kissed her, the idea of giving any man the right to so kiss
+her, filled her with sick apprehension.  The whole process of
+love-making thrilled her with disgust.
+
+She leaned from her window and looked out upon the glistening darkness
+of the wet November night, and her thoughts became detached from present
+complexities, and attuned themselves to memories that were becoming old.
+They were nearly two years old, but they wore the stark vividness of
+very recent things.  She allowed her fancy to riot unchecked around
+these bitter-sweet memories of a romance which had started from slumber
+only to fall back again into sleep, a sleep no longer sound and
+reposeful but disturbed by haunting dreams, dreams that were elusive and
+disconnected, and which belonged to the might-have-been.  There was no
+shrinking from these dreams; they floated before her mind arrayed in the
+gracious beauty of simple and sincere emotions.  The thought of love, of
+passion even, in this connection, had no qualm of revulsion in it.  To
+be held in strong arms a willing captive, to be kissed by lips to which
+her own responded, that was a different matter.  There would be no sense
+of shame in that, only a great wonder and a vast content.
+
+"Dreams! dreams!"  Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the
+rain without--wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter
+world sodden with the sky's incessant weeping.
+
+She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her
+hair.
+
+"He is out there in the sunshine," she thought; "and I'm here in the
+dark and the rain alone.  It is easy to forget when the sun shines
+always."
+
+Abruptly she drew back and closed the window and turned up the lights in
+the room.
+
+"I wish he wasn't coming quite so soon," she said, crouching down by the
+dying fire, a shivering, shrinking figure, with rain-wet hair, and eyes
+which were wet also, but not with rain.
+
+The memories were shut out with the rain-washed night.  She was back in
+the present again, with the disturbing reflection that the morrow, the
+last day of sad November, would see the arrival of Edward Morgan and the
+end of her girlish dreams.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
+
+Mr Edward Morgan arrived on the following afternoon.  Prudence watched
+him from the window disentangling himself from the carriage rugs, and
+fussing with the muffler which he wore wound carefully about his throat.
+The wind was in the north-east, and he was subject to bronchitis.
+
+Swathed in wraps he did not cut a romantic figure: he looked what he
+was, a prosperous, middle-aged man who valued his health and refrained
+from taking liberties with it.  Prudence told herself that he was wise
+to be cautious, at the same time she wished that he was of an age at
+which such caution was unnecessary.
+
+He mounted the steps, and was welcomed in the hall by Mr Graynor and
+taken to the library for purposes of refreshment stronger than tea after
+his cold and tedious journey.  Later, he made his appearance in the
+drawing-room, divested of his outdoor wear and improved on that account.
+A subtle blending of whisky and cigar smoke emanated from his person,
+of which Prudence was critically aware as she shook hands and replied to
+his inquiries as to her health.  He was in immense spirits, as became a
+successful lover; also he was a little shy and nervously anxious to
+please.
+
+He talked about his journey and discussed politics and business and the
+weather; and Prudence listened, taking no part in the conversation, and
+feeling grateful to him for refraining from addressing her directly.  He
+was, while intensely alive to her presence, seemingly unmindful of it.
+He credited her, not without reason, with sharing his shyness; and was
+anxious to give her time to get used to him and feel her way back to
+their former easy relations.  Miss Agatha received the greater part of
+his attention, and in return pressed the hot scones on him hospitably.
+He refused these on the plea that they gave him indigestion; but he
+accepted cake, and a cup of the eighteenpenny tea, which he pronounced
+excellent.
+
+"Mrs Morgan is well, I hope?"  Miss Agatha inquired conversationally,
+filling in one of those abrupt, unaccountable, and disconcerting pauses
+in the talk, which flowed with even dulness between the hitches.
+
+"Thank you, yes.  My mother enjoys excellent health.  Henry's wife has
+been laid up; they had to operate for appendicitis.  She's about again
+now.  Henry and the boys are flourishing."
+
+There followed polite expressions of regret for Mrs Henry Morgan's
+indisposition, broken into by the arrival of William, whose greeting of
+Mr Morgan overflowed with cordiality.
+
+"Been looking to see you in these parts for months," he said.  "Beastly
+weather for travelling; the wind is cutting.  Are those hot scones,
+Prudence?"
+
+William was so accustomed to being waited upon by the different members
+of his family that it never occurred to him to attend to his own needs.
+He did not observe the flush of annoyance that overspread Prudence's
+face, nor the reluctance with which she rose to fetch the scones in
+question; Mr Morgan observed it, however, and was before her in
+reaching the fireplace where the scones lay on a hot plate inside the
+fender.  He stooped for the plate; and the stiffness of his movements,
+while apparent to Prudence, passed uncriticised on this occasion.
+William protested loudly.
+
+"Oh, come!" he said.  "You shouldn't do that.  I can't allow a visitor
+to wait on me.  One of the girls will do it."
+
+Mr Morgan disregarded the remonstrance, refusing to relinquish the dish
+of scones.
+
+"My mother brought me up to wait upon her," he said, smiling.  "It comes
+natural to me."
+
+Prudence felt pleased; but she had no faith in the lesson proving
+beneficial to William; he would assuredly miss the point.
+
+"Well, you're a younger man than I," said William jocularly.  "I
+shouldn't show such energy after a long journey."
+
+Which speech, delivered for Prudence's benefit, William considered
+particularly tactful.  He had in mind his sister's reflections on Mr
+Morgan's age.  But Mr Morgan was not helpful.
+
+"I'm forty-three to-day," he acknowledged, with, in William's opinion,
+quite unnecessary candour.  "I decided on this date for making the
+journey from sentimental reasons; it occurred to me as an altogether
+agreeable way of celebrating the occasion."
+
+He did not look in Prudence's direction while he spoke, for which
+consideration she was obliged to him: she felt the eyes of the rest
+focussed upon herself, and guessed what was in their thoughts in
+connection with these confidences.  It did not in the least surprise her
+to hear William playfully observe that they would have to contrive
+something special in the way of entertainment to mark the event and make
+this birthday a memorable one.  He looked meaningly at Prudence, and
+slyly at Mr Morgan, and remarked that birthdays conferred peculiar
+privileges and gave a right to indulgence.  But Mr Morgan repudiated
+this.
+
+"At my age one doesn't insist on those prerogatives," he said.  "The
+only advantage I take of the day is to give myself pleasure.  I have
+done that."
+
+From which Prudence gathered to her relief that he did not intend to
+press his suit that day.  Nor did he.  He rather skilfully evaded the
+_tete-a-tetes_ with her, which every member of the household seemed in
+conspiracy to bring about.  He was giving her time to commit to heart
+the lesson which he had told her he wanted her to learn.  It was a
+lesson which she could not master with him for teacher; but she came to
+feel a very warm friendship for him, which in lieu of anything better
+seemed not insufficient to begin with.
+
+Mr Morgan had been at Court Heatherleigh a week before he broached the
+question of marriage with her; and Prudence, lulled into a sense of
+security by his avoidance of the subject, doubted whether he intended to
+propose to her, and was divided between a state of mortification and
+relief.  The proposal when it came startled her the more by reason of
+this adaptation of Mr Morgan from the role he had been cast for to the
+less romantic role of friend.  It found her immensely unprepared, as the
+delayed falling of anything long expected is apt to do when launched
+suddenly and with irrelevant haste.  She was altogether unaware of what
+was in his mind at the moment when he sprung the thing upon her.
+
+They were playing billiards together after dinner, with Mary acting as
+marker and making a third in the conversation that confined itself
+almost exclusively to the game.  Prudence, in the interest of making a
+brake, did not observe when Mary left the room; she became aware of her
+absence for the first time on looking round to call the score.  Mr
+Morgan marked for her.  When he approached the table, instead of
+playing, he laid his cue on the cloth and took Prudence's hand.
+
+"Come and sit down," he said, drawing her to the settee.  "We'll finish
+the game presently."
+
+Prudence relinquished her cue to him and sat down.  He put the cue away
+in the rack and seated himself beside her.
+
+"I've been a long time coming to my point," he said, coming to it rather
+abruptly now that he was once started; "but I think you must have
+understood my reason for delay.  I did not want to hurry you.  You know
+why I came down...  Prudence, will you marry me?"
+
+Prudence gave a little sigh, and sat perfectly still, staring with
+amazed eyes at the neglected balls on the green cloth.  Oddly, the
+thought which struck her at the moment was that it was unnecessary to
+break off in the middle of a game to ask her that.  There was no need to
+make opportunities; they were thrust at him.
+
+"Let me think," she said.  "Give me time.  You--startled me."
+
+"But you knew that I meant to ask you that question?"  He took her hand
+again and pressed it gently.  "When you sent that letter, wasn't it
+intended for permission to speak?  I interpreted it that way."
+
+"I--don't--know."  She was still for a moment; then she turned to him
+and looked him uncertainly in the eyes.  "I was very miserable when I
+wrote that letter.  Yes; I suppose that was what I meant--then."
+
+She broke off, and her gaze wandered away and came to rest again on the
+balls.
+
+"It's silly of me," she said, speaking very low.  "I feel a little
+afraid."
+
+"Just shyness," he said reassuringly, stroking the hand which lay limply
+in his.  "I am old for you; but you will find me the more gentle,
+possibly the more understanding, on that account.  My darling, I love
+you very dearly.  You are so young--you don't know yet what love is.  I
+did not know either until recently.  I come to it rather late.  But my
+feeling for you is very deep.  Prudence, my dear, I want you.  I love
+you.  If you give yourself to me I will do everything in my power to
+make your life happy.  Will you marry me, dear?"
+
+It seemed to Prudence that there was only one possible answer.  She had
+understood when she invited him to come down the significance of what
+she did.  She had no right to encourage him to hope and then fail in her
+part.  He was too good a man to play with.  She kept her face averted
+while she answered him, staring fixedly at the shining balls, lying
+where her last stroke had left them placed conveniently, she realised
+with grim appreciation of her mistake, for him to score off.
+
+"I want to be quite frank with you," she said, her breathing fast
+through sheer nervousness, an earnest expression on her face, which he
+thought very modest and gentle.  "I don't love you, Mr Morgan,--not in
+that way--not, I mean, as you love me.  I've thought--I should like to
+marry you.  I think that still--only I'm afraid sometimes,--afraid that
+you'll find me disappointing."
+
+He placed his arm very gently round her shoulders and held her so
+without attempting any warmer caress.  He smiled into her troubled eyes.
+
+"There is only one thing that could possibly disappoint me," he said,
+"and that is if I fail to make you happy.  Trust me, and all will be
+well."
+
+And so Prudence secured her passage through the door which it seemed he
+alone could open for her into those wider spaces where she imagined
+freedom was to be found.  But emerging with Edward Morgan at her side,
+it gradually became clear to her that she was doubly fettered.  In
+blindly groping for her freedom she had given herself to a new and more
+complete bondage.  She would leave the old tyranny behind her, only to
+pass to another condition of fresh and more pressing obligations.  The
+certainty of these things came to her with the realisation of her
+distaste for her new responsibility.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
+
+Prudence insisted upon a long engagement.
+
+That was the first hitch in the amicable relations between her and her
+fiance.  Mr Morgan could see no reason why they should not marry
+immediately.  He had less time than she to waste, and he was impatient
+of delay.  But Prudence remained firm.  She held out for a six months'
+engagement; and Mr Graynor from purely selfish reasons ranged himself
+on her side.  He was glad that her choice had fallen so wisely on this
+trusty friend of long standing.  He could hand her over to the care of
+Edward Morgan with no anxiety for her future well-being; but he did not
+want to part with her too soon.  When she was married the opportunities
+for seeing her would be few, and he dreaded the separation.
+
+"Six months is not so very long," he told the exasperated Mr Morgan.
+"And Prudence is only twenty."
+
+"If I were twenty," Mr Morgan retorted, "I might see the matter in that
+light.  Unfortunately I am not that age.  But I shall have to exercise
+patience, I suppose."
+
+He bought his fiancee a magnificent half hoop of diamonds, and slipped
+it on her fingers, where it looked, Prudence considered, oddly out of
+place.  It was altogether too valuable for constant wear.  She did not
+tell him so for fear of hurting his feelings; but she wished that he
+would buy her less extravagant gifts.  Whenever he gave her anything it
+was of the costliest description that he could procure.  It seemed to
+give him peculiar satisfaction to surround her with expensive things.
+And he was amazingly kind and considerate for her unexpressed wishes.
+Prudence never knew how much it cost him in self-restraint in those
+early days of their engagement to keep under the ardour of his love for
+her, and school his passionate desire to take her in his arms and kiss
+madly her cool unresponding lips.  He was wise, this mature lover.  He
+knew that he had to foster her kindly affection for him; that he would
+need to tend and cherish it a long time before he could look to see it
+blossom into love.  But he did not despair.  He believed that she would
+give him eventually a full and willing response.
+
+The engagement brought unforeseen consequences in the form of
+affectionate and intimate letters from the different members of Mr
+Morgan's family.  All these people were unknown to Prudence; yet they
+wrote to her as though the prospective relationship admitted them to
+terms of confidential familiarity.
+
+Old Mrs Morgan wrote approving her son's choice, and congratulating
+Prudence on having won so excellent a husband.  She was glad, she added,
+that Prudence was young; she liked young people about her.  She looked
+forward to having Prudence on a visit, when she would instruct her in
+regard to Edward's likes and dislikes, the care of his health, and other
+matters of similar importance.
+
+Mrs Henry Morgan's letter was gushing and insincere in tone.  As a
+matter of fact Mr Morgan's sister-in-law was not very pleased to hear
+of his engagement.  She had come to regard him as a confirmed bachelor,
+and her two sons, for whom she was very ambitious as quite certain of
+inheriting their uncle's immense wealth.  She had mapped out a brilliant
+future for them in which Morgan Bros, played no part; and she considered
+it indelicate on Edward's side to upset her plans by marrying--at his
+time of life.
+
+"You are a brave little person," ran one passage in her letter; "a man
+past forty is not adaptable.  But I'll give you all sorts of wrinkles
+how to manage him.  And of course his mother will live with you.  She
+and I don't get on."
+
+"Of course his mother won't live with us," Prudence told herself.
+
+But she learned later that Mrs Henry's statement was correct.  Old Mrs
+Morgan had managed Edward's house always, and would continue to do so.
+
+"You will love her," he assured Prudence; "and most certainly she will
+love you."
+
+An invitation to spend Christmas in Derbyshire followed; but Prudence,
+panic-stricken at the thought of meeting these people, insisted on
+spending her last Christmas at home; and it was finally settled that the
+visit should be deferred till the spring, when Mr Morgan promised
+himself the pleasure of fetching her to spend a fortnight with his
+mother, and of bringing her home again at the finish of the visit.
+There was little likelihood of seeing much of her in the interval; but
+she promised to write to him regularly once a week, setting aside his
+tentative suggestion that a daily correspondence would be welcome by
+frankly admitting that she would find nothing to say.  He was
+disappointed.  The ink on his own pen would not have dried from a dearth
+of ideas.  At forty-three a man's passion is no whit less ardent than
+that of a boy of twenty; but the man knows how to practise restraint.
+It was this knowledge which helped Edward Morgan over the difficulties
+of his courtship with a girl whose heart he had yet to win, and to whom
+passion was an unknown quantity.
+
+Prudence was rather sexless in those days.  The realities of love and
+marriage were mysteries to her.  Marriage meant no more than the
+solution of a problem that had occupied her attention on and off for
+years.  She saw no other way of obtaining her emancipation.  And he was
+very unexacting in his devotion, and patient and kind.
+
+The kindly attentions of Mr Morgan, the cessation of general
+hostilities, and the patronising approval of brother William, effected a
+wonderful clearance in the domestic atmosphere.  Prudence was once more
+in favour, and the indiscretions of the past were tacitly overlooked.
+She discovered also that by virtue of her engagement she had achieved a
+new importance in Wortheton social life.  People called to offer their
+congratulations; and the vicar talked affably of the imitative tendency
+of marriage, seeming to ascribe Prudence's good fortune to the example
+set by her sister.  He informed Mr Morgan rather unnecessarily that he
+was rich in this world's goods.
+
+Amid the general rejoicings Bobby alone stood aloof, critical and
+disapproving and altogether unimpressed with the splendour of the match.
+
+"You don't need to marry money," he wrote.  "There's more than enough of
+the beastly commodity in the family as it is.  And Morgan! ...  Of
+course he's all right in himself, and a good fellow; but he's more than
+double your age.  Imagine what you would say if I wanted to marry a
+woman old enough to be my mother!  Break it off, Prue.  I'll be home
+shortly, and I'll stand by you."
+
+Prudence shed a few surreptitious tears over this letter, though it
+moved her to mirth as well; it was so characteristic of the writer.
+But, save for glimpses during the holidays, Bobby had no idea of the
+flatness of life at Court Heatherleigh, its repression, its sneaking
+pose--there was no other term for it--of pious superiority which crushed
+the spirit and the natural honesty of those upon whom its influence was
+exerted.  She was not marrying Mr Morgan for his wealth; she was not
+marrying him for love.  Her reasons, when she came to analyse them,
+occurred to her singularly inadequate.  She felt very doubtful as to the
+wisdom of the step she had taken.  The idea of a triangular household,
+with a mother-in-law in supreme command, seemed to her rather like a
+repetition of the unsatisfactory home conditions.  She felt that Edward
+Morgan owed it to her to set up a separate establishment, and even
+ventured to suggest this rearrangement to him.  He heard her in pained
+surprise.
+
+"My mother will not intrude on us," he said.  "Morningside has been her
+home always.  I could not agree to her living elsewhere."
+
+"Couldn't _we_ live elsewhere?"  Prudence insisted.  "I should like a
+house of my own."
+
+"You don't understand," he said, with his hands on her shoulders, and
+his grave eyes looking tenderly down upon her.  "Home for my mother is
+where I am."
+
+He stooped and kissed her as a sort of act of forgiveness for the want
+of consideration she had shown.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
+
+On the morning that Edward Morgan left Wortheton it was arranged that
+Prudence should drive with him to the junction and see the train off.
+It was never clear to Prudence with whom the idea originated; it
+certainly did not emanate from her own brain.  She was even a little
+embarrassed at the thought of the four-mile drive with her heavily
+coated and bemuffled fiance, and the prospective ordeal of standing by
+the door of his compartment during those exasperating, interminable
+minutes before the starting of the train.
+
+She came downstairs into the hall dressed for the drive in a navy
+costume which accentuated the girlish slenderness of her figure to
+discover Mr Morgan winding his many wraps about him, and talking
+cheerfully with her father and sisters, who were gathered together to
+see him off.
+
+He paused in the business of buttoning his coat to inquire anxiously if
+she were sufficiently warmly clad for the day, which was bright and
+cold, with a touch of December frost in the air.  She replied carelessly
+that she did not feel cold; and Mr Graynor, with his arm about her
+shoulders, remarked thoughtlessly:
+
+"Young blood, Morgan, defies the weather."
+
+"I think Prudence should wear a fur about her throat," Agatha said.  "It
+would look more suitable."
+
+Mary was despatched forthwith to fetch the unwanted addition, which,
+when it appeared, Mr Morgan insisted on placing round her shoulders.
+Prudence took her seat in the carriage, feeling oppressed with the
+warmth of the sable and the confined heated atmosphere of the
+artificially warmed brougham, with its windows carefully closed against
+the cold clear air.  She dragged at the fur impatiently.
+
+"I must take it off," she said.  "I feel stifled."
+
+"All right," he acquiesced, and passed his arm round her waist in a
+clumsy caress.  "I'll keep you warm.  Comfy, eh?"
+
+She smiled at him a little nervously.
+
+"You are just a mountain of clothes," she said.
+
+During the long drive Mr Morgan kept his arm about her, and held her so
+closely that Prudence felt suffocated.  She proposed letting down the
+window part way; but Mr Morgan showed such alarm at the idea that she
+did not persist.
+
+"You don't understand the risk," he said.  "This winter travelling...
+It's how people contract pneumonia, risking chills through open windows.
+You don't know how to take care of yourself.  It's time I took a hand
+at it.  I'm going to take great care of you, little girl,--all my life.
+Open windows!--no!  This open-air craze is the cause of most of the ills
+of life."
+
+Prudence laughed.
+
+"I understood it was the cure for them," she replied.  "I live in the
+open air--and sleep in it."
+
+"Sleep in it!" he ejaculated in horrified accents.
+
+"Well, not actually that," she said; "but with the bedroom window wide--
+always."
+
+He stared at her.  He had never supposed that any one, save those
+undergoing the outrageous experiment of the new-fangled open-air cure,
+which he considered stark madness, slept with open windows in the
+winter.  His own windows were always carefully secured and heavily
+curtained.  Occasionally, during the very warm summer months, he allowed
+an inch at the top to remain open for purposes of ventilation.
+
+"You will grow wiser as you grow older," he said, and determined that on
+that point anyhow he would have his own way.
+
+It was a relief to Prudence when they arrived at the station.  She
+walked on to the platform, declining to accompany Mr Morgan to the
+booking-office while he procured his ticket.  She wanted to fill her
+lungs with fresh air before the further ordeal of final leave-taking;
+and she wanted for a few minutes to be rid of his kindly presence, and
+the necessity of responding to his lover-like advances.  It was all so
+dull and irksome; there was only one word which occurred to her as
+applicable to the situation, and that was stodgy.  The stodginess of it
+was getting on her nerves.
+
+When finally the big over-coated figure emerged upon the platform and
+came towards her Prudence felt a touch of compunction because she could
+not return the smiling gladness of his look with eyes which expressed a
+like pleasure at his approach; her own gaze was critical and entirely
+matter-of-fact.
+
+His train was in.  She opened the door of an empty compartment and stood
+beside it.  He joined her, waited until the porter had placed his
+luggage on the rack, and dismissed him handsomely; then he motioned
+Prudence to get into the compartment, and followed her quickly and
+closed the door upon themselves.
+
+"We've just time," he said, "for a last good-bye."  And took her in his
+arms.
+
+She had never felt so embarrassed in his presence before, perhaps
+because he had never before assumed so lover-like and determined an
+attitude.  He tilted back her face and kissed her lips, and continued to
+hold and kiss her in this extravagant manner, despite the fact that
+people passed the carriage at intervals and stared in as they passed.
+Mr Morgan was indifferent to this manifest curiosity in his doings, and
+his broad figure blocked the middle window and screened Prudence from
+intrusive eyes.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and attempted to withdraw from his embrace.  "The train
+will be starting immediately.  I had better get out."
+
+"Shy little girl!" he returned, and laughed joyously.  "You've never
+been very free with your kisses, Prudence; and it will be a long time
+before I see you again.  All right!  You shall get out now.  One good
+kiss before I let you go."
+
+He fairly hugged her.  Prudence gave him a cool hasty peck on the cheek,
+slipped from his hold, and was out on the platform as soon as he opened
+the door.  He closed the door and fastened it and leaned from the window
+to talk to her, holding her hand until the guard's flag waved the signal
+for her release.
+
+"Good-bye, my darling," he called to her.
+
+Prudence stood back and waved her hand to him, waved it gaily with a
+glad sense of relief.  The last she saw of him as the train began to
+move out of the station was his grave face regarding her mournfully as
+he pulled up the window before settling down in his corner.
+
+Prudence hurried out to the waiting carriage with her thoughts in a
+whirl.  This business of being engaged was an altogether perplexing
+affair.  She had not expected things to be like this somehow.  She did
+not know quite what she had expected; but she had never imagined that
+the stolid Edward Morgan could assume the role of lover and confidently
+look for a similar response from her; she had believed he would maintain
+the more dignified attitude of a warm and affectionate friendliness
+throughout their engagement; and she felt vexed and cheated because he
+had disappointed her in this belief.
+
+"It's absurd," she told herself, with her hot face turned to the sharp
+crisp air which came through the open window, "for him to imagine I am
+going to let him make love to me when I only want him to be nice and
+kind always."
+
+But she began dimly to apprehend that the absurdity was likely to go on.
+
+Bobby came home for the Christmas holidays and talked to her seriously
+of the mistake she was making.  He did not look forward to the prospect
+of coming home finally to find Prudence gone; and the next term at
+school was his last.
+
+"Beastly rotten it will be here without you," he remarked.  "You might
+have waited, Prue, a little longer.  You don't love old Morgan, do you?"
+
+That was a poser for Prudence.
+
+"I'm fond of him," she answered guardedly.  "He's kind, and generous.
+When I am married I shall be able to do as I like."
+
+"Rot!" he retorted.  "It will mean simply exchanging one dulness for
+another.  Then you'll vary the dullness by falling in love with some one
+else, and there'll be a scandal.  I know you.  You'll never settle down
+to a stick-in-the-mud existence with old Morgan.  And serve him jolly
+well right for being such an ass."
+
+Prudence regarded him with newly awakened interest, her expression
+slightly aggrieved.
+
+"I had no idea you held such a low opinion of me," she said.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"That's human nature, old girl.  If you intend to remain faithful to old
+Morgan you'll not have to look at another man, because when the right
+man comes along you'll know it; all the wedding rings in the world won't
+keep you blind to facts.  You chuck the silly old geyser," he counselled
+in the inelegant phraseology he affected, "before you tie your life into
+a hopeless knot."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It's not so easy," she said.
+
+"They'd be down on you, of course.  But I'd stand by you.  We'd worry
+through."
+
+"I didn't mean that."  She attempted explanations.  "He's so good and
+kind.  You don't understand.  I'd feel the meanest thing on the face of
+the earth if I hurt him deliberately like that.  And there isn't any
+need.  I _want_ to marry him."
+
+"There's no accounting for tastes, of course," he said rudely, and flung
+out of the room in a mood of deep disgust.
+
+The whole business of Prudence's engagement was profoundly exasperating
+to him.  It obtruded itself at unexpected moments with an insistence
+that was to his way of thinking indecent.  It interfered with his
+arrangements.  So many hours of her time were given to letter writing
+that the size of the weekly epistle was ever a matter of suspicious
+amazement to him.  He had no means of knowing how long those bald
+sentences which Prudence sprawled largely with a generous marginal space
+over the sheet of notepaper took in their composition.  He suspected
+that she wrote reams to the fellow and posted them on the sly.
+
+The regular arrival of Mr Morgan's weekly effusion was a further
+irritation.  This was handed usually to Prudence across the breakfast
+table with ponderous playfulness on brother William's part, and a show
+of sly surreptitiousness, that drew general attention to the transit
+from his pocket to her reluctant hand.
+
+The sorting of the letters was accompanied by such facetious subtleties
+as "Do we behold a billet doux?" or the murmured misquotation: "He sent
+a letter to his love."  And the bulky envelope would be passed to her to
+the accompaniment of appreciative giggles from his sisters, and received
+by Prudence with as unconcerned an air as the trying circumstances made
+possible, and left by her lying unopened on the table exposed to the
+general gaze while she finished her meal.  She carried her letter away
+with her and read it in the privacy of her room.
+
+"I can't think how you stand it," Bobby said once, when they were alone
+together.  "If Uncle William made such fatuous remarks to me I'd hit
+him."
+
+"I won't give him the satisfaction of seeing how he annoys me," she
+answered.  "William would vulgarise the most sacred thing."
+
+"You aren't for calling this luke-warm affair sacred, I hope?"  Bobby
+asked with fine sarcasm.  Whereupon she smiled suddenly and pulled his
+scornful young face down to hers and kissed it.
+
+"It's one way out," she explained; and he was silent in face of the
+reasonableness of her reply.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
+
+Christmas came and brought with it Edward Morgan's gift to his fiancee,
+a rope of pearls, so beautiful and costly that Prudence, on taking the
+shining thing from its bed of velvet, and holding it in her hands, was
+moved with a sense of remorse at the inadequacy of the return she was
+making this man, who showered gifts upon her in token of his love.  She
+did not want his presents; they were an embarrassment and a distress.
+
+The thought of wearing the pearls, as in the letter which accompanied
+them he requested her to do, on Christmas night, was distasteful to her
+on account of the continuous flow of witticism she would be forced to
+meet from William, who already had revealed a new inventiveness on
+presenting the registered package to her, and had manifested open
+curiosity as to its contents, which she had failed to gratify.  And she
+dreaded the cold criticism of Bobby's appraising eye.  Bobby would
+possibly refrain from verbal comment, but his face would express the
+more.
+
+She locked the pearls away and decided that she would show them to no
+one; she would ignore the request that came with them.  In any case they
+were too valuable to wear at a quiet dinner at home, at which the only
+guests would be Matilda and her husband, who, still in uncertainty as to
+his living, waited on in Wortheton in hopeful expectation.  To wear the
+pearls in Ernest's presence, and suffer William's sly pleasantries
+unmoved, was more than she felt equal to.  Ernest, through the medium of
+his wife, had expressed amazement at her engagement, which he attributed
+to worldly considerations.
+
+"She is incapable of appreciating the seriousness of marriage," he had
+told Matilda.  "Her mind is light and inclines to frivolity, and
+material advantages."
+
+That his own inclination had been towards a comfortable income, was a
+point he was apt to overlook.
+
+Prudence found some difficulty in writing a sufficiently appreciative
+acknowledgment of her lover's gift.  She hated the necessity for
+expressing a pleasure which she did not feel.
+
+"Your present is much too beautiful," she wrote.  "I don't know how to
+thank you.  I am overpowered.  You give such wonderful things..."
+
+She added nothing about locking the pearls away, but left it to his
+imagination to picture her, as he had said he would do, shining in all
+her girlish beauty with his pearls about her throat.  She determined to
+take them with her to Morningside when she went in April.  If he wished
+to see her wearing pearls, she would gratify him then.
+
+The visit to Morningside hung over her like a nightmare.  She was not
+allowed to forget it; Mr Morgan continually referred to it in his
+letters.  He was having the whole place re-decorated for her; and he
+wrote consulting her preference in the matter of wall-papers, and her
+taste in tapestries.  The furnishing of the house was Victorian; and he
+feared she might consider it a little heavy and inartistic.  He wanted
+her to express her wishes in regard to furniture and other matters.  But
+Prudence, taking alarm at the thought of this responsibility, flung the
+onus of everything on to him, and insisted that the furniture which had
+sufficed hitherto would assuredly serve for her needs.  She did not want
+anything changed.  This proved disappointing to him.  He would have
+liked her to show a greater interest in the home which was to be hers.
+Her indifference chilled his enthusiasm in the plans he was making for
+her pleasure; and the arrangements were left more and more in the
+entirely capable hands of the decorator.  "We can alter things later,"
+he told himself.  "And Prudence can buy any new stuff she wants."
+
+The agreeable prospect of shopping with her compensated for the earlier
+disappointment.  It would be so much pleasanter to choose things
+together.
+
+When she first beheld Morningside Prudence thought it the ugliest house
+she had ever been in; but later, when better acquainted with its solid
+splendour, she decided that it had possibilities, and was really a nice
+house made to look ugly.  There was a dingy serviceable effect about
+everything.
+
+She arrived on a fine evening in April, soft and balmy, following a day
+of intermittent showers and blazing sunshine.  Mr Morgan accompanied
+her.  He had spent the week-end at Wortheton, and made the journey back
+with her, as had been arranged.  His manner during the journey was
+kindly and attentive.  He displayed great consideration for her comfort,
+and, because she enjoyed fresh air, lowered one window a couple of
+inches and buttoned his coat from fear of the draught.  The absence of
+lover-like attentions, which he had sufficient perception to see
+disturbed her, reassured Prudence, and placed their relations on an
+easier footing.
+
+When she arrived at his home and was conducted to the drawing-room to be
+received by his mother, she was conscious of a new feeling in regard to
+him; he inspired her with a sense of support.  She turned to him
+instinctively as to some one reliable and familiar; and was grateful to
+him when he slipped his hand within her arm and kept it there while they
+advanced together down the long room to where old Mrs Morgan, stout and
+severe of feature, sat in a big chair, quietly observant of her,
+scrutinising her in the close disconcerting way peculiar to
+short-sighted people.
+
+"This is the daughter I promised you, mother," Edward Morgan said.
+
+Mrs Morgan rose slowly and confronted them.  She took the girl's
+outstretched hand.
+
+"What a child!" she said, and bent forward and kissed Prudence on the
+cheek.
+
+She was, nor did she hide it altogether successfully, a little
+disappointed.  Edward had prepared her for a young daughter-in-law, but
+she had not expected to see any one quite so youthful in appearance.
+Comparing them as they stood side by side, the disparity in age struck
+her unpleasantly.
+
+"My dear," she said, "I had not realised you were so young."
+
+"I don't think I realised it myself," Prudence returned, feeling her
+courage oozing away before the hard scrutiny of those critical eyes,
+"until to-day.  I've an unfledged feeling since leaving home.  But I'm
+twenty."
+
+Twenty!  And the man who proposed to make her his wife might, had
+circumstances so ordained it, have been her father.
+
+"She'll grow up, mother," Mr Morgan observed, and pressed the girl's
+arm reassuringly.  "I must try to equalise matters by growing younger
+myself."
+
+But the old lady was not encouraging.
+
+"You won't succeed, Edward.  It's like planting a bulb the wrong way in
+the soil; it grows against nature downwards, curves about, and works its
+way to the surface, crooked.  Prudence will have to grow to you; you
+can't go backwards."
+
+He reddened and laughed a little constrainedly.
+
+"I feel as young as I did at twenty," he said.  "Prudence will help to
+rejuvenate me.  I refuse to be discouraged."
+
+He crossed to the tea-table, poured the girl out a cup of tea, and
+brought it to her.
+
+"We've had a tiring journey," he said.  "I expect you'll be glad to go
+to your room and rest.  There's a family gathering to-night--in your
+honour."  He smiled down into the startled upraised eyes, and added:
+"Just my brother and his wife.  You'll find Mrs Henry amusing.  She's
+very eager to meet you."
+
+"Rose always gushes over new acquaintances," Mrs Morgan interposed.
+"She is making plans for Prudence's entertainment, although I told her
+that Prudence was coming for the purpose of making our acquaintance, and
+might prefer to avoid festivities.  I think she might have waited to
+consult her wishes."
+
+"Oh!" cried Prudence, with a ring of pleasurable excitement in her
+tones.  "But that's awfully kind of her."
+
+"You see," Mr Morgan said, enjoying the sight of her pleasure, and
+feeling grateful to his sister-in-law for her forethought, "the idea is
+not amiss.  We are out for amusement and agreeable to anything that
+offers.  Rose's plan is excellent."
+
+"Rose is glad of any excuse for gaiety," Mrs Morgan said.  "It is
+ridiculous for a woman of her age, with two big boys, to amuse herself
+in the undignified manner in which she does.  There is to be a dance
+next week.  She says it will introduce Prudence to the neighbourhood.
+In reality it is an excuse for indulging in a form of exercise which she
+has outgrown."
+
+"Do you enjoy dancing, Prudence?"  Mr Morgan asked.
+
+Her sparkling eyes answered him.
+
+"Oh! yes," she murmured eagerly, and was conscious from the expression
+on Mrs Morgan's face, of giving offence.  "I've never been to a dance--
+a real dance in my life," she added.
+
+"Too much thought is given to amusement nowadays," Mrs Morgan observed.
+"When I was a girl we seldom went to evening parties.  Late hours rob
+young people of their freshness, and these modern dances are very
+vulgar.  Edward dislikes dancing."
+
+"Oh! once in a way I can put up with that sort of thing," he interposed
+quickly.  "If Prudence enjoys it, I expect I shall get some pleasure out
+of the evening."
+
+Prudence gave him a grateful look, and, in reward for his consideration,
+remarked:
+
+"It's fortunate that I brought my pearls.  It's such a splendid
+opportunity for wearing them.  You didn't prepare me for these
+festivities."
+
+"Upon my word," he returned, laughing, "I never gave it a thought."  He
+became aware of his mother's silence, her tight-lipped disapproval, and
+turned the subject diplomatically.  "There's a busy time ahead for you.
+We've quite a lot of things calling for your attention.  And my mother
+is looking forward to showing you over the house, and letting you into
+the inner mysteries.  She is quite a wonderful housewife."
+
+"Prudence is probably not domesticated," Mrs Morgan said.  "Girls show
+no interest in their homes nowadays.  Things are left to servants."
+
+"I've never had much chance," Prudence explained apologetically.  "You
+see, I am the youngest of six daughters.  But I'd like to learn."
+
+Mr Morgan considered her gentle submissiveness very sweet.  He was
+surprised at his mother's lack of response to this softly-voiced desire;
+for himself, he felt a strong temptation to kiss the pretty timid face
+of the speaker, but his natural shyness restrained him from obeying this
+impulse.
+
+"Six woman are too many in one household," Mrs Morgan vouchsafed.
+"Some of you ought to have married."
+
+"One of us has," Prudence answered.
+
+"And another is going to," Mr Morgan put in, with a tentative smile at
+his fiancee.  She laughed softly.
+
+"It suggests the rhyme of the ten little nigger boys," she said.  "Six
+women in one house; one of them married, and then there were five."
+
+Later, when Prudence had gone upstairs to her room, Mrs Morgan voiced
+her opinion of her to her son in a single expressive phrase.
+
+"I am afraid, Edward, that your choice has fallen on a rather frivolous
+girl."
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
+
+Alone in the spacious bedroom allotted to her, Prudence spent the rest
+time allowed her before dinner in the indulgence of her favourite
+occupation, leaning from the window, lost in a maze of thought.  It
+struck her very forcibly with not the slightest intimation of doubt that
+six women in a household were less assertively too many than two women--
+two women with conflicting interests and equal authority.  She
+determined that she would not consent to live with a mother-in-law.  It
+was very plain to her that in the event of Mrs Morgan sharing their
+home, the combined wills of mother and son would force her inevitably to
+regulate her life on the lines which habit and tradition inclined them
+naturally to follow.  She did not aspire to excel as a housewife; nor
+did she wish to avoid late hours and unwholesome excitement, and develop
+a horror of draughts and a cautious regard for her digestion.  Mr
+Morgan was obliged to live simply.  His diet consisted mainly, it seemed
+to Prudence, of boiled mutton and milk puddings.  Mrs Morgan had
+impressed these important details on her in the drawing-room while she
+drank her tea.  Any departure from this rigorous self-denial was
+followed by tribulation.  And invariably he drank a glass of hot water
+the last thing before retiring.
+
+Old Mrs Morgan partook of hot water also.  She proposed that Prudence
+should adopt this excellent custom.
+
+"It is so good for every one," she had explained to Prudence's immense
+embarrassment.  "It flushes the kidneys."
+
+Recalling this amazing statement in the solitude of her room, Prudence
+was moved to quiet mirth.
+
+"A kidney bath," she reflected with a flash of malicious humour at Mrs
+Morgan's expense, "before bedtime.  Excellent practice!  I must
+certainly introduce Bobby to the beverage.  We'll call it K.B.  I
+suppose I'm expected to dine off boiled mutton every night, and wash it
+down with K.B.  What a prospect!  I wonder whether his mother suspects
+that when he is away from home Edward strengthens his nightly tonic with
+whisky."
+
+Prudence lingered at the open window until the first gong, booming
+through the house, roused her from her meditations to the disquieting
+realisation that she must dress and go down and face a resumption of
+these surprisingly intimate confidences.  Mrs Morgan had given her to
+understand that she was to be fully informed in everything relating to
+Edward's well-being and comfort.  The first duty of a wife, indeed the
+duty which embraced all others, consisted in having always in mind a
+regard for her husband's wishes and care for his health and happiness.
+
+"I fail to see where I come in," Prudence thought.  "Presumably my
+wishes don't count."
+
+Mr Morgan was waiting for her alone in the drawing-room when she
+descended.  He came forward quickly at sight of her and took her in his
+arms and kissed her gently.
+
+"I want to thank you," he said, "while I have the opportunity, for your
+sweetness and patience.  My mother has coddled me so long; she loves
+doing it; and I let her because--well, because she is my mother.  But
+don't be alarmed into believing I am the faddist she would make me
+appear.  You will find, when we are married, it is I who will do the
+thinking for both.  Don't worry your pretty head with trying to absorb
+these ideas.  They amuse her; we need not distress ourselves about
+them."
+
+Prudence looked up at him with a smile in her wide blue eyes.
+
+"Have I really to see to the airing of your flannels before you change?"
+she asked.
+
+He laughed with her.
+
+"There is an airing cupboard.  I don't think you need bother.  But I
+believe she does."
+
+"You really are a reassuring person," she said, and held up her face to
+him to be kissed.
+
+"You are crumpling your shirt, Edward," Mrs Morgan said, entering the
+room at the moment, a commanding figure in black silk and fine old lace,
+with a critical eye on their grouping and an absence of sympathy in her
+look.
+
+Prudence moved away quickly with the feeling that she had been rebuked.
+
+The Henry Morgans arrived exactly five minutes in advance of dinner, and
+were received with restrained cordiality, and duly presented to
+Prudence.  Mrs Henry, a bright little woman in the middle thirties,
+with a gay audacity of manner and a ready infectious laugh, took
+Prudence by the shoulders and kissed her effusively.  Then she held her
+off at arm's length and scrutinised her closely.
+
+"It is absurd," she remarked, her amused eyes on the girl's blushing
+face; "you'll take precedence of me.  You're the senior partner, you
+know.  We really ought to change husbands."
+
+"Prudence is better suited to a serious-minded husband than you are,
+Rose, in everything but years," old Mrs Morgan retorted.
+
+Mrs Henry did not appear to resent this remark.  She and her
+mother-in-law never met without an interchange of polite hostilities.
+
+"Now you know where to place me," she said to Prudence.  "I'm the little
+lump of leaven amid the dough of Morgan responsibility.  You and I have
+got to be friends.  I've been blessing Edward ever since he broke the
+amazing news for introducing something youthful into the firm.  We
+didn't expect it of him."
+
+The gong broke in on these indiscretions with its booming summons to the
+dining-room.  Prudence went in with her fiance, and faced Henry Morgan
+and his wife at table.  Henry was a younger edition of his brother, and
+not much more animated.  It occurred to Prudence that Mrs Henry struck
+a bright note of contrast amid the semitones of the Morgan household.
+
+Mrs Henry could on occasions make herself peculiarly offensive to her
+mother-in-law; but it suited her to cultivate Prudence's acquaintance,
+and so she exercised for that evening a certain tact in fencing with
+Mrs Morgan that gave no substantial ground for disagreement.  She
+contrived none the less to reveal Edward's mother to his fiancee in an
+altogether unfavourable light.
+
+"Mother is such an autocrat," she remarked once laughingly.  "I suppose
+that is due to the fact that she has never had a daughter."
+
+"If I had had a daughter," Mrs Morgan replied, "I would have brought
+her up to respect authority."
+
+"You'll be able to practise on Prudence," Mrs Henry suggested
+pleasantly, giving the old lady, who was more shrewd than she suspected,
+an insight into her game.  She was trying to prejudice Prudence against
+her.
+
+Mrs Morgan said nothing; but she determined to counterstroke that move.
+With the laudable desire of getting on to easier ground, Edward Morgan
+spoke of the coming dance and Prudence's anticipatory pleasure.  Mrs
+Henry discussed it happily.
+
+"I love dancing," she confessed to Prudence.  "And of course I knew you
+would.  It's one way of giving you a glimpse of the aborigines.  They
+are a dull lot on the whole.  And I'm afraid we'll be short of dancing
+men.  I shall have to import a few.  I'm glad you approve of the idea;
+mother, of course, doesn't."
+
+"You could scarcely expect dancing to appeal to me at my time of life,"
+Mrs Morgan observed, her short-sighted eyes scrutinising her
+daughter-in-law's face with unflattering attentiveness.  "I confess to
+surprise that it should still attract you so strongly.  But for Prudence
+it is a different matter.  At her age dancing is quite suitable.  Since
+Edward is willing to accompany her, I am sure she will enjoy it."  She
+smiled agreeably at Prudence.  "I shall enjoy hearing all about it
+afterwards."
+
+Mrs Henry had not calculated on this neat turning of her weapon of
+offence, and was temporarily at a disadvantage.  But she recovered from
+her surprise with astonishing quickness.
+
+"She will be able to tell you of her many conquests," she said.  "It
+will amuse you to hear of her triumphs."
+
+"I pay Prudence the compliment of believing her to be neither silly nor
+vain," Mrs Morgan returned.  "If she made conquests she would not boast
+of them."
+
+"I'm unfortunate," Mrs Henry remarked plaintively.  "I am always saying
+the wrong thing."  She glanced at Prudence with a swift upward lift of
+her eyelid, and added: "I shall have to borrow a leaf from your book of
+deportment.  You don't look as good as they would have me believe; but,"
+and she turned her eyes to where Edward Morgan sat beside his fiancee,
+and let them rest contemplatively on his solid figure, "I suppose you
+really are seriously inclined."
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
+
+During the days which followed Prudence strove continually to overcome
+her prejudices and adapt herself to Mrs Morgan's ways.  She tried, too,
+to blind herself to what she now realised for an unalterable fact, that
+her engagement was a mistake.  She did not love Edward Morgan.  She did
+not like his mother, nor his home, nor the life they led.  Mrs Henry's
+humorously sarcastic criticisms of the Morningside establishment did not
+annoy her.  She was often amused by them, and allowed Mrs Henry to see
+it.  Afterwards, removed from Mrs Henry's influence, her conscience
+rebuked her for disloyalty.
+
+She liked Mrs Henry on account of her brightness, and spent more time
+with her than old Mrs Morgan approved of.  Mrs Henry kept open house
+for her bachelor friends, of whom she had a number, and she took a
+malicious pleasure in getting Prudence to help in the business of
+entertaining.
+
+"You'll meet these men at my dance," she said.  "I want you to know them
+first; it makes it so much more agreeable."
+
+Prudence thought so too.  She failed to understand old Mrs Morgan's
+objection.  It was absurd to suppose that she must avoid all other male
+society on account of her engagement.
+
+These brief lapses into an almost Bohemian gaiety under Mrs Henry's
+chaperonage, made the Morningside household more noticeably dull.  The
+evenings were particularly dreary.  Mrs Morgan insisted upon playing
+patience after dinner, three-handed to include Prudence, and
+necessitating the use of three packs of cards which made for confusion
+in dealing.  Prudence was dense in learning the game, and would have
+preferred to sit out, but was not allowed to; it was imperative that she
+should share in the amusement.  It did not amuse her; and the
+concentration necessary in following the play made conversation
+impossible.
+
+"Edward and I play every night," Mrs Morgan explained.  "When he is
+absent I play a single-handed patience.  But that isn't so interesting.
+Now when he has to leave home you will be able to play with me.  That
+will cheer us during his absences, and will be nicer for me."
+
+Prudence began to feel very much as a fish must when caught in a net.
+The desire to escape was imperative; but the net tightened hourly; there
+appeared no weak places in it.  And Edward Morgan himself was so
+amazingly kind, and equally amazingly obtuse.  He appeared entirely
+unaware of the vain longing for escape which dominated Prudence's mind,
+and made her increasingly restless because of that gradual closing of
+the net which made retreat day by day more seemingly impossible.
+
+Old Mrs Morgan gave a dinner party for the purpose of introducing
+Prudence formally as her son's betrothed wife to his and her immediate
+friends.  Prudence was obliged to stand beside her with Edward and
+receive these guests as they arrived, and listen to their
+congratulations and utter little stereotyped phrases in acknowledgment
+of their good wishes.
+
+There was no way out of the muddle that she could see.  She had sealed
+and ratified her engagement by this visit to her fiance's home.
+
+The dinner party produced a curious state of reaction.  Apathetic
+resignation to the inevitable followed upon this amazingly dull
+ceremony.  She must go through with what she had undertaken and make the
+best of the bargain.  The hope of keeping a separate establishment from
+Mrs Morgan was as forlorn as the hope of escape had been.  Neither
+mother nor son, she knew, would suffer the arrangement.  They would wear
+down her opposition with the firm kindliness with which those in
+authority overrule the undisciplined complainings of youth.  None the
+less, she felt that the imposition of a mother-in-law was unfair.  Had
+Mr Morgan raised this condition at the time of his proposal she would
+not have agreed to it.
+
+The night of Mrs Henry's dance was to witness another reaction.
+Prudence's mood varied so continually during the brief visit to Mr
+Morgan's home that it might be said to shift like the compass with each
+fresh breath of criticism that greeted the intelligence of her
+engagement.  She was painfully sensitive on the subject.
+
+She had looked forward to this dance, the success of which in regard to
+partners was secured in advance, with much pleasure.  It was a new
+experience for her.  She dressed that evening with unusual care, and was
+conscious on surveying the finished result in the glass of looking her
+best.  When she went downstairs old Mrs Morgan's dim eyes noticed only
+that she appeared extraordinarily young and immature; there was a
+suggestion of the ingenue in the fresh girlish prettiness, emphasised by
+her white dress and the childlike expression in the wide blue eyes.
+
+At sight of her, flushed and happy, and wearing his pearls about her
+throat, Edward Morgan was moved to an infinitely tender admiration.  The
+thought of the appraising eyes of other men resting upon her, of her
+being held in familiar closeness by the partners who would claim the
+privilege of dancing with her, gave him a queer stab of jealousy.  He
+would have preferred that she should dance only with himself.
+
+"You look like a bride," he said, and bent over her and kissed her lips.
+
+Both speech and manner disconcerted Prudence.  Her glance fell, and the
+flush in her cheeks deepened.
+
+"I'm glad you think I look nice," she said.
+
+He put her into the motor, and sat beside her, a silent abstracted
+figure, enveloped in a heavy fur-lined coat.  Concern for the thinness
+of her attire and fear of draughts occupied him during the brief drive.
+Prudence was relieved when they reached the house and she was free from
+his fussy guardianship.
+
+He was waiting for her when she emerged from the cloak-room, and he
+tucked her hand under his arm with an air of conscious proprietorship
+and led her through an admiring group of men to where the hostess stood
+with her husband receiving their guests.
+
+"How sweet you look.  Prudence!"  Mrs Henry said.
+
+"How do?  Awfully glad to see you," murmured Mr Henry, repeating his
+formula parrotwise to each arrival.
+
+Edward Morgan passed gravely on into the ball-room with his fiancee.  He
+felt nervous and out of his element.  Functions of this description
+always bored him; he possessed no small talk, and dancing seemed to him
+a foolish pastime.  Nevertheless he claimed two dances from Prudence,
+whose programme filled rapidly; and, having danced the first dance with
+her, retired to the outskirts, and leaned against the doorpost, watching
+the moving scene with eyes that looked with jealous insistence for
+Prudence's figure among the gay throng of dancers.  Mrs Henry, who
+found time among her distractions to observe him, drew her husband's
+attention to the lounging figure, with the whispered injunction:
+
+"For goodness' sake take him into the card-room!  He is making himself
+ridiculous."
+
+But Mr Morgan refused to be beguiled into the card-room.  He maintained
+a determined stand near the door; and Prudence, whenever she left the
+room with her partner in search of rest at the finish of a dance, was
+conscious of his hungry watchfulness and the look of grave
+dissatisfaction in his eyes.  She wished that he would not watch her; it
+was embarrassing.
+
+"He doesn't look much like the hero of the evening," one unconscious
+partner remarked to her as he steered her carefully through the press of
+people.  "I wonder which is the lucky lady?--Some one with her eyes wide
+to the main chance, I imagine.  I've been amusing myself with trying to
+pick her out.  She is not conspicuous through attentiveness to him,
+anyhow.  Do you know her?"
+
+"Yes," Prudence admitted, with face aflame.
+
+"Oh, I say!  Point her out to me, will you?  I am a new-comer, and out
+of the know."
+
+"No; I don't think I will."
+
+"That's the reproof courteous," he returned, slightly nettled.  "You
+consider my remarks in bad taste."
+
+"I think them indiscreet," she answered.  "You wouldn't feel very happy
+for instance if I laid claim to the honour."
+
+It never occurred to him to treat this speech seriously.  He laughed as
+though it were a huge joke.
+
+"I'm not such a fool as I look," he said.  "It was because I knew it was
+safe that I spoke so unguardedly to you."
+
+Later on in the evening he had cause to remember his indiscretion and to
+regret it.  He noticed her with Edward Morgan, and observed with
+amazement the intimacy of the terms that held between them.  It flashed
+into his mind with disconcerting conviction that what he had believed to
+be a joke was no jest after all.  He had seen Mr Morgan speak to no one
+else, dance with no other partner.  He pushed his inquiries further, and
+learned to his ever-increasing discomfiture that it was to Mr Morgan's
+fiancee he had made his unguarded remarks.
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
+
+That night Prudence asked Edward Morgan for her release.  The dance to
+which she had looked forward so gladly, and which she had not enjoyed,
+had galvanised her into a fixed determination to secure her freedom
+while yet there was time.  The thought of marriage with a man so much
+older than herself, with whom she had nothing in common, whose every
+wish opposed itself in gentle opposition to her own, had become a
+nightmare to her.  Young eyes had looked into her eyes that night with a
+wondering question in them that had hurt her.  The hunger for young
+companionship gripped her.  Her memory echoed the careless inconsequent
+chatter, the joyous laughter of irresponsible youth.  One laugh in
+particular, an amused incredulous laugh, rang in her ears like a
+reproach.
+
+Why had she committed this folly?  She must draw back before it was too
+late.
+
+With manifest nervousness Prudence made her faltering appeal for release
+from her engagement during the homeward drive.  Mr Morgan was amazed.
+He keenly resented her lack of consideration for himself in wishing to
+withdraw her promise after the publicity given to their engagement.  She
+shrank back from the cold anger in his eyes and the hardness of his
+voice when he answered her.
+
+"You are overwrought," he said.  "You don't know what you are saying.
+What have I done, that you should wish to break off your engagement?  I
+have striven to please you, to make you happy.  Do you realise that in
+less than two months we are to be married?  You would make me
+ridiculous.  People will laugh.  It will be scandalous."
+
+His voice gathered anger as he considered the amusement that would arise
+at his expense when it became known that the young bride he had chosen
+had jilted him--jilted the wealthy Edward Morgan almost on the eve of
+the wedding.
+
+"It is absurd!" he added.  "You don't realise what you ask."
+
+"Oh, please!" she cried, and turned a white frightened face towards him.
+"Don't be angry with me.  I'm so sorry.  I ought never to have become
+engaged to you.  I don't love you."
+
+He sounded a note of impatience.
+
+"You raised that point at the time when I proposed," he said.  "I
+thought we had settled that.  Love will come with marriage.  I have
+enough for both."
+
+"Don't you see that that only makes it worse?" she said in a voice that
+shook with nervousness.  "I can never love you.  I know that now.  I've
+tried.  Oh! please be generous and forgive me.  I am so sorry for
+causing you pain.  I'm so sorry."
+
+She broke down, and sat huddled in a corner of the motor, and sobbed.
+
+Mr Morgan sank back in his corner and stared out at the darkened
+street.  Never in his life had he felt so annoyed and upset.  At the
+back of his mind lurked the uncomfortable conviction that he had been a
+fool, that his world would call him a fool, an old fool for falling in
+love with a pretty face.
+
+He wished he had never seen Prudence, wished that he had never asked her
+to become his wife.  Since he had asked her and she had accepted him, he
+had no intention of acceding now to her absurd request for release.  She
+was placing him in a most invidious position.  She seemed to have no
+appreciation of what was right and due to him.  It would be necessary to
+make her see that he had to be considered in this as well as herself.
+He thought of his mother, of the annoyance this would cause her.  He
+determined to ask her to intercede with the girl in his behalf.  It was
+impossible that she should retract from her promise at the eleventh
+hour.
+
+He sat in a heavy silence, his imagination busy with the awkwardness of
+this disastrous crisis in his hitherto pleasant life, until the motor
+turned in at his own gates and stopped in front of the house.  He got
+out, and, leaving Prudence to follow, walked up to the door which he
+opened with his latchkey.  He waited for her in the warm, dimly-lit
+hall, and closed the door after her and bolted it.  He lit a bedroom
+candle for her with some attempt to atone for his late discourtesy, and
+asked:
+
+"Would you like anything before you go upstairs?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+She took the candlestick from him with a shaking hand and turned towards
+the stairs.
+
+"Good-night," he said.
+
+The emotion in his voice moved her to yet deeper distress.  It was the
+first time she had parted from him without the good-night kiss.  She
+looked back at him where he stood, muffled in his greatcoat, a big
+ungainly figure, which nevertheless seemed shrunken, possibly on account
+of the loss of that air of successful assurance which hitherto had
+characterised the man.
+
+"Good-night," she answered softly.  "I am so sorry that I have hurt
+you."
+
+Then, carrying her candle, she went swiftly up the stairs.
+
+Neither Prudence nor Edward Morgan secured any sleep that night.  While
+Mr Morgan tossed restlessly on his bed, fretting and worrying over this
+blow which she had dealt him, Prudence lay very still and wide-eyed in
+the darkness, wondering dismally what the new day would bring forth, and
+how she would face old Mrs Morgan's anger, and the pained displeasure
+in Edward's eyes.
+
+It was obvious to Prudence when she descended on the following morning,
+heavy-eyed and with nerves strung to high tension, that Mr Morgan had
+already confided in his mother the fact that she wished to end her
+engagement.  The old lady was upset and deeply affronted.  Her agitation
+betrayed itself in the trembling of her hands as she poured out the
+coffee from the big silver urn.  Nothing was said on the subject
+uppermost in their thoughts until the finish of the meal, but a sense of
+something impending hung in the air, making ordinary conversation
+impossible.  When he had finished his breakfast Mr Morgan rose and went
+out, closing the door behind him.  Mrs Morgan followed his exit with
+her short-sighted gaze; then she sat back in her chair and gave her
+attention to Prudence.
+
+She did not speak immediately; she was busy collecting her ideas, trying
+to subdue her bitter resentment against this girl who deliberately
+planned to wreck her son's happiness.  A betrayal of anger would, she
+realised, only make the estrangement more complete.
+
+"I want to talk to you," she said presently, breaking the silence which
+was becoming increasingly awkward.
+
+Prudence looked up, and sat crumbling the bread beside her plate
+nervously, and waited.
+
+"Edward has told me what happened last night," Mrs Morgan added with
+fresh signs of agitation in her voice.  "He is very distressed and
+worried.  This means more to him than you realise.  It is not as if he
+were a young man, and could face a disappointment and get over it.  You
+cannot seriously intend to break off your engagement--now--when
+everything is arranged?  It would be monstrous."
+
+She paused, and looked with pathetic eagerness to Prudence for her
+answer.  The girl choked.  She felt the tears rising to her eyes and
+hastily winked them away.  What could she say?  What was there to say in
+face of her determination not to marry a man with whom marriage seemed
+to her now intolerable?  It amazed her to think that ever she could have
+contemplated such a step.
+
+"I don't know how to answer you," she faltered.  "It's so hateful to
+keep hurting people.  I know I've hurt Edward.  I know you are thinking
+badly of me--you must be.  And I can't alter it.  I can't please you.  I
+ought never to have accepted Edward.  I don't love him.  How can I marry
+some one I don't love?"
+
+The tears fell now unchecked; she made no attempt to staunch them.  But
+old Mrs Morgan took no heed of this display of emotion; no amount of
+tears could atone for such heartless conduct.  She set herself to the
+task of overruling the girl's decision.
+
+"I agree with you that you ought not to have engaged yourself to my
+son," she said; "but, since you are engaged to him and every one knows
+of the engagement, it would be most dishonourable for you to end it now.
+Your father will say the same.  You cannot do it, Prudence."
+
+"But I must," Prudence insisted.
+
+"No."  The old lady became more emphatic.  "It is unthinkable.  You
+can't do it.  I don't consider, myself, that you will make Edward a
+suitable wife; but he still wishes it; your family wish it.  You cannot
+draw back."
+
+Prudence pushed back her chair and stood up.
+
+"I'll go home," she said.  "I'll go to-day--now.  I don't think that
+Edward has a right to expect me to many him against my will.  I'll go
+home."  She gripped the back of her chair hard, and met Mrs Morgan's
+unfriendly eyes with no sign of yielding in her look.  "I know you are
+angry with me," she added.  "They'll be angry at home.  I can't help
+that.  I deserve it.  But to do as you wish wouldn't help matters.  It
+would be another mistake.  I couldn't make him happy."
+
+"You will never make any one happy," Mrs Morgan said, "because you are
+utterly selfish."
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
+
+Prudence was not allowed to return home that day as she wished to do.
+Old Mrs Morgan insisted upon writing first to Mr Graynor to prepare
+him for his daughter's unexpected return, and to explain the reason for
+her travelling before the original date and alone.  In the circumstances
+it was impossible that Mr Morgan should accompany her.
+
+Prudence dreaded the sending of this letter.  She feared as the result
+of its dispatch that some member of her family would arrive to take her
+home like a child who is in disgrace.  She retired to her room and spent
+the greater part of the day in tears till her face was disfigured and
+her eyelids swollen with weeping, so that Mrs Henry, when she called
+during the afternoon, could not fail to detect these signs of distress.
+Old Mrs Morgan was too upset to receive any one; and Prudence
+entertained the mystified visitor alone, and in response to repeated
+probings, explained the situation to her in jerky incomplete sentences
+which conveyed nothing very clearly, save the fact that she wished to
+end her engagement and that the Morgans would not agree to this on
+account of what people would say.
+
+Mrs Henry's primary emotion, when this point became clear, revealed
+itself in a vindictive gratification in her mother-in-law's
+discomfiture.  Apart from that she kept an open mind on the subject.
+She liked Prudence.  She would have preferred that Edward should not
+upset her own arrangements by taking to himself a wife, but, since he
+was inclined that way, she thoroughly approved his choice, and had
+become reconciled to the thought of his marriage.  She scarcely knew
+whether to feel relieved or disappointed at this unexpected turn of
+affairs.  But she was frankly amused.  The picture of old Mrs Morgan,
+amazed and angry, fussing in irreconcilable distress over what people
+would say, filled her with indescribable satisfaction.
+
+"They can't make you marry against your will," she said reassuringly.
+
+Prudence was not so sanguine.  Persistent opposition of the kind
+enforced in her family bore one with the irresistible force of a flood
+in the most unlikely directions.  To brave this opposition from a
+distance was a very different affair from facing it daily and being
+crushed beneath its influence.  She had had experience enough of this
+sort in the past.
+
+"It wouldn't be so intolerable," she said, "if Edward and I could five
+alone.  I want a home of my own.  I should hate to have my household
+ordered according to Mrs Morgan's ideas of what a home should be.
+Imagine not being mistress in one's own house!"
+
+"I can't imagine anything of the kind," Mrs Henry said, and became
+animated with a new and brilliant inspiration.  "Make your consent to
+marrying him conditional on his keeping a separate establishment," she
+suggested.  "Turn the old woman out--or make him take another house.
+That's how I should act in your place."
+
+The audacity of this proposal robbed it largely of its effect.  Prudence
+rejected it without consideration.
+
+"They would never agree to that," she said.
+
+"Then Edward has no right to hold you to your engagement.  You didn't
+undertake to marry his mother."
+
+Mrs Henry felt particularly pleased with her Solomon-like solution of
+the difficulty.  She urged Prudence to give it her attention.
+
+"You have the whole situation in your hands, if you like to be firm,"
+she said.
+
+It was a shabby card.  Prudence felt, to hold in reserve for the winning
+of the game.  Nevertheless, if it was a shabby card, it was a very
+strong one: it threw the responsibility of decision on Mr Morgan's
+shoulders.
+
+"Don't let them bully you, you poor child!"  Mrs Henry added, and
+passed a friendly arm around Prudence's waist.  "Be firm, and show some
+spirit, and you'll win through."  She took Prudence out motoring, to
+change the current of her thoughts, as she expressed it.  "It won't help
+matters if you are ill on our hands," she said.
+
+William arrived at Morningside as a result of Mrs Morgan's letter, a
+pompously irate and blustering William, whose anger roused Prudence to a
+show of defiance, but otherwise left her unmoved.
+
+"This is a nice thing to have happened," he observed, his cold eyes
+resting with unsympathetic criticism on her white face, with the eyes
+ringed from sleeplessness and recent distress.  "You have disgraced the
+family.  No Graynor, whatever his faults, has acted dishonourably
+before.  Your conduct is scandalous.  Here have I been obliged to leave
+my business and start off at a moment's notice on your account.  You
+show no consideration for any one."
+
+"You might have spared yourself the journey, so far as my pleasure is
+concerned," Prudence retorted.
+
+He insisted upon her returning with him by the first available train, an
+arrangement which suited Prudence, whose one desire was to get away from
+Morningside under any condition.  Edward Morgan's sense of injury, which
+he made very manifest, and his mother's silent anger, were difficult to
+face.
+
+She had not seen Edward alone since the night of the dance; but he
+sought an interview with her before she left the house to which he had
+brought her in the proud belief that she would one day live there with
+him as his wife.  He came to her in the drawing-room where she waited
+dressed ready for departure, with an air of perplexed and hurt inquiry
+in his look.  He refused to believe in the unalterable quality of her
+decision.  The whole thing was utterly incomprehensible to him.
+
+"Don't move," he said gravely, as Prudence started up nervously at his
+entrance with a hurried demand to know whether the motor and William
+were ready.  "I couldn't let you leave without a further effort to
+arrive at some sort of an understanding.  The motor will not be round
+for a few minutes.  There is plenty of time.  Won't you sit down?"
+
+She reseated herself, and looked away from his reproachful eyes,
+painfully conscious of the changing colour in her cheeks.  It troubled
+her to see him look so sad and stern.  He drew a chair forward and sat
+down near her.  His proximity, the ordeal of remaining there alone with
+him, was peculiarly distressing to her.
+
+"I am not going to accept your present decision as final," he said,
+after a pause given to reflection.  "You haven't allowed yourself
+opportunity for thought.  I regard this unaccountable change in your
+feelings as the result of some emotional phase which will eventually
+pass.  No; don't interrupt me," for she had looked up as if about to
+speak.  "I would rather that you took time to think about this matter
+first.  I have a right to that much consideration at least.  It is not
+fair to me that you should rely upon your impulses in so grave an issue.
+Treat me justly, Prudence.  Go home and weigh the question carefully,
+and then let me hear from you again.  My love for you remains unaltered
+in essence, though I confess to a feeling of disappointment at your want
+of appreciation.  Take time, my dear.  Give yourself at least a month
+for reflection.  I have not released you from your engagement; I cannot
+do that.  But if at the end of the month you still feel you do not wish
+to marry me, write to me frankly, and I promise you you will not find me
+unreasonable."
+
+"Thank you," Prudence said with her face averted.  "You are very kind."
+
+Mr Morgan, who was finding a pathetic satisfaction in the role of
+sorrowful mentor, took her listless hand in his, and assumed a
+friendlier tone.  He was beginning to believe his own assertion that her
+present mood was merely a phase that would pass and leave her in a
+normal frame of mind once more.  He pressed his point.
+
+"You haven't answered me," he said gently.  "You will do as I ask?"
+
+"I'll think it over," she agreed.  "And I'll write.  But--I wish you
+didn't care so much."
+
+Conversation hung after that.  Mr Morgan had made his appeal; he had
+nothing further to add, and Prudence found nothing to say.  It came as a
+relief to both when the door opened abruptly, and William thrust his
+head inside and demanded how much longer his sister intended keeping him
+waiting.  She rose and offered Mr Morgan her hand.  He pressed it
+warmly, and followed her from the room, and saw her into the waiting
+motor.  He still wore an air of chastened sorrow, but there was a gleam
+in his eyes suggestive of hope; and he turned away from watching the
+departure of the motor and went into the house with a lessening of the
+heavy gravity of his expression and a look of greater assurance than he
+had worn since the rupture.  He refused to accept defeat.  When she left
+his house Prudence had on her finger the engagement ring which he had
+given her.  She had offered to return this; but in answer he had taken
+her hand and replaced it and told her to keep it where it was.  It was
+not until after she reached home that she remembered it and took it off
+and locked it away from her sight.
+
+The return home was a miserable affair.  Her conduct in breaking off her
+engagement was viewed on all sides as a dishonourable act.  No one had
+any sympathy with the reasons she alleged for this amazing decision.
+Mr Graynor refused with an obstinacy that baffled her to discuss the
+subject.  He would not hear of her breaking her word to his valued and
+trusted friend.  It seemed to him disgraceful that she should
+contemplate such a step.  To jilt a man like Edward Morgan appeared to
+him an unpardonable offence.
+
+Prudence crept away early to bed and cried her heart out in the solitude
+of her room.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY.
+
+An intolerable fortnight went by.  Prudence bore with the displeasure of
+the family, which manifested itself in a gloomy reserve in her presence,
+with such cheerfulness as she could command.  The influence of Agatha
+and brother William pervaded the household and fenced her about in a
+withering isolation.  She had ample opportunity for the reflection which
+Mr Morgan had so earnestly entreated her to give to the matter of her
+engagement; but this subject least engrossed her attention.  The
+alternative of marriage with Mr Morgan in order to escape from the
+dreary home life was less attractive than it had seemed.  It held out no
+promise of freedom.  Old Mrs Morgan's rule was as arbitrary as
+Agatha's.  There still remained to her the move in the game which Mrs
+Henry had suggested so readily; but Prudence felt reluctant to win that
+way.
+
+From Bobby's letters Prudence derived her sole source of comfort.  These
+came fairly frequently, and urged upon her the necessity for keeping her
+end up.  Bobby approved of the rupture which disturbed the peace of two
+households, and promised his active support in the near future, and in
+the present his very sincere sympathy.
+
+"You've done the right thing at last, old girl," he wrote.  "It would
+have been better had you done it before; but it's no use wailing about
+that.  Don't let them bully you into retracing your step."
+
+Advice that was easier to give than to follow, in view of the general
+displeasure.  There were moments when Prudence felt that if something
+did not speedily relieve the tension she would be unable to hold out
+against the combined pressure of her family's disapproval and her
+father's sorrowful anger.  The latter hit her hard.  She had not known
+what it was to be really estranged from him before.
+
+"I wish you would try to understand," she pleaded with him once.  "I
+can't bear it when you never speak.  I want to talk to you about--
+things.  I want to make you understand my point of view.  You can't
+really think it right I should marry a man I do not care for."
+
+"I do not think it right that you should jilt an honourable man like
+Edward Morgan," he said.
+
+"But if I don't love him?" she insisted.  "You married for love."
+
+"Yes," he answered.  "And there was as great a difference between the
+ages of your mother and me as between you and the man you have promised
+to marry.  But your mother was happy with me."
+
+"Because she loved you," Prudence replied.
+
+"Yes," he allowed, and shifted uneasily in his chair and shaded his eyes
+with his hand.  "I think your mother's sense of duty would have kept her
+to her promise in any case," he added quietly.  "There is a code of
+honour.  Prudence, which we, who would keep our own respect and the
+respect of others, must uphold.  In urging the plea for your own
+happiness you are opposing a selfish consideration against the happiness
+of a good and just man.  You have to think of him as well as of
+yourself--of his happiness and your honour.  I beg you not to jilt him
+in this heartless manner.  It is not right, Prudence.  I must continue
+to set my face against it."
+
+That was the last time she attempted to plead her cause with him.  He
+was past being able to appreciate her point of view.  The only member of
+the family who sympathised with Prudence, and who in unobtrusive fashion
+sought to show a kindly understanding and to invite her confidence, was
+Matilda.  Marriage had not lessened Matilda's love for romance, though
+there was little that was romantic in her own life.  Ernest was sternly
+opposed to sentiment; and his wife, beautifully submissive to his
+prejudices, restrained her sentimental yearning in his presence, and in
+his absence fed her emotional mind on erotic literature and dreams.  He
+was absent from Wortheton at the time of Prudence's amazing return.  The
+expected living had fallen vacant, and he had gone in advance of his
+wife to prepare the new home for her reception.  That she might like a
+voice in the furnishing and decoration of the dilapidated vicarage which
+her money was to restore did not seem to have occurred to him.  He felt
+indeed quite generous and important while spending her money lavishly,
+according to his own idea of what was needful and agreeable for their
+mutual comfort.  The enlargement and improvement of his study gave him
+much pleasurable thought.
+
+Matilda, as well as Prudence, felt relieved that he was away.  The
+breaking of Prudence's engagement would have afforded him many
+opportunities for making unfavourable comments on his sister-in-law's
+character.  Matilda on this subject held views opposed to the rest.  The
+engagement had always been a matter for wonderment to her.  Her mind
+strayed continually back to the days of Steele's visit, and harped with
+reflective persistence on the more vivid events of that time.  She
+pictured his strong, good-looking face, and the admiration in his eyes
+when they had rested upon Prudence.  She recalled the night when he had
+entered the garden and talked stealthily with her young sister under her
+window.  She felt puzzled to understand how, after knowing Philip
+Steele, Prudence could have engaged herself to marry any one else.
+Matilda would have lived solitary, wedded to the memory of romance,
+rather than shut romance out of her life.
+
+"You should not many a man you don't love," she said once.  "You are
+young enough to wait."
+
+"I have waited two years," Prudence answered drearily.
+
+"Wait a little longer.  You don't want to marry Edward Morgan?"
+
+"I don't want to; but it looks as if I should be driven to marry him
+against my will."
+
+Matilda found nothing to say to that.  She had never possessed any will
+of her own as opposed to the family.
+
+The month for reflection drew to a close, and Prudence had arrived at no
+settled resolve as to what she purposed doing; she could not determine
+what to write to Mr Morgan.  She had promised him that she would write,
+but she found nothing to say.  The relations between herself and her
+family became more strained.  William made unnecessary references to the
+Graynor Honour at frequent intervals.  The word of a Graynor, he
+remarked, was regarded as equal to his bond--in the past; and left it to
+be generally inferred that it remained for Prudence to break that
+admirable record.
+
+Old Mr Graynor took little notice of her.  He was not actively unkind;
+but she had disappointed him keenly, and he allowed her to feel the
+weight of his displeasure.
+
+Goaded beyond measure, her thoughts reverted at times to the dull
+tranquillity of the Morningside establishment, and the relief to be
+gained from Mrs Henry's bright companionship, the memory of which
+brought a sense of comfort to her weary brain.  If it were not for old
+Mrs Morgan...
+
+She sat down one day to write to Mr Morgan.  She took her engagement
+ring from the locked drawer and packed it in its case and directed it to
+him.  All of which was entirely simple.  But the writing of the letter
+was a different matter.  It was very difficult to set down on paper what
+she wanted to say.  Ultimately the letter was written but the finished
+production did not please her; the sentences looked bald and brutal and
+ungracious.  It was one thing to resolve to refuse to marry a man unless
+he sent his old mother out of the home, it was another and altogether
+detestable matter to put that statement on to paper.  She could not do
+it.  Either she must marry the man unconditionally, or end the
+engagement finally.  It was impossible to make any such stipulation.
+
+So the letter was never sent.  Prudence eventually destroyed it; and
+still in a state of desperate indecision, entered upon a further period
+for reflection.
+
+The re-opening of the subject devolved upon Mr Morgan.  After the lapse
+of six weeks a letter arrived, reminding her of her promise to write to
+him, urging his love upon her, and hoping that she had reconsidered her
+decision.  It was a restrained and kindly letter, with not one sentence
+in the whole of it into which she could read a hint at reproach.  Quite
+at the finish he wrote:
+
+"My mother sends her love, and wishes me to say that, as possibly you
+would be happier keeping house alone, she will find a home for herself
+near ours."
+
+A flush came into Prudence's face while she read these words.  She
+smiled ruefully, and laid the letter aside, and sat quite still, looking
+out at the sunlight with a shadow of doubt like a passing cloud
+darkening the blue of her eyes.
+
+"That knocks down all my defences," she mused, and moved suddenly and
+found her handkerchief and buried her face in it.  "I'm a fool to cry,"
+she reflected.  "It doesn't alter anything really...  But I wish she
+hadn't sent that message."
+
+Thus ended Prudence's fight for freedom.  She gave in weakly, without
+further struggle; her resolves borne down by the relentless opposition
+of the family, by Mr Morgan's quite courteous persistence, and by his
+mother's unexpected concession.  She no longer had any substantial
+reason to urge against the marriage.  The reason which she had put
+forward repeatedly, that she did not love the man she was being forced
+to marry, was treated as frivolous and generally disregarded.  There
+appeared no way of escape.
+
+Marriage, which once had seemed to her to offer freedom from the dull
+restrictions of her home life, was nothing more than a shuffling of the
+same pack of cards.  She would change her place in the game, that was
+all; leave one control for another.  Perhaps that was life--woman's
+life, anyway.  But she had dreamed once of fine things, big things, in a
+world that was fair and lovely and tolerant--the land of promise of
+every young imaginative mind.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
+
+Having yielded on the most important point.  Prudence conceded every
+other.  She no longer seemed to possess any will, or, if the will were
+there, she had no heart to express her wishes.  The family arranged
+everything without consulting her; and the marriage, which was hurried
+forward to fit in as nearly as possible with the date previously fixed
+upon, was the biggest and most important function of its kind that
+Wortheton had ever seen.
+
+The young bride alone showed no interest in the proceedings, and wore
+her white satin and orange wreath with a look of weary protest in her
+pretty eyes, and an air of shrinking timidity which Mr Morgan
+considered very beautiful.
+
+Bobby's disgust at the whole affair was openly manifest.  It would have
+been more seemly, he told her with scorn, had she married the curate.
+
+"There's no accounting for tastes," he said, with an odd lack of
+sympathy in his manner.  "Morgan is a refined edition of Uncle William.
+When you are indulging in your hot water kidney cures and boiled mutton
+and respectability, don't forget that you asked for these blessings."
+
+"Oh, Bobby!" she protested.
+
+"Well, I told you not to give in.  You should have taken a firm stand."
+
+"When you have lived at home a little while you will discover how simple
+that advice is to follow," she said, and left him to digest this remark
+at his leisure.  She felt too flattened to argue with him.
+
+But on the day of the actual ceremony Bobby proved helpful and
+encouraging.  He hovered about her watchfully, and was always at hand to
+fend off the bores, as he expressed it.
+
+"It might be worse, old girl," he said.  "When you are fed up with
+things, send for me, and we'll manage some sort of a stunt together."
+
+There was no pretence between him and Prudence that the latter's
+marriage was a subject for rejoicing: they were too intimately
+acquainted with each other's thoughts to attempt a pose.
+
+"Lord! won't it be dull," he said, "without you."
+
+The Rev Ernest assisted in marrying his sister-in-law; and Matilda in
+a dove-coloured dress, a little regretful, and still puzzled by the turn
+of events, followed the service tearfully, and compared Mr Morgan's
+matured thick-set figure with Steele's well-set-up, muscular
+youthfulness, to the former's disadvantage, and tried to solace her
+misgivings with the reflection that doubtless everything was ordered for
+the best in this admirably regulated universe.
+
+Then the ring was placed on Prudence's finger; and the married couple
+repaired to the vestry, where Prudence signed the register which
+witnessed to the sacrifice of her girlhood and all her dreams of romance
+and freedom and the great flight into the unknown, which was to have
+revealed such wonderful possibilities of a golden life, complete and
+satisfying, and bright with gratified desires.  The shackles were
+riveted and her wings clipped for all time.
+
+Marriage is one of two things, a realisation of life, or a compromise.
+Prudence had effected a compromise, with her eyes opened wide to what
+she had lost.
+
+"That's finished," Edward Morgan said in satisfied tones, and kissed his
+wife heartily.
+
+Every one showed an eagerness to kiss the bride.  Even William raised
+her veil and laid a benedictory kiss upon her brow; but it was Bobby
+alone who felt her lips respond to his in warm affection; to the rest
+she remained a composed, unsmiling young woman, far too composed for a
+bride, Matilda thought.  She never shed a tear.  Matilda had shed
+several--emotional drops of pure happiness.  She recalled her
+sentimental mood of tremulous joy with agreeable satisfaction.  Love
+must express itself in such tender ways; it is never coldly and gravely
+self-contained, as in Prudence's case.
+
+"I hope you will be very happy, dear," Matilda said mournfully.  "It is
+a blessed thing to be married."
+
+At which the bride's stony features relaxed into a quiet smile; she had
+often heard Ernest make use of the same expression, though never in
+relation to his connubial bliss.
+
+Old Mrs Morgan, and Mr and Mrs Henry attended the wedding; and Bobby
+and Mrs Henry exerted themselves to make the affair go off brightly.
+Mrs Henry was a sport, Bobby opined.  He had an idea that under her
+auspices Prudence might have quite a good time, the nightly K.B. and the
+mother-in-law notwithstanding.
+
+Mrs Henry confessed to him her surprise at Prudence's sudden
+capitulation.
+
+"I never supposed she would give in," she said.
+
+"It wasn't her fault entirely," Bobby returned.  "The family made it so
+beastly uncomfortable for her.  Now you see us in bulk you ought to be
+equal to grasping the situation.  You see us at our amiable best; we
+aren't often so agreeable.  But even at our best we are a trifle heavy."
+
+"You are the lightest heavyweight I have ever encountered," she replied,
+laughing.
+
+"Oh!  I don't count.  I'm a sort of changeling."  He brought his face
+suddenly close to hers.  "I say," he said confidentially, "look after
+Prue a bit, and help her to a spree occasionally.  It's been dull enough
+for her at home.  She ought to have a fling now and again."
+
+Mrs Henry looked into his earnest eyes reflectively for a moment, and
+smiled.
+
+"That will be all right," she said.  "I've been a rebel always.  We'll
+contrive between us to make things hum.  You shall come along some day
+and see."
+
+"I can't understand a man wishing to marry a girl who has shown that she
+isn't keen," he remarked.
+
+Mrs Henry betrayed amusement.
+
+"The average man's vanity prevents him from realising her lack of
+eagerness," she returned cynically.
+
+"He attributes her reluctance to shyness or ignorance or any other
+incomprehensible feminine quality, seldom to non-appreciation of
+himself.  It is just as well, perhaps; it makes things pleasanter.  But
+don't you think at this stage it would be advisable to admit the
+keenness?"
+
+"Well, perhaps," he allowed, and smiled in response to the laugh in her
+eyes.  "Life is all a game of make-believe, after all.  Look round, and
+behold!  Every one affecting affability, and trying to appear as though
+this were a joyful occasion.  There is as much real joy in a funeral.
+Uncle William is genuinely pleased anyhow.  He has always feared that
+Prue would get Benjamin's share of the spoil.  There is more than a
+touch of the miser in the Graynor blood."
+
+William meanwhile was conversing amiably with the bride, who, wearied
+with congratulations, had drawn a little apart from the press of guests,
+and stood in the opening of the French window where the sunlight fell on
+the sheen of white satin and brightened the gold of her hair.  From
+where she stood she could survey the wallflowers growing in the borders
+near the path.  The sight of them brought back vividly the memory of the
+night when they had suffered sadly from the tread of despoiling feet.
+She answered William absently.
+
+"I am proud of you," he said unexpectedly, and placed a heavy hand upon
+her arm.  "The Graynor honour is safe in your keeping."
+
+She looked at him curiously.  William was fond of talking of the Graynor
+honour as though it were a quality peculiarly and finely personal.  She
+wondered what he had ever done to make it so manifestly his.  He spoke
+as a man might speak, but never does, who spends his life in defence of
+this particular virtue.
+
+"I've renounced the Graynor," she replied with a little twist of her
+lips.  "I'm not keeping anything appertaining to the name.  As for
+honour, we guard it best, perhaps, when we are least concerned about
+it--it's a natural instinct, not an hereditary quality."
+
+"It has always been an attribute of our family," he observed pompously.
+
+"Like the chimneys," she remarked--"which spoil the landscape for other
+people."
+
+She felt irritated, irritated with his sententiousness, his inflated
+pride.  She wished he would not thrust his unwanted company upon her.
+His condescending air of being kind and brotherly exasperated her.  He
+had rushed her into this marriage, he and Agatha; and she was resentful
+and bitter on this account.  It was a matter of immense regret to her at
+that moment that she had yielded to the force of circumstances and
+become the reluctant bride of a man who was altogether too good to be
+treated in this fashion.  Their married life could never be entirely
+happy: he would demand of her what she could never give.
+
+The consciousness of his claim upon her galled already.  When she saw
+him coming towards her, where she stood with William in the aperture of
+the window, advancing heavily with his smiling gaze upon her white-clad
+figure, she experienced a difficulty in meeting his eyes.  Something
+akin to fear gripped her heart and held her silent, white-lipped and
+unsmiling, as he approached.  She felt a wild desire to escape--out
+through the open window, beyond the walls into the road--to run away
+into the wide open country and hide.
+
+He little guessed at the storm that shook that quiet figure which
+remained so still and unresponsive when he halted beside it, with some
+jesting remark about her having slipped away from him.  She gathered
+from his words that she had done an unprecedented thing in deserting his
+side.  That was her place--at his side--always.
+
+He conducted her to the dining-room, where a huge wedding cake adorned
+the centre of the long table, a mountain of ornamental white sugar and
+silver decorations, which it was required she should cut, while her
+husband stood by, glad and proud, wishful to be helpful, enjoying these
+absurd customs, and listening to and responding to the toasts with
+heartfelt appreciation.
+
+Would all this insincere merrymaking never end?
+
+Old Mr Graynor put out a hand and felt for hers under the tablecloth,
+and pressed her fingers tenderly.  His action, in its simple appeal,
+melted the ice that was closing about Prudence's heart.  She turned to
+him swiftly, silently, and smiled into his understanding eyes with eyes
+as dim as his.  The new antagonism broke down; he was again the one
+human being whom she greatly loved.  And he was feeling every whit as
+lonely and sad at heart as herself.  How stupid and unnecessary it all
+seemed, and yet how inevitable!
+
+There followed the change into her travelling-dress, and the bustle of
+departure amid hurried farewells; and then Prudence entered the motor--
+the fine new car which Edward had bought for her, and in which they
+would make the journey to London, _en route_ for the Continent, where
+the honeymoon was to be spent.
+
+He had thought of everything that would conduce to her pleasure and
+comfort; and had sacrificed many an old-fashioned prejudice in planning
+a honeymoon that would appeal to her more youthful ideas of enjoyment.
+He did not care about travelling himself, and he hated foreign places
+and people.  But he enjoyed giving her pleasure.
+
+When the car turned out of the gates and whirled down the white road, he
+took her in his arms and crushed her to him and rained ardent kisses on
+her unresponsive lips.
+
+"My darling!" he murmured.  "My own darling!  How good it is to be alone
+with you at last!"
+
+Thus Prudence left her girlhood behind her and started upon her married
+life.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
+
+One sorry satisfaction attends on circumstance which admit no prospect
+of great happiness or pleasurable development, disappointment and
+disillusion are alike avoided.  During five dull years of married life
+Prudence passed from one stage to another of repugnance, remorse, and
+hostility, till she reached the final stage of apathetic resignation to
+the conditions of her life.
+
+The years, and Prudence's lack of any response, had considerably altered
+Edward Morgan's feelings towards her.  The ardour of his passion had
+cooled, and a polite indifference mainly characterised his mental
+attitude in regard to his girl-wife.  He remained proud of her, proud of
+her youth and of her beauty; but they were in no sense companions, or
+even faintly interested in each other's concerns.  They went their
+separate ways within the first two years of the ill-assorted union.
+During the first year they quarrelled frequently.  Mr Morgan,
+unaccustomed to opposition, found himself so constantly opposed to his
+young wife in small things that his temper suffered considerably.  Their
+first serious difference was in the matter of open windows.  Mr Morgan
+was unaccustomed to sleeping with his window open to the treacherous
+ills of the night air; Prudence was unaccustomed to sleep with them
+closed.  She could not, she averred, sleep at all in an insufficiently
+ventilated room; she couldn't breathe without air.  It transpired that
+Mr Morgan's respiratory organs worked better in a confined atmosphere.
+He ought to have belonged to the toad, or other hybernating species,
+Prudence reflected, but forbore to frame her reflections in speech.
+
+They spent some hours one cold night in the unprofitable exercise of
+jumping in and out of bed, alternately opening and shutting the window;
+until Prudence, recognising the absence of dignity in these proceedings,
+feigned slumber; and awoke in the morning with a headache, and the fixed
+resolve to have a separate sleeping apartment.
+
+Quarrels were frequent after that decision, which she adhered to firmly;
+until finally they arrived at that state of mutual indifference to which
+most unsuitably married people attain in time, when they are not
+sufficiently spirited to part, or are deterred by other considerations
+from taking this step.
+
+No children came to bless the union.  The little hands which might have
+drawn them together, the little feet which alone could have bridged the
+distances, were destined never to gladden their hearts.  It was a great
+grief to Prudence that she had no child.  Had a little child been born
+to her it would have eased her heart hunger and filled her lonely life
+and satisfied her.  It might possibly have reconciled her to her
+marriage.  The mother instinct was strong in her.  She desired a child
+with passionate intensity, and she was denied this greatest wish of her
+life.  She resented this.  It widened the gulf between herself and her
+husband, and fed her discontent from the perennial springs of regret
+which occasionally submerge the barren woman's soul in bitter waters.
+
+She wished to adopt a child; but Edward Morgan objected to the
+introduction into his quiet home of a child who was not his; and she let
+the matter drop.  It would have caused dissension had she persisted.
+Edward was seconded in his objection by old Mrs Morgan, who continued
+to live with them, her promise of a separate establishment having ended
+in a temporary absence from Morningside, to which she returned on a
+visit to her daughter-in-law, which prolonged itself indefinitely until
+her presence in the home was tacitly accepted as a matter of course.
+Had she adopted a child, there would have been, Prudence foresaw,
+considerable disagreement in regard to its upbringing; she and the
+Morgans held such opposite views on subjects of hygiene and education
+and general discipline.
+
+Mrs Henry was Prudence's sole refuge from unutterable boredom.  The
+worldly-minded little woman proved a staunch ally.  But her influence
+did not tend towards reconciling Prudence to her lot.  Mrs Henry
+cordially detested her husband's people, and enjoyed nothing better than
+inciting her sister-in-law to rebellion.
+
+"They would flatten you out, if you allowed them to," she declared,
+"until you felt like nothing in the world so much as a tired worm.  They
+tried it on with me."
+
+Prudence fell into the habit of seeking Mrs Henry's society whenever
+life at home proved more than usually trying; and Mrs Henry, whose
+house enjoyed the reputation of being a sort of free hotel, encouraged
+her visits, recognising in her pretty sister-in-law's presence an
+additional attraction to her successful parties.
+
+The intimacy between the two women was a source of continual annoyance
+to Mrs Morgan; but Edward, who liked his brother's wife and trusted his
+own wife implicitly, saw no reason for objecting to the friendship.
+Possibly he was wise enough to recognise that any objection to this
+harmless pleasure would be futile.  The affair of the windows had left a
+lasting impression on his mind.
+
+The beginning of the sixth year of her married life, when Prudence, at
+the age of twenty-five, outwardly very little altered since the day she
+married, had become resigned, if not reconciled, to a life in which she
+foresaw no possibility of change, witnessed the outbreak of war--the war
+which sprung so suddenly upon the world, and which was destined to
+change so many lives.  Lives which were fitted into grooves so deeply
+that it seemed they had rusted there and could never be dislodged, were
+flung out of their ruts like lava spit from the mouth of a volcano by
+this greatest upheaval which the world had known.  To Morgan Bros, as to
+Mr Graynor, the great disaster brought added prosperity.  The works
+were engaged in the manufacture of khaki, which Bobby, afire with
+enthusiasm, and eager for release from a life that was irksome and
+uninspiring, donned speedily, to William's manifest satisfaction, and
+his grandfather's pride and grief.
+
+That was the beginning of the changes in Prudence's life.  Apart from
+her anxiety on Bobby's account, and the natural gravity which the
+appalling immensity of the disaster occasioned, Prudence in the early
+days witnessed only the lighter side of war.  Mrs Henry, destined
+before those tragic five years ran their terrible course to lose both
+her young sons, worked hard in the early days--indeed, she worked
+unflaggingly to the end, and bravely strove to hide her sorrow from the
+world--to give the men she knew, and many who were strangers to her
+until the wearing of the uniform made them participators in her
+hospitality, the best of times while they remained in England.  Dances
+and entertainments of every description were organised on a princely
+scale for the benefit of the men who were out to defend the honour of
+the Empire.
+
+Old Mrs Morgan looked upon all this festivity disapprovingly, and
+remonstrated with her, urging the unseemliness of feting in such
+frivolous fashion men who were about to face death, and many of whom
+would be called inevitably before long to meet their God.  But Mrs
+Henry treated these remonstrances with smiling indifference.
+
+"The heroes of Waterloo left a ball-room to defeat their enemies," she
+argued.  "I expect the poor dears fought better and died happier by
+reason of those few bright hours.  The boys like being amused, and they
+love flirting with the girls.  Whatever does it matter?  If one has to
+die one might as well have a good time first.  It is the moment, after
+all, which counts.  We have only the present to think for; there may be
+no to-morrow."
+
+Which view of things did not tend to soothe her mother-in-law, who had
+arrived at an age which avoids reflecting on the uncertainty of the
+future.
+
+"Rose has no spiritual outlook," she observed one evening, over the
+nightly glass of hot water which she sipped with an enjoyment a toper
+might evince while imbibing his grog.  "Her attitude towards the
+Hereafter is frankly pagan.  She will perhaps be brought some day
+through suffering to recognise the vanity of this world, and the
+importance of the Future Life.  No one can escape responsibility for his
+acts."
+
+"Quite possibly Rose's record will be finer than the records of many
+people who lead seemingly exemplary lives," returned Prudence, to whom
+her mother-in-law's narrow views were particularly irritating.  "`How
+strange it will be,' as Lewis Hind says, `if, when we awake from the
+dream of death, we find that we are judged only by the good we have
+done.'  That would cause a considerable readjustment of the balance."
+
+"People who lead good lives do good by example," Mrs Morgan insisted;
+"those who spend their days in a feverish round of pleasure exert an
+evil influence."
+
+"The warm impulses which make for kindly human acts and brighten life
+for others have for me greater virtue than any prayer," came the quick
+retort, which scandalised Edward Morgan as well as his mother, and
+provoked him into joining in the discussion.
+
+"I don't like to hear any disparagement of prayer," he said quietly.
+"Your training in a pious home should have taught you at least respect
+for such things.  I say nothing against pleasure, except where it
+clashes with duty.  In the lives of upright people duty ranks above
+everything."
+
+"I've heard so much about the paramount importance of duty that I am a
+little weary of it.  It seems good to turn instead to the more genial
+side of human nature.  I think Rose's practical idea of a God-speed to
+the men by sending them off smiling is just splendid.  They all kissed
+her in sheer gratitude when they left her house the other night."
+
+"I hope," Edward Morgan said stiffly, "that you don't allow them to take
+those liberties with you?"
+
+Prudence laughed suddenly.
+
+"I'd just love it, if they did," she said.  "But I am too near their own
+age for them to attempt it.  I've, promised to write to quite a number
+of them though.  That includes parcels.  They will all be glad of gifts
+from home.  They are so young and jolly and full of life--just like
+Bobby."
+
+Her eyes were a little wistful.  She stood up, a graceful girlish figure
+in blue velvet, with the light falling softly on the gold of her hair.
+Edward Morgan's gaze followed her movements, as she walked to the
+fireplace and stood leaning with her arm on the mantelshelf, looking
+down on the hearth.  This free and frequent mixing with young life of
+the male sex disturbed him.  He was jealous.  It seemed to him that this
+new stream of sturdy youthful masculinity flowed between them, and set
+them still further apart.  If his love for Prudence had diminished, his
+sense of proprietorship had not abated in the least.  His pride of
+ownership was in arms against this incursion of new interests, new
+friendships, in which he had no share.
+
+"Rose is giving another dance to-morrow night, isn't she?" he said.  "I
+think I'll go with you and look on for a bit."
+
+She lifted her head and glanced towards him, surprised, and not
+particularly overwhelmed with gladness at the prospect of his company.
+Her reception of his proposal was not exactly flattering.
+
+"You!  You will be--bored.  It's just a romp."
+
+"Henry will be there, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, Henry!  He likes that sort of thing.  He romps too."
+
+"Henry was always a fool," Mrs Morgan put in acidly.  "He would not
+have married Rose if he had possessed ordinary common sense.  It will be
+as well for you to go, Edward; it may lend a little dignity to the
+occasion."
+
+Prudence laughed.
+
+"Oh! there's plenty of dignity--of a joyous nature," she said.  "We
+don't rag."
+
+She crossed to old Mrs Morgan's side and laid a hand on the back of her
+chair, feeling remorseful, as she so often felt when she had been
+provoked into a show of ungraciousness.
+
+"You come too," she said softly,--"just for an hour, and look on.  You'd
+love it; and they would love to see you there.  It's you, and others
+like you, that every mother's son of them is out to fight for.  Come and
+show them you appreciate their sacrifice."
+
+"I can better show my appreciation," Mrs Morgan answered, "by praying
+for them on my knees every night and morning of my life."  She handed
+her empty tumbler to her daughter-in-law, and stood up.  "It is time I
+went to bed," she said.  "I find these talks very upsetting."
+
+"I'm sorry," Prudence said, and suffered the distant good-night kiss,
+which was the customary parting between them, regardless of any feeling
+of antagonism that lay behind the caress.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
+
+Having announced his intention of accompanying his wife to the dance
+which Mrs Henry was giving, Edward Morgan, despite a growing
+disinclination for spending an evening in this way, adhered to his
+purpose in much the same spirit in which a man will keep an appointment
+he has made with his dentist, not compulsorily, nor because he wants to,
+but because he has no definite reason to urge against keeping the
+engagement.
+
+It was a matter of indifference to Prudence whether he went or not.  His
+presence would not add to the general hilarity; and he would probably
+want her to leave early; apart from that, it would be good for him to
+look on at the harmless fun with which youth took its fill of enjoyment
+in the presence of tragedy.  There was something fine and inspiriting in
+the gay manner in which these young people enjoyed themselves with the
+dark cloud of war overshadowing their lives.
+
+Prudence's thoughts dwelt upon these things as she entered Mrs Henry's
+house with her husband, and left him at the foot of the stairs and went
+up to take off her wrap.  They were everywhere, these khaki-clad
+figures; the sound of their voices, of their gay laughter, filled the
+rooms and passages.  She talked to them, when she descended, and met
+their admiring glances with the quiet self-possession which
+characterised her always, talked easily and pleasantly with men whom she
+had never met before, to whom she had not been introduced.  The uniform
+was an introduction; and she was there to help them to have a good time.
+Mrs Henry demanded that of her.  But this lapse from the conventions
+struck Edward Morgan unfavourably.  He perceived disrespect in the eager
+push of these unknown young men to secure a dance with his wife.  And
+she gave her dances readily to any one who solicited the favour, a sweet
+and gracious-looking figure in a dress of white and gold, with a wreath
+of gold leaves in her hair.
+
+"Don't tell me your name," he heard one laughing voice exclaim, as its
+owner scribbled something on his card.  "I've written it down as Queen
+of Hearts.  That's what you are--to me for to-night.  I want to think of
+you as just that."
+
+Mr Morgan, restraining a desire to interfere, turned abruptly and moved
+away.  He did not at all approve of this sort of thing.  The licence
+permitted by the times struck him as very objectionable.  He took up a
+position near the door, where he could command a view of the dancing and
+be out of the way.  He did not like the modern dances; they were
+awkward, and lacked the dignity of the dances familiar to his youth.
+
+"Come and open the ball with me," Mrs Henry said graciously, pausing
+beside him while the band played the opening bars of a two-step.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said stiffly; "but these rag-time airs are unfamiliar to
+me."
+
+"We can waltz to this," she said good-naturedly.  "You waltz divinely.
+Come on, old dear!"
+
+She put her hand on his arm, and he found himself to his amazement
+dancing with his sister-in-law and enjoying it.  He had not danced for
+years, not since the night when he danced in that same room with his
+fiancee, who, at the finish of the evening, had asked him to release her
+from her engagement.  The memory of that humiliating experience was with
+him when, at the finish of the dance, he found his way back to the quiet
+corner near the doorway, from whence he watched Prudence come and go
+with her different partners, always animated and gay and tireless in her
+enjoyment.  What, he wondered, would his life have been like, and hers,
+had he not turned a deaf ear to her request?
+
+He hated to see her enjoying herself thus independently of him; and he
+was powerless to interfere.  She would have accused him justly of
+jealousy of her youth.  He was jealous of her youth; he was still more
+jealous of the youth of the men who surrounded her.
+
+A late arrival, entering unobtrusively while the dancing was in full
+swing, seeing Mr Morgan standing disconsolately in the doorway, came to
+a halt beside him, and noting the heavy boredom of his look, was moved
+to address him, though he had no particular liking for the man he
+accosted, and was not sure how his advances would be received.
+
+"Something of a crush inside, sir," he observed.  "There doesn't appear
+to be any room for me."
+
+Mr Morgan turned his head and surveyed the speaker.  A light of
+surprised recognition flashed into his sombre eyes, and, after a slight
+show of hesitation, he held out his hand.
+
+"Steele!" he exclaimed.  "The last man I expected to see.  Where do you
+spring from?"
+
+Steele laughed quietly.
+
+"The war brought me back," he said.  "I arrived two days ago, and of
+course came home.  Mrs Henry met me yesterday outside the bank--and so
+I'm here.  She told me she was short of men.  The shortage isn't
+apparent."  He stared into the densely packed room and smiled.  "One
+can't imagine Mrs Henry short of anything.  It looks ripping."
+
+"Beastly crush!"  Edward Morgan muttered.  "I hate this sort of thing."
+
+The smile in the young man's eyes deepened, but the rest of his face was
+grave.  He was wondering why Mr Morgan put himself to the inconvenience
+of attending an entertainment against his inclination.
+
+"It doesn't look as though my chance of securing partners was rosy," he
+remarked.  "I'm horribly late."
+
+He had not made any great effort to get there earlier.  He had felt no
+particular interest in the dance to which he had been so urgently and
+unceremoniously bidden.  But he deplored his lateness sincerely when, as
+the music slowed down before finally ceasing, he caught an amazingly
+unexpected vision of soft white and gold, with cheeks flushed like a
+wild rose, and with wide blue eyes opened to their fullest as they
+encountered his eager gaze.  Prudence's eyes looked into his; and the
+lights and the music and the crowd melted magically away.  She was back
+in the past, with the scent of _gloire de Dijon_ roses filling the air,
+and one voice only breaking across immeasurable distance, and falling on
+her ears like a note, lost and now recalled, the dear familiar sound of
+a voice to which her heart responded and which flooded the universe with
+the music of the spring.
+
+Whether Prudence broke away from her legitimate partner, or whether it
+was Steele who effected the change, she never afterwards remembered.
+She was conscious at the moment only of the eager welcome in his eyes,
+the surprised satisfaction of his voice speaking her name, the glad
+assurance with which he took her hand and placed it on his arm and
+steered her with dexterous swiftness through the crowd about the
+doorway, leaving Mr Morgan staring after them in stupefied amazement,
+and her late partner frowning with annoyance at the slight which bereft
+him of the most sought after partner of the evening.
+
+It all happened so quickly.  Before she had recovered fully from the
+first surprise of the encounter, she found herself alone with Steele in
+a little room off the hall, that was all in confusion with an overflow
+of furniture from the rooms which had been cleared.  He drew her inside
+and closed the door and stood looking down at her with a laugh in his
+grey eyes.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.
+
+"What luck!" he ejaculated.  "Whoever would have thought of finding you
+here?  This saves me a journey."
+
+"I thought you were abroad," she said, her face irradiating happiness.
+"It's just a dream, I can't believe you are real."
+
+He stooped over her, and laid his hands on her shoulders and held her,
+looking into her upturned face.  "I thought myself at first _you_ were a
+dream," he said--"a vision which the longing in my heart had conjured
+up.  And then your voice--the touch of your hand..."  He bent lower and
+kissed her lips.  "That is no dream," he murmured, and drew back,
+smiling at her.  "How good it is to be with you again!  All the way home
+on the ship I've had you in my thoughts.  For that matter, I've had you
+in my thoughts right along ever since I went away.  I came home, I
+think, just to see you."
+
+"I thought you had forgotten," she said, and turned aside her face to
+hide the regret in her eyes.  "I waited to hear from you.  I waited, and
+waited.  And then--I thought surely you must have forgotten."
+
+"You might have known I couldn't forget," he said.  "You told me not to
+write.  I did write several times, but I didn't send the letters for
+fear they might get you into trouble at home.  But all that doesn't
+count now.  I've come back."
+
+There was a ring of triumph in his voice, a joyous inflection that
+seemed not only to invite, but to confidently expect, a sympathetic
+response.  Prudence, who in the first flush of her gladness at being
+with him again, had forgotten everything else for the moment, gave
+herself up to the pleasure of this unexpected encounter: her marriage,
+everything outside the immediate present, every one save themselves, was
+blotted out like patterns on the sand which the incoming tide
+obliterates.  She was as a person whose mind swings abruptly backward,
+with every event which has befallen in the interval wiped from her
+memory for the time.
+
+"You've come back!" she repeated, and smiled happily.  "I'm so glad.
+Why did you go abroad?"
+
+"Because there didn't seem much chance of getting on here," he replied.
+"I couldn't afford to waste the years.  You see, I wanted to make a
+home.  Well, I've done that."
+
+"Oh! but that's splendid!" she cried, her eyes shining with excitement.
+"You've got on quickly."
+
+He laughed with her, and seated himself on the arm of her chair and laid
+a hand upon one of hers.
+
+"I've been lucky," he said.
+
+He lifted his hand to her neck and slipped his arm around her shoulders.
+It did not seem to occur to him that she might resent or feel surprised
+at this familiarity.  They were in love with one another; he took that
+for granted; he was so certain about it that it did not appear necessary
+even to raise that point.
+
+"So now, you see," he added, "I can afford to marry."
+
+She looked at him with a quick darkening of her blue eyes, a sudden
+gravity chasing the smiling happiness from her face.  She knew quite
+well whom he wished to marry.  And she loved him.  She had no doubt
+about that at all.  She loved the feel of his nearness, the clasp of his
+arm about her: the touch of his lips had caused her a thrill of
+happiness, deeper and sweeter than any emotion she had felt or imagined.
+He wanted her; she wanted him; and she was not free to go to him.
+
+"Yes," she said, with, to him, unaccountable nervousness.  "Yes.  That's
+wonderful.  It's great news.  Tell me more--something about your life
+out there.  Where was it you went?  South Africa!  Funny!  I didn't even
+know where you were.  You'll go back, I suppose, after the war?"
+
+"Yes, I'll go back.  I don't think I'd care to live in England again.
+It's jolly out there--always summer.  You'd like it.  Say you'll like
+it--the jolly warmth and the brightness.  The scenery knocks spots out
+of Wortheton.  Do you remember that day in the woods, Prudence?--and the
+primroses we gathered and threw away?  I've often thought of that day,
+when I've been lonely and wanting you, and comparing the blue of your
+eyes with the blue of the African sky.  Dear, waking and dreaming, I
+have pictured you continually--leaning out of a window with the roses
+beneath the sill."
+
+He bent lower over her and clasped her closely, smiling at the
+reluctance, which he realised, and attributed to shyness; it was not
+because she did not love him that she shrank from his embrace.
+
+"Little girl," he said, "dear little girl, I didn't come over only to
+fight for the old country, I came for the purpose of fetching you and
+taking you out with me, if I am spared.  You'll go with me, Prudence--as
+my wife?  You know how I love you."
+
+"Oh!" she said.  And suddenly she was clinging to him sobbing, with her
+face hidden against his sleeve.  "I can't.  I can't."
+
+He was surprised, but manifestly unconvinced.  He supposed it was family
+opposition she feared, and he set himself to the business of sweeping
+this difficulty aside.
+
+"We're up against a lot, of course," he said, and smoothed her hair with
+his ungloved hand.  "Who cares?  If I go back to Africa I'm going to
+take you with me, if all the blooming family rolls up to prevent me.
+You trust me?  You love me, Prudence dear?"
+
+Prudence lifted her head, and sat back, looking at him with drenched,
+dismayed blue eyes.  The realisation that she must tell him of her
+marriage, that she ought to have told him sooner, came to her with
+startling abruptness.  A distressful certainty that she was about to
+give pain to this man whom she loved better than any one in all the
+world gripped her tormentingly.  She felt ashamed at the confession
+which she must make.  Horror of her marriage seized her.  She wanted to
+hide her eyes from the tenderness in his.
+
+"You don't understand," she said, and clenched her hands on the chair
+arm, her face strained and weary and her eyes full of a humiliated
+appeal.  "It's not the family.  Their attitude wouldn't matter.  If I
+had only known!  I thought you had forgotten, and I was so unhappy at
+home."  Her head drooped suddenly; she hid her eyes from his gaze.  "I
+can't tell you," she faltered.  "I can't tell you."
+
+He seized her hands almost roughly and held them in a grip which hurt.
+His face, set and stern and paler than her own, seemed suddenly to have
+aged.  His voice was hoarse.
+
+"You aren't going to tell me that you are married?" he said.  "For God's
+sake, don't tell me that!"
+
+Prudence did not answer, did not raise her head; she dared not meet his
+eyes.  He loosened her hands abruptly and stood up.
+
+"Some one's got before me," he said in odd constrained tones.  "Is that
+it?"
+
+He turned deliberately away, and remained rigid and outwardly composed,
+staring at a hideous old print on the wall, without consciously seeing
+what he looked at.  Prudence stood up also, and approached him, a
+white-robed quiet figure, in the stillness of the dimly-lit room.  She
+put one hand to her throat and nervously fingered the pearls which
+Edward Morgan had given her.
+
+"Yes, I'm married," she said, "to Mr Morgan."
+
+"That man!"  He turned on her angrily.  "He's old enough to be your
+father."
+
+"My mother married a man much older than herself," she answered quietly.
+"They were very happy."
+
+He emitted a short hard laugh.
+
+"So that's the end of my hopes," he said.  "Fool that I was!  I thought
+you cared for me."
+
+She moved nearer to him, and something of her forced control left her in
+that moment of intense emotion.  She laid a hand swiftly on his arm; and
+he read the despair and the longing in her saddened eyes.
+
+"You know I cared," she said.  "You know I care still.  I didn't
+understand.  I thought you had forgotten.  I was not sure how much you
+really meant.  You went away; and life was very difficult.  I had to get
+away from it all--I had to.  You had gone.  I believed that I should
+never see you again.  If I'd known you remembered, I would have borne
+with things; I would have waited all my life, if necessary, until you
+came back to me.  And now you've come--and it's too late.  It's too
+late."
+
+He looked down at her long and steadily, with a hint of something in his
+eyes which she did not understand, which she instinctively feared.  She
+put a hand before her eyes to shut out that look in his; and he seized
+the hand and dragged it aside and compelled her to meet his gaze.
+
+"Look here," he said quickly.  "We've got to meet and talk this matter
+out.  We can't talk here.  They'll miss you presently, and search for
+you."
+
+They had missed her already.  Mr Morgan was even then on his way to
+discover their retreat.  He approached the door while Steele spoke.
+Steele continued speaking rapidly and with vehement insistence.
+
+"It's not going to end like this, you know.  It can't.  Now that I know
+you love me, I'm not reckoning anything else.  Nothing else counts.
+I'll win you, if I have to break every law under the sun.  You are mine.
+I'll have you, whoever stands in my way.  Yours is no better than a
+forced marriage.  You belong to me.  You belonged to me first.  I went
+abroad to make a home for you.  I've done that.  Now I've come back to
+fight for you--in a double sense.  If I come through this war, you go
+back with me.  I won't go without you.  Think it over.  I'll see you
+somehow, and learn your decision later.  We'll bolt.  Don't be
+frightened.  It's a bit of a muddle, but it will all come right."
+
+At which moment the door opened, and Mr Morgan, ruffled and large and
+important, with an air of refusing to see what was altogether painfully
+obvious, advanced with an exaggeration of dignity and offered Prudence
+his arm.
+
+"Your partner is looking for you," he said.  "You have overstayed the
+interval."
+
+Prudence placed her hand on his sleeve, and, with her face averted from
+Steele, walked silently out of the room.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.
+
+The Edward Morgans left the dance early, at whose suggestion Prudence
+never remembered.  She was quite willing to go home.  The misery of
+meeting again Philip Steele after the lapse of years, of discovering
+that she loved him--that he loved her, had remained true to her memory
+always, was more than she could bear.  The image of Steele filled her
+mind and so dominated her thoughts that she could not fix her attention
+on anything else.
+
+She did not see him again.  He left quietly soon after Edward Morgan led
+his wife away--disappearing as he had come, unobtrusively, without
+meeting his hostess, feeling unequal to facing her, and fearful of
+risking a further encounter with the girl whose memory he had cherished
+faithfully since the night he had stood under her window and caught a
+rose which she dropped down to him for a token at parting.  The rose was
+in his possession still, and it was no more faded with the years, he
+reflected with bitterness, than his memory was in her fickle affections.
+
+He felt angry with her, and in his anger he judged her harshly.  He had
+thought of her so much, had imagined her pleasure at their meeting, had
+taken for granted that she would wait for him, confident of his return
+and of his love.  And he came back to find her married--gone from her
+old place at the window, the setting in which he had pictured her during
+those five lonely years of work.  He had sworn to take her back with
+him, sworn to have her in defiance of every law.  He recalled the boast
+with a smile of grim irony.  There was a suggestion of melodrama about
+it which struck him now as absurd.  What, he wondered, had she thought
+of the boast--of him?  She had remained so still and silent, with her
+half-averted face and an air of drooping sadness in her quiet pose.  She
+loved him.  In spite of his bitter resentment at her marriage, at her
+want of faith, deep down in his inner consciousness there remained the
+calm assurance that her heart was his, would remain his, no matter what
+the years brought forth.
+
+The Morgans exchanged scarcely a word during the drive home.  But when
+they reached the house Mr Morgan followed his wife into the
+drawing-room with the air of a man who intends having things out.  It
+was not the time for explanations.  He would have displayed greater
+wisdom had he deferred the discussion to a more fitting occasion.
+Prudence's nerves were all jarred.  She had reached a stage of misery
+which rendered her desperate, and her husband's manner, conveying his
+sense of outraged pride and conscious authority, provoked her to a show
+of bitterness, which in calmer moments she deplored.
+
+"That's the finish of all this dancing and merrymaking," he said rudely,
+and poured himself out a glass of water, which old Mrs Morgan's thought
+for their comfort had provided in chill readiness on a side table.  "I
+have always felt that this frivolity was out of keeping with the
+seriousness of the times.  Perhaps you will give me some explanation of
+your extraordinary behaviour.  What is Steele to you?  I saw there was
+something between you when you met.  It was not difficult to see.  Your
+manner attracted general attention.  I won't have my wife make herself
+conspicuous with any man.  Steele!"
+
+He voiced the name with an oath, and banged down his glass so that the
+water spilled over on the polished table.  Prudence watched him stonily,
+but without surprise, while he sopped up the water with his
+handkerchief.  It was so characteristic of him to be careful in small
+matters even in a moment of great emotional strain.
+
+"I am tired," she said, making the only appeal that presented itself to
+her mind whereby to avoid the discussion.  "I would rather not talk
+about these things now."
+
+"Tired!" he ejaculated angrily.  "You won't have to complain of that in
+future.  I will see that you take more rest.  And you _must_ talk of
+these things.  I have every right to insist upon an explanation."
+
+"Very well," she said, in quiet tones that should have warned him to
+desist.  "But I think you are unwise.  Mr Steele, when he met me
+to-night, had no idea that I was married; and, in the surprise of seeing
+him again, I suppose I betrayed my gladness.  I did not mean to do that.
+It was all so unexpected."
+
+"But what is he to you?"  Edward Morgan demanded.  "Good God! can't you
+answer a plain question?  What has there been between you and Steele in
+the past?"
+
+Prudence turned away from him to conceal the quivering of her lips, but
+her voice was steady when she answered despite the wild beating of her
+heart.
+
+"I loved him," she said simply, "and he loved me.  There was that
+between us.  But he went away, and I thought--he had forgotten."
+
+A long silence fell between them, a heavy silence.  In all his life
+Edward Morgan had never received such a blow to his pride as this.  She
+had dealt him a blow before when she sought to break their engagement;
+but that was trifling as compared with this--this brazen confession of
+love for another man.  She had never loved him--her husband.  She had
+been in love with another man all these years.
+
+"And yet you married me!" he said in a hard voice, snapping the silence
+abruptly.
+
+Had she not been goaded past endurance, Prudence, would not have said
+what she did say; she was ashamed of it later.  But his manner and his
+clumsy insistence irritated her into retorting.
+
+"At least I tried to evade doing you that injury," she said.
+
+His face became purple with anger.  Nothing she could have planned to
+say could have enraged him more than that cutting reminder at such a
+time of her reluctance to become his wife.
+
+"You did," he shouted, and smote the table beside which he stood so
+violently that the glasses on it jingled and the water was spilled
+again.  This time he allowed it to remain; he appeared not to see it in
+his outburst of noisy passion.  "But you weren't honest with me even
+then.  You concealed this thing from me deliberately.  You deceived me.
+I believed you were a simple-hearted girl whose love I could win with
+kindness.  And I was kind to you.  I have tried to be kind always--
+though God knows!  I received small return.  Do you suppose I would have
+married you had you told me that you loved another man?  I could feel
+some respect for you had you persisted in your refusal; I feel none for
+you now.  It was an evil day for me when you married me."
+
+"It was the one big mistake of my life," she answered, and turned and
+faced him fully, with blue eyes aflame with anger, her head lifted
+proudly, almost aggressively, her face expressing cold dislike.  She had
+never loved Edward Morgan, but she had not until then actively disliked
+him.  His blustering anger, and his ill-considered taunts repelled her.
+"If you care to have a separation I am quite agreeable.  I think we
+shall be happier apart."
+
+"I don't doubt you would like that," he said brutally.  "To be free to
+gallivant in your frivolous way at my expense, and under the protection
+of my name!  I prefer to exercise full control over my wife.  You are my
+wife, remember.  Nothing's going to alter that.  And since you bear my
+name I will see that you respect it.  There's going to be no scandal in
+this family.  Separation!  So that's what you are after!  Good God!  I
+would sooner see you lying dead in your coffin than that you should
+disgrace the name of Morgan by dragging it into the courts."
+
+She smiled coldly.  His arrogant rhetoric recalled annoyingly William's
+pride in the Graynor Honour.  They both seemed to fear these things were
+in jeopardy through her.  The tissue-paper wrappings in which they
+preserved these qualities appeared to her as consistent as they were
+inadequate.  There was a hollow ring in all this noisy talk.  Respect
+was to her a personal attribute, which revealed itself daily in the
+commonplace round of homely things.  She was not in the least concerned
+as to its chance of safe keeping in her possession.
+
+"I'll go to bed," she said.  "It isn't very profitable to stay here
+wrangling at this hour of night.  And to-morrow I will go home.  I want
+to get away.  I am weary of everything."
+
+"_This_ is your home," he said sharply.  Prudence looked at him
+strangely.
+
+"This has never been home to me," she replied.  "It is your home.  It is
+more your mother's home than mine.  I have not even authority to order
+the meals, or direct the household."
+
+"That's your own fault," he returned curtly.  "You evinced no interest
+in these matters."
+
+"Largely, it is my own fault," she agreed, with surprising meekness.  "I
+am responsible for the arrangement of my life, and I have done it very
+badly."
+
+She was perilously near to weeping.  She felt that if she did not escape
+immediately she would break down in front of him, and that was the last
+thing she desired to happen.  But he would not let her go at once.  He
+detained her while he put further questions to her relative to Steele.
+Had she made any arrangement to meet him again?  That was a suspicion
+which had jerked itself into his mind and would not be dislodged.  He
+was jealous of the man.  It was jealousy which had lashed him to his
+mood of unreasonable anger; it was jealousy which prompted him to ask
+this question of her, though in his heart he did not believe her capable
+of that.
+
+"What do you take me for?" she demanded fiercely, and shook off his
+detaining hand as if it stung her.  "I am going away in order to avoid
+meeting him.  Oh! let me go.  I can't stand any more to-night.  If you
+had been wise you would have kept silent and let me bury this thing in
+the most secret place of my heart.  There are things one ought not to
+speak of."
+
+"I have a right to your full confidence," he said.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, and brushed a tear away.  "If you only knew how much
+you lose in insisting on your rights!"
+
+With which she left him to his reflections, and went quickly from the
+room.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.
+
+It was strange that in this bitter crisis of her life the old home, from
+which she had longed so impatiently to escape in the days of her
+impulsive girlhood, should seem to Prudence a refuge from the distresses
+which now overwhelmed her.  She wanted to return to her childhood's
+home, to her father, to the bedroom with its window facing south and the
+roses lifting their heads to the sunlight below the sill.  These
+familiar pleasant things in their quiet beauty appealed to her
+irresistibly.  There was a suggestion of peace in the homely picture, of
+escape from misunderstanding and worry and the near danger of a presence
+which she feared to face.
+
+Edward Morgan raised no objection to her going.  Relations between
+himself and his wife were so strained since his unusual outburst of
+passion that he was relieved to be spared the awkwardness of daily
+intercourse for a time.  A brief separation might more readily effect a
+reconciliation between them than the present hostile conditions of life
+together promised.  His attitude of cold courtesy towards her, her
+silent aloofness, threatened to widen the distances irrevocably; and Mr
+Morgan had no desire for an open breach.  It was his intention to patch
+up the quarrel.  Prudence had not arrived at this stage.  Her thought
+was solely for the present.  She realised the urgent need to get away,
+to escape from Morningside, and from her husband and this life which had
+grown so painful to her.
+
+The return to her old home stuck in her memory by reason of the sense of
+change here as elsewhere.  The influence of the times had its grip on
+Wortheton, on Court Heatherleigh and its inmates.  William, whose manner
+was oddly unwelcoming towards his sister, was much occupied at the
+works, and troubled with labour discontent, and the threatened invasion
+of the Trades Union.  Some of his workpeople had struck for increased
+wages.  The increase had been granted after considerable delay; but the
+strikers had been compelled to apologise before they were allowed to
+resume their places.  That was the beginning of the end of William's
+autocracy.  Higher wages were given elsewhere, and the workpeople spoke
+sullenly among themselves of going in quest of better pay and fairer
+treatment.  The Wortheton factories were fated to come into line with
+the rest.
+
+At Court Heatherleigh the family had decreased in numbers, the younger
+Miss Graynor being absent on war work.  And Agatha had developed the
+knitting habit, and was never to be seen without a ball of wool and
+needles in her hands.  Even during meals she occupied herself with
+knitting between the courses.  The irreproachable butler was somewhere
+in France behind the lines, and his place had not been filled; the
+eminently respectable, severe-looking parlourmaid carried on unaided for
+the present.  Eventually the war engulfed her also; and she drifted from
+Wortheton to a munition factory with the settled purpose of bringing the
+war to a close.
+
+Prudence observed these changes with wonderment.  Somehow she had not
+supposed that a war even could alter the course of life in Wortheton--
+that lichenous spot, which seemed to have detached itself from the
+general progress and fallen into contented slumber for all time.  But
+the booming of the guns had effectually disturbed its repose.  The
+booming of those guns in France penetrated everywhere and found their
+echo in every heart.
+
+Old Mr Graynor alone stood apart from these things.  He was too old and
+feeble to feel a great interest in anything beyond the personal aspect
+of the great upheaval.  He was concerned at his daughters leaving home,
+and was anxious for Bobby's safety; but the war between the nations,
+which he was fated never to see ended, was too amazing and too vast to
+hold his attention.  The discussions in the home circle provided all the
+information he gleaned of the progress of events.
+
+He was glad of Prudence's company.  She, as well as himself, stood
+outside the general activity, and conveyed by her presence something of
+the atmosphere of the past.  He accepted her reappearance in the home
+without question.  He was growing forgetful and, save when Edward
+Morgan's name was mentioned, did not appear to remember his existence.
+The changes which had taken the others away had brought Prudence home;
+that was how he saw things; and he liked to have her there.
+
+"I'm getting old, Prue," he told her.  "I've taken to falling asleep in
+my chair, and my memory plays me tricks.  It is good to have you back.
+They are all so busy; the old man gets overlooked and forgotten.  You'll
+stay with me?"
+
+"Yes," Prudence answered, responding to the wistful tone in his shaky
+voice; "as long as you want me."
+
+He was the only person in all the world, she reflected, who really had
+need of her.  His dependence on her comforted her greatly.  They were
+both of them lonely souls, whom the rush of events left stranded beyond
+reach of the changing tides.
+
+It was early spring, and the depression of those first months of war
+brooded like a dark cloud over everything.  The garden, which in former
+years had blazed with bloom, seemed to have taken on an air of mourning
+with the rest.  Only a solitary bulb here and there, left in the soil
+from a past season, lifted its defiant head among the empty borders.
+The Court was short-handed; and Agatha had deemed it unfitting to waste
+time and money over the planting of unnecessary flowers.  But below
+Prudence's window the _gloire de Dijon_ roses were opening slowly,
+bringing their golden promise of warmer days to come.
+
+In the evenings, when her father had retired early as his custom was of
+late, Prudence would stand at her old place and lean upon the sill and
+look out over the shadowy stillness upon the white riband of road beyond
+the walls.  And her thoughts would travel back to the days when she had
+leaned there as a girl and watched a man go striding down the hill,
+whistling as he walked.  She had dreamed of love in those days, and of
+romance: but these things too had passed her by and gone down the road
+of life, following the man's destiny out of her sight.  When one has
+voluntarily accepted the lesser gift it is vain to hunger after what
+might have been.  There are two philosophies in life, and they both lead
+to definite points, and each has its followers: the one is to accept
+one's lot, whatever it may be, and bear it courageously; the other is to
+cast off responsibility and take what offers agreeably as the
+opportunity presents itself.  The individual can resolve for himself
+alone which is the better course.  Temptation assails people
+differently.  The prudent nature is not necessarily always the higher;
+but discretion is a wise virtue, and restraint is a proof of strength.
+
+Not until the night of her unexpected meeting with Steele had Prudence's
+fortitude been really tried.  She had felt it to be unequal to battle,
+and had not stayed to test its strength.  Safety for her lay in flight.
+Yet had she paused to reflect she might have realised that by her flight
+she betrayed her weakness to the man who had avowed in passionate terms
+his determination to meet and have speech with her again.
+
+Prudence had sought only to avoid a further meeting; but while she stood
+at her window a few nights after her return to Court Heatherleigh a
+sudden conviction seized her that Steele would make inquiries, would
+discover her movements, might even follow her.  He had been in earnest
+when he had said: "We've got to meet and talk this matter out...  It's
+not going to end like this.  Now that I know you love me nothing else
+counts."
+
+Nothing else counts! ...  So many things counted; so many conflicting
+interests stood between her and this reckless reasoning.  It was not in
+his right, nor in hers, to set aside every consideration that baulked
+his desire.
+
+Prudence rested her elbows on the sill and sunk her chin in her hands
+and remained still, lost in thought.  It was late.  The big clock in the
+hall had chimed the hour of midnight; but still she lingered there--
+lingered in the windy moonlight, which the dark clouds, hurrying athwart
+the sky, intermittently obscured.  A fever of pain and unrest fired her
+blood, and sent the warm colour to her cheeks where it burned, two
+brilliant spots of crimson, that defied the cooling breath of the wind.
+A sense of something impending held her breathless.  All that day she
+had felt an influence at work, an intangible something which oppressed
+and oddly disquieted her; the prescience of some unexpected event armed
+her against surprise.  She stood at the window as one who watches and
+waits for the event to befall.  She did not know what she expected, what
+she waited for in the silent room, that room in which she had lived
+through so many emotions, none more disturbing than those which swayed
+her now.  She felt that something was about to happen.  The suggestion
+of a presence near her was so real that she could not rest.  She had no
+thought of going to bed.  Something in the night called to her
+imperatively and kept her at her post.
+
+Suddenly while she leaned there her attention was caught by a sound
+below her window, a sound which brought with it a rush of memories which
+were a part of the past.  Some one moved swiftly out from the shadows of
+the bushes and stood under her window and called to her softly by name.
+The quiet authority of that voice set her pulses beating rapidly, till
+the thudding of her heart sounded loudly in her ears.  For a long moment
+she remained motionless, looking down through the shadowy moonlight upon
+a man's upturned face, a strong determined face with purposeful eyes
+raised to meet her shrinking gaze.
+
+Prudence half drew back, and put a hand over her breast with a quick
+involuntary movement; at the same moment the man below drew himself a
+foot or so nearer to her by grasping at the trellis against which the
+rose-bush was trained.
+
+"If you don't come down, I will come up to you," Steele said.
+
+"Oh! wait," she cried.
+
+She remained for awhile irresolute; then, as if in answer to an
+impatient movement from below, she said quietly:
+
+"Please be cautious.  I will join you in a minute."
+
+And the next moment the light of the moon was eclipsed and the stars
+paled to insignificance--or so it seemed to Steele--as her form vanished
+from above him, and he was alone in the windy darkness with the clouds
+trailing drearily across the face of the moon.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.
+
+Prudence slipped a cloak over her evening dress and softly unlatched her
+bedroom door and stepped out on to the landing.  There was no show of
+hesitation in her movements now.  She was doing an unwise thing; she
+realised that perfectly; but something outside her volition urged her on
+to the course she was taking.  She wanted to see Philip Steele, to talk
+with him once more--for the last time--talk with him uninterruptedly
+with no fear of being seen or overheard, with the certainty of being
+alone together, unsuspected, and with no explanations to be demanded by
+any one concerning their doings.  The freedom of the thought was like a
+breath of fresh air in her lungs.
+
+But there was need for caution too.  She stood still for a second or so
+on the landing, and listened with rapidly beating heart to the sounds
+which disturbed the silence of the sleeping house.  Every one had gone
+to bed hours before; the lights were all extinguished; but the moonlight
+shone at intervals brightly through the big windows, and illumined the
+staircase and the hall below.
+
+Prudence grasped the bannister and began the descent.  Carefully though
+she trod, the stairs creaked ominously as they never seemed to creak in
+the daylight.  And the great clock in the hall swung its heavy pendulum
+noisily backwards and forwards.  The familiar sound struck unfamiliarly
+on her excited fancy; it seemed to her that the old clock was ticking a
+warning, that it sought to rouse the house.  Stealthily she crossed the
+hall towards the drawing-room; the windows were easier to unfasten than
+the barred and chained front door.  To reach the drawing-room it was
+necessary to pass the library; in doing so a sound from within the room
+caught her attention, causing her heart to momentarily stop its beating.
+Some one was moving about, treading with heavy cautiousness over the
+carpet.  She took a hurried run, heedless, in her fear of being
+discovered there, whether her footsteps were audible or not, and gaining
+the drawing-room door, slipped inside the room, and remained still,
+watchful and alert.
+
+The figure of a man emerged from the library, hesitated, and then
+approached the hat-rack in the hall.  Prudence watched the man while he
+divested himself of his cap and overcoat and shoes before going quietly
+upstairs, shoes in hand, to his room.  She stood amazed and surveyed
+these doings through the narrow opening of the partially closed door.
+Intuition assured her that these mysterious proceedings were not
+connected in any way with herself.  Whatever it was that had taken
+William abroad it could have no association with her concerns.  William
+had shown as furtively anxious a desire to avoid detection as she had;
+he wore the air of a person engaged in nefarious practices.  The hall
+was not sufficiently light to reveal the expression of worried annoyance
+on his face; she recognised only the familiar outline of his form, and
+noted the secretiveness of his movements, and the care with which, in
+his stockinged feet, he had crept upstairs.
+
+Abruptly some words of Bobby's, uttered half jestingly years ago,
+recurred in an illuminating flash across her mind: "You are taking it
+too much for granted that the old boy's life is lived on the surface."
+Perhaps after all William had a life apart from the factory and the
+home, a life which he did not choose to reveal before the world.  It was
+strangely disconcerting to discover a person whom one had believed
+hitherto to have walked always circumspectly through life, stealing
+furtively about the house in the middle of the night like a burglar in
+search of plunder.
+
+In the surprise of this amazing development in the night's proceedings,
+Prudence lost sight of her own fears and became wonderfully clear-headed
+and reliant.  The responsibility of her present action weighed less
+heavily with her.  She unfastened the window quietly, and without haste,
+and stepped out on to the gravelled path.  Immediately Steele was beside
+her.  It seemed to her little short of miraculous that William should be
+abroad and have failed to discover his presence.  Steele, as a matter of
+fact, was alive to William's nocturnal prowling, and had concealed
+himself from sight among the shrubs.  He came forward now quickly and
+with caution, took Prudence's hand, and led her from the garden.
+
+"Some one's about," he said.
+
+"William," she whispered back.  "We only missed coming face to face in
+the hall by the fraction of a second."
+
+"I know."  He gripped her hand tightly.  "When I saw him pass round the
+corner of the house I made sure you'd run into him.  What's he doing,
+anyway?"
+
+"I don't know.  He was so anxious to avoid detection that it was easy to
+evade him."  She laughed nervously.  "I wonder what would have happened
+if I had run into him?"
+
+They passed through the gate side by side and came out on the moonlit
+road.  Steele drew his companion into the shadow of the wall and caught
+her in his arms and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, Prudence!" he said, and held her, scrutinising the shadowy outline
+of her face, with the dear eyes, misty and starlike, gazing sadly back
+into his.
+
+She made a feeble effort to extricate herself from his embrace.
+
+"I don't think we ought," she said, and found herself suddenly crying,
+with her face pressed against his shoulder.
+
+It was altogether wrong.  She knew quite well that she ought not to be
+there alone with him in the night.  She had not allowed for his
+following her to Wortheton.  The shock of seeing him again unnerved her.
+Steele soothed her and kissed the tears away.  Then he started to walk
+again, keeping his arm about her.
+
+"We can't talk here," he said.  "I've a lot of things to say to you.
+We'll cut across the fields and sit on that jolly stile where I
+discovered you picking primroses--was it really seven years ago?  Seven
+years!  My God!  Prudence, what a fool I was to believe you would wait
+for me till that time."
+
+"I didn't know..." she faltered.
+
+"Never mind," he said quickly.  "We won't speak of it.  We'll wipe the
+years out.  You are here--with me.  The other is just a dream.  It was
+yesterday that we picked primroses together, and spent the morning
+mooning in the woods.  You were so sweet, dear.  I just loved you.  I so
+longed to kiss you that day.  What a fool I was not to kiss you.  I
+remember so well how the sunlight played on your hair.  I watched it,
+and loved it--and you.  Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Don't!"  Prudence urged him.  "I can't bear it.  And I ought not to
+listen.  You mustn't say these things to me--now."
+
+"But I must," he said.  And added: "Now!  Why not now?  It's my time.
+As though it matters--anything.  I'm not going to consider anything but
+just my need of you.  You are mine, by every right under the sun."
+
+"No," she protested.  "No!  I can't let you say these things.  I ought
+not to have come out with you.  Don't make me regret coming."
+
+He was silent for a while after that; and she heard him breathing in
+hard deep breaths as he walked close by her side.  Many emotions stirred
+him; passion and desire and resentment strove furiously within him,
+making speech difficult, and defeating his effort after control.  The
+sense of loss, of defeat, weighed bitterly with him.  He wanted her so,
+wanted her with an intensity that resembled hunger--wanted her urgently,
+savagely, with a crude, primitive, human want that was for setting aside
+every consideration, every civilised law and code; that was for taking
+the law into his own hands and making her see eye to eye with himself.
+And she would not see things as he wished her to.  She was difficult.
+She was altogether too civilised.
+
+He turned to her abruptly, and snapped the silence sharply by hurling an
+unexpected question at her.
+
+"Why did you come out?" he asked.  "What did you expect?"
+
+"I don't know," she answered, and drew a little away from him.  "I think
+I wanted to talk to you just once more before--we parted."
+
+"Oh!" he said, with a short laugh.  "So that was it?  If that was your
+only reason you shouldn't have come.  I'm not intending to part--like
+that anyhow.  I wanted to talk to you on quite another subject.  You
+were stolen from me.  I'm for stealing you back.  I haven't any
+scruples--of that kind Mine was the greater injury.  I love you.  You
+love me.  You can't deny that, Prudence."
+
+Prudence made no attempt to deny it.  She faced him fully in the
+moonlight with her steady eyes lifted to his in saddened appeal.  He
+realised the quiet strength of her nature with a sense of impotent anger
+in feeling it opposed to his will.  There was going to be a fight in any
+case and the issue appeared uncertain.
+
+"Whether we love one another or not," she said, "we have to bear in mind
+that I am married."
+
+She was indeed more conscious of the fact at the moment than of any
+other.  She felt the necessity of impressing it upon him.  But Steele
+needed no reminding.  The rage in his heart leapt up at her words like a
+flame fed by some combustible fluid.  He seized her roughly in his arms
+and rained hot kisses upon her mouth.
+
+"But you don't love him?" he breathed.  "You don't love him?"  He stared
+at her as she pushed his face back, and laughed harshly.  "God!  Do you
+suppose I'm not bearing it in mind?--every moment since I learned the
+truth from your lips?  It's like murder in my heart, that knowledge.
+I'd like to kill him.  I could have struck him in the face that night
+when he came in and found us together, and took you away.  And he
+knows...  He knows that only the legal tie binds you to him.  I saw the
+knowledge in his eyes.  He doesn't trust you.  If he knew that you were
+out here, walking with me in the night, he would believe the worst.
+He's that type of man.  Nothing you could say would convince him
+otherwise.  They are made like that, those narrow, strictly conventional
+people.  They daren't trust their own emotions; they never allow them
+full play.  And they don't trust any one else.  They judge others by
+their own feeble standards.  They aren't human--it's sawdust, not blood,
+in their veins."
+
+He helped her over the first stile and led her along the field-path and
+so on to the next gate.  Prudence was rather silent and worried and
+somewhat dispirited.  She left him to do the talking, and walked on like
+a woman only half awake, to whom everything appears hazy and a little
+unreal.  And he unfolded his views to her on life, and love, and
+happiness, and the right of the individual to independent action.
+
+"It's not as though this business of marriage were a natural
+institution," he argued; "it's purely artificial.  When a man and a
+woman are honestly in love they don't bother with that aspect of the
+relationship.  They just want one another.  Marriage is merely a result
+attendant on the natural impulse.  I came home with the idea of marrying
+you, and I find you no longer free.  That fact maddens me; its fills me
+with despair.  But it doesn't alter the initial fact that I want you.
+That desire is no less keen than before I heard of your marriage.
+Prudence, dearest, be true to yourself.  You love me.  Come with me--
+now.  I came down here for that purpose--to take you away with me."
+
+He pulled her down on the stile beside him and put his arm about her and
+held her close to him.  She did not repulse him.  She felt strangely
+little angry at what he said.  She was too greatly moved to experience
+the lesser emotions which a sense of outraged virtue might have called
+forth at another time.  She had hurt this man badly; and she felt too
+sorry for him to resent in indignant terms the proposal which he made.
+He wanted her, wanted her urgently; and they loved one another.  Why had
+she allowed the years to separate them so irrevocably?
+
+"You don't answer," he said, and brought his face nearer to here and
+looked her in the eyes.  "You don't answer me."
+
+His voice shook with hardly repressed passion; his whole form shook.
+She felt the shoulder which pressed against her shoulder tremble, and
+the hand which gripped hers trembled also, and was burning to the touch.
+
+"You don't answer," he said again hoarsely.
+
+"My dear," she said, "what is there to say?"  And broke down again and
+wept.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.
+
+There was a great deal which she might have said, Steele thought, as he
+held her sobbing in his arms, and tried to convince her that happiness
+for both of them lay in following the path along which he sought to
+direct her steps.  He wanted her so; and they loved one another--two
+all-sufficient reasons, as he saw matters, for throwing such deterrent
+considerations as honour and duty to the winds.  They owed a duty to
+themselves as well as to others, he argued; and a loveless marriage was
+dishonouring.  She ought not to submit to the spoiling of both their
+lives from motives of no higher consideration than fear of the world's
+censure.
+
+"What does it matter to us what any one thinks?" he asked.  "This ruling
+of one's life by the world's opinion is ridiculous.  Here we are, you
+and I, in love with one another, wanting one another.  Life is very
+sweet and precious while one loves.  Prudence, but it isn't worth more
+than a sigh when one is denied love.  I want to make you mine before I
+leave for France.  We'll have our time together.  Then, when I come
+back, I will take you with me--to a new country where no one knows
+anything about us.  Dear, we shall be so happy."
+
+"You may never come back," Prudence said, and sat up and started to dry
+her tears.  "What would become of me then?"
+
+"I may not, of course."  He stared at her with his hot eager eyes,
+careless in that hour of passionate longing about the consequences
+involved.  He knew that for himself there was only one certainty--the
+present.  He lived in the present; it was useless to look ahead.
+"Aren't you ready to risk something?  I'd rather leave you my widow than
+not have you," he declared.  "I can't go away feeling that you belong to
+some one else.  Prudence, I'm mad with jealousy.  I'm jealous of that
+man's claim on you.  I'm beside myself.  I don't know what I'm saying.
+I know only one thing--I want you.  I'm just hungry for you.  I can't
+rest."
+
+"Oh, hush!" she said.
+
+"But you've got to hear," he insisted.  "You've got to know.  I've been
+like this since you told me your news.  I lie awake at nights, thinking,
+thinking, till it seems as if I were going mad.  I think of you always.
+I'm wanting you always.  For years I've thought of you as mine.  I meant
+from the beginning to win you.  Life's just a nightmare for me while I
+know you belong to some one else.  You made a mistake.  Set it right,
+dear--as far as you can.  Give yourself to me.  Say you will--now."
+
+He seized her again in his arms and held her and set his lips to hers.
+Frightened as well as distressed.  Prudence struggled against him,
+pushed his face gently away.  She felt the quick beating of his heart
+against her breast while he held her close, and she knew that her own
+heart was beating as rapidly; the pulses in her throat were going like
+tiny hammers.  The ardour of his kisses excited her.  All the natural
+impulses of youth, repressed so long, leapt up to answer his passion and
+flamed into warmth beneath his touch.  He stirred her, tempted her.  She
+had never experienced passionate love before, but she knew it now; it
+burned her lips and set her blood on fire.  She was a woman alight with
+love for the first time in her life.  Her eyes glowed softly, and behind
+their glow, dried up as it were by that flame of love, the mist of
+sorrow's unshed rain welled slowly and dimmed her sight of him.
+
+"You can't refuse me," he pleaded.  "My darling, you can't send me out
+of your life."
+
+"Oh, don't!" she sobbed, and clung to the gate, half swooning, and
+rested her face on her arm.  "You've no right to say these things to me;
+it's wicked of me to listen.  I ought not to have come out.  I don't
+know what to do.  I don't know what to say to you.  It's all so
+difficult."
+
+He refused to admit the difficulty.
+
+"If you had an ounce of pluck," he said--"if you cared, you would know
+what to do all right.  I am asking you for one thing; it's yes or no.
+Prudence."
+
+He gripped her shoulder and pulled her forcibly round till she faced him
+again.
+
+"Look here!" he cried hoarsely.  "Listen to me for a moment.  This may
+be the last time I shall see you--it will be the last time, if you
+refuse what I ask.  If I didn't know that you love me I wouldn't worry
+you.  I shouldn't want you if you did not want me.  But you do.  I don't
+care a damn about your marriage.  If you'll trust me, and come to me,
+you shall never regret it.  Oh! my little love!--my sweetheart!  Don't
+refuse what I ask.  It means everything to me.  Say you will, dear?"
+
+"Oh, don't!" she entreated him again, and shrank back from the passion
+in his eyes.
+
+But his arms were about her; they held her tightly.
+
+"Are you afraid?" he said, his face grim and set.  "I'm dangerous to you
+to-night, and you know it.  Here we are alone in the night together.
+What is to prevent me from taking what I want?  Why should I consider
+your scruples--or anything?  I am going out to that inferno...  Why
+shouldn't I seize my good hour before I go?  What's to prevent me?
+What's to prevent me from kissing you now?"
+
+He leaned over her and rained kisses on her mouth, kisses that seared
+her lips, that almost stifled her.  He was giving rein to his passion.
+A quality both wild and lawless sprang to life in him and overrode his
+better nature for the time.  Disappointed hope and baulked desire drove
+him to a frenzy of excess which in saner moments he would not have
+believed himself capable of.  He would have been horrified at this
+complete loss of control had he been able to appreciate it.  But a
+spirit of recklessness held him before which his commonsense melted like
+snow consumed by the fires which passion lit in his breast.  It occurred
+to him while he held her, crushed and trembling, in his arms and kissed
+her madly, that he was a fool to attempt to reason with her.  A girl
+nursed in the washy traditions of her class, as Prudence was, should not
+be hampered with the responsibility of choice: he ought to decide for
+her--ought to take full responsibility for the step he was urging her to
+accede to.  It wasn't fair to burden her conscience with a sense of
+willing concession.  That was where he had made the mistake.  He was
+asking too much of her.
+
+"Little love," he whispered against her lips, "don't be afraid.  There
+is nothing to fear in love; and I love you better than life.  You are
+going with me to-night.  No, don't speak!  You are nervous and unstrung.
+You don't know what you want.  Leave this to me.  I've got a car
+waiting in the village.  We'll travel up to town in it; and later, when
+I am drafted across the water, you'll go to France as my wife, and live
+there until I can be with you again."
+
+He drew back his head to look at her, and his face softened to a
+wonderful tenderness; there were tears in his eyes.  After a barely
+perceptible pause, he resumed more quietly:
+
+"Prudence, I've thought of this hour day and night since I saw your dear
+face light up at sight of me, and your dear eyes smile their welcome
+into mine.  You are mine by every natural law; and I'm going to take
+you.  Scruples!  We have no use for such folly.  They didn't scruple to
+marry you to a man too old for you.  He had no scruple against taking
+you without love.  They've themselves to thank for this.  What does it
+matter?  It's our own lives we have to think for.  Leave everything to
+me.  Don't worry.  I'll manage things.  I am taking you away with me
+to-night...  Life's going to be just splendid, dear.  We'll be together.
+Oh, Prudence, it will be great--wonderful!  My dear! ...  Oh, my
+dearest!"
+
+Very tenderly he kissed her lips again.  Prudence suddenly disengaged
+herself from his arms and slipped to her feet and stood facing him, the
+moonlight splashed on her hair and face, and on the slender bare arms,
+which she lifted on an impulse, bringing the hands to rest on his
+shoulders.
+
+"We can't, dear," she said.  "We can't.  It isn't that I'm afraid; it
+isn't that I don't love you--better than any one in all the world.  It's
+just because I love you so well, I think, that I can't have the beauty
+of it spoiled.  That sort of thing brings regret--always."
+
+"You don't dare," he said in sullen tones.  "You are thinking of what
+people will say."
+
+"No; it isn't that.  I don't wish to pose as good--I've never been good.
+But clean and decent living appeals to me.  I'm cold, perhaps--even a
+little hard; it isn't so difficult for me to practise restraint--when I
+try--hard.  I'm loving you with all my heart, dear; but I don't want to
+do what you ask.  If I agreed, I should hate myself, my life,
+everything, when the glamour faded and I had time to reflect.  I know
+myself so well.  I would rather go on with my dull loveless life than go
+away with you and lose my self-respect."
+
+"You don't love me," he said.  "You couldn't talk like that if you were
+in love.  It's unnatural.  I'd risk damnation for you."
+
+She leaned a little nearer to him, and a new quality came into her
+voice; her face was solemn and tender.
+
+"There's something else I'm thinking of besides these things," she said.
+"I can't bear that you should go to face death--to meet death,
+perhaps--with this sin upon your soul.  I don't like to think that men
+can talk so lightly of sinning in such grave and terrible times."
+
+He made an impatient sound that was like a cry of protest, and moved
+restlessly under her hands.
+
+"Oh, hang it all!  One doesn't want to be thinking all the time about
+that."
+
+"When death stands so close as it stands to nearly every one of us these
+days; when one reads of nothing else," she added quietly; "it makes one
+think.  It alters all one's view of life.  I used to feel that my own
+life mattered tremendously; that I had to make the most of every
+opportunity which might add to my enjoyment.  Now I see things
+differently.  I don't hold a lesser belief in the importance of life,
+quite the reverse; but the personal point of view is altogether
+unimportant.  Satisfaction comes from living worthily.  I have never
+done that.  I have been always selfish and inconsiderate for others.  I
+believe that to-night you have taught me self-knowledge.  Teach me also
+to be strong."
+
+Her voice fell into silence, but she did not remove her hands from his
+shoulders.  And he remained for a few seconds motionless, looking at her
+without speaking.  The appeal in her eyes and in her voice was
+irresistible; it was as an appeal to his manhood from some one
+pathetically weak and conscious of her weakness; and the better side of
+his nature responded to it.  But it cost him more than she could ever
+know to relinquish his dreams at her bidding.
+
+He put his hands over hers and stood up.  And so they remained for a
+while close together, looking into each other's eyes.
+
+"You are everything to me," he said at last, breaking the silence
+unexpectedly.  "I've thought of you so much--thought of you always as
+belonging to me.  It doesn't seem possible to rid myself of that idea.
+I've no interest in life outside it."
+
+"I know," she said.  "I know.  It is not going to be easy for me
+either."
+
+They came upon another pause.
+
+"At least you have a cause to fight for," she said presently.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"All that doesn't count, somehow.  But I shall be glad to go now.  I
+shall never come back.  Prudence."
+
+"Ah, don't!" she cried, with a sob in her voice.  "Don't say that.  I
+shall pray for your safety every day of my life."
+
+"Pray rather for a swift and merciful bullet," he said.  Then, seeing
+the pain in her eyes, he took her face between his hands and kissed it.
+"Don't cry, little love.  There are worse things to face than the long
+sleep.  Alive or dead, you will live in my heart always.  Keep my place
+green in your memory, dear."
+
+She dropped her face on his breast and sobbed her heart out in the
+shelter of his arms.
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.
+
+More credit is given to heroism which arises from physical courage than
+is accorded usually to moral bravery.  Yet the standard of physical
+courage, however loudly acclaimed, ranks no higher.  To win a victory
+over one's self demands greater strength of purpose than is required for
+the defeat of an ordinary foe.  To obey a sense of right from motives
+other than discretion necessitates courage of a superior order.  And it
+is through this courage, this quiet self-denial, that the world is kept
+a little better, a little sweeter, than would be possible if each
+individual set-out with the poor determination to gratify his every
+desire.
+
+Prudence had won a victory; but she did not feel triumphant; there was
+no conscious elation in her heart.  If the night air struck fresher and
+purer by reason of this restraint, it also struck very chill.  Its cold
+breath enveloped her.  She was weary and sad at heart.
+
+Steele, too, was silent and dispirited.  He parted from her in the road
+outside the gate, parted in almost apathetic calmness, and turned and
+walked quickly away down the hill.  He did not once look back to where
+Prudence waited at the gate and watched him with sad eyes, tearless now,
+until the night enfolded him and hid him from her view.  Then she let
+herself into the house and went wearily up to bed.
+
+That was the beginning and the end of her romance.  All the fine
+thinking in the world could not reduce the feeling of irreparable loss
+which she experienced in the knowledge that he had passed out of her
+life for ever.  She had sent him away; and all her happiness went with
+him, all her love.  If for a moment she regretted the triumph of virtue,
+it was but a transitory regret; but she did regret, passionately, that
+life had come between her and the realisation of love.  She believed
+that she could never feel happy any more.  She also believed that she
+could not return to her husband.  The thought of living again beneath
+his roof was hateful to her.
+
+Then merciful sleep overtook her, and the darkness closed down upon the
+misery of her thoughts.
+
+The morning brought no relief.  Heavy-eyed and languid, Prudence went
+downstairs, to find that she was late for prayers.  She was aware of
+William's gaze, as she slipped quietly into the room and took her seat,
+fixed upon her with a curious, it seemed to her, even a suspicious
+scrutiny.  He paused in the reading and waited with a sort of aggressive
+patience until she was seated.  Then he continued in his sonorous voice
+reading the lesson for the day.
+
+Upon the finish of prayers breakfast followed, after which Mr Graynor
+repaired to the library with Prudence who since her return read the
+papers to him because of his failing sight.  William prepared to start
+out on the day's business.  From the library Prudence could hear him
+calling loudly for his boots, and demanding of the servant who brought
+them why they were not in their accustomed place.  It transpired that he
+had omitted to put them outside his bedroom door on the previous night
+and thereby caused delay in the cleaning of them.  He muttered something
+in response, and hastily proceeded to draw them on.
+
+The servant meanwhile went to the front door in answer to an imperative
+ring.  Commotion followed upon the opening of the door.  Mr Graynor
+looked round at these unexpected interruptions and signed to Prudence to
+cease reading.  She sat with the newspaper open in her hands and
+listened to the sound of angry voices without.
+
+Some one had entered and was talking loudly and defiantly to William in
+the hall.  William was doing his utmost to eject the intruder and to
+talk her down at the same time--two impossible feats.  The noise of
+their voices raised in fierce altercation drew nearer; and, attracted by
+the disturbance, Agatha made her appearance from the morning-room and
+stood, pink and trembling with indignation, looking upon the scene in
+incredulous amazement.
+
+"What is that--creature doing here?" she asked of her brother.
+
+He seemed to find some difficulty in answering her, and, evading her
+eyes, glared furiously at the defiant young woman, who, holding a child
+by the hand, maintained her stand with an air of assurance which refused
+to be cowed by his lowering scowl.
+
+"You tell 'er what I want," she said.  "I don't mind."
+
+"Go away," he shouted.  "Do you hear?  Go away!"
+
+"It isn't difficult to 'ear you," she retorted sharply.  "I want a word
+with you, William Graynor; and I'm not going away until I've 'ad it."
+
+"Turn her out," Miss Agatha exclaimed, shocked and affronted.  "How dare
+she speak to you like that?"
+
+"Why don't you tell 'er," the insolent voice insisted, "what I've come
+for, and why I speak as I do?  Seems as if you was afraid of 'er."
+
+She looked round suddenly, and caught sight of Mr Graynor, standing
+with the library door open, surveying the scene.  She shrank back,
+quailing before the cold anger of his look.  But he had recognised her,
+and spoke now in a voice of sharp command.
+
+"Come in here, girl," he said; and to his son he added fiercely:
+"William, bring that woman inside, and shut the door."
+
+From force of habit, perhaps too because he recognised that there was no
+possible chance of evading explanations, William obeyed the order.  He
+allowed Bessie Clapp to precede him, and following her into the room,
+shut the door sharply behind him, and stood with his back against it in
+an attitude of gloomy anger.  Once he looked at Prudence, seated
+opposite their father with the newspaper in her lap, regarding the woman
+and child with pitiful understanding eyes.  He would have liked to
+suggest the advisability of her retiring; but his natural effrontery had
+deserted him, and he remained silent.
+
+Bessie Clapp also looked at Prudence.  The sight of the quiet figure,
+the light of friendly interest in the blue eyes, proved heartening: the
+hardness melted from her own face.  Standing a few steps inside the door
+against which William leaned, superb in her magnificent beauty, with the
+child clinging nervously to her hand, she confronted Mr Graynor, who,
+reseating himself, remained staring at her fixedly across the
+writing-table upon which he rested his shaking hand.
+
+The stillness of their various poses, for with the closing of the door
+each had maintained a rigid immovability, was fraught with significance.
+There was no need for a verbal explanation of the presence of the woman
+with her child in that house.  Mr Graynor knew, Prudence knew, as
+surely as William and the girl, what brought her there.  Nevertheless
+Mr Graynor, leaning heavily upon the table, with his cold eyes upon the
+girl's frightened face, demanded the reason of her noisy intrusion.
+
+"I told her not to come," William interposed sullenly.  "I dared her to
+come here annoying you."
+
+Mr Graynor silenced him with a gesture, never once removing his gaze
+from the nervous, but still defiant, face.  His question had been
+addressed to the girl, and he waited for her to answer him.  She drew
+the child closer to her, and looked into the cold unsympathetic face of
+her questioner, and answered with a sort of sulky shame:
+
+"I've brought William Graynor's son 'ome."
+
+William made a move, taking a quick step towards her as though he would
+have silenced her with force; but no one looked in his direction; and he
+shrank back to his former position by the door.
+
+"You make a serious charge," Mr Graynor said, speaking harshly.  "It
+will go hard with you if you cannot prove your words."
+
+"I can prove them all right," she answered sulkily.
+
+"I do not believe you," Mr Graynor said.  "This sort of thing has been
+tried often enough.  It is an audacious lie.  I say it is a lie.  Give
+me your proof."
+
+Bessie Clapp smiled faintly.  Her manner was growing more assured; the
+nervousness which the unexpected sight of him had caused her, was less
+apparent now.
+
+"You can't 'ave looked at the boy," she said, and bent down and removed
+the cap from the child's head and turned his face towards the man who
+questioned the truth of her statement.
+
+Mr Graynor had given only a cursory glance at the child; he looked now
+more closely, and, staring with dim eyes fierce with passionate anger
+into the small face, beheld as in the days of his own youth the features
+of his elder son faithfully reproduced.  There could be no dispute as to
+the likeness.  A sickening sense of the truth of the woman's claim,
+which before he had not so much doubted as refused to admit, held him
+dumb.  He put his hand before his eyes to shut out the sight of the
+child's face; and the little fellow, thoroughly frightened now, began to
+whimper.  His mother held him and hushed his cries.
+
+"You see," she said, watching Mr Graynor curiously, fascinated and
+somewhat awed by his evident emotion; "that's my proof.  One 'as only to
+look at 'im to see who's 'is father."
+
+A groan escaped Mr Graynor's lips.  He took his hand from before his
+eyes, and pushed aside some papers on the table, and rested his arms on
+it as before.
+
+"How dare you bring him here?" he asked in low shaking tones.  "Why do
+you bring him--now--after all this time?  You want money, I suppose?"
+
+Bessie Clapp turned a resentful gaze from him to William, who, furtively
+watching her, remained with his shoulders hunched dejectedly, scowling
+malevolently at her, and at the child whose claim upon him she sought to
+establish.
+
+"'E knows why I came," she said, indicating William with a brief nod.
+"I gave 'im 'is chance; but 'e wouldn't 'elp me.  I asked 'im to take
+the child off my 'ands, and 'e refused.  'E thought the work'ouse good
+enough for 'is son.  But the work'ouse don't 'elp these cases; and
+anyway I wouldn't care for 'im to go there.  And I can't keep 'im no
+longer I'm going to be married.  My man's joined up, and I'll draw the
+separation allowance.  But 'e don't want _'is_ child."
+
+Again she gave a nod indicating William, and then brought her gaze back
+to Mr Graynor's face.  The sight of the pained humiliation of his look
+caused a softening in her voice and manner.  She had not wanted to
+distress him; she was not vindictive.  She only required that the father
+of her child should make provision for it.  He was wealthy enough to do
+so.
+
+"I am sorry to 'ave 'ad to come," she said.  "I didn't mean no 'arm.  If
+'e 'adn't treated me mean, I wouldn't 'a come.  But I've got a chance
+now to start fair.  I want to place the child somewheres.  Plenty would
+take 'im if I could get the money guaranteed.  But _'e_," with another
+nod at William, "won't do nothing.  That's why I came.  I warned 'im all
+right."
+
+The red of William's face deepened to purple.  He looked at the woman as
+if he would have killed her had he dared; but he did not move, did not
+utter a word even in his own defence.  His animus against this girl, who
+had been his mistress, arose from the fact that she had broken with him.
+Had the initiative been his he might have acted differently.  He hated
+her while he listened to her scornful denunciation of himself, and the
+sordid story of his meanness which she mercilessly unfolded.  Not a word
+of what she uttered but had the ring of truth in it, and not a word in
+the miserable recital reflected any credit upon himself.  He shifted his
+feet uneasily, and turned his furtive eyes from the spectacle of her
+standing there in her dark and tragic beauty, with the boy clinging
+timidly to her skirt, hiding his tear-stained face in her dress in fear
+of the old man who sat and glared at him and spoke to his mother in
+harsh angry tones.  They frightened him, these strange people.  He
+wanted to go away from the big house, and this fierce old man, and the
+red-faced man, whom he knew slightly but did not like.  The red-faced
+man so often made his mother cry.  But the mother took no heed of the
+small hands tugging at her dress; her thoughts were intent on other
+matters than the child's distress.
+
+Mr Graynor, his face transformed with anger, turned to his son, and, in
+a voice broken with emotion, with shame for that son's dishonourable
+conduct and most despicable meanness, bade him speak.
+
+"You stand there and say nothing to these charges," he cried.  "Why
+don't you speak?  Have you nothing to say in answer to what this woman
+alleges?"
+
+"What is there to say?"  William returned.  "No doubt the child is mine.
+But I don't flatter myself that I have been more favoured than others.
+She is a loose woman; and she is lucky enough to have forced a claim on
+me."
+
+"You lie, William Graynor," she said fiercely.  "And you know that you
+lie.  From the time you pursued me, when I worked in the factory, a girl
+of sixteen, to the moment when I met the man I am going to marry, I
+never looked at another man.  You are a mean liar, that's what you are."
+
+Mr Graynor, ignoring the speaker and still looking towards his son,
+struck the table violently with his hand in an access of indignant
+anger.
+
+"You admit the paternity of this child, and, instead of sharing the
+responsibility, meanly try to shift it, and impugn the morality of a
+woman whose immorality you brought about!  How dare you utter these
+things in my hearing?"
+
+"I've paid her," William excused himself, and fingered his collar
+nervously as though it were too tight.  "I kept her so long as--" He
+broke off abruptly; and added in a savage voice: "She's had money enough
+from me."
+
+"I'm not complaining of what's past," the girl interposed.  "If you
+'adn't stopped the payments I shouldn't be 'ere now.  I can't afford to
+keep the child.  'E's as much yours as mine."
+
+"There," Prudence broke in to the general astonishment, for she had
+remained so quiet until now that they had almost forgotten her presence,
+"you are mistaken.  The law protects the man in these cases."
+
+"Then the law's rotten bad," said Bessie Clapp bitterly.
+
+Whether the sudden recollection of his daughter's presence decided Mr
+Graynor to bring the interview to a close, or if he felt unequal to
+further discussion is uncertain, but at this point he waved the girl to
+silence, and unlocking a drawer in the table, took out his cheque book
+and wrote a cheque and tore it out and passed it across the table to
+her.
+
+"I will see that my son makes suitable provision for the child," he said
+quaveringly.
+
+Bessie Clapp took the cheque and stood with it in her hand, looking at
+him out of her dark, sombre eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry I come," she said falteringly.  "I'm going right away from
+'ere.  You won't see me no more."
+
+Then suddenly Prudence rose.  She left her place by the fire, and
+crossing to where the other girl stood beside the table, she bent over
+the child and took the little fellow by the hand and drew him to her.
+
+"I am a childless woman," she said, in a sweet voice full of sympathy,
+"and I love children.  Give him to me."
+
+CHAPTER FORTY.
+
+A bomb falling in their midst could scarcely have caused a greater
+sensation than was produced by Prudence's request.  The effect of her
+speech and of her action was electrical.  Only the child remained
+unmoved; and he, reassured doubtless by the quiet composure of her
+bearing amid the general tension, which he realised without
+understanding it, and the sweet gentleness of her voice, ceased his
+plaintive whimpering and stared at her with round eyes filled with
+wonderment, and forgot his fear.
+
+Bessie Clapp stared also, a solemn light in her dark eyes, and with a
+face grown tender and womanly, with all the hardness gone from its look.
+But William Graynor, flushed with anger, strode forward to intervene;
+and the old man, looking with disfavour upon the grouping, uttered: "No,
+no!" in tones of sharp protest, and put out a hand and touched
+Prudence's sleeve.
+
+"The child will be all right," he said.  "Leave this to me."
+
+She turned to him with a wistful smile.
+
+"He's nobody's bairn," she said.  "Nobody wants him--except me."
+
+"Your husband wouldn't like it," he remonstrated.  "You have to consider
+him.  Take the child away," he added, addressing Bessie Clapp.  "I will
+communicate with you later."
+
+Prudence gave the boy into his mother's charge and walked with them to
+the door.
+
+"If I can arrange it, are you willing to give him up to me entirely?"
+she asked.
+
+"Yes, miss," Bessie answered in awed tones; and added, almost in a
+whisper: "It 'ud be a fine thing for 'im, any'ow."
+
+"'E's good," she said, with the door open and her hand upon it.  "'E
+ban't like 'is father; 'e ban't mean."
+
+Prudence returned to confront her father and brother, both of them
+disturbed, though in different degrees, by her unlooked for
+interference.  Mr Graynor regretted having allowed her to be present at
+the interview, while William resented deeply the fact that his double
+life should have been revealed to the young sister whom he had
+systematically snubbed and preached to all the years she had lived in
+the home.  The knowledge that she wished to adopt his bastard son was
+insupportable.
+
+"Let me beg, sir," he said, crimson and spluttering for words, "that you
+won't permit this.  It's indecent.  It's--unthinkable.  I can't agree to
+it."
+
+"It has nothing," Prudence answered quietly, "to do with you."
+
+Mr Graynor fixed his dim angry eyes on his son's face, the passion
+which he had kept under until now blazing up like a conflagration fanned
+by a sudden draught.  He had never felt so humiliated and ashamed in all
+the years of his long life.  For generations they had lived in
+Wortheton, honourable men and women, with an unsullied record which it
+remained for the present generation to smirch.  It hurt him in his most
+vulnerable spot, his pride, that this base and sordid sin should be laid
+to his son's charge.
+
+"You despicable hypocrite!" he shouted.  "How dare you question the
+right of any one to undertake a responsibility you are not man enough to
+shoulder?  Had I known before of this low intrigue I would have
+compelled you to marry the mother of your child.  Fortunately for her,
+she has found a better fate.  As for the child--" He broke off abruptly,
+and turned in his seat and sat looking into the fire.  "Prudence and I
+will settle that matter," he added more quietly.  "Leave it to us."
+
+Without uttering another word, William went heavily out of the room.
+Prudence approached the old man, who sat, a shrunken dejected figure,
+before the hearth, and kneeling on the carpet beside him, put her arms
+about him lovingly, and remained so in silence, while he looked steadily
+into the fire, thinking back--hearing again in imagination her indignant
+young voice speaking out of the past: "I will pray hard night and
+morning that God will befriend Bessie Clapp."  He put a hand upon her
+hair and smoothed it caressingly.
+
+"This is a blow, Prue," he said.  "It hits me hard."
+
+He roused himself after a while and sat straighter in his chair and
+looked at her inquiringly.
+
+"What makes you think you would like to have the child?" he asked.
+
+"Because I have no little one of my own," she answered.  "And this
+little child's life promises to be a sad one.  He has a claim on our
+consideration; the same blood runs in his veins."
+
+"That is what makes your proposition impossible, as I see it," he said.
+"Edward would not wish it.  Think of the disgrace, my dear.  One likes
+to hide these things."
+
+"That's where I don't see with you," she replied gently.  "In my opinion
+it is in refusing to accept our responsibilities that we merit disgrace.
+I've learned that quite lately.  Let me try to explain."
+
+She clung closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder and was silent
+for a space, plunged in thought.  The old man continued his occupation
+of stroking the bright hair, and was silent too, wondering what it was
+that needed explanation.
+
+"You never asked me," Prudence said presently, "what it was that brought
+me home so unexpectedly."
+
+"I was so glad," he replied, "to see you.  It never occurred to me to
+ask the reason of your coming.  It's sufficient for me that you are
+here."
+
+"Dear!" she said, and pressed his hand fondly.  "I'm always glad to
+come.  I'm sorry that ever I went away.  I came home because of a
+quarrel with Edward.  I left him in anger.  I had thoughts of leaving
+him altogether.  You see, dear, I too have behaved badly.  I meant to
+shirk my responsibilities because they had grown irksome.  Don't grieve,
+daddy; that's all past.  I've come to see that life can't be twisted to
+suit each person's needs.  We should make a hopeless tangle of it if we
+followed that principle.  There's one simple course for the straight and
+decent liver--to accept life as it is and make the best of it.  I mean
+to write to Edward to-day and ask him to come down and fetch me.  Then I
+will tell him about the child.  If he consents to my adopting him, I
+shall take him back with me."
+
+"You will make Edward's consent a condition to your reconciliation?"
+Mr Graynor asked.
+
+"Oh, no!"  Prudence looked swiftly into his face.  "I am hoping that he
+will give it as a concession."
+
+She twined her arms about the old man's neck and drew his cheek to hers
+and pressed hers against it.
+
+"I'm just hungry for a little child," she said.  "I long to hear little
+footsteps about the house, to know the clinging feel of little hands.
+I'm just a sackful of motherhood tied down and repressed.  I feel that I
+can't go on like this much longer."
+
+"I wish you had a dozen babies of your own," he said wistfully.
+
+"My dear!"  She was laughing now, though the tears shone behind the
+laughter.  "Half that number would serve."
+
+"I still don't like the idea of you adopting this child," Mr Graynor
+said after a pause.  "He comes of bad stock, Prue."
+
+"Not bad stock," she contradicted.  "I've known his mother all my life.
+She made a mistake.  That was largely due to environment: many girls in
+her position would have done the same.  And William... we won't judge
+William.  We don't know--everything, do we?  I am a great believer in
+training.  I know the faults I have to watch for.  I shall teach my
+child to be honest and generous and self-controlled."
+
+He smiled at her a little sadly.  Youth is so hopeful and so sanguine.
+But experience had proved to him that there is something which strikes
+deeper than training, something which no training can overcome--the
+nature which lies at the root of every human being.
+
+CHAPTER FORTY ONE.
+
+Edward Morgan came in immediate response to his wife's letter.  It was
+highly inconvenient with the press of business at the mills for him to
+leave; but he spent the night in travelling in order to save a day, and
+arrived at Wortheton, cold and stiff, in the early hours of the morning,
+risking chills and all the evils he was wont to avoid in his alacrity to
+respond to his wife's unexpected summons.
+
+It had come to him in a flash of unusual perceptivity that if he did not
+seize this moment which her softened mood generously offered for
+effecting a reconciliation, another opportunity might not present
+itself.  Despite a certain narrowness of outlook, there was no smallness
+in Mr Morgan's nature.  Because he read in Prudence's letter a sign of
+relenting, an earnest wish to close their differences, it did not occur
+to him to take a dignified stand and leave her to make all the advances,
+extending his forgiveness only when fully assured of her penitence.
+Such unequal methods, he realised quite clearly, never effected anything
+beyond a compromise.  And he was very anxious for a complete
+understanding between himself and his young wife.  Complete
+understanding and complete trust.  Without these no married life could
+be congenial.
+
+His own marriage had fallen far short of his expectations.  He knew that
+he had not won Prudence's love.  Since the night of their quarrel, when
+she had confessed to loving Steele, the hope which he had fostered
+patiently through the disappointing years, that he might yet win it, had
+died utterly.  But, oddly, that night with its ugly memories, its noisy
+wrangling and bitter recrimination, had revealed with a certainty beyond
+question that his own love for her, which he had believed was faded to
+insignificance, was still very much alive.  He wanted her very
+earnestly.  He missed her, missed her bright presence about the house,
+her youthful prettiness, her coming and going in her independent search
+for pleasure outside his home.  She had brought a glimpse of the
+unexpected, the delightful irrelevance of pleasant trivial things, into
+the prosaic setting of everyday life which had caught him away
+insensibly from the dulness and the worries of his stupendous business
+undertakings, and brightened his home, very much, he often thought, as
+the swift appearance of the sun would brighten the prospect on a grey
+day.  He had not realised, until she left him, how much he appreciated
+these things.  It was some return anyway, if not the most adequate he
+could have desired, for the love he felt for her.  He had made no
+particular concession, had not even attempted to adapt himself to her
+view of life.  He had demanded a great deal of her and given little in
+return.
+
+These thoughts floated through his mind as he drove up the hill to the
+house.  He was seeing their case altogether differently from the days
+when he had taken his young wife home and quarrelled with her seriously
+over such unimportant matters as ventilation and the direction of
+household affairs.  He was, he realised now, directly responsible for
+the beginning of the breach which had widened yearly and ended in an
+open rupture.  It remained for him to make amends for those earlier
+mistakes which had broken up the peace of his home.  He had led too
+self-centred a life.  In future he would evince greater interest in his
+wife's doings, show more sympathy with her aims.  After all, a wife
+needs something more from her husband than board and lodging; she has a
+right to his confidence and companionship.  He had never attempted to
+make a companion of her.  He had treated her always as a child, a child
+to be spoilt and petted, until she refused the petting.  Lately he had
+treated her with greater indifference, but still as a child, an
+unreasonable child towards whom kindness was misdirected.  It was not
+surprising that the woman in her had rebelled.
+
+It came as an agreeable surprise to Mr Morgan when he reached Court
+Heatherleigh in the grey dawn, weary and cold after his long journey, to
+be met on the doorstep by Prudence, who was the only member of the
+household awake at that hour.
+
+Their meeting was somewhat constrained.  He had not expected to see her
+and was at a loss for words.  They faced one another a little
+self-consciously in the big empty hall; and then Edward Morgan bent down
+and kissed his wife, with an air of uncertainty as to how his caress
+would be received.  Prudence flushed warmly, and, to cover her
+embarrassment, became actively helpful in disentangling him from his
+numerous wrappings.
+
+"I didn't expect to see any one at this hour," he said, and struggled
+out of his heavy coat and hung it on a peg.  Then he turned to her with
+quick unexpectedness.  "Thank you for the kindly thought, dear.  It is
+good to find a welcome awaiting one at the end of a journey."
+
+"You shouldn't have travelled by the night train," she said.  "You know
+you hate it."
+
+"It saved time," he explained.
+
+Arrangements had been made for an early breakfast for the traveller.
+Prudence led him into the breakfast-room, and poured out the hot coffee
+which she had made.  They did not talk much.  Each was conscious of the
+strain of this meeting; and the remarks which passed between them were
+impersonal and confined to the business of the moment.
+
+On finishing his meal Mr Morgan expressed a desire to go to bed; he
+thought he could sleep for a couple of hours.  Prudence accompanied him
+upstairs, and parted from him outside his bedroom door with a smile that
+was friendlier and more ready than any she had given him of late.  He
+was puzzled.  He could not understand her.  It was as though they had
+gone back to the days of the courtship, when he had been diffident and
+awkward and had found her shy and a little difficult, but kind always.
+The wife who had left him in anger, who for years, it seemed to him on
+looking back upon the past, had felt entirely indifferent towards him,
+ceased to be a vivid memory with him; her place in his thoughts was
+blotted out by the sunshine of Prudence's smile.
+
+He did not understand what had worked this change in her, but he
+realised that in some subtle way she was changed.  She had grown
+suddenly older, more self-contained and womanly.  She was as a person
+who, after walking aimlessly for a long while, strikes the right road
+unexpectedly, and proceeds more surely, with a definite purpose in view.
+
+Still puzzling over these things, he got into bed and soon forgot his
+perplexities and fatigue in sleep.
+
+While Edward Morgan slept heavily, and the rest of the household
+slumbered on undisturbed by the early arrival, Prudence remained at her
+bedroom window, wakeful and deep in thought, looking out upon the new
+day, upon the garden drenched with the heavy dews and saddened looking
+in its mantle of unrelieved green.  There were weeds upon the paths,
+which formerly had been weedless.  It occurred to her that the disorder
+was significant of the disorder in their own lives.  They had been
+careless of what they should have tended carefully, and had allowed
+things to fall into neglect.  There was a good deal of weeding to be
+accomplished on her own account.  She had let the disorder accumulate
+until it threatened to choke all the pleasant places in her mind and
+leave her just a discontented woman with no object in life, no mental
+outlook.
+
+Many lives as they unfold reveal a less agreeable vista than
+anticipation has led one to expect.  The philosophic mind makes the best
+of these disappointments, and sets to work to discover hidden beauties
+in the less alluring prospect ahead; it is the shallower mind which is
+dismayed by adverse conditions.  The road upon which Prudence had set
+her feet was not the road of her inclination; it was none the less the
+road she must travel.  To follow it finely was the desire of her heart,
+as she leaned from the window and thought sadly of the love she had let
+pass out of her life, and of the responsibilities she had undertaken,
+and so far neglected entirely.  She had endeavoured to shape life to her
+purpose, and instead life was shaping her to certain definite ends.
+
+Prudence leaned her chin on her hand and looked down upon the white
+riband of road beyond the walls.  Love had appeared to her along that
+road, and love had parted from her there and gone on down the road out
+of her life.  There were two sad hearts more in the world, that was all.
+But the road of life, like the road beyond the walls, remained to be
+trodden.  One had to go on.  It is better to travel with a brave
+confidence than to cherish vain regrets.
+
+Prudence and her husband met and had their talk out in the library after
+breakfast.  It was not so difficult a talk as she had imagined it would
+be.  Mr Morgan was as eager to make concessions as Prudence.  He had
+been doing a good deal of private thinking on his own account; and he
+saw very clearly that his young wife had never received fair treatment.
+He was anxious to make amends.
+
+His insistence on taking the greater share of the blame left her with
+curiously little to urge.  She scrutinised him, faintly amused.  It
+occurred to her that this generous closing of differences resembled the
+impulsive overtures of two children who had quarrelled needlessly and
+were bent on making it up.  On one point he was very decided: he refused
+to open up the cause of their quarrel.  All that was past.  He wanted to
+start afresh from that moment; he was not going to look back.
+
+"I've been a fool, Prudence," he said.  "A man is apt to forget the
+value of even his dearest treasure, simply, I suppose, because of the
+assurance given by possession; but when he is in danger of losing it he
+discovers his need.  My dear, I have been very unhappy."
+
+He was seated beside her on the sofa, and he moved as he finished
+speaking and put a hand upon hers, which rested on the seat beside her.
+She twisted her hand round and clasped his warmly.
+
+"Perhaps it was rather a good thing that I came away," she said, after a
+moment's pause.  "I was growing nervy.  A woman with nerves is difficult
+to live with.  I have been thinking, and finding out things.  It is
+astonishing what a lot I've learned about myself just lately.  I want to
+do better."
+
+"It's been my fault," he insisted.  "I never made sufficient allowance
+for your youth, dear.  We'll try again--make a fresh start.  We'll talk
+things out together and not bottle up grievances.  We have never talked
+freely enough to one another."
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"I'm rather glad," he said presently, "that things came to a head.  It
+has opened up the way to a better understanding.  You are the sort of
+woman a man learns to rely upon.  You're honest.  When I recall the
+things I said to you that night I am ashamed of myself."
+
+"Never mind that now," she said quickly.  "I don't want to think of
+that.  We agreed not to talk of that."
+
+She got up suddenly and stood in front of him, looking down at him with
+softened, smiling eyes.
+
+"I want to ask a favour," she said, "and I feel that that isn't quite
+honest just at the moment.  It's like taking advantage of our talk.
+That's so like a woman, isn't it?"
+
+He sprang up from his seat and took her by the shoulders and kissed her.
+
+"It's the most generous response you could make," he said--"to ask a
+favour.  It's a proof of your trust anyhow."
+
+"It's something very big," she said, with her earnest eyes lifted to his
+face.  "If you are altogether against it I'll not insist."
+
+"Tell me what it is," he said, manifestly surprised by the seriousness
+of her manner, and entirely unsuspecting the nature of the request.
+
+A faint increase of colour stole into her cheeks, but she kept her gaze
+lifted to his.
+
+"I have discovered a little child," she explained softly, "whom nobody
+wants; and I want to mother him.  I want to take him home with me."
+
+"You've always wanted that," he said, and waited for further
+enlightenment.
+
+Briefly she confided to his scandalised ears the story of William's
+illegitimate son, observing him closely while she unfolded the sordid
+tale in simple direct language, making no appeal to sentiment, merely
+relating the bald facts and leaving these to work their own effect.  She
+was not in the least surprised that he was too shocked on hearing the
+story to feel any sympathy for the child in his deserted condition.
+That side of the picture left him unmoved.
+
+"You couldn't bring that child home," he said, with more than a touch of
+firmness.  "A child like that! ...  In our home!  My dear, how could you
+wish such a thing in view of his parentage?"
+
+"It is on account of his parentage I wish it," Prudence answered
+quietly.  "He is a Graynor, Edward.  I want to give him a chance--a
+chance to grow up honest and decent living, a chance to become a better
+man than his father."
+
+"You talk as though the child were your responsibility," he complained.
+"It's nothing to do with us."
+
+"Not directly, no," she said.
+
+"Nor indirectly," he insisted.  "There isn't the faintest reason why you
+should assume responsibility."
+
+"There is every reason," she urged.  "He is a child launched evilly into
+a world which shows little sympathy for these children.  His life will
+be a hard one with no good nor kindly influences surrounding it.  There
+are numberless cases like this--little children brought into the world
+shamefully, and left to drift.  It is not surprising that they grow up
+to become bad citizens; it would be surprising if they didn't.  I want
+to give one of these small citizens his chance.  The knowledge that he
+is closely akin to me makes me more earnest in this wish.  We are
+childless people, Edward; we could do this without injuring any one.
+Are you very set against it?"
+
+She paused, and gazed inquiringly into his grave face, while he looked
+back at her for a long minute in silence, looked into the blue eyes,
+raised to his with a frank trustfulness he had never beheld in them
+before; and he knew that he could not refuse her her wish, however
+distasteful the idea of introducing this child into his home might be.
+Still gazing steadily into her quiet eyes, he said:
+
+"You wish to give this child his chance?  I don't like the idea, but I
+have no doubt it is none the less right because it is objectionable to
+me.  I withdraw my opposition.  Give him his chance, Prudence.  And in
+return let me ask a favour of you."
+
+"What is that?" she said.
+
+He did not take his eyes from hers.  He remained standing before her,
+observing her with such a yearning wistfulness in his face that her
+heart went out to him in pity because she had no love to offer in return
+for the love he still bore for her.
+
+"What is the favour, dear?" she asked.  "Give me also a chance," he said
+hoarsely, and held out his hands to her, and waited.
+
+Prudence put her hands into his, and the tears were in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Imprudence, by F.E. Mills Young
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