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The reflections of Ambrosine

by Elinor Glyn · English · Gutenberg #11624 · 385,774 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The reflections of Ambrosine
        a novel

Author: Elinor Glyn


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11624]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11624

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, William Flis and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REFLECTIONS OF AMBROSINE ***

The Reflections of Ambrosine

A Novel by

Elinor Glyn




NOTE

In thanking the readers who were kind enough to appreciate my "Visits
of Elizabeth," I take this opportunity of saying that I did not write
the two other books which appeared anonymously. The titles of those
works were so worded that they gave the public the impression that I
was their author. I have never written any book but the "Visits of
Elizabeth." Everything that I write will be signed with my name,

ELINOR GLYN




BOOK I




I


I have wondered sometimes if there are not perhaps some disadvantages
in having really blue blood in one's veins, like grandmamma and me.
For instance, if we were ordinary, common people our teeth would
chatter naturally with cold when we have to go to bed without fires in
our rooms in December; but we pretend we like sleeping in "well-aired
rooms"--at least I have to. Grandmamma simply says we are obliged to
make these small economies, and to grumble would be to lose a trick
to fate.

"Rebel if you can improve matters," she often tells me, "but otherwise
accept them with calmness."

We have had to accept a good many things with calmness since papa made
that tiresome speculation in South America. Before that we had a nice
apartment in Paris and as many fires as we wished. However, in spite
of the comfort, grandmamma hated papa's "making" money. It was not the
career of a gentleman, she said, and when the smash came and one heard
no more of papa, I have an idea she was almost relieved.

We came first over to England, and, after long wanderings backward and
forward, took this little furnished place at the corner of Ledstone
Park. It is just a cottage--once a keeper's, I believe--and we have
only Hephzibah and a wretched servant-girl to wait on us. Hephzibah
was my nurse in America before we ever went to Paris, and she is as
ugly as a card-board face on Guy Fawkes day, and as good as gold.

Grandmamma has had a worrying life. She was brought up at the court of
Charles X.--can one believe it, all those years ago!--her family up
to that having lived in Ireland since the great Revolution. Indeed,
her mother was Irish, and I think grandmamma still speaks French with
an accent. (I hope she will never know I said that.) Her name was
Mademoiselle de Calincourt, the daughter of the Marquis de Calincourt,
whose family had owned Calincourt since the time of Charlemagne
or something before that. So it was annoying for them to have had
their heads chopped off and to be obliged to live in Dublin on
nothing a year. The grandmother of grandmamma, Ambrosine Eustasie
de Calincourt, after whom I am called, was a famous character. She
was so good-looking that Robespierre offered to let her retain her
head if she would give him a kiss, but she preferred to drive to the
guillotine in the cart with her friends, only she took a rose to keep
off the smell of the common people, and, they say, ran up the steps
smiling. Grandmamma has her miniature, and it is, she says, exactly
like me.

I have heard that grandmamma's marriage with grandpapa--an
Englishman--was considered at the time to be a very suitable affair.
He had also ancestors since before Edward the Confessor. However,
unfortunately, a few years after their marriage (grandmamma was
really _un peu passée_ when that took place) grandpapa made a
_bêtise_--something political or diplomatic, but I have never heard
exactly what; anyway, it obliged them to leave hurriedly and go to
America. Grandmamma never speaks of her life there or of grandpapa,
so I suppose he died, because when I first remember things we were
crossing to France in a big ship--just papa, grandmamma, and I. My
mother died when I was born. She was an American of one of the first
original families in Virginia; that is all I know of her. We have
never had a great many friends--even when we lived in Paris--because,
you see, as a rule people don't live so long as grandmamma, and the
other maids of honor of the court of Charles X. were all buried years
ago. Grandmamma was eighty-eight last July! No one would think it to
look at her. She is not deaf or blind or any of those annoying things,
and she sits bolt-upright in her chair, and her face is not very
wrinkled--more like fine, old, white kid. Her hair is arranged with
such a _chic_; it is white, but she always has it a little powdered as
well, and she wears such becoming caps, rather like the pictures of
Madame du Deffand. They are always of real lace--I know, for I have
to mend them. Some of her dresses are a trifle shabby, but they look
splendid when she puts them on, and her eyes are the eyes of a hawk,
the proudest eyes I have ever seen. Her third and little fingers are
bent with rheumatism, but she still polishes her nails and covers the
rest of her hands with mittens. You can't exactly love grandmamma, but
you feel you respect her dreadfully, and it is a great honor when she
is pleased.

I was twelve when we left Paris, and I am nineteen now. We have lived
on and off in England ever since, part of the time in London--that was
dull! All those streets and faces, and no one to speak to, and the mud
and the fogs!

During those years we have only twice had glimpses of papa--the
shortest visits, with long talks alone with grandmamma and generally
leaving by the early train.

He seems to me to be rather American, papa, and very coarse to be
the son of grandmamma; but I must say I have always had a sneaking
affection for him. He never takes much notice of me--a pat on the head
when I was a child, and since an awkward kiss, as if he was afraid of
breaking a bit of china. I feel somehow that he does not share all
of grandmamma's views; he seems, in fact, like a person belonging to
quite another world than ours. If it was not that he has the same nose
and chin as grandmamma, one would say she had bought him somewhere,
and that he could not be her own son.

Hephzibah says he is good-natured, so perhaps that is why he made a
_bêtise_ in South America. One ought never to be called good-natured,
grandmamma says--as well write one's self down a noodle at once. While
we were in Paris we hardly ever saw papa either; he was always out
West in America, or at Rio, or other odd places. All we knew of him
was, there was plenty of money to grandmamma's account in the bank.

Grandmamma has given me most of my education herself since we came to
England, and she has been especially particular about deportment. I
have never been allowed to lean back in my chair or loll on a sofa,
and she has taught me how to go in and out of a room and how to
enter a carriage. We had not a carriage, so we had to arrange with
footstools for the steps and a chair on top of a box for the seat.
That used to make me laugh!--but I had to do it--into myself. As for
walking, I can carry any sized bundle on my head, and grandmamma says
she has nothing further to teach me in that respect, and that I have
mastered the fact that a gentlewoman should give the impression that
the ground is hardly good enough to tread on. She has also made me go
through all kinds of exercises to insure suppleness, and to move
from the hips. And the day she told me she was pleased I shall never
forget.

There are three things, she says, a woman ought to look--straight as
a dart, supple as a snake, and proud as a tiger-lily.

Besides deportment I seem to have learned a lot of stuff that I am
sure no English girls have to bother about, I probably am unacquainted
with half the useful, interesting things they know.

We brought with us a beautifully bound set of French classics, and
we read Voltaire one day, and La Bruyère the next, and Pascal, and
Fontenelle, and Molière, and Fénelon, and the sermons of Bossuet,
and since I have been seventeen the _Maximes_ of La Rochefoucauld.
Grandmamma dislikes Jean Jacques; she says he helped the Revolution,
and she is all for the _ancien régime_. But in all these books she
makes me skip what I am sure are the nice parts, and there are whole
volumes of Voltaire that I may not even look into. For herself
grandmamma has numbers of modern books and papers. She says she must
understand the times. Besides all these things I have had English
governesses who have done what they could to drum a smattering of
everything into my head, but we never were able to afford very good
ones after we left Paris.

There is one thing I can do better than the English girls--I am
English myself, of course, on account of grandpapa--only I mean the
ones who have lived here always--and that is, embroider fine cambric.
I do all our underlinen, and it is quite as nice as that in the shops
in the Rue de la Paix. Grandmamma says a lady, however poor, should
wear fine linen, even if she has only one new dress a year--she calls
the stuff worn by people here "sail-cloth"! So I stitch and stitch,
summer and winter.

I do wonder and wonder at things sometimes: what it would be like to
be rich, for instance, and to have brothers and sisters and friends;
and what it would be like to have a lover _à l'anglaise_. Grandmamma
would think that dreadfully improper until after one was married, but
I believe it would be rather nice, and perhaps one could marry him,
too. However, there is not much chance of my getting one, or a husband
either, as I have no _dot_.

We have an old friend, the Marquis de Rochermont, who pays us
periodical visits. I believe long ago he was grandmamma's lover. They
have such beautiful manners together, and their conversation is so
interesting, one can fancy one's self back in that dainty world of
the engravings of Moreau le Jeune and Freudenberg which we have. They
are as gay and witty as if they were both young and his feet were not
lumpy with gout and her hands crooked with rheumatism. They discuss
morals and religion, and, above all, philosophy, and I have learned
a great deal by listening. And for morals, it seems one may do what
one pleases as long as one behaves like a lady. And for religion, the
first thing is to conform to the country one lives in and to conduct
one's self with decency. As for Philosophy (I put a great big "P" to
that, for it appears to be the chief)--Philosophy seems to settle
everything in life, and enables one to take the ups and downs of fate,
the good and the bad, with a smiling face. I mean to study it always,
but I dare say it will be easier when I am older.

On the days when Monsieur de Rochermont comes grandmamma wears the
lavender silk for dinner and the best Alençon cap, and Hephzibah stays
so long dressing her that I often have to help the servant to lay
the table for dinner. The Marquis never arrives until the afternoon,
and leaves within a couple of days. He brings an old valet called
Theodore, and they have bandboxes and small valises, and I
believe--only I must not say it aloud--that the bandboxes contain his
wigs. The one for dinner is curled and scented, and the travelling one
is much more ordinary. I am sent to bed early on those evenings.

Each time the Marquis brings a present of game or fine fruit for
grandmamma and a box of bonbons for me. I don't like sweets much, but
the boxes are charming. These visits happen twice a year, in June and
December, wherever we happen to be.

The only young men in this part of the world are the curate and two
hobbledehoys, the sons of a person who lives in the place beyond
Ledstone, and they are common and uninteresting and _parvenu_. All
these people came to call as soon as we arrived, and parsons and old
maids by the dozen, but grandmamma's exquisite politeness upsets them.
I suppose they feel that she considers they are not made of the same
flesh and blood as she is, so we never get intimate with anybody
whatever places we are in.

Hephzibah has a lover. You can get one in that class no matter how
ugly you are, it seems, and he is generally years and years younger
than you are. Hephzibah's is the man who comes round with the grocer's
cart for orders, and he is young enough to be her son. I have
seen them talking when I have been getting the irons hot to iron
grandmamma's best lace. Hephzibah's face, which is a grayish yellow
generally, gets a pale beet-root up to her ears, and she looks so coy.
But I dare say it feels lovely to her to stand there at the back door
and know some one is interested in what she does and says.

Ledstone Park is owned by some people of the name of Gurrage--does not
it sound a fat word! They are a mother and son, but they have been
at Bournemouth ever since we came, six months ago. It is a frightful
place, and although it is miles in the country it looks like a
suburban villa; the outside is all stucco, and nasty, common-looking
pots and bad statues ornament the drive. They pulled down the smaller
original Jacobean house that was there when they bought the place, we
have heard. They are coming home soon, so perhaps we shall see them,
but I can't think Gurrage could be the name of really nice people.
The parson, of the church came to call at once, but grandmamma nearly
made him spoil his hat, he fidgeted with it so, and he hardly dared to
ask for more than one subscription--she is so beautifully polite, and
she often is laughing in her sleeve. She says so few people can see
the comic side of things and that it is a great gift and chases away
foolish _migraines_. I think she has a grand scheme in her head for
me, and that is what we are saving up every penny for.

Grandpapa's people lived in the next county to this, in a place
called Dane Mount. He was a younger son and in the diplomatic service
before he made his _bêtise_, but if he was alive now he would be over
a hundred years old, so during that time the family has naturally
branched off a good deal, and we can't be said to be very nearly
related to them. The place was not entailed, and went with the female
line into the Thornhirst family, who live there now. They are rather
new baronets, created by George II. However, I believe grandmamma's
scheme is for us to become acquainted with them, and for me to marry
whichever of them is the right age. The present baronet's name is Sir
Antony; it is a pretty name, I think. How this is to come about I do
not know, and of course I dare not question grandmamma.

How I wish it was summer again! I hate these damp, cold days, and the
east winds, and the darkness. I wish I might stay in bed until eleven,
as grandmamma does. We have our chocolate at seven, which Hephzibah
brings up, and then when I am dressed I practise for an hour; after
that there are the finishing touches to be put to our sitting-room,
and the best Sèvres and the miniatures to be dusted. Grandmamma would
not trust any one to do it but me, but by ten I can get out for a
walk.

It used to be dreadfully tiresome until we came here, because I was
never allowed to go out without Hephzibah, and she was so busy we
never got a chance in the morning, but since we came here I have
had such a pleasure. A dear, clever collie for a friend--we got him
from the lost dogs' home, and no one can know the joy he is to me.
Grandmamma considers him a kind of chaperon, and I am allowed to go
alone for quite long walks now, and when we are out of sight and no
one is looking we run, and it is such fun. Yesterday there was an
excitement--the hunt passed! It is the first time I have seen one
close. That must be delightful to rush along on horseback! I could
feel my heart beating just looking at them, and my dear Roy barked all
the time, and if I had not held his collar I am sure he would have
joined the other dogs to go and catch the fox. Some of the men in
their red coats looked so handsome, and there was one all covered with
mud; he must have had a tumble. His stirrup-leather gave way just
as he got up to the mound where Roy and I were standing, and he was
obliged to get off his horse and settle it. I am sure by his face
he was swearing to himself at being delayed. His fall had evidently
broken some strap and he was fumbling in his pocket for a knife to
mend it.

I always wear a little gold chatelaine that belonged to Ambrosine
Eustasie de Calincourt and is marked with her coronet and initials;
it has a tiny knife among the other things hanging from it. The muddy
hunter could not find one; he searched in every pocket. At last he
turned to me and said: "Do you happen to have a knife by chance?" and
then when he saw I was a girl he took off his hat. It was gray with
clay, and so was half of his face, it looked so comic I could not help
smiling as I caught his one eye; the other was rather swollen. The
one that was visible was a grayish-greeny-blue eye with a black edge.
I quickly gave him my knife and he laughed as he took it. "Yes, I do
look a guy, don't I?" he said, and we both laughed again. Even through
the mud one could see he was a gentleman. He fixed his stirrup so
quickly and neatly, but it broke the blade of my little gold knife.

He apologized profusely, and said he must have it mended, and where
should he send it? but at that moment there was the sound of the hunt
coming across a field near again. He had no time for more manners, but
jumped on his horse and was off in a few seconds--and alas! my knife
went with him! And just as I was turning to go home I picked up the
broken blade, which was lying in the road. I hope grandmamma won't
notice it and ask about it. As I said before, there are disadvantages
in being well born--one cannot tell lies like servants.




II


The Gurrage family have arrived. We saw carts and a carriage going to
meet them at the station. Their liveries are prune and scarlet, and
look so inharmonious, and they seem to have crests and coats of arms
on every possible thing. Young Mr. Gurrage is our landlord--but I
think I said that before.

On Sunday in church the party entered the Ledstone family pew. An
oldish woman with a huddled figure--how unlike grandmamma!--looking
about the class of a housekeeper; a girl of my age, with red hair and
white eye-lashes and a buff hat on; and a young man, dark, thick,
common-looking. He seemed kind to his mother, though, and arranged
a cushion for her. Their pew is at right angles to the one I sit
in, so I have a full view of them all the time. He has box-pleated
teeth--which seem quite unnecessary when dentists are so good now. No
one would have missed at least four of them if they had been pulled
out when he was a boy. His eyes are wishy-washy in spite of being
brown, and he looks as if he did not have enough sleep. They were all
three self-conscious and conscious of other people. Grandmamma says
in a public place, unless the exigencies of politeness require one to
come into personal contact with people, one ought never to be aware
that there is anything but tables and chairs about. I have not once in
my life seen her even glance around, and yet nothing escapes her hawk
eye. Coming out they passed me on the path to the church gate, and
Mrs. Gurrage stopped, and said:

"Good-mornin', me dear; you must be our new tenant at the cottage."

Her voice is the voice of quite a common person and has the broad
accent of some county--I don't know which.

I was so astonished at being called "me dear" by a stranger that for
half a second I almost forgot grandmamma's maxim of "let nothing in
life put you out of countenance." However, I did manage to say:

"Yes, I am Miss Athelstan."

Then the young man said, "I hope you find everything to your liking
there, and that my agent has made things comfortable."

"We are quite pleased with the cottage," I said.

"Well, don't stand on ceremony," the old woman continued. "Come up
and see us at The Hall whenever you like, me dear, and I'll be round
callin' on your grandma one of these days soon, but don't let that
stop her if she likes to look in at me first."

I thought of grandmamma "looking in" on this person, and I could
have laughed aloud; however, I managed to say, politely, that my
grandmother was an aged lady and somewhat rheumatic, and as we had not
a carriage I hoped Mrs. Gurrage would excuse her paying her respects
in person.

"Rheumatic, is she? Well, I have the very thing for the j'ints. My
still-room maid makes it under my own directions. I'll bring some when
I call. Good-day to you, me dear," and they bustled on into the arms
of the parson's family and other people who were waiting to give them
a gushing welcome at the gate.

Grandmamma laughed so when I told her about them!

Two days afterwards Mrs. Gurrage and Miss Hoad (the red-haired girl is
the niece) came to call.

Grandmamma was seated as usual in the old Louis XV. _bergère_, which
is one of our household gods. It does not go with the other furniture
in the room, which is a "drawing-room suite" of black and gold,
upholstered with magenta, but we have covered that up as well as we
can with pieces of old brocade from grandmamma's stored treasures.

After the first greetings were over and Mrs. Gurrage had seated
herself in the other arm-chair, her knees pointing north and south,
she began about the rheumatism stuff for the "j'ints."

"I can see by yer hands ye're a great sufferer," she said.

"Alas! madam, one of the penalties of old age," grandmamma replied,
in her fine, thin voice.

Then Mrs. Gurrage explained just how the mixture was to be rubbed in,
and all about it. During this I had been trying to talk to Miss Hoad,
but she was so ill at ease and so taken up with looking round the
room that we soon lapsed into silence. Presently I heard Mrs. Gurrage
say--she also had been busy examining the room:

"Well, you have been good tenants, coverin' up the suite, but you've
no call to do it. You wouldn't be likely to soil it much, and I always
say when you let a house furnished, you can't expect it to continue
without wear and tear; so don't, please, bother to cover it with those
old things. Lor' bless me, it takes me back to see it! It was my first
suite after I married Mr. Gurrage, and we had a pretty place on Balham
Hill. We put it here because Augustus did not want anything the least
shabby up at The Hall, and I take it kind of you to have cared for it
so."

Grandmamma's face never changed; not the least twinkle came into her
eye--she is wonderful. I could hardly keep from gurgling with laughter
and was obliged to make quite an irritating rattle with the teaspoons.
Grandmamma frowned at that.

By the end of the visit we had been invited to view all the glories of
The Hall. (The place is called Ledstone Park; The Hall, apparently,
is Mrs. Gurrage's pet name for the house itself.) We would not find
anything old or shabby there, she assured us.

When they had gone grandmamma said to me, in a voice that always
causes my knees to shake, "Why did you not make a _révérence_ to Mrs.
Gurrage, may I ask?"

"Oh, grandmamma," I said, "courtesy to that person! She would not
have understood in the least, and would only have thought it was the
village 'bob' to a superior."

"My child,"--grandmamma's voice can be terrible in its fine
distinctness--"my teaching has been of little avail if you have not
understood the point, that one has _not_ good manners for the effect
they produce--but for what is due to one's self. This person--who, I
admit, should have entered by the back door and stayed in the kitchen
with Hephzibah--happened to be our guest and is a woman of years--and
yet, because she displeased your senses you failed to remember that
you yourself are a gentlewoman. What she thought or thinks is of not
the smallest importance in the world, but let me ask you in future to
remember, at least, that you are my granddaughter."

A big lump came in my throat.

_I hate the Gurrages!_

The next day one of the old maids--a Miss Burton--arrived just as
we were having tea. She was full of excitement at the return of the
owners of Ledstone, and gave us a quantity of information about them
in spite of grandmamma's aloofness from all gossip. It appears, even
in the country in England, Mrs. Gurrage is considered quite an oddity,
but every one knows and accepts her, because she is so charitable and
gives hundreds to any scheme the great ladies start.

She was the daughter of a small publican in one of the southern
counties, Miss Burton said, and married Mr. Gurrage, then a commercial
traveller in carpets. (How does one travel in carpets?) Anyway,
whatever that is, he rose and became a partner, and finally amassed a
huge fortune, and when they were both quite old they got "Augustus."
He was "a puny, delicate boy," to quote Miss Burton again, and was not
sent to school--only to Cambridge later on. Perhaps that is what gives
him that look of his things fitting wrong, and his skin being puffy
and flabby, as if he had never been knocked about by other boys.
My friend of the knife, even with his coating of mud, looked quite
different.

Oh! I wonder if I shall ever know any people of one's own sort that
one has not to be polite to against the grain because one happens to
be one's self a lady. Perhaps there are numbers of nice people in this
neighborhood, but they naturally don't trouble about us in our tiny
cottage, and so we see practically nobody.

Just as Miss Burton was leaving Mr. Gurrage rode up. He tried to open
the gate with the end of his whip, but he could not, and would have
had to dismount only Miss Burton rushed forward to open it for him.
Then he got down and held the bridle over his arm and walked up the
little path.

"Send some one to hold my horse," he said to Hephzibah, who answered
his ring at the door. I could hear, as the window was a little open
and he has a loud voice.

"There is no one to send, sir," said Hephzibah, who, I am sure, felt
annoyed. Two laborers happened to be passing in the road, and he
got one of them to hold his horse, and so came in at last. He _is_
unattractive when you see him in a room; he seemed blustering and yet
ill at ease. But he did not thank us for keeping the suite clean! He
was awfully friendly, and asked us to make use of his garden, and, in
fact, anything we wanted. I hardly spoke at all.

"You _have_ made a snug little crib of it," he said, in such a
patronizing voice--how I dislike sentences like that; I don't know
whether or no they are slang (grandmamma says I use slang myself
sometimes!), but "a snug little crib" does not please me. He took off
his glove when I gave him some tea, and he has thick, common hands,
and he fidgeted and bounced up if I moved to take grandmamma her cup,
and said each time, "Allow me," and that is another sentence I do not
like. In fact, I think he is a horrid young man, and I wish he was not
our landlord. He actually squeezed my hand when he said good-bye. I
had no intention of doing more than to make a bow, but he thrust his
hand out so that I could not help it.

"_You'll_ find your way up to Ledstone, anyway, won't you?" he said,
with a sort of affectionate look.

Grandmamma found him insupportable, she told me when he was gone. She
even preferred the mother.

The following week I was sent up to The Hall with Roy and grandmamma's
card to return the visit. They were at home, unfortunately, and I had
to leave my dear companion lying on the steps to wait for me. Such a
fearful house! An enormous stained-glass window in the hall, the shape
of a church window, only not with saints and angels in it; more like
the pattern of a kaleidoscope that one peeps into with one eye, and
then bunches of roses and silly daisies in some of the panes, which,
I am sure, are unsuitable to a stained-glass window. There were
ugly negro figures from Venice, holding plates, in the passage, and
stuffed bears for lamps, and such a look of newness about everything!
I was taken along to Mrs. Gurrage's "budwar," as she called it. That
was a room to remember! It had a "suite" in it like the one at the
cottage, only with Louis XV. legs and Louis XVI. backs, and a general
expression of distortion, and all of the newest gilt-and-crimson
satin brocade. And under a glass case in the corner was the top of a
wedding-cake and a bunch of orange blossoms.

I was kept waiting about ten minutes, and then Mrs. Gurrage bustled
in, fastening her cuff. I can't put down all she said, but it was
one continual praise of "Gussie" and his wealth and the jewels he
had given her, and how disappointed he would be not to see me. Miss
Hoad poured out the tea and giggled twice. I think she must be what
Hephzibah calls "wanting." At last I got away. Roy barked with
pleasure as we started homeward.

We had not gone a hundred yards before we met Mr. Gurrage coming up
the drive. He insisted upon turning back and walking with me. He said
it was "beastly hard luck"--he has horrid phrases--his being out when
I came, and would I please not to walk so fast, as we should so soon
arrive at the cottage, and he wanted to talk to me. I simply pranced
on after that. I do not know why people should want to talk to one
when one does not want to talk to them. I was not agreeable, but he
did all the speaking. He told me he belonged to the Yeomanry and
they were "jolly fellows" and were going to give a ball soon at
Tilchester--the county town nearest here--and that I must let his
mother take me to it. It was to be a send-off to the detachment which
had volunteered for South Africa.

A ball! Oh! I should like to go to a ball. What could it feel like, I
wonder, to have on a white tulle dress and to dance all the evening.
Would grandmamma ever let me? Oh! it made my heart beat. But suddenly
a cold dash came--I could not go with a person like Mrs. Gurrage. I
would rather stay at home than that. When we got to the gate I said
good-bye and gave him two fingers, but he was not the least daunted,
and, seizing all my hand, said:

"Now, don't send me away; I want to come in and see your grandmother."

There was nothing left for me to do, and he followed me into the house
and into the drawing-room.

Grandmamma was sitting as usual in her chair. She does not have to
fluster in, buttoning her cuff, when people call.

"Mr. Gurrage wishes to see you, grandmamma," I said, as I kissed her
hand, and then I left them to take off my hat and I did not come down
again until I heard the front door shut.

"That is a terrible young man, Ambrosine," grandmamma said, when I did
return to the drawing-room. "How could you encourage him to walk back
with you?"

"Indeed, grandmamma, I did not wish him to come; he did not even ask
my leave; he just walked beside me."

"Well, well," grandmamma said, and she raised my face in her hands.
I was sitting on a low stool so as to get the last of the light for
my embroidery. She pushed the hair back from my forehead--I wear it
brushed up like Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt--and she looked
and looked into my eyes. If possible there was something pained and
wistful in her face. "My beautiful Ambrosine," she said, and that was
all. I felt I was blushing all over my cheeks. "Beautiful Ambrosine."
Then it must be true if grandmamma said it. I had often thought
so--perhaps--myself, but I was not sure if other people might think so
too.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is six weeks now since the Gurrages returned, and constantly, oh!
but constantly has that young man come across my path. I think I grow
to dislike him more as time goes on. He is so persistent and thick of
ideas, and he _always_ does things in the wrong place. I feel afraid
to go for my walks, as he seems to be loitering about. I sneak out
of the back door and choose the most secluded lanes, but it does not
matter; he somehow turns up. Certainly three times a week do I have to
put up with his company in one way or another. It is a perfect insult
to think of such a person as an admirer, and I annihilated Hephzibah,
who had the impertinence to suggest such a thing to me when she
was brushing my hair a few days ago. The ball is coming off, but
grandmamma has not seemed very well lately. It is nothing much, just
a bluish look round her mouth, but I fear perhaps she will not be
fit to go. When the invitation came--brought down by Mrs. Gurrage
in person--grandmamma said she never allowed me to go out without
herself, but she would be very pleased to take me. I was perfectly
thunderstruck when I heard her say it. She--grandmamma--going out at
night! It was so good of her, and when I thanked her afterwards, all
she said was, "I seldom do things without a reason, Ambrosine."

Oh, the delight in getting my dress! We hired the fly from the Crown
and Sceptre and Hephzibah drove with me into Tilchester with a list of
things to get, written out by grandmamma--these were only the small
etceteras; the dress itself is to come from Paris! I was frightened
almost at the dreadful expense, but grandmamma would hear nothing from
me. "My granddaughter does not go to her first ball arrayed like a
_provinciale_," she told me. I do not know what it is to be, she did
not consult me, but I feel all jumping with excitement when I think
of it. Only four days more before the ball, and the box from Paris is
coming to-morrow.

The Gurrages are to have a large party--some cousins and friends. I
am sure they will not be interesting. They asked us to dine and go on
with them, but grandmamma said that would be too fatiguing for her,
and we are going straight from the cottage, I do not quite know what
has happened. A few days ago, after lunch, grandmamma had a kind of
fainting fit. It frightened me terribly, and the under-servant ran for
the doctor. She had revived when he came, and she sent me out of the
room at once, and saw him alone without even Hephzibah. He stayed a
very long time, and when he came down he looked at me strangely and
said:

"Your grandmother is all right now and you can go to her. I think she
wishes to send a telegram, which I will take."

He then asked to see Hephzibah, and I ran quickly to grandmamma. She
was sitting perfectly upright as usual, and, except for the slight
bluish look round her mouth, seemed quite herself. She made me get
her the foreign telegram forms, and wrote a long telegram, thinking
between the words, but never altering one. She folded it and told me
to get some money from Hephzibah and take it to the doctor. Her eyes
looked prouder than ever, but her hand shook a little. A vague feeling
of fear came over me which has never left me since. Even when I am
excited thinking of my dress, I seem to feel some shadow in the
background.

Yesterday grandmamma received a telegram and told me we might expect
the Marquis de Rochermont by the usual train in the evening, and at
six he arrived. He greeted me with even extra courtesy and made me
compliment. I cannot understand it all--he has never before come so
early in the year (this is May). What can it mean? Grandmamma sent
me out of the room directly, and we did not have dinner until eight
o'clock. I could hear their voices from my room, and they seemed
talking very earnestly, and not so gayly as usual.

At dinner the Marquis, for the first time, addressed his conversation
to me. He prefers to speak in English--to show what a linguist he
is, I suppose. He made me many compliments, and said how very like I
was growing to my ancestress, Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt, and
he told me again the old story of the guillotine. Grandmamma seemed
watching me.

"Ambrosine is a true daughter of the race," she said. "I think I could
promise you that under the same circumstances she would behave in the
same manner."

How proud I felt!




III


How changed all the world can become in one short day! Now I know why
the Marquis came, and what all the mystery was about. This morning
after breakfast grandmamma sent for me into the drawing-room. The
Marquis was standing beside the fireplace, and they both looked rather
grave.

"Sit down, my child." said grandmamma; "we have something to say to
you."

I sat down.

"I said you were a true daughter of the race--therefore I shall expect
you to obey me without flinching."

I felt a cold shiver down my back. What could it be?

"You are aware that I had a fainting fit a short time ago," she
continued. "I have long known that my heart was affected, but I had
hoped it would have lasted long enough for me to fulfil a scheme I had
for a thoroughly suitable and happy arrangement of your destiny. It
was a plan that would have taken time, and which I had hoped to put
in the way of gradual accomplishment at this ball. However, we must
not grumble at fate--it is not to be. The doctor tells me I cannot
possibly live more than a few weeks, therefore it follows that
something must be settled immediately to secure you a future. You
are not aware, as I have not considered it necessary to inform you
hitherto of my affairs, that all we are living on is an annuity your
father bought for me, before the catastrophe to his fortunes. That,
you will understand, ceases with my life. At my death you will be
absolutely penniless, a beggar in the street. Even were you to
sell these trifles"--and she pointed to the Sèvres cups and the
miniatures--"the few pounds they would bring might keep you from
starving for perhaps a month or two--after that--well, enough--that
question is impossible. I can obtain no news of your father. I have
heard nothing from or of him for two years. He may be dead--we cannot
count on him. In short, I have decided, after due consideration and
consultation with my old friend the Marquis, that you must marry
Augustus Gurrage. It is my dying wish."

My eyes fell from grandmamma's face and happened to light on the
picture of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt. There she was, with the
rose in her dress, smiling at me out of the old paste frame. I was so
stunned, all I could think of was to wonder if it was the same rose
she walked up the guillotine steps with. I did not hear grandmamma
speaking; for a minute there was a buzzing in my ears.

_Marry Augustus Gurrage!_

"My child"--grandmamma's voice was rather sharper--"I am aware that
it is a _mésalliance_, a stain, a finish to our fine race, and if I
could take you on the journey I am going I would not suggest this
alternative to you; but one must have common-sense and be practical;
and as you are young and must live, and cannot beg, this is the only
certain and possible solution of the matter. The great honor you will
do him by marrying him removes all sense of obligation in receiving
the riches he will bestow on you--you yourself being without a _dot_.
Child--why don't you answer?"

I got up and walked to the window. She had said I was a true daughter
of the race. Would it be of the race to kill myself? No--there is
nothing so vulgar as to be dramatic. Grandmamma has never erred. She
would not ask this of me if there was any other way.

I came back and sat down.

"Very well, grandmamma," I said.

The blue mark round her lips seemed to fade a little and she smiled.

The Marquis came forward and kissed my hand.

"Remember--_chère enfant_," he said, "marriage is a state required
by society. It is not a pleasure, but it can--with creature
comforts--become supportable, and it opens the door to freedom _et
de tous les autres agréments de la vie pour une femme_."

He kissed and patted my hand again.

"Start with hate, passionate love, indifference, revolt, disgust--what
you will--all husbands at the end of a year inspire the same feeling,
one of complacent monotony--that is, if they are not altogether
brutes--and from the description of madame, _ce jeune_ Gurrage is at
least _un brave garçon_."

I am of a practical nature, and a thought struck me forcibly. When
could Mr. Gurrage have made the _demande_?

"How did Mr. Gurrage ask for my hand?" I ventured to question
grandmamma.

She looked at the Marquis, and the Marquis looked back at her, and
polished his eye-glasses.

At last grandmamma spoke.

"That is not the custom here, Ambrosine, but from what I have observed
he will take the first opportunity of asking you himself."

Here was something unpleasant to look forward to! It would be bad
enough to have to go through the usual period of formal _fiançailles_
of the sort I have always been brought up to expect--but to endure
being made love to by Augustus Gurrage! That was enough to daunt the
stoutest heart. However, having agreed to obey grandmamma, I could not
argue. I only waited for directions. There was a pause, not agreeable
to any of us, and then grandmamma spoke.

"You will go to this ball, my child. You will look beautiful, and you
will dance with this young man. You will not be so stiff as you have
hitherto been, and during the evening he is sure to propose to you.
You will then accept him, and bear his outburst of affection with what
good grace you can summon up. I will save you from as much as I can,
and I promise you your engagement shall be short."

A sudden feeling of dizziness came over me. I have never been faint
in my life, but all the room swam, and I felt I must scream, "No, no!
I cannot do it!" Then my eyes fell again on grandmamma. The blue mark
had returned, but she sat bolt upright. My nerves steadied. I, too,
would be calm and of my race.

"Go for a walk now, my child," she said, "Take your dog and run; it
will be good for you."

You may believe I courtesied quickly to them and left the room without
more ado.

When I got out-of-doors and the fresh May air struck my face it seemed
to revive me, and I forgot my ugly future and could think only of
grandmamma--poor grandmamma, going away out of the world, and the
summer coming, and the blue sky, and the flowers. Going away to the
great, vast beyond--and perhaps there she will meet Ambrosine Eustasie
de Calincourt, and all the other ancestors, and Jâcques de Calincourt,
the famous friend of Bayard, who died for his lady's glove; and she
will tell them that I also, the last of them, will try to remember
their motto, "_Sans bruit_," and accept my fate also "without noise."

When I got back, my ball-dress had arrived. Hephzibah had unpacked
it, and it was lying on my bed--such billows of pure white!--and it
fitted! Well, it gave me pleasure, with all the uglies looming in the
future, just to try it on.

The Marquis stayed with us. He could not desert his old friend, he
said, in her frail health, when she needed some one to cheer her. I
suspect the Marquis is as poor as we are, really, and that is why
grandmamma could not leave me to him. I am glad he is staying, and now
she seems quite her old self again, and I cannot believe she is going
to die. However, whether or no, my destiny is fixed, and I shall have
to marry Augustus Gurrage.

I did not let myself think of what was to happen at the ball. When one
has made up one's mind to go through something unpleasant, there is no
use suffering in advance by anticipation. I said to myself, "I will
put the whole affair out of my head; there are yet two good days."

Chance, however, arranged otherwise. This morning, the morning of the
ball, while I was dusting the drawing-room, I went to the window,
which was wide open, to shake out my duster, and there, loitering by
the gate, was Mr. Gurrage--at nine o'clock! What could he be doing?
He jumped back as if he had seen me in my nightgown. I suppose it was
because of my apron, and the big cambric cap I always wear to keep the
dust from getting into my hair. A flash came to me--why not get it
over now? He would probably not be so affectionate in broad daylight
as at the ball. So I called out, "Good-morning!"

He came forward up the path and leaned on the window-sill, still
looking dreadfully uncomfortable, hardly daring to glance at me. Then
he said, nervously, "What are you playing with, up like that?"

"I am not playing," I said, "I am dusting the china, and I wear these
things to keep me clean."

He _blushed_!

Then I realized all this embarrassment was because he thought I should
feel uncomfortable at being caught doing house-work! Not, as one might
have imagined, because _he_ had been caught peeping into our garden.
Oh, the odd ideas of the lower classes!

I took up a Sèvres cup and began to pull the silk duster gently
through the handle.

"Er--can I help you?" he said.

At that I burst out laughing. Those thick, common hands touching
grandmamma's best china!

"No, no!" I said.

He grew less self-conscious.

"By Jove! how pretty you are in that cap!"

"Am I?"

"Yes, and you are laughing, and not snubbing a fellow so dreadfully as
you generally do."

"No?"

"No--well, I came round because I couldn't sleep. I haven't been able
to sleep for three nights. I haven't seen you since Saturday, you
know."

"No, I did not know."

My heart began to beat in a sickening fashion. He leaned close to me
over the sill. I put down the cup and took up the miniature. I thought
if I looked at Ambrosine Eustasie that would give me courage. I went
on dusting it, and I was glad to see my hands did not shake.

"Yes, you are so devilishly tantalizing--I beg your pardon, but you
don't chuck yourself at a fellow's head like the other girls."

I felt I was "chucking myself at his head"--horrible phrase--at that
very moment, but as speech is given us to conceal our thoughts, I
said, "No, indeed!"

"Ambrosine--" (Oh, how his saying my name jarred and made me creep!)
"Er--you know I am jolly fond of you. If you'll marry me you'll not
have to dust any more beastly old china, I promise you."

I have never had a tooth out--fortunately, mine are all very white
and sound--but I have always heard the agony goes on growing until
the final wrench, and then all is over. I feel I know now what the
sensation is. I could have screamed, but when he finished speaking I
felt numb. I was incapable of answering.

"I've generally been able to buy all I've wanted," he went on, "but I
never wanted a wife before." He laughed nervously. That was a straw
for me.

"Do you want to buy me?" I said, "Because, if it is only a question of
that, it perhaps could be managed."

"Oh, I say--I never meant that!" he blustered, "Oh, you know I love
you like anything, and I want you to love me."

"That is just it," I said, quite low.

I felt too mean, I could not pretend I loved him. I must tell the
truth, and then, if he would not have me--me--Ambrosine de Calincourt
Athelstan!--why, then, vulgarly dramatic or no, I should have to jump
into the river to make things easy for grandmamma.

"What is 'just it'?" he asked.

"I do not love you."

His face fell.

"I kind of thought you didn't," he faltered, the bluster gone;
"but"--cheering up--"of course you will in time, if you will only
marry me."

"I don't think I ever shall," I managed to whisper; "but if you like
to marry me on that understanding, you may."

He climbed through the window and put his arms round me.

"Darling!" he said, and kissed me deliberately.

Oh, the horror of it! I shut my eyes, and in the emotion of the moment
I bent the bow on the top of the frame of Ambrosine Eustasie.

Then, dragging myself from his embrace and stuttering with rage, "How
dare you!" I gasped. "How dare you!"

He looked sulky and offended.

"You said you would marry me--what is a fellow to understand?"

"You are to understand that I will not be mauled and--and kissed
like--like Hephzibah at the back door," I said, with freezing dignity,
my head in the air.

"Hoity-toity!" (hideous expression!) "What airs you give yourself! But
you look so deuced pretty when you are angry!" I did not melt, but
stood on the defensive.

He became supplicating again.

"Ambrosine, I love you--don't be cross with me. I won't make you
angry again until you are used to me. Ambrosine, say you forgive me."
He took my hand. His hands are horrid to touch--coarse and damp. I
shuddered involuntarily.

He looked pained at that. A dark-red flush came over all his face. He
squared his shoulders and got over the window-sill again.

"You cold statue!" he said, spitefully. "I will leave you."

"Go," was all I said, and I did not move an inch.

He stood looking at me for a few moments, then with one bound he was
in the room again and had seized me in his arms.

"No, I sha'n't!" he exclaimed. "You have promised, and I don't care
what you say or do. I will keep you to your word."

Mercifully, at that moment Hephzibah opened the door, and in the
confusion her entrance caused him, he let me go. I simply flew
from the room and up to my own; and there, I am ashamed to say,
I cried--sat on the floor and cried like a gutter-child. Oh, if
grandmamma could have seen me, how angry she would have been! I have
never been allowed to cry--a relaxation for the lower classes, she
has always told me.

My face burned. All the bottles of Lubin in grandmamma's cupboard
would not wash off the stain of that kiss, I felt. I scrubbed my face
until it was crimson, and then I heard grandmamma's voice and had to
pull myself together.

I have always said she had hawk's eyes; they see everything, even with
the blinds down in her room. When I went in she noticed my red lids
and asked the cause of them.

"Mr. Gurrage has been here and has asked me to marry him, grandmamma,"
I said.

"At this hour in the morning! What does the young man mean?"

"He saw me dusting the Sèvres from the road and came in."

Grandmamma kissed me--a thing of the greatest rareness.

"My child," she said, "try and remember to accept fate without noise.
Now go and rest until breakfast, or you will not be pretty for your
ball to-night."

The Marquis's congratulations were different when we met in the _salle
à manger_; he kissed my hand. How cool and fine his old, withered
fingers felt!

"You will be the most beautiful _débutante_ to-night, _ma chère
enfant_," he said; "and all the _félicitations_ are for Monsieur
Gurrage. You are a noble girl--but such is life. My wife detested
me--_dans le temps_. But what will you?"

"You, at least, were a gentleman, Marquis," I said.

"There is that, to be sure," he allowed. "But my wife preferred her
dancing-master. One can never judge."

At half-past two o'clock (they must have gobbled their lunch), Mrs.
Gurrage, Augustus--yes, I must get accustomed to saying that odious
name--Augustus and Miss Hoad drove up in the barouche, and got
solemnly out and came up to the door which Hephzibah held open for
them. They solemnly entered the sitting-room where we all were, and
solemnly shook hands. There is something dreadfully ill-behaved about
me to-day. I could hardly prevent myself from screaming with laughter.

"I've heard the joyous news," Mrs. Gurrage said, "and I've come to
take you to me heart, me dear."

Upon which I was folded fondly against a mosaic brooch containing a
lock of hair of the late Mr. Gurrage.

It says a great deal for the unassailable dignity of grandmamma that
she did not share the same fate. She, however, escaped with only
numerous hand-shakings.

"He is, indeed, to be congratulated, _votre fils_, madame," the
Marquis said, on being presented.

"And the young lady, too, me dear sir. A better husband than me boy'll
make there is not in England--though his old mother says it."

Grandmamma behaved with the stiffest decorum. She suggested that
we--the young girls--should walk in the garden, while she had some
conversation with Mrs. Gurrage and Augustus.

Miss Hoad and I left the room. Her name is Amelia. She looked like a
turkey's egg, just that yellowish white with freckles.

"I hope you will be good to Gussie," she said, as we walked demurely
along the path. "He is a dear fellow when you know him, though a bit
masterful."

I bowed.

"Gussie's awfully spoony on you," she went on. "I said to aunt weeks
ago I knew what was up," she giggled.

I bowed again.

"I say, he'll give you a bouquet for the ball to-night; we are going
into Tilchester now to fetch it."

I could not bow a third time, so I said:

"Is not a bouquet rather in the way of dancing? I have never been to a
ball yet."

"Never been to a ball? My! Well I've never had a bouquet, so I can't
say. If you have any one sweet on you I suppose they send them, but I
have always been too busy with aunt to think about that."

Poor Miss Hoad!

When they had gone--kept behind grandmamma's chair, and so only
received a squeeze of the hand from my betrothed--grandmamma told
me she would be obliged to forego the pleasure of herself taking me
to the ball to-night, but the Marquis would accompany me, and Mrs.
Gurrage would chaperon me there. So, after all, I am going with
Mrs. Gurrage! Grandmamma also added that she had explained the
circumstances of her health to them, and that Augustus had suggested
that the wedding should take place with the shortest delay possible.

"I have told them your want of _dot_," she said, "and I must say for
these _bourgeois_ they seemed to find that a matter of no importance.
But they do not in the least realize the honor you are doing them.
That must be for you as a private consolation. I have stipulated,
as my time is limited, that I shall have you as much to myself as
possible during the month that must elapse before you can collect a
trousseau."

For that mercy, how grateful I felt to grandmamma!




IV


It is difficult to judge of a thing when your mind is prejudiced on
any point. Balls may be delightful, but my first ball contained hours
which I can only look back upon as a nightmare.

The Marquis and I arrived not too early; Mrs. Gurrage and her bevy of
nieces and friends were already in the dressing-room. They seemed to
be plainish, buxom girls, several of the bony, _passé_ description.
They looked at me with eyes of deep interest. My dress, as I said
before, was perfection. Mrs. Gurrage wore what she told me were the
"family jewels." Her short neck and undulating chest were covered
with pearls, diamonds, sapphires, and rubies, all jumbled together,
necklace after necklace. On top of her head, in front of an imitation
lace cap, a park paling of diamonds sat up triumphantly; one almost
saw its reflection in her shining forehead below. In spite of this
splendor, my future mother-in-law had an unimportant, plebeian
appearance, and as we walked down the corridor I wished I was not so
tall, that I might hide behind her.

Augustus was waiting among the other men of their party, with an
enormous bouquet. Not one of those dainty posies with dropping sprays
one sees in the Paris shops, but a good lump of flowers, arranged like
a cauliflower, evidently the work of the Tilchester florist. How I
should like to have thrown it at his head!

He gave me his arm, and in this fashion we entered the ballroom. A
bride of the Saturday weddings in the Bois de Boulogne could not have
looked more foolish than I felt. A valse was being played; the room
was full of light and color, all the officers of the Yeomanry in their
pretty uniforms (Augustus puffed with pride in his), and a general air
of gayety and animation that would have made my pulse skip a month
ago. We passed on to the other end of the room in this ridiculous
procession. I am quite as tall as Augustus, and I felt I was towering
over him, my head was so high in the air--not with exaltation, but
with a vague sense of defiance.

There were several nice-looking people standing around when at last we
arrived on the dais. Mrs. Gurrage greeted most of them gushingly and
introduced me.

"My future daughter-in-law, Miss Athelstan."

It may have been fancy, but I thought I caught flashes of surprise
in their eyes. One lady--Lady Tilchester--the great magnate in the
neighborhood, spoke to me. She had gracious, beautiful manners, and
although she could not know anything about me or my history, there
seemed to be sympathy in her big, brown eyes.

"This is your first ball Mrs. Gurrage tells me," she said, kindly. "I
hope you will enjoy it. I must introduce some of my party to you. Ah,
they are dancing now; I must find them presently."

During this Augustus fidgeted. He kept touching my arm, half in an
outburst of affection and half to keep my attention from wandering
from him. He blustered politenesses to Lady Tilchester, who smiled
vacantly while she was attending to something else. Then my _fiancé_
suggested that we should dance. I agreed; it would be an opportunity
to get rid of my cauliflower bouquet, which I flung viciously into a
chair, and off we started.

Augustus dances vilely. When he was not bumping me against other
_valseurs_ he was treading on my toes--a jig or a funeral-march might
have been playing instead of a valse, for all the time of it mattered
to him.

"I never dance fast, I hate it," he said, in the first pause; "don't
you?"

"No! I like it--at least, I mean, I like to do whatever the music is
doing," I answered, trying to keep my voice from showing the anger and
disgust I felt.

"Darling!" was all he muttered, as he seized me round the waist again.

"Oh! it makes me giddy," I said, which was a lie I am ashamed of. "Let
us stop."

It was from Scylla to Charybdis, for I was led to one of the
sitting-out places. So stupidly ignorant was I in the ways of balls
that I did not realize that we should be practically alone, or I would
have remained glued to the ballroom. However, before I knew it we were
seated on a sofa behind a screen, in a subdued light.

"Are you never going to give me a kiss, Ambrosine?" Augustus said,
pleadingly.

"Certainly not here," I exclaimed. "How can you be so horrid?"

"You are a little vixen."

"You may call me what you like; I do not care. But you shall not me a
public disgrace," I retorted.

"I think you are deucedly unkind to me," he said, his sulky underlip
pouting.

I controlled myself, I tried to remember grandmamma's last advice
to me, to be as agreeable as possible and not come to a quarrel.
She said I must even submit to a certain amount of familiarity from
my betrothed. These were her words: "It is in the nature of men, my
child, to wish to demonstrate by outward marks of affection their
possession and appreciation of their _fiancées_, and, unfortunately,
the English customs permit such an amount of license in this direction
that I fear you must submit to a little, at least, with a good grace."

I softened my voice. "I do not mean to be unkind," I said, "but it is
all so very sudden. You must give me time to accustom myself to the
idea of having a _fiancé_-you see, I have never had one before," and I
tried to laugh.

He was slightly mollified.

"Well, at least let me hold your hand," he said.

I gave him a stiff, unsympathetic set of fingers, which he proceeded
to kiss through the glove. My attention was so taken up with trying to
see if any one was coming, to avoid the disgrace of being caught thus,
that I had not even time to feel the nastiness of it.

Augustus was murmuring sentences of love all the time. It must have
sounded like this:

"Darling, what a dear little paw!"

"Oh! is not that a lady looking this way?"

"I should like to kiss your arm--"

"I am sure they can see in here by that looking-glass."

"Why won't you let me kiss just that jolly little curl on your neck?"

"I am certain some one is coming--oh!--oh!"

These "ohs" were caused by Augustus having got so beside himself that
he actually bent down and kissed my shoulder!

A sudden sense of helplessness came over me. I felt crushed, as if I
could not fight any more, as if all was ended.

"Good God! How white you are, darling! What is the matter?" I heard
his voice saying, as if in a dream. "Come, let me take you to have
some champagne."

I bounded up at that--I should get out of this cage. In the
refreshment-room some of the other Yeomen were standing with their
partners. The dance was over and they came up, and Augustus introduced
several of them, and, mercifully, I was soon engaged to dance for
numbers ahead. Neither their faces nor their conversation made the
slightest impression on me. These were the "jolly fellows," I suppose,
but I felt grateful to them for taking up my time, and I talked as
gayly as I could, and one or two of them danced nicely. Between each
dance there was Augustus waiting for me. But I soon found it was the
custom to stay with one's partner until the next dance began, and so
after that I hid in every possible place for the intervals, and then
took refuge with the Marquis. Presently there was a set of lancers.
Augustus rushed up to me before I could hide.

"I don't care who you are engaged to," he said, savagely, "You must
dance this with me. I have been deuced patient these last four dances,
but I won't stand being chucked like this any longer."

"I am not engaged to any one," I said, stiffly.

He tucked my hand under his arm and dragged me to where a set was
forming, but on the way Lady Tilchester beckoned us to the middle. We
took up our position at one of the sides of her set. Augustus was so
flattered at this notice that he forgot to grumble further at my long
absence.

Except ourselves, the rest of the sixteen people appeared to be all of
her party, and they looked so gay and seemed enjoying themselves; I am
afraid grandmamma would have said they romped, rather. Our _vis-à-vis_
were such a pretty girl and a very tall man, and when first he
advanced to meet us I felt I had seen him before, and by the second
figure I knew it was my friend of the knife. He is very good-looking
without the mud. Not the least expression of recognition came into
his face, but he laughed gayly at the fun of the thing. After the mad
whirl of a _chassé_, instead of a ladies' chain I have been accustomed
to, we came to an end. This dance was the first moment of the evening
I had enjoyed. All these people interested me; they seemed of another
world, a world where grandmamma and I could live happily if we might.
They made quite a noise, and they danced badly, but there was nothing
vulgar or _bourgeois_ about them. I felt like an animal who sees its
own kind again, after captivity; I wanted to break away and join them.
Augustus, on the contrary, was extremely ill at ease.

After that, one dance succeeded another--numbers of which I had
to spend with my _fiancé_, but, warned by my first experience, I
always pretended a great thirst, or a desire to see the rooms, or
an obligation to return to the Marquis, and so went to no more
sitting-out places. I did not again see the tall man--he seemed to
have disappeared until a dance after supper, when we met him with Lady
Tilchester.

"Ah! here you are," she said. "I have been wanting to find you to
introduce--" At that moment an old gentleman guffawed loudly near us,
and so I did not catch the name she said, but we bowed, and the tall
man asked me if I would dance that one with him.

Without the least hesitation I disengaged my hand from the arm of
Augustus (he likes to walk thus on every occasion), and said, "Yes."

"Oh! I say," said my _fiancé_, with the savage look in his face, "you
were going to dance with me."

Then Lady Tilchester interfered--what a dear and kind soul she must
have! She said so sweetly, as if Augustus was a prince, "Won't you
accept me as a substitute, Mr. Gurrage?"

Augustus was overcome with pride, and relinquished me with the best
grace.

Now it was really bliss, dancing with this man; we swam along, swift
and smoothly. I could no longer see the walls; a maze of lights was
all my vision grasped--I felt bewildered--happy. We stopped a moment
and he bent down and smiled at me.

"You look as if you liked dancing," he said. "Poor Lady Tilchester is
being mauled by that bear in your place."

I laughed. "I love dancing."

"I seldom do this sort of thing," he continued, "but you are a
beautiful mover," and we began again.

When it was over we went and sat down in the very alcove of my first
dance with Augustus. I had no uneasiness this time!

I can't say what there was about my partner--a whimsical humor, a
slight mocking sound in his voice, which pleased me; he took nothing
seriously; everything he said was as light as a thistle-down; he
reminded me of the wit of grandmamma and the Marquis; we got on
beautifully.

"I seem to have seen you before," he said, at last. "Have I met you
in Paris? or am I only dreaming? because I know you so well in the
galleries at Versailles--you stepped down from those frames just to
honor us to-night, did you not?--and you will go back at cock-crow!"

"If I only could!"

He asked me if I was staying at Brackney or Henchhurst, and when I
said no, that I lived only a few miles off, he seemed so surprised.

His brown hair crimps nicely and is rather gray above the ears, but he
does not look very old, perhaps not more than thirty-five or so, and
now that one can see both his eyes, one realizes that they are rather
attractive. A grayish, greeny-blue, with black edges, and such black
eyelashes! They are as clear as clear, and I am sure he is a cat and
can see in the dark. He laughed at some of the people, even the ones
who think themselves great, and he made me feel that he and I were the
same and on a plane by ourselves, which was delightful. All this time
I did not know his name, nor he mine. As he moved I saw a gold chain
in the pocket of his white waistcoat, and just peeping out was the
hilt of my little lost knife. I said nothing--I don't know why--it
pleased me to see it there. He had been away in the smoking-room most
of the evening, he said, playing bridge.

The Marquis is teaching it to grandmamma out of a book, but I do not
care for cards--and it seemed to me such a dull way to spend a ball. I
told him so.

"I like this better," he said, quite simply, "but then at most balls
one does not meet a dainty marquise out of the eighteenth century. Let
me see, was there not a story of the great Dumas about a _demoiselle
d'honneur_ of Marie Antoinette--I don't remember her name or her
history, but she became the Comtesse de Charny. Now I shall think of
you by that name--the Comtesse de Charny. Tell me, Comtesse, does it
not shock your senses, our modern worship of that excellent, useful,
comfortable fellow, the Golden Calf?"

"I don't know anything at all about him--who is he?" I said.

"Oh, he is a Jew, or a Turk, or an African millionaire--any one with
a hundred thousand a year."

I thought of Augustus--"calf" seemed just the word for him.

I laughed.

"We have a beautiful example of one here to-night," he continued;
"indeed you were dancing with him--the bear who mauled Lady
Tilchester. How did you get to know such a person?"

My heart gave a bound.

"I am engaged to Mr. Gurrage," I said, in a half voice, but raising my
head.

Oh, the surprise and--and _disgust_ in his eyes! Then, I don't know
what he saw in my face, I tried only to look calm and indifferent, but
the contempt went out of his manner, his eyes softened, and he put out
his hand and touched my fingers very gently.

"Oh, you poor little white Comtesse!" he said.

I ought to have been furious. Pity, as a rule, angers me so that it
would render me capable of being torn to pieces by lions without
flinching; but I am ashamed--oh! so ashamed--to say that tears sprang
up into my eyes--tears! Mercifully, grandmamma will never know.

"Come," I said, and we rose and walked down the corridor. There we met
Augustus, with a face like thunder. He had been looking everywhere for
me, he said. It appeared we had been sitting out for two dances.

"You promised me this one more turn," said the tall man, quite
unabashed; "they are playing a charming valse."

"She is engaged to me," growled Augustus.

"No, I am not," I said, smiling into his angry face; "I am quite my
own mistress as regards whom I dance with. I will come back when it is
finished and you shall have the next one," and I walked off with my
friend of the knife.

Whether my _fiancé_ stood there and swore or not I do not know; I did
not look back. We did not speak a word until the dance was finished,
my partner and I. Then he said:

"Thank you, little lady. We have, at all events, snatched some few
good moments out of this evening. Now, I suppose, we must return to
your--bear."

Augustus was standing by the buffet drinking champagne when we caught
sight of him. We stepped for a moment out of his view behind some
palms.

"Good-bye, Comtesse."

"Good-bye," I said, "Will you tell me your name? I did not hear it--"

"My name! Oh, my name is Antony Thornhirst--why do you start?"

"I--did not start--good-bye--"

"No, you shall not go until you tell me why you started? And your
name, too; I do not know it either!"

"Ambrosine de Calincourt Athelstan."

He knitted his level eyebrows as if trying to recall something, and
absently began to pull the knife out of his pocket. Augustus was
coming towards us.

"Yes," I said, "but it is too late. Good-bye."

The look of indifference, the rather mocking smile, the _sans souci_,
which are the chief characteristics of his face, altered. I left him
puzzled--moved.

       *       *       *       *       *

Grandmamma was awake, propped up in bed, her hair still powdered and
her lace night-cap on, when the Marquis and I got home. I leaned over
the rail and told her all about the ball. The Marquis sat in the
arm-chair by the fire.

"And where is your promised bouquet, my child?" she asked.

I faltered.

"Well, you see, grandmamma, I put it in a chair after the beginning,
and Mrs. Gurrage sat on it, so I thought perhaps, as it was all
mashed, I could leave it behind."

Grandmamma laughed; she was pleased, I could see, that the evening had
gone off without a fiasco!

"I met Sir Antony Thornhirst," I said.

The blue mark appeared vividly and suddenly round grandmamma's
mouth--she shut her eyes for a moment. I rushed to her.

"Oh, dear grandmamma," I said, "what can I do?"

She drank something out of a glass beside her, and then said, in
rather a weak voice:

"You were saying you met your kinsman. And what was he like,
Ambrosine?"

"Well, he was tall and very straight, and had small ears and--er--a
fairish mustache that was brushed up a little away from his lips,
and--and cat's eyes, and--brown, crimpy hair, getting a little gray."

"Yes, yes; but I mean what sort of a man?"

"Oh! a gentleman."

"But of course."

"Well, he laughed at everything and called me an eighteenth-century
comtesse."

"Did he know who you were?"

"No, not till the end, and then I do not think he realized that I was
a connection of his."

"It does not matter," said grandmamma, low to herself, "as it is too
late."

"Yes, I told him it was too late."

Grandmamma's voice sharpened.

"You told him! What do you mean?" and she leaned forward a little.

"I don't quite know what I did mean--those words just slipped out."

She lay back on her pillows--poor grandmamma--as if she was exhausted.

"Child," she said, very low, "yes--never forget we have given our
word; whatever happens, any change is too late."

A look of anguish came over her face. Oh, how it hurt me to see her
suffering!

"Dear grandmamma," said, "do not think I mind. I have done and will do
all you wish, and--and--as the Marquis said--it will not matter in a
year."

The Marquis, I believe, had been dozing, but at the sound of his name
he looked up and spoke.

"_Chère amie_, you can indeed be proud of _la belle débutante_
to-night; she was by far the most beautiful at the ball--_sans
exception_! Even the adorable Lady Tilchester had not her grand air.
_Les demoiselles anglaises! Ce sont des fagotages inouïs pour la plus
part_, with their movements of the wooden horse and their skins of the
goddess! As for _le fiancé, il était assez retenu, il avait pourtant
l'air maussade, mais il se consolait avec du champagne--il fera un
très brave mari_."




V


The next day Augustus went to London by the early train. I fortunately
saw the dog-cart coming, and rushed to tell Hephzibah to say I was not
up if he stopped, which of course he did on his way to the station. He
left a message for me. He would be back at half-past four, would come
in to tea. The Marquis and I were to dine there in the evening, so I
am sure that would be time enough to have seen him. Grandmamma said
it was no doubt the engagement-ring he had gone to London to buy, and
that I _really must_ receive it with a good grace.

At about four o'clock, while I was reading aloud the oration of
Bossuet on the funeral of Madame d'Orléans, the tuff-tuff-tuff of a
motorcar was heard, and it drew up at our gate and out got Sir Antony
Thornhirst and Lady Tilchester.

Although I could see them with the corner of my eye, and grandmamma
could too, I should not have dared to have stopped my reading, and was
actually in the middle of a sentence when Hephzibah announced them. I
did not forget to make my _révérence_ this time, and grandmamma half
rose from her chair. Lady Tilchester has the most lovely manners. In
a few minutes we all felt perfectly happy together, and she had told
us how Sir Antony was so anxious to make grandmamma's acquaintance,
having discovered by chance that he was a connection of hers, that
she--Lady Tilchester--had slipped away from her guests and brought him
over in her new motor, and she trusted grandmamma would forgive her
unannounced descent upon us. She also said how she wished she had
heard before that we were in this neighborhood, that she might have
months ago made our acquaintance, and could perhaps have been useful
to us.

I shall always love her, her sweet voice and the beautiful diffidence
of her manner to grandmamma, as though she were receiving a great
honor by grandmamma's reception of her. So different to Mrs. Gurrage's
patronizing vulgarity! I could see grandmamma was delighted with her.

Sir Antony talked to me. He asked me if I was tired, or something
_banal_ like that; his voice was _distraite_. I answered him gayly,
and then we changed seats, and he had a conversation with grandmamma.
I do not know what they spoke about, as Lady Tilchester and I went to
the other end of the room, but his manner looked so gallant, and I
knew by grandmamma's face that she was saying the witty, sententious
things that she does to the Marquis. A faint pink flush came into her
cheeks which made her look such a very beautiful old lady.

Lady Tilchester talked to me about the garden and the ball the night
before, and at last asked me when I was going to be married.

It seemed to bring me back with a rush to earth from some enchanted
world which contained no Augustus.

"I--don't know," I faltered, and then, ashamed of my silly voice,
said, firmly, "Grandmamma has not arranged the date yet--"

"I hope you will be very happy," said Lady Tilchester, and she would
not look at me, which was kind of her.

"Thank you," I said. "Grandmamma is no longer young, and she will feel
relieved to know I have a home of my own."

"It is delightful to think we shall have you for a neighbor. Harley is
only fifteen miles from here. I wonder if Mrs. Athelstan would let you
come and stay a few days with me?"

"Oh! I should _love_ to," I said.

However, grandmamma, when the subject was broached to her presently,
firmly declined.

"A month ago I should have accepted with much pleasure," she said,
"but circumstances and my health do not now permit me to part even for
a short time with Ambrosine."

She looked at Lady Tilchester and Lady Tilchester looked back at her,
and although nothing more was said about the matter, I am sure they
understood each other.

Sir Antony came and sat by me in the window-sill. I was wearing my
chatelaine and he noticed it.

"I am a blind idiot!" he exclaimed. "Of course you are the kind lady
who lent me the knife, which I broke, and then stole in a brutal way."

"I saw you did not recognize me the other night."

"I could only see out of one eye, you know, that day in the lane--that
must be my excuse."

I said nothing.

"I am not going to give back the knife."

"Then it is real stealing--and it spoils my chatelaine," I said,
holding up the empty chain.

"I will give you another in its place, but I must keep this one."

"That is silly--why?"

"It is very agreeable to do silly things sometimes--for instance, I
should like--"

What he would have liked I never knew, for at that moment we both
caught sight of Augustus getting out of his station brougham at our
gate.

"Here comes your bear," said Sir Antony, but he did not attempt to
stir from his seat. We could see Augustus walk up the path and turn
the handle of the front door without ringing. In this impertinence I
am glad to say he was checked, as Hephzibah had fortunately let the
bolt slip after showing in Lady Tilchester. He rang an angry peal.
Grandmamma frowned.

When Augustus finally got into the room his face was purple. He had
hardly self-control enough to greet Lady Tilchester with his usual
obsequiousness. She talked charmingly to him for a few moments, and
then got up to go.

Meanwhile Sir Antony had been conversing with me quite as if no
_fiancé_ had entered the room.

"You know we are cousins," he said.

"Very distant ones."

"Why on earth did you not let me know when first you came to this
place?"

"Grandmamma has never told me why she left you uninformed of our
arrival," I laughed. "How could we have known it would interest you?'"

"But you--don't you ever do anything of your own accord?"

"I would like to sometimes."

"It is monstrous to have kept you shut up here and then to--"

Augustus crossed the room.

"Ambrosine," he interrupted, rudely, "I shall come and fetch you this
evening for dinner, as you are too busy now to speak to me."

"Very well," I said.

Sir Antony rose, and we made a general good-bye.

There was something disturbed in his face--as if he had not said what
he meant to. A sickening anger and disgust with fate made my hand
cold. Oh!--if--Alas!




VI


To-morrow is my wedding-day--the 10th of June. There is my dress
spread over the sofa, looking like a ghost in the dim light--I have
only one candle on the dressing-table. It is pouring rain and there
are rumbles of thunder in the distance. Well, let it pour and hail
and rage, and do what it pleases--I don't care! Just now a flash came
nearer and seemed to catch the huge diamonds in my engagement-ring,
which hangs loose on my finger now. I flung it into the little china
tray, where strings of pearls and a fender tiara are already reposing
ready for to-morrow. I shall blaze with jewels, and Augustus will be
able to tell the guests how much they all cost.

This month of my _fiançailles_ has been nothing agreeable to recall.
Indeed, I should not have been able to go through with it only the
blue mark has so often appeared round grandmamma's mouth, especially
when Augustus and I have had trifling differences of opinion.

Long years ago, one summer we spent at Versailles when I was a child,
I remember an incident.

I was sitting reading aloud to grandmamma in the garden when from the
trees above there fell upon my neck, which was bare, a fat, hairy
caterpillar. I recollect I gave a gurgling, nasty scream, and dropped
the book.

Grandmamma was very angry. She explained to me that such noises were
extremely vulgar, and that if my flesh was so little under control
that this should turn me sick, the sooner I got over such fancies the
better.

She made me pick the creature up and let it crawl over my arm. At
first I nearly felt mad with horror, but gradually custom deadened the
sensation, and although it remained disagreeable, I could contemplate
it without emotion.

This memory has often proved useful to me during this last month.
To-day, even, I was able to sit upon the sofa and allow Augustus to
kiss me for quite ten minutes, without having to rush up and take
sal-volatile, as I had to in the beginning.

I have been through various trying ordeals. The tenants have
presented us with silver trays and other things, and we have listened
to speeches, and bowed sweetly, and numbers of hitherto distant
acquaintances have showered presents upon us. My future mother-in-law
has loaded me with advice, chiefly of a purely domestic kind, most of
it a guide as to how I had better please Augustus.

It appears he likes thick toast in preference to thin, and thick
soups; also that a habit he has of taking Welsh rarebit and stout for
a late supper when he sits up alone is not good for his digestion and
is to be discouraged. She hopes I will see that he wears his second
thinnest Jäger vests in Paris, not _the_ thinnest--which ought to be
kept for August warmth--as once before when there he caught a bad
catarrh of the chest through this imprudence.

Lady Tilchester is coming down from London in a special train on
purpose to grace our bridal ceremony. She has sent me the prettiest
brooch and such a nice letter.

I hope she will be a consolation in the future. For me life must be a
thing of waking in the morning, and eating and drinking, and taking
exercise, and going to bed again, and deadening all emotions, or
else I feel sure I shall get a dreadful disease I once read about
in an American paper Hephzibah takes in. It is called "spontaneous
combustion," and it said in the paper that a man caught it from having
got into a compressed state of heat and rage for weeks, and it made
him burst up at last into flames like an exploding shell.

Well, at all events, I have kept my word, and grandmamma is content
with me.

Miss Hoad--I shall have to call her Amelia now--is enchanted with the
whole entertainment. She is to be the only bridesmaid, and has chosen
the dress herself. It is coffee lace with a mustard-yellow sash. It
mill match her complexion. And Augustus is presenting her with a
huge bouquet, no doubt of the cauliflower shape, like my famous one,
besides a diamond-and-ruby watch.

I wonder if Sir Antony will be at the wedding--he was asked.

The Marquis de Rochermont will give me away--grandmamma is too feeble
now to stand. The ceremony is to be in the village church here, and
the choir, composed of village youths unacquainted with a note of
music, is to meet us at the lich-gate and precede us up the aisle,
singing an encouraging wedding-hymn, while school-children spread
forced white roses, provided by the Tilchester rose-growers.

Augustus explained that patronizing local resources like this will all
come in useful when he stands for Parliament later on.

Grandmamma stipulated that there should be no wedding feast, her
health and our small house being sufficient excuse. It is a great
disappointment to Mrs. Gurrage, I am sure, but we go away to Paris
as soon as I can change my dress after the church ceremony.

Think of it! This time to-morrow my name will be Gurrage! And Augustus
will have the right to--Merciful God! stop my heart from beating
in this sickening fashion, and let me remember the motto of my
race--"_Sans bruit_."

Oh, grandmamma, if I could go on your journey with you! The first jump
out into the dark might be fearful, but afterwards it would be quiet
and still, and there would be no caterpillars!

That was a beautiful flash of lightning! The storm is coming
nearer. Sparks flew from my diamond fender on the dressing-table.
Well--well--I--I wish I had seen Sir Antony again. Just now he sent
me a present. It is a knife for my chatelaine, the hilt studded with
diamonds, and there is a note which says that there is still time to
cut the Gordian knot.

What does it mean? I feel cold, as if I could not understand things
to-night.

The Marquis gave me some _conseils de mariage_ this afternoon.

"Remain placid," he said, "_fermez les yeux et pensez à autrui--après
vous aurez les agréments_."

Grandmamma has not even kissed me. Her eyes resemble a hawk's still,
but have the look of a tortured tiger as well sometimes. She has grown
terribly feeble, and has twice had fainting-fits like the one that
changed my destiny. I believe she is remaining alive simply by
strength of will and that she will die when all is over.

She has given me the greatest treasure of her life, the miniature of
Ambrosine Eustasie. I have it here by my side for my very own.

Yes, Ambrosine Eustasie, for me to-morrow there is also the
guillotine; and perhaps I, too, could walk up the steps smiling if
I were allowed a rose to keep off the smell of the common people;
Augustus's mother uses patchouli.




BOOK II




I


No one can possibly imagine the unpleasantness of a honey-moon until
they have tried it. It is no wonder one is told nothing at all
about it. Even to keep my word and obey grandmamma I could never
have undertaken it if I had had an idea what it would be like.
Really, girls' dreams are the silliest things in the world. I can't
help staring at all the married people I see about. "You--poor
wretches!--have gone through this," I say to myself; and then I wonder
and wonder that they can smile and look gay. I long to ask them when
the calmness and indifference set in; how long I shall have to wait
before I can really profit by grandmamma's lesson of the caterpillar.
It was useful for the _fiançailles_, but it has not comforted me much
since my wedding.

In old-fashioned books, when the heroine comes to anything exciting,
or when the situation is too difficult for the author to describe,
there is always a row of stars. It seems to mean a jump, a break to be
filled up as each person pleases. I feel I must leave this part of my
life marked with this row of stars.

It is two weeks now since I wrote my name Ambrosine de Calincourt
Athelstan for the last time, two weeks since I walked down the
rose-strewn guillotine steps on Augustus's arm, two weeks since
he--Ah, no! I will never look back at that. Let these hideous two
weeks sink into the abyss of oblivion!

It hardly seems possible that in fifteen days one could so completely
alter one's views and notions of life. I cannot look at anything with
the same eyes. It is all very well for people to talk philosophy, but
it is difficult to be philosophical when one's every sense is being
continually _froissé_. I feel sometimes that I could commit murder,
and I do not know when I shall be able to take the Marquis's advice to
remain placid and shut my eyes and try to get what good out of life I
can.

Augustus as a husband is extremely unpleasant. I hate the way his
hair is brushed--there always seems to be a lock sticking up in the
back; I hate the way he ties his ties; I hate everything he says and
does. I keep saying to myself when I hear him coming, "remember the
caterpillar, caterpillar, caterpillar." And once in the beginning,
when I was screwing up my eyes not to see, he got quite close before I
knew and he heard me saying it aloud.

He bounced away, thinking I meant there was one crawling on him, and
then he got quite cross.

"There are no caterpillars here, Ambrosine. How silly you are!" he
said.

He revels in being at once recognized as a bridegroom. He has
dreadfully familiar ways and catches hold of my arm in public, making
us both perfectly ridiculous. He has insisted upon buying me numbers
of gorgeous garments for my outer covering, but when I ventured to
order some very fine other things he grumbled at the cost.

"I don't mind your getting clothes that will show the money I've put
into them," he explained, "but I'm bothered if I'll encourage useless
extravagance in this way."

At the play he never understands more than a few words, but is always
asking me to explain what it means when there is anything interesting,
so I miss most of it myself from having to talk, and some of the
French plays are really very funny, I find, and have opened my eyes
a great deal, and I--even I--could laugh if I were left in peace to
listen a little.

Augustus is furiously angry, too, when the Frenchmen look at me. I
never thought I could even notice the gaze of strangers, but I am
ashamed to say that last night it quite pleased me.

We were dining at Paillard's, and two really nice-looking Frenchmen
had the next table. They looked at me, and Augustus glared at them and
fussed the waiters more than usual, and wanted to hurry me as much
as possible to get away; so I asked for other dishes and peaches and
nectarines and things out of season. At last, when I had dawdled quite
an extra half-hour, it came to an end, and the usual sums on the
margin of the bill began--Augustus adds up every item to see no sou
has been overcharged. At this point I looked up and caught one of
the Frenchmen's eye. Of course I glanced away at once, but there was
such a gleam of fun in his that I nearly smiled. Then, suddenly the
recollection came upon me that this creature, this thing sitting
opposite me, belonged to me. I have his name, he is my husband. I must
not laugh with others at his odious ways. After that I was glad to
creep away.

I am worried about grandmamma. She has not written; there only came a
small note from the Marquis. I am sure she must be very ill, if not
already dead. I cannot grieve; I almost feel as if I wished it so.
Augustus as a grandson-in-law would sting her fine senses unbearably.
He blusters continually, and his airs of proprietorship _envers moi_
would irritate her; besides, she would always have the idea that she
is cheating me by remaining alive, that, after all, my marriage was
not a necessity if she is still there to keep me. Oh, dear grandmamma!
if I could save you a moment's sorrow you know I would. When I said
good-bye to her she held me close and kissed me. "Ambrosine," she
said, "I shall have started upon my journey before you come back;
you must not grieve or be sad. My last advice to you, my child, is
to remember life is full of compensations, as you will find. Try to
see the bright and gay side of things, and, above all, do not be
dramatic."

She was always cheerful, grandmamma, but if I could just see her again
to tell her I will, indeed I will, try to follow her advice! Hush!
here is Augustus; I hear his clumsy footsteps. He has a telegram.

Alas! alas! My fears are true--grandmamma died this morning. Oh! I
cannot write, the tears make everything a mist.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is late July and I am at Ledstone as its nominal mistress--I say
nominal, for Augustus's mother reigns, as she always did.

The sorrow of grandmamma's death, the feeling that nothing can matter
in the world now, has kept me from caring or asserting myself in any
way. I feel numb. I seem to be a person listening from some gallery
when they all speak around me, and that the Ambrosine who answers
placidly is an automaton who moves by clockwork.

Shall I ever wake again? I sit night after night in my mother-in-law's
"budwar," the crimson-satin chairs staring at me, the wedding-cake
ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I
sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle
of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his
childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when
he cut all those superfluous teeth of his.

One little trait appears to have been considered a sign of great
astuteness and infantine perception. His fond parents--the late Mr.
Gurrage was alive then--gave him a new threepenny bit each week to
give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth.
Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with
the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny
halfpenny for himself.

"Me dear"--my mother-in-law always completes this story with this
sentence--"Mr. Gurrage said to me, 'Mark my word, Mary Jane, the boy
will get on!'"

In the class of my _belle famille_, mourning is fortunately a matter
of such importance that the wearing of crêpe for grandmamma has been
allowed to be sufficient reason for abandoning the wedding rejoicings.

Dear grandmamma! it would please you to know your death had done me
even this service. I am encouraged to grieve, especially in public.
Mrs. Gurrage herself put on black, and her face beamed all over with
enjoyable tears the first Sunday we rustled into the family pew stiff
with crêpe and hangings of woe. They gave grandmamma what Miss Hoad--I
mean Amelia--called a "proper funeral."

And so all is done--even the Marquis has gone back to France, and only
Roy is left.

There is something in his brown eyes of sympathy which I cannot bear;
the lump keeps coming in my throat. Kind dog, you are my friend.

Next week Lady Tilchester will have returned to Harley, and soon
Augustus and I are to go and pay a three days' visit there.

Once what joy this thought would have caused me--I was going to say
when I was young!--I shall be twenty next October, but I feel as if
I must be at least fifty years old.

Augustus is not a gay companion. He has a sulky temper; he is often
offended with me for no reason, and then a day or so afterwards will
be horribly affectionate, and give me a present to make up for it. I
can never get accustomed to his calling me Ambrosine--it always jars,
as if one suddenly heard a shopman taking this liberty. It is equally
unpleasant as "little woman" or "dearie," both of which besprinkle all
his sentences. He has not a mind that makes it possible to have any
conversation with him. He told me to-day that I was the stupidest cold
statue of a woman he had ever met, and then he shook me until I felt
giddy, and kissed me until I could not see. After a scene of this kind
I feel too limp to move. I creep out into the garden and hide with Roy
in a clump of laurel bushes, where there is a neglected sun-dial that
was once the centre of the old garden, and left there when the new
shrubbery was planted; there is about six feet bare space around it,
and no one ever comes there, so I am safe.

Sometimes from my hiding-place I hear Augustus calling me, but I never
answer, and yesterday I caught sight of him through the bushes biting
his nails with annoyance; he could not think where I had disappeared
to. It comforted me to sit there and make faces at him like a
gutter-child.

I have never had the courage to go back to the cottage. It is just as
it was, with all grandmamma's dear old things in it, waiting for me to
decide where I will have them put. Hephzibah has married her grocer's
man, and lives there as caretaker.

I suppose some day I shall have to go down and settle things, but I
feel as if it would be desecration to bring the Sèvres and miniatures
and the Louis XV. _bergère_ here to hobnob with the new productions
from Tottenham Court Road.

Augustus is having some rooms arranged for me, so that I, too, shall
have a "budwar" for myself. He has not consulted my taste; it is all
to be a surprise. And an army of workmen are still in the house, and
I have caught glimpses of brilliant, new, gilt chairs and terra-cotta
and buffish brocade (I loathe those colors) being carried up.

"Then I'll be able to have you more to myself in the evening," said
Augustus. "The drawing-rooms are too big and the mater's budwar is too
small, and you hate my den, so I hope this will please you."

I said "Thank you," without enthusiasm. I would prefer the company
of my mother-in-law or Amelia to being more alone with Augustus. The
crimson-satin chairs are so uncomfortable that now he leaves us almost
directly after dinner to lounge in his "den," and I have to go there
and say good-night to him. The place smells of stale smoke, some
particularly strong, common tobacco he will have in a pipe. He gets
into a soiled, old, blue smoking-coat, and sits there reading the
comic papers, huddled in a deep arm-chair, a whiskey-and-soda mixed
ready by his side. He is generally half-asleep when I get there. I do
not stay five minutes if I can help it; it is not agreeable, the smell
of whiskey.

There are so few books in the house. The first instalment of my
handsome "allowance" will soon be paid me, and then I will have books
of my own. I shall feel like a servant receiving the first month's
wages in a new place--a miserable beginner of a servant who has never
been "out" before. I feel I have earned them, though--earned them with
hard work.

Just this last month numbers of people have been to call on me. They
left only cards at first, because of my "sad loss," but we often are
at home now when they come.

My mother-in-law's visiting-list is a large one, and comprises the
whole of the "villa" people from Tilchester as well as the county
families. With the former she is deliciously patronizingly friendly;
they are all "me dears," and they talk about their servants and
ailments and babies, mixed with the doings of Lady Tilchester--they
always speak of her as the "Marchioness of Tilchester." They are at
home when we return the visits sometimes, too, and this kind of thing
happens: our gorgeous prune-and-scarlet footman condescendingly walks
up their paths and thumps loudly at their well-cleaned brass knocker,
and presses their electric bell. A jaunty lump of a parlor-maid in
a fluster at the sight of so much grandeur says "At home" (some of
them have "days"), and we are ushered into a narrow hall and so to a
drawing-room. They seem always to be papered with buff-and-mustard
papers and to have "pongee" sofa-cushions with frills. There is often
tennis going on on the neat lawn beyond, and we see visions of large,
pink-faced girls and callow youths taking exercise. The hostess gushes
at us: "Dear Mrs. Gurrage, so good of you to come--and this is Mrs.
Gussie?" (Yes, I am called Mrs. Gussie, Oh! grandmamma, do you hear?)
We sit down.

I have no intention of freezing people, but they are hideously ill
at ease with me, and say all kinds of foolishnesses from sheer
nervousness.

The worst happened last week, when one particularly motherly, blooming
solicitor's wife, after recounting to us in full detail the arrival of
her first grandchild, hoped Mrs. Gurrage would soon be in her happy
position!

Merciful Providence, I pray--that--never!

The county people are not so often at home, but when they are it is
hardly more interesting. There do not seem to be many attractive
people among them. They are stiff, and it is my mother-in-law who is
sometimes ill at ease, though she gushes and blusters as usual. The
conversation here is of societies, the Girls' Friendly Society, the
Cottage Hospital, the movements of the Church, the continuance of the
war, the fear the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry will volunteer;
and now and then the hostess warms up, if there is a question of a
subscription, to her own pet hobby. Their houses are for the most part
tasteless, too; they seem to live in a respectable _borné_ world of
daily duties and sleep. Of the three really big houses within driving
distance, one is shut up, one is inhabited for a month or two in the
autumn, and the third is let to a successful oil merchant to whom
Augustus and my mother-in-law have a great objection, but I can see no
difference between oil and carpets. I have seen the man, and he is a
weazly looking little rat who drives good horses.

I wonder what has become of my kinsman, Antony Thornhirst. He came
with Lady Tilchester to the wedding. I saw his strange eyes looking at
me as I walked down the aisle on Augustus's arm. His face was the only
one I realized in the crowd. We did not speak; indeed, he never was
near me afterwards until I got into the carriage. I wonder if he will
be at Harley--I wonder!

Augustus wishes me to be "very smart" for this visit; he tells me I
am to take all my best clothes and "cut the others out." It really
grieves him that my garments should be black. He suggested to his
mother that she had better lend me some of the "family jewels" to
augment my own large store, but fortunately Mrs. Gurrage is of a
tenacious disposition and likes to keep her own belongings to herself,
so I shall be spared the experience of the park-paling tiara sitting
upon my brow. Such things being unsuitable to be worn at dinner I fear
would have little influence upon Augustus; I am trembling even now at
what I may be forced to glitter in.

We are to drive over to Harley late in the afternoon.




II


In spite of Augustus--in spite of everything--I suddenly feel as if I
had become alive again here at Harley!

The whole place pleases me. It is an old Georgian house, with long
wings stretching right and left, and from a large salon in the centre
the other reception-rooms open.

Lady Tilchester is so kind, and makes one feel perfectly at home. A
number of people were assembled upon the croquet lawn and in the great
tent playing bridge when we arrived, and as no one seems to introduce
any one it has taken me two whole days to find out people's names.
Some of them, indeed, I have not grasped yet! It does seem a strange
custom. Either it is because every one in this set is supposed to be
acquainted with the other, and strangers are things that do not count,
or that meeting under one roof constitutes an introduction. I have not
yet found out which it is.

Anyway, it makes things dull at first. Augustus found it "deuced
unpleasant," he told me, as, instead of remaining quiet until he knew
his ground, he proceeded to commit a series of _bêtises_.

The first afternoon I subsided into a low chair, and a gruff-looking
man handed me some tea, and patted and talked to a bob-tailed
sheep-dog that was near.

I don't know if he expected me to answer for the dog, and so make
a conversation. He was disappointed, however, if so, as I remained
silent. Presently I discovered he was our host.

Lady Tilchester was busy being gushed at by Augustus. A little woman
with light hair came and sat down at the other side of me. She looks
like a young, fluffy chicken, and has a lisp and an infantile voice,
and wears numbers of trinkets, and her name, "Babykins," spelled in a
brooch of diamonds. I should not like to be called "Babykins," and I
wonder why one should want strangers to read one's name printed upon
one's chest.

Everything of hers is marked with that. Chain bracelets with
"Babykins" in sapphires and diamonds. On her handkerchief, which she
plays with, "Babykins" again stares at you. Even the corner of her
chemise, which shows through her transparent blouse, has "Babykins"
embroidered on it. It is no wonder even the young men never call her
anything else.

You have the first impression that you are talking to a child,
but afterwards you are surprised to find what a lot of grown-up,
scandalous things she has said.

She was very agreeable to me, and gave me to understand she was so
interested to make my acquaintance, as Lady Tilchester had told her so
much about me.

"You come from Yorkshire, don't you?" she said; "and your husband has
that wonderful breed of black pigs, hasn't he?"

"No," I said, "we live only sixteen miles off."

"Oh, of course! How stupid of me! You are quite another person, I
see," and she laughed. "But the pig farmers are coming, and I am so
anxious to meet them, as I have a perfect mania for piglets myself. I
want to start a new sort, and I hoped you could tell me about them."

"I am so sorry," I said. "I wish I could help you, but I do not
believe--except casually in the village--that I have ever seen a pig;
they must be delightful companions."

"Yes, indeed! I have large families of the fat white ones, and really
the babies are most engaging, and the very image of my step-children.
I always tell my husband it seems like eating Alice or Laura when he
insists upon having suckling-pig for luncheon. I suppose one would
not mind eating one's step-children, though--would one? What do you
think?"

Her great, blue eyes looked at me pathetically.

I tried to consider seriously the problem of the consumption of
possible step-children; it was too difficult for me.

"I quite hoped to make it pay," she continued--"keeping prize pigs, I
mean; we are so frightfully poor. But I am away so much I fear it does
not do very well. You play bridge, of course?"

This did not seem to have much to do with the pigs.

"No, I do not play."

"You don't play bridge? How on earth do you get through the day?"

"I really do not know."

"Oh, you must learn at once. I can give you the address of a woman in
London who goes out for five pounds an afternoon and who would teach
you in three or four lessons. It does seem funny, your not playing."

I said "Yes."

She did not appear to want many answers from me after this, but
prattled on about people and the world in general, and before half an
hour was over I was left with the impression that society is chiefly
composed of people living upon an agreeable and amusing ground
somewhere at the borderland of the divorce court.

"So tiresome of the husbands!" she concluded. "Before the war
they used to be the most docile creatures; as long as they got a
percentage, and the wives did not worry at their own little affairs,
all went smoothly. Now, since going out there and fighting, they have
come back giving themselves great airs, and talking about wounded
honor, and ridiculous things of that sort that one reads of in early
Victorian books. One does not know where it will end."

She yawned a little after this, and Lord Tilchester shuffled up and
sat down in the corner of the sofa near her. He has the manner of an
awkward school-boy.

"You are taking away every one's character, as usual, I suppose,
Babykins," he chuckled. "What will Mrs. Gurrage think of it all, I
wonder?"

Lady Tilchester interrupted further conversation by carrying me off
to see the garden. She is the most fascinating personality I have yet
met. There is something like the sun's rays about her--you feel warmed
and comforted when she is near. She looks so great and noble, and
above all common things, one cannot help wondering why she married
Lord Tilchester, who is quite ordinary. When she talks, every one
listens. Her voice is like golden bells, and she never says stupid
things that mean nothing. We had half an hour in the glorious garden,
and she made me feel that life was a fair thing, and that even I
should find bits to smile over. How great to have a nature like this,
that one's very presence does good to other human beings!

"There are a lot of tiresome people here, I am afraid," she said, at
last; "but I wanted you to come to the first party we had after our
return, so you must try and not be bored. You shall sit next Mr. Budge
to-night; he will be obliged to take in Lady Lambourne, but I will put
you on the other side. He will amuse you; he is the cleverest man I
know."

"Mr. Budge is a politician, is he not?" I asked. "I think I have heard
his name."

"That is delightful," she laughed, "Poor Mr. Budge! He--and, indeed,
many of us in England--fancies there is no other name to be heard. He
has a fault, though. He writes sentimental poetry which is complete
rubbish, and he prides himself upon it far more than upon his splendid
powers of oratory or wonderful organization capacities."

"What a strange side for a great man to have!" I said. "Sentimental
poetry--it seems so childish, does it not?"

"We all have our weaknesses, I suppose," and she smiled. "We should be
very dull if we left nothing for our friends to criticise."

"_Si nous n'avions point de défauts nous ne prendrions pas tant de
plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres!_" I quoted.

After a while we went back to the house.

Augustus and I got down at half-past eight for dinner, as grandmamma
had always told me that punctuality is a part of politeness, but only
one or two men were standing by the huge wood-fire that burns all the
time in the open fireplace in the salon where we assembled.

We did not know any of their names, and I suppose they did not know
ours. We stared at one another, and they went on talking again, all
about the war. Augustus joined in. He is dreadfully uneasy in case the
rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry may volunteer at last to go out, and
was anxious to hear their views of the possibility. I sat down upon a
fat-pillowed sofa, one of those nice kind that puff out again slowly
when you get up, and make you feel at rest any way you sit.

A short man with a funny face came and sat beside me.

"What a wonderful lady, to be so punctual!" he said. "You evidently
don't know the house. We shall be lucky if we get dinner at nine
o'clock."

"Why did you come down, then," I asked, "since you are acquainted with
the ways?"

"On the off chance, and because a bad habit of youth sticks to me, and
I can't help being on time."

"I am finding it absurd to have acquired habits in youth; they are all
being upset," I said.

He had such a cheery face, in spite of being so ugly, it seemed quite
easy to talk to him. We chatted lightly until some one called out:
"Billy, do ring and ask if we can have a biscuit and a glass of
sherry, to keep us up until we get dinner."

At that moment--it was nearly nine--more people strolled in, two women
with their husbands, and several odd pairs--the last among the single
people quite the loveliest creature I have ever seen. She does not
know how to walk, her lips were almost magenta with some stuff on
them, but her eyes flashed round at every one, and there seemed to be
a flutter among the men by the fireplace.

Augustus dropped his jaw with admiration. She had on a bright purple
dress and numbers of jewels. I feel sure he was saying to himself that
she was a "stunner." She did not look at all vulgar, however, only
wicked and attractive and delightful.

"Darling Letitia," she pleaded, to a stiff-looking old woman sitting
bolt-upright under a lamp, "don't glare at me so. I am not the last
to-night; there are still Babykins and Margaret and several others to
come."

"Oh, Lord, how hungry I am!" announced Mr. Budge, in a loud voice. I
recognized him now from his picture being so often in the papers.

Then, from a door at the other end, in tripped Babykins, and close
behind her Lord Tilchester, and, last of all, when the clock had
struck nine-fifteen, and even the funny-faced man next me had
exhausted all his conversation, the door at the north end of the salon
opened, and serenely, like a lovely ship, our beautiful hostess sailed
towards us.

"So sorry to be a little late," she said, calmly. "Tilchester, as you
have, of course, told every one whom they are to take in, we may as
well start."

Lord Tilchester had been sitting in the window-seat with Babykins, and
had completely forgotten this duty, I suppose. He got up guiltily and
fumbled for a paper in his pocket.

"Oh, don't let us wait for that," said Mr. Budge, gruffly. "Come, Lady
Tilchester, I shall take you and lead the way," and he gave her his
arm.

She laughed and took it.

"Very well," she said.

Every one scrambled for the people they wanted or knew best; and so
it happened that I found myself standing staring at a pale young man
with weak blue eyes and a wonderfully well-tied tie, the last of the
company.

He held out his arm nervously, and we finally got to the dining-room
and found two seats.

It was not until dinner was almost over that I found out he was the
Duke of Myrlshire, and ought to have taken in Lady Tilchester.

Augustus had placed himself next the purple lady, and his face grew
a gray mauve with excitement at her gracious glances.

My ducal partner was unattractive. He had a squeaky voice and a
nervous manner, but said some _entreprenant_ things in a way which
made me understand he is accustomed to be listened to with patience,
not to say pleasure.

He told me he was grateful to Mr. Budge for his move, as he had been
admiring me since the moment we arrived, and had determined, directly
the _mêlée_ began, to secure me if possible.

"Er--you don't look like an Englishwoman," he said, "and it is a nice
change. My eye is wearied with them; their outlines are all exactly
alike."

He further informed me that Paris was the only place to live in, and
that the English as a nation were crude in their vices.

"They make such a noise about everything here," he added. "One cannot
do a thing that it is not put the wrong way up in the halfpenny
papers."

"The penalty of greatness," I said, laughing. "They don't worry at
all, for instance, about what I am doing."

"Then they show extremely bad taste," he said, with a look of frank
admiration.

Before the women swept in a body from the room, I understood that his
object in life would henceforth be to make me sensible of his great
worth and charm. All these masterful, forward sentiments sounded so
comic, expressing themselves in his squeaky voice, I could not help
smiling. He became radiant. He did not guess in the least what amused
me.

Although the salon is immense, the ten or twelve women all crowded
around the fireplace. It was a damp, chilly evening.

They all seemed to know one another very well, and called each other
by their Christian names, so until Babykins again gave me some
information I did not realize who people were.

The purple lady is Lady Grenellen; her husband is at the war. She is
most attractive. She sat on a big sofa and smoked cigarettes rapidly
in a little amber holder. She must have got through at least three or
four of them before the men came in.

Lady Tilchester and two other women were deep in South-African news,
the rest talked about books and their clothes, but Babykins and
Letitia exchanged views upon the scandal of the time.

"In my day," Letitia said, "it sometimes happened that men made love
and ran away with a woman because they found they liked her better
than anything else in the world. It was a great sin, but their passion
was mixed with respect, and the elopement constituted the wedding
ceremony. Now you remain on at home until you are found out, and then
the husband takes a gratuity and the matter is hushed up, and probably
the lover passes on to your best friend, an added feather in his cap."

"Dear Lady Lambourne, how severe you are!" chirped Babykins.
"And you really should not use that little word 'you.' Of course,
you don't mean any of us, but it sounds unkind and might be
misunderstood--especially," she added, in a whisper to me, "as that
is the exact case of Cordelia Grenellen."

Letitia (Lady Lambourne) has a distinct voice and decided opinions.
She continued, as though no interruption had taken place:

"If the matter was only for love, too, I should still have nothing
to say; but it is so often for a string of pearls, or some new
carriage-horses."

"But, surely, it is more logical to have that reason than no reason at
all, like the case of your poor cousin. I understood that was sheer
foolishness, and Lord Edam did not even pretend to care for her."

Lady Lambourne looked daggers and remained speechless. "What
scandalous things you are all saying," laughed Lady Grenellen from her
sofa. "Letitia, you are sitting there and being epigrammatic, just
like the people in those unreal society plays they had last year. We
are all perfectly contented and happy if you would let us alone."

"One cannot but deplore the change," said Lady Lambourne.

"Personally, I am delighted with everything as it is," cooed Babykins.
"Life must be much pleasanter now than in your day, dear Lady
Lambourne; such a fuss and pretending, and such hypocrites you must
all have been--as, of course, human nature was the same then, and
since the beginning of time. We have always eaten and drank too rich
food and wine in our class and have not had enough to do, so we can't
help being as we are, can we?"

"Babykins, you silly darling, as if what we eat makes any difference!"
said Lady Grenellen, puffing her cigarette-smoke into cloudy rings in
the neatest way.

"Of course it does, Cordelia! Food makes all the difference, you know.
I have kept those white pigs for four years and I know all about it."

Babykins has the most pathetic blue eyes, and her childish voice is
arresting. Lady Grenellen went into a fit of laughter.

"You are perfectly mad about those horrid pigs!" she told her.

Lady Lambourne interrupted again, in a dignified voice. "Human nature
was _not_ the same in my day--as you call it--Mrs. Parton-Mills" (thus
she discovered to me Babykins' name). "We lived much more simply, and
enjoyed our pleasures and did our duties, and stayed at home more."

"And I expect you were frightfully bored, Letitia, darling," said Lady
Grenellen, "and that is why you never stay at home now."

It seemed to me quite wonderful how they could be so disrespectful to
this elderly lady, but she did not seem at all offended.

"You are incorrigible, Cordelia," was all she said, and she laughed.

"You had no bridge, and it must have been exactly like it still is
when I stay with Edward's relations in Scotland," Babykins continued.
"As we arrive there I feel 'goose-flesh' on my arms, with the
stiffness and decorum of everything. We chat about the weather at tea,
and no one ever says a word they really think; and we play idiotic,
childish games of cards for love in the evening; and it is all feeble
and wearisome, and the guests are always looking at the clock."

Lady Tilchester came and joined us; it seemed a breath of fresh
sunlight illuminating the scene.

"You appear all to be talking scandal," she said.

Imperceptibly the conversation changed, and we were discussing the war
news when the double doors of the dining-room opened.

Augustus looked very flushed in the face and unattractive as he came
towards us, but Lady Grenellen moved her skirts and made room for him
on her sofa. She smiled at him divinely, and was perfectly lovely to
him--as friendly and caressing as if he were an equal. It perfectly
astonished me. I could not talk and joke familiarly that with Augustus
any more than if he were one of the footmen. And she is a viscountess,
and must at least know what a gentleman is.

Half the party moved off to play bridge in one of the drawing-rooms;
the rest arranged themselves comfortably, two and two. Lady Tilchester
and Mr. Budge wandered into the music-room, and I, who had not
stirred, found myself almost alone by the fireplace with the Duke.

He proceeded to say a number of things to me that astonished me
greatly. I should not have understood them all had I not been to those
plays in Paris.

I suppose he was beginning to make love to me--if this is what is
called making love. His personality is not attractive, so it did not
touch me at all, and I am only able to look upon men now through eyes
which see coarse brutes. Perhaps they may be really nice, some of
them, but as I look at them one after another, the thought always
comes, how revolting could they appear in the eyes of their wives?
This is not nice of me, and I am sure grandmamma would reprove me for
it.




III


Next day, Sunday, some of us went to church. Augustus insisted upon my
going. He thought it would be a good opportunity of showing I was in
Lady Tilchester's company, although what it could have mattered to the
Harley villagers I do not know.

He himself stayed behind with Lady Grenellen, he said, to take her for
a walk in the woods.

After lunch every one seemed to play bridge but Lady Tilchester and I
and her politician and the weak-eyed Duke. We climbed the hill to the
ruins of the old castle and there sat until tea-time.

"Isn't it a bore for me I shall have to marry an heiress?" the Duke
said, pathetically. "Marriage is the most tiresome ennui at any time,
but to be forced through sheer beggary to take some ugly woman you
don't like and don't want is cruel hard luck, is it not?"

"Yes," I said, feelingly.

He was melted by the sympathy in my voice.

"You are a delicious woman; you seem to understand one directly.
People have got into the way of thinking it is no hardship to have to
do these things for the sake of one's title, but I can see you are
sympathetic."

"Yes, indeed!" I said.

"Cordelia Grenellen is arranging it for me. I have not seen her yet--I
mean the heiress."

"If I were a man I think I should keep my freedom and--and--work," I
faltered.

He looked at me, perfectly astonished.

"But what can I do?" he asked. "Only go into the city, and that is
quite played out now. I have no head for business, and it would seem
to me to be rather mean just to trade upon my name to get unsuspecting
people to take shares in concerns; whereas if I marry an heiress it is
a square game--I at least give her some return for her money."

"There is a great deal in what you say," I agreed.

"I told Cordelia--she is a cousin of mine, you know--I told her I
would not have a very ugly one, and I should prefer that she should be
a good, healthy brewer's daughter. Our family is over-well bred. You
see, if you are going to sacrifice yourself to keep up your name,
you may as well choose some one that will be of some ultimate use to
it. Now we want a strain of thick red blood in our veins; ours is a
great deal too blue. We are becoming reedy shaped, and more or less
idiotic."

He said all this quite gravely. He had evidently studied the
subject, and as I looked at him I felt he was perfectly right. If he
represented the type of his race, it had certainly grown effete.

"I won't have an American," he continued. "They are intellectual
companions before marriage, and they are generally so agreeable you
don't notice how nervous and restless they are really, but I would not
contemplate one as a wife. I must have a solid English cow-woman."

He stretched himself by my side and began pulling a bit of grass to
pieces. His hands look transparent, and he has the most beautifully
shaped filbert nails; his ears, on the contrary, are not perfect, but
stick out like a monkey's.

"You see, I should always live my own life," he went on, lazily. "I
worship the beautiful. The pagans' highest expression of beauty which
moved the world was in sculpture--cold and pure marble of divine form.
That awakened their emotions; one reads they had a number of emotions.
The Renaissance people, to take a medium time, expressed themselves by
painting glorious colors on flat canvas; they also had emotions. Those
two arts now are more or less dead. At any rate, they have ceased to
influence masses of people. Our great expression is music. We are
moved by music. It gives us emotions _en bloc_--all of us--some by
the tune of 'Tommy Atkins,' and others by Wagner. Well, all these
three--sculpture, painting, and music--give me pleasure, but I should
not want my cow duchess to understand any of them. I should want her
to have numbers of chubby children and to fulfil her social duties,
and never have to go into a rest-cure, or have a longing for
sympathy."

I said a few "yeses" and "reallys" during this long speech, and he
continued, like a mill grinding coffee:

"It don't do to over-breed. You are bound to turn out some _toqués_
if not altogether idiotic, and then my sense of beauty is outraged by
the freaks that happen in our shapes--you should see my two sisters,
the plainest women in England. Now you give me joy to look at. You are
quite beautiful, you know. I never saw any one with a nose as straight
and finely cut as yours. Why do you keep putting your parasol so that
I cannot see it?"

"One uses a parasol to keep off the sun, which is hot. Would you wish
me to get a sunstroke to oblige you?" And I put down my parasol still
lower.

"You are selfish!" in an aggrieved voice.

"Of course."

"And not the least ashamed of it!"

"Not the least."

He moved his position deliberately so that he came to my other side,
where the sun was not.

"I learned a certain amount of manoeuvring in South Africa, where I
went for a month or two," he said. "I hope this side of your face will
be as pretty. People always have a better and a worse side."

I laughed. It was too hot to circumvent him again, and his looking at
me could not hurt me.

"This is even prettier," he said, presently. "Where did you hide
yourself, that we none of us ever saw you before you married?"

"I lived rather near here for a little while."

"Now you look sad again. I never watched any one's face so much. Yours
is not like other people's; you look like a cameo, you know."

"Tell me about the people here," I said. "They are all strangers to
me."

"But I would much rather talk about you."

"That does not interest me; you said I was selfish, so you do what I
wish."

"What can I tell you of them? They are like all companies--dull and
amusing, mixed. They are a fair specimen of most people one meets in
the _monde où l'on s'amuse_. My cousin Lady Grenellen is perhaps the
most interesting among them, as she had the most histories."

"Histories?"

"Yes; her career has been one of riding for a series of falls, and
escaping even a peck."

"She is very lovely."

"Oh yes, Cordelia is good-looking enough," he said, as though there
was considerably more to add.

I did not continue the subject further. We talked of books, the war,
and various other things, and by-and-by our hostess called to us from
the higher level of the old drawbridge where she was sitting.

"We must be descending for some tea," she said, and started on with
her politician.

When we got back, Augustus was swinging Lady Grenellen in a lovely
Louis XV. _balançoire_, fixed up between two elm-trees; she put one
foot out, and looked so lovely and radiant!

Augustus had the expression of one of those negro pages Thackeray drew
in _The Virginians_--a mixture of pride and self-complacency--a he
held the red silk ropes.

Tea was so merry! No one was witty like grandmamma and the Marquis,
but every one was in a good temper and it was gay.

The party was rather more punctual at dinner on Sunday night, and Lady
Tilchester had arranged, as she meant to the night before, that I
should sit next her politician. Mr. Budge and Mrs. Gurrage--the names
went well together!

I do not know anything about politics, but he is what I suppose must
be a Radical, as he preaches home rule for Ireland, and equal rights
for all mankind, and an apologetic tone to other nations, and a
general dividing up of all one's _biens_. But they say he has a
splendid house in Grosvenor Square, and a flat in Paris, and never
asks any but the smartest titled people to his big pheasant shoot in
Suffolk.

He was delightful at dinner, anyway, and made me laugh. His voice is
clear, with just the faintest touch of Irish in it. And he sparred
with Lady Tilchester across me.

She is the greatest _grande dame_ one could meet, and a Tory to the
backbone in politics, but her manner to the servants is not nearly so
haughty as Mr. Budge's.

I do not like his hands; I cannot say why; they are neither big nor
ill-shapen, but there is something fat and feminine about the fingers.
I dare say, underneath, he could be like Augustus.

Lady Tilchester is devoted to him, and he has the greatest admiration
and respect for her. Their conversation is most interesting.

Some of the other men are very nice, and several of them almost come
up to grandmamma's criterion of the perfect male--that he should "look
like a man and behave like a gentleman."

The women are very smartly dressed all the time, but they do not show
a great sense of the fitness of things. Only Lady Grenellen and Lady
Tilchester are always adorable and attractive in anything and in any
way.

I believe they do not love one another very much, although they are
quite friendly; one somehow can see it in their eyes.

The Tilchester boy, who is thirteen, has just gone to Eton, but will
soon be home for the holidays; the little girl is at the sea. So I
have not seen either of them.

The whole house here is so beautifully done; there is no fuss, and
everything is exactly where one wants to find it. I shall be sorry
when we leave.

Just as we had begun luncheon to-day, Sir Antony Thornhirst came in,
and, after a casual greeting to every one, sat down near me.

He seems quite at home here, and as if he were accustomed to turning
up unannounced in this way.

I felt such a queer, quick beating in my heart. I suppose because
among all these strangers he was some one I knew before.

"So you decided not to cut the Gordian knot," he said, presently, as
if we were continuing the discussion of some argument we had had a
moment before.

He bridged in an instant the great gulf since my wedding. This _sang
froid_ stupefied me. I found nothing to say.

He continued:

"Do you know, I have heard since that to give any one a knife cuts
friendship, and brings bad luck and separation, and numbers of
dreadful things. So you and I are now declared enemies, I suppose.
Shall we go and throw the little ill-omen in the lake after lunch?"

"No; I will not part with my knife; I find it very useful," I said,
in a _bête_ way.

"Antony," called out Lord Tilchester, "you have arrived in the nick of
time to save Babykins from turning into a hospital nurse. She thinks
the costume becoming, and threatens to leave us for the wounded
heroes. Cannot you restrain her?"

"How?" asked Sir Antony, helping himself to some chicken curry.
"Really excellent curry your chef makes, Tilchester."

"Don't tell him about it, Reggie," lisped Mrs. Parton-Mills. "The
unfeeling creature is only thinking of his food."

"You seem to have all the qualities for an ideal convalescent nurse,"
said Sir Antony, with an air of detaching himself with difficulty from
the contemplation of the curry.

"And those qualities are--?" asked Lord Tilchester.

"Principally stimulating," and he selected a special chutney from the
various kinds a footman was handing.

"What do you mean?" demanded Babykins, pouting.

"Exactly what you do," and he looked at her, smiling in a way I should
have said was insolent had it been I who was concerned.

"But I want to go and help the poor dear fellows, and to cheer them
and make their time pleasanter."

"I said you would be an ideal convalescent nurse. But what would
become of the pigs?"

"Oh, Edward could look after them. I think too little attention has
been paid to the poor boys who are getting well. I could read to them
and write their letters home for them," and she looked pathetically
sympathetic.

"Hubble-bubble, toil and trouble," quoted Sir Antony.

"Who for?" laughed Lord Tilchester, in his rough, gruff way.

"The recipients of the letters, who would certainly receive them in
the wrong envelopes," said Sir Antony. "I think, Tilchester, you had
better persuade Babykins to stay in England, for the sake of the peace
of many respectable and innocent families."

"How wicked you are to me," flashed Babykins.

"Just what you deserve," chuckled Lord Tilchester.

"What tiresome nonsense these people talk," said Sir Antony, calmly,
to me. "You and I were in the middle of an interesting problem
discussion, were we not? And now I have lost the thread."

"It does not in the least matter," I said.

The Duke, who was on the other side of me, did not care to be left
out, and persistently talked to me for the rest of lunch.

Sir Antony consumed his with the appreciation of a connoisseur. It
appeared to be the only thing which interested him.

Babykins, from the other side, did her utmost to engage him in a war
of wits, but he remained calm, with the air of a placid lion.

When we got outside in the great tent he came up to me.

"I am going to take you for a walk," he said--"a nice, cool walk in
the woods. Will you get your parasol?"

The Duke was at that moment fetching it for me from the hall table,
where I had left it.

"I do not know what we shall do to-day," I said, "I believe I am going
to play croquet."

"Oh no, you are not. It is much too hot, and you must see the woods.
They are historical, and--Here, take this parasol and let us start."
This last hurriedly, as the Duke was seen returning with mine.

I cannot say why I allowed myself to be dragged off like this. My
natural impulse has always been to do the opposite thing when ordered
by any one but grandmamma. But here I found myself walking meekly
beside my kinsman down a yew-bordered path, holding a mauve silk
parasol over my head which did not belong to me.

We did not speak until we got quite to the end, where there is a
quaint fountain, the centre of four _allées_ of clipped yews.

My heart still continued to beat in a quick, tiresome manner.

"You look changed, Comtesse," Sir Antony said. "Your little face is
pale. Do you remember the night we danced together? It was round and
rosy then. Is it a hundred years ago?"

There is a something in his voice which is alluring. The mocking sound
goes out of it now and then, and when it does one feels as if one must
listen. Oh, but listen with both one's ears!

"Yes, it is a hundred years ago," I said.

"I was so sorry to hear of your grandmother's death," he continued. "I
wanted to tell you how I felt for you, but I was away in Norway, and
have only just returned. Did you think I was unkind?"

"No, I never thought at all. Grandmamma was glad to die. I knew she
could not live, but it came suddenly at the end."

"What a splendid personality! How I wish I had seen more of her! I
generally manage to seize the occasion, but fate kept you and her
beyond my reach. Why did we not all meet this time last year?"

"Oh, do not talk of that!" I cried. I felt I could not bear to
hear any more. "I am trying to forget, and to find life full of
compensations. Grandmamma and the Marquis promised me that I should."

He looked at me, stopped in the path, and bent down to a level with my
face. His eyes seemed as if they could see right through my mind then,
as on another occasion in our lives.

"Dear little white Comtesse!" he said. Almost the same words.

An emotion that is new to me happened. It was as if my heart beat in
my throat.

"We are dawdling by this fountain," I said. "Where are the woods?"

After that we were gay. He told me of many things. I seemed to see a
clear picture of the world as he talked--a light and pleasant world,
where no one was so foolish as to care for anything seriously.

One felt a donkey, to worry or grieve when the sun shone and the birds
sang!

How I enjoyed myself!

"Has Babykins chirped at you yet?" he asked, presently. "She is very
dangerous when she chirps."

"I do not like her," I said.

"Oh, you will presently. We all love Babykins. She acts as a sort of
moral mosquito in a big party. She flies around stinging every one,
and then we compare our bites and tear and scratch the irritated
places together. You will meet her everywhere--she is the only person
Tilchester takes a serious interest in."

"Are you staying here," I asked, "or did you only drive over?"

"I sent for my servant to bring my things, and I shall stay now I find
you. You always seem to forget we are cousins, and that people ought
to take an interest in their relations!"

"Tell me about your house--Dane Mount it is called, is it not?" I
asked, presently. We had been silent for a moment, walking down a
shady path, great pine-trees on each side.

"No, I won't tell you about it; you must come over there some day and
stop with me for a night or so. You ought to see the home of your
ancestors, you know. Promise me you will when I come back from
Scotland!"

We had gone deep into the wood by now. It was quite dusky. The thick
trees met overhead, and only an occasional sunbeam penetrated through.

I felt stupid. The words did not come so easily as when I am with the
Duke.

"How silent you are, Comtesse!"

"Is it not time to go back?" I said, stupidly.

"No, not nearly time. I want you to tell me all about yourself--where
you lived, and all that happened until you flashed into my life at
the Tilchester ball. See, we will sit down on this log of wood and be
quite comfortable."

We sat down.

"Now begin, Comtesse: 'Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I
came from--where?'"

"Do you really want to hear the family history?" I asked.

"Yes."

I told him an outline of things and how grandmamma and I had lived
at the cottage, and of all her wise sayings, and about the Marquis
and Roy and Hephzibah, and the simple things of my long-ago past.
It seemed as if I was speaking of some other person, so changed has
all my outlook on life and things become since I went to Paris with
Augustus.

"And now we come to the day we met in the lane," he said. "You were
not even engaged then, were you?"

"Oh no! Grandmamma had never had a fainting-fit; she would have found
the idea too dreadful at that time." I stopped suddenly, realizing
what I had said. I could not tell him how and why I had married
Augustus; he must think what he pleased.

He evidently thought a good deal, by the look in his eyes. I wish--I
wish when he looks it did not make my heart beat so; it is foolish and
uncomfortable.

"What a fool I was not to come with the automobile the night before
your wedding and carry you off to Gretna Green," he said, in a voice
that might have been mocking or serious, I could not tell which.

"Tell me, Comtesse, if I had tapped at your window, would you have
looked out and come with me?"

"There was a bad thunder-storm, if I recollect. We should have got
wet," I laughed, in a hollow way. He could not know how he was hurting
me; he should not see, at all events.

"You would have been very dear to take to Gretna Green," he continued.
"I should have loved to watch your wise, sweet eyes changing all
expressions as morning dawned and you found yourself away from them
all--away from Augustus."

I did not answer. I drew hieroglyphics with the point of the mauve
parasol in the soft moss beneath our feet.

"Why don't you speak, Comtesse?"

"There is nothing to say--I am married--and you did not tap at the
window--and let us go back to the house."




IV


The last evening at Harley is one of the things I shall not want to
recall. Augustus got drunk--yes, it is almost too dreadful to write
even. I had not realized up to this that gentlemen (of course I do not
mean that word literally, as applied to Augustus, but I mean people
with money and a respectable position)--I never realized that they got
drunk. I thought it was only common men in the street.

It struck me he was making a great noise at dinner, but as he was
sitting on the same side of the table as I was I could not see. When
the men joined us afterwards it came upon me as a thunder-clap. His
face was a deep heliotrope, and he walked unsteadily--not really
lurching about, but rather as if the furniture was in the way.

One or two of the men seemed very much amused, especially when he went
and pushed himself into the sofa where Lady Grenellen was sitting and
threw his arm along the back behind her head. I felt frozen. I could
not have risen from my chair for a few moments. She, however, did not
seem to mind at all; she merely laughed continuously behind her fan,
the men helping her to ridicule Augustus.

For me it was an hour of deep humiliation. It required all my
self-control to go on talking to Babykins as if nothing had happened.

The Duke came over and joined us. He drew a low chair and sat down so
that I could not see the hilarious sofa-party.

I have not the least idea what he said or what any of us said. The
guffaws of laughter in Augustus's thick voice was all I was conscious
of.

Sir Antony Thornhirst, who had stopped to speak to Lady Tilchester
by the billiard-room door, now came over to us. He stood by me for a
moment, then crossed to Lady Grenellen.

"They are wanting you to play bridge in the blue drawing-room," he
said.

She rose quite reluctantly, still overcome with mirth. Augustus tried
to get up, too, but stumbled back into the sofa.

Then, with infinite tact, my kinsman attracted his attention, said
some thrilling thing about the war, and, as Lady Grenellen moved off
and Augustus made another ineffectual attempt to rise and follow her,
Sir Antony sat down in her vacant place and for half an hour conversed
with my husband. Oh, I force myself to write the words "my husband."
It is to keep the hideous fact in remembrance, otherwise I might let
myself express aloud the loathing and contempt I feel for him.

Sir Antony had never before taken the least notice of him beyond the
most casual politeness, and now, from the scraps of conversation that
my preternaturally sharpened ears could catch, he seemed to be trying
his best to interest and retain Augustus beside him. Gradually the
whole company dispersed into the different drawing-rooms as usual, and
I followed the rest to look at the bridge.

As I was passing the sofa, where the two men were sitting, Augustus
seized hold of my dress.

"Don't look so damned haughty, little woman," he hiccoughed. "Er--I'm
all right--give me a kiss--"

"As I was going to tell you," interrupted Sir Antony, "I heard for a
fact that the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry that have escaped so
long are going to volunteer to go out, after all."

Augustus dropped my dress. His face got paler. This information seemed
to sober him for an instant, and in that blessed interval I got away
and into the blue drawing-room. Lady Tilchester was not playing
bridge, and she sat down in the window-seat beside me. It was a lovely
night, and the windows were wide open.

She is the most delightful companion. I am beginning to know her a
little and to realize how much there is to know.

To-night she was more than usually fascinating. It seemed as if
she wished to make me forget everything but the pleasure in our
conversation. She has a vast knowledge of books, and has even read all
the French classics that grandmamma loved. We talked of many things,
and, among them, gardens. She told me that I must make a new garden
at Ledstone, and I would find it an immense interest; and she spoke
so kindly of Mrs. Gurrage, and said how charitable she was and
good-hearted, and then delicately, and as if it had no bearing upon
the Gurrage case, hinted that in these days money was the only thing
needed to make an agreeable society for one's self, and that in the
future I must have plenty of amusement.

Insensibly my heart became lightened.

She talked to me of grandmamma, too, and drew me into telling her
things about our past. She was interested in grandmamma's strange
bringing-up of me, so different, she said, to the English girls of the
present day.

"And is it that, I wonder, which has turned you into almost as great a
cynic as Antony Thornhirst? He is the greatest I know."

"But can one be a cynic if one has so kind a heart?" I asked.

She looked at me quickly with a strange look.

"How have you discovered that so soon? Most people would not credit
him with having any heart at all," she said. "You know with all his
immense prestige and popularity people are a little afraid of him. I
think one would sum up the impression of Antony as a man who never in
all his life has been, or will be, called 'Tony.'"

Her voice was retrospecting.

"You have known him very long?" I questioned.

"Ever since I married, fourteen years ago. I remember I saw him
first at my wedding. He and Tilchester had, of course, been old
friends, always living so near each other. We are exactly the same
age--thirty-four, both of us. Growing old, you see!" She laughed
softly, then she continued:

"Antony was never like other men exactly. He is original, and
extraordinarily well read--only casually one would never guess it. He
wastes his life rather, though. I wish he would go into Parliament. He
has a habit of rushing off on long travels. Some years ago he went off
suddenly and was away for ages and ages--about five years, I think.
Then he stayed at Dane Mount for a while, and then, when the war first
began, he went out there, and has only been home a year."

"He never speaks of himself nor what he does, I notice."

"No; that is just his charm. I should like you to see Dane Mount. It
is far nicer than this, and he has wonderful taste. It is the most
comfortable house I know. He has delightful parties there when the
shooting begins."

"It would interest me to see it, because grandpapa came from there," I
said.

"Of course, you are cousins, in a way. You don't know how interested
Antony was in you that night after the Tilchester Yeomanry ball. He
came and sat in my sitting-room and talked to me about you, and then
it was he put two and two together and discovered you were related. I
had heard that evening about your grandmother and you living at the
cottage, and was able to give him some information. I don't think he
realized when you met that you were connected, did he?"

"No, not at all."

"A friend of mine and I were sitting by the fire, having said
good-night to the rest of the party--do you remember what a cold May
night it was? Antony came in and joined us. We all had admired you
so. I recollect this is one of the things he said: 'I met an
eighteenth-century marquise to-night.'"

"Yes, he called me that."

"He is so very hard to please. The ordinary women, like Babykins
and Cordelia Grenellen, don't understand his subtle wit. They are
generally in love with him, though. Cordelia was madly _éprise_ last
autumn; but he is as indifferent as possible, and does not trouble
himself about any of them. He is reported to have said once that it
had taken him five years to degrade himself sufficiently to be able
to enjoy the society of modern women. He is a wonderful cynic!"

"The Duke gave me to understand that no man of the world was ever
without some affair," I said.

"Well, I suppose it is true more or less, but Antony is always the
person who holds the cheek, hardly even complacently--generally with
perfect indifference. I have never known him, for years, put himself
out an inch for any woman."

I don't know why, but this conversation interested me deeply.

Just then some one came and joined us at the window, and Lady
Tilchester had to rise and talk with her other guests; but before she
moved off she put her hand on my arm and said, as if she had only then
remembered it:

"Oh, the housekeeper let me know just now that some soot had fallen in
your chimney. I do hope you won't mind sleeping in a tiny bedroom off
mine, just for to-night. We were so afraid the smell would keep you
awake. Your maid has moved your things."

Dear and kind lady! I will never forget your goodness to me nor cease
to love you.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was pouring rain as we drove home next day.

Augustus and I only met as we were ready to get into the carriage. I
had breakfasted in my room.

His face was the color of putty, and he had that look in his eyes
which, I remember, long ago I used to say appeared as if he had not
had enough sleep. His expression was sulky and morose, and I was
thankful when at last we started.

The guests were catching all sorts of trains. There were casual
good-byes. Lady Tilchester was not down, and no one occupied
themselves much with any one.

Lady Grenellen left just before us. She did not take the least notice
of me, but she talked in a caressing way to Augustus, and I heard him
say:

"Now, you won't forget! It is a bargain!" in the most _empressé_
voice, as he pulled his head out of the carriage-window.

For the first mile or two of our journey neither of us spoke. Augustus
lit a cigarette and smoked in a nervous way, and kept opening and
shutting the window.

Then he swore at me. I will not say the words he used, but the
sentence ended with a demand why I sat there looking like a "stuck
pig."

I told him quietly that if he spoke to me like that I would not reply
at all.

He got very angry and said he would have none of that nonsense; that
I seemed to forget that I was his wife, and that he could do as he
pleased with me.

"No, you cannot," I said. "I will not be spoken to like that."

"You'll be spoken to just as I jolly well please," was his refined
reply. "Sitting there like a white wax doll, and giving yourself the
airs of a duchess!"

I did not answer.

"A deaf and dumb doll, too," he said, with an oath.

He then asked where I had been all night, and what I had meant by
daring to stay away from him.

I remained perfectly silent, which, I fear, was infinitely provoking,
but I could not stoop to bandy words with him.

He began to bluster, and loaded me with every coarse abuse and a
tremendous justification of himself and his behavior of the night
before. I had not mentioned the subject or accused him of anything,
but he assured me he had not been the least drunk and that my
haughtiness was enough to drive any man mad.

When at least ten minutes of this torrent had spent itself a little, I
said the whole subject was so disagreeable to me and discreditable to
him that he had better not talk of it and I would try and forget it.

Grandmamma often told me how her grandfather, the husband of Ambrosine
Eustasie, had refused to fight with a man of low birth who had
insulted him, but had sent one of his valets to throw the creature
into the street, because in those days a gentleman only crossed swords
with his equals. I now understood his feelings. I could not quarrel
with Augustus, the whole situation was so impossible.

I tried to tell myself that it did not in the least matter what he
said and did. Then, as he continued abusing me, I repeated a bit of
Béranger to myself, and so grew unconscious, at last, of the words
he was saying.

Silence came eventually, and then, after a while, in quite a humble
voice, Augustus said:

"I say, little woman--er--you won't tell the mater--er--will you?"

Something touched me in his face--his common, unpleasant face. The
bluster was gone and there was a piteousness in it. I felt a slight
lump in my throat.

"Oh no; do not fear," I said.

Then he called me an angel and kissed me many times, and that was the
worst of all.

Oh! When the year is up, will the "monotonous complacency" have set
in?




V


The days are flying by. October has almost come, and the damp and the
falling leaves. It will soon be time for Mrs. Gurrage to depart for
Bournemouth.

Augustus is in a continual ferment, as the report that the rest of
the Tilchester Yeomanry are going to volunteer for active service has
cropped up frequently, and, while he likes the uniform and what he
considers the prestige of belonging to such a corps, he has no ardor
for using his weapons against the Boers.

I have tried very hard to take an interest in the matter, but the
numbness has returned. The oppression of the surroundings at Ledstone
cramps my spirit.

We have had several "parties"--batches of Gurrage relations--one or
two really awful people. And some days ago I was bidden to write and
invite the guests for the first big partridge drive.

"The mater will be gone to Bournemouth," Augustus said, "and you'll
have to stand on your own legs."

Matrimony has not cured him of his habit of using horrid phrases.

He has often been very rude to me lately, and has taken to going more
frequently to town for the day, and stays away for a night or two
sometimes.

These seem to me as holidays, and I have never thought of asking him
where he has been, although he comes back with an apologetic air of a
guilty school-boy which ought to excite my jealousy, I feel sure.

During these absences his mother looks uneasy and has once or twice
asked me if I know where he is.

My books have come--quantities of books!--and I spend hours in my
boudoir, never lifting my eyes from the pages to be distracted by the
glaring, mustard-brocade walls around me.

Mrs. Gurrage treats me with respect. There is a gradual but complete
change in her manner to me, from what cause I do not know. I am
invariably polite to her and consider all her wishes, and she often
tells me she is very proud of me; but all trace of the familiarity she
exercised towards me in the beginning has disappeared.

I am sorry for her, as she is deeply anxious, also, about this
question of the Yeomanry going to the war.

Augustus is still her idol.

Perhaps I am wicked to be so indifferent to them all. Perhaps it is
not enough just to submit and to have gentle manners. I ought to
display interest; but I cannot--oh, I cannot.

It is the very small things that jar upon me--their sordid views upon
no matter what question--the importance they attach to trifles.

Sometimes in the afternoons, after tea, Amelia reads the _Family
Herald_ to Mrs. Gurrage.

"A comfort it was to me in my young days, my dear," she often tells
me.

The delinquencies of the house-maids are discussed at dinner, the
smallest piece of gossip in Tilchester society.

I cannot, try as I will, remember the people's different names, or
whom Miss Jones is engaged to, or whom Miss Brown. Quantities of these
people come out to tea, and those afternoons are difficult to bear. I
feel very tired when evening comes, after having had to sit there and
hear them talk. Their very phraseology is as of a different world.

Augustus has not been drunk since the night at Harley, but often I
think his eyes look as if he had had too much to drink, and it is on
these occasions he is rude to me.

I believe in his heart he is very fond of me still, but his habit of
bullying and blustering often conceals it.

He continually accuses me of being a cold statue, and regrets that
he has married a lump of ice. And when I ask him in what way I could
please him better, he says I must love him.

"I told you before we were married that I never should, but I would
be civil to you," I said to him at last, exasperated beyond all
endurance. "You agreed to the bargain, and I do my best to keep it.
I never disobey you or cross you in a single thing. What have you to
complain of?"

"Everything!" he said, in a fury, thumping the table so hard that
a little Dresden-china figure fell down and broke into pieces on
the parquet floor. "Everything! Your great eyes are always sad. You
never take the least interest in anything about any of us. You are
docile--yes; and obedient--yes; and when I hold you in my arms I might
be holding a stuffed doll for all the response you make. And when I
kiss you, you shudder!"

He walked up and down the room excitedly.

"Oh, we have all noticed it!" he continued. "You are polite, and
quiet, and--and--damned cold! Does Amelia ever let herself go before
you? Never! The mater herself feels it. You are as different to any of
us as if you came from Mars!"

"But you knew that always. You used to tell me that was what you
liked about me," I said, wearily. "I cannot change my nature any more
than--than Amelia can hers."

"Why not, pray?"

"Have you never thought," I said, driven at last to defend myself,
"that there may be a side in the question for me also? I feel it as
badly as you do--your all being different to me."

He stopped in his angry walk and looked at me. This idea was one of
complete newness to him.

"Well, you'd better get out of it and change, for we sha'n't," he
said, at last. "You owe everything to me. You would have been in the
gutter now if I had not had the generosity to marry you."

I did not answer, but I suppose my eyes spoke, for he came close up to
me and shook his fist in my face.

"I'll break that proud spirit of yours--see if I don't!" he
roared--"daring to look at me like that! What good are you to me, I
should like to know? You do not have a child, and, of all things, I
want an heir!"

A low growl came from the hearth-rug, where Roy had been lying, and
the dear dog rose and came to my side. I was afraid he would fly at
Augustus, shaking his fist as if he was going to strike me. I put my
hand on Roy's soft, black head and held his collar.

In a moment Augustus turned round and rushed to the door.

"I'll have that dog poisoned," he said, as he fled from the room.

I took up a volume of La Rochefoucauld, which was lying on the table
near--grandmamma's copy--and I chanced to open it at this maxim:

"_On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine._"

About happiness I do not know, but for the rest--well, I must tell
myself that to feel miserable is only foolish imagination, when I have
a fire, and food, and a diamond necklace, and three yards of pearls,
and a carriage with prune-and-scarlet servants, and a boudoir with
mustard-silk walls, and--and numbers of other things.

Roy put his nose into my hand.

"Why did we not go on the long journey with grandmamma?" I said
to him. And then I remembered that it is ridiculous to be morbid
and dramatic, and so I rang for my maid--a dour Scotchwoman whom
I like--and told her to bring my out-door things here to the
boudoir-fire. And soon Roy and I were a mile from the house.

Lady Tilchester has been in Scotland almost ever since we spent our
four days at Harley. When she comes back I shall ask her if she will
come over here. She may help me to awake.

I am sure if any one could read what I have written, they would say
that poor Augustus had a great deal to put up with in having a wife
like me. Probably, from his point of view, I am thoroughly tiresome
and irritating. I do not exonerate myself.

       *       *       *       *       *

After a brisk walk I felt better, and by lunch-time was able to come
back to the house and behave as usual. Augustus, I found, had gone to
London.

Mrs. Gurrage was uneasy. She dropped her h's once or twice, a sure
sign, with her, of perturbation and excitement.

When the servants had left the room she said to Amelia:

"Quite time you were off with that basket for Mary Higginson."

And Amelia took the hint meekly and got up from her seat, leaving a
pear unfinished.

"Shut the door now, and don't stand loitering there!" my mother-in-law
further commanded.

Amelia is a poor relation, and has often to put up with unfinished
manners.

"Look here, my dear," Mrs. Gurrage said, when she felt sure we were
alone, "I don't like it--and that's flat!"

"What do you not like?" I said, respectfully.

"Gussie's goings-on! If you tried to coax him more he would not be
forever rushin' up to London to see that viscountess of his. I wonder
you don't show no spark of jealousy. Law! I'd have scratched her eyes
out had she interfered between me and Mr. Gurrage as she is doing
between you two, even if she was a duchess!"

"I do not understand," I said.

"Well, you must have your eyes glued shut," Mrs. Gurrage continued,
emphatically. "That Lady Grenellen, I mean. A nice viscountess she is,
lookin' after other people's husbands! Why, you can't never have even
glanced at the letters Gussie's got from her!"

"Oh, but _of course_ not!"

"Well, I have. My suspicions began to be aroused directly after you
got back from Harley. I caught sight of a coronet on the envelope"
(Mrs. Gurrage pronounces it "envellup"), "and I said to myself,
there's something queer in that, Gussie never sayin' a word--he as
would be so proud of a letter with a crown on it."

"Yes," I said. I felt sorry for her, she was so agitated. All the
veneer knowledge of grammar had left her, and she spoke with a broad,
natural accent.

"The next one that came--and never a word from him made me sure--so,
I thought to myself, I'll make certain, and I opened the bag myself
with my key for a few mornings--I came down early before him on
purpose--and soon I sees another gold crown and great, sprawly
writin'. The kettle was singing. It took me no time to get the gum
unstuck, and--well there! My dear, you never did! I blush to think of
it. The hussy! She was thankin' him for a diamond bracelet. Now I know
my son Gussie well enough to know he did not give her that bracelet
for nothing. Then she said as how he might come on Tuesday to see her,
as she would be passin' through London and would be at her town-house
for the day."

"But please don't tell me--it--oh, one ought never to read other
people's letters!" I exclaimed.

Mrs. Gurrage flushed scarlet.

"There! That's just you--your high and mighty sentiments! And why,
pray, shouldn't a mother watch over her son, even if his wife has not
the spirit to?"

I did not answer.

"There! It's been so from the first. I thought you'd have been proud
and glad to marry my Gussie--you, as poor as a rat! I don't set
no store by our wealth--the Lord's doin', and Mr. Gurrage takin'
advantage of the opportunities, his partener dyin' youngish--but I
liked the idea of your bein' high-born, and I was frightened about
Gussie's lookin' at that girl at the Ledstone Arms. And you seemed
good and quiet and well-brought-up. And Gussie just doted on you. You
ought to have jumped at him, but you and your grandma were that proud!
All the time you were engaged you were as haughty as if you were
honorin' _him_, instead of his honorin' you! Since you've been my
daughter-in-law, I have no cause to complain of you, only it's the
feelin', and your settin' quiet and far away, when a flesh-and-blood
woman would have clawed that viscountess's hair! Gussie'd never have
been after her if you'd show'd a little more affection. You're not a
bad-lookin' woman yourself if you wasn't so white."

"Do let us understand each other," I said. "I told your son from the
first that I did not care for him. My grandmother was old and dying.
We had no relations to depend upon. I should have been left, as
Augustus was unchivalrous enough to tell me this morning, 'in the
gutter.' These reasons seemed strong enough to my grandmother to make
her deem it expedient that I should marry some one. There was no time
to choose--I had never dreamed in my life of disobeying her. She told
me to marry Augustus. This situation was fully explained to him, and
he understood and kept us to the bargain. I have endeavored in every
way to fulfil my side, but in it I never contemplated a supervision
of his letters."

"Oh, indeed! And why couldn't you love him, pray? A finer young man
doesn't live for miles round," Mrs. Gurrage said, with great offence.
The other questions seemed in abeyance for the moment.

"We cannot force our likes and dislikes," I said.

"Well, you are married now, and part and parcel of him, and a wife's
duty is to keep her own husband from hussies--viscountesses or no they
can call themselves."

"What do you wish me to do?"

"Why, tax him with it when he comes home to-night. Let him see you
know and won't stand it. It's all your fault for not lovin' him, and
your duty now's to keep him in the path of virtue."

"May I say you informed me of his behavior? Because how otherwise
could I account for my knowledge? He would know I should never have
thought of opening or looking at his letters myself."

Mrs. Gurrage was not the least ashamed of having done this, to me,
most dishonorable thing. She could not see the matter from my point
of view.

I remember grandmamma once told me that servants and people of the
lower classes always think it is their right to read any one's letters
they come across, so I suppose my mother-in-law cannot help her
standard of honor being different to ours.

"You mustn't make mischief between my boy and me," she said. "You must
invent something--think of some other way."

"But I cannot tell a lie about it. I shall say you have received
disquieting information; I will not say how. Otherwise, I will not
speak to him at all about it."

Mrs. Gurrage burst into tears.

"There--it's breakin' my heart!" she sobbed, "and you don't care a
brass farthing!"

"Of course I care," I said, feebly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Oh, grandmamma! For once you must have been wrong, and it would have
been better for me to have worked in the gutter! I wonder if you felt
that at the end. But we had given our word. Augustus held us to it,
and no Calincourt had ever broken his word.

By the afternoon post came a letter from Sir Antony Thornhirst. He had
returned from Scotland, he said, and hoped we would soon pay him our
promised visit.

It was a short note, dry and to the point, with nothing in it
unnecessary in the way of words. I do not know why I read it over
several times. His writing gave me comfort. I felt as if there was
some one human who would understand things.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I was dressing for dinner, Augustus returned. He shuffled into
the room without knocking, while McGreggor was brushing my hair.

He seemed to have forgotten the scene of the morning, and was in a
most amiable mood. He had brought me a new muff chain, in wonderfully
good taste; he could never have chosen it himself. It is so difficult
to thank people for things when you would like to throw them in the
fire rather than receive them.

However, I did my best.

McGreggor felt it her duty to leave the room. Would this be a good
opportunity to get over what I had promised my mother-in-law to say
to Augustus? Oh, it was an ugly moment.

I told him, as simply as I could, that his mother was worried about
him, fearing he had contracted a dangerous friendship with Lady
Grenellen, and that I hoped he would make her mind at ease upon the
subject.

He came over to me and seized my wrists. There was an air of conscious
pride in his face. He was not displeased that this gallantry could be
attributed to him.

"It's all your fault if I do look at any one else," he blustered;
"and, anyway, a man of the world must have a little amusement, with
such a dull, stuck-up wife at home as I have got. Cordelia is a darned
sight higher rank than you are, and yet she does not give herself your
mighty airs."

"Oh, do not think it matters to me," I said, as calmly as I could,
"only it worries your mother, who spoke to me about it."

"If I thought you cared it would be different," Augustus said,
delighted to grasp at this excuse.

"No, it would be just the same, only in that case it would grieve me,
and I should suffer, whereas now--" I left the sentence unfinished, I
do not know why.

"Now you don't care what I do or whether I am dead or alive--that is
what you mean, I see," he said, dropping my wrists and walking towards
the door.

"Augustus!" I called to him, and he came back. "Listen. You swore at
me this morning. You were very rude to me, and you spend the day in
London with another woman, and return bringing me a present. I have
done my best not to resent these insults, but I warn you I will not
stand any more."

He became cringing.

"Who's been telling the mater these stories about me?" he asked.
"There's not a word of truth in them. It is a queer thing if a man
may not speak to a woman without people making mischief about it!"

"That is between you and your mother. All I would like to know is
that you will not swear at me in future and will treat me with more
civility."

I felt I could not continue the subject of his "friendship" with Lady
Grenellen. The whole matter seemed so low.

"Well, you are a brick, after all, not to kick up a row," Augustus
said. "So let us kiss and be friends again, and I am sorry if I was
nasty this morning. There! little woman, you need not be jealous," and
he patted my hand, and then began twisting the long waves of my hair
in and out of his thick fingers.

"What is a fellow to do when a woman falls in love with him?" he
continued, with self-conscious complacency. "He can't be a bear to
her, even though he is married, eh?"

"No, it is only to his wife he can be the bear," I said.

Of course, I ought to have been very jealous and angry, I am sure, but
I could not feel the least emotion. I only longed to wrench my hair
out of his hands, and to tell him that he might speak to and make love
to whom he pleased so long as he left me alone and in peace.

He then became more affectionate, telling me I was the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen, and that I had "stunning hair" and various
other charms, and if only I would not be a lump of ice he would never
leave me!

I could not say, as I felt, "But that is the one thing I should like
you to do," so I said nothing, and, as soon as I could get near the
bell unperceived, rang for McGreggor again, and put an end to the
scene.




VI


Next morning at breakfast Augustus said: "As Farrington has
refused for the 15th, you had better write and ask that fellow
Thornhirst--your cousin. They tell me he is a capital shot, and I
want my birds killed this year."

The year before, apparently, the party had been composed of
indifferent marksmen, and the head keeper had spoken rather
sarcastically upon the subject.

Augustus, when not bullying them, stands in great awe of his servants.

"I am afraid, with only this short notice, there is little chance of
Sir Antony being disengaged," I remarked.

I somehow felt as if I did not want him to come to Ledstone. He would
be so ridiculously out of place here.

"A keen shot would throw over any invitation he had had previously
for such a chance as my two best days," Augustus replied, pompously,
helping himself to a second kidney and smearing it with mustard. "You
just write this morning, and ask him to wire reply."

"Very well," I said, reluctantly. He would certainly be engaged though
I need not fear, "I had a note from yesterday, saying he had returned
from Scotland, and asking us to go over soon and pay our promised
visit to dine and sleep."

"There! I'll bet he was fishing for an invitation to this shoot,"
said Augustus, triumphantly. And, not content with the mustard he had
already plastered the kidney with, he shook pepper over it, heaping it
up upon his knife first and agitating that implement with his fork to
make the pepper fall evenly. I do not know why these details of the
way he eats should irritate me so.

"Now, mind you catch the early post," he continued, "and tell him who
the party are."

At fifteen minutes to eleven I found myself still staring irresolutely
at the sheet of note-paper lying before me on the writing-table in my
boudoir. It had the date written, and "Dear Sir Antony." The rest was
a blank.

The little, brand-new Dresden clock on the mantel-piece chimed the
three-quarters. The post leaves at eleven. I took up the pen and
dashed at it.

"Eight guns are going to shoot partridges here on the 15th of October,
and Augustus will be very pleased if you will make the ninth,"
I wrote. Could anything be more _bête_? "Please wire reply, and
believe me, yours sincerely--" I hesitated again. Must I sign myself
"Ambrosine de Calincourt Gurrage"? The strangest reluctance came over
me.

It has always been a disagreeable moment when I have had to write
"Gurrage," but never so disagreeable as now.

"A. de C.G.," I began. No, initials would not do--"urrage," I added,
and the distance between the "G" and the "u" showed, I am afraid, that
there was something unnatural about my signature.

"No one would accept such a stupid invitation as that," I said to
myself, hopefully, as I folded the sheet and put it in the envelope.
But by ten o'clock next day a telegram was handed to me:

    Very pleased to come on 15th. Many thanks.--ANTONY THORNHIRST.

So he will see the stuffed bears, and the negro figures, and the
Tottenham Court Road Louis XV. drawing-rooms, after all, whether I
wish it or no!

_Whether I wish it or no!_

Augustus was delighted--not so much at the acceptance of this guest,
but his own wonderful prehension.

"There! I told you he'd jump at it," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

For several days after this a good deal of my time was taken up by
my mother-in-law's advice and directions as to how I should rule the
house during her absence at Bournemouth, where she would be until she
returned to spend Christmas with us.

It was a great wrench, one could see, to Mrs. Gurrage to relinquish
even for this short two months her rule at Ledstone. But she was in so
good a temper with me for what she considered I had done in bringing
Augustus back "to the path of duty" (we have heard no more of Lady
Grenellen) that she bestowed upon me her sceptre with a good grace.

At last the day came when Amelia, carrying the parrot, followed her
into the brougham.

Augustus had preceded them to the station, and with infinite fuss of
maids and footman, and stray card-board boxes, and final directions,
the whole party disappeared down the drive, and I was left standing
on the red-granite steps.

A sudden sense of exaltation came over me.

I was alone for the first time since my wedding!

It would be evening before Augustus could return from seeing them
off in London.

There was almost one whole day. What should I do? Where should I go?

Roy even barked with pleasure.

As I turned back into the house, the butler informed me
Hephzibah--Mrs. Prodgers--was waiting to see me.

Dear old nurse! She comes up rarely. She is radiantly happy with her
grocer's man, and I think it grieves her to see me.

To-day it was to tell me that she had an accident with one of the
Sèvres cups, a chip having appeared in the handle.

She almost cried over it.

"Oh! If madam could know!" she said; then, "I dearly wish you would
come back just to see how I have kept things," she added.

"Oh, Hephzibah, I will some day, but do not ask me yet! I--I should
so miss grandmamma."

"You--you're happy, Miss Ambrosine?" she faltered, timidly. "Madam
always knew best, you know. But I had a dream last night of your
father, and he shook his fist at us--right there."

"Papa!" I felt startled. Our settled conviction had been so long that
he was dead. "You dreamed of papa? Oh! Hephzibah, if he should still
be alive!" I cried.

"There, there," she said, uneasily. "It is too late, anyway, my deary,
but he'll understand that we could none of us stand against madam--if
he should come back, ever. He--he--won't blame us."

I did not ask her what he should blame us for--her, poor soul! for
having been unable to keep me with her, free; me for having submitted
to the mutilation of my own life. Would papa blame us for this?

Kind, awkward, abrupt papa!

Hephzibah glanced round the room. It is the first time she had been
in my boudoir since it was finished.

"Why won't you have up some of your things?" she said, at last. "It
don't look like you, this grand place."

"No, it is not very like me, is it? But you see everything is changed,
and they would not do mixed, the old and the new. I am a new person."
I sighed. "See--this book is the only thing I brought with me, besides
the miniature of my great-great-grandmother," and I took up La
Rochefoucauld tenderly.

"It don't feel like home," said Hephzibah, and then she suddenly burst
into tears.

"Oh, my deary!" she sobbed, "And you so beautiful, and pale, and
proud, and never saying a word, and they are none of them fit to black
your boots."

"Oh, hush, hush, Hephzibah!" I said.

My voice calmed her. She looked round as though afraid that grandmamma
would come in and scold her for crying.

"There! I am an old fool!" she whimpered. "But it is being so happy
myself and knowing what real love is that makes me cry."

This picture of my dear old nurse as the heroine of a real love story
was so pathetically comic that a lump, half tears, half laughter, rose
in my own throat.

"I _am_ so glad you are happy, Hephzibah," I said, unsteadily. "And of
course I am happy, too. Come--I will show you the beautiful chain Mr.
Gurrage gave me lately, and a set of new rings, a ruby, a sapphire, a
diamond, each stone as big as a peanut."

Hephzibah had not lived with grandmamma for years without acquiring a
certain tact. She spoke no more of things that could emotion us, and
soon we parted, smiling grimly at each other.

But the sense of exaltation was gone.

I could fly a little, like a bird round a large aviary. The bars were
there beyond.




VII


It was odious weather, the afternoon of the 15th. Our eight guns had
arrived in time for tea, some with wives, some without--one with a
playful, giddy daughter. Men predominated.

There were some two or three decent people from the county round. The
remainder, commercial connections, friends of the past.

One terrible woman, with parted, plastered hair and an aggressive
voice and rustling silks, dominated the conversation. She is the wife
of the brother of the late Mr. Gurrage's partner who "died youngish."

This couple come apparently every year to the best partridge drive.
"Dodd" is their name.

Mrs. Dodd was extremely ill at ease among the other ladies, but was
determined to let them know that she considered herself their superior
in every way.

At the moment when she was recounting, in a strident voice, the
shortcomings of one of her local neighbors, the butler announced:

"Sir Antony Thornhirst."

Our ninth gun had arrived.

"So good of you to ask me," he said, as he shook hands, and his voice
sounded like smooth velvet after the others. And for a minute there
was a singing in my ears.

"Jolly glad to see you," Augustus blustered. "What beastly weather!
You motored over, I suppose?"

Sir Antony sat down by me.

I remembered the ways he would be accustomed to and did not introduce
him to any one.

He had exchanged casual "How do you do's" with the neighbors he knew.

I poured him out some tea.

"I don't drink it," he said, "but give me some, and sugar, and cream,
and anything that will take time to put in."

I laughed.

"It is very long since we met at Harley, and I began to think you were
going to forget me again, Comtesse!"

"Is that why you came here?"

"Yes--and because they tell me your keeper can show at least a hundred
and fifty brace of partridges each day!"

"Augustus was right, then."

"What about?"

"He said you would come because of the number of the birds. I--I--felt
sure you would be engaged."

"Your note was not cordial nor cousinly, and I was engaged, but the
attraction of the game, as Mr. Gurrage says, decided me."

His smile had never looked so mocking nor his eyes so kind.

"Might I trouble you for a second cup, please, Mrs. Gussie?" the
female Dodd interrupted, loudly, from half across the room, "Mr.
McCormack is taking it over to you. And a little stronger this
time, please. I don't care for this new-fangled taste for weak
tea--dish-water, I call it--only fit for the jaded digestions of
worn-out worldly women."

"Who owns this fog-horn?" my kinsman whispered. "Will it come out
shooting to-morrow? The game-book record will be considerably lower
if so!"

"It won't shoot; it will only lunch," I whispered back.

Somehow, my spirits had risen. I loved to sit and laugh there
with--Antony. (I think of him as Antony, now we are cousins, I must
remember.)

I poured out the blackest tea I could, and inadvertently put a lump
of sugar into it. I am afraid I was not attending.

Mr. McCormack, a big, burly youth, with a red face and fearfully
nervous manners, stood first on one foot, then on the other, while he
waited for the cup, which, eventually, he took back to Mrs. Dodd.

All this time Antony was sitting talking to me in his delightfully
lazy way, quite undisturbed by any one else in the room. He has
exactly grandmamma's manner of finding a general company simply
furniture.

He was just telling an amusing story of the house in Scotland he
had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of
the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of
teaspoons and china--and, amid a terrified silence, the fog-horn
exclaimed:

"Surely, Mrs. Gussie, I told you plain enough that sugar in my tea
makes me sick."

I apologized as well as I could, and repaired my want of attention,
and then I felt my other guests must claim me, so I whispered to
Antony:

"Do go and talk to Lady Wakely, please. You are preventing me from
doing my duty! I am listening to you instead."

"Virtuous Comtesse!"

But he rose, and crossed over to the fat wife of the member for this
division, and soon her face beamed with smiles.

I soothed Mr. McCormack, who somehow felt the sugar had been his
fault.

Augustus mollified the fog-horn Dodd, and peace was restored all
around.

It is a long time between tea and dinner when the days are growing
short. It was only half-past six when every excuse for lingering over
the teacups had expired.

What on earth could one do with this ill-assorted company for a whole
hour?

Augustus, with a desire to be extremely smart, had commanded dinner at
half-past eight.

Mercifully, the decent people and some of the men played bridge, and
were soon engaged at one or two tables. Augustus, who is growing fond
of the game, made one of the fourth, thus leaving five of our guests
hanging upon my hands.

"Shall I show you your rooms? Perhaps you would like to rest before
dinner," I said to the ladies, who were good enough to assent, with
the exception of Mrs. Dodd, who snorted at the idea of resting.

"Wullie," she said to Mr. Dodd. She had evidently picked up the
Scotch pronunciation of his name from him, a quiet, red-haired man
originally from Glasgow. He was hovering in the direction of one of
the bridge-tables. "Wullie, don't let me see you playing that game of
cards. There are letters to be written to Martha and my mother. Come
with me," she commanded.

Mr. Dodd obeyed, and they retired to the library together.

They are evidently quite at home here, and did not need any attention
from me.

Antony Thornhirst was the only other guest unemployed, and he
immediately rose and went to write letters in the hall, he said.
He had refused to play bridge on account of this important
correspondence.

So at last I got the two women off to their rooms, and was standing
irresolutely for a second, glancing over the balustrade after closing
the last door, when my kinsman looked up.

"Comtesse," he called, softly, "won't you come down and tell me when
the post goes?"

I descended the stairs. He was standing at the bottom by one of the
negro figures when I reached the last step.

"Have you not some quiet corner where we might sit and talk of our
ancestors?" he asked, with a comic look in his cat's eyes. "This place
is so draughty, and I am afraid of the bears! And we should disturb
that loving couple in the library and the bridge-players in the
drawing-room. Have you no suggestions for my comfort? I am one of your
guests, too, you know!"

"There is Mrs. Gurrage's boudoir, that has straight-up, padded chairs
and crimson satin, and there is my own, that is mustard yellow. Which
could you bear best before dinner?" I said, laughing.

"Oh! the yellow--mustard is stimulating and will give me an appetite."

So we walked up the stairs again together and he followed me down the
thickly carpeted passage to my highly gilded shrine.

For the first time since I have owned it, I felt sorry I had been too
numb to make it nice. The house-maids arrange it in the morning, and
there it stays, a monument of the English upholsterer's idea of a
Louis XV. boudoir.

As I told Hephzibah, the little copy of La Rochefoucauld and the
miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie are the only things of mine--my
own--that are here, besides all my new books, of course.

I sat down in the straight-backed sofa. It has terra-cotta and buff
tulips running over the mustard brocade. The gilt part runs into your
back.

Antony sat at the other end.

A very fat, rich cushion of "school of art" embroidery, with frills,
fell between us. We looked up at the same moment and our eyes met, and
we both laughed.

"You remind me of a picture I bought last year," Antony said. "It
was a little pastel by La Tour, and the last owner had framed it in
a brand-new, brilliant gilt Florentine frame."

Suddenly, as he spoke, a sense of shame came over me. I felt how wrong
I had been to laugh with him about this--my home. It is because, after
all these months, I cannot realize that Ledstone is my home that I
have been capable of committing this bad taste.

I felt my cheeks getting red and I looked down.

"I--I like bright colors," I said, defiantly. "They are cheerful
and--and--"

"Sweet Comtesse!" interrupted Antony, in his mocking tone, which does
not anger me. "Tell me about your books."

He got up lazily, and began reading the titles of a heap on the table
beyond.

"What strange books for a little girl! Who on earth recommended you
these?"

"No one. I knew nothing at all about modern books, so I just sent for
all and any I saw in the advertisements in the papers. Most of them
are great rubbish, it seems to me, but there are one or two I like."

He did not speak for a few moments.

"All on philosophy! You ought to read novels at your age."

"I did get some in the beginning, but they seemed all untrue and
mawkish, or sad and dramatic, and the heroines did such silly things,
and the men were mostly brutes, so I have given them up. Unless I see
the advertisement of a thrilling burglary or mystery story, I read
those. They are not true, either, and one knows it, but they make one
forget when it rains."

"All women profess to have a little taste for philosophy and
beautifully bound Marcus Aureliuses, and _Maximes_, and love
poems--clever little scraps covered in exquisite bindings. And one out
of a thousand understands what the letter-press is about. I am weary
of seeing the same on every boudoir-table, and yet some of them are
delightful books in themselves. You have none of these, I see."

He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.

"Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition." He turned to the
title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover. It is bound
in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my
chatelaine has--the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an
"A. E. de C." entwined, all tooled in faded gold.

"The arms on my knife!" Antony said, pulling it from his
waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.

"My knife," I said.

"Tell me all about her--A.E. de C.," he commanded, seating himself
on the sofa again.

"She was my great-great-grandmother, and was guillotined. See--I
will show you her miniature," and I took it from its case on the
writing-table. I have had a leather covering made to keep safe the
old, paste frame. It has doors that shut, and I don't let her look
too much at the mustard-yellow walls, my pretty ancestress.

"What an extraordinary likeness!" Antony exclaimed, as he looked
at it. "Are you sure I am not dreaming and you are not your own
great-great-grandmother?"

"No, I am myself. But I am supposed to be like her, though."

"It is the very image of you. She has your air and carriage of the
head, and--and--" he looked at it very carefully under the electric
light which sprouts from a twisted bunch of brass lilies on the wall,
their stalks suggesting a modern Louis XV. nightmare.

"And what?"

"Well, never mind. Now I want to hear her story." And we both sat down
again for the third time on the tulip-sofa.

I told him the history just as I had told him the outline of my life
the day in the Harley woods. Only, as then I felt I was speaking of
another person, now I seemed to be talking of myself when I came to
the part of walking up the guillotine steps.

"And so they cut her head off--poor little lady!" said Antony, when I
had finished, and he looked straight into my eyes.

The pillow of art-needlework and frills had fallen to the floor--even
it could not remain comfortably on the hard seat! There was nothing
between us on the sofa.

Antony leaned forward, close to me. His voice was strangely moved.

"Comtesse!" he began, when McGreggor knocked at the door.

"Mr. Gurrage is calling you, ma'am," she said, in her heavy, Scotch
voice, "and he seems in a hurry, ma'am."

"Ambrosine!" echoed impatiently in the hall.

"Why, it must be dressing-time!" said Antony, calmly, looking at his
watch. "I must not keep you," and he quietly left the room as Augustus
burst in from my bedroom door.

"Where on earth have you been?" he said, crossly. "That Dodd woman
has been driving us all mad! Willie Dodd came and joined us at bridge
and took McCormack's place, and the old she-tike came after him and
chattered like a monkey until she got him away. Where were you that
you did not look after her?"

"I was here, in my sitting-room, talking to Sir Antony Thornhirst," I
said, almost laughing. The picture of Mrs. Dodd at the bridge-table
amused me to think of. Augustus saw me smiling, and he looked less
ruffled.

"She is an old wretch," he said. "I wish I had not to ask Willie Dodd
every year, but business is business, and I'll trouble you to be civil
to them. We will weed out the whole of this lot, gradually, now. The
mater will go off to Bournemouth at this time of the year, and so,
by-and-by, we can have nothing but smart people."

The evening passed in an endless, boring round. This sort of company
does not adapt itself as the people at Harley did. With my best
endeavors to be a good hostess, the uneasiness of my guests prevented
me from making them feel comfortable or at home.

Mrs. Dodd's impertinence would have been insupportable if it had not
been so funny.

She complained of most things--the draughts, the inconvenience of the
hours of the train departures, and so on.

She was gorgeously dressed and hung with diamonds. Without being
exceptionally stout, everything is so tight and pushed-up that she
seems to come straight out from her chin in a kind of platform, where
the diamonds lose themselves in a narrow, perpendicular depression in
the middle.

Antony sat next me at dinner, at one side; on the other was old Sir
Samuel Wakely. Mr. Dodd on his left hand had Miss Springle, the
playful, giddy daughter of one of the guns.

She chaffed him all the time, much to the annoyance of his life's
partner, who was sitting opposite, and who, owing to an erection of
flowers, was unable to quite see what was going on.

"Yes," we heard Mr. Dodd say, at last, "I nearly bought it in Paris at
the Exhibition. Eh! but it was a beautiful statue!"

"I like statues," said Miss Springle.

"Well, she was just a perfect specimen of a woman, but Missus Dodd
wouldna let me purchase her, because the puir thing wasna dressed. I
didna think it could matter in marble."

"What's that you are saying about Mrs. Dodd?" demanded that lady from
across the table, dodging the chrysanthemums.

"I was telling Miss Springle, my dear, of the statue of 'Innocence' I
wanted to buy at the Exhibition at Paris," replied Mr. Dodd, meekly,
"and that you wouldna let me on account of the scanty clothing."

"Innocence, indeed!" snorted Mrs. Dodd. "Pretty names they give things
over there! And her clothing scant, you call it, Wullie? Why, you are
stretching a point to the verge of untruth to call it clothing at
all--a scarf of muslin and a couple of doves! Anyhow, I'll have it
known I'll not have a naked woman in my drawing-room, in marble or
flesh!"

The conversation of the whole table was paralyzed by her voice. My eye
caught Antony's, and we both laughed.

"There, there, my dear, don't be even suggesting such things," said
Mr. Dodd, soothingly.

"La! Mrs. Dodd, you make me blush," giggled Miss Springle.

I wondered what Antony thought of it all, and whether he had ever been
among such people before. His face betrayed nothing after he laughed
with me, and he seemed to be quietly enjoying his dinner, which,
fortunately, was good.

It was only for a few minutes before we all said good-night that we
spoke together alone.

"Shall you be down to breakfast, Comtesse?" he asked me.

"Oh yes," I said, "These people would never understand. They would
think I was being deliberately rude if I breakfasted in my room."

"At nine o'clock, then?"

"Yes."

"Lend me your La Rochefoucauld to read to-night?" he asked.

"With pleasure. I will have it sent to your room."

"No, let me get it from your mustard boudoir myself. I shall be coming
up, probably, to change into a smoking-coat, and my room is down that
way, you know."

"Very well."

So we said good-night.

Half an hour afterwards, I was standing by my sitting-room fire when
Antony came into the room. He leaned on the mantel-piece beside me and
looked down into my face.

"When will you come over to Dane Mount, Comtesse? I want to show you
_my_ great-great-grandmother. She was yours, too, by-the-way," he
said.

"When will you ask us?"

"In about a fortnight. I have to run about Norfolk until then. Will
you come some time near the 4th of November?"

"I shall have to ask Augustus, but I dare say we can."

He frowned slightly at the mention of Augustus.

"Of course. Well, I will not have a party, only some one to talk
to--your husband. The ancestors won't interest him, probably."

"Oh! Do ask Lady Tilchester," I said. "I love her."

He bent down suddenly to look at the Dresden clock.

"No, I don't think so. She will be entertaining herself just then," he
said, "and probably could not get away. But leave it to me, I promise
to arrange that Augustus shall not be bored."

He picked up La Rochefoucauld and opened it.

"I see you have marked some of the _maximes_."

"No. Grandmamma and the Marquis must have done that. Look, they are
all of the most witty and cynical that are pencilled. I can hear them
talking when I read them. That is just how they spoke to one another."

He read aloud:

"'_C'est une grande folie de vouloir être sage tout seul_!' Don't
be '_sage tout seul_,' Comtesse. Let me keep you company in your
_sagesse_," he said.

I looked up at him. His eyes were full of a quizzical smile. There
is something in the way his head is set, a distinction, an air of
command. It infinitely pleases me. I felt--I know not what!

"Now I will say good-night. I am tired, and it is getting late," I
said.

"Good-night, Comtesse," and he walked to the door. "I shall be down
at nine o'clock."

And so we parted.




VIII


On the morrow it had cleared up and flashes of blue sky were
appearing. Augustus and Mr. McCormack had both had too much to drink
the night before, at dinner, and were looking, and no doubt feeling,
mixed and ill-tempered.

The morning was long after the shooters had gone. It seemed as if one
o'clock, when we were to start for the lunch, would never come.

Miss Springle had some passages-at-arms with Mrs. Dodd. They had all
been down to breakfast but Lady Wakely and another woman, who were
accustomed to the ways of the world.

I had never seen any shooting before. The whole thing was new to me.
Augustus had insisted upon selecting what he considered a suitable
costume for me. We had been up to London several times together to try
it on, and, on the whole, though a little _outre_ in its checks, it is
not unbecoming.

"Do you shoot, yourself, Mrs. Gussie?" Mrs. Dodd asked, when we
assembled in the hall, ready to start.

"No; do you?" I replied.

"Of course not! The idea! But, seeing your skirt so very short, I
should have guessed you were a sportswoman and killed the birds
yourself!" and she sniffed ominously.

"Do birds get killed with a skirt?" Miss Springle asked, pertly. She
hates Mrs. Dodd. They were neighbors In Liverpool, originally. "I
thought you had to shoot at them?"

Mrs. Dodd snorted.

"You will get awfully muddy, Mrs. Dodd, in your long cashmere," Miss
Springle continued. "And Mr. Dodd told me, when I met him coming
from the bath this morning, to be sure not to wear any colors--they
frighten the birds. I am certain he will object to that yellow
paradise-plume in your hat."

Mrs. Dodd looked ready to fight.

"Mr. Dodd had better talk to me about my hat!" she said, growing
purple in the face. "I call all these modern sporting-costumes
indecent, and when I was a girl I should have been whipped for coming
out shooting in the things you have got on, Miss Springle!"

"Really! you don't say so!" said Miss Springle, innocently, "Why, I
never heard they shot birds in Liverpool, Mrs. Dodd."

I interfered. The expression of my elder guest's face was becoming
apoplectic.

"Let us get into the brake," I said.

Lady Wakely sat next me.

"Very unpleasant person, Mrs. Dodd," she whispered, wheezily, as we
drove off, "She is here every year. My dear, you are good-natured to
put up with her."

Lunch was laid out in the barn of one of the farm-houses. Augustus had
given orders that it should be of the most sumptuous description, and
the chef had done marvels.

The table looked like a wedding-breakfast when we got there, with
flowers and printed menus.

The sportsmen were not long in making their appearance. It was
a rather warm day, and Mr. McCormack and Mr. Dodd, who were not
accustomed to much exercise, I suppose, without ceremony mopped
their heads.

Antony, who was walking behind, with Sir Samuel Wakely, appeared such
an astonishingly cool contrast to them. His coat did not look new, but
as if it had seen service. Only everything fitted and hung right, and
he walks with an ease and grace that would have pleased grandmamma.

Augustus had a thunderous expression on his face. So had Wilks, the
head keeper. Later, I gathered there had been a great quantity of
birds, but the commercial friends had not been very successful in
their destruction. In fact, Mr. Dodd had only secured two brace,
besides one of the beaters in the shoulder, and a dog.

Antony sat by me.

"Dangerous work, shooting," he said, smiling, as he looked at the
menu. "What is your average list of killed in a pheasant battue?"

"What--what kind of killed?" I asked, laughing.

"Guests or beaters or dogs--anything but the birds."

"Cutlets ha la ravigotte or 'ommard ha lamerican, Sir Antony?" the
voice of the first footman sounded in our ears.

"Oh--er--get me a little Irish stew or some cold beef," said Antony,
plaintively, still with the menu in his hand.

"We've no--Irish stew--except what is prepared for the beaters, Sir
Antony," said James, apologetically. He had come from a ducal house
and knew the world. "Shall I get you some of that, Sir Antony?"

"No, don't mind." Then, turning to me, "What are you eating,
Comtesse?" he asked. "I will have some of that."

"It is truffled partridge in aspic," I said, disagreeably. "You can
pick out the truffles if you are afraid of them."

"Truffled partridge, then," he said to James, resignedly, and when
it came he deliberately ate the truffles first.

"Hock, claret, Burgundy, or champagne, Sir Antony?" demanded the
butler.

"Oh--er--I will have the whole four!"

His face had the most comical expression of chastened resignation as
he glanced at me.

Griggson poured out bumpers in the four glasses.

"I shall now shoot like your friend from Liverpool," said Antony, "and
if I kill your husband and most of the guests I cannot be blamed for
it," and he drank down the hock.

"Don't be so foolish," I said, laughing, in spite of having pretended
to be annoyed with him.

"I would drink anything rather than incur your displeasure," he said,
with great humility, as he took up the claret. "Must I eat everything
on the menu, too?"

I appeared not to hear, and turned to Mr. Dodd, who was on my other
side, his usually pale face still crimson with walking so fast and
this feast of Lucullus he was partaking of.

"I had bad luck this morning, Mrs. Gussie," he said, in a humble
voice. "I am sorry about that man and dog, and I am afraid the
gentleman on your right must have got a pellet also--eh, sir?" and
he addressed Antony.

"A mere trifle," said my neighbor "on the right," with his most suave
air and a twinkle in his eye as he finished the claret. "Just a shot
or two in the left arm--a mere nothing, when one considers the dangers
the whole line were incurring."

"You were shot in the arm, Sir Antony?" I exclaimed, suddenly, feeling
a great dislike to Mr. Dodd. "Oh, but people should not shoot if they
are so careless, surely!"

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Mr. Dodd, huffily. "I am not
careless. I have been shooting now for a matter of five years and only
twice before have hit any one."

"You have had the devil's own luck!" said Antony, beginning the
Burgundy.

"You may call it luck, sir," said Mr. Dodd, "but I think a man wants a
bit of judgment, too, to shoot, and I always try to remember where my
neighbors stand. But, I must admit, with pheasant shooting in a wood
it is more difficult. It was getting a little excited with a rabbit
which caused the last accident I had."

Antony finished the Burgundy.

"Are you going t

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