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The Halo

by Freifrau von Betsey Riddle Hutten zum Stolzenberg · English · Gutenberg #16909 · 438,028 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Halo

Author: Freifrau von Betsey Riddle Hutten zum Stolzenberg

Illustrator: Martin Justice


        
Release date: October 20, 2005 [eBook #16909]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16909

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HALO ***




Produced by Kathryn Lybarger, Paul Ereaut and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net











THE HALO

[Illustration: BRIGIT]


The

HALO


BY

BETTINA von HUTTEN

_Author of "PAM," "PAM DECIDES," ETC._


_WITH FRONTISPIECE_

By B. MARTIN JUSTICE

NEW YORK, DODD, MEAD

AND COMPANY, MCMVII


Copyright, 1907 By Bettina von Hutten

Published October, 1907


TO THE MEMORY OF

A DEAR LOST FRIEND

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

Bettina von Hutten

Thun, Switzerland, _September 5, 1907_




PROLOGUE


A straight stretch of dusty Norman road dappled with grotesque shadows
of the ancient apple-trees that, bent as if in patient endurance of the
weight of their thick-set scarlet fruit, edged it on both sides.

Under one of the trees, his back against its gnarled trunk, sat an old
man playing a cracked fiddle.

He played horribly, wrenching discords from the poor instrument,
grinning with a kind of vacant malice as it shrieked aloud in agony, and
rolling in their scarred sockets his long-blind eyes.

Beside him, his tongue hanging out, his head bent, sat a yellow dog with
a lead to his collar. Far and wide there was to be seen no other living
thing, and in the apple-scented heat the screeching of the violin was
like the resentful cries of some invisible creature being tortured.

"Papillon, _mon ami_," said the old man, ceasing playing for a moment,
"we are wasting time; the shadows are coming. See the baby shadow
apple-trees creeping across the road."

The yellow dog cocked an ear and said nothing.

"Time should never be lost, _petit chien jaune_--never be lost."

Then with a shrill laugh he ground his bow deep into the roughened
strings, and the painful music began again.

The yellow dog closed his eyes....

Suddenly far down the road appeared a low cloud of white dust, advancing
rapidly, and until it was nearly abreast of the fiddler, noiselessly,
and then, with the cessation of a quick padding sound of bare feet,
appeared a small, black-smocked boy, his sabots under his arm, his face
white with anger.

"Stop it!" he cried, "stop it!"

The old man turned. "Stop what, little seigneur," he asked with surly
amusement. "Does the high road belong to you?"

"You must stop it, I say, I cannot bear it."

The fiddler rose and danced about scraping more hideously than before.
"Ho, ho," he laughed, "ho, ho, ho, ho!"

The child threw his arms over his head in a gesture of unconscious
melodrama. "I cannot bear it--you are hurting it--I--I will kill you if
you do not stop." And he flew at his enemy, using his close-cropped
bullet-head as a battering ram.

For some seconds the absurd battle continued, and then, as unexpectedly
as he had begun it, the boy gave it up, and as the fiddler laughed
harshly, and the fiddle screeched, threw himself on the warm, dusty
grass and cried aloud.

There was a pause, after which, in silence, the old man groped his way
to the boy and knelt by him. "Hush, _mon petit_," he beseeched, "old
Luc-Ange is a monster to tease you. Do not cry, do not cry."

A curious apple, leaning over to listen, fell from its bough and dropped
with a thud into the grass.

The little Norman sat up. "I am not crying," he declared, turning a
brown, pugnacious face towards his late foe, "see, there are no tears."

The man touched his cheeks and eyelids delicately with his dirty
fingers. "True--no tears. But--why, why did you----"

"I was screaming because that noise was so horrible."

"And--that noise gave you pain?"

Bullet-Head frowned. Like all Normans, he resented his mental privacy
being intruded on by questions.

"Not pain; it gives me a horrible, hollow feeling in my inside," he
admitted grudgingly, "just under the belt."

After a moment he added, his dark eyes fixed angrily on the violin, "I
hate violins; they are dreadful things. M. Chalumeau had one. I broke
it."

The blind man laughed gratingly. "Because it made such a horrible
noise?"

"Yes."

Another pause, and then the man's expression of vacant malice turned to
one pitiful to see, one of indistinct yearning. "Give it to me," he
muttered, "they say I am half mad, and perhaps I am, but--I think I
could play once----" The yellow dog snapped at a fly, and his master
turned towards him, adding, "Before your time, Papillon, long before."

The bow touched the strings once or twice gently and ineffectively, and
then, his lips twitching, his eyelids as much closed as the scars on
their lids allowed them to be, he began to play.

It was the playing of one who had forgotten nearly everything of his
art, but it was sweet and true and strangely touching. To the boy it was
a miracle. He listened with the muscles of his face drawn tight in an
effort at self-control unusual in such a child, his square, brown hands
digging convulsively into the dry earth under the grass beside him. And
as the shadows of the trees crept over the road, and the oppressive heat
began to relent a little, the plaintive music went on and on, and scant,
painful tears stood on the player's face.

At last he stopped, and frowning in a puzzled way, said hoarsely, "What
is the matter, Papillon, where have we got to?"

The dog's tail stirred in answer, and at the same moment the other
listener burst into loud, emotional sobs, and the old man remembered.
"That's it, that's it. It's the boy who made me remember--'_Te rappelles
tu, te rappelles--tu, ma Toinon?_' Why do you cry, little boy? Why do
you cry?"

The boy dried his eyes on his smock sleeve.

"It--I am ten, too big to cry," he returned, with the evasion born in
him of his race, adding with the frankness peculiar to his own
personality, "but I did cry. It was beautiful."

The old man rose, and took up the dog's lead.

"Beautiful. Yes. There was a time----" He paused for a second. "What is
your name, little one?"

"Victor-Marie Joyselle."

"_Eh b'en_, Victor-Marie Joyselle, listen to me. When you have learned
to play the violin----" but Bullet-Head interrupted him.

"How do you know that I mean to learn to play the violin?" he queried,
drooping the outer corners of his eyelids in quick suspicion, "I did not
say so."

"I know. And when you have learned, remember me. And never let
anything--come here that I may put my hand on your head that you do not
forget--never let anything--duty, pleasure, money, or--or a
_woman_--come between you and your music."

The boy stared seriously into the strange face bent over him, the face
from which so much that was bad seemed for the moment to have been swept
away by the luminousness of the idea that had come to the half-idiotic
brain.

"'Duty, pleasure, money or--'"

"Or a _woman_" cried the fiddler, his face contorting with anger. "God
curse them all!" Muttering and frowning he jerked at his dog. "Come,
Papillon, come; we must be getting on, it is late. _Petit chien jaune,
petit chien jaune._"

The dog trotting discreetly at the end of the taut lead, the old man
slouched up the road, brandishing his violin aimlessly and talking aloud
as he went.

"I ask myself," said the little Norman, "how he _knew_."

Then, for he was no longer in haste, he stepped into his green sabots
and started homeward, biting into the apple that had listened.




PART ONE




CHAPTER ONE


The Earl of Kingsmead lay flat on his stomach on the warm, short grass
by the carp-pond, and studied therein the ponderous manoeuvres of an
ancient fish, believed by the people thereabouts to be something over
two hundred years old. Carp had a great charm for Lord Kingsmead; so had
electricity; so had toads; so had buns, and stable-boys, and pianolas,
and armour, and curates, and chocolates.

Everything was full of interest to this interesting nobleman, and the
most beautiful part of it was that there was beyond Kingsmead and the
very restricted area of London that he had hitherto been allowed to
investigate, a whole world full of things strange, undreamed-of,
delightful, and, best of all, dangerous, to the study of which he meant
to dedicate every second of the time that spread between that moment as
he lay on the grass and the horrid hour when he should be carried to the
family vault surrounded by sobbing relations.

For Tommy Kingsmead was one of those most unusual persons who understand
the value of life as it dribbles through their fingers in seconds,
instead of, like most people, losing the vibrant present in a useless
(because invariably miscalculated) study of the future.

This morning he had devoted to a keen investigation of several matters
of palpitating interest.

Had Fledge, the butler, who had apparently been at Kingsmead since the
beginning of the world, any teeth, or did his flexible, long lips hide
only gums? Until that day the problem had never suggested itself to
Fledge's master, but when it did, it roused in him a passion of
curiosity that had to be satisfied, after the failure of a series of
diplomatic attempts by the putting of a plain question.

"I say, Fledge."

"My lord?"

"--You never _do_ really open your mouth, you know--except, I suppose,
when you eat----"

"Yes, my lord."

"You just, well--fumble with your lips. So--I say, Fledge, _have_ you
any teeth?"

And Fledge, possibly because he was a man of principle, but probably
also because he suspected that his master's next words might take the
form of an order to open his mouth, told the truth. He had three teeth
only.

"And look here, Fledge, why do William's toes turn out at such a fearful
angle?"

Pledge's heart was in the plate-closet at that moment, but his patience
was monumental.

"I don't know, my lord--unless it's because 'e's only just left off
being knife-boy--they get used to standing at the sink a-washing up, my
lord, and William's feet is large, so I dessay he turned 'is toes out in
order to get near and not splash."

This elucidation appeared plausible as well as interesting to
Kingsmead, and he felt that in learning something of the habits of the
genus knife-boy he had added to his stock of human information, which he
undoubtedly had.

Then at lunch there had been the little matter of Bicky's dressmaker's
bill. The mater had been her crossest, and Bicky her silentest, and the
bill, discussed in French, a disgusting and superfluous language, the
acquirement of which Kingsmead had used much skill in evading, lay on
the table. It lay there, forgotten, after the two ladies had left the
room, but Kingsmead was a gentleman. So, later he had sought out his
sister and coaxed her into telling him the hair-raising sum to which
amounted the "two or three frocks" she had had that summer.

He had also learned that Mr. Yelverton, the Carrons, the Newlyns, and
Théo Joyselle were coming that afternoon, and what the _real_ reason was
that had made the Frenshaws wire they could not come. It had not at all
surprised him to hear that the reason given in the wire was utterly
false, for, like other people, Kingsmead was bound by his horizon.

On the whole, his day had been a busy one, and the valuable acquisitions
of knowledge that I have mentioned, together with a few scraps of
information on stable and garage matters, had brought him quite
comfortably up to four o'clock, when, as he idled across the lawn, that
rum old carp had caught, and held, his eye.

It was a very warm day in October, a day most unusual in its mellow
beauty; soft sunshine lay on the lawn and lent splendour to the not very
large Tudor house off to the left.

The air of gentle, self-satisfied decrepitude worn by the old place was
for the moment lost, and it looked new, clean-cut and almost gaudy, as
it must have done in the distant days when it was young. It was a
becoming day for the ancient building, as candle-light is becoming to an
old beauty and brings back a fleeting and pathetic air of youth to her
still lovely features.

Above, the sky was very blue, and the ruminating silence was broken only
by the honk-honk of a distant motor. The carp, impeded in his lethargic
progress by the thick stem of a water-lily, had stood still (if a fish
can be said to stand) for a century--nearly five minutes--his silly old
nose pointing stubbornly at the obstacle.

"_It_ won't move, so you'll have to," observed Kingsmead, wriggling a
little nearer, "Oh, I say _do_ buck up, or you'll never get there----"

And the carp, quite as if he understood, did buck up, and slid away into
the shadow of the rhododendrons.

Kingsmead rose slowly and picked up his cap. What should he do next? The
puppies weren't bad, nor the new under-gardener who swore so awfully at
his inferior, nor----

"Hello, Tommy."

"Hello, Bicky."

Brigit Mead wore a short blue skirt, brown shoes, a pink wash-silk
blouse made like a man's shirt, and a green felt hat that obviously
belonged to someone else. She was dressed like thousands of English
girls, and she looked as though the blood in her might be any in the
world but English. Hers was an enigmatic, narrow, high-bred face,
crowned by masses of dry black hair, and distinguished from any other
face most people had ever seen by the curved line of her little nose and
the colourless darkness of her very long, half-closed, heavily lashed
eyes. She looked sulky, disagreeable, and secretive, but she was
strangely and undeniably beautiful. Her long, thin-lipped mouth was too
close shut, but it was of an exquisite satin texture, scarlet in colour,
and when she said "Hello, Tommy," it melted into the most enchanting and
indescribable curves, showing just a glimpse of pointed white teeth.

Kingsmead studied her gravely for a moment.

"Been crying?"

"Yes."

"That bill?"

"Yes, that bill, you horrid little boy. There's a long worm in your
hair."

Kingsmead removed the worm.

"Mater been nasty?"

"Beastly."

"_H'm_. I say, Bick, I saw Ponty yesterday."

Brigit, who had turned and was gazing across the lawn, looked at him
without moving her head, a trick which is not at all English.

"Did you, now?"

"I did. He is dining here, he says. He is also sending you some flowers.
I told him," added the boy dreamily, "that we had lots ourselves."

After a moment, as she did not speak, he went on, "Poor old thing, why
did you poggle him so awfully, Bicky? You really _are_ a horrid girl,
you know."

"I didn't poggle him."

She did not turn, she did not smile, and the sombreness that was the
dominant expression of her face was strange to see in a girl of her age.

"Well----" Kingsmead's small countenance, so different from hers in its
look of palpitating interest and curiosity, suddenly flushed a deep and
a beautiful red. "I say, old girl," he broke out, "_are_ you going to?"

And she, silent and unresponsive as she was, could not avoid answering
him.

"Well, Tommy dear--I don't know, but I suppose I shall."

"I don't like him, poor thing, and I wish you--mustn't."

"That's exactly the word. I fear I must." Her eyes nearly closed as she
refused to frown. "This kind of thing can't go on for ever."

"You mean the mater. Well, look here, Bicky, she'll be better when
Carron is here--she always is."

"Oh, Tommy----"

"But she _is_. She obeys him rather, don't you think? I suppose because
he was a friend of father's. Is she really very bad to-day?"

"Yes."

"Well, why don't you ask him to tell her to chuck it? I say, dear old
thing, I wish I were nine years older!"

"If you were, I should be thirty-four!"

"I meant about the beastly money."

She laughed. "Funny little kiddie! _You_ aren't going to have any money
either. If we lived within our means we'd be enjoying life in a villa in
some horrible suburb. We are hideously poor, Kingsmead."

She so rarely called him by his name that the boy felt alarmed.
Pontefract, with his red neck and his short legs, seemed suddenly very
near.

"Isn't there anyone else?" he blurted out, as she led the way towards
the house. "I mean, any other chap with money?"

"No one with as much. And then, he isn't so very bad, Tommy. He's
good-natured. Think of Clandon, or--Negroponte!" Her shudder was
perfectly genuine.

"But Pontefract is so thundering old!"

She made no reply, and after a minute he went on: "What about Théo
Joyselle?"

"My dear child, he is three years younger than I, even counting in bare
years! And in reality I am twenty years too old for him. Silly little
boy, don't bother about me." And her face, as she smiled down at her
brother, was very pleasant as well as very beautiful.

"But he has money----"

She nodded.

"And----"

"How did you know that, imp?"

"Having eyes to see, I saw. And I'd like to be an In-law to Victor
Joyselle. I'd make him play to me all day. I say, I suppose she wouldn't
let us run up to hear him to-morrow?"

"Not she."

He sighed, and it was a grown-up sigh issuing from a child's throat, for
he loved music and had read the programme.

"How glorious the last one was! Upon my word, if I were you, I'd marry
Théo just to be that man's daughter-in-law."

Again she laughed and laid her hand on his head.

"Good old Thomas. He's a Norman peasant, remember--probably eats with
his knife. Oh, here's a motor--and it is Théo himself."

"Yes, speak of an angel and you hear his horn."

"Shall I tell him of your plan?" she teased as the motor slowed up.

But Tommy had disappeared, and in his place, small, freckled, and
untidy, it is true, but a gentlemanly host welcoming his mother's guest,
stood Lord Kingsmead.




CHAPTER TWO


Lady Kingsmead was one of those piteous beings, a middle-aged young
woman. She was forty-six, but across a considerably-lighted room looked
thirty-six. The shock, when one approached her, was so much the greater.
Her plentiful, grey-streaked hair dwelt in disgrace behind a glossy
transformation, and her face had, from constant massage and make-up, a
curious air of not belonging to her any more than did the wavy hair
above it.

The lines that the mercifully deliberate on-coming of age draws on all
of us were, it is true, nearly obliterated, but in their place was a
certain blankness that was very unbeautiful indeed.

However, she liked herself as she made herself, and most people thought
her wonderfully young-looking.

The question of age, real and apparent, is a curious one that gives
furiously to think, as the French say. No one on earth could consider it
an advantage for a child of twelve to wear the facial aspect of a baby
of two, nor for a girl of twenty to look like a child of ten, but later
on this equation apparently fails to hold good, and Lady Kingsmead in
appearing (at a little distance) nearly ten years her own junior, was as
vastly pleased with herself as, considering the time and the care she
devoted to the subject, she deserved to be.

As she came downstairs the evening of the day of her daughter's
unusually confidential conversation with her son, Brigit joined her.

"Ugh, mother, you have too much scent," observed the girl, curling her
upper lip rather unpleasantly. "It's horrid."

"Never mind, ducky, I've only just put it on; it will go off after a
bit. It's the very newest thing in Paris. Gerald brought it to
me--_Souvenir de Jeunesse_."

Brigit looked at her for a moment, but said nothing.

Lady Kingsmead's unconsciousness was, as it always was when she was in a
good humour, both amusing and disarming. So the two women descended the
dark, panelled staircase in silence, crossed the hall and went into the
drawing-room. A man sat over the fire, his long, white hands held up to
the blaze.

"H'are you, Brigit?"

"How d'you do, Gerald?"

Carron turned without rising, and stared thoughtfully at the girl. He
was a big, bony man who had once been very handsome, and the conquering
air had remained true to him long after the desertion of his beauty.
This, too, "gives to think," and is a warning to all people who have
made their worldly successes solely by force of looks, and these are
many. Carron pulled his moustache and narrowed his tired-looking blue
eyes in a way that had been very fetching fifteen years before.

"You look pretty fit," he observed after a pause, as she gazed absently
over his head at the carvings of the mantelpiece.

"I'm--ripping, thanks," she answered with a bored air.

"You'll have to look out, Tony," he went on, frowning as he caught the
expression in Lady Kingsmead's eyes, "she is confoundly good-looking.
Beauties' daughters ought always to be plain."

Lady Kingsmead flushed angrily, and was about to speak, when her
daughter interrupted in a perfunctory voice: "Oh, don't, Gerald, you
know she loathes being teased. Besides, your praise doesn't in the least
interest me."

His smile was not good to see. "I think, my dear Brigit, that you are
about the handsomest woman I ever saw--that is, the handsomest _dark_
woman; but you look so damned ill-tempered that you will be hideous in
ten years' time."

The girl drew a deep sigh of indifference, and turning, walked slowly
away. She wore a rather shabby frock of tomato-coloured chiffon, and as
she went down the room one of her greatest charms appeared to striking
advantage--the lazy, muscular grace of her movements. She walked like an
American Indian youth of some superior tribe, and every curve of her
body indicated remarkable physical strength and endurance.

Gerald Carron watched her, his face paling, and as Lady Kingsmead
studied him, her own slowly reddened under its mask of paint and powder.
The situation was an old one--a woman, too late reciprocating the
passion which she had toyed with for many years, suddenly brought face
to face with the realisation that this love had been transferred to a
younger woman, and that woman her own daughter. The little scene enacted
so quietly in the pretty, conventional drawing-room, with its pale walls
and beflowered furniture, was of great tenseness.

Before anyone had spoken the door opened and the Newlyns and Pat
Yelverton came in, Mrs. Newlyn hastily clasping the last of the myriad
bracelets that were so peculiarly unbecoming to her thin red arms. She
and her husband both were bird-like in eye and gesture, and their
nicknames among their intimates were, though neither of them knew it,
the Cassowary and the Sparrow, she being the Cassowary. Besides being
bird-like, they were both bores of the deepest dye.

Pat Yelverton was a blond giant with a very bad reputation, a genius for
Bridge, and the softest, most caressing voice that ever issued from a
man's throat.

Meeting the new-comers at the door, Brigit shook hands with them and
returned, with an aimless air peculiar to her, to the fire.

She knew them all so well, and they all bored her to tears, except
Carron, whom she strongly hated. Everybody bored her, and everything.
With the utmost sincerity she wondered for the thousandth time why she
had ever been born.

As the others chattered, she went to a window and stood looking out
over the moonlit lawn.

"Lady Brigit!"

She turned, and seeing the smile of delight on the boyish face before
her, smiled back. "Monsieur Joyselle!"

Théo, who was twenty-two, and who adored her, flushed to the roots of
his curly hair--and who was it who decided that blushes stop there, and
do not continue up over the skull, down the back and out at one's heels?

"Yes, yes," he cried, holding her hand tightly in his. "Let us speak
French, I--I love to speak my own tongue to you."

He himself had a delightful little fault in his speech, being quite
incapable of pronouncing the English "r," rolling it in his throat in a
way that always amused Brigit.

As he talked, her smile deepened in character, and from one of mere
friendly greeting became one of real affection. He was nice, this boy;
she liked his honest dark eyes and the expression of his handsome young
mouth.

"Tell me," she began presently, "how is your father?"

"He is well, my father, but very nervous. Poor mother!"

"Poor _mother_?"

"But yes. The concert is to be to-morrow, and he is always in a furious
state of nerves before he plays. He has been terrific all day."

Brigit sat down. "How curious. One would think that he of all people
would be used to playing in public by now," she commented, observing
with a tinge of impatience the effect on him of her head outlined
against the pale moonlight.

He stood for a moment, unconsciously and irresistibly admiring her.
Then, with a little shake of his head, answered her remark. "No, no, he
is most nervous always. It is your amateur who knows no stage-fright.
Papa," he went on, using the name that to English ears sounds so
strangely on grown-up lips, "says he invariably feels as though the
audience were wild beasts going to rush at him and tear him to
pieces--until he has played one number."

"And after the concert?"

As she spoke dinner was announced, and while they went down the passage
to the dining-room at the tail of the little procession, he answered
with a laugh, "Oh, _afterwards_ a child could eat out of his hand. He is
honey and milk, nectar and--_ambrrrrosia_!"

The dinner was noisy. Lady Kingsmead always shrieked, as did Mrs.
Newlyn, and her other guests either bellowed or screamed, with the
exception of Yelverton, who was hungry and said little.

Brigit sat between him and young Joyselle. It was nice to have the boy
next her, but his adoration was too obvious to be altogether
comfortable.

Freddy Newlyn told some new stories, all delightfully vulgar; Carron
gave a realistic _résumé_ of a recent French play.

"Awful rot, isn't it?" queried Yelverton suddenly under cover of a roar
of laughter. "Why the dickens can't they talk quietly?"

"If you dislike it," she inquired unresentfully, "why do you come?"

"I beg pardon, Lady Brigit, I forgot that you belonged here; I always do
forget."

Then Joyselle turned to her, his face so eloquent that she felt like
warning him not to betray his secret. "I--I am so happy to be here," he
stammered.

Her very black, very well-drawn eyebrows drew a trifle closer together,
and with the quickness of his race he saw it.

"Forgive me, Lady Brigit," he said hastily in English. "I am sorry.
And--I will not say it again! Only----"

"Only--you _are_ glad? Well, I'm glad, too," she answered slowly. The
noisier the others grew as dinner progressed, the closer she and this
quiet-voiced boy seemed to draw together.

"Poor old Ponty, too bad he couldn't come," cried Mr. Newlyn, pecking,
sparrow-like, at a scrap of food on his plate. "Anything wrong, Lady
Kingsmead?"

"No, I don't think so. He telephoned just before dinner--_oh_!"

She broke off, and everyone turned towards the door as it opened noisily
to admit a stout, red-faced man, who stood hesitating on the threshold,
not as much apparently from shyness as from a kind of bodily stammer of
movement.

"Ponty!"

"Awfully sorry, Tony," explained Lord Pontefract, advancing towards his
hostess, "awfully sorry, but that idiot Hendricks got a telephone
message wrong, and I thought I couldn't come. So when I found out, I
thought 'better late than never,' though I _had_ dined. Please say
'better late than never.'"

"Better late than never," chanted the whole party dissonantly, and room
was made for the new-comer between Brigit and Yelverton.

"That fool Shover nearly broke my neck, too," he confided, sitting down
and lowering his voice confidentially. "I--I thought for a second I
should never see you again."

She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. He had been drinking.
No one had ever seen Oscar Pontefract drunk, but as time went on the
honourable body of those who had ever seen him perfectly sober
diminished rapidly.

"Haven't seen you for ten days. Damnedest ten days I ever lived
through," he continued, helping himself to whisky and soda, "and most
infernal ten nights, too. Can't sleep for thinking of you," he added
hastily, as she at last turned and looked full at him.

She was twenty-five, and had lived in this _milieu_ for the past seven
years. It had begun by disgusting her, then for a time she had been
indifferent to it, and now for the last year it had been growing
steadily unbearable.

"_Dites donc_, Lady Brigit," began Joyselle in her left ear, and as she
listened to him she instinctively drew away from Pontefract, closer to
him. At dessert Kingsmead came sauntering in, less with the air of a
little boy allowed to appear with the fruit than of a gently interested
gentleman come to take a look at the strange beasts it amused him to
keep in a remote corner of his park.

He ate fruit in, to the unaccustomed eye, alarming quantities, and his
mother's guests discussed him exactly as if he had not been there.

A very plain little boy, Kingsmead, with stiff fair hair and many
freckles. But for his mouth a most unremarkable-looking person, for his
eyes, quick as those of a lizard, were pale blue in colour, and small.
But his mouth turned up at the corners in a peculiar and faun-like way,
and gave much character to his face, which was otherwise impassive as
well as ugly.

"Boy ought to go to school," growled Lord Pontefract.

Lady Kingsmead shrugged her shoulders. "Of course he ought," she
assented shrilly, "but what am I to do? He simply won't go, will you,
Tommy?"

"No, I believe in self-education. The intelligent child gleans more from
the company and conversation of his elders----" Gravely he paused and
gazed round the table at the meaningless faces of most of those present.

The Cassowary burst into a scream of laughter. "Oh, Tommy, you _are_
such a quaint little being," she cried; "isn't he, Gerald?"

"Beastly child. Kingsmead always was an ass, but no one would have
believed that even _he_ could be such an imbecile as to leave that boy
entirely in his wife's hands."

"_So_ ducky, I always think him, though not pretty," returned the
Cassowary.

As they left the dining-room Kingsmead whispered to his sister, "I say,
Bicky, look out for Ponty. He's a bit boiled."




CHAPTER THREE


"If I do, they will say that I am in love with some man who either won't
have me, or is already married, or that I am forced to, by my debts. If
I don't--then this will go on indefinitely, and some fine day I shall
jump into the carp-pond and drown in four feet of nasty, slimy water."

Brigit Mead stood behind the heavy curtains by an open window and
whispered the above reflections to herself. It was a trick she had in
moments of intense concentration, and the sharp, hissing sound of the
last words was so distinct that she involuntarily turned to see that she
had not been overheard.

No, it was all right, everyone was busy with the preparations for the
evening's work, except Joyselle, who sat at the piano and was playing,
very softly, a little thing of Grieg's.

The great hall looked almost empty in spite of its nine occupants, and
the electric lamps threw little pools of light on the polished floor.

It might have been a cheerless place enough, for one unintelligent
Georgian Kingsmead had added to its austerity of church-like painted
windows a very awful row of glossy marble pillars, that stood as if
aware of their own ugliness, holding up a quite unnecessary and
appallingly hideous gallery.

Luckily, however, the late Lord Kingsmead, while not possessing enough
initiative to do away with the horrors perpetuated by his ancestors, was
a man of some taste, and had, by the means of gorgeous Eastern carpets,
skilful overhead lighting, and some fine hangings, transformed the place
into a very comfortable and livable one.

A huge fire burned under the splendid carved chimney-piece, and Brigit,
turning from the cool moonlight to the interior, watched it with a
certain sense of artistic pleasure. It was a dear old house, Kingsmead,
and with money--oh, yes, oh, yes, money! When Tommy was grown, what kind
of a man would he be? She shuddered.

And there, staring at her across a table on which he was leaning to
perfect his not quite faultless balance, stood Pontefract, money, so far
as she was concerned, personified.

He owned mines in Cornwall, a highly successful motor-factory, a big
London newspaper, a house in Grosvenor Square, and Pomfret Abbey.

Also he owned an ever-thirsting palate, a fat red neck, red-rimmed eyes,
and a bald head.

She looked at him with the absent-minded deliberation that so annoyed
many people. He was rather awful in many ways, but he was a kind man,
his temper was good, and he would doubtless be an amiable, manageable
husband.

"Brigit,--let's go out, I,--there is something I want to tell you." His
voice shook a little with real emotion, and though he had undoubtedly
drunk more than was good for him, there was about the man a certain
dignity, compounded of his breeding, his respect for her, and his
sincerity.

She did not move, and her small, narrow face went white. He would take
her--wherever she asked him; she would be able to fly away from her
mother and her mother's friends. After a long pause, which he bore well,
she bowed her head slowly. "Yes, I will get a scarf," and leaving him
she left the room. Her face was set and a little sullen as she came back
with a long silk scarf on her arm. Carron met her near the door. "Made
up your mind, have you?" he asked, with deliberate insolence. "Better
wait till to-morrow, my dear--he's half drunk."

She hated Carron. Hated him with an intensity that few women know. At
that moment she would have liked to kill him. But knowing a better
weapon, and rejoicing in her cruelty, she used it. "Poor old Gerald,"
she said, smiling at him, "no man over fifty can afford the luxury of
jealousy."

Then she joined Pontefract.

He made his proposal succinctly and well, and without any confusion she
accepted him. "No--you may not kiss me to-night," she added. "You may
come for that--to-morrow. Now would you mind going? I--I want to be
alone."

Quite humbly, hardly daring to believe in his good fortune, he left her,
and she wandered aimlessly over the grass towards the carp-pond. "Nasty,
slimy water," she said aloud, "you have lost me!"

Joyselle had stopped playing, and through the open windows only a very
subdued murmur of voices came. Even Bridge has its uses. The night was
perfect, and the serene moon sailed high under a scrap of cloud like a
wing. The old house, most beautiful, looked, among its surrounding
trees, secluded and protected.

"It looks like a home," thought the girl bitterly.

And then young Joyselle joined her.

"May I come? Shall I bother you?"

"You may come; and you never bother me."

His youthful face was pleasant to look at; the dominating expression of
it was one of sunny sweetness. Would Tommy grow to be as nice a young
man?

Tommy, that old person, was, she knew, perched astride a chair near the
Bridge table, picking up, with uncanny shrewdness, all sorts of tips
about the great game, as he picked up knowledge about everything that
came his way. Up to this, his varied stock of information had not hurt
him. Later--who could tell?

"Where is Tommy?" she asked miserably.

"Watching the Bridge. Why are you unhappy?" His dark eyes were bent
imploringly on hers. "I--I can't bear to see you suffer."

"Oh, _mon Dieu, je ne souffre pas_! That is saying far too much. I----"

"Was it Pontefract?"

"No, oh, no. Ponty and I are very good friends," she returned absently.
And then she remembered. She was going to marry Ponty!

"Let's walk to the sun-dial and see what time it is by the moon," she
suggested abruptly.

But at the sun-dial he insisted further, always gentle and apologetic,
but always bent on having an answer to his question.

"You are not going to marry him?" he asked.

"Who told you I was?"

"No one."

"Oh!"

"Well, _are_ you?"

His head fairly swam as he looked at her in the full moonlight. "What
made you think of it?" she returned.

"Tommy--told me not to interrupt you--and him."

"Well--it's true."

He was young, and French, and she was beautiful and he was desperately
in love with her. Kneeling suddenly on the damp grass, he buried his
face in his arms as they lay limply across the sun-dial. There was a
long pause. He did not sob, he was quite still, but every line of him
proclaimed unspeakable agony.

"Poor boy," she said gently.

Then he rose. "I am not a boy," he declared, his chin twitching but his
voice firm, "and I love you. He is old and--_c'est un vieux roué_. I at
least am young and I have lived a clean life."

He asked her no question, but she paused to consider. "I know, I
understand," he continued, "you hate this life, you are bored and sick
of it all; you do not love your mother. _Mon Dieu, ne pas pouvoir aimer
sa mère!_ And you want to get away. Then--marry me instead. I am not so
rich, but I am rich. And, ah, I love you--_je t'aime_."

Poor Pontefract, leaning back in his big Mercedes trying to realise his
bliss, was jilted before Brigit had spoken a word. Like a flash, his
image seemed to stand before her, beside the delightful boy-man whose
youth and niceness pleaded so strongly to her. She did not consider that
breaking her word was not fair play, she had no thought of pity for
Pontefract. She loved nobody, and therefore thought solely of herself.
This boy was right. She would be happier with him than with poor, old,
fat Ponty. So poor, old, fat Ponty went to the wall, and putting her
hands into Joyselle's, she said slowly:

"Very well--I will. I will marry you. Only--you must know that I am an
odious person, selfish and moody, and----"

But she could not finish her sentence, because Joyselle had her in his
arms and was kissing her.

"I will be your servant and your slave," he told her, with very bad
judgment but much sincerity. "I will serve you on my knees."

"Now you must--buck up--and not let them see to-night. Mother will be
cross at first. And--I must write Ponty before we tell."

Her practical tone struck chill on Joyselle's glowing young ear, but he
followed her obediently to the house. As they reached the door the
opening bar of Mendelssohn's Wedding March rang out, played with a
mastery of the pianola that, in that house, only Kingsmead was capable
of.

On entering, Brigit's face was scarlet. She knew that her brother was
welcoming the wrong bridegroom. And it suddenly occurred to her that it
was awkward to be engaged to two men at once.

"I say----" began Tommy as he saw Joyselle, and she interrupted him
hastily. "Play something of Sinding's, dear," she said, and the boy
complied. But his eye was horribly knowing, and hard to bear.




CHAPTER FOUR


Lady Brigit leaned back in her corner and surveyed the otherwise empty
compartment with a sigh of relief. She knew that her face still bore
signs of the anger roused by her mother in their recent interview, and
she felt the necessity of looking as savage as she felt.

And she felt very savage indeed. If an American Indian--an idealised,
poeticised American Indian--could be invested with the beauty that does
not belong to the red races and yet which, if perfected on the lines of
beauty suggested by some of the nobler specimens of the nobler tribes,
she might look like Brigit Mead. The girl had a clean-cutness of
feature, a thin compactness of build, a stag-like carriage of her small
head that, together with her almost bronze skin and coal-black hair,
gave her an air remarkably and arrestingly un-English. The picture in
the Luxembourg gallery, a typically French, subtle, secretive face,
gives the expression of her face and the strange gleam in the long eyes.
But it, the face in the picture, is overcivilised, whereas Brigit looked
untamed and resentful.

She wore, for the weather had changed with the unpleasant capriciousness
of an elderly coquette, a warm, close-fitting black coat and skirt and a
small black toque. Round her neck clung to its own tail, as if in a
despairing attempt to find out what had happened to its own anatomy, a
little sable boa. She had a dressing-case and an umbrella, both of them
characteristically uncumbersome and light, and several newspapers and a
book.

Her journey was not to be a long one. She was going to change trains in
London and go half an hour into Surrey to spend a few days with a
friend. Lady Kingsmead, when told of the speedy jilting of the desirable
Pontefract, and the subsequent acceptance of young Joyselle, had been
disagreeable.

"It is ridiculous, and everyone will say you are cradle-snatching," she
had said. "When you are forty he will be thirty-seven--almost a boy
still."

"Dearest mamma," returned the girl with a very unfilial lift of her
upper lip, "forty is--_youth_!"

"And for you to marry a nobody; the son of nobody knows whom!"

"But everybody knows who his father is--which is rather distinguished
nowadays!"

Then Lady Kingsmead, as was natural, quite lost her temper and stormed.
Brigit was an idiot, a fool, a beastly little creature to do such a
thing. Ponty was a gentleman, at least, whereas----

"Whereas Théo is a delightful, nice, perfectly presentable young man,
and the son of the greatest violinist of the century."

"Ah, bah! of the last ten years, yes."

"Of the century. As to Ponty--why don't you marry him yourself? Anyone
could marry Ponty!"

Then, suddenly ashamed of herself, the girl had begged her mother's
pardon, but Lady Kingsmead was not of those to whom the crowning charm
of graceful forgiveness has been vouchsafed, and the battle went on. To
end it, Brigit announced her intention of going to stop with her friend
Pam de Lensky, and without more ado, or a word of good-bye, had left the
house.

Now, though ashamed, or possibly because she was ashamed, her anger
against her mother refused to subside, but grew stronger and bitterer as
the train rushed through the dull afternoon Londonwards.

"Why shouldn't I marry whom I choose? What has she ever done for me that
gives her a right to dictate to me? And I could _kill_ Gerald." A dark
flush crept up her cheeks and her mouth twisted furiously. For Carron
had dared to waylay her in the passage on her way to her room, and his
remarks had not been of a kind calculated to quiet her. Women who have
loved are sorry for men who love them, but women who do not know what
the word means are either amused or irritated by it. The conversation,
carried on in a careful undertone, and lasting only about five minutes,
was one that the girl would never, she knew, be able to forget, and one
that neither she nor the man could ever make even a pretence of
forgiving.

Far too excited and annoyed to read, she watched with unseeing eyes the
swift flight of the familiar landscape, and then suddenly, as the train
stopped, came to herself with a start. Victoria!

Mechanically, her thick chiffon veil over her face, she looked after
her luggage, took a hansom, and drove down Victoria Street, past the
Abbey, over Westminster Bridge, and so to Waterloo Station.

London was dull, but its dulness, grey and soft, was being mitigated by
a gradual and beautiful blossoming of lights--lights reddish, golden,
and clear white. People hurried along the streets, hansoms jingled and
passed by, buses and vans blocked the view and then, with elephantine
deliberateness, ambled on. Motors of all kinds grunted and jingled, from
the opulent, throaty-voiced ones, that chuckle as if they were fed on
turtle-soup, to the cheap variety, that sound as they pass like an
old-fashioned tinsmith's waggon.

And the combined effect of all these varied sounds was so different from
the sound of Paris, or New York, or Berlin, that an intelligent blind
man would have known where he was, if softly and undisturbingly dropped
from a balloon to a safe street corner.

Brigit Mead had no particular love for the old town, just as she had no
particular love for her little brother's country-house. She was too
bored to care in the least where she was, and only a few people in the
world could soothe her vexed and discontented mind to a sense of calm.
The woman to visit whom she was on her way was one of these, and as she
bought her ticket and made her way to the train a little of her
ill-temper died away. "Good old Pam," she whispered under her veil,
"_she_ will be glad I didn't take Ponty!"

Then there would be the children--six-years-old Pammy, the De Lenskys'
adopted child, and their own little Eliza and Thaddy--the latter a
delicious, roundabout person of eighteen months, the very feel of whom
was comforting.

"An empty carriage, if there is one, please," she asked the guard, and
he opened a door and helped her into a still unlit compartment. She
closed the door and, letting down the glass, leaned her head on her hand
and watched, through the veil she always wore when travelling as a
protection against impertinent and boring admiration, the little crowd
on the platform.

Most of them looked, thank Heaven, second class--she would be alone. And
then, just at the last, three men, all apparently very much excited and
speaking French very loudly, rushed at her door and tore it open.
"_Adieu donc, cher maître_"--"_Bon voyage_"--"_Au 'voir, mes
enfants--merci infiniment_"--"_Mille tendresses à Eugenie!_"

And the train had started, leaving Brigit alone in the dusk with a very
big man in a fur-collared overcoat and a long box, that he deposited
with much care on the seat, humming to himself as he did so. Then he sat
down and, taking off his broad-brimmed felt hat, wiped his forehead and
face with a handkerchief that smelt strongly of violets.

Lady Brigit shrank fastidiously into her corner. Another thing to bore
her. She was of those women who always hate their fellow-travellers and
resent their existence. And this man was too big, there was too much fur
on his coat, too much scent on his handkerchief. "_Salut demeure chaste
et pure_," he began singing, suddenly, apparently quite unconscious of
his companion's presence. "_Salut demeure_----" It was a high baritone
voice, sweet and round, and his r's were like Théo Joyselle's. Brigit
smiled. Dear Théo! Her mother could be as nasty as she liked, but they
would be happy in spite of her. And then, as in the beginning of the
world, it was light, and the girl recognised in her suddenly silent
_vis-à-vis_ the man who was to be her father-in-law, Victor Joyselle.

He had taken off his hat, and his dark, handsome, excited face was
distinctly visible under the untidy, slightly curly mass of peculiarly
silky, silver-grey hair. Brigit drew a deep breath. Victor Joyselle! She
had often heard him play. Those were the hands, in the brown dogskin
gloves, that worked such witchery with his violin. That was the violin
in the shabby box beside him. His dark eyes, over which the lids dropped
at the outer corners, were now fixed on hers, he was trying to see
through her veil. He was a magnificent creature, even now, with his
youth behind him: his big nose had fine cut, sensitive nostrils, his
mouth under a big moustache was well-cut and serene, and his strong chin
was softened by a dimple. And he was to be--her father-in-law.

For the first time for months the girl felt the youth and sense of fun
stir in her. Then he spoke--irrepressibly, as if he could not help it.

"I beg your pardon, madame, for singing," he burst out, "I--forgot that
I was not alone."

She bowed without speaking. Madame!

"May I open the other window?" he pursued, rising restlessly and tearing
off his gloves as if they hurt him, thereby revealing a large diamond on
the little finger of his right--the bow-hand.

"Yes."

He did so, and then sat down, and taking an open telegram from his
pocket, read it through several times, his nostrils quivering, his mouth
dimpling in an uncontrollable and enchanting smile. Then again, as if
impelled by some superior force, he turned to her and said: "I am not a
lunatic, madame. I am Victor Joyselle. I have played--my very best this
afternoon, and my son, _mon bébé_--is engaged to the most beautiful
woman in England!"

Inspired to a dramatic act totally foreign to her nature, impelled by
his sheer strength of imagination and his buoyant personality, Lady
Brigit Mead threw back her veil.

"Théo is engaged--to me," she answered.




CHAPTER FIVE


Joyselle stared at her, his eyes like two lamps. Then rushing at her, he
took her hands in his and bent over her. "Good God! Good God!" he cried
rapidly in French, "_you_ are Lady Brigit Mead? You--you Diana--you
_splendeur de femme_? But I dream--I dream!"

"Indeed, no, I am Brigit Mead, M. Joyselle,"--she was laughing, laughing
with delightful amusement. He was too delicious! Then she added hastily,
"You are crushing my hands!"

Sitting down by her, he patted her reddened fingers tenderly. "_Chère
enfant, chère enfant_, forgive an old papa--_qui t'a fait bobo_--and you
are actually going to marry my Théo?"

"I am."

"Then," with a solemnity that was as overwhelming as his joy, he
returned, bowing his head as if in church, "_il a une sacrée chance_. He
is--the luckiest boy in the world."

Brigit had forgotten what boredom meant. This spontaneous, warm-hearted
person with--oh, horror,--a white satin tie, and a low, turned-down
collar, filled her with the gentlest and most affectionate amusement.
And as he was to be her father-in-law, why not enjoy him? "It is kind
of you to be so pleased," she said, "it is very interesting, our meeting
like this----"

"Interesting! It is--romance, my dear, romance, of the most unusual. And
you are so beautiful that I cannot look away from you. He told me you
were beautiful--yes--but I had pictured to myself a pink and white miss
with a head as big as a pumpkin--and, just Heaven--a 'drawing-room
voice.' Tell me, oh, tell me, _fille adorée_, that you do not sing!"

His anxiety was perfectly sincere, and she hastened to reassure him.
"Indeed, I do not."

"Nor play--not even 'simple little things,' and 'coon-songs'?"

"Nothing."

"God be praised!" he returned with a sort of whimsical reverence, in
French. "Then you are perfect."

"Indeed I am not. Oh, I _really_ am not!" Before she knew what he was
about to do, he had kissed her forehead, and then, as the train stopped,
he rushed at the window.

"But where are you going?" he cried, so rapidly that she hardly
understood him. "Why are you--why are we both--going away from London?
We must go _home_--to my house--to my wife."

"I am going to make a visit----"

"_Mais non, mais non, mais non_--come, there is a train going to
London--hurry, we will go back. You will telegraph your friends. This
evening--the betrothal evening, you must spend with us. Come, hurry, or
we shall be too late."

"But I cannot, it is impossible," she protested weakly, as, he took her
dressing-case and umbrella from the seat, after scrambling into his
furry coat. "My friend is expecting me!"

"Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta! Come, _ma fille, bella signorina_, the train is
just there--I will telegraph your friend. Let me help you, _comme ça, ça
y est_!"

And almost before she knew what had happened, they were in the other
train speeding back to town.

"Théo is at home--he went to tell his mother," Joyselle said, nearly
braining an old lady with his violin-case as he swung round to speak.
"And they will be sitting by the fire, and I--who was going to spend the
night at the Duke of Cumberland's--will appear, and after we have
embraced, hey, presto--I produce you--Diana--his _adorée_--my daughter."

The old lady, who was engaged to nobody (and who, what was much worse,
never had been), resented his loud voice and his way of handling his
violin-case as if it had been a baby. "Sir," she said, "you are crowding
me."

"_Sacré nom d'une pipe_--I beg your pardon, madame, but you must not
push that box. You must not _touch_ it," he returned, all his smiles
gone and a ferocious frown joining his big black eyebrows. "It contains
my violin, madame, my Amati!"

Brigit, convulsed with laughter, laid her hand on his arm as if she had
known him for years, and he became like a lamb at her touch.

"I beg your pardon, madame," he added, smiling angelically (and an
angelic smile on a dark, middle-aged face is a very winning thing), "I
will put it over here."

Then, his beloved fiddle safe from profane touch, he again turned to
Brigit.




CHAPTER SIX


Number 57 Golden Square was dark when Joyselle's cab stopped in front of
it, and he, after tenderly depositing his violin-case under the little
portico, assisted Brigit to alight. "They are, of course, in the
kitchen," he remarked as he paid the cabby. "Come, _ma belle_."

She followed him as if she were in a dream, watching him open the door
with a latchkey, after a frantic search for that object in all his
pockets, tiptoeing after him as, a finger to his lips, a delighted,
boyish smile crinkling his eyelids, he led her down the narrow,
oilclothed passage.

"Why are they in the kitchen?" she asked, as excited as he.

"It is nearly eight; she is busy with supper."

Even in the dim light of the single gas burner Brigit caught at once the
predominating note of the house: its intense and wonderful cleanliness.
The walls, painted white, were snowy, the chequered oilcloth under her
feet as spotless as if it had that moment come from the shop, and the
slender handrail of the steep staircase glanced with polish, drawing an
arrow of light through the dusk.

Putting his violin-case on the table, Joyselle took off his hat and with
some difficulty pulled his arms out of his greatcoat sleeves. Then,
taking his guest by the arm, he very softly opened the door leading to
the basement, and started down the stairs, soft-footed as a great cat.
Could it possibly be she, Brigit Mead, creeping stealthily down a
basement staircase, her arm firmly held by a man to whom she had never
spoken until that afternoon?

The stairs turned sharply to the left half-way down, and at the turning
a flood of warm light met them, together with a smell of cooking.

"Ah, little mother, little mother," Théo's voice was saying, "just wait
till you _see_ her."

Joyselle's delight in the artistic timeliness of the speech found vent
in his putting his arm round his companion's slim waist and giving her a
hearty, paternal hug. Her whole face, in the darkness, quivered with
amusement. She had never in her whole life been so thoroughly and
satisfactorily amused. Then, having gone forward as far as his now
simply restraining hold would let her, she looked down into the kitchen.

It was a large room, snowy with whitewash as to walls and ceiling,
spotless as to floor. At the far end of it, opposite a pagoda-like and
beautiful but apparently unlighted modern English stove, was a huge,
deep, cavernous fireplace, unlike any the girl had ever seen. It was, in
fact, a perfect copy of a Norman fireplace, with stone seats at the
sides, an old-fashioned spit, and the fire burning lustily on the floor
of it, unhemmed by dogs or grate. On a long, sand-scoured table in the
middle of the room sat Théo, in his shirt-sleeves, deftly breaking eggs
into a big, green-lined bowl, while before the fire, gently swinging to
and fro over the flames a saucepan with an abnormally long
handle--Madame Joyselle. Her short, dark-clad figure, half-covered with
a blue apron, showed all its too-generous curves as she bent forward,
and when, at Théo's remark, she turned to him with a smile, she showed a
round, wrinkled, rosy face and small blue eyes that wrinkled with
sympathetic kindness. "She is beautiful, my little bit of cabbage?"

Théo broke the last egg, sat down the bowl, and got down from the table.
"Tannier--you remember him? The man who painted everybody last
winter--said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen." The
pride in his voice was good to hear.

"_Tant mieux!_ Beauty is a quality like another. And--_voilà mon petit_,
give me the eggs--she loves you?" As she put the question she took the
bowl and began beating the eggs violently yet lightly with a whisk. She
had turned the mixture into her hot saucepan and was holding it over the
fire before the young man answered. He stood, his hands in his
trousers-pockets, his head bent thoughtfully. Then he spoke, and his
words mingled with the hissing of the omelet. "I think she must," he
said with a certain dignified simplicity, "or she would not have
accepted me. But--not as I love her. That could not be, you know."

The eavesdroppers started apart guiltily, and for a second Brigit wanted
to rush up the stairs and out of the house. She had heard too much.

But Joyselle, gently pushing her out of his way, ran down the steps and
with a big laugh threw his arms round his boy and kissed him.

"_Voyons l'amoureux_," he cried, "show me thy face of a lover, little
boy, who only yesterday wore aprons and climbed on my knees to search
for sweets in my pockets!"

Madame Joyselle turned quietly, after having, with a dexterous twist of
her frying-pan, flopped her omelet to its other side. "Victor! And what
brings you back, my man?"

Her pleasant, placid face was a great contrast to his as he rushed at
her and kissed her hot cheek.

"_Va t'en_--you will make me drop Théo's omelet."

Joyselle took Théo's hands in his and looked solemnly at his son. "My
dear," he said, "my very dear son, God bless you and--her."

Again Brigit longed to flee, but she knew that if she tried, Joyselle
would be after her like a shot, and, she realised with an irrepressible
little laugh, probably pick her up and carry her down to the kitchen.

"Are you hungry, my man?" asked Madame Joyselle, slipping the omelet
onto a warmed platter, "there is some galantine de volaille truffée, and
this, and some cold veal."

Joyselle patted her affectionately on the back.

"_Oui, oui, my femme_, I am hungry. But--Théo--to-night I am a wizard. I
will grant you any wish you may have in your heart."

"Any wish----"

"_Pauvre petit_, tell him not that, Victor, my man. What would the poor
angel desire but the impossible?"

Théo stood silently looking at them. He was evidently in no mood for
farce, but as evidently he adored this noisy big father who towered
above his slender height like a giant, and tried to force himself to his
father's humour. "Dear papa," he murmured, "it is good that you have
come. I am so happy."

Joyselle seized the opportunity, such as it was, and turning to the open
door, called out in a voice trembling with pleasure and mischief, "Fairy
Princess, come forth."

And the disdainful, bored, too often frankly ill-humoured Lady Brigit
stepped out of the darkness into the homely light of the simple scene.

For a moment Théo plainly did not believe his eyes, and then as she
advanced, scarlet with a quite unusual embarrassment and sense of
intrusion, he gathered himself together and met her, his hands held out,
his face glowing.

"Victor--oh, Victor--this is terrible," Madame Joyselle burst out,
scarlet with shyness, all her serenity gone. "You should not have
brought her to the _kitchen! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_, a countess' daughter!"

But Théo led his _fiancée_ straight to his mother, and his instinctive
good taste saved the situation. "Mamma--here she is. Lady Brigit, this
is my mother--the best mother in the world."

The little roundabout woman wiped her hand on her apron, and taking the
girl's in hers, looked mutely up at her with eyes so full of timid
sweetness that Brigit, touched and pleased, bent and kissed her.

"_Voyons, voyons_," cried Joyselle, rubbing his hands and executing a
few steps by the fire, "here we are all one family. Félicité, my old
woman, is she not wonderful?"

Madame Joyselle, the flush dying from her fresh cheeks, bowed. "She is
indeed. And now--Théo, call Toinon--we must go to the dining-room."
Nobody else, even Brigit, who had never beheld that cheerless apartment,
wished to leave the kitchen, but Madame Joyselle's will was in such
matters law, and the little party was soon seated round the table
upstairs. And the omelet was delicious.

      *      *      *      *      *

An hour later Brigit found herself sitting in a big red-leather
armchair, in a highly modern and comfortable, if slightly gaudy
apartment--Joyselle's study. There was a small grate-fire with a red
club-fender, a red, patternless carpet, soft, well-draped curtains, and
tables covered with books and smoking materials.

There was also a baby-grand piano, covered with music, and a huge grey
parrot in a gilded and palatial cage.

It was Joyselle's translation of an English gentleman's room, even to
the engravings and etchings on the wall. One thing, however, the girl
had never before seen. One end of the room was glassed in as if in a
huge oak frame, and the wall behind it was literally covered with signed
photographs.

"Most of 'em are royalties," Joyselle explained with a certain naïf
pride, "beginning with your late Queen. I used to play Norman folk-songs
to her. There is the Kaiser's, the late Kaiser's, the Czar's, Umberto's,
Margarita's, who loves music, more than most--and _toute la boutique_.
Then there are also those of all the musicians, and--but you will see
to-morrow."

He had brought his violin-case upstairs, and now opened it and took out
his Amati. "I will play for you, _ma chère fille_," he declared.

And he played. Brigit watched him, amazed. Where was the rowdy,
loud-voiced, amusing and almost ridiculously boyish middle-aged man with
whom she had come to town?

This man's face was that of a priest adoringly performing the rites of
his religion. His head thrown back, his fine mouth set in lines of
ecstatic reverence, he played on and on, his eyes unseeing, or rather
the eyes of one seeing visions.

He was a creature of no country, no age. His grey hair failed to make
him old, big unwrinkled face failed to make him young. And as he
played--to _her_, she knew--years of imprisonment and sorrow seemed to
drop from the girl; she forgot all the bitterness, all the resentment
that had spoiled her life hitherto, and she felt as she leaned back in
her chair and listened as if she had at last come to a haven and found
youth awaiting her there.




CHAPTER SEVEN


It is pleasant to wake to the sound of exquisite--and sufficiently
distant--music. It is also pleasant to wake to the odour of good--and
sufficiently distant--coffee.

The morning after her remarkable arrival in Golden Square Brigit Mead
awoke to both these pleasant things. Somewhere downstairs someone was
playing a simple, plaintive air on a violin, and still further away
someone was making coffee--delicious coffee.

The girl for a moment could not remember where she was; the room, with
its dark-grey paper and stiff black-walnut furniture, was
foreign-looking, so were the coloured pictures of religious subjects on
the walls. On the chimney-piece stood two blue glass vases filled with
dried grasses, and the lace curtains flaunted their stiff cleanliness
against otherwise unshaded windows.

Where was she?

And then, as the music broke off suddenly, she remembered, and smiled in
delighted recollection of the evening before. Waking was usually such a
bore; the thought of breakfast, always a severe test to the unsociable,
was horrid to her. There would be either a solitary meal in the big dark
dining-room, or what was worse, guests to entertain (for Lady Kingsmead
never appeared until after eleven), and the disagreeable hurry and
scurry contingent on the catching of different trains. But here she
seemed to have escaped from what Tommy called Morning Horrors, and it
was delightful to lie in her bed and wonder what, in this extraordinary
house, was likely to happen next.

What did happen was, of course, quite unexpected; the door slowly opened
and a small yellow dog appeared, a note tied to his collar.

A mongrel person, this dog, with suggestions of various races in him;
his tail had intended to be long, but the hand of heredity had evidently
shortened it, and the ears, long enough to lop, pricked slightly as his
bright eyes smiled up at the girl, who laughed aloud as she took the
note he had brought.

"Oh, you dear little monster!" she said to him. "I never saw anything so
yellow as you in my life--except Lady Minturn's wig. I believe you're
dyed!"

The note, written in a peculiarly dashing hand on thick mauve paper, was
short:


"Ma Fille," it ran, "good morning to you--the first of many
happy ones with us. Yellow Dog Papillon brings this to you. He is an
angel dog, and loves you already, as does your Victor Joyselle,

                                                  "Beau-Papa."


Yellow Dog Papillon, having come to stay, was sitting up, as if he
never under any circumstances passed his time in another way. His rough,
pumpkin-coloured front feet hung genteelly limp, and his tail slowly
described a half circle on the highly polished floor.

Brigit laughed again, and patted his head. "Does he expect an answer?"
she asked seriously; but before the dog could tell her what he thought
the door opened, and Madame Joyselle entered, bearing a small lacquered
tray, on which stood a tiny coffee-pot, cup and saucer, plate and
cream-jug, of gleaming white porcelain, the edges of which glittered in
a narrow gold line, and a tall glass vase containing a very large and
faultless gardenia.

"I have brought you your coffee, Lady Brigit," said the little woman,
showing her beautiful teeth in a cheery smile, "and 'ard-boiled eggs.
Théo told me you like them 'ard-boiled. The gardenia is from my
'usband."

Her English was very bad, and the unusual exertion of speaking in the
tongue which to her, in spite of twenty-five years' residence in the
country of its birth, still remained "foreign," brought a pretty flush
to her brown cheeks. "You sleep--well?"

As she ate her breakfast Lady Brigit studied this simple woman who was
to be her mother-in-law. Madame Joyselle was, socially speaking,
absolutely unpresentable, for she had remained in every respect except
that of age what she had been born--a Norman peasant. She had acquired
no veneer of any kind, and looked, as she stood with her plump hands
folded contentedly on her apron-band, much less a lady than Mrs.
Champion, the housekeeper at Kingsmead.

But one fault Brigit had not: she was no snob, and the least worthy
thought roused in her as she contemplated her kindly hostess was that
her mother would be very much annoyed when she met her daughter's future
mother-in-law.

"Such delicious coffee," she said presently, "_and_ the rolls!"

"_Oui, oui, pas mal; c'est moi qui les ai faits._ I make myself----"

As she spoke there came a loud rap at the door, and Joyselle put in his
head, crowned with a gold-tasselled red-velvet cap of archaic shape.

"You permit, _ma fille_?" Without awaiting an answer he came in,
gorgeous from top to toe in a crimson garment between a dressing-gown
and a smoking-costume, girdled round his waist with a gold cord.

"She eats, the most beautiful!" he cried joyously, "and _petite mère_
and Yellow Dog look on! Is it not wonderful, _ma vieille_?"

Madame Joyselle smiled--sensibly. "It is delightful, my man, delightful.
But I fear you should not have come in--she may not like it."

"Not like it? Of course she does. Why should not the old beau-papa visit
his most beautiful while she breakfasts? You are a goose, Félicité!"

Brigit, vastly amused by their discussing her as if she were not
present, gave a bit of roll to the dog.

"A quaint little dog," she observed to them both.

Joyselle laughed. "Yes, yes, _il est bien drôle, ce pauvre_.
But-ter-fly. And the name, too, _hein_? Some day I will tell you the
story of why I have had nine dogs all named 'But-ter-fly.' There is so
much to tell you, so much."

He talked on, very rapidly, changing subjects with the rapidity of a
child, using his square brown hands in vivid gesture, marching about the
room, teasing the dog who, since his master had entered, had had eyes
and ears for none but him.

"The concert, you know, yesterday, was a grand success. All the papers
are full of it. Many play the violin to-day, you see, but there is only
one Joyselle."

"There is also a Kubelik," suggested Brigit slily, to see what he would
answer.

"My dear, yes; there is Kubelik, and there is Joachim still, thank God.
_Chacun dans son genre._ But Kubelik is a boy, and he has 'violin
hands'--fingers a _kilomètre_ long. Look at my hands, and you will see
why I am not his equal in execution. In other things----"

He looked gravely at his hands as he held them out to her. This was in
its turn different from the childlike vanity of a minute past; he was a
creature of a thousand moods, each one absolutely sincere.

Théo, she saw, was like his mother. From her he had his gentle voice and
quiet ways; from his father only the splendid dark eyes.

Joyselle was a remarkably handsome man in his somewhat flamboyant way,
and even the clear morning light failed to show lines in his brown face,
though his silky, wavy hair was very grey about his brow. He could be
compared to no one Brigit had ever seen; he was, even in his absurd
velvet gown, head and shoulders above anyone she knew, temperamentally
as well as physically. He could, she saw, go anywhere, among people of
any class, and find there an at least momentary niche for himself.
Gentleman? She would not answer her own mental question, but great
artist, man of the world, good fellow, remarkable man, most certainly.

"Your hair is very charming," he was saying as she came to the above
conclusion; "it seems to love being yours--as what would not? The hair
of many women looks as though it were trying hard--oh, so hard!--to get
away from them; but yours clings and--what is the word?--tendrils round
your head as if it loved you."

"Ordinary curly hair," she answered in French.

"But no--black hair is usually dry and like something burnt, or of an
oiliness to disgust. Is it not so, Félicité--is her hair not adorable?"

"_Oui, oui_, Victor; _oui, mon homme_. But we must go, for Lady Brigit
will be wishing to rise. Théo, too, awaits her downstairs."

The big man, who was crouching on the floor playing with the dog, rose
hastily. "Good God!" he cried in English words, but obviously in the
innocent French sense, "I quite forgot that unhappy child! Come,
Félicité; come Papillon, _m'ami_--let us disturb Belle-Ange no longer."

As if he had long been struggling with their reluctance to go, he
shepherded them out of the room, singing as he went downstairs, "_Salut,
demeure chaste et pure._"




CHAPTER EIGHT


The parrot, whose name was Guillaume le Conquérant, was a magnificent,
fluffy, grey bird picked out with green. His eye was knowing, and swift
and deep his infrequent but never-to-be-forgotten bite.

"He is studying you--dear," explained Joyselle, as he stood before the
huge gilt cage with Brigit shortly after her appearance downstairs that
morning. "It is a severe test that everyone who comes here has to
undergo. He is writing his memoirs, too."

"It will be a sad day for you, papa, when his memoirs appear," put in
Théo, who was smoking a pipe and walking up and down the room just
because he was much too happy to sit still. "You have yet to see the
_real_ Victor Joyselle, Brigit. This polite being is the one we keep for
company."

Brigit laughed. "Is it true?" she asked the violinist.

"Yes," he returned unexpectedly, "you see now the happy Joyselle; the
Joyselle _père de famille_, domestic; the artist Joyselle, alas! is an
irritable, nervous, unpleasant person, who forgets to eat, and then
abuses his wife for giving him no dinner; an absent-minded idiot who
leaves his own old coat at the club and goes off wrapped in the Marquis
of St. Ive's sables; a swearing, smoking, wild-headed person, who
adores, nevertheless, his little Théo, and that little Théo's beautiful
_fiancée_."

At the end of this long speech his face, which had in the middle of it
been sombre with a sense of his own iniquity, suddenly cleared, until a
radiant smile transfigured it.

"My little brother adores you, M. Joyselle," said Brigit suddenly; "he
will be _so_ pleased. He calls your hair a halo!"

"A sad sinner's halo, then. The beautiful saints have others. And your
little brother, what is his name? And how old is he?"

"Tommy is his name, and he is twelve. He is music-mad, and such a dear!
Isn't he, Théo?"

Brigit had never been so happy. It was all like a dream, these
warm-hearted, simple-minded people, the father and mother so ready to
love her for the son's sake, the mental atmosphere so different from
that to which she was accustomed. She felt younger and, somehow, better
than ever before. And Théo would be very helpful to Tommy, and Tommy's
joy, in hearing Joyselle play, something very beautiful. She had sent a
wire to her mother the night before at the station, but her mother would
not answer it, and there were at least several hours between her and the
moment when she must leave Golden Square. The very name was beautiful!

It was raining hard, and the blurred windows seemed a kind of magic
barrier between her and the tiresome old world outside.

Then there came a ring at the door, and a moment later Toinon, the
red-elbowed maid-of-all-work, appeared, very much alarmed, carrying a
card, which she gave to Brigit.

"Oh, dear--it is poor Ponty!" ejaculated the girl, involuntarily turning
to Joyselle.

"Poor----"

"Lord Pontefract, Théo. Oh, how _tiresome_ of mother!"

Joyselle frowned. "Do not call your mother tiresome," he said shortly.
"But who is this gentleman?"

Théo stood silently looking on. It was plain that it seemed to him quite
fitting that his father should arrange the matter.

"Lord Pontefract--a friend of--of ours," stammered Brigit, abashed by
the reproof as she had not been abashed for years.

"And do you want to see him?"

"No, no; I certainly do _not_ want to see him."

"Then I will go and tell him so."

"No, no. I--I had better go, don't you think, Théo?"

Poor Pontefract seemed rather piteous to her as he was discussed, and
her note had been curt and unsympathetic.

Théo looked up from his work of filling his pipe.

"I don't know. I should do as papa says."

"No. I must see him. I shall be back in a minute."

She ran downstairs almost into Pontefract's arms, for he had been left
in the passage by the horrified Toinon.

"Oh--sorry!" she exclaimed. "Come in here, will you?" "Here" was the
unused "salon" of the house, and in its austere ugliness would have
attracted the girl's attention at any other time. But she had now before
her something she had never seen, a perfectly sober Pontefract. And
though red, a little puffy, and watery as to eye, the man looked what he
was, an English gentleman. Brigit felt as though she had returned to an
uncongenial home after a tour into some strange, delightful country.

"I--I owe you an apology, I suppose," she said, so simply that he
stared.

"No, you don't, Lady Brigit. You wrote me a--a very kind note. But I
wanted to ask you to reconsider. I--I am unhappy."

There was a short pause, during which he looked at her unfalteringly,
and then he went on with a certain dignity: "I have--drunk too much of
late years, I know, but--I will never do so again. And I think I could
make you happy."

"Did mother send you here?" asked the girl suddenly.

"No; I telephoned her this morning for your address. She would be
glad--if you could make up your mind."

"I have made up my mind, Lord Pontefract. I am going to marry Théo
Joyselle. And--I think I am going to be happy. I--like them all very
much. And," holding out her hand, "I am _very_ sorry to have hurt you."

As she spoke the sound of music--violin music--came down the stairs.
They both started, for it was the Wedding March from "Lohengrin."

Brigit's small face went white with anger. "I--am sorry," she stammered;
"it is--ghastly. It isn't Théo--it is his father. Oh, _do_ go!"

Pontefract nodded. "Yes, I'll go. And--never mind, Brigit. He doesn't
_know_, the old chap!"

He left the room hastily, and she ran upstairs, her hands clenched.

It was as she expected: Théo had left the room, and Joyselle stood alone
by the open door, his face radiant with malicious, delight. "_Parti,
hein_? I thought he'd--What is the matter?" he ended hastily, staring at
her.

She went straight to him, breathing hard, her brows nearly meeting. "How
_could_ you do such a thing? It was abominable--hideous!"

"What was abominable?"

"To play that Wedding March! Théo had told you about--about him, and you
did it to hurt him. Oh, how could _anybody_ do such a thing!"

Joyselle put his violin carefully into its case.

"You are rude, mademoiselle," he returned sternly; "very rude indeed.
But you are--my guest."

And he left the room.

Brigit's temper was very violent, but she had seen in his set face signs
of one much worse than her own, and, with the strange unexpectedness
that seemed to characterise the man, his last move was as fully that of
a gentleman as his trick with the Wedding March had been shocking.

He was her host, and--he had left her rather than forget that fact.

For the first time in her life she was utterly at a loss. What should
she do?

She was still standing where he had left her when Madame Joyselle came
in, perfectly serene, and closed the door.

"What is the matter?" she asked calmly, sitting down and folding her
hands.

"I--M. Joyselle--hurt one of my friends--he was--rude. And then----"

"_C'est ça._ And then _you_ were rude. Never mind, he will not think of
it again, and neither must you."

Brigit was silent, and stood looking at le Conquérant. She _had_ been
impolite, and Joyselle's discourtesy was, after all, more like a bit of
schoolboy malice than the deliberate insult of a grown man. And his
dignified rebuke to her had set her at once on the plane of a naughty
child.

Were they both grown up, or both children? Or was he grown and she a
child, or was she a grown-up and he a child? It was very puzzling and
very absurd. She wanted to rage and she wanted to laugh.

She laughed. Because as she turned towards the disinterested spectator
on the sofa, Joyselle came in, his face bearing such a reflection of the
expression she felt to be in her own that she could not resist.

"_Bon._ It is laugh, then?" he cried, kissing her hands. "It appears
Belle-Ange has a temper, too! Let us forget all about it. Félicité, my
dear, bring us Hydromel, and we will drink forgetfulness." He opened the
door of the cage, and William the Conqueror came mincing out, waddling
on his inturned toes like some fat, velvet-clad dowager.

Hydromel is a Norman liqueur, thick and cloying. Brigit loathed it, but
could not resist Joyselle, who, the parrot on his left wrist, poured the
sweet stuff into little glasses and handed one to her.

"Item: forget that we both have bad tempers," he said, striking his
glass against hers. "Item; remember that we are both good in our hearts;
item, remember that father and daughter must be patient with each
other."

As she drained her glass Théo came in and laughed as he saw what they
were doing.

"A reconciliation already?" he cried. "Papa, what have you been up to?"

"We have both been correcting and being corrected. _Bon, c'est fini!_"




CHAPTER NINE


"My dear Gerald, anyone would think _I_ wanted her to do it!" Lady
Kingsmead's voice was very fretful, for Carron had done nothing but talk
to her about Brigit for the last fortnight, and though she knew that his
old love for herself was dead and buried, yet she enjoyed having an
occasional flower of speech laid on its grave.

"I really believe you are in love with her," she went on after a pause,
as he did not answer.

"Bosh!"

"But it certainly looks like it. You do nothing but talk about her."

Carron roused himself with an effort from the treadmill line of thought
that had tortured him ever since Brigit's engagement. "My dear Tony, you
are absurd. You know perfectly well that I have never loved any woman
but you. You have led me a dog's life for years; you prevented my
getting on in my career, because it amused you to have me dangling
about----"

     Lady K. Oh, Gerald, will you ever forget that horrible
     winter when you went to India?

     Carron (_aloud_). No, Tony! (_In petto_) She _can't_
     love the boy. That much is quite impossible!

     Lady K. The awful cables you used to send me? Heavens, how
     I cried every night, Gerry! And how horrid Kingsmead was that year!
     _So_ jealous.

     Carron (_aloud_). You were always such an abominable
     flirt! (_In petto_) If I only knew _why_ she hates me so! God! it's
     worse than hatred; it's loathing.

     Lady K. (_reproachfully_). That is unfair, dear. You
     _know_ I never loved anyone but you!

     Carron (_aloud_). But you flirted, Tony; yes, you did. You
     nearly drove me mad with jealousy. (_In petto_) Hang it all! how
     can I get away and go for a walk? This is unbearable.

And so on, and so on, all the _triste canzon_. Lady Kingsmead's boudoir
was a charming room done in white and pale corn-colour. There were many
books, but Tommy had one day betrayed the limitations of their field of
usefulness by asking his mother before several people, "Mother, where do
you keep the books you _read_?"

There were many flowers, beautiful Turkey carpets, shaded lamps,
overloaded little tables whose mission in life appeared to be the
driving parlour-maids, however reluctant, to the process of dusting,
and, in the darkest corner, where its faded gilding was supposed to
lighten the gloom, a beautiful old harp. The harp belonged to Mr. Isaacs
in Baker Street, but was supposed to have been played by the fair
fingers of Lady Kingsmead's grandmother.

The furniture and hangings, all new, belonged to Messrs. Bampton in
Piccadilly, as did the carpets. The pictures, belonging to the entail,
were paid for. Lady Kingsmead lay on a _chaise-longue_ and played with a
Persian kitten named Omar.

Carron sat opposite her in a low chair smoking cigarettes. It was just
four o'clock.

"I suppose she'll curse me out for being here," Carron began suddenly,
feeling that he deserved, after his hasty excursion into the churchyard
of his ancient love, a short indulgence in his present feelings; "she's
a good hater, that girl of yours."

"Yes, she has a very nasty temper. Now I, with all my
faults"--(pause)--"with all my faults, never could stay angry more than
five minutes. Besides, I was always so sensitive."

"Yes; oh, yes! What train does she come by, did you say?"

"The 4.27. Perhaps you'd like to go and meet her?"

He laughed, his blue eyes narrowing. "Thanks, no. And the others?"

"Oh, _I_ don't know. The list is there at your elbow. You are dull
to-day, Gerald."

"I know I am. I think I'm in for an attack of flue, or something; feel
shivery and all-overish. And I think you might be able to understand my
hating to have your daughter make such a horrible _mésalliance_, Tony."

She was touched with the pathetic facility for being touched common to
fading beauties. Rising, she laid her pretty hand on his shoulder.
"Poor darling, I am sorry I was cross. It is dear of you to mind. I
hated it, too, at first, for poor old Ponty is a gentleman, and he is
awfully cut up. But after all, it may not be a bad thing. She's a very
queer girl, Gerald, not at all easy to live with, and this boy Joyselle
is really nice. Besides, he has plenty of money----"

"By the way," interrupted Carron, tossing the kitten to a soft chair,
"where did he get the money? The fiddling chap can't have much. They say
he's a great spendthrift----"

"No, it isn't that. I mean Isabel Clough-Hardy left it to him. You
remember the moley one who died in Egypt?"

"Did she? He must have been a mere child when she died. You mean Hugh
Hislip's daughter?"

"Yes. Oh, yes, it was years ago. They say she was in love with Victor
Joyselle before she married."

"By Jove! Why didn't he marry her?"

"Because in this unenlightened land no man is allowed to have more than
one wife at a time--Oh, Tommy, what have you been doing?"

Kingsmead, who had come in without knocking, sat down and stretched his
thin legs over the arm of the chair. "Ratting."

"Oh, you nasty child! What a beastly thing!"

"Ratting, my dear mother, is a fine, manly, old-time sport. Most fellows
of my age and appearance would be making love to their mothers' friends,
but I bar women. Sport," he added solemnly, "for Thomas Edward, Earl of
Kingsmead."

Carron, who had always disliked the boy, looked at him. "So you bar
women? Many other 'men of your appearance' have said the same."

It was a nasty thrust, but Tommy, though he felt it, grinned cheerfully.

"_Stung!_" he cried, laying his hand on his heart in an absurd
theatrical gesture. "Your bolt has gone home, my dear fellow. But
experience may take the place of beauty at fifty."

Carron started. He loathed being fifty, he loathed Tommy, he loathed
everything.

Tommy turned to the kitten and talked artless nonsense to it to fill up
the pause that followed, and Lady Kingsmead powdered her nose with a bit
of chamois skin that lived in a silver box full of Fuller's earth under
the _chaise-longue_ pillows.

"Glad Brigit's coming?" asked Tommy, turning with appalling suddenness
to Carron, whose hatred for him increased tenfold as he tried to answer
carelessly.

As he replied, Brigit came in, without a hat, but covered from head to
foot with a rough tweed coat. Her wavy hair was very wet, and her
gloves, as she pulled them off, dripped on the floor. In her pearly pale
cheeks was a lovely pink tinge.

"What a day!" she cried. "I can't kiss you, mother--how d'ye do, Gerald?
Tommy, you angel, come and be drowned in sister's fond embrace!"

They all stared at her. "It's such a jolly rain. I drove myself in the
cart that had gone for Mr. Green. Green came in the brougham, poor dear!
Well--what are you all staring at, souls?"

"You look so--so young, Bicky," answered Tommy, with an effort. "What a
good time you must have had!"

Having taken off her coat and thrown her ruined gloves into the fire,
she sat down by her brother and put her arm round him.

"Dear little boy! I _am_ young, Thomas, and I did have a good time. He
is going to play for you, dear--all you want him to. He is a--a--what
shall I say?" Her eyes crinkled with amusement as she sought for a word.
"He really is a--ripper, Tommy. And he has a human dog named
Papillon--But-ter-fly," she added, still smiling and obviously quoting,
"also a parrot."

"And a wife," put in Carron sharply.

She looked at him, her face stiffening into its old expression of surly
hauteur.

"You have seen her?"

"No. But a friend of mine has. Charley Masterson, Tony. He says she
looks like a clean old peasant."

"That is exactly what she is--bravo, Charley Masterson! A clean old
peasant. Joyselle, too, is a peasant. They come from near Falaise, and
as a girl Madame Joyselle wore a cap. Is there no tea going?"

Lady Kingsmead, who hated rows unless she was one of the principals,
rang the bell.

"How was Pam?" she asked hastily.

"As nice as ever. They both sent you their love, by the way. I had a
heavenly week there, and they liked Théo so much. He came down for the
week-end. Oh, mother," she went on as the man who had answered the bell
closed the door, "please ask them down soon, will you? The clean old
peasant won't come; she never leaves home, and _he_ is--perfectly
presentable."

Lady Kingsmead watched her daughter in amazement. Tommy, as usual, was
right; Brigit looked, and seemed, years younger than she had done a
fortnight ago.

"Yes, my dear, I'll write to-night," she said with the graciousness she
used at will, and that was so charming. Then she added, "I might ask him
when the Duchess comes. He is sure to love duchesses; _those_ kind of
people always do."

"Yes, and as to duchesses, _those_ kind of people frequently like good
music for nothing."

But there was no bitterness in her tone, and mother and daughter smiled
at each other.




CHAPTER TEN


The Duchess did like good music for nothing, and when, a week later, she
was told on her arrival that Joyselle was to be of the party, she was
much pleased. She was only an ancient dowager, full of aches and pains
and sad and merry memories, but she was a great favourite nevertheless,
for her aches and pains and sad memories were kept safely in the
background, whereas her merry and sometimes somewhat shocking
recollections made her the very best of good company.

"A great man, my dear," she told Lady Kingsmead, "one of the finest
artistes I ever heard. I remember once in Petersburg, heaven only knows
how many centuries ago, hearing him play before the Czar. He was
extraordinarily handsome then, a tall young fellow--he can't be much
over forty now--very broad and strong-looking, with beautiful wavy brown
hair and gorgeous black eyes. The Grand Duchess Anastasia-Katherine was
very much in love with him, and he with her. She gave him a rose before
everybody--a red rose--and he kissed it quite boldly before he put it
into his coat. A remarkably dashing young man!"

"You have heard, I suppose, that my girl is going to marry his son?"

"Bless me, no! Has the creature a son? Men of that type ought never to
marry and have sons. What is he like, the boy?"

"A delightful person, Duchess, and we are all so pleased about it. I had
hoped for some time that she would take him--anyone could see how things
were going with _him_--but she was always so peculiar, and I rather
feared at one time that she would say no," and so on, and so on. Lady
Kingsmead did not know she was lying, and the Duchess, who was sleepy
and had on a tight dress, did not care. When she had found out who the
other guests were to be, and that dinner was at half-past eight, she
waddled upstairs, looking remarkably like Guillaume le Conquérant in her
grey dress, and went to sleep.

Lady Kingsmead had a cup of Bovril, which she had been told was
excellent for the complexion (although as her complexion was always
carefully concealed from the eye of man, also from the far more piercing
one of woman, it may be asked why she considered it). Then she had her
maid lock her dressing-room door, and give her an hour's facial massage.

At seven Joyselle arrived, and she was told that he had arrived.

"Ask Mr. Joyselle to come to my boudoir, Burton."

"Very good, my lady."

When Joyselle was ushered in he found a beautiful person in a lacy white
tea-gown reading Maeterlinck on a satin _chaise-longue_.

He kissed her hand.

"I am glad to have an opportunity of seeing you, Lady Kingsmead," he
began abruptly, fixing his dark eyes on hers. "Our little private
correspondence has, I trust, been as pleasing to you as it has to me?"

"I have greatly enjoyed it."

"I am delighted. And they, the _fiancés_, know nothing of it?"

"Of course not, Monsieur Joyselle." Her ladyship bowed with some dignity
as she spoke, for, besides being a very great artiste, this person with
the quiet air of authority was also a peasant.

"As I said, I rather doubted the wisdom of writing to you, but Théo is a
baby regarding money, and as you, of course, must consider the matter as
not altogether advantageous in the point of birth--for we have no birth,
my wife and I, we were just born,"--he smiled delightfully--"I thought
it only just to reassure your"--he was on the point of saying "mother's
heart," but thought better of it, and hastily substituted the word
"mind,"--"on this point of money. Théo, by the will of my dear friend,
Lady Isabel Clough-Hardy, does not come of age until he is twenty-five,
in something less than three years' time. But you now understand that I,
as guardian, am prepared to do all I can for the two dear children."

He _was_ handsome, the Duchess was right. And he was beautifully
dressed. And he would play for her guests after dinner.

Lady Kingsmead held out her jewelled hand.

"I am very glad that it happened," she said sweetly. "Théo's a dear
boy, and seems to make my little girl very happy."

"Yes, they seem happy. Ah--is this Tommy?"

It was. A spick-and-span Tommy, with very wet hair and a nervous smile;
a Tommy with cold hands and a curious twitching behind his knees. For he
had come to Olympus to see a god.

Joyselle held out his big, strong hand and Tommy's disappeared in it.
Thus, sometimes, are friendships made.

"I say--you _can_ play," stammered the boy. "I--it is glorious."

"You love music, Brigitte says."

"Don't I just! She says you'll play for me some time."

Tommy's small, greenish eyes were wet with irrepressible tears of
adoration.

Joyselle rose. "Come with me to my room now, Tommy, and I will play for
you. _Vous permettez, madame?_"

Lady Kingsmead bowed graciously, but when the door closed, frowned with
disgust, and putting Maeterlinck on the table, drew Claudine from under
an embroidered pillow and began to read.

Tommy, treading on air, accompanied Joyselle to his room, and sitting on
the floor as the easiest place in which to contain almost unbearable
rapture, listened.

Joyselle as he played recalled another little boy who, years before, had
listened in much the same way to another man playing the violin, and the
comparison is not so far-fetched as it seems, for although the blind
fiddler of the sunny day in Normandy had been only a third-rate scraper
of the bow, and Joyselle one of the world's very greatest artists, yet
in one thing they joined issue. Each of them gave to the listening child
before him his very best.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


Dinner that night was a very grand affair. Fledge inspired awe by his
majestic mien--Fledge liked duchesses--and Burton and William, the
recently promoted, with their heads striped with grease and powder,
looked to the enraptured eyes of the female servants their very best.

There were crimson roses in beautiful silver vases on the table, and in
the centre stood a particularly hideous but very valuable silver
ship--"given," as Tommy once gravely explained to a guest, "by somebody
or other--a king, or an admiral, I think--to one of my ancestors, in the
seventeenth century, who did something or other rather well."

Lady Kingsmead, under the Duchess' influence, was suffering from one of
her attacks of thinking Tommy "quaint," so, by the old lady's
suggestion, the boy was allowed to sit at the foot of his own table,
pretending, as he had told his sister he should find it necessary to do,
to be as young as his mother's guests.

The Duchess, greatly diverted by his demeanour, and reinforced on her
other side by an amusing, sad dog of thirty, who wrote wicked novels,
thoroughly enjoyed her dinner. There are so many reasons for enjoying
one's dinner; some people do because they like to meet their
fellow-creatures; some because they like being seen at certain houses;
some because they have beauty to display or stories to tell; and some
because they enjoy eating and drinking simply as eating and drinking.
The Duchess, in that she enjoyed dining for all the reasons above cited,
except that of bothering her ancient head about whose house she was seen
at, was extremely pleased with her entertainment. She wagged her old
head--white now, quite frankly, after many years of essays in difficult
tints--whispered to her novelist, and made love to Tommy quite
shamelessly.

"You look like an Eastern potentate, you are so silent and serious," she
told him once. "Do I bore you so horribly, or is it Miss Letchworth?"

"I am not bored at all, Duchess," answered the boy simply; "I am
thinking."

"And what are you thinking about?"

Tommy hesitated. Under her frivolous manner he knew the Duchess had a
heart, and very human sympathies.

"I want to be a violinist," he said slowly, after a pause during which
the Duchess, with a little shriek, rescued her salad, which William had
pounced upon.

"A violinist!"

"Hush! Please don't tell."

"Of course I'll not tell, but----"

"Have you heard him play?"

"Joyselle? Of course I have."

"Well?" asked Tommy in quiet triumph. What more could anyone say?

The old woman smiled sweetly at him. She, too, had been young, and
remembered. And there was in this little, plain boy a certain strain of
blood that she loved; his grandmother had been a Yeoland.

"So you really love it that much, do you? It means hard work, Tommy."

"I know," nodded the boy gravely.

And his mother, seeing his gravity, feared that he was not being
sufficiently quaint to amuse the old lady, and screamed down the table
at him to tell the Duchess the story of the jibbing pony at the Irish
race meeting. The story was not told.

On her right hand Lady Kingsmead had the local M.F.H., a dull man with
his head full of hounds, as she expressed it. But on her left sat
Joyselle, and as a guest he was certainly perfect. Lady Kingsmead in
pale pink and pearls was good enough to look at, and feeling that she
wished to be made love to, he made love to her, as was his duty. And he
did it well, for he was an artist. He was not conspicuous, or
over-impassioned, or over-adoring (very few women like unmixed
adoration), but he was amusing, a trifle outrageous, admiring, and
tactful. He was also amazingly handsome.

Down to her left Lady Kingsmead could see Carron being bored to death by
the wife of the M.F.H., who, someone said, if he had _his_ head full of
hounds and foxes, certainly had hers full of coals and blankets. For the
vicar was a bachelor, and poor Lady Brinsley hated hounds and foxes, and
really loved helping the poor. And being of the simple-minded who talk
to strangers out of the fulness of their hearts, she was telling him
sadly of the shameful way in which the coal-dealer had cheated poor,
dear Mr. Smith.

Mentally damning poor, dear Mr. Smith and his friend, as well as the
whole race of coal-dealers, Carron watched Brigit as she talked to Théo
and her other neighbour, Pat Yelverton, who watched her in quite evident
surprise.

"May I be rude and make a personal remark?" he asked her presently. She
smiled. "Yes." Yelverton hesitated, and then said slowly: "You have
changed wonderfully since I last saw you, Lady Brigit."

"You mean that I am not so disagreeable?"

"I mean----"

"I know. And you are right, Mr. Yelverton. I was very horrid, and now I
am--nicer--because I am very happy. It's a selfish reason, but I hope I
can use it as--as a kind of means to a good end."

Yelverton held his breath. Was it possible that the mere fact of being
engaged to a sweet-natured youth like Théo Joyselle could cause such a
miracle as this before his eyes? What was the boy to change Brigit from
a sullen, caustic woman into a charming, lovely young girl?

"I am very glad for you," he said presently, "and for him. I'm a sorry
old stager, Lady Brigit, but it is good to see two young things like you
and Joyselle find each other--in time."

As so often happens, his mood was answering hers, and she remembered
some story she had heard long ago about him and some girl who had
drowned herself.

"Thank you," she said very gently, and turned to Théo, for she had a
manlike fear of intruding on people's secrets. But Yelverton was one of
those unfortunate beings who, when they turn to their sentimental past,
must turn not to the memory of one face, but to a kind of romantic
mosaic of many faces that in time takes on the horrid semblance of a
composite photograph. So it is to be feared that the sad little story of
the girl who drowned herself because he who loved her, made casual and,
so to speak, duty-love to a married woman, had not occurred to him, as
Brigit in her new-found kindliness of supposition, took for granted.

It was a wonderful dinner to the girl; wonderful in the indulgence that
had come over her regarding her _convives_, and in the interesting
things she found it possible to glean from the snatches of talk she
caught from time to time. Alert, bright-eyed, an unwonted smile ever
hovering on her mouth, she listened, and young Joyselle watched her in a
fearful ecstasy of joy.

He felt, in his innocent youth, so old, so wicked, so world-worn for
this radiant angel who had given, herself to him. It was too good to be
true, and he trembled at the thought. But after dinner, when he had at
last been able to fly to the drawing-room, the Duchess had a beautiful
word to say to him. "Mr. Joyselle," the old woman began abruptly,
beckoning to him, "come here for a second, I want to congratulate you."

"Thank you, Duchess. I--I am indeed to be congratulated, for she is the
most perfect----"

"Tà, tà, tà, I don't mean that at all! I mean I want to congratulate you
on what you have been able to do for her in so short a time."

"I? To do for her?" He was honestly puzzled.

"Yes, you. Do you suppose she has always been what she is now? Not a bit
of it. The last time I saw Brigit Mead--it was at Ascot--she was a very
good-looking, of course--oh, unbelievably beautiful, if you prefer it,
but an ill-tempered, black-faced young minx, who should have been put on
bread and water for a month to correct her manner."

"Her manners!" shouted Théo, unable to believe his ears.

"No. Her manners were always all right, but her manner was atrocious.
And you have made her most delightful, as well as ten times lovelier
than I would have thought possible. There, now, you may go to her." And
Théo wasted no time.

"Love is a strange thing, isn't it?" went on the old woman to her
neighbour, without looking to see who he was, for it is a remark that
may safely be addressed to anybody.

"It is a damnable thing," growled the afflicted Carron, for it was he
who chanced, for his sins, to have paused just then under the pretence
of lighting a cigarette.

"Exactly," assented the Duchess briskly. "It has led you an awful life,
Gerald, hasn't it?"

"The absurdity of calling that boy's feelings for Brigit by the same
word that must express----"

"Yours for her mother, eh? Go away, you immoral thing!"




CHAPTER TWELVE


There was to be no Bridge that evening, and by unspoken consent everyone
sat in the hall. It was a cold night, and the roaring fire was pleasant
to hear, and in the expressive slang of the time, "things went."

Everyone was amused; for the time being, the bores had ceased from
boring, and the bored were at rest. Brigit, who loved to look into wet
and be dry, to look into cold and be warm, sat in the one plain glass
window in the place (its coloured predecessor had been broken by a
Roundhead cannon-ball and for vainglorious Family Reasons never been
replaced), so that she could look alternately into the storm and at the
comfortable, cheery scene within.

She wore white, and in her hair a tiny wreath of green enamel
bay-leaves. And to her beauty was, as the Duchess had so plainly felt,
added the great graces of good humour and simplicity.

"After all," thought the wise old lady, watching her, "all happy women
are simple."

Tommy, big with his splendid secret, roamed about the room, his hands in
his pockets, his chin poked up thoughtfully.

It was all very well to be an earl if one wanted to rule one's mother
and get one's own way generally, but when one wants to be a violinist,
then an earldom is distinctly a bore. He had never heard of a British
peer who at the same time was a great musician, but which of the two
positions precluded the other he could not decide.

He wished, naturally, to begin work at once. He would have to have a
serious talk with his mother to-night. If these people ever went to bed!

Bicky looked heavenly to-night. My word! what a sister for any fellow to
have!

And Joyselle--he was far too great a person to be "Mistered." Fancy Mr.
Beethoven, or Mr. Paderewski! Joyselle the Great and Glorious would help
him. The mater appeared to like him. It was strange, for she had been in
a terrible rage the first day or two--but she certainly was as pleased
as Punch now.

Joyselle had crossed the room and was sitting by Bicky now. By Jove, he
was patting her hand! And before everybody!

Suddenly he rose, she smiled up into his dark face, and he called Tommy.

"Tommy, will you go to my room and bring me my Amati?"

Why Tommy did not then and there burst with joy, that enraptured little
boy never knew. When he put the violin into the master's hand the child
trembled so that the master saw it. "When I have played one thing, you
are to go to bed," he said gravely. "You are tired."

And the spoiled and headstrong Tommy, he whose word was law to his
mother and many other people, nodded obediently. "I will play again for
you alone to-morrow," added Joyselle.

Then he went and stood near the fire, the red light flashing on him, and
played.

The first thing, plainly for Tommy, was a Norman cradle-song, very slow
and monotonous, and full of strange harmonies. When it was over, Tommy
quietly withdrew. To-morrow was to be his day.

Brigit Mead had stayed at the house in Golden Square for a full week,
and during that week she had heard her future father-in-law play a dozen
times or more.

He had played in the crimson velvet dressing-gown, in morning clothes,
in evening dress, once even in the fur-lined coat. Yet it seemed to her,
as she watched and listened now, in the great hall of the house of her
fathers, that she had never heard quite this same man play.

At home he had been "Beau-papa," noisy and demonstrative, or solemn with
artistic responsibility and reverence, but always the oldish man playing
to his family. Now, in some way, he was metamorphosed. He was now
"Joyselle"; he was, as she listened and watched, an unusually handsome,
not yet middle-aged gentleman, playing the violin as an artist, but
indisputably a gentleman.

She recalled, with a shudder, his awful lack of taste displayed the day
Pontefract called; she remembered her amusement on his insisting on
wearing a pale blue satin tie one day when he was lunching at a club to
meet a great pianist, and Théo's subsequent search among his belongings
for other similar horrors.

She remembered his over-loud laugh and his too-ready gesture. She
smiled, however, as she told herself that he was a peasant.

As she listened, her love for music quite subordinated to her strange
interest in the mere man, Théo leant forward and whispered quietly:
"Brigit, do you really care a little for me?"

"Yes." She smiled affectionately at him, for was it not he who made her
so happy?

And then the poor girl drew a long, shuddering breath, and leant back
behind the curtain, for she had suddenly realised that it was not Théo
who made her happy. It was the fact that he was Victor Joyselle's son.

And it was the big man with the violin who--who--who made her happy.

It was a miserable end to her childish dream of felicity, for she was
brave enough to admit to herself without the least hesitation what it
was that had happened.

And when Joyselle at length stopped playing and came back to sit by her,
she smiled at him in very good imitation of her own smile of half an
hour before.

But he was not satisfied.

"You did not like it?" he asked simply.

"Of course I did--it was _splendid_."

"Yet I could not hold you," he persisted, his vanity evidently a little
hurt. He could not hold her!

"Didn't we like it, Théo?" she urged, turning to the young man.

"To tell the truth, I didn't hear a note," he admitted, not in the least
shamefacedly. "I was looking at you."

"Lucky young beggar," laughed Joyselle, "small wonder! You two make a
very pleasant picture," he added, "and in a year or two----"

"Father," protested Théo, blushing scarlet in quick French sympathy for
the strange susceptibilities of his English fiancée, "don't!"

Brigit rose slowly. "I must go and say good night to Tommy," she said.
"I shall be down in a few minutes."

Tommy was in bed, reading a very large book by the light of an electric
lamp.

"What have you got there?" his sister asked, lying down by him and
pressing her face to the cool pillow.

"Oh, nothing. I just thought I ought to know something about--_Amatis_.
It's very interesting," he returned solemnly, and then burst out: "Oh,
Bick, isn't he _simply glorious_!"

"Yes, Tommy."

"There was never anyone like him. Not only the fiddling,
but--everything. Don't you think so? Don't you, Bicky?" he persisted
anxiously.

"Yes, Tommy, dear."

"I do think you the luckiest girl in the whole world. Just fancy being
_his_ daughter."

"Yes, Tommy."

Her head whirled, her heart beat hard, her hands were as cold as ice.
This, she told herself, was the plunge; it would be better shortly. And
when it _was_ better, then she could begin to fight. For she would
fight. It was a monstrous thing, a nightmare, and she would fight it
down.

"Brigit."

"Yes, Tommy?" With an effort she roused herself and sat up.

Tommy had closed the book and put it away. He now sat hunched in bed,
his thin arms in their pale blue sleeves clasping his knees. "Brigit, do
you think a peer could ever be a really great violinist?"




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


A sleepless night is always a bad thing, but it is full of horror when
its victim is haunted by an ever-recurring thought.

Brigit Mead went to her room, dismissed what her brother called her half
of Amélie, the French maid, put on a dressing-gown, and sat down by the
fire to think.

Her room was very exposed, and the wind howled dismally round the corner
of the house, while the rain fell in violent gusts against the ancient
panes. It was a comfort to hear the storm, for it made the fire welcome,
and a fire is comforting.

The girl huddled close to it, and according to her wont began uttering
her thoughts in a whisper.

"It is that. There's no doubt. And that is why I was so happy. He
doesn't know, that's one comfort. Only--what on earth am I to do? I
wonder if it will get worse or better, the more I see him? If only he
would make some more horrible blunders, or--or what? It isn't what he
does, it's what he is. It isn't even the playing. I barely heard him
to-night. And Théo--poor Théo! He must never suspect. But then, he never
would, unless I shouted it in his ear!"

She paused and put another log on the fire.

"_He_ will, though, unless I am very careful. He isn't old at all,
forty-two is young nowadays, and I'm sure he likes women. I daresay, if
I hadn't been engaged to Théo, he would have liked me. Most of 'em do.
And I never looked better in my life than I looked to-night. Vain
beast!"

Presently she got up, and roamed aimlessly about the room. The door
leading into her little sitting-room was open, and she went in and
switched on the light. "He wants to come in here to-morrow, and see
where I live. _Live!_ He wants to see my books. I'll hide those French
ones; they'd shock Beau-papa, I suppose, though they aren't very bad.
But what _am_ I to _do_? Can I go on being engaged--can I _marry_ Théo
while I--love his father? Would marrying Théo cure me, or make it worse?
And suppose he fell in love with me after we were married! And
she--Gerald's 'clean old peasant,' wouldn't she be horrified? Poor old
thing, she is very nice, but--and Tommy wanting to be a violinist! A
nice family party, upon my word!"

She laughed harshly and pulled her dressing-gown closer about her. It
was cold in here.

"I suppose I'd better tell Théo the truth--or, no, just that I've
changed my mind. No, I can't do that, for I'd never see _him_ again. I
want to see him; there's no danger; he'll never suspect me."

Up and down the two rooms she paced, her two long black plaits hanging
over her shoulders and accentuating the red-Indian character of her
face. "How Gerald would gloat!" she thought suddenly, clenching her
hands. "The beast!"

The stable clock struck one. She had thought that wretched old Duchess
would never want to go to bed.

"I wish I could tell Pam. According to the Duchess, Pam is a mine of
wisdom. But I know what she did about that Peele man, and I haven't the
courage to do that. Oh, why did I ever _see_ Théo? Then I'd have married
Ponty, and--_what's that_?" Wheeling fiercely, she faced the door
leading from her sitting-room into the passage. It opened noiselessly
and Carron came in, dressed as she had last seen him. "Hush! don't be
frightened, Brigit. I saw your light and----"

"Well--and?" She looked as if she were about to spring at his throat,
and he closed the door quietly and entered her bedroom.

"My good child, don't be melodramatic! I only wanted to tell you
that--that I am sorry I was rude to you the day you left----"

"Rude, were you? I had quite forgotten it. Now go!"

"No, thanks. I will sit down for a moment. Brigit, you are a very
foolish woman. Hush, I will tell you why. Firstly, because you are going
to marry the son of that musical mountebank; and secondly, because you
seem bound to make an enemy of me."

"Threats?"

She stood looking down at him with a smile as disagreeable, though not
as evil, as his own. "Don't you be melodramatic! And please go. If you
don't, I'll ring for Amélie."

"I don't mind."

And she knew that he did not. She, on the other hand did, for she had
always disliked and distrusted the Frenchwoman. "If you prefer one of
the men?"

"They won't hear you; men-servants never do. And, besides, I'm going in
a minute. Listen, Brigit; you have, during the past year, done
everything you could to hurt me. Do you think it's fair, all things
considered?"

"Fair or unfair, your--attentions annoy me."

"Well--your attitude annoys me, and unless you change it, I'll--get even
with you. Now, there's plain English for you." He rose. "That's all I
wanted to say. Rather pretty, your room."

"Very good," she sneered. "In the language of your favourite branch of
dramatic art, 'do your worst.'"

"And you intend to continue to torture me till--till I can't bear it?"
His face whitened, and there was real agony in his voice. After all, he
was suffering too, and suddenly, for the first time, she pitied him.

"I am sorry, Gerald," she said, bending towards him and laying her hand
on his shoulder. "I----"

"Hush!" reaching out his hand he switched off the light, for they had
both heard slow footsteps coming softly down the passage.

The room was dark now but for the fire which had died down, and luckily
they stood in the shadow. The soft footsteps, heavy, though they would
have been noiseless at any other hour than this most quiet one,
approached slowly and deliberately. Instinctively the girl clung to the
man, and he put his arms round her for the first time since she was a
little child. Even in their mutual fright she felt his heart give a wild
throb.

Then the door opened gently and on the threshold appeared--Tommy, sound
asleep, hugging to his unconscious breast the volume of the Encyclopædia
Britannica, in which he had been reading about the Amati.

Slowly the boy crossed the room and disappeared into the sitting-room.

"Go," whispered Brigit, desperately; "he mustn't be waked up--go this
way----"

But Carron had lost his head, and kissed her, breathlessly, hungrily,
and then, just as the little blue-clad figure again appeared in the one
doorway, he disappeared by the other.

The girl stood quite still, not daring to scream, so angry that only the
unconscious presence of Tommy prevented her rushing after the man she
hated, to try to kill him with her two hands.

And Tommy, after a moment's hesitation, made his slow way back to his
room and to bed. When she had tucked him up in safety she went to her
mother's room.

"Sorry to wake you, mother," she said, her voice shaky, "but might I
sleep with you? I have had such a bad dream and am nervous."

Lady Kingsmead luckily liked to have her vanity played upon by such
requests. It pleased her to have her daughter turn to her. "Of course,
darling," she said sleepily.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Carron was late for breakfast the next morning, and when he came in
found Brigit sitting in her mother's place, laughing and talking with
Sir Henry Brinsley, who, much pleased by the manner in which his dull
and endless stories were received, subsequently declared that it was all
rot calling that handsome girl of Lady Kingsmead's dull; very
intelligent girl indeed, as a matter of fact.

But for all her composure, Brigit never quite lost her
that-morning-conceived hatred of people who have two goes at ham and
eggs; and an infantile remark of Tommy's that eggs should be eaten only
out of the shell, because they "bled all over the plate," recurred to
her again and again as she watched the worthy baronet satisfy his
enormous appetite.

"Mornin', Brigit." "Morning, Gerald." She nodded, and he went to a side
table for some fish.

Théo, who sat opposite Brigit for the excellent reason that his father
had insisted on sitting by her, took some marmalade. "What are we to do
this morning?" he asked.

She frowned with sudden impatience. It was a horrible question. Would he
always ask it at breakfast?

Then she smiled at him, for his fresh happy face was good to look at.
"Oh, nothing--or anything you like. Why?"

"Because I thought it might be well, if you can spare the time, to take
papa for a spin in the motor. He did not sleep well."

She turned to Joyselle. "It is true. I am one of the best sleepers in
the world, but last night I had a bad dream, and it got on my nerves and
I lay awake for nearly two hours," He spoke with an air of only
half-amused grievance.

"I am sorry," she murmured perfunctorily, rising to shake hands with
Miss Letchworth, whom she had always disliked as being one of those
people who are jocund in the morning. Then, as Yelverton proceeded to
provide food for the unfortunate jocund one (who was really as inclined
to matutinal depression as any of her betters, but considered it her
duty to be "cheery"), Brigit realised that she was not sorry Joyselle
had slept badly; she was glad.

"My dream, Brigitte," he went on, his thought answering hers, "was about
you. You were so unhappy, poor child, and I was trying to help you, but
could not reach you. It was very dreadful, for I could hear you call to
me."

"How--pathetic," she answered, with stiffening lips. "But--would you
like to go motoring?" He nodded delightedly, for his mouth was full of
toast.

"I _love_ it," he went on, a moment later, "I love to go fast, fast,
fast. It is wonderful. What is your car?"

"It is mother's; nothing very remarkable in the way of speed, I fear.
Would you care to go for a drive, Lady Brinsley?"

But Lady Brinsley had letters to write, and no one else volunteering
for the excursion, half-past eleven found Brigit and Joyselle in the
tonneau of the car, and Théo sitting with the chauffeur.

"Go to Kletchley, Hubbard."

It was a cold, grey day, with a steely sky and a wind that threatened to
be high later on. Brigit's cap was tied on firmly with a strong green
veil, but she wore nothing over her face, and the chill air made her
feel better. She had not slept at all, and was tired, although nothing
in her aspect betrayed the fact. All night her mind had been busy with
its new-found problem, and the unusual presence of her mother had made
her very nervous. But--she had not dared return to her room, for fear of
finding Carron there.

If only she had had a father----

"_Vous etes roublée, ma fille_," said Joyselle, suddenly taking one of
her hands in his befurred ones; "what has happened? Can you not think of
me as your old papa, and tell me?"

She started, half-frightened, half angry. "I am not troubled, M.
Joyselle," she returned, in French. "I--have a headache, that is all."

Oh, time-honoured evasion; oh, classic lie, thou who hast served,
surely, since Eve's day, used without doubt by Helen of Troy, Cleopatra
and all the other unsaintly women, ancient and modern, whose stories are
so much more entertaining than those of the unco' guid--oh, Splendid
Mendax, where should we all be without you?

"A headache?" Joyselle's magnificent eyes looked kindly but searchingly
into hers. "No. Not that." Then, asking no further question, he leaned
back in his place and looked out over the fields on his left.

"Daughter--father--child--old man----" she told herself with set jaw,
"that is what he thinks. He is eight years younger than that brute
Gerald, too."

The road climbed dully up for half an hour, and then with a quick turn
stretched out over splendid downs, beyond which lay a narrow glittering
strip of grey sea. "There is the sea," announced Brigit, perfunctorily.
It was not intrinsically beautiful, the scene, but as some chord in the
human breast almost invariably vibrates in response to a view of salt
water, this point was considered, at Kingsmead, to be a particularly
important one, and as the motor flew on Brigit Mead wondered how many
hundred times she had brought people there with the same curt
introduction, "There is the sea."

Théo, perfectly happy, turned occasionally to look at the other two, but
spoke little. It filled him with joy to see his beloved and his father
together, and his engagement was still so young that he had not got used
to it, and loved to think about it.

Joyselle, too, was unusually silent for a long time. Then at last he
turned to Brigit, his face grave as she had hitherto seen it only when
he was playing.

"I will not intrude again, Brigitte," he said, his deep voice very
gentle; "but when--if--you ever care to come to me for help or
advice--of any kind, I shall always be at your service."

"Thank you," she said, and could say no more, for fear of breaking
down. Then her sense of humour, never very keen, did for once come to
the rescue, and in an absurd mental flash-light she pictured his face if
she should suddenly put her head down on his knees and wail out the
truth: "Yes, dear Beau-papa, advise and help me, for I am to be your
daughter, my children are to be your grandchildren, and--I love you!"

Something in her face hurt him, and for the rest of the drive he quite
simply and frankly sulked.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Brigit went for a long walk that afternoon, as was her wont when she
wished to think. As she started from the house she met Carron. "Look
here, Brigit," he said roughly, "you slept with your mother last night.
Was it because you were afraid I might come back?"

She eyed him with great coolness from under the shadow of her felt hat.
"No, I was afraid, when I left--my little brother--that you might _have
come back_." And she took her walking-stick from its place.

"I--I beg your pardon," he returned sullenly, looking at her as she
stood in the faint autumn sunshine, her well-cut coat and skirt somehow
failing to take from her her curious Indian air. "I was a beast."

"You always are, Gerald. Once when I was a child a spider bit me--or do
spiders sting? Well, it made me a bit sick at first, and then I--forgot
it. Good-bye."

The man's nerves were evidently in a bad state, for at her insult his
face broke out into a cold perspiration and went very white. "Oh--I am a
spider, am I? All right, I am glad I kissed you. Glad I held you close
in my arms. You can't undo that, whatever you may say."

She stood quietly swinging her stick, a smile just touching her
disdainful mouth. She was purposely being maddening, and she knew to the
uttermost the value, as a means of torture to the trembling man before
her, of the slight lift of her upper lip as she looked at him.

"Quite finished?" she asked, as he paused. "Then perhaps you'll let me
go? _Good-bye._"

He watched her out of sight, and then wiping his face carefully with his
handkerchief, returned to the house.

Crossing the park by a footpath that was now half-buried in fallen
leaves, she came out on the high road, and turning to the left, took a
steep path leading to the downs.

She walked with unusual rapidity for a woman, climbing the path without
relaxing her gait or losing her breath. The sharp, damp air brought to
her face colour that Carron had been unable to call up. He was, poor
wretch, so utterly secondary to her, that he was as little important as
the long-forgotten spider. It was Joyselle who occupied her thoughts,
whom her mental eyes saw, as she walked steadily seawards, as plainly as
if he had been with her.

The next morning would begin a respite for her, in one sense, for he was
going away. His old mother was ill in Falaise, and he was going to see
her. "Then," he had added, "I must visit a friend in Paris. I shall not
be back before the last of November."

This information he had volunteered to her immediately after lunch,
having quite forgotten his resentment at her lack of response to his
offers of advice. His quick changes of humour were very puzzling, and
continually made her doubt whether she or anyone else knew him at all,
though she had too much discrimination to doubt the sincerity of any one
of his moods.

She had left him on the point of going to his room to play for Tommy,
and knew that her brother would probably unfold to him during the
afternoon his plan of becoming a violinist.

If the child had talent, Joyselle would, she believed, do his utmost to
help him, and this was another reason why she could not make up her mind
how to manage her own affairs.

Even if she wished to break her engagement and never see Joyselle again,
had she the right thus to take from her brother the chance of great
happiness and protection that seemed to have come to him?

"Joyselle would never speak to me again if I threw Théo over," she told
herself. "First, he would scold me violently, and then he'd lop us all
off, trunk and branch. And--he might be the making of Tommy. Théo is so
gentle and good, and he so splendid--I could have Tommy a lot
with--us----"

On the other hand, however, what if she went from bad to worse regarding
Joyselle? Would she be able to bear it?

Her thoughts turning the matter relentlessly over and over, as a
squirrel does his wheel, she came home, getting there just at tea-time.

Lady Kingsmead, very much bored with her guests, had her useful
headache, and the girl had to hurry into dry clothes, for the rain had
come on, and play hostess.

"Tea, M. Joyselle?"

He made a wry and very ludicrous face. "_Merci_, Lady Brigit!"

"French people always loathe tea, my dear," laughed the Duchess; "they
take it when they have colds, as we take quinine."

Miss Letchworth, who had been three times to Paris for a week at a time,
looked up from her embroidery. "Oh, _Duchess_! People of our class often
drink it," she protested, the only tea she had ever consumed in Paris
being that of her hotel or of Columbins, "don't they, mossoo?"

Joyselle's eyes drew down at the corners and he gave his big moustache a
martial, upward twist. "Ask others, mademoiselle," he retorted wickedly.
"I am not of your class!"

It was brutal, and there was a short silence. Brigit was annoyed. Last
night she had hoped for one of his outbursts, but now that it had come
she was ashamed for him. And she shivered as she realised that this
shame was a serious sign.

"Horrid speech," she remarked, looking into the teapot she had forgotten
to fill with water, "isn't it, Théo?"

But Théo only laughed and shrugged his shoulders. His father was his
father, and except in little matters, such as satin and too flamboyant
ties, not to be even mentally criticised.

"But it is true, my dear," continued Joyselle, the mischief suddenly
gone from his face, a shrewd look of inquiry taking its place. "You are
going to marry into a peasant family, you know." Another change of mood!
He was severe now and disapproving.

She held up her head. "No one could call Théo a peasant, could they,
Duchess?"

Joyselle understood, and with bewildering rapidity again changed.
"Bravo!" he cried, laughing heartily. "You are marrying the _son_, you
mean, not the father. _C'est vrai, c'est vrai!_"

His utter unconsciousness was a great blessing, no doubt, but at that
moment it nearly maddened her. Was he blind?

Apparently he was, as he drank some mineral water and talked to the
Duchess.

The arrival of Lady Brinsley's poor dear Mr. Smith, the vicar, was the
next mild event of the day, and as his head too was filled with coals
and blankets, the story of the abominable coal-dealer had again to be
listened to and lamented over.

"The very worst coals I ever saw in my life, positively, are they not,
Lady Brinsley?"

"Eh, yes, Mr. Smith, quite too shocking. Nothing but dust, Duchess,
positively."

"We are all dust," returned the Duchess, who was whispering to Joyselle
about the Grand Duchess Anastasia-Katherine, _dans le temps_. "Oh, no,
we are all worms, aren't we?"

"Positively, I _never_ saw such very inferior coals," went on the Vicar,
wondering what on earth she was talking about.

Brigit looked at him as he babbled on. He was a very thin man, who
always reminded her of a plucked bird. Soon he would ask her why he had
not had the pleasure of seeing her in church for so long. He would hope
that she had not had a cold.

He did both these things, poor man, for it was his _rôle_ in life always
to say and do the perniciously obvious.

It was a very trying hour, but at last, under the dutiful pretext of
going to look after her mother, Brigit escaped and flew to Tommy's room.

It was a strange apartment for a little boy, for it had been assigned to
him once when he was ill, as being sunny, and beyond his brass bedstead
and small boy hoards, contained nothing whatever that looked as if it
belonged to one of few years.

For it was hung in faded plum-coloured satin, the eighteenth-century
furniture was quaint and beautiful, and the narrow oval mirrors, set in
tarnished gilded frames like a frieze about its walls, presented to
Brigit's eye as she opened the door an infinite and bewildering number
of Tommies, bending studiously over a large sheet of writing-paper, that
he held on a book on his knees.

"Hello, Tommy, what are you up to?"

The boy looked up, his face full of ecstasy. "I say, Bick, he _will_!
He will help me learn to be a violinist! He's going to find a good
teacher for me, and then, when I have got over the first grind, you
know, he's going--oh, Bicky, darling--he's going to teach me himself, at
the same time. Isn't he an angel!"

She sat down. "Yes, Tommy. But what on earth are you writing?"

"Well, you see, he--he says I must be educated. I had to promise him to
go in for Latin and all that rot. It's--a bore, but he says a musician
must be educated----"

She started. And he himself, was he educated? Did he know the ordinary
things known, colloquially speaking, by everybody? She did not know. It
had never occurred to her before.

"Yes, dear, but--what is that paper?"

Tommy blushed.

"Well, he's so keen on it, you know, I thought I'd advertise for a--a
tutor."

"Advertise for a tutor!"

"Yes. There is no good in wasting time, is there? And _she_ would potter
about asking people their advice, etc., so I--I have just drawn up this.
You won't tell?"

She shook her head with much gravity and then read what he had written:

     "Wanted, by the Earl of Kingsmead, a tutor. Oxford man preferred.
     Must be fond of sport, particularly ratting and cricket."

"Do you think it's all right?" he asked, as he read it.

"Y--yes--only there isn't any 'k' in 'particularly.' But I think we'd
better--ask someone, little brother. I don't imagine that children
usually advertise for their own tutors."

"But there isn't any 'usually' about me, Bick. And certainly _mother_
isn't 'usual,' nor you. And if she got a man I'd be sure to loathe him.
Think of that chap Baker that she thought such a lot of. Why, he read
poetry!"

"Poetry isn't any worse than music, is it?"

Tommy's mouth, as he smiled, was its most fawn-like. "_Music!_ Rather
different, my dear Brigit. Well--can you lend me some money for my ad?"

She was silent for a moment, and then answered in a kind of desperate
impatience, "Oh, dear! Suppose you go and ask _him_ what to do."




CHAPTER SIXTEEN


The Duchess, that evening, watched Brigit with dismayed surprise. What
had happened to the girl? Where were her happy expression and youthful
spirits?

Théo had not changed; that they had not quarrelled was quite evident,
for when she spoke to him there was something of the gentleness of the
day before in her manner; but this exception excepted, the girl had
reverted to her old air of silent, resentful indifference, and her
strange beauty was to the watchful old woman as repellent as she had
ever seen it.

Once, when Carron spoke to her, Brigit answered without turning her
head, and with her narrowed eyes and slow-moving lips looked almost
venomous.

If she had produced a knife and plunged it into him, the Duchess told
herself she would not have been surprised.

"An uncommonly unpleasant young person," thought the old lady, "with the
temper of a fiend. I wonder where she got it; poor Henry had no temper
at all, and her mother is at worst a spitfire."

Yelverton, too, noticed the disquieting change that had come over Lady
Brigit, and observed with some amusement that she had noticed his
observation and did not care about it, one way or the other.

Théo, seeing his love with the rosiest of spectacles, asked her gently
what was the matter, and was told in a quiet voice that she was cross.
"I have an abominable temper, poor boy," she said.

And possibly because it was the simple truth, it never occurred to him
to believe her, and he set this remark down as an example of her divine
humility.

Her mother, glaring at her toward the end of dinner, shrugged her
shoulders.

"Cross again," she thought; "what an infernal temper she has. I'm glad I
haven't, it makes so many wrinkles."

But Brigit had some reason for looking tragic, for she had made up her
mind, while dressing, to break her engagement. Perhaps, after all,
Joyselle would prove large-minded enough to continue to see Tommy, and
even if he did not, she must end matters.

Regarding herself, the girl had a curious prescience, and the vague
foreboding she had felt ever since her realisation of her love for
Joyselle had, as she sat before her glass while her maid dressed her
hair, suddenly developed into a definite terror. She knew that something
dreadful would happen if she continued to see Joyselle, and the fact
that he was quite innocent, and unsuspecting of the threatened danger,
gave her the sensation of one who sees a child playing with a poisonous
snake. _He_ was in danger as well as she, and not only they two, but his
son and his wife. Her beauty was so great, and she was so accustomed to
see its effect on men, that there was no vanity at all in her suddenly
awakened solicitude for him. At any moment he might see her with the
eyes of a man, instead of, as he had hitherto done, with those of a
father.

"And if he fell in love with _me_," she told herself as the maid clasped
her pearls round her neck, "there would be no hope for any of us."

It is remarkable that the possibility of Joyselle's loving her only
added to her misery, for most women in like cases would have clutched at
the bare chance of such a contingency in rapturous disregard of all
consequences.

She, however, who had been the object of more strong passions than many
women ever even hear of, knew although, or possibly because, she had
never before cared a jot for any man, that her time had come, and that
for her love must be a perilous thing. She had once been called a stormy
petrel, and now as, racked with the agony of her resolve, she sat
through the interminable dinner, she recalled the name, and smiled
bitterly to herself. Yes, she was a stormy petrel, and she had no right
to ruin Victor Joyselle and his family. She would break her engagement
and go to Italy for the winter. The Lenskys were going, and she would go
with them.

Joyselle was in high spirits that evening. He had had a letter from
Là-bas, as he always called Normandy, and his mother was better, and
greatly looking forward to his visit. "She is old, my mother," he told
the party, "eighty years old, but her cheeks are still rosy! They live
in Falaise, in a small little house near the parish church, and in her
garden she grows vegetables--ah, such vegetables!"

"It is a great age," observed someone, and he laughed aloud. "Yes--for
here. Là-bas with us, she is not so old as she would be here. I am an
old man here, but there, I am still _jeune_ Joyselle! And my big boy, my
betrothed boy, is still _le petit du jeune_ Joyselle."

It was not particularly interesting, but nevertheless everyone at the
table listened with delight. The man's vividness, his simple certainty
of their sympathy, were irresistible.

"Next September," he went on, draining his champagne glass and wiping
his moustache upward, in a martial way, "is their golden wedding, _mes
vieux_! It will be very fine. Very fine indeed, for all the children and
grandchildren," he glanced slily at Brigit, who clasped her hands
lightly on her lap, "will be there, and we shall eat until we can eat no
more, and tell each other old tales, and boast about our successes in
life--ah, it will be very pleasant!"

"You will come too, my Brigit," whispered Théo under his breath. "I can
show them my wonderful--wife?"

She could not answer, and he took her distress for girlish confusion,
and, manlike, rejoiced in it.

After dinner Joyselle came straight to her. "May I talk to you about
Tommy?" he began, "I love Tommy very much."

"He--adores you."

"Yes. Let us go into the library, Most Beautiful, where we can talk
quietly." Before she could protest he had turned to her mother and
announced his intention. "I leave to-morrow, before she will be up," he
declared, "and there are things I must say. You allow me, Lady
Kingsmead?"

Then he put his arm round the girl's waist and marched her down the hall
and up the stairs leading to the library.

"Isn't he quaint?" giggled Lady Kingsmead to the Duchess, and the old
woman assented with a laugh. "He is an amazing mixture of the boyish and
the paternal. I thoroughly like him."

Meantime Brigit had sat down in a tall-backed carved chair, and, her
hands on its arms, waited for Joyselle to speak. He walked about the
room for a few moments, looking up at the book-covered walls, opening
one of the windows, examining an ivory dragon that grinned on the
chimney-piece. Then he burst out, "_Eh, bien_, my dearest, and when is
it to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"The wedding."

A hot blush crept over her, leaving her cold.

"Théo wants his wife, and I want my daughter," he continued, sitting
down by her and taking her hand affectionately, "why waste time!"

She looked at him in hopeless dismay. He was so big, so strong, so
overpowering, she felt that her strength to resist his will was as
nothing.

"You think I ask too soon?" He looked at her, an anxious pucker in his
eyelids, "But no. There is never too much time in which to be happy, ma
Brigitte----"

For the first time in her recollection she was glad to see Gerald
Carron, as he came up the stairs, and approached them slowly.

"Does mother want me?" she asked, rising.

"No. I--just wondered what you were doing."

"I brought Lady Brigit here because I wanted to talk to her," explained
Joyselle, mildly. Carron laughed.

"So do I want to talk to her!"

Brigit gave a nervous laugh. "Let's all go downstairs and talk there. My
conversation isn't usually so appreciated."

The two men followed her in silence, and to her immense relief were both
promptly accosted by someone of the party, and she could escape to her
window seat.

What would have happened if Carron had not come, she asked herself with
a shudder. Would her strength have come back, and would she have been
able to tell Joyselle that he must make no plans for her wedding?

Until she had known his father, Théo had never seemed to her to lack
personality; he was young, but his very boyishness was individual. Yet
now with Joyselle clamouring for her to fix her wedding-day, Théo seemed
to fade into insignificance, and her task to become that of breaking the
news of her intended rupture with the son, to the father.

And as she sat there in the background watching the members of the
little party as they smoked and chatted to each other, she gave up and
resolved on flight. "If I told Théo he would rush to his father," she
thought, "and then Joyselle would come to me. And we'd quarrel, and then
anything might happen." His utter unconsciousness was at once a
safeguard and a menace.

"I'll say nothing until he is safe in Normandy," she decided.




PART II




CHAPTER ONE


There is on an olive-covered slope near the Mediterranean a certain
shabby pink villa which is remarkable for one thing. In it, years ago,
dwelt for a long time a man and a woman who, having no legal right to
love, yet not only loved, but were perfectly happy. They lived almost
alone, they had little money, the house was shabby even then, they had
few servants and but indifferent Italian food, and nothing but
old-fashioned tin baths to wash in. Yet they were English, and they were
happy because they loved each other so much that nothing else mattered.
Now this phrase about nothing else mattering is as common in love
affairs as the pathetic abuse of the poor old word eternity; but in the
case I instance, it fitted. Nothing else did matter. Not even, to any
extent, the presence of the one child that had come to them. Contrary to
all ethical and reasonable law, these two sinners were happy in their
pink house by the sea, and years after they had left it there seemed to
hang about the old place a kind of atmosphere of romance, as if the sun
and the moon, that have seen so much changeableness, loved still to look
down at the place where two human beings had been faithful to each
other.

These two people were Pamela Lensky's father and mother, and hither
came, early in the November that followed her meeting with Victor
Joyselle, Lady Brigit Mead as the guest of the Lenskys. And here she
stayed, while the mild, sunny winter days drifted by unmarked, a silent,
ungenial guest.

The Lenskys were happy people and enjoyed life as it came. He, a slim,
blond, exceedingly well-dressed little man, was attached to the Russian
Embassy in London, in some more or less permanent quality, having given
up his secretaryship after a miserable sojourn in a Continental city
that he and his wife both hated.

They had money enough to live comfortably, in the quiet way they both
liked, in England, and a year before that November his mother had died,
leaving them the richer by a few hundred pounds a year. So they were
well-off in the sense that they had plenty of money to spend, and the
certainty that their children would one day be in still better
circumstances.

One day in January Mrs. de Lensky was sitting on the floor in the
brick-floored nursery, building a Moorish palace for her son, aged
eighteen months.

She was a thin woman of thirty-six or seven, with large dark eyes,
somewhat hollow now, and a brown vivid face on which life had put
several deep lines--all of which, though unbeautiful in themselves, were
good lines, and made for character.

"And here's the tower in which the little boy lived," she said to the
baby, who, very fat and peculiarly blond, regarded her rapturously,
"and here's the dungeon where they put him when he was naughty. If
Thaddeus bites Elvira again," she added gravely, "what will happen to
him?"

But Thaddeus, who was possessed of the courage incidental to a sound
digestion and dormant nerves, only laughed and showed the wicked fangs
that had bitten the nurse.

It was a pleasant, bare, sunny room, the rug covered with shabby toys,
the walls nearly hidden by pictures from illustrated papers. Through an
open door one saw a table at which sat a little girl of six, bending
over a book with the unmistakable air of a child learning something
uninteresting.

"Eliza!"

"Yes, mother?" Eliza looked up. She too was blonde, but her eyes were
dark.

"Where is Pammy, dear?"

"I don't know, mother. Perhaps she's eating plaster again," suggested
Eliza, with the alertness that even charming children sometimes show
when face to face with the crime of some contemporary.

Pam did not laugh. Plaster-eating may be funny in other people's
children, but seven-year-old Pammy, her adopted daughter, was too old to
persist in the habit, and punishment seemed to have no effect on it. The
house was old, and the walls defective in many places, and Pammy's joy
was to dig out bits of ancient plaster and consume it on the sly. It was
presumably bad for her stomach and indubitably bad for her character, as
the child persisted in it with a quiet effrontery that baulked
discipline. So Mrs. de Lensky rose, and bidding Eliza look after the
baby, started in search of the wicked one.

January was spring at the Villa Arcadie, and as she went downstairs a
strong scent of heliotrope and narcissi was wafted towards her. A boy
stood in the hall carrying a basket.

"_Buon giorno_, Beppino. Oh, what lovely flowers! Tell Giovanni to bring
them to me in the _salone_, will you?" Crossing the hall she went into
the dining-room, and there, as she had expected, sat Pammy.

Years before, when she had, half out of kindness, half out of
loneliness, adopted the little new-born girl, she had never meant to
marry. And when she did marry, neither she nor her husband wished to get
rid of the child. But the result had not been particularly satisfactory,
for Pammy had grown to be a very fat, very stolid person, with no nose
to speak of and no sense of humour at all, and every day that passed
seemed to leave her a little more unattractive than she had been the day
before.

Now, at seven, she was as tall as most children of ten, immensely fat,
with pendulous red cheeks that in spite of cold cream and soft water
always looked as though they had just been rubbed with a grater. Her
hair, long and fair, was dank, hanging in two emaciated pig-tails nearly
to her waist, and her nails--another ineradicable trick--bitten to the
deepest depths possible.

"Pammy, dear, what have you been doing?" inquired Pam, gently.

"Looking out the window--and I ate some more plaster." Stolidly, with
lack-lustre eyes, the culprit gazed at her benefactor.

Pam sighed, but her mouth twitched. "I asked you not to."

"I know. I didn't mean to, but--it looked so good."

"'_Tous les gouts sont dans la nature_,' my dear," quoted Lensky, coming
in at the open window, "there are even people who like German bands!"
Looking down at Pammy through his eyeglass, the sun fell full on his
head, betraying an incipient bald patch. Otherwise Lensky had aged not
at all since his marriage.

"I saw Lady Brigit just now," he said, suddenly, "down in the olive
grove. I think something has happened. She looked--queer."

Pam started. "Poor dear--I'll go and speak to her--only, you know, she
never says a word to me about her trouble, whatever it is. I wonder----"

"Love story, of course," returned Lensky, briefly. "When a woman looks
like that it always _is_ a love story."

"Yes, but--Théo is such a dear! And I know he writes to her."

"Then it isn't Théo. He's not the only man she knows."

Pam frowned thoughtfully. "That's true, but--she _is_ so beautiful."

Lensky smiled at her, and on his strangely white, shrewd, worldly-wise
face the smile looked like a sudden flash of sunlight. "Yes, she _is_
without a doubt very beautiful, but----"

"'But'?"

"I think she is taking her trouble the wrong way. She is bearing it
without grinning, and the grinning is to my mind the greater half."

"But remember what her surroundings at home are, Jack. She had had no
discipline whatever; her mother is horrid----"

Lensky did not answer. Somehow he never cared to hold forth on the
subject of mothers to his wife.

And then, thin, erect, light-footed, Pam went out from the house in
which her strange childhood had been lived, and turning to her left
passed down the dangerously mossy marble steps, and into the olive
grove.




CHAPTER TWO


Lady Brigit Mead was sitting on the hummocky sparse grass under an
ancient olive-tree, looking seawards. She wore a blue frock without any
collar, and her face and long, round neck were very sunburnt. Her face
had hardened in the last four months, and there was a tense look about
her upper lip, yet an artist would have preferred her face as it now was
to what it was before she had become engaged. For now the nervous strain
she was living under had told on her more material beauties, leaving
more room for expression, as it seemed, to the others.

It was not that her face was better, but the suffering in it was less
petty than the resentment that had formerly stamped it.

The dominant characteristic in it had hitherto been disdainful bearing
of small annoyances; now it showed a grim endurance of a great
suffering.

"Bicky, dear," Pam asked suddenly, coming up unheard, "what is it?"

She started. "What is what?"

"Your trouble. Oh, don't tell me if you don't want to, but I can see you
are suffering, and--I used to tell the Duchess, long ago, and it always
did me good."

"Did you tell the Duchess about--Mr. Peele, Pam?"

The elder woman smiled and sighed. "No, my dear, I didn't. But--he was
her son-in-law."

"That wasn't why." Brigit had not moved, and Pam had seen no more than
her profile as she sat down.

"No, it wasn't. But then I was particularly lonely, and literally had no
one to tell. Whereas," she added with brisk good sense, "you have _me_."

For several minutes there was unbroken silence, and then Brigit said
slowly, "I believe you're right. And I'll tell you. It's about--myself,
of course; nothing else could upset me to this extent! You know I'm
engaged to Théo Joyselle. Well--I love his father."

Her voice was defiant, as if deprecating in advance any cut-and-dried
disapproval.

Pam did not answer for a moment. Then "Is his mother--I mean Théo's
mother--alive?" she then asked, drawing up her knees and clasping them
comfortably.

"Yes."

"That--is a pity."

"A pity! Aren't you shocked and frightened?"

"I'm sure I'm not shocked, and I don't think I am frightened. Brigit,
does Théo know?"

Then Brigit turned, her face white under the sunburnt skin. "No. I
am--afraid to tell him."

"Afraid?"

"Yes, afraid. If I broke the engagement, Joyselle would be furious, and
come and scold me."

"Surely you aren't afraid of being scolded?"

"By him, yes. If we had a row--the whole thing would come out."

"I don't see why."

The girl frowned. "You are you, and I am I. When I lose my temper I lose
my head and behave like a lunatic. I'd--let it all out as sure as we
both live. And then----" She broke off with a shrug.

"But, Brigit dear, I don't quite understand. What does Théo think of
your being here all the winter? And the father, doesn't he think it
strange?"

"No. You see, Joyselle went away from England in November, and was
detained for two months; his mother was ill. When I left, I told Théo
I'd write to him once a week, but that I wanted a long rest
before--before I saw him again. I lied, and said I wasn't well.

"Then when Joyselle came back he wrote to me, saying I must come home. I
wrote him a disagreeable note, practically telling him to mind his own
business. He was angry--and besides, he was working hard, and didn't
write again until this morning."

"Oh, I see."

"Théo has been--fairly contented--and I have been trying to tide things
over--no, I haven't, I've just funked it, Pam. I don't know what I'm to
do. I've loved being here, for you and M. de Lensky are so good to
me--but I'm afraid he might come----"

"Théo?"

"_No_," sharply, "Joyselle. He adores Théo and would hack me to pieces
if it would do him any good. And--well, I'm afraid of him."

Pam, in like case, would have faced the whole family, successfully
broken her engagement, protected her own secret, and done her hiding
afterwards, but she was too wise to say so.

"I am sorry for Théo," she remarked presently.

"So am I. And for Tommy, too. Tommy has been staying in Golden Square
ever since Joyselle came home, and he is so happy, poor child. It's--all
hideous. Will you read his letter?"

There was no need for Pam to ask whose letter, as she took it, and felt
Brigit's hot, dry fingers tremble against her own.


"My dear Daughter," she read, "you must come back to us. We
want you. Théo says nothing, but I can see how he misses you, and surely
it is but natural? And _petite mère_ and I want you. Surely you have had
enough of the South? It is unfitted for you, my beautiful one. You are
too strong to like warm air in the winter. Come back and go out into the
fog with me, and let the chill rain dampen your hair. Come back to your
lover who sighs for you, to your old adoring Beau-papa who longs to see
again the face of his beautiful child.           "Joyselle."


"Brigit--you must go."

Brigit poked at a clump of moss among the tangled roots of the tree
under which they sat, and sulked.

"You must, dear. And--you must buck up and break the engagement. It
isn't fair," continued Pam, energetically, "to go on stealing their
love."

"I stealing their love!--_I!_ And what has he done to me, pray? Do you
know that I haven't slept more than an hour at a time, for months? Do
you know that I cannot get away from the horrible, haunting thought of
him? That a flower, a book, a snatch of music--anything that reminds me
of him, turns me cold all over and takes my breath away, so that I
simply cannot speak? You are an idiot, an utter fool, to talk that way.
He has ruined my life, and you say I have stolen his love!" She gasped
in very truth as she ceased, and stood with one hand on her heaving
breast, her face white with anger.

"You have, my dear. The man seems really to love you as a father. And
you certainly have no right to that kind of affection from him! You
_must_ break your engagement."

Suddenly, after a long pause, during which she gazed blindly at the
brilliant sea, Brigit sat down, and turning, buried her face in her arms
and burst out crying.

It was nervous, irregular sobbing, cut by moans and muttered words,
broken by the convulsive movement of her shoulders. Pam was appalled,
much as a man might have been, for she herself had never been
hysterical, and this mixture of anguish and anger, given vent to so
openly, was a strange and horrible thing to her.

However, she knew enough to let the storm pass without interruption,
although it took nearly ten minutes for it to subside, and then, while
Brigit, her face red and disfigured, sat up and smoothed back her hair
and wiped her eyes, Pam spoke.

"It must be lunch-time," she said with great wisdom, and Brigit rose,
with a nod.

"I'll go for a walk. Don't want any lunch."

"All right. Good-bye."

Then they separated, Pam going up the sunny slope to her husband and
children, Brigit, down through the deserted garden of a long uninhabited
house, to the lonely sea.




CHAPTER THREE


Brigit left the villa the next morning and went straight to London. And
the nearer she got to the old town which contained, for her, the very
kernel of life, her spirits mounted and mounted in spite of herself. She
had for so long been "down among the dead men," as Tommy called
depression, that her sudden change of mood affected her strangely.

"If I must never see him again," she repeated over and over again aloud
to herself, in the solitude of her compartment, "I shall at least see
him once, and--hear him speak. I'll make him play to me, too; and I
shall see his big unseeing eyes, and his wonderful hands!" The very
wheels of the train seemed to be saying, "I'll see him, I'll see him,
I'll see him," and when she landed at Dover, in a pouring rain, she
could have laughed aloud for sheer joy.

Her mother was living in town, in the tiny house in Pont Street, but had
gone to the country for the week-end, so the girl, to her great delight,
was alone with the servants.

Putting on a dressing-gown she sat down by her fire and closed her eyes.

"Three months, a fortnight, and six days," she thought. "It seems years.
I wonder what he will say to me? Will he be glad to see me? And--how am
I to do? Shall I tell Théo, and make him tell? Or shall I be brave--as
Pam would--and tell him myself!"

Then, realising her absurdity in forgetting that after all it was more
Théo's affair than his father's, she laughed aloud.

It was easy to laugh, for whatever happened she would see Victor
Joyselle that evening, and beyond that she could not, would not, look.
The world might end to-morrow, and it mattered nothing to her. That
night he and she would be face to face.

She shuddered, for he would call her his daughter and kiss her forehead.
Then the smile came back to her lips, and she rose. It didn't matter;
nothing mattered but the great, primary fact that in--how many
hours?--four, she would see him. Let his mood be what it
would--fatherly, aloof, impish--he would be himself, she would see him,
and she loved him.

The Duchess of Wight had written to her, and going to her dressing-table
she re-read the note.

It was short, simply telling her that her mother had told of her
arrival, and asking her to dine at 8.30 in Charles Street. Not she, she
would not lose one second of the glorious anticipations that were hers
now. She would sit here close to her fire and gloat over her joy.
Sitting down, she took a sheet of paper and began to write----


"Dear Duchess,--Thanks so much for asking me to dine, but----"


She broke off and sat staring at the wall. To-morrow at this time what
would have become of her? The world would have run its course, come to
its end, and yet she would be still alive! Could she bear it?

She would have told her story; made these people understand that she
could never be one of them; broken (for the time) Théo's young heart,
and been reviled and cast out by Joyselle.

And she would have to return here, alone, broken with grief, hopeless.
Drearily she looked round the room. It would all be the same; nothing
would change; the very roses on her dressing-table would still be fresh
and sweet, and--she?

Raising her head, she met her own eyes in a glass, and started. Her own
beauty amazed her. "If he could see me now," she said aloud, "he
couldn't call me '_petite fille_.' He doesn't know I _am_ a woman; he
has seen me--as if through spectacles. If I had never known Théo, and
then met him somewhere by chance----"

She recalled his frank, wondering amazement as she raised her veil that
evening in the train.

"He sees me always with Théo's shadow between us. It is--unfair--and----"

She took a fresh sheet of paper and began her letter again:


"Dear Duchess.--Thanks so much for asking me to dine to-night.
I shall be delighted to come.
Yours sincerely.                                    "Brigit Mead."


Then she rang for the housemaid, who would in the absence of her half
of Amélie have to help her dress, and gave her certain directions.

To-morrow might bring what it would. That one evening was hers, and she
would use it. Joyselle should see her with his own eyes, as a man sees a
woman, not as a father sees a daughter. And he should see her as a man
sees a marvellously beautiful woman!

Satisfied with the conclusion to which she had come, she lay down and
slept for an hour, after which, the enigmatic smile on her lips bringing
into predominance the resemblance to the portrait in the Luxembourg, she
dressed, with more care than she had ever devoted to that process in all
her five-and-twenty years of life.

When she arrived at Charles Street and had shaken hands with the
Duchess, who had had influenza and looked very old, the first person she
saw was Gerald Carron.

"Will you speak to me, Brigit?" he said diffidently, "please do."

He, too, looked ill, and moistened his lips nervously as he spoke. She
shook hands with him without answering, and he hurried on, "Haven't I
been good? I knew where you were, and--I might easily have come----"

"You would not have had a flattering reception," she suggested drily.

"Or written. And I did neither. I was glad you went, though God knows----"

"How do you do, Mrs. Talboys," she cut him short ruthlessly, "when are
we to have another book?"

It was a very large dinner, and Brigit, placed between two men who dined
out for reasons dietetic and economic, and did not talk, was free to
pursue her own thoughts at leisure. She had wired Théo before leaving
the de Lenskys', that she was leaving for home, and before starting for
the dinner she had sent another wire, addressed simply "Joyselle," to
say that she was dining out, but would come to Golden Square after
dinner.

She knew that Joyselle, recognising her prompt appearance as an answer
to his letter, would be at home late in the evening, no matter where he
might have dined. "He has such strong family feelings," she reflected,
with a menacing curve of her upper lip.

So deeply was she buried in her thoughts that she was amazed to find
suddenly that the Duchess was trying to gather her flock's eye,
preparatory to herding it upstairs. Both her hungry neighbours made
spasmodic attempts to eradicate from her mind the memory of their
fanatical devotion to the rites of the table, and she smiled absently at
them, wondering what they would have thought if she had politely thanked
them for their silence!

"My dear," said the Duchess, a few minutes later, sitting down in her
favourite corner by the fire, "come and tell me about Pam."

"She is well, Duchess."

"Didn't she send me any messages?"

"She did. Much love and some kodaks of the children. Your god-child is
a love."

"H'm. And how is the horrid little adopted one?"

"Poor Pammy!"

"Now _will_ you look at Lady Agnes Blundell spilling coffee all over my
carpet. She did the same thing the other night at the Beaufoys'! I
really believe the woman drinks, or something. What were you saying, my
dear? Oh, how is your young man?"

Brigit did not smile. To-morrow was coming.

"I--I haven't seen any young men since I got back, Duchess."

"Oh, well, you tell him from me that his father is a wretch. Is there a
wife? I think someone said there was--well, she probably doesn't know
all _I_ know." The old woman pulled down her mouth in comic disapproval.

"What--is it?" queried Brigit.

"Oh, nothing, only--a very beautiful foreign actress, a lady famous for
her--plastic beauties. Voisin, my hairdresser--you know Voisin?
Delightful person, and the most indiscreet man in London--tells me they
dined together every evening at a little French place near Leicester
Square, where _he_ dines. And it appears your future papa-in-law was
furiously _épris_, or still is--possibly! You will have to keep him in
order. What is it, Bishop?"

The butler, whose name, the Duchess had been known to declare, explained
why no Anglican or other prelate ever dined or lunched with her--"It is
so confusing, my dear; suppose I should say 'Bishop, see if Mrs.
Snooks' carriage has come'"--came quietly up to the sofa. "Her
ladyship's carriage, your Grace."

Brigit rose. "Yes, I fear I must run away. Thanks so much for having
me----"

And when the men came in she had gone.

When she reached Golden Square she found the house in a blaze of light,
and smiled. It was like Joyselle to celebrate her return by illuminating
his every window; it would have been like him to put up a triumphal
arch; to have a big supper awaiting her; these things belonged to the
side of his nature that clamoured for expression in white satin ties.

For a moment she sat still in the motor, while the footman held the door
open.

"Come back at half-past eleven, Jarvis," she told the man, and got out.

The door was opened by Toinon, somewhat to Brigit's surprise--for it
would have been more like Joyselle to rush downstairs on hearing her
motor stop, but the reason was soon plainly comprehensible, for Joyselle
was playing. It was evidently earlier than they had expected her.
Slipping off her cloak and with a finger to her lips, she went quietly
upstairs and stood leaning against the side of the door.

It was wild music that she heard; music that made the blood in her
temples and throat pulse harder than ever. Breathing deep, she waited
for the climax, and when it came, quietly opened the door.

She had chosen her moment well, and as the door faced a long mirror
between the windows she saw, as she stood on the threshold, not only
Joyselle, who, alone in the room, stood staring in amazement, but also
that at which he stared--herself. Clad in a dress made apparently
entirely of flexible dull gold scales, the long lines of her figure
unbroken by any belt or trimming, the woman in the glass stood smiling
like a witch of old, a deep colour in her cheeks, the palms of her hands
held down by her side, the fingers outspread and slightly lifted as if
in water. Quite silently she stood and smiled until the man before her
dropped his violin--for the first time, she knew instinctively, in his
life.

Then she spoke, saying his name, the name by which the world knew him:
"_Joyselle._"

"_Mon Dieu!_" he returned softly. Coming slowly forward he caught her
hand with clumsy haste and kissed it. Her heart stopped its mad beating,
for she had won. Here was no Beau-papa. Here was the man, Victor
Joyselle.




CHAPTER FOUR


"I did not know you," he said. "I thought--_juste ciel_, how do I know
what I thought? You are so beautiful, I----"

She laughed gently. "Beau-papa! Beau-papa! Where is Théo?"

For she knew now that she would not break her engagement to-night. The
end was not yet. And by the strange laws that govern things emotional
between men and women, her self-control, hitherto utterly lamed by his
presence, was now, in face of his involuntary, as yet evidently
unconscious awakening, restored to her tenfold strong. She could have
spent weeks alone with the man without betraying her secret, now that
she had established her power over him. It had been his acceptance of
the fact of her future relationship to him, his unexpressed feeling that
she was a being of another generation, his tacit refusal to see in her
the woman _per se_, that had beaten her. Now she had, by the plain
assertion of her beauty, the enforcing of the appreciation of it as a
thing appertaining to her as a woman, not a daughter, got the reins--and
the whip--into her own hands.

"Where," she repeated, still smiling, "is Théo?"

"He is in his room; he will come--ah, _mon Dieu_!" Kneeling by his
violin, which luckily had fallen on a bearskin, he took it up and
looked at it shamefacedly. "See what you made me do," he said to Brigit,
"you and your golden dress! _Mon pauvre_ Amati."

She continued to look at him in silence, her instinct telling her that
the strange smile she had seen on the face of the woman in the glass
could not be beaten for purposes of subjugation. She continued to look
and smile, but she was sorry for him, even while every fibre in her
thrilled with triumph.

He realised her now; if she wanted him to love her, he would.

"Will you call Théo?" she asked as he rose. Without a word he left the
room, and a few moments later Théo's arms were around her, his fresh
lips on hers.

The boy was so happy, so incoherently, innocently jubilant, that if she
had in her room for another feeling, it would have been one of pity for
him. But there was no room. She was filled with triumph, and a full
vessel can contain not one drop more of however precious a liquid.

"_Ma Brigitte--mon adorée--que je t'ai desirée!_" stammered the boy.
"Why did you stay so long? Why was it so long? But, now, it is over and
you are here. You have come to me--you, a queen to her slave!"

His delightful face was wet with unconscious tears as they sat together,
and his voice trembled. For a moment she wished she could love him. It
would be so much more fitting, so much better--and then the demon in
her laughed. No. It was his father she loved, and who, if she chose,
should love her.

Madame Joyselle came in, splendid in a new brown silk dress that fitted
her as its skin fits a ripe grape, her face beaming with joy in her
son's joy. She gazed in amazement at Brigit before the younger woman
bent and kissed her, and then sat down and folded her hands, as was her
way.

"You look like a beautiful dragon--doesn't she, Théo?" she asked,
"doesn't she, Victor?"

Joyselle had returned with a look of having just brushed his hair. He
looked smoothed down in some way and was a little pale.

"My faith, she does, _ma vieille_," he returned. "When she opened the
door I was so startled that I--guess what I did, children? Dropped the
Amati!" When they had stopped exclaiming he went on, gradually, but with
a perceptible effort getting back his usual tone, "and stood and gasped
like a young prince in a fairy-tale, didn't I, Most Beautiful?"

She smiled, but she was not pleased. "You did--Beau-papa," she answered.
"I didn't know I was so beautiful. I have been dining out, hence the
dragon's skin. It is a nice frock, isn't it?" she ended, artistically
casual.

And then there were questions to be asked, stories to be told, and an
hour and a half passed like five minutes.

No more was said about the length of her untimely visit to Italy, but
much about the days in the near future. Would she go to see "Peter Pan"
the next night? And would she dine first at a little restaurant, where
the cooking was a thing to dream of?

And would she do several other things?

She would. She would do all these things. But--she would not go to a
certain little restaurant near Leicester Square, of which she had heard.
Joyselle blushed scarlet and for a moment looked as though he intended
to thunder out a severe reproof at her. Then she smiled at him with
narrowed eyes, and he said nothing.

At about half-past eleven an idea occurred to her. She wanted an omelet.
Like the first time. And she must borrow an apron and help make the
omelet; and it must be full of little savoury green things, and be
flopped in the long-handled frying-pan.

"But your dress!" cried Madame Joyselle, in horror.

"An apron, and I will twist up the tail of the dragon and pin it at the
waist, and--oh, come, come, come, it will be such fun!"

Down the stairs they ran, the three, leaving Madame Joyselle to turn out
all but one light, and to put another log on the dying fire.

Filled by the relentless spirit of coquetry that had suddenly awakened
in her, Brigit Mead danced about the great white kitchen, teasing
Joyselle, making love to his wife, laughing openly at Théo's admiration.
She, always so silent, chattered like a magpie; she, the uninterested,
flushed with intoxicating nonsense; the three people before her were her
audience, and she played to them individually, a different _rôle_ for
each; they were her slaves, and she piped her magic music to them until
they were literally dazed. Then, suddenly, she whisked off her blue
apron and unpinned the dragon's tail.

"The omelet was good," she said, "but it is eaten. And it is to-morrow
morning and the motor will be frozen. Come, _mon maître_, play one
beautiful thing to me before I fly away from you--something very
beautiful that I may dream of it."

And he played to her as she had never heard him. If the omelet had been
a magic wine, he could not have been more inspired!

His face took on the look it usually wore while he played, and solemnly
and reverently he stood, his eyes half shut, him mouth set in noble
lines. He had forgotten Brigit, but sub-consciously he was playing for
her, and she knew it, and appreciated the tribute, which was all the
greater because offered without intent.

She watched him unceasingly, and gradually, as the music went on, her
heart sank, and she realised that she had done a most unworthy thing.
The feeling she had had that last evening at home came back to her, the
feeling that he was a child in horrible danger. Only this time it was
she who had deliberately led him into the danger. And his
unconsciousness of his peril hurt her so, that as he stopped playing she
could have cried to him to go away, to run to the ends of the earth,
where she could not reach him.

"You liked it?" he asked gently, and the question seemed so
pathetically inadequate, and so plainly emphasised the innocence of his
mind, that tears came to her eyes.

"Yes," she said in a very quiet voice, "thank you, dear papa." But this
time there was no malice in the term, and when she said good-night to
him at the motor door, it was simply and filially. Then she turned to
Théo, and he, looking hastily up and down the quiet street, put his head
in at the window and kissed her.




CHAPTER FIVE


And that was the beginning of a most extraordinary phase of Brigit
Mead's life.

For the next four months she saw Joyselle almost daily. She never
broached the subject of her engagement being broken, its permanence was
taken for granted by everyone, and Tommy's indefinitely prolonged visit
to Golden Square would, if anything more than the fact of her engagement
had been necessary, have explained her constant presence there.

Once Théo had urged her to set their wedding-day, but she had put him
off and he had never again opened the question. That the young man was
not, could not possibly be, perfectly satisfied with the state of
affairs, she knew very well, but that, she told herself, she could not
help.

She lived on from day to day, more simply and with less self-analysis,
in spite of her curious position, than ever before in her life, for the
inevitable day of reckoning seemed to be the affair of the Brigit of the
future, whereas the Brigit of each day was concerned only with those
particular twenty-four hours. It was enough to live in close
companionship with the man she loved, and when, as occasionally she
tried to do, she reasoned to herself about it, her mind seemed paralysed
and utterly refused to make plans of any kind. So, twisting to her own
purposes, as people do, the saying about the evil of the day being unto
itself sufficient, she let time slip away unremarked and spring came.

It was a cold rainy season that year, with chill dark mornings and
flickerings of pale sunshine later on.

People talked much about the weather, and pretty women shivered in their
light finery. Tommy, who went home for a fortnight in April, reported
that things in the country were deplorable.

"Everyone has colds, and Mr. Smith says there is diphtheria at Spinny
Major. Green is disgusted, and from what I can gather from his cheery
reports, everyone is going to be ruined by agricultural depression. The
Mother of Hundreds has nine new pups--rather good ones."

This was at the end of April, and Lord Kingsmead was coiled in a big
chair in his sister's room in Pont Street. Mr. Babington, his tutor, had
just gone for a walk, poor man. Tommy's attitude to him had from the
first been one of polite tolerance, and Mr. Babington's bump of humour
being imperfectly developed, he in return regarded his charge with
something like horror.

A boy of twelve, who knew only the very first principles of Latin (Mr.
Babington was number three, the other two having proved unsatisfactory
to their employer-pupil), and knew the multiplication table only up to
"eight-times," disturbed his tidy little mind. There was, moreover, a
youth in Sydenham who clamoured for Mr. Babington, and who was after
that much-tried young Oxonian's heart. But Mr. Babington stayed on,
for--there was Brigit, and in the evenings the tutor locked his door,
smoked asthma cigarettes, and wrote sonnets by the yard to the
Enchantress.

Tommy, of course, had at once perceived the first shoots of the hapless
young man's baby passion as it sprang up in his heart--which did not
make it easier to bear, but still Mr. Babington stayed on.

"He'll never go, Bick," complained Tommy that afternoon, after his
remarks on Kingsmead. "I even tried smoking the other day, but he had a
handkerchief of yours that you left on the hall table, and was so bucked
that he barely noticed my iniquity. He _is_ a poisonous person!"

"Yes, I certainly preferred Mr. Catt--but you didn't like him either."

"How could anyone like a fellow named Catt? I nearly choked every time I
had to speak to him, and so did the Master." It was thus that the boy
designated and addressed Joyselle. "He used to call him Minet. I have
learned that rotten old multiplication-table, however, and Latin is
easy. I do wish," he went on, gnawing at an ancient bit of almond-rock
that he had acquired at the village sweetstuff shop at home, "that
mother had had me well whacked when I was a kid. It would have saved me
no end of trouble now."

Brigit laughed as she dabbed some cherry-coloured grease on her pointed
nails. "Poor old Tommy!"

The almond-rock was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after
a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone wrong
with Carron?"

She started. "I--why do you ask?"

"Because I think he looks very ill. Saw him yesterday as I went out, and
hardly knew him."

"Perhaps he's had influenza," she suggested.

She had not seen the man for weeks. He had been away several times, and
when he had come to the house had not asked for her. The last time they
had met they had, of course, quarrelled, and then she had forgotten him,
as she forgot everybody and everything not brought directly under her
notice.

In March he had gone to Monte Carlo to see her mother, who was visiting
there, and Lady Kingsmead had told her afterwards that he had been
wretched all during his stay. Brigit said she was sorry, but it is to be
doubted if the afflictions of anyone, if not directly affecting herself,
would at that time have given her any pain, and of all people poor
Carron was probably the last with whom she could feel any real sympathy.

Tommy had a bad throat and was not to go back to Golden Square that
night, but Brigit was dining somewhere with the two Joyselle men, and
was to spend the night in the now so-familiar spare-room, with the
coloured religious pictures on the walls.

Lady Kingsmead had returned to town that morning, but the perfect
freedom she gained by Tommy's long stay with, and her daughter's daily
visits to, the Joyselles, had long since overcome her first scruples
about "those sort of people being after all quite the associates for
Kingsmead," and had accepted Brigit's announcement for her intention
with an absent nod.

"Very well, dear, and remind him not to forget that he is dining here on
Tuesday. He really is _most_ obliging, about playing, I must say."

"Yes, the poor creature has his qualities," returned the girl, drily.
Twice during the past twelve weeks she had gone to Kingsmead for a day
or two, and on each occasion her note, written to the violinist at her
mother's suggestion, asking him down to dine and spend the night, had
met with telegraphic acceptance.

"Good-bye, little brother."

"Good-bye, Bicky, give him my love." Tommy's small eyes beamed with
fanatical affection, and Brigit kissed him again.

Then she went downstairs, picked up a passing hansom, and sped to
Paradise.




CHAPTER SIX


Félicie Louise Marie Joyselle was sitting in her bedroom, darning her
husband's socks.

She sat in a straight-backed chair near the dressing-table, and a huge
basket of mending of different kinds stood on the floor by her side. The
room was very simple, for she loved the well-polished black-walnut
furniture among which she had lived all her married life, and nothing
would have induced her to change it for new, however beautiful.

The walls were adorned with religious prints, but on the space over the
dressing-table, with its array of ebony and silver hair-brushes, was a
group of old, faded photographs, evidently all of the same
person--Joyselle; and over the chimney-piece hung four large oval
photographs, in varnished black frames, picked out with narrow red
stripes; quite evidently four middle-aged peasants in their best attire.
Near the door a coloured crayon of Théo at the age of five, in plaid
trousers, a short jacket, and a wide collar of crochetted lace, smiled
sheepishly down at the world. There was a table covered with books of
the kind whose gilt edges invariably stick together, because they are
never opened, and on the little table on the left of the broad bed, with
its scarlet counterpane and huge, soft-looking pillows, were an old
black crucifix and two shabby prayer-books.

It was a plain, inartistic room, and the middle-aged woman whose holy
of holies it had been for fifteen years was as old-fashioned and
unbeautiful as it; yet there was, somehow, about the place a certain
atmosphere of goodness and peace that cannot be described in words.

When Brigit Mead came in that afternoon she kissed Madame Joyselle as
usual, and then taking off her hat and coat, drew up another
stiff-backed chair and sat down.

"How are you, _petite mère_?" she asked gently, in French.

"I am well, as I always am, thank God. And you? And Tommy?"

"Tommy has a bad throat, but it is nothing. He sent his love. I am very
fit."

Madame Joyselle cut her cotton, scrutinised her work closely, and laid
the sock down and took up another.

"Such a man for wearing out socks. And always the heels," she remarked.
"It would try the patience of anyone!"

"Does it try even yours?" asked Brigit.

The little woman looked up, her shrewd black eyes twinkling under their
well-defined brows. "You have observed, then, that I am patient? But
yes, my dear, God help the wife of an artist if she is not! He is
terrible, my man, at times, but luckily I was born long-suffering. He
has, too, a way of wrenching at button-holes in collars that tears them
to bits, and desolates me."

"But----" began the girl, and then stopped.

All things considered, there was remarkably little constraint in her
feelings for this good woman, but somehow at that moment she wished to
change the subject.

Madame Joyselle, however, gave a gentle chuckle, and continued: "He was
his most terrific yesterday! Like a lion with no self-control; it was
very ridiculous."

Brigit started. Terrible, yes, but--it struck her as very unfitting for
the great man's plain little wife to find him ridiculous. And Félicité,
as her husband always called her, saw her start, and understood.

"Ah, yes, to you he is the great artist as well as Théo's
father--_hein_? To me he is, of course, just--my husband. All men are,
they say, different, but surely all husbands are much alike."

"There are certainly very few men like--_him_." Brigit took a sock out
of the basket and looked at it absently. There was a short silence,
during which Félicité did not speak, but she was watching her visitor in
the glass. Then she said suddenly, with a certain briskness in her
voice, "Shall I tell you about him? About my husband, you know, not
about the great artist of--all you others."

Brigit nodded. "Yes, please do. Tell me about--long ago, in Normandy."

"_Bien._ It will interest you. You like him very much, don't you?" she
added, suddenly, looking up and fixing the girl with her bright eyes.

"Like him? Indeed I do. I think him simply glorious," was the answer,
given in a gushing voice, but for a moment the girl felt vaguely uneasy.
During the last twelve weeks she had not, although seeing Joyselle's
wife every day, learned to regard her as a real factor in the game.
Joyselle, always tender and considerate of her, yet seemed to regard her
as a kind of cross between a mother and a nurse, and she, never
precisely retiring, and almost always present during Brigit's visits,
appeared to be perfectly used to the _rôle_ that he assigned her, and
sat, usually silent, a kindly spectator of whatever might be going on.

This was the first time that Brigit had realised that she had a real
personality, and the girl wondered at her own blindness, for every line
in Madame Joyselle's face meant, she now saw, an individuality stronger
rather than weaker than the average woman's, even in these days of
clamorous individualism.

"Do tell me about him--when he was young," Lady Brigit Mead continued,
her thick-looking white eyelids, eyelids that the hapless Mr. Babington
compared in his twenty-second sonnet to magnolia-petals, drooping till
her lashes made shadows on her cheeks.

And Félicité Joyselle told her story.

"He lived at St. Pol--a mile from Falaise on the way to Caen. His father
was gamekeeper to M. de Cérisay. My father, Jacques Rion,--there is his
picture to the right, with the beard,--was a tanner in Falaise. We were
all poor, but it was very pleasant. Falaise is a beautiful city.
Sometimes I used to think there was nothing so beautiful in London as
the Place St. Gervais on a market-day in summer, with the fountain
playing, and all the friendly people selling their wares. But that," she
added simply, "was before I had seen the Albert Memorial. Victor's
mother used to sell her fruit in the town, and her sister had married my
uncle, anyway! and Victor used to come with her. The first time I
remember seeing him, however, was at Mass. It was winter, and very cold,
and he kept blowing his hands to warm them. I was twelve, and he about
ten. He was a beautiful little boy. Then one day his father brought him
to see his aunt--who had married Monsieur Chalumeau, my uncle, you
see?--and I was there. And we went up to the castle. You have been
there? It is where the Conqueror--who conquered England--was born, in a
tiny little stone room high above the tower. You know the story of
Arlette?" Brigit nodded, but she did not know. She wanted to hear about
Joyselle.

"_Bon._ And then, when I was twenty, and he eighteen, he came back from
Rouen where, did I tell you?--M. de Cérisay had sent him to learn to
play the violin--and he told me he wanted me to marry him. He was very
splendid then, with city clothes, and oil on his hair, and his hands
smooth as a gentleman's.

"We were married at St. Gervais. Then he went back to Rouen and he
studied again. That," she added, "was the worst time of my life."

"But why?"

The elder woman looked up. "Because--I was just getting to know him,"
she returned slowly, "and--he was very wild."

Brigit nodded sympathetically. "Poor you," she said in English.

"Yes. The music made him half-mad, and then he had friends who taught
him to gamble. There were other things, too. Women. He was so handsome
and so fascinating, and his success was just beginning, they all ran
after him, and he enjoyed it. I," she added, "didn't. Then we went to
Paris. That was bad, too, only Théo was on the way, which made things
better. He was good to me during my illness--ah, very good; and
beautiful it was to see the big strong man, mad with his music and his
success, washing the little baby and dressing him. When Théo was
two--Victor had been working with his violin since he was fourteen--we
went to Berlin, and then began his craze for work. He used to work four
and five hours at a time for months. Once his health gave way, and we
were very poor, so he went to some place for a cure, and the little one
and I stayed at home. Then he met a great Prince,--I can never remember
his name,--and he invited us to stay with him. It was in a big castle
near Munich. Victor loved it, but I was very miserable. I never went
anywhere with him again."

"Why were you miserable, _petite mère_?" Brigit's voice was very gentle;
she seemed to see the young violinist, handsome and, as his wife put it,
driven half-mad by his music, the centre of attraction at the German
castle, and his little plain wife sitting forlorn by herself, looking
on.

"It was a Lady Créfinne Cranewitz,"--this name at least, she remembered!
"This Créfinne (it means countess) was very beautiful, but too big;
large all over like a statue, and blond. She used to wear one flower in
her bosom at dinner, and then give it to him afterwards. Also she gave
him a lock of her hair."

"And what did he give her?"

Félicité smiled placidly. "He gave her--his love. Ah, yes, he loved her,
his Créfinne Gigantesque."

"But----"

The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at
the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves
them--for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"

Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to
charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing
that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day
came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she
could make him love her almost in a moment. So, so far as she knew, he
still enjoyed her beauty without _arrière pensée_, although he saw her
through his own eyes, not Théo's. Yet now, at this phrase of his wife's,
"He always loves them--for the time," she started, half angrily.
When--if--the day came when he loved her, would this "clean old
peasant," as Carron had called her, sit and darn his socks and say to
herself--"for the time"?

"You are very--placid about it."

"Yes. In the beginning--no. Then I was jealous, and angry. But a jealous
woman is always ridiculous, my child, and men are so vain that the
implied homage upsets them. Many a woman has lost a man's love through
showing jealousy. So--in time I got used to it, and _tout passe_," she
continued comfortably.

"And you wouldn't mind now, if----" asked Brigit, her elbows on her knees,
her chin on her hands.

Madame Joyselle laughed. "_Wouldn't mind?_ Oh, _ma chère_! Just before
you came, he had a very bad turn--it was an Italian actress--a
pantomimiste, with the most beautiful arms in the world, and the face of
a vicious little boy. And he? _Épaté._ His ties wouldn't tie, he got new
shoes--fresh gloves every time he went to see her--scent, a new kind,
very expensive--he sent her flowers by the cartload, and went every
evening to see her act. Every day little mauve letters and wires from
her (he always forgot to burn them, and I was afraid Toinon might see
them), etc., etc., etc."

"And how did it end?" asked Brigit, her throat dry and hot. She hated
the pantomimiste.

"End? My faith, my dear, it is of a simplicity, the end. _You came._"

"I came----"

"Yes. And he was so delighted with his new--daughter--that he promptly
forgot his--love."

"But what did she do?"

"She made a fool of herself, poor thing; wrote, and telegraphed, and
threatened to kill herself. So we sent Théo to see her, and she quieted
down."

Brigit burst out laughing. "Sent Théo?"

"Yes. He always goes. He is very quiet and reasonable, you see."

"I see."

Madame Joyselle rose. "I must go and see about the dinner. Will you
come? Ah, yes," as they went downstairs, "they are like that, the men.
But Théo will be faithful to you, of that I am sure. He is like my
people, and then, thank God, he is not an artist!"




CHAPTER SEVEN


"Antoinette, I have something to say to you."

"So I ventured to gather from the fact that you have come to see me."

It was mid-May, and a fragrant breeze stirred the delicate curtains of
Lady Kingsmead's little drawing-room in Pont Street. There were flowers
everywhere, chiefly white lilacs, and the pale green and white chintz
and the quantities of light-hued pillows on the sofas (all of which
belonged, as yet, to Messrs. Liberty) made of the room a pleasant refuge
from the unusual heat outside. Lady Kingsmead, dressed in pale pink,
looked in the faint light very pretty as she leaned back in her deep
chair and played with the Persian cat.

Carron, upright on his small gilt chair, was pale and agitated, the
primitive feelings showing in his ravaged face looking in some way more
out of place, because he was exquisitely frock-coated and had a
fresh-blown tea-rose in his button-hole, than they would have done if he
had been shabby.

When Lady Kingsmead had spoken, he cleared his throat and began
hurriedly: "Antoinette--my--my wife is dead."

"Good Lord, Gerald, how you startled me! Is she really?"

"Yes, I--I saw her this morning."

"Drink?" asked Lady Kingsmead, pleasantly.

He frowned. "No. Cancer."

"How--horrid!"

She went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

"You look ill, poor dear. What is the matter? _Your_ looks are a bit on
the blink, too, Gerry! You must buck up."

She sat down and dabbed gingerly at her eyes with a scrap of
handkerchief. "It _is_ rather tragic, in its very insignificance, isn't
it? Well--what is it? Is it Brigit?"

Mutely and miserably he bowed his head, until she saw the carefully
concealed thin place on his crown.

"I thought so. It's no good, Gerald--give me the cat, will you?--she
dislikes you."

"She loathes me. And I would be burnt to death for her to-morrow."

She started at something in his tone--something she had not heard for
years.

"Can't you get over it?"

"No."

"Then----"

"Oh, my God, Tony, _I_ don't know. Can't--can't you help me?"

"I!"

"Yes. She can't love that boy; he is utterly insignificant. She's
marrying him for his money."

"No. She likes him. But, of course, the money helped. But she wouldn't
marry you if you were a millionaire yourself. She loathes you. Always
has."

"I am going mad, I think. I haven't slept for months. Look at my hand,
how it shakes; anyone would think I was a drunkard! Look here, Tony,
couldn't you ask her to speak civilly to me, at least?"

She was almost frightened as she looked at his piteous face. He had
indeed changed appallingly in the last six or eight months, and there
was a tremulous movement about his well-cut mouth that was alarming.

"Yes, Gerald, I'll ask her. I--I am awfully sorry for you."

"Thanks. As far as that's concerned, everybody in the world ought to be
sorry for everybody else. We all have our little private hell. When is
the--is the wedding-day fixed?"

"Oh, no," she returned hastily, "dear me, no. She is in no hurry to
marry, and he is, of course, dough in her hands. You, at least, needn't
worry about that. Will you dine here?"

"Sorry----"

"She is to be here, and Joyselle. Théo is out of town."

Carron rose and hesitated. "Do you think she'd mind?" he asked
piteously. A sharp pang touched her worldly heart. If, years ago, she
had let him go? If she had not made him give up diplomacy because she
wanted him in England? He would, doubtless, have divorced his impossible
wife, and married, and this would not have come to him.

"Of course she won't mind. Does she know that you love her?"

He nodded. She stared, and then rang the bell. "Bring Mr. Carron a
brandy and soda, Fledge; he is not well."

She went to the window and stood looking out into the quiet street until
the man had returned and she heard Carron set down the empty glass.

Then, without looking at him, she came back. Her shallow soul was
dismayed.

"Dinner at 8.30?" he asked after a pause.

"Yuss. Good-bye till then, for I must fly and make some calls."

"Good-bye, Tony. You are sure that boy isn't coming? I--I am getting to
hate him----"

"Nonsense," she laughed harshly, for she was not merry; "he isn't even
invited. He is in the country, I tell you."

"Then, _au 'voir_."

"_Au 'voir_, Gerry."

He went away, feeling that his cause perhaps was not utterly hopeless.

And in her gaudy bedroom, in the caravanserai that had been her idea of
luxury, his wife lay dead.




CHAPTER EIGHT


When the women had left the dining-room Carron got up from his place and
sat down by Joyselle, who looked at him with unconcealed astonishment.
He had never liked Carron, and knew that the man did not like him.

"When is your next concert to be, M. Joyselle?"

"The third of June."

"I--I always come. I have come for years, and last June I heard you in
Paris. You must like playing with Colonne."

"I do. He is a wonderful director. But--I did not know that you liked
music, Mr. Carron."

"I have always liked it. And no one plays the violin as you do."

He would not have hesitated to lie about the matter, had it been
necessary, but he happened to be telling the truth, and his weary voice
carried conviction.

Joyselle smiled. "I am glad," he said.

The two men eyed each other for a moment, and much was decided by their
gaze.

Carron broke the silence. "Did I not see you the other day in Chelsea. I
was motoring, and going very fast; but I think it was you."

"It is possible. I have a studio in Tite Street. I go there to
practise. It is very quiet there, at the top of the house, and I am very
nervous when I am working."

Carron nodded absently; this did not interest him. At the other end of
the table one of the Italian secretaries was talking about the Ascot
favourite to Freddy Fane, who had recently divorced his chorus girl and
stopped drinking, and who was supposed to be looked on with a favourable
eye by old Mrs. Banner, the aunt and chaperon of Lady Mary Sligo, the
prettiest of the season's _débutantes_.

"Is that man going to marry the beautiful girl I saw on the box-seat of
his coach the other day?" asked Joyselle, suddenly.

"I daresay. His mother died last month and left him pots of money.
Marmalade-pots--Peet's Peerless." After a moment Carron pursued, drawing
lines on the tablecloth with a fruitknife: "I have a very fine
violin--left me by my grandfather. It is a Strad, I believe. I wonder if
you'd care to see it?"

Joyselle pursed up his lips. "I should, but I warn you, it is probably
an imposture. Most cherished violins are--that are in the hands of
non-players."

"No doubt, but Sarasate has played on this one, and he believed it to be
genuine."

"Aha! When may I come?"

Carron named a near day, and then they went upstairs. He had obtained
his immediate object, and now there remained to him that evening a far
more difficult task.

Brigit was sitting by the window, fanning herself with a fan made of
eagle-feathers. She wore white and looked very tired.

"May I sit down here, Brigit?"

She turned at his voice, and then stared at him. "You look very ill,"
she said abruptly, "is your heart all right?"

Her face did not change as she spoke, and there was no friendliness in
her tone, but he thanked God that he was, and looked, ill.

"My heart is weak, I believe; nothing organic. It is very warm, and I
never can bear heat. You look tired yourself."

She nodded absently. "Yes, I have been away--at the Bertie Monson's.
Nelly Monson always gives me a headache, she talks so loud. And my room
was under the nursery. I do hate children."

Carron caught his breath. She was actually talking civilly to him. And,
then, remembering his request to her mother, he, for a second, hated
Lady Kingsmead with a bitter and senseless hatred. Was Brigit, after
all, only talking to him as a favour to her mother? But a second's
reflection showed him the folly of this idea. Had Brigit ever done
anything to please her mother? Never.

One of the two women-guests sat down at the piano and began to play,
very softly, an old song of Tosti's. Everybody listened. A hansom
jingled by and a bicycle's sharp bell was a loud noise in the
after-dinner silence.

Joyselle was standing by a table, absently balancing on his forefinger a
long, broad, ivory paper-knife. He was, Brigit remembered, curiously
adept in balancing, and once she had seen him go through, for Tommy's
amusement, a whole series of the kind, from the classic broomstick on
his chin, to blowing three feathers about the room at a time, allowing
none of them to fall. How quickly he had moved, in spite of his great
height, and how Tommy had laughed. But, for the past week, something had
gone wrong with the violinist. He had been away from the house one day
when she went, and that afternoon, when she "dropped in" on her way from
the station, he had hardly spoken. In his silence he seemed immeasurably
far from her, and she would have given worlds to read his thoughts.

During dinner he had been conventionally polite, but playing a _rôle_
was so foreign to him that even this laudable one of pretending to be
amused when he was bored sat gloomily and guiltily on him.

Carron 

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