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The Phantom Lover

by Ruby M. Ayres · English · Gutenberg #30286 · 524,011 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Phantom Lover

Author: Ruby M. Ayres


        
Release date: October 19, 2009 [eBook #30286]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHANTOM LOVER ***

THE PHANTOM LOVER

BY

RUBY M. AYRES

AUTHOR OF A BACHELOR HUSBAND, THE SCAR, ETC.

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America




Copyright, 1921, BY W. J. WATT & COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America




DEDICATED

TO MY FRIEND

Janet Moore

THE REAL 'JUNE MASON'

IN THIS STORY




THE PHANTOM LOVER




CHAPTER I


Somewhere out in the night a woman was crying, crying desolately. The
sad, rather monotonous sound broke the silence of the street and
floated through the open window of a room where Micky Mellowes was
wondering how the deuce he should get through the long evening lying
before him.

Micky was in a bad temper. It was not often that he was in a bad
temper, but he had begun the day by waking with a headache, which was
still with him, and which accounted for the wide open window and the
breath of icy air which was filling the room and fluttering the
curtains; and half an hour ago some people with whom he had been going
to dine had rung up and told him that the party was off owing to the
sudden death of a relative, thereby leaving the evening long and empty
on his hands.

It was New Year's Eve, too, which made matters a thundering sight
worse.

He wondered if Marie Deland was feeling as sick about it as he was.
Micky was in the middle of an interesting flirtation with Marie, which
bade fair to develop into something deeper with careful engineering on
the part of her family, for Micky was a catch, and though so far he
had proved himself singularly adroit in avoiding mothers with
marriageable daughters, the Delands were beginning to pat each other
on the back and to look pleased.

When the sound of crying reached him he had been feeling so thoroughly
fed-up with life that it had seemed impossible for anything ever to
interest him again; but now he climbed out of his chair with a faint
show of energy and strolled over to the window.

It was a cold, clear night, with myriads of stars in the dark sky that
seemed to shed a faintly luminous light to earth, bright enough at all
events for Micky to distinguish the figure of a girl walking slowly
along the pathway below.

She was walking so slowly and dispiritedly that a sort of vague
curiosity stirred in Micky's heart; here, at least, was some one even
more fed-up with life than he himself, and with a sudden impulse he
turned from the window, and, snatching up a hat and coat which he had
thrown down when he came in an hour earlier, made for the stairs.

He was half-way down when an apologetic cough at his elbow arrested
him; he stopped and turned.

"Well, what is it?"

"If you please, sir, Mr. Ashton has just sent round to ask if you
could make it convenient to be in at ten o'clock this evening, as he
wants to see you particularly."

Micky looked surprised; Ashton had been very particularly engaged for
that evening, he knew. Evidently something had happened to upset his
plans as well.

"Ten o'clock? All right; I dare say I shall be in."

He went on down the stairs.

Out on the path he paused and looked up and down the street.

The impulse that had sent him out had died away; it was beastly cold,
and much more comfortable by the fire. He hesitated, and in that
moment he saw the figure of the girl again.

She had stopped now in the light of a street lamp, and seemed to be
looking at something she carried in her arms--a child! Surely not a
child!

Micky's curiosity was aroused. He buttoned the collar of his coat more
closely round his chin and went on.

The girl had moved too, almost as if she felt instinctively that she
was being followed, and as Micky drew abreast with her she shrank a
little to one side as if afraid.

"What's the matter?" asked Micky bluntly.

They were some few yards from the lamp now. But, as she turned to look
up at him with startled eyes, its yellow light fell on her face; and
Micky saw with amazement that she was quite young and exceedingly
pretty, in spite of the distress in her eyes, and the tears that were
still wet on her cheeks.

"What's the matter?" he asked again, more gently, and waited for the
pathetically shaken denial which he felt sure would come.

"Nothing--nothing at all."

"Nothing!" There was a note of exasperation in his voice. "You were
crying--I heard you, and people don't walk about the streets at this
time of night and cry if there's nothing the matter. If that's a baby
you've got with you, you ought to know better than to----" He broke
off. She was laughing, a weak, uncertain little laugh.

"A baby!" she said tremulously. "It isn't a baby; it's a cat."

"A cat!" Micky's voice was full of disgust. He looked down at her from
his superior height with sudden suspicion. If this was just a hoax?

"Well, what's the matter anyway?" he asked again.

She looked away from him without answering.

Micky began to feel a bit of a fool; he wished he had not yielded to
the impulse to follow her. After all, it was no business of his if a
stranger chose to walk about his road and weep; he looked at her
impatiently.

Her hair beneath its not very smart hat shone golden in the lamplight,
and the little oval of cheek and rounded chin which was all he could
see of her averted face somehow touched a forgotten chord in his heart
and made him think of his boyhood and the girl-mother who had not
lived long enough to be more than a memory....

"Don't think I'm interfering or trying to annoy you," he said again.
"But if there is anything I can do to help you...."

She shook her head.

"There isn't anything.... I ought to have known better than to let you
hear that I was crying ... there's nothing the matter, I----" Then
quite suddenly she broke down again into bitter sobbing. "Oh, I'm so
miserable--so utterly miserable--I wish I were dead!"

Micky was appalled; he had heard women say that sort of thing before,
and had said it himself scores of times, but never with that note of
tragedy which he heard in this girl's voice.

Ten minutes ago he had considered himself the most miserable of
mortals because he had been let down over a dinner; he was ashamed of
his temper now as he stood there in the starlight and listened to this
girl's sobbing.

"Look here," he said after a moment, "you'll never feel any better if
you stay out here in the cold. I don't suppose you've had a
respectable meal for hours either--I know what women are. Where do you
live? You'll soon feel better when you get beside a fire and have
something to eat."

"I'm not going home any more," she said.

She spoke quite quietly, but with a sort of despair which there was no
mistaking.

Micky was a rapid thinker. He had clean forgotten his headache. This
was adventure with a capital letter. There was still something of
romance in the world which his jaded palate had not yet tasted.

"I'm sure you're tired," he said gently, "and probably fed-up. So am
I. I was just wondering what in the world to do with myself when I
heard you crying. It made me feel a sort of kinship with you--it did,
upon my word. If I'd been a woman I dare say I should have been
howling like anything. Will you come along with me and let me give you
some supper? I'm hungry too...."

She shrank back from him with a little gesture of fear.

"Oh no--please let me go!..."

She tried to pass him, but Micky barred the way.

"You can't walk about the streets all night," he said determinedly.
"The cat will hate it anyway, even if you don't mind." There was a
hint of laughter in his voice, though he had never felt more serious
in all his life. "And if you don't want me to take pity on you, you
might at least take pity on me ... please don't think I'm a bounder
trying to annoy you or anything like that ... perhaps I want a friend
just as badly as you do...." He stopped, aghast at his own temerity.

"If you do," she said tremulously, "I am more sorry for you than I can
say."

"I'm glad you said that," Micky answered, "because now you'll come
along and have that supper with me. There's a little café quite near
here that I know. If we are both miserable, we can at least be
miserable together."

Something told him that this girl was at the end of her tether; that
she was desperate, and his first casual curiosity concerning her
deepened in the most surprising fashion.

He felt in some inexplicable way that a curtain had been lifted from a
phase of life hitherto hidden from him; as if he were standing on the
threshold of a new world, where women only weep for something real and
tragic, not just butterfly tears of petulance like the women of his
own class.

The girl was silent for a moment; then suddenly she laughed, a hard
little laugh of recklessness.

"Very well," she said. "I suppose I may as well."

Micky was infinitely relieved; somehow he had not really thought that
she would allow him to accompany her.

They walked along for a few steps in silence. Once or twice the cat,
tucked under the girl's arm, gave a faint mieow of protest, and Micky
smiled to himself in the darkness.

It was the cat that seemed to give such a real touch of pathos to the
whole adventure, he thought, and wondered why. He looked down at her
deprecatingly.

"Let me carry it," he suggested.

"Carry it?" she echoed. "What do you mean?--Oh, the cat; no, thank
you. He wouldn't like it: he hates strangers."

"Oh!" said Micky. He felt chagrined. "Is it a great pet?" he asked.

"Yes." She hunched her queer burden more closely under her arm. "It
isn't really mine," she explained. "But they were so unkind to it in
the house that I had to bring it."

Micky was dying to ask questions, but somehow it hardly seemed a
propitious moment. He did not speak again till they reached the little
café.

It was a quiet little downstairs place, and just now was almost
deserted.

Micky chose a corner table which was partially screened from the rest
of the room. As he stood up to take off his coat he looked at the girl
interestedly.

She was better than pretty, he decided with a little pleasurable
thrill; he could not remember when he had seen a face that appealed to
him so strongly in spite of its pathos and the tear stains round her
eyes.

And such sweet eyes they were!--really grey with dark lashes and
daintily pencilled brows. She looked up suddenly, meeting his earnest
regard.

"Well?" she said. There was a touch of defiance in her voice; the
colour had risen in her white cheeks.

"Well?" said Micky with a friendly smile.

He sat down opposite to her; he was thanking his lucky stars that the
Delands' message had reached him before he changed into evening
clothes; somehow as he looked at this girl he felt slightly ashamed of
his own lazy, luxurious life and the banking account which, like the
cruse of oil, never failed. That this girl had no surplus of this
world's goods he was certain, though she was neatly dressed and was
unmistakably a lady. Her gloves were worn and had been carefully
mended, and her coat looked far too thin for such a cold night.

"Well, what are we going to have?" he asked. It was surprising how
cheerful he felt. "And what about that wonderful cat of yours? By the
way, hasn't it got a name?"

She smiled faintly.

"I call him Charlie," she said.

"Charlie!" Micky's eyes twinkled. "Well, it's original, anyway," he
said with a chuckle. "And Charlie must have some milk, I suppose. I
say, he's a bit thin, isn't he?" he asked dubiously.

She had taken off the shawl which had been wrapped about it, and the
poor animal sat on her lap blinking in the light, a forlorn enough
specimen, with a long tail and fierce eyes.

The girl stroked its head.

"He's been half starved," she said. "You'd be thin if you hadn't had
any more to eat than he's had."

"I'm sure I should," said Micky humbly. He thought guiltily of the
waste which he knew went on in his own establishment; it was odd that
it had never struck him before that there must be many people in the
world, not to mention cats, who would be glad enough of the waste from
his table.

He picked up the menu to hide his discomfort. When the waiter came he
ordered the best dinner the restaurant served. He was conscious that
the girl was watching him anxiously. When the waiter had gone, she
said, "I can't afford to have a dinner like that."

Micky flushed crimson.

"I thought you were dining with me," he stammered. "I--I hope you
will--I shall be only too honoured...."

Her grey eyes met his anxiously.

"I've never done a thing like this before," she said in distress. "I
don't know what you are thinking of me ... but ... well, I suppose I
was just desperate...." She broke off biting her lip, then she rushed
on again. "I don't suppose you'll ever see me any more, so it doesn't
really matter much, but...."

"I hope to see you again, many times," said Micky, with an earnestness
that surprised himself.

She looked away, and her face hardened.

"I suppose men are all the same," she said, after a moment.
"However...." she shrugged her shoulders with a sort of recklessness
that made Micky frown. She leaned back in her chair with sudden
weariness. "It's very kind of you," she said disinterestedly.

"It's not kind at all," he hastened to assure her. "I'm much more
pleased to be with you than you are to be with me. If it hadn't been
for you I should have spent this evening alone--New Year's Eve, too,"
he added, with a sort of chagrin and a sudden memory of Marie Deland.

"New Year's Eve!" she echoed. She closed her eyes for a moment, and
Micky had an uncomfortable sort of feeling that she was looking back
on the year that was dying and could see nothing pleasant in the whole
of the twelve months. Presently she opened them again with a little
sigh. "Well, I don't want another year like the last one," she said.

"You won't have," he told her promptly. "I've got a sort of feeling
that there are lots of good things coming along for you. The luck has
to change some time or other, and if you've had a rotten time in the
past you won't have it in the future."

"I don't believe in luck," she said.

"Don't you? I do," Micky declared. He hated the despondency in her
face; he felt a strong desire to see her smiling and happy. He rattled
on, talking any nonsense that came into his head.

The waiter came down the room and set the dishes on the table. He gave
a sort of supercilious sniff when Micky asked for a saucer of milk for
the cat. He looked at Charlie with scorn--Charlie, curled up on the
girl's lap now and purring lustily.

"Of course, you know, we really ought to have a bottle of wine," Micky
said dubiously. "Just something cheap, as it's New Year's Eve."

He would like to have given her champagne, but dared not suggest it.
He was quite sure that if she knew he was a rich man she would fly off
at a tangent. He ordered an inexpensive bottle of red wine and filled
her glass.

"Well, here's luck to the New Year," he said sententiously. "And to
our delightfully unexpected meeting," he added.

She flushed up to her eyes.

"Are you always as kind to people as you have been to me?" she asked
tensely.

Micky blushed.

"Oh, I say!" he protested. "You don't call this being kind, do you? I
assure you it's just pure selfishness. I should have spent my evening
alone if we hadn't met--and I hate being alone; I bore myself stiff in
five minutes. I'm just--honoured that you should have allowed me to
eat my supper with you. If you knew how beastly fed-up I was feeling
... the world seemed a positively loathsome place."

She laughed; she leaned her elbows on the table and her chin in her
hands, looking at him with thoughtful eyes.

"Are you poor?" she asked with disarming frankness.

"Poor as a church mouse," said Micky promptly. "At least"--he hastened
to amend his words--"I'm one of those unfortunate beggars who spend
money as fast as they get it. I've never saved a halfpenny in my
life."

This at least was the truth.

She nodded.

"Neither have I--I've never had one to save...."

The despondency was back again in her voice; Micky broke in hastily--

"Before we go any further I think we ought to know one another's
names." He fumbled in a pocket for a card, but changed his mind
quickly, remembering that his cards bore the address of the expensive
flat which he honoured with his presence. "My name is Mellowes," he
said. "I've got several Christian names as well, but people call me
Micky...." He waited, looking at her expectantly. "Won't you tell me
yours?" he asked.

She was staring down at her plate. He could see the dark fringe of
lashes against her cheeks. Suddenly she looked up.

"Why do you want to know my name? We shall never meet again, I----"

Micky leaned a little forward.

"If we don't," he said quietly, "it will be the greatest disappointment
I have ever had."

She looked at him with a sort of fear.

"You don't mean that," she said, with a catch in her voice. "You don't
really mean that ... you're just one of those men who say things like
that to every woman you----" She broke off, struck by the chagrin in
Micky's face. "No--I oughtn't to have said that," she went on
hurriedly. "I beg your pardon ... I ought not to have said it, and I
will tell you my name if you really want to know. My name is
Esther--Esther Shepstone."

"Thank you!" said Micky. "And now we're going to drink to good
resolutions for the New Year ... have you made one yet?"

She shook her head.

"What's the use? Besides ... I don't want to make any."

"Very well, then, I'll make one for you." He refilled her glass and
handed it to her. "Now say after me: 'I resolve that during the coming
year I will be good friends with Micky Mellowes----' Oh, I say,
don't--please don't...."

She had dropped her face in her hands again, and Micky had a miserable
conviction that she was crying.

But he was wrong, for presently she looked up again, and her eyes were
dry, though a little hard and bright.

"I don't believe in a man's friendship for a woman," she said. "But
I'll say it, if you like," and she took the glass from his hand.

"And to-morrow," said Micky presently, "I'm going to take you out to
tea or something--if I may," he added hurriedly.

He waited, but she did not speak. "May I?" he asked.

She was twisting the stem of her wineglass nervously; after a moment
she began to speak jerkily.

"When I came out to-night I didn't mean to go back any more," she
said. Her voice was low and full of a weary bitterness. "I was so
unhappy I didn't want to live." She caught her breath. "If it hadn't
been for you"--she was looking at him now with shame in her eyes. "If
it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have gone back--ever----" she
added. "But now...."

"But now," said Micky as she paused, "you're going back, and we're
going to start the new year--friends, you and I! Is that a bargain?"
he asked.

"Yes...."

Outside Micky hailed a taxicab.

"You're much too tired to walk," he said when she protested. "And it
will be a new experience for Charlie," he added with a twinkle.

He put her into the cab, and stood for a moment at the door.

"And the address?" he asked.

She hesitated, looking away from him; then suddenly she told him.

"It's Brixton Road--it's--it's a very horrid boarding-house," she
added with a half-sigh.

"Boarding-houses are all horrid," said Micky cheerily. "But I'll come
down myself to-morrow and see how bad it really is."

He tried to see her face.

"Shall you be in if I come in the afternoon?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes."

"About four, then," said Micky. He groped for her hand, found it, and
pressed it. "Good-night," he said.

"Good-night."

And the next moment Micky was alone in the starlight.

He stood looking after the taxi with a queer sense of unreality. Had
he just dreamt it all, and was there really no such girl as Esther
Shepstone? No Charlie? He shook himself together with a laugh. Of
course it was real, all of it! He walked on soberly through the cold
night.

To-morrow he would go to the very horrid boarding-house in the Brixton
Road and see her again.

Esther! He liked her name; there was something quaint and old-world
about it. It seemed impossible that they had only met a few hours
ago.

His headache had quite vanished. He was whistling a snatch of song
when he let himself into the house and went upstairs.

He opened the door of his sitting-room, and then stopped dead on the
threshold. The lights were burning fully, and a man was ensconced in
his favourite armchair by the fire--Ashton. Lord! he had forgotten all
about Ashton.

Micky looked guiltily at the clock--nearly eleven!--he began a
half-apology.

"Awfully sorry, old man--I was kept.... Been waiting long?"

"I got here at ten."

Ashton climbed out of the chair and looked at Micky with a sort of
shamefacedness.

"Don't take your coat off," he said suddenly. "I want you to come out
again----"

"Out! Now! Look at the time, man!"

"I know--it's only eleven.... I'm catching the midnight to Dover...."

Micky stared.

"Dover! What in the world...."

Ashton turned round and looked down at the fire with a sort of
embarrassment.

"It's the mater," he said jerkily. "She's found out----"

Micky looked puzzled.

"Found out! What on earth...."

Ashton made an impatient gesture. He was a good-looking man, with dark
eyes that could look all manner of things without in the least meaning
them.

"About that girl at Eldred's," he said in a strangled voice. "You
know! I told you about her. Lord, man, don't look so confoundedly
ignorant! I told you about her," he broke off. "Well, some one's told
the mater, and this morning...." he shrugged his shoulders. "There's
been old Harry to pay! She told me if I didn't give her up she'd cut
me out of her will. She would, too!" he added, in savage parenthesis.

"Well! and what did you say?"

Ashton looked round.

"Hang it all! what could I say? Told her I would, of course."

There was a sharp silence.

"I thought you liked the girl," said Micky bluntly.

The other man winced.

"So I did--so I do.... It's a rotten shame. If you'd ever seen her ...
you never have, have you?"

"No."

"Neither has the mater.... Women are all the same; because the girl
has to work for her living they think she isn't fit for me to
marry.... It's all a lot of rot.... However--beggars can't be
choosers--and so I'm off to-night."

Micky looked at him keenly.

"You mean that you're going without a word to the girl?"

"What can I do?--I went and saw her this morning--we had a rotten
scene. I meant to tell her it was all up, but somehow I couldn't; I'm
too dashed fond of her, and that's the truth. I can't bear to see her
cry--it makes me feel such a cur...."

He waited a moment, but Micky made no comment.

"So the only thing is to clear out," Ashton went on jerkily. "I can't
afford to quarrel with the mater, you know that.... Perhaps some
day...." He stopped. "After all, she can't live for ever," he added
brutally.

Micky said nothing.

"So I'm off to-night," Ashton went on with an effort. "I wanted to see
you--I knew I could trust you...." He fumbled in a pocket. "There's a
letter here.... I've written--I couldn't see her again. I know I'm a
coward, but ... well, there it is!"

He threw the letter down on the table.

"Will you go and see her, old chap, and give her that?" he asked with
an effort. "Tell her I--oh, tell her what you like," he went on
fiercely. "Tell her that if I could afford it...."

He stopped again, and this time the silence was unbroken for some
minutes.

Then he roused himself and picked up his coat. "Well, I must be
getting along. I left my baggage at the station."

He looked at Micky. "I suppose you think I'm an infernal sweep, eh?"
he asked curtly.

"No," said Micky.

He had always expected that Ashton's romance would end like this, and
he felt vaguely sorry for the girl, though he had never seen her. She
must have expected it, too, he thought. She must have known Ashton's
position all along. He followed his friend out of the room.

"You haven't told me her address," he said suddenly.

He decided that it would be better to send the letter--he did not want
to see her. He hated a scene as much as Ashton did.

Ashton was at the top of the stairs.

"It's on the letter. What have you done with it?"

There was an irritable note in his voice. "Don't leave it lying there
for that man of yours to see."

Micky went back into the room. The letter lay on the table where
Ashton had thrown it down.

He picked it up, glancing casually at the written address as he did
so. Then suddenly his tall figure stiffened, and a curiously blank
look filled his eyes, for the name scribbled there in Ashton's writing
was--

"Miss Esther Shepstone," and, below it, the number of the very horrid
boarding-house in the Brixton Road.




CHAPTER II


Micky stood staring at the envelope in his hand. He felt as if
something had happened to paralyse all power of action.

Esther Shepstone and Ashton's girl from Eldred's were one and the
same; that was all he could grasp, and it sounded absurd and
impossible.

He had heard so much of this girl--Ashton had talked about her times
without number--Lallie he had called her; now he came to think of it,
Micky could not remember having ever heard her spoken of by any other
name; and Lallie and Esther Shepstone were one and the same.

Was this, then, why she had cried, because of Ashton...?

Ashton called to him impatiently from the stairs.

"What the deuce are you doing? I shall miss my train."

Micky roused himself with a start, and, dropping the letter into his
pocket, went slowly out of the room; he felt as if he could not have
hurried had his life depended upon it; there was an absurdly cold sort
of feeling round his heart.

It was ridiculous, of course; it was nothing to him if the girl with
whom he had dined an hour ago loved Ashton; he had never seen her
before. That sounded an absurd truth, too; it seemed impossible that
until this evening he and she had never met.

"For heaven's sake, hurry up, man," said Ashton again sharply.

He was at the bottom of the stairs; the face he turned over his
shoulder to Micky looked pale and harassed.

Micky quickened his steps and joined his friend in the porch below;
they stood together out on the path waiting for a taxicab.

Micky glanced at Ashton with a curious sense of unreality; he felt as
if he had never seen him before; it seemed impossible that this Ashton
could know Esther--and Charlie!

A taxicab drew up to the kerb; Ashton banged open the door and got in.
Micky followed, and they drove some way in silence.

"I'll take thundering good care I don't stay away long," Ashton said
suddenly, with a sort of growl. "And if the mater thinks it will make
me forget Lallie----"

"I thought her name was Esther," said Micky quietly. He was looking
out of the window into the starry night.

"So it is--but I always call her Lallie." He looked at his friend with
a sort of vague suspicion. "How do you know what her name is?" he
asked.

"I saw it on the letter you gave me."

Ashton grunted.

"I think it would be better if you posted it to her yourself and have
done with it," Micky said with an effort. "I'm a rotten hand at this
sort of thing. It can't do any good if I go and see her."

"You said you would go--you might be a sport and stick to your word,"
Ashton protested. "I'd do the same for you any day."

Micky rather doubted it, but did not like to say so.

"If you knew how sick I am about the whole business," Ashton went on
jerkily. "You may not believe me, but I tell you, Micky, that I'd
marry that girl to-morrow if only----"

"If only--what?" Micky asked as he paused.

"Oh, you know! What the dickens can I do without a bob to my name
except what the mater chooses to dole out? I tell you," he went on
with a sort of snarl, "it'll be very different when I get the money.
Gad! if only I'd got it now!"

"Money isn't everything," said Micky sententiously. "And if you like
the girl, why not marry her and face it out?"

Ashton gave a savage little laugh.

"It's all very fine for you to say that money isn't everything--that's
only because you've got it, and are never likely to be without it. You
don't know what it feels like to be up to your eyes in debt and not
knowing where to turn for a fiver. Bah! what's the good of talking?"
He let down the window with a run, turning his face to the keen night
air.

They were nearing their destination, and there was still something he
wanted to say to Micky which so far, he had been afraid to put into
words.

"Well, I suppose I shan't be seeing you again for a bit," he said,
with rather a forced laugh. "You've been a good pal to me, Micky----"

Micky said "Rot!" rather shortly; he frowned in the darkness; Ashton
got on his nerves; he rather wished he had not come to see him off.

"Oh, but you have--whether you like me to say so or not," the other
man went on obstinately. "And--and there's one last thing I'm going to
ask you before I go...."

He waited, but Micky did not speak.

The taxi was turning into the station yard now, moving slowly because
of the congested traffic.

"If you could give Lallie some money," Ashton went on with a rush.
"I'd send her some, but I've only just got enough to get out of the
way with. I'll pay you back as soon as the mater condescends to send
me another cheque...."

Micky's face felt hot.

"Hasn't she--hasn't she got any, then?" he asked with an effort.

"No--at least I promised her some when I saw her this morning.
She--she's left Eldred's. You see"--he drew a hard breath--"you see, I
hoped we'd be able to get married, and so--well, there was no sense in
her staying on there. She was worked to death, poor kid."

He glanced at Micky, but could not see his face.

"You understand, don't you?" he said, encouraged by his silence. "She
owes them a bit at the boarding-house where she is living. I promised
to wipe it off for her, but the mater cutting up rough altered
everything, and so ... if you could give her a little----"

"I'll see to it," said Micky. He opened the door of the taxi and got
out before it was at a standstill. He took off his hat and let the
cold air play on his hot forehead. He could hardly trust himself to
speak.

He was thankful when Ashton went off to see to his luggage. He walked
into the station and found himself aimlessly staring at a notice
board. He could not remember when he had felt so furiously angry.

Had Ashton changed? he was asking himself in bewilderment. Or was it
merely that he had never seen the man he really was until to-night?

He tried to remember what Ashton had told him about Esther Shepstone
in the past. That she had been at Eldred's he knew, and that Eldred's
was a place where women bought silk petticoats and things he also
knew. He had heard Marie Deland and her friends talking about it lots
of times. Marie had once invited him to accompany her there when they
had been out together, but he had refused and had waited outside for
her. Now he came to think of it, that was about all Ashton had ever
told him of Esther Shepstone.

He knew that Ashton had been seen about with her a great deal; knew
that he had had to stand a lot of harmless chaff in consequence; he
himself had joked about Ashton's "latest" as they had all called her:
it seemed a memory to be ashamed of, when he thought of the way he had
heard her sobbing in the street that night, of the distress in her
eyes, of the hopeless way in which she had spoken.

Ashton rejoined him.

"Buck up! The train's in."

They went along the platform, followed by a porter with Ashton's
baggage. Micky looked at it resentfully; Ashton was evidently
prepared to enjoy himself; this was no rush after mere solitude and
forgetfulness.

He stood stiffly at the carriage door while Ashton stowed his smaller
traps on the rack. Presently he came to the window.

"You'll do the best you can, won't you, old man?" There was a real
anxiety in his eyes, but Micky was not looking at him; he answered
stiffly--

"Yes, I'll do what I can."

"She'll soon get another job," Ashton went on, with forced confidence.
"I'm sorry she left Eldred's, now it's come to this, but how was I to
know?" he appealed to Micky, but he might as well have appealed to a
brick wall for all response he got.

"And when I come back----" he said again. "Tell her that when I come
back many things may be all right again ... tell her that, will you?"

"I'll tell her," said Micky stolidly.

The guard was blowing his whistle now, doors were being shut.

Micky roused himself and looked at his friend.

"Are you--er--are you going to write to her?" he asked constrainedly.

Ashton coloured.

"No--it's better not--far better let the thing drop till I come back.
I've explained it all in my letter--she'll understand. It's no use
writing--don't you think it's better not----"

Micky hunched his shoulders.

"It's your affair," he said laconically.

"Yes, well, I shan't write--I'll send you my address as soon as I know
where I'm staying, and you can let me know what she said and how she
takes it.... Oh, confound it!"

A porter had come along and slammed the door; the train was slowly
moving; Micky was vaguely glad that there had been no time in which to
shake hands. A moment, and he was walking away alone down the
platform.

His hands were deep thrust in the pockets of his coat; he took no
notice of anything; he walked on and out of the station.

Well, this had been an eventful New Year's Eve with a vengeance; he
glanced up at the clock in the dome behind him--only a quarter to
twelve now, and yet so much had been crowded into the past four hours.
Since the moment when the Delands rang up to cancel his engagement to
dine he seemed to have stepped out of the old world into a new. He
wondered what Esther Shepstone was doing in the very horrid
boarding-house of which she had told him--if she was thinking of
Ashton.

What a cad the man was, what a cad!--he was amazed that he had not
discovered it before--to clear off and leave a girl like this, without
a word of farewell except the letter. He wondered if he meant to
deliver it and admit that he knew Ashton, or if he meant just to stick
a stamp on and post it to her.

He realised that there was nothing very much to be proud of in an
admission that he knew Ashton, and yet they had been friends for
years.

It was striking twelve when he got home; he stood for a moment on the
doorstep, looking up at the starry sky.

Several clocks were chiming midnight in the distance; he listened with
a queer sense of fatalism.

This was the strangest New Year's Eve he had ever spent in his life.
At this hour last year he had been dancing the old year out, and
to-night, had things gone as he had thought, he would have been
somewhere with Marie Deland--he might even have proposed to her by
this time. He smiled faintly, remembering that the intention had
really been somewhere in the background of his mind; but that, too,
had faded out now to give place to other, more important, factors.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve! He counted the strokes mechanically; there
was a breathless pause, then the clash of bells.

Some irrepressibles in a block of flats near by raised a cheer; the
front door of a house opposite was open, and Micky caught a glimpse of
a crowded hall and black-coated men and girls in pretty frocks.

He felt strangely removed from all the noise and laughter; after a
moment he turned and went up to his room.

The fire had been carefully made up and his slippers and dressing-gown
put to warm. Micky looked at them with a sort of disgust; it was
sickening for a healthy grown man to be so pampered; he kicked the
slippers into a corner and tossed the dressing-gown on to the couch.

He wondered what sort of a room Esther Shepstone had in the very
horrid boarding-house--what odd corner the thin black cat curled into
to sleep.

He took Ashton's letter from his pocket and stuck it up against the
clock on the mantelshelf.

"Miss Esther Shepstone...."

It was fate, that's what it was! He wondered if she would ever have
lived to get that letter had fate not thrown her across his path that
night.

She had been desperate--at the end of her tether, and all for the sake
of that cad Ashton.

He turned his back on the letter and lit a cigarette, but he let it go
out almost at once, and turned back again to stare once more at the
name scrawled on the envelope.

What had Ashton written to her? It worried him because he did not
know. Ashton had had other love-affairs--not quite such serious ones,
perhaps, but still serious enough--and Micky knew that when he had
wearied of them he had set about getting free of them by the shortest
route, caring little if it were also a brutal one. He thought of the
despair he had seen in Esther's face that evening; he dreaded that
there might be something in Ashton's farewell letter that would plunge
her back more deeply into her misery.

Out in the night the bells were still ringing joyously.

It was New Year's morning, and perhaps, if he sent that letter ... He
stood quite still for a moment, staring at it; then suddenly he threw
his cigarette into the fire and snatched the letter down from the
shelf.

He tore it open impulsively and drew out the enclosure. He unfolded it
and began to read. The silence of the room was unbroken save for the
little crisp sound as Micky turned the paper; then the letter
fluttered to the rug at his feet and lay there, half-curled up, as if
it were ashamed of the words it bore and wished to hide them.

Micky raised his eyes and looked at his reflection in the glass above
the mantelshelf. The pallor of his face surprised him, and the look of
passionate anger in his eyes.

He was a man of the world. He was no better and no worse than many of
the men whom he knew and called his friends, but this letter, in its
brutal callousness, seemed to shame his very manhood.

He had liked Ashton, had been his constant companion for months, but
he had never suspected him of being capable of this.

He supposed he ought to be ashamed of having opened the letter, but he
was not ashamed; he was glad that he had been able to spare the girl
this last and hardest blow of all--the knowledge that the man whom she
loved and trusted was unworthy.

Presently he picked the letter up from the rug. He picked it up with
the tips of his fingers, as if it were something repulsive to him, and
threw it down on the table.

The first few words stared up at him as it lay there.

  "DEAR LALLIE,--By the time you get this letter I shall be out of
  England, and I hope you won't make things worse for me than they
  already are by trying to find out where I have gone or by writing
  to my people and making a scene. The worst of these little
  flirtations is that they always have to end, as this must, and you
  must have known it."...

Micky drew in his breath hard; not an hour ago in this very room
Ashton had made out how cut-up he was at the turn his affairs had
taken, and yet all the time he had written this letter.

He flicked over a page and read on:--

  "... I shall never forget you and the good times we've had
  together. I should try and get back at Eldred's, if I were you.
  It's a good thing we didn't get married as matters have turned
  out, or the fat would have been in the fire with a vengeance. As
  it is, I shall have all my work cut out to put the mater in a good
  temper again. I am sending you some money by Mickey Mellowes; he's
  a friend of mine and as rich as Croesus, and as selfish as the
  devil. If he offers to take you out, let him, by all means. It
  wouldn't be a bad thing if he took a fancy to you; he doesn't care
  a hang for any one but himself. If only I'd got half his money ...
  but what's the use of talking about it? Anyway, this is good-bye;
  I shan't write again. Be a sensible girl, and try to see things
  from my point of view. It would only have meant ruin for both of
  us if I'd stuck to you. Good-bye; I send you my love for the last
  time.

                                                    RAYMOND ASHTON."

And this from the man whom she loved; the man who had pretended to
love her!

Micky dragged forward a chair with his foot and sat down straddlewise.
He leaned an elbow on the chair-back and ran his fingers through his
hair with a sort of bewilderment.

"He's as rich as Croesus and as selfish as the devil...."

And this from Ashton, his friend--the man whom he had helped out of
scrapes scores of times; the man to whom he had lent money without the
least hope of its ever being returned; Micky felt as if he had a blow
in the face.

His thoughts were in a whirl; the whole world needed readjusting. Was
he selfish? he asked himself in perplexity--if so, it was quite
unconsciously, and anyway Ashton was the last person who should have
made the accusation.

"I am sending you some money by a friend of mine...."

There was no hint that the money was first to be borrowed; he had
evidently been sure of his prey; Micky swore under his breath.

Of course, Ashton had not dreamed of the letter being opened, had not
dreamed of anything but that his carefully-made plans would be
minutely carried out and nothing more said.

Micky sat for a long time, lost in thought; the hands of the clock
crawled round to one and the chime struck; he looked up then, glancing
at the clock vaguely.

If he had not met Esther Shepstone there might have been no Esther in
the world at all now; if he allowed that letter to reach its
destination he would be plunging her back again into the abyss of
despair from which he had dragged her only that evening. She loved
Ashton; of that Micky was sure. Very well then, she should at least
have some part of her ideal left to her.

He went over to his desk and took up paper and pen; he spread Ashton's
letter out before him and studied the writing carefully.

Ordinary sort of writing, rather unformed and sprawly, but after a
trial run Micky managed a very presentable copy of it.

He sat back in his chair and eyed his handiwork with pride; he had
missed his vocation, he told himself with a chuckle; he ought to have
been a forger.

Then he dipped the pen in the ink again and squared his elbows. He had
never written a love-letter in his life, but he knew positively that
he was about to write one now.

He thought of Esther and the wistfulness of her grey eyes; she was the
girl whom a man could love. He coloured a little as the thought
involuntarily crossed his mind; she was a girl whom--he began to write
rapidly.

"My darling little girl----"

Micky was naturally rather eloquent with his pen, though he had never
before tried it in this especial direction.

"This is the most difficult letter I have ever had to write in all my
life; first, because I love you so much; and, secondly, because I am
afraid it is going to hurt you nearly as much as it hurts me. Dear, as
it will be some time before I see you again, and because I cannot
explain everything to you, I am going to ask you to trust me till we
meet again. I am leaving England to-night...."

Micky paused and ran his fingers through his hair agitatedly before he
struggled on once more: "I shall be thinking of you every minute till
we meet again, and of the happy times we have had together. I will
write to you whenever I can...." The pen paused, and Micky groaned,
recalling that Ashton had said he should not write at all.

"It'll have to do, anyway," he muttered, and again the pen flew: "I'm
not much of a hand at writing letters, as you know, but you must try
and read between the lines, and guess at all I would say were we
together ... All I will say to you when we meet again."

That last sentence was rather neat, Micky thought with pride, then a
wave of compunction swept through his heart as he remembered the
tragedy behind it all, and he finished the page soberly enough: "Ever
yours, Raymond Ashton."

"Damn him!" said Micky under his breath, as he blotted the signature;
then he took two ten-pound notes from a drawer in his desk, and,
enclosing them in the envelope, sealed and stamped it.

It was half-past one, but Micky climbed into his coat again. He locked
Ashton's letter into his desk, and, taking the one he had written,
went quietly down to the street.

The world was sleeping and deserted, and Micky's footsteps echoed
hollowly along the pavement.

"You're a fool, you know!" he told himself, with a sort of humour.
"You're a bally fool, my boy! It won't end here, you see if it does."

But he went on to the pillar-box at the street corner.

When he reached it he stood for a moment with the letter in his hand.

"You're a fool," he told himself again hardily. "Micky, my boy, you're
a bally idiot, interfering with what doesn't concern you--with what
doesn't concern you in the very least."

He looked up at the stars and thought of Esther Shepstone, of her eyes
and her wavering smile, and the soft note in her voice as she had
asked him--

"Are you always as kind to every one as you have been to me?"

No concern of his! It was every concern of his; he knew that he was
only living for the hours to pass before he saw her again. No concern
of his! when the greatest miracle of all the world had come to pass
during those last hours of the old year, inasmuch that Micky Mellowes,
heartwhole and a bachelor for thirty odd years, had been bowled over
by a girl without a shilling to her name--a girl who loved another
man, but a girl to whom Micky had without wishing it, without knowing
it, dedicated the rest of his life!

He was her champion for the future, some one to stand between her and
the callousness of the man of whom even now she was probably
thinking.

"No concern of mine!" said Micky to himself with fine scorn. "Why, of
course it is! Every concern of mine."

He squared his shoulders and dropped the envelope into the pillar-box.

And so Micky Mellowes posted his first love-letter.




CHAPTER III


In spite of the events of the night Micky Mellowes slept soundly. It
was half-past nine when he woke, to find his man Driver moving
noiselessly about the room.

When he saw that Micky was awake he approached the bed.

"Good-morning, sir, and a happy New Year."

Driver had an expressionless voice; he announced tea or tragedy in
exactly the same tone.

"Eh?" said Micky vacantly; the words opened the door of memory, and he
sat up with a start. It was New Year's Day, and last night ... ye
gods! what had not happened last night? Micky tingled to the tips of
his fingers as he remembered the letter he had written and posted; he
had expected to feel rotten about it in the light of day; it was an
agreeable surprise to find that he did not feel anything of the kind.

When he went in to breakfast there was a pile of letters waiting for
him; he looked them through carelessly--there was one from Marie
Deland, which he opened with a vague feeling of nervousness.

Marie was a nice little girl; he really was quite fond of her, and yet
... surely the days of miracles had not yet passed away, seeing that
in a few short hours his feeling for her had changed from something
warmer to more brotherly affection.

It made him feel uncomfortable to read what she had written; it was
really only quite an ordinary letter of regret that she had not seen
him last night, but Micky imagined he could read more between the
lines.

"... I quite hoped you would drop in, if only for a few moments," so
she wrote. "It's been so dull. I am writing this alone in the
library."

Micky knew that library well; he and she had spent a good deal of time
there together talking sweet nothings; he wondered if he would have
been an engaged man by this time if that relative of the Delands had
not so conveniently died, and if Esther had not chosen his particular
street in which to weep.

He screwed the letter up and tossed it into the fire; he would answer
it some time, or call; there was no immediate hurry. When he had
finished his breakfast he went to his locked desk and took out
Ashton's letter--somehow until he actually saw it again he could not
quite believe that the events of last night had not all been a dream;
but the letter was real enough, at all events with its callous
beginning to "Dear Lallie."

The morning seemed to drag; twice people rang him up on the 'phone and
asked him to lunch, but Micky was not in the mood for lunch; he felt a
suppressed sort of excitement, as if something of great import were
about to happen.

Driver looked at him woodenly once or twice; his face was as
expressionless as his voice, but his dull eyes saw everything, and
behind them his keen brain wondered what had happened to make Micky so
restless.

Towards one o'clock he ventured a gentle reminder.

"You have an engagement for half-past three, sir--Miss Langdon's."

Micky was yawning over the paper then; he looked up with an absurdly
blank face.

"Oh, I say!--well, I can't go, anyway. What was it for? I'm going
out--I've got an important appointment."

Driver never showed surprise at anything if he felt it.

"It was a musical 'At 'Ome,' sir," he answered stolidly. "Shall I ring
up and say that you won't be able to come?"

"Yes, ring up," said Micky. He coloured self-consciously beneath the
man's stoic eyes and hurriedly buried his head again in the
newspaper.

At three o'clock he changed his clothes for an immaculate morning-coat
and grey trousers; then, remembering what Esther had said about the
very horrid boarding-house, he changed them again for the oldest tweed
suit in his possession, and a pair of brown boots that had seen their
best days and long since been condemned by Driver.

"How in the world do I get to Brixton?" Micky asked the man when he
was ready. "I know I could take a taxicab, but I don't want to. What
other ways are there?"

Driver told him.

"There's the train, sir, or a tram."

Micky jumped at the tramcar. He was sure that people who lived in
Brixton must all use tramcars.

"How long would a tramcar take?" he asked.

Driver considered. Finally he said that he thought it might be the
best part of an hour.

Micky glanced at the clock. It was already a quarter past three. He
took up his hat hurriedly and went out into the street.

A taxicab would have to do for to-day anyway. He could dismiss it at
the corner of the road and walk the last few yards. A moment later he
was being whirled through the streets.

He sat leaning back in the corner with his feet up on the seat
opposite, feeling decidedly nervous.

Supposing he did not see Esther--supposing she were not there?
Supposing she had purposely given him the wrong address? Supposing
... oh, supposing a thousand and one things! Micky was full of
apprehension when at last the taxicab stopped at the corner of the
Brixton Road and the driver came to the door to ask what number.

Micky scrambled out.

"Oh, I'll walk the rest of the way."

He paid the man liberally, and set out along the crowded pathway.
There were so many people about that he thought it must be a market
day or something. A word with a policeman elicited the information
that he was at quite the wrong end of the street for the number he
wanted. Micky was rather glad. He felt that he needed time in which to
collect his thoughts, and yet when at last he reached his destination
he felt as nervous as a kitten and strongly inclined to go back. But
he went on and up the bare strip of garden which led to the front door
of the house. It wasn't such a bad-looking house, he thought. Not
nearly as bad as he had expected from the girl's description. In fact,
once upon a time it must have been rather a palatial residence, but
all the windows now were boxed up with cheap, starchy-looking
curtains, and there was a sort of third-rate atmosphere about the
basement and the cheap knocker on the front door.

Micky looked for a bell, but there wasn't one, so he knocked.

It seemed a long time before anybody came. When at last they did he
heard them coming for a long time before the door was opened, heard
slipshod steps on shiny linoleum, and a husky sort of breathless
cough.

The owner of the cough was young and scared-looking, in shoes several
sizes too large for her, and a skirt several inches too short. When
Micky asked for Miss Shepstone she stared without answering for a
moment, then she turned and slopped back the way she had come, leaving
the door on the chain.

Micky chuckled to himself; she evidently did not like the look of
him.

He waited patiently; then he heard another step along the shiny
linoleumed floor of the hall--a very different step this time--and,
turning eagerly, he saw Esther herself in the doorway.

"I didn't really think you would come," she said breathlessly.

For a moment Micky could not find his tongue. If he had thought this
girl pretty last night with the tears in her eyes he thought her a
thousand times prettier now. She looked as if some magician hand had
wiped the distress from her face and convinced her that the sun still
shone.

She wore the same clothes she had worn last night, but even they
seemed somehow to have changed. There was a bunch of violets pinned in
her jacket. Micky wondered if it were the violets that were
responsible for the alteration.

"When I make an appointment I always keep it," he said.

He had almost added "with any one like you," but thought better of it.
"And are you going to let me take you out to tea?" he asked.

She hesitated; she glanced back into the dingy hall behind her.

"I am leaving here to-day," she said. "My box has gone already. If you
will wait a moment ... I would ask you in, but you'd hate it so."

"I'll wait outside," said Micky.

He went down into the street. For the moment he had quite forgotten
all about Ashton and the letter which must by this time be in Esther's
possession.

"And what about Charlie?" he asked whimsically when she joined him.

She smiled, shaking her head.

"I sent him on--in a basket. Nobody wants him here--he only gets
badgered about all day long; so I'm taking him with me. Do you think I
ought not to?"

"I think Charlie is a most fortunate cat," said Micky.

She did not take him seriously.

"I think he will be happier with me anyway," she said "I'm going to
quite a nice boarding-house now. I went out this morning and found
it." She looked up at him with a smile. "I don't think even you would
mind coming to tea there," she said.

"I thought you were going to say mind coming there to live," Micky
told her audaciously. "I've been looking about for fresh diggings; I'm
tired of mine." He stopped and glanced behind him. "Can we get a
tramcar here?"

"I'm not tired," she said quickly.

"Well, I must admit that I am," Micky answered. He hated walking at
the best of times, and he did not like to suggest another taxicab.
"Let's go on top."

They climbed up and found a front seat; there was a working man next
to them smoking shag in a clay pipe; he looked at Micky and Esther
doubtfully, then asked--

"Does your good lady mind smoke, mister?"

Esther flushed.

"I don't mind at all," she said, laughing.

"You got home all right last night, then?" Micky said presently.
"After you had gone I wished I had seen you safely in...."

"It's kind of you, but I was quite all right." There was a note of
constraint in her voice. "I should like to thank you for what you did
for me last night," she said hesitatingly.

"If it hadn't been for you...." She stopped.

Micky did not know what to say.

"Anyway, it's all right now, eh?" he asked presently, with awkward
cheerfulness. "I thought it would be; when things look so black that
they can't possibly look any blacker, they always begin to mend. I've
found that out before; I don't know if you have."

"I found it out this morning."

Micky looked down at her. She was sitting with her hands clasped
together in her lap; there was a little flush in her cheeks, and her
lips were curved into a faint smile.

"It seems so wonderful too," she went on softly, "that it should have
happened on New Year's Day----"

"Fares, all fares, please," said the conductor beside them. Micky
dived into a pocket and found a shilling.

"Two, please," he said.

He had paid for and shared taxicabs with Marie Deland times without
number, but it had never given him quite the same pleasurable little
thrill as he experienced at this moment.

There was something so pleasantly familiar about this tramcar ride,
the fact of sharing the same uncomfortable seat with Esther
Shepstone.

"Penny ones?" the conductor asked.

Micky looked at the girl.

"Where shall we get off?" he asked.

"Penny ones will do," she said.

Micky took the tickets and pocketed his change.

"I don't know if there are any decent teashops round here," he said
dubiously. "If you would rather go up to the West End...."

But finally they found a confectioner's quite close to where the penny
fare ended.

Micky looked round critically.

"Is this all right?" he asked. "I've never been here before."

"I have, often," she said. She was drawing off her gloves.

Micky glanced hurriedly at her hands; she was wearing a ring. Hardly
knowing that he did so, he leaned across and touched it.

"Is that an engagement ring?" he asked. His voice sounded a little
breathless.

She looked up at him, drawing her hand away.

"Why do you ask me?"

He drew back; he shrugged his shoulders.

"I beg your pardon. I suppose I have no right to ask."

He ordered tea. He talked rather forced platitudes for the rest of the
time. He was just going to call for the bill, when Esther Shepstone
said suddenly--

"Mr. Mellowes, I should like to tell you something."

"Yes!" Micky did not look at her. Somehow he could not trust himself.

"I don't in the least know why I want to tell you," she said again
nervously. "But--you've been so kind to me...."

"Yes!" said Micky gently, as she paused. "Yes, what is it?"

She was twisting her teaspoon, and she kept her eyes lowered.

"Last night, when I met you--I was very unhappy ... There didn't seem
anything to live for in the world.... I don't know if you've ever felt
like that, or if you have ever cared for any one--really cared, I
mean--but if you have...." She stopped again.

"I think I understand," Micky said, with an effort. "You mean that
there's some one, some man...."

She raised her grey eyes to his face.

"Yes, that's what I mean."

"Some man you care for--care for very much," Micky went on slowly.
"Perhaps some one you have quarreled with--who hadn't been quite as
... kind as he might have been----"

The soft colour flooded her face.

"Did you guess--last night?" she asked shyly.

Micky smiled.

"Did I? I am not sure, perhaps." He drew a long breath that was half a
sigh. "Well?" he queried.

"I don't know why I am telling you this----" she said again, with a
sort of distress. "It cannot interest you, but, somehow, I think I
should like you to know."

"It interests me very much--I am honoured that you should tell me."
Micky looked again at the ring she wore; quite a cheap little ring,
with a couple of inferior diamonds. "You mean that you are engaged to
be married?"

"Yes; at least----" The words were only a whisper.

Micky sat very still.

"Well, I suppose you will have me for a friend all the same, won't
you?" he asked with an effort.

She looked at him in faint amazement.

"I thought if I told you that perhaps you'd rather not...." She
stopped in confusion.

Micky leaned a little closer over the table.

"You said last night that you didn't believe in a man's friendship for
a woman," he said. "Well, I am going to make you believe in it. I'm
going to be your friend. The fact that you are engaged makes no
difference to me, if it doesn't to you."

She looked at him earnestly.

"If you mean that," she said, "I think I'm very glad."

"Thank you. I suppose I mustn't ask who the--the lucky man is?"

She shook her head.

"I can't tell you. And he's away now--out of England."

Her voice changed a little, her eyes looked past Micky as if for the
moment she had forgotten him.

Micky watched her jealously.

"And so whatever was wrong last night is all right to-day, is that
it?" he asked with an effort.

"Yes ... somehow I never thought it would be, but this morning----"

"This morning?" he echoed as she stopped.

"I had a letter this morning," she told him, and her voice had
softened so wonderfully that Micky caught his breath. "Oh, I wonder if
you have ever been as unhappy as I was last night, and then had a
letter, a wonderful letter like I had this morning? There was
something in it that seemed to put everything right straight away;
something that I've always wanted before and never had. I can't
explain it any better than that, but perhaps you understand. I'm just
telling you because I feel so happy I must tell somebody, and because
I didn't want you to misjudge him as I did yesterday. I thought he
didn't really care, and I wanted to die, but to-day, when his letter
came----" She broke off into a little happy laugh.

Micky had rammed his clenched hands into his pockets; the blood was
hammering in his temples; his brain felt in a whirl; somehow in all
his wildest imaginings he had never dreamed of this.

It was his letter that had brought that new look of happiness to her
eyes! His letter which perhaps even then lay against her heart; the
first love-letter he had ever written to any woman, and she believed
it to have been written by Raymond Ashton!

He did not realise how long he sat there without speaking till Esther
spoke to him again. There was a little anxious note in her voice.

"I'm afraid I've bored you horribly with all this. I know it's no
interest to you, but I felt that I must tell somebody."

Micky roused himself with an effort.

"It's of great interest to me," he said. "And you mustn't ever say a
thing like that again. We're going to be friends, and real friends are
always interested in everything that concerns the other. I'm more glad
than I can say that you're happy. I only hope it's going to last for
ever."

Perhaps there was a dubious note in his voice, for an anxious gleam
crept into the girl's eyes.

"You sound as if you don't think that it will," she said quickly.

Micky made a hurried disclaimer.

"I do think so, of course I do! You deserve all the happiness you can
get, and whoever the man is, if he doesn't make you happy----"

He stopped, with frowning memory of Ashton and their parting only last
night.

He hoped in his heart that they would never meet again; if they did,
he realised that there would be quite a few nasty things he would feel
called upon to say to him.

The waitress brought the bill at that moment and put an end to further
conversation, for which he was thankful. He realised that he was
getting rather out of his depth. He breathed more freely when they
were safely out in the street.

"And where is the new boarding-house?" he asked presently. He wanted
to change the subject; every moment he was afraid that he would say
something to give himself away. He supposed he had behaved like an
impetuous fool. He ought never to have posted that letter--ought never
to have opened Ashton's; and yet--if he had not done so.... He looked
down at the girl beside him, and wondered grimly how she would have
felt if he had allowed that callous farewell to reach her.

"It's quite close to where we are now," she told him. "It's rather
more expensive than the last one, but it's well worth the extra money,
and"--she glanced up at him smilingly--"I'm better off to-day than I
was yesterday," she explained. "And when I go back to work again----"

"Are you going back, then?" he asked quickly.

"Of course I am. I must do something, and they will take me back at
Eldred's, I know----"

"Eldred's!" Micky frowned. "That's the petticoat shop, isn't it?"

She laughed.

"Yes; how did you know?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I've seen the place lots of times. A girl I know buys all her----" He
stopped. "Do you want to go back there?" he asked.

"Not particularly, but it's easier than looking for a fresh place, and
I know they will take me. I'm in the workroom, and it's not really
such a hard life."

Micky did some rapid thinking; it was surprising how easily his brain
had taken to hard work during the last twenty-four hours.

"Why don't you get a job as a companion to a nice old lady or
somebody?" he suggested vaguely.

She laughed again.

"It doesn't sound a bit attractive," she said frankly. "I think you
need an awful lot of patience. It's very kind of you to be interested,
but I think I shall go back to Eldred's, for a time, at least."

Micky did not like the idea at all, but he let the subject drop.

"Are you going back to the Brixton Road?" he asked after a moment.

"Oh no; I paid them before I left this afternoon, so I shall go
straight to the new place."

"I should like to walk there with you, if I may," said Micky.

"Of course you may."

"And when shall I see you again?" he asked. "You're not going to
vanish for days, are you? I've got no end of time to kill, and----"

"But I haven't," she reminded him. "At least, I shan't have when I
start work. But I should like to see you again," she added kindly.

"Thank you," said Micky with faint sarcasm.

He felt vaguely disappointed with the whole afternoon. She was holding
him so decidedly at arm's length. He supposed it was that infernal
fellow Ashton that stood between them. There was a sort of irony, too,
in the fact that he himself had by his own action established him more
firmly than ever in this girl's affections.

And the fellow was not worth a thought! That was the rotten part of
it. As he looked at her he felt strongly tempted to blurt out the
truth; to tell her that it was he who wrote that letter--to undeceive
her once and for all.

But the thing was manifestly impossible. She would probably think it
an abominable thing to have opened Ashton's letter; she would probably
be furious if he let her know that the money she had received had come
from him. Whichever way he turned he seemed to be in a corner.

They had reached the new boarding-house now, and Micky was relieved to
see that it was a decided improvement on the one in the Brixton Road.

The windows were not boxed up, and the steps and the bell were clean.
It was on the sunny side of the road, too, and had an air of
cheerfulness about it.

"It's much better than the other one, isn't it?" Esther asked.

"Streets better," he assured her. "I shouldn't mind living here
myself...." He waited, but she made no comment, and he felt rather
snubbed.

There was a little silence.

"Don't you like the place where you are living now?" she asked after a
moment. "Don't they make you comfortable there?"

"Oh, it's comfortable enough," said Micky. He wondered if he looked as
guilty as he felt. "But I don't believe in sticking on anywhere too
long. A change is good for every one. I shall be shifting out some day
soon, I expect."

There was a little silence.

"I shall see you again soon," he said. "And if there is anything I can
do for you----"

"Thank you, but there isn't." She spoke quite kindly, but Micky had
the uncomfortable sort of feeling that her thoughts were elsewhere. He
waited a moment, then held out his hand.

"Well, good-bye."

"Good-bye, and thank you for my tea."

She nodded and smiled and turned away from him.

There was nothing else for Micky to do but to go; he raised his hat
and walked off disconsolately.




CHAPTER IV


When Esther went upstairs to her room in No. 11 Elphinstone Road, she
found the door standing open, and she could hear some one talking
inside.

She stood still for a moment in amazement; she thought perhaps she had
made a mistake and come to the wrong room, but a glance reassured her;
the number of her room was 23, and this one was 23; she pushed the
door wider and went in.

Her boxes were there, standing one upon the other, so as to make more
space in the small room, and on the rather shabby rug by the fireplace
a woman was kneeling with her back to the door.

She did not hear Esther enter, and for a moment the girl stood staring
at her in blank amazement. She could not see her face, but she could
see that the woman was small and slightly built, with a wealth of jet
black hair coiled in becoming carelessness with a couple of yellow
pins to fasten it.

She wore a yellow blouse, which Esther would have thought hideous on
any one else, but somehow against that dark coil of hair it looked
decidedly picturesque.

Esther moved a little, deliberately knocking against a chair to
attract attention, and the girl on the hearthrug looked round with a
startled exclamation; then scrambled to her feet.

"I heard there was a cat," she explained. "Lydia told me that he was
shut up here alone, so I just had to come in and see him. I hope you
don't mind. I brought him some milk."

For a moment Esther was too taken aback to answer. She looked from the
little woman in the yellow blouse to Charlie, sprawled on the rug and
purring lustily, and then back again to the little woman.

She was very attractive looking, that was Esther's first thought, and
her next that she had never seen any one with such a beautiful
complexion.

"You're Miss Shepstone, aren't you?" her visitor queried in the
friendliest of tones. "You see, I know quite a lot about you already.
Lydia told me--Lydia's the housemaid--you'll like her; she's a really
nice girl. My name is June Mason--I live here, too, and I hope we will
be great friends."

There was something so breezily disarming about her that Esther held
out her hand.

"You're very kind. I hardly know what to say...."

"Don't say anything," Miss Mason answered airily. "I'm going to like
you; I knew I should somehow when I first heard your name. I believe
in that sort of thing--I don't know if you do, but as soon as Lydia
told me who it was that had taken this room I knew I should like you.
I think your name is sweet--Esther! So quaint and old-world. Have you
had your tea?--yes, oh, what a shame! I've got some ready for you in
my room. Oh, I hope you don't think it's awful cheek," she broke out
with a sort of embarrassment. "I've got a sitting-room here as well as
a bedroom, and I always make my own tea, it's better than you can get
downstairs. I've got a fire there too, and if you're ever cold I hope
you'll come and sit with me. I'm out a good deal but you can always
use my room when I'm not there, if you care to. Take off your hat and
come and see it now, or are you too tired? I don't want to worry
you."

"I'm not a bit tired," Esther said, laughing; she felt a little
bewildered by this sudden offer of friendship, but June Mason
interested her, and after a moment she took off her hat obediently.

"We'll bring the cat too," Miss Mason said; she swooped down with a
quick movement and caught the cat up in her arms. "I love cats," she
said. "What's his name?"

"Charlie," said Esther shyly. "He's very thin, but they weren't kind
to him where he belonged before...."

"What a shame! I simply loathe people who are not kind to animals.
Never mind, he'll soon get all right. Now come along--I'll help you
unpack your boxes presently."

She led the way downstairs, and Esther followed.

She had been feeling a little scared of this new boarding-house. She
felt grateful for this girl's unaffected overture.

"Mine's the best room in the house," Miss Mason informed her. She
pushed open the door of a room immediately below Esther's. "Sit down
and make yourself at home. I'll get the tea in half a minute. I know
you'll have another cup. I shall, anyway. Do you smoke?"

"No," said Esther.

"Well I do. I hope you're not shocked. I find it's so soothing when
you've got nerves; and I'm a frightfully nervy person. I am hardly
ever still; I'm always on the go."

Esther could well believe it. She looked on with a slightly dazed
feeling while June Mason lit a cigarette and bustled about the room.

It was a very comfortable room, with plenty of easy-chairs and lots of
cushions all in the same pale shade of mauve.

"I didn't think there would be any rooms as comfortable as this in the
house," Esther said. "I suppose you pay a great deal for it, though."

"I don't know about that. Most of the furniture is mine and all the
cushions. Do you like my cushions?"

She put down the teapot, which she had been about to fill, and caught
up one of the cushions, plumping its softness together with her white
hands.

"Mauve is my lucky colour," she rattled on. "Everything I do in mauve
turns out well. But perhaps you don't believe in a superstition like
that?"

Esther was rather bewildered.

"I'm not sure. I never thought about it," she said hesitatingly. "But
it's a very pretty colour."

Miss Mason dropped the cushion to the floor, and stooping picked
Charlie up and deposited him on it.

"Doesn't he look sweet?" she demanded. "And a black cat is lucky too,
you know, so that's a comfort."

She went back to the teapot, made the tea, and poured out a cup for
Esther.

"Is that chair comfy?--yes, lean back! What are you looking at? Oh, my
photographs! Yes. I have got a lot, haven't I? Lydia dusts them for
me! Lydia's a treasure! You'll love her. When I get married she's
going to leave here and come with me----"

Esther looked interested.

"Are you going to be married?" she asked.

Miss Mason laughed.

"Am I? No, I'm not. I'm too fond of my independence. Not that I don't
like men. I do like them, and I've got some awfully good pals amongst
them, too. Look!"

She turned with one of her rapid movements, caught up a photograph
from the shelf and handed it to Esther.

"There! that's one of the nicest men I ever met in my life," she said
enthusiastically. "Don't you think he's got a ripping face?"

Esther took the portrait laughingly--she thought June Mason one of the
most amusing people she had ever met--then she caught her breath on a
little smothered exclamation as she found herself looking straight
into the pictured eyes of Micky Mellowes.

June Mason was too occupied with a fresh cigarette to notice the blank
look that filled Esther's eyes.

She sat there in the big chair, staring at Micky's portrait with a
sense of foreboding. Surely it was something bigger than just chance
that had introduced him into her life for the second time.

"He's one of the best," June Mason went on. She dragged forward
another chair and plumped down into it comfortably.

"Don't you admire him?" She opened her eyes wide, looking across at
Esther.

"Yes, oh yes! I think he's quite nice," Esther said stiltedly. "But
not a bit good-looking, do you think?" she asked, with a sort of
hesitation.

Miss Mason took the portrait from her and held it at arm's length.

"Um!" she said critically. "Perhaps he isn't, but I like him so much,
you see, that I'm not a fair judge. He's been a good friend to me, at
all events."

She got up, replaced the frame on the shelf, and plumped back once
more amongst her mauve cushions.

"My people wanted me to marry him at one time," she went on airily. "I
might have done so only I liked him too well. He didn't care for me,
except as a friend, and it seemed a shame to spoil it, so I put my
foot down."

"You mean that you refused him?"

Esther was interested; she was remembering how Micky had told her that
he had never really cared for any woman in all his life.

"He never asked me, my dear," Miss Mason answered candidly. "I let him
see that it wouldn't be any good if he did, and I know he was
frightfully relieved. We were never so nearly in love with one another
as we were when we both knew that we didn't mean to get married." She
chuckled reminiscently. "It finished me with my people, though," she
added, "so I cleared out and came here."

"And--Micky?" Esther asked. "I--I mean Mr. Mellowes...."

Miss Mason looked faintly surprised.

"How did you know his name?" she asked. "Did I tell you? I suppose I
did. Oh, he's all right; he's the kind of man who always will be all
right. He's got another girl on the tapis now. I don't know if it will
come to anything, though. Anyway, she's not good enough for him."

"You seem very fond of him," Esther said.

"I am. He's a dear! I should love to see him happily married to a girl
with a heart of gold like his own. I think I know him better than most
people, and his little corner of the world would be amazed if they
knew the amount of good Micky manages to do."

She had flushed up with her own enthusiasm. Her curious eyes (Esther
could not decide if they were grey, blue, or green, or a mixture of
all three) were very bright and expressive.

"I've heard lots of rotten things said about him," she went on, "and I
know that none of them are really deserved--at least most of them are
not. He isn't a saint--but what man is, I should like to know? But
Micky's the sort who would give his life for a friend or any one
little and weak. Do you know"--she flung away the half-smoked
cigarette and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees--"last
winter, down in the country, I saw Micky go into a dirty pond in
evening dress to rescue a drowning cat. What do you think of that?"

"A--a--cat!" said Esther faintly. She looked at Charlie, and
remembered how Micky had paid for milk for him the night of their
strange meeting.

"A miserable drowning cat!" Miss Mason went on with tragic emphasis.
"He heard it mewing from the road, and he went in after it without
stopping to think. Now, I call a man a hero who will do a thing like
that when he is on his way to a dance he is very keen about, don't
you?"

"Yes," said Esther. Her heart warmed towards Mellowes. Kind as he had
been to her, she had not been quite sure of him; it made her feel
happier to hear him so warmly championed.

"You'll be sick to death of my chatter," June Mason broke out with
sudden change of voice. She helped herself to a third cigarette. "I
hope you don't mind smoke," she apologised. "I'm always at it; I think
I smoke dozens a day----"

"Or throw them away half smoked," Esther thought amusedly. "I don't
mind at all," she answered.

"You haven't told me a thing about yourself," Miss Mason reminded her
reproachfully. "And it's not fair that I should do all the talking. I
know your name, and that's about all. Have you got any people? Where
do you come from?"

Esther flushed a little.

"There isn't much to tell you. I haven't any people. I was born in
India, and my mother died there. I don't know anything about my
father. I was sent home to an aunt, and she looked after me till about
three years ago, when she died. I came to London then, and they took
me on at Eldred's--do you know Eldred's?"

"Do I not?" said Miss Mason fervently. "Scrumptious things they make;
but what prices! I can't afford them very often, but I go in there a
good deal. I know the manager, and he's going to do some business for
me--at least I hope he is. If I can get my stuff into his place it
will be a splendid thing. All London shops there, you know; all London
with any money, that is!"

Esther looked mystified.

"Your stuff!" she echoed. "What do you mean?"

June Mason laughed merrily. She had a very infectious laugh and a
trick of covering her face with her hands while she was laughing.

"I forgot that you didn't know!" she said. "I seem to know you so
well, I can't remember that we never saw one another before to-day. My
dear, I make face cream. Wait a moment."

She sprang up and disappeared behind a mauve curtain into an
adjoining room. Esther heard her moving about, opening and shutting
boxes and singing a snatch of song all the time. Presently she came
back with a tray crowded with little pots and phials of all sizes and
descriptions. She plumped down on her knees beside Esther's chair.

"There you are!" she said lightly, though there was an odd dash of
pride in her voice. "Face cream, night and day cream, eyelash tonic,
and all the rest of it! Of course, I'm only just starting--I'm not
like those people who advertise in all the papers and charge about a
guinea for a shilling jar; but my stuff is as good as theirs any day,
and better, because it's pure. Look!" She took a lid off a little
white pot with a mauve label and held it to Esther.

"Isn't that a glorious perfume?" she demanded. She sniffed it herself
with relish. "And it's all my invention, and I'm as proud of it as a
cat would be of nine tails. When I've got things a little more
ship-shape, Micky's going to put it on the market for me. It wants a
man behind all these sort of things you know. I can do all the donkey
work, but I've got no head for business. I never know the difference
between a loss and a profit. It was partly over this that I quarrelled
with my people--they said it was low-down to make face cream and sell
it--they're awful snobs! So I just cleared off and changed my surname
and came here. I'm quite happy, and if I haven't got as much money as
I had, I don't mind--I've got my liberty, and that's worth every
thing."

"I think you're just wonderful," Esther said. She picked up a lid from
one of the little pots and looked at the mauve and white label.

"June Mason's natural beautifier...."

She looked at the glowing face opposite to her.

"Do you use it for your own skin?" she asked shyly.

Miss Mason chuckled; she pushed the tray to one side along the floor.

"I don't mind telling you that I've never used cream to my skin at
all," she said. "But people think I do, and so there you are! Have
some more tea?"

She refilled Esther's cup and lit another cigarette. "So that's what I
am," she said. "And now go on, and tell me about yourself. You said
you were at Eldred's!"

"Yes, I was there for two years. I rather liked it! I love pretty
things, and I was in the workroom. They paid me quite well, too,
though it was hard work, and then--well, then I left----" her voice
changed subtly.

"Why?"

The query was only interested, and not at all impertinent.

Esther flushed.

"Well--well--I thought I was going to be married. He--well, he asked
me to leave to marry him, and so I did...."

"But you're not married?"

"No----" Esther was looking away into the fire. "No, I'm not married,"
she said in a stifled voice. "He--my fiancé--has had to go away on
business--abroad, and I don't know when I shall see him again."

Her voice sounded sad and dispirited.

"You poor little thing!" said June Mason. She leaned over and laid her
hand on Esther's. "Never mind! The time will soon pass, and then he'll
come back and you'll live happily ever after----"

Esther smiled.

"I know. I keep on telling myself it's foolish to worry. I felt quite
happy this morning. I had a letter from him, and somehow when I read
it things didn't seem half so bad; but----"

"And you'll have another to-morrow, I expect." Miss Mason insisted.
"And another the next day, and one every day while he's away. There!
That's better," she added cheerily as Esther laughed.

"I don't like to see you look so sad. I'm going to cheer you up. I
shan't allow you to be miserable. And anyway," she added, with a
sudden softening, "you've got some one who loves you, and that's worth
everything else in the world."

"Yes," said Esther. Her eyes shone and she thought of the letter which
was even then lying against her heart. Somehow she had never realised
how much he really cared for her till to-day.

"And what are you going to do till he comes home?" Miss Mason asked
interestedly. "If you had something to do you'd find the time pass
ever so much more quickly."

"It's a question of having to do something rather than how to pass the
time," Esther said. "I haven't any money except what I can make. My
aunt left me a little when she died, but it was only a very little,
and I spent most of it at first while I was looking for work. So I'm
going back to Eldred's--if they will have me, and I think they will."

Miss Mason said "Humph!"

"I think you're too good for a petticoat shop," she said bluntly.
"You're wasted there! Nobody sees you, and you're so pretty----"

"Oh, what nonsense!" Esther exclaimed. She laughed in sheer amusement.
To her it seemed absurd for this girl to call her pretty; she
considered June Mason such a personality--so attractive!

She really did make a picturesque figure as she sat there with her
mauve cushions all around her. Her yellow blouse and dark hair and
wonderful rose-leaf skin reminded one of some brilliant portrait
painted by a master-hand.

Esther would have been surprised could she have known the thought in
June's mind at that moment.

"She's just sweet! I don't know when I've seen a face I admire more.
Micky would adore her! She's just the sort of woman he always raves
about. I must ask him to tea to meet her one day."

"There are heaps of other berths going besides Eldred's, you know,"
she said earnestly. "However, you must do as you like, of course." She
threw away another unfinished cigarette. "Do you think we are going to
be friends?" she asked.

"I am sure we are," Esther said. She really did think so; she had
never met any one in the least like June Mason before. She began to
feel glad that she had come to this house. It was much more expensive
than the Brixton Road, certainly, but it was well worth it, even if
only because she had met this quaint little woman.

It was nearly seven o'clock before she thought of going back to her
own room, and then it was only the chiming of a clock on the shelf
that roused her.

"Nearly seven!" She started up in dismay. "I had no idea it was so
late. I am sorry for having stayed so long."

"There's nothing to be sorry for," June declared. "You may go shares
with this room if you like. I'm out so much, it isn't used half the
time. Think it over, will you?"

Esther flushed nervously.

"It's awfully kind of you; I should love to, but I couldn't afford it.
I'm really paying more money now than I ought to. I want to save,
too----"

Miss Mason laughed.

"For the wedding! Lucky girl! I hope you'll ask me to come and see you
married--and I hope he's very nice," she added.

"He is," said Esther eagerly. "And he's very handsome," she added
shyly.

But Miss Mason was not impressed.

"I don't care a fig if a man is handsome or not," she said bluntly.
"If he's just manly and straightforward and kind, that's all I expect
him to be. Now look here--we have dinner at half-past seven in this
establishment. It's only supper really, but we all put on our best
blouses--if we've got any--and call it dinner. I'll call for you on
the way down and we'll go in together. I'll tell Mrs. Elders you are
going to share my table, if you like; it's deadly dull sitting
alone."

"I should like to sit with you very much," Esther said eagerly. "But I
really haven't got a 'best' blouse." She glanced down at the plain
white silk shirt she wore; it had been washed many times, and had lost
its first freshness.

"Come down as you are, then," Miss Mason urged, "and I will too! I
hate changing. This yellow rag is good enough for the old tabbies we
get here."

Esther went half-way down the stairs and came back.

"Charlie--I've forgotten Charlie."

"Charlie can stay where he is till bedtime," June declared. "You can
come up and fetch him then. Hurry, or you'll be late."

Esther went down to her room, feeling more light-hearted than she had
done for a long time.

As she unpacked her boxes and tidied her hair she could hear June
Mason moving about upstairs, singing cheerily.

"I'm going to like her--I'm going to like her awfully," she told
herself. She hurried to be ready in time, but the rather unmelodious
dinner-bell had clanged through the house twice before June came to
the door.

"You've unpacked, then?" she said. She looked round the small room
approvingly. "I can see you're one of the tidy ones," she said. "I'm
not; I wish I were. However, we can't all be the same. Are you
ready?"

She took Esther's arm and they went downstairs together.

"Every one knows you're coming," June said as they neared the
dining-room. "Every one always knows everything that goes on here.
Don't take any notice if they stare a lot; they must stare at
something, poor darlings. I'll tell you who they all are and all about
them."

The dining-room was a long, narrow sort of room that looked as if it
once had been two rooms recently thrown into one; the floor was
covered with slippery green linoleum, and there was a long table
running almost the length of the room, with a few smaller ones on
either side.

A grey-haired woman with pebble glasses stood at the head of the long
table; Esther recognised her as the proprietress, Mrs. Elders.

She said good-evening to Esther and stared frigidly at June, as if she
did not like to see the two girls together. She did not approve of the
little face cream lady, though she was careful never to say so, as
June was one of her best paying propositions.

Esther was glad when they reached their own table; glad, too, that she
was more or less out of the way of curious glances.

The dinner was plain, but infinitely superior to the fare she had had
to put up with in the Brixton Road.

"Do you have all your meals here?" she asked June presently.

"No--only breakfast and supper--and not always supper. I go out with
friends sometimes. Every one hasn't given me up just because my family
have. But the food is quite good here. They're rather too fond of rice
and stewed apples; but it might be worse. Turn round presently and
look at the man behind you with the grey hair. Isn't he handsome? We
call him the colonel, though I don't believe he's a colonel at all.
He's a dear, but he always complains about everything. I know he gives
notice regularly on Saturday morning and takes it back again on
Saturday night. Mrs. Elders would think he wasn't well if he missed
giving her notice."

She laughed, and turning in her chair spoke to a young man who was
sitting alone at one of the smaller tables behind her.

"Is your cough better?" she asked. "I'm going to give you some special
stuff to-night for it. No, it isn't at all nasty." She turned back to
Esther. "May I introduce Mr. Harley--he's the most interesting person
in the whole house. He writes stories and things, Mr. Harley, this is
Miss Shepstone--a great friend of mine."

Harley bowed. He was pale, delicate-looking young man with fine dark
eyes.

"You never told me that you knew Miss Shepstone," he said to June.

"I didn't know her till this afternoon," she answered promptly; "but I
make friends quickly, as you know."

"You'll like Harley," she told Esther presently in an undertone. "He's
very clever, but so delicate, poor boy! He ought to live in the
country instead of in London. He's the sort of person I should love to
help if I were rich."

"It must be wonderful to be rich," Esther said. There was a little
flush in her cheeks; she was really enjoying herself. "It's the dream
of my life to have enough money to be able to do anything I like," she
added earnestly. "Just for a month! If I could be really rich just for
one month I wouldn't mind going back to being poor again."

Miss Mason said "Rubbish!" briskly. "Money can't buy happiness, my
dear, and don't you forget it. My people think it can, and lots of
other people think the same. It only shows what fools they are. It was
the money my people couldn't get over when I declined to marry Micky
Mellowes...." She made a little wry face. "I remember my mother coming
into my room one night in her dressing-gown--poor soul!--when she
heard I'd told Micky there was nothing doing, and saying tragically:
'June, you must be mad--stark, staring mad! Why, the man's as rich as
Croesus!'"

"Rich!" Esther was conscious of an odd little sinking at her heart.
"Is Mr. Mellowes rich, then?" she asked constrainedly.

Miss Mason was helping herself to a pat of butter. She held it poised
for a moment on the end of her knife while she answered--

"Rich? I should think he is! He's one of the richest men in London."

"One of the richest men in London!--but he----" Esther had been going
to add "But he told me that he was poor;" she only just checked the
words in time.

June nodded.

"He's the despair of all the match-making mammas," she said lightly.
"Over thirty, he is, and still a bachelor! I'm not sure if he isn't on
the verge of being caught now, but you never can tell! With a little
luck he may escape--she isn't good enough for him, anyway. Have you
finished? I'm dying for a cigarette, and we aren't allowed to smoke
here. Come up to my room and I'll make you some coffee; the stuff they
give us here isn't fit to drink."

She pushed back her chair and rose, and Esther followed.

She kept her eyes down as she walked the length of the room; the
colour rose in her cheeks as she realised how every one was staring at
her. The colonel, whom June had declared was not a colonel at all,
rose and held the door open for them to pass out.

June chuckled as they went upstairs.

"You've made an impression, my dear! It isn't often he does that for
any one." She slipped an arm through Esther's. "Why are you frowning
so? Have I said anything to annoy you?"

Esther laughed.

"Of course not. I was only thinking.... Do you--do your friends ever
come here to see you?"

She was thinking of Micky Mellowes, and wondering if he ever came to
the boarding-house, and if so, why he had not told her that he knew
somebody living here. After all, if he had deceived her in one
instance he would do so in many others--she felt a curious sense of
hurt pride; why had he gone out of his way to tell her he was a poor
man, when all the time----?

"To tell you the truth," June said frankly, "none of my friends know
where I am living. Call it false pride if you like, but there you are.
I have all my letters, except business ones, sent to my club--I belong
to an unpretentious club--I'll take you there some day--and not even
Micky knows that I live here. You see, when I flew in the face of
providence, otherwise my noble family, they stopped my allowance, so
as I'm entirely self-supporting, I had to be careful and live
inexpensively, so I came here. And I'm very comfortable. If I want to
meet any of my friends we meet out somewhere. I think it's better; it
leaves me quite free...."

They were back in her room again now, and Charlie had looked up with
one eye from his mauve cushion, and purred, by way of a greeting.

June lit a cigarette and rushed about in pursuit of the coffee-pot.
All her movements were quick. She seemed to breathe life and energy.

Esther walked over to the fireplace, and found herself looking at
Micky's photograph.

After all, he was just like all the other men she had ever known;
apparently none of them could be simple and sincere; she supposed it
had been his way of condescending to her, to pretend that he was poor
and in similar circumstances to herself; perhaps he had guessed that
she would never have allowed him to pay for her supper or tea, or have
talked to her as he had done, if she had known him to be a rich man.

She need never see him again, that was one thing; her heart hardened
as she met the frankness of his pictured eyes; he was not as honest as
he looked.

She had mistaken condescension for kindness. She bit her lip with
mortification as she recalled the confidence she had made to him only
that afternoon. He was probably laughing at it now, and no doubt would
repeat all she had said to his friends as a good joke.

She went to her own room as soon as she had had the coffee. She made
the excuse that she was tired, but when she went upstairs she sat down
on the side of the bed and made no effort to undress. A sort of shadow
seemed to have fallen on her spirits. She felt mortified that Micky
should so deliberately have lied to her; her cheeks burned as she
thought of the despair she had been in last night when she met him.
She hoped she would never see him again.

She looked round the little room with angry eyes. If only Fate had set
her feet in sunnier paths. She looked at the plain furniture and cheap
carpet; the wallpaper was hideous; there was a frightful oleograph of
two Early Victorian women with crinolines and ringlet curls hanging
over the mantlepiece. They both looked smug and self-satisfied. There
was an enlarged photograph of a bald-headed man wearing a Masonic
apron on another wall. He was fat and had his right hand plastered
carefully along a chair-back to bring into prominence a large signet
ring. Esther looked at him and shivered. She felt utterly alone and
cut off from the world. She longed for Raymond Ashton with all her
soul. She hated Micky Mellowes because his kindly condescension had
made her feel her position more acutely now she knew him to be what he
was.

In spite of the new friend she had made in June Mason she felt lonely
and unwanted; she began to cry like a child, as she sat there on the
side of the iron bedstead; the tears ran down her cheeks and she made
no effort to wipe them away.

She wanted to be happy so badly, and it seemed as if she never was to
be happy. The elation that had come to her when she read Micky's
letter that morning had faded miserably; after all, what was a letter
when it was a real, living personality she wanted, and not mere
words?

Downstairs she could hear June Mason moving about and singing; she at
least was happy with her little mauve pots and her cheery optimism.

Esther cried all the time she undressed; she crept into bed sobbing
miserably, like a child who sleeps at a boarding-school for the first
time.




CHAPTER V


Micky passed three days before he made any attempt to see Esther
Shepstone again; days that seemed like a month at least, and during
which he lost his appetite and forgot to smoke.

That she did not particularly care if she saw him again or not, he was
miserably sure. She had no thoughts for any one but Ashton. He felt as
if he could not settle to anything. On the third morning Marie Deland
rang him up. He had told her many times that her voice on the
telephone cheered him, but to-day it made him frown.

He tried to answer her cheery "That you, Micky?" as cheerily, but he
knew it was a failure.

"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Aren't you well? Or are you
cross?"

There was a hint of laughter in her voice. She had never known Micky
cross; he was always the cheeriest of mortals.

Micky grabbed at the excuse she offered him.

"I've got a brute of a headache," he said.

"Poor old boy!" The pretty, sympathetic voice irritated him. "Come out
for a walk; it will do you good."

"Thanks--thanks awfully, but I don't think it would. I'm a perfect
bear--you'd hate me. Some other time."

There was a little pause. Micky could have kicked himself as he
remembered on what terms they had parted. It was not her fault that a
miracle had happened since then to metamorphose the whole world. He
supposed uncomfortably that she was just the same as she had been when
he last saw her. He knew she must be wondering why he had stayed away
so long. He tried to soften his words.

"I'll look in to-night, if I may. Sorry to be such a bear."

She answered rather dispiritedly that it was all right, that she was
sorry he felt ill. It was a relief when she rang off. He took his hat
and went off to call on Esther.

He felt that he could settle to nothing till he had seen her again;
there was a curious jealousy in his heart about Ashton; he would have
given anything he possessed to be able to disillusion her, but knew it
was impossible without hopelessly compromising himself.

It was a bitter disappointment to find that she was out when he
reached the boarding-house; his face fell absurdly when he turned and
walked away.

He wondered if she really was out, or only out to him.

After a moment he laughed at himself. A few days ago he had not known
there was such a person as Esther Shepstone in the world, and yet now
here he was, consumed with jealousy because she was not in when he
called.

He took a taxicab back to the West End; he walked about for half an
hour staring aimlessly into shop windows, then went back to his rooms.
He could not understand his extraordinary restlessness; he had only
once before felt anything like it in all his life, and that had been
the first time he ever backed a horse, and was waiting a wire from the
course to say if the brute had won.

He recalled the fever of impatience that had consumed him then, and
laughed; after all, it had been nothing compared with this.

Driver came into the room.

"If you please, sir, Miss Mason has been on the 'phone. She said would
I ask you to meet her for tea."

Micky did not look enthusiastic; he liked June awfully, but to-day
every one and everything seemed a bore.

"Tea! Where?" he asked vaguely.

"Miss Mason said that you would know, sir; the same place as usual."

"Oh, all right!"

Micky looked at the clock and sighed. After all, June was always
amusing; he went off almost cheerfully to the unpretentious club of
which she had spoken to Esther. He had to wait in the lobby while a
boy in buttons fetched June to him. She came downstairs looking very
much at home, and smoking the inevitable cigarette. It was one of June
Mason's charms that she always managed to look at home wherever she
was.

She had taken off her coat, but she wore a green hat with a gold
ornament that suited her to perfection, set on her dark head at rakish
angle.

"I began to think you were not coming," she said.

She gave him her left hand, and Micky squeezed it in friendly fashion.
They went upstairs together to a small tea-room, which was just now
deserted save for two waitresses who were giggling together over a
newspaper.

June walked over to a table in the window, and Micky followed.

He had been here with her scores of times before, and the two
waitresses smiled at one another knowingly; they were quite sure that
this was romance.

Micky was sitting with an elbow on the table, absently smoothing the
back of his head; he was wishing it was Esther sitting opposite to
him; he looked up with a little start when June spoke to him.

"What's up, Micky? I've never seen you looking so depressed."

He roused himself with an effort.

"Oh, nothing, nothing! It's the beastly weather, I expect."

She looked at him quizzically with her queer eyes.

"I shouldn't have thought the weather would depress you," she said.
"However, if you say it does----"

He shook himself together.

"I'm not depressed any longer," he declared. "Well, and how are you?
And how is the swindle?" It was Micky's pet joke to call June's
invention the "swindle," though in his heart he was almost as proud of
it as she was.

She laughed.

"It's very well, thank you; but that isn't what I want to talk to you
about to-day. Micky, would you like to come to tea with me one
afternoon?"

Micky stared.

"Tea! Haven't I come to tea with you to-day?"

"Silly! I don't mean here; I mean where I live. It's a boarding-house.
I dare say you'll hate it, but it's really quite a nice place, and
beggars can't be choosers, anyway. I've got a very comfortable
sitting-room and most of my own furniture, and I can give you a good
cup of tea, or anything else, if you prefer it."

"I shall be delighted," Micky looked puzzled. "But isn't this rather a
breaking of rules? It's not so very long ago that you made me swear
never to try and find out where you lived. I thought it was all to be
a deadly secret."

"So it was, but I've decided to admit you. I know you're safe, and,
Micky, wouldn't you like to meet the dearest, prettiest, most
attractive little girl...."

Micky moved his chair back in mock alarm.

"June! You're not turning match-maker! If you are, I give you fair
warning that our friendship will have to end once and for ever. I'll
put up with a lot from you, but not this--not...."

"Don't be an idiot!" said June calmly. "There isn't the slightest
fear! And anyway----" she added, with a half sigh, "she's engaged, so
it wouldn't be any good. But I want you to help her.... Oh, I know I'm
always bringing you foundlings to help and look after, but you've got
such a big heart--and such a big banking account," she added
audaciously.

"Well, go on----" he said resignedly. "Who is the foundling this time,
and what am I to do?"

Micky laughed.

"She's a darling," June said warmly. "I've only known her for four
days--she lives in the same house. I took a fancy to her from the
first moment I saw her. No, it was before that--it was when I first
heard her name...."

Micky raised his brows.

"What a creature of impulse! My dear, you'll burn your fingers badly
some day."

"And when I do," said Miss Mason sharply, "I shan't come crying to you
for sympathy; however ... Well, she's poor! she's one of those
horribly poor, frightfully proud people whom it's impossible to help.
I've tried all ways! I asked her to go shares with my sitting-room,
and she said she couldn't afford it; she'll hardly let me give her a
cup of tea or coffee for fear I should think she is sponging on me.
She seems most frightfully alone in the world. She says she engaged to
a man, but he's abroad, and I'm sure he's not nice, anyway. He's only
written to her once since I've known her, at all events, and this
morning when there wasn't a letter, I know she went back to her room
and cried. I knocked at the door, but she wouldn't let me in."

She paused, and looked at Micky for sympathy.

He half smiled; he knew how enthusiastic June always was about
everything.

"Well, and what do you want me to do for this damsel in distress?" he
asked gently.

"I want you to get her a berth somewhere," he was told promptly. "No,
it's no use saying you can't! My dear man, you must know scores of
people who'd take her in. She thought she was fixed up all right, but
now it appears that the people she was with before haven't got a
vacancy for her, and so that's knocked on the head. She told me that
she's have to just take the first thing that came along. I don't
believe she's hardly got a shilling to her name. I offered to take her
into partnership with me. I said we'd go travelling together for my
beauty cream, but she wouldn't hear of it.... She's so proud!"--and
here a sound of tears crept into June Mason's voice. "I ask you,
Micky, what can be done with any one like that?"

Micky shrugged his shoulders.

"If she'll take anything that comes along, she ought to get a job
pretty soon," he said laconically. "I'll speak to a man I know--can
she write a decent hand and all that sort of thing?"

"Of course she can! But I want a good berth, mind you! I've never been
so fond of anybody as I am of her. She's awfully worried about this
horrid man she's engaged to. She doesn't say much about him, but this
morning she said that there didn't seem to be anything to live for,
and her eyes looked so sad...."

Micky smiled at her serious face.

"You'd make an eloquent appeal in a court of law," he said. He took a
pencil from his pocket and an envelope. "Give me her name and address,
and I'll see what I can do. I don't promise anything, mind you, but
I'll do what I can...."

"You're a dear," said June warmly. "I know you were the one to come
to. I'm quite sure when you've seen Esther you'll ... why, what's the
matter, Micky?"

Micky had looked up sharply. His face had paled a little.

"What name did you say?" he asked. He never knew how he managed to
control his voice. His heart seemed to be thumping in his throat.
"What name did you say?" he asked again, with an effort. "I did not
catch it----"

"It's Esther," said June, "Esther Shepstone."




CHAPTER VI


Micky's pencil jerked suddenly, sending an aimless scrawl across the
paper; for an instant he stared at his companion with blank eyes.
Fortunately June Mason was too intent on the relighting of her
cigarette to have any attention to spare for him; she went on talking
as she puffed.

"Yes...."--puff--"that's her name...." Another puff. "Isn't it a
change from your eternal Violets and Dorothys?"... Puff, puff. "Oh,
bother!" She threw the cigarette into an empty grate behind her and
prepared to give Micky her undivided attention once more. "Well, what
do you think about it? You haven't written her name down. Esther
Shepstone, I said.... Write it down," she commanded.

Micky obeyed at once. He was beginning to recover himself a little.

"I shall be able to help her all right," he said quickly. "Only, of
course, you won't let her know I'm mixed up in it at all; she'd hate
it if she knew, she...."

"How do you know she would?" June demanded with suspicion.

Micky met her eyes squarely.

"Well, you said she was proud or something, didn't you? And anyway I
don't want to pose as a blessed philanthropist; I'm not one either,
but I'll see what I can do for--for this new friend of yours. You say
she's poor?"

"Horribly poor, I'm afraid," said June with a sigh. "Micky, it's
rather pathetic--somebody sent her some money--not very much, but
still, it was money she evidently didn't expect. I've got a sort of
idea that it was from this man she's supposed to be engaged to----"

"Why do you say 'supposed'--she is engaged to him, isn't she?"

June shrugged her shoulders.

"She says so, and she wears a ring, but I've a sort of instinctive
feeling that there's something funny behind it. Anyway, I know she's
not happy; but don't interrupt. About this money--well, it was partly
my fault! I persuaded her to go and buy herself some clothes--she had
such a few things, poor child! And I even went with her and she bought
a frock and a new coat...."

"Yes," said Micky eagerly; he was glad she had bought a new coat; he
remembered how thin hers had been on that memorable night, and how she
had shivered in the cold night air.

"She was as pleased as a child with a new toy," Miss Mason went on.
"She brought them all up to my room to show me when they came home,
and we both tried them on ... and you've no idea how sweet she
looked," she added with enthusiasm. "Of course, I suppose this is
boring you horribly," she said deprecatingly.

"No," said Micky honestly. "It's not boring me at all, I promise
you."

"Well, anyway, she got the clothes, and now the place where she was
before say they can't take her back--it's Eldred's, the petticoat
shop. I don't suppose you know it, but----"

"I know it very well," said Micky.

"Oh, do you?" She laughed. "Well, they either won't or can't take her
back, and now she feels that she ought not to have spent the money on
the new frock and coat, and this morning she told me that she was
afraid she would have to leave Elphinstone Road, as it was more than
she could afford." June's eyes flashed. "Micky, what can one do with
people who are poor and proud? It's a most difficult combination to
fight. I blundered in and offended her by offering to lend her some
money, and, of course, she wouldn't hear of it, and there you are!"

She sighed, and leaned back in her chair despondently.

"Have a cake," said Micky absently; he pushed the plate across to her.
"The ones with the white sugar are nice."

Miss Mason ignored him.

"If that's all the interest you take----" she said offendedly.

Micky started.

"My dear girl, I'm full of interest--chock full to the brim! But we
came here for tea, so we may as well eat something while I try to
think of a plan." He wrinkled his forehead. "Of course," he
ejaculated, "that chap--what did you say his name was?"

"What chap? Oh, the fiancé! I don't know; she hasn't even let me see
his photograph yet; but she says he writes dreams of letters. I
haven't seen them either, of course."

"He may send her some more money. After all, you say it's only four
days since she heard from him. That's not very long; men are always
rotten letter writers."

Miss Mason looked wise.

"Four days is a long time when you're in love," she said. "If you were
engaged to Esther Shepstone I'll bet you'd write to her every day.
You're just the kind. Oh, I know what you're going to say--that you're
cut out for a bachelor, and rubbish like that, but you wait and see,
Micky--it's never too late."

"I've never written a love-letter in my life," Micky declared
indignantly. "And, anyway----"

June leaned across the table and looked at him with accusing eyes.

"Never? On your word of honour, Micky?"

Micky laughed and coloured.

"Well, perhaps--once!" he admitted. "But that's beside the point,
isn't it?... I'll think things over and write to you."

"Yes, but soon, Micky, soon! It's not a case where you can sit down
with your feet on the mantelpiece and give yourself a week to turn
things over in your mind. I want to know at once, to-morrow--to-night,
if possible. I know what Esther is--she'll be gone before I can turn
round, and I should hate her to go. I haven't got many friends, and I
do feel that she and I are going to be real friends--great friends ...
I don't know when I've taken such a fancy to anybody----"

"You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that," said Micky. His
eyes were shining. Then he realised that he had displayed rather
unnecessary warmth and hastened to amend his words. "I always said
that what you wanted was a real woman friend," he added more quietly.

June was drawing on her gloves; she had very white hands and
beautifully-kept finger-nails, and she was very proud of them.

"Never mind me," she said briskly. "You bustle about and find a post
for Esther, and I'll love you for ever. Are we ready?"

She rose and gathered up her various belongings. Micky declared that
she was always laden with small, oddly-shaped parcels.

"Samples, my dear man, samples!" she said briskly when Micky asked if
he might not be allowed to carry some. "And they're much too precious
to risk you dropping any."

"There's just one stipulation," Micky said as he followed her
downstairs again. "You're not to tell Miss Shepstone anything about
me--I'm going to be very strict on this subject. Will you promise?"

"Bless your heart, yes--and if you come to tea one day----"

"Oh, I don't think I'll come to tea," Micky said hastily. "I should
only feel rotten--self-conscious and all the rest of it, even if I was
quite sure she didn't know anything--not that there's anything to know
yet," he added quickly. "I may not be able to help her."

Miss Mason laughed.

"Oh, you'll help her right enough," she said breezily. "I know you."

She dismissed him when they reached the street. "No, I don't want you
to come with me; I've got some business to see to and you'd only be a
nuisance." She gave his hand a squeeze. "Good-bye, and thanks ever so
much Micky. You'll write to me--or wire?"

"As soon as there is anything to report."

He raised his hat and turned away, and June dived across the road,
perilously near to a motor-omnibus, clutching her samples jealously to
her heart.

"It'll be all right now," she told herself, with a sense of comfort.
"Everything's always all right as soon as Micky gets hold of it."

A soliloquy which made it seem all the more curious that she should
have hesitated to trust herself to him for life. Perhaps, as she had
told Esther, she cared too much for him to take the risk for them
both. He had told her candidly that he did not care for her as a man
should care for the woman he marries.

"And he makes a ripping friend! Ripping!" she told herself as she
scurried along to interview another beauty specialist about the
"swindle," as Micky politely called it.




CHAPTER VII


Micky went straight home when he left June. What he had heard about
Esther had disturbed him very much. He loathed to think that she was
unhappy.

The question was, how best to help her, and quickly. He was thankful
she had made a friend of June. June was one of the best, the loyalest
pal a man could ever have.

But, as June had said, Esther was too proud to take help unless it was
most tactfully offered. He racked his brains in vain. It was a
sickening thought that, with all his wealth, he could give her
nothing. Even the few paltry pounds she had unconsciously taken from
him would have been indignantly rejected had she known who was the
donor.

With sudden impulse he sat down and wrote to her. After all, she had
accepted his friendship; there was no reason on earth why he should
not write and ask to be allowed to see her again. He wrote most
carefully lest she should discover some likeness to the letter he had
written to replace Ashton's.

Might he take her out to dinner one night? Any night would suit him.
And did she like theatres? He had a friend who sometimes gave him a
couple of seats for a show. He would arrange for any night she liked
to mention.

He thought that was a neat stroke of diplomacy--of course, she would
not think he could afford to buy seats, and anyway it was true that he
had a friend who often gave him boxes and things--he would have to be
careful that Phillips did not send along a box this time though.

He ended up by hoping formally that she and Charlie were quite well
and comfortably settled into their new home, and he signed himself:
"Yours very sincerely, Micky Mellowes."

When he had finished the letter, he realised that he had written it on
his own heavily embossed writing paper, so he had to dig Driver up and
borrow a cheap sheet of unstamped grey paper and write it all out
again. Then he went out and posted it himself.

As soon as it had gone he wished he had sent it by hand; it meant such
a deuce of a time to wait for a reply; he calculated that he could not
possibly hear before to-morrow night.

But in this he was pleasantly disappointed, for his own letter reached
the boarding-house in Elphinstone Road that night, and Esther's reply
was waiting for him with the kidney and bacon in the morning.

Micky's heart began to thump when he saw the letter beside his plate;
he had never seen Esther's handwriting, but he knew by instinct that
it was hers. He scanned the first lines eagerly, and his face fell.

  "DEAR MR. MELLOWES,--Thank you for your letter. I am sorry, but I
  cannot come out with you, either to dinner or to a theatre.--

                                Yours very truly, ESTHER SHEPSTONE."

Micky's face was pathetic in its disappointment. He read the few curt
lines through again and again, vainly trying to find something more
behind the unmistakable refusal, but there it was in all its bald
decision.

She did not want to go out with him any more; she did not care if she
saw him again or not.

Micky left his breakfast, he no longer had any appetite. He had never
had such a snub in all his life--out of his disappointment anger was
rising steadily; she had no right to snub him like that without a
reason.

Driver, coming into the room at that moment, saw the untouched
breakfast and halted midway between door and table to stare at his
master.

Micky stood with his hands deep thrust into his pockets, glowering
into the fire. Driver advanced a step.

"Beg pardon, sir--but wasn't you well?" he asked stoically.

Micky began to swear, then his mood changed and he laughed.

"Yes, I'm all right----" He hesitated. "Driver, would you like to go
to Paris?"

Driver raised wooden eyes.

"Anywhere you wish, sir," he answered, in his usual expressionless
voice. "When were you thinking of starting, sir?"

"I'm not thinking of starting at all," said Micky. "I want you to
go--alone! You've been often enough now not to get lost. Do you think
you can manage it?"

"Yes, sir, if you think you can manage without me here."

There was the faintest touch of amazement in the man's even voice; he
knew how helpless Micky was, or pretended to be--knew how he hated
being left to do for himself.

But Micky only laughed.

"Oh, I can manage all right. I shall probably go away somewhere myself
for a few days. Besides, you won't be gone long----" He paused.

"No, sir," said Driver.

Micky was leaning against the mantelshelf; his eyes were all crinkled
up into a laugh as if he had heard some excellent joke which he was
about to repeat.

"No, you won't be gone long," he said again. "A couple of days, I
should think. You can put up at the hotel we stayed at last time;
they'll look after you, and the manager speaks English."

"Yes, sir----" Driver hesitated. "And--what were you wanting me to do
when I get there, sir?" he asked, after a moment.

Micky clung to his joke for an instant longer, then suddenly he let it
go.

"I want you to post a letter for me," he said.

Driver was too well trained to show amazement at Micky's instructions,
but just for a fractional second he forgot to answer with his usual
"Yes, sir," and stood immovable. Then he recovered himself, and said
it twice with hurried apology.

"And am I to go at once, sir?"

"To-morrow morning will do," Micky said. "You can go by the first boat
train." He looked at the man anxiously. He had a sort of uncomfortable
feeling that Driver must be thinking he was not quite right in the
head. After a moment he dismissed him.

Then Micky went over to his desk and rummaged amongst the many papers
and letters there till he found a sheet of paper embossed with the
name of an hotel in Paris. It had not been used, and Micky heaved a
sigh of relief.

He went to bed late that night. He forgot all about his promise to go
round to the Delands. He spent the time writing letters and tearing
them up again till the wastepaper basket was full; then he carried it
over to the fireplace and burnt every scrap of paper it contained.

There were two finished letters lying on his desk. One was sealed and
addressed, but not stamped, and the other was written on a sheet of
Driver's plain notepaper, which Micky folded and unfolded with a sort
of nervous dissatisfaction.

Its contents were not very long, but they had taken a good deal of
composing.

  "DEAR MISS SHEPSTONE,--I received your note in reply to my letter
  and cannot help saying that I feel very hurt at your decided
  refusal to allow me to take you out. I thought we were to be
  friends? Have I been so unfortunate as to offend you? If so, I can
  only assure you that it has been utterly unintentional. Won't you
  let me see you, if only for a moment? I will meet you at any time
  or place.--                          Yours sincerely, MICKEY
  MELLOWES."


He gave a dissatisfied growl as he finished reading it. Not a very
eloquent epistle. There was so much more which he wanted to say, but
did not dare to. He folded it again and thrust it into an envelope;
then he addressed it and laid it beside that other on his desk,
comparing the two handwritings with complacence.

Not in the least alike! Nobody would ever suspect that they had been
written by the same person.

He rang for Driver and gave him the unstamped envelope. "This is what
I want you to post in Paris. Mind you put enough stamps on. You'd
better have it weighed."

"Yes, sir." Driver looked at the other letter. "And--is that for the
post too, sir?"

Micky put his hand behind him with a guilty gesture.

"No; I'll post that myself," he said, and he went out then and there
into the cold night and did so.

As it dropped into the letter-box Micky looked up at the stars and
sighed.

What the dickens could he have done to make her so distant? At any
rate he would let her see that he was not to be so easily snubbed. If
she didn't answer his letter he would go boldly round to Elphinstone
Road, and stay there till he saw her.

He was half way to bed before he remembered that he had promised to go
to the Delands that evening. He stopped short with his necktie half
undone and swore.

What the deuce would they think of him?

Well, he would have to plead that headache still, that was all, and if
Marie chose to cut up rough.... Micky felt mean because he rather
hoped that she would. He knew that he wanted their friendship to
cease, but, man-like, he did not altogether like having to take the
initiative. Marie was a nice little girl, and if it hadn't been for
that relative of hers dying on New Year's Eve--well, he would probably
have been engaged to her by this time.

He went to bed feeling miserable.

Driver had just left the house to catch the boat train the following
morning when June Mason rang Micky up.

"Any news for me?" she demanded. "I hate worrying you so soon, but
Esther's given notice. She's told Mrs. Elders that she can't afford to
stay on. I nearly shook her this morning. I asked her to let me help
her for the time being. I even said that I would take five per cent.
interest on the hateful money if she was so abominably proud, and she
laughed! She cried the next minute and said I was much too kind to
her, but she wouldn't listen. What have you done?"

"Everything," said Micky promptly. "In a couple of days--"

"My good man, that's much too long to wait."

"It's the best I can do," said Micky rather shortly. "And you'll find
it's a good best if you'll be patient."

He heard the sigh she gave.

"Honest Injun!" he said seriously.

"Oh, very well. If you let me down, Micky----"

"You won't be let down," Micky said.

June went back to Elphinstone Road with a heavy heart.

She was very thorough in her friendships, and it really seemed a
terrible thing to her that Esther would not accept help.

She felt so genuinely fond of the girl herself that she could not
understand the feeling of affection and confidence not being
reciprocated; she went up to her room and tucked herself into the big
armchair amongst the mauve cushions and smoked innumerable cigarettes.
Charlie was asleep by the fire; he found his way upstairs now without
invitation; he was beginning to get quite respectable-looking; he had
lost his wild, scared look, and even his purr had taken on a sleekier,
smoother sound.

June stared at him for some time, then suddenly she got up and went
downstairs.

She knocked at Esther's door, but there was no answer, and she went
back to her own room dejectedly.

If only Esther were not so proud they might have such good times
together! If only Esther had a little money and could go shares with
this room; but what was the good of wishing? She hurled one of the
mauve cushions across the room, and after that she felt better.

She went down to lunch because she hoped Esther would be there, but
she was not. The long room was rather empty, and June ate her cold
meat and pudding hurriedly and went back upstairs.

It was getting dusk when she heard Esther come in; she waited eagerly,
but the footsteps did not come on to her door. June threw another
cushion across the room to keep the other company; it was her chief
vent for anger or irritation.

"Confounded pride," she said under her breath. She paced up and down
for some minutes, then she caught Charlie up from his cushion and went
downstairs to Esther's room with him in her arms.

Her knock was answered immediately and Esther stood there in the
doorway.

June spoke without looking at her.

"I've brought Charlie down--I thought if he stayed up in my room any
longer you'd be wanting to pay me for his board and lodging."

She thrust the cat into Esther's arms and turned away.

She was feeling very sore; hers was such a generous nature that she
could not understand why Esther could not see how glad she would have
been to help her; she went back to her own room and slammed the door.

A moment later she was sorry for what she had done; twice she went
half way down the stairs to apologise, then came back again.

"Do her good," she told herself snappishly. "I've no patience with
such silly pride, and as for you, my boy," she stopped and shook her
fist at Micky's photograph, "if you don't buck up and find her
something...."

The two days dragged away. June purposely avoided Esther; she never
went into the dining-room to meals, and Esther never came upstairs to
June's room; there was a kind of armed neutrality between them.

Charlie, too, seemed to have been told to keep away, and June missed
his lusty purr in the silent room.

She shed a few tears into the mauve cushions; she thought Esther was
wilfully misunderstanding her; she wrote to Micky on the second day
with a great deal of emphasis.

"Are you dead or asleep? Here am I, just living to hear from you, and
you leave me without a word! Esther and I haven't spoken for two days,
not that you care, of course. You don't believe in my friendships, I
know, but it's a very serious thing for me. I'm more fond of that girl
than I've ever been of anybody, and now she'll walk out of this house
and my life, and it will be your fault...."

She knew this was unfair to Micky, but she knew that Micky would
understand--Micky always understood.

But Micky frowned over the letter. Did she imagine he enjoyed sitting
down here doing nothing? What pleasure did she suppose he was getting
out of the whole thing?

He threw the letter into the fire. Something ought to happen
to-morrow, anyway. The last two days had seemed like months.

To kill time he went round to the Delands. He felt a little nervous as
he reached the house. It seemed an unconscionable time since he was
last here. When the butler opened the door he felt an insane desire to
say, "Good evening, Jessop! You're still here, then." Such a decade
ago it seemed since Jessop had been wont to admit him without question
and take his hat and coat.

But Jessop did not smile to-night, and did not move back an inch when
he saw who was the caller.

Micky was nonplussed.

"Er--anybody in?" he asked awkwardly.

"No, sir; the mistress and the young ladies are all out, sir...."

"Oh!" There was a little silence; then Micky turned on his heel.
"Well, good-night!" he said jerkily.

He walked away, not sure if he was relieved or disappointed. A few
yards down the road he almost cannoned into a man he knew.

"Hullo, Philips! Where are you off to?"

Philips stopped.

"Hullo, Micky! Not coming my way? I'm going to the Delands. What's up
with you? Haven't seen you for a week or more."

"I've been seedy," Micky said hurriedly. "And the Delands are out.
I've just called there myself."

"Eh?" Philips tried hard to see his face through the darkness. "Rot,"
he said at last. "They've got a musical evening on--I had a special
invite."

Micky said nothing. This was a nasty blow; apparently the Delands were
only "not at home" to him. Jove! he must have behaved caddishly. He
walked on feeling very subdued. Had he quite lost his wits, he
wondered, that for the sake of a girl who would have none of him he
was willing to offend all his old friends? He tried to look at his
behaviour from Marie Deland's point of view. Yes, it must look pretty
rotten, he was forced to admit.

He thought about it all the time he walked home. He asked himself
honestly if this new game was worth the candle.

Esther loved another man.

Already she had shown him that she cared nothing for him or his
friendship, and yet--yet---- Micky set his teeth. He had never wanted
anything really badly in all his life before, but now he wanted this
girl.

"I'm not done yet, anyway," he told himself. "After all--let the best
man win."

He felt that he had decided a question of great importance as he went
back to his rooms; it was a pleasant surprise to find Driver there;
Micky beamed.

"You've got back, then?"

"Yes, sir."

The man took Micky's hat and coat, and turned to go.

Micky stared.

"Everything all right?" he asked, with a touch of anxiety.

"Yes, sir."

"You posted the letter?"

"Yes, sir, and had it weighed...." There was a little pause.

"Is that all?" Micky asked. "Nothing else happened?"

The man raised his expressionless eyes.

"I should have got in this morning, sir, but we had a rough crossing,
and I was ill----"

Micky smiled.

"Poor old Driver!--anything else?"

"Yes, sir--I met Mr. Ashton in Paris. He seemed very surprised to see
me there without you, sir."

Micky's face changed; he had not counted on this.

"Good Lord!" he said. "You didn't tell him you----?"

Driver raised his eyes.

"I never tell anybody anything, sir," he said woodenly.

Micky breathed a sigh of relief.

"Good man.... He was alone, of course?"

"Alone at the hotel, but I saw him out driving twice with the same
lady, sir."

"You saw him out twice--driving with the same lady?" Micky echoed the
man's words vaguely. "All right--you can go."

"Thank you, sir." Driver departed, closing the door noiselessly.

Ashton had soon found consolation, Micky thought savagely. He wondered
what Esther would say if she could know. What was Driver thinking
about it all? Driver was safe as the Bank of England; but, all the
same, it was not altogether pleasant to feel that he had had to give
himself away to his valet.

He looked up at the clock. Past nine! So there would not be another
post in to-night.

Esther had not answered his note, and two whole days had elapsed.

Micky began pacing the room. Why had she so suddenly thrown him over,
he wondered miserably.

He could not imagine what he had done to offend her.

He hardly knew how the days had passed since New Year's Eve. He had
not visited any of his old haunts or seen any of his friends. It
almost seemed as if he had opened the book of a new life and forgotten
about the old.

She might have answered his letter. Dash it all! he wasn't just a
bounder who had spoken to her for his own amusement. He kicked a
hassock out of his way and went to bed.

If he didn't hear in the morning, he would risk it and go round to see
her. At the worst she could only have the door shut in his face....

"And even then----" he told his reflection in the mirror fiercely, as
he struggled with a stud. "Even then I'm not done--and I'll show her
that I'm not...."

                  *       *       *       *       *

June Mason was mixing perfume the following morning when a little
knock came at her door.

She looked up from her work and listened; after a second she resumed
her occupation briskly.

"Come in," she said.

She did not raise her eyes when the door opened, though she knew quite
well who had entered the room, and for a second Esther Shepstone stood
on the threshold hesitatingly, then she spoke.

"May I come in?"

June Mason looked up with an exaggerated start; she was a picturesque
figure at that moment in a big white overall, and with a scarf of her
favourite mauve tied over her dark head.

She held a little phial in either hand, and there was a delicious
faint smell of rose perfume in the room.

"You!" she said. "Gracious! I thought you were dead and buried long
enough ago. Oh yes, come in.... You don't mind me going on with my
work, do you? I'm up to my eyes in it.... Sit down."

But Esther stood where she was, the eagerness died out of her pretty
face.

"I won't stay if you're busy," she said. "I'll come another time,
but----" she hesitated. Across the room the eyes of the two girls met,
and June Mason promptly put down the two little phials.

"Come in and apologise, and so will I," she said heartily. "There!"
She reached up--Esther was taller than she--and gave the younger girl
a sounding kiss. "There! I don't often kiss people, so you can
consider yourself flattered." She dragged forward a chair and pushed
Esther into it. "Now, what do you want, and where's that Charlie?
You've no idea how I've missed him. No--you stay there, and I'll go
and fetch him up."

She darted off, and returned a moment later with Charlie in her arms.
There were yards of mauve ribbon lying on the table and she cut off a
length and tied it in a bow round his neck; then she kissed his head
and dropped him on to his cushion. "There! Now, we're quite at home
again," she said. "And now, fire away and tell me why you're here."

She packed all the dishes and boxes on to a tray, put them out of
sight behind a screen and came back to the fire.

"Do you like this perfume? It's something new! I'm trying to blend it
with white rose. Isn't it gorgeous?"

"Beautiful!" said Esther. She consented to have her chin dabbed. "What
are you making now?" she asked.

Miss Mason chuckled.

"Oh, I'm only experimising, as Micky calls it," she said lightly. "We
don't want to talk shop. You've got some news; I can see by your face
that you have."

Esther laughed and flushed.

"Oh, I have," she said tremulously. "Such wonderful news."

"Humph!" said June drily. "From the young man, of course? Well, is he
on his way home, and have you got to get a wedding dress in the next
five minutes or something?"

"Oh no, it isn't anything like that," said Esther. There was a shade
of regret in her voice. "But he's in Paris--he says he's not staying
there, but he had to pay a business call."

June gave a rather unladylike sniff, but Esther was too engrossed to
notice.

"He seems to have been very lucky," she went on. "He hadn't got very
much money when he went away, but he's got some appointment now; he
does not say what and...."--she gave a little excited laugh--"he says
that he's going to send me £3 a week for as long as he is away....
Isn't it wonderfully good of him? I suppose I ought not to take it,
but he says that if things had turned out as he hoped, we should have
been married, and so ... you don't think it's wrong of me to take it,
do you?" she asked anxiously.

June rose to her feet. She looked chagrined; she had been so sure that
this man was a rotter, that it was a bit of a set-back to hear this
news.

"You take it, my dear, and don't be a goose," she said promptly. "As
he says, if you were his wife you'd take it, and as you're going to be
married, it's quite the right thing if he's well off that he should
help you! I hope you won't let your silly pride make you send it back;
you'd only hurt his feelings."

"I wouldn't do that for anything," Esther said quickly. "But it's such
a lot of money."

"Rubbish!" said June. "Why, Micky Mellowes wouldn't even stop to pick
it up if he dropped it in the road."

"We are not all millionaires like Mr. Mellowes," Esther said sharply.
"And he ought to be ashamed of himself if he really wouldn't stop to
pick it up."

June laughed.

"Don't you take things so literally, my dear," she said. "I know you
don't like Micky, though you've never seen him, but I'm going to ask
him here to tea one day, if he'll come----"

"I don't suppose he will," said Esther. "Elphinstone Road wouldn't be
good enough for him, would it?"

June frowned.

"I don't like to hear you talk like that about Micky! It's not fair,
when you don't know him. I tell you he's one of the best--and, anyway,
as he's a friend of mine----"

Esther flushed.

"I'm sorry--I'd no right to have said anything about him at all;
please forgive me."

"Oh, it's all right," June said laconically. "But he isn't a bit of a
snob; he'd do anything in the world for anybody."

Esther glanced up at his portrait on the shelf. She felt a trifle
ashamed of what she had said; after all, Micky had been good to her in
his own way, even if his own way had been patronising.

"And so I shall stay on here," she said, after a moment. "And if you
think you would still like me to share this room----"

June pounced upon her.

"You darling! It's too good to be true. Of course, I should love it!
I'll go and tell old Mother Elders straight away; it will put her in a
good temper for a month."

"She's out," Esther said quickly. "I went to tell her myself as soon
as I got my letter.... It only came this morning." She coloured
sensitively beneath June's quizzical eyes.

"And of course you've been devouring it ever since," June said. "Well,
and very nice too! There's nothing to be ashamed of. I'll admit that I
didn't think somehow that he could be a very nice sort of person, this
young man of yours. No, I don't know why I thought so--just an idea of
mine. I get hold of ideas like that. But I've changed my mind now; I'm
sure he's a dear, or you'd never look so happy."

"I should love you to see him," Esther said with enthusiasm. "I'm sure
you would like him. I don't know his people, of course--I suppose if
they thought he cared for me they'd be angry--but it doesn't really
matter, and I know he doesn't care at all for his mother...."

June looked up from stroking Charlie.

"Now, I wish you hadn't said that," she said frankly. "No man can be
really nice who doesn't love his own mother."

Esther looked distressed.

"But she's horrid!" she said eagerly. "He has told me how horrid she
is to him--really she is--and as he's her only son----" She stopped.
"After all," she went on, "there's no law to make you like a woman
just because you happen to be her son, is there?"

"It's unnatural not to," June answered shortly. "However, as neither
of us know his mother, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. She
may be a perfect old cat. Some women are."

She wandered round the room to find a cigarette, and Esther sat
looking into the fire.

She could not remember her own mother. But somehow she felt sure that,
had she been living, she would have adored her.

She had never heard Raymond say anything nice of Mrs. Ashton--he had
always spoken about her in a bitter, half sneering way.

She looked across to June timidly.

"Do you always judge people by what you call 'instinct'?" she asked.
"When I first knew you you told me that you felt sure you would like
me before ever you saw me, and----"

"And I was right," June said triumphantly. "I nearly always am right
when I get an instinct about anything. Micky says it's all rot!--there
I am, talking about him again--it's a habit, so don't notice it! But
even he has to admit how often I am right; I could give you dozens of
instances."

Esther did not pursue the subject; she was remembering how June had
said that she had an "instinct" that Raymond was not nice.

"I think you're the most original person I've ever met," she said with
a little smile.

June laughed.

"Eccentric, Micky says I am----" she answered, then broke off with a
comical look of despair. "You really must excuse me for everlastingly
dragging him in," she apologised. "As I said before, it's a habit--and
there goes the dinner gong. Are we going to feed here to-day?"

Esther rose from the chair.

"I am," she said. "And I'm hungry, so I do hope there's something
nice."

They went down together.

"Curry," said June, sniffing the air critically. "The colonel will be
pleased; he's always telling us how they used to make curry in India,
poor old chap! Though I don't think any of us really believe that he's
ever been there."

But the colonel was not there.

"He's ill," so young Harley told the two girls as they sat down at
their table. "I went up to see him this morning, and he really looks
ill."

"You don't look in exactly rude health yourself," said June in her
blunt fashion. She noticed that Harley looked at Esther a great deal,
and she made up her mind to tell him at the earliest opportunity that
Esther was engaged. June scented romance everywhere.

"They are the first violets I have seen this year," Esther was saying,
looking at a little bunch the young man wore in his coat.

He took them out eagerly and laid them down beside her plate.

"Do have them, will you? I never wear flowers really, but a girl in
the street begged me to buy them."

Esther took them up eagerly.

"They are my favourite flowers," she said. "And I haven't had any
given to me for--oh, for ever so long."

It gave her a little pang to remember that Ashton had always brought
her violets in the first days of their acquaintance. It was one of the
many little attentions which he had gradually dropped.

"You're not to let Mr. Harley fall in love with you, mind," June said
severely as they went upstairs after dinner. "He's much too nice to be
made unhappy--even by you," she added affectionately.

Esther stared.

"Why, whatever do you mean?" she cried. "I never see him or speak to
him, except at meal times."

"I mean what I say," June insisted. "Didn't you see how he looked at
you when you took his violets?"

Esther flushed with vexation.

"Why, what perfect nonsense!" she protested.

But June only laughed.

"Onlookers see most of the game," she declared. "Aren't you coming up
to my room? Our room, I mean."

"I've got to go out--I had an appointment at half-past two, but I'll
love to come to tea with you," she added, seeing the disappointment in
June's face.

"Very well, then, four o'clock. But who is the appointment with? You
won't need to find a berth now. You're a lady of leisure."

"But I shall try all the same. I don't mean to be lazy just because
he's so good to me. I shall save all I can. I went to an agency
yesterday----"

"They'll rob you," June protested. "They always do. I know what agents
are," she added darkly.

Esther laughed.

But if she had hoped great things from her call that afternoon she was
disappointed. The thin, aristocratic-looking person who owned the
"Bureau," as it was called, looked at her with coldly critical eyes,
and said that she had no vacancies likely to suit her.

"But you told me to call," Esther protested.

"Certainly; there might have been something," was all the answer she
received. "Call again to-morrow, if you please."

Esther went out dispiritedly. There were so many girls of her own
class and age in the bare waiting-room; she felt quite sure that they
would all get berths before she had a chance.

She felt glad that she had June Mason to go back to. June was always
sympathetic. She went straight upstairs to the sitting-room with the
mauve cushions.

June opened the door before she had time to knock.

"I thought it was you. I heard your step. What's the matter? You
sounded dispirited as you came upstairs."

Esther laughed.

"I believe you must have second sight, or whatever they call it. But
you're right this time; I am rather down on my luck. They haven't
anything at the agency to suit me. I----" She stopped, looking past
June into the cosy room to where a man had just risen from a chair by
the fire--a tall man--who looked across at her with eyes that were
half-abashed, half-defiant. Micky Mellowes.




CHAPTER VIII


June introduced Micky and Esther with a sort of hurried
self-consciousness. It was not by her invitation that Micky was here
this afternoon, and the fact that she had asked him to help Esther
embarrassed her.

"Mr. Mellowes--Miss Shepstone; you've both heard of each other, so I
can leave you to entertain one another while I get tea."

And she bolted out of the room.

Esther looked after her with angry eyes; she thought June might have
stayed--she took a quick step forward to call her back, but Micky
stopped her; he put a hand on the door above her head, shutting it
fast.

"I'm going to speak to you, whether you like it or not," he said.

She faced him angrily; she was very flushed.

"I don't know what you mean. You've no right to speak to me like that.
If Miss Mason has asked you here to meet me----"

"June didn't know I was coming. She has no more idea than the dead
that we have ever met before. I haven't told her, and I don't suppose
you have--or will," he added grimly. "However, as we are alone, will
you tell me what I've done to offend you? It's not fair to take me for
a friend and then fling me over as if I were an old glove.... If I've
annoyed you, the least you can do is to tell me how and give me a
chance to explain."

Esther had walked back to the fire and Mellowes followed her. He knew
that he had only got a few moments, and he meant to make the most of
them.

"You refuse to see me or to allow me to take you out," he went on
urgently. "And you haven't even answered my last letter. If I have
offended you----"

"You haven't," said Esther, as he paused. "I'm not at all offended."

"Then why, in the name of all that's holy----" he began again, in
exasperation. She cut him short.

"You didn't tell me the truth about yourself. You made out you were
poor! You pretended to be some one quite different to what you are.
You've a perfect right to, I suppose, if you wish, but I hate being
deceived and treated like that. I suppose you think anything is good
enough for me! Perhaps it is, but----"

Micky brought his fist down with a bang on the back of the big
armchair.

"I give you my word of honour, Miss Shepstone, that what I said was
only because it seemed the best way to make you trust me. I had
absolutely no other reason for pretending to--to--be anything but what
I am. I know you'd have gone off at a tangent if I'd said I was
unfortunate enough to be rich, I know----"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You didn't even write to me from your real address--you just put a
number." She broke into an angry little laugh. "I suppose you thought
I shouldn't understand that a number can also be an expensive flat."

Micky turned pale with anger.

"You're deliberately trying to make out that I'm a bounder. It's not
fair--I don't deserve it; and as to thinking anything good enough for
you--I suppose you'd only take it as a fresh insult if I told you that
there is nothing in the world I consider good enough for you.... I
... oh, what's the good of arguing," he broke out with sudden rage.

"It's no good at all, and there's nothing to argue about," Esther said
stiffly. She had taken off her gloves and was flattening them out
nervously. "You offered me your friendship, and now I decline it. I
suppose I am free to do so?"

"No," said Micky violently, "you're not ... I--I ..." He turned away
sharply, realising with dismay how nearly he had blurted out the truth
about Ashton. After a moment he spoke more quietly.

"It is pure chance that brought me here. I have known June Mason for
years; we are old friends. She has no idea that I have ever seen you
before, but I will tell her this moment if you wish it----"

She raised passionate eyes to his face.

"I will never forgive you as long as I live if you dare to," she said
stormily.

Micky frowned till his brows nearly met above his kind eyes.

"Whatever I say or offer to do is wrong, of course," he said savagely.
"If I had not offered to tell her, you would probably have said that I
was ashamed of knowing you ... oh, good Heavens! whatever have I said
now?" he added as he saw the hot blood rush to her face.

He went over to her and tried to take her hand. "Do forgive me; I beg
of you to forgive me--I'm a clumsy idiot--but you don't know how hurt
I've felt about being turned down in this way."

"It's absurd to feel hurt--I haven't turned you down; I wish you
wouldn't keep saying that I have. Why I--I hardly know you," she added
with a little angry laugh.

Micky turned away; he stood staring down into the fire; neither of
them spoke again till June returned.

She carried a tray of cakes and hot toast; she set it down with a
thump on the round table by the fire.

"I coaxed it out of Mrs. Elders," she explained breathlessly. "I
generally keep some cake up here myself, but I haven't got a bit
to-day. Esther, fetch the cloth, there's a dear; and, Micky, you put
the kettle on--I have filled it."

She bustled about, talking the whole time; if she noticed the
constraint between the other two she said nothing till tea was ready,
and she sat down amongst the mauve cushions with a breathless sigh.

"Now we're going to be cosy. Well, and how have you two been getting
on? Micky, I've told Esther so much about you, she's sick to death of
the sound of your name."

"I never said so," Esther protested quickly.

"Have some cake," Micky said; he deposited a slice on June's plate and
adroitly changed the subject. He was furiously angry; he had not
believed that Esther had it in her to turn on him as she had done. But
the more she snubbed him, the more determined he was not to be
snubbed. As he sat there stirring his tea and listening to June's
chatter he was watching Esther all the time.

She had taken off her coat now. He wondered if it was the coat his
money had bought her; it was not half good enough, anyway. He thought
of the furs and expensive gloves which Marie Deland wore, and he
longed to be able to give some to this little girl who sat there with
such angry defiance in her eyes.

He realised that this pride of hers was going to be the hardest
barrier of all between them.

She could not forgive him because he was a rich man and had pretended
to be poor; she could not forget that he had paid for her dinner and a
saucer of milk for the cat. He looked down to where Charlie sat
blinking in the firelight, and a little smile crossed his face. He
wondered if perhaps some day soon she would offer to repay him for
that night--if she would insist on doing so, as she had insisted on
paying her share of everything with June.

"More tea?" June demanded across the table, and Micky said,
"Oh--er--yes, thanks," hurriedly. As long as the meal was unfinished
Esther would have to stay in the room, he thought; she could not very
well leave before; but in this he was mistaken, for Esther put her cup
down almost at once and looked at June.

"Will you think me very rude if I run away?" she asked. "I've got to
see Mrs. Elders and tell her I am staying on--I think she has been
trying to let my room."

June looked disappointed. "Oh, well, if you really must go," she said.
"Come back when you've seen her."

"Thank you," said Esther. She turned to Micky, who had risen. "I won't
say good-bye, then," she said with an effort to speak lightly.

He held open the door for her, and a moment later she had gone. As
soon as he came back to his chair June rounded on him.

"What have you said to annoy her?" She looked quite angry! "I wanted
you to like each other. Really, Micky, you are the limit! She won't
come back again, you see if she does."

"No," said Micky. "I don't think she will." He laughed a rather
chagrined laugh. "I haven't said anything as far as I know," he added.
"It's what you've said, I fancy. You've fed her up with accounts of
what a wonderful person I am."

"So you are," said June.

He frowned.

"It's kind of you to think so, but I don't know anybody else who
shares your opinion."

"Well, I can't help the world being full of idiots, can I?" she
demanded in exasperation. "And, Micky, why did you come here to-day?
When I asked you before you said you didn't want to come; you've soon
changed your mind."

"I came to tell you about Miss Shepstone. You asked me to get her a
berth...."

June laughed.

"My dear boy, you're too late! She doesn't want your help now, or mine
either, for that matter," she added ruefully. "She's a lady of
means--that wonderful man of hers who's tucked up in Paris having the
time of his life is going to allow her three pounds a week."

She paused and looked across at him expectantly.

"Well, why don't you look surprised?" she asked.

Micky swallowed hard.

"I am surprised!" he said. "Too jolly surprised for anything. It's
good news, eh? I suppose she was pleased...."

"Of course she was! She's staying on now, and is going to share my
room. She had a qualm just for a moment, as to whether she ought to
take the money, but I soon put her mind at ease. 'Take all you can
get, my dear,' I said. After all, I dare say if the man's giving her
three pounds he could afford to give her about double that amount; men
are not particularly generous from what I know of them--except you,
Micky...."

Micky got red.

"But three pounds a week is enough to live on? Don't you think it is?"
he asked, with a touch of anxiety in his voice.

"It's enough to live here on," June admitted. "But it's not great
wealth. Still, she's going to get a berth as well, so perhaps, after
all, the one you've heard of will suit her. What is it?"

Micky was stooping, patting Charlie's head.

"It's in an office," he said, after a moment; his voice sounded a
little uncertain. "I don't think it would really suit her, though--now
I've seen her," he hastened to add. "It would be too hard work--late
hours and all the rest of it, dontcherknow."

June looked at his bent head shrewdly.

"Humph!" she said. "Perhaps it's just as well this phantom lover of
Esther's has turned up trumps, if that's all you'd got to offer her."

"Phantom lover!" said Micky; his voice sounded as if he were annoyed.
"Whom are you talking about?"

"Esther's beloved," June said airily. "She won't tell me his name, so
I call him the phantom lover, because I've got an eerie sort of
feeling in my mind about him that he doesn't really exist. What do you
think, Micky?"

"My dear girl, how can I possibly know?"

June produced some cigarettes.

"If he were all that she'd like me to believe he is," she said
shrewdly, "she'd tell me more about him. She certainly got a bit more
confidential to-day, and said that he had a cat for a mother and a few
things like that. She had another letter from him this morning; he's
in Paris--on business, so he tells her." She laughed, turning her face
for a moment against the mauve cushion. Suddenly she sat upright
again, "Micky, I should hate that man if I knew him!"

Micky smiled.

"Another of your 'instinctive hates'?" he asked whimsically.

She nodded.

"I know you don't believe in them, but...."

"Don't I?" said Micky thoughtfully. "I'm not so sure." He looked at
his watch. "Well, I must be trotting. There's nothing else I can do
for you, I suppose? No more waifs who want billets...?"

"You're laughing at me."

"I'm not--I never laugh at you." He laid his hand on her shoulder for
a moment. "Don't bother to get up; you look so comfortable ...
Good-bye----"

"Good-bye--and, Micky, don't make up your mind not to like Esther just
because of this afternoon."

"My dear, I never thought of such a thing," he protested lamely.

June snuggled more cosily into the cushions.

"Ah, but I know what you are," she said, for once hopelessly on the
wrong track.

Micky laughed to himself as he went down the stairs; he wondered if he
was getting clever, or if June was not so quick to see a thing as he
had believed, that she had not noticed the constraint between himself
and Esther.

He looked about him eagerly as he went out, hoping to catch a
glimpse of Esther, but the house seemed deserted, quite different from
what he had pictured it to be. He had always thought that a London
boarding-house must be noisy and crowded and perpetually smelling of
soap and cabbage water; he was relieved to find that this was
fairly comfortable and quiet.

He picked up a taxicab at the corner of the road and was driven back
to his flat. He felt very depressed. Everybody seemed to have
interests in life except himself. He wished he had got married years
ago and settled down. He thought of Marie Deland with remorseful
affection. Here was another woman who must be thinking him a positive
outsider. How in the world did a man put an end to a flirtation that
was growing rapidly into something else without hurting a woman's
feelings, he wondered.

Ashton had accomplished it quite successfully several times. Micky
sighed, and let himself into his flat.

There were several letters lying on the table; he flicked them through
disinterestedly; then he stopped--the last one was from Ashton.

Micky stood for quite a minute staring down at the handwriting, which
he had been at such pains to copy. Then he ripped open the envelope.

Ashton wrote from Paris:--

  "DEAR MICKEY,--Just a line to send you my address, as promised.
  Hope things are going well with you. I am staying on here for the
  present, as I have run up against Maisie Clare--you remember her,
  Tubby Clare's little widow? My son, she's got pots of money, and
  at the present moment things are looking promising! The mater
  would be pleased if I could manage to pull it off. By the way, I
  dare say Driver told you I met him the other day--he was very
  mysterious and hadn't a word to say! Surely he wasn't joy-riding
  over here by himself? Remember me to every one.--Yours, R. F.
  ASHTON."

And not one word about Esther! Not a single mention of the girl who
was thinking of him night and day, and only living to see him again.

Micky crushed the letter and tossed it into the fire. That settled it,
he told himself; he no longer had the slightest compunction in cutting
Ashton out; the fellow was not worth a moment's consideration.




CHAPTER IX


Esther trudged to and fro from the agency where the stiff and stately
lady presided so many times during the next few days that she began to
hate the sight of the tall building and the dark stairs covered with
worn linoleum.

Every day the waiting-room seemed crowded with girls, many of whom
were a great deal more shabby and hopeless looking than she was, and
they all sat patiently on the wooden chairs and eyed one another with
a sort of jealous suspicion till their turn came to pass within the
magic portal which guarded the stiff and stately lady from the vulgar
gaze.

"I told you an agency wouldn't be any good," June Mason said when
Esther came home after another fruitless journey. "They take your
money and forget you till you turn up to remind them that you're still
in existence. Give it up, my dear, and come into partnership with me.
I should love to take you round to all the big stores and tell them
that you owe your milk and rose complexion to my famous cream." She
burst out laughing. "Can't you imagine it! Esther, you and I ought to
tour the country in a caravan or something. Call ourselves the new
Sequah." She rolled over in the big chair and hid her face in the
cushions.

Esther laughed; she felt quite at home now in June's room. There were
a few of her own possessions lying about, and she had bought Charlie a
new cushion of his own. It gave her a sense of independence to know
that she was paying her share of everything.

"I shall get something if I wait long enough," Esther said presently.
"Do you know, I rather think I should like to be a companion, after
all. I told Mr.----" She stopped; she had been about to add that she
had once told Micky how she would hate it.

"It might not be so bad," June admitted; "but you want some one with
pots of money and a good temper."

She looked at Esther consideringly.

"There wouldn't have to be any eligible sons either," she said
bluntly. "You're much too pretty----"

Esther laughed.

"What nonsense!"

June dragged Esther to her feet and made her look in the glass.

"Now dare to call it nonsense--look at yourself," she commanded.

But Esther only looked at June.

"Next to you," she began, but June cut her short.

"If you're going to try blatant flattery," she said.

They both laughed at that.

Some one tapped at the door; Lydia, the smiling housemaid, appeared;
she looked at the two girls with a sort of parental expression; she
was very fond of them both, and never minded how late or how hard she
worked to do little extra jobs for either of them. It was her greatest
pride to stay in when her "evening out" came and help June label the
little mauve pots; she recommended the famous cream to all her
friends; she was as proud of it as if it were her own invention.

She carried a note on a tray now, which she handed to Esther.

"I found it on the hall table, Miss," she said. "It must have been
left by messenger."

She waited a moment to make up the fire and tidy the hearth; she was
always glad of an excuse to stay in the room; she was never tired of
telling her friends what a pretty room it was--she loved the mauve
cushions and the many photographs.

She went away with a reluctant backward look. June yawned.

"Another love-letter?" she asked chaffingly. She looked across at
Esther, and was surprised to see the embarrassment in the girl's
face.

"It's from Mr. Harley," she said, in distress. "Oh, I'm sure I've
never let him think I----" She handed the letter to June. "He wants me
to go to a theatre with him," she added in confusion.

"Well, I should go," said June promptly. "You don't get much fun, and
the man knows you're engaged, and if he likes to chance it----"

"But how does he know I'm engaged? I've never told him."

"I did," June said calmly. "I saw the way the wind was blowing and
told him to save complications." She made a little grimace at Esther.
"And after this note are you still going to declare that he isn't more
than ordinarily interested? Esther, you're the most unsuspecting
baby---- Say you'll go, of course. There's no harm in it."

"I certainly shall not go," Esther said; "I don't want to, for one
thing, and, for another, it would not be fair----"

"You mean to Mr. Harley?" June asked.

"Yes, and to----"

"To the phantom lover! Oh, I see!" said June drily.

Esther coloured.

"I don't know what you mean," she said with a touch of dignity.

"Oh yes, you do," June declared. "Don't look so angry! What am I to
call him, pray? You haven't told me his name." She waited, but Esther
did not speak. "Of course, if you'd rather not," she added, rather
stiffly.

Esther got up and came over to sit on the arm of her chair.

"It isn't that I don't want you to know, but--well, I promised him not
to tell any one; you see, his people would be furious if they knew.
After all, I suppose I'm not anybody, and----"

June pushed her away.

"Oh, you make me tired!" she said crossly. "Why will you insist on
belittling yourself? Who on earth is this wonderful man that he sets
himself up for such a model of superiority? He can't be anybody if
he's ashamed of you. You don't like Micky, I know, but, with all his
money and position, if he loved you he'd be only too proud to shout it
from the housetops, and not care a hang what the world thought.
There's no rotten pride about Micky--if he loved a beggar girl he'd be
proud of it.... No, don't say any more, it makes me boil!"

She lit another cigarette and puffed at it furiously.

"Do you--do you think I should go with Mr. Harley, then?" Esther asked
presently. Her pretty face was flushed and troubled.

"No, I don't," said June emphatically. "I think you ought to please
yourself. I don't want to advise you, but it does seem to me that
you're throwing away any chance of real happiness for a--for a, what
do they call it?--something beginning with a 'c'...."

"Chimera," said Esther. She sat with downcast eyes for a moment, then
suddenly she began to cry. Perhaps in her heart she felt in some
mysterious way that June was right, that this girl, with her odd
instinct, had put her hand right on the heart of things, and that her
happiness did not really lie with Raymond Ashton.

And yet she loved him. Night and day he was never out of her thoughts.
She slept with his letters under her pillow. Since he went away he had
done much to blot out all that had gone before. And yet sometimes the
memory of that past unhappiness, of its disagreements and quarrels and
petty unkindnesses would raise its ugly head and look at her with a
sort of leer as if daring her to forget entirely.

June was all remorse in a moment.

"I'm a pig!" she said disgustedly. "I ought to be kicked. Why do you
let me talk so much? It's awful cheek of me to dare to criticise you.
I'll never do it again. He may be an angel for all I know. Esther, if
you don't stop crying I shall cry too, and then there'll be a nice
sort of noise."

Esther dried her eyes and laughed shakily.

"I'm silly; I don't know why I cried. There's nothing to cry for," she
protested.

"That's why women always cry," said June hardily.




CHAPTER X


Esther climbed the stairs of the agency again the following morning.
There was a little feeling of despondency in her heart. She had slept
badly, and she had not been able to forget what June had said about
Ashton.

Esther was influenced by June's "instincts," as she chose to call
them; she knew it was foolish, but the fact remained all the same.

When she opened the waiting-room door she felt half inclined to turn
and go away again. She would only meet with the same answer: "Nothing
that will suit you to-day, Miss Shepstone."

But for a wonder the room was almost empty, and the tall and stately
one was standing at the communicating door.

When she saw Esther she came forward.

"I was hoping you would call, Miss Shepstone. Will you come into my
room?"

Esther's heart leapt. She obeyed eagerly.

A lady was sitting at the table looking rather bored and irritated.

She was grey-haired and handsome, and most beautifully dressed. She
turned slightly when Esther entered, and stared at her through her
lorgnette, then she looked at the stiff and stately one.

"Is this--er--the young lady?" she asked.

"Yes, madam--this is Miss Shepstone." The stately one introduced
Esther with a wave of her hand. "This lady, Miss Shepstone, is looking
for a companion. Some one who can work well--and read aloud." She
looked at Esther sharply. "Can you read aloud?" she asked.

Esther stammered out that she supposed she could, but ...

"That is a minor detail," the lady with the lorgnette interrupted.
"Miss Shepstone, I am not wanting a companion in the ordinary sense of
the word. That is to say, I do not want you to be constantly with me.
You will have your own bedroom and sitting-room--and I shall only want
you at certain hours of the day. You will write letters for me and
make yourself generally useful." She paused, she searched the girl's
eager face through her glasses.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty-four," said Esther.

"Humph! And what have you done up till now?"

Esther flushed.

"I was in the workroom at Eldred's. The manager has promised to give
me a reference, but----"

"Eldred's!" the sharp gaze wavered a little. "And why did you leave
there, may I ask?"

"I left to get married, but----"

"But you are not married, of course."

"No."

"Nor going to be?"

"Not for the present, but----"

She was cut short again.

"I don't want to get used to you and to get you used to my ways and
then for you to leave me," she was told. "And I don't want a young man
constantly dangling round the house." Her voice was sharp, but not
unkind, and there was a smile in the keen eyes.

"No," said Esther. "I quite understand."

There was a little silence.

"Well," said the owner of the lorgnette then, "what do you think about
it? Do you think you would like to come? Do you think you would like
me?"

Esther smiled, there was something in this blunt questioning that
reminded her of June Mason.

"Yes," she said. "I think I should, but----"

"I hate that word," she was told promptly. "I don't want any 'buts' in
the question. You either wish to come or you do not. I will give you
fifty pounds a year, and your keep, of course. It's too much for an
inexperienced girl like you, but I think I shall rather like you.
Well, what do you say?"

Esther did not know what to say. The offer was tempting enough, but
she thought of June Mason and the room with the mauve cushions where
she was settling down so happily, and her heart sank.

"I should like to think it over," she said, stammering. "I have a
friend I should like to talk it over with if you don't mind. If you
will give me just a day or two...."

"Take a week by all means. I am going away myself for a few days, and
I shan't want you till I come back. Write and tell me what you decide
to do. Here is my card...." She took one from a heavy silver case and
laid it on the table. She looked at Esther quizzically, then suddenly
she held out her hand.

"Good-bye, Miss Shepstone. I hope I shall see you again," and the next
moment she had gone.

The stiff and stately owner of the agency was smiling, well pleased.

"You are most fortunate, Miss Shepstone," she said. "You have secured
one of the best posts I have on my books. If you take my advice you
will not hesitate. Make up your mind at once."

Esther did not answer. She took up the card from the table, then she
drew in her breath with a hard sound, for the name printed there was
Mrs. Raymond Ashton.




CHAPTER XI


Esther never knew how she got out into the street. She walked along
like some one in a dream; her cheeks were burning hot.

Mrs. Raymond Ashton! Raymond's mother! The woman of whom he had spoken
so often and so bitterly. The woman who had raised such a fierce
objection to her marriage with Raymond.

There was not much resemblance between mother and son; they were both
handsome, but there was a sort of humour in Mrs. Ashton's face which
Raymond's lacked. Esther tried vainly to find some likeness between
them.

She realised how different this woman was to what she had pictured
her, remembered that spontaneously offered hand. Had Mrs. Ashton known
who she was? Oh, surely not, or she would never have appeared so
anxious to engage her.

How angry Raymond would be. Angry that the woman he loved was to go to
his mother as a paid companion. Esther could not help smiling. For her
own sake she would not mind it. At least she would be with his mother
and in his home; but, of course, the thing was impossible--such a
situation would not be tolerable. She would have to write and refuse.

"Good afternoon!" said a voice, and, turning hurriedly, Esther found
Micky Mellowes beside her.

He looked as if he were not quite sure of his reception; but to-day
Esther had other thoughts to occupy her which were more interesting
than he was--and the smile she gave him was almost friendly.

"Good afternoon! Isn't it cold?"

"Very.... Where are you hurrying off to?"

He tried to speak casually, but his heart was beating uncomfortably.

"I'm just going back home," Esther said. "I've been to an agency
looking for a berth."

"A berth!" A frown came between his eyes. "What sort of a berth?" he
asked quickly.

Esther laughed.

"Well, I'm think of taking your advice--and going as companion to an
old lady--not that she's very old," she added doubtfully, with sudden
memory of Raymond's mother.

"You mean that you have decided?"

She hesitated.

"Well, I have the refusal of it." She looked at him with defiant eyes.
"I am only just hesitating--I want to talk to Miss Mason about it--she
is much more worldly wise than I am."

"June is a very sensible woman," he said. "I am glad you like her." He
hesitated. "And the--er--post?" he asked with an effort. "Will it be
in town?"

"Oh yes."

She was obviously not going to tell him any more, but Micky
persevered.

"I wonder if it is likely to be any one I know. I have quite an
extensive acquaintance in London."

"Yes," said Esther. "But I don't suppose you will know these people,
anyway," she added with an unconscious touch of loftiness in her
voice. "The name is Ashton--Mrs. Raymond Ashton."

There was the barest possible silence before Micky answered, a silence
during which the blank dismay and anger that crossed his face would
have been amusing had it not also had something of pathos in it.

"Ashton?" he said. "Oh, yes, I know Raymond Ashton very well." He was
watching her with jealous eyes, and she turned her head sharply and
looked up at him.

Just for a moment a traitorous eagerness crossed her face; he could
almost see the quick question on her lips, then she laughed.

"Really! How funny! But, of course, as you say, you must know a great
many people."

"I have known the Ashtons for years. You will like Mrs. Ashton."

There was a sort of quiet insinuation in the words, and Esther bit her
lip.

"And--the son?" she asked. "I think you said you knew the son."

"Yes, I know him--he is in Paris, I believe."

Micky was conscious of a queer tightening about his throat; it was a
tremendous effort to force himself to speak lightly.

"And shall I like him as well, do you think?" Esther asked deliberately.

Micky did not answer.

"Do you like him?" she persisted.

Micky's restraint broke its bonds; if he had died for it he could not
have checked the words that rushed to his lips.

"I detest the fellow!" he said. "He's a beastly outsider!"

He dared not look at her. He held his breath, waiting for the storm to
break, but if he had lost his self-control she kept hers admirably.

"Really," she said. Her voice was a little breathless, but quite calm.
"What does a man mean when he calls another man--such a name?"

Her face was quite colourless, even to the lips, and her hands were
clenched in the shabbiness of the cheap little muff she carried.

He blunderingly tried to make amends.

"I ought not to have said that, just because he's not the sort of man
I care about," he said stammeringly. "He's quite all right--it all
depends from what point of view you regard him. I hope you will forget
that I said that, Miss Shepstone. It--it was unpardonable."

"It's a matter of complete indifference to me what you say about--Mr.
Ashton," she told him.

She stopped. They had been walking along together.

"Which way are you going?" she asked.

Micky flushed up to his eyes; he knew this was a dismissal.

"I was coming along to see June," he said. "I hoped you would allow me
to walk along with you--if I am not intruding."

Esther forced a smile, but her lips felt stiff.

"Oh, but I am not going back," she said. Her voice sounded as if it
were cut in ice. "So I won't detain you. Good-bye."

She turned and left him, walking quickly away again in the direction
from which she had just come.

Her eyes were smarting with tears that had to be restrained.

"How dare he--oh, how dare he?" she asked herself passionately. "What
does he know about Raymond?"

She could not trust herself to go back home. She walked about in the
cold till she was tired out. She wanted to be sure that Micky would
have left Elphinstone Road before she got there. She wondered if June
knew the Ashtons too. She probably did, as Micky Mellowes knew them.
They were both of Raymond's own world, these two. It was only she, who
loved him best, who was outside the magic circle of his friends.

It was nearly supper time when she got in. She paused for a moment in
the hall and looked anxiously at the rows of coats and hats hanging
there. She thought she would know Micky's if she saw them there. She
forgot that he might have taken them up to June's room. She turned
away with a little sigh.

At the foot of the stairs she met young Harley. He coloured
sensitively when he saw her and stood aside for her to pass.

Esther flushed too. She wondered what he thought of her note refusing
the theatre. With sudden impulse she spoke--

"I hope you are not angry with me, Mr. Harley, but--but perhaps you do
not know that I am engaged to be married, and so ... so I don't think
I should accept invitations from any one else, though--though it was
kind of you to ask me," she added.

"I should have been delighted if you could have come," he said. "But,
of course, if your fiancé would not care about it----" He broke off as
if there was nothing more to be said.

Esther wondered if Raymond really would mind; at first he had been
very jealous, and could not bear her to speak to another man, but
latterly--she hated it, because she could not forget that once he had
told her she could marry a man with money if she only played her cards
carefully--the man who had said that seemed a different personality
altogether from the man whose letters she had only lived for during
the last fortnight.

Was she mean and unforgiving that she continually found herself
remembering the quarrels and scenes they had had? She wanted so
earnestly to forget them; she went up to June's room with dragging
steps.

The door of the room opened before she reached the landing, and June
came out.

"I knew it was you," she said. "Poor soul! how tired you sound.
Another day of miserable failure, I suppose. Never mind, come and sit
down in the warm, and you'll soon forget it."

Esther laughed rather shamefacedly.

"It's been a day of success, strange to relate," she said. "But I'm
tired, dead tired--I must have walked miles." She suddenly remembered
Micky; she looked round with--a quick suspicion. "Have you been alone
all the afternoon?" she asked.

"Yes, quite alone," June laughed. "Who did you expect to find here,
pray?" she demanded.

"Nobody--I only wondered if you had had any visitors."

"I might have known it wasn't the truth that he was coming here," she
told herself vexedly.

"Well, and what about the success?" June asked; she was sitting on the
hearthrug stroking Charlie. "You don't mean to say that the old dear
at the agency really had something to offer you this time?"

Esther nodded.

"Yes, and she's desperately anxious for me to take it, too. It's quite
a good offer, but it means leaving here and living in; and I don't
believe I want to leave here," she added ruefully.

June looked dismayed.

"I shan't let you go," she said promptly. "Just as we are settling
down so cosily." She put her white hands over her ears. "No, I don't
want to hear another thing about it, if that's it," she said. "I
shan't listen--write and refuse it--write and refuse it at once."

Esther laughed; she pulled June's hands down and held them firmly.

"Tell me," she said. "Do you know any people named Ashton?"

She was longing to find out if June did know them; it seemed such a
lifetime since she had seen Raymond or spoken to him, she was hungry
to hear him spoken of, even if only by this woman who probably had
merely known him as an ordinary acquaintance.

"Ashton!" June wrinkled up her nose. "I know some Ashtons who live in
Brayanstone Square," she said at last. "A mother and son. A very
handsome woman she is, with white hair, she has a sort of grande dame
look about her--the sort of woman you can imagine in a powdered wig
and a crinoline, curtsying to the queen." She scrambled up, and,
snatching a paper fan from the shelf, swept Esther a graceful curtsy
to illustrate her meaning.

But Esther was too much in earnest to be amused.

"It must be the same Mrs. Ashton," she said eagerly. "This is her
card--she gave it to me to-day--Mrs. Raymond Ashton."

June glanced at the card and nodded briskly.

"Yes, it's the same. I don't know her frightfully well; she's rather
reserved, too; but I admire her immensely--well, go on."

"She wants me to go to her as a sort of companion--she has offered me
fifty pounds a year."

June whistled.

"Not bad, is it? But you'll refuse, of course?"

"I asked her to let me think it over; I said I should like to talk it
over with you first."

June clasped her hands round her knees and stared into the fire
thoughtfully.

"She's a widow, isn't she?" Esther said hesitatingly. "At least--she
didn't say anything about a husband."

"Yes, she's a widow right enough," June said. "And delighted to be, I
should think," she added bluntly. "I never knew the departed spouse,
but from all accounts he was a perfect terror."

Esther said nothing. Raymond had always spoken of his father as being
a "rare old sport."

After a moment--

"There's a son, too," June said. "A kind of Adonis to look at,
beautiful eyes and all that sort of thing."

"Yes," said Esther. She tried hard to keep the eagerness from her
voice. "Do you--do you know the son too?" she asked nervously.

June gave a queer little laugh.

"Oh yes, I know him. That is to say, I say 'How d'ye do' to him when I
have the misfortune to meet him, but----"

Esther's hands were clasped in her lap.

"Why--why--misfortune?" she asked.

June Mason shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, I don't know--it's hard to explain--he's never done me any harm,
but there are some people one hates by instinct, and Raymond Ashton is
one of the people I hate." She smoothed a crease in the skirt of her
frock. "He's such a--such an awful outsider," she added, unconsciously
choosing the word Micky Mellowes had used a few hours before.

Esther sat very still. Twice she tried to speak, but no words would
come. She knew that it was unfair to June to sit there and allow her
to go on talking about Raymond, but something in her heart seemed to
have set a seal on her lips.

"He's that insufferable kind of creature who thinks himself
irresistible," June went on. "Micky has often told me the way he brags
about his so-called 'conquests.' Conquests, indeed! What are they but
a few poor ignorant girls hoodwinked by his handsome face and smooth
tongue? Dozens of girls he's had, my dear, literally dozens! Only the
other day some one told me that Mrs. Ashton had to threaten to cut him
off with a shilling if he didn't give up some little person he was
supposed to be going to marry! I don't know how true it is, mind you,
but that's the sort of man he is--I've no time for him at all," she
finished vigorously.

She turned to look at Esther, and gave a little exclamation of alarm.
"How pale you are! Don't you feel well?"

"I'm quite all right--I'm just tired--I don't think I'll go down to
supper to-night. I'll just stay here and be quiet. I wanted to hear
what you had to say about my future employer."

"Future fiddlesticks!" June retorted. "You're not going to her, my
dear; I shan't let you. If Raymond came home while you were there,
you'd never have any peace."

Esther was lying back now with closed eyes. Over and over again in her
mind she was saying to herself--

"I don't believe it--I don't believe a word of it; it's all cruel
lies--first Mr. Mellowes and now June. They both hate him, that's what
it is; but I don't believe a word of what they say." June was bustling
about the room fetching cushions and a light rug which she had laid
over Esther.

"You have a little sleep, and you'll feel heaps better," she said.

She went away, shutting the door quietly; and Esther hid her face in
her hands.

She hardly knew why she was crying, she only knew that she was utterly
miserable.

She took Ashton's last letter from her dress and read it through
again--how could any one, reading it, doubt that he loved her? How
could any one, knowing his careful thought for her, believe that he
was the detestable personality June and Micky had described?

She kissed the signature passionately. Nobody in all the world counted
but this one man.

She got up and went over to June's desk, which both girls used; she
felt that she must write to him and tell him how much she wanted him.

When she had finished writing she looked to the head of the paper on
which she had written for the address, and then she saw a postscript
scribbled in a corner which she had not noticed before.

  "Don't write to me here--I shall have left this hotel by the time
  you get my letter. I will write again as soon as possible."

It was like a door with iron bars being closed in her face; she could
not write after all! She could have no relief for all her longing and
unhappiness; she must just wait and wait, eating her very soul out,
till he wrote again.

She tore up what she had written and threw it into the fire.

"The phantom lover"--June's half playful, half mocking words came back
to her with foreboding. Was he indeed only a phantom lover? Just a
creation of her own brain and desire? She tried to thrust the thought
from her; she was tired and fanciful; in the morning she would be all
right; it was not fair to him, it was not fair to herself to be so
doubting. She went back to June's couch and curled up amongst the
mauve pillows; life was so hard, so disappointing; it gave so little
of all that one desired; the tears fell again, presently she cried
herself to sleep.

June came back on tiptoe; she stole across the room and looked at
Esther, then she went back to the hearthrug to keep Charlie company.

The fire had died down and she replenished it as quietly as she could,
putting a knob on at a time with her fingers.

As she leaned over to poke them softly together she caught sight of a
scrap of paper lying in the grate. It looked like part of a torn
letter, and without thinking June picked it up--the one word "dearest"
stared up at her in Esther's writing.

June looked at it for a long moment, then she turned her head and
glanced at Esther, still sleeping.

June frowned; she hunched her shoulders impatiently.

"More phantom lover, I suppose," she told herself crossly; she threw
the little scrap of paper into the fire and watched it burn with a
sort of vixenish delight.




CHAPTER XII

"I've decided to accept Mrs. Ashton's offer," said Esther suddenly.

It was the following afternoon, and she had been helping June paste
labels on to the little mauve pots. She looked up as she spoke, with
the paste brush still in her hand and her fingers all sticky.

"Did you hear what I said?" she demanded guiltily.

"Yes, I heard," June said rather tartly. "And I think you're a mean
pig. However, go on! Have your own way! Don't mind me."

"It isn't that at all," Esther declared. "But I must do something--I've
been idle quite long enough. I shall be sorry to leave you, but I shall
still pay for my half of the room."

"Thank you--thank you very much," said June drily. Esther flushed in
distress.

"Don't be so unkind! It's not that I want to leave you. I've been
happier here with you than anywhere else, but I must work, I can't
live on nothing...."

"You could live on three pounds a week if you wished to. What do you
suppose the phantom lover will say if he knows that his money hasn't
helped you, and that you're going to make a drudge of yourself?"

"I shan't be a drudge--I----"

June broke in impatiently.

"Oh, very well--I don't want to argue, but I think it's mean of you.
If you really liked me you'd stay...."

"I shall come to see you whenever I get any time off."

"Yes, once a week for two hours, I suppose--and when I shall probably
be out."

"I shall write first and let you know when I'm coming."

June took no notice; she screwed the lid on to a perfume bottle and
wiped her fingers on the white overall.

"You needn't put any more labels on," she said shortly. "I can do the
rest myself."

She took the tray away from Esther and carried it into her bedroom;
when she came back there was a suspicion of tears in her eyes. Esther
looked distressed. She felt that she was behaving meanly, and yet she
meant to go to Mrs. Ashton's.

"Micky Mellowes is coming directly," June said tartly. "If you don't
want to see him you'd better go. I know you hate him...."

Esther turned scarlet. She took off the apron she had borrowed from
June and turned to the door.

Before she reached it June followed.

"I'm a pig. I apologise humbly! Please stay. Why don't you box my ears
when I speak to you like this?" She dragged Esther back to the fire.
"I'm wild because you've made up your mind to leave me. Our friendship
doesn't mean anything to you.... There's Micky--he'll want to know why
I've been crying. Amuse him for five minutes, there's an angel, and
I'll come back."

She was gone in a flash.

A smiling Lydia showed Micky into the room. Lydia liked Micky; he was
always courteous, and he had been generous with his tips on each
occasion that he had visited the house.

Micky looked a little embarrassed when he saw Esther. He glanced
quickly round the room. "June ... I----"

"She's coming in a moment," Esther explained. "Won't you sit down?"

Micky sat on the arm of the big chair; he was cold; he leaned forward,
rubbing his hands vigorously. Esther watched him critically.

She had told June that she did not consider him in the least
good-looking, but now the thought crossed her mind that this had not
been quite a fair thing.

He was tall and well made, and he had brown hair that grew well about
his temples, and waved slightly where it parted.

His nose was nothing particular and slightly crooked, and his eyes
were nondescript in colour, but kind ... so kind! Esther remembered it
was the first thing she had noticed about him the night they met.

He looked up.

"Well," he said, "have you found another berth yet?"

"I'm going to Mrs. Ashton's," Esther said.

She was amazed at the sudden change in his face; a look of furious
anger flashed into his eyes; he rose to his feet.

"You're not serious?" he said quietly.

Esther laughed; she felt painfully nervous without knowing why.

"Serious? Indeed I am!" she answered. "Mr. Mellowes, what are you
doing?..."

Micky had caught her hands. Jealousy was driving him with whips of
fire--jealousy of this phantom lover, whom he himself had created.

"You're not to go," he said hoarsely. "I--I--I can't bear to think of
you having to work for your living. There's no need--it's all
nonsense. You'd hate being at the Ashtons.... Esther----"

She wrenched herself free; she was white to the lips.

"You must be mad!" she said. "How dare you speak like this? What is it
to you what I do? How dare you try to interfere? What business is it
of yours?"

Micky laughed shakily; he had recovered himself a little now.

"It's everything to me," he said rather hoarsely. "You must know that
it is. Esther, will you marry me?"

If only premeditated proposals were made, there would be few marriages
in the world. Ten minutes ago, when Micky Mellowes walked into the
room, he had no intention of asking Esther to marry him, but now it
seemed as if he had come for that express purpose as he stood there,
grimly obstinate.

There was a moment of silence; then Esther drew herself up.

"I think you must be mad," she said. "I've only seen you once or twice
in my life. I have told you that I am already engaged."

"I know, but it makes no difference," said Micky. "I ask you to marry
me--will you marry me?"

She drew back from him.

"You must be mad."

Micky laughed. "You've said that two or three times already, but I
assure you that I'm quite sane. I loved you the first moment I ever
saw you, but, of course, you won't believe it. However, that doesn't
matter--you haven't answered my question. Will you marry me?"

"You know I am engaged--how dare you?..." She backed away from him
till she was close to the door. Micky laughed savagely.

"You needn't be afraid--I'm not going to hurt you--I'm not going to
move from this hearthrug, but I should like you to answer my question.
Once again, will you marry me?"

"No----"

He forgot his promise and took a step towards her.

"I can make you happier than any other man possibly could. I've never
cared for a woman in my life till I met you...."

"I wouldn't marry you if you were the only man in the world--I--I
don't even like you...." Her voice shook with anger now. "My answer is
no--no--no! I shall never change my mind if I live to be a hundred
..." she added vehemently. The words seemed forced from her by
something in his eyes.

"You will," said Micky calmly, though he felt anything but calm.
"Women always do; but if you don't feel like changing it just at this
moment, will you please tell June I am here? I came to see her, and
I'm tired of waiting...." He turned away and went back to his seat on
the arm of the big chair as if nothing had happened, but his hand
shook when he tried to light a cigarette.

When June came back he was absently turning the pages of a magazine;
she looked at him for a moment, then began to laugh.

"Micky! What in the world has happened to you lately? Do you always
read a paper upside down?"

Micky started, looked down at the magazine, and said a bad word; then
he laughed too, and flinging the magazine across the room got to his
feet, stretching his long arms.

"Where's Esther?" June demanded. "I asked her to stay and amuse you
till I came back...."

"She did her best," said Micky drily. "But I am afraid I bored her."

June looked annoyed.

"I do think you two might try and like one another, if only for my
sake," she said. "It's so perfectly obvious that you hate one another,
and I cannot see why for the life of me."

"One of your instinctive hates, perhaps," Micky submitted, with a
touch of irony. He went back to the chair.

"Miss Shepstone tells me she has found a berth," he said, after a
moment. June nodded.

"Yes. Did she tell you with whom?"

"Yes; Mrs. Ashton."

Something in the tone of his voice made June look up quickly.

"Well?" she said.

Micky shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing--I dared to suggest that perhaps she would not like the
place, and she flew at me."

June laughed.

"That's just like Esther; she asks for your advice, and then----"

"She didn't ask for mine," Micky cut in. "I very kindly volunteered
the information."

"Oh!" June was on her knees now toasting buns.

"They're stale," she informed Micky candidly. "But you won't know it
when they're toasted."

Micky watched in silence. He was wondering if June had heard anything
of his conversation with Esther; they had both spoken rather loudly.
He was also wondering whether he should tell June the whole story.

"You must make allowances for her," June said briskly, as he was still
hesitating. "I know she's worried about this man. I discovered another
thing this morning, Micky"--she turned with a sudden jerk to look at
him, and the bun fell off the fork into the fire.

Micky laughed.

"Well, what have you discovered now?" he inquired.

"Why, that she can't write to him--he doesn't give her an address--or,
if he does, he takes good care to move on before she has time to
answer his letters. It looks to me, Micky, as if that young man is
shirking his responsibilities. If you ask my candid opinion, Esther
won't ever see him again."

Micky said "Rot!" rather uncomfortably. "If the fellow is
travelling--moving about...."

"He could give her an address and have the letters sent on, couldn't
he?" June demanded.

Micky rubbed his chin.

"What's she want to write to him for?" he asked presently.

June swung round, and a second bun almost shared the fate of the
first, but she grabbed it back in time.

"What does she want to write to him for?" she echoed with scorn. "My
poor child, what does any one want to write to any one for? She's in
love with the man, and when you're in love you simply have to write it
down--at least, that's what I understand from people with wide
experience. Esther's bursting to write and tell the phantom lover how
much she loves him and what a wonderful man he is; as a matter of fact
she does write to him, and tears the letters up again, and that's no
satisfaction. I wish to goodness he'd get run over and done with," she
added exasperatedly.

"I don't suppose she wishes it," said Micky.

"That's because she doesn't know what's good for her; he was probably
the first man who had ever paid her any attention, and from what she
says he's a bit of a swell, and I suppose she was flattered...."

"Rot!" said Micky violently; it made him boil to hear June say things
like this. Ashton superior to Esther? It was like the man's confounded
impudence to even think such a thing.

"Not such rot," June said wisely. "And that's what all the trouble is
about, or my name's not what it is. He has a stuck-up old cat of a
mother who won't condescend to know Esther.... What did you say?"

"Nothing," said Micky. He got up and began strolling about the room
with his hands in his pockets, and June finished toasting her buns and
made the tea.

"I'll just go up and tell Esther," she said. She went out of the room
and upstairs.

"Tea," she announced cheerfully, knocking at Esther's door; she turned
the handle and went in. Esther was standing by the window looking out
into the neglected garden at the back of the house; she turned.

"I'm not really hungry, and if you'd like to have Mr. Mellowes to
yourself----" she began.

June stared at her.

"My dear," she said then drily, "if I'd wanted to have Mr. Mellowes to
myself I should have married him long ago; so don't pretend you're not
dying for one of the stale but toasted buns."

She linked her arm in Esther's, and they went downstairs together.
Esther did not want to come, but it seemed easier to give way than to
make excuses. She took the chair which Micky brought forward; she felt
a little nervous and ill at ease. Once, when their eyes met, she found
herself colouring sensitively.

Micky let her alone in a marked fashion and talked to June. He had
found the man he had been looking for for months, he declared, a good
business man, honest----

"Really honest, Micky?" June asked, laughing.

"Really honest," Micky maintained. "Do you think I'd put you on to him
else? I've told him all about you. I went out to lu

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