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The Daughter Pays

by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds · English · Gutenberg #35591 · 624,780 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Daughter Pays

Author: Mrs. Baillie Reynolds


        
Release date: March 17, 2011 [eBook #35591]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAUGHTER PAYS ***




Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net










The Daughter Pays


By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds




A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers

New York

Published by Arrangements with George H. Doran Company




Copyright, 1915, 1916,

By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds




TO

ALICE PERRIN

PRE-EMINENT IN SYMPATHY FOR THE WORK OF HER SISTER WRITER

WITH AFFECTIONATE ADMIRATION




  _Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre!
  Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit etre._

    Inscription upon a statue of Love, in the Louvre.

    Freely rendered--

  _Whoe'er thou art, thy lord is he.
  He is, or was, or he must be._




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I The Man in the Gallery
     II Father and Son
    III Virginia at Home
     IV The Two Virginias
      V The Old Love
     VI Gaunt's Terms
    VII Virginia Decides
   VIII Into the Unknown
     IX In the Trap
      X Andromeda
     XI A First Experience
    XII The Beginning of Defeat
   XIII The Treatment Breaks Down
    XIV Instantaneous Conversion
     XV No Place of Repentance
    XVI Renouncement
   XVII What Comes Next?
  XVIII The Final Test
    XIX Absence
     XX A Case for Interposition?
    XXI The Last Ride Together
   XXII The Roman Villa
  XXIII Temptation
   XXIV Escape
    XXV The Return
   XXVI The Difficult Path
  XXVII Lunch at Perley Hatch
 XXVIII The Way Back
   XXIX The Mastery
    XXX The Escape




THE DAUGHTER PAYS




CHAPTER I

THE MAN IN THE GALLERY


  "_Yes, I have felt like some deserted world
  That God hath done with, and had cast aside
  Untilled, no use, no pleasure, not desired ...
  Could such a world have hope that, some blest day,
  God would remember her, and fashion her
  Anew?_"--Jean Ingelow.


The full sunshine of late June, tempered by the medium of London
atmosphere, illumined the long extent of Gallery Number Sixteen at
Hertford House.

It was a pay-day, and there were, in consequence, but few visitors. The
expanse of polished floor glimmered with a suggestion of coolness, a
hint of ice; and the summer light touched with brilliance the rich
colour on the walls, the mellow harmonies of the bits of old furniture
ranged below.

The space and solitude, the silence and sunlight, emphasised and threw
into strong relief the figures of two girls, deep in contemplation
before the portrait of Isabella, wife of Paul de Vos.

Though these were modern, even ultra-modern, Nattier and Boucher, great
interpreters of an artificial age, might have hailed them as kindred
spirits. They seemed eloquent of all that luxury could produce in the
way of exotic perfection. But for the absence of rouge and powder, they
were as far removed from the dingy, the commonplace, or the underbred,
as any pre-Revolution marquise, smiling from the windows of her chateau
upon a world dark with misery, convulsed with pain, and all unconscious
of its very existence.

Far indeed from these hot-house blooms seemed the seamy side. They were
of those who feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life. They
belonged to the class which a novelist of our own day has so happily
described as expensive. They were the fine flower of our epoch, and
unconscious of their own supreme selfishness.

One was of the petite type, gipsy brown and captivating, from the tip
of her plumes to the shoes and stockings which matched her gown, and
upon whose buckles the light winked. The other was taller and more
willowy. She was not big, but formed with the lithe grace of the modern
Atalanta. Something in the veiled loveliness of her soft eye suggested
a dove. Her hair was fair, and her face, wide across the brows, and
tapering at the chin, seemed designed to make an involuntary appeal to
the heartstrings of any man who looked at her. Every movement of this
girl was graceful. Yet one would have felt certain that her grace was
unstudied; she was not self-conscious; her attentions seemed entirely
absorbed by the beauty of the paintings at which she gazed.

Thus she stood, her chin uplifted; and a man who entered, with halting
step, from Gallery Fifteen, shot a keen glance and stopped short.

He was not a young man, and his dress, for London, was negligent;
whilst his long black moustache gave him a slightly out-of-date, or
provincial, aspect. His black hair showed some grey at the temples, but
he appeared to be in vigorous health.

For some long moments he stood in absorbed contemplation of the girlish
figure isolated against the dim, dignified background of the gallery:
and as he gazed there crept into his face an expression which made it
almost devilish. Every feature hardened--the mouth took on a sneer, the
eyes glowed with some concentration of feeling which altered his whole
face for the worse.

As yet unconscious of his presence, the girl gazed on; and after a
minute her smaller, darker friend strolled up and joined her. She said
something that made the other laugh. The chime of their mirth sounded
sweetly through the empty space, but brought to the lips of the watcher
a curl of contempt. He began to move forward slowly, seemingly intent
upon the pictures, but always coming nearer, until he stood where he
could hear the girls' light, careless talk.

"My dear," said the smaller girl, "I am thinking all the time what a
fancy dress this would make, for anybody that could wear it." They were
standing before Mierevelt's lovely portrait of the young nameless lady
in the ruff.

As her companion did not immediately reply, she added insistently:
"Virginia! Did you hear?"

The lame man started, or, as it were, winced at the sound of the name;
yet a certain satisfaction crept into his eyes, as of one who inly
reflects: "I thought so! I was not mistaken."

Virginia, thus appealed to, brought her dreamy gaze from the portrait
of the burgomaster who sits with his small son. "What? A fancy dress?
Oh, Mims, yes! That little bit of stiffened lace round the back of her
hair is an inspiration. I could make it, too--I see just how it's done."

The two proceeded to examine the head-dress in detail, with girlish
talk about the way to copy it. "Gold embroidery all down the front of
her gown. How sweet!" sighed Virginia admiringly. "But that ruff--would
it do?"

"For you? Of course! You could wear it, for you have a throat. But what
_did_ little people like me do, when they had all that between
their chin and their chest?"

Virginia was much amused. "No, Mims, you were not made for a ruff! But
then, _en revanche,_ you can wear all those lovely Venetian reds
and ambers that I can't touch!"

Childish talk, but with no suspicion of a critical listener! The lame
man heard every word. As the eager girl turned to point across the
gallery to a picture exemplifying the colours she meant, she slightly
brushed against him, for he was standing within a few feet of her. He
stepped back, raising his hat in acknowledgment of her gentle apology;
and his eyes, full of something between hostility and contempt, met
hers hardly, as if in a challenge, for a puzzling instant before he
turned away and limped to another place.

Virginia's colour rose and her lips set, as if an unspoken insult had
reached her. She was not used to read hostility in the eyes of men. She
recovered, however, in a moment, and continued her study of the
pictures, moving round for some minutes longer, until Miriam, leaning
near her, murmured:

"Shall we go into the next room? There is a custodian there, and that
man keeps on staring odiously."

"Yes; let us go and look at the Greuzes," replied Virginia.

It was not long before the unknown man followed them. He was now more
careful, however, and kept his eyes for the beauties of the catalogue
instead of allowing them to roam towards the beauties of his own day.

"I don't think he meant to be rude," presently said Virginia
doubtfully. "He looked at me almost as though he thought he knew me--as
if he expected me to speak to him."

"My dear, it is evident that you must never be allowed to go about
London alone," laughed Mims. "As if he knew you, indeed! That's the
commonest dodge of all. I am sure he is trying to be rude--he is edging
round here now----"

"Oh, nonsense! Let us think about the pictures and take no notice. He
could not be rude in a public place like this--he cannot think we are
girls of that sort."

"There's the portrait of you," said Mims mischievously, pausing before
Greuze's picture entitled "Innocence"--the picture with the lamb.

It was true, the likeness was striking. Virginia even coloured slightly
as she gazed. "Chocolate box!" said she disdainfully. "Greuze is only
pretty-pretty! I would far rather be like Isabella de Vos!"

As she spoke she moved away with her undulating grace, the lame man
having again approached nearer than was quite consistent with good
manners.

"That's the worst of you, Virginia--you can't go about without dragging
backwards the heads of all the men that pass," said Mims in injured
tones.

"Talk about glass-houses!" was her friend's sarcastic response, adding
with a little sigh: "Well, you won't long be troubled. Cinderella's
clock strikes to-morrow, and I go back to Wayhurst and my native
obscurity."

Miriam's soft, dark eyes clouded.

"Native obscurity! No, my dear, that's the tragedy! You were _not_
born to it, and you will never thrive in it! Oh, the pity! I could cry
when I think of you, mewed up in that wee brick-box of a villa, and
when I remember that it's not much more than two years ago since we
were staying with you at Lissendean--riding, hunting, motoring!"

"Don't talk of it, Mimsie, for pity's sake! It can't be helped, you
know; and, of course, it isn't half as bad for me as for poor mother."

Mims made a grumpy sound. She was depressed, not only by her friend's
impending departure, but by the thought of that friend's destiny.

Virginia Mynors, in the days when she and Miriam Rosenberg were at
school together, had been queen of everything. She was the elder
daughter of a county gentleman, her clothes came from the best places,
she took all the extras, rode, swam, hunted--with no more thought of
ways and means than her present appearance led one to suppose.

During the weary days of her father's long illness--a kind of creeping
paralysis which lasted for two years--Virginia had known that he had
money troubles. But though she had been his devoted nurse and trusted
secretary, she was no more prepared than was her butterfly mother for
the state of financial catastrophe revealed at his death. The solid
ground had failed beneath her feet. Everything was gone. Even
Lissendean, the home in which she had been born, was mortgaged. They
all moved out, the house was let, and upon the few hundreds a year
received as rent her mother, herself, her brother Antony, and her
little sister Pansy, were to live.

Virginia had to be the moving spirit in it all. She elected to settle
at Wayhurst, because there is an excellent public school there, and, as
a day boy, Antony, who was nearly fourteen, might obtain the education
of a gentleman. For nearly two years now such had been the girl's life.
Yet even Miriam did not guess the truth--did not guess the drudgery and
devotion of Virginia's daily round.

Mr. Rosenberg was what is described as rolling in money. He had social
ambitions, and was very well pleased when his daughter made friends at
school with the daughter of Bernard Mynors. The Rosenbergs, brother and
sister, had more than once accepted the whole-hearted hospitality of
Lissendean. Their father could not, therefore, with any good grace,
make objections to Miriam's pleading when she begged to have Virginia
to stay with her.

Miriam had a great deal too much pocket-money. She sent a substantial
cheque to Virginia, that she might provide herself with an outfit and
railway fares for the projected visit. Virginia was able to devote part
of this cheque to the providing of what was locally known as a "supply"
to do the housework while she herself was away. She belonged, indeed,
to that wonderful type of woman who can make a pound, expended upon
clothes, go as far as another woman makes five, or even ten. She
arrived in Bryanston Square for her visit with exactly the right
frocks, with her spirits high, and her bloom unimpaired, in spite of
the hard life she led. Youth and high spirit will carry all before
them. Mr. Rosenberg, when his astute eye rested upon the charming
creature, became suddenly aware of her as an incarnate temptation to
his son Gerald, upon whom all his hopes were concentrated.

Mr. Rosenberg was not without good impulses. He desired to befriend
this beautiful girl to whom Fate had shown herself so cruel. It was,
however, more than could be demanded of human nature that he should be
ready to console her for her misfortunes with the gift of all his
wealth and all his social ambition. As a man of business, he divined
her mother to have been the ruin of the family. He knew Mrs. Mynors as
a lovely, vain, shallow and selfish person, who all her life had lived
for her own amusement. Such a mother-in-law would be a burden that
Gerald could never carry. Moreover, there were two younger children, of
whom one, the little girl, was badly crippled--a permanent invalid.

Had Virginia, being her father's daughter, stood alone, it is just
possible that her extreme beauty would have brought Mr. Rosenberg to
the point of allowing the match. With her encumbrances he felt it to be
impossible. He did not know that it was at Gerald's instigation that
Mims had gone to the length of actually financing the scheme of the
visit. Yet his shrewdness rather suspected something of the sort.
During the whole fortnight of Virginia's sojourn he had been on
tenter-hooks--manoeuvring to keep his son out of the way without
seeming to do so.

They had--thanks, he felt sure, to his policy--arrived safely at the
last day of Miss Mynors' stay. Last moments, however, are fraught with
particular danger. Mr. Rosenberg could not feel that he was as yet "out
of the wood," and would probably have undergone even worse
apprehensions had he known of Gerald's appointment to meet the two
girls at Hertford House and give them tea.

"If we hadn't arranged to meet Gerald here, I would just walk right
away, out of the place," muttered Mims presently. "I wish that man
would not dog us like this."

"Let us leave off looking at the pictures," suggested Virginia, "and go
and sit at the top of the staircase, in that recess. Then we shall see
Mr. Rosenberg as he comes up--and the man could hardly pursue us there
without being openly offensive."

"Good!" replied Mims with satisfaction. They left the Boucher room, in
which the stranger seemed to be absorbed in contemplation, and seated
themselves in the alcove, behind the statue of "Triumphant Love."

They made a dainty picture in the fuller light which fell upon them
there; and they sat on undisturbed until they saw the head of their
escort appearing above the edge of the staircase.

Mims stood up and called to him, and in a moment he had joined them.

"Tired of the pictures already?" he asked, glancing at his watch. "I am
not late, am I?"

"Oh, no, not a bit. We have only been here a very few minutes," replied
his sister, noting that the lame man was now standing in the doorway,
and that his eyes were fixed on Gerald.

"Read what is written round the pedestal of this statue, boy," she went
on mischievously. "Is it true, or is it not?"

Gerald stooped over the words cut upon the circular base of the figure.
He was not actually a handsome man, but he was, without doubt,
distinguished-looking. Mr. Rosenberg senior prided himself upon the
fact that his son's face showed no racial characteristics. His features
were clean-cut, he was well-shaved and well-groomed, carried himself
with dignity, and was usually self-possessed. He stood before the
marble cupid, conscious in every nerve of the close proximity of his
sister's beautiful friend, and read aloud the couplet:


  _Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre!
  Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit etre._


"Is it true, Gerald?" asked Mims naughtily. He looked at Virginia.

"Is it true, Miss Mynors?"

Virginia hesitated. "Well, I think it is, but not in the sense in which
this inscription means it," she ventured timidly. "I mean--there is a
love which is stronger than anything or anybody--but not _that_
love--not that silly winged boy." She blushed a little as she spoke,
and looked so divinely pretty, her small teeth just showing between the
parted lips, her shadowy, Greuze eyes uplifted, that Gerald felt his
head swim.

"I think you are right," he said, speaking with extra gravity to hide
his emotion.

"Virgie is simply ridiculous about love," grumbled Mims. "She would
give away her head, her heart, her hand, anything she had, for those
she loves--her mother and her little sister----"

"And Tony," reprovingly put in Virginia.

"And Tony," teased her friend. "Isn't she a baby, Gerald?"

The young man considered her. "Or an angel?" he suggested. There was,
to him, something awe-inspiring in the simplicity of this girl. With a
face that might have brought the world to her feet, she was absorbed in
the domestic affections, untouched, as it would seem, by the admiration
she excited.

"Well, as the car is down there waiting, we had better be off,"
remarked Mims, after a short interval in which she had left the two to
talk together. "Are you going to take us to Fuller's, Gerald? If so, we
ought to move on. You know we must dine early; we are going to the
theatre for Virgie's last night."

The eyes of the man and the girl met, upon that, with mutual regret.
Her last night! Cinderella must put off her dainty raiment and return
to her saucepan-scouring, bed-making, account-keeping, making-ends-meet
existence. The pang that shot through Gerald's heart was so like
physical pain that he had a fanciful idea of the marble boy--the
"Triumphant Love" who looked smiling down upon them--having shot his
dart and reached the mark of his innermost feeling.

Could he let her go?

Like his father, he was a man of the world. Like his father, he had
planned the alliance with birth and money which was to establish his
position among English gentry. There was a sharp struggle in his mind.
Had Virginia had one ounce of the coquette in her, she could have
clinched the matter in five minutes.

The lame man, who had watched the whole colloquy, descended the stairs
behind them in time to see the perfectly appointed motor in waiting,
with its two men in livery. As he turned about and reascended to enter
the galleries once more, there was a bitter sneer on his mouth, a look
of active malevolence, as of one who deliberately turns his back upon
his better feelings.




CHAPTER II

FATHER AND SON


  "_The wise sometimes from wisdom's ways depart:
  Can youth then hush the dictates of the heart?
  Precepts of prudence curb, but can't control
  The fierce emotions of the flowing soul._"--Byron.


The three young people, after partaking at Fuller's of an excellent
tea, returned to Bryanston Square in good time to dress for dinner.

As they entered the house, Mr. Rosenberg emerged from his library on
the ground floor, and called to Gerald, who, thus summoned, hung up his
hat and walked into the dark, cool room where his father was seated at
his roll-top desk, with a letter lying before him.

The elder man looked up at his only son with a kindly, half-rueful
expression. "Gerald," he said, "I'm not as a rule tyrannical, and I
think you will admit that I don't pry unduly into your affairs."

"I do admit it, father----"

"Well, if I put a question which may seem to you unwarranted, I want
you to understand that there is grave reason for it. The question is
this. Is there any understanding between yourself and Miss Mynors?"

Gerald flushed, a slow, dark flush, as he seated himself near his
father, his eyes on the ground. "No," he said quietly, "not as yet."

"Ha!" The shrewd, kindly eyes above the rims of the reading-glasses
were fixed upon him. "That means that you might--eh, Gerald?"

The younger man did not at once reply. He seemed to be weighing
carefully the thing he wished to say. At last:

"I am not a fool, father," he began, "and I have ambition, or I should
be no son of yours. I should prefer to make a marriage which would
establish me socially." Embarrassment made his phrasing somewhat
stilted. "You will remember that when I first saw Miss Mynors, she was
the daughter of a man with a county position. One assumed the adequate
rent-roll that went with it."

"Yes, yes, my boy--I quite understand."

There was a pause. "She is far the most beautiful girl I ever saw,"
said Gerald at length.

"I grant it."

"She has also a beautiful disposition."

"H'mph!"

"Yes, it is so. Her birth being undeniable, and her beauty so great, I
have been wondering whether--whether anything else that is within my
reach could ever be as well worth having--could ever compensate me for
her loss."

"In short, my able, intellectual son is preparing to consider the world
well lost for love--eh?"

"I think, father, you will admit the temptation to do so in this case."

"I do," was the answer, in tones abrupt but heartfelt. "I don't mind
owning that, during the past fortnight, while seeing whither you were
drifting, I have been half-inclined to drift also in that direction.
But, my boy, it won't do." He laid his clenched hand heavily on the
desk before him. "I tell you plainly that it won't do. The girl is
beautiful, I don't deny it. But she comes of a bad stock. Her mother is
a woman whom I should describe as having no moral sense. They are
beggars. You would have bound upon your back, for the term of your
natural life, a ready-made family of three, none of whom, I dare swear,
will ever earn a farthing as long as they live. Just run your eye over
that."

With a sudden twisting gesture he pushed a note, on lavender paper with
a tiny, narrow black border, and scented with orris root, towards where
his son sat. Gerald read:

Laburnum Villa, Wayhurst.

_My dear, generous friend,_

_With your kindness to my Virginia already placing me under a burden
of obligation to you, it must indeed seem to you that I stretch
friendship to its utmost in writing to weary you with my troubles and
to beseech advice. My excuses are, briefly, these: I know you to be an
excellent man of business; and I know that you love my girl._

_I will try not to be tiresome, and, indeed, the story of my
misfortune, though dire, will not take long to tell. My poor
husband--who, alas! had not your gift for finance--mortgaged our dear
home during his lifetime. At his death, the debts on the estate
swallowed up almost all other available money. We were obliged to let
Lissendean, and to live upon the rent paid. I am quite unused to
business, having lived, till my sad widowhood, so sheltered a life, and
I forgot that if the payments were not kept up--the interest on the
mortgage--I should lose the house altogether. Believe me, in our
straitened circumstances, it was impossible to keep up the payments.
Only yesterday have I heard from my solicitor that the mortgagee has
foreclosed, and that we are left as destitute as though my husband had
been a crossing-sweeper._

_Can you suggest to me any means by which this trouble could be met?
Is there any way of raising money by which I can stave off the utter
ruin that threatens my helpless children? I turn to you as a last
resort, and you will never know what it costs my pride to let you into
the secret of our misery. Do not tell my darling child until her visit
is over--let her have her happy, happy moments with you undimmed. I can
break the bad news to her to-morrow, upon her return--or later, should
you by any chance wish her to extend her visit.--I am, dear Mr.
Rosenberg, your sorely tried friend,_

Virginia Mynors.


The dark colour deepened upon Gerald's face as he read this letter. He
laid it down with a gesture of distaste, and made no audible comment.

His father, looking sympathetically at him, tapped the paper with his
broad finger-tips. "Gerald," he said, "that woman is a humbug, through
and through. It is the letter of a cadger. Look at it--written on paper
that cost exactly ten times what her note-paper ought to cost. Little
things like that tell one a lot. No doubt everything else is on the
same scale. I expect they are up to their necks in debt. What can I do
with that letter, except send the writer ten pounds and regret my
inability to help her further? Nobody could help her. But I tell you
plainly, my son--if I can prevent it, as God's above us, that woman
shall never be your mother-in-law."

He did not speak violently, but judicially, as one summing up a case.

"I went down there once, you may remember, for a week-end, while they
were still at Lissendean," he continued. "I took her measure then. She
is a woman who would fleece any man who could be got to admire her. She
is that type. You think the girl is different. I tell you that what is
bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. The girl isn't to be
trusted any more than the mother. You see the position--absolutely
destitute! Three of them! What is to happen? Say you marry--say you
allow her two or three hundred a year--that's going to cripple you, and
it isn't going to keep her." He spoke with ever-increasing urgency. "If
you give her three, she'll spend five. If you give her five, she'll
spend eight. Can't you see that for yourself, Gerald? It's all in that
letter--every word of it--if you read between the lines."

"It's a contemptible letter," said Gerald, pushing back his chair
abruptly; "but I can't believe that the girl----"

"Gerald, put it to yourself a moment. Even if the girl is the best girl
in the world, are you prepared to keep the lot? Virginia's very
qualities--her love for her family, her generosity where they are
concerned--would be your ruin. You couldn't say no to her; she couldn't
say no to them. There you would all be."

Gerald's face hardened. His likeness to his father came out
clearly--breaking, as it were, through the polish of his public school
and university training. He saw the case with the Rosenberg eye, and he
flinched.

"But how," he stammered, and cleared his throat, "how am I to draw back
with honour, father?"

"I've done that for you. That is, the way out is open if you will take
it. The Liverpool house wrote me this morning, asking to have you sent
down for a week--some bother about that inspector, Routledge; you know
the man. I wired to the hotel that you might come on by the night
train. It may fairly be called urgent. My counsel to you is that you
just bolt--bolt and get clear away before you have committed yourself
to a thing which must be hopeless."

Gerald leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. It was a very
rare sign of feeling with him.

"You haven't committed yourself--you haven't said or done anything that
makes it impossible to draw back?" asked the elder man in deep anxiety.
"You said you hadn't."

"That is true. I have said nothing. I am not even certain what her
answer would be. I could not say that she had given me any reason to
hope. She is so serene, so impartially sweet, one cannot tell--like my
'Last Duchess,' you know--'who passed without much the same smile'?"

Mr. Rosenberg did not read Browning. The allusion passed him by.

"Then take your courage in your two hands, boy, and do as I tell you.
In a month or two you'll be thanking me on your knees. Bolt, I tell
you, bolt. Don't see her again. Leave a message by me--catch the
restaurant-train. I told Brown to pack your valise, and the car is
waiting."

Gerald was pale now. "She'll think me a cur."

"No such thing. I shall make good your case. Urgency. She will think
you could not help yourself. She will look upon the affair as hung up,
not ended. After a while she will forget it."

"But--but what are they to do?" stammered Gerald. "The mother may
deserve this, but she doesn't. It is she who will have to suffer."

"She shall not suffer. I will send them enough to carry on, and I will
recommend that wax doll of a mother to take a situation--to go as
companion to some heiress or something--to put her shoulder to the
wheel and help to keep her children. She has had a good run for her
money, now let her taste the rough side of things for a while. Do her
no harm. Do her good."

Gerald rose and went to the window, gazing out with unseeing eyes at
the busy welter of society traffic--the swift cars, laden with
well-dressed occupants, which flashed by in the summer evening.

His father watched him anxiously.

"Gerald," he said at last, "listen to me. If you go now--if you do as I
tell you--there need be nothing final about it. The girl will be at
Wayhurst--you will know where to find her. Suitors are not likely to be
as common as blackberries, even with her looks. Take this chance to
think things over more coolly than is possible when she is in the same
house with you. I don't want to demand too great a sacrifice, boy----"

The last words were husky and wistful. He loved his son sincerely.

Gerald swung round. "You have me beat, as the Irish say," he muttered
abruptly. "I know I'm not master of myself. If I speak to her, it might
be against my better judgment; I might regret it. You are right--it is
better to temporise, to postpone a decision. Yes, it is better--I am
almost sure."

He spoke absently, jerkily. In his mind was one of those pictures which
rise unbidden--and apparently without reason--to the memory. It was the
picture of the face of a man he had remarked that afternoon at the
Wallace collection, standing in the doorway of the Boucher room, as the
Rosenberg party went downstairs. The man had a noticeable face--dark,
with an expression in the eyes which brought to mind the word
"smouldering."

He had watched the gay little party of three with an air that was like
Mephistopheles sneering at Faust. "So! You are snared--snared like
other men, by a pretty face and luminous eyes----"

That was what the silent watcher had conveyed to the prosperous young
suitor.

Oddly, the recollection of his face, swimming all unaware into the
field of memory, turned the scale.

"Yes, father, I shall go," said Gerald.

      *      *      *      *      *

"Why, where's Jerry?" demanded Mims, as she and Virginia entered the
drawing-room, and proceeded to greet a couple of young men, who stood
there with the before-I-have-dined expression upon their clean faces.
"How do you do, Lawrence? How do you do, Mr. Bent? I expect our box
will hold five."

"I telephoned Bent an hour ago, Mims," said Mr. Rosenberg. "Poor old
Gerald has had a stroke of bad luck. I have been obliged to send him
away."

Mims paused in consternation, and, as though she could not help it, her
glance flew to Virginia. "To send him away? Why, where?" she cried
blankly.

Virginia, more in reply to the glance than as a result of the news,
coloured divinely. She had put on her very sweetest gown. It was a
survival of Lissendean days, carefully altered by the finger of genius,
so that it looked to be the very latest. It was pale blue, with touches
of faint periwinkle mauve: and young Bent, as he gazed, was trying to
decide which colour matched her eyes more nearly.

She was hurt. The news wounded. She had spent this fairy fortnight in
luxury and also in a dream of happiness. She had not singled out Gerald
as anything more than one factor in her bliss. He was just a part of a
scheme of things which must be injured by any interference.

So unconscious was she of any deeper significance, that she turned at
once to Mr. Rosenberg, lifting to him the eyes that even he found a
difficulty in resisting, and cried impulsively:

"Do you mean that Gerald is gone--that I shall not see him again before
I leave?"

"Why, if you are leaving in course of the next few days, I fear not,"
said the hypocrite. "He was not pleased, as you may imagine. But
business is sometimes urgent, you know. Had he not gone, I must have
done so myself: and he thought a night journey to Liverpool rather much
to expect from a man of my age who had a son to send. Eh?"

"Of course," murmured Virginia. "But it is a pity! Spoils our last
evening!"

"Oh, now, now, Miss Virginia! That is a little rough upon poor Bent,
who has rallied up at a moment's notice to make your party complete.
Confess now--in the lamentable circumstances, could I have done better?
Eh? I think not. There is dinner announced. Come, take my arm. Mims
must divide herself between the two young men."




CHAPTER III

VIRGINIA AT HOME


  "_Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend,
  Seeking a higher object. Love was given,
  Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end,
  That self might be annulled--her bondage prove
  The fetters of a dream, opposed to Love!_"
                    --Wordsworth.


The six-forty-six express from London swept majestically into the
station at Wayhurst.

It was one of the events of the day in the sleepy place--the arrival of
the 6.46; the evening papers came down on that train. Many residents
were on the platform--the retired Army men to fetch their _Pall Mall
Gazette_, others to meet friends. There was nobody to meet Virginia
Mynors, but evidently she did not expect it. She stood among the
throng, in her simplest linen suit, and searched with her eyes for the
outside porter. It was some time before she could secure his
services--he was busy with more important clients--and when at last he
had shouldered her trunk and hat-box, it was with the remark that he
couldn't "promise to be out at the villas, not much afore nine o'clock,
at any rate."

Virginia intimated that nine o'clock would suit, and turned,
travelling-bag and umbrella-case in hand, to brave her hot walk. It was
a sultry evening. The country town was bathed in dust; the roads,
though it was almost seven o'clock, seemed shadeless. After a while the
girl stopped to withdraw her sunshade from the case, and proceeded on
her way, holding it up with one hand, the weight of her hand-luggage in
the other.

She looked pale and dispirited. Somehow, the end of her glorious London
visit had tailed off in dissatisfaction. The Rosenbergs had been
kind--most kind--to the last. They had insisted upon keeping her one
day longer, that Mr. Bent might take them to Hendon to see some flying.
But longer than that she would not stay, for Pansy, her little lame
sister, had written her a letter containing the following disquieting
news:


_Mama is in an awfull stayt. I think she has had bad news. She says
we are rewend._


This last word Virginia interpreted "ruined," and as she plodded along
the High Street, and up the Balchurch Road, past Sycamore Terrace and
its handsome houses, to the region of tiny villas, these words were
haunting her. She had supposed their ruin already accomplished. What
could have happened afresh? What had mamma been doing? Incurring debts
which she could not pay? This she was constantly doing upon a small
scale, in spite of the fact that her daughter rigorously supervised her
cheque-book and controlled the household expenditure.

Virginia took it for granted that her mother would always spend more
than she ought, and was quite used to depriving herself of necessaries
in order to provide mamma with such small luxuries as expensive soap,
note-paper, perfume, a library subscription, and so on. Graver
expenditure than this she had not anticipated; but she was blaming
herself for having yielded to the imploring desire of Mims that she
should go to London, and her mother's eager advocacy of the plan. She
ought not to have left mamma to the management of anything; she knew
it. She was prepared to find the weekly expenses doubled, but she had
still a couple of sovereigns in her purse with which she hoped to meet
this deficiency.

As she moved along in the heat, laden and depressed, her face assumed
an aspect of anxiety which altered it surprisingly. Seen thus, it was
obvious that she was not merely slender, but sadly thin: hollows were
discernible in the cheeks, shadows lurked around the smiling mouth when
it was grave.

At last Laburnum Villa was reached.

With a sigh of relief Virginia trod the tiny garden approach, pushed
open the narrow door, and deposited her burdens within the passage.

The passage was extremely small. It was distempered in pale green
(Virginia had distempered it), and the paint was white (Virginia had
enamelled it). The floor was stained (Virginia had stained it), and on
the ground there lay a very valuable old Persian corridor-rug, relic of
Lissendean. From Lissendean, too, came the marble fountain-head which
was used for umbrellas, and the little carved oak table.

Cinderella's expression changed as she entered her home--changed to an
eager, glowing delight of anticipation. Light-footed she ran up the
tiny staircase, and, pushing open the door of the back room on the
landing, flew to the side of a child who lay almost flat upon an
invalid-couch at the open window.

There were ecstatic cries: "Virgie, Virgie!" and "Pansy, my Pansy
blossom!" and the two sisters were clinging together in a rapture of
affection.

"Let's look at you, Virgie, darling! Oh, yes, you are better! It has
done you good, hasn't it, dear? Plenty to eat--you never have enough at
home."

"Pansy, Pansy, what nonsense you talk, you silly baby! Of course I
always have plenty to eat! The point is, how have _you_ been
getting on? Has old Mrs. Brown fed you properly?"

Pansy was able to reassure her. The "supply" had been quite
satisfactory. "Only she said she thought the missus didn't ought to
expect no general to do up her boots for her, and mend her stockings,"
remarked the child. "I told her to give mamma's stockings to me--you
know her darning was abominable. Mamma would never have worn them
afterwards if she had done them. She grumbles enough as it is at having
to wear darned stockings at all. Mrs. Brown is quite a kind old thing.
She is staying to-night until eight o'clock to get supper, so that you
should not have to set to work the moment you come home."

"That's a relief," owned Virginia, fetching a deck-chair and seating
herself with her arms behind her head. "Where is mamma now?"

"She's still out, I think. I haven't heard her come in. She went this
afternoon to call upon Major and Mrs. Simpson, and to buy some things
to trim up a hat."

"Oh, but she doesn't want another hat----" began Virgie in vexation,
and checked herself. "I only trimmed her a new one the day I left home."

"Well, somebody sent her some money yesterday, I think," replied Pansy.
"She went this morning and bought herself a winter coat at Baxter's
sale. She said it was an economy."

"And when the winter comes, she'll say it's out of date," replied
Virgie with a little groan. "Oh dear, I do wish she wouldn't do things
like that--with poor Tony's suit almost in rags."

"Well, you know it is no use for me to say anything, don't you, dear?"
remarked Pansy, with the quaintest assumption of wisdom.

She would have been a pretty child but for her look of transparent,
egg-shell frailness. Her hair, with bronze lights in it, clustered
charmingly about her small face, and her eyes were as lovely as
Virginia's own, but with the haggard, hungry expression of a child who
has no health.

She was very small for her age, which was twelve. Her lameness was the
result of a bad accident in babyhood. Mr. and Mrs. Mynors spent a
winter on the Riviera, leaving their children in charge of a nurse who
was not trustworthy. Mrs. Mynors had been warned that the nurse was
flighty, but had taken no notice of the caution. She wished to set out
on a certain date, and said she had no time to make other arrangements.
The woman went out for what is now known as a "joy-ride" with the
chauffeur and other chosen companions. She took with her Pansy, who was
the baby, and Bernard, the elder boy, who was her favourite, leaving
Tony at home in charge of Virginia. The party refreshed itself at many
taverns on the way, and it was hardly surprising that the affair ended
in a serious accident. Bernard was killed, and the baby's spine was
injured.

The shock of his eldest son's loss was thought to have been the source
of Mr. Mynors' own lingering illness. He had forgiven his wife many a
flirtation, much consistent neglect of himself. He never forgave her
for Bernard's death.

Nine-year-old Virginia waited, all that terrible day, and part of the
night, for the return of the motoring party. Old Brand, the butler, who
had been with the Mynors from the time of her father's boyhood, and who
had begged his mistress not to leave this nurse in charge of the
children, sat hour after hour with Virginia on his lap, until, at ten
o'clock, he carried her up to bed, left her in charge of the
under-nurse, and himself went out with one or two gardeners to see if
he could hear news of the motor-party.

Virginia, though in bed, could not sleep. She lay listening, listening
for a sound in the silent house, until the dawn began to break. Then
she heard wheels--wheels and voices on the gravel of the drive; and,
slipping from her bed, without arousing the fast-sleeping nursemaid or
Tony, she ran downstairs in her white nightie.

All her life she would remember Brand's face as he strode into the hall
and laid down upon a settle the burden that he carried--Bernard, with
his head all shrouded in white linen. Then came a doctor, stern and
tight-lipped, with the moaning baby in his arms. Virginia could still
recall the carbolic smell of the doctor's clothes as he went upstairs,
the blueness of the baby's face in its waxen stillness, and the silence
punctuated by faint moans.

The grim realities of life came then to the girl's consciousness for
the first time, never to leave her more. For some years--until she went
to the school at which she met Miriam Rosenberg--she was grave and
silent with a gravity unbefitting her years, her fine health, her
promising future. After that she yielded to the spell of youth and
friendship and adventure, and the world had seemed ever more alluring,
until the final shock of her father's loss.

This hot afternoon, gazing down upon Pansy's pathetic fragility, she
thought what sorrows had been hers in the twenty years of her short
life. The future looked sadder than usual, and her customary good cheer
was temporarily absent; she felt a curious depression, or sense of
coming trouble.

"You look so grave, Virgie darling!"

"Pansy, I'm a perfect pig. I believe I am suffering from that horrible
feeling we used to call 'after-the-party' feeling."

"I don't wonder," replied Pansy sagely. "It must be pretty rotten to
come back from all that fun and luxury and money to start being maid of
all work again. Oh, Virgie, what are we to do?"

"Do? Why, get on, of course--do our work and enjoy it!" cried Virginia,
springing up and going to the window. "Oh, Pansy, the delphiniums! How
this hot weather has brought them out! There was not one in bloom when
I left."

"I thought you'd be pleased with that!" cried the child in eager
delight. "And look at the roses too, Virgie--the Hiawatha that you
thought was dead!"

"Darling Hiawatha! He came from home," whispered Virginia. She knelt by
the window, her elbows on the sill and her curved chin resting on her
hands, while her Greuze eyes rested on the row of little garden plots,
on the farther row that abutted upon them, and on the backs of the
houses beyond those. She was young, it was summer-time, and yet, and
yet----

"Well," said Pansy, "did Gerald send me his love or anything?"

Virginia started. Gerald at the moment filled her thoughts. She had
missed him when he went away--went away without a word! She had not
expected to miss him so much. Yet, with the lack of perception of her
youth, she failed to connect her present formless dejection with the
thought of his departure.

Pulling herself together with a determined effort, she turned from the
window, explained to Pansy the fact that Gerald had been obliged to
rush off to Liverpool for his father, and thus had naturally not had
time for any special message or present. "But I have got something for
you, sweetums," she murmured caressingly. "You wait until the outside
porter condescends to deliver my boxes! You only wait!"

The colour flooded the cripple's transparent skin. "Oh, Virgie, Virgie,
what is it? Tell me what it is!"

"We'll make it a guessing game," replied Virgie. "I will just go and
get on some old things, and we will play it properly. Where's Tony, by
the way?"

"Gone with the eleven to play Balchurch. Did you know they have made
him twelfth man? He's awfully bucked," said Pansy, with satisfaction.
"I don't expect he'll be back yet."

"Oh! Pansy! but how splendid! He's very young, isn't he?"

"Two years younger than the youngest man in the eleven," announced
Pansy, with satisfaction. "I'm making him a tie in the school colours."
She took up her knitting with pride.

A sound in the hall below struck Virginia's ear. "There's mamma," she
said; "I must go and greet her."

Slipping out of the room, she descended the stairs, and entering the
tiny drawing-room on the right of the entrance passage, stood face to
face with Mrs. Mynors.

It was hard to believe that these were mother and daughter; they looked
more like sisters. The elder woman, in coquettish slight mourning, had
the same face, broad at the brow, tapering at the chin, the same long
lovely eyes, deep-lashed, the same poise of the head and wavy
golden-brown hair. A close observer alone would mark differences. The
elder woman's eyes were blue, like forget-me-nots--the hard blue that
looks so soft, that never varies. Her daughter's were less easy to
describe. They were changeful as the sea, responsive to varying skies;
and just now, in the waning light, they seemed dark grey.

"Well, my chick, how are you? I was having tea with the Simpsons and
forgot the time, or I should have been back before this. You are
looking better for your change! I'm glad I persuaded you to go, though
we get on pretty badly without you." Passing keen eyes over her
daughter's face she seated herself, slightly drawing up her skirt with
a motion which intimated that she expected to have her shoes untied.

Unhesitatingly Virginia knelt upon the ground and performed this
service. The little room in which they were was a bower of luxury. In
it were collected all the relics of their vanished past which Mrs.
Mynors had thought herself unable to do without. Silver, miniatures,
cushions, foot-stools, a soft couch, an empire writing-table. It was
like the tiny boudoir of a rich woman. Its owner cast a disgusted
glance about her, as she remarked: "Charwomen never will dust, will
they?"

"Oh, I hoped you would have dusted this room yourself, just while I was
away," replied Virginia, with a sigh, casting her housewifely eye upon
the tarnished silver. It was a room which would take a good hour a day
to keep in proper order.

"Well, Virgie, have you any news for me?" asked Mrs. Mynors presently,
in her voice of tantalising sweetness.

Virginia raised her eyes, puzzled by something in the voice. "News?"
she answered wonderingly. "Nothing very special. I told you most of it
in my letters. The flying yesterday was most interesting--quite worth
staying for."

Mrs. Mynors sat meditatively, while her daughter left the room, went
upstairs, found indoor shoes and brought them down. She then carefully
pulled the pins from the becoming hat and removed it, her mother
sitting in calm acquiescence the while. Mrs. Mynors was uneasy. Her
reading between the lines in Virginia's innocent letters had certainly
led her to conclude that Gerald Rosenberg meant to marry the girl. Had
she herself made a fatal mistake in sending that letter to Gerald's
father before the matter had been clinched? She had felt doubts, but
her dire need had driven her on. Now she was wondering how to find
words in which to convey to Virginia the blow which had descended.

Virginia always divided the money. Each quarter she had apportioned to
her mother the sum for the interest on the mortgage. There had always
been something else on which that money must be spent.

What would Virgie say when she knew that Lissendean had gone, vanished;
that they would never revisit it; that Tony could never come into his
inheritance?

Far though she was from any feeling of self-blame, she yet was
conscious of discomfort as she looked at her daughter's unsuspecting
face.

It was easy to decide not to spoil Virgie's first evening at home by
bad news. Leaving her daughter to carry her hat, gloves and sunshade to
the room above, she settled herself luxuriously by the open window,
with her feet up, and plunged into temporary forgetfulness in the pages
of a very exciting novel.

Meanwhile--the outside porter proving better than his word--the trunk
arrived and was unpacked. The enraptured Pansy found herself mistress
of a doll of almost inconceivable beauty, with jointed limbs, and a
body that could be washed in real water. Mims had added a chest of
drawers, and various articles of costume. The dressing and undressing
of dolls had always been the little cripple's one joy. And never had
she hoped to possess such a doll as this.

Then Tony came home, hot and exultant, looking such a fine boy in his
flannels and blazer. His team had beaten the other after a hard fight,
during which, of course, the umpire had given an l.b.w., grossly unfair
and in favour of the rival eleven.

He received his own present very graciously--a curious collection of
oddments it seemed to the unlearned; but he had marked what he wanted
in a catalogue, and his sister had obediently bought as directed.
Contrite wheels, eccentrics, female screws, and so on, were darkness to
her mind, but pure joy to the recipient.

Her gift to her mother--a pair of really nice gloves--was also accepted
graciously, though with an absence of enthusiasm which led Virginia to
suspect that other things, besides the winter coat, had been purchased
that morning at Baxter's sale. Who could have sent money to her mother?
She could think of nobody; for the men friends who had hovered
continually about Lissendean had never penetrated to Laburnum Villa.
Mamma, however, made no confidence, and could not, of course, be
questioned.

It came to be time for Mrs. Brown to depart. Mamma had no silver, and
asked Virgie to pay her off. The young housekeeper then felt at liberty
to go and survey her kitchen premises, and to heave deep sighs at the
sight of so many dirty pots and pans, and the inevitable brown patch
burnt upon the enamel of her favourite milk-saucepan.




CHAPTER IV

THE TWO VIRGINIAS


  "_But hadst thou--Oh, with that same perfect face,
  And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
  And that same voice my soul hears, as a bird
  The fowler's note, and follows to the snare!--
  Hadst thou, with these the same, but brought a mind!_"
                    --R. Browning.


Nobody who saw Virginia next morning, in her blue linen overall,
bringing up her mother's early morning tea, would have recognised the
dainty flower of luxury who had moved over the polished floors of the
galleries of Hertford House. She put the tray beside the bed, drew back
the curtains, and brought in the hot water, just as a housemaid might
have done. Mrs. Mynors, rosy and beautiful among her pillows, rubbed
her sleepy eyes, and murmured "Thank you, dear one!" in a perfunctory
manner, stretching her white arms luxuriously, and adding fretfully:
"Another grilling day!"

Virginia returned no answer to this comment, but withdrew to the
kitchen, where Tony sat munching his fried bread and bacon and drinking
his coffee with a schoolboy's appetite. When he had been despatched,
clean and ready for his day's work, there was Pansy's breakfast to be
thought of. Dainty toast, fresh tea, a spoonful of jam, were arranged
on a pretty tray and carried upstairs. Then Virginia was at leisure to
sit down for a few minutes, drink what was left of the coffee in Tony's
pot, and eat some bread-and-butter. In truth she had little appetite.
The heat sapped her strength, and she reflected sadly that it was a
mistake to go away.

A holiday made it harder to begin again.

From the moment of finishing her breakfast till the moment of laying
lunch, she never ceased from her labours. The kitchen had to be
thoroughly scrubbed before its dainty mistress could be friends with it
again. Then there were beds to make, a room to sweep, three rooms to
dust. Then her mother came down, drank a cup of Bovril, and settled
herself in the garden with some embroidery, while Virginia went up to
make her bed and do her room.

When lunch had been cleared and washed up, the drudge had an hour's
breathing space. She spent it lying upon the bed in Pansy's room, the
little cripple having been moved as usual to her invalid couch by the
window. Virginia was so tired that she herself felt alarmed. What was
to become of them all if her health were to give way? The thought was
too horrible to be dwelt upon.

Her mother, remarking the depression of her spirits, was vexed. She
could not help wishing that Virginia were not quite such a simpleton.
If she had had an ounce of the coquette in her, she could have secured
Gerald Rosenberg, and all would have been well. Mrs. Mynors had
refrained from any kind of hint when the girl went to London in
response to Miriam's urgent invitation. She thought her hint might
defeat itself. Now she was wondering whether, in view of her daughter's
obtuseness, she would not have done well to let her know what was
expected of her. She could see that the girl was out of heart, and she
shrank, partly from cowardice, partly from affection, from dealing the
final blow. Yes, her utter selfishness notwithstanding, Mrs. Mynors had
some affection for Virginia. She misunderstood the girl, and
undervalued her; she accepted all her burnt offerings and sacrifices as
manifestly her own due; yet she trusted and leaned upon her with all
the weight of her own empty egotism.

Next morning, when the little figure in its blue overall brought in the
tea, there was a business-like letter lying upon the tray.

Mrs. Mynors did not open it until she had enjoyed her tea, for it was
from the solicitors who had foreclosed the mortgage, and well she knew
that it was not likely to contain anything that would please her.

She lay for some time--after she had eaten and drunk--glancing at the
morning paper, and trying to determine to face the necessary
unpleasantness. At last, heaving a sigh of boundless self-pity, she
took the envelope in her pretty white hands and opened it.

As she read a sudden flush mounted to her very brow. A smothered
exclamation broke from her. She was seized with trembling, her heart
beat suffocatingly, and with a bound she sprang from bed, rushed to her
mirror, and stood there, surveying with sparkling eyes the image of
Virginia Mynors at the age of forty-one.

Oh, did the mirror lie, or was it true that she was very nearly as
pretty as ever? Hardly a silver thread in the beautiful ripe gold hair
that had no slightest hint of red in it! The teeth still perfect within
the pretty lips, barely discernible crows' feet at the corners of the
brilliant, expressive eyes! Plumper she was no doubt, but to be plump
prevents wrinkles. As she stood there, even in her disarray, she knew
that she did not deceive herself. She was still a most attractive woman.

... And fate had sent her a chance like this! With pulses racing she
crept back to her bed and curled up there, trying to decide how best to
take advantage of this marvellous coincidence, this strange turn of
fortune's wheel. What a good thing that she was a woman of experience,
no longer a shy girl. She must not lose this chance, as silly Virginia
had lost hers!  No, no! She was too clever for that. How well the
French wit had said: "_Si la jeunesse savait! Si la vieillesse
pouvait!_"

In herself, the two states of youth and age were met felicitously. She
was old enough to know, young enough to enjoy! If she could not now
take hold on circumstance, and wrest her defeat into pure victory, then
she was no better than a fool--and she had never thought herself that.

All the time she was dressing her lips would part in a smile that
revealed those pretty teeth, and a dimple which still lurked in a fold
of her smooth cheek. She passed her own plans in review before her
mind, pondering--pondering as to how much she would have to tell
Virgie. Her excitement was so great that she felt sure she would have
to tell most of it. Thrills of anticipation coursed most agreeably
through her being. How had she been able to bear it so far--this
crushing, stifling existence in an odious little box in a horrid
third-rate town? How patient she had been! What a martyrdom she had
borne! For the children it was of course different. For her it had been
a living burial. Now that it was over--now that she saw a shining
gateway admitting her back to the world she loved so well, it seemed
incredible that she could have stood it so long.

... What would Virgie say now--Virgie, who was always so mean and
stingy, reproving her for gratifying even the simplest taste, expecting
her to live as though she had been brought up in one of the cottages on
her husband's estate? She pictured the rapture of gratitude and
devotion with which the girl would realise that her mother's charm, her
mother's ability to hold a man's affection for twenty years and more,
was to mend the family fortunes. She faced--only to disregard it--the
fact that Virginia would have some ridiculous scruples about her
father's memory. She recollected very soon that, for Pansy's sake, the
girl would welcome any way out--Pansy, whose lameness might be cured,
if she could only have the required advice and treatment.

She sat before her glass in a dream of reminiscence.

There was a tap at the door, and her daughter entered, soft-footed,
carrying a cup on a tray. "I've brought your cold beef-tea jelly,
dearest, as it is such a hot day," said she, putting it down. "Would
you like me to do your hair for you?"

"Oh, my chick, if you only would! I feel quite over-strained! I have
had such extraordinary--such heart-searching news! I very nearly
fainted when I was having my bath."

Virginia turned pale. The remembrance of Pansy's revelation concerning
their "rewend" condition leapt to her mind. She had now been home three
days, and her mother had said nothing of it, but seemed flush of cash.
Virginia had consulted the cheque-book--nothing out of the way there.
The money spent on house-keeping had been, as she expected, too large,
but not out of all bounds.

Something had stolen Virginia's buoyancy. She felt an inward flinching,
as though she could not bear a fresh blow. It must be the heat. She
took up a silver brush, and said, as stoutly as she could:

"Well, Mums, tell me all about it. I can bear it."

Mrs. Mynors pushed aside her golden tresses, opened a small drawer,
searched it, and drew out the solicitor's letter.

"Virgie, I could not tell you the very day you came home," she
faltered. "It would have been brutal, but I suppose you must know."

Her daughter, taking the legal-looking documents in her suddenly cold
hands, sank rather than seated herself upon a chair, for the
humiliating reason that she felt unable to stand.

There was stillness for a while in the tiny room, which, like the
drawing-room downstairs, was a bower of luxury. Carpet, curtains,
furniture, plenishings--all were costly relics of bygone days,
something to make a pillow between the dainty head of its mistress and
the hard cold boards of poverty. Even as she cleaned the silver toilet
articles yesterday, Virgie had noted a fresh bottle of a particularly
expensive perfume affected by her mother.

Now she read the letters--read the family doom.

All gone! Everything! Lissendean!...

She put her hands to her head. She must think.

What was left?

Nothing! They were paupers. Tony must leave school and begin to be an
errand boy. She, Virginia, must go into service. Pansy must be got into
a home for cripples! Her mother?...

... And she had gone without the necessities of life to keep up those
payments, while Mrs. Mynors was squandering the money on petty luxuries!

For the moment passion surged up so strongly in Virginia that she had
to clench her hands and grind her teeth, while she shook with the
effort to refrain from telling the pretty, golden-haired doll once for
all what she thought of her. This mother, whom she had loved, whom dad
had loved! Almost his last words had been a plea to his daughter not to
let her mother suffer if she could help it.

Had she not done her best? What more could have been required of her
that she had not given? She had sacrificed her whole life to the
service of her loved ones, had drudged and toiled that her mother might
have ease, had listened to her grumbling complaints, had humoured her
wilfulness. Yet all had been in vain. In vain!

To her mother's consternation, and even annoyance, Virginia slipped off
her chair in a dead faint.

With a sense of acute injury at being called upon to render such
service, the plump, useless hands succeeded in lowering the girl to the
floor. Then, still resentful, Mrs. Mynors actually got a wet sponge and
laid it on her daughter's forehead. This not succeeding, she found
_eau-de-Cologne_ and applied that. After a time Virginia slowly
returned to life, and to a knowledge of the enormity of her behaviour.
She dragged herself to her mother's bed, and lay down there until her
swimming senses should readjust themselves.

They were ruined; and her mother was buying winter coats and bottles of
perfume! It was really laughable.

"You cannot reproach me, really, Virgie," said her mother presently,
speaking with sad submissiveness from out her cloud of hair. "You must
see that I could not help spending that money, and also that I never
dreamed what would be the result of getting behindhand with my
payments. Our own lawyer ought to have warned me. I consider him much
to blame in the matter."

Virginia had nothing at all to say.

"I can see that you do blame me!" sharply cried Mrs. Mynors. "You lie
there without a word of comfort--as if I had ruined you and not myself
too! I suppose it is as hard for me as for you."

Virgie turned her face over and hid it on the pillow.

After gazing at her for some time, in a mood which accusing conscience
made bitter, Mrs. Mynors decided to play her trump card.

"You need not put on all these airs of tragic despair, Virgie. I have
told you the bad news first. This morning I have had other news--the
most extraordinary thing--the most unlikely coincidence--that you ever
heard! Do you want me to tell you about it, or are you too ill to pay
any attention?"

Virgie made an effort and sat up. "I'm so sorry, mother. It was very
sudden, you know, and it is all so horrible--like falling over a
precipice. I felt as if I could not grasp it. I am better now."

She slipped off the bed and tottered to the window, leaning out into
the air. "Please tell me--everything," she begged.

Mrs. Mynors leaned forward, and a little, mischievous smile showed her
dimple, as she said, playing nervously with the articles in her
manicure set: "Did you ever hear me speak of the man I was once engaged
to--the man I jilted to marry your father--Mr. Gaunt?"

"I believe I have," replied Virginia, knitting her brows.

"It was a tiresome affair," went on the lady, with a sigh. "He was very
young and impetuous; perhaps that is putting it too mildly; he had a
shocking temper, and he didn't take his jilting at all peaceably. I
know I was in fault, but what is a girl to do? He was a mere boy. When
I promised to marry him I had never seen your father; and you know,
Virgie darling, how irresistible he was."

"Yes. I know," said Virginia, telling herself that, after all, her
mother must have loved the dead man better than had appeared. Yet why,
if she loved him so much, had there always been so many others?
Virginia recalled the familiar figures--Colonel Duke, and Major Gibson,
the M.F.H., and Sir Edmund Hobbs. Certainly, for the last two years of
his life Bernard Mynors had been unable to escort his wife himself. If
she hunted, it must be with others. It had, in fact, been with others.

The dainty lips curved into a yet broader smile. "Poor Gaunt! It seems
that he has never married," went on the musical voice. "He was too
madly in love, I suppose, for any transfer of his affections to be
possible. But the point of it all is this. I have this morning heard
that it is he who holds the mortgage on our property. Lissendean
belongs to him!"

Virginia's big, woful eyes opened very wide.

"I heard this morning from the lawyers that he is in London for a week
or two, and wants to get the business finished off. I have made my
little plan. I mean to go up to town and see him, Virgie."

The words brought Virginia to her feet. "To go and see him?"

"Yes. I must, for my children's sake, make an appeal to his kindness of
heart. The pain I caused him must long ago have been forgotten, and if
I can only procure an interview with him, I feel very little doubt of
being able to persuade him to allow us more time."

Virginia considered. "Do you think he will see you? It might be very
painful for him. Have you heard nothing of him since your marriage?"

"Nothing. He lives in the country now, it seems. He must have inherited
the place that belonged to his old great-aunts. He always used to tell
me that there was not much chance of his coming into it. He was a fine
fellow in his way, only difficult--so jealous, for one thing. However,
it would be most interesting to meet him. I wonder"--coquettishly--"if
he will know me again. I don't fancy that I have changed much."

"Very little, I should think," said Virgie; "the miniature that father
had done of you the first year you were married is still just like you."

Mrs. Mynors smiled brightly. She was beginning to recover her good
humour. "Unless he has altered strangely, he will not be cruel to the
widow and the fatherless," she murmured pensively. "Cheer up, Virgie,
all is not yet lost. Try to be a little hopeful, dear child."

Virginia sat, twisting her hands together, turning the matter over in
her mind. Her mother's creditor was her mother's old lover. Her mother
was going to seize this fact, and make the most of it. Something in
Virginia revolted from the idea; but she could not urge her objections.
She fixed her purple-grey eyes upon the gay face in the mirror. It
might have been that of a woman without a care. Every instinct in her
mother was kindled at the idea of once more encountering, and most
probably conquering, what had been hers once, and would turn to her
again.

A step-father! That was an idea to make one wince. With all the
ingrained fidelity of her simple nature, the girl hated the thought.
Yet, after all, what was the alternative?

She felt that the family fortunes had passed beyond her own power to
adjust or alter. As long as a foothold of dry ground remained she had,
as it were, protected these dear ones from the raging flood. Now that
the tide had swept them away, and they were all tossing on the waters,
could she object to her mother's seizing a rope--any rope--that might
be flung to them?

"I suppose he knows," she said, after a long pause, "he knows that it
is you?"

"I suppose so. These coincidences are very curious. I have never seen
him, never even heard of him, since our rupture." She reflected, her
chin on her hand. "Strange that he should have inherited money," she
observed. "He was not at all well off when I knew him, though he was
very ambitious. He wrote--essays and so on for the Press. He was
certainly clever. Twenty-two years since I last saw him! How strange it
seems! I used to be afraid at first that he might try to kill me or
your father. He was so violent. At our wedding we had special police
arrangements. But nothing happened. Nothing at all." She spoke as if
the fact were slightly disappointing.

"It is a chance," sighed out Virginia at length. "If you can bear it,
mother--if it is not asking too much of you to go and beg a favour from
a man you once treated badly, then I think you had better try."

Mrs. Mynors' mouth drooped at the corners, and her face took on the
sweetest look of resignation. "Virgie, dearest, you can fancy--you can
understand something of what it will cost me. But for my children's
sakes I must put my own feelings aside. I must go and see what I can
do. Let me see! Where--how could I meet him? A solicitor's office does
not lend itself. Oh, Virgie, I have it! What a comfort, what a piece of
good luck, that I became a life-member of the 'Sportswoman' three years
ago! I will ask him to meet me there! I will write a note, to be given
to him direct; and I don't think he will refuse. If he does, I will
just go to London and take him by storm. I vow I'll see him somehow!
Leave it to me, Virgie! You shall see what I can do. When my children's
bread is at stake, no effort shall be too great, no sacrifice too
difficult."

      *      *      *      *      *

Later on, when Virginia had done her hair to perfection, and gone away
to do the house-work, Mrs. Mynors took a chair, mounted it, and
unlocked a small drawer at the top of her tall-boy. There were several
bundles of letters and papers in the drawer, and a small jewel-case
containing a ring. She searched among the papers for one loose
envelope, addressed in a forcible, small but not cramped handwriting.

She sat down, with this letter and the ring-box upon her knee, and read:


_You make a mistake. It is not the transfer of your affections from
myself to Mynors of which I complain, for this has not taken place.
What has happened is simply that you have bartered yourself for his
money and position. If I had been cursed with a few hundreds a year
more than he has, you would not have forsaken me. You never loved me;
but for a whole year you have succeeded in deceiving me--in making me
believe that you did. This is the thing I find unpardonable. Men have
killed women for such treachery as yours. Were I to kill you, it would
save poor Mynors a good many years of misery. But the code of civilised
morals forbids so satisfactory a solution. You must live, and destroy
his illusions one by one. I ought to thank you for my freedom, but that
I cannot do, being human. As a man in worse plight than mine once said:
"My love hath wrought into my life so far that my doom is, I love thee
still." There lies the humiliation and the sting._


The woman's lips curved into a smile of foreseen triumph. The insult of
the first part of the letter was nothing to her. There was his written
confession. In spite of her betrayal, he loved her still.

After the lapse of all these years the lava-torrent of his boyish fury
had no doubt cooled. The love might well remain.




CHAPTER V

THE OLD LOVE


  "_Now hate rules a heart which in love's easy chains
  Once passion's tumultuous blandishments knew;
  Despair now inflames the dark tide of his veins,
  He ponders in frenzy o'er love's last adieu._"--Byron.


A week later Mrs. Mynors stood before her mirror at a much earlier hour
than was her wont. She was arranging her veil with a hand that shook,
and eyes full of a curious mixture of anxiety and triumph. The anxiety
was because she was bound upon an errand of enormous strategic
importance; the triumph because her imagination ran on ahead and
pictured things that she would have blushed to own.

Her old lover had assented to her proposal for a meeting. He was to be
this morning at twelve o'clock at the Sportswoman--that smartest and
most go-ahead of county ladies' clubs in London.

Virginia stood near. She held in her hand a dainty handbag, embroidered
in steel beads and lined with pale violet. Into this she was putting a
purse, a powder-puff, a wisp of old lace that was supposed to be a
handkerchief, and so on. The aroma of the expensive perfume was over
everything.

Mrs. Mynors' costume was a subtle scheme of faint half-mourning. It was
most becoming.

"What time do you think you shall be back?" asked Virginia.

"My child, how can I say? You must expect me when you see me. It
depends so much upon what I accomplish. If Osbert Gaunt proves
disagreeable, I must just get a bit of lunch at the club and come
straight home. If he is hospitably inclined, why, you see, it might be
later."

"I only wanted to know how much money you are likely to spend."

"Don't trouble about that, dear one. I have plenty of money for my
modest needs."

She stepped back, surveyed the general effect of her appearance, and
sighed a little. Then, opening one of the small jewel drawers in her
toilet table, she took out a ring-case, extracted the ring it
contained, and slipped it upon her finger. It was a large tourmalin,
set in small brilliants--a lovely blue, like the eyes of its wearer.

"What a pretty ring! I never saw it before," said Virginia, with
interest. She loved pretty things. That trait she had inherited from
her mother.

"His engagement ring," said the widow pensively. "He would not take it
back. He said it would bring a curse upon any woman who wore it. He
shall see that I have kept it."

Virginia's heart surged up within her until she almost broke into
weeping. Her own mother, the widow of Bernard Mynors, the widow of the
most-beloved, the dearest, the best, the handsomest--she was setting
out gaily to fascinate an old lover, wearing on her finger the ring he
had bestowed in the days when she had never seen her husband.

"How she can!" thought Virgie to herself. Her mother was a continual
puzzle to her. In her intense simplicity the girl took her usually at
her own value. She believed devoutly that it was at great personal cost
that Mrs. Mynors was going to town that day. She judged her feelings by
her own. And yet, and yet----

The sound of wheels on the road outside caused her to look from the
window. "Why, here is an empty fly stopping at the door," said she in a
tone of surprise.

"I ordered it, Virgie," replied her mother, a little embarrassed. "I
have so little strength, especially of a morning, I felt that, on an
errand like this, I should want all my force, all my coolness. This
heat is so unnerving."

She smiled deprecatingly. "My poor little fly is the sprat to catch a
whale," she laughed. Then impetuously she flung her arms about her
daughter's neck. "Wish me luck! Oh, wish me luck!" she cried.

Virginia's warm heart leapt at the cry. She embraced her mother with
all the fervour she dare employ without crushing the delicate toilette.
They went downstairs together, the lady stepped into the shabby fly
with a look of disdainful fortitude, her sunshade was given her, and
with a wave of the hand to the girl at the gate she started off upon
her great mission. Virgie went slowly into the kitchen, sat down
wearily, and poured out her tepid tea. After eating and drinking a few
mouthfuls listlessly, she roused herself to prepare fresh tea for Pansy
and to carry her breakfast upstairs.

"Good morning, precious! How have you slept?" she cried cheerily, as
she set down the tray, drew up the blind, and came to the bedside.
Pansy lay there smiling, perfectly flat on her back, with Ermyntrude,
the new doll, at her side.

"Slept booful. Not one pain all night. But I'm fearfully hungry,
Virgie!"

"I don't wonder; I am dreadfully late! I had to get mother off, you
see. She has just started," replied Virginia, trying to keep the sorrow
out of her trembling voice. She stooped, touched a handle below the
bed, and with incredible care and delicacy wound the little cripple up
into a posture just enough tilted to enable her to feed herself.

"Gone to see a gentleman she used to know before she knew dad,"
remarked Pansy, pondering. "He'll think she's every bit as pretty as
she was then. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I am sure he must think so."

"Oh, Virgie!"--after a long pause--"suppose he was to ask her again?"

Her sister winced as this dark idea was thus frankly expressed in
words. She had, however, been more or less prepared for it.

"I don't think it very likely, Pansy," she replied slowly, "but if he
did, and if mother thought it was her duty to say 'Yes,' we must not
make it hard for her."

"How could it be her duty to say 'Yes'?" demanded Pansy
argumentatively. "She loved dad, and it would be beastly to have a
step-father."

"It would be beastlier still not have enough to eat," was the thought
in Virgie's heart. She did not express it, however. The child knew
nothing of the terrible state of things, and must not know unless it
was inevitable. "We'll hope for the best, darling. He may not ask her,"
she softly told the child. "And now eat your breakfast, while I go and
clear away downstairs."

      *      *      *      *      *

From Euston one must positively take a taxi in order to arrive at Dover
Street. Mrs. Mynors instructed the driver to throw back the hood; and
reclined, her sunshade between her delicate face and the June sun,
enjoying a few minutes of the kind of pleasure in which she revelled.

Ah! the joy of it. The gay streets, the well-dressed crowds, the
enticing shops, the loaded flower-baskets, at the street corners, the
window-boxes in the tall houses, the flashing cars, the bustle and
movement of London in the season. Here, she felt, was her native
element. To this she belonged--she whom a cruel fate had treated so ill
as to cause the whole structure of her pleasure to crumble to nothing
at the very time of life when a woman begins to feel that she needs
comforts and luxury.

For forty years she had enjoyed that empire which any beautiful woman
may enjoy if she chooses. Her beauty had prevented every one who came
near her from realising the truth about her. Had you told her that she
was a monster of selfishness, that she had never loved anybody but
herself, that she had jilted a poor man to marry a rich one, and that
she had loved neither the one nor the other, she would simply have
wondered how your mind could have become so warped as to cause you to
utter such slanders.

Now that she had the twofold weapons of beauty and misfortune, surely
none could resist.

Not for long years had her heart so throbbed, her blood run so swiftly,
as this morning, as the taxi turned out of Bond Street, slid along
Grafton Street into Dover Street, and stopped at the doors of the club.

Since her husband's death she had never entered it. Now she wondered
how she had kept away so long, and admired with fervour her own Spartan
heroism. How meekly she had bowed under undeserved adversity!

She strolled into the dressing-room, put down her sun-shade, and
contemplated herself in a mirror. The things she had seen in the shops
that morning, and the costumes in the streets, had put her somewhat out
of conceit of her own appearance. The mirror, however, restored all her
self-confidence. She was looking lovely, with a bloom in her cheeks
that the fagged-looking London women could not hope to emulate.

She used her powder with judgment and restraint, adjusted her veil, and
went out into the hall.

"I am going into the chintz parlour," said she to the page-boy, "and I
am expecting a gentleman by appointment. Bring him to me there--Mrs.
Mynors."

She went upstairs, outwardly quite tranquil, though inwardly she was
shaken with a storm of excitement which she could not wholly
understand. In old days she had feared Osbert Gaunt. She remembered
that, though she did not own it to herself. Devoted slave as he had
been, she had had perhaps some faint instinctive premonition that he
was in reality her master. He had been subject to bursts of passion, to
fits of sullen rage. It had been exciting, but exhausting, to be loved
by him.

All that was twenty years ago. What was he now?

She surveyed the pretty little parlour, furnished in a clever imitation
of the Georgian era. From among the chairs she selected two. Then,
changing her mind, she chose a small couch, with room for two to sit
upon it. She brought forward a little table, put some magazines upon
it, opened one and became so absorbed in the sketch of a Paris gown
which it contained that she started annoyingly at the voice of the
page-boy announcing her visitor.

Osbert Gaunt walked in. Her first thought was that, changed though he
was, she should have known him anywhere. Certainly his was a
personality not easy to forget. He was dark complexioned by nature,
and, as he lived in the open air, he was also much tanned. His
coal-black hair was slightly softened with grey at the temples, but his
moustache was raven black, and it altered his appearance to something
curiously unlike her memory of the keen young boyish face. He walked
with the limp which she remembered well, and as they shook hands his
glance swept over her from head to foot, appraising and, as it seemed,
condemning, for his lip curled into a sneer.

He was perfectly self-possessed. The lady was genuinely agitated.

"I trust that I am punctual to your appointment, madam," he said drily.

They were alone in the room. She noticed that with thankfulness, even
while she realised how entirely the man had the advantage over her. To
her, this interview meant everything. To him, apparently, very little.
She was so much affected that she sat down at once, making a little
appealing movement with her hand that he should sit beside her, as she
murmured: "Oh, Osbert, you are good to come ... and you are so little
changed."

He replied, with indifference that amounted to discourtesy: "I came to
suit my own convenience; and I have changed completely."

With this preliminary amenity he looked around, chose a chair, brought
it forward, and sat down facing her. His rudeness was so disconcerting
that she forgot her part, and spoke confusedly:

"Oh no, indeed, you have not changed; you always used to contradict.
That was part of your temperament."

"Pardon me, I am not here to discuss my temperament. I have come on
business."

She made a little deprecating sound, as though he had hurt her. "Oh,
Osbert, this is dreadful! Dreadful! If I had expected this, I would not
have appealed to you. How could I dream that you would have remained
unforgiving all these years?"

She drew out the tiny handkerchief, redolent of lily of the valley. In
old days a tear from her had driven him mad.

"You surprise me," was his answer. "I understood that you desired to
discuss a mortgage. If you will allow me to say so, I must confess that
any allusion from you to our past relations seems to me to be in the
worst of taste."

"Osbert! Oh, Osbert! That you can speak so to me! It is useless--quite
useless to go farther. Had I been rich and prosperous, I could
understand your desire to taunt me.... I never could have believed that
you would stoop to it when you know quite well the straits to which we
are reduced--that I and mine are starving!"

Again his look swept over her, as if mocking at her general aspect of
subdued luxury.

"Madam, it seems to me that the unfortunate tradesmen whom you employ
are more likely to starve than you are," he said emphatically. "But, as
regards your financial position, that is, I suppose, part of the
subject which we are here to discuss. I gather that my foreclosing of
this mortgage embarrasses you seriously?"

She kept her face turned from him, allowing one crystal tear to lie
undried upon her soft cheek, as she answered in low, grief-broken tones:

"We were almost beggars before. This is the final straw."

He took the chance she gave him to look full at her. Her aspect of
humiliation and discouragement seemed to please him.

"Good!" said he. "Then we come to something definite. What do you
suggest that I should do in this matter? I am a little puzzled, because
you cannot, I think, have supposed that I should be likely to strain
any point in your favour--rather perhaps the reverse. Eh?"

She paused, as it were for breath. What could she do? She had thought
of him in many ways, but had foreseen nothing like this. Even her
impervious vanity was forced to the conclusion that the sight of her in
her scarcely impaired beauty moved him no more than if she had been a
hairdresser's block. Not even the ashes of passion remained. He was
pleased that she should be humiliated. He liked to have her at his
feet. Oh, why had she not guessed that a nature like his--warped,
distorted, embittered--would rejoice at seeing the woman who had
injured him brought low? His foot was on her neck! She felt inclined to
spring up and rush from the room--or to snatch his hands and make some
wild appeal! Why, this was the man who had trembled at her touch--who
had thrashed the son of a peer for saying that she was a flirt! This
was the man who had been made happy with a smile, desperate with a
frown. Yet now....

In fierce longing to bring him once more into subjection, she stifled
down her resentment, resisted her impulse to give way. As his insulting
words stung her, she winced, like one enduring an unworthy blow.

"I made a mistake," said she in low tones. "I must own it. I actually
did, as you suggest, hope that you would strain a point in my favour.
All that I remember of you is noble. I fancied that the fact--which I
admit--that I once injured you, so far from being against me, would
constrain you the more to serve me, if you could."

"Indeed! So that was what you thought! It was rather clever of you, but
not quite clever enough. I have to own that I don't at all consider
that your having successfully hoodwinked me twenty years ago gives you
a right to do it again. But let that pass. It is the mortgage which we
must keep in mind. I think it not impossible that we may come to terms,
that I may be able to afford you some relief--on conditions"--he held
up his hand hastily as she turned impulsively on her seat--"on
conditions, I say--you had better wait to hear me."

For the first time she let her eyes meet his. The cruelty, the ironic
sense of mastery conveyed to her from beneath those half-shut lids,
made her shudder involuntarily. So might an Inquisitor survey the
victim brought bound into his presence. Still she kept up the pose--the
only one that occurred to her scared wits--the pose of relying upon his
nobility.

"I knew--I knew you could not mean to be merciless," she faltered.

"Don't go too fast," he replied coldly. "There is much to consider
before thanks can appropriately be offered. In the first place, a few
questions are necessary. To begin. Have you a daughter bearing a
remarkable resemblance to yourself? And was she in London a week or two
ago with some friends who have a motor-car--a young man and a young
woman?"

Mrs. Mynors sat a moment speechless, considering this new turn of the
incredible conversation. "Yes," she faltered at last, "that is quite
true. Virginia was in town with our friends, the Rosenbergs."

His lip curled. "_Virginia!_ You named her after yourself!"

"It was my husband's wish," she stammered. "She is the dearest, the
best girl in the world!"

"Madam"--with mock reverence--"that is an unnecessary statement; she is
your daughter--and she is, I feel sure, in all respects worthy of you.
I saw her in a picture-gallery not long ago. Interested by the
astonishing likeness, I took pains to overhear some of her
conversation. The second Virginia is a replica of the first--which is
saying a great deal. You are attached to her, madam."

"Attached to her? Attached to my darling daughter? Are you mad, Osbert?"

"I don't think so. I am still a bachelor, you know, and the proposal
which I put before you is this: If your daughter will undertake the
position which her mother declined, we will cry quits, you and I."

She had almost screamed in the extremity of her surprise and
mortification. Had he struck her with a horsewhip she could not have
felt more outraged. Fury, resentment, a wild, combative resistance
which she could not recognise as jealousy, deprived her for a while of
speech. She was choking, inarticulate with the force of blind feeling
which shook her as a tempest shakes a tree.

"You are atrocious!" she ejaculated at last. "Simply atrocious! What
can you mean? Virgie won't have you."

"In that case there will be no need of further discussion," was his
answer. "In your place, I think I should at least place the offer
before her. Should she accept it, I will make you an allowance of three
hundred pounds a year for life, besides undertaking the cost of your
son's education. Are there other children?"

She was staring at him as one may gaze, fascinated, upon a cobra about
to strike. "One other," she hurriedly replied. "A little girl--_she
is lame_."

"Ha!" A dull flush rose to his face. "Cripples seem to haunt your
footsteps. Well--in the event of the acceptance of my offer, it shall
be my care to see that she has the proper treatment and the best
advice."

"Good gracious me!" slowly said the bewildered woman. "Am I dreaming?
Osbert, you _must_ be mad!"

"Madam, I think you will find that I am considered remarkably sane by
most people. Anyway, you have my offer--make what you can of it. I will
put it in writing, if you like. Your daughter won't find many husbands
who would be willing to marry and provide for the entire family. Yet,
you see, such is my devotion, that I am ready to do even this for her
charming sake."

"Devotion? You have no devotion!" she cried wildly. "You are taking
advantage of my helplessness to torture me! You would torture Virgie!
How can you feel any devotion for a girl you have only set eyes upon
once?"

"Well, we will say it is not devotion that inspires me, but a desire to
get a bit of my own back," said he, with a most unpleasant smile. "She
will be the Andromeda, sacrificed for the rest of you--offered to the
Beast--myself. You flinched from such a fate. If she now undertakes to
brave it, will not that be poetic justice?"

Mrs. Mynors swallowed once or twice, blinked, tried to visualise the
impression this speech gave. Since his entrance, nothing that Gaunt
said had sounded real. There had been a sarcasm, a jeering cadence; he
had been playing with her all the time. But these words had a different
ring. He was in earnest. It seemed as if the last sentence revealed to
her something of his inner state of mind. It was like coming, in the
dusk, upon the sudden mouth of a black pit. She had said, "You would
torture Virginia!" and something in his reply suggested that her random
words were true.

She sat staring, confronting the set mask of his face. The old fear of
him came back, after twenty years, racing up across the vistas of
memory as the Brittany tide races over the St. Malo sands. In this man
there was something perverted, something evil, something with which she
must hold no traffic, make no bargain. She knew that she ought to end
this preposterous interview; to speak a few dignified reproachful words
and leave the tempter and his monstrous proposal.

"Virginia," she managed at last to say, "shall never even know of your
horrible suggestion."

He took his watch from his pocket, glanced at it, replaced it, and
spoke.

"Then you reject this offer unconditionally?"

"As you foresaw that I should!" she cried, with a burst of tears
hastily choked back.

"Oh, pardon me, I foresaw nothing of the kind. You forget that in old
times I knew you rather well; and I never thought you a fool."

"But you are impossible--outrageous!" she expostulated. "Why should you
want to marry Virginia?"

"I am old enough to know my own mind, I suppose. My reasons--pardon
me--are not your concern. My terms are before you, and I am somewhat
pressed for time. If you refuse _tout court_, there is nothing
further to be said. I will take my leave. But it seems to me that you
might submit the case to the judgment of Miss Mynors. Tell her that I
have an estate in Derbyshire, and can settle five thousand pounds upon
her, in addition to what I propose doing for her family. If she has
anything like her mother's eye to the main chance, she will think twice
before turning me down."

Part of the rage which surged in the woman's heart as she glared at him
was sheer jealousy--jealousy of her young, fresh daughter. They had
met, those two. He had seen Virginia in a picture-gallery. He, a man of
past forty, wanted to marry this girl of twenty! Oh, what a fool! What
a fool! When she, the suitable age, the suitable partner, the old, lost
love in almost all her old charm, sat there before him!

"Osbert," she murmured faintly, "don't jeer at me! For pity's sake be
yourself, your old self, for five minutes! Tell me the meaning of this
unkind jest."

"Once more, madam, let me assure you that I am in earnest. I mean what
I say. I am aware that my proposal does sound quixotic; but I will have
it all legally embodied and made certain. If Miss Mynors will marry me,
I will do for you what I have said. If she will not, then I regret to
be unable to offer you _any_ assistance."

He took up his hat and rose. "May I know whether you will undertake to
convey my offer to your daughter?" he asked. "If you decline, I leave
London to-day. I farm my own land, and we are busy at Omberleigh just
now. If you decide to tell her, I will await the first post here in
London the day after to-morrow; and, in the event of her being
favourably inclined, I shall come down to Wayhurst that afternoon."

Mrs. Mynors clenched her small, ineffectual fists. There he stood,
pitiless. Her presence meant nothing to him. It left him utterly
unmoved. How he had changed from the days of his emotional youth!

He was master of the situation. If she arose in her offended majesty,
marched off and left him--to what must she return? To absolute
pauperism. She had no relatives of her own, and her husband's few
distant cousins had been far more frequently appealed to than her
daughter knew, and were tired of helping. By promising to let Virginia
know his terms, she committed herself to nothing. If there had been an
alternative.... But there really was not!

She, too, rose. "I--I suppose I must tell Virginia," she said sullenly;
"but I shall forbid her to accept your preposterous suggestion."

"Oh, no, you won't," he replied, again with that odious smile. "Too
much hangs upon it for you. We part, then, with at least a sporting
chance of meeting again. I hope I shall prove a dutiful son-in-law.
Good morning."

He bowed, seeming not to notice her appealing hands, outstretched in
one last attempt to pierce his armour.

He was gone. Thus ended her mission--the last throw of the dice, upon
which she had staked so much!

Nothing now between her and beggary but the remains of the cheque for
twenty pounds, sent to her by Mr. Rosenberg.




CHAPTER VI

GAUNT'S TERMS


  "_Her hand was close to her daughter's heart
  And it felt the life-blood's sudden start;
  A quick deep breath did the damsel draw
  Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw._"--Rossetti.


Virginia, lily-pale in the heat, sat at the window of the tiny parlour
dignified by the name of dining-room, adding up accounts. She had given
Pansy her lunch, eaten some bread and cheese herself, and left the
child to her daily afternoon rest while she applied herself to the
discussion of ways and means.

It was Tony's half-holiday, and he would be home, he promised, at five
o'clock, to help her carry down the little invalid into the garden to
have tea. He was renouncing an hour of his precious cricket to do this.
What a darling he was! Virginia's eyes grew misty as she thought of
him--how pluckily he went without things that "other chaps" had! How
loyally he refrained from piercing her heart with the thought of her
own helplessness to supply him with what he wanted!

Now, for the first time, she was alone with the problem created by her
mother's improvidence. In all its bare hideousness, the thing
confronted her. The rent was due. They had always waited to pay it
until the cheque for the quarter's rent at Lissendean came in. Now
there was no cheque to be expected. If her mother's errand to-day had
failed, she must give notice to quit that very afternoon. Even so,
where was this quarter's rent to come from? The balance at the bank was
seven pounds six and two-pence.

The furniture must be sold. This, with her mother's pretty things,
would pay the landlord. Afterwards--what?

The sweet eyes grew dim with a secret, bewildered kind of pain. Why had
Gerald Rosenberg gone away without a word?... Yet, when she asked
herself why not, she had no intelligible answer to give. Nothing had
passed between himself and her, in words. Only she had been conscious
of his unceasing, absorbed attention, given to herself, whenever they
had been in company. There had been a tiny secret thread of mutual
understanding--or so Virginia had thought. It now appeared that she was
mistaken. There had been nothing between them. It was like brushing
gossamer from before one's eyes. It had been there, but it was nothing.
The first strong light of reason dispersed it. Something that had been
very sweet, very poignant, had come to an end. While telling herself
that it had all been her own fancy, inwardly she knew it was not so.
There had been something. But it was only gossamer--just midsummer
madness.

Now that the doom had fallen, she would never see the Rosenbergs again.
She would have to be a governess, if such a post could be obtained.

Keenly she wondered what was passing between Mrs. Mynors and her old
lover. Though her nature revolted from the idea, she yet caught herself
hoping that a marriage between the two might come about. If this Mr.
Gaunt--what an uncomfortable name!--was ready to take his former
sweetheart to his home, he surely would offer asylum to her children,
or if not, arrange that they could be together elsewhere.

Ah! That would be the thing! She lost herself in visions of this little
home with herself, Pansy and Tony in it--no mother to wait upon; for
dearly as she loved the privilege of waiting upon her mother, Virginia
had to own that it was mamma who made things difficult.

She shut her neatly kept books with a sigh, and as she did so, glancing
up, she saw to her surprise, that her mother was opening the garden
gate.

She must have caught a very early train home!

Swiftly Virginia sprang up, hurried to the door, and admitted the
returned traveller. One glance at the pretty, sulky face, the lids
slightly puffed as with recent tears, told Virginia that the news was
not good; and her heart sank to a degree so unexpectedly low that she
girded at herself for a coward and a despicable person.

"Oh, my dear, you have walked all this way alone in the heat! How tired
you must be. We are going to have tea in the garden later on--come to
your sitting-room; let me put you on the sofa and take off your shoes.
You will soon feel better," she crooned over her mother, as she led her
to the couch, tended her gently and lovingly, and--oh, crowning
boon--asked no questions.

The care was accepted, but with a reservation which the sensitive girl
was quick to feel. Gazing on the averted face and pouting lips, she
could almost have thought that mamma was vexed with her, had that not
been improbable under the circumstances. What was it? Did mamma think
she ought to have met the train? Or did she want special tea made for
her alone, immediately? Well, that was easily done. "Lie and rest, dear
one," she said sympathetically, "and I will just make you a cup of tea;
the kettle won't take five minutes to boil."

When she returned, with the dainty tray, and the wafer bread and
butter, her mother was sitting up, her feet on the ground, her elbows
on a small table, crying silently into her ridiculous
pocket-handkerchief. This could, of course, only mean complete
disaster. With a dreadful sinking of the heart Virginia murmured:

"You will tell me all about it when you feel able?"

Uncovering her eyes, Mrs. Mynors fixed them reproachfully upon her
daughter; and the girl, conscious of some unspoken reproach, felt
guilty, though no misdeeds came to her mind.

"Virgie," said a hollow voice, as at last the silence was broken, "did
Miriam Rosenberg, when you were in town, take you to any picture
galleries?"

Virgie stood, the picture of astonishment.

"Why, yes, we went to the Academy," said she, wonderingly, "and--oh,
yes--we went to Hertford House as well."

As she spoke the words, the memory of that day, that last day with
Gerald, caused the rosy tint to steal up on her pale cheeks. The lynx
eyes fixed upon her saw and misinterpreted.

"Did you meet a gentleman there?"

Still more mystified, Virginia shook her head.

"Virginia, think! A dark man, who walked lame."

The girl started--yes, her mother was not mistaken, she started quite
visibly. "The lame man," she said. "Yes, of course, I remember."

Something like fury gleamed in the elder woman's blue eyes as she stood
up, confronting her taller daughter. "He was Mr. Gaunt!" she flashed.

"What! _That_ was Mr. Gaunt? Was it indeed? Oh, then, perhaps that
accounts for it!"

"Accounts for what?"

"That he looked as if he expected me to bow to him or speak to
him--that he looked as if he thought he knew me! I am very like you,
mamma, am I not? Everybody says so."

"He saw the likeness, and remembers the meeting," muttered Mrs. Mynors,
crumpling up her handkerchief into a tight ball with vindictive
fingers. "I suppose you thought he admired you very much?"

"Not at all," returned the girl at once. "I thought he looked angry or
offended. He--he followed us about rather persistently, until Mims and
I felt uncomfortable. We went and sat outside, at the top of the
stairs, to get out of his way."

"Humph! He did admire you, though, for all that! At least, he wants to
marry you!"

"Wha-a-t!" Virginia was guilty of vulgarity in her amused amaze. "Oh,
mummie, don't be silly! He meant you. You have made a mistake."

Her mother gave a short, bitter laugh. "I am _passee_," she said
through her teeth. "I ought to have known better. I ought to have sent
you as my ambassador! You might have been able to come to terms. Tell
me," she cried sharply, grasping her daughter's wrist, "tell me what
you thought of him? Sombre, interesting--eh? The strong silent
man--that kind of thing? You must have used your eyes in a way that I
am sure I never taught you."

Virginia stood transfixed. She felt as if she were talking to a
stranger. This was a mother she had never seen. "Oh, mother, dear, what
can you mean?" she remonstrated, in low, hurt tones.

With another mirthless laugh, Mrs. Mynors flung back upon her sofa
pillows. She began to pour tea into a cup, and her hand shook.

"How little girls understand," said she with sarcasm. "Tell me now,
honestly, what _did_ you think of him?"

Virginia remained a moment, searching her memory. Every minute of that
afternoon was etched clearly in her mind's eye. "Mims did not like him
at all," said she. "She thought he meant to be rude. But I thought that
he looked--very unhappy."

"A case of mutual love at first sight, evidently," was the scornful
comment. "Well, shall you have him, Virgie? I am to make you the formal
offer of his hand."

"Mother, I think--I think I had better leave you to drink some tea and
rest," said the meek Virginia. "I really can't understand what you
mean, you are talking wildly, and I am afraid the long, hot journey has
unnerved you."

"Stop, Virgie, don't go out. I forbid it. You must stay and listen to
what I have to say. Before saying it, I wanted to find out just how
much had passed between you, and I understand things a little better
after what you tell me. Well! In short, I have what Mr. Gaunt calls a
business offer to put before you, and you have until to-morrow
afternoon's post in which to make up your mind."

Virginia obediently seated herself upon a chair opposite her mother,
who, between sips of tea, told her of the offer made by Gaunt.

The elder woman's mind was in a strange tumult--she hardly knew which
was the keener feeling in her--her furious jealousy or her devouring
desire that her daughter should accept the offer which would lift them
out of poverty. On her journey down in the train, she had been growing
used to the idea. The sense of outrage, which had stung her so smartly
at first, subsided a little, in the light of other considerations. What
chances of matrimony had Virginia? Since she had let young Rosenberg
slip through her fingers, her mother was beginning to see that she was
not the kind of girl to seize chances, even should they present
themselves. If Gaunt were serious in his wild plan, if it could be
shown that he was financially solvent and able to do as he promised,
then she had better swallow her feelings and take what she could get.

She told herself that it was one of those cases of sudden electric
sympathy--of love at first sight. Yet she knew that she said this only
to salve her conscience. She was, as her old lover had told her, no
fool. She saw his conduct, all of a piece. Why had he taken up the
mortgage on Lissendean? To have her in his power. Why did he wish to
become her son-in-law? For the same reason. Try to deceive herself as
she might, she knew that love had no place in the man's thoughts. When
he had spoken of "getting a bit of his own back," he had spoken with a
certain momentary glimpse of self revelation. He had uncovered a corner
of a mind perverted, a mind which had brooded long upon a solitary idea
of grievance until obsessed by it.

Mrs. Mynors, in her sub-conscious self, knew all this. Had she told her
daughter, the girl must have recoiled shuddering from the prospect of
such an alliance. As her old lover had foreseen, she was very careful
_not_ to tell her daughter anything of the kind. Her better nature
had at first fought within her a little. She resolved that she would
describe Gaunt's malevolence, his cold-blooded assurance. Then she
would come forward, offer to share a part of Virginia's burden, decide
that they must stand together and face what her own selfish, mean folly
had brought upon them all. But, as she strove to envisage some of what
such a step must cost her, she had cowered away from the picture.

She _could not_ face beggary.

She began to temporise. How did she know the exact position of affairs?
It was possible that, strive though he might to conceal it from her,
the man was in love. She determined upon her course of action. She
would tell Virginia how Gaunt had watched her in the Gallery. The
girl's own demeanour should give her the cue as to whether or no she
should proceed to unfold his proposal. If the sudden fancy had been
mutual ... after all, it _might_ have been mutual....

She returned home. She spoke. Virginia betrayed consciousness. Before
the mention of the lame man--at the very memory of Hertford House--she
had blushed, she had been embarrassed. Further questioning had elicited
her clear memory of Gaunt's attention and pursuit. She had owned, with
a distinct hesitation, that she thought he looked unhappy. That decided
Mrs. Mynors. With a new hard-heartedness, born of her new, tormenting
jealousy of Virgie's youth and sweetness, she stamped down the
deep-lying scruples. She made the best of Gaunt's case, and said that
he wished to come down to Wayhurst to plead his suit himself.

It took some time to convince Virgie that the man was in earnest. Yet,
recalling his appearance and manner, as she held them in her memory,
the girl owned to herself that this was a man who might make an
eccentric, even a quixotic, offer.

The interview was broken off short by the entrance of Tony, who flung
open the front door, loudly whistling, and could be heard throwing down
his books, and shouting for Virgie. He knew better than to enter the
little boudoir, his mother's sanctum. Very, very rarely was he
permitted to set foot within its charmed area.

"I have until to-morrow's post," said Virgie gravely, as she lifted the
tray with the tea-things, and carried it away.

The whole affair must be pushed into the background for the time being.
Pansy was to be fetched downstairs, the tea-table spread in the garden,
more tea prepared. Tony was a willing, if somewhat boisterous, helper.
He and his sister between them soon arranged things, and the too
brilliant eyes of the little cripple glistened with pleasure as she was
laid beside the wire arch smothered in Hiawatha, to enjoy the air of
the exquisite summer evening.

Virgie sat, the socks she endlessly knitted for Tony in her never idle
fingers, watching the clear-cut profile, which, as she could not
conceal from herself, grew ever more ethereal. Pansy did not seem
definitely worse, and had less pain than formerly. But she was wasting,
and her sister knew it.

The Wayhurst doctor was very anxious that a new treatment, in which he
had great faith, should be tried. He thought it the only chance; but as
it was protracted, and involved a long course of skilled nursing, with
daily medical supervision, it would be extremely costly. It was,
therefore, out of the question.

Yet, if Virginia married Mr. Gaunt, it would become easy. He had
actually volunteered that Pansy should have all the help obtainable.
She glanced from Pansy to Tony, and at the darns on his threadbare
trouser-knees. She heard his jolly laugh, and also his quickly
smothered sigh, as he remarked that he was the only chap in his form
who did not belong to the school O.T.C. He knew that the uniform and
camp expenses were beyond his sister's resources.

This, too, would be rectified, if she did as suggested. It was a bribe
of whose strength Gaunt himself could form no idea.

Later, when Tony had scampered away to bowl at the nets, and she was
alone in the kitchen washing up tea-things, she bent her mind upon the
extraordinary turn of affairs. The heat had made her so languid that
she was obliged to sit down while the kettle boiled upon her tiny
oil-stove. Her visit to London had done her spirits good, but London
air is not the best for recuperative purposes. Moreover, she had been
up late most nights during her stay in town, and the thought of Gerald
had at times disturbed her rest. Since her return--and more especially
since hearing about the mortgage trouble--her strength seemed to grow
less and less. The knowledge that she was almost at the end of her
means, and saw no chance of replenishing the empty exchequer, had acted
upon a body weakened by a long course of underfeeding. In her heart she
knew that she could not go on much longer acting as general servant,
and starving herself that the others might have enough. If she broke
down--if her health proved to be so undermined that she could not take
a situation--what was to become of these helpless ones?

The idea that her mother could help in any way never occurred to her.
The three were bracketed together in her mind, as those for whom she
had promised her dying father to care.

Now came a way out--not an inviting one, but one that had to be faced
nevertheless. If she married Mr. Gaunt, he undertook to lift her
burdens from her shoulders. Moreover, he lived in the country--the real
country. Omberleigh Grange was in Derbyshire, and it must have a
garden--a real garden, such as she had been born to, such as she loved.
A garden in which to rest and grow strong again, a garden in which
Pansy might be wheeled along smooth walks, and lie under the spreading
shade of big trees. These things could be hers, at a price. What did
the price involve?

Mr. Gaunt had loved her mother. He knew, of course, that her mother had
preferred another man; but she, Virginia, bore a wonderful resemblance
to the woman lost, and the lonely man wanted to satisfy his empty heart
by cherishing her. In return, he would do for mother, for Pansy, for
Tony, all the things that she, poor Virgie, in her helplessness, could
not do, with all her love. The sacrifice demanded was just the
sacrifice of herself. Well--what did that matter? Why should she not be
sacrificed, for the good and happiness of those she loved so ardently?
It really was very simple, after all.

Perhaps a few weeks earlier she might not have felt quite so
indifferent. There had been shining gates--the gates of a young girl's
fancy--and shyly they had begun to open, and to show a tiny glimpse of
rosy mysteries within.

That was over now. It had been but gossamer and illusion. This was a
real, definite, tangible plan--a rope held out to save her perishing
family, drifting on a bit of wreckage. In the seizing of the rope, she
herself, incidentally, would be sacrificed. That was all. Why not?

By the time that the scanty crockery was arranged in spotless order on
the shelves, and the kitchen as tidy as a new pin, the girl had
practically come to a decision. She said nothing, however, that night.
Pansy was a little over-tired after her garden excursion, and could not
get to sleep, so, instead of sitting with her mother downstairs,
Virginia remained at the little invalid's bedside and read aloud. When
at last the child slept, she was too tired to do anything but go to bed
herself. Nevertheless, her preoccupations awoke her in the early summer
dawn.

In her utter simplicity she slipped from bed and knelt down in her
white garment. She asked for guidance, and it seemed to her childlike
faith that it was granted. Like her namesake in far-off old Rome, she
must be sacrificed. She remembered the words of the ballad she had
learned as a child, the words spoken by the frantic father of the Roman
Virginia: "And now, my own dear little girl, there is no way but this!"

It was as though her own father's voice spoke to her from the grave,
urging her to courage and a stout heart. The man was a stranger, the
man was formidable; but she would be so good to him that they must grow
to understand each other.

It was the only way, and she resolved to take it.




CHAPTER VII

VIRGINIA DECIDES


  "_Early in the morning
  When the first cock crowed his warning
  Neat as bee, as sweet and busy,
  Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
  Aired and set to rights the house,...
  Fed the poultry, sat and sewed;
  Talked as modest maidens should._"
                    --Christina Rossetti.


When Virginia went into her mother's room after breakfast that morning,
she told her quietly that she had made her decision.

Mrs. Mynors gave a half-stifled, excited exclamation. For the life of
her she could not have told what she hoped or desired. She stared at
her composed daughter with eyes half of entreaty, half of fear.

"I shall write and tell Mr. Gaunt to come to-morrow," said Virginia
with calm.

"Oh, for pity's sake, child, are you not mad?" cried the wretched woman
in the bed.

"I have considered it," was the steady answer. "He is unhappy, and I am
pretty sure that I could be a comfort to him. His way of doing things
seems odd; but he is lonely, and I daresay he has been soured. I will
do all I can to make him happy, if he on his side will perform his
promises to you and the children."

"Virgie, don't!" The voice was so altered, so strange, that the girl
paused, wondering.

"Don't? Why do you say so?"

"Because I----" Mrs. Mynors came to a stop. What could she say?
"Because I have a lurking idea that he will not be kind to you." How
ridiculous that sounded! And upon what was it based? Only upon the
man's manner--his insolence, his evident desire to wound and insult
her. Somehow she could not tell Virgie how his open contempt had stung.

"Because you--you don't know him--you can't love him," she stammered.

"But _you_ knew him and loved him well enough to promise to marry
him," countered Virgie instantly. "Of course, that has great weight
with me. If he were a complete stranger, it would be different." She
stood beside the bed, playing with one of its brass corner-knobs. "You
know, mamma, I am rather an odd girl," said she with a swift blush. "I
think I am attracted to what I pity. It would be waste to marry me to
an adoring husband, who would give me everything I desired. I would
rather give than have things given to me."

Mrs. Mynors lay back, watching her through narrowed eyes. "You
are--yes, you certainly are odd," she muttered. "I own that I don't
understand you in the least."

Virgie smiled. None knew better than she herself the truth of this
statement.

"Of course," said she, "I am not accepting his offer definitely. I am
simply saying that he may come here and see me to-morrow. I could not
clinch the matter until we have some hold over him."

"What?" cried her mother sharply. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well," replied her young daughter simply, "Mr. Gaunt has made some big
promises. How do we know that he means to keep them? You say he is
eccentric. He may not be trustworthy. In any case, I shall not agree to
do as he asks without being certain that he will do as he offers. We
must go to Mr. Askew and ask him to come and meet him, so that a proper
settlement may be prepared."

"Well, upon my word! Virgie, you cold-blooded little horror!" began
Mrs. Mynors, almost in a scream. She broke off abruptly and rolled
over, hiding her face in the pillows.

"But, mother," said Virgie wonderingly, "you don't reflect. I am
promising to give all that I have or am. Suppose I did that, and found
myself cheated of the price? You must know that I should not think of
marrying a man I have hardly seen and do not love, except for you and
the children. Do you call me cold-blooded because I am careful to
assure myself that I shan't be sacrificed in vain?"

Her mother wrung her hands. "Virgie, you know that I do not demand such
an unnatural bargain?"

"Of course I know that you don't demand it," was the quiet answer. "It
is my own decision. I promise you one thing: if, when Mr. Gaunt comes,
I feel that he is a person I never could care for, if he repels me
utterly, I will draw back. But you know, mother, you have told me one
or two things about him, as he was in the old days when you loved
him--and they were rather fine."

"Oh, but he is so altered," sobbed Mrs. Mynors from the pillow. "You
would never know him for the same man. He used to be so tender, so
chivalrous, so impulsive. Now he seems so hard, so----"

She broke off. What was she doing? The affair that was to bring her
comparative ease, to keep her from starvation, was well in train.
Should she herself stop it? She reflected that Virginia was not
accepting definitely--only promising to consider the matter. Let things
take their course. She believed the girl had some sentimental
school-girl fancy about Osbert! Yes, she had thought that from the
first. She was wasting her compassion, her delicate feeling.

After all, considering Virgie's beauty, was it likely that Gaunt would
be cruel to her? With a feeling almost like hatred she studied the pure
outline of the profile, the effect of the sunlight glinting through the
brown-gold hair, the curve of the chin, the slimness of the young,
drooping body, veiled in its blue overall.

"Oh, do as you like!" she cried, "send your letter; but talk as little
as you can to me about it! How do you suppose I like being told that
you are sacrificing yourself for me? I can go to the workhouse in the
last resort, like other people."

"Perhaps. But Pansy can't," said Virginia, a trifle rigidly. She took
up the tray and disappeared.

      *      *      *      *      *

The day dragged by. To Virginia it seemed as if it would never end, and
yet as if it were passing like a sigh. She felt as those who have been
in a sinking ship have described themselves as feeling when the wave
rose above the gunwale, and seemed to hesitate--to pause
awfully--before it burst.

Pansy was very insistently eager to know what had passed between mamma
and Mr. Gaunt the previous day. It was hard to stave off her
pertinacious inquiry, but Virgie was able to tell her that negotiations
were going on which might, or might not, lead to something. To-morrow
would bring more news.

Thus the dawn broke upon the fatal day--a day of persistent fine rain
which did nothing to abate the heat.

At about ten o'clock the loud imperative knock of a telegraph boy
sounded upon the little door. Virginia took in the message. It was from
Gaunt, and ran thus--


_Please reply definitely to business offer, which otherwise is off._


The girl sat down, with knees shaking, staring at the message, which
was reply paid. The boy waited whistling in the little entrance passage.

Should she give the definite answer demanded? Could she face the
knowledge that all hope was over? She would not show her mother the
despotic telegram. She knew that she must answer it for herself.

Taking a pencil she wrote:


_Definite reply impossible till after visit. May we expect you?_


She prepaid the reply to this, dismissed the boy, and walked into the
kitchen with limbs shaking. She felt as if she had defied the robber
chief who was holding them all to ransom.

It is difficult to describe the storm of excitement in which she
awaited the second message. Her mother and Pansy both demanded the
meaning of the double knock. She replied tranquilly to her mother that
Mr. Gaunt had tried to extort a definite answer, which she had refused
to give. Mrs. Mynors' cry: "Then he won't come after all?" was so
tragic that the girl's heart contracted.

Within an hour she held in her hands the following remarkable sentence:


_You gain nothing by delay. Arrive about four._


Virgie could not conceal from herself that it was relief which she
experienced. Putting on her hat, she went out in the rain, down to the
town, to the office of Mr. Askew, the solicitor, who had helped her
with the agreement for Laburnum Villa, and in one or two other small
matters. She asked him to come up that afternoon, at about half-past
four. Then she bought a few little cakes for tea, and returned home to
arrange everything as spick and span as possible.

Her mother had insisted that the "supply" should be asked to come up
for the afternoon, that their guest might not know of their servantless
condition. Virginia was at first opposed to the idea, but after
reflection she agreed. Mr. Gaunt must not think them too utterly in his
power. She felt like the besieged citizens who threw loaves of bread
over the walls, in order that the besiegers might suppose that they
were living in plenty. Moreover, the presence of Mrs. Brown would
ensure that Pansy and Tony were not neglected, but had tea at the
proper time, Virgie being otherwise engaged.

Thus it was that Gaunt, on his arrival, was admitted by a
responsible-looking middle-aged woman in a very clean apron, and shown
into a room which, though tiny, was a bower of luxury.

Mrs. Mynors, beautifully gowned, rose from the downy Chesterfield to
greet him. She thought he looked less vindictive, less ironical than he
had seemed at their last meeting. After all, perhaps she had been
fancying things!

"Well," he said, "so our young lady is considering the subject, as I
foresaw she would do. She is her mother's own daughter."

Mrs. Mynors smothered her resentment at this extraordinary address. She
was conscious of a hatred which was difficult to keep within bounds,
but her own panic, when she knew that there was a doubt of his coming,
had shown her something of what would be her frame of mind if Virginia
declined to marry.

"Virginia," said she, "is by no means my own daughter. I am a wretched
woman of business, whereas her head is as clear as a man's. She wishes
to have all that you propose to do for us embodied in a marriage
settlement."

"Ha!" said Gaunt, as if delighted. The mother could hardly have made a
more misleading statement. "Sharp young woman, indeed! Well, I respect
her for that. There's no reason that I know of, for her to trust me.
Where is she, by the bye? Has she entrusted the preliminaries to you?"

"No, she has not. She is acting quite independently in this matter,"
snapped Mrs. Mynors. "She is not quite of age, but I have always left
her a great liberty of action. In fact, we have been more like sisters
than mother and daughter." She dabbed her eyes daintily, and her voice
was fraught with pathos.

"How charming!" said Gaunt gravely. "Did she remember having met me at
the Wallace Collection?"

"Oh, yes, indeed she did! She remembered very well!" cried Mrs. Mynors,
and her laugh was nearly as unpleasant as his own.

"Capital," was his comment. "All should go well then. Is love at first
sight the proper cue, eh? Advise me. What do you think?"

For a moment the mask dropped. The real woman looked at him through the
eyes of the elder Virginia. "I think you are a devil," she said
distinctly.

He seemed much amused. "Well, perhaps you are not so far out this time.
I told you that you were no fool. I thought you could be trusted to
prepare the way for these difficult negotiations. Now may I see the
lady of my heart?"

As he spoke, the door opened softly and Virginia walked in.

She wore her deceptive air of extreme elegance, and her prettiest
frock. It was a costume grossly unsuited to the tiny villa, and she had
hitherto worn it only in London. Any man beholding her might have been
pardoned for supposing her to be a luxury-loving idler, a girl who
thought of little else but appearances.

Gaunt stood up. She approached him with a mingling of shyness and
welcome; her manner seemed to trust him completely--to say that she
knew herself safe in his hands. It might have made appeal to the
veriest ruffian, had not his eye been jaundiced by his knowledge of her
mother, and of their penniless circumstances. Her virginal modesty was
to him merely consummate hypocrisy.

"Well," he said, "so I hear that you are not going to commit yourself
until I stand committed too? Is that so?"

She laughed a little breathlessly. His non-smiling, dark face and big,
rather hulking person were formidable, and she was conscious of fear.

"You said it was a business transaction, and business transactions
ought to be business-like, ought they not?" she asked. She was speaking
playfully, while her eyes sought his, as wanting to understand, to
obtain some key to his curious behaviour. "It was kind of you to come,
nevertheless," she added, with a hesitation born of his lack of
response.

"I am a non-social, boorish kind of person," he said abruptly, after a
pause, during which she withdrew herself and sat down. "I suppose I
ought to begin with some kind of apology for such a blunt offer, hey?
But I am told that young ladies nowadays like something out of the way;
and you could fill in the details for yourself, I expect. You saw me
admiring you that day in the Gallery, did you not?"

Again the eyes, so like, so unlike, her mother's, were lifted to those
of the man who remembered each look and smile of twenty years back as
if it had been yesterday.

"I noticed something special--something I could not interpret--in your
manner," was her gentle reply. "I told my friend that I thought you
must imagine that you knew me. I was interested when mamma said that it
was my likeness to her which drew your attention. I was glad to have it
so well explained."

He leaned forward, intent upon her face and her down-bent gaze. "Well,"
he said, in a voice which thrilled her curiously, "perhaps you think
that my suggestion is not quite so surprising, after all?"

Virginia made no reply. Her mother clenched her hands in rage, made
some small movement, enough to attract his attention, and caught a ray
of what was undoubtedly malice directed at her from under his heavy
lids.

"Well," he went on, turning again to the girl, his tone subdued and
almost gentle, "what do you say?"

She wavered--her colour came. Innocent and ignorant of life though she
was, she yet felt the immensity of the step she was taking; but,
strangely enough, the fact that the man gave her no help counted in his
favour with her. His manner suggested some tremendous feeling, out of
sight. His aloofness was like a fine and delicate consideration. The
mocking quality in his address, so obvious to her mother, passed her by.

"Do you really think," she asked, her gaze still upon the ground, "that
I am an adequate exchange for all the things you promise to do
for--_them_?"

"Tell me now--enumerate--what have I promised to do for _them_?"

She lifted her eyes then. He was not looking at her, but brushing the
sleeve of his coat where a crumb had fallen upon it. This avoidance
gave her courage. "To educate Tony," said her voice, so fatally like
her mother's in its cadenced sweetness, "to allow mother three hundred
pounds a year, and to let Pansy have the best advice and treatment for
her lameness."

"I admit all that, right enough. Anything more?"

"To settle five thousand pounds on me----"

He looked in triumph at Mrs. Mynors. "Admirable!" he said, with a
sarcasm which penetrated to the girl's intelligence with a shock. She
broke off, startled.

"All right," he told her soothingly. "I agree to that too. Anything
more?"

"Our solicitor, Mr. Askew, said there was another thing that I ought to
ask," she replied, quite tranquilly. "It is that you should make a will
in my favour, so that if anything happened to you, we should not be
left destitute."

He once more let his mocking glance lash Mrs. Mynors. "I appreciate my
future wife's business capacity," said he, "but I warn you that I am
horribly healthy. Except for the accident which lamed me, I have not
had a day's illness in my life. I fear I shan't oblige you by dying
just yet."

Virgie grew pink. "Oh, I beg your pardon! That must have sounded very
cold-blooded," she apologised. "But you said it was a business offer,
did you not?"

He smiled for the first time. Dropping his voice to a low
persuasiveness: "Did you quite believe that?" he asked.

Thus challenged, the truth in Virginia spoke. "No," she told him; "I
thought it too extraordinary to be true."

"Besides," he persisted, still in that wooing undertone, "with a man
who had seen you, it could hardly be, eh?"

Virgie held her breath. Something was here which was utterly beyond
her. She was half terrified, half fascinated.

"Do you remember the statue on the landing at Hertford House?" he
asked. The blood rushed to her cheeks now in headlong tide. _He_
knew what brought it; her mother misinterpreted.

"When you had gone, I went and read the inscription," he pursued. "I
told myself how true it was. Do you remember it? _Voici ton
maitre?_"

He sat and watched the memory, the pang that rent her. The sight of it
seemed to give him real pleasure. He could trace the regret, the quiver
of feeling, and he could say to himself: "She loves young Rosenberg,
but she will marry me for my money. She deserves the punishment which I
am going to inflict."

"So, you see, I am a wise man; I know when I am beaten," he went on
smoothly. "I acknowledged my master when I found him."

The struggle in Virginia was keen. She was telling herself that this
was Mr. Gaunt's highly unusual way of confessing himself attracted. If
it were true that he already felt this strong inclination, then she
must satisfy him; the marriage ought to be a success, since he had the
desire to love, and she the will to please, to serve, to cherish. Yet
there was an undernote, like the boom of the far-away storm in the
voice of a calm sea. This alarmed her, for she did not understand it.

To steady herself and hide her embarrassment she rose and went to the
tea-table, at which she seated herself, pouring the tea and dispensing
it with the noticeable grace which characterised her least important
actions.

She noticed that her mother was shedding tears, and the sight caused
her to make a great effort and launch into small talk--of the late
heat, and the rain, and the climate of Wayhurst. Small support did she
receive from either of her companions; and by the time that Gaunt had
eaten a slice of cake and drunk two cups of tea, his patience seemed
suddenly to give out.

"Come, then," he asked suddenly, "have we arranged matters, subject to
your finding the business side of the transaction in good order?"

Thus confronted with the bald issue, Virgie felt as if he had slapped
her in the face; but in a moment she had rallied. He had promised to
give her all she asked. Could she, logically, do aught else but accept?
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, hesitated, rose, and went to
the window, gazing forth upon the little wet street. Over the way, at
Alpine Cottage, the pug had managed to get shut out in the rain. It was
astonishing how often he did this. It was the one thing that seriously
displeased his prim and elderly mistress. Virgie's mind caught at the
trifling fact, the little bit of her daily life, as if its
consideration could protect her against the awful decision which loomed
ahead.

"If you want to stipulate for other things, now is your time," said
Gaunt, rising and coming towards her. It was but a step, for the room
was tiny. "For instance, don't you want it put in the settlements that
you should have so many months in town every year, or that I should
give you a motor? I haven't got a motor, I must warn you."

Here was something that she could answer without hesitation. She turned
to him her lovely, tender smile. "Oh, all that! Why, I shall be your
wife," she sweetly answered him.

There was a tingling silence after this artless speech. Gaunt's face
fell. He looked as though a momentary doubt assailed him. Then he
realised that he must seize the chance she thus unwittingly gave him of
assuming her consent.

"Ah! then you can think of yourself as my wife?" He turned his face to
where Mrs. Mynors sat like a woman hypnotised. "Then we are engaged!"
he cried. "I am such a crusted old provincial bachelor that I did not
provide for this occasion before I left town by the purchase of a ring.
But I see upon your mother's finger a jewel which, if I mistake not,
belongs to me." He approached the sofa with hand outstretched. "Thank
you, madam. It seems to me a most touching idea that the mother and
daughter should wear the same betrothal ring." He held it out to
Virginia.

"Put it on," he said.

Virginia wavered. She looked from the man to the woman, bewildered with
the invisible clash of feelings which she could not interpret. Mrs.
Mynors hid her face behind her perfumed wisp of lawn; but, then, she
would have done that in any case at such a moment as her daughter's
betrothal. Gaunt's eyes were alight, but, as it were, a-smoulder; there
was no flame in their glance.

Turning very white, the girl took the ring from him and obediently
slipped it upon her finger.

"Done!" he said, in tones of boundless satisfaction. "Now we come to
definite arrangements." He seated himself again, but Virginia remained
standing as if something had turned her to stone. "I live a very busy
life at Omberleigh," he told her briskly, "farming my own land; and my
estate is a big one. I must go down there to-night to superintend the
end of the hay harvest, and I must stay there a few days in order to
prepare the house for your reception. I should like to be married this
day week if that will suit you. As we both live in our own parishes,
there will be no difficulty about a licence. It is not possible for me
to take a honeymoon at this time of year, so I shall carry you straight
back to Derbyshire after the ceremony."

"Wait--wait. No, no, Osbert, this is preposterous!" broke in Mrs.
Mynors. "This cannot be. Virginia does not know you; she is all
unprepared. Such haste is--improper! I will not have it."

He looked as obstinate as a mule with its ears laid back. "Sorry," he
said. "On this matter I shall be obliged to insist. I must be married
before we begin to reap, and it is going to be a very early harvest
this year. Don't make difficulties. Remember that you profess to be
very hard up, and I don't begin to make you any allowance until your
daughter is my wife."

Virginia was reflecting. "If they told me I was to have an operation I
would rather have it at once, than be left to think about it."

She spoke suddenly. "Mother, I can be ready," she said gently. "Let it
be as Mr. Gaunt thinks best."

"Excellent!" said the bridegroom. "Your mother tells me that she allows
you complete independence of action, so we will take this as settled.
Is that your solicitor now entering the gate? I will give him my
instructions at once with your permission, for I must go back to London
by the six train to catch the express to Ashbourne."





CHAPTER VIII

INTO THE UNKNOWN


  "_Graceful as an ivy bough
  Born to cling and lean,
  Thus she sat to sing and sew....
  When she raised her lustrous eyes
  A beast peeped at the door._"--Christina Rossetti.


Mr. Askew stood at the window, watching the figure of the prospective
bridegroom limping down the road. He turned his mild eyes back to the
two ladies within the room with something like wonder in their depths.

"Miss Virginia, I congratulate you," he said almost reverently. "You
have indeed found a generous husband."

"You think--you are of opinion--that his generosity is exceptional?"
faltered Mrs. Mynors.

"Exceptional? But, my _dear_ madam, it is unheard of! Strong
indeed must be the attachment! He told me," added the kind old man,
with a smile of appreciation at the bride-elect, "that it was a case of
love at first sight. Miss Virginia has made a conquest worth boasting
of!"

Virginia stood gazing anxiously at the speaker. She longed to ask if he
was quite sure that her future husband was sane; but such a question
must appear too eccentric for her to venture upon it. Fortunately, the
next words of the lawyer practically answered it.

"And such a grasp of business! Such a fine, keen intelligence! He tells
me that he runs his estate at a profit, has all these new intensive
culture ideas, and plenty of capital to carry them out. A fine fortune,
indeed! One wonders how it chances that such a man has remained so long
a bachelor!"

Mrs. Mynors bridled, but said nothing. Virginia absorbed the sense of
the opinion just given with considerable relief. The information
respecting Gaunt's scientific cultivation of his land interested her.
Her own father, living on his hereditary acres, had been in like manner
devoted to the soil. At Lissendean, however, the land had starved to
supply the constantly increasing demands of the mistress of the house;
and the shadow of the approaching, inevitable bankruptcy had paralysed
all planning, and embittered the premature illness and death of a
chivalrous and simple gentleman.

The thought that this free life, of tramping over fields and through
spinneys, of riding across one's own acres, and watching the response
of the earth to the hand of man, might once more be hers, went far to
reconcile the new Andromeda to her lot. The manner and appearance of
her suitor had rather puzzled than hurt her. He had pleaded solitude
and boorishness as a reason for his extraordinarily abrupt tactics. If
he atoned for his surprising rudeness in the matter (for instance) of
her mother's ring by being good to his wife, and allowing her to have
Pansy to stay with her, then she might be so nearly happy that she need
waste little regret upon her own action in shutting upon her youth the
gate of dreams. Softly she stole from the room, leaving her mother
still in talk with Mr. Askew, finding out all she could as to the
extent of her son-in-law's means; and privately speculating as to how
far it would be prudent to exceed the miserable allowance which he
proposed to make her.

Virginia went upstairs to Pansy's room to console the child for her
disappointment in not having seen her future brother. Shyly the elder
sister, when Gaunt was taking leave, had suggested a moment's visit to
the little invalid. She had been curtly refused. He had barely time in
which to catch his train to London. By way of comfort, Virgie now
enlarged upon the big, beautiful garden at Omberleigh, wherein, of
course, Pansy would ere long find herself installed. Eagerly the child
noticed and remarked upon the beautiful ring which her sister wore. She
had not previously seen it, and was naturally kept in ignorance of its
somewhat humiliating history.

"I wonder what else he will send you, Virgie," said the child eagerly.
"I expect that before long lovely wedding presents will begin to come.
What dress shall you buy to be married in, darling?"

"I shan't buy any," was the calm reply. "We are to be married with
nobody there but mother and Tony, at ten o'clock in the morning, and I
shall have to travel back to Omberleigh afterwards. I shall just wear
my frock that you are so fond of, with the chiffon tunic, and take a
dust-coat to church with me."

Pansy was inclined to be disappointed, but Virginia showed her how
impossible it was for her to spend money which they had not got, and
how far more honourable she felt it to be going to her marriage in
things which had been paid for.

Busy days they were for Virgie, for she had to engage a good, competent
servant for Laburnum Villa, and also to make arrangements with their
doctor for Pansy to try the treatment he had always been so eager to
recommend. Everything had to be so ordered that it might be fully in
train by the wedding day, that her mother should not feel too much
inconvenienced by the departure of her devoted maid-of-all-work.

Perhaps the most difficult task of all that fell to the bride was the
writing of her news to Miriam Rosenberg. Long did she sit with the tip
of her penholder laid thoughtfully on her lip, her eyes gazing gravely
forth, but seeing nothing. She felt the extraordinary circumstances
needed some handling. She must try to put things in their most
favourable light without actually violating truth. And it was only a
few days before her day of doom that she finally achieved the following:


_My dearest Mims,_

_I am writing a line to tell you a piece of news which will, I think,
astonish you. I am going to be married! More surprising still, I am
going to be married next Tuesday! It sounds wild, I know, considering
that when I was with you there was no such idea; but it is not quite as
sudden as it seems, for Mr. Gaunt is a very old friend, and knew mother
before I was born. He is being most incredibly good, and is to provide
for mother, Pansy and Tony. Is it not wonderful? Like a story in a
book. He lives in Derbyshire, and has a big estate, so I shall be in
the country, as in old days--and you know how I love a country life.
When we are settled down, you must come and stay with us._

_Nobody is invited to the wedding, Mr. Gaunt having no near relative.
It is to be early in the morning, with only mother and Tony present, as
we have a long way to go afterwards._

_I send you much love, and I shall never forget all your goodness to
me.--Your constant friend_,

Virginia Mynors.


For the two days which followed the despatch of this letter Virginia
lived in secret suspense. She did not really believe that there was any
likelihood that Perseus, in the handsome person of Gerald Rosenberg,
would arrive to unchain her from her rock; yet the tiny chance that he
might fought and struggled within her. Each time the postman passed she
felt her heart lift in her side. Each time the bell rang she wondered
whether there might not be a tall figure waiting on the other side of
the door.

As might have been expected, no such thing happened. A letter came from
Mims by return of post, full of congratulation and excitement, and
stating that a consignment of wedding presents had been despatched. In
fact, Mr. Rosenberg, senior, was so transported with gratitude to
Virginia for refraining from becoming his daughter-in-law that he
bestowed on her a set of ermine furs fit for a princess. Mims sent a
mirror in a silver frame; Gerald a pendant.

Except for a silver cream-jug from Mr. Askew, these were the only
presents the girl received. Tony and Pansy almost broke their hearts at
being unable to give anything, until Mrs. Mynors, roused to most
unexpected generosity, allowed them to go shares with her in pressing
upon Virgie's acceptance some articles of her mother's silver toilet
set--brush, comb, and so on.

Small time had the bride for reflection, until the dawn of the fatal
day.

The rain had changed the weather. The heat was no longer great--in
fact, the day was chilly and grey, with a gusty little wind which blew
up the dust in sudden puffs.

The bride's toilette, of pale blue over white, was extremely pretty. As
she stood in the drawing-room awaiting the fly which would drive her,
her mother and Tony to the church, Mrs. Mynors thought she had never
seen a more perfect picture of girlish fairness. Excitement and nervous
trepidation had chased the pallor with which a sleepless night had
invested her. Up to the last moment she had been at work upon this and
that--rearranging her own room to accommodate the professional nurse
who would be in charge of Pansy during her treatment, trying to think
out and plan everything so exactly that her mother would not be able to
upset it afterwards. It was not until nearly two o'clock in the morning
that she finished her own packing, and lay down to the thoughts of
unspeakable dread with which she now knew that she regarded her
approaching marriage.

Since the day of Gaunt's visit her mother had hardly spoken to her. Her
silence was not exactly hostile, but it was very wounding. It was as
though she had suddenly discovered that her daughter was not the girl
she took her to be; as if the poor child was abandoning her home and
duties to make a rich marriage--leaving her mother to pine in the
little villa, cut off from all her own set. There was nothing to take
hold of, nothing that Virginia could plead against; it was just an
atmosphere of coldness, of pained surprise, but it seemed to the
depressed girl to be the last straw.

With her usual patience she shouldered the burden and bore it. She
guessed, with her quick, sensitive sympathy, that perhaps it hurt mamma
less to adopt this attitude. Her daughter was sacrificing herself to
her family. To admit this stunning weight of obligation must, of
course, be painful. Mamma always shrank from painful things. She had
discovered this pose of hers as a kind of refuge from humiliation.
Virgie accepted it meekly. Nevertheless, the tears which it wrung from
her in the darkness of her last night at home were bitter, and could
not be checked for a long time.

The knowledge that Gaunt was in the town, that he had arrived by the
last train the previous night, and was putting up at the Ducal Arms
near the station, seemed to render sleep impossible. She could not tell
why. Not till five o'clock had struck was she compelled by mere
exhaustion to close her eyes.

All her life Virginia had been a poor eater, and the least excitement
was wont to deprive her of appetite. As a result of this, she had
eaten, during the past ten days, barely enough to keep her alive. There
was nobody to notice what she ate, or whether she took a sufficient
quantity. As she had been under-nourished for the last two years, with
the sole exception of her fortnight with the Rosenbergs, during great
part of which mental agitation had made it difficult for her to eat,
she was in a state of real debility. Wholly inadequate did she feel for
what lay before her--the new beginning, the effort to understand the
unknown being whom she was to marry, the settling into strange
surroundings. Her weakness and discouragement were so profound that, by
the time she had arisen, dressed for church, and passed through the
sharp and biting agony of her parting from Pansy, she was reduced to a
state of passive endurance.

All the way to church she talked feverishly, eagerly to Tony of what
they would do in the future. She would pay his pocket money out of her
own allowance. He was to join the school O.T.C. at once, so that he
might go into camp at the end of term....

In such plans as these lay her only anodyne.

Her mother was reduced to complete silence. Mrs. Mynors--in her own
opinion--was the interesting and tragic heroine of this occasion. She,
in all her beauty, all her desolation, had been passed by in favour of
her inexperienced, immature daughter. The pathos of her position--left
in Laburnum Villa while Virginia went to take up a place in county
society--flooded her with self-pity. Never had she felt capable of such
an intensity of emotion as upon this day, when she was carried helpless
to church to give her daughter away. Never had she come so near to
being primally and brutally elementary as at the moment when the
carriage stopped at the church door, and Gaunt came forward, greeting
her with:

"Good morning, my mother-in-law!"

She drew in her breath with a sound like a moan; but in a flash she had
seen that she must make no manifestation. The time for that had gone
by. As she moved up the church, side by side with her daughter, she
realised two things, sharply and simultaneously. One, that she could
and ought to have prevented this marriage; the other, that it was now
too late.

What was Gaunt's plan she could not exactly know. If it was simply to
mortify her, then she could not see why he should be unkind to Virgie.
Yet she distrusted and feared him; and she had given no warning to the
simple creature at her side, going like a lamb to the slaughter, blind
to all life's mysterious issues, blind to the sinister motive which her
mother so clearly saw behind Gaunt's eccentric marriage. For Virginia,
the old truth held good, that at the actual moment one ceases to
realise what is happening. The service struck her with a sense of
detachment. She heard it with interest, almost for the first time. The
vows were, indeed, comprehensive. One had, however, the comforting
knowledge that the vowing was mutual. He promised things as well as
she. There was a curious consolation in the reflection that he vowed to
love, cherish, and even worship his wife. There seemed nothing detached
about his own participation in the rite. He grasped her fingers so
strongly as to be almost painful as he vowed "to have and to hold."

And now it was done, and there was no more use in wondering whether one
had been right or wrong.

The bare and unadorned service was quickly over. The elderly vicar read
a short and platitudinous address to the newly married out of a small
pastoral book. Gaunt took his wife's hand, placed it on his arm, and
marched her into a stuffy, small vestry, wherein she was to write for
the last time her name, Virginia Mynors.

She wrote it; and turning, fixed her troubled gaze upon her mother with
an expression so bewildered, so lost, that it pierced even through the
crust of egotism. Mrs. Mynors began to gasp hysterically, but, after a
momentary fight for composure, managed to say, "Osbert, Osbert, I
conjure you! Be good to her! Be good to my Virgie!"

"My dear mother-in-law, I promise you that Virgie shall have the
treatment she deserves," was his reply. "Come, Mrs. Gaunt, we must be
off, if we are to catch the London train."

Virginia was now quite numb. She took his arm because he offered it,
and because there seemed nothing else to do. They were at the church
door. She broke away from Gaunt to fling her arms round Tony. The boy
was radiant, showing her with glowing eyes a sovereign which his new
brother-in-law had just bestowed. The sight did more to encourage the
bride than might be supposed. She kissed her mother next, finding it
out of the question to give any parting message or direction, because
the attempt to articulate would let loose a flood of feeling hardly
complimentary to her husband.

Then she was in the carriage, alone with the man who was to walk
through life at her side. Still the merciful numbness held her.

Gaunt, in an unconcerned way, said he thought they had better lunch at
the Savoy, and she agreed, not knowing what he meant. He made one or
two other trifling remarks concerning the disposal of her luggage,
which awaited them at the station.

They found the train, and he put her in, walking away himself, and
returning with the news that all the trunks were safe, and in the van.
He laid upon her lap a pile of magazines and one or two novels.

"I hate talking in a train," he remarked. She could have loved him for
such marvellous consideration.

He had a small bag, stuffed with legal-looking documents, which he
diligently perused. Virginia, thus released momentarily from strain,
lay back against the cushions. The breeze fluttered into the carriage,
sweet with the breath of summer. She tried to rest, and not to think.
It was impossible not to think, however. Her thoughts were glued, as it
were, to the consideration of this man to whom she was so strangely
tied.

"He loved me at first sight. He guessed who I was. He got into
communication with mother in order to be introduced. He suggested
marriage there and then. When will he begin to woo me? What will he
tell me? What shall I answer? Shall I be able to help flinching, from
letting him see how abjectly afraid I am?"

He did not put her to the test. Was it possible that he divined her
exhaustion, and respected it?

She was still wondering when the non-stop express ran into the terminus.

He put her into a taxi while he went and looked after their baggage.
Then he rejoined her, and directed the driver to the Savoy Hotel.

They secured a table near the window, whence could be seen the waters
of the Thames, the endless movement of the traffic on the Embankment
and the brilliant flowers of the public gardens.

The beauty of it revived Virgie a little. She ate some lunch, drank a
glass of champagne, and began to make small, shy comments upon the
scene, to which her husband listened tolerantly, but not as though
interested. She reflected that she must seem to him altogether young
and childish.

Her slender grace and charm drew many eyes. As Gaunt glanced about him,
he was keenly conscious of this. Presently he leant back with the smile
that his mother-in-law hated.

"Glad you are pleased," said he. "Make the most of it. You are going to
be buried in the heart of the country from to-day onward."

She laughed lightly. "That will be no hardship," said she. "What I
should not like would be to be buried in the heart of London. The walls
in London seem as if they must fall down and crush you--so near
together. Have you ever felt that?"

"I don't like London."

"Then that is one taste we share," said she thoughtfully, leaning back
to survey him. "How strange that I should know so little of your
tastes! We shall have to begin at the very beginning, shall we not?"

"The beginning of what?" asked Gaunt.

"Of acquaintanceship," she answered.

"Pardon me. I know you through and through. You have not a taste, a
habit, nor an idea that I am not intimately acquainted with. Gives me
an unfair advantage, does it not?"

"If it's true, it does indeed; but I don't think it is true," was her
frank answer.

He gave something between a grunt and a laugh. "You are not competent
to form an opinion," he replied, looking at his watch. "It is now five
minutes to two," he went on, "and our train leaves St. Pancras at four.
What will you do? I am going to have a smoke. Perhaps you would like to
lie down and rest a while--eh?"

It was so exactly what she craved that she thought his sympathy
wonderful. That he was dismissing her to solitude on her wedding day,
while he smoked, did not occur to her. She thanked him quite eagerly, a
maid was summoned, and she was shown into a room with a deliciously
downy bed. The maid removed her hat, took off her shoes, drew the
blinds, and left, promising to call her in plenty of time.

She could not sleep, but the silence and the recumbent posture helped
her. She went down to the entrance hall after her rest, feeling much
more able to endure the remainder of her journey than she had dared to
hope.




CHAPTER IX

IN THE TRAP


  "_'Sit fast--dost fear?--The moon shines clear--
  Fleet goes my barb--keep hold!
  Fearst thou?'--'Oh, no!' she faintly said;
  'But why so stern and cold?'_"--Scott.


Virgie awoke, so to speak, from her numbness in the train, somewhere
between London and Derby.

She was sitting, with her pile of light literature and fashion papers,
opposite the man who had married her, and who was to all appearance
immersed in the folios of blue foolscap, which he was marking here and
there with red pencil. The documents, so far as she could judge, were
leases.

The motion of the train had lulled her into a short nap, and it seemed
as if quite suddenly she was wide awake, and pinching herself to make
sure that it was not all a dream. Here was a man who had, as it were,
leaped at a girl, and married her in such hot haste that there was no
time for reflection. One argued, one assumed, the strong feeling which
made such behaviour credible. Yet now he sat, as a man twenty years
married might sit, marking passages in a lease with red pencil, while
his few hours' bride, in all her delicate loveliness, faced him,
neglected, ignored.

Surely this was puzzling!

Had she but known, her own demeanour was much more surprising to him
than his could be to her. He was wondering when an outburst of wounded
vanity would come, how much longer she could refrain from comment upon
his behaviour. Surely she must be piqued beyond endurance, she who
imagined herself to have captured his heart at a glance, and was
doubtless pondering the question of exactly what her conquest
represented, in money, luxury, and pleasure.

His seemingly absorbed attention had, as a fact, hardly wandered from
her for an instant since they met that morning; and the results of his
observations were not according to his expectation. So far, she had not
merely been pliant, she had seemed grateful for kindness. Of course he
knew her to be badly frightened. At the Savoy, for a few minutes, under
the influence of gay surroundings and champagne, there had been, as he
thought, a glimpse of the real woman--the coquette incarnate. It had
vanished, however, the moment he set his heavy hand thereon.

Now she sat before him in her Dresden china daintiness, a picture of
luxury, carefully tended down to her very finger-nails. While she slept
he had perused the features that moved him so vitally--the well
remembered breadth of brow and pointedness of chin, the deep setting of
the shadowy eyes, the lines of the throat, the base of which rose milky
from its setting of misty chiffon.

As soon as she stirred, he returned to his blue foolscap. Now she was
returning his compliment--studying him.

Reluctantly she found that experience was confirming the judgment she
had formed instantaneously at Hertford House. She did not like her
husband's face, and could hardly say why this was so, since in a
virile, somewhat rough-hewn fashion, his features were good. She was
just saying to herself, "It is the expression that is wrong; it must be
the expression," when he raised his head, met her eyes, and smiled in
the way she was learning to dislike.

"Well, don't you think I am an ideal husband?" he asked.

She answered his smile. "That remains to be seen," she countered.

"At least," he said, "I fulfil the one essential condition, don't I?
The one thing needful for husbands?"

"What is that?"

"Why, a long purse, of course."

She coloured warmly, and showed, by downcast eye and close-pressed
lips, how this wounded. She felt that she had nothing to say in reply,
except a low, reproachful, "Oh!" in the shock of such an unkindness.

"Not very tactful of me, was it, to taunt you with the amiable weakness
which has procured me the lifelong privilege of your society?"

"Amiable weakness?" she repeated vaguely.

"The woman's desire for physical comforts, luxury, and so on, at any
cost."

"Oh," murmured Virgie, "I don't think--indeed, I'm sure you don't
understand."

"No? We must discuss the matter at greater length; but as I told you
this morning, I dislike talking in the train. We shall be at Luton in a
minute, and I telegraphed for a tea-basket."

The train slowed down as he spoke. He rose, leaned from the window, and
took the tray from the boy who was waiting on the platform.

Virginia poured out the tea, and dispensed the bread and butter and
cake with a sinking heart.

Of all the things she had anticipated, unkindness from her newly made
husband had been farthest from her thoughts. Her maiden terrors had
concerned themselves in the opposite direction. She had feared
demonstrative display of feeling which as yet she must be unable to
reciprocate. His attitude froze her timid efforts to make friends. The
remaining words that passed between them during the journey were
negligible, except for once, when he looked up suddenly--they were
passing a lonely stretch of moorland, and he had been gazing from the
window--and said:

"So you think you will like living in the country?"

"I know I shall. I have always lived in the country," she replied.

"Not with me," was his comment, while a faint smile crossed his eyes.

"No. Not with you," was her gentle answer.

She wanted to speak to him, to tell him how well she meant to keep her
new-made vows, that though her marriage was, as he must know, a
marriage of convenience, she intended to do her duty to the utmost
limit of her powers. But he said he did not like talking in the train;
and her spirits were so exhausted that she dare not risk a breakdown.
She remained, therefore, rapt in the silence which seemed the sole
alternative, until they reached their journey's end.

A brougham awaited them, drawn by a pair of fine horses. There followed
a drive of more than five miles through country which grew each moment
wilder and more beautiful. They came at last to a pine wood, set among
swelling uplands. A lodge gate here flanked the road, and as the
lodge-keeper's child opened it, and touched his forelock, Virginia
guessed that they were in their own domain.

The trees were so thick and dark as to produce a premature twilight.
Through this they drove for the best part of a mile. The name of
Omberleigh could be well understood. It was, indeed, a place of
shadows. The house stood in the depths of the wood, so far as the side
from which they approached was concerned. It was a Georgian house,
straight and square, with a classic porch of grey stone, supported upon
columns.

The house door stood open, and revealed a dark hall, somewhat untidy,
and furnished with big black cupboards, surmounted by foxes' masks,
antlers, and stuffed fish. On its shabby turkey carpet stood an elderly
man-servant, a middle-aged parlourmaid, and a grey-haired woman who was
presumably a cook-housekeeper. All of them looked as though they were
patiently trying to grapple with undeserved calamity in the shape of a
new mistress.

"Mrs. Wells, this is my wife," said Gaunt, in tones that sounded as if
he were trying to conceal his triumph.

"I am sure I wish you joy, ma'am," replied Mrs. Wells, with an implied
despair of the fulfilment of any such wish.

Virginia was used to a large household. She slipped off her glove, and
shook hands kindly with Mrs. Wells. "Thank you so much. I am sure I
shall be happy in this beautiful place," said she cordially.

"This is Hemming, who has been with me a great many years," went on
Gaunt, indicating the man-servant, who murmured, "Namely fifteen," as
he glanced at the fair creature standing there, who looked, as he
afterwards remarked, like a fairy strayed in from the woods.

"And this is Grover, who will wait upon you," he went on. "Grover, you
had better take Mrs. Gaunt straight upstairs. Hemming, let the men
carry up the luggage into Mrs. Gaunt's room forthwith."

"This way, ma'am," said Grover, distantly. She took the dust-cloak
which Virgie had slipped off, flashing a glance of reluctant admiration
as she did so at the pretty frock displayed. The staircase was on the
dark side of the house, and the corridor above seemed very sombre to
the girl as she followed her guide.

Her bedroom was big and old-fashioned, with three high sash windows,
set deep in the walls. This lay on the other side of the house, and the
bride stepped forward into the full glory of a sunset, far over land
which sloped away downward in a wide prospect. The aspect of this side
of the house was south with a touch of west.

Grover was pleased at the involuntary cry of pleasure which the new
mistress gave as she went to one of the windows and gazed out. She
thawed a little as she pointed out to the eager girl the fine hill
which was the pride of their part of the county, Gladby Top.

The men brought up the boxes, and by the time she had arrayed Virginia
in the frock which young Mr. Bent so much admired in Bryanston Square,
Grover had laid aside the greater part of her resentment, and was
inclined to think that very few of the neighbouring families could show
anything in the way of a bride approaching the quality of the specimen
just brought to Omberleigh.

"You can excuse him and understand him, if you take what I mean," she
said later on in the kitchen. "Most times there's really no knowing
what it is as takes their fancy when they get to his age. But with
her--well, I don't see how he could help himself! If she was to be had,
right he was to snap her up. What seems odd to me is that she should
have taken him, for you can see she's a tip-topper--none of your
soap-makers' daughters, but real gentry."

Grover showed the bride downstairs into the drawing-room with an
uncomfortable feeling that it was not an adequate setting for so fair
and youthful a presence. Virginia had not lingered over her dressing,
and found that there was half an hour yet before the dinner would be
served. She stood in the long, bare room, probably last re-furnished in
the '60's, and gazed about her forlornly. This room was on the sunny
side of the house, and its windows opened upon a paved terrace with an
Italian balustrade in stone.

She strayed across the Brussels carpet to the window, and stood there
gazing out upon the falling slopes of a garden--yes, a garden--but as
it seemed to her a somewhat bare one. There was just enough bedding-out
to make a meagre display; but when she thought of the flaming
herbaceous flowers which ought to fill those long border edgings, of
the Alpine plants which ought to bloom from every cleft in those
limestone walls, she sighed at the thought of wasted opportunities. The
tastes of the master of the house were not for horticulture, it
appeared.

The thought of his sneer at her for a mercenary marriage rushed to her
mind. This husband--this stranger--what manner of man was he? What was
to be her fate at his hands? The doubt and terror turned her blood to
water. She put her two hands to her throat to keep down the swelling
sobs. Then she turned swiftly, instinctively backward, and saw that
Gaunt had noiselessly entered, and stood just behind her.

"Well," he said, "it is done now. The trap has closed behind you, and
you cannot get out. What do you think of your life-sentence?"

A sudden determination came to her not to show fear. His manner was
that of one grimly jesting. She answered playfully, "I think my jailer
likes to tease."

"Well," he went on, "you walked into the snare with your eyes open. You
knew nothing of me, did you, beyond the one glorious fact that I am
rich? Nothing else mattered. My negligence, my rudeness, my neglect,
could not drive you from your purpose. True daughter of Virginia
Sheringham, you have made your bed, and now you must lie upon it."

His wife's eyes flashed, and her answer came clearly. "Pardon me! You
say that I knew nothing of you but that you were rich. That is not
true. I knew that you were a man of whom my own mother thought so well
that she engaged herself to marry you. I knew also--or guessed--that
you were lonely and unhappy. I could see that you were--lame."

"What?" he cut her off short. "You have the assurance to tell me to my
face that my infirmity was a reason for your marrying me? You thought
that you could elude the vigilance of a lame man--was that it? But
though I limp I am no cripple. In fact, I am particularly
active--active enough to guard you very carefully, as I warn you."

Bewildered, roused to hot indignation though she now was, Virginia felt
her spirits rise defiant to meet this bullying tone. "A husband should
guard his wife, and I hope you will guard me," she replied promptly,
"but you speak as though you intended to hold me captive. What do you
mean by that?"

"I mean," he said, measuring his words, and keeping his eyes steadily
upon her, "to undertake the task of your reformation. I am going to
turn you into something human--into a feeling, breathing, and, if
necessary, a suffering woman. I am going to take away your false
standards, to humble your vanity, to mortify your avarice. You shall
see yourself, Virginia Gaunt, as you really are! Your outward beauty,
upon which you trade, as your mother traded, is nothing to me but a
whip, reminding me of the fool I was in my youth. I saw you first,
using your lure, casting your net, hoping to secure young Rosenberg as
your escape from poverty and debt. You nearly succeeded; you would have
succeeded had not your friend belonged to a race which likes to have
its money's-worth. You blush--yes, that shows the truth of my surmise.
He would doubtless have been a more congenial solution of your problem
than I; but he, alas, was not available! So you took me! And so you
were very careful about the settlements! But there were things for
which you forgot to stipulate--and those you must learn to do without!"

She was white now. Only her force of will kept her upon her feet. The
insulting words stormed at her brain, and filled her with despair.

"You say this to me--_to your wife_. Is it fair, do you think?...
I have not deceived you. You never asked me to give you love. I mean to
keep my promises, without the goad of threats.... If--if I did wrong,
in accepting what you offered, I am sorry. I want to do my duty, if you
will help me ... but don't make it too--difficult."

"Excellent!" he commented. "A picture of wifely submission! We shall
make something of you yet--perhaps in time. Meanwhile, it is as well to
warn you that yours is to be no life of luxury. You must work, my
girl--work, do you hear?"

"That will be nothing new," she replied tremulously. "I am used to hard
work."

He laughed out. She looked like a creature whom the weariness of toil
had never touched. He was so convinced of her idleness and frivolity
that he could see nothing else.

"Work? You look like it. Your mother looks like it too. She fluttered
into her Dover Street Club, clad like Solomon in all his glory, and
with no more concern about the cost of her finery than the lilies of
the field. The only work that women like you understand is how to spend
money. That's your vocation, the business of your life! How to catch
some man and wring from him the means to indulge your desires."

He was mounted on his hobby now, and his words came with a sudden
fluency for which his previous taciturnity made her unprepared. "She
was quite young--young enough to have been unworldly, you would have
thought--when she jilted a poor man to marry a rich one. In spite of
that innocent exterior, she was as clever as a pickpocket, as cautious
as a Jew. Afterwards I remembered how carefully she had questioned me
as to the likelihood of my coming into this property. There was a life
between me and it. She was not taking any chances!... But, after all,
the life failed. I came into my inheritance not so many years after my
jilting ... and, by the Lord! when she was a needy widow and I was a
rich man, she would have married me, had I so much as held up a finger.
Do you deny it?"

Virginia could hardly breathe. If the hands she had clutched when
drowning had contracted about her throat and held her down under water,
she might have felt something the same consternation. Love! Love at
first sight! Why, the man loathed her.

"But," she brought out breathlessly, "if this--if this is what you
think of me, why--why have you married me?"

"I'll tell you why. I married because I am siren-proof, and I am going
to reform you. You're young; you may not be irreclaimable. We'll see if
I can change your nature; but if I can't do that, I swear I will
control your actions. For the first time in your life, you are going to
be disciplined. The starting-point for your training is that you should
be completely cut off from your past. Therefore, you will not again see
any of the members of your family, either here, or elsewhere. You need
not look so incredulous. I carry out the things I undertake. Don't
suppose you can escape from me."

The hatred in his voice was the outcome of twenty years of morbid
egotism. The very atrocity of his amazing tirade helped his wife to
rally. All her dignity, all her good breeding, came now to her support.

She spoke low but steadily. "It is true that I cannot escape. I bound
myself this morning, by vows which to me are more binding than cords.
But let me remind you that you also took vows--to love and to cherish."

He bowed ironically. "Oh, be sure that I shall cherish my piece of
perfection," he replied, "and, when I have broken her to harness, I may
reward her with my affection."

Her face, as she met his look, merited study. She had found a source of
consolation in her misery--the consciousness of her own immense height
above him. Terror, which had been succeeded by disgust, now disappeared
altogether in sheer contempt.

"You have made us quits," she said simply. "This morning I felt myself
under a great weight of obligation. Now you have paid yourself in full,
paid yourself in insult to a helpless woman."

"Take care! Take care what you say to me!" he cried, swayed by a tumult
of inexplicable feeling.

She made no answer. Only she faced him, no longer afraid, but coldly
critical. Her look was almost pitying. As they stood confronted, the
man had a curious experience. Her wonderful likeness to her mother
vanished utterly, and he saw a woman strange to him not only in person
but in type--a type as yet unknown.

There was a pause, which was broken by the roll of the gong in the
hall. Gaunt started. Hemming threw open the door and announced dinner.

Caught at such a moment, the master of the house, to his annoyance, was
taken aback and hesitated. His wife did not seem to share his
embarrassment. With her head held high she advanced the few steps which
separated them, and laid her hand upon his arm.

Together they walked out into the hall, under the respectful but close
observation of the butler, and entered the dining-room, a dark and
gloomy apartment, on the wooded north side of the house.

Here dinner was laid, in the style of a half-century ago.

To Gaunt's surprise, his wife began to talk almost at once. She spoke
of the glorious view from the window of her room, inquired the height
of Gladby Top, and mentioned her own taste for gardening. After a few
minutes of moody uncertainty, Gaunt joined in her attempt to keep up
appearances; and it was not until Hemming and Grover had placed dessert
upon the table and left the room that the inevitable silence fell.




CHAPTER X

ANDROMEDA


  "_Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
  Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
  To look at, from outside the walls....
  And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys,
  Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;
  And, like a glad sky the north wind sullies,
  The lady's face stopped its play
  As if her first hair had grown grey_."--Browning.


The final closing of the door upon Hemming, as he discreetly retired,
seemed to the bride to fill the gloomy room with reverberations. The
door was not banged, yet she heard its echoing dying away like a murmur
in cavernous heights. She had an illusion of being in some dark
sea-cave, into which the tide would slowly crawl and swallow her up.
Her feet were cold, as though the first shallow waves already laved
them.

All through the dinner she had been putting a strain upon herself. She
was now near the breaking-point. Gaunt was pouring wine from the heavy,
stumpy cut-glass decanter into a wine-glass. She heard the lip of the
bottle clink, as though his hand were not quite steady.

As usual in moments of stress her appetite had forsaken her. She had
seemed to help herself to the various dishes, and had played with her
knife and fork, so that Gaunt, from his end of the table, did not
notice that she ate practically nothing. Before leaving the room,
Hemming had handed her a dish of fine strawberries. These she felt she
could eat. She took some cream, broke the fruit with a fork, and ate
with thankfulness that she had some mechanical process with which to
fill in this hollow pause before the commencement of what she felt
might be definite hostilities.

The moments lengthened. He did not speak nor raise his eyes; but as
soon as she laid down her spoon, he lifted his head, and said abruptly:

"Come here!"

Virgie jumped. The attack was indeed sudden. For a moment she wavered,
then rose and moved noiseless down the length of the floor, along the
edge of the table, until she stood beside him.

He leaned back, contemplating her. More than ever she looked like the
princess in a fairy-tale. Her dress was cut and fashioned with the
mystic skill that belongs to very few of the daughters of our race. It
was subtle; it had a disturbing effect. There was a general impression
of charm--elusive and faintly fragrant--of a finished work of art, from
the curve of the soft hair to the satin of the small shoes.

"You are quite as good an actress as I supposed," remarked her husband,
with satisfaction.

She pondered this for a minute. Then: "You mean that I kept up
appearances before the servants? That is second nature with me, I
think--hardly acting. But I thought I was doing what you would wish?"

He placed his hands upon the table edge, pushing his chair back
slightly on its hind legs, while he looked up at her. Again he had the
air of one who grimly jests.

"Excellent! A wife who actually foresees her husband's wishes, and acts
accordingly! Yes, I suppose it is best that it should be so. Pray
continue to enliven my meals with your pretty prattle."

The colour sprang to her face at the gibe. "Perhaps you will give me
more efficient support next time," she said quickly, speaking before
reflecting.

He laughed as though he had scored a point. "I think I warned you
against answering back," he softly reminded her.

She looked him full in the eyes--a look which apparently infuriated
him. With a sudden forward movement he caught her by the waist,
dragging her down upon his knee. "Here, drink to our good health and
future happiness!" he cried, pushing the glass of wine towards her.

The unlooked-for assault made her so faint that she knew the wine would
do her good, help her to maintain her self-command in this ghastly
situation. She sat where he placed her, took the glass from his hand
with both hers, and lifted it to her lips. "I drink to your good
health," she said with dignity.

He gave a wrathful exclamation, snatched the glass from her, so that
the remainder of the wine was shot over the carpet, and said: "Little
hypocrite! You would sooner drink to my death!"

"Oh, no," said she, "I desire your health. You are a very sick man just
now, in mind if not in body."

"Sick or well, I am your husband--in sickness or in health, you know."

She answered patiently. "Yes; I know. I am not likely to forget."

She took out a tiny handkerchief, wiping her trembling lips with it.
The action drew his attention to the tourmalin ring she wore above her
wedding-ring. He snatched at her hand, pulled off the ring, and flung
it into the heart of the fire which glowed dully afar off in the
old-fashioned steel grate, for the day had not been warm.

"An end of that," he said. "I only used it to get it out of your
mother's hands."

She drew in her breath in a long sigh, but made no other demonstration,
though she felt her head swim. He was holding her with both hands, and
his touch seemed as if it seared. He looked as if he longed to provoke
some sign of acute feeling.

"You are proud," he said, under his breath. "Proud as Lucifer. But I'll
tame your pride."

There seemed no answer to this, and she attempted none.

"You are going to be the passive martyr, the persecuted victim, are
you?" he went on. "That is the role you select? But don't try me too
far, or you may provoke me to _make_ you show yourself in your
true colours."

She raised her hands to her mouth with a little moan. "Oh!" she
faltered, shaken with the storm of her wounded heart. "Isn't it enough
for you to know me broken? Must you see the tears and hear the cries
before you can be satisfied? Well, you will--very soon. I--don't feel
as if I can bear much more. But to-night you have hit too hard. You
have blunted all feeling. I _could_ not care, whatever happened. I
have got past that."

With a sudden gasping for breath, she made an effort to rise. For a
moment he seemed minded to constrain her, but almost immediately let
her go. She stood, supporting herself a moment against the corner of
the table, then tried a few uncertain steps, and collapsed softly in a
little forlorn heap of silk and gauze upon the carpet, midway to the
door.

Gaunt rose, his face dark with annoyance. This was altogether so unlike
his own forecasts of the scene that he was bewildered. He had expected
coaxings, blandishments, the pleadings and wiles with which Virginia
the elder had made him so intimately acquainted. He remembered how,
when in the old days his sullen temper had made him harsh, she had hung
about him, how sweetly and pathetically she had put him in the wrong,
how deftly she had smoothed his ruffled fur and achieved her own ends
whatever they were.

Continually in his solitude, brooding over the wreck of his life, he
had told himself that now he knew, now he was wise with the wisdom we
garner from the fields of tragedy and disappointment. He was proof
against the sirens, his ears were plugged with wool. Was he not the man
to punish and reform a coquette?

He went and stood over Virginia; then knelt at her side, passed an arm
under her, and arranged her in a more easy posture. She was in a dead
faint. He stared doubtfully, rose, haltingly crossed the room, and laid
his fingers upon the bell. He did not ring it. His hand fell away; he
went to the table, poured some water into a glass, knelt and dabbed her
temples. She did not move.

After a minute or two he rose, went softly to the door and peered out
into the hall. There was no sound of Hemming or the coffee. Turning
back he stooped, lifted Virgie with ease, carried her into the
drawing-room, laid her on a sofa near the window, and opened the
casement wide upon the night. The fresh, strong air revived her. She
opened her eyes, and looking upward, saw the canopy of stars in the
deep-blue velvet heavens.

Slowly coming back to the realisation of the present moment, she turned
her head, and saw Gaunt stooping over the hearth, placing a fresh log
upon the fire. She sat up, sick and shivering. He looked round quickly
at her movement, but turned away again and did not speak. He stood
gazing down at the leaping flames in brooding silence; then, facing
about with one of his sudden, flinging movements, which sent her heart
into her mouth, he marched across the room, opened the grand piano and
sat down.

Virginia was conscious of great astonishment as he began to play. It
was wild, Hungarian music, leaping and striking like lightning flashes.
But it seemed the one thing she could have borne at the moment. With a
sigh of utter fatigue, she let her head droop against the hard,
uncompromising cushion of the old-fashioned sofa and listened. He had
been playing about ten minutes, when Hemming and the coffee came in;
and Virginia was able to sit up and help herself with composure.

"Hemming," said Gaunt, as the servant was leaving the room, "Mrs. Gaunt
is overtired. Tell Grover she will be coming upstairs almost at once."

"Yes, sir."

The man departed, and again the closing of the door awoke those faint,
mysterious reverberations which were like the last contact of the
outside world with the tragedy of the isolated and rock-chained maiden.
So might Andromeda have felt, when the smith had hammered into place
the last rivet of her fetters, and she was left--left helpless and in
an anguish of suspense, to await the oncoming of the monster.

Gaunt drank his coffee seated upon the piano-stool. Then he set down
his cup and began once more to play. This time it was soft and gentle,
a lullaby, like falling water. It brought the tears rushing to
Virginia's eyes, so that she hid her face against the cushions, and
covered her mouth to suppress her crying.

Oh for just one moment of the clinging of Pansy's arms; of the bear's
hug from a leaping boy in pyjamas, declining to go to bed tractably,
wasting his sister's time in the fashion in which she loved to have it
wasted! What were they all doing now, at this hour? Caroline, the new
maid, was just bringing up Pansy's cup of Benger's food. Was it
properly made?--"thin, but not too thin," like Mr. Woodhouse's gruel?
Virgie had taken pains to show Caroline exactly how to do it. She had
seemed to understand.

Were they missing their sister? Would Pansy--intolerable thought--cry
for Virgie's good-night kiss and tuck-in? Oh, no, surely not! They
would all be lapped in their new comfort and security. They would be
better cared for than she, with all her goodwill, had been able to
accomplish, unsupported by funds.

Yet, oh, to be back, with that burden hanging over her as of old! To
take up and shoulder the weight that had been crushing her, even if to
do so meant death--a maiden death, a blessed release from this hard,
difficult world.

She grasped, she clutched at the only consolation she had. Her present
agony of terror and apprehension was just the price she had to pay for
their safety and welfare. She had determined to pay it, and she would
carry out her resolve. She must not flinch because it was turning out
so much worse than she had thought possible. What did it matter--what
_could_ it matter, what became of her? They were happy and secure;
Gaunt was tightly bound down to go on helping them, even in the case of
her own death. She felt so weak, so scared that night, that she thought
for the first time in all her life of death as a thing which might
conceivably happen to herself.

"What is the use of minding," she whispered, trying to reassure
herself. "It doesn't matter--nobody but me will ever know."

Her sobbing ceased. Something in the music helped to soothe it. The
flutter of harmonious notes was like the beating of wings. It suggested
the flight of wild birds. She thought of the swans which used to cross
the sky in autumn at Lissendean, flying to seek new spheres for
themselves. There came to her mind that story of Hans Andersen, in
which the princess has to weave coats of nettles for the princes, her
brothers, in order to break the spell that binds them. Should she not
gladly plait her nettle-coats, endure her doom, to lift from those two
beloved heads the evil spell of poverty and sickness?

      *      *      *      *      *

The music stopped.

With it, her thoughts ceased as if shivered suddenly to fragments.

Her husband rose from the piano. Her heart was in her mouth, and she
found herself shuddering in a panic terror which drove out every other
sensation. He came up and stood looking at her, with a somewhat
resentful expression.

"You seem quite done up," he observed. "You had better go to bed and to
sleep. A good night's rest is what you want. To-morrow let us hope you
will be more fit to take up your new duties."

She raised her wet eyes with a glance of incredulous gratitude. "I am
sorry I gave way," she murmured. "I am not usually so weak. But you
see, a great deal has happened ... and I hardly slept at all last
night, and I am very tired." Slowly she stood up, eagerly but silently
questioning him.

After a moment's embarrassment she held out her hand. He drew his own
from his pocket to present in return. Half contemptuously, he threw a
glance at the little girlish fingers lying in his square brown palm.
"I'll give you another ring," he said brusquely, "but I couldn't stand
seeing you wear that other. When we meet to-morrow morning, I hope you
will be rested. Good night. Off with you."

She needed no second bidding.




CHAPTER XI

A FIRST EXPERIENCE


  "_Living alone in an empty house
  Here half hid in the gleaming wood, ...
  Till a morbid hate and horror have grown
  Of a world in which I have hardly mixt,
  And a morbid, eating lichen fixt
  On a heart half turned to stone._"--Tennyson.


It seemed to Virginia, as she let her limbs relax in the big, downy old
bed, as though she never could sleep again. Somewhere in that silent
house couched the Monster, as yet inert, but one day to awake, one day
to rise before her as she cowered there chained to her rock. The very
silence seemed full of breathings, the whispering of the trees outside
her window was like a stealthy approach. How could sleep visit her? Yet
youth exhausted will have its way, and she had not been laid to rest
more than half an hour when she was in a profound and tranquil slumber,
which lasted without a break until she was called next morning.

Grover had drawn back the curtains, and her room was full of sunshine.
The maid brought her tea to the bedside, and smiled as though she could
not help smiling at the angelic little face in its tumbled golden halo.

"Dear me, ma'am, if you'll pardon the liberty, it does seem that odd to
have a lady in this house," said she benevolently.

"Why? Does Mr. Gaunt not have many visitors?" asked Virgie drowsily.

"Oh, never ladies, ma'am! Why, ever since I came, no lady has stayed in
this house--no, nor so much as dined! What is it they call the master
in these parts--it means one that hates women?"

"Misogynist?" said Virgie. "Have I married a misogynist?"

"Indeed, ma'am; it's high time he was cured. A fine man like him,
strong and in the prime of life. We've all wished it, many a time! And
cured he could not help but be, once he had seen you, as we all agreed
last night," was the flattering verdict, given rather timidly.

The bride coloured, but did not seem offended. She raised herself on
her elbow and ate her morsel of toast, asking Grover various questions.

"Our courtship has been so short, I know nothing about his home life,"
she said. "But this seems to be a very pretty place."

"Pretty indeed, and a different house it will be when once you get it
going, and full of friends, ma'am. Of course, they all say he was
disappointed in love as a young man, ma'am, and that is why he dislikes
the poor ladies so much. I expect, however, you know a good bit more
about that than what I do."

"Yes," said Virgie, "I know all about that." She sighed. "I hope I
shall do right," she remarked, "but gentlemen who live alone grow very
set in their ways. You must tell me of any little tastes or fancies he
may have."

Grover laughed gaily as she gathered up the tea-things and went to fill
the bath. "You that can turn him round your little finger, I'll be
bound," she chuckled.

The new mistress left her in this pleasing delusion, and lay back upon
her pillows with a sigh. If she could but have the whole day in bed,
she thought wistfully. A long day's rest, after her good sleep, would
set her up once more. At this moment her one desire was to snuggle down
in the safe refuge of the bedclothes, and remain there utterly passive
and inert.

She appeared, however, punctually in the dining-room when the gong for
breakfast sounded.

The meal was set in the old-fashioned way, the tea and coffee service
before the mistress, the hot dishes at the other end.

Gaunt was standing with an open newspaper in his hand near the window.

"Well," he said, "did you sleep?"

"Yes, thank you, I did."

She came up and shook hands. He eyed her keenly. This was the first
time he had seen her in morning dress. Her white linen was simple and
fresh, and she was daintily neat; but there were blue shadows under the
melting eyes, and a sad droop of the mouth which spoke of dejection.

"Come, sit down, and pour out my coffee," he said, limping quickly to
his own place. "We have much to get through to-day. You must go and see
Mrs. Wells, and give the orders for the day." He added, with his "bad
smile": "If you are not very good at housekeeping, I don't envy you.
She will think very small beer of you."

"It is two years since I had the management of a large house," was the
gentle reply, "but I do not think I have forgotten. London housekeeping
would seem more difficult to me."

He looked at her, puzzled. "But your mother kept house at Lissendean, I
presume?"

"N-no, I don't think mother ever kept house," said Virgie doubtfully.
"She used to have a first-rate housekeeper who managed everything when
we were little. But afterwards, when I grew up, we were becoming so
much poorer, that I told father to dismiss the housekeeper and save her
wages, because I thought I could manage. It was wonderful," she added
reminiscently, "how much we saved then."

"Perhaps your father was not as particular about his food as I am," he
remarked sourly.

"I expect Mrs. Wells knows your likes and dislikes, does she not? If
she will help me for the first few weeks, I think I can manage to
please you," was the courteous rejoinder.

Gaunt laid down his knife and fork to contemplate her. "In some ways,"
he said slowly, "it appears that you do _not_ resemble your
mother."

"Who? I? Oh, no, I am not a bit like mother, except in looks," calmly
replied Virgie. "Did you suppose I was? She is social and I am
domestic. She likes going out, and I like home. I am shy with
strangers, and she never is." After a minute's thought, she added: "You
see, ever since I grew up, I have known the seamy side of
things--trouble, losing father, and poverty. I suppose it has made me
dull."

The man glowered upon her fixedly as she sat, with an empty plate,
sipping her cup of tea.

"You're not eating," he threw out, at length.

"I have not much appetite this morning," was her gentle reply.

"Eat!" he shouted, springing from his place and noting with
satisfaction her involuntary recoil. "Come, what's it to be? Kidney and
mushroom, eggs, ham--what?"

She grew pink with distress. "Please, no," she pleaded. "I--I can't
manage it. I--I simply can't swallow."

"Nonsense!" he declared loudly. "No airs and graces here, please. What
will you have?" He held his fork poised above the dishes. There was an
electric silence, and he thought she was going to rebel openly. But,
after a brief struggle, she commanded herself.

"An egg, please."

He rose, brought her the egg and the toast rack. She thanked him
carefully, and he seemed to retire behind his paper. But, after some
silence, he abruptly flung it down.

"If you don't eat what you have there, I'll come and stand over you,"
he threatened.

He was obeyed then, though with a most evident effort.

"As soon as you have had your interview with Mrs. Wells," said he, when
she had finished, "I want to take you round the farms. Be ready in the
hall at ten-thirty sharp."

She rose. "Perhaps you will either show me the way to the kitchens, or
ring for one of the servants?" said she rather stiffly.

"Hoity toity!" cried her husband, stopping short to gaze upon her. "We
stand upon our dignity, don't we? Come along. I'll show you."

She followed him down the tiled passage, to the comfortable, though not
very extensive kitchen premises. Omberleigh was not a large house,
though the reception rooms were spacious and dignified.

"Now, Mrs. Wells," he announced, "here's your new tyrant. She fancies
herself on her housekeeping, so I expect there will be wigs on the
green before very long. But remember, if you quarrel you part; I am not
going to have any wranglings in my peaceful bachelor abode."

Mrs. Wells evidently looked upon this speech as a particularly choice
specimen of humour. "Well, there now! I never!" was her good-humoured
comment. "If I can't make friends with this young lady, sir, I think I
shall deserve to be turned out, if I have served you for a goodish
while. He thinks to tease you and me, ma'am, don't he?"

The new mistress had a deft smile all ready. "Indeed, Mrs. Wells, I
think he is fond of teasing," she said; and, as so often, the cadence
of her voice reminded him unbearably of the woman who had forsaken him,
hardened his heart, and drove him away, hostile and irritated.

Mrs. Wells proceeded to make Virginia welcome. Grover had evidently
carried down a good report of the new arrival. The housekeeper took her
lady round dairy, scullery, store-room and larder, and was soon
impressed with her thorough knowledge of the workings of a gentleman's
country household.

"Bless me, to look at her you'd never think it!" she declared
afterwards. "Just like one of the coloured plates in the fashion
papers, or a wax doll with the paper just off of it. But what she don't
know about churning ain't worth learning; and as to bread and
cakes--why, you'd think she had kept house all her life, and it's my
belief she has too--ever since she was old enough to have the sense for
it."

      *      *      *      *      *

At half-past ten, when Gaunt strolled into the hall, his wife, in a
shady hat and with a white sunshade, was descending the stairs. Her
unquestioning submission--the punctuality which left him no ground for
any kind of complaint--was annoying. He felt that the ground was being
fairly cut away under his feet, and decided that he must make it clear
that a mere policy of yielding would not exempt her from the discipline
he meant to inflict.

They left the house together and, turning to the left among the thick
pines, soon found a gate which let them through into the sunny
meadowland.

They first visited the stables, the barnyards, and the orchards. Then
descending the slope, they came to the cattle in the pastures. Beyond
this again was cornland, and the fields were beginning to grow faintly
golden with the promise of harvest.

Mindful of his sneer at her "prattle" Virginia said little; but he
could not but recognise, from what she did say, that she knew what she
was talking about. She asked one or two questions about his manures,
which touched upon the very point that just now interested him keenly.
He was almost as much surprised as if she had begun to speak to him in
Arabic. More clearly than ever he was beginning to perceive that this
was not by any means the woman he had expected. Yet he hardened his
heart. He gazed upon her elegance, her fragility, her Dresden china
fairness, and told himself she was merely cleverer than he had
foreseen. The agricultural interest was just a pose, meant to
conciliate him. She had, apparently, more than one weapon up her
sleeve. She intended his conquest, and was planning her campaign
accordingly. As f

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