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Latter-Day Sweethearts

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Title: Latter-Day Sweethearts

Creator: Mrs. Burton Harrison

Illustrator: Frank T. Merrill


        
Release date: July 19, 2015 [eBook #49494]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49494

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATTER-DAY SWEETHEARTS ***




Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: A flower shot down amid the crowd.  Page 19.]




                        *Latter-Day Sweethearts*


                                   By

                         *MRS. BURTON HARRISON*

                               Author of

                           "A Bachelor Maid,"
               "The Carlyles," "The Circle of a Century,"
                        "The Anglomaniacs," Etc.


          "La Duchesse.--'L'amour est le fleau du monde.  Tous
                    nos maux nous viennent de lui.'

            "Le Docteur.--'C'est le seul qui les guerisse,"
                        --"_Le Duel_," _Henri Lavedan_.


            Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK T. MERRILL


                           A. S. & T. HUNTER
                            SPECIAL EDITION,
                              UTICA, N. Y.


                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                 THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION
                                  1907




                          COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
                       CONSTANCE BURTON HARRISON.

                     _Entered at Stationers' Hall._
                         _All Rights Reserved._



                    Composition and Electrotyping by
                           J. J. Little & Co.
                        Printed and bound by the
                     Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass.




[Illustration: (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from LATTER-DAY
SWEETHEARTS)]




                              *LATTER-DAY
                              SWEETHEARTS*



                              *CHAPTER I*


In going aboard the "Baltic" that exceptionally fine October morning,
Miss Carstairs convinced herself that, of the people assembled to see
her off, no one could reasonably discern in her movement the suggestion
of a retreat. The commonplace of a sailing for the other side would not,
indeed, have met with the recognition of any attendance at the pier
among her set, save for her hint that she might remain abroad a year.
There had been a small rally on the part of a few friends who had
chanced to meet at a dinner overnight, to go down to the White Star
docks and say good-by to Helen Carstairs.  Helen sincerely wished they
had not come, both because the ceremony proved a little flat, and
because, when she had time to think them over, she was not so sure they
were her friends.

But the main thing was that she had been able to withdraw, easily and
naturally, from a doubly trying situation.  She had not wanted to go
abroad.  All the novelty and sparkle had gone out of that business long
ago.  She knew foreign travel from A to Z, and she loathed tables
d'hote, even more than the grim prospect of private meals with Miss
Bleecker in sitting-rooms redolent of departed food, insufficiently
atoned for by an encircling wilderness of gilding and red plush.  The
very thought of a concierge with brass buttons lifting his cap to her
every time she crossed the hall, of hotel corridors decked with strange
foot gear upon which unmade bedrooms yawned, of cabs and galleries and
harpy dressmakers, of sights and fellow tourists, gave her a mental
qualm.  But it was better than staying at home this winter in the big
house in Fifth Avenue where Mr. Carstairs had just brought a stepmother
for her, in the person of "that Mrs. Coxe."

There was apparently no valid reason for Helen's shuddering antipathy to
the lady, who had been the widow of a junior partner of her father, a
man whom Mr. Carstairs had "made," like many another beginning in his
employ.

Mr. Coxe had died two years before, of nervous overstrain, leaving this
flamboyantly handsome, youngish woman to profit by his gains.  Helen had
always disliked having to ask the Coxes to dinner when her father's fiat
compelled her to preside over the dull banquets of certain
smartly-dressed women and weary, driven men, whom he assembled at
intervals around his board.  She could not say what she objected to in
Mrs. Coxe; she thought it might be her giggle and her double chin.  It
had been always a relief when one of these "business" dinners was over,
and she knew she would not have to do it soon again.  When Mr. Carstairs
dined in return with the Coxes, they had him at some fashionable
restaurant, taking him afterward to the play.  Mrs. Coxe had shown sense
enough for that!  During the interregnum of Mrs. Coxe's mourning
following the demise of her exhausted lord, Mr. Carstairs had had the
yacht meet Helen and himself at Gibraltar, and cruised all that winter
in the Mediterranean.

That had been life abroad, Helen thought, with a throb of yearning!  She
was very fond of her father, rather a stony image to most people, and
immensely proud of the way people looked up to his achievements in the
Street, the resistless rush of his business combinations, his massive
wealth, and his perfect imperturbability to newspaper cavil and attacks
by enemies.  She had loved to be at the head of his establishment, and
to receive the clever and distinguished and notable people, foreign and
domestic, who accepted Mr. Carstairs' invitation to meet one another,
because they were clever and distinguished and notable, not because they
wanted to talk all the evening what they had talked all day.

When they had come home from their cruise, Helen spent the summer in
Newport, where her father rarely went.  The yacht was his summer home,
he was wont to say; and Helen did not suspect how often that season the
noble "Sans Peur" had been anchored off the shores of a settlement in
Long Island where Mrs. Coxe was enjoying the seclusion of a shingled
villa with broad verandas set in a pocket handkerchief of lawn.  Back
and forth flew the owner's steam launch between the "Sans Peur" and the
landing, and yet nobody told Helen.  That autumn she had affairs of her
own to absorb her time and give her a sobering view of humanity.  For
the first time in her life her father had vacated his throne as
masculine ruler of her thoughts.  She had passed into the grip of a
strong, real passion for a man "nobody" knew.

That is to say, John Glynn was too hard at work to let himself be found
out.  Helen had indulged in her affair with him almost unknown to her
acquaintances, most of whom regarded the foot of the ladder of wealth,
where he distinctly stood, as the one spot where dalliance in sentiment
was to be shunned.  Her movements were hampered by the fact that,
although the daughter of a plutocrat, she had only a trifle of her own;
Mr. Carstairs having announced, with the insolent eccentricity of some
men of his stripe, that she should go dowerless to her husband, hoping
thus to protect her from fortune-seekers, foreign and native.  So long
as she remained unmarried under his roof she was to enjoy great wealth
and the importance it confers. Until now Helen had not cared.  Her brain
was clear, her head was cool, she had tastes and occupations that filled
every hour, and plenty of people who flocked around her, paying court to
the dispenser of liberal hospitalities.

Her love passage had ended in disaster, but exactly what had passed
between her and the unknown Glynn, no one was sufficiently intimate with
Helen to ascertain.

The marriage of her father with Mrs. Coxe had taken place in June, after
which Mr. Carstairs had withdrawn his apparent objections to Newport,
and blossomed out there as a villa resident of supreme importance. The
months of this but partially successful experiment on the part of the
new Mrs. Carstairs had been passed by Helen in suppressed misery.  She
had gone into camp in the Adirondacks, had visited friends at Dark
Harbor, and welcomed with thankfulness the invitation to spend September
with a young couple of her acquaintance who had a house at Lenox,
filled, with the exception of one spare room, with assorted dogs.

Early in October her father, visibly inspired by the lady who no longer
giggled in Helen's presence, but had not lost her double chin, gave his
recalcitrant daughter "a good talking to."  If she persisted in her
rebellious demeanor towards her stepmother, the more reprehensible
because reserved, she was at liberty to do one of two things, viz., take
a furnished house in town and engage Miss Bleecker, or somebody, to be
her chaperon; or else go where she liked, abroad.

Choosing the latter alternative, Helen had been considered fortunate in
securing for her companion the lady in question, who was certified by
her believers to be rarely disengaged. Miss Bleecker, in earlier days,
had given readings in New York drawing-rooms and elsewhere about the
country, until the gradual fading away of audiences had turned her
thoughts into the present more lucrative and less fatiguing channel of
genteelest occupation.

Nature had gifted her with an ephemerally imposing presence, large,
cold, projecting eyes, an authoritative voice and an excellent knowledge
of the art of dress.  It was familiarly said that to see her come into a
room was a lesson to any girl; and her acquaintance with the ins and
outs of New York society and fond pride in the display of it, put the
dull lady beyond criticism as a general conversationalist.

The two travellers were attended by a French maid, closely modelled in
exterior upon previous employers of rank abroad, whose service she had
relinquished for the higher wage resulting from her American decadence
in social standing.  Her large wad of suspiciously golden hair, frizzed
over the eyebrows, was a souvenir of a "Lady Reggie"; while the flat
waist, girdled low upon the hips of a portly person, was her best
tribute to the slim young Princess Bartolozzi who had had her two years
in Rome.  This composite rendering of great ladies did not rob
Mademoiselle Eulalie of the coarse modelling of her features; but, on
the other hand, as Miss Bleecker said, she was safe from couriers, and
her packing was a dream.

When Helen went to the cabin de luxe secured by her father's secretary,
into which Miss Bleecker's room opened, she felt impatient with the
girls who followed her, exclaiming approvingly over its comforts; with
the maid who stood sentinel by her gold-fitted dressing-case; with Miss
Bleecker, who, in colloquy with a white-capped stewardess, was already
laying down the law as to their requirements on the voyage.  She hurried
out again, encompassed by her friends, to gain the upper deck, where the
men of the visiting party, looking unanimously bored, awaited anxiously
the ringing of the last gong that should drive them from the ship.  All
had been said that could be said on either side. Vague repetitions had
set in.  Helen's eyes roved eagerly over the crowds on the pier below,
over the congested gangway.  She was hoping to see her father,
and--perhaps, but improbably--one other.  Late in the fray a brougham
rattled along the pier and drew up below.  Helen recognized her father's
big brown horse and his steady coachman in sober livery, the down-town
outfit of the financier, who, below Fourteenth Street, was simplicity
itself.  Mr. Carstairs, with a preoccupied air, got out and ascended the
gangway.  The official in charge at the top of it, who would have barred
the way to a lesser man, smiled and waved the magnate into his
daughter's embraces.  Everything insensibly yielded to the subtle power
of this ruler of the destinies of men.  Helen, as she drew out of the
lax clasp of the paternal arm, felt a thrill of her old pride in him; a
sense of despair that she was nevermore to be his chosen companion for a
voyage; a sharp pang of resentment at the image of the absent interloper
of their peace.

"It was too good of you to find time to come, papa!" she exclaimed,
turning to nod to the secretary who accompanied him. "Who knows when we
shall be together again!"

"Yes, there is a board of directors waiting for me now," said Mr.
Carstairs abstractedly. "Of course, you will be all right, my dear.
Foster has seen to everything, and Miss Bleecker will--ah.  Miss
Bleecker, here you are; glad to see you looking so fit for the voyage.
Nothing to speak of, though, a crossing in this monster.  Wish I were
getting away myself.  I'm off now, Helen, my dear. Wish you good luck
and a good time generally!"

"It won't be with you and the 'Sans Peur,' father," exclaimed the girl,
with filling eyes.

"Well, well, we did get along pretty well last cruise, didn't we?  I was
to tell you," he added, lowering his tone, "that if you are in the humor
for it, in the Spring--in the humor, mind you, we'll be out, probably in
March, and take you and Miss Bleecker on at Villefranche, or anywhere
you like."

"Thank you, sir," said Helen, rigid in a moment, her eyes dried of
moisture.

"Think it over, my dear!  You'll find it better worth while."

He kissed her again on the side of the cheek, missing her lips somehow,
and was gone. Helen hardly saw his spare figure in the topcoat that
seemed too large for it, so quickly the crowd closed behind him.  She
was conscious of impatience with Foster, who stood there bowing in his
sleek importance as the millionaire's confidential man, extending his
dampish fingers for good-by.  The party who had come to see her off
sprinkled their final farewells with a few banal last remarks and
disappeared.  Miss Bleecker, serenely proud, took her station by the
taffrail in a place where no acquaintance or reporter could fail to note
her among the "well-known people sailing this morning."  Helen was at
last alone.

Alone as she had never felt before, in her five-and-twenty years of
active, independent life.  A gap in the double row of passengers
crowding to the rail forward gave her an opportunity.  Slipping in, she
looked down upon upturned, ivory-tinted faces massed together like those
on a Chinese screen; at the windows of the company's rooms, also crowded
with gazers, but saw nobody she knew.

Already the mighty ship began to stir in her water-bed.  When she ceased
motion again, Helen would be over three thousand miles from home, and
the memories of this last trying year.  It seemed to her there was not
one soul ashore to care whether she went or stayed.  Was this worth
living for, even as she had lived?

A voice smote upon her ear.  It issued from a girl jammed in next to
her--a girl younger than herself, extremely pretty, flashily attired,
recklessly unconventional.  Hers was what Helen recognized to be a
Southern voice, low of pitch and soft of cadence, but just now strained
to the utmost to make itself audible to a young man in the act of
forcing his way through the resistant crowd, to reach the edge of the
outer pier from which the ship was now swinging off.  To further
accentuate her presence among the departing, the young lady was waving a
small American flag.

"Jo-oh-n!  Oh!  Mr. Glynn!  Look up! Here I am!  Up here!"

Helen started electrically, for it was _her_ John Glynn, and none other,
whom this unknown person was thus shamelessly appropriating!  He, whom
she had been yearning to catch a glimpse of, who she was convinced must
know from the papers that she was sailing by this steamer.  He, who she
had felt sure was in some hidden corner looking after her, although, by
her behest, they might not again hold speech one with the other!

"Got here only this minute.  Best I could do!" shouted John Glynn back
to the stranger, a smile lighting his handsome, manly face.

"Never mind!  I understand!  Good-by!"

A flower shot down amid the crowd.  Several men affected to jump for it,
but John Glynn caught it and put it in his coat.  His gaze never left
Helen's neighbor; to her his eyes were upturned, his hat was waved.  In
a flash, Miss Carstairs had drawn out of sight and fled within.

She found Miss Bleecker already extended upon the couch in her own
stateroom, taking tea, the door opened between, whilst Eulalie, kneeling
before steamer trunks and bags, was littering everything near-by with
luxurious belongings.

Helen accepted a cup of tea, changed her street costume for a long,
close-fitting brown ulster with a sable toque and boa, in which Eulalie
told her she was _parfaitement bien mise_; and, escaping again to the
deck, walked up and down a comparatively clear space until the "Baltic"
was well down the bay. Then, fairly tired, but unwilling to face Miss
Bleecker's chatter, she found a chair forward, where it was not likely
she would sit again during the voyage, and with a wisp of brown chiffon
drawn close over her face, abandoned herself to melancholy thought.

So this was the end of John Glynn's lamenting for her loss!  She, not
he, had been faithful to the love they had shared so fondly for a little
while, in which she had no longer dared indulge with him.  This was the
way he had accepted her decision that they must try to forget each
other, finally.

During the one week of their secret engagement she had felt immeasurable
happiness.  But every moment of closer, contact with her young love, a
boy in world's knowledge beside herself, though of her own age in actual
years, convinced her of the fatal mistake she had made in believing she
could give up her present life for him, and clog his career by an early
marriage.  So she had broken the bond ruthlessly, and her father had
never known of its existence.  And his consolation so quickly found!
Helen's lip curled disdainfully.  Some girl he had met in his
boarding-house; the kind of thing he had been accustomed to before Miss
Carstairs treated her jaded taste to his virile freshness and charming
looks, his masterful reliance upon himself, his willingness to take her,
poor or rich!  The type of girl she had seen in the tumultuous moment
beside the rail was puzzling.  Not a lady, according to her
artificialized standard, but having the frank assurance and belief in
herself that had attracted Helen to John Glynn, with a something of good
breeding underneath.  Cheaply dressed, cheap mannered, perhaps, ignorant
of what Miss Carstairs considered elemental necessities of training, but
never vulgar.

But whatever the rival, the hurt was that Glynn cared for Helen no more,
while she cared just the same.  What a fool she had been to believe that
masculine fidelity survives the blows of fate!

Masked in her brown veil, Helen sat in her corner, turning this bitter
morsel upon her tongue, her eyes vaguely resting upon the passing show
of passengers as they came straying up on deck to make the best of a
fine afternoon while getting out to sea. Impatiently casting aside her
unwelcome thoughts, she tried to interest herself in these people, to
speculate upon their identity, purpose, and personality, with the usual
rather poor returns, since a ship's company assembled at first view has
always the most depressing influence upon the looker-on. Beside her,
upon one of the rare seats of a liner that belong to nobody, she espied
a shabby little man, in an overcoat like a faded leaf, drop down
furtively, then seeing no one inclined to disturb him, relax his muscles
and, taking off an ancient, wide-brimmed felt hat, look about him with a
beaming smile, prepared for full enjoyment of the hour and scene.

Something in the artless buoyancy of his manner, his meek acceptance of
a modest place in life, his indifference to the considerations that
oftenest vexed the souls of Miss Carstairs' acquaintances upon making
any sort of public appearance before their fellow-beings, struck her
with an approach to approval.  Her glance toward him was met in the same
spirit of prompt return that follows patting upon the head a friendly
dog.

"Beautiful weather we're having to go out in, ma'am," he said.  "I'm
kind of glad to settle down in this quiet corner 'n see the last o' my
native land.  I reckoned I was in no one's way occupying this little
bench a bit. Because, you see, I've walked and walked, inspecting the
White Star leviathan, everywhere they'd let me set a foot, till I'm
about worn out.  Talk about 'seeing New York City'!  It's not a patch on
this ship for making a man feel his lower limbs, if you'll excuse the
expression before a lady.  Why, she's a wonder, ma'am, a marvel, and
there's literally no end to her.  I find myself saying at intervals,
'Thank God, I've lived to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and what's more, to
cross it in a floating Waldorf-Astoria,' for so it looks to me!"

"You are fond of the water, then?" said Helen, surprised at her own
affability, but on the whole too wretched to care for risks.

"Well, ma'am, I've, so to say, some little experience.  I resided
formerly in Norfolk, Virginia, and went round to Baltimo, Maryland, on
several trips by sea.  Know Baltimo, ma'am?  Can't exactly compare it to
New York, I reckon, but still it's a fine city. Celebrated for its
monuments, canvasbacks, and pretty girls, the saying used to be. Worn't
dead stuck on canvasbacks myself, though; got overfed with them on my
father's plantation when I was a lad, preferred bacon and greens any day
in the year.  But I'll give in to the praise of Baltimo women to my last
breath.  Married one of 'em, in fact, an' if God ever sent an angel into
a man's life, 'twas she."

Miss Carstairs, to her surprise, detected simultaneously with a tender
adoring look coming upon his withered face, a suspicion of moisture in
her interlocutor's eyes.  She sat up, felt that here was something so
out of the way as to verge upon impropriety, made a movement to depart,
and finally concluded to remain where she was.

"Yes, ma'am, she was too good for me, or any man.  Born among the best,
as the saying is, and I, one of the small potatoes in the heap.  'Tisn't
any wonder I should be thinking of her to-day, the way she wanted all
her life to go to Europe and never dreamed of managing to get there."

"I hope this thought won't spoil your own pleasure in the journey,"
Helen said, embarrassed to find an answer.

"Oh! no, ma'am, no chance of that.  Why, she's been with me in spirit
ever since we parted, ten years ago, an' I always feel as if she was
sharing things.  She'd need a good deal to make up to her for the
hardships she had with me.  You see, I was first leftenant of infantry,
just come out o' the war, 'n 'bout as bare o' money as when I came into
the world, I reckon, when I met her first off in Baltimo, where I was
lookin' for a job.  I was bred up as a drug clerk, and so was glad to
take a place in a poor little store, 'n we began life together in one
room of a boarding-house, 'n a hall bedroom at that!  She, mind you, was
a general's daughter of the real old Maryland first chop stock, but as
poor as me.  After her father was killed at Gettysburg, you see, her
mother went to pickling for a living, 'n 'twas hard work, with two other
daughters on her hands, neither one o' them likely to marry much, being
the kind the Lord makes homely for reasons of His own.  My wife, now,
was a beauty, no mistaking her!  I never understood how she came to take
up with me, 'n when I asked her why, she said she was just tired o'
pickles, anyway!  That was only her fun, ma'am; we had to have a little,
to make the wheels go round.  Please excuse me for taking the liberty of
talking so sociably.  We Southerners have that way, I reckon, and,
besides, it seemed like my heart was so full of wife to-day, I had to
say something to somebody, or break a trace."

Miss Carstairs hesitated, then gave way to an unusual impulse, arising
as she spoke.

"I must thank you, rather, for having reminded me that all men don't
forget.  I am sure you deserved all the happiness you had with her, and
I hope there is a great deal of it still left in life for you."

"Well, now, ma'am, that's beautifully said.  But I won't let you go
without knowing that, though I've come to it by a long, hard way, my
luck has turned at last, and the only trouble is that she's not here to
share it. The long years after we moved south to Alabama (where I'd an
opening, and after a while set up for myself), when wife toiled and
moiled for me--when we lost all the children that were born to us, but
the last one--how she used to sit in the evenings and read about English
cathedrals and Stonehenge, and the like!  She didn't seem to care so
much about visiting Italy and Paris and the Riviera, but Switzerland
tickled her awfully. She had a picture of Mont Blanc on top of a
work-box.  When I think how cheap the post cards are in these days, I do
wish wife could have had a lot to paste in an album that she kept.  She
always said I was to take daughter, if we ever got money enough for two
to cross on, and that she would stay at home.  And now, the money's
come, enough for all of us, and I'm taking daughter, just as she said,
and we're to see England and she isn't!  I tell you, ma'am, things are
sorted out unevenly by our good Lord!"

Miss Carstairs carried into her cabin the wistfulness of the gentle old
face, the irresistible conviction of his honesty.  What, in the
beginning, had tempted her to mock, now laid forcible hold of her better
nature, and impelled her to gentler thoughts.

A sharp awakening was the rencounter with Miss Bleecker's apprehensions
as to where she should sit at table, and the effervescence of that
lady's regrets that the parties with whom she had counted upon being
included, were all "made up."  Helen recalled previous voyages under the
aegis of her distinguished father, where their table was the one most
desired by social pretenders, with its _plats_ and wines served from his
private stores, its aura of plutocratic exclusiveness in which revolved
obsequious stewards!  She winced at thought of glory fled, but while
Miss Bleecker enlarged upon the neglect of the secretary, Foster, in not
having arranged this matter for them, reflected bitterly that Foster,
trimming his sails to the wind of Fortune, was now the devotee of the
new Mrs. Carstairs' whims, and unless especially ordered so to do, would
be likely to make no effort for the rebellious stepdaughter's
advancement.

Affecting indifference to the detail in question, she found herself at
dinner assigned to a small table in one corner of the saloon, of which
five of the nine seats were already filled, when Miss Bleecker,
sparkling intermittently in jet, sailed ahead of her charge, and
motioned Helen into place beside her.  A steward, who had identified the
ladies, came hurrying to overtake them, and express his hope that Miss
Carstairs would be satisfied with his selection for her, assuring her,
in a whisper, that he had taken every care that she should have only the
"best" people as her comrades.

Helen, who had not yet sat down, smiled at the reassuring promise.  The
whisper, overheard by two of the gentlemen unfolding their napkins
opposite, produced an answering smile.  Impossible to resist a voucher
so bestowed!  Simultaneously the two men arose and stood till Miss
Carstairs had taken her revolving chair and was safely installed beside
her chaperon.  The table was now complete, save for the seat at the end
and that at its right adjoining Helen's.

Soup had hardly been placed before them when the intended occupants of
the vacant places resolved themselves into a couple, at sight of whom a
cold tremor passed into Miss Carstairs' limbs--for they were none other
than the mild little man with whom she had been talking on the deck, and
the girl who had thrown John Glynn a flower!

The old fellow had made scant preparation for the ceremonial meal of the
day on shipboard.  His kind face shone with soap and water, while a thin
lock of gray hair was laboriously trained by the same medium over his
bald crown.  His mustard-colored "tourist suit" of tweed, the red tie
and rumpled cheviot shirt, might, indeed, have served a noble earl upon
his travels through an American drawing-room; but whatever the
appearance of her sire, it was at once lost to sight in the radiant
prettiness and extraordinary self-possession of the girl who accompanied
him.

A goddess of liberty in height, with the complexion of a pink-and-white
balsam flower, and rippled hair of gold worn parted in the middle and
extending outward in exaggerated wings; her admirable young form was
attired in cheap China silk of an azure tint incorporating
transparencies of white lace that revealed a dazzling neck and arms.
Decked with profuse jewelry of the inexpensive sort, she stood for a
moment where the rest of the company could fully profit by the
apparition before it went into eclipse in her allotted seat!

The attention of their table, hitherto indirectly converging upon the
fine lines and _pate tendre_ coloring of Miss Carstairs, now shifted its
focus to a point not to be forsaken for the remainder of the voyage (an
example promptly to be followed by the rest of the passengers, the
officers and personnel of the big ship in general).  The newcomer
possessed, in spite of her extreme youth, the manner of some histrionic
star who has the conscience of her calling in producing effects not to
be forfeited by a moment's neglect of opportunity.  Her present entrance
had the full effect of a sweep down to the footlights, to pause with one
hand upon the desk from which the heroine is wont to dash off her little
notes to the leading man, whilst reading them aloud to the audience.

But withal, so childlike were her contours, so joyous her appeal for
notice, one felt that her vanity might still be the innocent belief of a
little girl secure of her own interestingness to the public, when she
comes into a roomful of her mother's guests.

All eyes following her movements, the stranger surveyed the saloon
briefly, and spoke to her companion with good-humored authority.

"Just what I told you, Dad.  The older gentlemen all sit in the end
seats, and that's the place for you."

"Now, Posey, child," came in audible rejoinder, "none of your nonsense,
but just do as I said, and take the end yourself. Nobody wants to see an
old fossil like me put forward when they can get a nice young lady to
look at.  Sit down, right away, and I'll just slip in beside this lady.
Why, ma'am," he added, interrupting himself with a face of glad
recognition in identifying Miss Carstairs, "if it ain't you, and I'm
real pleased to meet up with you again!  A needle in a haystack, I was
thinking myself among all these strange folk.  And you'll be such prime
company for Posey, here.  Let me make you acquainted with my daughter,
Miss Pamela Winstanley, of Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama."

Miss Carstairs inclined her head toward the beaming newcomer, and almost
immediately turned to close converse in an undertone with Miss Bleecker,
who was herself occupied in digesting unpleasant first impressions.

For, after fortifying herself with soup, and ordering a whiskey and soda
for digestion's sake, the chaperon had sent her eagle glance around the
board with this result:

Of the five gentlemen installed before their arrival, two were mentally
labelled, "Hopeless, old, grumpy, no doubt, of no possible use to us."
Another, "A mere larky boy, not knowing him, must keep him down," and
the pair who had arisen and stood at their approach, "An Englishman,
badly bored, good figure, eyes and teeth, has been, or is, in the army;
the Frenchman with him, rather like Mephistopheles, might be amusing,
but will, of course, be sea-sick all the way over.  A poor lot, and just
wait till I get at that head steward and find out what he means by it!"




                              *CHAPTER II*


"My dear Helen, I really may as well tell you at once, that I don't like
your walking alone, in the dark, down on that lower deck that looks
steeragy, where there are no chairs, and the men go to smoke after
dinner."

"Do they?  I hadn't noticed," said Helen, indifferently.

She had come into their rooms with a brighter look upon her face, born
of the delicious swoop of salt air upon it, and the sound of that
churning music of the waves with which the sea rewards the good ship
when she takes her ocean crests easily and settles down to her grand
Atlantic stride.

"I lost you, after dinner, when I was sitting on the boat deck with Mrs.
Vereker, hearing all about her daughter's divorce and her son's
appendicitis.  No wonder the poor woman goes abroad for a change.  And,
really, I'm glad, after all, we are not with them at table, since she
can talk of nothing else, and much as one may feel for a friend's
troubles, it is nicer to hear a little about other people's, too!  I was
telling Mrs. Vereker--though, dear me, she hardly lets one speak--how
dreadfully they had served us about the people they put us with, and, my
dear, what do you think?  It never does to judge by first appearances at
sea, for as it turns out, Mr. Vereker--who is that kind of a fussing,
Miss Nancyish man, and loves to study the passenger list--has discovered
that every soul at our table, except those dreadful Southerners, has a
title!  The one with glasses, who speaks such funny English, is a German
Graf, of a family of fabulous antiquity, who has been to Washington to
see his ambassador about sending one of his sons to learn agriculture in
America.  The one who gobbles so, and complains of the draught on his
back, and had the port shut, is Prince Zourikoff, a Russian savant, who
has written a book called 'Etudes sur la cause de la decadence des
peuples.'  The saucy boy who went in for a flirtation with that
Winstanley girl, is Mr. Vane, a son of Lord Kennington, whom they sent
to Canada for a year to get him out of mischief at home.  The really
interesting person is--who do you suppose?--the man opposite you, Lord
Clandonald, whose story was in all the newspapers a year ago.  His wife,
a beautiful Miss Darien, behaved scandalously, yet was so clever in
tricking everybody, it was hard to get the divorce.  But he got rid of
her at last, and then went around the world.  Doesn't look like a man of
that sort, does he?  Rather shy, I should say, and hold-off, but a
splendid figure.  The Frenchman is actually the famous Mariol, whose
books are my delight, though he's a wretch the way he writes about
women. He's Clandonald's great chum, and they have been travelling
together."

Helen's face had lighted.

"I know only one or two books of Mariol's--essays principally, but they
are perfect of their kind----"

"I advise you to keep to the essays," said Miss Bleecker, dryly.  "He
has an enormous reputation in the literary world, and one likes to meet
them, now and again, if they are not frumps."

"And provided he is not sea-sick," said Helen, smiling.

"In this boat, in an ordinary sea, there'll be no excuse for it.  Why,
one hardly knows we are moving.  To return to Clandonald, don't you
think people one reads about and hears about are always disappointing?
I don't say there was anything wrong attributed to _him_; they said he
was rather Quixotic in his treatment of the worthless creature, who had
to give up his name and go under. But he is so much like other people.
Nothing to show he was in such a notorious divorce suit--Helen, what are
you smiling at?"

"The thrilling thought that I had M. de Mariol to mix my salad
dressing," replied Miss Carstairs.

"Was it good?  I am always careful the first day out.  Oh!  I must tell
you about those queer Dicks, the Southerners.  It seems that Lord and
Lady Channel Fleet came on board at the last minute, and took quite an
ordinary room--that heavy-looking red-faced man and the dowdy woman in
big turquoise earrings, who sat at the captain's table--they had to have
those two seats, so the Winstanleys were transferred to us.  If we had
only secured the Channel Fleets, we should have been so complete!
Perhaps they and Clandonald don't speak, though, and the captain found
it out, or the purser, who always hears all the gossip.  At any rate,
we've got to put up with the Winstanleys, and I'll give you my frank
opinion, Helen, that before this voyage is over we'll have cause to rue
the day when we laid eyes on them.  The old man is simply too absurd.
Treats her as if she were a princess and he her courier.  How you could
stand his babbling in your ear, I can't imagine.  But she! she!  The
worst specimen of the travelling American who makes one blush for one's
country when abroad."

"One must own to her good looks," Helen interpolated bravely.

Miss Bleecker snorted.

"My dear, that is unworthy of you.  A Twenty-third Street shop-girl
would be ashamed to do her hair like that; and her frock--bought in
stock, and fitted in half a day, probably.  But even that doesn't count
beside her phenomenal assurance and self-conceit.  Fancy now, her
addressing a remark to me, before I had spoken to her.  I never heard
such a string of words from a young person in my life, and to take it
upon her to entertain the whole table!  It really silenced me.  One
comfort is that everybody will put her down as I did, and sooner or
later she'll be left severely to herself."

"I noticed that Lord Clandonald and M. de Mariol seemed much amused, and
the others couldn't keep their eyes from her," said truthful Helen, who
had her own cause for blank wonderment at the further development of
John Glynn's acquaintances.

"Oh! that is the provoking part of men," answered Miss Bleecker, tossing
her head; "give them a pretty face and a forward manner, and they'll
pretend to be entertained. I'm very sorry, Helen, but if that girl
doesn't take my hint and tone down a great deal, I shall be under the
necessity of making a complaint about our seats.  It isn't possible the
line wouldn't wish to place your father's daughter at least
_respectably_ at table. These Winstanleys are, in my opinion, most
suspicious people, and I have asked Mr. Vereker to make very particular
inquiries and find out if I am not right.  He says that when she came
into the saloon, every neck on our side was stretched looking after her,
and he quite agrees with me--no, Mrs. Vereker agreed with me, her
husband was weak enough to say what were the odds when a girl is so
deuced pretty--that there must be something wrong."

The latter part of Miss Bleecker's monologue was spoken to space, since
Miss Carstairs, melting away into her own room, had closed the door
between them.

Helen found Mlle. Eulalie sitting on the foot of the cane settee,
comfortably warming her toes at a small apparatus of shining brass,
which, with its red lamp inside, presented a fair semblance of the
forsaken fires of home. Upon the bed lay her own satin quilt, her own
pillows of embroidered linen were prepared invitingly, her peignoir
billowed across the couch.  Upon every side gleamed and glittered the
little objects of cut-glass, tortoise-shell and gold which she had
heaped in the balance against John Glynn's love, along with a hundred
other manifestations of the outward and visible signs of a solvent
existence.  To-night she was strangely repelled by them.  She made a
motion to go out again into the half darkness of that same deserted
lower deck, where she could walk to the rush of the wind and the
inspiriting swish of the water.  She wanted to be alone with her
thoughts, to bid a last good-by to the love she had known for a little
happy while.  Then the image of Miss Posey Winstanley, with her assured
smile and undaunted self-satisfaction, came to her with a new shock,
and, turning back, she let Eulalie take off her dress and brush her
hair, surrendering herself inertly to the warmth and perfume of
materialism, and trying to think she was better so.

Far into the night Helen lay, physically at rest, inhaling the pure air
from her open window, feeling the gentle uplift of the sea as the huge
bulk of the ship faintly answered to its impulse, listening to the bells
challenging one another from afar, but she could not sleep.  Tirelessly
her memory went over every incident of her acquaintanceship with Glynn,
and of the virtual break with her father since the terrible substitution
of the woman she suspected into her old place at home.  To the last she
had kept a brave front, and no one should ever know what this past year
had cost her.  She was leaving America, without temptation to return.
The secret glimmering hope that had kept alight within her, that some
day John Glynn and she might come together again, was now finally
extinguished.  It was as if a new era of life were opening, and the
question was, how best should she shape it?

For the twentieth time Miss Carstairs had come around to the knottiest
problem of all those that kept her wakeful in her giant cradle of the
sea.  She was wondering how duty and dignity might combine to inspire
her action toward her successor in Glynn's affections.  Her chief
apprehension regarding Pamela Winstanley, was that John Glynn should
have made her ever so little aware of that prior bond.  A cold terror
had possessed her at thought of the exuberant creature sharing or even
suspecting her sacred secret.  But in the girl's helter-skelter attempts
at speech with every one at table, she had given no hint that she had
previously heard of Miss Carstairs.  Helen could only hope that Glynn's
name would never come up between them.  And, at this point, a soft,
swabbing sound and the tread of muffled feet upon the deck beneath her
window, gave notice that the sailors were at their early morning tasks.
The weird, self-pitying note of the parrot in a cabin hard by seemed to
grow fainter and more dreamlike.  Turning wearily upon her pillows, she
let sleep take her into its merciful embrace.


"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your American types ready to hand
upon this voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the two men walked up
and down with their cigars upon the deck decried by Miss Carstairs'
chaperon.  "The most obvious one is, of course, the astonishing young
person who aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a first meal at
sea, when one is always on guard not to be too accessible."

"She is like one of those Eastern shops, where everything is in the
window," Mariol answered.  "But adorably fresh and naive and pretty.  No
other continent could produce her than the wide and liberal one we are
just quitting."

"Might we but keep her to ourselves!" said Clandonald, mockingly.  "But
I foresee that she will be the wonder and the joy of the entire ship's
company on our run over. And the mild old boy who retires into the
background to give his Wonder every chance! I rather like the old boy, I
think."

"My own taste would be for the young lady who is protected by Buddha
reincarnate, in the person of the disapproving chaperon. Her beauty is
rarer, more subtle, than the other's; she is clearly of the _fine fleur_
of the American aristocracy of dollars.  I suspect a Colonial ancestor
somewhere, and you observed that the chaperon did not disdain us too
much, to let fall a hint or two concerning the custom of splendor in her
charge's life. When they find you out, Clandonald, I'll wager the sun
will promptly shine between the clouds for you."

"The old woman is in the apologetic stage for America, and that's enough
to give me a strong disgust for her.  Let them be anything that's real,
and I'm ready to meet Americans 'hands across the sea.'  But the ones
that affect to decry their nationality, to convince us that they are of
a small, segregated class that stand on higher ground than the rest, are
abhorrent to me.  Clearly, Buddha's protegee belongs to that class? and
will not tarry to let us become aware of it."

"Grant that my Mdlle. Helene--for I don't know her other name--is both
beautiful and finely bred, and I will abandon you the rest of her
sisterhood.  She is full of an exquisite intellectuality, but it would
not prevent her loving if her heart were awakened--and if I am not
mistaken, it has already been awakened.  Imagine a young girl, _chez
nous_, with that expression in her eyes, and yet that delicate restraint
of manner.  I should like to know the fair Helene's history."

"That you might dissect her with admirable grace in a feuilleton that
_tout Paris_ would read and applaud--and--forget her the next hour, in a
new enthusiasm."

"Better to possess all the enthusiasms than none, old chap.  I am really
in despair over your failure to be aroused by the infinite variety of
the diversions offered to you in this journey of ours that, alas! must
end too soon."

"There is one pleasure that has never palled on me, and that is the
society of my travelling companion.  You are the ideal one in many
respects, Mariol; but if I could point out one virtue more than another
that distinguishes you in that character, it is the letting a man enjoy
all his bad humors, his fads, his follies, if you will, unchecked and
unbridled.  I have sometimes basely suspected you of sacrificing me in
order to make copy of my infirmities.  But, at any rate, I have enjoyed
blessed liberty, and, whatever the result, I have profited by the
semblance of a perfect tact and consideration."

"A roundabout way of warning me not to intrude my advice upon you now.
But seriously, Clandonald, and at any risk, I must tell you that you
need rousing.  That past of yours, unsavory as it was through no fault
of yours, has been long enough decently interred for you to forget it,
and to recreate your life's happiness.  One can't be sore always, any
more than we can love always, or mourn always.  And you, of all men the
one best fitted to wear the yoke of your staid British virtues, to serve
your country and your king at home, to be a model landlord, a husband
and a paterfamilias, _comme il y en a peu_!  For heaven's sake, accept
the blessed opportunity of your present freedom, and make up for that
wretched first mistake. You aren't happy, you have no ambition, no
purpose, no zest in living.  Get yourself a wife."

"This from Mariol, the scoffer, the celibate!  My dear fellow, I forgive
you your trespass upon forbidden ground, because I know you are sincere.
But you forget one small, important fact.  The person who bore my name,
and her various works of evil, have so depleted my finances that, had I
the courage, I haven't the wherewithal to hawk my wares in the marriage
mart.  I wonder if you know what it costs to keep a Lady Clandonald in
the enjoyment of the domestic atmosphere of which you speak.  I know to
my cost.  Unless she were a beautiful savage, content to retire with me
to one of those isles of the South Sea poor Louis Stevenson idealized, I
couldn't even give her a season in town, or a trip to Paris or Homburg,
much less races, and all the bridge a woman needs; and so there'd be the
devil to pay, you see. If she would set up a bonnet-shop, or a place for
horribly dear frocks, and keep me on the proceeds--! but otherwise, I'm
as poor as a rat, Mariol, and haven't your resources, or royalties,
remember."

"A small matter, my dear lad, with the ever-continuing flood of American
dollars pouring from West to East through the facile clasp of the fair
beings by whom we are presently surrounded.  And you would not run great
risks.  There is this to be said for them, that American ladies rarely
degenerate into either bores, dupes or pieces of household machinery:
'Le familier vulgaire, utile et sans bouquet, comme le vin qu'on boit
avec l'eau.'  They progress with the epoch and the civilization that
claim them.  Take--as a matter of illustration merely--either of the two
young women who grace our board."

"As a matter of illustration, merely," answered Clandonald, laughing,
"I'd prefer to take the sweet child of nature, combining, with the
vulgarity of a powdered nose, the eyes of an intelligent cherub recently
short-coated."

"As you please," said Mariol, arching his brows resignedly.  "My choice
for you would have been the fine-grained daughter of the Puritans with
hair the color of a hazelnut, the flat, straight back, and resolute
figure gowned by Paquin.  I dare say both ladies are accessible to what
you have to offer them, or that either would soon fit into place in the
long walk at Beaumanoir, among those strutting white peacocks against a
background of clipped yews and sun-warmed ancient brick.  No American
girl could resist that walk and those white peacocks, Clandonald, take
my word for it."

"Then marry one yourself, and I'll let the place to you for a song."

"I have still to see Tibet," answered the other, stopping to light a
fresh cigar.

Their talk ended in a discussion wide afield from the subject with which
it had begun. But when Mariol turned in, it was with a throb of secret
satisfaction that he had been able, in the darkness, and apparently _a
l'improviste_, to wing in the direction of his friend a shaft he had
long held in reserve for him.

He had been with Clandonald, side by side, wading through the miserable
mire of his divorce case, and rejoiced when he saw him rid for ever of
the creature who had dragged him down.  The two men had met first in
South Africa, while Clandonald was lying ill of enteric, and Mariol,
coming upon him by accident in the course of his own explorations for
observation and adventure at the seat of war, had nursed him with the
gentleness and devotion of a woman, until he was out of danger and ready
for the voyage home. During his first convalescence, Clandonald had
received the plainly unwelcome news of his wife's intended journey out,
"to look after her dear old boy."  The arrival of her errant ladyship,
followed by the untoward discovery of her real motives in making this
heroic effort, and the hardly concealed scandal of her companionship on
the voyage, precipitated a relapse of Clandonald's malady, and the
ultimate severance, some two years later, of his heavy marriage bond,
borne during the lifetime of a boy who died through her neglect.

In all this dreary time Mariol had stood by him and held him up.  The
brilliant mocker, the professed skeptic of all tenderness apart from the
metaphysics of the sex question, had developed into the best of
hard-luck friends; and their agreement to travel together after
Clandonald was free and had left the army proved more than a success.

Now they were drifting homeward again, Mariol to his boulevards and the
fond congenial life of Paris, Clandonald--to what? Mariol, with his keen
insight and ready sympathy, saw that his friend was returning to
England, restless, unsatisfied, out of tune with his future
surroundings; well in body and healthy in his mind, indeed, but in no
humor to pick up his life from where his late partner had cast it, like
a jewel, into wayside dirt.

Mariol had hoped much from their visit to America, where they had found
themselves, during the latter part of the season at Newport, subjected
to the overpowering hospitality of the leaders of the great world.  But
although Clandonald's antecedents were as well known and familiarly
discussed there, as in England and on the Continent, and there had been
displayed no disposition on the part of society to visit his evil
fortune upon him, the young man passed but abstractedly through the
ordeal of charms and graces, defiled before his gaze, during the hours
when the world that entertains is in evidence.  Mariol sometimes
wondered whether his friend would not have been more easily consoled in
an atmosphere less surcharged with the art of pleasing.

The moment he had laid eyes upon Miss Carstairs, whose patronymic he was
yet to learn, it had flashed upon the Frenchman's active brain that here
was the solution of his perplexities.  That the girl met so thoroughly
his own exacting taste in externals, seemed to him a convincing proof
she would be the ideal angel to step down into Clandonald's troubled
pool and make it clear. Her looks, age, good breeding, reserve of
bearing, and evident fortune, added to the fact that she, too, had in
her eyes the shadow of past sorrow, left the kind fictionist no doubt of
his own perspicacity in selection. He had addicted himself to the task
of making friends with her, with a promptitude facilitated by his secret
hopes, and Clandonald's indifference proved the more provoking in that
it bore every aspect of probable enduringness.

Mariol fell asleep, that memorable first night at sea, congratulating
himself that his cares in connection with matters of sentiment were so
purely perfunctory, and that whatever the issue out of Clandonald's
impassivity, no personal interest in any one of the disturbing sex could
ever afford his mentor other than the emotion of a scientist who skewers
a new butterfly for his microscope.




                             *CHAPTER III*


There was to be no complexity attending the position taken by Miss
Pamela Winstanley, commonly called Posey, in the consideration of her
fellow-passengers of the "Baltic."  From the first day out, as has been
said, every one aboard became a prey to the absorbing interest created
by her daily movements, sayings and doings.  Beyond the fact that she
was travelling with her father, a Mr. Herbert Winstanley, sometime of
the Army of the Confederate States, presumably a person of very moderate
social place and fortunes, the antecedents of the radiant young beauty
were unknown, and she was accepted upon her face value alone.  It was
indisputable that, whenever she appeared conversation centered upon her
to the exclusion of more serious topics.  And, in return, Miss
Winstanley lavished her effervescing good graces with impartiality upon
all admirers in attendance.  The honors of her smiles and pretty sayings
were shared alike by Lord Clandonald and any minor individual of the
impressible sex, who might chance to be on hand.  Jolly old Lord Channel
Fleet, resembling Santa Claus with his roseate face and white fringe of
a beard, found himself vying for her favors with a succession of
American college youths in sweaters, one of whom, famed in university
circles as a thrower of the hammer, stood about in attitudes expressive
of rank jealousy, whenever his sportive lordship was at her side.  Lady
Channel Fleet, indeed, was known to be nervous lest the threatening
young man should do something dreadful to her liege.

Miss Bleecker, Mrs. Vereker, and sundry mothers of unentertaining
daughters who struggled into their deck-chairs without assistance and
walked with each other the diurnal mile, looking as if nothing would
induce them to descend to the companionship of the supporting sex,
formed a number of ingenious theories to account for the fair Pamela.
She was a milliner's forewoman, going out to secure fashions for
Alison's Cross Roads.  She was a dashing divorcee, who had resumed her
maiden name.  She had been a barmaid in California, an artist's model in
New York, an assistant washerwoman in the Klondyke, had tried on cloaks
in a leading haberdashery of Chicago--in all of which capacities there
was somebody aboard who had known somebody else who had actually seen
her!  But of suppositions concerning the charmer, the most popular was
that she had sung on the local stage somewhere in the South, and was now
going abroad to study for comic opera.  For in addition to other devices
for the bewilderment of mere man, Miss Winstanley was found to possess a
fascinating gift of rendering little Creole chansonettes that conjured
up the warm velvet-like touch of Southern air, the region of palm and
pine and mocking-birds, of orange flowers and Cherokee roses, and the
love spells lingering around it.  Then she could croon "Mammy" songs, of
a negress hushing her nursling, in a way to bring tears to the eyes of
most hardened listeners.  And between the songs and croonings she would
describe scenes, and impersonate actors, with a natural fire and pathos
that are rarely taught or teachable.  But of this accomplishment she was
more chary than the rest, and there were those heard to declare that, on
one occasion on deck, she had sung tears into her own eyes, and abruptly
stopped, declaring she did not care to do it before more than one or
two.  The incident being repeated to Miss Bleecker, that inveterate lady
declared it to be but a clever bit of acting to whet expectation of
future appearances behind the footlights.

Amid the successes of his daughter's meteoric rise, little Mr.
Winstanley prowled about the ship, a solitary and somewhat pathetic
figure in his evident belief that self-effacement was the first duty of
the parent of such a Phoenix among maidens.  Following his abortive
reopening of acquaintance with Miss Carstairs, he withdrew into his
shell and spoke no more to her.  Helen reproached herself that she had
not been able to conceal from him the repulsion at first inspired in her
by her rival in John Glynn's favor.  Old Winstanley's mild twinkle of
the eye, the smile playing around his thin lips, gave no hint, however,
that his retiring attitude was inspired by offence.  He seemed to live
apart in a world of his own thoughts and memories, from which even his
Posey's triumphs could not extract him for long.

And Posey, Miss Bleecker to the contrary (who from her end of the table
consistently glared down the intruder's right to be), continued to reign
in her revolving chair, as the established queen of every meal.  Her
quips and cranks of fan, her lawless sallies at the expense of those
around her, had effectually banished restraint and brought the diverse
elements of their party together; even Helen parting with her formality
to join in the talk, when convinced by observation that Miss Winstanley
knew nothing whatever of her prior acquaintance with John Glynn.

From the beginning, the Honorable Bobby Vane, Lord Kennington's
scapegrace boy, had fallen head over ears in love with Posey, and was
ready to forfeit his not very brilliant prospects in life to marry her,
no matter in what capacity she had previously appeared.  Posey laughed
at and with the lad, enjoying his off-hand gayety and mischief, and
there it began and ended.  The Russian savant, under the influence of
Miss Winstanley's presence, forgot to grumble about draughts and sauces,
and smoothed his grim-visaged front into affability, answering her in
English as choice as M. de Mariol's French.  The old German count,
proving to be the most kindly and merry of comrades, developed a faculty
for telling uproariously funny stories, of which the effect was impaired
only by such a strange mispronunciation of the English tongue that his
auditors were kept supernaturally grave in the effort not to smile at
him, and therefore did not smile at all.

A volume of Mariol's clever (and happily innocuous) short stories having
been produced by somebody and put into circulation on the ship, Miss
Winstanley had familiarized herself with them, and was engaged at odd
moments in translating the little _chef d'oeuvres_ of style, with Bobby
Vane, in whose imagination a book of any kind, save a betting book,
loomed larger than an elephant.

Mariol, to whom direct address from casual people upon the subject of
his writings was an affliction, had been rather dreading the young
lady's comments, and was relieved when she disposed of him thus easily:

"I think they're just lovely, Mr. Mariol, and am trying to make Mr. Vane
agree with me, but he declares they're too jolly dismal and give him the
awful blues.  After this, when people say they envy me being at table
with you, I can truly tell them you don't talk the least bit like your
books."

"Mrs. Kipling told me once," said Clandonald, following a laugh at
Mariol's expense, "that when a gushing American girl asked how she could
endure the brilliancy of a certain chat between her husband and Cecil
Rhodes on the Kiplings' veranda in South Africa, she had been puzzled
what to answer, because, as a matter of fact, each of these gentlemen
had been trying to talk more delightful drivel than the other.  What
good luck for the rest of us, that great minds do unbend in the intimacy
of private discourse!"

"If one doesn't talk in brief paragraphs, like those columns printed in
American newspapers for busy men to read in elevated trains, one isn't
listened to, I find," said the author, ruefully.

"In most countries, nowadays," observed Prince Zourikoff, looking
anxiously to see whether the portion of cold braised beef left upon the
platter was enough for his liberal appetite, "the fine arts of
conversation and correspondence have both been driven like chaff before
the wind of modern restlessness. Nobody converses, few read, friendly
communication is achieved by wire or telephone. And as to introducing a
serious topic into society--perish the thought!  One would be voted a
superannuated nuisance."

"I have always thought it the best compliment a man can pay a woman,"
said Miss Carstairs, blushing a little, "when he talks to her, in
earnest, about what dominates his thoughts."

Mariol flashed an appreciative glance at her.  Clandonald cried out:

"Heaven defend your sex, my dear lady, if they had to sit still and
listen to most men's governing thoughts.  And, on the whole, there is
nothing so wearing as a person with ideas that have never been applied.
To-day, we must think and act, and accomplish or fail, before we talk.
And as far as talk goes, it's everybody's plain duty to be amusing and
not long."

"To come down before the footlights, and do one's turn, and then drop
back again," interpolated Miss Bleecker, with a glance at the beauty,
who was helping Bobby Vane to a baked potato.  "You are quite right,
Lord Clandonald.  It is perfect audacity for any one person, whether
clever or insignificant, to attempt to monopolize attention.  Everybody
else is invariably bored by it, where they are not laughing in their
sleeves."

"Have you seen many persons laughing in their sleeves, Miss Bleecker?"
asked Posey Winstanley, innocently.  "Did they do it when you were
young?  I always wondered how.  Mr. Vane, please stop eating long
enough, to let's try laughing in our sleeves at Miss Bleecker.  I reckon
she'll tell us if it's the real thing."

"There are places, then, where they do say 'I reckon,'" pursued Miss
Bleecker, impassively.  "You mentioned, Lord Clandonald, how much you
were disappointed not to hear more provincialisms of speech in America.
I should think Miss Winstanley could give you all you care to collect."

"Did you ever hear, Miss Winstanley," put in Mariol quickly, "the pretty
speech made by King William IV about a charming country-woman of yours,
whom some one asked, 'Pray, do you come from that part of America where
they guess and where they calculate?'  'Lady Wellesley comes from where
they fascinate,' said the gallant monarch."

Bobby Vane clapped his hands approvingly.

"That's rippin', ain't it, Mr. Mariol!  My goodness me, wish I weren't
such a duffer at writing things down an' spellin' or I'd make a note of
it.  What?"

"Come to school at Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama, and we'll teach you
how," said Posey.

"Helen, you will find me on the boat-deck by Mrs. Vereker," said Miss
Bleecker, majestically arising.  "I have had quite enough of this.  And
I consider it my mission to spend as much time as I can give to poor
Mrs. Vereker, prostrated by care and anxiety as she has been, and her
husband never allowed to come near her on the voyage."

A light sparkled in the wide-open blue eyes of the ship's charmer, and a
smile hovered around her pretty mouth.  She was well aware that about
the second day out, the critical and finical Mr. Vereker had joined in
the universal procession toward her shrine. She had avoided an
introduction as long as possible, compelling her ancient admirer to
perform wonders of intrigue and diplomacy, before he was admitted to the
privilege of her acquaintance.  Since then, he had persecuted her for
walks on deck, secured for her white violets, at vast expense, from some
one who was taking them out in the ship's ice-box for sale in London;
had sent to her table daily tokens of regard, from pats of choice
butter, bunches of black Hamburg grapes, and broiled birds, to Southern
"pin-money" pickles. Not content with these tangible evidences, Mr.
Vereker had promised her a dog, and invited her to motor with them
through Touraine.  The poor man, who had, in Miss Bleecker's parlance,
"no stomach to speak of," was expecting the return of one of his
periodical attacks, when he would be forced to go upon milk and Educator
biscuits, too enfeebled to walk the deck and flirt, and wished to make
the most of his well moments; but, so far, Miss Winstanley had been
constantly engaged with others, and could not yield him the tete-a-tete
desired.

Miss Bleecker, enlisted under the standard of a complaining wife, was
gratified to leave the party, having hurled the final shaft. Mariol
liked the self-control with which Posey turned immediately to other
topics, no less than he appreciated the effort Helen Carstairs made to
atone for her companion's venom by remaining awhile in conversation that
included the girl attacked. The Frenchman, who noted most things passing
near him, had been making up his mind that some strong personal reason
existed to keep Miss Carstairs in a state of mental self-defence against
the attractions of Miss Winstanley.  A judgment so clear and cool and
fair as Helen's in ordinary matters, he had rarely seen, and he believed
her capable of more than the allotted amount of feminine generosity
toward those of her own sex.  As far as he had been able to gather, she
had never before seen or heard of this mysterious young person who had
made their voyage so gay.  What could the reason be?

It had not escaped him that the Southern girl, taking heed of Helen's
low-pitched voice, of her quiet garb and reserved manner among
strangers, had profited by them to tone down some of her own
extravagances.  Already, Miss Winstanley's hair was brushed simply back
in a glorious golden sweep, allowing its natural waves to reveal
themselves untortured.  Already, the obnoxious blue dress with its lace
transparencies, the redundant jewelry had gone into retirement, the
young girl appearing at dinner in white blouses as simple as Helen's
own.  Better than all, she no longer challenged people within earshot
with her sentiments and opinions.

From time to time, Mariol had detected passing from her to Helen the
glances of homage a very unsophisticated girl bestows upon one she has
elected to make her heroine. And, despite this artless worship, Miss
Carstairs did not relent in her cool demeanor. She was civil always,
considerate often, but never yielding in keeping Miss Winstanley at a
distance.  The men at their table were unanimously beginning to feel
that a girl may win easily in the chief events of such a contest, and
yet be badly worsted in the end.

The only one among them who seemed to have preserved indifference on the
subject of Posey's wrongs, was the quiet little man in the
mustard-colored tweeds, with the cowboy hat of sunburnt felt, who
accompanied the beauty to her meals, but was rarely seen with her
elsewhere.

One afternoon, however, she broke away from her cordon of admirers, and
finding the old fellow walking alone, linked her arm in his, adjusting
her pace to his.

"Why, little girl, what's come to you, that the beaux have left you no
better company than mine?" he said, with the jocular homage of his
habitual manner to her.

"There isn't much better company than yours, dad, and I'm beginning to
find it out," she answered, caressingly.

[Illustration: "There isn't much better company than yours, dad."]

"Well, well, a compliment from the belle o' the ship!  Reckon when I get
to London I'll have to be buying myself a new suit, and a dozen o'
boiled shirts, though, come to think of it, seems to me I'm no great way
behind that Lord Channel Fleet o' yours in the matter of clothes and
footwear--regular beetle-crushers, those shoes of his, and his hat an
even match for mine."

"He's rather an old dear, anyhow," said Posey; "but I've got another
ancient on the string that's too foolish to talk about.  That Mr.
Vereker--he's dyed and made-up, and always fussing about his digestion.
He has a young doctor travelling with him to give him hypodermics for
his nerves, and they're going to some queer place where he'll have to
walk barefoot on wet stones, and diet, with a lot of grand dukes and
things that he just loves to talk about.  Aren't they funny though,
these old society men?  Imagine you prancing around after young girls!"

"I can't," said her father, simply.  "There isn't a woman living, old or
young, that could take my fancy away from the girl I won in Baltimo,
after the wah.  She's my love, the same now as then.  You're pretty
good-looking, Posey, so people seem to think.  But your mother.  Lord!
She was a beauty, and as soft and gentle as an evenin' breeze."

"I sometimes wish I had her now, daddy. Since I've been eighteen, and
everybody's so good to me, I mean.  There are such lots of little things
a mother could tell me.  And to think I was the only child she kept--the
very last of your family--and she couldn't have stayed with me!  Ah!
well, don't mind me, dad, I'm happy enough with you."

"You certainly don't often pull a long face, dearie.  If there's
anything troubling you, out with it, and let's see if I can't help."

"It's rather a big little secret, daddy. Maybe I oughtn't have kept it
so long, but I was ashamed to tell, I reckon.  You see nothing like this
ever happened to me before."

The old man's faded eyes kindled with sudden fire.  He halted her
suddenly, facing seaward, and together they leaned over the taffrail.

"Posey, it hasn't got anything to do with John Glynn, has it?" he asked
with a tremulous eagerness of joy.

"Yes, daddy."

"He spoke to you before we sailed?"

"Just before.  That last evening, at the hotel, when you went off to
smoke with the nice old gentleman you fought beside at Seven Pines, and
left us sitting in the corridor looking at the people.  He said
everything that was nice about you, first; how you had been his father's
dearest friend, and had helped him through college, and started him in
New York, and he loved you dearly, and never could repay the debt.  Then
he recalled how he and I had known each other as boy and girl, though he
always thought of me as nothing but a little kid, until he saw me last
year at home, and just now, in New York. He told me how hard he was
working, with scarcely a minute to call his own, and what a tough
struggle it would be to get up top, but that he meant to do it, if he
lived----"

"And he will--he will!" interrupted Mr. Winstanley, in accents of strong
pride. "He didn't tell you, I'll bet, that he never took up my offer to
stake him with funds for his expenses in New York, till he got square
upon his feet, and that he never drew a blessed cent of it?"

"He said you'd been more than good, but he wouldn't impose on you.  You
see, daddy, John knows that all these years you've had as much as you
could do to keep us going, and have me educated.  I suppose he was as
surprised as I, when he found you were taking me abroad in style--you
extravagant old thing, you!"

"Of course.  Of course," murmured Mr. Winstanley, acquiescently.  "It
does seem extravagant, doesn't it?  But we'll manage to make two ends
meet, I reckon, if we pinch, afterwards, to make up for it.  Go on,
Posey, go on.  Tell me the rest about you and John. It is music to my
ears."

"I thought so, daddy," the girl said, with a tender sigh.  "And though I
wasn't quite ready to do what he asked me, I couldn't say no.  So when
he said you and his father had always wanted us two to be married, some
day, and would I consider myself engaged to him, until he was ready to
give me a home in New York, I just asked him to wait till the next day,
and I would telephone my answer before the steamer sailed.  And I did.
That's what I was doing when you called to me that the carriage was
waiting to drive us to the pier.  I was shut up in the telephone booth
at the hotel saying 'yes' to John."

"And you never gave the poor lad a chance to see you face to face
again?" exclaimed her father, every wrinkle of his face luminous with
satisfaction at the news.

"Ye-es," said Posey, "I saw him for a minute over the rail of the
steamer.  He just rushed down from his office the minute he could get
off.  I'd told him I'd write him all the usual things by the pilot-boat,
and from Queenstown; and he'd laughed and said he'd have to be satisfied
with that!  You mustn't expect John and me to be silly, father, for we
aren't a bit, either of us.  I ought to tell you that he's been in love
with another girl, and it didn't turn out well, and he put her out of
his thoughts forever."

"So that was what ailed the lad last Spring when I went North on that
business of the mine?  I might have guessed it, poor boy, he was blue as
indigo.  Well, it was handsome of him to tell you, daughter, and, my
word for it, your marriage will be just as happy as if he hadn't taken
that other little notion before he saw that you were the real girl for
him.  It'll all be blown away like the steamer smoke yonder, and he'll
wonder at himself for ever thinking he could have put up with the idea
of any wife but you.  For that's a man's way, my dear, since the world
began."

"Was it your way, daddy?" asked Posey archly.

"My child, I was ready to put myself before the mouth of the first
cannon I met up with when I went into service, and be blown to atoms,
through calf-love for a young lady of our neighborhood.  She jilted me
to marry a widower, a Baptist preacher by the name of Simkins; no, it
was Lawson, I think--but never mind.  She had nine children when I saw
her next, and we didn't recognize each other.  When we did, she talked
to me about Simpkins'es (it really was Simkins) asthma, without a break
for fifteen solid minutes, and I got away, thanking the Lord it wasn't
my asthma, and my fat wife, and my nine children, howling and doing
stunts all over the house--yet I lived to be happier than any king with
the real angel of my life!  But, dearie, it isn't the time to be talking
of anything but you and John Glynn, and the joy you've given me in
promising to marry each other some day.  He is the finest young man I
know, and the one of all in the world I'd choose to share what--there,
you do the talking, I can't trust myself."

"Daddy, do you want me to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the
truth, the way I always have?  Then here it is.  What I've promised to
do, I'll do.  I think just as much of John as you do, in a way, and I
was proud to have him ask me.  But I felt he was doing it because he had
made up his mind it was the thing of all others to please you; also,
because it was safe and right to anchor his life to a girl who belonged
to his own class, and had no ideas beyond the plain, homely things she
had been brought up to.  But he doesn't know me, in the least.  I'm not
the girl he thinks, only a vain, conceited creature who loves admiration
and flattery and pretty things, and all the luxuries I see other people
having on this voyage, and the high-up places of the world.  I want to
live, to have my fling, and what's worse, I want to be loved--really, as
I think it ought to be!"

Her voice dropped with her eyelashes; a burning blush ran up and
overspread her face.  Old Herbert Winstanley asked himself if this were,
indeed, his little girl, his romp in pinafores of a year or two back?
Whence had come the blooming vision of young womanhood who had
supplanted the Posey of his recent lean and struggling years?  What were
these obsessions controlling her?  He could not tell, and meekly bent
before the blast.

"I reckon you know best, daughter," he said, clearing his throat in some
embarrassment. "But this much I'm as sure of as that the sun is in the
sky.  You've done a wise thing, and a good thing, in engaging yourself
to John.  Be true to him and to yourself, and the rest'll all come
right.  Only, it's fair to tell you that you and John aren't a-going to
begin as poor as poverty's back door, the way we did.  I've had a little
streak o' luck lately, and there's cash enough to give you your fling in
Europe, and start you and John to housekeeping in New York in pretty
decent style.  He's a luckier fellow than he knows, is John, only I
don't mean to tell him so yet a while, or anybody else, and neither must
you, my girl."

"Could I have a cabin de luxe, and a French maid and a chaperon to
travel with, daddy," she asked with a glowing countenance, "instead of
half a stateroom with a horrid woman who drenches herself with scents,
and lectures me about keeping the light turned on while I do my hair?
Could I have a little string of real pearls, and one lovely pearl ring,
and a rug for my steamer-chair lined with otter, and tailor-made suits
that fit adorably--like Miss Carstairs, who's just my ideal, though
she'll hardly look at me?"

"We'll see, we'll see," mumbled Mr. Winstanley, looking as much alarmed
as did the fisherman in the "Arabian Nights," when he had let the Genie
escape and soar from the Magic Bottle.  "Seems to me you spent a good
lot shopping in New York the week we were there."

"I wish I could throw all that trash I bought overboard," said the girl,
gritting her teeth in vexation.  "Nobody but an idiot from Alison's
Cross Roads would have chosen such things and thought them stylish."

"It may be so," said her father, resignedly, "but putting one fact
alongside another, it looks as if you'd had as good a show as any young
lady on board, daughter."

"Daddy, you are the dearest old bat!" cried she, revealing to his
astonished gaze her eyes full of big, bright, childish tears. "How can't
you see that I'm only a peep-show, an amusement for all these people,
and that most of the women on board hardly speak to me?  I don't care a
bit about that horrid old war-horse of the Scripture that snorts and
champs--Miss Bleecker!  I consider her beneath my notice, and she may
insult me all she pleases.  And Mrs. Vereker is another, and all their
set--dull, stiff women, with nothing but their wealth to recommend
them."

"Well, if it comes to that," murmured Mr. Winstanley, involuntarily
clinking the sovereigns he carried in a buckskin pouch in his breeches
pocket, then checking himself and saying no more.

"They may say I'm a chorus girl all they're a mind to.  I know I'm not,
and that you are one of the most honored citizens of our town, and we
came of good old stock.  I don't deny I've wanted to go on the stage.
Till lately, I've simply yearned for it.  But that, and all sorts of
notions I had seem to have vanished away since I came aboard--since I've
known Miss Carstairs."

"That's the young woman sits at our table?  Can't say I blame you,
Posey, I kinder took a shine to her, myself, the first evening out; but
she chilled on me afterward, and I'm never for troubling folks with my
attentions."

"She chilled on you because of me, poor dear; for any nice girl in her
senses must see you're a heavenly angel, if you do wear rusty tweeds.
She thought I was crude and aggressive and cheap, and so I am, maybe,
but I don't mean to stay so; and if ever I get to be anything better,
it'll be Helen Carstairs that's started me.  But she won't know it, and
won't know me, and that's really what's bothering me so dreadfully,
daddy."

"Her father's the great Carstairs, isn't he?  Didn't I hear John say
he'd indirectly given him a lift last year, and said some good things
about the way the boy managed a certain office job that came under
Carstairs' eye?"

"Did he?  There now, daddy, is just the girl John would have been wise
to get, if he could.  She might have helped him up the ladder by just
putting out a finger-tip.  And he is so ambitious, so fastidious.  I
could see that little trifles about me jarred on him constantly--the
very things these lords and grandees aboard admire the most it seems. He
called them provincialisms, and Lord Channel Fleet says they're simply
delicious. Who am I to believe?"

"Ah, my little girl, I can't tell you, and that's the truth.  But John's
apt to be right, only whether or not Miss Carstairs is his ideal, you
just be yourself, and don't put on any frills.  You can't help being
lively, thank God, nor true, nor generous, for you're your own mother's
child.  You'll make friends, never fear, the only trouble to my mind is
lest they should be those who care for you only because----"

"Why, daddy, one would almost think I am something in disguise.  You
needn't be afraid of any one on this trip, however. They'll all forget
me the day the ship touches Liverpool."

"Well, it don't matter much when we've got John behind us, does it,
daughter?  I reckon he'll be proud as I am to hear what a belle you've
been.  There's only one thing it's crossed my mind he mightn't fancy
over-much--your going around with that lord fellow that's been so much
talked about--that Clandonald man, I mean."

"Oh! daddy, _don't_!"

Mr. Winstanley had thought himself, through experience, prepared for
most of the idiosyncrasies of femininity as developed by his daughter,
but he could not have reasonably counted upon the look that came into
her face as she made this protest.  It caused him to stare, shake
himself like a wet dog, scrutinize her again narrowly, then utter an
exclamation familiar to him only under stress of strong emotion.

"Stonewall Jackson, daughter!  I want to know!"




                              *CHAPTER IV*


The measure of Mr. Winstanley's curiosity was, however, not to be
satisfied on this occasion; since, almost immediately, the colloquy with
his daughter over the "Baltic's" rail was destined to interruption by
Lord Clandonald in person, who came up to ask if Miss Winstanley were
ready for their walk.

Since the first evening of their meeting, he had fallen into the habit
of seeking her out in a half-shy, wholly unemotional manner, and of
spending a half hour or so in her company listening to her merry chatter
and insensibly lightening and brightening out of the heavy lassitude
that had possessed his soul for so many weary months.  With returning
animation, the real beauty and high distinction of his face revealed
itself.  Posey, who had thought of his title merely as a pleasing toy,
who had as yet acquired none of the prevalent worship of her average
countrymen for the glamour of a place among the hereditary nobility of
the lands they affect to surpass in achievement, liked to be with him
because of three things--viz., the great strength and beauty of his
body, his gift of beautiful diction, and the melodious speech that rang
upon her ear like a chime of perfect bells.  She also enjoyed his way of
brushing his hair and putting on his clothes, and not caring in the
least what anybody on board thought of him or said of him.  At least,
that is what, had she possessed a confidante of her own sex, Miss
Winstanley would have admitted concerning her indifferent admirer.

He had come to her as a man who at thirty considers himself to have done
with life, and consents to take up incidental diversion by the way.  He
had never met a girl so ignorant of the world, so inexhaustibly
interested in things and people, so fresh and healthy, yet innately
refined, so daring, yet so sure of herself that no man might take a
liberty with her in speech or action; and above all, so pretty.

So deliciously pretty!  The woman whom he had ruined his life by
marrying, five years before, had been accounted a beauty, and was a
gentlewoman by tradition and association. As he had seen Ruby Darien
last, in the divorce court, she seemed a mere made-up creature who would
go to pieces at night in her maid's hands, a thing of artifice and
stimulant, of base passions and shallow emotionality, already a
has-been, although barely his own age.  At what time of her existence
was it that she had made his pulses thrill with her loveliness?  Could
he have ever considered Ruby the peer in looks of this stray maiden come
upon by chance to be soon parted with, and never seen again?  He hated
to think he had believed himself Ruby's lover during the time before he
had found her out.  He loathed the days before he put her away, when,
for his boy's sake, he had kept on terms with her outwardly.  After his
child died, and he had taken his opportunity to be a free man, he often
thanked God, that following that voyage of his wife's to South Africa he
had never thought of her as beautiful.

But except for the somewhat languid admiration excited in him, the young
American had not yet stirred the deeper fountains of Clandonald's
feeling.  Mariol, observing the progress of affairs, was quietly
content.  He really considered the acquaintance with Posey a species of
mild cure, like a visit to a German health-place where one eats brown
bread and baked apples, and goes to bed at ten o'clock.  If it had been
Miss Carstairs, now, upon whom these desultory attentions of his
lordship had been bestowed, Mariol, having ascertained this lady to be
the daughter of the world-famous financier, would have been much more
actively concerned in forecasting for her a place among the white
peacocks at Beaumanoir.

It was about Beaumanoir that Clandonald now found himself obliged to
talk with Miss Winstanley.  With the lightning-like rapidity of growth
in steamer intimacies, they had all come to discourse of one another's
domiciles and surroundings, and Mariol, whose aestheticism rejoiced in
his friend's noble old forsaken home, had shown the girl a photograph of
it.  Posey, like every Southerner, had an instinctive love and reverence
for the historic element in English country homes, and the ancient
moated dwelling in whose grounds monarchs had taken their pleasure
appealed keenly to her otherwise concrete and contemporaneous view of
things.  To see it was like stepping out of a modern railway station
into an old-world garden of ripe delights.  And to be actually walking
up and down decks with the owner, albeit he looked like other men and
had his hands thrust in the pockets of an indifferently shabby ulster,
was a fillip her imagination had not previously known.

A little teased, a little flattered by her queries on the subject,
Clandonald yet felt assured that her interest was impersonal and
genuine.  When he remembered how Ruby had hated to stay at Beaumanoir,
preferring any small stuffy hotel in Paris or Rome, or on the Riviera,
Miss Winstanley's real enthusiasm was refreshing.  It almost made him
want to go back himself to that spot, haunted by the ghosts of dead
beliefs, near which the poor little boy slept, under a tiny mound in the
churchyard that he was always trying to forget.

Strange, now it always came to him when alone in a balmy wood, with
birds singing and sun filtering through the branches; or on Sundays when
a church bell rang; or if he awoke suddenly in the middle of the night;
or in looking at a field of haymakers and distant grazing sheep!  It was
not a keen pain any longer, but only a sobering, tender thought, and the
man was better for it afterward.  Now, again, as he thrust his hands
deeper in his pockets and strode up and down beside the girl, dodging
other walking pairs, and wishing there were not so many people in the
world who wanted to do what he did, the image of the little green mound
arose across the waste of wide Atlantic.  Was it Posey who inspired his
one sacred remembrance?  He could not tell, but went on letting her draw
him out about his lovely impoverished Beaumanoir, until she was touched
and astonished at the feeling he revealed concerning it.

"Oh!  I am sure you will have it all once more, and be able to enjoy
everything as of old," she exclaimed impulsively.

"Perhaps you don't know why this is impossible," he answered, gulping
down the bitter fact, "It is quite hopeless for me to live decently
there, on all I am ever likely to have in the way of income."

"And I, like a goose, keep always ignoring the money question in
connection with those beautiful entrancing old English places. I've read
about them so often in a book we have of 'Dwellings of the Aristocracy
and Gentry,' and also in 'Country Life.'  They seem to have been created
to go on for ages by themselves, in a state of suspended animation, like
the Sleeping Beauty's palace. If you won't think me silly, I'll tell you
that when I get hold of a copy of 'Country Life,' I imagine myself
living in one house after another of the illustrations, and I want to
buy all the horses and dogs and sheep and everything in the
advertisements, except, maybe, incubators, which are horrid unnatural
things, and the smelly stuff they put upon the grass and flowers that
can't say 'don't'!"

Clandonald laughed.

"Rather my own idea.  But I supposed all you people of the South owned
large estates and many acres to experiment upon."

"Oh! dear, no!  We personally never owned anything bigger than a
back-yard, until my father was persuaded by a man to go shares with him
in some land I never saw, where they found both coal and iron.  Last
year the man died, and my daddy, who had paid up most all the purchase
money, came into possession of the whole property.  I believe it's
turned out better than he thought, and he's lately got something good
out of it, else certainly we'd not have had this trip to Europe.  I'm
glad you never saw Alison's Cross Roads, Lord Clandonald.  It's just the
homeliest, pokiest little place in Alabama, and the people are good and
kind, but commonplace to a degree.  The houses are all of wood with
jig-saw trimmings and the paint half worn off.  Nobody thinks it
necessary to improve anything, and the negroes swarm over everywhere,
and rule the land."

"Then I suppose you'll call me jolly impertinent," said he, "if I wonder
how you grew up as you are in the middle of it."

"I don't know!  I just did.  People have grown tired, down there, of
holding up their hands over me.  My teacher at school, who was born
North, was the only one that ever understood why I wanted anything
different from the rest.  She took several magazines, and told me about
others, that I persuaded daddy to subscribe to.  She lent me books and
talked to me, but two years ago she decided to marry in New York, and I
lost her. She lives there now, dear soul, in an awfully little flat.
Her husband is in the insurance business, and she edits a column of
'Advice to Girls.'  She says she fairly hates some of the idiots who
write to her asking the most drivelling questions.  But to please the
editor, she has to dissemble, and call them dears and answer like a
guardian angel when she had rather choke them and be done with
it--because the work pays the butcher's bill and half the gas!"

"Has she taught you that such poverty is evened by the good to be
acquired from the married state?"

"I think so.  At least, she and Mr. Bartley have a good deal of fun out
of things. Their greatest treat, when their maid's cooking gets too
impossible and Mr. Bartley is growing thin, is to go to dinner at an
Italian restaurant, a dollar each, with wine, and to eat enough
spaghetti to last another little while.  Mrs. Bartley got fifteen
dollars for looking up facts and dates in the Astor Library for a
fashionable lady, who was allotted to read a paper on something she
never heard of before, at a meeting of her literary club.  Mrs. Bartley
ended by doing the whole thing, and the lady was so fascinated by
herself in typewriting, that she sent a check for fifteen instead of
ten; so the Bartleys took me to their restaurant for dinner, and
afterward to the play, in cheap seats.  Yes, I think the Bartleys are
all right.  If their kitchen door could be kept shut, and the smell of
cooking be banished from the parlor, I believe they'd be as happy as
most people who are married, anyway."

"Perhaps, if you and your father are to be in London, you would let me
take you out to dinner and cheap seats at the play?"

"Wouldn't I love it?  But you can't drag daddy to the theatre, and I'm
not like Miss Carstairs, blessed with a chaperon.  Do you notice that,
as we are getting 'half-seas over,' Miss Bleecker's English accent
becomes more pronounced?  She is forever talking about when we are 'in
town,' and regretting that it is out of the season, because so few of
their great friends will be there to welcome them. She calls all the
American duchesses by their first names, and the other United States
peeresses that she didn't play with in infancy, she must have brought up
by hand."

"I am afraid I am too lowly a personage to claim the lady's acquaintance
in future," said Clandonald, indifferently.  "But I confess I should
like, for my friend Mariol's sake, who has conceived a vast admiration
for her charge--to manage to ask Miss Carstairs and himself to join you
and your father in a run down to Beaumanoir for luncheon, while you are
'in town.'  It is pretty, there, in autumn, and there are sure to be
some good peaches on the garden wall."

"How adorable!" exclaimed Posey. "Daddy might go to that, if I beg him,
but Miss Carstairs--!  There's the difficulty. She won't more than look
at me.  I wonder why you, who are born really higher up in the world
than Miss Bleecker and Miss Carstairs, never let me feel that I am only
a druggist's daughter!"

"In Athens, they tell you Aristotle kept a chemist's shop," answered
Clandonald, laughing.  "And I have always understood that some of the
most illustrious of the families in New York's Four Hundred were founded
upon drugs."

"If it wasn't pills, or capsules, or hair tonic, it was some other kind
of merchandise!" said Posey, viciously.  "And, anyhow, what does it
matter?  There was a sentence I copied out of a book of Maarten
Maartens, that Mrs. Bartley lent me, about there being no other way of
living than either on the money you have earned for yourself, or on the
money that other people have earned for you.  As long as that simple
fact remains, the question will also remain whether money-making is so
very contemptible!"

"Try any man living, with an honest chance, and see what he'd answer,"
said Clandonald with a sigh.  "I'd give anything I own for a respectable
business that would bring in the cash and the knowledge of how to run
it, _bien entendu_."

"You poor thing!" exclaimed Miss Winstanley, guilelessly.  "Why weren't
you born in dear America?  Of course if you _could_ go stalking around
in chain-armor like those ancestors of yours at Beaumanoir, it wouldn't
seem so appropriate.  But just to look at you as you stand, to-day, I
should judge there were the makings of a fair business man in you.  Look
here, Lord Clandonald, I don't know that I was ever better pleased in my
life than by that idea of yours of our going to lunch at Beaumanoir with
Miss Carstairs. I don't mind telling you I just adore that girl--and the
combination of her company with a moat and yew trees, and wall-peaches,
and the chance of seeing English rooks--and Miss Bleecker not 'in it,'
I'll be eternally obliged."

"It seems to me the host counts for unflatteringly little," said
Clandonald, somewhat piqued.

"I didn't mean to have you think so," answered she with astonishing
gentleness, "I was only carried away to forget my manners by realizing
so many dreams at once.  Indeed, I am glad, or shall be, to meet you
again after this voyage.  Now, I'm going to ask you something that will
make you laugh, perhaps, but please don't.  Could you give me the
address of a really good place in London where I could get frocks and
hats, ready-to-wear, that would keep me from looking like a guy?"

Poor Clandonald winced at thought of just how he had become acquainted
with the best _faiseuses_ in London, whose bills he had paid to the
uttermost farthing, after the ex-Lady Clandonald had ceased to be.  But
he could not help smiling at the earnest anxiety of his questioner.

"I think I might help you a little, perhaps, but surely----"

"Surely there ought to be some woman aboard to do it?  Of course you
think so, but if I could tell you half I've divined, and some things
I've overheard from them, you'd know I'd never ask one of them.  Why, I
heard that old Vereker tabby say to the old Bleecker cat, as distinctly
as could be, that I was a freak in clothes and a bounder in manners, and
she wondered the captain let me go at large."

"Oh!  I say."

"Perfectly true, and I had it out of her by trailing her half-dead
husband after me all over the ship, until he hadn't a leg to stand on;
and I put a rose in his buttonhole under her very eyes.  I've been
ashamed of it ever since, but when a girl's got to fight her own
battles, what would you have?"

"There should be always some one glad to fight for you," he said,
suddenly fired by her proud young beauty in distress.

They had, while speaking, walked down to the dividing rail that cuts off
the promenaders of the second cabin from the first-class decks, and for
some moments tarried there, Clandonald with his back to it, Miss
Winstanley facing him.  As the Englishman spoke these unpremeditated
words of warm sympathy, for the second time that day there had come into
the girl's artless face an expression she certainly had no idea of
revealing.  It caused Clandonald to pull himself up with a jerk, and
stay the vague, rather affectionate, words he had been on the point of
uttering, without, perhaps, meaning to have too much importance attached
to them. And it was further reflected in the shining green eyes of a
second-class passenger in shabby black, standing near by the barrier,
wearing a veil of black gauze with large coquettish velvet dots that
half concealed her undulated locks of unreasonably ruddy hair!

It was not the first time the green gleam of those watchful eyes had
been fixed upon Clandonald and his companions.  He had, in fact, been
under their close observation whenever practicable since leaving New
York harbor, in the course of their owner's predatory walks, as she
alternately drew near and receded with graceful feline tread, seeming to
look at nothing, yet forever alert where the good-looking, lazy young
Englishman was concerned.

The youthful steward who distends himself for the public good by blowing
the bugle for lunch was, on this occasion, the agent of Providence to
relieve a strained situation. Clandonald could not, in the face of such
a blast, go on with his implied offer of championship.  The second-cabin
passenger glided swiftly back across her little bridge, and was seen no
more.  Miss Winstanley, announcing herself half-starved, went to her
stateroom to wash her hands.  And his lordship, to calm his feelings,
partook of a certain small, specially reviving, bitter-sweet draught,
which his servant had acquired the gentle art of mixing, during their
sojourn in San Francisco.  On the way into the dining-room, he found
Mariol just ahead of him, amid a congerie of stewards hurrying to and
from their pantries with their arms full of crockery, and in an
atmosphere tinctured with out-rushing odors of cauliflower and curried
rice, gave his friend a word of counsel.

"I have been talking with Miss Winstanley," he said.  "The truth is,
Mariol, the poor girl is being pecked by all these women, until it
hurts.  You have some friendship, perhaps some influence, with Miss
Carstairs. Persuade her to be generous, and take the outsider in.  It
will cost her nothing, and I'm hanged if I understand why she's been
such an icicle, as it is."

"Did Miss Winstanley invite your intercession?" asked Mariol, dodging
back from contact with an inclined plane of mutton broth, in a tilting
china plate marked with the White Star's emblem, borne aloft by a deeply
apologetic steward.

"No.  Absolutely no.  She'd fight to the last ditch before she'd give in
to them.  But I have an ulterior motive.  I want to ask the two young
women with my dear old aunt, Lady Campstown, to play propriety, to come
down with you to Beaumanoir some day next week, and if they hardly
speak----"

"Under these circumstances, I will engage to attempt the impossible,
though whether I achieve it is quite another story.  I, too, have been
at a loss to fathom Miss Carstairs' apparent intention to ignore our
pretty table-mate.  I had fancied her too sure of her own position to
care about a mere difference in social status.  I have found her
perfectly amiable.  But if, by any chance, the discussion of Miss
Winstanley comes up, there is an immediate stiffening of the muscles of
the neck and chin, the clear eyes become veiled, and she turns the
subject.  I could almost fancy, but that they never met before, there
was some personal animus between them."

"Tell her the girl is her devoted lover from afar, makes her a model in
all things, and that we owe the agreeable modifications of the fair
Posey's dress and manner exclusively to Miss Carstairs' example."

"That is a happy suggestion, and may accomplish good results.  But did
you ever know a man's eulogy of a woman effect anything with her own
sex?  It is generally successful only in confirming the worst
predispositions, and in precipitating animosity where latent antipathy
had sufficed.  Still, who could resist the exquisite flattery of such
imitation as our Posey's of Miss Carstairs? Fix your day for Beaumanoir,
my dear chap. I consider our cause gained in advance."

"Do you know, Mariol," said Clandonald as the two men sat down at table,
where the ladies had not yet arrived, "I have sometimes fancied that you
yourself are getting rather under the spell of the young lady you have
engaged to placate in Miss Winstanley's behalf."

"Do you know, Clan, that I never before suspected you of the imaginative
gift? Nothing but Jonah's gourd--was it Jonah, and was it a gourd?--that
grew up and withered in a night, could have had so little time allotted
to its natural development, as a fancy by me for Miss Carstairs."

"That is no argument.  I have read of love affairs beginning at the
Statue of Liberty and culminating before the Gulf Stream was crossed.
There is really no better medium than mid-Atlantic air for the growth of
the tender passion.  The leisure of a good voyage is like the forty
years of Europe compared with the cycle of Cathay."

"It seems to me that you are exculpatory."

"I wish to heaven I might be!" exclaimed Clandonald, smothering his very
genuine regret with a forkful of the roast beef of old England pastured
upon Western plains.

The talk that morning with Posey Winstanley had awakened in him certain
emotions of a simple elementary sort that, in spite of him, still
twanged upon his heart-strings, pleasingly.  He had, however, been by no
means prepared for that upward glance of her childlike orbs when he had
offered her his sympathy.  While the normal vanity of the male creature
thrilled in quickened interest in response to it, his judgment, his
sense of responsibility, nay, of honor, called upon him loudly to let
the thing go no further.  A patent and audacious coquette on the
surface, she was at heart a child who had as yet tasted no reality of
sentiment for one of the dominant sex, and to whom such reality would
inevitably come with extraordinary force.

The whimsicality of her having selected him--a battered plaything of the
Fates, who did not want her, who could not indulge in her--for the
object of a dawning first passion, struck him hard.  He resolved to keep
out of her way, and considered how he could have his meals elsewhere, or
take to his bed for the remainder of the voyage.  The projected luncheon
at Beaumanoir should be carried out, and that done, he would have
acquitted himself, _en galant homme_, of all that could be reasonably
expected of a travelling Briton toward visiting Americans who had
contributed to cheer his voyage across the Atlantic.

To begin the new order of things, he let himself be absorbed in
conversation by Miss Bleecker, his pet aversion, who leaning over the
table, her ample bosom begarlanded with chains and cords, each one
sustaining some necessary implement for the aid of vision, far or near,
and all of them entangled, was in her best spirits.  She, Lady Channel
Fleet, and Mrs. Vereker, had been in their deck chairs since broth and
biscuits to the present moment, discussing the American women who had
married into the British nobility. The three ancient heads cowled in
veils and furry hoods--for the air off the Banks had had in it a tang of
ice--had bobbed together during this time with a vivacity of movement
suggesting the cinematograph.

Mrs. Vereker's sciatic leg, which it was the mission of her good-looking
footman to keep enwrapped with rugs, when he could forego flirting with
the ladies' maids, had been frequently exposed to the biting wind, and
yet she did not notice it.  Lady Channel Fleet, who, with her husband
and a maid, had been doing America economically in somebody's private
car, at somebody's expense, wisely kept quiet; since, if she shivered,
there was no James to wrap her up.  Miss Bleecker, more serene, indeed,
than Buddha, in her position between a British matron of title and one
of New York's leaders, did not feel the cold.  Except in a parterre box
at the opera (with the best people), she had no greater idea of
happiness than such surroundings; with a long, uninterrupted morning in
which to rehash old stories and acquire new ones concerning the ladies
under discussion, whom she secretly considered the elect of earth.

Lady Channel Fleet, conscious of having had more honors paid to her in
America than in the whole course of her undistinguished life at home,
was proportionately inclined to be critical of Americans, now she had
come away.  Her strictures upon their extravagance in living, which she
had enjoyed to the top of her bent, the largeness of their houses and
the smallness of their grounds, their ridiculous way of running after
strangers, and the extraordinary interchange of matrimonial partners
among people one knew and visited, were interspersed with various bits
of gossip she had been able to pick up in England concerning American
peeresses who had not received her at their houses and were, indeed,
unconscious of her existence.

It had been rather a bitter pill for Mrs. Vereker, who was hand-in-glove
with all these fine people both in England and New York, to have to
listen politely to Lady Channel Fleet.  But, then, Mrs. Vereker had
already stood so much in the line of incivility from the British dames
of high place upon whom she had lavished courtesy during their sojourn
in the land of the free, that she was a little hardened.  She knew that
on arrival out, she would go from Claridge's to stop at country houses
where Lady Channel Fleet's star would never even faintly rise.  She was
secure in being able to buy herself a good time and the best of
everything wherever she might go, and felt, on the whole, content.  Miss
Bleecker, on the contrary, who had no such solid foundations as her
friend, felt in listening to Lady Channel Fleet as acutely pained as if
she were reading one of Mr. Benson's or Mr. Hichens' novels, wherein
modern Americans of good society are made to say "Popper" and "real
nice."  She could hardly imagine how her nation could arise to ignoring
these dreadful accusations.

But when Lady Channel Fleet had incidentally let fall that she always
presumed Miss Bleecker, from her speech and manner, to be an
Englishwoman born, Miss Bleecker had forgiven all.  She redoubled her
powers of entertainingness, brought out a few newer, racier anecdotes of
persons known to all of them, and the luncheon bugle had caught the
gossips unawares, making them feel the morning quite too short.

"I suppose we shall see you at Mr. Vereker's little supper this evening,
Lord Clandonald?" said the chaperon, suavely.  "One knows what to expect
in the way of private dainties, when Mr. Vereker entertains--game,
wines, pates, caviare put up for him on the Volga, flowers, grapes and
melons from his own glass houses, and such turtle soup as only the
Vereker _chef_ can send aboard.  And to think the poor man has to sit at
the head of the table, drinking milk and swallowing little tablets out
of his waistcoat pocket, looking gray as a ghost, and thin as a rail,
not able to touch a thing of all his delicious spread!"

"Mr. Vereker has been so good as to include me," answered Clandonald.

"I believe most of those at our table are expected," the lady went on,
in a hardly lowered voice, "with, of course, one or two exceptions.
When Mr. Vereker crosses alone they say his parties are apt to be a
little mixed.  But with his wife aboard--she is so thoroughly exclusive,
one need never fear."

What might have been omitted from the words, was accentuated by a manner
of contempt whose objects there was no mistaking. Mr. Winstanley as
usual appeared not to be listening to the passing chat; but his daughter
lost not a syllable or look; Helen Carstairs, also, fully appreciated
the situation. While Posey, with rare self-control, kept her own counsel
and remained silent, Miss Carstairs, flushing faintly, spoke so that all
present could hear her.

"I'm afraid I'm one of those who fail to appreciate the honor of Mr.
Vereker's invitations, ashore or afloat.  Who was it who said to be left
out by him was a greater compliment than to be placed at his right
hand?"

"Helen, I'm surprised to hear you talk such nonsense," began her
chaperon briskly, but was interrupted by Posey Winstanley, who with a
grateful glance at Helen, spoke in tones as quiet and measured as her
own.

"Then I am certainly past getting the benefit of Miss Carstairs' hint,
Miss Bleecker, since Mr. Vereker asked me first, before seeing if he
could get the others; and I was rash enough to accept."




                              *CHAPTER V*


MR. Vereker's little supper proved all that Miss Bleecker had claimed
for it in the matter of exotic luxury.  American beauty roses, as fresh
as if they had bloomed that morning, decked the centre of the board, and
a corsage bouquet of royal purple violets lay beside each lady's plate.
The unpleasantly pallid host, with skin drawn like parchment over his
lean jaws, his hair and mustache unnaturally black, sat at one end, and
(to the dismay of Miss Bleecker, who had been made to fit in at the
side) Miss Posey Winstanley upon his left, opposite my Lady Channel
Fleet in a rumpled cotton blouse, still wearing the turquoise earrings,
with the addition of a turquoise chain to hold her eyeglasses.

Posey, in severely plain white voile, with a picture hat and white
feathers framing the waves of her splendid hair, thanked her stars that
she had had Helen Carstairs' example in dress long enough to profit by
it for this occasion.  She saw in half a glance that her frock, the
result of the best skill of the dressmaker at Alison's Cross Roads, who
called her by name in fitting her, could not vie with the dove-colored
confection with its all-over embroideries that sat so easily upon
Helen's erect form.  But she knew that it was unobtrusive, and the
little slip of mirror above her washing-stand had told she was at her
best.

It had been an ordeal that of dressing while her cross room-mate, who
made a virtue of what she called "retiring" early, continued at
intervals to extend her head like a turtle's from its shell, and inquire
whether Miss Winstanley would be very much longer! Posey was fain to go
outside and have the finishing touches put to her toilette by the
stewardess, Mrs. Gasher, the bib of whose white apron covered
sympathetic interest, since she knew about the supper, and that the
ladies to be present were dead set against the beauty of the ship.  When
she had stuck the last pin, Mrs. Gasher maternally informed Miss
Winstanley that she looked pretty enough to beat the Jews, and would
find her 'ot water covered with a towel when she came in again to go to
bed; and if she couldn't get undone herself, never to mind ringing up
Mrs. Gasher.

Under this cheerful inspiration, Posey had marched into the saloon to
find the others all in place, an empty chair kept for her at the host's
left.

She had been hoping to be next Clandonald--for no reason but that she
wanted it. Instead, she had but a cold glance from him across the table,
at which she quailed because she thought she read in it displeasure.
And immediately he turned back to his conversation with Prince Zourikoff
about Silver or Trusts, or Labor, or some of those tiresome things, and
looked at her no more.  The only consolation for this awful blow was
that Helen, sitting between Mariol and Bobby Vane, had smiled at her
kindly when she came in late.

Miss Bleecker, beside the Graf von Bau, who occupied the seat to the
left of Mrs. Vereker, decided that the world was out of joint.  Lord
Channel Fleet, at the right of his hostess, looked tired, and when Miss
Bleecker effusively addressed him upon topics of contemporaneous
interest in London, gave her but scant answers.  Graf von Bau, after he
had exhausted civilities with the lady of the feast, had but eyes and
ears for the spot where Posey had already begun to outdo herself in
characteristic nonsense.

"That girl!" said Miss Bleecker, between her teeth, to Mr. Charley
Brownlow, a serious-faced, clean-shaven New York clubman of whom the
utmost his friends and enemies could find to say was that he was "always
everywhere."  "It is not enough to defy poor dear Mrs. Vereker, who
flatly said she should not be asked, but to make herself so conspicuous.
See, every man at table, except you----"

"I don't know her, don't you know? Never met her anywhere," interposed
Mr. Brownlow gravely.

"Of course you didn't--as I was saying, every man at table but you, and,
I'm glad to see, Lord Clandonald, can look at nothing else.  I suppose
she went too far with Clandonald, and he wants to put her back in her
place.  Everybody understands old Vereker's rage for a pretty face,
though I, for one, can never see good looks in a common person. It's
scandalous the way she's going on to-night.  Mr. Vereker's trying to
make her take champagne, and she pretending she never drinks it!  Poor
Lady Channel Fleet, what a trial to sit opposite her!  Now, we shall
have a fresh batch of stories circulated in London about the way
American girls act; and the worst of it is you can never get the English
to see the difference between people of our stamp, and hers.  Why, I
don't believe Lord Channel Fleet and Clandonald take in, at this minute,
the enormous distance between my Helen and that impossible young person.
What's that they're laughing at?  Something saucy she is saying to Lady
Channel Fleet, I'll wager."

"What do we do for chaperons, at home, Lady Channel Fleet?" Miss
Winstanley was remarking, her head well in the air, and the spirit of
mischief securely seated in her eyes. "Well, we don't need 'em greatly
at Alison's Cross Roads, where I live; but if there's a party at the
other end of town, your best young man generally calls for you in a
hack. And when he brings you home again, about three or four in the
morning, you give him your latch-key to open the front door, and if
you're not tall enough, you get him to turn out the gas in the vestibule
before he goes."

"Good Heavens!" ejaculated Lady Channel Fleet, growing purple.

"Why not, I'd like to know?" exclaimed Posey, sturdily.  "We consider it
awfully swell to be taken that way, and the fellows that can't afford a
hack generally bunch together with the girls and all go in the tram; and
it's lots of fun, I tell you.  Just bully!"

Mrs. Vereker exchanged glances of mute despair with Miss Bleecker and
Mr. Brownlow. The others laughed frankly, Clandonald, only, remaining
smileless, and Helen Carstairs coloring with a futile desire to arrest
Miss Winstanley's progress in confidences.

As well attempt to stay Niagara!  A demon of recklessness had possessed
himself of John Glynn's promised bride, and poor Posey went from bad to
worse, talking continuously, her cheeks flushed to the color of the
American beauties lavished upon the table, her eyes glittering defiance;
while old Vereker, who had desired nothing better, applauded her every
utterance, and urged her to further daring.

"She should stop now," whispered Mariol to Miss Carstairs, who was
looking very grave.

"Oh, indeed I think so," answered Helen earnestly.

"For her own sake, if there is no one else whose interests are to be
guarded."

Helen started perceptibly.  No one else whose interests were to be
guarded?  What of John Glynn, and where was the friendship Helen had
promised to keep for him in lieu of the love she had withdrawn?
Impulsively, she leaned forward, caught Posey Winstanley's eye, and into
her own beseeching, all-womanly gaze threw an appeal not to be resisted.

Clandonald, who had begun to be sickeningly annoyed by the scene, and as
far as possible avoided looking directly at the heroine of the hour,
happened to note this little episode.  Remembering what Posey had told
him of Helen's influence over her imagination, he was touched but not
surprised at the younger girl's response.  Posey, blushing hotly,
drooped her eyes, and in an instant, as if with a garment cast aside,
had parted with her aggressive gaiety.  During the remainder of the meal
she sat dull and spiritless, and at its close, when she had promised to
sing one song for them, tried to get out of it and leave the party.

There was a general outcry of remonstrance. Bobby Vane, coming around to
lead her to the piano, whispered to her to do her best and silence the
tabby chorus.  When she finally yielded, and sat down, expectation ran
high among Mr. Vereker's faction that the girl would give them something
audacious to be remembered.

It was but a "Mammy" chant, she breathed, rather than sang, in a _voix
d'or_ that softened all hearts within hearing; and before they could
applaud it she struck firmer chords, and began Lockhart's Spanish
ballad:

    "Rise up, rise up, Xarifa,
    And lay your golden cushion down."


The song and its setting were unfamiliar to most of those present.
While it lasted, they forgot the grinding of mighty screws that bore the
ship ever forward, they heard not the wash of ocean coming through the
open ports.  They were in ancient days of warlike Spain, and all their
sympathy was for the lovely Moorish lady forsaken by false Abdallah.
Everybody within hearing was drawn irresistibly to listen in ravished
silence. And when for the last time the hapless Xarifa refused to come
to the window and "gaze with all the town" at her recreant lover riding
by in state, the honors of the evening were clearly for Posey
Winstanley.  At that moment, all but a few of the audience were prepared
to be led or used by her, as one feels when Calve softens to sing a
folk-song of her native land.

Amid the patter of applause Miss Winstanley abruptly arose from the
piano, and said she was going out to get a breath of air. There were
protestations, but only the host, who looked at her with bleared,
enraptured eyes, ventured to ask her to sing again.  Then, Mr. Vereker
finding his proposition for Lillian Russell's latest success unheeded,
allowed the departure of his star, rejecting all offers of
companionship, to be the signal for breaking up the affair.

Everybody scattered, the men to the smoking-room, the ladies to their
cabins.  Helen Carstairs, with her maid in attendance, came back almost
immediately, and stood for a moment hesitating in the companion-way of
the deck where she had last seen Posey.  Here she encountered
Clandonald, who, like herself, seemed to be at a loss.

"I am undertaking a formidable task," she said.  "To look for a missing
person in this ship; but have you chanced to see Miss Winstanley
anywhere?"

She saw that his face was clouded, his calm ruffled.

"I myself have been on the same search," he said, brusquely.  "But we
may as well spare our pains.  The young lady in question appears to be
at present under charge of Mr. Vereker."

Helen had but time to let her face show the annoyance of her feelings,
when out of the clear obscure of the deck beyond, against a background
of sky "patined with such bright stars" as never Shakespeare saw, came
to them a flying figure.  It was Posey, flushed with angry blood, and
after her limped their host of the evening, his spectral face wreathed
in apologetic smiles.

"Oh! please, Miss Carstairs, may I stay with you?" exclaimed the girl
with quivering lips, in her agitation putting herself between Helen and
Clandonald, who involuntarily interposed his stalwart form so that none
else could approach her.  "I didn't realize how late it was when I went
out to be by myself in the fresh air."

"Miss Winstanley is just a _leetle_ nervous after her triumphs of
to-night," began Mr. Vereker, who had come up with them--smoothly, but
ill at ease.

"I am not nervous.  I never was in my life," cried the girl, stamping
her foot.  "It is because--because----"

She ended in a burst of passionate tears.

"Let me go with you to your room," said Helen, gently.  "I had wanted to
ask you for a little walk, but it is late now, and the deck people are
for putting us all to bed."

"High-strung little filly, and green; green as grass," observed Mr.
Vereker to Clandonald, as Miss Carstairs disappeared, leading Posey down
the corridor.  "If you're up to a little poker in the smoking-room, I
can tell you a thing or two about our bewitching girl from Dixieland
that will amuse you greatly."

"You will excuse me," answered Clandonald, with lightning in his gaze.
Mariol, passing in at the moment, saw Vereker shrivel under it and
disappear.  Clandonald gave his friend a clue to the situation.

"If you had followed your impulse and punched the old sinner's head,"
commented Mariol, "it might have been a poor return for his hospitality,
but a mighty relief to you.  However, we can safely leave him to the
gods for punishment.  He will probably go under to-morrow, with one of
his attacks, because he drank champagne for supper.  I understand that a
trained nurse for him makes part of the Verekers' travelling suite. He
will become a horrid elderly infant in her hands.  I am glad Miss
Carstairs came to the relief.  I hope you noticed that fine movement of
hers to check the exuberance of the younger girl?  I had no time to put
your suggestion to enlist her into effect before the thing occurred.
And now----"

"Now, I think we may count upon our day all together at Beaumanoir.  But
till then, and after it, Mariol, I mean to keep my distance from Miss
Winstanley."

"The trouble was that you began doing it too suddenly.  From the moment
she caught sight of your glum countenance at supper the sparkle went out
of things for her.  But, _bon Dieu_, what a gift she has, that untrained
creature!  Somebody ought to take charge of her musical education, and
in a few years she would witch the world."

"There is something better for a pure, straightforward being like that
to do than to witch the world behind footlights," said Clandonald
doggedly.  "I can't think of it for her."

"My advice to you is to get off at Queenstown," answered Mariol as they
separated for the night.


"You are not sleepy?  That's good, for I'm not, either, and I'll just
send away Eulalie, and we'll go into my room and talk."

Posey's heart lightened with pleasure as she followed Miss Carstairs
inside the pretty bower Eulalie's skill had contrived from her young
lady's belongings for the voyage.  What a contrast to the half of a dull
inside cabin which Mr. Winstanley, in his simplicity, had accepted for
Posey from the agent of whom he had purchased places; with the spinster
room-mate humped under the bedclothes on the sofa; her clothes and hats
hanging overhead distractedly; their steamer trunks and bags encumbering
the narrow space between hers and Posey's berths!

Here were unimagined comforts, order, nicety, a little brass bed with
flowery curtains, softest pillows and duvets, a bath room opening out,
with porcelain tub; an equipment for the toilet that astounded Posey,
till then content with her little cotton night-gown trimmed with
tatting, her kimono of cheap blue flannel bought ready-made, her one
brush and comb, and tooth-brush, and bottle of Sozodont, her knitted
slippers, and the steamer-pocket of blue denim with the motto "Bon
voyage," presented to her on leaving Alison's Cross Roads by her friend
the dressmaker! But she showed no more surprise than an Indian does on
his first visit to the glories of the White Father at Washington.  Truth
to tell, she had already arrived at the stage of development where
things tangible have become of secondary importance to feelings and
emotions.  She had passed, that evening, through so many varying phases
of mental experience, that Helen Carstairs' new kindness seemed the
opening of the gate of Heaven.

"Now if you feel like it, and think it will do you good," said Helen,
installing her in a cushioned chair of Madeira wicker-work, and,
herself, perching school-girl fashion on the settee, "you must tell me
what troubled you, though I think I can guess."

"He tried to kiss me, that hateful old mummy that I've done nothing but
make fun of on the voyage," cried the girl, fiery blushes streaming into
her face.  "If he hadn't said such fool-words when he did it, I might
have thought he was just like old Grandfather Billings of our town, that
always dodders along in the sunshine and kisses the girls when they stop
to speak to him, thinking they're their own grandmothers.  But even
Grandfather Billings has never kissed me.  I hate it, and never would
put up with it from a living soul, so when old Vereker tried it on, I
boxed his ears, and boxed to hurt, too, and then I ran away.  What
business had he following me out on deck, anyway, when I'd said I wanted
to be by myself?  If daddy knew--but he shan't know, he's too good to
trouble, and I reckon I can take care of myself."

She ended bravely, but one glance into Helen's grave, kind face sent her
again into tears.

"Oh!  Miss Carstairs, don't mind me.  Let me be a little while, and I'll
promise not to bother you again.  After you looked at me that time at
supper, I seemed to shrink up into such a poor pretending creature.  I
saw in a flash how cheaply I'd been 'showing off.'  It was mostly to
make those people that looked down on me sit up on their hind legs,
anyway! I felt common and half-bred beside you, whom I'd been trying so
hard to imitate since we came aboard.  I do want to be a lady, your
kind, I do, I do.  Not only for my own sake, and my mother's, who was a
real one, but because--if you only knew----"

"I am ready to know," said Helen, after a pause, her voice, in spite of
her, curiously flattened.

"I am engaged to marry a man, to whom it will mean everything that I
shall be, let me say, all you are.  And there's a great reason why I
should try to please him in those things. How strange that I should want
to tell you such an intimate secret, out of my very heart! But there is
no other woman I can talk to, and that look you gave me seemed to open
every door within me!"

"I will help you if I can," Helen breathed, rather than spoke.  Her
spirit, wrestling with the certainty that crushed it, was yet ready to
rise to generosity.  Was it not what she had bid John Glynn do in the
moment of his acutest suffering?  Find a younger, fresher, more trustful
life-partner than herself, and put swiftly out of mind their disastrous
venture together that could not end in happiness! What right had she to
be feeling these fierce heart-beats of rebellion against the child's
superior claim upon him, these desperate yearnings to have him back
again?

"I am ashamed to let you know what will make you think even less of me
than you do. When I promised myself to John Glynn--there I've told you
his name, but it doesn't matter--I did so because I thought it would
make my dear daddy, who was in some sort his guardian and his father's
best friend--happier than anything in the world.  Also, I was flattered
that he should ask me.  Down at Alison's, where John lived as a boy,
they think he has taken the head of his firm into business with him, and
that all New York looks on admiringly.  He's about the greatest hero we
have after Lee and Davis.  He's a splendid man, Miss Carstairs, perhaps
you _have_ heard of him?  I remember now, daddy said Mr. Carstairs had
spoken well of John. When that Lady Channel Fleet had the cheek to say
at supper, she considered the American men, as a rule, inferior to their
women, and decidedly so to Englishmen, I could have flown at her, and
asked her to wait till she'd seen John."

Helen, conscious that something of the same mental protest had
formulated itself in her during the same period of provocation, could
not forbear a smile.  Fortunately, Miss Winstanley, being fairly
launched upon her confidence, did not pause for answer or comment.

"You will see, then, that I do honestly mean to be what I ought, to
John--that--I have no other wish or fancy--and yet there is another
influence that's come without my seeking--one that could not bring me
happiness. It frightens me to think of it.  I don't know what to do,
where to turn.  Think of putting the thing of a day and hour against the
other, the safe one, the true one!  Yes, it frightens me.  Miss
Carstairs, you are older and wiser than I, tell me what I shall do to
conquer it?"

All the voices in Helen's heart sang in chorus, in answer to this simple
and pathetic appeal.  The voice of joy, the voice of temptation were
louder for awhile than the others, but she dared not let them prevail.
She had never been a demonstrative person, and the touching of
strangers, under no matter what stress of sympathy, was an impossibility
to her.  She did not, therefore, "lock Posey in a warm embrace" and
"kiss her upon the virgin brow," bidding her be of good cheer, as all
would yet be well between John Glynn and herself.  But she told her,
calmly and dispassionately, that it is probable no girl ever grew up to
womanhood to escape some errant fancy for a man whom she afterwards
thanked God she had not been allowed by Destiny or her parents to marry.
She counselled her to indulge in no dreams or reveries or
self-questionings about the matter, but to keep to the pledge she had
made, and give all her energies to the task of making a good man happy.

Posey brightened wonderfully during Miss Carstairs' little lecture.  As
she ran off to bed, it was with the joyful step of a freed school-girl
and the feeling that she was not altogether steeped in wickedness.
Half-way down the corridor, she turned, ran back, and ventured to knock
again at Miss Carstairs' door.  Her errand was the very feminine one of
asking Helen to be so good as to undo "two wretched hooks" in the region
of her shoulder-blades; a service she knew Mrs. Gasher would never at
that late hour be awake to perform for her.  When Miss Carstairs opened
the door, standing in the aperture in some surprise to know what was
wanted, Posey felt sorry and puzzled to see that her new friend's eyes
were filled with tears.

As Miss Winstanley, finally relieved from the apprehension of having to
spend the night in a cuirass of white voile with many little pipings of
satin and a good deal of scratchy net, crept in like a thief at her own
cabin-door, her room-mate roused up and groaned dismally.

"Seems to me I'm to have not a wink of sleep to-night.  Just as I'd
settled down for my first nap, there came a stupid steward with a note
for you.  I told him to put it in your berth and go out as quick as he
could, and since then I haven't closed my eyes."

"Thank you.  I'm sorry you are not resting well," said Posey, still
under the influence of her recent gentle mood.  "Is it anything you've
eaten, do you think?"

"Eaten?  I never eat at sea," sniffed the sufferer.  "It's my nerves, as
usual, and since you've roused me up completely, I'll thank you to mix
me another trional powder, and not to turn up the light.  While you're
about it, you may's well step outside and get my rug off the rail, and
put it over my poor feet.  Blocks of ice they are, cold feet are
constitutional in our family.  Humph!  Single fold, not double, I don't
want to smother.  I should think your father'd know better than to let a
girl like you go traipsing around a ship alone at this hour of the
night.  Perhaps, if you'd heard what I did, since I've been lying here
trying to count sheep and say the ten table, you'd haul in your horns a
bit, and not think yourself such a museum wonder.  The people in the
next room were talking about you, and I heard the man say as plain as
anything: 'If I wanted my daughter to keep her good name, I'd not let
her go out on deck at night with that gay old bird, Tom Vereker.'  And
the woman answered: 'Some people's heads are so turned with vanity and
fine company, they don't take ordinary care.  It's the talk of all the
decks how she's laying herself out to catch that disreputable lord, and
he and his French friend calling her "dead easy sport," in the
smoking-room.'"

"Did any one say that such words had been actually used about me by
either of those gentlemen?" asked Posey, stopping short, her eyes
blazing in the dark.

"How do I know all that's said, lying here a wretched victim of nerves,
and nobody caring if I live or die?"

"I ask you, only, was it stated that either of those gentlemen said
anything approaching to those words of me?"

"For goodness' sake, speak lower, Miss Winstanley, you'll be overheard.
Some people have no consideration for others, especially girls at night,
when people are trying to fall asleep.  If there's a race I consider
utterly heartless, it is girls."

"I am not going to let you sleep or rest," went on the avenger, calmly
taking off her hat, "till you answer my question in plain words--yes or
no."

"N-o-o.  I don't know that it was actually _said_, but the lady inferred
that Lord Clandonald and his friend couldn't _think_ anything else, if
you continued to give yourself away, as you've been doing."

"Very well!  I understand.  And, since we are due at Queenstown day
after to-morrow, I shall ask you to oblige me by not addressing to me a
syllable, good, bad or indifferent, so long as I have the misfortune to
remain your room-mate.  If we collide with something, and go down, don't
even inquire of me where the life-preservers are.  And now, since I want
to read my note, I mean to turn on the electricity and do so
comfortably, and you may wake or sleep, or go on inventing spiteful
fables, whichever you prefer. From this moment, I am done with you."

Certainly, Posey knew how to take care of herself.  But there was always
a swift following of regret and penitence when she had let her clever
tongue loose upon an opponent, and while the subdued spinster sobbed
under her bedclothes, the girl rather miserably opened one of the ship's
envelopes, to find, written upon a slip of paper, in an angular and
illegible, but educated, woman's hand these words:

"When next you invite a certain friend of yours to supply you with
frocks and hats, take care that it is not within hearing of one who is
well acquainted with Lord C----'s limited generosity to the reigning
fancy of the hour. Better fix your hopes upon the older and more solvent
of your swains.  It will pay well, and be a less dangerous game for
you."

As the insult burned upon the girl's understanding, it seemed to her
that the world must stop revolving then and there.  It was her first
experience of the poison of anonymous correspondence, that, in an
instant, ran through her veins, paralyzing her with shame and
humiliation.  How could she face daylight and the society of honest
folk, with a stain of such suspicion upon her?  What had she brought
upon her honored father, upon her trustful lover, by exposing herself to
such an imputation?  Would Helen Carstairs ever speak to her again, if
she knew what had been thought and said of Posey Winstanley?

She turned out the light, and cast herself upon her berth.  Now, over
the tumult of her self-flagellations, arose the actual sound of a mighty
wind arising to bear down upon the ship.  It had come up suddenly, their
room was upon the weather-side, and, in her already nervous state, the
sounds seemed the shrieking of all the demons chained in hell. While the
spinster, now avenged, snored peacefully through the tumult of elements
outside, Posey lay wide-eyed, trembling, imagining all horrors of the
sea, and praying for the comfort of Mrs. Gasher's friendly voice.

"If we are to be lost," passed through her mind, despairingly,
"everything will be forgotten that has been said of me, and it is better
so."  She longed to go to her father, but dared not, considering his
distance from her, and the unpleasant fact that he shared a stateroom
with two other men.  The silence of the ship seemed as unnatural as the
failure of increase in its motion.  The curtain drawn over their doorway
swayed ever so slightly back and forth, there was no creaking of timbers
or crash of crockery, or rolling of small objects upon the floor.  A
glass of water left on the washhand-stand was not disturbed in its
equilibrium.  Surely this was strange, weird, unnatural, with such a
tempest raging on the sea!

Now Posey decided that, on the whole, she did not wish to die.  Driven
by panic, she arose, still dressed as she had been for the supper, and
stole out down the long, empty passage-ways upon a tour of
investigation, to encounter no living soul save a sleepy night-steward
standing under a light, to con an ancient newspaper.

The man looked up sleepily as the unwonted apparition drew near him.  He
recognized the beauty, and from her pallor and agitation decided she
must be ill.

"Anything I can do for you, miss?" he asked politely.

"Oh! no.  Nothing whatever," answered Posey hurriedly.  "I was only not
sleeping well, and feeling a little nervous in the storm."

"Storm, miss?" queried the steward abstractedly, swallowing a yawn.

"Yes, a fearful one.  On our side, it blows like mad.  Surely you must
hear it?"

With the ghost of a smile hovering upon his face, the man walked over
and gave a look out into the night.

"It _might_ be half a gale," he said dubiously. "But you see, miss, in
these ships we sort o' get out o' the way of knowing what is going on
outside!"

Half a gale!  Posey's inclination to resent the belittling statement
went back to bed with her, but presently her sense of humor got the
better of the other poignant emotions, and she laughed at her own
alarms, of which the interruption had, on the whole, proved a wholesome
one; and at last, completely wearied out, fell into deep sleep, amid the
continued howling of the harmless wind.


The gay voyage that had begun so buoyantly passed, at the finish,
beneath the shadow of a cloud.  The first sight of land gave but a sorry
welcome to the new-comers, as it immediately disappeared under a dense
curtain of fog.  The ship crept up the Irish coast to the melancholy
tooting of the siren, answered by other craft, from ocean liners to
humble trawlers, made Queenstown toward morning in an interval of clear
weather, and, relapsing into the embrace of fog, came next evening
finally to anchor for the night at some distance from Liverpool to await
a safer opportunity of docking the monster, and letting her passengers
ashore.  During the dolorous hours preceding their final parting the
disappointed passengers, before so friendly, smiling, intimate, seemed
to draw away from each other, darkling and afraid.  Smiles, jokes, good
stories, civil speeches and compliments had been apparently packed up
with sea rugs and steamer chairs.  The decks, dripping and cheerless,
offered no attraction to promenaders, the library was filled to
oppression with forms bending listlessly over books that could not hold
attention.  Every desk held diligent scribblers, glaring suspiciously at
each other through the top of the separating screen, their places
awaited by more would-be correspondents impatient of delay.  In the
companion-ways, subdued people huddled together or walked over the
unfortunate beings with buckets whose duty it is to swab the sticky
linoleum underfoot.  A reminiscent odor of their last sea-dinner arose
to mingle with suggestions, coming none knew whence, of bilge, fresh
paint, tarpaulin and wet ropes.  The only thoroughly lively mortals to
be seen were the stewards bustling everywhere; the tidy stewardesses,
with their cap-streamers flying; and the ladies' maids and valets who
hoped to get their charges early to bed, thus advancing their own time
of freedom and farewell.

At a comparatively early hour, the usual spaces where passengers
assemble were deserted, most people giving up the pretence of being
exhilarated by near approach to the British Isles.  The dining-saloon
displayed still a few groups sitting around the tables sipping from
glasses, reading or talking; the smoking-room alone retained its usual
features of cards and conviviality.

Here, toward ten o'clock, Clandonald, looking more than commonly bored,
arose from a game in which he had not acquitted himself with brilliancy,
and strolled outside, alone.

Since the night of the supper, he had not been called upon to put into
effect his stern resolution of eschewing Miss Winstanley's society.  She
had come to her meals late, or early, contriving to avoid more than a
passing contact with her acquaintances at table. While the rest of them,
notably Bobby Vane, deplored this circumstance, attributing it to a
caprice or an indisposition; while Miss Bleecker secretly chuckled with
delight that the enemy had so soon struck her colors, and Helen wondered
in silence why there was no following up on Posey's part of the
promising beginning of a friendship between them; while even the astute
Mariol was nonplussed at the young girl's sudden drop in spirit and
voluntary abdication of her past as reigning sovereign, Clandonald felt
himself a prey to more acute and genuine feeling concerning her than he
had ever dreamed of experiencing. So far from going ashore at
Queenstown, it was now his ardent wish to stay on the ship till he saw
the last of Miss Winstanley at Liverpool; since Mr. Winstanley had
announced that instead of running up to town on the special steamer
train with their friends, his daughter had taken a fancy to see Wales,
and they would accordingly stop over at Chester.

Up to the moment, perhaps, when Clandonald had interposed himself
between Posey and her annoyer, it had not occurred to him that he could
feel for her anything more than man's honest delight in youth and
extraordinary beauty, as well as the titillation that came to his mental
part from her amusing indifference to his rank, her straightforward
appeal to his comradeship.  Even the fleeting revelation in her gaze
that had occasioned his resolve to fly, had excited until then in him
little more than regret at the misadventure.

When he had brusquely stood himself in Vereker's way, Helen Carstairs
had not observed what caused a current of pleasure to run through his
veins, and a quick rush of protective tenderness toward Posey to fill
and overflow his heart.  Involuntarily the girl had pressed nearer to
him, slipping her arm through his, and, for the few seconds that this
attitude endured, he had wanted never to part with her again!

Then she had started away from him, almost guiltily, and Miss Carstairs
had carried her off in tears!  From thenceforward a blank, as far as a
return to their old relations went! Clandonald, puzzling himself wofully
to know what he had done to alienate her, had spent hours in meditation
upon the theme. Now that he had lost her, the possession of her
guileless friendship, still more of her possible love, had become of
supreme value and importance; to win it he was ready to forfeit
anything, even to throwing over his excellent and devoted Mariol, whose
keen glances worried him, and whose wit and wisdom had temporarily lost
their flavor.

And so the last hour of the last evening had come around, and his last
chance to speak with her had gone!  He knew how it would be on the
morrow.  Nothing less conducive to an exposition of the tender passion
in any of its phases can be found than the landing on a foggy day at
Liverpool, with its crowds and coal smoke, its lowering skies, and dingy
surroundings, its hustling porters and watermen, the rush and rumble of
a great industrial city beginning at the water's edge, after the
inspiring solitudes of three thousand miles of salt water.

He would see her only amid a confusion of sights and sounds that would
effectually prevent any but the most banal phrases of adieu. She would
pass away from him and become as had all the other women he had met,
like the dissolving foam wreaths in their track across the Atlantic.  He
was annoyed with himself for feeling it so much.  The thing was out of
all reason.  Perhaps, after he had speech with her once more, he might
better realize what an ass he had been to imagine she cared for him.
Things, in short, would adjust themselves on a common-sense footing.

But he could not get speech with her.  An overture to that effect,
somewhat clumsily conveyed before dinner-time, had been rejected by Miss
Winstanley in such terms that Clandonald felt vexed and mortified,
wondering what or who could have set her so against him.

And here, at last, when he stepped out on deck, into the glare of the
electric lights, intending to return to his own room and prosaically go
to bed, the Fates would have it that he ran upon Mr. Winstanley
shivering like a true Southron in the raw atmosphere around the ship's
anchorage, his daughter clinging to his arm, looking most lovely in her
furs, her cheeks of a vivid carmine, the little locks on her forehead
drifting and curving in the moist air.

"Pretty dismal lookout, isn't it?" said the old gentleman cheerily.
"Kind o' evenin' that makes one think o' a tumbler full of hot Scotch,
and a big snappin' wood-fire, with a couple o' little darkies tumblin'
over each other to bring in the fat pine knots."

"If I could fly with the crow over in that direction," said Clandonald,
pointing toward the invisible shore, "I know of a hearthside not far
off, where at least part of those conditions would be fulfilled to me!
It is in the house of an uncle of mine, where as a boy I considered it
Paradise to go, and still do, sometimes for the shooting.  One of those
homes of merry England (a misnomer now, I grant you) that you have
expressed so kind a desire to see, Miss Winstanley.  I sincerely hope,
by the way, that you haven't forgotten your promise to persuade Mr.
Winstanley to give me a day at Beaumanoir, and that you'll settle upon a
date with Miss Carstairs--who has also agreed to honor me--before we
leave the ship."

"You are very kind, but our plans are undecided," said the girl, in a
low, tremulous tone.

"Seems as if the sea hadn't agreed with daughter this little bit,"
observed Mr. Winstanley. "She sort o' thinks she'll stop by a few days,
along the road, before we get to London.  So this is a British fog?  A
No. 1, I reckon.  I hope you won't think me impolite if I call it a
regular searcher, sir.  At this moment I feel it in the marrow o' my
bones.  But anything to please the ladies, and when Posey said she'd a
headache that wouldn't leave her till she got a turn outside, out we
came to admire your English coast scenery, I tell her--Great Scott,
Posey, I've gone and done it, now!"

He had been fumbling in his breast pocket for a handkerchief, and drew
forth the missing article with a vexed look upon his mild old face.

"Done what, daddy?"

"Left my letter of credit in a coat in the steamer-trunk that was packed
for storage in Liverpool.  And they've likely carried it out a'ready!  I
must find that steward right away, dearie, and tip him to hunt it up."

"Let me go with you, please."

"You'd only be in the way.  If you want to finish our walk, stay here,
and I'll come right back for you.  Perhaps Lord Clandonald wouldn't
mind----"

"Oh! no, father!  I'll stay alone."

The voice was decided, even positive. Clandonald, bowing, moved away in
another direction than that taken by Mr. Winstanley.

It was over.  He had done with Posey Winstanley and all her kind.  If
she were so capricious as her actions indicated, this decision was a
thoroughly good thing.

But all the same, like Lot's wife, he looked back.  Posey had taken out
her pocket handkerchief, and was wiping her eyes with the little wisp
half the ship had picked up after her.  Clandonald, in two strides,
returned to her side.

"I am not going to push myself into your company.  Just two minutes, and
I'll be off. But I think you owe it to me to say why you are treating me
like a scoundrel or an impostor."

"Oh! not that, not that!" she cried piteously.

"Have I done anything to forfeit a place among your decent acquaintances
since that time you clung to my arm and--I mean since you let me feel
that I might stand between you and insult----"

"Nothing.  I believe in you just the same, and always shall."

"Thank you for so much, at any rate. But--you believe in me, in _spite_
of what?"

"Oh!  Lord Clandonald, how can I say it to you?" she exclaimed, driven
to the wall.

"I have stood a good deal of evil speaking in my time," he said, in a
grim undertone. "And if it helps to clear the atmosphere between us, I
can stand more."

"It is not you only, I, too, have been the victim of cruel and
slanderous sayings.  I have not told my dear father, who is so
unsuspicious.  I wouldn't have him suffer as I have for the world.  For
the last twenty-four hours I have been receiving, in all sorts of odd
ways that I cannot trace, anonymous notes about you and me that have cut
me to the quick."

"Let me see one of them," he said, growing slightly pale.

"Do you think I'd keep the horrid, poisonous things?  Not a half hour
since I tore the whole batch into little bits, and threw them overboard.
Perhaps ... I ought to tell you, they were written by a woman, who
says----"

"Go on, Miss Winstanley."

"--That you wronged her cruelly and ruined her whole life."

"I thought so," he said, between his teeth. His face had grown so dark
and bitter that Posey hardly knew the man.  "There is only one who
could--but how, in God's name, did she get aboard this ship?"

"I suppose the writer thought I would not have courage to tell you--but
I always believe in speaking out, you know."

"It may be some low practical joke at our expense," he suggested, his
eyes lightening.

"No, even I, who never saw an anonymous letter before, could tell that
this is horridly real.  Whoever it is, Lord Clandonald, you--and now
I--have a desperate enemy. I am threatened with a scene, an exposure,
she calls it, that will disgrace me utterly, if I am seen again with
you."

"Let me risk it for you!  Let me stand between you and all liars, evil
speakers and slanderers, for always--" the man exclaimed passionately,
then stopped short.

There was that in the girl's look that startled him from his
unconsidered speech. The staring white light of the electric globe
immediately above them showed the bloom forsaking her young face, the
lips trembling violently.

"It proves how little we know of each other that I should let you say
such words to one who has no right to hear them," she said, recovering
herself to speak in her natural tone.  "But if we mayn't be friends,
after this, please remember that I have believed you, not your
slanderer.  Now, as my father doesn't seem to be coming back, and this
is not my native air, if it is yours, I will say good-by.  We'll be too
busy and too cross to want to speak to each other to-morrow morning,
even if it were wise.  If you meet me again, it will be a different
Pamela Winstanley, one who knows more, perhaps, and makes fewer
mistakes, but who'll never forget your kindness on this voyage."

Clandonald was bewildered at her rapid change back into the speech of
conventionality, her self-control, her determination to put him
definitely away from her.  His brain was also dizzy with thoughts of the
dread presence on shipboard of the one woman he had hoped never to see
on earth again.  What he might, could or would have answered Miss
Winstanley was not said.

They stood together uncertainly for one confusing moment in what seemed
a moist gray world, haunted by skulking shadows in tarpaulin, the chill
wind of the Channel whipping them, overhead the repeated raucous roar of
the fog-horn--and then she was gone, melted away into encompassing
gloom! His ship-idyl, his mad brief temptations of a few moments since,
were past.  He was back again in England with his bitter memories and
cheerless future.

To Mariol he gave, before bed-time, an account of the outrage to which
Miss Winstanley had been subjected, begging him to try to trace out the
offender, and silence her at any cost.

The Frenchman, promising to do this, and relieved at the collapse of his
friend's nascent affair with Miss Winstanley, was hardly surprised, on
awaking next day, and finding their ship safely alongside her dock in
Liverpool, to be told that his lordship, impatient of delay, had gone
ashore during the night in the tender that had nosed its way to the
fog-bound liner to carry off the mails, leaving his servant to follow
with his luggage.

Mariol, after attending unsuccessfully to the business entrusted to him
by Clandonald, encountered Miss Carstairs, her chaperon and maid, on
deck awaiting the summons to go ashore.  He stood by them, commenting
with amusement upon the sudden disintegration of the ardent intimacies
of the voyage. To judge from appearances, the chief aim of the
passengers was now to rid themselves of one another as promptly as
possible.  People who had sworn fidelity over night were offish,
mysterious, absorbed in petty anxieties about customs, telegrams, trains
and tips.  As usual to inexperienced tourists, the latter question arose
to be a cloud that was ultimately to overshadow the glories of European
travel. What attendants had been remunerated according to service done,
what countenances had darkened, who had seemed satisfied, was discussed
in whispers between anxious family groups.  Farewell sentiments bestowed
upon friends one thought one had seen the last of were found to be
superfluous, since the recipients were sure to be found again
provokingly popping up everywhere; on the gangway, on the docks, and
facing the customs officers.  Lucky if one were not to be thrust
together with them into the same railway carriage, all to arrive in
London hating each other heartily!

M. de Mariol, without appearing to do so, had scanned narrowly the
outgoing crowd from the steamer.  No trace had appeared, here or
elsewhere, of the familiar figure of Clandonald's former wife.  A
suggestion occurring to him that the excursive Ruby had been last heard
of in America, and was probably returning under an alias, made the
search in the passenger lists a futile one. Whatever were the facts in
the history of this obnoxious and insufferable woman, he must give her
up for the present as a bad job.  He felt almost inclined to believe
that some one else had thrown suspicion upon her, in order to cover a
low attack upon Miss Winstanley and Clandonald.

As he and Miss Carstairs started a little later to walk together up the
inclined plane leading to the Euston Special, they beheld, in the
street, Mr. and Miss Winstanley getting into a four-wheeler laden with
archaic trunks, from the window of which Posey waved to them a sober
last good-by.

At the same moment they were asked to step aside to give place to an
invalid chair containing Mr. Vereker, greenish-gray of complexion,
scowling at all the world, and escorted by his nurse and doctor.  No
vestige remained of the effusive host, the ladies' gallant, the purveyor
of choicest scandal from the clubs!  His wife and valet, with Mr.
Charley Brownlow and a train of servants and porters, brought up the
rear of the cortege, pressing importantly forward to reach their private
car.

Miss Bleecker, whose soul always melted tenderly to the sorrows of the
rich, could not lose this opportunity.  Stepping up briskly, she
proffered her condolence to the suffering magnate, to be repelled by a
savage gesture and a snarl of annoyance at being spoken to, that caused
the irate lady to retire in crimson confusion.

She was the more perturbed by the incident, because not only did her
dear friend Mrs. Vereker decline to make amends for her husband's
ill-manners, but she murmured audibly to Mr. Brownlow that "Sally
Bleecker never did know how to stay in the back row."  Additionally, the
chaperon's discomfiture was increased by the appearance of Lord and Lady
Channel Fleet, who with their depressed maid hugging a jewel-case
containing the well-known turquoises, were hastening away to the joys of
home and their native land.  Lady Channel Fleet enjoyed the little
scene.  She had just whispered to her husband that she'd be thankful to
get to their own house, where at last they wouldn't see Americans or
hear them talk.

The next acquaintance to pass by Mariol and Miss Carstairs was Prince
Zourikoff, who, from between two porters carrying some Aztec images he
had secured in Mexico, gave them an abstracted nod to supplement his
polite farewell achieved on board.  Dear old Graf von Bau was already in
the embraces of his loving spouse and two gigantic daughters, who were
kissing him violently upon both cheeks, and, attended by a secretary,
governess and maid, had come over from Berlin to meet and reclaim their
wanderer.

"Thus vanish Miss Winstanley and her little court!" said Mariol in Miss
Carstairs' ear.  "It is true, Bobby Vane clung to her till forcibly
taken possession of by his elder brother, whom the Kenningtons sent down
to fetch him safely home.  The lad was sufficiently hard hit, and if the
young lady had been ambitious of making an English alliance of rank, she
might have secured him--to the disgust of the Kenningtons, of course,
since Bobby has nothing, and the Winstanleys are evidently in modest
circumstances."

"I believe I can surprise you there," said Helen.  "As we are all
scattering, it can make no difference to any one--certainly on this side
the globe," she added, with a faint sigh.

"I like an _apres coup_.  Please tell me," answered he, smiling.

"First, tell me something.  If you like, that is, if not, let it go.
From what you have observed, does it strike you that a friend of Miss
Winstanley's would be justified in thinking that Lord Clandonald has
fallen in love with her?"

"Lord Clandonald left the ship without making any arrangement for a
future meeting with the young lady," said Mariol, diplomatically.  "And
to my best knowledge, there is no likelihood of his seeing her, unless
by chance."

Helen drew a long breath, but not one of relief.

"Because," she went on, "her good old father came yesterday to thank me
for some imagined kindness to his daughter, and, in the course of
conversation, told me that he had recently become the owner of a
large--very large--fortune, but in his desire to protect her from
'interested' suitors, had determined to keep the knowledge of it from
her. He asked my advice as to the wisdom of the step, poor soul!  I told
him that I had had some experience of paternal mismanagement in this
regard, in the case of a friend of mine--and that I thought Posey ought
certainly to know."

"I agree with you," commented Mariol, astonished, and, for Clandonald's
sake, just a tiny bit depressed.  "What a difference it would have made
on board, had it been suspected that our social sovereign was possessed
of a golden foundation for her throne.  And since you have mentioned my
friend Clandonald's fancy for the young lady----"

"It was rather unfair for me not to have told you at once," interrupted
Miss Carstairs, "that I am aware of reasons why such a fancy on his part
for Mr. Winstanley's heiress, or of her for him, would have produced
disastrous results in America."

"She is, then--" began Mariol, trying to keep the vexation from his
voice.

"Mr. Winstanley said that he thought it best for any one interested in
his daughter that there should be no concealment of her engagement to
marry a man whom she has long known--of whom he thoroughly approves, and
that his daughter was willing to have it known.  A man whom such a
marriage will help in the best way, since when they became engaged, he
knew nothing whatever, nor does he now, of her improved fortunes."

"Lucky fellow!" said Mariol, swallowing a grimace.  "But I must own to
you that the circumstance robs the fair Posey of a good deal of her
interest in my eyes.  You, Miss Carstairs, are so far removed from their
estate of happy barbarism, you are so broad, so far-seeing, you won't
object to my suggesting that the image of Miss Winstanley's mate chosen
from among her friends of early years does not allure me.  He is, in
fact, a total extinguisher of my desire to meet her after she shall have
become his wife.  Now, own that you yourself have a shudder of mild
distaste when you think of what he must be!"

"On the contrary," said Miss Carstairs, distinctly, "I have the pleasure
of knowing Miss Winstanley's fiance; and I consider him not only one of
the most manly men, but the truest gentleman in the circle of my
acquaintance."


"Helen, here is a compartment that will just hold you and me and
Eulalie, comfortably, and we will tip the guard to let us have it to
ourselves," came in Miss Bleecker's penetrating tones.  "Good-by, M. de
Mariol, we shall always remember our pleasant voyage, and I shall
treasure that clever thing you wrote in my birthday book.  Sorry not to
have seen Lord Clandonald to say good-by, but we shall all meet again,
of course, people always do.  Don't forget if you are in town, any time,
we are in Curzon Street for a fortnight, and then Paris, Hotel
Westminster. Eulalie, you have Miss Carstairs' black jacket?  Porter,
look out for those umbrellas in the netting, put my dressing bag beside
me, the tea-basket overhead--where is the other rug?  Oh!  I see.  Ten
pieces, all right, porter, here you are, for you and your mate.  _What_,
not enough?  Ample, and more than you deserve.  Helen, how could you
give him another shilling, when you know that is what shows any one with
half an eye you are just from the other side?"




                              *CHAPTER VI*


The luncheon at Beaumanoir, although lacking the young lady for whose
delectation it had been proposed, came off to the satisfaction of at
least four of the five people present, viz., Miss Bleecker, whom it had
been impossible to omit; M. de Mariol, who, cynicism to the contrary,
was delighted with a chance of showing Helen Carstairs the noble old
place in a lambent day of mid-October; Helen, herself, frankly pleased
with the entertainment; and good old Lady Campstown, whose mind having
long set itself upon the thought of her nephew's remarriage with a
wealthy American girl, as a happy issue out of all his difficulties,
chose to construe the occasion into a presentation to her of the future
chatelaine whose dollars were to stop the chinks in Clandonald's
ancestral roofs, and her virtues to gild anew the escutcheon dimmed by
her unworthy predecessor.

"If she's an American, she'll probably go straight," thought Lady
Campstown, after having first informed herself through a New York lady
so long resident in London as to suffer acute pangs upon being reminded
of the place of her nativity, that Helen's father was "_the_ Mr.
Carstairs whom everybody had heard about."  When Clandonald had proposed
to his aunt to preside over his little party, her ladyship had not dared
ask him the direct question that was burning upon her lips.  She had
contented herself with his answer to her rallying query whether upon his
travels he had met any of those wonderful girls from the States the
modern novelists write about, that he fancied the supply would always be
equal to the demand for that commodity.  And when Miss Carstairs, so
quiet, lovely and distinguished in mien and manner, appeared amid the
faded chintz of the great drawing-room at Beaumanoir, admiring its
choice contents with knowledge and without gush, treating Lady Campstown
exactly as she ought to be treated, the reality of the old gentlewoman's
hopes seemed as near as it was grateful.

Even Miss Bleecker shone in a reflected light, and Lady Campstown
pronounced her, afterwards, a most agreeable, chatty person. As she
conducted both visitors through the principal rooms of her childhood's
home, her little ladyship's frail face and figure seemed to have stepped
down for the occasion from a frame of which the gilding had worn away.
Helen was in turn charmed by her simplicity and frankness, and the two
gravitated together naturally.  The men found them in the picture
gallery, where Lady Campstown was destined to receive her first
disillusion, in the fact that her nephew in asking Miss Carstairs if she
were ready to see the white peacocks on their famous strutting ground,
invited M. de Mariol to come, too!

But the good aunt utilized her talk alone with Miss Bleecker to speak
openly about Lord Clandonald's excellences, his wrongs at the hands of
Ruby Darien, his desirable domestic traits, the subjects, in fine,
rarely neglected when the female proprietor or backer of a man in the
marriage market sees her chance.  Lady Campstown was so genuinely
unselfish in her desire to build up again the shattered fabric of her
dear Clan's life, that another than the pachydermatous Miss Bleecker
would have perceived the pathos of the situation, and condoned the
openness of the attack.  Miss Bleecker, however, was quite on her guard.
She did not consider Clandonald anything to jump at in the way of a
match for Helen.  She was certain of Mr. Carstairs' disapproval; she
knew that he could not be brought to supply cash for the palpably
exigent repairs at Beaumanoir, and lastly, and more to the point, she
had no idea of relinquishing while she could hold it, her comfortable
billet as Miss Carstairs' chaperon. But she was aware that Lady
Campstown, while possessing but a small and meagre establishment in
London, had a pretty villa at Cannes, where she was a personage of
undoubted influence and wide acquaintance. And as Miss Bleecker's doctor
had advised the air of that favored resort for her relaxed throat, and
Helen did not care where they went, Cannes was the secret object of the
chaperon's intended movement southward at the season's height.

Therefore, the conversation, while the two elders strolled or sat under
immemorial yews, and enjoyed grapes and peaches plucked in an enchanting
old walled garden, waxed upon one side, more gracious and evasive, on
the other, more perplexed and yet more hopeful. From all she could
gather, Lady Campstown was convinced that Helen had been sent by
Providence for Clan's regeneration.  The hint given on their return to
the house, that the American ladies would be in Cannes after Christmas,
to remain there until joined probably by Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs in the
well-known yacht, "Sans Peur," seemed to fit into her plans.  A further
suggestion from the dowager, that Miss Bleecker and her charge would
allow Lady Campstown to have the pleasure of introducing them to some
people and places in the south, came so quickly, and was accepted so
suavely, that the stately little lady was herself a little startled and
taken aback by it.

At this moment Clandonald and his other guests stepped in through a
window opening upon a stone-paved court with fountains and statues and
ancient trees, enclosed in walls of ivy and maiden-hair fern,
reproducing prettily one of those haunts of Pan at Villa d'Este in
Tivoli, adored by a former owner. Helen had been sitting upon a
lichen-grown stone bench, too lapped in pure pleasure to want to move.
A stable-clock striking somewhere back of shrubberies, had warned her
that it was time for them to be thinking of their train up to town; and
she rose regretfully.

"It has been a day to string upon Time's rosary," she said to her host,
to whom she yielded the greater credit for his hospitality, because she
saw that he had been worried and abstracted, and that it was Mariol's
continued sparkle of wit and bonhomie that had really lent the occasion
its subtle charm.

"It is very kind of you to have been willing to give me so much of your
valuable time," he answered, with an effort to throw off what was
possessing him, "and it has been a pleasant second chapter of our
voyage."

"I wanted to tell you and M. de Mariol before we separate," went on Miss
Carstairs, who had all day been trying for an opportunity to bring this
in, and failed, simple as the matter seemed, "that I had, this morning
only, a letter from Miss Winstanley.  They decided, you know, to put off
their visit to London till some later date, and have been wandering
through the apple country of South Devon, to see the orchards and the
cider-making.  Some book Mr. Winstanley read had tempted him.  They were
to stop at Torquay, thence going to Dover and the Continent."

"Very nice--and very American," said Clandonald.  "Fancy running after
an apple-crop the moment one lands in Britain, because some man has put
it into a novel!  I hope Miss Winstanley has recovered from her
indisposition?"

"She seemed to be well and happy.  She asked to be kindly remembered to
you and M. de Mariol."

Clandonald's courtesy had taken wings, in the emotion of a deeper sort
that overcame him inconveniently.  He had hoped to carry off easily this
inevitable talk about the girl who had laid so strong a hold upon his
broken life.  But he said nothing at all, while Mariol, as usual, came
to the rescue.

"I have been telling Clandonald the two interesting facts developed by
you concerning our Alabama friend," he said, gracefully. "And we both
unite in asking you to convey to her our best congratulations upon her
intended marriage."

"What a glorious copper beech!" exclaimed Helen, suddenly looking away
past its owner to where the trees arose like a fire fountain from velvet
sward.  "I beg your pardon.  I will give her the message when I answer
her characteristic letter.  Perhaps I ought to have said before that, in
a postscript, she asked me to tell you both of her engagement to Mr.
Glynn, should I not have already done so."


Lady Campstown, having taken cordial leave of her nephew's guests, whom
de Mariol escorted back to their private hotel in Curzon Street,
remained over with Clandonald at Beaumauoir for tea.  They drank it,
thanks to a perfectly warm and well-aired afternoon, under the beech
tree extolled by Miss Carstairs.  Clandonald's dogs, the only friends of
man who do not disappoint or change, clustered around his knee, a homely
but human Schipperke gluing her faithful head upon her master's boot.
The day, the hour, the pleasant rite, the dear old woman whose thin,
pearl-white fingers twinkled among the tea cups as she looked over at
him from time to time in a sort of speechless longing, touched and
pleased the returned traveller, but could not cheer his melancholy.

Finally Lady Campstown took heart of grace to go to the point direct.

"I'm sorry to see you so down, Clan, my dear boy," she said, in handing
him his second cup.  "To-day, of all days, when you have had such a
charming visitor.  I can't tell you how well I am pleased with Miss
Carstairs.  You must know."

"Delighted, I'm sure, Aunt Lucy," he answered, with refrigerating
vagueness. "But to talk of less agreeable subjects, I'm sorry to say
Ruby has broken loose again, and is annoying me horribly.  Having failed
recently to make a scene for me--and another person--after her own
heart, she has taken to writing me infernal hypocritical letters, saying
she's back in England, stone-broke, ill, penitent, Lord knows what, and
must have money."

"The old cry!" exclaimed Lady Campstown hotly.  "Don't answer her, Clan,
treat her as if you were locked in behind walls, and she in the street,
outside."

"Her capacity for inventing malice and mischief is too great.  She will
find some way to circumvent me.  Her price of peace is hard cash, and so
for the present, I can breathe free again."

"You have been weak enough----" began his aunt, despairingly.

"I am not the only one involved," he said shortly.  "Now, Aunt Lucy, say
no more to me about it.  I only wished to put you on your guard against
any assault she might make upon your compassion."

"I am safe from that!" said the little lady grimly, and indeed, for the
moment, she looked so, in her splendid wrath and scorn. Clandonald did
not pursue the subject, and something warned her that neither was this
the time for pursuance of the light vision of the American girl whom she
had fondly pictured taking Ruby's place in the desolate old house.  They
talked of family matters, of Clan's travels, of things present and to
come until Lady Campstown and her maid were obliged to leave.  When her
nephew had put her into the brougham to go to the station, Lady
Campstown rallied her courage for a final appeal.

"You'll drop in for luncheon, tea or dinner whenever you've nothing
better, won't you, dear boy?" she asked, surveying him wistfully.  "You
know I go out so little I'm apt to be always there.  I'm to have
luncheon on Tuesday, and go to some pictures with these pleasant friends
of yours who've just left us; and, Clan, dear, isn't it nice that
they're coming to Cannes this winter?  Miss Carstairs' father is to be
there in the yacht. He must be a very interesting man.  Such a power,
one can't fail to--oh! thank you, Jenkins" (this to the gardener,
arriving with a huge nosegay of late roses and chrysanthemums, and a
basket of ruddy peaches), "they are most lovely, I am sure.  You will
certainly not fail to make me that promised visit in January?  It seemed
so lonely, last year, nobody inhabiting your room.  Come, promise, Clan,
and I know you will never break your word!"

"I am afraid, Aunt Lucy," he said, giving her a final loving kiss, "that
I had better not promise anything, just now, if I'm to keep up my good
reputation in your eyes.  Think what you like as to my being spooney
about a pretty American.  But it is arranged between Mariol and
myself--though we can't agree about our destination--that we are to set
out for somewhere early next week. Mariol leans toward Tibet, I to the
Balkans.  To decide it, we shall probably toss up a sovereign.  But this
much is certain--off we go."

It was not until December, when Lady Campstown was fairly established at
Villa Julia, on the slope of the Californie, under house-walls obscured
by bougainvillea and arbutilon and Gloire de Dijon roses, that she felt
in the least assuaged of her disappointment. She had left London swathed
in a yellow fog of appalling density, had run down to Dover in an
atmosphere of pea-soup; had found Paris under weeping skies; had
traversed France in a murky mist; and only on waking up in Cannes next
morning had renewed acquaintance with the sun.

As she looked out of her window, the olives and palms seemed to wave a
welcome to the south.  The sea laughed in every ripple of its wide
expanse, the mountains slept under their veil of azure, the light over
all was almost intolerably bright.  The flowers that she so well loved,
blooming overhead and underfoot, springing from wall crannies,
gladdening and glorying every available spot of earth, made her ladyship
feel once more like her own even-tempered, happy self!

She had not heard from the wanderers in the Balkans, but had felt
resigned that dear Clan had not pushed on to that dreadful far-away
Tibet, where men were flayed alive if they happened not to please the
rulers upon whose land they were trespassing, which would have been so
much worse!  She and her maid, and a servant or two brought out from
England, occupied themselves for a day in unpacking and readjusting
ornaments, putting flowers and plants about the rooms, and looking over
the garden, a lovely tiny place where roses ran riot, and palm trees
waved their feathered tops or clashed together their spiked leaves with
a little metallic ring, when the breeze stirred them from their majestic
calm.

There were many finer, many larger, many more cared-for gardens in the
town, though none that gave more satisfaction to its owner. Lady
Campstown knew and loved every inch of it, but the spot most often
resorted to by her, in hot sunshine, was a tunnel cut in a thicket of
bamboos terminating her domain, from which a gate led out under the wall
of the adjoining lordly pleasure house called "Villa Reine des Fees."
Above this wall arose the symmetrical shafts of a cypress avenue, into
which, and far beyond it, Lady Campstown had been accustomed to
penetrate at will, through a little green door hidden by verdure, placed
there for the convenience of the gardeners.  The lodge-keeper of this
deserted dwelling, to whose child her ladyship had ministered in
illness, and all the other employees of the place, had always made
welcome the little figure in black, wearing a mushroom hat and carrying
a long tortoise-shell stick, who from time to time appeared among the
alleys and under the flowery pergolas of a veritable fairyland of trees
and turf and shrubs and blossoms.

The dwelling at Reine des Fees, sheltered from prevailing winds by a
thick olive grove resting like a gray cloud upon the hillside above it,
was of considerable size and pretension.  Ascending, by a long flight of
white marble steps, the two terraces with their mosaic pavements and
marble balustrades, over which orange and lemon trees hung their fruit
and flowers, one reached an imposing portal, where roses climbed upon
the white facade of the many-windowed house, to fall back in rivulets of
bloom.  The gardens were a marvel of skilfully massed semi-tropical
shrubbery and trees, shutting out the view of other villas and revealing
at happy turns vistas of the Mediterranean, the two islands, and the
blue jagged line of the Esterels; while tall box-hedges, cypresses,
fountains and pergolas wedded the tender grace of Italy to the warm,
witchery of Provence.

The place had been originally constructed by a wealthy Russian as a
bower for his young wife who had died there in early married life; and
for a long time had remained unoccupied, although scrupulously kept up.

Upon the death of the owner it had passed to his younger brother who,
intending to live in it according to his luxurious tastes, had put in
"lifts," baths, and sundry up-to-date conveniences; had renewed the
furniture, china and glass, prepared the stables for many horses, and
then vanished from sight of man into a house he had in the
Caucasus--melancholy mad!

For two years Villa Reine des Fees had now been in the market for a
tenant, yet none had presented himself.  Whether or not the house had a
name for bringing ill-luck to its inhabitants, or that the price fixed
upon it was prohibitively high, it had remained vacant, as before.  Lady
Campstown could not regret this circumstance.

So long the enchanted ground behind the rose-wall had seemed an annex to
her own modest property, she begrudged the idea of its overflowing with
noisy gay people, with their dinners and dances, their motor cars
puffing up the drive, their tennis matches and tea-parties,
piano-practising and perhaps spoiled children and dogs, to invade her
sylvan solitudes.

The one fate that Lady Campstown kept in reserve as the most painful
that could possibly overtake Villa Reine des Fees, was for it to be
inhabited by Americans.  Now, upon her return (although recently born
again, as it were, to a new sense of the excellent possibilities of her
transatlantic kinsfolk!) she learned with dismay, from her gardener,
that the house had actually been leased to an American family, who were
to arrive the following day!  Details of the calamity she could not at
first bring herself to acquire.  It was enough that her worst fears for
her cherished playground were about to be realized. She turned pale at
thought of the changes sure to come.

Directly after luncheon Lady Campstown took down her mushroom hat and an
Inverness cape that her maid had hung on a peg in the entry, armed
herself with her tortoise-shell stick--a gift from Clandonald, by the
way--and trotted down the walk of her own garden leading out under the
bamboos to the little green door in her neighbor's wall.  This was open,
and she went in, sadly resolved to make a final pilgrimage to all the
familiar spots henceforward to be blocked from her view as effectually
as newspaper paragraphs by the ink-marks of a Russian censor.

The day was glorious, earth, sea and sky lustrous with intense sunshine,
the air filled with odors of orange-blossom and violet, jasmine and
rose, the palms bending gently under a summer breeze.  Never had the
grounds of Villa Reine des Fees seemed in more perfect order.  She gave
one glance up at the gleaming house-front above the stately balustrades,
and saw that its windows were open, new curtains fluttering in the
breeze. In the loggia adjoining the boudoir of the poor little dead
princess, wicker chairs, gayly cushioned, were grouped under the rose
wreaths.  The signs of coming habitation were too evident.

Lady Campstown would not look again. Sorrowfully she directed her steps
along the lower terrace, her tortoise-shell stick tapping impatiently
upon the renaissance birds and beasts of its pavement.  She even hoped
not to meet any of the friendly Provencals who worked upon the place,
with whom she had been wont to stop and talk about themselves and
families, the prospects of the flower-crop for neighboring cultivators,
and affairs of the town in general.

At some distance from the house this terrace was rounded into a lookout,
commanding a wondrous avenue of palms, their trunks enwrapped in roses
and jasmine, at the end of which the hillside fell sharply away,
revealing an unimaginably lovely view of the sea and islands.  From
here, as the visitor now seated herself to gaze her last at a favorite
prospect, she saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, between
borders of violets, a very tall young woman, modishly attired in white
embroidered cloth, with a large white-plumed hat that breathed of the
Rue de la Paix, in Paris.

[Illustration: She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a
very tall young woman, modishly attired.]

Lady Campstown wished that she could believe this engaging person to be
some one who, like herself, had strayed into Villa Reine des Fees
through curiosity--a guest from one of the adjacent smart hotels.

But she could not.  She knew in her British soul that it was none other
than one of the temporary owners of the property, and that she herself
stood revealed a trespasser.  In her intense vexation, the dowager arose
again, striking her stick on the hot marble underfoot, till two little
green lizards scampered away in fright at its sharp resonance.

"I beg your pardon," she said in her well-bred old voice, "I live in the
next house, and of course had no idea that the villa was yet inhabited."

"Please don't speak of it," was the surprisingly friendly answer.  (The
girl was thinking, "Here, surely, is the Fairy Godmother.")  "We decided
at the last minute to come a day earlier, so anxious were we to get out
of gloomy, wet Paris.  You see, my father has been very ill, and the
doctors rather wanted to hurry him to Provence. We took the night train,
arriving this morning, and already he seems to feel the benefit, and is
now getting a good sleep."

As she spoke she came up upon the terrace, and stood by Lady Campstown's
side.

"I am glad to hear it," answered the old lady, forgetting her
resentment.  "I should explain that this house has been so long
unoccupied, I have felt at liberty to stray in from time to time, and
see the flowers and so----"

"Indeed, you are not to say another word," said the hostess, with pretty
emphasis.  "If you had the least idea how I was just bursting to let out
of me some of my delight!"

"'Bursting to let out of me'!"  Lady Campstown was certain that she knew
no one who would have been responsible for that peculiar phrase, but the
joyous appeal of the young voice and eyes, the radiantly smiling mouth,
were not to be resisted.

"You feel it, then?" she said, smiling in return.

"Down to the ground!" said the tall girl. "I don't believe I ever had
such thrills in my life before.  I've been walking up and down under
these oranges and lemons and palms, wondering if it can be I?  To think
we're to have this little heaven all to ourselves for daddy to get well
in!  You see, there are only my father and myself, and we know very few
people over here in Europe.  We are Americans."

"I believe so," said Lady Campstown, with restraint.

"The villa was taken for us through our doctor in Paris, who had seen
it, and told daddy.  I thought the rooms in our hotel in Paris too
lovely for anything, but this goes a long way ahead.  I've got that
splendid big front chamber with the dressing-room and bath, and the sort
of little porch covered with vines, where the servants seem to expect me
to have my breakfast by myself.  The truth is, I don't care where I eat
these old continental breakfasts; only rolls and coffee, and perhaps one
miserable little egg, and that extra, I'm always hungry again by eleven.
Daddy's got a huge room opposite mine, all carved furniture with a bed
like a church pew, but he likes it, and the man nurse that takes care of
him says he's better already for the change. It's ridiculous for only us
two to try to fill this regular little palace, isn't it?  If I were
home, I could ask some of the girls, but, over here, I don't know any
but one, and we haven't actually got a chaperon for me yet. We talked of
it, you know, but when it came to the point, daddy dreaded her being
perched up between us like Poe's raven, at meals, and everywhere, and so
we put it off.  Perhaps, if you live here you wouldn't mind giving me a
word of advice about how to do things. There's a housekeeper that goes
with the house, and she engaged the extra servants, such a lot I never
saw!  I came out into the garden to get rid of the whole kit and boodle
of them!  But after a while I'll learn my way, and then not feel so
awkward as I do now. Maybe you are thinking it strange why I don't know
these things, but I've no mother, and no near relations but daddy, and
till now we've lived in a very plain way, at home."

Lady Campstown's heart melted incontinently. The rapidity and scope of
the girl's confidences were atoned for by her youth and the direct gaze
of her childlike eyes, to say nothing of the beauty that had been
sinking into the old lady's impressionable senses. Also, her ladyship
was always genuinely interested in the details of a perilous illness;
and those of the invalid's recent grave attack of pneumonia were
received with not to say satisfaction, but something that nearly
approached it.  She gave the girl much sound advice, and as they strayed
together onward from point to point through the grounds, which Lady
Campstown knew _con amore_, she found herself equipped with an
astonishing relish for the situation so unexpectedly attained.  When
they were both quite out of breath with talking and walking, she
furthermore accepted, graciously, an invitation to step indoors and
rest.  She had thought her new friend a tyro in social arts, but when
they reached the top of the long, hot gleaming flight of white marble
stairs, and stood together between the potted bamboos and pelargoniums
in the vestibule, was pleased to have her step back with charming grace
and execute a little curtsey, saying:

"I don't think you can know that my name is Pamela Winstanley, and I'd
be very glad if you wouldn't mind telling me yours."


It is not, therefore, to be numbered among things incredible that soon
after four o'clock that afternoon, when the sun like a ball of fire had
dropped behind the blue barrier of the Esterels, leaving the world to
darkness and a sudden glacial chill, Miss Winstanley, attended by one of
her brand-new footmen carrying a sheaf of rare roses, repaired, in her
turn, through the little green doorway in the flowery wall dividing
Villa Reine des Fees from Villa Julia.  She was wrapped in a smart
fur-lined cloak, and her mission was to take tea with Lady Campstown!

A trim maid ushered her into the long, low drawing-room with its
hangings of sunflower yellow, its mirrors and consoles and twin Empire
sofas, its square of dull red Turkey carpet in the centre of a slippery
waste of parquetry, its brass-trimmed tables and chairs, bought with the
house and never altered. But over all had been diffused a look of home
that Villa Reine des Fees could not attain.  There was a folding screen
covered with miniatures, behind the couch whereon Lady Campstown sat
crocheting in rosy wool one of the new _pelerines neigeuses_; there were
flowers and books and a wide writing-table, with silver bound blotting
book and silver fittings. A small table, covered with a web of white
linen and lace that a Cardinal might have worn upon a day of festa, was
spread for the tea to be brought in by and by; and Posey did not know
that, to fit it to her guest's age and supposed tastes, Lady Campstown
had sent a special messenger to the rue d'Antibes for marrons glaces and
wondrous crystallized fruits!

A little fire of gnarled olive roots, pine cones, and eucalyptus boughs
was blazing on the hearth.  The girl, carrying her own flowers now,
paused on the threshold with an exclamation of delight.

"Oh! how good, how sweet of you to let me come!" she cried, "and,
please, would you think me very rude if I sat down on the rug and played
with your Orange pussy?"


The tea over, the new friends talked with ever-increasing cordiality.
Lady Campstown soon knew all there was to know of the girl's former
modest position in life and her recent information by her father that
she was expected to spend his large income as she pleased.

"He asked me, poor dear, not to hold back for anything in reason, but to
find out all that we ought to have, and order it.  And you'd better
believe, Lady Campstown, that an American girl knows how to do that
same! It seems he had a talk on our steamer, just before we landed, with
a friend both he and I trust in, and she told him it was his duty to
live up to his fortune.  He's known he had all this money for nearly a
year past, but had no idea how to begin to spend it.  And so we branched
right out in Paris, and got a suite of rooms that a royalty had before
us.  I went straight off to the Only Adorable Worth, and bought
everything in the way of gowns.  I had masters in French and singing,
and when we drove in the Bois, or went to the galleries and shops, and
everybody stared, I took to it as naturally as a duck to water.  But I
must say it was lonesome.  I longed and longed for somebody to tell how
I felt about it all in my inmost heart....  Then, my darling old daddy
fell ill, and his life was in danger, and all the grandeur fell flat as
a pancake.  I didn't care a straw for my clothes, my carriage, my fine
maid, even my new pearls--the whirling wheel of life stood still, still,
and I heard only my heart-beats!  I thought I was going to lose the
dearest, tenderest father in the world, and be left a poor wretched
orphan with nothing but things to comfort me!"

She had sprung up from the rug and was by this time seated on the couch
beside Lady Campstown, and that lady's kind little hand had found its
way into hers.  If the dowager felt, at moments, a little dizzy with the
speed at which this episode of new acquaintance had progressed, she had
only to look across the room at the portrait of a girl who would have
been thirty had she lived, but in her mother's eyes seemed forever just
eighteen.  Maybe she would have been ungrateful, unloving, _mondaine_ or
_devote_; she might have married ill, or died in bringing a child into
the world; or any one of a thousand every-day happenings might have
robbed the mother of joy in her companionship.  But, to Lady Campstown,
her lost daughter was always young, prosperous, lovely, beyond reproach;
and for her sake, Pamela Winstanley, with all her imperfections of
bringing-up upon her golden head, was forgiven much!  What wonder that
before they separated Posey had received assurance that Lady Campstown
would look after her in various substantial ways; and that Mr.
Winstanley's new motor car, ordered from Paris, being yet to come, the
girl should be invited to take her first view of the riant little town
from the cushions of Lady Campstown's well-known old landau, with the
quiet black horses and sober coachman?  When they had thus agreed to go
shopping together in the tempting, if narrow and sunless, rue d'Antibes,
and Posey, for the second time, had arisen to take her leave, her eye
fell upon an imperial photograph, framed in silver, of a man she
recognized with a swift leap of the heart.

"My nephew Clandonald," said the dowager, heaving a little affectionate
sigh.  "Almost all I have left to love.  He is a dear fellow, and has
been much sinned against.  Just now he is somewhere in the Balkans
loafing, as he calls it, with his friend M. de Mariol, but I trust he
will come back soon, and that certain things I hope for him will become
realities.  I don't mind telling you, my dear, that there is a young
lady in the case, and that she's a countrywoman of your own.  I have met
her, and love her already for his sake, but there's been mischief made,
and it will take time to straighten out the tangle of my poor Clan's
heart affairs, and, when you and I know each other better, I will
explain. In the meantime, we won't talk of it.  You'll be ready at
half-past ten to-morrow, when I call for you?  I'll take you around to
the right tradespeople, and afterwards we'll have a little turn on the
Croisette."

"An American girl!" Posey said within herself.  "It must be said he
found consolation very soon."  She was conscious of feeling rather
blank.




                             *CHAPTER VII*


"When in doubt where to go, stay in Paris," had been for some years of
travel Miss Bleecker's favorite saying.  Helen, who had no great love
for the place from her chaperon's point of view, simply acquiesced when
told it was too early to go south.  She begged Miss Bleecker to go on
with her own routine. Mornings in the shops were followed by luncheons
with old friends among the American residents, where, after luxurious
eating and drinking of light wines, the women sat for hours rooted upon
down couches, propped by silken cushions, exchanging hearsays of
stupendous gossip about their common acquaintances. Upon Miss Bleecker's
return from one of these intimate entertainments, Helen's views of human
nature were lowered for days to come.

In the afternoon, Miss Bleecker generally drove out with her charge, or
left cards upon people who would have resented her getting in as
earnestly as she.  In her smart wrap and voluminous furs, with, her
plumed hat and dotted veil, the chaperon justly flattered herself that
some of the glances bestowed upon their victoria in the Bois and along
the Champs Elysees were a late plum fallen to her share.  In Central
Park, at home, and in Fifth Avenue, every one knew it was only the same
old Sally Bleecker in a new French hat.  Miss Bleecker had heard it
suggested that one must come abroad to find a proper deference paid to
years of maturity, which secretly was not what she desired.  Her taste
was neither for the cold-blooded pushing to the wall of her generation
by young Americans, nor yet the reverent hand-kissing of the ancient,
observable in high life abroad.  Since her morals were above reproach,
all she really asked was a recognition by the public of her successful
illustrations of the methods of Paquin and Alphonsine.

There were always teas to drop in for, after the drives, at the
cosmopolitan resorts of Ritz, or Columbin, or Rumpelmayer, or in private
dwellings.  In Paris, the division of time between five and seven in the
afternoon has become as important for the achievement of social idling
of both sexes as in London.

It is in New York where the tea-drinking habit is a graft among the men,
and to the women an intermittent sacrifice to fashion's shrine.  Miss
Bleecker was of the sort whom the steam of the tea-kettle inebriates as
well as cheers.  She could better exist without her evening orisons than
her cup of tea between four and five.

When the ladies returned to their hotel, there was barely time to dress
for dinner or the play.  Miss Bleecker's dinner list in Paris was larger
than in New York, where Sally Bleecker was beginning to be _vieux jeu_.
Abroad, she was welcomed by the translated Americans living in various
capitals, who were sure of hearing from her the few things about the
private lives of their friends at home that had not got into their
newspapers.  Lastly, but decidedly not least, she had had the wisdom to
perfect herself in bridge, which Helen detested, in common with all
games of cards. Whenever Miss Carstairs elected to go off with friends
of her own to dine and pass the evening, and her young lady put on a tea
gown and ordered a plate of soup and a wing of chicken in their own
salon, the chaperon was in glory.  In a black net dress, largely
bespangled, with a dog-collar of excellently imitated pearls around the
doubtful portion of her throat beneath the chin, with her hair admirably
groomed and her nails perfectly manicured, wearing her best evening
manner and longest gloves, old Sally would run down stairs nimbly to the
fiacre that was to take her to her earthly Paradise of bridge!  Or else
in company with a playmate of seventy-two, who smoked cigarettes
eternally, wore low scarlet gowns and rarely dined at home, she would go
on from place to place, exhilarated beyond fatigue, whispering inwardly
to herself there was nothing like this at her home across the sea.

Helen would have been wofully tired of this life had she not possessed
the resources of a rational cultivated woman, and the ability to extract
the real kernel of Parisian life, in addition to the acquaintance of a
few clever people with whom she could fraternize in her own way.  After
all, as well Paris as elsewhere for the living down of a great clutching
emotion such as her brief passion for John Glynn!  She had been spared
hearing Posey Winstanley talk about him as her possession, since the
Winstanleys had quitted Paris early in December, just before their own
arrival there.  She had heard in various ways how old Herbert had taken
her advice literally, and enrolled himself among the money spenders of
their liberal nation.  With astonishing rapidity, the fame of the
stunning young Southern beauty had been bruited abroad.  It was related
that a semi-royal personage who had seen her going up the staircase of
her hotel had addressed to her father a proposal for her hand, which had
been refused by the wise old gentleman without conveying the fact to his
daughter.  It was known that she had been "taken up" by the best people
in Cannes.  A little breeze of laudation concerning her was forever
blowing where gossips congregate in _le monde ou l'on s'amuse_.  I

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