The Oyster

by Peer

CHAPTER XI

A solemn child, healthy in body, but with wistful eyes, paddled his spade into wet shingly sand at Bournemouth. He was precociously wise, already given to thought, to wondering as children wonder.

What Cyril wondered was why there were so many scold words in the world? Why it was always, "Don't, Cyril!" and "Cyril, run away!" or "Cyril, I will not have you rough to your brother."

Why mother, who was a beautiful thing, would catch up little Cecil and look so bitterly at him, and on more bitterly still to Cyril.

"Funny how her ladyship adores Master Cecil," Mrs Stanson would confide to the under-nurse; "being delicate, I suppose."

Cyril was heir to four places, to grouse moors and fishings, to diamonds and plate and pictures, all entailed. Cecil would have a younger son's ample portion, and no more. Cecil was puny, a weakling; his father sighed over him.

Paddling his spade, Baby Cyril came round the castle, brushed a little roughly against Baby Cecil; the spoilt child fell and whimpered.

"Cyril sorry. I sorry, Cecil."

"Cyril, you rough little wretch!" Lady Blakeney leant forward, slapping the boy harshly. "You little bully!"

"I"—Cyril touched the white place which stung on his soft cheek, the white which turned to dull red. "I—" His mouth quivered, but he said nothing, merely looked out at the heaving sea.

The pathos in his child's eyes might have touched anyone but a mother jealous of another woman's child, storming behind a rage which must be hidden.

Esmé Carteret's baby must oust Denise's son from his kingdom.

"Ah, Denise! How can you?" A pained cry, another woman springing forward, catching the slapped baby to her. "Denise! How can you!"

"Why not, Esmé? He's a born bully. Bad-tempered, always hurting Cecil. A great strong tyrant."

The women's eyes met with anger and dislike flashing in both glances.

It was not altogether chance which had brought Esmé to Bournemouth. She hunted health now, strove for what once had been hers to trifle with—hunted health and peace, and found neither.

Denise's payments were desultory; she had to show outward civility to Esmé to make up for the half-yearly hush-money. Sir Cyril had houses at Bournemouth; she had offered one to the Carterets for nothing.

"Poor Esmé, Cyril. I told her she might have the little lodge. She's looking wretched."

"She's the most restless being on earth. Of course, Den; give it to her. If she had a pair of boys, now, as you have."

"Yes." Denise had to hide the pain in her eyes, for with Cecil's birth had come a fierce mother-love, making the careless indifference which she had felt for Cyril turn to bitter dislike. He got the measles, brought it to her boy, who almost died of it; whooping-cough, before the child was old enough to bear it well.

They were down at Blakeney Court when Denise told her husband that she had lent Esmé the lodge. The boys were playing outside; the little one crawling solemnly, Cyril arranging sticks and flowers into a pattern.

"He's got an extraordinary look of someone," said Sir Cyril. "Cecil's a true Blakeney, if he wasn't so delicate; but Cyril's finer—not like us; he mopes and dreams already."

If there were no Cyril! Denise clenched her hands, understood how men felt before they brushed aside some life in their path. That day was wet later; she found the children playing in the picture-gallery, with Nurse Stanson showing a friend the Romneys and the Gainsboroughs, and other treasures which represented a fortune.

Cyril loved one cavalier, painted on a fiery charger, an impossible beast, all tail and eyes and nostril. The boy was happy staring at the picture, patting at the great frame. "Cyrrie's man," he would say. "Cyrrie's man."

"Oh, Cyril's man—all Cyril's men," Denise flashed out furiously. "No men for Cecil."

"Cecil not care for Cyril's man, mummie," the child's eyes looked wistfully at Denise. "He never look up yet."

"Oh, they'll all be yours—gloat over it!" snapped Denise. "Take your friend on, Mrs Stanson; show her the picture of Lady Mary Blakeney—the one by Lely. Yes, all yours!" Half unconsciously she pushed Cyril; he slipped on the polished floor, slid toward the fireplace, fell with his yellow head not three inches from the old stone kerb.

Nurse Stanson ran to him, screaming. Demon-driven, Denise had watched. If—if—the little pate had hit the hard, cold stone, if her boy had been left heir.

"All right, mummie—Cyril not hurt," he had said, bravely, as he got up.

And now—they were playing at Bournemouth, and Baby Cyril had come through croup, with the best doctors in London striving against King Death for the life of Sir Cyril's heir.

How many children would have died in the wheezing, cruel struggle! At heart it made Denise a murderess, and she hated herself for it.

"You—you are cruel to that child," Esmé said. "You are, Denise. Take care."

Two small, sand-dusted hands pushed her away. Cyril backed with dignity.

"Mummie only made a miftook, tank you," he said—"only a miftook."

He was loyal to the woman who hated him. Her child, yet he pushed her away, would not accept the clinging tenderness of her hands. Esmé sat down again, her eyes hard and bitter.

The years had changed her greatly. Her dazzling beauty had not so much faded as hardened. Her eyes were still bright, her hair gold; but the flush of red-and-white was all art now; her mouth had tightened; the brightness of her blue eyes was that of aching restlessness.

She had tried rest cures and come away half maddened by the quiet, by her leisure to think. She had travelled and come home to England because the boy was there.

Sometimes she would turn to Bertie, show the same half-wild outbursts of tenderness which she had first shown on the day she had sold the pendant; trying to find comfort in his caresses, clinging to him, pouring out tender words. Then the phase would pass. Without perfect confidence perfect love cannot exist. There was a secret between them; they were lovers no longer. For weeks she would go her own careless way, spending recklessly, always in debt, paying off the mites on account which make debts rolling snowballs, mounting until they crush the maker.

Sometimes Denise was difficult to get at; sometimes she said she was afraid of Sir Cyril. The boy's price came in small sums, fifties, twenties; often frittered away on a day or two's foolish amusement.

Old Hugh Carteret made his will, left it ready for signature.

"When you have a child, Bertie, I will leave you everything," he said, "and make your allowance up to what my boys had." He sighed as he spoke of his loss.

Esmé would have welcomed a child now—a mite to wipe out Cyril's memory, but none came to her.

She had taken to concealing her debts, to paying them as well as she could, for Bertie grew sterner as the years passed.

"I believe that Reynolds girl advises him," Esmé once confided to Dollie Gresham. "They're always talking sense."

"So frightfully trying," sympathized Dollie kindly; "kind of thing one learns up for maiden aunts, or uncles about to die; but in everyday life, unbearable."

Esmé's old friends dropped her a little; she lost her fresh, childish charm; she was always hinting at her poverty; asking carelessly to be driven about in other people's cars, picking up bundles of flowers and carrying them off, vaguely promising to send the money for them; but she hadn't time to go round to get her own. She wanted now to be entertained rather than entertain. She was feverishly anxious to win at bridge, and irritable to her partner if they lost.

The club saw more of her. Men friends dropped Esmé after a time; the disinterested spending of money is not the way of ordinary mankind. Dinners, suppers, flowers, theatres must have their credit account on one side of the ledger; and Esmé would have none of it.

Behind the aching love for her lost boy she liked her husband, and even if she had not liked him, would not have deceived him.

Stolen interviews, bribed maids, carefully-arranged country-house visits, were not of her life.

She sat still now, staring at the sea. Sometimes she would get into a bathing dress, and swim out. She was a fine swimmer, but the ripple of the salt water meant an hour's careful repairs. Her figure, too, had lost its supple beauty and she did not care to show it.

Estelle Reynolds was swimming, carefully, with short, jerky strokes, Bertie holding one hand under her small, firm chin.

Estelle's mother had married again; the girl lived on with her aunt in London. A dull life, only brightened by her friendship with the Carterets.

With eyes which would not see Estelle and Bertie Carteret had put aside that day in Devonshire, tried to hide from each other how sweet it was to meet and talk, how easy to drop into the fatally intimate confidences when man and woman tell of their childhood, and their hopes and fears and foolish little adventures, as men and women only tell to those they care for.

"She is no swimmer," said Esmé, contemptuously, "that Reynolds girl."

"Your husband takes care of her." Denise Blakeney's laugh was full of spiteful meaning. "He will teach her to swim, belle Esmé."

"I'll swim myself; I'll show them how." Esmé's bathing dress was by her side. She picked up the bundle, calling to her maid; regretted the impulse before she had got to her tent; flung herself hurriedly then into the thin webbing, fastened on stockings and sandals and a bright-coloured cap, and ran out.

"Here, Bertie, tell Estelle to look at me." Vanity breaking out as she poised on the board, slipped into the cool water, swam easily, powerfully out to sea; the rush of the water soothed her nerves; she was its master, beating it down, cleaving her way through it. Treading water, she looked through the translucent depths; how quiet it was there. What if she gave up struggling and slid down to peace? She looked down, morbidly fascinated. But before peace there would be a choking struggle; the labouring of smothered lungs for precious air; the few moments of consciousness before the blackness came.

A child's voice rose shrilly from the shore.

"No, mumsie, Cyril didn't. He not sorry, 'cos he didn't."

Esmé turned and swam back. She could not die. She would have a son of her own to still the longing for the sad-eyed boy she had sold.

"See, Estelle—strike out! Don't be afraid. Let Bertie go."

"But I am afraid, horribly. And I like one toe on the sand," said Estelle, placidly. "I swim all short, somehow."

"It's because you are afraid." No one was looking at her; Esmé's interest in the swimming died out suddenly; she grew bored again, fretful.

She went in, the bathing dress clinging to her, showing how thin she was growing.

"You had better go in too, Estelle. You've been out for an hour. No, you'll never swim the Channel."

Half nervously Bertie sent the girl away, tried to forget the thrill of contact as he held up the firm little chin, as he touched her soft round limbs in the water.

The girl was so completely fresh and virginal, with a new beauty growing in her face and sweet grey eyes. She was lithe, active; he watched her run to catch his wife, to walk in beside her.

Esmé was quite young, but she walked stiffly; she was growing angular.

The two women pulled to the flap of the tent, flinging off their dripping things. Esmé had thrown a silken wrapper over her shoulders; she stood looking into the long glass she had hung up in a corner. A sense of futile anger racked her as she looked; the powder was streaked on her face; the rouge standing out patchily; she looked plain, almost old. The mirror showed her slim body, with limbs growing too thin, with her girlish outlines spoilt and gone. Behind her, unconscious of scrutiny, she watched Estelle drying herself vigorously, perfect of outline, with rounded arms moving swiftly, slight and yet well-covered, a model of girlish grace.

With a muttered exclamation Esmé looked at tell-tale marring lines, began hastily to put on her expensive under-garments; cobwebby, silken things, trimmed with fine real lace.

"Go for my powder, Scott"—Esmé's maids never stayed with her for long—"for my powder, quickly!"

"A clumsy woman." Esmé lighted a cigarette, sat in the shadow, accentuating the age she had seen by knowing of it, lines of unhappiness deepening in her handsome face.

Scott, objecting to a quarter of a mile in scorching heat, went mincingly. Came back with powder alone, without rouge or lip salve, or face cream—stood woodenly listening to an outburst of abuse. They were going on at once to a picnic luncheon; the motors were waiting. Denise had called out twice impatiently.

"You said powder, mem."

"I cannot go like this. I must get back; and they will not wait."

Esmé had denounced the picnic as a bore in the morning; now she knew what it would be like to sit alone at a cold luncheon and miss the drive.

"Madame"—a soft voice spoke outside the flaps of the tent. Scott, enraged and giving notice, had left to bridle in the sunshine—"is there anything I can do for Madame?"

It was Esmé's old maid, Marie. The girl came in with a Frenchwoman's deftness, and pulled a make-up box from her pocket.

"Pauvre, madame; after the bath too. I always carry this."

Marie dabbed swiftly until the streaked complexion was made cunningly perfect. Marie was out of a place—had left her last mistress, a plebeian nobody.

"With no dresses to come to me but those in violet silks or of the colour called tomato!" cried Marie. "Oh, Madame! And with no life, no gaiety, nothing but five-o'clock parties, and long luncheons, and, madame—oh, but raging when she lost at the bridge. Mon Dieu! So I left Madame. It is true one night I did put on the false plait—oh, but not carefully, for a dinner, but after a great scolding my fingers did tremble. Madame's great guest was an Eveque, what you call down Church, and strict. James the footman told me, and it was dreadful; it was to his lap the loose plait fell. I left. Madame is ravishing, and I would I were again in the service of my dear Madame."

It was easily arranged. Esmé forgot that Marie might know a little and guess more. She sent the irate Scott away immediately, and directed Marie to the house they were lodging in.

A glance at the glass had made Marie seem indispensable; a brilliantly handsome face was reflected there now, pink-cheeked, white-skinned, smooth.

"Esmé! What have you been doing? We are hopelessly late, and we are driving you."

"All my powder was washed off"—Esmé was frank, up to a certain point—"I'm sorry, Denise."

"And Cyril will bring the children; they are gone in the small car." Denise was irritated, impatient.

Sir Cyril drove; a big, pearl-grey Mercedes hummed away, nosing through traffic, sensitive as a child, eager as a hunter.

The picnic was on the cliffs, miles away. They lunched in a dazzling sun, since it is ever in the mind of man that he enjoys himself more away from his own cool dining-room, seated on hard ground in the heat.

The Blakeneys' cook knew that which was indigestible and therefore indispensable. Lobster mayonnaise, cold salmon, devilled shrimps, galantines, pastry, whipped cream.

The appetite of picnickers is a great thing, and one which towards tea-time wonders what possessed it. But girls laughed merrily, planning strolls by the shimmering sea; they had brought shrimp nets. Girls with pretty, unspoiled feet would take off shoes and stockings and paddle into pools, treacherous places where one slipped and wanted help to steady one.

Other girls would sit quiet in shady nooks. Youth loves its picnics where it may wander in couples; and mamma loves them, knowing how sunshine and fresh air and the folly of shrimp-hunting all lead to the hour when the young man feels he cannot do without the merry, pretty, foolish thing who cries "A crab!" and clings to him.

Denise had asked young people; she had no London friends down here. She watched them pair off as she sat down in the shade—listened to shrill laughs and merry voices.

Esmé, yawning, bored again, strolled away alone; there was no one she wanted to talk to. The sea had slipped far out; opal-tinted pools gleamed on the sands and shingle; brown seaweed clung to the rocks.

The children, busy with pails, were gathering shells and stones, looking with delight at the gay colours of the pebbles as they picked them up, wet and glistening, to fade into dull-hued things of red and brown and grey.

Esmé waited with them; helped Cyril to find yellow shells and brilliant bits of polished brick and pebble.

He looked pale, wistful. It was in her mind to shriek out her secret aloud—to pick the child up and cry out that he was hers and she would keep him.

How she had dreaded his coming; how gladly she had arranged the plot with Denise. And now she knew that her heart was no harder than other women's; that nature was stronger than her love of indolence and pleasure. If she had been honest and patient Bertie would be heir now to several thousands a year, and this child, her son, to a title. He was hers and she had cheated him, given him to a loveless life, sent him into unhappiness. Who would have dreamt of Denise having a child, of the bitter jealousy of this false son.

"And we dare not," whispered Esmé to the pebbles, "we dare not tell."

Cyril was settling his pebbles in rings and loops, making quaint patterns of them, on a strip of dry sand.

"Funny thing." Bertie Carteret strolled across to his wife. "I was always at that when I was a kiddie. Let me help, Cyril. I used to love making patterns."

"Did you?" said Cyril, solemnly. "I does."

Esmé saw the faces together. There was a likeness, faint, but yet plainly visible. The same level eyebrows, finely-cut nose, and eyes with their power to suffer.

"Playing?" Sir Cyril joined them, the children's faces lighting up, for they loved the big man. "We'll all play. Let's dig a castle. Cyrrie"—his arm closed round the elder boy—"mummie says you were naughty to-day—pushed Cecil."

"Mummie made a miftook," said Cyril equably.

"Mummies never make miftooks," Sir Cyril answered gravely. "Never. Cyril must be a better boy and not bully the baby. I don't want to punish you, Cyril."

"It doesn't last long, dad—if she'd like you to." The boy's eyes, with an old look in them, met Sir Cyril's. "I don't mind, dad—it's soon over."

Esmé's fingers closed on a handful of pebbles, so closely that when she let the wet stones fall her hands were marked and bruised.

The boy was telling them calmly that he was used to punishment. Her boy!

Sir Cyril grunted to himself. His wife adored delicate Cecil; had never cared for the elder boy. It puzzled the big man, vexed him, so that he made a pet of Cyril, loving him as the child whose coming had made such a change in his own life; the strong, big boy who was a credit to the name.

Foolish young people hunted for shrimps until they were weary; then, looking at the advancing sea, they whispered how dreadful it would be to drown, and listened, flushing, as proud young manhood assured them that to swim to shore with such a burden would be a joy. The crawling baby waves, inch deep in their advancing ripples, heard and laughed. To prove devotion young manhood would have welcomed white-crested rollers, swift currents running fiercely between them and the land.

Bertie had wandered far out, Estelle Reynolds with him.

They talked of books and plays, but always ending with the same subject, the lives of two human beings called Albert and Estelle.

"If one only could live down at Cliff End," he said. "I wanted to go there now, but Esmé would come here. Oh, how tired I am of asphalte and 'buses, and the comforts of clubs. I hunted five days last winter, Estelle."

"But you shot a lot," she said.

"At huge house-parties, with a two-hours' luncheon to be eaten in the middle of the day, and bridge to be played when one is dead sleepy after dinner. I have an old-fashioned liking for scrambling over rough ground with a setter and a spaniel, and bringing home a few snipe and a pheasant or a couple of duck. They give me more joy than my pile of half-tame pheasants, reared for slaughter, or my partridge or grouse. My friends wouldn't come to my shoots, Estelle. And—Esmé's friends"—he shrugged his shoulders—"they are too smart for me. She's straight herself as Euclid's line, but—one hears and sees—Dollie Gresham, for instance."

"Well?" said Estelle.

"She is a very clever bridge player," he said drily. "Oh, I say nothing, but I've watched the people she picks out to play with. Aspiring idiots who think high stakes give them a reputation as fine players. There's Gore Helmsley, too—the black-eyed Adonis. I meet him everywhere, and my desire to kick him flourishes unappeased. There are queer stories afloat about the man. There was Sybil Knox; she won't speak to him now, almost cut him at the Holbrooks last Christmas. He's running after Lady Gracie de Lyle now, a little, dolly-faced baby who goggles into his black eyes and thinks him magnificent."

"Oh, Bertie! Goggles!" said Estelle.

"Well, she does. She's got china-blue eyes, just like saucers; and she's barely eighteen. I spoke to her mother, and she said it would make the girl less school-girly to be taken up for a month or two by a smart man—that is a word," grunted Bertie, "which I'd like to bury. 'Smart'—it's a cloak for folly, extravagance, display and gambling—for worse. Never be smart, Estelle."

Estelle looked at her brown hands and remarked drily that she did not think she ever would be.

"They know no rest, these people," he said. "They wake to remember all they absolutely must do, and how many meals they must eat with their friends. Madame breakfasts in bed. Monsieur picks at devilled kidneys in the dining-room. He has his glass of port at twelve at the club. She has hers before she goes shopping. Then luncheon, bridge, drives, parties, tea; more bridge-parties, cocktails, dinner. Theatre, and bridge, a ball; supper; bridge again; devilled bones and chloral; they are too tired to sleep naturally. And since all this must pall, they must have some zest of novelty, and so go through the oldest round on earth—that of stolen meetings and hidden letters, and the finding out if a new lover has really anything new to say to them. If they lived in the country and looked after their houses and their gardens, and just had a yearly outing to amuse them, they wouldn't all go wrong from sheer nerves. The Town is swallowing home life, Estelle; the smell of the asphalte gets into their nostrils, the glitter and noise of restaurants become necessity. We cannot be bothered with a cook, so the restaurant for the flat can send us in what it chooses, called by any name it pleases. We get our breakfasts in now in the new flat. And anything else we want. Esmé only keeps two maids. Everything is exceedingly cold by the time I get it, and if we have people to dine it means crowds of things from Harrod's, but it all saves trouble. And to save trouble is the spirit of the age. To eat glucosey jams, and drink cider which never heard of apples, and so forth. I believe, in the future, that every square and street will have its monster kitchens with lifts running to each house. No one will cook."

"And one day," said Estelle, laughing, "will come the swing of the pendulum, and we shall go back to an England which bakes and preserves and brews, and finds out how healthy it makes its children."

"No." Bertie shook his head. "We are going too fast for that. So fast that one day, with its motors and aeroplanes, old England will find it has fallen over a cliff, and lies buried in the sand of Time, forgotten. The brakes will not always act, and exceeding the speed limit generally ends in disaster. We are a mighty nation, but always, always the sea-road for our supplies. We should starve here in a month if that was stopped. Some day it will be—by some strategy. Tea is ready—let us forget lobster and eat again."

Hot-faced footmen had built a big fire on the shore. The couples came flocking back to eat and drink again. Some shyly radiant, their afternoon a golden memory; others laughing too loudly for happiness; others visibly bored.

"The most absolute dullard," Rose whispered to her cousin, Hilda Hamilton. "He only made two remarks the whole afternoon, and one was 'that shrimpin' was shockin'ly wet.' And the other that 'he did hope it wouldn't wain to spoil the bathin'.'"

"Oh, Rose, he didn't lisp," laughed Hilda.

"Well, he ought to, he's such an idiot. Yes, I'll take muffins, thank you. How clever toasting them."

"There was a fire," said the dull youth, sapiently; "it made it easier."

"Oh, it would." Miss Rose giggled over her muffin.

The opal tints grew wider on the sea as it creamed in over the sands; the murmur of the baby waves grew louder.

Marie was airing her triumphant return at the door of Esmé's pretty house. She had tripped into the bedroom, altered and arranged, peered into the cupboards.

"Ciel! but Madame has now an outfit," said Marie; "it is good that I return. Evidently Madame has an income."

Scott, the ousted one, waited stolidly for her wages, and grumbled in the kitchen, hinting spitefully that she might not receive them at once.

Marie settled and sang, and settled, poring over the heaped letters on Esmé's tables, raising her thin eyebrows at the gathering of bills.

"I wonder"—Marie laid down an urgent letter from a Bond Street firm—"where Madame went when she sent me away. I have always wondered," said Marie, tripping down the path of the little garden.

A young man strolling by stopped in amazement, listened to Marie's voluble explanations. A freckled youth, who kept a little hairdresser's shop, and hoped in time to keep fair Marie over it as part proprietress. Marie possessed schemes for moving westwards and becoming affluent. The youth's name was Henry Poore, his hobby photography.

"Tiens! they come, and you must go," said Marie, seeing the big motor humming to the door of the Blakeneys' house. "Ah! it is well that I came here, for there are many clothes and a fine wage, and voila! there is Monsieur le Capitaine. See, he stands with a thin mees."

Henry Poore looked down the road. "Seems I've seen him before," he said. "Sure I have."

"Laikely. Ze world is full of meetings," observed Marie. "He was soldier; he has now retire. Oh, Henri, I am happy. Nevair did I have so good a time as with this Madame. You shall come to do her hair for ze Court. You shall be great hairdresser. Allez vite, quick!"

Marie made an appointment, and Henry walked off. But the invisible lines of fate were closing round Esmé. She had taken up one herself when she re-employed Marie, who knew just a little too much.

Scott, dourly respectful, waited for her due.

"Four months, mem, if you please."

"Give it to her, Bertie. I am tired."

"But—I gave you the wages cheque each month, Esmé," Bertie said sharply. "Why did you not pay the woman?"

"I suppose I spent it on something else. Don't fuss over a few pounds. Give it to her and let her go. Tell her not to come to me for recommendations."

Esmé strolled off to give herself over to the deft brown hands, to be powdered, tinted into new beauty, to have her golden hair re-done.

"It is not the money. It is only a few pounds, but it is always the same thing," muttered Bertie to himself as he wrote the cheque, "always."

"Sure to be right, sir?" Scott permitted herself a little veiled insolence.

"Right? What do you mean, Scott?"

"Mrs Carteret's were not always, sir," snapped Scott, primly. "Several shops have had to apply again. Thank you, sir. Good-night."

The block of a fat cheque-book was looked at unhappily. The balance left was so small, and there was no more money due until Christmas. Bertie Carteret sighed drearily. Another lot of shares must go; long-suffering luck be trusted to replace them.

Esmé, in one of her gay moods, came down, dressed in filmy white, black velvet wound in her burnished hair, a glittering necklace at her throat. She chattered incessantly, hung about Bertie with one of her outbursts of affection.

Marie had given Madame ah, but a tiny thing for the nairves, a thing she had learnt of at Madame la Comtesse's and treasured the prescription. Marie had prescribed further, suggested massage, a sure cure for nervous ills.

Esmé made plans in her head; leapt from reckless despair to reckless hope. She spent in imagination the big allowance Bertie's uncle would give them; she saw herself "my lady." She felt clinging fingers in hers, saw baby faces in her house. She would brush away the effect of her own wicked folly; she would be happy and rich and contented.

So, with her thoughts leaping ahead, she frightened Bertie by talking of her plans; they comprised country houses, a yacht, hunters, jewels, new frocks.

"I'll have that sable coat altered. The Furrier Company will do it for a hundred pounds. I'm sick of it. We'll go to Tatts, Bertie, and buy you a couple of hunters."

"Out of what?" he asked gravely.

"Out of—futurity," Esmé laughed. "Estelle, don't look sensible; it worries me. Look here, children, I'm not well. I'm going over to Paris to see Legrand. That dull doctor's wife I met to-day says he can cure death itself. And then, when I am well—"

With flushed cheeks and shining eyes she perched on the arm of Bertie's chair, her fingers caressing his hair. "And then," she said, bending and whispering to him.

He flushed, but took her hot white fingers in his.

"Oh, it's for that," he said, in a low voice—"for that, Esmé."

"For that. Then I'll settle down—give up Society," she said, jumping up and running to the window. "Come, we'll go out and join the trippers. I wonder Denise has not sent for me to play bridge. No, we won't go out; ring up the Adderleys, Bertie. They'll always play.... It's too dull just walking out in the dark."

It was always too dull to do anything which left room for thought.

Esmé played until morning, then, with the effect of the nerve tonic worn off, went irritably upstairs, knowing that nothing but chloral would give her rest that night.

"Tell Monsieur I am not well, that I must sleep alone. That will do, Marie. You can go."

Marie held the cobwebby nightdress ready to put on, but Esmé sent the maid away.

Marie laid down the scented silken thing and went thoughtfully.