THE ELDEST SON

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

Author of "Exton Manor"

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919

To
KATHLEEN

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I [The Squire Is Infernally Worried]
II [A Question of Matrimony]
III [Exit Miss Bird]
IV [The Dower-House]
V [Lady George]
VI [Blaythorn Rectory]
VII [The Squire Puts His Foot Down]
VIII [The Squire Feels Trouble Coming]
IX [Dick Pays a Sunday Visit]
X [The Meet at Apthorpe Common]
XI [Dick Leaves Kencote and Makes a Discovery]
XII [The House Party]
XIII [The Hunt Ball]
XIV [A Shoot]
XV [The Guns and the Ladies]
XVI [The Money Question]
XVII [Sunday and Monday]
XVIII [Mrs. Clinton Chooses a Governess]
XIX [Mrs. Clinton In Jermyn Street]
XX [Aunt Laura Intervenes]
XXI [An Engagement]
XXII [Dick Comes Home]
XXIII [Humphrey Counts His Chickens]
XXIV [Virginia Goes to Kencote]
XXV [A Lawn Meet]
XXVI [What Miss Phipp Saw]
XXVII [The Run of the Season]
XXVIII [Property]
XXIX [Brothers]
XXX [Miss Bird Hears All About It]

CHAPTER I

THE SQUIRE IS INFERNALLY WORRIED

"Nina," said the Squire, "I'm most infernally worried." He was sitting in his wife's morning-room, in a low chair by the fire. In front of him was a table set for tea for one—himself. There were buttered toast and dry toast and preserves, a massive silver teapot, milk jug, cream jug, and sugar basin, a breakfast cup of China tea, and two boiled eggs, one of which he was attacking, sitting forward in his chair with his legs bent. He had come in from hunting a few minutes before, at about six o'clock, and it was his habit thus to consume viands which most men of his age and bulk might have been afraid of, as likely to spoil their dinner. But he was an active man, in spite of his fifty-nine years and his tendency to put on flesh, and it would have taken more than a tea that was almost a meal to reduce his appetite for dinner at eight, after a day in the saddle and a lunch off sandwiches and a flask of sherry. When his tea was over he would indulge himself in half an hour's nap, with the Times open at the leader page on his knee, and go up to dress, feeling every inch of him a sportsman and an English country gentleman.

His tea was generally brought to him in his library. This evening a footman had followed him into that room immediately upon his entering the house, as usual, had unbuckled his spurs, pulled off his boots for him, and put on in their place a pair of velvet slippers worked in silk, which had been warming in front of the fire. Only when his coat was wet or much splashed with mud did the Squire change that. He considered smoking-jackets rather effeminate, and slippers, on ordinary occasions, "sloppy." It was only in his dressing-room or on these evenings after hunting that he wore them. Otherwise, if he had to change his boots during the daytime he put on another pair. He was particular on little points like this. All his rules were kept precisely, by himself and those about him.

This evening he had told the footman, and the butler who had followed him into the room with the tray, that he would have his tea in Mrs. Clinton's room, and he had marched across the hall with a firm and decisive step, in his red coat and buckskin breeches, between which and his hand-knitted heather-mixture socks showed a white expanse of under-drawers round a muscular calf.

Mrs. Clinton sat opposite to him in another low chair, at work on a woollen waistcoat. He always wore waistcoats made by her, thick for the winter, light for the summer, and she knitted his socks for him, of which he required a large number, for he hated them to be darned. He liked to see her working for him like this. He was a rich man, but a woman ought to work with her hands for her husband, whether he was rich or poor. It was her wifely duty, and incidentally it kept her out of mischief. Mrs. Clinton, at the age of fifty-four, with her smooth yellow-grey hair and her quiet and composed face, did not look as if she would be up to serious mischief, even if this and other restrictions were removed from her. She looked up when her husband addressed her, and marked the furrow between his heavy eyebrows. Then she looked down again at her work and waited for him to unbosom himself further.

"How old is Dick?" asked the Squire, leaning forward to put a spoonful of yolk of egg into his mouth with one hand, while he shielded his grey beard with the other.

She knew then the subject upon which he had expressed himself as infernally worried, for he was not accustomed to keep the first stirrings of discontent to himself.

"He was thirty-four last April," she said.

"Thirty-four," he repeated. "Yes; and I was twenty-four when I married you. That's early. I shouldn't advise any young man to marry at that age, unless, perhaps, he was the only one to keep a name going—as I was, of course—at least in my immediate family. But thirty-four! It's really time Dick thought about it. He's the eldest son. It's his duty. And as far as I can see he never gives the matter a thought. Eh?"

"As far as I can see he is not thinking about it," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Well, if I couldn't see you couldn't see. I say it is time that he did begin thinking about it. I'm getting on now—good for another twenty years, I should hope, but I want to see the succession assured. Walter is the only one of the boys that's married, and he's only got two girls. Of course, he may have a son—they're coming pretty quick—but I've never got over that doctoring business. I shouldn't like the heir of Kencote to be brought up in a place like Melbury Park, and I say so freely—to you."

This was the echo of an old disturbance. The Squire's third son had refused to take Orders, with a view of occupying the family living, but had studied medicine, and was now practising in a suburb of London, and not one of the most genteel suburbs either. That furrow always appeared faintly in the Squire's brow when he was forced to mention the distasteful words Melbury Park.

"I think it would be a good thing if Dick were to marry," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Good thing? Of course it would be a good thing. That's just what I'm saying. There's Humphrey; he doesn't look much like marrying, either. In fact, if he doesn't pick up a wife with a pot of money, I'd rather he didn't. He spends quite enough as it is. I've no opinion of that London life, except for a bit when a man's young and before he settles down. Dick has been in the Guards now for—what?—twelve years. I never meant that he should take up soldiering as a profession. Just a few years spent with a good regiment—as I had myself, in the Blues—that's all right for a young fellow who has a good property to succeed to. But an eldest son ought to settle down, on the property, and get married, and have sons to succeed him."

"Dick comes here a good deal," said Mrs. Clinton, "and he takes an interest in the property."

"Well, I should hope he did," responded the Squire. "The property will belong to him when my time's over. What do you mean?"

"I only mean that Dick is not wrapped up in London life and all that goes with it, as Humphrey seems to be."

"Oh, Humphrey! I've no patience with Humphrey. If Kencote isn't good enough for him let him stay away. Only I won't pay any more bills for him. He has a good allowance and he must keep within it. I've told him so. Now if I'd put him into the army, instead of the Foreign Office, he might have stuck to it and made a profession of it. I wish I had—into a working regiment. It would have done him all the good in the world. However, I don't want to talk about Humphrey. I don't expect an heir to come from him; and Frank is too young to marry yet. Besides—a sailor! It's better for him to marry later. Dick ought to marry, and there's an end of it. And when he comes down to-morrow I shall tell him so."

Mrs. Clinton made no immediate reply, but after a pause, during which the Squire came to the end of his eggs and began to attack the buttered toast, she said, "I have to tell you something, Edward, which I am afraid will disturb you."

"Besides," pursued the Squire in his loud, resolute voice, "there's the dower-house standing empty now. If Dick were to get married soon I need not bother about finding a tenant for it. I don't want to let it; it's too near here. If we got people there we didn't like it would be an infernal nuisance. Eh, Nina? What were you saying?"

"I am sorry to say," said Mrs. Clinton, "that Miss Bird is going to leave us."

The Squire was just about to put a piece of toast into his mouth, which was half open for its reception. It remained half open while he looked at his wife, the toast arrested halfway. "Miss Bird! Leave us!" he exclaimed when he had found his voice. He could hardly have been more astounded if his wife had announced that she was going to leave him, and indeed Miss Bird had lived at Kencote nearly as long as Mrs. Clinton, and had initiated into the mysteries of learning all the young Clintons, from Dick, who was now thirty-four, down to the twins, Joan and Nancy, who were fifteen.

"She has talked about it for some time," said Mrs. Clinton. "She has felt that the children were getting beyond her, and ought to have better teaching than she can give them."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Squire. "I don't want the children turned into blue-stockings. I'm quite satisfied with what Miss Bird is doing for them, and if she wants telling so, for goodness' sake tell her, and let's have no more of such rubbish. Miss Bird indeed! Who's she to upset the whole house?"

"I am afraid she has determined to go, Edward," said Mrs. Clinton in her equable voice. "Her invalid sister, you know, has lost her husband, and there is no one else to look after her."

The Squire grunted. "Well, if that's the reason," he said, rather grudgingly, "I suppose we can't complain, although it's a most infernal nuisance. I've got used to Miss Bird. She's a silly old creature in some respects, but she's faithful and honest. Now we shall have to get used to somebody else. Really, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. Life is hardly worth living with all these worries. One never seems to get a moment's peace. I'm going into my room now, Nina, to read the paper for a bit."

"I should like to talk to you for a few minutes longer about the children," said Mrs. Clinton. "As a change has to be made, I want to make a thorough one. It is quite true that they are beyond Miss Bird, even if she could have stayed. I should like to send them to a good school for two or three years, and then to France or Germany for a year."

The Squire bent his brows in an amazed frown. "What on earth can you be thinking of, Nina?" he exclaimed. "France or Germany? Nice healthy English girls—teach 'em to eat frogs and horse-sausage—pick up a lot of affected nonsense! You can put that idea out of your head at once."

Mrs. Clinton's calm face flushed. "There is no need to talk of that for two or three years," she said. "I should like them now—when Miss Bird leaves us—to go to a really good school in England, where they can learn something."

"Learn something? What do you mean—learn something? Haven't they been learning something all their lives—at least since Miss Bird began to teach them? What does a girl want to learn, except how to read and write a good hand and add up accounts? I don't want any spectacled, short-haired, flat-chested females in my house, thank you. The children are very well as they are. They're naughty sometimes, I've no doubt, but they're good girls on the whole. Girls ought to be brought up at home under their mother's eye. I can't think what you want to send them away from you for, Nina. It isn't like you. I should have thought you would have missed them. I know I should, and they're not going to school."

"I should miss them very much," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Very well, then, let them stop at home. It's quite simple."

Mrs. Clinton was silent, bending her head over her work.

"You would miss them and I should miss them," pursued the Squire, after a pause. "No, there's no sense in it."

There was another pause, and then the Squire asked, "Why do you want to send them to school?"

Mrs. Clinton laid down her work and looked at him. "I should be satisfied," she said, "if they could get the teaching they ought to have at home. Perhaps I should prefer it. But it would mean a first-class governess living here, and——"

"Well, there's no objection to that," interrupted the Squire. "I dare say old Miss Bird is a little out of date. Get a good governess by all means; only not a blue-stocking, mind you."

Mrs. Clinton smiled. "I'm afraid she would have to be what you would call a blue-stocking," she said. "But she needn't show it. Clever girls don't wear spectacles and short hair necessarily nowadays."

"Oh, don't they?" said the Squire good-humouredly. He was leaning back in his chair now, looking at the fire. "How are you going to set about getting one?"

"I should ask Emmeline to help me." Emmeline was Lady Birkett, the wife of Mrs. Clinton's brother, the judge.

"Not a bad idea," said the Squire. "But I won't have any of your suffragettes. Herbert is a very good fellow, but he's a most pestilent Radical."

"You would let me offer a good salary, I suppose."

"What do we pay Miss Bird?"

"Only thirty pounds a year. She has never asked for more."

"She's a good old creature. I'm sorry for her sister. Is she well off, do you know?"

"I'm afraid very badly off."

"Then how will they get on? I suppose Miss Bird has saved a bit. She's had no expenses here except her clothes for many years."

"She told me she had saved about four hundred pounds."

"Has she? Out of thirty pounds a year! It's extraordinary. Still, that won't give her much, capitalised, poor old creature. I'll tell you what, Nina, I'll talk it over with Dick and see if we can't fix up a little annuity for her. She's served us well and faithfully all these years, and we ought to do something for her."

"Oh, Edward, I am so glad," said Mrs. Clinton. "I hoped you might see your way to helping her. She will be so very grateful."

The Squire lifted himself out of his chair. "Oh yes, we'll do something or other," he said. "Well, get another governess then, Nina, and pay her—what do you want to pay her?—forty?"

Mrs. Clinton hesitated a moment. "I want to get the best I can," she said. "I want to pay her eighty at least."

The Squire, in his moods of good humour, was proof against all annoyance over other people's follies. He laughed. "Oh, I should make it a hundred if I were you," he said.

"When the boys had Mr. Blake in their holidays," said Mrs. Clinton, "he had five pounds a week, and only had to teach them for an hour a day."

"That's a very different thing," said the Squire. "Blake was a University man and a gentleman. You have to pay a private tutor well."

"I want to get a lady," said Mrs. Clinton, "and I should like one who had been to a University."

"Oh, my dear girl," said the Squire, moving off down the room, "have it your own way and pay her what you like. Now is there anything else I can do for you before I go and write a few letters?"

"You are very kind, Edward, in letting me have my way about this. There is one more thing. If the children went to school they would have extra lessons for music and drawing or anything else that they might show talent in. Joan and Nancy have both got talent. I want to be able to have masters for them, from Bathgate—or perhaps even from London—for anything special that their governess cannot teach them."

The Squire was at the door. "Well, upon my word!" he said, nodding his head at her. Then he went out of the room.

CHAPTER II

A QUESTION OF MATRIMONY

Dick Clinton, the eldest son, arrived at Kencote at a quarter to eight, and went straight up to his room to dress. This young man—for, with his spare, upright frame, sleek head, and well-fitting clothes, he looked less than his thirty-four years—was as well served as his father, although he did not get his will by the same means; and the little wrongs of life, each of which the Squire, as they came along, dealt with as "a most infernal nuisance," he took more equably. He had brought his own servant with him, but had no need of him for the time, for his evening clothes were laid out for him, his shirt, with studs in and a collar attached, was hung over the back of a chair in front of the piled-up fire, and he had only to slip out of one suit and into another as if he had been in the house all day instead of having just reached the end of a journey of over three hours. These things were all a matter of course to him. The warm bright room, red-curtained, and quiet from the deep stillness of the country, gave him no particular sensation of pleasure when he entered it, except that he was cold from his journey and there was a good fire; nor, consciously, did the fact that this was his home, which he liked better than any other place, although he was more often than not away from it. He was thinking, as he began immediately in his quick neat way to change his clothes, that there was no apparent sign of the frost yielding, and fighting off his annoyance—for he hated to feel annoyed—at the stoppage of the morrow's hunting. He had very much wanted to hunt on the morrow, more than he usually wanted anything.

And yet he was, though he hardly knew it, pleased to be at home, and in this room, which had been his ever since he had left the nursery. The little iron bedstead was the one on which he had slept as a boy; the flat tin bath, standing against a wall with the bath-mat hung over it, was only rather the worse for wear since those days; the worn carpet, now more worn, was the same; and the nondescript paper on the walls, which were hung with photographs of his "house" at Eton, showing him amongst the rest in five stages, from the little fair-haired boy in his broad collar sitting cross-legged on the grass, to the young man with folded arms in a place of honour by his tutor. There were later Cambridge groups too, exhibiting him as Master of the Drag, in the eighteenth-century dress of the True Blue Club, and in other conjunctures of pursuits and companions, but nothing to mark a later date than his University days, unless it were the big photographs in silver or tortoise-shell frames on the mantelpiece and writing-table. Probably nothing had been added to the decoration of the room for a dozen years, only a few things for use—a larger wardrobe and dressing-table from another room in the house, a big easy-chair, a fur rug by the bed. The room contained everything he needed in such a room, and since he needed nothing there to please the eye, it had received nothing all these years, and would receive nothing until he should leave it for good, when he should be no longer the eldest son, but in his turn the head of the house.

He had nearly finished dressing when there was a knock at the door, and a voice, "Are you there, Dick? Can we come in?"

His rather expressionless face changed a little, pleasantly. "Yes, come along," he called out, and his young sisters came in in their fresh muslin frocks, their masses of fair hair tied back with big blue ribbons. They had that prim air of being dressed, which is different in the case of girls not quite grown up from that of their elder sisters. They were remarkably alike and remarkably pretty, and Dick, who stood at the dressing-table in his shirt sleeves tying his tie, although he did not turn round to greet them, noticed their appearance with approval through the glass.

"Well, Twankies," he said affably, as they went up to the mantelpiece and stood one on either side of the fire, "what's the news with you?"

"We are to have a new preceptress," said Joan, the elder, "vice the old Starling, seconded for service elsewhere."

Dick turned and stared at her. "Old Miss Bird leaving!" he exclaimed. "Surely not!"

"You can't be more surprised than we were," said Nancy—the twins generally spoke alternately. "She broke it to us in floods of tears this afternoon. Joan cried too."

"So did you," retorted Joan. "You blubbered like a seal."

"And it did me credit," said Nancy, accepting the charge with complete equanimity.

"What is she going for?" asked Dick.

"She has to go and look after her sister, poor old thing!" said Joan. "And she doesn't think she knows enough to take us on any further."

"We denied it hotly, to comfort her," continued Nancy. "But it's quite true. We have the brains of the family, and are now going to leave childish things behind us. I wish you'd make your watch ring, Dick."

Dick pressed the spring of his repeater, and the twins listened to its tinkle in silence. Nancy sighed when he put it into his pocket. "Even that isn't the treat that it used to be," she said. "We are getting too old for these simple pleasures. Joan is beginning to take an interest in dress, and I am often to be seen absorbed in a book. Dick, shall you kiss Miss Bird when you say good-bye? There's nothing she would love better."

"When is she going?" asked Dick, ignoring the question.

"In about a week," Joan replied. "Dick, I think you ought to kiss her, if you possibly can. You are the eldest, and nearer her heart than any of us. She told us so."

"I'll give you both a kiss and you can pass it on," said Dick, with an arm round each. "Come along down."

They went down to the morning-room, and on the stroke of eight Dick led his mother into dinner, the Squire following.

The twins settled themselves each in a corner of the big sofa in front of the fire. They usually read during the half-hour before they were summoned to dessert, but this evening they had something to talk about.

"I wonder what she'll be like," Nancy began.

"If Aunt Emmeline chooses her I should think she would be all right," said Joan.

Nancy considered this. "Yes," she said. "But she will have to be kept in her place. Of course we have always been able to do exactly as we like with the old Starling. Joan, we must conserve our liberties."

"Oh, I think we shall be able to do that," said Joan. "We must remain calm and polite."

"And keep up our reputation for eccentricity," added Nancy. Then they both giggled.

"You know, Joan, I think it's rather fun," Nancy proceeded. "I shan't a bit mind learning things now. I should have hated it a year or two ago. But you can't deny that it is rather slow at home."

"That's why Cicely ran away," said Joan. "She simply couldn't stand it any longer. But it doesn't worry me like that. We have a pretty good time on the whole."

"Yes, we see to that. But, of course, Cicely was much older. And after all, she didn't run very far—only to London, to see Walter and Muriel. And she soon came back."

"She had to. I believe there was more in that than we knew about."

Nancy looked up sharply. "Do you? Why?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I believe it had something to do with her engagement to Jim. She was married pretty soon after, anyhow, and there was no talk of it at the time."

"I wonder if we could find out."

"What's the good? And it's over two years ago now. I wonder if Dick would drive us over to Mountfield to see the babies to-morrow. He won't be able to hunt."

"He won't want to see the babies. Men are so silly in that way. They pretend they don't care for them."

"Father doesn't. He's just as silly about them as we are."

"It isn't silliness in us. We are women, and we understand. If a man does like a baby it's just as a toy."

"All the same, I think it does father credit liking his grandchildren. I should hardly have expected it of him."

"He's getting softer in his old age. Nancy, I wonder how mother persuaded him to let us have a really good governess. He'd think it quite absurd that girls should want to learn anything."

"My dear child, you could get anything you wanted out of father if you tackled him in the right way."

"Only some things."

"Anything, I said."

"I'll bet you four weeks' pocket-money that you couldn't get him to let us hunt."

"Oh, well! that's part of his religion. 'I may be old-fashioned—I dare say I am—but to see a pack of women scampering about the country and riding over the hounds—eh, what? No, thank you!' I didn't mean I could make him become a Roman Catholic, or anything of that sort. But I'll bet you what you like I'll get him to let us have a pony."

"Four shillings?"

"Right."

"Do you think you really can, Nancy? It would be jolly."

"I don't see why he shouldn't. Cicely always rode old Tommy, and so did we till he died."

"Only surreptitiously, and bare-backed. We should have to have habits and all that, now."

"Mother would see to that. Anyhow, I'll tackle him."

"How shall you manage it?"

"I shall think out a scheme."

"Dick might help. Nancy, I'll bet you eight weeks' pocket-money you can't get two ponies."

"I'll begin with one, and see how I get on. Now I think I'll immerse myself in a book."

Presently they were called into the dining-room and sat, one on each side of their father, cracking and peeling walnuts for him and eating grapes on their own account, demure and submissively responsive to his affectionate jocularity. "What big girls you're both getting!" he said. "And going to be turned into blue-stockings, eh, what! Have to buy you a pair of spectacles each next time I go to Bathgate." He laughed his big laugh, drank half a glass of port, and beamed on them. He thought they were the prettiest pair of young feminine creatures he had ever seen, and so little trouble too! It was a good thing for a man to have sons to carry on his name, but young girls were an attractive addition to a family, and to the pleasures of a big house. He had thought it rather ridiculous of his wife to present him with the twins fifteen years before, and seven years after his youngest son was born, but he had long since forgiven her, and would not now have been without them for anything.

When he and Dick were left alone over their wine there was a short pause, and then he cleared his throat and began: "I want to talk to you about something, Dick."

Dick threw a glance at him and took a puff at his cigarette, but made no reply.

The Squire seemed a little nervous, which was not usual with him. "Of course I don't want to interfere with you in any way," he said. "I've always given you a pretty free hand, even with the property, and all that sort of thing. I've consulted you, and you've had your way sometimes when we've differed. That's all right. It will belong to you some day, and you're—what?—thirty-four now."

"Yes," said Dick. "Thirty-four. Time to think of settling down, eh?"

The Squire brightened. "Yes, that's just it," he said. "Time to think of settling down. You've had enough soldiering—much more than I had. I never expected you would stick to it so long."

"I don't want to leave the service yet," said Dick calmly. "I'm down here pretty often—almost all my leave."

"Yes, yes, I know," said the Squire. "But if—if—— Well, look here, Dick—no use beating about the bush—why can't you get married?"

Dick smiled. "It wouldn't be a bad scheme," he said.

The Squire was pleased. He was getting on splendidly. "You feel that," he said. "Well, I haven't liked to say anything, but it's been on my mind for a long time." He then recapitulated the reasons why he thought Dick should marry, as he had enunciated them to Mrs. Clinton—his position as eldest son and heir to a fine property, his advancing age, the inadvisability of looking to Melbury Park as the cradle for a successor to the emoluments and amenities of Kencote, or of leaving it to Humphrey, the second son, to provide an heir. "The fact is, you ought to do it for your own sake," he wound up, "as well as for the sake of the place."

"Whom do you want me to marry?" asked Dick, with a shade of flippancy.

"Oh, well, I'd leave that to you," the Squire conceded handsomely. "You've a lot to offer. I should think you could pretty well take your pick—must have had plenty of opportunities all these years. You needn't look for money, though it's always useful. Any nice girl of good birth—of course you wouldn't want to marry one who wasn't. Good heavens! there must be a score of them presented every year, and you have been about London now for ten or twelve years. Do you mean to say you haven't got one in your mind?"

"Haven't you?" asked Dick.

"Well, if you like to consult me, why not Grace Ettien? Old Humphrey Meadshire would be delighted. She is his favourite granddaughter, and I'm sure he would like to see her married before he goes."

"Grace is a charming girl," replied Dick. "But I don't want to marry my cousin."

"Cousin! My dear fellow, old Humphrey and your grandfather were first cousins. You're surely not going to let that stand in the way."

"I've known her ever since she was a baby. She's a baby now. It would be like marrying one of the Twankies."

The Squire began to get fussed. "You're talking nonsense, Dick," he said. "She must be at least twenty-one. The fact is you have left it so long that an ordinary girl of a marriageable age seems a child to you. You'll be taking up with a widow next."

There was an appreciable pause before Dick asked, "Well, should you object so much to that?"

"Of course I should," said the Squire, "—for you. I shouldn't mind in the case of Humphrey, if she wasn't too old, and had enough money for the pair of them. I'm not going to pay any more of his debts. I'm sick of it."

Dick allowed the conversation to travel down this byroad for a time, and when the Squire brought it back to the original track, said, "Well, I'll think over what you say. But I don't know that I should care, now, about marrying a young girl."

The Squire turned this over in his mind, looking down on his plate, and his brows came together. "What do you mean?" he asked shortly. "You wouldn't want to marry an old woman."

Dick took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it.

"When I marry," he said decisively, "it will probably be a woman of nearer thirty than twenty."

The Squire made the best of it. "Oh, well—as long as she's not over thirty," he said. "Girls don't marry so young as they used to. But—well, you must think of an heir, Dick."

Dick made no reply to this, and the conversation ended.

CHAPTER III

EXIT MISS BIRD

Miss Bird arose on the next morning to find her window glazed with frost, and it was characteristic of her and of the house in which she had lived for over thirty years that her first thought was, "No hunting to-day"; although the deprivation could not be expected to hold any disappointment for herself, or indeed to affect her in any way.

Her second thought marked a drop to the sombre uneasiness in which she had spent wakeful hours during the night. She would not rise many more times in this familiar room, nor look out on to a scene which she had come to know so well at all seasons of the year that she could not help loving it. She would have liked to see the trees of the park, for a farewell, in their early June dress, the grass about them powdered with the yellow of buttercups. But she hoped so to see them again. She had been made to feel that she was parting from friends, that she was by virtue of her long and faithful service part of the family, that she would not lose them altogether. The Squire had said the day before, when he had made known to her that he had heard of her projected departure, "You must come and see us, you know, Miss Bird. The house won't be like itself without you."

Could anything be more gratifying—and from such a man? Mrs. Clinton, of course, had been kindness itself, had said just the right things to make a person feel herself valued, and said them as if she meant them, as no doubt, dear lady, she did, for she was always sincere. And the darling children had cried—she should never forget that as long as she lived—when she had told them that she was going. Here the simple lady found a tear trickling down her own sharp nose, and put a hairpin in her mouth while she wiped it away.

It seemed impossible that she should really be going. It was just upon thirty years since she had first come to Kencote, and it seemed like yesterday. She summoned up a rueful little smile when she recalled, in the light of her now assured position as "a member of the family," her palpitating nervousness on her introduction to the great house, so different from anything she had known. She had never been "out" before. She had had a good education, for those days, in the day school that her mother, the doctor's widow, and her elder sister had carried on in a little town in which she had been born, and had taught in it till she was twenty-eight. Then, after deep consultation, she had answered Mrs. Clinton's advertisement, and, her references having proved satisfactory, had been engaged to impart the rudiments of education to a child of five, which she had modestly thought she was as capable of doing as anybody, and at a salary that seemed to her munificent.

She remembered arriving at Kencote on a spring evening and being received by Mrs. Clinton, the pretty young wife and mother, who had been almost as shy as herself, but had been so anxious that everything should be "nice" for her that she had soon lost her awe of the big house and the many servants; and even the figure in the background from which all the splendour around her emanated lost some of its imaginative terror, since the lady of the house had proved so accessibly human. She had thought the little boy, whom she had been taken to see in bed, a darling, and so quaint when he asked her solemnly if she could jump a pony over a log, because he could. She had liked his quiet, elderly nurse, who had come to talk to her in her schoolroom when he had gone to sleep. She had called her "miss," and shown that she had no wish to "presume," but only the wish to be friendly, and they had, in fact, remained friends for years. She had been greatly pleased with the size and comfort of her schoolroom, which she had entirely to herself, to read or write or play the piano in, outside hours of lessons, which were at first as short as was conceivably possible. And she had not in the least expected that there would be a maid for the schoolroom, who was, as she wrote to her sister, practically her own maid, calling her in the morning and bringing her a cup of tea, lighting a fire for her every evening in her bedroom as a matter of course, and indeed treating her as if she might be the mistress of the house.

She had been happy at Kencote from the first, although she had been a good deal alone, for until her little pupil had grown bigger she had had all her meals sent up to her in the schoolroom, except on Sundays, when she lunched downstairs in charge of little Dick. Those were nervous occasions, for it took her a long time to get used to the Squire—the young Squire, as he was then—with his loud laugh and hearty ways, who used to chaff her at table in a way to cause her uneasiness, although he was never anything but kind, and she was assured, even when she blushed deepest, that his manner was only intended to put her at her ease and make her feel "one of the family."

She had soon lost any awe she may have started with of Mrs. Clinton, although her respect for that lady's character had only grown with the passage of time. Mrs. Clinton used to sit with her sometimes in the schoolroom, and in the summer time they would work under the big lime in the garden while little Dick played about on the lawn. Miss Bird's simple gaiety of heart had had play, and her rather breathless volubility had never been checked by any stiffness on the part of Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Beach, the Rector of Kencote, and the Squire's half-brother, had always treated her with consideration, and his wife had made her feel at home in the rectory, and expected her to visit there occasionally on her own account. The Squire's six maiden aunts at the dower-house, all but one of whom were now dead, had also treated her kindly, but in a rather more patronising manner. She had not minded that. She had quite agreed with the opinion which underlay everything they said and did, though it was seldom expressed in words, that the Clintons of Kencote were great people in the land, and her native humility had led her to accept gratefully the attentions paid to her by them and their neighbours, and to "presume" on it no more than little Dick's nurse had presumed on her own mild gentility.

She had found little Dick rather a handful as he grew older, but she had coped successfully with him, by the expenditure of much energy of speech and action, and had courageously beaten the beginnings of learning into his brain, so that he took a good place at his first school, and she was not disgraced. By that time Humphrey was ready for her guiding hand, and then Walter, and a few years later, Cicely, hailed with joy as a pupil whom she might train up to the fine finish; for there could be no talk of school for a girl Clinton, and Miss Bird's success with Dick had given her a high place as an instructress in the Squire's estimate of her abilities, so that there was never any idea of her being some day superseded, and the years at Kencote stretched happily in front of her.

Cicely was nine, and Frank, the sailor, seven, when the twins arrived. The day of their birth was a good day in Miss Bird's annals. It meant more years still at Kencote, and by this time the idea of living with any other family would have been most distressing to her. And yet she would have had to seek another situation but for the arrival of the twins, for when she should have finished with Cicely she would be fifty only, and would not have put by enough money to enable her to retire. These are the hardships of a governess's lot, and Miss Bird had them fully in her mind, saving and skimping all through the fruitful years for a time when not only the opulences of existence in a house like Kencote should be hers no longer, but it might be difficult to make ends meet at all. The twins lifted a weight off her mind, which, with all her daily cheerfulness and courage, had never been quite absent from her; for another nine or ten years would just enable her to provide for her old age, and she knew that those nine or ten years would be hers if she could only keep her health, of which there seemed no reasonable doubt. "It is not many women in my position who are as fortunate as I," she had written to her sister at the time. "The Squire, who roared with laughter when he heard of the birth of the darling babies, said to me the first time he saw me afterwards, 'Well, that fixes you for another twenty years, Miss Bird.' And he added in a way which you might think profane if you had not heard him say it, 'Thank God, eh?'"

Well, here was the end of those happy years, which seemed to have sped like a week or two since the birth of the twins. She had seen Walter and Cicely married and had dandled their babies. She had shared Mrs. Clinton's daily anxiety during the long months Dick had served in South Africa, and had taken his award of a D.S.O. almost as a personal compliment. She had been glad at all the joys of the family and saddened with their sorrows. She had seen the Squire grow from a handsome young man to an elderly one, and Mrs. Clinton's hair turn nearly white. She had boxes and drawers full of the presents she had received at Christmas and on her birthdays, which had never been forgotten, and the photographs of Clintons of all ages from babyhood upwards were displayed on every available standing place in her room. They were more to her than her sister or her sister's children, but the call had come to her to leave them and to go to a place where she would have to work hard and anxiously for the rest of her life on a very small pittance and in very narrow surroundings, and it had never occurred to her to shirk it. It had all fitted in—she felt that she had been "guided." The teaching which she had never doubted that she was able to give to Cicely now seemed to her inadequate for the finish of the twins' education, but she did doubt, now that her departure had been settled for her on other grounds, whether she would have had the strength to say so and cut herself adrift of her own accord. Here was matter for thankfulness—that she had been led to see what her duty was, and to do it. She would always have Kencote to look back to, and she was indeed fortunate to have spent the best part of her life in such a place, and with such people.

The twins came in as she was finishing her toilette, to take her down to breakfast. This was a reversal of the procedure of the past, when it had been the first of her daily duties to hunt them out of whatever spot out of doors or in to which their vagrant fancy had led them, and see that they appeared to the public eye duly washed, combed, and brushed. They embraced her, enveloping her wizened form with their exuberant youth, like flowers round a peastick, and she was moved to the depths of her being, though all she said was, "Now, Joan 'n' Nancy, don't be rough. You can love a person without untidying her hair."

"Are your nails quite clean, Starling darling?" asked Joan, taking one of her hands and examining it.

"And are you quite sure you've brushed your teeth properly?" enquired Nancy.

"Now don't tease, Joan 'n' Nancy," said Miss Bird, disengaging herself. "I shall only be here another week and you must try and be good girls and let me go away remembering that."

"Joan was saying this morning as we were dressing," said Nancy, "that she was very sorry now to think of all the trouble she had given you, Starling darling, and if she could have the time over again she would behave very differently."

"Idiot!" retorted Joan. "It's you who have given the trouble. Starling has often said that if it weren't for your example I should be a very good girl, haven't you, Starling darling?"

"You would both be good girls if it wasn't for the other's example," replied Miss Bird. "And you can be dear good girls as good as gold and I hope you will when the new governess comes to teach you."

"I hope we shall, but I doubt it," said Joan.

"You see, Starling darling, what we would do for you we couldn't be expected to do for a stranger whom we didn't love, could we?" said Nancy.

Miss Bird was moved by this, and would have liked to embrace the speaker, with words of endearment. But she had grown rather wary of exhibiting affection towards her pupils, who were apt to respond so voluminously as to leave her crumpled, if not actually dishevelled.

"Well, if you love me as much as you say you do," she said, "you will remember all the things I have told you; now are you quite ready for breakfast, because it is time to go down?"

"We told Dick you would like him to kiss you before you went, and I think he will," said Joan innocently, as they went down the broad staircase all three abreast.

"Now, Joan, if you really said a thing like that—oh, take care! take care!" Miss Bird had tried to stop on the stairs and withdraw her arm from Joan's, who, assisted by Nancy on the other side, had led her on so that she tripped over the next step, and would have fallen but for the firm grasp of the twins. She was led into the dining-room, protesting volubly, until she saw that Mrs. Clinton and Dick were there, when the episode ended.

When breakfast was over the Squire surprised her by asking her immediate attendance in his room, to which she followed him across the hall in a flutter of apprehension. It would not be quite true to say that she had never been into this room during the thirty years of her sojourn at Kencote, but it was certainly the first time she had entered it on the Squire's invitation. He did not ask her to take a seat, nor did he take one himself, but stood in front of the fire with his coat tails over his arm and his hands in his pockets.

"There's a little matter of business I should like to settle with you, Miss Bird," he said. "You've lived here a considerable number of years, and you've done remarkably well by us and the children. If everybody did their duty in life as well as you, Miss Bird, the world 'ud be a better place than it is, by George! Now I want to do a little something for you, as you've done so much for us, and I've talked it over with Dick, and we are going to buy you a little annuity of fifty pounds a year, which with what my wife tells me you've saved will put you out of anxiety for the future; and I'll tell you this, Miss Bird, that I never—Eh, what! Oh, my good woman ... God's sake ... here, don't take on like that ... Gobblessme, what's to be done?"

For Miss Bird, overcome by this last great mark of esteem, had broken down and was now sobbing into her handkerchief. Knowing, however, the Squire's dislike of a scene she succeeded in controlling herself, and addressed him with no more than an occasional hiccup. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Clinton; I couldn't help it and it's too much and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and shall never forget it as long as I live and it's just like all the rest of the kindness I've received in this house which I could never repay if I lived to be a hundred."

"Well, I'm very glad it meets your views, Miss Bird," said the Squire, greatly relieved at the subsidence of emotion, and anxious to escape further thanks. "And I assure you the obligation's still on our side. Now, I must write some letters, and I dare say you've got something to do, too."

Miss Bird retired to her bedroom where, unrebuked, she shed her tears of thankfulness, then wiped her eyes and sponged her face and went about the duties of the day.

These did not, this morning, include lessons for the twins, for it was Saturday, which was for them a holiday, when complete freedom was tempered only by the necessity of "practising." Dick had refused to drive them over to Mountfield to see their sister and her babies, but had offered them a walk to the dower-house during the course of the morning.

"I wonder what he wants to go there for?" said Joan, as they went upstairs.

"There's more in this," said Nancy, "than meets the eye."

There did not, however, seem to be more in it than a natural desire to see a house empty which one has always known occupied, and this desire the twins shared. They found Dick in an affable mood as they walked across the park together—the sort of affectionately jovial mood of which they had occasionally taken advantage to secure a temporary addition to their income. Indeed, it seemed to have brought Dick himself a reminder of his young sisters' financial requirements, for he asked them, "Have you saved up enough money for your camera yet, Twankies?"

Neither of them replied for the moment, then Joan said rather stiffly, "We shan't be able to buy that for some time."

"Why, you only wanted twenty-five shillings to make it up a month ago, and I gave you a sovereign towards it," said Dick.

Another short pause, and then Nancy said, "You gave it us!"

"Yes," said Dick, "to buy a camera. I'm not certain you didn't screw it out of me. I never quite know whether it's my idea or yours when I tip you Twankies. Come now, what have you done with that sovereign?"

"We have spent it on a good object," said Joan. "But we do want the camera most frightfully badly, and if you would like to contribute to the fund again it would save us many weary months of waiting."

"To say nothing of a severe economy painful to our generous natures," added Nancy.

"Not till I know what you spent the last contribution on," said Dick. "You're getting regular young spendthrifts. I shall have to look into this, or you'll be ruining me by and by."

"Won't you give us anything more unless we tell you?" enquired Joan; and Nancy amended the question: "Will you give us something more if we do tell you?"

"I'll see," said Dick. "Come, out with it!"

"Well, it's nothing to be ashamed of," said Joan. "We wanted to buy the old Starling a really good present, and out of our own money."

"It took the form of a pair of silver-backed brushes with cupids' heads on them, and cost three pounds seventeen and sixpence," added Nancy.

"They are not cupids, but angels," said Joan, "which are much more adapted to Starling's tastes."

"Well—cupids or angels—it cleaned us entirely out," concluded Nancy.

Dick put an arm round the shoulders of each and gave them a squeeze as they walked. "You're a pair of topping good Twankies," he said. "I'll start your new camera fund. I'll give it you now."

"Thanks awfully, Dick," said Joan, as he took out his sovereign purse, "but I think we'd rather you didn't. You see, it's rather a special occasion—the poor old Starling going away—and we wanted to give her something that would really cost us something."

"I agree with my sister," said Nancy. "But thanks awfully all the same, Dick. You're always a brick."

"Well, I respect the delicacy of your feelings, Twanks," said Dick. "But isn't anybody ever going to be allowed to contribute to the camera fund? How long does the embargo last?"

"There's a good deal in that," said Joan thoughtfully. "Of course we can't refuse tips for ever, can we, Nancy?"

Nancy thought not. "Let's say in a month from to-day," she suggested. "If Dick likes to give us something then and happens to remember it—of course, we shan't remind him—then I think we might accept without feeling pigs."

"I'll make a note of that," said Dick gravely, "when I get home."

CHAPTER IV

THE DOWER-HOUSE

Surrounded by its winter woods and an over-thick growth of evergreens, the little Jacobean hall, which had for centuries been the second home of the Clintons of Kencote, had an air slightly depressing as Dick and the twins came to it through the yew-enclosed garden at the back. White blinds were down behind all the leaded mullioned windows, only one thin thread of smoke rose into the sky from the carved and twisted chimney-stacks.

Forty years before, when the Squire had succeeded his grandfather, his six spinster aunts had left him in undisturbed possession of the great house and taken up their abode here, very seldom to leave, until one by one they had been carried off to their grave in Kencote churchyard. Aunt Ellen, the eldest of them all, had died at a great age a few months before, and Aunt Laura, the youngest, who was now seventy-eight, had removed herself and her belongings to a smaller house in the village. Neither Dick nor, of course, the twins had ever known the dower-house unassociated with the quiet lives of the old ladies, and they shared in their different degree the same feeling of strangeness as they stood under the porch and listened to the bell echoing in the empty house. It was like a human body from which life had departed, but with its age and many memories it still kept a soul of its own which could be revivified by fresh occupancy.

They went through all the rooms. There was a great deal of fine old furniture in them, things which Clintons of past centuries had bought new, never thinking that they would some day acquire merit as antiquities. There were few such things in the great house, which had been rebuilt after a fire in the reign of Queen Anne and refurnished later still, in the reign of Queen Victoria. Nor had the beautiful things of which the dower-house was full been valued in the least by their owners until long after the six maiden aunts had gone to live there. They had been simply old-fashioned in the eyes of the Squire, their owner, and were so still, for he had no knowledge of such things, and no appreciation of them. Dick knew a little more, and as he looked at one fine old piece of furniture after another, standing forlorn on the carpetless floors, or against the dark panelling of the walls, he said, "By Jove! Twankies, there's some good stuff in this old shanty."

"Who is going to live in it?" asked Joan.

"Ah, that's the question!" replied Dick. "Tell you what, Twankies, let's play a game. Supposing I ever got married, I should live here, you know. Let's see how the rooms would pan out."

The twins were quite ready to play this or any other game, although it did not promise much excitement, because there were only quite a limited number of rooms, and most of them were more or less obviously labelled. It seemed, however, that Dick was prepared to play the game seriously, for after they had fixed the dining-room, drawing-room, morning-room, and smoking-room, and a tiny oak parlour which the aunts had used for garden chairs and implements and Dick said would do for his guns if a baize-lined glass cupboard were put up in a recess by the fireplace, he inspected the kitchen premises with some thoroughness.

"I say, Dick, are you going to get married and come and live here?" asked Joan, as he began to make notes on the back of an envelope.

"There's more in this than meets the eye," observed Nancy.

"Small Twankies mustn't ask impertinent questions," replied Dick. "But I'll tell you exactly how it stands, and you mustn't let it go any further."

"Oh, rather not," said Joan.

"Our ears are all agog," said Nancy.

"You see, Twankies, somebody has got to live in this house, haven't they? Well, then, it must be done up, eh? And if I come and live in it some day, I don't want to have to do it up again—see? So there you have it all in a nutshell."

"Yes, I see," said Joan; "but it's a little disappointing."

"It all sounds very reasonable," said Nancy, "but I still think there's more in it than meets the eye."

They were in the great stone-floored kitchen, which still retained its cavernous hearth and open chimney.

"You could roast an ox here," said Dick. "We'll turn this into a servants' hall, Twankies, and rig up the other place for cooking. The cellar's all right, so is the pantry—and big enough for two. We'll divide it up, eh? and one part will do for a brushing-room. There's nowhere at present where a servant can brush your clothes."

"What wonderful domestic knowledge you display, Dick!"' observed Nancy. "Where are the maids to brush their mistresses' clothes? In here with the valets?"

"Yes, of course," said Dick. "This isn't a palace. People who come to stay must expect some inconveniences. I don't see any place for a game larder. We must see about that outside. Now we'll go upstairs."

They went up the broad shallow stairs of age-worn oak, and through the hive of rooms, which opened into one another, and led out into little passages, closets, and stairways in the most confusing way, and made you wonder what scheme of daily life the old builder had in mind when he planned them. He had certainly wasted a great deal of room. The main corridor opened out here and there into broad spaces, where there was perhaps a bookcase, or a low seat under a latticed window, or only the rich emptiness of the square of oak panelling, the polished floor, and the plastered ceiling. Whatever his aims, he had gained his effect of gracious ease and warm shelter. However varied might be the needs of its occupants through the succeeding years, the dower-house would be as much of a home as on the day it was first built.

"A man might make himself very comfortable here, Mr. Copperfield," quoted Nancy, as they stood at a window of the biggest bedroom, which had panels of linen pattern, with a plastered frieze and an oak-beamed ceiling. There was also a heavy carved oak bed, in which Aunt Ellen had recently looked her last upon surroundings that had continually reminded her of the age and importance of the family of which she was a member.

"I shall have all these beastly laurels grubbed up, and some of the trees cut down," said Dick. "The place is like a family vault. And I'm not sure that I won't have this woodwork painted white."

Joan looked doubtfully round her. She knew nothing of the value of old good things, but she felt dimly that the carved panelling, dark with age, ought to remain as it was. Nancy felt so still more strongly. "It would be wicked to do that," she said. "This is a lovely room, and tells you stories. If you like I'll give you a rhapsody."

Joan grinned. "Have you ever heard one of Nancy's rhapsodies, Dick?" she asked. "They're awfully good."

Dick had not, but expressed himself willing to listen to whatever foolishness might be in store for him for the space of one minute precisely. Nancy stood against the dark woodwork on the other side of the room. Her pretty, mischievous face was framed in the thick fall of her fair hair and the fur round her throat. She wore a little fur cap and a red coat, and a big muff hung from her shoulders. Dick, always affectionately disposed towards his young sisters, thought he had never seen a girl of her age look prettier, and put his arm vicariously round Joan, who was exactly like her, as they sat on the window-seat.

"In this old house," began Nancy, using her right hand for gesticulation and keeping the other in her muff, "lots of old Clintons have died, and lots of new Clintons have been born. Think, my children, of the people who have come here to live. Some of them were gallant young men Clintons who had just taken to themselves fair young brides, and they were full of hope for the future, and pleasure in having such a jolly house to live in with her they loved best in the world. A few years would pass and the rooms would echo with the voices and steps of little children, and all would be gaiety and mirth. Then a change would come over the spirit of the scene. The young couple would go with their family to the great house, and in their stead would come a sad-faced figure in deep black, a Clinton widow, who had had her day of glory, and would now spend the rest of her years here in peace and seclusion. But all would not be dark to her. She would have great fun in suiting the dear old house to her taste, she would be cheered by the constant visits of the younger members of her family, and she could do a good deal more what she liked than she had done before."

"Well, upon my word!" interposed Dick.

Nancy held up her hand. "Hear, all ye Clintons!" she concluded. "Old men and women, young men and maidens, and especially the gallant warrior knight and the sweet young maiden I see before me—ye belong to a race which has its roots far back in history, and has been distinguished for many things, but not particularly for brains, as far as I can make out from my recent researches. But at last there has arisen one who will make up for that deficiency. You now behold her in the person of Nancy Caroline Clinton, who addresses you. See that ye cherish her and tip her well, or ye will be eternally disgraced in the eyes of posterity."

She ended with a ripple of laughter, shaking back her hair.

"Well, you're the limit," said Dick, with a grin. "Come on, let's go and look at the stables. Is it true that you suddenly find yourself possessed of brains, Twanky? I never suspected it of you."

"My dear Dick," said Joan, as they went down the stairs, "she has been talking about nothing but her brains for the last month, ever since Uncle Herbert last came here to shoot."

"They were always there," explained Nancy, "but he put the match to the tinder. I'm going to write books when I get a little older. But of course I must be properly educated first. I suppose you know we're going to have a really up-to-date, top-hole governess, Dick?"

"Yes, I've heard that," said Dick, "although I don't admire your way of describing her. Lord, what a place to put a horse!"

"If it is the expression 'top-hole' you object to, I learnt it from you," said Nancy. "My ears are receptive."

"Two loose-boxes and three stalls," said Dick. "We can make that do, but they're all on the slant. We'd better begin by altering this at once; the house can wait for a bit."

"Of course the stables are more important than the house," said Joan. "I say, Dick, there is something we want to ask you. Do be a brick and say, yes."

Dick was pursuing his investigations. "Coach-house isn't bad," he said. "Harness-room wants refurnishing. Let's see what the rooms upstairs are like."

They climbed up the steep staircase. "Dick, will you persuade father to do something?" asked Joan.

"What?" asked Dick. "This would be all right for an unmarried groom."

"We want a pony. We've never had anything to ride since poor old Tommy died."

They were clattering down the stairs again. "You want—you want—you want everything," said Dick. "You'll want a four-in-hand next. I don't know whether you want a pig-stye, by any chance. I'll give you this one if you do—ridiculous place to put it! This is where we'll build the game larder. Come on, Twankies, we'll go and look up old Aunt Laura. I want to see what she's taken away from here."

He set off at a smart pace, the twins on either side of him. "I don't know why you want to go putting your oar in about the pony," said Nancy. "I was to tackle father about that."

"Tackle father!" repeated Dick. "Look here! that's not the way to talk about the governor, Nancy."

"Oh, Dick darling, don't call me Nancy. I feel that I'm trembling under the weight of your displeasure."

Joan hastened to her relief. "When she said 'tackle,' she only meant that I betted her four weeks' pocket-money that father wouldn't let us have a pony," she said.

"You mean well, but you've done it now," said Nancy.

"Really, it's about time that you two had somebody to look after you," said Dick. "Who on earth taught you to bet, I should like to know?"

"Humphrey," replied Nancy promptly. "We were standing by him, and he betted us a shilling each that he would bring down the next bird that came over. He didn't, and he paid up promptly."

"We wanted him to bet again, but he refused," said Joan.

"But it gave us a taste for speculation which we shall probably never overcome," said Nancy.

Dick grunted. "Humphrey oughtn't to have done it," he said. "You are not to bet with each other, you two. And that bet about the pony—which was infernal cheek to make, anyhow—is off. Do you hear?"

"Yes, Dick dear," said Joan obediently. "But what does a bet being 'off' mean, exactly?"

"Is it the same as hedging?" asked Nancy.

"It means—well, it means it's off. You know what it means as well as I do. And I don't like your arranging with each other to get things out of the governor, either—or anybody else. You get plenty given you, and it isn't nice for girls of your age to be always on the make."

"But, Dick darling," expostulated Joan, "there are such lots of horses about the place. I think we might be allowed to ride now. Of course, we didn't mean a pony, really. We are big enough to stick on a horse, and father wouldn't have to buy another one for us."

"We are about to embark on an arduous course of study," said Nancy, "and horse exercise would be the best possible thing for us."

"You stick to your golf," said Dick. "We spent a lot of money making those links in the park, and you get more fun out of them than anybody."

"Then you won't help us about riding?" asked Joan.

"No," said Dick. "All the nags are wanted for hunting, and I'm not going to advise the governor to increase the stables."

Nancy breathed a deep sigh. "It's all your fault, Joan," she said. "You don't know how to treat a man. You must never blurt things out that you want. You must remember women are a subject race."

"But you won't mind our asking father, Dick, will you?" pleaded Joan.

Dick gave his ultimatum. "You'd better give up the idea," he said. "And remember what I told you about being on the make. You're nice kids, but you want keeping in order. I hope the new lady will do it."

"I hope she will," said Nancy; "but she's got a hard row to hoe. I can't help feeling a little sorry for her."

Aunt Laura had taken up her abode in a little old house on the village street, with a square, brick-walled garden behind it. The agent had occupied it before the death of Aunt Ellen, but had now removed to a farm which was in hand.

They found the old lady sitting by the fire in her parlour, knitting. She was frail and shrunken, and looked as if she might not long survive her transplantation. Mrs. Clinton or the twins came to see her every day, but a visit from the Squire or one of his sons, and especially Dick, was an honour which never failed mildly to excite her. She was now in a flurry, and told the elderly maid who had shown her visitors in to bring wine and cake, in the fashion of an earlier day. The men of the family never refused this entertainment, either because they were averse to wounding Aunt Laura's susceptibilities, or because they liked it.

"Well, I hope you've made yourself pretty comfortable, Aunt Laura," said Dick in a loud, clear voice, for the old lady was rather deaf, although she did not like to acknowledge it. He was looking round the room as he spoke. Its panelled walls were painted light green, and were hung with coloured prints. A recessed cupboard was full of beautiful old china; but there was nothing else of much value in the room, which was furnished with a Victorian drawing-room suite and a round rosewood table. The old lady had a pretty modern French table by her side with conveniences for her work and her books. She had also her old cottage piano, with a front of fluted red silk, upon which she sometimes played. A canary hung in the window, which faced south and let in, between the curtains, a stream of wintry sunshine.

"It is a bright little house," said Aunt Laura. "I sometimes wish that your dear Aunt Ellen had spent the last few years of her life here after your dear Aunt Anne died. The dower-house was a very dear home to us, and we were greatly attached to it, but in the winter it was dark, and this is much more cheerful. It is cold to-day, and I am sitting over the fire, as you see. But I often sit by the window and see the people going by. You could not do that in the dower-house, for nobody did go by."

"Did you bring all the furniture you wanted to make you comfortable, Aunt Laura?" asked Dick.

Aunt Laura looked up over her spectacles. "I am quite comfortable, I thank you, Dick," she replied, "although I have not got quite used to things yet. It is not to be expected that I should, all at once, at my age, and after having lived with the same things round me for close upon forty years. But your dear father has been kindness itself, as he always is, and allowed me to have all my bedroom furniture brought here, so that in my room upstairs I feel quite at home. And for the downstairs rooms he told me that any pictures or china and so forth that I had a fancy for I might have, and I hope I have not taken advantage of his generosity. I shall not want the things for very long, and they are being well taken care of. He did not want me to take any of the furniture, as he said this house was furnished already, but he wanted me to feel at home here."

Dick seemed to consider for a moment. "If there's anything special you want in the way of furniture, Aunt Laura," he said, "anything you've got attached to and like to use, we'll see if we can't get it brought down for you."

"Well, of course, I got attached to it all," replied Aunt Laura. "But I can't expect to have it all, and what is here will do for me very well. Hannah is making some pretty loose chintz covers for the chairs and sofa in this room, which will give it a more home-like appearance. I do not like the carpet, which is much worn, as you see, and was never a very good one, but I have half formed a plan of going over to Bathgate when the spring comes and seeing if I can get one something after the pattern of that in the morning-room at the dower-house, which your aunts and I used much to admire. It was old and somewhat faded, but its colours were well blended, and I have heard that it was brought straight from Persia, where they have always made excellent carpets, for my grandfather, who was in business in the city of London. He would be your great-great-grandfather, and they used to call him 'Merchant Jack,' even after he succeeded to Kencote."

If Dick had known the true value of the carpet in question he might not have offered to have it sent down for Aunt Laura's use, but he immediately did so, and the old lady's gratitude ought sufficiently to have rewarded him. "Now is there anything else, Aunt Laura?" he asked.

"Well, as you are so extremely kind, Dick," she said, "—and I hope your dear father will not mind, or think that I have been grasping, which I should not like after all his generosity—I think if I might have the use of the old bureau upon which your aunts and I used to write our letters and in which we used to keep our few business papers—for there was a very good lock—not that there was any necessity to lock things up at the dower-house, for everything was under Hannah's charge, and, although she is apt to be a little flighty in her dress, and your dear Aunt Ellen sometimes rebuked her for that, but always kindly, she was quite reliable, and anything might have been left about in perfect safety.—As I was saying, if I might have the use of the old bureau for as long as I live—I should not want it longer—I do not think I should regret anything, except of course that your dear aunts are all gone now, and I am the last of them left."

Dick had prepared himself, during the foregoing speech, to promise, immediately it came to an end, that Aunt Laura should have the old bureau, although it was a very fine specimen of Dutch marquetry, and the piece of furniture that had struck him as the most desirable of all he had just seen in the dower-house. "Oh, of course, Aunt Laura," he said. "You shall have the bureau and the carpet sent down this afternoon. Then you'll feel quite at home, eh?"

"Well, perhaps not this afternoon, Dick," replied Aunt Laura. "It might upset the house for Sunday to make a change, and I should not be quite ready to superintend it. But on Monday, or even Tuesday—I am not particular—I could make ready. There is no immediate hurry. It is enough for me to know that I am to have the things here, and I shall think upon them with very great pleasure. I'm sure I cannot thank you enough, dear Dick, for your kindness. It is of a piece with all the rest. Why, I do not believe you have yet seen my beautiful table. Children dear, see here! Is it not convenient? I can place my favourite book here by my side, and when I am tired of reading, without moving from my seat, I can lay it down, and there is my work ready for me underneath, and in this pocket, as you see, are all sorts of conveniences, such as scissors, little tape-measure in the form of a silver pig, and so on; and here an ivory paper-knife. It is indeed a handsome present, is it not?"

"It's lovely, Aunt Laura," said Joan. "Who did it come from?"

"On Thursday," replied Aunt Laura. "Thursday morning. No, I am telling you a story. It was Thursday afternoon, for Hannah was just about to bring in the tea."

"Who gave it you, Aunt Laura?" asked Joan again.

"Did I not tell you?" said Aunt Laura. "It was dear Humphrey. He sent it down from London. He came in to see me when he was last at Kencote and described to me such a table as this, which I admit I did say I should like to possess, but certainly with no idea that he would purchase one for me. But there! all you dear boys and girls are full of kind thoughts for your old aunt, and I am sure it makes me very happy in my loss of your dear Aunt Ellen to think I have so much left to be thankful for."

When the twins were in their bedroom getting ready for luncheon Joan said, "I wonder why Humphrey is so attentive all of a sudden to Aunt Laura."

"There's more in it than meets the eye," said Nancy. "Did you notice how surprised Dick looked when she said Humphrey gave it her? And then he frowned."

"I expect Dick thinks Humphrey is too extravagant. It must have been an expensive table. And I know Humphrey has debts, because he asked me to open a tailor's bill that came for him and tell him the 'demnition total,' as he was afraid to do it himself. It was more than a hundred pounds, and he said, 'I wish that was the only one, but if it was I couldn't pay it.'"

"Poor old Humphrey!" said Nancy. "I say, Joan, do you think he is making up to Aunt Laura, so that she will pay his bills for him?"

"What a beastly thing to say, Nancy!" replied Joan. "Of course, none of the boys would do a thing like that. Besides, Aunt Laura hasn't got any money."

"No, I don't suppose so," said Nancy reflectively. "I expect father gives her an allowance, poor old darling!"

But Aunt Laura had money. She had the thirty-six thousand pounds which her father had left to her and her sisters, and she had, besides, the savings of all six ladies through a considerable number of years.

CHAPTER V

LADY GEORGE

The Squire had a touch of rheumatism, and was annoyed about it, but also inclined to give Providence due credit for so visiting him, if he must be visited at all, at a time of hard frost. "If I coddle myself up to-day and perhaps to-morrow," he said over the luncheon table, "I shall be able to hunt all right on Monday, if the frost breaks. I suppose you wouldn't care to go over those Deepdene Farm figures this afternoon, Dick, eh?"

"We might have an hour with them before dinner," replied Dick. "I thought of riding over to Mountfield to see Jim this afternoon. I want a little exercise."

"I don't know whether you will find Jim in," said Mrs. Clinton. "Muriel, and I think Mrs. Graham, are coming over here this afternoon."

"I'll take my chance," said Dick.

The twins saw him off from the hall door. He rode a tall bay horse, which danced with impatience on the hard gravel of the drive as he looked him over, drawing on his gloves.

"Dear old Cicero! doesn't he look a beauty?" said Nancy. "What was his figure, Dick?"

"You will never be able to get on him," said Joan. "Shall I bring a chair?"

But Dick was up and cantering over the crisp grass of the park, managing his nervous powerful mount as if he and the horse were of one frame and as if nothing could separate them.

"He does look jolly," said Joan admiringly.

"He's a good man on a horse," acquiesced Nancy.

"All the boys are. So they ought to be. They think about nothing else."

"You know, I think Dick is just the sort of man a girl might fall in love with," said Joan. "He's very good-looking, and he has just that sort of way with him, as if he didn't care for anybody."

"I expect lots of girls have fallen in love with him. The question is whether he is ever going to fall in love with them. I'm inclined to think he's turning it over in his mind. I dare say you were blinded by all that business at the dower-house this morning. I wasn't. You mark my word, Joan, Dick is going to get married."

"I shouldn't wonder. He's grown softer somehow. See how interested he was in the kitchen. Who do you think it is, Nancy?"

"My dear! Don't you know that? It's Grace Ettien. Didn't you notice what a fuss father made of her when she last come over? Took her all round, and almost gave her the place. He doesn't treat girls like that as a rule."

"You didn't say so at the time."

"No; but I've put two and two together since. You see if I'm not right. By this time next year the dower-house will be occupied by Captain and Lady Grace Clinton—and oh, Joan! perhaps there'll be another baby in the family!"

The ecstasy of the twins at this prospect was broken into by Miss Bird, who appeared behind them in the doorway and promised them their deaths of cold if they did not come indoors at once.

In the meantime Dick was trotting along the hard country lanes, between the silent silvered winter woods and the frozen fields, always with an eye about him to see what things of fur and feather might share with him the winter solitude, what was doing in the hard-bound soil, and what in the clear spaces of the air. He had the eye of the countryman, trained from boyhood to observe and assimilate. He had lived for years the life of court and camp, had adapted himself as readily to the turmoil of London gaieties as to regimental duties in other stations at home and abroad, or to months of campaigning in Egypt and South Africa. He had skimmed the cream of all such experiences as had come in his way, but here in the depths of the English country, just here where his ancestors had lived for generation after generation, were placed the foundations of his life. Here he was at home, as nowhere else in the world. All the rest was mere accident of time and place, of no account as compared with this one spot of English soil. Here alone he was based and firmly rooted.

Mountfield lay about four miles from Kencote, and the two estates marched, although the one was small as compared with the other. Two years before, Jim Graham, the owner of Mountfield, had married Cicely Clinton, and his only sister just before that had married Walter Clinton, the doctor of Melbury Park, where the Squire was so averse to looking for an heir. So the Clintons and the Grahams were bound together by close ties, and there was much coming and going between the two houses.

Cicely's carriage was before the door as Dick rode up, and she herself came out as he dismounted. She looked very pretty in her thick furs, young and fresh, and matronly at the same time.

"Oh, Dick, I'm so glad to see you," she said. "Have you come to see Jim? I'm afraid he's gone over to Bathgate, and won't be back for some time."

"H'm! That's a bore," said Dick. "You're going over to Kencote, aren't you, Siskin?"

"Yes. I'm going to fetch Mrs. Graham and drive her over. But do come in for a minute or two."

"Oughtn't to keep the horses long in this weather," said Dick. "Drive 'em about for a few minutes, Carter. I'll just come in and throw my eye over the babies, Siskin."

Cicely's face brightened. She led the way into her morning-room, and turned to kiss her brother, her hands on his shoulders. "Dear old Dick!" she said. "Do you really want to see the babies?"

"Of course I do," he replied. "You've given us the taste for them over at Kencote. The Twankies foam at the mouth with pleasure whenever the babies are mentioned, and even the governor looks as if a light were switched on in his face when anything is said about them."

Cicely rang the bell. "He is a doting grandfather," she said, with a smile. "I would take them over this afternoon, but it's too cold."

"Nice room, this!" said Dick, looking round him. "Are you glad to be settled down in the country again, Sis?"

"Yes. Awfully glad," she said. "I hated London, really. At least, I liked meeting the people, but you can only feel at home in the country."

"There was a time," said Dick.

She blushed. "Oh, don't talk about that, Dick," she said, in some distress. "I was all wrong. I didn't know what I wanted. I know now. I want just this, and Jim, and the babies. I was overjoyed when our two years in London were up, and Jim said we could come back here if we kept quiet and lived carefully. Here they are—the darlings!"

The tiny morsels of lace and silk-clad humanity—Dick, the boy, Nina, the baby girl—who were brought into the room in charge of a staid elderly smiling nurse, looked as happy babies ought to look—as if they belonged to the house and the house belonged to them. Dick took up his namesake and godson in his arms and his keen face softened. "He's getting a great little man," he said. "When are you going to cut his hair, Cicely?"

Cicely scouted the idea. "Men are always in such a hurry," she said. "Dick, you ought to marry and have babies of your own."

"Ah, well! perhaps I shall some day," said Dick. "Now I must be pushing on, and you oughtn't to keep the horses waiting, Sis. Good-bye, little chap."

"Aren't you coming back to Kencote?" Cicely asked.

"Not just yet. Going to hack a few more miles. I haven't been on a horse for three weeks."

So Cicely got into her carriage and Dick's horse was brought round, and they went off in different directions.

Cicely picked up her mother-in-law at her house just outside the park. Mrs. Graham was waiting for her at her garden gate, in company with a deerhound, a spaniel, and an Irish terrier. She had on a coat and skirt of thick tweed, and a cloth hat with a cock's feather.

"I suppose there won't be a tea-party," she said, as she got into the carriage. "I did intend to put on smart clothes, but I found I couldn't be bothered when the time came. They must take me in my rags or not at all. You look smart enough, my girl."

"If I had your figure," said Cicely, "I should never want to wear anything but country clothes."

"Ah! now that's very nice of you," said Mrs. Graham. "I do wear well for fifty-three, and I'm not going to deny it. My face is a bit battered, of course. I must expect that, riding and tramping about in all weathers. But I'm as fit as if I were thirty years younger, and I don't know what more you can ask of life—unless it's to have your own people round you instead of a pack of molly-coddles."

Cicely laughed. Jim Graham had let Mountfield for two years after their marriage to a rich and childless couple, who spent most of their time in working at embroidery, and motoring about the country in a closed-in car, for neither of which pursuits Mrs. Graham had found it in her heart to forgive them.

"Well, they're gone," she said. "And thank goodness for it. I should have let the Lodge and gone away myself if they had stayed here any longer. Cumberers of the ground, I call them, and what they wanted with a country house beats me. But you never know who you're going to get for neighbours nowadays. By the by, have you heard that old Parson Marsh has let Blaythorn Rectory for the hunting season?"

Blaythorn was about three miles from Mountfield, on the opposite side to Kencote. Cicely had not heard this piece of news.

"Yes," said Mrs. Graham, "and to a lady of title, my dear—Lady George Dubec—no less. I haven't the ghost of an idea who she is. But no doubt your father will know. He is a regular walking peerage—knows who everybody is and whom everybody has married to the third and fourth generation. What accommodation poor old Parson Marsh has for hunters I don't know. I should think the lady must have been done in the eye. And as for the house—the last time I was in it it smelt so of dogs and tobacco-smoke that even I couldn't put up with it, and Lord knows I'm not particular."

"Where is Mr. Marsh going to live?" asked Cicely.

"Oh, I believe he has sacked his curate on the strength of it, and has taken his rooms. I don't know why he should have wanted a curate at all, except that he's so bone-idle, and I'm sure he can't afford one. He owes Joynes the butcher over forty pounds. But, good gracious, Cicely, don't encourage me to gossip. I'm getting a regular old hag. It's the influence of your late tenants, my dear. They loved village tittle-tattle, and I had to join in with it whenever we met, because there was nothing else in the wide world I could talk to them about. The worst of it is I was acquiring quite a taste for scandal. But I've turned over a new leaf. So has old Marsh I suppose, and is going to pay up all his debts. I wish him well over his difficulties."

With such sprightly talk did Mrs. Graham pass away the time till they reached Kencote, when she began all over again with Mrs. Clinton as audience. Cicely had gone upstairs to see the twins and Miss Bird, and Mrs. Graham asked point-blank that Mr. Clinton might be informed of her arrival. "I have lots to tell him," she said, "and I want to ask him some questions besides."

Mrs. Clinton rang the bell, without saying anything, and a footman was sent with a message to the Squire, who presently came in, bluff and hearty, but walking with a slight list.

"Ah, Mrs. Graham!" he said as he shook hands. "Come to cheer us up with a little gossip—what? But where are the grandchildren?"

"Dear me! I forgot to ask," said Mrs. Graham. "I suppose it is too cold for them. But I've brought the dogs, Mr. Clinton."

"Oh, the dogs!" said the Squire, with his loud laugh. "No dogs in this house."

"I know," said Mrs. Graham. "And it's such a mistake. Kencote is the only country house I know where there isn't a dog indoors. I never feel that it's properly inhabited."

"It was swarming with them in my grandfather's time," said the Squire, "and I dare say would be now if that mongrel hadn't gone for Dick when he was a little fellow. Always kept 'em outside since. Outside is the place for a dog."

"I don't agree with you," said Mrs. Graham. "And it isn't like a sportsman to say so. However, we needn't quarrel about that. Who is Lady George Dubec, Mr. Clinton?"

"Lady George Dubec?" repeated the Squire. "I suppose she's the wife—or the widow rather—of George Dubec, the Duke of Queenstown's brother, and a pretty good rascal he was. Got killed in a railway accident in America two or three years ago, and it was the best thing that could have happened to him. Wish they'd kill off a few more like him. I didn't know he was married. Why do you ask?"

"She has taken Blaythorn Rectory to hunt from. She came down yesterday or the day before."

"Blaythorn Rectory! To hunt from!'" exclaimed the Squire. "Well, that's the most extraordinary thing! Are there any stables there? I never heard of Marsh keeping anything but an old pony, and the whole place must be in the depths of dilapidation."

"Well, I don't know. But there she is. And you don't know who she is. I thought you knew who everybody was, Mr. Clinton."

"Wait a minute," said the Squire, and he went over to a table where there were books of reference. "No, there's no marriage here," he said, turning over the pages of one of them, "except his first marriage thirty years ago. Poor Lady Bertha Grange that was, and he drove her into her grave within five years. The fellow was a brute and a blackleg. I was at school with him, and he was sacked. And I was at Cambridge with him and he was sent down, for some disgraceful business, I forget what. Then he was in the Guards, and had to clear out of the service within a year for some precious shady racing transaction. The fellow had every possible chance, and he couldn't run straight. He went abroad after that, but used to turn up occasionally. Nobody would have anything to do with him. I believe he settled down in America, if he could ever be said to settle down anywhere. I know he was in some scandalous divorce case. One used to hear his name come up occasionally, and always in an unsavoury sort of way. He was a wrong 'un, through and through, but a good-looking blackguard in his young days, and women used to stick up for him."

"Well, he seems to be better out of the world than in it," said Mrs. Graham. "But what about his widow? You say she isn't down there."

"No, but this book is out of date. I've got a later one in my room. I'll send for it."

The new book gave the information required. Lord George Dubec had married five years before Miss Virginia Vanreden, of Philadelphia.

"Oh, an American!" said Mrs. Graham. "Well, I suppose I must go and call on her. Even if I don't like her I shall be doing my duty to my neighbours in providing them with gossip. Not that I like gossip—I detest it. Still, one must find something to talk about. Shall you call on her, Mrs. Clinton?"

The Squire answered. "Oh, I think not," he said. "I don't like hunting—er! hum! ha!"

"You don't like hunting women," said Mrs. Graham imperturbably. "I know you don't, Mr. Clinton. That's another point between us. But we're very good friends all the same."

"Oh, of course, of course," said the Squire. "Nearly put my foot in it that time, Mrs. Graham, eh? Ha! ha! Well, with such old friends one can afford to make a mistake or two. No, I think we'll leave Lady George Dubec alone. She won't be here long, and I've no wish to be mixed up with anybody belonging to George Dubec—alive or dead. I had the utmost contempt for the fellow. Besides, I don't like Americans, and any woman who would have married him after the life he'd led ... well, she may be all right, but I don't want to know her—that's all. I should like to know, though, how she got hold of Blaythorn Rectory, of all places, or why she has come to Meadshire to hunt. The country pleases us all right, and we're quite content with our sport, but we're not generally honoured by strangers in that way."

"I dare say I can find out all about it," said Mrs. Graham. "And when I do I'll let you know."

Cicely was sitting on the great roomy shabby sofa in the schoolroom, with a twin on either side of her, and Miss Bird upright in the corner, alternately tatting feverishly a pattern of lace thread and dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. For the subject of conversation was her approaching departure, and, as she said, with all the kindness that had been showered on her and the affection that she felt she never would lose, it was no use pretending that she was glad she was going away, for she was not, but, on the contrary, very sorry.

"Nancy and I are going to write to her once a week regularly," said Joan. "We did think of writing every day at first, but we probably shouldn't keep it up."

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh might be weak," said Nancy. "And there's no sense in overdoing things. Anyhow, we have promised that we will never love Miss Prim half as much as we love our darling Starling, and she is pleased at that, aren't you, Starling darling?"

"Of course I am pleased to be loved," replied Miss Bird; "but indeed, Nancy, I should not like you to set yourself against your new governess on my account; it is not necessary and you can love one person without visiting it on another and I do not like you to call her Miss Prim."

"She is sure to be," said Nancy elliptically. "We must call her something, and that's as good a name as any till we see what she is like."

"If you don't treat her respectfully she won't stay," said Cicely.

"We haven't treated Starling respectfully, but she has stayed all right," said Joan. "I suppose you know we are going to have lessons besides, Sis—drawing, and music, and deportment, and all sorts of things."

"Oh, we're going to be well finished off while we're about it," said Nancy. "We shall be ready to fill any position, from the highest to the lowest."

"We shall be the ornament of every drawing-room to which we are introduced," said Joan. "I think we're worth polishing off handsomely, don't you, Sis? Have you noticed how awfully pretty we're getting?"

"Now that is a thing," broke in Miss Bird, "that no well-brought-up girl ought to say of herself, Joan."

"But, Starling darling, it's true, and you can't deny it," replied Joan. "We must tell the truth, mustn't we?"

"The new booking-clerk at the station casts admiring glances at us," said Nancy. "At first it made us uncomfortable; we thought we must have smuts on our noses. But at last we tumbled to it. Cicely, we are loved, not only for our worth, but our beauty."

"You are a couple of donkeys," said Cicely, laughing. "Well, I'm glad you're going to apply yourselves to learning, although it's a dreadful thing to be losing our dear old Starling. Kencote will be quite changed."

"There are many changes coming about at Kencote," said Nancy. "Joan and I can feel them in the air. We'll let you know when there's anything more to tell you, Cicely."

"Thank you very much," said Cicely. "I think I had better go downstairs now."

The twins went with her, and on the stairs Cicely said, "I didn't like to say it before Starling, but I think you're awfully lucky children, to be going to be taught things. I never was. I do hope you'll take advantage of it."

"Oh, I do hope we shall," said Joan. "It is such a chance for us. We feel that."

"Deeply," acquiesced Nancy. "If we don't we shall never forgive ourselves—never."

CHAPTER VI

BLAYTHORN RECTORY

Dick, when he had left Mountfield, trotted on at a slightly faster pace than he had hitherto come, in the direction of Blaythorn, and did not draw rein until he came to that rectory concerning whose occupancy his relations and connections were so exercised. It was a dull house, with a short, weed-grown drive behind a rather shabby brick wall and an overgrown shrubbery, on the outskirts of the village. He got off his horse and rang the bell, which was presently answered by a smart parlourmaid, who gave him a discreet smile of welcome, and whisked off at his request, with a flourish of petticoats, to fetch a groom from the stableyard hard by. Then she showed him into the drawing-room, where two women were sitting by the fire, one of whom rose to greet him with an exclamation of pleasure, while the other gathered up her work deliberately and prepared to leave the room.

Lady George Dubec was a tall, slender woman in the early thirties, or possibly only in the late twenties. Her face was a little worn, but her eyes were deep and lustrous, and her features delicate. When she smiled she was beautiful. Her dark hair was elaborately braided; her slim figure looked well in a black gown of soft folds. She had thin, almost transparent hands, covered with jewels. She moved gracefully, and her voice was low, but clear and musical, with only the suspicion of an un-English intonation.

"Oh, Dick, what a godsend you are," she said as she gave him both her hands. "Toby and I were wondering how on earth we were going to get through the rest of the afternoon and evening."

"I wasn't wondering at all," said the other lady, who had now also risen and shaken hands with the visitor. "I knew you would come. So did Virginia, really. We were talking about you. I will now retire to another apartment and leave you alone."

"Indeed you'll do no such thing," said Virginia Dubec, taking her by the shoulders and pushing her back into her chair. "We will have the lights and tea—although it is early—and a talk of three together. We're all friends, and you're not going to sit alone."

"Of course not," said Dick. "A nice sort of state you'd work yourself up into against me! I know you, Miss Dexter."

She took her seat again and unrolled her work. She was short and rather plain, with sandy-coloured hair and square-tipped fingers. She had not smiled since Dick had entered the room.

"Oh, I don't deny that I'm jealous," she said. "I've had her to myself for three years, and you have come and stolen her away from me. But it's a harmless sort of jealousy. It doesn't make me object to you. It only makes me wonder sometimes."

"What do you wonder?" asked Dick, standing up before the fire and looking down at her with a glance that immediately transferred itself to her companion, on whom his eyes rested with an expression that had a hint of hunger in it.

Virginia answered for her. "She wonders what there is in a man for a woman to cling to—and especially after my experience. She thinks a woman's friendship ought to be enough. She wants no other. We talk over these things together, but we don't quarrel. She knows that I shall always love her, don't you, Toby?"

"Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't," said Miss Dexter. "But we needn't discuss these matters before Captain Dick. I'll ring for the lights and the tea."

Dick breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. He was not at home in the discussions of abstract questions. "How do you find yourself here, Virginia?" he asked, looking round him. "You have made this room very jolly, anyhow."

"That's what Mr. Marsh said, in his own particular way," she said, with a smile. "He said, 'If I'd known a woman could do this sort of thing to a house, I'd have married a wife years ago.'"

"And of course Virginia immediately suggested he should marry me," said Miss Dexter. "She is so generous with her belongings."

"It made us very good friends," said Lady George. "A joke of that sort always does. We shall carry it on till the end of my tenancy, and then he will propose to Toby. You'll see, Dick."

"I shouldn't blame him," said Dick. "The stables aren't so very bad, are they?"

"Oh, Wilson says they'll do. But I wish you had been able to get me a brighter house, Dick. It is rather depressing, in spite of all my furbishing and knick-knacks."

"My dear girl, it was absolutely the only one within reach. We don't let houses for hunting hereabouts. You wait till you see the dower-house. I was there this morning, and really I'd no idea what a jolly little place it is. With the few alterations I'm going to make, and all the jolly old furniture, it will be a topping place. You'll fall in love with it, Virginia."

She sighed. "There are some fences to take before we land up there," she said. "I'm rather frightened about it all, Dick. When will your mother come and see me? Have you told her I am here yet?"

"No," he said shortly. "I shall tell them this evening."

Miss Dexter dropped her work in her lap with a gesture of impatience, and looked up at him. "Why haven't you told them?" she asked. "Are you ashamed of her?"

Dick's face flushed and his lips tightened. "That isn't a proper question to ask, Miss Dexter," he said. "I know what I'm about, and so does Virginia."

"My dear Toby, for goodness' sake don't make him angry," said Lady George. "I'm frightened of him when he looks like that."

Dick forced a smile. "My father is a good sort, but he wants managing," he said. "I'll state the case quite plainly once more, as Miss Dexter sees fit to question my action."

"Oh, good gracious!" put in that lady, "I'm not worth all these heavy guns."

"Toby! Toby!" expostulated her friend.

The maid came in at that moment with a lamp and stayed to draw curtains and light candles. Dick dislodged himself from his stand in front of the fire and took a chair, but left it to the two women to carry on a desultory conversation until they were left alone again. Then he rose once more. "Look here," he said. "We've got to have this out once for all. I'm not going to be twitted for my actions, Miss Dexter."

"Well, please have it out," she said. "I'm listening."

"You are the most tiresome creature in the world," said Lady George.

"I don't want to say anything to hurt you, Virginia," Dick went on, "but the name you bear would set my father against you—violently."

"Oh, my dear Dick!" she said, "you don't hurt me in the least, but why go into all that? We understand each other. Toby, I feel as if I could beat you."

"Well," said Dick. "I won't say any more about that, but you have got to remember it. But there are prejudices to get over besides. He wants me to make the usual sort of marriage with a—oh, you know the sort of female child fellows like me are supposed to marry—his mind is running on it now, and he actually tackled me about it last night. He's got the young person all ready—that's the sort of man he is—my cousin, Grace Ettien. I said, No, thank you, and I told him I didn't want to marry a youngster—wouldn't, anyway. It's no good beating about the bush, Virginia—until he sees you—until he sees you, mind—you don't fill the bill."

"That's a pleasant way of putting it," said Miss Dexter.

"I won't have another word," said Lady George decisively. "You two are just annoying each other. Dick, my dear, I think it's just sweet of you to put all your faith in that seeing of me. I adore you for it. It eases all my spiritual aches and pains. Toby, you irritating creature, can't you see how lovely it is of him? If he were all wrong about having me come down here, I shouldn't care. He has done it because he believes in his heart of hearts that his people have only got to set eyes on me and all their objections will vanish into thin air."

"I don't say that quite—I don't know," said Dick.

"Well, you needn't go and spoil it," said Miss Dexter. "I was just going to say that it did make up for a good deal."

"Look here, Miss Dexter," said Dick. "If I were to go and tell my father straight off that I am going to marry Virginia he would be all over bristles at once. All the things that don't matter a hang beside what she is, and what every one can see she is who knows her, would be brought up, and he'd put himself into a frantic state about it. He wouldn't let me bring her to Kencote; he'd fight blindly with every weapon he could use. I'm heir to a fine property, and I'm as well off as I need be, even while my father is alive, as long as I don't set myself against all his dislikes and prejudices. If I do, he can make me a poor man, and he'd do it. He'd do anything by which he thought he could get his way. I shouldn't even be able to marry, unless I lived on my wife's money, which I won't do."

"No, you're too proud for that," said Miss Dexter.

"Put it how you like. I won't do it. I'll take all a wife can give me except money. That I'll give. If there were no other way, I'd break down his opposition. I know how to treat him, and I could do it; but it would take time; I should cut myself off from Kencote until I had brought him under, and Virginia's name would be bandied about here, in the place where we are going to live all our lives, in a way that would affect us always, and in a way I won't subject her to. He'd do that, although he might be sorry for having done it afterwards, and I don't think I should be able to put up with it. We might quarrel in such a way that we shouldn't be able to come together again, and the harm would be done. As I say, if there were no other way I would run the risk. But there is another way, and I'm taking it. You asked me a foolish question just now—if I was ashamed of Virginia. It is because I am so far from being ashamed of her—because I'm so proud of her—that I asked her to come down here, where he can get to know her before he has any idea that I'm going to marry her. She can make her way, and make him forget all the rest. Now, what have you got against that? Let's have it plainly."

"Dear Dick!" said Virginia softly. "I have had many compliments paid me, but that is the best of all. Answer him, Toby, and don't keep up this tiresome irritation any longer. It spoils everything."

"Well, I'll give in," said Miss Dexter. "But in my inmost soul I'm against all this policy, and if your father isn't quite blind, Captain Dick, he will see through it, and you will be worse off than before."

"My father can't see through anything," said Dick. "Besides, there's nothing to see through. I shouldn't mind telling him—in fact, I shall tell him—that it was I who advised Virginia to come down here. He knows I have heaps of friends all over the place that he doesn't know of. Virginia is one of them, for the present."

"I hope everything will turn out well," said Miss Dexter after a slight pause. "I won't say I think you're right, but I'll say you may be, and I hope you are. And I won't worry you with any more doubts."

Virginia Dubec rose from her chair impulsively and kissed her. "My darling old Toby!" she said. "You are very annoying at times, but I couldn't do without you."

After tea Miss Dexter went out of the room, and they did not try to stop her. When they were left alone Dick held Virginia in his arms and looked into her eyes. "What have you done to me," he asked her, with a smile, "after all these years?"

"Am I really the first, Dick?" she asked him.

"You are the first, Virginia—and the only one. You have changed everything. I have always thought I had everything I wanted. Now I know I've had nothing."

"And I have had nothing, either," she said. "Every morning I wake up wondering what has happened to me. And when I remember I begin to sing. To think that at my age, and after my bitter experience, this should come to me! Oh, Dick, you don't know how much I love you."

"I know how much I love you," he said. "If there were no other way I would give up Kencote and everything else for you. I love you enough for that, Virginia, and the things I would give up for you are the only things I have valued so far. But we won't give up anything, my girl. My good old obstinate old father will fall at your feet when he knows you."

"Will he, Dick?"

"I have fallen at your feet, Virginia, and I'm rather like my father, although I think I can see a bit further into things, and I have a little more control over my feelings—and my speech."

They had sat down side by side on a sofa, and Dick was holding her slender hand in his brown one.

"I used to think you had so much control over yourself that it would be impossible ever to get anything out of you," she said. "You are so frightfully and terrifyingly English."

He laughed. "That gnat-like friend of yours has the power to make me explain myself," he said. "I've never tried to talk over any one to my side as I do her. I have always taken my own way and let people think what they like."

"I think it is sweet of you to put yourself—and me—right with her, Dick. She has been the best friend that I ever had, except you, dear Dick. She stood by me in the worst days, and put up with untold insults without flinching, so that she could stay with me. Of course, at first, she was terrified lest I should make another mistake. She is like a grim watch-dog over me. But she likes you, and trusts you. You must put up with her little ways."

"Oh, I do, my dear, and I will. She's a good sort."

"Dick, will your mother like me? You have never told me very much about her. I think I feel more nervous about her than about your father."

"You needn't, Virginia. She is one of the best of women. I think she is perhaps a little difficult to know. She is rather silent and keeps her thoughts to herself; but I know we shall have her on our side. She has only to know you. But in any case she wouldn't give us any trouble."

"That sounds rather hard, Dick. Don't you love your mother? I loved mine."

"Of course I do. But she doesn't interfere with us. She never did. It was my father we had to consider, even when we were boys."

"Interfere with you! I don't like the sound of it. Dick, I don't think I will talk to you about your mother. I will wait until I have seen her. You don't help me to know what she is like. I hope I shall get on with her. I shall know soon. Will she be at the meet on Monday, if there is one?"

"No. But my father will. I shall introduce him to you then. I told you he had a foolish prejudice against women hunting, didn't I? It won't be quite the most propitious of times. But we can't help that."

"Well, I won't hunt on Monday, then. I will drive Toby to the meet instead, and follow on wheels."

"H'm. Perhaps it would be better—just at the first go off. And I don't believe you really care as much about hunting as you think you do, Virginia."

She looked into his face with her dark, sweet eyes. "I don't care about anything, except to please you, Dick," she said. "As for hunting—it was the excitement—to keep my mind off. It was the only thing he let me do, over here. I believe he would have liked me to kill myself, and sometimes I used to try to."

He put his hand before her mouth. "You are not to talk about those bad times," he said.

She kissed his hand, and removed it. "I like to, sometimes," she said. "It is such a blessed relief to think of them as quite gone—it is like the cessation of bad neuralgia—just a sense of peace and bliss. Perhaps I didn't really try to kill myself, but certainly I shouldn't have cared if I had. It was not caring that gave me my reputation, I suppose, for I didn't mind where I went or what I did. I do care now. I don't think I should very much mind giving it up altogether."

"Well, you mustn't do that for this winter, at any rate. You shall do what you like afterwards. And as for your reputation, my dear, I'm afraid we are so out of the smart hunting world in South Meadshire that you will find very few of us aware of it. So you needn't run any risks in trying to keep it up."

"Very well, Dick. But I expect when the hounds begin to run I shall forget that I have to be cautious. Yes, I do love it. I don't want to give up hunting. And there won't be much for me to do here outside that, will there?"

"I'm afraid I am condemning you to a dull three months, my poor Virginia. But I want you to get to know the country, and love it, as I do. Kencote means a lot to me. I want it to mean a lot to you too."

"So it shall. I love it already, for your sake, and it seems a wonderful thing to me that you and all the people you have sprung from should have been settled down just in this little spot in the world for all those centuries. Dick dear, I know you are giving up a lot for me. I know, although I wasn't brought up in all these traditions, that your father is right, really, and that it is not a woman like me you ought to choose for your wife."

Dick raised her hand and let it fall with his own. "I have chosen you for my wife, Virginia, out of all the women I have known. I love and honour you, and I wouldn't have you different—not in the smallest particular. No Clinton of Kencote has ever chosen a wife more worthy to bear his name. Let that be enough for you, and don't worry your pretty head about anything, except to make love to my old father when you meet him."

When Dick had ridden away, in the gloaming, and the two women were left to themselves for the long evening, Virginia Dubec said to Miss Dexter, "Toby, tell me the truth; don't you think I am the most fortunate woman in the world?"

"If all goes well," said the other soberly and decisively, "I think you will be happy. But your Dick, Virginia, is the sort of man who will want to rule, and to rule without question. He is very much in love with you now—that is quite plain, although he is one of those men who hold themselves in. But you won't get your way, my dear, when you are married, unless it is his way too—any more than you did before."

"Oh, my own way! What do I care about that? My way shall be his way. I love him and I can trust him. He is a strong man, and tender too. Toby, I adore him. I will do everything in the world that I can to make him happy. He has raised me out of the dust, and given me to myself again. When I am married to him I shall forget all the pain and misery. It's a new life he is giving me, Toby, and the old unhappy life will fall from me and be as if it had never been."

"You are expecting a great deal, Virginia," said Miss Dexter; "I hope some part of it will be realised."

CHAPTER VII

THE SQUIRE PUTS HIS FOOT DOWN

Kencote was three hours' journey from London by a fast train, and it had always been the custom of the sons of the family—those of them whose avocations made it necessary for them at any time to live in town—to come down whenever they pleased, to spend a night or a few nights, without announcing their arrival. Their rooms were there ready for them. Kencote was their home. Dick or Humphrey, and, in the days before he was married, Walter, would often walk into the house unexpectedly and go upstairs and dress without any one but the servants knowing they were there until dinner-time. The Squire liked them to come and go in that way. It seemed to give him, in his retired, bucolic life, a tie with the world. He would always give them a hearty welcome, even if he had to object to something they had done, or had left undone, before they left again.

It was Humphrey who arrived on this Saturday afternoon, reaching Kencote by the half-past four train, and walking up from the station and into the morning-room, for his cup of tea. The Squire's greeting was a shade less hearty than it would have been in the case of his other sons. Humphrey had given him a good deal of trouble in the way of money. It is true that there had never been any big catastrophe, no sudden demand for a large sum to meet a debt of honour, from racing or cards, as fathers were sometimes confronted with by extravagant sons. Humphrey was too cautious to run those sorts of risks. The Squire, perhaps, would have preferred that the demands upon him should have come in that way rather than from the constant, rather cold-blooded exceeding of an allowance which he told himself, and Humphrey, was as large as any younger son had a right to expect, and a good deal larger than most of them got. Humphrey did not deny this. He simply said, whenever he did ask his father for more money, that he had not been able to do on it, but if his father would clear off his debts for him and give him a fresh start, he would try to do on it for the future. He had made the endeavour three times, and each time with less success than before, for the debts had been bigger. And now the Squire was getting angry about it. It had always been the same. Humphrey's debts after he had left Cambridge had been about twice as large as Dick's, although Dick had been Master of the Drag and had had expenses that Humphrey had not. Walter had left Oxford with no debts at all. And since their University days, Humphrey had actually had more money than either of the others, although Dick was the eldest son and a considerable sum had been paid to buy Walter his practice.

Now it was not the Squire's way to bear malice or to let any annoyance rankle when once it had been met and dealt with. In the ordinary course he would have expressed himself very strongly and felt very strongly on the subject when one of Humphrey's periodical crises of debt was disclosed to him, but when he had so relieved his mind he would have paid up and forgotten all about it. He had done so the first time, and even the second, after a rather stronger explosion. It was the third, now nearly two years ago, which had rankled; and the reason was not only that Humphrey, as seemed quite obvious, was living in just such a way as had brought him to exceed his income and get into trouble before, with the consequence that a new crisis and a new demand would probably arise before long. It was so much in the air that the Squire was continually calling the gods to witness that he was not going to pay any more of Humphrey's debts. But he would not have felt so sore, when he did think about it, if it had not been for Humphrey's attitude towards him in particular, and towards Kencote and all that it represented in general.

The fact was that Humphrey, from the serene heights of his career as a very smart young man about town, patronised them. It is to be supposed that he could not help it, that it was an attitude which he would have corrected if he had been aware of it, for it was quite certain that, when once his father became aware of it, it would not help him in any plan he might have to make for further pecuniary assistance. The Squire merely had a feeling of irritation against Humphrey, which slumbered while he was away and always became sharper during his somewhat rare visits to Kencote. It was not yet formulated, but was nearer to getting to a head every time they came together. The young man, if he had had an adviser, might have been told that if he acted in such a way as to bring it to a head, it would be time for him to look out.

Humphrey walked into the morning-room with a cool air, as if he had come from another room in the house instead of from London. He was the only one of all the Clintons who was dark. He was not so good-looking as Dick, but he was well set up, and his clothes were always the perfect expression of the requirements of the moment. So were Dick's, but Dick wore old clothes sometimes, Humphrey never. He was a young man of the highest fashion, whenever and wherever he appeared.

The Squire was standing in front of the fire, as his habit was, Mrs. Clinton sitting behind her tea-table and Mrs. Graham near her. The twins were on the sofa on either side of Cicely. Humphrey kissed his mother, shook hands with his father and Mrs. Graham, and sat down by his sisters. "The frost is going to break," he said.

"Is it?" said the Squire. "Well, that's the best news you could have brought. Look here, we were talking of Lady George Dubec. Do you know anything about her?"

"Virginia Dubec?" said Humphrey. "She is a very beautiful lady."

"Well, but who is she? Who was she? An American they say. Is she all right?"

"She was an actress. Musical comedy, or something of the sort. But that was some years ago. Old George Dubec married her in New York, and led her an awful life. She used to hunt with the Quorn. Went like a bird, and didn't care how she went or where she went. People used to say she wanted to break her neck and get away from George Dubec. But Dick knows her better than I do. He'll tell you all about her."

Mrs. Clinton looked up from the teacups, Mrs. Graham arched her brows and her mouth twitched, the twins caught the sense of surprise and gazed open-eyed at their father.

"Dick knows her!" exclaimed the Squire. "Then why on earth——! Does he know she has settled down here?"

"Has she settled down here?" asked Humphrey. "Where has she settled, and what for?"

"Taken old Marsh's rectory at Blaythorn," said Mrs. Graham. "Going to hunt with the South Meadshire."

"That seems an odd proceeding for one of the brightest ornaments of the Shires," said Humphrey.

The Squire knit his heavy brows. "We can show her very good sport," he said, "if that's what she wants. But I should like to know why she came here, all the same."

"There's more in this than meets the eye," said Nancy, very unwisely, for she and Joan were instantly sent out of the room.

"What are you children doing here?" asked the Squire sharply. "Why aren't you with Miss Bird? Run along now; you've got lessons to do, or something."

"We don't have lessons on Saturday. Can't we stay with Cicely, father?" asked Joan.

"I must be going directly," said Cicely, rising. "But I'll come with you and pay a last farewell to the dear old Starling."

So the three of them retired, and directly they got out of the room Joan fell upon Nancy. "What an idiot you are!" she said. "If you had kept quiet we should have heard everything. When you get hold of a new speech you must always be poking it in. We've had enough of 'There's more in this than meets the eye.' I wish you'd get hold of a new one."

"I own it was foolish of me," said Nancy. "I'm at the mercy of a phrase. Still, it was quite true. We know who Dick is in love with now. Of course he got her down here. Humphrey said she was very beautiful."

"You are not to talk like that, children," said Cicely. "You know nothing about these things."

"Darling!" said Joan, squeezing her arm. "Don't be so frightfully grown-up. We are not children any longer, and we know a good deal more than you think."

"We are a force to be reckoned with now," said Nancy, "and it's no use trying to keep family secrets from us, sending us out of the room, and all that. It's too transparent, and makes us talk all the more."

There was a pause in the morning-room when the three sisters had left. Humphrey's quick brain was adjusting many things. He knew Dick admired Virginia Dubec, although it had not hitherto occurred to him that that admiration betokened anything serious. He suspected also, that since somebody must have suggested to the lady that she should spend a season hunting in Meadshire instead of in Leicestershire, that somebody was probably Dick. But if his brother had not seen fit to disclose that fact at Kencote, not even the fact of his acquaintanceship with Lady George Dubec, it was not for him to do so. Therefore, when his father asked him whether Dick knew that she had come to Blaythorn, and why she had come, he said, "I don't know in the least. He'll tell you if you ask him."

The Squire bent his brows on him. "You said he knew her very well."

"I didn't say he knew her very well. I said he knew her better than I did. Lots of people know her. She goes about everywhere in London."

"She was an actress, you say?"

"Well, that's what I've heard. It may not be true."

"It is true," said Mrs. Graham. "Virginia Vanreden. I remember quite well now. I saw her when I was in New York with my husband ten years ago. And a lovely creature she was. I shall go and call on her at once."

The Squire frowned again. "What sort of an actress was she?" he asked. "Was she a chorus girl?"

"It was a play called The Flower of Florida," replied Mrs. Graham, "a very silly play with catchy music, only it didn't catch me, because I hate music, and I was bored to tears. No, she wasn't a chorus girl, and she wasn't the Flower of Florida either—I remember the Flower, an exuberant lady with gold teeth, who seemed to be very popular, but I should have said she was past her job. This girl danced—oh, I remember her very well; she was the best of the bunch, and the Flower grinned at her with her teeth and scowled at her with her eyes while she was performing. When we got back to New York on our way home she had caught on, and all the richly gilded youth was crowding to see her. The Flower had departed, mad with jealousy."

"A dancing girl!" said the Squire. "Of course! Just the sort that George Dubec would have married. Well, you may call on her if you like, Mrs. Graham, but——"

"Oh, I shall," said Mrs. Graham. "Perhaps she will dance for me. I liked her immensely. She was certainly beautiful, and I like beauty. She was quite young too. She can't be very old now."

"What I want to know is what brings her to Blaythorn," said the Squire, which closed the discussion, for Cicely's carriage was announced at that moment, and the welfare of the Mountfield horses being of paramount importance it was not many minutes before she and Mrs. Graham had driven away.

Dick returned shortly after six o'clock, and when he had changed his clothes, came into the library where his father was sitting at his big writing-table looking over papers, his gold-rimmed glasses perched on his straight nose.

"Oh, here you are," he said, looking over them at his son. "I say, what's this about Lady George Dubec taking the rectory at Blaythorn?"

Dick took a cigarette out of his case and went over to the smoking-table by the fire to get a match. "I've just been to see her," he said; "she's a friend of mine."

"Well, but——" The Squire was puzzled, vaguely uneasy, though he could not have told why. "What on earth has she come here for? Who brought her? You didn't, I suppose?"

Dick sat down with rather elaborate unconcern in one of the big easy-chairs facing his father, who had turned round sideways in his seat. "I suppose you may say I did bring her, in a way," he said. "She wanted to do a bit of mild hunting somewhere, and I told her she'd better try the South Meadshire."

"But they tell me she's well known with the Quorn and all that sort of thing."

"Now I should like to know who told you that," said Dick to himself, but he did not ask. "She hasn't hunted there for two seasons," he said. "She wanted something a bit quieter. I said I'd see if I could find her a smallish house, and I wrote to Wylie, the agent at Bathgate. Blaythorn Rectory was the only place he could get hold of, and the stables there aren't much."

"I should think not."

"They are better than you'd think, though, and she has only brought three horses."

"Why didn't you tell us you were springing this strange lady upon us?" asked the Squire, as a beginning out of all the questions he wanted to ask.

"I haven't been home for a month," said Dick, "and I'm not much of a correspondent."

"You didn't say anything about it last night, and you didn't say you were going over to see her this afternoon." The Squire's uneasiness was beginning to take shape, and Dick realised with annoyance that he had given it something to feed on.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But we were talking about other things. The poor lady had a brute of a husband—I expect you knew him, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, I knew him. A pretty sort of rascal he was too."

"I've always heard so, though I never met him. He behaved like a swine to her, at any rate, and she's a very charming woman. I think you'll like her, father. I want to ask the mater to go over and see her as soon as she can. She doesn't know any one hereabouts, and it's a bit lonely for her."

He could not keep the note of appeal, rarely heard from him, out of his voice, but it escaped the Squire, who only saw himself at issue with his eldest son—a position he exceedingly disliked.

"Oh, my dear boy!" he said. "A woman that blackguard George Dubec picked up off the music-hall stage! You can't be serious."

"That's not true," said Dick sharply. "Who said she was on the music-hall stage?"

"Well, on the stage, anyhow—dancing on the stage—it's the same thing."

"Who told you that?"

"Humphrey said she had been on the stage, and Mrs. Graham remembered seeing her when she was in America."

"Is Humphrey here?"

"Yes, he came this afternoon. An American dancer, you know, Dick, and a woman who would marry George Dubec—really, you might have thought twice before you brought a person of that sort here; and as for your mother calling on her—that's out of the question. Surely you can see that."

The Squire's tone was conciliatory. He would not have spoken in that way, upon a subject on which he felt strongly, to any one else in the world, and when he had spoken he threw a glance at his son, whose face betokened nothing of all he was thinking at that moment.

Dick did not speak at once. When he did he said quietly, "When I suggested to Lady George, who has been a friend of mine for some time, that she should spend a month or two in this part of the country, I told her that my people would be glad to see her and do what they could for her. It never crossed my mind that you would refuse to acknowledge a friend of mine. It is not my habit to make friends of women I couldn't introduce you or my mother to."

"But, my dear boy!" expostulated the Squire. "A woman who has danced on the stage, the widow of a notorious profligate and swindler—George Dubec was a swindler, and he wasn't received latterly even in men's society—decent men. I wouldn't have received him, for one."

"You can say what you like about George Dubec," replied Dick. "It was the way he had treated her that made me sorry for her, first of all. Then I found she was a good woman, as well as a very charming one. There isn't a soul who knows her—and lots of people know her—who could have a word to say against her. It isn't generally known that she was on the stage—it was for a very short time—and I wish to goodness Humphrey had minded his own business and kept that to himself. Her father was a planter in the South, and lost everything he had in the war. She had to support her mother, and that was the only way. She was very young. I honour her for what she did."

"Yes, oh yes, that's all right," said the Squire, who was coming more and more to feel that it was all wrong. "But it's no good, Dick. Plenty of people in their different lines of life do things that you can honour them for, as you say, but you don't welcome them to houses like Kencote. We live a quiet enough life here, I know that. We're not one of the modern smart country houses, thank God, and never will be as long as I'm alive. But we're of some account in this part of the world, and have been for generations. And the long and the short of it is, Dick, that if you want to make friends with ladies of that sort, I can't stop you—I don't want to—it's your affair and you're old enough to look after yourself—but I won't have them at Kencote."

Inwardly, Dick was raging, and it needed all his self-control to keep his feelings from showing themselves in his face or in his speech. But he knew that if he did so everything was lost. It had been no vain boast that he had made to Virginia Dubec, that he could manage his father. He had the advantage over him that a man who controls his speech and his temper always has over a man who habitually controls neither. For many years past the Squire, who pictured himself as the wise but undisputed autocrat of his household, had gone to his eldest son for advice upon any matter that bothered him, and had always taken his advice. In questions of estate management he had never taken a step of any importance without consulting Dick, and Dick had been the virtual ruler of the estate, although the Squire did not know it. In his father's eyes Dick was a model son. He had never once had to exercise his paternal authority over him since his schooldays. He knew that Kencote, which was the apple of his own eye, was also the apple of Dick's, and that he would have as worthy a successor as any head of an old-rooted family ever had. In course of years he had come to treat his eldest son with a respect and consideration which he gave to no other being alive. Except that none but an eldest son who was some day to step into his place could have aroused the feelings he had towards him, his attitude towards Dick was what he might have felt towards a brother, almost, it might be said, towards an elder brother.

Now Dick was quite aware of all this, and he knew also that in his last speech his father had crossed a line that had never yet been crossed between them. He had done what he did almost every day of his life with some member or other of his family or household, but had never done with him since he was a child, because he had never given him the opportunity. He called it putting his foot down, and although in reference to other matters Dick had frequently, by the exercise of his peculiar gift of cool tact, caused the taking up again of a foot that was announced to have been put down, and by no means despaired of being able to do so in this instance, he knew that this was not the time to undertake the removal. Something of his moral supremacy had already disappeared if his father could take it into his hands to give an ultimatum against his expressed wishes. There was no knowing how much further it would be damaged if he were encouraged, as he would be by opposition now that he had once delivered himself, to back up his revolt by strong speech. It was what he always fortified himself with either before or after the process of putting his foot down, and Dick had no mind to undergo it.

"Very well," he said quietly. "If you feel like that about it, there's no more to be said. It's damned awkward for me, but I suppose I took too much on myself."

The Squire immediately recrossed the line, on the other side of which only opposition could possibly make him wish to keep his footing. "Oh, well," he said, "of course I don't say—in this instance—what I mean is—well, look here, Dick, I don't say anything one way or the other. I'll say this, my boy, you've never given me the slightest trouble, and we've always seen eye to eye in pretty well everything, and where we haven't at first you have always come to see that I was right in the end—eh? Better let me think the question over—what? I don't want you to feel you can't ask your friends to this house, which will be your own some day."

"I can hardly help feeling that, can I?" said Dick, with a short laugh.

"Eh? Well, I must think it over, and talk it over with your mother. You'd better think it over too, old boy. I can't help thinking you'll feel you haven't been very wise. We're Clintons of Kencote, you know. We owe something to ourselves."

But Dick could stand no more. "All right," he said, rising. "I think I'll go up and have a bath before dinner. I'm a bit stiff."

CHAPTER VIII

THE SQUIRE FEELS TROUBLE COMING

Dick went out of the room angry with himself, angry with his father, and still more angry with his brother. He wanted to meet Humphrey and have it out with him, and he knew that Humphrey at that hour—about seven o'clock—would be in the smoking-room. But he went upstairs, not because he wanted a bath before dinner as he had told his father, and certainly not because he was stiff after trotting a dozen miles or so along the roads, but because he knew that it was not wise to have anything out with anybody unless you had complete command over yourself. So he went into his big comfortable bedroom, where a bright fire was burning, lit some candles, and threw himself into an easy-chair to think matters out.

That his father would give way, that he was already in process of giving way, he was well assured. He knew how to work that all right, and he had taken no false step, as far as he could remember, in dealing with him. But that little fact of Virginia's having once danced on the stage, of which she had told him in the early days of their friendship, as she had told him everything else about her varied, unhappy life, he had never thought that he—and she—would have to face. If it had not been for that, his father, so he told himself, would have given way already. Knowing it, it was surprising that he had left anything to be said on the subject at all. He need never have known it; so few people did know it, even in London, where Virginia was beginning to be well known, or in Leicestershire, where she was very well known indeed. Of course, Humphrey knew it—he knew all that sort of gossip about everybody—and Dick's anger against him began to burn as he imagined the way in which he would have let it out. He was like a spiteful old woman, fiddling about in drawing-rooms, whispering scandal into other old women's ears and receiving it into his own in return.

At this point Humphrey came into the room. "Hullo, old chap!" he said. "What on earth are you doing up here? It isn't time to dress yet."

Dick got up quickly out of his chair and faced him. He had better have gone to him in the smoking-room at once before he had begun to think things over. "What the devil do you mean by meddling with my affairs?" he said angrily.

Humphrey stopped short and stared as if he had held a pistol to his head. He and Dick and Walter had been closer friends than most brothers are. Their ways for some time had begun to diverge, but they had remained friends, and since their boyhood they had never quarrelled. Such a speech as Dick's was in effect more than a pistol held to his head. It was a pistol shot.

"I suppose you mean what I told them downstairs about Virginia Dubec," he said.

"Virginia Dubec? Who gave you the right to call her Virginia?" said Dick hotly, and could have bitten out his tongue for saying it the moment after, for of course it told Humphrey everything.

But Humphrey was too deeply astonished at the moment to take in anything. He thought he knew his brother; he had always rather admired him, and above all for his coolness. But if this was Dick, passionate and indiscreet, he did not know him at all, and it was difficult to tell how to deal with him.

But Humphrey was cool too, in his own way, hating the discomfort of passion, and he certainly did not want to have a row with his elder brother. "I don't know why you're up against me like this," he said. "I should have thought we knew each other well enough by this time to talk over anything that wants talking over, sensibly. I'm quite ready to talk over anything with you, but hadn't we better go and do it downstairs? They'll be up here putting out your clothes directly."

"We'll go down to the smoking-room," said Dick, not sorry to have a minute or two in which to pull himself together.

So they went downstairs without a word, and along a stone passage to a big room which had been given over to them as boys, because it was right away from the other rooms, and in which they knew no one would disturb them.

Neither of them spoke at once, but both took cigarettes from a box on a table, and Humphrey offered Dick a match, which he refused, lighting one for himself.

"Lady George Dubec," said Dick—"Virginia Dubec, if you like to call her so—I've no objection—is a friend of mine, as you know. She wanted a quiet place to hunt from for a month or two, and I said I would try to find her a house here. Of course I told her that they would make friends with her from here. I went to see her this afternoon, and I come back to find you have been talking scandal about her, and giving the governor the impression that she's an impossible sort of creature for respectable people to know. Upon my word, Humphrey, you ought to be kicked."

Humphrey grew a shade paler, but he asked quietly, "What scandal do you accuse me of spreading about her?"

"Well, it isn't scandal in the sense that it's untrue; but I don't suppose a dozen people know that she was ever on the stage. It was only for a few months, and the circumstances of it did her credit. But if it gets about, it will do her harm. As far as the governor goes, of course, it puts him up on his hind legs at once, and here am I in the position of getting this quite charming lady, against whom nobody can say a word, down here, and my own people refusing to go near her. It's too bad. If you happened to know that about her, which, of course, is just the sort of thing you would find out and remember and talk about, out of all the other things you might say about a woman like that, you ought to have kept it to yourself. And you would have done if you had had a spark of decent feeling."

"I should have kept it to myself if I had had any idea it was through you she came here."

"You ought to have kept it to yourself in any case. You know her, you know what she is, and the first thing you find to blurt out about her when you hear she has come down here is the very thing that you know will put everybody against her!"

"Look here, Dick, there's no sense in you going on blackguarding me like this. I hadn't a ghost of a notion she was anywhere near here when I told them what I did. The moment I came into the room the governor said, 'We've been talking about Lady George Dubec. Do you know her?' I said, 'Yes, she's a very charming lady.' That was the very first thing I said. Then I said, 'She was an actress once upon a time.' There's nothing in that. You say very few people know it. You're quite wrong. Lots of people know it. Why, even Mrs. Graham knew it, and had seen her. Nobody thinks anything the worse of her for it. Why should they? And anyhow it wasn't until afterwards that they told me that she had come down here. Then I said, 'Dick knows her better than I do; he'll tell you all you want to know.' Really, old chap, you're a bit unreasonable."

Both of them had been standing so far, but now Humphrey, feeling perhaps that the crisis had been disposed of, threw himself into a chair.

So it was, on the surface. Dick stood for a time looking down on the floor. If it was as Humphrey had said, and he had not known that Virginia Dubec was in the neighbourhood until after he had let out that fact about her, it was impossible to carry the attack further. But Dick was no more satisfied with him than before. The hostility he had felt remained, and was destined to grow. From that moment the common ground of easy, tolerant brotherhood upon which they had both stood for so long was left behind. Dick had begun to criticise, to find cause for dislike; Humphrey had received an affront, and he did not easily forgive an affront.

But the cement of their years of frictionless companionship still held, and could not be broken in a moment. Dick also took a chair. "Well, if you didn't know——" he said rather grudgingly.

"No, I didn't know, and I'm sorry," said Humphrey; "the governor won't hold out, Dick; he's only got to see her."

It was the best thing he could have said. Dick was inwardly gratified, and some of his resentment departed. "You needn't say anything unless he opens the subject," he said. "But——"

"Oh, I know what to say if he does," said Humphrey. "I say, Dick, old chap, is it a case?"

Dick was not at all ready for this—from Humphrey, although if Walter had asked him he might have admitted how much of a case it was, and gained some contentment by talking it over. "I like her, of course," he said, somewhat impatiently; "I've never disguised it. I suppose one is permitted to make friendship with women occasionally?"

"Oh yes," said Humphrey, with rather elaborate unconcern. Then Dick said he was going up to dress, and left the room without further word, while Humphrey sat a while longer looking at the fire and turning things over in his mind.

Over the dinner-table that evening there was talk of the forthcoming Hunt Ball, and the one or two others which made the week after Christmas a short season of gaiety in South Meadshire. The Birketts were coming to stay for them, the Judge and his wife and unmarried daughter, and his other daughter, Lady Senhouse, with her husband. These were the only guests invited so far, and the Squire, who liked a little bustle of gaiety about him now and again, said that they must ask one or two more people.

"We shall be unusually gay this year," he said, "with the ball for Grace at Kemsale, which is sure to be well done. We must take a good party over from Kencote. Who can we ask?"

It was a somewhat extraordinary thing that a question like that could not easily be answered at Kencote. The Squire very seldom left home, Mrs. Clinton practically never, and in the course of years the families from whom they could draw for visitors had dwindled down to those of relations and county neighbours. The Squire was quite satisfied with this state of things. There were plenty of people about him with whom he could shoot, and who would shoot with him; and an occasional dinner party was all or more than he wanted in the way of indoor sociability—that, and this yearly little group of balls, the Hunt Ball, the Bathgate Ball, and whatever might be added to them from one or other of the big houses round. Kencote had never been one of those houses. Its women had never been considered of enough importance to make the trouble and expense of ball-giving worth while, and the men could get all the balls they wanted elsewhere. Before Cicely was married her brothers had generally brought a few men down for these local gaieties, but for the past two years there had been no party from Kencote.

"I think Lady Aldeburgh would bring Susan Clinton if you were to ask her," said Humphrey. "In fact, I'm pretty sure she would."

Now the Countess of Aldeburgh was a person of some importance in the social world, and her husband was sprung from the same race as the Squire, sprung, in fact, some distance back, from Kencote, and represented, as the Squire not infrequently pointed out, a junior branch of the family of which he himself was the head. He was accustomed to speak rather patronisingly of the Aldeburgh Clintons on that account, although not to them, for he did not know them, the present Lord Aldeburgh having been a small boy at school at that period of the Squire's life when he had been about London and known everybody.

"Are they friends of yours?" he asked, not displeased at the idea.

"Yes," said Humphrey. "I told Susan Clinton that she ought to see the home of her ancestors—I was lunching with them—and Lady Aldeburgh said they couldn't see it unless they were asked."

"No difficulty about asking them," said the Squire. "Very pleased to see them, and show them what there is, although I dare say they won't think much of it after the sort of thing they're accustomed to. They must take us as they find us. Did you say anything about these balls?"

"Well, yes, I did—threw out feelers, you know. I think they would come if mother were to ask them."

"Oh, write by all means, Nina," said the Squire. "Include Aldeburgh, of course."

"Oh, he won't come," said Humphrey. "He never goes where they do. He doesn't like them."

The Squire frowned. He knew there were people like that, but he didn't want to hear about them. According to his old-fashioned ideas, husbands and wives, if they went visiting at all, ought to go visiting together. Of course it was different where a man might have to go up to London for a day or two. There was no necessity always to take his wife along with him. Or he might perhaps go to a house to shoot. That was all right. But for women to make a point of going about by themselves—why, they had much better stop at home and look after their household duties. "Well, ask him, of course," he said. "He can refuse if he likes. We can do very well without him. Are either of you boys going to ask any men?"

Dick had thought of bringing a friend, Captain Vernon, who had been to Kencote before and would be very welcome. And Humphrey was going to ask Lord Edgeware.

"What, that young fool who lost all his money racing?" asked the Squire.

"He didn't lose it all," said Humphrey, "and he's had a lot more left to him."

"We don't want that sort of person here," said the Squire decisively.

"All right," said Humphrey. "But he's a very good chap all the same, and has finished sowing his wild oats."

"He's an absolute rotter," said Dick. "I quite agree; we don't want that sort of fellow here."

Humphrey threw a glance at him and flushed with annoyance, but he said lightly, "I beg to withdraw his candidature. Is there any objection to Bobby Trench? He hasn't spent money racing because he has never had any to spend."

Dick was silent. The Squire enquired if Mr. Trench was one of Lord So-and-so's sons, and being informed that he was, said that he had known his father and should be pleased to see him at Kencote. So the party was made up, and the men went on to talk about pheasants and hounds, until the twins came in for dessert, when they went on talking about pheasants and hounds.

The Squire and Dick went into the library to go over their farm papers together almost immediately after dinner, leaving Humphrey with his mother and the girls in the morning-room. When they had finished they betook themselves to easy-chairs to talk, as their custom was in the evening. They were very good friends, and had enough in common to make their conversation mutually agreeable. Neither of them read much, and when Dick was at Kencote they usually spent their evenings talking. But Dick was rather silent to-night, and the Squire was uneasily conscious of the shadow that had fallen on their intercourse. And when he was uneasy about anything his uneasiness always found expression.

"I say, my boy, I hope you don't take it amiss what I said about this Lady George Dubec this afternoon," he said. "You see my point all right, don't you?"

"I see your point well enough," said Dick. "Only I don't think it's much of a point."

He was accustomed thus to address his father on equal terms, and the Squire liked to have it so. He was now only anxious, while having his own way, to avoid the unpleasantness of leaving a grudge against himself in Dick's mind.

"Well, we needn't go all over it again," he said. "I haven't made up my mind yet. I don't say your mother shan't call and I don't say she shall. I must think it over. Of course it's a bit awkward for you."

"It's more than a bit awkward for me," said Dick uncompromisingly. "When you do think it over you might consider how particularly awkward it is, after having helped this lady to a house here, to have to tell her that my people don't consider her respectable enough to know."

"H'm! Ha!" grunted the Squire, at a loss how to meet this. Then he made a clutch at his authority. "Well, I think you ought to have asked me first, Dick," he said, "and not taken things for granted. If I'm putting you in an awkward position now, it's because you have put me in an awkward position first."

There was reason in this, perhaps more than the Squire usually displayed in discussing a subject in which his feelings were already engaged, and Dick did not want to go over the ground again until matters had advanced themselves a stage.

"She will be at the meet on Monday—driving," he said. "You will see what she is like, and that she isn't in the least like what you probably think she is. I should like to introduce you to her, but that shall be as you please."

The Squire did not reply to this. He sat looking at the fire with a puzzled frown on his face. Then he turned to his son and said, "There's nothing between you and this lady, Dick, is there? You hadn't got her in your mind last night when you said that you did not want to marry a young girl?"

Dick cursed himself inwardly for having made that unlucky speech. He was not cut out for however mild a conspiracy, and he hated to have to fence and parry. But he must answer quickly if suspicion, which would be disastrous at the present stage, were not to rest on him. He gave a little laugh. "Is that what you have been thinking of?" he asked. "Is that why you don't want mother to call on Lady George?"

The Squire had only to push his question, and he would have learnt everything, for Dick would not have denied Virginia. But he did not do so. "No, of course not," he said. "But if it were so—if that's how the land lay——"

Dick did not tell him that that was not how the land lay. He said nothing, and the Squire relinquished the subject, not to open it up again until he was alone with his wife that night. Then his disquietude came out, for Dick's reply to his question had not satisfied him, and putting two and two together, as he said, and impelled towards dreadful conclusions by his habit of making the most of vague fears, he had now fully convinced himself that the land did indeed lie in the direction of Lady George Dubec, now settled within a mile or two, at Blaythorn, and that, unless he could do something to stop it, a most dreadful catastrophe was about to overtake the house of Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton could do little to calm his fears. Privately she thought that he was making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and that Dick was as little likely as the Squire himself to marry such a woman as she imagined Lady George Dubec to be. For she knew how much alike her husband and her son were in all the essential aims and ambitions of their lives, although she knew also that Dick had a far cooler head and a better brain than his father's. For that very reason he was the less likely to make a marriage which would be beneath the dignity of his family. She said what she could to persuade her husband that Dick might be trusted in a matter of this sort, but he was in that stage of alarm when however much a man may desire to find himself mistaken he resists all attempts to prove him so. "I tell you, Nina," he said, "that he told me himself that when he did marry it would be a middle-aged woman, or words to that effect. And he gets this woman down here without saying a word to us about it, and they say she's good-looking—you heard Humphrey say that yourself, and Mrs. Graham too—and he goes over there this afternoon without mentioning it.—By Jove! didn't he say he wanted to go and see Jim at Mountfield? Yes, he did,—you remember—at luncheon. Nina, I'm afraid there's no doubt about it. Can't you see what a dreadful thing it would be, and that we must stop it at any cost?"

"I hope it will not come about," said Mrs. Clinton. "Dick is level-headed, and he sees questions of this sort in much the same light as you do, Edward."

"It would be intolerable," wailed the poor Squire. "And Dick of all people! I'd have trusted him anywhere. And now I shall have to stand up against him, and it will be one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. But I won't let him throw himself away and drag the old name in the dust if I can possibly prevent it. And, God helping me, I will prevent it, whatever it costs me. Nina, you are not to go near this woman. The only way is to keep her at arm's-length. If we stand firm the affair will fade out, and Dick will forget all about it. He has always been a good boy. I've been proud of my son. He will thank me some day for saving him from himself. Good-night, Nina, God bless you. There's a difficult time coming for us at Kencote, I'm afraid."

So night and silence fell on the great house. Its master, always healthily tired after his day, spent mostly in the open, soon forgot his troubles in sleep; its mistress lay awake for a long time, wondering if trouble were really going to befall her first-born, who had gone so far from her since she had first hugged him to her breast. And in other rooms in the house there were those who lay awake and wearied themselves with the troubles of life or slept soundly without a care, some of them of account in the daily comings and goings, some of very little, but one and all acting and reacting on one another, concerned in some degree in a common life.

CHAPTER IX

DICK PAYS A SUNDAY VISIT

It did not take Dick long to find out on that next (Sunday) morning that his diplomacy had failed, that his father, urged by his fears, had discovered what he would have hidden from him for a time, or thought he had discovered it, which came to the same thing, since it was true, and that he might just as well have announced his intention of marrying Virginia Dubec, and entered at once upon the struggle which was now bound to come in any case.

Nothing was said on either side, and the Squire did his best to behave as usual. But the attempt was too much for him, and there was no one who did not know before breakfast was over that there was a disturbance in the air. He would enter upon a course of conversation with gaiety, and relinquish it immediately to frown upon his plate. He grumbled at everything upon the table, and testily rebuked the twins for fidgeting. They took the rebuke calmly, knowing quite well what it portended, and were only anxious to discover the cause of the upset.

"It's this Lady George Dubec," said Joan, when they were alone together. "There's something fishy about her; it must have come out after we were sent away yesterday. Father thinks he's Emperor of this part of Meadshire, and he doesn't like her coming here without his being consulted."

"I don't think it's that at all," said Nancy. "I believe it's Humphrey's debts. Father has got pots of money, but he hates shelling it out. He was snappy with Humphrey this morning."

"So he was with everybody but Dick. That proves nothing. A week's pocket-money that it's this Lady George."

"Dick said we weren't to bet."

"Oh, well, perhaps we'd better not, then. He was a brick about the camera. I don't suppose he's concerned in it, whatever it is. With father, Dick does no wrong."

"I'm not sure. Joan, supposing Dick has fallen in love with Lady George and father is upset about it!"

"Oh, my dear, do talk sense. Dick in love with a widow!"

"Stranger things have happened. Anyhow, we'll leave no stone unturned to find out what it is."

"Oh, we'll ferret it out all right. It will add to the interest of life."

There was one thing that the Squire always did on the rare occasions on which he found himself in a dilemma, and that was to consult his half-brother, the Rector. Consequently when, after church, meeting Mrs. Beach, the Rector's wife, in the churchyard, he asked her if she and Tom would come up to luncheon, Dick, overhearing him, smiled inwardly and a little ruefully, and pictured to himself the sitting that would be held in the afternoon, when the Rector would be invited into the library and the Squire would unbosom himself of his difficulties. Dick himself had often joined in these conclaves. "Let's see what Tom has to say about it," his father would say. "He has a good head, Tom." Dick would be left out of this conclave, but as he thought of the line that his uncle was likely to take, he half wished that he had had a conclave with him himself beforehand. The Rector was a man of peace, a lovable man, who hated to see any one uncomfortable, and perhaps, for a churchman, hated a little too much to run the risk of discomfort himself. Probably he would have sympathised. Certainly he would have brought no hard judgment to bear on Virginia, whatever she had done and whatever she had been. However, it was too late to think of that now, and when Joan asked him at luncheon if he would go for a walk with them in the afternoon, he took the bull by the horns and said that he was going to drive over to Blaythorn.

"By the by," said Mrs. Beach, not noticing the Squire's sudden frown, "have you heard that Mr. Marsh has let his rectory to a hunting lady?"

"Yes," said Dick, "Lady George Dubec. She is a friend of mine, and I'm going over to see her."

Never had the Squire spoken with more difficulty. But it behoved him to speak, and to speak at once. "I am very sorry she has come," he said. "She is a friend of Dick's in London, but we can't recognise her here at Kencote."

Except that the servants were not in the room it was a public throwing down of the gage of battle. It amounted on the Squire's part to an affront of his son, the being beloved best in the world, and he would have put it on him if the whole household had been present. But what it cost him to do so could be told from his moody fits of silence during the rest of the meal, his half-emptied plate and his twice-emptied glass.

Dick took the blow without flinching, although he was inwardly consumed with anger, not at the affront to himself, but to Virginia. "We are a little behind the times at Kencote," he said lightly. "But we shall probably fall into line by and by."

The Squire made no answer. He had shot his bolt and had none of the ammunition of repartee at hand. The awkward moment was covered by the immediate flow of conversation, but he took little or no part in it, and it was a relief when the meal was over.

When the Squire had led the way into the library and shut the door upon himself and the Rector, he broke out at once. "Tom, you heard what happened. Dick is out of his mind about this woman. Unless something can be done to stop it, a dreadful day is coming to Kencote."

The Rector, tall, fleshy, slow in movement, mild of speech, was astonished. "My dear Edward!" he exclaimed. "I did not gather from what passed that—that this meant anything serious."

"Oh, serious!" echoed the Squire, half distraught. "It's as serious as it can be, Tom." And he told him in his own decisive manner exactly how serious it seemed to him to be. "A hunting woman!" he ended up. "I could have forgiven that. I can't deny that women do hunt, now, who wouldn't have done in our young days. An American! Well, people do marry them nowadays—but an American at Kencote after all these generations! Think of it, Tom! And if that were only the worst! But a stage dancer! A woman who has shown herself before the public—for money! And a widow!—a woman who has been married to one of the worst blackguards in England. You remember him, Tom—at Eton."

"No," said the Rector. "He was before my time."

"Before your time—yes, and three or four years older than I am. He'd have been an old man if he'd been alive now. And it's the widow of that man my son wants to marry. Isn't it too shameful, Tom? What can have come over him? He has never acted in this sort of way before. My boy Dick! In everything that has ever happened to annoy me, he has always behaved just exactly as I would have my son behave. And now he brings this trouble on me. Oh, Tom, tell me what on earth I'm to do."

The poor gentleman was so overcome with distress that it was pitiful to witness. The Rector knew how he took things—hard at first, and bringing his heaviest weight of resistance to bear upon the lightest obstacles, but calming down after he had been humoured a bit, accepting the inevitable like a sensible man, and making the best of it. But this was beyond the point at which he could be humoured. It struck at all that he held dearest in life, the welfare of his son, the dignity of his house. He would not give way here, whatever distress it cost him to hold out.

"Have you seen this lady, Edward?" asked the Rector.

"Oh, seen her! No," replied the Squire. "Why should I want to see her? She may be good-looking. They say she is. I suppose Dick wouldn't have fallen in love with her if she were not, and at any rate women who are not good-looking don't become pets of the stage, as I'm told this woman was. Pah! It's beyond everything I could have believed of Dick. I would rather he had married the daughter of a farm-labourer—a girl of clean healthy English stock. To bring a creature from behind the footlights and make her mistress of Kencote—a soiled woman—that's what she is, even if she has never sold herself—and who knows that she hasn't? She did sell herself—to a broken-down roué, a man old enough to be her father—for his wretched title, I suppose. And now she wants to buy Kencote, and my son, Dick, the straightest, finest fellow a father ever had reason to be proud of. I tell you, Tom, the world ought to be delivered of these harpies. They ought to be locked up, Tom, locked up, and the wickedness whipped out of them."

"Has Dick said that he wanted to marry her?" asked the Rector, anxious to bring this tirade, which was gathering in intensity, to an end.

"It's as plain as it can be. He has brought her down here, and he wants us to take her up."

"Well, but is that all, Edward? Surely you have more to go on than that, if you have made up your mind that he wants to marry her."

"I have more to go on. He told me only two nights ago that he was quite ready to marry, and that he wouldn't marry a girl. That's plain English, isn't it? And this comes just on top of it. Why, he had her down here—fixed it all up for her—and never said a word to us till after we'd heard from outside that she was there. There are a lot of things. I can put two and two together as well as anybody, and I haven't a doubt of it. And I asked him definitely, yesterday, and he didn't deny it."

"He didn't acknowledge it, I suppose."

"I tell you he didn't deny it. He gave me an evasive answer. That isn't like Dick. She has had a bad influence on him already. Don't waste time in trying to persuade me that black is white, Tom. Tell me how I am to stop this."

The Rector could not tell him how to stop it. He knew very well that Dick was a stronger man than his father, and that if he had made up his mind to do a thing he would do it. But he still doubted whether he had made up his mind to do this particular thing. He thought that the Squire was probably alarming himself needlessly, and with all the art that lay in his power he tried to persuade him that it was so. "Young men," he ended, "do make friends with women they wouldn't want to marry. You know that is so, Edward. It is no use shutting your eyes to facts."

"Yes, but they don't bring them down to their homes for their mothers and sisters to make friends with," retorted the Squire. "It's the last thing Dick would do, and I'd rather he did what he's doing now, bad as it is, than do a thing like that. He's hypnotised—that's what it is—he thinks she's a good woman—everything she ought to be——"

"And perhaps she is a good woman, Edward, and everything she ought to be," interrupted the Rector, speaking more emphatically than was his wont, for in his simple unworldliness it had not occurred to him that his last words could bear the interpretation the Squire had put upon them, and he was rather scandalised. "I say that you ought to hold your judgment until you have seen her, and know something of her at first hand. I do not believe that Dick would expect his family to make friends with a lady who was not above reproach, and I certainly never meant for a moment to imply that he would do such a thing as make love to a woman he did not intend to marry. When I said that men make friends with women, I meant no more than I said."

"Well, you're a parson," said his brother, "and you've got to keep your eyes shut to certain things that go on, I suppose."

"No, Edward, that is not the duty of a parson," returned the Rector. "I shut my eyes to nothing. It seems to me that you do. It seems to me that you shut your eyes to what you know of Dick's character. You picture to yourself a vulgar, scheming adventuress. I say that if Dick is in love with this lady, as you say he is, she is not that, but something very different, and I say again that you ought to withhold your judgment until you have seen her."

"As far as seeing her goes," grumbled the Squire, "there's nothing easier than that. I shall see her at the covert-side, and I dare say I shall see her scampering all over the county covered with mud, and getting in the way of the hounds. Women are an infernal nuisance in the hunting-field. Well, you don't give me much comfort, Tom. Still, it does one some good to talk over one's troubles. I'm afraid this is going to be a big trouble—the biggest I've ever had in my life."

"Then don't meet it half-way," said the Rector. "You don't know for certain that Dick wants to marry her, and if he does she can't be anything like you have imagined her. I'm afraid I must go now, Edward. I have to look in at the Sunday-school."

"Well, good-bye, Tom, my dear fellow. Tell 'em in the Sunday-school to obey their parents. Yes, for this is right, by George! the Bible says. And so it is; if children would obey their parents, half the trouble in the world would disappear."

Dick was not best pleased, when he drove up to the door of Blaythorn Rectory, to hear that her ladyship had gone for a walk with Miss Dexter, and would not be back for an hour or more. He had not told her that he was coming over, and had not intended to do so. Horses were not taken out of the Kencote stables on Sundays without necessity. He said he would wait, and went into the drawing-room to get what consolation he could out of his own thoughts until Virginia should return.

He had been there about half an hour, sometimes walking up and down the room, sometimes reading a few pages of a book and throwing it impatiently on one side, sometimes sitting staring moodily into the fire, when he heard voices in the hall. A look of relief came over his face and he got up, prepared to greet Virginia, when the door was opened and Mrs. Graham was shown into the room. She was dressed in her usual serviceable walking clothes and had a dog-whip in her hand, although she had left her dogs for the time being outside.

"Good gracious, Dick!" she exclaimed. "They told me there was nobody here."

"The other maid let me in," said Dick. He could not for the life of him prevent himself feeling and looking shamefaced.

Mrs. Graham took no notice of it. She walked straight to a little writing-table in the corner of the room and sat down. "As I suppose you are wondering what on earth I am doing here," she said, "I'll tell you. I had a letter this morning from Anne Conyers, who asked me to come and see Lady George, as she didn't know a soul in the county. I'm only too pleased to; we're such a set of rustics here that it does us good to get somebody new, if they're not nincompoops like those people we've just got rid of at Mountfield. I thought I would drop in this afternoon. If she's sensible she won't mind my coming in these clothes. If she isn't I don't want to know her. You know her; you don't think she'll mind, eh?"

"Oh, of course not."

"I'm just going to write her a note asking her to dine to-morrow. Jim and Muriel are coming, and Roddy Buckstone. Will you and Humphrey come, Dick? We don't want too many women."

"I don't know about Humphrey. I shall be pleased to."

"Well, that's all right. You might take a message from me to Humphrey."

"I'd rather you wrote a note to him—and posted it."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Graham in a voice that invited explanation.

But Dick gave none.

"Lady George has a friend staying with her—Miss Dexter," he said. "You'd better ask her too, I think."

"Oh, of course. Thank you for telling me. Miss Dexter."

She wrote her note, fastened and directed it, dwelling rather deliberately on the process as she neared its completion. She seemed as if she were turning over in her mind something to say, but finally rose, and said, "Well, I suppose she'll get that when she comes in. I'll take myself and the dogs back to Mountfield now."

"Why don't you wait and see her?" asked Dick, rather grudgingly, for he didn't want Mrs. Graham to stay. "She can't be long now."

Mrs. Graham looked at him shrewdly. "I don't think I will," she said. "She'll be out with the hounds to-morrow, I suppose. Look here, Dick, I don't know whether I'm a fool to say anything or not, and I don't want to mix myself up in other people's business, but Anne Conyers told me that Lady George was a friend of yours, and that you had got her this house. We'll see that she gets on here all right."

She gave him a knowing nod which made him reply—

"Oh, you mean that there's likely to be trouble at Kencote. Well, I don't mind telling you that there is trouble. My father announced to-day before Tom and Grace and the whole family that Lady George Dubec might be good enough for me to know in London, but she wasn't good enough for him or anybody to know at Kencote." He spoke bitterly, and as Mrs. Graham, who knew him well, had never heard him speak of his father.

"Did he?" she said. "Well, that's what, if I were a man, I should call rather thick. Still, he'll probably come round, and if he doesn't he is not the only person in South Meadshire, though he sometimes behaves as if he thought he was. Good-bye, Dick; to-morrow at eight o'clock, then. I'll write to Humphrey, though I shan't break my heart if he doesn't come."

Dick let her out at the front door, where she was vociferously greeted by her pack, and then returned to the drawing-room. "And I wonder what she'll be thinking as she goes home," he said to himself.

Virginia came into the room alone when she and Miss Dexter returned. Dick could hear her glad little cry of surprise outside when she was told he was there, and it made him catch his breath with a queer mixture of sensations. She brought a cool fresh fragrance into the room with her, and he thought he had never seen her look sweeter, with her rather frail beauty warmed into sparkling life by the exercise she had taken in the sharp winter air and her pleasure at finding him there on her return.

Sitting by her side on the sofa he told her what had happened, and she took the news thoughtfully and sadly. "He must be rather terrible, your father," she said, "and cleverer than you thought too, Dick, if he suspects already what is between us."

"Oh, I suppose it's I who am not so clever as I thought myself," he said. "When he asked me point-blank I couldn't tell him a lie. But I own I never thought he would ask me. It was from something I had said to him the night before, about not wanting to marry a youngster. I don't know why on earth I was fool enough to say it, and put him on the scent. I suppose I was thinking such a lot of you, my girl. I can't get you out of my head, you know. But the fact is I'm not cut out for a conspirator, Virginia, and now that all my carefully laid plans have come to nothing, I'm not sure that I'm not rather relieved."

"You think they have quite come to nothing, Dick?"

"It looks like it. We shall know to-morrow. I still think—what I've always thought and built upon—that if he once sees you——"

"Dear Dick! But it's rather late for that now, if he has heard all about me, and has made a picture of me in his mind."

"Well, it's such a preposterous picture, that the reality can't help striking him. We won't do anything until after we know what has happened at the meet. And by the by, there's a dinner invitation for you for to-morrow evening." He told her about Mrs. Graham and gave her her note.

"That is very kind of Mrs. Graham," she said. "I forgot to tell you that I knew her sister-in-law. I'm afraid we shan't have much opportunity of talking there, Dick."

So they talked where they were for a long time, until the dusk fell and the maid came in with the lights and the tea, and Miss Dexter after her, and the result of their talk was that they felt things were not as bad as they looked. Dick's father would relent some day, and until he did they had each other.

CHAPTER X

THE MEET AT APTHORPE COMMON

The meet on Monday was at Apthorpe Common, a distance of nine miles from Kencote, and the three men appeared at breakfast in boots and breeches. The Squire always did so, and donned his red coat, with the yellow collar of the South Meadshire Hunt, when he dressed for the day. Dick came to breakfast in a tweed jacket, and Humphrey in a quilted silk smoking-coat, and both had linen aprons tied round their waists to preserve their well pipe-clayed breeches. But the Squire belonged to an older generation, having been born when boots and breeches still lingered as the normal dress of country gentlemen, and a red coat was as easy in the wearing as any other coat. He looked a fine figure of a man, as he stood up at the end of the table to read prayers to his household, and ready to go with the best if he got a horse up to his weight.

At a quarter to ten punctually the Squire stood at the front door enveloped in a heavy ulster, a serviceable but not very shiny hat on his head, a cigar in his mouth, drawing on his gloves, and looking over the handsome pair of greys in his phaeton. Humphrey, whose hat lacked nothing in polish, stood by him in a fur coat. As the stable clock chimed the quarter, the Squire turned to the butler, who stood behind him with a rug, and asked where Captain Clinton was.

"Dick is driving himself," said Humphrey. "He started five minutes ago."

The Squire's face darkened, but he climbed up to his seat and took the reins. Humphrey got up by his side, and with a clatter and jingle they started, while the groom swung himself into his seat behind.

If Humphrey's thoughts had not been taken up with his own affairs he might have felt sorry for his father. It was an unfailing custom at Kencote that when there were only three to go to a meet far enough off to necessitate a drive, they should go in the phaeton. The Squire enjoyed these drives, with his eldest son sitting by his side, especially on such a morning as this, soft and mild, and holding out every prospect of a good day at the sport that he loved. Now he drove along at his usual steady pace without saying a word. The brightness had gone out of his day's pleasure before it had begun, and he would just as soon as not have turned his horses' heads and gone home again. There had been constraint between him and Dick since the day before, but not unfriendliness, and he had thought that perhaps they might have come as closely together as usual during this drive, or at any rate have buried for a time the thought of what lay between them in the prospect of the day's sport. But Dick had gone off alone without a word, and his heart was sore within him. Dick might have spared him this, he thought. It meant, as nothing else he could have done would have meant, that their pleasant, almost brotherly, intimacy was to cease. Each was to go his own way, until one or the other of them gave in. And the Squire knew, although he may not have said as much to himself, that Dick could support this sort of estrangement better than he could. Dick had his friends, scores of them, and when he came down to Kencote he was only leaving them behind him; while to him, surrounded by his family, but very much alone as far as the society of men of his own interests was concerned, Dick's visits to his home were the brightest times in his life, when everything that was to be done seemed better worth the doing, because so much of it was done in his company, and the pleasures of life were redoubled in value because they shared them and could talk about them, beforehand and afterwards.

His mind too was turned to what lay before him, which he had thought about as little as possible. He was going to where he could see this woman who had enslaved Dick. She was to be there, spoiling for him even the pursuit he liked best. And Dick no doubt would be at her side, piloting her, making himself conspicuous by his attentions to the whole county, providing food for gossip, perhaps for scandal. If this creature was to be hanging to his coat-tails, his son, who had followed hounds since his childhood, and whom he had always taken a pride in seeing well mounted and going with the best of them, would be pointed at as a man who had always been in the first flight until he had been caught by a woman, but was now of no account in the field. The Squire had seen that happen before, and it covered him with shame and anger to think that it would happen to Dick.

His anger was directed against Virginia alone. He felt none against his son, but only a kind of thwarted tenderness, which would have led him to do anything, short of allowing him to throw himself away and spoil his life, to bring back the old happy state of feeling between them. It crossed his mind that he might even be obliged to let him have his way in this matter. He knew that he would be sorely tried if he were to hold out, and that he might not have the power to do so. He thought that perhaps he would do as Tom had advised and see this woman first, see if there were any saving grace in her which would enable him to give way, and comfort himself with the idea that things might have been worse. At any rate, he was bound to see her shortly, and without making any decision he could dismiss the subject from his mind now and prepare to enjoy himself as much as possible under the circumstances. He sat up straighter, drew the reins more firmly and laid his whip lightly across the flanks of the greys. "Well, Humphrey," he said as the horses quickened their pace, "I think we shall have a good day. Scent ought to lie well, and we're sure to find a fox in that spinney of Antill's. I've never known it draw blank yet."

"Yes, we ought to get off pretty quick," said Humphrey, also rousing himself. "I say, I'm in rather a quandary."

"Well, what is it?" asked the Squire rather shortly. Humphrey's quandaries were generally of a financial nature, and he had no wish to add one of them to his present troubles.

"Mrs. Graham has asked me to dine to-night."

"Well, why not? You can have something to take you over."

"Oh yes. Dick is going. It is to meet Lady George Dubec."'

The Squire's face darkened instantly. Here he was, plunged straight into it again, when he wanted to free his mind for the time being of Lady George Dubec and anything that had to do with her.

"Mrs. Graham seems to have lost no time," he said. "She hadn't called on her on Saturday. I suppose she must have done so yesterday. And she knows perfectly well that I don't want to have anything to do with the woman. Are Jim and Cicely going?"

"I don't know. She only mentions Dick."

"If she mixes Cicely up with—with this lady, I shall be very much annoyed. Not that I can say anything, I suppose, now she's married, but I think Mrs. Graham might respect my wishes a little more. Well, you can do as you like. I suppose the modern way is to disregard the wishes of the head of the house entirely."

"I don't want to disregard your wishes," said Humphrey. "I think as long as one remains at home one ought to respect them."

The Squire was mollified at this, but he only said rather gruffly, "Well, if you can put up with eating your dinner at home this evening, I'd rather you should. Dick has taken the bit between his teeth, and he certainly doesn't think that my wishes should be respected. Apparently nothing that I can say will influence him. He seems to me to be heading straight for the nastiest kind of fall. What sort of a woman is this, Humphrey? You said you knew her, didn't you?"

"Oh, I've met her," said Humphrey. "She's a very pretty woman. Nobody can deny that."

"People who have made a success on the stage generally are," said the Squire; "at least, they used to be in my time. Is she—well, is she a lady?"

"Oh Lord, yes," said Humphrey. "I'm sorry I let out that about her having been on the stage. You couldn't possibly guess it to look at her. Dick tackled me about it yesterday and said that nobody knew it. People do know it, but there's no necessity to spread it all over the place."

The Squire thought for a moment. Then he put his question point-blank. "Does Dick want to marry this woman, or doesn't he?"

"If you had asked me that two days ago," replied Humphrey glibly, "I should have smiled at the idea. Now, I believe he does."

"What has made you change your mind, then?"

"Well, his getting her down here, for one thing. Then, as I told you, he was furious with me for letting out what I did about her. In fact, if I hadn't kept my head we should have had a devil of a row about it; and Dick and I have never had a row since we were kids."

The Squire digested this information. It confirmed his worst fears and made his heart the heavier. "Can't you help to stop it?" he asked shortly. "You and he have always been pretty good friends."

"I can't do any more than the twins could," replied Humphrey. "As I told you, we nearly had a row about it as it is. If I tried to interfere we should have one without a doubt."

"I suppose you don't want a thing like that to happen in the family?" asked the Squire, throwing him a side glance.

"Of course I don't want it," said Humphrey. "I've nothing against the lady as she is, but I don't want her for a sister-in-law."

"I should think not," said the Squire emphatically. "Well, I suppose I'm the only person who can stop it, and by George! I will."

Again he stroked the greys with his whip, and their pace quickened. "Look here, Humphrey," he said, "tell me how on earth I can stop it."

Humphrey smiled into his thick fur collar. It was so like his father, to issue a bold statement of his intentions and then immediately to ask for advice as to how to act. But he had not been accustomed to ask advice of Humphrey.

"Well, it doesn't seem to be a very difficult matter," he said.

"What do you mean?" asked the Squire shortly. "He's not paying much regard to my wishes now."

"I dare say you can't stop him amusing himself with the lady," said Humphrey. "I don't know why you should want to. If you make it awkward for him he'll be all the keener; if you give him his head he's quite likely to come to his senses. But it will be a different thing if it comes to marrying."

"Why?"

"Well, what's he to marry on—his pay as a captain in the Guards? What can any of us marry on if you don't see us through?"

The Squire's attitude towards his eldest son was such that, through all his anxiety and all his cogitations, he had never yet thought of this. He was a rich man, and he gave all his sons good allowances and Dick a very handsome one. He did this as a matter of course, and never looked upon it otherwise than as rightly due from him. And, equally of course, he was prepared largely to increase the allowance when Dick should marry. But it was quite true that there was nothing to prevent him from stopping it altogether. If the worst came to the worst he could exercise the power of the purse, but it would be extremely repugnant to him to do it, and the suggestion struck him like a temptation to act unworthily. "What on earth put that into your head?" he asked.

Humphrey was a little taken aback by his tone. He was annoyed with Dick, as he had never been annoyed with him since their childhood, although he had often been jealous of his seniority. But they had been on such good terms together that he could not feel quite comfortable in putting a spoke in his wheel, as he felt he was now doing.

"It doesn't want much putting there," he said. "The idea of marriage does cross one's mind occasionally, and one naturally wonders what you would do to make it possible. It wouldn't be possible at all without you."

"Well, I should be very sorry to have to take a step like that," said the Squire after further consideration. "And I don't want to talk about it."

Now they came to the foot of a long hill, bounded on one side by a deep wood, on the other by open grass-land, which fell away gradually, and some distance off swelled again into a long undulating rise, dotted with pieces of woodland, arable fields, and farms here and there, and ended in the far distance in a range of hills lying mistily under parallels of soft grey clouds. It was the best bit of country the South Meadshire could boast, and to the Squire surveying it largely, as he walked his horses up the hill, every square mile within reach of the eye spoke of some remembered episode in the long course of years during which he had enjoyed his best-loved sport.

There—a line of grey at the bottom of the green valley—was the brook into which he and his pony had soused head over ears when as a small boy he had thought to follow his grandfather over a place which that redoubtable sportsman himself had felt some qualms about taking. The old man, warned by the shouts, had looked round and trotted back to the brook, where he must have made up his mind that neither the small boy nor the small pony was in danger of drowning, for he had said, "Well, if you're such a fool as to get in, let's hope you're not too much of a fool to get out," and had turned his horse's head and galloped off without further ado. There was the covert from which a cunning old dog fox had been hunted three times in two seasons, and had given them three separate runs, which were talked of still when the old stagers of the South Meadshire got together at one end of the table over the port, although it was nearly thirty years ago. There was the fence over which, as a hard-riding subaltern, at the end of a season during which he had hunted for the most part in Leicestershire, he had broken the back of the best mare he had ever owned, through over-anxiety to show his neighbours what riding straight to hounds really meant, and nearly broken his own neck into the bargain. There was the grass field in which, many years before, although it seemed like yesterday, hounds had pulled their fox down, and Dick, riding his first pony, had been in at the death, had won his first brush, and had been duly blooded. He smiled within himself and remembered how his little boy had ridden home at his side with the smears on his face and shown himself proudly to his mother, and how, forgetting his new-found manhood, he had howled when it was proposed to wash them off.

There were other exploits of Dick's and of his other sons', who had all taken to the sport as he would have had sons of his take to it, which this wide stretch of country recalled. In fact, Dick and he, driving up this long hill to a meet at Apthorpe, or beyond it, had been wont to recall episodes which they both remembered, pointing out this and that spot, near or far. He liked best to recall the doings of his boys, although his own and those of his hard-bitten, redoubtable old grandfather had not been forgotten in the long tale. It was as if a sudden chill had struck him when the thought came to him, that if he and Dick were to be kept apart by what had come between them, they would perhaps never drive together again up the Apthorpe Hill. The hoarse note of a motor-horn behind him, and the necessity of drawing to the side of the road as the machine swirled by, enabled him to relieve his feelings by an expression of abhorrence stronger than he usually allowed himself, although his ordinary language on the use of motor-cars in connection with hunting did not lack vigour. And this particular motor-car contained the Master of the South Meadshire himself, who waved to him as he passed, and received no very warm greeting in return. The Squire had had a grudge against Mr. Warner during the greater part of his life. His grandfather had kept the hounds for forty years, hunted them himself, and spent money lavishly on the upkeep of kennels and general equipment. When he had died the Squire had been too young to follow him, and Mr. Warner, who had made his money in trade as the Squire averred, although he had actually inherited it, and was but recently come into the county, had taken them. He was now an old man getting on for eighty, and had kept them ever since, hunting with them as regularly and riding as straight as he had ever done—a wonderful old man, already beginning, in his lifetime, to pass into a proverb, as the Squire's grandfather, Colonel Thomas Clinton, had done. But the Squire had never had a good word for him. Of all the positions in life which he might have filled, he felt it hard that the Mastership of the South Meadshire should have been kept out of his hands. And that was his grudge against Mr. Warner, carefully nourished by that gentleman's late acceptance of mechanical traffic, and sundry other causes which need not be enquired into.

Other motor-cars passed them before they got to the top of the hill, and the Squire had a word or two of condemnation to spare for each, as they forced him to draw aside and control his horses, which shared his dislike of the new-fangled things.

At the top of the rise the wood curved away to the right, and there was nothing before them but the wide gorse-speckled common, with the broad highroad running through it. They drove on for a mile and came to a high-lying inn by the roadside, appropriately named the "Fox and Hounds," with a sign-post and a water-trough in front of it, and a broad piece of grass, which was now the centre of the best of all English country sights in the winter. The hounds were grouped about their huntsman, George Winch, a grey-whiskered, weather-tanned man sitting upright on his tall bay horse, the two of them quiet and unmoved, ready for what was to come, but not unduly excited over it, and his three young Whips, two of them his sons and the other his nephew. The Master had already hoisted himself on to his horse and sat as straight as his huntsman, although he was twenty years his senior. And all round were the faithful followers of the South Meadshire, some of whom had ridden with those hounds for as long as, or longer than, the Squire himself, some of whom had only begun that season. The men were mostly in pink, with the yellow collar, and dressed for work and not for show, their breeches spotless, their boots well polished and their tops of the right mellow shade, but their coats not of the newest, and their hats lacking the mirror-like shine which was imparted to those of the young bloods such as Humphrey. There was a sprinkling of ladies, amongst whom was Mrs. Graham, in a workmanlike habit that had seen better days, but many more of them had come on wheels than on horseback. There were boys on ponies, their round hats jammed on to their heads, their round legs in wrinkled cloth gaiters, and the Master's two little granddaughters riding astride. On the outskirts of the loosely knit crowd was a good sprinkling of farmers, solid elderly men in hard felt hats, drab coats, corduroys and brown gaiters, and slim, active young men in smarter editions of the same attire, but not always so well mounted.

The Squire drove up to the front of the inn, where his horse and Humphrey's were being walked up and down by their grooms, and climbed down from his seat with a side-look that was half a frown at the crowd. Amongst the women on horseback he saw none that he did not know, and hoped that the dreaded lady had not come; but immediately he had satisfied himself that she was not riding he caught sight of Dick, already mounted, standing by a smart little pony-cart which contained two women, and his frown deepened. When he was on his horse and had seen that his flask and sandwich-case were in place, he had another moment of indecision. Through all his discomfort and annoyance, his heart yearned towards his son, and he was alternately and from minute to minute swayed by opposite impulses, to hold out firmly for Dick's sake or to give way for his own. As he walked his horse on to the green it was in his mind to cross over to where Dick was standing by the pony-cart and, with what graciousness he could, end it all.

But he was stopped by one of his old friends, who had something quite unnecessary to say about the weather and the prospect of the day's sport, and before he could disengage himself he saw Dick leave the pony-carriage and the two ladies, and come towards him. He did not pay much attention to his friend, but sat on his horse facing his son. He saw Dick also stopped, and waited impatiently, hoping that he was coming to speak to him. Then he saw a very smartly attired young man trot up to the pony-carriage, arms and legs akimbo, to be greeted, as it seemed to him, with complete cordiality by the lady who held the reins, but not so effusively by the lady by her side. This young man was his pet abomination, the vacuous, actress-hunting, spendthrift son of a rich father, already notorious for his "goings-on," and likely to be more so if he continued as he had begun. He heard his loud foolish laugh over something he had said to the lady, or something she had said to him, and saw, although he could not hear, her laugh in reply. Then he saw him take out his cigarette-case and offer it to her, and at that he wrenched round his horse's head and exclaimed, apparently in answer to a question which he had not heard addressed to him, much to his friend's surprise, "No, I'm damned if I do."

He had seen enough. If that vicious young fool was the sort of person the woman was on terms of intimacy with, then she was just what he had pictured, and there was no saving grace in her. A cigarette-smoking, loose-tongued, kind-to-everybody creature of the stage! He would rather be at enmity with his son all his days, he would rather see him dead, than married to such a woman.

He walked his horse, not knowing where he was going to, except that he wanted to get as far as possible away from Lady George Dubec, to the outskirts of the crowd and beyond them, his mind in a ferment of disgust. He heard the creak of saddlery and the thud of a horse's hoofs on the hard turf behind him. Dick trotted up to him, and said, as he reined up his horse, "I wish you'd let me introduce you to Lady George." He spoke as if there had been no controversy between them on the subject. He knew his father, and he was giving him his chance. Two minutes earlier and the Squire would have taken it. Now he turned round sharply, his face red. "I have no wish to be introduced to Lady George, now or at any time," he said.

"Oh, all right!" said Dick coldly, and turning his back on him, trotted off again.

CHAPTER XI

DICK LEAVES KENCOTE AND MAKES A DISCOVERY

There was not much pleasure for the Squire that day, although they found a fox without delay, and with one check hunted him across the best of the South Meadshire country and killed him in the open after a fast run of forty minutes. The hounds got him out of the spinney where he was known to reside, in no time, but he immediately took refuge in another and a larger one half a mile or so off. The hunt straggled after him, those who had been on the wrong side of the covert when the music of the hounds first announced their prompt discovery riding hard to make up for lost time, the carts and carriages streaming along the road. Then there was a pause while the hounds worked to and fro through the wood, and the groups formed again and waited for what should happen. The Squire, more by instinct than design, for his thoughts were on far other matters, edged down the skirts of the wood to where he could see the fox break cover if he behaved as his experience told him most foxes would behave in like circumstances, and keeping well under cover he soon saw the cunning nose poking out of the brushwood and the furtive red form steal out to cross the road and make a bold bid for freedom. Just at that moment, as he was preparing to give the view-hulloa when my gentleman should have taken irrevocably to the open, a cart drove smartly round the opposite corner of the wood and pulled up, but not before the fox had seen it and slunk cautiously back into shelter. The Squire smothered a strong exclamation of disgust, but gave it vent and added something to it when he recognised the cart and its driver. If Lady George Dubec had come into the South Meadshire country to head the South Meadshire foxes, as well as to annoy him grossly in other ways, then good-bye to everything. But she should be told what she had done. With rage in his heart and a black scowl on his face he cantered along the strip of grass by the roadside, and lifting his hat and looking the offending lady straight in the face, said in an angry voice, "Would you mind keeping behind the hounds, madam? You have just turned the fox back into covert." Then he turned his back and rode off, leaving Virginia and Miss Dexter looking at each other with horrified faces.

However, Reynard's caution did not save him long. He was bustled out of shelter again within ten minutes, and realising that his only chance of escape was to run for it, run he did and gave the hounds all they knew to catch him. The Squire was away with the first, and, riding hard and straight, did for what would have been otherwise a blissful forty minutes succeed in losing the sharp sense of his unhappiness, although black care was perched all the time behind him, and when the fox had been killed, seized on him with claws so sharp that he had no heart left for anything further, and leaving the hounds to draw a gorsy common for another fox turned his horse's head round and rode off home.

Humphrey, not far away at the start, had been in at the finish, with half a dozen more, but he had seen nothing of Dick, and no one who had set out to follow on wheels had been anywhere within sight for the last half-hour. The Squire felt a grim satisfaction in the thought of Lady George Dubec left hopelessly out of it, but he also thought of Dick missing the best run, so far, of the season to keep behind with her, and his satisfaction turned into sad disgust. His long ride home was the most miserable he had ever taken, and he wished before it was ended that he had seen out the day, on the chance of another burst of excitement which for the time would have eased his pain.

He reached Kencote about three o'clock, and expected to find the house empty, for he knew that Mrs. Clinton had been going to lunch at Mountfield and he did not expect her to be back yet. But she met him in the hall and said, "I thought you might be home early, Edward, so I did not go out."

Now the Squire was never home early. He always saw out the day's sport, however bad it might be, and the number of times he had returned from hunting before dark during the last thirty years might have been counted on his ten fingers. He looked at his wife apprehensively and followed her into the morning-room, where she turned to him.

"Dick has gone," she said.

He stared at her, not understanding.

"He came back about twelve," she went on, "and changed his clothes. His servant was out, but he left word for him to pack and follow him to Blaythorn. He wrote you a letter before he went."

"Where is it?" asked the Squire. "Didn't you see him before he went? Didn't you speak to him?" He went out of the room and into his own, and Mrs. Clinton followed him.

"I did see him," she said, as the Squire went to his writing-table where an envelope was lying on the silver-mounted blotting-pad. "He said that you had made it impossible for him to remain at home, and he bade me good-bye, but he did not tell me anything more."

But the Squire was not listening to her. He turned the page of the letter and then put it into her hand. "Read that," he said.

"Dear Father" [it ran],

"I had hoped at least that you would have consented to meet the woman I am going to marry. If you had you would have seen how unlike she is to your ideas of her and that I am doing myself honour by my choice. You have made the situation impossible now, and I cannot return to Kencote until you consent to receive my affianced wife with the respect due to her.

"Your affectionate son,
"RICHARD CLINTON."

The Squire's face was purple, but he controlled the violent expression of his anger. "His affianced wife!" he exclaimed scornfully. "So now we have it all, and I was right from the beginning. Well, if he waits till I receive her he may wait till I'm in my coffin. I told him this morning I would not recognise her, now or at any time, and I'll stick to my word. He has chosen to fight me, and he will find that I'm ready." He spoke bitterly, but firmly, and as if he meant everything that he said.

Mrs. Clinton laid the letter on the table. Her face was serious, and paler than its wont. "Have you seen her, Edward?" she asked. "Is she so impossible?"

"Seen her! Impossible!" echoed the Squire, with a return to the unbridled violence he usually showed when he was disturbed. "Yes, I've seen her, and she's as impossible as a wife for the heir of Kencote as any woman on the face of the earth—a painted hussy, hand in glove with the worst sort of vicious loafer, puffing cigarettes in the face of a whole crowd of respectable people, shamelessly breaking up sport—oh, I've seen her, and seen enough of her. To my dying day I'll never willingly see her again, and if that means breaking with Dick I'll break with him till he comes to his senses. I mean it. If she is going to stay here to hunt with the South Meadshire, then I'll go and hunt somewhere else until she's gone; or I won't hunt at all. Yes, she's impossible. You've spoken the right word. I shouldn't be doing my duty if I left any stone unturned to put an end to Dick's unaccountable folly. He'll thank me for it some day, and I'll put up with all and every unhappiness until that day comes."

He had calmed down during the course of his speech, as he often did, beginning on a note of unreasonable violence and ending on one completely different. But he did not usually end on a note of strong determination, as now, and Mrs. Clinton looked at him as if she hardly recognised him, with lines of perplexity and trouble in her smooth, comely face. She did not ask him what he was going to do, such questions being apt to provoke him to impatient anger and seldom bringing a direct reply. She said hesitatingly, "If he says definitely that he is going to marry her——" and left him to supply the end of her sentence.

"I shall not let him marry her," he said quietly. "He can't marry on his pay, and I shall stop his allowance from to-day."

This statement, revolutionary of all fixed notions that had their rise in Kencote, affected Mrs. Clinton as nothing before in her married life had affected her. It showed her her husband as she had never known him, bent on a course of action, not ready to take advice about it, but prepared to turn his back on the most cherished principles of his life in order to carry it out. She had nothing to say. She could only look down and wonder apprehensively what her world was coming to.

"I don't think I should have thought of doing such a thing," the Squire admitted. "It gives me more pain to take a course like that than anything else could have done. It was Humphrey who suggested it. He said, quite truly, that none of them could marry unless I saw them through. And I won't see Dick through this. I'll do anything to stop it, however much I suffer by what I have to do. Don't you think I'm right, Nina?"

This was more what Mrs. Clinton was accustomed to. She could not say that she thought he was right, nor that he was wrong. She could only say, as she did, that such a proceeding would be distressing to him.

"I know that," said the Squire, with a new simplicity. "I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of Dick. I love the boy, Nina. He's got himself into trouble and I've got to help him out of it."

"Do you think this is the best way?" was all that she could find to say.

"It's the only way. If there were any other I would take it. If it doesn't bring him to his senses at once, I shall keep the money for him till it does. God knows I don't want to touch it."

"He will have to give up the Guards," said Mrs. Clinton.

The Squire had not thought of this, and he digested the statement. "He's not an absolute fool," he said, "although he has lost his head over this. As far as the service goes, I shouldn't mind if he did give it up. I never meant him to go on soldiering so long. Still, if he does give it up, what's he to do, poor fellow, till he comes round? He wouldn't have a penny. I shall tell him that I will continue his allowance as long as he remains unmarried." He brightened up as this idea struck him. "Yes," he said, "that will be the best way, and just as effective. I couldn't bear to think of Dick hard up. I'll write now."

He sat down to his table, muddy boots, spurs, and all, and Mrs. Clinton left him, a little relieved in her mind that he saw a gleam of light, but otherwise solicitous for his sake and unhappy on her own. She loved her firstborn too, although it was very long since she had been able to show it. She would have liked to have helped him now, but he had not asked for her help, had told her nothing, and had left her with scarcely more than a formal word of farewell.

The Squire, left to himself, wrote quickly, and sealed up his letter after he had read it over once, as if first thoughts were best, and he was uncertain to what second would lead him.

"My dear Dick" [his note ran],

"I can only repeat that nothing will induce me to give my consent to the marriage you propose. If you marry in a way to please me I shall provide for you handsomely, as I have always intended to do, but if you persist in the course you have begun on I shall withdraw your allowance entirely. It will be paid to you for the present, but only as long as you remain unmarried. I am very sorry to have to take this course, but you leave me nothing else to do.

"Your affectionate father,
"EDWARD CLINTON."

When he had closed and directed the envelope an unpleasant thought struck him, and he leant back in his chair and looked out of the window while he considered it. "I suppose she must have some money," he said to himself; and then after a time, "But Dick would never do that."

The note was taken over to Blaythorn, as all notes were that were despatched from Kencote, by a groom on horseback. The Squire was impatient of the workings of the penny post, except for distances impossible for a horse, and he would not ask if Dick's soldier-servant had yet left the house with his master's belongings. "Tell one of the grooms to take that over," were his curt instructions, and so well was the letter of his orders always obeyed that a groom rode off with it within a quarter of an hour, although another one was already harnessing a horse to the cart that was to take Dick's servant to Blaythorn as soon as he should be ready. But having got safely outside the park gates he dawdled till his fellow caught him up, and the three of them then continued the journey together and discussed the situation.

Dick's servant was loyal to his master, but it was not in human nature that he should have refrained from speculating upon what was doing, and between them they managed to attain to a fairly clear idea of what that was, their unanimous conclusion being that if the Captain had made up his mind to marry the lady the Squire might take what steps he liked, but he would not stop him. In this way began the rumours that presently spread all over the county and thence all over England, or to such of its inhabitants as are interested in the affairs of its Captain Clintons and Lady Georges.

Dick and Virginia were alone together when the note was brought in, the mounted groom having ridden on when he got within a mile of his destination. "That means war," said Dick, laconically, when he had read it; "but I didn't think he would use those tactics quite so soon. I wonder who put him up to it." He thought for a moment. "Humphrey wouldn't have done it, I suppose," he said reflectively.

Virginia's eyes were serious as she looked up from the note written in the Squire's big, rather sprawling hand on the thick white paper. "I wonder why he hates me so," she said a little plaintively. "Is it because I headed the fox, Dick?"

Dick took her chin between his thumb and finger and his face grew tender as he looked into her eyes. "You were a very foolish girl to do that, Virginia," he said. "I should have thought you would have known better."

"I didn't know there was such a sharp turn," she said. "I pulled up the moment I got round the corner."

"Oh, well! never mind about that," said Dick. "It was unfortunate, but it wouldn't have made him want to disinherit me. He can't disinherit me, you know. It's just like him to go blundering into a course like this, which he hasn't got the firmness to keep up."

"That letter doesn't look as if he lacked firmness," Virginia said. "Dick dear, what shall you do?"

Dick did not answer this question directly. He had his father's habit of following out his own train of thought and ignoring, or rather not noticing, interruption. "He must know perfectly well," he said, "that I can raise money quite easily on my prospects. I dare say he hasn't thought of that, though. He never does think a thing thoroughly out. He wouldn't be happy if I threatened to do it."

"Oh, Dick, Dick!" exclaimed Virginia, "why do you want to worry about money? I have plenty for both of us."

"My dear, I've told you that's impossible," said Dick a little impatiently. "Don't keep harping on it."

It gave her a thrill of delight to be spoken to in that way—by him. She had been used to being ordered to do something or not to do something by a man, but not by the man she loved. She kept obedient silence, but gave Dick's arm a little squeeze.

"I'm not going to do it, though," he went on. "I should hate it as much as he would. Let's sit down, Virginia. I'll tell you what I'm going to do."

They sat down on the sofa, and Dick took a cigarette out of his case. Virginia held it open. "Couldn't I have just one?" she pleaded.

"No," said Dick, taking it from her. "You promised you would give it up when you came down here."

"So I have," she said. "I think you are very cruel."

Dick put the case back into his pocket. "Of course I'm not unprepared for this," he said, "though I hoped it wouldn't come to it. I shall have to give up the service and get some work."

"Oh, Dick!" she said. "You don't want to give up the service."

"No, I don't want to. I should have got my majority next year, and I wanted to go on till I commanded the regiment, though I never told him so. But it's got to be done, and it's no use grizzling about it."

"And you're doing this for me!" she said softly.

"I am doing a great deal more than that for you," he said. "I'm giving up Kencote, at least for a time."

"Do you think I'm worth it?" she asked drily.

He looked down at her, and then took her hand in his. "You must get used to my little ways," he said, with a kind smile. "I must be able to say to you what is in my mind."

"Oh, I know," she said repentantly. "It was horrid of me. But I do know what you're giving up, and I love you for it. I hope it won't be for long—Kencote, I mean. I suppose if you give up the army you won't be able to go back to it. I hate to think of that because it's your career. And what else can you work at, dear Dick? Fancy you in an office!"

"The idea of me in an office needn't disturb you," said Dick. "I don't intend to go into an office. There are two things I know about. One is soldiering, the other is estate management. If I'm to be prevented from managing the estate that's going to be my own some day, then I'll manage somebody else's in the meantime. There are lots of landowners who would be only too glad to give me a job."

"Tell me what it means exactly, Dick. Have you got to be a sort of steward to some rich person? I don't think I should like that."

He laughed and patted her hand. "You must get rid of some of your American ideas," he said. "The 'rich person' wouldn't want to treat me as a servant. And it isn't necessary that he should be very rich. I might not be able to get a big agency all at once. I don't know that I should want to, as long as there was enough work to do. As far as your money goes, Virginia, I shouldn't have any feeling about using it to help run the show. What I won't do is to live on it and do nothing. There ought not to be any difficulty in finding a place that would give us a good house, and enough money to run the stables on, and for my personal expenses, which wouldn't be heavy, as we would stick there and do our job. It would be just what I hoped we should be doing at Kencote from the dower-house. With luck, if there happened to be a vacancy anywhere, I could do better than that. But that much, at any rate, it won't be difficult to get, with a month or so to look round in."

"Then all our difficulties are done away with!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Dick, why didn't you tell me before? I thought, if your father held out, we should have a terrible time, and you would be as obstinate as possible about my money. I'll tell you what I have. I have——"

"I don't want to know what you have—yet," he interrupted her. "I didn't tell you before because I hoped it wouldn't come to that. I didn't want to face the necessity of giving up the service, and still less of having to give up Kencote. But now there's no help for it; well, we must just let all that slide and make the best of things."

She still thought his scruples about using her money to do what he wanted to do, and his absence of scruples about using it to do what he didn't want, needed more explanation. But she gave up that point as being only one more of the inexplicable tortuosities of a man's sense of honour. She was only too glad that the question could be settled as easily as that. But Dick must have felt also that it needed more explanation, for he said, "When I said that I had no feeling about letting you help run the house—of course, I really hate it like poison. But there is just the difference."

"Oh, of course there is—all the difference in the world," she made haste to reply, terrified lest they should be going to split, after all, on this wretched simulacrum of a rock. Then she had a bright thought. "But, Dick dear, you told me once how lucky your ancestors had been in marrying heiresses—not that I'm much of an heiress!"

"You're not an heiress at all," he said impatiently. "I suppose everything you've got comes from—from that fellow. Can't you see the difference? I hate touching his beastly money. And I won't, longer than I can help."

"But, Dick!" she exclaimed wonderingly. "Didn't you know? He never left me a cent. He hadn't a cent to leave."

He stared at her. "Then where did it come from?" he asked.

"Why, from pigs—from Chicago," she said, laughing. "My father was of an old family, my mother wasn't, and one of her brothers made a fortune in a bacon factory. Unfortunately, he did not make it until after she was dead and I was married, or it might have stopped—oh, many things. But he left it to me—the bacon factory—and I sold it for—— But you won't let me tell you how much."

"Oh, you can tell me if it's yours," he said.

"Well, they told me I had been cheated. But what was I to do with a bacon factory? And I sold it for as much as I wanted to live comfortably on. I sold it for a quarter of a million dollars."

Dick's stare was still in evidence. "A quarter of a million! Dollars!" he repeated. "That's—what? Fifty thousand pounds. By the Lord, Virginia, you're an heiress after all."

CHAPTER XII

THE HOUSE PARTY

"My dear Emmeline," said the Judge, "if I hadn't such a profound contempt for Edward's intellect and for everything represented or misrepresented by him, I could feel it in my heart to be very sorry for him."

"My dear Herbert," replied Lady Birkett, "if you weren't as deeply sorry for him as you actually are, you wouldn't be your own kind, sympathetic, would-be-cynical self."

Sir Herbert and Lady Birkett with their two daughters and their son-in-law had arrived at Kencote that afternoon to make part of the company gathered there for the South Meadshire Hunt Ball. Other guests had arrived by a later train, but there had been an interval during which the Judge had been closeted with his brother-in-law, the Squire, and heard from him everything that had taken place within the past month, which was the interval that had elapsed since Dick had abruptly left Kencote. He had now come into his wife's bedroom, where she was in the later stages of dressing for dinner, although dinner was as yet half an hour off.

"I know you want to tell me everything," she said, "and although the lady who is doing my hair does not understand a word of English as yet, you will probably be able to talk more freely if she is not present. If you will come back in five minutes she will have gone to Angela."

So the Judge went into his dressing-room and, finding his clothes already laid out, dressed and repaired again to his wife, not quite in five minutes, but in little more than ten.

"I suppose you have heard all about it from Nina?" he said, taking up the conversation where he had left it. "Have you seen this Lady George Dubec?"

"Yes," said Lady Birkett. "She is not in the least what Edward pictures her, according to Nina. As far as her looks tell one anything, I should say she was a charming woman."

"Edward paints her as a voluptuous siren of the ballet. I suppose one may put that down as one of his usual excursions of imagination."

"She certainly isn't that, and it was news to me that she had ever been on the stage. Poor Nina is very distressed about it. She says that they have had no word from Dick since he left the house, that Edward has only heard through Humphrey that he has sent in his papers, but even Humphrey doesn't know where he is or what he is doing."

"I had the same news from Edward, with the additions which might be expected of him. He takes it hard that after all he has done for Dick he should be treated in that way, and I don't know that I shouldn't take it hard in his place. It makes me increasingly thankful that I haven't any sons."

This was a polite little fiction on the Judge's part which his wife respected. It was the chief regret of his life that he had no son.

"Nina says he is fretting himself into a fever," said Lady Birkett, "lest Dick should be raising money on his expectations."

"Fretting himself into a fever," replied the Judge, "is not the expression I should use of Edward. But he certainly feels deep annoyance, and expresses it. He had not thought of that when he delivered his ultimatum, and, as he says, it would be the easiest possible thing for Dick to do. But I was mercifully able to relieve his mind on that point. I did not exactly tell him that Dick, although he has more brains in his little finger than his father has in his head, is so much like him that he would shrink from taking so sensible a step as much as Edward himself would; but I gave him the gist of it. My dear Emmeline, to men like Edward and Dick, land—landed property—is sacrosanct. Dick would give up any woman rather than embarrass an acre of Kencote. Kencote is his religion, just as much as it is Edward's. Edward gained comfort from my assuring him of the fact. He said that Dick was behaving so badly that right and wrong seemed to have no distinction for him for the time being, but probably there were crimes that he would not commit, and this might be one of them."

"I am glad you told him that," said Lady Birkett. "I should think it is probably true. But what is he doing, or thinking of doing?"

"He may be thinking of doing a little honest work," said the Judge, who had sat for some time in the House of Commons as a wicked Radical. "I put the suggestion to Edward for what it was worth, but he scouted it. As he indicated, there is nothing that a man who has been through a public school and university training, and has been for ten or fifteen years in a position of responsibility in His Majesty's army, can do. He has no money value whatever. I did not contradict him."

"She has money, I suppose," said Lady Birkett.

"She must have some. But there again I felt able to reassure Edward. I know the Dicks of the world pretty well. They are not without their merits, and there are certain things they don't do. Of course, if he were working, and making some sort of an income, with his prospects it would be different."

Lady Birkett let this go by. "Will Edward hold out, do you think?" she asked.

"Well," said the Judge reflectively, "I'm bound to say it surprises me, but there is every sign of his holding out till Doomsday, or, which puts a more likely period to it, till something unforeseen happens."

"Till he hears that Dick has married her, for instance."

"There wouldn't be much object in his holding out after that. But there is seldom much object in Edward's divagations. He is swayed by his prejudices and by the impulses of the moment. Still, I'll do him justice: he is acting as sensibly as he knows how in this crisis. I believe he loves Dick better than any being upon earth, with the possible exception of himself. I really believe he loves him better than himself. Of course Dick represents Kencote, and the family, and the line, and all the whole clamjamphrie, which partly accounts for it. At any rate he is causing his stupid old self an infinity of worry and annoyance, and all for the sake of what he considers a principle. I should say that Dick is acting foolishly in holding off altogether. I dare say Nina told you he has not answered a single letter. It has always struck me that he had Edward completely under his thumb, and I should have said that he had only to hang on here and play his cards well and Edward would have given way. Now he is stiffening himself up."

"I suppose they are both stiffening themselves up."

"You put it in a nutshell. Fancy Edward giving up his season's hunting so that he shan't be obliged to set eyes on his aversion! That impresses me. He is in dead earnest. He will stop this marriage if he can."

"But Dick is just as obstinate."

"It is the case of the irresistible body and the immovable force."

"Didn't you make any suggestion?"

"Yes, I did. I suggested that he should stipulate for a year's delay. I pointed out that if the lady was the bad character he supposes her to be, Dick, with the sense he has inherited from his father—I said that, God forgive me—would come to see it in that time."

"Did he take to the idea?"

"Not at all. When did Edward ever take to any idea at first sight? But it will sink in, and I shall give Tom Beach a hint to follow it up."

"I believe it will be the best way, and Nina is going to try and see Dick when she comes up with me next week."

The Judge stroked his chin. "H'm!" he said. "I'm afraid Nina has very little power to help matters."

"I am much more sorry for Nina than I am for Edward."

"Oh, so am I," interpolated the Judge.

"It is the thing I can least forgive Dick—his treating his mother practically in the same way as Edward treats her—as if she were of no account. It doesn't promise well for the happiness of this Lady George, or whoever he does come to marry."

"Let's hope for her own sake that she won't make Nina's mistake."

"You mean——"

"Oh, Nina laid herself down to be trampled on from the very first. She had plenty of character. She could have stood out. Now, whatever character she has has been buried under a mountain weight of stolid stupidity. She can't call her soul her own."

"I think she would act—and against Edward—if she saw her way to act effectively."

"She would be laying up a pretty bad time for herself if she did act against Edward in any way."

"Oh, but she wouldn't mind that if she thought it was her duty."

"Well, she can try. And she might put that idea of mine to Dick. Let him promise not to marry the lady for a year. He has been a bachelor for thirty-five or so, and he can stand another. I believe it might be the solution. I suppose we had better be going down now."

It was an unusually large party for Kencote that assembled at dinner. The Squire took in Lady Aldeburgh, who must have been five-and-forty if a day, but either by a special dispensation of Providence, or by mysterious arts marvellously concealed, was still enabled to present herself to the world as eight-and-twenty. The Squire did not quite approve of this, but the illusion was so complete that he found himself talking to her as if she were a girl. She was beautifully gowned in blue and silver, and wore the Aldeburgh diamonds, which sparkled on the clear white skin of her neck, on her corsage, and in the smooth ripples of her hair. She was attractive enough to the eye to make it possible for her to indulge in moods for the heightening of her charm. Sometimes she was all childish gaiety and innocence; sometimes the deep melancholy of her soul looked out of her violet eyes, which were so good that they had to be given their chance; sometimes she was ice. This evening she had begun on a pouting note, which she had often found effective with elderly gentlemen, but finding the Squire impervious to its appeal and plainly puzzled by it, remembering also that she had on her diamonds, she had exchanged it for the air of a grande dame, humanised by maternal instinct.

"Mother is telling Mr. Clinton how she has devoted herself to my bringing-up," whispered Lady Susan to Humphrey. "Is he likely to be impressed at all, do you think?"

"He is likely to be bowled over by the result," replied Humphrey gallantly, and Lady Susan, who was not so pretty as her mother, and only slightly more sensible, told him not to be an idiot.

Of Lady Birkett's two daughters, Beatrice, the elder, had been accompanied by her husband, Sir George Senhouse, the rising young politician, whose handsome, intellectual head would have made him remarked anywhere, but whose bent shoulders, grey temples, and carelessness of dress made him seem older than his years. The younger, Angela, sat by the man she was going to marry, Hammond-Watt, the youngest K.C. at the Bar. The inclusion of these two men in the party had caused Bobby Trench, Humphrey's friend, to ask if he had come to Kencote for a ball or a political meeting, and to suggest the advisability of clearing out again before he should be asked for a speech. This young gentleman, to whom the accident of birth had brought the privilege of taking in his hostess, and whose other neighbour had been Beatrice Birkett, asked himself before dinner was over what he had come for, ball or no ball. He was accustomed to shine in smart country houses, and Kencote was not at all smart. He had found Mrs. Clinton unresponsive to his light chatter, and Angela Birkett so taken up with the conversation of her K.C. that she had little attention to spare for him. George Senhouse, who sat opposite to him, made no effort to follow his lead, and, in fact, ignored him as far as possible, which secretly annoyed him. Lady Aldeburgh, who would have permitted him to flirt with her, was beyond his reach, and her daughter was too much taken up with Humphrey to do more than exchange a light sally or two with him. He was reduced to eating his dinner, which was a very good one, and, in large intervals of silence, to gazing around upon the company and inwardly ejaculating, "Never again!"

When the ladies had left the room the Squire, with old-fashioned courtesy, brought the decanters down to his end of the table and engaged him in conversation about his father.

"I recollect very well," said the Squire, in his loud, confident tones, "when Cane Chair won the Derby at thirty-to-one, by George!—dear me, I should be afraid to say how many years ago. He belonged to your grandfather, and of course we were all on him. Your father and I——"

"Oh yes, he's told me that story dozens of times," said Bobby Trench.

"Oh!" said the Squire, somewhat disconcerted. "Yes, I suppose he has."

"We haven't heard it dozens of times," said George Senhouse. "What was the story, Mr. Clinton?"

The Squire turned towards him and his face lightened. "I haven't thought about it for years," he said. "It's just come back to me. Jim Trench and I made up our minds we would go and see the horse run, so we got out of a window at four o'clock in the morning—did I say it was when we were at Cambridge together?—and drove tandem to Hitchin, where we got a train to London. I recollect we had sent on a change of horses to—to some place half-way. We slunk about amongst the crowd, as Jim's father was particular—wouldn't bet even on his own horses and all that sort of thing, and I don't blame him; I haven't had a bet on a horse since I was in the Blues;—and he wouldn't have taken it well to see Jim at Epsom when he ought to have been at Cambridge. Well, we saw the horse win, and, by George! I should be afraid to say how much money your father"—here he turned again towards Bobby Trench—"took off the bookies."

"Pots," said Bobby laconically. "But he lost it all over the Leger."

"Ah, well, the best thing he could have done," said the Squire. "I had put on a tenner, and both of us had had a little ready-money transaction on the course after we'd seen the horse canter; so we went back to London with a pocketful each, and by George!"—here the Squire laughed his great laugh—"we'd dropped it all to a pack of card-sharpers before we got there. We were pretty green in those days, and it was all our own fault, so we didn't quarrel with the fellows—we'd tried to have them, and they'd had us instead. We made 'em show us how it was done, so that we shouldn't be had again, and I recollect they said we were a couple of good sportsmen and gave us a sovereign or two back to get us to Cambridge, or we should have had to walk there, by George!

"But that wasn't the end of it," proceeded the Squire after he had done justice to his youthful memories with a hearty laugh. "We celebrated the occasion with a supper of the True Blue Club, in your father's rooms—has he told you that?"

"I don't know whether he's ever told me the truth about it," admitted Bobby Trench.

"Weil, it's a long time ago," said the Squire, "and we were all young and foolish. It was a lively supper, and your father went out for a little fresh air. They used to keep the college buttery stores in barges on the river in those days, and after wandering about a bit and climbing a few fences and gates for purposes of his own he found himself on the St. John's barge. Then he thought he'd like a bath, and it didn't somehow occur to him to go in over the side, so he knocked a hole in the bottom of the barge and sank her, by George!"

Here the Squire interrupted himself to laugh again. "He had all the bath he wanted, and the wonder is he wasn't drowned," he concluded. "Well, we had some pretty lively times in those days, and it doesn't do you any harm to recall them occasionally. I should like to see your father again. It must be thirty years since I set eyes on him. Wonder if he'd care to come and shoot one of these days?"

Bobby Trench said he was sure he would be delighted, and undertook to deliver a message, which he fulfilled later on by informing his father that his one-time friend had developed into a regular old turnip-hoer, and if he wanted to sit and listen to long-winded yarns about nothing Kencote was the place to go to.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HUNT BALL

The Assembly Room of the Royal Hotel at Bathgate had been the scene of many fashionable gatherings in days gone by, when London had not been so easy of access, and the rank and fashion of South Meadshire had been wont to meet there for their mutual enjoyment, on nights when the moon was round and roads not too deep in mire. The Regent had once shown his resplendent presence there, having been entertained at Kencote by Beau Clinton, who hated the place and spent its revenues in London, but had furbished it up at rare expense—to the tradesmen who did the work—for the reception of his royal patron. The Prince had expressed himself pleased with what had been done, and told his host that it was surprising what you could do with a damned dull hole like that when you tried; but he had not repeated his visit, and Beau Clinton's extravagance had soon after been redeemed by his brother the merchant, who succeeded him as Squire of Kencote, and just in time, or there would have been nothing to succeed to.

The royal visit to the Assembly at Bathgate was still to be recalled by the lustre chandelier in the middle of the room which was surmounted by the Prince of Wales's feathers. The landlord of those days had followed the example of Beau Clinton, except in the matter of forgetting to pay his tradespeople, and spent a large sum in decorating the room; and he thought himself well repaid when the princely patron of the arts had remarked that it was "devilish chaste." It had hardly been touched since. The red silk panels on the walls were faded, and here and there frayed, and the white paint which surrounded them was much the worse for wear. Of the Sheraton settees that had once surrounded the walls only one remained, on the daïs at the end of the room. It was that on which the royal form had reposed, and the present landlord had refused, it was reported, a large sum for it. There was a musicians' gallery at the opposite end of the room, and sconces for candles between the panels. It was still a handsome room, and on the annual occasion of the South Meadshire Hunt Ball, its shabbiness disguised with flowers, it had quite an air. But it was small for these latter days, and, for the dancers, apt to be inconveniently crowded. Bobby Trench, after he had had his toes trodden on and his shirt-front crumpled, inwardly repeated his ejaculations of dinner-time, "Never again!"

But he was, fortunately, in a minority. The bulk of the healthy open-air-looking young men and the pretty country-bred girls who footed it to the strains of a brisk and enlivening string band were not so particular as he. They smiled at the mishaps of others and laughed at their own, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly, as young men and women do who are not surfeited with pleasure. Their elders looked on from the rout seats placed round the room, or from their place of vantage on the daïs, and in the intervals of the babel of talk—for nearly all of them knew one another and had a great deal to say—thought of their own young days and were pleased to see their pleasure repeated by their sons and daughters. There is no ball like a country ball, not too overwhelmingly invaded from London or elsewhere. It has the essence of sociability, where people meet who do not meet too often, and there is something for the young ones to do and the old ones to look on at. If the Bobby Trenches who happen upon it compare it unfavourably with more splendid entertainments, it is to be doubted if those entertainments are so much enjoyed by those who take part in them, except perhaps by the novices, to whom all gaiety is glamour.

The Squire, sitting on the daïs as became a man of his position in the county, scanned the assembly after having conducted Lady Aldeburgh through the mazes of the opening quadrille, and the frown which had left his face for the past few hours, but had sat there almost invariably during the past month, appeared again. Lady Aldeburgh was talking to old Lord Meadshire, his kinsman, who in spite of age and chronic asthma was still an inveterate frequenter of local festivities, and he had a moment's interval in which his trouble rolled back upon him. He had had a dim hope that Dick, who for the first time in his life, except when he was in South Africa, had not come home for Christmas, might show up at Bathgate for this occasion. It had been a very small hope, for nothing had been heard from him, and he had even left them to take it for granted that he had put off Captain Vernon, the friend whom he had asked to stay at Kencote for the balls. And, furthermore, if he should be there it would be as a guest of Lady George Dubec, who was known still to be at Blaythorn. But even that disagreeable condition did not entirely do away with the Squire's desire to set eyes on his son, for whose presence he longed more and more as the days went on. But there was no Dick to be seen amongst the red-coated men in the room, and as yet there was no Lady George Dubec.

But as he looked over the moving crowd of dancers, and the bordering rows of men and matrons sitting and standing, his bushy brows contracted still more, for he saw her come in beneath the musicians' gallery at the other end of the hall with Miss Dexter, and, which caused him still further disquietude, saw her instantly surrounded by a crowd of men. He turned his head away with an impatient shrug and broke into the conversation between Lady Aldeburgh and Lord Meadshire. But this did not save him, for Lord Meadshire, whose old twinkling eyes were everywhere, said in his low husky voice, "There's the lady I met driving yesterday. Tell me who she is, my dear Edward, and relieve my curiosity."

The Squire, mumbling inaudibly, got up from his seat and, turning his back upon the hall, entered into a conversation with the wife of the Master of the South Meadshire, whom he disliked, but who happened to be the only lady disengaged at the moment. But she said, when she had answered his first remark, "There is Lady George. She looks handsomer than ever"; and turning his back again he went out into a room where there was a buffet and swallowed a glass of champagne, although he knew that a tablespoonful would have brought him discomfort.

Virginia was dressed in a gown of shimmering blue green which had the effect of moonlight. She had a row of turquoises round her slim neck. Her colour was higher than usual and her eyes sparkled. No one of those who pressed round her admiring her beauty and gay charm could have guessed that it was excitement of no pleasurable sort that brought the light to her eyes and the laughter to her lips. But Miss Dexter, standing demurely by her side, dressed in black, her light hair combed unbecomingly back from her broad forehead, and receiving with equanimity the crumbs of invitation that fell from her friend's richly spread table, knew with what shrinking Virginia had brought herself to make her appearance here. Both of them knew very well why the Squire had no more been seen in the hunting field since that first day; both of them had been aware of him the moment they had entered the room, had seen his movements, and interpreted them correctly.

Virginia was soon dancing with Bobby Trench, who had drawn her impatiently away from her suitors, telling her that the valse was half over and that she could fill up her card later.

"Jove!" he said, when they had danced once round the room in silence, "it's a relief to come across a friend amongst all these clodhoppers. How on earth do you find yourself here?"

"I'm living near here at present," she said. "How do you?"

"Oh, I'm a visitor—a non-paying guest in a house like a Hydropathic Establishment, or what I imagine one to be like. Fine house, but mixed company."

"Then if you are a guest you ought not to say so," said Virginia, whose thoughts so ran on Kencote that it was the first house that occurred to her as possibly affording him hospitality.

"Oh, they're all right, really," he said, "only they're the sort of people who take root in the country and grow there, like cabbages—except the chap who asked me. He's one of the sons, and he'd smarten 'em up if he had his way. Humphrey Clinton! Do you know him?"

"No," said Virginia. "Well, yes, I've met him in London. I don't like him."

"Eh? Why not? I'll tell him."

"Very well. Let's go and sit down. The room is too crowded."

But Bobby Trench, who saw the end of the dance in sight, and knew that directly Virginia sat down other men would come up to her, continued to dance. "I haven't bumped you yet," he said. "We'll steer through somehow. Are you going to Kemsale on Monday?"

"No," said Virginia, and left off dancing, having come to the end of the room, where Miss Dexter was still standing. As her partner had foreseen, she was immediately besieged again, and as for some, to him, unaccountable reason, she refused to book another engagement with him, he went away and left her in a huff.

He came across Humphrey, who was partnerless for the moment. "Let's go and get a drink," he said. "I'm dry. I say, you didn't tell me that Virginia Dubec lived in these parts."

"She doesn't," replied Humphrey as they made their way towards the room with the buffet. "She has taken a house here for a few months. My brother Dick got it for her."

"Oh, I thought she said she didn't know your people. Where is your brother, by the by?"

Humphrey considered for a moment as to whether he should enlighten him as to the state of the case, and decided not to, but wished almost immediately that he had, for as they went into the refreshment-room they met his father coming out, and Bobby Trench, who always spoke what was passing through his mind to the nearest available person, said, "I've found a friend, Mr. Clinton—Lady George Dubec. Didn't know she was in your part of the country."

The Squire scowled at him, and went out of the room without a word.

"Nice manners!" commented Bobby Trench to himself.

"The fact is," said Humphrey, "that the governor won't know the lady."

"Why not? What's the matter with her?" asked his friend. "I should have thought she'd have been a godsend in a place like this. I thought you said your brother got her down here."

"So he did," said Humphrey, making a clean breast of it. "That's what the row's about. Governor wouldn't have anything to do with her, and so Dick has retired from the scene for a time. But don't say anything about it, old chap. Little family disturbance we don't want to go any further."

"Course not," said Bobby Trench, delighted to get hold of the end of a piece of gossip and determined to draw out the rest as soon as possible. "So that's how the land lies, is it? Now I see why she didn't want to have any more truck with this engaging youth. Well, your brother's taste is to be commended. Why does your father object to her?"

"Oh, I don't know. Old-fashioned prejudice, I suppose; and he knew George Dubec."

"And he was a daisy, from all accounts. Come on, we'd better be getting back."

Old Lord Meadshire, who had been Lord-Lieutenant of the county from which his title came for over forty years, and took an almost fatherly interest in its inhabitants, learnt from Mrs. Graham who the unknown lady was.

"Oh, I can tell you all about her," she said. "She's making a fine disturbance in this little duck-pond."

"Well, she's pretty enough to make a disturbance anywhere," said the old lord, whose kindly eye for youth and beauty was not dimmed by his eighty years. "And if there is anything going on, I know I can trust you to tell me all about it."

"There it is again," replied Mrs. Graham. "I'm getting the reputation of a tale-bearer, and there's nothing I hate more. Still, I think you ought to know." And she told him who Virginia was, and what was happening because she was what she was.

The old man grew rather serious as the story was unfolded to him. "Edward Clinton was always headstrong," he said, "but it's unlike him to quarrel with Dick. I think he ought to have waited to see what she was like first."

"Of course he ought," said Mrs. Graham. "I've no patience with him. He had the impudence to take me to task for asking her to dinner, and Jim and Cicely to meet her. But he didn't get much change out of me."

"You told him what you thought about him—what?"

"I told him what I thought about her, and left him to infer the rest. There's nothing wrong about her, if she did marry Lord George Dubec, and all the rest of it. I like her, and I told him so. And if I can't ask my own son and daughter-in-law to meet whom I like in my own house without being hauled over the coals by Mr. Clinton—well, he'll be expecting me to ask him what I'm to wear next."

"He couldn't improve on that," said Lord Meadshire, with an appreciative glance at her pretty gown of pale blue silk under brown net.

"Thank you," returned Mrs. Graham. "I hate clothes, but I can get myself up if I'm flattered enough beforehand. Cicely does that for me. I've no complaint to make of her as a daughter-in-law."

"Well, you had better introduce me to Lady George," said Lord Meadshire. "She must be asked to Kemsale on Monday. And I'll find an opportunity of dropping a word of common sense into Edward's ear, eh?"

"It will go out at the other. There's nothing to stop it," said Mrs. Graham. "But it will be a good thing to show him he's not going to have it all his own way."

The introduction was duly made, and Virginia, palpitating under her air of assured ease, talked to him for some little time, sitting with him on the daïs. She knew that this kind old man who chatted pleasantly with her, making feeble little jokes in his asthmatic voice, which his eyes, plainly admiring her, asked her to smile at, was the most important of all Dick's relations, besides being the most important man in the county, and that if she could win him to like her his influence might well avail to ease her lover's path. That he did like her and was prepared to accept her in friendly wise as a neighbour was plain. But she had a moment of fright when he said, "We are dancing at Kemsale on Monday night. You must come. Where is Eleanor, I wonder?" And he looked round for Lady Kemsale, his widowed daughter-in-law, who kept house for him.

"I am not sure," she said hurriedly. She did not know in the least how much he knew, or whether he knew anything. "Captain Clinton found me my house here, but——" She did not know how to go on, and feared she had already said too much in her confusion, but he turned towards her.

"Oh, I know, I know," he said kindly, and then beckoned to his daughter-in-law, a stout, rather severe-looking lady in steely grey, who greeted Virginia without smiling and gave the required invitation rather coldly.

"I will send you a card," she said, "and please bring any friends you may have with you."

Lady Kemsale had just heard the story of his troubles from the Squire, who had found in her a sympathetic listener, and she had heard that Virginia had once danced on the stage. She would have preferred to have ignored her, but Lord Meadshire's commands must be obeyed, and even as she obeyed them and gave the invitation her sympathy with the Squire's troubles began to wane and she said to herself that he must have made a mistake. There was nothing of the stage-charmer about this woman, and Lady Kemsale thought she knew all about that class of temptress, for her own nephew had recently married one of them. She preserved her stately, unsmiling air as she turned away, but she was already softened, if Virginia had only known it.

But Virginia's sensibilities had already taken renewed fright at her manner, and in a way the exhibition of which now somewhat disturbed old Lord Meadshire. She rose to her feet, and her air was no less stately than that of Lady Kemsale. "It is very kind of you to ask me to your house," she said, "but I think under the present circumstances I would rather not come." Then she made him a bow and stepped off the daïs, and was immediately seized by her partner of the dance that was then in progress. She was angry, but did not speak to him until they had circled the room twice. She was willing to pay court to the people amongst whom she was going to marry if they treated her properly. She was willing to do even more than that for Dick's sake, and to run the risk of slights, and she had done so by staying at Blaythorn, as he had asked her to do, and by coming here to-night. But she was not going to put up with slights from women who chose to treat her as of no account and as if she were anxious at all costs to obtain their countenance. There might be women who would be glad to gain entrance to a house like Kemsale even after such an invitation as Lady Kemsale had given her, but she was not one of them. The invitation, if it came after what she had said to Lord Meadshire, should be refused. The woman whom Dick was going to marry would not be recognised on those terms. She would wait until she could go to Kemsale as an equal, and if that time never came she would not go at all. In the meantime she was spending a very wearing evening, and had an impulse to cut it all short and summon Miss Dexter to accompany her home. But the thought that she was going through it for Dick's sake sustained her, and she said to herself that since she had wrought up her courage to come she would not run away.

The person who did run away, before the dancing was half over, was the Squire. He could stand it no longer. He could not remain in the refreshment-room all the evening, and, as he hated cards, the solace of the tables, set out quite in old Assembly-room style in another room, did not avail him. If he led out a dowager to take his part in a square dance there was always the haunting fear that Virginia might be brought into the same set, and if he sat and looked on at the round dances the hateful sight of her dark head and slender form was always before him. Moreover, he had not yet talked to any one who had not either made some remark about her or asked him why Dick was not there, or, worse still, maintained an ominous silence on the subject of both of them, showing plainly that he or she was aware of the disturbance in his household, which galled him exceedingly, although to sympathetic and assumedly secret ears like those of Lady Kemsale he was ready to talk his fill, and gain relief from doing so. He could not keep what he felt out of his face, and he saw people looking at him with furtive amusement as he sat there glowering at the assembly, or trying his best to talk as if he had nothing on his mind. He felt instinctively that the story was being put all about the room, as indeed it was, for rumour was already in the air, and had gained impulse by Dick's absence and his own behaviour.

And then Lord Meadshire—Cousin Humphrey, as he had called him ever since he was a child, and called him still—had talked to him about Dick and about Virginia, coupling their names together, as he disgustedly said to himself, showing plainly that he knew what was on foot, and inviting confidences if the Squire felt disposed to give them. He did not feel so disposed. He was angry with his kinsman for so publicly giving his countenance to Virginia, flouting him in the face—so he felt it—making it appear as if he, in the place where he had all his life cut a distinguished figure, and his wishes, were not worth regarding. "I don't know the lady and don't want to," he said, one might say petulantly. "And as for Dick—she wanted to come here and he told her of a house. Considering he has scarcely been near the place since she came, it's most annoying to hear him talked about as if there was something between them. I hope you'll do what you can to contradict that report. You can do a lot if you want to."

Lord Meadshire glanced at him quizzically. He knew well enough his ostrich-like habit of burying one fact in a Sahara of words and leaving a dozen for all the world to see. "Come now, my dear Edward," he said persuasively, "why not make friends with the lady? You will find her everything she ought to be, and a charming woman into the bargain. If Dick is a little struck with her charms, I don't wonder at it, and there's nothing to be alarmed at. The best thing you can do is to keep your eye on her while he is away."

But this was a little too much. Cousin Humphrey had been his boyhood's idol, and was the only member left of an older generation of his family with the exception of Aunt Laura, but if he thought that he could treat him as an obstinate child who was to be coaxed into good behaviour, he was mistaken. "Nothing will induce me to make friends with her or to recognise her in any way," he said, with decision. "Where's Nina? I'm going home. I can't stand this any longer."

Mrs. Clinton, who was enjoying herself in a quiet way, talking to people whom she seldom saw, and infinitely relieved in her mind to find Virginia what she was, and not what she had feared she might be, even a little fascinated by her grace and beauty, and watching her all the time even when she was talking, was disagreeably surprised at the curt request of her lord and master that she should instantly accompany him home. "But, Edward!" she exclaimed, "we have not ordered the carriage until one o'clock, and it is not yet eleven. Aren't you well?"

"We can get a fly," snapped the Squire. "Yes, I'm quite well. But I can't put up with any more of this."

Still she hesitated. There were her guests to think of. How could she go off and leave them?

"If you like I will go home with Uncle Edward," said Angela Senhouse, to whom she had been talking. "I think it would make people uneasy if you were to go." She looked at the Squire with her calm, rather cold eyes, and he suddenly grew ashamed of himself. "I'll get a fly and go by myself. You had better stay here, Nina." And he took himself off without further ado.

CHAPTER XIV

A SHOOT

On the morning after the Hunt Ball the Clinton twins rose, as usual with them in the winter, about half-past eight o'clock. In the summer they were up and out of doors at all sorts of unorthodox hours, but in the cold long nights they slept like young hibernating animals, snuggling amongst their warm coverings, and occasionally having to be extricated by all the powers of persuasion, moral and physical, possessed by Miss Bird. Miss Bird had now departed and the new governess had not yet arrived, so they were their own mistresses within limits, and responsible for their own tidy and punctual appearance at the breakfast-table.

Hannah, the schoolroom maid, brought in their tea and bread and butter at eight o'clock, drew up their blinds, set out their bath (for there were no bathrooms at Kencote), and then applied herself to the task of arousing them. "Now, Miss Joan and Miss Nancy," she said in a loud, confident voice, as if she had only to tell them to get up and they would get up immediately. "I've brought your 'ot water. Miss Joan! Miss Nancy! Eight o'clock! Time to get up! Miss Joan! Miss Nancy!"

Joan stirred, opened her eyes, closed them again, turned over and buried herself in the bedclothes again. "Now, Miss Joan," said Hannah, quick to pursue her advantage, "don't go dropping off to sleep again. 'Ere's yer tea all ready and yer 'ot water gitting cold. Miss Nancy! Time to get up!"

"Go away," said Joan in a sleepy voice. "I'm awake."

"Yes, and you'll be asleep again in a minute if you don't set up and drink yer tea. Now, Miss Joan, you don't want me to stand 'ere all the morning wasting me time with the whole 'ouse full and me wanted to 'elp."

"Then go and 'elp, and don't bother," replied Joan sleepily.

"Miss Nancy!" cried Hannah. "I know you ain't asleep. Set up and drink yer tea. Miss Nancy! Lor'! the trouble I 'ave now Miss Bird's gone, and only me to see that everything's right up 'ere and you ain't late downstairs, which you know I should be blamed and not you if you wasn't down in time."

This roused Joan, who opened her eyes again and said, "It's nothing to do with you whether we're late or not. You're always full of your own importance. I'm quite awake now and you can clear out," and she sat up in bed, and took her cup from the table between the two beds.

"Not till Miss Nancy sets up I won't," said Hannah. "I know she's awake and it's only contrariness as makes her pretend not to be."

"Nancy, do sit up and let her go," entreated Joan, "or she'll go on jabbering like a monkey for hours. My nerves won't stand it at this time of the morning."

Nancy sat up suddenly and reached for her cup. "Depart, minion!" she commanded.

"Now you won't go to sleep again after you've 'ad yer tea," said Hannah. "I shall come back in 'alf an hour to do yer 'airs, and if you ain't up and ready for me, I shall acquaint Mrs. Clinton, for reelly the trouble I 'ave in this very room every morning as sure as the sun rises, no young ladies as calls theirselves young ladies wouldn't be'ave so."

"Parse that sentence," said Nancy, and Hannah, with a toss of the head, left the room.

"Hannah's getting above herself," said Joan. "She seems to think now Starling's gone she's been promoted to her place."

"We'll let her go a little further," said Nancy, "and then we'll pull her off her perch. What's the weather like? Not raining, is it? I say, we ought to have some fun to-day, Joan. Who shall you stand with?"

The Kencote coverts were to be shot over that day, and the twins were allowed to accompany the guns on such occasions as these.

"I don't know; Uncle Herbert, I think. He's the most amusing."

"Joan, you know quite well I bagged Uncle Herbert in the schoolroom yesterday," said Nancy.

"Did you? I'd forgotten. You can have him in the morning and I'll go with him in the afternoon. I think I shall go with Bobby Trench, and see if he's as clever as he thinks he is."

"You can't, my dear; you're too old. It would be considered forward. Besides, he's an awful little ass."

"That's what I wanted to convey to him. But I think I'll go with Humphrey. He hasn't tipped us for ages, and one of us must attend to business."

"You can't do that either. He'll want that simpering Lady Susan. Joan, I believe there's more in that than meets the eye."

"Penny, please," said Joan, holding out her hand. "You said you would if I caught you saying that again."

"All right, when I get up. I forgot. Why don't you go with George Senhouse?"

"He's too serious, and this is a holiday. Besides, he doesn't hit them. I hate bloodshed, but I like to see something done. I wish dear old Dick were here. He'd bowl them over all right."

"I wonder," said Nancy, "when all that bother is going to stop. Dear papa will have to give way in the end, you know. He might just as well do it now and save time."

"If I were Dick I should just marry her and let him make the best of it. I wish he'd do something. Father has really been too tiresome for words for the last month. If you and I behaved like he does we should be sent to bed, and serve us right. I wonder what happened last night. I expect she was at the ball."

"He wouldn't take any notice of her if she was. I wish we could set eyes on her. I should like to see what she's really like."

"Cicely says she's very pretty."

"Well, I suppose she'd have to be that if Dick wants to marry her. Aren't men funny about women, Joan? Now I suppose you'd call that silly little Bobby Trench good-looking, but I should no more want to marry him than the ugliest man in the world."

"That isn't much of a discovery. You needn't have lived very long to find out that women are much more sensible than men."

With this aphorism Joan rose and proceeded to her toilette, and Nancy, after indulging in another short nap, followed her example.

The Squire, refreshed by his night's slumber, rose determined to do his duty by his guests and put from him for the day all thoughts of Lady George Dubec and, what was more difficult, of his son Dick. Mrs. Clinton, when she had returned from the ball, very late, had found him in a deep sleep in the great canopied bed which she had shared with him for so many years. He had not awakened during her long muffled process of undressing, nor when she slipped, careful to make no noise and as little movement as possible, into bed by his side. But before she slept he had turned over and, half asleep still, murmured, "Good-night, Nina. God bless you." It had been his nightly farewell of her for nearly forty years, uttered often with no special meaning, sometimes even without interval at the end of some unreasonable expression of annoyance. But last night the words had come softly and affectionately, as if, returning for a moment from the pleasant land of oblivion, where he had been wandering and to which he was immediately returning, he had been glad to find her waiting for him, his close companion, valued above others. She had put her hand softly on to his, and lain for a long time, in the deep silence of the night, in that light contact.

The common life of the household at Kencote began with family prayers at a quarter-past nine, at which, on this Saturday morning, Lady Aldeburgh and her daughter, Sir Herbert Birkett, Bobby Trench, and Humphrey failed to put in an appearance. The Judge had been up at seven, reading in his bedroom, and appeared with the breakfast dishes, but Humphrey did not arrive until five minutes later, and the presence of guests did not avert from him the invariable rebuke of unpunctuality. "I wish you'd manage to get up in decent time when you're here," said the Squire. "Where's young Trench?"

"In his bedroom, I suppose," replied Humphrey coolly, inspecting the dishes on the side-table.

The Squire said nothing further, but when he, with most of the party, was leaving the room half an hour later, and met Bobby Trench, to whom the morning light had apparently brought a renewal of self-content, entering it, he greeted him with an earnest enquiry after his health.

"Oh, I'm as bobbish as possible, thank you," replied Bobby Trench brightly.

"I'm glad of that," said the Squire, passing on. "I thought as you didn't come down at the proper time you must have been feeling poorly."

Bobby Trench stared at his broad retreating back in amazement. "Lor'! What a house!" was his inward exclamation, as he went on into the dining-room.

Humphrey, who was deliberate in his meals, was still at the table, and Joan was leaning on the back of his chair. She was making some suggestion as to pecuniary profit to herself and Nancy from the day's sport, which yet should not amount to a bet.

"Hullo, old man!" said Humphrey. "Joan, ring the bell. Everything must be cold by this time."

Joan hesitated. Such a proceeding was unheard of at Kencote, where, if people came down late for breakfast, they must expect it to be cold. But Bobby Trench politely anticipated her. "Don't you trouble, Miss Joan," he said, going to the bell himself. "I say, are you going to stand with me to-day and see me shoot?"

If Nancy had been there to support her she would have asked innocently, "Can you shoot?" for although she liked being addressed as "Miss Joan," she did not like Bobby Trench's free and easy air. But maiden modesty replied for her, "I think I'm going with Humphrey."

"She wants me to give her a shilling for every bird I miss, and she'll give me sixpence for every one I knock over. How does that strike you for a soft thing?"

A footman came in at that moment, and looked surprised at the order that was given him.

"Do you want heverythink cooked, sir, or only some fresh tea?" he asked, with a glance at the table where the lamps were still sizzling under the hot dishes.

"We live a life of rigid punctuality in this house," Humphrey apologised, when he had retired with his order. "They don't understand renewing the supplies."

"Sorry to give so much trouble," replied Bobby Trench, "but I'm pretty peckish, to tell you the truth. Dancing always gives me a twist. Look here, Miss Joan, I'll bet you half a dozen pair of gloves I kill more birds than Humphrey."

"Take him, Joan; it's a certainty," said Humphrey.

Joan was secretly enchanted at being treated as of a glovable age, but she answered primly, "Thank you, Mr. Trench, I'm not allowed to bet."

"Oh, ho!" jeered Humphrey. "What about that shilling you and Nancy got from me?"

"Dick said we ought not to have done it, and we weren't to do it any more," said Joan.

Humphrey was silent. Bobby Trench, who was good-natured enough to take pleasure in the innocent conversation of extreme feminine youth, especially when it was allied to beauty, as in the case of the twins, said, "Well, of course, you must always do what you're told, mustn't you? But I'll tell you what, we won't call it a bet, but if I don't kill more birds than Humphrey I'll give you six pairs of gloves—see? Only you'll have to stand by me half the time and him half the time, to count."

"Oh, she doesn't want gloves," said Humphrey, with some approach to his father's manner. "Cut along upstairs, Joan, or you'll have Miss Bird after you."

"Miss Bird has departed," said Joan, but she went out of the room, somewhat relieved at the conclusion of what might have developed into an embarrassing episode.

At half-past ten the big shooting-brake appeared at the door, and the whole party, men and women, got into it, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, and Lady Aldeburgh and her daughter, who had not yet made an appearance. The Squire had been extremely annoyed at this. "She's as strong as a horse," he had said of his kinsman's wife, "and when she stays in other people's houses she ought to keep their hours. And as for the girl, if she can't get up to breakfast after a ball, she oughtn't to go to balls. I'll tell you what, Nina, I'm hanged if I'm going to keep the whole party waiting for them. We start at half-past ten sharp, and if you can't rout 'em out by then, you must wait and bring 'em on afterwards in the carriage."

Mrs. Clinton had not felt equal to the task of routing out her guests, and the brake had driven off, within three minutes of the half-hour, without them.

It was a deliciously mild morning. The sun, shining palely in a sky of misty blue, gave it an illusive air of spring; blackbirds whistled in the copses; the maze of tree-twigs in distant woods showed purple against the wet green of the meadows; the air was virginally fresh, and had the fragrance of rich moist earth and a hint of wood smoke. Brown beech leaves still clung to the hedges on either side of the deep muddy country lanes, and blackberries, saturated with dew, on the brambles.

Servants and dogs and guns had been sent on a quarter of an hour before. The Squire, on these important occasions, when he took the cream of his preserves and began at an outlying wood, to finish up just before dark with the home coverts, liked to drive up to the place appointed and find everything ready for an immediate start. Beaters must be in place ready for the whistle on the instant. Guns must be posted for the first drive with no delay whatever. There was a lot to get through before dusk, and no time must be wasted. If those who were asked to shoot at Kencote on the big days did their parts, he—and Dick—and the keepers would do theirs and show them as pretty a succession of drives, with an occasional walk over stubble or a field of roots to vary the proceedings, as they would get anywhere in England. Only there must be no dawdling, and the women who were permitted to look on must subordinate their uncontrolled natures to the business in hand.

All the arrangements necessary to make the machinery run without a hitch, so that none of the full day's programme should be hurried, meant a great deal of preliminary consultation and adjustment. Bunch, the head-keeper, admirable in his capacity for generalling his little army of beaters and for faithfully carrying out instructions, had no initiative of his own, and the Squire had always relied upon Dick—and relied on him much more than he knew—for arranging the plan of campaign. This time he had had to do it alone, with much consequent irritation to himself and bewilderment and head-scratching to honest, velveteen-clad Bunch. And he had relied on Dick's coolness—also much more than he knew—to get the guns posted expeditiously and with as little friction of talk and enquiry as possible. To-day he would have to rely on Humphrey to help him, and Humphrey was as yet untried in this capacity. He was anxious and worried as he drove, sitting on the high box-seat beside his coachman, and itching to handle his horses himself as he always did except on shooting days, when he wanted to save his hands. Usually he sat behind, but this morning he felt he could not take his part in the talk and laughter that went on in the body of the brake. He was not at all sure how the day would turn out. There were several points at which a hitch might occur. Following a light suggestion of Dick's, he had arranged to take High Beach Wood the opposite way to that in which it had always been taken, and he was not at all sure that Bunch had fully understood his testily given instructions—or, indeed, that he fully understood them himself. Nor was he quite certain of his guns, and he wanted to kill a respectable head of game. The two local notabilities whom he had invited, old Mr. Wilkinson, of Birfield, and Colonel Stacey, who lived in a villa in Bathgate, and shot steadily through the season within a radius of forty miles, he could rely on. Humphrey was a good shot, though not so good as Dick. Sir Herbert Birkett was surprisingly good, for a Londoner, on his day, but when it wasn't his day he was surprisingly bad, and didn't even care enough about it to make the usual lamentations. George Senhouse enjoyed it thoroughly, but never touched a feather. Hammond-Watt and Bobby Trench he knew nothing whatever about, but it was unlikely that either of them would turn out above the average. He could only hope that they would not turn out very much worse. At any rate, at the best, it was not a team that could be expected to create a record in the Kencote preserves, and at the worst might bring disgrace on them.

He could not help thinking of these things and worrying about them. If Dick had been there he would have calmed those uneasy tremors. He would have told him that the birds would show up well, even if the guns didn't, that the experts were at least equal to the duffers and the doubtfuls, putting everything in a hopeful light, not anticipating any possible hitch, but quite ready to deal with it if it should come. Dick never lost sight of the fact that they were out for a day's sport; the Squire fussed and worried so about trifles that all such sense of pleasure was apt to leave him. He had an uneasy, half-defined feeling that his temperament caused him to err in this way, and it made him want Dick, who could relieve him of the weight of small anxieties, all the more. He was learning how much he had been wont to depend on his son. One of the impulses of appeal and affection, which continually shot across the stiff web of his obstinate determination, came to him now, and if Dick could have appeared at that moment he would have welcomed him with open arms, and given way in everything. But Dick was away, he did not know where, and with a sigh he resigned himself to the prospect of a day of anxiety.

They came to an open gate by the roadside and drove in through a strip of wood until they came to an open space in front of a keeper's cottage. It stood, backed by trees, facing a wide sloping meadow, which was completely surrounded by a wood of oak and beech, intermixed with spruce and some firs. The little group of loaders with their masters' guns and cartridge-bags stood ready by the palings, the glossy coated retrievers waved welcoming tails as the brake drove up, the hoof-beats of the horses muffled on the thick grass. The beaters were already in line at the other end of the wood, far out of sight, waiting for Bunch's signal. There was nothing to do but place the guns and prepare for the stream of pheasants which would presently begin to fly over them. Except that neither Mr. Wilkinson nor Colonel Stacey had yet arrived.

It was the first check to the prompt orderly proceedings of the day. The Squire, taking his gun from the hands of an under-keeper and filling the pockets of his wide shooting-jacket with cartridges, gave vent to a forcible expression of irritation. "Now there we are, held back at the very start!" he exclaimed. "'Pon my word, it's too bad of those fellows. I told 'em eleven o'clock sharp, and they've shot here dozens of times before and know the place as well as I do."

"It's only just five minutes to eleven," said Humphrey, and as he spoke Mr. Wilkinson's dog-cart drove in from the wood, bringing himself and Colonel Stacey, all ready for immediate business. Before eleven o'clock struck from the cuckoo-clock in the keeper's kitchen the whole party was walking down the meadow to line the borders of the wood and do what execution they might.

Humphrey showed himself efficient in translating the Squire's intentions as to the placing of the guns, from the notes he had jotted down on a sheet of letter paper. He knew that inextricable confusion would arise later if those notes were to be followed literally, but trusted to be able to arrange things by word of mouth when the time came, as most people were content to do.

So they stood and waited. From the keeper's cottage up the hill you could have seen the eight little groups, standing expectantly on the grass at a short distance from the wood, following the curve of its line. Behind each stood a gaitered loader with another gun ready to hand to his master. The women, in clothes not distinguishable in colour from those of the men, stood with them; the dogs squatted by the side of their masters or tugged at leashes held by the men. Blackbirds popped in and out of the wood, and thrushes, but there were few sounds of life. There was a hush of expectancy, and otherwise only the deep winter stillness of nature, and the pale sun, and the wet odour of the soil.

CHAPTER XV

THE GUNS AND THE LADIES

Nancy stood with her uncle, as she had announced her intention of doing. Sir Herbert, in a Norfolk jacket of voluminous tweed and a green Tyrolean hat, would hardly have been recognised by those who had only seen him in his Judge's robes. He asked Nancy as they were waiting whether she thought he was properly attired. "I like to do the thing thoroughly while I'm about it," he said. "I notice that nobody but myself is wearing these buttoned things—spats I think they call them. I think you might have written, Nancy, to tell me they had gone out of fashion. Do you think I could take them off and throw them away presently? I don't know what good they are. It is only a passion for being correctly dressed that induced me to put them on."

"I think they look very nice," said Nancy. "And as for your hat, Uncle Herbert, I'm sure it's the very latest thing, because Humphrey has got one just like it. But it wants a woodcock's feather in it."

"Oh, does it? Thank you for telling me. I shall direct my attention to-day to shooting a woodcock if one turns up, and robbing him of his feather. It is very unpleasant and takes away your conceit of yourself not to have everything exactly right. With your intelligence you no doubt understand that."

"Joan understands it better than I do," replied Nancy. "She likes to be well dressed. I don't care about it one way or the other."