THE IMAGINARY MARRIAGE

The pretty, frightened girl who shared the drawing-room at this moment with Lady Linden of Cornbridge Manor House had not dared to open her lips. But that was her ladyship’s way, and “Don’t talk to me!” was a stock expression of hers. Few people were permitted to talk in her ladyship’s presence. In Cornbridge they spoke of her with bated breath as a “rare masterful woman,” and they had good cause.

Masterful and domineering was Lady Linden of Cornbridge, yet she was kind-hearted, though she tried to disguise the fact.

In Cornbridge she reigned supreme, men and women trembled at her approach. She penetrated the homes of the cottagers, she tasted of their foods, she rated them on uncleanliness, drunkenness, and thriftlessness; she lectured them on cooking.

On many a Saturday night she raided, single-handed, the Plough Inn and drove forth the sheepish revellers, personally conducting them to their homes and wives.

They respected her in Cornbridge as the reigning sovereign of her small estate, and none did she rule more autocratically and completely than her little nineteen-year-old niece Marjorie.

A pretty, timid, little maid was Marjorie, with soft yellow hair, a sweet oval face, with large pathetic blue eyes and a timid, uncertain little rosebud of a mouth.

“A rare sweet maid her be,” they said of her in the village, “but terribul tim’rous, and I lay her ladyship du give she a rare time of it....” Which was true.

“Don’t talk to me, miss!” her ladyship said to the silent girl. “I know what is best for you; and I know, too, what you don’t think I know—ha, ha!” Her ladyship laughed terribly. “I know that you have been meeting that worthless young scamp, Tom Arundel!”

“Oh, aunt, he is not worthless—”

“Financially he isn’t worth a sou—and that’s what I mean, and don’t interrupt. I am your guardian, you are entirely in my charge, and until you arrive at the age of twenty-five I can withhold your fortune from you if you marry in opposition to me and my wishes. But you won’t—you won’t do anything of the kind. You will marry the man I select for you, the man I have already selected—what did you say, miss?

“And now, not another word. Hugh Alston is the man I have selected for you. He is in love with you, there isn’t a finer lad living. He has eight thousand a year, and Hurst Dormer is one of the best old properties in Sussex. So that’s quite enough, and I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about Tom Arundel. I say nothing against him personally. Colonel Arundel is a gentleman, of course, otherwise I would not permit you to know his son; but the Arundels haven’t a pennypiece to fly with and—and now—Now I see Hugh coming up the drive. Leave me. I want to talk to him. Go into the garden, and wait by the lily-pond. In all probability Hugh will have something to say to you before long.”

“Oh, aunt, I—”

“Shut up!” said her ladyship briefly.

Marjorie went out, with hanging head and bursting heart. She believed herself the most unhappy girl in England. She loved; who could help loving happy-go-lucky, handsome Tom Arundel, who well-nigh worshipped the ground her little feet trod upon? It was the first love and the only love of her life, and of nights she lay awake picturing his bright, young boyish face, hearing again all the things he had said to her till her heart was well-nigh bursting with love and longing for him.

But she did not hate Hugh. Who could hate Hugh Alston, with his cheery smile, his ringing voice, his big generous heart, and his fine manliness? Not she! But from the depths of her heart she wished Hugh Alston a great distance away from Cornbridge.

“Hello, Hugh!” said her ladyship. He had come in, a man of two-and-thirty, big and broad, with suntanned face and eyes as blue as the tear-dimmed eyes of the girl who had gone miserably down to the lily-pond.

Fair haired was Hugh, ruddy of cheek, with no particular beauty to boast of, save the wholesomeness and cleanliness of his young manhood. He seemed to bring into the room a scent of the open country, of the good brown earth and of the clean wind of heaven.

“Hello, Hugh!” said Lady Linden.

“Hello, my lady,” said he, and kissed her. It had been his habit from boyhood, also it had been his lifelong habit to love and respect the old dame, and to feel not the slightest fear of her. In this he was singular, and because he was the one person who did not fear her she preferred him to anyone else.

“Hugh,” she said—she went straight to the point, she always did; as a hunter goes at a hedge, so her ladyship without prevarication went at the matter she had in hand—“I have been talking to Marjorie about Tom Arundel—”

His cheery face grew a little grave.

“Yes?”

“Well, it is absurd—you realise that?”

“I suppose so, but—” He paused.

“It is childish folly!”

“Do you think so? Do you think that she—” Again he paused, with a nervousness and diffidence usually foreign to him.

“She’s only a gel,” said her ladyship. Her ladyship was Sussex born, and talked Sussex when she became excited. “She’s only a gel, and gels have their fancies. I had my own—but bless you, they don’t last. She don’t know her own mind.”

“He’s a good fellow,” said Hugh generously.

“A nice lad, but he won’t suit me for Marjorie’s husband. Hugh, the gel’s in the garden, she is sitting by the lily-pond and believes her heart is broken, but it isn’t! Go and prove it isn’t; go now!”

He met her eyes and flushed red. “I’ll go and have a talk to Marjorie,” he said. “You haven’t been—too rough with her, have you?”

“Rough! I know how to deal with gels. I told her that I had the command of her money, her four hundred a year till she was twenty-five, and not a bob of it should she touch if she married against my wish. Now go and talk to her—and talk sense—” She paused. “You know what I mean—sense!”

A very pretty picture, the slender white-clad, drooping figure with its crown of golden hair made, sitting on the bench beside the lily-pond. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed on the stagnant green water over which the dragon-flies skimmed.

Coming across the soundless turf, he stood for a moment to look at her.

Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but latterly he had realised that there was something missing, something without which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams waking and sleeping he had seen this same little white-clad figure seated at the foot of the great table in the dining-hall.

He had seen her in his mind’s eye doing those little housewifely duties that the mistresses of Hurst Dormer had always loved to do, her slender fingers busy with the rare and delicate old china, or the lavender-scented linen, or else in the wonderful old garden, the gracious little mistress of all and of his heart.

And now she sat drooping like a wilted lily beside the green pond, because of her love for another man, and his honest heart ached that it should be so.

“Marjorie!” he said.

She lifted a tear-stained face and held out her hand’ to him silently.

He patted her hand gently, as one pats the hand of a child. “Is—is it so bad, little girl? Do you care for him so much?”

“Better than my life!” she said. “Oh, if you knew!”

“I see,” he said quietly. He sat staring at the green waters, stirred now and again by the fin of a lazy carp. He realised that there would be no sweet girlish, golden-haired little mistress for Hurst Dormer, and the realisation hurt him badly.

The girl seemed to have crept a little closer to him, as for comfort and protection.

“She has made up her mind, and nothing will change it. She wants you to—to marry me. She’s told me so a hundred times. She won’t listen to anything else; she says you—you care for me, Hugh.”

“Supposing I care so much, little girl, that I want your happiness above everything in this world. Supposing—I clear out?” he said—“clear right away, go to Africa, or somewhere or other?”

“She would make me wait till you came back, and you’d have to come back, Hugh, because there is always Hurst Dormer. There’s no way out for me, none. If only—only you were married; that is the only thing that would have saved me!”

“But I’m not!”

She sighed. “If only you were, if only you could say to her, ‘I can’t ask Marjorie to marry me, because I am already married!’ It sounds rubbish, doesn’t it, Hugh; but if it were only true!”

“Supposing—I did say it?”

“Oh, Hugh, but—” She looked up at him quickly. “But it would be a lie!”

“I know, but lies aren’t always the awful things they are supposed to be—if one told a lie to help a friend, for instance, such a lie might be forgiven, eh?”

“But—” She was trembling; she looked eagerly into his eyes, into her cheeks had come a flush, into her eyes the brightness of a new, though as yet vague, hope. “It—it sounds so impossible!”

“Nothing is actually impossible. Listen, little maid. She sent me here to you to talk sense, as she put it. That meant she sent me here to ask you to marry me, and I meant to do it. I think perhaps you know why”—he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it—“but I shan’t now, I never shall. Little girl, we’re going to be what we’ve always been, the best and truest of friends, and I’ve got to find a way to help you and Tom—”

“Hugh, if you told her that you were married, and not free, she wouldn’t give another thought to opposing Tom and me—it is only because she wants me to marry you that she opposes Tom! Oh, Hugh, if—if—if you could, if it were possible!” She was trembling with excitement, and the sweet colour was coming and going in her cheeks.

“Supposing I did it?” he said, and spoke his thoughts aloud. “Of course it would be a shock to her, perhaps she wouldn’t believe!”

“She would believe anything you said...”

“It is rather a rotten thing to do,” he thought, “yet....” He looked at the bright, eager face, it would make her happy; he knew that what she said was true—Lady Linden would not oppose Tom Arundel if marriage between Marjorie and himself was out of the question. It would be making the way clear for her: it would be giving her happiness, doing her the greatest service that he could. Of his own sacrifice, his own disappointment he thought not now; realisation of that would come later.

At first it seemed to him a mad, a nonsensical scheme, yet it was one that might so easily be carried out. If one doubt was left as to whether he would do it, it was gone the next moment.

“Hugh, would you do—would you do this for me?”

“There is very little that I wouldn’t do for you, little maid,” he said, “and if I can help you to your happiness I am going to do it.”

She crept closer to him; she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and held his hand in hers.

“Tell me just what you will say.”

“I haven’t thought that out yet.”

“But you must.”

“I know. You see, if I say I am married, naturally she will ask me a few questions.”

“When she gets—gets her breath!” Marjorie said with a laugh; it was the first time she had laughed, and he liked to hear it.

“The first will probably be, How long have I been married?”

“Do you remember you used to come to Marlbury to see me when I was at school at Miss Skinner’s?”

“Rather!”

“That was three years ago. Supposing you married about then?”

“Fine,” Hugh said. “I married three years ago. What month?”

“June,” she said; “it’s a lovely month!”

“I was married in June, nineteen hundred and eighteen, my lady,” said Hugh. “Where at, though?”

“Why, Marlbury, of course!”

“Of course! Splendid place to get married in, delightful romantic old town!”

“It is a hateful place, but that doesn’t matter,” said Marjorie. She seemed to snuggle up a little closer to him, her lips were rippling with smiles, her bright eyes saw freedom and love, her heart was very warm with gratitude to this man who was helping her. But she could not guess, how could she, how in spite of the laughter on his lips there was a great ache and a feeling of emptiness at his heart.

“So now we have it all complete,” he said. “I was married in June, nineteen eighteen at Marlbury; my wife and I did not get on, we parted. She had a temper, so had I, a most unhappy affair, and there you are!” He laughed.

“All save one thing,” Marjorie said.

“Goodness, what have I forgotten?”

“Only the lady’s name.”

“You are right. She must have a name of course, something nice and romantic—Gladys something, eh?”

Marjorie shook her head.

“Clementine,” suggested Hugh. “No, won’t do, eh? Now you put your thinking cap on and invent a name, something romantic and pretty. Let’s hear from you, Marjorie.”

“Do you like—Joan Meredyth?” she said.

“Splendid! What a clever little brain!” He shut his eyes. “I married Miss Joan Meredyth on the first of June, or was it the second, in the year nineteen hundred and eighteen? We lived a cat-and-dog existence, and parted with mutual recriminations, since when I have not seen her! Marjorie, do you think she will swallow it?”

“If you tell her; but, Hugh, will you—will you?”

“Little girl, is it going to help you?”

“You know it is!” she whispered.

“Then I shall tell her!”

Marjorie lifted a pair of soft arms and put them about his neck.

“Hugh!” she said, “Hugh, if—if I had never known Tom, I—”

“I know,” he said. “I know. God bless you.” He stooped and kissed her on the cheek, and rose.

It was a mad thing this that he was to do, yet he never considered its madness, its folly. It would help her, and Hurst Dormer would never know its golden-haired mistress, after all.

CHAPTER II
IN WHICH HUGH BREAKS THE NEWS

Lady Linden had just come in from one of her usual and numerous inspections, during which she had found it necessary to reprove one of the under-gardeners. She had described him to himself, his character, his appearance and his methods from her own point of view, and had left the man stupefied and amazed at the extent of her vocabulary and her facility of expression. He was still scratching his head, dazedly, when she came into the drawing-room.

“Hugh, you here? Where is Marjorie?”

“Down by the pond, I think,” he said, with an attempt at airiness.

“In a moment you will make me angry. You know what I wish to know. Did you propose to Marjorie, Hugh?”

“Did I—” He seemed astonished. “Did I what?”

“Propose to Marjorie! Good heavens, man, isn’t that why I sent you there?”

“I certainly did not propose to her. How on earth could I?”

“There is no reason on earth why you should not have proposed to her that I can see.”

“But there is one that I can see.” He paused. “A man can’t invite a young woman to marry him—when he is already married!”

It was out! He scarcely dared to look at her. Lady Linden said nothing; she sat down.

“Hugh!” She had found breath and words at last. “Hugh Alston! Did I hear you aright?”

“I believe you did!”

“You mean to tell me that you—you are a married man?”

He nodded. He realised that he was not a good liar.

“I would like some particulars,” she said coldly. “Hugh Alston, I should be very interested to know where she is!”

“I don’t know!”

“You are mad. When were you married?”

“June nineteen eighteen,” he said glibly.

“Where?”

“At Marlbury!”

“Good gracious! That is where Marjorie used to go to school!”

“Yes, it was when I went down to see her there, and—”

“You met this woman you married? And her name?”

“Joan,” he said—“Joan Meredyth!”

“Joan—Meredyth!” said Lady Linden. She closed her eyes; she leaned back in her chair. “That girl!”

A chill feeling of alarm swept over him. She spoke, her ladyship spoke, as though such a girl existed, as though she knew her personally. And the name was a pure invention! Marjorie had invented it—at least, he believed so.

“You—you don’t know her?”

“Know her—of course I know her. Didn’t Marjorie bring her here from Miss Skinner’s two holidays running? A very beautiful and brilliant girl, the loveliest girl I think I ever saw! Really, Hugh Alston, though I am surprised and pained at your silence and duplicity, I must absolve you. I always regarded you as more or less a fool, but Joan Meredyth is a girl any man might fall in love with!”

Hugh sat gripping the arms of his chair. What had he done, or rather what had Marjorie done? What desperate muddle had that little maid led him into? He had counted on the name being a pure invention, and now—

“Where is she?” demanded Lady Linden.

“I don’t know—we—we parted!”

“Why?”

“We didn’t get on, you see. She’d got a temper, and so—”

“Of course she had a temper. She is a spirited gel, full of life and fire and intelligence. I wouldn’t give twopence for a woman without a temper—certainly she had a temper! Bah, don’t talk to me, sir—you sit there and tell me you were content to let her go, let a beautiful creature like that go merely because she had a temper?”

“She—she went. I didn’t let her go; she just went!”

“Yes,” Lady Linden said thoughtfully, “I suppose she did. It is just what Joan would do! She saw that she was not appreciated; you wrangled, or some folly, and she simply went. She would—so would I have gone! And now, where is she?”

“I tell you I don’t know!”

“You’ve never sought her?”

“Never! I—I—now look here,” he went on, “don’t take it to heart too much. She is quite all right—that is, I expect—”

“You expect!” she said witheringly. “Here you sit; you have a beautiful young wife, the most brilliant girl I ever met, and—and you let her go! Don’t talk to me!”

“No, I won’t; let’s drop it! We will discuss it some other time—it is a matter I prefer not to talk about! Naturally it is rather—painful to me!”

“So I should think!”

“Yes, I much prefer not to talk about it. Let’s discuss Marjorie!”

“Confound Marjorie!”

“Marjorie is the sweetest little soul in the world, and—”

“It’s a pity you didn’t think of that three years ago!”

“And Tom Arundel is a fine fellow; no one can say one word against him!”

“I don’t wish to discuss them! If Marjorie is obsessed with this folly about young Arundel, it will be her misfortune. If she wants to marry him she will probably regret it. I intended her to marry you; but since it can’t be, I don’t feel any particular interest in the matter of Marjorie’s marriage at the moment! Now tell me about Joan at once!”

“Believe me, I—I much prefer not to: it is a sore subject, a matter I never speak about!”

“Oh, go away then—and leave me to myself. Let me think it all out!”

He went gladly enough; he made his way back to the lily-pond.

“Marjorie,” he said tragically, “what have you done?”

“Oh, Hugh!” She was trembling at once.

“No, no, dear, don’t worry; it is nothing. She believes every word, and I feel sure it will be all right for you and Tom, but, oh Marjorie—that name, I thought you had invented it!”

Marjorie flushed. “It was the name of a girl at Miss Skinner’s: she was a great, great friend of mine. She was two years older than I, and just as sweet and beautiful as her name, and when you were casting about for one I—I just thought of it, Hugh. It hasn’t done any harm, has it?”

“I hope not, only, don’t you see, you’ve made me claim an existing young lady as my wife, and if she turned up some time or other—”

“But she won’t! When she left school she went out to Australia to join her uncle there, and she will in all probability never come back to England.”

Hugh drew a sigh of relief. “That’s all right then! It’s all right, little girl; it is all right. I believe things are going to be brighter for you now.”

“Thanks to you, Hugh!”

“You know there is nothing in this world—” He looked down at the lovely face, alive with gratitude and happiness. His dreams were ended, the “might-have-been” would never be, but he knew that there was peace in that little breast at last.

CHAPTER III
JOAN MEREDYTH, TYPIST

Mr. Philip Slotman touched the electric buzzer on his desk and then watched the door. He was an unpleasant—looking man, strangely corpulent as to body, considering his face was cast in lean and narrow mould, the nose large, prominent and hooked, the lips full, fleshy, and of cherry—like redness, the eyes small, mean, close together and deep set. The over—corpulent body was attired lavishly. It was dressed in a fancy waistcoat, a morning coat, elegantly striped trousers of lavender hue and small pointed—toed, patent—leather boots, with bright tan uppers. The rich aroma of an expensive cigar hung about the atmosphere of Mr. Slotman’s office. This and his clothes, and the large diamond ring that twinkled on his finger, proclaimed him a person of opulence.

The door opened and a girl came in; she carried a notebook and her head very high. She trod like a young queen, and in spite of the poor black serge dress she wore, there was much of regal dignity about her. Dark brown hair that waved back from a broad and low forehead, a pair of lustrous eyes filled now with contempt and aversion, eyes shielded by lashes that, when she slept, lay like a silken fringe upon her cheeks. Her nose was redeemed from the purely classical by the merest suggestion of tip-tiltedness, that gave humour, expression and tenderness to the whole face—tenderness and sweetness that with strength was further betrayed by the finely cut, red-lipped mouth and the strong little chin, carried so proudly on the white column of her neck.

Her figure was that of a young goddess, and a goddess she looked as she swept disdainfully into Mr. Philip Slotman’s office, shorthand notebook in her hand.

“I want you to take a letter to Jarvis and Purcell, Miss Meredyth,” he said. “Please sit down. Er—hum—‘Dear Sirs, With regard to your last communication received on the fourteenth instant, I beg—’”

Mr. Slotman moved, apparently negligently, from his leather-covered armchair. He rose, he sauntered around the desk, then suddenly he flung off all pretence at lethargy, and with a quick step put himself between the girl and the door.

“Now, my dear,” he said, “you’ve got to listen to me!”

“I am listening to you.” She turned contemptuous grey eyes on him.

“Hang the letter! I don’t mean that. You’ve got to listen about other things!”

He stretched out his hand to touch her, and she drew back. She rose, and her eyes flashed.

“If you touch me, Mr. Slotman, I shall—” She paused; she looked about her; she picked up a heavy ebony ruler from his desk. “I shall defend myself!”

“Don’t be a fool,” he said, yet took a step backwards, for there was danger in her eyes.

“Look here, you won’t get another job in a hurry, and you know it. Shorthand typists are not wanted these days, the schools are turning out thousands of ’em, all more or less bad; but I—I ain’t talking about that, dear—” He took a step towards her, and then recoiled, seeing her knuckles shine whitely as she gripped the ruler. “Come, be sensible!”

“Are you going to persist in this annoyance of me?” she demanded. “Can’t I make you understand that I am here to do my work and for no other purpose?”

“Supposing,” he said, “supposing—I—I asked you to marry me?”

He had never meant to say this, yet he had said it, for the fascination of her was on him.

“Supposing you did? Do you think I would consent to marry such a man as you?” She held her head very proudly.

“Do you mean that you would refuse?”

“Of course!”

He seemed staggered; he looked about him as one amazed. He had kept this back as the last, the supreme temptation, the very last card in his hand; and he had played it, and behold, it proved to be no trump.

“I would neither marry you nor go out with you, nor do I wish to have anything to say to you, except so far as business is concerned. As that seems impossible, it will be better for me to give you a week’s notice, Mr. Slotman.”

“You’ll be sorry for it,” he said—“infernally sorry for it. It ain’t pleasant to starve, my girl!”

“I had to do it, I had to, or I could not have respected myself any longer,” the girl thought, as she made her way home that evening to the boarding-house, where for two pounds a week she was fed and lodged. But to be workless! It had been the nightmare of her dreams, the haunting fear of her waking hours.

In her room at the back of the house, to which the jingle of the boarding-house piano could yet penetrate, she sat for a time in deep thought. The past had held a few friends, folk who had been kind to her. Pride had held her back; she had never asked help of any of them. She thought of the Australian uncle who had invited her to come out to him when she should leave school, and then had for some reason changed his mind and sent her a banknote for a hundred pounds instead. She had felt glad and relieved at the time, but now she regretted his decision. Yet there had been a few friends; she wrote down the names as they occurred to her.

There was old General Bartholomew, who had known her father. There was Mrs. Ransome. No, she believed now that she had heard that Mrs. Ransome was dead; perhaps the General too, yet she would risk it. There was Lady Linden, Marjorie Linden’s aunt. She knew but little of her, but remembered her as at heart a kindly, though an autocratic dame. She remembered, too, that one of Lady Linden’s hobbies had been to establish Working Guilds and Rural Industries, Village Crafts, and suchlike in her village. In connection with some of these there might be work for her.

She wrote to all that she could think of, a letter of which she made six facsimile copies. It was not a begging appeal, but a dignified little reminder of her existence.

“If you could assist me to obtain any work by which I might live, you would be putting me under a deep debt of gratitude,” she wrote.

Before she slept that night all six letters were in the post. She wished them good luck one by one as she dropped them into the letter-box, the six sprats that had been flung into the sea of fortune. Would one of them catch for her a mackerel? She wondered.

“You’d best take back that notice,” Slotman said to her the next morning. “You won’t find it so precious easy to find a job, my girl; and, after all, what have I done?”

“Annoyed me, insulted me ever since I came here,” she said quietly. “And of course I shall not stay!”

“Insulted you! Is it an insult to ask you to be my wife?”

“It seems so to me,” she said quietly. “If you had meant that—at first—it would have been different; now it is only an insult!”

Three days passed, and there came answers. She had been right, Mrs. Ransome was dead, and there was no one who could do anything for Miss Meredyth.

General Bartholomew was at Harrogate, and her letter had been sent on to him there, wrote a polite secretary. And then there came a letter that warmed the girl’s heart and brought back all her belief and faith in human nature.

“MY DEAREST CHILD,
“Your letter came as a welcome surprise—to think that you are looking for employment! Well, we must see to this—I promise you, you will not have far to look. Come here to me at once, and be sure that everything will be put right and all misunderstandings wiped out. I am keeping your letter a secret from everyone, even from Marjorie, that your coming shall be the more unexpected, and the greater surprise and pleasure. But come without delay, and believe me to be,
“Your very affectionate friend,
“HARRIET LINDEN.”

“P.S.—I suggest that you wire me the day and the train, so that I can meet you. Don’t lose any time, and be sure that all past unhappiness can be ended, and the future faced with the certainty of brighter and happier days.”

Over this letter Joan Meredyth pondered a great deal. It was a warm-hearted and affectionate response to her somewhat stilted little appeal. Yet what did the old lady mean, to what did the veiled reference apply?

“So you mean going, then?” Slotman asked.

“I told you I would go, and I shall. I leave to-morrow.”

“You’ll be glad to come back,” he said. He looked at her, and there was eagerness in his eyes. “Joan, don’t be a fool, stay. I could give you a good time, and—”

But she had turned her back on him.

She had written to Lady Linden thanking her for her kindly letter.

“I shall come to you on Saturday for the week-end, if I may. I find there is a train at a quarter-past three. I shall come by that to Cornbridge Station.
“Believe me,
“Yours gratefully and affectionately,
“JOAN MEREDYTH.”

There was a subdued excitement about Lady Linden during the Thursday and the Friday, and an irritating air of secretiveness.

“Foolish, foolish young people! Both so good and so worthy in their way—the girl beautiful and clever, the man as fine and honest and upright a young fellow as ever trod this earth—donkeys! Perhaps they can’t be driven—very often donkeys can’t; but they can be led!”

To Hugh Alston, at Hurst Dormer, seven miles away, Lady Linden had written.

“MY DEAR HUGH,
“I want you to come here Saturday; it is a matter of vital importance.” (She had a habit of underlining her words to give them emphasis, and she underscored “vital” three times.) “I want you to time your arrival for half-past five, a nice time for tea. Don’t be earlier, and don’t be later. And, above all, don’t fail me, or I will never forgive you.”

“I expect,” Hugh thought, “that she is going to make a public announcement of the engagement between Marjorie and Tom Arundel.”

It was precisely at half-past five that Hugh stepped out of his two-seater car and demanded admittance at the door of the Manor House.

“Oh, Mr. Alston,” the footman said, “my lady is expecting you. She told me to show you straight into the drawing-room, and she and—” The man paused.

“Her ladyship will be with you in a few moments, sir.”

“There is festival in the air here, Perkins, and mystery and secrecy too, eh?”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” the man said. “This way, Mr. Alston.”

And now in the drawing-room Hugh was cooling his heels.

Why this mystery? Where was Marjorie? Why didn’t his aunt come?

Then someone came, the door opened. Into the room stepped a tall girl—a girl with the most beautiful face he thought he had ever seen in his life. She looked at him calmly and casually, and seemed to hesitate; and then behind her appeared Lady Linden, flushed, and evidently agitated.

“There,” she said, “there, my dears—I have brought you together again, and now everything must be made quite all right! Joan, darling, here is your husband! Go to him, forgive him if there is aught to forgive. Ask forgiveness, child, in your turn, and then—then kiss and be friends, as husband and wife should be.”

She beamed on them both, then swiftly retreated, and the door behind Joan Meredyth quickly closed.

CHAPTER IV
FACE TO FACE

It was, Hugh Alston decided, the most beautiful face he had ever seen in his life and the coldest, or so it seemed to him. She was looking at him with cool questioning in her grey eyes, her lips drawn to a hard line.

He saw her as she stood before him, and as he saw her now, so would he carry the memory of the picture she made in his mind for many a day to come—tall, perhaps a little taller than the average woman, tall by comparison with Marjorie Linden, brown of hair and grey of eye, with a disdainfully enquiring look about her.

He was not a man who usually noticed a woman’s clothes, yet the picture impressed on his mind of this girl was a very complete one. She was wearing a dress that instinct told him was of some cheap material. She might have bought it ready-made, she might have made it herself, or some unskilled dressmaker might have turned it out cheaply. Poverty was the note it struck, her boots were small and neat, well-worn. Yes, poverty was the keynote to it all.

It was she, womanlike, who broke the silence.

“Well? I am waiting for some explanation of all the extraordinary things that have been said to me since I have been in this house. You, of course, heard what Lady Linden said as she left us?”

“I heard,” he said. His cheeks turned red. Was ever a man in a worse position? The questioning grey eyes stared at him so coldly that he lost his head. He wanted to apologise, to explain, yet he knew that he could not explain. It was Marjorie who had brought him into this, but he must respect the girl’s secret, on which so much depended for her.

“Please answer me,” Joan Meredyth said. “You heard Lady Linden advise us, you and myself, to make up a quarrel that has never taken place; you heard her—” She paused, a great flush suddenly stole over her face, adding enormously to her attractiveness, but quickly as it came, it went.

What could he say? Vainly he racked his brains. He must say something, or the girl would believe him to be fool as well as knave. Ideas, excuses, lies entered his mind, he put them aside instantly, as being unworthy of him and of her, yet he must tell her—something.

“When—when I used your name, believe me, I had no idea that it was the property of a living woman—”

“When you used my name? I don’t understand you!”

“I claimed that I was married to a Miss Joan Meredyth—”

“I still don’t understand you. You say you claimed that you were married—are you married to anyone?”

“No!”

“Then—then—” Again the glorious flush came into her cheeks, but was gone again, leaving her whiter, colder than before, only her eyes seemed to burn with the fire of anger and contempt.

“I am beginning to understand, for some reason of your own, you used my name, you informed Lady Linden that you—and I were—married?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And it was, of course, a vile lie, an insolent lie!” Her voice quivered. “It has subjected me to humiliation and annoyance. I do not think that a girl has ever been placed in such a false position as I have been through your—cowardly lie.”

He had probably never known actual fear in his life, nor a sense of shame such as he knew now. He had nothing to say, he wanted to explain, yet could not, for Marjorie’s sake. If Lady Linden knew how she had been deceived, she would naturally be furiously angry, and the brunt of her anger would fall on Marjorie, and this must not be.

So, silent, unable to speak a word in self-defence, he stood listening, shame-faced, while the girl spoke. Every word she uttered was cutting and cruel, yet she shewed no temper. He could have borne with that.

“You probably knew of me, and knew that I was alone in the world with no one to champion me. You knew that I was poor, Mr. Alston, and so a fit butt for your cowardly jest. My poverty has brought me into contact with strange people, cads; but the worst, the cruellest, the lowest of all is yourself! I had hoped to have found rest and refuge here for a little time, but you have driven me out. Oh, I did not believe that anything so despicable, so unmanly as you could exist. I do not know why you have done this, perhaps it is your idea of humour.”

“Believe me—” he stammered, yet could say no more; and then a sense of anger, of outraged honesty, came to him. Of course he had been foolish, yet he had been misled. To hear this girl speak, one would think that he had deliberately set to work to annoy and insult her, she of whose existence he had not even known.

“My poverty,” she said, and flung her head back as she spoke, “has made me the butt, the object for the insolence and insult of men like yourself, men who would not dare insult a girl who had friends to protect her.”

“You are ungenerous!” he said hotly.

She seemed to start a little. She looked at him, and her beautiful eyes narrowed. Then, without another word, she turned towards the door.

The scene was over, yet he felt no relief.

“Miss Meredyth!”

She did not hear, or affected not to. She turned the handle of the door, but hesitated for a moment. She looked back at him, contempt in her gaze.

“You are ungenerous,” he said again. He had not meant to say it; he had to say something, and it seemed to him that her anger against him was almost unreasonable.

She made no answer; the door closed on her, and he was left to try and collect his thoughts.

And he had not even apologised, he reflected now. She had not given him an opportunity to.

Pacing the room, Hugh decided what he would do. He would give her time to cool down, for her wrath to evaporate, then he would seek her out, and tell her as much as he could—tell her that the secret was not entirely his own. He would appeal to the generosity that he had told her she did not possess.

“Hugh!”

“Eh?” He started.

“What does this mean? You don’t mean to tell me, Hugh, that all my efforts have gone for nothing?”

Lady Linden had sailed into the room; she was angry, she quivered with rage.

“I take an immense amount of trouble to bring two foolish young people together again, and—and this is the result!”

“What’s the result?”

“She has gone!”

“Oh!”

“Did you know she had gone?”

“No, I knew nothing at all about her.”

“Well, she has. She left the house twenty minutes ago. I’ve sent Chepstow after her in the car; he is to ask her to return.”

“I don’t suppose she will,” Hugh said, remembering the very firm look about Miss Joan Meredyth’s mouth.

“And I planned the reconciliation, I made sure that once you came face to face it would be all right. Hugh, there is more behind all this than meets the eye!”

“That’s it,” he said, “a great deal more! No third person can interfere with any hope of success.”

“And you,” she said, “can let a girl like that, your own wife, go out of your life and make no effort to detain her!”

He nodded.

“For two pins,” said Lady Linden, “I would box your ears, Hugh Alston.”

CHAPTER V
“PERHAPS I SHALL GO BACK”

Perhaps she was over-sensitive and a little unreasonable, but she would not admit it. She had been insulted by a man who had used her name lightly, who had proclaimed that he was her husband, a man who was a complete stranger to her. She had heard of him before from Marjorie Linden, when they were at school together.

Marjorie had spoken of this man in effusive admiration. Joan’s lips curled with scorn. She did not question her own anger. She did not ask herself, was it reasonable? Had not the man some right to defend himself, to explain? If he had wanted to explain, he had had ample opportunity, and he had not taken advantage of it. No, it was a joke—a cruel, cowardly joke at her expense.

Poor and alone in the world, with none to defend her, she had been subjected to the odious attentions of Slotman. She was ready to regard all men as creatures of the same type. She had allowed poverty to narrow her views and warp her mind, and now—

“I beg your pardon, ma’am—”

She was walking along the road to the station. She turned, a man had pulled up in a small car; he touched his hat.

“My lady sent me after you, Mrs. Alston.”

Joan gripped her hands tightly. She looked with blazing eyes at the man—“Mrs. Alston...” Even the servant!

“My lady begs that you will return with me. She would be very much hurt, ma’am, if you left the house like this, her ladyship begs me to say.”

“Who was your message for?”

“For you, ma’am, of course,” said the man.

“Ma’am—Mrs. Alston!” So this joke had been passed on even to the servants, and now she was asked to return.

“Go back and tell Lady Linden that I do not understand her message in the least. Kindly say that the person you overtook on the road was Miss Joan Meredyth, who is taking the next train to London.” She bent her head, turned her back on him, and made her way on to the station.

Half an hour later she was leaning back wearily on the dusty seat of a third-class railway carriage, on her way back to the London she hated. Now she was going back again, because she had nowhere else to go. As she sat there with closed eyes, and the tears on her cheeks, she counted up her resources. They were so small, so slender, yet she had been so careful. And now this useless journey had eaten deeply into the little store.

She had no more than enough to keep her for another week, one more week, and then.... She shivered at the thought of the destitution that was before her.

Dinner at the boarding-house was over when she returned, but its unsavoury and peculiar smell still pervaded the place.

“Why, Miss Meredyth, I thought you were away for the week-end, at least,” Mrs. Wenham said. “I suppose you won’t want any dinner?”

“No,” Joan said. “I shall not want anything. I—I—” She paused. “I was obliged to come back, after all. Perhaps you could let me have a cup of tea in my room, Mrs. Wenham?”

“Well, it’s rather inconvenient with all the washing-up to do, and as you know I make it a rule that boarders have to be in to their meals, or go without—still—”

“Please don’t trouble!” Joan said stiffly.

The woman looked up the stairs after the tall, slight figure.

“Very well, then, I won’t!” she muttered. “The airs some people give themselves! Anyone would think she was a lady, instead of a clerk or something.”

There was a letter addressed to Joan waiting for her in her room. She opened it, and read it.

“DEAR JOAN,
“I suppose you are in a temper with me, and I don’t think you have acted quite fairly. A man can’t do more than ask a girl to be his wife. It is not usually considered an insult; however, I say nothing, except just this: You won’t find it easy to get other work to do, and if you like to come back here on Monday morning, the same as usual, I think you will be doing the sensible thing.
“Yours,
“PHILIP SLOTMAN.”

She had never meant to go back. This morning she had thanked Heaven that she had looked her last on Mr. Philip Slotman, and yet a few hours can effect such changes.

The door was open to her; she could go back, and pick up her life again where she had dropped it before her journey to Cornbridge. After all, Slotman was not the only cad in the world. She would find others, it seemed to her, wherever she went.

At any rate, Slotman had opened the door by which she might re-enter. As he said, work would be very, very hard to get, and it was a bitter thing to have to starve.

“Perhaps,” she said to herself wearily as she lay down on her bed, “perhaps I shall go back. It does not seem to matter so very much after all what I do—and I thought it did.”

CHAPTER VI
“THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING”

For the first time since when, as a small, curly-headed boy, Hugh Alston had looked up at her ladyship with unclouded fearless eyes, that had appealed instantly to her, he and she were bad friends. Hugh had driven back to Hurst Dormer after a brief battle with her ladyship. He had seen Marjorie for a few moments, had soothed her, and told her not to worry, that it was not her fault. He had kissed her in brotherly fashion, and had wondered a little at himself for the slight feeling of impatience against her that came to him. He had never been impatient of her before, but her tears this afternoon unreasonably annoyed him.

“She’s a dear, sweet little soul, and over tender-hearted. Of course, she got me into this mess, and of course, bless her heart, she is worrying over it; but it can’t be helped. As for that other girl!” His lips tightened. It seemed to him that Miss Joan Meredyth had not shone any more than he had. She had taken the whole thing in bad part.

“No woman,” said Hugh to himself, “has any sense of humour!” In which he was wrong, besides which, it had nothing to do with the case.

“I am disappointed in Hugh,” Lady Linden said to her niece. “I don’t often admit myself wrong; in this matter I do. I regarded Hugh Alston as a man utterly and completely open and above board. I find him nothing of the kind. I am deeply disappointed. I am glad to feel that my plans with regard to Hugh Alston and yourself will come to nothing.”

“But, aunt—”

“Hold your tongue! and don’t interrupt me when I am speaking. I have been considering the matter of you and Tom Arundel. Of course, your income is a small one, even if I released it, but—”

“Aunt—we—we wouldn’t mind, I could manage on so little. I should love to manage for him.” The girl clasped her hands, she looked with pleading eyes at the old lady.

“Well, well, we shall see!” her ladyship said indulgently. “I don’t say No, and I don’t say Yes. You are both young yet. By the way, write a letter to Tom and ask him to dine with us to-morrow.”

“Thank you, aunt!” Marjorie flushed to her eyes. “Oh, thank you so much!”

“My good girl, there’s nothing to get excited about. I don’t suppose that he will eat more than about half a crown’s worth.”

Meanwhile, Hugh Alston had retired to his house at Hurst Dormer in a none too happy frame of mind. He had rowed with Lady Linden, had practically told her to mind her own business, which was a thing everyone had been wishing she would do for the past ten years, and no one had ever dared tell her to.

Altogether, he felt miserably unhappy, furious with himself and angry with Miss Joan Meredyth. The one and only person he did not blame was the one, only and entirely, to blame—Marjorie!

This Sunday morning Hugh in his study heard the chug-chug of a small and badly driven light car, and looked out of the window to see Marjorie stepping out of the vehicle.

“Hugh,” she said a few moments later, “I am so—so worried about you. I hate to think that all this trouble is through me. Aunt thinks I have gone to church, but I haven’t. I got out the car, and drove here myself. Hugh, what can I do?”

“There’s one thing you can’t do, child, and that is drive a car! There are heaps of things you can do. One of them is to go back and be happy, and not worry your little head over anything.”

“But I must, it is all because of me; and, Hugh, aunt has asked Tom to dinner to-day.”

“I hope he has a good dinner,” said Hugh.

“Hugh!” She looked at him. “It is no good trying to make light of it. I know you’ve been worried. I know you and—and Joan must have had a scene yesterday, or she wouldn’t have left the house without even seeing me.”

“We had—a few words; I noticed that she did seem a little angry,” he said.

“Poor Joan! She was always so terribly proud; it was her poverty that made her proud and sensitive, I think.”

He nodded. “I think so, too. Poverty inclines her to take an exaggerated view of everything, Marjorie. She took it badly.”

The girl slipped her hand through his arm. “Is—is there anything I can do? It is all my fault, Hugh. Shall I confess to aunt, and then go and see Joan, and—”

“Not on your life, you’ll spoil everything. I am out of favour with the old lady; she will take Tom into favour in my place. All will go well with you and Tom, and after all that is what I worked for. With regard to Miss Joan Meredyth—” He paused.

“Yes, Hugh, what about Joan? Oh, Hugh, now you have seen her, don’t you think she is wonderful?”

“I thought she had a very unpleasing temper,” he said.

“There isn’t a sweeter girl in the world,” Marjorie said.

“I didn’t notice any particular sweetness about her yesterday. She had reason, of course, to feel annoyed, but I think she made the most of it, however—” He paused.

“Yes, Hugh, what shall you do? I know you have something in your mind.”

“You are right; I have. I am going to do the only thing that seems to me possible just now.”

“And that is?”

“Seek out Miss Joan Meredyth, and ask her to become my wife in reality.”

CHAPTER VII
MR. SLOTMAN ARRIVES AT A MISUNDERSTANDING

At half-past nine on the Monday morning Miss Joan Meredyth walked into Mr. Slotman’s office, and Mr. Slotman, seeing her, turned his head aside to hide the smirk of satisfaction.

“Women,” he said to himself, “are all alike. They give themselves confounded airs and graces, but when it comes to the point, they aren’t born fools. She knows jolly well she wouldn’t get another job in a hurry, and here she is.”

But Mr. Slotman made up his mind to go cautiously and carefully. He would not let Miss Meredyth witness his sense of satisfaction.

“I am glad you have returned, Miss Meredyth. I felt sure that you would; there’s no reason whatever we shouldn’t get on perfectly well.”

The girl gave him a stiff little inclination of her head. She had done much personal violence to her sense of pride, yet she had come back because the alternative—worklessness, possible starvation and homelessness—had not appealed to her. And, after all, knowing Mr. Slotman to be what he was, she was forewarned and forearmed.

So Joan came back and took up her old work, and Mr. Slotman practised temporarily a courtesy and a forbearance that were foreign to him. But Mr. Slotman had by no means given up his hopes and desires. Joan appealed to him as no woman ever had. He admired her statuesque beauty. He admired her air of breeding; he admired the very pride that she had attempted to crush him with.

A woman like that could go anywhere, Slotman thought, and pictured it to himself, he following in her trail, and finding an entry into a society that would have otherwise resolutely shut him out. For like most men of his type, self made, egregious, and generally offensive, he had an inborn desire to get into Society and mingle with his betters.

On the Monday morning there had been delivered to Hugh Alston by hand a little note from Marjorie; it was on pink paper, and was scented delicately. If he had not been so very much in love with Marjorie, the pink notepaper might have annoyed him, but it did not. The faint fragrance reminded him of her.

She wrote a neat and exquisite hand; everything that she did was neat and exquisite, and remembering his hopes of not so long ago, he groaned a little dismally to himself as he reverently cut the envelope.

“MY DEAR HUGH,
“I have managed to get the address from aunt. It is ‘Miss Joan Meredyth, care Mrs. Wenham, No. 7, Bemrose Square, London, W.C.’ I have been thinking so much about what you said, and hoping that your plan may succeed. I am sure that you would be very, very happy together....”

(Hugh laughed unmusically.)

“Tom has been here all the afternoon and evening, and aunt has been perfectly charming to him. Hugh, I know that everything is going to be right now, and I owe it all to you. You don’t know how grateful I am, dear. I shall never, never forget your goodness and sweetness to me, dear old Hugh.
“Your loving
“MARJORIE.”

With something approaching reverent care, Hugh put the little pink-scented note into his pocket-book.

To-night he would go to Town, to-morrow he would interview Miss Joan Meredyth. He would offer her no explanations, because the secret was not his own, and nothing must happen now that might upset or tell against Marjorie’s happiness.

He would express regret for what had happened, ask her to try and realise that no indignity and no insult had ever been intended against her, and then he would offer her his hand, but certainly not his heart. If she felt the sting of her poverty so, then perhaps the thought of his eight thousand a year would act as balm to her wounded feelings.

At this time Hugh Alston had a very poor opinion of Miss Meredyth. He did not deny her loveliness. He could not; no man in his senses and gifted with eyesight could. But the placid prettiness of Marjorie appealed to him far more than the cold, disdainful beauty of the young woman he had called ungenerous, and who had in her turn called him a cad.

It was Mrs. Wenham herself who opened the hall door of the house in Bemrose Square to Mr. Hugh Alston at noon on the day following.

Though certainly not dressed in the height of fashion, and by no means an exquisite, Mr. Hugh Alston had that about him that suggested birth and large possessions. Mrs. Wenham beamed on him, cheating herself for a moment into the belief that he had come to add one more to the select circle of persons she alluded to as her “paying guests.”

Her face fell a little when he asked for Miss Meredyth.

“Oh, Miss Meredyth has gone to work,” she said.

“To work?”

“Yes, she’s a clerk or something in the City. The office is that of Philip Slotman and Company, Number sixteen, Gracebury.”

“You think that I could see her there?” asked Hugh, who had little knowledge of City offices and their routine and rules, so far as hirelings are concerned.

“I suppose you could; you are a friend of hers?”

He nodded.

“Well, I don’t know that it is usual for visitors to call on lady clerks. If I might make a suggestion I’d say send in your card to Mr. Slotman, and ask his permission to see Miss Meredyth.”

“Thanks!” Hugh said. “If that’s the right thing to do, I’ll do it.”

Half an hour later Mr. Slotman was examining Hugh’s card.

“Who is he?”

“A tall, well-dressed gentleman, sir; young. Looks as if he’s up from the country, but he’s a gentleman all right,” the clerk said.

“Very good, I’ll see him.”

Slotman rose as Hugh came in. He recognised the man of position and possessions, a man of the class that Slotman always cultivated.

“I wish to ask your permission to interview Miss Meredyth. I understand that, in business hours, the permission of the employer should be asked first.”

“Delighted!” Slotman said. “You are a friend of Miss Meredyth’s?” He looked keenly at Hugh, and the first spark of jealousy was ignited in his system.

“Hardly that, an acquaintance only,” said Hugh.

Slotman felt relieved.

“Miss Meredyth is in the outer general office. You could hardly talk to her there. If you will sit down, I will go out and send her to you, Mr.—Alston.” He glanced at the card.

“Thanks, perhaps you would be so kind as not to mention my name to her,” said Hugh.

“Something up!” Slotman thought. He was an eminently suspicious man; he suspected everyone, and more particularly all those who were in his pay. He suspected his clerks of wasting their time—his time, the time he paid for. He suspected them of filching the petty cash, stealing the postage stamps, cheating him and getting the better of him in some way, and in order to keep a watch on them he had riddled his suite of offices with peepholes, listening holes, and spyholes in every unlikely corner.

A small waiting office divided his private apartment from the General Office, and peepholes cunningly contrived permitted anyone to hear and see all that passed in the General Office, and in his own office too.

He found a young clerk in the waiting office, and sent him to Miss Meredyth.

“Ask Miss Meredyth to go to my office at once, not through this way, and then you remain in the General Office till I send for you,” said Slotman.

This gave him the advantage he wanted. He locked both doors leading into the waiting office, and took up his position at the spyhole that gave him command of his own office.

He could see his visitor plainly. Hugh Alston was pacing the room slowly, his hands behind his back, his face wearing a look of worry. Slotman saw him pause and turn expectantly to the door at the far end of the room.

Slotman could not see this door, but he heard it open, and he knew by the look on the man’s face that Joan had come in.

“Why are you here? How dare you follow me here?”

“I have dared to follow you here, to express my deep regret for what is past,” Hugh said. He looked at the girl, her white face, the hard line made by a mouth that should be sweet and gentle.

It seemed, he thought, that the very sight of him roused all that was cold and bitter in her nature.

“Am I to be tormented and insulted by you all my life?” she asked.

“You are unreasonable! You cannot think that this visit is one that gives me any pleasure,” Hugh said.

“Then why do you come?”

“I asked permission of your employer to see you, and he kindly placed his office at our disposal. I shall not keep you long.”

“I do not intend that you shall, and in future—”

“Will you hear what I have to say? Surely I am not asking too much?”

“Is it necessary?”

“To me, very! I wish to make a few things plain to you. In the past—I had no intention of hurting or of disgracing you—”

Slotman started, and clenched his hands. What did that man mean? He wondered, what could such words as those mean?

“But as I have shamed and angered you, I have come to offer the only reparation in my power—a poor one, I will admit.”

He looked at her, paused for a moment to give her an opportunity of speaking, but she did not speak. She looked at him steadily.

“May I briefly explain my position? I am practically alone in the world. My home is at Hurst Dormer, one of the finest old buildings in Sussex. I have an income of eight thousand a year.”

“What has this to do with me?”

“Only that I am offering it to you, myself and all I possess. I am asking you to do me the honour of marrying me. It seems to me that it is the one and the only atonement that I can make for what has passed.”

“You are—very generous! And—and you think that I would accept?”

“I hoped that you might consider the offer.”

Slotman gripped at the edge of the table against which he leaned.

He could scarcely believe his own ears—Joan, who had held her head so high, whom he had believed to be above the breath of suspicion!

If it were possible for such a man as Mr. Philip Slotman to be shocked, then Slotman was deeply shocked at this moment. He had come to regard Joan as something infinitely superior to himself. Self-indulgent, a libertine, he had pursued her with his attentions, pestered her with his admiration and his offensive compliments. Then it had slowly dawned on the brain of Mr. Philip Slotman that this girl was something better, higher, purer than most women he had known. He had come to realise it little by little. His feelings towards her had undergone a change. The idea of marriage had come to him, a thing he had never considered seriously before. Little by little it grew on him that he would prefer to have Joan Meredyth for a wife rather than in any other capacity. He could have been so proud of her beauty, her birth and her breeding.

And now everything had undergone a change. The bottom had fallen out of his little world of romance. He stood there, gasping and clutching at the edge of the table, while he listened to the man in the adjoining room offering marriage to Joan Meredyth “as the only possible atonement” he could make her!

Naturally, Mr. Philip Slotman could not understand in the least why or wherefore; it was beyond his comprehension.

And now he stood listening eagerly, holding his breath waiting for her answer.

Would she take him, this evidently rich man? If so, then good-bye to all his hopes, all his chances.

Within the room the two faced one another in momentary silence. A flush had come into the girl’s cheeks, making her adorable. For an instant the coldness and hardness and bitterness were all gone, and Hugh Alston had a momentary glimpse of the real woman, the woman who was neither hard, nor cold, but was womanly and sweet and tender.

And then she was her old self again, the bitterness and the anger had come back.

“I thank you for making everything so clear to me, your wealth and position and your desire to make—to make amends for the insult and the shame you have put on me. I need hardly say of course that I refuse!”

“Why?”

“Did you ever expect me to accept? I think you did not!”

She gave him a slight inclination of the head and, turning, went out of the room, and Hugh Alston stood staring at the door that had closed on her.

CHAPTER VIII
THE DREAM GIRL

“She is utterly without generosity; she is cold and hard and bitter, and she has made a mountain out of a molehill, built up a great grievance on what was, after all, only a foolish and ill-considered statement. She is pleased to feel herself deeply insulted, and she hates me for what I did in perfect innocence. I have done all that I can do. I have offered to make amends in the only way I can think of, and she refuses to accept either that or my apologies. Very well, then... But what a lovely face it is, and for just that moment, when the hardness and bitterness were gone...” He paused; his own face softened. One could not be angry for long with a vision like that, which was passing before his mind, conjured up by memory.

Just for that instant, when the flush had come into her cheeks, she had looked all those things that she was not—sweet, womanly, tender, and gentle, a woman with an immense capacity for love.

“Bah!” said Hugh. “I’m an idiot. I shall go to a theatre to-night, forget all about her, and go home to-morrow—home.” He sighed a little drearily. For months past he had pictured pretty Marjorie Linden as queen of that home, and now he knew that it would never be. His house would remain lonely and empty, as must his life be.

He sighed sentimentally, and took out Marjorie’s little pink note from his pocket-book. He noticed for the first time that it was somewhat over-scented. He realised that he did not like the smell of scent, especially on notepaper, and pink was not his favourite colour. In fact, he disliked pink. Marjorie was happy, Lady Linden was beaming on Tom Arundel, the cloud had lifted from Marjorie’s life. Hugh tore up the pink, smelly little missive, and dropped the fragments into the grate of the hotel bedroom.

“That’s that!” he said. “And it’s ended and done with!”

He was amazed to find himself not broken-hearted and utterly cast down. He lighted his pipe and puffed hard, to destroy the lingering smell of the pink notepaper. Then he laughed gently.

“By every right I should now be on my way to the bar to drown dull care in drink. She’s a dear little soul, the sweetest and dearest and best in the world. I hope Tom Arundel will appreciate her and make the little thing happy. I would have done my best, but somehow I feel that Tom is the better man, so far as Marjorie is concerned.”

Grey eyes, not disdainful and cold and scornful, but soft, and filled with kindliness and gentleness, banished all memory of Marjorie’s pretty pathetic blue eyes. Why, Hugh thought, had that girl looked at him like that for just one moment? Why had she appeared for that instant so different? It was as if a cold and bitter mask had fallen from her face, and he had had a peep at the true—the real woman, the woman all love and tenderness and gentleness, behind it.

“Anyhow, it doesn’t matter,” said Hugh. “I’ve done what I believed to be the right thing. She turned me down; the affair is now closed, and we’ll think of something else.”

But it was not easy. At his dinner, which he took in solitary state, he had a companion, a girl with grey eyes and flushed cheeks who sat opposite to him at the table. She said nothing, but she looked at him, and the beauty of her intoxicated him, and the smile of her found an answer on his own lips. She ate nothing, nor did the waiter see her; so far as the waiter was concerned, there was an empty chair, but Hugh Alston saw her.

“Why,” he asked, “why can you look like that, and yet be so different? That look in your eyes makes you the most beautiful and wonderful thing in this world, and yet...”

He laughed softly to himself. He was uttering his thoughts aloud, and the unromantic waiter stared at him.

“Beg your pardon, sir?” he asked.

“That’s all right!” Hugh said. “What won the three-thirty?”

“I don’t think there was any racing to-day, sir,” the man said.

He went away, not completely satisfied as to this visitor’s sanity, and Hugh drifted back into dreams and memories.

“You are very wonderful,” he said to himself, “yet you made me very angry; you hurt me and made me furious. I called you ungenerous, and I meant it, and so you were. Yet when you look at me with your eyes like that and the colour in your cheeks, I can’t find one word to say against you.”

He went to the theatre that night. It was a successful play. All London was talking of it, but Hugh Alston never remembered what it was about. He was thinking of a girl with cold disdainful looks that changed suddenly to softness and tenderness. She sat beside him as she had sat opposite to him at dinner. On the stage the actors talked meaningless stuff; nothing was real, save this girl beside him.

“What’s the matter with you, my good fellow, is,” Hugh said to himself, as he walked back to the hotel that night, “you’re a fickle man; you don’t know your own mind. A week ago you were dreaming of Marjorie; you considered blue eyes the most beautiful thing in the world. You would not have listened to the claims of eyes of any other colour, and now—Bless her dear little heart, she’ll be happy as the day is long with Tom Arundel, with his nice fair hair parted down the middle, and her pretty scented notepaper. Of course she’ll be happy. She would have been miserable at Hurst Dormer, and so should I have been; seeing her miserable, I should have been miserable myself. But I shall go back to Hurst Dormer to-morrow and start on that renovation work. It will give me something to occupy my time and attention.”

That night, much to his surprise, Hugh found he could not sleep.

“It’s the strange bed,” he said. “It’s the noise of the London streets.” Sleeplessness had never troubled him before, but to-night he rolled and tossed from side to side, and then at last he sat bolt upright in the bed.

“Good Lord!” he said. “Good Lord, it can’t be!” He stared into the thick darkness and saw an oval face, crowned by waving brown hair, that glinted gold in the highlights. He saw a sweet, womanly, tender, smiling mouth and a pair of grey eyes that seemed to burn into his own.

“It can’t be!” he said again. And yet it was!

CHAPTER IX
THE PEACEMAKER

“Bless my soul!” said General Bartholomew. He had turned to the last page and looked at the signature. “Alicia Linden! I haven’t heard a word of her for five and twenty years. A confoundedly handsome girl she was too. Hudson, where’s my glasses?”

“Here, General,” said the young secretary.

The General put them on.

“My dear George,” he read.

It was a long letter, four pages closely written in Lady Linden’s strong, almost masculine hand.

“...I remember that when she visited me years ago, she told that me you were an old friend of her father’s. This being so, I think you should combine with me in trying to bring these two wrong-headed young people together. I have quarrelled with Hugh Alston, so I can do nothing at the moment; but you, being on the spot so to speak, in London, and Hugh I understand also being in London...”

“What the dickens is the woman drivelling about?” the General demanded. “Hudson!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Read this letter carefully, digest it, and then briefly explain to me what the dickens it is all about.”

The secretary took the letter and read it carefully.

“This letter is from Lady Linden, of Cornbridge Manor House, Cornbridge. She is deeply interested in a young lady, Miss Joan Meredyth. At least—” Hudson paused.

“Joan, pretty little Joan Meredyth—old Tom Meredyth’s girl. Yes, go on!”

“Three years ago,” Hudson went on, “Miss Meredyth was married in secret to a Mr. Hugh Alston—”

“Hugh Alston, of course—bless me, I know of Hugh Alston! Isn’t he the son of old George Alston, of Hurst Dormer?”

“Yes, that would be the man, sir. Her ladyship speaks of Mr. Alston’s house, Hurst Dormer.”

“That’s the man then, that’s the man!” said the General, delighted by his own shrewdness. “So little Joan married him. Well, what about it?”

“They parted, sir, almost at once, having quarrelled bitterly. Lady Linden does not say what about, and they have never been together since. A little while ago she received a letter from Miss Meredyth, as she still continues to call herself, asking her assistance in finding work for her to do. And that reminds me, General, that a similar letter was addressed to you by Miss Meredyth, which I sent on to you at Harrogate.”

“Must have got there after I left. I never had it—go on!”

“Lady Linden urges you to do something for the young lady, and do all in your power to bring her and Mr. Alston together. She says if you could effect a surprise meeting between them, good may come of it. She is under the impression that they will not meet intentionally. Miss Meredyth’s address is, 7 Bemrose Square, and Mr. Alston is staying at The Northborough Hotel, St. James. Of course, there is a good deal besides in the letter, General—”

“Of course!” the General said. “There always is. Well, Hudson, we must do something. I knew the girl’s father, and the boy’s too. Tom Meredyth was a fine fellow, reckless and a spendthrift, by George! but as straight a man and as true a gentleman as ever walked. And old George Alston was one of my best friends, Hudson. We must do something for these two young idiots.”

“Very good, sir!” said Hudson. “How shall we proceed?”

The General did not answer; he sat deep in thought.

“Hudson, I am getting to be a forgetful old fool,” he said. “I’m getting old, that’s what it is. Before I went to Harrogate I was with Rankin, my solicitor. He was talking to me about the Meredyths. I forget exactly what it was, but there’s some money coming to the girl from Bob Meredyth, who went out to Australia. No, I forget, but some money I know, and now the girl apparently wants it, if she is asking for influence to get work. Go and ring Rankin up on the telephone. Don’t tell him we know where Joan Meredyth is, but give him my compliments, and ask him to repeat what he told me the other day.”

Hudson went out. He was gone ten minutes, while the General dozed in a chair. He was thinking of the past, of those good old days when he and Tom Meredyth, the girl’s father, and George Alston, the lad’s father, were all young fellows together. Ah, good old days, fine old days! When the young blood coursed strong and hot in the veins, when there was no need of Harrogate waters, when the limbs were supple and strong, and the eyes bright and clear. “And they are gone,” the old man muttered—“both of them, and a lot of other good fellows besides; and I am an old, old man, begad, an old fellow sitting here waiting for my call to come and—” He paused, and looked up.

“Well, Hudson?”

“I have been speaking to Mr. Rankin, sir. He wished me to tell you—” Hudson paused; his face was a little flushed, as with some inward excitement.

“Go on!”

“Before his death, which occurred six months ago, Mr. Robert Meredyth, who had made a great deal of money in Australia, re-purchased the old Meredyth family estate at Starden in Kent, Starden Hall, meaning to return to England, and take up his residence there. Unfortunately, he died on board ship. His wife was dead, his only son was killed in the war, and he had left the whole of his fortune, about three hundred thousand pounds, and the Starden Hall Estate, to his niece, Miss Joan Meredyth.”

“By George! so the girl’s an heiress!”

“And a very considerable one!”

“We won’t say a word about it—not a word, Hudson. We’ll get the girl here, and patch up this quarrel between her and her young husband. When that’s done we’ll spring the news on ’em, eh?”

“I think it would be a good idea, General,” Hudson said.

CHAPTER X
“IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING”

Slotman leaned across his table. His eyes were glaring his face was flushed a dusky red.

Against the wall, her face white as death, but her eyes unafraid, the girl stood staring at him, in silent amazement.

“And you—you’ve given yourself airs, set yourself up to be all that you are not! You’ve held me at arm’s length, and all the time—all the time you’re nothing—nothing!” the man shouted. “I know all about you! I know that a man offered you marriage to atone for the past—to atone—you hear me? I tell you I know about you, and yet you dare—dare to give yourself airs—dare to pretend to be a monument of innocence—you!”

“You are mad!” the girl said quietly.

“Yes, that’s it—mad—mad for you! Mad with love for you!” Slotman laughed sharply. “I’m a fool—a blind, mad fool; but you’ve got me as no other woman ever did. I tell you I know about you and the past, but it shall make no difference. I repeat my offer now—I’ll marry you, in spite of everything!”

It seemed to Joan that a kind of madness came to her, born of her fear and her horror of this man.

She forced her way past him, and gained the door, how she scarcely remembered. She could only recall a great and burning sense of rage and shame. She remembered seeing, as in some distant vision, a man with scared eyes and sagging jaw—a man who, an utter coward by nature, had given way at her approach, whose passion had melted into fear—fear followed later by senseless rage against himself and against her.

So she had made her retreat from the office of Mr. Philip Slotman, and had shaken the dust of the place off her feet.

It was all very well to bear up and show a brave and determined face to the enemy, to give no sign of weakness when the danger threatened. But now, alone in her own room in the lodging-house, she broke down, as any sensitive, highly strung woman might.

Joan looked at her face in the glass. She looked at it critically. Was it the face, she asked herself, of a girl who invited insult? For insult on insult had been heaped on her. She had been made the butt of one man’s senseless joke or lie, whatever it might be; the butt of another man’s infamous passion.

“Oh!” she said, “Oh!” She clasped her cheeks between her hands, and stared at her reflection with wide grey eyes. “I hate myself! I hate this face of mine that invites such—such—” She shuddered, and moaned softly to herself.

Beauty, why should women want it, unless they are rich and well placed, carefully protected? Beauty to a poor girl is added danger. She would be a thousand, a million times better and happier without it.

She grew calmer presently. She must think. To-morrow the money for her board here would be due, and she had not enough to pay. She would not ask Slotman for the wages for this week, never would she ask anything of that man, never see him again.

Then what lay before her? She sat down and put her elbows on the dressing table with its dingy cheap lace cover, and in doing so her eyes fell on a letter, a letter that had been placed here for her.

It was from General Bartholomew, an answer to the appeal she had written him at the same time that she had written to Lady Linden. It came now, kindly, friendly and even affectionate, at the very eleventh hour.

“I was away, my dear child, when your letter came. It was forwarded to Harrogate to me. Now I am back in London again. Your father was my very dear friend; his daughter has a strong claim on me, so pack your things, my dear, and come to me at once. I am an old fellow, old enough to have been your father’s father, and the little note that I enclose must be accepted, as it is offered, in the same spirit of affection. It will perhaps settle your immediate necessities. To-morrow morning I shall send for you, so have all your things ready, and believe me.
“Yours affectionately,
“GEORGE BARTHOLOMEW.”

She cried over the letter, the proud head drooped over it; bright tears streamed from the grey eyes.

Could Hugh Alston have seen her now, her face softened by the gladness and the gratitude that had come to her, he would have seen in her the woman of his dreams.

The banknote would clear everything. She did not scruple to accept it in the spirit of affection in which it was offered. It would have been churlish and false pride to refuse.

He had said that he would send for her when the morning came; he had taken it for granted that she would go, and there was no need to answer the letter. And when the morning came she was ready and waiting, her things packed, her last bill to Mrs. Wenham paid.

The maid came tapping on the door.

“Someone waiting for you, miss, in the drawing-room.”

Joan went down. It would be the old fellow, the warm-hearted old man himself come to fetch her! She entered the big ugly room, with its dingy wall-paper and threadbare carpet, its oleographs in tarnished frames, its ancient centre ottoman, its elderly piano and unsafe, uncertain chairs. How she hated this room, where of evenings the ‘paying guests’ distorted themselves.

But she came into it now eagerly, with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and hand held out, only to draw back with sudden chill.

It was Mr. Philip Slotman who rose from the ottoman.

“Joan, I’ve come to tell you I am sorry, sorry and ashamed,” he said. “I was mad. I want you to forgive me.”

“There need be no talk of forgiveness,” she said. “You are the type of man one can perhaps forget—never forgive!”

He winced a little, and his face changed to a dusky red.

“I said more than I meant to say. But what I said, after all, was right enough. I know more about you than I think you guess. I know about that fellow, that—what’s his name?—Alston—who came. I know why he came.”

“You are a friend of his, perhaps? I am not surprised.”

“I never saw him before in my life, but I know all about him—and you—all the same. He was willing to act fairly to you after all, and—”

“What is this to do with you?” she asked.

“A lot!” he said thickly. “A lot! Look here!” He took another step towards her. “Last night I behaved like a mad fool. I—I said more than I meant to say. I—I saw you, and I thought of that fellow—and—and you, and it drove me mad!”

“Why?” She was looking at him with calm eyes of contempt, the same look that she had given to Hugh Alston at their last meeting.

“Why—why?” he said. “Why?” He clenched his hands. “You know why, you know I love you! I want you! I’ll marry you! I’ll dig a hole and bury the past in it—curse the past! I’ll say nothing more, Joan. I swear before Heaven I’ll never try and dig up the past again. I forgive everything!”

“You—you forgive everything?” Her eyes blazed. “What have you to forgive? What right have you to tell me that you forgive—me?”

“I can’t let you go, I can’t! Joan, I tell you I’ll never throw the past in your face. I’ll forget Alston and—”

The door behind the girl opened, the maid appeared.

“Miss,” she said, “there’s a car waiting down below. The man says he is from General Bartholomew, and he has come for you.”

“Thank you. I am coming now. My luggage is ready, Annie. Can you get someone to carry it down?”

Joan moved to the door. She looked back at Slotman. “I hope,” she said quietly, “that we shall never meet again, Mr. Slotman, and I wish you good morning!” And then she was gone.

Slotman walked to the window. He looked down and saw a car, by no means a cheap car, and he knew the value of things, none better. He waited, unauthorised visitor as he now was, and saw the girl come out, saw the liveried chauffeur touch his cap to her and hold the door for her, saw her enter. Presently he saw luggage brought down and placed on the roof of the limousine, and then the car drove away.

Slotman rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I’ll be hanged! And who the dickens is General Bartholomew? And why should she go to him, luggage and all? Is it anything to do with that fellow Alston? Has she accepted his offer after all?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

The General put his two hands on Joan’s shoulders. He looked at her, and then he kissed her.

“You are very welcome, my dear,” he said. “I blame myself, I do indeed. I ought to have found out where you were long ago. Your father was one of my dearest friends, God rest his soul. I knew him well, and his dear little wife too—your mother, my child, one of the loveliest women I ever saw. And you are like her, as like her as a daughter can be like her mother. Bless my heart, it takes me back when I see you, takes me back to the day when Tom married her, the loveliest girl—but I am forgetting, I am forgetting. You’ve brought your things?” he asked. “Hudson, where’s Hudson? Ring for Mrs. Weston, that’s my housekeeper, child. She’ll look after you. And now you are here, you will stay here with us for a long time, a very long time. It can’t be too long, my dear. I am a lonely old man, but we’ll do our best to make you happy.”

“I think,” Joan said softly, “that you have done that already! Your welcome and your kindness, have made me happier than I have been for a very, very long time.”

CHAPTER XI
THE GENERAL CALLS ON HUGH

Hugh Alston lingered in London, why, he would not admit, even to himself. In reality he had lingered on in the hope of seeing Joan Meredyth again. How he should see her, where and when, he had not the faintest idea; but he wanted to see her even more than he wanted to see Hurst Dormer.

He had thought of going to the city and calling on Mr. Philip Slotman again. But he had not liked Mr. Slotman.

“If I see her, she will only suggest that I am annoying and insulting her,” Hugh thought. “I suppose I thought that I was doing a very fine and very clever thing in asking her to be my wife!” His face burned at the thought. He had meant it well; but, looking back, it struck him that he had acted like a conceited fool. He had thought to make all right, by bestowing all his possessions and his person on her, and she had put him in his place, had declined even without thanks.

“And serve me jolly well right!” Hugh said. “Who?” he added aloud.

“Gentleman, sir—General Bartholomew,” said the hotel page.

“And who on earth is he?”

“Short, stout gentleman, sir, white whiskers.”

“That’s quite satisfactory then; I’ll see him,” said Hugh.

He found the General in the lounge.

“You’re Hugh Alston,” said the General. “I’d know you anywhere. You are your father over again. I hope that you are as good a man.”

“I wish I could think so,” Hugh said, “but I can’t!” He shook hands with the General. He had a dim recollection of the old fellow, as one of his father’s friends, who in the old days, when he was a child, had come down to Hurst Dormer; but the recollection was dim.

“How did you find me out here, sir?”

“Ah, ha! That’s it—just a piece of luck! The name struck me—Alston—I thought of George Alston. I said to myself, ‘Can this be his boy?’ And you are, eh? George Alston, of Hurst Dormer.”

The General rambled on, but he forgot to explain to Hugh how it was that he had found him out at the Northborough Hotel, and presently Hugh forgot to enquire, which was what the General wanted.

“You’ll dine with me to-night, eh? I won’t take no—understand. I want to talk over old times!”

“I thought of returning to Sussex to-night,” said Hugh.

“Not to be thought of! I can’t let you go! I shall expect you at seven.”

The old fellow seemed to be so genuinely anxious, so kindly, so friendly, that Hugh had not the heart to refuse him.

“Very well, sir; it is good of you. I’ll come, I’ll put off going till to-morrow. I remember you well now, you used to come for the shooting when I was a nipper.”

Not till after the old fellow had gone did Hugh wonder how he had unearthed him here in the Northborough Hotel. He had meant to ask him—he had asked him actually, and the General had not explained. But it did not matter, after all. Some coincidence, some easily understandable explanation, of course, would account for it.

“And to-morrow I shall go back,” Hugh thought, as he drove to the General’s house in a taxicab. “I shall go back to Hurst Dormer, I shall get busy doing something and forget everything that I don’t want to remember.”

But his thoughts were with the girl he had seen last in Mr. Slotman’s office. And he saw her in memory as he had seen her for one brief instant of time—softened and sweetened by some thought, some influence that had come to her for a moment. What influence, what thought, he could not tell; yet, as she had been then, so he saw her always and remembered her.

A respectful manservant took Hugh’s coat and hat; he led the way, and flung a door wide.

“General Bartholomew will be with you in a few moments, sir,” he said; and Hugh found himself in a large, old-fashioned London drawing-room.

“To-morrow,” Hugh was thinking, “Hurst Dormer—work, something to occupy my thoughts till I can forget. It is going to take a lot of forgetting, I suppose I shall feel more or less a cad all my life, though Heaven knows—”

He swung round suddenly. The door had opened; he heard the swish of skirts, and knew it could not be General Bartholomew.

But who it would be he could not have guessed to save his life. They met again for the third time in their lives. At sight of him the girl had started and flushed, had instinctively drawn back. Now she stood still, regarding him with a steadfast stare, the colour slowly fading from her cheeks.

And Hugh stood silent, dumbfounded, astonishment clearly shown on his face.

CHAPTER XII
“I TAKE NOT ONE WORD BACK”

“I will do you the justice, Mr. Alston, to believe that you did not anticipate this meeting?”

“You will only be doing me justice if you do not believe it,” Hugh said.

The girl bent her proud head. “I did not know that you were a friend of General Bartholomew’s?”

“Nor I till to-day, Miss Meredyth.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hugh explained that he had not seen the General since he was a child, till the General had unearthed him at the Northborough Hotel that afternoon.

Joan frowned. Why had the General done that? Why had he, not three minutes ago, patted her on the shoulder, smiled on her, and told her to run down and wait for him in the drawing-room? Suddenly her face burned with a glowing colour. It seemed as if all the world were in league together against her. But this time this man was surely innocent. She had seen the look of astonishment on his face, and knew it for no acting.

“I came here yesterday,” she said quietly, “in response to a warm invitation from the General, who was my father’s friend.”

“My father’s too!”

“I—I wanted a home, a friend, and I accepted his invitation eagerly, but since you have come—”

“My presence makes this house impossible for you, of course,” Hugh said, and his voice was bitter. “Listen to me, I may never have an opportunity of speaking to you again, Joan.” He used her Christian name, scarcely realising that he did so.

“You feel bitterly towards me, and with reason. You have made up your mind that I have deliberately annoyed and insulted you. If you ask me to explain what I did and why I did it, I cannot do so. I have a reason. One day, if I am permitted, I shall be glad to tell you everything. I came here to London like a fool, a senseless, egotistical fool, thinking I should be doing a fine thing, and could put everything right by asking you to become my wife in reality. I can see now what sort of a figure I made of myself, and how I must have appeared to you when I was bragging of my possessions. I suppose I lack a sense of humour, Joan, or there’s something wrong with me somewhere. Believe me, senseless and crude as it all was, my intentions were good. I only succeeded in sinking a little lower, if possible, in your estimation, and now I wish to ask your pardon for it.”

“I am glad,” she said quietly, “that you understand now—”

“I do, and I have felt shame for it. I shall feel better now that I have asked you to forgive. Joan,” he went on passionately, “listen! A fool is always hard to separate from his folly. But listen! That day when I saw you in the City, when I made my egregious proposal to you—just for a moment you were touched, something appealed to you. I do not know what it was—my folly, my immense conceit—for which perhaps you pitied me. But it was something, for that one moment I saw you change. The hard look went from your face, a colour came into your cheeks, your eyes grew soft and tender—just for one moment—”

“What does all this—”

“Listen, listen! Let me speak! It may be my last chance. I tell you I saw you as I know you must be—the real woman, not the hard, the condemning judge that you have been to me. And as I saw you for that one moment, I have remembered you and pictured you in my thoughts; and seeing you in memory I have grown to love that woman I saw, to love her with all my heart and soul.”

Love! It dawned on her, this man, who had made a sport of her name, was offering her love now! Love! she sickened at the very thought of it—the word had been profaned by Philip Slotman’s lips.

“I believe,” she thought, “I believe that there is no such thing as love—as holy love, as true, good, sweet love! It is all selfish passion and ugliness!”

“Just now, Mr. Alston”—her voice was cold and scornful, and it chilled him, as one is chilled by a drenching with cold water—“just now you said perhaps you lacked humour. I do not think it is that, I think you have a sense of humour somewhat perverted. Of course, you are only carrying this—this joke one step further—”

“Joan!”

“And as you drove me from Cornbridge Manor, I suppose you will now drive me from this house. Am I to find peace and refuge nowhere, nowhere?”

“If—if you could be generous!” he cried.

She flushed with anger. “You have called me ungenerous before! Am I always to be called ungenerous by you?”

“Forgive me!” His eyes were filled with pleading. He did not know himself, did not recognise the old, happy-go-lucky Hugh Alston, who had accepted many a hard knock from Fate with a smile and a jest.

“And so I am to be driven from this home, this refuge—by you?” she said bitterly. “Oh, have you no sense of manhood in you?”

“I think I have. You shall not be driven away. I, of course, am the one to go. Through me you left Cornbridge, you shall not have to leave this house. I promise you, swear to you, that I shall not darken these doors again. Is that enough? Does that content you?”

“Then I shall have at least something at last to thank you for,” she said coldly. And yet, though she spoke coldly, she looked at him and saw something in his face that made her lip tremble. Yet in no other way did she betray her feelings, and he, like the man he was, was of course blind.

It was strange how long they had been left alone, uninterrupted. The strangeness of it did not occur to him, yet it did to her. She turned to the door.

“Joan, wait,” he pleaded—“wait! One last word! One day I shall hope to explain to you, then perhaps you will find it in your heart to forgive. For the blunder that I made in Slotman’s office, for the further insult, if you look on it as such, I ask you to forgive me now. It was the act of a senseless fool, a mad fool, who had done wrong and tried to do right, and through his folly made matters worse. To-night perhaps I have sinned more than ever before in telling you that I love you. But if that is a sin and past all forgiveness, I glory in it. I take not one word of it back. I shall trouble you no more, and so”—he paused—“so I say good-bye.”

“Good-bye!” He held out his hand to her, but she looked him full in the face.

“Good-bye!” she said, and then turned quickly, and in a moment the door was closed between them.

He did not see her hurry away, her hands pressed against her breast. He did not see the face, all womanly and sweet, and soft and tender now. He had only the memory of her brief farewell, the memory of her cold, steady eyes—nothing else beside.

CHAPTER XIII
THE GENERAL CONFESSES

“My dear, my dear, life is short. I am an old man, and yet looking back it seems but yesterday since I was a boy beginning life. Climbing the hill, my dear, climbing the hill; and when the top was gained, when I stood there in my young manhood, I thought that the world belonged to me. And then the descent, so easy and so swift. The years seem long when one is climbing, but they are as weeks when the top is passed and the descent into the valley begins.” He paused. He passed his hand across his forehead. “I meant to speak of something else, of you, child, of your life, of love and happiness, and of those things that should be dear to all us humans.”

“I know nothing of love, and of happiness but very, very little,” she said.

He took her hand and held it. “You shall know of both!” he promised. “There is strife, there is ill-feeling between you and that lad, your husband.”

She wrenched her hand free, her face flushed gloriously.

“You!” she cried. “You too !”

“Yes, I too! I sought him out yesterday, and asked him to this house on purpose that you and he should meet, praying that the meeting might bring peace to you both. I knew the lad’s father as I knew yours. Alicia Linden wrote to me and told me all about this unhappy marriage of yours. She told me that she loved you both, that you were both good, that life might be made very happy for you two, but for this misunderstanding—”

“Don’t!—don’t. Oh, General Bartholomew, how can I make you understand? It is untrue—I am not his wife! I have never been his wife. It was a lie! some foolish joke of his that he will not or cannot explain!”

He looked at her, blinking like one who suddenly finds himself in strong light after the twilight or darkness.

“Not—not married?”

“I never saw that man in my life before I met him at Lady Linden’s house, not two weeks ago. All that he has said about our marriage, his and mine, are foolish lies, something beyond my understanding!”

The General waved his hands helplessly.

“It is all extraordinary! Where can that foolish old woman have got hold of this story? What’s come to her? She used to be a very clear-minded—”

“It is not she, it is the man—the liar!” Joan cried bitterly. “I tell you I don’t understand the reason for it. I cannot understand, I don’t believe there is any reason. I believe that it is his idea of humour—I can’t even think that he wanted to annoy and shame and anger me as he has, because we were utter strangers.”

She stood at the window, looking out into the dull, respectable square. She saw a man ascend the steps and ring on the hall door-bell, but he did not interest her.

“I shall find work to do,” she said, “soon. I am grateful to you for—for taking me in, for giving me asylum here for a time—very, very grateful. I know that you meant well when you brought that man and me face to face last night—that man—” She paused.

She could see him now, that man with eager and earnest pleading in his eyes, with hands outstretched to her, as he told her of his love. And seeing him in memory, there came into her cheeks that flush that he had seen and remembered, and into her eyes the dewy, softness that banished all haughtiness, and made her for the moment the tender woman that she was.

“So,” she said, “so I shall find work to do, and I will go out again and earn my living and—”

“There will be no need!” the General said.

“I cannot stop here and live on your charity!”

“There will be no need,” he repeated.

“Mr. Rankin,” announced a servant. The door had opened, and the man she had been watching came in.

He shook hands with the General.

“Joan, this is Mr. Rankin. Rankin, this is Miss Joan Meredyth.”

She turned to him and bowed slightly.

“You will allow me to congratulate you, Miss Meredyth. Believe me, it is a great happiness to me that at last, after much diligent seeking, I have, thanks to the General here, found you. General—you have told her?” He broke off, for there was a puzzled look in the girl’s face.

“Told her nothing—nothing,” said the General; “that’s your business.”

Strangely, their words aroused little or no curiosity in her mind. What was it she had been told or not told, she did not know. Somehow she did not care. She saw a pair of pleading eyes, she saw the colour rise in a man’s cheeks. She saw an outstretched hand, held pleadingly to her, and she had repulsed that hand in disdain.

But Mr. Rankin was talking.

“Your uncle, on his way back to this country, died on board ship. His only son was killed, poor fellow, in the War. There was no one else, the will leaves everything to you unconditionally. Through myself he had purchased the old place, Starden Hall, only a few months before his death, and it was his intention to live there. So the house and the money become yours, Miss Meredyth. There is Starden, and the income of roughly fifteen thousand a year, all unconditionally yours.”

And listening, dazed for the moment, there came into her mind an unworthy thought—a thought that brought a sense of shame to her, yet the thought had come.

Did that man—last night—know of this, of this fortune when he had told her that he loved her?

A few days had passed, days that had found Joan fully occupied with the many matters connected with her inheritance.

To-day she and the old General were talking in the drawing-room of the General’s house.

“Of course, if you prefer it and wish it, my dear.”

“I do!” said Joan. “I see no reason why Lady Linden should be in any way interested in me and my affairs. I prefer that you should tell her nothing at all. I was very fond of Marjorie, she is a dear little thing, and Lady Linden was very kind to me once, that is why I wrote to her. But now I would sooner forget it all. I shall go down to Starden and live.”

“Alone?”

“I have no one, so I must be alone! Mr. Rankin says that all the business formalities will be completed this week, and there will be nothing to keep me. Mrs. Norton, the housekeeper at Starden, says the house is all ready, so I thought of going down at the beginning of next week!”

“Alone?” the old man repeated.

“Since I am alone, I must go alone.”

“My dear, I am an old fellow, and likely to be in the way, but if—my society—would—”

Joan smiled, and the smile transfigured her. It brought tenderness and sweetness to the young face that adversity had somewhat hardened.

“No, I won’t be selfish, dear,” she said gently. “You would hate it; you are at home here, and you have all you want. There you would be unhappy and uncomfortable; but I do thank you very, very gratefully.”

“But you can’t go alone, child. Why bless me, there’s my niece Helen Everard. She’s a widow, her husband’s people live close to Starden at Buddesby. If only for a time, let me arrange with her to go with you.”

“If you like,” she said.

“I’ll write to her at once,” the General said, and Joan nodded, little dreaming what the sending of that letter might mean to her.

CHAPTER XIV
THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL

For a while the unrighteous may bask in the sunshine of prosperity, but there comes a time of reckoning, more especially in the City of London, and things were at this moment shaping ill for Mr. Philip Slotman.

He stood at the door of the general office and surveyed his clerks. There were five of them; at the end of the week there would be but two, he decided. Next week probably there would be only one.

“Hello, Slotman!” It was a business acquaintance, who had dropped in to discuss the financial position.

“Things all right?

“Nothing to complain about,” said Slotman, who did not believe in crying stinking fish. Credit meant everything to him, and it was for that reason he wore very nice clothes and more jewellery than good taste warranted.

In Mr. Slotman’s inner office he and his friend, Mr. James Bloomberg, lighted expensive cigars.

“So the pretty typist has gone, of course?” said Bloomberg.

Slotman started. “You mean—?”

“Miss Meredyth; I’ve heard about her.”

“About her. What?”

Bloomberg drew at his cigar. “Of course you know she’s come into money, a pot of money and a fine place down in the country. Uncle died, left a will—that sort of thing. Rankin acts for me, a sound man. I was talking to him the other day, and your name cropped up.”

“Go on!” said Slotman. The cigar shook between, his finger and thumb. “My name cropped up?”

“And Rankin was interested, as a young lady he was acting for had just come into a pot of money and a fine place down in Kent, and he had heard that she used to be employed by you. Ah, ha!” Bloomberg laughed. “You oughtn’t to have let her slip away, old man. She was as pretty as a peach, and now with some hundreds of thousands she will be worth while, eh?”

“I suppose so,” Slotman said, apparently indifferently. “And did you hear the name of the place she had come into?”

“I did. Something—Den—all places in Kent are something or other—Den. Oh, Starden! That’s it! Well, I must go. But tell me, what’s your opinion about those Calbary Reef Preferentials?”

Ten minutes later Slotman was alone, frowning at thought. If it were true, then indeed the luck had been against him. Even without money he had been willing, more than willing to marry Joan, in spite of the past, of which he knew nothing, but suspected much. Yes, he would have married her.

“She got hold of me,” he muttered, “and I can’t leave off thinking of her, and now she is an heiress, and Heaven knows I want money. If I had a chance, if—” He paused.

For a long while Mr. Philip Slotman sat in deep thought. About Joan Meredyth there was a mystery, and it was a mystery that might be well worth solving.

“I’ll hunt it out,” he muttered. “I’ll have to work back. Let me see, there was that old General—General—?”

He frowned, Ah! he had it now, for his memory was a good one.

“General Bartholomew! That was the name,” Slotman muttered. “And that is where I commence my hunt!”

CHAPTER XV
“TO THE MANNER BORN”

Starden Hall was one of those half-timbered houses in the possession of which Kent and Sussex are rich. It was no great mansion, but a comfortable, rambling old house, that had been built many a generation ago, and had been added to as occasion required by thoughtful owners, who had always borne in mind the architecture and the atmosphere of the original, and so to-day it covered a vast quantity of ground, being but one storey high, and about it spread flower gardens and noble park-land that were delights to the eye.

And this place was hers. It belonged to her, the girl who a few short weeks ago had been earning three pounds a week in a City office, and whose nightmare had been worklessness and starvation.

Helen Everard watched the girl closely. “To the manner born,” she thought. And yet there was that about Joan that she would have altered, a coldness, an aloofness. Too often the beautiful mouth was set and hard, never cruel, yet scornful. Too often those lustrous eyes looked coldly out on to a world that was surely smiling on her now.

“There’s something—” the elder woman thought, for she was a clever and capable woman—a woman who could see under the surface of things, a woman who had loved and suffered, and had risen triumphant over misfortunes, which had been so many and so dire that they might have crushed a less valiant spirit.

General Bartholomew had explained briefly:

“The child is alone in the world. There is something I don’t quite understand, Helen. It is about a marriage—” The old gentleman paused. “Look here, I’ll tell you. I had a letter from Lady Linden, an old friend, and she begged me to find Joan and bring her and her young husband together again.”

“Then she is married?”

“No, that is, I—I don’t know. ’Pon my soul, I don’t know—can’t make head or tail of it! She says she isn’t, and, by George! she isn’t a girl who would lie; but if she isn’t—well, I’m beaten, Helen. I can’t make it out. At any rate, I did bring her and the lad, and a fine lad he is too, George Alston’s son, together. And he left the house without seeing me, and afterwards the girl told me that he was practically a stranger to her, and that there had never been any marriage at all. At the same time she asked me not to write to Lady Linden, and she said that it was no business of hers, which was true, come to that. And so—so now she’s come into this money, and she is utterly alone in the world, and wants to go to Starden to live—why, my dear—”

“I see,” Helen said. “I shall be glad to go there for a time you know; it’s Alfred’s country.”

“I remembered that.”

“John Everard is living at Buddesby with his sister Constance. They are two of the dearest people—the children, you know, of Alfred’s brother Matthew.”

“Yes—yes, to be sure,” said the old gentleman, who was not in the slightest degree interested.

“And they will be nice for your Joan Meredyth to know,” said Mrs. Everard.

“That’s it, that’s it! Take her about; let her see people, young people. Make her enjoy herself, and forget the past. I don’t know what the past held. Joan is not one to make confidants; but I fancy that her past, poor child, has held more suffering than she cares to talk about. So try and make her forget it. Get the Everards over from Buddesby, or take her there; let her see people. But you know, you know, my dear. You’re a capable woman!”

Yes, she was a capable woman, far more capable than even General Bartholomew realised. Clever and capable, kindly and generous of nature, and the girl interested her. It was only interest at first. Joan was not one to invite a warm affection in another woman at the outset. Her manner was too cold, too uninviting, and yet there was nothing repellent about it. It was as if, wounded by contact with the world, she had withdrawn behind her own defences. She, who had suffered insult and indignity, looked on all the world with suspicious, shy eyes.

“I will break down her reserve. I think she is lovable and sweet when once one can force her to throw aside this mask,” Helen Everard thought.

So they had come to Starden together.

Joan had said little when she had first looked over the place; but Helen, watching her, saw a tinge of colour come into her cheeks, and her breast rise and fall quickly, which proved that Joan was by no means so unmoved as she would appear.

It was her home, the home of her people. It was to-day almost as it had been a hundred years ago, and a hundred years before that, and even a hundred years earlier still.

The low-pitched, old-fashioned rooms, with the mullioned windows, the deep embrasures, the great open, stone-slabbed hearths, with their andirons and dog-grates, the walls panelled with carved linen-fold oak, darkened by age alone and polished to a dull, glossy glow by hands that would work no more.

Through these rooms, each redolent of the past, each breathing of a kindly, comfortable home-life, the girl went, looking about her with eyes that saw everything and yet seemed to see nothing.

“You like it, dear?” Helen asked.

“It is all wonderful, beautiful!” Joan said, and yet she spoke with a touch of sadness in her voice.... “How—how lonely one might be here!” she added.

“You—you must not think of loneliness; you will never be lonely, my dear. If you are, it will be of your own choice!”

“Who knows?” Joan smiled sadly. She was thinking of a man who had told her that he loved her. There had been more than one, but the one man stood out clear and distinct from all others; she could even remember the words he had used.

“If, in telling you that I love you, I have sinned past all forgiveness, I glory in it, and I take not one word of it back.”

Yet how could he love her? How could he, when he had insulted her, when he had used her name, as he had, when he had humiliated and shamed her, how could he profess to love her? And they had met but three times in their lives.

“Joan, dear,” Helen Everard said, “Joan!”

“Yes? I am sorry, I—I was thinking.” Joan looked up.

Helen had come into the room, an open letter in her hand.

“I wrote to John and Constance Everard, my nephew and niece,” Helen said. “I told them I was here with you, and asked them to come over. They are coming to-morrow, dear. I think you will like them.”

“I am sure I shall,” Joan said; but there was no enthusiasm in her voice, only cold politeness that seemed to chill a little.

“I glory in it,” she was thinking, “and take not one word of it back.” She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully and turned away.

“What time will they be coming, Helen?” she asked, for she had made up her mind. She would think no more of this man, and remember no more of his speeches. She would wipe him out of her memory. Life for her would begin again here in Starden, and the past should hold nothing, nothing, nothing!

CHAPTER XVI
ELLICE

Buddesby, in the Parish of Little Langbourne, was a small place compared with Starden Hall. Buddesby claimed to be nothing more than a farmhouse of a rather exalted type. For generations the Everards had been gentlemen farmers, farming their own land and doing exceedingly badly by it.

Matthew, late owner of Buddesby, had taken up French gardening on a large scale, and had squandered a great part of his capital on glass cloches, fragments of which were likely to litter Buddesby for many a year to come.

John, his son, had turned his back on intensive culture and had gone back to the old family failing of hops. The Everard family had probably flung away more money on hops than any other family in Kent.

The Everards were not rich. The shabby, delightful old rooms, the tumble-down appearance of the ancient house, the lack of luxuries proved it, but they were exceedingly content.

Constance was a slim, pale, fair-haired girl with a singularly sweet expression and the temper, as her brother said often enough, of an angel. John Everard was big and broad, brown-haired, ruddy complexioned. He regarded every goose as a swan, and had unlimited belief in his land, his sister, and the future. There was one other occupant of Buddesby, a slight slender, dark-haired girl, with a thin, olive face, a pair of blazing black eyes, and a vividly red-lipped mouth.

Eight years ago Matthew Everard had brought her home after a brief visit to London. He had handed her over to eighteen-year-old Constance.

“Look after the little one, Connie,” he had said. “There’s not a soul in the world who wants her, poor little lass. Her father’s been dead years; her mother died—last week.” He paused. “I knew them both.” That was all the information he had ever given, so Ellice Brand had come to Buddesby, one more mouth to feed, one more pair of feet to find shoes for.

She had many faults; she was passionate and wilful, defiant and impatient of even Connie’s gentle authority. But there was one who could quell her most violent outburst with a word—one who had but to look at her to bring her to her sane senses, one whom she would, dog-like, have followed to the end of the world, from whom she would have accepted blows and kicks and curses without a murmur, only that Johnny Everard was not in the habit of bestowing blows and curses on young ladies.

Constance was twenty-six, John, the master of Buddesby, was a year younger, and Ellice was eighteen, her slender body as yet childish and unformed, her gipsy-like face a little too thin. But there was beauty there, wonderful and startling beauty that would one day blossom forth. It was in the bud as yet, but the bud was near to opening.

They were at breakfast in the comfortable, shabby old morning-room at Buddesby. It was eight o’clock, and John had been afield for a couple of hours and had come back with his appetite sharp set.

They rose early at Buddesby. Constance had been at her housewifely duties since soon after six. Only Ellice had lain abed till the ringing of the breakfast-bell.

“A letter from Helen,” Constance said.

“Helen? Oh, she’s got to Starden then?” said John.

“And wants us to come over, dear.”

“Of course! We’ll go over next week some time. I’m busy now with—”

“It wouldn’t be kind not to go at once.”

“Who is Helen?” demanded Ellice. She looked fierce-eyed at Connie and then at John. “Who is she?” A tinge of colour came into her cheeks.

Connie saw it, and sighed a little. She knew this girl’s secret, knew it only too well. Many an hour of anxiety and worry it had caused her.

“Helen is our aunt by marriage,” she said.

“Oh!” Ellice said, “I thought—”

John laughed. He had a jolly laugh, a great hearty laugh that did one good to hear.

“What did you think she was, gipsy girl?” he asked, for “gipsy” was his pet name for the little dark beauty.

“Did you think she was some young and lovely damsel who was eager to meet me again?”

“I should hate her if she was!” the girl said, whereat John laughed again.

“Write to Helen, Con,” he said as he rose from the table, “and say we’ll come over to-morrow.” He paused, frowning, at thought. “I’ll manage it somehow. I’ll drive you over in the trap. It would be useful to have a car; I don’t know why I put off getting one.”

Constance did, and she smiled. “Wait till next year, dear.”

He nodded. “Yes, next year we’ll get one. Meanwhile write to Helen, and tell her we’ll be over to-morrow afternoon.”

“And I?” Ellice asked.

John looked at her. “Why—no, child, you’ll stop at home and look after the house, eh?” He nodded to them and went out.

“Is she there—alone?” Ellice asked.

“Who, dear?”

“This Helen, your aunt. Is it usual to call your aunt just plain Helen?”

“No, I suppose it isn’t, and she is not there alone, as you ask. She is living with a girl who has just come into a great deal of money—Miss Joan Meredyth.”

“What is she like?” the girl asked quickly.

Constance smiled.

“I don’t know, dear. You see, I have never seen her.”

“Then I hope,” Ellice said between her clenched teeth, “I hope she is ugly, ugly as sin!”

“I think,” said Constance gently, “that you are very silly and foolish!”

Yet when the morrow came it was Ellice and not Constance who sat beside John in the trap, and was driven by him the six odd miles to Starden. For Constance had one of “her headaches.” It was no imaginary ailment, but a headache that prostrated her and filled her with pain, that made every sound an agony. She lay in her room, the blinds drawn, and all the household hushed.

“I’ll write that we’ll go to-morrow, dear,” John said.

“No, go to-day. I should be glad, Johnny. Go to-day and take Ellice, I am so much better alone; and by the time you come home perhaps I shall have been able to sleep it off.”

So Johnny Everard drove Ellice over to Starden that afternoon.

Helen Everard received them in the drawing-room. She was fond of Johnny Everard and his sister. This dark-faced girl she did not know, though she had heard of her. And now she looked at her with interest. It was an interesting face, such a face as one does not ordinarily see.

“One day, if she lives, she will be a beautiful woman,” Helen thought. “To-day she is a gawky, passionate, ill-disciplined child; and I am afraid, terribly afraid, she is very much in love with that great, cheery, good-looking nephew of mine.”

“Come,” she said, “Joan is in the garden. I promised that when you came I would take you to her. You have heard about her of course?” Helen added to John.

“Only a little, that she is an heiress, and has come into Starden.”

“She was very poor, poor child, and I think she had a hard and bitter time of it. Then the wheel of fortune took a turn. Her uncle died, and left her Starden and a great deal of money. So here she is.”

Helen felt a hand grip her arm, and turned to look down into a thin face, in which burned a pair of passionate eyes.

“Is she—pretty?” the girl asked.

“I think,” Helen said slowly, “that she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

Unlike his usual self, John Everard was very silent and thoughtful as he drove home later that evening. Helen had said that Joan Meredyth was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. He agreed with her whole-heartedly. She had received him and Ellice kindly, yet without much warmth, and now as he drove home in the light of the setting sun Johnny Everard was thinking about this girl, going over all that had happened, remembering every word almost that she had uttered.

“She is very beautiful, wonderfully beautiful,” he thought. And perhaps he uttered his thoughts aloud, for the girl, as silent as himself, who sat beside him, started and looked up into his face, and into the passionate, rebellious heart of her there came a sudden wave of jealous hatred.

CHAPTER XVII
UNREST

Lady Linden patted the girl’s small white hand.

“Yes, child,” she said comfortably, “Colonel Arundel and I had a nice long talk last night, and you may guess what it was about. He and I were boy and girl together, there’s no better blood in the kingdom than the Arundel’s—what was I saying? Oh yes, we decided that it would be a good plan to have a two years’ engagement, or better still, none for eighteen months, and then a six months’ engagement. During that time Tom can study modern scientific farming and that sort of thing, you know, and then when you and he are married, he could take over these estates. I am heartily sick of Bilson, and I always fancy he is robbing me—what did you say, child?”

“Nothing, auntie.”

“Well, you ought to be a very happy little girl. Run away.”

But Marjorie lingered. “Aunt, you haven’t heard anything of—of Hugh?” she asked.

“Hugh—Hugh Alston? Good gracious, no! You don’t think I am going to run after the man? I am disgusted with Hugh. His duplicity and, worse still, his obstinate, foolish, unreasoning behaviour, have annoyed me more than anything I ever remember. But there, my dear child, it is nothing to do with you. I have quite altered my opinion of Hugh Alston. You were right and I was wrong. Tom Arundel will make you a better husband, and you will be as happy as the day is long with him.”

“I shan’t!” Marjorie thought as she turned away. It was wrong, and it was unreasonable, and she knew it; but for the last four or five days there had been steadily growing in Marjorie’s brain, an Idea.

Stolen fruits are sweetest, stolen meetings, moonlit assignations, shy kisses pressed on ardent young lips, when the world is shrouded in darkness and seems to hold but two. All these things make for romance. The silvery moonlight gives false values; the knowledge that one has slipped unseen from the house to meet the beloved one, and that the doing of it is a brave and bold adventure, gives a thrill that sets the heart throbbing and the young blood leaping—the knowledge that it is forbidden, and, being forbidden, very sweet, appeals to the young and romantic heart.

But when that same beloved object, looking less romantic in correct evening dress, is accepted smilingly by the powers that be, and is sate down to a large and varied, many coursed dinner, then Romance shrugs her disgusted shoulders and turns petulantly away.

It was so with Marjorie. When the idea first came to her, she felt shocked and amazed. It could not be! she said to herself. “I love Tom with all my heart and soul, and now I am the happiest girl living.”

But she was not, and she knew it. It was useless to tell herself that she was the happiest girl living when night after night she lay awake, staring into the darkness and seeing in memory a face that certainly did not belong to Tom Arundel.

Hugh Alston had commenced work on the restoration of certain parts of Hurst Dormer. He had busied himself with the work, had entered whole-heartedly into all the plans, had counted up the cost, and then, realising that all his enthusiasm was only forced, that he was merely trying to cheat himself, he lost interest and gave it up.

“I’ll go to London,” he said. “I’ll go and see things, and try and get thoughts of her out of my mind.” So he went, and found London even more uninteresting than Hurst Dormer.

He had promised that he would never molest her, never annoy her with his visits or his presence, and he meant religiously to keep his word, and yet—if he could just see her! She need not know! If he could from a distance feast his eyes on her for one moment, on a sight of her, what harm would he do her or anyone?

Hugh Alston did not recognise himself in this restless dissatisfied, unhappy man, who took to loitering and wandering about the streets, haunting certain places and keeping a sharp lookout for someone who might or might not come.

So the days passed. He had gladdened his eyes three times with a view of old General Bartholomew. He had seen that ancient man leaning on his stick, taking a constitutional around the square.

And that was all! He passed the house and watched, yet saw no sign of her. He came at night-time, when tell-tale shadows might be thrown on the blinds, but saw nothing, only the shadow of the General or of his secretary, never one that might have been hers.

And then he slowly came to the conclusion that Joan Meredyth could no longer be there. It had taken him nearly a week to come to that decision.

That Joan had left General Bartholomew’s house he was certain, but where was she? He had no right to enquire, no right to hunt her down. If he knew where she was, how could it profit him, for had he not promised to trouble her no more?

Yet still for all that he wanted to know, and casting about in his mind how he might find her, he thought of Mr. Philip Slotman.

It was possible that if she had left the General’s she had gone back to take up her work with Slotman again.

“I’ll risk it,” he thought, and went to Gracebury and made his way to Slotman’s office.

It was a sadly depleted staff that he found in the general office. An ancient man and a young boy represented Mr. Philip Slotman’s one-time large clerical staff.

“Mr. Slotman’s away, sir, down in the country—gone down to Sussex, sir,” said the lad.

“To Sussex? Will he be away long?”

“Can’t say, sir; he may be back to-morrow,” the boy said. “At any rate, he’s not here to-day.”

“I may come back to-morrow. You might tell him that Mr. Alston called.” And Hugh turned away.

Another disappointment. He realised now that he had built up quite a lot of hope on his interview with Slotman.

“Shall I wait till to-morrow, or shall I go back to-day?” Hugh wondered. “This is getting awful. I don’t seem to have a mind of my own, I can’t settle down to a thing. I’ve got to get a grip on myself. How does the old poem go: ‘If she be fair, but not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?’ That’s all right; but I do care, and I can’t help it!”

He had made his aimless way back to the West End of London. It was luncheon time, and he was hesitating between a restaurant and an hotel.

“I’ll go back to the hotel, get some lunch, pack up and leave by the five o’clock train for Hurst Dormer,” he decided, and turned to hail a taxicab.

And, turning, he came suddenly face to face with the girl who was ever in his thoughts.

She had been helping a middle-aged, pleasant-faced woman out of a cab, and then, as she turned, their eyes met, and into Joan Meredyth’s cheeks there flashed the tell-tale colour that proved to him and to all the world that this chance meeting with him meant something to her after all.

CHAPTER XVIII
“UNGENEROUS”

Hugh Alston had raised his hat, and she had given him the coolest of bows. He was turning away, true to his promise to trouble her no more, and her heart seemed to cry out against it suddenly.

If she could have believed that he had been here of deliberate intent, to find her, to see her, she would have felt cold anger against him; but it was an accident, and Joan knew suddenly that for some reason she was unwilling to let him go.

What she said she hardly knew, something about the unexpectedness of meetings that were common enough in London. At any rate she spoke, and was rewarded by the look that came into his face. A starving dog could not have looked more gratitude to one who had flung him a bone than Hugh Alston, starving for her, thanked her with his eyes for the few conventional words.

Before he could realise what had happened, she had introduced him to her companion.

“Helen, this is Mr. Alston—whom I—I know,” she said.

“Alston.” Helen Everard congratulated herself afterwards that she had given no sign of surprise, no start, nothing to betray the fact that the name was familiar.

Here was the man then whom Lady Linden believed to be Joan’s husband, the man whom Joan had denied she had married, and who she had stated to General Bartholomew was scarcely more than a stranger to her.

And, looking at him, Helen knew that if Hugh Alston and she met again, he would certainly not know her, for he had no eyes for anything save the lovely cold face of the girl before him.

“Oh, Joan,” she said, “there is one of those bags I have been wanting to get for a long time past. Excuse me, Joan dear, will you?” And Helen made hurriedly to a shop hard by, leaving them together.

Joan felt angry with herself now it was too late. She ought to have given him the coldest of cold bows and then ignored him; but she had been weak, and she had spoken, and now Helen had deserted her.

“I will say good-bye, Mr. Alston, and go after my friend.”

“No, wait—wait. I want to speak to you, to thank you.”

“To thank me?” She lifted her eyebrows. “For what?”

“For speaking to me.”

“That sounds very humble, doesn’t it?” She laughed sharply.

“I am very humble to you, Joan!”

“Mr. Alston, do you realise that I am very angry with myself?” she said coldly. “I acted on a foolish impulse. I ought not to have spoken to you.”

“You acted on a generous impulse, that is natural to you. Now you are pretending one that is unworthy of you, Joan.”

“I do not think you have any right to speak to me so, nor call me by that name.”

“I must call you by the name I constantly think of you by. Joan, do you remember what I said to you when we last met?”

“No, I—” She flushed suddenly. To deny, was unworthy of her. “Yes, I remember.”

“It is true, remember what I said. I take not one word of it back. It is true, and will remain true all my life.”

“My friend—will be wondering—”

“Joan, be a little merciful.”

And now for the first time he noticed that she was not dressed as he had seen her last. There was a suggestion of wealth, of ample means about her appearance. Clothes were the last thing that Hugh thought of, or noticed. Yet gradually Joan’s clothes began to thrust themselves on his notice. She was well dressed, and the stylish and becoming clothes heightened her beauty, if possible.

“Joan, I have a confession to make.”

She bent her head.

“I couldn’t act unfairly or deal in an underhand way with you.”

“I thought differently!” she said bitterly.

“I remembered my promise made to you at General Bartholomew’s, yet I came to London in the hope of seeing you, that was all that brought me here. I would not have spoken to you if you had not spoken to me first. I only wanted just to see you. I wonder,” he went on, “that I have not been arrested as a suspicious character, as I have been loitering about General Bartholomew’s house for days, but I never saw you, Joan!”

“I was not there!”

“No, I gathered that at last. You will believe that I had no intention of annoying you or forcing myself on your notice. I wanted to see you, that was all, and so when I had made up my mind that you were not there, I went to the City Office where I saw you last.”

Her face flushed with anger.

“You have taken then to tracking me?” she said angrily.

“I am afraid it looks like it, but not to annoy you, only to satisfy my longing to see you. Just now you said I sounded humble. I wonder if you could guess how humble I feel.”

“I wonder,” she said sharply, “if you could guess how little I believe anything you say, Mr. Alston? I am sorry I spoke to you. It was a weakness I regret. Now I will say good-bye. You went to Slotman’s office, and I suppose discussed me with him?”

“I did not; he was not there. I was glad afterwards he was not. I don’t like the man.”

“It does not matter. In any event Mr. Slotman could not have helped you; he does not know where I am living.”

“Won’t you tell me?”

“Why should I, to be further annoyed by you?”

“I think you know that I will not annoy you. Won’t you tell me, Joan?”

“I—I don’t see why I should. Remember, I have no wish to continue our—our acquaintance; there is no reason you should know.”

“Yet if I knew I would be happier. I would not trouble you.”

“Surely it does not matter. I am living in the country, then—in Kent, at Starden. I—I have come into a little money.” She looked at him keenly. She wondered did he know, had he known that night when he had told her that he loved her?

“I am glad of it,” he said. “I could have wished you had come into a great deal.”

“I have!” she said quietly.

“I am truly glad,” he said. “It was one of the things that troubled me most, the thought of you—you forced to go out into the world to earn your living, you who are so fine and exquisite and sensitive, being brought into contact with the ugly things of life. I am glad that you are saved that—it lightens my heart too, Joan.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t I told you? I hated the thought of you having to work for such a man as Slotman. I am thankful you are freed from any such need.”

She had wronged him by that thought, she was glad to realise it. He had not known, then.

“My uncle died. He left me his fortune and the old home of our family, which he had recently bought back, Starden Hall, in Kent. I am living there now with Mrs. Everard, my friend and companion, and now—”

While she had been waiting to be served with a bag that she did not particularly require, Helen Everard watched them through the shop-window. She watched him particularly.

“I like him; he looks honest,” she thought. “It is all strange and curious. If it were not true what Lady Linden said, why did she say it? If it is true, then—then why—what is the cause of the quarrel between them? Will they make it up? He does not look like a man who could treat a woman badly. Oh dear!” Helen sighed, for she had her own plans. Like every good woman, she was a born matchmaker at heart. She had a deep and sincere affection for John Everard. She had decided long ago that she must find Johnny a good wife, and here had been the very thing, only there was this Mr. Hugh Alston.

She had been served with the bag, it had been wrapped in paper for her, and now Helen came out. She had lingered as long as she could to give this man every chance.

“I am afraid I have been a long time, Joan,” she began.

Hugh turned to her eagerly.

“Mrs.—Everard,” he said, “I have been trying to induce Miss Meredyth to come and have lunch with me.”

“Oh!” Joan cried. The word lunch had never passed his lips till now, and she looked at him angrily.

“I suggest Prince’s,” he said. “Let’s get a taxi and go there now.”

“Thank you, I do not require any lunch,” Joan said.

“But I do, my dear. I am simply famished,” said Helen.

It was like a base betrayal, but she felt that she must help this good-looking young man who looked at her so pleadingly.

“And it is always so much nicer to have a gentleman escort, isn’t it?”

“You can’t refuse now, Joan,” Hugh said.

Joan! The name suggested to Helen that Joan had not spoken quite the truth when she had told General Bartholomew that she and this man were practically strangers. A strange man does not usually call a young girl by her Christian name.

“As you like,” Joan said indifferently. She looked at Hugh resentfully.

“I do not consider it is either very clever or very considerate,” she said in a low voice, intended for him alone.

“I am sorry, but—but I couldn’t let you go yet. You—you don’t understand, Joan!” he stammered.

She shrugged her shoulders; she went with them because she must. She could not create a scene, but she would take her revenge. She promised herself that, and she did. She scarcely spoke a word during the luncheon. She ate nothing; she looked about her with an air of indifference. Twice she deliberately yawned behind her hand, hoping that he would notice; and he did, and it hurt him cruelly, as she hoped it might.

But she kept the worst sting for the last.

“Please,” she said to the waiter, “make out the bills separately—mine and this lady’s together, and the gentleman’s by itself.”

“Joan!” he said, as the waiter went his way, and his voice was shocked and hurt.

“Oh really, you could hardly expect that I would wish you to spend any of your—eight thousand a year on me!”

Hugh flushed. He bent his head. His eight thousand a year that once he had held out as a bait to her, and yet, Heaven knew, he had not meant it so. He had only meant to be frank with her.

He was hurt and stung, as she meant he should be, and seeing it, her heart misgave her, and she was sorry. But it was too late, and she must not confess weakness now.

There was a cold look in his face, a bitterness about his mouth she had never seen before. When he rose he held out his hand to Mrs. Everard; he thanked her for coming here with him, and then he gave Joan the coldest of cold bows. He held no hand out to her, he had no speech for her. Only one word, one word that once before he had flung at her, and now flung into her face again.

“Ungenerous!” he said, so that she alone could hear, and then he was gone, and Helen looked after him. And then, turning, she glanced at Joan, and saw that there were tears in the girl’s grey eyes.

CHAPTER XIX
THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MR. SLOTMAN

“And who the dickens,” said Lady Linden, “is Mister—Philip what’s-his-name? I can’t see it—what’s his name, Marjorie?” Lady Linden held out the card to the girl.

“It—it is—Slotman, auntie,” Marjorie said.

“Don’t sniff, child. You’ve got a cold; go up to my room, and in the medical—”

“I haven’t a cold, auntie.”

“Don’t talk to me. Go and get a dose of ammoniated tincture of quinine. As for this Mr. Slotman—unpleasant name—what the dickens does he want of me?”

Marjorie did not answer.

Slotman was being shewn into the drawing-room a few moments later. He was wearing his best clothes and best manner. This Lady Linden was an aristocratic dame, and Mr. Slotman had come for the express purpose of making himself very agreeable.

“Oily-looking wretch!” her ladyship thought. “Well?” she asked aloud.

“I am grateful to your ladyship for permitting me to see you.”

“Well, you can see me if that’s all you have come for.”

“No!” he said. “If—if I—” He paused.

“Oh, sit down!” said Lady Linden. “Well, now what is it you want? Have you something to sell? Books, sewing machines?”

“No, no!” He waved a deprecating hand. “I am come on a matter that interests me greatly. I am a financier, I have offices in London. Until lately I was employing a young lady on my staff.”

“Well?”

“Her name was Meredyth, Miss Joan Meredyth.”

“I don’t want to hear anything at all about her,” said Lady Linden. “Why you come to me, goodness only knows. If you’ve come for information I haven’t got any. If you want information, the right person to go to is her husband!”

“Her—her husband!” Mr. Slotman seemed to be choking.

“You seem surprised,” said Lady Linden. “Well, so was I, but it is the truth. If you are interested in Miss Meredyth, the proper person to make enquiries of is Mr. Hugh Alston, of Hurst Dormer, Sussex. Now you know. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Slotman passed his hand across his forehead. This was unexpected, a blow that staggered him.

“You—you mean, your ladyship means that Miss Meredyth is recently married.”

“Her ladyship means nothing of the kind,” said Lady Linden tartly. “I mean that Miss Meredyth has for some very considerable time been Mrs. Hugh Alston. They were married, if you want to know—and I don’t see why it should any longer be kept a secret—three years ago, in June, nineteen eighteen at Marlbury, Dorset, where my niece was at school with Miss Meredyth. Now you know all I know, and if you want any further information, apply to the husband.”

“But—but,” Slotman said, “I—” He was thinking. He was trying to reconcile what he had heard in his own office when he had spied on Hugh Alston and Joan, when on that occasion he had heard Hugh offer marriage to the girl as an act of atonement. How could he offer marriage if they were already married? There was something wrong, some mistake!

“But what?” snapped her ladyship, who had taken an exceeding dislike to the perspiring Mr. Slotman.

“Is your ladyship certain that they were married? I mean—” he fumbled and stammered.

Lady Linden pointed to the door. “Good afternoon!” she said. “I don’t know what business it is of yours, and I don’t care. All I know is that if Hugh Alston is a fool, he is not a knave, so you have my permission to retire.”

Mr. Slotman retired, but it was not till some hours had passed that he finally left the neighbourhood of Cornbridge. He had been making discreet enquiries, and he found on every side that her ladyship’s story was corroborated.

For Lady Linden talked, and it was asking too much of any lady who was fond of a chat to expect her to keep silent on a matter of such interest. Lady Linden had discussed Hugh Alston’s marriage with Mrs. Pontifex, the Rector’s wife, who in turn had discussed it with others. So, little by little, the story had leaked out, and all Cornbridge knew it, and Mr. Slotman found ample corroboration of Lady Linden’s story.

Not till he was in the train did Mr. Slotman begin to gather together all the threads of evidence. “I should not describe Lady Linden as a pleasant person,” he decided, “still, her information will prove of the utmost value to me. On the whole I am glad I went.” He felt satisfied; he had discovered all that was discoverable, so far as Cornbridge was concerned.

“Married in eighteen, June of eighteen,” he muttered, “at Marlbury, Dorset. I’ll bet she wasn’t! She may have said she was, but she wasn’t!” He chuckled grimly. He was beginning to see through it. “I suppose she told that tale, and then it got about, and then the fellow came and offered her marriage as the only possible way out. I’d like to choke the brute!”

Slotman slept that night in London, and early the following morning he was on his way to Marlbury. He found it a little quiet country town, where information was to be had readily enough. It took him but a few minutes to discover that there was a school for young ladies, a school of repute, kept by a Miss Skinner. It was the only ladies’ school in or near the town, and so Mr. Slotman made his way in that direction, and in a little time was ushered into the presence of the headmistress.

“I must apologise,” he said, “for this intrusion.”

Miss Skinner bowed. She was tall and thin, angular and severe, a typical headmistress, stern and unyielding.

“I am,” Slotman lied, “a solicitor from London, and I am interested in a young lady who a matter of three years ago was, I believe, a pupil in this school.”

“Indeed?”

“Miss Joan Meredyth,” said Slotman.

“Miss Meredyth was a pupil here at the time you mention, three years ago. It was three years ago that she left.”

“In June?” Slotman asked.

“I think so. Is it important that you know?”

“Very!”

“I will go and look up my books.” In a few minutes Miss Skinner was back.

“Miss Meredyth left us in the June of nineteen hundred and eighteen,” she said.

“Suddenly?”

“Somewhat—yes, suddenly. Her father was dead; she was leaving us to go to Australia.”

“So that was the story,” Slotman thought, “to go to Australia.”

“During the time she was here, may I ask, did she have any visitors? Did, for instance, a Mr. Hugh Alston call on her?”

“Mr. Alston, I remember the name. Certainly he called here, but not to see Miss Meredyth. He came to see Miss Marjorie Linden, who was, I fancy, distantly related to him. I am not sure, Mr. Alston certainly called several times.”

“And saw Miss Meredyth?”

“I think not. I have no reason to believe that he did. Miss Linden and Miss Meredyth were close friends, and of course Miss Linden may have introduced him. It is quite possible.”

“Thank you!” said Slotman. He had found out all that he wanted to know, yet not quite.

For the next few hours Philip Slotman was a busy man. He went to the church and looked up the register. No marriage such as he looked for had taken place between Hugh Alston and Joan Meredyth in June, nineteen eighteen, nor any other month immediately before or after. No marriage had taken place at the local Registrar’s office. But he was not done yet. Six miles from Marlbury was Morchester, a far larger and more important town. Thither went Philip Slotman and pursued his enquiries with a like result.

Neither at Marlbury, nor at Morchester had any marriage been registered in the name of Hugh Alston and Joan Meredyth in the year nineteen eighteen; and having discovered that fact beyond doubt, Philip Slotman took train for London.

CHAPTER XX
“WHEN I AM NOT WITH YOU”

A fortnight had passed since Johnny Everard’s first visit to Starden, and during that time he had been again and yet again. He had never taken Ellice with him since that first time.

Two days after the first visit he had driven Constance over, and Constance and Joan Meredyth had become instant friends.

“You’ll come again and often; it is lonely here,” Joan had said. “I mean, not lonely for me, that would be ungrateful to Helen, but I know she is very fond of you, and she will like you to come as often as possible, you and your brother.”

“Con,” Johnny said as he drove her home that evening, “don’t you think we might run to a little car, just a cheap two-seater? It would be so useful. Look, we could run over to Starden in less than half an hour. We can be there and back in an hour if we wanted to, and Helen would be so jolly glad, don’t you think?”

Constance smiled to herself.

“We haven’t much money now, Johnny,” she said. “Last year’s hops were—awful!”

“They are going to be ripping this year. I’ve got that blight down all right,” he said cheerily.

“Yes, dear; well, if you think—” She hesitated.

“Oh, we can manage it somehow,” he said hopefully.

Constance looked at him out of the corner of her eyes.

“It will be useful for you to run over to Starden to see Helen—won’t it?”

“Yes, to see Helen. She’s a good sort, one of the best, dear old Helen! Isn’t it ripping to have her near us again?”

“She could always have come to Buddesby if she had wanted to.”

“Oh, there isn’t much room there!”

“But always room enough for Helen, Johnny. You haven’t told me what you think of Joan Meredyth.”

She watched him out of the corners of her eyes. He stared straight ahead between the ears of the old horse.

“Joan Meredyth,” he repeated, and she saw a deep flush come stealing under the tan of his cheeks. “Oh, she’s handsome, Con. She almost took my breath away. I think she is the loveliest girl I ever saw.”

“Yes, and do you—”

“And do I admire her? Yes, I do, but I could wish she was just a little less cold, a little less stately, Con.”

“Perhaps it is shyness. Remember, we are strangers to her; she was not cold and stately to me, Johnny.”

“Ah!” Johnny said, and went on staring straight ahead down the road.

“Did Helen say much to you, Con?”

“Oh, a good deal!”

“About”—Johnny hesitated—“her?”

“Yes, a little; she thinks a great deal of her. She says that at first Joan seemed to hold her at arm’s length. Now they understand one another better, and she says Joan has the best heart in the world.”

“Yet she seems cold to me,” said Johnny with a sigh.

Still, in spite of Joan’s coldness, he found his way over to Starden very often during the days that followed. He had picked up a small secondhand car, which he strenuously learned to drive, and thereafter the little car might have been seen plugging almost daily along the six odd miles of road that separated Buddesby from Starden.

And each time he got the car out a pair of black eyes watched him with smouldering anger and passion and jealousy. A pair of small hands were clenched tightly, a girl’s heart was aching and throbbing with love and hate and undisciplined passions, as though it must break.

But he did not see, though Constance did, and she felt troubled and anxious. She had understood for long how it was with Ellice. She had seen the girl’s eyes turned with dog-like devotion towards the man who was all unconscious of the passion he had aroused. But she saw it all in her quiet way, and was anxious and worried, as a kindly, gentle, tender-hearted woman must be when she notices one of her own sex give all the love of a passionate heart to one who neither realises nor desires it.

So, day after day, Johnny drove over to Starden, and when he came Helen would smile quietly and take herself off about some household duty, leaving the young people together. And Joan would greet him with a smile from which all coldness now had gone, for she accepted him as a friend. She saw his sterling worth, his honour and his honesty. He was like some great boy, so open and transparent was he. To her he had become “Johnny,” to him she was “Joan.”

To-day they were wandering up and down the garden paths, side by side.

The garden lay about them, glowing in the sunshine of the early afternoon. Beyond the high bank of hollyhocks and the further hedge of dark yew, clipped into fantastic form, one could catch a glimpse of the old house, with its steep sloping roof, its many gables, its whitened walls, lined and crossed by the old timbers. The hum of the bees was in the air, heavy with the fragrance of many flowers.

And Joan was thinking of a City office, of a man she hated and feared, a man with bold eyes and thick, sensual lips. And then her thoughts drifted away to another man, and she seemed to hear again the last word he had spoken to her—“Ungenerous.” And suddenly she shivered a little in the warm sunlight.

“Joan, you are not cold. You can’t be cold,” Johnny said.

She laughed. “No, I was only thinking of the past. There is much in the past to make one shiver, I think, and oh, Johnny, I was thinking of you too!”

“Of me?”

She nodded. “Helen was telling me how keen and eager you were about your farm, how difficult it was to get you to leave it for an hour.” She paused. “That—that was before you came here, the first time—and since then you have been here almost every day. Johnny, aren’t you wasting your time?” She looked at him with sweet seriousness.

“I am wasting my time, Joan, when—when I am not with you!” he said, and his voice shook with sudden feeling, and into his face there came a wave of colour. “To be near you, to see you—” He paused.

Down the garden pathway came a trim maidservant, who could never guess how John Everard hated her for at least one moment of her life.

“A gentleman in the drawing-room, miss, to see you,” the girl said.

“A gentleman to see me? Who?”

“He would not give a name, miss. He said you might not recognise it. He wishes to see you on business.” Joan frowned. Who could it be? Yet it was someone waiting, someone here.

“I shall not be long,” she said to Johnny, and perhaps was glad of the excuse to leave him.

“I will wait till you come back, Joan.”

She smiled and nodded, and hastened to the house and the drawing-room, and, opening the door, went in to find herself face to face with Philip Slotman.

Philip Slotman, of all living people! She stared at him in amaze, almost doubting the evidence of her sight. What did he here? How dared he come here and thrust himself on her notice? How dared he send that lying message by the maid, that she might not recognise his name?

“You’ve got a nice place here, Joan,” he said with easy familiarity. “Things have looked up a bit for you, eh? I notice you haven’t said you are glad to see me. Aren’t you going to shake hands?”

“Explain,” she said quietly, “what you mean by coming here.”

If she had given way to senseless rage, and had demanded how he dared—and so forth, he would have smiled with amusement; but the cool deliberation of her, the quiet scorn in her eyes, the lack of passion, made him nervous and a little uncomfortable.

“I came here to see you—what else, Joan?”

“Uninvited,” she said. “You have taken a liberty—”

“Oh, you!” he shouted suddenly. “You’re a fine one to ride the high horse with me! Who the dickens are you to give yourself airs? You can stow that, do you hear?” His eyes flashed unpleasantly. “You can stow that kind of talk with me!”

“You came here believing, I suppose, that I was practically friendless. You knew that I had no relatives, especially men relatives, so you thought you would come to continue your annoyance of me. Would you mind coming here?”

He went to the window wonderingly. The window commanded a wide view of the garden. Looking out into the garden he could see a man, a very tall and very broad young man, who stood with muscular arms folded across a great chest. The young man was leaning against an old rose-red brick wall, smoking a pipe and obviously waiting. The most noticeable thing about the young man was that he was exceptionally big and of powerful build and determined appearance. Another thing that Slotman noticed about him was that he was not Mr. Hugh Alston, whom he remembered perfectly.

“Well?”

“That gentleman is a friend of mine, related to the lady who lives with me. If I call on him and ask him to persuade you to go and not return, he will do so.”

“Oh, he will, and what then?”

“I don’t understand you—what then? Why did you come here uninvited? Why did you send an untruthful message by my servant—that I would not recognise your name?”

“Trying to bluff me, aren’t you?” Slotman said. He looked her in the eyes. “But it won’t come off, Joan; no, my dear, I’ve been too busy of late to be taken in by your airs and defiance!” He laughed. “I’ve been making quite a round, here, there, and everywhere, and all because of you, Joan—all because of you! Among other places I’ve been to,” he went on, seeing that she stood silent and unmoved, “is Marlbury You remember it, eh? A nice little town, quiet though. I had a long talk with Miss Skinner—remember her, don’t you, Joany?”

Her eyes glittered. “Mr. Slotman, I am trying to understand what this means. Is it that you are mad or intoxicated? Why do you come here to me with all these statements? Why do you come here at all?”

“Marlbury,” he continued unmoved, “a nice, quiet little place. I spent some time in the church there, and at the Council offices, looking for something, for something I didn’t find, Joany—and didn’t expect to find either, come to that, ha, ha!” He laughed. “No, never expected to find, but, to make dead sure, I went to Morchester, and hunted there, Joany, and still I didn’t find what I was looking for and knew I shouldn’t find!”

“Mr. Slotman!”

“You aren’t curious, are you? You won’t ask what I was looking for, perhaps you can guess!” He took a step nearer to her. “You can guess, can’t you, Joany?” he said.

“I am not attempting to guess. I can only imagine that you are not in your sane senses. You will now go, and if you return—”

“Wait a moment. What I was looking for at Marlbury and Morchester and did not find—was evidence of a marriage having taken place in June, nineteen eighteen, between Hugh Alston and Joan Meredyth. But there’s no such evidence, none! Ah, that touches you a bit, don’t it? Now you begin to understand why I ain’t taken in by your fine dignity!”

“You—you have been looking for—for evidence of a marriage—my marriage with—what do you mean?”

Her face was flushed, her eyes brilliant with anger.

“I mean that I am not a fool, though I was for a time. You took me in—I am not blaming you”—he paused—“not blaming you. You were only a girl, straight out of school. You didn’t understand things, and the man—”

“What—do—you—mean?” she whispered.

“You left Miss Skinner’s, said you were going to Australia, didn’t you? But you didn’t go. Oh no, you didn’t go! You know best where you went, but there’s no proof of any marriage at Marlbury or Morchester. Now—now do you begin to understand?”

She did understand, a sense of horror came to her, horror and shame that this man should dare—dare to think evil of her! She felt that she wanted to strike him. She saw him as through a mist—his hateful face, the face she wanted to strike with all her might, and yet she was conscious of an even greater anger, a very passion of hate and resentment against another man than this, against the man who had subjected her to these insults, this infamy. She gripped her hands hard.

“You—you will leave this house. If you ever dare to return I will have you flung out—you hear me? Go, and if you ever dare—”

“No, no you don’t!” he said. “Wait a moment. You can’t take me in now!” He laughed in her face. “If I go I’ll go all right, but you’ll never hear the end of it. You’re someone down here, aren’t you? I have heard about you. You’re a Meredyth, and the Meredyths used to hold their heads pretty high about here. But if you aren’t careful I’ll get talking, and if I talk I’ll make this place too hot to hold you. You know what I mean. I hate threatening you, Joan, only you force me to do it.” His voice altered. “I hate threatening, and you know why. It is because I love you, and I am willing to marry you—in spite of everything, you understand? In spite of everything!”

Joan threw out her hand and grasped at the edge of the table.

“My friend out there—am I to call for him? Are you driving me to do that? Shall I call him now?”

“If you like,” Slotman said. “If you do, I’ll have something to tell him of a marriage that never took place in June, nineteen eighteen, and of a man who came to my office to see you, and offered to marry you—as atonement. Oh yes, I heard—trust me! I don’t let interviews take place in my offices that I don’t know anything about!”

He was silent suddenly. There was that in her face that worried him, frightened him in spite of himself—a wild, staring look in her eyes; the whiteness of her cheeks, the whiteness even of her lips. There was a tragic look about her. He had seen something like it on the stage at some time. He realised that he might be goading her too far.

“I’ll go now,” he said. “I’ll go and leave you to think it all out. You can rely on me not to say anything. I shan’t humble you, or talk about you—not me! A man don’t run down the girl he means to make his wife, and that’s what I mean—Joan! In spite of everything, you understand, my girl?” He paused. “In spite of everything, Joan, I’ll still marry you! But I’ll come back. Oh, I’ll come back, I—” He paused. He suddenly remembered the denuded state of his finances, yet it did not seem an auspicious moment just now to ask her for financial help.

“I’ll write,” he thought. He looked at her.

“Good-bye, Joan. I’ll come back; you’ll hear from me soon. Meanwhile, remember—not a word, not a word to a living soul. You’re all right, trust me!”

Meanwhile Johnny Everard wandered about the sweet, old-world garden, and did not appreciate its beauties in the least. He was waiting, and there is nothing so dreary as waiting for one one longs to see and who comes not.

But presently there came a maid, that same maid who had earned Johnny’s temporary hatred.

“Miss Meredyth wished me to say, sir, that she would be very glad if you would excuse her. She’s been taken with a bad headache, and has had to go to her own room to lie down.”

“Oh!” said Johnny. The sun seemed to shine less brightly for him for a few moments. “I’m sorry. All right, tell her I am very sorry, and—and shall hope to see her soon!”

Ten minutes later Johnny Everard was driving back along the hot high-road, utterly unconscious that the car was running very badly and misfiring consistently.

In her own room Joan sat, her elbows on the dressing-table, her eyes staring unseeingly out into a garden, all glowing with flowers and sunlight.

She was not thinking of Johnny Everard; his very existence had for the time being passed from her memory. She was thinking of that man, and of what he had said, the horror and the shame of it. And that other man—Hugh Alston—had brought this upon her—with his insulting lie, his insolent, lying statement, he had brought it on her! Because of him she was to be subjected to the shame and humiliation of such an attack as Slotman had made on her just now.

THE IMAGINARY MARRIAGE

Henry St. John Cooper

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IA MASTERFUL WOMAN

CHAPTER IIIN WHICH HUGH BREAKS THE NEWS

CHAPTER IIIJOAN MEREDYTH, TYPIST

CHAPTER IVFACE TO FACE

CHAPTER V“PERHAPS I SHALL GO BACK”

CHAPTER VI“THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING”

CHAPTER VIIMR. SLOTMAN ARRIVES AT A MISUNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER VIIITHE DREAM GIRL

CHAPTER IXTHE PEACEMAKER

CHAPTER X“IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING”

CHAPTER XITHE GENERAL CALLS ON HUGH

CHAPTER XII“I TAKE NOT ONE WORD BACK”

CHAPTER XIIITHE GENERAL CONFESSES

CHAPTER XIVTHE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL

CHAPTER XV“TO THE MANNER BORN”

CHAPTER XVIELLICE

CHAPTER XVIIUNREST

CHAPTER XVIII“UNGENEROUS”

CHAPTER XIXTHE INVESTIGATIONS OF MR. SLOTMAN

CHAPTER XX“WHEN I AM NOT WITH YOU”

CHAPTER I
A MASTERFUL WOMAN

CHAPTER II
IN WHICH HUGH BREAKS THE NEWS

CHAPTER III
JOAN MEREDYTH, TYPIST

CHAPTER IV
FACE TO FACE

CHAPTER V
“PERHAPS I SHALL GO BACK”

CHAPTER VI
“THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING”

CHAPTER VII
MR. SLOTMAN ARRIVES AT A MISUNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER VIII
THE DREAM GIRL

CHAPTER IX
THE PEACEMAKER

CHAPTER X
“IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING”

CHAPTER XI
THE GENERAL CALLS ON HUGH

CHAPTER XII
“I TAKE NOT ONE WORD BACK”

CHAPTER XIII
THE GENERAL CONFESSES

CHAPTER XIV
THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL

CHAPTER XV
“TO THE MANNER BORN”

CHAPTER XVI
ELLICE

CHAPTER XVII
UNREST

CHAPTER XVIII
“UNGENEROUS”

CHAPTER XIX
THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MR. SLOTMAN

CHAPTER XX
“WHEN I AM NOT WITH YOU”