The Fate of Fenella

The Fate of Fenella

A NOVEL

BY

NEW YORK
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 Fourth Avenue

Copyright, 1892, by
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
All rights reserved.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

CONTENTS

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.

The publishers claim with no little satisfaction that in this book they offer the reading public a genuine novelty. The idea of a novel written by twenty-four popular writers is certainly an original one. The ladies and gentlemen who have written “The Fate of Fenella” have done their work quite independently of each other. There has been collaboration but not consultation. As each one wrote a chapter it was passed on to the next, and so on until it reached the hands of Mr. F. Anstey, whose peculiar and delightful humor made him a fitting choice for bringing the story to a satisfactory close.

THE FATE OF FENELLA.

CHAPTER I.
BY HELEN MATHERS.
“FENELLA.”

And dinna ye mind, love Gregory,

As we twa sate at dine,

How we changed the rings frae our fingers,

And I can show thee thine?

Her hair, gloves, and shoes were tan-color, and closely allied to tan, too, was the tawny, true tiger tint of her hazel eyes. For the rest, she was entirely white save for her dark lashes and brows, the faint tint of rose in her small cheeks, and a deeper red in her lips that were parted just then in a spasm of silent, delighted mirth. She stood on the top steps of the Prospect Hotel, Harrogate, waiting for the coach to come round, and looking across the hotel gardens to the picturesque Stray beyond, upon which a unique game of cricket was just then going forward, to the intense diversion of all beholders. Two little boys had evidently started it on their own hook, and a variety of casuals had dropped in to bear a hand, the most distinguished of these being a nigger minstrel, who, in full war-paint, and with deep lace ruffles falling over his sooty hands, was showing all his white teeth, and batting with a prowess that kept the whole field in action.

“I hope Ronny won’t get his pate cracked,” said the girl, half aloud, as the four grays drew up with a flourish, and the usual bustle on the steps began. “Good-morning, George!” and she nodded brightly to the good-looking driver, who beamed all over, and touched his hat, for the girl had clambered to many a pleasant drive beside him during the past fortnight.

“Box-seat again!” snapped a spiteful female voice behind her. “I wonder she is allowed to monopolize the best seat as she does, day after day!”

The girl laughed, as, giving a brief glimpse of a soft mass of whiteness above silken hose, she swung lightly up to the perch that was indeed wide enough to accommodate three persons, though the privilege of occupying the third lay entirely within George’s jurisdiction, and was never, save to an old favorite, accorded.

“Where are we going to-day?” she said, as she settled herself comfortably, and unfurled a big tan-color sunshade. “Not to any of those tiresome show-places, I hope? I’m so tired of them!”

“No, miss,” said George, who refused, even in the teeth of Ronny, to recognize her as anything but a slip of a girl, “we’re going for a drive of my own; just dawdling about a bit like, and nowhere in particular.”

“Jolly!” she said, sniffing up the pure air as if she loved it, and with that delightful quality of enjoyment in her voice which acts like an elixir on surrounding company. “Do you know, I mean to come up here every year to drink the waters, for I’ve got to love the place!”

George looked delighted as he glanced round to see if all his cargo was aboard, but as usual everyone was waiting for the inevitable person who is always late, and who will probably be late for his own funeral if he can possibly manage it.

“Most people who come here once, come again, miss,” said George, twisting the lash of his whip into a knot. “There’s one gentleman who never misses a season, and I was going to ask you, as a favor, if you’d mind his coming on the box-seat this morning? He ’most always had it last year. I told him I must ask a lady’s consent, so we’re to pick him up outside the Pump-room if you’re quite agreeable.”

“Is he fat?” said the girl dubiously, and feeling that her drive would be quite spoiled.

“He’s as slight as a poplar,” said George, his face lightening up, “and he’s a gentleman, miss, and you can’t say more than that. There’s so few of ’em about nowadays!”

The cargo was now complete. The miscellaneous crowd that daily assembled to witness the departure of the coach fell back, the horses stretched out into a gallop, and skirting the hotel garden, with its lounging seats, and cheerful awnings, rounded the corner with a flourish, emerging on the Stray with a musical horn-blowing that made Ronny, in the distance, hold up his little flushed face to his mother, and wave the bat he was so very seldom allowed to use.

The girl waved and kissed her hand lovingly to the boy, and the nigger appropriating the compliment to himself, and promptly returning the same, while he also tried to combine business and pleasure by hitting a ball, lost his balance, and sat down in a large puddle. Quaint and varied were the aspects of life afforded by the Stray, that curious piece of ground secured to the townspeople forever, that in some parts almost resembles a fair; while in others, ancient trees shut in stately houses that have all the dignity and peace of a cathedral close.

In the open a band was playing, nigger minstrels were performing, children played, old maids cackled, pigeons flocked, fortune-tellers plied their craft, and old couples sat side by side like puffins, warming themselves in the sun. Even in this inevitable groaning Salvation Army lasses and lads were there, combining piety and wealth with that astuteness which is so distinguishing a feature of their peculiar religion.

And the thoroughly English scene, so full of human life, and steeped through and through with such a glory of September air and sunshine as even summer had not dared to promise, or even tried to fulfill, gave extraordinary pleasure to the heart, making one feel, with Lucretius, that “he who has grown weary of remaining at home often goes forth, and suddenly returns, inasmuch as he perceived he is nothing better for being abroad.”

Down the steep incline in George’s smartest style, past the Crown Hotel, that should surely be at the top of the hill, not the bottom, and so to the Pump-room, where with a clash and a clatter he draws up, scanning the crowd of people, who, having drunk their nauseous doses inside, are dawdling and gossiping in true Harrogate fashion before they disperse.

The girl does not take the trouble to look at any of them, not even when George touches his hat, and says, “Here, my lord.” Then there is the sensation as of a person ascending the coach, on her side, she indignantly notes, so that she hastily whispers:

“Couldn’t he go on your other side, George?”

“Very sorry, miss, but couldn’t drive that way,” and then she draws her skirts close to her with head turned aside, as her unwelcome coach-fellow swings himself into the seat beside her.

She is so slight, so small, that after all there is ample room and to spare, especially as he answers to the graceful description of him furnished by the driver.

“Do you call this a new drive?” she says to George, as they rattle past the lovely Bogs Valley Gardens, and up the steep ascent to the Spa. “Why——”

“Fenella!” breathlessly exclaimed a voice beside her.

“Frank.”

Two aghast, petrified young faces looked into each other; then the girl, recovering herself first, said:

“Pray, how do you come here?”

“And what brings you?” he retorted.

“Gout. What are you laughing at?” she said airily; “haven’t I got ancestors? Didn’t they drink October ale by the hogshead, and old port by the gallon? And I’ve got to pay the piper, for I never heard of the liquor hurting them. But talking of ancestors, I’ve got such a lovely story to tell you. There is a frightfully fat, vulgar woman at our hotel, and you know there are only two things in this sinful world that give me real fits—humbug and vulgarity. Well, this woman never for one single meal lets anybody forget her progenitors, and bawls out at the top of her dreadful voice, ‘All my people are cavalry people!’ And what do you think? Her uncle keeps a pork shop not far from here, so after all she’s perfectly right in her boast, only the cavalry are—Pigs!”

Frank laughed.

“You are as bad as ever, I see,” he said, and then glanced at the driver, who had averted his head as much as possible.

“George,” said Fenella, putting a coaxing little face round his shoulder, “could you—would you mind putting a bit of cotton wool in your ear on this side, because I want to talk to—to Lord Francis? I’ve got a bit in my pocket somewhere, I know.”

George’s face flickered, as he expressed himself quite agreeable, but was rather surprised, as blue-blooded people usually talk before their inferiors as if they had no more hearing and understanding faculties than tables or chairs. When the wool was produced out of a smart little pocket, he proceeded to plug his ear gravely, and even rammed it down hard to show that his intentions were strictly honorable. This business over, Fenella turned round and showed a little laughing face that seemed to have caught all the sunshine of the day, aye, and held it fast.

“I always carry a bit in my pocket for Ronny,” she said, “as he gets a touch of earache sometimes. What’s that? They can hear us behind? Oh? no, the trot of the horses’ feet swallows up our voices. Let them talk. They will say I picked you up!”

“So you did. Do you know any of them?”

“Heaven forbid! A woman, my dear, who never sits in the drawing room with the other ladies,” said Fenella, adroitly mimicking a sour female voice, “there must be something wrong about her. And so there is,” she added, below her breath, and for a moment the little face grew hard.

“How is Ronny?” said Frank.

“He is very well,” she said nonchalantly. “Poor wee man, isn’t it a good job he isn’t a girl? And he hasn’t begun to grow ugly and horrid and masculine yet—he is all mine, mine!”

The mother’s love in her rang out triumphantly, and her face grew very tender.

“We have such good times together, he and I,” she went on happily; “he is not with me to-day, because he is playing cricket at the present moment. We go down to the Stray with the bat and stumps, and forage round for a scratch team. I took a hand myself the other day, and actually bowled out a butcher’s boy!”

Frank laughed, then shook his head. “You are quite as mad as ever,” he said. “Where is your companion?”

“I hope,” said Fenella calmly, “that she is dead. I didn’t try to polish off any of the other ones, because they meant well in spite of their aggravatingness, but she was downright wicked. So I led her a life,” she concluded, looking as triumphantly happy as a child who plays truant on a glorious day with a pocketful of pennies and burnt almonds.

Frank shook his head sadly.

“Why won’t you be good, Fenella?” he said. “You could be so easily.”

“I always am,” said Fenella promptly, and nodded her curly head close to his nose. “I take sulphur baths, and regularly sneeze sulphur. I get up every morning at half-past seven. Just think of that! It’s a fearful scramble, because Ronny never will wake up. He sleeps just like you, for ever and ever.” She stopped, and colored vividly, then dashed on again breathlessly, “And of course it takes some time to dress him.”

“You have no nurse, no maid!” he exclaimed, in amazement.

“No,” she replied with great sangfroid, “I like a free hand, and no woman can have that, with a female detective tripping up her heels, and wearing her silk stockings. And I love to wait on Ronny—to wash and dress him, and make him look sweet. Of course,” she added anxiously, “he isn’t always clean—the dirtier a boy is, the nicer he is—but he is perfectly happy! You should see us run down the hill to the Pump-room, though everyone has done long before we get there! And then we eat such a breakfast. We’ve got a dear little fat waiter who simply devotes himself to us, and steals for us all the newest eggs! But he had an awful accident yesterday,” said Fenella, turning tragic eyes on Frank, “what do you think it was?”

“He fell in love with you?”

Fenella began to laugh in that low gurgle which was so like the sound of a cheerful, over-full brook.

“Do you remember you said that about my hairdresser? And how I said I thought it would really have come cheaper in the end if I had married him? I always thought that rather neat myself. But I never told you what the accident was. He broke four hundred plates yesterday!”

“Very greedy of him if he did it all at once.”

“It was all at once. The strap of the lift broke as he was hauling them up!”

“Poor devil!” said Frank absently.

They were quite away from the houses now, and the brisk, pure air, the pleasant scents from the hedgerows, and the swift movement to the music of the horses’ feet, and perhaps some other sources of satisfaction within, brought a light to Fenella’s eyes, and a rose-soft color to her cheek that made her altogether enchanting and sweet.

“And pray,” said Frank, looking at her eagerly, unwillingly, as at forbidden fruit that sorely tempted him, “do you talk to any of the fellows at the hotel?”

“No,” she said airily, “they talk to me. You see, they are all so fond of Ronny.”

“No doubt,” said Frank, curtly and significantly.

“But I pretend not to hear. Stay—there is one man whom I talk to——”

“Who is he?” said Frank grimly, and looking straight between the horses’ ears.

“Oh, nobody in particular,” said Fenella, rather faintly, “but you see he has a small nephew here, and it seems he and Ronny met at the Grandisons’ in the country, and are quite old friends. So the barrister and I have got quite pally.”

Frank sat mute as a fish.

“He is of the type I rather admire,” she said, with a suspicious note in her voice. “You know, Frank,” she lifted a naïvely impudent, grave little face to his, “I always did like a dark, clean-shaven man!”

Frank himself was as dark and clean-shaven as it was possible to be, and the corners of his mouth trembled at her audacity, as he turned away.

“He told me such a delicious story yesterday,” she went on, her face breaking up into dimples. “It was about a little girl upon whose mother a horrid old woman was calling. When the old woman got up to depart, she said to the child, ‘You’ll come and see me, my dear, won’t you?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ said the child, ‘But you don’t know where I live?’ ‘Yes, I do,’ said the child, nodding. ‘I know who is your next-door neighbor.’ ‘Who is that?’ says the old woman. ‘Why, mother says you are next door to a fool!’”

But Frank did not smile. It is curious that a man’s sense of humor is usually entirely in abeyance when matters of stern import engross him, while a woman’s is usually at its keenest when tragedy is in the air.

“What do people think at the hotel?” he burst out in the undertone both had maintained throughout the conversation.

“That I am a widow,” she said coolly; “that is to say, if they turn up the hotel list of visitors.”

“What name have you inscribed?” he said coldly.

“Fenella Ffrench. I suppose I have a right to my own name?”

“And the child’s?”

“Ronny Onslow.”

“What are your trustees about?” he broke out, with subdued passion.

Fenella shrugged her slender shoulders, and laughed. “I was twenty-four years old yesterday,” she said, with apparent irrelevance; “did you remember?”

“I remembered,” he said curtly.

“Talking of trustees,” she said, “will you ever forget the talk, and fuss, and documents that day at Carlton House Terrace? I couldn’t help thinking of Lady Caroline Lamb, and how, when she and her husband were required to sign the deed of separation, the pair of them could nowhere be found! When discovered at last, Lady Caroline was on her husband’s knee, feeding him with bread and butter! But, though they parted, he loved her all the time,” went on Fenella, the little mocking voice grown suddenly wistful; “and it was on his faithful breast that she pillowed her dying head at last, and his kind voice that sped her on her way!”

“Yes,” said Frank, in a strained voice; “her faults were more of head than heart. But some women have not even hearts for faults to be bred in. Why did you do it?” he said suddenly, with a mist before his own eyes that hindered him from seeing the tears in hers.

“Hi! Onslow! I say, Onslow!” shouted a voice that seemed to come from beneath the horses’ feet, and both the young people peeped over to see a fat little man in white linen clothes, standing on tiptoe on the road, and blowing out his cheeks like a cherub’s.

“Why, Castleton!” cried Frank, “what are you doing there?”

“Walking down my fat, dear boy. I was looking heavenward, and saw you coming. Where do you hang out? Beastly water, rotten eggs, rusty iron, and a dash of old Nick. Oh, I say!” (catching sight of Fenella, not quite hidden by her sunshade) “is that really—well, you know, really—I am astonished—and delighted, too! I always said——”

“Drive on!” roared Frank, and on they went upon the instant, and Frank turned to look at Fenella. She was very pale, and very angry, with all the summer gladness gone out of her eyes and lips.

“Frank,” she said, “never, never will I submit to be made ridiculous. By to-morrow this time, the story will be all over the London clubs. Drive back to Harrogate with you I will not, and either you get down, or I will.”

Frank never moved.

“George!”

“Yes, my lady.”

She stamped her little foot.

“How dare you call me that?” she said, in a furious underbreath. “Put me down!”

George never budged an inch. The trot-trot of the horses’ feet maddened her, and she sprang up.

“Fenella,” said Frank, winding his arm round her waist, “if you don’t sit tight, I’ll put you on my knee, and keep you there, and then I’ll kiss you.”

CHAPTER II.
BY JUSTIN H. McCARTHY, M. P.
KISMET.

But, ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose.

That youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close.

Omar Khayyam.

“Hulloa, Jacynth!”

Jacynth awoke from his reverie with a start and stared at the speaker. He had quite forgotten where he was. Through the gray smoke of his cigarette he had conjured, as from some magic vapor, an enchanting face—a girl’s face—with hazel eyes and wonderful tan-colored hair. He had been in dreamland, and now he was only in the gardens of the hotel, and instead of his exquisite vision he found facing him a fat little man in white linen, who looked very hot and very jolly.

“I say, Jacynth, don’t you remember me?”

Jacynth did not remember, at least fully. He had a dim consciousness that the fat little figure ought to be familiar to him, but he could not remember where or why. He had not quite collected himself yet, and he was slightly annoyed at the interruption to his day-dream. Also he was annoyed at being annoyed and being discomposed by anything. No perplexing witness, no hostile counsel, no antagonistic judge had ever been known to ruffle Clitheroe Jacynth’s imperturbability. But then no vision with tan-colored hair and hazel eyes had ever come into court with him. He looked at the fat white figure, and shook his head gravely.

“But I say, hang it all, Jacynth, don’t you remember that night in Cairo, and the dancing girls and the hasheesh den, and the row and all the rest of it?”

Memory asserted herself in Jacynth’s mind. He did remember a night in Cairo when a party of young fellows from Shepheard’s set out to see something of the queer Cairene slums. The fat little man was of the party; he was in white then, too, Jacynth remembered. He remembered, too, how hugely the little man had enjoyed everything, from the—well, the eccentricities of the dancing girls to the fumes in the hasheesh den, and even to the final scrimmage in the gambling hell, when Jacynth by a timely stroke saved his fat companion from being knifed by a Levantine rogue who had been detected in cheating. There was an awful row afterward; he remembered that, too, and an awkward business before the authorities next morning, but the names of his friends and his own legal reputation settled the matter. Yes, he remembered the fat little man now. He got up with a smile on his dark, clean-shaven face and held out his hand.

“How are you, Lord Castleton?”

Lord Castleton laughed. That was his way. He went through life laughing, as if everything were the best joke in the world.

“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me,” he said. “By Jove! I haven’t forgotten you, and that turn of the wrist which sent that Levantine devil’s toothpick spinning. Well, and how are you?”

The men had sat down beside each other on the garden chair. Castleton produced a cigarette-case almost as fat as himself, on which a daintily-painted ballet girl disported.

“Try one!” he said; “they are ripping. Bingham Pasha sent them to me himself. He got them from the Sultan.”

Jacynth took a cigarette, lit it from the end of his own, Castleton watching him all the time with the most jocular expression.

“You’re not looking very fit,” he said. “Those confounded courts, I suppose. By Jove! I shouldn’t like to be a lawyer.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” Jacynth said; “I’m not taking the waters here. My sister lives here, and I’ve a festive little nephew. I only came here for a rest. I don’t quite know why I came here just now though. Kismet, I suppose.”

As he spoke that same vision of face and hair and eyes floated up before him.

Castleton laughed more boisterously than ever.

“Ah! Kismet, the dear old word. Yes, I suppose it’s fate that makes us do most of the things which we seem to do for no particular reason.”

“Has Kismet brought you here?” Jacynth inquired. “You seem fit enough at all events.”

“Fit, my dear fellow? not at all.”

It was one of Castleton’s little jocularities with life to consider himself likely at any moment to become a confirmed invalid. “I was up in Bagdad, and I picked up an English paper which said that Harrogate was looking lovely, and somehow I felt homesick and seedy, and all that sort of thing, so I just cut the East and came slap on here.”

“Do you know,” said Jacynth gravely, “that there are moments when I feel much more inclined to cut the West and go, as you say, ‘slap on’ to some sleepy Eastern place—Bagdad perhaps, or Japan—and dream away the rest of my life.”

“The rest of your life? You talk as if you were ninety!” And Castleton slapped his fat little leg merrily.

“Don’t you know what the man-at-arms says in Thackeray’s ballad?” Jacynth replied. “‘Wait till you come to forty year.’ Well, I have come to forty year, pretty nearly. I was thirty-nine three weeks ago—and do you know, Castleton, there are times when I’m tired of the whole business.”

“By Jove! what would the judges say if they heard the famous Clitheroe Jacynth talking like this?”

“My dear fellow, I’m not famous, and if I were, what’s the good of being famous at the price of becoming a fossil?”

“Do you know,” said Castleton, with a grin, “I believe you must be mashed on somebody or other, by Jove, I do. If you talk——”

Before Castleton had finished his sentence he became aware that Jacynth was not paying him much attention. In fact, Jacynth’s gaze seemed to be directed very intently toward the end of the garden, and Jacynth’s mind appeared to be giving no heed whatever to Castleton’s amiable garrulity. So Castleton, following the direction of his friend’s glance, saw in the distance a woman’s form, a form that was familiar to him, a form that he had already seen that day.

“By Jove!” said Castleton to himself softly. He had no time to say more, even to himself, for Jacynth had jumped to his feet and was bidding him good-by.

“Glad to have met you, hope to see you soon again.” These were the words Jacynth was saying, with a confusion curiously at variation with his habitual composure. He shook Castleton warmly by the hand, and moved away so rapidly that Castleton’s, “Why, my dear boy, of course you will; I shall stop here for ever so long,” was delivered to the empty air.

“By Jove!” Castleton said again, this time aloud, as he watched Jacynth’s rapid advance in the direction of the girl. “By Jove, he’s struck, like all the lot. Poor devil! I’ll stay here and give him a hint presently. Oh, poor devil, poor devil!” And Castleton’s jolly face expressed as much honest commiseration as its ruddy plumpness permitted.

In the meantime, Jacynth, walking rapidly, had met the girl. She smiled a welcome to him, and stopped as he stopped. Her face seemed troubled, he thought, in spite of its enchanting smile.

“How grave you look,” he began, for want of anything better to say.

“How grave you look,” she retorted, with a flash of the familiar enchanting audacity, as she looked up into his grave dark face.

“I have something to say to you,” said Jacynth. The remark was commonplace enough, but he felt his voice fail as he said it, and he knew by the sudden heat in his face that the blood was filling his pale cheeks.

The sound of his voice evidently impressed the girl, for she looked up at him with a sudden start, and her reply was queerly girlish and puzzled.

“What is it?” Then, as if she felt suddenly conscious of a blunder, or of unexpected knowledge, she tried to add other words:

“I mean, of course—I do not understand—I am looking for Ronny.”

“Ronny is quite safe,” said Jacynth gravely. “He is still at cricket with Harold. What I have to say does concern him though, a little.”

“Concern Ronny!” There was a genuine note of alarm in the girl’s fresh voice, and she looked up at Jacynth with a wistful trouble in her eyes. “Concern Ronny! Why, what have you to say about Ronny?”

“Can you give me a few moments?” he asked. “It is quiet here.”

He pointed to a pathway more secluded than the rest, a pathway with a rustic garden chair, a deserted pathway.

“Shall we sit here for a minute?” he said, and they walked to the rustic seat, and sat down side by side. There was a curious look of alarm in the hazel-colored eyes, but Jacynth did not notice it, for he was looking down, tracing a word upon the ground with his stick, and the word that he traced was the word he had used but now, Kismet.

“What do you want to say to me?” He could hear a hard ring in her voice, and looking up he saw a hardness in her eyes, and his lips trembled.

“We have been very good friends,” he began, and faltered. She caught him up.

“We have been good friends,” she said. “If you wish us to be good friends any more you will not say what it is just possible that you may think of saying. There are some words which will estrange us for ever.”

Jacynth looked at her despairingly. How exquisitely lovely she looked, like some angel of youth, some vision of summer in that autumnal garden. His heart seemed to be beating very fast, his eyes were hot, and his lips dry, and his hands trembled feverishly.

“Listen!” he said, and as he spoke his own voice sounded far away and unfamiliar like the voice of some shadow encountered in a dream. “Listen! I love you with all my heart. Hush! let me say what I have got to say”—for she had turned to him, half appealing, as if to interrupt his declaration—“I daresay you may think it very audacious of me to love you—or, at least, for I could not help loving you, to tell you so. I know that you are beautiful enough and good enough to be addressed by better men than I. I should have been content with my secret love and held my peace. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t.”

He paused for a moment. She laid her hand on his gently, and he trembled at her touch. “I am very sorry,” she began, but he went on again wildly:

“I am not quite a fool. Men who are not quite fools either say that I have a great career before me. I have made something of a name as it is, although I may still almost speak of myself as a young man. You shall be proud of me, indeed, I promise you that, if you will only let me serve you. Life is all a game of chances, but if you will take this chance, I do not think that you will regret it. Your lover will not be quite unworthy of your love.”

“I am very, very sorry,” she said, “but you have said the words which must divide us. I did like you, I do like you very much, but we cannot be friends any more.”

“You cannot love me,” he said slowly.

“I cannot love you—and I know we cannot be friends. You are not that kind of man. It would tear your heart to pieces. Better one wrench at once and be done with it. And I am not the kind of woman to accept friendship that I knew was only a mask for love.”

“You cannot love me?” he asked again monotonously, like a man repeating some set formula.

“I cannot love you. I have played with my life in my own way, and as I have played so I will pay. Now, good-by, I know you too well and trust you too well to fear that you will trouble me at all. You will go away, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Jacynth moodily, “I will go away.”

“Thank you, and good-by.” She moved away swiftly, and he stood there staring after her until she disappeared inside the hotel.

Jacynth walked moodily back into the garden and stared sullenly at the bright sky. If the autumn day, so warm that it might have been midsummer, had suddenly changed to winter, it could not have looked colder or more dismal to his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. “So that’s all over,” he said to himself bitterly; “you have played your stake and you have lost, and now you must remember that it is your duty to play the man and not the fool.” Thrusting his hands into his pockets he began to walk slowly down the garden path, feeling very dull and dizzy, like a man who has had a heavy fall. He was thinking, or trying to think, of things which interested him so deeply once, and which now seemed so strangely uninteresting, when his meditations were interrupted. He found himself confronted by Castleton, who was eying him sympathetically.

“Old man,” said Castleton, “you saved my life once, and though it wasn’t much worth saving, I’m devilish grateful to you all the same. So I’d like to do you a good turn now if I can.”

“You can’t do me any good,” Jacynth answered, “there’s nothing the matter with me. Don’t talk rot, there’s a good fellow.”

“There’s a great deal the matter with you, and I can do you good,” Castleton answered. “I can tell you all about that woman.”

CHAPTER III.
BY FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE.
HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY.

But this case is so plain ... that nothing can obscure it, but to use too many words about it.—Jeremy Taylor.

Lord Castleton, doubtless, did not literally believe that he could tell his friend “all about” that woman. But he probably was possessed with the conviction that when he should have said what he had to say, there would remain little more worth telling. We smile with a kind of fatigued contempt at the venerable classical joke of the fool who, wishing to sell his house, carried about a brick from it as a specimen. We know better how to judge of houses. But we are willing—sometimes—to pick off a very small fragment of human life, and to exclaim knowingly, “Look here, I’ll tell you what it is made of!”

Lord Castleton’s well-meant offer was not received with gratitude.

“What woman?” growled Jacynth, taking one hand out of his pocket to tilt his hat a little more over his eyes.

“Why, Mrs.—Miss—Lady—by Jove, I scarcely know what to call her!”

“That’s a good beginning,” said Jacynth sardonically.

“No, no, my dear fellow, I really do know all about her; only it’s—it’s a little puzzling where to begin.”

“Why begin?”

The fat little gentleman reddened and frowned. Then his good nature, and his sense of obligation to the other man, and his pity for him (which, perhaps, rendered the sense of obligation easier to bear) conquered the momentary irritation.

“The fact is, Jacynth,” he said, “I consider it my duty to tell you the story of Fenella Ffrench. No one knows it better than I do. You may hear it told by a score of men in town, who will be a deuced deal harder on the girl than I am. I have no animosity against her, poor little fool—none in the world. In fact, I rather like her.”

“Very gratifying to the lady; but—excuse me—not of palpitating interest to me. Good-by. I think I shall go for a long spin.”

“Stop a moment, Jacynth! Did you never hear of Lady Francis Onslow?”

Jacynth turned round sharply and looked at him. “Lady Francis Onslow?” he repeated, putting his hand to his forehead and looking as though he were trying to recall some half-effaced recollections.

“Lady Francis Onslow. She was a daughter of Colonel Fortescue Ffrench, of Crimean celebrity, and she married Frank Onslow when she was only seventeen, and three years afterward they were separated.”

“Is that the woman?”

“That is the woman.”

“She looks such a child!”

“I told you she was married when she was only seventeen.”

“But he—Lord Francis—he is alive?”

“Very much so! At least he looked alive enough when I saw him about half an hour ago.”

“He is here?”

“Yes. Look here, Jacynth; just let us take a turn somewhere; here, this is a quiet path, and——”

“No; not there!” said Jacynth, drawing back roughly, as Lord Castleton laid his hand on his arm. It was the pathway where he had just been speaking with Fenella. “I don’t know why I should listen to you at all. What does it matter? Nothing you can say will do any good.”

Nevertheless, he did listen. What man would not have listened? That he should believe it when it was told was another matter. Jacynth was a clever man, a man of brilliant talents and rising reputation in his profession. He had also certain special gifts which were not so generally recognized. He had a keen and almost intuitive insight into character, and a steady power of incredulity as to a vast proportion of the stories circulated in the “best society” on the “best authority.”

At first sight this may seem no very extraordinary power. And perhaps it is not extraordinary, but it is certainly not common. The gossip of the smoking room, the little tattle of the clubs, penetrate, as a fine drizzling rain penetrates one’s clothing, into the consciousness of most men.

Men may declare that they give no heed to that sort of gossip; but, as a rule, their minds are porous, and do not resist it. With persons who pride themselves on knowing the world, credulity has almost come to signify believing good of men’s neighbors. But Jacynth had often been cynically amused by the childish credulity with which a knot of men at his club would swallow evil stories, intrinsically improbable, and supported by no tittle of evidence that he would have dared to offer to the least enlightened of juries, merely because they were evil. For these gentlemen “knew the world.” Something he dimly remembered hearing of the separation which had taken place between Lord and Lady Francis Onslow; but nothing clearly. He had not lived in their world; he did not now live in it.

He had a poor opinion of Lord Castleton’s intellect, but he believed him to be as truthful as he knew how to be. Jacynth was quite capable of disbelieving a story against a woman, even though she were young, beautiful, full of impulsive high spirit, and separated from her husband, and even although he had not happened to be in love with her. He did not intend to break a lance on her behalf. He was not given to such breaking of lances, for he also “knew the world.” But neither was he going to accept Lord Castleton’s statements with the undoubting faith that Lord Castleton seemed to expect. Nevertheless he listened.

“She was an only child, you know,” said Lord Castleton, hooking himself on to his companion’s arm, so as to speak confidentially in his ear as they walked up and down, “idolized by her father. Her mother died when she was a small child, so she was left to take pretty much her own way ever since she was six years old. Ffrench got some old woman or other to look after her as she grew older—a kind of duenna, you know. But as to controlling her, it was a mere farce. Fenella did as she pleased with the colonel, and the colonel did as he pleased with everybody else, for he was a Tartar, and never allowed any member of his household to contradict him—always with the one exception, you know; and so the end of it was that every man, woman, and child about the place had to be Miss Fenella’s very humble servant, or had to go. She was the wildest little beggar; used to go tearing about the country on a little Arab horse she had. Once she took it into her head to ride to hounds, and, by George, sir, she went flying over everything that came in her way and was in at the death! The only woman there; just think of that! A child not fifteen riding to hounds quite alone, for the old groom who used to trot about after her could no more keep up with her than if he’d been mounted on a tortoise.”

A vision of the slight, straight, fearless young creature, with a wave of tawny hair floating behind her, the wonderful hazel eyes shining, and the delicate cheeks glowing like roses, came vividly before Mr. Jacynth’s mind as he listened.

“I know that story’s true,” continued Castleton. “Old Lord Furzeby, who was Master at that time, and had been hunting the county for twenty years, told me it himself; and said he’d never seen anything like it. However, he called next day on her father, and then Ffrench did put a stop to the hunting. He wouldn’t quite stand that.”

“Well?” said Jacynth, after a pause.

“Well, that’s just a specimen of the way she was brought up. But there were worse things than the hunting, a deuced sight.”

“What things?” growled Jacynth, flashing a dark side glance at his companion’s round rubicund face.

“I—upon my soul, I think they may be all summed up in one word—flirtation! Of all the outrageous, audacious, insatiable little flirts that ever were born for the botheration of mankind, I suppose Fenella Ffrench is about the completest specimen.”

“Poor mankind!” sneered Jacynth, drawing down the corners of his mouth.

“My dear fellow, she began when she was in short frocks. I’ve no doubt the man where she bought her hoops and dolls was in love with her. And when she began to grow up it was a general massacre.”

“Not of the innocents, however,” muttered Jacynth.

“Ffrench’s place was in Hampshire, not quite out of reach by a drive from Portsmouth, although it was a long pull by road. And before she was sixteen, Fenella had bowled over the whole garrison. I believe the local chemist expected a wholesale order for prussic acid the day her engagement to Frank Onslow was announced,” said his fat little lordship, chuckling at his own wit.

“Where did she meet him?”

“At a garrison ball in Portsmouth. It was supposed to be a case of love at first sight. Regular Romeo-and-Juliet business, don’t you know?”

“Oh! she loved him?” said Jacynth, between his set teeth.

“God knows! she said she did, any way; and made him believe it. As for him, he was desperately mashed.”

“And so—and so they married, but didn’t live happy ever after.”

“No, by George! It didn’t last long. For the first year or two, it was all billing and cooing. They took a little place in Surrey, and gave themselves up to rurality and domestic affection. Old Ffrench used to spend half his time there with ’em. And when Fenella’s boy was born, they had a story that the colonel was seen wheeling a perambulator about the garden, and administering a feeding-bottle. It did seem as though Fenella had begun to put a good deal of water in her wine, as the Italians say. They hadn’t been married three years when Colonel Ffrench died suddenly. I was not in England at the time. I was in a very low state—all to pieces! In fact, Sir Abel Adamson has since confessed that he thought my nervous system—however, that will probably not interest you. I set off on a long sea voyage, which they said was my best chance. And, in point of fact, I prowled about for more than a year and a half. It was in Japan that I got hold of an old Times with the announcement of Ffrench’s death. Oho! thought I to myself. My Lady Francis Onslow will come in for a nice little pile. She had something when she married. And, of course, Ffrench left her everything he had in the world.”

“Then Lord Francis Onslow hadn’t made a bad thing of it?”

“A very good thing of it!—from the financial point of view, that is. He was a duke’s son; but I needn’t tell you that a duke’s fifth son——”

“Can’t expect to marry a lady from Chicago or New York with millions of dollars in pigs or petroleum. Of course not! That’s reserved for his seniors,” said Jacynth.

Lord Castleton laughed. But he did not quite like this little speech. He considered himself the least bumptious of men about his rank. But there was something in Jacynth’s words—a twang, not only of bitterness, but of contempt—which Lord Castleton inwardly pronounced to be “bad form.” But Jacynth was sore, poor wretch! Terribly sore! However, his lordship compressed his narrative somewhat, as being very doubtful what venomed criticism might be lurking in the barrister’s mind.

“Well, the main point of the story is what happened after the colonel’s death, and when Frank Onslow and his wife went up to town. Only I thought it well to give you a glimpse of the madcap sort of life the girl had been allowed to lead, because it, to some degree, explains a good deal of her reckless way of carrying on.”

Lord Castleton fancied he heard Jacynth mutter under his breath, “Poor child!” But the clean-shaven, firmly molded jaw looked set and grim when he glanced at it; and a countenance less expressive of any “compunctious visitings” of sentiment than the countenance of Clitheroe Jacynth, barrister-at-law, as it appeared in that moment, it would be difficult to imagine.

“Lady Francis made one of the biggest sensations I can remember, when she began to get into the swing of London society. She had been presented on her marriage, of course. But then Frank had carried her off to the cottage in Surrey, and the world had seen no more of her, so that now she appeared as a novelty. And she is—well, you know what she is to look at. I know dozens of women handsomer by line and rule. But there’s something fetching about Fenella that I never saw equaled. And then the old game began again. Fellows were mad about her, and she flirted in the wildest way.”

“The Romeo-and-Juliet passion having meanwhile died a natural death?” said Jacynth, staring straight before him.

“Oh, I suppose so. The fact is, she is a butterfly kind of creature that no man ought ever to have taken seriously.”

“And the husband——”

“Frank was—well, the fact is, Frank acted like a fool. He was very young, too, you know. They were like a couple of children together, and used to squabble, and kiss, and make it up like children. Frank never had the least suspicion of jealousy about her, though. Never—until——”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Jacynth, with a nod of the head.

“Well, whether his aunt, old Lady Grizel, put it into his head, or whether he saw something for himself that he didn’t like—the fact is, Frank made a scene one night when they came home from a ball at the Austrian Embassy, and Fenella—who is the Tartar’s own daughter when she’s roused, I can tell you, dynamite isn’t in it!—flared up tremendously, and there was, in short, the devil to pay. Fenella, it seems, had been secretly bottling up a little private jealousy on her own part. There was a certain Madame—her name don’t matter; and she has returned to Mongolia or wherever she came from long ago—a certain woman, pretty nearly old enough to be Frank’s mother, but a fascinating sort of Jezebel, whom you met about everywhere that season. And Fenella turned round and declared that Frank had been making her miserable by his goings-on with that vile woman!”

“All her foolish fancy, of course!” said Jacynth, suddenly looking at the other man with a penetrating gaze from beneath his frowning black brows.

“Oh—well—you know—oh, I daresay Frank had, to some extent, been making an ass of himself. But, of course, the case was totally different.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Fenella talked like a wild Indian, you know. It couldn’t be supposed that because Lord Francis Onslow kicked up his heels rather more than was exactly pretty, Lady Francis Onslow was to be allowed to follow suit. He had taken exception to a certain man—military attaché to one of the Embassies—and forbade Fenella to dance with him or receive him in her drawing room. Needless to say that Fenella made a point of waltzing with him the next night, and of giving him a standing invitation to five o’clock tea. More rows. Family consultations. Aunt Grizel volunteering as peace-maker; I think that was the last straw. Fenella insisted on a separation; she was as obstinate as possible. She would take her boy and leave him. As to the money, he might keep it all. And that sort of wild nonsense.”

“But she carried her point? She left him? How was it possible that he let her go?”

“My dear friend, the idea of talking of ‘letting’ or not letting Fenella Onslow do anything she had set her will on is refreshingly naïf. She threatened them that if they did not consent to an amicable arrangement she would bring legal proceedings (on account of the Mongolian fascinator!) and make a scandal. Well, the Onslows hate the name of a scandal as a mad dog hates water.”

“Or as a burnt child dreads the fire,” put in Jacynth.

“At any rate, among them they cobbled up the deed of separation; and there is poor Frank with a wife and no wife, and the boy—he was devoted to the little chap—taken away from him, at any rate for some years.”

“And there is Lady Francis Onslow with a husband and no husband.”

“Upon my soul I believe she’s happier without him, upon my soul I do! All she cares for in life is to flirt; to decoy some wretched fellow into a desperate state about her, and then to turn him off with an impudent little assumption of innocence, and declare she meant nothing. People said there was more in that affair of the military attaché, than her usual coquetries. But I don’t know. I don’t believe she has it in her power to care for any man. However, very few of those who saw the little drama being acted before their eyes take a lenient view of Fenella’s conduct. I felt bound to open your eyes, Jacynth. The woman is as dangerous as a rattlesnake. Of course she’s gone and made a hideous hash of her own life; but she has done worse than that to other people’s lives, and she’ll go on doing it. I saw her just now sitting up on the box-seat of the coach beside her husband, and——”

“Beside whom?”

“Beside her husband, Frank Onslow. There’s nothing she hasn’t impudence enough for! It wouldn’t surprise me if they were to come together again.”

“And that,” said Jacynth, walking away by himself, “is what Castleton calls telling me ‘all about that woman!’ I don’t know whom she loves, nor whether she loves anyone at this present moment. But that there are depths of feeling in that girl of which old Castleton is about as well able to judge as a mole of the solar system—but what’s the good of it! I have played my stake and lost it. I—I must get out of this place if I’m to keep any hold over myself at all. How could a raw lad like Frank Onslow value her or understand her? Of course, he was selfish and unreasonable and dull to all the finer part of her nature, like a boy as he is—or was, at any rate, when he married her!” He went up to his room and dragged out a portmanteau. He must get away. There was no use in parleying or delay. Flight, instant flight, was the only thing for him. But when he had opened the portmanteau, and dragged out a few clothes from the chest of drawers, he sat down by the bedside and buried his face in the pillow. “I love her! I love her!” he moaned out. And then he hated himself for his folly.

At this moment a little childish footstep was heard tramping up the stairs; tap—tap—tap—tap, climbing up with much exertion, but with eager haste, and then a sweet little childish voice said, “Mr. Jacymf, Mr. Jacymf, are you there?”

Jacynth opened the door with a wildly beating heart. Could she have sent him a message? “What is it, Ronny, my man?” he said, looking down upon the child’s curly, tawny hair and bright, innocent, hazel eyes that were so like his mother’s.

“Hulloa!” cried Ronny, surveying the portmanteau and the litter of clothes on the floor, “are you going away?”

“Yes, old boy.”

“Is Grandison going too?”

“No; not Grandison. What do you want, Ronny?”

“I want you not to go away!”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Why can’t you come with us, if you are going away?”

“Come with you? Where?”

“With me and Mummy. Mummy says we shall go to a nicer place than this. And I may play cricket. I wanted you to come and play with me and Grandison. But I s’pose you can’t if you’re packing your clothes. Aint they in a jolly mess?”

Jacynth lifted the child up in his arms and kissed him. “Good-by, Ronny,” he said, in a queer, choking voice; and then he set the little fellow outside the door and shut it.

Ronny prepared to make the descent of the staircase, holding tight to the banisters. He put one little chubby finger up to his cheek and looked at it. “Hulloa!” said he very gravely, “my face is all wet!”

CHAPTER IV.
BY A. CONAN DOYLE.
“BETWEEN TWO FIRES.”

Happier is he who standeth betwixt the fire and the flood, than he who hath a jealous woman on either side of him.—Fourth Veddah.

The single short drive on the Harrogate coach had re-awakened all Frank Onslow’s dormant passion for the capricious and beautiful woman whom he had made his wife. His weak and pliant nature was one which could readily forget, and after a few weeks of dull pain his separation had ceased to be a grief to him, and he had devoted himself to the turf and the green table with an energy which had driven his matrimonial troubles from his mind. That Fenella had at the least been indiscreet in the case of the Count de Mürger was beyond all question. Further, she had allowed her indiscretion to be known and commented upon. Domestic unhappiness is ill to bear, but worse still is it to see pitying eyes turned upon one in society, to read snappy little two-edged paragraphs in gossiping papers, or in a club smoking room to see heads incline toward each other while a swift malicious whisper passes from man to man. All this is bad to bear, and yet it had been Lord Francis’s lot to bear it. It had soured his mind and hardened his heart at the time of his separation.

But every wound will heal, and this one also had skinned over. When in the morning he had seen the girlish figure of his wife perched upon the box-seat, with her yellow hair curling from under the dainty hat, and looked into the hazel eyes which still shone with the old provoking, mischievous, challenging twinkle, he had felt his heart go out to her, and had loved her once more even as he loved her on that first night when he had plighted his troth to her after the garrison ball at Portsmouth. It maddened him now to find that, with all the fire of his love, he could not kindle any answering spark in her. Had she turned away from him, treated him coldly, or upbraided him for his conduct, then indeed he might have had hopes. A quarrel might lead to a reconciliation. But that she should treat him as an everyday acquaintance, gossip with him about trivial matters, and break small jests with him, that was indeed intolerable. In vain, through the long drive, he strove to pass the barrier. At every allusion to their married life, or to their quarrel, she either retired into absolute silence or else with quick feminine tact turned the conversation into other channels. If he had forgiven her there was no sign that she in turn had forgiven him.

And who was there who knew better than himself that there was much to forgive? If her name had been coupled with that of the Count de Mürger, had not his been equally and even more openly associated with the notorious Mme. Lucille de Vigny? He might have doubts as to his wife’s guilt, but he could have none as to his own. If he had been subjected to the degradation of the pity of his fellow-men, had not she undergone as much or more? He remembered now with grief and compunction how day after day, and evening after evening, he had deserted his wife in favor of the society of the fascinating Frenchwoman. He remembered, too, how patient she had been at first. Then, how her patience had gradually changed to surprise, surprise to suspicion, suspicion to anger, and anger to revenge in the shape of the flirtation which had brought about the separation. Who was he, to blame her? He had himself been the first to sin. Now he was the first to forgive. Would she follow him in the one as in the other?

Alas! it seemed that she would not—that the breach was too broad to be ever again bridged over. Through the bright summer morning, as they rattled past the lines of beech trees, and through the pleasant Yorkshire lanes, he chafed and fretted, but in vain. His sin had been too deep to be forgiven. As he handed her down, when they arrived once more at the Prospect Hotel, he pressed her little hands in his feverish grasp, and looked appealingly into her hazel eyes. There was no answering softness in their glance—nothing but amusement and something akin to contempt. He turned away with a sigh, and wandered slowly off in the direction of the gardens, walking with bent head, and the listless steps of a melancholy man.

Had his eyes not been downcast he might have noticed that he was not alone on the graveled, hedge-lined walk, which curved down through the pleasant Harrogate gardens. A woman was walking toward him, moving slowly through the rich yellow sunshine, and glancing from right to left with the air of one who is a visitor and a sight-seer. Her light cream dress, her dainty pink sunshade, and her broad shady hat, with its curling snow-white feather, made a pleasant picture to the eye, which was by no means diminished by her approach, for she was a woman of singular beauty. Though past her first youth, the lines of her figure were as graceful and perfect as an artist could desire, while her face, with its dark Southern beauty, its clear-cut, delicate features, and imperious eyes, spoke of a passionate and impetuous nature, such as is seldom to be found among our cold and self-contained Northern races.

Approaching from different ends of the walk the two had almost passed each other before Lord Francis looked up, and their eyes met. He sprang back with a cry of surprise, and of something approaching to dismay, while she stood quietly looking at him out of somber, deeply-questioning eyes.

“Lucille!” he gasped. “You are the last person whom I expected to see in Harrogate.”

“But I am not surprised,” she answered, speaking with a slight French lisp, which added a charm to her rich, deep voice. “I knew that you were in Harrogate. That is why I came.”

“But why do you wish to follow me, Lucille? What good can come of it?”

“What good? All good. Is not love good? And do I not love you? Ah, Frank, you taught me to love you, and how can I unlearn it? It is happiness to me to see you and to speak to you.”

“But see the misery that it has caused. We must part, Lucille. If you truly love me you will help me to retrieve my life, and not to wreck it further.”

“Ah!” cried she, with a quick flash in her dark eyes. “You have seen her. You have been speaking with your wife again.”

“Yes, I saw her to-day.”

“By chance?”

“Yes, by chance.”

“And you are friends again?”

“No, not friends.”

“Ah, you wished it, but she would not have it. I can see it in your face. O Frank, how could you humble yourself to such a woman? How could you? To hold out your hand to her and to be refused! Quelle dégradation! See how she has treated you—she, who is not worthy to be the wife of any honest man.”

The color sprang to Onslow’s pale cheeks. It was one thing to know his wife’s faults, and it was another to hear about them.

“That is an old story,” he said curtly. “We may let that drop.”

“An old story? Why, she was with De Mürger last week in London.”

“Fenella was?”

“Yes, I saw them with my own eyes riding together in the Row.”

Lord Francis started as if he had been stung. “Come here!” he said. There was a garden bench in a little recess, and he threw himself down upon it. Lucille de Vigny seated herself beside him, and a triumphant smile played over her dark and beautiful face as she marked with a sidelong glance the anger and chagrin which convulsed her companion’s features.

“Is this true?” he cried.

“I tell you, Frank, that I saw them with my own eyes. It is not my custom to say what is not true.”

“They were riding together?”

“Yes.”

“And talking?”

“Talking and laughing.”

“By heavens, I will see that fellow De Mürger. I will shoot him, Lucille. It is not our custom in England to duel. But he is a foreigner. He will meet me. I have wished to avoid a scandal, but if they court one why should I spare them? In the Row, you say?”

“Yes, and just when all the world was there.”

“Heavens! it is maddening.” He sank his face in his hands and groaned aloud.

“And what matter, after all?” said she, laying one delicately gloved hand upon his wrist. “Why should you trouble? What is she to you now? She is unworthy, and that is an end. Tout est fini. You are a free man, and may let her go her way while you go yours. Which way will be yours, Frank?”

The blood throbbed in his head. He felt her warm, magnetic hand tighten upon his wrist. Her soft, lisping voice, and the delicate perfume which came from her dress, seemed to lull the misery which had torn him. Already, in her presence, the fierce longing for his wife which had possessed him was growing more faint. Here was a woman, beautiful and tender, who did indeed love him. Why should his heart still dwell upon that other one who had brought unhappiness and disgrace to him?

“Which way will be yours, Frank?”

“The same as yours, Lucille.”

“Ah, at last!” she cried, throwing her arms about him. “Did I not know that I should win you back?”

A sharp cry, a cry as from a stricken heart, and a dark shadow fell between the pair. Lord Francis started to his feet. Fenella was standing in front of them, her hands thrown out, her eyes blazing with anger.

“You villain!” she gasped. “You false villain!” She put her hands to her throat, and struggled with her words like a choking woman. Lord Francis Onslow looked down, while the blood flushed to his temple. Mme. de Vigny stood beside him, her hands folded across each other, and a look of defiance and anger upon her face.

“I came out here to tell you that I had forgiven you. Do you hear? That I had forgiven you. And this is how I find you. Oh, I shall never forgive you now—never, never, never! Why were you so nice to me this morning, if you meant to treat me so?”

“One word, Fenella,” cried Onslow. “Answer me one question, and if I have wronged you I will go down on my bended knees to you. Tell me truthfully, and on your honor, were you in the company of De Mürger last week?”