Produced by Al Haines









[Illustration: Cover art]





[Frontispiece: Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square was an exceedingly
simple meal.  FRONTISPIECE.  _See page 92_.]




THE WICKED MARQUIS


BY

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

WILL GREFÉ



MCCLELLAND & STEWART PUBLISHERS

TORONTO




_Copyright, 1919,_

BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY


_All rights reserved_




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Luncheon at Grosvenor Square was an exceedingly
  simple meal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when
  I succeeded to the title and estates"

"I expect we are all as bad, though," she went
  on rather gloomily, "even if we are not
  quite so blatant"

"You're very hard, father," she said simply




THE WICKED MARQUIS



CHAPTER I

Reginald Philip Graham Thursford, Baron Travers, Marquis of Mandeleys,
issued, one May morning, from the gloomy precincts of the Law Courts
without haste, yet with certain evidences of a definite desire to leave
the place behind him.  He crossed first the pavement and then the
street, piloted here and there by his somewhat obsequious companion,
and turned along the Strand, westwards.  Then, in that democratic
thoroughfare, for the first time since the calamity had happened, his
lips were unlocked in somewhat singular fashion.

"Well, I'm damned!" he exclaimed, with slow and significant emphasis.

His companion glanced up furtively in his direction.  The Marquis, as
Marquises should be, was very tall and slim, with high well-shaped
nose, very little flesh upon his face, a mouth of uncertain shape and
eyes of uncertain colour.  His companion, as solicitors to the
aristocracy should be, was of a smaller, more rotund and insignificant
shape.  He had the healthy complexion, however, of the week-end golfer,
and he affected a certain unlegal rakishness of attire, much in vogue
amongst members of his profession having connections in high circles.
In his heart he very much admired the ease and naturalness with which
his patron, in the heart of professional London, strode along by his
side in a well-worn tweed suit, a collar of somewhat ancient design,
and a tie which had seen better days.

"The judge's decision was, without doubt, calamitous," he confessed
gloomily.

The Marquis turned in at the Savoy courtyard with the air of an habitué.

"I am in need of a brief rest and some refreshment," he said.  "You
will accompany me, if you please, Mr. Wadham."

The lawyer acquiesced and felt somehow that he had become the tail end
of a procession, the Marquis's entrance and progress through the
grillroom towards the smoking-room bar was marked by much deference on
the part of porters, cloak-room attendants and waiters, a deference
acknowledged in the barest possible fashion, yet in a manner which his
satellite decided to make a study of.  They reached a retired corner of
the smoking room, where the Marquis subsided into the only vacant easy
chair, ordered for himself a glass of dry sherry, and left his
companion to select his own refreshment and pay for both.

"What," the former enquired, "is the next step?"

"There is, alas!" Mr. Wadham replied, "no next step."

"Exactly what do you mean by that?" the Marquis demanded, knitting his
brows slightly as he sipped his sherry.

"We have reached the end," the lawyer pronounced.  "The decision given
by the Court to-day is final."

The Marquis set down his glass.  The thing was absurd!

"Surely," he suggested, "the House of Lords remains?"

"Without a doubt, your lordship," Mr. Wadham assented, "but it is of no
use to us in the present instance.  The judge of the Supreme
Court--this is, by-the-by, our third appeal--has delivered a final
decision."

The Marquis seemed vaguely puzzled.

"The House of Lords," he persisted, "remains surely a Court of Appeal
for members of my order whose claims to consideration are not always
fully recognised in the democracy of the common law court."

"I fear," Mr. Wadham replied, with a little cough, "that the House of
Lords is supposed to have other functions."

"Other functions?"

"In an indirect sort of fashion," Mr. Wadham continued, "it is supposed
to assist in the government of the country."

"God bless my soul!" the Marquis exclaimed.

There was a queer, intangible silence.  The lawyer was quite aware that
a storm was brewing, but as his distinguished client never lost his
temper or showed annoyance in any of the ordinary plebeian ways, he was
conscious of some curiosity as to what might happen next.

"You mean to say, then," the Marquis continued, "that for the rest of
my days, and in the days of those who may succeed me, that edifice,
that cottage which for generations has sheltered one of the family
retainers, is to remain the property of--of an alien?"

"I fear that that is the decision of the court," the lawyer admitted.
"The deed of gift was exceptionally binding."

The Marquis shook his head.  The thing was incomprehensible.

"I can stand upon the roof of Mandeleys," he said, "and I can look
north, south, east and west, and in no direction can I look off my own
land.  Yet you mean to tell me that almost in my garden there is to
remain a demesne which can be occupied by any Tom, Dick or Harry which
its nominal owner chooses to place in possession?"

The lawyer signed to the waiter for their glasses to be replenished.

"It is certainly not justice, your lordship," he admitted,--"it is not
even reasonable--but it is the law."

The Marquis produced a gold cigarette case, absently lit a cigarette,
and returned the case to his pocket without offering it to his
companion.  He smoked meditatively and sipped his second glass of
sherry.

"A state of things," he declared, "has been revealed to me which I
cannot at present grasp.  I must discuss the matter with Robert--with
my son-in-law, Sir Robert Lees.  He is an intensely modern person, and
he may be able to suggest something."

"Sir Robert is a very clever man," the lawyer acknowledged, "but
failing an arrangement with the tenant himself, I cannot see that there
is anything further to be done.  We have, in short, exhausted the law."

"A process," the Marquis observed sympathetically, "which I fear that
you must have found expensive, Mr. Wadham."

"The various suits into which we have entered on behalf of your
lordship, and the costs which we have had to pay," the latter hastened
to announce, "amount, I regret to say, to something over eighteen
thousand pounds."

"Dear me!" his companion sighed.  "It seems quite a great deal of
money."

"Since we are upon the subject," the lawyer proceeded, "my firm has
suggested that I should approach your lordship with regard to some
means of--pardon me--reducing the liability in question."

So far as the face of Mr. Wadham's client was capable of expressing
anything, it expressed now a certain amount of surprise.

"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he remarked, "that you are asking me to
attend to your business for you."

The lawyer knitted his brows in puzzled fashion.

"I am not sure that I quite follow your lordship," he murmured.

"Do I employ you," his patron continued, "to manage my estates, to
control my finances, to act as agent to all my properties, and yet need
to keep a perspective myself of my various assets?  If eighteen
thousand pounds is required, it is for your firm to decide from what
quarter the money should come.  Personally, as you know, I never
interfere."

Mr. Wadham coughed in somewhat embarrassed fashion.

"As a matter of fact, your lordship," he confessed, with a most
illogical sense that it was his duty to apologise for his client's
impecuniosity, "as a matter of fact, neither my partners nor I can at
the present moment see where a sum of eighteen thousand pounds can be
raised."

The Marquis rose to his feet and shook the cigarette ash carefully from
his coat.

"Our conversation, Mr. Wadham," he said, "is reaching a stage which
bores me.  I have just remembered, too," he added, with a glance at the
clock, "that my daughter is entertaining a few friends to lunch.  You
must write to Merridrew.  He is really a most excellent agent.  He will
tell you what balances are likely to be available during the next few
months."

Mr. Wadham received the suggestion without enthusiasm.

"We made an application to Mr. Merridrew some few weeks ago," he
remarked, "as we needed some ready money for the purpose of briefing
the barristers.  Mr. Merridrew's reply was not encouraging."

"Ah!" the Marquis murmured.  "Merridrew is a gloomy dog sometimes.  Try
him again.  It is astonishing how elastic he can be if he is squeezed."

"I am afraid your lordship has done all the squeezing," the solicitor
observed ruefully.

A little trill of feminine laughter rang through the room.  Two smartly
attired young ladies were seated upon a divan near the door, surrounded
by a little group of acquaintances.  One of them leaned forward and
nodded as the Marquis and his companion passed.

"How do you do, Marquis?" she said, in distinctly transatlantic accents.

The behaviour of his client, under such circumstances, remained an
object lesson to Mr. Wadham for the rest of his life.  The Marquis
gazed with the faintest expression of surprise at, or perhaps through,
the young person who had addressed him.  Fumbling for a moment in his
waistcoat pocket, he raised a horn-rimmed monocle to his eye, dropped
it almost at once, and passed on without the flicker of an eyelid.  On
their way to the outside door, however, he shook his head gravely.

"What a singular exhibition," he murmured,--"demonstration, perhaps I
should say--of the crudeness of modern social intercourse!  Was it my
fancy, Wadham, or did the young person up there address me?"

"She certainly did," the other assented.  "She even called you by name."

They were standing in the courtyard now, waiting for a taxi, and the
Marquis sighed.

"In a public place, too!" he murmured.  "Wadham, I am afraid that we
are living in the wrong age.  I came to that conclusion only a few days
ago, when I was invited, actually invited, to dine at the house of--
But I forget, Wadham, I forget.  Your grandfather would appreciate
these things.  You yourself are somewhat imbued, I fear, with the
modern taint.  A handful of silver, if you please," he added, holding
out his hand.  "I am not accustomed to these chance conveyances."

The lawyer searched his trousers pockets, and produced a couple of pink
notes and a few half-crowns.  In some mysterious fashion, the whole
seemed to pass into the Marquis's long, aristocratic hand.  He turned
to the porter who was standing bare-headed, and slipped a ten-shilling
note into his palm.

"Well, good morning, Wadham," he said, stepping into his taxicab.  "I
have no doubt that you did your best, but this morning's unfortunate
happening will take me some time to get over.  My compliments to your
senior partner.  You can say that I am disappointed--no more."

The Marquis crossed his legs and leaned back in the vehicle.  Mr.
Wadham remained upon the pavement, gazing for a moment at his empty
hand.

"Taxi, sir?" the hall porter asked obsequiously.

Mr. Wadham felt in all his pockets.

"Thank you," he replied gloomily, "I'll walk."




CHAPTER II

Lady Letitia Thursford, the only unmarried daughter of the Marquis,
stood in a corner of the spacious drawing-room at 94 Grosvenor Square,
talking to her brother-in-law.  Sir Robert, although he wanted his
luncheon very badly and, owing to some mistake, had come a quarter of
an hour too soon, retained his customary good nature.  He always
enjoyed talking to his favourite relation-in-law.

"I say, Letty," he remarked, screwing his eyeglass into his eye and
looking around, "you're getting pretty shabby here, eh?"

Lady Letitia smiled composedly.

"That is the worst of you _nouveaux riches_," she declared.  "You do
not appreciate the harmonising influence of the hand of Time.  This
isn't shabbiness, it's tone."

"_Nouveaux riches_, indeed!" he repeated.  "Better not let your father
hear you call me names!"

"Father wouldn't care a bit," she replied.  "As for this drawing-room,
Robert, well, sixty years ago it must have been hideous.  To-day I
rather like it.  It is absolutely and entirely Victorian, even to the
smell."

Sir Robert sniffed vigorously.

"I follow you," he agreed.  "Old lavender perfume, ottomans,
high-backed chairs, chintzes that look as though they came out of the
ark, and a few mouldy daguerreotypes.  The whole thing's here, all
right."

"Perhaps it's just as well for us that it is," she observed.  "I have
come to the conclusion that furniture people are the least trustful in
the world.  I don't think even dad could get a van-load of furniture on
credit."

Sir Robert nodded sympathetically.  He was a pleasant-looking man, a
little under middle age, with bright, alert expression, black hair and
moustache, and perhaps a little too perfectly dressed.  He just escaped
being called dapper.

"Chucking a bit more away in the Law Courts, isn't he?"

Letitia indulged in a little grimace.

"Not even you could make him see reason about that," she sighed.  "He
is certain to lose his case, and it must be costing him thousands."

"Dashed annoying thing," Sir Robert remarked meditatively, "to have a
cottage within a hundred yards of your hall door which belongs to some
one else."

"It is annoying, of course," Letitia assented, "but there is no doubt
whatever that Uncle Christopher made it over to the Vonts absolutely,
and I don't see how we could possibly upset the deed of gift.  I am
now," she continued, moving towards a stand of geraniums and beginning
to snip off some dead leaves, "about to conclude the picture.  You
behold the maiden of bygone days who condescended sometimes to make
herself useful."

The scissors snipped energetically, and Sir Robert watched his
sister-in-law.  She was inclined to be tall, remarkably graceful in a
fashion of her own, a little pale, with masses of brown hair, and eyes
which defied any sort of colour analysis.  But what Sir Robert chiefly
loved about her were the two little lines of humour at the corners of
her firm, womanly mouth.

"Yes, you're in the setting all right, Letty," he declared, "and yet
you are rather puzzling.  Just now you look as though you only wanted
the crinoline and the little curls to be some one's grandmother in her
youth.  Yet at that picture show the other night you were quite the
most modern thing there."

"It's just how I'm feeling," she confided, with a little sigh, standing
back and surveying her handiwork.  "I have that rare gift, you know,
Robert, of governing my personality from inside.  When I am in this
room, I feel Victorian, and I am Victorian.  When I hear that Russian
man's music which is driving every one crazy just now--well, I feel and
I suppose I look different.  Here's Meg coming.  How well she looks!"

They watched the motor-car draw up outside, and the little business of
Lady Margaret Lees's descent carried out in quite the best fashion.  A
footman stood at the door, a grey-haired butler in plain clothes
adventured as far as the bottom step; behind there was just the
suggestion of something in livery.

"Yes, Meg's all right," Sir Robert replied.  "Jolly good wife she is,
too.  Why don't you marry, Letty?"

"Perhaps," she laughed, leaning a little towards him, "because I did
not go to a certain house party at Raynham Court, three years ago."

"Are you conceited enough," he inquired, "to imagine that I should have
chosen you instead of Meg, if you had been there?"

"Perhaps I should have been a little too young," she admitted.  "Why
haven't you a brother, Robert?"

"I don't believe you'd have married him, if I had," he answered
bluntly.  "I'm not really your sort, you know."

Lady Margaret swept in, very voluble but a little discursive.

"Isn't this just like Bob!" she exclaimed.  "I believe he always comes
here early on purpose to find you alone, Letty!  Who's coming to lunch,
please?  And where's dad?"

"Father should be on his way home from the Law Courts by now," Letitia
replied, "and I am afraid it's a very dull luncheon for you, Meg.  Aunt
Caroline is coming, and an American man she travelled over on the
steamer with.  I am not quite sure whether she expects to let Bayfield
to him or offer him to me as a husband, but I am sure she has designs."

"The Duchess is always so helpful," Robert grunted.

"So long as it costs her nothing," Lady Margaret declared, "nothing
makes her so happy as to put the whole world to rights."

"Here she comes--in a taxicab, too," Sir Robert announced, looking out
of the window.  "She is getting positively penurious."

"She is probably showing off before the American," Lady Margaret
remarked.  "She is always talking about living in a semi-detached house
and making her own clothes.  Up to the present, though, she has stuck
to Worth."

The Duchess, who duly arrived a few moments later, brought with her
into the room a different and essentially a more cosmopolitan
atmosphere.  She was a tall, fair woman, attractive in an odd sort of
way, with large features, a delightful smile, and a habit of rapid
speech.  She exchanged hasty greetings with every one present and then
turned back towards the man who had followed her into the room.

"Letty dear, this is Mr. David Thain--Lady Letitia Thursford.  I told
you about Mr. Thain, dear, didn't I?  This is almost his first visit to
England, and I want every one to be nice to him.  Mr. Thain, this is my
other niece, Lady Margaret Lees, and her husband, Sir Robert Lees.
Where's Reginald?"

"Father will be here directly," Letitia replied.  "If any one's
famished, we can commence lunch."

"Then let us commence, by all means," the Duchess suggested.  "I have
been giving the whole of the morning to Mr. Thain, improving his mind
and showing him things.  We wound up with the shops--although I am sure
Alfred's tradespeople are no use to any one."

Letitia moved a few steps towards the bell, and on her way back she
encountered the somewhat earnest gaze of her aunt's protégé.  Even in
those few moments since his entrance, she had been conscious of a
somewhat different atmosphere in the faded but stately room.  He had
the air of appraising everything yet belonging nowhere, of being wholly
out of touch with an environment which he could scarcely be expected to
understand or appreciate.  He was not noticeably ill-at-ease.  On the
other hand, his deportment was too rigid for naturalness, and she was
conscious of some quality in his rather too steadfast scrutiny of
herself which militated strongly against her usual toleration.  He
seemed to stand for events, and in the lives which they mostly lived,
events were ignored.

The butler opened the door and announced luncheon.  They crossed the
very handsome, if somewhat empty hall, into the sombre,
mahogany-furnished dining room, the walls of which were closely hung
with oil paintings.  Letitia motioned the stranger to sit at her right
hand, and fancied that he seemed a little relieved at this brief escape
from his cicerone.  Having gone so far, however, she ignored him for
several moments whilst she watched the seating of her other guests.
Her brother-in-law she drew to the vacant place on her left.

"I dare say father will lunch at the club," she whispered.  "Aunt
Caroline always ruffles him."

"I am afraid he will have found something down Temple Bar way to ruffle
him a great deal more this morning," Sir Robert replied.

The door of the dining room was at that moment thrown open, however,
and the Marquis entered.  Pausing for a moment on the threshold, in
line with a long row of dingy portraits, there was something distinctly
striking in the family likeness so mercilessly reproduced in his long
face, with the somewhat high cheek bones, his tall, angular figure, the
easy bearing and gracious smile.  One missed the snuffbox from between
his fingers, and the uniform, but there was yet something curiously
unmodern in the appearance of this last representative of the Mandeleys.

"Let no one disturb themselves, pray," he begged.  "I am a little late.
My dear Caroline, I am delighted to see you," he went on, raising his
sister's fingers to his lips.  "Margaret, I shall make no enquiries
about your health!  You are looking wonderfully well to-day."

The Duchess glanced towards her protégé, who had risen to his feet and
stood facing his newly arrived host.  There was a moment's poignant
silence.  The two men, for some reason or other, seemed to regard each
other with no common interest.

"This is my friend, Mr. David Thain," the Duchess announced,--"my
brother, the Marquis of Mandeleys.  Mr. Thain is an American, Reginald."

The Marquis shook hands with his guest, a form of welcome in which he
seldom indulged.

"Any friend of yours, Caroline," he said quietly, "is very welcome to
my house.  Robert," he added, as he took his seat, "they tell me that
you were talking rubbish about agriculture in the House last night.
Why do you talk about agriculture?  You know nothing about it.  You are
not even, so far as I remember, a landed proprietor."

Sir Robert smiled.

"And therefore, sir, I am unprejudiced."

"No one can talk about land, nowadays, without being prejudiced," his
father-in-law rejoined.

"Father," Letitia begged, "do tell us about the case."

The Marquis watched the whiskey and soda with which his glass was being
filled.

"The case, my dear," he acknowledged, "has, I am sorry to say, gone
against me.  A remarkably ill-informed and unattractive looking person,
whom they tell me will presently be Lord Chief Justice, presumed not
only to give a decision which was in itself quite absurd, but also
refused leave to appeal."

"Sorry to hear that, sir," Sir Robert remarked.  "Cost you a lot of
money, too, I'm afraid."

"I believe that it has been an expensive case," the Marquis admitted.
"My lawyer seemed very depressed about it."

"And you mean to say that it's really all over and done with now?" Lady
Margaret enquired.

"For the present, it certainly seems so," the Marquis replied.  "I
cannot believe, personally, that the laws of my country afford me no
relief, under the peculiar circumstances of the case.  According to Mr.
Wadham, however, they do not."

"What is it all about, anyway, Reginald?" his sister asked.  "I have
heard more than once but I have forgotten.  Whenever I look in the
paper for a divorce case, I nearly always see your name against the
King, or the King against you, with a person named Vont also
interested.  Surely the Vont family have been retainers down at
Mandeleys for generations?  I remember one of them perfectly well."

The Marquis cleared his throat.

"The unfortunate circumstances," he said, "are perhaps little known
even amongst the members of my own family.  Perhaps it will suffice if
I say that, owing to an indiscretion of my uncle and predecessor, the
eleventh Marquis, a gamekeeper's cottage and small plot of land,
curiously situated in the shadow of Mandeleys, became the property of a
yeoman of the name of Vont.  This ill-advised and singular action of my
late uncle is complicated by the fact that the inheritors of his bounty
have become, as a family, inimical to their patrons.  Their present
representative, for instance, is obsessed by some real or fancied
grievance upon which I scarcely care to dilate.  For nearly twenty
years," the Marquis continued ruminatively, "the cottage has been empty
except for the presence of an elderly person who died some years ago.
Since then I have, through my lawyers, endeavoured, both by purchase
and by upsetting the deed of gift, to regain possession of the
property.  The legal owner appears to be domiciled in America, and as
he has been able to resist my lawsuits and has refused all my offers of
purchase, I gather that in that democratic country he has amassed a
certain measure of wealth.  We are now confronted with the fact that
this person announces his intention of returning to England and taking
up his residence within a few yards of my front door."

Sir Robert laughed heartily.

"Upon my word, sir," he exclaimed, "it's a humorous situation!"

The Marquis was unruffled but bitter.

"Your sense of humour, my dear Robert," he said, "suffers, I fear, from
your daily associations in the House of Commons."

The man by Letitia's side suddenly leaned forward.  After the smooth
and pleasant voice of the Marquis, his question, with its slight
transatlantic accent, sounded almost harsh.

"What did you say that man's name was, Marquis?"

"Richard Vont," was the courteous reply.  "The name is a singular one,
but America is a vast country.  I imagine it is scarcely possible that
in the course of your travels you have come across a person so named?"

"A man calling himself Richard Vont crossed in the steamer with me,
three weeks ago," David Thain announced.  "I have not the least doubt
that this is the man who is coming to occupy the cottage you speak of."

"It is indeed a small world," the Marquis remarked.  "I will not
inflict this family matter upon you all any longer.  After lunch,
perhaps, you will spare me a few moments of your time, Mr.--Mr. Thain.
I shall be interested to hear more about this person."

Letitia rose, presently, to leave the room.  Whilst she waited for her
aunt to conclude a little anecdote, she glanced with some interest at
the man by her side.  More than ever the sense of his incongruity with
that atmosphere seemed borne in upon her, yet she was forced to concede
to him, notwithstanding the delicacy of his appearance, a certain
unexpected strength, a forcefulness of tone and manner, which gave him
a certain distinction.  He had risen, waiting for her passing, and one
lean brown hand gripped the back of the chair in which she had been
sitting.  She carried away with her into the Victorian drawing-room,
with its odour of faded lavender, a queer sense of having been brought
into momentary association with stronger and more vital things in life.




CHAPTER III

Sir Robert preferred to join his wife and sister-in-law in the
drawing-room after luncheon.  The Marquis, with a courteous word of
invitation, led his remaining guest across the grey stone hall into the
library beyond--a sparsely furnished and yet imposing looking
apartment, with its great tiers of books and austere book cases.  On
his way, he drew attention carelessly to one or two paintings by old
masters, and pointed out a remarkable statue presented by a famous
Italian sculptor to his great-grandfather and now counted amongst the
world's treasures.  His guest watched and observed in silence.  There
was nothing of the uncouth sight-seer about him, still less of the
fulsome dilettante.  They settled themselves in comfortable chairs in a
pleasant corner of the apartment.

A footman served them with coffee, a second man handed cigars, and the
butler himself carried a tray of liqueurs.  The Marquis assumed an
attitude of complete satisfaction with the world in general.

"I am pleased to have this opportunity of a few words with you, Mr.
Thain," he said.  "You are quite comfortable in that chair, I trust?"

"Perfectly, thank you."

"And my Larangas are not too mild?  You will find darker-coloured
cigars in the cabinet by your side."

"Thank you," David Thain replied, "I smoke only mild tobacco."

"Personally," the Marquis sighed, "I can go no further than cigarettes.
A vice, perhaps," he added, watching the blue smoke curl upwards, "but
a fascinating one.  So you came across this man Vont on the steamer.
Might I ask under what circumstances?"

"Richard Vont, as I think he called himself," was the quiet reply,
"shared a cabin in the second class with my servant.  I was over there
once or twice and talked with him."

"That is very interesting," the Marquis observed.  "He travelled second
class, eh?  And yet the man has many thousands to throw away in these
absurd lawsuits with me."

"He may have money," Thain pointed out, "and yet feel more at home in
the second class.  I understood that he had been a gamekeeper in
England and was returning to his old home."

"Did he speak of his purpose in doing so?"

"On the contrary, he was singularly taciturn.  All that I could gather
from him was that he was returning to fulfill some purpose which he had
kept before him for a great many years."

The Marquis sighed.  On his high, shapely forehead could be traced the
lines of a regretful frown.

"I was sure of it," he groaned.  "The fellow is returning to make
himself a nuisance to me.  He did not tell you his story, then, Mr.
Thain?"

"He showed no inclination to do so--in fact he avoided so far as
possible all discussion of his past."

"Richard Vont," the Marquis continued, raising his eyes to the ceiling,
"was one of those sturdy, thick-headed, unintelligent yeomen who have
been spoiled by the trifle of education doled out to their
grandfathers, their fathers and themselves.  A few hundred years ago
they formed excellent retainers to the nobles under whose patronage
they lived.  To-day, in these hideously degenerate days, Mr. Thain,
when half the world has moved forward and half stood still, they are an
anachronism.  They find no seemly place in modern life."

David Thain sat very still.  There was just a little flash in his eyes,
which came and went as sunlight might have gleamed across naked steel.

"But I must not forget," his host went on tolerantly, "that I am
speaking now to one who must to some extent have lost his sense of
social proportion by a prolonged sojourn in a country where life is
more or less a jumble."

"You refer to America?"

"Naturally!  As a country resembling more than anything a gigantic
sausage machine wherein all races and men of all social status are
broken up on the wheel, puffed up with false ideas, and thrown out upon
the world, a newly fledged, cunning, but singularly ignorant race of
individuals, America possesses great interest to those--to those, in
short," the Marquis declared, with a little wave of the hand, "whom
such things interest.  I am English, my forefathers were Saxon, my
instincts are perhaps feudal.  That is why I regard the case of Richard
Vont from a point of view which you might possibly fail to appreciate.
Would it bore you if I continue?"

"Not in the least," David Thain assured him.

"Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I succeeded to the
title and estates, an advent which occurred a few years after my wife's
death.  He was already occupying a peculiar position there, owing to
the generosity of my predecessor, whose life he had had the good
fortune to save.  He had very foolishly married above him in
station--the girl was a school mistress, I believe.  When I came to
Mandeleys, I found him living there, a widower with one daughter, and a
little boy, his nephew.  The girl inherited her mother's superiority of
station and intellect, and was naturally unhappy.  I noticed her with
interest, and she responded.  Consequences which in the days of our
ancestors, Mr. Thain, would have been esteemed an honour to the persons
concerned, ensued.  Richard Vont, like an ignorant clodhopper, viewed
the matter from the wrong standpoint....  You said something, I
believe?  Pardon me.  I sometimes fancy that I am a little deaf in my
left ear."

[Illustration: "Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I
succeeded to the title and estates."]

The Marquis leaned forward but David Thain shook his head.  His lips
had moved indeed, but no word had issued from them.

"So far," his host went on, "the story contains no novel features.  I
exercised what my ancestors, in whose spirit I may say that I live,
would have claimed as an undoubted right.  Richard Vont, as I have
said, with his inheritance of ill-bestowed education, and a measure of
that extraordinary socialistic poison which seems, during the last few
generations, to have settled like an epidemic in the systems of the
agricultural classes, resented my action.  His behaviour became so
intolerable that I was forced to dismiss him from my service, and
finally, to avoid a continuance of melodramatic scenes, which were
extremely unpleasant to every one concerned, I was obliged to leave
England for a time and travel upon the Continent."

"And, in the meantime, what happened at Mandeleys?" David Thain asked.

"Richard Vont and his nephew appear to have left for the United States
very soon after my own departure from England.  The cottage he left in
the care of an elderly relative, who gave little trouble but much
annoyance.  She attended a Primitive Methodist Chapel in the village,
and she passed both myself and the ladies of my household at all times
without obeisance."

"Dear me!" David Thain murmured under his breath.

"After her death, I instructed my lawyers to examine the legal title to
the Vont property and to see whether there was any chance of regaining
it.  Its value would be, at the outside, say six or seven hundred
pounds.  I advertised and offered two thousand, five hundred pounds to
regain, it.  My solicitors came into touch with the man Vont through an
agent in America.  His reply to their propositions on my behalf does
not bear repetition.  I then instructed my lawyers to take such steps
as they could to have the deed of gift set aside, sufficient
compensation of course being promised.  That must have been some eight
years ago.  My efforts have come to an end to-day.  The cottage remains
the property of Richard Vont.  My own law costs have been considerable,
but by some means or other this man Vont has contrived to defend his
property at the expenditure of some five or six thousand pounds.  One
can only conclude that he must have prospered in this strange country
of yours, Mr. Thain."

"To a stranger," the latter observed, "it seems curious that this man
should have set so high a value upon a property which must be full of
painful associations to him."

"The very arguments I made use of in our earlier correspondence," his
host assented.  "I have told you the story, Mr. Thain, because it
occurred to me that this man might have communicated to you his reason
for returning after all these years to the neighbourhood."

"He told me nothing."

"Then I have wasted your time with a long and, I fear, a very dull
story," the Marquis apologised gracefully.  "Shall we join the others?"

"There was just one question, if I might be permitted," David Thain
said, "which I should like to ask concerning the story which you have
told me.  The girl to whom you have alluded--Vont's daughter--what
became of her?"

The Marquis for a moment stood perfectly still.  He had just risen to
his feet and was standing where a gleam of sunlight fell upon his cold
and passionless features.  His silence had, in its way, a curious
effect.  He seemed neither to be thinking nor hesitating.  He was just
in a state of suspense.  Presently he leaned forward and knocked the
ash from his cigarette into the grate.

"The lady in question," he replied, "has found that place in the world
to which her gifts and charm entitle her.  I fear that my sister will
be getting impatient.  My daughter, too, I am sure, would like to
improve her acquaintance with you, Mr. Thain."

David Thain was, in his way, an obstinate and self-willed man, but he
found himself, for those first few moments, subject to his host's calm
but effectual closure of the conversation.  Nevertheless, he recovered
himself in time to ask that other question as they left the room.

"The lady is alive, then?"

"She is alive," the Marquis acquiesced, in a colourless tone.

A servant threw open the door of the drawing-room.  The Marquis
motioned to his guest to precede him.

"As I imagined," he murmured, "I see that my sister is impatient.  You
will forgive me, Caroline," he went on, turning to the Duchess.  "Mr.
Thain's conversation was most interesting.  Letitia, my dear, do press
Mr. Thain to dine with us one evening.  This afternoon I fear that I
have been unduly loquacious.  I should welcome another opportunity of
conversing with him concerning his wonderful country."

Letitia picked up a little morocco-bound volume from the table and
consulted it.  Sir Robert drew the prospective guest a little on one
side.

"For heaven's sake," he whispered, "don't give the Marquis any
financial tips.  He has a fancy that he is destined to restore the
fortunes of the Mandeleys on the Stock Exchange.  He is a delightfully
ornamental person, but I can assure you that as a father-in-law he is a
distinct luxury."

David Thain smiled grimly.

"I shall be careful," he promised.




CHAPTER IV

The Marquis devoted the remainder of that afternoon, as he did most
others, to paying a call.  Very soon indeed after David Thain's
departure, he left the house, stepped into the motor-car which was
waiting for him, and, with a little nod to the chauffeur which
indicated his indulgence in a customary enterprise, drove off towards
Battersea.  Here he descended before a large block of flats overlooking
the gardens, stepped into the lift and, without any direction to the
porter, was let out upon the sixth floor.  He made his way along the
corridor to a little mahogany front door, on which was a brass plate
inscribed with the name of _Miss Marcia Hannaway_.  He rang the bell
and was at once admitted by a very trim parlourmaid, who took his hat
and cane, and ushered him into a remarkably pleasant little sitting
room.  A woman, seated before a typewriter, held out two ink-stained
hands towards him with a little laugh.

"I've been putting a ribbon in," she confessed.  "Did you ever see such
a mess!  Please make yourself comfortable while I go and wash."

The Marquis glanced with a slight frown at the machine, and, taking her
wrists, stooped down and kissed them lightly.

"My dear Marcia," he expostulated, "is this necessary!"

She shook her head with a droll smile.

"Perhaps if it were," she confessed, "I should hate to do it.  There's
a _Nineteenth Century_ on the sofa.  You can read my article."

She hurried out of the room, from which she was absent only a very few
moments.  The Marquis, with a finger between the pages of the review
which he had been reading, looked up as she re-entered.  She was a
woman of nameless gifts, of pleasant if not unduly slim figure.  Her
forehead was perhaps a little low, her eyes brilliant and intelligent,
her mouth large and exceedingly mobile.  She was not above the
allurements of dress, for her house gown, with its long tunic trimmed
with light fur, was of fashionable cut and becoming.  Her fingers,
cleansed now from the violet stains, were shapely, almost elegant.  She
threw herself into an easy chair opposite her visitor, and reached out
her hand for a cigarette.

"Well," she asked, "and how has the great trial ended?"

"Adversely," the Marquis confessed.

"You foolish person," she sighed, lighting the cigarette and throwing
the match away.  "Of course you were bound to lose, and I suppose it's
cost you no end of money."

"I believe," he admitted, a little stiffly, "that my lawyers are
somewhat depressed at the amount."

She smoked in silence for a moment.

"So he will go back to Mandeleys.  It is a queer little fragment of
life.  What on earth does he want to do it for?"

"Obstinacy," the Marquis declared,--"sheer, brutal, ignorant obstinacy."

"And the boy?" she asked, pursuing her own train of thought.  "Have you
heard anything of him?"

"Nothing.  To tell you the truth, I have made no enquiries.  Beyond the
fact that it seems as though, for the present, Richard Vont will have
his way, I take no interest in either of them."

She nodded thoughtfully.

"If only we others," she sighed, "could infuse into our lives something
of the marvellous persistence of these people whom in other respects we
have left so far behind!"

"My dear Marcia," he protested, "surely, with your remarkable
intelligence, you can see that such persistence is merely a form of
narrow-mindedness.  Your father has shut in his life and driven it
along one narrow groove.  To you every day brings its fresh sensation,
its fresh object.  Hence--coupled, of course, with your natural
gifts--your success.  The person who thinks of but one thing in life
must be indeed a dull dog."

"Very excellent reasoning," she admitted.  "Still, to come back to this
little tragedy--for it is a tragedy, isn't it?--have you any idea what
he means to do when he gets to Mandeleys?"

"None at all!"

"Let me see," she went on, "it is nineteen years ago last September,
isn't it?--nineteen years out of the middle of his life.  Will he sit
in the garden and brood, I wonder, or has he brought back with him some
scheme of mediaeval revenge?"

"There was a time," the Marquis reflected, "when several of my Irish
tenants used to shoot at me every Saturday night from behind a hedge.
It was not in the least a dangerous operation, and I presume it brought
them some relief.  With Vont, however, things would be different.  I
remember him distinctly as a most wonderful shot."

"Psychologically," Marcia Hannaway observed, "his present action is
interesting.  If he had shot you or me in his first fit of passionate
resentment, everything would have been in order, but to leave the
country, nurse a sullen feeling of revenge for years, and then come
back, seems curious.  What shall you do when you see him sitting in his
garden?"

"I shall address him," the Marquis replied.  "I fear that his long
residence in such a country as America will have altered him
considerably, but it is of course possible that the instincts of his
class remain."

"How feudal you are!" she laughed.

The Marquis frowned slightly.  Although this was the one person in the
world whom he felt was necessary to him, who held a distinct place in
his very inaccessible heart, there were times when he entertained a dim
suspicion that she was making fun of him.  At such times he was very
angry indeed.

"In any case," he said, "we will not waste our time in speculating upon
this man's attitude.  I am still hoping that I may be able to devise
means to render his occupancy of the cottage impossible."

"I should like to hear about the boy."

"If," the Marquis promised, "I find Vont's attitude respectful, I will
make enquiries."

"When are you going to Mandeleys?" she asked.

"I am in no hurry to leave London," he replied.

"When you go," she told him, "I have made up my mind to take a little
holiday.  I thought even of going to the South of France."

The lines of her companion's forehead were slightly elevated.

"My dear Marcia," he protested gently, "is that like you?  The class of
people who frequent the Riviera at this time of the year--"

She laughed at him delightfully.

"Oh, you foolish person!" she interrupted.  "If I go, I shall go to a
tiny little boarding house, or take a villa in one of the quiet
places--San Raphael, perhaps, or one of those little forgotten spots
between Hyères and Cannes.  Phillis Grant would go with me.  She isn't
going to act again until the autumn season."

Her visitor's expression was a little blank.

"In the case of your departure from London," he announced, in a very
even but very forlorn tone, "I will instruct Mr. Wadham to make a
suitable addition to your allowance.  At the same time, Marcia," he
added, "I shall miss you."

His words were evidently a surprise to her.  She threw away her
cigarette and came and sat on the sofa by his side.

"Do you know, I believe you would," she murmured, resting her hand upon
his.  "How queer!"

"I have never concealed my affection for you, have I?" he asked.

This time the laugh which broke from her lips was scarcely natural.

"Concealed your affection, Reginald!" she repeated.  "How strangely
that sounds!  But listen.  You said something just now about my
allowance.  If I allude to it in return, will you believe that it is
entirely for your sake?"

"Of course!"

She rose from her chair and, crossing the room, rummaged about her desk
for a moment, produced a letter, and brought it to him.  The Marquis
adjusted his horn-rimmed eyeglass and read:


_Dear Madam_:

We feel that some explanation is due to you with regard to the
non-payment for the last two quarters of your allowance from our
client, the Marquis of Mandeleys.  We have to inform you that for some
time past we have had no funds in our possession to pay this allowance.
We informed his lordship of the fact, some time back, but in our
opinion his lordship scarcely took the circumstance seriously.  We
think it better, therefore, that you should communicate with him on the
subject.

Faithfully yours,
  WADHAM, SON AND DICKSON.


The Marquis deliberately folded up the letter, placed his eyeglass in
his pocket, and sat looking into the fire.  There was very little
change in his face.  Only Marcia, to whom he had been the study of a
lifetime, knew that so far as suffering was possible to him, he was
suffering at that moment.

"You mustn't think it matters," she said gently.  "You know my last
novel was quite a wonderful success, and for that article in the
_Nineteenth_ you were looking at, they gave me twenty guineas.  I am
really almost opulent.  Still, I thought it was better for you to know
this.  The same thing might refer to other and more important matters,
and you know, dear, you are rather inclined to walk with your head in
the air where money matters are concerned."

"You have been very considerate, but foolishly so, my dear Marcia," he
declared.  "This matter must be put right at once.  I fear that a
younger element has obtruded itself into the firm of Wadham, an element
which scarcely grasps the true position.  I will see these people,
Marcia."

"You are not to worry about it," she begged softly.  "To tell you the
truth--"

Marcia was a brave woman, and the moment had come up to which she had
been leading for so long, which for many months, even years, had been
in her mind.  And when it came she faltered.  There was something in
the superb, immutable poise of the man who bent a little courteously
towards her, which checked the words upon her lips.

"It will be no trouble to me, Marcia, to set this little affair right,"
he assured her.  "I am only glad that your circumstances have been such
that you have not been inconvenienced.  At the same time, is it
entirely necessary for you to manipulate that hideous machine
yourself?" he enquired, inclining his head towards the typewriter.

"There are times," she confessed, "when I find it better.  Of course, I
send a great deal of my work out to be typed, but my correspondence
grows, and my friends find my handwriting illegible."

"I have never found it difficult," he remarked.

"Well, you've had a good many years to get used to it," she reminded
him.

His hand rested for a moment upon her shoulder.  He drew her a little
towards him.  She suddenly laughed, leaned over and kissed him on both
cheeks, and jumped up.  The trim little parlourmaid was at the door
with tea.

"Yes," she went on, "you have learned to read my handwriting, and I
have learned how you like your tea.  Just one or two more little things
like that, and life is made between two people, isn't it?  Shall I tell
you what I think the most singular thing in the world?" she went on,
pausing for a moment in her task.  "It is fidelity to purpose--and to
people, too, perhaps.  In a way there is a quaint sort of distinction
about it, and from another point of view it is most horribly
constraining."

"I interrupted you this afternoon, I imagine," he observed, "in the
construction of some work of fiction."

"Oh, no!" she replied.  "What I write isn't fiction.  That's why it
sells.  It's truth, you see, under another garb.  But there the fact
remains--that I shouldn't know how to make tea for another man in the
world, and you wouldn't be able to read the letters of any other woman
who wrote as badly as I do."

"The fact," he remarked, "seems to me to be a cause for mutual
congratulation."

She stooped down to place a dish of muffins on a heater near the fire,
graceful yet as a girl, and as brisk.

"I can't imagine," she declared, "why it is that my sex has acquired
the reputation for fidelity.  I am sure we crave for experience much
more than men."

The Marquis helped himself to a muffin and considered the point.  There
were many times when Marcia's conversation troubled him.  He was by no
means an ill-read or unintellectual man, only his studies of literature
had been confined to its polished and classical side, the side which
deals so much with living and so little with life.

"Are you preparing for a new work of fiction, Marcia," he asked, "or
are you developing a fresh standpoint?"

"Dear friend," she declared, lightly and yet with an undernote of
earnestness, "how can I tell?  I never know what I am going to do in
the way of work.  I wish I could say the same about life.  Now I am
going to ask you a great favour.  I have to attend a small meeting at
my club, at the other end of Piccadilly, at half-past five.  Would you
take me there?"

"I shall be delighted," he answered, a little stiffly.

She went presently to put on her outdoor clothes.  The Marquis was
disappointed.  He realised how much he had looked forward to that quiet
twilight hour, when somehow or other his vanity felt soothed, and that
queer weariness which came over him sometimes was banished.  He
escorted Marcia to the car when she reappeared, however, without
complaint.

"I see your name in the papers sometimes, Marcia," he observed as he
took his place by her side, "in connection with women's work.  Of
course, I do not interfere in any way with your energies.  I should
not, in whatever direction they might chance to lead you.  At the same
time, I must confess that I have noticed with considerable pleasure
that you have never been publicly associated with this movement in
favour of Woman's Suffrage."

She nodded.

"I should like a vote myself," she admitted simply, "but when I think
of the number of other women who would have to have it, and who don't
yet look at life seriously at all, I think we are better as we are.  Is
it my fancy," she went on, a little abruptly, "or are you really
troubled about the return of--of Richard Vont?"

"As usual, Marcia," he said, "you show a somewhat extraordinary
perception where I am concerned.  I am, as you know, not subject to
presentiments, and I have no exact apprehension of what the word fear
may mean.  At the same time, you are right.  I do view the return of
this man with a feeling which you, as a novelist, might be able to
analyse, but which I, as a layman, unused to fresh sentiments, find
puzzling.  You remember what a famous Frenchman wrote in his memoirs,
suddenly, across one blank page of his journal--'To-day I feel that a
great change is coming.'"

She smiled reassuringly.

"Personally," she told him, "I believe that it is just the call of
England to a man who lived very near the soil--her heart.  I think he
wants the smell of spring flowers, the stillness of an English autumn,
the winds of February in the woods he was brought up in.  It is a form
of heart-sickness, you know.  I have felt it myself so often.  It is
scarcely possible that after all these years he is still nursing that
bitter hatred of us both."

The car had reached the great building in which Marcia's club was
situated.  The Marquis handed her out.

"I trust that you are right," he remarked.  "You will allow me to leave
the car for you?"

She shook her head.

"There are so many women here with whom I want to talk," she said.  "I
may even stay and dine.  And would you mind not coming until Wednesday?
To-morrow I must work all day at an article which has to be typed and
catch the Wednesday's boat for America."

"Exactly as you wish," he assented.

She waved her hand to him and ran lightly up the steps.  The Marquis
threw himself back in his car and hesitated.  The footman was waiting
for an address, and his august master was suddenly conscious that the
skies were very grey, that a slight rain was falling, and that there
was nowhere very much he wanted to go.

The man waited with immovable face.

"To--the club."




CHAPTER V

Messrs. Wadham, Son and Dickson were not habited in luxury.  Theirs was
one of those old-fashioned suites of offices in Lincoln's Inn, where
the passages are of stone, the doors of painted deal, and a general air
of bareness and discomfort prevails.  The Marquis, who was a rare
visitor, followed the directions of a hand painted upon the wall and
found himself in what was termed, an enquiry office.  A small boy tore
himself away with apparent regret from the study of a pile of
documents, and turned a little wearily towards the caller.

"I desire," the Marquis announced, "to see Mr. Wadham, Senior, or to
confer at once with any member of the firm who may be disengaged."

The small boy was hugely impressed.  He glanced at the long row of
black boxes along the wall and a premonition of the truth began to dawn
upon him.

"What name, sir?" he enquired.

"The Marquis of Mandeleys."

The office boy swung open a wicket gate and pointed to the hard remains
of a horsehair stuffed easy-chair.  The Marquis eyed it curiously--and
remained standing.  His messenger thereupon departed, exhibiting a rare
and unlegal haste.  He returned breathless, in fact, from his mission,
closely followed by Mr. Wadham, Junior.

"This is quite an honour, your lordship," the latter said, hastily
withdrawing his hand as he became aware of a certain rigidity in his
visitor's demeanour.  "My father is disengaged.  Let me show you the
way to his room."

"I should be obliged," the Marquis assented.

Mr. Wadham, Senior, was an excellent replica of his son, a little
fatter, a little rosier and a little more verbose.  He rose from behind
his desk and bowed twice as his distinguished client entered.  The
Marquis indicated to Mr. Wadham, Junior, the chair upon which he
proposed to sit, and waited while it was wheeled up to the side of the
desk.  Then he withdrew his gloves in leisurely fashion and extended
his hand to the older man, who clasped it reverently.

"Your lordship pays us a rare honour," Mr. Wadham, Senior, observed.

"I should have preferred," the Marquis said, with some emphasis, "that
circumstances had not rendered my visit to-day necessary."

The head of the firm nodded sympathetically.

"You will bear in mind," he begged, "our advice concerning these recent
actions."

"Your advice was, without doubt, legally good," his visitor replied,
"but it scarcely took into account circumstances outside the legal
point of view.  However, I am not here to discuss those actions, which
I understand are now finally disposed of."

"Quite finally, I fear, your lordship."

"I find myself," the Marquis continued sternly, "in the painful
position of having to prefer a complaint against your firm."

"I am very sorry--very sorry indeed," Mr. Wadham murmured.

"I discovered yesterday afternoon, entirely by accident, that the
allowance which you have my instructions to make to Miss Hannaway has
not been paid for the last two quarters."

"Through no neglect of ours, I assure your lordship," Mr. Wadham
insisted gravely.  "You will remember that we wrote to you last
October, pointing out that the yield from the estates was insufficient,
without the help of the bank, to meet the interest on the mortgages,
and that, amongst other claims which we were obliged to leave over, we
should be unable to forward the usual cheque to the young lady in
question."

The Marquis cleared his throat and tapped with his long forefingers
upon the desk.  It was a curious circumstance that, although both Mr.
Wadham, Senior, and Junior had done more than their duty towards their
distinguished client, each had at that moment the feeling of a criminal.

"You are, I believe, perfectly well aware, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis
declared, "that I never read your letters."

Mr. Wadham, Senior, coughed.  His son thrust both hands into his
trousers pockets.  The statement was unanswerable.

"I was therefore," the Marquis continued severely, "in complete
ignorance of your failure to carry out my instructions."

Mr. Wadham, Junior, less affected than his father by tradition, and
priding himself more upon that negligible gift of common sense,
interposed respectfully but firmly.

"We can scarcely be responsible," he pointed out, "for your lordship's
indisposition to read letters containing business information of
importance."

The Marquis changed his position slightly and looked at the speaker.
Mr. Wadham, Junior, became during the next few seconds profoundly
impressed with the irrelevance, almost the impertinence of his words.

"I should have imagined," the former said severely, "that my habits are
well-known to the members of a firm whose connection with my family is
almost historical."

"We should have waited upon your lordship," Mr. Wadham, Senior,
admitted.  "But with reference to the case of this young lady, not
hearing from your lordship, we wrote to her, very politely, indicating
the great difficulties which we had to face in the management of the
Mandeleys estates, owing to the abnormal agricultural depression, and
we promised to send her a cheque as soon as such a step became
possible.  In reply we heard from her--a most ladylike and reasonable
letter it was--stating that owing to recent literary successes, and to
your lordship's generosity through so many years, she was only too glad
of the opportunity to beg us to cease from forwarding the quarterly
amount as hitherto.  Under those circumstances, we have devoted such
small sums of money as have come into our hands to more vital purposes."

"I suppose it did not occur to you," the Marquis observed, "that I am
the person to decide what is or is not vital in the disposition of my
own moneys."

"That is a fact which we should not presume to dispute," the lawyer
admitted, "but I should like to point out that, on the next occasion
when we had a little money in hand, your household steward, Mr.
Harrison, was here in urgent need of a thousand pounds for the payment
of domestic bills connected with the establishment in Grosvenor Square."

"It appears to me," the Marquis said, with a trace of irritability in
his tone, "that the greater part of my income goes in paying bills."

The complaint was one which for the moment left Mr. Wadham speechless.
He was vaguely conscious that an adequate reply existed, but it eluded
him.  His son, who had adopted the attitude of being outside the
discussion, was engaged in an abortive attempt to appear as much at
ease in his own office as this client of theirs certainly was.

"I will discuss the matter of Miss Hannaway's future allowance with
that young lady, and let you know the result," the Marquis announced.
"In the meantime, how do we stand for ready money?"

"Ready money, your lordship!" his interlocutor gasped.

"Precisely," the Marquis assented.  "It is, I believe, a few days after
the period when my tenants usually pay their rents."

"Your lordship," Mr. Wadham said, speaking with every attempt at
gravity, "if every one of your tenants paid their full rent and brought
it into this office at the present moment, we should still be unable to
pay the interest on the mortgages due next month, without further
advances from the bank."

"These mortgages," the Marquis remarked thoughtfully, "are a nuisance."

So self-evident a fact seemed to leave little room for comment or
denial.  The Marquis frowned a little more severely and withdrew his
forefingers from the desk.

"Figures, I fear, only confuse me," he confessed, "but for the sake of
curiosity, what do my quarterly rents amount to?"

"Between seven and eight thousand pounds, according to deductions, your
lordship," was the prompt reply.  "That sum I presume will be coming in
from your agent, Mr. Merridrew, within the course of a few days.  The
interest upon the mortgages amounts to perhaps a thousand pounds less
than that sum.  That thousand pounds, I may be permitted to point out
to your lordship, is all that remains for the carrying on of your
Grosvenor Square establishment, and for such disbursements as are
necessary at Mandeleys."

"It is shameful," the Marquis declared severely, "that any one should
be allowed to anticipate their income in this way.  Mortgages are most
vicious institutions."

Mr. Wadham coughed.

"Your lordship's expenditure, some ten or fifteen years ago, rendered
them first necessary.  After that there was the unfortunate speculation
in the tin mines--"

"That will do, Mr. Wadham," his client interrupted.  "All I desire to
know from you further is a statement of the approximate sum required to
clear off the mortgages upon the Mandeleys estates?"

Mr. Wadham, Senior, looked a little startled.  His son stopped
whistling under his breath and leaned forward in his chair.

"Clear off the mortgages," he repeated.

"Precisely!"

"The exact figures," was the somewhat hesitating pronouncement, "would
require a quarter of an hour's study, but I should say that a sum of
two hundred and twenty thousand pounds would be required."

"I have not a head for figures," the Marquis acknowledged gravely, "but
the amount seems trifling.  I shall wish you good-day now, gentlemen.
Two hundred and twenty thousand, I think you said, Mr. Wadham?"

"That is as near the amount as possible," the lawyer admitted.

The Marquis drew on his gloves, a sign that he did not intend to honour
his adviser with any familiar form of farewell.  He inclined his head
slightly to Mr. Wadham, and more slightly still to Mr. Wadham, Junior,
who was holding open the door.  The small boy, who was on the alert,
escorted him to the front steps, and received with delight a gracious
word of thanks for his attentions.  So the Marquis took his departure.

Mr. Wadham, Junior, closed the door and threw himself into the chair
which had been occupied by their distinguished client.  There was a
faint perfume of lavender water remaining in the atmosphere.  His eyes
wandered around the further rows of tin boxes which encumbered the wall.

"I suppose," he murmured, "it's a great thing to have a Marquis for
one's client."

"I suppose it is," Mr. Wadham, Senior, assented gloomily.

"Father, do you ever feel at ease with him?" his son asked curiously.
"Do you ever feel as though you were talking to a real human being, of
the same flesh and blood as yourself?"

"Never for a single moment," was the vigorous reply.  "If I felt like
that, John, do you know what I should do?  No?  Well, then, I'll tell
you.  I should have those tin boxes taken out, one by one, and stacked
in the hall.  I should say to him, as plainly as I am saying it to
you--'We lose money every year by your business, Marquis.  We've had
our turn.  Try some one else--and go to the Devil!'"

"But you couldn't do it!" Mr. Wadham, Junior, observed disconsolately.

"I couldn't," his father agreed, with a note of subdued melancholy in
his tone.




CHAPTER VI

Lady Margaret, who chanced to be the first arrival on the night of the
dinner party in David Thain's honour, contemplated her sister
admiringly.  Letitia was wearing a gown of ivory satin, a form of
attire which seemed always to bring with it almost startling
reminiscences of her Italian ancestry.

"So glad to find you alone, Letty," she remarked, as she sank into the
most comfortable of the easy chairs.  "There's something I've been
wanting to ask you for weeks.  Bob put it into my head again this
afternoon."

"What is it, dear?" Letitia enquired.

"Why don't you marry Charlie Grantham?" her sister demanded abruptly.

"There are so many reasons.  First of all, he hasn't really ever asked
me."

"You're simply indolent," Lady Margaret persisted.  "He'd ask you in
five minutes if you'd let him.  Do you suppose Bob would ever have
thought of marrying me, if I hadn't put the idea into his head?"

"You're so much cleverer than I," Letitia sighed.

"Not in the least," was the prompt disclaimer.  "I really doubt whether
I have your brains, and I certainly haven't your taste.  The only thing
that I have, and always had, is common sense, common sense enough to
see that girls in our position in life must marry, and the sooner the
better."

"Why only our class of life?"

"Don't be silly!  It's perfectly obvious, isn't it, that the daughters
of the middle classes are having the time of their lives.  They are all
earning money.  Amongst them it has become quite the vogue to take
situations as secretaries or milliners or that sort of thing, and it
simply doesn't matter whether they marry or not.  They get all the fun
they want out of life."

"It sounds quite attractive," Letitia admitted.  "I think I shall take
a course in typewriting and shorthand."

"You won't," Margaret rejoined.  "You know perfectly well that that is
one of the things we can never do.  You've got to marry first.  Then
you can branch out in life in any direction you choose--art, travel,
amours, or millinery.  You can help yourself with both hands."

"Which have you chosen, Meg?"

"Oh, I am an exception!" Margaret confessed.  "You see, Bob is such
fun, and I've never got over the joke of marrying him.  Besides, I
haven't any craving for things at all.  I am not temperamental like
you.  Where's father?"

"Just back from the country.  He'll be here in time, though."

"And who's dining?"

"Charlie, for one," Letitia replied, "Aunt Caroline, of course, and
Uncle, Mrs. Honeywell, and the American person.  The party was got up
on his account, so I expect father wants to borrow money from him."

"He doesn't look an easy lender," Lady Margaret remarked.

"There's no one proof against father," Letitia declared.  "He is too
exquisitely and transparently dishonest.  You know, there's a man's
story about the clubs that he once borrowed money from Lewis at five
per cent. interest."

Margaret remained in a serious frame of mind.

"Something will have to be done," she sighed.  "Robert went down and
looked at the mortgages, the other day.  He says they are simply
appalling, there isn't an acre missed out.  It's quite on the cards,
you know, Letty, that Mandeleys may have to go."

Letitia made a little grimace.

"I am getting perfectly callous," she confided.  "If it did, this house
would probably follow, father would realise everything he could lay his
hands upon and become the autocrat of some French watering place, and I
should cease to be the honest but impecunious daughter of a wicked
nobleman, and enjoy the liberty of the middle-class young women you
were telling me about.  It wouldn't be so bad!"

"Or marry--" Margaret began.

"Mr. David Thain," the butler announced.

The juxtaposition of words perhaps incited in Letitia a greater
interest as she turned away from her sister to welcome the first of her
guests.  He had to cross a considerable space of the drawing-room, with
its old-fashioned conglomeration of furniture untouched and unrenovated
for the last two generations, but he showed not the slightest sign of
awkwardness or self-consciousness in any form.  He was slight and none
too powerfully built, but his body was singularly erect, and he moved
with the alert dignity of a man in perfect health and used to gymnastic
training.  His clean-shaven face disclosed nervous lines which his
manner contradicted.  His mouth was unexpectedly hard, his deep-set
grey eyes steel-like, almost brilliant.  These things made for a
strength which had in it, however, nothing of the uncouth.  The only
singularity about his face and manner, as he took his hostess' fingers,
was the absence of any smile of greeting upon his lips.

"I am afraid that I am a little early," he apologised.

"We are all the more grateful to you," Lady Margaret assured him.
"Letitia and I always bore one another terribly.  A married sister, you
know, feels rather like the cuckoo returning to the discarded nest."

"One hates other people's liberty so much," Letitia sighed.

"I should have thought liberty was a state very easy to acquire," David
Thain observed didactically.

"That is because you come from a land where all the women are clever
and the men tolerant," Letitia replied.  "Where is that husband of
yours, Margaret?"

"I am ashamed to say," her sister confessed, "that he stayed down in
the morning room while Gossett fetched him a glass of sherry.  Look at
him now," she added, as Sir Robert entered the room unannounced and
came smiling towards them.  "How can I have any faith in a husband like
that.  Doesn't he look as though the only thing that could trouble him
in life was that he hadn't been able to get here a few minutes earlier!"

"Given away, eh?" the newcomer groaned, as he kissed Letitia's fingers.
"How are you, Mr. Thain?  Your country is entirely to blame for my
habits.  I got so into the habit of drinking cocktails while I was over
there that I really prefer my aperitif to my wine at dinner."

Sir Robert, who had discovered within the last few days exactly where
Mr. David Thain stood amongst the list of American multi-millionaires,
drew this very distinguished person a little on one side to ask about a
railway.  Then the Marquis made his appearance, and immediately
afterwards the remaining guests.  David Thain, of whom many of the
morning papers, during the last few days, had found something to say,
found himself almost insinuated into the position of favoured guest.
He took Mrs. Honeywell--a dark and rather tired-looking lady--in to
dinner, but he sat at Letitia's left hand, and she gave him a good deal
of her attention.

"You know everybody, don't you, Mr. Thain?" she asked him, soon after
they had taken their places.

"Except the gentleman on your right," he answered.

She leaned towards him confidentially.

"His name," she whispered, "is Lord Charles Grantham.  He is the son of
the Duke of Leicester, who is, between ourselves, almost as wicked a
duke as my father is a marquis.  Fortunately, however, his mother left
him a fortune.  Do you notice how thoughtful he looks?"

David Thain glanced across the table at the young man in question, who
was exchanging rather weary monosyllables with his right-hand neighbour.

"He is perhaps overworked?"

Letitia shook her head.

"Not at all.  He cannot make up his mind whether or not he wants to
marry me."

"And can you make up your mind whether you wish to marry him?"

Letitia lost for a moment her air of gentle banter.

"What a downright question!" she observed.  "However, I can't tell you
before I answer him, can I, and he hasn't asked me yet."

"I should think," David Thain said coolly, "that you would make an
excellent match."

Their eyes met for a moment.  There was a challenging light in hers to
which he instantly responded.  Her very beautiful white teeth closed
for a moment upon her lower lip.  Then she smiled upon him once more.

"It is so reassuring," she murmured, "to be told things like that by
people who are likely to know.  Charles, talk to me at once," she went
on, turning towards him.  "Mr. Thain and I agree far too perfectly upon
everything."

Thain was deep in conversation with his neighbour before Lord Charles
was able to disentangle himself from the conversational artifices of
the Duchess.  Letitia took note of his aptness with a little, malicious
smile.  It was towards the close of dinner when she once more turned
towards him.

"Have you been telling Mrs. Honeywell how you made all your millions?"
she asked.

"I have been trying to point out," he replied, "that the first million
is all one has to make.  The rest comes."

"What a delightful country!" Letitia observed.  "If I were to borrow
from all my friends and collected a million, do you think I could go
out there and become a multi-millionaire?"

"Women are not natural money-makers," he pronounced.

"What is her real sphere?" she asked sweetly.  "I should so much like
to know your opinion of us."

"As yet," he replied, "I have had no time to form one."

"What a pity!" she sighed.  "It would have been so instructive."

"In the small amenities of daily life," he said thoughtfully, "in what
one of our writers calls the insignificant arts, women seem inevitably
to excel.  They always appear to do better, in fact, in the narrower
circles.  Directly they step outside, a certain lack of breadth becomes
noticeable."

"Dear me!" she murmured.  "It's a good thing I'm not one of these
modern ladies who stand on a tub in Hyde Park and thump the drum for
votes.  I should be saying quite disagreeable things to you, Mr. Thain,
shouldn't I?"

"You couldn't be one of those, if you tried," he replied.  "You see, if
I may be permitted to say so, nature has endowed you with rather a rare
gift so far as your sex is concerned."

"Don't be over-diffident," she begged.  "I may know it, mayn't I?"

"A sense of humour."

"When a man tells a woman that she has a sense of humour," Letitia
declared, "it is a sure sign that he--"

She suddenly realised how intensely observant those steely grey eyes
could be.  She broke off in her sentence.  They still held her, however.

"That he what?"

"Such a bad habit of mine," she confided frankly.  "I so often begin a
sentence and have no idea how to finish it.  Ada," she went on,
addressing Mrs. Honeywell, "has Mr. Thain taught you how to become a
millionairess?"

"I haven't even tried to learn," that lady replied.  "He has promised
me a subscription to my Cripples' Guild, though."

"What extraordinary bad taste," Letitia remarked, "to cadge from him at
dinner time!"

"If your father weren't within hearing," Mrs. Honeywell retorted, "I'd
let you know what I think of you as a hostess!  Why are we all so
frightened of your father, Letitia?  Look at him now.  He is the most
picturesque and kindly object you can imagine, yet I find myself always
choosing my phrases, and slipping into a sort of pre-Victorian English,
when I fancy that he is listening."

"I see him more from the family point of view, I suppose," Letitia
observed, "and yet, in a way, he is rather a wonderful person.  For
instance, I have never seen him hurry, I have never seen him angry, in
the ordinary sense of the word; in fact he has the most amazing
complacency I ever knew.  Of course, Aunt Caroline," she went on,
turning to the Duchess a few moments later, "if you want to stay with
the men, pray do so.  If not, you might take into account the fact that
I have been trying to catch your eye for the last three minutes."

Thain drew up nearer to his host after the women had withdrawn, and
found himself next Sir Robert, who talked railways with eloquence and
some understanding.  Lord Charles was frankly bored, and bestowed his
whole attention upon the port.  The Marquis discussed a recent land
bill with his brother-in-law, but in a very few moments gave the signal
to rise.  He attached himself at once to David Thain.

"You play bridge?" he asked.

"Never if I can avoid it," was the frank reply.

"Then you and I will entertain one another," his host suggested.

The Marquis's idea of entertainment was to install his guest in a
comfortable chair in a small den at the back of the house, which he
kept for his absolutely private use, and to broach the subject which
had led to David's welcome at Grosvenor Square.

"Let me ask you," he began, "have you seen anything more of this man
Vont?"

"Nothing."

The Marquis looked ruminatively at the cedar spill with which he had
just lit his cigarette.

"I am almost certain," he said, "that I saw him on the platform at
Raynham--the nearest station to Mandeleys--yesterday.  He seemed
marvellously little altered."

"He has probably taken up his abode down there, then," David observed.

The Marquis's face darkened.  He brushed the subject aside.

"There is a matter concerning which I wish to speak to you, Mr. Thain,"
he said.  "You are one of the fortunate ones of the earth, who have
attained, by your own efforts, I believe, an immense prosperity."

David listened in silence, watching the ash at the end of his cigar.

"Your money, my son-in-law, Sir Robert, tells me," the Marquis
continued, "has been made in brilliant and sagacious speculation.
There have no doubt been others who have followed in your footsteps,
and, in a humbler way, have shared your success."

David had developed a rare gift of silence.  He smoked steadily, and
his expression was remarkably stolid.

"I find myself in need of a sum," the Marquis proceeded, with the air
of a man introducing a business proposition, "of two hundred and twenty
thousand pounds--there or thereabouts."

There was a momentary gleam of interest in David's eyes, gone, however,
almost as soon as it had appeared.  For the first time he made a remark.

"Over a million dollars, eh?"

The Marquis inclined his head.

"My position," he continued, "naturally precludes me from making use of
any of the ordinary methods by means of which men amass wealth.  I have
at various times, however, made small but not entirely unsuccessful
speculations--upon the Stock Exchange.  The position in which I now
find myself demands something upon a larger scale."

"What capital," David Thain enquired, "can you handle?"

The Marquis stroked his chin thoughtfully.  He was aware of a
pocketbook a shade fuller than usual, of three overdrawn banking
accounts, and his recent interview with his lawyers.

"Capital," he repeated.  "Ah!  I suppose capital is necessary."

"In any gambling transaction, you always have to take into account the
possibility," David reminded him, "that you might lose."

"Precisely," the Marquis assented, selecting another cigarette, "but
that is not the class of speculation I am looking for.  I am anxious to
discover an enterprise, either by means of my own insight into such
matters, which is not inconsiderable, or the good offices of a friend,
in which the chances of loss do not exist."

David was a little staggered.  He contemplated his host curiously.

"Such speculations," he said at last, "are difficult to find."

"Not to a man of your ability, I am sure, Mr. Thain," the Marquis
asserted.

"Do I gather that you wish for my advice?"

The Marquis inclined his head.

"That," he intimated, "was my object."

David smoked steadily, and his host contemplated him with a certain
artistic satisfaction.  He had been something of a sculptor in his
youth, and he saw possibilities in the shape and pose of the great
financier.

"The long and short of it is," David said at last, "that you want to
make a million dollars, without any trouble, and without any chance of
loss.  There are a good many others, Marquis."

"But they have not all the privilege," was the graceful rejoinder, "of
knowing personally a Goliath of finance.  You will pardon the allegory.
I take it from this morning's _Daily Express_."

"In my career," David continued, after a moment's pause, "you would
perhaps be surprised to hear that I have done very little speculating.
I have made great purchases of railways, and land through which
railways must run, because I knew my job and because I had insight.
The time for that is past now.  To make money rapidly one must, as you
yourself have already decided, speculate.  I can tell you of a
speculation in which I have myself indulged, but I do not for a moment
pretend that it is a certainty.  It was good enough for me to put in
two million dollars, and if what I believe happens, my two millions
will be forty millions.  But there is no certainty."

The Marquis fidgeted in his chair.

"By what means," he asked tentatively, "could I interest myself in this
undertaking?"

"By the purchase of shares," was the prompt reply.

The Marquis considered the point.  The matter of purchasing anything
presented fundamental difficulties to him!

"Tell me about these shares?" he invited.  "What is the nature of the
undertaking?"

"Oil."

The Marquis grew a little more sanguine.  There was an element of
fantasy about oil shares.  Perhaps they could be bought on paper.

"Large fortunes have been made in oil," he said.  "Personally, I am a
believer in oil.  Where are the wells?"

"In Arizona."

"An excellent locality," the Marquis continued approvingly.  "What is
the present price of the shares?"

"They are dollar shares," David replied, "and their present price is
par.  You may find them quoted in some financial papers, but as
practically the entire holding is in my possession, the market for them
is limited."

"Precisely," the Marquis murmured.  "To come to business, Mr. Thain,
are you disposed to part with any?"

David appeared to consider the matter.

"Well, I don't know," he said, "I've made something like twenty million
dollars out of my railways, and I have about reached that point when
speculations cease to attract."

The Marquis held on to the sides of his chair and struggled against the
feeling almost of reverence which he feared might be reflected in his
countenance.

"A very desirable sum of money, Mr. Thain," he conceded.

"It's enough for me," David acknowledged.  "There are two million
shares in the Pluto Oil Company, practically the whole of which stand
in my name.  If the calculations which the most experienced oil men in
the States have worked out materialise, those shares will be worth ten
million dollars in four months' time.  Let me see," he went on, "two
hundred and thirty thousand pounds is, roughly speaking, one million,
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  You can have two hundred
thousand of my shares, if you like, at a dollar."

"This is exceedingly kind of you," the Marquis declared.  "Let me see,"
he reflected, "two hundred thousand dollars would be--"

"A matter of forty thousand pounds."

"I see!" the Marquis ruminated.  "Forty thousand pounds!"

"You are not, I am sure, a business man," his guest continued, "so you
will pardon my reminding you that you can easily obtain an advance from
your bankers upon the title deeds of property, or a short mortgage
would produce the amount."

"A mortgage," the Marquis repeated, as though the idea were a new one
to him.  "Ah, yes!  I must confess, though, that I have the strongest
possible objection to mortgages, if they can in any way be dispensed
with."

"I suppose that is how you large English landowners generally feel,"
David remarked tolerantly.  "If you would prefer it, I will take your
note of hand for the amount of the shares, payable, say, in three
months' time."

The Marquis upset the box of cigarettes which he was handling.  He was
not as a rule a clumsy person, but he felt strongly the need of some
extraneous incident.  He stood on the hearthrug whilst the servant whom
he summoned collected the cigarettes and replaced them in the box.  As
soon as the door was closed, he turned to his guest.

"Your offer, Mr. Thain," he said, "is a most kindly one.  It simplifies
the whole matter exceedingly."

"You had better make the usual enquiries concerning the property," the
latter advised.  "I am afraid you will find it a little difficult over
on this side to get exact information, but if you have any friends who
understand oil prospecting--"

The Marquis held out his hand.

"It is not an occasion upon which a further opinion is necessary," he
declared.  "I approve of the locality of the property, and the fact
that you yourself are largely interested is sufficient for me."

"Then any time you like to meet me at your lawyer's," David suggested,
"I'll hand over the shares and you can sign a note of hand for the
amount."

The Marquis considered the matter for a moment, thoughtfully.  There
was something about the idea of letting Mr. Wadham see him sign a
promissory note for forty thousand pounds which occurred to him as
somewhat precarious.

"Perhaps you have legal connections of your own here," he ventured.
"To tell you the truth, I have been obliged to speak my mind in a very
plain manner to my own solicitors.  I consider that they mismanaged the
Vont case most shamefully.  I would really prefer to keep away from
them for a time."

David nodded.

"I have a letter to some lawyers, at my rooms," he said.  "I will send
you their address, and we can make an appointment to meet at their
office."

The Marquis assented gravely.  He considered that the matter was now
better dismissed from further discussion.

"I have no doubt," he said, "that my sister would like to talk to you
for a time.  Shall we join the ladies?"

David threw away his cigar and professed his readiness.  They crossed
the hall and entered the drawing-room.  There was one table of bridge,
and Letitia was seated with her sister on a divan near the window.  The
former sighed as she watched the entrance of the two men.

"Do look at father, Meg," she whispered.  "I am perfectly certain he
has been borrowing money."

Margaret shrugged her shoulders.

"What if he has, my dear!" she rejoined.  "These people can afford to
pay for their entertainment.  I think it's rather clever of him."

Letitia groaned.

"You have such ignoble ideas, Meg," she said reprovingly.  "Now I know
I shall have to make myself agreeable to Mr. Thain, and I either like
him or dislike him immensely.  I haven't the least idea which."

"I shouldn't be surprised," her sister whispered, as Thain approached,
"if he didn't help you presently to make up your mind."




CHAPTER VII

Marcia Hannaway called upon her publisher during the course of the
following day.  She found the ready entrée of a privileged client--with
scarcely a moment's delay she was ushered into the presence of James
Borden, the person who for some years now had occupied the second place
in her thoughts and life.

"Anything happened, Marcia?" he enquired, after their quiet but
familiar greeting.  "You look as though you were bringing Fate with
you."

She made herself comfortable in the easy-chair which he had drawn up to
the fire.  Outside, an unexpectedly cold wind made the sense of warmth
doubly pleasant.  She unfastened her simple furs and smiled at him a
little dolefully.

"Just this," she replied, handing him a letter.

He spread it out, adjusted his eyeglasses and read it deliberately:


94, GROSVENOR SQUARE, Thursday.

_My dear Marcia:_

I have made enquiries with reference to the non-payment of your
allowance for the last two quarters, and now enclose cheque for the
amount, drawn by my agent in Norfolk and payable to yourself.  I think
I can promise you that no further irregularities shall occur.

I look forward to seeing you to-morrow afternoon, and I must tell you
of a financial operation I am now conducting, which, if successful, may
enable me to pay off the mortgages which render the Norfolk estates so
unremunerative.

I trust that you are well, dear.  I have ordered Carlton White's to
send in a few flowers, which I hope will arrive safely.

Yours,
  REGINALD.


James Borden read the letter carefully, glanced at the small coronet at
the top of the paper, and folded it up.

"I'm sorry, Marcia," he said simply.

She made a little grimace.

"My dear man," she confessed, "so am I.  After all, though, I am not
sure that the money makes all the difference.  You see, if he really
were too poor--or rather if his lawyers couldn't raise the money to
send to me--I fancy that I should feel just the same."

The publisher turned his chair round towards the fire.  He was a man of
barely middle age, although his black hair was besprinkled with grey
and growing a little thin at the temples.  His features were good, but
his face was a little thin, and his clothes were scarcely as tidy, or
the appointments of his office so comfortable as his name and position
in the publishing world might have warranted.  Marcia, who had been
looking at him while he read, leaned forward and brushed the cigarette
ash from his coat sleeve.

"Such an untidy man!" she declared, straightening his tie.  "I am not
at all sure that you deserve to have lady clients calling upon you.
Were you late last night?"

"A little," he confessed.

"That means about one or two, I suppose," she went on reprovingly.

"I dined at the club and stayed on," he told her.  "There was nothing
else to do except work, and I was a little tired of that."

"Any fresh stuff in--interesting stuff, I mean?"

He shook his head.

"Three more Russian novels," he replied, "all in French and want
translating, of course.  The only one I have read is terribly grim and
sordid.  I dare say it would sell.  I am going to read the other two
before I decide anything.  Then perhaps you'll help me."

"Of course I will," she promised.  "I do wish, though, James, you
wouldn't stay at the club so late.  How many whiskies and sodas?"

"I didn't count," he confessed.

She sighed.

"I know what that means!  James, why aren't you a little more human?
You get heaps of invitations to nice houses.  Much better go out and
make some women friends.  You ought to marry, you know."

"I am quite ready to when you will marry me," he retorted.

"But, my dear man, I am bespoke," she reminded him.  "You know that
quite well.  I couldn't possibly think of marrying anybody."

"What are you going to do with that money?" he demanded.

"I think I shall keep it," she decided.  "Not to do so would hurt him
terribly."

"And keeping it hurts me damnably!" he muttered.

She shook her head at him.

"We've had this over so often, haven't we?  I cannot leave Reginald as
long as he wants me, relies upon me as much as he does now."

"Why not?" was the almost rough demand.  "He has had the best of your
life."

"And he has given me a great deal of his," she retorted.  "For nineteen
years I have been his very dear friend.  During all that time he has
never broken a promise to me, never told a falsehood, never said a
single word which could grate or hurt.  If he has sometimes seemed a
little aloof, it is because he really believes himself to be a great
person.  He believes in himself immensely, you know, James--in the
privileges and sanctity of his descent.  It seems so strange in this
world, where we others see other things.  If I only dared, I would
write a novel about it."

"But you don't care for him any more?"

"Care for him?" she repeated.  "How could I ever stop caring for him!
He was my first lover, and has been my only one."

"Let me ask you a question," James Borden demanded suddenly.  "Don't
you ever feel any grudge against him?  He took you away from a very
respectable position in life.  He ruined all sorts of possibilities.
He was fifteen or twenty years older than you were, and he knew the
world.  You pleased him, and he deliberately entrapped your affections.
Be honest, now.  Don't you sometimes hate him for it?"

"Never," she answered without hesitation.  "I was, as you say, most
respectably placed--a teacher at a village school--and I might have
married a young farmer, or bailiff's son, or, with great luck, a
struggling young doctor, and lived a remarkably rural life, but, as you
have observed, in great respectability.  My dear James, I should have
hated it.  I was, I think, nineteen years old when Reginald, in a most
courtly fashion, suggested that I should come to London with him, and I
have exactly the same feelings to-day about my acceptance of his
proposal as I had then."

"You are a puzzle," he declared.  "You wouldn't be, of course, only
you're such a--such a good woman."

"Of course I am, James," she laughed.  "I am good, inasmuch as I am
faithful to any tie I may make.  I am kind, or try to be, to all my
fellow creatures, and I should hate to do a mean thing.  The only
difference between me and other women is that I prefer to choose what
tie I should consider sacred.  I claimed the liberty to do that, and I
exercised it.  As to my right to do so, I have never had the faintest
possible shadow of hesitation."

"Oh, it all sounds all right when you talk about it," he admitted, "but
let's come to the crux of this thing now we are about it, Marcia.  I am
eating my heart out for you.  I should have thought that one of the
great privileges of your manner of life was your freedom to change, if
you desired to do so.  Change, I mean--nothing to do with infidelity.
You may have the nicest feelings in the world towards your Marquis, but
I don't believe you love him any more.  I don't believe you care for
him as much as you do for me."

"In one sense you are perfectly right," she acknowledged.  "In another
you are altogether wrong."

"And yet," he continued, almost roughly, "you have never allowed me to
touch your fingers, much more your lips."

"But, my dear man," she remonstrated, "you must know that those things
are impossible.  I would kiss you willingly if you were my friend, and
if you were content with that, but you know it would only be hypocrisy
if you pretended that you were.  But listen," she went on.  "I, too,
sometimes think of these things.  I will be very frank with you.  I
know that I have changed lately, and I know that the change has
something to do with you.  Reginald is sometimes a little restless
about it.  A time may come when he will provoke an explanation.  When
that time comes, I want to answer him with a clear conscience."

Mr. James Borden brightened up considerably.

"That's the most encouraging thing I've heard you say for a long time,"
he confessed.

She smiled.

"There are all sorts of possibilities yet," she said.  "Now fetch a
clothes brush and let me give you a good brushing, and you can take me
out to lunch--that is to say, if you can find something decent to wear
on your head," she went on, pointing to a somewhat disreputable looking
hat which hung behind the door.  "I won't go out with you in that."

"That," he replied cheerfully, "is easily arranged.  I can change my
clothes in five minutes, if you prefer it."

She shook her head.

"You look quite nice when you're properly brushed," she assured him.
"Send upstairs for another hat, and we'll go into the grill room at the
Savoy.  I want a sole colbert, and a cutlet, and some of those little
French peas with sugar.  Aren't I greedy!"

"Delightfully," he assented.  "If you only realised how much easier it
is to take a woman out who knows what she wants!"

They lunched very well amidst a crowd of cosmopolitans and lingered
over their coffee.  Their conversation had been of books and nothing
but books, but towards the end Marcia once more spoke of herself.

"You see, James," she told him, "I have the feeling that if Reginald
really does succeed in freeing the estates from their mortgages, he
will have any quantity of new interests in life.  He will probably be
lord-lieutenant of the county, and open up the whole of Mandeleys.
Then his town life would of course be quite different.  I shall
feel--can't you appreciate that?--as though my task with him had come
naturally and gracefully to an end.  We have both fulfilled our
obligations to one another.  If he can give me his hand and let me
go--well, I should like it."

She looked so very desirable as she smiled at him that Borden almost
groaned.  She patted his hand and changed the conversation.

"Very soon," she continued, "I am going to undertake a painful duty.  I
am going down to Mandeleys."

"Not with him?"

She shook her head.

"My father is back in England," she explained.  "He has come back from
America and is living in the cottage of many lawsuits.  I must go down
and see him."

"Has the boy returned, too?" he enquired.

"I have heard nothing about him," Marcia replied.  "He was very
delicate when he was young, and I am not even sure whether he is alive.
My father probably doesn't want to see me in the least, but I feel I
ought to go."

"You wouldn't like me to motor you down, I suppose?" Borden suggested
diffidently.  "The country is delightful just now, and it would do us
both good.  I could get away for three days quite easily, and I could
bring some work with me to peg away at whilst you are being dutiful."

"I should love it," she declared frankly, "and I don't see the least
reason why we shouldn't go.  You won't mind," she went on, after a
second's hesitation, "if I mention it to Reginald?  I am sure he won't
object."

James Borden bit through the cigarette which he had just lit, threw it
away and started another.

"You must do whatever you think right," he said.  "Perhaps you will
telephone."

"As soon as I know for certain," she promised him.




CHAPTER VIII

It was obvious that the Marquis was pleased with himself when he was
shown into Marcia's little sitting room later on that same afternoon.
He was wearing a grey tweed check suit, a grey bowler hat, and a bunch
of hothouse violets in his buttonhole.  His demeanour, as he drew off
his white chamois leather gloves and handed them, with his coat and
cane, to the little parlourmaid, was urbane, almost benevolent.

"You look like the springtime," Marcia declared, rising to her feet,
"and here have I been cowering over the fire!"

"The wind is cold," her visitor admitted, "but I had a brisk walk along
the Embankment."

"Along the Embankment?"

"I have been to one of those wonderful, cosmopolitan hotels," he told
her, as he bent down and kissed her, "where they have hundreds of
bedrooms and every guest is a potential millionaire."

"Business?"

"Business," he assented.  "My lawyers--I am very displeased, by-the-by,
with Mr. Wadham--having been unable for many years to assist me in
disposing of the mortgages upon Mandeleys, I am making efforts myself
in that direction, efforts which, as I believe I told you, show much
promise of success."

"I am delighted to hear it," she replied.  "From every point of view,
it would be so satisfactory for you to have the estates freed once
more.  You would be able to entertain properly, wouldn't you, and take
up your rightful position in the county?"

The Marquis seated himself in his favourite easy-chair.

"It is quite true," he confessed, "that I have been unable, for the
last ten years, to exercise that position in the county to which I am
entitled.  I must confess, moreover, that the small economies which
have formed a necessary and galling part of my daily life have become
almost unendurable.  You received my cheque, I hope?"

She nodded and laid it upon the table.

"It was dear of you, Reginald," she said, "but do you know it's
astonishing how well I seemed to be able to get on without those last
three payments.  I am earning quite a great deal of money of my own,
you know, and I do wish you would let me try and be independent."

His grey eyes were fixed almost coldly upon her.

"Independent?  Why?"

"Oh, don't be foolish about it, please," she begged.  "For nineteen
years, I think it is now, you have allowed me six hundred a year.  Do
you realise what a great deal of money that is?  Now that I am
beginning to earn so much for myself, it is absurd for me to go on
taking it."

"Do I understand it to be your desire, then, Marcia," he asked, "to
effect any change in our relations?"

She came over and sat on the arm of his chair.

"Not unless you wish it, dear," she replied, "only the money--well, in
a sense I've got used to having it all these years, because it was
necessary, but now that it isn't necessary, I can't help feeling that I
should like to do without it.  I earned nearly six hundred pounds, you
know, last year, by my stories."

The Marquis had half closed his eyes.  He had become momentarily
inattentive.  Somehow or other, Marcia realised that her words had
brought him acute suffering.  There were tears in her eyes as she took
his hand.

"Don't be silly about this, Reginald dear," she pleaded.  "If it means
so much to you to feel--I mean, if you look upon this money as really a
tie between us--give me a little less, then--say three hundred a year,
instead of six."

Her visitor was recovering his momentarily disturbed composure.

"You are still nothing but a child in money matters, dear," he said.
"We will speak of this again before the end of the year, but in the
meantime, if you have anything to spare, invest it.  It is always well
for a woman to have something to fall back upon."

Tea was brought in, and their conversation for a time became lighter in
tone.  Presently, however, Marcia became once more a little thoughtful.

"I have made up my mind," she declared abruptly, "to go down to
Mandeleys to see my father."

The Marquis was silent for a moment.  Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, why not, if you really feel it to be your duty," he conceded.
"Personally, I think you will find that Vont is unchanged.  You will
find him just as hard and narrow as when he disowned you."

"In that case," Marcia acknowledged, "I shall not trouble him very
much, but when I think of all these years abroad--it was through me he
left England, you know, Reginald--I feel that I ought to do my best, at
any rate, to make him see things differently--to beg his forgiveness
with my lips, even if I feel no remorse in my heart.  I have a most
uncomfortable conviction," she went on reflectively, "that I have grown
completely out of his world, but, of course, in all this time he, too,
may have changed.  I wonder what has become of my little cousin."

"Vont came back alone, I believe," her visitor told her, "and he came
back second class, too.  I heard of him, curiously enough, from an
American gentleman who crossed on the same steamer, and who happened to
be a guest at my house the other night."

Marcia nodded.

"The boy left England too young," she remarked, "to miss his country.
I suppose he has settled down in America for ever."

"I must say that I wish Vont had stayed with him," the Marquis
declared.  "Yes, go down and see him, by all means, Marcia.  I should
rather like to hear from you what his state of mind is.  I gather that
he is obdurate, as he resisted all my efforts to repossess myself of
his cottage, but it would be interesting to hear."

"Should you mind," she asked, "if I motored down there with my
publisher--Mr. James Borden?  You have heard me speak of him."

"Not in the least," was the ready reply.  "Has your friend connections
in the locality?"

"None," Marcia admitted.  "He would come simply for the sake of a day
or two's holiday, and to take me."

"He is one of your admirers, perhaps?"

"He has always been very kind to me."

The Marquis was momentarily pensive.

"You are a better judge than I, Marcia," he observed, "but is such an
expedition as you suggest--usual?  I know that things have changed very
much since the days when I myself found adventures possible and
interesting, but have they really progressed so far as this?"

Marcia considered the matter carefully.

"On the whole," she decided, "I should say that our proposed expedition
was unusual.  On the other hand, Mr. Borden has no near relatives, and
I myself enjoy a certain amount of liberty."

The Marquis smiled at her.

"As much liberty as you choose.  If I hesitated then for a moment, it
was for your own sake.  I do not think that I have ever sought to
curtail your pleasures, or to interfere in your mode of living."

"You have been wonderful," she admitted gratefully.  "Perhaps for that
very reason, because my fetters have been of silk, I have never
realised but always considered them.  Do you know that you are the only
man who has ever sat down in this flat as my guest, during the whole
sixteen years I have lived here?"

"I should never have asked you," he said, "but I am not in the least
surprised to hear it.  Sometimes," he went on, drawing her towards him
in a slight but affectionate embrace, "you have perhaps thought me a
little cold, a little staid and distant from you, even in our happiest
moments.  I was brought up, you must remember, in the school which
considers any exhibition of feeling as a deplorable lapse.  The thing
grows on one.  Yet, Marcia," he added, drawing her still closer and
clasping her hand, "you have been my refuge in all these years.  It is
here with you that I have spent my happiest hours.  You have been my
consolation in many weary disappointments.  I often wish that I could
give you a different position than the one which you occupy."

"I should never be so contented in any other," she assured him, patting
his hand.  "In all these years I have felt my mind grow.  I have
read--heavens, how I have read!  I have felt so many of the old things
fall away, felt my feet growing stronger.  You have given me just what
I wanted, Reginald.  To quote one of your own maxims, we have only one
life, but it is for us to subdivide.  We take up a handful of
circumstances, an emotion, perhaps a passion, and we live them out, and
when the flame is burnt we are restless for a little time, and then we
begin it all over again.  That is how we learn, learn to be wise by
suffering and change."

"I am afraid," the Marquis sighed, "that I do not live up to my own
principles.  All my life I have detested change.  There could be no
other home for me but Mandeleys, no other clubs save those where I
spend my spare time, no other pursuits save those which I have
cultivated from my youth, no other dear friend, Marcia, to whom one may
turn in one's more human moments, than you."

Marcia shrugged her shoulders.

"It is queer," she admitted, "to hear such professions of fidelity from
you."

"Had I a different reputation?" he asked.  "Well, you see how I have
outlived it."

Marcia's silence, natural enough at the time, puzzled him a little
afterwards, puzzled him as he leaned back in his car, on his way
homewards, puzzled him through the evening in the few minutes of
reflection which he was able to spare from a large dinner party.

"Borden!" he muttered to himself.  "I wonder what sort of a man he is."

In his library, where he lingered for a few moments before retiring to
bed, he took down a volume of "Who's Who."  Borden's name, rather to
his surprise, was there.  The man, it seemed, was of decent family, had
done well at Oxford, both in scholarship and athletics.  He was
born--the Marquis counted his years.  He was forty-one years
old--nineteen years younger!  He closed the book and sat down in his
chair, forgetting for once to mix for himself the whiskey and soda
which lay ready to his hand.  It seemed to him that there was a tragedy
in that nineteen years.  Borden was of the age now that he himself had
been when Marcia had first listened to his very courtly and yet
uncommonly definite love-making.  He rose almost like a thief, crossed
the hall, and, opening softly the door of the drawing-room, turned up
the two lights before a great gilt mirror.  He stood and regarded
himself thoughtfully, appraisingly, critically.  He was tall and very
little bowed.  His figure was still the figure of a young man, and the
court clothes which he was wearing became him.  That he was handsome so
far as regards his finely chiselled features, his high forehead and his
soft grey hair, he granted himself.  The world had given him few
chances of forgetting it.  But there was a little whiteness about his
cheeks, a slight dropping of the flesh under his eyes, just something
of that tired look which creeps along with the years, a silent,
persistent ghost.  The Marquis switched off the lights and turned
towards the door.  He tiptoed his way across the hall and threw himself
once more into his easy-chair.  His eyes were fixed upon the opposite
wall.  He still saw that presentment of himself.  And there was Marcia,
barely in the prime of her life, the figure of her girlhood developed,
yet not, even now, matronly; her bright complexion, her broad,
intellectual forehead with its masses of brown hair, her humorous
mouth, her dark, undimmed eyes, still hungry for what life might have
to give.  Those nineteen years remained a tragedy.




CHAPTER IX

David Thain, arrived at the end of his journey, seated himself on the
second stile from the road, threw away his cigar and looked facts in
the face.  He who had run the gamut of the Wall Street fever, who in
his earlier days had relied almost upon chance for a meal, who had
stood the tests of huge successes as well as the anxieties of possible
failures without visible emotion--in such a fashion, even, that his
closest friends could scarcely tell whether he were winning or
losing--found himself now, without any crisis before him, and engaged
in the most ordinary undertaking of a stroll from the station across a
few fields, suddenly the victim of sensations and weaknesses which
defied analysis and mocked at restraint.  It was the England of his
boyhood, this, the sudden almost overpowering realisation of those
dreams which had grown fainter and fainter during his many years of
struggle in a very different atmosphere.  Birds were singing in the
long grove which, behind the high, grey-stone wall, fringed the road
for miles.  Rooks--real English rooks--were cawing above his head.  A
light evening breeze was bending the meadow grass of the field which
his footpath had cloven, and from the hedge by his side came the faint
perfume of hawthorn blossom.  Before him was the park with its
splendours of giant oaks, with deer resting beneath the trees, and in
the distance the grey, irregular outline of Mandeleys Abbey.  He had
played cricket, when he was a boy, in the very field through which he
was passing.  Some time in that dim past, he had stood with his uncle,
whilst he had issued with the beaters from that long strip of
plantation, watching with all a boy's fervid admiration the careless
ease with which the Lord of Mandeleys was bringing the pheasants down
from the sky.  He had skated on the lake there, had watched at a
respectful distance the antics of the ladies Letitia and Margaret,
anxious to escape from their retinue of servants and attendants.  A
queer little vision came before him at that moment of Lady Letitia
hobbling towards him upon the ice, with one skate unbuckled, and a firm
but gracious entreaty that the little boy--he was at least a head
taller than she--would fasten it for her.  Strange little flashes of
memory had come to him now and then in that new world where he had
carved his way to success, memories so indistinct that they brought
with them no thrills, scarcely even any longing.  And now all his
strength and hardness, qualities so necessary to him throughout his
strenuous life, seemed to have passed away.  He was a child again,
breathing in all these simple sights and perfumes, his memory taking
him even further back to the days when he sat in the meadow, in the hot
sun, picking daisies and buttercups, and watching for the fish that
sometimes jumped from the stream.  It was an entirely unexpected
emotion, this.  When once more he strode along the footpath, he felt a
different man.  He had lost his slight touch of assurance.  He looked
about him eagerly, almost appealingly.  He was ashamed to confess even
to himself that he had the feeling of a wanderer who has come home.

He crossed the last stile and was now in the park proper.  Several
villagers were strolling about under the trees, and they looked at this
newcomer, with his dark-coloured clothes and strangely-shaped hat, with
some surprise.  Nevertheless, he held uninterruptedly on his way until
he reached the broad drive which led to the Abbey.  He walked on the
turf by the side of it, over the bridge which crossed the stream,
through the inner iron gates, beyond which the village people were not
allowed to pass, and so to the well-remembered spot.  On his right was
the house--a strange, uneven building, at times ecclesiastical, here
and there domestic, always ancient, with its wings of cloisters running
almost down to the moat which surrounded it.  And just over the moat,
crossed by that light iron handbridge, with its back against what he
remembered as a plantation, but which had now become a wood, the little
red brick cottage, smothered all over with creepers, its tiny garden
ablaze with flowers, its empty rows of dog kennels, its deserted line
of coops.  David glanced for a moment at the drawn blinds of the Abbey.
Then he crossed the footbridge and the few yards of meadow, lifted the
latch of the gate and, walking up the gravel path, came to a sudden
standstill.  A man who was seated almost hidden by a great cluster of
fox-gloves rose to his feet.

"It's you, then, lad!" he exclaimed, holding out both his hands.
"You're welcome!  There's no one to the house--there won't be for a
quarter of an hour--so I'll wring your hands once more.  It's a queer
world, this, David.  You're back with me here, where I brought you up
as a stripling, and yon's the Abbey.  Sit you down, boy.  I am not the
man I was since I came here."

David Thain dragged an old-fashioned kitchen chair from the porch, and
sat by his uncle's side.  Richard Vont, although he was still younger
than his sixty-four years, seemed to his nephew curiously changed
during the last week.  The hard, resolute face was disturbed.  The
mouth, kept so tight through the years, had weakened a little.  There
was a vague, almost pathetic agitation, in the man's face.

"You'll take no notice of me, David," his uncle went on.  "I'm honest
with you.  These few days have been like a great, holy dream, like
something one reads of in the Scriptures but never expects to see.
There's old Mary Wells--she's doing for me up there.  Just a word or
two of surprise, and a grip of the hand, and no more.  And there's the
Abbey--curse it!--not a stone gone, only the windows are blank.  You
see the weeds on the lawn, David?  Do you mark the garden behind?  They
tell me there's but two gardeners there to do the work of twenty.  And
the drive--look at it as far as you can see--moss and weed!  They're
coming down in the world, these Mandeleys, David.  Even this last
little lawsuit, the lawyers told me, has cost the Marquis nineteen
thousand pounds.  God bless you for your wealth, David!  It's money
that counts in these days."

David produced a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and handed it over to
his uncle, who filled a pipe eagerly.

"That's thoughtful of you, David," he declared.  "I'd forgotten to buy
any, and that's a fact, for I can't stand the village yet.  You're
looking strange-like, David."

"And I feel it," was the quiet answer.  "Uncle, hasn't it made any
difference to you, this coming back?"

"In what way?" the old man asked.

"Well, I don't know.  I walked across those fields to the park, and I
seemed suddenly to feel more like a boy again, and I felt that somehow
I was letting go of things.  Do you know what I mean?"

"Letting go of things," Richard Vont repeated suspiciously.  "No!"

"Well, somehow or other," David continued, as he filled his own pipe
and lit it, "I found myself looking back through the years, and I
wondered whether we hadn't both let one thing grow too big in our
minds.  Life doesn't vary much here.  Things are very much as we left
them, and it's all rather wonderful.  I felt a little ashamed, as I
came up through the park, of some of the things we've planned and
sworn.  Didn't you feel a little like that, uncle?  Can you sit here
and think of the past, and remember all that burden we carried, and not
feel inclined to let it slip, or just a little of it slip, from our
shoulders?"

Vont laid down his pipe.  He rose to his feet.  His fingers suddenly
gripped his nephew's shoulder.  He turned him towards the house.

"Listen, David," he said; "there's twilight an hour away yet, but it
will soon be here.  The blackbirds are calling for it, and the wind's
dropping.  Now you see.  That was her room," he added, touching the
window, "and there's the door out, just the same.  You see that tree
there?  I was crouching behind that with my gun ready loaded, and there
was murder in my heart--I tell you that, boy.  I watched the Abbey.  I
was supposed to be safe in Fakenham Town, safe for a good two hours,
and I lay there and watched because I knew, and no one came.  And then
I heard a whisper.  I turned my head, although I was most afeared, and
out of that door--that door from Marcia's room, David--I saw him come.
I saw her arms come out and draw him back, and then I began to breathe
hard, but the trees were thick that way--I'd been looking for him
coming from the Abbey---and they stole out together, arm in arm.  I was
so near them that they must have heard me groan, for Marcia started.
And then, before I knew what was happening, he--the Marquis, mind--had
struck up my gun, caught it by the barrel and sent it flying.  My hand
was on his throat, but he was as strong as I was, in those days, and a
mighty wrestler.  It's my shame, boy, after all these years to have to
confess it, but he got the better of me.  I was crazy with anger, and
he had me down.  And then he stood aside and bade me get up, and my
strength seemed all gone.  He stood there looking at me contemptuously.
'Don't make a fool of yourself, Vont,' he said.  'Your daughter and I
understand one another, and our concerns have nothing to do with you.
If you have anything to say to me, come up to the Abbey to-morrow.
You'll find your gun in the thicket.'  He turned round and he kissed
Marcia's fingers, just like I'd seen them do in the distance at their
fine parties up there, and he strolled away.  There was the gun in the
thicket, and he knew it, and I knew it, and I couldn't move, and he
went.  And all I could hear was Marcia crying, and those birds singing
behind, and I just slipped away into the wood."

"Uncle, is it worth while bringing this all up again?" David
interrupted.

"Aye, it's worth while!" the old man insisted fiercely.  "It's worth
while for fear I should forget, for the old place has its cling on me.
That next day I went to the Abbey, and I saw the Marquis.  He was quite
cool, sent the servants out--he'd no weapon near--and he talked a lot
that I don't understand and never shall understand, but it was about
Marcia, and that she was his, and was leaving with him for London that
evening.  I just asked him one question.  'It's for shame, then?' I
asked.  And he looked at me just as though I were some person whom he
was trying to make understand, who didn't quite speak the language.
And he said--'Your daughter made her choice months ago, Vont.  She will
live the life she desires to live.  I am sorry to take her away from
you.  Think it over, and try and feel sensible about it.'  It was then
I felt a strange joy, that I've never been able rightly to understand.
I'd just remembered that the cottage was mine, and I had a sudden
feeling that I wanted to sit at the end of the garden and watch the
Abbey and curse it, curse it with a Bible on my knee, till its stones
fell apart and the grass grew up from the walks and the damp grew out
in blotches on the walls.  And that's why I've come back after all
these years."

"And you're just the same?" David asked curiously.  "You feel just the
same about him?"

"Don't you, my lad?" his uncle demanded.  "You're not telling me that
you're climbing down?"

David took the old man's arm.

"On the contrary, uncle," he said, "my promised share of the work is
done.  I hold his promissory notes for forty thousand pounds, due in
three months.  I have sold him some shares that aren't worth forty
thousand pence, and won't be for many a year.  I've cheated him, if you
like, but when the three months comes you can make him a bankrupt, if
you will.  I'll give you the notes."

Richard Vont drew himself up.  He turned his face towards the Abbey,
growing a little indistinct now in the falling twilight.

"It's grand hearing," was all he said.  "There's Mary, coming round
with the supper, boy.  I'll take the liberty of asking you to have a
bite with me and a glass of ale, but I'll not forget that you're the
great David Thain, the millionaire from America, who took kindly notice
of me on the steamer.  Come this way, sir," he went on, throwing open
the cottage door.  "It's a queer little place, but it's a novelty for
you American gentlemen.  Step right in, sir.  Mrs. Wells," he
announced, "this is a gentleman who was kind to me upon the steamer,
and he promised that if ever he was this way he'd drop in.  He'll take
some supper with me.  You'll do your best for us?"

The old lady looked very hard at David Thain, and she dropped a curtsey.

"From America, too," she murmured.  "'Tis a wonderful country!  Aye,
I'll do my best, Richard Vont."




CHAPTER X

Mr. Wadham, Junior, a morning or so later, rang the bell at Number 94
Grosvenor Square and aired himself for a moment upon the broad
doorstep, filled with a comfortable sense that this time, at least, in
his prospective interview, he was destined to disturb the disconcerting
equanimity of his distinguished client.  He was duly admitted and
ushered into the presence of the Marquis, who laid down the newspaper
which he was reading, nodded affably to his visitor and pointed to a
chair.

"Your request for an interview, Mr. Wadham," the former said,
"anticipated my own desire to see you.  Pray be seated.  I am entirely
at your service."

Mr. Wadham paused for a moment and decided to cross his legs.  He was
already struggling against that enervating sense of insignificance
which his client's presence inevitably imposed upon him.

"We heard yesterday morning from Mr. Merridrew," he commenced.  "He
made us a remittance which was four hundred pounds short of what we
expected.  His explanation was that your lordship had received that sum
from him."

"Quite right, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis assented affably.  "Quite right.
I was in the neighbourhood, and, finding Mr. Merridrew with a
considerable sum of money in hand, I took from him precisely the amount
you have stated."

"Your lordship has perhaps overlooked the fact," Mr. Wadham continued,
"that we are that amount short of the interest on the Fakenham
mortgage--Number Seven mortgage, we usually call it."

"Dear me!" the Marquis observed.  "Surely such a trifling sum does not
disturb your calculations?  You do not run my affairs on so narrow a
margin as this, I trust, Mr. Wadham?"

"It isn't a question of a narrow margin, your lordship," Mr. Wadham
replied.  "There is, as a rule, no margin at all.  We usually have to
make the amount up by overdrawing, or by advancing it ourselves.  This
time the firm wish me to point out that we are unable to do either."

"Dear me!  Dear me!" the Marquis ejaculated, in a tone of some concern.
"I had no idea, Mr. Wadham, if you will forgive my saying so, that your
firm was in so impecunious a position."

"Impecunious?" the lawyer murmured, with his eyes fixed upon his
client.  "I scarcely follow your lordship."

"Did I not understand you to say," the Marquis continued, "that this
trifle of four hundred pounds has upset your arrangements to such an
extent that you are unable to make your customary payments on my
behalf?"

"Will your lordship forgive my pointing out," Mr. Wadham explained,
"that these payments are on your account, and that it is no part of the
business of solicitors to finance their clients, without a special
arrangement?  We have our own more lucrative investments continually
open to us, and we are at the present moment several thousand pounds
out of pocket on account of recent law expenses."

"The whole thing," the Marquis pronounced, "seems to me very trifling.
State in precise terms, if you please, Mr. Wadham, the object of your
visit."

"To ask for your lordship's instructions as to the payment of twelve
hundred pounds interest, due to-morrow," Mr. Wadham replied.  "We have
eight hundred pounds in hand from Mr. Merridrew.  So far from having
any other funds of your lordship's at our disposal, we are, as I have
pointed out, your creditor for a somewhat considerable amount."

The Marquis was leaning back in his chair, the tips of his long,
elegant fingers pressed gently together.

"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he said quietly, "that your visit is,
in a sense, an admonitory one.  Your firm resents--am I not right?--the
fact that I have found it convenient to help myself to a portion of the
revenue accruing from my estate."

"We should not presume for a moment to take up such an attitude," the
lawyer protested.  "On the other hand, the four hundred pounds in
question requires replacement by to-morrow."

"And you find the raising of that sum inconvenient, eh, Mr. Wadham?"

The young man was distinctly ill at ease.  His instructions were to be
firm and dignified but by no means to offend; to deliver a formal
protest against this tampering with funds already dedicate, but to do
or say nothing which would give the Marquis any excuse for reprisals
against the firm.  Mr. Wadham began to wonder whether perhaps he was a
person of small tact, or whether these instructions were more than
usually difficult to carry out.

"There is no sacrifice, your lordship," he said slowly, "which my firm
would hesitate to make in your interests and the interests of the
Mandeleys estate.  At the same time, the unexpected necessity for
finding these sums of money is, I must confess, at times a strain upon
us."

The Marquis nodded sympathetically.  He rose to his feet, crossed the
room towards his desk, which he unlocked with a key attached to a gold
chain, and returned with a bundle of scrip in his hand.

"I have here, Mr. Wadham," he announced, "scrip in a very famous oil
company, the face value of the shares being, I believe, a trifle over
forty thousand pounds.  I, in fact, paid that price for them at the
beginning of the week."

The young lawyer uncrossed his legs and swallowed hard.  He was
prepared for many shocks, but this one seemed outside the region of all
human probability.

"Did I understand your lordship to say that you had paid forty thousand
pounds for them?" he gasped.

The Marquis assented with an equable little nod.

"I was somewhat favoured in the matter," he admitted, "as the value of
the shares has, I believe, already considerably increased.  The amount
I actually paid for them was, in round figures, forty thousand and one
hundred pounds--transfer duty, or something of that sort.  I have
little head for figures, as you know, Mr. Wadham.  You had better take
these--not for sale, mind, but for deposit at one of my banks.  You
will probably find that, under the circumstances, they will permit you
to overdraw an additional five hundred pounds on my account, without
embarrassing your own finances."

Mr. Wadham, Junior, took the bundle of scrip into his hand, and glanced
hastily through it.

"The Pluto Oil Company of Arizona," he murmured reflectively.

"The name of the company is doubtless unknown to you," the Marquis
observed indulgently; "they are, in fact, only just commencing
operations--but it is the opinion of my friend and financial adviser,
Mr. David Thain, that the forty thousand pounds' worth of shares you
have in your hand will be worth at least two hundred thousand before
the end of the year."

"Mr. David Thain, the multi-millionaire?" Mr. Wadham faltered.

"The same!"

The lawyer gripped the bundle hard in one hand, closed his eyes for a
moment, opened them again and struck out boldly.

"As your lordship's adviser," he said, "may I enquire as to the nature
of the payment which you have made?  Forty thousand pounds is not a sum
which either of the banks with whom your lordship has credit--"

The Marquis waved his hand.

"My dear young friend," he explained, "it was not necessary for me to
resort to banks.  Mr. Thain suggested voluntarily that I should give
him my note of hand for the amount.  He quite understood that a man
whose chief interest in the country is land does not keep such a sum as
forty thousand pounds lying at his banker's."

Mr. Wadham groped for his hat.

"The shares shall be deposited, and the interest, of course, paid," he
murmured.  "I am sorry to have troubled your lordship in the matter."

"Not at all, not at all," the Marquis replied genially.  "Very pleased
to see you at any time, Mr. Wadham, on any subject connected with the
estates.  Ah!" he added, glancing at a card which a footman at that
moment had brought in, "here is my friend, Mr. David Thain.  You must
meet him, Mr. Wadham.  Such men are rare in this country.  They form
most interesting adjuncts to our modern civilisation.  Show Mr. Thain
in, Thomas."

David Thain duly arrived.  He shook hands with the Marquis and was by
him presented to Mr. Wadham.

"Mr. Wadham is my legal advisor--or rather a junior representative of
the firm who conduct my affairs," the Marquis explained.  "I have just
handed him over my shares in the Pluto Oil Company, for safe keeping."

"Very glad to know you, Mr. Thain," the young lawyer observed,
reverently shaking hands.  "One reads a great deal of your financial
exploits in the newspapers just now."

"I really can't see," David replied, "that your press men are much
better over here than in the States.  In any case, Mr. Wadham, you
mustn't believe all you read."

"You will give my regards to your father and the other members of your
firm," the Marquis concluded, with the faintest possible indication of
his head towards the door.  "I shall probably have some instructions of
an interesting nature to give you before long, with regard to the
cancellation of, at any rate, the home estate mortgages.  Ah, here is
Thomas!  Very much obliged for your attention, Mr. Wadham."

The lawyer made his adieux in somewhat confused fashion, and left the
room with an ignominious sense of dismissal.  The Marquis glanced at
the clock.

"I am a creature of habit, Mr. Thain," he said.  "At twelve o'clock I
walk for an hour in the Park.  Will you give me the honour of your
company?"

"Anywhere you say," David assented.  "There was just a little matter I
wanted to mention--nothing important."

"Precisely," the Marquis murmured, ringing the bell.  "You will return
to lunch, of course?  I shall take no denial.  My daughter would be
distressed to miss you.  Gossett," he added, as they moved out into the
hall, "my coat and hat, and tell Lady Letitia that Mr. Thain will lunch
with us.  Have you any idea, Gossett," he added, as he accepted his
cane and gloves, "how to make cocktails?"

"I have a book of recipes, your lordship," was the somewhat doubtful
reply.

"See that cocktails are served before luncheon," the Marquis
instructed.  "You see, we are not altogether ignorant of the habits of
your countrymen, Mr. Thain, even if in some cases we may not ourselves
have adopted them.  A cocktail is, I gather, some form of alcoholic
nourishment?"

Thain indulged in what was, for him, a rare luxury--a hearty laugh.  He
threw his head back, showing all his white, firm teeth, and the little
lines at the sides of his eyes wrinkled up with enjoyment.  Suddenly a
voice on the stairs interposed.

"I must know the joke," Letitia declared.  "How do you do, Mr. Thain?
A laugh like yours makes one feel positively delirious with the desire
to share it.  Father, do tell me what it was?"

"To tell you the truth, my dear," the Marquis replied, quite honestly,
"I am a little ignorant as to the humorous application of a remark I
have just made."

"It was your father's definition of an American institution, Lady
Letitia," David explained, "and I am afraid that its humour depended
solely upon a certain environment which I was able to conjure up in my
mind--a barroom at the Waldorf, say."

"Another disappointment," Letitia sighed.

"Mr. Thain is lunching with us, dear," her father announced.

"So glad," Letitia remarked, nodding to Thain.  "We shall meet again,
then."

She passed out of the front door, and David, who was very observant,
noticing several things, was silent for the first few moments after her
departure.  She appeared, as she could scarcely fail to appear in his
eyes, charming even to the point of bewilderment.  Yet, although the
wind was cold, she had only a small and very inadequate fur collar
around her neck.  Her tailormade suit showed signs of constant
brushings.  There was a little--a very modest little patch upon her
shoes, and a very distinct darn upon her gloves.  David frowned in
puzzled fashion as he turned into the Park.  Some of his boyish
antipathies, so carefully nursed by his uncle and fostered by the
atmosphere in which they lived during his early days in America,
flashed into his memory, only to be instantly discarded.  He remembered
the drawn blinds, the weedy walks of Mandeleys; the hasty glimpse which
he had had of silent, empty rooms and uncarpeted ways in the higher
storeys of the mansion in Grosvenor Square.

"I am not a person," the Marquis observed, as they proceeded upon their
promenade, "who needs a great deal of exercise, but I am almost a slave
to habit, and for many years, when in town, it has been my custom to
walk here for an hour, to exchange greetings, perhaps, with a few
acquaintances, to call at my club for ten minutes and take a glass of
dry sherry before luncheon.  In the afternoons," he went on, "I
occasionally play a round of golf at Ranelagh.  Are you an expert at
the game, Mr. Thain?"

"I have made blasphemous efforts," David confessed, "but I certainly
cannot call myself an expert.  Perhaps what is known as the American
spirit has rather interfered with my efforts.  You see, we want to get
things done too quickly.  Golf is a game eminently suited to the
British temperament."

"You are doubtless right," the Marquis murmured.  "That loitering
backward swing, eh?--the lazy indisposition to raise one's head?  I
follow you, Mr. Thain.  Your call this morning, by-the-by," he went on.
"You have some news, perhaps, of these Pluto Oils?"

David shook his head.

"I came to see you," he announced, "upon a different matter."




CHAPTER XI

The Marquis was occupied for several minutes in exchanging greetings
with passing acquaintances.  As soon as they were alone again, he
reverted to his companion's observation.

"There was a matter, I think you said, Mr. Thain, which you wished to
discuss with me."

"I was going to ask you about Broomleys," David replied.

The Marquis was puzzled.

"Broomleys?  Are you referring, by chance, to my house of that name?"

"I guess so."

"But, my dear Mr. Thain, you surprise me," the Marquis declared.  "When
did you hear of Broomleys?"

"I should have explained," David continued, "that I spent this last
week-end at Cromer.  There I visited an agent and told him that I would
like to take a furnished house in the neighbourhood.  I motored over,
at his suggestion, to see Broomleys, and the tenant, Colonel Laycey,
kindly showed me over.  He is leaving within a few days, I believe."

"Dear me, of course he is!" the Marquis observed genially.  "I had
quite forgotten the fact--quite forgotten it."

The Marquis saluted more acquaintances.  He was glad of an opportunity
for reflection.  The Fates were indeed smiling upon him!  A gleam of
anticipatory delight shone in his eyes as he thought of his next
interview with Mr. Wadham, Junior!  On his desk at the present moment
there lay a letter from the firm, announcing Colonel Laycey's departure
and adding that they saw little hope of letting the house at all in its
present condition.

"It would be a great pleasure to us, Mr. Thain," the Marquis continued
pleasantly, "to have you for a neighbour.  Did the agent or Colonel
Laycey, by-the-by, say anything about the rent?"

"Nothing whatever," David replied.  "The Colonel pointed out to me
various repairs which certainly seemed necessary, but as I am a single
man, the rooms affected could very well be closed for a time.  It was
the garden, I must confess, which chiefly attracted me."

"Broomleys has, I fear, been a little neglected," the Marquis sighed.
"These stringent days, with their campaign of taxation upon the landed
proprietor, have left me, I regret to say, a poor man.  Colonel Laycey
was not always considerate.  His last letter, I remember, spoke of
restorations which would have meant a couple of years' rent."

"If I find any little thing wants doing urgently when I get there,"
David promised carelessly, "I will have it seen to myself.  If the rent
you ask is not prohibitive, it is exactly the place I should like to
take for, say, a year, at any rate."

"You are a man of modest tastes, Mr. Thain," the Marquis observed.
"The fact that you are unmarried, however, of course renders an
establishment an unnecessary burden.  You will bear in mind, so far as
regards the rent of Broomleys, Mr. Thain, that the house is furnished."

"Very uncomfortably but very attractively furnished, from what I saw,"
David assented.

The Marquis collected himself.  Colonel Laycey had been asked three
hundred a year and was paying two hundred, a sum which, somehow or
other, the Marquis had always considered his own pocket money, and
which had never gone into the estate accounts.  A little increase would
certainly be pleasant.

"Would five hundred a year seem too much, Mr. Thain?" he asked.  "I
cannot for the moment remember what Colonel Laycey is paying, but I
know that it is something ridiculously inadequate."

"Five hundred a year would be quite satisfactory," David agreed.

"I will have the papers drawn up and sent to you at once," the Marquis
promised.  "You will be able to enter into possession as soon as you
like.  You would like a yearly tenancy, I presume?"

"That would suit me quite well."

"You will be able, also, to resume your acquaintance with that singular
old man whom you met upon the steamer--Richard Vont," the Marquis
remarked, with a slight grimace.  "I hear that he is in residence
there."

"I have already done so," David announced.

The Marquis raised his eyebrows.

"You have probably heard his story, then, from his own lips," he
observed carelessly.  "I am told that he sits out on the lawn of his
cottage, reading the Bible and cursing Mandeleys.  It is a most
annoying thing, Mr. Thain, as I dare say you can understand, to have
your ex-gamekeeper entrenched, as it were, in front of your premises,
hurling curses across the moat at you.  That class of person is so
tenacious of ideas as well as of life.  Here comes my daughter Letitia,
already well escorted, I see."

Letitia, with Grantham by her side, waved her hand without pausing,
from the other side of the broad pathway.  David for a moment felt the
chill of the east wind.

"Grantham," the Marquis told his companion confidentially, "is one of
Lady Letitia's most constant admirers.  My daughter, as I dare say you
have discovered, Mr. Thain, is rather an unusual young woman.  Her
predilections are almost anti-matrimonial.  Still, I must confess that
an alliance with the Granthams would give me much pleasure.  I should,
in that case, be enabled to give up my town house and be content with
bachelor apartments--a great saving, in these hard times."

"Naturally," David murmured.

"Often, in the course of our very agreeable conversations," the Marquis
went on, "I am inclined to ignore the fact of your most amazing
opulence.  My few friends, I am sorry to say, are in a different
position.  Money in this country is very scarce, Mr. Thain--very
scarce, at least, on this side of Temple Bar."

David answered a little vaguely.  His eyes were lifted above the heads
of the scattered crowd of people through which they were passing.

"May I ask--if it is not an impertinence," he said,--"is Lady Letitia
engaged to Lord Charles Grantham?"

The Marquis's manner was perhaps a shade stiffer.  Mr. Thain was just
given to understand that about the family matters of such a personage
as the Marquis of Mandeleys there must always be a certain reticence.

"There is no formal engagement, Mr. Thain," he replied.  "The fashion
nowadays seems to preclude anything of the sort.  One's daughter just
brings a young man in, and, in place of the delightful betrothal of our
younger days, the date for the marriage is fixed upon the spot."

Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square, notwithstanding the cocktails, was an
exceedingly simple meal, a fact which the Marquis himself seemed
scarcely to notice.  He kept his eye on his visitor's plate, however,
and passed the cutlets with an unnoticeable sigh of regret.

"Charlie wouldn't come in to lunch, father," Letitia announced.  "I
think he was afraid you were going to ask him his intentions."

The Marquis glanced at the modicum of curry with which he was consoling
himself.

"Upon the whole, my dear," he said, "I am glad that he stayed away.  He
is a most agreeable person, but not at his best at luncheon time.
By-the-by, do you know who our new neighbour is to be at Broomleys?"

"You haven't let it?" she asked eagerly.

"This morning, my dear," her father replied, bowing slightly towards
their guest.  "Mr. Thain has been spending the week-end at Cromer, was
offered Broomleys by the agent there, and he and I fixed up the matter
only a few minutes ago."

"How perfectly delightful!" Letitia exclaimed.

David glanced up quickly.  He looked his hostess in the eyes.

"That is very kind of you, Lady Letitia," he said.  She laughed at him.

"Well, I meant it," she declared, "and I still mean it, but not,
perhaps, exactly in the way it sounded.  Of course, it will be very
pleasant to have you for a neighbour, but to tell you the truth--you
see, although we're poor we are honest--our own sojourn at Mandeleys
rather depends on whether we let Broomleys, and Colonel Laycey,
although he has the most delightful daughter, with whom you are sure to
fall in love, was a most troublesome tenant.  He was always wanting
things done, wasn't he, father?"

"It is certainly a relief," the Marquis sighed, watching with
satisfaction the arrival of half a Stilton cheese, a present from his
son-in-law, "a great relief to find a tenant like Mr. Thain."

"I asked your agent," David remarked a little diffidently, "about the
shooting."

The Marquis touched his glass.

"Serve port, Gossett," he directed,--"the light wood port, if we have
any," he added a little hastily, to the obvious relief of his domestic.
"The shooting, eh, Mr. Thain?"

He sipped his wine and considered.  First Broomleys, and then the
shooting!  The gods were very kind to him on this pleasant April
morning.

"You haven't preserved lately, I understand," his guest observed.

"Not for some years," the Marquis acknowledged.

"I don't mind about that at all," David went on.  "I am just American
enough, you know, to find no pleasure in shooting tame birds.  I shall
have no parties, and I shall not be ambitious about bags.  I like to
prowl about myself with a gun."

His host nodded appreciatively.

"You shall have the refusal of the shooting," he promised.  "At the
moment I am not prepared to quote terms.  My people of business can do
that."

"Have you no friends in England, Mr. Thain?" Letitia asked, a little
abruptly.

"Very few," David replied.  "I do not make friends easily."

"I always thought Americans were so sociable," she remarked.  "A great
many of your compatriots have settled down here, you know."

David considered the matter for a moment.

"You would smile, I suppose," he said, "if I were to tell you that
there are more so-called 'sets' in American Society than in your own.
I am a very self-made man indeed, and I possess no womenkind to
entertain for me.  I am therefore dependent upon chance acquaintances."

"Such friends as may make your sojourn in Norfolk more agreeable, Mr.
Thain," the Marquis promised genially, "you shall most certainly find.
Mandeleys will always be open to you."

David made no immediate response.  His teeth had come together with a
little click.  He felt a strange repugnance to lifting the glass, which
the butler had just filled, to his lips.  A queer little vision of
Mandeleys and the cottage was there, Richard Vont, seated amongst those
drooping rose bushes, his face turned towards the Abbey, his eyes full
of that strange, expectant light.  A sudden wave of self-disgust almost
broke through a composure which had so far resisted all assaults upon
it.  Almost he felt that he must rise from his place, tell this
strange, polished, yet curiously childlike being the truth--that he was
being drawn into the nets of ruin--that he was entertaining an enemy
unawares.

"You must really try that wine, Mr. Thain," he heard his host say
gently.  "I make no excuse for not offering you vintage port.  At
Mandeleys I have at least the remnants of a cellar.  You shall dine
with us there, Mr. Thain, and I will give you what my grandfather used
to declare was 1838 vintage."

David roused himself with an effort.  He brushed aside the
uncomfortable twinge of conscience which had suddenly depressed him,
and turning away from Letitia, looked his host in the eyes.

"You are very kind," he said.  "I shall come with much pleasure."




CHAPTER XII

The Duchess waved her sugar tongs imperiously, and David, who had
hesitated upon the threshold of her drawing-room, made his way towards
her.  There were a dozen people sitting around, drinking tea and
chatting in little groups.

"Now don't look sulky, please," she begged, as she gave him her left
hand.  "This is not a tea party, and it is quite true that I did ask
you to come and have a chat with me alone, but I couldn't keep these
people away.  They'll all go directly, and if they don't I shall turn
them out.  Letitia has promised me to take care of you and to see that
no one bites.  Letitia, here is the shy man," she added.
"There!"--thrusting a cup of tea into his hand.  "Take that, help
yourself to a muffin and go and hide behind the piano."

Letitia rose from her place by the side of an extremely loquacious
politician, to whose animated conversation she had paid no attention
since David's entrance.

"You hear my aunt's orders?" she said, nodding.  "Don't try to shake
hands, with that collection of things to carry.  I am to pilot you into
a corner and keep you quite safe until she is ready to take possession
of you herself."

David looked longingly at some French windows which led out on to a
wide stone terrace.

"Why not outside?" he suggested.  "It's really quite warm to-day."

"Why not, indeed?" she assented.  "Come along."

They passed out together, found two comfortable wicker chairs and a
small table, on which, with a sigh of relief, David deposited his
burden.  Below them was a stretch of the Park, from which they
themselves were screened by a row of tall trees.

"Don't sit down," she begged him.  "Get me another of those small
muffins first, and a cup of tea.  If any one suggests coming out here,
bolt the windows after you."

David executed his task as speedily as possible.  Letitia watched him a
little curiously as he returned.

"You aren't really a bit shy, you know," she told him.  "I watched you
through the window there.  How clever you were not to see that tiresome
Mrs. Raymond!"

"Why should I see her?" he asked.  "She is a perfect stranger to me.
She came up to me at a party, the other night, and asked me, as a great
favour, to dine at her house and to tell her how to invest some money
so that she could double it."

"I know," Letitia assented, with her mouth full of muffin.  "She does
that to all the financiers and expects them to give her tips just
because she has dark eyes and asks them to a tête-à-tête dinner.  I
expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even
if we are not quite so blatant.  What on earth have you been doing to
father?  He swaggers about as though he were already a millionaire."

[Illustration: "I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather
gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant."]

David smiled a little sadly as he looked out across the tree tops.

"Your father has rather a sanguine temperament," he said.

"Well, don't encourage him to speculate, please," Letitia begged.  "We
couldn't afford to lose a single penny.  As it is," she went on, "we
are only able to come to Mandeleys because you've taken that ramshackle
old barn close by and paid twice as much as it's worth.  About the
shooting, too!  I almost laughed aloud when you mentioned it!  Do you
know, Mr. Thain, that we haven't reared a pheasant for years, and that
we don't even feed the wild ones?"

"What about the partridges, though," he reminded her, "and the hares?
I talked to a farmer when I was down there the other day, and he
complained bitterly that there was only one vermin-killer on the whole
estate and that the place was swarming with rabbits.  I rather enjoy
rabbit shooting."

"Oh, well, so long as you understand," Letitia replied, with a little
shrug of the shoulders, "take the shoot, for goodness' sake, and pay
dad as much as he chooses to ask for it.  I've always noticed," she
went on reflectively, "one extraordinary thing about people who haven't
the faintest idea of business.  They are always much cleverer than a
real business man in asking ever so much more than a thing is worth.  A
person with a sense of proportion, you see, couldn't do it."

"One would imagine," he complained, "that you were trying to keep me
away from Mandeleys."

"Don't, please, imagine such a thing," she begged earnestly.  "If there
is anything I hate, it's London--or rather hate the way we have to live
here.  You are entirely our salvation.  If you desert us now, I shall
be the most miserable person alive.  Only, you see, I know what father
is, and what you do you must do with your eyes open."

He was silent for a moment.  The echo of her words lingered in his
ears.  He moved a little uneasily in his place, more uneasily still
when he found that she was watching him intently.

"You are really a very mysterious person, Mr. Thain," she declared,
with a note of curiosity in her tone.  "I hear that you decline to be
interviewed, and you won't even tell the newspapers whether this is
your first visit to England or not."

"I don't see what business it is of the newspapers," he rejoined.  "I
am not a person of any possible interest to any one.  I have done
nothing except make a great deal of money.  That, too, was purely a
matter of good fortune and a little foresight.  In America," he went
on, "one expects to meet with that personal curiosity.  Over here, I
must say that it surprises me."

"I suppose you are right," she admitted, "but, you see, under the
present conditions of living, the possession of money does give such
enormous power to any one.  Then you must remember that our press has
become Americanised lately.  However, I am not a journalist, so will
you answer me one question?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"Have you ever been in England before?"

"Once."

"Long ago?"

"A great many years ago."

"I don't really know why I am curious," she went on thoughtfully, "but
there was a time, when I saw you first--doesn't this sound hackneyed,
but it's quite true--when I fancied that I'd seen you before.  It
worried me for days.  Even now it sometimes perplexes me."

He hated the lie which had risen so readily to his lips and choked it
back.

"A dear lady, a friend of the Duchess, made the same remark to me when
we were introduced," he said.  "She excused herself gracefully by
saying that people were so much alike, nowadays."

"I don't think that you are particularly like other people," she
observed, studying him.  "Would you like to hear what Ada Honeywell
thinks about you?"

"So long as it leaves me still able to hold up my head," he murmured.
"Mrs. Honeywell struck me as being rather severe in her strictures."

"It was only of your appearance she was speaking," Letitia continued.
"She said that she could see three things in your face--a Franciscan
monk, a head _maïtre d'hôtel_ at the most select of French restaurants,
and the modern decadent criminal, as opposed to the Charles Peace type."

"I am much obliged, I'm sure," he remarked, leaning back and laughing
for once quite naturally.  "My type of criminal, I presume, is one who
brings art to his aid in working out his nefarious schemes."

"Precisely," she murmured.  "Like Wainwright, the poisoner, or the
Borgias.  But at any rate we agreed upon something.  There is purpose
in your face."

"You speak as though that were unusual!  I suppose we all have a set
course in life."

She nodded.

"And a good deal depends upon the goal, doesn't it?"

There was a brief--to David, an enigmatic pause.  Letitia's questions
had puzzled him.  She might almost have suspected his identity.  They
both listened idly for a few moments to the music of a violin, which
some one was playing in the drawing-room.

"You've asked me a great many questions," he said abruptly.  "What
about you?  What is your goal?"

"My dear Mr. Thain," she replied, "how can you ask!  I am an
impecunious young woman of luxurious tastes.  It is my purpose to
entrap somebody with a comfortable income into marrying me.  I have
been at it for several seasons," she went on a little dolefully, "but
so far Charles Grantham is my only certainty, and he wobbles
sometimes--especially when he sees anything of Sylvia Laycey."

"Sylvia Laycey," he repeated.  "Is she the daughter of the present
tenant of Broomleys?"

Letitia nodded.

"And a very charming girl, too," she declared.  "You'll most certainly
fall in love with her.  Everybody does when she comes up to stay with
me."

"Falling in love isn't one of my ordinary amusements," he observed a
little drily.

"Superior person!" she mocked.

The Duchess suddenly appeared upon the balcony.

"Look here," she said, "there's been quite enough of this.  Mr. Thain
came especially to see me.  Every one else has gone."

"I wonder if that might be considered a hint," Letitia observed,
glancing at the watch upon her wrist.  "All right, aunt, I'll go.  You
wouldn't believe, Mr. Thain," she added, buttoning her gloves, "that
one's relations are supposed to be a help to one in life?"

"You're only wasting your time with Mr. Thain, dear," her aunt replied
equably.  "I've studied his character.  We were eight days on that
steamer, you know, and all the musical comedy young ladies in the world
seemed to be on board, and I can give you my word that Mr. Thain is a
woman-hater."

"I am really more interested in him now than I have ever been before,"
Letitia declared, laughing into his eyes.  "My great grievance with
Charlie Grantham is that he cannot keep away from our hated rivals in
the other world.  However, you'll talk to me again, won't you, Mr.
Thain?"

David was conscious of a curious fit of reserve, a sudden closing up of
that easy intimacy into which they seemed to have drifted.

"I shall always be pleased," he said stiffly.

Letitia kissed her aunt and departed.  The Duchess sank into her empty
place.

"I am going to be a beast," she began.  "Have you been lending money to
my brother?"

"Not a sixpence," David assured her.

The Duchess was evidently staggered.

"You surprise me," she confessed.  "However, so much the better.  It
won't interfere with what I have to say to you.  I first took you to
Grosvenor Square, didn't I?"

"You were so kind," he admitted.

"Now I come to think of it," she reflected, "I remember thinking it
strange at the time that, though I couldn't induce you to go anywhere
else, or meet any one else, you never hesitated about making Reginald's
acquaintance."

"He was your brother, you see," David reminded her.

"It didn't occur to me," she replied drily, "that that was the reason.
However, what I want to say to you is this, in bald words--don't lend
him money."

David looked once more across the tops of the trees.

"I gather that the Marquis, then, is impecunious?" he said.

"Reginald hasn't a shilling," the Duchess declared earnestly.  "Let me
just tell you how they live.  Letitia has two thousand a year, and so
has Margaret, from their mother.  Margaret's husband, who is a decent
fellow, won't touch her money and makes her an allowance, so that
nearly all her two thousand, and all of Letitia's, except the few
ha'pence she spends on clothes, go to keeping an establishment
together.  Reginald has sold every scrap of land he could, years ago.
Mandeleys is the only estate he has left, and there isn't a square yard
of that that isn't mortgaged to the very fullest extent.  It's always a
scramble between his poor devils of lawyers and himself, whether
there's a little margin to be got out of the rents after paying the
interest.  If there is, it goes, I believe, towards satisfying the
claims of a lady down at Battersea."

"A lady down at Battersea," David replied.  "Is it--may I ask--an old
attachment?"

"A very old one indeed," the Duchess replied, "and, to tell you the
truth, it's one of the most reputable things I know connected with
Reginald.  He is inconstant in everything else he does, and without
being in any way wilfully dishonest, he is absolutely unreliable.  But
this lady at Battersea--she belonged to one of his tenants or
something--I forget the story--has kept him within reasonable bounds
for more years than I should like to say--  What do you see over there,
Mr. Thain?" she broke off suddenly, following his steadfast gaze.

David dropped his eyes from the clouds.  His fingers relaxed their
nervous clutch of the sides of his chair.

"Nothing," he answered.  "I am interested.  Please go on."

"Reginald has stuck at nothing to get money," the Duchess continued.
"He has been on the board of any company willing to pay him a few
guineas for his name.  I believe things have come to such a pitch in
that direction that the most foolhardy investor throws the prospectus
away if his name is on it.  He has drained his relatives dry.  And yet,
if you can reconcile all these things, he is, in his way, the very soul
of honour.  Now, having told you this, you can do as you please.  If
you lend him money, you'll probably never get it back.  If you've any
to chuck away, I can show you a hundred deserving charities.  Reginald
without money is really a harmless and extraordinarily amusing person.
Reginald in search of money is the most dangerous person I know.  That
is what I wanted to tell you, and if you like now you can run away.  My
hairdresser is waiting for me, and he is just a little more independent
than my chef.  Stop, though, there's one thing more."

The Duchess had rung a bell with her foot, and a servant was waiting at
the windows to show David out.  The latter turned back.

"You are not making a fool of yourself with Letitia, are you?"

David was very white and cold for a moment.  He looked his hostess in
the face, and, as she expressed it afterwards, froze her up.

"I am afraid that I do not understand you, Duchess," he said.

"Oh, don't be silly!" she replied.  "Remember that I am your oldest
friend in this country, and I say what I like to everybody.  You avoid
most women as you would the plague--most women except Letitia.  I've
warned you against the father.  Now I am warning you against the
daughter.  And then you can go and lose your heart to one and lend a
million to the other, if you want.  Letitia, for all her apparent
amiability, is the proudest girl I ever knew.  I hope you understand
me?"

"Perfectly!"

"Letitia will marry for money, all right," her aunt continued.  "She
understands that that is her duty, and she will do it.  But it will be
some one--you will forgive me, Mr. Thain--with kindred associations,
shall I say?  Letitia, fortunately, takes after her father.  She has no
temperament, but a sense of family tradition which will give her all
the backbone she needs."

"Is there any other member of the family," David began--

"Don't be a silly boy," the Duchess interrupted, "because that's what
you are, really, in this world and amongst our stupid class of people.
You are just as nice as can be, though.  Run along, and don't forget
that you are coming to dine on Friday.  You'll meet the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and he's going to try and persuade you to settle down
here, for the sake of your income tax."

"Another plunderer!" David groaned.  "I am beginning to feel rather
like a lamb with an exceedingly long fleece."

"You would look better with your hair cut," the Duchess remarked, as
she waved her hand.  "Try that place at the bottom of Bond Street.  The
Duke always goes there.  A Mr. Saunders is his man.  Better ask for
him.  You'll find him at the top end of the room."




CHAPTER XIII

There was just one drop of alloy in the perfect contentment with which
the Marquis contemplated his new prospects, and that was contained in a
telephone message from Mr. Wadham, Junior, which he received upon the
afternoon of David's call upon the Duchess.

"I must apologise for troubling your lordship," Mr. Wadham began.  "I
know your objection to the telephone, but in this instance it was quite
impossible to send a message."

"I accept your apology and am listening," the Marquis declared
graciously.  "Be so good as to speak quite slowly, and don't mumble."

Mr. Wadham, Junior, cleared his throat before continuing.  He was a
little proud of his voice, although its rise and fall was perhaps more
satisfactory from the point of view of a Chancery Court than from one
who expected to gather the sense of every syllable.

"I am ringing up your lordship," he continued, "concerning the large
batch of shares in the Pluto Oil Company of Arizona, which you
entrusted to us for safe keeping, and for deposit with the bank against
the advance required last Monday."

"I can hear you perfectly," the Marquis acknowledged suavely.  "Pray
continue."

"Your lordship's bankers sent for me this morning," Mr. Wadham went on,
"in connection with these shares.  They thought it their duty to point
out, either through us or by communication with you direct, that
according to the advice of a most reliable broker, their commercial
value is practically nil."

"Is what?" the Marquis demanded.

"Nil--nix--not worth a cent," Mr. Wadham, Junior, proclaimed
emphatically.

The Marquis, in that slang phraseology which he would have been the
first to decry, never turned a hair.  He had not the least intention,
moreover, of permitting his interlocutor at the other end of the
telephone even a momentary sensation of triumph.

"You can present my compliments to the manager," he said, "and tell him
that the value of the shares in question does not concern either him or
his brokers.  In any case, they could not possibly have any information
concerning the company, as it is only just registered and has not yet
commenced operations.  You understand me, Mr. Wadham?"

"Perfectly, your lordship," was the smooth reply.  "The fact remains,
however, that the brokers do know something about the company and the
persons interested in it, and that knowledge, I regret to say, is most
unfavourable.  We felt it our duty, therefore, to pass on these facts."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you for your anxieties on my behalf," the
Marquis declared.  "My legal interests are, I am quite sure, safe in
your hands.  My financial affairs--my outside financial affairs, that
is to say--I prefer to keep under my own control.  I might remind you
that these shares are supported, and came into my hands, in fact,
through the agency of Mr. David Thain, the great financier."

There was a moment's pause.

"I had not forgotten the fact," Mr. Wadham admitted diffidently, "and
it certainly seems improbable that Mr. Thain would introduce a risky
investment to your lordship within a few weeks of his arrival in this
country.  At the same time, we feel compelled, of course, to bring to
your notice the broker's report."

"Quite so," the Marquis acquiesced.  "Kindly let the people concerned
know that I am acting in this matter upon special information.
Good-day, Mr. Wadham.  My compliments to your father."

So the conversation terminated, but the Marquis for the remainder of
that day felt as though just the shadow of a cloud rested upon his
happiness.  Twice he stared at the address of David's rooms, which
occupied a prominent place upon his study table, but on both occasions
he resisted the impulse to seek him out and obtain the reassurance he
needed.  He buried himself instead in a Review.

Letitia came in to see him on the way back from her aunt's tea party.
The Marquis carefully made a note of his place and laid down his
periodical.

"You found your aunt well, I trust, dear?"

"Oh, she was all right," Letitia replied.  "She had an irritating lot
of callers there, though."

Her father nodded sympathetically.

"The extraordinary habit which people in our rank of life seem to have
developed lately for making friends outside their own sphere is making
Society very difficult," he declared.  "Members of our own family are,
I am afraid, amongst the transgressors.  Whom did you meet this
afternoon?"

Letitia mentioned a few names listlessly.

"And Mr. Thain," she concluded.

Her father betrayed his interest.

"Mr. Thain was there, eh?  I understood that he was much averse to
paying calls."

"He looked as though he had been roped in," Letitia observed, "and aunt
was all over herself, apologising to him for having other people there.
She wanted to consult him, it seems, about something or other, and she
turned him over to me until she was ready."

"And you," the Marquis enquired, with questioning sympathy, "were
perhaps bored?"

"Not bored, exactly--rather irritated!  I think I am like you, in some
respects, father," Letitia went on, smoothing out her gloves.  "I
prefer to find my intimates within the circle of our own relatives and
connections.  A person like Mr. Thain in some way disturbs me."

"That," the Marquis regretted, "is unfortunate, as he is likely to be
our neighbour at Mandeleys."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, it is of no consequence," she replied.  "I shall never feel the
slightest compunction in anything I might do or say to him.  If he pays
more for Broomleys than it is worth, he has the advantage of our
countenance, which I imagine, to a person in his position, makes the
bargain equal.  Mr. Thain does not seem to me to be one of those men
who would part with anything unless he got some return."

"Money, nowadays," the Marquis reflected, pressing the tips of his
fingers together, "is a marvellously revitalising influence.  People
whose social position is almost, if not quite equal to our own, have
even taken it into the family through marriage."

Letitia's very charming mouth twitched.  Her lips parted, and she
laughed softly.  Nothing amused her more than this extraordinary
blindness of her father to actual facts--such, for instance, as the
Lees' woollen mills!

"I do hope," she remarked, "that you are not thinking of offering me
up, dad, on the altar of the God of Dollars?"

"My dear child," the Marquis protested, "I can truthfully and proudly
say that I am acquainted with no young woman of your position in
connection with whom such a suggestion would be more sacrilegious.  I
have sometimes hoped," he went on, "that matters were already on the
eve of settlement in another direction."

"I don't know, I'm sure," Letitia answered thoughtfully.  "I sometimes
think that I have a great many more feelings, dad, than the sole
remaining daughter of the Right Honourable Reginald Thursford, Marquis
of Mandeleys, ought to possess.  The fact is, there are times when I
can't stand Charlie anywhere near me, and as to discussing any subject
of reasonable interest, well, he can only see anything from his own
point of view, and that is always wrong."

"You and he, then," the Marquis observed, "appear to share--or rather
to possess every essential for domestic happiness.  The constant
propinquity in which married people of the middle and lower classes are
forced to live is no doubt responsible, in many cases, for the early
termination of their domestic happiness."

"I always thought the middle classes were horribly virtuous," Letitia
yawned.  "However!--Thursday night, dad.  You are dining out, aren't
you?"

"Thursday night," the Marquis repeated, telling for the hundredth time,
with bland ease, the falsehood which had almost ceased to have even the
intention to deceive.  "Yes, I dine at my club to-night, dear."

She bent over and kissed his forehead.

"Remember, my dear," he enjoined, "that I do not wish you to develop
any feelings of positive dislike towards Mr. Thain.  Such people have
their uses in the world.  We must not forget that."

Letitia laughed at him understandingly, but she closed the door in
silence.




CHAPTER XIV

Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense
of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of
Trewly's Restaurant.  The programme which followed was always the same.
The Marquis rose from a cushioned seat in the small entrance lounge to
greet her, very distinguished looking in his plain dinner clothes, his
black stock, vainly imitated by the younger generation, his horn-rimmed
eyeglass, his cambric-fronted shirt with the black pearls, which had
been the gift of the Regent to his great-grandfather.  The head waiter,
and generally the manager, hovered in the background while their
greetings were exchanged and Marcia's coat delivered to the care of an
attendant.  Then they were shown with much ceremony to the same table
which they had occupied on these weekly celebrations for many years.
It was in a corner of the room, a corner which formed a slight recess,
and special flowers, the gift of the management, were invariably in
evidence.  The rose-shaded lamp, with its long, silken hangings, was
arranged at precisely the right angle.  The Marquis asked his usual
question and waved away the menu.

"What you choose to offer us, Monsieur Herbrand," he would say, in his
old-world but perfect French.  "If Madame has any fancy, we will send
you a message."

So the meal commenced.  Trewly's was a restaurant with a past.  In the
days of the Marquis's youth, when such things were studied more
carefully than now, it was the one first-class restaurant in London to
which the gilded youth of the aristocracy, and perhaps their sires,
might indulge in the indiscretion of entertaining a young lady from the
Italian chorus without fear of meeting staider relatives.  The world of
bohemian fashion had changed its laws since those days, and Trewly's
had been left, high and dry, save for a small clientele who remembered
its former glories and esteemed its cellar and cuisine.  It belonged to
the world which the Marquis knew, the world whose maxims he still
recognised.  After all these years, he would still have thought himself
committing a breach of social etiquette if he had invited Marcia to
lunch with him at the Ritz or the Carlton.

They drank claret, decanted with zealous care and served by a
black-aproned cellarman, who waited anxiously by until the Marquis had
gravely sipped his first glassful and approved.  Their dinner to-day
was very much what it had been a dozen years ago--the French-fed
chicken, the artichokes, and strawberries served with liqueurs
remained, whatever the season.  And their conversations.  Marcia leaned
back in her chair for a moment, and again the corners of her lips
twitched as she remembered.  Faithfully, year after year, she could
trace those conversations--the courtly, old-fashioned criticism of the
events of the week, criticism from the one infallible standard, the
standard of the immutable Whiggism upon which the constitution itself
rested; conversation with passing references to any new event in art,
and, until lately, the stage.  To-night Marcia found herself tracing
the gradual birth of her stimulating rebellion.  She remembered how,
years ago, she had sat in that same seat and listened as one might
listen to the words of a god.  And then came the faint revolt, the
development of her intellect, the necessity for giving tongue to those
more expansive and more subtle views of life which became her heritage.
To do him justice, the Marquis encouraged her.  He was as good a judge
of wit and spirit as he was of claret.  If Marcia had expressed a
single sentence awkwardly, if her grammar had ever been at fault, her
taste to be questioned, he would have relapsed into the stiffness of
his ordinary manner, and she would have felt herself tongue-tied.  But,
curious though it seemed to her when she looked back, she was forced to
realise that it was he who had always encouraged the birth of her new
thoughts, her new ideals, her new outlook upon life, her own drastic
and sometimes unanswerable criticisms of that state of life in which he
lived.  She represented modernity, seeking for expression in the
culture of the moment.  He, remaining of the ancient world, yet found
himself rejuvenated, mentally refreshed, week by week, preserved from
that condition of obstinate ossification into which he would otherwise
have fallen, by this brilliant and unusual companionship.  In all the
many years of their intimacy he had felt no doubts concerning her.  He
was possessed of a self-confidence wholly removed from conceit, which
had spared for him the knowledge of even a moment's jealousy.  In her
company he had felt the coming and, as he now realised, the passing of
middle age.  It was only within these last few hours that certain
formless apprehensions had presented themselves to him.

"You drink your wine slowly to-night," she observed.  "I was just
thinking how delicious it was."

He touched the long forefinger of his left hand, just a little swollen.

"A touch of gout," he said, "come to remind me, I suppose, that however
much we set our faces against it, change does exist.  You are the only
person, Marcia, who seems to defy it."

She laughed at him, but not with entire naturalness.  He found himself
studying her, during the next few moments.  Just as he was a celebrated
connoisseur of _objets d'arts_, a valued visitor to Christie's,
although his purchases were small, so he was, in his way, an excellent
judge of the beautiful in living things.  He realised, as he studied
her, that Marcia had only more fully developed the charm which had
first attracted him.  Her figure was a little rounder but it had lost
none of its perfections.  Her neck and throat were just as beautiful,
and the success of her work, and her greater knowledge of life, had
brought with them an assured and dignified bearing.  There was not a
vestige of grey in her soft brown hair, not a line in her face, nor any
sign of the dentist's handiwork in her strong, white teeth.  Only--was
it his fancy, he wondered, or was there something missing from the way
she looked at him?--a half shy, half baffled appeal for affection which
had so often shone out upon him during these evenings, a wholly
personal, wholly human note, the unspoken message of a woman to her
lover.  He asked himself whether that had gone, and, if it had, whether
the companionship which remained sufficed.

"So the journey down to Mandeleys has not materialised yet?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"To tell you the truth," she told him, "I rather shrank from it.  I
could not seem to bring it into perspective--you know what I mean.  How
am I to go to him?  I don't suppose he has changed.  He is still
splendidly faithful to the ideas of his earlier days.  I do not suppose
he has moved a step out of his groove.  He is looking at the same
things in the same way.  Am I to go to him as a Magdalen, as a
penitent?  Honestly, Reginald, I couldn't play the part."

Their eyes met, and they both smiled.

"It is very difficult," he admitted, "to discuss or to hold in common a
matter of importance with a person of another world.  Why do you go?"

"Because," she replied, "he is, after all, my father; because I know
that the pain and rage which he felt when he left England are there
to-day, and I would like so much to make him see that they have all
been wasted.  I want him to realise that my life has been made, not
spoilt."

"I should find out indirectly, if I were you, how he is feeling," the
Marquis advised.  "I rather agree with you that you will find him
unchanged.  His fierce opposition to my reasonable legal movements
against him give one that impression."

"I shall probably be sorry I went," she admitted, "but it seems to me
that it is one of those things which must be done.  Let us talk of
something else.  Tell me how you have spent the week?"

"For one thing, I have improved my acquaintance with the American,
David Thain, of whom I have already spoken to you," he told her.

"And your great financial scheme?"

"It promises well.  Of course, if it is entirely successful, it will be
like starting life all over again."

"There is a certain amount of risk, I suppose?" she asked, a little
anxiously.

The Marquis waved his hand.

"In this affair quite negligible," he declared.

"It would make you very happy, of course, to free the estates," she
ruminated.

The Marquis for a moment revealed a side of himself which always made
Marcia feel almost maternal towards him.

"It would give me very great pleasure, also," he confessed, "to point
out to my solicitors--to Mr. Wadham, Junior, especially--that the task
which they have left unaccomplished for some twenty-five years I have
myself undertaken successfully."

"This Mr. Thain must be rather interesting," Marcia said musingly.
"Could you describe him?"

It was at that precise moment that the Marquis raised his head and
discovered that David Thain was being shown by an obsequious _maître
d'hôtel_ to the table adjoining their own.

In the case of almost any other of his acquaintances, the Marquis's
course of action would have been entirely simple.  David, however,
complicated things.  With the naïve courtesy of his American bringing
up, he no sooner recognised the Marquis than he approached the table
and offered his hand.

"Good evening, Marquis," he said.

The Marquis shook hands.  Some banalities passed between the two men.
Then, as though for the first time, David was suddenly and vividly
aware of Marcia's presence.  Some instinct told him who she was, and
for a moment he forgot himself.  He looked at her steadily, curiously,
striving to remember, and Marcia returned his gaze with a strange
absorption which at first she failed to understand.  This slim,
nervous-looking man, with the earnest eyes and the slight stoop of the
head, was bringing back to her some memory.  From the first stage of
the struggle her common sense was worsted.  She was looking back down
the avenues of her memory.  Surely somewhere in that shadowland she had
known some one with eyes like these!--there must be something to
explain this queer sense of excitement.  And then the Marquis, who had
been deliberating, spoke the words which brought her to herself.

"Marcia, let me present to you Mr. David Thain, of whom we were
speaking a few minutes ago.  Mr. Thain, this is Miss Marcia Hannaway,
whose very clever novel you may have read."

David's eyes were still eagerly fixed upon her face, but the
introduction had brought Marcia back to the earth.  There could be no
connection between those half-formed memories and the American
millionaire whose name was almost a household word!

"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Hannaway," David said.  "I was
just telling the Marquis that I was surprised to find any one here whom
I knew.  I asked a friend to tell me of a restaurant near my rooms
where I should meet no one, and he sent me here."

"Why such misanthropy?" she asked.

"It is my own bad manners," he explained.  "I accepted an invitation
for this evening, and found at the last moment so much work that I was
obliged to send an excuse."

"You carry your work about with you, then?"

"Not always, I hope," he replied, "only I am just now clearing out a
great many of my interests in America, and that alone is sufficient to
keep one busy."

He passed on with a little bow, and took his place at the table which
the _maître d'hôtel_ had indicated.  The Marquis, to whom his coming
had been without any real significance, continued his conversation with
Marcia until he found to his surprise that she was giving him less than
her whole attention.

"What do you think of our hero of finance?" he enquired, a little
coldly.

"He seems very much as you described him," Marcia answered.  "To tell
you the truth, his sudden appearance just as we were talking about him
rather took my breath away."

"It was a coincidence, without doubt," the Marquis acknowledged.

Her eyes wandered towards the man who had given his brief order for
dinner, and whose whole attention now seemed absorbed by the newspaper
which he was reading.

"It is Mr. Thain, is it not, who introduced to you this wonderful
speculation?" she asked, a little abruptly.

"That is so," the Marquis admitted.  "I have always myself, however,
been favourably disposed towards oil."

Marcia suddenly withdrew her glance, laughed softly to herself and
sipped her wine.

"I was indulging in a ridiculous train of thought," she confessed.
"Mr. Thain looks very clever, even if he is not exactly one's idea of
an American financier.  I expect the poor man does get hunted about.  A
millionaire, especially from foreign parts, has become a sort of Monte
Cristo, nowadays."

The subject of David Thain dropped.  The Marquis, as their coffee was
brought, began to wonder dimly whether it was possible that the thread
of their conversation was a little more difficult to hold together than
in the past; whether that bridge between their interests and daily life
became a little more difficult to traverse as the years passed.  He
fell into a momentary fit of silence.  Marcia leaned towards him.

"Reginald," she said, "do you know, there was something I wanted to ask
you this evening.  Shall I ask it now?"

"If you will, dear."

She paused for a moment.  The matter had seemed so easy and reasonable
when she had revolved it in her mind, yet at this moment of broaching
it, she realised, not for the first time, how different he was from
other men; how difficult a nameless something about his environment
made certain discussions.  Nevertheless, she commenced her task.

"Reginald," she began, "do you realise that during the whole of my life
I have never dined alone with any other man but you?"

"Nor I, since you came, with any other woman," he rejoined calmly.
"You have some proposition to make?"

She was surprised to find that he had penetrated her thoughts.

"Don't you think, perhaps," she continued, "that we are a little too
self-enclosing?  Thanks to you, as I always remember, dear, the world
has grown a larger place for me, year by year.  At first I really tried
to avoid friendships.  I was perfectly satisfied.  I did not need them.
But my work, somehow, has made things different.  It has brought me
amongst a class of people who look upon freedom of intercourse between
the sexes as a part of their everyday life.  I found a grey hair in my
head only the night before last, and do you know how it came?  Just by
refusing invitations from perfectly harmless people."

"I have never placed any restrictions upon your life," her companion
reminded her.

"I know it," she admitted, "but, you see, the principal things between
us have always been unspoken.  I knew just how you felt about it.  What
I want to know is, now that the times have changed around you as well
as around me, whether you would feel just the same if I, to take an
example, were to lunch or dine with Mr. Borden, now and then, or with
Morris Hyde, the explorer.  I met him at an Authors' Club
_conversazione_ and he was immensely interesting.  It struck me then
that perhaps I was interpreting your wishes a little too literally."

The Marquis selected a cigarette from his battered gold case with its
tiny coronet, tapped it upon the table and lit it.  Marcia was already
smoking.

"I fear that I am very old-fashioned in my notions, Marcia," he
confessed.  "I should find it very difficult to adapt myself to the
perfectly harmless, I am sure, lack of restraint which, as you say, has
opened the doors to a much closer friendship between men and women.
The place which you have held in my life has grown rather than lessened
with the years.  It is only natural, however, that the opposite should
be the case with you.  I should like to consider what you have said,
Marcia."

"You have meant so much to me," she continued, "you have been so much.
In our earlier days, too, especially during that year when we
travelled, you were such a wonderful mentor.  It was your fine taste,
Reginald, which enabled me to make the best of those months in Florence
and Rome.  You knew the best, and you showed it to me.  You never tried
to understand why it was the best, but you never made a mistake."

"Those things are matters of inheritance," he replied, "and
cultivation.  It was a great joy to me, Marcia, to give you the keys."

"Yes," she repeated, "that is what you did, Reginald--you gave me the
keys, and I opened the doors."

"And now," he went on, "you have pushed your way further, much further
into the world where men and women think, than I could or should care
to follow you.  Is it likely to separate us?"

She saw him suddenly through a little mist of tears.

"No!" she exclaimed, "it must not!  It shall not!"

"Nevertheless," he persisted, "the thought is in your mind.  I cannot
alter my life, Marcia.  I live to a certain extent by tradition, and by
habits which have become too strong to break.  There is a great
difference in our years and in our outlook upon life.  There is much
before you, flowers which you may pick and heights which you may climb,
which can have no message for me."

"Nothing," Marcia declared fervently, "shall disturb our--our
friendship."

"That does not rest with you, dear, but rather with Fate," he replied.
"You might control your actions, and I know that you would, but your
will, your desires, your temperament, may still lead you in opposite
directions.  I have been your lover too long to slip easily into the
place of your guardian.  Hold out your hand, if you will, now, and bid
me farewell.  Try the other things, and, if they fail you, send for me."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," she objected.  "We are both of us
much too serious.  The only question we are considering is whether you
would object to my dining with Mr. Borden and lunching with Mr. Hyde?"

"It would give you an opportunity," he remarked, with a rather grim
smile, "of seeing the inside of some other restaurant."

"How understanding you are!" she exclaimed.  "Do you know, although I
love our dinners here, I sometimes feel as though this room were a
little cage, a little corner of the world across the threshold of which
you had drawn a chalk line, so that no one of your world or mine might
enter.  The coming of Mr. Thain was almost like an earthquake."

With every moment it seemed to him that he understood her a little
more, and with every moment the pain of it all increased.

"My dear Marcia," he said, "you have spoken the word.  More than once
lately I have fancied that I noticed indications of this desire on your
part.  I am glad, therefore, that you have spoken.  Dine with your
publisher, by all means, and lunch with Mr. Hyde.  Take to yourself
that greater measure of liberty which it is only too natural that you
should covet.  We will look upon it as a brief vacation, which
certainly, after all these years, you have earned.  When you have made
up your mind, write to me.  I shall await your letter with interest."

"But you mean that you are not coming down to see me before then?" she
asked, a little tremulously.

"I think it would be better not," he decided.  "I have kept you to
myself very stringently, Marcia.  You see, I recognise this, and I set
you free for a time."

He paid the bill, and they left the room together.

"You are coming home?" she whispered, as they passed down the vestibule.

He shook his head.

"Not to-night, if you will excuse me, Marcia," he said.  "The car is
here.  I will take a cab myself.  There is a meeting of the committee
at my club."

They were on the pavement.  She gripped his hand.

"Do come," she begged.

He handed her in with a smile.

"You will go down to Battersea, James," he told the chauffeur, "and
fetch me afterwards from the club."

A queer feeling caught at her heart as the car glided off and left him
standing there, bareheaded.  It was the first time--she felt something
like the snap of a chain in her heart--the first time in all these
years!  Yet she never for a moment deceived herself.  The tears which
stood in her eyes, the pain in her heart, were for him.




CHAPTER XV

The Duchess, a few mornings later, leaned back in her car and watched
the perilous progress of her footman, dodging in and out of the traffic
in the widest part of Piccadilly.  He returned presently in safety,
escorting the object of his quest.  The Duchess pointed to the seat by
her side.

"Can I take you or drop you anywhere?" she asked.  "Please don't look
as though you had been taken into custody.  I saw you in the distance,
walking aimlessly along, and I really wanted to talk to you."

David for a moment indulged in the remains of what was almost a boyish
resentment.

"I have to go to the Savoy," he explained, "and I was rather intending
to walk across St. James's Park."

"You can walk after your lunch," she insisted.  "If you walk before, it
gives you too much of an appetite,--afterwards, it helps your
digestion, so get in with me, and I will drive you to the Savoy."

He took his place by her side with a distinct air of resignation.  The
Duchess laughed at him.

"You are a very silly person to dislike other people so," she
admonished.  "If you begin to give way to misanthropy at your time of
life, you will be a withered up old stick whom no one will want to be
decent to, except to get money out of, before you're fifty.  Don't you
know that the society of human beings is good for you?"

"There isn't a medicine in the world one can't take too much of," David
ventured, smiling in spite of himself.

"To the Savoy, John," his mistress directed.  "Tell Miles to drive
slowly.  To abandon abstruse discussions," she continued, leaning back,
"have you regarded my warning?"

"Which one?" he demanded.

"I mean with reference to my brother.  I happen to have come across him
once or twice, during the last few days.  On Wednesday he was in the
most buoyant spirits--for him.  He had the air of a man who has
accomplished some great feat.  If you only knew how amusing Reginald is
at such times!  His manner isn't in the least different, but you know
perfectly well that he is thinking himself one of the most brilliant
creatures ever born.  There is a note of the finest and most delicate
condescension in the way he speaks.  I am perfectly certain that if he
had happened to come across the Chancellor of the Exchequer on
Wednesday, he would have discussed finance with him in a patronising
fashion, and probably offered him a few hints as to how to reduce the
National Debt."

"On Wednesday this was," David murmured.

"And on Friday," the Duchess continued, "he was a different man.  He
carried himself exactly as usual, but his footsteps were falling like
lead.  He looked over the eyes of every one, and there was that queer,
grey look in his face which helps one to remember that, notwithstanding
his figure, he is nearly sixty years old.  What have you been doing to
him, Mr. Thain?"

"Nothing that would account for his latter state," David assured her.

"When did you see him last?" she asked.

"On Thursday."

"Where?"

David hesitated.

"At Trewly's Restaurant."

"He was lunching or dining with some one?"

"Dining."

The Duchess nodded.

"Of course!  With a lady, wasn't it?"

"Is this a fair cross-examination?" David protested.

"My dear Mr. Thain, don't be absurd," his companion admonished.  "Every
one in London and out of it has known of my brother's friendship with
Marcia Hannaway for years.  As a matter of fact, we all approve of it
immensely.  The young woman, although she must be getting on now, is a
very clever writer, and I think that the influence she has exercised
upon Reginald, throughout his life, has been an excellent one.  So that
was Thursday night, eh?"

David assented.  He was looking out of the window of the car, as though
interested in the passing throngs.

"I will tell you something," the Duchess continued.  "You have heard, I
dare say, of the lawsuits down at Mandeleys, and of that keeper's
cottage within a hundred yards from the lawn, and of the old man Vont,
who has come back just as bitter as ever?  That girl is his daughter."

"The Marquis seems to have displayed the most extraordinary fidelity,"
David remarked.

"My dear Mr. Thain," was the emphatic reply, "they have been the making
of one another's lives.  It is the sort of thing one reads more of in
French memoirs than meets with in actual life, but I can assure you
that Reginald would be absolutely miserable without her, and she--well,
see what she has become through his influence and companionship.  Yet
they tell me that that old man has come back to his ridiculous cottage,
and sits there in the front garden, reading the Bible and blasting the
very gooseberry bushes with his curses against Reginald.  Most
uncomfortable it will be, I should think, when you all get down there."

"Nothing that you have said alters the fact," David reminded her, "that
Vont's daughter has been all her life, and is to-day, in an invidious
situation with regard to your brother."

The Duchess's eyebrows were slightly raised.

"And why not?" she asked, in genuine surprise.  "Of course, I don't
claim to be so absolutely feudal in my ideas as Reginald, but I still
cannot find the slightest disadvantage which has accrued to the young
woman from her position."

"I have been brought up myself in a different school," David said
quietly, "in the school Richard Vont was brought up in.  I see no
difference fundamentally between a Marquis and a gamekeeper, and to me
the womenkind of the gamekeeper should be as sacred to the Marquis as
the womenkind of the Marquis to the gamekeeper."

The Duchess laughed good-humouredly.

"I have always insisted," she declared, "that America is the most
backward country in the world.  So many of you come to Europe now,
though, that one would have thought you would have attained to a more
correct perspective of life.  But you are certainly much more amusing
as you are.  No, be quiet, please," she went on.  "I didn't call for
you to enter into general discussions.  I just wanted to know about
Reginald.  Of course, you have discovered already that I am
ridiculously fond of him, and I am trying to find out what is
depressing him so much.  Do you know what I am most afraid of?"

"I have no idea," David confessed.  "The workings of your mind seem to
lead you to such unexpected conclusions."

"Don't be peevish," she replied.  "What I am really more afraid of than
anything is that Marcia Hannaway will leave him."

"Why?"

The Duchess shrugged her shoulders.

"She is twenty years younger than Reginald, and she has made for
herself an entirely new place in life.  That is the wonderful goal a
woman reaches who has brains and is enabled to put them to some
practical use.  She has a circle of friends and admirers and
sympathisers, already made.  Now Reginald is a dear, but his outlook
upon life is almost whimsical, and I have always wondered whether he
would be able to hold a woman like this to the end.  The only thing
is," she concluded ruminatively, "that the affair has been going on for
so long, and is so well known, that it would be positively indecent of
her to break it off.  Don't you think so, Mr. Thain?"

David looked at the Duchess and shook his head.

"Honestly," he admitted, "I can't give an opinion.  I thought I
understood something of human nature before I came into touch with you
and those few members of your aristocracy whom I have met through you.
But frankly, to use a homely metaphor, you take the wind out of my
sails.  I don't know where I am when you lay down the law.  There is
something wrong between us fundamentally.  I was brought up the same
way Vont was brought up.  Things were right or wrong, moral or immoral.
You people seem to have made laws of your own."

"It's time some one revised the old ones," his companion laughed.
"However, I can see that you can be no help to me about Reginald, and
here we are at the Savoy.  By-the-by, I've never seen you except with
men.  Have you no women friends?  Are none of those charming little
musical comedy ladies I see through the windows there expecting you as
their host?"

"They look very attractive," David admitted, smiling back at his
companion, "but I am, in reality, lunching alone.  I came here because
I know my stockbroker lunches every day in the grillroom, and I want to
see him."

"How pathetic!" she sighed.  "I really believe that I have a duty in
connection with you."

"At any rate," he promised, as he held out his hand, "there is a man
here who will serve us some American lobster which is very nearly the
real thing."

"Don't make me feel too gluttonous," she begged, as she stepped out.
"I really am not in the habit of inviting myself to luncheon like this,
but the fact of it is--"

She hesitated.  He passed behind her into the little vestibule.

"Well?"

"Well, I rather like you, Mr. David Thain," she whispered.  "You won't
be vain about it, will you, but all the financiers I have ever met have
been so extraordinarily full of their money and how they made it.  You
are different, aren't you?"

"I am content if you find me so," he answered, with rare gallantry.

David ordered a thoroughly American luncheon, of which his guest
heartily approved.

"If you Americans," she observed, "only knew how to live as well as you
know how to eat, what a nation you would be!"

"We fancy that we have some ideas that way, also," he told her.
"Wherein do we fail most, from your English point of view?"

"In matters of sex," the Duchess replied coolly.  "You know so much
more about lobster Newburg than you do about women.  I suppose it is
all this strenuous money-getting that is responsible for your
ignorance.  No one over here, you see, tries for anything very much."

"You certainly all live in a more enervating atmosphere," David
admitted.

"Tell me about your younger days?" she demanded.

"There is nothing to tell in the least interesting," he assured her.
"My people were poor.  I was sent to Harvard with great difficulty by a
relative who kept a boot store.  I became a clerk in a railway office,
took a fancy to the work and planned out some schemes--which came off."

"How much money have you, in plain English?" she asked.

"About four millions," he answered.

"And what are you going to do with it?"

"Buy an estate, for one thing," he replied.  "Fortunately, I am very
fond of shooting and riding, so I suppose I shall amuse myself."

"Are those your only resources?" she enquired, with a faint smile.

"I may marry."

"Come, this gets more interesting!  Any lady in your mind yet?"

"None whatever," he assured her, with almost exaggerated firmness.

"You'd better give yourself a few years first and then let me choose
for you," she suggested.  "I know just the type--unless you change."

"And why should I change?"

"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present
something bottled up in you.  I do not know what it is, and if I asked
you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever
that may be.  Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years'
struggle of yours?  Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for
generous life, Mr. Thain."

"You are a very observant person."

"Trust me, then, and tell me your secret sorrow?" she suggested.  "I
could be a very good friend, Mr. Thain, if friends amuse you."

"I have lived under a shadow," he confessed.  "I am sorry, but I cannot
tell you much about it.  But in a sense you are right.  Life for me
will begin after the accomplishment of a certain purpose."

"You have a rival to ruin, eh?"

"No, it isn't that," he assured her.  "It happens to be something of
which I could not give you even the smallest hint."

"Well, I don't see how you are going to get on with it down at
Broomleys," she observed.  "What a horrid person you are to go there at
all!  You might as well bury yourself.  You have the wealth of a Monte
Cristo and you take a furnished villa--for that's all it is!  Perhaps
you are waiting till the mortgages fall in, to buy Mandeleys?  Or did
my warning come too late and is Letitia the attraction?"

He was conscious of her close observation, but he gave no sign.

"I have seen nothing of Lady Letitia," he said, "but even if she were
content to accept my four millions as a compensation for my other
disadvantages, it would make no difference."

"Any entanglements on the other side?" she asked airily.

"None!"

The Duchess finished her lobster and leaned back in her chair.  Through
her tiny platinum lorgnette she looked around the room for several
moments.  Then a little abruptly she turned again to him.

"Really," she said, "people are doing such mad things, now-a-days, that
I am not at all sure that I am right in putting you off Letitia.  It
would be frightfully useful to have four millions in the family.  And
yet, do you know," she went on, "it's queer, isn't it, but I don't want
you to marry my niece."

"Why not?"

"How crude!" she sighed.  "I really shall have to take a lot of trouble
with you, Mr. David Thain.  However, if you persist--because Letitia is
my niece."

"And you don't like me well enough," he asked, "to accept me as a
husband for your niece?"

She laughed at him very quietly.

"Are you very ingenuous," she demanded, "or just a little subtle?
Hadn't it occurred to you, for instance, that I might prefer to keep
you to myself?"

"You must forgive me if I seem stupid," he begged, "or unresponsive.  I
don't wish to be either.  I can understand that in America I might be a
person of some interest.  Over here--well, the whole thing is
different, isn't it?  Apart from my money, I know and realise how
ignorant I am of your ways, of the things to do here and how to do
them.  I feel utterly at a disadvantage with every one, unless they
happen to want my money."

"You are too modest, Mr. Thain," she declared, leaning a little towards
him and dropping her voice.  "I will tell you one reason why you
interest me.  It is because I am quite certain that there is something
in your life, some purpose or some secret, which you have not confided
to any living person in this country.  I want to know what it is.  It
isn't exactly vulgar inquisitiveness, believe me.  I am perfectly
certain that there is something more of you than you show to people
generally."

David was conscious of an odd sense of relief.  After all, the woman
was only curious--and it was most improbable that her curiosity would
lead her in the right direction.

"You are very discerning, Duchess," he said.  "Unfortunately, I have no
confidence to offer you.  The one secret in my life is some one else's
and not my own."

"And you never betray a confidence?" she asked, looking at him
steadfastly.  "You could be trusted?"

"I hope so," he assured her.

Their lunch passed on to its final stages.  The Duchess smoked a
Russian cigarette with her coffee, and it seemed to him that
imperceptibly she had moved a little nearer to him.  Her elbows were
upon the table and her hands clasped.  She seemed for a moment to study
one or two quaint rings upon her fingers.

"A few more questions, and I shall feel that we know one another," she
said.  "Just why have you left America and this wonderful pursuit of
wealth?"

"Because there were no more railways in which I was interested," he
answered, "nor any particular speculation or enterprise that appealed
to me.  I have more money than I can ever spend, and I know very well
that if I remained in America I should have no peace.  I should be a
target for years for every man who has land to sell near railways, or
shares to sell, or an invention to perfect.  As soon as I decided to
wind up, I decided also that it was necessary for me to clear right
away.  Apart from that, England and English life attracts me."

"And this purpose?" she enquired.  "This secret--which is somebody
else's secret?"

"Such as it is," he replied, "it belongs to this country."

"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.

"I am thirty-seven," he told her.

She sighed.  Her slightly tired blue eyes seemed to be looking through
the little cloud of cigarette smoke to the confines of the room.

"A magnificent age for a man," she murmured, "but a little ghastly for
a woman.  I was thirty-nine last birthday.  Never mind, one has the
present.  So here are you, in the prime of life, with an immense
fortune and no responsibilities.  If Disraeli had been alive, he would
have written a novel about you.  There is so much which you could do,
so much in which you could fail.  Will you become just a man about town
here, make friends partly in Bohemia and partly amongst some of us,
endow a theatre and marry the first chorus girl who is too clever for
you?  Or--"

"I am more interested in the 'or,'" he declared rashly.

She turned her eyes slightly without moving her head, and knocked the
ash from her cigarette into her plate.

"Let us go," she said, a little abruptly.  "I am tired of talking here.
If you really wish to know, you can accept the invitation which I shall
send you presently, and come to Scotland."




CHAPTER XVI

Letitia and her escort pulled up their horses at the top of Rotten Row.
Letitia was a little out of breath, but her colour was delightful, and
the slight disarrangement of her tightly coiled brown hair most
becoming.

"It was dear of you, Charlie, to think of lending me a hack," she
declared.  "I haven't enjoyed a gallop so much for ages.  When we get
down to Mandeleys I am going to raid Bailey's stables.  He always has
some young horses."

"Want schooling a bit before they're fit to ride," Grantham observed.

"If I had been born in another walk of life," Letitia said, "I am sure
horse-breaking would have been my profession.  You haven't been in to
see us for ages, Charles."

"You weren't particularly gracious the last time I did come," he
reminded her gloomily.

"Don't be silly," she laughed.  "You must have come on an irritating
afternoon.  I get into such a terrible tangle sometimes with my
housekeeping accounts up here.  You know how impossible dad is with
money matters, and he leaves everything to me."

The young man cleared his throat.

"I think you've borne the burdens of the family long enough," he
remarked.  "I wish you'd try mine."

"You do choose the most original forms of proposal," Letitia
acknowledged frankly.  "As a matter of fact, I have had enough of
keeping accounts.  I have almost made up my mind that when I do marry,
if I ever do, I will marry some one enormously wealthy, who can afford
to let me have a secretary-steward as well as a housekeeper."

"You've been thinking of that fellow Thain," he muttered.

"Oh, no, I haven't!" she replied.  "Mr. Thain is a very pleasant
person, but I can assure you that I have never considered him
matrimonially.  I suppose I ought to have done," she went on, "but, you
know, I am just a little old-fashioned."

"I can't see what's the matter with me," the young man said
disconsolately.  "I've a bit of my own, a screw from my job, and the
governor allows me a trifle.  We might work it up to ten thousand a
year.  We ought to be able to make a start on that."

"It is positive wealth," Letitia acknowledged, "but I am sure you don't
want me really, and I haven't the least inclination to get married, and
heaven knows what would happen to dad if I let him go back to bachelor
apartments!"

"He'd take care of himself all right," Letitia's suitor observed
confidently.

"Would he!" she replied.  "I am not at all sure.  Our menkind always
seem to have gone on sowing their wild oats most vigorously after
middle age.  Of course, if Ada Honeywell would marry him, I might feel
a little easier in my mind."

"Ada won't marry any one," Grantham declared, "and I am perfectly
certain, if she were willing, your father wouldn't marry her.  She's
too boisterous."

"Poor woman!" Letitia sighed.  "She's immensely rich, but, you see, she
has no past--I mean no pedigree.  I am afraid it's out of the question."

"I wish you would chuck rotting and marry me, Letitia," he begged.
"There's a little house in Pont Street--suit us down to the ground."

Letitia found herself gazing over the tops of the more distant trees.

"We are going down to Mandeleys in a few days," she said presently.
"I'll take myself seriously to task there.  I suppose I must really
want to be married only I don't know it.  Don't be surprised if you get
a telegram from me any day."

"I'd come down there myself, if I had an invitation," he suggested.

She shook her head.

"Charlie," she declared, "it couldn't be done.  So far as I can see at
present, unless some of the tenantry offer their services for
nothing--and our tenantry aren't like that--we shall have to keep house
with about half a dozen servants, which means of course, only opening a
few rooms.  As a matter of fact, we shan't be able to go at all, unless
Mr. Thain pays his rent for Broomleys in advance."

They turned out of the Park and not a word passed between them again
until Letitia descended from her horse in Grosvenor Square.

"You were a dear to think of this, Charles," she said, standing on the
steps and smiling at him.  "I haven't enjoyed anything so much for a
long time."

"You wouldn't care about a theatre this evening?" he proposed.

"Come in at tea time and see how I am feeling," she suggested.  "I have
dad rather on my hands.  He has been wandering about like a lost sheep,
the last few afternoons.  I can't think what is wrong."

She strolled across the hall and looked in at the study.  The Marquis
was seated in an easy-chair, reading a volume of Memoirs.  She crossed
the room towards him.

"Father," she exclaimed, "you ought to have been out a beautiful
morning like this."

The Marquis laid down his book.  He was certainly looking a little
tired.  Letitia came up to his side and patted his hand.

"How's the gout?" she asked.

"Better," he replied, examining the offending finger.

"You're just lazy, I believe," Letitia observed reprovingly.  "The
sooner we get down to Mandeleys the better."

The Marquis glanced at a silver-framed calendar which stood upon the
table.  He had glanced at it about a hundred times during the last few
days.

"A little country air," he confessed, "will be very agreeable.  I think
perhaps, too," he went on, "that I am inclined to be weary of London.
It is more of a city, after all, isn't it, for the bourgeois rich than
for a penniless Marquis.  Where did you get your mount from, dear?"

"Charlie lent me a hack," she replied.  "I've had a perfectly
delightful ride."

"You have not yet arrived, I suppose," her father went on, "at any
fixed matrimonial intentions with regard to Charlie?"

She shook her head a little dejectedly.

"It's so hard," she confessed.  "I am dying to say 'yes,' especially,
somehow, during the last few days, but somehow I can't.  I think it
must be his fault," she added resentfully.  "He doesn't ask me
properly."

"You'll find some one will be taking him off your hands before long,"
her father warned her.  "Personally, I have no objection to find with
the alliance."

"Of course," Letitia complained, "it's very clear what you are thinking
of!  You want your bachelor apartments in the Albany again, and the gay
life.  I really feel that it is my duty to remain a spinster and look
after you."

The Marquis smiled.  Once more his eyes glanced towards the calendar.

"Better ask Charlie down to Mandeleys and settle it with him there," he
suggested.

"That's just what he wants," she sighed.  "If we begin a house party
there, though, think what a picnic it will be!  And besides, Sylvia
Laycey is sure to be somewhere about, and he'll probably fall in love
with her again.  I do wish I could make up my mind.  What are you doing
to-night, dad?"

"I am dining with Montavon," her father replied, "at the club.  He has
a party of four for whist."

"Dear old things!" Letitia murmured affectionately.  "I hope you have
Sheffield plate candlesticks on the table.  Why not go in fancy
dress--one of those Georgian Court dresses, you know--black velvet
knickerbockers, a sword and peruke!  Much better let me give you a
lesson at auction bridge."

The Marquis shivered.

"You play the game?" he asked politely.

"I tried it as a means of subsistence," Letitia confessed, "but my
partners always did such amazing things that I found there was nothing
in it.  If you are really dining out, dad, I shall go to the play with
Charlie."

"Alone?"

"Don't be silly, dear," Letitia protested, flicking her whip.
"Remember what that wicked old lady wrote in her memoirs--'Balham
requires a chaperon, but Grosvenor Square never.'  I shall try and get
used to him this evening.  I may even have wonderful news for you in
the morning."

The Marquis took up his book again.

"I wish, my dear, that I could believe it," he told her fervently.




CHAPTER XVII

"I feel like the German lady," Marcia observed, as she stood before her
little sideboard and mixed a whisky and soda, "who went on cutting
bread and butter.  The world falls to pieces before my eyes--and I
press the handle of a syphon.  There!"

She carried the tumbler to Borden, who was seated by her fireside, and
threw herself into an easy-chair opposite to him.

"I know it's all wrong," she declared.  "My instincts are so obstinate
even about the simplest things.  You see, I have even wheeled away his
easy-chair so that you shan't sit in it."

"Women always confuse instincts with prejudices," Borden rejoined,
calmly sipping his whisky and soda.  "May I smoke a pipe?"

Marcia gave a little gesture of despair.

"I never knew a man," she exclaimed, "who exhibited such a propensity
for making himself at home!  Tell me," she went on, "did you notice a
very aristocratic looking, almost beautiful girl, with large brown eyes
and a pale skin, seated in the stalls just below our box?"

"The girl with Charles Grantham?"

Marcia nodded.

"That was Lady Letitia Thursford," she told him.

"Is she engaged to Grantham?"

"She wasn't last week," Marcia replied.  "I think the Marquis would
like it, but Lady Letitia is by way of being difficult.  I saw her
looking at me thoughtfully, once or twice.  I was dying to send down
word to her that I had permission."

Borden moved in his chair a little uneasily.

"You are bound to no one," he reminded her.  "There is no one of whom
you need to ask permission."

"Don't be silly," Marcia replied.  "I asked permission, and without it
I wouldn't have dined with you alone to-night or lunched with Morris
Hyde on Tuesday."

"I trust that both entertainments," he ventured, "have been a success."

Marcia shook her head.

"Morris Hyde was very disappointing," she confessed.  "I was looking
forward to being tremendously entertained, but instead of telling me
all about these unknown tribes in Central America, his only anxiety
seemed to be to know if I was going to let him kiss me in the taxi
afterwards.  Explorers, I am afraid, are far too promiscuous."

"Publishers," Borden said firmly, "are renowned throughout the world
for their fidelity."

"Fidelity to their cash boxes," Marcia scoffed.

Borden, who had lit his pipe, blinked at her through a little cloud of
smoke.  They had come straight from the theatre, and he was in the
evening clothes of a man who cares nothing about his appearance,--the
black waistcoat, the none-too-well fitting shirt, the plainest of
studs, and the indifferently arranged white tie.  Nevertheless, Marcia
liked the look of him, seated at ease in her low chair, and it was very
obvious that he, too, approved of his hostess.  She was curled up now
at the end of the sofa, a cigarette in her mouth, an expression of
curious perplexity upon her face.  She was dressed very plainly in
black, having alternately tried on and discarded all her more elaborate
evening gowns.  She had had a queer, almost desperate fancy to make
herself look as unattractive as possible, but the very simplicity of
her dress enhanced the gleaming perfection of her throat and arms.
Even her posture, which should have been ungraceful, suited her.  Her
disturbed and doubtful frame of mind had softened her firm mouth, and
lit with a sort of sweet plaintiveness her beautiful eyes.

"Do you think," he asked, "that I look upon you as a promising
investment?"

"Well, I am," Marcia replied.  "You admit having made money out of me
this spring."

"At any rate, I am willing to divide it," he suggested.

"Upon conditions!"

"No one in the world gives something for nothing," he reminded her.

"We seem to be mixing up business and the other things most
shockingly," Marcia declared.  "Do you really mean that you are willing
to share the profits of my next novel with me?"

"I couldn't do that," he objected, "it would be too unbusinesslike.  I
am quite willing, however, to share my life and all I have with you."

"Mere rhetoric!" Marcia exclaimed uneasily.

"Solemn earnest," he insisted.  "Will you marry me, Marcia?"

She looked across at him.  Her eyebrows were a little raised, her eyes
inclined to be misty, her mouth tremulous.

"James," she replied, "I believe I'd like to.  I'm not quite sure--I
believe I would.  But just tell me--how can I?"

"He has kept you to himself for pretty well twenty years," Borden said
gruffly.

She sighed.

"When I was a child of seventeen," she confided, "a young farmer down
at Mandeleys kissed me.  If I had been one year younger," she went on,
"I should have spat at him.  As it was, I never spoke to him again.
Then, a few months after that, the schoolmaster at the school where I
was teaching made an awkward attempt at the same thing.  He missed me,
but his lips just touched my cheek.  Then Reginald came.  Let me see,
that was nineteen years ago, and since then no one else has kissed me."

"A record of fidelity," Borden observed, "at which, even in your own
stories, you would scoff."

"But then, you see," she reminded him, "I never write about a person
with queer ideas like mine, because they wouldn't be interesting.
People like a little more resilience about their heroines."

"Couldn't we talk brutal common sense for once?" he asked impatiently.
"I have never abused your Marquis.  From your own showing, he has
played the game, as you have.  All I want to say is that the natural
time has come for your separation.  I have waited for you a good many
years, and I am a domestic man.  I want a home--and children.  It's
quite time you wanted the same."

Perhaps for a moment the light in her eyes was a shade softer.  She
moved uneasily in her place.

"Quite primitive, aren't you, James?" she murmured.

"Life's a primitive thing when we get down to the bone," he answered.
"You and I have wasted many an hour discussing the ologies, trying to
thrust ourselves into the peculiar point of view of these neurotic
Norwegians or mad Russians.  When you come down to bedrock, though, for
sober, decent people there is only one outlet to passion, only one
elementary satisfaction for man and woman."

"You make things sound very simple."

"It isn't that," he persisted.  "It's you who make them complex by
being maudlin about this man.  He has had what many would call the best
part of your life.  He has given up nothing for your sake, done nothing
for your sake.  He has kept you in the same seclusion that his
grandfather would have done.  He has treated you, so far as regards the
outside world, as a man does--"

He stopped abruptly.  Something in her eyes warned him.

"There are limits," she told him drily, "to my appreciation of
unbridled speech.  According to his lights, Reginald has been
wonderful.  To me there has been more romance than ignominy in many of
his ideas.  My trouble is something different.  I can't quite make up
my mind what it would mean for him if I were to strike out for myself
now."

"You are like all women," he declared furiously.  "You complicate every
situation in life by thinking of other people.  Think for yourself,
Marcia.  What about your own future?  I promise you that your Marquis
would think for himself, if he were up against a similar problem.  He
is getting all he wants.  Are you?  Of course you aren't!"

"Does anybody get all they want out of life?"

"It is generally their own fault if they don't get the main things," he
insisted.  "But, see here, I'll attack you with your own weapons.  Here
am I, forty-one years old, in love with you since I was thirty-two.
What about those nine years?  I am dropping into the ways of untidy,
unsatisfactory bachelordom.  I only order new clothes when some friend
chaffs me into it, and if I do I forget the ties and shirts and those
sorts of things.  I've lost all interest in myself.  I loaf at the
club, play auction bridge when I might be doing something a great deal
better, and drink a whisky and soda when any one asks me.  I hang on to
the business, but when I've finished my work I drift.  In another five
years' time I shall begin to stoop, I shall live with cigar ash all
over my clothes, and I shall have to be taken home from the club every
other night.  Your doing, Marcia--your responsibility."

"I should think," she said severely, "that your self-respect--"

"Oh, don't bother about my self-respect!" he interrupted.  "I am a
human being, and I tell you, Marcia, that every man needs something in
his life to lift him just a little, to live up to, not down to.  There
is only one person in the world can take that place for me.  I'm a
clear charge upon your hands.  You know that I love you, that you've
driven all thoughts of other women out of my head, that you keep me
beating against the walls of my impotence every time we meet and part.
I am perfectly certain, if you don't come down to the world of common
sense, I shall sink into the world of melodrama and go and tackle your
Marquis myself.  He must let you go."

"Do you want me as much as all that?" she asked, a little wistfully.

He was by her side in a moment, inspired by the break in her tone, the
sweet, soft look in her eyes.  He sank on one knee by the side of her
couch and took her hands in his, kissing them one after the other.

"Ah, Marcia," he murmured, "I want you more than anything else on
earth!  I want you so much that, when you come, you will make the years
that have passed seem like nothing but a nightmare, and the minutes, as
they come, years of happiness.  I am awkward, I know, sometimes, and
gruff and morose, but so is any man who spends his life fretting for
the thing he can't get.  I only ask you, dear, to be fair.  I have
never said an unkind word about the man for whom you have cared so
long.  I only say now that you belong to me.  I am not a bit foolish--I
am not even jealous--only your time has come, your time for that little
home in the country, a husband always with you, and, I hope to Heaven,
children."

She took his face between her hands and kissed him.  He understood her
so perfectly that, as she drew her lips away, he rose and stood on the
hearthrug, a conqueror yet humble.

"You won't mind," she begged, "if I choose my own time?  It may be very
soon, it may be a little time.  You will leave it to me, and you will
trust me.  From to-night, of course--"

She hesitated, but his gesture was sufficient.  She knew that she was
understood.

"You have made me the happiest man in the world," he said.  "I can't
stop a moment longer--I should simply say extravagant things.  And I
know how you feel.  It isn't quite time for them yet.  But you'll send
for me?"

"Of course!"

"And about your visit to Mandeleys?" he asked.  "I shan't begin to be
busy again for another fortnight."

She hesitated.

"Somehow," she confessed, "it seems a little different now.

"It needn't," he replied.  "I am content with what I have."

She glanced at the calendar.

"Tuesday?" she suggested.

"Tuesday would suit me admirably," he assented.

She let him out herself, and he kissed her fingers.  He was never quite
sure whether he walked down the stairs or whether he rang for the lift.
He was never quite sure whether he looked for a taxi or decided to
walk.  He passed over the bridge, and the lights reflected in the dark
waters below seemed suddenly like jewels.  He made his way to his club
because of the sheer impossibility of sleep.  He stood on the threshold
of the reading room and looked in at the little group of semi-somnolent
men.  In his way he was popular, and he received a good many sleepy
greetings.

"What's the matter with Borden?" one man drawled.  "He looks as though
some one had left him a fortune."

"He has probably discovered another literary star," a rival publisher
suggested.

"I wish to God some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man
yawned.

Borden rang the bell for a drink.

"Dickinson was right," he said.  "I've found a new star."


Letitia, on her return from the theatre that same evening, found her
father seated in a comfortable corner of the library, with a volume of
Don Quixote in his hand, a whisky and soda and a box of cigarettes by
his side.  He had exchanged his dinner jacket for a plain black velvet
coat, and, as he laid his book down at her coming, she seemed to notice
again that vague look of tiredness in his face.

"Quiet evening, dad?" she asked, flinging herself into a low chair by
his side.

"A very pleasant one," he replied.  "Montavon's party was postponed,
but I have reopened an old fund of amusement here.  With the exception
of Borrow, none of our modern humourists appeal to me like Cervantes."

"You wouldn't call Borrow exactly modern, would you?"

"Perhaps not," the Marquis conceded.  "I may be wrong to ignore the
literature of the present day, but such attempts as I have made to
appreciate it have been unsatisfactory.  You enjoyed the play, dear?"

"Very much," Letitia acquiesced.  "The house was crowded."

"Any one you know?"

She mentioned a few names, then she hesitated.  "And that clever woman
who wrote 'The Changing Earth' was there in a box--Marcia Hannaway.
She was with rather a dour-looking man--her publisher, I think Charlie
said it was."

The Marquis received the information with no signs of particular
interest.  Letitia stretched out for a cigarette, lit it and looked a
little appealingly at her father.

"Dad," she said, "I've made an awful idiot of myself."

"In what direction?" the Marquis enquired sympathetically.  "If it is a
financial matter, I am fortunately--"

"Worse!" Letitia groaned.  "I've promised to marry Charlie Grantham."

The Marquis stretched out his long, elegant hand and patted his
daughter's.

"But, my dear child," he said, "surely that was inevitable, was it not?
I have looked upon it as almost certain to happen some day."

"Well, I'm rather glad you take it like that," Letitia remarked.  "Now
I come to think of it, I suppose I should have had to say 'yes'
sometime or another."

"Where is Charlie?"

"Gone home in a huff, because I wouldn't let him kiss me in the car or
bring him in with me."

"Either course would surely have been usual," the Marquis ventured.

"Perhaps, but I feel unusual," Letitia declared.  "It isn't that I mind
marrying Charlie, but I know I shall detest being married to him."

"One must remember, dear," her father went on soothingly, "that with
us, marriage is scarcely a subject for neurotic ecstasies or most
unwholesome hysterics.  Your position imposes upon you the necessity of
an alliance with some house of kindred associations.  The choice,
therefore, is not a large one, and you are spared the very undignified
competitive considerations which attach themselves to people when it
does not matter whom on earth they marry.  The Dukedom of Grantham is
unfortunately not an ancient one, nor was it conferred upon such
illustrious stock as the Marquisate of Mandeleys.  However, the
Granthams have their place amongst us, and I imagine that the alliance
will generally be considered satisfactory."

"Oh, I hope so," Letitia replied, without enthusiasm.  "I only hope I
shall find it satisfactory.  I didn't mean to say 'yes' for at least
another year."

The Marquis smiled tolerantly.

"Then what, my dear child," he asked, "hastened your decision?"

Letitia became suddenly more serious.  She bit her lip and frowned
distinctly into the fire.  At that moment she was furious with a
thought.

"I can't tell you, dad," she confessed.  "I'd hate to tell you.  I'd
hate to put it in plain words, even to myself."

He patted her hand tolerantly.

"You must not take yourself too hardly to task, Letitia," he said, "if
at times you feel the pressure of the outside world.  You are young and
of versatile temperament.  Believe me, those voices to which you may
have listened are only echoes.  Nothing exists or is real in life which
the brain does not govern.  I am quite sure that you will never regret
the step which you have taken this evening."

Letitia stood up.

"I hope not, father," she sighed, a little wistfully.  "There are times
when I am very dissatisfied with myself, and to-night, I am afraid, is
one of them."

"You analyse your sentiments, my dear, too severely," her father told
her.  "You are too conscientious.  Your actions are all that could be
desired."

"You won't be lonely if that idiot takes me away from you soon?" she
asked.

The Marquis looked almost shocked.

"Loneliness is not a complaint from which I ever expect to suffer,
dear," he said, as he rose and opened the door for her.

He returned to his empty chair, his half consumed whisky and soda, his
vellum-bound volume, carefully marked.  Somehow or other, the echoes of
his last words seemed to be ringing in his ears.  The fire had burned a
little low, the sound of passing vehicles from outside had grown
fainter and fainter.  He took up his book, threw himself into his
chair, gazed with vacant eyes at the thick black print.  There was a
sudden chill in his heart, a sudden thought, perhaps a fear.  There was
one way through which loneliness could come.




CHAPTER XVIII

Marcia, who had dreamed all night of blue skies flecked with little
fragments of white cloud, a soft west wind and sun-bathed meadows,
descended the creaking stairs of the Inn at Fakenham, paused upon the
broad landing to admire the great oak chests and the cupboards full of
china, and then made her way to the coffee room.  She found Borden
standing at the window, looking down into the country street and
talking with a stranger, whom he left, however, at her entrance.  They
took their places at the breakfast table to which a waiter ushered them.

"Still lucky," her companion remarked, as he watched Marcia pour out
the coffee.  "It's going to be another delightful day."

She glanced out into the sunlit street.  Just opposite was a house
almost hidden in clematis, and in the background was a tall row of elm
trees amongst the branches of which the rooks were cawing.

"I feel like Rip van Winkle," she whispered.  "Do you know that
twenty-five years ago I came to what is called a Farmers' Ordinary in
this very room?  Tell me," she went on, "who was the man with whom you
were talking?  His face is quite familiar to me."

He glanced around.  Thain had taken his place at the further end of the
room.

"The man of whom we were speaking the other day," he said,--"David
Thain.  I think that you have met him, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"Why, of course!  I didn't recognise him in tweeds.  Whatever is he
doing down here?  But I know before you can tell me," she continued
quickly.  "He has taken Broomleys, hasn't he?"

"He told me that he had taken a house in the neighbourhood," Borden
replied.  "He is going over there this morning to meet the present
occupiers."

"It is a very small world," Marcia observed.  "I wonder whether he
recognised me."

"Without undue flattery, I think I might say that I should think it
probable."

"And of course he is imagining all sorts of improper things,--chuckling
about them, I dare say, in the way men do.  He is being what I suppose
he thinks tactful.  He never glances in this direction at all.  I'll
give him a surprise in a minute or two!"

They finished their breakfast, and Marcia crossed towards David's
table.  As soon as he was conscious of her approach, he rose.  He
welcomed her, however, without a smile.

"From Trewly's at dinner to the Mandeleys Arms for breakfast," she
remarked, smiling.  "I feel quite flattered that you remembered me, Mr.
Thain."

"Did I show any signs of remembering you?" he asked a little grimly.

"Of course you didn't," she acknowledged.  "You ignored even my
sweetest bow.  That is why I felt sure that you recognised me
perfectly."

David remained silent, standing still with an air of complete but
respectful patience.

"You have taken a house down here, the Marquis tells me," she continued.

"I have taken Broomleys."

"I hope that you will like the neighbourhood," she said.  "I used to
live here once myself."

"So I understood."

She was for a moment taken aback, conscious now of a certain definitely
inimical attitude in the man who stood looking coldly into her eyes.

"You know all about me, then?  That is the worst of getting into 'Who's
Who.'"

"I know more about you than I do about your companion, certainly," he
admitted.

She laughed mockingly.  To a downright declaration of war she had no
objection whatever.

"That is Mr. Borden, who publishes my stories," she told him.  "I don't
suppose you read them, do you?"

"I am not sure," he replied.  "I read very little modern fiction, and I
never look at the names of the authors."

"Then we must take it for granted," she sighed, "that my fame is
unknown to you.  If you should see the Marquis before I do, please tell
him that he was entirely wrong about the best route here.  His advice
has cost us nearly thirty miles and a punctured tire.  You won't
forget?"

"Certainly not," he promised.

She turned away with a little nod of farewell, to which David's
response was still entirely formal.  Left alone in the room he resumed
his breakfast, finished it with diminished appetite, and within a few
minutes was speeding through the country lanes in his great Rolls-Royce
car.  The chauffeur sat a little uneasily in his place.  It was very
seldom that his master showed such signs of haste.  In a quarter of an
hour they were in the avenue of Mandeleys.  Instead of turning to the
right, however, to Broomleys, he took the turning to the Abbey and
pulled up short when within a hundred yards of the house.

"Wait here for me," he directed.  "If you see another car coming up,
blow your horn."

He walked across the smooth, ancient turf, stepped over the wire fence
and raised the latch of Richard Vont's cottage gate.  His uncle, a
little disturbed, came hastily down the garden path.  His clothes were
stained with clay, and the perspiration was on his forehead.  David
looked at him in surprise.

"Working so early?"

Vont nodded.

"You forget," he said, "that this is not early for me.  All my life I
have risen with the sun and gone to bed with it.  Come inside, David.
I'll get this muck off my hands.  You spoke of the afternoon."

"I came direct from the village," David replied, as he followed his
uncle into the house.  "I came because I thought you would like to know
that there is another visitor on the way to see you."

Richard Vont looked round and faced his nephew.  His shirt was open at
the throat, his trousers were tied up with little pieces of string.  In
whatever labour he had been engaged, it had obviously been of a
strenuous character.  He wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"What's that, David?" he demanded.  "A visitor?"

"Marcia is at the Mandeleys Arms," David told him.  "I am taking it for
granted that she is on her way to see you."

Vont turned deliberately away, and David heard his heavy feet ascending
the staircase.  In a few moments he called downstairs.  His voice was
as usual.

"Step round this afternoon, lad, if you think it's well."

David passed out of the little garden, crossed the strip of park, and,
taking the wheel, drove slowly round by the longer route to Broomleys.
He passed before the front of the Abbey--a mansion of the dead, with
row after row of closed blinds, masses of smokeless chimneys, and
patches of weeds growing thick in the great sweep before the house.
Even with its air of pitiless desertion, its severe,
semi-ecclesiastical outline, its ruined cloisters empty to the sky on
one wing, its unbroken and gloomy silence, the place had its
atmosphere.  David slackened the speed of his car, paused for a moment
and looked back at the little creeper-covered cottage on the other side
of the moat.  So those two had faced one another through the years--the
Abbey, silent, magnificent, historical, with all the placid majesty of
its countless rows of windows; its chapel, where Mandeleys for
generations had been christened and buried,--at its gates the little
cottage, whose garden was filled with spring flowers, and from whose
single stack of chimneys the smoke curled upwards.  Even while he
watched, Richard Vont stood there upon the threshold with a great book
under his arm.

David shivered a little as he threw in the clutch, passed on round the
back of the building and through the iron gates of the ancient dower
house.  He felt a little sigh of relief as he pulled up in front of the
long, grey house, in front of which Sylvia Laycey was waiting to
receive him.  She waved her hand gaily and looked with admiration at
the car.

"They are all here, Mr. Thain," she exclaimed,--"Mr. Merridrew and
father and your own builder.  Come along and quarrel about the
fixtures.  I thought I had better stay with you because dad loses his
temper so."

David descended almost blithely from his car.  He was back again in a
human atmosphere, and the pressure of the girl's fingers was an instant
relief to him.

"I am not going to quarrel with any one," he declared.  "I shall do
exactly what Mr. Muddicombe tells me--and you."

She was a very pleasant type of young Englishwoman--distinctly pretty,
fair-skinned, healthy and good-humoured.  Notwithstanding the fact that
their acquaintance was of the briefest, David was already conscious of
her charm.

"You'll find me, in particular, very grasping," she declared, as they
entered the long, low hall.  "I want to make everything I can out of
you, so that daddy and I can have a real good two months in London.  I
don't believe you know the value of things a bit, do you--except of
railways and those colossal things?  Cupboards, for instance?  Do you
know anything about cupboards?  And are you going to allow us anything
for the extra bathroom we put in?"

"Well, I am rather partial to bathrooms," he confessed, "and I should
hate you to take it away with you."

She drew a sigh of relief.

"So long as you look upon the bathroom matter reasonably, I am quite
sure we shan't quarrel.  Tell me about Lady Letitia, please?  Is she
quite well--and the Marquis and all of them?  And when are they coming
down?"

"They are quite well," he told her, "and Lady Letitia sent you her
love.  They talk of coming down almost at once."

"I do hope they will," she replied, "because when we leave here dad and
I are going to stay for a week or so with some friends quite near.
There!  Did you hear that noise?  That's daddy stamping because he is
getting impatient."

"Then perhaps--" David suggested.

"I suppose we'd better," she interrupted.  "Be lenient about the
bathroom, please.  And if you could manage not to notice that the
dining room wants papering, you'd be an angel.  This way."




CHAPTER XIX

David proved himself such a very satisfactory incoming tenant that the
Colonel insisted upon his staying to lunch and hastened off into the
cellar to find a bottle of old Marsala, of which he proposed that they
should partake with a dry biscuit before Mr. Merridrew's departure.
Sylvia sank into a low chair with a little exclamation of despair.

"Now daddy's done it!" she exclaimed.  "Are you hungry, Mr. Thain?"

"Not very--yet," David replied, glancing at his watch.  "You see, it's
only half-past eleven."

"Because," she said impressively, "there are exactly three rather
skinny cutlets in the house.  All the servants left this
morning--'all', I said.  We only have two!--and an old woman from the
village is coming up at half-past twelve to cook them.  One was for me
and two were for father.  Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do?"

David smiled.

"Well," he observed, "I was distinctly asked to luncheon, and I
accepted.  Haven't you anything--"

"Anything what?" she asked patiently.

"Tinned in the house, or that sort of thing?" he suggested, a little
vaguely.

"Of course we haven't," she replied.  "Don't you know that we are all
packed up and leaving to-morrow?  It's the biggest wonder in the world
that we have any biscuits to eat with that precious Marsala."

"Why not," he proposed hopefully, "put on your hat and motor into
Fakenham with me?  I suppose there is a butcher's shop there.  We can
buy something together."

She sprang to her feet.

"And you can choose exactly what you like!" she exclaimed.  "Mr. Thain,
you are delightful!  That is the best of you Americans.  You are full
of resource.  I shan't be a minute getting a hat and a pair of gloves."

David strolled about the gardens of his new demesne until Sylvia
reappeared.  She had pinned on a blue tam-o'-shanter and was wearing a
jersey of the same colour.

"I shall love a spin in your car!" she exclaimed.  "And you drive
yourself, too.  How delightful!"

They swung off through the more thickly wooded part of the park,
driving in places between dense clumps of rhododendrons, and coming
unexpectedly upon a walled garden, neglected, but brilliant with spring
and early summer flowers.

"Isn't it queer to have a garden so far away from the house," the girl
remarked, "but I dare say you've heard that the late Marquis of
Mandeleys was mad about underground passages.  There is one existing
somewhere or other to the summer house in that garden from the Abbey,
and lots of others.  I am not at all sure that there isn't one to
Broomleys."

"Haven't you been afraid sometimes lest the ghosts of the dead monks
might pay you an unexpected visit?"

She shook her head.

"They always held the funeral services in the chapel," she explained,
"but the burying place is at the side of the hill there.  You can see
the Mandeleys vault from here."

"And the cypress trees," David pointed out.  "I wonder how old they
are."

"The American of you!" she scoffed.  "You ought to love Mandeleys--and
Broomleys.  Everything about the place is musty and ancient and worn
out.  You know the Marquis, don't you?"

"Slightly," David assented.

"Is he really human," she asked, "or is he something splendidly
picturesque which has just stepped out of one of the frames in his
picture gallery?  I can never make up my mind.  He is so beautiful to
look at, but he doesn't look as though he belonged to this generation,
and why on earth they ever used to call him 'The Wicked Marquis' I
can't imagine.  I've tried him myself," she went on ingenuously, "in no
end of ways, but he treats me always as though I were some grandchild,
walking on stilts.  Of course you're in love with Lady Letitia?"

"Must I be?"

"But isn't it all absolutely preordained?" she insisted, "in fact, it's
almost depressingly obvious.  Here are the Mandeleys estates, the
finest in Norfolk, mortgaged up to the hilt, the Abbey shut up, the
Marquis and all of them living on credit, the family fortunes at their
lowest ebb.  And here come you, an interesting American stranger, with
more millions than the world has ever heard of before.  Of course you
marry Lady Letitia and release the estates!"

"Do I!" he murmured.  "Well, it seems plausible."

"It has to be done," she decided, with a sigh.  "It's a pity."

"Why?"

She shook her head.

"We mustn't flirt.  We should be interfering with the decrees of
Providence.--What an interesting-looking woman!  You know her, too."

They passed Marcia and her companion, about half-way to Fakenham.
Marcia bowed cheerfully and looked with interest at Sylvia.

"I know her very slightly," David admitted.

"She doesn't belong to these parts," Sylvia said.  "We've lived here
for nearly seven years, you know, and I know every one for miles round,
by sight."

"She came originally from somewhere in the neighbourhood, I believe,"
David observed.

"Tell me everything about her, please?" his companion demanded.  "I am
a born gossip."

"You finish with the romance of Mandeleys first," he suggested
evasively.

"Well, we've finished that, so far as you are concerned," she said,
"but as soon as you have rescued the family and the wedding bells have
ceased ringing, you'll find yourself faced with another problem.  Did
you notice a queer little cottage, right opposite the Abbey?"

"Of course I did."

"Well, there's an old man sits in the garden there," she went on,
"reading the Bible and cursing the Marquis, most of the day.  He used
to do it years ago, and then he went to America.  Now he's come back,
and he's started it again."

"And what does the Marquis do about it?" David enquired.

"He can't do anything.  The late Marquis made the old man a present of
the cottage for saving his life, and they can't take it away from him
now.  I suppose he must have been really wicked when he was young--I
mean the Marquis," she went on, "because, you see, he ran away with
that old man's daughter.  It's the sort of thing," she went on, "that
Marquises are supposed to do in stories, but it doesn't make them
popular in a small neighbourhood.  Now tell me about the good-looking
woman who bowed to you, please?"

"She is the daughter of the man of whom you have been speaking," David
told her.  "She is the lady with whom the wicked Marquis eloped nearly
twenty years ago."

Sylvia's interest was almost breathless.

"You mean to say that you knew the story--you--an American?"

"Absolutely," he replied.  "I came into touch with it in a queer way.
The old man Vont came back from America on the same steamer that I did.
I'll tell you another thing.  The wicked Marquis, as you call him, and
that lady whom we have just passed, dine together now at least one
night a week, and the woman has become quite a famous authoress.  She
writes under the name, I believe, of Marcia Hannaway."

Sylvia threw herself back in her seat.

"Why, it's amazing!" she declared.  "It turns a sordid little village
tragedy into a piece of wonderful romance.  Perhaps, after all, that is
what makes the Marquis seem like a piece of wood to every other woman."

"I have heard it said," David continued, "that he has been entirely
faithful to her all his life.  Where do I stop, please?"

"Here," she replied, "at this shop.  Please come in and choose your own
meat.  I feel in much too romantic a frame of mind to even know beef
from mutton."

David followed her a little doubtfully into the shop.

"Perhaps," he ventured to suggest, "as the nucleus of your meal has
already been decided upon--"

"Of course," she interrupted; "cutlets.  We want more cutlets.  You
needn't bother.  I'll see about it."

David slipped into the next shop and reappeared with a huge box of
chocolates, which he handed over apologetically.

"I am not sure whether you'll find these up to much."

"For the first time," she exclaimed, as she accepted them, "I realise
what it must be to be a millionaire!  I have never seen such a box of
chocolates in my life.  Do you mind going over to the grocer's and
letting him see me with you?" she went on.  "It will be so good for our
credit, and his is just one of the accounts we have to leave for a
little time.  Were you ever poor, Mr. Thain?"

"Poor, but not, alas! romantically so," he confessed.  "To be the real
thing, I ought to have earned my first few pounds, oughtn't I?  You
see, I didn't.  I was educated by relatives, and when a great chance
came my way I was able to take advantage of it.  An uncle advanced me a
thousand pounds, upon one condition."

"Had you to make him a partner?" she asked, in the intervals of giving
a small order at the grocer's.

He shook his head.

"No," he answered gravely, "it wasn't a financial condition.  In a way
it was something more difficult."

She looked at him curiously.

"Whatever it was," she said, "if you promised, I am quite sure that you
would keep your word."

They motored homewards and David was for a few minutes unexpectedly
thoughtful.  He deliberately approached Broomleys from the back, but
even then it was impossible to avoid a distant view of the cottage.  He
looked towards it grimly.

"Conditions are stern things," he sighed.

"Haven't you kept that one yet?" she asked.

"The time is only just coming," he told her.

She looked up at him pleadingly.

"Don't bother about it now, please," she begged.  "This is such a
delightful day.  And whatever you do, you mustn't let it interfere with
your eating three cutlets."




CHAPTER XX

Borden's car came to a standstill in the avenue, and Marcia looked
across the strip of green turf towards the cottage with a queer little
thrill of remembrance.

"You are sure you won't mind waiting?" she asked, as she sprang down.
"If there is any fatted calf about, I'll call you in."

Borden showed her his pockets, bulging with newspapers.

"I shall be perfectly content here," he said, "however long you may be.
I shall back the car on to the turf and read."

She nodded, turned away, lifted the latch of the gate and made her way
towards the cottage,--curiously silent, and with no visible sign of
habitation except for the smoke curling up from the chimney.  As she
drew nearer to the rustic entrance, she hesitated.  A rush of those
very sensations at which she had so often gently mocked swept through
her consciousness, unsteadying and bewildering her.  Mandeleys,
imposing in its grim stillness, seemed to be throwing out shadows
towards her, catching her up in a whirlpool of memories, half
sentimental, half tragical.  It was in the little cottage garden where
she now stood, and in the woods beyond, that she had wandered with that
strange new feeling in her heart of which she was, even at that moment,
intensely conscious, gazing through the mists of her inexperience
towards the new world and new heaven which her love was unfolding
before her.  A hundred forgotten fancies flashed into her brain.  She
remembered, with a singular and most unnerving accuracy, the silent
vigils which she had spent, half hidden amongst those tall hollyhocks.
She had seen the grey twilight of morning pass, seen the mists roll
away and, turret by turret, the great house stand out like some fairy
palace fashioned from space in a single night.  She had seen the
thrushes hop from the shrubberies and coverts on to the dew-spangled
lawn, had heard their song, growing always in volume, had seen the
faint sunlight flash in the windows, before she had crept back to her
room.  Another day in that strange turmoil which had followed the
coming of her love!  She had watched shooting parties assemble in the
drive outside, her father in command, she herself hidden yet watchful,
her eyes always upon one figure, her thoughts with him.  And then the
nights--the summer nights--when men and women in evening costume
strolled down from the house.  She could see their white shirt fronts
glistening in the twilight.  Again she heard the firm yet loitering
step and the quiet, still voice which had changed the world for her.
"Is Vont about, Miss Marcia?" she would hear him say.  "I want to have
a talk with him about the partridge drives to-morrow."  She closed her
eyes.  The smell of the honeysuckle and the early cottage roses seemed
suddenly almost stupefying.  There were a few seconds--perhaps even a
minute--before Vont had donned his brown velveteen coat and issued from
the cottage--just time for a whispered word, a glance, a touch of the
fingers.--Marcia felt her knees shake as she lingered underneath the
porch.  She was swept with recalcitrant memories, stinging like the
lash of a whip.  Perhaps this new wisdom of hers was, after all, a
delusion, the old standards of her Calvinistic childhood unassailable.
Then, for the first time, she was conscious of a familiar figure.
Richard Vont was seated in a hard kitchen chair at the end of the
garden, with a book upon his knee and his face turned to Mandeleys.  At
the sound of her little exclamation he turned his head.  At first it
was clear that he did not recognise his visitor.  He laid down the book
and rose to his feet.  Marcia came a few steps towards him and then
paused.  Several very ingenious openings escaped her altogether.

"Father," she began, a little hesitatingly, "you see, I've come to see
you.  Are you glad?"

He stood looking at her--a man of rather more than middle height but
bowed, with silvery hair and a little patch of white whiskers.  The
rest of his face was clean-shaven, still hard and brown as in his
youth, and his eyes were like steel.

"No," he answered, "I am not glad.  Since you are here, though, take
this chair.  I will fetch another while I hear what you have to say."

"Shall we go inside?" she suggested.

He shook his head.

"Your mother lived and died there," he reminded her.

Marcia set her teeth.

"I suppose she walked in the garden sometimes," she said resentfully.

"The garden is different," he declared.  "The earth changes from
generation to generation, just as the flowers here throw out fresh
blossoms and the weeds come and go.  But my rooftree stands where it
always did.  Wait."

He disappeared into the house and returned in a few moments with a
chair which he placed a few feet away from Marcia.  Then he sat and
looked at her steadily.

"So you are Marcia," he said.  "You've grown well-looking."

"Marcia--your daughter," she reminded him gently.  "Are you going to
forget that altogether?"

"Not," he replied, "if you are in need of succour or help, but I judge
from your appearance that you need neither.  You are flesh of my flesh,
as I well know."

"I want nothing from you, father, except a little kindness," she
pleaded.

His hands trembled.

"Kindness," he repeated.  "That's strange hearing.  You are without
friends, perhaps?  You made some, maybe, and they heard of your
disgrace, and they've cast you off?"

She shook her head.

"No, it isn't that at all.  I have many friends, and they most of them
know my history."

"Friends of your own sort, then!"

Marcia moved uneasily in her chair.

"Father," she said gently, "don't you sometimes think that your views
of life are a little narrow?  I am very sorry indeed for what I did,
inasmuch as it brought unhappiness to you.  For the rest, I have
nothing to regret."

He was breathing a little harder now.

"Nothing to regret?" he muttered.

"Nothing," she repeated firmly.  "For many years the man who took me
away from you gave me everything I asked of him in life, everything he
promised.  He is still willing to do the same.  If any change comes
into our relations, now or in the future, it will be my doing, not his."

"Meaning," he demanded, "that you've seen the wickedness of it?"

"Meaning nothing of the sort," she replied.  "I want you to try and
realise, father, if you can, that I have passed into a larger world
than you or this little village community here know very much about.  I
have written books and been praised for them by men whose praise is
worth having.  There are plenty of perfectly good and well-living
people who know what I have done and who are glad to be my friends.
There is one who wants to marry me."

Richard Vont looked at her long and steadily.  Marcia was, as usual,
dressed with extreme simplicity, but her clothes were always good, and
economy in boots and hats was a vice which she had never practised.
When she told him that she had passed into a world apart from his, he
realised it.  The only wonder was that she had ever been his daughter!

"To marry you!" he repeated.  "It's one of those of your own loose way
of thinking, eh?  One of those who have forgotten the laws of God and
have set up for themselves some graven image in which there's nought of
the truth?"

"The man who wishes to marry me, father," she said warmly, "is a man of
honour and position.  Can't you believe me when I assure you that there
is another way of looking at what you consider so terrible?  I have
been as faithful to my vows as you to your marriage ones.  The man whom
I am told you still hate has never wavered in his loyalty to me, any
more than I have in my fidelity to him.  Can't you believe that to some
extent, at least, we have sanctified our love?"

James Vont passed his hand a little wearily over his forehead.

"It's blasphemous gibberish that you're talking," he declared.  "If you
had come back to me, Marcia, in rags and in want, maybe there is
something in my heart would have gone, and I'd have taken you and we'd
have found a home somewhere far away.  But to see you sitting there,
soft and well-spoken, speaking of your success, pleased with your life,
turns that very hatred you spoke of into fury!  You and your learning
and your writing of books!  Why, you're ignorant, woman, more ignorant
than the insects about you.  You don't know right from wrong."

"Father," she pleaded--

"Aye, but listen," he went on.  "You've children, eh?"

"No," she answered softly.

"No children to bear your shame, eh?  And why not?"

She looked for a moment into his eyes, and then away.

"That may be the one weak spot," she confessed.

"The one weak spot!" he repeated bitterly.  "Shall I tell you what you
are, you women who live cheerfully with the men you sell yourselves to,
and defy the laws of God and the teaching of the Bible?  You're just
wastrels and Jezebels.  Ay, and there's the garden gate, Marcia, and my
heart's as hard as a flint, even though the tears are in your eyes and
you look at me as your mother used to look.  It's no such tears as
you're shedding as'll bring you back into my heart.  Your very
prosperity's an offence.  You carry the price of your shame on your
back and in your smooth speech and in this false likeness of yours to
the world you don't belong to.  If it's duty that's brought you here,
you'd better not have come."

Marcia rose to her feet.

"You're very hard, father," she said simply.

[Illustration: "You're very hard, father," she said simply.]

"The ways of the transgressors are hard," he replied, pointing still
towards the gate.  "If you'd come here in shame and humiliation, if
you'd come here as one as had learnt the truth, you'd have found me all
that you sought.  But you come here a very ignorant woman, Marcia, and
you leave me a little harder than ever before, and you leave the curses
that choke my throat a little hotter, a little more murderous."

His clenched fist was pointing towards Mandeleys, his face was like
granite.  Marcia turned and left him without a word, opened the gate,
walked across the little strip of turf, and half shrank from, half
clung to the hand which helped her up into the car.

"Get away quickly, please," she implored him.  "Don't talk to me,
James.  Outside the gates as quickly as you can go!"

He started his engine, and they drove off, through the lodge gates into
the country lane, where the hedges were beautiful with fresh green
foliage and fragrant with early honeysuckle.

"To London," she begged.  "Don't stop--anywhere yet."

He nodded and drove a little faster, his eyes always upon the road.  It
was not until they had reached the heath country and the great open
spaces around Newmarket that a little colour came back into her cheeks.

"It wasn't a success, James," she said quietly.

"I was afraid it mightn't be," he admitted.

"Nothing but a Drury Lane heroine would have moved him," she went on,
with an uneasy little laugh.  "If I could have gone back in rags, in a
snowstorm, with a child in my arms, he'd have forgiven me.  As I am
now, I am an offence to all that he holds right, and his ideas are like
steel cables--you can't twist or bend them."

Borden nodded.  He relaxed his speed a little and glanced towards his
companion.

"You know what our friend said in that Russian manuscript I lent you,"
he reminded her: "'The primitive laws are for the primitive world.'"

"But what do we learn, Jim?" she asked him tremulously.  "What is its
value?  Is it sophistry or knowledge?  I lived in that little cottage
once.  I have smiled at the memory of those days so often.  I did
homely tasks and dreamed of books and learning.  To me it seems,
although my fingers are bleeding, that I have climbed.  And to him--and
he looked just like something out of the Bible, Jim--I am nothing
more--"

"Don't," he interrupted.  "He is of his world and you of yours.  You
can't work out the sum you are trying to solve, there isn't any common
denominator."

"I don't know," she answered, a little pitifully.  "There was a single
second, as I saw him sitting there with his Bible on his knee and
remembered that he was a clean, well-living, honest man, when my heart
began to shake.  I remembered that he was my father.  It seems to me
that it is all wrong that there should be any difference between us.  I
suddenly felt that a brain really didn't count for anything, after all,
that all the culture in the world wasn't so beautiful as a single right
feeling."

He slackened again the speed of the car.  As far as they could see was
a great open space of moorland, with flaming bushes of yellow gorse,
little clumps of early heather, and, in the distance, a streak of blue
from the undergrowth of a long belt of firs.  She looked about her for
a moment and closed her eyes.

"There," he said, "is one of the simplest phases of beauty, the world
has ever given us--flowers and trees, an open space and a west wind.
There isn't any one who can look at these things and be happy who isn't
somewhere near the right path, Marcia."

She leaned back, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the blue distance.

"Just drive on, please, Jim," she begged.




CHAPTER XXI

David ate his three cutlets and, both as regards appetite and in other
ways, was a great success at the little luncheon party.  Afterwards,
they finished the bottle of Marsala under a cedar tree, and whilst the
Colonel indulged in reminiscences, Sylvia's eyes rested more than once
upon the automobile drawn up before the door.  It was quite an
adventure in her rather humdrum life, and, after all, there was no
reason why a fairy prince shouldn't be an American millionaire and come
in a Rolls-Royce.

"I am sure I hope you'll like Broomleys, Mr. Thain," the Colonel said,
as David rose to make his adieux.  "I am delighted to leave the place
in the hands of such a good tenant.  It makes one almost sorry to go
away when one realises what one is missing in the shape of neighbours,
eh, Sylvia?"

Sylvia was unaccountably shy, but she raised her eyes to David's for a
moment.

"It is most disappointing," she agreed.  "Mr. Thain is such a
sympathetic shopper."

David drove off a little gloomily.

"Why the devil couldn't I fall in love with a nice girl like that," he
muttered to himself, "instead of--"

He pulled up short, set his heel upon that other vision, and braced
himself for the immediate task before him.  He drove around the park,
drew up outside the cottage, and, descending from the car, approached
the low hedge.  At the further end of the garden he could hear his
uncle's sonorous voice.  He was seated in a high-backed chair, the
Bible upon his knee, reading to himself slowly and with great
distinctness the Ten Commandments.  On the ground by his side were the
remnants of another chair.  As David came up the little path, his uncle
concluded his reading and laid down the Bible.

"Bring out a chair and sit with me, David," he invited.

David pointed to the ground.

"Your furniture seems--"

"Don't jest," his uncle interrupted.  "That chair I have broken to
pieces with my own hands because of the woman who sat upon it not many
hours since."

David frowned.

"You mean Marcia?"

"I mean Marcia--the woman who was my daughter," was the stern reply,
"the woman of whose visit you warned me."

"Come into the house with me," David begged, turning his back upon
Mandeleys.  "You sit and look at that great drear building and brood
overmuch.  I want to talk with you."

Richard Vont rose obediently to his feet and followed his visitor into
the little parlour.  David looked around him curiously.

"This place seems to have the flavour of many years ago," he said.
"Sometimes I can scarcely realise that I have ever eaten my meals off
that oak table.  Sometimes it seems like yesterday."

"Time passes, but time don't count for much," the old man sighed.
"Mary Wells will be up from the village soon, and she'll make us a cup
of tea.  Sit opposite me, lad.  Is there any more news?"

"None!"

"Them shares, for instance?"

"There will be no change in them," David replied.  "In two months' time
he will know it."

"And he'll have forty thousand pounds to find, eh?--forty thousand
pounds which he will never be able to raise!" Richard Vont muttered,
his eyes curiously bright.  "There isn't an acre of land here that
isn't mortgaged over and over again."

"You'll make him a bankrupt, I suppose," David said thoughtfully.

"Ay, a bankrupt!" his uncle repeated, lingering over the word with a
fierce joy.  "But there's something more as'll fall to your lot,
David," he went on,--"something more--and the time's none so far off."

David moved in his chair uneasily.

"Something more?"

"Ay, ay!" the old man assented.  "You'll find it hard, my boy, but
you'll keep your word.  You've got that much of the Vonts in your
blood.  Your word's a bond with you."

"Tell me," David begged, "about that something more?"

"The time's not yet," his uncle replied.  "You shall know, lad, in good
season."

David was silent for a moment, filled with nameless and displeasing
apprehensions.  He was brave enough, prepared to meet any ordinary
emergency, but somehow or other the vagueness of the task which lay
before him seemed appalling.  Outside was Mandeleys, a grim and silent
remembrance.  Inside the cottage everything seemed to speak of
changeless times.  The pendulum of the tall clock swung drowsily, as it
had swung thirty years ago.  The pictures on the wall were the same,
the china, the furniture, even its arrangement.  And the man who sat in
his easy-chair was the same, only that his whiskers and hair were white
where once they had been black.

"Uncle," he begged, "let me know the worst now?"

"You'll know in good time and not before," was the almost fierce reply.
"Don't weary me to-night, lad," Vent continued, his voice breaking a
little.  "The day has been full of trials for me.  'Twas no light
matter to have a strange woman here--the strange woman, David, that was
once my daughter."

David frowned a little.

"Uncle," he said, "I don't wish to pain you, but I am sorry about
Marcia."

"You don't need to be, lad.  She isn't sorry for herself.  She is
puffed up with the vanity of her brain.  She came here in fine clothes
and with gentle manners, and a new sort of voice.  She has made
herself--a lady!  Poor lass, her day of suffering is to come!  Maybe I
was hard on her, but I couldn't bear the sight of her, and that's the
truth.  She talked to me like one filled with wisdom.  It was me whom
she thought the ignorant one.  Put Marcia out of your mind, David.  We
will talk of other things."

David leaned forward in his chair.  His eyes were bright, his tone
eager.

"Let us have this out, uncle," he begged.  "I've been thinking of
it--perhaps as much as you lately.  They may have been wrong, those
two; they may be sinners, but, after all, the world isn't a place for
holy people only.  The Bible tells you that.  For nearly twenty years
he has stood by her and cared for her.  There has been no meanness, no
backing out on his part.  He is as much to her to-day as ever he was."

"Ay," his listener interposed scornfully, "she talked that way.  Do you
reckon that a man and woman who sinned a score of years ago are any the
better because they are going on sinning to-day?  Faithfulness to good
is part of the Word of God.  Faithfulness in sin is of the Devil's
handing out."

David shook his head.

"I am sorry, uncle," he said earnestly, "I have come to look on these
things a little differently.  Many years ago, in America, I used to
wonder what it was that kept you apart from every one else, kept the
smile from your lips, made you accept good fortune or ill without any
sign of feeling.  I was too young to understand then, but I realise
everything now.  I know how you denied yourself to send me to school
and college.  I know how you left yourself almost a beggar when you
gave me the chance of my life and trusted me with all your savings.
These things I shall never forget."

"One word, lad," Vont interrupted.  "It's the truth you say.  I trusted
you with well-nigh all I had that stood between me and starvation, but
I trusted you with it on one condition.  Do you mind that condition?
We sat outside the little shanty I'd built with my own hands, up in the
Adirondacks there, and before us were the mountains and the woods and
the silence.  We were close to God up there, David.  You remember?"

"I remember."

"You'd come hot-foot from the city, and you told me your story.  I sat
and listened, and then I told you mine.  I told you of the shame that
had driven me from England, and I told you of the thoughts that were
simmering in my mind.  As we sat there your wrath was as mine, and the
oath which I had sworn, you swore, too.  I lent you the money over that
oath, boy.  Look back, if you will.  You remember the night?  There was
a hot wind--cool before it reached us, though--rushing up from the
earth, rushing through the pine trees till they shook and bowed around
us; and a moon, with the black clouds being driven across it, looking
down; and the smell of the pines.  You remember?"

"I remember," David repeated.

"We stood there hand in hand, and there was no one to hear us except
those voices that come from God only knows where, and you swore on your
soul that you would help me as soon as the time came to punish the man
who had blasted my life.  In my way you promised--not yours.  There
should be no will but mine.  For this one thing I was master and you
were slave, and you swore."

"I swore.  I am not denying it," David acknowledged.  "Haven't I made a
start?  Haven't I deceived the man at whose table I sat and laid a plot
to ruin him?  And I have ruined him!  Do you want more than this?"

"Yes!" was the unshaken reply.

"Then what, in heaven's name, is it?" David demanded.  "Out with it,
for God's sake!  I carry this whole thing about with me, like a weight
upon my soul.  Granted that you are master and I am slave.  Well, I've
done much.  What is there left?"

"That you will be told in due season."

"And meantime," David continued passionately, "I am to live in a sort
of prison!"

"You've no need to find it such," the old man declared doggedly.

David sprang to his feet.  The time had come for his appeal.  The words
seemed to rush to his lips.  He was full of confidence and hope.

"Uncle," he began, "you must never let a single word that I may say
seem to you ungrateful, but I beseech you to listen to me.  Life is
like a great city in which there are many thoroughfares.  It is an
immense, insoluble problem which no one can understand.  You never open
another book except your Bible.  You have never willingly exchanged
speech with any human being since you left here.  In America you
shunned all company, you lived in the gloomiest of solitudes.  This
little corner of the earth is all you know of.  Perhaps there is more
in life even than that Book can teach you."

"Marcia talked like this," Richard Vont said quietly.  "She spoke of
another world, a world for cleverer folk than I.  Are you going to try
and break my purpose, too?"

"I would if I could," David declared fervently.  "This man is what his
ancestors and his education have made him.  He has led a simple,
ignorant, and yet in some respects a decent life.  He is too narrow to
understand any one's point of view except his own.  When he took Marcia
away, she was the village girl and he the great nobleman.  To-day
Marcia holds his future in her hands.  She is the strong woman, and he
is the weak man.  She has achieved fame and made friends.  She has
lived a happy life, she is at the present moment perfectly content.
Every promise he made her he has kept.  Well, why not let it go at
that?"

"So you are another poor child who knows all about this wonderful world
of which I am so ignorant," Richard Vont said bitterly.  "Yet, my lad,
I tell you that there's one great truth that none of you can get over,
and that is that sin lives, and there is nothing in this world, save
atonement, can wash it out."

"There's a newer doctrine than that, uncle," David insisted.  "You talk
with the voice of the black-frocked minister who dangles Hell in front
of his congregation.  There is something else can clear away sin, and
the Book over which you pore, day by day, will teach it you, if you
know where to look for it.  There's love."

"Was it love, then, that brought him down through the darkness to
dishonour my daughter?" Vont demanded, with blazing eyes.

"It didn't seem like it, but love must have been there," David
answered.  "Nothing but love could have kept these two people together
all this time, each filling a great place in the other's life.  I
haven't thought of these things much, uncle, but I tell you frankly,
I've read the Bible as well as you, and I don't believe in this black
ogre of unforgivable sin.  If these two started in wrong fashion,
they've purified themselves.  I hold that it's your duty now to leave
them alone.  I say that this vengeance you still hanker after is the
eye for an eye and limb for a limb of the Old Testament.  There has
been a greater light in the world since then."

"Have you done?" Vont asked, without the slightest change in his tone
or expression.

"I suppose so," David replied wearily.  "I wish you'd think over it
all, uncle.  I know I'm right.  I know there is justice in my point of
view."

"I'll not argue with you, lad," his uncle declared.  "I'll ask you
no'but this one question, and before you answer it just go back in your
mind to the night we stood outside my shack, when the wind was blowing
up from the valleys.  Are you going to stand by your pledged word or
are you going to play me false?"

The great clock ticked drearily on.  From outside came the clatter of
teacups.  David walked to the latticed window and came back again.
Richard Vont was seated in his high-backed chair, his hands grasping
its sides.  His mouth was as hard and tightly drawn as one of his own
vermin traps, but his eyes, steadfastly fixed upon his nephew, were
filled with an inscrutable pathos.  David remembered that passionate
outburst of feeling on a far-distant night, when the tears had rolled
down this man's cheeks and his voice was choked with sobs.  And he
remembered--

"I shall keep my word in every way," he promised solemnly.

Vont rose slowly to his feet.  His knees were trembling.  He seemed to
be looking into a mist.  His hands shook as he laid them on David's
shoulders.

"Thank God!" he muttered.  "David, boy, remember.  This light talk is
like an April shower on the warm earth.  Goodness and sin are the same
now as a thousand years ago, and they will be the same in a thousand
years to come.  We may pipe a new tune, but it's only the Devil's
children that dance to it--sin must be punished.  There's no getting
over that!  Forgiveness later maybe--but first comes punishment."




CHAPTER XXII

A queer atmosphere of depression seemed about this time to have
affected the two inhabitants of Number 94 Grosvenor Square.  The
Marquis had suddenly become aware of an aimlessness in life which not
even his new financial hopes enabled him to combat.  The night of his
weekly dinner at Trewly's he spent in the entertainment of three
ancient whist companions, and it was not until they had gone and he was
left alone in the silent house that he realised how empty and
profitless the evening had been.  Day by day, after lunch, he sent out
the same message to his chauffeur--five o'clock for the club instead of
three o'clock for Battersea, and on each occasion the words seemed to
leave his lips with more reluctance.  He walked each morning in the
Park, as carefully dressed and as upright as ever, but one or two of
his acquaintances noticed a certain difference.  There was an increased
pallor, a listlessness of gait, which seemed to bespeak an absent or a
preoccupied mind.  He even welcomed the coming, one morning just as he
was starting for his promenade, of Mr. Wadham, Junior.  Here at least
was diversion.

Mr. Wadham, Junior, had been rehearsing his interview and his
prospective deportment towards the Marquis on the way up, and he
started the enterprise to his own entire satisfaction.  He entered the
library with an exceedingly serious air, and he took great pains to be
sure that the door was closed after the retreating butler before he did
more than respond to his distinguished client's greeting.

"Anything fresh, Wadham?" the latter enquired.

"I have ventured to see your lordship once more," Mr. Wadham began,
"with reference to the scrip which we deposited at the bank to meet
certain liabilities on your behalf."

"Well, what about it?" the Marquis asked good-humouredly.  "You lawyers
know nothing of the Stock Exchange."

Mr. Wadham assumed an expression of great gravity.

"Would your lordship," he begged, "for the satisfaction of my firm, the
members of which I think you will admit have always been devoted to
your lordship's interests, ring up the stockbroking firm
of--say--Messrs. Youngs, Fielden and Company, or any other you like,
with reference to the value of those shares?"

"I am, unfortunately," the Marquis replied, "not in a position to do
so.  The shares were sold me by a personal friend.  I am content to
believe that if they had not been of their face value, the transaction
would not have been suggested to me."

"That," Mr. Wadham declared seriously, "is not business."

"It happens to be the only way in which I can look upon the matter,"
was the cool reply.

"To proceed a little further," the lawyer continued, "I am here to
enquire, solely in your own interests and as a matter of business,
whether you have made any definite agreement to pay for these shares?
I am under the impression that your lordship mentioned a note of hand."

"I have signed," the Marquis acknowledged, "a bill, I believe the
document was called, for forty thousand pounds, due in about two
months' time."

"Has your lordship any idea as to how this liability is to be met?"

"None at all.  It is possible that the shares will have advanced in
value sufficiently to justify my selling them.  If not, I take it that
the bank will advance the sum against the scrip."

Mr. Wadham, Junior, could scarcely contain himself.

"Does your lordship know," he exclaimed, "that the bank hesitated about
advancing a sum of less than a thousand pounds upon the security of
those shares?"

The Marquis yawned.

"They will probably have changed their minds in two months' time," he
remarked.

"But if they have not?" Mr. Wadham persisted.

"It is the unfortunate proclivity of you who are immersed in the narrow
ways of legal procedure," his client observed, "to look only upon the
worst side of a matter.  Personally, I am an optimist.  I rather expect
to make a fortune on those shares."

"It is the belief of my firm, on the contrary," Mr. Wadham confessed
gloomily, "that they will end in a petition in bankruptcy being
presented against your lordship."

The Marquis shook out his handkerchief, wiped his lips and lit a
cigarette.

"Yours appears to be rather a dismal errand, Mr. Wadham," he said
coldly.  "Is there any reason why I should detain you further?"

"None whatever, so long as I have made it quite clear that there is no
prospect of raising a single half-penny in excess of the mortgages
already completed.  The matter of the forty thousand pounds draft is,
of course, entirely in your lordship's hands.  I thought it my duty to
inform you as to the value of the shares, in case you were able to
persuade the gentleman who sold them to you to cancel the transaction."

"You mean well, Wadham, no doubt," the Marquis declared, a little
patronisingly, "but, as I said before, your turn of mind is too legal.
My respects to your father.  You will forgive my ringing, will you not?
Lady Letitia is waiting for me to walk with her."

Mr. Wadham departed, saying blasphemous things all the way into
Piccadilly, and the Marquis walked with Lady Letitia in the Park.  As a
rule their conversation, although mostly of personal matters, was
conducted in light-hearted fashion enough by Letitia, and responded to
with a certain dry though stately humour by her father.  This morning,
however, a silence which amounted almost to constraint reigned between
them.  The Marquis, realising this, finally dragged his thoughts with
difficulty away from his own affairs.

"I had intended to speak to you, Letitia," he began, "concerning the
announcement of your marriage.  Some festivities must naturally follow,
and a meeting between myself and the Duke."

"Whom you hate like poison, don't you, dad!" Letitia said, with a
little grimace.  "Well, so do I, for the matter of that."

"One's personal feelings are scarcely of account in such a case," the
Marquis averred; "that is to say, any personal feelings with the
exception of yours and Grantham's.  The match is suitable in every way,
and at a time when every young man of account is being chased by a new
race of ineligible young women, it must be a comfort to his family to
contemplate an alliance like this."

Letitia shrugged her shoulders.

"With regard to the actual announcement, dad," she said, "we are going
to keep it to ourselves for a few weeks longer, or at any rate until we
are safely settled in the country.  It's such a bore to have every one
you have ever spoken to in your life come rushing round to wish you
happiness and that sort of thing.  Charlie rather agrees with me."

"The matter, naturally, is in your hands," the Marquis replied, with a
slight air of relief.

"Of course, I am seeing rather more of Charlie," Letitia went on, "but
people won't take any notice of that.  There have been rumours of our
engagement at least half a dozen times already.  Aren't you getting
just a little sick, dad, of this everlasting walk and these everlasting
people we keep on bowing to and wish we didn't know?"

"I hadn't thought of it exactly in that way," her father confessed,
"and yet perhaps London is a little wearisome this season."

"I think," Letitia sighed, "that I never felt so keen about leaving
town and getting into the country.  I suppose you wouldn't care to go
down to Mandeleys a week earlier, would you?" she asked tentatively.

The Marquis looked upwards towards the tops of the trees.  He thought
of that particular spot on the hall table where notes were left for
him, of the old-fashioned silver salver laid by his side on the
breakfast table, upon which his letters were placed.  He thought of the
queer new feeling with which, day by day, he glanced them through,
opening none, searching always, covering his disappointment by means of
some ingenious remark; and of the days when he returned from such a
walk as this, or from the club, his eyes glued upon the sideboard even
while the butler was relieving him of his coat and gloves.  This
morning all the accumulated sickness, all the little throbs of
disappointment, seemed to be lumped into one gigantic and intolerable
depression, so that his knees even trembled a little while he walked,
and his feet felt as though they were shod with lead.  He remembered
his sleepless nights.  He thought of that dull ache which came to him
sometimes in the still hours, when he lay and fancied that he could
hear her voice, her cheerful laugh, the tender touch of her fingers.
He felt a sudden, overmastering desire to be free, at any rate, from
that minute by minute agony.  At Mandeleys there would be only the
post.  Or perhaps, if he made up his mind to leave town earlier than he
had expected, he would not be breaking his word to himself if he sent
just a line to tell her of his changed plans.  The country, by all
means!

"So far as I am concerned, Letitia," he said, "I think that I have
never before felt so strongly the desire to leave London.  I suppose
that, if we were content to take things quietly, we could collect a few
servants and be comfortable there?"

"I am sure of it, dad!" she exclaimed eagerly.  "You don't need to
bother.  I could arrange it all," she went on, passing her arm through
his.  "Four or five women will be all that we need, and Mrs. Harris can
collect those in the village.  Then we need only take Gossett and Smith
from here, and of course cook.  The others can go on to board wages."

The Marquis smiled indulgently.

"You must not disperse the establishment too completely, my dear," he
said.  "I have great hopes that a certain business venture which I have
made will place us in a very different financial position before very
long."

She looked a little dubious.

"Was that what Mr. Wadham was worrying about this morning?" she asked.

"Mr. Wadham, Junior, is a most ignorant young man," her father
proclaimed stiffly.  "The venture, such as it is, is one which I have
made entirely on my own responsibility."

A sudden thought struck her.  Her arm tightened upon her father's.

"Has it anything to do with Mr. Thain?"

"It was Mr. Thain who placed the matter before me," he assented.

"And Mr. Wadham doesn't approve?"

"You really are a most intelligent young person," her father declared,
smiling.  "Mr. Wadham's disapproval, however, does not disturb me."

Letitia was conscious of a curious uneasiness.

"Are you quite sure that Mr. Thain is an honest man, father?" she asked.

The Marquis's eyebrows were slightly elevated.

"My dear!" he said reprovingly.  "Mr. Thain's position as a financier
is, I believe, beyond all question.  Your aunt, who, you will remember,
first brought him to us, spoke of his reputation in the States as being
entirely unexceptionable."

"After all, aunt only met him on the steamer," Letitia observed.

"Consider further," the Marquis continued, "that he has taken Broomleys
and will therefore be a neighbour of ours for some time.  Do you think
that he would have done this with the knowledge in his mind he had
involved me in a transaction which was destined to have an unfortunate
conclusion?"

Letitia was silent.  Her fine forehead was clouded by a little
perplexed frown.  The problem of David Thain was not so easily solved.
Then the Duchess called to them from her car and beckoned Letitia to
her side.

"I have heard rumours, Letitia," she whispered.

Letitia nodded.

"I was coming round to see you, aunt," she replied.  "We are not going
to announce it until a little later on."

The Duchess smiled her approbation.

"I am delighted," she declared.  "You are so difficult, Letitia, and
there are so many girls about just now, trying to get hold of our young
men.  Some one was telling me only last night of an American girl--or
was she South American; I don't remember--with millions and millions,
who almost followed Charlie about.  Of course, that sort of thing is
being done, but it hasn't happened in our family yet.  Dear people,
both of you!  When are you going to Mandeleys?"

"We have just decided," the Marquis told her, "to shorten our stay in
London.  Letitia's engagements are capable of curtailment, and my own
are of no account.  We are thinking of going at once."

"And your neighbour," the Duchess enquired; "when is he going into
residence?"

"I have not heard."

"I am expecting him to come to Scotland later on," she observed.

The Marquis was gently surprised.

"Won't he be just a little--"

"Not at all," the Duchess interrupted.  "He shoots and fishes, and does
everything other men do.  I am not quite sure," she went on, "that you
thoroughly appreciate Mr. Thain."

"My dear Caroline, you are entirely mistaken," the Marquis assured her.
"What Letitia's sentiments with regard to him may be, I do not know,
but so far as I am concerned, I consider him a most desirable
acquisition to my acquaintances."

"If only I had your manner!" she said earnestly.  "Poor Mr. Thain!"

With a little nod she drove off.  The Marquis and Letitia continued
their promenade.

"Why 'Poor Mr. Thain'?" the former mused.  "Exactly what did Caroline
mean, I wonder?"

"I think," Letitia replied, "that she was emphasising the distinction
between your acceptance of Mr. Thain and hers."

Her father remained puzzled.

"Mr. Thain has been a guest at my house," he said, "and we shall treat
him as a neighbour when we meet at Mandeleys."

"Those things are indications of a friendly feeling," Letitia observed,
"but you yourself know where you have placed the barriers.  Now Aunt
Caroline doesn't mean to have any barriers.  If Mr. Thain can be
awakened to his great opportunities, it is perfectly clear that she
means to enter upon a flirtation with him."

The Marquis was a little shocked.

"You are somewhat blunt, my dear," he said.  "So far as your Aunt
Caroline is concerned, too, I fear that she has in a measure lost that
fine edge--perhaps I should say that very delicate perception of the
differences which undoubtedly do exist.  I am pointing this out to you,
Letitia," he continued, as they left the Park, "but it occurs to me
that my doing so is unnecessary.  I have noticed that since your
entrance into Society, some four or five years ago, you have identified
yourself entirely with my views.  Nothing could have been more
discriminating than your treatment of the various excellent people with
whom you have been brought into contact."

Letitia did not speak for a moment.  Then she turned to her father with
a little sigh.

"An inherited weakness, I suppose," she murmured.  "I sometimes rather
envy other people their standpoint."

The Marquis made no reply.  They were nearing Number 94, and he was
conscious of that slight, nervous expectancy which required always a
firm hand.  The door was opened before they could ring.  The young man
who served under Gossett was already relieving him of his hat and
gloves.  With a perfectly leisurely step, the Marquis advanced towards
the hall table.  He glanced at the superscription of two or three
notes, dropped his eyeglass, and turned away towards his
study--empty-handed.

"Several notes for you, Letitia," he said, without looking around.




CHAPTER XXIII

Richard Vont, a few mornings later, leaned upon his spade and gazed
over towards Mandeleys with set, fixed eyes.  His clothes and hands
were stained with clay, the sweat was pouring down his face, he was
breathing heavily like a man who has been engaged in strenuous labour.
But of his exhausted condition he seemed to take no count.  There was
something new at the Abbey, something which spoke to him intimately,
which was crowding his somewhat turgid brain with the one great
imagining of his life.  For Mandeleys had opened its eyes.  A hundred
blinds had been raised, long rows of windows stood open.  Men were at
work, weeding the avenue, and driving mowing machines across the lawns
which stretched down to the ring fence and the moat.  Flaming borders
of yellow crocuses became miraculously visible as the dank grass
disappeared, and many spiral wreaths of smoke were ascending into the
misty stillness of the spring morning.  Away behind, in the high-walled
garden, were more gardeners, bending at their toil.  Richard Vont was
no reader of the _Morning Post_, but an item in its fashionable
intelligence of that morning lay clearly written before him.  The
Marquis was coming back!

Vont turned slowly away, left his spade in the tool shed, entered the
cottage by the back door, carefully changed his clothes, washed the
clay from his face and hands, and descended into the sitting room,
where his breakfast awaited him.  Mrs. Wells looked at him curiously.
She was a distant connection and stood upon no ceremony with him.

"Richard," she demanded, "where were you when I come this morning?"

"Sleeping, maybe," he answered, taking his place at the table.

"And that you weren't," she contradicted, "for I made bold to knock at
your door to ask if you'd like a rasher of bacon with your eggs."

He raised his head and looked at her steadily.

"Well?"

"I'm not one to pry into other people's affairs," she continued, "but
your goings on are more than I can understand.  All day long you sit
with the Book upon your knee, and if a neighbour asks why you never
pass the gate, or seemingly move a limb, it's the rheumatics you speak
of.  And yet last night your bed was never slept in, my man, and I
begin to suspect other nights as well.  What's it mean, eh?"

Richard Vont rose to his feet and opened the door.

"Just that," he answered harshly, pointing to it.  "I'll not be spied
on.  Inch for inch and yard for yard, this cottage and garden are mine,
I tell you--mine with dishonour, maybe, but mine.  I'll have none
around me that watches and frets because of the things that I choose to
do.  I'll lie out in the garden at nights, if I will, and not account
to you, Mary Wells; or sleep on the floor, if it pleases me, and it's
no concern of any one but mine.  So back to the village gossips, if you
will, and spread your tale.  Maybe I'm a midnight robber and roam the
countryside at night.  It's my affair."

"A robber you're not, Richard Vont," was the somewhat dazed reply, "and
that the world knows.  And there's summut more that the world knows,
too, and that is that since you came back from Americy, never have you
set foot outside that gate.  There's friends waiting for you at the
village, and there's them as smokes their pipe at night in the
alehouse, whose company 'd do you no harm, but for some reason of your
own you live like a hermit.  And yet--yet--"

"Go on, Mary," he said sturdily.  "Finish it."

"It's the nights that are baffling," Mrs. Wells declared.  "There's
some of your clothes in the morning wrings with sweat.  There's
sometimes the look in your face at breakfast time as though you'd had a
hard day's work and done more than was good for your strength."

"I'm no sleeper," he declared, "no sleeper at all.  If I choose to walk
in the garden, what business is it of yours, Mary, or of any one down
in th' village?  Answer me that, woman?"

"Every man, I suppose, may please himself," she conceded grudgingly,
"but I don't hold with mysteries myself."

"Then you full well know," he replied, "how to escape from them.  If
they're too much for you, Mary, I've fended for myself before, and I
can do it again."

Mrs. Wells snorted.

"Keep your own counsel, then, Richard."

"And you keep yours," he advised.  "You're my nearest of kin, Mary,
though you're but my cousin's widdy.  If you can learn to keep a still
tongue in your head and do what's asked of you, there may be a trifle
coming to you when my time comes.  But if you get these curious fits on
you, and they're more than you can stand; if you're going bleating from
house to house in the village, and spending your time in
tittle-tattling, then we'll part.  Them's plain words, anyhow."

Mrs. Wells became almost abject.

"You've said the word, Richard, and I'll bide by it," she declared.
"You can run races with yourself round the garden all night long, if
you've a will.  I'll close my eyes from now.  But," she added, as a
parting shot, "that clay on your old clothes takes a sight of getting
off."

Richard Vont ate his breakfast slowly and thoughtfully, entirely with
the air of a man who accomplishes a duty.  Afterwards, with the Bible
under his arm, he took his accustomed seat at the end of the garden
facing Mandeleys.  There were tradesmen's carts and motor-vans passing
occasionally on their way to and from the house, but he saw none of
them.  He was in his place, waiting, watching, perhaps, but without
curiosity.  Presently a summons came, however, which he could not
ignore.  He turned his head.  David Thain, on a great black horse, had
come galloping across the park from Broomleys, and had brought his
restive horse with some difficulty up to the side of the paling.  The
greeting between the two was a silent, yet, so far as Vont was
concerned, an eager one.

"You know what that means?" David observed, pointing with his crop
towards the house.

"I know well," was the swift answer.  "It's what I've prayed for.  Move
your horse out of the way, boy.  Can't you see I'm watching?"

David looked at the old man curiously.  Then he dismounted, and with
his arm through the reins, leaned against the paling.

"There's nothing to watch yet," he said, "but tradesmen's carts."

"It's just the beginning," Vont muttered.  "Soon there'll be servants,
and then--him!  If he comes in the night," the old man went on, his
voice thickening, "I'll--"

Words seemed to fail him, but he had clenched his hands on the cover of
the book he had closed, and his blue veins stood out in ugly fashion.
David sighed.  Yet, notwithstanding his despair, some measure of
curiosity prompted a question.

"Just why do you want to see him so much?" he asked.

"Hate," was the quiet reply.  "It's twenty years since, and I've a kind
of craving to see him that much older.  There's hate and love, you
know, David.  They're both writ of here.  But I tell you it's hate that
lasts the longest.  Love is like my flowers.  Look at them--my tall
hollyhocks, my bush roses, my snapdragon there.  They blossom and they
fade, and they lie dead--who knows where?  And in the spring they come
again, or something like them.  And hate," he went on, pointing to a
spade which lay propped against the paling, "is like that lump of
metal.  It's here winter and summer alike.  It doesn't change, it
doesn't die; there's no heat would melt it.  It was there last year,
it's there to-day, it will be there to-morrow."

David sighed, and looked for a moment wearily away.  The old man
watched him anxiously.  Exercise had brought a slight flush to his
pallid cheeks and an added brightness to his eyes.  He sat his horse
well, and his tweed riding-clothes were fashionably cut.  His uncle's
frown became deeper.

"You're young, David," he said, "and I know well that you and me look
out on life full differently.  But an oath--an oath's a sacred thing,
eh?"

"An oath is a sacred thing," David repeated.  "I've never denied it."

"You'll not flinch, lad?" the old man persisted eagerly.

"I shall not flinch."

"Then ride off now.  There's no gain to either of us in talking here,
for your mind is set one way and mine another.  You'll have a score of
years of youth left after you've done my behest."

David paused with his foot in the stirrup, withdrew it and returned to
the paling.

"Let me know the worst," he begged.  "I've beggared your enemy for you.
I've soiled my conscience for the first time in my life.  I've lied to
and ruined the man who trusted in my word.  What is this further deed
that I must do?"

Richard Vont shook his head.

"When the time comes," he promised, "you shall know.  Meanwhile, let
be!  It's a summer morning, and you are but young; make the most of it.
Come when I send for you."

So David rode off, up the broad slopes of the great park, along the
wonderful beech avenue and out on to the highway.  He turned in his
saddle for a moment and looked towards the road from London.




CHAPTER XXIV

The Marquis, with an after-breakfast cigarette in his mouth, strolled
out of his front door, a few mornings later, to find himself face to
face with Richard Vont.  He called Letitia, who was behind.

"The worst has happened," he groaned.

Letitia stood by her father's side and looked across the stone flags,
across the avenue, with its central bed of gay-coloured flowers, the
ring fence, the moat, the few yards of park, to where, just inside his
little enclosed garden, Richard Vont was seated, directly facing them.

"Well, you expected it, didn't you, father?" she observed.

"All the same," the Marquis declared, with a frown, "it's an irritating
thing to have a man seated there within a hundred yards of your front
door, with a Bible on his knee, cursing you.  I am convinced now, more
than ever, that my case against this man must have been grossly
mismanaged.  The law could never permit such an indignity."

Letitia stepped back for a moment to light a cigarette.  Then she
rejoined her father and contemplated that somewhat grim figure
critically.

"If he is going to do that all the time," the Marquis went on, "I shall
have nerves.  I shall have to live in the back part of the house."

Letitia gravely considered the matter.

"Why don't you try talking common sense to him?" she suggested.
"Perhaps a few words from you would make all the difference."

"He is probably sitting there with a gun," her father sighed.
"However, it's an idea, Letitia.  I'll try it."

He strolled across the avenue, through a little iron gate in the
railings, and across the moat by a footbridge.  When he had approached
within a dozen paces of the palings, however, Richard Vont rose to his
feet.

"You're nigh enough, Lord Mandeleys," he called out, "nigh enough for
your own safety."

The Marquis advanced with his usual leisurely and aristocratic walk to
the edge of the palings.  Richard Vont stood glaring at him like a wild
beast, but there was no signs of any weapon about.

"Vont," the former said, "we both have rights.  This park is mine so
far as your paling, just as your garden is yours where you are.  I have
no fancy for shouting, and I have a word to say to you."

"Say it and begone, then," Vont exclaimed fiercely.

"Really," the Marquis expostulated, "you are behaving in a most
unreasonable manner.  I am here to discuss the past.  For any wrong
which you may consider I have done you, I express my regret.  I suggest
to you that your daughter's present position in life should reconcile
you to what has happened."

"My daughter's brains nor your money don't make an honest woman of her."

The Marquis sighed wearily.

"Your outlook, Vont," he said, "is full of prejudice and utterly
illogical.  I found qualities in your daughter which endeared her to
me, and she has lived a perfectly reputable and engrossing life ever
since she left your home, such a life as she could not possibly have
lived under your roof or in this part of the world.  In every way that
counts, she has prospered.  Therefore, I ask you to reconsider the
matter.  I claim that any wrong I may have done you is expiated, and I
suggest that you abandon an attitude which--pardon me--is just a little
theatrical, put aside that very excellent Book or else read it as a
whole, and give me your hand."

"I'd cut it off first," Vont declared savagely.

"This is rank prejudice," the Marquis protested.

"It seems so to you, belike," was the scornful answer.  "You clever
folk who can crowd your brain with thoughts and ideas from
books--you've no room there for the big things.  You've so many little
weeds growing up around that the flower doesn't count.  Nought that you
can say about Marcia can alter matters.  I'd sooner have seen her
married to the poorest creature on your land than to know that she has
lived as your dependent for all these years."

The Marquis shook his head sorrowfully.

"You're an obstinate old man, Vont," he said, "and a very selfish one.
You are wrapped up in your own narrow ideas, and you won't even allow
any one else to show you the truth.  Marcia has been happy with me.
She would have been the most miserable creature on earth married to a
clod."

"Ay, she's been here to show herself," Vont muttered, "down in a
motor-car, in furs and silks, like a creature from some world that I
know not about.  She's talked as you've talked.  I've listened to the
pair of you.  I thrust my daughter out of the garden and bade her go
away and learn the truth.  And you--well, I just take leave to say that
as I cursed you nigh on a score of years ago, and have cursed you in my
heart ever since, so I curse you now!"

"But are you going to sit there every day doing it?" the Marquis
enquired, a little irritably.

"This house and garden are mine," Richard Vont replied stolidly,
"although you've done your best to beggar me by taking them away.  When
I choose, I shall sit here.  When I choose, I shall sit and watch you
with your guests, watch you morning, noon and night.  I've one wish in
my heart, hour by hour.  Maybe that wish will reach home, Marquis of
Mandeleys.  If it does, you'll see them all in black along the
churchyard path there, and hear the doors of your vault roll open."

"You're a little mixed in your similes, my friend," the Marquis
remarked, "because, you know, if those things happen--to me, I shall be
the one person who doesn't hear them.  Still, I gather that you are
implacable, and that is what I came to find out.  What astonishingly
fine hollyhocks!" he observed, as he turned away.  "I must go and look
at my own."

For a moment there was tragedy in Vont's clenched fists and fierce,
convulsive movement forward.  The Marquis, however, without a backward
glance, lounged carelessly away and, finding Letitia, strolled with her
to the walled garden.

"The man is impossible," he proclaimed.  "It is obviously his intention
to sit there and make himself a nuisance.  Well, we get used to
everything.  I may get used to Richard Vont."

Letitia hesitated for a few moments.

"Father," she said, "there are certain subjects which are not, as a
rule, mentioned, but if you will permit me--"

The Marquis stopped her.

"My dear, please not," he begged, a little stiffly.  "Remember, if you
will, that I have little in common with the somewhat modern school of
thought indulged in by most of your friends.  There are certain
subjects which cannot be discussed between us.  Let us hear what Mr.
Hales has to say."

Hat in hand, the head gardener had hastened down to meet them, and
under his tutelage they explored his domain.  His master murmured
little words of congratulation.

"I have done my best, your lordship," the man observed, "but Mr.
Merridrew has been cruel hard on me for bulbs and seeds and plants, and
as to shrubs and young trees, he'll not have a word to say."

The Marquis nodded sympathetically.

"We may be able to alter that next year, Hales," he promised.  "Mr.
Merridrew, I know, has had great trouble with the tenants for the last
few quarters.  Next year, Mr. Hales, we will see what we can do."

The gardener once more doffed his cap and received the intelligence
with gratified interest.  Over the top of the hill, a small governess'
cart, drawn by a fat pony, came into sight, and Letitia waved her hand
to the girl who was driving.

"It's Sylvia Laycey," she murmured.  "Now how on earth can that child
still be at Broomleys, if Mr. Thain is really here?"

Sylvia explained the matter as she drove into the great stableyard,
Letitia walking on one side of her and the Marquis on the other.

"Of course we've left Broomleys," she told them, "but we are staying
with the Medlingcourts for three or four days.  They asked us at the
last moment.  And then your letter came, Letitia--just in time.  I'm
simply crazy to come and stay with you.  Letitia, you lucky girl!  You
are going to be here all the time!  I am simply foolish about him!"

"About whom?" Letitia asked indifferently.

"Why, Mr. David Thain, of course!  He's the nicest thing I've ever
talked to.  He lunched with us on Thursday--but of course you're in
love with him, too, so there'll be no chance for me."

Letitia's laugh was half amused, half scornful.

"If you are in earnest, Sylvia," she said, "which doesn't seem very
likely, I can assure you that you need fear no rival.  Mr. Thain does
not appeal to me."

"We have nevertheless found Mr. Thain," the Marquis observed, suddenly
reminding them both of his presence, "a very agreeable and interesting
acquaintance."

Sylvia made a little grimace.  She thrust her arm through Letitia's and
drew her off towards the lawn, where some chairs had been brought out
under a cedar tree.

"You are such a wonderful person, Letitia," she said, "and of course
your father's a Marquis and mine isn't.  But I thought, nowadays,
Americans were good enough for anybody in the world, if only they had
enough money."

"Both my father and I, you see," Letitia observed, "are a little
old-fashioned.  I have never had any idea of marriage, except with some
one whose family I knew all about."

"Of course," Sylvia declared, "I am a horrid Radical, and I think I'd
sooner not know about mine.  If Mr. Thain's antecedents were
unmentionable, I should adore him just the same, but, as I know your
father would remind me in some very delicate fashion if he were here,
the situation is different.  You don't mind talking about him, do you,
Letitia, because that's what I've come for?"

"Well, I'll listen," Letitia promised, as she settled herself in an
easy-chair.  "I really don't know what I should find to say, except
that he's moderately good-looking, has quite nice manners, and money
enough to buy the whole county."

"You are fearfully severe," Sylvia sighed.  "Of course, I've been
talking rot, as I always do, but we did find him charming, Letitia,
both Daddy and I.  He was so simple and unaffected, and he drove me
into Fakenham and bought cutlets for our luncheon.  When I come to
think of it," she went on, with a look of horror in her face, "I
believe he paid for them, too."

"He can well afford to," Letitia laughed.

The Marquis came to them across the lawn.  He held in his hand an open
telegram.

"From Grantham, my dear," he said to Letitia.  "It appears that he is
bored with town and proposes to come down to-morrow night instead of
waiting until Saturday.  I have replied that he will be very welcome.
Mrs. Foulds will really have to bestir herself.  I have a line from
Caroline, too, to ask if she may stay for a couple of days on her way
to Harrogate."

Letitia rose to her feet.  The cloud which had fallen upon her face was
doubtless owing to housekeeping cares.  The Marquis, shading his eyes
with his hand, was gazing across the park.

"Really," he remarked, a little drily, "I shall have to hint to our new
neighbour that turf which is several hundred years old is not meant to
be cut up like prairie-land.  He sits his horse well, though."

Sylvia jumped quickly up and Letitia gazed in the direction which her
father had indicated.  David, on his black horse, was riding across the
park towards Broomleys.




CHAPTER XXV

The Marquis, as he sat at his study table after lunch, was not inclined
to regard his first day at Mandeleys as a success.  The only post of
the day had been delivered, and the letter for which he was waiting
with an anxiety greater than he even realised himself, was still
absent.  There was a letter, however, from Mr. Wadham, which afforded
him some food for thought.  It was a personal letter, written by the
head of the firm, and he perused it for the second time with a frown
upon his forehead.


_My dear Lord Mandeleys:_

I have ventured, in your interests, to do what my son tells me you
yourself felt some hesitation in doing--namely, I have made enquiry
through a firm of stockbrokers who make a speciality of American oil
shares, as to the Pluto Oil Company, Limited, of whose shares you have
made so large a purchase.  I find that no development of this property
has taken place, very little, if any, machinery has been erected, no
oil has ever been discovered in the locality or upon the estate.  May I
beg of you that, to avoid disastrous consequences, you at once see your
friend from whom you purchased these shares, and endeavour to make some
arrangement with him to take them off your hands, as they were
doubtless tendered to you by false representations.

I am quite sure that I need not point out to your lordship that I write
you this letter entirely without prejudice and in the interests of the
Mandeleys name and estates.

There could be no possibility of the drafts executed by your lordship
being met, unless the shares themselves provided the funds, which,
under the existing conditions, appears impossible.

Respectfully yours,
  STEPHEN WADHAM.


The Marquis looked out upon the lawn.  There was in his memory, too, a
recent and serious conversation with Mr. Merridrew, concerning the
accumulating charges for dilapidations upon the property.  He watched
David playing croquet with Sylvia Laycey with a deepening frown upon
his face, glanced from them to where Letitia sat, apparently absorbed
in a book which she was reading, and from her he looked through a side
window towards that hated little demesne across the moat, where Richard
Vont, in his shabby brown velveteen suit, with his white hair and his
motionless figure, seemed to dominate the otherwise peaceful prospect.
Somehow or other, both outlooks irritated him almost as much as his own
mental condition.  The hard pressure of circumstances was asserting
itself in his mind.  He found himself struggling against an insidious
longing to see Letitia in Sylvia's place.  In his way he was
superstitious.  He even began to wonder whether that silent, ceaseless
hate, that daily litany of curses, could really in any way be
responsible for the increasing embarrassments by which he was
surrounded, that great, dumb anxiety which kept him with wide-open eyes
at night and sent him about in the daytime with a constant, wearing
pain at his heart.

He turned at last wearily away from the window, rose to his feet,
opened the French doors which led out into the gardens, and strolled
across the lawn to where Letitia was seated.  She laid down her book
and welcomed him with a smile which had in it just a shade of fatigue.

"Our friend Thain," he observed, "seems to be a success with Miss
Sylvia."

Letitia turned her head and watched them.

"Sylvia has already confided to me her ardent admiration."

The Marquis sighed as he sank into a chair.  Letitia glanced at him a
little anxiously.

"Anything wrong, dad?"

"Nothing that should depress one on such a wonderful day.  It is more a
state of mind than anything.  You and I, I fancy, were both born a few
hundred years too late."

"Money again?"

He nodded.

"It is one of the most humiliating features of modern existence," he
declared, "to find the course of one's daily life interfered with by
the paltry necessities of pounds, shillings and pence.  One inherits a
great name," he went on ruminatively, "great traditions, an estate
brimful of associations with illustrious ancestors.  In one's daily
life one's sense of dignity, one's whole position, is all the time
affected, I may say poisoned, by the lack of that one commodity which
is neither a proof of greatness or even deserving.  We are very poor
indeed, Letitia."

She sighed.

"Is it anything fresh?"

"Mr. Merridrew has been here this morning," her father continued, "and
has spoken to me very seriously about the condition of the whole
estate.  No repairs or rebuilding have been effected for years.  The
whole of the rents, as they have been received, have been required to
pay interests on the mortgages.  Mr. Merridrew adds that he scarcely
dare show himself before any one of the tenants, to whose just demands
he is continually promising attention.  He considers that unless the
whole of the next quarter's rents are spent in making repairs, we shall
lose our tenants and the property itself will be immensely
deteriorated."

"There are those shares that Mr. Thain sold you," she reminded him
hopefully.

"You must take this for what it is worth," he said.  "I have a private
letter from Mr. Wadham himself this morning, in which he tells me
frankly that he has received reports indicating that those shares are
worthless."

"Worthless?" Letitia exclaimed, bewildered.

Her father nodded.

"He begs me earnestly to appeal to Mr. Thain to take them off my hands.
Even if I could bring myself to contemplate such a step, we should even
then be faced with the fact that, adopting Mr. Merridrew's views, there
are no funds to provide the interest on the mortgages next quarter day."

Letitia glanced once more uneasily towards David Thain.

"Worthless!" she repeated.  "I don't understand it, father.  Do you
really believe that Mr. Thain would do you an ill turn like this?"

The Marquis shook his head.

"I can conceive no possible reason for such an action," he declared.
"We have not injured him in any way.  On the contrary, we have, at your
Aunt Caroline's solicitation, offered him a hospitality somewhat rarely
accorded by you and me, dear, to persons of his nationality and
position."

Letitia made a little grimace.

"Aunt Caroline looks at him from a different point of view, doesn't
she!"

"Your aunt is intensely modern," the Marquis agreed.  "She is modern,
too, without any real necessity.  Her outlook upon life is one which,
considering her descent, I cannot understand."

"Don't you think, father," Letitia asked him squarely, "that, however,
disagreeable it may be, you ought to speak to Mr. Thain about the
shares?  He could probably tell you something which would relieve your
mind, or he might offer to take them back."

The Marquis was silent for a moment.  Probably no one in the world
except Letitia knew how much it cost him to say the next few words.

"I will do so," he promised.  "I will find an early opportunity of
doing so.  At the same time, in the absence of any more definite
information, I prefer to retain my belief in their value."

Sylvia and David came strolling towards them.  The former was looking
almost distressed.

"Letitia dear, isn't it horrid!" she said.  "I must go now!  I promised
Mrs. Medlingcourt that I'd be back to tea.  She has some stupid people
coming in.  We've had such a wonderful game of croquet.  I am quite
sure I could make an expert of Mr. Thain in a very short time.  Can I
have my pony cart, please, Letitia?  And what time shall I come on
Thursday?"

"We shall be ready for you any time you like," Letitia replied, "so
please suit yourself."

They all strolled round to see her start.  She looked a little
wistfully at the vacant place in the governess' cart, as she took her
seat.

"I can't drop you at Broomleys gate, can I, Mr. Thain?" she asked.

He shook his head smilingly.

"I should never dare to face your pony again," he declared.  "Bring
your father over to see me, and we'll mark out a croquet court at
Broomleys."

"We'll come," she promised.

She drove away.  David, too, turned to take his leave.

"So nice of you to entertain our little visitor," Letitia said, smiling
graciously upon him.  "She is charming, isn't she?"

"Quite," he replied.

"I'll show you a way into the park from the flower gardens," she
continued.  "It saves you a little."

She led the way across the lawn, very erect, very graceful, very
indifferent.  David walked by her side with his hands behind him.

"You must find these country pursuits a relaxation after your more
strenuous life," she observed.

"I find them very pleasant."

"To-morrow," Letitia told him, "my aunt arrives for a day or two.  You
are almost as popular with her, you know, as you seem to be with
Sylvia."

"The Duchess," he repeated.  "I did not know that she was coming here.
She was kind enough to ask me to go to Scotland later on."

"You will be very foolish if you don't go, then," Letitia advised.
"The Rossdale grouse moors are almost the best in Scotland.  Aunt
Caroline is staying here for two days on her way to Harrogate.  You
must dine with us on Thursday night.  She will be so disappointed if
she does not see you at once."

"You are very kind, Lady Letitia," he said.  "I fear that I am inclined
to encroach upon your hospitality."

She picked a rose and held it to her lips for a moment.

"We must amuse Aunt Caroline," she observed languidly.  "It is many
years since she imposed herself as a visitor here.  We dine at a
quarter past eight.  This is the gate."

He passed through it and turned to make his farewells.  Her left hand
was resting upon the iron railing, her right supported her parasol.
She nodded to him a little curtly.

"You promised," he reminded her, "that some day you would come over and
help me about the garden."

"Did I?" she answered.  "Well, remind me sometime, won't you?"

"Why not now?" he persisted.

She shook her head.

"I have to go and consult with Mrs. Foulds as to where to put all our
visitors.  Charlie Grantham is coming with aunt, I think, and we have
so many rooms closed up.  Don't fall into the moat.  There's a bridge
just to the left."

She turned away, and David watched her for several moments before he
swung round.  He was conscious of a sudden and entirely purposeless
feeling of anger, almost of fury.  From the higher slopes of the park
he turned and looked once more towards Mandeleys.  Letitia had
evidently forgotten her household duties.  She had thrown herself back
in her chair and was once more apparently engrossed in her book.




CHAPTER XXVI

David Thain, a few hours later, lounged in a basket chair in the one
corner of his lawn from which he could catch, through the hedge of yew
trees, a furtive glimpse of Mandeleys.  By his side stood a small
coffee equipage and an unopened box of cigars; in the distance was the
vanishing figure of the quiet-mannered and very excellent butler with
whom a famous registry office had endowed his household.  It was an
hour of supreme ease.  An unusually warm day was succeeded by an
evening from which only the warmth of the sun had departed, an evening
full of scents from flowers and shrubs alike, an evening during which
the thrushes prolonged their music until, from somewhere in the distant
groves at the back of the house, a nightingale commenced, like the
tuning up of an orchestra, to make faint but sweet essays at continued
song.  It was as light as day but there were stars already in the sky,
and a pale, colourless moon was there, waiting for the slowly moving
mantle of twilight.  David Thain was alone with his thoughts.

They had started somewhere in the background, in the first throb and
excitement of life, in the moment when his lips had framed that
horrible oath which held him now in its meshes.  Then had come the real
struggle, years of brilliant successes, the final coup, the stepping in
a single day on to one of those pedestals which a great republic keeps
for her most worshipped sons.  Always it seemed to him that there was
that old man in the background, waiting.  At last had come the
question.  Yes, he was ready.  He had come to England a little
protesting, a little incredulous, always believing that those fierce
fires which had burned for so long in the grey-haired, patient old man
would have burned themselves out, or would become softened by
sentimental associations as soon as he set foot in his native place.
David's awakening was complete and disconcerting.  The fury of Richard
Vont showed no signs of abatement.  He found himself committed already
to one loathsome enterprise--and there was the future.  He looked down
gloomily at the magnificent pile below, with its many chimneys, its
stretching front and far-reaching wings, and some echo of the
bitterness which raged in the old man who sat and watched at its gates,
found an echo in his own heart.  He remembered the amusement with which
that subtle but absolutely natural air of superiority, on the part of
father and daughter alike, had first imbued him.  Their very kindness,
the frank efforts of the Marquis, as well as of Lady Letitia, to lead
him into some channel of conversation in which he could easily express
himself was the kindness of those belonging to another world and
fearing lest the consciousness of it might depress their visitor.  And
with his resentment was mingled another feeling; not exactly
acquiescence--his American education had been too strong for that--but
admiration for those inherent gifts which seemed to bring with them a
certain grace, carried into even the smaller matters of life.  Perhaps
he exaggerated to himself their importance as he sat there in the soft
gathering twilight, poured out his neglected coffee and still played
with his unlighted cigar.  The rooks had ceased to caw above his head.
Some of the peace of night was stealing down upon the land.  In the
windows of Mandeleys little pinpricks of light were beginning to show.

The iron hand-gate which led from the park into his domain was suddenly
opened and closed.  The way led through a grove of trees and through
another gate into the garden.  He turned his head and watched the spot
where the figure of his visitor must appear.  It was curious that from
the first, although his common sense should have told him how
impossible such a thing was, he had an intuitive presentiment as to who
this visitor might be.  He laid down the unlighted cigar upon his table
and leaned a little forward in his chair.  First he heard footsteps
falling softly upon a carpet of pine needles and yielding turf, slowly
too, as though the movements of their owner were in a sense reluctant.
And then a slim, tall figure in white--a familiar figure!  He was up in
a moment, striding forwards.  She had already passed through the gate,
however, and was moving towards him across the lawn.

"Lady Letitia!" he exclaimed.

She nodded.

"Please don't look as though I'd done anything so terribly unusual,"
she begged.  "What a pleasant spot you have chosen for your coffee!"

David's new treasure proved fully equal to the occasion.  From some
unseen point of vantage he seemed to have foretold the coming of this
visitor, and prepared to minister to her entertainment.  Lady Letitia
sank into her chair and praised the coffee.

"So much better than the stuff we have been trying to drink," she told
David.  "I must bring dad round one evening.  He loves good coffee.
How beautiful your trees are!"

"Your trees," he reminded her.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It seems ages since I was here," she remarked.  "Sylvia was away when
we were down last, and dad and Colonel Laycey were annoyed with one
another about some repairs.  You don't want any repairs, do you, Mr.
Thain?"

"I have arranged to do whatever is necessary myself," David told her,
"in consideration of a somewhat reduced rent."

"I am glad you consider it reduced!" Letitia observed.  "Of course, you
think I am mad to come and see you like this, don't you?" she added a
little aggressively.

"Not in the least," he replied.  "I should not have ventured to have
expected such a visit, but now that you are here it seems quite
natural."

"After all, why isn't it?" she agreed.  "I walked round the garden
once, thinking about a certain matter in which you are concerned, and
then I walked in the park, and it occurred to me that you would
probably be sitting out here, only a few hundred yards away, just as
you are doing, and that you could, if you would, set my mind at rest."

"If I can do that," he said, "I am very glad that you came."

"I am going to unburden my mind, then," she continued.  "It is about
those shares you sold father, Mr. Thain."

His manner seemed, to her quick apprehension, instantly to stiffen.
Nevertheless, he was expectant.  He was willing to go through a good
deal if only he could hear her voice for once falter, if even her tone
would lose its half-wearied, half-insolent note, if she would raise her
eyes and speak to him as woman to man.

"The Pluto Oil shares," he murmured.  "Well?"

"Of course, father hadn't the least right to buy them," she went on,
"because we haven't a penny in the world, and he couldn't possibly pay
for them unless they fetched as much, when the payment fell due, as he
gave for them.  I am rather stupid at these things, Mr. Thain, but you
understand?"

"Perfectly!"

Her long fingers stole into the cigarette box.  She accepted a light
from him and leaned back once more in her chair.

"Father," she proceeded, "has the most implicit faith in everybody.
The fact that you are an American millionaire was ample proof to him
that anything in the way of shares you possessed must be worth a great
deal more than their face value.  I do not know what led to his buying
them--you probably do.  Did he asked for any assurances as to their
intrinsic value?"

"I warned him," David said, "that they were entirely a speculation.  He
asked my advice as to some way of raising a large sum of money, much
larger than he could hope to gain by any ordinary enterprise.  I
presumed that he was willing to speculate and I suggested these shares.
They certainly are as speculative as any man could desire."

"Are they worth any more now than when father bought them?" she
enquired.

"To the best of my belief they have not moved," he replied.  "As a
matter of fact, they have not yet had a chance to prove themselves."

"They are still worth a dollar a share, then?"

"They are worth a dollar a share as much as they were when your father
bought them."

She turned her head and looked at him.

"My father," she said, "declines to ask you any questions.  He would
consider it in bad taste to suggest for a moment that he felt any
uneasiness with regard to the necessary payment for them.  He is none
the less, however, worried.  He was foolish enough to tell his lawyers
about them, and lawyers, I am afraid, have very little faith in him as
a business man.  The result of the enquiries they made was most
depressing."

"It probably would be," David assented.

"Forty thousand pounds' worth of shares," Letitia continued, "which are
worth as much now as when my father bought them, are, I suppose,
nothing to you.  I wondered whether you would object to have them back
again?  I think that it would relieve my father's mind."

Thain was silent for a moment.  He had lit a cigar now and was smoking
steadily.

"You have not much idea of business, Lady Letitia," he remarked.

"Business?" she repeated, with a note of surprise in her tone.  "How
should I have?  There are certain matters of common sense and of honour
which I suppose are common to every one of reasonable intelligence.
There did not seem to me to be any principle of business involved in
this."

"Supposing," David said, "the shares had risen and were worth two
dollars to-day, you would not in that case, I presume, have honoured me
with this visit?"

"Certainly not," she replied.

"I did not sell those shares to your father as an act of philanthropy,"
he continued.  "He asked me to show him a speculation, and I showed him
this.  Those shares, so far as I know, are as likely to be worth five
times their value next week, or nothing at all.  I am a very large
holder, and it seemed to me that it would be a reasonable act of
prudence to sell a few of them at a price which showed me a small
margin of profit."

"Profit?" she repeated wonderingly.  "Are you in need of profit?"

"It is the poison of wealth," he observed.  "One is always trying to
add to what one has."

She turned her head and looked at him intently.  For a moment she was
almost startled.  There was something unreal in the sound of his words.
Something that was almost a foreboding chilled her.

"Mr. Thain," she said calmly.

"Yes?"

"Had you any reason--any special reason, I mean--for selling those
shares to my father?"

His face was inscrutable.

"What reason should I have, Lady Letitia?"

"I can't imagine any," she replied, "and yet--for a moment I thought
that you were talking artificially.  I probably did you an injustice.
I am sorry."

David's teeth came together.  There was lightning in his eyes as he
glanced down through the trees towards Vont's little cottage.

"Don't apologise too soon, Lady Letitia," he warned her.

She raised her eyebrows.

"I am not accustomed to think the worst of people," she said.  "I can
scarcely picture to myself any person, already inordinately wealthy,
singling out my father as a victim for his further cupidity.  Let me
return to the question which I have already asked you.  Would you care,
without letting my father know of this visit and my request, to return
his cheque or promissory note, or whatever it was, in exchange for
these shares?"

"I am not even sure, Lady Letitia," he reminded her, after a moment's
pause, "that your father wishes this."

"You can, I think, take my word that it would be a relief to him," she
asserted.

He pondered for a few moments.  The light through the trees seemed to
be burning brighter in Vont's sitting room.

"I will be frank with you, Lady Letitia," he said.  "There has been no
increase in the value of these shares.  The news which I have expected
concerning them has not arrived.  The transaction, therefore, is one
which at the present moment would probably entail a loss.  Do you wish
me to make your father a present of twenty or thirty thousand pounds?"

She rose deliberately to her feet and shook the few grains of cigarette
ash from her dress.  The cigarette itself she threw into a laurel bush.

"I understand," she remarked, "what you implied when you said that
women did not understand business."

Her tone was unhurried, her manner expressed no indignation.  Yet as
she strolled towards the gate, David felt the colour drained from his
cheeks, felt the wicker sides of his chair crash in the grip of his
fingers.  He rose and hurried after her.

"Lady Letitia," he began impulsively--

She turned upon him as though surprised.

"Pray do not trouble to escort me home," she begged.

"It isn't that," he went on, falling into step by her side.  "You make
me feel like a thief."

"Are you not a thief?" she asked.  "I have been told that nearly all
very rich men are thieves.  I begin to understand that it may be so."

"It is possible to juggle with money honestly," he assured her.

"It is also possible, I suppose," she observed, with faint sarcasm, "to
lower the standard of honesty.  Thank you," she added, as she passed
through the second gate, "you perhaps did not understand me.  I should
prefer to return alone."

"I am going your way," he insisted desperately.

"My way?" she repeated.  "But there is nowhere to go to, unless you are
proposing to honour us with a call at Mandeleys."

"I am going in to see old Richard Vont," he said.

She laughed in surprised fashion.

"What, the old man who sits and curses us!  Is he a friend of yours?"

"He was on the steamer, coming home," David reminded her.  "I told you
so before.  I take an interest in him."

His point now was momentarily gained, and he walked unhindered by her
side.  The soft twilight had fallen around them, little wreaths of mist
were floating across the meadows, the birds were all silent.  The
pathway led through another narrow grove of trees.  As they neared the
gate, Letitia hesitated.

"I think it is just as near across the meadow," she said.

He held open the gate for her.

"You had better stay on the path," he advised.  "The grass is wet and
your shoes are thin."

She looked into his face, still hesitating.  Then she swiftly dropped
her eyes.  The man must be mad!  Nevertheless, she seemed for a moment
to lose her will.  The gate had fastened behind them with a sharp
click.  They were in the grove.  The way was very narrow and the fir
trees almost black.  There was only a glimpse of deep blue sky to be
seen ahead and in front.  The pigeons rustled their wings, and a great
owl lumbered across the way.  Something happened to Letitia then which
had never happened before.  She felt both her hands gripped by a man's,
felt herself powerless in his grasp.

"Lady Letitia," he exclaimed feverishly, "don't think I'm a fool!  I'll
not ask for what you haven't got to give--me.  You shall have your
father's note--you shall have--for him--what will make him free, if
you'll only treat me like a human being--if you'll be--kind--a little
kinder."

Her eyes flashed at him through the darkness, yet he could see that one
thing at least he had achieved.  Her bosom was rising and falling
quickly, her voice shook as she answered him.  For the first time he
had penetrated that intolerable reserve.

"Are you mad?" she cried.  "Are you trying to buy me?"

"How else should I win even a kind glance?" he answered bitterly.

"You mistake me for a railroad system," she mocked.

"I have never mistaken you for anything but a woman," was the vibrating
reply.  "The only trouble is that to me you always posture as something
else."

His hands were burning upon her wrists, but she showed no resentment.

"Is this the way," she asked, "that Americans woo?  Do they imprison
the lady of their choice in some retired spot and make a cash offer for
their affections?  You are at least original, Mr. Thain!"

"If I can't bring myself to ask you in plain words what I am craving
for," he answered hoarsely, "you can guess why.  I know very well that
there is only one thing about me that counts in your eyes.  I know that
I should be only an appendage to the money that would make your father
happy and Mandeleys free.  And yet I don't care.  I want you--you
first, and then yourself."

"You have some faith, then, in your eligibility--and your methods of
persuasion?" she observed.

"Haven't I reason?" he retorted.  "You people here are all filled up
with rotten, time-exploded notions, bound with silken bonds,
worshippers of false gods.  You don't see the truth--you don't know it.
I am not sure that I blame you, for it's a beautiful slavery, and but
for the ugly realities of life you'd prosper in it and have children
just as wonderful and just as ignorant.  But, you see, the times are
changing.  I am one of the signs of them."

"If this were an impersonal discussion," Letitia began, struggling to
compose her voice--

"But it isn't," he broke in.  "I am speaking of you and of me, and no
one else.  I'm fool enough to love you, to be mad about you!  Fool
enough to make you an offer of which any man with a grain of
self-respect should be ashamed."

"I quite agree with you," she said smoothly.  "Perhaps it will end this
very interesting little episode if I tell you that I am engaged to
marry Lord Charles Grantham, and that he is coming down to-morrow."

He released her hands--flung them from him almost.

"Is this the truth?" he demanded.

She laughed lightly.

"Why on earth," she asked, "should I take the trouble to tell you
anything else?"

He pointed to the path.

"Get on," he ordered.

She found herself obeying him--without resentment, even.  When they
reached the gate that led into the park, he held it open and remained.
She hesitated for a moment.

"You are going to leave me to brave the perils of the rest of the
journey alone?" she asked.

He made no answer.  She lifted her skirts a little, for the dew was
becoming heavier, and made her graceful way down the slope and across
the bridge to the postern gate.  Arrived there, she looked round.
David Thain had vanished back into the grove.

Letitia made her way into her own room and closed the door.  She lit
both of the candles upon her dressing table, pulled back the lace of
her sleeves and looked at her wrists.  There were two red marks there,
red marks which, as she stared at them, seemed suddenly again to feel
the iron pressure.  She stared at them, half in surprise, without anger
and yet with a curious emotion.  Suddenly she found that she was
trembling, obsessed with a strange yet irresistible impulse.  She bent
down and lightly kissed the flaming marks.  Then she blew out the
candles, threw herself into the easy-chair which, earlier in the day,
she had drawn up to the window, and looked steadily back into the park
now fast becoming a phantasy of shadowland.




CHAPTER XXVII

The Marquis, with several account books and Mr. Merridrew, who had
ridden over from his office on a motor-bicycle, had settled down to a
laborious evening.  The former, for no particular reason, was enjoying
a slight relapse into his customary optimism.

"I am not without expectation," the Marquis commenced by explaining to
his agent, "that at the end of the next two months I may find myself in
possession of a large sum of money.  Under those circumstances, it will
not be a purposeless proceeding to work out what is really required in
the way of repairs on the various farms.  It will be a great pleasure
for me to meet my tenants in any way possible.  On the whole, I
consider that they have been very reasonable and loyal."

Mr. Merridrew agreed with his lordship, agreed with him fervently.

"Some of them," he confessed, "have been very troublesome.  A few of
them have been driven to make some slight repairs themselves, but on
the whole, your lordship, it would be a great relief if one were able
to assist them so far as regards positive dilapidations."

The Marquis dipped his pen in the ink and settled down to his task.  At
that moment, however, Gossett knocked at the door, opened it and
advanced towards his master with a card upon a salver.

"The gentleman is staying at Fakenham, I believe, sir, and has motored
over."

The Marquis lifted the card.  "Mr. James Borden" at first conveyed
nothing to him.  Then he felt a sudden stab of memory.

"The gentleman wishes to see me?" he enquired.

"He begs to be allowed a short interview with your lordship," Gossett
replied.

"You can show him into the library," was the brief direction.  "Mr.
Merridrew," he added, turning to the agent, "you can proceed with the
abstract without me.  I shall return in time to go through the totals
and learn the family records of the various tenants--I refer, of
course, to those with which I am not acquainted."

Mr. Merridrew was quite sure that he could manage alone and settled
down to his task.  The Marquis presently left him and crossed the great
hall, one of the wonders of Mandeleys, the walls of which were still
hung with faded reproductions, in ornate tapestry, of mediaeval
incidents.  From somewhere amongst the shadows came Gossett, who
gravely took up his stand outside the library.  As though with some
curious prescience of the fact that this was an unwelcome visitor, his
bow, as he threw open the door, was lower even than usual.

"Shall I light the lamp, your lordship?" he asked.

The Marquis glanced towards the oriel windows, through which the light
came scantily, and at the figure of James Borden, advancing now from
somewhere in the dim recesses of the room--an apartment which remained
marvellously little altered since the days when it had contained the
laboriously collected books of a Franciscan order of Monks.

"Perhaps it would be as well, Gossett," his master assented.  "You wish
to see me?" he added, turning towards his visitor.

James Borden had come posthaste from London, acting upon an impulse
which had swept him off his feet.  All the way down he had been the
prey to turbulent thoughts.  A hundred different ways of conducting
this interview had presented themselves before him with such facility
that he had come to look upon it as one of the easiest things on earth.
Yet now the moment had arrived he was conscious of an unexpected
embarrassment.  The strange tranquillity of the house and this stately
apartment, the personality of the Marquis himself--serene, slightly
curious, yet with that indefinable air of good-breeding which magnifies
the obligations of a host--had a paralysing effect upon him.  He was
tongue-tied, uncertain of himself.  All the many openings which had
come to him so readily faded away.

"My name is Borden," he announced.  "I have come here, hoping for a
short conversation with you."

The Marquis made no immediate reply.  He watched the lighting of a huge
lamp which Gossett silently placed in the middle of an ebony black
writing table, to the side of which he had already drawn up two
high-backed chairs.

"Is there anything else your lordship desires?" the man asked.

"Not at present, Gossett.  I will ring."

The Marquis pointed towards one of the chairs, and seated himself in
the other.

"I shall be very glad to hear of your business with me, Mr. Borden," he
said courteously.

His visitor had lost none of his embarrassment.  The Marquis, in his
old-fashioned dinner clothes, his black stock, the fob which hung from
his waistcoat, his finely chiselled features, and that mysterious air
of being entirely in touch with his surroundings, had him at a
disadvantage from the first.  Borden was wearing the somewhat shabby
blue serge suit in which he had travelled all day, and which he had
neglected to brush.  He had been too much in earnest about his mission
to do more than make the most hasty toilet at the hotel.  The
high-backed chair, which suited the Marquis so well, was an unfamiliar
article of furniture to him, and he sat upon it stiffly and without
ease.  Nevertheless, he reminded himself that he was there--he must say
what he had come to say.

"I am venturing to address you, Lord Mandeleys," he began, "upon a
personal subject."

The Marquis raised his eyebrows gently.  It was perhaps a suggestion of
surprise that a personal subject should exist, lending itself to
discussion between him and this visitor.

"And before I go any further," the latter continued, "I want to make it
clear that I am here at my own initiative only--that the other person
interested is entirely ignorant of my visit."

Mr. Borden paused, and the Marquis made no sign whatever.  He was
sitting quite upright in his chair, the fingers of his right hand
toying lazily with an ancient paper knife, fashioned of yellow ivory.

"Nevertheless," the speaker went on, "I wish to tell you that my visit
is a sequel to a conversation which I had last night with Miss Marcia
Hannaway, a conversation during which I asked her, not for the first
time, to be my wife."

The Marquis's fingers ceased to trifle with the paper knife.
Otherwise, not a muscle of his body or a single twitch of the features
betrayed any emotion.  Nevertheless, his visitor realised for the first
time that all his life he had had a wrong conception of this man.  He
knew quite well that he had altogether underrated the difficulties of
his task.

"I am taking it for granted," he proceeded, "that you are broad-minded
enough, Lord Mandeleys, to admit that we can discuss this, or any other
matter, on terms of equality.  I am unknown to you.  My father was a
Dean of Peterborough; I was myself at Harrow and Magdalen."

The Marquis's fingers stretched out once more towards the paper knife.

"You mentioned, I believe," he said, "the name of a lady with whom I am
acquainted."

"I am coming to that," was the eager reply.  "I only wanted to have it
understood that this was a matter which we could discuss as equals, as
man to man."

"I am so far from agreeing with you," the Marquis declared calmly,
"that I prefer to choose my own companions in any discussion, and my
own subjects.  It happens that you are a stranger to me."

Borden checked a hasty retort, which he realised at once would have
placed him at a further disadvantage.

"Lord Mandeleys," he said, "I was at first Miss Hannaway's publisher.
I have become her friend.  I desire to become her husband.  Her whole
story is known to me, even from the day when you brought her away from
the Vont cottage and chose her for your companion.  I have watched the
slow development of her brain, I know how much she has benefited
intellectually by the forced seclusion entailed upon her by the
conditions of your friendship.  I realise, however, that the time has
come when in justice to her gifts, which have not yet reached fruition,
it is necessary that she should come into closer personal contact with
the world of which she knows so little.  She can attain that position
by becoming my wife."

"Really!" his listener murmured, with a faint note of unruffled
surprise in his tone.

Borden set his teeth.  The task which had seemed to him so easy was
presenting now a very different appearance.  Nevertheless, he kept an
iron restraint upon himself.

"I do not wish to weary you," he went on, "by making a long story of
this.  I am forty-one years old and unmarried.  Marcia Hannaway is the
first woman whom I have wished to make my wife, and I wish it because
I--care for her.  I have been her suitor for nine years.  During all
that time she has given me no word of encouragement.  I have never
once, until these last few days, been permitted to dine alone with her,
nor been allowed even the privilege of visiting her at her home.  The
restrictions upon our intercourse have been, I presume, in obedience to
your wishes, or to Marcia's interpretation of them."

"If we could come," the Marquis said gently, "to the reason for this
visit--"

The words supplied the sting that Borden needed.

"I believe," he declared, "that Marcia Hannaway in her heart wishes to
marry me.  I believe that she cares enough to marry me.  Only a short
time ago she admitted it, and within twelve hours I received a note,
retracting all that she had promised."

There was a deep silence throughout the great room.  The faces of the
two men--a little closer now, for Borden had moved his chair--were both
under the little circle of lamplight.  For a single second something
had disturbed the imperturbability of the Marquis's countenance--it
seemed, indeed, as though some strange finger had humanised it, had
softened the eyes and drawn apart the lips.  Then the moment passed.

"Are we nearing the end of this discussion, Mr. Borden?"

"Every word brings us nearer the end," was the ready reply.  "I am
going to tell you the truth as I feel it in my heart.  Marcia would be
at her best in the life to which I should bring her.  Mentally,
spiritually and humanly, as my wife she would be happier.  She has
refused me out of loyalty to you."

"Are you suggesting," the Marquis enquired, "that I should intervene in
favour of your suit?"

Borden struck the table with the flat of his hand.

"Damn it," he exclaimed, "can't you talk of this like a man!  Don't you
care enough for Marcia to think a little of her happiness?  I want you
to let her go--to let her believe, whether it is the truth or not, that
she is not, as she seems to think, necessary to your life.  Come!  Life
has its sacrifices as well as its compensations.  You've had the best
part of a wonderful woman's life.  I am not saying a word about the
conditions which exist between you.  I don't presume.  If I did, I
should have to remember that Marcia speaks always of your treatment of
her with tears of gratitude in her eyes.  But your time has come.
Marcia has many years to live.  There is something grown up within her
which you have nothing to do with--a little flame of genius which burns
there all the time, which at this very moment would be a furnace but
for the fact of the unnatural life she is forced to lead as
your--companion.  Now you ask what I've come for, and you know.  I want
you to forget yourself and to think of the woman who has been your
faithful and sympathetic companion for all these years.  She hasn't
come to her own yet.  She can't with you.  She can with me.  Write and
thank her for what she has given you, and tell her that for the future
she is free.  She can make her choice then, unfettered by these
infernal bonds which you have laid around her."

The Marquis turned the lamp a little lower with steady fingers.  The
necessity for his action was not altogether apparent.

"You suggest, Mr. Borden, if I understand you rightly," he said, "that
I am now too old and too unintelligent to afford Marcia the stimulating
companionship which her gifts deserve?"

"There can't be a great sympathy between you," the other declared,
"and, to be brutal, the place in life which she deserves, and to which
she aspires, is not open to her under present conditions."

"You allude, I presume," the Marquis said, "to the absence of any legal
tie between Miss Hannaway and myself?"

"I do," Borden assented.  "The world is a broad-minded place enough,
but there are differences and backwaters--I am not here to explain them
to you.  I don't need to.  Marcia Hannaway, married to her publisher,
going where she will, thinking how she will, meeting whom she will,
would be a different person to Miss Marcia Hannaway, living in
isolation in Battersea, with nothing warm nor human in her life
except--"

"Precisely," the Marquis interrupted, with a little gesture which might
have concealed--anything.  "I am beginning to grasp your point of view,
Mr. Borden."

"And your answer?"

"I have no answer to give you, sir.  You have made certain suggestions,
which I may or may not be prepared to accept.  In any case, matters of
so much importance scarcely lend themselves to decisions between
strangers.  I shall probably allude to what you have said when I see or
write Miss Hannaway."

"You've nothing more to say to me about it, then?" Borden persisted, a
little wistfully.

"Nothing whatever!  You may possibly consider my attitude selfish," the
Marquis added, "but I find myself wholly indifferent to your interests
in this matter."

"I should be able to reconcile myself even to that," was the grim
reply, "if I have been able to penetrate for a single moment that
accursed selfishness of yours--if I have been able to make you think,
for however short a time, of Marcia's future instead of your own."

The Marquis rose without haste from his place, and rang the bell.

"You will permit me, Mr. Borden," he invited, "to offer you some
refreshments?"

"Thank you, I desire nothing."

The Marquis pointed to the door, by which Gossett was standing.

"That, then, I think, concludes our interview," he said, with icy
courtesy.

Mr. Borden walked the full length of the very long apartment, suffered
himself to be respectfully conducted across the great hall, out on to
the flags and into the motor-car which he had hired in Fakenham.  It
was not until he was on his way through the park that he opened his
lips and found them attuned to blasphemy.  At the top of the gentle
slope, however, where the car was brought to a standstill while the
driver opened the iron gate, he turned back and looked at Mandeleys,
looked at its time-worn turrets, its mullioned windows, the Norman
chapel, the ruined cloisters, the ivy-covered west wing, the beautiful
Elizabethan chimneys.  A strange, heterogeneous mass of architecture,
yet magnificent, in its way impressive, almost inspiring.  He looked at
the little cottage almost at its gates, from which a thin, spiral
column of smoke was ascending.  Perhaps in those few seconds, and with
the memory of that interview still rankling, he felt a glimmering of
real understanding.  Something which had always been incomprehensible
to him in Marcia's story stood more or less revealed.




CHAPTER XXVIII

The Marquis, if he had been a keen physiognomist, might perhaps have
read all that he had come to London to know in Marcia's expression as
he made his unexpected entrance into her sitting room on the following
day.  She was seated at her desk, with a great pile of red roses on one
side of her, and a secretary, to whom she was dictating, on the other.
She swung round in her chair and for a moment was speechless.  She
looked at her visitor incredulously, a little helplessly, with some
traces of an emotion which puzzled him.  Her greeting, however, was
hearty enough.  She sprang to her feet and held out both her hands.

"My dear man, how unlike you!  Really, I think that I like surprises.
Give me both your hands--so!  Let me look at you."

"I should have warned you of my coming," he said, raising the
ink-stained fingers which he was clasping to his lips, "but to tell you
the truth it was a caprice."

"I thought you were in the country, at Mandeleys!" she exclaimed.

"I was," he replied.  "I have motored up from there this morning.  I
came to see you."

She dismissed her secretary, gazed at herself in the glass and made a
grimace.

"And a nice sight I look!  Never mind.  Fancy motoring up from
Mandeleys!  What time did you start?"

"At six o'clock," he answered, with a little smile.  "It was somewhat
before my regular hour for rising.  If you have no other arrangements,
I should be glad if you would take luncheon with me."

"Bless the man, of course I will!" she assented, passing her arm
through his and leading him to a chair.  "You are not looking quite so
well as you ought to after a breath of country air."

"I am passing through a time of some anxiety," he acknowledged.

She remained on the side of his chair, still holding his arm.  The
Marquis sank back with a little air of relief.  There seemed to be
something different, something warmer in the world.  He was moved by a
rare and unaccountable impulse--he drew her towards him and kissed her
lips.

"I had a birthday last week," he said, with a very slight smile.  "I
think that it affected me.  One begins to wonder after one has passed
middle age, not what there is to look forward to, but how much it is
worth while enduring."

"Of course," she declared, with a grimace, "you've been diving into
musty old volumes at Mandeleys and reading the mutterings of one of
those primitive philosophers who growled at life from a cave."

"I have found myself a little lonely at Mandeleys," he confessed.

"But this visit to London," she persisted.  "Is it business?  Is there
anything wrong?"

"I came to see you."

"My head is going round," she declared.  "This is Wednesday.  Besides,
I thought you were going to stay away until I wrote you--not that I
wanted you to."

"I changed my mind," he told her, "in consequence of a visit which I
received yesterday from a Mr. James Borden."

She gave vent to an exclamation of dismay.

"You mean that Jimmy has been down to see you?"

"If Jimmy and Mr. James Borden are identical," the Marquis replied, a
little stiffly, "he undoubtedly has."

She looked at him helplessly.

"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "how could he be so foolish!"

"He wanted, it seems," the Marquis continued, "to have what he called a
man-to-man talk.  I am not the sort of person, as you know, Marcia, who
appreciates man-to-man talks with strangers.  I listened to all that he
had to say, and because I gathered that he was your friend, I was
polite to him.  That is all.  He gave me to understand that he was your
suitor."

"He'd no right to tell you anything of the sort," she declared, "but in
a sense I suppose it is true.  He wants me to marry him.  It's most
fearfully unsettling.  But that he should come to you!  I wish he
hadn't, Reginald."

"It appeared to me to be a quixotic action," the Marquis assented.
"However, indirectly it has been conducive of good--it has brought me a
great pleasure.  I have missed you very much, Marcia.  I am very happy
to be here again, for however short a time."

"You are going back, then, to Mandeleys?"

"When we part, directly after luncheon.  I have guests arriving there
to-night--my sister and Grantham, and I believe some others.  But after
my talk with Borden, or rather his talk to me, I felt that I must see
you."

"Well, I've missed you," she confessed frankly.  "I seem to have had
lots to do, and I have been going to the theatres, and I have quite
made up my mind to write a play.  But I have missed you.--Shall I go
and put on my hat?"

"If you will," he answered.  "We can talk in the car and at luncheon."

The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed.  At thirty-nine, he
thought, she was wonderfully young.  Her figure was a little more
mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise
and assurance with the passing years.  He leaned back in his chair
almost with a sense of luxury.  He was back again in the atmosphere
which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung
around him and kept him warm and contented--kept him, too, from looking
over the edge into strange places.  The room was deliciously feminine,
notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder.  There were magazines,
Reviews and illustrated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of
cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose
upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk.  One of her gloves
lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs.  It seemed to him
that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own,
in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central
position.  There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver
cocktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two glasses.
Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came
in, dressed for the street.  She was followed by a servant with some
ice upon a tray, and bottles.

"Now for my new vice," she exclaimed gaily, taking up the cocktail
shaker and half filling it with ice.  "You are not going to be
obstinate, are you?"

"I shall take anything you may give me, with great pleasure," he
assured her, a little stiffly.

She saw him looking at the second glass, and laughed.

"It is Phyllis Grant who is responsible for this," she explained.  "She
lives in the next flat, you know, and she comes in most days, either
before luncheon or before dinner, for an apéritif and a cigarette."

The Marquis's face cleared.  He drank his cocktail and pronounced it
delicious.  On the threshold he paused and looked back.

"I like your little room, Marcia," he said.  "I find it a strange thing
to confess, but there is nowhere else in the world where I feel quite
as much at home, quite as contented, as I do here."

She seemed almost startled, for a moment unresponsive.  Such a speech
was so unlike him that it seemed impossible that he could be in
earnest.  She walked down the stairs by his side with a new gravity in
her face.  Perhaps he noticed it.  At any rate, as soon as they were
seated in the car he began to talk to her.

"The object of Mr. Borden's visit to me, I gathered, was to impress
upon me the fact that by marrying him you would gain many advantages
from which you are at present debarred.  I naturally made no comment,
nor did I argue the matter with him.  I have come to you."

She sat silent in her corner.  Her eyes were fixed upon a nursemaid,
with two or three young children, passing by.  Suddenly she touched her
companion on the arm and pointed to them.

"There is that, you know," she faltered.

The Marquis nodded.

"My great fear," he continued, "is that sometimes I am too much
inclined to treat you as a contemporary, and to forget that you have
never known those things which are a part of every woman's life.  I
must give Mr. Borden the credit for having had the good taste not to
mention them."

"Oh, Jimmy isn't a cad," she answered, "but, without mentioning them, I
cannot understand what he came to you for.  As regards the other things
you have spoken of, I don't care a rap about them, in fact I love my
independence.  I go where I choose, I have found no one indisposed to
make my acquaintance, and the more I see of life--such life as comes to
me--the more I love it.  When Jim--Mr. Borden--uses such arguments, he
bores me.  They are directly against him instead of for him.  If I were
Mrs. James Borden, people would leave cards upon me and I should have
to eat dinners with fellow-publishers' wives, and exchange calls, and
waste many hours of my life in all the tomfoolery of middle-class
respectable living.  It doesn't appeal to me, Reginald.  He is an idiot
not to realise it."

"What does appeal to you, then?" he asked.

"That," she answered, moving her head backwards.

They crossed Battersea Bridge in silence.

"It's such a silly, ordinary problem," she went on presently, "and yet
it's so difficult.  It's either now or never, you know, Reginald.  I
shall say good-by to the thirties before long."

"It is your problem," he said sadly, "not mine."

She held his fingers in hers.

"If only, when we were both so much younger," she sighed, "we had had a
little more courage.  But I was so ignorant, and there was so much
else, too, to distract.  I shall never forget our first few months of
travel--Paris, the Riviera, Italy.  I was impressionable, too, and I
loved it all so--the colour and the beauty, the rich, warm stream of
life, after that wretched village school.  I was so aching to
understand, and you were such a good tutor.  You fed my brain
wonderfully.  Oh, I suppose I ought to be content!"

"And I," he murmured, "I, too, ought to be ready to creep into my own
little shelter and be content with--memories."

"Ah, no!" she protested, laying her hand upon his.  "If you feel like
that, it is ended.--Now come, this is a gala day.  You have come so far
to see me.  I am seriously flattered.  You must be starved, too.  Not
another word until we have lunched."

At Trewly's their entrance produced a mild sensation.  Their usual
table was fortunately unoccupied.  The manager himself welcomed them
with many compliments.  Marcia glanced around her a little listlessly.

"There is something rather mausoleum-like about this restaurant in the
daytime," she declared.  "Won't you take me somewhere else one day,
Reginald?"

"Why not?" he answered.  "It is for you to choose."

"There are some queer, foreign little places," she went on hastily.
"The things to eat, perhaps, are not so good, but the people seem
alive.  There is an air here, isn't there, of faded splendour about the
decorations and the people, too."

"I will make enquiries," the Marquis promised.

"Don't," she begged.  "You must leave it to me.  I will find somewhere.
And now let us be serious, Reginald.  Here we are come to rather a late
crisis in our lives.  Tell me, how much do I really mean to you?  Am I
just a habit, or have you really in the background memories and
thoughts about me which you seldom express?"

He leaned across the table.

"I will confess," he said, "that I have been surprised, during the last
few days, to discover how much you do mean to me, Marcia.  Your quicker
apprehension, perhaps, finds fault with me, rebels against the too
great passivity of my appreciation.  You have been the refuge of my
life.  Perhaps I have accepted too much and given too little.  That is
what may reasonably happen when there is a disparity in years and
vitality as great as exists between us.  What seemed to you to be
habit, Marcia, is really peace.  I have forgotten what I should always
have remembered--that you are still young."

Her eyes glistened as she looked at him.  A ray of sunshine which found
its way through an overhead window was momentarily unkind.  The lines
under his eyes, the wrinkles in his face, the thinning of his hair,
were all a little more apparent.  Marcia was conscious of an unworthy,
a hateful feeling, a sensation of which she was hideously ashamed.  And
yet, though her voice shook, there was still self-pity in her heart.

"I am so glad that you came," she said.  "I am so glad that you have
spoken to me like this.  You need have no fear.  Those other things
were born of just a temperamental fancy.  They will pass.  Be to me
just what you have been.  I shall be satisfied."

A cloud passed over the sun.  His face was once more in the shadow, and
curiously enough her fancy saw him through strangely different eyes.
Age seemed to pass, although something of the helpless wistfulness
remained.  It was the pleading of a boy, the eager hope of a child, of
which she suddenly seemed conscious.

"Do you think that you can be happy--as things are, Marcia?" he asked.
"Your friend, Mr. Borden, doesn't think so.  He came down--he was just
a little melodramatic, I think--hoping to incite me to a great
sacrifice.  I was to play the part of the self-denying hero.  I was to
give away the thing I loved, for its own sake.  I had no fancy for the
rôle, Marcia."

"And I should hate you in it, dear," she assured him. "Mr. James 
Borden will always be a dear friend, but he must learn what every 
one else in the world has had to learn--a lesson of self-denial.
He will find some one else."

"I am not jealous of the man," the Marquis said.  "I am jealous of just
one thought that his coming may have brought into your brain--one
instinct."

"Don't be," she begged.  "It will go just as it came.  It is part of a
woman's nature, I suppose.  Every now and then it tortures."

Luncheon was served excellently but without undue haste.  They fell to
discussing lighter topics.

"You will be interested to hear," he told her, "that my daughter
Letitia is engaged to be married to Charles Grantham.  I am quite
expecting that by Christmas I shall be alone.  I find Letitia a
charming and dutiful companion," he went on, "but I must confess that I
look forward to her marriage with some satisfaction.  It has occurred
to me that if it suited your work, we might travel for a time, or
rather settle down--in Italy, if you prefer it.  There is so much there
to keep one always occupied.  In Florence, for instance, one commences
a new education every spring."

"I should love it," she answered, with an enthusiasm which still lacked
something.

"A villa somewhere on the slopes of Fiesole," he continued, "with a
garden, a real Italian garden, with fountains and statuary, and
straight paths, and little strips of deep lawn, and a few cypress
trees.  And there must be a view of Florence.  I think that you would
work well there, Marcia.  If things go as I expect, I thought that we
might leave England about Christmas-time, and loiter a little on the
Riviera till the season for the cold winds has passed.  Browning wrote
of the delights of an English spring, but he lived in Florence."

"There is so much there that I am longing to see again," she murmured.

"You shall see it all," he promised.  "If you wish, you shall live with
it.  I do not know whether there is anything strange about me," he went
on, after a moment's hesitation, "but I must confess that I find myself
a little out of touch with modern English life.  The atmosphere of my
sister's house, for instance, invariably repels me.  The last
generation was amused by the efforts of those without just claims to
penetrate into the circles of their social superiors.  To-day the
reverse seems to be the case.  The men, and the women especially, of my
order, seem to be perpetually struggling to imitate the manners and
weaknesses of a very interesting but irresponsible world of Bohemia.  I
find myself with few friends, nowadays.  The freedom and yet the
isolation of foreign life, therefore, perhaps appeals to me all the
more.

"But you would not care to leave Mandeleys, surely?"

"My dear Marcia," he said, "I am possessed, perhaps, of a peculiar
temperament, but I can assure you that Mandeleys is spoiled for me so
long as that--that ridiculous old man--you will forgive me--your
father, sits at the end of his garden, invoking curses upon my head.
To every one except myself, the humour of the situation is obvious.  To
me there is something else which I cannot explain.  Whether it is a
presentiment, a fear, an offence to my dignity, I cannot tell.  I have
spent all the spare money I have in the world trying to get that Vont
cottage back again into the family estates, but I have failed.  Really,
your father might just as well have Mandeleys itself."

"You know that I went to see him?" she asked.

"I remember your telling me that you were going," he replied.

"My mission was a dismal failure," she confessed.  "I felt as though I
were talking to a stranger, and he looked as though he were speaking to
a Jezebel.  We stood in different worlds, and called to one another
over the gulf in different languages."

"Perhaps," the Marquis sighed, "it is as well that he is your father.
The other morning I passed down the fencing gallery and examined my
father's collection of rifles.  There was one there with a range of six
hundred yards, which was supposed in those days to be marvellous, and
some cartridges which fitted it.  The window was open.  You think,
Marcia, that I am too placid for impulses, yet I can assure you that I
slipped a cartridge into the magazine of that rifle, closed it, and
knelt down before the open window.  I held your father covered by the
sight until I could have shrieked.  Then I turned away and fired at a
log of wood in the park.  I found the bullet afterwards, half a foot
deep in the centre of it."

She shivered a little.

"For heaven's sake, don't go near that fencing gallery again!" she
begged.--"You see the time?"

He rose to his feet, and they passed down the restaurant together.
Outside, the car was waiting.

"Will you think me very discourteous," he asked, "if I send you back in
a taxicab?  I shall be hard pushed, as it is, to reach home before my
guests."

"Of course," she assented.

He stood for a moment after she had taken her place in the vehicle,
with her hand in his.

"My visit," he whispered, "has made me very happy."

She looked at him through a mist of unexpected tears.

"Come to me soon," she begged a little abruptly.  "I shall want you."

"Early next month," he promised, "or, if you send for me, before."

She seemed restless, indisposed to let him go.  "I wish you weren't
going away at all," she declared with unusual fervour.  "I wish--Come
back with me now, won't you?  Do!"

For a moment he hesitated.  He felt an extraordinary impulse to throw
everything on one side and accept her invitation.  The crisis passed,
however, before he could yield.  Marcia, with a little laugh, became
her normal self.

"What an idiot I am!" she exclaimed good-humouredly.  "Of course, you
must get down to Mandeleys as quickly as you can.  Good-by!"

She threw herself back in the corner of the taxicab and waved her
farewells.  The Marquis stood for a moment bareheaded upon the
pavement.  He watched the vehicle until it became lost in the stream of
traffic.  The impulse of a few moments ago was stronger than ever,
linked now, too, with an intolerable sense of depression.  It was with
an extraordinary effort of will that he took his place in his own car
and motioned the chauffeur to proceed.




CHAPTER XXIX

The Duchess walked with Letitia in the high-walled garden at Mandeleys,
on the morning after her arrival.  She appeared to be in a remarkably
good temper.

"I have not the least intention of boring myself, my dear Letitia," she
said, in reply to some conventional remark of her niece's.  "So long as
I get plenty of fresh air during the day, good plain food, and my
bridge between tea and dinner, I am always contented.  Let me see," she
went on, coming to a standstill and pointing with her stick to the
little belt of tall elm trees and the fir plantation behind, "Broomleys
is that way, isn't it?  Yes, I can see the house."

Letitia nodded, but only glanced in the direction her aunt indicated.

"And Mr. Thain?  Do you find him a pleasant neighbour?"

Letitia looked deliberately the other way.  It was just as well that
her aunt should not see the flash in her eyes.

"We do not see much of him," she replied.  "He gallops round the park
every day like a lunatic, and he spends a great deal of time, I think,
in his car."

"My dear," the Duchess said impressively, "David Thain may have his
peculiarities, but he is really a most simple and sincere person.  I
was attracted to him upon the steamer simply because of his shyness,
and a good thing for you, dear, that I was.  It must make quite a
difference to have Broomleys properly let to a man who can pay a good
rent for it."

"We have never denied that," Letitia admitted drily.  "We are keeping
house now upon the first quarter's rent."

"Is it my fancy," her aunt continued, stooping to pick herself a sprig
of lavender, "or do you really dislike Mr. Thain?"

"Intensely!" Letitia confessed with emphasis.

The Duchess was surprised.

"Well, really!" she exclaimed.  "And to me he seems such a harmless,
inoffensive person, absolutely without self-consciousness and not in
the least bumptious."

"What on earth has he to be bumptious about?" Letitia scoffed.  "He has
simply made a lot of money out of other people."

"That shows brains, at least," her aunt reminded her.

"Cunning!" Letitia retorted.

The Duchess twirled the sprig of lavender between her fingers.  She
could not remember ever to have heard her niece so much in earnest.

"Well, I hope you don't feel too strongly about him," she said.  "I
must have him asked to dinner while I am here."

"We have anticipated your wishes," Letitia remarked.  "He is coming
to-night."

"I am very glad to hear it," was the satisfied reply.  "I shall do my
best to persuade him to come up to Scotland later on.  There is nothing
that Henry enjoys more than a little flutter in American railways.
Perhaps he will help us to make some money."

"Personally," Letitia said slowly, "I should be very careful how I
trusted Mr. Thain."

The Duchess was shocked.

"You carry your aversions too far, my dear," she remonstrated.

"Perhaps, I only know that he sold father a lot of shares which it is
my profound conviction are entirely worthless."

"Sold your father shares?" the Duchess repeated.  "I don't understand.
How on earth could Reginald pay for any shares!"

"He gave what is called an acceptance," Letitia explained.  "It falls
due in about six weeks."

The Duchess smiled.  She had a great idea of her own capacity for
business.

"My dear," she said, "if between now and then the shares have not
improved sufficiently for your father to make a profitable sale, Mr.
Thain can extend the time of payment by renewing the bill."

"You have more confidence in Mr. Thain than I have," Letitia remarked
drily.

Her aunt was a little puzzled.  She decided to change the conversation.

"Where is Charles this morning?" she enquired.

"In the library with father.  They are discussing possible settlements.
I thought that sort of thing was always left to lawyers."

"I hope you are happier about your marriage than you seem," her aunt
observed.  "Charles is quite a _parti_, in a way, you know, although he
is not rich."

"Oh, I suppose it may as well be Charles as any one else," Letitia
assented, a little drearily.

The Duchess shook her head.

"You need a change, my dear," she declared.  "I hate to hear you talk
like that, especially as you are by way of being one of those
single-minded young persons who must find everything in marriage or
else be profoundly unhappy.  I am not at all sure that you ought to
have considered the question of marriage until you were in love."

"Thank you," Letitia retorted, "I have a horror of being an old maid."

Her aunt sighed.

"Now I come to think of it," she went on reminiscently, "there is a
curious streak of fidelity, isn't there, in your father's character.
You must take after him.  It ought to make you very careful, Letitia.
I don't want to say a word against Charles, but he doesn't carry his
head quite so high as you do, you know.  When are you going to announce
your engagement?"

"As soon as he leaves here, I think."

"Hm!  Is Charlie very much in love with you?"

"If he is, he hasn't mentioned it," Letitia observed.  "Nowadays, men
seem to reserve that sort of protestation for their musical comedy
friends, and suggest a joint establishment, as a matter of mutual
convenience, to us."

"Bitter, my dear--very bitter for your years!" her aunt sighed.

"What would you like to do this morning?" Letitia asked, abruptly
changing the subject.

"I shall amuse myself," was the prompt reply.  "First of all, I am
going to undertake a little mission on Reginald's account.  I am going
over to talk to that ridiculous old man Vont.  Afterwards, I shall walk
across to Broomleys."

"Most improper!" Letitia remarked.

"My dear," her aunt reminded her, "I am nearly forty years old,
although no one in the world would guess it if it were not for those
wretched Court Guides.  I look upon Mr. Thain as a sort of protégé of
mine, and I have an idea that you are not being so nice to him as you
might be."

"I do my best," Letitia replied, "and I really don't think he has
anything to complain of."

The Duchess parted from her niece as they neared the house and
proceeded to pay her first visit.  She crossed the moat by the little
handbridge, walked briskly across the intervening strip of park, and
approached the little enclosure in which the cottage was situated.
Richard Vont, seated in his usual corner of the garden, remained
motionless at her approach.  He neither rose nor offered any sort of
greeting.

"Good morning, Vont," she said briskly, as she reached the paling.

He was looking at her fixedly from underneath his bushy grey eyebrows.
He sat bolt upright in his chair, and he kept his hat upon his head.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"My good man," she remonstrated, "you might as well be civil.  Why
don't you stand up and take off your hat?  You know who I am."

"Yes, I know who you are," he replied, without moving.  "You are
Caroline, Duchess of Winchester.  I keep my hat upon my head because I
owe you no respect and I feel none.  As to asking you in, no one of
your family will ever, of my will, step inside these palings."

"You are a very obstinate old man, Vont," she said severely.

"I am what the Lord made me."

"Well," she continued, leaning slightly against the paling and looking
down at him, "I came down here to say a few words to you, and I shall
say them, unless you run away.  You are one of those simple, ignorant
men, Vont, who love to nurse an imaginary injustice until the idea that
you have been wronged becomes so fixed in your brain that you haven't
room for anything else there.  This behaviour of yours, you know, is
perfectly ridiculous."

Vont made no sign even of having heard her.  She continued.

"You haven't even a grievance.  My brother took your daughter away from
her home.  Under some conditions, that would have been a very
reprehensible thing.  As things turned out, it has been the making of
the young woman.  She has received a wonderful education, has been
taken abroad, and has been treated with respect and consideration by
every one.  My brother has devoted a considerable portion of his
lifetime to ensuring her happiness.  She is now a contented, clever,
talented and respected woman.  If she had remained here, she would
probably have become the wife-drudge of a farmer or a local tradesman.
You are listening, Richard Vont?"

"Yes, I am listening!"

"If the Marquis had betrayed your daughter, taken her away and deserted
her," she continued, "there might have been some justification for this
theatrical attitude of yours.  Under the present circumstances, there
is none at all.  Why don't you rid yourself of the idea, once for all,
that you or your daughter have suffered any wrong?  You've only a few
years to live.  Take up your work again.  There is plenty to be done
here.  Go and mix with your old friends and live like a reasonable man.
This brooding attitude of yours is all out of date.  Put your Bible
away, light a pipe, and set to work and kill some of the rabbits.  The
farmers are always complaining."

"You have a niece up yonder," Vont said, knitting his shaggy grey
eyebrows and gazing steadfastly at his visitor, "a well-looking young
woman, they say--Lady Letitia Thursford.  Would you like her to live
with a man and not be married to him?"

"Of course," the Duchess replied, "that is simply impertinent.  If you
are going to compare the doings of your very excellent yeomen stock
with the doings of the Thursfords, you are talking and thinking like a
fool.  A few hundred years ago, it would have been your duty to have
offered your womenkind to your master when you paid your rent.  We have
changed all that, quite properly, but not all the socialists who ever
breathed, or all the democratic teachings you may have imbibed in
America, can entitle you to talk of the Vonts and the Thursfords in the
same breath."

The old man rose slowly to his feet.  He leaned a little upon his
stick, and pointed to Mandeleys.

"You are an ignorant, shameless woman," he said.  "Get you home and
read your Bible.  If you want a last word to carry away with you, here
it is.  My daughter was just as much to me as the young woman who
walked yonder with you in the garden is to her father.  Let him
remember that."

"But, you foolish person," she expostulated, "Lady Letitia enjoys all
the advantages to which her station entitles her.  Your daughter, with
a mind and intelligence very much superior to her position, was
employed in the miserable drudgery of teaching village children."

"Honest work," he replied, "hurts no one, unless they are full of
sickly fancies.  It's idleness that brings sin.  They tell me you've
new creeds amongst those in your walk of life, and a new manner of
living.  Live as you will, then, but let others do the same.  I stand
by the Book, and maybe, when your last days come, you will be sorry you
cast it aside."

"So far as I remember," she reminded him, "the chief teaching of that
Book is forgiveness."

"Your memory fails you, then," he answered grimly, "for what the Book
preaches is justice to poor and rich alike."

The Duchess sighed.  She was a good-hearted woman and full of
confidence, but she recognised her limitations.

"My good man," she said, "I shall not argue with you any more.  You
won't believe it, but you are simply narrow and pig-headed and
obstinate, and you won't believe that there may be a grain of reason in
anybody else's point of view but your own.  Just look at yourself!  You
can't be more than sixty-five or so, and you might be a hundred!  You
sit there nursing your grievance and thinking about it, while your
whole life is running to seed.  Why don't you get up and be a human
being?  Send for your daughter to come down and look after you--she'd
come--and choke it all down.  Put the Book away for a time, or read a
little more of the New Testament and a little less of the Old.  Come,
will you be sensible, and I'll come in and shake hands with you, and
we'll write your daughter together."

Vont was still leaning on his stick.  Save that his eyebrows were drawn
a little closer together, his expression was unchanged.  Yet his
visitor, though the sunshine was all around them, shivered.

"Did he send you here?"

"Of course not," she replied.  "I came of my own accord.  I remembered
the days when you used to take me rabbiting and let me shoot a pheasant
if there was no one about.  You were a sensible, well-balanced man
then.  I came, hoping to find that there was a little of the old
Richard Vont left in you."

"There is just enough of the old Richard Vont left," he said, "to send
you back to where you came from, with a message, if you care to carry
it.  Tell him--your brother, the Lord of Mandeleys--that I am not
sitting here of idle purpose, that I don't hear the voices around me
for nothing, that I don't look day and night at Mandeleys for nothing.
Tell him to make the most of the sun that shines to-day and the soft
bed he lies on to-night and the woman he kisses to-morrow, for he is
very close to the end.  I am an old man, but I'm here to see the end.
It has been promised."

The Duchess, brimful of common sense and good humour, brave as a lion
and ready of tongue as she was, felt a little giddy, and clung to the
rail as she crossed the little bridge over the moat.  She looked back
only once.  Richard Vont remained standing just as she had left
him--grim, motionless, menacing.




CHAPTER XXX

The Marquis glanced at the note which was handed to him at luncheon
time, frowned slightly and handed it across to Letitia.

"What have you people been doing to Thain?" he asked a little
irritably.  "He doesn't want to come to dinner."

The Duchess and Sylvia, who had just arrived on her projected visit,
made no attempt to conceal their disappointment.  Letitia picked, up
the note and read it indifferently.

"I am very sorry, aunt," she said.  "I gave him all the notice I could."

"There is perhaps some misunderstanding," the Marquis remarked.  "In
any case, he would not know that you were here for so short a time,
Caroline.  After luncheon I will walk across and see him."

"I will go with you," the Duchess decided.  "I should like to see
Broomleys again.  As a matter of fact, I meant to go there this
morning, but I found one call enough for me."

They took their coffee in the garden.  Letitia followed her father to a
rose bush which he had crossed the lawn to examine.

"Dad," she asked, passing her hand through his arm, "have you had any
good news?"

He shook his head.

"Why?"

"Because you look so much better.  I think that motoring must agree
with you."

He patted her hand.

"I rather enjoyed the drive," he admitted.  "As a matter of fact,
perhaps I am better," he went on.

"You haven't any good news about the shares, I suppose?" she asked
hesitatingly.

For a moment he was grave.

"I have no news at all," he confessed, "or rather what news I have is
not good.  I put an enquiry through an independent firm of stockbrokers
with whom I have had some transactions; and their reply coincided with
the information already afforded to me."

Letitia glanced across the park, and her face darkened.

"Has it ever struck you," she asked, "that there is something peculiar
about Mr. Thain in his attitude towards us--as a family, I mean?"

The Marquis shook his head.

"On the contrary," he replied, "I have always considered his deportment
unimpeachable."

Letitia hesitated, pulled a rose to pieces and turned back with her
father towards where the Duchess was reclining in a wicker chair.

"I dare say it's my fancy.  Why don't you all go," she suggested, "and
take Mr. Thain by storm?  He can scarcely resist you, aunt, and Sylvia."

"Why don't you come yourself?" the Duchess asked.

"My duty lies here," Letitia observed, with a little smile towards
Grantham, who had just strolled up with Sylvia.

The Duchess rose to her feet.

"Dear me, yes!" she acquiesced.  "You two had better go off and have a
long country walk.  If I sit for long after luncheon, I always go to
sleep; so come along, Reginald, we'll beard the lion in his den."

The Marquis glanced towards Sylvia, but she shook her head.

"I must see after my unpacking," she said, "but I should very much like
Mr. Thain to come.  Do try to persuade him."

The Duchess and her brother strolled up the garden and out of the
postern gate into the park.

"That's a terrible old man of yours, Reginald," the former observed,
glancing over her shoulder.  "I never came across such a person off the
boards at Drury Lane."

"He is an infernal nuisance," the Marquis grumbled.  "It seems absurd,
but he gets on my nerves.  Day by day, there he sits, wet or fine.  You
can't see his lips move, but you can always feel sure that he is
hunting up choice bits of damnation out of the Old Testament and
hurling them across at me."

"I have come to the conclusion," his sister decided, "that he is out of
his mind.  An ignorant man who lives with one idea all his life is apt
to lose his reason.  He has never attempted any violence, has he?"

"Never," the Marquis replied, "but since you have mentioned it,
Caroline, I always have a queer sensation when I am that side of the
house.  It is just about the distance to be picked off nicely with a
rifle.  I can't think why he doesn't do it--why he contents himself
with abuse."

"I am going to consult Mr. Thain about him," his companion said.  "A
man of his robust common sense is much more likely to influence a
lunatic like Vont than you or I.--So this is where our millionaire
hermit is hidden," she went on, as they reached the gate.  "Dear me,
the place has changed!"

"It will soon be in order again," the Marquis observed.  "Thain has a
dozen men at work in the grounds, and he is having the rooms done up,
one by one.  He lives in the library, I think, and the bedroom over it."

They passed through the plantation and into the gardens.  Thain was
there, talking to one of the workmen.  He came to meet them with a
somewhat forced smile of welcome upon his lips.

"This is very unexpected," he declared, as he shook hands.  "I should
have called upon you this afternoon, Duchess."

"I should think so!" she replied severely.  "Will you be so good as to
tell me at once what you mean by refusing my niece's invitation to
dine?"

He hesitated for a moment, then he smiled.  There was something very
attractive about his visitor's frank directness of speech and manner.

"I refused," he admitted, glancing around to where the Marquis was
engaged in conversation with a gardener, "because I didn't want to
come."

"But I am there, you stupid person!" she reminded him.  "You are
invited to dine with me!  I know you don't get on with Lady Letitia,
and I know you don't like large parties, but there are only half a
dozen of us there, and I promise you my whole protection.  Show me
something at once.  I want to talk to you.  Those Dorothy Perkins roses
will do, at the other end of the lawn."

He walked in silence by her side.  She waited until they were well out
of earshot.

"David Thain," she said, "have I shown an interest in you or have I
not?"

"You have been extraordinarily kind," he confessed.

"And in return," she continued, "you have decided to avoid me.  I won't
have it.  Are you afraid that I might want you to make love to me?"

He shook his head.

"I am sure you wouldn't find that amusing," he declared.  "In the
society of your sex I generally behave pretty well as your brother
would do if he were dumped down in an office in Wall Street."

"I honestly believe that you are diffident," she admitted.  "I never
met a millionaire before who was, and at first I thought it was a pose
with you.  Perhaps I was mistaken.  You really don't think, then, that
you have any attraction apart from your millions?"

"I'm quite sure that I haven't," he answered bitterly.

"A love affair!" she exclaimed, looking into his face scrutinisingly.
"And I knew nothing of it!--I, your sponsor, your lady confessor,
your--well, heaven knows what I might not be if you would only behave
decently!  A love affair, indeed!  That little yellow-haired chit, I
suppose, who is down here raving about you all the time--Sylvia
What's-her-name?"

He smiled.

"I know very little of Miss Sylvia Laycey," he said, "beyond the fact
that she seems very charming."

"I suppose you ought to marry," she continued regretfully.  "It seems a
pity, but they'll never leave you alone till you do.  What is your
type, then?  Sylvia Laycey is much too young for you.  I suppose you
know that."

"I don't think I have one," he answered.

"That's because I am married, of course," she went on.  "If you were a
sensible man, you would settle down to adore me and not think of
anybody else at all.  But you won't do it.  You'll want to buy palaces
and yachts and town houses and theatres, like all the rest of the
superfluously rich, and you'll want a musical comedy star to wear your
jewels, and a wife to entertain your friends."

"Well, you must admit that I haven't been in a hurry about any of these
things yet," he observed.

She looked at him keenly.

"Look here, my young friend," she said, "you haven't made the one
mistake I warned you against, have you?  You haven't fallen in love
with Letitia?"

He laughed almost brutally.

"I am not quite such a fool as that," he assured her.

"Well, I should hope not," she enjoined severely.  "Besides, as a
matter of fact, Letitia is engaged.  Her young man is staying at
Mandeleys now.  Just answer me one question, David--why did you refuse
that invitation to dinner?"

"Because I didn't feel like coming," he answered.  "I thought it would
probably be a large party, most of them neighbours, and every one would
have to make an effort to entertain me because I am a stranger, and
don't know their ways or anything about them."

"There you are again!" she exclaimed.  "Just as sensitive as you can
be, for all your millions!  You'll come, David--please?"

"Of course I will, if you ask me like that," he assented.

She turned to her brother, who was approaching.

"Success!" she announced.  "Mr. Thain has promised to dine.  He refused
under a misapprehension."

"We are delighted," the Marquis said.  "At a quarter past eight, Mr.
Thain."




CHAPTER XXXI

Gossett in the country was a very different person from Gossett in
Grosvenor Square.  An intimate at Mandeleys was not at all the same
thing as a caller in town, and David found himself welcomed that
evening with a grave but confidential smile.

"The drawing-room here is closed for the present, sir," he observed,
after he had superintended the bestowal of David's coat and hat upon an
underling.  "We are using the gallery on the left wing.  If you will be
so kind as to come this way."

David was escorted into a long and very lofty apartment, cut off from
the hall by some wonderful curtains, obviously of another generation.
The walls were hung with pictures and old-fashioned weapons.  At the
far end was a small stage, and at the opposite extremity a little box
which had apparently at some time been used by musicians.  Some large
beech logs were burning in an open fireplace.  The room contained
nothing in the way of furniture except a dozen or so old-fashioned
chairs and a great settee.

"These large rooms," Gossett explained, "get a little damp, sir, so his
lordship desired a fire here."

He had scarcely disappeared when a door which led into the gallery was
opened, and Lady Letitia came slowly down the stairs.  The place was
lit only by hanging lamps, and David's impression of her, as he turned
around, were a little unsubstantial.  All the way down the stairs and
across that strip of floor, it seemed to him that he could see nothing
but her face.  She carried herself as usual, there was all the pride of
generations of Mandeleys in her slow, unhurried movements and the
carriage of her head.  But her face.--David gripped at the back of one
of the tall chairs.  He made at first no movement towards her.  This
was the face of a woman into which he looked.  The change there was so
complete that the high walls seemed to melt away.  It was just such a
vision as he might have conceived to himself.  Her words checked the
fancies which were pouring into his brain.  He became again the puzzled
but everyday dinner guest.

"I am very glad that you have come, Mr. Thain," she said, giving him
her hand, "and I am very glad indeed to see you alone, even if it is
only for a moment, because I feel--perhaps it is my thoughts that
feel--that they owe you an amende."

"You are very kind," he replied, a little bewildered.  "I am glad to be
here.  What have you ever done which needs apology?"

"I spoke of my thoughts," she reminded him, with a little smile.  "What
I once thought, or rather feared, I am now ashamed of, and now that I
have told you so I am more at ease."

She stood up by his side, little flashes of firelight lighting her soft
white skin, gleaming upon the soft fabric of her gown.  She wore no
ornaments.  The Mandeleys pearls, generally worn by the unmarried women
of the family, were reposing in the famous vaults of a West End
pawnbroker.  Her strong, capable fingers were innocent of even a single
ring, although upon her dressing table there was even at that moment
reposing a very beautiful pearl one, concerning which she had made some
insignificant criticism with only one object, an object which she
refused to admit even to herself.  David remained silent through sheer
wonder.  He had a sudden feeling that he had been admitted, even if for
only these few moments, into the inner circle of her
toleration--perhaps even more than that.

"I hurried down," she explained, "just to say these few words, and I
see that I was only just in time."

The curtain had been raised without their noticing it, and the Duchess,
with Grantham by her side, had entered.  There was a slight frown upon
the latter's forehead; the Duchess was humming softly to herself.

"Well, Sir Anthony, so you've kept your word," she said to David, when
he had shaken hands with Grantham.  "I can see quite well what the
country is going to do for you, unless you are looked after.  The
amiable misanthrope is the part you have in your mind.  Gracious!
Motors outside!  Have we got a party, Letitia?"

Letitia, who to David's keen observation seemed already to have lost
something of that strange new quality which she had shown to him only a
few moments ago, shook her head.

"The Vicar and Mrs. Vicar, and the Turnbulls, and Sylvia's father."

"I am not going to be bored," the Duchess declared firmly.  "I insist
upon sitting next to Mr. Thain.  How pretty Sylvia looks!  And what a
becoming colour!  Now listen to me, David Thain," she went on, drawing
him a little on one side, "you are not to flirt with that child.  It's
like shooting them before they begin to fly.  You understand?"

"Not guilty," David protested.  "I can assure you that I am a passive
victim."

"Silly little goose," the Duchess murmured under her breath, "waiting
there for you to go and speak to her, with all sorts of sentimental
nonsense shining out of her great eyes, too.  I shall go and talk to
old General Turnbull till the gong goes.  Why we can't have dinner
punctually with a small party like this, I can't imagine."

Sylvia was certainly glad to welcome David.  Her father came up in a
few moments and shook hands heartily.

"Still buy your own cutlets, eh, Mr. Thain?" he asked.  "Jolly good
cutlets they were, too!"

"I suppose you have a housekeeper and all sorts of things," Sylvia
laughed, "and live in what they call regal magnificence."

David's protest was almost eager.

"I have a man and his wife who came down with me from London," he said,
"and one or two servants--very few, I can assure you.  Won't you come
and try my housekeeping, Colonel, before you move on, and bring Miss
Sylvia?"

"With pleasure, my boy," the Colonel declared.  "We leave for town next
Saturday.  Any day between now and then that suits Sylvia."

Dinner was announced, and David found himself placed at a round table
between the Duchess and Sylvia.  The former looked around the
banqueting hall with a shiver.

"Reginald," she protested, "why on earth do you plant us in the middle
of a vault like this?  Why on earth not open up some of the smaller
rooms?"

The Marquis smiled deprecatingly.  His extreme pallor of the last few
days had disappeared.  He seemed younger, and his tone was more alert.

"This room is really a weakness of mine," he confessed.  "I like a
vaulted roof, and I rather like the shadows.  It isn't damp, if that is
what you are thinking of, Caroline.  We have had fires in it ever since
we came down--timber being the only thing for which we don't have to
pay," he added.

"It makes one feel so insignificant," the Duchess sighed.  "If you were
dining fifty or sixty people, of course, I should love it, but a dozen
of us--why, we seem like spectral mites!  Look at old Grand-Uncle
Philip staring at us," she went on, gazing at one of the huge pictures
opposite.  "Pity you cannot afford to have electric light here,
Reginald, and have it set in the frames."

"A most unpleasant idea!" her brother objected.  "Confess, now, if you
could see two rows of ancestors, all illuminated, looking at you while
you ate, wouldn't it make you feel greedy?"

The conversation drifted away and became general.  The Duchess leaned
towards her neighbour.

"I think I am rather sorry I came here," she whispered.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I find you disappointing.  I thoroughly enjoyed discovering
you upon the steamer.  You were delightfully primitive, an absolute
cave-dweller, but you quite repaid my efforts to make a human being of
you.  You were really almost as interesting when we first met in
London.  And now, I don't know what it is, but you seem to have gone
thousands of miles away again.  You don't seem properly human.  Don't
you like women, or have you got some queer scheme in your head which
keeps you living like a man with his head in the clouds?  Or are you in
love?"

"I haven't settled down to idleness yet, perhaps," he suggested.

"Of course," she went on, "you ought to be in love with me, and
miserable about it, but I am horribly afraid you aren't.  I believe you
have matrimonial schemes in your mind.  I believe that your affections
are so well-trained that they mean to trot all along the broad way to
St. George's, Hanover Square."

"And would you advise something different?" he asked bluntly.

"My dear man, why am I here?" she expostulated.  "I have a fancy for
having you devoted to me.  What I mean to do with it when I have
captured your heart, I am not quite sure."

Every one was listening to a story which old General Turnbull was
telling.  Even Sylvia had leaned across the table.  David turned and
looked steadily into his companion's face.

"It seems to me," he said, "that only a very short time ago, Duchess,
out of solicitude for my extreme ignorance, you warned me against
setting my affections too high."

"I was speaking then of marriage," she replied coolly.

"I see!  And yet," he went on, "I am not quite sure that I do see.  Is
there any radical difference between marriage and a really intimate
friendship between a man and a woman?"

She smiled.  Her slight movement towards him was almost a caress.

"My dear, unsophisticated cave-dweller!" she murmured.  "Marriage is an
alliance which lasts for all time.  It is apt, is it not, to leave its
stamp upon future generations.  Great friendships have existed amongst
people curiously diverse in tastes and temperament and position.  A
certain disparity, in fact, is rather the vogue."

"I begin to understand," he admitted.  "That accounts for the curious
club stories which one is always having dinned into one's ears,
hatefully uninteresting though they are, of Lady So-and-So entertaining
a great fiddler at her country house, or some other Society lady
dancing in a singular lack of costume for the pleasure of artists in a
borrowed studio."

"You are not nearly so nice-minded as I thought you were," the Duchess
snapped.

"It is just my painful efforts to understand," he protested.

"Any one but an idiot would have understood long ago," she retorted.

David turned to his left-hand neighbour.

"The Duchess is being unkind," he said.  "Will you please take some
notice of me?"

"I'd love to," she replied.  "I was just thinking that you were rather
neglecting me.  I want to know all about America, please, and American
people."

"I am afraid," he told her, "that I know much more about America than I
do about American people.  All my life, since I left Harvard, I have
been busy making money.  I never went into Society over there.  I never
accepted an invitation if I could help it.  When I had any time to
spare I went and camped out, up in the Adirondacks, or further afield
still, when I could.  We had lots of sport, and we were able to lead a
simple life, well away from the end of the cable."

"And you killed bears and things, I suppose?" she said.  "How lucky
that you are fond of sport!  It makes living in England so easy."

He smiled.

"I am not so sure," he confessed, "that I should consider England quite
so much of a sporting country as she thinks herself."

"What heresy!" the Marquis exclaimed, leaning forward.

"Of course, I didn't know that I was going to be overheard," David said
good-humouredly, "but I must stick to it.  I mean, of course, sport as
apart from games."

"Shooting?" the Marquis queried.

"I am afraid I don't consider that shooting at birds, half of them
hand-reared, is much of a sport," David continued.  "Have you ever
tried pig-sticking, or lying on the edge of a mountain after three
hours' tramp, watching for the snout of a bear?"

Letitia had broken off her conversation with Lord Charles and was
leaning a little forward.  The Marquis nodded sympathetically.

"Hunting, then?"

David smiled.

"You gallop over a pastoral country on a highly-trained animal, with a
pack of assistant hounds to destroy one miserable, verminous creature,"
he said.  "Of course, you take risks now and then, and the whole thing
looks exceedingly nice on a Christmas card, but for thrills, for real,
intense excitement, I prefer the mountain ledge and the bear, or the
rounding up of a herd of wild elephants."

"Mr. Thain preserves the instincts of the savage," the Duchess
observed, as she sipped her wine.  "Perhaps he may be right.
Civilisation certainly tends to emasculate sport."

"The sports to which Mr. Thain has alluded," the Marquis pointed out,
"are the sports of the stay-at-home Englishman.  Most of our younger
generation--those whose careers permitted of it--have tried their hand
at big game shooting.  I myself," he continued reminiscently, "have
never felt quite the same with a shotgun and a stream of pheasants,
since a very wonderful three weeks I had in my youth, tiger hunting in
India.--I see that Letitia is trying to catch your eye, Caroline."

The women left the room in a little group, their figures merging almost
into indistinctness as they passed out of the lighted zone.  David's
eyes followed Letitia until she had disappeared.  Then he was conscious
that a servant was standing with a note on a salver by his side.

"This has been sent down from Broomleys, sir," the man explained.

David took it and felt a sudden sinking of the heart.  The envelope was
thin, square and of common type, the writing was painstaking but
irregular.  There was a smudge on one corner, a blot on another.  David
glanced at the Marquis, who nodded and immediately commenced a
conversation with Grantham.  He tore open his message and read it:


"The time has arrived.  I wait for you here."


He crushed the half-sheet of notepaper in his fingers and then dropped
it into his pocket.

"There is no answer," he told the servant.




CHAPTER XXXII

Grantham, who had been unusually silent throughout the service of
dinner, slipped away from the room a few minutes before the other men.
He found Letitia arranging a bridge table, and drew her a little on one
side.

"Letitia," he said, "I am annoyed."

"My dear Charles," she replied, "was anything ever more obvious!"

"You perhaps do not realise," he continued, "that you are the cause."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Well?"

"In the first place," he complained, "you are not wearing my ring."

"I thought I told you," she reminded him, "that I would prefer not to
until we formally announced our engagement."

"Why on earth shouldn't we do that at once--this evening?" he
suggested.  "I can see no reason for delay."

"I, on the other hand, have a fancy to wait," she replied carelessly,
"at least until your visit here is over.

"Your hesitation is scarcely flattering," he remarked with some
irritation.

"Is there anything else you wish to say?" she enquired.  "I really must
get out those bridge markers."

He began to show signs of temper.  Watching him closely for the first
time, Letitia decided that he had most unpleasant-looking eyes.

"I should like to know the subject of your conversation with that Thain
fellow when I came in this evening," he demanded.

"I am sorry," she said coolly.  "We were speaking upon a private
subject."

The anger in his eyes became more evident.

"Private subject?  You mean to say that you have secrets with a fellow
like that?"

"A fellow like that?" she repeated.  "You don't like Mr. Thain, then?"

"Like him?  I don't like him or dislike him.  I think he ought to be
very flattered to be here at all--and you are the last person in the
world, Letitia, I should have expected to find talking in whispers with
him, with your heads only a few inches apart.  I feel quite justified
in asking what that confidence indicated."

Letitia smiled sweetly but dangerously.

"And I feel quite justified," she retorted, "in refusing to answer that
or any similar question.  Are you going to play bridge, Charlie?"

"No!" he replied, turning away.  "I am going to talk to Miss Laycey."

Sylvia was quite willing, and they soon established themselves on a
settee.  The Duchess, rather against her inclinations, was included in
the bridge quartette.  Letitia, having disposed of her guests, strolled
over towards David, who was standing with his hands behind him,
gloomily studying one of the paintings.

"I must show you our Vandykes, Mr. Thain," she said, leading him a
little further away.  "When these wonderful oil shares of yours have
made us all rich, we shall have little electric globes round our old
masters.  Until then, I find it produces quite a curious effect to try
one of these."

She drew an electric torch from one of the drawers of an oak cabinet
and flashed a small circle of light upon the picture.  Thain gave a
little exclamation.  The face which seemed to spring suddenly into
life, looking down upon them with a faintly repressed smile upon the
Mandeleys mouth, presented an almost startling likeness to the Marquis.

"Fearfully alike, all our menkind, aren't they?" she observed, lowering
the torch.  "Come and I will show you a Lely."

They passed further down the gallery.  She looked at him a little
curiously.

"Is it my fancy," she asked, "or have you something on your mind?  The
note which reached you contained no ill news, I hope?"

"I don't know," he answered, with unexpected candour.  "I have a great
deal on my mind."

"I am so sorry," she murmured.

They had reached the further end of the gallery now.  She sank into the
window seat and made room for him by her side.  For a moment he looked
out across the park.  In the moonless night the trees were like little
dark blurs, the country rose and fell like a turbulent sea.  And very
close at hand, ominously close at hand as it seemed to him, a bright
light from Richard Vont's cottage was burning steadily.

"Let me ask you a question," he begged a little abruptly.  "Supposing
that you had given your word of honour, solemnly, in return for a vital
service rendered, to commit a dishonourable action; what should you do?"

"Well, that is rather a dilemma, isn't it?" she acknowledged.  "To tell
you the truth, I can't quite reconcile the circumstances.  I can't, for
instance, conceive your promising to do a dishonourable thing."

"At the time," he explained, "it did not seem dishonourable.  At the
time it seemed just an act of justice.  Then circumstances changed, new
considerations intervened, and the whole situation was altered."

"Is it a monetary matter?" she enquired, "one in which money would make
any difference, I mean?"

He shook his head.

"Money has nothing to do with it," he replied.  "It is just a question
whether one is justified in breaking a solemn oath, one's word of
honour, because the action which it entails has become, owing to later
circumstances, hideously repugnant."

"Why ask my advice?"

"I do not know.  Anyhow, I desire it."

"I should go," she said thoughtfully, "to the person to whom I had
bound myself, and I should explain the change in my feelings and in the
circumstances.  I should beg to be released from my word."

"And if they refused?"

"I don't see how you could possibly break your word of honour," she
decided reluctantly.  "It is not done, is it?"

He looked steadily down the gallery, through the darkened portion, to
where the soft, overhead lights fell upon the two card tables.  There
was very little conversation.  They could even hear the soft fall of
the cards and Sylvia's musical laugh in the background.  All the time
Letitia watched him.  The strength of his face seemed only intensified
by his angry indecision.

"You are right," he assented finally.  "I must not."

"Perhaps," she suggested, "you can find some way of keeping it, and yet
keeping it without that secondary dishonour you spoke of.  Now I must
really go and see that my guests are behaving properly."

She rose to her feet.  Sylvia's laugh rang out again from the far
corner of the gallery, where she and Grantham were seated, their heads
very close together.  Letitia watched them for a moment tolerantly.

"I will recall my fiancé to his duty," she declared, "and you can go
and talk nonsense to Sylvia."

"Thank you," he answered, "I am afraid that I am not in the humour to
talk nonsense with anybody."

She turned her head slightly and looked at him.

"Sylvia is such an admirer of yours," she said, "and she has such a
delightful way of being light-hearted herself and affecting others in
the same fashion.  If I were a man--"

"Yes?"

"I should marry Sylvia."

"And if I," he declared, with a sudden flash in his eyes, "possessed
that ridiculous family tree of Lord Charles Grantham's--"

"Well?"

"I should marry you."

She looked at him through half-closed eyes.  There was a little smile
on her lips which at first he thought insolent, but concerning which
afterwards he permitted himself to speculate.  He stopped short.

"Lady Letitia," he pleaded, "there is a door there which leads into the
hall.  You don't expect manners of me, anyway, but could you accept my
farewell and excuse me to the others?  I have really a serious reason
for wishing to leave--a reason connected with the note I received at
dinner time."

"Of course," she answered, "but you are sure that you are well?  There
is nothing that we can do for you?"

He paused for a moment with his hand upon the fastening of the door.

"There is nothing anybody can do for me, Lady Letitia," he said.
"Good-by!"

She stood for a moment, watching the door through which he had passed
with a puzzled frown upon her face.  Then she continued her progress
down the room.  Arrived at the bridge table, she stooped for a moment
to look over her aunt's score.

"Finished your flirtation, my dear?" the latter asked coolly.

Letitia accepted the challenge.

"So effectually," she replied, "that the poor man has gone home.  I am
to present his excuses to every one."

The Duchess paused for a moment in the playing of her hand.  Her
brother, with unfailing tact, threw himself into the breach.

"I suppose," he said, "that we can scarcely realise the
responsibilities which these kings of finance carry always upon their
shoulders.  They tell me that Mr. Thain has his telegrams and cables
stopped in London by a secretary and telephoned here, just to save a
few minutes.  He receives sometimes as many as half a dozen messages
during the night."

The Duchess continued to play her hand.

"After all," she remarked, "I fear that I shall not be able to ask Mr.
Thain to Scotland.  One would feel the responsibility so much if he
were to lose anything he valued, by coming."




CHAPTER XXXIII

Richard Vont, as though he had been sitting there listening for the
raising of the latch, was on his feet before David could enter the
sitting room.

"The Lord's day has come," he muttered, dragging him in.  "It's been a
weary while, but it's come."

David threw off his overcoat in silence, and the old man looked
wonderingly at his clothes.

"You've been taking your dinner up with them--at the house?" he asked.

David nodded.

"Yes," he assented.  "Your note found me there.  I came as soon as I
could."

"I never doubted ye," the old man muttered.  "I knew you'd come."

David, suddenly stifled, threw open the cottage window.  When he came
back into the little circle of lamp-light, his face was pale and set.
He was filled with a premonition of evil.

"I want you to listen to me, uncle," he said earnestly.  "I have
something to say."

"Something to say?" the old man repeated.  "Another time, my
boy---another time.  To-night you have work to do," he added, with a
fierce flash of triumph in his eyes.

"Work?"

"Aye!--to keep your oath."

"But to-night?  What can I do to-night?" David exclaimed.  "No, don't
tell me," he went on quickly.  "I'll have my say first."

"Get on with it, then.  There's time.  I'm listening."

"I have forgotten nothing," David began, "I am denying nothing.  I
remember even the words of the oath I swore."

"With your hand upon the Bible," Vont interrupted eagerly,--"your hand
upon the Book."

David shivered.

"I am not likely to forget that night," he said.  "What I swore we both
know.  Well?  I have begun to keep my word.  You know that."

"Aye, and to-night you'll finish it!" Vont cried, with uplifted head.
"After to-night you'll be quit of your oath, and you can go free of me.
I've made it all easy for you.  It's all planned out."

"I must finish what I have to say," David insisted.  "It's been on my
mind like lead.  He's a ruined man, uncle--beggared to the last penny.
I've dishonoured myself, but I've done it--for your sake.  Beyond that
I cannot go."

"You cannot go?" Vont muttered blankly.

"I cannot.  I don't know what this scheme of yours is, uncle, but leave
me out of it.  I'm in Hell already!"

"You think--"

Vont was breathing heavily.  The words suddenly failed him, his fingers
seemed to grip the air.  David had a momentary shock of terror.  Then,
before he could stop him, the old man was down upon his knees, holding
him by the legs, his upraised face horrible with a new storm of passion.

"David, you'll not back out!  You'll not break that oath you swore when
I lent you the money--all my savings!  And it might have gone wrong,
you know.  It might have beggared me.  But I risked it for this!  You
don't know what I've been through.  I tell you there isn't a night,
from darkness till nigh the dawn, I haven't toiled with these hands,
toiled while the sweat's run off my forehead and my breath's gone from
me.  And I've done it!  I've made all ready for you--and to-night--it's
to-night, boy!  If you go back on me, David, as sure as that Book's the
truth, you shall know what it is to feel like a murderer, for I'll sit
and face you, and I'll die!  I mean it.  As God hears me at this
moment, I mean it.  If you falter to-night, you shall find me dead
to-morrow, and if it blackens my lips, I'll die cursing you as well as
him--you for your softness because they've flattered you round, him
because he still lives, with the wrong he did me unpunished."

David dragged him up by sheer force and pushed him back into his chair.

"What is it you want me to do?" he asked in despair.

"You can't refuse me," Vont went on, his voice strong enough now.
"Watch me and listen," he added, leaning forward.  "There's my hand on
the Book.  Here's my right hand to Heaven, and I swear by the living
God that if you fail me, you shall find me to-morrow, sitting dead.
That's what your broken oath will do."

"Oh, I hear," David answered drearily.  "I'll keep my word.  Come, what
is it?"

Vont rose deliberately to his feet.  All trace of passion seemed to
have disappeared.  He took an electric torch from his pocket and led
the way to the door.

"Just follow me," he whispered.

They made their way down the little tiled path to the bottom of the
garden.  In the right-hand corner was what seemed to be the top of a
well.

"You remember that, perhaps?"

David nodded.

"I know," he said.  "I used to play down there once."

Vont rolled the top away, and, stooping down, flashed the light.  There
were stone steps leading to a small opening, and at the bottom the
mouth of what seemed to be a tunnel.  David started.

"It's one of the secret passages to Mandeleys!" he exclaimed.

"There are seven of them somewhere," his uncle replied, in a hoarse
undertone--"one, they say, from Broomleys, but that's too far, and the
air would be too foul, and maybe it don't lead where I want it to.
I've made air-holes along this, David.  You take the torch, and you
make your way.  There's nothing to stop you.  It's dry--I've sprinkled
sand in places--and there's air, too.  When you come to the end there's
a door.  Four nights it took me to move that door.  It's wide open now.
Then you mount a little flight of stairs.  They go round and round, and
at the top there's a little stone landing.  You'll see before you what
seems to be blank wall.  You press your palms on it--so--and soon you
find an iron handle.  It'll turn easy--I've oiled it well--and you step
right into the room."

"What room?" David demanded, in bewilderment.

The old man's fingers clutched his arm.

"Into the bedchamber of the Lady Letitia Mandeleys!" he proclaimed
triumphantly.  "Keep your voice low, boy.  Remember we are out of
doors."

"Into the--!  Are you mad, uncle?" David muttered, catching at his
voice as though it were some loose quality that had escaped from him.

"There's never a saner man in this county," was the fierce reply.
"It's what I've worked for.  It's the worst blow I can deal his pride.
Oh, I know she is a haughty lady!  You'll step into her chamber, and
she'll see you, and she'll shriek for her servants, but--but, David,"
he added, leaning forward, "they'll find you there--they'll find you
there!  The Marquis--he'll be told.  The nephew of Richard Vont will be
found in his daughter's chamber!  There'll be explanations enough, but
those things stick."

David suddenly found himself laughing like a madman.

"Uncle," he cried, "for God's sake--for Heaven's sake, listen to me.
This is the maddest scheme that ever entered into any one's head.  I
should be treated simply like a common burglar.  I should have no
excuse to offer, nothing to say.  I should be thrown out of the house,
and there isn't a human being breathing who'd think the worse of the
Lady Letitia.  You don't know what she's like!  She's wonderful!
She's--"

"I'll not argue with you, boy," Vont interrupted doggedly.  "You think
I know nothing of the world and its ways, of the tale-bearing and the
story-telling that goes on, women backbiting each other, men grasping
even at shadows for a sensation.  You'll do your job, David, you'll
keep your oath, and from to-night you'll stand free of me.  There'll be
no more.  You can lift your head again after you've crossed that
threshold.  Make what excuse you like--come back, if you will, like a
frightened hare after they've found you there--but you'll have stood in
her bedchamber!"

David shivered like a man in a fever.  He was beginning to realise that
this was no nightmare--that the wild-eyed man by his side was in sober
and ghastly earnest.

"Uncle," he pleaded, "not this.  Lady Letitia has been kind and
gracious to me always.  We can't strike through women.  I'd rather you
bade me take his life."

"But I don't bid you do anything of the sort," was the sullen reply.
"Death's no punishment to any man, and the like of him's too brave to
feel the fear of it.  It's through her the blow must come, and you'll
do my bidding, David, or you'll see me sitting waiting for you
to-morrow, with a last message to you upon my dead lips."

David gripped the torch from his hand.  After all, Hell might come to
any man!

"I'll go," he said.

It was a nightmare that followed.  Stooping only a little, flashing his
torch always in front, he half ran, half scrambled along a paved way,
between paved walls which even the damp of centuries seemed scarcely to
have entered.  Soon the path descended steeply and then rose on the
other side of the moat.  Once a rat paused to look at him with eyes
gleaming like diamonds, and bolted at the flash of the torch.  More
than once he fancied that he heard footsteps echoing behind him.  He
paused to listen.  There was nothing.  He lost sense of time or
distance.  He stole on, dreading the end--and the end came sooner even
than he had feared.  There was the door that yielded easily to his
touch, the steep steps round and round the interior of the tower, the
blank wall before him.  The iron handle was there.  His hands closed
upon it.  For a moment he stood in terrible silence.  This was
something worse than death!  Then he set his teeth firmly, pressed the
handle and stepped through the wall.

Afterwards it seemed to him that there must have been something
mortally terrifying in his own appearance as he stood there with his
back to the wall and his eyes fixed upon the solitary occupant of the
room.  Lady Letitia, in a blue dressing gown, was lying upon a couch
drawn up before a small log fire.  There seemed to be no detail of the
room which in those sickening moments of mental absorption was not
photographed into his memory.  The old four-poster bedstead, hung with
chintz; the long, black dressing table, once a dresser, covered
carelessly with tortoise-shell backed toilet articles, with a large
mirror in the centre from which a chair had just been pushed back.
But, above all, that look in her face, from which every other
expression seemed to have permanently fled.  Her lips were parted, her
eyes were round with horrified surprise.  The book which she had been
reading slipped from her fingers and fell noiselessly on to the
hearth-rug.  She sat up, supporting herself with her hands, one on
either side, pressed into the sofa.  She seemed denied the power of
speech, almost as he was.  And then a sudden wonderful change came to
him.  He spoke quite distinctly, although he kept his voice low.

"Lady Letitia," he said, "let me explain.  I shall never ask for your
forgiveness.  I shall never venture to approach you again.  I have come
here by the secret passage from Vont's cottage.  I have come here to
keep an oath which I swore in America to Richard Vont, and I have come
because, if I had broken my word, he would have killed himself."

He spoke with so little emotion, so reasonably, that she found herself
answering him, notwithstanding her bewilderment, almost in the same key.

"But who are you?" she demanded.  "Who are you to be the slave of that
old man?"

"I am his nephew," David answered.  "I am the little boy who played
about the park when you were a girl, who picked you up on the ice once
when you fell.  All that I have I owe to Richard Vont.  He sent me to
college.  He lent me the money upon which I built my fortune, but on
the day he lent it to me he made me swear a terrible oath, and to-night
he has forced me to keep it by setting foot within your chamber.  Now I
shall return the way I came, and may God grant that some day you will
forgive me."

Almost as he spoke there was a little click behind.  He started round
and felt along the wall.  There was a moment's silence.  Then he turned
once more towards Letitia, his cheeks whiter than ever, his sunken eyes
filled with a new horror.  Even the composure which had enabled him to
explain his coming with some show of reason, had deserted him.  He
seemed threatened with a sort of hysteria.

"He followed me!  Damn him, he followed me!" he muttered.  "I heard
footsteps.  He has fastened us in!"

He tore desperately at the tapestry, shook the concealed door and
rattled it, in vain.  Letitia rose slowly to her feet.

"You see what has happened," she said.  "Richard Vont was more cunning
than you.  He was not content that you should make your little speech
and creep back amongst the rats.  Tell me, what do you propose to do?"

He looked around him helplessly.

"There is the window," he muttered.

She shook her head.

"We are on the second story," she told him, "and there is nothing to
break your fall upon the flags below.  To be found with a broken neck
beneath my window would be almost as bad as anything that could happen."

"I am not afraid to try," he declared.

He moved towards the window.  She crossed the room swiftly and
intercepted him.

"Don't be absurd," she admonished.  "Come, let us think.  There must be
a way."

"Let me out of your room on to the landing," he begged eagerly.  "If I
can reach the hall it will be all right.  I can find a window open, or
hide somewhere.  Only, for God's sake," he added, his voice breaking,
"let me out of this room!"

A flash of her old manner came back to her.

"I am sorry you find it so unattractive," she said.  "I thought it
rather pretty myself.  And blue, after all, is my colour, you know,
although I don't often wear it."

"Oh, bless you!" he exclaimed.  "Bless you, Lady Letitia, for speaking
to me as though I were a human being.  Now I am going to steal out of
that door on tiptoe."

"Wait till I have listened there," she whispered.

She stole past him and stooped down with her ear to the keyhole.  She
frowned for a moment and held out her hand warningly.  It seemed to him
that he could feel his heart beating.  Close to where he was standing,
her silk stockings were hanging over the back of a chair.--He suddenly
closed his eyes, covered them desperately with the palms of his hand.
Her warning finger was still extended.

"That was some one passing," she said.  "I don't understand why.  They
all came to bed some time ago.  Stay where you are and don't move."

They both listened.  David seemed in those few minutes to have lost all
the composure which had become the habit of years.  His heart was
beating madly.  He was shaking as though with intense cold.  Lady
Letitia, on the other hand, seemed almost unruffled.  Only he fancied
that at the back of her eyes there was something to which as yet she
had given no expression, something which terrified him.  Then, as they
stood there, neither of them daring to move, there came a sudden awful
sound.  It had seemed to him that the world could hold no greater
horror than he was already suffering, but the sound to which they
listened was paralysing, hideous, stupefying.  With hoarse, brazen
note, rusty and wheezy, yet pulled as though with some desperate
clutch, the great alarm bell which hung over the courtyard was tolling
its dreadful summons.

Letitia stood up, her cheeks ghastly pale.  She, too, was struggling
now for composure.

"Really," she exclaimed, "this is an evening full of incidents.--Don't
touch me," she added.  "I shall be all right directly."

For a single moment he knew that she had nearly fainted.  She caught at
the side of the wall.  Then they heard a cry from outside.  A spark
flew past the window.  A hoarse voice from somewhere below shouted
"Fire!"  And then something more alarming still.  All down the
corridor, doors were thrown open.  There was the sound of eager
voices--finally a loud knocking at the door which they were guarding.
Letitia shrugged her shoulders.

"This," she murmured, "is fate."

She opened the door.  There was a little confused group outside.  The
Marquis, fully dressed, stood with his eyes fixed upon Thain at first
in blank astonishment,--afterwards as one who looks upon some horrible
thing.  Grantham in a dressing gown, took a quick step forward.

"My God, it's Thain!" he exclaimed.  "What in hell's name--?"

Letitia turned towards her father.

"Father," she began--

The Marquis made no movement, yet she was suddenly aware of something
in his expression, something which shone more dimly in the face of her
aunt, which throbbed in Grantham's incoherent words.  Her brave little
speech died away.  She staggered.  The Marquis still made no movement.
It was David who caught her in his arms and carried her to the couch.
He turned and faced them.  In the background, Sylvia was clinging to
Grantham's arm.

"You gibbering fools!" he cried.  "What if an accursed chance has
brought me here!  Isn't she Lady Letitia, your daughter, Marquis?
Isn't she your betrothed, Grantham?  Your niece, Duchess?  Do you think
that anything but the rankest and most accursed accident could ever
have brought me within reach even of her fingers?"

No one spoke.  The faces into which he looked seemed to David like a
hideous accusation.  Suddenly Gossett's voice was heard from behind.

"The fire is nothing, your lordship.  It is already extinguished.  Some
one seems to have brought some blazing brambles and thrown them into
the courtyard."

"Get some water, you fools!" Thain shouted.  "Can't you see that she is
faint?"

The Duchess began to collect herself.  She advanced further into the
room in search of restoratives.  The Marquis came a step nearer to
Thain.

"Tell me how you found your way into this room, sir?" he demanded.

"By the foulest means on God's earth," Thain answered.  "I came through
the secret passage from Vont's cottage."

"Without Lady Letitia's knowledge, I presume?" Grantham interposed
hoarsely.

"No one but a cad would have asked such a question," David thundered.
"I broke into her room, meaning to deliver one brief message and to go
back again.  Vont followed me and fastened the door.--Can't you read
the story?" he added, turning appealingly to the Marquis.  "Don't you
know who I am?  I am Vont's nephew, the boy who played about here years
ago.  I lived with him in America.  He paid for my education at
Harvard; he lent me the money to make my first venture.  He has been
all the relative I ever had.  Out there I pledged my word blindly to
help him in his revenge upon you, Marquis, in whatever manner he might
direct.  To-night he sprung this upon me.  I was face to face with my
word of honour, and the certainty that if I refused to fulfil my pledge
he would kill himself before morning.  So I came.  It was he who rang
the alarm bell, he who planned the pretence of a fire to trap me here.
This was to be his vengeance.--Be reasonable.  Don't take this
miserable affair seriously.  God knows what I have suffered, these last
few minutes!"

Letitia sat up, revived.  She was still very pale, and there was
something terrible in her face.

"For heaven's sake," she begged, "bring this wretched melodrama to an
end.  Turn that poor man out," she added, pointing to David.  "His
story is quite true."

Every one had gone except the Marquis and Grantham.  Neither of them
spoke for several moments.  Then the Marquis, as though he were awaking
from a dream, moved to the door, opened it and beckoned to David.

"Will you follow me," he invited.

Very slowly they passed along the great corridor, down the broad stairs
and into the hall.  The Marquis led the way to the front door and
opened it.  Neither had spoken.  To Thain, every moment was a moment of
agony.  The Marquis held the door open and stood on one side.  David
realised that he was expected to depart without a word.

"There is nothing more I can say?" he faltered despairingly.

The Marquis stood upon his own threshold.  He spoke slowly and with a
curious lack of expression.

"Nothing.  It is the times that are to blame.  We open our houses and
offer our hospitality to servants and the sons of servants, and we
expect them to understand our code.  We are very foolish.--Since you
have broken this silence, let me spare myself the necessity of further
words.  If your contrition is genuine, you will break the lease of
Broomleys and depart from this neighbourhood without further delay.  My
agent will wait upon you."

Without haste, yet before any reply was possible, the Marquis had
closed the great door.  David was once more in the darkness, staggering
as though his knees would give way.  The avenue stretched unevenly
before him.  He started off towards Broomleys.




CHAPTER XXXIV

At a few minutes after nine, the following morning, the Marquis entered
the room where breakfast was usually served.  The Duchess, in
travelling clothes and a hat, was lifting the covers from the silver
dishes upon the sideboard, with a fork in her hand.  She welcomed him a
little shortly.

"Good morning, Reginald!"

"Good morning, Caroline," he replied.  "Are you the only representative
of the household?"

She snorted.

"Charlie Grantham went off in his little two-seater at eight o'clock
this morning," she announced.  "He is motoring up to town.  Left
apologies with Gossett, I believe--telegram or something in the night.
All fiddlesticks, of course!"

"Naturally," the Marquis assented, helping himself from one of the
dishes and drawing his chair up to his sister's side.  "So exit Charles
Grantham, eh?"

"And me," the Duchess declared, returning to her place and pouring out
the coffee.  "I suppose you can send me to Fakenham for the ten o'clock
train?"

The Marquis considered for a moment.

"I am not sure, Caroline," he said, "that your departure is entirely
kind."

"Well, I'm jolly certain I don't mean it to be," she answered bitterly.
"I ask no questions, and I hate scenes.  A week ago I should have
scoffed at the idea of David Thain as a prospective suitor for Letitia.
Now, my advice to you is, the sooner you can get them married, the
better."

"Really!" he murmured.  "You've given up the idea, then, of taking the
young man to Scotland?"

"Entirely," the Duchess assured him emphatically.  "I was an idiot to
ever consider it.  When people of his class find their way amongst us,
disaster nearly always follows.  You see, they don't know the rules of
the game, as we play it.  Whilst we are on this subject, Reginald, what
are you going to do about it?"

The Marquis unlocked his letter case and shook out the contents.

"You mean about last night?" he asked.  "Well, as I don't want to be
the laughing-stock of the county, I shall keep as quiet as I can.  I
knew that something ridiculous would happen, with that poor lunatic
sitting in the garden, poring over the Bible all day long."

The Duchess looked distinctly malicious.

"I am not at all as sure as I should like to be," she said, "that the
old man is to blame for everything."

The Marquis looked at his sister intently.  She bent over the milk jug.

"You leave me in some doubt, Caroline," he observed coldly, "as to what
frame of mind you are in, when you make such utterly incomprehensible
remarks and curtail your visit to us so suddenly.  At the same time, I
hope that whatever your private feelings may be, you will not forget
certain--shall I call them obligations?"

"Oh, don't be afraid!" she rejoined.  "I am not likely to advertise my
folly, especially at Letitia's expense.  I don't care a jot whether the
young man came through a hole in the wall or dropped down from the
clouds.  I only know that his presence in Letitia's bedchamber--"

"We will drop the discussion, if you please," the Marquis interrupted.

There was just the one note in his tone, an inheritance, perhaps, from
those more virile ancestors, which reduced even his sister to silence.
The Marquis adjusted his eyeglass and commenced a leisurely inspection
of his letters.  He did so without any anxiety, without the slightest
premonition of evil.  Even when he recognised her handwriting, he did
so with a little thrill of pleasurable anticipation.  He drew the
letter closer to him and with a word of excuse turned away towards the
window.  Perhaps she was wanting him.  After all, it would be quite
easy to run up to London for a day--and wonderfully pleasant.  He drew
the single sheet from its envelope.  The letters seemed magnified.  The
whole significance of those cruel words seemed to reach him with a
single mental effort.


Reginald, I was married to James Borden this morning.  I suppose it is
the uncivilised part of me which has been pulling at my heartstrings,
day by day, week by week, the savage in me clamouring for its right
before it is too late.

So we change positions, only whereas you have atoned and justified
every one of your actions towards me since our eyes first met, I am
left without any means of atonement.

Will you forgive?

Your very humble and penitent
  MARCIA.


The Marquis replaced the letter in the envelope.  For several moments
he stood looking across the park, beyond, to the well-cultivated farms
rolling away to the distant line of hills.  His brain was numbed.
Marcia had gone!--There was a mist somewhere.  He rubbed the
windowpane, in vain.  Then he set his teeth, and his long, nervous
fingers gripped at his throat for a moment.

"Your coffee is getting cold," his sister reminded him.

He came back to his place.  She watched him a little curiously.

"Any message from our pseudo-Lothario?" she asked.

The Marquis gathered up his other letters.

"There is nothing here from him," he said, "but I must ask you to
excuse me, Caroline.  There is an urgent matter which needs my
attention."

He crossed the room a little more slowly than usual, and his sister,
who was still watching him critically, sighed.  There was no doubt at
all that his walk was becoming the walk of an old man.  The stoop of
the shoulders was also a new thing.  She counted up his age on her
fingers, and, rising from her place, looked at herself in the mirror
opposite.  Her face for a moment was hard and set, and her fingers
clenched.

"Years!" she muttered to herself.  "How I hate them!"


The Marquis selected a grey Homburg hat of considerable antiquity, and
a thicker stick than usual, from the rack in the hall.  The front doors
stood wide open, and he walked out into the pleasant sunshine.  It was
a warm morning, but twice he shivered as he passed down the broad sweep
of drive and, with a curious sensation of unfamiliarity, crossed the
little bridge over the moat, the few yards of park, and finally
approached the palings which bordered Richard Vont's domain.  The mist
still seemed to linger before his eyes, but through it he could see the
familiar figure seated in his ancient chair, with the book upon his
knee.  The Marquis drew close to the side of the palings.

"Richard Vont," he began, "I have come down from Mandeleys to speak to
you.  Will you listen to what I have to say?"

There was no reply.  The Marquis drew the letter from his pocket.

"You are a cruel and stubborn man, Vont," he continued.  "You have gone
far out of your way to bring injury and unhappiness upon me.  All your
efforts are as nothing.  Will you hear from me what has happened?"

There was silence, still grim silence.  The Marquis stretched out his
hand and leaned a little upon the paling.

"I took your daughter, Richard Vont, not as a libertine but as a lover.
It was perhaps the truest impulse my life has ever felt.  If there was
sin in it, listen.  Hear how I am punished.  Month followed month and
year followed year, and Marcia was content with my love and I with
hers, so that during all this time my lips have touched no other
woman's, no other woman has for a moment engaged even my fancy.  I have
been as faithful to your daughter, Richard Vont, as you to your
vindictive enmity.  From a discontented and unhappy girl she has become
a woman with a position in the world, a brilliant writer, filled with
the desire and happiness of life to her finger tips.  From me she
received the education, the travel, the experience which have helped
her to her place in the world, and with them I gave her my heart.  And
now--you are listening, Richard Vont?  You will hear what has happened?"

Still that stony silence from the figure in the chair.  Still that
increasing mist before the eyes of the man who leaned towards him.

"Your daughter, Richard Vont," the Marquis concluded, "has taken your
vengeance into her own hands.  Your prayers have come true, though not
from the quarter you had hoped.  You saw only a little way.  You tried
to strike only a foolish blow.  It has been given to your daughter to
do more than this.  She has broken my heart, Richard Vont.  She grew to
become the dearest thing in my life, and she has left me.--Yesterday
she was married."

No exclamation, no movement.  The Marquis wiped his eyes and saw with
unexpected clearness.  What had happened seemed so natural that for a
moment he was not even surprised.  He stepped over the palings, leaned
for a single moment over the body of the man to whom he had been
talking, and laid the palm of his hand over the lifeless eyes.  Then he
walked down the tiled path and called to the woman whose face he had
seen through the latticed window.

"Mrs. Wells," he said, "something serious has happened to Vont."

"Your lordship!"

"He is dead," the Marquis told her.  "You had better go down to the
village and fetch the doctor.  I will send a message to his nephew."

Back again across the park, very gorgeous now in the fuller sunshine,
casting quaint shadows underneath the trees, glittering upon the
streaks of yellow cowslips on the hillside.  The birds were singing and
the air was as soft as midsummer.  He crossed the bridge, turned into
the drive and stood for a moment in his own hall.  A servant came
hurrying towards him.

"Run across the park to Broomleys as fast as you can," his master
directed.  "Tell Mr. Thain to go at once to Vont's cottage.  You had
better let him know that Vont is dead."

The young man hastened off.  Gossett appeared from somewhere in the
background and opened the door of the study towards which the Marquis
was slowly making his way.

"The shock has been too much for your lordship," the man murmured.
"May I bring you some brandy?"

The Marquis shook his head.

"It is necessary, Gossett," he said, "that I should be absolutely
undisturbed for an hour.  Kindly see that no one even knocks at my door
for that period of time."

Gossett held open the door and closed it softly.  He was a very old
servant, and in great measure he understood.




CHAPTER XXXV

Richard Vont was buried in the little churchyard behind Mandeleys, the
churchyard in which was the family vault and which was consecrated
entirely to tenants and dependents of the estate.  The little
congregation of soberly-clad villagers received more than one surprise
during the course of the short and simple service.  The Marquis
himself, clad in sombre and unfamiliar garments, stood in his pew and
followed the little procession to the graveside.  The new tenant of
Broomleys was there, and Marcia, deeply veiled but easily recognisable
by that brief moment of emotion which followed the final ceremony.  At
its conclusion, the steward, following an immemorial custom, invited
the little crowd to accompany him to Mandeleys, where refreshments were
provided in the back hall.  The Marquis had stepped back into the
church.  David and Marcia were alone.  He came round to her side.

"You don't remember me?" he asked.

"Remember you?" she repeated.  "Aren't you Mr. David Thain?"

"Yes," he admitted, "but many years ago I was called Richard David
Vont--when I lived down there with you, Marcia."

Emotion had become so dulled that even her wonder found scanty
expression.

"I remember your eyes," she said.  "They puzzled me more than once.
Did he know?"

"Of course," David answered.  "We lived together in America for many
years, and we came home together.  Directly we arrived, however, he
insisted on our separating.  You know the madness of his life, Marcia."

"I know," she answered bitterly.  "Was I not the cause of it?"

"It was part of his scheme that I should help towards his revenge," he
explained.  "I did his bidding, and the end was disaster and
humiliation."

They stood under the little wooden porch which led out into the park.

"You will come up to Broomleys?" he invited.

She shook her head.

"Just now I would rather go back to the cottage," she said.  "We shall
meet again."

"I shall be in England only for a few more days," he told her gloomily.
"I am returning to America."

She looked at him in some surprise.

"I thought you had settled down here?"

"Only to carry out my share in that infernal bargain.  I have done it,
I kept my word, I am miserably ashamed of myself, and I have but one
feeling now--to get as far away as I can."

"But tell me, David," she asked, "what was this scheme?  What have you
done to hurt him--the Marquis?"

"I have done my best to ruin him," David replied, "and through some
accursed scheme in which I bore an evil and humiliating part, I have
brought some shadow of a scandal upon--"

He broke off.  Marcia waited for him to continue, but he shook his head.

"The whole thing is too insignificant and yet too damnable," he said.
"Some day, Marcia, I will tell you of it.  If you won't come with me,
forgive me if I hurry away."

He was gone before she could remonstrate.  She looked around and saw
the reason.  The Marquis was coming down the gravel path from the
church in which he had taken refuge from the crowd.  She felt a sudden
shaking of the knees, a momentary return of that old ascendency which
he had always held over her.  Then she turned and waited for him.  He
smiled very gravely as he held her hand for a moment.

"You are going back to the cottage?" he asked.  "I will walk with you,
if I may."

They had a stretch of park before them, a wonderful, rolling stretch of
ancient turf.  Here and there were little clusters of cowslips, golden
as the sunshine which was making quaint patterns of shadow beneath the
oaks and drawing the perfume from the hawthorn trees, drooping beneath
their weight of blossom.  Marcia tried twice to speak, but her voice
broke.  There was the one look in his face which she dreaded.

"I shall not say any conventional things to you," he began gently.
"Your father's life for many years must have been most unhappy.  In a
way, I suppose you and I are the people who are responsible for it.
And yet, behind it all--I say it in justice to ourselves, and not with
disrespect to the dead--it was his primeval and colossal ignorance, the
heritage of that stubborn race of yeomen, which was responsible for his
sorrow."

"He never understood," she murmured.  "No one in this world could make
him understand."

"You know that our new neighbour up there," he continued, moving his
head towards Broomleys, "was his nephew--a sharer, however unwilling,
in his folly?"

"He has just told me," she admitted.

"I was the first to find your father dead," he went on.  "When I
received your letter, Marcia, I took it to him.  I went to offer him
the sacrifice of my desolation.  That, I thought, would end his enmity.
And I read your letter to dead ears.  He was seated there, believing
that all the evil he wished me had come.  I suppose the belief brought
him peace.  He was a stubborn old man."

Marcia would have spoken, but there was a lump in her throat.  She
opened her lips only to close them again.

"I wished to see you, Marcia," he continued, "because I wanted you to
understand that I have only one feeling in my heart towards you, and
that is a feeling of wonderful gratitude.  For many years you have been
the most sympathetic companion a somewhat dull person could have had.
The memory of these years is imperishable.  And I want to tell you
something else.  In my heart I approve of what you have done."

"Oh, but that is impossible!" she replied.  "I cannot keep the bitter
thoughts from my own heart.  I am ashamed when I think of your
kindness, of your fidelity, of all that you have given and done for me
throughout these years.  And now I have the feeling that I am leaving
you when you need me most."

He smiled at her.

"Your knowledge of life," he said gently, "should teach you better.
The years that lay between us when you first gave me all that there was
worth having of love in the world were nothing.  To-day they are an
impassable gulf.  I have reached just those few years which become the
aftermath of actual living, and you are young still, young in mind and
body.  We part so naturally.  There is something still alive in you
which is dead in me."

"But you are so lonely," she faltered.

"I should be lonelier still," he answered, "or at least more unhappy,
if I dragged you with me through the cheerless years.  Life is a matter
of cycles.  You are commencing a new one, and so am I, only the things
that are necessary to you are not now necessary to me.  So it is
natural and best that we should part."

She pointed to the cottage, now only a few yards away.  Its doors and
windows were wide open, there was smoke coming from the chimney, a
wealth of flowers in the garden.

"The cottage is mine," she said.  "Sometimes I believe that it was left
to me in the hope that I might come back with my heart, too, full of
bitterness, and that I might take his place.  It is yours whenever you
choose to take it.  I shall send the deeds to Mr. Merridrew."

He looked at it thoughtfully.  For a moment the shadow passed from his
face.  He stood a little more upright, his eyes seemed to grow larger.
Perhaps he thought of those days when he had stolen down from the house
with beating heart, drawn nearer and nearer to the cottage, felt all
the glow and fervour of his great love.  There was a breath of perfume
from the garden, full of torturing memories--a little wind in the trees.

"One of the desires of my life gratified," he declared.  "Mr. Merridrew
shall draw up a deed of sale.  Look," he added, pointing to the drive,
"there is some one waiting for you in the car there.  Isn't it your
husband?"

She glanced in the direction he indicated.

"Yes," she murmured.

"I will not stay and see him now," the Marquis continued.  "You will
forgive me, I know.  Present to him, if you will," he went on, with
some faint touch of his old manner, "my heartiest good wishes.  And to
you, Marcia," he added, raising the fingers of her ungloved hand to his
lips, "well, may you find all that there is left in the world of
happiness.  And remember, too, that every drop of happiness that comes
into your life means greater peace for me.--We talk too seriously for
such a brilliant morning," he concluded, his voice measured, though
kindly, his attitude suddenly reminiscent of that long, pictured line
of gallant ancestors.  "Take my advice and use some of this beautiful
afternoon for your ride to London.  There will be a moon to-night and
you may enter it as the heroine in your last story--a fairy city."

He left her quite easily, but when she tried to start to meet her
husband, her knees gave way.  She clung to the paling and watched him
cross the bridge and stroll up the little strip of turf, still erect,
contemplating the great pile in front of him with the beneficent
satisfaction of inherited proprietorship.  She watched him pass through
the front door and disappear.  Then she turned around and drew her
husband into the cottage.

"James," she cried, sobbing in his arms, "take me away--please take me
away!"




CHAPTER XXXVI

During those few hours of strenuous, almost fierce work into which
David threw himself after the funeral, he found in a collection of
belated cablegrams which his secretary handed him an explanation of
Letitia's half apology, an explanation, he told himself bitterly, of
her altered demeanour towards him.  The old proverb stood justified.
Even this, the wildest of his speculations, had become miraculously
successful.  Pluto Oil shares, unsalable at a dollar a few weeks ago,
now stood at eight.  Oil had been discovered in extraordinary and
unprecedented quantities.  Oil was spurting another great fortune for
him out of the sandy earth.  He paused to make a calculation.  The
Marquis's forty thousand pounds' worth were worth, at a rough estimate,
three hundred thousand.

"Extraordinary news, this, Jackson," he remarked to the quiet,
sad-faced young man, who had been his right hand since the time of his
first railway deal.

"Most extraordinary," was the quiet reply.  "I congratulate you, Mr.
Thain.  You do seem to have the knack of turning everything you touch
into gold."

"Do I?" Thain murmured listlessly.

"I took the liberty of investing in a small parcel of shares myself,
just to lock away," the young man continued.  "I gave seventy cents for
them."

"Not enough to make you a millionaire, I hope?" Thain asked, with some
bitterness.

"Enough, with my savings, to give me a very comfortable feeling of
independence, sir," Jackson replied.  "I have never aspired any further
than that."

Thain returned to his desk.  He gave letter after letter, and more than
once his secretary, who had received no previous intimation of his
master's intended departure, glanced at him in mild surprise.

"I presume, as you are returning to the States, sir," he suggested,
"that we must try to cancel the contracts which we have already
concluded for the restoration of this place?"

Thain shook his head.

"Let them go on," he said.  "It makes very little difference.  I have a
seven years' lease.  I may come back again.  The letters which I gave
you with a cross you had better take into your own study and type.  I
shall be here to sign them when you have finished."

The young man bowed and departed.  David listened to the closing of the
door and turned his head a little wearily towards the night.  The
French windows stood open.  Through the still fir trees, whose perfume
reached him every now and then in little wafts, he could see one or two
of the earlier lights shining from the great house.  Once more his
thoughts travelled back to the ever-present subject.  Could he have
done differently?  Was there any way in which he could have spared
himself the ignominy, the terrible humiliation of those few minutes?
There was something wrong about it all, something almost suicidal--his
blind obedience to the old man's prejudiced hatred, his own frenzied
tearing to pieces of what might at least have remained a wonderful
dream.  One half of his efforts, too, had fallen pitifully flat.  The
Marquis had only to keep the shares to which he was justly entitled, to
free for the first time for generations his far-spreading estates, to
take his place once more as the greatest nobleman and landowner in the
county.  If only it had been the other scheme which had miscarried!

His avenue of elms was sheltering now an orchestra of singing birds.
With the slightly moving breeze which had sprung up since sunset, the
perfume of his roses became alluringly manifest.  Through the trees he
heard the chiming of the great stable clock from Mandeleys, and the
sound seemed somehow to torture him.  His head drooped for a moment
upon his arms.

The room seemed suddenly to become darker.  He raised his head and
remained staring, like a man who looks upon some impossible vision.
Lady Letitia, bare-headed, a little paler than usual, a little, it
seemed to him, more human, was standing there, looking in upon him.  He
managed to rise to his feet, but he had no words.

"I am not a ghost," she said.  "Please come out into the garden.  I
want to talk to you."

He followed her without a word.  It was significant that his first
impulse had been to shrink away from her as one dreading to receive a
hurt.  She seemed to notice it and smiled.

"Let us try and be reasonable for a short time," she continued.  "We
seem to have been living in some perfectly absurd nightmare for the
last few hours.  I have come to you to try and regain my poise.  Yes,
we will sit down--here, please."

They sat in the same chairs which they had occupied on her previous
visit.  David had been through many crises in his life, but this one
left him with no command of coherent speech--left him curiously,
idiotically tongue-tied.

"I have thought over this ridiculous affair," she went on.  "I must
talk about it to some one, and there is only you left."

"Your guests," he faltered.

"Gone!" she told him a little melodramatically.  "Didn't you know that
we had been alone ever since the morning afterwards?  First of all, my
almost fiancé, Charlie Grantham, drove off at dawn.  He left behind him
a little note.  He had every confidence in me, but--he went.  Then my
aunt.  She was the most peevish person I ever knew.  She seemed to
imagine that I had in some way interfered with her plans for your
subjugation, and although she knew quite well that no woman of the
Mandeleys family could ever stoop to any unworthy or undignified
action, she decided to hurry her departure.  She left at midday."

"But Miss Sylvia?"

"Sylvia was most ingenuous," Letitia continued, her voice regaining a
little of its natural quality.  "Sylvia came to me quite timidly and
asked me to walk with her in the garden.  She wondered--was it really
settled between me and Lord Charles?  If it was, she was quite willing
to go into a nunnery or something equivalent,--Chiswick, I believe it
was, with a maiden aunt.  But if not, she believed--he had whispered a
few things to her--he was hoping to see her that week in town.  It was
most extraordinary---she couldn't understand it--but it seemed that
their old flirtations--you knew, of course, that they had met often
before--had left a void in his heart which only she could fill.  He had
discovered his mistake in time.  She threw herself upon my mercy.  She
left by the three-thirty."

"My God!" he groaned.  "And this was all my doing!"

"All your doing," she assented equably.  "They were all of them
perfectly content to accept your story.  There is not one of them who
disputes it for a single moment.  But you were there, with the secret
door closed behind you, and, as my aunt said, there is really no
accounting for what people will do, nowadays.  And now," she concluded,
"I gather that you are leaving, too."

"I am motoring up to town to-morrow morning," he said.  "I haven't
ventured to speak of atonement, but your coming here like this, Lady
Letitia, is the kindest thing you have ever done--you could ever do.  I
have tried, in my way," he went on, after a moment's pause, "to live
what I suppose one calls a self-respecting life.  I have never before
been in a position when I have been ashamed of anything I have done.
And now, since those few minutes, I have lived in a burning furnace of
it.  I daren't let my mind dwell upon it.  Those few minutes were the
most horrible, psychological tragedy which any man could face.  If your
coming really means," he went on, and his voice shook, and his eyes
glowed as he leaned towards her, "that I may carry away with me the
feeling that you have forgiven me, I can't tell you the difference it
will make."

"But why go?" she asked him softly.

His heart began to beat with sudden, feverish throbs.  His eyes
searched her face hungrily.  She seemed in earnest.  Her lips had lost
even their usual, faintly contemptuous curl.  If anything, she was
smiling at him.

"Why go?" he repeated.  "Can't you understand that the one desire I
have, the one burning desire, is to put myself as far away as possible
from the sight and memory of what happened that night?  We have been
telephoning through to London.  I have taken my passage for America on
Saturday.  I shall go straight out to the Rockies.  I just want to get
where I can forget your look and the words with which your father
turned me out of his house.  And worse than that," he added, with a
little shake in his tone, "their justice--their cruel, abominable
justice."

Then what was surely a miracle happened.  She leaned forward and took
his hand.  Her eyes were soft with sympathy.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed.  "You couldn't do anything else.  I
have been thinking it over very seriously.  It was a horrible position
for you, but you really couldn't do anything else, that I can see.  You
told your story simply and like a man.  But wait.  There is one thing I
can't understand.  Those shares--were they not to be part of that poor
man's vengeance.  You surely never intended that we should benefit by
them in this extraordinary way?"

"I believed them," he told her firmly, "when I sold them to your
father, to be, until long after he would have had to pay for them, at
any rate, absolutely worthless.  The wholly unexpected has happened, as
it does often in oil.  Your father's shares are worth a fortune.  He
can realise his idea of clearing Mandeleys.  He can dispose of them
to-day for three hundred thousand pounds.  Lady Letitia, you have come
to me like an angel.  This is the sweetest thing any woman ever did.
Be still kinder.  Please make your father keep the shares.  They are
his.  They were sold to ruin him.  It is just the chance of something
that happened many thousand miles away, which has turned them in his
favour.  He accepts nothing from me.  It is fate only which brings him
this windfall."

"I promise," she said.  "To tell you the truth, I think father is as
much changed, during the last few days, as I am.  When I saw him, about
an hour ago, and told him that I was coming to see you, I was almost
frightened at first.  He looks older, and I fancy that something which
has happened lately--something quite outside--has been a great blow to
him."

"Does he know, then, how kind you are being to me?" David asked.

She nodded.

"He rather hoped," she whispered, leaning a little closer still to him
and smiling into his face, "that you would come back with me and dine."

David suddenly clutched her hands.  He was a man again.  He threw away
his doubts.  He accepted Paradise.

On their way across the park, a short time later, he suddenly pointed
down towards the little cottage.

"You haven't forgotten, Letitia," he said, "that I lived there?  You
haven't forgotten that that old man was my uncle!--that his father and
grandfather were the servants of your family?"

"My dear David," she replied, "I have forgotten nothing, only I think
that I have learned a little.  I am still full of family tradition,
proud of my share of it, if you will, but somehow or other I don't
think that it is more than a part, and a very small part, of our daily
life.  So let there be an end of that, please.  You have done great
things and I am proud of you, and I have done nothing except suffer
myself to be born into a very ancient and occasionally disreputable
family....  Oh, I must tell you!" she went on, with a little laugh.
"What do you think father was settling down to do when I came out?"

David shook his head.

"I have no idea."

"I left him seated at his desk," she told him.  "He is writing a line
to Mr. Wadham, Junior, asking him to-day's price of the Pluto Oil
shares."




THE END




NOVELS by E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

He is past master of the art of telling a story.  He has humor, a keen
sense of the dramatic, and a knack of turning out a happy ending just
when the complications of the plot threaten worse disasters.--_New York
Times_.

Mr. Oppenheim has few equals among modern novelists.  He is prolific,
he is untiring in the invention of mysterious plots, he is a clever
weaver of the plausible with the sensational, and he has the necessary
gift of facile narrative.--_Boston Transcript_.

  A Prince of Sinners
  Mysterious Mr. Sabin
  The Master Mummer
  A Maker of History
  The Malefactor
  A Millionaire of Yesterday
  The Man and His Kingdom
  The Betrayal
  The Yellow Crayon
  The Traitors
  Enoch Strone
  A Sleeping Memory
  A Lost Leader
  The Great Secret
  The Avenger
  The Long Arm of Mannister
  The Governors
  Jeanne of the Marshes
  The Illustrious Prince
  The Lost Ambassador
  The Mystery of Mr. Bernard Brown
  A Daughter of the Marionis
  Berenice
  The Moving Finger
  Havoc
  The Lighted Way
  The Tempting of Tavernake
  The Mischief-Maker
  The World's Great Snare
  The Survivor
  Those Other Days
  A People's Man
  The Vanished Messenger
  Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo
  The Double Traitor
  The Way of These Women
  Mr. Marx's Secret
  An Amiable Charlatan
  The Kingdom of the Blind
  The Hillman
  The Cinema Murder
  Bernard The Pawns Count
  The Zeppelin's Passenger
  The Curious Quest
  The Wicked Marquis


LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, BOSTON











End of Project Gutenberg's The Wicked Marquis, by E. Phillips Oppenheim