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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 39730
   :PG.Title: The Girl Who Had Nothing
   :PG.Released: 2012-05-18
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Mrs. C. N. Williamson
   :MARCREL.ill: John Cameron
   :DC.Title: The Girl Who Had Nothing
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1905
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE GIRL WHO HAD NOTHING
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   THE GIRL WHO HAD NOTHING

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   By

   MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON

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   AUTHOR OF "THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR," ETC.

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   *ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN CAMERON*

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   LONDON

   WARD LOCK & CO LIMITED

   1905

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.. contents:: CONTENTS
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CHAPTER I--The Old Lady in the Victoria
=======================================

Joan Carthew had reason to believe
that it was her birthday, and she had
signalised the occasion by running away
from home.  But her birthday, and her
home, and her running away, were all so
different from things with the same name
in the lives of other children, that the
celebration was not in reality as festive as it might
seem if put into print.

In the first place, she based her theory as
to the date solely upon a dim recollection
that once, eons of years ago, when she had
been a petted little creature with belongings
of her own (she was now twelve), there had
been presents and sweets on the 13th of
May.  She thought she could recall looking
eagerly forward to that anniversary; and
she argued shrewdly that, as her assortment
of agreeable memories was small, in all
likelihood she had not made a mistake.

In the second place, Joan's home was a
Brighton lodging-house, where she was a
guest of the landlady, and not a "paying"
guest, as she was frequently reminded.  In
that vague time, eons ago, she had been left
at the house by her mother (who was, it
seemed, an actress), with a sum of money
large enough to pay for her keep until that
lady's return from touring, at the end of the
theatrical season.  The end of the season
and the end of the money had come about
the same time, but not the expected mother.
The beautiful Mrs. Carthew, whose
professional name was Marie Lanchester,
had never reappeared, never written.
Mrs. Boyle had made inquiries, advertised, and
spent many shillings on theatrical papers,
but had been able to learn nothing.
Mr. Carthew was a vague shadow in a mysterious
background, less substantial even than a
"walking gentleman," and Mrs. Boyle,
feeling herself a much injured woman, had in
her first passion of resentment boxed Joan's
ears and threatened to send the "brat" to
the poorhouse.  But the child was in her
seventh year and beginning to be useful.  She
liked running up and downstairs to answer
the lodgers' bells, which saved steps for the
two overworked servants; and, of course,
when she became a financial burden instead
of the means of lightening burdens, it was
discovered that she could do many other
things with equal ease and propriety.  She
could clean boots and knives, wash dishes,
help make beds, and carry trays; she
could also be slapped for misdeeds of her
own and those of others, an act which
afforded invariable relief to the landlady's
feelings.  As years went on, further spheres
of usefulness opened, especially after the
Boyle baby came; one servant could be
kept instead of two; and taking
everything into consideration, Joan's hostess
decided to continue her charity.  Therefore,
the child could have answered the
conundrum, "When is a home not a home?"
out of the stores of her intimate experience.

In the third place, she had only run away
as far as one of the shelters on the Marine
Parade; she had brought the landlady's
baby with her, and, lurking grimly in the
recesses of her mind, she had the virtuous
intention of going home again when Minnie
should be hungry enough to cry, at tea-time.

Joan was telling the two-year-old Minnie
a fairy story, made up out of her own head,
all about a gorgeous princess, and founded
on the adventures she herself would best
like to have, when, just as the narrative was
working towards an exciting climax, a girl
of Joan's own age came in sight, walking
with her governess.

The story broke off short between Joan's
little white teeth, which suddenly shut
together with a click.  This did not signify
much, as far as the Boyle baby was
concerned, for Joan unconsciously wove fairy
tales more for her own pleasure than that
of her companion, and as a matter of fact
the warmth of the afternoon sunshine had
acted as "juice of poppy and mandragora"
upon Minnie's brain.  Her small, primrose-yellow
head was nodding, and she was
unaware that the story had ended abruptly just
as the princess was beguiling the dragon, and
that a girl almost as fine as the princess
herself was approaching.

The new-comer was about twelve or
thirteen, and she was more exquisitely dressed
than any child Joan remembered to have
met.  Perhaps, if the apparition had been
a good deal younger or older, the
lodging-house drudge would not have observed so
keenly, or realised with a quick stab of
passionate pain the illimitable gulf dividing
lives.  But here was a girl of her own age,
her own height, her own needs and capacities,
and yet--the difference!

It struck her like a thrust of some thin,
delicate surgical instrument which could
inflict anguish, yet leave no trace.  Joan's
whole life was spent in dreaming; without
the dreams, existence at 12, Seafoam Terrace
would not have been tolerable to a young
creature with the nerves of a racehorse and
the imagination of a Scheherazade.  She
lived practically a double life within herself,
but never until this moment had she been
consciously jealous of the happier fate of a
fellow-creature.

In looking from the shelter where she
sat in shadow, at the other girl who walked
in sunshine, she knew the crunching pain
of the monster's fangs.

The other girl had long, fair hair; she
wore white muslin, foaming with lace frills,
white silk stockings, and shoes of white
suede.  Her face was shaded by a great,
rose-crowned, leghorn hat, which flopped
into soft curves and made a picture of small
features which without it might have seemed
insignificant.  The magnetism that was in
Joan Carthew's eyes forced the girl to turn
and throw a glance as she passed at
the shabby child in faded brown serge (a
frock altered from a discarded one of
Mrs. Boyle's) who sat huddled in the shelter, with
a tawdrily dressed baby asleep by her side.
The glance had all the primitive, merciless
disdain of a sleek, fortunate young animal
for a miserable, hunted one, and Joan felt
the meaning of it in her soul.

"Why should she have everything and I
nothing?" was the old-new question which
shaped itself wordlessly in the child's brain.
"She looks at me as if I were a rat.  I'm
not a rat!  I'm as good as she is, if I had
her clothes.  I'm cleverer, and prettier, too,
I know I am--heaps and heaps.  Oh!  I
want to be like her, only better--I must be--I shall!"

She quivered with the fierceness of her
revolt against fate, yet in it was no vulgar
jealousy.  The other girl's pale blue eyes,
in one contemptuous glance, had found
every patch on her frock and shoes, had
criticised her old hat, and sneered at her
little, rough, work-worn hands, scorning her
for them as if she were a creature of an
inferior race; but Joan had no personal
hatred for the happier child, no wish for
revenge, no desire to take from the other
what she had.  The feeling which shook
her with sudden, stormy passion was merely
the sharp realisation of injustice, the
conviction that by nature she herself was worthy
of the good things she had missed, the savage
resolve to have what she ought to have, at
any cost.

It was not tea-time yet, and Minnie was
happily asleep; Joan was certain to be
scolded just as sharply on her return as if
she had stopped away for hours longer,
therefore she might as well have drained her
birthday cup of stolen pleasure to the dregs;
but the good taste of the draught was gone.
She yearned only to go home, to get the
scolding over, and to have a few minutes
to herself in the tiny back room which she
shared with the baby.  There seemed to
be much to think of, much to decide.

The child waked Minnie, who was cross
at being roused, and refused to walk.  The
quickest way of triumphing over the
difficulty was to carry her, and this method
Joan promptly adopted.  But the baby was
heavy and fractious.  She wriggled in her
young nurse's grasp, and just as Joan had
staggered round the corner of Seafoam
Terrace, with her disproportionate burden, she
tripped and fell, under the windows of No. 12.

Minnie roared, and there was an echoing
shriek from the house.  Mrs. Boyle, who
had been looking up and down the street
in angry quest of her missing drudge, saw
the catastrophe and rushed to the rescue of
her offspring.  She snatched the baby, who
was more frightened than hurt, and holding
her by one arm, proceeded to administer
chastisement to Joan.

Instinctively she knew that the girl was
sensitive and proud, though she had no kindred
feelings in her own soul, and she delighted
in humiliating her drudge before the whole
street.  As she screamed reproaches and
harsh names, raining a shower of blows on
Joan's ears and head and burning cheeks, a
face appeared in at least one window of
each house along the Terrace.  Though a
cataract of sparks cascaded before the child's
eyes, somehow she saw the faces and imagined
a dozen for every one.

The shame seemed to her beyond bearing.
She forgot even her love for the baby, which
(with the dreams) was the bright thread in
the dull fabric of her existence.  After this
martyrdom, she neither could nor would
live on in Seafoam Terrace, which with all
its eyes had seen her beaten like a dog.

"Into the house with you, you lazy,
good-for-nothing brat!" panted Mrs. Boyle, when
her hand was tired of smiting; and with a
push, she would have urged the girl towards
the open front door, but Joan turned
suddenly and faced her.

"No!" she cried, "I won't be your
servant any more!  I've done with you.  I
will never go into your hateful house again,
until I come back as a grand lady you will
have to bow down to and worship."

These were grandiloquent words, and
Mrs. Boyle would either have laughed with a
coarse sneer, or struck Joan again for her
impudence, had not the look in the child's
great eyes actually cowed her for the moment.
In that moment the thin girl of twelve, whom
she had beaten, seemed to grow very tall
and wonderfully beautiful; and in the next,
she had gone like a whirlwind which comes
and passes before it has been realised.

Joan was desperate.  Her newly formed
ambition and her stinging shame mounted
like frothing wine to her hot brain.  She
was in a mood to kill herself--or make her fortune.

For a time she flew on blindly, neither
knowing nor caring which way she went.
By and by, as breath and strength failed,
she ran more slowly, then settled into a
quick, unsteady walk.  She was on the
front, running in the direction of Hove, and
in the distance a handsome victoria with
two horses was coming.  The sun shone on
the silver harness and the horses' satin
backs.  There was a coachman and a groom
in livery, and in the carriage sat an old lady
dressed in grey silk, of the same soft tint as
her hair.

Joan had seen this old lady in her victoria
several times before, and had pretended to
herself, in one of her glittering dreams, that
the lady took a fancy to her and proposed
adoption.

Now, in a flash of thought, which came
quick as the glint of light on a bird's wing,
the child told herself that this thing must
happen.  She had no home, no people,
nothing; she would stake her life on the one
throw which might win all or lose all.

Without stopping to be afraid, or to argue
whether she were brave or foolhardy, she
ran forward and threw herself in front of the
horses.  The coachman pulled them up so
sharply that the splendid pair plunged,
almost falling back on to the victoria, but
he was not quick enough to save the child
one blow on the shoulder from an iron-shod hoof.

In an instant the groom was in the road
and had snatched her up, with a few gruff
words which Joan dimly heard and
understood, although she had just enough
consciousness left to feign unconsciousness.

"How dreadful! how dreadful!" the old
lady was exclaiming.  "You must put the
poor little thing in the carriage, and I'll
drive to the nearest doctor's."

"Better let me take her in a cab to a
hospital, my lady," advised the groom.  "It
wasn't our fault.  She ran under the horses'
feet.  Tomkins and me can both swear to that."

The arbitress of Joan's fate appeared to
hesitate, and the child thought best to
revive enough to open her eyes (which she
knew to be large and soft as a fawn's) for
one imploring glance.  In the fall which had
caused her to drop the Boyle baby, she had
grazed her forehead against a lamp-post,
and on the small, white face there remained
a stain of blood which was effective at this
juncture.  She started, put out her hand,
and groped for the old lady's dress, at which
she caught as a drowning man is said to
catch at a straw.

"On second thoughts, I will take her
home, if she can tell me where she lives.
She seems to be reviving," said the
lady.  "Where do you live, my poor little girl?"

"I--don't live anywhere," gasped Joan,
white-lipped.  "I haven't any mother or
any home, or anything.  I wanted to die."

"Oh, you poor little pitiful thing!  What
a sad story!" crooned the old lady.  "You
shall go to *my* home, and stop till you get
well, and I will buy you a doll and lots of
nice toys."

The rapidly recovering Joan determined
that, once in the old lady's house, she would
stop long after she had got well, and that
she would, sooner or later, have many things
better than toys.  But she smiled gratefully,
faintly, looking like a broken flower.
The groom was directed to place her on
the seat, in a reclining posture, and she was
given the old lady's silk-covered air-cushion
to rest her head upon.  She really ached
in every bone, but she was exaggerating
her sufferings, saying to herself: "It's come!
I've walked right into the fairy story, and
nothing shall make me walk out again.
I've got nobody to look after me, so I'll
have to look after myself and be my own
mamma.  I can't help it, whether it's right
or wrong.  I don't know much about right
and wrong, anyhow, so I shan't bother.
I've got to grow up a grand, rich lady; my
chance has come, and I'd be silly not to
take it."

Having thus disposed of her conscience--such
as her wretched life had made it--Joan
proceeded to faint again, as picturesquely as
possible.  Her pretty little head, rippling
over with thick, gold-brown hair, fell on
the grey silk shoulder and gave the kindly,
rather foolish old heart underneath a warm,
protecting thrill.  The child's features were
lovely, and her lashes very long and dark.
If she had been ugly, or even plain, in spite
of her appealing ways, Lady Thorndyke (the
widow of a rich City knight) would probably
have agreed to the groom's suggestion; but
Joan did not overestimate her own charms
and their power.  A quarter of a century
ago Lady Thorndyke had lost a little girl
about the age of this pathetic waif, and she
had had no other child.  There was a nephew
on the Stock Exchange, but Lady Thorndyke
was interested in him merely because she
thought it her duty, though he had been
brought up to take it for granted that he
would be her heir.  In truth, the lonely
woman had half unconsciously sighed all
her life for romance and for love.  She had
never had much of either, and now, in this
tragic child who clung to her and would
not be denied, there was promise of both.

So Joan was borne in supreme spiritual
triumph and slight bodily pain to the big,
old-fashioned Brighton house where her new
protectress spent the greater part of the year.  She
was put into a bed which smelled of lavender
and felt like a soft, warm cloud; she went
through the ordeal of being examined by a
doctor, knowing that her whole future might
depend upon his verdict.  She lay sick
and quivering with a thumping heart, lest
he should say: "This child is perfectly
well, except for a bruise and a scratch or
two.  There is nothing to prevent her being
sent home."  But in her anxiety Joan had
worked herself into a fever.  The doctor
was a fat, comfortable man, with children
of his own, and the escaped drudge could
have worshipped him when he announced
that she was in a highly nervous state, and
would be better for a few days' rest, good
nursing, and nourishing food.

She had arnica and plasters externally,
and internally beef-tea.  Then she told her
story.  Had it been necessary, Joan would
have plunged into a sea of fiction, but she
had enough dramatic sense to perceive that
nothing could be more effective than the
truth, dashed in with plenty of colour.

Joan's memory was as vivid as her
imagination.  She was fired to eloquence by her
own wrongs; and her word-sketch of the
poor baby deserted by a beautiful, mysterious
actress, her picturesque conjectures as to
that actress's noble husband, the harrowing
portrait of her angelic young self as a
lodging-house drudge, the final climax, painting
the savage punishment in the street, and
her resolve to seek refuge in death (the one
fabrication in the tale), affected the secretly
sentimental heart of the City knight's widow
like music.

"I would rather have been trampled to
death under your horses' feet than go
back!" sobbed the child.

"Don't be frightened and excite yourself,
my poor, pretty little dear," Lady
Thorndyke soothed her.  "No harm shall come
to you, I promise that."

Joan's instinctive tact had been sharpened
to diplomacy by the constant need of
self-defence.  She said no more; she only looked;
and her eyes were like those of a wounded
deer which begs its life of the hunter.

Lady Thorndyke began to turn over various
schemes for Joan's advantage; but that
same evening, which was Saturday, her
nephew, George Gallon, arrived from town
to spend Sunday with his aunt.  She told
him somewhat timidly about the lovely
child she was sheltering, and the
hard-mouthed, square-chinned young man threw
cold water on her projects.  He said that
the girl was no doubt a designing little
minx, who richly deserved what she had
got from the charitable if quick-tempered
woman who gave her a home.  He advised
his aunt to be rid of the young viper as soon
as possible, and meanwhile to leave the
care of her entirely to servants.

His strong nature impressed itself upon
Lady Thorndyke's weak one, as red-hot
iron cauterises tender flesh.  She believed
all he said while he was with her, and
conceived a distrust of Joan; but Gallon had
an important deal on in the City for Monday,
and was obliged to leave early, having
extracted a half-promise from his aunt that
the intruder should go forth that day, or
at latest the next.

He had not seen Joan Carthew, and
therefore had not reckoned on her strength and
fascination as forces powerful enough to
fence with his influence.

Joan felt the difference in her patroness's
manner, as a swallow feels the coming of a
storm.  She knew that there had been a
visitor, and she guessed what had happened.
She grew cold with the chill of presentiment,
but gathered herself together for a
fight to the death.

"You look much better this morning, my
dear," began Lady Thorndyke nervously.
"You will perhaps be well enough to get up
and be dressed by and by, to drive out with
me, and choose yourself a doll, or anything
you would like.  You will be glad to hear
that--that my nephew and I called on
Mrs. Boyle yesterday, and--she is sorry if
she was harsh.  In future, you will not be
living on her charity.  I shall give her a
small yearly sum for your board and clothing.
You will be sent to school, as you ought to
have been long ago, and really I don't see
how she managed to avoid this duty.  But
in any case you will be happy."

Joan turned over on her face, and the bed
shuddered with her tearing sobs.  She was
not really crying.  The crisis was too tense
for tears.

"Don't, dear, don't," pleaded Lady Thorndyke,
feeling horribly guilty.  "I will see
you sometimes, and----"

"See me sometimes!" echoed the child.
"You are the only person who has ever
been kind to me.  I can't live without you
now.  I won't try.  Oh, it was cruel to
bring me here and show me what happiness
could be, just to drive me away again into
the dark!"

"But----" the distressed old lady had
begun to stammer, when the child slipped
out of bed and fell at her protectress's feet.

"Keep me with you!" she implored.
"I'll be your servant.  I'll live in the kitchen.
I'll eat what your dog eats.  Only let me stay."

She wound her slim, childish arms round
Lady Thorndyke's waist, her eyes streamed
with tears at last; her beautiful hair curled
piteously over the grey-silk lap.  She
was at that moment a great actress, for
though she was honestly grateful, she neither
wished nor intended to live in the kitchen
and eat what the dog ate.  She would be a
child of the house or she would be nothing.
Her beauty, her despair, and her humility
were irresistible.  Lady Thorndyke forgot
George Gallon and clasped the child in her
arms, crying in sympathy.  "If you care
so much, dear, how can I let you go?" she
whimpered.

"I care enough to die for you, or to die
if I lose you!" Joan vowed.

"You shall not die, and you shall not
lose me!" exclaimed the old lady,
remembering her nephew now and defying him.
"You shall stay and be my little girl."

Joan did stay.  Before the week ended,
and another visit from George Gallon was
due, she had so entwined herself round Lady
Thorndyke's heart that the rather cowardly
old woman had courage to face her nephew
with the news that she meant to keep the
waif whom "Providence had sent her."




CHAPTER II--The Old Lady's Nephew
=================================

At first there was no question of formal
adoption.  Joan simply stayed on and
was allowed to feel that she had a right to
stay.  Gallon did all he could to oust her, for
his mind had telescopic power and brought
the future near.  He feared the girl, but he
dared not actually offend his aunt, lest he
should lose at once what he wished to
safeguard himself against losing later.

The child made Lady Thorndyke happier
than she had ever been.  Her presence created
sunshine.  She was never naughty like other
children; she was never sulky nor disagreeable.
A governess was procured for her,
a mild, common-place lady whom Joan
despised and astonished with her progress.
"I was born knowing a lot of things which
she could never learn," the little girl told
herself scornfully.  But she did not despise
George Gallon, whom she occasionally saw,
nor did she exactly fear him, because she
believed that she would be able to hold
her own in case the day ever came for a
second contest, as she foresaw it would.

When she had learned all that the
governess knew, and rather more besides, she was
sent to a boarding-school in Paris to be
"finished."  After her first term, she came
back to Brighton for the Christmas holidays,
so grown up, so beautiful, and so
distinguished that Lady Thorndyke was very
proud.  "What shall I give you for
Christmas, my dear?" she asked.  "A diamond ring?"

Joan kissed her withered leaf of a hand.

"If you love me," she said, "give me
the right to call myself your daughter.
That is the one thing in the world you have
left me hungry for.  Will you adopt me,
so that I can feel I am your own, own child?
Think what it would be if any one ever
claimed me and took me away from you!"

Joan's love was not all a pretence.  She
would have been a monster if it had been,
instead of the mere girl of seventeen she was,
with a large nature, and capacities for good
which had been stunted and turned the wrong
way.  But the vicissitudes of life had taught
her to be even more observant than she was
critical, and she knew as well how to manage
Lady Thorndyke as if the kind old creature
had been a marionette, worked with strings.
It was not necessary to let her benefactress
know all that was in her mind, nor how she
had calculated that to be the rich woman's
legally adopted daughter ought to mean
being her heiress as well.  While she pleaded
to be Lady Thorndyke's "own, own child,"
she was saying to herself: "I will make a
good deal better use of the money than that
hateful George Gallon would."

No normal young man, and no sentimental
old lady, could have doubted the
disinterestedness of a girl with eyes like Joan
Carthew's.  Lady Thorndyke was delighted
with the dear child's affection, and promptly
sent for her lawyer to talk over the matter
of a formal adoption.  She also announced
her intention of altering her will, and
leaving only twenty thousand pounds to her
nephew, the bulk of her property to Joan,
"who would no doubt be greatly surprised."

Thinking it but fair that George should
be prepared for this change in his prospects,
she told him what she intended to do, in the
presence of a friend, lest there should be
a scene.

There was no scene, for George was a
sensible man, and saw that a little butter on his
bread was better than none.  But he hated
Joan, and respected her at the same time
because she had triumphed.  He was not
quite beaten yet, however.  He had a talk,
which he hoped sounded manly and frank,
with his young rival, told Joan that he bore
her no grudge, and paid her a compliment.
When she went back to school, flowers and
sweets began to arrive from "Cousin George";
and the girl saw the game he was playing
and smiled.

When she came home for Easter, he
proposed.  He got her on a balcony, by
moonlight, where he said that he had loved her
for years, and could not wait any longer to
speak out what was in his heart.

"Your heart!" laughed Joan, with all
the insolence of a beautiful, spoiled young
heiress of eighteen, who has pined for
revenge upon a hated man, and got it at
last.  "Your heart!"  It was delicious to
throw policy to the wind for once and be
frankly herself.  She was thoroughly enjoying
the situation, as she stood with the pure
radiance of the moonlight shining down
upon her bright head and her white, filmy
gown.  "What a fool you must think me,
Mr. Gallon!  It's your pockets you would
have me fill, not your heart.  I acknowledge
I have owed you a debt for a long time,
but it's not a debt of love.  When I was a
forlorn, friendless child, you tried to turn
me out into the cold; and if I hadn't been
stronger than you, you would have succeeded.
Instead, it was I who did that.  I've
always meant to pay, for I hate debts.  No,
I will not marry you.  No; nothing that
your aunt means to give me shall be yours.
Now I have paid, and we are quits."

.. _`"'No, I will not marry you.'"`:

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   :alt: "'No, I will not marry you.'"

   "'No, I will not marry you.'"


George Gallon was cold with fury.  "Don't
be too sure," he said in his harsh voice,
which Joan had always hated.  "They laugh
best who laugh last."

"I know that," the girl retorted; and
passing him to go indoors, where Lady
Thorndyke dozed after dinner, she threw
over her shoulder a laugh to spice her words.

The next day she went back to school,
pleased with herself and what she had done,
for she was no longer in the least afraid of
George Gallon.

Some things are in the air.  It was in
the air at school that Joan would be a great
heiress.  The girls were very nice to her,
and Joan enjoyed their flatteries, though
she saw through them and made no intimate
friends.  When in June, shortly before the
coming of the summer holidays, the girl was
telegraphed for, because Lady Thorndyke
had had a paralytic stroke and was dying,
there was a sensation in the school.  Of
course, as Joan would now inherit something
like a million, she would not return, but
after her time of mourning would come out
in Society, well chaperoned, be presented,
and probably marry at least a viscount.
The other girls were nicer than ever; tears
were shed over her, and farewell presents bestowed.

When Joan arrived in England, Lady
Thorndyke was dead, and the girl was sad,
for she realised how well she had loved her
benefactress.  After the funeral came the
reading of the will.  The dead woman's
adopted daughter, the servants, and George
Gallon were the only persons present besides
the lawyer.  Joan's heart scarcely quickened
its beating, for she was absolutely confident.
Any surprise which might come could be
merely a matter of a few thousands more or
less.  She sat leaning back in an armchair,
very calm and beautiful in her deep
mourning.  George Gallon's eyes never left her
face, and they lit as at last she lifted her
head, with bewilderment on the suddenly
paling face.

There had been a few bequests to servants
and to a favourite charity.  Everything else
which Lady Thorndyke died possessed of
was left unconditionally to her nephew,
George Gallon.  There was no mention of
Joan Carthew.  The will was dated ten
years before.  Lady Thorndyke had put off
making the new one, and death had
rendered the delay irrevocable.  Joan Carthew
had not a penny in the world; save for her
education, her clothes, and the memory of
six happy years, she was no better off than
on the day when she threw herself under
Lady Thorndyke's carriage.

.. _`"Joan Carthew had not a penny in the world."`:

.. figure:: images/img-042.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Joan Carthew had not a penny in the world."

   "Joan Carthew had not a penny in the world."


At first she could not believe that it was
true.  It was like having rolled a heavy stone
almost to the top of an incredibly steep hill,
to find oneself suddenly at the bottom,
crushed under the stone.  But the solicitor's
stilted sympathy, and the look in George
Gallon's eyes, which said: "Now perhaps
you are sorry for having made a fool of
yourself," brought her roughly face to face with
the truth.  At the same time she was
stimulated.  The words, the look, braced her
to assume courage, if she had it not.

She was down--very far down; but she
was young, she was beautiful, she was brave,
and life had early taught her to be unscrupulous.
The world was, after all, an oyster;
she would open it yet somehow and make it
hers; this was a vow.

When the solicitor had gone, George
remained.  The house was his house now.

"What do you intend to do?" he inquired.

"I have my plans," Joan answered.

In the man's veins stirred a curious thrill,
which was something like dread.  The girl
was wonderful, and formidable still, not to
be despised.  He half feared her, yet he
could not resist the temptation to humiliate
the creature who had laughed at him.

"It is a pity you never learned anything
useful, like typing and shorthand," said he
patronisingly.  "If you had, I would have
taken you into our office as secretary.  There's
two pounds a week in the job, and that's
better than the wages of a nursery governess,
which, in the circumstances, you will, no
doubt, be thankful to get.  After what has
passed between us, you would hardly care,
I suppose, to accept charity from me, even
if I were inclined to offer it."

"I would take no favour from you," said
Joan, in an odd, excited voice.  "But I
*will* accept that secretaryship; you'll find
me competent."

George stared.  "You don't know what
you are talking about.  You have no
knowledge of typing or shorthand."

"I am expert in both.  I thought, as a
woman with large property, the accomplishments
might be useful to me, and I insisted
on taking them up at school instead of one
or two others more classical but not as
practical."

"You would actually come and work in
my office, almost as a menial, on a salary
of two pounds a week, while I enjoy the
million you expected would be yours?"

"Beggars mustn't be choosers," returned
Joan, drily.  "You don't withdraw the offer?"

"No-o," replied George slowly, doubtful
whether his scheme of humiliation had been
quite wise, yet finding a certain pleasure
in it still.  "The girl's expression is queer,"
he said to himself.  "She looks as if she
had something up her sleeve."

He was right.  Joan had something "up
her sleeve," something too small to be visible,
yet large enough, perhaps, to be the seed of
fortune.




CHAPTER III--A Deal in Clerios
==============================

George Gallon had lately left a
well-known firm of stockbrokers, in
which he had been junior partner, and set
up business on his own account.  He had
started at a trying time, about the close of
the Boer war, when the financial world was
in a state of depression; but he had since
brought off two or three *coups* for his clients
and himself, and though he was unpopular, he
had begun to be talked of among a limited
circle in the City as a man who would succeed.

Joan Carthew had heard "George's luck"
discussed by guests at Lady Thorndyke's,
when she had been at home from school on
her holidays; therefore it was that she had
so promptly accepted the offer thrown to
her in derision, as a bone is flung to a chained
dog.  "If I keep my eyes and ears open, I
shall get tips," was the thought that flashed
into her mind.

If Joan had been an ordinary eighteen-year-old
girl, she would have faltered before
the difficulty of turning such "tips" to her
own advantage, on a salary of two pounds a
week; but she would not have entered George
Gallon's service if she had been one to falter
before difficulties; and three days after
the reading of the will which left the girl a
pensioner on her own wits, she presented
herself at the office in Copthall Court.

It was early, and Gallon had not yet arrived.
However, his curiosity to see whether Joan
would really keep her engagement brought
him to the City half an hour earlier than
usual.  When he came in, there sat at an
inner office, at the desk used by his late
stenographer, a young woman plainly dressed
in black, though not in mourning deep
enough to depress the spirits of the beholder.

It was Joan Carthew.  She had already
taken off her hat and hung it on a peg.
Gallon noticed instantly that her beautiful
golden-brown hair was dressed more simply
than he had seen it.  Every detail of her
costume was suited to the new part she was
about to play--that of the business woman.

"Good morning, Mr. Gallon," she said
crisply.  "Your head clerk told me this
would be my desk.  I have brought my
own typewriter.  I hope you don't mind.
You know, from the test you made the other
day, that I take down quickly from dictation,
and that my typing is clear.  I am ready to
begin work whenever you are."

"Glad to find you so businesslike," said
Gallon, uncomfortable in spite of himself,
though there was a keen relish in the situation.

"You will, I hope, never find me anything
else," quietly replied Joan.

So the new *régime* began.  At first, for
some days, the man was ill at ease, could
not collect his thoughts for dictation, and
stammered in his speech.  He regretted that
his desire to humiliate the girl had tempted
him to offer this position; but Joan's attitude
was so tactful, so unobtrusive, that little
by little he forgot his awkwardness and
even the meanness of his motive in making
her his dependent.  He almost forgot that
he had ever asked her to marry him; and
because he found her astonishingly clever
and useful, he waived the idea of further
insults which had flitted through his head
when first the dethroned heiress became
his secretary.

One autumn morning, Gallon was late.
Joan sat waiting in his office, and had opened
such correspondence as was not marked
"Private," had typed several letters ready
for her employer's signature, and having
no more business which could be transacted
until he appeared, began to glance through
an illustrated Society weekly which she
took in.  This paper she always read with
eagerness; not because she had the morbid
interest of an outsider in the doings of Society,
with a capital S, but because any information
she could glean about important people
might be of service in the career to which
she undauntedly looked forward.

On one page of this particular paper,
country houses, electric-launches, libraries,
motor-cars, and even family jewels were
advertised; and it was an absorbing page
to Joan.  To-day she gazed long at the
reproduction of a handsome steam-yacht,
which for some weeks past had been advertised
for sale, for the sum of twelve thousand
pounds.  Only a few months ago, she had been
planning to have some day a yacht of her
own.  It had been one of the many pleasant
things she had meant to do with Lady
Thorndyke's money.

"I shouldn't mind owning the *Titania*, if
she's as good as her photograph," the girl was
thinking, when George Gallon and a fat,
foreign-looking man came in.

"You can go back into the next room,
Miss Carthew," said George, abruptly.  "I
shall not need you at present, and you may
tell them outside that I am not to be disturbed."

Joan rose and walked into the outer office,
where the three clerks, who were all more or
less in love with the beautiful secretary,
glanced up joyfully from their work at
sight of her.  The youngest, whose desk
was close to the door, had already proposed.
He was a dreamy youth with a fluffy brain,
but his father was a rich man known in the
City as "the Salmon King," who cherished
hopes that one day his son would cut a
figure on the Stock Exchange.  These family
details the young man had confided to Joan
as a lure to matrimony, and though she had
answered that he was a "foolish boy," and
nothing was farther from her intention than
to settle down as Mrs. Tommy Mellis, she had
not in so many words refused the honour.

Now she whispered a request that, if he
had still a regard for her, he would slip away
and buy a box of chocolates, for the need
of which she was perishing.  A moment
later Tommy was out of his chair, and Joan
was in it.  His was the one seat in the room
where conversation in Gallon's private office
could by any means be overheard; and
Gallon was aware that whatever might go
in at Tommy's right ear promptly went out
at the left, without leaving the smallest
impression of its meaning.

"Is the deal certain to come off?" she
heard George inquire.

"Sure as the sun is to rise to-morrow,"
replied another voice with a foreign accent.
"You are the only outsider in the know.
That's worth something, isn't it?"

"It's worth what I've promised for it."

"At least that.  And I want an advance to-day."

"In such a hurry?  Remember I shan't make
anything, or be sure you haven't fooled me,
for weeks.  Still, I can manage a hundred."

"I need ten times that."

"You'll have it the day the Clerios are taken over."

"'Sh! not so loud!  And no names, for
Heaven's sake, man!"

"Oh, that's all right.  The clerk near
the door is a fool.  The only one out there
with any real brains is a girl, but she doesn't
know the difference between Clerios and
clerics.  That's why I employ a woman for
a secretary.  She spends her spare energy
on the fashions, and doesn't bother about
things which are none of her business."

In spite of this protest, Gallon dropped
his voice.  Only a word here and there
started out of the broken murmurs on the
other side of the door; but one more sentence,
almost whole, came to her ears.  "Grierson
Mordaunt ... sort of chap ... carries these
things through."  Then reappeared Tommy
with the chocolates, and Joan went to her
own desk; but the stray bits of information
were as flint and steel in her brain, and
together they struck out a spark of inspiration.
She was as sure as if she had heard all details
of the transaction that the World's Shipping
Combine, of which the American millionaire,
Grierson Mordaunt, stood at the head, had
arranged to take over the Clerio line of
Italian boats plying between Mediterranean
ports.  The fat man with the foreign accent
was no doubt the confidential agent of the
Italian company, and being acquainted with
George Gallon and his methods, had given
the secret away for a consideration.  Doubtless
he was poor, perhaps in difficulties;
otherwise he would have kept the information
and bought all the Clerio shares he could
lay his hands upon.

Now Joan knew why Gallon had written
yesterday to a man in Manchester, asking
him how many Clerios he had to sell, and
what was the lowest price he was prepared
to take for them, adding that it would be
useless, in the present depressed state of the
market, to name a high figure.  This man
had been requested to wire his answer, and
at any moment it might arrive.

When Joan had jumped so far in her
conclusions, Gallon escorted his visitor out,
flinging back word that he would be in again
in half an hour.

The girl's blood sang in her ears.  It
seemed to her that Fortune was knocking
at the door; but could she find the key to
open it?  She called all her wits to the
rescue, and in five minutes that key was
grating in the lock.

In Gallon's private room was a small
desk, which she used when her services were
wanted there.  This gave her an excuse to go
in, and in passing she threw a glance at
Tommy Mellis, which caused him, after the
lapse of a decent interval (he counted eighty
seconds), to follow.

"Once you said you would do anything
for me," she began, with a lovely look.
"Did you mean it?"

"Rather!"

"Well, then, the next question is: Will
your father do anything for *you*?"

"He'll do a good deal."

"If you tell him you've a tip about some
shares that are bound to rise, will he give you
the money to buy them?"

"He'd lend it.  That's his way.  He'd
be tickled to see me taking an interest in
business.  But what has that got to do
with----"

"I want to buy some shares--lots of shares--all
I can get hold of.  To-day they're
going cheap.  To-morrow, who can say?
They are Clerios."

"But, look here, even I know that Clerios
are no good.  It's a badly managed line,
and the shares are down to next to nothing."

"All the better.  Mr. Gallon mustn't know
you are in this, as he wants to get hold of
all the shares himself.  You must trust me
enough to have them put into my name, and
when I've got your profit for you, we'll go
halves.  Can you see your father inside half
an hour?"

"His place is just round the corner."

"Well, then, if you *do* care anything for
me, ask him to see you through a big deal.
You shall really make on it, I promise you,
something worth having besides my--gratitude."

"The governor's a queer fish.  If I should
let him in----"

"You won't let him in.  But we don't
want your father or anybody else in with us.
All we want is the loan, and his name, which
is a good one in the City, I know.  I trust
you for that.  You must show how clever
you are, if you're anxious to please me.
I'll manage the rest.  Now, like a dear, good
boy, run off and arrange things with your father."

Again Tommy became knight-errant, and
hardly was he out of the way when a strange
voice was heard in the adjoining office.
"Mr. Gallon in?  I'm Mr. Mitchison, from
Manchester."

"Mr. Gallon is out at present, but----"
a clerk had begun, when Joan appeared
and cut him short.  "Mr. Gallon wishes
me to see Mr. Mitchison, in his absence.
Will you kindly step in here, sir?"

The gentleman from Manchester obeyed.
Joan's quick eyes noted his worried air and
the genteel shabbiness of his clothing.  "I am
Mr. Gallon's confidential secretary," she said.
"I know about this business of Clerios.
You came instead of wiring?  Mr. Gallon
rather expected you would."

"I had to come to London in a day or
two, anyhow, and it's always more
satisfactory to do business in person."

"Exactly.  Well, I'm sorry to tell you
that Mr. Gallon has seen reason to change his
mind about buying your block of shares
in the Clerio line, as he has some big things
on now, and finds his hands full; but
Mr. Mellis, a client of his--'the Salmon King,'
you know--wants to invest some money
privately for his son.  Mr. Gallon has advised
them that, though Clerios are not likely to
rise much for some years, there is a certain,
if small, dividend; and if you can tell young
Mr. Mellis where they can get hold of other
blocks of the same shares, it might then be
worth his while to take over yours.  Those
you hold are hardly enough for him without others."

"I know several men in Genoa, where I
did business for some years, who hold shares
and would part with them for a decent price.
I could work the deal for Mr. Mellis, I'm
certain."

"Good.  He's at his father's office now.
I have Mr. Gallon's permission to introduce
you to him, but his only free time this morning
is in the next half-hour.  I can go with
you to Mr. Mellis senior's office, if you're
inclined to settle matters at once."

"The Salmon King," who had earned
his title by building up the largest "canned
goods" business of its kind in England, had
offices on the ground floor of an imposing
building not far away, and Joan was lucky
enough to guide her companion to the door
without the dreaded misfortune of meeting
George Gallon on the way.  As they crossed
the threshold, Tommy Mellis issued from
a room with a ground-glass door.  Joan
hurried to him, asked if his father had been
kind, was assured that all was well so far,
and hastened to explain the new development
of affairs so clearly that even Tommy's
slow intelligence grasped her meaning
without difficulty.  "When I've introduced you
to Mr. Mitchison, offer him twenty pounds
a share (their nominal value is fifty), and if
necessary go up to twenty-five.  Tell him
he shall have a commission on all the other
shares he can get, if the whole thing can be
fixed up by wire to-morrow.  Say there is a
man coming to see you the day after about
some other investment, which your father
prefers, but you've taken a fancy to this, and
want everything settled before the two older
men come together.  As Gallon must do all
his business in Clerios privately, and doesn't
want to ask for them in the House, that will
give us time to work."

"By Jove! this will mean a lot of money,"
faltered Tommy.  "Of course, I'm delighted
to do this for you, but if the governor----"

Joan soothed his fears; and introduced
Mitchison to young Mellis, who took them
both into a small, empty office.  She hovered
about during the business conversation which
ensued, putting in a word here and there,
and impressing the Manchester man with her
shrewdness.  In his opinion, George Gallon
had a treasure for a secretary, and he was
grateful to her for pushing on his affairs so
well, especially as he did not believe he could
have got from Gallon the price which Mellis
was willing to give.

When Joan returned to the office in
Copthall Court, her employer had not yet come
back.  "Don't tell Mr. Gallon I've been out,
will you?" she appealed to the clerks, her
slaves.  As she spoke, the door opened, and
Gallon entered, just in time to hear the
ingenuous request.  The young men flushed
in consternation for her, but the girl did not
change colour.  As a matter of fact, she
had known that George was coming up,
and had probably seen her on the stairs.
She had not spoken without design.

Having been delayed vexatiously, Gallon
was not in a good mood, and his black ones
were unpleasant for underlings.  A frowning
look and a gesture of the head called
Joan to his private office.  She followed
meekly; but when the scolding had reached
the stage which she mentally designated
as "ripe," her meekness vanished like snow
in sunshine.

"How dare you speak to me like that!"
she exclaimed, her eyes blazing.  "I'm not
your servant, though I have served you
well.  I leave to-day."

"This moment, if you choose," George
flung back at her furiously, though in reality
he had not intended matters to touch this
climax.  Joan had become valuable, but,
as he said to himself in his sullen anger,
she was the "last person in the world whose
impudence he would stand."

When Joan had gathered up her few
belongings, and remarked that she would
send for her typewriter, she added:
"Mr. Mitchison, of Manchester, called, and wanted
me to tell you that he'd already parted
with the shares you wired about last night.
I asked who had bought them, but he was
pledged to secrecy.  I believe that is all I
need say, except that you will find all your
correspondence in good order, to be taken
over by my successor; and as you have
declared so often that clever stenographers
are starving for want of employment, you
will not be long in obtaining one."

With this she was off, and, hailing the
first cab she saw (though in her
circumstances a cab was an extravagance), drove
to Woburn Place, where she lived in a back
bedroom on the top floor of a cheap boarding-house.

She remained only long enough, however,
to change into one of the pretty dresses left
from last spring's wardrobe.  Looking as if
her home should be Park Lane instead of
Bloomsbury, she went to the office of the
illustrated weekly in which she had been
interested that morning.  When she inquired
the address of *Titania's* owner, she was
told that all business connected with the
yacht would be done at the advertising
bureau of the paper.  This was a blow, for
the proposal that Joan had to make was not,
perhaps, of a kind suited to the taste of a
mere commonplace agent.  She thought for
a moment, and then said, with a slight
accent which she had learned through mimicking
a girl at school: "Well, I'm very sorry,
but I'm afraid we can't do business, then.
I'm an American girl; my name is
Mordaunt.  Grierson Mordaunt is my uncle.
I guess you've heard of him.  I want to
buy a yacht, in a hurry--my people generally
are in a hurry--and I thought this one
might do.  But if I can't see the owner
myself, it's no use.  *Good* morning."

.. _`"Looking as if her home should be Park Lane instead of Bloomsbury, she went to the office."`:

.. figure:: images/img-064.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Looking as if her home should be Park Lane instead of Bloomsbury, she went to the office."

   "Looking as if her home should be Park Lane instead of Bloomsbury, she went to the office."


Before she had got half-way to the door
the dapper manager of the advertising bureau
stopped her.  Possibly an exception might
be made in her favour; he would write to
his client.

"Can you send the letter by district
messenger?" shrewdly asked the
newly-fledged Miss Mordaunt.

The manager admitted that this could be
done.  To what hotel should he transmit
the answer?  "I'm staying with friends,
and I don't want them to know about this
till it's settled," said Joan.  "I tell you
what I'll do: I'll wait here."




CHAPTER IV--The Steam Yacht *Titania*
=====================================

She did wait, for three-quarters of an
hour; and at the end of that time the
manager received a reply to his letter.  In
consequence, he told Joan that Lady John
Bevan would see her at Kensington Park
Mansions.

As soon as the girl heard the name of
Lady John Bevan, she knew why the yacht
was for sale, and was hopeful that the eccentric
proposition she meant to make might be
received with favour.  Lord John Bevan
was in prison, for the crime of forgery,
committed after losing a fortune at Monte Carlo.

Joan took another cab to Kensington
Park Mansions--a mean shelter for a woman
whose environment had once been brilliant.
But Lady John, a tall and peculiarly elegant
woman, shone out like a jewel in an
unworthy setting.  The two women looked at
each other with admiration, and there was
eagerness in the elder's voice as she said:
"You want to buy the *Titania*, Miss Mordaunt?"

"I'm not sure yet, till I've tried, to see
how I like her," replied Joan.  "That's
fair, isn't it?  What I want, if I see the
yacht, take fancy to her, and we can
come to terms, is to hire the *Titania* for
a while.  Then, at the end of that time,
if I don't buy her myself, I'll sell her for
you to somebody else; that's a promise.
What would you want for your yacht for a
couple of months, all in working order, and
the captain and crew's money included?"

"Five hundred pounds," returned Lady
John.  "You can see her at Cowes."

"Well, I don't mind telling you that's
more than I expected.  I'm G. B. Mordaunt's
niece, and some day I suppose I
shall be one of the richest women in America,
but my money's tied up till I'm twenty-five.
I've only an allowance, and Uncle Grierson,
who is my guardian, is hard as nails.  I'll
tell you what I can do, though.  I have some
shares which are worth a lot of money,
but I don't want to deal with them myself,
as their value is a secret, and my uncle
would be mad with me if he knew I was
using it.  What I was going to say is this.
The shares I speak of are worth mighty
little to those who aren't 'in the know,' and
a lot to those who are.  If you'll call
to-morrow morning at ten o'clock on a
stockbroker in the City, whose address I'll give
you, and tell him you've a block of Clerios to
dispose of, he'll jump at the offer.  All you
must do is to stand firm, and you can get
eight hundred pounds out of him.  If he
says they're no good, just let your eyes
twinkle and tell him G. B. Mordaunt's
niece has been talking to you.  That will
settle Mr. George Gallon!  Keep your five
hundred for the yacht, and give the three
hundred change to me.  Of course, this is
provided I like the yacht.  You give me an
order to see her at Cowes.  I'll start at once,
wire you what I think of her, and, if it's all
right, I'll call here first thing in the morning
with the share certificates."

Carried away by the girl's magnetism and
dash, Lady John Bevan would have said
"Yes" to almost anything.  She said "Yes"
now with a promptness which surprised
herself when she thought of it afterwards,
by the cold light of reason.

Joan arrived at Cowes before dark, and
was delighted with the *Titania* and her crew.
She wired her approval to Lady John, and
telegraphed Tommy Mellis, asking him to
meet her at Waterloo for the eleven o'clock
train from Southampton, bringing the share
certificates which had that morning been
Mitchison's.  She was sure that Tommy
would not fail, and he did not.  They had
supper together in the grill-room of the
Carlton, as Joan was not in evening dress.
She told him all she chose to tell, and no
more; and thus ended the busiest day of
Joan Carthew's life.

The transaction in which Lady John
Bevan was to act as catspaw came off next
morning as the girl had expected, and she
would have given something handsome if
she could have seen George Gallon's face
when he found himself obliged to pay, for
the very shares he had expected to obtain
yesterday, four times what he had intended
to offer Mitchison.  His profit would now
be small, when the great *coup* came off;
still, he could not afford to refuse the chance,
and Joan knew it.  Some day, she meant that
he should also know to whom he owed his
defeat; but that day was not yet.

For the shares sold by Mitchison he had
received two hundred pounds.  A like sum
Joan agreed to place in Tommy's hands, as
part profit of the transaction; and when
Lady John Bevan was paid for the two
months' hire of the *Titania*, the girl would
have a hundred pounds over, to "play with,"
as she expressed it to herself.  The other
shares which Mitchison was pledged to obtain
from Genoa would be available within the
next few days, and Joan had made up her
mind what to do with them by and by.
She had had several inspirations since
overhearing snatches of conversation between her
employer and his Italian visitor yesterday
morning, and one of these inspirations
concerned Lady John Bevan.

Lady John was pitied by the old friends
in the old life from which poverty and
misfortune had removed her.  People would
have been glad to be "nice" to her in any
cheap way which did not cost too much
money or trouble, if she had let them.  But
the woman was a proud woman, who still
loved her husband in spite of his guilt, and
she had not cared to go out of her hired
flat in Kensington to be patronised by the
world which had once flattered and fought
for her invitations.  Joan guessed as much
of this as she did not know, and when Lady
John wished her, rather wistfully, a "pleasant
cruise," the girl said suddenly: "Come
along and be my chaperon!  My aunt
Caroline, Uncle Grierson Mordaunt's sister,
came to England with me; but she hates the
sea, and flatly refuses to do any yachting.
I'm not sorry, because she's a prim old
dear, and what I want is to see a little life
and fun.  I've been kept very close till
now, and though I'm of age, I'm only just
out, so I don't know many people, and you
would be sure to meet lots of nice friends of
yours, to whom you'd introduce me.  It's so
foggy and horrid here now; I'm going to
make straight for the Riviera with the *Titania*,
and it will do you good.  Please come."

Lady John could not resist the prospect,
or that "Please," spoken cooingly, with
lovely, pleading eyes and a childlike touch
on her arm.  Besides, she was fond of the
*Titania*, and before she quite knew what
she was doing, she had promised to chaperon
Grierson Mordaunt's niece.

Considering the way in which she was
handicapped by false pretences and
shortness of cash, Joan could not have done
better for herself.  She told Lady John that
she had had a disagreement with the friends
with whom she had been staying, and wished
to be recommended to a hotel for the few
days before they could get off on the *Titania*.
Of course, Lady John invited her to the
flat, and the girl accepted.  She asked her
new chaperon's advice about dressmakers
and milliners for the Riviera outfit, which
must be got together in a hurry.  Lady
John had paid all her own bills after the
crash, with money grudgingly supplied by
relations, and was still in the "good books"
of the tradespeople she had once lavishly
patronised.  Introduced by her as a niece
of the well-known American millionaire, Joan
had unlimited credit to procure unlimited
pretty things.  Everything had to be bought
ready made; and at the end of the week
the steam-yacht *Titania*, with "Miss Jenny
Mordaunt" and Lady John Bevan on board,
was bounding gaily over the bright waters
of the Bay.  A few days later, the *Titania*
made one of a colony of other yachts lying
snugly in Nice harbour.

Now, Joan's wisdom in the choice of a
chaperon justified itself even more pointedly
than when it had been a question of a pilot
among shoals of tradespeople.  Lady John
believed in her young charge, whose
statements concerning her engaging self it had
never occurred to the elder woman to doubt.
Having undertaken the duties of a chaperon,
she was conscientious in carrying them out,
and lost no time in picking up old friendships
which might be valuable to Miss Mordaunt--just
how valuable, or in what way, Lady
John little dreamed.

Not only did she know a number of rich
and titled English folk, who had come out to
spend the cold months at their villas, or in
fashionable hotels, at Nice, Monte Carlo, and
Mentone, but she could claim acquaintance
with various foreign royalties and
personages of high degree.  These latter
especially were delighted to meet the beautiful
American girl, who was so rich and
independent that she travelled about the world
on her own yacht.  It was nobody's business
that the *Titania* was but hired for two months,
since it was Miss Mordaunt's pleasure to
pose as the owner.  The name of the yacht
had been changed, for politic reasons, since
gay Lord John had careered about the
waterways of the world in her; she had been
newly decorated, and the colour of her paint
had undergone a change, therefore she could
pass unrecognised by all save experts.  Joan
and her chaperon kept "open house" on
board.  The luncheon-table was always laid
for twelve, in case any one strolled on in
the morning whom it would be agreeable to
detain.  On fine days--and what days were
not fine on these shores beloved of the sun?--tea
was always served on deck under the
rose-and-white awning; and Russian princes,
Austrian barons and baronesses, French counts
and countesses, with a sprinkling of the
English nobility, came early and stayed
late to drink the Orange Pekoe and eat the
exquisite little cakes provided by the
confiding tradespeople of Nice.  Joan paid for
nothing, and got everything.  Was she not a
great American heiress, and was not the yacht
alone a guarantee of her trustworthiness?

Not even the owners of famous American
yachts lying alongside suspected the girl to
be other than she seemed, though they were
of the world in which Grierson Mordaunt
was prominent.  He was not a man who
made intimate friends, and none of those
who knew him best had any reason to doubt
that he had a pretty niece named Jenny.
Concerning the great Mordaunt himself Joan
kept posted as to his whereabouts.  She read
the papers and followed his movements in
Florida; therefore she felt safe and pursued
her business more or less calmly.

For it was business more than pleasure
which had brought the girl on this adventure,
though she knew how to combine the two.
Her hospitality, her breakfasts, her tea and
cakes, her lavish dinners, were not supplied
to her guests for nothing, though they were
not aware that they were paying save by the
honour of their presence.  When Joan had
established friendly relations with a person
worth cultivating (she abjured all others),
her next step was to drop a careless word
about a wonderful "tip" she had got from
Grierson Mordaunt.  "It's all in the family,"
she would say, laughing, "or he would never
have given it away; and, of course, I mustn't.
He just said to me: 'Buy up a certain
thing while you can get it,' and I did.  My
goodness!  I've got more than I know what
to do with, for, after all, I had more money
than I wanted before.  By and by I shall be
*too* rich.  Mercy!  I'm afraid now of being
married for my money."

Then the hearers, dazzled by this fairy
story, wondered whether they might possibly
ask Miss Mordaunt if they could profit by
the marvellous "tip," and pick up a few
crumbs from her overflowing table.  If Joan
had hawked her wares, no doubt these
people would have fought shy; but as the
object was difficult of attainment and must
be manoeuvred for, according to the way
of the world they struggled for it with
eagerness.  As soon as Joan could decently appear
to understand, in her innocence, what her dear
friends were driving at, she was so
"good-natured" that she volunteered to sell them
a few of her own shares.  The only promise
she exacted in return was that nobody would
boast of the favour granted.  The shares
which she had bought at a low price--not
yet paid--she sold for three times their
face value, sent half the profit to Tommy
Mellis as she got it in, and pocketed her own
half.  She was thus able to pay the tradespeople
who had trusted her, and to lay in coal for
the trips round the coast which the *Titania*
often took with a few distinguished passengers.

The girl could have sung for joy over the
success of her adventure.  In the end she
would cheat nobody; she would make a
decent sum for herself, and meanwhile she
was drinking the intoxicating nectar of
excitement.  She was so happy that when
she had finished her business, sold all her
shares, and the two months for which the
*Titania* was hired were drawing to an end
she longed to stay on.  She was her own
mistress, and could pay her way now--at
least, for awhile, until she had another
stroke of luck, which her confidence in
herself enabled her to count upon as certain.
She and Lady John were having a "good
time," everybody liked them, and she did
not see why this good time should not go
on indefinitely.  Besides, she had promised
to sell the yacht for its owner.  The two
ladies of the *Titania* had invitations for a
month ahead, and one evening were dressed
and waiting for the arrival of an English
bishop, a Roman prince, two American
trust magnates, and a French duchess and
her daughter, when the name of Mr. Grierson
Mordaunt was announced.

Joan's blood rushed to her head, but she
stood up smiling.  "Leave us for a minute,
dear," she breathed to Lady John, who
slipped off to her cabin unsuspectingly.
The girl found herself facing a grizzled,
smooth-shaven man with a prominent chin,
a large nose, and deep eyes of iron grey
which matched his hair and faded skin.

"So you are the young woman who has
been trading on a supposed relationship to
me?" remarked Grierson Mordaunt, looking
her up and down from head to foot.

"We are related--through Adam," replied
Joan, whose lips were dry.  "As for
'trading' on the relationship, I'm proud of it,
and I don't see why you should be ashamed
of me.  I've done nothing to disgrace you."

"What is your game, that you should have
selected my particular branch of the Adam
family?"

"Because I have one of your family
secrets.  If you are going to disown me,
there's no reason why I shouldn't give it away."

"What are you talking about?"

"Clerios.  You aren't ready for the secret
of that deal to come out yet, are you?  I
saw in the paper the other day that you had
denied any intention of taking the Clerio
line into your combine.  It was the same
paper that said you had just returned to
New York from Florida."

"You are an adventuress, my young friend."

"Every seeker of fortune is an adventurer
or an adventuress.  The crime is, failure.
I'm not a criminal, because I am succeeding,
and my success has enabled me to meet my
obligations.  If you don't think that I was
justified in claiming relationship with you
through so remote an ancestor in common
as Adam, you can make the rest of my stay
here very uncomfortable, I admit; and if
you have no fellow-feeling for a beginner, I
suppose you will do it."

"How long do you intend your stay to
be?" inquired Mordaunt grimly, but with
a twinkle in his eye.

"How long do you want it kept dark
about Clerios?"

"A fortnight."

"Then I should like very much, if you
don't mind, to stop here a fortnight."

The great man laughed.  "You've the
pluck of--the Evil One!" he ejaculated.
"I was in Paris, and read about one of my
niece's smart dinner-parties, so I came
on--especially to see you.  Now----"

"Now you are here, won't you stop to one
of the dinner-parties?  Some very nice people
are coming this evening."

"And play the part of fond uncle?  No,
I thank you.  But, by Jove!  I'm hanged if
I don't go away without unmasking you.
You may bless your pretty face and your
smart tongue for that----"

"And the family secret."

"That's part of it, but not all.  I give
you a fortnight's grace.  Mind, not a day
more; and respect the character you've
stolen meanwhile, or the promise doesn't
stand.  This day fortnight you clear out,
and Miss Jenny Mordaunt must never be
heard of again."

"It's a bargain," said Joan.  "By some
other name I shall be as great."

"So long as it's not mine.  Have you done
well with Clerios?"

"Pretty well, thank you.  I was a little
hampered for lack of capital.  I might get
you a few shares here in Nice, if you like;
not cheap, exactly--still, a good deal lower
than they will be a fortnight from now."

"Much obliged.  You needn't trouble
yourself.  But I shall keep my eye on you."

"I shall consider it a compliment," said
Joan, "and try to be worthy of it."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

When he was gone, Joan sank into a
chair and closed her eyes.  It would have
been a comfort to faint, but the first guest
arrived at that moment, and she rose to them
and to the occasion.  The dinner was a great
success, and every one was grieved to hear
that the *Titania* was due to steam away--for
a destination unmentioned--in a fortnight.




CHAPTER V--The Landlady at Woburn Place
=======================================

Joan had no difficulty in selling *Titania*
for Lady John Bevan, to a Swiss
millionaire, the proprietor of a popular
chocolate, who was disporting himself on
the Riviera that winter.  The yacht was
to be delivered to him at Corsica, so that
when the charming Miss Mordaunt and her
chaperon steamed out of Nice Harbour, none
of those who bade them farewell needed to
know that *Titania* was to be disposed of.  If
they found out afterwards, it did not matter
much to Joan.  After her the Deluge.

The girl had grown fond of Lady John
Bevan, and could not bear to exchange her
friend's warm affection and gratitude for
contempt.  Therefore she made up a pretty
little fiction about an unexpected summons
to America, and parted from Lady John,
with mutual regret, at Ajaccio.  Joan's one
grief in this connexion was that Miss
Mordaunt would scarcely be able to keep her
promise to write from New York; but this
grief was only one of the rain-drops in that
"deluge" which had to fall after the
vanishing of the American heiress.

If she had been prudent, Joan might have
come out of this adventure with a small
fortune after sending Tommy Mellis his
share of the spoil; but she had been
intoxicated with success, and had spent lavishly,
as money came from the sale of the shares.
She made a good commission on the "deal"
with the yacht, which she sold for a somewhat
larger sum than Lady John had asked; but
where a less generous young person might
have closed the episode with thousands,
Joan Carthew had only hundreds.  She had
also, however, many smart dresses, some
jewellery, and the memory of an exciting
experience.  Besides, the money she kept
had been got easily, in addition to the joy
of her adventure.

It had been in the girl's mind, perhaps,
that she might, as Miss Mordaunt, capture a
fortune and a title; but in this regard, and
this only, the episode of the *Titania* had
proved a failure.  She had had plenty of
proposals, to be sure; but the men who
were rich were either too old, too ugly, or
too vulgar to suit the fastidious young woman
who called the world her oyster; and the
titles laid at her feet were all sadly in need
of the gilding which a genuine American
heiress might have supplied for the sake of
becoming a Russian princess or a French *duchesse*.

So Miss Mordaunt disappeared from the
brilliant world where she had glittered like
a star; and at about the same time, Miss
Joan Carthew (who had nothing to conceal)
appeared at her old quarters in Woburn
Place.  She went back there for two reasons;
indeed, Joan had bought her experience of
life too dearly to do anything without a
reason.  The first was because she wished
to lie hid for awhile, spending no unnecessary
money until the twilight of uncertainty
should brighten into the dawn of inspiration
and show her the next step on the ladder
which she was determined to mount.  The
second reason was that the landlady--a quite
exceptional person for a landlady--had been
kind, and Joan desired to reward her.

If the girl had not gone back to Woburn
Place, her whole future might have been
different.  But--she did go back, and arrived
in the midst of a crisis.  Since Joan had
vanished, some months ago, bad luck had
come into the house and finally opened the
door for the bailiff.

Joan found the landlady in tears; but to
explain the fulness of the girl's sympathy,
the landlady must be described.

In the first place, she *was* a lady; and she
was young and pretty, though a widow.  Her
husband had been the Honourable Richard
Fitzpatrick, the scapegrace son of a penniless
Irish viscount.  "Dishonourable Dick," as
he was sometimes nicknamed behind his
back, had gone to California to make his
fortune, had naturally failed, but had
succeeded in marrying an exceedingly pretty
girl, an orphan, with ten thousand pounds of
her own.  He had brought her to England,
had spent most of her money on the
race-course, and would have spent the rest, had
it not occurred to him that it would be good
sport to do a little fighting in South Africa.
He had volunteered, and soon after died of
enteric.

Meanwhile, the Honourable Mrs. Fitzpatrick
was at a boarding-house in Woburn
Place, where the landlord and landlady were
so kind to her that she gladly lent them
several hundred pounds, not knowing yet
that she had only a few other hundreds left
out of her little fortune.

Suddenly the blow fell.  Within three days
Marian Fitzpatrick learned that she was a
widow, that her dead husband had employed
the short interval of their married life in
getting rid of almost everything she had;
and that, her landlord and landlady being
bankrupt, she could not hope for the return
of the three-hundred-pound loan she had
made them.

It was finally arranged, as the best thing
to be done, that she should take over the
lease of the boarding-house and try to get
back what she had lost, by "running" the
establishment herself.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick had just shouldered this
somewhat incongruous burden, when Joan
Carthew had been attracted to the house by
the brightness of the gilt lettering over the
door, and the pretty, fresh curtains in the
windows.  Joan was nineteen, and Marian
Fitzpatrick twenty-three.  The two had been
drawn to one another with the first meeting
of their eyes.  When, after a few weeks'
acquaintance, the girl had been told the
young widow's story, her interest and
sympathy were keenly aroused, for Joan's heart
was not hard except to the rich, most of whom
she conceived to be less deserving, if more
fortunate, than herself.  Now, when she came
back fresh from her triumphant campaign
on the *Côte d'Azur*, to hear that things
had gone from bad to worse, all the latent
chivalry in her really generous nature was
aroused.

Joan was tall as a young goddess brought
up on the heights of Olympus, instead of
at a French boarding-school.  Despite the
hardships and wretchedness of her childhood,
she was strong in body and mind and spirit,
with the strength of perfect nerves and a
splendid vitality.  Marian Fitzpatrick, broken
by disappointment, and worn by months of
anxiety, was fragile and white as a lily which
has been bent by savage storms, and the
sight of her small, pale face and big, sad,
brown eyes fired the girl with an almost
fierce determination to assume the *rôle* of
protector.

"I've got money," she reflected, in mental
defiance of the Fate with whom she had
waged war since childish days, "and I can
make more when this is gone.  I suppose I'm
a fool, but I don't care a rap.  I'm going to
help Marian Fitzpatrick, and perhaps make
her fortune, as I mean to make my own.  But
just for the present, mine can wait, and hers
can't."

Aloud, she asked Marian what sum would
tide her over present difficulties.  Two
hundred and fifty pounds, it appeared, were
needed.  Joan promptly volunteered to lend,
on one condition, but she was cut short before
she had time to name it.

"Condition or no condition, you dear
girl, I can't let you do it," sobbed Marian.
"I'm perfectly sure I could never pay.  I'm
in a quicksand and bound to sink.  Nobody
can pull me out."

"I can," said Joan; "and in doing it, I'll
show you how to pay me.  You just listen
to what I have to say, and don't interrupt.
When I get an inspiration, I tell you, it's
worth hearing, and I've got one now.  What
I want you to do is to give up trying to manage
this house.  You're too young and pretty
and soft-hearted for a landlady, and you
haven't the talent for it, though you have
plenty in other ways, and one is, to be
charming.  My inspiration will show you how best
to utilise that talent."

Then Joan talked on, and at first Marian
was shocked and horrified; but in the end the
force of the girl's extraordinary magnetism
and self-confidence subdued her.  She ceased
to protest.  She even laughed, and a stain
of rose colour came back to her cheeks.  It
would be very awful and alarming, and
perhaps wicked, to do what Joan Carthew
proposed, but it would be tremendously exciting
and interesting; and there was enough
youthful love of mischief left in her to enjoy
an adventure with a kind of fearful joy,
especially when all the responsibility was
shouldered by another stronger than herself.

The first thing to do towards the carrying
out of the great plan was to get some one
to manage the boarding-house in Mrs. Fitzpatrick's
place.  This was difficult, for
competent and honest managers, male or female,
were not to be found at registry-offices, like
cooks; but Joan was (or thought she was)
equal to this emergency as well as others.
She sorted out from the dismal rag-bag of
her early Brighton experiences the memory
of a wonderful woman who had done
something to make life tolerable for her when she
was the forlorn drudge of Mrs. Boyle's
lodging-house at 12, Seafoam Terrace.

This wonderful woman had been one of
two sisters who kept a rival lodging-house in
Seafoam Terrace.  The Misses Witt owned
the place, consequently it was not improbable
that they were still to be found there, after
these seven years; and as they had not always
agreed together, it seemed possible that the
younger Miss Witt (the clever and nice one,
who had given occasional cakes and bulls'-eyes
to Joan in those bad old days) might be
prevailed upon to accept an independent
position, with a salary, in London.

Joan had always promised herself that,
when she was rich and prosperous, she would
sweep into the house of her bondage like a
young princess, and bestow favours upon
little Minnie Boyle, whom she had loved.
But Lady Thorndyke had not wished her
adopted daughter even to remember the sordid
past; and after the death of her benefactress,
the girl had not until lately been in a
position to undertake the *rôle* of fairy princess.
Even now, to be sure, she was not rich, but
she swam on the tide of success, and she had
at least the air of dazzling prosperity.  She
dressed herself in a way to make Mrs. Boyle
grovel, and bought a first-class ticket, one
Friday afternoon, for Brighton.  She took her
seat in an empty carriage, and hardly had she
opened a magazine when a man got in.  It was
George Gallon; and if he had wished to get
out again on recognising his travelling
companion, there would not have been time for
him to do so, as at that moment the train
began to move out of the station.

These two had not seen each other since
the eventful morning when Joan had resigned
her position as Mr. Gallon's secretary.  She
was not sure whether she were sorry or glad
to see him now, but the situation had its
dramatic element.  George spoke stiffly, and
Joan responded with malicious cordiality.
Knowing nothing of her identity with
Grierson Mordaunt's brilliant niece, long pent-up
curiosity forced the man to ask questions as
to where she had been and what she had been
doing.

"I have an interest in a London boarding-house,
and am going to Brighton to try and
engage a manageress," Joan deigned to
reply, with a twinkle under her long eyelashes.
"I forgot that you would of course have kept
on the old place at Brighton.  I suppose
you are going down for the week-end?"

George admitted grimly that this was the
case, and as Joan would give only tantalising
glimpses of her doings in the last few months,
and seemed inclined to put impish questions
about the office she had left, he took refuge in
a newspaper.  Joan calmly read her magazine,
and not another word was exchanged until
the train had actually come to a stop in the
Brighton station.  "Oh! by the way," the
girl exclaimed then, as if on a sudden thought.
"It was I who got hold of those Clerios I
believe you had an idea of buying in so very
cheap.  I knew you could afford to pay well
if you wanted them.  One gets these little
tips, you know, in an office like yours.  That's
why I snapped at your two pounds a week.
Good-bye.  I hope you'll enjoy the sea air
at dear Brighton."

Before George Gallon could find breath to
answer, she was gone, and he was left to
anathematise the hand-luggage which must
be given to a porter.  By the time it was
disposed of, the impertinent young woman
had disappeared.  Yet there is a difference
between disappearing and escaping.  Joan's little
impulsive stab had made Gallon more her
enemy than ever, and perhaps the day might
come when she would have to regret the
small satisfaction of the moment.

But she had no thought of future perils,
and drove in the gayest of moods to Seafoam
Terrace, where she stopped her cab before
the door of No. 12.  There, however, she
met disappointment.  Her first inquiry was
answered by the news that Mrs. Boyle had
died of influenza in the winter, and the house
had passed into other hands.  The servant
could tell her nothing of Minnie; but the
new mistress called down from over the
baluster, where she had been listening to the
conversation, that she believed the little girl
had been taken in by the two Misses Witt
next door.

Death had stolen from Joan a gratification
of which she had dreamed for years.  Mrs. Boyle
could never now be forced to regret
past unkindnesses to the young princess
who had emerged like a splendid butterfly
from a despised chrysalis; but Minnie was
left, and Joan had been genuinely fond of
Minnie.  She had therefore a double
incentive in hurrying to the house next door.

The nice Miss Witt herself answered the
ring, and Joan had a few words with her alone.
She would be delighted to accept a good
position in London; and it was true that
Minnie Boyle was there.  She had taken
compassion on the child, who was as penniless
and friendless as Joan had been when last in
Seafoam Terrace; but the elder Miss Witt
wished to send the little girl to an orphanage,
and the difference of opinion, and Minnie's
presence in the house, led to constant
discussion.  "The only trouble is," said the
kindly woman, "that if I leave, sister will
send the little creature away."

"She won't, because I shall take Minnie
off her hands," retorted Joan, with the
promptness of a sudden decision.  "Do let
me see the poor pet."

Minnie was nine years old, so small that
she did not look more than six, and so
pathetically pretty that Joan saw at once how she
might be fitted into the great plan.  She
could do even more for the child now than
she had expected to do; and because the little
one was poor and alone in the world, as she
herself had been, Joan's heart grew more than
ever warm to her playmate of the past.  She
made friends with Minnie, who had
completely forgotten her, and so bewitched the
child with her beauty, her kindness, and her
smart clothes that Minnie was enchanted with
the prospect of going away with such a grand
young lady.

"I used to know some nice fairy stories
when I was very, very little," said the child.
"This is like one of them."

"I told you those fairy stories," returned
Joan.  "Now I am going to make them come true."




CHAPTER VI--The Tenants of Roseneath Park
=========================================

About the first of May, when Cornwall
was at its loveliest, everybody within
twenty miles of Toragel (a village famed for
its beauty and antiquity, as artists and
tourists know) was delighted to hear that
Lord Trelinnen's place was let at last, and
to most desirable tenants.  Lord
Trelinnen was elderly, and too poor to live at
Roseneath Park, therefore Toragel had long
ceased to be interested in him; but it was
intensely interested in the new people, despite
the fact that their advent was the second
excitement which had stirred the fortunate
village within the last year or two.

The first had been the home-coming of
Sir Anthony Pendered, the richest man in
the county, who had volunteered for the
Boer war, raised a regiment, and, when peace
was declared, had come back to Torr Court
covered with honours.  He was only a knight,
and had been given his title because of a
valuable new explosive which he had
discovered and made practicable.  He had grown
enormously rich through his various
inventions, and, after an adventurous life of some
thirty-eight years, had bought a handsome
place near his native village, Toragel.  At
first the county had looked at him askance,
but the South African affair had settled all
aristocratic doubts in his favour.  About
a year before the letting of Roseneath Park
he had been enthusiastically received by all
classes, and was still a hero in everybody's
eyes; nevertheless, the first excitement had
had time to die down, and the county people
and the "best society" of the village united
with more or less hidden eagerness to know
what poor old Lord Trelinnen's tenants would
be like.

The Trelinnen pew in the pretty church of
Toragel was next to that where Sir Anthony
Pendered was usually (and his maiden sister
always) to be seen on Sunday mornings.
The first Sunday after the new people's
arrival, the church was full; but service
began, and still the Trelinnen pew was empty.
After all, the tenants of Roseneath Park
(whom nobody had seen yet) had come only
yesterday.  Perhaps they would not appear
till next Sunday; but just as the congregation
was sadly resigning itself to this
conclusion, there was a slight rustle at the door.
The first hymn was being sung, therefore
eyes were able to turn without too much
levity; and it is wonderful how much and
how far an eye can see by turning almost
imperceptibly, particularly if it be the eye of
a woman.

Two ladies and a little girl were shown to
the Trelinnen pew.  Both ladies were young;
the elder could not have been more than
twenty-three, the younger looked scarcely
nineteen.  Both were in half-mourning; both
were beautiful.  They were, in fact, no other
than the Honourable Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and
her sisters, Miss Mercy and Mary Milton,
these latter being known in other circles as
Joan Carthew and little Minnie Boyle.

The child, who appeared to be about six
years old, was charmingly dressed, and
exemplarily good during the service.  As for
her elders, they were almost aggravatingly
devout, scarcely raising their eyes from
their prayer-books, and never glancing
about at their neighbours, not even at Sir
Anthony Pendered, who looked at the two
more than he had ever been known to look
at any other women.  This was saying a
good deal, because he was by no means a
misanthrope, although he was forty and had
contrived to remain a bachelor.  It was
rumoured that he wished to marry, if he
could find a wife to suit him, though
meanwhile he was content enough with the society
of his sister, who was far from encouraging
any matrimonial aspirations.

When Marian and Joan and Minnie were
driven back to Roseneath Park (in the perfect
victoria and by the splendid horses which
advertised the solid bank balance they did
not possess), the two "elder sisters" talked
over their impressions.

Minnie played with a French doll, that
somewhat resembled herself in her new white
frock, with her quantities of yellow hair.
Marian, leaning back on a cushioned sofa,
waiting for the luncheon-gong to sound,
was prettier and more distinguished-looking
than she had ever been; while Joan, as
Mercy Milton, would scarcely have been
recognised by those who knew her best.
Marian's maiden name had really been Milton,
and "Mercy" had been selected to fit the
picture for which Joan had chosen to sit.
Her beautiful, gold-brown hair was parted
meekly in the middle and brought down over
the ears, finishing with a simple coil in the
nape of her white neck.  She was dressed as
plainly as a young nun, and had the air of
qualifying for a saint.

"Well, dear, what did you think of him?"
she inquired of Marian.

"Of whom?" asked Mrs. Fitzpatrick, blushing.

"Oh, if you are going to be innocent!
Well, then, of the distinguished being
whose name and qualifications I showed you
in the *Mayfair Budget* a few days after I
got back to England and you.  The *eligible
parti*, in fact, whose residence near Toragel
is responsible for our choice of abode."

"Joan!  *Don't* put it like that!"

"'Mercy,' if you please, not Joan.  And I've
found out exactly what I wanted to know.
Your reception of my brutal frankness has
shown me that you like him.  So far, so good."

"I may like him, but that won't help your
plan.  Oh, Jo--Mercy, I mean, I do feel
such a wretch!  That man looks so honest
and frank and nice, and he could hardly take
his eyes off you in church.  If he knew what
frauds we are!"

"You are not a fraud, and it is you with
whom he is concerned, or it will be, as I'll
soon show him, if necessary.  Your name *is*
Fitzpatrick; you are a widow; we are
sisters--in affection.  You haven't a fib to
tell; you've only got to be charming."

"But it's you he admires.  I told you it
would be so.  If one of us is to be Lady----"

"'Sh!" said Joan; and the gong boomed
musically for lunch.

Had it not been for the existence of innocent
little Minnie, the county might not have
accepted the lovely sisters as readily as it did.
Joan had thought of that, as she thought of
most things; and Minnie, the *protégée* of
charity, was distinctly an asset.  "A very
good prop," as Joan mentally called her, in
theatrical slang which she had learned,
perhaps, from her long-vanished mother.

The presence of Minnie in the feminine
household gave a kind of pathetic, domestic
grace, which appealed even to tradespeople;
and tradespeople were extremely important
in Joan's calculations.

She had obtained credentials, upon starting
on her new career, in a characteristic way.
Miss Jenny Mordaunt wrote to Lady John
Bevan, asking for a letter of introduction
for a great friend of hers, the Honourable
Mrs. Fitzpatrick, to the solicitors who had
charge of Lord Trelinnen's affairs, as
Mrs. Fitzpatrick wanted to take Roseneath Park.
Jenny Mordaunt's late chaperon gladly
managed this.  Mrs. Fitzpatrick called upon
her, and Lady John was charmed.  She had
known the "Dishonourable Dick" slightly,
years ago, had heard that he had married
an heiress, and marvelled now that he had
been tolerated by so sweet a creature as
this.  Lady John offered one or two letters
of introduction to old friends in Cornwall,
and they were gratefully accepted.  As the
friends were not intimate, and as Lady John
detested the country, except when hunting or
shooting was in question, there was little
danger that she would inopportunely appear
on the scene and recognise the saintly Mercy
Milton as the late Miss Mordaunt.

Everybody called on the fair, lilylike
young widow and her very modest, retiring,
unmarried sister--everybody, that is, with
the exception of Miss Pendered, who pleaded,
when her brother urged, that she was too
much of an invalid to call on new people.
Soon, however, he boldly went by himself,
excusing his sister with some tale of
rheumatism which she would have indignantly
resented.  Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mercy Milton
were surrounded with other visitors when Sir
Anthony Pendered was announced, and he
was just in time to hear a glowing account of
the orphaned sisters' "dear old California
home," which Joan had learned by heart,
partly from Marian's reminiscences, partly
from a book.

.. _`"Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mercy Milton were surrounded by other visitors when Sir Anthony Pendered was announced."`:

.. figure:: images/img-116.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mercy Milton were surrounded by other visitors when Sir Anthony Pendered was announced."

   "Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mercy Milton were surrounded by other visitors when Sir Anthony Pendered was announced."


"When father and mother died, little
Minnie and I were the loneliest creatures
you can imagine," the gentle Mercy was
saying.  "Dear Marian had just lost her
husband, and so she wrote for us to join her.
It is so nice having a home in the country
again.  We both felt we couldn't be happy
without one, and we chose Cornwall because
we thought it the loveliest county in England.
We are very glad we did, now, for everybody
has been *so* kind."

She might have added "and the trades-people
*so* trusting"; but on that subject she
was silent, though she intended that they
should go on trusting indefinitely.  Indeed,
thus far the scheme worked almost too easily
to be interesting.

Sir Anthony Pendered outstayed the other
visitors, and he stopped unconscionably long
for a first call; but that was the fault of his
hostesses, who made themselves so charming
that the man lost count of time--and perhaps
lost his head a little, also.  At first it seemed
that Marian's impression was right, and that,
despite Mercy's retiring ways, it was the young
girl who attracted him.  This made Marian
secretly sad; for when she had seen Sir
Anthony looking up from his prayer-book in
the adjoining pew, she had said in her heart,
with a sigh: "How good he would be to a
woman!  How he would pet her and take
care of her!  To be his wife would be very
different from----" but she had guiltily
broken short that sentence in the midst.

Persuaded and fired by Joan, she had
entered into this adventure.  She had even
laughed when Joan selected the neighbourhood
of Toragel because a Society paper
announced the advent of a particularly
desirable bachelor.  "You will be the
prettiest and nicest woman in the county, of
course; therefore, he will fall in love with
you and propose.  He will marry you; you
will live happy ever after; and you will be
able to pay all the debts that we shall have
run up in the process of securing him," the
girl had remarked.  But now, when the
"desirable bachelor" had become a living
entity, and she felt her heart yearning
towards him, Marian's conscience grew sore.
Still, though she told herself that she could
not carry out the plan and try to win Sir
Anthony Pendered, it was a blow to see him
prefer Joan.

The symptoms of his admiration were
equally displeasing to the girl.  She was
deliberately effacing herself for this episode;
while it lasted, she was to be merely the
"power behind the throne."  Knowing that
she was more strikingly beautiful and brilliant
than Marian Fitzpatrick, she had studied
how to reduce her fascinations, that Marian
might outshine her.  Evidently she had not
entirely succeeded; but during that first
call of Sir Anthony's, she quickly,
surreptitiously changed a diamond-ring from her
right hand to the "engaged" finger of her
left, flourished the newly adorned member
under his eyes, and spoke, with a conscious
simper, of "going back some day to California
to live."  Sir Anthony did not misunderstand,
and as he had not yet tumbled over
the brink of that precipice whence a man falls
into love, he readjusted his inclinations.
After all, Mrs. Fitzpatrick was as pretty,
he thought, and certainly more sympathetic.
He was glad that Minnie was her sister, and
not her child.  Though he had always said
he would not care to marry a widow, this
case was different from any that he had
imagined, for Mrs. Fitzpatrick had only been
married a year or two when her husband died,
and she had soon awakened from her girlish
fancy for the man--so Miss Milton had
guilelessly confided to him.

Thanks to this, and much further
"guilelessness" of the same kind on the part of
the meek maiden, Sir Anthony Pendered
discovered, before the sisters had been for many
weeks tenants of Roseneath Park, that he
was deeply in love with Marian Fitzpatrick.
Accordingly, he proposed one June afternoon,
amid the ruins of a storied castle overhanging
the sea.  Joan had got up a picnic to this
place expressly to give him the opportunity
which she felt triumphantly sure he was
seeking, and she was naturally annoyed with
Marian when she discovered that the young
widow had asked for "time to think it over."

"You little idiot!  Why didn't you fall
into his arms and say 'Yes--yes--*yes*'?"
the girl demanded, in Marian's bedroom, when
they had come home towards evening.

"Because I love him, and because I'm a
fraud!" exclaimed Marian.  "Oh!  I know
what you must think of me.  I haven't
played straight with you, either.  You've
done everything for me.  I was to make this
match; and the rent of this place, and our
horses and carriages, the payment of all the
tradespeople on whom we've been practically
living, depend on my catching the splendid
'fish' you've landed for me.  You've lent me
a lot of money; and what you had left when
we came here, you've been spending----"

"I've spread it like very thin butter on
very thick bread, to make the hundreds look
like thousands.  To carry off a big *coup* like
this, one must have *some* ready money,"
broke in Joan, with a queer little smile at
her own cleverness, and the thought of where
it would land her if Marian's "conscientious
scruples" refused to be put to sleep.  "We
*shall* be in rather a scrape if you won't marry
Sir Anthony--and you're made for each other,
too.  But never mind, we shall get out of it
somehow.  At worst, we can disappear."

"And leave everything unpaid, and let him
and everybody know we are adventuresses!"
exclaimed Marian, breaking into tears.

"Don't cry, dear; don't worry; and don't
decide anything," said Joan.  "I have an idea."

She induced Marian to go to bed and nurse
the violent headache which the battle between
heart and conscience had brought on.  When
it was certain that Mrs. Fitzpatrick would
not appear again that evening, she sent a
little note by hand to Sir Anthony, as
fortunately Torr Count was the next estate to
Roseneath Park.  "Do come over at once.
It is very important that I should see you,"
wrote the decorous Mercy.

Sir Anthony Pendered was in the midst of
dinner when the communication arrived,
and to his sister's disgust he begged her to
excuse him, as it was necessary to go out
immediately on business.

"That adventuress has sent for you!"
Ellen Pendered fiercely exclaimed.  "She
has got you completely in her net.  I don't
believe those three are sisters.  They don't
look in the least alike, and it is all very well
to say an ignorant nurse spoiled the child's
accent.  I have heard her talk more like
a Cockney than a Californian.  I tell you
there is something wrong, very wrong, about
them all."

"I advise you not to tell any one else,
then," answered Anthony Pendered furiously--"that
is, unless you wish to break off for
ever with me.  This afternoon I asked the
'adventuress,' as you dare to call her, to
marry me, and she refused.  I had to plead
before she would even promise to think it
over."  With this he left his sister also to
"think it over," and decide that, between two
evils, it might be wise to choose the less.

Marian's lover could not guess why Marian's
younger sister had sent for him, and his
anxiety increased when he saw the gravity
of the girl's face.

"Is Mar--is Mrs. Fitzpatrick ill?" he stammered.

"A little, because she is unhappy; but you
can make her well again--if you choose,"
replied Joan inscrutably.

"Of course I choose!" he almost indignantly protested.

"Wait," said she, "and listen to what I
have to say.  Poor Marian is the victim of
her own goodness and sweet nature; and
because she swore to me that she would never
tell the story of our past, she feels it would be
wrong to marry you.  I cannot let her suffer
for Minnie and me, so I am now going to tell
you, myself.  But on this condition--if you
do decide that you want her for your wife in
spite of all, you will never once mention the
subject to Marian.  I will inform her that
you know the truth and that she is not to
speak of it to you.  Is that a bargain?"

"Yes; but you needn't tell me the story
unless you like.  I'm sure *she* is not to blame
for anything," replied the man, who was now
thoroughly in love with Marian, even to the
point of wondering what he had ever seen in
Mercy.

"Certainly it is not she; but as she thinks
it is, it amounts to the same thing.  The
facts are these: Dear, good Marian took
pity on Minnie and me in a London boarding-house,
where we chanced to meet after her
widowhood.  She had decided to come here
to live, because she longed for the country,
but had not meant to take as grand a house
as this, as she had just found out that her
dead husband had spent most of her fortune.
I implored her to bring Minnie and me to her
new home, and give me a good chance of
getting into society by introducing us as
her sisters.  She was rather a 'swell'--at
least, she had married an 'Honourable,' and
we were nobodies.  The poor darling finally
consented to handicap herself with us.  I
had a little money, too, which had--er--come
to me through a lucky investment, and
I was so anxious to live at Roseneath Park
that I made Marian (who is most unbusiness-like)
believe that together we would have
enough to take the place.  I am supposed to
be practical, and so the management of
everything has been left to me.  I have paid
scarcely anything, except the servants' wages,
so you see what I have brought my poor
Marian down to.  The only atonement I
can make is to try and save her happiness
by confessing my wrongdoing to you and
begging that you will not visit it on her."

"I certainly will not do that," said Sir
Anthony Pendered quickly.  "As you say, her
one fault has been a kindness of heart almost
amounting to weakness, which, in my eyes,
makes her more lovable than ever.  As for
the loss of her money, that matters nothing
to me.  I have more than I want, and----"

"You'll pay everything, without betraying
me to Marian?  Oh!  I don't deserve it; but
*do* say you will do that, and I will relieve you
of my presence near your *fiancée* as soon as
possible, as a reward.  I know that, after
what I have told you, it would be an
embarrassment to you to see me with Marian,
because as you are *very* chivalrous, you could
not let people know I was not really her
sister.  I will disappear, and every one can
think I have been suddenly called out to
my Californian lover to be married."

"Doesn't he exist?" questioned Sir
Anthony, looking at her "engaged" finger
and thinking of the matrimonial schemes
she had just confessed.

"Not in California.  But as I haven't been
a success here, I may decide to be true to
the person who gave me this ring."  (She
had bought it herself.)  "Now that I've
promised to go out of Marian's life for ever,
you'll guard her happiness by seeing that
everything is straightened here--financially?"

"I shall be only too delighted, if you will
tell me how to manage it without my name
appearing in the matter."

"We--ll, if you'd trust the money to me,
I'd use it honestly to pay our debts, and give
you all the receipts."

"So it shall be."

"You're a--a brick, Sir Anthony.  The
only difficulty left then is about poor little
Minnie, of whom Marian is really very fond.
People might gossip if Marian let her youngest
sister go back to California with me; for as
we are supposed to be so nearly related,
surely it would be better to save a scandal and
let--well, let sleeping sisters lie?"

"If Marian is truly fond of Minnie, there
will be plenty of room for the child at Torr
Court, and she will be welcome to stay there,
as far as I am concerned.  I must say,
Miss--er--Milton, that I think the child will be
better off under our guardianship than in
the care of her real sister."

"You *are* good, and I quite agree with you,"
responded Joan meekly, far from resenting
his look of stern reproach.  "When you've
trusted me with that money to pay things,
and I hand you the receipts, I'll hand you
also a written undertaking never to trouble
you or--Lady Pendered.  You would like
me to do that, wouldn't you?"

"I--er--perhaps something of the kind
might be advisable," murmured Sir Anthony.

When he had gone, the girl chuckled and
clapped her hands.  Then she ran to a
looking-glass.  "You're not exactly stupid,
my dear," she apostrophised her saintly
reflection.  "You've provided splendidly for
Marian and you've saved her sensitive
conscience.  *Her* slate is clean.  As for Minnie,
she will be all right until the time comes,
if it ever does, that you can do better for her.
As for yourself--well, you can leave Marian
a couple of hundred for pocket-money, and
still get out of this with something on which
to start again.  You've finished with Mercy
Milton, thank goodness! and--it *will* be a
relief to do your hair another way."

Two days later, Joan Carthew had turned
her back upon Toragel, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick's
engagement to Sir Anthony Pendered was
announced.




CHAPTER VII--The Woman Who Knew
===============================

Joan went straight from Cornwall to
London and the Bloomsbury boarding-house
in which some of her curiously earned
money was invested.  All was to begin
over again now; but to the girl this idea
brought inspiration rather than discouragement,
for the world was still her oyster, if
she could open it, and experience had already
taught her some dexterity in the use of the
knife.  At this house in Woburn Place
she had the right to live without paying,
while she "looked round," and Miss Witt,
who owed her present position to Joan, was
only too delighted to welcome her benefactress.

The place was doing well, and the corner
of difficulty had been turned; this was the
news the manager-housekeeper had to give
Joan.  Every room but one was full, and so
far the boarders seemed to be "good pay,"
with perhaps a single exception.

"There's only the little top floor back
that's empty," cheerfully went on Miss Witt.
"Of course, I will take that and give you mine."

"You'll do nothing of the sort, my dear
woman," said Joan.  "I like running up
and down stairs.  It does me good.  Besides,
I'd rather be at the back.  There's a tree,
or something that once tried hard to be a
tree, to look at, as I know well, for the room
used to be mine; so there's no use talking
any more about that matter--it's settled.
You stay where you are, and I will rise, like
cream, to the top.  Now tell me about
this doubtful person you are afraid won't
pay.  Is it a man or a woman?"

"A woman," replied Miss Witt, "and
one of the strangest beings I ever saw.  It
is a great comfort to me that you are here,
miss, for you can decide what is to be done
about her.  She hasn't paid her board for a
fortnight, but she keeps pleading that as
soon as she is well, and can go out, she will
get remittances which have been delayed."

"Oh, she is ill, then?"

"So she says.  But I'm not sure, miss,
it isn't just an excuse to work upon my
compassion, for why should she have to go
out for remittances?  She stops in her room,
lying upon a sofa, and makes a deal of bother
with her meals being carried up so many
pairs of stairs, though it's hardly worth
while her having them at all, she eats so
little.  Yet she doesn't look a bit different
from what she did when she was supposed
to be well and going about as much like
anybody else as one of her sort could *ever* do."

"What do you mean?" asked Joan,
whose curiosity was fired.

"Only that she is, and was, more a ghost
than a human being, with her great, hollow,
black eyes, like burning coals, set deep under
her thick eyebrows and overhanging
forehead; with her thin cheeks--why, miss,
they almost meet in the middle--her yellow-white
skin, her tall, gliding figure and stealthy
way of walking, so that you never hear a
sound till she's at your back."

"Queer kind of boarder," commented Joan.

"That she is, miss; and when she applied
for a room, I would have said we were full
up, but in those days we had several of our
best rooms empty, and, strange as she was,
her clothes were so good, and the luggage
on the four-wheeler waiting outside was so
promising, as you might say, that it did
seem a pity to send away two guineas a
week because Providence had given it a
scarecrow face.  So I showed her the best
back room on the top floor----"

"Next to mine," cut in Joan.

"If you will have it so, miss; and there
she's been for the last six weeks, not having
paid a penny since the end of the first month."

"What is the ghost's name and age?"
the girl went on with her catechism.

"Her name, if one was to take her word,
which I'm far from being certain of, is
Mrs. Gone; and as for her age, miss, she might
be almost anywhere between fifty and a
hundred."

"What a clever old lady!" laughed the
girl.  "Well, we can't turn the poor wretch
away while she's ill, if she is ill, can we?  I
know too well what it is to be alone in the
world and down on your luck, to be hard
on anybody else, especially a woman.  We
must give Mrs. Gone the benefit of the doubt
for a little while.  But your description
has quite interested me; I should like to see
this ghost who doesn't walk."

"The house is the same as yours, miss,"
said Miss Witt.  "You have the right to
go into her room at any time, more
particularly as she hasn't paid for it."

"Perhaps I'll carry up her dinner this
evening, by way of an excuse," returned
Joan--"if you think she could bear the
shock of seeing a strange face."

Upon this, Miss Witt, who adored the
girl, protested that, in her opinion, the sight
of such a face could only be a pleasure to
any person and in any circumstances.  Joan
laughed at the compliment, but she did not
forget her intention.  Mrs. Gone's meals were
usually taken up a few minutes before the
gong summoned the guests to the dining-room,
because it was easier to spare a servant
then than later, and it was just after the
dressing-bell had rung that the girl knocked
at the "ghost's" door.

Joan was surprised to find her heart
quickening its beats as she waited for a
bidding to "Come in!"  One would think
that a sight of this old woman who would
not pay her board was an exciting event!
She smiled at herself, but the smile faded
as she threw open the door in answer to a
faint murmur on the other side.  Miss Witt's
sketch of Mrs. Gone had not been an exaggeration.

There she lay on a sofa by the window,
her face gleaming white in the twilight;
and it was a wonderful face.  A shiver went
creeping up and down Joan's spine, as a flame
leaped out from the shadowy hollows of
two sunken eyes to hers.

"This woman has been some one in particular--some
one extraordinary," the girl thought
quickly; and as politely as if she had
addressed a duchess, she explained her intrusion.
"The servants were busy, and I offered
to carry up your dinner," Joan said.  "I
arrived only to-day; and as Miss Witt
looks upon me as a sort of proprietor, she
told me how ill you have been.  I hope
you are better."

The old woman with the strange face
looked steadily at the beautiful girl in the
pretty, simple, evening frock which was to
grace the boarding-house dinner.  "Did Miss
Witt tell you nothing else?" she asked, in a
voice which would have made the fortune
of a tragic actress in the death scene of some
aged queen.

"She told me that she was afraid you
were in trouble," promptly answered Joan,
who had her own way of dressing the truth.
By this time the girl had entered the room,
set the tray on a table near the sofa, and
taking a rose from her bodice, laid it on
the pile of plates.  This she did on the
impulse of the moment, not with a preconceived
idea of effect, and she was rewarded
by a slight softening of the tense muscles
round the once handsome mouth.

"I hope you like roses?" she asked.

"Yes," Mrs. Gone answered brusquely.
"Why do you give it to me?"

"Because I'm sorry you are ill, and
perhaps lonely," said Joan, able for once to
account for an action without a single mental
reserve.  "I have had a good deal of worry
in my life, and can sympathise with others,
as I told Miss Witt when she spoke of you.
One reason why I came was to say that you
needn't distress yourself about your indebtedness
to this house.  Try to get well, and
pay at your convenience.  You shall not be pressed."

Joan had not meant to say all this when
she arranged to have a sight of Mrs. Gone.
She had merely wished to satisfy her
curiosity; but now she felt impelled to utter
these words of encouragement--why, she
did not know, for she had not conceived
any sudden fancy for the sinister old woman.
On the contrary, the white face, with its
burning eyes and secretive mouth, inspired
her with something like fear.  A woman
with such a face could not have many sweet,
redeeming graces of character or heart.
There was, to supersensitive nerves, an
atmosphere of evil as well as mystery about her;
but though Joan felt this, it gave a keener
edge to her interest.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Gone.  "You are
kind, as well as pretty.  I do not like young
people usually, but I might learn to like
you.  I hope you will come again."

The words were a dismissal and a compliment.
Joan accepted them as both.  She
promised to repeat her visit, and after lighting
the shaded lamp on the table, left Mrs. Gone
to eat her dinner.

The girl would have given much to lift
the veil of mystery wrapped about this
woman's past and personality.  She even
boasted to herself that she would find
some way, sooner or later, at least to peep
under its edge; but day after day passed,
and though she went often to Mrs. Gone's
room, and was always thanked for her kind
attentions, she seemed no nearer to attaining
her object than at first.  Beyond occupying
a room which she did not pay for, Mrs. Gone
was not an expensive guest.  She ate almost
nothing; and when Joan had been in Woburn
Place for a week, the white face with its
burning eyes had become so drawn with
suffering that in real compassion the girl
offered to call a doctor at her own expense.
But Mrs. Gone would not consent.  "I hate
doctors," she said.  "No one could tell me
more about myself than I know."

The girl's own affairs were absorbing
enough, for she saw no new opening yet
for her ambition; still, she found time to
think a great deal about Mrs. Gone.  "Am
I a soft-hearted idiot, allowing myself to be
imposed upon by a professional 'sponge'?"
she wondered; "or is there something in
my odd feeling that I shall be rewarded
for all I do for this extraordinary woman?"

Such questions were passing through her
mind one night when she had gone to bed
late, after being out at the theatre.  She had
been in Woburn Place eight days, and was
growing impatient, for none of the boarders
were of the kind to be used as "stepping-stones,"
and none of the Society and financial
papers, which she studied, afforded any
hopeful suggestion for another phase of her
career.  To be sure, the young man with
whom she had consented to go to the theatre
was employed as a reporter for a great
London daily, and she had been "nice"
to him, with the vague idea that she might
somehow be able to profit by his infatuation;
but at present she did not see her way, and
it appeared that she was wasting sweetness
on the desert air.

"I suppose," Joan said to herself, turning
over her hot pillow, "that if I were an
ordinary girl, I might be contented to go on as I
am.  I can live here for nothing, and get
enough interest on the money I've put into
this concern to buy clothes and pay my
way about, with strict economy.  All the
men in the house are in love with me; and
if they were more interesting, that might
be amusing.  But I'm not born to be
contented with small people or things.  I don't
want clothes.  I want creations.  I don't
want the admiration of young men from
the City.  I want to be appreciated by
princes.  I believe I must have been a
princess in another state of existence, for I
always feel that the best of everything is
hardly good enough for me."

As she thought this, half laughing, there
came a sound from the next room--that
room which might have been the grave of the
strange woman who occupied it, so dead
was the silence which reigned there day and
night.  Never before had Joan heard the
least noise on the other side of the dividing
wall, but now she was startled by a crash as
of breaking glass, followed by the dull, soft
thud which could only have been made by
the fall of a human body.  Joan sat up,
her heart thumping, and it gave a frightened
bound as a groan came brokenly to her ears.

She waited no longer, but slipped her bare
feet into a pair of satin *mules*, flung on her
dressing-gown, and in another moment was
out of her room and in the dark passage,
fumbling for the handle of the other door.

Mrs. Gone kept her door unlocked in the
daytime, perhaps to save herself the trouble
of rising to admit servants, or her only
visitor, Joan Carthew; but the girl feared
that it might not be so at night, and that
before she could penetrate the mystery of
the fall and the groan, the whole house
would have to be disturbed.  She was
relieved, therefore, to find that the door yielded
to her touch.  Pushing it open, she listened
for an instant, but only the dead silence
throbbed in her ears.

As she got into her dressing-gown, with
characteristic presence of mind Joan had
caught up a box of matches and put it into
her pocket.  The room was as dark as the
passage outside, and the girl struck a match
before crossing the threshold.  The little
flame leaped and brightened.  Something on
the floor glimmered white in the darkness,
and Joan did not need to bend down to
know what it was.

The gas was close to the door, and she
lighted it with the dying match, which burnt
her fingers.  Then she saw clearly what had
happened.  In tottering uncertainly across
the floor, Mrs. Gone had knocked over a
small table holding a china candlestick, a
water-bottle, and a goblet.  She had fallen,
and after uttering that one groan which had
crept to Joan's ears, she had lost consciousness.

The girl's quick eyes sought for an
explanation of the catastrophe.  The long, white
figure lay at some distance from the bed, and
near the mantel.  On the mantel stood a
curiously shaped, dark green bottle, which
Joan had once been requested to give to
Mrs. Gone.  She had seen a few drops of some
colourless liquid poured into a wineglass of
water; and when it had been swallowed, the
ghastly pallor of the face had changed to a
more natural tint.  Mrs. Gone had then
said that she took the medicine when very
ill.  If she used it oftener, its effect would
disappear, and she would have nothing left
to turn to at the worst.

"It was that bottle she was trying to
find in the dark," Joan guessed.  "She
must have been too ill to try and light the
gas.  Now, how much was it that I saw her
pour out?  It might have been ten drops--no more."

So thinking, the girl filled a glass on the
wash-handstand a third full of water,
measured ten drops of the medicine with a steady
hand, and raising Mrs. Gone's head, put the
tumbler to her lips.  The strong teeth seemed
clenched, but some of the liquid must have
passed their barrier, for the dark eyes opened
wide and looked up into Joan's face.

"Too late----" the woman panted, with
a gurgling in the throat which choked her
words.  "Dying--now.  Wish that--you--you
have been kind--only one in the world.
My secret--you might have--Lord Northmuir
would have given----"

The voice trailed away into silence.  The
gurgle died into a rattle; the woman's
breast heaved and was still.  Her eyes had
not closed, but though they stared into
Joan's, the spark of life behind their windows
had gone out.  Mrs. Gone was dead, and
had taken her secret with her into the unknown.

Joan had never seen death before, but
there was no mistaking it.  Her first impulse
was to run downstairs, call Miss Witt and a
young doctor who had his office and
bedroom on the dining-room floor.  Nevertheless,
when she had laid the heavy head gently
down and sprung to her feet, she remained
standing.

For some minutes she stood motionless,
almost rigid, her lips pressed together, her
eyes hard and bright.  Then she struck
one hand lightly upon the other, exclaiming
half aloud: "I'll do it!"

It seemed certain by this time that no one
had heard the crash of glass and the fall
which had alarmed her, for the house was
still.  Nevertheless, Joan tiptoed to the door
and bolted it.  When she had done this,
she opened all the drawers of the dressing-table
and searched them carefully for papers.
Discovering none, she left everything exactly
as she had found it.  Next she examined
the pockets of the three or four dresses
hanging in the wardrobe, but they were limp
and empty.  There were still left the leather
portmanteau and handbag which had
appealed to Miss Witt's respectful admiration.
Both were locked, but Joan's instinct led
her to look under the pillows on the bed, and
there lay a key-ring.  She was able to open
portmanteau and bag, but not a paper of any
kind was to be seen, and the girl recalled a
remark of Miss Witt's, that never since
Mrs. Gone had become a boarder in Woburn
Place had she been known to receive or send
a letter.

Having assured herself that no information
was to be gained among the dead woman's
possessions, Joan unlocked the door and
went softly downstairs to rouse Miss Witt.
She justified what she had done by reason
of Mrs. Gone's last words, for she believed
that the dead woman would have made her a
present of the secret if she could.




CHAPTER VIII--Lord Northmuir's Young Relative
=============================================

Awakened and informed of what had
happened, the housekeeper called the
doctor, who looked at the body and certified
that death had resulted from failure of the
heart, which must have been long diseased.
Joan paid for a good oak coffin and a
decent funeral.  She bought a grave at Kensal
Green and ordered a neat stone to be erected.
If she had previously earned Mrs. Gone's
gratitude, she felt that she had now merited
any reward which might accrue in future,
and the curious, erasible tablet that did
duty as her conscience was wiped clear.

The morning after Mrs. Gone's funeral,
the girl put on her favourite frock of grey
cloth, with a hat to match, which had been
bought at one of the most fashionable shops
in Monte Carlo.  This costume, with grey
gloves, grey shoes, and a grey chiffon parasol,
ivory-handled, gave Joan an air of quiet
smartness, a combination particularly
appropriate for the adventure which she had
planned.  She hired a decorous brougham
and said to the coachman: "Drive to
Northmuir House, Belgrave Square."

It was but ten o'clock, and, as Joan had
gleaned some information concerning the
habits of the occupant, she was confident
that he would be at home.  Mrs. Gone had
not been dead two hours when the girl
began searching through her own scrapbook,
compiled of cuttings taken from Society
papers.  Whenever she came across the
description of any important member of the
aristocracy--his or her home life, manners,
fancies, and ways--she cut it out and pasted
it into this book, in case it should become
valuable for reference.  The moment that
the dying woman uttered the name of
Northmuir, Joan's memory jumped to a paragraph
(one of the first that had gone into the
scrapbook), and as soon as she could shut
herself up in the little back room, she had
consulted her authority.

The Earl of Northmuir was, according to
the paper from which the cutting had been
clipped, still the handsomest man in England,
though now long past middle age.  Once he had
been among the most popular also, but for
some years he had lived more or less in
retirement, owing to illness and family
bereavements, seldom leaving his fine old town
house in Belgrave Square.

"He'll be in London, and he won't be the
sort of man to go out before noon," Joan
said to herself.

Her heart was beating more quickly than
usual, but her face was calm and untroubled,
as she stood on the great porch at Northmuir
House, asking a footman in sober livery if
Lord Northmuir were at home.

The girl in the grey dress and grey hat,
with large, soft ostrich feathers, might have
been a young princess.  Whatever she was,
she merited civility, and the servant, who
could not wholly conceal surprise, politely
invited her to enter, while he inquired if
his Lordship could receive a visitor.  "What
name shall I say?" he asked.

"Give him this, please," said Joan,
handing the footman an envelope, addressed to
"The Earl of Northmuir."  Inside this
envelope was a sheet of paper, blank,
save for the words, "A messenger from
Mrs. Gone, who is dead"; and the death
notice was enclosed.

With this envelope the man went away,
leaving her to wait in a large and splendid
drawing-room, where stiffness of arrangement
betrayed the absence of a woman's taste.

Joan looked about appreciatively, yet
critically.  Then, when she had gained an
impressionist picture of the room, she glanced
at the jewelled watch on her wrist, a present
from Lady John Bevan after the sale of the
*Titania*.

What if Lord Northmuir had never known
the dead woman under the name of Gone?
What if--there were many things which
might go wrong, and Joan had put her
whole stake on a single chance.  If she had
been mistaken--but as her mind played
among surmises, the footman returned.

"His Lordship will see you in his study,
if you will kindly come this way," the servant
announced.

Joan rose with quiet dignity and followed
the man along a pillared hall to a closed
door.  "The lady, my lord," murmured the
footman, in opening it.  Joan was left alone
with a singularly handsome old man, who
sat in a huge cushioned chair by the
fireplace.  It was summer still, but a fire of
ship-logs sparkled with changing rainbow
lights on the stone hearth.  In a thin hand,
Lord Northmuir held an exquisitely bound
book.  He must have been more than sixty,
but his features were of the cameo--fine,
classic cut, of which the beauty, like that
of old marble, never dies, and it was easy
to see why he had once borne a reputation
as the handsomest man in England.  It was
easy to see also, by his eyes as they catalogued
each item of Joan's beauty, that he had
been a gallant man, not blind to the charms
of women.  Nevertheless, his voice was cold
as he spoke to the unexpected visitor.

"I haven't the pleasure of knowing your
name, or why you have honoured me by
calling," he said.  "Forgive my not rising.
I am rather an invalid.  Pray sit down.
There is something I can do for you?"

"Several things, Lord Northmuir," returned
the girl, taking the chair his gesture had indicated.

"You will tell me what they are?"

"I am anxious to tell you.  In the first
place, I wish to be a relation of yours, and
not a poor relation.  I wish to have a thousand
pounds a year, either permanently or until
my marriage, should I become the wife of a
rich man through your introduction."

Lord Northmuir stared at the girl, and if
there were not genuine astonishment in his
eyes, he was a clever actor.  "You are a
handsome young woman," he said slowly, when she
had finished, "but I begin to be afraid that
your mind is unfortunately--er--affected."

"There is a weight upon it," Joan replied.--"the
weight of your secret.  It's so heavy
that unless you are very kind, I shall be
tempted to throw the burden off by laying
it upon others."

Now the blood hummed in her ears.  If
she had built a house of cards, this was the
moment when it would topple, and bury
her ambition in its ignominious downfall.
But Lord Northmuir's slow speech had
quickened her hope, for she said to herself that
it was not spontaneous; and gazing keenly
into his face, she saw the blood stain his
forehead.  She had staked on the right chance,
yet the risk was not past.  Her game was
the game of bluff, but its success depended
upon the man with whom she had to deal.

"I do not understand what you are talking
about," he said.

"I dare say I haven't made my meaning
clear," answered Joan, half rising.  "Perhaps
I'd better explain to my solicitor, and
get him to write a letter----"

"You are nothing more nor less than a
common blackmailer," Lord Northmuir
exclaimed, bringing down his white hand on
the arm of his chair.

"I may be nothing less, but I am a good
deal more than a common one," retorted
Joan, surer of her ground.  "I will prove
that, if you force me to do it."

"Who are you?" he broke out abruptly.

"I am a Woman Who Knows," she replied.
"There was another Woman Who
Knew.  She called herself Gone.  She is dead,
and I have come.  I have come to stay."

"Don't you understand that I can hand
you over to the police?" demanded Lord
Northmuir, with difficulty controlling his
voice so that it could not be heard by possible
listeners outside the door.

"Yes; and I understand that I can hand
your secret over to the police.  They would
know how to use it."

He flushed again, and Joan saw that her
daring shot had told.  For the instant he had
no answer ready, and she seized the
opportunity to speak once more.  "You can do
better for yourself than hand me over to the
police.  There need be no trouble, if you
will realise that I am not a common person,
and not to be treated as such."

"Again I ask: Who are you?" he cried.

Joan risked another shot in the dark.
"Can't you make a guess?" she asked,
with a malicious suggestion of hidden
meaning in her tone.

An expression of horror and surprise passed
over Lord Northmuir's handsome face,
devastating it as a marching tornado devastates
a landscape.  It was evident that he had
"made a guess," and been thunderstruck by
its answer.  Joan's curiosity was so strongly
roused that it touched physical pain.  Almost,
she would have been ready to give one of
her pretty fingers to know the secret.

"Do you still wish to ask questions?"
she inquired.

"Heaven help me, no!  What is it that
you want?"

"I have told you already.  If I insisted
on all I have a right to claim, you would
not be where you are."

She watched him.  He grew deathly and
bowed his white head.  Joan felt sorry for
the man now that he was at her mercy; but
her imagination played with the secret, as a
child plays with a prism in the sunshine.
Its flashing colours allured her.  "Oh! if I
only *knew* something," she thought,
"something which would hold in law, and could
go through the courts, where might I not
stand?  I might reach one of the highest
places a woman can fill.  But it's no use;
I must take what I can get, and be thankful;
and, anyway, I can't help pitying him
a little, though I'm sure he doesn't deserve it.
He's old and tired, and I won't make him
suffer more than is necessary for the game."

Joan again named her terms, this time
with much ornamental detail.  She was to
be a newly discovered orphan cousin.  Her
name was to be, as it had been in
Cornwall, Mercy Milton.  She was to be
invited to visit, for an indefinite length
of time, at Northmuir House.  Her noble
relative was to exert himself to the extent
of giving entertainments to introduce her
to his most influential and highly placed
friends.  He was also to make her an
allowance of a thousand pounds a year.

"Don't think, if you gamble away
as--as the other did, that I will go beyond this
bargain, for I will not!" cried Lord Northmuir,
with a testy desire to assert himself
and show that he was not wholly to be cowed.

"I don't gamble, except with Fate," said Joan.

This exclamation of his explained one
or two things which had been dark.  She
guessed now why Mrs. Gone, evidently used
to luxuries, had been reduced to living on
the charity of a boarding-house keeper, and
why it had been necessary to wait until she
should be well enough to go out before she
could obtain "remittances."

Having concluded her arrangement with
Lord Northmuir, and settled to become his
relative and guest, Joan went back in her
brougham to Woburn Place.  She told Miss
Witt that she had been called away, packed
her things, left such as she would not want
in Belgrave Square in boxes at the boarding-house,
delighted the housekeeper with many
gifts, and the following morning drove off with
a pile of luggage on a cab.  Turning the corner
of Woburn Place into the next street, she
also turned a corner in her career, and for
the third time ceased to be Joan Carthew.

She had chosen to take up her lately laid
down part of Mercy Milton for two reasons.
One was, that in this character as she had
played it in Cornwall, with meekly parted
hair, soft, downcast eyes, simple manners
and simple frocks, she was not likely to be
recognised by any one who had known the
dashing and magnificent Miss Jenny Mordaunt;
while if she should come across Cornish
acquaintances, there was nothing in her
new position which need invalidate the story
of Lady Pendered's gentle sister.

If Lord Northmuir had looked forward
with dread to the intrusion of the adventuress
whom he was forced to receive, he soon
found that, beyond the galling knowledge
of his bondage, he had nothing disagreeable
to fear.  The young cousin did not
attempt to interfere with his habits after
he had provided her with acquaintances,
who increased after the manner of a
"snowball" stamp competition.  The two
usually lunched and dined together, and--at
first--that was all.  But Miss Mercy
Milton made herself charming at table, never
referred by word or look to the loathed
secret, and was so tactful that, to his
extreme surprise, almost horror, the man found
himself looking forward to the hours of
meeting.  Joan was not slow to see this;
indeed, she had been working up to it.  When
the right time came, she volunteered to help
Lord Northmuir with his letters (he had
no secretary) and to read aloud.  At the
end of six months she had become indispensable,
and he would have wondered how
existence had been possible without his
treasure had he dwelt upon the dangerous
subject at all.  If, however, the blackmailer's
instalment in the household had turned
out an agreeable disappointment to the
blackmailed, it was a disappointment of
another kind to the author of the plot.  Joan
Carthew did not find life in Belgrave Square
half as amusing as she had pictured it, and
though she was surrounded by luxury which
might be hers as long as Lord Northmuir
lived, each day she grew more restless and
discontented.

She had found society on the Riviera
delightful, but the butterfly crowd which
fluttered between Nice and Monte Carlo had
little resemblance to that with which she
came in contact as Lord Northmuir's cousin.
Jenny Mordaunt could do much as she
pleased--at worst she was put down as a
"mad American, my dear"; but Mercy
Milton had the family dignity to live up to.
Lord Northmuir's adopted relative could
not afford to be "cut" by the primmest
dowager; and being an ideal, conventional
English girl in the best society did not suit
Joan's roaming fancies.

It was supposed that she would be Lord
Northmuir's heiress; consequently mothers
of eligible young men were charming to her,
which would have been convenient if Joan
had happened to want one of their sons.
But not one of the men who sent her flowers
and begged for "extras" at dances would
she have married if he had been the last
existing specimen of his sex.  This was
annoying, for in planning her campaign, Joan
had resolved to marry well and settle
satisfactorily for life.  Now, however, she found
that it was simpler to decide upon a mercenary
marriage in the abstract than when it became
a personal question.

At the close of a year with Lord Northmuir
she had saved seven hundred pounds,
and at last, after a sleepless night, she made
up her mind to take a step which was, in a
way, a confession of failure.

She went to Lord Northmuir's study as
usual in the morning, but this time it was
not to act as reader or amanuensis.

"It's a year to-day since I came," she
said abruptly, with a purposeful look on
her face which the man felt was ominous.

"Yes," he answered.  "A strange year,
but not an unhappy one.  What I regarded
as a curse has turned out a blessing.  I
should miss the albatross now if it were to
be taken off my neck."

"I'm sorry for that," said Joan, "for
the albatross has revived and intends to fly
away."

"What!  You will marry?"

"No.  I'm tired of being conventional.
I've decided to relieve you of my presence
here; and you can forget me, except when,
each quarter, you sign a cheque for two
hundred and fifty pounds."

Lord Northmuir's handsome face grew
almost as white as when she had first
announced her claim upon him.  "I don't
want to forget you.  I can't forget you!"
he stammered.  "If I could, I would publish
the whole truth; but that is impossible, for
the honour of the name.  You have made
me fond of you--made me depend upon
you.  Why did you do that, if you meant
to leave me alone?"

"I didn't mean it at first," replied Joan
frankly.  "I thought I should be 'in clover'
here, and so I have been; but too much
clover upsets the digestion.  I must go, Lord
Northmuir.  I can't stand it any longer.  I'm
pining for adventures."

"Have you fallen in love?"

"No.  I wish I had.  I've been trying in vain."

"A year ago I would not have believed
it possible that I should make you such an
offer, but you have wrought a miracle.  You
came to blackmail, you remained to bless.
Stay with me, my girl, till I die, and not
only shall you be remembered in my will, but
I will increase your allowance from one
thousand to two thousand a year.  I can
afford to do this, since you have become
the one luxury I can't live without."

"I was just beginning to say that, if you
would let me go without a fuss, I would
take five hundred instead of a thousand a
year."

"But now I have shown you my heart,
you see that offer does not appeal to me."

Joan broke out laughing; this upsetting
of the whole situation was so humorous.  A
sudden reckless impulse seized her.  She
could not resist it.

"Lord Northmuir, you will change your
mind when I have told you something," she
said.  "I have played a trick on you.  I
have no connection with your family, and
know no more about your secret than I
know what will be in to-morrow's papers.
Mrs. Gone, in dying, mentioned a secret
and your name.  I put two and two together,
and they matched so well that I've lived on
you for a year, bought lots of dresses, made
crowds of friends, had heaps of proposals,
and kept seven hundred pounds in hand.
Now I think you will be willing to let me
go; and you can lie easy and live happy
for ever after."

Having launched the thunderbolt, she
would have left the room, but Lord Northmuir,
old and invalided as he was, sprang
from his chair like an ardent youth and
caught her arm.

"By Jove! you shan't leave me like
that!" he cried.  "You have made your
first mistake, my dear.  Instead of being
in your power, you have put yourself in
mine.  I need fear you no longer.  But as a
trickster I love you no less than I did as a
blackmailer.  Indeed, I love you the more
for your diabolical cleverness, you beautiful
wretch!  Stay with me, not as the little
adopted cousin, living on charity, but as
my wife, and mistress of this house.  Or,
if you will not, I shall denounce you to the
police."

For once, Joan was dumfounded.  The
tables had been turned upon her with a
vengeance.  She gasped, and could not answer.

"You see, it is my turn to dictate terms
now," said Lord Northmuir.

Joan's breath had come back.  "You are
right," she returned, in a meek voice.  "I
have given you the reins.  But--well, it
would be something to be Countess of
Northmuir."

"Don't hope to be a widowed Countess,"
chuckled the old man.  "I am only sixty-nine,
and for the last ten years I have taken
good care of myself."

"I count on nothing after this," said Joan.

"You consent, then?"

"How can I do otherwise?"

Lord Northmuir laughed out in his triumph
over her.  "The notice of the engagement
will go to the *Morning Post* immediately,"
he said.  "To-morrow, some of our friends
will be surprised."

But it was he who was surprised; for,
when to-morrow came, Joan had run away.




CHAPTER IX--A Journalistic Mission
==================================

It is like stating that the world is round
to say that London is the best of
hiding-places.  It is the best, because there
are many Londons, and one London knows
practically nothing about any of the other
Londons.  When, therefore, Mercy Milton
disappeared from Northmuir House,
Belgrave Square, Joan Carthew promptly
appeared at her old camping-ground, the
boarding-house in Woburn Place.

Joan was no longer penniless, and as far
as Lord Northmuir was concerned, she was
easy in her mind.  A man of his stamp was
unlikely to risk the much-prized "honour
of his name" to seek her with detectives;
while, unassisted, he would have to shrug his
weary old shoulders and resign himself to
loss and loneliness.

But ambition kindled restlessness.  She
grudged wasting a moment when her fortune
had to be made, her permanent place in
life fixed.  Besides, she was dissatisfied with
her adventure in the house of Lord Northmuir.
She had not come off badly, yet it
galled her to remember that in self-defence
she had been driven to confess her scheme
to its victim, and that--this expedient not
proving efficacious--she had eventually been
forced to run away like the coward she was
not.  On the whole, she had to admit that
if Lord Northmuir had not in the end got
the better of her, he had come near to doing
so.  The sharp taste of failure was in her
mouth, and the only way to be rid of it was
to get the better of somebody else--somebody
disagreeable, so that the sweets of
success might be unmixed with bitterness.

Existence as Lord Northmuir's adopted
relative had been deadly dull; existence as
his wife would have been worse; and the
remembrance of boredom was too vivid
still for Joan to regret what she had sacrificed.
Nevertheless, she realised that it had been a
sacrifice which she would not a little while
ago have believed herself fool enough, or
wise enough, to be capable of making.  She
wanted her reward, and that reward must
mean new excitements, difficulties, and dangers.

"I should like to do something big on a
great London paper," she said to herself on
the first night of her return to Woburn
Place.  "What fun to undertake a thrilling
journalistic mission, and succeed better than
any man!  I wonder whether Mr. Mainbridge,
who was a reporter on *The Planet*,
is here still.  He wasn't at dinner, but then
he used often to be away.  I must ask in the
morning."

Joan went to sleep with this resolve in
her mind, and before breakfast she had
carried it out.  Mr. Mainbridge was still one
of Miss Witt's boarders, and had often
inquired after Miss Carthew.  He had come
in late last night, was now asleep, but would
be down to luncheon, and there was no
doubt that he would be delighted to see the
object of his solicitude.

All turned out as Miss Witt prophesied,
and Joan was even nicer to the reporter
than she had been before.  He invited her
to dine that evening at an Italian restaurant,
and she consented.  When they had come
to the sweets, Mr. Mainbridge could control
his pent-up feelings no longer, and was
about to propose when Joan stopped him.

"We are too poor to indulge in the luxury
of being in love," said she, with a sweet
frankness which took the sting from the
rebuff and dimly implied hope for the future.
"I shall not marry until I am earning as
much money as--as the man I love.  I
could not be happy unless I were independent.
Oh, Mr. Mainbridge! if you do care
to please me, prove it by introducing me to
the editor of your paper!  I want to ask
him for work."

The stricken young man felt his throat
suddenly dry.  In his first acquaintance
with Joan he had boasted of his "influence"
with the powers that were upon that new
and phenomenally successful daily, *The Planet*.
As a matter of fact, the influence existed
in Mainbridge's dreams, and there only.
Sir Edmund Foster, the proprietor and
editor, hardly knew him by sight, and
probably would not recognise him out of Fleet
Street.  To ask such a favour as an
introduction for a strange young girl, however
attractive, was almost as much as the poor
fellow's place was worth, but he could not
bear to refuse Joan.

"Tell Sir Edmund that I have information,
important to the paper, for his private ear,"
added the girl, reading her admirer's mind
as if it had been a book.

"But--but if--er--you haven't really
anything which he----" stammered Mainbridge.

"Oh, I have!  I guarantee he shall be
satisfied with me and not angry with you.
Only I must see him alone.  Tell him I come
from"--Joan hesitated for an instant, but
only for an instant--"from the Earl of
Northmuir."

Mainbridge was impressed by the name
and her air of self-confidence.  Encouraged,
he promised to use every effort to bring
about the introduction, if possible the very
next day.  If he succeeded, he would
telegraph Joan the time of the appointment,
which would certainly not be earlier than
three in the afternoon, as Sir Edmund never
appeared at the office until that hour.

"Then I won't stop for the telegram and
give him a chance to change his mind before
I can drive from Woburn Place to Fleet
Street," said Joan.  "I will be at the office
at three in the afternoon, and wait until
something is settled, if I have to wait till
three in the morning."

The next day, after luncheon, Joan chose
her costume with extreme care, as she
invariably did when it was necessary to arm
herself for conquest.  Radiant in pale blue
cloth edged with sable, she presented herself
at the offices of *The Planet*.  There was a
waiting-room at the end of a long corridor,
and there she was bidden to sit; but
instead of remaining behind a closed door,
as soon as her guide was out of sight she
began walking up and down near the
stairway where Sir Edmund Foster must sooner or
later pass.  She had never seen the famous
man, but she remembered his photograph
in one of the illustrated papers.

Presently a tall, smooth-shaven, sallow
man, with eagle features and bags under his
keen eyes, came rapidly along the corridor,
accompanied by a much younger, less
impressive man, who might have been a secretary.
Joan advanced, pretending to be absorbed
in thought, then stood aside with a start of
shy surprise and a look nicely calculated
to express reverence of greatness.  Sir
Edmund Foster glanced at the apparition
and let his eyes linger for a few seconds as
his companion rang the bell of the lift, close
to the wide stone stairway.

"When he hears that there is a young
woman waiting to see him, he will remember
me, and the recollection may influence his
decision," thought Joan, who did not
under-value her beauty as an asset.

Perhaps it fell out as she hoped (things
often did), for she had not read more than
three or four back numbers of *The Planet*,
which lay on the waiting-room table, when
Ralph Mainbridge, flushed and almost
tremulous with excitement, came to say that Sir
Edmund had consented to see her at once.

Without seeming as much overpowered as
he expected, the girl prepared to enter the
presence of greatness.  But she was not in
reality as calm as she appeared.  The
thunderous whirr of the printing-machines had
almost bereft her of the capacity for thought,
just at the moment when she wished to think
clearly.  Her nerves were twanging like the
strings of a violin which is out of tune, and
it was an intense relief to be shot up in the
alarmingly rapid lift to a quieter region.
The rumbling roar was deadened on Sir
Edmund's floor, and as the door of his private
office closed on her, it was shut out altogether.

"Miss Carthew, from Lord Northmuir,"
the famous editor-proprietor said.  "I believe
you have some interesting information for
me."  He smiled with a certain dry benignity,
for Joan was very pretty, and he was,
after all, a man.  "I think I saw you downstairs."

"I saw you, Sir Edmund."  Joan's manner
was dignified now, rather than shy.  "I
trust you will not be angry, but within
the last two hours everything has changed
for me.  Lord Northmuir, whom I know
well through my cousin, Miss Mercy Milton,
his ward (you may have heard of her; we
are said to resemble each other), has now
changed his mind about allowing the piece
of information I meant for you to be
published.  He has forbidden his name to be
used, but it was too late to stop that.  I can
only beg, for my cousin Miss Milton's sake
more than my own, that you will not let the
fact come to his ears; if it should, she will
suffer."

"You need not fear that," Sir Edmund
reassured her; "but if you have no
information to give me, Miss--er----"

"I had to come and explain why I hadn't,"
Joan cut in.  "I hope you won't blame poor
Mr. Mainbridge for putting you to this
trouble.  It isn't his fault, and he doesn't
even know."

"Who is Mr. Mainbridge?  Oh, ah! yes,
of course.  Pray don't regard it as a trouble.
Quite the contrary.  But unfortunately, I----"

"You would say you are a very busy man,"
Joan threw into the editor's suggestive
pause.  "I won't take up much more of your
time.  But I want to say that, although I
have nothing of value, as I hoped, to tell, I
shall have later, if you will consent to engage
me on your staff."

Sir Edmund laughed.  He evidently
considered Joan a spoiled darling of Society
with a new whim.  "My dear young lady!"
he exclaimed, "in what capacity, pray?
We do not devote space to fashions, even in
a Saturday edition.  Would you come to us
as a reporter, like your friend Mr. Mainbridge?"

"As a special reporter," amended Joan.
"I would undertake any mission of importance----"

"There are none going begging on *The
Planet*.  But" (this soothingly by way of
sugaring a dismissal) "you have only to
get hold of something good and bring it to
me.  For instance, some nice, spicy little item
as to the truth of the rumoured alliance
between Russia and Japan.  We would pay you
quite well for that, you know, provided you
gave it to us in time to publish ahead of any
other paper."

"How much would you pay me?" asked
Joan, nettled at this chaffing tone of the
famous man.

"Enough to buy a new frock and perhaps
a few hairpins; say a hundred pounds."

"That isn't enough," said Joan; "I
should want a thousand."

Sir Edmund turned a sudden, keen gaze
upon the girl; then his face relaxed.  "We
might rise to that.  At all events, I'm safe
in promising it."

"It *is* a promise, then?"

"Oh, certainly."

"Thank you.  Let me see if I understand
clearly.  I'm not quite the baby you think,
Sir Edmund.  I read the papers--yours
especially--and take, I trust, an intelligent
interest in the political situation.  Now, the
latest rumour is that Russia is secretly
planning an understanding with Japan and
China.  What you would like to know is
whether there is truth in the rumour, and
what, in that event, England would do."

"Exactly.  That is what all the papers
are dying to find out."

"If you could get the official news before
any of them, you would give the person who
obtained it for you a thousand pounds.
If, in addition, they, or one of them--let us
say *The Daily Beacon*--got the *wrong* news
on the same day, you would no doubt add
five hundred to the original thousand; for
revenge is sweet, even to an editor, I suppose,
and *The Beacon* has, I have heard, contrived
to be first in the field on one or two important
occasions within the last few years."

This allusion was a pin-prick in a sensitive
place, for Joan was aware that *The Daily
Beacon* and *The Planet* were deadly rivals
as well as political opponents.  Mainbridge
had told her the tale of *The Planet's*
humiliation by the enemy, and she had not forgotten.
*The Beacon* had been able, at the very time
when *The Planet* was arguing against their
probability, to assert that certain political
events would take place, and in time these
statements had been justified, to the
discomfiture of *The Planet*.

Sir Edmund frowned slightly.  "*The
Daily Beacon* possesses exceptional advantages,"
he sneered.  "It is difficult for less
favoured journals to compete with it for
political information."

"I believe I can guess what you refer to,"
answered Joan.  "I hear things, you know,
from my cousin, Miss Milton."  (This to
shield Mainbridge.)  "Lord Henry Borrowdaile,
an Under Secretary of State, is a
distant relative of Mr. Portheous, the
proprietor of *The Daily Beacon*, and it is said
that there has been a curious leakage of
diplomatic secrets, once or twice, by which
*The Beacon* profited."

"You are a well-informed young lady."

"I hope to earn your cheque as well as
your compliment," said Joan.  "Perhaps
you will write it before many days have passed."

"It must be before many days, if at all."

"I understand that time presses, if you
are to be first in the field, for the great secret
can't be kept from the public for more than
a week or ten days at most.  But look
here, Sir Edmund, would you go that extra
five hundred if, on the day that your paper
published the truth about the situation,
*The Beacon* made a fool of itself by printing
exactly the opposite?"

"Yes," said the editor, "I would."

"Well, we shall see what we shall see,"
returned Joan.  She then took leave of Sir
Edmund, who was certainly not in a mood
to blame Mainbridge for an introduction
under false pretences, even if he were far
from sure that charming Miss Carthew could
accomplish miracles.

As for Joan, her head was in a whirl.
She wanted to do this thing more than she
had ever wanted anything in her life, though
it had not entered her head a few moments
ago.  She would not despise fifteen hundred
pounds; but it was not of the money she
was dreaming as she told her cabman to
drive to Battersea Park, and keep on driving
till ordered to stop.  The strange girl could
always collect and concentrate her thoughts
while driving, and this was her object now.

Joan had never met Lord Henry Borrowdaile,
but during her year at Northmuir
House she had known people who were
friends or enemies of the young man and
his wife.  She had her own reason for
listening with interest to intimate talk about the
character and private affairs of persons who
were important figures in the world, for at
any time she might wish to use knowledge
thus gained.  She did not believe, from what
she had heard, that Lord Henry Borrowdaile,
son of the Marquis of Wastwater, was
a man to betray State secrets for money.
He was "bookish" and literary, and though
he was not rich, neither did he covet riches.
But he did adore his beautiful young wife,
and was said by those who knew him to be
as wax in her hands.  She was popular, as
well as pretty; was vain of being the leader
of a very gay set, and dressed as if her
reputation depended upon being the best-gowned
woman in London.  Because Lady Henry
posed as an *ingénue*, who scarcely knew
politics from polo, Joan suspected her.  "It
is she who worms out secrets from her husband
and sells them to Portheous," Joan said
to herself.  "Oh! to be a fly on the wall
in the Borrowdailes' house for the next week!"

This wish was so vivid, that like a
lightning flash it seemed to illumine the dim
corners of the girl's brain.  She suddenly
recalled another story of the inestimable
Mainbridge's, told in connection with the
rivalry of *The Daily Beacon* and *The Planet*.

"An eminent statesman's servant told the
secret of his master's intended resignation,"
she said to herself.  "Why shouldn't a
servant at the Borrowdailes'----"

She did not finish out the thought at the
moment; the vista it opened was too wide
to be taken in at a glance.  But after driving
for an hour round and round Battersea
Park, the patient cabman suddenly received
an order to go quickly to Clarkson's, the
wigmaker.  At the shop, the hansom was
discharged, and it was a very different-looking
fare which another cab picked up at
the same door somewhat later.




CHAPTER X--The Coup of "The Planet"
===================================

About half-past five, a plump old
country-woman, with a brown tissue veil over
her ruddy, wrinkled face, waddled into a
green-grocer's not far from South Audley Street.
She bade the young man in the shop a wheezy
"Good day," and asked if she might be
bold enough to inquire whether Lady Henry
Borrowdaile's housekeeper were a customer.
Yes, the youth admitted with pride, for
anything in their line which was not sent up
from the Marquis of Wastwater's, in the
country, they had the honour of serving her
Ladyship.

"Ah!  I thought how it would be, your
place being so near, and the nicest round
about," said the old country-woman.  "The
truth is, I have to go to the house on a
disagreeable errand.  I volunteered to do it
for a friend, and I've forgotten the number.
I've to break some bad news to one of the
housemaids."

"Not Miss Jessie Adams, I hope!"
protested the young man, blushing up to the
roots of his light hair.

"Yes, it is poor Jessie," said the old
woman.  "You know her?"

"We've been walking out together the
last six months.  I suppose her father's
took bad again, or--or worse?"

"He's living--or was when I left; but----"
and the old-fashioned bonnet with the veil
shook ominously.  "Well, I must go and
do my duty.  I hope she'll be able to get
home for a week or so."

A few minutes later, Joan, delighted with
her disguise and the detective skill she was
developing, rang the servants' bell at the
Borrowdailes'.  She had learned what she
had hoped to learn, the name of one of the
maids, and she had also learned something
more--the fact that Jessie Adams had a
father whose state of health would afford an
excuse for absence; and the existence of a
lover, who would probably urge immediate
marriage if there were enough money on
either side.

The old countrywoman with the brown
veil was voluble to the footman who opened
the door.  She explained that she had news
from home for Jessie Adams, and was shown
into a servant's sitting-room, where presently
appeared a fresh-looking girl with languishing
eyes, and a full, weak mouth.

"Oh, I thought perhaps it would be Aunt
Emmy!" exclaimed the young person in
cap and apron.

"No, I'm not Aunt Emmy, but you may
take it I'm a friend," replied the old woman.
"Don't be frightened.  Your father ain't
so very bad, but your folks would be glad
to have you at home if you could manage it.
And, look here, my gell, here's good news
for you.  You may make a tidy bit of money
by going, if you can get off at once--this
very night.  How much must you and that
nice young man of yours put by before you
can marry?"

"We can't marry till he sets up in business
for himself, and it will take a hundred pounds
at least," said the girl.  "We've each got
about ten pounds saved towards it.  But
what's ten pounds?"

"Added on to ninety it makes a hundred,
and you can earn that by lending your place
here for one fortnight to a niece of mine,
who wants to be a journalist and write what
the doings inside a smart house are like.
She'd name no names, so you'd never be
given away.  All you'd have to do would be
to tell the housekeeper your father was took
bad, and would she let you go if you'd bring
your cousin Maria in your stead--a clever,
experienced girl, with the best references from
Lord Northmuir's house?"

"My goodness me, you take my breath
away!" gasped Jessie Adams.  "How do
I know but your niece is a thief who'd steal
her Ladyship's jewels?"

"You don't know, except that I say she
isn't.  But, anyhow, what does it matter to
you?  You don't need to come back or ever
be in service again.  Here's the ninety pounds
in gold, my dear.  You can bite every piece,
if you wish; and you've but to do what I
say to get them before you walk out of this
house.  You settle matters with the
housekeeper, and I'll have my niece call on her
within the hour."

The girl with the languishing eyes and
the weak mouth had her price, like many
of her betters, and it happened to be exactly
ninety pounds.  Joan had brought a hundred,
and considered that she had made a bargain.
Jessie consented to speak to the
housekeeper, and the countrywoman departed.
By this time it was dusk.  She took a
four-wheeler and drove to the gates of the Park.
In a dark and lonely spot the outer disguise
was whisked off, and the paint wiped from
her face.  Underneath her shawl she wore
a neat black dress, suitable for a housemaid
in search of a situation.  This, too, Joan had
thoughtfully obtained at Clarkson's, whence
her pale blue cloth had been despatched by
messenger to Woburn Place.  The bonnet
was quickly shaped into a hat; the stuffing
which had plumped out the thin, girlish
form was wrapped in the shawl which had
concealed it, and hidden under a bush.
Joan's own hair was combed primly back
from her forehead, and strained so tightly
at the sides as to change the expression of
her face completely.  "Cousin Maria" was
as different from Miss Joan Carthew as a
mouse is from a bird of Paradise.

Cream could not be more velvety soft
than Joan's voice, the eye of a dove more
mild than hers, as she conversed with Lady
Henry Borrowdaile's housekeeper.  And she
was armed with a magnificent reference.
There had been a Maria Jordan at Lord
Northmuir's, as housemaid, in Joan's day
there, but the real Maria had gone to America,
and it was safe and simple to write in praise
of this young person's character and
accomplishments, signing the document Mercy
Milton.  At worst, even if Lady Henry's
housekeeper sent the reference to Lord
Northmuir's housekeeper, the imposition could
not be proved.  Maria might have had time
to come back from America, and Miss Milton,
now departed, might have consented to
please the housemaid by giving her a written
recommendation.

But Maria Jordan's manner as an applicant
to fill her cousin's place was so respectful and
respectable, and the need to decide was so
pressing, that Lady Henry's housekeeper
resolved to accept Jordan, so to speak, on
face value.  That same night Jessie Adams
went home (or somewhere else), and her
cousin stepped into the vacant niche.

Meanwhile, Joan had, on the plea of
picking up her luggage, driven to one or
two cheap shops in the Tottenham Court
Road, and provided herself with a tin box
and a suitable outfit for a superior
housemaid.  She was thankful to find that she
would have a room to herself, and delighted
to discover that Jessie Adams and Mathilde,
Lady Henry's own maid, had been on terms
of friendship.  Their rooms adjoined; Jessie
had been teaching Mathilde English in odd
moments, and Mathilde had often obligingly
carried messages to the enamoured greengrocer.

Joan lost not a moment in winning her
way into Mathilde's good graces, wasting the
less time because she had already made
preparations with a view to such an end.
She had bought a large box of delicious
sweets, which she pretended her own "young
man" had given her, and this she placed at
the French girl's disposal.  It happened that
Lady Henry was dining out and going to
the theatre afterwards that night, and
Mathilde, being free, visited Maria easily
in her room, where she sat on the bed,
swinging her well-shod feet and eating cream
chocolates.  Maria, in the course of
conversation, chanced to mention that her
"young man" was the partner of a French
hairdresser in Knightsbridge; that the two
were intimate friends; that the hairdresser
was young, singularly handsome, well-to-do,
and looking out for a Parisienne as a wife.
This Admirable Crichton was in France at
present, on business, Maria added, but he
would return in the course of a fortnight,
when Maria's "young man" should effect
an introduction, as she was sure that
Monsieur Jacques would fall in love at first
sight with Mathilde.

Mathilde pretended indifference, but she
thought Maria the nicest girl she had met
in England, far more *chic* than Jessie; and
when she heard that her new friend longed
to be a lady's maid, she offered to coach her
in the art.  Maria was gushingly grateful,
for though she had (she said) already acted
as maid to one or two ladies, they had not
been "swells" like Lady Henry, and lessons
from Mathilde would be of inestimable value.

"I suppose," she went on coaxingly,
"that if I showed you I could do hair nicely,
and understood what was wanted of a lady's
maid, you wouldn't be took ill, and give me
a chance to try my hand on Lady Henry?
Practice on her Ladyship would be worth
a lot of lessons, wouldn't it?  My goodness!
I'd give all my savings for such a chance in
a house like this!  Think of the help it
would be to me afterwards to say I'd been
understudy, as you might call it, to a real
expert like Mathilde, Lady Henry Borrowdaile's
own maid, and given great satisfaction
in the part!  It might mean a good
place for me.  I ain't jokin', mademoiselle.
I've got twenty-five sovereigns saved up,
and if you'll have neuralgia so bad you can't
lift your head from the pillow for three or
four days, those twenty-five sovereigns are
yours."

"*Mais*, for me to have ze neuralgia, it do
not make that milady take you for my
place," said the laughing Mathilde.

"No, but leave that to me.  You shall
have the money just the same."

"All right," said Mathilde, giggling, scarce
believing that her friend was in earnest.
"I have ze neuralgia *demain*--to-morrow."

Joan sprang up and went to the new tin
box.  She bent over it for a moment, with
her back to Mathilde; then she turned,
with a stocking in her hand--a stocking fat
in the foot, and tied round the ankle with
a bit of ribbon.  "Count what's there,"
she exclaimed, emptying the stocking in
Mathilde's lap.

There were gold and silver, and even a
little copper.  Altogether, the sum amounted
to that which Maria had named, and a few
shillings over.

Mathilde was dazzled.  What with this
bird in hand, and another in the bush (the
eligible hairdresser), she was ready to do
almost anything for Maria.  Later that night,
in undressing Lady Henry, she complained
of suffering such agony that she feared
for the morrow.  Luckily, should she be
incapacitated for a short time, there was
a girl now in the house (a young person in
the place of the first housemaid, absent on
account of trouble in the family) who had
been lady's maid and knew her business.
Lady Henry was too sleepy to care what
might happen to-morrow--indeed, scarcely
listened to Mathilde's murmurings; but when
to-morrow was to-day, and a sweet-faced,
sweet-voiced girl announced that Mathilde
could not leave her bed, the spoiled beauty
remembered last night's conversation.  After
some grumbling, she consented to try what
Jordan could do; and while the second
housemaid pouted over Maria's work, Maria
was busy ingratiating herself with Lady
Henry--ingratiating herself so thoroughly
that Mathilde would have trembled jealously
for the future could she have seen or heard.
Joan was one of those rare creatures,
born for success, who set their teeth in
unbreakable resolve to do whatever they must
do, well.  Being a lady herself, with all a
lady's fastidious tastes, she knew how a lady
liked to be waited upon.  She was not
attracted by Lady Henry, whom men called
an angel, and women "a cat," but she was
as attentive as if her whole happiness
depended on her mistress's approbation.
Mathilde was efficient, but frivolous and
flighty, sometimes inclined to sulkiness; and
Lady Henry, superbly indifferent to the
sufferings of servants, decided that she would
not be sorry if Mathilde were ill a long time.

Two or three days went by; Joan kept
the Parisienne supplied with *bonbons* and
French novels, and carried up all her meals,
arranged almost as daintily as if they had
been for her Ladyship.  Mathilde was happy,
and Joan was--waiting.  But her patience
was not to be tried for long.

On the third day, she was told that her
mistress was dining at home, alone with
Lord Henry.  This was such an unusual
event that Joan was sure it meant something,
especially when Lady Henry demanded
one of her prettiest frocks.  A footman,
inclined to be Maria's slave, was smiled upon,
intercepted during dinner, and questioned.
"They're behaving like turtle-doves," said he.

Joan had expected this.  "That little cat
has guessed or discovered that everything
is settled, and she means to get the truth out
of him this evening, so that somehow she
can give the news to *The Daily Beacon*
to-night, in time to go to press for to-morrow,"
the girl reflected.

She was excited, but the great moment
had come, and she kept herself rigidly under
control, for much depended upon calmness
and fertility in resource.  "They will have
their coffee in Lady Henry's boudoir," Joan
reflected, "and that is when she will get
to work."

She thought thus on her way upstairs,
carrying a dress of Lady Henry's, from
which she had been brushing the marks of a
muddy carriage-wheel.  She laid it on a
chair, and saw on another a milliner's box.
Her mistress had not mentioned that she
was expecting anything, and Joan's curiosity
was aroused.  She untied the fastenings,
lifted a layer of tissue paper, and saw a neat,
dark green tailor-dress, with a toque made
of the same material and a little velvet.
There was also a long, plain coat of the green
cloth, with gold buttons, and on the breast
pocket was embroidered an odd design in
gold thread.

Joan suddenly became thoughtful.  This
dress was as unlike as possible to the butterfly
style which Lady Henry affected, and all
who knew her knew that she detested dark
colours.  Yet this costume was distinctly
sombre and severe; and the name of the
milliner was unfamiliar to Joan.

"It's like a disguise," the girl said to
herself, "and I'll bet anything that's what it's
for.  She went to a strange milliner; she
made a point of the things being ready
to-night; she chose a costume which would
absolutely change her appearance, if worn
with a thick veil.  And then that bit of
embroidery on the pocket!  Why, it's a
miniature copy of the design they print under
the title of *The Beacon*.  It is a beacon,
flaming!  She means to slip out of the house when
she's got the secret safe, and somebody at the
office of the paper will have been ordered to
take a veiled woman with such a dress as this
up to Portheous' private office, without her
speaking a word.  Well--a woman will go
there, but I hope it won't be Lady Henry."

Without stopping for an instant's further
reflection, Joan caught up the box and flew
with it to her own room, where she pushed
it under the bed.  She then watched her
chance, and when no one was in sight, darted
into the boudoir, where she squeezed herself
behind a screen close to the door.  She
might have found a more convenient
hiding-place, but this, though uncomfortable, gave
her an advantage.  If the two persons she
expected to enter the room elected to sit
near the fireplace, as they probably would,
Joan might be able to steal noiselessly away
without being seen or heard.

She had not had much time to spare, for
ten minutes after she had plastered herself
against the wall, Lord and Lady Henry came
in.  They went to the sofa in front of the
fire and chatted of commonplaces until after
the coffee and *Orange Marnier* had been
brought.  Then Lady Henry took out her
jewelled cigarette-case, gave a cigarette to
her husband and took one herself.  To light
hers from his, she perched on Lord Henry's
knee, remaining in that position to play with
his hair, her white fingers flashing with
rings.  She cooed to her husband prettily,
saying how nice it was to be with him alone,
and how it grieved her to see him weary and
worried.

"Is the old Russian Bear going to take
hands and dance prettily with little Japan
and big China, darling?" she purred.  "You
know, precious, talking to me is as safe as
talking to yourself."

"I know, my pet.  Thank goodness, the
strain is over.  England and France together
have brought such pressure to bear, that
Russia was in a funk.  The ultimatum we
issued----"

"Oh, then, the ultimatum *was* sent?"

"Yes.  If Russia had held firm, nothing
could have prevented war.  But for obvious
diplomatic reasons, the papers must not be
able to state officially that any negotiations
of the sort have ever taken place.  There
has been a rumour, but that will die out."

"Ah, well, I'm glad there won't be war;
but as *you're* not a soldier, and can't be
killed, it wouldn't have broken my heart.
Kiss me and let's talk of something amusing.
Your poor pet gets a headache if she has to
think of affairs of State too long."

Joan did not wait for the end of the last
sentence.  She began with the utmost caution
to move the farther end of the screen
forward, until she could reach the door-handle.
With infinite patience she turned the knob
at the rate of an inch a minute, until it was
possible to open the door.  Then she pulled
it slowly, very slowly, towards her.  At
last she could slip into the corridor, where
she had an instant of sickening fear lest she
should be detected by a passing servant.
Luck was with her, however; but instead
of seizing the chance to run upstairs unseen,
she stopped, shut the door as softly as it
had been opened, and then knocked.  Lady
Henry's voice, with a ring of relief, called
"Come in!"  Joan showed herself on the
threshold, and announced that a person
from Frasquet's, of George Street, had called
to say that by mistake a costume ordered by
Lady Henry had been sent to the wrong
address, but that search would at once be
made, and the box brought to South Audley
Street as soon as found.

Lady Henry sprang up with an exclamation
of anger, and called down the vengeance
of the gods upon the house of Frasquet.

"Might I suggest, your Ladyship, that I
go with the messenger, and make sure of
bringing back the box, if the dress is a valuable
one?" asked Joan.

Lady Henry caught at this idea.  Joan
was bidden to run away and not to come
back till she had the box.  "I will give you
a sovereign if you bring it home before
midnight," she added.

Joan walked calmly out with the box from
Frasquet's, took a cab, and drove to Woburn
Place, where, in her own room, she dressed
herself as Lady Henry had intended to be
dressed.  The frock and coat fitted
sufficiently well, for Jordan and her mistress
were somewhat of the same figure.  An
embroidered black veil, with one of chiffon
underneath, completely hid her features;
and, heavily perfumed with Lady Henry's
favourite scent, at precisely a quarter to
eleven she presented herself at the office of
*The Daily Beacon*.  A gesture of a gloved
hand towards the flaming gold on the coat
was as if a password had been spoken.  She
was conducted to a private office on the
first floor, and there received by a bearded,
red-faced man, who sprang up on her entrance.

"Well--well?" he demanded.

The veiled and scented lady put her finger
to her lips.

"'Sh!" she breathed.  Then, disguising
her voice by whispering, she went on.  "Russia
China, and Japan have signed the alliance,
in spite of England and France, whom they
have defied very insolently, and it's only a
question of a short time before the storm
breaks.  There!  That's all, in a nutshell.
I must run away at once."

.. _`"'Sh!' she breathed."`:

.. figure:: images/img-214.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Sh!' she breathed."

   "'Sh!' she breathed."


"A thousand thanks!  You're a brick!"  Mr. Portheous
pressed the gloved hand and
left a cheque in it.  "We shall go to press
with this immediately."

Joan glanced at the cheque, saw it was
for seven hundred pounds, and despised
Lady Henry for cheapening the market.
Her waiting cab drove her a few streets
farther on, to the office of *The Planet*.  A
card with the name of Miss Carthew, and
"Important private business" scrawled upon
it, was the "Open, sesame!" to Sir Edmund
Foster's door.

"Have you your cheque-book handy?"
she nonchalantly asked.

"What for?"

"*Quid pro quo.*"  Joan rushed into her
whole story, which she told from beginning
to end, proving its truth by showing
Mr. Portheous' cheque made out to Mrs. Anne
Randall.  "Lady Henry, no doubt, has an
account somewhere under that name.  She's
too sharp to use her own," added the girl.
"Do you believe me now?"

"Yes.  You're wonderful.  I shall risk
printing the news exactly as you have given
it to me."

"You won't regret your trust.  But I don't
want your cheque to-night.  I'll take it
to-morrow, when I can say: 'I told you so.'"

"Would you still like to come on our staff--at
a salary of ten pounds a week?"

"No, thank you, Sir Edmund.  I've brought
off my big *coup*, and anything more in the
newspaper line would be, I fear, an anticlimax.
Besides, I want to play with my fifteen
hundred pounds."

"What shall you do now?"

"Go back to the house which has the
honour of being my home, change my clothes,
hurry breathlessly to South Audley Street,
and inform Lady Henry that her costume
can't be found.  She will then, in desperation,
decide to send a note to *The Daily Beacon*,
which, my prophetic soul whispers, she will
order me to take."

"Shall you go?"

"Out of the house, yes--never, never to
return, for my work there is done.  But not
to the office of *The Beacon*.  Lady Henry's
box shall be sent to her by parcel post
to-morrow morning, and Mrs. Randall's cheque
will be in the coat pocket.  That will surprise
her a little, but it won't matter to me; for,
after having called here for my cheque, I
think I'll take the two o'clock train for the
Continent.  I shall have plenty of money
to enjoy myself, and I feel I need a change
of air."

"You are wonderful!" repeated Sir Edmund Foster.




CHAPTER XI--Kismet and a V.C.
=============================

"Now, where on earth have I seen that
girl before?" Joan Carthew asked herself.

It was at Biarritz, where she was enjoying,
as she put it to herself, a well-earned holiday;
and she was known at her hotel, and among
the few acquaintances she had made, as
the Comtesse de Merival, a young widow with
plenty of money.  She was a Comtesse
because it is easy to say that one has married
a sprig of foreign nobility, without being
found out; she was a widow because it is
possible for a widow to be alone, unchaperoned,
and to amuse herself without ceasing to be
*comme il faut*.

Joan had amused herself a great deal
during the six weeks since she had left England,
and the cream of the amusement had consisted
in inventing a romantic story about herself
and getting it believed.  It was as good as
acting in a successful play which one has
written for oneself.

At the present moment she was walking
on the *plage*, pleasantly conscious that she
was one of the prettiest and best-dressed
women among many who were pretty and
well-dressed.  Then a blonde girl passed
her, a blonde girl who was new to Biarritz,
but who, somehow, did not seem new to
Joan's retina.  Her photograph was
somewhere in the book of memory, and, oddly
enough, it seemed to have a background of
sea and blue sky, as it had to-day.

The girl was pretty, as a beautifully dressed,
golden-haired doll in a shop window is pretty.
She was also exceedingly "good form," and
she was vouched for as a young person of
importance by a remarkably distinguished-looking
old man who strolled beside her.

They turned, and in passing the "Comtesse"
for the second time, the girl looked
full in Joan's face, with a lingering gaze
such as a spoiled beauty often directs upon
a possible rival.

Then, all in an instant, Joan knew.

"Why," she reminded herself, "it's the
girl I saw at Brighton--the girl I envied.
I know it is she.  That's eight years ago,
but I can't be mistaken."

Somehow this seemed an important
discovery.  If Joan, a miserable, overworked
slavey of twelve, nursing her tyrant's baby,
had not been bitten with consuming jealousy
of a child no older but a thousand times
more fortunate than herself, she might have
gone on indefinitely as a slavey, and might
never have had a career.

The little girl at Brighton had looked
scornfully from under her softly drooping
Leghorn hat at the shabby child-nurse, and
a rage of resentment had boiled in Joan's
passionate young heart.  Now, the tall girl
at Biarritz looked with half-reluctant
admiration from under an equally becoming
hat at the Comtesse de Merival, who was
more beautiful and apparently quite as
fortunate as she.  Nevertheless the old scar
suddenly throbbed again, so that Joan
remembered there had once been a wound;
and she knew that she had no gratitude
for the girl to whom, indirectly, she owed
her rise in the world.

Joan was usually generous to women, even
when she had no cause to love them, for,
with all her faults, there was nothing of the
"cat" in her nature; yet, to her surprise,
she felt that she would like to hurt this girl
in some way.  "What a brute I must be!"
she said to herself.  "I didn't know I was
so bad.  Really I mustn't let this sort of thing
grow on me, otherwise I shall degenerate
from a highwayman (rather a gallant one, I
think) into a cad, and I should lose interest
in foraging for myself if I were a cad."

As she thought this, the girl and her
companion were joined by a man.  Joan glanced,
then gazed, and decided that he was the most
interesting man to look at whom she had ever
seen in her life.  Not that he was the
handsomest, as mere beauty of feature goes,
but he was of exactly the type which Joan
and most women admire at heart above all
others.

One did not need to be told, to know that
he was a soldier.  As he stood talking to
his friends, with his hat off, and the sun
chiselling the ripples of his close-cropped
hair in bronze, his head towered above those
of the other men who came and went.  His
face was bronze, too, of a lighter shade,
blending into ivory half way up the forehead,
and his features were strong and clear-cut
as a bronze man's should always be.  He
wore no moustache or beard, and his mouth
and chin were self-reliant, firm, and generous,
but Joan liked his eyes best of all.  As she
passed slowly, they met hers for a second,
and their clear depths were brown and bright
as a Devonshire brook when the noonday
sun shines into it.

It was only for a second that the man's
soul looked at her from its windows, but it
was long enough to make her sharply realise
two facts.  One, that she was far, far beneath
him; the other, that he was the only man
in the world for her.

"To think that *that* girl should know
him, and I not!" she said to herself
rebelliously.  "He is miles too good for me, but
he's more miles too good for her, because
she hasn't any soul, and I have, even though
it's a bad one.  Again, after all these years,
that girl passes through my life, taking with
her as she goes what I would give all I own,
all I might ever gain, to have.  It's
Kismet--nothing less."

"*Ah, Comtesse, bon jour*!" murmured a
voice that Joan knew, and then it went on
in very good English, with only a slight
foreign accent: "You are charming to-day,
but you do not see your friends.  They
must remind you of their existence before
they can win a bow."

"I have just seen some one who was like
a ghost out of the past," returned Joan,
with a careless smile for the handsome, dark
young man who had stopped to greet her.

"What!" his face lighted up.  "You
know that young lady you were looking at?
That is indeed interesting, and I will tell
you why, presently, if you will let me.  If you
would but introduce me--at all events, to the
father.  The rest I can do for myself."

"I don't know her," said Joan, "although
an important issue of my life was associated
with the girl.  I can't even give you her name."

"I can do as much as that for you,"
said the Marchese Villa Fora.  "She is a
Miss Violet Ffrench, and the old man is her
father, General Ffrench.  Not only is she
one of the greatest beauties, but one of the
greatest heiresses in England."

"Ah!" said Joan, "no wonder you are interested."

"No wonder.  But what good does that
do to me, since I have not the honour of
her acquaintance, and since she is to marry
that great, bronze statue of a fellow?"

A pang shot through Joan's heart, and
she was ashamed because it was a
jealous pang.  "She is to marry him!  How
do you know that, since you are not acquainted
with her?"

"It is an open secret.  I saw the father
and daughter in Paris three weeks ago, and
fell in love at first sight--ah! you may
laugh.  You Englishwomen cannot understand
us Latins.  It is true that I proposed
to you, but you would not take me, and my
heart was soon after caught in the rebound.
It is very simple."

"You thought that you fell in love with
me at first sight, too; at least, you said
so, and without any introduction except
picking up my purse when I dropped it in the
Champs Élysées."

"I got an introduction afterwards."

"Yes, a lady who was staying at my hotel."

"At all events, she vouched for me.  She
has known my family for years, in Madrid."

"She warned me against you, Marchese.
She said that you were a fortune-hunter, and
that you fancied I was rich.  When you had
proposed, and I had told you frankly that my
fortune was but silver-gilt, warranted to
keep its colour for a few years only, you were
very much obliged to me for refusing you,
as it saved you the trouble of jilting me
afterwards.  You are still more obliged to
me now that you have met a genuine heiress
who has all other desirable qualifications as
well."

"You are cruel," exclaimed Villa Fora,
to whose style of good looks reproaches were
becoming.  "Cannot a man love twice?
What does it matter to the heart whether
there has been an interval of weeks or of
years?  I am madly in love with Miss
Ffrench, and as you promised to be my
friend if I would 'talk no more nonsense,' I
have no hesitation in confessing it to you.
I followed her here from Paris, and arrived only
this afternoon.  She is at the Hotel
Victoria; therefore, so am I."

"So am I, but not 'therefore,'" cut in
Joan.  "And the--the man you say she is to marry?"

"Colonel Sir Justin Wentworth?  He is
at the Grand.  But he has come for her.  I
know the whole story--I have it from a
gossiping old lady who is *au courant* with
every one's affairs if they are worth
bothering with; and she does not make mistakes.
She has told me that General Ffrench was the
guardian of this Sir Justin, that the
father--a baronet--was his dearest friend.  The
match has been an understood thing ever
since Wentworth was eighteen and the girl
five; for there is quite thirteen years'
difference in their ages."

"Then he is about thirty-four or five,"
said Joan thoughtfully.

"Yes, but in that I am not interested.
The awful part for me is that the girl
is now of age, and the obstacle of her
youth no longer prevents the marriage.
Any day the worst may happen.  If
I could only meet her, I might have a chance
to undermine the cold, bronze statue, even
though he has a great reputation as a
soldier, and is a V.C.  But how to manage
an introduction?  The father has the air of
a mediaeval dragon."

Joan's heart said: "The man is not a
cold statue," but aloud she remarked: "I
see now why you hoped that I knew Miss
Ffrench.  You wanted *me* to manage it.
Well, perhaps I can, even as it is.  I have
undertaken more difficult things and succeeded."

"Oh, if you would!  But why should
I hope it, since you have nothing to gain?"

Joan dropped her eyes and did not answer.

"Yet you will try?" pleaded Villa Fora.

"Yet I will try, on one condition.  You
must be a connection of the late Comte de Merival."

"Your husband!"

Joan smiled as she nodded.

"I am Spanish; he was, I understand,
French.  But then that presents no difficulty.
There are such things as international marriages."

"Yes.  Your mother's sister married an
uncle of my husband's, didn't she?"

"Quite so.  It is settled," agreed the
Marchese gravely.

"Well, then, that is the sharp end of the
wedge.  I will do my best and cleverest to
insert it," said Joan.  "As you have just
arrived, it will be the easier.  We are cousins.
It can appear to all those whom it does not
concern (meaning the gossips of the hotel)
that you have run on to see your cousin.  For
the rest, you must trust me for a day or two,
or perhaps more."

Joan had tea--with her cousin--at Miremont's;
and they saw the Ffrenches and Sir
Justin Wentworth, also having tea.  Violet
Ffrench looked at Joan with the same
side-glance of half-grudging admiration as before,
and Joan looked, now and then, at Violet
Ffrench with a charming, frank gaze, which
seemed to say: "You are so sweetly pretty
that I can't keep my eyes off you, and I
like you for being pretty."  In reality it
said something quite different, but it was
effects, not realities, which mattered at the
moment.

Thus the campaign had begun, though
the enemy was blissfully ignorant of the
activity upon the other side.

Joan went back to the hotel rather earlier
than she had intended, and going straight
to the large, empty dining-room, rang for
the head waiter.  When he appeared, she
asked if it were yet arranged where a new
arrival, General Ffrench, was to sit with his
daughter.  The waiter pointed out a small
table or two, near the centre of the room;
but before his hand withdrew from the
gesture, it was turned palm upward in answer
to a slight, silent hint from Joan.  Finally,
it retired with a louis in its clasp.  "I want
you to put my table close to theirs," said
she.  "It shall be done, madame," replied
the man; and it was done.  Therefore Joan
and Violet could scarcely help exchanging more
glances from between their red-shaded candles
that night at dinner, which Joan ate alone,
unaccompanied by the wistful Villa Fora.

The Ffrenches appeared to know nobody
in the hotel, and of this she was glad.  There
was the more chance for her.

After dinner there was conjuring, and
Joan contrived to sit next to Miss Ffrench.
Villa Fora was on the opposite side of the big
drawing-room, where he had reluctantly gone
in obedience to his "cousin's" instructions.
The conjuring made conversation, and Joan
was not surprised to find the heiress open to
flattery.  When the performance was over, she
kept her seat; and by this time, having
introduced herself to Miss Ffrench, the
introduction was passed on to the father.
He, good man, was too well-born to be actually
a snob, but he had no objection to titles,
even foreign ones, and the Comtesse de
Merival was so pretty, so modest, altogether
such good form, that he had no objection
to her as, at least, an hotel acquaintance
for his daughter.

It seemed that General Ffrench had been
ordered to Biarritz for his health, and that
he hoped to do some golfing; but Miss
Ffrench hated golf, and as she had no friends
in the place, she expected to be very dull.

At this, Joan reminded her gaily of the
friend with whom she and her father had
been walking in the afternoon.

"Oh, but he is such an old friend, he
doesn't count," exclaimed Violet, blushing
a little.

"She isn't a bit in love with him," thought
Joan.  "What a shame!  But--*tant mieux*.
She is vain and romantic; often the two
qualities go together in a woman.  The ground
is all prepared for me."

By and by, Sir Justin Wentworth strolled
in from his hotel.  Though she was dying
to stay and meet him, and perhaps have a
few words, Joan rose and walked away.
This course was approved by General Ffrench.
He would have known what to think if the
beautiful Comtesse had made herself fascinating,
at such short notice, to his son-in-law elect.

Joan talked with her "cousin," who had
been in the smoking-room, and Violet Ffrench
had time to be intensely curious as to the
connection between her charming new
acquaintance, the Comtesse de Merival, and
the handsome, dark young man who had
been in her hotel at Paris.  He had looked
at her then; he looked at her now.  What
was he to the Comtesse? what was the
Comtesse to him?

Next morning, both General Ffrench and
Sir Justin Wentworth walked off to the
golf-links, leaving Violet to write letters in
the glass room that looked out on the sea.
Presently Joan came in, with a writing-case
in her hand, and Violet stopped in the midst
of the first sentence of her first letter.  Joan
did not even begin to write, nor had she ever
cherished the faintest intention of doing so.

Violet rather hoped that she would mention
the dark young man, but she did not; and
then, of course, Violet hoped it a great deal
more.  The two girls drifted from one subject
to another, and finally, by way of a favourite
author and a popular novel of the moment,
they touched the key of romance.

"I used to think that romance was dead
in this century, but lately I have been
finding out that it isn't," said Joan.  "Oh,
not personally.  Romance is over for me.
I loved my husband, you see, and he died
the day of our wedding; I married him on
his death-bed.  That is not romance; it is
tragedy.  But I am speaking of what I
should not speak of, to you, so let us talk of
something else."

"Why?" asked Violet.

"Oh, because--because I have an idea
that you are engaged."

"How can that matter?"

"It does matter.  I oughtn't to explain,
so you mustn't urge me."

"You rouse my curiosity," said Violet;
but this was not news to Joan.

"Engaged girls shouldn't have curiosity
about anything outside their own romances,"
replied the Comtesse de Merival mysteriously.

"I've never had a real romance," sighed
Violet.  "I've always been more or less
engaged to Sir Justin Wentworth ever since
I can remember.  He is a splendid fellow,
as you can see."

"I hardly noticed," said Joan; then
added, in a whisper, but not too low a whisper
to be heard: "I was so busy pitying someone else."

Violet's colour rose, and she was really a very
pretty girl, though vanity made her eyes cold.

"Sir Justin's father and mine were old
chums," went on Violet.  "Our place and
his lie close together in Devonshire.  We
have even some of the same money-interests--mines
in Australia.  He has heaps of
money, too, so there's no question of his
needing to think of mine."

"As if any man could think of your money
when he had you to think of!" exclaimed
Joan.  "No doubt you will be very happy.
Such a long friendship ought to be a good
foundation for the rest, and yet--and yet--it's
a pity that you should have to marry
and become a placid British matron without
first knowing some of the wild joys of *real* love,
real romance."

"I thought you doubted there being any
left in the world?"

"No; I said I had found at least one
case which had built up my faith again;
a case of passionate love, born at first sight,
and strong enough to carry the man across
the world, if necessary, to follow the woman
he loves."

"Such love isn't likely to come my way."

"It has come your way.  It is here--close
to you.  Oh, I have done wrong!  I
should not have spoken.  But I am so sorry
for him--my poor, handsome cousin."

"Your cousin!"  This was a revelation,
and Violet's eyes were not cold now, but
warm with interest.

"Yes, the Marchese Villa Fora, the
best-looking and one of the best-born young men
in Spain.  But indeed we must not talk
of him.  What a lovely day it is!  I must
have my motor-car out this afternoon.  How
I should love to take you with me!"

Violet would ask no more questions;
but all that had been dark was now clear, and
she could think of nothing and no one except
the Comtesse's cousin, the Marchese Villa Fora.

Joan had been in the hotel at Biarritz for
ten days, and by the trick of "being nice"
(she knew how to be very nice) to the
unattached old ladies and middle-aged dowagers,
she had been accepted on her own valuation.
She did not flirt, she had a title, she appeared
to be rich, she owned a motor-car, therefore
none of her statements regarding herself
was doubted.  General Ffrench made an
inquiry or two concerning her, was satisfied
with the replies, and therefore consented
to let his daughter join an automobile party
arranged by the Comtesse for the afternoon.

Somehow, in the motor-car, Violet sat
next to the Marchese Villa Fora, who gazed at
her sadly with magnificent eyes and said
very little.  It was extremely interesting,
she discovered, to sit shoulder to shoulder with
a man who was dying of hopeless love for you,
and had followed you across France, though
he had never spoken a word to you until
to-day.  It was he who helped her out when
they came back to the hotel, and the thrill
in her fingers after his had pressed them almost
convulsively for an instant remained for a long time.




CHAPTER XII--A New Love and an Old Enemy
========================================

Now, the thin end of the entering wedge,
of which Joan had hinted, was well in,
and after this day events moved swiftly.  The
Comtesse de Merival and Miss Ffrench were
close friends.  Violet opened her heart to
Joan and told her everything that was in it--not
a long list.  Joan sympathised and
advised.  She did so want dear Violet to be
happy, she said, for happiness was the best
thing in the world; and love was happiness.
She wanted her to have that.

The two girls were together constantly,
and this meant that Joan soon began to see
a good deal of Sir Justin Wentworth.  Quickly
she diagnosed that he cared nothing for
Violet Ffrench, except in a kindly, protective,
affectionate way, but that he had a deep
regard for her father.  He would never try
to free himself of the tacit understanding
into which he had drifted as a boy; if any
change were to come, the initiative must
be taken, and firmly taken, by Violet.

Meanwhile, two things were happening.
If Violet was not precisely falling in love
with Villa Fora, she was in love with
the idea of him which was growing up in her
mind; and Justin Wentworth had discovered
that he craved for something more in life
than Violet Ffrench could ever give him.

He had gone on contentedly enough for
the several years during which he had
definitely thought of the marriage.  There had
been the Boer war, and then the interest
of coming home to England and his beautiful
old place in Devonshire, which he loved.
But now, quite suddenly, he had awakened to
the fact that contentment is no better than
desperate resignation; and though he was
hardly aware of it yet, the awakening had
come to him when looking into Joan's eyes.

He would not confess to himself that he
loved her, but he thought that she was the
most vivid creature he had ever met, and
he could not help realising how curiously
congenial they were in most of their thoughts.
Often he seemed to feel what she was feeling,
without a word being spoken on either
side, and unconsciously he was jealous of
the handsome Spanish cousin with whom
(General Ffrench innocently suggested) the
Comtesse would probably make a match.

Joan, on her part, cared too much by this
time to be able to see clearly, where her own
affairs were concerned.  She had begun the
little comedy she was playing not for the
sake of Villa Fora, but for her own, with
the deliberate intention of separating Violet
Ffrench from Justin Wentworth, even though
she might never come any nearer to him
herself.  All the machinery which she had set
going was running smoothly.  Violet was
fascinated by Villa Fora, was meeting him
secretly and receiving notes from him; he
was determined to bring matters to a climax
soon, and was sure of his success.  General
Ffrench played golf all day, bridge half the
night, and suspected nothing; nor, apparently,
did any one else.  Still, Joan was more
miserable than she had ever been in her life--far
more miserable than when Lady Thorndyke
had died without making a new will and
left her penniless.

The girl saw herself at last as she was,
unscrupulous, an adventuress, living on her
wits and the lack of wits in others.  She
hated herself, and worshipped more and
more each day the honourable soldier from
whom her own unworthiness (if there were
no other barrier) must, she felt, put her
irrevocably apart.

Even as Joan talked to Violet of Wentworth
and Villa Fora, outwardly agreeing with the
girl that the one was cold, that it was the
other who knew how to love, her whole soul
was in rebellion against itself.  "He does
not think of me at all," she would repeat over
and over again, despite the secret voice of
instinct which whispered a contradiction.
"He doesn't think of me; and even if he did,
he would only have to know half the truth
to despise me as the vilest of women."

Then, one day, there was a great scandal
at the hotel.  The Marchese Villa Fora had
run away with Miss Violet Ffrench, in the
Comtesse de Merival's motor-car, which lately
he had been learning to drive.  Even Joan
was taken by surprise, for she had not known
that the thing was going to happen so soon.
She was actually able to tell the truth--or
something approaching the truth--when she
assured the father and the deserted *fiancé* that
she was innocent of complicity.  So candid
were her beautiful, wet eyes, so tremulous her
sweet voice, and so pale the delicate oval
of her cheeks, that both men believed her,
and one of them was so happy in this sudden
relief from the weight of a great burden
that he could have sung aloud.

General Ffrench was far from happy;
but he determined that, rather than give
fuel to the scandal, he would make the best of
things as they were.  To this course he was
partly persuaded by the counsels of Justin
Wentworth.  Villa Fora was undoubtedly
what he pretended to be, a Spanish marquis
of very ancient and honourable lineage,
though it would take many golden bricks
to rebuild the family castle in Spain.  The
girl had gone with him, and gone too far
before the truth came out to be brought
back with good grace, therefore it were well
to let her become the Marchesa Villa Fora
quietly, without useless ragings.

The thing Joan had set herself to
accomplish was done; she had separated Justin
Wentworth and Violet Ffrench for ever, and
now the end had come.  She was hurt and
sore, and could hardly bear to see her own
face in the glass, for she imagined that it
had grown hard and cruel--that Justin
Wentworth must find it so.

General Ffrench openly announced his
daughter's marriage to the Marchese Villa
Fora, and told all inquirers that he was going
to join her in Madrid; but Justin Wentworth
would not, of course, accompany his old friend
on such a mission.  He would set his face
towards England, and with this intention
he said "Good-bye" to the Comtesse de Merival.

"This has hurt and shocked you,
too," he said.  "There is one thing I must
say to you, and it is this: it is only for her
father that I care.  I want her to be happy
in her own way.  We did not suit each other."

"I used sometimes to think not," Joan
answered in a voice genuinely broken.  "I
used to be afraid that--if you should ever
marry--you would not have been happy.
Perhaps she--wasn't the right one for you."

Her eyes were downcast, but the compelling
power of love in the man's caught them
up to his and held them.

"I have known that she wasn't the right
one for a long time," he said.  "I have
known the right one, and it is you.  I love
you with all my heart.  I want you.  You
are the one woman on earth for me.  I
hadn't meant to say this now, but--I can't
let you go out of my life.  I must do all I
can to keep you always."

"Don't!" gasped Joan.  "Don't! it will
kill me.  Oh, if you only knew, how you
would hate me!"

"Nothing could make me hate you."

"Yes.  Wait!"  And then Joan poured
out the whole story--not only of this last
fraud, but of all the frauds; the story of her "career."

He listened to the end, without interrupting
her once.  Then, at last, when the
strange tale was finished, and the pale girl
was silent from sheer exhaustion of the
hopeless spirit tasting its punishment in
purgatory, he held out his arms.

"Poor, little, lonely girl!" he said.  "How
sorry I am for you!  How I want to comfort
and take care of you all the rest of your life,
so that it may be clear and white, as your
true self would have it be!  And--how glad
I am that you're not a widowed Comtesse!"

----

She was in his arms still when a knock at
the door roused them both from the first
dream of real happiness the girl had ever known.

A servant brought a card.  She took it
from the tray and read it out mechanically:
"Mr. George Gallon."

"Tell the gentleman----" she had begun;
but before she could go further with her
instructions George Gallon himself had entered the room.

"Well, Miss Carthew," he said, "I heard
from an unexpected source that you were
here, swaggering about as the widow of a
French Comte.  I needed a little holiday,
and so I ran out to see whether you were a
greater success as a Comtesse than you were
as a typewriter in my office.  Oh!  I beg your
pardon.  You're not alone.  I'm afraid I
may have surprised your friend with some
disagreeable news."

"Not at all," said Justin Wentworth
calmly.  "Miss Carthew has not only told
me of that episode in her life, but how it
became necessary for her to take up the
position of a typewriter.  Your treatment of
her seemed almost incredible--until I saw
you.  No wonder it was necessary for Miss
Carthew to adopt an *alias*, if this is the sort
of persecution she is subject to under her
own name.  But in future it will be different.
As Lady Wentworth she will be safe even from
cads like you; and though she is not yet
my wife, I'm thankful to say I have even
now the right to protect her.  When do you
intend to leave Biarritz, Mr. Gallon?"

.. _`"'When do you intend to leave Biarritz?'"`:

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   :alt: "'When do you intend to leave Biarritz?'"

   "'When do you intend to leave Biarritz?'"


George opened his lips furiously, but snapped
them shut again.  Then, having paused to
reflect, he said: "I am here only for an hour.
I'm going on to Spain."

"Pray watch over your tongue in that
hour," returned Wentworth.

Then George Gallon was gone.

"I'll worship you all my life on my knees,"
said Joan.  "I'm not worthy to touch your
hand.  But I will be.  I will be a new self."

"Only the best of the old one, that is
all I want," answered her lover.  "The
past is like a garment which you wore for
protection against the storm.  But there will
be no more storms after this."

"Because you have forgiven me, because
you believe in me," cried Joan, "you will
make of me the woman you would have me!"

"The woman you really are, or I would
not have loved you," he said.

And so it was that Joan Carthew's career
ended and her life began.

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Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

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