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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 49494
   :PG.Title: Latter-Day Sweethearts
   :PG.Released: 2015-07-19
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Mrs. Burton Harrison
   :MARCREL.ill: Frank \T. Merrill
   :DC.Title: Latter-Day Sweethearts
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1906
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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LATTER-DAY SWEETHEARTS
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   .. _`A flower shot down amid the crowd.  Page 19.`:

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      :alt: A flower shot down amid the crowd.  Page 19.

      A flower shot down amid the crowd.  Page `19`_.

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      Latter-Day Sweethearts

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      By

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      MRS. BURTON HARRISON

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      Author of

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      "A Bachelor Maid,"
      "The Carlyles," "The Circle of a Century,"
      "The Anglomaniacs," Etc.

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      "La Duchesse.—'L'amour est le fléau du monde.  Tous
      nos maux nous viennent de lui.'

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      "Le Docteur.—'C'est le seul qui les guérisse,"
                          —"*Le Duel*," *Henri Lavedan*.

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      Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK \T. MERRILL

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      \A. \S. & \T. HUNTER
      SPECIAL EDITION,
      UTICA, \N. \Y.

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      NEW YORK AND LONDON
      THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION
      1907

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      COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
      CONSTANCE BURTON HARRISON.

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      *Entered at Stationers' Hall.*
      *All Rights Reserved.*

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      Composition and Electrotyping by
      \J. \J. Little & Co.
      Printed and bound by the
      Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass.

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   .. _`(Facsimile Page of Manuscript from LATTER-DAY SWEETHEARTS)`:

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      :alt: (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from LATTER-DAY SWEETHEARTS)

      (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from LATTER-DAY SWEETHEARTS)

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.. _`CHAPTER I`:

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   LATTER-DAY
   SWEETHEARTS

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   CHAPTER I

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In going aboard the "Baltic" that exceptionally
fine October morning, Miss Carstairs
convinced herself that, of the people assembled
to see her off, no one could reasonably discern
in her movement the suggestion of a retreat.
The commonplace of a sailing for the other
side would not, indeed, have met with the
recognition of any attendance at the pier
among her set, save for her hint that she
might remain abroad a year.  There had been
a small rally on the part of a few friends
who had chanced to meet at a dinner
overnight, to go down to the White Star docks
and say good-by to Helen Carstairs.  Helen
sincerely wished they had not come, both
because the ceremony proved a little flat, and
because, when she had time to think them
over, she was not so sure they were her friends.

But the main thing was that she had been
able to withdraw, easily and naturally, from
a doubly trying situation.  She had not wanted
to go abroad.  All the novelty and sparkle
had gone out of that business long ago.  She
knew foreign travel from A to Z, and she
loathed tables d'hôte, even more than the grim
prospect of private meals with Miss Bleecker
in sitting-rooms redolent of departed food,
insufficiently atoned for by an encircling
wilderness of gilding and red plush.  The very
thought of a concierge with brass buttons
lifting his cap to her every time she crossed
the hall, of hotel corridors decked with
strange foot gear upon which unmade
bedrooms yawned, of cabs and galleries and
harpy dressmakers, of sights and fellow
tourists, gave her a mental qualm.  But it was
better than staying at home this winter in the
big house in Fifth Avenue where Mr. Carstairs
had just brought a stepmother for her,
in the person of "that Mrs. Coxe."

There was apparently no valid reason for
Helen's shuddering antipathy to the lady,
who had been the widow of a junior partner
of her father, a man whom Mr. Carstairs had
"made," like many another beginning in his
employ.

Mr. Coxe had died two years before, of
nervous overstrain, leaving this flamboyantly
handsome, youngish woman to profit by
his gains.  Helen had always disliked having
to ask the Coxes to dinner when her father's
fiat compelled her to preside over the dull
banquets of certain smartly-dressed women
and weary, driven men, whom he assembled
at intervals around his board.  She could not
say what she objected to in Mrs. Coxe; she
thought it might be her giggle and her double
chin.  It had been always a relief when one
of these "business" dinners was over, and
she knew she would not have to do it soon
again.  When Mr. Carstairs dined in return
with the Coxes, they had him at some
fashionable restaurant, taking him afterward to
the play.  Mrs. Coxe had shown sense enough
for that!  During the interregnum of
Mrs. Coxe's mourning following the demise of her
exhausted lord, Mr. Carstairs had had the
yacht meet Helen and himself at Gibraltar,
and cruised all that winter in the Mediterranean.

That had been life abroad, Helen thought,
with a throb of yearning!  She was very fond
of her father, rather a stony image to most
people, and immensely proud of the way
people looked up to his achievements in the
Street, the resistless rush of his business
combinations, his massive wealth, and his
perfect imperturbability to newspaper cavil
and attacks by enemies.  She had loved to be
at the head of his establishment, and to
receive the clever and distinguished and
notable people, foreign and domestic, who
accepted Mr. Carstairs' invitation to meet one
another, because they were clever and
distinguished and notable, not because they wanted
to talk all the evening what they had talked
all day.

When they had come home from their
cruise, Helen spent the summer in Newport,
where her father rarely went.  The yacht was
his summer home, he was wont to say; and
Helen did not suspect how often that season
the noble "Sans Peur" had been anchored
off the shores of a settlement in Long Island
where Mrs. Coxe was enjoying the seclusion
of a shingled villa with broad verandas set in
a pocket handkerchief of lawn.  Back and
forth flew the owner's steam launch between
the "Sans Peur" and the landing, and yet
nobody told Helen.  That autumn she had
affairs of her own to absorb her time and
give her a sobering view of humanity.  For
the first time in her life her father had
vacated his throne as masculine ruler of her
thoughts.  She had passed into the grip of
a strong, real passion for a man "nobody"
knew.

That is to say, John Glynn was too hard
at work to let himself be found out.  Helen
had indulged in her affair with him almost
unknown to her acquaintances, most of
whom regarded the foot of the ladder of
wealth, where he distinctly stood, as the one
spot where dalliance in sentiment was to be
shunned.  Her movements were hampered by
the fact that, although the daughter of a
plutocrat, she had only a trifle of her own;
Mr. Carstairs having announced, with the insolent
eccentricity of some men of his stripe, that
she should go dowerless to her husband,
hoping thus to protect her from fortune-seekers,
foreign and native.  So long as she remained
unmarried under his roof she was to enjoy
great wealth and the importance it confers.
Until now Helen had not cared.  Her brain
was clear, her head was cool, she had tastes
and occupations that filled every hour, and
plenty of people who flocked around her,
paying court to the dispenser of liberal
hospitalities.

Her love passage had ended in disaster, but
exactly what had passed between her and the
unknown Glynn, no one was sufficiently
intimate with Helen to ascertain.

The marriage of her father with Mrs. Coxe
had taken place in June, after which
Mr. Carstairs had withdrawn his apparent
objections to Newport, and blossomed out there
as a villa resident of supreme importance.
The months of this but partially successful
experiment on the part of the new Mrs. Carstairs
had been passed by Helen in suppressed
misery.  She had gone into camp in
the Adirondacks, had visited friends at Dark
Harbor, and welcomed with thankfulness the
invitation to spend September with a young
couple of her acquaintance who had a house
at Lenox, filled, with the exception of one
spare room, with assorted dogs.

Early in October her father, visibly
inspired by the lady who no longer giggled in
Helen's presence, but had not lost her double
chin, gave his recalcitrant daughter "a good
talking to."  If she persisted in her
rebellious demeanor towards her stepmother, the
more reprehensible because reserved, she was
at liberty to do one of two things, viz., take
a furnished house in town and engage Miss
Bleecker, or somebody, to be her chaperon;
or else go where she liked, abroad.

Choosing the latter alternative, Helen had
been considered fortunate in securing for her
companion the lady in question, who was
certified by her believers to be rarely disengaged.
Miss Bleecker, in earlier days, had given
readings in New York drawing-rooms and
elsewhere about the country, until the
gradual fading away of audiences had turned her
thoughts into the present more lucrative and
less fatiguing channel of genteelest occupation.

Nature had gifted her with an ephemerally
imposing presence, large, cold, projecting
eyes, an authoritative voice and an excellent
knowledge of the art of dress.  It was
familiarly said that to see her come into a room
was a lesson to any girl; and her acquaintance
with the ins and outs of New York society
and fond pride in the display of it, put
the dull lady beyond criticism as a general
conversationalist.

The two travellers were attended by a
French maid, closely modelled in exterior
upon previous employers of rank abroad,
whose service she had relinquished for the
higher wage resulting from her American
decadence in social standing.  Her large wad
of suspiciously golden hair, frizzed over the
eyebrows, was a souvenir of a "Lady Reggie";
while the flat waist, girdled low upon
the hips of a portly person, was her best
tribute to the slim young Princess Bartolozzi
who had had her two years in Rome.  This
composite rendering of great ladies did not
rob Mademoiselle Eulalie of the coarse
modelling of her features; but, on the other hand,
as Miss Bleecker said, she was safe from
couriers, and her packing was a dream.

When Helen went to the cabin de luxe
secured by her father's secretary, into which
Miss Bleecker's room opened, she felt
impatient with the girls who followed her,
exclaiming approvingly over its comforts; with
the maid who stood sentinel by her gold-fitted
dressing-case; with Miss Bleecker, who, in
colloquy with a white-capped stewardess, was
already laying down the law as to their
requirements on the voyage.  She hurried out
again, encompassed by her friends, to gain
the upper deck, where the men of the visiting
party, looking unanimously bored, awaited
anxiously the ringing of the last gong that
should drive them from the ship.  All had
been said that could be said on either side.
Vague repetitions had set in.  Helen's eyes
roved eagerly over the crowds on the pier
below, over the congested gangway.  She was
hoping to see her father, and—perhaps, but
improbably—one other.  Late in the fray a
brougham rattled along the pier and drew up
below.  Helen recognized her father's big
brown horse and his steady coachman in
sober livery, the down-town outfit of the
financier, who, below Fourteenth Street, was
simplicity itself.  Mr. Carstairs, with a
preoccupied air, got out and ascended the
gangway.  The official in charge at the top of it,
who would have barred the way to a lesser
man, smiled and waved the magnate into his
daughter's embraces.  Everything insensibly
yielded to the subtle power of this ruler of
the destinies of men.  Helen, as she drew out
of the lax clasp of the paternal arm, felt a
thrill of her old pride in him; a sense of
despair that she was nevermore to be his chosen
companion for a voyage; a sharp pang of
resentment at the image of the absent
interloper of their peace.

"It was too good of you to find time to
come, papa!" she exclaimed, turning to nod
to the secretary who accompanied him.
"Who knows when we shall be together again!"

"Yes, there is a board of directors waiting
for me now," said Mr. Carstairs abstractedly.
"Of course, you will be all right, my dear.
Foster has seen to everything, and Miss
Bleecker will—ah.  Miss Bleecker, here you
are; glad to see you looking so fit for the
voyage.  Nothing to speak of, though, a
crossing in this monster.  Wish I were getting
away myself.  I'm off now, Helen, my dear.
Wish you good luck and a good time generally!"

"It won't be with you and the 'Sans Peur,'
father," exclaimed the girl, with filling eyes.

"Well, well, we did get along pretty well
last cruise, didn't we?  I was to tell you," he
added, lowering his tone, "that if you are in
the humor for it, in the Spring—in the humor,
mind you, we'll be out, probably in March,
and take you and Miss Bleecker on at
Villefranche, or anywhere you like."

"Thank you, sir," said Helen, rigid in a
moment, her eyes dried of moisture.

"Think it over, my dear!  You'll find it
better worth while."

He kissed her again on the side of the cheek,
missing her lips somehow, and was gone.
Helen hardly saw his spare figure in the
topcoat that seemed too large for it, so quickly
the crowd closed behind him.  She was
conscious of impatience with Foster, who stood
there bowing in his sleek importance as the
millionaire's confidential man, extending his
dampish fingers for good-by.  The party who
had come to see her off sprinkled their final
farewells with a few banal last remarks and
disappeared.  Miss Bleecker, serenely proud,
took her station by the taffrail in a place
where no acquaintance or reporter could fail
to note her among the "well-known people
sailing this morning."  Helen was at last
alone.

Alone as she had never felt before, in her
five-and-twenty years of active, independent
life.  A gap in the double row of passengers
crowding to the rail forward gave her an
opportunity.  Slipping in, she looked down
upon upturned, ivory-tinted faces massed
together like those on a Chinese screen; at the
windows of the company's rooms, also crowded
with gazers, but saw nobody she knew.

Already the mighty ship began to stir in
her water-bed.  When she ceased motion
again, Helen would be over three thousand
miles from home, and the memories of this
last trying year.  It seemed to her there was
not one soul ashore to care whether she went
or stayed.  Was this worth living for, even
as she had lived?

A voice smote upon her ear.  It issued
from a girl jammed in next to her—a girl
younger than herself, extremely pretty,
flashily attired, recklessly unconventional.  Hers
was what Helen recognized to be a Southern
voice, low of pitch and soft of cadence, but
just now strained to the utmost to make itself
audible to a young man in the act of forcing
his way through the resistant crowd, to reach
the edge of the outer pier from which the
ship was now swinging off.  To further
accentuate her presence among the departing,
the young lady was waving a small American
flag.

"Jo-oh-n!  Oh!  Mr. Glynn!  Look up!
Here I am!  Up here!"

Helen started electrically, for it was *her*
John Glynn, and none other, whom this
unknown person was thus shamelessly
appropriating!  He, whom she had been yearning
to catch a glimpse of, who she was convinced
must know from the papers that she was
sailing by this steamer.  He, who she had felt
sure was in some hidden corner looking after
her, although, by her behest, they might not
again hold speech one with the other!

"Got here only this minute.  Best I could
do!" shouted John Glynn back to the stranger,
a smile lighting his handsome, manly face.

"Never mind!  I understand!  Good-by!"

.. _`19`:

A flower shot down amid the crowd.  Several
men affected to jump for it, but John
Glynn caught it and put it in his coat.  His
gaze never left Helen's neighbor; to her his
eyes were upturned, his hat was waved.  In
a flash, Miss Carstairs had drawn out of sight
and fled within.

She found Miss Bleecker already extended
upon the couch in her own stateroom, taking
tea, the door opened between, whilst Eulalie,
kneeling before steamer trunks and bags,
was littering everything near-by with
luxurious belongings.

Helen accepted a cup of tea, changed her
street costume for a long, close-fitting brown
ulster with a sable toque and boa, in which
Eulalie told her she was *parfaitement bien
mise*; and, escaping again to the deck, walked
up and down a comparatively clear space
until the "Baltic" was well down the bay.
Then, fairly tired, but unwilling to face Miss
Bleecker's chatter, she found a chair
forward, where it was not likely she would sit
again during the voyage, and with a wisp of
brown chiffon drawn close over her face,
abandoned herself to melancholy thought.

So this was the end of John Glynn's
lamenting for her loss!  She, not he, had been
faithful to the love they had shared so fondly
for a little while, in which she had no longer
dared indulge with him.  This was the way
he had accepted her decision that they must
try to forget each other, finally.

During the one week of their secret
engagement she had felt immeasurable
happiness.  But every moment of closer, contact
with her young love, a boy in world's
knowledge beside herself, though of her own age
in actual years, convinced her of the fatal
mistake she had made in believing she could
give up her present life for him, and clog his
career by an early marriage.  So she had
broken the bond ruthlessly, and her father
had never known of its existence.  And his
consolation so quickly found!  Helen's lip
curled disdainfully.  Some girl he had met
in his boarding-house; the kind of thing he
had been accustomed to before Miss Carstairs
treated her jaded taste to his virile
freshness and charming looks, his masterful
reliance upon himself, his willingness to take
her, poor or rich!  The type of girl she had
seen in the tumultuous moment beside the
rail was puzzling.  Not a lady, according to
her artificialized standard, but having the
frank assurance and belief in herself that had
attracted Helen to John Glynn, with a
something of good breeding underneath.  Cheaply
dressed, cheap mannered, perhaps, ignorant
of what Miss Carstairs considered elemental
necessities of training, but never vulgar.

But whatever the rival, the hurt was that
Glynn cared for Helen no more, while she
cared just the same.  What a fool she had
been to believe that masculine fidelity
survives the blows of fate!

Masked in her brown veil, Helen sat in her
corner, turning this bitter morsel upon her
tongue, her eyes vaguely resting upon the
passing show of passengers as they came
straying up on deck to make the best of
a fine afternoon while getting out to sea.
Impatiently casting aside her unwelcome
thoughts, she tried to interest herself in these
people, to speculate upon their identity,
purpose, and personality, with the usual rather
poor returns, since a ship's company
assembled at first view has always the most
depressing influence upon the looker-on.
Beside her, upon one of the rare seats of a liner
that belong to nobody, she espied a shabby
little man, in an overcoat like a faded leaf,
drop down furtively, then seeing no one
inclined to disturb him, relax his muscles and,
taking off an ancient, wide-brimmed felt hat,
look about him with a beaming smile,
prepared for full enjoyment of the hour and
scene.

Something in the artless buoyancy of his
manner, his meek acceptance of a modest
place in life, his indifference to the
considerations that oftenest vexed the souls of Miss
Carstairs' acquaintances upon making any
sort of public appearance before their
fellow-beings, struck her with an approach to
approval.  Her glance toward him was met in
the same spirit of prompt return that follows
patting upon the head a friendly dog.

"Beautiful weather we're having to go out
in, ma'am," he said.  "I'm kind of glad to
settle down in this quiet corner 'n see the last
o' my native land.  I reckoned I was in no
one's way occupying this little bench a bit.
Because, you see, I've walked and walked,
inspecting the White Star leviathan, everywhere
they'd let me set a foot, till I'm about
worn out.  Talk about 'seeing New York
City'!  It's not a patch on this ship for
making a man feel his lower limbs, if you'll
excuse the expression before a lady.  Why,
she's a wonder, ma'am, a marvel, and there's
literally no end to her.  I find myself saying
at intervals, 'Thank God, I've lived to cross
the Atlantic Ocean, and what's more, to cross
it in a floating Waldorf-Astoria,' for so it
looks to me!"

"You are fond of the water, then?" said
Helen, surprised at her own affability, but
on the whole too wretched to care for risks.

"Well, ma'am, I've, so to say, some little
experience.  I resided formerly in Norfolk,
Virginia, and went round to Baltimo,
Maryland, on several trips by sea.  Know
Baltimo, ma'am?  Can't exactly compare it to
New York, I reckon, but still it's a fine city.
Celebrated for its monuments, canvasbacks,
and pretty girls, the saying used to be.
Worn't dead stuck on canvasbacks myself,
though; got overfed with them on my
father's plantation when I was a lad, preferred
bacon and greens any day in the year.  But
I'll give in to the praise of Baltimo women
to my last breath.  Married one of 'em, in
fact, an' if God ever sent an angel into a
man's life, 'twas she."

Miss Carstairs, to her surprise, detected
simultaneously with a tender adoring look
coming upon his withered face, a suspicion
of moisture in her interlocutor's eyes.  She
sat up, felt that here was something so out of
the way as to verge upon impropriety, made
a movement to depart, and finally concluded
to remain where she was.

"Yes, ma'am, she was too good for me, or
any man.  Born among the best, as the
saying is, and I, one of the small potatoes in the
heap.  'Tisn't any wonder I should be thinking
of her to-day, the way she wanted all her
life to go to Europe and never dreamed of
managing to get there."

"I hope this thought won't spoil your own
pleasure in the journey," Helen said,
embarrassed to find an answer.

"Oh! no, ma'am, no chance of that.  Why,
she's been with me in spirit ever since we
parted, ten years ago, an' I always feel as if
she was sharing things.  She'd need a good
deal to make up to her for the hardships she
had with me.  You see, I was first leftenant
of infantry, just come out o' the war, 'n 'bout
as bare o' money as when I came into the
world, I reckon, when I met her first off in
Baltimo, where I was lookin' for a job.  I
was bred up as a drug clerk, and so was glad
to take a place in a poor little store, 'n we
began life together in one room of a
boarding-house, 'n a hall bedroom at that!  She,
mind you, was a general's daughter of the
real old Maryland first chop stock, but as
poor as me.  After her father was killed at
Gettysburg, you see, her mother went to
pickling for a living, 'n 'twas hard work, with
two other daughters on her hands, neither
one o' them likely to marry much, being the
kind the Lord makes homely for reasons of
His own.  My wife, now, was a beauty, no
mistaking her!  I never understood how she
came to take up with me, 'n when I asked her
why, she said she was just tired o' pickles,
anyway!  That was only her fun, ma'am; we
had to have a little, to make the wheels go
round.  Please excuse me for taking the
liberty of talking so sociably.  We Southerners
have that way, I reckon, and, besides, it
seemed like my heart was so full of wife
to-day, I had to say something to somebody, or
break a trace."

Miss Carstairs hesitated, then gave way to
an unusual impulse, arising as she spoke.

"I must thank you, rather, for having
reminded me that all men don't forget.  I am
sure you deserved all the happiness you had
with her, and I hope there is a great deal of it
still left in life for you."

"Well, now, ma'am, that's beautifully
said.  But I won't let you go without
knowing that, though I've come to it by a long,
hard way, my luck has turned at last, and the
only trouble is that she's not here to share it.
The long years after we moved south to
Alabama (where I'd an opening, and after a
while set up for myself), when wife toiled
and moiled for me—when we lost all the
children that were born to us, but the last
one—how she used to sit in the evenings and read
about English cathedrals and Stonehenge,
and the like!  She didn't seem to care so
much about visiting Italy and Paris and the
Riviera, but Switzerland tickled her awfully.
She had a picture of Mont Blanc on top of
a work-box.  When I think how cheap the
post cards are in these days, I do wish wife
could have had a lot to paste in an album
that she kept.  She always said I was to take
daughter, if we ever got money enough for
two to cross on, and that she would stay at
home.  And now, the money's come, enough
for all of us, and I'm taking daughter, just
as she said, and we're to see England and
she isn't!  I tell you, ma'am, things are
sorted out unevenly by our good Lord!"

Miss Carstairs carried into her cabin the
wistfulness of the gentle old face, the
irresistible conviction of his honesty.  What, in
the beginning, had tempted her to mock, now
laid forcible hold of her better nature, and
impelled her to gentler thoughts.

A sharp awakening was the rencounter
with Miss Bleecker's apprehensions as to
where she should sit at table, and the
effervescence of that lady's regrets that the
parties with whom she had counted upon being
included, were all "made up."  Helen
recalled previous voyages under the ægis of her
distinguished father, where their table was
the one most desired by social pretenders,
with its *plats* and wines served from his
private stores, its aura of plutocratic
exclusiveness in which revolved obsequious
stewards!  She winced at thought of glory
fled, but while Miss Bleecker enlarged upon
the neglect of the secretary, Foster, in not
having arranged this matter for them,
reflected bitterly that Foster, trimming his
sails to the wind of Fortune, was now the
devotée of the new Mrs. Carstairs' whims,
and unless especially ordered so to do, would
be likely to make no effort for the rebellious
stepdaughter's advancement.

Affecting indifference to the detail in
question, she found herself at dinner assigned to
a small table in one corner of the saloon, of
which five of the nine seats were already
filled, when Miss Bleecker, sparkling
intermittently in jet, sailed ahead of her charge,
and motioned Helen into place beside her.  A
steward, who had identified the ladies, came
hurrying to overtake them, and express his
hope that Miss Carstairs would be satisfied
with his selection for her, assuring her, in a
whisper, that he had taken every care that
she should have only the "best" people as
her comrades.

Helen, who had not yet sat down, smiled at
the reassuring promise.  The whisper,
overheard by two of the gentlemen unfolding
their napkins opposite, produced an answering
smile.  Impossible to resist a voucher so
bestowed!  Simultaneously the two men arose
and stood till Miss Carstairs had taken her
revolving chair and was safely installed
beside her chaperon.  The table was now
complete, save for the seat at the end and that
at its right adjoining Helen's.

Soup had hardly been placed before them
when the intended occupants of the vacant
places resolved themselves into a couple, at
sight of whom a cold tremor passed into Miss
Carstairs' limbs—for they were none other
than the mild little man with whom she had
been talking on the deck, and the girl who
had thrown John Glynn a flower!

The old fellow had made scant preparation
for the ceremonial meal of the day on
shipboard.  His kind face shone with soap and
water, while a thin lock of gray hair was
laboriously trained by the same medium over
his bald crown.  His mustard-colored
"tourist suit" of tweed, the red tie and rumpled
cheviot shirt, might, indeed, have served a
noble earl upon his travels through an
American drawing-room; but whatever the
appearance of her sire, it was at once lost to
sight in the radiant prettiness and extraordinary
self-possession of the girl who accompanied him.

A goddess of liberty in height, with the
complexion of a pink-and-white balsam flower,
and rippled hair of gold worn parted in the
middle and extending outward in exaggerated
wings; her admirable young form was
attired in cheap China silk of an azure tint
incorporating transparencies of white lace
that revealed a dazzling neck and arms.
Decked with profuse jewelry of the
inexpensive sort, she stood for a moment where
the rest of the company could fully profit
by the apparition before it went into eclipse
in her allotted seat!

The attention of their table, hitherto
indirectly converging upon the fine lines and
*pâte tendre* coloring of Miss Carstairs, now
shifted its focus to a point not to be
forsaken for the remainder of the voyage (an
example promptly to be followed by the rest
of the passengers, the officers and personnel
of the big ship in general).  The newcomer
possessed, in spite of her extreme youth, the
manner of some histrionic star who has the
conscience of her calling in producing
effects not to be forfeited by a moment's
neglect of opportunity.  Her present entrance
had the full effect of a sweep down to the
footlights, to pause with one hand upon the
desk from which the heroine is wont to dash
off her little notes to the leading man, whilst
reading them aloud to the audience.

But withal, so childlike were her contours,
so joyous her appeal for notice, one felt that
her vanity might still be the innocent belief
of a little girl secure of her own interestingness
to the public, when she comes into a
roomful of her mother's guests.

All eyes following her movements, the
stranger surveyed the saloon briefly, and
spoke to her companion with good-humored
authority.

"Just what I told you, Dad.  The older
gentlemen all sit in the end seats, and that's
the place for you."

"Now, Posey, child," came in audible
rejoinder, "none of your nonsense, but just
do as I said, and take the end yourself.
Nobody wants to see an old fossil like me put
forward when they can get a nice young lady
to look at.  Sit down, right away, and I'll
just slip in beside this lady.  Why, ma'am,"
he added, interrupting himself with a face
of glad recognition in identifying Miss Carstairs,
"if it ain't you, and I'm real pleased
to meet up with you again!  A needle in a
haystack, I was thinking myself among all
these strange folk.  And you'll be such prime
company for Posey, here.  Let me make you
acquainted with my daughter, Miss Pamela
Winstanley, of Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama."

Miss Carstairs inclined her head toward
the beaming newcomer, and almost immediately
turned to close converse in an undertone
with Miss Bleecker, who was herself
occupied in digesting unpleasant first impressions.

For, after fortifying herself with soup,
and ordering a whiskey and soda for digestion's
sake, the chaperon had sent her eagle
glance around the board with this result:

Of the five gentlemen installed before their
arrival, two were mentally labelled,
"Hopeless, old, grumpy, no doubt, of no possible
use to us."  Another, "A mere larky boy,
not knowing him, must keep him down,"
and the pair who had arisen and stood at
their approach, "An Englishman, badly
bored, good figure, eyes and teeth, has been,
or is, in the army; the Frenchman with him,
rather like Mephistopheles, might be amusing,
but will, of course, be sea-sick all the way
over.  A poor lot, and just wait till I get at
that head steward and find out what he means
by it!"





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.. _`CHAPTER II`:

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   CHAPTER II

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"My dear Helen, I really may as well tell
you at once, that I don't like your walking
alone, in the dark, down on that lower deck
that looks steeragy, where there are no chairs,
and the men go to smoke after dinner."

"Do they?  I hadn't noticed," said Helen,
indifferently.

She had come into their rooms with a
brighter look upon her face, born of the
delicious swoop of salt air upon it, and the
sound of that churning music of the waves
with which the sea rewards the good ship
when she takes her ocean crests easily and
settles down to her grand Atlantic stride.

"I lost you, after dinner, when I was
sitting on the boat deck with Mrs. Vereker,
hearing all about her daughter's divorce and
her son's appendicitis.  No wonder the poor
woman goes abroad for a change.  And,
really, I'm glad, after all, we are not with
them at table, since she can talk of nothing
else, and much as one may feel for a friend's
troubles, it is nicer to hear a little about other
people's, too!  I was telling Mrs. Vereker—though,
dear me, she hardly lets one speak—how
dreadfully they had served us about
the people they put us with, and, my dear,
what do you think?  It never does to judge
by first appearances at sea, for as it turns
out, Mr. Vereker—who is that kind of a
fussing, Miss Nancyish man, and loves to study
the passenger list—has discovered that every
soul at our table, except those dreadful
Southerners, has a title!  The one with
glasses, who speaks such funny English, is
a German Graf, of a family of fabulous
antiquity, who has been to Washington to see
his ambassador about sending one of his sons
to learn agriculture in America.  The one
who gobbles so, and complains of the draught
on his back, and had the port shut, is Prince
Zourikoff, a Russian savant, who has written
a book called 'Études sur la cause de la
décadence des peuples.'  The saucy boy who
went in for a flirtation with that Winstanley
girl, is Mr. Vane, a son of Lord Kennington,
whom they sent to Canada for a year to get
him out of mischief at home.  The really
interesting person is—who do you
suppose?—the man opposite you, Lord Clandonald,
whose story was in all the newspapers a year
ago.  His wife, a beautiful Miss Darien,
behaved scandalously, yet was so clever in
tricking everybody, it was hard to get the
divorce.  But he got rid of her at last, and
then went around the world.  Doesn't look
like a man of that sort, does he?  Rather shy,
I should say, and hold-off, but a splendid
figure.  The Frenchman is actually the famous
Mariol, whose books are my delight, though
he's a wretch the way he writes about women.
He's Clandonald's great chum, and they have
been travelling together."

Helen's face had lighted.

"I know only one or two books of Mariol's—essays
principally, but they are perfect of
their kind——"

"I advise you to keep to the essays," said
Miss Bleecker, dryly.  "He has an enormous
reputation in the literary world, and one likes
to meet them, now and again, if they are not
frumps."

"And provided he is not sea-sick," said
Helen, smiling.

"In this boat, in an ordinary sea, there'll
be no excuse for it.  Why, one hardly knows
we are moving.  To return to Clandonald,
don't you think people one reads about and
hears about are always disappointing?  I
don't say there was anything wrong attributed
to *him*; they said he was rather Quixotic
in his treatment of the worthless creature,
who had to give up his name and go under.
But he is so much like other people.  Nothing
to show he was in such a notorious divorce
suit—Helen, what are you smiling at?"

"The thrilling thought that I had M. de
Mariol to mix my salad dressing," replied
Miss Carstairs.

"Was it good?  I am always careful the
first day out.  Oh!  I must tell you about those
queer Dicks, the Southerners.  It seems that
Lord and Lady Channel Fleet came on board
at the last minute, and took quite an ordinary
room—that heavy-looking red-faced man and
the dowdy woman in big turquoise earrings,
who sat at the captain's table—they had to
have those two seats, so the Winstanleys
were transferred to us.  If we had only
secured the Channel Fleets, we should have
been so complete!  Perhaps they and
Clandonald don't speak, though, and the captain
found it out, or the purser, who always hears
all the gossip.  At any rate, we've got to put
up with the Winstanleys, and I'll give you
my frank opinion, Helen, that before this
voyage is over we'll have cause to rue the day
when we laid eyes on them.  The old man is
simply too absurd.  Treats her as if she were
a princess and he her courier.  How you
could stand his babbling in your ear, I can't
imagine.  But she! she!  The worst
specimen of the travelling American who makes
one blush for one's country when abroad."

"One must own to her good looks," Helen
interpolated bravely.

Miss Bleecker snorted.

"My dear, that is unworthy of you.  A
Twenty-third Street shop-girl would be
ashamed to do her hair like that; and her
frock—bought in stock, and fitted in half a
day, probably.  But even that doesn't count
beside her phenomenal assurance and
self-conceit.  Fancy now, her addressing a
remark to me, before I had spoken to her.  I
never heard such a string of words from a
young person in my life, and to take it upon
her to entertain the whole table!  It really
silenced me.  One comfort is that everybody
will put her down as I did, and sooner or
later she'll be left severely to herself."

"I noticed that Lord Clandonald and
M. de Mariol seemed much amused, and the
others couldn't keep their eyes from her," said
truthful Helen, who had her own cause for
blank wonderment at the further development
of John Glynn's acquaintances.

"Oh! that is the provoking part of men,"
answered Miss Bleecker, tossing her head;
"give them a pretty face and a forward
manner, and they'll pretend to be entertained.
I'm very sorry, Helen, but if that
girl doesn't take my hint and tone down a
great deal, I shall be under the necessity of
making a complaint about our seats.  It isn't
possible the line wouldn't wish to place your
father's daughter at least *respectably* at table.
These Winstanleys are, in my opinion, most
suspicious people, and I have asked
Mr. Vereker to make very particular inquiries
and find out if I am not right.  He says that
when she came into the saloon, every neck
on our side was stretched looking after her,
and he quite agrees with me—no, Mrs. Vereker
agreed with me, her husband was weak
enough to say what were the odds when a
girl is so deuced pretty—that there must be
something wrong."

The latter part of Miss Bleecker's monologue
was spoken to space, since Miss Carstairs,
melting away into her own room, had
closed the door between them.

Helen found Mlle. Eulalie sitting on the
foot of the cane settee, comfortably warming
her toes at a small apparatus of shining brass,
which, with its red lamp inside, presented a
fair semblance of the forsaken fires of home.
Upon the bed lay her own satin quilt, her own
pillows of embroidered linen were prepared
invitingly, her peignoir billowed across the
couch.  Upon every side gleamed and glittered
the little objects of cut-glass, tortoise-shell
and gold which she had heaped in the
balance against John Glynn's love, along
with a hundred other manifestations of the
outward and visible signs of a solvent
existence.  To-night she was strangely repelled by
them.  She made a motion to go out again
into the half darkness of that same deserted
lower deck, where she could walk to the rush
of the wind and the inspiriting swish of the
water.  She wanted to be alone with her
thoughts, to bid a last good-by to the love she
had known for a little happy while.  Then
the image of Miss Posey Winstanley, with
her assured smile and undaunted self-satisfaction,
came to her with a new shock, and,
turning back, she let Eulalie take off her
dress and brush her hair, surrendering
herself inertly to the warmth and perfume of
materialism, and trying to think she was better so.

Far into the night Helen lay, physically at
rest, inhaling the pure air from her open
window, feeling the gentle uplift of the sea
as the huge bulk of the ship faintly answered
to its impulse, listening to the bells challenging
one another from afar, but she could not
sleep.  Tirelessly her memory went over
every incident of her acquaintanceship with
Glynn, and of the virtual break with her
father since the terrible substitution of the
woman she suspected into her old place at
home.  To the last she had kept a brave
front, and no one should ever know what
this past year had cost her.  She was
leaving America, without temptation to return.
The secret glimmering hope that had kept
alight within her, that some day John Glynn
and she might come together again, was now
finally extinguished.  It was as if a new era
of life were opening, and the question was,
how best should she shape it?

For the twentieth time Miss Carstairs had
come around to the knottiest problem of all
those that kept her wakeful in her giant
cradle of the sea.  She was wondering how
duty and dignity might combine to inspire
her action toward her successor in Glynn's
affections.  Her chief apprehension
regarding Pamela Winstanley, was that John
Glynn should have made her ever so little
aware of that prior bond.  A cold terror had
possessed her at thought of the exuberant
creature sharing or even suspecting her sacred
secret.  But in the girl's helter-skelter
attempts at speech with every one at table,
she had given no hint that she had previously
heard of Miss Carstairs.  Helen could only
hope that Glynn's name would never come up
between them.  And, at this point, a soft,
swabbing sound and the tread of muffled feet
upon the deck beneath her window, gave notice
that the sailors were at their early morning
tasks.  The weird, self-pitying note of the
parrot in a cabin hard by seemed to grow
fainter and more dreamlike.  Turning wearily
upon her pillows, she let sleep take her into
its merciful embrace.

.. vspace:: 2

"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your
American types ready to hand upon this
voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the
two men walked up and down with their
cigars upon the deck decried by Miss
Carstairs' chaperon.  "The most obvious one is,
of course, the astonishing young person who
aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a
first meal at sea, when one is always on guard
not to be too accessible."

"She is like one of those Eastern shops,
where everything is in the window," Mariol
answered.  "But adorably fresh and naïve
and pretty.  No other continent could
produce her than the wide and liberal one we
are just quitting."

"Might we but keep her to ourselves!"
said Clandonald, mockingly.  "But I foresee
that she will be the wonder and the joy
of the entire ship's company on our run over.
And the mild old boy who retires into the
background to give his Wonder every chance!
I rather like the old boy, I think."

"My own taste would be for the young
lady who is protected by Buddha reincarnate,
in the person of the disapproving chaperon.
Her beauty is rarer, more subtle, than the
other's; she is clearly of the *fine fleur* of the
American aristocracy of dollars.  I suspect
a Colonial ancestor somewhere, and you
observed that the chaperon did not disdain us
too much, to let fall a hint or two concerning
the custom of splendor in her charge's life.
When they find you out, Clandonald, I'll
wager the sun will promptly shine between
the clouds for you."

"The old woman is in the apologetic stage
for America, and that's enough to give me a
strong disgust for her.  Let them be
anything that's real, and I'm ready to meet
Americans 'hands across the sea.'  But the
ones that affect to decry their nationality, to
convince us that they are of a small,
segregated class that stand on higher ground than
the rest, are abhorrent to me.  Clearly,
Buddha's protégée belongs to that class? and will
not tarry to let us become aware of it."

"Grant that my Mdlle. Hélène—for I don't
know her other name—is both beautiful and
finely bred, and I will abandon you the rest
of her sisterhood.  She is full of an exquisite
intellectuality, but it would not prevent
her loving if her heart were awakened—and
if I am not mistaken, it has already been
awakened.  Imagine a young girl, *chez nous*,
with that expression in her eyes, and yet that
delicate restraint of manner.  I should like
to know the fair Hélène's history."

"That you might dissect her with admirable
grace in a feuilleton that *tout Paris*
would read and applaud—and—forget her
the next hour, in a new enthusiasm."

"Better to possess all the enthusiasms
than none, old chap.  I am really in despair
over your failure to be aroused by the
infinite variety of the diversions offered to you
in this journey of ours that, alas! must end
too soon."

"There is one pleasure that has never
palled on me, and that is the society of my
travelling companion.  You are the ideal one
in many respects, Mariol; but if I could point
out one virtue more than another that
distinguishes you in that character, it is the
letting a man enjoy all his bad humors, his fads,
his follies, if you will, unchecked and
unbridled.  I have sometimes basely suspected
you of sacrificing me in order to make copy
of my infirmities.  But, at any rate, I have
enjoyed blessed liberty, and, whatever the
result, I have profited by the semblance of a
perfect tact and consideration."

"A roundabout way of warning me not
to intrude my advice upon you now.  But
seriously, Clandonald, and at any risk, I
must tell you that you need rousing.  That
past of yours, unsavory as it was through no
fault of yours, has been long enough decently
interred for you to forget it, and to recreate
your life's happiness.  One can't be sore
always, any more than we can love always, or
mourn always.  And you, of all men the one
best fitted to wear the yoke of your staid
British virtues, to serve your country and
your king at home, to be a model landlord,
a husband and a paterfamilias, *comme il y
en a peu*!  For heaven's sake, accept the
blessed opportunity of your present freedom,
and make up for that wretched first mistake.
You aren't happy, you have no ambition, no
purpose, no zest in living.  Get yourself a wife."

"This from Mariol, the scoffer, the
celibate!  My dear fellow, I forgive you your
trespass upon forbidden ground, because I
know you are sincere.  But you forget one
small, important fact.  The person who bore
my name, and her various works of evil, have
so depleted my finances that, had I the
courage, I haven't the wherewithal to hawk my
wares in the marriage mart.  I wonder if
you know what it costs to keep a Lady
Clandonald in the enjoyment of the domestic
atmosphere of which you speak.  I know to
my cost.  Unless she were a beautiful savage,
content to retire with me to one of those isles
of the South Sea poor Louis Stevenson
idealized, I couldn't even give her a season in
town, or a trip to Paris or Homburg, much
less races, and all the bridge a woman needs;
and so there'd be the devil to pay, you see.
If she would set up a bonnet-shop, or a place
for horribly dear frocks, and keep me on the
proceeds—! but otherwise, I'm as poor as a
rat, Mariol, and haven't your resources, or
royalties, remember."

"A small matter, my dear lad, with the
ever-continuing flood of American dollars
pouring from West to East through the
facile clasp of the fair beings by whom we
are presently surrounded.  And you would
not run great risks.  There is this to be said
for them, that American ladies rarely
degenerate into either bores, dupes or pieces
of household machinery: 'Le familier
vulgaire, utile et sans bouquet, comme le vin
qu'on boit avec l'eau.'  They progress with
the epoch and the civilization that claim
them.  Take—as a matter of illustration
merely—either of the two young women who
grace our board."

"As a matter of illustration, merely,"
answered Clandonald, laughing, "I'd prefer
to take the sweet child of nature, combining,
with the vulgarity of a powdered nose, the
eyes of an intelligent cherub recently
short-coated."

"As you please," said Mariol, arching his
brows resignedly.  "My choice for you
would have been the fine-grained daughter
of the Puritans with hair the color of a
hazelnut, the flat, straight back, and resolute
figure gowned by Paquin.  I dare say both
ladies are accessible to what you have to
offer them, or that either would soon fit into
place in the long walk at Beaumanoir, among
those strutting white peacocks against a
background of clipped yews and sun-warmed
ancient brick.  No American girl could resist
that walk and those white peacocks,
Clandonald, take my word for it."

"Then marry one yourself, and I'll let
the place to you for a song."

"I have still to see Tibet," answered the
other, stopping to light a fresh cigar.

Their talk ended in a discussion wide afield
from the subject with which it had begun.
But when Mariol turned in, it was with a
throb of secret satisfaction that he had been
able, in the darkness, and apparently *à
l'improviste*, to wing in the direction of his
friend a shaft he had long held in reserve
for him.

He had been with Clandonald, side by side,
wading through the miserable mire of his
divorce case, and rejoiced when he saw him
rid for ever of the creature who had dragged
him down.  The two men had met first in
South Africa, while Clandonald was lying
ill of enteric, and Mariol, coming upon him
by accident in the course of his own explorations
for observation and adventure at the
seat of war, had nursed him with the gentleness
and devotion of a woman, until he was
out of danger and ready for the voyage home.
During his first convalescence, Clandonald
had received the plainly unwelcome news of
his wife's intended journey out, "to look
after her dear old boy."  The arrival of her
errant ladyship, followed by the untoward
discovery of her real motives in making this
heroic effort, and the hardly concealed
scandal of her companionship on the voyage,
precipitated a relapse of Clandonald's
malady, and the ultimate severance, some two
years later, of his heavy marriage bond,
borne during the lifetime of a boy who died
through her neglect.

In all this dreary time Mariol had stood by
him and held him up.  The brilliant mocker,
the professed skeptic of all tenderness apart
from the metaphysics of the sex question,
had developed into the best of hard-luck
friends; and their agreement to travel
together after Clandonald was free and had
left the army proved more than a success.

Now they were drifting homeward again,
Mariol to his boulevards and the fond
congenial life of Paris, Clandonald—to what?
Mariol, with his keen insight and ready
sympathy, saw that his friend was returning to
England, restless, unsatisfied, out of tune
with his future surroundings; well in body
and healthy in his mind, indeed, but in no
humor to pick up his life from where his late
partner had cast it, like a jewel, into wayside
dirt.

Mariol had hoped much from their visit to
America, where they had found themselves,
during the latter part of the season at
Newport, subjected to the overpowering hospitality
of the leaders of the great world.  But
although Clandonald's antecedents were as
well known and familiarly discussed there,
as in England and on the Continent, and
there had been displayed no disposition on
the part of society to visit his evil fortune
upon him, the young man passed but
abstractedly through the ordeal of charms and
graces, defiled before his gaze, during the
hours when the world that entertains is in
evidence.  Mariol sometimes wondered
whether his friend would not have been more
easily consoled in an atmosphere less
surcharged with the art of pleasing.

The moment he had laid eyes upon Miss
Carstairs, whose patronymic he was yet to
learn, it had flashed upon the Frenchman's
active brain that here was the solution of his
perplexities.  That the girl met so
thoroughly his own exacting taste in externals,
seemed to him a convincing proof she would
be the ideal angel to step down into
Clandonald's troubled pool and make it clear.
Her looks, age, good breeding, reserve of
bearing, and evident fortune, added to the
fact that she, too, had in her eyes the shadow
of past sorrow, left the kind fictionist no
doubt of his own perspicacity in selection.
He had addicted himself to the task of
making friends with her, with a promptitude
facilitated by his secret hopes, and
Clandonald's indifference proved the more
provoking in that it bore every aspect of
probable enduringness.

Mariol fell asleep, that memorable first
night at sea, congratulating himself that his
cares in connection with matters of
sentiment were so purely perfunctory, and that
whatever the issue out of Clandonald's
impassivity, no personal interest in any one of
the disturbing sex could ever afford his
mentor other than the emotion of a scientist who
skewers a new butterfly for his microscope.





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.. _`CHAPTER III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

There was to be no complexity attending
the position taken by Miss Pamela
Winstanley, commonly called Posey, in the
consideration of her fellow-passengers of the
"Baltic."  From the first day out, as has been
said, every one aboard became a prey to the
absorbing interest created by her daily
movements, sayings and doings.  Beyond the fact
that she was travelling with her father, a
Mr. Herbert Winstanley, sometime of the
Army of the Confederate States, presumably
a person of very moderate social place and
fortunes, the antecedents of the radiant
young beauty were unknown, and she was
accepted upon her face value alone.  It was
indisputable that, whenever she appeared
conversation centered upon her to the
exclusion of more serious topics.  And, in
return, Miss Winstanley lavished her
effervescing good graces with impartiality upon
all admirers in attendance.  The honors of
her smiles and pretty sayings were shared
alike by Lord Clandonald and any minor
individual of the impressible sex, who might
chance to be on hand.  Jolly old Lord
Channel Fleet, resembling Santa Claus with his
roseate face and white fringe of a beard,
found himself vying for her favors with
a succession of American college youths in
sweaters, one of whom, famed in university
circles as a thrower of the hammer, stood
about in attitudes expressive of rank
jealousy, whenever his sportive lordship was at
her side.  Lady Channel Fleet, indeed, was
known to be nervous lest the threatening
young man should do something dreadful to
her liege.

Miss Bleecker, Mrs. Vereker, and sundry
mothers of unentertaining daughters who
struggled into their deck-chairs without
assistance and walked with each other the
diurnal mile, looking as if nothing would
induce them to descend to the companionship
of the supporting sex, formed a number of
ingenious theories to account for the fair
Pamela.  She was a milliner's forewoman,
going out to secure fashions for Alison's
Cross Roads.  She was a dashing divorcee,
who had resumed her maiden name.  She had
been a barmaid in California, an artist's model
in New York, an assistant washerwoman in
the Klondyke, had tried on cloaks in a
leading haberdashery of Chicago—in all of which
capacities there was somebody aboard who
had known somebody else who had actually
seen her!  But of suppositions concerning the
charmer, the most popular was that she had
sung on the local stage somewhere in the
South, and was now going abroad to study
for comic opera.  For in addition to other
devices for the bewilderment of mere man,
Miss Winstanley was found to possess a
fascinating gift of rendering little Creole
chansonettes that conjured up the warm
velvet-like touch of Southern air, the region of
palm and pine and mocking-birds, of orange
flowers and Cherokee roses, and the love
spells lingering around it.  Then she could
croon "Mammy" songs, of a negress hushing
her nursling, in a way to bring tears to
the eyes of most hardened listeners.  And
between the songs and croonings she would
describe scenes, and impersonate actors, with
a natural fire and pathos that are rarely
taught or teachable.  But of this accomplishment
she was more chary than the rest, and
there were those heard to declare that, on one
occasion on deck, she had sung tears into her
own eyes, and abruptly stopped, declaring
she did not care to do it before more than
one or two.  The incident being repeated to
Miss Bleecker, that inveterate lady declared
it to be but a clever bit of acting to whet
expectation of future appearances behind the
footlights.

Amid the successes of his daughter's
meteoric rise, little Mr. Winstanley prowled
about the ship, a solitary and somewhat
pathetic figure in his evident belief that
self-effacement was the first duty of the parent
of such a Phoenix among maidens.  Following
his abortive reopening of acquaintance
with Miss Carstairs, he withdrew into his
shell and spoke no more to her.  Helen
reproached herself that she had not been able
to conceal from him the repulsion at first
inspired in her by her rival in John Glynn's
favor.  Old Winstanley's mild twinkle of the
eye, the smile playing around his thin lips,
gave no hint, however, that his retiring
attitude was inspired by offence.  He seemed
to live apart in a world of his own thoughts
and memories, from which even his Posey's
triumphs could not extract him for long.

And Posey, Miss Bleecker to the contrary
(who from her end of the table consistently
glared down the intruder's right to be),
continued to reign in her revolving chair, as the
established queen of every meal.  Her quips
and cranks of fan, her lawless sallies at the
expense of those around her, had effectually
banished restraint and brought the diverse
elements of their party together; even Helen
parting with her formality to join in the talk,
when convinced by observation that Miss
Winstanley knew nothing whatever of her
prior acquaintance with John Glynn.

From the beginning, the Honorable Bobby
Vane, Lord Kennington's scapegrace boy,
had fallen head over ears in love with Posey,
and was ready to forfeit his not very
brilliant prospects in life to marry her, no
matter in what capacity she had previously
appeared.  Posey laughed at and with the lad,
enjoying his off-hand gayety and mischief,
and there it began and ended.  The Russian
savant, under the influence of Miss
Winstanley's presence, forgot to grumble about
draughts and sauces, and smoothed his
grim-visaged front into affability, answering her
in English as choice as M. de Mariol's
French.  The old German count, proving to
be the most kindly and merry of comrades,
developed a faculty for telling uproariously
funny stories, of which the effect was
impaired only by such a strange mispronunciation
of the English tongue that his auditors
were kept supernaturally grave in the effort
not to smile at him, and therefore did not
smile at all.

A volume of Mariol's clever (and happily
innocuous) short stories having been
produced by somebody and put into circulation
on the ship, Miss Winstanley had familiarized
herself with them, and was engaged at
odd moments in translating the little *chef
d'oeuvres* of style, with Bobby Vane, in
whose imagination a book of any kind, save
a betting book, loomed larger than an elephant.

Mariol, to whom direct address from casual
people upon the subject of his writings was
an affliction, had been rather dreading the
young lady's comments, and was relieved
when she disposed of him thus easily:

"I think they're just lovely, Mr. Mariol,
and am trying to make Mr. Vane agree with
me, but he declares they're too jolly dismal
and give him the awful blues.  After this,
when people say they envy me being at table
with you, I can truly tell them you don't talk
the least bit like your books."

"Mrs. Kipling told me once," said
Clandonald, following a laugh at Mariol's
expense, "that when a gushing American girl
asked how she could endure the brilliancy of
a certain chat between her husband and Cecil
Rhodes on the Kiplings' veranda in South
Africa, she had been puzzled what to answer,
because, as a matter of fact, each of these
gentlemen had been trying to talk more
delightful drivel than the other.  What good
luck for the rest of us, that great minds do
unbend in the intimacy of private discourse!"

"If one doesn't talk in brief paragraphs,
like those columns printed in American
newspapers for busy men to read in elevated
trains, one isn't listened to, I find," said the
author, ruefully.

"In most countries, nowadays," observed
Prince Zourikoff, looking anxiously to see
whether the portion of cold braised beef left
upon the platter was enough for his liberal
appetite, "the fine arts of conversation and
correspondence have both been driven like
chaff before the wind of modern restlessness.
Nobody converses, few read, friendly
communication is achieved by wire or telephone.
And as to introducing a serious topic into
society—perish the thought!  One would be
voted a superannuated nuisance."

"I have always thought it the best
compliment a man can pay a woman," said Miss
Carstairs, blushing a little, "when he talks
to her, in earnest, about what dominates his
thoughts."

Mariol flashed an appreciative glance at
her.  Clandonald cried out:

"Heaven defend your sex, my dear lady,
if they had to sit still and listen to most
men's governing thoughts.  And, on the
whole, there is nothing so wearing as a
person with ideas that have never been applied.
To-day, we must think and act, and accomplish
or fail, before we talk.  And as far as
talk goes, it's everybody's plain duty to be
amusing and not long."

"To come down before the footlights, and
do one's turn, and then drop back again,"
interpolated Miss Bleecker, with a glance at
the beauty, who was helping Bobby Vane to
a baked potato.  "You are quite right, Lord
Clandonald.  It is perfect audacity for any
one person, whether clever or insignificant,
to attempt to monopolize attention.  Everybody
else is invariably bored by it, where
they are not laughing in their sleeves."

"Have you seen many persons laughing
in their sleeves, Miss Bleecker?" asked Posey
Winstanley, innocently.  "Did they do it
when you were young?  I always wondered
how.  Mr. Vane, please stop eating long
enough, to let's try laughing in our sleeves at
Miss Bleecker.  I reckon she'll tell us if it's
the real thing."

"There are places, then, where they do say
'I reckon,'" pursued Miss Bleecker,
impassively.  "You mentioned, Lord Clandonald,
how much you were disappointed not to hear
more provincialisms of speech in America.  I
should think Miss Winstanley could give you
all you care to collect."

"Did you ever hear, Miss Winstanley," put
in Mariol quickly, "the pretty speech made by
King William IV about a charming country-woman
of yours, whom some one asked,
'Pray, do you come from that part of
America where they guess and where they
calculate?'  'Lady Wellesley comes from
where they fascinate,' said the gallant
monarch."

Bobby Vane clapped his hands approvingly.

"That's rippin', ain't it, Mr. Mariol!  My
goodness me, wish I weren't such a duffer at
writing things down an' spellin' or I'd make
a note of it.  What?"

"Come to school at Alison's Cross Roads,
Alabama, and we'll teach you how," said Posey.

"Helen, you will find me on the boat-deck
by Mrs. Vereker," said Miss Bleecker,
majestically arising.  "I have had quite enough
of this.  And I consider it my mission to
spend as much time as I can give to poor
Mrs. Vereker, prostrated by care and anxiety as
she has been, and her husband never allowed
to come near her on the voyage."

A light sparkled in the wide-open blue eyes
of the ship's charmer, and a smile hovered
around her pretty mouth.  She was well
aware that about the second day out, the
critical and finical Mr. Vereker had joined in
the universal procession toward her shrine.
She had avoided an introduction as long as
possible, compelling her ancient admirer to
perform wonders of intrigue and diplomacy,
before he was admitted to the privilege of her
acquaintance.  Since then, he had persecuted
her for walks on deck, secured for her white
violets, at vast expense, from some one who
was taking them out in the ship's ice-box for
sale in London; had sent to her table daily
tokens of regard, from pats of choice butter,
bunches of black Hamburg grapes, and broiled
birds, to Southern "pin-money" pickles.
Not content with these tangible evidences,
Mr. Vereker had promised her a dog, and
invited her to motor with them through
Touraine.  The poor man, who had, in Miss
Bleecker's parlance, "no stomach to speak
of," was expecting the return of one of his
periodical attacks, when he would be forced
to go upon milk and Educator biscuits, too
enfeebled to walk the deck and flirt, and
wished to make the most of his well
moments; but, so far, Miss Winstanley had been
constantly engaged with others, and could
not yield him the tête-à-tête desired.

Miss Bleecker, enlisted under the standard
of a complaining wife, was gratified to leave
the party, having hurled the final shaft.
Mariol liked the self-control with which
Posey turned immediately to other topics,
no less than he appreciated the effort
Helen Carstairs made to atone for her
companion's venom by remaining awhile in
conversation that included the girl attacked.
The Frenchman, who noted most things
passing near him, had been making up his mind
that some strong personal reason existed to
keep Miss Carstairs in a state of mental
self-defence against the attractions of Miss
Winstanley.  A judgment so clear and cool and
fair as Helen's in ordinary matters, he had
rarely seen, and he believed her capable of
more than the allotted amount of feminine
generosity toward those of her own sex.  As
far as he had been able to gather, she had
never before seen or heard of this mysterious
young person who had made their voyage so
gay.  What could the reason be?

It had not escaped him that the Southern
girl, taking heed of Helen's low-pitched voice,
of her quiet garb and reserved manner among
strangers, had profited by them to tone down
some of her own extravagances.  Already,
Miss Winstanley's hair was brushed simply
back in a glorious golden sweep, allowing its
natural waves to reveal themselves
untortured.  Already, the obnoxious blue dress
with its lace transparencies, the redundant
jewelry had gone into retirement, the young
girl appearing at dinner in white blouses as
simple as Helen's own.  Better than all, she
no longer challenged people within earshot
with her sentiments and opinions.

From time to time, Mariol had detected
passing from her to Helen the glances of
homage a very unsophisticated girl bestows
upon one she has elected to make her heroine.
And, despite this artless worship, Miss
Carstairs did not relent in her cool demeanor.
She was civil always, considerate often, but
never yielding in keeping Miss Winstanley
at a distance.  The men at their table were
unanimously beginning to feel that a girl
may win easily in the chief events of such
a contest, and yet be badly worsted in the end.

The only one among them who seemed to
have preserved indifference on the subject
of Posey's wrongs, was the quiet little man
in the mustard-colored tweeds, with the
cowboy hat of sunburnt felt, who accompanied
the beauty to her meals, but was rarely seen
with her elsewhere.

One afternoon, however, she broke away
from her cordon of admirers, and finding
the old fellow walking alone, linked her arm
in his, adjusting her pace to his.

"Why, little girl, what's come to you, that
the beaux have left you no better company
than mine?" he said, with the jocular
homage of his habitual manner to her.

"There isn't much better company than
yours, dad, and I'm beginning to find it out,"
she answered, caressingly.

.. _`"There isn't much better company than yours, dad."`:

.. figure:: images/img-066.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "There isn't much better company than yours, dad."

   "There isn't much better company than yours, dad."

"Well, well, a compliment from the belle
o' the ship!  Reckon when I get to London
I'll have to be buying myself a new suit, and
a dozen o' boiled shirts, though, come to think
of it, seems to me I'm no great way behind
that Lord Channel Fleet o' yours in the matter
of clothes and footwear—regular beetle-crushers,
those shoes of his, and his hat an
even match for mine."

"He's rather an old dear, anyhow," said
Posey; "but I've got another ancient on the
string that's too foolish to talk about.  That
Mr. Vereker—he's dyed and made-up, and
always fussing about his digestion.  He has
a young doctor travelling with him to give
him hypodermics for his nerves, and they're
going to some queer place where he'll have
to walk barefoot on wet stones, and diet, with
a lot of grand dukes and things that he just
loves to talk about.  Aren't they funny though,
these old society men?  Imagine you prancing
around after young girls!"

"I can't," said her father, simply.  "There
isn't a woman living, old or young, that could
take my fancy away from the girl I won in
Baltimo, after the wah.  She's my love, the
same now as then.  You're pretty good-looking,
Posey, so people seem to think.  But
your mother.  Lord!  She was a beauty, and
as soft and gentle as an evenin' breeze."

"I sometimes wish I had her now, daddy.
Since I've been eighteen, and everybody's so
good to me, I mean.  There are such lots of
little things a mother could tell me.  And to
think I was the only child she kept—the very
last of your family—and she couldn't have
stayed with me!  Ah! well, don't mind me,
dad, I'm happy enough with you."

"You certainly don't often pull a long
face, dearie.  If there's anything troubling
you, out with it, and let's see if I can't help."

"It's rather a big little secret, daddy.
Maybe I oughtn't have kept it so long, but
I was ashamed to tell, I reckon.  You see
nothing like this ever happened to me before."

The old man's faded eyes kindled with
sudden fire.  He halted her suddenly, facing
seaward, and together they leaned over the taffrail.

"Posey, it hasn't got anything to do with
John Glynn, has it?" he asked with a
tremulous eagerness of joy.

"Yes, daddy."

"He spoke to you before we sailed?"

"Just before.  That last evening, at the
hotel, when you went off to smoke with the
nice old gentleman you fought beside at
Seven Pines, and left us sitting in the
corridor looking at the people.  He said
everything that was nice about you, first; how you
had been his father's dearest friend, and had
helped him through college, and started him
in New York, and he loved you dearly, and
never could repay the debt.  Then he recalled
how he and I had known each other as boy
and girl, though he always thought of me as
nothing but a little kid, until he saw me last
year at home, and just now, in New York.
He told me how hard he was working, with
scarcely a minute to call his own, and what a
tough struggle it would be to get up top, but
that he meant to do it, if he lived——"

"And he will—he will!" interrupted
Mr. Winstanley, in accents of strong pride.
"He didn't tell you, I'll bet, that he never
took up my offer to stake him with funds for
his expenses in New York, till he got square
upon his feet, and that he never drew a
blessed cent of it?"

"He said you'd been more than good, but
he wouldn't impose on you.  You see, daddy,
John knows that all these years you've had
as much as you could do to keep us going,
and have me educated.  I suppose he was as
surprised as I, when he found you were
taking me abroad in style—you extravagant old
thing, you!"

"Of course.  Of course," murmured Mr. Winstanley,
acquiescently.  "It does seem
extravagant, doesn't it?  But we'll manage to
make two ends meet, I reckon, if we pinch,
afterwards, to make up for it.  Go on, Posey,
go on.  Tell me the rest about you and John.
It is music to my ears."

"I thought so, daddy," the girl said, with
a tender sigh.  "And though I wasn't quite
ready to do what he asked me, I couldn't say
no.  So when he said you and his father had
always wanted us two to be married, some
day, and would I consider myself engaged to
him, until he was ready to give me a home
in New York, I just asked him to wait till
the next day, and I would telephone my
answer before the steamer sailed.  And I did.
That's what I was doing when you called to
me that the carriage was waiting to drive us
to the pier.  I was shut up in the telephone
booth at the hotel saying 'yes' to John."

"And you never gave the poor lad a chance
to see you face to face again?" exclaimed her
father, every wrinkle of his face luminous
with satisfaction at the news.

"Ye-es," said Posey, "I saw him for a
minute over the rail of the steamer.  He just
rushed down from his office the minute he
could get off.  I'd told him I'd write him all
the usual things by the pilot-boat, and from
Queenstown; and he'd laughed and said he'd
have to be satisfied with that!  You mustn't
expect John and me to be silly, father, for
we aren't a bit, either of us.  I ought to tell
you that he's been in love with another girl,
and it didn't turn out well, and he put her
out of his thoughts forever."

"So that was what ailed the lad last Spring
when I went North on that business of the
mine?  I might have guessed it, poor boy,
he was blue as indigo.  Well, it was
handsome of him to tell you, daughter, and, my
word for it, your marriage will be just as
happy as if he hadn't taken that other little
notion before he saw that you were the real
girl for him.  It'll all be blown away like the
steamer smoke yonder, and he'll wonder at
himself for ever thinking he could have put
up with the idea of any wife but you.  For
that's a man's way, my dear, since the world
began."

"Was it your way, daddy?" asked Posey archly.

"My child, I was ready to put myself
before the mouth of the first cannon I met up
with when I went into service, and be blown
to atoms, through calf-love for a young lady
of our neighborhood.  She jilted me to marry
a widower, a Baptist preacher by the name
of Simkins; no, it was Lawson, I think—but
never mind.  She had nine children when I
saw her next, and we didn't recognize each
other.  When we did, she talked to me about
Simpkins'es (it really was Simkins) asthma,
without a break for fifteen solid minutes, and
I got away, thanking the Lord it wasn't my
asthma, and my fat wife, and my nine
children, howling and doing stunts all over the
house—yet I lived to be happier than any
king with the real angel of my life!  But,
dearie, it isn't the time to be talking of
anything but you and John Glynn, and the joy
you've given me in promising to marry each
other some day.  He is the finest young man
I know, and the one of all in the world I'd
choose to share what—there, you do the
talking, I can't trust myself."

"Daddy, do you want me to tell you the
whole truth and nothing but the truth, the
way I always have?  Then here it is.  What
I've promised to do, I'll do.  I think just as
much of John as you do, in a way, and I was
proud to have him ask me.  But I felt he was
doing it because he had made up his mind it
was the thing of all others to please you; also,
because it was safe and right to anchor his
life to a girl who belonged to his own class,
and had no ideas beyond the plain, homely
things she had been brought up to.  But he
doesn't know me, in the least.  I'm not the
girl he thinks, only a vain, conceited creature
who loves admiration and flattery and pretty
things, and all the luxuries I see other people
having on this voyage, and the high-up places
of the world.  I want to live, to have my
fling, and what's worse, I want to be
loved—really, as I think it ought to be!"

Her voice dropped with her eyelashes; a
burning blush ran up and overspread her
face.  Old Herbert Winstanley asked himself
if this were, indeed, his little girl, his
romp in pinafores of a year or two back?
Whence had come the blooming vision of
young womanhood who had supplanted the
Posey of his recent lean and struggling
years?  What were these obsessions controlling
her?  He could not tell, and meekly bent
before the blast.

"I reckon you know best, daughter," he
said, clearing his throat in some embarrassment.
"But this much I'm as sure of as
that the sun is in the sky.  You've done a
wise thing, and a good thing, in engaging
yourself to John.  Be true to him and to
yourself, and the rest'll all come right.  Only,
it's fair to tell you that you and John aren't
a-going to begin as poor as poverty's back
door, the way we did.  I've had a little streak
o' luck lately, and there's cash enough to give
you your fling in Europe, and start you and
John to housekeeping in New York in pretty
decent style.  He's a luckier fellow than he
knows, is John, only I don't mean to tell him
so yet a while, or anybody else, and neither
must you, my girl."

"Could I have a cabin de luxe, and a
French maid and a chaperon to travel with,
daddy," she asked with a glowing countenance,
"instead of half a stateroom with a
horrid woman who drenches herself with
scents, and lectures me about keeping the
light turned on while I do my hair?  Could
I have a little string of real pearls, and one
lovely pearl ring, and a rug for my steamer-chair
lined with otter, and tailor-made suits
that fit adorably—like Miss Carstairs, who's
just my ideal, though she'll hardly look at me?"

"We'll see, we'll see," mumbled Mr. Winstanley,
looking as much alarmed as did the
fisherman in the "Arabian Nights," when he
had let the Genie escape and soar from the
Magic Bottle.  "Seems to me you spent a
good lot shopping in New York the week we
were there."

"I wish I could throw all that trash I
bought overboard," said the girl, gritting her
teeth in vexation.  "Nobody but an idiot
from Alison's Cross Roads would have chosen
such things and thought them stylish."

"It may be so," said her father, resignedly,
"but putting one fact alongside
another, it looks as if you'd had as good a
show as any young lady on board, daughter."

"Daddy, you are the dearest old bat!"
cried she, revealing to his astonished gaze
her eyes full of big, bright, childish tears.
"How can't you see that I'm only a peep-show,
an amusement for all these people, and
that most of the women on board hardly
speak to me?  I don't care a bit about that
horrid old war-horse of the Scripture that
snorts and champs—Miss Bleecker!  I
consider her beneath my notice, and she may
insult me all she pleases.  And Mrs. Vereker
is another, and all their set—dull, stiff
women, with nothing but their wealth to
recommend them."

"Well, if it comes to that," murmured
Mr. Winstanley, involuntarily clinking the
sovereigns he carried in a buckskin pouch in
his breeches pocket, then checking himself and
saying no more.

"They may say I'm a chorus girl all they're
a mind to.  I know I'm not, and that you
are one of the most honored citizens of our
town, and we came of good old stock.  I
don't deny I've wanted to go on the stage.
Till lately, I've simply yearned for it.  But
that, and all sorts of notions I had seem to
have vanished away since I came aboard—since
I've known Miss Carstairs."

"That's the young woman sits at our
table?  Can't say I blame you, Posey, I
kinder took a shine to her, myself, the first
evening out; but she chilled on me afterward,
and I'm never for troubling folks with
my attentions."

"She chilled on you because of me, poor
dear; for any nice girl in her senses must see
you're a heavenly angel, if you do wear rusty
tweeds.  She thought I was crude and
aggressive and cheap, and so I am, maybe, but
I don't mean to stay so; and if ever I get to
be anything better, it'll be Helen Carstairs
that's started me.  But she won't know it,
and won't know me, and that's really what's
bothering me so dreadfully, daddy."

"Her father's the great Carstairs, isn't
he?  Didn't I hear John say he'd indirectly
given him a lift last year, and said some
good things about the way the boy managed
a certain office job that came under
Carstairs' eye?"

"Did he?  There now, daddy, is just the
girl John would have been wise to get, if he
could.  She might have helped him up the
ladder by just putting out a finger-tip.  And
he is so ambitious, so fastidious.  I could see
that little trifles about me jarred on him
constantly—the very things these lords and
grandees aboard admire the most it seems.
He called them provincialisms, and Lord
Channel Fleet says they're simply delicious.
Who am I to believe?"

"Ah, my little girl, I can't tell you, and
that's the truth.  But John's apt to be right,
only whether or not Miss Carstairs is his
ideal, you just be yourself, and don't put on
any frills.  You can't help being lively, thank
God, nor true, nor generous, for you're your
own mother's child.  You'll make friends,
never fear, the only trouble to my mind is
lest they should be those who care for you
only because——"

"Why, daddy, one would almost think I
am something in disguise.  You needn't be
afraid of any one on this trip, however.
They'll all forget me the day the ship touches
Liverpool."

"Well, it don't matter much when we've
got John behind us, does it, daughter?  I
reckon he'll be proud as I am to hear what
a belle you've been.  There's only one thing
it's crossed my mind he mightn't fancy
over-much—your going around with that lord
fellow that's been so much talked about—that
Clandonald man, I mean."

"Oh! daddy, *don't*!"

Mr. Winstanley had thought himself,
through experience, prepared for most of
the idiosyncrasies of femininity as developed
by his daughter, but he could not have
reasonably counted upon the look that came into
her face as she made this protest.  It caused
him to stare, shake himself like a wet dog,
scrutinize her again narrowly, then utter an
exclamation familiar to him only under stress
of strong emotion.

"Stonewall Jackson, daughter!  I want to know!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

The measure of Mr. Winstanley's curiosity
was, however, not to be satisfied on this
occasion; since, almost immediately, the
colloquy with his daughter over the "Baltic's"
rail was destined to interruption by Lord
Clandonald in person, who came up to ask
if Miss Winstanley were ready for their walk.

Since the first evening of their meeting, he
had fallen into the habit of seeking her out in
a half-shy, wholly unemotional manner, and
of spending a half hour or so in her
company listening to her merry chatter and
insensibly lightening and brightening out of
the heavy lassitude that had possessed his
soul for so many weary months.  With
returning animation, the real beauty and high
distinction of his face revealed itself.  Posey,
who had thought of his title merely as a
pleasing toy, who had as yet acquired none of the
prevalent worship of her average countrymen
for the glamour of a place among the
hereditary nobility of the lands they affect
to surpass in achievement, liked to be with
him because of three things—viz., the great
strength and beauty of his body, his gift of
beautiful diction, and the melodious speech
that rang upon her ear like a chime of
perfect bells.  She also enjoyed his way of
brushing his hair and putting on his clothes, and
not caring in the least what anybody on board
thought of him or said of him.  At least, that
is what, had she possessed a confidante of her
own sex, Miss Winstanley would have admitted
concerning her indifferent admirer.

He had come to her as a man who at thirty
considers himself to have done with life, and
consents to take up incidental diversion by
the way.  He had never met a girl so ignorant
of the world, so inexhaustibly interested in
things and people, so fresh and healthy, yet
innately refined, so daring, yet so sure of
herself that no man might take a liberty with
her in speech or action; and above all, so
pretty.

So deliciously pretty!  The woman whom
he had ruined his life by marrying, five years
before, had been accounted a beauty, and was
a gentlewoman by tradition and association.
As he had seen Ruby Darien last, in the
divorce court, she seemed a mere made-up
creature who would go to pieces at night in her
maid's hands, a thing of artifice and stimulant,
of base passions and shallow emotionality,
already a has-been, although barely his
own age.  At what time of her existence was
it that she had made his pulses thrill with
her loveliness?  Could he have ever
considered Ruby the peer in looks of this stray
maiden come upon by chance to be soon
parted with, and never seen again?  He hated
to think he had believed himself Ruby's
lover during the time before he had found
her out.  He loathed the days before he put
her away, when, for his boy's sake, he had
kept on terms with her outwardly.  After his
child died, and he had taken his opportunity
to be a free man, he often thanked God, that
following that voyage of his wife's to South
Africa he had never thought of her as beautiful.

But except for the somewhat languid admiration
excited in him, the young American had
not yet stirred the deeper fountains of
Clandonald's feeling.  Mariol, observing the
progress of affairs, was quietly content.  He
really considered the acquaintance with Posey
a species of mild cure, like a visit to a
German health-place where one eats brown bread
and baked apples, and goes to bed at ten
o'clock.  If it had been Miss Carstairs, now,
upon whom these desultory attentions of his
lordship had been bestowed, Mariol, having
ascertained this lady to be the daughter of
the world-famous financier, would have been
much more actively concerned in forecasting
for her a place among the white peacocks at
Beaumanoir.

It was about Beaumanoir that Clandonald
now found himself obliged to talk with Miss
Winstanley.  With the lightning-like rapidity
of growth in steamer intimacies, they had
all come to discourse of one another's
domiciles and surroundings, and Mariol, whose
æstheticism rejoiced in his friend's noble old
forsaken home, had shown the girl a photograph
of it.  Posey, like every Southerner,
had an instinctive love and reverence for the
historic element in English country homes,
and the ancient moated dwelling in whose
grounds monarchs had taken their pleasure
appealed keenly to her otherwise concrete
and contemporaneous view of things.  To see
it was like stepping out of a modern railway
station into an old-world garden of ripe
delights.  And to be actually walking up and
down decks with the owner, albeit he looked
like other men and had his hands thrust in
the pockets of an indifferently shabby ulster,
was a fillip her imagination had not
previously known.

A little teased, a little flattered by her
queries on the subject, Clandonald yet felt
assured that her interest was impersonal and
genuine.  When he remembered how Ruby
had hated to stay at Beaumanoir, preferring
any small stuffy hotel in Paris or Rome, or
on the Riviera, Miss Winstanley's real
enthusiasm was refreshing.  It almost made him
want to go back himself to that spot, haunted
by the ghosts of dead beliefs, near which the
poor little boy slept, under a tiny mound in
the churchyard that he was always trying to
forget.

Strange, now it always came to him when
alone in a balmy wood, with birds singing
and sun filtering through the branches; or
on Sundays when a church bell rang; or if he
awoke suddenly in the middle of the night;
or in looking at a field of haymakers and
distant grazing sheep!  It was not a keen pain
any longer, but only a sobering, tender
thought, and the man was better for it
afterward.  Now, again, as he thrust his hands
deeper in his pockets and strode up and down
beside the girl, dodging other walking pairs,
and wishing there were not so many people in
the world who wanted to do what he did, the
image of the little green mound arose across
the waste of wide Atlantic.  Was it Posey who
inspired his one sacred remembrance?  He
could not tell, but went on letting her draw
him out about his lovely impoverished
Beaumanoir, until she was touched and astonished
at the feeling he revealed concerning it.

"Oh!  I am sure you will have it all once
more, and be able to enjoy everything as of
old," she exclaimed impulsively.

"Perhaps you don't know why this is
impossible," he answered, gulping down the
bitter fact, "It is quite hopeless for me to
live decently there, on all I am ever likely
to have in the way of income."

"And I, like a goose, keep always
ignoring the money question in connection with
those beautiful entrancing old English places.
I've read about them so often in a book we
have of 'Dwellings of the Aristocracy and
Gentry,' and also in 'Country Life.'  They
seem to have been created to go on for ages
by themselves, in a state of suspended
animation, like the Sleeping Beauty's palace.
If you won't think me silly, I'll tell you that
when I get hold of a copy of 'Country Life,'
I imagine myself living in one house after
another of the illustrations, and I want to
buy all the horses and dogs and sheep and
everything in the advertisements, except,
maybe, incubators, which are horrid
unnatural things, and the smelly stuff they put
upon the grass and flowers that can't say
'don't'!"

Clandonald laughed.

"Rather my own idea.  But I supposed all
you people of the South owned large estates
and many acres to experiment upon."

"Oh! dear, no!  We personally never
owned anything bigger than a back-yard,
until my father was persuaded by a man to
go shares with him in some land I never saw,
where they found both coal and iron.  Last
year the man died, and my daddy, who had
paid up most all the purchase money, came
into possession of the whole property.  I
believe it's turned out better than he thought,
and he's lately got something good out of it,
else certainly we'd not have had this trip to
Europe.  I'm glad you never saw Alison's
Cross Roads, Lord Clandonald.  It's just
the homeliest, pokiest little place in Alabama,
and the people are good and kind, but
commonplace to a degree.  The houses are all of
wood with jig-saw trimmings and the paint
half worn off.  Nobody thinks it necessary to
improve anything, and the negroes swarm
over everywhere, and rule the land."

"Then I suppose you'll call me jolly
impertinent," said he, "if I wonder how you
grew up as you are in the middle of it."

"I don't know!  I just did.  People have
grown tired, down there, of holding up their
hands over me.  My teacher at school, who
was born North, was the only one that ever
understood why I wanted anything different
from the rest.  She took several magazines,
and told me about others, that I persuaded
daddy to subscribe to.  She lent me books
and talked to me, but two years ago she
decided to marry in New York, and I lost her.
She lives there now, dear soul, in an awfully
little flat.  Her husband is in the insurance
business, and she edits a column of 'Advice
to Girls.'  She says she fairly hates some of
the idiots who write to her asking the most
drivelling questions.  But to please the
editor, she has to dissemble, and call them dears
and answer like a guardian angel when she
had rather choke them and be done with
it—because the work pays the butcher's bill
and half the gas!"

"Has she taught you that such poverty is
evened by the good to be acquired from the
married state?"

"I think so.  At least, she and Mr. Bartley
have a good deal of fun out of things.
Their greatest treat, when their maid's
cooking gets too impossible and Mr. Bartley is
growing thin, is to go to dinner at an Italian
restaurant, a dollar each, with wine, and to
eat enough spaghetti to last another little
while.  Mrs. Bartley got fifteen dollars for
looking up facts and dates in the Astor
Library for a fashionable lady, who was
allotted to read a paper on something she never
heard of before, at a meeting of her literary
club.  Mrs. Bartley ended by doing the whole
thing, and the lady was so fascinated by
herself in typewriting, that she sent a check for
fifteen instead of ten; so the Bartleys took
me to their restaurant for dinner, and afterward
to the play, in cheap seats.  Yes, I think
the Bartleys are all right.  If their kitchen
door could be kept shut, and the smell of
cooking be banished from the parlor, I
believe they'd be as happy as most people who
are married, anyway."

"Perhaps, if you and your father are to
be in London, you would let me take you out
to dinner and cheap seats at the play?"

"Wouldn't I love it?  But you can't drag
daddy to the theatre, and I'm not like Miss
Carstairs, blessed with a chaperon.  Do you
notice that, as we are getting 'half-seas over,'
Miss Bleecker's English accent becomes more
pronounced?  She is forever talking about
when we are 'in town,' and regretting that it
is out of the season, because so few of their
great friends will be there to welcome them.
She calls all the American duchesses by their
first names, and the other United States
peeresses that she didn't play with in infancy,
she must have brought up by hand."

"I am afraid I am too lowly a personage
to claim the lady's acquaintance in future,"
said Clandonald, indifferently.  "But I
confess I should like, for my friend Mariol's
sake, who has conceived a vast admiration
for her charge—to manage to ask Miss
Carstairs and himself to join you and your
father in a run down to Beaumanoir for
luncheon, while you are 'in town.'  It is pretty,
there, in autumn, and there are sure to be
some good peaches on the garden wall."

"How adorable!" exclaimed Posey.
"Daddy might go to that, if I beg him, but
Miss Carstairs—!  There's the difficulty.
She won't more than look at me.  I wonder
why you, who are born really higher up in
the world than Miss Bleecker and Miss
Carstairs, never let me feel that I am only a
druggist's daughter!"

"In Athens, they tell you Aristotle kept a
chemist's shop," answered Clandonald,
laughing.  "And I have always understood that
some of the most illustrious of the families
in New York's Four Hundred were founded
upon drugs."

"If it wasn't pills, or capsules, or hair
tonic, it was some other kind of merchandise!"
said Posey, viciously.  "And, anyhow,
what does it matter?  There was a
sentence I copied out of a book of Maarten
Maartens, that Mrs. Bartley lent me, about
there being no other way of living than either
on the money you have earned for yourself,
or on the money that other people have earned
for you.  As long as that simple fact remains,
the question will also remain whether
money-making is so very contemptible!"

"Try any man living, with an honest
chance, and see what he'd answer," said
Clandonald with a sigh.  "I'd give anything I
own for a respectable business that would
bring in the cash and the knowledge of how
to run it, *bien entendu*."

"You poor thing!" exclaimed Miss Winstanley,
guilelessly.  "Why weren't you born
in dear America?  Of course if you *could* go
stalking around in chain-armor like those
ancestors of yours at Beaumanoir, it wouldn't
seem so appropriate.  But just to look at you
as you stand, to-day, I should judge there
were the makings of a fair business man in
you.  Look here, Lord Clandonald, I don't
know that I was ever better pleased in my
life than by that idea of yours of our going
to lunch at Beaumanoir with Miss Carstairs.
I don't mind telling you I just adore that
girl—and the combination of her company with
a moat and yew trees, and wall-peaches, and
the chance of seeing English rooks—and Miss
Bleecker not 'in it,' I'll be eternally obliged."

"It seems to me the host counts for unflatteringly
little," said Clandonald, somewhat piqued.

"I didn't mean to have you think so,"
answered she with astonishing gentleness, "I
was only carried away to forget my manners
by realizing so many dreams at once.  Indeed,
I am glad, or shall be, to meet you again after
this voyage.  Now, I'm going to ask you
something that will make you laugh, perhaps, but
please don't.  Could you give me the address
of a really good place in London where I
could get frocks and hats, ready-to-wear, that
would keep me from looking like a guy?"

Poor Clandonald winced at thought of just
how he had become acquainted with the best
*faiseuses* in London, whose bills he had paid
to the uttermost farthing, after the ex-Lady
Clandonald had ceased to be.  But he could
not help smiling at the earnest anxiety of his
questioner.

"I think I might help you a little,
perhaps, but surely——"

"Surely there ought to be some woman
aboard to do it?  Of course you think so,
but if I could tell you half I've divined, and
some things I've overheard from them, you'd
know I'd never ask one of them.  Why, I
heard that old Vereker tabby say to the old
Bleecker cat, as distinctly as could be, that
I was a freak in clothes and a bounder in
manners, and she wondered the captain let
me go at large."

"Oh!  I say."

"Perfectly true, and I had it out of her by
trailing her half-dead husband after me all
over the ship, until he hadn't a leg to stand
on; and I put a rose in his buttonhole under
her very eyes.  I've been ashamed of it ever
since, but when a girl's got to fight her own
battles, what would you have?"

"There should be always some one glad to
fight for you," he said, suddenly fired by her
proud young beauty in distress.

They had, while speaking, walked down
to the dividing rail that cuts off the
promenaders of the second cabin from the
first-class decks, and for some moments tarried
there, Clandonald with his back to it, Miss
Winstanley facing him.  As the Englishman
spoke these unpremeditated words of
warm sympathy, for the second time that
day there had come into the girl's artless face
an expression she certainly had no idea of
revealing.  It caused Clandonald to pull
himself up with a jerk, and stay the vague, rather
affectionate, words he had been on the point
of uttering, without, perhaps, meaning to
have too much importance attached to them.
And it was further reflected in the shining
green eyes of a second-class passenger in
shabby black, standing near by the barrier,
wearing a veil of black gauze with large
coquettish velvet dots that half concealed her
undulated locks of unreasonably ruddy hair!

It was not the first time the green gleam of
those watchful eyes had been fixed upon
Clandonald and his companions.  He had, in fact,
been under their close observation whenever
practicable since leaving New York harbor,
in the course of their owner's predatory
walks, as she alternately drew near and
receded with graceful feline tread, seeming to
look at nothing, yet forever alert where the
good-looking, lazy young Englishman was
concerned.

The youthful steward who distends himself
for the public good by blowing the bugle for
lunch was, on this occasion, the agent of
Providence to relieve a strained situation.
Clandonald could not, in the face of such a
blast, go on with his implied offer of
championship.  The second-cabin passenger glided
swiftly back across her little bridge, and was
seen no more.  Miss Winstanley, announcing
herself half-starved, went to her stateroom to
wash her hands.  And his lordship, to calm his
feelings, partook of a certain small, specially
reviving, bitter-sweet draught, which his
servant had acquired the gentle art of mixing,
during their sojourn in San Francisco.  On
the way into the dining-room, he found Mariol
just ahead of him, amid a congerie of
stewards hurrying to and from their pantries with
their arms full of crockery, and in an
atmosphere tinctured with out-rushing odors of
cauliflower and curried rice, gave his friend
a word of counsel.

"I have been talking with Miss Winstanley,"
he said.  "The truth is, Mariol, the
poor girl is being pecked by all these women,
until it hurts.  You have some friendship,
perhaps some influence, with Miss Carstairs.
Persuade her to be generous, and take the
outsider in.  It will cost her nothing, and I'm
hanged if I understand why she's been such
an icicle, as it is."

"Did Miss Winstanley invite your
intercession?" asked Mariol, dodging back from
contact with an inclined plane of mutton
broth, in a tilting china plate marked with
the White Star's emblem, borne aloft by a
deeply apologetic steward.

"No.  Absolutely no.  She'd fight to the
last ditch before she'd give in to them.  But
I have an ulterior motive.  I want to ask the
two young women with my dear old aunt,
Lady Campstown, to play propriety, to come
down with you to Beaumanoir some day next
week, and if they hardly speak——"

"Under these circumstances, I will engage
to attempt the impossible, though whether I
achieve it is quite another story.  I, too, have
been at a loss to fathom Miss Carstairs'
apparent intention to ignore our pretty
table-mate.  I had fancied her too sure of her own
position to care about a mere difference in
social status.  I have found her perfectly
amiable.  But if, by any chance, the
discussion of Miss Winstanley comes up, there is
an immediate stiffening of the muscles of the
neck and chin, the clear eyes become veiled,
and she turns the subject.  I could almost
fancy, but that they never met before, there
was some personal animus between them."

"Tell her the girl is her devoted lover from
afar, makes her a model in all things, and
that we owe the agreeable modifications of
the fair Posey's dress and manner exclusively
to Miss Carstairs' example."

"That is a happy suggestion, and may
accomplish good results.  But did you ever
know a man's eulogy of a woman effect
anything with her own sex?  It is generally
successful only in confirming the worst
predispositions, and in precipitating animosity
where latent antipathy had sufficed.  Still,
who could resist the exquisite flattery of such
imitation as our Posey's of Miss Carstairs?
Fix your day for Beaumanoir, my dear chap.
I consider our cause gained in advance."

"Do you know, Mariol," said Clandonald
as the two men sat down at table, where the
ladies had not yet arrived, "I have
sometimes fancied that you yourself are getting
rather under the spell of the young lady you
have engaged to placate in Miss Winstanley's
behalf."

"Do you know, Clan, that I never before
suspected you of the imaginative gift?
Nothing but Jonah's gourd—was it Jonah, and was
it a gourd?—that grew up and withered in a
night, could have had so little time allotted to
its natural development, as a fancy by me for
Miss Carstairs."

"That is no argument.  I have read of
love affairs beginning at the Statue of Liberty
and culminating before the Gulf Stream was
crossed.  There is really no better medium
than mid-Atlantic air for the growth of the
tender passion.  The leisure of a good voyage
is like the forty years of Europe compared
with the cycle of Cathay."

"It seems to me that you are exculpatory."

"I wish to heaven I might be!" exclaimed
Clandonald, smothering his very genuine
regret with a forkful of the roast beef of old
England pastured upon Western plains.

The talk that morning with Posey Winstanley
had awakened in him certain emotions
of a simple elementary sort that, in spite of
him, still twanged upon his heart-strings,
pleasingly.  He had, however, been by no
means prepared for that upward glance of
her childlike orbs when he had offered her
his sympathy.  While the normal vanity of
the male creature thrilled in quickened
interest in response to it, his judgment, his
sense of responsibility, nay, of honor, called
upon him loudly to let the thing go no
further.  A patent and audacious coquette on
the surface, she was at heart a child who had
as yet tasted no reality of sentiment for one
of the dominant sex, and to whom such reality
would inevitably come with extraordinary
force.

The whimsicality of her having selected
him—a battered plaything of the Fates, who
did not want her, who could not indulge in
her—for the object of a dawning first
passion, struck him hard.  He resolved to keep
out of her way, and considered how he could
have his meals elsewhere, or take to his bed
for the remainder of the voyage.  The
projected luncheon at Beaumanoir should be
carried out, and that done, he would have
acquitted himself, *en galant homme*, of all that
could be reasonably expected of a travelling
Briton toward visiting Americans who had
contributed to cheer his voyage across the
Atlantic.

To begin the new order of things, he let
himself be absorbed in conversation by Miss
Bleecker, his pet aversion, who leaning over
the table, her ample bosom begarlanded with
chains and cords, each one sustaining some
necessary implement for the aid of vision,
far or near, and all of them entangled, was
in her best spirits.  She, Lady Channel Fleet,
and Mrs. Vereker, had been in their deck
chairs since broth and biscuits to the
present moment, discussing the American women
who had married into the British nobility.
The three ancient heads cowled in veils and
furry hoods—for the air off the Banks had
had in it a tang of ice—had bobbed together
during this time with a vivacity of movement
suggesting the cinematograph.

Mrs. Vereker's sciatic leg, which it was
the mission of her good-looking footman to
keep enwrapped with rugs, when he could
forego flirting with the ladies' maids, had
been frequently exposed to the biting wind,
and yet she did not notice it.  Lady Channel
Fleet, who, with her husband and a maid, had
been doing America economically in
somebody's private car, at somebody's expense,
wisely kept quiet; since, if she shivered, there
was no James to wrap her up.  Miss Bleecker,
more serene, indeed, than Buddha, in her
position between a British matron of title and
one of New York's leaders, did not feel the
cold.  Except in a parterre box at the opera
(with the best people), she had no greater
idea of happiness than such surroundings;
with a long, uninterrupted morning in which
to rehash old stories and acquire new ones
concerning the ladies under discussion, whom
she secretly considered the elect of earth.

Lady Channel Fleet, conscious of having
had more honors paid to her in America than
in the whole course of her undistinguished
life at home, was proportionately inclined to
be critical of Americans, now she had come
away.  Her strictures upon their extravagance
in living, which she had enjoyed to the
top of her bent, the largeness of their houses
and the smallness of their grounds, their
ridiculous way of running after strangers, and
the extraordinary interchange of matrimonial
partners among people one knew and visited,
were interspersed with various bits of gossip
she had been able to pick up in England
concerning American peeresses who had not
received her at their houses and were, indeed,
unconscious of her existence.

It had been rather a bitter pill for Mrs. Vereker,
who was hand-in-glove with all these
fine people both in England and New York,
to have to listen politely to Lady Channel
Fleet.  But, then, Mrs. Vereker had already
stood so much in the line of incivility from
the British dames of high place upon whom
she had lavished courtesy during their
sojourn in the land of the free, that she was a
little hardened.  She knew that on arrival
out, she would go from Claridge's to stop at
country houses where Lady Channel Fleet's
star would never even faintly rise.  She was
secure in being able to buy herself a good
time and the best of everything wherever she
might go, and felt, on the whole, content.  Miss
Bleecker, on the contrary, who had no such
solid foundations as her friend, felt in
listening to Lady Channel Fleet as acutely pained
as if she were reading one of Mr. Benson's
or Mr. Hichens' novels, wherein modern
Americans of good society are made to say
"Popper" and "real nice."  She could
hardly imagine how her nation could arise to
ignoring these dreadful accusations.

But when Lady Channel Fleet had
incidentally let fall that she always presumed
Miss Bleecker, from her speech and manner,
to be an Englishwoman born, Miss Bleecker
had forgiven all.  She redoubled her powers
of entertainingness, brought out a few newer,
racier anecdotes of persons known to all of
them, and the luncheon bugle had caught the
gossips unawares, making them feel the
morning quite too short.

"I suppose we shall see you at Mr. Vereker's
little supper this evening, Lord Clandonald?"
said the chaperon, suavely.  "One
knows what to expect in the way of private
dainties, when Mr. Vereker entertains—game,
wines, patés, caviare put up for him on the
Volga, flowers, grapes and melons from his
own glass houses, and such turtle soup as only
the Vereker *chef* can send aboard.  And to
think the poor man has to sit at the head of
the table, drinking milk and swallowing little
tablets out of his waistcoat pocket, looking
gray as a ghost, and thin as a rail, not able
to touch a thing of all his delicious spread!"

"Mr. Vereker has been so good as to
include me," answered Clandonald.

"I believe most of those at our table are
expected," the lady went on, in a hardly
lowered voice, "with, of course, one or two
exceptions.  When Mr. Vereker crosses alone
they say his parties are apt to be a little
mixed.  But with his wife aboard—she is so
thoroughly exclusive, one need never fear."

What might have been omitted from the
words, was accentuated by a manner of
contempt whose objects there was no mistaking.
Mr. Winstanley as usual appeared not to be
listening to the passing chat; but his
daughter lost not a syllable or look; Helen
Carstairs, also, fully appreciated the situation.
While Posey, with rare self-control, kept her
own counsel and remained silent, Miss Carstairs,
flushing faintly, spoke so that all
present could hear her.

"I'm afraid I'm one of those who fail to
appreciate the honor of Mr. Vereker's invitations,
ashore or afloat.  Who was it who said
to be left out by him was a greater compliment
than to be placed at his right hand?"

"Helen, I'm surprised to hear you talk
such nonsense," began her chaperon briskly,
but was interrupted by Posey Winstanley,
who with a grateful glance at Helen, spoke
in tones as quiet and measured as her own.

"Then I am certainly past getting the
benefit of Miss Carstairs' hint, Miss Bleecker,
since Mr. Vereker asked me first, before
seeing if he could get the others; and I was rash
enough to accept."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

MR. Vereker's little supper proved all that
Miss Bleecker had claimed for it in the
matter of exotic luxury.  American beauty roses,
as fresh as if they had bloomed that morning,
decked the centre of the board, and a corsage
bouquet of royal purple violets lay beside
each lady's plate.  The unpleasantly pallid
host, with skin drawn like parchment over
his lean jaws, his hair and mustache
unnaturally black, sat at one end, and (to the
dismay of Miss Bleecker, who had been made
to fit in at the side) Miss Posey Winstanley
upon his left, opposite my Lady Channel
Fleet in a rumpled cotton blouse, still
wearing the turquoise earrings, with the addition
of a turquoise chain to hold her eyeglasses.

Posey, in severely plain white voile, with a
picture hat and white feathers framing the
waves of her splendid hair, thanked her stars
that she had had Helen Carstairs' example
in dress long enough to profit by it for this
occasion.  She saw in half a glance that her
frock, the result of the best skill of the
dressmaker at Alison's Cross Roads, who called
her by name in fitting her, could not vie with
the dove-colored confection with its all-over
embroideries that sat so easily upon Helen's
erect form.  But she knew that it was unobtrusive,
and the little slip of mirror above her
washing-stand had told she was at her best.

It had been an ordeal that of dressing while
her cross room-mate, who made a virtue of
what she called "retiring" early, continued
at intervals to extend her head like a turtle's
from its shell, and inquire whether Miss
Winstanley would be very much longer!
Posey was fain to go outside and have the
finishing touches put to her toilette by the
stewardess, Mrs. Gasher, the bib of whose
white apron covered sympathetic interest,
since she knew about the supper, and that the
ladies to be present were dead set against the
beauty of the ship.  When she had stuck
the last pin, Mrs. Gasher maternally
informed Miss Winstanley that she looked
pretty enough to beat the Jews, and would
find her 'ot water covered with a towel when
she came in again to go to bed; and if she
couldn't get undone herself, never to mind
ringing up Mrs. Gasher.

Under this cheerful inspiration, Posey had
marched into the saloon to find the others all
in place, an empty chair kept for her at the
host's left.

She had been hoping to be next Clandonald—for
no reason but that she wanted it.
Instead, she had but a cold glance from him
across the table, at which she quailed because
she thought she read in it displeasure.  And
immediately he turned back to his conversation
with Prince Zourikoff about Silver or
Trusts, or Labor, or some of those tiresome
things, and looked at her no more.  The only
consolation for this awful blow was that
Helen, sitting between Mariol and Bobby
Vane, had smiled at her kindly when she
came in late.

Miss Bleecker, beside the Graf von Bau,
who occupied the seat to the left of
Mrs. Vereker, decided that the world was out of
joint.  Lord Channel Fleet, at the right of
his hostess, looked tired, and when Miss
Bleecker effusively addressed him upon topics
of contemporaneous interest in London, gave
her but scant answers.  Graf von Bau, after
he had exhausted civilities with the lady of
the feast, had but eyes and ears for the spot
where Posey had already begun to outdo
herself in characteristic nonsense.

"That girl!" said Miss Bleecker, between
her teeth, to Mr. Charley Brownlow, a
serious-faced, clean-shaven New York clubman
of whom the utmost his friends and enemies
could find to say was that he was "always
everywhere."  "It is not enough to defy
poor dear Mrs. Vereker, who flatly said she
should not be asked, but to make herself so
conspicuous.  See, every man at table, except
you——"

"I don't know her, don't you know?
Never met her anywhere," interposed
Mr. Brownlow gravely.

"Of course you didn't—as I was saying,
every man at table but you, and, I'm glad to
see, Lord Clandonald, can look at nothing
else.  I suppose she went too far with
Clandonald, and he wants to put her back in her
place.  Everybody understands old Vereker's
rage for a pretty face, though I, for one, can
never see good looks in a common person.
It's scandalous the way she's going on
to-night.  Mr. Vereker's trying to make her
take champagne, and she pretending she never
drinks it!  Poor Lady Channel Fleet, what a
trial to sit opposite her!  Now, we shall have
a fresh batch of stories circulated in London
about the way American girls act; and the
worst of it is you can never get the English
to see the difference between people of our
stamp, and hers.  Why, I don't believe Lord
Channel Fleet and Clandonald take in, at
this minute, the enormous distance between
my Helen and that impossible young person.
What's that they're laughing at?  Something
saucy she is saying to Lady Channel
Fleet, I'll wager."

"What do we do for chaperons, at home,
Lady Channel Fleet?" Miss Winstanley was
remarking, her head well in the air, and the
spirit of mischief securely seated in her eyes.
"Well, we don't need 'em greatly at Alison's
Cross Roads, where I live; but if there's a
party at the other end of town, your best
young man generally calls for you in a hack.
And when he brings you home again, about
three or four in the morning, you give him
your latch-key to open the front door, and if
you're not tall enough, you get him to turn
out the gas in the vestibule before he goes."

"Good Heavens!" ejaculated Lady Channel
Fleet, growing purple.

"Why not, I'd like to know?" exclaimed
Posey, sturdily.  "We consider it awfully
swell to be taken that way, and the fellows
that can't afford a hack generally bunch
together with the girls and all go in the tram;
and it's lots of fun, I tell you.  Just bully!"

Mrs. Vereker exchanged glances of mute
despair with Miss Bleecker and Mr. Brownlow.
The others laughed frankly, Clandonald,
only, remaining smileless, and Helen
Carstairs coloring with a futile desire to
arrest Miss Winstanley's progress in confidences.

As well attempt to stay Niagara!  A
demon of recklessness had possessed himself of
John Glynn's promised bride, and poor Posey
went from bad to worse, talking continuously,
her cheeks flushed to the color of the
American beauties lavished upon the table,
her eyes glittering defiance; while old
Vereker, who had desired nothing better,
applauded her every utterance, and urged her
to further daring.

"She should stop now," whispered Mariol
to Miss Carstairs, who was looking very grave.

"Oh, indeed I think so," answered Helen
earnestly.

"For her own sake, if there is no one else
whose interests are to be guarded."

Helen started perceptibly.  No one else
whose interests were to be guarded?  What
of John Glynn, and where was the friendship
Helen had promised to keep for him in
lieu of the love she had withdrawn?
Impulsively, she leaned forward, caught Posey
Winstanley's eye, and into her own beseeching,
all-womanly gaze threw an appeal not
to be resisted.

Clandonald, who had begun to be sickeningly
annoyed by the scene, and as far as possible
avoided looking directly at the heroine
of the hour, happened to note this little
episode.  Remembering what Posey had told
him of Helen's influence over her imagination,
he was touched but not surprised at the
younger girl's response.  Posey, blushing
hotly, drooped her eyes, and in an instant,
as if with a garment cast aside, had parted
with her aggressive gaiety.  During the
remainder of the meal she sat dull and spiritless,
and at its close, when she had promised
to sing one song for them, tried to get out of
it and leave the party.

There was a general outcry of remonstrance.
Bobby Vane, coming around to lead
her to the piano, whispered to her to do her
best and silence the tabby chorus.  When she
finally yielded, and sat down, expectation ran
high among Mr. Vereker's faction that the
girl would give them something audacious to
be remembered.

It was but a "Mammy" chant, she
breathed, rather than sang, in a *voix d'or*
that softened all hearts within hearing; and
before they could applaud it she struck
firmer chords, and began Lockhart's
Spanish ballad:

   |  "Rise up, rise up, Xarifa,
   |  And lay your golden cushion down."
   |

The song and its setting were unfamiliar
to most of those present.  While it lasted,
they forgot the grinding of mighty screws
that bore the ship ever forward, they heard
not the wash of ocean coming through the
open ports.  They were in ancient days of
warlike Spain, and all their sympathy was
for the lovely Moorish lady forsaken by false
Abdallah.  Everybody within hearing was
drawn irresistibly to listen in ravished silence.
And when for the last time the hapless Xarifa
refused to come to the window and "gaze with
all the town" at her recreant lover riding by
in state, the honors of the evening were clearly
for Posey Winstanley.  At that moment, all
but a few of the audience were prepared to
be led or used by her, as one feels when Calvé
softens to sing a folk-song of her native land.

Amid the patter of applause Miss Winstanley
abruptly arose from the piano, and
said she was going out to get a breath of air.
There were protestations, but only the host,
who looked at her with bleared, enraptured
eyes, ventured to ask her to sing again.  Then,
Mr. Vereker finding his proposition for Lillian
Russell's latest success unheeded, allowed the
departure of his star, rejecting all offers of
companionship, to be the signal for breaking
up the affair.

Everybody scattered, the men to the
smoking-room, the ladies to their cabins.  Helen
Carstairs, with her maid in attendance, came
back almost immediately, and stood for a
moment hesitating in the companion-way of the
deck where she had last seen Posey.  Here she
encountered Clandonald, who, like herself,
seemed to be at a loss.

"I am undertaking a formidable task," she
said.  "To look for a missing person in this
ship; but have you chanced to see Miss
Winstanley anywhere?"

She saw that his face was clouded, his calm
ruffled.

"I myself have been on the same search,"
he said, brusquely.  "But we may as well
spare our pains.  The young lady in question
appears to be at present under charge of
Mr. Vereker."

Helen had but time to let her face show the
annoyance of her feelings, when out of the
clear obscure of the deck beyond, against a
background of sky "patined with such bright
stars" as never Shakespeare saw, came to
them a flying figure.  It was Posey, flushed
with angry blood, and after her limped their
host of the evening, his spectral face wreathed
in apologetic smiles.

"Oh! please, Miss Carstairs, may I stay
with you?" exclaimed the girl with quivering
lips, in her agitation putting herself
between Helen and Clandonald, who
involuntarily interposed his stalwart form so that
none else could approach her.  "I didn't
realize how late it was when I went out to be
by myself in the fresh air."

"Miss Winstanley is just a *leetle* nervous
after her triumphs of to-night," began
Mr. Vereker, who had come up with
them—smoothly, but ill at ease.

"I am not nervous.  I never was in my
life," cried the girl, stamping her foot.  "It
is because—because——"

She ended in a burst of passionate tears.

"Let me go with you to your room," said
Helen, gently.  "I had wanted to ask you
for a little walk, but it is late now, and the
deck people are for putting us all to bed."

"High-strung little filly, and green; green
as grass," observed Mr. Vereker to Clandonald,
as Miss Carstairs disappeared, leading
Posey down the corridor.  "If you're up
to a little poker in the smoking-room, I can
tell you a thing or two about our bewitching
girl from Dixieland that will amuse you
greatly."

"You will excuse me," answered Clandonald,
with lightning in his gaze.  Mariol,
passing in at the moment, saw Vereker shrivel
under it and disappear.  Clandonald gave his
friend a clue to the situation.

"If you had followed your impulse and
punched the old sinner's head," commented
Mariol, "it might have been a poor return
for his hospitality, but a mighty relief to
you.  However, we can safely leave him to
the gods for punishment.  He will probably
go under to-morrow, with one of his attacks,
because he drank champagne for supper.  I
understand that a trained nurse for him
makes part of the Verekers' travelling suite.
He will become a horrid elderly infant in her
hands.  I am glad Miss Carstairs came to the
relief.  I hope you noticed that fine
movement of hers to check the exuberance of the
younger girl?  I had no time to put your
suggestion to enlist her into effect before the
thing occurred.  And now——"

"Now, I think we may count upon our
day all together at Beaumanoir.  But till
then, and after it, Mariol, I mean to keep
my distance from Miss Winstanley."

"The trouble was that you began doing it
too suddenly.  From the moment she caught
sight of your glum countenance at supper
the sparkle went out of things for her.  But,
*bon Dieu*, what a gift she has, that untrained
creature!  Somebody ought to take charge
of her musical education, and in a few years
she would witch the world."

"There is something better for a pure,
straightforward being like that to do than
to witch the world behind footlights," said
Clandonald doggedly.  "I can't think of it
for her."

"My advice to you is to get off at Queenstown,"
answered Mariol as they separated
for the night.

.. vspace:: 2

"You are not sleepy?  That's good, for
I'm not, either, and I'll just send away
Eulalie, and we'll go into my room and talk."

Posey's heart lightened with pleasure as
she followed Miss Carstairs inside the pretty
bower Eulalie's skill had contrived from her
young lady's belongings for the voyage.  What
a contrast to the half of a dull inside cabin
which Mr. Winstanley, in his simplicity, had
accepted for Posey from the agent of whom
he had purchased places; with the spinster
room-mate humped under the bedclothes on
the sofa; her clothes and hats hanging
overhead distractedly; their steamer trunks and
bags encumbering the narrow space between
hers and Posey's berths!

Here were unimagined comforts, order,
nicety, a little brass bed with flowery
curtains, softest pillows and duvets, a bath room
opening out, with porcelain tub; an equipment
for the toilet that astounded Posey, till
then content with her little cotton night-gown
trimmed with tatting, her kimono of cheap
blue flannel bought ready-made, her one brush
and comb, and tooth-brush, and bottle of
Sozodont, her knitted slippers, and the
steamer-pocket of blue denim with the motto "Bon
voyage," presented to her on leaving Alison's
Cross Roads by her friend the dressmaker!
But she showed no more surprise than an
Indian does on his first visit to the glories of
the White Father at Washington.  Truth to
tell, she had already arrived at the stage of
development where things tangible have
become of secondary importance to feelings
and emotions.  She had passed, that evening,
through so many varying phases of mental
experience, that Helen Carstairs' new
kindness seemed the opening of the gate of
Heaven.

"Now if you feel like it, and think it will
do you good," said Helen, installing her in a
cushioned chair of Madeira wicker-work, and,
herself, perching school-girl fashion on the
settee, "you must tell me what troubled you,
though I think I can guess."

"He tried to kiss me, that hateful old
mummy that I've done nothing but make fun
of on the voyage," cried the girl, fiery blushes
streaming into her face.  "If he hadn't said
such fool-words when he did it, I might have
thought he was just like old Grandfather
Billings of our town, that always dodders
along in the sunshine and kisses the girls
when they stop to speak to him, thinking
they're their own grandmothers.  But even
Grandfather Billings has never kissed me.  I
hate it, and never would put up with it from
a living soul, so when old Vereker tried it on,
I boxed his ears, and boxed to hurt, too, and
then I ran away.  What business had he
following me out on deck, anyway, when I'd
said I wanted to be by myself?  If daddy
knew—but he shan't know, he's too good to
trouble, and I reckon I can take care of myself."

She ended bravely, but one glance into
Helen's grave, kind face sent her again into
tears.

"Oh!  Miss Carstairs, don't mind me.  Let
me be a little while, and I'll promise not to
bother you again.  After you looked at me
that time at supper, I seemed to shrink up
into such a poor pretending creature.  I saw
in a flash how cheaply I'd been 'showing off.'  It
was mostly to make those people that looked
down on me sit up on their hind legs, anyway!
I felt common and half-bred beside you, whom
I'd been trying so hard to imitate since we
came aboard.  I do want to be a lady, your
kind, I do, I do.  Not only for my own sake,
and my mother's, who was a real one, but
because—if you only knew——"

"I am ready to know," said Helen, after a
pause, her voice, in spite of her, curiously
flattened.

"I am engaged to marry a man, to whom
it will mean everything that I shall be, let me
say, all you are.  And there's a great reason
why I should try to please him in those things.
How strange that I should want to tell you
such an intimate secret, out of my very heart!
But there is no other woman I can talk to,
and that look you gave me seemed to open
every door within me!"

"I will help you if I can," Helen breathed,
rather than spoke.  Her spirit, wrestling with
the certainty that crushed it, was yet ready
to rise to generosity.  Was it not what she
had bid John Glynn do in the moment of his
acutest suffering?  Find a younger, fresher,
more trustful life-partner than herself, and
put swiftly out of mind their disastrous
venture together that could not end in happiness!
What right had she to be feeling these
fierce heart-beats of rebellion against the
child's superior claim upon him, these
desperate yearnings to have him back again?

"I am ashamed to let you know what will
make you think even less of me than you do.
When I promised myself to John Glynn—there
I've told you his name, but it doesn't
matter—I did so because I thought it would
make my dear daddy, who was in some sort his
guardian and his father's best friend—happier
than anything in the world.  Also, I was
flattered that he should ask me.  Down at
Alison's, where John lived as a boy, they
think he has taken the head of his firm into
business with him, and that all New York
looks on admiringly.  He's about the greatest
hero we have after Lee and Davis.  He's a
splendid man, Miss Carstairs, perhaps you
*have* heard of him?  I remember now, daddy
said Mr. Carstairs had spoken well of John.
When that Lady Channel Fleet had the cheek
to say at supper, she considered the American
men, as a rule, inferior to their women,
and decidedly so to Englishmen, I could have
flown at her, and asked her to wait till she'd seen John."

Helen, conscious that something of the
same mental protest had formulated itself in
her during the same period of provocation,
could not forbear a smile.  Fortunately, Miss
Winstanley, being fairly launched upon her
confidence, did not pause for answer or comment.

"You will see, then, that I do honestly
mean to be what I ought, to John—that—I
have no other wish or fancy—and yet there
is another influence that's come without my
seeking—one that could not bring me happiness.
It frightens me to think of it.  I don't
know what to do, where to turn.  Think of
putting the thing of a day and hour against
the other, the safe one, the true one!  Yes,
it frightens me.  Miss Carstairs, you are older
and wiser than I, tell me what I shall do to
conquer it?"

All the voices in Helen's heart sang in
chorus, in answer to this simple and pathetic
appeal.  The voice of joy, the voice of
temptation were louder for awhile than the others,
but she dared not let them prevail.  She had
never been a demonstrative person, and the
touching of strangers, under no matter what
stress of sympathy, was an impossibility to
her.  She did not, therefore, "lock Posey in
a warm embrace" and "kiss her upon the
virgin brow," bidding her be of good cheer,
as all would yet be well between John Glynn
and herself.  But she told her, calmly and
dispassionately, that it is probable no girl
ever grew up to womanhood to escape some
errant fancy for a man whom she afterwards
thanked God she had not been allowed by
Destiny or her parents to marry.  She counselled
her to indulge in no dreams or reveries
or self-questionings about the matter, but to
keep to the pledge she had made, and give all
her energies to the task of making a good
man happy.

Posey brightened wonderfully during Miss
Carstairs' little lecture.  As she ran off to
bed, it was with the joyful step of a freed
school-girl and the feeling that she was not
altogether steeped in wickedness.  Half-way
down the corridor, she turned, ran back, and
ventured to knock again at Miss Carstairs'
door.  Her errand was the very feminine one
of asking Helen to be so good as to undo "two
wretched hooks" in the region of her
shoulder-blades; a service she knew Mrs. Gasher
would never at that late hour be awake to
perform for her.  When Miss Carstairs
opened the door, standing in the aperture in
some surprise to know what was wanted,
Posey felt sorry and puzzled to see that her
new friend's eyes were filled with tears.

As Miss Winstanley, finally relieved from
the apprehension of having to spend the night
in a cuirass of white voile with many little
pipings of satin and a good deal of scratchy
net, crept in like a thief at her own cabin-door,
her room-mate roused up and groaned
dismally.

"Seems to me I'm to have not a wink of
sleep to-night.  Just as I'd settled down for
my first nap, there came a stupid steward
with a note for you.  I told him to put it in
your berth and go out as quick as he could,
and since then I haven't closed my eyes."

"Thank you.  I'm sorry you are not resting
well," said Posey, still under the influence
of her recent gentle mood.  "Is it
anything you've eaten, do you think?"

"Eaten?  I never eat at sea," sniffed the
sufferer.  "It's my nerves, as usual, and
since you've roused me up completely, I'll
thank you to mix me another trional powder,
and not to turn up the light.  While you're
about it, you may's well step outside and get
my rug off the rail, and put it over my poor
feet.  Blocks of ice they are, cold feet are
constitutional in our family.  Humph!  Single
fold, not double, I don't want to smother.  I
should think your father'd know better than to
let a girl like you go traipsing around a ship
alone at this hour of the night.  Perhaps, if
you'd heard what I did, since I've been lying
here trying to count sheep and say the ten
table, you'd haul in your horns a bit, and not
think yourself such a museum wonder.  The
people in the next room were talking about
you, and I heard the man say as plain as
anything: 'If I wanted my daughter to keep
her good name, I'd not let her go out on deck
at night with that gay old bird, Tom
Vereker.'  And the woman answered: 'Some
people's heads are so turned with vanity and fine
company, they don't take ordinary care.  It's
the talk of all the decks how she's laying
herself out to catch that disreputable lord, and
he and his French friend calling her "dead
easy sport," in the smoking-room.'"

"Did any one say that such words had
been actually used about me by either of those
gentlemen?" asked Posey, stopping short,
her eyes blazing in the dark.

"How do I know all that's said, lying here
a wretched victim of nerves, and nobody
caring if I live or die?"

"I ask you, only, was it stated that either
of those gentlemen said anything approaching
to those words of me?"

"For goodness' sake, speak lower, Miss
Winstanley, you'll be overheard.  Some
people have no consideration for others,
especially girls at night, when people are trying
to fall asleep.  If there's a race I consider
utterly heartless, it is girls."

"I am not going to let you sleep or rest,"
went on the avenger, calmly taking off her
hat, "till you answer my question in plain
words—yes or no."

"N-o-o.  I don't know that it was actually
*said*, but the lady inferred that Lord
Clandonald and his friend couldn't *think*
anything else, if you continued to give yourself
away, as you've been doing."

"Very well!  I understand.  And, since
we are due at Queenstown day after to-morrow,
I shall ask you to oblige me by not addressing
to me a syllable, good, bad or indifferent,
so long as I have the misfortune to
remain your room-mate.  If we collide with
something, and go down, don't even inquire
of me where the life-preservers are.  And
now, since I want to read my note, I mean to
turn on the electricity and do so comfortably,
and you may wake or sleep, or go on
inventing spiteful fables, whichever you prefer.
From this moment, I am done with you."

Certainly, Posey knew how to take care of
herself.  But there was always a swift
following of regret and penitence when she had let
her clever tongue loose upon an opponent,
and while the subdued spinster sobbed under
her bedclothes, the girl rather miserably
opened one of the ship's envelopes, to find,
written upon a slip of paper, in an angular
and illegible, but educated, woman's hand these
words:

"When next you invite a certain friend of
yours to supply you with frocks and hats, take
care that it is not within hearing of one who
is well acquainted with Lord C——'s limited
generosity to the reigning fancy of the hour.
Better fix your hopes upon the older and
more solvent of your swains.  It will pay
well, and be a less dangerous game for you."

As the insult burned upon the girl's understanding,
it seemed to her that the world must
stop revolving then and there.  It was her
first experience of the poison of anonymous
correspondence, that, in an instant, ran
through her veins, paralyzing her with shame
and humiliation.  How could she face
daylight and the society of honest folk, with a
stain of such suspicion upon her?  What had
she brought upon her honored father, upon
her trustful lover, by exposing herself to such
an imputation?  Would Helen Carstairs ever
speak to her again, if she knew what had been
thought and said of Posey Winstanley?

She turned out the light, and cast herself
upon her berth.  Now, over the tumult of her
self-flagellations, arose the actual sound of a
mighty wind arising to bear down upon the
ship.  It had come up suddenly, their room
was upon the weather-side, and, in her
already nervous state, the sounds seemed the
shrieking of all the demons chained in hell.
While the spinster, now avenged, snored
peacefully through the tumult of elements
outside, Posey lay wide-eyed, trembling, imagining
all horrors of the sea, and praying for the
comfort of Mrs. Gasher's friendly voice.

"If we are to be lost," passed through her
mind, despairingly, "everything will be
forgotten that has been said of me, and it is
better so."  She longed to go to her father, but
dared not, considering his distance from her,
and the unpleasant fact that he shared a
stateroom with two other men.  The silence of the
ship seemed as unnatural as the failure of
increase in its motion.  The curtain drawn
over their doorway swayed ever so slightly
back and forth, there was no creaking of
timbers or crash of crockery, or rolling of small
objects upon the floor.  A glass of water left
on the washhand-stand was not disturbed in its
equilibrium.  Surely this was strange, weird,
unnatural, with such a tempest raging on the sea!

Now Posey decided that, on the whole, she
did not wish to die.  Driven by panic, she
arose, still dressed as she had been for the
supper, and stole out down the long, empty
passage-ways upon a tour of investigation,
to encounter no living soul save a sleepy
night-steward standing under a light, to con
an ancient newspaper.

The man looked up sleepily as the
unwonted apparition drew near him.  He
recognized the beauty, and from her pallor and
agitation decided she must be ill.

"Anything I can do for you, miss?" he
asked politely.

"Oh! no.  Nothing whatever," answered
Posey hurriedly.  "I was only not sleeping
well, and feeling a little nervous in the
storm."

"Storm, miss?" queried the steward
abstractedly, swallowing a yawn.

"Yes, a fearful one.  On our side, it blows
like mad.  Surely you must hear it?"

With the ghost of a smile hovering upon his
face, the man walked over and gave a look out
into the night.

"It *might* be half a gale," he said dubiously.
"But you see, miss, in these ships we
sort o' get out o' the way of knowing what is
going on outside!"

Half a gale!  Posey's inclination to resent
the belittling statement went back to bed with
her, but presently her sense of humor got the
better of the other poignant emotions, and she
laughed at her own alarms, of which the
interruption had, on the whole, proved a
wholesome one; and at last, completely wearied out,
fell into deep sleep, amid the continued
howling of the harmless wind.

.. vspace:: 2

The gay voyage that had begun so buoyantly
passed, at the finish, beneath the shadow
of a cloud.  The first sight of land gave but a
sorry welcome to the new-comers, as it
immediately disappeared under a dense curtain
of fog.  The ship crept up the Irish coast to
the melancholy tooting of the siren, answered
by other craft, from ocean liners to humble
trawlers, made Queenstown toward morning
in an interval of clear weather, and, relapsing
into the embrace of fog, came next evening
finally to anchor for the night at some
distance from Liverpool to await a safer
opportunity of docking the monster, and letting her
passengers ashore.  During the dolorous
hours preceding their final parting the
disappointed passengers, before so friendly,
smiling, intimate, seemed to draw away from
each other, darkling and afraid.  Smiles,
jokes, good stories, civil speeches and
compliments had been apparently packed up with
sea rugs and steamer chairs.  The decks,
dripping and cheerless, offered no attraction to
promenaders, the library was filled to
oppression with forms bending listlessly over
books that could not hold attention.  Every
desk held diligent scribblers, glaring
suspiciously at each other through the top of the
separating screen, their places awaited by
more would-be correspondents impatient of
delay.  In the companion-ways, subdued
people huddled together or walked over the
unfortunate beings with buckets whose duty it
is to swab the sticky linoleum underfoot.  A
reminiscent odor of their last sea-dinner arose
to mingle with suggestions, coming none
knew whence, of bilge, fresh paint, tarpaulin
and wet ropes.  The only thoroughly lively
mortals to be seen were the stewards bustling
everywhere; the tidy stewardesses, with their
cap-streamers flying; and the ladies' maids
and valets who hoped to get their charges
early to bed, thus advancing their own time of
freedom and farewell.

At a comparatively early hour, the usual
spaces where passengers assemble were
deserted, most people giving up the pretence of
being exhilarated by near approach to the
British Isles.  The dining-saloon displayed
still a few groups sitting around the tables
sipping from glasses, reading or talking; the
smoking-room alone retained its usual
features of cards and conviviality.

Here, toward ten o'clock, Clandonald,
looking more than commonly bored, arose from a
game in which he had not acquitted himself
with brilliancy, and strolled outside, alone.

Since the night of the supper, he had not
been called upon to put into effect his stern
resolution of eschewing Miss Winstanley's
society.  She had come to her meals late, or
early, contriving to avoid more than a
passing contact with her acquaintances at table.
While the rest of them, notably Bobby Vane,
deplored this circumstance, attributing it to
a caprice or an indisposition; while Miss
Bleecker secretly chuckled with delight that
the enemy had so soon struck her colors, and
Helen wondered in silence why there was no
following up on Posey's part of the promising
beginning of a friendship between them;
while even the astute Mariol was nonplussed
at the young girl's sudden drop in spirit and
voluntary abdication of her past as reigning
sovereign, Clandonald felt himself a prey to
more acute and genuine feeling concerning
her than he had ever dreamed of experiencing.
So far from going ashore at Queenstown, it
was now his ardent wish to stay on the ship till
he saw the last of Miss Winstanley at
Liverpool; since Mr. Winstanley had announced
that instead of running up to town on the
special steamer train with their friends, his
daughter had taken a fancy to see Wales, and
they would accordingly stop over at Chester.

Up to the moment, perhaps, when Clandonald
had interposed himself between Posey and
her annoyer, it had not occurred to him that
he could feel for her anything more than
man's honest delight in youth and extraordinary
beauty, as well as the titillation that
came to his mental part from her amusing
indifference to his rank, her straightforward
appeal to his comradeship.  Even the fleeting
revelation in her gaze that had occasioned his
resolve to fly, had excited until then in him
little more than regret at the misadventure.

When he had brusquely stood himself in
Vereker's way, Helen Carstairs had not
observed what caused a current of pleasure to
run through his veins, and a quick rush of
protective tenderness toward Posey to fill and
overflow his heart.  Involuntarily the girl had
pressed nearer to him, slipping her arm
through his, and, for the few seconds that this
attitude endured, he had wanted never to part
with her again!

Then she had started away from him, almost
guiltily, and Miss Carstairs had carried
her off in tears!  From thenceforward a blank,
as far as a return to their old relations went!
Clandonald, puzzling himself wofully to
know what he had done to alienate her, had
spent hours in meditation upon the theme.
Now that he had lost her, the possession of
her guileless friendship, still more of her
possible love, had become of supreme value
and importance; to win it he was ready to
forfeit anything, even to throwing over his
excellent and devoted Mariol, whose keen
glances worried him, and whose wit and
wisdom had temporarily lost their flavor.

And so the last hour of the last evening had
come around, and his last chance to speak
with her had gone!  He knew how it would
be on the morrow.  Nothing less conducive
to an exposition of the tender passion in any
of its phases can be found than the landing
on a foggy day at Liverpool, with its crowds
and coal smoke, its lowering skies, and dingy
surroundings, its hustling porters and watermen,
the rush and rumble of a great industrial
city beginning at the water's edge, after
the inspiring solitudes of three thousand
miles of salt water.

He would see her only amid a confusion of
sights and sounds that would effectually
prevent any but the most banal phrases of adieu.
She would pass away from him and become
as had all the other women he had met, like
the dissolving foam wreaths in their track
across the Atlantic.  He was annoyed with
himself for feeling it so much.  The thing
was out of all reason.  Perhaps, after he had
speech with her once more, he might better
realize what an ass he had been to imagine
she cared for him.  Things, in short, would
adjust themselves on a common-sense footing.

But he could not get speech with her.  An
overture to that effect, somewhat clumsily
conveyed before dinner-time, had been
rejected by Miss Winstanley in such terms
that Clandonald felt vexed and mortified,
wondering what or who could have set her
so against him.

And here, at last, when he stepped out on
deck, into the glare of the electric lights,
intending to return to his own room and
prosaically go to bed, the Fates would have it
that he ran upon Mr. Winstanley shivering
like a true Southron in the raw atmosphere
around the ship's anchorage, his daughter
clinging to his arm, looking most lovely in
her furs, her cheeks of a vivid carmine, the
little locks on her forehead drifting and
curving in the moist air.

"Pretty dismal lookout, isn't it?" said the
old gentleman cheerily.  "Kind o' evenin'
that makes one think o' a tumbler full of hot
Scotch, and a big snappin' wood-fire, with a
couple o' little darkies tumblin' over each
other to bring in the fat pine knots."

"If I could fly with the crow over in that
direction," said Clandonald, pointing toward
the invisible shore, "I know of a hearthside
not far off, where at least part of those
conditions would be fulfilled to me!  It is in the
house of an uncle of mine, where as a boy I
considered it Paradise to go, and still do,
sometimes for the shooting.  One of those
homes of merry England (a misnomer now,
I grant you) that you have expressed so kind
a desire to see, Miss Winstanley.  I sincerely
hope, by the way, that you haven't forgotten
your promise to persuade Mr. Winstanley to
give me a day at Beaumanoir, and that you'll
settle upon a date with Miss Carstairs—who
has also agreed to honor me—before we leave
the ship."

"You are very kind, but our plans are undecided,"
said the girl, in a low, tremulous tone.

"Seems as if the sea hadn't agreed with
daughter this little bit," observed Mr. Winstanley.
"She sort o' thinks she'll stop by a
few days, along the road, before we get to
London.  So this is a British fog?  A No. 1,
I reckon.  I hope you won't think me impolite
if I call it a regular searcher, sir.  At
this moment I feel it in the marrow o' my
bones.  But anything to please the ladies, and
when Posey said she'd a headache that
wouldn't leave her till she got a turn
outside, out we came to admire your English
coast scenery, I tell her—Great Scott, Posey,
I've gone and done it, now!"

He had been fumbling in his breast pocket
for a handkerchief, and drew forth the missing
article with a vexed look upon his mild
old face.

"Done what, daddy?"

"Left my letter of credit in a coat in the
steamer-trunk that was packed for storage
in Liverpool.  And they've likely carried it
out a'ready!  I must find that steward right
away, dearie, and tip him to hunt it up."

"Let me go with you, please."

"You'd only be in the way.  If you want
to finish our walk, stay here, and I'll come
right back for you.  Perhaps Lord Clandonald
wouldn't mind——"

"Oh! no, father!  I'll stay alone."

The voice was decided, even positive.
Clandonald, bowing, moved away in another
direction than that taken by Mr. Winstanley.

It was over.  He had done with Posey
Winstanley and all her kind.  If she were so
capricious as her actions indicated, this decision
was a thoroughly good thing.

But all the same, like Lot's wife, he looked
back.  Posey had taken out her pocket
handkerchief, and was wiping her eyes with the
little wisp half the ship had picked up after
her.  Clandonald, in two strides, returned to
her side.

"I am not going to push myself into your
company.  Just two minutes, and I'll be off.
But I think you owe it to me to say why you
are treating me like a scoundrel or an impostor."

"Oh! not that, not that!" she cried piteously.

"Have I done anything to forfeit a place
among your decent acquaintances since that
time you clung to my arm and—I mean since
you let me feel that I might stand between
you and insult——"

"Nothing.  I believe in you just the same,
and always shall."

"Thank you for so much, at any rate.
But—you believe in me, in *spite* of what?"

"Oh!  Lord Clandonald, how can I say it
to you?" she exclaimed, driven to the wall.

"I have stood a good deal of evil speaking
in my time," he said, in a grim undertone.
"And if it helps to clear the atmosphere
between us, I can stand more."

"It is not you only, I, too, have been the
victim of cruel and slanderous sayings.  I
have not told my dear father, who is so
unsuspicious.  I wouldn't have him suffer as I
have for the world.  For the last twenty-four
hours I have been receiving, in all sorts of
odd ways that I cannot trace, anonymous
notes about you and me that have cut me to
the quick."

"Let me see one of them," he said, growing
slightly pale.

"Do you think I'd keep the horrid,
poisonous things?  Not a half hour since I tore
the whole batch into little bits, and threw
them overboard.  Perhaps ... I ought
to tell you, they were written by a woman,
who says——"

"Go on, Miss Winstanley."

"—That you wronged her cruelly and
ruined her whole life."

"I thought so," he said, between his teeth.
His face had grown so dark and bitter that
Posey hardly knew the man.  "There is only
one who could—but how, in God's name, did
she get aboard this ship?"

"I suppose the writer thought I would not
have courage to tell you—but I always believe
in speaking out, you know."

"It may be some low practical joke at our
expense," he suggested, his eyes lightening.

"No, even I, who never saw an anonymous
letter before, could tell that this is
horridly real.  Whoever it is, Lord Clandonald,
you—and now I—have a desperate enemy.
I am threatened with a scene, an exposure,
she calls it, that will disgrace me utterly, if I
am seen again with you."

"Let me risk it for you!  Let me stand
between you and all liars, evil speakers and
slanderers, for always—" the man exclaimed
passionately, then stopped short.

There was that in the girl's look that
startled him from his unconsidered speech.
The staring white light of the electric globe
immediately above them showed the bloom
forsaking her young face, the lips trembling
violently.

"It proves how little we know of each
other that I should let you say such words to
one who has no right to hear them," she said,
recovering herself to speak in her natural
tone.  "But if we mayn't be friends, after
this, please remember that I have believed
you, not your slanderer.  Now, as my father
doesn't seem to be coming back, and this is
not my native air, if it is yours, I will say
good-by.  We'll be too busy and too cross to
want to speak to each other to-morrow
morning, even if it were wise.  If you meet me
again, it will be a different Pamela
Winstanley, one who knows more, perhaps, and
makes fewer mistakes, but who'll never
forget your kindness on this voyage."

Clandonald was bewildered at her rapid
change back into the speech of conventionality,
her self-control, her determination to
put him definitely away from her.  His brain
was also dizzy with thoughts of the dread
presence on shipboard of the one woman he
had hoped never to see on earth again.  What
he might, could or would have answered Miss
Winstanley was not said.

They stood together uncertainly for one
confusing moment in what seemed a moist
gray world, haunted by skulking shadows in
tarpaulin, the chill wind of the Channel
whipping them, overhead the repeated
raucous roar of the fog-horn—and then she was
gone, melted away into encompassing gloom!
His ship-idyl, his mad brief temptations of
a few moments since, were past.  He was
back again in England with his bitter
memories and cheerless future.

To Mariol he gave, before bed-time, an
account of the outrage to which Miss Winstanley
had been subjected, begging him to try to
trace out the offender, and silence her at any
cost.

The Frenchman, promising to do this, and
relieved at the collapse of his friend's nascent
affair with Miss Winstanley, was hardly
surprised, on awaking next day, and finding
their ship safely alongside her dock in
Liverpool, to be told that his lordship, impatient
of delay, had gone ashore during the night in
the tender that had nosed its way to the
fog-bound liner to carry off the mails, leaving his
servant to follow with his luggage.

Mariol, after attending unsuccessfully to
the business entrusted to him by Clandonald,
encountered Miss Carstairs, her chaperon
and maid, on deck awaiting the summons to
go ashore.  He stood by them, commenting
with amusement upon the sudden
disintegration of the ardent intimacies of the voyage.
To judge from appearances, the chief aim of
the passengers was now to rid themselves of
one another as promptly as possible.  People
who had sworn fidelity over night were offish,
mysterious, absorbed in petty anxieties about
customs, telegrams, trains and tips.  As usual
to inexperienced tourists, the latter question
arose to be a cloud that was ultimately to
overshadow the glories of European travel.
What attendants had been remunerated
according to service done, what countenances
had darkened, who had seemed satisfied, was
discussed in whispers between anxious family
groups.  Farewell sentiments bestowed upon
friends one thought one had seen the last of
were found to be superfluous, since the
recipients were sure to be found again
provokingly popping up everywhere; on the
gangway, on the docks, and facing the
customs officers.  Lucky if one were not to be
thrust together with them into the same
railway carriage, all to arrive in London hating
each other heartily!

M. de Mariol, without appearing to do so,
had scanned narrowly the outgoing crowd
from the steamer.  No trace had appeared,
here or elsewhere, of the familiar figure of
Clandonald's former wife.  A suggestion
occurring to him that the excursive Ruby
had been last heard of in America, and was
probably returning under an alias, made the
search in the passenger lists a futile one.
Whatever were the facts in the history of this
obnoxious and insufferable woman, he must
give her up for the present as a bad job.  He
felt almost inclined to believe that some one
else had thrown suspicion upon her, in order
to cover a low attack upon Miss Winstanley and Clandonald.

As he and Miss Carstairs started a little
later to walk together up the inclined plane
leading to the Euston Special, they beheld, in
the street, Mr. and Miss Winstanley getting
into a four-wheeler laden with archaic trunks,
from the window of which Posey waved to
them a sober last good-by.

At the same moment they were asked to
step aside to give place to an invalid chair
containing Mr. Vereker, greenish-gray of
complexion, scowling at all the world, and
escorted by his nurse and doctor.  No vestige
remained of the effusive host, the ladies'
gallant, the purveyor of choicest scandal from
the clubs!  His wife and valet, with
Mr. Charley Brownlow and a train of servants
and porters, brought up the rear of the
cortége, pressing importantly forward to reach
their private car.

Miss Bleecker, whose soul always melted
tenderly to the sorrows of the rich, could not
lose this opportunity.  Stepping up briskly,
she proffered her condolence to the suffering
magnate, to be repelled by a savage gesture
and a snarl of annoyance at being spoken to,
that caused the irate lady to retire in crimson
confusion.

She was the more perturbed by the incident,
because not only did her dear friend
Mrs. Vereker decline to make amends for
her husband's ill-manners, but she
murmured audibly to Mr. Brownlow that "Sally
Bleecker never did know how to stay in the
back row."  Additionally, the chaperon's
discomfiture was increased by the appearance of
Lord and Lady Channel Fleet, who with their
depressed maid hugging a jewel-case containing
the well-known turquoises, were hastening
away to the joys of home and their native
land.  Lady Channel Fleet enjoyed the little
scene.  She had just whispered to her
husband that she'd be thankful to get to their
own house, where at last they wouldn't see
Americans or hear them talk.

The next acquaintance to pass by Mariol
and Miss Carstairs was Prince Zourikoff, who,
from between two porters carrying some
Aztec images he had secured in Mexico, gave
them an abstracted nod to supplement his
polite farewell achieved on board.  Dear old
Graf von Bau was already in the embraces
of his loving spouse and two gigantic
daughters, who were kissing him violently upon
both cheeks, and, attended by a secretary,
governess and maid, had come over from
Berlin to meet and reclaim their wanderer.

"Thus vanish Miss Winstanley and her
little court!" said Mariol in Miss Carstairs'
ear.  "It is true, Bobby Vane clung to her
till forcibly taken possession of by his elder
brother, whom the Kenningtons sent down to
fetch him safely home.  The lad was
sufficiently hard hit, and if the young lady had
been ambitious of making an English alliance
of rank, she might have secured him—to the
disgust of the Kenningtons, of course, since
Bobby has nothing, and the Winstanleys are
evidently in modest circumstances."

"I believe I can surprise you there," said
Helen.  "As we are all scattering, it can
make no difference to any one—certainly on
this side the globe," she added, with a faint
sigh.

"I like an *après coup*.  Please tell me,"
answered he, smiling.

"First, tell me something.  If you like,
that is, if not, let it go.  From what you have
observed, does it strike you that a friend of
Miss Winstanley's would be justified in thinking
that Lord Clandonald has fallen in love
with her?"

"Lord Clandonald left the ship without
making any arrangement for a future meeting
with the young lady," said Mariol,
diplomatically.  "And to my best knowledge, there
is no likelihood of his seeing her, unless by
chance."

Helen drew a long breath, but not one of relief.

"Because," she went on, "her good old
father came yesterday to thank me for some
imagined kindness to his daughter, and, in the
course of conversation, told me that he had
recently become the owner of a large—very
large—fortune, but in his desire to protect
her from 'interested' suitors, had determined
to keep the knowledge of it from her.
He asked my advice as to the wisdom of the
step, poor soul!  I told him that I had had
some experience of paternal mismanagement
in this regard, in the case of a friend of
mine—and that I thought Posey ought certainly
to know."

"I agree with you," commented Mariol,
astonished, and, for Clandonald's sake, just
a tiny bit depressed.  "What a difference it
would have made on board, had it been
suspected that our social sovereign was possessed
of a golden foundation for her throne.  And
since you have mentioned my friend
Clandonald's fancy for the young lady——"

"It was rather unfair for me not to have
told you at once," interrupted Miss Carstairs,
"that I am aware of reasons why such a
fancy on his part for Mr. Winstanley's
heiress, or of her for him, would have produced
disastrous results in America."

"She is, then—" began Mariol, trying to
keep the vexation from his voice.

"Mr. Winstanley said that he thought it
best for any one interested in his daughter
that there should be no concealment of her
engagement to marry a man whom she has
long known—of whom he thoroughly
approves, and that his daughter was willing to
have it known.  A man whom such a
marriage will help in the best way, since when
they became engaged, he knew nothing
whatever, nor does he now, of her improved fortunes."

"Lucky fellow!" said Mariol, swallowing
a grimace.  "But I must own to you that the
circumstance robs the fair Posey of a good
deal of her interest in my eyes.  You, Miss
Carstairs, are so far removed from their
estate of happy barbarism, you are so broad,
so far-seeing, you won't object to my
suggesting that the image of Miss Winstanley's
mate chosen from among her friends of early
years does not allure me.  He is, in fact, a
total extinguisher of my desire to meet her
after she shall have become his wife.  Now,
own that you yourself have a shudder of mild
distaste when you think of what he must be!"

"On the contrary," said Miss Carstairs,
distinctly, "I have the pleasure of knowing
Miss Winstanley's fiancé; and I consider
him not only one of the most manly men, but
the truest gentleman in the circle of my
acquaintance."

.. vspace:: 2

"Helen, here is a compartment that will
just hold you and me and Eulalie, comfortably,
and we will tip the guard to let us have
it to ourselves," came in Miss Bleecker's
penetrating tones.  "Good-by, M. de Mariol, we
shall always remember our pleasant voyage,
and I shall treasure that clever thing you
wrote in my birthday book.  Sorry not to
have seen Lord Clandonald to say good-by, but
we shall all meet again, of course, people
always do.  Don't forget if you are in town,
any time, we are in Curzon Street for a
fortnight, and then Paris, Hotel Westminster.
Eulalie, you have Miss Carstairs' black
jacket?  Porter, look out for those umbrellas
in the netting, put my dressing bag beside me,
the tea-basket overhead—where is the other
rug?  Oh!  I see.  Ten pieces, all right, porter,
here you are, for you and your mate.  *What*,
not enough?  Ample, and more than you
deserve.  Helen, how could you give him another
shilling, when you know that is what shows
any one with half an eye you are just from the
other side?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

The luncheon at Beaumanoir, although
lacking the young lady for whose delectation
it had been proposed, came off to the
satisfaction of at least four of the five people
present, viz., Miss Bleecker, whom it had
been impossible to omit; M. de Mariol, who,
cynicism to the contrary, was delighted with
a chance of showing Helen Carstairs the
noble old place in a lambent day of
mid-October; Helen, herself, frankly pleased with
the entertainment; and good old Lady
Campstown, whose mind having long set itself upon
the thought of her nephew's remarriage with
a wealthy American girl, as a happy issue
out of all his difficulties, chose to construe
the occasion into a presentation to her of the
future chatelaine whose dollars were to stop
the chinks in Clandonald's ancestral roofs,
and her virtues to gild anew the escutcheon
dimmed by her unworthy predecessor.

"If she's an American, she'll probably go
straight," thought Lady Campstown, after
having first informed herself through a New
York lady so long resident in London as to
suffer acute pangs upon being reminded of
the place of her nativity, that Helen's father
was "*the* Mr. Carstairs whom everybody
had heard about."  When Clandonald had
proposed to his aunt to preside over his little
party, her ladyship had not dared ask him
the direct question that was burning upon her
lips.  She had contented herself with his
answer to her rallying query whether upon his
travels he had met any of those wonderful
girls from the States the modern novelists
write about, that he fancied the supply would
always be equal to the demand for that
commodity.  And when Miss Carstairs, so quiet,
lovely and distinguished in mien and
manner, appeared amid the faded chintz of the
great drawing-room at Beaumanoir, admiring
its choice contents with knowledge and
without gush, treating Lady Campstown
exactly as she ought to be treated, the reality of
the old gentlewoman's hopes seemed as near
as it was grateful.

Even Miss Bleecker shone in a reflected
light, and Lady Campstown pronounced her,
afterwards, a most agreeable, chatty person.
As she conducted both visitors through the
principal rooms of her childhood's home, her
little ladyship's frail face and figure seemed
to have stepped down for the occasion from a
frame of which the gilding had worn away.
Helen was in turn charmed by her simplicity
and frankness, and the two gravitated
together naturally.  The men found them in the
picture gallery, where Lady Campstown was
destined to receive her first disillusion, in the
fact that her nephew in asking Miss
Carstairs if she were ready to see the white
peacocks on their famous strutting ground,
invited M. de Mariol to come, too!

But the good aunt utilized her talk alone
with Miss Bleecker to speak openly about
Lord Clandonald's excellences, his wrongs at
the hands of Ruby Darien, his desirable
domestic traits, the subjects, in fine, rarely
neglected when the female proprietor or
backer of a man in the marriage market sees
her chance.  Lady Campstown was so genuinely
unselfish in her desire to build up again
the shattered fabric of her dear Clan's life,
that another than the pachydermatous Miss
Bleecker would have perceived the pathos of
the situation, and condoned the openness of
the attack.  Miss Bleecker, however, was
quite on her guard.  She did not consider
Clandonald anything to jump at in the way
of a match for Helen.  She was certain of
Mr. Carstairs' disapproval; she knew that he
could not be brought to supply cash for the
palpably exigent repairs at Beaumanoir, and
lastly, and more to the point, she had no idea
of relinquishing while she could hold it, her
comfortable billet as Miss Carstairs' chaperon.
But she was aware that Lady Campstown,
while possessing but a small and meagre
establishment in London, had a pretty villa
at Cannes, where she was a personage of
undoubted influence and wide acquaintance.
And as Miss Bleecker's doctor had advised the
air of that favored resort for her relaxed
throat, and Helen did not care where they
went, Cannes was the secret object of the
chaperon's intended movement southward at
the season's height.

Therefore, the conversation, while the two
elders strolled or sat under immemorial yews,
and enjoyed grapes and peaches plucked in
an enchanting old walled garden, waxed upon
one side, more gracious and evasive, on the
other, more perplexed and yet more hopeful.
From all she could gather, Lady Campstown
was convinced that Helen had been sent by
Providence for Clan's regeneration.  The
hint given on their return to the house, that
the American ladies would be in Cannes
after Christmas, to remain there until joined
probably by Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs in the
well-known yacht, "Sans Peur," seemed to
fit into her plans.  A further suggestion from
the dowager, that Miss Bleecker and her
charge would allow Lady Campstown to have
the pleasure of introducing them to some
people and places in the south, came so
quickly, and was accepted so suavely, that
the stately little lady was herself a little
startled and taken aback by it.

At this moment Clandonald and his other
guests stepped in through a window opening
upon a stone-paved court with fountains and
statues and ancient trees, enclosed in walls
of ivy and maiden-hair fern, reproducing
prettily one of those haunts of Pan at Villa
d'Este in Tivoli, adored by a former owner.
Helen had been sitting upon a lichen-grown
stone bench, too lapped in pure pleasure to
want to move.  A stable-clock striking
somewhere back of shrubberies, had warned her
that it was time for them to be thinking of
their train up to town; and she rose regretfully.

"It has been a day to string upon Time's
rosary," she said to her host, to whom she
yielded the greater credit for his hospitality,
because she saw that he had been worried and
abstracted, and that it was Mariol's continued
sparkle of wit and bonhomie that had really
lent the occasion its subtle charm.

"It is very kind of you to have been willing
to give me so much of your valuable time,"
he answered, with an effort to throw off what
was possessing him, "and it has been a
pleasant second chapter of our voyage."

"I wanted to tell you and M. de Mariol
before we separate," went on Miss Carstairs,
who had all day been trying for an opportunity
to bring this in, and failed, simple as
the matter seemed, "that I had, this morning
only, a letter from Miss Winstanley.  They
decided, you know, to put off their visit to
London till some later date, and have been
wandering through the apple country of South
Devon, to see the orchards and the
cider-making.  Some book Mr. Winstanley read had
tempted him.  They were to stop at Torquay,
thence going to Dover and the Continent."

"Very nice—and very American," said
Clandonald.  "Fancy running after an
apple-crop the moment one lands in Britain, because
some man has put it into a novel!  I hope
Miss Winstanley has recovered from her
indisposition?"

"She seemed to be well and happy.  She
asked to be kindly remembered to you and
M. de Mariol."

Clandonald's courtesy had taken wings,
in the emotion of a deeper sort that
overcame him inconveniently.  He had hoped to
carry off easily this inevitable talk about the
girl who had laid so strong a hold upon his
broken life.  But he said nothing at all, while
Mariol, as usual, came to the rescue.

"I have been telling Clandonald the two
interesting facts developed by you concerning
our Alabama friend," he said, gracefully.
"And we both unite in asking you to convey
to her our best congratulations upon her
intended marriage."

"What a glorious copper beech!" exclaimed
Helen, suddenly looking away past its
owner to where the trees arose like a fire
fountain from velvet sward.  "I beg your
pardon.  I will give her the message when I
answer her characteristic letter.  Perhaps I
ought to have said before that, in a postscript,
she asked me to tell you both of her engagement
to Mr. Glynn, should I not have already
done so."

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Campstown, having taken cordial
leave of her nephew's guests, whom de Mariol
escorted back to their private hotel in Curzon
Street, remained over with Clandonald at
Beaumauoir for tea.  They drank it, thanks
to a perfectly warm and well-aired afternoon,
under the beech tree extolled by Miss
Carstairs.  Clandonald's dogs, the only friends
of man who do not disappoint or change,
clustered around his knee, a homely but human
Schipperke gluing her faithful head upon
her master's boot.  The day, the hour, the
pleasant rite, the dear old woman whose thin,
pearl-white fingers twinkled among the tea
cups as she looked over at him from time to
time in a sort of speechless longing, touched
and pleased the returned traveller, but could
not cheer his melancholy.

Finally Lady Campstown took heart of
grace to go to the point direct.

"I'm sorry to see you so down, Clan, my
dear boy," she said, in handing him his
second cup.  "To-day, of all days, when you
have had such a charming visitor.  I can't
tell you how well I am pleased with Miss
Carstairs.  You must know."

"Delighted, I'm sure, Aunt Lucy," he
answered, with refrigerating vagueness.
"But to talk of less agreeable subjects, I'm
sorry to say Ruby has broken loose again,
and is annoying me horribly.  Having failed
recently to make a scene for me—and
another person—after her own heart, she has
taken to writing me infernal hypocritical
letters, saying she's back in England,
stone-broke, ill, penitent, Lord knows what, and
must have money."

"The old cry!" exclaimed Lady Campstown
hotly.  "Don't answer her, Clan, treat
her as if you were locked in behind walls, and
she in the street, outside."

"Her capacity for inventing malice and
mischief is too great.  She will find some way
to circumvent me.  Her price of peace is hard
cash, and so for the present, I can breathe
free again."

"You have been weak enough——" began
his aunt, despairingly.

"I am not the only one involved," he said
shortly.  "Now, Aunt Lucy, say no more to
me about it.  I only wished to put you on
your guard against any assault she might
make upon your compassion."

"I am safe from that!" said the little lady
grimly, and indeed, for the moment, she
looked so, in her splendid wrath and scorn.
Clandonald did not pursue the subject, and
something warned her that neither was this
the time for pursuance of the light vision of
the American girl whom she had fondly
pictured taking Ruby's place in the desolate old
house.  They talked of family matters, of
Clan's travels, of things present and to come
until Lady Campstown and her maid were
obliged to leave.  When her nephew had put
her into the brougham to go to the station,
Lady Campstown rallied her courage for a
final appeal.

"You'll drop in for luncheon, tea or
dinner whenever you've nothing better, won't
you, dear boy?" she asked, surveying him
wistfully.  "You know I go out so little I'm
apt to be always there.  I'm to have luncheon
on Tuesday, and go to some pictures with
these pleasant friends of yours who've just
left us; and, Clan, dear, isn't it nice that
they're coming to Cannes this winter?  Miss
Carstairs' father is to be there in the yacht.
He must be a very interesting man.  Such a
power, one can't fail to—oh! thank you,
Jenkins" (this to the gardener, arriving with a
huge nosegay of late roses and chrysanthemums,
and a basket of ruddy peaches), "they
are most lovely, I am sure.  You will
certainly not fail to make me that promised
visit in January?  It seemed so lonely, last
year, nobody inhabiting your room.  Come,
promise, Clan, and I know you will never
break your word!"

"I am afraid, Aunt Lucy," he said, giving
her a final loving kiss, "that I had better not
promise anything, just now, if I'm to keep up
my good reputation in your eyes.  Think what
you like as to my being spooney about a
pretty American.  But it is arranged
between Mariol and myself—though we can't
agree about our destination—that we are to
set out for somewhere early next week.
Mariol leans toward Tibet, I to the Balkans.  To
decide it, we shall probably toss up a
sovereign.  But this much is certain—off we go."

It was not until December, when Lady
Campstown was fairly established at Villa
Julia, on the slope of the Californie, under
house-walls obscured by bougainvillea and
arbutilon and Gloire de Dijon roses, that she
felt in the least assuaged of her disappointment.
She had left London swathed in a yellow
fog of appalling density, had run down
to Dover in an atmosphere of pea-soup; had
found Paris under weeping skies; had
traversed France in a murky mist; and only on
waking up in Cannes next morning had
renewed acquaintance with the sun.

As she looked out of her window, the olives
and palms seemed to wave a welcome to the
south.  The sea laughed in every ripple of its
wide expanse, the mountains slept under their
veil of azure, the light over all was almost
intolerably bright.  The flowers that she so
well loved, blooming overhead and underfoot,
springing from wall crannies, gladdening
and glorying every available spot of
earth, made her ladyship feel once more like
her own even-tempered, happy self!

She had not heard from the wanderers in
the Balkans, but had felt resigned that dear
Clan had not pushed on to that dreadful
far-away Tibet, where men were flayed alive if
they happened not to please the rulers upon
whose land they were trespassing, which would
have been so much worse!  She and her
maid, and a servant or two brought out from
England, occupied themselves for a day in
unpacking and readjusting ornaments, putting
flowers and plants about the rooms, and looking
over the garden, a lovely tiny place where
roses ran riot, and palm trees waved their
feathered tops or clashed together their spiked
leaves with a little metallic ring, when the
breeze stirred them from their majestic calm.

There were many finer, many larger, many
more cared-for gardens in the town, though
none that gave more satisfaction to its owner.
Lady Campstown knew and loved every inch
of it, but the spot most often resorted to by
her, in hot sunshine, was a tunnel cut in a
thicket of bamboos terminating her domain,
from which a gate led out under the wall of
the adjoining lordly pleasure house called
"Villa Reine des Fées."  Above this wall
arose the symmetrical shafts of a cypress
avenue, into which, and far beyond it, Lady
Campstown had been accustomed to penetrate
at will, through a little green door
hidden by verdure, placed there for the
convenience of the gardeners.  The lodge-keeper
of this deserted dwelling, to whose child her
ladyship had ministered in illness, and all
the other employees of the place, had always
made welcome the little figure in black,
wearing a mushroom hat and carrying a long
tortoise-shell stick, who from time to time
appeared among the alleys and under the flowery
pergolas of a veritable fairyland of trees
and turf and shrubs and blossoms.

The dwelling at Reine des Fées, sheltered
from prevailing winds by a thick olive grove
resting like a gray cloud upon the hillside
above it, was of considerable size and
pretension.  Ascending, by a long flight of white
marble steps, the two terraces with their
mosaic pavements and marble balustrades, over
which orange and lemon trees hung their
fruit and flowers, one reached an imposing
portal, where roses climbed upon the white
façade of the many-windowed house, to fall
back in rivulets of bloom.  The gardens were
a marvel of skilfully massed semi-tropical
shrubbery and trees, shutting out the view of
other villas and revealing at happy turns
vistas of the Mediterranean, the two islands,
and the blue jagged line of the Esterels; while
tall box-hedges, cypresses, fountains and
pergolas wedded the tender grace of Italy to the
warm, witchery of Provence.

The place had been originally constructed
by a wealthy Russian as a bower for his
young wife who had died there in early
married life; and for a long time had remained
unoccupied, although scrupulously kept up.

Upon the death of the owner it had passed
to his younger brother who, intending to live
in it according to his luxurious tastes, had put
in "lifts," baths, and sundry up-to-date
conveniences; had renewed the furniture, china
and glass, prepared the stables for many
horses, and then vanished from sight of man
into a house he had in the Caucasus—melancholy mad!

For two years Villa Reine des Fées had
now been in the market for a tenant, yet
none had presented himself.  Whether or
not the house had a name for bringing ill-luck
to its inhabitants, or that the price fixed
upon it was prohibitively high, it had
remained vacant, as before.  Lady Campstown
could not regret this circumstance.

So long the enchanted ground behind the
rose-wall had seemed an annex to her own
modest property, she begrudged the idea of
its overflowing with noisy gay people, with
their dinners and dances, their motor cars
puffing up the drive, their tennis matches and
tea-parties, piano-practising and perhaps
spoiled children and dogs, to invade her
sylvan solitudes.

The one fate that Lady Campstown kept in
reserve as the most painful that could
possibly overtake Villa Reine des Fées, was for
it to be inhabited by Americans.  Now, upon
her return (although recently born again, as
it were, to a new sense of the excellent
possibilities of her transatlantic kinsfolk!) she
learned with dismay, from her gardener, that
the house had actually been leased to an
American family, who were to arrive the
following day!  Details of the calamity she
could not at first bring herself to acquire.  It
was enough that her worst fears for her
cherished playground were about to be realized.
She turned pale at thought of the changes
sure to come.

Directly after luncheon Lady Campstown
took down her mushroom hat and an
Inverness cape that her maid had hung on a peg
in the entry, armed herself with her tortoise-shell
stick—a gift from Clandonald, by the
way—and trotted down the walk of her own
garden leading out under the bamboos to the
little green door in her neighbor's wall.  This
was open, and she went in, sadly resolved to
make a final pilgrimage to all the familiar
spots henceforward to be blocked from her
view as effectually as newspaper paragraphs
by the ink-marks of a Russian censor.

The day was glorious, earth, sea and sky
lustrous with intense sunshine, the air filled
with odors of orange-blossom and violet,
jasmine and rose, the palms bending gently
under a summer breeze.  Never had the
grounds of Villa Reine des Fées seemed in
more perfect order.  She gave one glance up
at the gleaming house-front above the stately
balustrades, and saw that its windows were
open, new curtains fluttering in the breeze.
In the loggia adjoining the boudoir of the
poor little dead princess, wicker chairs, gayly
cushioned, were grouped under the rose
wreaths.  The signs of coming habitation
were too evident.

Lady Campstown would not look again.
Sorrowfully she directed her steps along the
lower terrace, her tortoise-shell stick tapping
impatiently upon the renaissance birds and
beasts of its pavement.  She even hoped not
to meet any of the friendly Provençals who
worked upon the place, with whom she had
been wont to stop and talk about themselves
and families, the prospects of the flower-crop
for neighboring cultivators, and affairs of
the town in general.

At some distance from the house this
terrace was rounded into a lookout, commanding
a wondrous avenue of palms, their trunks
enwrapped in roses and jasmine, at the end
of which the hillside fell sharply away,
revealing an unimaginably lovely view of the
sea and islands.  From here, as the visitor
now seated herself to gaze her last at a
favorite prospect, she saw coming toward her,
beneath the arch of palms, between
borders of violets, a very tall young woman,
modishly attired in white embroidered cloth,
with a large white-plumed hat that breathed
of the Rue de la Paix, in Paris.

.. _`She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a very tall young woman, modishly attired.`:

.. figure:: images/img-168.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a very tall young woman, modishly attired.

   She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a very tall young woman, modishly attired.

Lady Campstown wished that she could
believe this engaging person to be some one
who, like herself, had strayed into Villa
Reine des Fées through curiosity—a guest
from one of the adjacent smart hotels.

But she could not.  She knew in her British
soul that it was none other than one of the
temporary owners of the property, and that
she herself stood revealed a trespasser.  In
her intense vexation, the dowager arose again,
striking her stick on the hot marble underfoot,
till two little green lizards scampered
away in fright at its sharp resonance.

"I beg your pardon," she said in her well-bred
old voice, "I live in the next house, and
of course had no idea that the villa was yet
inhabited."

"Please don't speak of it," was the
surprisingly friendly answer.  (The girl was
thinking, "Here, surely, is the Fairy
Godmother.")  "We decided at the last minute
to come a day earlier, so anxious were we to
get out of gloomy, wet Paris.  You see, my
father has been very ill, and the doctors
rather wanted to hurry him to Provence.
We took the night train, arriving this morning,
and already he seems to feel the benefit,
and is now getting a good sleep."

As she spoke she came up upon the terrace,
and stood by Lady Campstown's side.

"I am glad to hear it," answered the old
lady, forgetting her resentment.  "I should
explain that this house has been so long
unoccupied, I have felt at liberty to stray in
from time to time, and see the flowers and
so——"

"Indeed, you are not to say another word,"
said the hostess, with pretty emphasis.  "If
you had the least idea how I was just bursting
to let out of me some of my delight!"

"'Bursting to let out of me'!"  Lady
Campstown was certain that she knew no one
who would have been responsible for that
peculiar phrase, but the joyous appeal of the
young voice and eyes, the radiantly smiling
mouth, were not to be resisted.

"You feel it, then?" she said, smiling in
return.

"Down to the ground!" said the tall girl.
"I don't believe I ever had such thrills in my
life before.  I've been walking up and down
under these oranges and lemons and palms,
wondering if it can be I?  To think we're to
have this little heaven all to ourselves for
daddy to get well in!  You see, there are only
my father and myself, and we know very few
people over here in Europe.  We are Americans."

"I believe so," said Lady Campstown, with
restraint.

"The villa was taken for us through our
doctor in Paris, who had seen it, and told
daddy.  I thought the rooms in our hotel in
Paris too lovely for anything, but this goes
a long way ahead.  I've got that splendid big
front chamber with the dressing-room and
bath, and the sort of little porch covered with
vines, where the servants seem to expect me to
have my breakfast by myself.  The truth is,
I don't care where I eat these old continental
breakfasts; only rolls and coffee, and perhaps
one miserable little egg, and that extra,
I'm always hungry again by eleven.  Daddy's
got a huge room opposite mine, all carved
furniture with a bed like a church pew, but he
likes it, and the man nurse that takes care of
him says he's better already for the change.
It's ridiculous for only us two to try to fill
this regular little palace, isn't it?  If I were
home, I could ask some of the girls, but, over
here, I don't know any but one, and we
haven't actually got a chaperon for me yet.
We talked of it, you know, but when it came
to the point, daddy dreaded her being perched
up between us like Poe's raven, at meals, and
everywhere, and so we put it off.  Perhaps, if
you live here you wouldn't mind giving me a
word of advice about how to do things.
There's a housekeeper that goes with the
house, and she engaged the extra servants,
such a lot I never saw!  I came out into the
garden to get rid of the whole kit and boodle
of them!  But after a while I'll learn my way,
and then not feel so awkward as I do now.
Maybe you are thinking it strange why I
don't know these things, but I've no mother,
and no near relations but daddy, and till now
we've lived in a very plain way, at home."

Lady Campstown's heart melted incontinently.
The rapidity and scope of the girl's
confidences were atoned for by her youth and
the direct gaze of her childlike eyes, to say
nothing of the beauty that had been sinking
into the old lady's impressionable senses.
Also, her ladyship was always genuinely
interested in the details of a perilous illness;
and those of the invalid's recent grave attack
of pneumonia were received with not to say
satisfaction, but something that nearly
approached it.  She gave the girl much sound
advice, and as they strayed together onward
from point to point through the grounds,
which Lady Campstown knew *con amore*,
she found herself equipped with an astonishing
relish for the situation so unexpectedly
attained.  When they were both quite out of
breath with talking and walking, she furthermore
accepted, graciously, an invitation to
step indoors and rest.  She had thought her
new friend a tyro in social arts, but when
they reached the top of the long, hot
gleaming flight of white marble stairs, and stood
together between the potted bamboos and
pelargoniums in the vestibule, was pleased to
have her step back with charming grace and
execute a little curtsey, saying:

"I don't think you can know that my
name is Pamela Winstanley, and I'd be very
glad if you wouldn't mind telling me yours."

.. vspace:: 2

It is not, therefore, to be numbered among
things incredible that soon after four o'clock
that afternoon, when the sun like a ball of fire
had dropped behind the blue barrier of the
Esterels, leaving the world to darkness and a
sudden glacial chill, Miss Winstanley, attended
by one of her brand-new footmen carrying a
sheaf of rare roses, repaired, in her turn,
through the little green doorway in the flowery
wall dividing Villa Reine des Fées from Villa
Julia.  She was wrapped in a smart fur-lined
cloak, and her mission was to take tea with Lady Campstown!

A trim maid ushered her into the long, low
drawing-room with its hangings of sunflower
yellow, its mirrors and consoles and twin
Empire sofas, its square of dull red Turkey
carpet in the centre of a slippery waste of
parquetry, its brass-trimmed tables and chairs,
bought with the house and never altered.
But over all had been diffused a look of
home that Villa Reine des Fées could not
attain.  There was a folding screen covered with
miniatures, behind the couch whereon Lady
Campstown sat crocheting in rosy wool one of
the new *pélérines neigeuses*; there were
flowers and books and a wide writing-table, with
silver bound blotting book and silver fittings.
A small table, covered with a web of white
linen and lace that a Cardinal might have
worn upon a day of festa, was spread for the
tea to be brought in by and by; and Posey
did not know that, to fit it to her guest's age
and supposed tastes, Lady Campstown had
sent a special messenger to the rue d'Antibes
for marrons glâcés and wondrous crystallized
fruits!

A little fire of gnarled olive roots, pine
cones, and eucalyptus boughs was blazing on
the hearth.  The girl, carrying her own
flowers now, paused on the threshold with an
exclamation of delight.

"Oh! how good, how sweet of you to let me
come!" she cried, "and, please, would you
think me very rude if I sat down on the rug
and played with your Orange pussy?"

.. vspace:: 2

The tea over, the new friends talked with
ever-increasing cordiality.  Lady Campstown
soon knew all there was to know of the girl's
former modest position in life and her recent
information by her father that she was
expected to spend his large income as she
pleased.

"He asked me, poor dear, not to hold back
for anything in reason, but to find out all that
we ought to have, and order it.  And you'd
better believe, Lady Campstown, that an
American girl knows how to do that same!
It seems he had a talk on our steamer, just
before we landed, with a friend both he and
I trust in, and she told him it was his duty to
live up to his fortune.  He's known he had
all this money for nearly a year past, but had
no idea how to begin to spend it.  And so we
branched right out in Paris, and got a suite of
rooms that a royalty had before us.  I went
straight off to the Only Adorable Worth, and
bought everything in the way of gowns.  I
had masters in French and singing, and when
we drove in the Bois, or went to the galleries
and shops, and everybody stared, I took to it
as naturally as a duck to water.  But I must
say it was lonesome.  I longed and longed for
somebody to tell how I felt about it all in my
inmost heart....  Then, my darling old
daddy fell ill, and his life was in danger, and
all the grandeur fell flat as a pancake.  I
didn't care a straw for my clothes, my
carriage, my fine maid, even my new pearls—the
whirling wheel of life stood still, still, and I
heard only my heart-beats!  I thought I was
going to lose the dearest, tenderest father in
the world, and be left a poor wretched orphan
with nothing but things to comfort me!"

She had sprung up from the rug and was by
this time seated on the couch beside Lady
Campstown, and that lady's kind little hand
had found its way into hers.  If the dowager
felt, at moments, a little dizzy with the speed
at which this episode of new acquaintance had
progressed, she had only to look across the
room at the portrait of a girl who would have
been thirty had she lived, but in her mother's
eyes seemed forever just eighteen.  Maybe
she would have been ungrateful, unloving,
*mondaine* or *dévote*; she might have married
ill, or died in bringing a child into the world;
or any one of a thousand every-day happenings
might have robbed the mother of joy in
her companionship.  But, to Lady Campstown,
her lost daughter was always young, prosperous,
lovely, beyond reproach; and for her
sake, Pamela Winstanley, with all her
imperfections of bringing-up upon her golden head,
was forgiven much!  What wonder that
before they separated Posey had received
assurance that Lady Campstown would look after
her in various substantial ways; and that
Mr. Winstanley's new motor car, ordered from
Paris, being yet to come, the girl should be
invited to take her first view of the riant
little town from the cushions of Lady
Campstown's well-known old landau, with the quiet
black horses and sober coachman?  When
they had thus agreed to go shopping together
in the tempting, if narrow and sunless, rue
d'Antibes, and Posey, for the second time, had
arisen to take her leave, her eye fell upon an
imperial photograph, framed in silver, of a
man she recognized with a swift leap of the heart.

"My nephew Clandonald," said the dowager,
heaving a little affectionate sigh.  "Almost
all I have left to love.  He is a dear fellow,
and has been much sinned against.  Just
now he is somewhere in the Balkans loafing,
as he calls it, with his friend M. de Mariol,
but I trust he will come back soon, and that
certain things I hope for him will become
realities.  I don't mind telling you, my dear,
that there is a young lady in the case, and
that she's a countrywoman of your own.  I
have met her, and love her already for his
sake, but there's been mischief made, and it
will take time to straighten out the tangle of
my poor Clan's heart affairs, and, when you
and I know each other better, I will explain.
In the meantime, we won't talk of it.  You'll
be ready at half-past ten to-morrow, when I
call for you?  I'll take you around to the
right tradespeople, and afterwards we'll have
a little turn on the Croisette."

"An American girl!" Posey said within
herself.  "It must be said he found consolation
very soon."  She was conscious of feeling
rather blank.





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.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

"When in doubt where to go, stay in
Paris," had been for some years of travel
Miss Bleecker's favorite saying.  Helen, who
had no great love for the place from her
chaperon's point of view, simply acquiesced when
told it was too early to go south.  She begged
Miss Bleecker to go on with her own routine.
Mornings in the shops were followed by
luncheons with old friends among the American
residents, where, after luxurious eating and
drinking of light wines, the women sat for
hours rooted upon down couches, propped by
silken cushions, exchanging hearsays of
stupendous gossip about their common acquaintances.
Upon Miss Bleecker's return from one
of these intimate entertainments, Helen's
views of human nature were lowered for days
to come.

In the afternoon, Miss Bleecker generally
drove out with her charge, or left cards upon
people who would have resented her getting
in as earnestly as she.  In her smart wrap
and voluminous furs, with, her plumed hat
and dotted veil, the chaperon justly flattered
herself that some of the glances bestowed
upon their victoria in the Bois and along the
Champs Elysées were a late plum fallen to
her share.  In Central Park, at home, and in
Fifth Avenue, every one knew it was only
the same old Sally Bleecker in a new French
hat.  Miss Bleecker had heard it suggested
that one must come abroad to find a proper
deference paid to years of maturity, which
secretly was not what she desired.  Her taste
was neither for the cold-blooded pushing to
the wall of her generation by young Americans,
nor yet the reverent hand-kissing of the
ancient, observable in high life abroad.  Since
her morals were above reproach, all she really
asked was a recognition by the public of her
successful illustrations of the methods of
Paquin and Alphonsine.

There were always teas to drop in for, after
the drives, at the cosmopolitan resorts of
Ritz, or Columbin, or Rumpelmayer, or in
private dwellings.  In Paris, the division of
time between five and seven in the afternoon
has become as important for the achievement
of social idling of both sexes as in London.

It is in New York where the tea-drinking
habit is a graft among the men, and to the
women an intermittent sacrifice to fashion's
shrine.  Miss Bleecker was of the sort whom
the steam of the tea-kettle inebriates as well
as cheers.  She could better exist without her
evening orisons than her cup of tea between
four and five.

When the ladies returned to their hotel,
there was barely time to dress for dinner or
the play.  Miss Bleecker's dinner list in Paris
was larger than in New York, where Sally
Bleecker was beginning to be *vieux jeu*.
Abroad, she was welcomed by the translated
Americans living in various capitals, who were
sure of hearing from her the few things about
the private lives of their friends at home that
had not got into their newspapers.  Lastly,
but decidedly not least, she had had the wisdom
to perfect herself in bridge, which Helen
detested, in common with all games of cards.
Whenever Miss Carstairs elected to go off
with friends of her own to dine and pass the
evening, and her young lady put on a tea gown
and ordered a plate of soup and a wing of
chicken in their own salon, the chaperon was
in glory.  In a black net dress, largely
bespangled, with a dog-collar of excellently
imitated pearls around the doubtful portion of
her throat beneath the chin, with her hair
admirably groomed and her nails perfectly
manicured, wearing her best evening manner
and longest gloves, old Sally would run down
stairs nimbly to the fiacre that was to take
her to her earthly Paradise of bridge!  Or
else in company with a playmate of seventy-two,
who smoked cigarettes eternally, wore
low scarlet gowns and rarely dined at home,
she would go on from place to place, exhilarated
beyond fatigue, whispering inwardly to
herself there was nothing like this at her home
across the sea.

Helen would have been wofully tired of this
life had she not possessed the resources of a
rational cultivated woman, and the ability to
extract the real kernel of Parisian life, in
addition to the acquaintance of a few clever
people with whom she could fraternize in her
own way.  After all, as well Paris as
elsewhere for the living down of a great
clutching emotion such as her brief passion for
John Glynn!  She had been spared hearing
Posey Winstanley talk about him as her
possession, since the Winstanleys had quitted
Paris early in December, just before their own
arrival there.  She had heard in various ways
how old Herbert had taken her advice
literally, and enrolled himself among the money
spenders of their liberal nation.  With
astonishing rapidity, the fame of the stunning
young Southern beauty had been bruited
abroad.  It was related that a semi-royal
personage who had seen her going up the
staircase of her hotel had addressed to her father
a proposal for her hand, which had been
refused by the wise old gentleman without
conveying the fact to his daughter.  It was known
that she had been "taken up" by the best
people in Cannes.  A little breeze of
laudation concerning her was forever blowing
where gossips congregate in *le monde où l'on
s'amuse*.  In two expressive words, Miss
Winstanley "had arrived!"

Helen used to wonder most how this reacted
upon John Glynn.  She pictured his amazement
at finding the Cinderella he had wooed
had turned into a Princess in Glass Slippers.
But as that is the sort of a shock to which
most sensible men become easily habituated,
she felt that he had, by now, probably ceased
to wonder at his good luck.  If he thought at
all of Helen, it would be with gratitude for
having set him free for this.

She was not so certain that Posey had
reached the same stage of satisfaction with
existing bonds.  Helen was too clever at
reading character not to have seen more than
Posey meant to admit about her feeling for
Clandonald.  She saw also that Clandonald
was immensely taken by the girl, and believed
that if Glynn were not in existence the
Englishman would some day return to the charge.
But she knew nothing of the anonymous
letters, and their vile attacks upon Posey, which,
long after silence had set in in the direction
of the enemy, continued to burn and sting in
their object's clean, sensitive soul.  Since she
had told Clandonald, Posey had spoken of
this insult to no one.  It made her feel,
however, that she could never be quite the same again.

Helen had exchanged a letter or two with
her, but the acquaintance had seemed to drift.
It was Miss Carstairs' feeling that until Posey
and Mr. Glynn were safely married, it would
be more honorable of her to keep out of sight
altogether; which goes to show that deep down
in the bottom of her heart Miss Carstairs was
not altogether certain she had lost all hold
upon her former lover's sensibilities.

One of the strangest experiences ever coming
to Helen befell her at this time.  It was
nothing less than a declaration of his love in
a letter, *en route*, from M. de Mariol.  He
had written to her intermittently since their
parting in London charming airy missives in
his best vein, his critics would have said;
letters of rambling travel, of European politics,
of observation; graceful, incisive, glowing
with color, sparkling with happy phrases;
the letters of a poet, a cultured eclectic of the
twentieth century to his inspiration.  But she
had not imagined until she finished reading
the last of the series it could come to his
doing her the honor of asking her to be his
wife.  She was profoundly moved, more even
than flattered.  She had loved Glynn because
he was young, handsome, unjaded, therefore
broader than most of the men surrounded by
whom she had grown up; because it had made
her smile to be near him, and the touch of
his stalwart hand had thrilled her with a thrill
that sometimes came back now.  Mariol,
appealing to her intellectual side, to her sense
of high companionship, repelled her as a lover,
and what he asked her to do seemed, on the
face of it, grotesque.  His suggestion that if
she could be brought to look upon him
favorably, he would return immediately to Paris,
filled her with panic.  Her letter sent in
return was purposely gentle and simple and
apparently unstudied, although nothing had
ever cost her such epistolary birth-pangs.

M. de Mariol did not return to Paris, and
in the course of some days Miss Bleecker
also received an important letter, although
not of a matrimonial cast.  It was from
Mrs. Carstairs, in New York, proposing an
interposition of diplomacy between her
stepdaughter and herself.  Mrs. Carstairs,
self-confessed a suffering angel who had borne
in silence Helen's malignant opposition to
her, was about to come abroad to spend the
spring in yachting with her husband in the
Mediterranean, and would be glad to have
Miss Bleecker and Helen join them anywhere
that was convenient.  If Mr. Carstairs
himself did not write to repeat this invitation,
Helen would know it was because the poor
dear was overworked and brain-weary.  For
that reason, if for none other, Helen should
put aside her unjust, and injurious, and
missish fancies, and become one of their family
circle in the eyes of all the world.

("Naturally," said the astute chaperon to
herself, "there is one of two reasons for this
urgency to have Helen with them.  Either
some man she is flirting with is to make one
of the party, or somebody has refused to
receive Mrs. Carstairs until her step-daughter
has done so first.")

If Helen would prove herself the devoted
daughter she had always boasted of being,
and subscribe to her father's wishes,
Mrs. Carstairs was empowered by him to say that
he would give her at once the fortune,
independently of himself, that he had previously
withheld.  (Incidentally, she named a sum
of which the magnitude made Miss Bleecker's
frog-like eyes distend and her dull heart beat
excitedly.)  Helen would be free to come, to
go, to marry as she pleased.

("And she'd be certain to do it, right
away," interpolated the reader, "so I don't
see where I come in at all.")

Helen would in fact be one of the most
enviable young women in America.  In conclusion,
while urging upon Miss Bleecker the
necessity of prompt and vigorous action in
this delicate matter, Mrs. Carstairs made an
offer to her own account.  To the chaperon,
if successful in effecting the reconciliation,
she would give, unknown to any one, a check
for so many dollars, that, again, the frog-eyes
opened widely, and Miss Bleecker slapped the
letter upon her knee.

"The woman mayn't be well born, and she
certainly deserves all Helen's done to her; but
she's got brains, and I think she'll get there,"
said Miss Bleecker, in conclusion.

.. vspace:: 2

The beginning of February saw Miss
Carstairs, her companion and the admirable
Eulalie—who, of course, started the journey with
a headache in order to justify her claim to
be a first-class ladies' maid—leaving Paris in
the Côte d'Azur Rapide, their destination the
Riviera.  So great was the exodus for that
coveted spot that not only had the travellers
been unable to secure for themselves places
in the melancholy resort of a *dames seules*
carriage, but the compartment in which they
found cards bearing their names over the end
seats was ominously placarded in all the
other divisions.  In vain Miss Bleecker
fumed and fussed and put on her best grand
duchess manner; in vain Mlle. Eulalie looked
like an early Christian martyr; the guard
could give them no promise of better things.

After adjusting her many belongings in the
racks and settling down with a look of grim
resolution to bear all for Helen's sake, it
occurred to Miss Bleecker to get up again and
read the names of their yet absent
fellow-passengers.  Two of them were foreign,
undistinguished, presenting nothing to her
imagination, and as their owners took possession
at the moment, the lady sat down in some
confusion at being detected in her access of
curiosity.

"If the other man comes, we'll be knee-to-knee
all day, and there won't be breathing
space," she whispered across to Helen, next
whom, in the middle seat, the fair Eulalie was
installed, leaving one place vacant near the
door upon the corridor.

"If it's a man, so much the better,"
whispered Helen back.  "Imagine another
headache, beside Eulalie's."

"Oh! but I saw the name.  English or
American, 'Mr. John Glynn,'" returned the
unknowing chaperon, who having cast her
bombshell, opened a Paris *New York Herald*
and began to read the column of social movements
in America.

Helen sat bolt upright, the blood tingling
in her veins.  Before she could recover from
the first stupor of astonishment, the train was
in motion, and, simultaneously, the guard
hurried into his place the one person in the world
whom Miss Carstairs had least dreamed of seeing.

She had shaken hands with him, and named
him to Miss Bleecker, who wondered where
Helen had picked up this surprisingly
good-to-look-upon young man, before her heart
ceased its wild palpitation, and she could
fairly control her voice.  He was direct from
Cherbourg, it appeared, had crossed Paris in
a slow fiacre, barely catching the Côte d'Azur,
in which his place had been retained by wire,
and was on his way to the Riviera in answer
to a summons concerning important business
for a friend resident there for the winter.

"I fancy I know your friend," said Helen,
determined to let no grass grow under her
feet.  "I crossed with good old Mr. Winstanley
in October, and he told me of your
engagement to his daughter."

"Yes, that has been for some time
announced," answered Glynn, the color
deepening in his clear brown skin, while Helen
remained quite pale.  "You have heard also,
perhaps, of Mr. Winstanley's bad break in
health?  Although better, he is not yet able
to do business for himself, and a question
came up in connection with the mines, in which
it was necessary to have his verbal
instructions; hence, my run over.  Rather a jolly
change for me from my office work.  Since
October, I have had my own place, you know,
representing Mr. Winstanley's interests, with
headquarters in New York."

"I congratulate you doubly, then," said
Helen.  "How very strange that you should
have come into this carriage of all others.
And how nice for you, getting out of the
blizzards and the high-piled, dirty snow of New
York streets in February, to have a glimpse
of obstinately azure skies and acres of rose
and jasmine!"

Although they were running smoothly,
conversation across Mlle. Eulalie's large hands,
in slightly soiled white kid gloves clasped over
Helen's jewel case, did not progress in
comfort.  Miss Bleecker, who always wanted to
be entertained, imperiously signed to the maid
to change places with Mr. Glynn, which was
done, bringing him close to the ladies for a
long day's run.

In New York, Miss Bleecker might not
have looked twice at a man not in Mr. Charley
Brownlow's set, and unknown at any of the
clubs of which she considered membership to
be the hall-mark of gentility.  But those
things settle down amazingly abroad, and
she now saw Glynn with unclouded eyes.
While Helen was wondering how Posey Winstanley
could ever have turned aside to fancy
Lord Clandonald, when she was free to marry
this far handsomer, more imposing, young
American, Miss Bleecker was subjecting
Glynn to a rapid fire of questions about home
matters, from the new Subway to the
wrangles in City politics.

It was noticeable that when the chaperon
now touched upon the subject of the
Winstanley family, she did so in a key greatly
altered from her former contemptuous one.
A man who had risen in a night from
commonplace obscurity to his present wealth
and growing importance was a type of her
country she could not conscientiously
overlook.  She recalled to Mr. Glynn that she
had thought his future father-in-law "so
quaint yet forceful."  She was not as
enthusiastic over Mr. Glynn's fiancée, but there
are limits to what we must expect of women.

Still, her active mind was even then springing
ahead of the present.  If she succeeded,
as now seemed probable, in bringing about the
reconciliation between Helen and her father's
wife, and Helen consented to return to them
for the present, obviously Miss Bleecker,
although with a warm nest-egg in her pocket,
would be, vulgarly speaking, out of a job.
What better than to annex herself to the
Winstanleys, to have the credit of forming a young
creature who was destined to conspicuous
place before the world and even, perhaps——?

Miss Bleecker, at this juncture, cast a
furtive glance at her reflection in the little slip
of mirror over Helen's head.  It was not
exactly favorable, since she had risen before
the world was aired, her complexion looked
yellow where it ought to be red, and certain
fatal lines around nose and mouth, elusive in
the evening, stood out, abnormally plain!
Miss Bleecker looked away.  By and by, hope
springing eternal, whispered to her that what
a rich old man wants in a wife is not youth
and beauty, provoking the eternal triangle of
the modern situation, but agreeability, tact, a
knowledge of how to make the wheels go round.
She rallied, smiled at Mr. Glynn in the
manner of a sweet old-time friend and counsellor,
then taking out a French novel and a pearl-handled
paper-cutter, subsided into apparent
literature and actual plan-making.

Helen wondered if ever girl in her position
were more curiously hounded by odd
circumstance.  She saw that Glynn, like herself,
was profoundly moved by their rencontre.
And what wonder, since when they had last
met she had sobbed her farewell upon his
breast, his arms had tightly closed around
her, and he had declared that he could not,
would not give her up!

He had been forced to give her up,
however, and gradually to acquiesce in the
common sense of her decision.  The offer of
himself to Miss Winstanley, made without
knowledge of Posey's altered circumstances, had
been joyously approved in a letter posted at
Liverpool by Mr. Winstanley, who had
bidden John remember that he was now his son,
and, as such, entitled to a full share of the
good luck that he proceeded to unfold.  When
Glynn had assumed charge of Mr. Winstanley's
interests and business, he had for the
first time learned the full meaning and
extent of that good luck!  Mr. Winstanley also
told him that under the circumstances of
Posey's call to a much higher position in life
and society than had even been expected, he
desired her to spend some time longer in
pursuance of education and wider experience
before returning home to be married.

A little dazed by the turn of events, Glynn
had acquiesced in this latter decree, almost
too easily, he feared.  He told himself that
he needed time to adjust his ideas to the
prospect of riches.  As a matter of fact, he was
relieved not to become Posey's husband until
he knew her better.  The pretty, half-baked,
freakish creature, who offended his sense of
conventionality, who dealt with him so
unemotionally, seemed about as practical a bride as
Undine must have been to her long-suffering
knight!  Between Posey's image and himself,
that of high-bred Helen Carstairs, stepping
down from her proud pedestal to give him the
first passion of her woman's love, had, in the
beginning, perpetually come.  Latterly, this
had been wearing off, and stern habit had
asserted itself, as it fortunately does.

Posey's letters, surely the strangest ever
penned by a betrothed maiden to her lover,
came to Glynn regularly.  She had told him,
with appalling frankness, that after engaging
herself to him (by telephone!) she had
suffered many pangs of fear that the whole thing
was a mistake; also, she must confess, she had
met another man with whom, had there been
no obstructions in the way, she might have
been happier.  During her father's illness,
seeing the enormous stress he laid upon her
promise to marry John, she had come to see
things more clearly, had recognized in herself
a vain, silly child, and was now resolved to
devote her whole future life to being more
worthy of her good fortune as Glynn's wife.

To read these artless effusions had been like
looking into a crystal globe.  Whatever came,
Glynn could not complain that she had
deceived him.  During his benefactor's dangerous
illness, when it was essential for Glynn
to remain where he was, and he could only
cable his anxiety and sympathy, his heart
had become more awakened to Posey's claim
upon him, and he had felt for her loyal
tenderness.  When the summons from Mr. Winstanley
arrived that was to bring him once
more in actual touch with her, he had set out
to obey it, believing that he was at last
effectually cured of old weakness, and panoplied to
begin the new life.

And he had hardly set foot in France before
he found himself seated side by side with
Helen Carstairs in a railway train, flying
southward, with nothing to disturb their
intercourse during a long day and evening, and
actually bound for the same goal!

Simultaneously, Glynn and Helen rose to
the occasion, put behind them the temptation
to revert to the fond chapter lived in their
young lives, and took up again the sort of
intercourse that had so pleased and refreshed
her at the beginning of their acquaintance.
It was like one of their old talks at the house
of Helen's friend who had introduced them
to each other, and fostered their intimacy; a
woman who had the cleverness to find interesting
people in the whirlpool of business and
pleasure and money-spending that calls itself
New York society, and the courage to draw
them out of it to herself.

Glynn felt that he would long have cause
to remember that February day.  The new
fast train justified all that had been claimed
for it in speed and comfort.  It tore down
the Rhone valley as the mistral tears, it left
behind Avignon, city of Popes, and other
spots of classic interest, as if it had been a
"Flyer" between Chicago and New York.
The light carriages rocked and swayed, stones
from the road-bed rose up like a fusillade of
small-arms, striking the bottom of the train;
one dared not leave one's seat for the
dining-car for fear of falling; people who had not
exchanged a word previously began, by common
consent, to talk all together, and all their
talk was of the speed of trains they had
known and heard about.  Miss Bleecker went
yellow in her nervous anxiety, declaring she
had no use for a train in which one could not
brew a cup of tea for fear of setting things
on fire.  Mlle. Eulalie wept under her veil,
and accepted brandy offered her from Miss
Bleecker's flask.  The two solemn travellers
who filled the other seats, and now joined in
general animated talk, turned out to be one
a French railway engineer, to whose utterances
all listened humbly, the other an Italian
musical genius, *en route* for Monte Carlo.  In
the confusion of tongues and exclamations,
the little string of toy carriages bounced and
flew onward, until suddenly the air brakes
were put on, and with a long protracted
jolting, they came to a full stop!

Something had happened, but what?  Glynn
and the engineer, going outside to investigate
matters, in the falling dusk, returned to
report that their carriage was to go no farther,
and its passengers were to be transferred to
the one ahead.

"As well as I can make out, it is the
complaint not unknown to our railways of a
'hot box,'" said Glynn.  "The bother is,
that you ladies must take what seats you can
get till our journey's end."

Officials, coming to hurry them, showed but
scant sympathy with Miss Bleecker's indignant
protests, with Eulalie's fresh burst of
tears.  Helen, following her chaperon quietly,
had an odd sensation that nothing mattered
much so long as Glynn was at her elbow
speaking cheery, merry words!

They threaded their way into the carriage
ahead, to be received with what enthusiasm
by the tired, nervous, over-strained passengers
already filling its full space, may be imagined.
Miss Bleecker was accommodated with the
odd seat of a compartment reserved by a
French couple of her acquaintance, who,
feeling rather bored by so much of each other's
society, made a virtue of necessity in welcoming
the stranded American lady.  Eulalie was
tucked somewhere happily out of sight.  For
Helen and Glynn there remained but two
camp-stools, produced by a guard, and placed
in the corridor at the rear!

"I have heard of blessings in disguise,"
he said significantly, when they were
speeding forward again toward Marseilles.

"This is really better than that stuffy place
we had," she answered, made happy, despite
herself, by the meaning in his tones.

"If any one had told me that I should be
to-day sitting beside you, rushing through the
darkness headlong to the unknown, I would
have counted it a fable."

"You are not rushing to the unknown.  I
cannot think of any one whose life and work
are more clearly cut out for him or more
sure of a happy ending."

"I—I suppose so," he said, with a sigh.

"You know it, Mr. Glynn."

"Has it come to Mr. Glynn?"

"Don't make things worse for me than
they are," she exclaimed confusedly.  She
felt frightened that one moment of isolation
with him had brought back into his voice the
lover's cadence, after their months of blank
separation, and their day just passed in
renunciation and good behavior.  The admission
in her speech, the forlorn droop of her
mouth, were too much for his strained resolution.

"Tell me one thing only, Helen—as if we
two were standing on the verge of everlasting
parting—have you cared?"

"When have I not cared?" she said impetuously.

"*Had* it to be?"

"I thought so, then.  I haven't always
thought so since.  Latterly——"

"Go on.  Latterly—?" he said, in a dreary tone.

"I have made a compromise with my father
about something in dispute between us.  He
has made me more than independent of him.
Isn't it always so in life, that relief comes
too late?"

"What did that ever matter, anyway?
Wasn't I ready, willing, eager, mad, to take
you as you were?  Would it have been the
first time an American man married an
American woman without a penny between them,
except what he could earn?  The trouble was
that you couldn't trust me."

"That I couldn't trust myself," she said
bitterly.  "I knew my world better than you
did, John."

"But you say you haven't always thought
the same since," he exclaimed, searching her
eyes with a desperately anxious gaze.

"It is not fair to wring from me such
admissions.  It isn't like you to persist in talk
like this.  After all, you were the first to
console yourself."

His face fell into gloom.  He drew away
from her and, for a while, sat in silence.
Helen turned to look out of the window to
hide her gathering tears.

It was a miserable time for both, yet neither
would have yielded up an inch of it in
exchange for any imaginable pleasure.  Helen
was thinking, "Oh, that the train would only
go on forever, and let me sit by him on this
horrid little stool without a back!" and Glynn
would have fought any guard or conductor
who came to offer them the usual seats among
other people.  They said very little, but felt
the more.  At Marseilles, where they went outside
for a whiff of soft, delicious air, fancying
they smelt orange blossoms, and saw stars
looking into the sea, and during the rest of
the zigzag run along the lovely coast to
Cannes, each knew that the other was dreading
the finale of their strange experience.

As they ran into the Cannes station toward
eleven o'clock, and it became necessary to
rouse up nodding Miss Bleecker, and collect
woful Eulalie, with her bags and bundles,
Helen and he rose simultaneously, with a
shiver of apprehension.

"This is the last time, John?"

"The last time, Helen—*darling*," he said,
in a hoarse undertone of yearning tenderness.

Their hands met and strained together.  Her
eyes answered his, and he did not again
doubt.

"It has been all one great, terrible
mistake," she went on, more steadily.  "We have
got to meet, if you stay here, and after this
there's to be no more weakness, remember!
We'll be pretty poor stuff if we can't conquer
ourselves, don't you think so?"

Hers was the last word, for Miss Bleecker,
tottering like a somnambulist, issued forth
to interrupt them.  Helen and she were
assisted out of the train by Glynn, and placed
in custody of their hotel's station-porter.  A
moment more, the ladies were in the 'bus
alone, threading the back streets of the sleepy
little town, to ascend the hill to a stately
hostelry, where their arrival was the signal for
a theatrical effect of house-porters in scarlet
jackets issuing from a brilliantly lighted
entrance around which roses and bougainvillea
twined.

.. vspace:: 2

"Really, Helen," observed Miss Bleecker,
whose good-humor returned as she looked
complacently around their pretty suite of
rooms, where lights and flowers and a small
fire of olive-wood combined to make the
travellers forget their woes.  "I must say
they have done very well for us.  I believe we
shall be comfortable here until the yacht
arrives.  And how delightful it is to think you
sent that cable, yesterday, consenting to join
your dear father and his wife.  When you lay
your head on your pillow, every night after
this, you will sleep more sweetly with the
thought of having—why, child, you're white
as a ghost!  I suppose you're a little train-sick,
after the shaking-up we got.  It was too
bad your having to sit out on that wretched
little camp-stool, but you seemed to get along
well enough with Mr. Glynn, and there wasn't
an inch left in Countess de Saint Eustache's
compartment.  Do you know, she told me the
whole story, from beginning to end, of Kate
Ravenel's unfortunate marriage with the
Marquis de Contour.  My dear, he is an
absolute decadent!  And to think how the
Ravenels bought and paid for him in hard
cash, and how wretchedly they were sold in
the transaction!  By the way, the Countess
knows our friend, M. de Mariol, intimately,
and says that for people to get him to their
dinners or country houses is the greatest
feather in their caps!  He is *de tout*, she
assures me, which, of course, makes one enjoy
his writings so much more.  I hope we shall
certainly meet him again.  Helen, speaking
of young Glynn, if ever a man was born with
a gold spoon in his mouth, it's he.  To be
marrying Mr. Winstanley's only child, and
they having gone up like a house afire!  The
Countess says the Winstanleys have been
floated here by Lady Campstown, and already
know everybody, and are much liked.  It
seems they have one of the most desirable
villas, own a smart motor, the girl has no
end of stunning gowns—you remember they
showed us at Worth's the evening frocks
they were sending down to her—and will soon
be entertaining lavishly.  The question is,
where did Lady Campstown pick her up?
We must call on both of them to-morrow.  I
am all anxiety to meet dear Lady Campstown
again, and I confess I am anxious to get a
peep inside Villa Reine des Fées."

"I fancy you will find Miss Winstanley
changed in many respects, Miss Bleecker,"
said Helen, wearily.  "But it seems to me
hardly probable she has lost her high spirit
in this little time.  And she *may* remember
your conduct to her on shipboard."

"Nonsense, my dear!" answered the chaperon,
complacently.  "As we live now, it is
always easy and generally convenient to
forget.  The girl, for all her barbarisms, seemed
to have a level head.  She will be charmed to
see us, and so will Lady Campstown, who had
set her heart upon marrying you to that
nephew of hers, Clandonald.  If it were not
for young Glynn, I should imagine that the
Lady Campstown had gone off on another tack
in her heiress cruise.  Looks like it, don't you
think?  If Miss Winstanley hasn't told her of
her engagement to Glynn, there'll be a pretty
row on presently.  We'll call, at any rate.  I
am glad to hear Mr. Winstanley is no worse,
and may be counted upon to recover
permanently from this attack.  I wonder if he
likes being read aloud to, Helen?  To show
that I bear no ill-will to the girl for her
pertness to me, I'd just as soon offer to sit with
him, sometimes.  I was always said to have
great success with invalids.  And we'd
better be prompt in looking them up, for who
knows whether this is really a business trip
of Glynn's?  I should be much inclined to
think he has run over to look after his
heiress, and see that she does not slip through
his fingers, with all these fine people with
titles hanging around her.  Glynn looks like a
positive, if not self-willed, fellow, Helen.
Indeed, I shouldn't in the least wonder if the
business pretext is a blind, and *M. le fiancé*
won't go back to America without his bride.
In that case, we shall have a smart wedding
at Cannes, and poor Mr. Winstanley will be
left all to himself at Villa Reine des Fées.
They say there is nothing like that entrance
hall and staircase in the town, all marbles of
the rarest and most beautiful colors; and the
dining-room, with its wall tapestries and
screens, is fit for a palace.  Poor Mr. Winstanley!
There is nothing so sad in life as
a person of—well, middle age—left alone by
young people for whom he has done everything.
There should be some congenial and
sympathetic soul to—poor Mr. Winstanley!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

"Come a little way down this walk, John,"
Posey said, the morning after her lover's
arrival, while engaged in showing him the
place, "and you will see exactly where the
woman was sitting yesterday, when she got
up and spoke to me in that dreadful way.  I
never dare tell my father, and it would worry
dear Lady Campstown out of her wits to
think any suspicious outsider had been seen
lurking about the grounds.  I rather fancied
this person was out of her head, and so, when
she vanished abruptly, I just told the
gardener that a doubtful-looking stranger had
been in the garden, and his men must be on
the watch to see that it doesn't occur again."

"Quite right," said Glynn.  "I dare say
you won't hear of her any more.  What sort
of a lunatic was she?  Young or old, smart or
shabby, English-speaking or foreign?"

"Oh!  English decidedly, with one of their
lovely low voices, from the throat.  A lady,
I suppose, one would call her, but shabby and
deadly pale with glittering brown eyes, and
lips with no color.  I should think she took
morphine, or some of those horrid things.
Her clothes had been handsome once, but
were put on in a slovenly way."

"Probably some poor soul here for her
health, who had escaped from her caretakers.
Certainly, you can have no enemies,
my dear girl?"

"I didn't think so," answered Posey,
flushing, "until I received a number of
anonymous letters on shipboard, and several
afterward.  Then they stopped suddenly."

"Do you mind telling me their drift?"

Posey's cheeks became crimson, but she
looked him bravely in the face.

"They were all full of lying things against
me and the man I told you I met at sea—and
have never seen or heard from since."

"Thank you, dear," said Glynn, simply.
"We have both need of consideration for
each other, and I trust you thoroughly.  But
this gives me an idea.  You say the morphine
lady told you she had a favor to ask of
you——"

"Yes, but before she could get further,
the gardener's man came in sight, and she
took flight.  She said that I was luckier than
she, since I could buy my peace, and she'd
advise me not to hold back now when I'd a
chance to do so."

"That's blackmail, not insanity.  The
woman has probably spent her last sou at
Monte Carlo, and reading about you in the
papers, thinks you're a good object to attack
for funds."

"It's no use, John.  I can't tell half a
thing, to save my life," exclaimed the girl,
desperately.  "At the moment she ran down
that alley of laurustinus, she called back,
'You can't expect your friend, Lord
Clandonald to pay all, and you nothing, to shut
mouths.'"

Glynn walked beside her in moody silence.
The matter was worse than he had feared.
To find Posey in the toils of an obnoxious
scheme for torment and money-getting, was
more than annoying.  He justly considered
that it was paying too high for her successes,
her magnificent establishment in life.  For
the moment it blotted out the blue of sky and
blurred the exquisite beauty of their surroundings.

He had, like everybody else, heard of
Clandonald and his matrimonial infelicities, his
divorce, and his visit to the States.  A strong
resentment took possession of the young
American at the idea that this Briton,
battered by foul tongues and associations, should
be the one who, even for a—moment, had won
Posey's allegiance away from himself.

"You are angry.  I knew you would be,"
she burst out finally.  "I at first thought of
telling Lady Campstown, and asking her
advice.  But Lord Clandonald is her nephew,
almost her son, and I was ashamed.  She has
not the faintest idea there was ever anything
between us."

"Between you?  What can you mean?"
wrathfully demanded Glynn, whose merit
was never that of tolerance.

"I don't know myself.  It was all so
sudden, and passed so quickly.  He used to come
and talk and walk with me upon the ship.  I
began by being sorry for him, because his
life had been so spoiled.  He never said a
word of flattery or silly talk like the others.
He seemed to me a man."

"Well, go on, please," said Glynn, curtly.

"One evening when that old wretch Mr. Vereker
tried to kiss me out on deck——"

"What!" thundered Glynn, his brows
meeting, his eyes darting ire upon her.

"He didn't do it, John; just missed the tip
of my ear, and I hit him in the face.  I ran
away to Miss Carstairs and Lord Clandonald,
and told them, or rather didn't tell them—they
understood.  Clandonald looked just as you do
now, and put himself in front of me, and I
was so glad to be protected, when all the ship
was saying mean, spiteful things of me, that
for a little while I thought I must be in love
with Lord Clandonald——"

"This alone is worth crossing the ocean to
hear," commented Glynn with bitter sarcasm.

"Well, you know I told you of it at the
time.  It was a perfectly hopeless thing,
anyhow.  Even if you hadn't been there, I
couldn't marry a divorced man whose wife
is living.  It's just one of those fashionable
habits that doesn't happen to appeal to me."

"Posey, you are unconquerable," he said,
a gleam of amusement coming into his eyes.

"You might as well hear all the rest.
After I had those nasty letters, I kept away
from him and got daddy to give up London,
because I'd promised we would go down to
lunch at Beaumanoir, his home.  It was my
first and last chance at an English ancestral
mansion, I reckon.  The last night aboard,
when we were at anchor near Liverpool, in
a fog, daddy and I met him, by accident, on
deck.  Dear old dad, who can't be made to
suspect anybody, would run off after his
letter of credit, that he'd packed in a steamer
coat and almost sent ashore.  I was left with
Lord Clandonald.  I tell you, John, you
couldn't have treated me better than he did
then.  There was one little minute when I
was scared, though.  He was furious when
I told him of the anonymous letters.  He
said there was only one who could have done
it, but how, in God's name, did she get upon
that ship?  And then he asked me to let
him stand between me and all such people
always——"

"You let him ask you that?"

"John, you know when a man and a girl
are together things get said that they never
dreamed of saying.  I knew like a shot I
ought to have told Clandonald about you
before.  But how could I introduce the subject
in cold blood——"

"I am afraid it was cold blood," interpolated
John ruefully.

"Well, you couldn't expect me to thrill
and tremble, and all those things they do in
novels, when I'd said yes in a telephone
booth, and never seen you after.  I tried to,
John.  Honestly, I did, but it wasn't the
least use."

Glynn would have been more than mortal
not to laugh at her look of humble apology.

"Ah! well, Posey dear, I'll not be hard on
you.  But tell me, please, what further passed
between you and Lord Clandonald?"

"Absolutely nothing.  All I could do was
to turn the conversation away from him and
me.  I couldn't find the least little way to
bring you into it, or to say, 'Unhand me, sir,
my heart and faith are another's,' since his
hands were in his pockets and mine in my
muff, and we were both saturated with
Channel fog.  I just thanked him for all his
kindness to me on the voyage, and told him what's
true, that I'd never forget it; though, if he
ever met me again I'd probably be a very
different sort of Posey Winstanley.  And
then he calmed down, and it was all over
forever, and I ran away to see if daddy had found
his letter of credit—and—and—I've never
seen or heard from Clandonald since."

"Posey, you are a child still, a charming
child, and I love you for it, dear."

"It's awfully good of you, John, and the
greatest possible relief.  If you knew what a
double-faced sort of thing I've felt myself to
be all these months, remembering that I'd let
another man almost propose to me, when I
had given you my word of honor—there's one
thing I'd like to ask before we've done with
the subject, though.  What does it mean when
a person is by you and you'd give, oh! *anything*
if they wouldn't go away?"

John started genuinely.  A vision flashed
to him of those blessed maddening hours in
the train the day before, when Helen and he
had sat together, and he jealously begrudged
every revolution of the iron wheels that,
without mercy, carried them toward their parting.

"I don't know, Posey," he murmured guiltily.
"Why in the world do you ask me that?"

"Because I thought you would tell me,
honestly," said she, with a speculative
expression.  "It has bothered me often,
wondering.  But it doesn't matter.  Now you are
here, everything seems straight and clear
before me.  Shall I ever forget daddy's rapturous
old face when he sat by your supper-tray
at the library table, last night, forcing you to
eat indigestible food, and looking from one to
the other of us?"

"But he has aged, dear," said Glynn, with
a twinge of pain.  "One sees the spirit in
his face above the flesh.  We must never let
him know care or trouble again, little girl.
We must strengthen his arms, one on either
side of him, and make him walk easily through
life."

"How beautifully you talk, John!" cried
she.  "Ah!  No Englishman could ever have
felt that way toward my daddy.  No other
man could give him what you do.  Yes, you
are right.  It's our life-work to put him
between us, and look out for him every day."

"And to do so," went on Glynn resolutely,
"we should marry soon."

Posey started visibly.

"Must we, John?  Oh!  I hadn't thought of that."

"Is the idea a pain to you?"

"Perhaps.  I don't know.  I've always put
it out of my mind when it weighed on me.
Daddy gave me a year, John," she added
pleadingly.  "And the year began in October.
This is only February.  We're all so happy
as we are."

Happy!  Again that clutch of iron upon
Glynn's heartstrings!

"Happiness will come more fully and
freely, my sweetheart," he said, striving for
words, "when we have put his heart's desire
beyond all chance.  I think you will both have
to come back with me to America this Spring,
if I'm to serve his interests as I should.  Let
me take my wife with me, Posey."

"What, *now*?" she cried, with wide-open,
panic-stricken eyes.  "Oh! goodness gracious,
I hope not now!"

"I am due again in New York almost immediately,
but will be free to return the beginning
of next month, or a little later.  By that time
the heat will be sending you away from the
Riviera, and would it not be best for us to be
married very quietly here, and let Mr. Winstanley's
son and daughter take care of him
upon the voyage?"

"A wedding here?  What a funny idea!"
cried Posey.  "Not a girl I know to ask as
bridesmaid—at least, the only one I'd want
would be Helen Carstairs, who has just arrived
in Cannes, and I don't know about her.
Perhaps she mightn't wish; but she was *too dear*
to me, John, on shipboard, as I wrote you.  By
the way, you didn't seem to take the least
interest in my friendship with Helen, and yet it
has done me a world of good.  Not a girly-girly
affair in the least, I assure you.  We'd
both have scorned that.  She has written to
me several times, and I was simply wild with
pleasure to hear she was coming down to
Cannes.  I think if you'd realized what Helen
is, John, at least what she is to me, you'd not
have been so indifferent.  I must tell you the
truth, I was really quite hurt with you.  But
you'll meet here, and then you'll see for
yourself, and end by adoring her as I do—oh,
John," she exclaimed, interrupting her light
chatter with an exclamation of terror, "there's
that woman now!"

"What woman, Posey?" he asked, bewildered
at her rapid change of subject.

"Hush!  The one I told you of, who frightened
me yesterday—the mad woman.  Don't
turn suddenly, but, after a second, look
between those two lemon trees.  She just glided
past as we were speaking, down the walk from
Villa Julia, and is hiding behind the
shrubbery.  She's waiting for me, John.  This is
getting terrible!"

"She shall have *me*," said Glynn grimly,
his senses alert in a moment to the danger
Posey ran.

"Don't make a scene with her—don't alarm
daddy," she went on.

"Trust me," he answered briefly.  "Do you
go into the house, and stay there till I come.
Say nothing to any one, and I'll rid you of
your nightmare."

As Posey mutely obeyed him, albeit with a
blanched face, Clandonald's saying came into
Glynn's mind, "There's but one woman who
would do this thing."  Verily, Glynn would
not have to go far to find her.

She arose from her bench as he approached—evidently
badly scared.  A man of his years
and vigor and mastery of the situation had not
entered into her calculations of this experience.

"You look surprised at seeing me here,"
she said rapidly, with perfectly well-bred
ease.  "I suppose it is trespass, but the villa
had been so long unoccupied, we had got into
the way of running into the garden from my
aunt, Lady Campstown's, whose house is
across the lane yonder."

He was for a moment thrown off his guard
and bowed, acquiescing, as any gentleman
would have done.

"However, I am just going," she added.
"The little green door is very familiar to me,
I assure you."

"Might I delay you one moment," he said
courteously, "to ask what can be your motive
in annoying and threatening the young lady
of this house?  I ask in her father's name,
and we wish you to know that this must be
absolutely the last time that you come into
these grounds."

"What difference does it make?" she
asked fretfully, throwing out her hands with
a weary gesture and losing her self-control.
"I can always reach her, somehow.  She has
not done with me yet, I can tell her.  Unless,"
she added, with a low, meaning laugh, "her
friends are ready to make it well worth my
while to disappear."`

"You will not find her friends unwilling
to aid in that desirable result.  But I have
first to know your motive in annoying her so
cruelly."

"Call it rivalry, call it revenge," she said,
with a shrug.  "Either one of these causes is
strong enough.  She is, if you must know, the
only woman I ever feared could take my place
in my late husband's life—permanently, I
mean," she added, with an ugly smile.

"I take it that I am speaking to Lord
Clandonald's divorced wife?"

"Really, my good sir, you give yourself, or
rather Miss Winstanley, 'away,' as they say in
the vernacular of your richly-gifted country.
You are evidently well-informed of the
progress of that immaculate young lady's affair
with Clandonald—continued on shipboard
doubtless from America, and who knows
when and where since?"

"The young lady, whose name I forbid
you to mention here," cried Glynn, with a
darkened countenance, "met the gentleman
in question on shipboard for the first time, as
she did twenty others, and has never seen or
communicated with him since."

"She has convinced you of that fact—then
rumor is right for once, and there is a
confiding fiancé from America?  After all,
yours is a younger civilization than ours, and
you still believe in your girls?"

Glynn interrupted her.  He had got all he
wanted from Ruby Darien.

She had been a striking beauty, had, even
now, a certain reckless grace of manner.
Her face was as Posey had described it.  He
read there untruth, degradation of moral
fibre, and the ravage of disease and drugs.
There was no use in dealing with her in
heroics.  Money would buy her, and money
she should have.

"If Miss Winstanley's friends agree to
make it worth your while—substantially
worth your while" (her eyes glittered) "to
keep at a distance from her, never again to
approach her in deed or speech, at the risk
of forfeiting a monthly allowance of say—"
(here he mentioned a sum which caused Ruby
Darien's haggard face to flush high with
covetous delight)—"it will certainly not be
without an understanding on their part of how
you contrived to present yourself through
Lady Campstown's premises without
identification by her servants."

"That was a small matter," she said
eagerly.  "Although my respected aunt-in-law
has long since instructed her staff not
to admit me to her presence, there remains
in her employ a child of nature, an untutored
Provençal housemaid, who in former days
chose to idealize me, and even now would do
anything reasonably atrocious at my bidding.
She it was who contrived to let me in from
the lane, to which a cab from the station
brought me up the hill.  I should tell you
that I am stopping temporarily at Nice, in
an hotel where they accept me without questions,
but which has proved, alas, too fatally
convenient to Monte Carlo!"

"Then, if you will allow me, I will myself
see you into another cab for your return.
There is a station for carriages at no great
distance down the road from here.  To-morrow
I will present myself at your hotel in
Nice, with the necessary papers insuring to
you the allowance I named, and an agreement,
which I shall in return ask you to sign,
pledging yourself to keep your side of the
bargain."

"American promptitude in business is
proverbial," she said, essaying an easy laugh,
and darting a side glance, not unmixed with
admiration, upon her interlocutor.  "How
nice it must be to be disgustingly rich as all
you Yankees are; to be able to confound the
politics and frustrate the knavish tricks of
your enemies by the prompt administration
of hard cash!  I always thought that if I'd
had money enough to be good on, I might
have graduated as a saint."

.. vspace:: 2

When Glynn walked up the steps at Reine
des Fées, feeling a mixture of disgust and
pride in his victory achieved, Posey ran out
to meet him, slipping her arm in his.

"You've triumphed, I see.  Oh!  John,
dear, what daddy needs is a real son like
you, and I, just such a brother.  Don't tell
me anything about that horrid creature now,
let's be happy for a while.  Let us speak of
something as far from her as one pole of
earth is from the other—of dear Helen
Carstairs, whose card I found on the hall table
when I went in after leaving you.  If it
hadn't been that I was with you, I'd have
begrudged missing her for anybody's sake.
Of course the stupid servants said I was not
at home.  Now, why couldn't they have shown
her into the garden, and then she could have
been introduced to you, and how nice that
would have been!  The two people of all
others I most admire, and shall expect and
insist upon being friends with each other!
Say, John, to please me that you are
longing to meet Helen!"

"Posey," began Glynn, and his voice to
his own ears sounded unnaturally thin, "I
have been waiting a chance to tell you that
I have known Miss Carstairs; that I ran
upon her by chance at the Gare de Lyons
yesterday, just as the train for the South
had started.  That we were, in fact,
companions in the same compartment, and talked
of you together, more than once, during our
day's run."

"You!  Helen!  Wonders will never
cease!" cried the girl exultingly.  "But,"
a sobering thought seizing hold of her, "how
was it possible you never mentioned her to me
in a single one of your letters?"

"Try to think why, Posey," the young man
said gravely, as they paused together in the
hall filled with dead marbles and living
blossoms of the Spring.

"It was Helen, then, Helen?"  Her eyes
flamed the rest of the sentence.

"Yes."

"Ah!  I might have guessed it.  And I—was
vain enough and rash enough to think
I could fill her place to you.  Poor, dear
John, what you have lost, and what have you
got instead?"

"Far more than I merit in any case, dear.
It is her secret, and, but that I dared not
deceive you, should never have passed my lips.
It is over, Posey, buried forty fathoms deep.
You see, now, that each of us has need of
charity and forbearance with the other, and
you must set me an example of kind forgivingness
for all I have done or left undone toward you."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Winstanley, who,
at this moment, came shuffling out from the
library to join them, "you are late for
luncheon, but how long wouldn't I wait to see you
and Posey standing there together?  It's
better than any sun-bath to have you around,
I tell you!  I feel years younger since you
came."

"So do I, father," said Posey.  "After
this I am going to wear a collar with a little
bell and a leash, and let John lead me upon
the Croisette.  It is good to have some one to
be will and conscience, both, for me!"

"I'm afraid I've spoiled her for you, just
a little, John," added her father wistfully.

"You and others, perhaps.  But such as
she is, she's a lot too good for me, sir—or
any man.  All the same, I think you'll have
to be giving me Posey before the time you
fixed for our probation.  We are young and
will grow together, and she'll help me to do
big work.  And it seems to me, Mr. Winstanley,
that she's got a dose of this Old
World at the start that'll make her willing
to settle down in our own country."

"We'll see," nodded the old gentleman.
And, indeed, the idea of an earlier marriage
chimed in with his own notions.  Since the
wing of the Angel of Death had brushed so
near his face in passing, Herbert Winstanley
often thought that to put the future of
his impetuous child into safe hands would
give him a happier feeling when he lay down
to sleep o' nights.

.. vspace:: 2

Thus Miss Bleecker was wiser than she
knew, in predicting a matrimonial
conclusion to the Winstanley winter in Cannes.
When she and Helen accepted Posey's
invitation to dine with them "to meet a few
friends" on the night but one following their
arrival—an invitation, needless to say,
accepted by Miss Carstairs with perturbation
of spirit and the feeling that she was
walking up to the cannon's mouth—things seemed
to point that way.  They found Mr. Winstanley,
simple and gentle as ever, standing
to receive his guests in the drawing-room
with its famous tapestries, surrounded by
gems of art that for the first time in years
had emerged from their Holland cerements.
The stately room had flowers massed in its
corners, and a great fire of logs was leaping
under a carved stone mantelpiece also banked
high with plants and blossoms.  At her
father's right hand stood Posey, blushing and
dimpling with artless pleasure in receiving
her friend under circumstances so radically
different from those in which they had met
and parted a few months before; but in dress
and bearing so perfectly adapted was she to
her luxurious entourage, that Miss Bleecker
blinked when looking upon her, and refused
to believe her eyes.  And on Mr. Winstanley's
other side, quiet, grave, a little pale, but
collected and fully determined to maintain
his position with dignified acceptance, stood
Glynn—as handsome and bonny a lad as ever
rejoiced a father's heart, Mr. Winstanley
was saying inside his own warm receptacle
of human emotions.

As Helen's eyes met John's and dropped
away; as he clasped her gloved fingers,
marvelling at her grace and distinction in the
trailing dinner gown of pale rose satin
without frill or furbelow, each felt that this
occasion had for them the solemn significance
of a final renunciation of their love.  It was
as if she were standing in the church seeing
Glynn take Posey to be his wife.  A keen
pang of shame for the weakness that had
overcome her on their journey shot through
her being.  Ah, well!  Fate had been too
strong for her then.  That was the last, the
very last—like a farewell breathed into
already deadened ears.

Posey's attitude toward Helen also touched
Miss Carstairs acutely.  That there was in it
a new consciousness she felt immediately.
She recognized that Glynn must have eased
his honest heart of its burden by telling his
betrothed of his former love for her, and
felt that this was as it should be, if Posey
were to remain her friend.  It was not
tender apology, or loving sympathy, that Posey
showed, nor yet bashful consciousness that
she had in some way taken the ground from
under Helen's feet, but an exquisite mixture
of all these.  Her high spirits had for the
moment deserted her.  She kept close to her
father's side, answered Miss Bleecker's
fulsome greetings with no attempt at tart or
witty answers, and, as their other guests came
in, proceeded to do the honors as if "born
to the purple" (so Miss Bleecker whispered to John Glynn).

The chaperon's day of wonder was upon
her, while the room rapidly filled with a
company of people distinguished in the world's
eye of their winter colony, all of whom bore
themselves toward the tenant of Reine des
Fées and his youthful *châtelaine* with the
friendly consideration of accustomed intimates.
To each of the new-comers, Glynn was
presented by his host; without special
announcement, it is true, yet in fashion so
intentional that there was no mistaking the
attitude in which he stood toward father and
daughter.  As they presently went in to
dinner, in a salle with carved panels of French
walnut and great lustres of Venetian glass
illuminating its four corners, to gather
around a table that left nothing for
fastidious taste to criticise, Miss Bleecker wanted
to pinch herself upon taking off her gloves,
to feel assured that she was not in a dream.
The old gentleman, yonder, well turned out
by a good valet, in appropriate evening clothes,
seated between a great lady of France, whose
neck was wrapped in historic pearls, and an
Englishwoman, of rank and exclusive habit,
could he be the little old man of shipboard,
whom Helen's chaperon had despised and
derided as the veriest pretender to good
society?  It was incredible!  And the strangest
part of the situation in old Sally's eyes was
that, save in externals, Herbert Winstanley
had not altered in any particular from the
shrewd quiet observer of the game of life, the
mild commentator upon the ways of men and
women, the almost childlike recipient of
courtesy and kind words, whom she remembered
with amused contempt.

Such as he was, these people had taken him
up with a good-will there was no denying.
Miss Bleecker had the pleasure of finding
herself at table told off to an old beau of
nativity American, overlaid with years of
veneer Continental, who seemed to find satisfaction
in extolling to her the "solid" success
of the Winstanleys; the girl's extraordinary
ease in presiding over this banquet of state,
and the good luck of that fellow Glynn, whose
significant appearance this evening was
evidently intended to put all of Miss Winstanley's
other admirers out of the running.

Old Sally, who had long ago learned how to
trim her sails, listened with bitterness, and
while comforting her inner woman with the
long succession of "plats" and wines
presented at her elbow, made up her mind that
she would stray over to Reine des Fées,
without Helen, next morning (under her most
becoming parasol), with the hope of finding
Mr. Winstanley engaged in taking his sun-bath on
the terrace.  "And, if I only get my chance,"
she meditated, "trust me for following it
up."  The announcement, by cable from America
that day, of the engagement of a contemporary
of her own, long abandoned in appearance to
celibate joys, to marry "the last man anyone
would have expected to see pick her up"—a
recent widower of large means and uncertain
temper—accelerated the spinster's thoughts
and lent a false brilliancy to the evening that
had begun for her so dolefully.

To Helen Carstairs, naturally, the ordeal of
the dinner was interminable.  Separated from
Glynn by a wide extent of flower-decorated
table, amid which candles gleamed softly, and
silver lent its sheen to illuminate beds of
maiden-hair and cyclamen, she dared not look
in his direction.  All of her efforts were given
to self-control.  The man who took her in, a
handsome blond young Russian, with all the
languages of earth seemingly at his disposal,
decided that the American heiress not
appropriated at this feast was as cold as the snows
of his own Caucasus.  The Roumanian prince
on her other side gave her up also as a person
impossible to interest.  She went through it
like an automaton, her one desire to see Posey
signal to the lady with the pearls that it was
time to arise from table.

Lady Campstown, watching this little drama
of every day, felt worried and puzzled.  She
had never given up the idea that Clandonald
had cared for Miss Carstairs, and was only
debarred from telling her so from his pride
of poverty and the clog attached to his career.
Although her ladyship's secret heart yearned
over Posey, and she would have given worlds
to see Clan's allegiance transferred to her, the
American rival well disposed of in some other
way (nature not settled in her mind) and
Posey becoming a member of their family, her
very own to cherish through life, the joyous
regenerator of her nephew's hopes and
fortunes—she now felt this to be a fairy tale
beyond chance of reality.  Much as she had
talked to Posey about Clan that winter (and
one must have experience of the wealth of
conversation a lonely old woman lavishes upon
the young, strong, vigorous manhood that
belongs to her and has gone out to the world,
forsaking her, to know just how much that
was), the girl had never in return given her
a hint of interest in him beyond the common.
She had spoken of their meeting on shipboard,
had acceded to Lady Campstown's appeals for
interest in the chief events of his life, but had
ventured nothing on her own account.

Slowly, but surely, therefore, Lady
Campstown had seen the evanishment of this hope,
conceived in secret and brought forth in fear,
without a suggestion of it having been
consigned to Miss Winstanley.  The arrival of
Mr. Glynn, duly presented to her ladyship in form,
had shown the dowager the futility of her
hopes.  The engagement with Glynn was real,
tangible, not a boy-and-girl fancy that might
drift into smoke—it was undeniably "there to stay."

Lady Campstown, perhaps unwillingly,
could not withhold from Glynn the tribute of
admiration his manly exterior, his fearless
earnestness of character, were wont to extort
from strangers.  She had failed, though, to
discern in Posey any of the usual signs and
tokens by which a girl takes the world into her
confidence concerning her joy at a lover's
coming.  She marvelled at the child's matter-of-fact
demeanor, her off-hand bonhommie, her
warm spirit of comradeship to Glynn.  It must
be, thought the old lady, a little put out by
these conditions, which were not according to
her recollections or her views, "that is the
way they do it in America!"

Thus, perforce falling back upon the Helen
Carstairs idea again, that young lady's arrival
in Cannes had seemed little short of Providential.
Clandonald must, according to his promises
and forecasts of travel, be shortly in the
field.  There was no question that he had once
admitted to his aunt it was some American
lady who had caused the trouble from Ruby
shortly after his return to Beaumanoir.  He
had been vague, elusive, as men always are in
telling what their womenkind want to know
about other women; but there had been a girl,
an American girl; Ruby had attacked him
through this girl, he had paid dearly to silence
the base tormentor, and then, in an access of
wounded pride and disgust, had again shaken
the dust of his native land from his feet, and
journeyed into the unknown.  Months had
passed, long enough for Clandonald's angry
feelings to subside.  He must soon come back
to Villa Julia, where he had known so many
happy hours.  His aunt would make him
thoroughly comfortable, happy, as she well knew
how to do.  She would go slowly, leaving
Helen and himself to drift together again in
the natural order of such things.  It must, it
must come out all right!

While indulging in this optimistic thought
for the twentieth time in two days, Lady
Campstown had happened to catch a glimpse
of Helen's face between two candelabra.  It
was the first time she had seen it in repose
since the young lady's visit to Beaumanoir,
and she was struck with an increase of thought
and pain in the rare, fine countenance.  At
once she decided that Helen was fretting after
Clan, and her warm heart bounded with
sympathy.  She went up to Miss Carstairs when
the women were together after dinner and
spoke to her cordially, flatteringly.  Posey,
from where she sat with her two greatest
ladies—tarrying there, however, just long
enough to say a few modest words, then
leaving them to what they desired, conversation
with each other—saw the talk between her two
friends, and longed to join in it.  Hastening
upon her rounds as a hostess, she in due time
came up with them.

"What a nice time you two dear souls are
having!" she exclaimed.  "And how I've
wanted to be with you!  It is so much nicer
always to be with the few one loves than with
the many one merely has to know."

"You have been gleaning golden opinions,
all the same," said Helen.  "Lady Campstown
has been telling me what Princess Z——
says of you as an entertainer—that you were
born, not made."

"I reckon—no, I *fancy* I came by it
honestly," laughed Posey.  "I always enjoy the
things we give so much more than those we go to."

"I am asking Miss Carstairs to come to me
to-morrow for luncheon," said Lady Campstown,
putting with loving fingers a stray bit
of Posey's lace in place.  "And I do hope,
dear, you haven't promised anybody else."

"I'll come, surely," exclaimed the girl.
"Though I suppose I ought not to forsake
daddy and John these few days we have
together.  But to tell you the mortifying truth,
they are continually falling knee-deep into
talks of which I can't understand a thing.
And sometimes I slip out with my dogs, and
they don't even know that I have gone."

"'Slip out' to-morrow, then, at 1.30, and
bring the dogs," said Lady Campstown.
"But, my dear, what does this mean that I
hear, Mr. Glynn is for leaving us on Thursday?"

"He's going to catch the 'Kronprinz' at
Cherbourg, Saturday, and must have a few
hours in Paris.  It's awfully stupid, I tell
him, but when an American man gets hold of
a scheme that spells business you can no more
induce him to loose hold of it than my darling
Maida will consent to give up a particular pet
bone."

"But he's coming back very soon, they tell
me.  How you Americans can go racing back
and forth across the Atlantic as you do——"

"Yes, he's coming back very soon," said
Posey, faltering a little, and pulling to pieces
a superb white rose with purple-red outside
petals that hung from a vase on the console
next to her.  "I may as well tell you both,
what I meant to do to-morrow, that daddy and
he decided to-day the wedding's to come off
at the end of March.  John will accordingly
rush through a lot of things in New York,
tear back again, probably via Genoa, if they
put on one of the fast ships, and where his
trousseau's to come in, I can't imagine.  My
own will take every minute from now till then,
and all of the missionary aid you two dears
choose to lend me, to make it an accomplished fact."

"You can count upon me in all things,"
Helen said very quietly.

"Oh, my dear lamb, and you ask me to be
glad when it means that I've got to lose you,"
put in Lady Campstown, thinking for the
moment honestly about herself, and thereby
covering what might have been a trying pause
to both girls.  A servant, presenting a tray of
coffee-cups at Lady Campstown's side, helped
further to bridge the moment, and others of
Posey's guests surrounding her with chat and
laughter, the question of the marriage floated
away into space.  Helen, however, took it back
to her hotel with her, wrestled with it during
sleepless hours, and next day, to stave off
intolerable thought, set out for a long walk alone.

Whither she went she neither cared nor
knew.  She had a vague remembrance of
having passed through the flower-market, and
being set upon to buy, by a soft-voiced, smiling
woman who stood behind great blurs of red and
yellow and white and purple, shrined in
verdure, from which luscious scent arose.  To get
rid of her, she had paid a persistent child a
franc for a big bunch of violets, and the girl,
with a saucy, merry face, thrust into her hand
also a spray of orange blossom.  Helen threw
this last away impatiently.  Impossible to be
rid of the suggestions of that wedding,
ten-fold more abhorrent to her now that she had
seen for herself and knew beyond a peradventure
that it was inspired by no such love as she
and John had felt for each other only a day or
two before; such love as she must feel for him,
God help her, till she died.

She walked on through the town, far into
the outskirts, till seeing a sign of "New Milk"
upon a chalet near the road made her suddenly
remember she had set out without even her
morning coffee.  Going inside the building, she
sat for a few moments at a table while a woman
served her with rolls and a glass of milk, and
then, starting forth again, was vaguely
tempted to ascend a hillside which rose
abruptly above the spot, crowned with a noble
growth of trees.

Helen had no sooner gained the smooth
plateau of the summit than she remembered
where she was.  Long ago, as a child, in charge
of her English governess, journeying from the
Italian seashore to join her father at
Marseilles, they had stopped over for a midsummer
fête at Mont St. Cassien, where, in blazing
heat, the Cannois and their rustic neighbors
from miles around had fulfilled an old custom
of Provence in holding service at a little chapel
on this hill, the remainder of the day and
evening being spent in feasting at tables spread on
the slopes and in the green valley below.  She
could shut her eyes and see again the lights
gleaming around the tables, as the hot
darkness fell, the gay costumes, and the chain of
dancers threading its way among the trees.

The grass was growing wild and coarse
where she followed a shaded path to the little
hut in which a holy hermit had once lived and
died.  A peasant woman in the kitchen of the
hermitage was cooking something in a casserole
over a tiny fire, but she left it civilly to
conduct the stranger through to the chapel
adjoining.  A girl grown to woman's height,
but, alas, a child in intellect, began pulling and
tugging at her mother's gown, asking witless
questions and being repeatedly, but tenderly,
thrust aside by the woman, and told to stay in
her own place.

Helen hardly knew why she had acceded
to the woman's suggestion that she should visit
the uninteresting sanctuary, with its cheap
emblems and smell of stale incense, and
decorations of paper flowers.

But she understood, when through the now
opened front door a gentleman stepped from
broad sunshine into the chill interior, apparently
as aimless as herself, and came up to her side.

"Helen!  You are alone?"

"You here!" she answered under her
breath.  "When I have come all this
distance to be away from you!"

"It is the same with me, Helen," Glynn
said in a sombre voice.  "I have wandered
and wandered up here for no reason in
particular, trying to believe you are not in
Cannes, trying to master my ungovernable
desire to be with you only once again."

"It is all of a piece with our being thrust
together that day upon the train," she cried
impetuously.  "What have we done that such
things should be forced upon us?"

"Come out at least into the sunshine," he
said, taking her cold hand.  "You will be
chilled in this dreary place."

Giving a douceur to the poor guardian of
the premises, they went together to a point of
the hillside whereon the trunk of a fallen tree
offered a semblance of a seat.

Helen, actually nerveless, dropped upon it,
Glynn standing beside her, neither daring to
speak first.

"You know that I am leaving to-morrow?"
he asked finally.

"Posey told me so last night," she answered.

"She told you what was to follow my return
at the end of March?"

"Yes."

"The question is, Am I a man of honor or
a scoundrel?" he went on with a frowning
brow.  "I have thought of it so long, so
intensely, that my judgment has ceased to act.
Helen, you have the clearest mind, the most
well-balanced conscience I ever knew——"

"You can say that, when I was so false to
myself and you as to let you go that time in
New York, before all these complications came
upon us?" she interrupted him bitterly.
"But there, what is the use?  We have parted,
there is no hope, let us never speak of
ourselves together again.  If it is your duty to
Posey, to her father, that torments you; I bid
you keep your pledge.  It is impossible that
you should now make any motion to withdraw
from it.  The one terrible thing to me was
that we should all go on and Poesy have no
idea what you and I once were to each
other——"

"Nobody could know that," the man said
sturdily.  Helen shivered.

"But you have relieved me of that fear,"
she hurried on.  "I saw at once, last night,
that you had told her——"

"Only that you were the woman I had
loved before plighting myself to her.  She
knows nothing of the circumstances of our
acquaintance.  That is my secret, mine only,
to be treasured till I die."

"She knows enough, however, to make clear
the way between us," Helen made further
haste to say.  "If you are kind now, you will
end this conversation that ought never to have
begun.  I shall be leaving Cannes shortly.  My
father is coming for me in his yacht.  Before
I see you again you will have in your keeping
the happiness, the trust, of one—no, two, of
the kindest, most confiding creatures God ever
made.  Never think that it is I who could try
and weaken you at the outset of such a task.
If necessary, rather let Posey think that I
have grown cold to her than run the risk of
such a re-awakening of old feeling as we two
have innocently suffered from to-day."

Her voice dropped to a whisper.  Violet
shadows had formed under her eyes, the lines
around her mouth had deepened painfully.
But when she looked at him full in the eyes,
he knew there would be no more weakening
in his direction.  Presently she arose, and
they walked together to the foot of the hill,
where Helen hailed a passing carriage and
asked him to put her in it.  A moment more,
and Glynn was indeed alone.

As he walked rapidly homeward, he forced
his mind away from the overpowering interest
of this last chance interview to dwell upon
minor things, among which he was inclined to
classify even the settling of the affair with
Posey's tormentor, Mrs. Darien.  He had,
according to his engagement with that lady, gone
over to Nice by an early train the day
following their interview in the garden.  He had
found her in the melancholy splendors of a
saloon bedroom in a cheap hotel, with a screen
half encircling an untidy couch, a dressing-table
littered with strange scents and unguents,
shabby finery hanging upon hooks, and a
*chaise longue* of rusty plush drawn up before
a writing-table containing, in addition to its
blotter and inkstand, a case of liqueurs and
glasses.

Mrs. Darien, for which he yielded her credit,
made no attempt to apologize for her poor
surroundings.  She received her visitor with
astonishing ease and vivacity; talked rapidly
and cleverly of contemporaneous topics, and
when he came, without overmuch delay, to the
point of the business that brought him, treated
Mr. Glynn in a semi-coquettish, rallying
spirit, as though he were proposing to her a
very good joke.  She closed upon his offer
like a vice, however, and affixed her name to
the paper forfeiting the liberal allowance he
had decided to make her should she be again
heard of as molesting Miss Winstanley with
an eager, trembling hand.  Glynn had
decided, as he walked away from her into purer
air, that drink or morphia, or both, were
driving the ex-Lady Clandonald to an end at a
fearful rate of speed.  He had paid high for
this visit to Nice, but it counted as nothing
provided she left Mr. Winstanley's little ewe
lamb in peace.

.. vspace:: 2

The two girls met at luncheon at Lady
Campstown's, who had spent the morning in
letting Posey experiment upon her nerves
in the Winstanley's automobile.  Posey felt
proud indeed of this success, when she brought
home the dowager (at the utmost limit of
speed disallowed by law), thrilled and
enchanted, after beginning her expedition with
closed eyes and a prayer upon her lips.
Mr. Winstanley, who had long since abandoned
himself to sharing risks with his girl, sat
beside his guest, exhibiting to the public the
exterior of a diver for pearls combined with a
hippopotamus.

Flushed by conquest, Posey had recovered
her buoyant spirits, and their meal was
enlivened by her old daring sallies.  She even
ventured, in the welcome absence of Miss
Bleecker, upon introducing an imitation of
that lady, in an entanglement of eye-glasses,
trying to read the dinner menu at sea.  Lady
Campstown, who thought less of Miss
Bleecker than she had before seeing her
recent barefaced designs upon Mr. Winstanley,
enjoyed this very much; but Posey confessed
it had not been a success at home, owing to
Mr. Winstanley not relishing satire directed
toward acquaintances, and considering Miss
Bleecker, on the whole, "a very polite and
agreeable lady."

When Posey separated from Helen after
lunch she felt that a little frost had fallen
upon their friendship.  She instinctively
realized that things could not be between them
what they were before Glynn had owned to
her he had first loved Helen.  Something told
her that it needed time to smooth over a
situation like their own.  After John left on the
morrow she would, perhaps, see dear Helen
with a lighter heart.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Glynn had sailed away again, and
preparations for the wedding had already
begun to absorb Miss Winstanley.  She had been
gone for a week in Paris with Lady Campstown
when Mr. Carstairs' yacht, the "Sans
Peur," made its appearance in the harbor.
Previous to this, it may be told, Miss Bleecker
had privately received and cashed a draft
upon her bankers that had put the chaperon
in unprecedented funds and spirits.  She had
received also a telegram of instructions from
Mrs. Carstairs, at Gibraltar, directing her to
engage for their party a suite of costly
apartments at the Grand Hotel.  Full of
importance, she swelled here, there and everywhere,
detailing to all ears the grandeur and importance
of her employers, and basking in the rays
of glory they sent before them.  She needed
a little cheering at this time, since Mr. Winstanley
had remained inflexible, declining her
offers to bear him company on his terrace, and
treating her persistently as a worthy elderly
person, beyond the pale of pleasures that do
not belong to the late afternoon of life.

For Helen the days preceding the arrival
of the "Sans Peur" were profoundly sad
ones.  Putting aside her feelings upon another
theme, her dread of reunion with Mrs. Carstairs
robbed her of all joy in her dear father's
coming.  In vain Miss Bleecker drummed into
her ears how nobler far it is to give than to
receive, how a self-sacrifice like hers would
bring its own reward, how Helen was destined
to be the blessed medium through whom joy
and harmony would descend upon the Carstairs
family for evermore.

If a faint—ever so faint—hope survived in
Helen's mind that her stepmother's specious
assurances of good-will to her and devotion
to her father were to be credited, this faded
upon her first visit to the yacht.  In the cabin
where she herself had once reigned as queen
she found Mrs. Carstairs, coarsened, indefinably
repellant, although still superb in bloom
and with a Rubens lady's plenitude of
physique.  Around her were grouped two or three
men, making up the party of which Helen was
expected to be the bulwark of respectability.
One of them, a Mr. Danielson, Helen disliked
promptly and instinctively; none would she
have admitted into the circle of her
acquaintances at home.  When Mr. Carstairs, after
some delay, made his appearance, Helen was
shocked beyond measure to behold in him a
mere weary wraith, beside whom his wife
seemed to flaunt her beauty and splendid
health with insolence.  His greeting of his
daughter was indifferent, abstracted.  She
found it impossible to have a word alone with
him.  The thought of the cruise before her
lay like ice on Helen's heart.

Before Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs had spent
a week in Cannes the lady declared it to be a
poky hole and wished she had gone to Nice.
To Nice they accordingly repaired, and in due
course of time sailed for Naples.  While
Mrs. Carstairs rattled and joked noisily with her
other guests, she reserved for the handsome
cad at whom Helen had taken special umbrage
a reserve of manner more suspicious to an
interested looker-on.  To Helen, a petty
agony of the cruise was that Mr. Danielson
should conceive himself obliged to devote most
of his leisure hours to attendance upon the
owner's daughter, refusing with fatuous
persistency to be shaken off.  A few brief
scornful words of remonstrance on this subject,
addressed to her stepmother, were met by the
laughing assurance that there was really
nothing for Helen to apprehend, and that a
man so universally run after as was
Mr. Danielson, by what Mrs. Carstairs called the
"fair sex," must meet the risk of having his
casual attentions misinterpreted at times.

Proud, wounded, scornful, feeling that her
standard of life had dropped to an unendurable
point, Helen got into the habit of keeping
to herself as much as practicable.  At
Naples she would take her own maid and
absent herself for hours from the yacht and
its dubious company.  To her father there
was actually no chance of being what she had
hoped.  He was mostly captious, preferring
to be left alone when his wife did not
vouchsafe him her companionship—which was now
a rare event.  The great Mr. Carstairs was,
indeed, socially a cipher among these
half-breeds, who drank his wines and allowed him
to pay their expenses of travel.

Miss Bleecker, under the infatuation of
Mrs. Carstairs' liberal money-spending, of
their luxurious living and continual seeking
of pleasure and excitement in which she was
included when, as usual, Helen refused to
go—became as a broken reed in support of her
charge's movements.  Poor old Eulalie, with
some sense of the loss of refined surroundings
they had sustained, and a hearty dislike
of the imperative chaperon, ranged herself
exclusively upon the side of her young
lady—refusing to fraternize with Mrs. Carstairs'
maid, whom she regarded as a second-rate
creature in every way, and going through the
routine of life in general with a dogged
determination to endure unto the end.

A day came at last when Miss Carstairs
went out to Pompeii with her maid, instead of
to the museum in Naples, where she had
announced her intention of spending the afternoon.

She left Eulalie sitting upon an immemorial
stone and wandered off alone through the
beautiful sad place.  To the guardian, who
would fain have followed her, she gave a
piece of money and a gracious smile, explaining
that she knew it all by heart, and wanted
only to gain a general impression of the dead
city on that day of radiant spring.  She had
been standing for some time near the tomb of
Mamia, looking out over the bay and mountains
of Castellamare melting together in sunshine,
and, recalled to the present by the lateness
of the hour, started to walk back to where
she had left the monumental Eulalie.

Her resolution to leave the yacht, to abandon
the party, and if needs be to forfeit all
that her acquiescence had secured for her,
was now definitely taken.  To avoid discussion,
she would simply ask her father to allow
Miss Bleecker and herself to go up to Rome,
where Mr. Carstairs could never abide visiting,
on the ground that he did not like living
over catacombs and being face to face with
so many things already done for.  He knew
Helen's tender passion for the Imperial City,
and might excuse her from going on with
them to Sicily.

From Miss Bleecker she felt sure of meeting
fierce and stubborn resistance to her plan.
The dream of Miss Bleecker's life had been
a cruise in the "Sans Peur," and it was hardly
to be supposed she would easily relinquish it.
But Helen felt that upon occasion she could
be stubborn too.  Any clash of wills, and
subsequent victory for her, was worth undertaking,
to rid her of the offensive companionship
of Mrs. Carstairs—and one other.

She could not be sure of what she suspected
between them.  She scorned to make herself
assured.  She could not stoop to the
miserable method necessary to the acquirement of
dread certainty.  And yet "she was walking
every day with bare feet on a burning
pavement without feeling the burn."

Passing with noiseless step before a house-wall
arising like a screen before her path, she
paused for a moment to enjoy one last gaze
at the pageant of sea and sky in the light of
waning day.  In this brief time the sound of
her own name spoken by low voices behind
the ruined wall forced themselves upon her
hearing.  They were those of her stepmother
and the man Danielson.

Two phrases interchanged, but they told
Helen all.  She could never again indulge in
the misery of doubt.

She stood for an instant as if overtaken
by the lava flow that had devastated the homes
of seventeen centuries ago surrounding her.
The one despairing, driving impulse was to
steal away unseen by the woman who
dishonored her dear father's name.  Helen
thought she had rather fall down and die and
become embedded with the dust of ages than
go back to face Mrs. Carstairs and let her
know she had found her out.

As the couple, without discovering her
neighborhood, moved in an opposite direction,
Mr. Carstairs' daughter took wings to
her feet and flew to pick up Eulalie and find
the cab they had left before the Hotel Diomed.
The maid, sluggish though were the workings
of her mental part, saw that her mistress had
had a fright, and blamed herself for losing
sight of her.  Helen's cheeks were white, her
hands shook as though palsied, as she sprang
into the cab and bade the man drive fast, fast,
back toward the town.  She wished, at all
events, to avoid being caught up with or
passed by the pair, who could not at that hour
linger much longer within the enclosure.

During the long joggling drive through
interminable stony streets, encumbered by the
populace of the Neapolitan suburbs, performing
their domestic avocations out of doors,
she came to a desperate conclusion.  She was
of age sufficiently mature to act for herself.
She could not, would not, give her reasons to
her father.  But she would carry out her
recent determination to leave the yacht at once,
forfeit the price that had been paid her to be
an infamous blind, and, at any risk, sever her
present connection with Mrs. Carstairs.

Helen possessed the American woman's
promptitude in action.  She drove with
Eulalie to an hotel formerly frequented with her
father, engaged a room for the night, and
sent the maid to the yacht with a note
requesting Miss Bleecker to come to her.  The
interview resulting with her estimable
chaperon was perhaps one of the most painful of
her experience.  The lady, to whom she gave
in explanation of her resolve a bare statement
that she could no longer endure the trial
of life with her stepmother, exhausted
herself in remonstrance and reproach.  She
pointed out to Helen that the money from her
father could still be, and no doubt would be,
withdrawn upon announcement of Miss Carstairs'
extraordinary move.  Helen declared
that, well aware of this fact, she was prepared
to live on the small income coming to her from
her mother's estate.  Miss Bleecker reminded
her that her father was in evidently wretched
health, and that no whim or temper should
stand between him and his daughter's
attendance at his side.  Helen, blushing scarlet,
with tears in her eyes, recalled to Miss
Bleecker that she had not been allowed
access to her father's own cabin since they had
been together on the cruise, and that,
furthermore, he did not appear to want her.  Miss
Bleecker called Heaven to witness that she
had no patience with family jars, had no axe
to grind on her own account, but that if Helen
persisted in her wilful determination she
should feel it *her* bounden duty not to
forsake poor Mrs. Carstairs if wanted to remain.

That evening, between nine and ten, Mrs. Carstairs
called upon Miss Carstairs, but was
not received.  Helen sent back, in a hotel
envelope, her stepmother's card, across which
she had written these words:

"I happened to be at Pompeii this afternoon,
but no other than myself shall know
under what circumstances you also were there.
It is enough that we must part."

.. vspace:: 2

Next day Mrs. Carstairs announced to her
guests that they were sailing for Sicily, and
as Miss Carstairs did not desire to go farther
South, she had decided to return by train to
the Riviera, to visit her friend, Miss
Winstanley, at Cannes, and would rejoin the "Sans
Peur" later, somewhere in the
Mediterranean.  Then the "Sans Peur" steamed
gallantly away, bearing Miss Bleecker, now
installed as companion to the owner's lady, and
Mr. Carstairs, keeping his cabin, it was said,
with a bad attack of some trouble undeclared.

The same evening, as Helen was about
taking her train for Genoa and the Riviera at
the *Stazione Centrale*, she met, face to face
on the platform, Lord Clandonald and M. de
Mariol, returning by way of Corfu, Brindisi
and Naples from the Peloponnesus, where
they had finally brought up after their ramble
in Eastern Europe.  The two men greeted her
with cordial courtesy, receiving in sum the
explanation of her presence made public by
Mrs. Carstairs.  Mariol, from whom she
shrank a little, in the fear that he might
remember against her with rancor the refusal
of his addresses, showed no consciousness that
this episode had occurred between them.  He
was his old self, gentle, sympathetic, with an
exquisite intelligence in dealing with her such
as no other man had exhibited.  He saw her
into her own compartment with her maid, and
before bedtime returned there several times,
to take the seat vacated by Mlle. Eulalie, who
had carried her accustomed headache to an
open window in the corridor.

Before they had talked ten minutes Helen
realized that her great crisis was understood
and felt by him.  In her overstrained and
overburdened state the relief of finding a soul
in tune with her desolate one was infinite.  She
let him know just as much as was necessary
of the impelling cause of her action, and also
that in accepting Miss Winstanley's invitation
in a recent letter to return to Cannes, "if
only to see the spring flowers," she was doing
so until she could make up her mind just how
to readjust her life to altered circumstances.

M. de Mariol said little, but thought much,
after he had left Miss Carstairs for the night.
Clandonald had come once to look after both
of them, and their talk had turned into
cheerful channels.  Both men were brown and
healthy and in good spirits, Mariol on his way
to Paris, Clandonald to Cannes, to visit his
good aunt.  They touched upon the subject of
the Winstanleys' rise into fortune and worldly
vogue, Clandonald saying that Lady Campstown
had written him of Miss Winstanley's
approaching marriage with Mr. Glynn.  In
his frank, untroubled face Helen failed to
discern any symptom of corroding care, and once
more she registered an experience of the brevity
of men's attachments when their object is removed.

During the day's journey that followed,
dashing in and out of tunnels, catching
glimpses of Paradise cut short by the blackness
of the Inferno—or, as some one has aptly
said, "Travelling through a flute and seeing
daylight through its stops"—M. de Mariol
absorbed the chief part of Miss Carstairs'
society, putting forth for her the best of his
rare powers of charm and companionship.
When Clandonald and herself finally left the
train at Cannes, and Mariol went on his way
Paris-wards, Helen breathed a genuine sigh
of regret for a void not to be filled.

The welcome she received from the
Winstanleys went far toward reconciling Miss
Carstairs to the necessity for a continuance
of interest in human existence.  Those warm
and simple-hearted people, refusing to allow
her to stop at an hotel alone with her maid,
opened their home to her with rejoicing
hospitality.  Nothing that she had ever seen of
a kindred nature seemed to her as broad and
warm as their delight in offering her a shelter.
Posey's quick wit divined that a terrible break
had occurred between Helen and her father's
party; her delicacy withheld all questions as
to its cause.  It was enough that Helen
Carstairs, to whom she had looked up with the
veneration of a devotée on his knees before
his shrine, had come upon a time of sorrow,
of disillusion, of deep and lasting despondency,
and that it was Posey's privilege to
afford her protection and sympathy until the
dark hour was past.  It never entered into her
generous nature to draw the contrast between
the days, not so long past, when Helen had
kept her at arm's-length, and she was the
outsider.  Nothing that she could do was too
much to cheer Helen, to make her feel one of
their innermost circle of home, more than a
welcome, a cherished guest.

In this atmosphere of tender *prévenance*
Helen's bruised spirit quickly recuperated.
She did not relax in her intention to make a
small independent home for herself
somewhere, a condition of things her father's
continued silence seemed to bring ominously near.
She had no illusions as to the fact that
Mrs. Carstairs had represented her conduct to her
father in the most unfavorable, unpardonable
light.  A little while she would remain as the
Winstanleys' guest, then would tell Posey
that she had found it obligatory to shift for
herself and to live upon far less than she had
ever done before.

The means of escape from her *impasse* came
to Miss Carstairs from an unexpected quarter.
Three days after her arrival at Reine des
Fées, while sitting with Posey in the orange
walk, a letter was handed her addressed in
M. de Mariol's handwriting.

Helen blushed violently, then grew pale, as
she laid it aside to read in private.  She felt
that it must contain a renewal of his former
offer of marriage, and this time the old feeling
of unfitness was lacking.  She was conscious
only of the great unselfishness and generosity
which this man of intellectual distinction and
wide renown had always shown to her.  She
could see now that life is possible without
either the thrills of young passion or the costly
material pleasures that wealth provides.  Her
future, as the wife of M. de Mariol, would be
assured of certain elements of happiness quite
apart from the demands of her past, but on
the whole as satisfying to a reasonable being.
He had told her that his means enabled him
to be independent of the charge of
fortune-hunting.  He knew that she was now, by her
own act, almost impoverished, and yet he still
wanted her.  He was well-born, admirably
bred, in a social surrounding that would
continually interest her, and was, as always, a true
and loyal gentleman.  Above all, her future
home would be far removed from the unspeakable
black cloud that must hang over it in
America.  And yet——

Posey's happy voice sounded in her ear.
"You aren't going to read your letter, now?
Then you'll let me talk?  You haven't
forgotten that we're dining to-night at Villa
Julia?  Do you think I had better wear my
rose chiffon, or the little white crêpe de chine
with silver embroideries that came from the
bazaar in Cairo?  It was so strange Lord
Clandonald should have taken the hour to
call yesterday, when we were sure to be at
the Golf Club with all the world.  You say
he looks well, Helen?  Bigger, browner,
stronger?  I have been thinking all
yesterday and to-day of dear Lady Campstown's
joy in his return.  When she heard he was
coming she quite forgot me, and my poor
diminished shade crept into insignificance.
With her own dear little thin hands she
smoothed his bed-linen, and put flowers on
his dressing-table.  Ah, how much love means,
Helen!  It's been growing on me every day,
that all the rest is poor flimsy stuff....
I think Lady Campstown has made me over,
and my breast swells in gratitude to her.  I
even love daddy better for loving her....
If I can only end by loving John as much as
I love them!"

"Posey!" said her friend, shivering.

"Don't say you feel the mistral, Helen.  It
simply can't get to us in this sheltered spot.
Dear, I wish you'd be happy, too.  For some
reason that I can't tell, I'm simply bubbling
over to-day.  One of my wild fits, I reckon.
It began when I got your wire saying you
were actually going to be good enough to
come and stay with me, without that hateful
old Bleecker—there, I feel better.  '*Celà
soulage!*' as the woman in that play at the
Gallia said when she had boxed her
husband's ears—and then, and then——"

"Posey!" repeated Helen, with a sort of
awe in her voice.

She had noted, with astonishment and pain,
the girl's uncontrollable delight at the
knowledge of Clandonald's actual vicinity to her.
She had watched her, all the day before,
fluttering with excitement and expectation,
dropping for a while into bitter disappointment
when they had returned home, to find only his
cards!

"Helen, you think I'm impatient for this
evening to come, but I'm not.  I can wait
perfectly well to see Lady Campstown with her
'boy.'  But you know how the person
somebody you love is always talking about and
waiting for, seems the one you want most to
see.  Not a day this winter that the old
darling hasn't talked to me of 'Clan.'  I believe
I know about every incident of his life, except
the gloomy ones connected with his marriage—his
first pony, his scarlet fever, all the rest
of it——"

Helen's anxious brow cleared.

"I suppose it's natural, but you mustn't
forget, my dear, that he's very handsome and
charming, and your fancy took a little turn
that way on shipboard—and that you are soon
to be married to John Glynn."

Posey heaved a long, genuine sigh.

"I don't forget.  I'm all right for John,
only I wish I could be free a little longer.  I
should think you'd know nothing would tempt
me to be in love with a man whose wife isn't
dead.  Anyhow, I told John every single thing
that ever passed between Clandonald and me,
not the tiniest thing hidden.  Of course John
saw I couldn't help being more interested, in
a certain way, in Clandonald than in any man
I ever saw before."

"Not of course, Posey," said Helen, half
smiling.  "There are even some people who
might consider the man you have more
'interesting' than the man you might have had."

"Oh!  John is a darling.  Everybody
knows that, but their looks are not to be
compared—why, Helen, he's not as tall as
Clandonald by several inches—he hasn't that
beautiful set of the head upon the shoulders, just
such as I should think a king would have—and
that rich, thick brown hair—Helen, it's
really dreadful how thin John's hair is
getting on the top."

Helen dropped her book upon the ground.

"Don't, Posey," she exclaimed, almost
sharply.  "It isn't worthy of you to talk
such nonsense."

"Ah, well," said the girl, mischievously,
"I feel like saying those little things
sometimes, it seems to relieve the tension....
Helen, don't look at me with such a face,"
she added, with sudden gravity.  "It almost
makes me think that though John is going
to marry me, you haven't entirely stopped
caring for him....  How pale you are!
You frighten me! ... You know you do,
you know you do, and he—?  How could he
love me when he had you near?  I see it all
now.  He would like to get you back; he has
never really wanted me, and I'm only to be
taken because of his duty to my father."

The April mood had changed.  Great drops
of crystal welled into her blue eyes and
dropped upon her cheeks.  Impelled by
desperate resolve, Helen sprang upon her feet.

"Don't cry, dear.  Don't cry, my darling
Posey.  You are over-nervous, and it isn't
wise for us to prolong a talk like this.  I will
leave you for a little while alone, to go in and
read my letter, and when we meet again at
luncheon, I may have something to tell you
about myself that will take away all fear of
my ever coming between you and your John Glynn."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

Clandonald had now been two whole days
in Cannes without treating himself to a
glimpse of the young woman with whom he
had parted in a fog off Liverpool.  And yet
this was not through indifference, or
forgetfulness, for in all his wanderings the image
of the fair American, his "Goddess of
Liberty," as he liked to think of her, had gone
with him persistently, in spite of the
unpleasant fact that he knew her to be engaged to,
and now on the point of matrimony with,
another man.  Even Mariol had not found out
how keenly the news of the forthcoming
nuptials of Miss Winstanley and Mr. Glynn had
cut into his friend's sensibilities.  Rather
than meet her, Clandonald would fain have
avoided the Riviera altogether, to go on direct
to London, but for the pleading image of his
dear old aunt, who was counting upon him
to come to her.  Nobody suspected that in a
long, flat pocket-book of Viennese leather,
presented to him at parting by Lady
Campstown—and for a wonder in woman's gifts,
actually available by the male recipient—he
carried a picture of Posey, cut out of an
English illustrated paper, found in a wayside inn
in Roumania, among other "Beauties of the
Day and Hour."  It was a charming characteristic
pose in which the photographer had
caught her, and the gown and coiffure showed
the girl's advance in worldly style and
knowledge of how to make the most of her
advantages.  Here, indeed, would have been a Lady
Clandonald, amply equipped to take her place
in the picture gallery of Beaumanoir among
the beauties of their line!  And in her frank
young face he could read no trace of the
unwholesome tastes and proclivities that had
wrecked him through Ruby Darien.  It was
a folly, a childish weakness, to treasure this
scrap of paper in his breast pocket close over
his heart, and he had resolved that he would
soon violently dispossess himself of the same
by casting it in the fire.  Let him meet her
once again, have speech with her in the
ordinary way, realize that she was entirely
absorbed in preparations for her union with
another, and it would be easier to be done for
good and all with this strange, obstinate,
enduring obsession.

It was not the best atmosphere for a man
in his state of mind to find himself in daily
intercourse with his impulsive old aunt, whose
life had been for weeks and months saturated
with the influence of Posey's personality.
Although Lady Campstown honestly believed
herself to be doing everything that feminine
tact and zeal could inspire to extol to him the
desirability of Helen Carstairs as a wife, she
was really setting forth Posey's charm from
morning until night.  She told Clandonald
how the girl had first come to her, tall and
nymph-like, through the avenue of palms,
with violets, white and blue, clustered around
her footprints.  How, immediately, her first
distaste of the dreaded American neighbor
had been swept away in the girl's sweet
appeal to her friendship; how she had then only
done for her what she would have had
another woman do, in like case, for her own
Lucy, had she lived.  And how, little by little,
she had grown to wait upon Posey's daily
coming, to laugh with her, to sympathize in
her needs and perplexities, until she counted
a day lost when Miss Winstanley did not
appear to irradiate it.

"At the same time, my dear," the dowager
said, interrupting herself, "I am not going
to pretend that there are not other girls in
the world as engaging and lovable as she.
Miss Carstairs, for example, is—er—*most*
distinguished in her appearance, and has
admirable manners.  Posey tells me that her
friend Helen is so highly educated she makes
her feel as ignorant as a street Arab.  Of
course, that's only the child's American habit
of exaggeration.  She really reads and studies
part of every day, and her literature teacher,
Miss Barton, says Miss Winstanley's memory
for facts and grasp of ideas is something
quite out of the common.  As I was saying,
Helen Carstairs is just the kind of person I
should think would bear transplanting into
English life.  She is so simple and
unemotional and self-contained.  When you go to
Heine des Fées to call—when did you say
you were going to call, Clan dear?"

"I don't think I said, Aunt Lucy," answered
her nephew, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Ah, well, dear, probably it will be to-day,
as you have now had time to draw breath
after telling me all about your travels.  You
must have had a very pleasant journey from
Naples in company with Miss Carstairs."

"Yes, very pleasant, what Mariol would
let me have of her.  He was very absorbent,
it must be said.  You know I told you once,
long ago, that I believed good old Mariol had
actually knocked under to a fair Yankee, and
I have now every reason to believe that this
lady is the object of his secret cult."

"I never heard of such a thing!"
exclaimed Lady Campstown, for her, almost
sharply.  "I can't imagine a more unsuitable
idea.  These marriages with Frenchmen
rarely turn out well.  At least, unless the man
has a title and a château, and the foreign wife
would have some interests in the country.  A
mere brilliant, drifting, scoffing creature like
M. de Mariol—!  Think of that book of his
I found on your table and tried to read.
Why, there were ideas in it that made my
hair stand on end."

"Moral: Aunt Lucys shouldn't carry off
the French books they find on their nephews'
tables," answered he, teasingly.  "It is a
fact, however, that Miss Carstairs seemed to
find extreme satisfaction in her long-continued
duet with my clever chum.  It was as
much as I could do to get a word in edgewise."

"I am surprised, and I must say a little
put out, Clan.  I shouldn't think you'd have
given her up like that to any man, however
friendly he might be."

"To give up argues to have had.  And I
cannot truly claim to have established any
monopoly in the young lady's society.  Aunt
Lucy, dear, I won't tease you any more.  As
our American friends say, 'you've been
barking up the wrong tree.'  It was never Miss
Carstairs that turned my poor, weak brain.
I admire, esteem her cordially, and think
Mariol would get an ideal wife if she would
smile on him—but love her—never in this
world."

"But you *said* I might think what I pleased
as to your being spooney about an American
girl, that day you brought her to Beaumanoir
and afterward told me you had decided
to go away again.  It was virtually
acknowledging that you loved her, and but
for the abominable interference of a person
who shall be nameless, would have pressed
your suit."

"They said that in Lord Byron's days,
Aunt Lucy, or was it Miss Edgeworth's?
And you have been dwelling on that rash
admission of mine, and building air castles
with me and Miss Carstairs looking out of
the windows all these months in consequence?
No, best of aunties, you are horribly out of
focus.  You've got hold of the wrong
person altogether.  I don't in the least mind
letting you know that I made all kinds of a fool
of myself on that voyage over last October.
I dreamed dreams never to be realized.  And,
as the powers of mischief willed it, Ruby
seeing my name announced for that sailing,
had taken a second-class passage on the same
ship, with the laudable hope of 'making it
hot for me,' she said.  She succeeded but too
well.  She peppered an innocent young girl
with vile anonymous notes that made her
shun the sight of me.  After I got to town,
she wrote to me directly, and to buy her off I
made certain sacrifices I could ill afford.  As
far as I know to the contrary, I did buy her
off.  I count any money well spent that would
keep shame and sorrow out of the life of the
girl I set out to champion.  She never knew
of it, she very likely wouldn't care.  She
probably went on her straight, clean path of life,
and forgot everything connected with me.
Yes, it *was* an American girl, Aunt Lucy, but
she wasn't Helen Carstairs."

"My poor boy, my darling Clan," began
the dowager, then choked and remained silent.

"I know you'll never ask me who it was,
dear, so I'll make haste and put you out of
your misery.  Did it never occur to you that
your admiration for Miss Winstanley might
be a family failing?"

"Oh! not *that*, Clan.  Never *that*!  To
think you got so near anything that would
have given me such pure joy——"

"I didn't get near, that was just the trouble.
I believe she liked me, perhaps better than
any other man on board, till Ruby's doings
came between us.  But she gave me unmistakably
to understand there could be nothing
again after we parted then.  Of course, when
I heard later that she was engaged to this
man Glynn——"

"Who is really a fine, manly fellow, Clan;
you couldn't help liking him.  But, oh! why
couldn't he have fancied the Carstairs girl
and left my Posey for you?  And, my dear,
it is just a marvel to me.  Posey, who is as
open as a spring morning when there isn't a
cloud in the sky; Posey, who never prevaricates
or hesitates about the truth, how could
she let me go on, day after day, hour after
hour, talking about you——"

"A fine evidence of her polite endurance,
Aunt Lucy.  Poor Miss Winstanley!"

"How could she, I say, without giving me
the least little hint that you had fallen in love
with her?"

"I suppose because she considered that my secret."

"Now that I think it over, it seems to me
that she almost always managed to turn the
conversation in your direction.  She certainly
showed the utmost relish in whatever I had
to tell her, good, bad or indifferent."

"There was no occasion for the use of
either of the two last adjectives, when I was
your subject," said Clandonald, looking at
her with tenderness, more touched than he
chose to show.

"No, my dear, there wasn't, I must say.
Oh!  Clan, it all comes back to me with a rush.
Why, Posey has been just *living* on talk of
you and reminiscences of you ever since we
have been together.  And I thought it was
only I!"

"Take care, Aunt Lucy," the man said,
getting up to stride back and forth across
the room.  "This is dangerous doctrine you're
preaching, when Miss Winstanley's wedding-day
is set."

"God forgive me, so it is," answered Lady
Campstown, the tears rushing into her eyes.

"Let us make a pact, will you?" said
Clandonald, stopping presently.  "I have gone
over and left my pasteboards in due form at
Reine des Fées, at a time when you told me
the ladies were likely to be at the Golf Club."

"Yes, and I was really quite put out about
it, but I see now that it was better so."

"And I shall meet the young lady at dinner
here this evening, according to your plan.
There will be several outsiders.  I shan't
have much chance to speak with her, and
after that——"

"Clan, don't suggest that you will leave
me after that.  Indeed, I couldn't stand it;
you positively must stay.  I should tell you
that you won't run much chance of seeing
Posey privately, in any case.  She's
tremendously taken up with fitters and people
who come down from Paris to bring things for
her to see.  Besides, Miss Carstairs isn't in
good spirits, I find, and no wonder—I believe
she just broke and ran away from that
dreadful vulgar stepmother.  We heard enough of
Mrs. Carstairs' doings the little time she was
here to be thankful she took herself off.
There's trouble brewing for the husband, if
all one is told is true.  Posey watches over
Helen like a mother-bird, and hardly leaves
her.  Besides, they are expecting at any day
or time the return of Mr. Glynn.  He hasn't
cabled, but it was understood he was to get
aboard the first available ship sailing for
Cherbourg or the Mediterranean ports the
hour after he finished some critical business
he had on hand for his chief.  (The way
these Americans fly fairly takes one's breath
away!)  So there is no reason for you to go
from here, if you think there's to be any
embarrassment resulting from your meeting
with her.  The days will glide on fast enough
to the wedding!" she ended with a deep and
heartfelt sigh.

"I don't want to run in face of the enemy,
indeed," he said, trying for a more cheerful
face.  "I think I'll stroll out in the garden
and smoke a pipe, and try and settle my
perturbed spirit.  And you, dear, what will you
do with yourself this afternoon?"

"The carriage is ordered, soon, for a round
of visits I have to make.  How much rather
had I spend the time, as I often do at this
hour, going in through the green door to sit
with Posey in the orange walk—near the
fountain with the broken-nosed Triton, you
remember.  It's her favorite spot, and
nothing but rain will prevent her sitting there
for an hour with her book or work."

"Then I'll see you at tea-time, if not before."

"I'll be back, you may trust me.  Nothing
I dislike more than having my tea out, at
houses where a woman sits behind a little
table, talking to everybody that comes, and
mixing the most abominable doses of half-cold
tea, and too much cream and sugar, for
her unoffending guests, forgetting whether
the water boils or the tea-pot has stood too
long!  Keep to the bamboo walk, my dear, the
mistral is blowing hard to-day, and you're
not like me, acclimatized to it.  Down there
you'll be sheltered and private, and can smoke
your pipe in peace."

.. vspace:: 2

Clandonald had hardly left his aunt standing
before the fireplace in her sunny
drawing-room, pondering upon the surprising
intelligence he had communicated, when Lady
Campstown's parlor-maid came in with a
rather frightened face.

"Well, Parks, what is it?  Have you
broken a piece of my old Sèvres in putting
out the dessert service, or has pussy had a fit?"

"It's only, my lady," said the girl,
haltingly, "that the—er—lady you gave us
orders not to admit has driven up to the
gate in a cab, and insists upon seeing you
on business of the highest importance, so she
says."

"You mean the person calling herself
Mrs. Darien?" asked the dowager, in icy tones.

"That were the name, your ladyship."

"What can I do?" passed through Lady
Campstown's much-perturbed and angered
brain.  "Clan's being here complicates
matters dreadfully.  She is quite capable of
making a scene that will echo through the
neighborhood.  I have declared that I will not again
hold speech with her.  If she were herself, I
believe even she would not push into my house
and presence.  The horrible fear is that she
is not herself, but under the influence of
drink.  In that case I must get old Rosa,
who loves her still, to take her off quietly.

"Say that Lady Campstown will see Mrs. Darien
for ten minutes before she goes out
to keep an engagement.  And, Parks, tell the
cab to wait.  Not outside the front gate, but
in the lane at the bottom of the garden.  And,
Parks, send Rosa to me at once."

The Provençal servant, called Rosa, with a
rather pale and guilt-stricken face and
manner, came hastily into the drawing-room,
stepping back to hold open its door for
Mrs. Darien, who followed close upon her heels.

"Stop where you are, Rosa," said the
mistress of the dwelling, now the great lady in
every muscle and fibre of her stately little
form.  She spoke in the woman's own tongue,
and her low, clear voice was charged with
indignant emphasis.  "From this lady's
appearance in my house, I assume that she is
in some degree irresponsible for her actions,
and that she needs a caretaker to escort her
back whence she came.  I desire you to make
yourself ready to go with her, now, directly,
without delay, and not to return under my
roof until you can report to me that you have
done so."

"No such great hurry, Aunt Lucy," said
Mrs. Darien, with careless insolence.  "I'm
really in a very normal and pacific state of
mind, considering the way the mistral is blowing,
and that I, last night, spent my last sou
at Monte Carlo, and will be turned out of my
room at Nice if I can't pay for it before a
couple of days have passed."

"You can stoop to ask me for money?"
said Lady Campstown, in English.

"When one's flat on the ground one hasn't
to stoop, you know," answered the visitor,
calmly arranging the folds of her veil drawn
over a cheap plumed hat, under which a
chalk-white countenance with gleaming eyes
revealed itself menacingly.  "I chanced to see
in the local paper that Clan had arrived to
stop with you, and so simply timed my visit
when you would feel most impelled to pay to
get rid of me.  What, for instance, if he were
to step in at this moment, through that
window into the garden?  Wouldn't it be rather
cheap at the price to see the last of me for a
couple of hundred francs or so?"

Lady Campstown, with a swelling heart,
walked over to her escritoire, unlocking a
compartment thereof to take out two bank-notes
of the amount indicated.  She despised
herself for the action, but could not trust her
voice to speak.

"Thanks, so very much," said Ruby, superbly
putting her gains into a bag of gilded
meshes hanging at her waist.  "And as I see
you flashing the lightning of your virtuous
eye upon that poor, shuddering numbskull of a
Rosa there, let me at least exonerate her from
any complicity in the arrangement for my
visit here to-day."

"I have heard that you have been seen
lately in the lane below my garden,"
exclaimed the dowager hotly, "and that some
one in my household is under suspicion of
having been holding conversation with you
in the bamboo walk.  I can only say that if
this happens again Rosa goes out of my
service on the minute."

Ruby, who had been covetously looking
around the luxurious, familiar room, shrugged
her shoulders indifferently.

"I suppose I must not detain you," she
said conventionally, turning to withdraw.
"But since you have suggested it, I would
be really quite glad to have Rosa escort me
back to my hotel.  The effort of coming
here—perhaps the force of old associations—has
proved something of an ordeal to me.  My
heart is rather spinning around, and I am not
altogether sure I can answer for the strength
necessary to support my legs on the retreat."

"Go, Rosa, put on your hat and jacket as
I bid you, and accompany Madame," said
Lady Campstown, nervously anxious to end
the scene at any cost.  A fuller view of
Mrs. Darien's face had showed her the awful
extent to which time and an evil life had ravaged
it.  She would not look at her a second time,
but, shuddering, walked away to the window
and set it wide open, standing with her back
to the offender, in speechless disgust and
misery.

To be one minute unobserved was enough
for Ruby Darien.  She had been standing
near a little cabinet, on a shelf of which was
accustomed to lie Lady Campstown's own
especial pass-key through the little green
door into the garden of Reine des Fées.  Since
the occupation of the place by tenants this
had not been used.  But things were not wont
to change their position often at Villa Julia,
and the key still lay in its old corner
undisturbed.  Ruby's nimble fingers closed upon
and transferred it to the interior of her little
gilded bag, while Lady Campstown, resolved
not to speak to her visitor again, kept her
position at the window.

"I suppose, then, I may go?" said Ruby,
laughing softly.  "In view of your inhospitable
attitude, I have really no excuse for
lingering.  *Au revoir*, Aunt Lucy.  I will return
to you your old Rosa unspotted by the world.
And if it will add to Clan's pleasure to hear
I am near him, give him my compliments."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

Clandonald, meantime, was walking up and
down in the bamboo avenue, chewing the cud
of sweet and bitter fancy.  Lady Campstown's
loving babble had put him in possession of
an idea that haunted him like sweet music.
"Posey has been fairly *living* on talk of you
and reminiscences of you ever since we met."  With
all due allowance for the predisposition
of the kind speaker in his favor, there was a
suggestion of conviction in her manner that
he could not forget or put away.  Was ever
flattery so subtly delicious as this thought?
The fine stern resolution he had made to flee
from Posey's vicinity seemed to take to
itself wings and vanish in thin air.  What?
Go without seeing her once alone, without
thanking her for her kind thought of him,
her mission of ministration to his relative in
his absence?  It would be a truly unheard-of
thing to do.  He even chose to forget the
swiftly advancing marriage—the betrothed
lover who was doubtless now upon the ocean,
speeding as fast as steam could bring him to
make sweet Posey his.  Nothing weighed,
nothing counted, beside Clandonald's strong,
overpowering desire to look upon her face,
to touch her hand again, to have her clear
eyes search the recesses of his soul.

In two words, he had come down off his
high horse, and was now madly anxious to
get inside the Reine des Fées garden on the
chance of finding Miss Winstanley sitting
alone in the spot indicated by his aunt as her
favorite retreat at that hour of the day—the
orange walk, near the fountain with the
broken-nosed Triton.  It was one of the most
secluded spots about the grounds, he
remembered.  Anything might happen there and
the inhabitants of the villa be none the wiser
for it.  What good fortune if he should have
the luck to find her alone and undisturbed in
this sequestered nook!  And even if Miss
Carstairs should be with Posey, he would
trust to her woman's tact to leave them alone
for a little talk.

With an artful affectation of going toward
the town, he proceeded to stroll down the
walled street for a bit, then turning, doubled
on his tracks, and went in at the large gate
of the Villa Reine des Fées, inquiring of the
woman who sat in the vine-wreathed doorway
of the lodge playing dominoes with an old, old
man, and who admired milord Clandonald
greatly, whether "the ladies" were at home.
Upon receiving from her a smiling assurance
that she knew them to be somewhere about
the grounds, since her husband, the gardener,
had just then called to Miss Winstanley
where she sat in the orange walk, to receive
some orders about a new flower-bed, he bowed,
thanked his informant, and took his way to
the designated spot.

Clandonald had regained his boyish beauty
after so many days in the saddle and nights
under the stars.  His complexion was well
with healthy blood, the haggard look had fled
from his eyes, his magnificent form was in
perfect condition, his heart beat like a
schoolboy's beneath his summer flannels.  As he
walked on with a rapid, springing step, he
brandished in his hand a Makila stick of
tough Pyrenean wood, of which the handle
was formed of a single rounded pebble, and
having at the lower end an iron spike—one
of the dangerous canes fabricated by the
Basque peasants, dear to the heart of
Northern Spain, brought by him from Biarritz,
long ago, and left hanging by its leathern
loop in his aunt's entry, where, as a relic of
her nephew, it was religiously preserved.  His
hat, of fine Panama braid, shaded his eyes
from the too glaring ardor of the Provençal
sun after the middle of the day.

The gardener's wife, looking after him,
smiled appreciatively.  She knew his hard
luck story, and, like everybody else, hoped
that Clandonald had at last emerged again
from under the shadow of the undeserved
cloud of Ruby Darien.  When he had
disappeared behind the shrubbery, and was well
out of hearing, the good woman curved her
hand around her mouth and remarked to her
ancient sire, in a patois hard for an outsider
to understand, that she hoped at last the *Bon
Dieu* was going to make up to this poor young
milord for the troubles He had sent to him—just,
for all the world, as if he had been a
peasant like themselves!

Clandonald did not notice her further, nor
other inhabitant of the enchanted garden
than himself, until he arrived through a
flowery arch directly in the presence of Miss
Winstanley, seated alone upon a marble bench
in a niche of glossy green, wiping tears out
of her eyes, like a naughty dryad put in a
corner for punishment.

.. _`Like a naughty dryad put in a corner for punishment.`:

.. figure:: images/img-294.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Like a naughty dryad put in a corner for punishment.

   Like a naughty dryad put in a corner for punishment.

.. vspace:: 2

At the same moment, ascending the hill
from the town, came another young man,
whose destination also was the orange walk,
where Posey sat disconsolate.  John Glynn,
finding at the last moment in New York that
he could get a quick passage to Genoa by an
ocean greyhound put on for an occasion, had
returned to Europe several days before he
was expected, and neglecting to wire from
Genoa, expected to take his friends here by
surprise.  He had walked from the station,
entering the villa grounds from the lower
gate.  It seemed to him something queer was
inspiring the forces of Nature that afternoon.
A strange, weird, exciting wind was astir
under brilliant sunshine—a wind to provoke
and condone any act of nervous irritability.
Glynn felt glad to take refuge from its fury
by pausing under a great eucalyptus at the
foot of the garden, and resting there a while.

All during his quick eight days' passage
across the southern route of the Atlantic, he
had been alternately drawn and repelled by the
consideration of his forthcoming marriage.
At the idea of his benefactor, the maker of
his fortunes, the dear confiding old man
whom he could never repay for benefits
conferred, he felt ready to march up to the
church door and surrender himself to Posey
without a look behind.  But it was different
when the reverie centred upon the young girl
whose innocent thoughts were translated into
words as fast as her impulse gave them birth,
whose fun and daring, joy and pain,
succeeded each other like ripples on a summer
sea; he wondered if he had a right to make
of her an unloved wife.

For since that fateful hour when he had sat
close to Helen in the railway train, and since
their meeting at the wayside chapel on the
hill, their hearts pulsing together, their
thoughts yearning each toward the other,
stern resolve forcing them apart, he had
known that to say he would cease to love
Helen had not made it any better with him,
as far as the only woman he had ever desired
to marry was concerned.  Absence from her,
a voyage to and from America, tough work
which he had surmounted successfully, a
negotiation so skilfully concluded that it had
saved Mr. Winstanley grave loss, none of
these circumstances had lessened his passionate
yearning for her whom he had first held
in his arms and kissed as his future wife.
When, after one of these outbursts of feeling
for Helen, he thought of Posey, it was always
with keen shame and abiding pity; it did not
seem to him that he was "playing fair"—and
yet, here he was, back again at Cannes,
the day of the wedding was shortly to be set,
and, as Posey's husband, he was to enter upon
a career in his native country, the breadth and
magnitude of which would surpass the fondest
dreams of his ambitious boyhood.

So strong had been the current of inclination
turning him from his destined way, that
he had actually come afoot from the station,
and sent his belongings by a cab, rather than
expedite his progress to Reine des Fées by
driving.  He had no idea that Helen had
become a temporary inmate of the establishment.
His one letter received from Posey
during his swift run home, had described her
friend as having sailed away on the "Sans
Peur," in company with that "utterly odious
Mrs. Carstairs," and "looking so sad and
spiritless it wrung one's heart to see her."

Helen in Naples or Sicily, even if he knew
her to be far from happy, was better than
Helen in Cannes, looking on at his wedding
with Posey!

If Glynn could have suspected that at the
identical moment, when he was sitting under
the eucalyptus tree trying to screw his courage
to pushing boldly up the hill, Miss Carstairs
was at the writing-table in her room, inditing
with hot hands and desperate resolve a letter
to Mariol, telling him she would be his wife!

But he dreamed of none of the threads of
Destiny weaving together that day and hour
while the mistral blew fiercely around Villa
Reine des Fées.  He only thought he would
tarry a little while longer, his legs and spirits
feeling weighted as if with lead, before
announcing himself at the house, the hero of
the "happy event" to come.

.. vspace:: 2

A third unexpected visitor to the garden
now also advanced from the direction of Villa
Julia, and moved furtively behind the hedges
toward the Triton fountain.

As Ruby had found herself in the lane about
to get into her carriage, with Rosa in attendance,
she had caught sight of Clandonald
lightly striding ahead of her, his evident
destination the gilded iron grille opening into the
drive of Reine des Fées.  Instantly, the
burning, unreasoning jealousy of Posey, that had
never forsaken Mrs. Darien, sprang up again
to madden her into action.

What she desired to do, to say, to accomplish,
she knew not, but (the bad wind, no
doubt, aiding) an evil spirit in her blood
commanded her imperatively to enter and lurk in
the forbidden garden, with the hope of hearing
or seeing something pass between the two.  She
knew from public announcement that Miss
Winstanley was about to marry Glynn, the
man who had supposed he had bought Ruby's
forbearance from troubling his fiancée.  If
any prick of conscience assailed the desperate
creature it was at thought of her sworn
promise to John Glynn—a promise about to be
forfeited in most treacherous fashion—to say
nothing of her loss of his indispensable
allowance.  For, in stealing the key of the green
door from Lady Campstown, she had really
meant to be more mischievous and offensive
than openly aggressive.  She intended to keep
it until the chance came to give, as she termed
it, "that vindictive old hag, Aunt Lucy," a
rousing fright, and at the same time, perhaps,
satisfy her curiosity as to how things were
going on between Clandonald and the
Winstanley girl.

And here was her opportunity sooner than
she had hoped.  She had sharply ordered the
alarmed Rosa to keep watch in the cab until
her return; had heeded not the woman's
beseechings, for the love of all the Saints, not
to run this risk of offending Milady Campstown;
and had let herself into Reine des Fées
by means of the key which Posey had begged
Lady Campstown to use at will, now that the
green door was kept permanently locked.

To cross the forbidden threshold seemed to
inspire Ruby with more rancorous thoughts
than ever before.  Why should Clandonald,
also Glynn, have paid her so heavily to protect
this girl, already favored by fortune, whilst
she wandered in outer darkness?  She hated
Posey the more, not only because these two
men stood before her, but because Ruby's best
endeavor had not seemed to do her material
harm; because the girl had ceased being
insignificant and was now rich and powerful; and
lastly, because Lady Campstown was her best
friend.

Ruby knew that by taking the nearer way
she would arrive upon the scene before
Clandonald could do so, and be safely in ambush
watching him.  If he were merely to enter the
house for a conventional call she could do
nothing, and might slip back to rejoin Rosa,
unseen.  But she counted rather confidently
upon what she had ascertained from questioning
her tool, that Miss Winstanley and her
friend were generally to be found out-doors
at this hour of the afternoon.

The sight of Clandonald walking unconcernedly
ahead of her, twirling the Makila stick,
which she recognized as a souvenir of their
joint visit to Biarritz, was as fuel to her flame.
He looked so young, so normally vigorous, so
full of bounding life; he was so well groomed,
so well turned out, as the men were not with
whom she associated in the present phase of
her existence.  How long it was, with the
exception of her talk with Glynn, since she had
held converse with a clean, wholesome, and
courteous gentleman!

And she was so thin, so bloodless, so
unbeautiful; her empire over his sex was so
nearly gone, she had so little left to hope for!

The immediate result of this contrast
between herself and the man who had once taken
her, for better, for worse, at the altar, was to
make Ruby Darien furiously angry.  As
Clandonald passed out of her sight, between the
ivied walls of the steeply descending street,
she felt that she would have liked to spring
upon him like a panther, and—ah! it was
better that he had passed on!

.. vspace:: 2

Clandonald, as has been said, had
unexpectedly stepped in through an arch of
crimson ramblers, to find Posey, whom Helen
Carstairs had just left to go in to write her
letter to Mariol, weeping alone, and lovelier than
even he had remembered her.

If Miss Winstanley had been on her guard,
or chatting with a friend, or sitting with her
book and looking up with a pleasant smile as
he drew near, Lord Clandonald might not have
forgotten himself, as he now unquestionably did!

Without a moment's forethought, following
out the impulse one has to console a child whom
one finds in distressful solitude, he made
toward her a buoyant movement, taking her hand
in both of his, and dropping upon the bench
beside her.

In her present period of believing herself,
as it were, deserted by John and Helen, who,
so fitted for one another, had, figuratively,
soared away out of her ken upon a rosy cloud,
the girl welcomed Clandonald with lips and
eyes too eloquent to be mistaken.  Feeling that
he must speak, knowing that he ought to choose
his words most carefully, he ended by doing
nothing of the kind.

"Oh, please don't cry!" he simply said.
"You are too dear and lovely ever to shed
a tear!  If you were mine——"

In books it is where people make the beautiful
set speeches that come out just right as
to semicolons and periods, besides fitting
exactly into place in conversation.  In real life,
under strong emotion, things are said brokenly
that often have neither grammar, rhyme nor
reason.  This man certainly never meant to
make love to this girl out of a clear sky.  But
his voice, his face, his manner, were all those
of a lover such as Posey had not known in her
brief experience.  And the worst of it was, the
same unaccountable, unbidden feeling of
delight again rushed over her that she had felt
for him upon the ship.  It seemed sufficient
for him to be near her for that to tingle in her
veins!  She thought he was the brightest,
noblest object her eyes had ever rested upon,
not a mere faulty man idealized.  In plain
words, "the old, old story was told again"
in the garden of Reine des Fées!

But Posey had gained in self-control since
her experience of the world.  She checked the
radiant return movement toward Clandonald,
who, also pulling himself together, guiltily
arose and stood at some distance away from
her, holding his hat like a shy schoolboy,
without saying another word.

"I'm not crying," she remarked, somewhat
untruthfully.  "I'm only thinking over a sad
sort of talk I've just had with my friend, Miss
Carstairs, who's staying with me, as you know.
She told me, by the way, you'd been so nice
to her on the journey, and so had M. de Mariol.
We were sorry to miss you yesterday, and
are looking forward to the dinner this evening.
I didn't think you would call again to-day."

"Neither did I," he said, "but when it
came to waiting for my aunt's dinner hour
I had to.  I hope you won't mind my taking
the short cut to Paradise, without ringing at
your front door.  It got me here the sooner,
see?  And as my aunt had happened to let
fall that you always came to the Orange Walk
about this time, I ventured upon the liberty.
But I didn't dare expect such good luck as
finding you quite alone."

"Helen has just left me," she answered, a
little confused by his ardent gaze.  "I can
see that it astonished you to find me so much
grander than I was.  But for me, I'm already
used to it.  Oh!  Do you know, I had the
greatest satisfaction yesterday.  That Mrs. Vereker,
who snubbed me so on the ship, you
remember, and that stuffed image of a
Mr. Brownlow, were both lunching at the Gold
Club, at a table by themselves; and seeing us
with some people they thought 'worth while,',
came up and spoke to me, almost humbly!"

"How did you treat them in return?"

"I said, 'Oh! really.  Are you in Cannes?'  And
then the Grand Duke asked me some
question, and I turned away to him.  If the
Grand Duke hadn't happened to be there it
would have been no fun at all.  You see how
wicked and worldly I have grown.  Then
Mr. Brownlow asked if he might call at Villa des
Fées, and I said we were so much engaged we
hadn't any day at home.  Mrs. Vereker is
dying to know Lady Campstown, who doesn't
care whether she meets a leader in New York
or a leader in Allison's Cross Roads.  I won't
ask you to tell me about your travels, for
darling Lady Campstown has read me every line
of your late letters, and even some you wrote
her as a boy.  I know how you stroked the
crew of that splendid boat-race at college,
and when you shot the lion on the Upper Nile,
and what you ate in South Africa.  After my
talks with her this winter I used to go home
thinking you certainly the biggest and
greatest and bravest person in the world!"

Her girlish raillery seemed to him the most
delicious fooling.  He tossed his hat and stick
into the flower-border behind them, and
dropped again upon the bench beside her.
Beside the cool green shadow of their
verdurous niche, the sunshine seemed to lie on the
marble pavement beyond, like a slab of gold,
the mad wind whistling outside harmless.  And
neither noticed that Mrs. Darien, who had been
standing dark with menace, still as Fate, in
the shrubbery at their rear, had leaned over
and possessed herself of the dangerous Makila
stick.

A few moments later, Glynn, where he sat
down in the lower garden, heard Posey scream
once, then silence.

He sprang up and flew to the spot whence
the sound issued, some under-gardeners
reaching it at the same time.  They found Miss
Winstanley upon her feet, with horror in her
eyes, Lord Clandonald endeavoring to lift
from the ground the form of a senseless
woman, his right arm hanging helpless, an ugly
bleeding wound upon his brow.

"It's all right!" he exclaimed to them
grimly.  "This person attacked Miss
Winstanley, and I caught the blow, that's all."

"Oh!  John, John, how thankful I am to see
you!" cried Posey.  "Help Lord Clandonald,
please; he is badly hurt.  It is Mr. Glynn,
Lord Clandonald, and for my sake you must
let him serve you."

Clandonald, wavering upon his feet, was
glad to be assisted to the bench where they
were sitting when Mrs. Darien aimed her
deadly blow.  But he retained sufficient
understanding to thank Glynn, and urge on him
the necessity of having the woman, who had
been evidently overtaken by some kind of
a seizure, removed quietly from the place, and
put in charge of Lady Campstown—"who will
understand."  After which brief direction, he
uttered one sigh, and fainted.

So Helen found the little group whom
tragedy had grazed!  Posey, holding Clandonald's
head in her arms, his limp body lying
across the seat!  Helen was carrying in her
hand the letter she had come outside to show
Posey, in fulfilment of her promise to the
girl—the letter to Mariol, telling him she
would be his wife!

To her, with a hurried explanation of the
affair and of his presence there, Glynn
consigned Posey, who seemed scarcely conscious
of where she was and what had happened,
begging Miss Carstairs to take her to her room.
Before all things, it was desirable that Miss
Winstanley's name should be kept out of the
business, which he believed would end
favorably for Clandonald.  Helen led her away,
obedient as a child, although trembling
violently, and holding her hand over a spot upon
the breast of her white gown where Clandonald's
blood had stained it.

Glynn, fetching some water from the fountain,
soon brought Mrs. Darien's victim back
to consciousness.  Clandonald's first act was
to look about for the murderous weapon, and
ask Glynn to suppress it; his second to eagerly
question the two gardeners, who, having borne
Mrs. Darien away, had now returned with
remedies from the servants at Villa Julia,
secured under pretence that one of their
number had met with an accident.

"*Quant à la dame, milor*," said one of
these men, who had been for a long time on
the place and knew very well the skeleton in
his neighbor's closet.  "It was not found
necessary to trouble Milady Campstown with
her.  The housemaid, Rosa, was waiting in
the cab, much frightened, since she thought
that Madame Darien had looked exceedingly
ill when she went into the garden against
Rosa's advice.  Madame Darien had revived
and bidden the men assist her into her
carriage, and the housemaid had driven off with
her to the station.  It was not needful to tell
anyone else what occurred, since, the Virgin
be praised, no serious harm appeared to have
been done."

Glynn, whose French fell short in moments
of emergency, tried to explain to the men that
his and Mr. Winstanley's gratitude for their
excellent service and consideration would
continue to be remembered substantially in
proportion to their reticence upon the subject.
He emphasized it by a transfer of gold to each
brown right hand, which the Provençals
received with blushes of becoming modesty.

"And now, you will go back to your work,
*comprehendez vous*?" added John, "leaving
me to conduct *ce monsieur* to Villa Julia,
explaining that a *branch fell from a tree across
his cheek and arm*!"

Clandonald smiled wanly.

"That will do for a stop-gap," he said.
"But I have my fears that the woman who
committed this unexplained assault will again
be heard from on the subject.  I fancy you
know, Mr. Glynn, who she is, and that Miss
Winstanley has been for months an object of
her virulence."

"I should tell you," said Glynn, while aiding
him to get upon his feet, "that I had some
experience of Mrs. Darien upon my former
visit to Cannes.  I, in fact, then found it
better to go to her lodgings in Nice, and try to
perfect a little arrangement for Miss
Winstanley's protection.  That, it seems, has
failed."

"The person is irresponsible," answered
Clandonald, a dark flush, coming into his face.
"And, I am afraid, incorrigible."

"All the same, I am going to ask your
permission to interfere so far as to look her up
again to-night."

"You know that is what I most want?"

"I think so.  I put myself in your place."

"More than that no man can do for
another," said Clandonald warmly.

After Glynn had gotten him into his own
bedroom, called up his servant, and telephoned
for the family physician of Lady Campstown
(who, herself, remained still fortunately absent
upon her round of calls), they parted like
friends of years.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII`:

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   CHAPTER XII

.. vspace:: 2

There was no little dinner at Villa Julia
that evening.  Clandonald, wretched and
feverish, tossed upon his bed.  Posey's white
face and strained expression of anxiety kept
the other villa in a state of suspended
animation while Glynn, in the motor car, was
running over to Nice on business not stated.

.. vspace:: 2

Helen Carstairs met him early next
morning upon the terrace, at his request.

"How has she slept?" he asked eagerly.

"Like a tired baby.  Toward morning she
awoke sobbing, and I soothed her till she fell
asleep again.  Just now, when I went into her
room with the news that Lord Clandonald also
had passed a good night, she was very much
more like herself—gentle, yet plucky, and
determined to keep up."

"I hate a nervous shock for an impressionable
woman.  Thank God, it is all no worse!
Suppose you and I had happened not to be
with her—it makes me sick to think of it!
Helen, this isn't the time to beat about the
bush to find phrases.  Tell me the honest
truth.  Does Posey love Clandonald?"

"I think so.  But she has fought against
it from the first.  Don't let your sympathy with
her at this moment lead you to any rash act of
renunciation.  She is so young.  She will get
over it.  Besides, she has told me most
positively that she could never bring herself to
marry a man whose divorced wife is living."

"If that is the only obstacle, it need not
count," said Glynn gravely.  "The woman
who called herself Mrs. Darien died last
night—and a blessed solution it is to a miserable
snarl.  She went back with the housemaid to
her hotel in Nice, and they got her into bed.
By the time I reached the place the woman,
crying bitterly, came down to tell me 'her
ladyship' was dead.  It was apoplexy—the
second attack—precipitated by her insane
passion of jealousy of Posey."

"Thank Heaven, it wasn't a murder she
had to carry with her into eternity!  Our poor
darling, Posey—if that horrid flint had struck
her in the head where the woman aimed to
hit—I can't bear to think of it——"

"Don't.  We have shaved the narrow edge,
but have escaped.  Helen, one of the strangest
things that ever happened to me was that
Mrs. Darien left in the blotter on her table a sealed
letter addressed to me.  I took possession of
it by showing the landlord and the doctor my
visiting card.  I don't know what they thought
of me.  I don't much care.  In it she asked
my pardon for breaking her pledge to me.
Said she was tempted beyond resistance to
return to Villa Reine des Fées, that she was dead
broke, desperate, expected to die suddenly
some day, and wanted me to know that if she
ever could have gone straight again it was
because of the way I had trusted her."

"But your trust was in vain," said Helen,
with the hardness of most good women
toward bad ones.  "Therefore I can feel no
sentiment for her but one of thankfulness that
she is out of your hands, in Higher ones."

They walked back and forth for a few moments
in the crisp morning air, Nature smiling
as she always does after the poignant scenes
enacted in her sight.  Mr. Winstanley, who
was having his breakfast in the rose-wreathed
loggia upstairs, and from whom the incident
of the attack on Posey had been kept, saw
them and waved his kind hand cordially.

Glynn stopped.

"It's no use, Helen.  All the things I long
for upon earth would lose their flavor at the
cost of ingratitude to him.  Even if Posey
does believe that she cares most for
Clandonald—and if you had heard the words the poor
child spoke when she held him, without life,
bleeding, against her heart, you would not
doubt it—it is not I who can withdraw from
my pledge to her."

Helen could not speak.  She was thinking
of that letter to Mariol, not yet sent.  Although
she felt now that Glynn meant to keep to his
engagement at all costs, she was sure she could
never send it; that Mariol's brief mirage of
winning her must fade into the desert sands
of friendship, if he would be content with that.

.. vspace:: 2

During the days that ensued she kept almost
altogether with Posey, who was not allowed
by her physician to leave her room.  And as
Helen was in the act of making up her mind
to go to Paris to enter as a boarder in the
family of a governess of former days, who
now gave shelter to art students and girls
whose voices were in training for the stage,
she received a startling telegram.

It was from her father at Taormina, requiring
her presence there without delay.  "I am
alone and ill," were the magic words that sent
her speeding back to him, to find the hapless
gentleman deserted by his wife, whose affair
with Danielson had ended in guilty flight!
Aged, mortified, broken, clinging to Helen in
his humiliation, Mr. Carstairs had yet made
short work of ridding himself of the
unwelcome visitors who had preyed upon his money,
while deriding him for a blind old fool not to
have seen before the condition of affairs.  In
the flotsam of the wreck Miss Bleecker, too,
floated off, Helen refusing to see her or listen
to explanations, and Mr. Carstairs making
short work of her prayer to be allowed to
remain with poor darling Helen in this awful time.

At last, then, she was again alone with her
father, free to cheer and comfort his life with
her best endeavors, a new object given to her
for daily care and sacred ministration.
Mr. Carstairs would not hear of dallying in the
hateful spot where his shame had come to
him.  He insisted that the "Sans Peur"
should take them to an English port, whence
they might embark immediately for home.
And Helen had reluctantly to acknowledge
that the only medicine for a wrong and grief
like his was a return to the life of great
affairs, in which he was signally a leader.

At Liverpool, where she had landed so
listlessly the previous autumn, Miss Carstairs
received a letter of loving farewell and
God-speed from Posey Winstanley at Cannes.  The
girl could not keep out of her phrases of
affection the note of common sense, which made
Helen's humiliating experience a subject of
ultimate rejoicing by her friends.  She was
sure that Helen was going home to new
happiness, new occupation, a generally broadening
horizon.  In the continual circling of moderns
around this little globe the friends were
sure to meet again, "early and often," Posey
prayed.  She had entirely regained her health,
the weather was getting piping hot, Reine des
Fées was too dreadfully dull now that dear
John Glynn had gone back "for good" to his
office in New York; even Lady Campstown
had been taken off by Lord Clandonald for a
visit to Beaumanoir; and lastly—it was on the
cards that Mr. Winstanley and Posey might
also soon go to make acquaintance with
England in the Spring.

No word of her marriage.  While Helen was
pondering upon this theme a steward brought
her another letter that had been taken out of
a later mail-bag.  It was a *mot d'adieu* from
Lady Campstown, containing, among other
items of information, a statement that Posey's
wedding was "indefinitely postponed."

.. vspace:: 2

The perennial Miss Bleecker, although
smarting still under the contemptuous
dismissal given her by Mr. Carstairs at
Taormina, was next seen that Spring at Cadenabbia,
hanging on, rather miserably, to the skirts
of Mrs. Vereker.  The two ladies, waiting
there for Mr. Vereker (who had been walking
barefoot at Brixen, in wet grass), were
heard to bicker continually, to the discomfort
of all within earshot.  In due time they were
joined by and accompanied Mr. Vereker to
a new cure he had heard of, at a place in
Switzerland, where the *régime* consisted of
skim milk and electricity.

The hotel which sheltered the party proved
to be situated upon a sylvan hill-top,
surrounded by a park stocked with tame deer,
with "Verboten" placarded over every spot
where one most desired to go.  A merry Swiss
lad was hired by the management to jodel in
an adjacent grove, but there were no visible
cows.  One beheld, instead, a flock of theatrical
sheep, perpetually conducted up and down
verdant slopes by a shepherd and a dog.  Also,
a band of native singers, the men in tweeds
and Derby hats, the women in custom-made
blouses and gored skirts, who came often to
warble disconsolately upon the terrace.  There
was even a cuckoo sequestered in the woods,
of which Miss Bleecker snappishly complained,
as a horrid clock, striking all out of
order to wake people up at 5 A.M., until some
one told her it was the genuine bird of Shakespeare,
when she called it a darling little thing.

For a long, long time it rained at this resort,
and the guests sat on damp iron chairs in the
veranda and looked at where the view had
been some weeks before.  After that it was
grilling hot, and as Mrs. Vereker and Miss
Bleecker were obliged to stay on for the
completion of Mr. Vereker's treatment, the
temper of the party became something too awful
for words.

The chief solace of the two ladies was to
read French novels and English weekly
newspapers.  When the "Queen" published,
among "Americans in London," a picture of
the beautiful Miss Winstanley in her presentation
gown, describing the glories of its
"white and silver, with lilies-of-the-valley
bunched around the train," together with details
of the young lady's success in the fashionable
world under the sponsorship of Lady
Campstown, Miss Bleecker may have been
said to have received her punishment for
many follies in the past.

A perfect day of early July saw the visit
of Miss Winstanley and her father to
Beaumanoir, so long projected and so rudely
interrupted, at last an accomplished fact.  Lady
Campstown, who had taken up her residence
with her nephew under the supposition that
he still needed her care, sat outside, after
luncheon, with Mr. Winstanley, between whom
and herself an excellent comradeship had
sprung up.  She saw nothing odd in the old
fellow's quaint manners, his homely exterior,
his shyness and reverence toward women.  She
had always liked his having come out of the
Southern rather than the Northern portion
of the States, feeling, somehow, more in touch
with people from below the fabled line of
Mason and Dixon than with their
aggressively prosperous neighbors.  She liked his
showing nothing of his wealth and potentiality,
and enjoyed his shrewd talk.  Above all,
it must be said she liked him for being the
progenitor of Posey, who had finally wound
herself and tangled herself in the dowager's
heart-strings, not to be dislodged.

They had been talking of the girl, and the
fact that despite her brilliant little sortie into
London society, she did not look quite
happy—quite herself.

"It will be as well for her when it is all
over," said Lady Campstown, plying her
knitting-pins.  "But I don't think it's done
her real harm to have seen things the way we
do them.  And another year, perhaps—who
knows?  There are always changes."  She
ended with a sigh.

"If you are alluding to my daughter's
marriage, ma'am," said Herbert Winstanley,
speaking with authority and swallowing a
lump of final disappointment, "I was
wanting a chance to tell you that she's about
concluded that John Glynn and she will be better
friends than lovers.  I had been suspecting
something of the kind when she told me—on
the Fourth it was, and I had to laugh when
she said she chose that day on account of
George Washington and the cherry tree,
because she couldn't tell a lie.  That's Posey,
Lady Campstown.  Always a laugh on her lip
when a tear is in her eye.  I saw how hard it
went with her to have to rob me of a dear hope.
But I reckoned if her mother'd been living
it'd not have been let go so far.  It's a hard
thing for a man of my age to play on a little
delicate musical instrument like a girl's heart.
It's over, anyhow, and she's written giving
Glynn his freedom.  I think Posey would like
you to know these circumstances, ma'am,
seeing you're the best substitute for a mother the
little girl has had.  She doesn't want you to
think her light or triflin' in such things; she
tried hard to be loyal to him and me....
But even if she'd loved John well enough to
be his wife, there was an obstacle.  He had
kept company with another young lady first,
and they'd been separated by his being poor....
I presume you'll agree that a young
fellow who'd once been in love with Miss Helen
Carstairs couldn't find giving her up as easy
as it seemed."

"So that's the meaning of it all?" cried
her ladyship, dropping her knitting, which
the Schipperke proceeded to guard as if it
were a Dutch baby asleep in a canal-boat.  "I
often wondered, but could not be sure.  I
almost thought it was M. de Mariol."

"Well, I shouldn't think that would suit,
exactly," said the old man, cautiously
nodding his Anglo-Saxon head.  "Not but what
he's a nice man, the Monseer.  But, as things
look now, my boy is a better match for
Mr. Carstairs' daughter, and John'll feel more
sure of himself to ask her again.  She's had a
hard time, that sweet lady, and I wish her
many years of happiness to forget it in.  You
see, ma'am, my Posey thinks John *will* ask
her again."

Lady Campstown, who had long since resigned
herself to see the vision of Helen at
Beaumanoir fade from her imagination, here
felt a great new jet of hope spring up in her
heart and water everything around it.  Her
withered cheek glowed rosy red, her eyes had
a girlish lustre.  She hardly presumed to put
her thoughts into words, and yet the mild blue
orbs of old Mr. Winstanley had fixed themselves
upon hers with a singular significance.

"Mr. Winstanley!  You have another
idea?" she exclaimed, nervously trembling.

"Several, ma'am," said Herbert Winstanley.
"You know by this time, I reckon, that
your nephew got that bad hurt on the cheek
and just missed losing his eyesight, to save
Posey from a mad woman.  Girls set store by
such experiences, I suppose.  But long ago,
on the steamer, I saw she fancied him
mightily....  I won't conceal from you, ma 'am,
it isn't what I'd have picked out for Posey.
Doesn't seem suitable for such a Hail Columbia
sort of girl, now, does it?  But Clandonald's
a white man, I'll say that for him....
And m' wife set a great store by English
people and their homes....  They're staying
away a good long time, those young folks....
The doctors threaten I'll have to spend
my winters in Cannes, the years that are left
to me, but I reckon Villa Rain des Fays is big
enough for us all."

.. vspace:: 2

When Clandonald and Posey came back at
last from seeing the white peacocks they were
walking hand in hand, and a great peace had
settled upon their faces.

.. vspace:: 3

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