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TONIA CHARTERS sat in the corner of a first-class carriage, staring at the shaven fields of Kent. Presently she made a little grimace at her father, who had been watching her with quiet amusement.

“Funny, isn’t it?”

He put aside his paper and studied her face with an interest that, at the moment, was even more keen than usual. Her mouth was rather large, her lips continually in suggestive motion, her face rather square and broad across the brows. She had a short, piquant nose, impudently tilted, turbulent, bronze hair, intensely alive and electrical, and a smooth, white skin. Altogether an arresting young woman.

“What’s funny about it?”

“It all looks predestined and—well—so tidy. Too tidy for me. It’s as though people had been staying up at night for a thousand years putting the place in order—picking up things. Know what I mean?”

Charters smiled. “They have—more or less—for the last couple of thousand. You’ll get used to it.”

Tonia’s brows arched a little. She doubted that, having no immediate desire to get used to it. All very well, she thought, that her father should come into an unexpected inheritance, but quite another thing to root a girl out of the Canadian setting she loved with all her soul and stick her down in Kent.

She felt she was going to be stuck. She didn’t question his authority. That was where it came in to be a man. Authority! To be a woman—to be what well-meaning people called “womanly” suggested being something like a sheep.

She glanced obliquely at her mother, wondering if her parent—whom she really adored—faintly resembled the docile ewes of which they seemed to have passed millions since leaving Charing Cross.

“I won’t say I won’t try to get used to it, but you’ll have to be awfully lenient while it’s going on. Wouldn’t it be much easier for you if I’d been born a boy?”

“Thanks—we’ve got a rather nice one who seems fairly content.”

That made it a little difficult, so she gave an expressive shrug. Julian, her only and elder brother, was waiting for them at The Dene, the old Charters mansion, to which they were now bound. The last time she had seen Julian was three months ago, and three thousand miles away in Canada. She wondered if he had begun to change already.

And with Julian now was Rodney Bethune. Her mind fastened rather unwillingly on Rodney, and she pushed out her lower lip. With Tonia this meant something.

“John,” said her mother, pointing, “isn’t that charming?”

He glanced at an old Tudor farm-house and nodded. Queer impulses were at work in him—this expatriate whose forbears had left England and crossed the sea a hundred years ago. He began to feel that in some other life some essential part of him had lived here. It was new, yet not new; old, yet amazingly young. And what would it express to his children?

“I suppose this is the calm before the storm, and we’ll be up to our eyes in work in no time,” said his wife thoughtfully.

“It’s something like that. The London agents told me there was a heap to be done.”

“Work for you, Tonia,” went on her mother cheerfully. “You’ll be expected to call on all the old women and make friends with everyone in the village.”

“Do you really own that village, dad, own it outright—the whole thing?”

“I am the proud and somewhat puzzled owner of two villages.”

“Gosh! How did your people get them in the first place?”

“From Bill the Conqueror, who gave them to one of your progenitors after the Battle of Hastings. He seemed to be pleased with what we did in that affair.”

“Two whole darn villages!”

“Tonia!” expostulated her mother. “Please!”

“Yes, two whole ones, though I assume there was nothing but a collection of huts at the time.”

“But what about the hutters—or whatever you call them? What did they think of it?”

“I fancy they were wise enough to say nothing—whatever they might have thought.”

“Gee!” breathed Tonia, with a touch of awe. “Think of it. Could you sell them?”

“No—the property is entailed. That’s why no part of it has ever been sold.”

“Just sort of run to seed?”

“I’m afraid it’s a bit that way.”

“And nothing there but The Dene and a lot of pheasants and peasants?”

He laughed. “Perhaps a bit more than that. Let’s hope so, anyway. And if you want a picture of English country life, why don’t you ask Rodney? He knows all about it, and I don’t know anything yet.”

“No, thanks; I’ll try to pick it up without his help.”

“You’re going to be nice to him?” put in her mother, a shade anxiously. “You promised.”

“My behaviour will be both dignified and restrained, but I wish Julian hadn’t brought him.”

“Julian says he’s been a tremendous help.”

Tonia said nothing, and apparently began to count sheep. But instead of the pastoral landscape east of Maidstone, she saw a very different scene. This was the lake district of Ontario, where lay the island with the big bungalow, whither the Charters family repaired with great joy every summer.

There young Bethune, an Oxford man on his first visit to Canada, brought a letter of introduction from a friend, and there, following the example of several other men, he fell in love with Tonia. She had not tried to attract him—in fact, she tried not to, and with the usual result.

It came to a climax when, canoeing home from a regatta, and landing on another island to make tea in camp fashion, Rodney made the grievous mistake of taking her both by surprise and in his arms. This only lasted an instant. Tonia, suddenly robbed of speech by astonishment, became a young fury.

He was amazed. Never, in his experience, had a girl’s words and actions been quite so extreme before, and they paddled back to the bungalow in a silence that could be felt. And now Julian, by a turn of the wheel, was also taking a post-graduate course at Oxford, and apparently worshipped Rodney. Was ever anything so awkward?

Dusk had already fallen when they were met by the two at Charterden Station. A little delay ensued there, the arrival of the new lord of the manor not being a thing lightly passed over; then they glided off toward The Dene, Julian doing most of the talking.

“It’s all right, I think, and the whole staff want to stay on, though I don’t see what there is for ’em to do. Manders, the butler, is the chief push.”

“No member of your sex ever could see that,” smiled his mother. “What about the house?”

“Big as a barn—or several barns—no central heat and old as the Ark. It’s full of what Manders calls period furniture that he handles with great reverence.”

There proved to be a good deal to be said about the house, and while Julian unfolded himself, Rodney sat silent, his eyes catching Tonia’s with an expression he tried to make not too triumphant.

But he felt triumphant. The last thing she had said to him was that she hoped she might never see him again, and said it with a fiery earnestness. The cards, however, had fallen to him, and here he sat, one, so to speak, of the deputation that welcomed her to a new home of which she knew nothing and he already knew a good deal.

And in his country this time, not hers. From the curve of her lower lip he concluded that she had sensed something of this herself.

Presently the car turned in through great iron gates, beside which was a tiny cottage where an old woman was forcing her stiff knees into a curtsy, and along an avenue of lofty elms. Looking ahead, this seemed interminable.

“It’s a regular landmark hereabout,” said Julian. “You can see it for miles. There’s a lovely view in daytime, and——”

The car stopped as he spoke. The chauffeur turned, touched his hat and looked extremely vexed.

“Flat tyre, sir. Shall I go on or change the wheel?”

“How far is it?”

“Matter of half a mile, sir, and the road none too good.”

“Change the wheel.”

Rodney threw off more local information, and Tonia peered into the gloom around her. The car had halted opposite a low thicket, from the middle of which rose the blasted trunk of one great tree. Behind this was a high stone wall over which she could see the roof of a fairly large house.

There were no lights that one could observe, and the place was dipped in a sort of hush that struck the girl with an odd significance. It seemed to be enclosed in walls except, probably, on its southern front. Over it rose the great tree, shattered forty feet above the ground, a huge column some fifteen feet in circumference ruined in mid-air as though some Titan, inhabiting the house, had sheared it off in retribution for unwelcome curiosity.

It must be that certain physical things give off certain emanations to which some individuals are sensitive. In this case Tonia was instantly aware of something she could neither see nor understand. This place had for her a definite significance. It was elusive, yet positive. It meant something.

She was staring at it with a dreamy fascination when Julian’s voice came in.

“That’s the Lodge—Whispering Lodge, they call it. Some people named Danello have it.”

“Why ‘whispering’?” asked Tonia sharply.

“There’s romance for you right away,” laughed her father. “No well-founded English country place is complete without something of the kind. Probably called ‘whispering’ on account of the wind in the trees. Heard much yet about the shooting, Julian?”

“Yes. Hammond—he’s head keeper—says there are a lot of them.”

“Like shooting, Rodney?”

“Yes, sir; nothing better.”

“You must come down. Ah—I see the end of our journey—aren’t those the lights of The Dene?”

His wife took a quick little breath, and for an instant the eyes of these two, who understood each other so well, met and exchanged messages.

They realized; but the young people could not—as yet. A new home, new friends, new duties! Such was the colour of their thoughts as they went in at the big door beside which stood Manders, looking very like a Bishop. As for Tonia, she hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold, and then, stepping forward, found herself entering abreast of Rodney. It struck her suddenly that it was just as though they were returning from a honeymoon—which made her secretly furious.

The next day was rather mixed, a day of impressions, surprises and discoveries, for Tonia had never seen anything like The Dene before. Her parents were excessively busy with Julian, and she felt in her bones that Rodney, who so far had said very little, but seemed extraordinarily at home considering it was someone else’s house, was about to renew that attack. He caught her after lunch.

“Well, what do you make of it?”

He began thus, then went on exactly where he had left off. That was one of the things about him that annoyed her. He was so consecutive and persistent. She measured him with brown eyes that held little flecks of light.

“You think,” she said, in her husky voice, “that when a man tells a girl he loves her she ought just naturally to get busy and love him back. I don’t see it.”

“You don’t care what I feel?”

“Not exactly. I don’t know whether I do or not—yet—I suppose I do up to a point. You pay me a sort of compliment, of course, though I’m not wanting one.”

“I’m not trying to be complimentary. I love you, Tonia.”

He put this very bluntly, with no flinching from that straight stare. “Is it because I’m English, and you don’t care for England?”

“Only partly,” she said with perfect truth.

“Nothing unusual about us, is there?”

“The English wouldn’t be what they are unless they thought there was. And they’re so frightfully thankful they are English,” she added calmly.

He almost decided to be angry, then laughed. One could not be long angry with a nature like hers. Her quick wit and husky voice fascinated him. She had no little airs or affectations, these being impossible to one with her sense of humour; she was completely fearless and did not know how to hedge. Her girl associates used to think it strange that one so unsentimental should be so attractive to men. But Rodney understood—as had several others.

Presently she saw something in his eyes that was unmistakable, and added hastily:

“What happened before had better not happen again. I want to be quite clear about that.”

“You may depend on the most formal behaviour on my part, if that’s any help,” he assured her.

“It will certainly help you.”

“And not make the slightest difference to the facts of the case,” he added cheerfully.

“There is no case—therefore no facts.”

Blue eyes met brown and crossed like rapiers. She rather liked him at that moment, because she liked a fighter. His type, she admitted, was good, being straight Saxon with clear skin, smooth and rather long face, flaxen hair, good shoulders that were not too heavy, and a sort of litheness about him, so that he moved with the flexible ease of a well-bred horse.

He had made a decided hit with her friends in Canada, though he seemed oblivious to it at the time. “I’d trust and believe him,” she said to herself, “but I’ll never, never marry him!”

“Well,” he said with imperturbable good nature, “have it any way you like, but remember you’re in my country now.”

“Do you expect to be asked here again if you talk in that fashion?”

“I’ve already been asked, and accepted with peculiar pleasure. Ostensibly I’m coming to shoot. You’ll note the ‘ostensibly.’ ”

Tonia gulped. “Listen! Do you really think you’re irresistible?”

He took her suddenly by the shoulders so that they stood facing each other, two superb young animals each on the road of destiny, one revolting, the other rejoicing.

“There’s something about you, Tonia, I don’t pretend to understand, but you’re all I want in the world. That’s the prodigious fact, and it will never be altered. Now, if it’s war, let it be war. That doesn’t make any difference—and I’m ready for it. But you’re beaten before you start.”

A wild tumult set up in her heart, and she wrenched herself free.

“How utterly characteristic—and English!” she said with a stony stare.

Julian and Rodney departing next day, the Charters family began the process of acclimatization. To Charters his new, yet ancient, surroundings brought a strange sense of unreality. Men and generations might pass, but this rambling mansion, in its deer-park, remained unaltered and unalterable. Not for a hundred years had The Dene belonged to his side of the family, and now he had a glimpse of the unchangeable order and custom that for centuries had governed this peaceful land.

He was the surviving elder son of his branch, and his dead ancestors seemed to throng these panelled halls, saluting him with ghostly hands as the one who would take up their task and live for it—as they had. He had, in a way, just come from another world, but in bone and blood and everything memorial he was one with them. He had made his fortune across the sea, but The Dene claimed this, as it claimed himself.

He wondered a little if, really, it was on account of what his wife said when the news reached them in Canada that he had come. That hour would always be vivid—on the bungalow veranda—the speeding mail launch furrowing the lake—the thick letter on stiff paper—the talk with his wife that followed—then her confession that she had always longed to live in England.

“I know you could have bought a place over there at any time within the past few years, but you weren’t ready for it. And it wouldn’t have been the same. I’ve nothing to be memorial about, yet I’m far more so than you. A thousand times I’ve fancied ourselves all at The Dene, and now that you’re free in a financial way, don’t you think there’s something nice about England’s sons coming back to her? Just like homing pigeons,” she had concluded a little nervously. And that had settled it.

But it unsettled Tonia. Only her mother realized how passionately the girl loved Canada and its life. Her enjoyment of it was that of a young colt in new pasture on a spring day. Rule and order were anathema, and she delighted in the unexpected happenings of a new country. She was intensely curious—with a candour that her friends found utterly disarming, and it appeared that at nineteen she had no use for men—except as playmates.

Yet she demoralized men. Her father laughed at this, but Mrs. Charters, who had long since learned to recognize the premonitory symptoms, used to sigh as she saw their first faint development in each new victim. They made her feel helpless, and Tonia seemed to spread a sort of emotional plague.

On her side there would be a month or two of friendship and a sense of thankfulness at finding a man too sane to be sentimental. Then the inevitable upheaval. Tonia would emerge from this with flaming cheeks, and, vowing that she had done with men as companions, cultivate girls with volcanic energy for the next months. Presently it would happen all over again.

And it was, thought Mrs. Charters, the depth of irony that the final thing of this sort in Canada should have been over Rodney Bethune, who, so to speak, had awaited them on the threshold of their new home in England.

All this was running through her mind as she sat making notes of a thousand things to be attended to. The Dene, she had discovered, was deplorably short of many everyday essentials both as to the kitchen and linen closets. She was in the middle of a list when Tonia came in.

“Well, child, do you find it rather slow?”

“No, mother, there’s a heap to see.”

“Your father and I have been thinking a good deal about you.”

“Oh!” said Tonia. “Why?”

“Well, in a way, this is more of a change for you than anyone else, and till we get settled and begin to meet people you may feel a little at sea.”

Tonia wished she were at sea, but only laughed. “What else, mother?”

“I know how you feel about English things in general, but advise you against coming to conclusions too soon over here. First impressions are very apt to be misleading. I’m sure you will find everyone very kind, and don’t think people stiff when they don’t mean to be. I think you ought to be very happy.”

Tonia gave a little sigh. “I don’t say I’m not.”

Mrs. Charters laughed outright. “I’m glad, because you’re not a very cheery picture; but, really, child, it’s wiser not to express any fixed opinions till you know a good deal more. Just study people and their ways for, say, three months, then tell us what you think.”

“I suppose I’m rather uncomfortable to live with sometimes, but I can’t be anything but me,” she said laconically.

She wandered about for a while, ending up in the dining-room, where she found Manders busy after lunch.

“Does it rain in England all the fall, Manders?” she asked, staring disconsolately at the dripping trees.

Manders gave an apologetic little cough. “Beg pardon, miss, all the what?”

“Oh—autumn—I forgot.”

“I would say, miss, that this was a remarkably fine autumn for this part of Kent. The rainfall has been less than usual.”

Tonia shrugged her supple shoulders and scrutinized a group of fallow deer grazing peacefully two hundred yards away. “Too peaceful,” she murmured.

Beyond the deer one could see the Maidstone road and the glistening tops of shining cars. The deer took no notice of these whatever. She contrasted these placid pets with the last buck she had seen darting like a bullet through the Canadian woods, and it made her disgruntled.

“Thanks about the rainfall. Anything ever happen down here, Manders?” She called him Manders now without effort, but it had taken careful practice.

“Just the usual, miss; what you’d expect in a place like this—births, marriages and deaths, with now and again a bit of poaching. One man got a year for taking pheasants last winter. Went for the keeper, but keeper nabbed him.”

“A year in prison for that?”

“Crime, miss, nothing short of crime.”

She gulped down her indignation, and thought it over. It seemed she had done more hard thinking in the last few days than in all her life before. Such odd people one found here—and so frightfully polite. That must be because her father owned the houses they lived in. Such houses, too! Pretty enough to look at—if you didn’t look too close—but she wanted to pull most of them down, rebuild and put in electric light.

“Did Mr. Philip entertain much?”

Manders could not repress a smile. Mr. Philip Charters, recently deceased without issue, had asked the vicar and his wife to dinner on the second Tuesday of the month, for the last thirty years. At Christmas he gave a depressing entertainment for the school-children, during which he delivered a long address on the early Christian Fathers that heightened the gloom. Very occasionally his neighbours, Lady Netley and her son, came to dine. That and nothing more.

“There was weeks, miss, when none but himself came in by the front door.”

“Must have been cheerful for you. Who are our nearest neighbours?”

“That would be Lady Netley and Mr. Bruce, her son. About two miles away. Sir Stephen died last year. You pass their place, it’s called Fidlow, motoring to town.”

“I see.” Tonia was silent for a moment, her mind turning to the one thing that had really interested her, then decided to approach the matter by the oblique route. “Who are the Danellos—the people in the Lodge?”

Manders put down his tray. “Who they rightly are, miss, I cannot say, except they’re very respectable tenants—though I wouldn’t exactly call them gentry—and have had the Lodge for some years. There’s him and his wife, and the young lady, Miss Olga. She’d be about twenty-one. Mr. Danello is foreign—French, they say—though others have it he’s a Bulgarian. Very quiet, all of them, miss, and you hardly ever see them. They never go out anywhere, and he has some kind of a business in town.”

She tucked that away, decided not to be unduly curious too soon, and watched a big, twin-engined Farnam gliding like a great grey ghost above the elms toward Paris. Their main route passed directly over the property.

“Have any of those machines ever come down here?”

Manders shook his head. “Never, miss.”

“What’s it like in summer?”

“A good deal more life about then, miss. What with the hoppers and——”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“The hop-pickers, miss,” said Manders with extreme dignity. “They come down from the East End by hundreds for a matter of two or three weeks. And there’s always some gipsies about.”

Tonia grew attentive. Gipsies were the liveliest things she had heard mentioned so far.

“Do they tell your fortune?”

“They’ll tell you anything, miss, for sixpence. When it comes to fortunes I’d sooner take old Mother Goddard in the Gate House.”

“Was that she with the white hair and long chin we saw when we drove here?”

“I believe, miss, there hasn’t been anyone but her at the Gate House for the last forty years.”

Tonia nodded, and dropped into the nearest chair to think. It had thin curving legs, a delicate harp-shaped back, and collapsed under her with a crash. She picked herself up and laughed when she saw the butler’s expression of utter horror.

“Miss Tonia,” he stammered, awestruck; “that was two hundred years old, and genuine Queen Anne!”

“What would you call it now, Manders? I’m going to say how-do-you-do to Mrs. Goddard.”

Mother Goddard had one tooth, a crooked back, very white hair and a memory that compassed generations. Tonia, settled on a stool beside the fire, regarded her with intense interest, spread her hands to the blaze and went straight to the point.

“Manders says that you tell fortunes.”

“I do, my dear, in a manner of speaking. Whatever is wrote in your hand.”

“Would you like to tell mine?”

She hobbled across the hearth, swung a singing pot out of the flame, and tilted it, hissing.

“Whiles it’s drawing, Miss Tonia.”

The girl stretched out her palm, narrow, firm and well-shaped. The old woman put on her glasses, studied it a moment and made an odd sound in her dry throat.

“It’s heart and head, miss, that’ll make trouble for you.”

“Why?” smiled Tonia.

“Head goes one way, heart t’other. You’re the kind that sometimes loves and hates the same one.”

“At the same time?” asked Tonia soberly.

“Yes, miss, that’s here, and you don’t stop long enough to think. And things hurt you often and you’ll be married in two years.”

“Not I—I know better.”

“Well, miss, maybe you do, and maybe not. It’ll be natural like then, though it ain’t now.”

Tonia, in spite of herself, was rather impressed. This aged crone, with the cracked voice and beady eyes—this leaning cottage, so old that its bricks seemed ageless—the puttering fire and singing pot—the dancing shadows that filled the tiny room—the feeling that perhaps when people got as near eternity as this they might see further than others—all began to work in her brain.

“Mrs. Goddard, if what you say is true, doesn’t it make you feel queer to look at a person and know what’s going to happen to them?”

The old woman sipped her tea peacefully. “Well, my dear, that is as it may be, but it don’t worry me. It’s their business, not mine. But there’s one family here whose fortunes or misfortunes I’ve never had the chance to tell.”

“Which?”

Mrs. Goddard crooked her wrinkled thumb. “In the Lodge—the Whispering Lodge. They’ve never come near me.”

“Do they know about you?” Tonia was instantly aroused.

“Yes, miss, everyone does hereabouts. It’s us that don’t know about them. There’s some that lives in the light and others in shadow. They’ve took the shadow. But it won’t last long now.”

“What?”

“The shadow, miss. I’m old, but I’ll live to see it go.”

“Mrs. Goddard, if there’s anything wrong, why isn’t it seen to?”

“It ain’t what you could put your finger on. There was one must have touched it somehow, but he never spoke again. Your hand, miss!” Her parchment finger traced the thread-like lines for a patient moment, then she looked up with a touch of awe.

“It’s here, miss, I see it now. Light will come through you.”

Tonia, neither believing nor disbelieving, felt breathless. And yet——!

“What could I have to do with it?”

The old woman did not answer, but pointed to the fire, where a log subsided into a glowing mound that took on a multitude of shapes. It meant nothing to Tonia, but Mrs. Goddard, her bony chin supported on a skinny hand, studied it intently. Presently she took a long breath.

“Nothing more to-night, miss. I can’t get no further.”

Such was the utter finality of this that Tonia rose, completely puzzled. “You must finish it some other day. I’m going home now.”

“Alone, miss?”

“Yes—why not?”

“Then when you do be passing the Lodge, step quickly, my dear, very quickly.”

Tonia set out, smiling to herself. Night had come quickly, the avenue was dark, and for the half-mile between her and The Dene the world was steeped in silence and gloom. An owl hooted in a spinney as she drew near the Lodge. Clouds came up, obscuring the sickle of a new moon, and Tonia, shivering a little, felt she was about to do something foolish. But, after all, why was it foolish to wait a while?

As though obeying a signal, she halted, left the road, and leaned motionless against a giant trunk. Still darker now, and her lips became a little dry.

A breath of wind stirred in the trees. Faint sounds reached her from the invisible village, the bark of a dog and horn of a distant car. Rabbits hopped about her feet, making sudden startling noises in the dead leaves.

The mass of the Whispering Lodge loomed indistinctly over the stone wall, showing no light whatever. It seemed huge, formless and vaguely threatening.

She did not know how long she waited thus, and was getting cold and stiff, when she felt in a strange but certain way that there was movement close by. Time had now ceased to exist.

In a sort of trance it was impossible to break, she found herself staring at a spot where surely one shadow was blacker than the rest. Presently it appeared to detach itself—and move.

It did move! At that she nearly ceased to breathe, and, straining her ears, distinguished an infinitely faint, crumpling sound.

Squeezing her eyes tight, she made out a figure, at first formless, but gradually taking the shape of a woman. This neared the road, then halted as though perceiving the watcher. Tonia distinguished something pale—a face—dead white—with large, luminous eyes.

At that she gave a loud, irrepressible cry and rushed forward. There was nothing! The shadow had vanished, and she found her own face scratched by the opposing thicket.

The cloud slid from the moon. She stood for an instant, panting, whereupon recklessness took her, and she pushed desperately on. The thicket thinned. She passed the great blasted trunk and stopped dead.

Twenty feet away rose the stone wall—with no opening whatever.

At that moment a light sprang to life in a rear window of the Lodge. The outline of a man’s figure was cast against a blind, and she heard a laugh, clear and intensely ironical.