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"Of course I will," he said. "The _Temple d'Amour_ would look quite well up upon that rising ground, and you could have a small winding lake dug to complete the illusion. Nothing is impossible, and I suppose you can get permission from the old Wendover who lives in Rome to do what you wish?"

"I should like to have been able to take the park of the next place, La Sarthe Chase, too--that impassable haw-haw and the boarded-up gate irritate me. The boards have been put since I came to look over everything last autumn. I did instruct the agent, Martin, in Applewood to offer a large price for it, but he assured me it would be quite useless; it belongs, it appears, to the most ridiculous old ladies, who are almost starving, but would rather die than be sensible."

Suddenly John Derringham was conscious that his sympathies had shifted to the Misses La Sarthe, and he could not imagine why.

"You told me, I think," she went on, "that you knew this neighborhood. Do you happen to be aware of any bait I could hold out to them?"

"No, I do not," he said. "That sort of pride is foolish, if you like; but there it is--part of an inheritance of the spirit which in the past has made England great. They are wonderful old ladies. I dined with them once long ago."

"I must really go over and see them one day. Perhaps I could persuade them to my view."

The flicker of a smile came into the eyes of John Derringham, and she noticed it at once. It angered her, and deepened the pretty pink in her fresh cheeks.

"You think they would not be pleased to see me?" she flashed.

"They are ridiculously old-fashioned," he said. "Not your type at all."

"But I love curiosities," she returned, smiling now. "I am not absolutely set upon any type. All human beings are a delightful study. If you know them, you must bring them to see me then some day."

But at this John Derringham laughed outright.

"If you could picture them, you would laugh, too," he said. "There is someone, though, whom I do want you to know, who lives close here--my old Oxford professor of Greek, Arnold Carlyon. He is a study who will repay you. The most whimsical cynic, as well as one of the greatest scholars I have ever come across in my life. I promised him to-day that I would persuade you to let me take you to see him."

"How enchanting," she replied with enthusiasm. "And we must make him come here. When shall we go? To-morrow?"

"No, I said Monday or Tuesday--with your permission," and he bent over her with caressing homage.

"Of course--when you will. That, then, is where you were this morning. But how did you get back through the park?" she asked. "There is no opening at that side whatever. It is all blocked by the wicked La Sarthe Chase."

"I came round the edge," he said, and felt annoyed--he hated lying--"and then turned upwards. I wanted to see the boundaries."

"I hate boundaries," she laughed. "I always want to overstep them."

"There is the chance of being caught in snares."

"Which adds to the excitement," and she allowed her radiant eyes to seek his with a challenge.

He was not slow to take it up.

"Enchantress," he whispered softly, "it is you whose charm lays snares for men. You have no fear of falling into them yourself."

She rippled a low laugh of satisfaction. And, having tamed her lion, she now suggested it was time to go in to luncheon.

CHAPTER XII

Arabella Clinker took Sunday afternoons generally to write a long letter to her mother, and Good Friday seemed almost a Sunday, so she went up to her room from force of habit. But first she looked up some facts in the countless books of reference she kept always by her. Mrs. Cricklander had skated over some very thin ice at luncheon upon a classical subject, when talking to the distinguished Mr. Derringham, and she must be warned and primed up before dinner. Arabella had herself averted a catastrophe and dexterously turned the conversation in the nick of time. Mrs. Cricklander had a peculiarly unclassical brain, and found learning statistics about ancient philosophies and the names of mythological personages the most difficult of all. Fortunately in these days, even among the most polished, this special branch of cultivation was rather old-fashioned, Miss Clinker reflected, but still, as Mr. Derringham seemed determined to wander along this line (Arabella had unconsciously appropriated some apt Americanisms during her three years of bondage), she must be loyal and not allow her employer to commit any blunders. So she got her facts crystallized, or "tabloided," as Mrs. Cricklander would mentally have characterized the process, and then she began her letter to her parent. Mrs. Clinker, an Irishwoman and the widow of a learned Dean, understood a number of things, and was clear-headed and humorous, for all her seventy years, and these passages in her daughter's letter amused her.

We are entertaining a number of distinguished visitors, and among them Mr. John Derringham, the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He is a most interesting personality, as perfectly sure of what he wants in life as is M. E. (M. E. stood for "My Employer"--names were invidious). They would be a perfect match, each as selfish as the other, I should say. He is really very cultivated, and believes her to be so, too. She has not made a single mistake as yet, but frightened me at luncheon a little. I must try and get her to keep him off classical subjects. She intends to marry him--and then she will not require me, I suppose; or rather, I do not think he would permit her to keep me. If it came to a measure of wills, he would win, I think--at first, at least--but she could wear away a stone in the end, as you know. The arranging of this place is still amusing her, so she may decide to spend a good deal of time here. She closed her mouth with that firm snap this morning that I have described to you often, and said that it was going to be her delight to make them put themselves out and come so far away from London for her. "Them," for the moment, are Mr. Derringham and Mr. Hanbury-Green, almost a Socialist person, who is on the other side--very brilliantly clever but with a Cockney accent in one or two words. M. E. does not notice this, of course. Mr. H-G. is in love with her--Mr. D. is not, but she is determined that he shall be. I do not know if he intends to marry her. He is making up his mind, I think, therefore I must be doubly careful not to allow her to commit any mistakes, because if she did it would certainly estrange him, and as to keep her free is so much to our advantage, I feel I must be extra careful in doing my duty.

Arabella was a person of scrupulous honor.

She then proceeded to describe the party, and concluded with,

There is one American girl I like very much--perfectly natural and bubbling with spirits, saying aloud everything she thinks, really well educated and taking so much outdoor exercise that she has not yet begun to have the nervous attacks that are such a distressing feature of so many of her countrywomen. I am told it is their climate. M. E. says it is because the men out there have always let them have their own way. I should think so much smoking has something to do with it.

John Derringham meanwhile had gone with his hostess and some of the rest of the party, Mr. Hanbury-Green among them, to inspect the small golf links Mrs. Cricklander was having constructed in the park. Her country-house must be complete with suitable amusements. She had taken all the Wendover shooting, too, and what she could get of Lord Graceworth's beyond. "You cannot drag people into the wilds and then bore them to death," she said. What she most enjoyed was to scintillate to a company of two or three, and fascinate them all into a desire for a _tte--tte_, and then, when with difficulty one had secured this privilege, to be elusive and tantalize him to death. To passion she was a complete stranger, and won all her games because with her great beauty she was as cold as ice.

She was not feeling perfectly content this Good Friday afternoon. Something had happened since the evening before which had altered John Derringham's point of view towards her. She felt it distinctly with her senses, trained like an animal's, to scent the most subtle things in connection with herself. It was impossible to seize, she could not analyze it, but there it was; certainly there seemed to be some change. He was brilliant, and had been even _empress_ before lunch, but it was not spontaneous, and she was not perfectly sure that it was not assumed. It was his cleverness which attracted her. She could not see the other side of his head--not that she would have understood what that meant, if she had heard the phrase.

But her habit was not to sit down under an adverse circumstance, but to probe its source and eradicate it, or, at least, counteract it. Thus, while she chattered eloquently to Sir Tedbury Delvine, her keen brain was weighing things. John Derringham had certainly had a look of aroused passion in his eyes when he had pressed her hand in a lingered good night; he had even said some words of a more advanced insinuation as to his intentions towards her than he had ever done before. They were never exact--always some fugitive hint to which afterwards she would try to fix some meaning as she reviewed their meetings. She had not seen him at breakfast because she never came down in the morning until eleven or twelve, and he had already gone out, she heard, when she did descend.

It followed then that either he had received some disturbing letter by the post--only one on Good Friday--or something had occurred during his visit to his old master. It would be her business to find out which of these two things it was. Could the Professor be married, and might there be some woman in the family? Or was it nothing to do with the Professor or with a letter, or was there a more present reason? Had Cora Lutworth attracted him with her youth and high spirits? They were walking ahead now, and she could hear his laugh and see how they were enjoying themselves.

She had been a perfect fool to ask Cora. She did not fear a single Englishwoman, the powers of most of whom in her heart she despised--but Cora was of her own race, and well equipped to rival her in a question of marriage. Cora was only twenty-one, and she herself was thirty--and there was the divorce which, although she had found it no bar to her entrance into the most exclusive English society, still might perhaps rankle unconsciously in the mind of a man mounting the political ladder, and determined to secure the highest honors.

She felt she hated Cora, and would have destroyed her with a look if she had been able.

Miss Lutworth, meanwhile, brimful of the joy of life and _insouciance_, was amusing herself vastly. And John Derringham was experiencing that sense of relaxation and irresponsible pleasure he got sometimes when he was overworked from going to an excruciatingly funny Paris farce. Miss Lutworth did not appeal to his brain at all, although she was quite capable of doing so; she just made him feel gay and frolicsome with her deliciously _rus_ view of the world and life in general. He forgot his ruffled temper of the morning, and by the time they had returned for tea, was his brilliant self again, and quite ready to sit in a low chair at his hostess's side, while she leaned back among the cushions of her sofa, in her own sitting-room, whither she had enticed him during that nondescript hour before dinner, when each person could do what he pleased.

"Is not Cora sweet?" she said, smoothing the brocade beneath her hand. Her sitting-room had been arranged by the artist who had done the house, as a perfect bower of Italian Sixteenth Century art. Mr. Jephson, the artist, had assured her that this period would make a perfect background for her fresh and rather voluptuous coloring; it had not become so _banal_ as any of the French Louis'. And so Arabella had been instructed to drum into her head the names of the geniuses of that time, and their works, and she could now babble sweetly all about Giorgione, Paolo Veronese and Titian's later works without making a single mistake. And while the pictures bored her unspeakably, she took a deep pleasure in her own cleverness about them, and delighted in tracing the influence Paolo Veronese must have had upon Boucher, a hint from Arabella which she had announced as an inspiration of her own.

She had tea-gowns made to suit this period, and adopted the stately movements which were evidently the attribute of that time.

John Derringham thought her superb. If he had been really in love with her, he might have seen through her--and not cared--just as if she had not attracted him at all, he would certainly have taken her measure and enjoyed laying pitfalls for her. But as it was, his will was always trying to augment his inclination. He was too busy to analyze the real meaning of any woman, and until the Professor's words about the divorce and the Misses La Sarthe's view of the affair, it had never even struck him that there could be one single aspect of Mrs. Cricklander's case which he might have to blink at. He had told himself he had better marry a rich woman, since his old maternal uncle, Joseph Scroope, had just taken unto himself a young wife and might any day have an heir. And this was his only other possible source of fortune.

Mrs. Cricklander seemed the most advantageous bargain looming upon the horizon. She was of proved entertaining capabilities. She had passed her examination in the power of being a perfect hostess. She had undoubted and expanding social talents. Women did not dislike her; she was very vivid, very handsome, very rich. What more could a man who in his innermost being had a supreme contempt for women, and a supreme belief in himself, desire?

He had even balanced the advantages of marrying a rich American girl, one like Miss Lutworth, for example. But such beings were unproven, and might develop nerves and fads, which were of no consequence in the delightful creatures with whom he passed occasional leisure hours of recreation, but which in a wife would be a singular disadvantage. Since he must marry--and soon--before the present Parliament broke up and his Government went out, and there came some years of fighting from the Opposition benches, when especially brilliant entertaining might be of advantage to him--he knew he had better make up his mind speedily, and take this ripe and luscious peach, which appeared more than willing to drop into his mouth.

So, this late afternoon, aided by the scents and colors and propinquity, he did his very best to make gradual love to her, and for some unaccountable hideously annoying reason felt every moment more aloof. It almost seemed at last as if he were guarding something of fine and free that was being assailed. His dual self was fighting within his soul.

Mrs. Cricklander was experiencing all the exciting emotions which presumably the knights of old enjoyed when engaged in a tournament. She was not even disturbed when the dressing-gong rang and she had not yet won. It was only a postponement of one of the most entrancing games she had ever played in her successful life. And Mr. Hanbury-Green was going to sit upon her left hand at dinner and would afford new flint for her steel. He was a recent acquisition, and of undoubted coming value. His views were in reality nearer her heart politically than those of John Derringham. Deep down in her being was a strong class hatred--undreamed of, and which would have been vigorously denied. She remembered the burning rage and the vows of vengeance which had convulsed her as a girl, because the refined and gently bred women of her own New York's inner circle would have none of her, and how it had been her glory to trample upon as many of them as she could, when Vincent Cricklander had placed her as head of his fine mansion in Fifty-ninth Street, having moved from the old family home in Washington Square. And there, underneath, was the feeling still for those of any country who, instinct told her, had inherited from evolution something which none of her money, and none of her talent, and none of her indomitable will, could buy. But of course Mr. Hanbury-Green was not to be considered, except as a foil for her wit--a pawn in the game for the securing of John Derringham.

Thus it was that she was able to walk in her stately way with trailing velvets down the broad stairs of her newly acquired home with a sense of exaltation and complacency which was unimpaired.

John Derringham, on the contrary, was rather abrupt with his valet and spoilt two white ties, and swore at himself because his old Eton hand had lost its cunning. But finally he too went down the shallow steps, and, joining his hostess at the door, sailed in with her to the George I saloon, his fine eyes shining and his bearing more arrogant than before.

CHAPTER XIII

After dinner there was a brisk passage of arms between the two men of opposite party in the group by the fire, and Mrs. Cricklander incited them to further exertions. It had arisen because Mr. Derringham had launched forth the abominable and preposterous theory that the only thing the Radicals would bring England to would be the necessity of returning to barbarism and importing slaves--then their schemes applied to the present inhabitants of the country might all work. The denizens in the casual wards, having a vote and a competence provided by the State, would have time to become of the leisured classes and apply themselves to culture, and so every free citizen being equal, a company of philosophers and an aristocracy of intellect would arise and all would be well!

Mrs. Cricklander glanced stealthily at his whimsical face, to be sure whether he were joking or no--and decided he probably was. But Mr. Hanbury-Green, so irritated by the delightful hostess's evident _penchant_ for his rival, allowed his ill-humor to obscure his usually keen judgment, and took the matter up in serious earnest.

"Your side would not import, but reduce us all--we who are the defenders of the people--to being slaves," he said with some asperity. "Your class has had its innings long enough, it would be the best thing in the world for you to have to come down to doing your own housework."

"I should make a capital cook," said John Derringham, with smiling eyes, "but I should certainly refuse to cook for anyone but myself; and you, Mr. Green, who may be an indifferent artist in that respect, would have perhaps a bad dinner."

"I never understand," interrupted Mrs. Cricklander--"when everything is socialistic, shall we not be able to live in these nice houses?"

"Of course not," said Mr. Hanbury-Green gravely. "You will have to share with less fortunate people." And then he drew himself up ready for battle, and began.

"Why, because a man or woman is born in the gutter, should not he or she be given by the State the same chance as though born in a palace? We are all exactly the same human beings, only until now luck and circumstance have been different for us."

"I am all for everyone having the same chance," agreed John Derringham, allowing the smile to stay in his eyes, "although I do not admit we are all the same human beings, any more than the Derby winner is the same horse as the plow horse or the cob. They can all draw some kind of vehicle, but they cannot all win races--they have to excel, each in his different line. Give everyone a chance, by all means, and then make him come up for examination, and if found fit passed on for higher things, and if unfit, passed _out_! It is your tendency to pamper the unfit which I deplore. You have only one idea on your Radical Socialist side of the House, to pull down those who are in any inherited or agreeable authority--not because they are doing their work badly, but because you would prefer their place! The war-cry of boons for the people covers a multitude of objects, and is the most attractive cry for the masses to hear all over the world. The real boon for the people would be to give them more practical sound education and ruthlessly to clear out the unfit." Then his face lost its whimsical expression and became interested.

"Let us imagine a Utopian state of republic. Let every male citizen who has reached twenty-five years, say, pass his examination in the right to live freely, regardless of class, and if he cannot do so, let him go into the ranks of the slaves, because, turn it how you will, we must have some beings to do the lowest offices in life. Who would willingly clean the drains, fill the dust-carts--and, indeed, do the hundred and one things that are simply disgusting, but which must be done?"

Mr. Hanbury-Green had not a sufficiently strong answer ready, so remained loftily silent, while John Derringham went on:

"We obscure every issue nowadays by a sickly sentiment and this craze for words to prove black is white in order to please the mediocrity. If we could only look facts in the face we should see that the idea of equality of all men is perfectly ridiculous. No ancient republic ever worked, even the most purely democratic, like the Athenian, of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., without an unconsidered and unrepresented population of slaves. You know your Aristotle, Mr. Green," he went on blandly, "and you will remember his admirable remark about some men being born masters and others born to obey, and that, if only Nature had made the difference in their mental capacities as apparent to the eye as is the difference in their bodies, everyone would recognize this at once."

His voice grew intense: the subject interested him.

"You may say," he went on, "that Aristotle, Plato and Socrates accepted the fact of slavery without protest because it was an institution from time immemorial, and so the idea did not appear to them so repugnant. But do you mean to tell me that such consummate geniuses, such unbiased glorious brains would have glossed over any idea, or under-considered any point in their schemes for the advancement of man? They accepted slavery because they saw that it was the only possible way to make a republic work, where all citizens might aspire to be equal."

"You would advocate slavery then? Oh! Mr. Derringham, how dreadful of you!" exclaimed Mrs. Cricklander, half playfully.

"Not in the least," he returned, still allowing some feeling to stay in his voice. "I would only have it recognized that there must be some class in my ideal republic who will do the duties of the slaves of old. I would have it so arranged that they should occupy this class only when they had shown they were unfit for anything higher, and I would also arrange it that the moment they appeared capable of rising out of it there should be no bar to their doing so. It is the cry of our all being equal because we have two arms and two legs and a head in common, not counting any mental endowment, which is utter trash and hypocrisy. But when these agitators are shouting for the people's rights and inciting poor ignorant wretches to revolt, they never suggest that the lowest of them is not perfectly suited to the highest position! Those occupying any station above the lowest have got there merely by superior luck and favoritism, not merit--that is what they preach."

Mr. Hanbury-Green was just going to answer with a biting attack when Miss Cora Lutworth's rather high voice was heard interrupting from a tall old chair in which she had perched herself.

"Why, Mr. Derringham, we all want to be something very grand," she laughed merrily. "I hate common people and love English dukes and duchesses--don't you, Cis?" and she looked at Mrs. Cricklander, who was standing in a position of much stately grace by the lofty mantelpiece.

"You sweet girl!" exclaimed Lord Freynault, who was next to her. "I cannot get any nearer to those favored folk than my uncle's being a duke, but won't you let me in for some of your friendly feelings on that account?"

"I certainly will," she answered archly, "because I like the way you look. I like how your hair is brushed, and how your clothes are cut, and your being nice and clean and outdoor--and long and thin--" and then she whispered--"ever so much better than Mr. Hanbury-Green's thick appearance. He may be as clever as clever, but he is common and climbing up, and I like best the people who are there!"

John Derringham now addressed himself exclusively to his hostess.

"I agree with the point of view of the old Greeks--they were so full of common sense. Balance and harmony in everything was their aim. A beautiful body, for instance, should be the correlative of a beautiful soul. Therefore in general their athletics were not pursued, as are ours, for mere pleasure and sport, and because we like to feel fit. They did not systematically exercise just to wrest from some rival the prize in the games, either. Their care of the body had a far higher and nobler end: to bring it into harmony as a dwelling-place for a noble soul."

"How divine!" said Mrs. Cricklander.

John Derringham went on:

"You remember Plato upon the subject--his reluctance to admit that a physical defect must sometimes be overlooked. But nowadays everything is distorted by ridiculous humanitarian nonsense. With our wonderful inventions, our increasing knowledge of sanitation and science, and the possibilities and limitations of the human body, what glorious people we should become if we could choke this double-headed hydra of rotten sentiment and exalt common sense!"

But now Mrs. Cricklander saw that a storm was gathering upon Mr. Hanbury-Green's brow and, admirable hostess that she was, she decided to smooth the troubled waters, so she went across the room to the piano, and began to play a seductive valse, while John Derringham followed her and leaned upon the lid, and tried to feel as devoted as he looked.

"Why cannot we go to-morrow and see your old master?" she asked, as her white fingers, with their one or two superb rings, glided over the keys. "I feel an unaccountable desire to become acquainted with him. I should love to see what the person was like who molded you when you were a boy."

"Mr. Carlyon is a wonderful-looking old man," John Derringham returned. "Someone--who knows him very well--described him long ago as 'Cheiron.' You will see how apt it is when you meet."

Mrs. Cricklander crashed some chords. She had never heard of this Cheiron. She felt vaguely that Arabella had told her of some classical or mythological personage of some such sounding name, a boatman of sorts--but she dare not risk a statement, so she went on with the point she wished to gain, which was to investigate at once Mr. Carlyon's surroundings and discover, if possible, whether there was any influence there that would be inimical to herself.

"I dare say we can go to-morrow," John Derringham said. "You and I might walk over--and perhaps Miss Lutworth and Freynault. We can't go a large party, the house is so small."

"Why cannot you and I go alone, then?" she asked.

"Oh, I think he would like to see Miss Cora. She is such a charming girl," and John Derringham looked over to where she sat, still dangling a pair of blue satin feet from the high chair. And inwardly Mrs. Cricklander burned.

Cora was a second cousin of her divorced husband, and belonged by birth to that inner cream of New York society which she hated in her heart. Never, never again would she be so foolish as to chance crossing swords with one of her own nation. But aloud she acquiesced blandly and arranged that they should start at eleven o'clock.

"Perhaps we could persuade him to return to lunch with us?" she hazarded. "And that would be so nice."

"You must do what you can with him," John Derringham said. "I have prepared him to find you beautiful--as you are."

"You say lovely things about me behind my back, then?" she laughed. "Now he will be disappointed!"

"Yes, I admit it was a _btse_--but, being my real thoughts, they slipped out when I was there to-day. You will have to be extra charming to substantiate them."

Before Mrs. Cricklander went to bed, she called Arabella Clinker into her room.

"Arabella," she said, "who was Cheiron?" But she pronounced the "ei" as an "a," so Miss Clinker replied without any hesitation:

"He was a boatman who carried the souls of the dead over the River Styx, and to whom they were obliged to pay an obolus--son of Erebus and Nox. He is represented as an old man with a hideous face and long white beard and piercing eyes."

"Is there anything else I ought to know about him?" her employer asked, and Arabella thought for a moment.

"There is the story of Hercules not showing the golden bow. Er--it is a little complicated and has to do with the superstitions of the ancients--er--something Egyptian, I think, for the moment--I will look it up to-morrow. I can't say offhand."

"Thanks, Arabella. Good night."

And it was not until after the party of four had started next morning that Miss Clinker suddenly thought, with a start: "She may have been alluding to quite the other Cheiron--the Centaur--and in that case I have given her some wrong lights!"

CHAPTER XIV

Cora was being more than exasperating, Mrs. Cricklander thought, as they went through the park. Not content with Lord Freynault, who was plainly devoted to her, she kept every now and then looking back at John Derringham with some lively sally, and although he was being particularly agreeable to herself, he responded to Miss Lutworth's piquant attacks with a too ready zeal.

Mrs. Cricklander grew more and more certain that her hold over him had lessened in these last two days, and every force in her indomitable personality stiffened with determination to win him at all costs.

The Professor received them graciously. He was seated in his library, which now was a most comfortable room surrounded with bookcases in which lived all his rare editions of loved books. Nothing could be more fascinating than Mrs. Cricklander's manner to him--a mixture of deference and friendly familiarity, as though he would appreciate the fact of a tacit understanding between them that she too had a right in John Derringham's friends. She had been so reassured by finding that Mr. Carlyon was unmarried and lived alone, that a glow of real warmth towards the Professor emanated from her, while the conviction grew that it was nothing but the influence of Cora Lutworth which had even momentarily cooled her whilom ardent friend.

Mr. Carlyon's imperturbable countenance gave no hint of what he thought of her, although John Derringham watched him furtively and anxiously. He listened to their conversation when he could, and it jarred upon him twice when the lady of his choice altogether missed the point of Cheiron's subtle remarks. She whom he had always considered so understanding!

Of Halcyone there was no sign and no mention, and for some reason which he could not explain John Derringham felt glad.

It seemed an eternity before Mrs. Cricklander got up to go, having been unable to persuade Mr. Carlyon to return with them to luncheon. He had a slight cold, he said, and meant to remain in his warm library.

"Mr. Derringham says you are called Cheiron," Mrs. Cricklander announced laughingly. "How ridiculous to find in you any likeness to that old ferryman of the piercing eye. I see no resemblance but in the beard."

"So John relegates me to the post of ferryman to the dead already, does he!" Mr. Carlyon responded. "I had hoped he still allowed me my horse's hoofs and my cave--I have been deceiving myself all these years, evidently."

A blank look grew in Mrs. Cricklander's eye. What had caves and horse's hoofs to do with the case? She had better turn the conversation at once, or she might be out of her depth, she felt; and this she did with her usual skill, but not before the Professor's left eyebrow had run up into his forehead, and his wise old eyes beneath had met and then instantly averted themselves from those of John Derringham.

All the way back to the house Mrs. Cricklander had the satisfaction of listening to a much more advanced admiration of herself than she had hoped to obtain so soon, and arrived in the best of restored humors--for John Derringham had clenched his teeth as he left the orchard house, and had told himself that he would not be influenced or put off by any of these trifling things, and that it was some vixenish turn of Fate to have allowed these currents of disillusion about a woman who was so eminently suitable to reach him through the medium of his old friend.

A strange thing happened to Halcyone that morning. She had made up her mind to keep away from her usual visit to Cheiron on the Monday and Tuesday when John Derringham had announced he might bring over his hostess to see the Professor. She did not wish to cause complications with her aunts by making Mrs. Cricklander's acquaintance, and underneath she had some strange reluctance herself. Her unerring instincts warned her that this woman might in some way trouble her life, but she thought Saturday would be perfectly safe and was preparing to start, when some vague longing came over her to see her goddess. She had felt less serene since the day before, and John Derringham and his words and looks absorbed her thoughts. The home of Aphrodite was now in a chest in the long gallery, of which she kept the key, and as this old room was always empty--none of the servants, not even Priscilla, caring about visiting it--haunted, it was, they said--she had plenty of time to spend what hours she liked with her treasure without having to do so by stealth, as in the beginning. For any place indoors she loved the long gallery better than any other place. The broken window panes had been mended when the turn for the better came for the whole house, and now she herself kept it all dusted and tidy and used it as a sitting-room and work-room as well; and, above all, it was the temple of the goddess wherein was her shrine.

This day when Aphrodite was uncovered from her blue silk wrappings, her whole expression seemed to be one of appeal; however Halcyone would hold her, in high or low light, the eyes appeared to be asking her something.

"What is it, sweet mother and friend?" she said. "Do you not want me to leave you to-day? If so, indeed I will not. What are you telling me with those beautiful, sad eyes? That something is coming into my existence that you promised me always, and that it will cause me sorrow, and I must pause?"--and she shivered slightly and laid her cheek against the marble cheek. "I am not afraid, and I want whatever it must be, since it is life." Then she put the head back, and started upon her walk. But first one thing and then another delayed her, until last of all she sat down under the oak near the gap in the hedge and asked herself if all these things could be chance. And here she took to dreaming and watching the young rabbits come out of their holes, and to wondering what Fate held in store for her in the immediate future. What was going to be her life? That nothing but good could happen she always knew, because since the very beginning God--the same personal kindly force that she had always worshiped, unaltered by her deep learning, unweakened by any theological dissertations--was there manifesting the whole year round His wonderful love for the world.

And so she sat until the clock of the church at Sarthe-under-Crum struck one, and she started up, realizing that she was too late now to go on to Cheiron's and would only just have time to return for lunch with her aunts. She must go instead in the afternoon. So she walked briskly to the house, with a strange feeling of relief and joy, which she was quite unable to account for in any explicable way.

Nothing delayed her on her second attempt to reach the orchard house, and she found Cheiron placidly smoking while he read a volume of Lucian. She was quite aware what that meant. When the Professor was in an amused and cynical humor he always read Lucian, and although he knew every word by heart, it still caused him complete satisfaction, plainly to be discerned by the upward raising of the left penthouse brow.

Halcyone sat down and smiled sympathetically while she tried to detect which volume it was, that she might have some clew to the cause of her Professor's mood. But he carefully closed the book, so that she could not see--it was the Judgment of Paris in the dialogue of the gods--and she was unable to have her curiosity gratified.

"Something has entertained you, Cheiron?" she said.

"I have had the visit of two goddesses," he answered, chuckling. "Our friend John Derringham brought them. He wanted to show them off and get my opinion, I think."

"And did you give him one?" she asked. "I suppose not!"

"He went away with his teeth shut--" and Mr. Carlyon's smile deepened as he stroked his white beard.

Halcyone laughed. She seldom asked questions herself. If the Professor wished to tell her anything about the ladies he would do so--she was dying to hear! Presently a set of disjointed sentences flowed from her master's lips between his puffs of smoke.

"Girl--worth something--showy--honest--sure of herself--clever--pretty--on her own roots--not a graft."

"Girl"--who was the girl? Halcyone wondered. But Cheiron continued his laconic utterances.

"Woman--beautiful--determined--thick--roots of the commonest--grafting of the best--octopean, tenacious--dangerous--my poor devil of a John!"

"And did you give the apple to either, Cheiron?" Halcyone asked with a gleam of fine humor in her wise eyes. "Or, one of the trio being absent, did you feel yourself excused?"

Mr. Carlyon glanced at her sharply, and then broke into a smile.

"Young woman, I do not think I have ever allowed you to read the Judgment of Paris," he said. "Wherefore your question is ill-timed and irrelevant."

Then they laughed together. How well they knew one another!--not only over things Greek. And presently they began their reading. They were in the middle of Symonds' "Renaissance," and so forgot the outer world.

But after Halcyone had gone in the dusk through the park, the Professor sat in the firelight for a while, and did not ring for lights. He was musing deeply, and his thoughts ran something in this line:

"John must dree his weird. Nothing anyone could say has ever influenced him. If he marries this woman she will eat his soul; having only a sham one of her own, she will devour his. She'll do very well to adorn the London house and feed his friends. He'll find her out in less than a year--it will kill his inspirations. Well, Zeus and all the gods cannot help a man in his folly. But my business is to see that he does not ensnare the heart of my little girl. If he had waited he could have found her--the one woman with a soul."

* * * * *

Miss Roberta had, unfortunately, a bad attack of rheumatism on Easter Sunday, augmented by a cold, and Halcyone stayed at home to rub her poor knee with hot oil, so she did not see the Wendover party, several of whom came to church. Miss La Sarthe occupied the family pew alone, and was the source of much amusement and delight to the smart inhabitants of the outer world.

"Isn't she just too sweet, Cis?" whispered Miss Lutworth into Mrs. Cricklander's ear. "Can't we get Mr. Derringham to take us over there this afternoon?"

But when the subject was broached later at luncheon by his hostess, John Derringham threw cold water upon the idea. He had stayed behind for a few minutes to renew his acquaintance with the ancient lady, and had given her his arm down the short church path, and placed her with extreme deference in the Shetland pony shay, to the absolute enchantment of Miss Lutworth, who, with Lord Freynault, stood upon the mound of an old forgotten grave, the better to see. It was in the earlier days of motor-cars, and Mrs. Cricklander's fine open Charron created the greatest excitement as it waited by the lych-gate. The two Shetlands cocked their ears and showed various signs of nervous interest, and William had all he could do to hold the minute creatures. But Miss La Sarthe behaved with unimpaired dignity, never once glancing in the direction of the great green monster. She got in, assisted by the respectful churchwarden, and allowed John Derringham to wrap the rug round her knees, and then carefully adjusted the ring of her turquoise-studded whip handle.

"Good day, Goddard," she said with benign condescension to the churchwarden. "And see that Betsy Hodges' child with the whooping-cough gets some of Hester's syrup and is not brought to church again next Sunday." And she nodded a gracious dismissal. Then, turning to John Derringham, she gave him two fingers, while she said with some show of haughty friendliness: "My sister and I will be very pleased to see you if you are staying in this neighborhood, Mr. Derringham, and care to take tea with us one day."

"I shall be more than delighted," he replied, as he bowed with homage and stood aside, because William's face betrayed his anxiety over the fidgety ponies.

Miss La Sarthe turned her head with its pork-pie hat and floating veil, and said with superb tranquillity, "You may drive on now, William." And they rolled off between a lane of respectful, curtseying rustics.

Mrs. Cricklander and Lady Maulevrier had already entered the motor and were surveying the scene with amused interest, while Miss Lutworth and Lord Freynault, chaperoned by Arabella Clinker, were preparing to walk. It was not more than a mile across the park, and it was a glorious day. John Derringham joined them.

"I think I will come with you, too," he said. "You take my place, Sir Tedbury. It is only fair you should drive one way."

And so it was arranged, not altogether to the satisfaction of the hostess, who would have preferred to have walked also. However, there was nothing to be done, and so they were whizzed off, while with the tail of her eye Cecilia Cricklander perceived that Lord Freynault had been displaced from Cora's side and was now stalking behind the other pair, beside Arabella Clinker.

"What an extraordinary sight that was," she said to Sir Tedbury Delvine as they went along. "I thought no villagers curtsied any more now in England. That very funny-looking old lady might have been a royalty!"

"It is because she has never had a doubt but that she is--or something higher--complete owner of all these souls," he returned, "that they have not yet begun to doubt it either. They and their forebears have bobbed to the La Sarthe for hundreds of years, and they will go on doing it if this holder of the name lives to be ninety-nine. They would never do so to any new-comer, though, I expect."

"But I am told they have not a penny left, and have sold every acre of the land except the park. Is it not wonderful, Kitty?" Mrs. Cricklander went on, turning to Lady Maulevrier. "I am dying to know them. I hope they will call."

But Sir Tedbury had already chanced to have talked the matter over with John Derringham, because he himself was most anxious to see La Sarthe Chase, which was of deep historical interest, and had incidentally been made aware by that gentleman of the old ladies' views, so he hastily turned the conversation, rather awkwardly, to other things. And a wonder grew in Mrs. Cricklander's mind.

That anyone should not be enchanted to receive her beautiful and sought-after self could not enter her brain, but there was evidently some bar between the acquaintance of herself and her nearest neighbors, and Arabella should be set to find out of what it consisted.

CHAPTER XV

"Do let us go around by the boundary," Miss Lutworth said when they got through the Wendover gates. "I long to see even the park of that exquisite old lady; it must look quite different to anybody else's, and I feel I want an adventure!"

So they struck in towards the haw-haw--the four walking almost abreast.

When they came to beyond the copse, after it touched the Professor's garden, they paused and took in the view. It was unspeakably beautiful from there, rolling away towards the splendid old house, which could only just be distinguished through the giant trees, not yet in leaf. And suddenly, hardly twenty yards from them across the gulf, coming from the gap in Mr. Carlyon's hedge, they saw a tall and very slender mouse-colored figure, as Halcyone emerged on her homeward way--she had run down to see Cheiron when her duties with Miss Roberta were over, and was now going back to lunch.

"Good morning!" called John Derringham, and the four advanced to the very edge of their side, and Halcyone turned and also bordered hers, while she bowed serenely.

"Isn't it a day of the gods!" he continued. "And may I from across this Stygian lake (there was a little water collected in the haw-haw here from the recent rains) introduce Miss Lutworth to you--and Miss Clinker and Lord Freynault? Miss Halcyone La Sarthe."

Everyone bowed, and Halcyone smiled her sweet, grave smile.

"We would love to jump over--or you come to us," Cora Lutworth said with her frank, friendly charm. "Isn't there any way?"

"I am afraid not," responded Halcyone. "You are across in another world--we live in the shades, this side."

"Remember something about a fellow named Orpheus getting over to fetch his girl"--"gail" Lord Freynault pronounced it--"since old John will use Eton cribs in describing the horrid chasm. Can't we sop old Cerberus and somehow manage to swim, if there is no ferryman about?"

"You would certainly be drowned," said Halcyone. "In this place the lake is quite ten inches deep!"

Cora Lutworth was taking in every bit of her with her clever, kindly eyes.

"What a sweet, distinguished violet-under-the-mossy-bank pet of a girl!" she was saying to herself. "No wonder Mr. Derringham goes to see his Professor! How mad Cis would be! I shan't tell her." And aloud she said:

"You cannot imagine how I am longing to get a nearer peep of your beautiful old house. Do we get a chance further on?"

"No," said Halcyone. "I am so sorry. You branch further off once you have passed the closed gate. It was very stupid--the La Sarthe quarreled with the Wendovers a hundred years ago, and it was all closed up then, and these wicked spikes put."

"It is too tantalizing. But won't you walk with us to where we have to part?" Miss Lutworth said, while John Derringham had a sudden longing to turn back and carefully remove certain bits of iron and brick he wot of, and ask this nymph of the woods to take him on to their tree, and tell him more stories about Jason and Medea in that exquisitely refined voice of hers, as she had done once before, long ago. But even though he might not have this joy, he got rather a fine pleasure out of the fact of sharing the secret of the crossing with her, and he had the satisfaction of meeting her soft eyes in one lightning comprehending glance.

They chatted on about the view and the beauties of the neighborhood, and they all laughed often at some sally of Cora's--no one could resist her joyous, bubbling good-fellowship. She had all the sparkle of her clever nation, and the truest, kindest heart. Halcyone had never spoken to another young girl in her life, and felt like a yearling horse--a desire to whinny to a fellow colt and race up and down with him beside the dividing fence of their paddocks. A new light of youth and sweetness came into her pale face.

"I do wish I might ask you to come round by the road," she said, "and see it near, but, as Mr. Derringham knows, my aunts are very old, and one is almost an invalid now, so we never have any visitors at all."

"Of course, we quite understand," said Cora, quickly, touched at once by this simple speech. "But we should so love you to come over to us."

"Alas!" said Halcyone, "it is indeed the Styx."

And here they arrived at the boarded-up gate, where further view was impossible, and from which onwards the lands ceased to join.

"Good-by!" they called to one another, even Arabella Clinker joining in the chorus, while Cora Lutworth ran back to say:

"Some day we'll meet--outside the Styx. Let us get Mr. Derringham to manage it!"

And Halcyone cried a glad "Oh, yes!"

"What a darling! What a perfect darling!" Miss Lutworth said enthusiastically, taking Arabella's arm as they struck rapidly inward and up a knoll. "Did you ever see anything look so like a lady in that impossible old dress? Tell us about her, Mr. Derringham. Does she live with those prehistoric ladies all alone in that haunted house? Could anything be so mysterious and romantic? Please tell us all you know."

"Yes, she does, I believe," John Derringham said. "My old master tells me she never sees or speaks to anyone from one year's end to another. I have only met her very rarely myself."

"Does it not seem too awful?" returned Cora, aghast, thinking of her own merry, enjoyable life, with every whim gratified. "To be so young and attractive and actually buried alive! Don't you think she is a dream, Arabella?"

"I was greatly impressed with her distinction and charm," Miss Clinker said. "I wish we could do something for her to make things brighter."

"Let us ask Cis--" and then Miss Lutworth paused, returning to her first thought--she knew her hostess well. No, it could not bring any pleasure into the life of this slender, lithe English lady with the wonderful Greek name, to be made acquainted with Cecilia Cricklander, who would tear her to pieces without compunction the moment she understood in what direction John Derringham's eyes would probably be cast. He saw Cora's hesitation and understood, and was grateful.

"I believe this girl is trumps. I don't think she will even mention our meeting," he said to himself.

Now for a few steps Miss Lutworth drew Arabella Clinker on ahead.

"Arabella, you dear," she whispered, "I don't want to say a word against Cis--who, of course, is all right--but I have a feeling we won't tell her we've met this dryad of a Halcyone La Sarthe. Have you got that instinct, too?"

"Quite strongly," said Arabella, who never wasted words. "I was going to mention to you the same idea myself."

"Then that is understood!" and she laughed her happy laugh. "I'll see that Freynie doesn't peach!"

Thus it was that four demure and healthful-looking beings joined the party on the terrace of Wendover, and described their pleasant walk, without one word spoken of their _rencontre_ with the youngest Miss La Sarthe. And once or twice Cora Lutworth's mischievous eyes met those of John Derringham, and they both laughed.

CHAPTER XVI

John Derringham made a point of slipping away on the Easter Tuesday afternoon; he determined to drink tea with the Misses La Sarthe. He went to his room with important letters to write, and then sneaked down again like a truant schoolboy, and when he got safely out of sight, struck obliquely across the park to the one vulnerable spot in the haw-haw, and after fumbling a good deal, from his side, managed to get the spikes out and to climb down, and repeat the operation upon the other side. There was no water here, it was on rather higher ground, and he was soon striding up the beech avenue towards the house.

"It would be an extremely awkward place to get over in the dark," he thought, and then he was conscious that Halcyone was far in the distance in front of him, almost entering the house.

So she would be in, then--that was good.

He had never permitted his mind to dwell upon her for an instant, after the Sunday walk. He made himself tell himself that she was a charming child whom he felt great pity for, on account of her lonely life. That he himself took a special interest in her he would not have admitted for a second to his innermost thought. He had now definitely made up his mind to propose to Cecilia Cricklander, and was only awaiting a suitable occasion to put this intention into effect.

Numbers of moments had come--and passed--but he was always able to find good and sufficient fault with them. And once or twice, when Fate itself seemed to arrange things for him, he had a sudden sensation as of a swimmer fighting with the tide, and he had battled to the shore again, and was still free!

But it must come, of course, and before he left for London at the end of the week. Private news had reached him that the Government must soon go out, and he felt this thing must be an accomplished fact before then, for the hand he meant to play.

But meanwhile it was only Tuesday, and he was nearing the battered and nail-bestudded front door of La Sarthe Chase. William said the ladies were at home, and he was shown into the Italian parlor forthwith.

It had not changed in the slightest degree in the seven years since he had seen it first, nor had the two ancient spinsters themselves. They were most graciously glad to receive him, and gave him tea out of the thinnest china cups, and at last Miss Roberta said:

"Our great-niece Halcyone will be coming down in a moment, Mr. Derringham. She has grown up into a very tall girl. You will hardly recognize her, I expect."

And at that instant Halcyone opened the door and said a quiet word of welcome. And if her heart beat rather faster than usual under her simple serge bodice, nothing of any emotion showed in her tranquil face.

She took her tea and sat down in a chair rather in the shadows and aloof.

Miss La Sarthe monopolized the conversation. She had no intention of relinquishing the pleasure of this rare guest, so while Miss Roberta got in a few sentences, Halcyone hardly spoke a word, and if she had really been a coquette, calculating her actions, she could not have piqued John Derringham more.

She looked so very sylph-like as she sat there, bending her graceful head. Her eyes were all in shadow and seemed to gleam as things of mystery from under her dark brows, while the pure lines of her temples and the plaiting of her soft thick hair made him think of some virgin goddess.

But she never spoke.

At last John Derringham began to grow exasperated, and plunged into temptation, which he did not admit that he ought to have avoided.

"I am so very much interested in this wonderful old house," he said, addressing Miss La Sarthe. "That row of bay windows is in a long gallery, I suppose? Would it be a great impertinence if I asked to see it?"

"We shall be pleased for you to do so," the old lady returned, without much warmth. "It is very cold and draughty, my sister and I have not entered it for many years, but Halcyone, I believe, goes there sometimes; she will show it to you if you wish."

Halcyone rose, ready at once to obey her aunts, and led the way towards the door.

"We had better go up the great staircase and along through Sir Timothy's rooms. The staircase which leads directly to it from the hall is not quite safe," she said. "Except for me," she added, when they were outside the door. "Then, I know exactly where to put my feet!"

"I would follow you blindly," said John Derringham, "but we will go which way you will. Only, you are such a strange, silent little old friend now--I am afraid of you!"

Halcyone was rather ahead, leading the way, and she turned and paused while he came up close beside her.

Her eyes were quite startled.

"You afraid of me!" she said.

"Yes--you seem so nymph-like and elusive. I do not know if I am really looking at an ordinary earth-maiden, or whether you will melt away."

"I am quite real," and she smiled, "but now you must notice these two rooms a little that we shall pass through. They are very ghostly I think; they were the Sir Timothy's who went to fetch James I from Scotland. I am glad they are not mine, but the long gallery I love; it is my sitting-room--my very own--and in it I keep something which matters to me more than anything else in the world." Then she went on, with a divine shyness which thrilled her companion: "And--I do not know why--but I think I will show it to you."

"Yes, please do that," he responded eagerly, "and do not let us stop to look at the ghostly apartments--where you sit interests me far more."

So they went rapidly through Sir Timothy's rooms, with the great state bed where had slept his royal master, so the tale ran, and on down some uneven steps, and through a small door, and there found themselves in the long, narrow room, with its bays along the southern side, and one splendid mullioned casement at the end with coats-of-arms emblazoned upon each division. And through this, which looked west, there poured the lowered afternoon sun with a broad shaft of glorious light.

The place was almost empty, but for a chest or two and a table near this window with writing materials and books. And upon a rough set of shelves close at hand many more volumes reposed.

"So it is here you live and work, you wise, lonely, little Pallas Athen," he said.

"You must not call me that--I am not at all like her," Halcyone answered softly. "She was very clever and very noble--but a little hard, I think. Wait until I have shown you my own goddess. I would rather have her soul than any other of the Olympian gods."

John Derringham took a step nearer to her.

"Do you remember the night at dinner here when you told me Pallas Athen's words to Perseus?" he said. "I have thought of them often, and they have helped me sometimes, I think."

"I am so glad," said Halcyone simply, while she moved towards her treasure chest.

He watched her with satisfied eyes--every action of hers was full of grace, and the interest he felt in her personally obscured any for the moment in what she was going to show him, but at last he became aware that she had unlocked a cupboard drawer, and was taking from it a bundle of blue silk.

His curiosity was aroused, and he went over as near as he could.

"Come!" whispered Halcyone, and walked to the high window-sill of the middle section, and then put down her burden upon the old faded velvet seat.

"See, I will take off her veil gradually," she said, "and you must tell me of what she makes you think."

John Derringham was growing interested by now, but had no idea in the world of the marvel he was going to see. He started more perceptibly than even Mr. Carlyon had done seven years before, when he had realized the superlative beauty of the Greek head.

Halcyone uncovered it reverently, and then took a step back, and waited silently for him to speak.

He looked long into the marvelous face, and then he said as though he were dreaming:

"Aphrodite herself!"

"Ah! I felt you would know and recognize her at once--Yes, that is her name. Oh, I am glad!" and Halcyone clapped her hands. "She is my mother, and so, you see, I am never alone here, for she speaks always to me of love."

John Derringham looked at her sharply as she said this, and in her eyes he saw two wells of purity, each with an evening star melted into its depths.

And he suddenly was conscious of something which his whole life had missed--for he knew he did not know what real love meant, not even that which his mother might have given him, if she had lived.

He did not speak for a moment; he gazed into Halcyone's face. It seemed as if a curtain had lifted for one instant and given him a momentary glimpse into some heaven, and then dropped again, leaving a haunting memory of sweetness, the more beautiful because indistinct.

"Love--" he said, still dreamily. "Surely there is yet another and a deeper kind of love."

Halcyone raised her head, while a strange look grew in her wide eyes, almost of fear. It was as though he had put into words some unspoken, unadmitted thought.

"Yes," she said very softly, "I feel there is--but that is not all peace; that must be gloriously terrible, because it would mean life."

He looked at her fully now; there was not an atom of coquetry or challenge; her face was pale and exquisite in its simple intentness. He turned to the goddess again, and almost chaunted:

"Oh! Aphrodite of the divine lips and soulful eyes, what mystery do you hold for us mortals? What do you promise us? What do you make us pay? Is the good worth the anguish? Is the fulfillment a cup worth draining--without counting the cost?"

"What does she answer you?" whispered Halcyone. "Does she say that to live and fulfill destiny as the beautiful year does is the only good? It is wiser not to question and weigh the worth, for even though we would not drink, perhaps we cannot escape--since there is Fate."

John Derringham pulled himself together with an effort. He felt he was drifting into wonderland, where the paths were too tenderly sweet and flowered for him to dare to linger, for there he might find and quaff of the poison cup. So he said in a voice which he strove to bring back to earth:

"Where did you get the beautiful thing? She is of untold value, of course you know?"

Halcyone took the marble into her hands lovingly.

"She came to me out of the night," she said. "Some day I might tell you how--but not to-day. I must put her back again. No one knows but Cheiron and me--and now--you--that she is in existence, and no one else must ever know."

He did not speak; he watched her while she wrapped the head in its folds of silk.

"Aphrodite never had so true a priestess, nor one so pure," he thought, and a strange feeling of sadness came over him, and he thanked her rather abruptly for showing him her treasure, and they went silently back through Sir Timothy's rooms, and down the stair; and in the Italian parlor he said good-by at once, and left.

The wind had got up and blew freshly in his face. There would be a gale before morning. It suited his mood. He struck across the park, but instead of making for the haw-haw, he turned into Cheiron's little gate. He wanted understanding company, he wanted to talk cynical philosophy, and he wanted the stimulus of his old master's biting wit.

But when he got there, he found Cheiron very taciturn--contributing little more than a growl now and then, while he smoked his long pipe and played with his beard. So at last he got up to go.

"I have made up my mind to marry Mrs. Cricklander, Master," he said.

"I supposed so," the Professor replied dryly. "A man always has to convince himself he is doing a fine thing when he gives himself up to be hanged."

CHAPTER XVII

John Derringham reached Wendover--by the road and the lodge gates--in an impossible temper. He had left the orchard house coming as near to a quarrel with his old master as such a thing could be. He absolutely refused to let himself dwell upon the anger he had felt; and if Fate had given him a distinct and pointed chance to ask the fair Cecilia for her lily hand, when he knocked at her sitting-room door before dinner, he would no doubt have left the next day--summoned again to London by his Chief--an engaged man. But this turn of events was not in the calculations of Destiny for the moment, and he found no less a person than Mr. Hanbury-Green already ensconced by his hostess's side. They were both smoking and looked very comfortable and at ease.

"I just came in to tell you I shall be obliged to tear myself away to-morrow," John Derringham said, "and cannot have the pleasure of staying to the end of the week in this delightful place."

Mrs. Cricklander got up from her reclining position among the cushions. This was a blow. She wished now she had not encouraged Mr. Hanbury-Green to come and sit with her; it might be a lost opportunity which it would be difficult to recapture again. But she had felt so very much annoyed at Mr. Derringham's capriciousness, displayed the whole of the Monday, and then at his absenting himself to-day, having gone to see the Professor, of course--since he was out of the house at tea-time when she had sent to his room to enquire--that she had determined to see what a little jealousy would do for him. But if he were off on the morrow this might not be a safe moment to try it.

Mr. Hanbury-Green, however, had not the slightest intention of giving up his place, in spite of several well-directed hints, and sat on like one belonging to the spot.

So they all had to go off to dress without any longed-for word having been spoken. And Mrs. Cricklander was far too circumspect a hostess to attempt to arrange a _tte--tte_ after dinner under the eye of an important social leader like Lady Maulevrier, whom she had only just succeeded in enticing to stay in her country house. So, with the usual semi-political chaff, the evening passed, and good-nights and good-bys were said, and early next day John Derringham left for London.

He would write--he decided--and all the way up in the train he buried himself in the engrossing letters and papers he had received from his Chief by the morning's post.

And for the next six weeks he was in such a turmoil of hard work and deep and serious questions about a foreign State that he very seldom had time to go into society, and when at last he was a little more free, Mrs. Cricklander, he found, had not returned from Paris, whither she always went several times a year for her clothes.

But they had written to one another once or twice.

He had promised in the last letter that he would go down to Wendover again for Whitsuntide, and this time he firmly determined nothing should keep him from his obvious and delectable fate.

Mrs. Cricklander had no haunting fears now. She could discover no reason for John Derringham's change towards her. Arabella had been mute and had put it down to the stress of his life. This tension with the foreign State, it leaked out, had been known to the Ministers for a week before it had been made public--that, of course, was the cause of his preoccupation, and she would simply order some especially irresistible garments in Paris, and bide her time.

He wrote the most charming letters, though they were hardly long enough to be called anything but notes; but there was always the insinuation in them that she was the one person in the world who understood him, and they were expressed with his usual cultivated taste.

It was sheer force of will that kept John Derringham from ever thinking of Halcyone. He resolutely crushed the thought of her every time it presented itself, and systematically turned to his work and plunged into it, if even a mental vision of her came to his mind's eye.

He felt quite calm and safe when, two days before he was expected at Wendover, the idea came to him to propose himself to the Professor, so as not to have to go and see him and endure his cynical reflections _after_ he should be engaged to his hostess.

Mr. Carlyon had wired back, "Come if you like," and on this evening in early June John Derringham arrived at the orchard house.

Cheiron made no allusion to the matter that had caused them to part with some breezy words upon his old pupil's side. Mrs. Cricklander or Wendover might not have existed; their talk was upon philosophy and politics, and contained not the shadow of a woman--even Halcyone was not mentioned at all.

Whitsuntide fell late that year, at the end of the first week in June, and the spring having been exceptionally mild, the foliage was all in full beauty of the freshest green.

It was astonishingly hot, and every divine scent of the night came to John Derringham as he went out into the garden before going to bed. A young setting half-moon still hung in the sky, and there were stars. One of those nights when all the mystery of life seems to be revealing itself in the one word--Love. The nightingale throbbed out its note in the copse amidst a perfect stillness, and the ground was soft without a drop of dew.

John Derringham, hatless, and with his hands plunged in the pockets of his dinner coat, wandered down the garden towards the apple tree, picking an early red rosebud as he passed a bush--its scent intoxicated him a little. Then he went to the gate, and, opening it, he strolled into the park. Here was a vaster and more perfect view. It was all clothed in the unknown of the half dark, and yet he could distinguish the outline of the giant trees. He went on as if in some delicious dream, which yet had some heart-break in it, and at last he came to the tree where he and Halcyone had sat those seven years ago, when she had told him of what consisted the true point of honor in a man. He remembered it all vividly, her very words and the cloud of her soft hair which had blown a little over his face. He sat down upon the fallen log that had been made into a rude bench; and there he gazed in front of him, unconscious now of any coherent thought.

Suddenly he was startled by a laugh so near him and so soft that he believed himself to be dreaming, but he looked round and quickly rose to his feet, and there at the other side of the tree he saw standing the ethereal figure of a girl, while her filmy gray garments seemed to melt into the night.

"Halcyone!" he gasped. "And from where?"

"Ah!" she said as she came towards him. "You have invaded my kingdom. Mortal, what right have you to the things of the night? They belong to me--who know them and love them."

"Then have compassion upon me, sweet dryad!" he pleaded, "who am but a pilgrim who cannot see his way. Let me shelter under your protection and be guided aright."

She laughed again--a ripple of silver that he had not guessed her voice possessed. Her whole bearing was changed from the reserved, demure and rather timid creature whom he knew. She was a sprite now, or a nymph, or even a goddess, for her brow was imperious and her mien one of assured command.

"This is my kingdom," she said, "and if you obey me, I will show you things of which you have never dreamed--" and then she came towards the tree and sat upon the high forked branch of the broken bough while she pointed with shadowy finger to the part which was a bench. "Sit there, Man of Day," she ordered, "for you cannot see beyond your hand. You cannot know how the living things are creeping about, unafraid now of your cruel power. You cannot discern the difference in the colors of the fresh young bracken and the undergrowth; you cannot perceive the birds asleep in the tree."

"No, indeed, Lady of Night," he said, "I admit I am but a mole, but you will let me perceive them with your eyes, will you not?"

She slipped from her perch suddenly, before he could put out a protesting hand to stop her, and glided out of his view into the dark of the copse, and from there he heard the intoxicating silver laughter which maddened his every sense.

"Halcyone! Witch!" he called. "Come back to me--I am afraid, all alone!"

So she came, appearing like a materializing wraith from the shadow, and with an undulating movement of incredible grace she was again seated upon her perch, the fallen forked branch of the tree.

John Derringham was experiencing the strongest emotion he had ever felt in his life.

A maddening desire to seize the elusive joy--to come nearer--to assure himself that she was real and not a spirit of night sent to torture and elude him--overcame all other thought. The startling change from her deportment of the day--the very way she glided about was as the movement of some other being.

And as those old worshipers of Dionysus had grown intoxicated with the night and the desire of communion with the beyond, so he--John Derringham--cool, calculating English statesman--felt himself being drawn into a current of emotion and enthrallment whose end could only be an ecstasy of which he did not yet dare to dream.

It was all so abnormal--to see her here, a shadow, a tantalizing soft shadow with a new personality--it was no wonder he rubbed his eyes and asked himself if he were awake.

"Come with me," she whispered, bending nearer to him, "and I will show you how the wild roses grow at night."

"I will follow you to Hades," he said, "but I warn you I cannot see a yard beyond my nose. You must lead me with your hand, if so ethereal a spirit possesses a hand."

Again the silver laugh, and he saw her not, but presently she appeared from behind the tree. She had let down her misty, mouse-colored hair, and it floated around her like a cloud.

Then she slipped a cool, soft set of fingers into his, and led him onward, with sure and certain steps, while he blundered, not knowing where to put his feet, and all the time she turned every few seconds and looked at him, and he could just distinguish the soft mystery of her eyes, while now and then, as she walked, a tendril of her floating hair flew out and caressed his face, as once before, long ago.

"There are fairy things all about us," she said. "Countless pink campions and buttercups, with an elf in each. They will feel your giant feet, but they will know you are a mortal and cannot help your ways, because, you poor, blind bat, you cannot see!"

"And you?" he asked. "Who gave you these eyes?"

"My mother," she answered softly, "the Goddess of the Night."

And then she drew him on rapidly and stealthily, and he saw at last, in the open space where the stars and the sinking moon gave more light, that they were approaching the broken gate, and were near the terraced garden, which now was better kept.

When they got to this barrier to their path, Halcyone paused and leaned upon it.

"Mortal," she said, "you are wandering in a maze. You have come thus far because I have led you, but you would have fallen if you had walked so fast alone. Now look, and I will show you the lily-of-the-valley cups--there are only a few there under the shelter of the gray stone arch. Come."

And she opened the gate, letting go of his hand as she glided beyond.

"I cannot and will not hazard a step if you leave me," he called, and she came back and gave him again her soft fingers to hold. So at last they reached the summer house at the end of the second terrace, where the archway was where old William kept his tools.

There were very few flowers out, but a mass of wild roses, and still some May tulips bloomed, while from the meadow beneath them came that indescribable freshness which young clover gives.

John Derringham knew now that he was dreaming--or drunk with some nectar which was not of earth. And still she led him on, and then pointed to the old bench which he could just see.

"We shall sit here," she said, "and Aphrodite shall tell us your future--for see, she, too, loves the night and comes here with me."

And to his intense astonishment, as he peered on to the table, he saw a misty mass of folds of silk, and there lay the goddess's head, that Halcyone had shown to him that day in the long gallery more than a month ago.

He was so petrified with surprise at the whole thing that he had ceased to reason. Everything came now as a matter of course, like the preposterous sequence of events in a dream. The Aphrodite lay, as a woman caressed, half buried in her silken folds, but Halcyone lifted her up and propped her against a stone vase which was near, letting the silk fall so that the broken neck did not show, and it seemed as if a living woman's face gazed down upon them.

John Derringham's eyes were growing more accustomed to the darkness, or Halcyone really had some magic power, for it seemed to him that he could see the divine features quite clearly.

"She is saying," the soft voice of his companion whispered in his ear, "that all the things you will grasp with your hands are but dreams--and the things that you now believe to be dreams are all real."

"And are you a dream, you sweet?" asked John Derringham. "Or are you tangible, and must I drink the poison cup, after all?"

"I would give you no noxious wine," she answered. "If you were strong and wise and true, only the fire which I have stolen from heaven could come to you."

"Long ago," he said, "you gave me an oak-leaf, dryad, and I have kept it still. What now will you grant to me?"

"Nothing, since you fear--" and she drew back.

"I do not fear," he answered wildly. "Halcyone!--sweetheart! I want you--here--next my heart. Give me--yourself!"

Then he stretched out his arms and drew her to him, all soft and loving and unresisting, and he pressed his lips to her pure and tender lips. And it seemed as if the heavens opened, and the Night poured down all that was divine of bliss.

But before he could be sure that indeed he held her safely in his arms, she started forward, releasing herself. Then, clasping Aphrodite and her silken folds, with a bound she was far beyond him, and had disappeared in the shadow of the archway, on whose curve the last rays of moonlight played, so that he saw it outlined and clear.

He strode forward to follow her, but to his amazement, when he reached the place, she seemed to vanish absolutely in front of his eyes, and although he lit a match and searched everywhere, not the slightest trace of her could he find, and there was no opening or possible corner into which she could have disappeared.

Absolutely dumbfounded, he groped his way back to the bench, and sitting down buried his head in his hands. Surely it was all a dream, then, and he had been drunk--with the Professor's Falernian wine--and had wandered here and slept. But, God of all the nights, what an exquisite dream!

CHAPTER XVIII

The half-moon set, and the night became much darker before John Derringham rose from his seat by the bench. A stupor had fallen upon him. He had ceased to reason. Then he got up and made his way back to the orchard house, under the myriads of pale stars, which shone with diminished brilliancy from the luminous, summer night sky.

Here he seemed to grow material again and to realize that he was indeed awake. But what had happened to him? Whether he had been dreaming or no, a spell had fallen upon him--he had drunk of the poison cup. And Halcyone filled his mind. He thrilled and thrilled again as he remembered the exquisite joy of their tender embrace--even though it had been no real thing, but a dream, it was still the divinest good his life had yet known.

But what could it lead to if it were real? Nothing but sorrow and parting and regret. For his career still mattered to him, he knew, now that he was in his sane senses again, more than anything else in the world. And he could not burden himself with a poor, uninfluential girl as a wife, even though the joy of it took them both to heaven.

The emotion he was experiencing was one quite new to him, and he almost resented it, because it was upsetting some of his beliefs.

The next day, at breakfast, the Professor remarked that he looked pale.

"You rather overwork, John," he said. "To lie about the garden here and not have to follow the caprices of fashionable ladies at Wendover, would do you a power of good."

There was no sight of Halcyone all the day. She was living in a paradise, but hers contained no doubts or uncertainties. She knew that indeed she had lived and breathed the night before, and found complete happiness in John Derringham's arms.

That, then, was what Aphrodite had always been telling her. She knew now the meaning of the love in her eyes. This glorious and divine thing had been given to her, too--out of the night.

It was fully perceived at last, not only half glanced at almost with fear. Love had come to her, and whatever might reck of sorrow, it meant her whole life and soul.

And this precious gift of the pure thing from God she had given in her turn to John Derringham as his lips had pressed her lips.

She spent the whole day in the garden, sitting in the summer house surveying the world. The blue hills in the far distance were surely the peaks of Olympus and she had been permitted to know what existence meant there.

Not a doubt of him entered her heart, or a fear. He certainly loved her as she loved him; they had been created for each other since the beginning of time. And it was only a question of arrangement when she should go away with him and never part any more.

Marriage, as a ceremony in church, meant nothing to her. Some such thing, of course, must take place, because of the stupid conventions of the world, but the sacrament, the real mating, was to be together--alone.

In her innocent and noble soul John Derringham now reigned as king. He had never had a rival, and never would have while breath stayed in her fair body.

By the evening of that day he had reasoned himself into believing that the whole thing was a dream--or, if not a dream, he had better consider it as such; but at the same time, as the dusk grew, a wild longing swelled in his heart for its recurrence, and when the night came he could not any longer control himself, and as he had done before he wandered to the tree.

The moon, one day beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of the day were rising to give welcome and fuse itself in the night.

He was alone with the bird who throbbed from the copse, and as he sat in the sublime stillness he fancied he saw some does peep forth. They were there, of course, with their new-born fawns.

But where was she, the nymph of the night?

His heart ached, the longing grew intense until it was a mighty force. He felt he could stride across the luminous park which separated them, and scale the wall to the casement window of the long gallery, to clasp her once more in his arms. And, as it is with all those beings who have scorned and denied his power, Love was punishing him now by a complete annihilation of his will. At last he buried his face in his hands; it was almost agony that he felt.

When he uncovered his eyes again he saw, far in the distance, a filmy shadow. It seemed to be now real, and now a wraith, as it flitted from tree to tree, but at last he knew it was real--it was she--Halcyone! He started to his feet, and there stood waiting for her.

She came with the gliding movement he now knew belonged in her dual personality to the night.

Her hair was all unbound, and her garment was white.

All reason, all resolution left him. He held out his arms.

"My love!" he cried. "I have waited for you--ah, so long!"

And Halcyone allowed herself to be clasped next his heart, and then drawn to the bench, where they sat down, blissfully content.

They had such a number of things to tell one another about love. He who had always scoffed at its existence was now eloquent in his explanation of the mystery. And Halcyone, who had never had any doubts, put her beautiful thoughts into words. Love meant everything--it was just he, John Derringham. She was no more herself, but had come to dwell in him.

She was tender and absolutely pure in her broad loyalty, concealing nothing of her fondness, letting him see that if she were Mistress of the Night, he was Master of her Soul.

And the complete subservience of herself, the sublime transparency without subterfuge of her surrender, appealed to everything of chivalry which his nature held.

"Since the beginning," she whispered, in that soft, sweet voice of hers which seemed to him to be of the angels, "ever since the beginning, John, when I was a little ignorant girl, it has always been you. You were Jason and Theseus and Perseus. You were Sir Bors and Sir Percival and Sir Lancelot. And I knew it was just waiting--Fate."

"My sweet, my sweet," he murmured, kissing her hair.

"And the time you came, when I was so ugly," she went on, "and so overgrown--I was sad then, because I knew you would not like me. But the winds and the night were good to me. I have grown, you see, so that I am now more as you would wish, but everything has been for you from that first day in the tree--our tree."

That between two lovers the thing could be a game never entered her brain. The thought that it might be wiser to watch moods and play on this one or that, and conceal her feelings and draw him on with mystery, could meet with no faintest understanding in her fond heart.

She just loved him, and belonged to him, and that was the whole meaning of heaven and earth. Any trick of calculation would have been a thousand miles beneath her feet. And while he was there with her, clasping her slender willowy form to his heart, John Derringham felt exalted. The importance of his career dwindled, the imperative necessity of possessing Halcyone for his very own augmented, until at last he whispered in her ear as her little head lay there upon his breast:

"Darling child, you must marry me at once--immediately--next week. We will go through whatever is necessary at the registry-office, and then you must come away with me and be my very own."

"Of course," was all she said.

"It is absolutely impossible that we could let anyone know about it at present--even Cheiron--" he went on, a little hurriedly. "The circumstances are such that I cannot publicly own you as my wife, although it would be my glory so to do. I should have to give up my whole career, because I have no money to keep a splendid home, which would be your due. But I dare say these things do not matter to you any more than they do to me. Is it so, sweet, darling child?"

"How could they matter?" Halcyone whispered from the shelter of his clasped arms. "Of what good would they be to me? I want to be with you when you have time; I want to caress you when you are tired, and comfort you, and inspire you, and love you, and bring you peace. How could the world--which I do not know--matter to me? Are you not foolish to ask me such questions, John!"

"Very foolish, my divine one," he said, and forgot what more he would have spoken in the delirium of a worshiping kiss.

But presently he brought himself back to facts again.

"Darling," he said, "I will find out exactly how everything can be managed, and then you will meet me here, under this tree, and we will go away together and be married, and for a week at least I will make the time to stay with you, as your lover, and you shall be absolutely and truly my sweetest wife."

"Yes," said Halcyone, perfectly content.

"And after that," he went on, "I will arrange that you stay somewhere near me, so that every moment that I am free I can come back to the loving glory of your arms."

"I cannot think of any other heaven," the tender creature murmured. And then she nestled closer, and her voice became dreamy.

"This is what God means in everything," she whispered. "In the Springtime, which is waiting for the Summer--in all the flowers and all the trees. This is the secret the night has taught me from the very beginning, when I first was able to spend the hours in her arms."

Then this mystery of her knowledge of the night he had to probe; and she told him, in old-world, romantic language, how she had discovered the stairs and Aphrodite, and even of the iron-bound box which she had never been able to move.

"It contains some papers of that Sir Timothy, I expect," she said. "We know by the date of the breastplate that it was when Cromwell sent his Ironsides to search La Sarthe that he must have escaped through the door and got to the coast; but he was drowned crossing to France, so no one guessed or ever knew how he had got away--and I expect the secret of the passage died with him, and I was the first one to find it."

"Then what do you make of the goddess's head?" asked John Derringham. "Was that his, too?"

"Yes, I suppose so," she answered. "He was a great, grand seigneur--we know of that--and had traveled much in Italy when a young man, and stayed at Florence especially. He married a relative of the Medici belonging to some female branch, and he is even said to have been to Greece; but in the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany he would certainly have learned to appreciate the divine beauty of Aphrodite. He must have brought her from there as well as the Hebe and Artemis, which are not nearly so good. They stand in the hall--but they say nothing to me."

"It would be interesting to know what the papers are about," John Derringham went on. "We must look at them together some day when you are my wife."

"Yes," said Halcyone, and thrilled at the thought.

"So it was through the solid masonry you disappeared last night? No wonder, sprite, that I believed I was dreaming! Why did you fly from me? Why?"

"It was too great, too glorious to take all at once," she said, and with a sudden shyness she buried her face in his coat.

"My darling sweet one," he murmured, drawing her to him, passion flaming once more. "I could have cried madly"--and he quoted in Greek:

/$ "Wilt them fly me and deny me? By thine own joy I vow, By the grape upon the bough, Thou shalt seek me in the midnight, thou shalt love me even now." $/

Mr. Carlyon had not restricted Halcyone's reading: she knew it was from the "Bacch" of Euripides, and answered:

"Ah, yes, and, you see, I have sought you in the midnight, and I am here, and I love you--even now!"

After that, for a while they both seemed to fall into a dream of bliss. They spoke not, they just sat close together, his arms encircling her, her head upon his breast; and thus they watched the first precursors of dawn streak the sky and, looking up, found the stars had faded.

Halcyone started to her feet.

"Ah! I must go, dear lover," she said, "though it will only be for some few hours."

But John Derringham held her two hands, detaining her.

"I will make all the arrangements in these next few days," he said. "I am going to Wendover for Whitsuntide. I will get away from there, though, and come across the park and meet you, darling, here at our tree, and we will settle exactly what to do and when to go."

Then, after a last fond, sweet embrace, he let her leave him, and watched her as she glided away among the giant trees, until she was out of sight, a wild glory in his heart.

For love, when he wins after stress, leaves no room but for gladness in his worshiper's soul.

CHAPTER XIX

It was John Derringham who was taciturn next morning, not the Professor!

The light of day has a most sobering effect, and while still exalted in a measure by all the strong forces of love, he was enabled to review worldly events with a clearer eye, and could realize very well that he was going to take a step which would not have a forwarding impetus upon his career, even if it proved to be not one of retrogression.

He must give up the thought of using a rich wife as an advancement; but then, on the other hand, he would gain a companion whose divine sweetness would be an ennobling inspiration.

How he could ever have deceived himself in regard to his feelings he wondered now, for he saw quite plainly that he had been drifting into loving her from the first moment he had seen her that Good Friday morning, the foundations having been laid years before, on the day in the tree.

He felt rather uncomfortable about his old master, who he knew would not approve of any secret union with Halcyone. Not that Cheiron would reck much of conventionalities, or care in the least if it were a marriage at a registry-office or not, but he would certainly resent any aspect of the case which would seem to put a slight upon his much-loved protge or place her in a false position.

He would tell him nothing about it until it was an accomplished fact and Halcyone was his wife--then they would let him into the secret.

All the details of what she would have to say to her aunts in her letter of farewell on leaving them would have to be thought out, too, so that no pursuit or inopportune prying into the truth would be the consequence.

Of any possibility of her stepfather's ultimate interference he did not think, not knowing that she had even any further connection with him. To satisfy in some way the ancient aunts was all that appeared a necessity. And that was difficult enough. He had certainly undertaken no easy task, but he did not regret his decision. The first and only strong passion he had ever known was mastering him.

But there was yet one more unpleasant aspect to face--that was the situation regarding Mrs. Cricklander. He had assuredly not committed himself or even acted very unfairly to her. She had been playing a game as he had been. He did not flatter himself that she really loved him--now that he knew what love meant--and her ambition could be gratified elsewhere; but there remained the fact that he was engaged to stay with her for Whitsuntide, and whether to do so, and plainly show her that he had meant nothing and only intended to be a friend, or whether to throw the visit over, and go to London, returning just to fetch Halcyone about Wednesday, he could not quite decide.

Which would be the best thing to do? It worried him--but not for long, because indecision was not, as a rule, one of his characteristics, and he soon made up his mind to the former course.

He would go to Wendover on Saturday, as was arranged, take pains to disabuse his hostess's mind of any illusion upon the subject of his intentions, and, having run over to Bristol this afternoon to give notice to the registrar and procure the license, he would leave with the other guests on the Tuesday, after lunch, having sent his servant up to London in the morning to be out of the way.

Then he would sleep that night in Upminster, getting his servant to leave what luggage he required there--it was the junction for the main line to London, and so that would be easy. A motor could be hired, and in it, on the Wednesday, he would come to the oak avenue gate, as that was far at the other side of the park upon the western road; there he would arrange that Halcyone should be waiting for him with some small box, and they would go over to Bristol, be married, and then go on to a romantic spot he knew of in Wales, and there spend a week of bliss!

By the time he got thus far in his meditations he felt intoxicated again, and Mr. Carlyon, who was watching him as he sat there in his chair reading the _Times_ opposite him, wondered what made him suddenly clasp his hands and draw in his breath and smile in that idiotic way while he gazed into space!

Then there would be the afterwards. Of course, that would be blissful, too. Oh! if he could only claim her before all the world how glorious it would be--but for the present that was hopeless, and at all events her life with him would not be more retired than the one of monotony which she led at La Sarthe Chase, and would have his tenderest love to brighten it. He would take a tiny house for her somewhere--one of those very old-fashioned ones shut in with a garden still left in Chelsea, near the Embankment--and there he would spend every moment of his spare time, and try to make up to her for her isolation. Well arranged, the world need not know of this--Halcyone would never be _exigeante_--or if it did develop a suspicion, ministers before his day had been known to have had--_chres amies_.

But as this thought came he jumped from his chair. It was, when faced in a concrete fashion, hideously unpalatable as touching his pure, fair star.

"You are rather restless to-day, John," the Professor said, as his old pupil went hastily towards the open window and looked out.

"Yes," said John Derringham. "It is going to rain, and I must go to Bristol this afternoon. I have to see a man on business."

Cheiron's left penthouse went up into his forehead.

"Matters complicating?" was all he said.

"Yes, the very devil," responded John Derringham.

"Beginning to feel the noose already, poor lad?"

"Er--no, not exactly," and he turned round. "But I don't quite know what I ought to do about her--Mrs. Cricklander."

"A question of honor?"

"I suppose so."

The Professor grunted, and then chuckled.

"A man's honor towards a woman lasts as long as his love. When that goes, it goes with it--to the other woman."

"You cynic!" said John Derringham.

"It is the truth, my son. A man's point of view of such things shifts with his inclinations, and if other people are not likely to know, he does not experience any qualms in thinking of the woman's feelings--it is only of what the world will think of _him_ if it finds him out. Complete cowards, all of us!"

John Derringham frowned. He hated to know this was true.

"Well, I am not going to marry Mrs. Cricklander, Master," he announced after a while.

"I am very glad to hear it," Cheiron said heartily. "I never like to see a fine ship going upon the rocks. All your vitality would have been drawn out of you by those octopus arms."

"I do not agree with you in the least about any of those points," John Derringham said stiffly. "I have the highest respect for Mrs. Cricklander--but I can't do it."

"Well, you can thank whichever of your stars has brought you to this conclusion," growled the Professor. "I suppose I'll pull through somehow financially," the restless visitor went on, pacing the floor--"anyway, for a few years; there may be something more to be squeezed out of Derringham. I must see."

"Well, if you are not marrying that need not distress you," Cheiron consoled him with. "Those things only matter if a man has a son."

John Derringham stopped abruptly in his walk and looked at his old master.

His words gave him a strange twinge, but he crushed it down, and went on again:

"It is a curse, this want of money," he said. "It makes a man do base things that his soul revolts against." And then, in his restless moving, he absently picked up a volume of Aristotle, and his eye caught this sentence: "The courageous man therefore faces danger and performs acts of courage for the sake of what is noble."

And what did an honorable man do? But this question he would not go further into.

"You were out very late last night, John," Mr. Carlyon said presently. "I left this window open for you on purpose. The garden does one good sometimes. You were not lonely, I hope?"

"No," said John Derringham; but he would not look at his old master, for he knew very well he should see a whimsical sparkle in his eyes.

Mr. Carlyon, of course, must be aware of Halcyone's night wandering proclivities. And if there had been nothing to conceal John Derringham would have liked to have sat down now and rhapsodized all about his darling to his old friend, who adored her, too, and knew and appreciated all her points. He felt bitterly that Fate had not been as kind to him as she might have been. However, there was nothing for it, so he turned the conversation and tried to make himself grow as interested in a question of foreign policy as he would have been able to be, say, a year ago. And then he went out for a walk.

And Cheiron sat musing in his chair, as was his habit.

"The magnet of her soul is drawing his," he said to himself. "Well, now that this has begun to work, we must leave things to Fate."

But he did not guess how passion on the one side and complete love and trust upon the other were precipitously forcing Fate's hand.

The possibility of John Derringham's sending a message to Halcyone was very slender. The post was out of the question--she probably never got any letters, and the arrival of one in a man's handwriting would no doubt be the cause of endless comment in the household. The foolishness had been not to make a definite appointment with her when they had parted before dawn. But they had been too overcome with love to think of anything practical in those last moments, and now the only thing would be for him to go again to-night to the tree, and hope that she would meet him there. But the sky was clouding over, and rain looked quite ready to fall. As a last resource he could send Demetrius--his own valet he would not have trusted a yard.

The rain kept off for his journey to Bristol, and his business was got through with rapidity. And if the registrar did connect the name of John Derringham, barrister-at-law, of the Temple, London, with John Derringham, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he was a man of discretion and said nothing about it.

It was quite late when Mr. Carlyon's guest returned to his roof--cross-country trains were so tiresome--and it had just begun to pour with rain, so there was no use expecting that Halcyone would be there by the tree. And bed, with a rather feverish sensation of disappointment, seemed John Derringham's portion.

Halcyone had passed a day of happy tranquillity. She was of that godlike calm which frets not, believing always that only good could come to her, and that, as she heard nothing from her lover, it was because--which was indeed the truth--he was arranging for their future. If it had been fine she had meant to go to the tree, but as it rained she went quietly to her room, and let her Priscilla brush her hair for an hour, while she stared in the old dark glass, seeing not her own pale and exquisite face, but all sorts of pictures of future happiness. That she must not tell her old nurse, for the moment, of her good fortune was her one crumpled rose-leaf, but she had arranged that when she went she would post a letter at once to her, and Priscilla would, of course, join her in London, or wherever it was John Derringham would decide that she should live. The thought of leaving her aunts did not so much trouble her. The ancient ladies had never made her their companion or encouraged her to have a single interest in common with them. She was even doubtful if they would really miss her, so little had they ever taken her into their lives. For them she was still the child to be kept in her place, however much she had tried to grow a little nearer. Then her thoughts turned back to ways and means.

She so often spent the whole day with Cheiron that her absence would not be remarked upon until bedtime. But then she suddenly remembered, with a feeling of consternation, that the Professor intended to leave on the Tuesday in Whitsun week for his annual fortnight in London. If the household knew of this, it might complicate matters, and was a pity. However, there was no use speculating about any of these things, since she did not yet know on which day she was to start--to start for Paradise--as the wife of her Beloved!

Next morning it was fine again, and she decided she would go towards their tree, and if John were not there, she would even go on to the orchard house, because she realized fully the difficulty he would find in sending her a message.

But he was there waiting for her, in the bright sunlight, and she thought him the perfection of what a man should look in his well-cut gray flannels.

John Derringham knew how to dress himself, and had even in his oldest clothes that nameless, indescribable distinction which seems often to be the birthright of Englishmen of his class.

The daylight made her timid again; she was no more the imperious goddess of the night. It was a shy and tender little maiden who nestled into the protecting strong arms of her lover.

He told her all his plans: how he had given notice for the license, and that it would be forthcoming. And he explained that he had chosen Bristol rather than Upminster because in this latter place everyone would know the name of La Sarthe--even the registrar's clerk and whoever else they would secure as a witness--but in Bristol it might pass unnoticed.

They discussed what should be done about Cheiron and the old ladies, and decided that when to apprise the former of their marriage must be left to John's discretion; and as Halcyone would not be missed until the evening, they would simply send two telegrams from Bristol in the late afternoon, one to Miss La Sarthe and one to Priscilla, the former briefly to announce that Halcyone was quite safe and was writing, and the latter asking her old nurse not to let the old ladies feel worried, and promising a letter to her, also.

"Then," John Derringham said, "you will be my wife by that time, sweetheart, and you will tell your aunts the truth, ask them to keep our secret, and say that you will return to them often, so that they shall not be lonely. We will write it between us, darling, and I do not think they will give us away."

"Never," returned Halcyone, while she looked rather wistfully towards the house. "They are too proud."

He dropped her hand for an instant; the unconscious inference of this speech made him wince. She understood, then, that she was going to do something which her old kinswomen would think was a hurt to their pride, and so would be silent over it in consequence. And yet she did not hesitate. She must indeed love him very much.

A tremendous wave of emotion surged through him, and he looked at her with reverence and worship. And for one second his own part of utter selfishness flashed into his understanding, so that he asked, with almost an anxious note in his deep, assured voice:

"You are not afraid, sweetheart, to come away--for all the rest of your life--alone with me?"

And often in the after days of anguish there would come back to him the memory of her eyes, to tear his heart with agony in the night-watches--her pure, true eyes, with all her fresh, untarnished soul looking out of them into his as they glistened with love and faith.

"Afraid?" she said. "How should I be afraid--since you are my lord and I am your love? Do we not belong to one another?"

"Oh, my dear," he said, as he folded her to his heart in wild, worshiping passion, "God keep you always safe, here in my arms."

And if she had known it, for the first time in his life there were tears in John Derringham's proud eyes. For he knew now he had found her--the one woman with a soul.

Then they parted, when every smallest detail was settled, for she had promised to help Miss Roberta with a new design for her embroidery, and he had promised to join Mrs. Cricklander's party for an early lunch. They intended to make an excursion to see the ruins of Graseworth Tower in the afternoon.

"And indeed we can bear the separation now, my darling," he said, "because we shall both know that we must go through only four more days before we are together--for always!"

But even so it seemed as if they could not tear themselves apart, and when he did let her go he strode after her again and pleaded for one more kiss.

"There!" she whispered, smiling while her eyes half filled with mist. "This tree is forever sacred to us. John, it is listening now when I tell you once more that I love you."

And then she fled.

CHAPTER XX

When once John Derringham had definitely made up his mind to any course in life, he continued in it with decision and skill, and carried off the situation with a high-handed assurance. Thus he felt no qualms of awkwardness in meeting Mrs. Cricklander and treating her with an enchanting ease and friendliness which was completely disconcerting. She had no _casus belli_; she could not find fault with his manner or his words, and yet she was left with the blank conviction that her hopes in regard to him were over. She despised men in her heart because, as a rule, she was able to calculate with certainty every move in her games with them. Feeling no slightest passion, her very mediocre intellect proved often more than a match for the cleverest. But her supreme belief in herself now received a heavy blow. She was never so near to loving John Derringham as during this Whitsuntide when she felt she had lost him. Cora Lutworth once said of her:

"Cis is one of the happiest women in the world, because when she looks in the glass in the morning she never sees anything but herself, and is perfectly content. Most of us find shadows peeping over our shoulders of what we would like to be."

Arabella found her employer extremely trying during the Saturday and Sunday, and was almost in tears when she wrote to her mother.

Mr. Derringham has plainly determined not to be ensnared yet. If this did not render M. E. so difficult to please, the situation would be very instructive to watch. And I am not even now certain whether he will escape eventually, because her whole pride in herself is roused and she will stick at nothing. I have a shrewd suspicion as to what has caused the change in his feelings and intentions towards M. E., but I have not imparted my ideas to her, since doing so might do no good, and would in some way certainly injure an innocent person. As yet I believe she is unaware of this person's existence. We have done everything we can for Mr. Derringham with the most erudite conversation. I have been up half of the night ascertaining facts upon all sorts of classical subjects, as that seems to be more than ever the bent of his mind in these last two visits. (I am given to understand from other sources that the person of whom I made mention above is a highly-trained Greek scholar and of exceptional refinement and cultivation, so that may be the reason.) The strain of preparing M. E. for these talks and then my anxiety when, at meals or after them, I hear her upon the brink of some fatal mistake, has caused me to have most unpleasant headaches, and really, if it were not so modern and silly a phrase, I should say the thing was getting on my nerves. However, all the interesting guests are leaving on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Derringham, I understand from what he said to me, intends to go over to his old master, Professor Carlyon's, and catch a later train from there, but M. E. does not know this, and I have not felt it my duty to inform her of it, because it might involve some awkwardness connected with the person about whom I have already given you a hint. I must close now, as I have some facts to look up concerning the worship of Dionysus which M. E. is going to bring in to-night. It was only yesterday I told her who he was, and I had the greatest difficulty to get her to understand he was Bacchus as well, as she had learned of him when younger under that name as the God of Drunkards, and did not consider him a very nice person to mention. But Mr. Derringham held forth upon the rude Thracian Dionysus last night and the fundamental spirituality of his original cult, and so she felt it might seem rather _bourgeois_ to be shocked, and has committed to memory as well as she can some facts to-day.

It will be seen from Miss Clinker's frank letter to her parent that Mrs. Cricklander was leaving no stone unturned to gain her object, and such praiseworthy toil deserves the highest commendation.

John Derringham, meanwhile, having successfully smoothed matters to his own satisfaction, felt at liberty to dream in his spare moments of his love. He already began to wonder how he had ever felt any emotion towards the fair Cecilia--she was perfectly charming, but left him as cold as ice!

And so at last the good-bys were said, and he got into the motor with some of the other guests, ostensibly for the station, but in reality to get out at the Lodge gates upon the pretense of going to see the Professor. He intended, instead of this, to cross the haw-haw and reconnoiter upon the hope of meeting his beloved, because there was no necessity for him to spend a dull afternoon in Upminster when perhaps some more agreeable hours could be snatched under the tree. He had attended to every point, he believed, even having written a letter to Cheiron which he had taken the precaution to give to his servant to post from London on the following morning, so that there would be no Bristol mark as a clew to their whereabouts. In this he merely stated that when his old master would receive it Halcyone would be his wife, and that for a time they had decided to keep the marriage secret, and he hoped his old master would understand and sympathize.

The only qualm of any sort he experienced during these three days was when he was composing this letter, so he finished it quickly and did not even read it over. And now, as he strode across the Wendover park, it was safe in his servant's pocket and would be despatched duly next day. He was unaware of the fact that Mr. Carlyon had left for London by a morning train.

As he came within view of the haw-haw, he saw in the far distance Halcyone just flitting towards the beech avenue gate, and in his intense haste to catch her up before she should get too near the house, he removed the bricks very carelessly, not even remarking that one, and the most important, was disposed of in such a manner that the spike left beneath would not bear his weight.

He had got thus far, his eyes fixed upon the slender white figure rapidly disappearing from his view, when with a tremendous crash his foothold gave way and he fell with fearful force into the ditch beneath, his head striking one of the fallen bricks. And after that, all things were blank and his soul wandered into shadowland and tasted of the pains of death.

* * * * *

From the first break of day on that Tuesday when Halcyone awoke she was conscious that some sorrow was near her. Every sense of hers, every instinct, so highly trained by her years of communion with Nature seemed always to warn her of coming events.

She was restless--a state of being quite at variance with her usual calm. The air was sultry and, though no rain fell, ominous clouds gathered and faint thunder pealed afar off.

"What is it? What is it, God?" she asked of the sky. But no answer came, and at last she went out into the park and towards the tree. She had made all her simple preparations--everything that she must take had been put into a small bag and was safely waiting in the secret passage, ready for her to fetch on the morrow.

Cheiron, she knew, had gone to London. Had they not said good-by on the evening before? And his last words had made her smile happily at the time.

"Things are changing, Halcyone," he had said, with the whimsical raising of his left penthouse brow. "Perhaps you will not want to learn Greek much longer with your crabbed old Cheiron in his cave."

And she had flung her arms round his neck and buried her face in his silver beard, and assured him she would always want to learn--all her life. But now she felt a twinge of sadness--she would indeed miss him, her dear old master, and he, too, would be lonely without her. Then she fought with herself. Feelings of depression were never permitted to stay for a moment, and she looked away into the trees for comfort--but only a deathly stillness and a sullen roll of distant thunder answered, and left her uncomforted.

And then some force stronger than her will seemed to drive her back to the house, and to the long gallery, and just at the very moment when she had passed beyond her lover's sight it was as if something chased her, so that she ran the last few yards, and paused not until she stood in front of Aphrodite's shrine.

It would be difficult to carry the marble head with the other few things she proposed to take, but none the less was the necessity imperative. She could not be married without the presence of her beloved mother to bless her.

As she lifted her goddess out, with her silken wrappings, the first flash of the nearing storm lit up the dark room with lurid flame.

Halcyone shivered. It was the one aspect of Nature with which she was out of harmony. When thunder rolled and lightning quivered, her vitality seemed to desert her and she experienced what in her came nearest to fear.

"Ah! someone has angered God greatly," she whispered aloud; and then she carried the head to the secret door, knowing full well she would be unwatched in her entry there--on such a day, with thunder pealing, not a servant would have ventured into the long gallery.

Another and louder rumble reached her with muffled sound, as she made her way in the dark underground, and as she came to the place where there was the contrived gleam of light and outer air, the lightning turned the narrow space into a green dusk.

Halcyone was trembling all over, and when she had put her precious bundle safely into the bag with the rest of her simple preparations, she laid it on the iron-bound box which had never been stirred, all ready for her to lift up and take with her in the morning. Then she ran back, cold and pale, and hastily sought Priscilla in her own room, and talked long to her of old days, glad indeed to hear a human voice, until presently the rain began to pour in torrents and the storm cried itself out.

But with each crash before this came her heart gave a bound, as if in pain. And a wild longing grew in her for the morrow and safety in her lover's arms.

And he--alas! that hapless lover!--was lying there in the haw-haw, with broken ankle and damaged head, half recovering consciousness in the pouring rain, but unable to stir or climb from his low bed, or even to cry aloud enough to make anyone hear him. And so at last the night came, and the pure moonlight, and when her usual evening duties were over with her aunts, Halcyone was free to go to bed.

She opened her window wide, but she did not seek to wander in the wet park. John would not be there, and she must rest, so as to be fair for him when tomorrow they should start on life's sweet journey--together.

But her heart was not quiet. All her prayers and pure thoughts seemed to bring no peace, and even when, after a while, she fell into a sleep, it was still troubled.

And thus the day dawned that was to have seen her wedding!

She told herself that the dull, sullen oppression she awoke with was the result of the storm in the night, and with firm determination she banished all she could of heaviness, and got through her usual avocations until the moment came for her to start for the oak avenue gate. She timed her arrival to be exactly at ten o'clock so that she need not wait, as this of the three outlets was the one where there might be a less remote chance of a passer-by. They had had to choose it because it was on the road to Bristol.

The sun was shining gorgeously again when she emerged from the secret door, carrying her heavy bundle, and except in the renewed freshness of all the green there seemed no trace of the storm. Yes--as she got near the gate she saw that one huge tree beyond that old friend who had played the part of the holder of the Golden Fleece was stricken and cleft through by the lightning. It had fallen in helpless fashion, blackened and yawning, its proud head in the dust.

This grieved her deeply, and she paused to pass a tender hand over the gaping wound. Then she went on to the gate, and there waited--waited first in calm belief, then in expectancy, and at last in a numb agony.

The sun seemed to scorch her, the light hurt her eyes, every sound made her tremble and start forward, and at last she cried aloud:

"O God, why do I feel so troubled? I who have always had peace in my heart!"

But no bird even answered her. There was a warm stillness, and just there, under these trees, there were no rabbits which could have comforted her with their living forms scuttling to and fro.

She tried to reason calmly. Motors were uncertain things--this one might have broken down, and that had delayed her lover. She must not stir, in case he should come and think his lateness had frightened her and that she had gone back to the house. Whatever befell, she must be brave and true.

But at last, when the afternoon shadows were lengthening, the agony became intense. Only the baker had passed with his cart, and a farm wagon or two, during the whole day. Gradually the conviction grew that it could not only be an accident to the motor--if so, John would have procured some other vehicle, or, indeed, he could have come to her on foot by now. Something had befallen him. There must have occurred some accident to himself; and in spite of all her calm fortitude, anguish clutched her soul.

She knew not what to do or which way to go. At last, as the sun began to sink, faint and weary, she decided the orchard house would be the best place. There, if there was any news of an accident, Sarah Porrit, the Professor's one female servant, would have heard it.

She started straight across the park, carrying her heavy bag, and crossed the beech avenue, and so on to the trysting tree. A cold feeling like some extra disquietude seemed to overcome her as she neared the haw-haw and the copse. It was as if she feared and yet longed to get there. But she resisted the temptation, and went straight on to the little gate and so up the garden to the house.

Mrs. Porrit received her with her usual kindly greeting. All was calm and peaceful, and while Halcyone controlled herself to talk in an ordinary voice, the postman's knock was heard. He passed the Professor's door on the road to Applewood and left the evening mail, when there chanced to be any.

Mrs. Porrit received the letters--three of them--and then she adjusted her spectacles, but took them off again.

"After all, since you are here, miss, perhaps as you write better than I you will be so good as to redirect them on to the master. You know his address, as usual." And she named an old-fashioned hotel in Jermyn Street.

Halcyone took them in her cold, trembling fingers, and then nearly dropped them on the floor, for the top envelope was addressed in the handwriting of her beloved! She knew it well. Had she not, during the past years, often seen such missives, from which the Professor had read her scraps of news?

She carried it to the light and scrutinized the postmark. It was "London," and posted that very morning early!

For a moment all was a blank, and she found herself grasping the back of Cheiron's big chair to prevent herself from falling.

John had been in London at the moment when she was waiting by the tree! What mystery was here?

At first the feeling was one of passionate relief. There had been no accident, then; he had been obliged to go--there would be some explanation forthcoming. Perhaps he had even written to her, too--and she gave a bound forward, as though to run back to La Sarthe Chase. But then she recollected the evening postman did not come to the house, and they got no letters as Cheiron did, who was on the road. Hers could not be there until the morning--she must wait patiently and see.

With consummate self-control she made her voice sound natural as she said, "Oh, I am so late, Mrs. Porrit. I must go," and, bidding the woman a gracious good evening, walked rapidly to the house. A telegram might have come for her, and she had been out all day. What if her aunts had opened it!

This thought made her quicken her pace so that at last she arrived at the terrace breathless with running; and having deposited her bag in safety, she came out again from the secret passage and got hastily to the house.

But there was no sign of a telegram in the hall, and she mounted to find Priscilla in her room, which she discovered to be in great disorder, her few clothes lying about on every available space.

"Oh, my lamb, where have you been?" the elderly woman exclaimed. "At four o'clock who should come in a fly from the Applewood station but your step-father's wife! She was staying at Upminster, and says she thought she would come over and see you--and now it's settled that we go back with her to London to-morrow. Think of it, my lamb! You and me to see the world!" Then she cried in fear: "My precious, what is it?"

For Halcyone, overwrought and overcome, had staggered to a chair and, falling into it, had buried her face in her hands.

CHAPTER XXI

Mrs. James Anderton was seated in the Italian parlor with the two ancient hostesses when Halcyone at last came into their midst. They had evidently exhausted all possible topics of conversation and were extremely glad of an interruption.

Miss La Sarthe had been growing more and more annoyed at her great-niece's lengthy absence, while Miss Roberta felt so nervous she would like to have sniffed at her vinaigrette, but, alas! the stern eye of her sister was upon her and she dared not.

Mrs. James Anderton--good, worthy woman--had not passed an agreeable afternoon either. She felt herself hopelessly out of tune with the two old ladies, whose exquisitely reserved polished manners disconcerted her.

She had been made to feel--most delicately, it is true, but still unmistakably--that she had committed a breach of taste in thus descending upon La Sarthe Chase unannounced. And instead of the sensation of complacent importance which she usually enjoyed when among her own friends and acquaintances, she was experiencing a depressed sense of being a very small personage indeed.

Her highly colored comely face was very hot and flushed and she rather restlessly played with her parasol handle. Miss La Sarthe's voice grew a little acid as she said:

"This is our great-niece, Halcyone La Sarthe, Mrs. Anderton"--and then--"It is unfortunate that you should have been so long absent, child."

"I am very sorry," Halcyone returned gently, and she shook hands. She made no excuse or explanation.

Mrs. Anderton plunged into important matters at once.

"Your father, Mr. Anderton"--how that word "father" jarred upon Halcyone's sensitive ears!--"wished me to come and see you, dear, and hopes you will return with me to-morrow to London, for a little visit to us, that you may make the acquaintance of your brother and sisters."

Halcyone had already made up her mind what to do, before she had left her room. She would agree to anything they suggested in order to have no obstacles put in her way--not admitting for a moment that these people had any authority over her. Then, if in the morning she received a letter from her Beloved, she would follow its instructions implicitly. Always having at hand her certain mode of disappearance, she could slip away, and if it seemed necessary, just leave them to think what they pleased. Priscilla would be warned to allay at once the anxiety of her aunts, and for the Andertons she was far too desperate to care what they might feel.

"Thank you; it is very good of you," she said as graciously as she could. "My old nurse has told me of your kind invitation, and is already beginning the preparations. I trust you left Mr. Anderton and my stepbrother and sisters well?"

"Hoity-toity!" thought Louisa Anderton. "Of the same sort as the old spinsters. This won't please James, I fear!" But aloud she answered that the family were all well, and that James Albert, who was thirteen now, would soon be going to Eton.

Over Halcyone, in spite of her numbness and the tension she was feeling, though controlled by her firm will, there came the memory of the red, crying baby, for whose life her own sweet mother had paid so dear a price. And Mabel and Ethel--noisy, merry little girls!--she had thought of them so seldom in these latter years--they seemed as far-off shadows now. But James Anderton and her mother stood out sharp and clear.

The strain and anguish of the day had left her very pale. Mrs. Anderton thought her plain and most uncomfortably aloof; she really regretted that she had put into her husband's head the idea of giving this invitation. He would gladly have left Halcyone alone, but for her kindly thought. Mabel was just seventeen, and such a handful that her father had decided she should stay in the schoolroom with her sister for another year, and Mrs. Anderton had felt it would be a good opportunity for Halcyone to rejoin the family circle at a time when her presence, if she proved good-looking, could not in any way interfere with her stepsister's debut.

And here, instead of being overcome with gratitude and excitement, this cold, quiet girl was taking it all as quite an ordinary circumstance. No wonder she, Louisa Anderton, felt aggrieved.

They had hardly time for any more words, for Mrs. Anderton had already put off her departure by the seven-twenty train from Applewood to Upminster on purpose to wait for Halcyone, and now proposed to catch the one at nine o'clock--her fly still waited in the courtyard--and they made rapid arrangements. Halcyone, accompanied by Priscilla, was to meet her the next day at the Upminster junction at eleven o'clock, and they would journey to London together.

And all the while Halcyone was agreeing to this she was thinking, if in the improbable circumstance that she should get no letter in the morning, it would be wiser to go to London. There was her Cheiron, who would help her to get news. But of course she would hear, and all would be well.

Thus she was enabled to unfreeze a little to her stepfather's wife, who, as they said good-by at the creaking fly's door, felt some of her soft charm.

"Perhaps she is shy," she said to herself as she rolled towards the station. "Anyway, it is restful, after Mabel's laying down the law."

That night Halcyone took her goddess to the little summer house upon the second terrace.

"If I start with John to-morrow, my sweet," she said, "you will come with me as I have promised you. But if I must go to that great, restless city, to find him, then you will wait for me here--safe in your secret home." And then she looked out over the misty clover-grown pleasance to the country beyond bathed in brilliant moonlight. And something in the beauty of it stilled the wild ache in her heart. She would not admit into her thoughts the least fear, but some unexplained, unconquerable apprehension stayed in her innermost soul. She knew, only she refused to face the fact, that all was not well.

Of doubt as to John Derringham's intentions towards her, or his love, she had none, but there were forces she knew which were strong and could injure people, and with all her fearlessness of them, they might have been capable of causing some trouble to her lover--her lover who was ignorant of such things.

She stayed some time looking at the beautiful moonlit country, and saying her prayers to that God Who was her eternal friend, and then she got up to steal noiselessly to bed.

But as she was opening the secret door, to have one more look at the sky, after she had replaced Aphrodite in the bag, it seemed as though her lover's voice called her in anguish through the night: "Halcyone!" and again, "Halcyone! My love!"

She stopped, petrified with emotion, and then rushed back onto the terrace. But all was silence; and, wild with some mad fear, she set off hurriedly, never stopping until she came to their trysting tree. But here there was silence also, only the nightingale throbbed from the copse, while the faint rustle of soft zephyrs disturbed the leaves.

And Jeb Hart and his comrade saw the tall white figure from their hiding-place in the low overgrown brushwood, and Gubbs crossed himself again, for whether she were living or some wraith they were never really sure.

At the moment when Halcyone opened the secret door, John Derringham was just recovering consciousness in a luxurious bed at Wendover Park, whither he had been carried when accidentally found by the keepers in their rounds about eight o'clock. It was several days since they had visited this part of the park, and they had lit upon him by a fortunate chance. He had lain there in the haw-haw, unconscious all that day, while his poor little lady-love waited for him at the oak gate, and was now in a sorry plight indeed, as Arabella Clinker bent over him, awaiting anxiously the verdict of the doctors who had been fetched by motor from Upminster. Would he live or die?

Her employer had had a bad attack of nerves upon hearing of the accident, and was now reclining upon her boudoir sofa, quite prostrated and in a high state of agitation until she should know the worst--or best.

Arabella listened intently. Surely the patient was whispering something? Yes, she caught the words.

"Halcyone!" he murmured, and again, "Halcyone--my love!" and then he closed his eyes once more.

He would live, the physicians said after some hours of doubt--with very careful nursing. But the long exposure in the wet, twenty-four hours at least, with that wound in the head and the broken ankle, was a very serious matter, and absolute quiet and the most highly skilled attention would be necessary.

It was Arabella who made all the sensible, kind arrangements that night, and herself sat up with the poor suffering patient until the nurses could come. But it was Mrs. Cricklander who, dignified and composed, received the doctors after the consultation with Sir Benjamin Grant next day, before the celebrated surgeon left for London, and she made her usual good impression upon the great man.

That the local lights thought far more highly of Arabella did not matter. Mrs. Cricklander was wise enough to know, it is upon the exalted that a good effect must be produced.

"And, you are sure, Sir Benjamin, that he will get quite well?" she said tenderly, allowing her handsome eyes to melt upon the surgeon's face. "It matters enormously to me, you know." Then she looked down.

Thus appealed to, Sir Benjamin felt he must give her all the assurance he could.

"Perfectly, dear lady," he said, pressing her soft hand in sympathy. "He is young and strong, and fortunately it has not touched his brain. But it will take time and gentlest nursing, which you will see, of course, that he gets."

"Indeed, yes," the fair Cecilia said. And when they were all gone, she summoned Arabella.

"You will let me know, Arabella, every minute change in him," she commanded, "especially when he seems conscious. And you will tell him how I am watching over him and doing everything for him. I can't bear sick people--they upset my nerves, and I just can't stand them. But the moment he is all right enough to see me so that it won't bore me, I'll come. You understand? Now I must really have a trional and get some rest."

And when she was alone she went deliberately to the glass and smiled radiantly to herself as she whispered aloud:

"So he isn't going to die or be an idiot. In a few years he can still be Prime Minister. And I have got him now, as sure as fate!"

Then she closed her mouth with that firm snap Arabella knew so well, and, swallowing her sleeping draught, she composed herself for a peaceful siesta.

CHAPTER XXII

It required all Halcyone's fortitude to act the part of unconcern which was necessary after the post had come in and no letter for herself had arrived. The only possibility of getting through the time until she should reach London, and be able to communicate with Cheiron would, be resolutely to forbid her thoughts from turning in any speculative direction. _She knew_ nothing but good could come to her--was she not protected from all harm by every strong force of the night winds, the beautiful stars and the God Who owned them all? Therefore it followed that this seeming disaster to her happiness must be only a temporary thing, and if she bore it calmly it would soon pass. Or, even if it delayed, there was the analogy of the winter which for more than four months of the year numbed the earth, often with weeping rain and frost, but, however severe it should be, there was always the tender springtime following, and glorious summer, and then the fulfillment of autumn and its fruits. So she _must not_ be cast down--she must have faith and not tremble.

She made herself converse gently with her stepfather's wife, and won her liking before they reached Paddington station. If she had not been so highly strung and preoccupied, she would have been thrilled in all her fine senses at the idea of leaving Upminster, further than which she had never been for the twelve long years of her residence at La Sarthe Chase; but now, except that all appeared a wild rush and a bewildering noise, the journey to London made no impression upon her. It was swallowed up in the one longing to get there--to be able somehow to communicate with Cheiron, and have her anxiety laid to rest.

The newsboys were selling the evening papers when they arrived, but her eyes, so unaccustomed to all these new sights, did not warn her to scan the headlines, though as they were reaching Grosvenor Gardens where Mr. Anderton's town-house was situated, she did see the words: "Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs." The sheet had fallen forward and only this line was visible.

They did not strike her very forcibly. She was quite unacquainted with the custom of advertising sensational news in London. It might be the usual political announcements--it surely was, since she saw another sheet as they got to the door with "Crisis in the Cabinet" upon it. And it comforted her greatly. John, of course, was concerned with this, and had been summoned back suddenly, having had no possible time to let her know. He who was so true an Englishman must think of his country first. It seemed like an answer to her prayers, and enabled her to go in and greet her stepfather with calm and quiet.

James Anderton had come from the city in the best of tempers. The day had been a good one. He had received his wife's telegram announcing that Halcyone would accompany her on her return, and awaited her arrival with a certain amount of uneasy curiosity and interest. Would the girl be still so terribly like Elaine and the rest of the La Sarthe--especially Timothy, that scapegrace, handsome Timothy, her father, on whose memory and his own bargain with Timothy's widow he never cared much to dwell?

Yes, she was, d----d like--after a while he decided; with just the same set of head and careless grace, and that hateful stamp of breeding that had so lamentably escaped his own children, half La Sarthe, too. It was just Timothy of the gray eyes come back again--not Elaine so much now, not at all, in fact, except in the line of the throat.

His solid, coarse voice was a little husky, and those who knew him well would have been aware that James Anderton was greatly moved as he bid his stepdaughter welcome.

And when she had gone off to her room, accompanied by the boisterous Mabel and Ethel, he said to his wife:

"Lu, you must get the girl some decent clothes. She looks confoundedly a lady, but that rubbish isn't fair to her. Rig her out as good as the rest--no expense spared. See to it to-morrow, my dear."

And Mrs. Anderton promised. She adored shopping, and this would be a labor of love. So she went off to dress for dinner, full of visions of bright pinks and blues and laces and ribbons that would have made Halcyone shrink if she had known.

Mabel was magnificently patronizing and talked a jargon of fashionable slang which Halcyone hardly understood. Some transient gleam of her beloved mother kept suggesting itself to her when Mabel smiled. The memory was not distinct enough for her to know what it was, but it hurt her. The big, bouncing, overdeveloped girl had so little of the personality which she had treasured all these years as of her mother--treasured even more than remembered.

Ethel had no faintest look of La Sarthe, and was a nice, jolly, ordinary young person--dear to her father's heart.

At last they left Halcyone alone with Priscilla, and presently the two threw themselves into each other's arms--for the old nurse was crying bitterly now, rocking herself to and fro.

"Ah! how it all comes back to me, my lamb," she sobbed. "He's just the same, only older. Hard and kind and generous and never understanding a thing that mattered to your poor, beautiful mother. Oh! she was glad to go at the end, but for leaving you. Dear lady!--all borne to pay your father's debts, which Mr. Anderton had took up. I can't never forgive him quite--I can't never."

And Halcyone, overcome with her long strain of emotion, cried, too, for a few minutes before she could resume her stern self-control.

But at dinner she was calm again, and pale only for the shadows under her wide eyes.

She had written her letter to Cheiron--she knew not of such things as messenger-boys or cabs, and had got Priscilla to post it for her, and now with enforced quiet awaited his answer which she thought she could receive on the morrow.

"There has been a crisis in the Cabinet, has there not?" she said to her stepfather, hoping to hear something, and James Anderton replied that there had been some split--but for his part, the sooner this rotten lot of sleepers had gone out the better he would be pleased; a good sound Radical he was, like his friend Mr. Hanbury-Green.

Halcyone abruptly turned the conversation. She could not, she felt, discuss her beloved and his opinions, even casually, with this man of another class.

Oh! her poor mother--her poor, sweet mother! How terrible it must have been to her to be married to such a person!--though her common sense prompted her to add he was probably, under her influence, not nearly so coarse and bluff in those days as now he appeared to be.

Her little stepbrother, James Albert, had not returned from his private school for the summer holidays, so she perhaps would not see him during her visit.

As the dinner went on everything struck her as glaring, from the footmen's liveries to the bunches of red carnations; and the blazing electric lights confused her brain. She, the little country mouse, accustomed only to old William's gentle shufflings, and the two tall silver candlesticks with their one wax taper in each!

She could not eat the rich food, and if she had known it, she looked like a being from some shadowy world among the hearty crew.

Next morning Mr. Carlyon received her letter as he began his early breakfast; and he tugged at his silver beard, while his penthouse brows met.

The matter required the most careful consideration. He enormously disliked to have to play the rle of arbiter of fate, but he loved Halcyone more than anything else in the world, and felt bound to use what force he possessed to secure her happiness--or, if that looked too difficult, which he admitted it did, he must try and save her from further unnecessary pain.

He had the day before received John Derringham's letter written from Wendover and which Mrs. Porrit had redirected, containing the news of the intended wedding, and it had angered him greatly.

He blazed with indignation! His peerless one to be made to take a mistress's place when any man should be proud to make her his honored wife! "The brutal selfishness of men," he said to himself, not blaming John Derringham in particular. "He ought to have gone off and left her alone when he felt he was beginning to care, if he had not pluck enough to stand the racket. But we are all the same--we must have what we want, and the women must pay--confound us!"

He had never doubted but that, when he read the letter, Halcyone was already his old pupil's wife--if indeed such a ceremony were legal, she being under age. And this thought added to his wrath, and he intended to look the matter up and see. But, before he could do so, he got an evening paper and read a brief notice that John Derringham had met with a severe accident--of what exact nature the press association had not yet learned--and was lying in a critical condition at Wendover Park, the country seat of the "beautiful American society leader, Mrs. Vincent Cricklander," with whose name rumor had already connected the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the most interesting manner, the paragraph added.

So Fate had stepped in and saved his pure night flower, after all! But at what sort of price? And Cheiron stared into space with troubled eyes.

He passed hours of anxious thought. He never did anything in a hurry, and felt that now he must especially consider what would be his wisest course.

And then, this next morning, Halcyone's letter had come.

It was very simple. It told of Mrs. Anderton's arrival at La Sarthe Chase and of her own return to London with her--and then the real pith of it had crept out. Had he heard any news of Mr. Derringham? Because she had seen his writing upon a letter Mrs. Porrit was readdressing at the orchard house and, observing it was from London, she presumed he was there, and she hoped she should see him.

The Professor stopped abruptly here.

"What a woman it is, after all!" he exclaimed. He himself had never noticed the postmark on John Derringham's envelope! Then he folded Halcyone's pitiful little communication absently, and thought deeply.

Two things were evident. Firstly, John Derringham had been disabled before the hour when he should have met his bride; and secondly, she was, when she wrote, unaware that he had had any accident at all. She must thus be very unhappy and full of horrible anxiety--his dear little girl!

But what courage and fortitude she showed, he mused on, not to give the situation away and lament even to him, her old friend. She plainly intended to stand by the man she loved and never admit she had been going to marry him until he himself gave her leave.

"The one woman with a soul," Cheiron muttered, and rubbed the mist away which had gathered in his eyes.

He revolved the situation over and over. Halcyone must be made aware of the accident, if she had not already read of it in the morning papers; but she must not be allowed to do anything rash--and as he got thus far in his meditations, a waiter knocked at the old-fashioned sitting-room door, and Halcyone herself brushed past him into the room.

She was deadly pale, and for a moment did not speak.

Mrs. Anderton, it appeared, thinking she would be tired from her unaccustomed journey, had suggested she should breakfast in bed, which Halcyone, thankful to be alone, had gratefully agreed to; and when on her breakfast tray which came up at eight o'clock she saw a daily paper, she had eagerly opened it, and after searching the unfamiliar sheets for the political news, her eye had caught the paragraph about John Derringham's accident. In this particular journal the notice was merely the brief one of the evening before, but it was enough to wring Halcyone's heart.

She bounded from bed and got Priscilla to dress her in the shortest possible time, and the faithful nurse, seeing that her beloved lamb was in some deep distress, forbore to question her.

Nothing would have stopped Halcyone from going out, but she hoped to do so unperceived.

"Look if the way is clear to the door," she implored Priscilla, "while I put on my hat. I must go to the Professor at once--something dreadful has happened."

So Priscilla went and contrived so that she got Halcyone out of the front door while the servants were busy in the dining-room about the breakfast. She hailed a passing hansom, and in this, to the poor child, novel conveyance, she was whirled safely to Cheiron's little hotel in Jermyn Street, and Priscilla returned to her room, to make believe that her nursling was still sleeping.

"Halcyone! My child!" the Professor exclaimed, to gain time, and then he decided to help her out, so he went on: "I am glad to see you, but am very distressed at the news in the paper this morning about John Derringham--you may have seen it--and I am sure will sympathize with me."

Halcyone's piteous eyes thanked him.

"Yes, indeed," she said. "What does it mean? Ought not--we--you to go to him?"

Mr. Carlyon avoided looking at her.

"I cannot very well do that in Mrs. Cricklander's house," he said, tugging at his beard, to hide the emotion he felt. "But I will telegraph this minute and ask for news, if you will give me the forms--they are over there," and he pointed to his writing-table.

She handed them immediately, and as he adjusted his spectacles she rang the bell; no time must be lost, and the waiter could be there before the words were completed.

"When can you get the answer?" she asked a little breathlessly.

"In two hours, I should think, or perhaps three," the Professor returned. "But there is a telephone downstairs--it has just been put in. We might telephone to his rooms, or to the Foreign Office, and find out if they have heard any further news there. That would relieve my mind a little."

"Yes--do," responded Halcyone eagerly.

The tone of repressed anguish in her soft voice stabbed Cheiron's heart, but they understood each other too well for any unnecessary words to pass between them. The kindest thing he could do for her was to show her he did not mean to perceive her trouble.

The result of the telephoning--a much longer process then than it is now--was slightly more satisfactory. Sir Benjamin Grant's report, the Foreign Office official informed them, was that Mr. Derringham's condition was much more hopeful, but that the most complete quiet for some time would be absolutely necessary.

"John is so strong," Mr. Carlyon said, as he put down the receiver which he had with difficulty manipulated--to Halcyone's trembling impatience. "He will pull through. And all I can do is to wait. He will probably be up at the end of my fortnight, when I get back home." And he looked relieved.

"They would not give him a letter from you, of course, I suppose?" said Halcyone. "If his head has been hurt it will be a long time before he is allowed to read."

Cheiron nodded.

"I am interested," she went on, looking down. "You will let me know, at Grosvenor Gardens, directly you hear anything, will you not, Master?--I--" and then her voice broke a little.

And Cheiron stirred in his chair. It was all paining him horribly, but until he could be sure what would be best for her he must not show his sympathy.

"I will send Demetrius with the answer when it comes, and I will telegraph to Wendover morning and night, dear child," he said. "I knew you would feel for me." And with this, the sad little comedy between them ended, for Halcyone got up to leave.

"Thank you, Cheiron," was all she said.

Mr. Carlyon took her down to the door and put her in the waiting hansom which she had forgotten to dismiss, and he paid the man and reluctantly let her go back alone.

She was too stunned and wretched to take in anything. The streets seemed a howling pandemonium upon this June morning at the season's full height, and all the gayly dressed people just beginning to be on their way to the park for their morning stroll appeared a mockery as she passed down Piccadilly.

Whether she had been missed or no, she cared not, and getting out, rang the bell with numbed unconcern, never, even noticing the surprised face of the footman as she passed him and ran up the long flights of stairs to her room, fortunately meeting no one on the way. Here Priscilla awaited her, having successfully hidden her absence. It was half past ten o'clock.

Halcyone went to the window and looked out upon the trees in the triangular piece of green. They were not her trees, but they were still Nature, of a stunted kind, and they would understand and comfort her or, at all events, enable her to regain some calm.

She took in deep breaths, and gradually a peace fell upon her. Her friend God would never desert her, she felt.

And Priscilla said to herself:

"She's prayin' to them Immortals, I expect. Well, whoever she prays to, she is a precious saint."

CHAPTER XXIII