F.E. Mills Young (continued 2)

Prudence found this irksome at first, and set herself, sometimes successfully, to evade their united vigilance; but after one or two apparently accidental encounters with the curate, who appeared astonishingly in the most unexpected places and joined her on her stolen walks, she accepted the new development with a meekness which agreeably surprised her family, and discomfited the curate.

It was the curate’s quietly resolved manner, his air of exaggerated conspiracy, that drove Prudence to this unusual submissiveness. She knew quite well that the little man was making up his mind to propose to her, and she did not wish to give him the opportunity. Her decision was taken abruptly, after meeting him one day on the high road along which she was walking briskly with her back to the tall chimneys and her face to the wind and the little village which lay half-way between Wortheton and the junction town which connected it with the busier world from which it held aloof. The curate was cycling from the opposite direction. He was due to attend a meeting within the half-hour and had barely time to arrive at the appointed place; but when he came face to face with Prudence he alighted nimbly from his machine, and, pulling off a heather mixture glove, extended an eager hand. For a moment she allowed him to hold hers in his grip, and found herself wondering while she faced him which of his admirers had knitted the gloves for him. Then she withdrew her hand and remarked, for the lack of something more interesting to say, that the wind was boisterous.

“Yes,” he said; “you have it against you. Why not face about? It’s a great help at one’s back.”

This suggestion Prudence considered artful without being brilliant. She had no desire for his company on the return journey.

“I love to feel it in my face,” she said. “And since you prefer it behind it is well we are travelling in opposite directions.”

But the curate was not to be disposed of so easily. He turned his cycle and fell into step beside her. Prudence was taller than he; he was obliged to look up from under the wide brim of his hat when regarding her, a reversal of the usual order which occasioned him secret vexation.

“One so seldom gets a chance of seeing you alone,” he said. “I suppose it is because you are so much younger that your sisters make so much of you. They care for you tremendously. It is beautiful to observe their devotion.”

This view of her family’s watchful mistrust as a manifest sign of their devotion was new to Prudence and afforded her amusement. She wondered whether he was altogether sincere in what he said, or if he were indulging in unsuspected satire.

“I find it a little trying sometimes to be the family pet,” she returned demurely. “The position is rather like that of the cat of the house which gets called indoors when it would prefer to remain in the garden. I wonder myself at times why the cat obeys the summons.”

He experienced a little difficulty in following her train of thought.

“It’s thinking of the milk, I suppose,” he suggested, whereat Prudence laughed.

“I dare say that explains it—economic dependence explains many uncomfortable things. I haven’t much sympathy with the domesticated cat,” she added. “She should ignore the call, and remain in the garden and eat birds.”

“Surely,” he said, a little pained, “you wouldn’t wish it to do that? It’s so cruel.”

“So is eating mutton,” she answered flippantly; “but we all do it.”

He digested this for a moment, found no adequate answer, and turned the conversation.

“I was thinking of you as I rode,” he said, in tones into which he threw an inflection of tenderness which she could not fail to detect. “I scarcely dared to expect so much happiness as to meet you like this. You are a tremendous walker. Do you realise how far you are from home?”

He still hoped to induce her to turn and walk back with him. He would be late for his meeting in any case. He was too mentally flurried to decide how he should explain the defection: he was not very ready at invention; but the sight of Prudence’s fair indifferent face drove him to the verge of recklessness; no consideration at the moment was strong enough to tear him from her side.

“The farther the better,” Prudence answered. “I am walking into the sunset.” She turned her face to the westering sun and the warm glow in the sky that lit its declining glory. “When I turn about I see only the chimneys; they blot out everything for me.”

“But one can’t see them from this distance,” he insisted, and paused and looked back to verify his statement.

Prudence smiled faintly.

“I can,” she said. “I see them even in my dreams.”

“I think myself they look rather fine,” he said. “The red bricks against the trees are arresting.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and smiled at him more directly. He felt that he had struck a happy note and was unnecessarily elated.

“All great industries appeal to me,” he continued as they walked on again. “I’m tremendously interested in the factory—and in the workpeople. They are so human and yet simple. I enjoy working among them. And Mr Graynor is so generous. The workpeople think very highly of him. I have been very happy in my labours since coming here.”

Prudence, missing the guile in this, looked at him in astonishment.

“Really!” she said. “You are easily pleased.”

“You think so?” He drew a little nearer to her; his disengaged hand, hanging at his side, brushed lightly against hers. “I don’t think that myself. But you see I have met much kindness here, and—forgive my saying so—it is such a happiness in itself to know you. I doubt whether you understand what a priceless pleasure that is to me.”

“It is very flattering of you to say so,” Prudence broke in hastily, and not so much turned the conversation as jerked it into an impersonal channel. “Look at that gorgeous splash of red on those clouds. Isn’t it just as though they were catching fire?”

“Yes,” he said in a flattened voice, feeling the rebuff; “it’s very fine.”

“Isn’t it? And that warm light on the trees... You can see it spreading along the branches. They’re all aglow. If it could only last!”

“‘The light of the whole world dies when day is done,’” quoted the curate sentimentally, and gazed in rapt admiration upon her face which was all aglow too, but owed nothing of its colour to the sunset. “You look like one inspired,” he added. “I wish I could sketch you as I see you now.”

Prudence made an impatient movement.

“I don’t believe you care a bit for beautiful scenery,” she said.

“I do,” he assured her eagerly. “I admire everything beautiful. I... Never mind the sunset now. I’m thinking of you. I can’t think of anything else. I want to—”

“Oh!” she interrupted, with a note of sharp relief in her voice, and turned an embarrassed face in the direction of a solitary pedestrian, who appeared opportunely round a bend in the road, and slowly advanced, bearing a bundle in her arms, which at first the girl failed to recognise for an infant, wrapped in an old shawl. “There’s some one I want to speak to,” she said, and blessed Bessie Clapp for her timely appearance—“some one I know.”

“I’ll wait,” he said, still resolute though considerably ruffled at the interruption.

Prudence regarded him frowningly.

“No,” she insisted, “you mustn’t wait. I want to see her alone. I shall walk back with her.”

“That isn’t altogether kind,” he said—“to dismiss me. But I may see you another time?”

He held out his hand and waited. If he expected a direct answer to his tentative suggestion, he was disappointed. Prudence shook hands hurriedly, murmured a breathless good-bye, and left him to mount his cycle and ride in unclerical mood to his neglected meeting, where he accounted for his unpunctuality by confessing to a puncture which he omitted to explain was caused by a thorn which he had painstakingly placed in the road and ridden over when a quarter of a mile from the town. Which proves what an amount of trouble a conscientious person will take in the insincere evasion of a direct lie.

Prudence meanwhile advanced to meet the girl in the road. As the distance between them decreased she discovered that what the other carried in her arms was not an inanimate bundle, as she had supposed, but a little child. Instantly her interest quickened. The unexpected appearance of Bessie Clapp had seemed to her merely opportune at a moment when any diversion would have been welcome, but the sight of Bessie with a baby in her arms—presumably her own baby—caught her attention away from her immediate concerns and brought the other’s affairs into greater prominence. She had always believed that this girl had been hardly dealt by, and no one had ever considered it worth while to enlighten her. Prudence’s sense of justice was in arms, and her liking for Bessie, whom she had known from childhood, awoke anew at sight of the beautiful tragic face with its look of passionate antagonism. She halted in the girl’s path and accosted her with disarming friendliness.

“I’m so glad to meet you,” she said. “I thought you had left this neighbourhood altogether.”

“There are some as would like to make me leave,” said Bessie Clapp, her dark unsmiling gaze on the fair tranquillity of the younger, happier face. “I’ve been badgered enough. We’m living in the little village down over the hill.”

“Just five miles away! And I never knew.” Prudence bent suddenly over the bundle in her arms. “Is this your child?” she asked.

“Yes; he’s mine.”

There was proprietorship but no pride in the admission. It was Prudence’s hand which pulled the covering away from the tiny face.

“Oh!” she said, and half drew back, and then bent again compassionately over the ugly little mottled piece of humanity in the beautiful young mother’s arms. “I’ve never seen so young a baby before. What do you call him?”

“He isn’t christened,” the sullen voice responded. “I’ve no patience with those silly customs.”

“But,” began Prudence, and looked perplexed, “he’ll have to have a name of his own some time.”

“We call ’im William,” the young mother volunteered. “There’s no need for cold water splashing over that. If ’e don’t like ’is name later on, ’e can change it.”

Prudence, steering away from the subject, replaced the shawl over the little face and impulsively held out her arms.

“Let me carry him,” she said. “I’d love to; and you are tired. Where were you taking him?”

“To the farm yonder, among the trees. I get milk for ’im there. ’E’s been weaned these three weeks.”

The exchange from the girl-mother’s arms to the younger arms extended eagerly to receive their burden was effected silently. Prudence walked on proudly, bearing her unaccustomed charge with a sense of new responsibility suddenly acquired. She loved the feel of the little warm body against her heart; the nestling pressure of this soft helpless thing, which lay so confidingly within the shelter of her arms, roused in her the strong protective maternal instinct which is every woman’s heritage. In her pity for its puny helplessness she forgot the sense of shock which the first glimpse of the repellently ugly wrinkled face had occasioned her, forgot the circumstances of its unfortunate birth, and the more recent revelation that it had not been received into the Church, was not in any sense of the term a Christian; she realised only that she held in her arms that most wonderful of all things, a new generation; and felt in her heart the warm glow of protective love for this weak little morsel of humanity, born into an unwelcoming world—a love child who was denied love. The unfair conditions of the child’s birth awoke her utmost compassion. She felt resentful against its unknown father, against the injustice of the world’s judgment, which throws discredit on maternity rather than on illicit love. The greatest crime of this unwedded mother, Prudence recognised, lay in the fact that she had brought a child into the world.

“He must be a great comfort to you,” she said gently. “A baby makes up for a lot.”

Bessie Clapp laughed harshly.

“Ban’t many as think like you,” she said. “They wouldn’t agree with you at Court Heatherleigh.”

And Prudence, thinking of Agatha, and Matilda’s pink shocked face, of brother William’s austere principles, and her father’s cold disapproval at the mere mention of Bessie’s name, could not contradict this. They would have been scandalised, and she knew it, could they have seen her walking with this outcast, and carrying the outcast’s baby in her strong young arms.

Chapter Twelve.

The meeting with Bessie Clapp set Prudence’s mind working in new directions. She realised, with an immense pity and a growing wonder for the complexities of human emotions, that this girl, whose motherhood had come to her in circumstances which the world surrounds with contumely and disgrace, had no love for the child of her unlawful passion. She had allowed Prudence to discover that. But for the fear of consequent punishment, she had admitted with bitterness that she would do away with the baby. She confessed too to a hatred of its father.

Prudence wondered whether this unnatural dislike for her own offspring resulted from the shame with which its birth had covered her, or was the inevitable consequence of the revulsion of feeling which had swept from her heart every kindly emotion which must have drawn her once towards the man she now professed aversion for. The man who had injured her had a lot to answer for. If ever it lay in her power to hurt him in return it was fairly certain that she would not hesitate to use her opportunity. The silence which she maintained in regard to his name was no guarantee of a wish to shield him; it suggested rather a caution which awaited its hour to strike.

The meeting left Prudence with a feeling of depression. It did not decrease her pity, but it lessened her liking for the girl to discover her attitude of bitter resentment against the helpless mite she had brought into the world. And it set her thinking about marriage in a new light. Was it possible to cease to love a man one had loved once passionately? And could a woman grow to hate the children of a loveless marriage? If these matters were beyond the control of human will power, it seemed that it might be so. Here was an example of it anyway, though it might be a bad example. Until that talk with Bessie Clapp it had never occurred to Prudence that a woman could dislike her own child. It was one of the inexplicable problems of life.

Prudence reached home to discover that she was late. Miss Agatha met her in the hall, already dressed for the evening meal, which was the most important function of the day, and at which no one was expected to put in a tardy appearance. Miss Agatha glanced from the warning face of the great clock at the foot of the staircase to the sweet flushed face of her young sister, and from thence to her dust-soiled shoes.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Don’t you see the time?”

“I’ll hurry,” Prudence answered. “It won’t take me three minutes to change. I’ve been for a tramp.”

“You have a deceitful habit,” Miss Agatha admonished her, “of slipping away from the house without informing anyone. If you were less selfish it might occur to you that your sisters would like to accompany you occasionally. I can’t understand why you prefer to walk alone.”

“I shall be late,” Prudence said, with her foot on the stair, “if I stay to go into that now.”

And with a rebellious face she ran upstairs, leaving Miss Agatha, aghast and indignant, looking up from the foot of the staircase after her vanishing figure. Prudence was getting altogether out of hand.

“She tramps the country,” William affirmed on learning the trouble, “like a factory girl. I won’t have my sister making herself so noticeable—mooning about the lanes and hanging over stiles. It—it isn’t respectable.”

“I wish,” Miss Agatha said, meanly shifting responsibility, “that you would put your foot down. If you were firm she might possibly respect your wishes. I can do nothing with her.”

“M’m!” William coughed gently, and assumed an expression which he hoped conveyed the air of inflexibility he deemed suited to the responsible position thus conferred on him. “I’ll see to it,” he said; and felt relieved when the gong sounded in advance of Prudence’s entry, and so deferred the moment for exercising his authority.

He was less confident than Agatha that firmness on his part would produce the result desired. He had in mind the occasion when he had insisted upon an apology before the resumption of fraternal relations with his young sister. He had maintained a dignified silence until the thing threatened to become ridiculous, and still the apology had not been forthcoming: he had been forced to capitulate; and the memory of that defeat rankled. But the lesson had been salutary in so far that it discouraged him from straining his authority to a point whence it aggravated to open revolt. Defiance was a quality which defeated William’s statesmanship.

Prudence came running down the stairs as the rest of the family crossed the hall on the way to the dining-room.

“You ran it pretty close, Prue,” her father said, as she took the last couple of stairs at a jump and landed laughing beside him. He patted the little hand she slipped within his arm.

“You are precisely two minutes late,” Miss Agatha observed. “I think you might have made a greater effort to be punctual.”

“I might, of course, have slid down the banisters,” Prudence retorted.

“Tut, tut!” Mr Graynor patted the small hand again in gentle reproof. “You are tomboy enough without scandalising us to that extent.”

Save that he held his head a little higher on passing behind her to his seat at table, William disregarded her presence, a sign by which Prudence recognised that she was once again in disgrace. It occasioned her therefore something of a shock when William approached her later during the evening and requested a few minutes of her time. He had something of importance, he announced, which he wished to say. This request in its unexpectedness deprived her for the moment of breath. She was attracted by his speech and puzzled. She found herself wondering amazedly what kind of confidence William intended to repose in her. William found her silence embarrassing; he had expected her to give him a cue. He cleared his throat, nervously fingering the arrangement of his tie. Prudence began to feel sympathetic. She believed he was about to confess to some romantic attachment, although there was not, so far as she knew, any woman of their acquaintance likely to inspire sentiment in him. If William were in love, that might account for his preoccupation during dinner.

“Please give me your whole attention,” he said, which was a superfluous remark even for a commencement; it was so obvious that he was receiving what he asked for. “It is a little difficult for me, a little—ahem!—embarrassing to say what I wish to say in view of your inexperience.”

This confirmed Prudence’s suspicion. She smiled at him encouragingly.

“Oh! I expect I’ll understand,” she said kindly. “It’s nice of you to tell me, anyhow.”

He was taken aback, and he showed it. He had never known Prudence so amenable before; her attitude discountenanced him slightly.

“I am glad you take so sensible a tone,” he returned; “it makes my task easier. I do not wish to find fault; your conduct is indiscreet rather than blameworthy. You ought to realise that it is not seemly for a young girl in your position to tear about the country as you do. I am not sure that in a factory town it is altogether safe. In any case it gets you talked about. It distresses your sisters; it distresses me. It lays you open to misapprehension. Why should you wander about the roads alone?”

“Oh! Is that all?” Prudence’s smile had changed in quality; kindliness made way for irony. “How do you know I do wander alone?” William reddened angrily.

“I should be sorry to insult you by supposing the contrary,” he replied with restrained annoyance. “No one in this house credits you with being other than thoughtless. Your behaviour shows a great want of consideration for your family.”

“It wasn’t until to-day that I realised you were all so devoted to me,” Prudence returned with suspicious meekness. “I have yet to get accustomed to that idea. So much family affection is embarrassing.”

“If you are going to adopt that outrageous tone,” William observed with a resumption of dignity, “I have nothing further to say.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Prudence reassured him. “You haven’t left much unsaid. You have filled my mind with a lot of new ideas that make it feel like a rubbish heap. If the roads are not safe for a girl to walk along, it is time some one saw to it that they were made so. As for being talked about, no one with a decent mind would make matter for talk where there was none. Are you quite sure, William, that your own mind doesn’t need a little tidying up? Your workpeople at least are your responsibility. If you have any dubious characters among them, turn them away—as you turned away Bessie Clapp.”

William’s face was crimson. He rose and stood looking down at her with the look of a man who feels himself deeply insulted.

“You forget yourself,” he said. “How dare you mention that woman’s name to me?”

“I have held that woman’s child in my arms to-day,” she answered quietly. “I think perhaps that gives me the courage.”

He bent swiftly and caught her by the shoulder.

“So that’s how you spend your time?” he said, staring into her steady eyes. He emitted an ugly laugh and pushed her roughly from him. “A decent-minded girl would shrink from such contact.”

She smiled coldly.

“It is only the decent mind that does not fear these things,” she answered, and turned away from the look in his eyes, which was not good to see.

It was by a great effort at control that he refrained from striking her. He spluttered for words. Confronted with her cool disdain, anger overcame him. He felt himself at an immense disadvantage.

“You are impossible!” was all he could find to say.

Prudence, thinking over the scene later, while leaning from her window with the night wind cooling her heated face, wondered what was wrong with herself that this spirit of antagonism should flame forth at the slightest provocation. Why could she not endure William, and suffer his little homilies with patience? Why should Agatha’s constant fault-finding irritate her to the verge of desperation? If she were possessed of a vein of humour, she told herself, these things would merely afford amusement. But they did not amuse. They were slowly souring a naturally sweet disposition.

Big tears welled in the blue eyes, hung for a space on her lashes, and fell like silver dew upon the rose-leaves beneath the sill—hot tears that sprang from the well of discontent which had its source in a vain longing for unattainable things.

Chapter Thirteen.

The troubles of youth are none the less real because to riper age they appear trivial in the retrospect. In the constant fret against the irksome restrictions of her life Prudence’s sunny nature fought under unequal conditions, with the result that the sun suffered many an eclipse. In one of these depressed moods she wrote to Bobby to the effect that she felt unequal to holding out until he came home for good, and that if matters did not improve the desperation of the situation would drive her to elope with the curate.

“The sole consideration which deters me,” she added, “is that Jones is such an impossible name.”

“What’s in a name?” Bobby wrote back airily. “You’re safe, old girl, if you jib at a little thing like that.”

The curate, failing to meet Prudence alone and wearying of being fenced with, took a mean advantage of her at the annual Sunday-school treat, and secluding her in a corner of the playing-field with her class of infants, set the infants running races and came rather abruptly to his point.

“I love to watch you with little children,” he remarked with disconcerting suddenness. “You have such a wonderful sympathy with them.”

“I like children,” she answered guardedly; and tried to gather the babies about her; but the curate was throwing sweets for them, and they preferred scrambling for these to clinging to teacher’s hands. There is a time for everything.

“So do I,” he said, attentively scrutinising her averted face, and admiring the fine colour in her cheeks which a new quality in his voice had brought there. “Children in the home make home beautiful.”

He swept the field with his glance, and decided that his chance was short-lived and might not come again. He plunged desperately.

“I want to marry,” he said, hurriedly, and threw a further quantity of sweets to the children and turned more directly towards her. “I have been waiting so long for an opportunity of saying this to you that you will forgive me if I seem a little abrupt and choose my time inopportunely. I never see you alone now. You cannot have failed to observe how deeply in love I am. You are so sweet and gentle that I feel you will be kind. I want a little encouragement.” He paused expectantly. “I may go on?” he asked, when she took no advantage of his hesitation. “You will give me a little hope?”

Prudence turned her face and met his eyes fully. There was no possibility of mistaking his meaning.

“No, please don’t,” she said. “I don’t want you to say any more. I hoped you would see it wasn’t any use. I’m sorry.”

The curate although a vain man, had never felt very confident of winning her. He wanted her quite urgently; but he was not so deeply in love with Prudence as he was with himself, and the certainty of defeat wounded his pride more than it wounded his feelings. He had no intention of giving her the satisfaction of being in a position to say that she had refused him. He dissembled meanly, congratulating himself on the clever ambiguity with which he had worded his proposal.

“I am sorry you have formed that opinion,” he said, trying to keep the chagrin he felt from betraying itself in his voice. “You are so much with her that I believed you would enjoy her entire confidence, and I was vain enough to expect a little encouragement. But I am not going to accept your opinion as final. I shall make my appeal to her. Perhaps I ought to have done so in the first instance; but a man feels naturally diffident at these times.”

The play of expression on Prudence’s face while she listened to his stilted sentences was remarkable. He would have been very obtuse if he believed that he succeeded in deceiving her. It was very evident that she apprehended him very clearly. A little smile hovered about her mouth when she replied to him.

“If it is Matilda you allude to,” she said, with an ambiguity equal to his own, “I wish you all the success you deserve.”

He raised his hat gravely and left her, carrying the bag of sweets with him, to the manifest disgust of the staring infants; and Prudence, watching his hurrying little figure making its purposeful way through the different groups in search of his unconscious quarry, laughed quietly and without malice, despite his ungenerous effort to humiliate her.

“Now I shall have a new enemy in my brother-in-law,” she reflected. “He is marrying the chimneys. But Matilda will be too grateful to him to resent that.”

Matilda was grateful. She was sufficiently overcome with the honour thus conferred on her to satisfy even Mr Jones’ colossal vanity. Mr Jones accepted his triumph with becoming condescension; to describe his air as elated would be misleading. His manner towards his affianced wife, who was several years his senior, and had never been handsome, was benevolently patronising. His courtship was business-like, and free from those affectations of silly sentiment so unsuited to his calling. If Miss Matilda regretted the lack of lover-like attentions, she concealed her disappointment, clinging insistently to the belief that everything that Ernest did was right and dignified. It would have been unbecoming in a clergyman to be demonstrative.

“I used to think,” she confessed to Prudence in a moment of rare confidence, “that it was you he admired. You remember how he used to persist in accompanying us on our walks, and how he talked principally with you? All the while he was thinking of me. He told me so. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“He has the sense,” Prudence answered, and kissed the flushed face kindly, “to realise that you will make the best wife in the world for a clergyman.”

And she thought of Bobby’s epithet, “money-grubbing little worm,” and decided that it aptly fitted Ernest.

Bobby chaffed her about the curate, affecting to believe she had suffered a disappointment.

Prudence did not confide in him the tale of the curate’s duplicity; loyalty to Matilda kept her silent on that subject. But her wrathful disgust was roused on the day of Matilda’s wedding, when Mr Jones, claiming the privilege of a brother, caught her unprepared in the hall and kissed her unsuspecting lips.

“If you ever take such a liberty with me again,” she said, white and angry, “I will make you the laughing-stock of Wortheton.”

He assumed an air of dignity while conscious of looking ridiculous. Her words, her tone in uttering them, lashed him into a rage of hatred that cured him finally of any tender thought he had cherished in regard to her. He spoke of her later to his wife as ill-mannered and ungentle of temper, a description which, while holding it to be ungenerous, occasioned Matilda considerable comfort. She had felt uneasily jealous of Prudence at times, even during the days of her brief engagement. Mr Jones had shown such predilection for the society of the younger sister that Matilda, like Leah, was made to realise the humiliating position of the substitute. Her faith in his uprightness did not allow of disbelief; besides which his ill-natured criticism of her young sister carried conviction; his tone expressed cordial dislike.

“Fuller acquaintance with her reveals her more objectionable qualities,” he said. “I believed her to be a nice, simple girl, but she is certainly not that.”

“Prudence is very warm-hearted,” Matilda said weakly in defence of the absent. “But father spoils her a little.”

“He makes a fool of her,” was the bridegroom’s unclerical retort.

Thus Matilda left the home of her childhood, seated beside her husband in the carriage which was to take them to the junction, and to the back of which Bobby, with a sense of the eternal unfitness of things, had tied one of Matilda’s discarded shoes. Not even the thought of the comfortable dowry which went with the gentle Matilda had the power to lighten Mr Jones’ lowering countenance during the long drive to the station, and Mr Graynor had behaved with quite surprising generosity in the matter of settlements. The hard ring in Prudence’s voice, when she had threatened to make a laughing-stock of him, the expression of disgust on her white face, hit his pride hard. And he dared not offend her further from the wholly unnecessary fear that she would put her threat into execution. He knew that he had paid her marked attention, and that Wortheton was aware of his preference. If she chose to spread tales about him they would not lack credence.

His frown deepened when he felt his wife’s gloved hand timidly feeling for his; then he roused himself with an effort and responded to the gentle pressure of her fingers.

“It’s nervous work getting married,” he said, with an uneasy laugh. “The fuss and the crowd... every one staring. Phew!”

Matilda sympathised with him; she had felt nervous also.

“I’m glad it’s over—oh! so very glad—and happy, dear.”

“Blithering ass, isn’t he?” was Bobby’s cheerful comment, when, turning from watching the vanishing carriage, he found Prudence beside him, looking unusually tall and womanly in her bridesmaid’s dress of soft blue, with a hat with cornflowers in it shading her face. “Come along, and drink to their connubial bliss in another bumper of champagne.”

He filled her glass for her and one for himself.

“Cheer up,” he cried, and raising his glass, grinned at her over the brim. “There are more Joneses than one in the sea. You needn’t sport the willow so openly. It’s indecent. Here’s to their health, wealth, and happiness! It will be wealth for him, anyway—cute little beast!”

Prudence became aware of her father surveying them from the doorway with a tired smile on his bored and worried face. He had slipped away from his guests, who lingered aimlessly on the lawn, and followed them indoors. She persuaded him to take a seat beside her and drink a glass of his own very excellent champagne.

“It’s jolly good stuff. You did them awfully well, sir,” said Bobby enthusiastically approving. “We’ve given Wortheton something to think about. It’ll be Prue’s turn next.”

“There’s plenty of time for Prudence,” Mr Graynor said—“plenty of time.”

He found himself looking at her in her unfamiliar dress, surprised, as Bobby had been, by the womanliness he realised for the first time. It disconcerted him.

“Weddings are a nuisance; they upset the household,” he said. “I wish all these people would go.”

“They are like the wasps,” said Bobby; “they’ll hang about so long as the grub’s there. I’ll go out and clear them off.”

He left the room by the window. Mr Graynor looked after him, and meeting Prudence’s eye, exchanged a smile with her.

“The assurance of youth!” he remarked. “You and I, we’ve had enough of them, Prue.” He regarded her again more attentively. “That blue dress is very becoming to you, my dear.”

Prudence flushed warmly. His appreciation recalled to her mind the light of admiration in the curate’s eyes, his quick hungry swoop towards her, the eager furtiveness of his kiss—the first time that a man’s lips had touched hers, other than the members of her family. But he belonged to the family in a sense—a wretched little hanger-on, catching at the overflow from the Graynor pockets.

“If it is becoming, I don’t believe you like it very well,” she said.

“It makes you look old—perhaps that’s why,” he answered, and thought with regret of the little girl who had given place to this tall and gracious young woman.

Chapter Fourteen.

Matilda’s departure from the family circle made strangely little difference. She had made no particular place for herself in the home which she had occupied for thirty years, had established no claim on any member of her family. If anyone missed her, it was Prudence: Matilda had been the most amiable of her elder sisters; but she had never been in any sense of the word a companion. The first Mrs Graynor’s family, with the exception of the younger son, were none of them companionable; they were self-contained and reserved, and lacking in those qualities of individuality and initiative which make for the breaking away from tradition and the following a line of one’s own. Matilda was naturally submissive. She had submitted uncomplainingly to Agatha’s rule all her life; and she left one submission for another, and, in accordance with the dictates of the marriage service, which Prudence considered degrading and Matilda thought beautiful, became subject willingly to the dominating and not particularly chivalrous authority of her husband. Had Mr Jones succeeded in winning the sister whom he had coveted, he would have found this comfortable arrangement of relationship reversed. There was no aptitude for submission in Prudence.

On one point after Matilda’s marriage Prudence was firm: she refused to be chaperoned on her walks by one of the remaining sisters. Matilda’s presence she had suffered as a protection against the curate’s advances; since these advances were no longer to be dreaded, she refused to be shadowed in future, and in order to escape from the annoyance took to cycling, a form of exercise which none of the elder Miss Greynors would attempt.

Her cycling took her far afield, and brought many new pleasures into her life. Miss Agatha tried to veto the idea; but Prudence, backed by her father’s permission, and in possession of a fine new machine which he bought for her, defied opposition and rode forth whenever the weather permitted in quest of new experiences. Sometimes she met with adventures, and got into unexpected and informal conversations with strangers encountered surprisingly in little outlying villages where she dismounted to rest and quench her thirst. Cycling in its early stages is very thirsty work. She never mentioned those experiences at home; not that she was naturally secretive, but she held a strong conviction that such harmless amusement would meet with disapproval; and life had taught her that it is wisest to avoid unpleasantness.

And once she met with an accident. That had to be admitted because it could not by any means be suppressed.

It was a silly sort of accident, which an experienced rider might have averted; and it left her injured in temper as much as physically hurt. The bicycle suffered the greater damage. She was free-wheeling down hill with a broad open road ahead and nothing more formidable to pass than a leisurely farm cart, crawling up the steep incline, accompanied by an amiable sheep-dog which, until the cycle came abreast with it, was ambling comfortably within the shade at the back of the cart. Apparently the sight of the girl on the cycle excited it. It rushed forward unexpectedly and, barking vociferously, got in front of her wheel. Prudence swerved violently in order to avoid it, overbalanced herself, and, before she quite realised what was happening, found herself in the road inextricably mixed up with her crumpled machine. The dog, its feet planted deeply in the white dust, barked in enjoyment of this new kind of game.

The farmer pulled up his horse, and looked down upon their grouping with an expression of stolid amiability.

“’E won’t ’urt ’ee,” he called out reassuringly, and whistled to the dog, which, disregarding its owner, continued to bark gleefully at the débris.

Prudence lifted a face pale with indignation to the speaker.

“’E won’t ’urt ’ee,” he repeated, and in case she needed further reassurance, added comfortably: “’E’s done it afore. ’E’s that friendly. But you needn’t be afraid; ’e won’t hurt.”

“Afraid!” she ejaculated, and sat up and looked around for her hat. “He’s done all the mischief he can. Get down, please, and wheel my machine as far as the cottage. I’ll have to rest.”

It dawning upon the man for the first time that the lady was annoyed with him, he proceeded to obey her instructions, curiously little resentful of her anger. While Prudence painfully regained her feet he righted the disabled cycle, and, after a glance at his horse to assure himself of his intention to stand, half-wheeled half-carried the machine to a cottage at the bottom of the hill, and propped it against the wall of the house.

“’E’s that friendly,” he reiterated, gently admonishing the dog which accompanied them delightedly. “’E always runs up to folk like that. ’E’s done it afore. But ’e wouldn’t ’urt anyone. It’s just friendliness.”

Prudence found nothing to say. She was already ashamed of her heat; but the man’s amiable indifference exasperated her. This was due, not to any want of consideration, but to rustic obtuseness. He was urgently anxious to reassure her in regard to the dog; ladies were scared as a rule of dogs; he was also desirous of returning to his cart, the horse having views of its own about standing. He knocked on the cottage door, quite unnecessarily; two girls, who had witnessed the accident, having already appeared in the entrance. One of them was laughing immoderately, as though she considered the affair a huge joke, enacted for her special amusement; the other, and older girl, favoured her with a reproving look.

“Young lady’s met with a accident,” the man explained. “The dog done it; ’e’s that friendly. She wants to rest a bit.”

He left it at that, and hurried back to his cart. The elder girl invited the stranger to come inside, and the younger, following them, stood in the doorway, laughing. Prudence showed her annoyance.

“It wasn’t so funny as you seem to think,” she said, surveying her from a chair in indignant surprise.

“I know,” the girl replied, her laughter trailing off into spasmodic giggles. “I don’t know what makes me keep laughing. But it was funny seeing you in the road, an’ the bicycle an’ all. It made me fair screech. I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

“You’d like a glass of water, I expect?” said the older girl; and the younger, as if desirous of atoning for her misplaced merriment, hurried away to fetch it.

“I don’t know how I shall get home,” said Prudence, who was more concerned with this difficulty than with her bruises, although these were more considerable than she had thought at first. She had wrenched her ankle badly. “I’m ten miles from Wortheton, and my machine is twisted hopelessly—even if I could ride it, which at present I don’t feel equal to doing. Could I get a conveyance near here?”

“No,” answered the girl. “There’s nothing but that cart that’s gone on. I don’t know what you’ll do.”

They were not very helpful people, and there was no other house within sight. Prudence began to fear that she would be hung up there for the night. She wondered whether for a consideration the girl who had laughed so immoderately would walk to the nearest village and secure some sort of conveyance. She regretted that she had not commandeered the cart of the man whose dog was responsible for the mishap, but events had been too hurried to allow her time to realise the difficulties of getting home in her damaged condition. She appealed to the girl, who still stood surveying her with a wide grin of amusement, and who seemed by no means eager to undertake the mission. She looked out along the dusty road and up the steep hill, down which Prudence had sped to her undoing, and hesitated; then she picked up a hat which was lying on a chair and remarked that she would go up the road a bit and see if anyone were about.

Prudence sat on in the room, waiting in the company of the sister, with a blank feeling of hopelessness for the next event. This when it befell was so altogether unexpected that at the moment when she first caught sight of a motor, with the girl who had set forth on her reluctant search seated in the back, she almost discredited her senses. But the motor came to a stop in the roadway before the house, and the other girl, springing up and going to the window, remarked explanatorily over her shoulder:

“It’s Major Stotford in his car. That’s a rare bit of luck for you. I suppose Lizzie stopped him. She’s got a cheek. He’s lord of the manor over to Liscombe. It’s all his property about here.”

Lizzie burst in in great excitement.

“It’s all right,” she cried; “the Major’ll drive you. Only you must be quick; he hates to be kept waiting.”

She ran out again, and stood in the road staring admiringly at the rather heavy, handsome man who remained at the steering wheel, and only looked round when Prudence, walking with an unmistakable limp, emerged from the house, with the other girl behind her, and approached the car. With his first casual glance at her the look of indifference gave immediate place to an expression of very real interest. What he had expected he hardly knew, certainly not what he saw. He raised his cap, and with an alertness he had not yet displayed, left the wheel and opening the door of the car stepped into the road.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” said Prudence. “It’s most awfully kind of you to come to the assistance of a stranger. I fear it will trespass on your time. I live at Wortheton; that’s ten miles from here.”

“Wortheton!” he said, and smiled charmingly. “My time is not so valuable that so heavy a call upon it need worry you. I’ll sprint you home under the half-hour.”

He held the door for her and helped her up. Lizzie had occupied the back seat, but plainly he preferred to have Prudence beside him.

“Is that your cycle?” he asked. “You have had a spill.”

“Yes. It will need to visit the doctor before I can ride it again,” she said, and turned a look of regret on the damaged machine.

“So will you, by the look of things,” he remarked, and scrutinised her more closely.

Prudence leaned down to take her farewell of, and recompense the sisters, who, sober enough now, watched the proceedings with interest.

“I’ll send out for the cycle to-morrow,” she said.

But Major Stotford saw no necessity for leaving the cycle behind.

“It will go in the back all right. We might as well take it along,” he said, and lifted it into the car.

Lizzie, considerably more obliging than heretofore, lent a hand. When he had settled the machine he took his seat beside Prudence.

“Anyone we pass will conclude that I’ve run you down, and that I’m taking home the pieces,” he said, smiling at her with curious intimacy, as the car took the long hill, and the girl leaned back white and weary against the cushions. He drew a flask from his pocket and handed it to her. “Don’t look so horrified. If you could see the colour of your face you would realise as surely as I do that this is what you need. Take a good pull at it and you’ll feel better.”

“I begin to believe that the lamp on my bicycle must once have belonged to Aladdin,” Prudence said with a quiet little laugh of enjoyment. “I rubbed it to some purpose in the dust of the road. Whatever I require appears.”

Major Stotford laughed with her. The thought in his mind, which he was careful not to express in words, was that she carried the magic within her. He leaned forward and altered the pace of the car, which had been running at top speed.

Chapter Fifteen.

“And now,” Major Stotford remarked, as he turned in at the gates of Court Heatherleigh and drove slowly along the smooth gravelled path which led to the house, “for explanations. Beastly things, explanations, eh? Can’t see the necessity for them myself.”

He scrutinised the white face which, even in its pallor, and despite the worried expression which he observed settled upon it as they drew near her home, looked extraordinarily fresh and sweet. He had enjoyed the ten mile drive exceedingly. Had he not believed that his companion was enduring more discomfort than she would allow, he could have wished that the distance had been greater. He was a man who appreciated feminine society, and he had derived considerable pleasure as the result of an act of careless good-nature from which he had not anticipated enjoyment. It had been a new and agreeable experience. He determined that he would see her again. The slight service he had been able to render her gave him that much right at least, he decided.

The door was flung wide, and the butler came down the steps with concern written large on his discreet features. He opened the door of the car. Major Stotford alighted, shouldered the man authoritatively out of the way, and assisted Prudence to the ground. She leaned on his arm heavily, and he saw her blue eyes darken with a look of pain.

“I’m sorry; my ankle hurts.”

She turned from him to the waiting servant; but Major Stotford, anticipating her request, lifted her in his arms and carried her easily up the steps and into the hall.

The butler, following quickly, got ahead of this intrusive stranger whose proceedings he did not altogether approve of, and threw open the drawing-room door. Major Stotford entered with his burden, and after one swift comprehensive glance which took in the fact that the room was untenanted, and located the sofa at the same moment, carried Prudence to it and laid her gently down among its cushions. He stood over her inquiringly, anxiety in his look and the hint of a smile in his eyes.

“Come now! We’re all right, eh?” he said, and felt in his pocket for his flask, thought better of it and withdrew his hand again empty.

Prudence made an effort to sit up and laughed nervously.

“It’s so stupid,” she said, “A little thing like that! It’s nothing really.”

She was immensely relieved that no one save Graves had witnessed their arrival. It would have alarmed her father, and scandalised Agatha, to have seen her carried in like a baby. Major Stotford’s helpfulness had been in excess of what was necessary, she felt; with the aid of a strong arm she could have accomplished the journey herself.

“I’ve given you a lot of trouble. You’ve been awfully kind to me,” she said.

Before he could reply, Mr Graynor entered, concerned and fussy, followed by Agatha, who wore an expression of protest, and suggested frigid disapproval in the very rustle of her skirts.

“I always knew how it would end,” she exclaimed. “This doesn’t in the least surprise me.”

“Oh! it isn’t the end,” Major Stotford put in with a twinkling of amusement. “These little annoyances happen at the beginning. I don’t think there are any bones broken.”

Mr Graynor bent anxiously over Prudence and laid a hand on her hair.

“You’ve had an accident. Are you much hurt?” he asked.

“It’s nothing really,” she said, ashamed at the general fuss in front of a stranger. “I had a spill—a silly little spill which jarred my ankle. Major Stotford very kindly motored me home.”

Mr Graynor glanced swiftly at the person referred to. His anxiety partially relieved, he found time to give attention to the man who had not only brought his daughter home, but was, he imagined, responsible for the accident. Major Stotford, taking advantage of the pause, set about correcting this impression, which he had foreseen as likely to follow his share in the proceedings.

“I was fortunately near the spot,” he said. “Miss Graynor rode over a dog in the roadway, and unluckily it was not the dog which got hurt. It seldom is on these occasions. I brought home the wreckage.”

“I am sure I am very much obliged to you,” Mr Graynor said, but with such a lack of graciousness in his manner as to cause Prudence surprise and distress. Major Stotford’s helpfulness had been more valuable than he realised. She glanced at her new acquaintance with a quick bright flush.

“I know I am. If it had not been for Major Stotford’s kindness I should have been stranded for the night with no possibility of communicating with you at a wretched wayside cottage ten miles away. I’ve trespassed enormously on his time, and given quite a lot of trouble. But I enjoyed the ride.”

He laughed pleasantly.

“I enjoyed it too. And you make too much of my services. They were nothing. I trust the foot will soon be well, and that the injuries are as light as you would so bravely have us believe.” He addressed himself to Mr Graynor. “If you like I’ll leave word at the doctor’s on my way back. You’ll want to call him in, I expect.”

“Thank you, there is no need to trouble you further,” Mr Graynor returned stiffly. “I can send.”

“I have already sent,” Miss Agatha interposed; and Major Stotford turned to look in her direction, as if recalling the presence of one he had temporarily forgotten.

“Then that’s finished,” he said; “and it only remains to unload the car.”

He spoke with a certain cold hostility in his voice which did not escape Prudence’s ear. It hurt her. She could have wept with vexation at her father’s want of gratitude and courtesy to this man who had proved so good a friend to her in her need: she felt that she wanted to apologise to him for the rudeness of her family. Then she became aware of her father speaking again in the same politely distant tones as before, thanking the other man coldly for the trouble he had been put to, and assuring him that the bicycle had been removed by the servants.

“You should not have burdened yourself with that too,” he added. “You place me under a heavy obligation to you which will leave me always indebted.”

“My dear sir,” Major Stotford interrupted, “you are in no sense under an obligation to me; please disabuse your mind of that idea.”

He cut short further expressions of gratitude by advancing to the sofa and shaking hands with Prudence, who, as if desirous of atoning for the general lack of warmth, gave him both her hands on a simple girlish impulse. He took and held them with no show of surprise.

“Thank you so much,” she said, a soft appeal in eyes and voice which he was quick to note. “I just want to say how much I enjoyed the drive and your kind care of me. I’m very grateful to you.”

“You are setting such a premium on ordinary courtesy that I begin to believe it must be a rare quality in these parts,” he said jestingly, with what sounded to Prudence a faintly sarcastic humour. He had assuredly not been given particular evidence of the quality beneath that roof. “But if you insist on regarding my small service so graciously I do not feel inclined to quarrel with you on that score. I can only repeat that I am glad I happened to be on the spot. Good-bye. Take care of the ankle. It will tax your patience, I expect.”

Mr Graynor accompanied him into the hall, and invited him into the library for refreshment, which he declined. Prudence listened to their voices outside, listened to the motor drive away, and turned with a face pale with indignation, when her father re-entered the room, and reproached him with having displayed so little gratitude to a man who had acted with such ready kindliness towards her.

“I felt ashamed,” she said. “You were barely civil.”

“You forget yourself, Prudence,” Agatha said. “Father was quite civil. There was no need to gush—you did that.”

“And if I did,” Prudence cried, exasperated, “you two forced me into doing so.”

Mr Graynor had crossed to the window, where he remained with his back towards the room, paying little heed to their wrangling.

“I wish it had not been Major Stotford who rendered you the service,” he said presently, and faced about and approached the sofa with an expression of worried annoyance on his face. “I am sorry this has happened.”

“Why?” Prudence sat up straighter and punched the cushions viciously. “Why?” she repeated aggressively.

“Because—”

“Do you think it necessary to explain these matters to a child?” Agatha interrupted tartly.

Prudence laughed angrily.

“I’m not a child,” she said. “You can’t keep my mind for ever on a leading string.”

“I think you are unnecessarily excited,” Mr Graynor said in displeased tones. “I doubt whether that is good for you in your present condition.”

“Being thwarted is not good for me in my present condition,” Prudence retorted, but with greater calmness. “You aren’t being fair to me. Why should it be a matter for regret to you that Major Stotford should do me a service? He hadn’t much choice. No man, who wasn’t a brute, could have acted otherwise in the circumstances.”

“No,” Mr Graynor admitted. “It was simply unfortunate. Major Stotford is a man whom I do not care to have in my house, whom I would not choose as an associate for my daughters. He has an evil reputation.”

“Evil!” Prudence sounded a note of incredulity. “In what sense?” she asked.

“There is no need to soil your ears with his history,” Mr Graynor replied. “His wife divorced him two years ago. I understood he was abroad.”

“Oh!” said Prudence, and felt oddly chilled by this revelation.

She had liked the man, had hoped that the acquaintance so informally begun would develop pleasantly on ordinary lines, a hope which she realised very certainly could never be fulfilled. Further intercourse would be forbidden her. Though had the road been open to a pursuance of the acquaintance Prudence herself would no longer have wished to follow it up. The colour had gone out of the pleasure and left a neutral-toned picture in its stead, a picture of life in its least lovely aspect, with the sordid streak of self-indulgence trailing its disfiguring smudges across the canvas. Was nothing that was pleasant altogether fine? In this complex meandering of human destinies was this mean streak, which spoilt the fine grain of the wood, discoverable in each separate individual?

Prudence lay back against the cushions feeling utterly weary and unable to cope with the rush of swift emotions which flooded her mind. Reaction followed upon the period of excitement. She was conscious only of the pain in her foot. No one had thought of removing her shoe. She had loosened it in the car; but the foot had swollen and felt too big for its covering. She made an effort now to remove the shoe, whereupon Agatha, capable but unsympathetic, came to her assistance.

“You ought to have done that before,” she complained petulantly, and to her own surprise, as well as to her sister’s, broke down and cried weakly.

Chapter Sixteen.

Though not serious, Prudence’s injuries confined her to the house for some time. It proved an irksome time for the members of her family as well as for herself. She was not patient, and it exasperated her to be compelled to lie on the sofa, unequal to rising from it and running away when her sisters, from a sense of duty, installed themselves near her couch with the sociable intention of keeping her company. They insisted on her occupying herself with some sewing as a relief to the tedium of enforced inaction. Prudence hated sewing, and made a demand for books; whereupon her sisters in turn read aloud to her the works of Miss Nouchette Carey, which were familiar to Prudence from childhood, and bored her exceedingly. She wanted something more stimulating; something which did not depict Wortheton ideals and sentiment. But the more modern writers were banned as unwholesome, and the poets were discredited on account of an erotic tendency to idealise passion and adorn sensuousness with an exalted language better suited to more spiritual qualities. Or so Miss Agatha thought.

“The merit of a book,” she affirmed, “depends upon whether it stands the test of being read aloud without causing embarrassment to the reader and to the audience.”

“Books never embarrass me,” Prudence said, “but occasionally they bore me. I don’t care to read about people who lead the stodgy kind of life we lead.”

“Life is not stodgy,” Agatha reproved her. “And it is the same everywhere.”

“God forbid!” ejaculated Prudence, and thereby brought a storm of horrified reproach upon her head.

On occasions Matilda arrived and spent an afternoon or morning with her, such an altered Matilda that she appeared to Prudence in the guise of a stranger. Matilda had emerged since her marriage, and from being a mild reflection of her eldest sister, reflected now Mr Jones quite brightly and unconsciously. She echoed him in a feminine note, and quoted him with unintentional inaccuracy, but with sufficient likeness to recall the original with unpleasant vividness to Prudence’s mind. Usually Mr Jones was too busy to accompany her.

“The vicar leaves so much to him,” Mrs Jones explained. “Ernest hopes to move from Wortheton shortly.”

“I understood that he was greatly attached to his work here,” Prudence said. “He likes the factory and the people.”

“He has hopes of a living,” Matilda confided, lowering her voice.

“Oh, a living! That’s another matter. You’ll be quite important.”

Matilda looked a little doubtful.

“It’s a very poor living,” she confessed, “even if he succeeds in obtaining it. No clergyman without private means could accept it.”

“I see.” Prudence did see, very clearly. She smiled suddenly. “How grateful he must feel to you,” she added.

Matilda resented this very much in the manner Prudence decided in which Mr Jones would have resented it.

“That matters only in regard to this particular living,” she said. “Ernest would succeed in any case; he is so clever.”

Prudence’s accident, with the unfortunate complication which had effected Major Stotford’s entry upon the scene, was used by Agatha, backed by brother William, as a sufficient reason against future cycling. Agatha went to an immense amount of trouble in her efforts to gain her father’s veto against Prudence riding again. She persuaded him to get rid of the bicycle as the surest means of avoiding fresh misadventures; and rendered him so nervous with her gloomy forebodings that he did consent to part with the bicycle; but he reserved his veto against riding until he saw how Prudence viewed a possible prohibition. He could not deny her pleasure merely because the idea of her riding made him nervous. Bobby had met with accidents when he first cycled; but it never had been suggested that Bobby should give up riding from a fear he might break his neck.

The damaged cycle was disposed of; William saw to that. Agatha undertook to inform her sister; she also sought to prevail with her to give up the exercise. She enlarged upon her father’s anxiety, so injurious in the case of a man of his years, and pointed out to Prudence that duty demanded this sacrifice of her pleasure to his anxious love.

Prudence heard her out in silence, a stony silence which betrayed nothing of the rage that burned within her breast. With the finish of the oration her chin tilted aggressively.

“This is your doing,” she said.

“It is father’s wish,” Agatha replied. “The bicycle was sold by his orders.”

“Oh!” Prudence exclaimed, with a gesture of impatience. “I know. What’s the good of talking? I am sick of all this pretence of anxiety. You hate me to have any enjoyment. You never rest—you never have rested, from seeking to make my life colourless and dull. You are satisfied only when you keep me sewing, or working in the parish. Well, I won’t sew any more—for fear I prick my fingers, and I won’t work in the parish either from a nervous dread of having my morals contaminated. If I can’t do the things I like, I won’t do the things I don’t like either.”

Miss Agatha’s anger, if more controlled, was every whit as great as Prudence’s. She gazed down upon her sister where she lay upon the sofa with eyes of cold dislike. Always they had been antagonistic. She had resented her father’s second marriage bitterly, and had disliked his young wife: the earlier resentment, and the dislike for Prudence’s mother, influenced her largely in her antagonism towards the child of the marriage, the child who was dearer to their father than any of his other children, and who was so unlike the rest. But she had, according to her own view, conscientiously done her duty by her young sister: the accusation of jealous injustice stung her; she felt that she had not merited that.

“You are wicked and ungrateful,” she said. “You display a great want of control, and an unchristian spirit. I hope that later, when you have given yourself time to reflect, you will regret what you have said. I confess I don’t understand you.”

“No,” Prudence rejoined. “You never have understood me. I don’t suppose you ever will.”

“You are not,” Miss Agatha answered shortly, “so complex as you imagine.”

Having nothing further to say, and feeling irritated by the laugh with which her rebuke was received, she closed the interview by leaving the room.

But the matter was not ended. Prudence had no intention of allowing it to rest there. She meant to have it out with her father. He had given the bicycle to her; he had no right to dispose of it without consulting her. The business of having it out with him in private was not easy of accomplishment; she seldom saw him alone, and pride restrained her from broaching the subject before the others. Matters were complicated by the arrival of Mr Edward Morgan, who, to Prudence’s secret disappointment, came himself on his firm’s business instead of sending a subordinate. Prudence had very vividly in her memory that former occasion when Steele visited Wortheton. She recalled their different meetings, few in number but strangely pleasant and familiar; recalled too the stolen interview with Steele under her window. She longed to speak of him to Mr Morgan; but self-consciousness tied her tongue and made mention of his name too difficult. She waited in the hope that Mr Morgan would allude to the young man’s visit. But Mr Morgan was not accommodating. He had as a matter of fact almost forgotten Steele’s existence, had entirely forgotten that visit of Steele’s to Wortheton over a year ago. Steele had left Morgan Bros, shortly afterwards and gone abroad: that, so far as Edward Morgan’s interest in him was concerned, was the finish.

It became plain to Prudence, and to the members of Prudence’s family, as the days passed and Mr Morgan showed no haste to depart, that he was becoming more than ordinarily interested in herself. He had known her for years. As a child she had delighted him; as a girl he had found her amusing; but the woman in her came as a startling revelation, and carried this middle-aged and rather serious-minded business man out of his immense abstractions and his rather cumbersome habit of reserve.

He became surprisingly alert and attentive to Prudence’s whims. He was quick to lend a hand when she left her sofa; and he sat beside the sofa in the evenings, and played chess with her, and taught her card games. William’s amiable efforts to draw him into conversation with himself, or to entice him into the library, met with no encouragement.

“It’s dull for your sister, not being able to get about,” he explained. “We’ve got to amuse her.”

He did amuse her; and he earned her gratitude at the same time. It was a new and agreeable experience to be considered first and consulted deferentially and made to feel oneself of some importance. He bought her chocolates and books, books such as Miss Agatha did not approve of, and which Prudence read with avidity. She shared her chocolates, but she kept the books to herself.

“If you only knew what pleasure you give me,” she said, on receiving a volume. And Mr Morgan, looking pleased, answered quietly:

“That’s what I want to give you—pleasure.”

The next day he gave her another book.

“I don’t read novels myself,” he explained. “But I demand the best, and place myself unreservedly in the bookseller’s hands. Generally they know what is worth reading.”

Prudence confided in him her trouble over the cycling veto, anticipating sympathy, and was disappointed in him because he sided with the family in their objection to her riding. He did not approve of cycling for ladies, he said. That struck her as a very antiquated prejudice. Cycling for women was so general until motoring became more popular.

“If father would give me a car,” she said, “I should prefer it.”

“Better have a pony carriage,” he advised, “if you intend driving it yourself. Safer and pleasanter, really.”

“How stodgy!” she said, and laughed. “That’s much too slow.”

It was regrettable, she reflected, that he was so elderly; and she wondered what he had been like as a young man, and why he had never married.

The answer to that question was that, until he met her as a woman, he had never known love. He knew it now. And he recognised it for the one passion of his life—a disturbing passion on account of the disparity in their ages. This disparity he recognised as a barrier, but a barrier which might be overcome. It is a barrier which many people surmount and not always unsuccessfully. None the less the undertaking is attended with risks, and the risks are worthy of consideration. The ideal marriage is based on equality in essential things. Contemporaneous ideas and sentiments lend themselves most readily to sympathy. Without sympathy and understanding a perfect relationship cannot exist. The individual of forty who fails to recognise this fact deserves no compassion when he strikes the rocks ahead.

Chapter Seventeen.

Edward Morgan came into Prudence’s life again at a time when the dulness and restriction of her home were peculiarly galling, when her spirit was in fierce revolt against the petty tyranny of Agatha’s rule, supported by William’s influence and strengthened by their animosity towards her, which seemed to her daily to increase and to make anything like amicable relations impossible. Before this powerful bond of opposition Mr Graynor, old and incapable of sustained effort, gave way against his volition, slowly but surely deputing his authority in domestic affairs as he had deputed his business authority to his son, and retiring more and more within himself, content, if not harassed with a knowledge of unpleasantness to leave to his family the arrangement of their affairs. That in this way he treated his young daughter unfairly did not occur to him. He had no idea that Prudence was unhappy. Yet, had he reflected he must have recognised that it was a powerful combination arrayed against her, a combination which he himself felt unequal to opposing. But he belonged to a past generation. When the autumn leaves cling to the tree beyond their time they hang sear and useless before the push of the new verdure: and he had hung on till it seemed that the seasons had forgotten him and time refused to detach him from the bough. He was a little weary of hanging there overlooked and forgotten while another generation ripened to decay. He saw his children entering upon their autumn, and almost forgot the time when they, like Prudence, were in the springtime of life. When one reaches the winter of life one realises life’s sadness; for the hope of spring, and the contentment of summer belong to the days that are numbered. One lives necessarily in the present and looks back upon the past; the future belongs solely to youth. In Edward Morgan’s love for Prudence was repeated his own middle-aged romance. His married life with his young wife had been too brief to prove its unsuitability. He only remembered that that short time had been a happy time for him. And he liked Morgan; he would be satisfied to accept him for a son-in-law. Prudence was young for him, he recognised that; but, he argued, middle-aged men frequently married young girls, and such marriages were not always unsuccessful. The middle-aged suitor seldom pauses to reflect that if a younger man appeared upon the scene his matured experience would stand him in no good stead; a girl does not often marry a man many years her senior from any happier reason than that nothing better offers. To a girl a man of forty appears elderly. This is natural. Age, like everything else, is relative in either sex.

Prudence was flattered by Mr Morgan’s attentions and grateful for his consideration. She did not love him. She had a very clear idea what type of man could inspire love in her. It was an entirely different type from Mr Morgan. But marriage with Mr Morgan opened a way of escape from uncongenial surroundings. If she missed this opening it was very possible that an opportunity might not occur again. She made up her mind, as Steele had known she would do, to seize it when the moment offered.

She made one final attempt, however, to gain news of Steele. One day when she was alone with Mr Morgan she summoned all her courage and inquired after Steele.

Mr Morgan showed surprise at her question, and paused a moment for reflection before he was able clearly to recall the facts about the man to whom she referred. It seemed to be a matter of astonishment to him that she should be acquainted with Steele. Steele had left Morgan Bros, a year ago, he told her. He had gone abroad, to Africa, he believed. He revealed an uncertainty as to his movements and a lack of interest in them which exasperated Prudence.

“So many young men emigrate to the Colonies nowadays,” he said. “New countries attract them. They don’t settle down in England.”

“There are better openings in new countries, I suppose,” she said in a dispirited voice, which she strove to render indifferent. “A man with enterprise ought to get ahead in the Colonies.”

“A man with enterprise possibly might get ahead,” Mr Morgan allowed; “a man with capital assuredly would.”

“Don’t brains reckon as capital in new countries?” she asked.

“Brains are an asset in every country,” he answered; “but credit at one’s bank is the surest passport to success anywhere. So far as I remember, Steele was unfortunate. He did not leave us under any cloud; but there was a default in his department, and he had to make good. I imagine he emigrated with only the necessary means for landing.”

“Oh!” said Prudence, and regarded Mr Morgan, who was reputed to be a millionaire, with a diminution of respect. He could better have afforded to lose the money. To have allowed a man who, while responsible, was not culpable in the matter of the deficit to make good was ungenerous. “I wish you had not told me that.”

He looked astonished.

“You could have borne the loss,” she said.

“Business cannot be run on quixotic lines,” he answered. “Besides, every man of honour accepts his responsibilities.”

He was quite right; she knew that; all he said was perfectly just. But a woman seldom reasons on lines of strict justice. She would have liked Edward Morgan better had he been generous rather than just. Instead she went to bed feeling angry with him and compassionate towards Steele. Why, she wondered, had she forbidden Steele to write? And why had he obeyed her so implicitly? He might in any case have sent her a line of farewell before sailing. She would not have cared had the whole family seen it if only she had received that small assurance that he remembered.

Perhaps he did not remember. Perhaps when he left Wortheton he had put her out of his thoughts. There was no reason why he should continue to bear her in mind when circumstances had taken him out of her life and separated them so widely. There were fresh interests now, new scenes, to engage and distract his attention. The Wortheton episode had played an unimportant part in his life. Such episodes, she knew, were frequent in most men’s lives, and stood for no more than they were, pleasant interludes breaking the monotony of everyday things.

Then her thoughts strayed reminiscently to that stolen interview under her window; and she recalled things Steele had said to her and the manner of their utterance; and it seemed to her by the light of those half-forgotten memories that he had acted disloyally in going out of her life so completely. He had betrayed an interest in her. And he had stirred up a corresponding interest in her breast. He had no right to do that and then to pass on and forget.

Two days later Edward Morgan returned to Derbyshire. It had been his intention to propose to Prudence before returning. He had had an interview with Mr Graynor, and had ascertained that his suit was viewed favourably by her father; but Prudence herself was a little difficult during those last two days; and Mr Morgan did not feel sufficiently confident of success with her to put his happiness to the test. Her variable moods disconcerted him. It did not occur to him to seek an explanation of her decreased kindliness in anything that had passed between them; and so he failed to trace his fall in her esteem to the information he had given her in regard to Steele. That unfortunate relation had opened up a wider gulf than he would have believed possible, as a more generous account would, while raising him in her esteem, have decreased the influence of the absent Steele. Now the balance weighed in Steele’s favour; and Mr Morgan was made uncomfortably conscious of a lack of response to his tenderness from the girl he hoped to marry.

On the evening before he left he had an interview with her alone.

It was a matter for amusement with Prudence to note the frequency of these private audiences. Hitherto the family had relegated her to the background; now, with an amazing discernment for matters calling for their united supervision, they withdrew from the drawing-room, melting away with such tactful unobtrusiveness that Mr Morgan firmly believed in those numerous domestic obligations which engaged so much of their time, and very willingly submitted to be entertained by the sister whose accident incapacitated her from taking an active share in their doings. On the whole he was well satisfied; and he approved of the doctor’s prescription of rest as the only cure for the damaged ankle.

“I’ll send you some more literature when I get back,” he said, sitting facing her in the dusk, with what remained of the daylight falling on his broad strong face. “I expect the sofa will see a good deal of you for a week or so longer. The trouble of these matters is the disproportionately long time they take to mend. On the next occasion when I visit Wortheton I shall hope to see you walking about with the best.”

“I should hope so,” Prudence said, and laughed.

“Oh! I don’t mean to absent myself for a specially long period,” he said, and looked at her with the light of a steady purpose in his eyes. “I’m wanting you to say that you will be glad to see me again. I should have liked to have heard you express some regret at my going now.”

He paused, but Prudence, who was nervously playing with a flower which he had brought in from the garden for her, did not immediately reply. She was not sure what might follow an expression of regret from her. She did not feel regret; and she had a very definite desire in her mind to avert a direct proposal.

“I shall be very pleased to see you when you come again,” she said at last.

Mr Morgan smiled faintly.

“I suppose I shall have to rest content with that,” he said. He put out a hand and laid it over her hand—the hand which held the flower. “Do I seem old to you?” he asked.

Prudence looked up at him with wide surprised eyes. He was looking back at her with a steady kindly smile that made her nervous.

“Not so very old,” she answered; and felt her cheeks flaming as she saw the quick colour stain his face.

He sighed.

“A little fatherly, eh?” he said, the smile returning. And he wondered whether she would ever learn to her distress how cruelly youth can hurt. “Well, I’m not young. I’m forty-two. I want you to accustom yourself to that knowledge before I come again. When I come again I shall have another lesson to teach you.”

He spoke lightly; and with the lessening of his earnestness and the removal of his hand, both of which Prudence had found embarrassing, she felt relieved and was able to smile back at him with something of the old frankness.

“If you teach then as kindly as you have to-day,” she said, “I shall prove a dull pupil if I do not learn it readily.”

“You give me hope,” he said.

He scrutinised her for a moment very closely, made as though he would speak, surprised a startled apprehension in her eyes which nearly resembled fear, and thought better of it. He got up rather suddenly and walked to the fireplace and stood staring unseeingly into the empty grate.

“I’ll be patient,” he said. “Perhaps you will have prepared your mind a little to receive that lesson by the time I return.”

Chapter Eighteen.

It was the wisest thing which Edward Morgan could have done to go away and leave what he had it in his mind to say unsaid. Prudence missed him after he left, missed his kindly attentions, the quick thought for her comfort which forestalled her wishes, his pleasant companionship. He was a man who, if somewhat earnest, perhaps because of this earnestness, talked well on most subjects. He was neither brilliant nor very ready of speech. The quality Prudence liked best in him was his habit of treating her as an equal; he did not pursue the tactic of talking down to her. The latter was one of William’s unamiable eccentricities, and it annoyed Prudence the more because William at his wisest was never so profound as to be beyond the comprehension of the most ordinary intelligence.

In Mr Morgan’s presence William’s attitude towards her changed considerably; following Mr Morgan’s departure the increased deference of his manner moderated slightly since no definite proposal had resulted. William suspected that his sister’s chances were not so secure as he had believed. She was foolish enough, he decided, to lose this excellent opportunity of making a brilliant marriage. William was not so anxious to see his sister married as he was desirous of forming an alliance with the house of Morgan Bros. If she brought the matter off she would win his approbation and his unbounded respect. Something of what he felt on this head he managed to convey to her in an indirect manner which he considered tactful. He felt that his approval would have considerable weight with her.

“Morgan appears to have enjoyed his visit,” he remarked to her; “he was sorry to go. He is an uncommonly good fellow. I like him.”

“He’s a kind old thing,” said Prudence with a gleam of mischief in her eyes.

“Old! Nonsense!” William squared his heavy shoulders and regarded himself complacently in the overmantel. “He’s a younger man than I.”

“Well, yes.” Prudence surveyed William’s grey hairs with uncomplimentary attentiveness, surveyed his corpulent figure, and smiled. “He’s forty-two. I have his own word for that.”

“A man isn’t old at forty-two,” he said.

“He looks old though.”

“When a man has passed his first youth,” William observed sententiously, “he is—ahem!—more interesting, more reliable. He knows what he wants. I confess that Morgan inspires in me both confidence and liking. One can respect a man who has proved his worth.”

“He has proved an aptitude for making money,” Prudence allowed.

“Isn’t that proof of worth?”

“It suggests sound business acumen.”

“With industry and perseverance,” he insisted.

“Generosity is finer than these qualities.” She was thinking of the unfortunate confidence relating to Steele.

“You at least have not found him lacking in that quality,” he said, surprised. “He has showered gifts on you.”

“He has been very generous to me,” she admitted, and laughed with a ring of scorn in the mirth. “There is small merit in being generous when it pleases one to be so.”

He stared at her in amazement.

“I think you are strangely wanting in gratitude,” he said. “Few people with the very sufficient grounds which you have for recognising a man’s generosity would display so grudging an acknowledgment. Morgan was most appreciative in his praise of you. He revealed a very deep—regard for you.”

William surveyed his half-sister with the doubtful scrutiny of a man who failed to discover what it was in her which attracted other men: beyond her looks he could discern no particular charm; and her looks were not in his opinion remarkable.

“I have heard more impassioned avowals,” she returned.

“From whom?” he demanded instantly.

“Perhaps I have only imagined them,—or,” and she patted the cover of one of Mr Morgan’s gifts and laughed, “met with them in books.”

“There is a lot of pernicious trash written,” observed William. “It puts ideas in girls’ heads.”

“You wouldn’t wish even a girl’s head empty of ideas, would you?”

“I would wish it empty of nonsense,” he answered sharply. “A woman should be satisfied to look after her home, and—all that.”

This being non-committal and liberal of interpretation, Prudence let it pass unchallenged. She was so familiar with William’s ideas about woman and her place in the scheme of things, and appreciated his opinion so little that she was satisfied to leave him to the undisputed enjoyment of his views. It was William’s own misfortune that he could never emerge from the rut into which he had floundered. He had long ago persuaded himself into the belief that his rut was the open road.

Feeling that he had said sufficient to add the weight of his approval to the balance in favour of Mr Morgan, William left his sister to digest his words; and subsequently informed his father that he entertained small doubt that if Edward Morgan did Prudence the honour of asking her to be his wife she would accept him. He believed she would appreciate the compliment of such an offer.

Prudence herself was less confident. She was indeed so undecided that the respite allowed her came as a relief. It gave her time for consideration of the matter. She did not love Edward Morgan; but he held open the door of freedom, and she feared that if she missed this opportunity of passing through, it might never open for her again.

There followed a period of waiting and uncertainty and general boredom, during which the ankle grew well and she was able to leave the sofa and walk in the garden. It was then that the loss of her cycle became once more a source of acute annoyance.

“You had no right to sell it, daddy,” she complained; “it was mine. You’ll have to buy me a new one.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t care to ride any more, Prue,” he returned evasively. “It isn’t safe. You may break your neck next time.”

“I may, of course. I stand a greater chance of doing so if you won’t buy me a machine, because I shall hire; and hired cycles aren’t reliable. Of course I shall ride again. Your advice is as preposterous as telling a child who has learnt to walk that it must revert to sedentary habits. It wouldn’t, you know, however nice a child it might be.”

She drew him towards her by the lapels of his coat and kissed him on either cheek.

“You’ll get me a new cycle, daddy?—just like the last?”

Mr Graynor yielded. When Prudence coaxed, looking at him with that light in her blue eyes, she recalled her mother so vividly to his mind that he could not resist her. It were easier to vex Agatha than to disappoint Prue.

Chapter Nineteen.

Summer was on the wane and autumn was busy early colouring the leaves. Edward Morgan had intended returning to Wortheton before the finish of the warm weather; but many things prevented him from carrying out his wish; and the weeks went by without any sign from him, save the regular arrival of the monthly parcel of books, which Prudence as regularly acknowledged, writing a frank girlish letter of thanks, which took longer to compose than the subject matter warranted. The difficulty of writing those letters increased with each repetition of the performance. He never wrote to her. He did not even address the parcels; they came direct from the bookseller. Had he sent a few friendly lines with his gifts it would have made the task of acknowledgment easier.

Each time that he received one of these brief inconsequent epistles Mr Morgan opened it eagerly and hastily read it in the always vain hope of finding the wish expressed therein that he would fulfil his promise to revisit Wortheton. But Prudence made no mention of this matter. And he locked the letters away in a private drawer and waited in patient hopefulness for the next. The next letter invariably roused similar emotions and brought further disappointment on perusal. Mr Morgan proved of his own experience that being in love is not a happy condition of mind.

On the whole Prudence enjoyed the possession of an undeclared suitor: it gave her a sense of importance, a sense too of future security. She could regard with indifference the acid rigour of Agatha’s authority and brother William’s pompous displeasure. William had been extremely annoyed by the arrival of the new bicycle, and had made unpleasant observations about Prudence’s roaming habits and her propensity for making casual and undesirable acquaintances. It was very evident that William considered that his sister rode abroad in quest of these adventures. His insinuations exasperated her, but they did not shake her determination to ride when and where she pleased.

It was soon after the arrival of the new cycle, when she was enjoying her first long rides after the accident, that she met again the man whose kindness to her lingered pleasantly in her memory, despite the shock of disillusion which had eclipsed much of the brightness of the recollection. The encounter sprung upon her unaware. She had neither expected nor wished to meet Major Stotford again. But when he overtook her in his car, and stopped the car a few yards ahead of her and waited for her to come up with it, there was no doubt in Prudence’s mind as to what she ought to do. She ceased peddling and alighted. Major Stotford, who was alone, opened the door of the car and stepped into the road beside her.

“A piece of good luck!” he said, shaking hands. “I’ve often wondered about you. There is no need to ask if you have quite recovered. So they let you ride again?”

“They didn’t want to; it was a fight,” Prudence said, and laughed.

“Yes!” he said, smiling too. “I imagined you would have difficulty. I’m glad you won. They didn’t tell you, I suppose, that I called to inquire a few days after our adventure?”

“No; they didn’t tell me,” she replied, and flushed slightly. “It was very kind of you. I didn’t know.”

“I thought possibly it might not get to your knowledge,” he said coolly, and surveyed her flushed face with keen appreciation. “I was not allowed to see you, but was privileged to interview your brother instead. I have never approved of substitutes, and discovered on that occasion no good reason for reconsidering my prejudice. I’m delighted to meet you again anyhow.”

His frankness embarrassed Prudence; but she recalled his kindness and the service he had done her, and felt further vexation with her family.

“I’m glad too,” she said, playing nervously with the little bell on her handle-bar. He took hold of the handle-bar also and became immensely interested in the machine.

“It’s a new one, isn’t it?” he said. “Surely the other wasn’t past repairing?”

“I don’t know. They got rid of it.”

“I see.” His eyes twinkled. “And you compelled them to make good. They have done it quite handsomely. Your persuasive powers must be considerably greater than mine.”

“I threatened to hire,” said Prudence, and immediately realised on hearing him laugh that this admission was disloyal to the family. She lifted her eyes with a flash of pride in them to his smiling face. “Father is always generous,” she said. “He wouldn’t trust the old cycle again, though the spill was entirely my fault. I’m cautious in regard to dogs now.”

“Yes,” he agreed, the smile deepening. “Caution is a quality which the wise cultivate. Possibly had I not considerably neglected it I should have been more successful—socially. But these things are so dull.”

He took his hand off the handle-bar and straightened himself and looked down at her with a quick resolve in his face.

“We managed to find room for the old cycle,” he said. “I don’t see why there need be any difficulty in stowing this away. What do you say? Will you drive with me?”

For the fraction of a second Prudence hesitated. She did not want to drive with him. She knew that if she agreed she could not speak of it at home: there was something a little shameful in doing what must of necessity be done secretly. But the memory of that former occasion on which she had been glad enough to make use of his car was in her mind, and made a refusal to accept the present invitation appear pointedly ungracious.

“You would rather not?” he said reproachfully.

Prudence made up her mind on the instant.

“Thank you, I should like it. But couldn’t we leave the bicycle somewhere and pick it up on our return?”

“We could,” he said. “That’s not a bad idea. There’s an inn a quarter of a mile along the road. I’ll drive on so that you shan’t be smothered in dust, and you follow; then we’ll house the bicycle and go for a joy ride.”

He re-entered the car and drove off; while Prudence, waiting for the cloud of dust which he raised to subside, stood beside her machine, dismayed at the realisation of what she had consented to do, and considering whether it would not be wiser to head her cycle in the opposite direction and ride home. But reflection showed her the impossibility of acting in so ungracious a manner. She should have declined his invitation in the first instance; to evade the engagement now was unthinkable.

When she arrived at the inn it was to discover that Major Stotford had made the necessary arrangements; it only remained for her to relinquish her cycle to the man who stood ready to take it, and climb to her seat in the car. Despite a determination to enjoy herself and banish disquieting thoughts, Prudence was conscious of feeling not entirely at her ease with her companion. She could not have explained this sense of mistrust. There was nothing in Major Stotford’s manner to arouse it; she decided that possibly it resulted from what she had learned in regard to his private life. That ugly story coloured all her thoughts of him, and revealed him in an unfavourable light. She had not met this type of man before.