PART III (continued 5)

CHAPTER XV

The next morning Clodagh rose imbued with new decision. During Gore's absence, things had worn a vague, even an impersonal aspect; for, like all her countrywomen, she possessed a fatally pleasant capacity for shelving the disagreeable. While Gore was absent, it had seemed so easy to meet Deerehurst on the footing he elected to maintain—the footing of calm, reassuring friendship. But now, with Gore's return, the aspect of affairs had altered. She was forced to look circumstances in the face—forced to consider her position. She might be a shelver of difficulties; but, before all things, she was a woman in love; and with the instinct that such a condition of mind engenders she had interpreted the look in Gore's eyes when the name of Deerehurst had been mentioned between them—and had recognised that it was not to be ignored.

As she dressed that morning, she mentally surveyed the courses of action that lay open to her; and with each moment of reflection, it became plainer to her understanding that only one was worthy of consideration. However difficult the task, she must make known her position to Deerehurst, and trust to his generosity to find means of helping her.

Her mind was full of this new and somewhat optimistic scheme when she came into the dining-room, where Nance was already reading her morning letters. With a slightly absorbed manner she kissed her sister and, passing round the breakfast-table, picked up her own correspondence.

In a perfunctory way she turned the envelopes over until one arrested her attention, as being intimately connected with her thoughts.

It was a letter from Deerehurst, and she tore it open hastily, skimming the contents with an eager glance.

"Dear little Lady," it began,

"Yesterday the fates who watch over my affairs were unkind. The afternoon was frankly a failure. But I shall claim recompense; I shall look in upon you in your box at the Apollo at nine to-night. A vexatious business matter calls me out of town to-day, or I should strive to see you earlier. But at nine make me welcome.

"Always devotedly,

"Deerehurst."

She finished reading the note, then laid it down and hurriedly picked up another letter. How annoying it was! How malicious of Chance!

The second letter proved to be from Lady Frances Hope; it was from Brittany, and reproached her extravagantly for not having written since they parted at Tuffnell. Imploring for news of her movements, it informed her that the writer, with Mrs. Bathurst and Valentine Serracauld, was on her way back to London. She followed the lines mechanically, but her mind was elsewhere. At last she threw the letter down.

"Nance!" she said suddenly.

"Darling?"

"Nance, I'm in a horrid difficulty."

Nance's high, arched eyebrows drew together in a frown of concern.

"Nothing bad?" she said. "Nothing about Walter?"

"No. Yes—yes it is. You know Walter dislikes Lord Deerehurst. Well, he was vexed at finding him here yesterday; and after he had gone I—I promised not to see him any more—I promised to break off my friendship with him."

Nance nodded, tactfully refraining from any joy in the proving of her theories.

"Yes?" she prompted softly.

"And now Lord Deerehurst writes that he will be at the Apollo to-night, and is coming round to our box at nine."

Nance pursed up her lips.

"Oh!" she said. "And you'll have to put him off?"

"That's the annoying thing. I can't. At least, not easily."

"Why?"

"Because he's going into the country to-day, and won't be back till evening."

"Send him a note. He must go home to dress before going to the theatre."

"He might dress and dine at his club."

"Write to his club as well."

Clodagh's perplexity showed itself in annoyance.

"How absurd you are, Nance! Fancy writing a man two letters asking him not to see you, and giving no explanation! It would simply bring him round here at ten to-morrow morning."

She poured herself out a cup of tea and drank it hastily.

"Life is a hateful tangle!" she said.

"No it isn't, darling, if you only had a little patience."

Clodagh made a very impatient gesture.

"You don't understand!"

"I understand one thing—that you care for Walter."

Clodagh looked up, her mutable face lit by a sudden change of expression—a sudden look of almost passionate seriousness.

"Yes, I do care for Walter," she said suddenly; "I care so much that I honestly and truly believe it would kill me if anything came between us. I have had lots of things in my life—pleasure, excitement, admiration—but I have never had happiness until now. And I won't lose it!—I can't lose it!"

The words poured forth in vehement sincerity; then, as she saw the expression on Nance's face, she gave a little laugh and put out her hand across the table.

"Dearest! I frightened you! Of course everything comes right, if one has a little patience. Let's begin breakfast properly! My head aches."

With another laugh, she pressed Nance's fingers, gathered up her scattered correspondence, and poured herself out another cup of tea.

Nance spent a long morning with her future mother-in-law, lunching with her afterwards at her hotel. Clodagh, left to herself, ordered her horse for eleven o'clock; and after two hours of recklessly swift riding in the Row, lunched alone at her club. After lunch she wrote two telegrams—one addressed to Deerehurst's London house, the other to the club he most frequented; these she handed in herself at a telegraph office, and having despatched them, drove straight home.

At four o'clock Nance returned to the flat, to be met by the announcement that her sister had a bad headache and had gone to her own room. Full of concern, she flew along the corridor and knocked on Clodagh's door.

In a very low voice Clodagh gave her leave to enter.

She opened the door swiftly; then paused, alarmed. The blinds were drawn, and by the subdued light she saw Clodagh lying on a couch near one of the windows.

"Why, Clo! What's the matter?"

She ran forward and dropped on her knees by the couch.

Clodagh extended two rather cold hands, and took possession of Nance's warm ones.

"Nothing but a wretched headache! It will go, if I lie down all the afternoon and keep quiet to-night."

Nance looked up.

"But how can you—at the play?"

"I'm not going to the play."

"Not going?"

Clodagh drew her sister closer.

"Now, darling, don't make a fuss! If you say one word of objection, my head will get ten times worse than it is. You are just to listen, and do as I tell you. You are to telephone to Mrs. Estcoit and explain what has happened. She will do the chaperoning instead of me."

"But Walter——"

"Walter is to go with you. You are to be as nice to him as you possibly can be. Everything is to be exactly as we arranged—exactly as we arranged."

She raised herself on her elbow to enforce the words.

"And what about Lord Deerehurst?"

Clodagh did not answer immediately; then, sinking back among her pillows, she spoke in a somewhat hurried voice.

"That will be all right; I—I took your advice and sent him two messages, one to Carlton House Terrace and one to his club. He won't be at the theatre."

"But if he doesn't get the message? If he comes all the same?"

"Then be polite to him. And now go, like a good child. Don't ask any more questions. Don't say anything. Let me see you when you're dressed, and I'll give you a letter for Walter. I'm afraid I can't dine with you; I'll just have something sent in here." Then, as if in sudden remorse, she put her arms about Nance's neck and drew her close to her.

"Darling, forgive me, if I seem impossible!"

At half-past eight Nance left the house, having shown herself to her sister, made a last loving inquiry as to her health, and taken possession of the note for Gore.

As she passed out of the bedroom, Clodagh threw off the fur rug that lay across her feet, and sat up with an expression of sharp attention. As the sound of the closing hall door reached her ears, she drew a little breath of excitement and rose from the couch with no appearance of her recent indisposition.

Without calling in Simonetta, she changed from the white silk wrapper she was wearing into a black walking-dress, and crossing to one of the wardrobes took out a black hat and veil.

She scarcely looked at herself, as she smoothed her hair and fastened on her hat. Beneath the enforced repression of the afternoon, there burned in her mind a certain sense of adventure—of enterprise—that turned her hot and cold. For though the Irish nature may procrastinate, it takes action with a very keen zest when once circumstance has compelled a decisive step.

Having finished her dressing, she picked up a pair of gloves, switched off the electric light, and left the room. In the corridor outside she met one of the maids; but without giving the woman time to show any surprise, she made haste to offer an explanation.

"I have forgotten to tell Miss Asshlin something of importance," she said. "I shall have to drive to the theatre and see her. Please ring for the lift. The porter will find me a cab." And without waiting to observe the effect of the somewhat disjointed statement, she passed to the hall door.

A few minutes later the hall porter had put her into a hansom, telling the cabman to drive to the Apollo Theatre.

While the cab doors were being closed, and the order given, Clodagh sat very still; and for a few minutes after they had started, she lay back in her seat, watching the familiar succession of lights and trees and indistinct massed faces that form the nightly picture between Knightsbridge and Piccadilly; but at last, as Hyde Park Corner loomed into view, she sat upright, and raising her hand, shook the roof trap.

The cabman checked the pace of his horse and, opening the little door, looked down.

"Don't mind the Apollo," she said. "Drive to Carlton House Terrace instead."

The man muttered an assent, and, wheeling his horse to the right, cut across the traffic.

Five or six minutes passed while the cab threaded its way across the Green Park, past Buckingham Palace into St. James's Park; then Clodagh gained her first close view of Deerehurst's town house. For one moment she felt daunted by the unfamiliarity of its aspect; but the next, she rallied her determination, and, stepping from the cab, paid her fare and walked resolutely across the pavement to the imposing door.

It was opened at once by a servant in very sombre and decorous livery; who, having thrown the door wide, looked at her, then looked at the cab, just wheeling away from the kerb. There was nothing uncivil in the man's glance—nothing that one could reasonably complain of—yet, to her intense annoyance, Clodagh coloured.

"Is Lord Deerehurst at home?" she asked.

The servant's eyes left the retreating cab.

"Have you an appointment with his lordship?"

"If he is in, Lord Deerehurst will see me. I am Mrs. Milbanke."

At the coldness of her tone, and her ready mention of her name, his manner changed, though a flicker of curiosity passed across his face.

"Are you the lady his lordship is expecting?" he said, in a different voice.

"Yes, Lord Deerehurst is expecting me."

There was a slight pause; then, with the air of one who admits a novice into inner mysteries, he stepped back, ushering her up into the spacious hall.

"Will you kindly step this way?" he said. "His lordship is in his study."

Glad that the ordeal of entering the house was over, Clodagh readily followed the man across the hall, up a wide stairs, and along a softly carpeted corridor. At the end of the passage he paused in front of a curtained door, and, pushing the curtain back, entered an unseen room.

"The lady your lordship is expecting!" she heard him say.

Then he turned quickly and threw the door open for her. An instant later, she had entered Deerehurst's room.

At the moment, her thoughts were too confused to permit of detailed observation of the room; although afterwards, when the interview had taken place, and she had time to sift reality from imagination, the scene and its central figure were destined to stand out with the accuracy of a picture that has made an indelible, if an unconscious, impression upon the observer's mind.

The room was an anomaly, viewed from a studious point of view; but the merely artistic eye would have found nothing to cavil at. It was not large, as one counts rooms in a great London house, though elsewhere it would have seemed spacious. Numberless books in costly bindings were strewn about on tables and in cases, but they were not the books of the thinker. They were the romances, the memoirs, the poems of the last half-century, but not one volume dealt with science, or even with philosophy. The walls were panelled in dark red; some beautiful lamps hung from the ceiling; and in a distant corner a large silver bowl full of crimson roses was set up, as if in homage to beauty, before an exquisitely modelled statue of Venus.

In a quick, half-comprehended flash of instinct, it came to Clodagh that she had never really seen Deerehurst until now, as he stood backgrounded by the atmosphere he himself had created. He was dressed as he had been on the night in Venice when she had first seen him. He wore the curiously cut evening clothes that he always affected, and which gave to his appearance the peculiar distinction that set him apart from other men; the diamond ring that she had noticed on that first night glittered on his hand; and, as then, the black ribbon of his eyeglass showed across his shirt front. But more clearly than in the dusk of the Venetian night she saw the long outline of his face, the peculiar artificial pallor of his skin, the cold vigilance of his eyes. And in that moment of entry a faint, indescribable hesitancy chilled her resolution. Involuntarily she halted on the threshold of the room.

But Deerehurst gave no time for her indecision to mature. As the door closed upon the servant, he came quickly forward and took the hand she mechanically offered him.

For one moment he held her fingers closely; then he lifted them and, before she could anticipate the action, pressed them to his lips.

That a man should kiss a woman's hand by way of greeting is not necessarily a significant thing. It may be a slightly ostentatious act—but it may be nothing more. Uncertain how to construe the movement, Clodagh gave a faint laugh and withdrew her fingers.

"Were you very much surprised to get my wire?"

She moved away from him into the middle of the room. Now that she put it to the test, the interview seemed infinitely more difficult than when contemplated from a distance. She felt nervous and ill at ease.

Watching her with his close, attentive look, Deerehurst drew forward a chair.

"Sit down, little lady!" he said in his thin, impassive voice.

Reassured by the formality of the action, she took the proffered seat.

"Now take off your gloves. We shall feel more at home."

Again she gave a little laugh.

"My gloves! But I must go in five minutes."

"In five minutes? When the night is so young?" He drew forward another chair, and sat down beside her.

"Do you know how glad and proud I feel?"

She looked up quickly. His tone had subtly changed.

"Lord Deerehurst," she said, "I must explain that the reason I came—the reason I came, instead of sending for you or writing——"

Deerehurst leant forward and laid his cold hands over hers.

"Let me take these off! It feels so very formal and unlike ourselves."

He began softly to open the buttons of her glove and draw it deftly from her hand.

"But you haven't listened to what I said," she objected. "I want to explain at once, so that you can understand at once——"

Before answering, he drew off the second glove and laid the two upon the table.

"Why should you explain? Have I ever been lacking in imagination?"

"No—oh no; I did not mean that!"

"Then why explain anything? Don't you think we have fenced with each other long enough?" He picked up the gloves quickly, and again laid them down. "Don't you think I can understand without explanation?"

"Understand?"

"Why you came to me to-night."

"Understand—why I came to-night?"

"I think so."

He turned and looked straight into her eyes.

At the look and the movement the blood leaped to her face; she drew back into her chair.

"And why do you think I came to-night?"

Very swiftly Deerehurst bent forward.

"I think, little lady, that you came because you know that a man cannot be played with for ever. And because, being a very proud woman, you will not say in so many words, 'I give you leave to love me!' Dear little Clodagh!" He suddenly put out his hand towards hers. "It has all been very delightful—your reticence and your innocence. But we both know that such pretty things are perishable."

Clodagh sat perfectly still. She did not attempt to withdraw her hand; she did not attempt to rise. She sat watching him as if fascinated, while a hundred recollections of looks, of words, of insinuations directed against her and him by Lady Frances Hope—by Rose Bathurst—by other women of their set—strayed in nightmare fashion across her mind.

Deerehurst sat watching her, his hand holding hers, his eyes steadily reading her face. Then suddenly he gave a short laugh and leant back in his chair.

"Little actress!" he said.

The words, but more than the words the tone in which they were spoken, roused her. She rose incontinently to her feet, a sudden memory of Serracauld and the card-room at Tuffnell sweeping across her mind.

"Lord Deerehurst," she said breathlessly, "there is some terrible mistake. You utterly, utterly misunderstand."

It was Deerehurst's turn to show emotion. For the first time in her knowledge of him, the mask of impassivity dropped from his face; his cold eyes gleamed unpleasantly.

"And how, little lady? I am not often accused of misreading men—and women."

"You think——" She paused, unable to find the words she needed. She felt like one who has inadvertently stepped upon shifting sands, where the ground had seemed most secure.

"You think——" she began again.

But she got no further. With a silent movement, Deerehurst laid his hand upon her arm.

"Don't you think we have fenced long enough? Don't you think I have been extraordinarily patient?"

Clodagh turned very cold.

"Patient?" she said indistinctly.

He drew her suddenly closer to him; and before she could resist, he had kissed her hair, her lips, her neck.

"Yes, patient, because I have never before asked for this. Because I have been content to kiss your hand, when I might long ago——" He bent over her again. But something in the white face and wild eyes that confronted him arrested him. He drew back and looked at her.

"Come!" he said. "The play is over! Give me a kiss of your own accord."

Clodagh said nothing. Terror mastered her.

"Come! Give me a kiss!"

She lay almost passive in his embrace, her lips parted, her eyes fixed on his.

He gave another short laugh, half indulgent, half triumphant.

"What a little saint! Come! Show me why you came to me to-night! Be human! Be what you know you are!"

Clodagh made no answer; but he felt her sway a little in his arms.

"What is it?" he asked sharply. Selfish annoyance was written on his face, though he asked the question solicitously.

"I feel faint," she said—"a little faint."

"Faint? Nonsense! It will pass. Rest for a moment." Without ceremony, he half lifted her across the room to a couch that stood between the fireplace and the door.

"Poor little girl! Don't be frightened! It will pass in a minute. Is there anything you would like?"

Clodagh opened her eyes.

"A little water, I think," she said in a tremulous voice.

His face cleared.

"Or some champagne! Nothing would pick you up like a glass of champagne. Why did I not think of it before? Lie perfectly still! We will have some champagne in one moment."

With the possibilities held out by the idea he turned eagerly from the couch, and crossed the room to the electric bell that was placed beside his desk.

But, quick as lightning, the instant his back was turned, Clodagh was on her feet. With a movement so swift and silent that only fear could have inspired it, she slipped to the door, opened it, and was speeding down the long corridor to the stairs.

The house was silent. The upper portion seemed darker than when she had arrived. The hall alone lay brightly lighted—a place of hope and promise, figuring the world outside—the good wholesome world lying suddenly within her reach.

She ran down the broad stairs, indifferent to the fact that the servant who had admitted her had risen from a seat near the door, and was looking at her in frank surprise. Her ears were strained to catch any sound from upstairs, her eyes were on the door.

As she hurried across the hall, the man came forward.

"Do you require a cab, madam?" he asked a little doubtfully.

"No. Just open the door!"

Still with a shade of uncertainty he obeyed, and at the same instant Deerehurst's voice sounded from the head of the stairs.

What he said—whether he addressed her or the servant—Clodagh never knew. At the mere sound of his high, thin tones she went blindly forward through the open door.

As she passed down the steps, a cab wheeled round the corner of Carlton House Terrace. Instinctively she looked towards it, still animated by the desire for flight. But the next instant she looked away again, realising that it already held a fare, and that there was luggage on the roof.

In the perturbation of the moment she failed to see, what was infinitely more material, that the occupant of the cab was Valentine Serracauld; that he had leant forward in sudden, eager curiosity as she passed down the steps of the house to which he was driving; and that, as she turned her head in his direction, he had drawn quickly back into the shadow of his seat.

CHAPTER XVI

Almost immediately a second cab appeared, and, finding it at her disposal, Clodagh hailed it eagerly and gave the address of the flat.

As the horse sped away in the direction of her home, she sat almost motionless, her only gesture being to lift her hands to her eyes from time to time, as if to shut out some near and unpleasant vision. Life in its crudest, its most repulsive aspect stared at her out of the darkness. She sat crushed by the disillusionment of the last hour.

And a new furtiveness—born of the new realisation—assailed her when at last she stepped from the cab at her own door. With an instinctive lessening of her natural fearlessness, she hurried through the vestibule and passed straight to the lift. Gaining her own door, she let herself in by her latch-key, and then paused, looking fearfully and eagerly about, in expectation of some unwished-for sound. But everything in the flat was still; and crossing the hall, she entered her own room. The electric light had been switched on and the place set in order, and Simonetta sat at the dressing-table, mending a piece of lace.

"No one has come back?" Clodagh asked.

"No one, signora." Simonetta arose and turned to her mistress.

Seeing the expression on her face, Clodagh nervously anticipated her words.

"My head still aches," she said. "I think you may go. I should like to be alone."

From previous knowledge of her moods, the woman made no protestations, but folded up her work and went quietly towards the door.

As she gained it, Clodagh turned.

"Simonetta!"

"Yes, signora?"

"Tell the servants they are to say nothing to any one of my having gone out to-night. You understand."

"I understand, signora."

"That is all—good-night!"

"Good-night, signora!"

It would be futile to relate the thoughts that passed through Clodagh's mind in the hour that followed Simonetta's departure; but when, at half-past eleven, Nance returned from the theatre, and, hurrying to the bedroom, opened the door swiftly and anxiously, she was standing by one of the open windows, her hat and veil still on, her gaze fixed resolutely on the shadowy trees of the park.

Crossing the threshold softly, Nance tip-toed into the room.

"Clo," she whispered, "'how are you? Better?" Then she paused in pleased surprise.

"What? You've been out? Then you are better. How glad Walter will be! He insisted on coming back to know how you were."

At Gore's name, Clodagh started and looked round.

"Walter here?" she said.

"Yes; but, Clo! what's the matter? You've been crying."

Clodagh stepped to her side and laid her hand imperatively on her arm.

"Hush!" she whispered. "Go back at once and tell Walter that I'm—that I'm asleep. Tell him that Simonetta said I was better and fell asleep. Tell him anything you can think of that will make him happy and get him away. He must be got away. I can't see him. Do you understand, Nance? He must be got away."

For one surprised moment Nance looked at her sister; then conquering her curiosity, she turned quietly and moved to the door.

"All right, darling!" she said reassuringly; "I'll send him away happy."

Clodagh put her hand across her eyes.

"Thank God!" she said. "If you had asked me one more question I couldn't have borne it. Send him away, and then come back."

In silence Nance left the room. Five minutes passed—ten minutes; then Clodagh's straining ears caught the closing of the outer door, and her hand dropped to her side in a gesture of excessive relief.

"Thank God!" she said again.

When Nance re-entered, she was still standing in the middle of the room, her face white and tear-stained, her figure braced.

"Nance," she said, almost before the door had closed upon her sister, "I am going to tell you things I have never told you before. I feel I shall go mad to-night, if I don't tell some one. Don't ask me any questions. Just listen and—if you can—love me!"

Nance paused just inside the door. Her own face looked pale above the shimmering blue and silver of her evening dress; her dark blue eyes were full of a peculiarly tender light.

"I don't love you, Clo," she said below her breath. "I adore you. Tell me whatever you like."

Clodagh threw out her hands despairingly.

"I'm not worth love like that," she cried. "You'll know it when I've finished. Do you remember long ago, Nance, when James and I went to Venice? Do you remember my letters from Venice?"

Nance showed no surprise at the sudden irrelevant questions.

"All of them," she answered—"I have them all."

"Then you remember how I met Frances Hope and Val Serracauld—and Lord Deerehurst?"

"I remember."

"I was very much alone at that time, Nance. James was only a shadow in my life; and they—they seemed like sunshine, and I wanted the sunshine. I have always been like a child, turning to bright tawdry things."

"Clo! you're upset to-night!—you're ill!"

"No, I'm not. I've been seeing myself and seeing my life to-night. I liked these people—I liked these men who talked to me and flattered me, and ignored the fact that I had a husband—I liked them and encouraged them. And one night, on the balcony of the Palazza Ugochini——" She stopped, then made a sudden gesture, as if to sweep unnecessary things aside. "But I won't talk of that!" she cried. "It is the later time I want to come to—the time after James's death, when I met Frances Hope again." She paused to regain her breath; but the look of determination did not leave her face. Her dark eyes seemed; almost to challenge Nance's. "When I went to Monte Carlo with Frances," she went on, "I did not go to forget poor James's death, as you believed; I went to forget something else that had made me much more unhappy; and the way I set about forgetting was to gamble. Yes, I know what you feel!—I know what you think! But it cannot alter anything. I gambled. I lost large sums of money that Frances advanced me. I had to borrow, because there were formalities to be gone through about James's will, before I could draw my income. Then I came back to London; I met Val Serracauld and Lord Deerehurst again; I took an expensive flat; I lived like people six times as well off as myself; I gambled again——"

"Clodagh!"

Clodagh put up her hand.

"Wait! It's all leading up to something. I was utterly foolish, utterly mad. I borrowed again to pay my debts at bridge. Then one day Frances asked me for her money. It seemed like the end of the world; but it was a debt of honour—it couldn't be shirked. I wrote her out a cheque that left me beggared of the half-year's income I had been counting on to put me straight."

"Oh, Clo, Clo! Why wasn't I here?"

"Yes, why wasn't somebody here? But the worst is to come. I did not know where to look, I did not know where to turn, when suddenly—quite suddenly—I thought of your thousand pounds——"

Nance gave a little gasp.

"I remembered that. And, Nance—Nance, can you guess what happened?"

Nance did not attempt to answer.

"I took that thousand pounds. I stole it. Don't say anything! Don't try to excuse me! I want to face things. I told myself I would write and tell you; then I told myself I would say it when you came back. But when you did come"—she halted for a second—"when you did come, Nance, you loved me, you admired me, you respected me, and—and I couldn't. When you asked me for the money that night at Tuffnell, I knew I would have to find it and pay it back without making any confession to you."

A sound that was almost a moan escaped Nance's lips.

"Yes!" Clodagh cried—"yes! I know exactly how great a fool I was. But what is done is done. The day you drove to Wynchley with Lady Diana and Walter, I stayed behind to write to Mr. Barnard and ask him to advance me the money. But somehow I couldn't do that, either; and then—hate me, Nance! hate me, if you like!—Lord Deerehurst came to me when I was most disheartened, most depressed, and offered to lend me the money."

"And you took it?" Nance said almost quietly.

"I took it—yes, I took it. I have always been like that—always—always; grasping at the easy things, letting the hard ones slip by. And now!—now!"

"Now?"

"Nance, listen!" She took a swift step forward. "It was because of that loan that I couldn't slight him since we came back to town. You were right—you were quite right in all you advised; but I couldn't do it. He had lent me the money. He had seemed my best friend. I felt I couldn't do it—until yesterday.

"But yesterday, when he left, and Walter spoke of him, I knew there was no choice. It was my own happiness or his friendship. And I—I decided for my own happiness."

She stopped, and drew a quick, deep breath.

Nance clasped her hands, fearfully conscious that more was still to come.

"When I have a difficult thing to do," Clodagh went on, "I must do it quickly. I can't wait, I can't prepare and plan, I can't brood over things. After Walter left yesterday I decided that what must be done must be done at once. I made up my mind that I would see Lord Deerehurst to-night; that I would be quite candid with him, explain my position—and appeal to his generosity to let our friendship end."

"Then to-night——?"

"To-night was all a deception. I had no headache—I wasn't ill. I shammed it all, that I might be alone."

"And while we were at the theatre you sent for him——?"

"No! I went to Carlton House Terrace to see him."

"Went to see him! Clo!"

"I said you could hate me! Do hate me! Despise me! Think anything you like! I went to see him; I went to his house—at night, alone—thinking, believing—— Oh!" She made a gesture of acute self-disgust. "Nance, need I say it all? Need I?—need I? Can't you understand without my saying? All that I had imagined about his friendship was untrue. Such people don't understand friendship. All along he had been waiting, quietly and silently, like one of those horrible hawks we used to watch at Orristown—waiting to swoop down when the right moment came." With an almost hysterical gesture she put her hand to her throat.

Nance's face had become very white; but in the intensity of her pity and love, she did not dare to approach her sister.

"Clo," she whispered, "you must tell Walter."

Clodagh's face suddenly flamed.

"Tell Walter! Tell Walter that I owe Deerehurst a thousand pounds—that I lied to him and to you all to-night, that I might go alone to Deerehurst's house! You don't know Walter! There is only one thing in the world that I can do—that I must do, and that is to go to Ireland and arrange about raising money on my share of Orristown. It can be done somehow. Father did it. I shall not eat or sleep or think until that thousand pounds is paid."

Prompted by a swift and eager impulse, Nance's face flushed, and she ran forward. Then almost as she reached her sister's side, her expression changed. She suddenly curbed her impetuosity.

"Perhaps it would be a good idea," she said slowly. "When would you like to go?"

"To-night if I could! I feel—oh, I feel——!" Clodagh put her hands over her face.

Nance stood watching her for a moment longer. Then she slipped softly to her side, and put one arm about her neck.

"Don't be sad, darling," she murmured—"don't be sad! You shall go to Ireland to-morrow, if you like; and all the planning—all the explaining to Walter and to everybody—will be done by me."

And so it came to pass, in the extraordinary way with which events sometimes precipitate themselves, that at four o'clock on the following afternoon Clodagh was borne swiftly out of Paddington Station on the first stage of her journey to Ireland.

The chain of incidents that had been forged by Nance to make this departure feasible, as well as possible, had been too minute and complex to make any impression upon Clodagh's mind. Her confession the night before had been more a confession to herself than a conscious unburdening of her soul to other ears; and having made it, she was satisfied to resign herself into any hands that were willing and capable of guiding her actions.

The first incident of the morning had been a visit from Gore. But it had been Nance who had interviewed him first; and a quarter of an hour later, when Clodagh had come into the drawing-room, nervous and guilty, she had found him full of sympathy and solicitude for what he believed to be her sudden recall to Ireland. Then had come the Estcoits; and with their advent, more solicitude and more sympathy. Lunch time had crept upon them almost unawares; and—again on Nance's initiative—the whole party had adjourned to the Hyde Park Hotel, and had partaken of a meal in company.

More than once during the crowded hours of the morning, Clodagh had striven to draw her sister aside; but Nance, animated by an unusual excitement, had evaded every possibility of a tête-à-tête.

It was only at the door of the railway carriage, when Gore and Estcoit were superintending the labelling of her luggage, and Mrs. Estcoit and Daisy were buying books and papers for her amusement, that at last they had a word in private. Clodagh was standing in the open doorway of the carriage, and Nance was on the step, when quite suddenly the latter put up her hand and pressed a letter between her sister's fingers.

"My proper good-bye is in this letter, darling," she said. "I couldn't say it before everybody. Kiss me, will you?"

Impulsively Clodagh bent forward, and the sisters exchanged a long kiss.

"You have been an angel, Nance! I will thank you when—when——"

"No!—no! There can never be thanks between you and me. We are one. Remember that always! Always, Clo—always!"

She drew back quickly, as the rest of the party came hurrying to the carriage.

And so the good-byes had all been said, and the train had steamed out of the station; she had watched the platform melt into obscurity, and then had dropped into her seat with that sense of quiet—of flatness—that follows the moments of parting.

The long railway journey and the night crossing to Ireland still lay between her and action. She looked impatiently at her travelling companions, an uninteresting brother and sister who had already buried themselves behind newspapers in their respective corners of the carriage, and almost angrily she turned to the heap of magazines lying beside her; but as she did so, her glance brightened. Nance's letter was still to be read!

In the midst of her perplexities, a tender thought flashed over her mind as she opened the envelope, and her face softened instinctively as she began to read. But gradually, as her glance passed from one line to another, her expression changed, she sat upright in her seat, her bearing altered in a sudden, inexplicable manner.

"Darling, darling Clo!" the letter began,

"I must have seemed a wretch last night and to-day! I mean I must have seemed very strange, showing hardly any surprise or sympathy at anything you told me, and taking your going to Ireland as though it were a thing that happened every day. But, Clo, it wasn't because I didn't love and worship you, and feel for you in every tiny thing, but because I was afraid you would guess what was really in my mind—what I was plotting and planning all the time.

"Clo, I wanted you to go to Ireland because—oh, do forgive me for even writing it!—I wanted to get you away.

"Dearest, you are to do no more silly things. At the risk of hurting you, I am saying this. You used to say long ago that I saw more than you, because I looked on instead of doing things myself. Clo, you are not to raise money on Orristown, because you have no need to do it. Lord Deerehurst has been paid his thousand pounds and you are free—quite free.

"My little sister, imagine that my arms are round your neck so tight that you can't be vexed! When you told me last night that my thousand pounds really belonged to him, my first thought was to say—'Well, let's give him back as much of it as we have left!' But I stopped in time. You were not in the mood last night to take the most loving favour in the world. You wanted to sacrifice yourself; so instead of saying what was in my heart, I locked it up closely and thought about it all night; and before you were awake this morning, I sent for Pierce and asked him to lend me three hundred pounds—the three hundred we had spent out of the thousand.

"Don't say anything, darling! Don't be angry! Don't even think! Pierce was perfectly sweet; he never asked one question, and at three o'clock to-day, just after we came back from lunch, I sent the thousand pounds in notes to Carlton House Terrace, with a card of yours enclosed.

"Darling, don't be vexed! Don't question it! It is right, I know. It was a debt of honour, in the fullest sense.

"And now, Clo, it's all finished, all done with, all passed, and you can repay me the money slowly in years and years. Be happy! Oh, darling, be happy! Go back to Orristown, as I would have you to go back, with your heart full of all the great, good, true love that Walter and I have for you.

"Ride and walk and swim, and be without one care; and in a week or two, when the hateful thought of last night has been swept away by the splendid strong sea winds, come back to us, a newer, wiser, happier Clodagh.

"Darling, I am, now and always,

"Your true sister,

"Nance."

Clodagh closed the letter; then suddenly she rose from her seat and stepped from the carriage into the narrow corridor.

The engine was swinging forward at great speed; the train itself was swaying to the swift motion; outside, the pleasant English country seemed to fly past the long line of windows. For a second, she stood by the carriage door; then she stepped forward to the open window and, leaning out, let the strong current of air play upon her face, blowing back the hair from her temples.

How good God was! How good the world was! The great machinery of the train—the great wheels of life—ground out the same sudden song. She was free! By the unlimited power of love, she had been made free!

CHAPTER XVII

It was eleven o'clock on the day following when Clodagh's train steamed into the little station of Muskeere. Her boat had arrived in Cork in the early hours of the morning; but she had only given herself time to take a hurried breakfast at one of the hotels, before driving to the railway station. Now that she had set foot in Ireland, the racial love of home had awakened in her, making the hours leaden until she found herself at Orristown.

The great lifting of the spirit that Nance's letter had brought into being, had not subsided since the moment she had arisen from her seat in the train, filled with the knowledge that an insupportable burden had been lifted from her. At Reading she had despatched an answering telegram to her sister; and for nearly an hour afterwards, she had sat in the corner of her carriage, covering sheet after sheet of note-paper with hasty pencilling. Two letters were the result,—one to Nance, all love, all spontaneous gratitude; the other to Gore, full of tenderness, of promise, of almost vehement reassurance.

Thus the long and usually monotonous train journey ran itself out; and in the confused darkness of the crowded landing-stage, she went on board the boat at New Milford.

The crossing of the sea had ever been a delight to Clodagh. The love of the sea—the almost mystical knowledge of it—was in her blood. And that night for many hours she had paced the deck, rejoicing after a fashion understood by few in each forward plunge of the vessel—in the sense of exhilaration and action conveyed each time the prow dipped to cut the waves and send the spray flying.

She was going home! There had seemed a curious, thrilling sensation in the knowledge. She was going home! After many experiences, she was returning to the spot where her life had first separated its thread from the great tapestry of existence—the spot where happiness and unhappiness had first presented themselves as differentiated things—where the elemental facts of pain and pleasure had been first demonstrated to her unformed mind. The memory of Orristown had materialised, as she had walked to and fro under the summer sky powdered with faint stars; and she had closed her eyes until the salt sting of the sea had conjured up the square, white house, the green fields, and the long, shelving rocks.

The picture had remained with her long after she retired to her cabin, and had been still before her mind when the first low line of Irish land had broken across her vision in the silvery morning. Then it had been dispersed by more immediate things,—the arrival at Cork—the breakfast—the drive across the town to the Muskeere train; until at last the shrill whistle of the small engine, announcing that her destination was reached, swept everything but the incidents of the moment from her consideration.

As the train stopped, she sprang to her feet and leaned out of the window. How intensely familiar it was!—the narrow platform; the wooden paling, behind which the incursion of summer visitors to Muskeere congregated each day to watch the Cork trains arrive; the slovenly, good-natured porter, absolutely unaltered by the passage of time!

Her thoughts swam, as she tried vainly to reconcile her own many experiences with this amazing changelessness. Then all need for such comparison was brushed aside, as a tall figure came striding down the platform, followed by a couple of dogs; and she recognised Laurence Asshlin.

Her first conscious thought was, "How fine-looking he has grown!" her second, "How badly his clothes are made!" Then she laughed to herself from happiness, and from that sense of comradeship and clannishness to which the Irish nature is so susceptible.

"Larry!" she cried a moment later, as she threw the carriage door open.

But her dog Mick was the first to gain her side. Leaping forward at sound of her voice, he sprang into the carriage, whimpering with joy.

"Mick!—darling Mick! Oh, you bad thing!" She laughed again delightedly; then she turned, flushed and radiant, to greet her cousin.

"Hold him, Larry! That's better! Now, how are you?" She held out her hand and laid it in Asshlin's disengaged one.

Larry flushed with excitement and embarrassment.

"How are you, Clo? You're awfully unchanged! Let me help you out! The trap is waiting!"

As in a dream, she passed through the little station that had seemed so large and imposing to her childish eyes in the time when a day's shopping in Cork had represented the acme of adventure and enterprise; but half-way down the narrow platform she paused.

"Oh, the sea, Larry!" she exclaimed, drawing in a long, deep breath—"the heavenly smell of the sea!" Then she suddenly caught sight of Burke, waiting, as he might have waited six years ago, beside the high, old-fashioned trap.

"The same trap!" she said, with a little gasp.

Asshlin laughed.

"The same, only for a coat of varnish. But won't you speak to Tim?" He added the last a trifle diffidently, with a shy glance at her costly clothes and her general air of refinement and distinction.

Without a word she went forward.

"Tim!" she said very softly.

The old man turned quickly; then drew back.

But Clodagh held out her hand, regardless of the staring summer visitors.

"Tim! I'm not so changed that you don't know me?"

The old man remained motionless.

"I'd know you if I was under the sod, and the sound of your voice come anear me," he said almost solemnly.

Clodagh felt her throat tighten, as the old horny hand was slowly extended to clasp her own.

"I'm glad to be home, Tim!" she said impulsively—"I'm glad to be home!"

There was a delay of several minutes while the porter extricated her luggage from the van; and during this interval, she found time to admire the young horse, which had been bred at Orristown, and to make friends with the Irish terrier that had been Mick's companion on the run to Muskeere, besides asking a dozen questions concerning people and things at Carrigmore. Then at last, the trunk was deposited under the roomy seat of the trap; and Asshlin stepped forward to help her into her place.

"Larry," she said, pausing with her foot on the step, "may I drive? I'd love to drive."

Asshlin gave a ready assent, and, taking his own seat, handed her the reins, while Burke mounted to the back of the trap.

It was wonderful to Clodagh, that first gathering up of reins rendered hard by long service and Irish rain—that first forward start into the strong, sea-scented air. A sudden joy filled her. She was young; the world was a goodly place, when one studied it in this untainted atmosphere; above all, she was possessor of the great prize—love. Far away, in the tumult and press of the greatest city in the world, the man she set above all others thought of her—waited for her—trusted her.

Out of her own bright confidence, she made the sunny morning brighter, as she drove along the well-remembered roads, halting every mile or so to gaze at some thrice-familiar object that stood now as it had stood in the days of her babyhood.

At last Carrigmore was reached. She saw the clustering pink-and-white cottages of the village; the sleeping ruins guarded by the Round Tower; the long, yellow strand and the glassy bay, on whose farther headland stood the house of Orristown—-a square white patch, to be seen for many miles. She looked at it all long and closely.

"Oh, Larry," she said, below her breath, "how wonderfully the same it is! Nance told me, but I couldn't imagine it. Why, there's scarcely a weed changed!"

Asshlin laughed a little.

"We didn't think you'd care much about it, after Italy and places," he said, with a slight touch of shy awkwardness that seemed more than ever to link the present with the past.

"Not care about it? Larry!" Her voice quivered; then she laughed quickly and touched the horse with the whip.

"Shall we go straight to Orristown? or shall I run in and see Aunt Fan?"

Asshlin looked slightly distressed.

"You're tired after the journey," he said. "And, anyway, it's one of her bad days. They come oftener than ever now. To-morrow she'll enjoy seeing you more."

A quick recollection of her aunt on her bad days swept over Clodagh's mind; and she looked up suddenly into Larry's handsome, spirited face.

"Is she often cross now, Larry?" she asked, as she might have asked when they were children.

Asshlin turned at the sound of her voice; his diffidence forsook him; the old comradeship, the old sense of sympathy and understanding, came rushing back.

"She is harder than ever to get on with," he said. "And every day seems worse than the last. Sometimes——" He stopped; but a shadow of discontent, of depression, had darkened his face.

"Poor Larry!" Clodagh said very softly. And without further comment, she turned the horse's head in the direction of Orristown.

The cousins spoke rather less during the drive along the low, flat road lying parallel to the strand; but, despite the silence, each was conscious of an awakened fellowship; and as they descended the sharp hill that led to the gates of Orristown, Clodagh pointed with her whip to where the sky hung low and brooding over the glassy line of the horizon.

"This heat will break in a storm, Larry," she said, aware of having spoken the same words a hundred times in almost the same spot.

Asshlin scanned the sea thoughtfully.

"I believe you're right!" he answered. "But a puff of wind would do no harm. You'd like a scud across the bay, wouldn't you?"

Clodagh's eyes danced.

"Love it!" she substituted enthusiastically. "Come for me at ten to-morrow, Larry, and we'll sail back together to Carrigmore. We'll have a long day there and see everything; and then you'll come back with me to dinner." She flashed a quick smile at him, as she piloted the trap through the rusty gates.

As they swept up the long, narrow drive, she looked eagerly to right and left; then suddenly she gave a little laugh of pleasure, and waved her whip towards a field that skirted the avenue, in which a very old man had paused in the act of digging potatoes, and now stood in an attitude of rigid salutation, a broken felt hat held above his head.

"Look, Larry! It's Pat Foley! Poor old Pat! Isn't it lovely the way every one remembers?"

Her eyes filled with sudden tears, as they passed the last clump of trees and came full upon the old white house; then, as the horse drew up sharply under the well-remembered iron balcony, she gave a little cry and threw the reins to Asshlin.

Hannah had opened the hall door, and stood broad-faced, honest, beaming as of old.

"My darlin'!" she cried—"my darlin'!"

And in an instant, regardless of her dress and of the eyes of Asshlin and Burke, Clodagh sprang to the ground and rushed into the arms that had so often sheltered her.

At eight o'clock on the same evening, Clodagh, with Mick at her feet, sat in a shabby leather arm-chair by the open window of the bedroom that she had shared with Nance for so many years. Outside, the soft beating of the sea against the rocks came to her ears with strange familiarity; by her side stood a small table set out with a homely tea; while in front of her, jealously watchful that she did justice to the meal, stood Hannah.

"An' 'tis a millonaire they tells me the child is goin' to marry?" she asked in one of her tentative, round-about questions. "Glory be to God! an' she only out of the school!"

Clodagh glanced through the window at the golden evening sky.

"You married me before I had been to school, Hannah," she said, below her breath.

The old shrewd light gleamed in Hannah's eyes. She moved awkwardly and yet softly round the tea-table, and laid her broad hand on Clodagh's shoulder.

"Many's the day I do be ponderin' on that match, Miss Clodagh," she said earnestly. "The ways of God are dark; and what I done, I done for the best."

Clodagh, touched by the deep solicitude of the voice, put her own smooth hand over the old rough one.

"I'm sure God did everything as it should be done, Hannah,—because it—it has all come right in the end."

Hannah's hand dropped from her shoulder in sudden excitement.

"Miss Clodagh!" she said breathlessly—"Miss Clodagh, is it a husband you'll be thinkin' to take?"

Again Clodagh's gaze wandered across the sky, melting now from gold to orange.

"There is a man who wants to take me for his wife, Hannah," she corrected, very gently.

"An' you do be puttin' him before everythin' in the world?"

Clodagh turned swiftly and met the small, anxious eyes.

"So much before everything, that if I were to lose him now I should lose"—she paused for an instant, then added—"myself."

Hannah's eyes narrowed in the intensity of her concern.

"An' he do be carin' for you, Miss Clodagh?"

Clodagh learnt forward; and the warm light from the sunset touched and transfigured her face.

"Yes—he cares," she said very slowly.

CHAPTER XVIII

Late on the afternoon that followed her arrival, Clodagh—with Larry in attendance—climbed up the uneven path that led from the Orristown boat-cove to the house. A considerable change had taken place in the weather since the previous evening. The sky no longer hung low and motionless above the horizon line; the sea no longer shone white and polished as a mirror. A gale had sprung up, breaking the clouds and whipping the sea into small green waves; and more than once, as the cousins clambered up the rugged track, Asshlin paused to look back at his small boat, lying with furled sail and shipped oars on the shingle.

"I hope I've beached her high enough," he said. "There will be a big sea to-night."

Clodagh laughed. The prospect of a storm stirred her. She felt boundlessly happy, boundlessly confident in this free, open life.

The night before, after Larry had left her, and the first tinge of twilight had fallen across the old house, there had been a moment in which the ghosts of memory had threatened to assail her—to come trooping up the gaunt staircase, and through the great, bare rooms. But her will had conquered; she had dispelled the phantoms, and had slept dreamlessly in the big four-post bed.

In the morning she had awakened, as James Milbanke had awakened long ago, to a world of light and joy. But with this difference, that to him the world had been a thing to speculate upon and study, while to her it was a thing familiar—understood—possessed. While she partook of breakfast and while she visited the stables, she kept Hannah by her side, learning from her the vicissitudes of the many humble lives around Orristown that had been known to her since childhood; then, before the tales had been half recounted, Larry had arrived in his boat; and the two cousins, like children playing at a long-loved game, had gone down together to the boat-cove to where the little craft flashed its white sail like a seagull in the sun, and danced with impatience to be off across the crisp green waves.

Clodagh's first act on landing, at Carrigmore, had been to visit the little ivy-covered post-office, in the hope that the Orristown letters might possibly be intercepted. But the postman had already left the village, and she had no choice but to wait patiently for Gore's first letter until her return in the evening. But the postponement had not been sufficient to damp her spirits; and she had started on her various expeditions with a very light heart. Last of all, had come the visit to Mrs. Asshlin, who now rarely left her room, but lay all day in the semi-light made by drawn blinds, drinking numerous cups of strong tea and keeping up a fitful murmur of complaint.

With senses that rebelled against the depressing atmosphere, Clodagh had entered the bedroom and had sat for nearly an hour beside her aunt's couch, listening with all the patience she could muster to the oft-repeated tale of discontent and ill-health. Then at last, feeling that duty could demand no more, she had risen and kissed Mrs. Asshlin's worn cheek.

"We must have you over in London, Aunt Fan," she said cheerfully. "We must take you to a really good doctor, and have you made quite well."

But Mrs. Asshlin had shaken her head dubiously.

"I never had faith in really good doctors since Molyneaux came down to see your poor father."

To this, there seemed no possible response; so Clodagh had kissed her aunt once more, and, with a promise that she would return the next day, had slipped silently out of the gloomy room followed by Larry. Outside, in the vivid daylight, the cousins had looked at each other involuntarily.

"Sometimes life seems awful, Clo!" Asshlin had said, in a despondent voice. And with a momentary shock, Clodagh had caught a gleam of the restlessness, the brooding gloom, that used long ago to settle on the face of her father.

"Why don't you leave Carrigmore, Larry?" she had said quickly. "It's a wonderful place to rest in, but it's not the place for the whole of a man's life."

Asshlin had made a descriptive gesture, indicating the house behind him; then, with a sudden impulse of confidence, he had thrust his hand into his pocket, and had drawn out six five-pound notes.

"When this represents the whole exchequer of the next three months, there isn't much question of foreign travel—or fortune-seeking," he had said. "Come along! The gale is freshening!"

And Clodagh had obeyed, depressed for the moment by contact with that hidden poverty of the proud and well-born, that is one of the most pathetic factors in the scheme of Irish social life. She had longed ardently to make some suggestion, some offer of help, to this bright, spirited boy, who was wasting the best years God had given him in coping with an estate that could never be made to pay, and attending upon an invalid who hovered perpetually on the borderland of shadows; but a native comprehension of the position held her dumb. An offer of help made on the moment of his confidence would set an irrevocable barrier between them in the very dawning of their renewed friendship.

So she had talked to him of the crops, of the fishing, of the Orristown live-stock, while the boat carried them back across the bay. And the sail homeward under the scudding clouds, while the little boat danced and dipped to the buffeting of the waves, had erased the passing gloom; and now, as they climbed the steep pathway and passed across the fields to the house, Clodagh's heart was beating high in her own egotistical joy at the mere fact of life.

She laughed out of sheer pleasure, as they passed round the house and four or five dogs rushed forth from the hall to greet them; and stooping impulsively, she drew Mick close to her and kissed his rough head.

"Larry, do you remember how you won him from me long ago, and how nobly you gave him back? I have never forgotten it." She smiled affectionately at her tall young cousin; and, freeing Mick, led the way into the house.

On the shabby hall table, where the silver sconces stood as of old, lay a small heap of letters; and with an exclamation of pleasure, Clodagh ran forward and picked them up, passing them hastily in review.

There was a thick, important-looking one from Nance. And—yes! the first letter from Gore—the letter she had been waiting for!

For an instant her face fell. It felt thin and disappointing, as she held the envelope between her fingers. But almost at once her face cleared. After all, men had not as much time as women for the writing of letters! And this had been written on the day of her departure! She looked at the postmark: "London—10.30." Of course he had only had time to scribble a line. How good and thoughtful of him even to have sent that line! She turned and looked at Larry, her face radiant once more.

"Larry," she said, "will you tell Burke that we'll dine in half an hour, if Hannah has everything ready? And tell them to have candles in all the sconces. It is to be a dinner party, you know!" She gave a pleasant little laugh and turned towards the stairs, closing her fingers over her letters in a delightful, secret sense of anticipation and possession.

Her own room was filled with a cold grey light as she entered it—a peculiar light drawn from the wind-swept sky and the pale, agitated waters; and she noticed, as she crossed the threshold, that the wind roared draughtily down the wide chimney, in a way that suggested autumn and autumnal gales. But the circumstance made little impression; she carried her own world in her heart—and here, in the letter Gore had written.

In a second impulse of love, she laid the others aside, and opened Gore's envelope. Drawing out the letter, she held it for a moment against her face. On this paper his hand had rested when he wrote to her! There was a sense of personal contact in the mere thought. Then, at last, with a smile at her own sentiment, she opened it slowly and smoothed out the pages.

The written lines—scarcely more than a dozen in number—danced for an instant before her eyes; then focused themselves with terrible distinctness.

There was no formal beginning to the letter; it was merely a statement made in sharp, uneven characters, as though the sender had written under great stress—great emotion or resolve.

"I find," it began, "that you have treated me with an unpardonable want of honour and want of truth on a matter that concerned me very deeply—the matter of Deerehurst; and it seems to me, under the circumstances, only just and right that our engagement should come to an end. A marriage built upon such a basis could only have one termination. If this seems hard or abrupt, I can only say that the knowledge of my mistake has come hardly to me. I shall go abroad again as soon as I can make my plans. I am glad to think that, as no one but your sister knew of our engagement, my action can cause no public comment or unpleasantness for you.

"Walter Gore."

Clodagh read the lines—read and re-read them. For the first time in her life, her quick brain failed to respond to a first suggestion; then, at last, as though the cloud that obscured her mind had been rent asunder, conception of all that the letter conveyed sprang to her understanding.

Walter had written this letter! Walter had given her up! Her face became very white; she swayed a little, looking about her vaguely, as if for some physical aid; then suddenly revolt took the place of panic. It was all some horrible mistake. She must go to him—rend the web of doubt that had divided them—if need be, humble herself, show him the greatness of her love, until he must condone—must forgive—must reinstate her in his heart!

Moving swiftly, she crossed the room to the fireplace, drawing out her watch as she went. With a good horse, she might still catch the last train from Muskeere—take the night mail from Cork to Dublin—cross to Holyhead in the morning, and be back in London to-morrow!

She lifted her hand to the frayed and tasselled bell-rope that hung from the ceiling: then, by a strange impulse, her arm dropped to her side.

When her journey was accomplished—when she met Gore, what had she to explain? what had she to confess? The tassel of the bell-rope slipped from between her fingers.

The vision of herself pleading with him rose vividly before her,—she, with her passionate impulsiveness; he, with his grave dignity, his uncompromising integrity. She recalled the peculiar words he had made use of on the day he had discovered Deerehurst's gift of flowers. "I should either believe in you—or disbelieve in you!" His critical attitude in their first acquaintance started to life at the remembrance of the words. He, who expected of others what he himself performed—he who, as Nance had said, was "so honourable himself"—how would he receive the poor, lame story she had to offer? A horrible, confusing dread closed in about her. A week ago, she would have gone forth confidently, to make her confession; but now her faith was less. On the night in Deerehurst's study she had tasted of the tree of knowledge—had seen things as men see them; and her fearlessness had been shaken.

She looked helplessly round the bare room filled with cold grey light.

No; Walter would never believe!—Walter would never believe! The knowledge that she had lied to him even once would stand between them, condemning her hopelessly. An appalling weight seemed to press her to the earth. She was cut adrift. She was separated for ever from all safe, sheltering human things; somewhere in the dim, far regions where the decrees of fate are made, a knell had been sounded!

She glanced once more round the bare, familiar room, from the great four-post bedstead to the long window, beyond which lay the green fields, the wind-swept sky, and the livid line of the sea; then suddenly she turned, and fled through the open door and out into the empty corridor.

Asshlin was still standing in the hall, as she came downstairs; at the sound of her approach he looked up, but in the falling twilight he noticed nothing unusual in her appearance.

"We've made a great illumination!" he said—"quite a blaze of light!"

Clodagh made no answer; but descending the stairs quickly, passed into the dining-room.

As on the night years ago, when Milbanke had come to Orristown, the old room was prepared to do honour to a guest. The tablecloth was laid, places were set for two, and the great silver sconces were filled with candles that glowed so brightly that even the dark portraits on the walls were thrown into relief. But no fire blazed in the wide grate as on the former occasion, and the curtains of the three long windows were drawn back, admitting the light from the stormy evening sky.

Clodagh's first glance, as she entered the room, was for these windows, and her first words concerned them.

"Larry, draw the curtains!" she said.

To her own ears, her voice seemed to come from some distant place—to sound infinitely thin and far away; but Asshlin seemed to observe nothing. He went forward obediently and drew the six long curtains.

As the last was pulled into place Burke entered, and carefully laid two dishes upon the table. A moment later Clodagh took her seat.

"What will you eat, Larry?" she said hurriedly. "Chicken? Ham?"

Asshlin turned to her, as he in his turn took his place.

"What will you have?" he said.

"I? Oh—anything! But talk, Larry! Tell me things! Let's—let's be gay!"

Asshlin was busy cutting up the chicken. He did not hear the faintly hysterical note that underran her voice—the note of warning from a mind trying with panic-stricken haste to evade itself.

He helped her to some chicken; and Burke, laying the plate before her, went in search of wine.

She toyed for a moment or two with the food, making pretence to eat.

At last Larry looked at her.

"You're eating nothing. Aren't you hungry?"

She started nervously.

"No; I'm not hungry. I—I had a glass of milk in my room. I couldn't wait for dinner." She tried to laugh, as she told the falsehood.

He accepted the explanation.

"Then you must have a glass of wine now!" he said genially, as Burke re-entered with a dusty bottle of port. "Give me the bottle, Burke!"

He took it from the old man's hands, and poured some wine into Clodagh's glass; and as he leant forward, he suddenly saw by the light of the candles that her eyes were wide and black, her face very white.

"Clo, you're not feeling ill?" he asked, in quick concern.

Clodagh put her hand to her face with a startled gesture.

"No! Do I look ill? It's the storm. The storm has got on my nerves. We develop nerves in London, you know!" Again she attempted to laugh.

Once more Asshlin accepted her explanation, as something he had no authority to question.

"I want you to talk, Larry!" she added hurriedly. "I want you to talk. Say anything! Take me out of myself!"

She raised her glass to her lips and drank some of the wine. It brought a faint tinge of colour to her cheeks, but only increased the bright darkness of her eyes.

While Asshlin consumed his dinner, she sat very upright in her chair, sipping her wine from time to time or breaking small mouthfuls from her bread.

At last, having hovered anxiously about her, Burke made bold to speak his thoughts.

"Is it the way the chicken isn't nice, ma'am?" he ventured.

She started, as she had started each time she had been directly addressed.

"No, Burke! Oh no!" she said hastily. "The chicken is very nice. It's only that the storm has—has given me a headache."

Burke shook his head sympathetically, as a sudden gale swept round the house.

"'Tis lookin' for a bad night, sure enough!" he said, as he passed round the table with the next course.

When the pudding had been served and partaken of by Asshlin, Clodagh at last pushed back her chair, and with a curiously unstrung movement walked across the room to the fireplace.

"Larry," she said suddenly, "will you play cards with me when Burke takes the things away?"

Asshlin looked up with interest.

"By Jove!" he said, "what a good idea!"

When Burke reappeared, solemnly carrying some cheese, Clodagh turned to him quickly.

"Is there a pack of cards in the house, Tim?" she asked.

He glanced at her white face and upright figure, but his expression betrayed nothing.

"I do be thinkin' there's a deck some place, if I could lay me mind on it."

Asshlin leant across the table.

"There's a pack in the drawer of the side-board."

Burke crossed the room, but not over-eagerly; and, opening the drawer, produced the cards.

"'Tis the deck poor Misther Dinis got from Cork the self-same day——" he began. Then he stopped considerately; and added under his breath, "The Almighty God be good to us all!"

Clodagh took the cards from him, and stood very still, fingering them nervously. At any other time, the thought of playing with cards that belonged to the dead would have filled her with repugnance; but to-night all ordinary standards had been lost—all the world was chaos. She was like one who is slipping down into a bottomless abyss, and stretches desperate hands towards any straw that might offer respite.

She never changed her position while the table was being cleared; her only sign of emotion still being shown by the spasmodic way in which she passed the cards between her fingers. When at last the cloth had been removed and the candles replaced, she came quickly across the room and stood looking down upon her cousin.

She still mechanically shuffled the cards; but her glance, as it rested on Asshlin, was unconscious and absorbed, seeing only its own mental pictures.

"What shall we play, Larry? What game can two people play?"

Asshlin looked up.

"Piquet," he said, "or euchre."

She nodded.

"Euchre! Yes, euchre!" She drew a chair up to the table and sat down. "What stakes?"

Asshlin looked uncertain.

"You say!" he suggested a little diffidently.

She gave a nervous start, as a fresh gale shook the windows.

"Thirty shillings a game? Twenty shillings a game?"

For an instant he looked at her amazed; but seeing the unconsciousness of her expression, his breeding forbade him to offer any objection. With a reckless excitement he had never before had opportunity to feel, he leant back in his chair, and taking up the glass Burke had set beside him, poured out some port and drank it.

"Thirty shillings a game!" he said magnificently.

Clodagh did not seem to hear; certainly she saw nothing of his scruple and his yielding. Her own thoughts rode and spurred her, pressing her forward in a wild, panic-stricken search for oblivion.

"Come, Larry! Play!—play! I feel"—she paused and laughed hysterically—"I feel that, if I were a man to-night, I should drink all the port in that bottle! I want to forget everything. Play!—play!"

Asshlin picked up the cards that she had laid upon the table. He could not understand her in this new mood; but he was satisfied not to understand her. He felt stimulated—lifted above himself—as he had never been before.

For two hours they played, with luck evenly balanced; then Asshlin made a reluctant attempt to draw out his watch.

"Did you hear that?" he said, as the wind roared up from the sea like an invading army. "I ought to be getting home. She'll be worrying about me."

He spoke firmly enough, but his eyes wandered back to the cards.

Clodagh rose, and, crossing to the sideboard, poured some water into a glass and drank it.

"No! no!" she said eagerly. "It's quite early. It's only eleven. She won't expect you yet."

He put his watch back into his pocket; Clodagh returned to her place at the table; and the play went on.

By twelve o'clock a change had come in their positions. Fortune was no longer impartial; and Clodagh stood the winner by several games. Again Asshlin made a movement towards departure. His face was flushed now, and a look of alarm had begun to mingle with his excitement.

"I—I ought to be going now, Clo," he said a little huskily.

Clodagh gave a sharp laugh. At last it seemed to her that she was drowning thought—holding at bay the black sense of loss and agony that threatened to inundate her soul. She threw up her head, and her eyes challenged her cousin's.

"You are a coward if you go now, Larry! You are afraid to take your revenge!"

He coloured like a girl, and gave a half-angry, half-embarrassed laugh.

"Don't say that, Clo!"

"Then will you play?"

"I—I oughtn't to."

Again Clodagh laughed—a laugh so nervous and high-pitched that it rang almost harshly across the room.

"Then you're not an Asshlin!"

"Am I not?" He tilted his chair forward, and leaned upon the table. "Let's see! Come along! I'm game for anything after that!"

There was a new note in his voice—a fiery note, that seemed to challenge fate and throw reason to the winds.

It stirred some latent power in Clodagh's brain. A faint colour crossed the pallor of her face; she half rose from her seat.

"Shall we 'play like the devil,' as father used to say?"

Asshlin threw up his head. It was as if flint and steel had struck—the spark followed inevitably.

"Yes!" he cried; "we'll play like the devil!"

At one o'clock they rose from the table. Clodagh's face was white again; but Asshlin's was deeply flushed; and as he stood up, confronting his cousin, it almost seemed that he had drunk more than the two glasses of port to which the bottle testified.

"I must go now, Clo," he said. "May I ring for Burke to get me a lantern?"

Clodagh took a step forward.

"Stay the night, Larry? You can have father's room."

He shook his head and crossed to the fireplace.

"I owe you forty pounds," he said in an unsteady voice. "I'll leave thirty here"—he drew out the notes he had shown her at Carrigmore, and laid them under the clock on the mantelpiece—"the other ten I'll—I'll give you to-morrow."

But Clodagh scarcely heard.

"Do stay! Oh, do stay!"

Again he shook his head, and pulled the bell-rope.

"I've put the notes here—under the clock."

"All right!—all right! But, Larry, can't you stay? It's a horrible night."

"I can't!" Then, as the door opened and Burke appeared, he turned to him hastily: "Burke, bring me a lantern. I want to get the boat out."

At last Clodagh's mind was torn from its own concerns.

"The boat! You're not going to cross the bay on a night like this?"

Old Burke came forward, looking from one to the other.

"Wisha, Masther Larry, is it crazy you are?"

Asshlin turned his flushed face on the old servant.

"We're all a bit crazy now and then, Tim. But I was never afraid of the sea. Get me the lantern!"

Still Burke hesitated. But suddenly Asshlin stepped forward, with a look so full of pride and domination, that by instinct he succumbed.

"As quick as you can, Burke!"

And the old man hobbled off.

There was silence between the cousins after he had gone. Asshlin leaned upon the mantelpiece, with his face averted; Clodagh walked nervously about the room, changing the arrangement of the silver on the sideboard, snuffing the candles that had begun to gutter, doing any aimless and unnecessary thing that could blur her sense of impending solitude. At last she paused in the middle of the room.

"Larry——" she began desperately.

But at the same instant Burke's step sounded in the hall, and his voice came to them through the open door.

"The lanthern is here, Masther Larry!"

Asshlin started.

"All right! I'm coming!" he called. "Good-night, Clo!" He walked forward almost awkwardly, and took her cold hand.

She looked up into his face, her own misery blotting out all other things.

"Larry! can't you stay?"

Asshlin passed his hand across his forehead.

"Don't ask me, Clo! Good-night!"

An instant later he was gone.

She ran out into the hall on the moment that she realised her desertion.

"Larry!" she called—"Larry!"

But her voice was drowned in the gale, as Burke opened the hall door and the wind rushed in, filling the wide black hall. There was a confused suggestion of storm and lantern-light; a vague silhouetted vision of Burke, bent and small, and of Asshlin, straight, lithe, and tall. Then the door closed with a thud. Lantern, figures, and storm were alike shut out from her knowledge. She was alone in the great house.

CHAPTER XIX

Almost at the same hour that Clodagh sat down to play cards with Laurence Asshlin at Orristown, Nance was seated with Daisy Estcoit in the lounge of the Carlton. After her sister's departure, Mrs. Estcoit had borne her off to be her guest at the hotel; and now, the little party of four having dined in the restaurant, she had gone to her room to discuss a business letter with her son, leaving the two girls ensconced under one of the big palm-trees.

It was very pleasant and interesting to sit there, and watch the groups seated on the low couches beside the little coffee-tables, or to study the throng of people that moved constantly through the large glass doors of the vestibule, and up the flight of shallow steps to the restaurant itself, with its shaded lights and pretty artificial garden. The crowd was unusually large for the time of year: the band was playing a waltz: the whole atmosphere seemed gay and happy to one who only that morning had performed a great act of love.

"How lovely life is, Daisy!" Nance said suddenly, unconsciously echoing Clodagh's words on the day of Gore's return to London.

Daisy Estcoit laughed.

"Of course it is—with a trousseau like yours! But look over there—by the big palm!"

Nance had bent to rearrange some roses in her belt.

"Where? What?" she said, glancing up.

"Don't you see?"

"No. What?"

"Sir Walter Gore. He just rushed through and into the restaurant. He seems in tremendous haste."

"Walter! Where?" Nance looked round eagerly.

"I've just told you. In the restaurant. But here he is back again! He must have been looking for some one."

Nance rose from the quiet corner in which they were sitting, and stepped forward to greet Gore; but, as he came towards her down the flight of shallow steps, her smile of welcome died, and a look of surprise and concern crossed her eyes.

"Walter," she said softly.

He looked round at sound of his name.

"Oh! Nance!" he said. His manner was as quiet as usual, but he looked like a man who has undergone some great fatigue and has not yet found time to rest.

They shook hands in silence, Nance's dark blue eyes scanning his face.

"Have you heard from Clo?" she said, at last. "I have. Such a dear letter—written in the train."

He flushed.

"Yes," he said laconically, "I have heard. But I can't wait to talk about the letter now. I only came here hoping to find a man I know; they told me at his rooms that he was dining here, but 'twas evidently a mistake. I must say good-night!"

He held out his hand, and Nance took it mechanically; but as their fingers fell apart, she stepped forward and walked with him resolutely across the lounge.

In the vestibule she paused, and compelled him to meet her eyes.

"Walter," she said, "something is wrong!"

Gore's face hardened.

"Nothing is wrong."

She tightened her fingers round the fan she was carrying.

"That is untrue, Walter."

Something in the entire candour of the words touched him. He looked at her with new eyes.

"You are right," he said quietly. "It was untrue."

"Then something has happened? Something about Clo?"

"Yes. Something—something that will break our engagement."

Nance turned very pale.

"Walter!" she said faintly, after a moment's pause. Then, before he could speak again, she looked up at him. "Wait for a minute!" she said sharply—"wait for a minute!" And turning, she hurried back to where Daisy Estcoit was still sitting.

"Daisy," she said, "tell Pierce that I have gone out with Walter, and that I'll be back in half an hour. Tell him that it's something most—most important." She spoke hastily; and, without waiting to see the effect of her words, turned again, and threaded her way between the groups of people back to where Gore was standing.

"Call a cab, Waiter!" she said. "We must talk."

"But, Nance——"

"A hansom, please!"

She turned without embarrassment to one of the attendants.

"But Nance——"

"You cannot refuse me, Walter. Clo is everything in the world to me."

The jingle of harness sounded, as the hansom drew up; and, walking deliberately forward, she got into the vehicle.

"Tell him to drive anywhere that will take half an hour," she said to Gore, as he reluctantly followed.

"Out Holland Park way!" he said, pausing on the step. "I'll tell you when to stop."

He took his seat and closed the doors of the cab.

"Won't you be cold without a wrap?"

Nance ignored the question.

"Now," she said, "what is it? Is it about Deerehurst?"

At the sudden onslaught, Gore started, and turning round, looked at her.

"I don't intend to discuss this matter," he said in his coldest voice.

"But I mean to discuss it." She met his glance with a resolution that was not to be denied. "Is it about Deerehurst?"

"If you wish to know, it is about Deerehurst."

In his voice there was all the reserve, all the coldness of the Englishman who has been very sorely wounded.

"And what about him?"

Quite suddenly Gore's reserve flamed to anger.

"Do you think I am going to talk of such things with a child like you?"

Nance clasped her hands on the closed doors of the cab, formulating a sudden prayer that help might be vouchsafed her; then she spoke, with eyes fixed steadily in front of her.

"I am not a child, Walter," she said in a very low voice. "And you must speak to me—for Clo's sake. And if you won't, then I must tell you that I know all about her staying away from the theatre the other night—about her having no headache, but wanting to see Deerehurst—about her going to Carlton House Terrace at nine o'clock—I know it all, because she told me——"

Gore drew a quick, amazed breath.

"She told you?"

She nodded. Her throat felt very dry.

"Clodagh told you that?"

"Yes. Who told you?"

He made no answer.

"Walter, was it Lady Frances Hope?"

"What does that matter?"

"It was Lady Frances?"

He put his hand wearily over his eyes.

"If you wish to know, it was."

"I guessed so. I always hated her. The other day, as we drove from Paddington after seeing Clodagh off, we passed her in the Park with Valentine Serracauld. He must have seen or guessed, or heard from Deerehurst—and told her. He is an enemy of Clo's, too, since the time at Tuffnell.

"Oh, Walter!" She turned suddenly, and looked at him—"Walter, have you ever really known Clodagh?"

The pain and question in her voice broke through his wounded self-esteem.

"Clodagh has made a fool of me, Nance," he said harshly. "She has never been straight with me—never from the very first."

"And do you know why?"

"No; I can't pretend that I know why."

His tone was very bitter.

"Because she cares too much. She idealises too much."

Gore made a sound that might have been meant for a laugh.

"I think it is I who have idealised."

Nance straightened her small figure.

"Then you have always treated her wrongly. What Clo needs is not to be idealised, but to be taken care of; not to be praised or blamed, but to be taken care of." Her brown fingers were tightly clasped, as they rested on the cab doors. "All her life she has wanted to be taken care of—and all her life she has been thrown back upon herself. When I was little, I had her; but when she was little, she had no one. Our mother died when I was born."

Something in the simple pathos of this statement stirred Gore's ever-present sense of the sacredness of home ties.

"I never knew that," he said very quietly.

"Yes, our mother died when I was born; and Clo grew up in our father's care. Did she ever tell you about our father?"

"No. At least——"

"Then I shall. I've told Pierce. People ought to know. It helps them to understand.

"Our father was a spendthrift—a gambler—a man without any principles. If somebody stronger than himself had taken him in hand when he was young, things might have been different. But he began by ruling everybody who came in contact with him, until at last nobody dared to rule him.

"Can you imagine how a man like that would bring up a daughter—you who had a mother to help you in every year of your life?"

Her blue eyes darkened with intensity.

"Our home in Ireland is a big lonely house on the sea-coast. Imagine growing up in a house like that, without care or money or friends—for father drove all his friends away. Imagine Clo's life! Her only learning was what she got with our cousin from the schoolmaster of the nearest village; her only amusements were sailing and riding and fishing. She never had the love or friendship of a woman of her own class; she never knew what it was to be without the dread of debt or disgrace; and then, at eighteen, she married the first man who came into her life—not because she liked him—not because she wanted to marry, or knew what marrying was—but because he had saved our father's honour by paying his debt!"

She paused to take breath; but before Gore could speak, she went on again:

"Do you know what I always wonder, Walter, when I think of Clodagh?"

Gore made a low murmur.

"I wonder, considering everything, that she hasn't done really wrong things, instead of just terribly foolish ones! It doesn't seem strange to me that she should have behaved like a child, when she first felt what it was to be free and flattered and admired. Listen, Walter! There have been too many clouds between you and Clodagh. Neither of you has understood. You have been too proud; and she has been too much afraid. But I am not afraid!"

And in the prosaic London cab, with her eyes fixed resolutely on the heavy copper-coloured sky that hung above the housetops, Nance performed her second act of love. While Gore sat silent, she poured forth the whole mistaken tale of Clodagh's life, from the days in Venice to the hour of her departure for Ireland. She omitted nothing; she extenuated nothing. With a strange instinct towards choice of the right weapons, she fought for her sister's future. Everything was told—Lady Frances Hope's poisoning of Clodagh's mind against Gore himself—the scene with Serracauld in the card-room—all the temptations, all the follies, confessed in the darkness of the nights at Tuffnell, and in Clodagh's own bedroom on the night she visited Deerehurst. It was the moment for speech; and she spoke. Her own shyness, her own natural reticence, were swept aside by the great need of one who was infinitely dear. The scene at Carlton House Terrace she described without flinching; for candour and innocence move boldly where lesser virtues fail and falter. She told the story with a simple truth that was more dignified than any hesitancy.

When at last she had finished, Gore sat for a space, very silent and with bent head; then abruptly, as if inspired by a sudden resolution, he put up his hand to the trap in the roof.

"The nearest telegraph office!" he called, as the cabman looked down.

The man whipped up his horse. But Nance turned sharply.

"What are you going to do?"

"To wire to Clodagh."

"To Clodagh?"

"Yes."

"But Clodagh doesn't know? Walter, you haven't told Clodagh! Walter!"

Gore bent his head. "I wrote to her the night I saw Frances Hope," he said. "She had my letter this morning."

"This morning?" It was impossible to fathom the pain and alarm in Nance's voice. "What did you write?"

"Very little. Just that I knew about Deerehurst—that I thought it better we should not marry."

"And she got that letter this morning? She has been hours and hours alone, believing that you don't love her—that she is left utterly by herself? Oh!"

"Nance, don't! I'm sufficiently ashamed."

Nance put her hands over her eyes.

"I'm not thinking of you!" she said cruelly.

"I know. But remember, there's the wire. We can still wire. I shall tell her that you and I are coming for her to Ireland—that she will never be alone again."

Nance's hand dropped.

"But you don't understand!" she cried. "No telegram can reach her to-night. It will only get to Carrigmore to-morrow morning—and from there to Orristown. If we were to give everything we have in the world—if we were to die for it—we could not save her from the blackness, the loneliness and horror of to-night!"

CHAPTER XX

Early on the morning that followed the storm, Clodagh stepped from the hall door of Orristown. As she stood on the gravelled pathway in the clear, strong daylight, she looked like one who has fought some terrible battle in the watches of the night, and who has been worsted in the encounter. She was pale and fragile, with a frightened query in her eyes, as though she had propounded some enormous question, to which Fate had as yet made no answer. For a time she stood in a helpless attitude, looking toward the green hill, crowned with sparsely foliaged trees, that fronted the house; then, seeming to take some vague resolution, she walked slowly forward towards the avenue, pausing where the gravelled pathway joined the fields.

There was a curious look upon the land and sea that morning, as though both were lying exhausted by the tumult of the night. All around beneath the avenue trees lay twigs and short splintered branches, to which the limp leaves, whipped to untimely death by the vehemence of the storm, still hung. Across the bay, as far as Carrigmore, the sea lay like a sleeping tiger that has prowled and harried through the dark hours of night, and now lies at rest. A wonderful pearly blue was upon the waters—long, rippling lines spread from headland to headland, like faintly pencilled shadows; but massed in a dark fringe along the curve of yellow strand was a ridge of packed seaweed, that held within its meshes a thousand evidences of the strife that had been, in twists of straw, pieces of broken cork, and long black chunks of driftwood.

She stood for an indefinite space, looking at this significant dark line standing out against the smoothness of the sand, until, half unconsciously, her attention was attracted by a sound that made itself audible from the direction of the gate, growing in volume as it advanced—the swish, swish of bare feet on soft ground. She turned from the vision of the sleeping sea, to behold a small peasant child in torn dress and dirty apron speeding up the drive.

The child neared her; then swerved away as if in fear, and continued her flight towards the house.