Front matter (continued 3)

CHAPTER XV.

"WILL YOU TAKE THIS MAN?"

The kindly cup of tea of which Mrs. Colley had spoken to Abram Lestwick must have grown cold or been replaced and renewed many times, but it was not partaken of by him for whom it was so hospitably intended.

Mrs. Colley, a short, little body, with a long, lean, bony face and black hair, dragged back painfully from a protruding and shiny forehead, watched for Abram as eagerly as ever a maid watched for the coming of her lover.

'Lizabeth, sallow faced, black haired like her grandmother, and with the bad teeth possessed by too many country girls, tossed her head.

"I don't go running after no man!" she said. "Abram Lestwick least of all! I say if he doan't want our tea, let him stop away!"

"You fool!" said her grandmother, "and there be that Mrs. Hanson forever dangling after he. Would you be beat, 'Lizabeth, by a pink and white dolly faced hussy like Mrs. Hanson's Betty? I'd have more pride, I would!"

"She be welcome to he!" said 'Lizabeth. "Too quiet and mum mouthed he be to my liking and——"

"There he be!" said Mrs. Colley.

She bounded out of her chair and was across the little sitting room kitchen and down the garden path to the gate all in a moment; a very energetic woman, Mrs. Colley!

"Oh, Abram!" she said a little breathlessly. "Funny me coming out this moment and meeting 'ee promiscus like, but I did see a great slug a-settling on my geraniums and just at this very moment 'Lizabeth be laying the tea and a fresh biscuit she hev baked, all hot from the oven, so du 'ee come in now, Abram, for there be a powerful lot of things I want to speak wi' 'ee about!"

"I be sorry," he said gloomily, "afraid I be I cannot stop!"

"And the tea fresh brewed and on the hob and the water on it not more'n three minutes, Abram, and the biscuit of 'Lizabeth's baking, a currant biscuit, Abram!"

He shook his head. "I wish 'ee good evening, Mrs. Colley," he said, "and must be getting along!" He lifted his hat to her, a polite man, Abram Lestwick, and went on. Mrs. Colley went back, beaten and angry.

"She hev laid a spell on him, 'tis a good thing for Mother Hanson her bain't living a hundred years ago, or burned for a witch her would be, certain sure! And his coat buttons, I never see such a sight, 'Lizabeth!"

"Drat his coat buttons! What be they to me?"

"Two gone out of the four and two others hanging by threads, and him working his fingers whiles he were talking wi' me, pulling they off, a rare busy time wi' her needle will Abram Lestwick's wife hev! Wonderful restless and nervis he be about the hands, 'Lizabeth!"

"Drat his hands!" said Elizabeth Colley. "He doan't catch me sewing on his buttons for him, no nor for the best man living neither, which Abram Lestwick b'aint!"

Down the road went Abram Lestwick, the weak chin under the straggling growth of black hair looked a shade more resolute this evening, for he had made up his mind.

Was he, Abram Lestwick, the man to stand nonsense from a mere maid who dared oppose his will with her own? No! Was he not Farmer Patcham's foreman and first hand, looked up to and respected? He was!

Had he not a cottage of four rooms of his own? He had! Was he not in receipt of a steady income of thirty-five shillings a week, of which he had no less than forty-three pounds ten saved and standing in the Post Office Savings Bank to his credit? He was!

Very well then!

Down the road strode Abram Lestwick.

"I'll put up wi' no more dilly dallying wi' she!" he said to himself, "I be a strong intentioned man, not a boy like some, to be put off wi' a grimace and a shake o' a head, and such like! And so I'll let her know and I hev her grandmother's good wishes!"

He did not falter, he flung open the little green painted gate of Mrs. Hanson's front garden and trod manfully up the broken stone pathway to the cottage door.

"Why if it bain't Abram!" said Mrs. Hanson, in a tone of surprise, though she had been watching the clock for him this past half hour. Betty, pouring boiling water from the kettle into the brown teapot, started, so that the hot water splashed on her hand, but she uttered no sound. Her face turned white, perhaps it was the pain from the boiling water, perhaps the sound of the man's voice!

"Good evening!" he said.

"Good evening to 'ee, Abram," said Mrs. Hanson. She looked across the room to the girl. "Betty, here be Abram!"

"Aye, I know!"

Abram had taken off his hat, he was twisting it between his restless fingers, plucking at the felt, bending the brim. Mrs. Hanson stared resolutely at his face.

"Wun't 'ee draw a chair and set down, Abram?" she said. "An' put your hat down!"

He nodded, he put his hat down and sat by the table. Betty's face was white and set hard, her small round chin was thrust out obstinately.

Abram looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.

"I du hear good accounts of the new people at the Manor," he said.

"Aye, a sweet and pleasant spoken lady and the daughter of a Lord!" said Mrs. Hanson. "And Mr. Allan Homewood, who I did speak with the very day he came here first, a very nicely spoken gentleman, I'm sure!" She looked at Betty.

Betty sat down, she stared straight before her, she knew that these were but preliminaries, that which they were saying now mattered nothing at all. Her grandmother poured out the tea. Abram took his cup, he twisted it round and round in the saucer.

"I see Mrs. Colley as I passed the door, picking slugs she were! She asked me in to tea, she said there was a fresh biscuit of 'Lizbeth's baking!"

It was meant for conversation, and not as a reflection on the present tea table, which was guiltless of a currant biscuit.

"A wunnerful hand at cooking, 'Lizbeth Colley be!" he said.

Mrs. Hanson shrugged her shoulders, "Hev you ever noticed her teeth, Abram, terribul teeth they be!"

"Terribul!" he agreed; he looked at the girl facing him. He could not see her teeth, for her small rosebud mouth was tightly compressed, but he had seen them and remembered them for the whitest pearls he had ever seen.

"A rare hand at fashioning and managing, 'Lizbeth Colley," he remarked. He paused to drink with his mouth full of bread and butter. It was not a pretty exhibition, but neither Mrs. Hanson nor Betty remarked it. Bread and butter and tea taken at one meal had to mingle, sooner or later; why not sooner than later?

The meal went on, Abram smacked his lips noisily. Mrs. Hanson tried to make conversation.

"A bit of luck for an old man like Markabee getting a permanent job at his time of life! I wonder how long du they think they'll keep he?" she asked.

"Ah!"

"Though I du admit very agile he be for his years!"

It was all idle, it was all eating up time, till the meal should be over. These, as Betty knew, were merely preliminaries, presently the real business would start. Her grandmother had warned her.

"Ahram be here to-night, he be, to hev a direct answer and for 'ee to make up thy mind and name the day!" said Mrs. Hanson.

"He'll get his direct answer, he will! And as for naming the day, there wun't he no day to name!" said Betty.

"We'll see, my gell!"

"Aye, we'll see!" said Betty.

"I can't think what have come to that maid!" Mrs. Hanson thought. "All contrairy and perilous defiant her be, and once——"

"Help me clear they things!" Mrs. Hanson said.

The meal was over at last. Abram brought out his pipe; he did not light it, he did not even put it between his long, yellowish teeth. He held it in his hand, he twisted it and turned it. He made of the bowl a thimble, which he set on his finger; he picked at the thin silver mount and all the time he watched Betty. And always that weak chin of his under the coarse, sparse black hairs, seemed to grow stronger and more protruberant, more pronounced.

Mrs. Hanson spun out the washing up, but it was over at last and she came back and took her usual seat by the fireplace.

"And now, Abram?" she said.

It was the signal, Betty stiffened up, she clenched her small hands; Abram dropped the pipe and stooped to recover it.

"Mrs. Hanson, Ma'am, and Betty, you both know full well why I be here to-night," he said. "Terribul slow of speech I be—" He dropped the pipe again and went in search of it; groping along the floor, again he recovered it.

"Why not put the pipe down, Abram?" Mrs. Hanson said. "Pipes be terribul easy things to drop!"

He nodded, he put the pipe down on the table and fell to plucking out the horsehairs from the chair seat.

"Terribul slow of speech I be!" he repeated. "But you, Ma'am, Mrs. Hanson, know, I think, why I be here to'night! 'Tis about the maid, Betty, your grand-darter, Ma'am!"

"Ah!" said Mrs. Hanson.

"What hev your visits to do wi' me?" Betty demanded, a spot of vivid colour in her white cheeks.

"I du love 'ee and want 'ee to marry me!" he said simply.

"That be well spoken, straight and to the point, that be!" said Mrs. Hanson. "No man could speak fairer!"

"Then I will speak straight and to the point tu," Betty said. "I du not love 'ee and will never marry 'ee! I would sooner be dead, and drownd myself I will before I marry 'ee, Abram Lestwick!"

"Ah!" he said, his eyes roved towards Mrs. Hanson. What had she to say to that?

"A perilous bad maid 'ee be!" said Mrs. Hanson.

"So 'ee've told me till I be sick to death o' hearing it. Perilous bad and wicked and ungrateful, I be—an all that's bad! Why do he come here a persecutering me? Why doan't he leave I alone?" the girl cried passionately. "I doan't ask him to—to foller me and worry me—why doan't he go and marry 'Lizbeth Colley, wi' her currant biscuits? A wonderful fashioner and manager she be! He said it, said it and I—I wun't marry him. I'll die—die willing and glad, yes die! Yes, I'll die!"

She leaped to her feet, her face was burning, her eyes brilliant with defiance and anger.

"No one hasn't the right to so persecute a maid like he du persecute I! I doan't want him here. I—I can't bear nor bide 'ee, Abram Lestwick, I can't!"

Her voice faltered. He sat there staring at her, never speaking a word and his silence disconcerted her.

"A perilous—" began Mrs. Hanson.

"Say—say it again, say it again!" Betty panted, "And I'll scream, I'll scream till I be dead. Say it, again!"

"And 'ee be my son Garge's child. Garge as were ever mild and quiet, and I be Garge's mother!" Up rose Mrs. Hanson. "I be Garge's mother and thy grandmother and I be the one to speak, Betty Hanson, and speak I will!" She lifted a strong arm and pointed a long, thick-jointed finger at the girl. "Marry him 'ee shall, and I say it! And wi' a good grace tu, and come to your senses, 'ee shall, my maid, if I break a stick over your back! And I'll hev no more o' these tantrums, no more of them, I say, a perilous bad and wicked maid 'ee be! Hev not Abram done we a great honour? Hev he not——"

"I'll kill myself before I marry him!" the girl said, but she said it without passion, only with an immense certainty in her voice.

Abram blinked, he stared at the ill smelling, newly lighted lamp.

"Listen to me, Betty Hanson. Here be Abram asking 'ee to marry 'ee and asking 'ee to name the day—answer!"

"I hev answered!"

"Answer as I order 'ee!"

"I shan't!"

Mrs. Hanson stalked across the room, she went to a corner by the fireplace, in that corner stood the stout old stick that had supported her husband's declining years. She had always kept that stick in the corner, it was more homely to see it there. She took it now, she came back to Betty.

"Will 'ee marry this good man?"

"No!"

One, two, three, down came the stick, heavily across the slender shoulders. The girl's eyes filled with tears, born of the smart of the blows, but she kept her white teeth clenched.

"I ask 'ee again, will 'ee name the day?"

"No, never!"

Thud, thud, thud!

Ahram Lestwick leaned forward, he stared at them both. He was tearing the threads out of the fringe of the cheap tablecloth now. He watched Betty's face without emotion. "Dogged abst'nate her be!" he muttered.

"Betty Hanson, my mind be made up! Will 'ee take this man to be your lawful wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for better an' for worser, till death du 'ee part?"

"I wun't, I hate him!"

Thud, thud, thud.

"And I hate 'ee tu!" said Betty suddenly.

"That be enough!" The stick fell. "'Ee've said it, Betty Hanson! Said it! Said it past recall! Hate me, 'ee said it! And to-morrow 'ee go out, go out, my maid, for I live in no house where hate du abide!"

"I'll go and glad, glad!" the girl said.

Abram rose slowly.

"I beg to thank 'ee for a good tea, which I did enjoy, Mrs. Hanson, 'tis time for me to be going!" he turned towards the door. "A very good tea!" he said. "I bain't partial to new baked currant biscuits!" He paused at the door and looked at Betty.

"I'll ask 'ee to name the day some other time, my maid! I be a patient man, a very patient man, I be in no hurry, no hurry at all! And I wish 'ee good night, Mrs. Hanson, and thank 'ee for your good tea once again!"

Betty stared at him, her eyes were wide, filled with terror. She lifted her hands to her face, she gripped her face between them, the sharp little nails dug into the soft, peach-like cheeks, but she felt no pain, was unconscious of what she was doing.

He looked at her and smiled, he backed out and closed the door, but she did not move. She heard his steps outside, her breast was rising and falling and when she spoke, she spoke in gasps, in short breathless sentences.

"Did 'ee see—grandmother, did 'ee see—his hands—his hateful hands? Grandmother, did 'ee see? One day—he'll kill someone wi' they hands, kill 'em—grandmother, maybe—maybe 'twill be—me!"

CHAPTER XVI

"MY LADY MERCIFUL"

"I am glad Mr. Dalabey spared her," said Kathleen.

She nodded towards the little figure of the nymph standing up from the middle of the lake.

"So am I!" Allan said. "But I've a great respect for Dalabey, he does not look it, but he is an artist. He has a right perception, a sense of fitness. Dalabey is a reader and a thinker, too. Kathleen, you would be surprised by the depth of Dalabey's knowledge, for all that, he says 'I be' and 'Du 'ee?' Which, after all, may be better English than that which you and I speak. You would hardly believe that Dalabey and Ruskin have more than a nodding acquaintance, but so it is! Yes, I'm glad he spared the little stone maid. Do you know the first morning we were here, dear, I worried about her. I rose early and came out to see if she were still here and there she was, a monument to Dalabey's good sense! I've congratulated him since!"

She was listening to him with a smile on her lips. Now she glanced at him, at the tall, big young man by her side—her husband!

"Allan," she said suddenly, "Allan, you seem to be very happy!"

"Happy!" he was startled. "Of course I am happy. Why—why did you say that? I am happy and content. I Have the dearest and best man in the world for father. I have a wife who is friend and comrade——" he pressed her hand. "I have a home, the like of which there is not to be found in all England! Happy—why not, Kathleen?"

She was silent for a moment. He had said the dearest father and his wife—after all his wife was only friend and comrade—only! Why did she feel vaguely dissatisfied, had she not set herself to be just that very thing, that he said she was—friend, comrade, and now he had said it, she felt a little regret.

"And you would not have things different from what they are, Allan?"

"No!" he said. "I'm very, very content, very proud and very happy, Kathleen."

"And the dream," she said, "the dream you told me of, Allan, the pretty girl who came——"

He laughed frankly, almost boyishly, a laugh so clear and so ringing that it, was infectious.

"Because I had a pleasant dream and dreamed a pretty girl was imprudent enough to come and kiss me, shall I moon about disconsolate and unhappy, my mind filled with stupid longing and foolish regrets, eh?"

"But the dream did affect you for a time, Allan?"

"For a time," he said, "it was so clear, so real, so strange, so—so undreamlike that it must affect me! Kathleen, I never think of it now, I've put it out of my mind, I've sat there a score of times on that very seat and no dreams have come, I've smiled at the foolish fancy of it, laughed it all to scorn—and forgotten it——"

"But if it were not—all a dream, if one day she came into your life—that girl——"

He shook his head. "She was a dream and she doesn't exist, she never will and never can—she came and she went—for good!"

"And yet," she persisted, with a woman's strange persistence, "Allan, if—if she came, if you saw her in life, if——"

"Then," he said quietly and looked her full in the eyes, "you have my promise, dear, just as I have yours, but it will never, never be—Kathleen, shall I be truthful, honest, candid with, you? I never want it to be, dear, I am well content! And now come——" he went on gaily, "and we'll talk to old Markabee, that young fellow who refuses to grow old! Come, dear and——"

But she shook her head. "I am going to the village, Allan," she said, "at least, not to the village, but to a little cottage between here and Little Stretton, Mrs. Hanson's cottage."

"Hanson, I remember a kindly talkative old dame who has always a smile and a country bob for us."

"I am afraid she is not as kindly as she looks!" Kathleen said.

"Why, what has the wicked old body been doing?"

"Ill-treating her granddaughter, so I have heard. It was Debly Cassons who told me. She said she was passing Mrs. Hanson's cottage as she came here last evening, and she heard the sound of beating and looking in through the window saw that wicked old woman thrashing the girl with a stick. And there——" Kathleen went on, "the girl was standing accepting the blows without a sound, but later as Debly was going back, she heard someone sobbing as thought her heart was breaking and she found the girl lying on the grass in the little garden crying bitterly. Debly is a kindly old soul and she tried to comfort her and find out what the trouble was, but the girl would not answer, so——"

"So my dear little Lady Bountiful, my Lady Merciful is going to carry comfort to the ill-used child, eh?"

He looked at Kathleen, then stretched out his hand and touched hers. "Kathleen, you are a good woman," he said sincerely and gently, "I wish I could think that I were worthy of you!"

Kathleen shook her head, she did not speak.

There was a trace of sadness in her eyes as she went back alone to the house. It seemed to her that there was the chance of happiness of a great and wonderful happiness, yet she could not stretch out her hand to grasp it, could not because of memories, years old memories, memories of another face and another voice, memories of a love that had filled her life once. She had loved then, she told herself, as a woman loves but once, as she could never love again.

"Allan's happiness and mine," she said to herself, "is built not on love, but on friendship and respect, perhaps it is the surest, the best foundation," yet while she consoled herself, she sighed a little and the sadness stayed in her eyes.

Very grim and very silent was Mrs. Hanson this morning. Last night that maid, the maid she had brought up from babyhood had told her that she hated her, had said "shan't" to her, had defied her.

Mrs. Hanson had had a strict upbringing herself, she had married Hanson because he was in regular work and was drawing good pay, twelve shillings a week, no less. Her parents had told her to marry Hanson and she had married him. The marriage market has its branches in the smallest of villages and marriages of convenience are not luxuries enjoyed only by the rich and the wellborn.

And she, in her turn, had found a very suitable husband for this wayward maid who, lacking in duty and obedience, definitely refused to accept that husband.

Very well then! Mrs. Hanson had every reason to be hurt and aggrieved.

Betty had risen early—as usual—had cleaned out the little cottage kitchen, had polished the stove till it shone, had made the fire and had prepared the breakfast just as usual, but all the time she was doing it, she knew that she was doing it for the last time.

Last night her grandmother had said to her, "You shall go!"

Her grandmother never changed her mind, never relented, never altered. Betty knew this of long, long experience, besides in any event she would go, she would not stay—no, not even if her grandmother begged her to on her bended knees, and that was not in the least likely. They had their breakfast together in stony silence. After breakfast Mrs. Hanson spoke.

"Wash they things and put them back on the dresser—for the last time!" she added.

Betty had washed the things, she had replaced them on the dresser, on to the snowy white board of the dresser top she had permitted one large hot tear to splash.

Her grandmother sat stiffly upright in her chair by the window with the huge family Bible open on the little rickety round table before her.

Mrs. Hanson always turned to the Bible for comfort and for advice in times of stress and doubt. She was reading stolidly through the story of Naboth's Vineyard and was deriving much spiritual comfort from it. Very stern and unrelenting she looked sitting primly bolt upright, her hands resting on the book and her spectacles adjusted on the end of her long and pointed nose.

Now and again out of the corner of her eye she glanced at the girl who was slowly putting the finishing touches to her work. In a little while the girl must be gone, Mrs. Hanson was a stern and unrelenting woman.

Where the girl would go to, Mrs. Hanson did not know, she never gave it a thought.

"She did say, she did hate me!" the old woman thought. "Hate—a perilous wicked thing for a young gell to say—and to abide in a house of hatred, I will not! There's the Bible for it—'Better a dinner of yarbs and contentment therewith than a stalled ox in the house——'" Mrs. Hanson looked up, a shadow had fallen across the window, there came a light tapping on the door.

"Bless me and bless my dear soul!" said Mrs. Hanson aloud, "if here b'ain't my Lady Homewood, Betty quick—quickly open the door to Her Ladyship, quick now! Do 'ee hear me speak?"

The door was opened by Betty. Coming from the hot bright sunlight of the outer world into the twilight of the little room, Kathleen could only see a slight, slender figure in an old cotton gown, which figure bobbed a deferential, yet it almost seemed a defiant little curtsey to her.

"This is Mrs. Hanson's cottage?" Kathleen asked.

"Yes, my lady!"

Mrs. Hanson had risen, she bobbed, it was no half hearted curtsey this of hers, she seemed to sink into the floor to her middle and then rose again, tall and lean and agitated.

"Mrs. Hanson I be, my Lady, and proud I be to see your Ladyship here—Betty, a chair for her Ladyship, my maid!"

Betty brought a chair, she flicked it with a duster and placed it that Kathleen might be seated.

And now Kathleen, whose sight had grown accustomed to the dimmer light of the room, could see the child plainly, and seeing her, wondered a little at the loveliness of the little piteous face, the drawn mouth, the big saddened eyes that had so evidently recently shed tears.

Poor pretty little maid! Kathleen remembered what Debly had told her of the child lying out in the grass, sobbing her heart out in the darkness of the night. She looked at the stern puritanical looking old woman and Kathleen, who was hot blooded and generous, felt instinctive dislike of her, which dislike was unjust and ill placed.

So, having come expressly about this girl with the golden hair and the sweet oval face, Kathleen, being a very diplomatic young woman, spoke of everything and anything else under the sun. She told Mrs. Hanson how often she had admired the neatness and prettiness of the little front garden.

"It is so nice to see gardens so well kept, I am sure yours is a great credit to you, and oh Mrs. Hanson, do please sit down, we can't talk comfortably, can we, if you stand?"

"Oh, my Lady, to sit in your presence!"

"Then you will force me to stand too!" said Kathleen.

So Mrs. Hanson sat down on the very edge of her hard chair and they talked of the garden, that neat little garden with its flower beds, surrounded by nice large flint stones which Betty whitened regularly every Saturday, to make all prim and clean and spotless for the Sunday.

"You have lived here many years?" Kathleen asked.

"A Hanson hev always lived in this cottage, my Lady, from time out o' mind. A Bifley were I born, my mother being a Pringle, and me married to Amos Hanson when I were just turned seventeen."

"Ah yes!" Kathleen said. "And this is your granddaughter?"

"My granddarter her be," said Mrs. Hanson sternly.

"And of course you need her here to help you in this little cottage?" Kathleen hazarded.

"I du not need she, my Lady, and her be going to leave me, her be, this very day!"

"To—to leave—you—you mean the child is going away? Where is she going to?"

Mrs. Hanson did not answer. The girl was still in the room, seemingly busy at the dresser, but Kathleen looking could see the slender shoulders shake and knew what a big fight the little maid was putting up to keep herself from bursting into tears.

What little village tragedy was here? she wondered.

"Is she going to London?" Kathleen asked.

"I du not know, my Lady!"

"But——" Kathleen said.

Mrs. Hanson rose, she was trembling.

"My Lady, that I should hev to tell 'ee a stranger, yet with a face so kind, that emboldened I be—my Lady—this maid, this perilous wicked maid——" the old dame stopped for a moment, quivering and shaking, "this perilous bad, wicked onnatchral maid did say to me—I hate 'ee, I du! Said it my lady wi' her own lips and tongue, she did! And I said tu her 'Betty Hanson, granddarter o' mine, 'ee may be, but never, never will I abide in a house where hatred du exist, so out of this house du 'ee go for a bad perilous maid on the morrow!' And this be the morrow, my Lady——"

"But she is so young, only a child and surely you would not let her go without, knowing she is going into safety and into the house of friends? She is your granddaughter and you are responsible for her! Do you think that you are acting rightly? Do you think—oh please don't think that I am preaching to you—but she is so young and so pretty and to think of her going—and never even knowing where the poor child is going to!"

"I hev chose for she a good husband, a man wi' thirty-five shillings a week coming in, a cottage too and of quiet ways!"

"But if she does not love him?" Kathleen asked, and, remembering her own marriage, blushed red as a rose.

"Love him indeed, my lady, hev I not chose he for she? A good upstanding, upright man as ever was, to Church reg'lar twice a Sundays, walking in the fear of God, he du, and very respectable wi' never a word to be heard against he—and—and——" Mrs. Hanson paused nervously and exhausted for the moment.

"But she is only a child! Betty, come here, Betty!"

"Betty, du 'ee hear her Ladyship a-speaking to 'ee?" cried the grandmother.

But Betty at the dresser, her back obstinately turned, did not move.

"There, there!" said Mrs. Hanson triumphantly, "'ee can see for yourself, my Lady, how bad and de-fiant and obstinant her du be—Oh Betty, shame on thee!" the old woman added, for Kathleen herself had risen and had gone across the room to the lonely little figure and all suddenly had put a kind arm about those heaving shoulders.

"Betty, Betty child, come and tell me all about it!" she said in that sweet gentle voice of hers that could break down any barrier of anger and defiance. And then Betty, knowing, feeling that here was a friend, broke down suddenly and giving way to the long threatening tears, laid her head against Kathleen's breast and sobbed.

"I hate him, I hate him I du and fear him I du, My—my lady and grandmother be so bent on my marrying he and I, I can't! Oh, I can't bear it, I can't and 'tis breaking my heart, it be, my—my Lady!"

"Hush, little one, don't cry!" Kathleen said.

"Betty, I be mortal ashamed of 'ee, I be!" said Mrs. Hanson. "Mortal ashamed and all put about I be!"

"Please, Mrs. Hanson, let me speak to her!" said Kathleen. She drew Betty towards her chair, she sat down and held the girl's hot little hand and looked into the pretty flushed tear stained face. Poor pretty child!

"How old are you, Betty?" she asked.

"I be—be eighteen, my Lady!"

"And behaving she be like she were but seven!" said Mrs. Hanson. "A perilous bad——" she paused.

"Your grandmother says you must go, Betty!"

"Aye, I du, I du, and when I du say a thing, by that thing I du abide!" said Mrs. Hanson. "Go, I said, and go she shall! A very unrelenting woman I be!"

And then at last came a flash of anger into Kathleen's eyes.

"Yes, a very hard and unrelenting woman, I fear, Mrs. Hanson! Has this child no other friends, no other relations, than you?"

"Never a soul hev she got, and I hev brought she up!"

"And now would turn her out of the house, knowing that she had no one to go to, no one to keep and protect her, for shame, Mrs. Hanson!" cried Kathleen in just indignation. Mrs. Hanson said nothing, she quivered and shook. Perhaps in her heart of hearts she wanted to give way, but she had said it, a stern and unrelenting woman was she, and prided herself on it.

"And where will you go to, Betty, when you leave your grandmother's cottage?"

"Oh my lady, I du not know, indeed I du not! For I hev not thought of it, but I wouldn't mind where I did go, so be it was not to Abram Lestwick, who I du hate and of whom I be in most mortal terror, my—my lady!"

"Then you shall not go to him, you shall come to me, Betty, and you shall be my little maid!" Kathleen said.

"To—to the Manor House, my—my lady?" Betty stammered, "Oh my Lady, to—to the Manor House?"

"Why, of course, child, for I live there!"

"Oh my Lady, I—I couldn't, don't ask me—I couldn't bear to—to go there and see it all—all as it be now—I couldn't my Lady, 'twould break my heart!"

Kathleen looked at her in amazement. "But why, Betty?" she said. "I don't understand!"

"My Lady," interposed Mrs. Hanson, "if so be as I may be allowed to speak——" she paused, quivering with indignation, "'tis but right I should tell 'ee this, that this wayward, obstinate, perilous gel was forever in they old gardens before Mr. Homewood bought the old place, forever she was, spite of all I did say to she. Sometimes of nights I du verily believe she would rise and go stealing off to they gardens, a terribul state they was in too, and coming back wi' her frock all covered wi' green like and sometimes tored by the wall over which she did climb most shameful——"

Kathleen heard, she looked at the girl who stood with bowed head before her.

"Why did you go to the garden, Betty?" she asked softly.

"Because—oh I—I don't know, because—I can't—can't tell 'ee, my Lady, I can't tell 'ee, but it be all changed and altered now wi' great fences put up and—and my stone maid gone and 'twould break my heart, my Lady to go there and not see she, my stone maid, any more!"

"The stone maid is not gone, Betty, and the gardens have not been altered, but only made beautiful and they tell me that they must be just as they were in the old days!"

"I wonder, my Lady, as 'ee have the patience to talk wi' she!" said Mrs. Hanson.

But Kathleen took no notice. "So, Betty, will you come to me and be my little maid?"

"And glad and grateful!" said Mrs. Hanson. "Say it!" she commanded. "Elizabeth Hanson, say it, yes—and glad and grateful I du be, my Lady, to 'ee for your great kindness, and drop my Lady a curtsey, 'ee unmannerly maid, as I be sore ashamed of!"

"If only——" Kathleen thought, "if only the old woman would leave the child alone, poor Betty, I can see why that little spirit of hers was goaded into rebellion at last!"

"I need no thanks!" Kathleen said, "I only want Betty to say that she will come; you will come, child?"

How kind were those eyes that looked into hers, how sweet a smile there was on her Ladyship's beautiful face! It must have melted a heart of stone and Betty's warm passionate little heart was not of stone. So she broke down, sobbing and crying, she would come and glad and grateful she was, and come she would that very day if her Ladyship would but have her.

"Pack your little box, Betty," Kathleen said, "and I will send one of the men presently to fetch it for you and I think and hope you will be happy and—and maybe Betty, you will not find the old garden so changed after all. I will answer for it there are no ugly fences and the stone maid stands where she did in the middle of the lake, Betty, so—go come and see your little friend again!" She held out her kind hand, but Betty did not take it, instead she dropped suddenly onto her knees and kissed that white hand as if it had been the hand of a Queen, and so like a queen was Kathleen to the country maid, a Queen all beautiful, all generous, all kind. Queen! No, an angel from Heaven rather! And when she had gone Betty stood there, all unmindful that her grandmother was here and she spoke her thoughts aloud.

"Very willing and glad I would be," she said slowly, "very willing and glad to die for she, I would!"

Mrs. Hanson sniffed, she had no patience with such outrageous and exaggerated statements.

"Get 'ee off and pack your box," she said sharply, "and think yourself lucky, Betty Hanson, as 'ee hev found another home, and a kind mistress, too kind I be afeared! Too kind and lenient like wi' 'ee and your folly, my maid!"

CHAPTER XVII

HAROLD SCARSDALE RETURNS

Kathleen's face was very thoughtful, a little sad even, as she walked back along the white dusty road. She hardly saw the village folk, who bobbed and curtseyed to her as she passed. She saw only a sweet oval face, a glorious head of glittering hair, a pair of sad, wistful blue eyes.

"So these people do, as their betters!" she thought. "They drive and goad their children into unhappy marriages! My Lord's daughter must be made to marry thirty thousand a year, as little Betty, Mrs. Hanson's granddaughter, is to be forced into marriage with thirty shillings a week! How wrong and what a shame it all is! Money, rank, position and interest! Is there no such thing as love left in the world at all? May not a man choose his mate, a woman choose for herself from among all men, the one she loves? It seems not, in village or in city, in cottage or in palace, and I——" she paused. "I did as I was bidden and I am happier perhaps than I deserve to be!"

Kathleen, unlike other well born young ladies of Society, had had no maid, in the old days she could not afford one. Amy, the parlour maid, had assisted her into the dresses that were so very seldom paid for, and Kathleen had long since adopted the unladylike practice of doing her own hair. So when she came to Homewood she had decided to continue without a maid, though the funds were not lacking now and the dresses were certainly paid for.

Of course little Betty Hanson would not know a tithe of those things that a good and practiced lady's maid should know. She would not be able to do her ladyship's hair in the latest and most becoming style. She would not be able to select gowns suitable for special occasions. She would not be able to massage my lady's white hands and perhaps her face. She would not be able to flatter and fawn and sponge and perhaps rob and lie. No, Betty Hanson was not likely to have any of these desirable accomplishments.

Kathleen had an honest admiration for beauty. She was one of those rare women who can see and appreciate beauty in another woman. She would have everything about her beautiful if she could. She feared that perhaps to those who were unbeautiful, she was a little unjust. To Ann, the very plain housemaid who came from the Fulham Road, for instance, Kathleen was more than unusually kind and generous, because in her heart of hearts she did not like Ann. And she believed that she did not like Ann because Ann had a sallow, greasy skin, a misshapen nose and small mean eyes, set too closely together and a loose, nondescript kind of mouth.

Ann, as a matter of fact, was a stupid, blundering creature, who forgot to do one half of what she was told and deliberately neglected to do the other half, who generally did everything badly, and had a habit of breaking the most expensive things she could put her clumsy hands on. Once Kathleen, goaded and irritated by Ann's hopeless imbecility had spoken sharply—sharply for her—to the girl and had promptly repented of it and had given Ann five shillings and begged a half day off for her from Mrs. Crozier, the housekeeper.

But that was like Kathleen and that was why the servants adored her.

But Kathleen was a little disturbed in her mind. She found herself wondering, remembering and wondering—what was this about this child haunting the old garden at the Manor House, climbing the high brick wall and entering into that place of desolation and solitude, called thither, who knows by what strange voices? What was this about her going there of nights to wander about the black solitudes of tangle and weed? Surely it was not right, it was not canny. She smiled at the word, the word that she had heard her old Scottish nurse use years and years ago. Yet it was the right word, it was not canny that a young and pretty girl should have so strange a love for solitudes and weed grown gardens.

"Could it—could it have been she?" What mad nonsense, what folly was this? Kathleen wondered at her own thoughts. How could it have been this girl whom Allan had seen there that day? He had said it was a dream, it must have been a dream—this girl was no dream, but living reality. And then Allan had told her that the girl of his dream had been dressed all in some strange, old world costume, how the garden about her had been in bloom and all so trim and neat and tidy, how the old house, a place of desolation, had been bright and gay with its open windows and blowing curtains, and how the girl herself had gone to him and had kissed him and had put her little mittened hands—mittened hands—had little Betty Hanson ever owned a pair of mittens in her life? No, no those things had gone out in Betty's great-grandmother's time, what mad nonsense it all was! So Kathleen laughed merrily and laughed the ideas and the notions all away.

She went to find Mrs. Crozier—Mrs. Crozier, the elderly, kindly autocrat of the house, Mrs. Crozier who had been housekeeper in a far finer and more magnificent mansion than this, no less a place than Dwennington Hall, the seat of the Duke of Grandon.

"Mrs. Crozier, I have engaged a young village girl, Betty Hanson, granddaughter of Mrs. Hanson, who lives in the cottage up the road towards Little Stretton, she is to be my lady's maid. She is only a child and she will feel strange here at first so——"

"I quite understand, my lady, I'll look after the little thing and make her feel quite at home!"

"Thank you, you do so readily understand me, Mrs. Crozier."

"It's easy enough to understand your Ladyship," Mrs. Crozier said. "There is always some kindly thought in your head, my lady, for others—I know Mrs. Hanson slightly, a good and very respectable woman!"

"Will you send one of the men for Betty Hanson's box presently? And oh Mrs. Crozier, about the fourteenth——"

"I'm making all preparations, my lady, Sir Josiah will be coming of course!" Mrs. Crozier smiled, she held Sir Josiah in very high esteem.

"Not a highly educated gentleman, perhaps," Mrs. Crozier had said over a cup of tea to Mrs. Parsmon, the doctor's wife, "but one of the kind, Mrs. Parsmon that I call Nature's gentlemen! That is my opinion of Sir Josiah Homewood!" So when Mrs. Crozier mentioned his name to Sir Josiah's daughter-in-law, she smiled in a very kindly way.

"Sir Josiah will bring a friend, perhaps two, and my father will come of course," Kathleen's voice changed a little, as it always did in some subtle manner when she spoke of her father. Her face seemed to grow a shade colder, then the cloud passed and she was smiling and thanking Mrs. Crozier again, for her intended kindness to Betty Hanson.

"I'll see her in the morning," she said, "let her come up to me after breakfast and I'll have a long talk with her, and O Mrs. Crozier, as she is leaving her grandmother so suddenly, she may need some things, clothes I mean—I know it is not always easy for a young girl to get all the clothes she needs"—there was a sad reminiscent smile on Kathleen's face, "so will you get anything for her she may require and let me know?"

"I will do everything, my lady."

The fourteenth was the date fixed for the house warming, that event that had a little puzzled Sir Josiah. But he quite understood what it meant now, and he was looking forward to it with much the same feeling as a schoolboy has regarding the coming summer holidays.

At the old fashioned chop house in the City, a table was regularly reserved for Sir Josiah, which he sometimes shared with Cutler and sometimes with Jobson or Cuttlewell, or Priestly (of Priestly, Nicholson, and Coombe, those famous contractors). At that same table now, Sir Josiah bragged and boasted of the glories of Homewood, of his daughter-in-law, Lord Gowerhurst's only child. How he told them of his work at Homewood and of the wonders of the place. "Historical, it is!" he said. "And that feller Davenham, I put him in charge. I know my limitations, Cuttlewell, no man better, when it comes to furnishing in the Period style I'll own I'm beat, but Davenham knows, an expensive man I'll admit, but what's money, what's money?"

What was money indeed! Had not Sir Josiah been in pursuit of it all his life, had he not seemed to worship it? Had not those plump knees of his been for ever bent to the Golden Calf?

"What's money, hey?" he cried. "Ho! William, William! Mr. Cuttlewell will take a glass of that old port with me!"

And William, the antique waiter, of the white side whiskers and the ancient evening dress suit and the large sized, untidy feet, shuffled away to fill the order, for their best and most respected customer.

"I'd like you to see the place, I should, Priestly, my boy! My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen, is giving a house warming on the fourteenth. Cutler's running down with me—going to take him down in the car. Hang it, Priestly, you shall come! My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen, says all my friends are her friends, and she means it, she's that sort. God bless her! There isn't a truer, sweeter woman on earth and so—so I say God bless her!" The tears came into his eyes, they trickled down his cheek.

Here was honest pride, honest and unfeigned! He lifted his glass of port, he beamed on them and gave them the toast from his heart. "My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen Homewood, God bless her!"

They smiled at him, they took it good naturedly, they knew his worth, a sound man Sir Josiah, good for at least a couple or three hundred thousand and very likely for a good deal more. When a man has a credit good for anything from two to four hundred thousand, who will not put up with his little ways, even though it might be a trifle boring for those who had not the pleasure of Lady Kathleen's acquaintance? So Priestly was asked and Cutler and Cuttlewell too, only unfortunately Cuttlewell could not come, but Jobson could and would!

When the expansive moment was past, Sir Josiah felt a little nervous. Had he overstepped the limits? Had he gone too far; would it not be encroaching on Kathleen's goodness? Conscience smote him. That he had bought and paid for the house, that he was sending down cases of wines regardless of cost, that he was ordering at the big London Stores with the most lavish hand and purse in the world, all that mattered nothing at all! But would Kathleen be annoyed? He wrote to her and received a letter that made his cheeks flush like those of a school miss of sixteen.

"Your friends are mine, bring them all, you cannot bring too many, especially if they are like you. Only let me know how many rooms you want, dear, and believe me to be your affectionate and grateful Kathleen."

"God bless her!" he said. "God bless her!" And that day he added Coombe to the list. What a time they would all have on the fourteenth! How he talked and bragged and boasted, yet strangely enough a change had come over his boasting, it was not of his Lordship the Earl, and her "Ladyship, the Earl's daughter, it was not of the "historical" mansion, and the period rooms and Davenham's whole hearted expenditure in the matter of furnishing the place, it was of "My daughter-in-law, Kathleen."

"Beautiful, ha, ha!" he laughed. "I'll shew you real beauty! You think Lesbia Carter and Sybil Montgomery, those actress girls, are beautiful and so they are, sweetly pretty girls they are, and I don't say one word against 'em, not me! But when you see my daughter Kathleen—Lady Kathleen, then you'll see beauty, then you'll see goodness and sweet gracious womanliness, my boy!"

Cutler and Jobson laughed, they had their little jokes together. "The old boy ought to have married her himself! I'll bet you he's more in love with her than Allan, his son, is!"

"I know Gowerhurst," said Coombe. Coombe was a large man who smoked expensive cigars, with the bands on them, for effect.

"Know him, I should think I do. He owes me a bit now! I'll bet you if he hears I'm going to—what's the name of the place—Homewood—he won't turn up—catch him!"

Lord Gowerhurst had received his invitation. He had not been down to Homewood, he had no love for the country, ancient historical houses and early English gardens did not appeal to him. The house that found the most favour in his sight was his favourite and particular Club, and he preferred the card room there or the billiard room to any garden that ever bloomed. But he must go, he must offer himself up as a sacrifice. Old Homewood would be there of course and his Lordship was not quite easy in his mind about certain speculations into which he had been led. Lumeyer had induced him to put five of the twelve thousand he had obtained from Homewood into the Stelling Reef Gold Mine and his Lordship had heard bad accounts of that same concern. He had tried to sell out and had tried vainly.

Lumeyer, a densely black bearded man, with cherry lips, had told him all would be well, but his Lordship did not believe it. It might conceivably be possible that presently he would need old Homewood's help again.

"Doosid bore and beastly nuisance!" he said. "But I'll have to go, I hate family parties and that kind of thing and Kathleen hasn't mentioned if there's a billiard room. Let me see—the fourteenth will be Friday. I'll leave a telegram with Parsons, the hall porter here, to send on to me the first thing Monday morning, demanding my presence in Town. Kathleen's done well, doosid well, thanks to me! I don't like the tone of her letter, though, no, hang me, I don't like the tone of her letter! Cold and formal, but that's Kathleen, takes after her mother! Doosid cold and doosid formal, well, well!" He paused. "Whatever happens I'll be able to say I did the best possible for my daughter. A man's got to consider his family, I've considered mine, no one can say to the contrary!"

It was in the dining room during luncheon time at his Club that his Lordship was holding communion with his own thoughts. He started now at the sight of a tall elderly, white haired, soldierly man who came in, followed by a somewhat younger man—it was the younger man who claimed his Lordship's attention.

"Who's that?" he asked himself. "Seen that face before—who the doose is it now? Not a member——"

"Here Paul!"

"Yes, my Lord?"

"Paul, did you see that gentleman come in? Who is he?"

"Sir Andrew Moly——"

"Yes, yes, I don't mean the old one, I mean the younger one with him!"

"Don't know, my Lord, can't say! I haven't seen the gentleman before!"

"Then find out!" The man scuttled off.

"I—I know that face, hang me if I don't—wonder who he is?" His Lordship frowned, he adjusted his eyeglass and gazed across to the little table where Sir Andrew Molyneux and his companion were seated.

"Confoundedly annoying to see a fellow's face and not know who the doose he is!" His Lordship thought. "Hello, Paul, well? Have you found out?"

"Yes, my Lord, I did, I took the liberty of asking Mr. Marsmith. I noticed Mr. Marsmith bow to the gentleman as he came in and I took the liberty——"

"Yes, yes, but who is the fellow?"

"A very important gentleman, Governor of some place as I didn't catch the name of, my Lord, somewhere in America, I should think or the Indies—I don't know my Lord, anyhow he is Sir Harold Scarsdale, a very rich——"

"Bless—my—soul!" his Lordship said. "Thanks, that will do, Paul, that will do!"

Paul went away.

"Harold Scarsdale—bless my soul!" He sat and looked at the younger man.

"Altered, confoundedly altered, looks twenty years older, and it is only ten! Let me see, he can't be a day over thirty-five and the fellow looks forty-five. By George, there was that love affair between him and Kathleen. I remember it well, Old Scarsdale, our Rector at Benningley's son. I remember, by George I do, had a few words with the young fellow, called him a presumptuous puppy if I remember right, so he was, by George! But byegones—eh—byegones can be byegones—Kathleen was too sensible and too cold, yes by George, too cold to make a fool of herself, turned him down, very rightly and properly, I remember it all, remember catching him in the garden at Bishopsholme, I remember a letter I got hold of, of his, asking Kathleen to run away with him, the young fool. By George if I remember right, I made it warm for him! And he cleared out, left the country, he seems to have done well for himself, knighted, eh? Well, well, things change, the wheel goes round, one man gets carried up, t'others get taken down. I'm t'other," he smiled grimly. "I'm down! I think—I think——" he paused. "I shall recall—why not? A rich man, Paul said so, sensible fellow Paul. He knows I always like to understand the financial position of other folk—I shall certainly, yes certainly, recall our earlier acquaintance!"

His Lordship bided his time. He waited, he had finished his own luncheon some time since, but he timed his retirement from the dining room to synchronise with that of the other two.

"Why, bless my soul, surely I am not mistaken?"

Sir Andrew turned to look at his Lordship, but this expression of astonishment was not for him.

The other man had halted, seemed to draw back, his face stern and grave, a handsome face, seemed to harden a shade as the Earl thrust himself forward.

"I surely am not mistaking my old friend's son, Harold Scarsdale. If I am, then believe me I offer my sincere apologies, but I can hardly make a mistake!"

"My name is Scarsdale, and——"

"Then you don't remember me, bless my soul, you don't remember me, my name is Gowerhurst!"

"I remember your Lordship perfectly!"

"My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you, it quite takes me back. Come, come, we must have a long talk, a long talk together, eh? How's the world been treating you? Well, I hope, if I can be of service to you, command me! By George, Harold, I always had a sneaking affection for you!"

"You managed to hide it very cleverly, my Lord, ten years ago!

"Ha, ha! Had to, you know, had to! Doting father, that sort of thing, couldn't let my little girl make a bad match! Hang it, if I'd been a rich man, ha, ha, I wouldn't have stood in your way, but I wasn't; I was, and am, come to that, doosid poor, and a father's feelings, Harold, my boy, as you'll know when you are a father yourself, unless——"

"I am not married!" said Scarsdale quietly.

"No, no, quite right. Well as I was saying, a father must consider his child. I may have seemed hard, a little hard perhaps, to you that day, I remember it perfectly well, but I liked you, my dear fellow, all the time my heart was bleeding for you, bleeding, sir! I said to myself, can I, dare I? No, by George, I can't and daren't! I can't see my girl scrubbing her own doorstep and—and turning her dresses and making her own bonnets—I can't think of it! So I nerved myself to be stern, nerved myself, Harold, and all the time my heart bled for you, my dear lad!"

"I remember very well," Scarsdale said quietly, "that you on that occasion called me a cunning, scheming, blackguardly young adventurer, who had dared to presume to look far too high, and you were right, as to the last, my lord, but not as to the first. For I was not cunning or scheming, I—I loved her, worshipped her and forgot everything else——"

"By George! and so you did, so you did! But I was her father, I had to consider ways and means, eh? You'd do the same yourself, you'd have to! But we can't talk here!"

"I am with Sir Andrew Molyneux, an old friend of my father."

"Ah! And your father, dear old fellow, how is he now, eh?"

"He has been dead four years, my Lord, and if you will excuse me——"

"Positively I must see you and have a chat with you over things, Harold. You'll dine with me to-night? Say yes!" Lord Gowerhurst wrung the young man's hand. "Come, come, I can't take no—I positively refuse to take no! Hang it, after all these years old friends and that sort of thing, we can't pass like ships in the confounded night, can we, eh?"

Sir Harold Scarsdale smiled. He had a stern, grave face, but the smile lighted it up.

"To-night then, my Lord, since you wish it, here—at what time?"

"Eight o'clock," his Lordship said briskly, "and I shall look for you, it's been a delight, a sheer delight to see you again!"

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE DAWN

My dear Kathleen, I am looking forward with keen enjoyment to my coming visit to your charming home. That I have not come before you will easily understand, my love. I am an old fellow and my ways are not your ways. I am sensitive, very sensitive, as I think you know. To have felt myself de trop would have been a cause of pain to me. I felt I could not do it and though my heart was yearning for you and though I have often, a thousand times, pictured your beautiful home, its master and mistress, though I, in my solitary and none too comfortable rooms, have often visioned to myself your delightful life at Homewood, yet I have never intruded. I have been tempted many times. I have said to myself, I will run down just for the day, then I hesitated. Should I be welcome? I know, I know, my love, that my dear daughter's heart is always affectionately inclined to her doting father, yet in your new life, with your new interests, with your young husband, I have wondered, is there a place, some nook, some corner for the old fellow to stow himself away in?

"But bless me, how I ramble on? I live a very quiet and uneventful life, my appetite is not what it was. I sometimes walk round to the Club and try and peck a morsel for lunch, but I am not my own man. I think I feel my loneliness. Well, well, my dear, I look forward, as I say, to the fourteenth of this month, with great expectation and happiness. Now I shall behold you in your own home. I shall behold my dear daughter, mistress of a good house, dispensing her and her husband's hospitality with the gracious courtesy that is the birthright only of a woman of breeding. Give my kindly remembrance to your husband and believe me, my dear Kathleen, ever your fond and devoted Father, Gowerhurst.

"P.S. I am taking the liberty of bringing an old friend down with me. I know in such a mansion as Homewood, there are many rooms, may I hope that I am not encroaching in asking that one may be reserved for one for whom you once had a kindly feeling."

Kathleen smiled a little and frowned a little over this letter. It was like her father, he wrote as he spoke. But who was the friend? She hardly gave it a thought, there were so many old friends, was there one for whom she had once had a kindly feeling? She doubted it. Her father, in the old days, had commanded her ready affection at all times for any opulent acquaintance from whom he was hopeful of extracting money. This was in all probability another victim. So Kathleen put the letter aside and forgot all about it, except that she asked Mrs. Crozier to have another room prepared.

She told Mrs. Crozier now, lest she might forget it.

"Oh, my lady," said the housekeeper, "there's that little Betty Hanson who came yesterday, she is waiting your ladyship's pleasure."

"I had not forgotten," Kathleen said. "Will you send her up to my room?"

She smiled at Allan. "My new maid," she said, "the one I told you about, the little girl from the cottage down the road, such a pretty little thing, I am sure you will admire her!"

Allan smiled when she had gone out, he wondered if other wives bespoke their husband's admiration for new maids in this way? Then his smile drifted away and he frowned a little, had Kathleen loved him—she would have been more jealous of his admiration—loved him! How good she was, what a sweet, lovely nature hers was, and how utterly unworthy of her was he!

Had she loved him? Yet, why should he wish for her love when he had given her none of his own? None? No, he did not love her, not as a man should love the wife he has married. He liked her, admired her, respected her, above all living women. She shared with his father the whole of his heart, but it was not "the love," not the passion of young manhood, the worshipping, devouring, all selfish and yet all unselfish love that surely she was worthy to awaken in his breast.

"Betty!" Who had said "Betty"? Who had uttered that name? Mrs. Crozier of course, she had told Kathleen that Betty Hanson was here, but the name awakened memories, memories of that dream. "Her" name had been Betty, had she not told him with her red lips, "Thy Betty," she had said, and he had been "her Allan."

Betty, nonsense! This Betty would be a big bouncing, red cheeked, bold eyed, healthy country girl! As for Betty of his dreams, there was no place for her now in his busy life. There was much to be done. He had taken up farming wholeheartedly, not for ever would he live on his father's bounty. He would improve the place, make it almost self-supporting. He would prove to his father and Kathleen that there was something in him and that he was not merely an idler and a dreamer. So he filled his pipe and lighted it and went out to have a long talk with old Custance at One Tree Hill Farm. For Custance, though old, seemed to be the most progressive man in the place and already he and Allan had laid their heads together and had discussed ways and means to wring money from the fertile soil.

Mrs. Crozier had been very kind to the timid and shy girl. She had had Betty to tea with her in her own private room, she had introduced her to the other servants, and had kept a motherly eye on Betty till the time came for Betty to retire to her own small room in the servant's quarters.

And she was here! actually here, sleeping in this old house, which she had seen so often, watched so often by sunlight and moonlight. She remembered it as it had been then, with its broken windows, with the ivy and the creepers growing over it in one great tangle.

But the garden, she had not seen the garden yet! How would it look when she saw it? What terrible changes would there be there? Her dear garden, what harm had they done to it? How strange and altered would it be?

She could not sleep that night, she lay awake on the strange unfamiliar bed, tossing restlessly.

Her ladyship had said, and how sweet and good was her ladyship, she had said that the stone maiden was still there in the old lake, so she would find one familiar friend.

After a long, sleepless, troubled night for Betty, the daylight dawned at last, and then she rose and dressed very quietly and before the other servants were waking, she crept down the steep stairs to the kitchen.

She did not hesitate for a moment, she seemed to know her way perfectly, yet she had never been inside the house before. The House had always repelled her, its gloom and its silence and its dust had forbidden any desire on her part to explore it. Yet now she made her way unerringly through the great kitchen through the vast and cold scullery, down a long passage till she came to a little door, a door that she knew must be there. And it was there and then she drew a ponderous bolt that had been fashioned by a hand that had been dust for two centuries. She unfastened a huge lock, by a key that required all her strength to turn, and so she opened the door and stepped out into the garden as the rising sun flung its first ray of primrose and gold across the heavens.

Only two steps Betty took, then stood still. The light was dim yet, yet through the grey mists she could see it—not as she had seen it last—yet as she had seen it perhaps in her dreams. It was all so familiar, not as she had dreaded, strange and cold, but it, was as the face of an old friend suddenly grown young again, young and beautiful and sweet.

Her garden—yes it was hers! Changed and yet not changed, even more hers, it seemed to her, now, than had been the weed grown, tangled desert she remembered. Yet she remembered that she had seen it thus in dreams and now, as the sun rose, as the sky was flooded with the glory of the dawn, she saw her garden in all its beauty, in all its reality, as sometimes she had seen it in those strange dreams that had come to her.

Had she not seen it like this when those figures, those strange, beautiful, unreal figures of her imagination had promenaded these old walks, those gracious ladies with their strange old world costumes, their hair dressed so high on their heads, their tiny slim waists, their great bell-like skirts and their little red heeled shoes. Those men in their rich deep skirted coats, their stockinged legs, their swords, their wigs—all those visions that had come to her in dreams, had they not moved and lived in a garden like this, this same garden as it was now, all trim and sweet and gay with flowers?

She felt her heart pounding, throbbing, beating as it had never beat before. She hurried on and on, down the broad stone pathway to the lake and there she saw her little friend, just the same as always, the broken pitcher on her shoulder.

So while the sun rose higher and higher, Betty stood there and nodded solemnly to the little stone figure, who never nodded back. And then, turning to go back to the house before the others should know that she had come here unpermitted, she stopped suddenly and uttered a little choking cry of wonder and amazement. For from here she could see the house, a place of the living, no longer a place of the dead. She could see the curtains fluttering in the breeze at the many open windows, she could see the signs of life there, the primness and neatness of it all!

And it was all familiar, there was no strangeness to her here, she was looking at that which her eyes had seen before and yet how could it be, since she had not entered this place, since those days before the workmen had come to alter it all? How could it be? and yet it was! And then suddenly she turned and did not know why, and looked at an old stone seat that stood on the edge of the great ring about the sundial. Why had she looked at it? What had she expected to see there? What she saw was an old, old stone seat, grey and brown and green in the shadows, golden white where the sun's rays touched it.

And then, filled with wonder, filled with a strange sense of fear, she ran to the house and so back through the door which she bolted and barred after her, and up the steep stairs to her own little room and to sit on the bed with her hands clasped and her eyes staring into vacancy, a vacancy which yet seemed to hold many things, and one thing she saw very plainly, a man who was young, a man whom she knew instantly as he whom she had seen so often at his work in the old garden. But now she saw his face, and he smiled at her, a lean, strong, sunburned face, with eyes as blue as her own! How often in those strange dreams had she seen him, quaintly dressed in a suit of snuff coloured brown, toiling at his work with spade and hoe. "Allan!" she said suddenly. "Allan!" And then she uttered a cry, she hid her face in her hands and shivered suddenly, for she was conscious of a strange feeling of fear, for here was something she could not understand. "Allan!" Why had she said that name? What had put it into her mind and brought it to her lips?

CHAPTER XIX

THE DREAM MAIDEN

If Allan Homewood, Esquire, should by chance meet his wife's maid or any other servant on the stairs, or in one of the innumerable passages of the old fashioned house, it was scarcely likely that he would give more than a passing glance and more than a passing thought to the domestic. If little Betty Hanson should happen suddenly on the master of the house at a turn in the passageway, what more becoming than she should drop her eyes demurely and go on her way?

So while Allan and Betty Hanson had met perhaps a dozen times or more, neither had really seen the other.

Allan was vaguely conscious of a small trim figure, and a wealth of golden hair, which figure when he came tapping at the door of his wife's room usually flitted out by another door.

Betty took kindly to her new duties, she was intelligent, she was quick and she was very eager to be of service to her mistress. Because she was eager to learn she learned rapidly. Kathleen was a gentle mistress, who never lost her temper and saw something rather pitiful in the young girl's evident desire to please.

"Poor little thing!" she said, "she is grateful!" So she was more than usually kind to Betty and the girl whose heart was bursting with love and gratitude, would very willingly have lain down and allowed Kathleen to trample on her.

"What do you think of my little maid, Allan? Don't you think the child is pretty?"

"Eh, your maid? Oh yes!" Allan said. "Quite a pretty little thing!" He was thinking of something else, the fourteenth of the month was weighing rather heavily on him and his spirits.

If it had only been his father who was coming, or only Kathleen's, but that both should come, that both should bring friends of their own troubled Allan. He knew that his father's friends were not likely to find much favour with his Lordship. Allan had met most of them, he knew Cutler, a prosy, self sufficient, middle aged bore. Jobson was another of the same type. Coombe was a big man with a loud voice and vulgar aggressive manner. He told interminable stories without wit or point. They were sound men in the City, very likely, but he dreaded their advent here. For his father he felt nothing but pride and affection. He knew the old man's goodness of heart, his generous nature, his simplicity, for these he loved him and honoured him above all men. Let my Lord Gowerhurst sneer at that good honest man if he dared—if he dared—in his, Allan's presence. It was not of his father, but of Cutler, Jobson, Coombe and Company that Allan felt nervous and whom he worried about.

Kathleen had told him that her father was bringing a friend.

"Who?" Allan asked.

"I don't know, Allan, he writes, an old friend of mine—but I doubt it, very few of my father's friends were mine—I am sorry," she said frankly, "that he is coming. I know that you do not like him, Allan, I cannot wonder that you do not!" She sighed and her head drooped a little.

And Allan, looking at her, felt his heart swell with pity, for he knew what that proud spirit of hers had been called on to suffer because of her father, the Earl.

But was it pity only that made his heart swell, that made him take a step towards her, then stand hesitating?

He turned abruptly and went out into the garden. He was puzzled, uneasy, uncertain—Life had seemed so placid, the future as well as the present had seemed so certain, as certain as anything human could be. He and Kathleen understood one another so perfectly, were such firm friends, such tried companions; yet did they understand one another after all? Did he even understand himself?

He flung himself down onto the stone seat facing the sundial. He had never been in love in his life, and therefore told himself that he knew all about it. Love, he believed, came like a tempest, it swept a man off his feet, it robbed him of his appetite. It caused him sleepless nights, it drove him to a thousand and one follies. Such mad, passionate, foolish love had never assailed him. He had a good appetite and he slept well of nights, he did not write poetry, though he was rather fond of reading it, if it were good. So emphatically he could not be in love and certainly not in love with his own wife!

He laughed at the thought, but the laughter was a little uncertain, a little shaky.

"I am," he said aloud, "no more in love with her than she with me. We are the best of friends, our lives together are practically ideal, we have not had one quarrel in all these weeks, we are not likely to have; how could one quarrel with a woman so gracious, so sweet, so good as Kathleen?"

He thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched out his long legs and stared hard at his boots.

In love? certainly not! and most assuredly not with Kathleen, yet supposing she were to leave him, supposing he must suddenly face life without her? He shuddered at the thought.

Then he refused to consider the matter, to-morrow was the fourteenth, to-morrow would come his father, God bless him, with his beaming face, his car probably packed full of little delicacies and little presents, as well as of City friends, whose coming Allan distinctly dreaded, yet his father should not be made aware of that. There would be a royal welcome for Coombe and Cutler and Jobson, for the sake of the dear old man who brought them.

A telegram had been delivered by the red cheeked messenger from the Little Stretton Telegraph office.

It was carried up to My Lady's room, as Mr. Homewood himself was not visible.

Kathleen tore open the envelope, it was from her father.

Womanlike she glanced at the signature "Gowerhurst" first and a faint hope came that it was to say his Lordship would not be able to come, but he was coming.

"Find trains serve badly, can you send a car to meet us three fifteen Longworthy Station. Gowerhurst."

Of course they could and must. Kathleen sighed a little, she glanced through the window and saw Allan sprawling on the old stone seat by the sundial.

"Betty," she said, "take this telegram down to Mr. Homewood and ask him if he will kindly arrange about it."

Nothing was farther from Allan's thoughts, at this moment, than dreams, or memories of dreams. He had put all that nonsense behind him, long since; he had laughed frankly and whole heartedly when the merest memory of that strangely lifelike dream had come into his mind. If it had affected him—and it had—it affected him no longer.

He was thinking particularly of Coombe, if only his father had contented himself with Cutler and Jobson! They were at least quiet and unobtrusive, while Coombe—Allan looked up.

Down the wide flagged pathway a girl was coming to him. About her was the old world garden, all bright and gay with its flowers, and the trim emerald green lawn, all dappled with sunlight and shadows. Behind her was the old house, the casement curtains fluttering in the gentle breeze and the girl herself dainty and light footed.

Why did he start? Why did he catch his breath suddenly? Why did his eyes dilate? She wore no quaint old-world cap on her gleaming little head of golden hair, she wore no flowered gown, high waisted and cut low to show the white neck. No, she wore a very simple, plain black frock with a dainty white apron. But he knew her! He knew her and his heart seemed to stand still as he watched her, wide eyed with amazement. His outflung hand gripped the back of the stone seat.

So she came towards him, then as suddenly stopped, she stood there looking, looking at him with the bluest eyes he had ever seen. He saw a little hand go to her breast as into her childlike face there came a look of wonder and of fear.

"Betty!" he said. "Betty!" And scarcely knew that he had said it.

"Allan, oh Allan, I——" and then flashed into her face a crimson tide of shame, she dropped her eyes, she stood before him, trembling and abashed.

What had possessed her? What madness was this? Allan—she had dared so to call him, him the master of the house—my lady's husband!

So the man sat, gripping the old seat, and the girl stood there, covered with shame and confusion, not daring to lift her eyes, and silence fell on them both.

What strange mad fantasy was this? Should he waken in a moment to hear Dalabey's voice, as once before? But no, she was real at least, this little maid in her black dress and her head crowned with its shining glory.

But she had called him Allan, the name had seemed to come spontaneously from her lips, as he had called her Betty! He felt shaken, life had suddenly become fantastic to him, nothing seemed very real. It was after all a world of dreams; this too, was a dream. He could almost have welcomed the voice of Dalabey, but it did not come. So she stood there, with bent head and he saw something fluttering in her little hand.

"You—you have brought me a message?" he said, and his voice sounded strangely hoarse and discordant.

"Yes, sir, from—from my Lady!" She dropped him a little curtsey, he could see the flush still in her cheeks, could see that it even stained her white neck and her little ears. He rose and went to her and stretched out his hand. He hoped that she would look up but she did not, never once were the blue eyes lifted to his own. Why had she come, why had she come? He had not wanted her to come, yet she had come into his life after all. She was here, standing before him, not in the picturesque trappings of a byegone century, but in her modern dress, still he knew her well enough.

"Betty, Betty!" Betty who had kissed him, who had told him that she loved him.

He had hoped once that he might meet her in real life. He had pictured her, tried to dream that dream again, yet had never succeeded. And now that at last he saw her, could stretch out his hand and touch her, he knew that it were better that she had not come.

He put out his hand and took the telegram from her, yet did not look at her.

"You are—Betty Hanson, my wife's maid?"

The little head seemed to droop lower, he could see the childish breast heaving under the pretty white apron. She dropped him a curtsey humbly.

"You are Betty!" he said. "And you called me——"

He paused.

"Oh sir, oh sir forgive me. Indeed—indeed I du not know what made me, sir!" Now the blue eyes were lifted to him in pitiful appeal.

"Indeed—oh indeed, sir, I didn't know what I were saying! 'Twasn't as if I myself spoke, 'twas as if—if summut in me made me say it—oh sir—indeed, I couldn't help it! I—I don't know what made me du it!"

How blue her eyes were, how they shone and glittered now with the tears that clung to the sweeping, upturned lashes, how pitiful in its appeal for pardon was the little face! He looked at her with a feeling of pity, and yet not of pity only. It was she! the girl of his dreams, the girl who had come to him and called him "Allan, her Allan," this girl a servant in the house, who had come to him this day in real life and had called him by his name.

What meaning, what strange, unknown, force was behind it all? How could he tell, still less, poor maid, how could she?

"I am not angry, Betty," he said, "indeed, why should I be angry—with you—for I called you Betty, knowing it to be your name, though I did not recognise you as Betty Hanson, my wife's maid. Don't think of it again, child, and do not let it trouble you! Perhaps you are right, it was not you yourself who spoke——"

"And you bain't angry wi' me, sir?" she asked.

He shook his head and smiled. Angry—angry with her—yet had she not once before asked him that selfsame question? Strangely he remembered clearly and distinctly the very words "Allan, Allan, be you still angry wi' your Betty now?"

Perhaps unconsciously he had muttered them aloud, for he was startled to see the look in her face, the wonder, the and excitement.

"What—what made 'ee say those words?" she gasped. "Oh, what made 'ee say 'em?"

"I don't know, I don't know," he said. "Betty, Betty, child, go back, forget all this, it is nonsense—some foolish dream that you and I seem to have shared. Go back, little maid, to your mistress and your work and forget—-" he paused, "forget that you knew my name to be Allan and that I knew you for Betty! Believe me it is better, far, far better so!" He smiled at her kindly. "Don't think that I am angry, why should I be angry? It seems to me, child, that fate is playing some strange trick with us, that is far, far beyond understanding. We must not try to understand it. Betty, better put it out of your mind and forget it——"

"If—if I could!" she whispered. "Oh if I could!"

"We must, both of us," he said sternly. "We must forget what we should never know!"

How pretty she was—and now that the colour was in her cheeks, how lovely she looked in the sunlight with the old garden all about her! Kathleen was right—a rarely lovely little maid was Mrs. Hanson's granddaughter! And as she was, so had been that other maid, the maid of his dream, the same gleaming, golden hair, the same delicate arched brows—the deep blue eyes—with their wealth of uplifted lashes, the fair oval of her cheeks, and the red lipped dainty little mouth that once had smiled on him so kindly and not smiled only, but had come so willingly to meet his own lips.

"Betty, there are some things that it is not given to us to understand, perhaps now and again in the lives of some mortals the curtain is for a moment lifted. It may have been so with us, lifted and then, allowed to fall again—and when it has been lifted only for a moment, Betty, it is better that we who have been granted a sight beyond it, should forget what we have seen and never let it influence our thoughts or our lives. Can you understand me, Betty?"

She nodded silently, she looked at him with her glorious eyes and in them he saw to his dismay, his terror almost, the same light, the light of the love he had seen shining in the eyes of his dream maiden.

But now she broke the spell, she dropped him a curtsey, she was turning away.

"Be there any answer to my lady's message, sir?" she asked.

"No!" he said. "No, there is no answer!"

He went back to the stone seat and sat there, conscious that life and the world had changed suddenly for him. He dropped his chin onto his hand and sat staring, staring and seeing nothing.

He knew that once he had hoped that she might come and she had come and now he knew he was sorry and yet glad, with a strange gladness.

"Betty!" he said and said it aloud. "Betty——!" And saw her, not as he had seen her but a moment ago, but as he had seen her that first time in her picturesque flowered gown, so quaintly high waisted, the neck cut low to shew her slender white throat, the little mittened hands and the mob cap on her shining head.

But the face, the eyes, the lips, ah! they were the same!

He rose suddenly and seemed to shake himself mentally and physically. This was real life, this was the world all about him. There was no time for folly and for dreams—to-morrow the old house would be filled with visitors. He remembered the telegram suddenly and found it crushed into a ball in his hand. He opened it and smoothed it out and read it.

"It is from my wife's father," he said aloud, and then repeated the words as of some set meaning and for some known purpose, "my wife's father!"

CHAPTER XX

THE ROAD TO HOMEWOOD

Long ago before their marriage, Allan had promised to tell Kathleen if his dream maiden should ever come to him in real life. And she had come, yet he had not told his wife. To-morrow the old house would be filled with guests. Kathleen had much to do and much to think about, why trouble her now with this foolish story? After all the visitors were gone—why then—perhaps—but not now!

Then they would have the old house to themselves, then would be the time for confidences, and such foolish confidences after all, why tax her patience with them now?

As for Betty, it was likely that he would see the child again, yet when he saw her, what then? He would not speak to her. Yet at the very thought of that fair, flowerlike face, those deep blue eyes, something seemed to stir within him, the blood seemed to run more quickly in his veins, he was conscious of a heart throb, of a subdued excitement.

And now that she was not here before his eyes, he pictured her, not as he had seen her last, but as he had seen her for the first time, in quaint gown and mob cap, with mittened hands.

No! when the visitors were all gone, when her father and his had taken their departure, when they had the house to themselves once again—then he would tell her and ask her opinion and advice. Perhaps she would send the child away, women did such things he knew, he hoped that Kathleen would not. On the whole he did not think she would. Kathleen could not be guilty of anything that was small and mean.

She looked up at him now as he came in with the same frank kindly smile as always.

"You had my father's telegram, Allan?" she said. "Did you arrange about a car?"

"Yes!"

"Allan, it's very, very wrong of me, yet when I saw the message was from my father I almost hoped that it was to say he could not come!"

He did not answer and she went on.

"He has taken so little interest in us and the house, he has not thought it worth his while to run down, even for an hour to see us, all these weeks, while your father——" she paused.

"I wish," he said, "that my father was not bringing so many of his City friends, I am afraid that his Lordship will not approve of them!"

"Your father surely has a right to bring whom he pleases to this house?"

"Yes, dear, but——"

"I wrote to him. I did not tell you at the time, I told him that all his friends were welcome here, Allan, if we can give him any little pleasure; could we deny it to him, after all that he has given to us and done for us? And, oh! I feel so humble when I think of him and his goodness. I remember what I used to think of him, what I used to permit myself to say of him, before I knew him as I know him now. I feel that I can never sufficiently make amends for that!"

All that evening she talked to him of the visitors who were coming. She herself had seen to Sir Josiah's room, she had arranged vases for the flowers that she would not cut until the morning, so that they should be fresh. It was a sense of duty rather than a feeling of love that caused her to put flowers in her own father's room too, for one thing she knew that he would not appreciate them. That night Allan lay wakeful. He thought of Betty and thought of her with a sense of shame, yet with a strange joy.

Why should it have been as it had? What meaning was behind it all? Was there a meaning that he would ever understand? He remembered what his father had told him of a Pringle—an Allan Pringle who had married a Betty, maid to the then mistress of the house. It had been a sad story, his father had said, the girl had died, poor Betty! He listened to Kathleen's sweet regular breathing, he lifted himself on his arm and watched her sleeping face in the moonlight that came in through the widely opened window.

How good she was, how white and pure she looked lying here in her sleep! He was strangely moved, his mind was filled with a great reverence for her, he bent to her, he touched her cheeks with his lips, so lightly as not to waken her, then he lay down again and slept.

No holiday maker ever set out for a day's pleasuring with keener anticipation than did Sir Josiah this bright September morning. He was to call for Cutler on the way. Coombe was driving his own car and would pick up Jobson, they were to meet at the Chequers at Horley, should they not happen on one another on the road.

There were a thousand and one things to remember, a dozen packages to stow away.

"Mind that there one, Bletsoe, my man, go lightly now!"

"Very good, Sir Josiah!"

"And see Mr. Cutler don't go and put his foot on it," said Sir Josiah, "and let me see, one, two, three, four, that's all right! One moment!" Back into the house he dashed, to reappear with more parcels.

"Reg'lar old Santy Claus," muttered Bletsoe, with a kindly smile, "like a blooming great kid he is, going to 'ave a day's outing!"

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—seven's right, and eight, that's in my pocket; what's the time, Bletsoe?"

"Gone ten, sir!"

"Bless my soul and I promised to be at Cutler's at ten—all right now, Bletsoe, let her go!"

How he had racked his brain, what shops had he not rummaged, what shopmen and shop maidens had he not pestered. He had sent down cases from the wine merchant, stores from Messrs. Whiteley, hundred weights of pâte de foie gras, Strasbourg pies, chocolates and Heaven knew what besides from Messrs. Fortum and Mason's. That lengthy and evidently fragile parcel he had been so careful about was a beautiful and costly vase. Something of the Ming Period or the Chang Dynasty, he was not very sure what, but it cost a great deal. That soft and pliable looking parcel was a silken kimono of rare and wonderful workmanship. Those square parcels were cigars and cigarettes for Allan and Allan's friends. There he sat, this red faced, jolly old gentleman, with a great cigar in the corner of his mouth and he beamed on the world as his magnificent car whirled him up one street and down another.

And here was Cutler actually ready, standing in his open doorway, Cutler in a new and rather becoming tweed suit, and a soft felt hat, an unfamiliar Cutler, for Sir Josiah had never seen him in anything but a silk hat and a correct black coat in the City.

"Hallo Cutler, here we are, a bit late, mind the parcels! Bletsoe, take Mr. Cutler's suitcase, here we are, my boy, lovely morning, looking forward to a delightful run, picking up Coombe and Jobson at Horley. Get in, get in! Have a cigar, no you prefer a pipe. I don't know that you ain't right!"

And now they were really off and away. How nimbly the big car twisted in and out the traffic, how it dodged cumbersome, road monopolising trams, how it slipped round the unwieldy omnibuses! Then away southward Streatham was passed—here was Croydon with its narrow congested streets, past Purley and Redhill, down the long hill somewhere near the foot of which lies the village of Horley and its well known Inn, where Coombe and Jobson would be waiting.