Front matter (continued 3)

"Ah, bad," remarked the sergeant. "It looks as though our friend had an inkling to that effect."

Elma thought the interview would never be over.

It was best to say nothing, or Mrs. Leighton would have had the town searched for Elsie. It was best in every way to crumple tight that incriminating paper and wonder why in the wide world Elsie had done it.

She met the Serpent the following day. There was an impish, happy look of mischief on that usually savage little face. Miss Meredith had been retailing to her mamma the terrific alarm which the Leightons had experienced on the previous evening. She met Elma full face and the smile on her lips died.

"Why did you do it?" asked Elma bluntly as though she had known the Serpent all her life. The Serpent glared blandly at Elma, then fiercely resumed her ordinary pose.

"You came to my house, or your mother did, to take me out of myself--charity-child sort of visit, you know. I heard of that, never mind how. I came to you to take you out of yourselves. I rather fancy I did it--didn't I?"

The ice of reserve had been broken at last and the Serpent was stinging in earnest.

Elma could only gaze at her.

"You think I'm a kind of 'case,' I suppose. Some one to feel good and generous over. Just because my hair is coming out in patches. Well, it's stopped coming out in patches but I still have a few calls to pay."

"Weren't you afraid last night?" asked Elma in complete wonder.

They had moved into a shadow against the wall.

"Afraid," blazed the Serpent, and then she trembled as though she would fall.

"Don't," cried Elma sharply, "don't faint."

"I nearly did--last night. I nearly did. It was dreadful going home. Who knows that it was I who was there?"

"I do," said Elma, "that's all."

"Don't tell a soul," wailed the burglar. "You won't, will you? I know it was awful of me, but such fun up to the moment, when--when I heard them moving inside. Then my legs grew so weak and it was like a dream where you can't get away. You shouldn't have called me the Serpent."

"We didn't," said Elma. "Not in the way you mean. But because you seemed to know about animals in a queer way--like Elsie Venner. Lance said she was half a snake, but just because she knew about snakes. It's difficult to explain."

"Lance?" asked the Serpent.

"Yes, why don't you speak to Lance now and then?"

"I pay him a higher compliment," said the queer little Serpent. "I wore his clothes last night."

"Oh," said Elma. "Oh! yet you could faint to-day--or nearly so."

"Isn't it wicked," said the Serpent. "A boy wouldn't have given in. They do much worse, and don't give way at the knees, you know. I only opened the window and threw in the note. It was nothing. I meant you just to be puzzled. I was there early and couldn't find a suitable window or a door, so I waited till the maids went to bed. They left a little window half open."

"Mamma ought to dismiss cook," said Elma primly.

It was a streak of the sunlight of confidence which did not illuminate the Serpent again for many days to come. Elma, however, at the time, and until she once more met the scornful glare of reserve habitual to that person, felt as though she had found a friend. They said good-bye in fairly jocular spirits, and Elma rushed home to give at least her "all-to-be-depended-upon" mother the news.

When she entered the drawing-room, however, Jean was describing the burglary to a company of people. Little shrieks and "Ohs" and "Oh, however did you do it?" "I should have died, really I should," were to be heard.

Jean's burglar was six feet two by this time and he had an "accomplice."

Elma thought she would choose another occasion on which to give her news to Mrs. Leighton.

CHAPTER XIII

A Reconciliation

Mr. Leighton was very sympathetic over the burglar. He heard of the occurrence in two ways, first in the fiery excited recital of Jean, and then in confidence from Elma. Mrs. Leighton was there also.

"Well, I never!" she said. "That poor little lonely soul stealing about at night! it's dreadful." She never thought for a moment of how foolish it made the rest of them seem.

"She isn't at all afraid of the dark, or the woods, or storms, or anything of that kind," said Elma. "She loves being out with her black cat when it's pitch dark. But she's terrified now of policemen, and I don't think she will ever call properly on us all her life. She's perfectly savage with us."

Mr. Leighton stroked his hair in a preoccupied manner.

"One has to beware of what I should call professional goodness," he said mildly. "It's pleasant, of course, to feel that one does a nice action in being kind to the like of that stormy little person. But when she detects the effort at kindliness! Well, one ought sometimes to think that it must be humiliating to the needy to be palpably helped by the prosperous. There are various kinds of wealth, not all of them meaning money. This child has had no affection. Naturally she scorns a charitable gift of it. It's almost a slight on her own parents, you know."

"There," said Mrs. Leighton in a dismal way, "I told Dr. Merryweather I disliked intruding. It was an intrusion."

"Oh, it will be all right," replied Mr. Leighton. "Don't plague the child over this romp of being a burglar, that's all. And don't patronize her," he said to Elma. "Give her a chance of conferring something herself. It's sometimes a more dignified way of finding a friend."

Elma felt some of her high ideas of reclaiming the serpent topple. Miss Grace had advised differently. "Be kind and helpful," she had declared. Now her father seemed to think that it was the serpent's task to be the generous supporting figure. It made Elma just a little wild with that blazing little serpent Elsie.

For a year and a half their friendship with the serpent existed over crossed swords. She recovered in health, but the routine of her life never wavered. The force of habit in connection with her mother, that the Professor's tempestuous irritable habits should rule the house and that she should be kept quaking in a silence which must not be broken, could not be dispelled even by the diligent visits of Miss Meredith. Adelaide Maud drew off after the first encounter with the Professor. "I'm afraid that there will just have to be a tragic outburst every time Mrs. Clutterbuck says 'a new pair of shoes' instead of 'a pair of new shoes,'" said she, "nothing can save her now."

Soon the efforts of Dr. Merryweather were forgotten in the impenetrable attitude of the whole family.

At the end of eighteen months, most of Ridgetown was collected one day for a river regatta at a reach a few miles up from the town. Every one of any consequence except Lance, as Betty put it, was present. They rowed in boats and watched the races, picnicked and walked on the banks. One wonderful occurrence was the presence of Mrs. Clutterbuck and the Serpent. Mr. Symington had appeared once more and done something this time to penetrate the aloofness of their existence. He had come once or twice to the Leightons' with the Professor.

The girls put this friend of their father's on a new plane.

He could be engrossed in talk with their father and the Professor, and yet not gaze past the rest of the family as though they were "guinea pigs."

They now knew Mr. Sturgis well enough to tell him that he thought nothing more of them than that they were a land of decorative guinea pig. Mr. Symington, however, who had not seen them grow out of the childish stage, but had come on them one memorable evening when the picture of them, for a new person, was really something rather delightful to remember--Mr. Symington was immediately put on a pedestal of a new order. The difference was explained to Robin, who growled darkly. "It's perfectly charming to be received with deference by the man who is splendid enough to be received with deference by our own father," explained Jean. "Don't you see?"

Robin saw in a savage manner. He had never been on this particular pedestal. With all his sister's enthusiasm for Mr. Symington, he could see little to like in that person.

Mr. Symington studied in lonely parts of the world the wild life an ordinary sportsman would bring down with his gun. He was manly, yet learned. Delightfully young, yet stamped with the dignity of experience. Robin in his presence felt a middle-aged oppression in himself, which could not be explained by years.

He was particularly galled by his sister's persistence in keeping near the Clutterbuck party on the Saturday of the river regatta.

There were exciting moments of boat races, duck races, swimming competitions, and so forth. Then came the afternoon when everybody picnicked.

The Leightons had a crowd of friends with them, and took tea near the pool by the weir.

May undertook to teach Betty how to scull in an outrigger, which one of the racers had left in their care for the moment. Betty was daring and rather skilful to begin with. It seemed lamentable that with so many looking on, she should suddenly catch a real crab. May, standing on the bank, screamed to her, as Betty's frail little boat went swinging rather wildly under the trees of an island.

"Look here," cried Jean to May sharply. "What made you two begin playing in such a dangerous part? Sit still," she shouted wildly to Betty.

It seemed as if no one had understood that there was any danger in these little pranks of Betty's, till her boat was swept into mid-stream, and ran hard into certain collision on the island. Jean called for some one to take a boat out to Betty. Then the full danger of the situation flashed on them. Just a few minutes before, a detachment had gone up to the starting point, and no boat was left in which one might reach Betty.

"Sit still," shouted Jean again, "hold on to the trees or something."

It had occurred in a flash. Betty in the quiet water was all very well, but Betty, the timid, out alone on a swirling river with a weir in the very near distance, this Betty lost her head.

Jean's scream, "Sit still," had the effect of frightening her more than anything. "It was what one was advised to do when horses were running off, or something particularly dreadful was about to happen," thought Betty.

She first lost an oar, then splashed herself wildly in the attempt to recover it. The sudden rocking of her "shining little cockle shell," as she had called it only a minute before, alarmed her more than anything. She was being swept on the island, deep water everywhere around it. With a gasp of fear she rose to catch the tree branches, missed, upset the cockle shell at last, and fell into the river.

Those on the bank, for a swift moment, "or was it for centuries," stood paralysed.

"Oh!" cried Jean, "oh!"

There was a swift sudden rush behind them, "like a swallow diving through a cornfield," said May later. A tense, victorious little figure, flinging off hat and a garment of sorts; a splash; a dark head driving in an incredibly swift way through water impatiently almost trodden upon by two little wildly skimming hands, then a voice when Betty rose: "Lie on your back, I'll be with you in a minute," and the valiant little Serpent was off to the saving of Betty. It was sufficiently terrifying on account of the weir. If Elsie reached Betty, would she have the strength to bring her back. If Elsie did not reach Betty, Betty could not swim. It was dreadful. Jean, second-rate swimmer as she was, would have been in herself by this time, but that Elma held her.

"She's got her," she whispered with a grey face. They shouted when the Serpent turned slightly with Betty. She was like a fierce little schoolmistress. "Don't interfere with me, he on your back. Keep lying on your back," and Betty obeyed. At the supreme moment the Serpent had come into her own, and displayed at last the talent which till then had only been expended on her cats and dogs. "Lie still," she growled, and obediently, almost trustingly, Betty lay like a little white-faced drowned Ophelia. Then "Come along with that boat," sang out the Serpent cheerily.

Round the bend of the river above, at sound of their cries had come "Hereward the Wake, oh how magnificent," sobbed Jean. It was Mr. Symington.

The Serpent, with hard serviceable little strokes, piloted Betty lightly out of the strength of the current. Mr. Symington was past and gently back to them before a minute had elapsed.

"Grip the gunwale," he said cheerily to Elsie. It was the tone of a man addressing his compatriot.

(Oh! how magnificent of the Serpent.)

"Now," he said. "Keep a tight hold on her still. I must get you into quiet water." He pulled hard. Immediately he had them into the backwater. It was rather splendid to see him get hold of a tree, tie the boat, and be at the side of the Serpent before one could breathe. He had rowed in with the full strength of a strong man, and in a minute he was as tenderly raising Betty. He had never properly removed his eyes from her face. "She was just faulting. You held on well," he said approvingly. "Don't let her sisters see her at present." He lifted Betty to the bank.

"Quick, open your eyes," he said commandingly.

"Look here," called the Serpent. She had scrambled neatly out by herself, "Betty, Betty Leighton, oh! Betty, open your eyes." There was an answering quiver. "Quick, Betty, before your sisters come. Don't frighten them. Open your eyes, Betty."

Mr. Symington rubbed Betty's hands smoothly in a quick experienced manner.

Betty opened her eyes and looked at the Serpent.

"Oh, Elsie," she said, "Elsie, you sweet little Serpent!" It was an end to the crossed swords feud. Elsie took her in her arms and cried.

When the girls arrived panic-stricken they found Mr. Symington trying to get a coherent answer to his orders from two bedraggled girls, who could do nothing but weep over each other. The brave little Serpent had lost her nerve once more.

"Oh!" she said, "it's very wicked to be a girl. Boys wouldn't give way like this."

Jean looked at her narrowly, "Do you always go about in gymnasium dress, ready to save people?" she asked, with the remains of fear in her voice.

The brave little Serpent looked down on her costume, and the red which glowed in her cheeks only from mortification ran slowly up and dyed her pale face crimson. "Oh!" she said, "oh!" and sat speechless.

Betty sat up shivering. "I do call that presence of mind, don't you? She flung off her skirt, didn't you, dear?"

The Serpent would have answered except that the "dear" unnerved her. She faded to tears once more.

"Come, come," said Mr. Symington.

And at that, as they afterwards remembered, Mabel "came."

She came through the trees in a white dress, and the sunshine threw patches of beautiful colour on her hair.

"Oh, little Betty!" she cried.

Then she saw the Serpent.

She took Elsie right up against the beautiful white dress and kissed her. Mabel could not speak at all. But her eyes glowed. She turned them full on Mr. Symington. "We must take these children home at once," she said.

Mr. Symington looked as though he had been rescuing an army. "Yes," said he gravely.

Robin had trailed in looking somewhat dissatisfied.

"Jean would go, wouldn't she?" he asked.

"Oh no, I don't want mummy to know," said Mabel. "She is up there with Mrs. Clutterbuck. These two must go home, and get hot baths, and be put to bed and sat upon, or they won't stay there. Where can we get a cab, I wonder?"

"Here," said a voice.

Adelaide Maud now came through that beautiful pathway of sun-patched trees with Elma. "I've heard all about it," said she, "and we have the carriage. Borrow wraps from every one and tuck them in. We shall keep Mrs. Clutterbuck employed till Mr. Symington comes back."

It seemed that they all took it for granted that Mr. Symington would go.

Robin showed signs of losing his temper. Mabel as a rule, when these imperious fits descended on him began to investigate her conduct and wonder where she might alter it in order that he might be appeased. This time, however, she was too anxious and concerned over Betty, and while Jean might be quite whole-hearted in her manner of looking after people, one could not depend on her for knowing the best ways in which to set about it. In any case, the two could not be kept there shivering.

Adelaide Maud was a trifle indignant at the interruption. "Quick," she said to Mr. Symington, "get them in and off."

"Oh you are the fairy princess, always, somehow, aren't you," sighed Betty, happily, as on their being tucked in rugs and waterproofs, Adelaide Maud gave quick decided orders to the coachman.

"Isn't she just like a story book," she sighed rapturously. They drove swirling homewards, in a damp quick exciting way until they pulled up at the door of the White House.

"Oh, mine was nearer," said the Serpent nervously. She had never entered the portals of the White House in this intimate manner, and suddenly longed for loneliness once more.

"Well," said Mabel sweetly and nicely, "you will just have to imagine that this is as near for to-day at least. Because I am going to put you to bed."

They laughed very happily because they were being put to bed like babies.

"If only Cuthbert were here," said Mabel anxiously and in a motherly little way to Mr. Symington, afterwards, "he would tell me whether they oughtn't to have a hot drink, and a number of other things they say they won't have."

"I should give them a hot drink," said Mr. Symington with his grave eyes dancing a trifle. "And keep them in blankets for an hour or two."

It was he who found Mr. Leighton and told him a little of what had happened. ("Oh the conspiracies which shield a parent!") For days Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, the Professor and Mrs. Clutterbuck, had an idea that the two girls had merely fallen in and got very wet. In any case, Elsie often came home in considerable disrepair. When one found, however, that neither was the worse for the fright, Elsie was made a real heroine. It changed her attitude completely. The Leightons liked her now whether they felt charitable or not. It was a great relief. And one day her own father focussed his far-away gaze on her, as though he had only then considered that there was anything on which to look at her particular place at table.

"They tell me--ahem--that you can swim," he exclaimed. "Very excellent exercise, very."

To an outsider it did not sound like praise, but his sentence set Elsie's heart jumping in a joyous manner.

"Oh, papa," she said. "I was very frightened afterwards."

"Hem," said he, "an excellent time in which to be frightened."

Mrs. Clutterbuck congratulated herself on his having said it (she would have made it "time to be frightened in," and the Professor in such good humour, too!)

Happier days had really dawned in that grim household however.

The growing up of the courage of Elsie became a wonderful thing.

Meanwhile other events had occurred than the saving of Betty. Robin had had to go home alone, and Lance had the benefit of some of his ill-humour on meeting him on the way.

"Who shot cock Robin to-day?" reflected Lance with speculative eyes on that retreating person. He nearly ran into a very athletic figure coming swinging round on him from the Leightons'.

Hereward the Wake was in his most magnificent mood and his eyes shone with the light of achievement. He was speaking when he turned, and the words dropped automatically even before the impish gaze of Lance.

"Knew you and named a star," quoted Mr. Symington.

"Now what on earth has that to do with the boat race?" asked Lance.

CHAPTER XIV

The First Peal

Mabel was twenty-one when her cousin Isobel Leighton came to make her home at the White House. Isobel's mother had died ten years before, and since the more recent death of her father, she had stayed for a year or two with her mother's relations. Now, suddenly, it seemed imperative that Mr. Leighton should offer her a place in his own family, since various changes elsewhere left her without a home. It was the most natural thing in the world that everybody should be pleased. The girls got a room ready for her, and took pains towards having it specially attractive. They even made plans amongst their friends for Isobel to be suitably entertained. "Though how we are to manage about dance invitations and that sort of thing, I can't think," said Jean. "It's bad enough with two girls, and sometimes no man at all. It will be awful with three."

Elma herself was on the verge of being eligible for invitations. Mabel looked as though she did not mind much. Worrying thoughts of her own were perplexing her, thoughts which she could not share with any one just then. The spring of her life had been one to delight in. Tendrils of friendship had kept her safely planted where Jean, the revolutionist, tore everything by the roots. What was not good enough for Jean immediately was had up and cast away. What had not been good enough for Jean had been their own silly enthusiasm for the Story Books. Jean in her own mind had disposed of the whole romance of this by beating Theodora at golf. She now patronized Theodora, and ignored the others. Adelaide Maud she already considered entirely passé.

The confidences of long ago were shaken into an unromantic present. The Dudgeons called ceremoniously twice a year, and invited the girls to their dances. Mabel and Jean went, occasionally with Cuthbert "cut in marble," and were inexpressibly bored in that large establishment.

"It doesn't seem to make up for other things that one sits on velvet pile and has a different footman for each sauce," Mabel declared. "We have to face the fact that the Dudgeon establishment is appallingly ugly."

So much for Mrs. Dudgeon's beaded work cushion effect.

"It's only a woman who would make you leave an early Victorian drawing-room for a Georgian hall, and get you on an ottoman of the third Empire, and expect you to admire the mixture," growled Cuthbert. It was this sort of talk that was to be had out of him after he had been to the Dudgeons' balls.

Elma still prized her meetings with Adelaide Maud at Miss Grace's, but recognized where her friendship ceased there. There seemed no getting further into the affections of Adelaide Maud than through that warm comradeship at Miss Grace's, or through her outspoken admiration for Mr. Leighton. And "Adelaide Maud had grown passé" Jean had declared.

The world seemed very cold and unreal at this juncture.

Mabel came into Elma's room one day looking very disturbed. There was a fleeting questioning look of "Are you to be trusted?" in her eye.

"You know I'm to be trusted, Mabs," said Elma, as though they had been discussing the iniquity of anything else. "You aren't vexed at Isobel's coming are you?"

"Oh, no," said Mabel quickly, "it isn't that, it's other things." She threw herself languidly on a couch.

"Haven't you noticed that the Merediths haven't been here for a fortnight?"

Elma brushed diligently at fair, very wavy hair. It fell in layers of soft brown, and shone a little with gold where the light touched the ripples, diligently created with over-night plaiting. She had grown, but in a slender manner, and was admittedly the petite member of the family. There was a wealth of comprehension in the glance she let fall on Mabel.

"Mabel, you don't mean to quarrel with them do you?"

It seemed that the worst would happen if that happened.

"I don't suppose I shall have the chance," said Mabel. She took a rose out of a vase of flowers, and began to pluck absently at the petals.

"I think I should love to have the chance."

"Oh, Mabel," said Elma distractedly, "how dreadful of you! And how fatal it might be! I shouldn't mind quarrelling a little. I think indeed it would be lovely, if one were quite sure, perfectly convinced, that one could make it up again. That's why I enjoy a play so much. Every one may be simply disgusting, but they are bound to make it up. If only one could be absolutely safe in real life! But you can't. I don't believe Mr. Meredith would make it up."

"I am sure he wouldn't." Mabel plucked at a pink leaf stormily. "That's why I should like to quarrel with him."

"Mabs, don't you care for him now?" Elma's eyes grew wide with trouble. It was not so much that Mabel had given any definite idea of having cared for Mr. Meredith. It had been a situation accepted long ago as the proper situation for Mabel, that there should be an "understanding" in connexion with Mr. Meredith. It established limitless seas of uncertainty if anything happened to this "understanding" except the most desirable happening. Mabel leaned her head on her hand.

"You see, dear," she exclaimed, "this is how it is. Long ago, papa so much disliked our talking about getting married, any of us, even in fun you know, that it was much easier, when Mr. Meredith came, just to be friends--very great friends, you know, but still--friends. Papa always said he wouldn't let one of us marry till we were twenty-three. That was definite enough. And he has been quite pleased that we haven't badgered him into getting engaged. Still, I always think that Robin ought to have said to him, once at least, that sometime he wanted to marry me. He didn't, I just went on playing his accompaniments, and being complimented by his sister. Now--now, what do you think? He has grown annoyed with papa for being so kind to Mr. Symington. Fancy his dictating about papa!" Mabel's eyes grew round and innocent.

"But that's because Mr. Symington is nice to you, perhaps," said Elma, as though this burst of comprehension was a great discovery on her part.

"Exactly," said Mabel calmly. "But if you leave unprotected a cake from which any one may take a slice, you can't blame people when they try to help themselves. Robin should be able to say to Mr. Symington, 'Hands off--this is my property,' and then there would be no trouble. As it is, he wants me to do the ordering off, papa's friend too!"

"What did you say to him, Mabel?" Elma asked the question in despair.

"I said that when Mr. Symington had really got on--then would be the time to order him off."

Mabel fanned herself gently. Then her lip quivered.

"I don't think papa ever meant to let me in for an ignominious position of this sort--but here I am. If Robin won't champion me, who will?"

"Oh, but surely," said Elma, "surely Robin Meredith would never----"

"That's the trouble. He would," said Mabel. "And once you've found that out about a man--you simply can't--you can't believe in him, that's all."

Elma sat in a wretched heap on her bed.

"I think it's horrid of him to let you feel like that," she said. "Other men wouldn't. Cuthbert wouldn't to any one he cared for."

"Lots wouldn't," said Mabel. "That's why it's so ignominious, to have thought so much of this one all these years!"

"Mr. Maclean wouldn't," said Elma. She had always wondered why Mabel had ignored him in her matrimonial plans.

"No, I don't believe he would," said Mabel. "But that's no good to me, is it?"

"Mr. Symington wouldn't," said Elma.

"Oh, Elma!"

Mabel's eyes grew frightened. "That's what scares me. I sit and sit and say, Mr. Symington never would. It makes Robin seems so thin and insignificant. He simply crumples up. And Mr. Symington grows large and honourable, and such a man! And I'm supposed in some way to be dedicated to Robin. It's like having your tombstone cut before you are dead. Oh, Elma, whatever shall I do!"

Elma was quite pale. The lines of thought had long ago disappeared with the puckerings of wonder on her face. Here indeed was thunder booming with a vengeance, and near, not far off like that golden picture of years ago. Mabs was in deep trouble.

"You see what would happen if I told papa? He would order off Mr. Symington in a great fright, because he has never thought somehow that any of us were thinking of him except that he is an awfully clever man! I think also that papa would turn Robin out of the house."

"I believe he would," said Elma in a whisper.

"And then--how awful! All our friends, their friends! Everywhere we go, we should meet Sarah Meredith! What a life for us! I should like to quarrel--just because I'm being so badly treated, but the consequences would be perfectly awful," said Mabel. She took it as though none of it could be helped.

Elma was quite crumpled with the agitation of her feelings.

"You must tell papa, Mabel," she said gently.

"Oh, Elma, I can't--about Mr. Symington. Imagine Mr. Symington's ever knowing and thinking--'What do I care for any of these chits of girls!' Robin has always got wild--if I smiled to my drawing master even. What I hate, is being dictated to now. And his sulking--instead of standing by me if there is any trouble. He isn't a man."

A sharp ring at the bell, and rat-tat of the postman might be heard. Somebody called up that a letter had come for Mabel.

Elma went for it and produced it with quaking heart. The writing seemed something very different to any of the letters which came to Mabel.

It was from Mr. Symington.

It explained in the gentlest possible way that he had learned from Miss Meredith that his presence in Ridgetown caused some difficulty of which he had never even dreamed. He wrote as a great friend of her dear father's, and a most loyal admirer of her family, to say the easiest matter in the world was being effected, and that his visit to Ridgetown had come to an end.

The paper shook gently in Mabel's fingers, and fell quivering and uncertain to the floor. She looked up piteously and quite helplessly at Elma, like a child seeking shelter, and then buried her head on the couch. She cried in long, strangled sobs, while Elma stood staring at her.

Elma pulled herself together at last.

"Mabel dear, I'm going to read it."

Mabel nodded into her bent arms.

"Oh but," said Elma after shakingly perusing that document, "but he can't--he can't do this. It's dreadful. It's like blaming you! What can Miss Meredith have said? Oh! Mabel! Mabel, I shall cut that woman dead wherever and however I meet her. Oh, Mabel--what a creature! Don't you cry. Papa will explain to Mr. Symington. He will believe papa. Papa will explain that you had nothing to do with it, that you don't mind whether he goes or stays--that----"

"But I do mind," said Mabel in cold, awe-struck tones. "That's the awful part. And it's nothing but the smallness of Robin that has taught me, Mr. Symington is the only man worth knowing in the whole earth."

She clasped her hands in a hopeless way.

"And he has been sent away, banished, by the very man who should have made it impossible for me to see any good quality in any one else except himself."

"Who will play Mr. Meredith's accompaniments now?" Elma asked. "Why they can't get on without you, dear." She still believed that just as plays were arranged, so should the affairs of Mabel come back to their original placidity.

"I shall never play another note for Robin Meredith," said Mabel.

Elma could not yet doubt but that Robin would come directly he knew how satisfactorily he had disposed of his rival. One hoped that Mr. Symington had only explained so far to Mabel. That afternoon they were to meet Isobel, so that every one was more or less occupied, and always on this same evening of the week, Friday, the Merediths were at an open "at home" which the friends of the Leightons attended at the White House. The question was, would the Merediths come?

Mabel did not seem to care whether they came or not. She sat, crushing the letter and not looking at Elma.

"Elma dear," she said at last, "I can't stand this. I shall tell papa. Mamma will only say 'I told you so' for our having been such friends with the Merediths. But I can't bear that she shouldn't know I'm not ashamed of anything," she caught her breath with a slight sob. "But I'm done with Robin."

It seemed magnificent to Elma that for her own honour she should jeopardize so much. Men like Mr. Meredith were so rare in Ridgetown. Yet when she asked her, couldn't she still admire Robin, Mabel said very truthfully then "No."

Elma would have liked to say that it didn't matter about Mr. Symington.

"Robin will never enter this house again," Mabel said with quivering lip.

But he came--several times.

CHAPTER XV

The Arrival

The 4.50 train hammered and pounded in a jerkily driven manner to Ridgetown. It was hot, and most of the windows lay open in the endeavour to catch any air that had escaped being stifled in smoke and the dust of iron. Miss Meredith occupied a first-class carriage together with two people. One, an old gentleman who travelled daily and who did not count, the other a dark-eyed girl of pale complexion. She wore irreproachably fitting tweeds, and as though to contradict the severity of their trim appearance, a very flamboyant red hat. It was tip-tilted in a smart way over her nose, and had an air of seeming to make every other hat within eyeshot scream dejectedly, "I come from the country."

The red hat came from the town, London presumably. The dark girl seemed in a petulant mood, as though the atmosphere of the carriage stifled her in more ways than by its being uncontrollably hot. It was out of gear with the smooth, madonna-like appearance of her features, that she should be petulant at all. There was an indescribable placidity about her carriage and expression which contradicted her movements at this moment of nearing Ridgetown. She caught Miss Meredith's eye on her, and seemed annoyed at the interest it displayed. Miss Meredith was much impressed by her appearance. As a rule, she confined her ideas of people in Ridgetown either to their being "refined" or "rather vulgar." This girl had not the air of being either of those two. She was a type which had never been dissected in Ridgetown. It was as evident that one would neither say of her that she was the complete lady, nor yet that she was un-ladylike. One could say that she was good-looking, adorably good-looking. Calm, lucid eyes, containing a calculating challenge in their expression, milky complexion framing their mysterious depths of darkness, red lips parting occasionally with her breathing over startlingly white teeth, this was all very different to the rosebud complexions, the rather shy demeanour of Ridgetown.

Miss Meredith could act as a very capable little policeman when she became interested in any one. She determined to act the policeman now that she was aware this must be a visitor to Ridgetown. They had passed the last slow stopping-place, and were nearing what must be her destination. Each station without the name of Ridgetown had evidently annoyed the dark girl.

"The next station is Ridgetown," said Miss Meredith pleasantly.

The dark girl stared.

"Oh, ah, is it?" she asked negligently.

An old gentleman rose from the corner and began collecting his belongings.

"May I help you?" he asked, and lifted down her dressing case.

She became radiant.

"Thank you so much," she said very gracefully.

Miss Meredith felt in an annoyed manner that her own overtures had been unrecognized in favour of these. She could be an abject person, however, wherever she intended to make an impression, and decided not to be non-plussed too soon. Doubtless the dark girl was about to visit some friend of her own. She rose at her end of the carriage to get a parasol from the rack. It allowed the new arrival to swing out on the platform even before the train was stopped.

Miss Meredith saw Isobel being received by the Leightons.

This was enough to allow of Miss Meredith's slipping away unnoticed before a porter came to find the neglected dressing bag. But she went unwillingly, and in a new riot of opinion. The truth came forcibly that the new cousin would be a great sensation in Ridgetown. It was strange that she had never dreamed that the dark girl might be the Leightons' cousin. No occasion would be complete without her. A few weeks ago, and she might have had her first reception at the Merediths', where they should have had the distinction of introducing her. Now, owing to late events, relations might be rather strained between themselves and the Leightons.

Miss Meredith had grown more ambitious each year with regard to her brother. She was the ladder by which he had climbed into social prominence in Ridgetown. Her diligence overcame all obstacles. At first, she had deemed it delightful that he should be attached to Mabel, now it seemed much more appropriate that he should make the most of the Dudgeons. Through the Leightons they had formed a slight acquaintance there, which had lately shown signs of development. It became necessary to sow seeds of disaffection in the mind of Robin where the Leightons were concerned. He had become too much of their world. He was a man not easily influenced, and he had had a great affection for Mabel. But the constant wearing of the stone had invariably been the treatment for Robin, and lately a good deal of wearing had been necessary on account of Mr. Symington.

She began to recall just how much she had said to Mr. Symington. Her face burned with the recollection that he had shown how much he thought of Mabel. She had put the matter from Mabel's point of view. While Mr. Symington was there, Mabel's happiness with Robin was interfered with. Miss Meredith had intended to infer that it was his constant attendance at the White House which was being called in question. Whereas, he had already, unknown to her, settled on it as meaning Ridgetown. He had interrupted her abruptly, with stern lips, "Pardon me, but will you let me know distinctly,--is Miss Leighton engaged to your brother?" Miss Meredith saw her chance and took it at a run. "Yes," she said. It was hardly a lie, considering how Robin and Mabel had been linked for so many years in a tacit sort of manner.

"That--I had not understood," said Mr. Symington. Whereupon he immediately wrote his letter to Mabel.

Miss Meredith had always had her own ideas of Mr. Symington. He was not the companion for these very young girls. He was not old, on the other hand, but he possessed a temperament which put him on another plane than that of the rather boisterous Leighton family. On the Meredith plane, if one would have the words spoken.

"Robin," she said that evening, after the arrival of Isobel, "let us go down to the Leightons' as though nothing had happened."

Robin turned a reserved mask of a countenance in her direction.

"You women can do anything," he said.

The weariness of being without these kaleidoscopic friends of theirs had already beset him. They were still in time to find the old level again. It would certainly be a freezing world without the Leightons. Everybody knew that one might get social advantages with the Dudgeons, but one had always a ripping time with the Leightons.

Miss Meredith, on her part, began to wonder, now that Mr. Symington was warned and would keep Robin from feeling the desirability of the girl whom two men were after, whether Robin himself might be more gently weaned than by thus being borne away on an open rupture. Robin was in the position of a man who had been brought up by mother and sister. Practically, whatever he had touched all his life had remained his own, sacred and inviolate. It seemed that Mabel ought to have remained his own merely because he had once stretched out his hand in her direction. Then, he began to find that he reckoned with a family which had been taught unselfishness.

Isobel, to do her justice, always imagined that Mabel from the reserve of her welcome on the occasion of her arrival, resented her presence at the White House. She noticed that of all the girls to welcome her, Mabel kept a constrained silence. This she immediately put down to a personal distaste of herself, and controlled her actions accordingly. From the first moment of greeting her aunt and uncle, and sitting down to table, she upheld a sweetness of character which was unassailable, and which put Mabel's distrait manner into rather wicked relief. Isobel's was a nature, formed and articulate, entirely independent of the feelings and sympathies of others, a nature which could thrive and blossom on any trouble and disappointment, so long as these were not her own. She had learned in the mixed teaching of her rather stranded life, that very little trouble or disappointment came in the way of those who could see what they wanted and grab with both hands accordingly. She determined to grab with both hands every benefit to be derived from being leader in the Leighton family. She had come there with the intention of being leader. Before the meal was over, she had gained the good opinion of all except Mabel, an intentional exclusion on her part. Mabel had received her without effusion. Here was rivalry. In the most methodical and determined manner, she began a long siege of those rights and privileges which Mabel, as head of the Leighton girls, had never had really questioned before. She supplied a link in their musical circle, incomplete before. She could sing. Her methods were purely technical and so highly controlled, that the rather soulful playing of the Leighton girls shrank a little into a background of their own making. Isobel's voice was like a clear photograph, developed to the last shred of minuteness. One heard her notes working with the precision of a musical box. The tiring nature of her accomplishments was never evident at a first performance. These only appeared to be ripplingly brilliant. She had the finished air and mechanical mannerisms of the operatic artist, and they became startlingly effective in a room where music only in its natural and most picturesque aspect had been indulged. Mr. Leighton endeavoured to reconcile himself to a person who was invariably at top notes, and Isobel deceived herself into thinking that she charmed him. She charmed the others however, and Jean especially was at her feet. It struck her that probably she would be able to get more of the fat of life out of Jean than out of any one. She noted that Jean ordered a good deal where others consulted or merely suggested. Ordering was more in her line.

Of Mrs. Leighton she took no account whatever, except that she was invariably sweet in her presence.

It dawned on no one that a very dangerous element had been introduced into the clear heaven of the wise rule of the White House.

Mabel's mind at the start, it is true, was in a subconscious condition of warning. The particular kind of warning she could not recognize, but, long after, attached it to the attitude of Isobel. In a month or two, she found that while her family still remained outwardly at one with her, a subtle disrespect of any opinion of hers, a discontent at some of her mildest plans, seemed to invade the others. It came upon her that her ideas were very young and crude with Isobel there to give finer ones.

Ah! that was it. Isobel was so much better equipped for deciding things than she was. It affected Mabel's playing when she imagined that her family found it at last not good enough. She never could play for Isobel. On the first night of arrival, Mabel was most concerned, however, on how she was to give certain news to her father and mother. Mr. Leighton had heard from Mr. Symington--only that he had been called away. Mabel took the news in public with a great shrinking Her heart cried out in rebellion, and instead of indulging that wild cry, she had to be interested in the arrival of Isobel. She caught Isobel's keen darkness of gaze on her, and shifted weakly under its influence to apparent unconcern and laughter.

At the worst of it, when they were taking tea in the drawing-room after dinner, Robin and his sister came in. Miss Meredith's coup was worth her fear and distrust in experimenting with it. Robin became genuinely interested in Isobel. This made him almost kind to Mabel.

It concentrated all Mabel's wild rush of feelings to a triumph of pride. Where she would willingly have gone to her room and had it out with herself, she waited calmly in the drawing-room and heard Isobel's first song.

Miss Meredith's heart glowed feebly. She had won her point. But Mabel's face heralded disaster.

Elma too would not look at her.

Elma trembled with the weight of what she would like to say to Sarah Meredith, and could not. Feebly she determined not to shake hands with her, then found herself as having done it.

Mr. Leighton talked quite unconcernedly about the departure of Mr. Symington. "Can you tell me why he leaves us so suddenly?" he asked of Miss Meredith.

She had always made a point of liking to be asked about Mr. Symington. This time she seemed afraid of the subject, certainly of Mr. Leighton's airy manner of handling it. Robin's face flushed hotly in an enraged sort of manner. Mabel's grew cold.

With all their experience of each other, and their knowledge of what had been going on, none in the room knew the nature of the crisis at hand, except the actors in it, and Elma. But, by the intuition of a nature that scented disaster easily and wilfully, Isobel, without a word from one of them, saw some of these hearts laid bare.

Miss Meredith, ill at ease, interested her immensely.

Miss Meredith at last answered that she knew nothing of the reason why Mr. Symington had left so abruptly.

Elma rose shaking in every limb.

"That is not true," she said. Her voice, more that her words carried effect.

She could go no further, she could only say, "That is not true."

Mrs. Leighton looked very surprised, and then helplessly bewildered. Miss Meredith had a talent for seeing her chance. She saw it here. She turned in a rather foolish way, as though they intended some compliment.

"Indeed," said she, "you all over-rate my influence with Mr. Symington. It is nothing to me whether he goes or stays."

Mabel pulled Elma into a corner.

"Oh shut up dear, for Heaven's sake shut up!" she whispered, and that incident was closed.

But Isobel began to play with a loud triumphant accompaniment and sang in a manner which might have shown every one the thing which she thought she had just discovered.

Instead, they all declared they had never heard such clear top notes.

CHAPTER XVI

The Thin Edge of the Wedge

It seemed to Mabel that Isobel's proposals, kindly worded and prettily mentioned, were always impossible of acceptance. She did nothing but refuse these overtures to friendship for the next week or so. This was the more awkward since she was particularly anxious to make everything nice for Isobel. But the proposals and the overtures seemed continually to occur in connexion with the Merediths. It was a ridiculous thing of course that Isobel should be proposing anything in connexion with the Merediths.

Jean had now found some one after her own heart, one who did not wait for invitations, but thought immediately on a plan for making one's self known to people. Isobel had already called on the Dudgeons. Her progress was a royal one, and Mabel hated herself for the way she alone, though often with the backing up of Elma's companionship, kept out of things. She ventured to tell Jean why Robin no longer was a friend of hers. Jean seemed then to think him all the more eligible for Isobel. This hurt more than one dared to believe. But Jean always had been for a direct way of dealing with people, sentiment not being in her nature at all. She considered it stupid of Mabel to bother about a man to whom she had not even been engaged.

Mabel, rather morbidly clung to her pride after this, and refused Elma's repeated pleadings to tell her mother and father. If one's own sister called one a donkey, it wasn't much encouragement to go on to more criticism. Mabel would rather see Isobel married to Robin than say a word more on her own account. Elma worried about it as much as Mabel did, and nothing would induce her to go near the Merediths. Mr. and Mrs. Leighton noted the difference, but had to confess that changes of a sort must come. Above all, Mabel was very young, and they did not want to press anything serious upon her just then. Robin's behaviour remained so gentlemanly that no one could convict him of anything except a sudden partiality for Isobel.

"They are all children of a sort," said Mr. Leighton, "and children settle their own differences best."

Isobel felt the difficulty of the number of girls in the place. It appalled her to think of Elma's creeping up next, and making the string lengthen. She looked with positive disapproval on Elma with her hair up. In a forlorn way, Elma felt the great difference between her seventeenth birthday, and that glorious day when Mabel entered into her kingdom.

Mabel was in trouble, Jean engrossed with her own affairs, and Isobel sweetly disdainful when Elma turned up her hair. She put it down again for three weeks, and nobody seemed to be the least pained at the difference.

At every visit to Miss Grace, she wondered whether or not it would be quite loyal to tell her about Mabel. Miss Annie and she were, however, so uncomprehending about anything having gone wrong, so interested in the new cousin, that invariably Elma's confidences were checked by such a remark as, "How very sweet Isobel looked in that pink gown to-day," and so on. Then one had to run on and be complimentary about Isobel. It seemed to Elma that her heart would break if Miss Grace, along with every one else, went over to Isobel.

She was not to know that Adelaide Maud had been there before her.

"I can't quite explain," said Adelaide Maud to Miss Grace one day, "I can't explain why I feel it, but this new cousin isn't on the same plane with the Leightons. There's something more--more developed, it's true, but there's also something missing."

"Something that has to do with being a lady?" asked Miss Grace in her timid way.

"Exactly. I know my London types, and this isn't one I should fasten on to admire, although she makes rather a dashing brilliant appearance in her present surroundings."

"I'm a little concerned about that," said Miss Grace.

In spite of her uniform courtesy where Isobel was concerned she had quite a talk with Adelaide Maud regarding her.

"I should fancy it's this," said Miss Grace finally, "that while she stays with the Leightons she has all the more income on which to look beautiful. I can't help seeing an ulterior motive, you observe. I sometimes wonder, however, what she will do to my little girls before she is done with them."

The first thing Isobel did was to inflame Jean with a desire to sing. There was no use trying to inflame Mabel about anything. After Jean had discovered that she might have a voice there was nothing for it but that she should go to London. She begged and implored her father and mother to let her go to London. She was the only member of the family who had ever had the pluck to suggest such a thing. They had a familiar disease of home-sickness which prevented any daring in such a direction. Mabel had twice come home a wreck before she was expected home at all, and invariably vowing never to leave again.

And now Jean, the valiant, asked to be allowed to go alone to London in order to study.

"It's Isobel who has done it," wailed Betty. "She's so equipped. We seem such duffers. And it will be the first break."

Mr. Leighton groaned.

"Why can't you be happy at home," he asked Jean.

"Oh, it will be so lovely to come back," said Jean, "with it all--what to do and how to do it--at one's fingers' ends."

"You don't keep your voice at your fingers' ends, do you?" asked Mrs. Leighton.

It seemed superb nonsense to her that Jean should not take lessons at home. Isobel marvelled to find that the real difficulty in the way of Jean's getting was this mild obstinacy of Mrs. Leighton's.

"I can tell Jean of such a nice place to live--with girls," said Isobel. "And I know the master she ought to have."

"And we can't all vegetate here for ever," said poor Jean.

Nothing ever cost Mr. Leighton the wrench that this cost him, but he prepared to let Jean go.

Mabel and Elma would rather anything than that had happened just then. It had the effect of making Isobel more particular in being with Mabel rather than with Jean. Had she sounded the fact that with all Jean's protestations, Mabel was the much desired--that people were more keen on having the Leighton's when Mabel was of the party! Elma began to speculate on this until she was ashamed of herself.

They played up for Jean at this juncture as though she were going away for ever. One would have thought there was nothing to be had in London from the manner in which they provided for her. Even Lance appeared with a kettle and spirit lamp for making tea.

"You meet in each other's rooms and talk politics and mend your stockings," said he, "and you take turns to make tea. I know all about it."

Maud Hartley gave her a traveller's pincushion, and May Turberville a neat hold-all for jewellery.

Jean stuck in her two brooches, one bangle, a pendant and a finger ring.

Then she sighed in a longing manner.

"If I use your case, I shall have no jewellery to wear," she said to May.

At that moment a package was handed to her. It was small, and of the exciting nature of the package that is first sealed, and then discloses a white box with a rubber strap round it.

"Oh, and it's from Bulstrode's," cried Jean in great excitement. "The loveliest place in town," she explained to Isobel. "What can it be?"

It was a charming little watch on a brooch clasp, and it was accompanied by a card, "With love to dear Jean, to keep time for her when she is far away. From Miss Annie and Miss Grace."

"Well," said Jean, with her eyes filling, "aren't they ducks! And I've so often laughed at Miss Grace."

"They are just like fairy godmothers," said Elma. "Jean! It's lovely."

She turned and turned the "little love" in her hand.

Where so many were being kind to Jean, it appeared necessary to Aunt Katharine that she also must make her little gift. She gave Jean a linen bag for her boots, with "My boots and shoes" sewn in red across it.

"I don't approve of your trip at all," she said to Jean, "but then I never do approve of what your mother lets you do. In my young days we were making jam at your age, and learning how to cure hams. The stores are upsetting everything."

"I want to sing," said Jean, "and your bag is lovely, Aunt Kathie. Didn't you want very badly to learn the right way to sing when you were my age?"

Aunt Katharine sang one Scotch song about Prince Charlie, and it was worth hearing for the accompaniment alone, if not for the wonderful energy with which Aunt Katharine declaimed the words. Dr. Merryweather, in an abstracted moment, once thanked her for her recitation, and this had had the unfortunate result of preventing her from performing so often as she used to.

"No, my dear," she said in answer to Jean's remark, "I had no desire to find out how they sang at one end of the country, when my friends considered that I performed so well at the other end. The best masters of singing are not all removed from one's home. Nature and talent may do wonders."

Then she sighed heavily.

"The claims of home ought to come first in any case. Your mother and father have given you a comfortable one. It is your duty to stay in it."

"Well, papa has inflamed us with a desire to excel in music. It isn't our fault," said Jean. "And one can't get short cuts to technique in Ridgetown."

"I quite see that your father places many things first which ought to come last," said Aunt Katharine dismally. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, for four girls, even including Jean with her boot bag, had risen at her, "I forgot that I am not allowed free expression in regard to my own brother-in-law."

Aunt Katharine could always be expected to give in at this point, but up to it, one was anxious.

Cuthbert came down to bid farewell to Jean.

"You are a queer old thing," he said to her. "Living in rooms is a mucky business, you know."

"Oh, I shall be with twenty other girls," said Jean; "a kind of club, you know. Isobel says it's lovely. And then we get so stuck here!"

Cuthbert admitted that it wasn't the thing for them all to be cooped up in Ridgetown.

"Couldn't stand it myself, without work," said he. "And then, it's ripping, of course."

It was lovely to have Cuthbert back, and he made a new acquaintance in Isobel. She had been a queer little half-grown thing when he had last seen her.

In an indefinite way he did not approve of her, but finding her on terms of such intimacy with every one, he only gave signs of pleasure at meeting her.

Elma was in dismay because there were heaps and heaps of things for which she wanted Cuthbert, and he only stayed two days. An idea that he could put a number of crooked things straight, if he remained, made her plead with him to come again.

Cuthbert promised in an abstracted manner.

"Give me one more year, Elma, and then you may have to kick me out of Ridgetown," he said. "Who knows? At least, I shall make such a try for it, that you may have to kick me out."

Everybody nice seemed to be leaving, and Adelaide Maud was away.

It was rather trying to Elma that Isobel should about this period insist on visiting at Miss Annie's. Isobel seemed to be with them on every occasion, from the moment that Jean arranged to go to London.

Jean got everything ready to start. With Isobel's help she engaged her room from particulars sent to her. It was the tiniest in a large house of small rooms, but Jean, rather horrified at a detached sum of money being singled out by her father from the family funds, was determined to make that sum as small as possible. Mr. Leighton saw these preparations being made and was helpful but dismal about them. Mrs. Leighton presented her with a travelling trunk which would cover up and be made a window-seat, no doubt, in that room where the tea parties were to occur. Everything was ready the night before her departure, and exactly at 7.15, when the second dressing bell rang for dinner, as Betty explained afterwards, Jean broke down.

This was an extraordinary exhibition to Isobel, who had travelled, and packed, and always moved to a new place with avidity. She said now that she would give anything she was worth at that moment to be flying off to London like Jean.

"Oh," said Jean, "it's like a knife that has cut to-day away from to-morrow, and all of you from that crowd I'm going to. Do you know," she said, as though it were quite an interesting thing for them to hear about, "I feel quite queer--and sick. Do you think that perhaps there is something wrong with me?" She even mentioned appendicitis as a possible ailment.

"You are getting home-sick," said Mabel, who knew the signs.

Jean was much annoyed.

"You don't understand," she said. "I'm not silly in that way. I don't feel as though I could shed a tear at going away. I'm just over-joyed at the prospect. But I'm so wobbly in other ways. I'm really terrified that I'm going to be ill."

Poor Jean ate no dinner. Jean didn't sleep. Jean perambulated the corridors, and thought of the night when Cuthbert got hurt. She wished that she were enough of a baby to go and knock at her mother's door, as they had done then, and get her to come and comfort her. She hoped her father wasn't vexed that she had asked to go, and hadn't minded leaving him. Then she remembered how she intended coming home--a full-blown prima donna sort of person--one of whom he should really be proud. This ought to have set her up for the night, but the thought of it failed in its usual exhilarating effect.

The sick feeling returned, with innumerable horrors of imaginary pain, and a real headache.

Jean saw the dawn come in and sincerely prayed that already she had not appendicitis.

CHAPTER XVII

A Reprieve

The first two letters from Jean were so long, that one imagined she must have sat up most of the night to get them off.

"I don't mind telling you that I felt very miserable when I got to my rooms," she said among other things. "I drove here all right, and the door was opened by a servant who didn't seem to know who I was. Then she produced a secretary who looked at me very closely as though to see whether I was respectable or not. She took me up to my room, and it's like a little state-room, without the fun of a bunk. There's one little slippy window which looks out on the gardens, and across the gardens there are high houses, with occasionally people at the windows. One girl with a pink bow in her hair sits at a window all day long. Sometimes she leans out with her elbows on the sill, and looks down, and then she draws them in again and sits looking straight over at me. She's quite pretty. But what a life! It must be dreadful only having one room and nothing to do in it. My piano hasn't come, and until it arrives, it's like being the girl with the pink bow. At home it's different, we can always pull flowers, or fix our blouses or do something of that sort. The girls here don't seem to mind whether one is alive or dead. I think they are cross at new arrivals. I sat last night at dinner at a little table all by myself, on a slippery linoleum floor, and thought it horrid. Then it would have been fun to go to the drawing-room ('to play to papa,' how nice that sounds), but the girls melted off by themselves. I looked into the drawing-room and thought it awful, so I ran up to my room and stayed there. The girl with the pink bow was at her window again, and I really could have slain her, I don't know why."

Then "I'm to have my first lesson to-morrow. I'm so glad. Because I can't practise, even although my piano has come. A girl who writes made the others stop playing last night in the drawing-room because it gave her a headache. It makes me think that no one will want to hear me sing. I suppose they think I'm very countrified.

"I think the real reason why I can't practise is because I'm not very well. London food doesn't seem so nice as ours, and I still have that funny feeling that I had when I started. I suppose you are all having jolly times. You would know that girls lived in this house. It's all wicker furniture, and little green curtains, and vases of flowers. I've only gone out to see about my lesson, except to the post and quite near here. I don't like going out much yet. Isobel's directions were a great help."

This letter stopped rather abruptly. So much so that Mr. Leighton was far from happy about Jean. He bothered unceasingly as to whether he should have allowed her to go. Mrs. Leighton enlarged his anxiety by her own fears. Jean's growing so much faster and taller than any one else had been a point in her favour with her mother a few years before, and Mrs. Leighton had never got over the certainty that Jean must be delicate in consequence.

"I hope she won't have appendicitis," said she mournfully.

"Oh, mummy," said Mabel, "Jean is only home-sick."

Jean wrote another desponding letter.

"Home-sick or not home-sick, if Jean is ill, she has got to be nursed," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Jean has never been ill in her life," Mabel pointed out. "She hasn't even felt very home-sick. It will pass off, mummy dear."

But it didn't.

Jean sat, in dismal solitude, in the room looking over to the girl with the pink bow, and she thought she should die. She did not like the words of encouragement which came from home. Every one was trying to "buck her up" as though she were a kid. No one seemed to understand that she was ill.

At the fifth day of taking no food to speak of and not sleeping properly, and with the most lamentable distaste of everything and every one around possessing her, she detected at last an acute little pain which she thought must be appendicitis.

She went out, wired home "I am in bed," and came back to get into it.

Once the girls in the house heard that she was ill, they crowded into her room with the kindest expressions of help and sympathy. They brought her flowers and fruit, and one provided her with books. Then they came in, as Lance had promised, and made tea for her. Jean took the tea and a good many slices of bread and butter, and felt some of the weight lifted. It might not be appendicitis after all.

And she never dreamed of the havoc which her telegram might create. Towards the evening, she got one of her effusive visitors to send off another telegram. "Feeling better," this one declared.

She did not know that just before this point, Mr. Leighton had determined to fetch her home from London. The whole household was in despair. Mrs. Leighton wanted to start with him in the morning. Mr. Leighton was not only anxious, he was in a passion with himself for ever having let Jean go.

"Madness," he said, "madness. I cannot stand this any longer."

Isobel hated to see people display feeling, and this excitement about a girl with a headache annoyed her infinitely. She was invited out to dinner with Mabel, and Mabel would not go.

"Papa is in such a state," Mabel said, "I could not possibly go out and leave him like this. Let us telephone that we cannot come."

Isobel checked the protest that rose to her calm lips. She was ready in a filmy black chiffon gown, and her clear complexion looked startlingly radiant in that framing. She had quite determined to go to the dinner party.

"Let me telephone for you, Mabel," she said with rather a nice concern in her voice. "Then it won't take you away from your father."

Mabel abstractedly thanked her.

"Say Jean is ill please, and that papa is in fits about her. The Gardiners will understand."

Isobel telephoned.

She came back to Mabel with her skirts trailing in little flaunting waves of delicate black.

"They beg me to come. It's so disorganizing for a dinner party. What shall I do?" she asked in an interrogative manner.

Mrs. Leighton said, "Oh, do go, Isobel," politely. "Why should anybody stay at home just because we were so foolish as to let Jean go off to London alone?"

"Oh, well," said Isobel lightly, "when you put it like that, I must."

She went to telephone her decision.

It was nearly four weeks afterwards when, in quite an unexpected manner, Betty discovered that she never telephoned that second time at all. Isobel had arranged her going from the start, adequately.

Mabel was left alone with the anxious parents when Jean's second telegram came in. It opened Mabel's eyes to the fact that perhaps for once Jean was really homesick. It was so much like the way she herself would have liked to have acted on some occasions and dared not. Jean had never been ill or been affected by nerves before, and had therefore no confidence in recoveries. No doubt her interest in the new experience had made her imagination run away with her. She disliked London and wanted to get out of it--that was clear enough. But after just six days of it--with everybody laughing at her giving in! The thing was not to be thought of.

It seemed to Mabel that her own difficult experiences lately, all the hard things she had had to bear, culminated in this sudden act of duty which lay before her. She must clear out--go to Jean and help her through.

"Oh, papa," she said, "please let me go."

Mr. Leighton jumped as though she had exploded a bomb.

"What, another," asked he; "isn't one enough! No, indeed! I've had quite enough of the independence of girls by this time. There's to be no more of it. Jean is coming home, and you will all stay at home--for ever."

He never spoke with more decision. Mrs. Leighton had reached the point where she could only stare.

Mabel sat down to her task of convincing them. She looked very dainty--almost fragile in the delicate gown of the particular colour of heliotrope which she had at last dared to assume. A slight pallor which Mrs. Leighton had noticed once or twice of late in Mabel had erased the bright colour which was usual with her. She spoke with a certain kind of maturity which her mother found a little pathetic.

"You see, papa, it's like this. If you go to Jean now, in all probability whenever she sees you she will be as right as the mail, just as the rest of us are when we've been home-sick. Then she will be awfully disgusted that she made so much of it when she finds out what it is, and it won't be coming home like a triumphant prima donna for her to come now, will it? She will fall awfully flat, don't you think? And Cuthbert and Lance and you, papa, will go on saying that girls are no good for anything. You will take all the spirit out of us at last."

"She mustn't go on being ill in London," said Mrs. Leighton. "We can't stand the anxiety."

"Let me go up for a week or two, and see her started," pleaded Mabel. "I've been there, you know, and know a little about it, and she would have time to feel at home. If I find her really ill, I could send for you. Jean wouldn't feel an idiot about it if I went up just to see her started."

Then Mabel fired her last shot.

"It would be good for me, mummy. I've been so stuck lately. Won't you let me go?"

Something in Mabel's voice touched her mother very much.

"Won't Robin miss you?" she asked in a teasing, but anxious way. "You don't tell us, Mabel, whether you want Robin to miss you or not. And that's one of the main things, isn't it?"

Mabel started, and her eyes grew wide with a fear of what they might say next.

"It's all right, Mabs! Don't you worry if you don't want to talk about it," said her father cheerily. There was a reserve in all of them except Jean which kept them from expressing easily what they were not always willing to hide.

"Oh," said Mabel, "I think I did want to, but n-never could. I don't think I want to be c-coupled with Robin any more. It was fun when I was rather s-silly and young, but it's different now."

She looked at her father quite sedately and quietly.

"I think Robin thinks a good deal more of Isobel and I'm glad," she said quite determinedly. "The fact is, I was sure I would be glad if something like that happened. I was sure before Isobel came."

Mr. Leighton patted her shoulder.

"Thank you, my dear, for telling us. You're just to do as you like about these things. Difficult to talk about, aren't they? Remember, I don't think much of Robin now, or that sister of his. They could have arranged it better, I think. Never mind. I shall be glad to have you find worthier friends." He patted her shoulder again, and looked over at Mrs. Leighton. She was surreptitiously wiping her eyes. Mabel sat strong and straight and rather radiant as though a weight were lifted.

"I don't think," said Mr. Leighton to his wife in a clear voice, "I don't think that either you or I would be of greater service to Jean than Mabel could be! Now, do you, my dear, seriously, do you?" He kept an eye on her to claim the answer for which he hoped.

"I don't think so, John," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Then could you get ready for the 8.50 to-morrow morning?" asked Mr. Leighton of Mabel.

Mabel hugged him radiantly for answer.

"I don't know how I can live without two of you, even for a week," he said. "But then, I won't be selfish. Make the most of it and a success of it, and I shall always be glad afterwards that you went."

It was no joke to have to prepare in one evening for a visit to London. Elma's heart stopped beating when she heard of the arrangement.

"Oh, Mabs, and I shall be left with that--bounder!"

The word was out.

Never had Elma felt so horrified. Years she had spent in listening to refinements in language, only to come to this. Of her own cousin too!

"Oh, Mabs, it's shameful of me. And it will be so jolly for Jean. And you too! Oh, Mabs, shall I ever go to London, do you think?"

"You go and ask that duck of a father of ours--now--at present--this instant, and he will promise you anything in the world. No, don't, dear. On second thoughts he needs every bit of you here. Elma! Play up now. Play up like the little brick you are. You and Betty play up, and I'll bless you for ever. Don't you know I'm skipping all that racketing crowd. I'm skipping Robin. I'm skipping Sarah! Think of skipping the delectable Sarah!" She shook her fist in the direction of the Merediths' house. "And what is more, dear Elma, I am skipping Isobel."

She said that in a whisper.

They had all the feeling that Isobel was a presence, not always a mere physical reality.

Elma had not seen Mabel in such a joyous mood for weeks.

"And it's also because I feel I can soon square up Jean, and make her fit," said Mabel; "so that I'm of some use, you see, in going. I'm quite sure Jean is only home-sick after all."

She trilled and sang as she packed.

"Won't you be home-sick yourself, Mabel?" asked Elma anxiously.

"I have to get over that sooner or later. I shall begin now," said Mabel.

"Won't it be beastly in that girls' club?" wailed Betty.

"Oh, I'm sure it will," quivered Mabel. She sank in a heap on the floor.

"Whatever possessed Jean to go off on that wild chase, I can't think," cried Betty.

"I know," said Elma.

"What?"

"Isobel."

The gate clicked outside and there were voices. Betty crept to the window-sill and looked over. Mabel and Elma stood silent in the room. Crunching footsteps and then Isobel's voice, then Robin's, then "Good-night."

Mabel, with a smothered little laugh, flung a blouse into her trunk.

"Isn't it ripping, I'm going to London," said she.

CHAPTER XVIII

"Love of our Lives"

Elma in the privacy of her best confidences had called Isobel a bounder. The iniquity, viewed even only in the light of a discourtesy, alarmed her, and made her more than anything "buck up" to being "nice" to her cousin.

Isobel had been quite taken aback by the news of Mabel's departure. She had bargained for almost anything rather than that. Jean had continually rubbed it in that Mabel was no use for going anywhere away from home. And now she was being sent to succour Jean. Isobel had gone out with the news for everybody that Mr. and Mrs. Leighton would be leaving in the morning. She had even made some plans. Now, what she looked upon as the tutelage of Mr. and Mrs. Leighton remained, and Mabel, whom she already regarded as the most useful companion where her own interests were concerned, was going off to London.

She could not avoid looking very black about it. To be left there with two children, Elma and Betty, chained hand and foot to that kindergarten! One could hardly believe that so dark a cloud could sit on so clearly calm, so immobile a countenance. Mabel detected the storm, and it had the effect of making her the more relieved and willing to be off.

She had many thoughts for Elma.

"Don't be hustled out of your rights, dear," she whispered. "Remember, you are the head."

Elma had to remember almost every hour of the day. The rule of Isobel was subtle, and it was most exceedingly sure. She did not take the pains to hide her methods from Elma and Betty, as she had done from Mabel and Jean. She openly used the telephone, not always with the door shut. It brought her plenty of engagements. When a dull day offered itself, Isobel invariably was called up by telephone to go out. She never dreamed of inviting Elma. Mrs. Leighton she looked after in a protecting way which was very nice and consoling to that lady stranded of her Jean. Many plans were made for Mrs. Leighton's sake, which Elma considered must have often surprised her. It did not seem necessary that Mrs. Leighton should attend tea at the golf club for instance, but Isobel insisted on seeing her go there. Everybody congratulated the Leightons on having such a charming girl to keep them company while Mabel and Jean were away. Isobel had certainly found a vocation.

She came in to Mrs. Leighton and Elma in the drawing-room one day in her prettiest tweeds with rather fine furs at her throat.

"Hetty Dudgeon has just rung me up, asking me to go to see her this afternoon," she said calmly. "I don't suppose you care for the walk," she asked Mrs. Leighton.

Mrs. Leighton roused herself from the mental somnolence of some weeks.

"Miss Hetty! Why, I was speaking to her half an hour ago. She wanted to send an introduction to Jean. She--she, why, it's very strange that she didn't tell me she wanted you to come. And you've dressed since. In fact, she said----"

Mrs. Leighton got no further.

"She must have changed her mind," said Isobel in a careless manner. "Well, good-bye, everybody, I'm off."

Mrs. Leighton sat a little speechless for the moment.

"I don't think I quite like that of Isobel," she said. "Miss Hetty did not want any one this afternoon. She told me why--she's so frank. Vincent is coming."

Elma sat debating in her mind, should she tell her mother or should she not. It was hardly right that Isobel should drag in the telephone, anything, under her mother's unsuspecting eyes, for her own ends. It was wildly impertinent to her mother.

"Mummy, Isobel knew that Vincent was going and she made up her mind to go too!"

"Made up her mind!"

"Yes--she almost half arranged it with Vincent at the golf club the other day."

"Then--then what about telephoning!"

"She never telephoned at all," said Elma.

Mrs. Leighton would willingly have had that unsaid.

"It is dreadful to think that any one would take the trouble to do such a thing for the sake of going to the Dudgeons," she said. "Are you sure you are not mistaken?"

"Oh, Miss Meredith is happy for a week if she can squeeze in an excuse for going to the Dudgeons," replied Elma. "The Dudgeons are such 'high steppers,' you know."

"I don't like it," said Mrs. Leighton, "I really don't. None of you were brought up to go your own way like that, and I don't admire it in other people."

"Isobel believes in grabbing for everything one wants with both hands. She doesn't mean to do anything wicked. She simply means to be on the spot," said Elma.

"But what about loyalty, and friendship, and--and honour?" said poor Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, when you are grabbing with both hands for other things you haven't time for these."

"My precious child! What in the wide world are you saying!" Mrs. Leighton was quite horrified.

"Nothing that I mean, or believe in, mummy. Only what Isobel believes in. She thinks we are fools to bother about loyalty and that kind of thing. She hasn't had any one, I think, who cared whether she was honourable or not. And it must be distracting to know that all the time she can be perfectly beautiful. It must make you think that everything ought to come to you, no matter how."

Elma was really scourging herself now for that iniquity of "the bounder."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" said Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, mummy, I'm almost sorry I told you now. Except that it lifts the most awful weight from my mind. I've been so afraid that while Isobel went on being so sweet and graceful that we should all get bad-tempered if you believed in her very much. She countermands my orders to the servants often and often, and they never think of disobeying her. That's one thing I want to ask you about. If I insist on their obeying me, will you back me up? I simply crinkle before Isobel, I hate so to appear to be against her in any way. But Mabel told me I'm to play up as head of the house, and I'm not doing it while Isobel upsets any order of mine with a turn of her little finger. It's awfully weak of me, but I've always said I was made to be bullied, I do so hate having rows with people."

The murder was out then.

Mabel had been gone four weeks, and the housekeeping which had gradually drifted into her hands was now of course in the command of Elma, or ought to be. Mrs. Leighton saw at last where Isobel had been getting hold of the reins of government.

"You must not be jealous of Isobel's attractions," she said. "And you know, Elma, any little squabble with your cousin would be a rather dreadful thing."

"Awful," said Elma.

"Your father would never forgive us."

"He would understand, though," said Elma. There was always such a magnificence of justice about her father.

"He is feeling being without the girls so much," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Yes," said Elma. "But, oh! mother, he is so pleased now that they are getting on. And isn't it magnificent of Mabel! That's what makes me think I must play up here. Miss Grace says it's very weak to give in on a matter of principle. She says that whether I'm wrong or right, the servants ought to obey me."

Mrs. Leighton debated for a long time.

"I quite see your difficulty," she said. "But above all things, we must never let Isobel think she hasn't her first home with us. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes, mummy," said Elma. "If only you will back me upon the servant question once. Then I don't believe we shall have any more trouble with Isobel. I don't mind about whom she telephones to or whom she doesn't, but I do mind about the housekeeping. She thinks I'm such a kid, you know. And I mustn't for the credit of the family remain a kid all my days."

There was a far stronger motive to account for Elma's determination than any mere slight to herself. It was that Isobel had known about Robin and yet appropriated him as though he were a person whom one might make much of. The treatment of Mabel turned her from a child into a woman blazing for justice.

As they sat down to dinner that night, she noticed that her own little scheme for table decoration had been changed. At dessert she asked, with her knees trembling in the old manner, "Who changed my table centre?"

Nobody answered till Isobel, finding the silence holding conspicuously, said in a careless way, "Oh, I found Bertha putting down that green thing." Elma flushed dismally. (If she could only keep pale.)

She simulated a careless tone, however.

"Oh, Isobel," she said, "I wish you wouldn't. When I give directions to the servants, it's very difficult for me if some one else gives them others." It was lame, but it was there, the information that she was in control.

"Very distracting for the servants, too," said Mrs. Leighton calmly, and ratified Elma's venture with her approval.

She ate a grape with extreme care.

Isobel did not answer. She froze in her pink gown however, and a storm gathered kindling to black anger in her eyes.

She looked Elma over, her whole bearing carrying a threat. It was a pose which generally produced some effect.

But Elma was fighting for something more than her own paltry little authority. She was bucking up "for Mabel's sake."

She pretended to treat it as a joke now that Isobel "knew."

"So after this I'm in undisputed authority," she exclaimed, and wondered at herself for her miraculous calmness. "And if you, Betty, endeavour to get more salt in the soup or try on any other of your favourite dodges, I shall--"--she also ate a grape quite serenely--"I shall half kill you."

"Oh, Betty," she said afterwards, "I feel as though I had gone in for a bathe in mid-winter. Did you see her eye!"

"I did," said Betty. "So did papa. You'll find it will be easier for us now. How calm you were! I should have fainted."

"My knees were knocking like castanets," said Elma. "If I had had them japanned, you would have heard quite a row. But it's very stimulating." It occurred to her that now she could write in a self-respecting manner to Mabel.

Isobel after this entirely blocked off Elma from any of her excursions. Even the visits to Miss Grace were over so far as Isobel was concerned, and Elma once more had that dear lady to herself.

She would not tell Miss Grace how it had happened that her cousin no longer accompanied her. Occasionally, however, Isobel stepped in herself and found her former audience in Miss Annie.

None of it affected Elma as it might have done. Isobel hardly spoke to her, certainly never when they were alone. It alarmed Elma how she could light up when anybody was present, any one who counted, and be quite companionable to Elma.

This all faded before the success of Mabel and Jean, who were now writing in the best of spirits.

And oh! "Love of our lives," Adelaide Maud, who was now in London, had called on them. It opened up a fairyland to both, for she took them to her uncle's house, and fêted them generally. Good old Adelaide Maud.

There was no one like her for bringing relief to the rich, and helping the moderately poor.

So Elma described her.

It seemed odd that it should be difficult to know Adelaide Maud except in an emergency. Elma, on the advice of Miss Grace, merely had to send her one little note when in London, with Mabel's address, and Adelaide Maud had called.

There were great consolations to the life she now led with Isobel. Cuthbert vowed he would come down to Elma's first dance. How different it was to what she had anticipated! She would go with Isobel and Isobel would be sweetly magnificent, and Elma would feel like a babe of ten. She longed to refuse all invitations until Mabel came home. Then the unrighteousness of this aloofness from Isobel beset her, and they accepted an invitation jointly.

Isobel ordered a dream of a dress from London. Elma was in white. Mabel and Jean sent her white roses for her hair, the daintiest things. Cuthbert played up, and George Maclean found her plenty of partners. Isobel was quite kind. Mr. Leighton had looked sadly on Elma on seeing her off.

"Another bird spreading its wings," said he.

She looked very small and delicately dainty. Whereas Isobel, "Isobel was like a double begonia in full bloom," said Betty.

The begonia bloomed till a late hour effulgently.

Elma simply longed all the time for Mabel and Jean, and oh! "Love of our Lives," Adelaide Maud.

It was Lance who christened her "Love of our Lives."

"What's that idiot going on about," asked Cuthbert, as he swung Elma off on the double hop of a polka.

"He is talking about Adelaide Maud. I'm so dull because she isn't here."

"You are?" asked Cuthbert.

There was a curious inflection on the "you" as though he had said, "You also?"

"Yes," said Elma, "though it's so often 'so near and yet so far' with Adelaide Maud, she is really my greatest friend."

Cuthbert seemed impressed.

"She doesn't need to make so much of the 'so far' pose," he said gruffly.

"Oh yes, she does," replied Elma. "It's her mother. She withers poor Adelaide Maud to a stick. It's a wonder she's such a duck. Adelaide Maud, I mean. Cuthbert, when are you coming home for a long visit?" she asked.

"Next summer. I shall tell you a great secret. I think I am to get a lectureship, quite a good thing. Can you keep it from the pater until I'm sure?"

"Rather," said Elma.

"Then," he said, "if it isn't all roses here next summer, you'll only have one person to blame."

"One?" asked Elma.

Visions of Isobel cut everything from her mind.

"Is it Isobel?" she asked mildly.

"Isobel!" Cuthbert looked so disgusted that she could have kissed him.

She saw Isobel at that moment. She was swaying round the room in the perfection of rhythm with no less an old loyalist than George Maclean. Ah, well--all their good friends might drift over there, but she still had Cuthbert. The joy of it lent wings to her little figure. It always had been and always remained difficult for her to adapt her small stride to men of Cuthbert's build. This night she suddenly acquired the strength and ease--the knowledge which really having him gave her, to make dancing with him become a facile affair.

"Oh, Cuthbert, this is ripping," she sighed at last. "If it isn't Isobel, who is it?" she asked him.

"Why, Elma, you are a little donkey! Who could it be, but 'Love of our Lives,' Adelaide Maud?"

He swung her far into the middle:--where the floor became as melted wax, and life opened out to Elma like a flower.

"Oh, Cuthbert dear, how ripping," said little Elma.

CHAPTER XIX

Herr Slavska

Mabel had discovered that a woman with a mission hasn't such a bad time of it. She set out on her journey to Jean without one of her usual misgivings. It was jolly to think that she might be able to be of some use in the world. The tediousness of a long journey of changes till she reached the main-line and thundered direct to London did not pall on her as it had done before. Throughout she thought, "I'm getting nearer to Jean, and I shall put her on her feet."

She prepared to hate the girls' club, but to be quite uninfluenced by it. She would take Jean out, till neither of them cared what the club was like at all. She forgot Robin and Isobel and everything except one thing which she would never forget, and Jean.

She drove up to the door of the club in the most energetic and independent mood she had ever experienced. She didn't care whether the secretary looked her up and down or not. She merely went straight to Jean's room. Jean didn't at all pretend that it was a downcome. She simply wept with delight at the sight of Mabel.

"And I never shed a tear, not one, till you came," said she. "I'm so glad you came just when I began to get better."

Mabel did not dare to tell her that she had only been home-sick.

"If I tell her that, she will lie in bed to convince me that she is really ill," she thought.

Girls' voices were heard screaming volubly.