Front matter (continued 5)

"You beautiful wild anemone!" breathed the fencing girl in a whisper.

Mabel and Jean heard the soft words with surprise. It was a new light through which to look on Elsie. They had never quite dropped the pose of the benignant girls who had taken Elsie "out of herself." To them she was rather a protégé than a friend; much as Mabel at least would have despised herself for that attitude had she detected it in herself. She acknowledged an immediate drop in her calculations, when the fencing girl did not ask as most people did, "Who is that queer little thing?" It was difficult in one sudden moment to adjust oneself to introducing Elsie as "You beautiful wild anemone!"

Jean, however, merely summed up the fencing girl as rather ignorant. "Why," she said frankly, "I declare it's Elsie!" and in a whisper declared, "There's nothing beautiful about Elsie."

They welcomed her heartily, curiously, and wondered if Lance's latest news of the family was true.

"Mother Buttercluck," he had written, "has come in for a little legacy. It's she who clucks now (grammar or no grammar) and the Professor chimes in as the butter portion merely. May heard about it. Can you imagine Mrs. C. saying, 'I'd love to have some one to lean on,' and the Buttercluck, who would have declared before--'On whom to lean. Pray do be more careful of your English,' not having a cluck left! Though I do think Elsie had knocked a little of the cluck out before the legacy arrived."

Elsie did not seem to be bursting with news. She sat in rather a grown-up, reliable way, opening her furry coat at their orders, and drawing off her gloves. Her hair was up in loose, heavy coils on her neck, and it parted in front with that restless rippling appearance which made one think of the open air. The tip-tilted nose, which had seemed the principal fault in the face which had always been termed plain in childhood, seemed now to lend a piquancy to her features. These were delicately irregular, and her eyebrows were too high, if one might rely on the analysis of Jean.

The fencing girl sat and stared at her with her foil balanced on a crossed knee. If one wanted to do the fencing girl a real kindness, to make her radiantly happy, then one introduced her to some one in whom she might be interested. Life was a garden to her, and the friends she made the flowers. She was not particular about plucking them either. "Oh, no indeed," she would say, "I've seen some one in the park to-day who is more sweet and lovely than any one human ought to be. I should love to know her, of course, but she was just as great a joy to look at. Why should you want to have everything that's beautiful? It's merely a form of selfishness."

Mabel and Jean imagined that it was more a pose on the part of the fencing girl than any talent of Elsie's which immediately impressed her on this afternoon. They were later to discover that a thrill of expectancy, of interest, was Elsie's first gift to strangers.

"Oh, no," breathed the fencing girl to herself, "you are not beautiful, really; you are a personality--that's it."

Elsie sat pulling her gloves through her white hands.

"Lance says Mrs. Clutterbuck has a legacy," said Jean bluntly. "I suppose it's true, but we are never sure of Lance, you know."

She passed a cup and some buttered toast.

"Oh, yes, it's true," said Elsie. "I do so envy mamma."

"Why? Doesn't she--haven't you the benefit of it too?" asked Mabel in surprise.

"Oh, yes. It isn't that, you know." Elsie swept forward, with a little furry cape falling up to her ears as she recovered a dropped glove. "It's giving papa a holiday. I've thought all my life how I should love to grow up and become an heiress, and give my papa a holiday."

"You thought that," asked Jean accusingly. "Come now--when you were climbing lamp-posts and skimming down rain-pipes----"

"Yes, and breaking into other people's houses," said Elsie slowly.

"Did you do that too?" asked Jean.

"Once," said Elsie dreamily, "only once. I was a dreadful trial to my parents," she explained to the fencing girl.

"You weren't spanked enough," said Mabel, shaking her head at her.

"My papa was too busy, and mamma too concerned about him to attend to me," smiled Elsie. "Poor mamma! She knew if I told my father what I did, it would disturb his thoughts, and if his thoughts were disturbed he couldn't work, and if he couldn't work the rent wouldn't be paid."

"Oh," said Mabel with memories heaping on her, "had you really to worry about the rent?"

The fencing girl began to talk at last.

"It makes me tired," said she vigorously, "the way in which you people, brought up in provincial and suburban places, talk. Because you can't afford to be there unless your fathers have enough money to take you there, you think there's no struggle in the world. You ought to live a bit in towns where people are obliged to show the working side as well as the retired and affluent side. You poor thing, stuck in suburbia, among those Philistines, and thinking about the rent! I suppose they only thought you were bad tempered."

The fencing girl had landed them into a conversation more intimate than any they had attempted together.

"Oh," said Elsie, and she looked shyly at Mabel and Jean. "I was a tiny little thing when I got my first lesson. A lady and her daughter called on mamma the second week we were in Ridgetown. I came on them in the garden afterwards. They were going out at the gate, and they didn't see me coming in. This lady said to her daughter, quite amiably: 'It's no use, my dear; I suppose you observed they have only one maid.' They never called again."

The fencing girl bit her lip with an interrupted laugh.

"Isn't that suburbia?" she asked. "Now, isn't it?"

"It made me a little wild cat," said Elsie. "Everybody in Ridgetown had at least two maids, except ourselves."

"Do you know," said Jean, "I know the time when we would have wept at that if it had ever happened to us. It isn't a joke," she told the fencing girl.

Elsie gave a long, quiet laugh. "If I ever have children," she said, "I hope I may keep them from being silly about a trifle of that sort."

"That's one of the jokes of life though. You won't have children who need any support in that way.

"Won't I?" asked Elsie with round eyes.

"No, they'll all be quite different. They'll be giving you points on the simple life, and advising you to dispense with maids altogether," said the fencing girl. "I'm not joking. It's a fact, you know, that children are awfully unlike their parents. Are you like your mother?" she asked Elsie.

"Not a bit," said Elsie laughing.

"Don't study yourself merely in order to know about children. You may just have been a selfish little prig, you know," said the fencing girl cheerily. "Study them by the dozen, be public-spirited about it. Then some day you may be able to understand the soul of a child when you get it all to yourself. You won't just sit and say in a blank way, 'In my day children were different.'"

"Oh," cried Jean. "Now don't. If there's anything I hate, it's when Evelyn begins to preach about children."

"Oh, well," said the fencing girl with a shrug, "if Mrs.----, whatever your mother's name is, had known as much about their little ways as I do, she would never have let you worry about that one maid. We are all wrong with domestic life at present. The one lot stays in too much and loses touch with the world, and the other lot are too busy touching the world to stay in enough. We are putting it right, however," she said amiably. "We are----" She spread her hands in the direction of the company collected. "We are getting up our world at present. After that we may be of some use in it."

Elsie looked at her rather admiringly.

"My father would love to hear you talk," she said amiably.

"Talk," said the fencing girl in a fallen voice, "and I hate the talkers so!"

"Nevertheless," said Mabel, "given a friend of ours in for tea--who does the talking?"

"Evelyn," said Jean, "and invariably her own subjects too."

It seems that this girl was not always fencing.

She controlled the collecting of rents and practically managed the domestic matters in three streets of tenements of new buildings recently erected in a working part of London. She was also engaged to be married.

"Doesn't this sort of independent life unsettle you for a quiet one?" she was often asked by her friends.

"And it's quite different," she would explain. "Knowing the stress and the difficulties of this side of it make me long for that little haven of a home we are getting ready at Richmond. I would bury myself there for ever, from a selfish point of view that is, and probably vegetate like the others. But I've made a pledge never to forget--never to forget what I've seen in London, and never to stop working for it somewhere or somehow."

"What about your poor husband?" asked Jean.

"He isn't poor," said the fencing girl with a grin. "He is getting quite rich. He fell in love with me at the tenements. He built them. I should think he would divorce me if I turned narrow-minded."

She gazed in a searching way at Elsie.

"You have the makings of a somebody," she said gravely, "more than these two, though they are perfectly charming."

"I want to go to the Balkans," said Elsie. She turned to Mabel. "Cousin Arthur declared he really would take me."

"Is Mr. Symington there now?" asked Jean. Mabel thanked her from the bottom of a heart that couldn't prompt a single word at that supreme moment.

"No, but he said he was going some day," said Elsie. That was all. Mabel had seen a blaze of sunshine and then blackness again.

"Oh," said the robust, unheeding Jean, "what do your people say to that?"

"Papa says he won't have me butchered," said Elsie with a radiant smile.

"Look here," said the fencing girl, with her eyes still searching that "wild flower of a face" of Elsie's. "Will your father come and see my tenements?"

The answer of Elsie became historic in the girls' club.

"I think he will," said she. "He was up the Ferris wheel last night."

CHAPTER XXVI

Under Royal Patronage

Mrs. Leighton made use of the fact of the Clutterbuck's being in London to write to the Professor's wife.

"We have been so anxious about Elma, who now however is picking up. But we have the saddest news of Miss Annie. It seems as though she would not live more than a day or two. If I have bad news to send to Mabel and Jean, may I send it through you? It would be such a kindness to me if I knew you were there to tell them."

Mrs. Clutterbuck responded in that loving tremulous way she had of delighting in being useful. She could not believe in her good fortune with the Professor. After all, it had been worry, concern about material things, which had clouded his affection for a time. He had never been able to give himself to the world, as he desired to give himself, because of that grind at lectures which he so palpably abhorred. Now even the lectures were a delight, since he had leisure besides where he did not need to reflect on the certainty of "the rainy day." He was once more the hero of her girlish dreams. How magnificent not to lose one's ideal! They both rejoiced in the young ardour of Elsie, whose courage made leaps at each new unfolding of the "loveliness of life."

It was very delightful now that the two Leightons should come under those gently stretching wings of the reinvigorated Professor's wife.

At the time of a call from Mrs. Clutterbuck, Mabel and Jean had just received tickets from Lady Emily for a concert at a great house. The concert, to those who bought guinea tickets, was not so important as the fact that royal ears would listen to it. Herr Slavska disposed of the affair in a speech which could not be taken down in words. His theme was the rush of the "stupids" to see a royal personage, and the tragedy of the poor "stars" of artists who could hardly afford the cab which protected their costumes. Yet some members of his profession, he averred, would rather lose a meal or two than lose the chance of seeing their name in red letters and of bowing to encores from royalty.

"And why not?" asked Jean. "I think it would be lovely to bow to royalty."

"Where is ze art?" he asked as a wind-up. "Nowhere!"

"That's nonsense, you know," Jean confided afterwards. "I think there must be a lot of art in being able to sing to kings and queens. Besides, why shouldn't they wave their royal hands, and produce us, as it were--like Aladdin, you know."

Jean already saw herself at Windsor.

Mabel merely concerned herself with the fact that Mr. Green was to play. He had not the scruples of Herr Slavska. "Although it's an abominable practice," said he. "It is the artists who make the sacrifice. Everybody else gets something for it. The crowd gets royalty, royalty gets music, charities get gold. We get momentary applause--that is all."

"That's what I'm living for," declared Jean, "just a little, a very little momentary applause. Then I would swell like a peacock, Mabel, I really should. The artists don't get nothing out of it after all. They get appreciation."

Mrs. Clutterbuck was intensely interested in the concert. "Do you mean to say there's to be a prince at it?" she asked.

There were to be princesses also, it seemed.

"Oh," said Mabel, "how lovely it would have been for Elsie and you to go."

She saw the experience that it would be for a little home bird of the Mrs. Clutterbuck type. She considered for a moment--"Couldn't she give up her ticket for one of them?"

Mrs. Clutterbuck saw the indecision in her face.

"No, my dear, no," said she, "I know the thought in your mind. I have a much better plan."

The pleasure of being at last able to dispense favours--transformed her face. She turned with an expectant, delighted look to Elsie.

"If we could go together," said she, "and it wouldn't be a bore to both of you to sit with two country cousins like ourselves, I should take two tickets. It would be charming."

This plan was received with the greatest acclamation.

"We ought to have a chaperon anyhow," said Jean.

It seemed the funniest thing in the world to Mabel that they should be about to be chaperoned by Mrs. Clutterbuck. In some unaccountable way it drew her more out of her loneliness than anything she had experienced in London. On the other hand, she was constantly reminding herself how much amused some people in Ridgetown would be if they only knew.

They drove to the concert on a spring day when the air had suddenly turned warm. The streets were sparkling with a radiance of budding leaves, of struggling blossom; and all the world seemed to be turning in at the great gates of the house beyond St. James'.

It was not to be expected that one should know these people, though, as Jean declared, "Every little boarding-house keeper in Bayswater could tell you who was stepping out of the carriage in front of you."

There was a great crowd inside; heated rooms and a wide vestibule, and a hall where a platform was arranged with crimson seats facing it and denoting royalty.

Mrs. Clutterbuck's timidity came on her with a rush. She could hardly produce her two tickets. It was Mabel who saved the situation and piloted them in as though she understood exactly where to go. There was a hush of expectancy in the beautifully costumed crowd within. Everybody looked past one with craning neck. Mabel began to laugh. "It's exactly as though they were built on a slant," she declared.

In the end they found seats on the stairs beside the wife of an ambassador.

"My dear," said Mrs. Clutterbuck in rather a breathless way to Mabel. "My dear, just think of it."

Mabel immediately regretted having brought her there.

"But everybody is sitting on the stairs," she said gravely. "It's quite all right. Lady Emily told me she once took a seat in an elevator in somebody's house because there was no room elsewhere. She spent an hour going up and down, not having the courage to get out."

Mrs. Clutterbuck smiled nervously.

"It isn't that, my dear. It's the gown, that one in front of you. Every inch of the lace is hand-made."

Mrs. Clutterbuck was quite enervated by the discovery.

"Oh," said Mabel in quite a relieved way, "was that it? I began to blame myself for bringing you to the stairs."

"Isn't it fun?" said Elsie. "Much funnier looking at these people than it will be looking at royalty. I never saw so many lorgnettes."

A sudden movement made them rise. A group of princesses with bouquets appeared and took their seats on the red chairs.

"Oh," said Jean with a sigh, as they sat down again. "Think of the poor artists now."

She had grown quite pale.

"I don't think I shall ever be able to perform," she said. "My heart simply stops beating on an occasion of this sort."

The crowd parted again, and a singer, radiant in white chiffon with silver embroidery, and wearing a black hat with enormous plumes, ascended the platform. She curtseyed elaborately to the princesses, and casually bowed in the direction of the applause which reached her from other sources. She began to sing, and in that hall of reserved voices, of deferential attitudes, of eager, searching glances and general ceremonious curiosity, her voice rang out a clear, beautiful, alien thing. It danced into the shadows of minds merely occupied with staring, it filled up crevices as though she had appeared in an empty room. One moment every one had been girt with a kind of fashionable melancholy which precluded anything but polite commonplaces. The next minute something living had appeared, a liquid voice sang notes of joy, mockery and despair; it lit on things which cannot be touched upon with the speaking voice, and it brought tears to the eyes of one little princess.

Jean was shrouded in longing. Nothing so intimately delicious had ever come near her. She might as well shut up her music books and say good-bye to Herr Slavska. Elsie sat beside the lady in real lace. She was in the woods with the fresh air blowing over her; buttercups and daisies at her feet.

"Is she not then charming?" asked a voice at her side. The real lace had spoken at last. That was how they discovered afterwards that she was the wife of an ambassador. The lady had her mind distracted first by the sheer beauty of a famous voice which she loved, next by the delicate profile of the face beside her--a type not usual in London.

Elsie turned her eyes with a start.

"It's like summer, the voice," she said simply.

"It's like the best method I've ever heard," said Jean darkly. (Oh, how to emulate such a creature!)

"Ah, yes. But she returns. And now, while yet she bows and does not sing--a leetle vulgar is it not?"

The ambassador's wife could discount her favourite it seemed. That was just the difficulty in art. To remain supreme in one art and yet recognize other forms of it, that was the fortune of few. The singer had enormous jewels at her neck.

"She would wear cabbage as diamonds," said the lady, "but with her voice one forgives."

Thereafter there was a procession of the most talented performers at that moment in London. Magicians with violins drew melodies in a faultless manner from smooth strings and a bow which seemed to be playing on butter. Technique was evident nowhere, only the easy lovely result of it. In an hour it became as facile a thing to play any instrument, sing any song, as though practice and discouragement did not exist in any art at all.

"Mr. Green played decorously and magnificently," said Elsie. "They are all a little decorous, aren't they?" she asked, "except that wonderful thing in the white and silver gown."

Nothing had touched the daring beauty of that voice.

Mrs. Clutterbuck leant forward to Elsie eagerly.

"I was right, Elsie," said she. "You know I was right."

"Right?" asked Elsie. Her eyes shone with a. dark glamour. "You mean about it's being so nice here, romantic and that sort of thing?"

"No," said Mrs. Clutterbuck. She sometimes had rather a superb way of treating Elsie's little imaginative extravagances. "I mean about mauve--mauve is the colour this year, don't you see?"

"Mamma," she said radiantly, "I quite forgot. I was simply wondering how long all this would last, or whether they'd suddenly cut us off the way Jean says they do."

"They do," said Jean, "at these charity concerts. One after another runs on and makes its little bow. And some are detained, you know, and then the programme just comes to an end."

"They seem to be going on all right," said Mrs. Clutterbuck placidly, "and mauve is the colour, you see."

Another singer appeared, and Jean's heaven was cleared of clouds by the evidence in this performer of a bad method. Now, indeed, it seemed an easy matter to believe that one could triumph over anything.

That first, victorious, delicious voice had trodden on every ambition Jean ever possessed. But the frailty of a newcomer set her once more on her enthusiastic feet.

"I should say it would be easy enough to get appearing at a concert like this," she said dimly to Elsie. Her eye was on the future, and the platform was cleared. At the piano sat Mr. Green, grown older a little, and more companionable as an accompanist; and in the centre, in radiant silver and white, and--and diamonds, sang Jean, the prima donna, Jean!

She was startled by the sudden departure of the ambassador's wife.

"For the leaving of the princess I wait not," said this lady. With a cool little nod to Elsie, she descended the crowded stairs.

Her remarks on the vulgarity of the singer rankled with Jean. The costume seemed so appropriate to that other fair dream.

"I didn't think her vulgar, did you?" she asked Elsie.

"Not on a platform, perhaps," said Elsie vaguely. Her thoughts invariably strayed from dress. "But in a drawing-room she would look, look----"

"Well, what Elsie?" asked Jean impatiently.

Elsie's dreamy eyes came down on her suddenly. "In a drawing-room she would look like a lamp shade," she blurted.

It really was rather a tragedy for them that the golden voice should have been framed in so doubtful a setting.

Elsie's eyes were on the princesses.

"They have eyes like calm lakes," said she. "How clever it must be to look out and feel and know, only to express very often something entirely different. Don't you wonder what princesses say to themselves when they get alone together after an affair of this sort?"

"I know," said Mabel. "They say, 'I wonder what girls like these girls on the stairs say of us after we are gone; do they say we are charming, as the newspapers do, or do they say----' But they couldn't think that, for they are charming, aren't they?" asked Mabel.

"Yes," said Elsie sadly. "But I never could keep a bird in a cage. It must be like being in a cage sometimes for them."

There was an abrupt movement among the royal party. The last of the illustrious performers had appeared, and it was time to go. Everybody rose once more. Then there was a hurried fight for a tea-room where countesses played hostess.

Mrs. Clutterbuck, now finally in the spirit of the thing, moved along blithely. She spoke, however, in low modulated whispers as though she were attending some serious ceremony.

"I'm sure your mother would have enjoyed this," she said, as they sat down to ices served in filagree boats. "The countesses and, you know, the general air of the thing--so different to Ridgetown."

"Ridgetown!" The girl laughed immoderately. "We couldn't sit on the stairs at Ridgetown, could we?" Mrs. Clutterbuck was getting away from her subject.

"Take some tea, my dear," she said to Mabel in the tone of voice as one who should say, "you will need it." "It's invigorating after the ice," said the Professor's wife.

Mabel took tea.

Now that the great event of the concert was over, they were a little tired, and glad of the idea of fresh air.

"Miss Grace, dear--have you heard from Miss Grace lately?" asked Mrs. Clutterbuck.

"No. It's a funny thing," said Mabel. "We supposed it was because of Elma's illness, you know. Miss Grace would be in such a state. Shall we go now?"

They got out and arranged to walk through St. James' Park together.

"I had a message," said Mrs. Clutterbuck quietly, "about Miss Grace. I am to have another when I get back just now. Will you come with me? It's about Miss Annie. She has been very ill."

It was impossible for her to tell them that the same illness as Elma's had done its work there. They seemed to have no suspicion of that.

"Oh, poor Miss Annie!" said Mabel. "If I had only known!"

"That was just it; they couldn't tell you that too with all you had to hear about Elma. Elma is very well now, you understand, but Miss Annie--well, Miss Annie is not expected to live over to-night."

The news came to them in an unreal way. It was the break-up of their childhood. That Miss Annie should not always be there, the charming beautiful invalid, seemed impossible.

"Oh, but," said Mabel, "she has been so ill before, won't she get better?"

"She was never ill like this before," said Mrs. Clutterbuck. "We will see what the message says."

They found a wire at home. At the end of a sparkling day, it came to that. While they had listened to these golden voices, Miss Annie had----

The telegram lay there to say that Miss Annie had died.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Home-Coming

Mr. Leighton departed from his first feelings of hurry where Mabel and Jean were concerned, and delayed their home coming till Elma was in a condition not to be retarded by any extra excitement.

They drove away at last from the club early in the morning, so that they had the entire house to see them off. It was very nearly as bad as leaving Ridgetown.

"I shall not be able to walk past your door for some days," said one red-haired girl. "Oh, don't I know that feeling?"

She was compelled to stay in London, with only a fortnight's holiday in summer time.

"I shall send you forget-me-nots by every post," said Jean. "You'll be in love with the new girl in a week."

"I won't," said the red-haired girl.

They had gifts from all of the girls stowed away somewhere. What a morning! Even the hall porter showed signs of dejection at their going.

"It will never be the same without you, miss," he said to Mabel.

One's own family were not so complimentary.

Mabel and Jean left in a heaped-up four-wheeler.

"I feel quite sick, you know," said Jean.

It was a historic statement, and Mabel had her own qualms. They left a houseful of good little friendly people, a dazzling, hard-working London, and they were going back--to the wedding of Isobel. Mabel had not got over the feeling that drama only exists in a brilliant manner in London, and that life in one's own home, though peaceful, was drab colour. It wouldn't be drab colour, it would be radiant of course, if happy unexpected things happened there. How it would lighten to the colour of rose, oh gorgeous life, if such a thing could ever happen now! But it wouldn't. All that would happen would be that Robin would marry Isobel and that she should keep on playing piano. Ah well, in any case, she could play piano a long way better than she ever did. And Jean could sing with a certain distinction of method. Not nearly ripe, this method, as Jean informed every one, but on the way. Her voice would be worth hearing at twenty-five.

Much of the effect they would make on Ridgetown was invested in the boxes piled above them. All their spare time lately had been taken up in spending their allowance in clothes and panning things neatly out to London standards. It gave them an amount of reliance in themselves and in their return which was very exhilarating. Though what did it all matter with Miss Annie gone?

"It terrifies me to think of Ridgetown without Miss Annie. What shall we do there?" asked Jean mournfully.

"Yes, that's it," replied Mabel. "No one dying in London would make that difference. I shall think, as we are driving home, Miss Annie isn't there. Won't you?"

"And here they would only have a little more time for somebody else," said Jean.

They drove through the early morning streets with a tiny relief at their heart. On their next drive they would know everybody they passed.

"Oh, how deadly I felt when I came here!" said Jean. "Knowing no one, and thinking that if I died in the cab no one near me would care!"

They reached Ridgetown in the afternoon. A carriage was drawn up at the station gates. In it were Mrs. Leighton, Miss Grace and Elma.

Mabel stood transfixed.

"Oh, Elma," she said, "Elma!"

Elma knew it. She wasn't as fat as a pumpkin after all. And every one had kept on saying that she was fatter than any pumpkin. Mabel was the only one who had told the truth. She leaned over the folded hood of the carriage and hugged her gently.

"I should like to inform you Mabs, I'm as fat as a pumpkin."

But Mabel hung on to the carriage with her head down. No one had told her that Elma had been so ill as this.

Elma had the look of having been in a far country--why hadn't some one told her? Miss Grace, who had been away for some weeks with Adelaide Maud and had just got back in fairly good spirits, did some of the conversing which helped Mabel to recover herself.

Cuthbert and Betty came hurrying up from the wrong end of the train.

"Oh, and we missed you," wailed Betty, "and I wanted to be the first."

One could hug indiscriminately at Ridgetown Station. Jean was the next person to melt into tears. She had tried to tell Miss Grace how sorry she was.

Cuthbert began to restore order.

"You'd better take two in that carriage, crowded or not," said he. "There are boxes lying on the platform which will require a cab to themselves."

"It's our music," said Jean importantly and quite untruthfully.

"It's my new hat," said Mabel, with a return of her old dash.

She had gone round the carriage seeing each occupant separately, and there seemed to be no hurry for anything, merely the pleasure of meeting again.

Just then there was a whirl of wheels in the distance. A certain familiarity in the sound made four girls look at each other. Mrs. Leighton, who had no ear for wheels, stared in a surprised way at her daughters.

"Well," she said, "what are we all waiting for? We must get home sometime."

"Yes," asked Cuthbert lustily, "what in the wide world are we waiting for?"

A high wagonette and pair of horses drove up, and turned with a fine circle into line behind them. In the wagonette sat Adelaide Maud. Adelaide Maud was dressed in blue.

"That," said Elma, with a sigh of great contentment.

The three girls dashed at Adelaide Maud.

Elma laid her hand on Cuthbert's.

"Go and say how do you do to Adelaide Maud," said she.

For a minute or two she was left with Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace. Then Cuthbert came to her.

"Get up," said he to Elma. "Get up. You're to go with Adelaide Maud."

"Who is this Adelaide Maud who interferes with every plan in connection with my family?" asked Mrs. Leighton. She had a resigned note in her voice. "Shall we ever get home," she kept asking.

A voice behind them broke in.

"I didn't tell him to be impolite, Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud. "I only asked to have Elma in my carriage."

Elma looked provokingly at Adelaide Maud.

"I'm so sorry," said she, "but I'm driving home with Cuthbert."

"It's not true," said Cuthbert. "She's doing nothing of the kind."

"Then I shall get in here," said Adelaide Maud calmly, and proceeded to step in.

Several people tried to stop her.

"I want to drive home with mummy," said Jean.

"And I mean to take Elma," said Mabel.

Mrs. Leighton leant back in the carriage.

"I should like to mention," she said, "that this is not a royal procession, and that we only take about two and a half minutes to get home in any case. What does it matter which carriage we go in?"

"Every second is of value," said Jean.

"Well, here you are, Jean, get in beside your mother," said Adelaide Maud. "And, Elma and Mabel, you come with me. And, Mr. Leighton, you look after Miss Grace. What could be more admirable?"

They did it because it seemed the simplest way out, except Cuthbert, who backed into the station and came up on a cab with the luggage. He looked vindictively at Adelaide Maud as he descended, as though he would say, "This is your doing."

The three conveyances were blocking the wide sweep of gravel in front of the White House.

Adelaide Maud patted one of the horses' heads in an unnecessary manner.

"I must congratulate you on your professorship," said she.

"Thank you," said Cuthbert.

"So nice for your family too, to have you here all summer."

"Excellent," said Cuthbert.

"I don't see how you can run a lectureship when you say so little." Adelaide Maud spoke very crisply, and in a nice cool manner.

Cuthbert looked stolidly at the men carrying in luggage.

"The students will respect me probably," he said grimly.

Adelaide Maud laughed a clear ringing laugh. Then she looked at Cuthbert once "straight in the eye" and ran indoors. Cuthbert began pulling boxes about with unnecessary violence.

They had tea in the drawing-room amidst the roses, for the tables were covered with them. Mabel did nothing but wander about and say, "Oh, oh, and isn't it lovely to be home."

But Jean sat right down and in a business-like manner began to describe London. Also, she was very sorry for Elma, because now she, Jean, knew what it was to be ill. She began to detail her symptoms to Elma.

"Oh, Jean, you little monkey," said Mabel. "Don't listen to her, she wasn't ill a bit." It was the only point on which Mabel and Jean really differed.

Isobel came sailing in. Nothing could have been nicer than the way she greeted them.

"Oh, Isobel, aren't you dying to hear me sing?" asked Jean. It never dawned on her but that Isobel, who had been so keen to get her off to a good master, put art first and everything else afterwards.

Mrs. Leighton would never forget the way in which Mabel received her. Mabs had developed into a finely balanced woman. There was no sign of her wanting to detract in the slightest from Isobel's happiness.

"Do let me see your ring. How pretty! And how it fits your hand, just a beautiful ring. Some engagement rings look as though they had only been made for fat Jewesses. Don't they? I love those tiny diamonds set round the big ones. Where are you going for your honeymoon?"

"I'm going first for my things," said Isobel. "I've got no further than that. Miss Meredith and I are taking a week in London next week."

That was her triumph, that she had "squared" Miss Meredith. Miss Meredith had really a lonely little heart beating beneath all her paltry ambitions. Always she had been stretching for what was very difficult of attainment. She had stretched for a wife for Robin, and she had stretched in vain. Then suddenly one day this undesirable Isobel had asked her to go to London to help with her trousseaux. No one perhaps knew what a strange and unlooked-for delight filled her heart, what gates of starchy reserve were opened to this new flood of gratitude rising within her. Robin had always, although influenced by her in an intangible way, treated her as though she were a useful piece of furniture. He so invariably discounted her services; it had made her believe that her only chance of keeping him at all was in imposing on him her hardest, most unlovable traits. That Isobel, of her own accord, should seek her advice, out of the crowd who were willing to confer it, really agitated her. From that moment she was Isobel's willing ally.

Isobel saw here the result of incalculable goodness as encouraged by Mr. Leighton. His words had stung her to an exalted notion of what she might do to show him that she could confer as well as receive. She should "ingratiate Sarah" in a thorough manner. The result of it surprised her more than she would confess. There were other ways of receiving benefits than by grabbing with both hands it seemed. Isobel began to think that unselfish people probably remained unselfish because they found it a paying business. Nothing would ever really relieve her mind of its mercenary element.

The funniest experience of her life was this new friendship with Sarah. Mr. Leighton noted it, and she saw that he noted it. She went one day to him in almost a contrite mood.

"I've begun to ingratiate Sarah," said she, "I believe I'm rather liking the experience."

Mr. Leighton knew better than to lecture her at all. He thought indeed that signs of relenting would not readily occur between either of them.

"Goodness is an admirable habit," he said lightly.

She thanked him for having fallen into her mood by this much.

"Well, anyhow, a little exhibition of it on my part has evidently been a welcome tonic to Sarah," she said.

Mabel and Jean found her easier than of yore. Only Elma carried the reserve formed by what she had gone through into the present moment of rapture. They made Mabel play and Jean sing, and Adelaide Maud and Jean performed a duet together.

Cuthbert pranced about and applauded heavily, and Adelaide Maud swung her crisp skirts and bowed low in a professional manner.

"If I can't sing," said she, "I can bow. So do you mind if I do it again?" So she bowed again.

It was quite different to the old Adelaide Maud, who aired such starchy manners in their drawing-room.

Lance came in by an early train.

"Heard you were home," said he, "and ran in to see if you'd take some Broken Hills, or Grand Trunks, or Consolidated Johnnies, you know."

He produced a note-book.

"Now Mrs. Leighton promised to buy a whole mine of shares the other day, and she hasn't done it. How am I to get on with my admirable firm, if my best clients fail me in this way?"

Jean exploded into laughter. Lance as a stockbroker, what next!

"You needn't laugh," he said. "I made twenty-five pounds for the mater last week. Not your mater, mine!"

"Don't listen to Lance's illegal practices," said Elma.

Lance struck an attitude in front of Mabel.

"Oh, mother," he said, "how you've growed. I'm afraid of you. Wait till you see what Maclean will say!"

"Maclean?"

"Yes. Now, Elma, don't pretend to look blank about it. It was you who told me."

Elma groaned. (If it only were Mr. Maclean!)

"I told you nothing," she said. "You are not to be trusted, I've always known that, in Stock Exchange or out of it, I'd never tell you a single thing."

"Well, it was Aunt Katharine," said Lance with conviction. She had just appeared in the doorway.

"Well, well," she said in a fat, breathless way. "Well, you're home, and I am glad. Dear, how tall you both are! And is that the latest?" She looked at Mabel's hat. "Well, well. We've had enough trouble with you away. Elma will be ready for none of that nonsense for a year or two, that's one comfort. Jean, you are quite fat. Living in other people's houses seems to agree with you. Not the life we were accustomed to. Young people had to stay at home in my day."

"Now, Aunt Katharine," said Lance, who was a privileged person, "are they your girls, or Mrs. Leighton's, that you lecture them so?"

"Look here, Lance," said Elma, "Aunt Katharine isn't a Broken Hill, or a con--consolidated Johnnie. You just leave her alone, will you?"

"Elma's become beastly dictatorial since she was ill," said Lance savagely. "What's that confab in the corner?"

Mrs. Leighton was sitting with Adelaide Maud, and in the pause which ensued, everybody heard her say, "When Jean was a baby--no, it was when Elma was a baby, and Cuthbert, you know----" just as the girls were afraid she would five long years ago.

"Oh," said Cuthbert from the other end of the room, "my dear mother, if you go on with that----"

"I can't imagine why they never want to know what they did when they were babies," said Mrs. Leighton, in an innocent manner. She disliked being stopped in any of these reminiscences. Adelaide Maud's eyes danced. "They were so much nicer when they were babies," sighed Mrs. Leighton.

Then she turned round on them all.

"You two girls have been home for an hour or more, and you never asked after your dear father."

Mabel giggled. Jean looked very serious.

Elma said suddenly, "They are hiding something, mummy," and the secret was out.

Mr. Leighton had met them pretty nearly half way. He had travelled with them, and in town had seen them into the train for Ridgetown.

"And he told me," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he had an important meeting which would keep him employed for the better part of the day."

"So he had," said Mabel.

"It's just like John," said Mrs. Leighton to Aunt Katharine. "One might have known he wouldn't stay away from these girls."

She smiled largely as she remembered his protestations of the morning.

"Oh, well," said Aunt Katharine dingily, "it would have been nicer of him to have told you. You never were very firm with John."

Robin Meredith came in the evening when they were assembled with Mr. Leighton in the drawing-room and the girls were playing once more. They played and sang with a fine new confidence and abandonment which made up to Mr. Leighton for long weary months of waiting. Mabel, mostly on account of her father's commendation, was quite composed and cheerful as she shook hands with Robin. Robin would not have minded the composure, but the cheerfulness wounded him a trifle. Mr. Leighton considered that his future life had more promise in it now that he saw Robin unnerved. If it were not for the beautiful ease of Mabel's manner, he should have felt uncertain as to the consequences of all that had happened. But Mabel was so serenely right in every way that his last fear melted.

Mabel herself began to wonder at her own placidity. She looked with thankfulness on the scene before her, all her family and Elma given back to her, every one loyal, untouched by the influence which she had so feared before, Isobel going to be married to a man from whom she was glad to feel herself freed, her home intact. Yet a bitter mist gathered in her mind and obliterated the joyousness. How wicked of her--to complain with everything here so lovely before her.

No, not everything.

Mabel, in the darkness that night before falling asleep, held her hand to her eyes. No, everything had not come back to her yet.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Adelaide Maud

The Leighton's had been writing off the invitations for the wedding, and Elma was in her room with Adelaide Maud. This had been converted into a sitting-room so long as Elma remained a convalescent.

Elma had asked Isobel if she might have just one invitation for a special friend of her own. Now who was this friend, Mrs. Leighton wondered? She was surprised when Elma asked her, without any embarrassment for Mr. Symington's address.

"And don't tell who it is, please, Mummy, because I have a little plot of my own on hand."

She sealed and addressed this important missive quite blandly under her mother's eyes.

Mrs. Leighton could not make it out. She was inclined to fall into Aunt Katharine's ways and say, "In my young days, young people were not so blatant."

Mr. Leighton shook his head over her having allowed the invitation to go.

"You can't tell what net she may become entangled in," he said, "and Symington cleared out in a very sudden manner, you know." He could not get that out of his mind.

Mrs. Leighton harked back to the old formula. "Elma is only a child," she said, "with too much of a superb imagination. She will have a lot of fancies before she is done."

Elma saw her letter posted, with only Mrs. Leighton and Miss Grace in the secret. She felt completely relieved and happy. Nothing had pleased her so much for a long time.

"Why, Elma, your cheeks are getting pink at last," said Adelaide Maud.

She had come in to spend the afternoon with Elma while the others went to the dressmaker for the all-important gowns. Adelaide Maud had said she would come if Elma were to be quite alone. And Elma meant to be quite alone until Cuthbert came down by an early train. Then, after Adelaide Maud was announced, she rather hoped that Cuthbert might appear.

"Are you sure they are pink," she asked Adelaide Maud, "because I used to be so anxious that I might look pale."

"You must have thought yourself very good looking lately then," said Adelaide Maud. "Elma," she asked suddenly, "why don't you girls sometimes call me Helen? I think you might by this time."

"I would rather call you Adelaide Maud," said Elma.

"But I can't be a Story Book for ever."

"I shouldn't want to call you Helen when you looked like Miss Dudgeon. Mrs. Dudgeon wouldn't like it, would she?"

Ridgetown traditions still hampered their friendship it seemed.

Adelaide Maud's head fell low.

"Do you know, Elma, in five minutes, if I just had one chance, in five minutes I could get my mother to say that it didn't matter whether you called me Helen or not. But I never get the chance."

"I did one lovely and glorious thing yesterday," said Elma. "Couldn't I do another to-day?"

"I don't know what you did yesterday, but you can't do anything for me to-day," said Adelaide Maud stiffly.

Cuthbert came strolling in. Adelaide Maud looked seriously annoyed.

"You told me you would be quite alone," she said to Elma.

"Oh, you don't mind about Cuthbert, do you?" asked Elma anxiously. "Besides, Cuthbert didn't know you were coming."

"I did," said Cuthbert shortly.

Adelaide Maud had risen a little, and at this she sat down in a very straight manner, with her head slightly raised. She and Elma were on a couch near a tea-table. Cuthbert took an easy chair opposite. Then Adelaide Maud began to laugh. She laughed with a ringing bright laugh that was very amusing to Elma, but Cuthbert remained quite unmoved.

Adelaide Maud looked at him.

"Oh, please laugh a little," she said humbly.

Cuthbert did not take his eyes away from her. He simply looked and said nothing.

"How are the invitations going on?" he asked Elma as though apparently proving that Adelaide Maud did not exist.

Elma clasped her hands.

"Beautifully. I've been allowed to ask all my 'particulars.'"

"Am I to be invited?" asked Adelaide Maud simply.

"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon," said Elma in a hollow voice. "Do you think Mrs. Dudgeon will come?" she asked in a melancholy manner.

"Not if Mr. Leighton looks like that," said Adelaide Maud. She turned in a pettish manner away from him and gazed at Elma.

Elma burst out laughing.

"Oh, Cuthbert, I do think you are horrid to Adelaide Maud."

Adelaide Maud sat up again looking perfectly delighted.

"Now there," she said, "I have been waiting for years for some one to say that about Mr. Leighton. Thank you so much, dear. It's so perfectly true. For years I have been amiable and for years he has been--a----"

"A brute," said Elma placidly.

"Yes," said Adelaide Maud. "And I've got to go on pretending to be a girl of spirit with a mamma who won't understand the situation, and--and--I get no encouragement at all. It's a horrid world," said Adelaide Maud.

Cuthbert rose from the easy chair, with a look in his eyes which Elma had never seen.

"All I can say is," he pretended to be speaking jocularly, "will the lady who has just spoken undertake to repeat these words, in private--in----"

"No, she won't," said Adelaide Maud in a whisper.

Elma sat shaking in every limb. The one thought that passed through her mind was that if she didn't clear out, Cuthbert might kiss Adelaide Maud, and that would be awful. She crawled out of the room somehow or other. What the others were thinking of her she did not know. She wanted to reach something outside the door, and sank on a chair there. Oh, the selfishness of lovers! Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert were "making it up" while she sat shaking with her face in her hands in the long corridor.

Mrs. Leighton found her there some little time afterwards.

"Sh! mummy. Speak in a whisper, please."

"Well, I never. Who is ill now, I should like to know?"

"Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert."

She pulled her mother's head down to her and whispered in her ear.

"I didn't know it was coming, they were so cross with one another. And then I knew it was. And I just slipped out. And I'm shaking so that I'm afraid to get off this chair. I should never be able to get engaged myself--it's so--en--enervating."

"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton; "well, I never. Turned you out of your own room, my pet. Just like those Dudgeons."

"Oh, mummy, it's lovely. I don't mind. It's just being ill that made me shake. Aren't you glad it's Adelaide Maud?"

"Well--it never was anybody else, was it?" asked Mrs. Leighton blandly.

"Oh, mummy! You knew!"

Elma's whispers became most accusing.

Mrs. Leighton might have been as dense as possible in regard to her daughters, but Cuthbert's heart had always lain bare.

"Know?" asked she. "What do you think made Adelaide Maud run after you the way she did?"

"Oh, mummy. It wasn't only because of Cuthbert, was it?"

"Well, I sometimes thought it was," she said with a smile at her lips.

She looked at the shut door.

"But I can't have you stuck on a hall chair in the corridors for the afternoon, all on account of the Dudgeons," said she. "Besides, they'll be bringing up tea."

She knocked smartly on the door.

"Mamma, I never saw anything like your nerve," said Elma.

Cuthbert opened the door. He stood with the fine light of a conqueror shining in his eyes, the triumph of attainment in his bearing.

Mrs. Leighton's nerve broke down at the sight of him. It was true then.

"Oh, Cuthbert, what is this you have been doing?" wailed she. Her son was a man and had left her.

Without a word he led her into the arms of Adelaide Maud.

"And remember, please, Mrs. Leighton," said that personage finally, "that I would have been here long before if he had let me, and that I had practically to propose before he would have me. Surely that is humiliating enough for a Dudgeon."

"Cuthbert wanted to give you your proper position in life, dear, if possible."

"When all I wanted was himself--how silly of him," said Adelaide Maud.

"Would you mind my telling you that that poor child of mine who has just recovered from typhoid fever is sitting like a hall porter at your door, trembling like an aspen leaf," said Mrs. Leighton. "Won't you get her in?"

They laughed, but it really was no joke to Elma. She had known something of the sorrows of life lately, and had borne up under them, even under the great trial of Miss Annie's death; but because two people were in love with one another and had said so, she took to weeping. Cuthbert carried her in and petted her on his knee, and Adelaide Maud stood by and said what a selfish man he was, how thoughtless of others, and how really wicked it was of him to have allowed this to happen to Elma. She stood stroking Elma's hair and looking at Cuthbert, and Cuthbert patted Elma and looked at Adelaide Maud. Then Cuthbert caught Adelaide Maud's hand and she had to sit beside them, and then tea came and Elma was thankful.

"I know what it will be," she said. "You will never look at any of us again, just at each other."

Mrs. Leighton regarded the tea table.

"It appears," said she, "as if for the first time for years I might be allowed to pour out tea in my own house. You all seem so preoccupied."

"Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud, "you are perfectly sweet. You are the only one who doesn't reproach me, and I'm taking away your only son."

"May I ask when?" asked Cuthbert sedately, but his eyes were on fire.

"Don't you tell him, Helen," said Mrs. Leighton. "It's good for them not to be in too great a hurry."

"She called me Helen," said Adelaide Maud.

"Now, Elma! Elma--say Helen, or you'll spoil the happiest day of our lives."

"Say Helen, you monkey!" cried Cuthbert, giving her a large piece of cake and several lumps of sugar.

Elma took her cup and the cake in a helpless way.

"You just said that to get accustomed to the name yourself," she declared. "And if you don't mind, I would rather have toast to begin with."

Adelaide Maud giggled brightly and her hair shone like gold. Cuthbert stood looking, looking at her till a piece of cake sidled off the plate he was carrying.

"Mummy dear, do you like having tea with me all alone?" asked Elma.

That was what came of it in many ways. Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud had not a word for any one. But then they had been so long separated by social ties and an unfriendly world and "pride," as Helen put it, and various things. Mrs. Dudgeon took the news "carved in stone," and her daughters as something that merely could not be helped. Helen had always been crazy over these Leightons. Mrs. Dudgeon unbent to Mr. Leighton however. He was a man to whom people invariably offered the best, and for his own part he could never quite see where the point of view of other people came in where Mrs. Dudgeon was concerned. Cuthbert was already sufficiently established as rather a brilliant young university man, and a partnership in a large practice in town was being arranged for. Mrs. Dudgeon could unbend with some graciousness therefore, and, after all, Helen was the eldest of four, and none were married yet. "Time is a great leveller," said Adelaide Maud.

All the love and enthusiasm which had been saved from the engagement of Isobel were showered on the unheeding Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud.

"It isn't that I don't appreciate it," said Adelaide Maud. "I know how dreadful it would be to be without it, but oh! somehow there's so little time to attend to every one who is good to me."

Isobel, in a certain measure, was annoyed at the interruption to her own arrangements. In a day things seemed to change from her being the centre of interest, to the claims of Adelaide Maud coming uppermost. She looked on the engagement as a complete bore. Robin seemed depressed with the news. She often wondered how far she could influence him, and turned rather a cold side to him for the moment. Then her ordinary wilfulness upheld her serenely. After all, once married to Robin, she would be independent of the domestic enthusiasms of the Leighton crowd. She was tired of the pose where she had to appear as one of them, and longed to assert herself differently as soon as possible.

As for the girls themselves--what had London or anything offered equal to this?

They could not believe in their luck in having Adelaide Maud as a sister.

Elma went in the old way to give the news to Miss Grace.

"Oh, I'm so pleased, my dear, so pleased," said poor lonely Miss Grace. "It makes up for so much, my dear, when one grows old, to see young people happy. We are so inclined to be extravagant of happiness when we are young. Some one ought always to be on the spot to pick up the little stray pieces we let drop and enable us to regain them again."

"Weren't you ever engaged to be married, Miss Grace?" Elma asked quite simply.

Miss Grace was not at all embarrassed in the usual way of old maids. She gazed over the white and gold drawing-room, and one saw the spark of flint in her eyes.

"Not engaged, dear, but all the inclination to be. Ah, yes, I had the inclination. And he invited me, but affairs at that time made it unsuitable."

"Oh, Miss Grace, only unsuitable?" Elma's heart went out to her. Beneath everything she knew it must be Miss Annie.

"Yes, dear. And the others found him different to what I did. Selfish and dictatorial, you know. Nothing he did seemed to fit in to what they expected. He grew annoyed with them. I sometimes hardly wonder at that. It made him appear to be what they really thought him. And in the end I asked him to go."

"Oh, Miss Grace!"

Elma's voice was a tragedy.

"It was not fair, it was not fair to him or to you. He didn't want to marry the others. What did it matter what they thought?"

"If he could have married me then, it wouldn't have mattered," said Miss Grace. "I knew that he was good and true, you see; so that I never doubted him. But he was poor, and they worried me nearly to my grave. I was very weak," said Miss Grace.

"And I suppose he went and married some one else in a fit of hopelessness," said Elma tragically. "What a nice wife you would have made, Miss Grace!"

Miss Grace started a trifle, and looked anxiously at Elma. She did not seem to hear the compliment.

"Oh, we all have our little stories," she said. "But don't be extravagant of your beautiful youth, my dear."

"I don't feel youthful or beautiful in any way," said Elma. "I think it's the fever. I feel as though I had been born a hundred years ago. I wish I could keep from shivering whenever anything either exciting or lovely happens. Now, I never was so happy in my life as I was yesterday over Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud, and I was so shaky that I simply burst into tears. What's the good of being youthful if one feels like that?"

"Wait till you have a holiday, dear, you will soon get over that."

Miss Grace did her best to cheer her up. Elma's thoughts ran back to the story she had heard.

"Miss Grace," she asked, "this man that you were engaged to, was he----"

The door opened and Saunders appeared.

"Dr. Merryweather," said he.

Miss Grace rose in a direct manner. She controlled her voice with a little nervous cough.

"This is just the person to tell you that you ought to be off for a change," she said as they shook hands with Dr. Merryweather.

Miss Grace told him about Elma's shakiness as though it were a real disease. Mrs. Leighton had never looked upon it as anything more than "just a mannerism," as Miss Grace put it. Dr. Merryweather ran his keen eye over Elma's flushed face.

"You mustn't have too many engagements in your family," he said, "while you remain a convalescent."

He had been only then arranging with Mrs. Leighton that she should take Elma off for a trip.

"Mr. Leighton will go too," he said kindly. "I don't think any of you realize how much your parents have suffered recently."

"Oh, but when?" asked Elma in a most disappointed voice. "Not at once, I hope."

"Almost at once," said Dr. Merryweather. "Before this first wedding at least."

Elma's face fell a trifle.

"Oh, well, I suppose I must," she said. "But so much depends on my being just on the spot--up to Isobel's wedding, you know."

"I said, 'No more engagements,'" said Dr. Merryweather with his eye still on her flushed face.

"This isn't exactly an engagement," said Elma with a sigh. "I wish it were."

There was no explaining to Dr. Merryweather of course. There was even not much chance of enlightening Miss Grace. One could only remain a kind of petted invalid and await developments. Now that Adelaide Maud was really one of them and Cuthbert in such a blissful state, it would seem as though nothing were required to make Elma perfectly happy. But there was this one trouble of Mabel's which only she could share. For of course one couldn't go about telling people that Mabel had set great store by the one man who had run away.

"If only George Maclean would play up," sighed Elma.

But almost every one played up except George Maclean.

CHAPTER XXIX

Mr. Symington

Mabel and Jean were to be bridesmaids at Isobel's wedding. Ridgetown had only one opinion for that proceeding. "It was just like the Leightons."

Aunt Katharine was more explicit.

"It's hardly decent," she said. "Do you want the man to show how many wives he could have had."

"To show one he couldn't have, more likely," said Mrs. Leighton shortly. She herself could not reconcile it to her ideas of what should have been. Mr. Leighton was adamant on the question, however. Isobel had set her heart on this marriage and the marriage was to be carried out. She was their guest and their responsibility. It would be scandalous if they did not uphold her as they would have done had there been none of this former acquaintance with Robin. It would seem as though they had attached unnecessary importance to what now was termed "nothing more than a flirtation." It was a pity they could not all like Robin as they ought to, or have been extremely fond of Isobel; but under the circumstances, they at least must all "play the game."

Isobel took the information tranquilly. It seemed to her that she might have been allowed to arrange her own bridesmaids, then she recognized where the wisdom of Mr. Leighton asserted itself on her side. There was much less chance of conjecture where she and Mabel showed up in friendly manner together with one another. She had one friend from London as her first bridesmaid, and after this the question of dresses obliterated everything.

Jean, it is true, had still a soul for other things. She moaned for her Slavska on every occasion. She rushed to mirrors in agony lest her chin or throat muscles were getting into disrepair, and she talked already of having to renew her lessons.

"You are just like a cheap motor," said Betty at last, "always having to be done up. Why don't you keep on being a credit to your method like the expensive machines? They don't rattle themselves to bits in a week."

Betty was getting a little out of patience with life.

"I've had a ghastly time of it," she admitted to Mabel. "All the spunk is out of Elma, you know, and what with her being ill and Isobel engaged, I've led a lonely life. And now Jean can't talk of anything but her Slavska. I hate the man."

When Jean was not talking about Slavska, she was sending boxes of flowers to the club girls. Reams of thanks in long letters came by the morning posts. There was no doubt of the popularity of Jean.

"I should never be in deadly fear now of having to get on alone in life," she said. "There's such comfort in girls, you can't think."

Mabel had always remained a little more outside that radiantly friendly crowd, yet had quite as admiring a following. Mr. Leighton unendingly congratulated himself for letting them both have the experience. "Though never again," he declared, "never again, will I allow one of you away from home."

Then occurred Cuthbert's engagement. In a curious way it comforted Mr. Leighton. He was acquiring another daughter. Adelaide Maud loved that view of it best of all.

"If Mr. Leighton had been against me, I should have refused you," she explained to Cuthbert.

"You mean that I should," he corrected her. "Now what I am about to propose----"

"Are you really going to propose, dear?" asked Adelaide Maud innocently. Cuthbert grinned.

"You are to be married to me in the autumn," said he.

Adelaide Maud cogitated.

"Well, failing a real proposal, a command of this sort may take its place. I shall endeavour to be ready for you in the autumn."

"They are the funniest pair," said Jean; "Helen is so cool and Cuthbert so domineering! And I used to be so stuck on engagements," she sighed.

All the girls were in Elma's room, where Isobel tried on some of her finery. Elma lay on the couch at the window. She had had her trip with Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, and had come home with some colour and a good deal more vitality. Yet still there was much to be desired. Dr. Merryweather thundered out advice about the wedding.

"She is not to be excited," he kept hammering at every one. Elma felt a culprit in this respect. Nothing excited her except the one fact which evidently could not be altered. She had sent an invitation to Mr. Symington which he had not acknowledged in any shape or form. It seemed so ignominious. One could imagine that rather splendid and cultured person saying, "Oh, these young Leightons again! Don't trouble me with their children's weddings," or something to that effect. She grew cold as she thought of what Mabel's disgust would be when she heard of the flag she had held out (what more definite signal to "come on" could any one have given;) and of his utter disregard of that mild overture. She grew more and more troubled about it. So much so that Mrs. Leighton remarked to her husband as each list of acceptances came from home, and no word of Mr. Symington, "I believe that child is moping because he does not answer."

Mr. Leighton was all for the righting that time would accomplish. "She may forget this, whatever it is, in a day," said he. He said to Elma, however, "I hear Symington was asked. Shouldn't wonder if he were so far away that he hasn't had the letter."

That possibility gladdened her heart immediately. Perhaps after all he had not yet made his slighting remarks about the Leighton children. The Clutterbucks also were abroad, so that there seemed no chance of any of the connection being present.

Elma finally came home, and they had reached the Saturday afternoon before the wedding on the following Tuesday. A very finished example of the London girl had appeared as Isobel's first bridesmaid, and everybody was chatting incontinently. Jean ran on with her own views of things, since she usually found these of more interest than anything else.

"I feel now as though I wouldn't be engaged for a ransom," she said. "I think of all the men we know and how nice they are, but I don't want to be married to them."

"I should hope not," said Isobel. "Why should you!"

"All right, Isobel, I won't poach. But I'd rather give a concert than have a wedding."

It was her latest desire to give a concert in the Bechstein or Eolian Hall, when her voice was "ripe." She had even consulted an agent.

"If only papa would see it," she said, "it would cost £60, but I should get it all back again."

"Oh, one of these private concerts," said the London girl.

"Yes," broke in Mabel. "Where you pay £60 to an agent and he looks after everything including the people with whom you appear. You fill one part of the hall with your friends, and they fill up the rest. Free tickets, you know. Then each portion applauds like mad whatever you do. It all depends on who has most friends who gets the most encores. It is the duty of the rival crowd to remain silent when their own friend isn't performing."

"Oh, Mabel," said Jean.

"It's true," said the London girl. "And if a critic comes you treasure him, oh! you treasure him! There are seats and seats waiting for critics. This one poor man puts it as neatly as he can, Miss So-and-So sang "agreeably," then he rushes off to the most adjacent hall, and does the same for the next aspirant to musical honours."

"And you immediately buy a book for press cuttings," quoth Isobel.

"And only that poor one goes in."

"You are the most depressing crowd I ever met," said Jean despairingly.

"That's not all," said the London girl. "After paying for the other performers, you may happen to find that they have already paid the agent in order to appear with you."

"Oh, I believe a lot, but I won't believe that," said Jean.

"You may just as well," said the London girl, "because it happened to me. And it's very good business for the agent."

"Oh dear," cried Jean. "Do be silent about it then. With you in the house, do you think my father would ever allow me to give that concert."

"I sincerely hope he won't," said the London girl heartily.

Betty sat looking very glum.

"Why we should all be here discussing Jean's career, when there are far more important things to think about, I can't imagine. Jean, you might stop talking of your own affairs for once and help with Isobel's. Here's another box to be opened."

Jean stood pulling at the string.

"Still," she said obstinately, "if you have a voice and a fine method, and a man behind you like Slavska----"

"Oh, put her out," wailed Betty.

A chorus of "Put her out" ensued. Cuthbert, coming in in the midst of this, without asking for particulars, took Jean in his arms, and carried her off.

"I think it's perfectly miraculous the strength that comes to engaged people," said Betty simply. "Cuthbert couldn't have moved Jean a few weeks ago."

They both returned at that moment, looking warm but satisfied.

"The pater is growling downstairs that he can't get one of you to play to him nowadays," said Cuthbert. "There are to be no more weddings he says."

"Oh, there never is to be no more anything," wailed Betty. "And I'm only half grown up. You've exhausted papa before one of you have done anything."

"Well, let Jean go and rehearse her concert," remarked Isobel calmly.

"I require a good accompanist," said Jean.

Elma had been looking out at the window. She heard the gate open, to four minor notes, containing the augmented fourth of the opening to the Berlioz "King of Thule," which they all loved. Somebody had said "Oil that gate," and Mr. Leighton had objected because it reminded him of the "King of Thule." When Elma heard the magic notes, and looked out at the window, she could have dispensed with minor intervals for the rest of her existence.

Mr. Symington was coming up the drive.

Oh, Love of our Lives, and now this! She could at last recover from typhoid fever.

"I don't think any of you need go down to papa," said she. "There's an old johnny come to see him."

The bell rang at that moment.

Cuthbert approached her.

"I should fancy," said he, "that with all the good training you have had from Miss Grace, you would have known better than to talk of old johnnies. Who's the josser, anyway?"

"Cuthbert, my darling boy, you are just a little bit vulgar. Cuthbert, I've never been so happy in my life as I am at the present moment."

"So long as you don't weep about it, I don't mind," said Cuthbert.

Elma got up. "I think I could dance," said she.

"Do," said Cuthbert, and put his arm round her.

To the dismay of the girls, he swung Elma into the midst of the wedding trousseaux. Boxes were snatched up, tissue paper sent flying in all directions. Every girl in the room screamed maledictions on them both. This was quite unlike Elma, to be displaying her own feelings at the risk of anything else in the world. They stopped with a wild whirl.

"Elma wanted to dance," said Cuthbert coolly, "and as she hasn't had any exercise lately, I thought it would be good for her. Have some more?" he asked her.

A demon of delight danced in Elma's eyes.

"Why, certainly," she said politely.

There was no holding them in at all.

Elma had her first real lecture, from Mabel of all people.

"I think it's very inconsiderate of you, Elma--just when we are so busy. You might arrange to stop fooling with Cuthbert when these things are lying about. It isn't fair of you."

"Oh, Mabs," said Elma, "you don't know! I've been under the clouds so long--thunder clouds, with everything raining down on me, and hardly any sunshine at all. And just at the present moment I'm on top of the clouds, treading on air; I can't describe it. But even although you are so solemn, and Isobel is so vexed, and Jean is so haughty, and Betty is simply vicious, why, even in spite of that, I'd like another dance with Cuthbert."

Her eyes shone. (Oh, what--what was taking place down stairs?)

Cuthbert said "Come on," in a wild way. These spirits had been natural with him just lately.

But this time five girls intervened.

"Not if I know it," said Isobel.

And "Get you to your Adelaide Maud," cried Betty. So there was no more dancing for Elma just then.

"However," said she, "for the first time in my life, I think, I'm really looking forward to Tuesday night." They were to have a dance in honour of Isobel's wedding. "I think that whether Dr. Merryweather is alive or dead, I shall dance the whole evening." She began to adopt Jean's manner. "Do you know," she said to her, "I feel so inspired. I think I could go and compose an anthem!" (What were they saying downstairs?)

"Oh," said Betty. "She said that just before she took ill, you know. And I lay awake at night thinking she would die. Because I asked you, you know, just in fun, were you going to die because you wanted to write an anthem."

"On the contrary," said Elma, "I now want to write an anthem because I'm about to live."

"Look here, Elma," said Mabel sedately, "if you don't sit down and keep yourself quiet, I shall get Dr. Merryweather to come."

"If he has time," said Isobel drily.

"Time?" asked Mabel.

"Yes, before he gets married to Miss Grace."

That bomb burst itself to silence in the most complete pause that had fallen on the Leighton family for a long time. They began to collect their scattered senses with difficulty. Elma thought, "Mr. Symington in the drawing-room and Miss Grace going to be married! Am I alive or dead?"

"Didn't you notice?" said Isobel's calm voice. "Haven't you seen that Dr. Merryweather's heart is with Miss Grace? You could tell that from the colour of his gloves. Lemon yellow ever since Miss Annie died."

"Oh, Isobel," said Mabel gravely.

Elma remembered her asking, "And Miss Grace, this man, was he----" and Saunders opening the door and announcing, "Dr. Merryweather." Was this something more than a coincidence, and was Isobel right? Surely Miss Grace would have let her know. Then the certainty that Miss Grace would far more easily let an alien like Isobel know, by reason of her own embarrassment, than a friend like Elma through frank and easy confidence, began to convince her. She heard the gate sing its little song of warning again at that moment. Miss Meredith tripped in.

Miss Meredith!

Elma put her head out at the open window.

"Oh, Miss Meredith, do come upstairs, we've such a lot to show you."

Sarah came safely up. (Oh the relief!) What if she met Mr. Symington, and this new castle of cards came tumbling down to more interference from that quarter. Besides, they were soon going to tea, and Mabel was still unwarned. Elma discreetly hoped that Mabel would not faint. As for herself, her shakiness seemed gone for ever. She was a lion, defending Mabel.

Miss Meredith floated about the room. "Perfectly sweet," she said one minute, and "Isn't it a dream?" the next. (What was Mr. Symington saying in the drawing-room?)

It came alarmingly near tea-time. Elma made everybody prink up a little. "We are all such frights," she said, "and there's some old johnny with papa in the drawing-room."

"I do believe you know who it is," said Betty, "and won't tell us." She was in a suspicious mood with society in general.

"I do," said Elma simply. "It's Mr. Symington."

Mabel did not faint. She was providentially with her back to the others, packing a tulle dress in tissue paper just then, and one has to be very particular with tulle. She was quite collected and calm when she finished. Miss Meredith was the colour of the Liberty green screen behind her. Her energy did not fail her in this crisis however.

"Why, it's nice Mr. Symington comes back," she said. "Is he coming to the wedding?"

"He is," said Elma. "He was my 'particular.' I asked Isobel if I might invite him."

"Who is he anyway?" asked Isobel, patting her hair gently in front of a mirror.

("Oh, Isobel, my friend, if you only knew that," Elma conferred with herself, "you wouldn't perhaps be the centre of attraction to-day.")

"He's a man who's great friends with the pater," said Jean unconcernedly. "He goes abroad a lot and writes up things and develops photos and has a place in Wales."

"A place in Wales, how nice!" said the London girl. "But it isn't the great Mr. Symington, is it?"

"Why, yes, I suppose it must be," said Jean.

"Of course it is," said Miss Meredith, socially active once more. "Mr. Symington is a very famous young man."

"Good gracious," said the London girl, "my curling tongs at once, please. These surprises are very demoralizing. Look at my hair."

They all made themselves beautiful for "the great Mr. Symington."

Mabel turned a pair of wide eyes on Elma. Elma nodded like a little mother, with a wealth of smiles at her lips. (Oh, Mabel, play up!)

Cuthbert had found his mother coming out of the drawing-room.

"Well, you seem in good spirits," said she,

"Who is in there?" he asked.

"Mr. Symington."

"Oh, it's he, is it?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Oh, for no particular reason," said Cuthbert. "Only Elma saw him coming in and called him an old johnny. I knew something was up."

"Elma?" asked Mrs. Leighton anxiously.

"Yes. And she's in great form about something. Haven't seen her so gay for an age."

Mrs. Leighton's eyes dropped. "Poor little girl," she said to herself. She thought it best to proceed upstairs, and break some of the surprise of Mr. Symington's arrival.

She found them in a room where boxes were piled in every direction. It was like her that in her present dilemma she should immediately begin to reprove them for their untidy habits.

"This room is really a disgrace," she said. "Just look at all these boxes! And it's tea-time and not one of you in the drawing-room with your father, the only afternoon he has too! Elma, what have you been doing to make your hair so untidy?"

"My hair is only a wig, and this is my room," said Elma firmly. "For the last ten minutes I have been trying to get to my own mirror. We are prinking ourselves up for the great Mr. Symington."

"Oh," said Mrs. Leighton. "So you know. Well, he only got the invitation a few days ago, when he was buried in Servia or some outlandish place. He came right on."

"For my wedding?" asked Isobel in cool surprise.

Miss Meredith gazed in a rather frightened manner at every one.

"No," said Elma. "Not altogether. There were others reasons." She determined to cut all the ground from under the feet of Sarah. "I arranged it with Mr. Symington," she said in an important voice. Then, with the airy manner of the London girl, she patted down the turbulent wig, which had so annoyed Mrs. Leighton. "He is a perfect duck," she said lightly.

CHAPTER XXX

"Now here there dawneth"

The organ in the Ridgetown church pealed in a stately manner the wedding music from Lohengrin. Isobel, the bride, moved with exactitude slowly down the aisle with her three bridesmaids. Mr. Leighton, presumably leading her, was compelled to delay himself several times. Who could have known that the arm lying on his was manipulating matters so conscientiously! It was inimitably done. Isobel's entourage arranged itself in perfect order, and knowing that everything was properly completed, she raised her eyes to those of Robin just as the last chord sounded. This had been rigorously rehearsed, but nothing could have been better carried out. The ceremony of marriage commenced.

There were more dramas played out that day than what Ridgetown called "the drama" of Mabel's acting bridesmaid to Isobel. Ridgetown was delightfully curious in noting that Robin, for instance, looked nervous and disturbed. The darting glances which had so unnerved the Leighton family long ago, dwelt on Isobel only occasionally. Robin would not be at his happiest till the ceremony was over.

Whether by accident or design, Miss Grace, who was unable to join the wedding party on account of her mourning, came in quietly to church with Dr. Merryweather. Here was drama enough if one liked to look further as Isobel had done. Then Mr. Symington had been ordered to be an usher. The groomsman, a Mr. Clive, a friend of the Merediths, was, of course, out of the usher part of the business. So Cuthbert and George Maclean and Lance and Mr. Symington were requisitioned. They had to show in the guests and give the cue to the organist, and take the bridesmaids out afterwards. Miss Meredith had been of opinion that they did not require so many ushers. The girls insisted on four at least.

Elma was not in the seventh heaven which she had inhabited a few days before. There was something still unravelled about Mr. Symington's attitude.

She was not to know, of course, that he had immediately placed himself in Mr. Leighton's hands in regard to Mabel. That much-startled person only thought of another complication--Mabel, when Elma had set her heart on him! In a disturbed manner he had endeavoured to let Mr. Symington know that he might find difficulties in the way. He begged, above all things, that he might not rush matters.

"Give us time to think a little," he pleaded. "We have had so much of this sort of thing lately."

Mr. Symington would have preferred to have had it out then and there. "You understand," he said, "that I left this unsaid before, because I thought, in fact I was led definitely to understand that she was engaged to Meredith, and that my presence here was a trouble to her."

"Ah, that's it--perhaps," said Mr. Leighton. "It was not because of Meredith. There may be other reasons."

Mr. Symington's hopes went down at a rush.

When the girls crowded into the room for tea, his greeting and Mabel's consisted of a mere clasp of the hand on either side with no words spoken at all. But Mabel felt suddenly as though she could face the world. Was it strength he had given her by the mere touch of his hand? She could not raise her eyes to let him or anybody else see what was written there.

The deadlock puzzled the triumphant Elma. Miss Grace comforted her a little. "These things always come right--sooner or later."

These two good friends had not the firmness to probe that remark further, though Elma was dying to ask about Dr. Merryweather.

"I'd like to help them," said Elma instead, "but I should feel like the 'tactful woman' that Mr. Maclean was laughing at. He says that when tactful women write novels they are always making people drop handkerchiefs in order to help the heroine, or having a friend outside or something of that sort at the right moment. It made me feel so silly over sending the invitation to Mr. Symington. Especially," continued she sadly, "since he doesn't seem to be making much use of it. It's very enervating to be tactful, especially when your tact doesn't come off."

Miss Grace looked at her long and kindly.

"Don't bury your sympathies in the cause of others too much, dear," she said. "With some of us, with you and me for instance, it might become more of a weakness perhaps than a real virtue."

Elma immediately thought, "There is something in what Isobel said after all."

Instead of giving voice to it, she said, "I have bothered about Mabs, I know. But then, I haven't any affairs of my own, you see."

"Oh, dear child, never be sure, never be too sure about that," said Miss Grace.

A delightful feeling stole over Elma. Could it be possible that anything exciting could ever happen to herself. But no--how could it?

"I think it's papa always telling us no woman ought to be married until she's twenty-three that de--demoralizes me so," she said. "And lately, since Mabs is nearly that age, he is actually running it on to twenty-five."

"Yes, but they never really mean it," said Miss Grace.

"Well, one thing I intend to see to is that Mr. Symington takes Mabel out of church after the wedding. Sarah wants him. And Sarah is not going to have him."

"I think you are quite right there," said Miss Grace.

Elma got hold of Mr. Symington herself. "I want you to do me a great favour," she said. "I want you to escort Mabel on Tuesday."

"It isn't a favour," he said. He pulled his big shoulders together and looked magnificent. He was browned and tanned with the sun. Only a slight frown between the eyes to be cleared away and then he would be the old Mr. Symington.

"Well, please do it like this. Ask Mabel if you may."

"Now?" asked Mr. Symington.

"If you like," said Elma.

They were on the lawn after dinner, and Mr. Symington in two days had hardly had a glimpse of Mabel, far less any conversation with her.

She was talking to Isobel.

He walked straight up to her.

"May I escort you out of church on Tuesday?" he asked.

Mabel looked up in a puzzled way, then her eyes lit with shyness and something much more brilliant than had been seen in them for a long time.

"Yes," she said simply.

(Could he know how her heart thumped to that quiet "yes"?)

"Thank you."

(Oh, after all, after all, could the sun shine after all!)

Isobel broke in coldly.

"I had understood from Robin that Mr. Symington would take Miss Meredith."

Mabel turned cold. She could not help it, for the life of her, she could not help it, she turned an appealing glance on Mr. Symington. This he had hardly required, but it helped him to a joyous answer.

"Oh, no, Miss Leighton. Some mistake. I'm bound to Miss Mabel."

Elma strolled up. "It's all because of Cuthbert's insisting on taking Helen. Cuthbert ought to have taken Mabel. Mr. Clive takes the first bridesmaid; Mr. Symington, Mabel; George Maclean, Jean."

"Who takes you?" asked Mr. Symington.

"Oh, I'm not in the procession," said Elma.

"Yes, you are." Mabel was quite animated now. "The whole family trails out in pairs with somebody or another."

George Maclean strolled up.

"I shall take Elma," he said.

"No, you won't! You take Jean."

"I won't be taken by George Maclean," cried Jean. "He's always horrid to me."

"Wire for Slavska," interpolated Betty.

"Is this my wedding, or whose is it?" asked Isobel.

They settled everything once more. The real result lay in Mr. Symington's determination about Mabel.

He came to Elma afterwards.

"Is there anything under the sun you want, which you haven't got?" he asked her. "Because I should like to present it to you here and now."

That cleared up things incalculably for the wedding. Elma sitting in front saw only Mabel, and Mabel's face was the colour of a pink rose. Mr. Symington took her out of church after the wedding, next to the first bridesmaid.

Aunt Katharine followed them with her lorgnette.

"They're a fine couple," she said to Elma. "It's a pity Mabel spoiled herself with this Meredith man. Mr. Symington might lead her out in earnest. I always told your mother what it would be."

There was no squashing of Aunt Katharine.

Mabel had begun to see land after having tossed on what had seemed an endless sea. She had been without any hope at all, but it was necessary to appear throughout as though she had some safe anchor holding her in port. The joy of delivery was almost more than she could bear. She became afraid of looking at Mr. Symington. After the arrival of the guests at the White House, she managed to slip out and disappear upstairs. Her own room had people in it helping to robe Isobel. She stole into the schoolroom. Too late of making up her mind, since Mr. Symington, seeing a trail of pale silken skirts disappear there, tried the only door open to him on that landing. He found Mabel.

"Oh," said she blankly. "I wanted to get away--away from downstairs for a little."

He had some difficulty in replying.

"So I noticed," he said.

They lamely waited. Mabel caught at a window cord and played with it.

"We ought to go downstairs," she whispered.

Why she spoke in a whisper she could not imagine.

Mr. Symington came close to her.

"Mabs," he said, "just for three minutes I mean to call you Mabs. And after that--if you are offended--you can turn me off to the ends of the earth again. You know why I left before."

She bent her head a little.

"You didn't want me to go? You didn't want me to go! Say that much, won't you?"

She could not answer.

"I know what it means if you do," he said. "Oh don't I know what it means? Mabs, I'm going to make you care for me--as I do for you--can you possibly imagine how much I care for you--why won't you speak to me?"

Mabel never spoke to him at all.

He happened to take her hand just then, and the same confidence which had so strangely come to her a few days ago on his arrival, came to her once more. He took her hand, and time stood still.

Somebody outside, a vague time afterwards, called for Mabel. It dawned on them both that they were attending Isobel's wedding.

"We ought to go downstairs," whispered Mabel.

Her conversation was certainly very limited. They both smiled as they noticed this, a comprehensive, understanding, oh! a different smile to any they had ever allowed themselves.

"We will, when you've just once--Mabs--look up at me. Now--once."

Time stood still once more, but it took the last of the frown from between the eyes of Mr. Symington.

"Now for Isobel's wedding party," cried he.

Mr. Leighton was stunned a little with the news. "Only one stipulation," said he. "I want to tell Elma myself."

Mabel was terribly disappointed.

"Oh, papa--of all people--I wanted to tell Elma."

He was adamant however, even when Mr. Symington added his requests.

"You've interfered seriously enough between me and one of my daughters," Mr. Leighton said severely. "Leave me the other."

So nothing was mentioned until Mr. Leighton should tell Elma. Mrs. Leighton was nervous about the whole thing, yet in an underhand way very proud of Mabel.

"I can't see that any of you are at all suited to be the wife of a man like Mr. Symington," she said to Mabel pessimistically. "But your father thinks it is all right." She had had rather a long day with Aunt Katharine.

Elma saw that the clouds had lifted where Mabel was concerned, and Mr. Symington was in magnificent spirits. She thought they might have told her something, but she was sent to lie down with no news at all until the dance in the evening. Isobel left regally. There was not much of the usual scrimmage of a wedding-leave-taking about her departure. Her toque and costume were irreproachable. Miss Meredith attended her dutifully, as though she were a bridesmaid herself. But with Robin she had felt too motherly for that. Indeed, some new qualities in Miss Meredith seemed to be coming uppermost.

Dancing was in full swing in the evening when Mr. Leighton methodically put on an overcoat and took Elma to sit out in the verandah. "It is to prevent your dancing too much," he told her.

Elma had the feeling of being manipulated as she had been when she was ill. What did all this mystery mean? She tucked in readily enough beside her father. The night was warm, with a clear moon, and the lights from the drawing-room and on the balcony shed pretty patches of colour on her white dress and cloak.