Frances Peard

"The Swing of the Pendulum"

Chapter One.

Dislike.

The shallow North Sea had been fretted by a northerly gale, and the voyage from Hull even more than usually unpleasant, when the passengers on board the Eldorado struggled up to see the low-lying land which forms the entrance to Stavanger. The vessel was crowded, but hardly any one had appeared at meals, and the groups on deck had been too much occupied with their own discomforts to do more than take a languid interest in each other. Now that the worst was over, this interest quickened.

Two ladies, a mother and daughter, were standing a little apart, when a gentleman strolled up to them. They greeted him with a smile.

“I have not seen you since the night you came on board; where have you been all the time?” he began.

“Don’t ask,” said the elder lady, with a shudder. “For the first time in my life I have suffered the pangs of actual remorse, because I persuaded Millie to come. However, we are never going home again, that is quite decided.”

“Unless we walk,” said Millie firmly.

“Do you mean to land at Stavanger?”

“How can you ask? I would land anywhere, even on a desert island. Besides, we have been reading somebody’s Best Tour, and according to that it is the right way of going into Norway. Once adopt a guide-book, you become its slave.”

“Then we shall be likely to jog along together, unless you object?” said Wareham, with a smile.

Millie looked at him with frank delight, her mother gave a quick glance, in which more mingled feelings might have been read. She made haste, however, to express her pleasure.

“I am not likely to object to an unexpected piece of good fortune, but I give you fair warning that, although I can get on by myself as well as most women, if there is a man at hand, I am pretty sure to turn over exacting carriole-drivers, or anybody making himself disagreeable, to him.”

“I am not alarmed. There are no exacting carriole-drivers in Norway, and you are more likely to over-pay than be over-charged. You will like the country.”

“I am going to enjoy it immensely,” said Millie, “when once I am there. This doesn’t count, does it? because, though I believe we are staring at lovely mountains, and there are rose-red sheds standing up against them, I feel too much humiliated to be enthusiastic, and my one longing is for tea. Besides, I am dreadfully cold.”

“Come to the other side of the ship,” said her mother briskly. “We shall see the town better, and be nearer our luggage.”

Wareham followed, he hardly knew why.

He liked the Ravenhills very well, but he had not intended to attach himself to any fellow-travellers, and when he spoke of jogging along together, it was rather an allusion to the inevitable gravitation of Norwegian travel than to that deliberate companionship which their words seemed to accept. He told himself, however, that this was a natural mistake, born of inexperience. It would be easy enough to break away when he found it desirable; he would not worry his holiday with excess of caution. Mrs Ravenhill was charming, and Millie might turn out to possess the same delicate quality. As she stood before him with her mother, he was struck with the prettiness of her hazel eyes and her dimples, and with that swift rush of thought into the imaginary future which we have all experienced, and from which we often return with a flush of shame, he saw himself falling in love with Millie, and coming back to England an engaged man. The thought was so vivid, that when at this moment she turned to speak to him, he had scarcely time to call himself back to the actual condition of things, and something of his mental picture was perhaps betrayed in his face, for she glanced quickly at him a second time, and coloured slightly.

“Norway may be as delightful as you all declare,” she said, “but when I set up a delightful land it shall have no custom-house. Here we shall have to wait, I suppose, while great big men amuse themselves with rummaging among all my most nicely packed corners. Oh, it’s absurd, it’s barbarous! And mother wouldn’t bring a maid.”

Mrs Ravenhill had moved a little forward, to speak to one of the stewards who were carrying up the cabin packages. When next Wareham looked at her, she had apparently relinquished her intention, and was talking to a gentleman who up to this moment had stood aloof, and who, even now, showed no great conversational alacrity, as Wareham remarked with a little amusement.

“Who is that?” he asked Miss Ravenhill.

“That?” Millie’s eyes began to smile. “Oh, poor Colonel Martyn. It is really wicked of mother, for she knows how frightened he gets when he hasn’t Mrs Martyn to protect him. But here she comes,” and Millie stopped suddenly.

Wareham did not notice the break, for his eyes had passed Mrs Martyn, and fallen with a start of annoyed surprise upon the face of a girl who followed her. The girl was young, and unusually tall, though, owing to an extraordinary grace and ease of movement, this only became evident when you compared her with the other women who stood round. She looked neither to the right nor left, and with the sun shining brightly behind her, it was difficult to see her face distinctly, but Millie, who was watching Wareham, perceived that he recognised her, and that the recognition was, for some reason or other, unwelcome.

“You know Miss Dalrymple?” she asked curiously.

Wareham’s expression had stiffened.

“No,” he said briefly.

“No? But you have seen her? You must have seen her this season?”

“Yes, I have seen her.”

Millie’s mouth opened as if she were going to put another question, but if it were so her intention changed. She said with enthusiasm—

“She is very beautiful.”

Wareham did not answer. He had turned his back upon the group, and was looking over the water past some brilliantly red-roofed barns to a broken line of tender amethyst-coloured hills.

“Are those people going to get out here?”

“What people?”

“Miss Dalrymple and her friends.”

“No. They told us at Hull—we all dined together at the Station Hotel, you know—that they should go on to Bergen.”

“Oh, good!” said Wareham, with unmistakable relief.

Millie began to laugh.

“You don’t know her, yet you have a dislike to her!”

“Yes. I dislike her.”

Something in Wareham’s tone checked further questioning. It was grave, outspoken, and the least little bit in the world haughty. Millie flew away from the subject, though her thoughts crept back to it again and again, with, it must be owned, a secret glee.

Slowly the vessel steamed into the harbour. The sun had broken out brilliantly after the gale; clouds, blown into strange shapes, struck across the sky, and glittered whitely behind a cleft in the distant mountains; the indigo blue water was full of dancing movement, and gave everything an air of gay exhilaration which it was difficult to resist. Into Millie’s pale face colour returned, and her eyes brightened as she looked about her at the vividly-painted boats, the white houses, and the cream-coloured ponies standing on the quay. Thanks to Wareham, they were among the first to leave the vessel, and to make their way through a gently interested crowd towards the inn. Mrs Ravenhill was more enthusiastic than her daughter. She sketched, and all she saw resolved itself into a possible effect on a square of white paper, and breathed the joy of creation. She was possessed, besides, with the fancy that her coming to Norway in a spirit of warm good-will should be warmly reciprocated, so that she looked at the people smiling, ready to shake hands with them all, since she had heard that was the form of greeting they liked. Millie, who had not her mothers buoyancy, found it more difficult to forget the impressions of the voyage. She began to pity those remaining on board.

“Unfortunate people who go on to Bergen! Weren’t the Martyns very sorry for themselves, mother?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear? They have given up the idea, changed their plans, and are landing here. Mrs Martyn vowed she couldn’t stand another hour.”

Millie shot a quick glance at Wareham, and told herself that his face spoke annoyance, but at this moment Mrs Ravenhill’s alert attention to the unusual was caught by a pony standing in a little cart, hobbled by reins twisted round its fore-feet, and she broke into exclamation. Then they left the harbour by a short street, and presently found themselves at the entrance of the comfortable inn which calls itself the Grand, where the two ladies vanished up-stairs, while Wareham, who had a telegram to send, went up the hill to the post-office.

Already he repented of the rashness which had allowed Mrs Ravenhill to suppose that he was ready to join her. He had known them long, but not well, and to a mail used to self-disposal, there was horror in the bare thought that they might make undue claims upon his attentions. That was bad enough, but the Martyns lay behind—worse, and that they should be worse was annoying. The best friend in the world cannot adopt the misfortunes of his friend as though they were his own, least of all, as Wareham reflected, with a half-laugh, when they are the misfortunes of love. As Dick Wareham with Hugh Forbes opposite to him—seen through a cloud of smoke, and the mist of years—sympathy bound him to denunciation of the woman who had ruined Hugh’s happiness; but as Richard Wareham in a holiday land, old surroundings behind, only folly would allow disturbance because this same woman was under the same roof! What was she to him? He reflected impatiently that he had been a fool to tell Miss Ravenhill that he disliked her. Wareham was hot-headed, and hot-headed yet fair-minded men must often wade through deep waters of repentance. He owned that he had behaved ill, and as his opinion of himself was of more importance to him than that of the world, the judgment annoyed him, and Miss Dalrymple, the cause of annoyance, became more obnoxious. He sent his telegram, and it was to Hugh Forbes.

If he had indulged in a hope that the Martyns might have betaken themselves to another inn, that hope was promptly dispelled, for after making his way back, followed by children shyly inviting him to buy paper screws, containing each four or five strawberries, he found their names largely scrawled across the black board in the entrance-hall, where the good-humoured burly porter was still arranging rooms for white-faced arrivals. Then he jumped at another chance of escape. Had the Sand steamer gone?

It had. The Eldorado was some hours late, and the steamer left at two. No other was due for twenty-four hours. Wareham went to his room, ashamed of the impulse of retreat. A bath and increasing hunger braced him, and he came down to the meal which in Norway does duty for late dinner, caring nothing as to whom he might encounter. He was not surprised to hear that Mrs Ravenhill had already made intimate acquaintance with Stavanger, its streets, harbours, and boats, but he was appreciatively grateful for the tact which had led her to abstain from asking him to accompany her; evidently she intended him to understand that travelling with them was not going to interfere with his liberty. Millie, like the rest of the world, had been sleeping; now she was quite herself again, and announced that she meant to go out immediately after supper.

“Meanwhile I intend to try everything that is on the table. Isn’t that the properly unprejudiced spirit in which to dine in a strange country?”

“Oh, praiseworthy!” said Wareham. “Do you mind how they come, or will you follow hackneyed routine, and start with salmon?”

“Please. I don’t wish to go in too strongly for emancipation. I shall begin with salmon, and be much disappointed if you don’t provide me with reindeer collops—isn’t that the proper word?—and cloudberries and cream.”

“You are born to disappointment,” Wareham announced. “Cloudberries are not ripe much before September, and we are in July.” Millie looked at him, laughing and frowning. He admired her dimple.

“Spare my delusions,” she said. “I shall not listen to you. I know what to expect. Cloudberries and cream I shall feast upon, if not to-day, another day. Pirates will be in the fjords, at a safe distance. There will be islands, and if we look long enough, we shall see a man swimming, and flinging up his hands; while up by the saeters we shall come upon a little Lapp, carrying away a cheese as big as himself. That is my Norway,” Millie continued triumphantly, “not the miserably complicated country of Ibsen and Bjornson.” She lowered her voice to an “Ah!” and said no more, as the Martyns and Miss Dalrymple appeared.

Three empty seats opposite the Ravenhills had been reserved for the new-comers. Colonel Martyn gave a nod to Wareham, expressive of the sympathy of a fellow-sufferer, and dropped into the chair corresponding with his. Mrs Martyn came next, a large fair woman, with hardness in her face and brusqueness in her manner. Wareham passed them and looked at Miss Dalrymple, hostility in his heart, and admitted; as well as a curiosity which he would not have so readily acknowledged.

She faced the level light of many windows, a position against which Millie had rebelled, and she had just gone through a trying sea voyage; but her beauty defied what would have affected others. Her skin was warmly tinted, her hair a lovely brown, growing low on the temples, and lighter than is usual with brown beauties, some shades lighter than the beautiful eyes. Wareham, looking at her, pelted her with all the detracting epithets he could light upon; he called the poise of the small head on the slender throat arrogant, yet to most people it would have seemed as natural as the growth of a flower, and as perfect. As for the line of her lips, it was hard, hard, hard. Sitting down, she swept the table with a swift glance, half closing her eyes as she did so, to her judge a sign of sinful vanity, though really due to near-sightedness. This done, she turned and talked almost exclusively to her neighbour, a small old lady, shy, and a little prim, who had also crossed in the Eldorado. She was often, however, silent: once Wareham encountered her half-shut glance resting upon him. She showed no confusion at meeting his gaze, and he had to own, with a little mortification, that her look was as impersonal as that which she turned upon others of the unknown company.

Millie had grown silent, perhaps because her neighbour spoke less; and the link between the two sets was Mrs Ravenhill. She knew many people and could talk easily; at one moment in her conversation with Mrs Martyn, who had not yet stepped back into her usual assertive mood, she leaned across her daughter, and introduced Wareham. It was only an act of courtesy; after the interchange of a few words, his talk drifted again to Millie.

The motley meal ended, it broke up abruptly.

“Mother and I are going out,” said Millie, with careful avoidance of pressure.

“I will come, if I may.” He added heedfully, “That is, if you are to be alone?”

“Alone, of course.” The girls eyes danced. Triumph had not often come to her, and to find a man, a man of distinction, who preferred her society to that of the beautiful Miss Dalrymple, was intoxicating. She swept her mother to her room, and implored her to make haste.

“Why?”

“Why? Because it is pleasanter to be alone.”

“Shall we be alone?”

Pinning on her veil, Millie admitted that she believed Mr Wareham would come.

“Oh!” Presently Mrs Ravenhill added, with a little intention—“Millie, don’t spoil Mr Wareham.”

The girl laughed frankly.

“The bare idea makes you fierce, mother, doesn’t it? But I do think it is nicer to have a man with us than to trail along by ourselves, and if he comes, he will expect things to—to—well, to go as he likes.”

Mrs Ravenhill emitted another “Oh!” She added—“In my day a man would have thought himself honoured.”

“So he would in mine, if I had the arrangement of things,” Millie retorted. “But I haven’t, and all that can be done is to make the best of them. Perhaps you haven’t found out that Mr Wareham detests Miss Dalrymple, and evidently wishes to avoid her. We needn’t force them upon each other.”

“I thought he did not know her?”

“Nor does he.”

“Well,” said her mother, with impatience, “have it as you like, Millie, only, for pity’s sake, don’t let us plunge into a cloud of mystifications and prejudices! We didn’t come to Norway for that, and Mr Wareham isn’t worth it.”

To this the girl made no answer, and the subject dropped.

So they went out, all three, in the cool clear daylight, which had no suggestion of evening about it, except that the shop-doors were locked, and people strolled about with leisure which seemed unnatural. The streets were not beautiful, but all the boarded houses had clean white faces, red roofs, and cheerful windows crowded with flowers. Presently they came upon the old cathedral with its two low spires; on one side an ancient avenue of storm-stunted sycamores, dignified a grave little cluster of houses at its end. Millie wanted to go into the church, and professed herself injured at finding it closed.

“Mayn’t they ever shut up?” said Wareham, holding out his watch with a smile.

“It is a quarter to ten!” she exclaimed, but refused to return. A lake glimmered through the trees—they went there, and afterwards along stony ways round the harbour. Something—was it the pure light air, the kindly sensible-faced people?—set the girls heart, throbbing. She had suddenly caught her mother’s simple power of enjoyment, and Wareham owned that her quick intuition gave originality to the commonplace.

By the time the harbour was reached, lights were golden, colour ran riot in the sky. There was too much ripple on the water for reflections, but the green boats bobbed gaily up and down; while far away the mountains lay faintly blue against the eastern sky, out of which light paled. Beyond the streets are public gardens, the houses are left behind, and the wide water-mouth stretches broadly. Now there was nothing but the lap of waves, distant islands, more distant mountains, and the sunset sky above.

They lingered, and silently watched the pomp fade, found a boat, and rowed across the harbour in the last afterglow.

Chapter Two.

A Man’s Judgment.

Strange, indeed, that Wareham should have been thus shot into the society of Anne Dalrymple! Never personally acquainted with her, he had heard more about her than of any other living woman, could have described her positively, and believed he knew her mind. Heart he denied her. Had he been in England during the past year or two they must have met, but he had first been ordered abroad after a narrow escape of breakdown from over-work; then, bitten by the charm of the south, let himself drift lazily from Italy to Greece, from Greece to Egypt, from Egypt to India, all lands of enchantment.

During the latter part of this stay, letters had been showered upon him from his chief friend, Hugh Forbes, letters crammed with enthusiasm, with hope, with despair, a thundering chord, with the beautiful Miss Dalrymple for its root. Wareham pished and poohed, and sometimes pitched away as much as half a letter—unread—with a word. But he was a man with an unsuspected strength of sympathy. Probably it belonged to his success as an author that, once interested, he could project himself into another mind, and feel its sensations. Especially where his affections were concerned was this the case, and it may have been fortunate for him that his affections were not easily moved, perhaps because he feared what he counted a weakness, and was reluctant to let himself go. Once he had loved a woman, but this happened before he was famous, and she married a richer man; since that time his heart had apparently remained untouched, although he never avoided women’s society.

The dark time of disappointment drew him nearer to his friend. Hugh was three years his junior, but they had been at school together, and the habit of befriending the younger boy had stuck to Dick. When this happens, the strength of the tie is scarcely calculable, at least on the side of the elder. Hugh knew and acted upon it almost unconsciously. He would as soon have expected the Funds to collapse, as Dick to fail him in case of need.

After a time his letters announced the unexpected to Wareham. The affair was serious, and Miss Dalrymple had accepted him. Rapture filled sheets of paper. Then letters ceased, and Wareham, who was in India, smiled, recognising the inevitable; and waited without misgiving, until a cooler time should bring back the outer manifestations of a friendship which he could not doubt. They came in the form of a cry of misery. Within six weeks of the wedding Miss Dalrymple had broken off the engagement.

He read the letter in amazement, and rushed back to England, snapping the small ties with which he was lazily suffering himself to be entangled, and knowing that in the blackness of a lovers despair his was the only hand to bring the touch of comfort. Under his own misfortunes he had been dumb, but this reticence did not affect his sympathy with a more expansive nature. Hugh liked to enlarge upon his sorrows, unfailing interest lurked for him in the question how they might have been avoided, and the answer was never so convincing as to suffice.

Wareham gave a patient ear to the lengthy catalogue of Miss Dalrymple’s charms—until he could have repeated them without prompting—and offered one suggestion after another as to the causes which had induced her to break off her engagement. For there had been no quarrel, no explanation. Hugh had merely received a letter saying that she had discovered it to have been a mistake, and could not marry him; she accepted the whole blame, and asked him not to attempt to see her.

It was a preposterous request, and he battled against it with all his might, only to find that the fates were on her side. For, although he wrote stormy, heart-breaking letters, although he battered at her doors, his letters remained unanswered, and all that he could hear was that Miss Dalrymple was ill and would see no one. This made him worse. Her father was dead, brothers she had none; Lady Dalrymple, her step-mother, an inconsequent careless woman of the world, who had shrugged her shoulders when Anne announced her intention of marrying Hugh Forbes, admitted him to her boudoir, and told him, with another shrug, that she could neither interfere nor offer an explanation. Anne had acted throughout on her own responsibility; as she had not opposed when she disapproved, he could not expect her to take part against her judgment.

“How was I to fight such an argument?”

Hugh asked Wareham, not once but twenty times. The first time he was answered by a question whether he had never met the girl anywhere? “Was I going to insult her in public!” groaned Hugh, and his friend liked him the better for manly self-restraint when he had reason for being distraught. He had avoided society and nursed his misery, exaggerating it, perhaps, but acting gallantly. Wareham could not but reach the conclusion that he had been abominably treated. Yet where lay the remedy? Patience had to be offered in draughts, and was turned from with loathing. This went on until even Wareham grew weary of repetition, and was not sorry when Hugh’s sister came up to town, and appeared eager for confidences. With the belief that his friend would be the better for a change of consolers, Wareham resolved to carry out a vague plan, and go to Norway for three or four weeks. And there, as has been seen, he at once found himself confronted with Miss Dalrymple.

Naturally, she now occupied his thoughts. He had sent a telegram to Hugh on arrival, in compliance with a promise he had made to let him know if he at any time became acquainted with Miss Dalrymple’s movements; a promise made idly, and already regretted. To-night he pieced together his impressions.

They were as unfavourable as might have been expected. The signs in her face he had already read against her, and her composure almost shocked him. He was certain, from the exuberance of Hugh’s friendship, that his own name must be familiar to Miss Dalrymple; and, considering her tacit acknowledgment to Hugh that she had treated him very ill, a woman whose heart was what a womans should be, must have felt and betrayed uneasiness at finding herself face to face with the dearest friend of the man she had jilted. Miss Dalrymple, however, had shown no symptom of feeling. She had treated him as if he had never so much as touched her thoughts, and to do Wareham justice, it was friendship, not vanity, which resented the indifference. He thought it horrible that a woman should be so cold.

Pride, also, he read accusingly. In his own mind he believed Hugh to have been flung over because she had grown discontented with his position. That she had yielded primarily, Wareham interpreted as due to the young fellow’s strong personal charm, perhaps to weariness of other men. It was an impulse, not love; and it was not powerful enough for a strain. He depreciated her beauty; who cares for half-shut eyes? He was not sure that Millie Ravenhill was not prettier; at any rate, he was certain that she was more attractive.

When conclusions stand up before us in such mighty good order, the chances are that we have always kept them ready made. This did not strike Wareham, sifter of causes though he might be; he set them down to acuteness of observation, and credited them with impartiality. It vexed him the more to be thrust by circumstances into a sort of companionship with Miss Dalrymple, whom of all women he would have avoided. He would take the first opportunity to break away, but when? For in Western Norway, where there is but one short railway, it often happens that you must leave when you can, not when you will, and at Stavanger this means once in the twenty-four hours. Imagine the sensation, nineteenth-century Englishman! What annoyance! what repose! Whether he would or no, he must make up his mind to journey as far as Sand, perhaps Osen, perhaps even Naes, with all the others who had landed from the Eldorado. After, he might go on by himself, and this consolation sent him off to bed.

When he met the Ravenhills in the morning, he found that Mrs Ravenhill’s inexhaustible energy had carried her out sketching, and brought her back hungry. She vowed that the place was charming, and after they had breakfasted—waited upon by a girl in Hardanger dress, cut-away scarlet bodice, beaded stomacher and belt, with white chemisette, sleeves, and apron, and fair hair hanging in a long plait—insisted upon bearing them off to prove her words. And, indeed, though there is nothing striking in the town itself, it was impossible not to feel its bright pleasantness. The sun shone gaily, the sweet pure air made every breath delight; even in July there was a fragrant freshness abroad, such as only comes to lands where spring and summer flutter down as fleeting visitors, and we cannot do enough to welcome them. All the houses are painted, whitened, and decked with flowers; they have not the lazy, sunburnt, picturesque charm of the south, but under the delicate northern sky there is a quiet yet vigorous cheerfulness about them. Wareham, who had seen Eastern splendours, was conscious of this gentle quality, and liked it.

They wandered round the busy harbour, into the cathedral, with its Norman pillars, and great impressive barbaric pulpit. The minister came out as they went in, a long black figure with a tall hat, a Puritan ruff, and a kind face, who looked as if he had stepped out of a story-book. Afterwards they strolled on, not much caring where, between hedges of sweet-briar, past boggy places waving with cotton rush, and climbed a hill to see the interlacing fjords, and the distant mountains veiled with advancing mist, and the women making their hay in the fields. Millie, who had not cared very much for Norway before she came, having something of a girl’s indifference to the unknown, was discovering delightful things around and before her—were they not rather blossoming in her heart? As for Wareham, he, too, became sanguine. So far, the Martyns were avoided, and with good luck the annoyance of their presence might be reduced to a minimum.

Three people content! What good sprite was here, and what mischief lurked behind? The three, equally unconscious of their luck and their danger, looked at all they could see, went back to the inn for more salmon, and steamed away down the fjords towards Sand.

An hour afterwards they were on the upper deck of the little steamer. Grey mists had gathered in their scouts, and swept up, chilling the air and battling with the sunshine. Now one, now the other gained the day. Miss Dalrymple walked about with Colonel Martyn. Wareham believed she shared his own disinclination to meet, and, under the circumstances, disinclination was more creditable than indifference. His hard thoughts of her softened slightly—very slightly. Mutual avoidance would prevent difficulties which might otherwise prove awkward in the coming days. Meanwhile, as yet nothing had been said or done which foreboded trouble.

It pleased Millie to treat Wareham as if he were responsible for anything lacking in the beauty of the country, and as the wide entrance to the Sand fjord is uninteresting, and a cold wind, nipping in from a bleak sea, chilled the landscape, he became the butt of many mock reproaches. Wrapped in a fur cloak, and barricaded behind an umbrella, she vowed there was nothing to see. Perhaps there was not much. But Wareham found a never-failing attraction in the small scattered villages at which the steamer stopped. A dozen or more white houses, a little stone pier, against which, under the crystal-clear water, seaweed of a wonderful green clung and floated, and a stir of human interest among the people who came down to the water’s edge to meet the steamer. At one of these landing-places the crowd was more than usual—a pink, green, and blue crowd—and there was concentrating of eyes upon one young girl, to whom the vessel had brought a bouquet—a white bridal bouquet. The pride with which she received it, the eagerness with which she read the note accompanying it, and allowed the children to admire and smell it, the interest of the other gazing girls, and the dignified air she assumed after the first few moments, made up an idyll which Wareham watched, smiling. He was sorry when the steamer backed away from the busy pier, and left the girl with her hopes, her triumphs, and her awe-smitten companions.

Going back to tell the idle Millie that she had missed something, his eye fell upon a tall slight figure in a long cloak, standing near the spot where he had stood, and talking to a shorter man with a grey beard. It was Miss Dalrymple, and she had apparently been occupied in the same way as himself. Her face was turned towards him, but she made no sign of recognition.

“Well?” demanded Millie gaily.

“Well, you would have found it interesting.”

“How do you know?”

“Listen to what were the accessories. A note and a nosegay.”

“Go on. No more?”

“A young woman. Beyond question, a wedding near at hand, and I have remarked that all women are interested in weddings.”

“Distantly viewed they are tolerable; but looked at closely, one’s pity becomes painful. And I am too cold to cry comfortably.”

“You must be super-sensitive. I saw no promise of tears.”

“The actors conceal their feelings; only the spectators may suffer theirs to be seen. Look how grave Miss Dalrymple is!”

Wareham glanced. Anne stood where he had last noticed her, apparently listening to her companion, and it was true that she appeared to be grave and preoccupied. Hers was a face in which beauty played capriciously, and at this moment the lines justified his charge of hardness.

“Merely bored, I should say, and not troubling herself to hide it.”

Millie put a sudden question.

“Wasn’t there some story, some engagement, in which Miss Dalrymple was mixed up? I am sure there was something one ought to remember.”

Wareham did not feel himself called upon to assist in this mental examination.

“With her beauty she is likely enough to be talked over,” was all he said. But Millie persisted.

“I am certain there was a sort of sensation—I must ask mother, for I am suddenly seized with curiosity. What was it? Wasn’t there—?” She broke off, and in a moment looked up triumphantly. “Of course! How stupid of me! Now it comes back. She was engaged to a son of Sir Michael Forbes. Didn’t you hear of it? Oh, I am sure you did! The wedding day was actually fixed, and everything arranged, and the next thing one heard was that it was at an end. How could I have forgotten!”

Wareham was silent. She looked at him in surprise.

“It is impossible it should not have come to your ears?”

His face changed a little. If she had known it, she was irritating him by her persistence, although he acquitted her of intention.

“One may as well leave the idle talk of the season behind one,” he said gravely.

“One can’t, with the chief subject before one,” retorted Millie. “Confess. Haven’t you thought about it since you saw her?”

He hesitated, then allowed the fact, adding that thoughts might remain one’s own.

“Ah, you think me a chatterbox,” she said good-humouredly. “How tiresome! Here is another shower sweeping across.”

“Shall I get a cloak?”

“No. I really want to hear more. I am sure you can tell me.” She added with eagerness—“Which was to blame?”

“What a question!”

“Why, is it strange? Somebody was, I suppose. I have very little doubt myself that Mr Forbes was the sinner.”

Wareham was startled from his impassive attitude.

“What has given you that impression?”

“What? How can I tell you? If I were to say it was a woman’s intuition, you would laugh. So that I imagine it is owing to vague recollection of what I may have heard.”

“If that is all, I think you should disabuse yourself of the idea. Whoever was to blame, it was certainly not Mr Forbes.”

She looked at him mischievously, and remarked that he spoke so gravely of an indifferent matter that one might suppose he had an interest in it.

“I have not said that it was indifferent.”

“Oh!” Millie coloured, and said hastily—“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. If I had dreamed that there was anything to make you care, I should not have tried to find out your opinion. Do you know, I should be really glad of a mackintosh.”

Wareham went to get it, but when he came back he reverted to the subject.

“Let me explain why I care. The man to whom Miss Dalrymple was engaged is my friend, and knowing as I do the circumstances of the case, I can’t stand hearing him reproached. I can’t explain the facts, simply because they are inexplicable, but I will ask you to take my word that no blame rests with him.”

“Oh no, I understand, I quite understand,” Millie stammered, wishing herself anywhere else. She was frightened, and could not find a jest with which to swing herself out of the difficulty. Her embarrassment made him think more kindly of her again.

Presently Mrs Ravenhill, who had been talking to Mrs Martyn, came to carry Millie to a more sheltered corner. Wareham, seeing that they were approaching another fjord village, went to the vessels side. This time there was a contrast—no crowd, no happy throng of girls: a few children, a few older people gathered on the pier; the baker came to receive his sack of flour, the postmaster his letters; next, out of the steamer another burden was lifted, an empty black coffin, studded with silver nails; the children—and the children only—stared curiously at the label, then they too ran off. And, so long as the steamer was in sight, there lay the strange black deserted thing, a blot on the green, unclaimed, and to all appearance uncared for. Some prick of the universal humanity kept Wareham’s eyes fixed upon it. He felt as if the dead man, whose home it was to be, was wronged by this callous desertion; as if he had been bound to all of them by a tie they were ignoring; and while conscious of the unreasonableness of his blame, he could not shake off the feeling that he shared in the common cruelty. Suddenly, by his side, a voice exclaimed—

“It is horrible!”

He turned abruptly, and saw Miss Dalrymple. Her eyes were fixed where he had been looking, and she went on—

“One has no right to resent a mere accident. They may have to come from a distance, and it can’t be known exactly when the steamer will call. Still—”

“It offends one,” said Wareham.

“It is heartless.”

He kept his eyes on her face.

“Happily the dead are not hurt by heartlessness.”

“Happily,” she returned, after a moment’s pause. She glanced at him, half closing her eyes, in the manner he disliked. Already the conversation had taken an edge, of which, even had it been unintentional, neither could have been unconscious. But Wareham wished to wound. He asked whether she had noticed the group at the landing-place before this last? She made a sign of assent.

“What did you think of it?”

“I?”

“Was it more creditable to human nature? Was heart there, or was the girl merely pleased with her power?”

A smile made him more angry.

“What makes you or me her judge?”

“Dismal experience as to motives,” Wareham replied. “One lives and learns.”

“Not so surely,” Anne returned coolly. “Half the time our pretence of reading motives is sheer affectation. What we are really after is the making our conclusions fit our theories.” She suddenly shot away from the subject. “Are you travelling with the Ravenhills?”

“Yes—no,” said Wareham, surprised. “It was a chance meeting, and we have all to go the same way.”

“All?” She frowned. “Do you mean that we are irrevocably bound together?”

“Practically. Naturally there may be small deviations.”

“Oh, hateful!” she said frankly, and apparently mused over the information. Having bestowed it, Wareham was silent until she put another question. “May I inquire where you are all going to-night?”

“I can only help you so far as the Ravenhills are concerned. They will push on to Osen.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I, of course.”

“You were mistaken, then,” said Anne triumphantly, “in supposing that we follow the same route. We stop at Sand.”

He laughed. “Pardon me. Sand or Osen are practically the same thing. We meet on the same steamer to-morrow morning.”

“Oh!” She reflected again. “There is no help for it, then. Except—”

Wareham waited.

“I trust to you not to take advantage,” she said, in a hurried tone, and with a movement of the head which he interpreted as his dismissal.

Instead of rejoining the Ravenhills he stood solitary, and thought over the conversation. What ground had been won or lost between two antagonists’? He had made it plain to Miss Dalrymple that he was on his friends’ side, and she had let him know that the meeting was disagreeable to her. So far there was equality. But though he had not disguised his feelings, he could not flatter himself that he had caused Anne the slightest embarrassment. And there was vexation in the thought that their first movement had been towards sympathy, so that he remembered a throb of satisfaction on hearing her exclamation by his side. He remembered, too, and dwelt upon, the expression of her look—which said more than words—the brow slightly contracted, the eyes fixed, the strong pitiful curve of her lips. In spite of his prejudice, she was beautiful. Hugh’s raptures had inspired him with contradictory views, but he told himself now that there was no reason to be unfair, and that a lover might very well lose his head over fewer charms. Disapproval, contempt, perhaps, were as strong as ever, and proof against a woman’s face. Yet something in his own thoughts irritated him, and he turned from them to talk to a tall German, whose wife and children were ensconced in the warmest corner of the deck.

Chapter Three.

We Start Ourselves and Cry Out that Fate Pushes.

All the skydsguts, and all the owners of vehicles for miles round Sand, stormed the steamer on its arrival, and out of the struggling crowd Wareham with difficulty extricated Mrs Ravenhill and Millie, and started them in a stolkjaerre, while he himself followed in a second with a young Grey, who had, of course, crossed in the Eldorado. (Stolkjaerre pronounced stolkyerrer. Skydsgut pronounced shüssgoot.) In all there was a string of nine or ten little carriages, each drawn by a cream-coloured or light dun pony, its two occupants in front, and its skydsgut perched on the luggage behind.

Now that they had left the open fjord, wind-swept by a north-westerly gale, it had grown calm and warm; and, driving up to the mountains by the side of a hurrying river, the charm of the country began to reveal itself. Mrs Ravenhill would have liked to have broken away from the procession, and enjoyed it alone, but this was impossible. The ponies trotted in regular file, walked up the slightest incline, and raced wildly downhill; nothing would have induced ponies or drivers to part company, and, indeed, after all, something in the small cavalcade was refreshingly different from ordinary modes of travelling. Colours glowed and softened in the clear air, crimson sorrel turned the long grass into ruddy fields, waving and shimmering in the breeze, the river, narrowing, dashed itself into milky whiteness. In parts, trees growing singly out of the green, made the country park-like; elsewhere a wilder character prevailed, with a background of grey hills, on which grey clouds brooded. It was ten o’clock before they reached Osen, but so lingering was the day, that even by that time the surrounding outlines were scarcely touched with uncertainty.

Throughout the drive importunate skydsguts had petitioned on behalf of a new inn, but Wareham had decided to stop at the Suldal, known to him of old. Of all the procession only the two stolkjaerres halted there, the rest whisking by to the other and more pretentiously illuminated building; it seemed to Millie that the very landlord met them with surprise. The whole house was at their disposal; no one, he explained, was there, because the other house was very liberal to the skydsguts, and they persuaded their employers in its favour. There was something pathetic in the sad resignation with which he made this statement, and Mrs Ravenhill, whose face had fallen at realisation of the solitude, which appeared to point to something obnoxious, became enthusiastic. The quaint box-like little bedrooms, all pitch-pine, unbroken by paper, plaster, or carpet, delighted her; and as every sound was audible throughout the house, she and Millie in their separate rooms could talk as easily as if they had been together. Presently, however, other voices mingled themselves, and it became evident that some of their fellow-travellers had retraced their steps. When they came down to the meal which had been energetically prepared, they found half-a-dozen others. If it was not a very elaborate repast, there was plenty and good-will, and a homely hospitality which was pleasant. Besides, they were all hungry, and all sleepy, and neither the careful warnings against fire, with directions how to get out of the little passages, and where to find the “safety ropes,” nor the rather loud confidences of two travellers on the upper floor, could keep Mrs Ravenhill or Millie long awake.

Wareham, on the contrary, was not drawn to sleep. A paper in hand, which he wanted to think out by the help of a cigar, gave an excuse for strolling along the quiet road, where all was still except the unresting swirl of the river. His will forced concentration upon the matter which was in his mind, but it was like driving unruly horses, and the moment he relaxed his hold, his thoughts bolted to the words Anne Dalrymple and he had exchanged. It was difficult to explain why, except that her talk, her manner, and, above all, her face, had interested him. They possessed a certain quality distinct from the words and faces of others. That he thought of her with an ever-increasing disapproval did not interfere with the interest, but served for an excuse for returning to its contemplation, since nothing is more absorbing than a problem. It was doubtless this attraction which led him to fill out their conversation with imaginary words and incidents, such as might have led to an altogether different result. Jilt or flirt, Anne Dalrymple was no mere brainless woman, and he found himself on the verge of a wish that he had not been Hugh’s friend, so that he might have talked to her without prejudice. A man’s anger against a woman leaves him uncomfortable, with a sense of his own unfairness, whether deserved or not.

He began to resent his position. He had dropped into it unknowingly, but the bare idea that it might suggest to Hugh a thought of his friend’s disloyalty, cut like a lash. Kicking at pebbles in the road, or staring up at the dominating height rising blackly on the other side of the river, would not help him, and for the moment there seemed nothing else. He must make the best of it. Why on earth trouble himself with what could not be helped? Was he by ill-luck becoming morbid? He walked back to the inn, disgusted with himself; pitched away his cigar before entering the inflammable box, and slept, resolved to accept ordinary intercourse as if he and Miss Dalrymple were strangers.

It is difficult to adopt any course of action which does not involve others in unexpected ways. His last intention would have been to make marked advances to Millie Ravenhill, yet, treating her as a haven of refuge, meant being much by her side on the following day. The morning was all summer, full of light and freshness, and as the little carriages began to arrive from Sand, Wareham was very willing to get out of the way by joining half-a-dozen of their fellow-travellers in a stroll over the grassy hill behind the inn. Then Millie and he drifted away together, and she wanted a flower plucked out of a marshy bit of land, and when that was gathered a daring stone-chat enticed them, and the frank innocent beauty around beguiled Wareham, so that when the steamer sent up a warning shriek they were forced to run, and reached the vessel breathless. Mrs Ravenhill flung a look of reproach at Wareham, while she scolded Millie.

“How could you be so imprudent! I have been waiting in terror, not knowing where to send. Osen is all very well, but to be forced to spend another twenty-four hours here! I am really very angry.”

“Blame me,” said Wareham penitentially. “It was all my fault.”

He pleased himself by observing that the Martyns and Miss Dalrymple were in possession of seats, and as there had been a certain intention—on his part—of delay, it is doubtful if he were really sorry. Millie was radiant.

“I should not have minded staying,” she remarked, when breath had come back; “it is a dear little place, and it would have been a real crow for the landlord. He loved us so dearly for driving straight to his inn, instead of being forced there by want of room in the other! But what an odd state of society must exist in this place, when out of half-a-dozen houses two are rival inns! Do they speak? Do they fight? Human nature could not allow them to be friendly!”

“Oh, I’m not so sure,” said Mrs Ravenhill; “you forget the strength of nature here, and that the human part of them would have to combine against snow and darkness and solitude. Once we are gone, I dare say they are good friends together.”

As they were carried along over the green waters of the Suldal lake, it seemed to some of those who were looking, as though they were entering a solemn and enchanted region.

The sun, which blazed upon the great granite hills, could not rob them of their supreme gravity. They were mighty Titans resting after labour and conflict; earth-forces up-heaved and left to lie and bleach, exposed to the more subtle forces of air and water. For the lake crept in and out between them, always softly pushing through, although often the tremendous cliffs closed so menacingly round, that the boat appeared to be making for a wall of sheer rock against which she must be ground. At such moments those on board watched almost breathlessly for the passage to declare itself, sometimes splitting a sharp angle, sometimes stealing through a sinuous curve, once urged between two colossal barriers, which bear the name of the Portal. It is the gateway into a shadowy, mysterious, yet radiant world, which lies as God’s Hand has left it, untouched by man. On either side the mountains rise precipitously, or melt away into ethereal distances; out of their soft purples and greens an occasional raw patch marks where the frost-giant has split off a vast fragment from the rock and tumbled it into the green waters below. Birch and oak clamber up and down the cliffs; a sharp white line shows a slender waterfall leaping from the heights, and re-appearing here and there, but, too far off for movement to be perceptible, it looks a mere scratch on the shadows. More rarely, where there is the suspicion of a valley, or, at any rate, a flatness, the steamer screams to some half-dozen—or fewer—scattered houses, tying in a scarcely-endurable solitude, a little amphitheatre of silence; each with its tiny patch of emerald-green rye, its square of half-cut grass, its small potato-ground, its boat lying on the shore. Some rough track may exist, but of visible roads there are none, nor any cattle, except, possibly, a few goats away browsing on the hills. Such forlorn habitations only deepen the brooding solitude, by forcing on the imagination dreams of these alone, self-dependent lives, but for the call of the steamer as alone as though they were a knot of sailors shipwrecked on a desert shore.

Wareham, for whom they had a strange attraction, watched them from the forepart of the vessel. While he was there, Colonel Martyn joined him. He was a tall sad-looking man, with a mountainous nose, devoted to sport, and hating society. He grumbled a disconsolate question.

“How much longer does this sort of thing go on?”

“The lake? Three hours, from end to end. Doesn’t it please you?”

“It would please me well enough if I were pulling up in a boat. Cooped up with a lot of other fools, it makes me sick. Do you mean to tell me you find any pleasure in the business?”

Wareham laughed.

“Evidently I haven’t your energy.” He went on to ask whether with these sentiments his own free will had brought Colonel Martyn abroad?

The other turned a melancholy eye upon him.

“Good heavens, that you should put such a question! My wife insists upon going through an annual period of discomfort. I don’t much care where it is. This year she and Anne Dalrymple took a craze for Norway, and here we are.” It was as if his last words meant “Poor devils!”

Wareham had no thought of letting fly his next words. They escaped him.

“Has Miss Dalrymple travelled with you before?”

Colonel Martyn again looked at him.

“Never. She is my wife’s last friend. A former acquaintance of yours?”

Wareham hastened to repudiate.

“I have never spoken to her until Mrs Martyn introduced me.” Some unaccountable impulse made him add—“But I have often heard of her.”

“No good?”

“I did not say so.”

“Never mind me,” said his companion, seating himself on the bulwark, and swinging one long leg. “Women are frauds—most of them.”

“Well for you that your wife is not within earshot!”

“She would vow that it showed I was enjoying myself. That’s a delusion she holds on to. Keep your liberty—there you have my advice. As for Anne Dalrymple, I’ve an idea there was something on with her this season, but I don’t listen to society crams, and I’ve heard no particulars.”

The red rag was irritating Wareham.

“This was not a society cram. We’ll leave it alone, however. Miss Dalrymple is your wife’s friend.”

For the first time a smile flitted across Colonel Martyn’s lantern visage.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “say as much or as little as you like. So long as you don’t hold me responsible for the freaks of my wife’s friends, I’m indifferent, profoundly indifferent, as to what is thought of them. Only wish they’d carry out this sort of amusement without me. I’m no use. Can’t speak a word of the lingo. Miss Dalrymple’s handsome, that I’ll own—there she has the pull over most of Blanche’s cronies—but I don’t doubt she behaved badly—”

“Mrs Martyn wants the key of her bag,” said a voice at his elbow. He swung round guiltily to face Anne Dalrymple.

“Eh?—what?”

“The key of her bag.”

“Oh, of course!—yes. Shall I take it or will you?” His embarrassment was pitiable, while she stood cool.

“You, I think.”

He bolted.

Wareham, annoyed with his position, stood confronting her. Her height nearly reached his own, her eyes, dark with anger, swept him scornfully, she drew a deep breath.

“Honourable—to set my friends against me!”

He remained silent. Her tone grew more scathing.

“Do not imagine that I take exception at your opinions—your attitude,”—a stress on the ‘your’—“to them I am absolutely indifferent. Think what you please—judge me as harshly as you like—influence your own friends if it amuses you to do so. When—not satisfied with this—you attempt to prejudice the people under whose care I am travelling, then, Mr Wareham, you are taking advantage of my being a woman to offer me an unpardonable insult.”

Wareham stood like a statue, while she scourged him with her words. Indignation gave such beauty to her face and gestures, that his own anger grew soft.

“You are right,” he said. “I am not conscious of having said anything to which you could take exception, but it is true that Colonel Martyn gathered that my thoughts of you were not friendly, and I acknowledge that I was to blame in permitting myself to mention your name.”

Her look had been full on his, now she dropped it reflectively. Anger still burned in her eyes, but she was not so composed as she had been. Her breath came and went quickly, and when she spoke her voice was slightly shaken, yet abrupt.

“Be more careful in future.”

“You may trust me,” said Wareham, bowing gravely. He was not surprised at her turning to leave him, what astonished him was that she came back.

“I don’t know whether it is because I am a woman, and have no means of defending myself except by words,” she said coldly, “that I think you owe it to me to tell me what you said to Colonel Martyn.”

“Anything is owing to you that lies in my power. But this is exceedingly difficult.”

“Do you take refuge in an imaginary failure of memory?” she asked, scornfully again.

“On the contrary, I can trust my memory.”

“Then?”

“It is just because the words were so trifling, that I shall find it difficult to convince you that I am keeping back nothing.”

She hesitated, but her eyes met his frankly. “I imagine that you will endeavour to give me a true impression.”

“Thank you. What happened, then, was that on Colonel Martyn’s mentioning your name, I asked whether you had travelled with them before?”

“And what was that to you?”

“Nothing. I have already expressed my regret at having put the question.”

“Go on.”

“Colonel Martyn, on his side, inquired whether I knew you, and from my answer jumped hastily at a conclusion which I imagine you will not require me to excuse?” She made an imperious gesture.

“I have told you that your own opinions do not concern me in the least. Come to something more definite.”

“But there was nothing more definite,” said Wareham, lifting his eyebrows. He let memory travel slowly over the conversation, picking up threads. “Colonel Martyn, in a discursive review of his dislike to travel, made an allusion to a matter in which you were concerned, and I replied that, as you were his wife’s friend, we had better drop the subject. Evidently he likes to emphasise the idea that he and his wife are two, and I imagine this led him to make the unfortunate remark you caught. Pray assure yourself that you have heard all there was to hear, and permit me to repeat how deeply I regret it.”

She did not at once answer. The vessel was passing through a marvellous cleft, precipitous rocks arose out of the clear water on either side. Wareham saw Mrs Martyn approaching, curiosity in her face. He waited for Anne to speak.

“I suppose I ought to thank you,” she said at last, slowly. “I suppose you tried to be fair. If you did not succeed, perhaps it was beyond your powers.”

Mrs Martyn arrived.

“Anne, did you ever see anything so remarkable? I hope you noticed how sharply the steamer turned?”

“Did it?”

“Did it! You are as bad as Tom. What have you been doing? Talking?”

“I suppose so.”

“Was it interesting?” asked Mrs Martyn, glancing from one to the other.

“Hardly,” said Anne, before Wareham could speak. “We only took up a legacy of conversation left by your husband.” She walked away.

“Poor Tom!” Mrs Martyn uttered a laugh. “It must have been a legacy of grumbles. He is miserable because he has to sit still, and submit to be carried from point to point, without the possibility of using violent exercise to accomplish his purpose. If he could only pull up the lake, and tug the steamer behind, he would be happy again. Can you take life with less play of muscle, Mr Wareham?”

“As lazily as you like.”

“All the better. It is enough to endure growls from one’s husband, without hearing them echoed by others. Please do your best to induce him to enjoy himself.”

“I!” said Wareham, with surprise. He added that it was unlikely that he would find an opportunity in the short time they would be together.

“I thought you travelled with the Ravenhills?”

“Accidentally.”

“Have you fallen out?”

“No, no,” he protested, half amused, half provoked. “But chance having thrown us together, does not bind us.”

“It might. Chance might have much to answer for,” she went on rapidly. “While it keeps you near us, do be good to my unlucky Tom! I thought he and Anne would have amused each other, but they do not. I hope,”—she reached the point to which he had divined she was tending, and adopted a careless air—“I hope that Tom did not try to run down Anne? He has a deceptive way of saying more than he means, and saying it in his melancholy way produces a stronger effect than if it came from an ordinary person; as I always tell him, I don’t think he is in the least aware of the impression he makes. Anne is the dearest girl in the world!”

Wareham felt as if fate were determined to force his opinion about Miss Dalrymple; he answered cautiously—

“I understood from Colonel Martyn that you were friends.”

She looked at him.

“I don’t believe that either he or you stopped there!”

He gathered that her husband had confided the unfortunate remark which had caused his flight, and thought it hard that she should come to him, instead of applying to her friend, for particulars. He was resolved not to be drawn a second time, experience having already proved sufficiently embarrassing.

“I am not aware of having gone beyond it,” he said indifferently. “How should I? Until five minutes ago I had scarcely exchanged twenty words with Miss Dalrymple.”

She persisted.

“But of course you had heard of her? Every one who is anything is heard about now-a-days.”

He agreed to the general remark, and she tapped her foot impatiently.

“How cautious you are! Now, I always speak my mind, even if it offends people. Life would be unendurable if one had to weigh one’s words like so many groceries.”

It is difficult to answer the people who present you with themselves as an example. Wareham laughed, and assured her that she had only to choose an impersonal topic.

“A hint for a hit. Well, I don’t think you’re acting fairly towards Anne, because you won’t say what has prejudiced you against her.”

So far Wareham had kept his temper, but at this point annoyance made a sudden leap to the front, and with the smile still on his lips, he felt savage. It seemed to him that they wouldn’t leave him alone, that they wanted to force his hand, and oblige him to say something that was either offensive or false.

“If you mean that I object to discussing Miss Dalrymple with her friends,” he said coldly, “you are right.”

“Ah, you would prefer doing it with her enemies,” she returned with a shrewdness perhaps unexpected.

“I should prefer changing the subject altogether,” said Wareham. “Do you know that we are nearly at the end of our voyage? Behind those grey elephantine rocks lies Naes, and there it is ordained that we dine.”

“Dine! At two! Poor Tom! But how good for his health!”

Wareham did not feel himself called upon to express an opinion on this point. He went back to Mrs Ravenhill and Millie, landed, and walked with them up to the little inn, from which a red flag was gaily flying.

It is between Naes and Haare that the Bratlandsdal lies, one of the most beautiful secrets of Norway. Secret, indeed, only by comparison, since the road has been carved out, but as yet not so freely tourist-ridden as other parts. A hard-worked clergyman and his wife, flinging the energy of work into their holiday, at once set off on the long tramp; the other travellers, more respectful to comfort, waited to engage stolkjaerres and carrioles, and to go through the routine of salmon and stringiest mutton; so that it was three o’clock before the Ravenhills, Wareham, and young Grey—wrenched from remote homage of Miss Dalrymple—set off leisurely to walk to the head of the gorge, stolkjaerres and luggage at their heels.

Grey was an enthusiastic fisherman, and his talk of flies, many of which festooned his hat. His companions were careless as to their merits, but Millie had a charm of simple sympathy, which all along Wareham had recognised and liked, and she let him expatiate upon them without giving a hint that she was bored. Almost at once they were in the shadow of the great gorge, the road mounted; down, far down, cleaving its way between thousand-feet rocks, dashed a wild river, beryl-coloured when not churned into whiteness, leaping, laughing, flying from rock to rock, curving into green pools, flinging foam at the growing things which bent to kiss it, an impetuous, untamable, living force. To think of it in storm with a hundred angry voices crying out, and mountain-echoes hurling back their rage, was to shudder. But now, under a brilliant sun, there was a lovely splendour abroad; feathery beds of moss and fern hid away the menacing crevices of the grey rocks; streams tinkled, drop by drop, from the overhanging heights; shadows were soft, tender, and wavering, radiant sunlight changed harshness into beauty.

“And we have it to ourselves!” sighed Mrs Ravenhill thankfully. “The others are ahead, and are welcome to the better rooms. But what of the Martyns?”

Young Grey was eager in his knowledge.

“They were tired, and waited another hour. I promised to arrange about their rooms. It was Miss Dalrymple who said she was tired.”

He spoke with an unmistakable touch of reverence.

Mrs Ravenhill thought it a pity they should risk losing the lights.

“The days are long enough,” Millie put in. “And how delightful to have this delicious place to ourselves! Let us enjoy it.”

“Let us,” said Wareham. “How do you begin?”

“Oh!” cried the girl indignantly, “there is no beginning. You must do it.”

“Ah, that is feminine impracticability. You issue a command, and we are anxious to obey, but every act has a beginning and an end.”

She broke into a smile.

“Well, then, put away the wish to be anywhere else.”

“Done,” said Wareham, after a moments consideration. “But don’t you see Mr Grey eyeing the river?”

The young fellow excused himself. He was only wondering how a particular fly which the landlord had bestowed upon him would work in the pools.

“Precisely,” said Wareham, smiling at Millie. “In our advanced civilisation, enjoyment has ceased to be spontaneous, and has become an art. It can’t be treated so unceremoniously as you suggest. Stalk it as you would a deer, and, even then, ten to one your prey escapes you.”

She cried out—

“I should think so! You had better pretend that an epicure who has made up his mind what to have for dinner is the only person who knows what enjoyment is!”

“I suppose so—yes, I dare say you have hit on the best definition,” returned Wareham reflectively. “What is very certain is that he should not come to Norway.”

“I think you are hateful! Do you mean to tell me you are never pleased?”

“Oh, pleased!—yes, certainly. Enjoyment is something more important—more all round.”

“Well, that is what we feel now.” She swept in her mother with a comprehensive look. “We like the beauty, the air, the solitude—and our companions,” she added, with a smile. “Isn’t that all-round enjoyment?”

“I really believe it is,” said Wareham, glancing at her kindly, “and that you know more about it than I do. Long may it be so!”

He thought he had never seen her look prettier. Her eyes danced, the dimples in her cheeks gave her face a sweet child-likeness, she was as fresh as the young summer which ran riot all about them. The idea took him that Miss Dalrymple’s beauty would have faded in this world of laughing colour, of flashing waters, too much of the other world belonged to it. Millies was heightened, and it pleased him to dwell on the discovery. Her merriment was contagious. When the stolkjaerres overtook them, she fed the good ponies with barley-sugar, and aired her attempts in Norwegian upon the men, who answered in excellent English. Afterwards—when they had climbed again into the little carriages, the skydsgut perched behind upon portmanteaux, as the clever ponies trotted cheerfully along, requiring no touch from the whip, but quickening their pace under an encouraging chirrup, and stopping at a long-drawn Pr-r-r from the driver—they overtook the clergyman and his wife, tramping unweariedly along. And here Millie had her triumph. For in their hands they carried a bunch of red and yellow berries, and held them inquiringly to a skydsgut, who answered “Multer.” Now, multer, as Millie had taken care to ascertain, is Norwegian for cloudberry, and here was what she had determined to see and taste, and been told she was too early for. Two or three were at once made over to her, but she would not eat them there, preferring to taste them with the dignity of cream at Haare. And it may as well be added, that these were the first and last cloudberries she saw in Norway.

Watches told them that it was early evening when they made their last climb to Haare. For some time past the grandeur of the gorge had been smoothed into tenderer lines; the river broadened—driving young Grey into distraction when he looked at it—and presently a lake opened, lying quiet and shadowy under sheltering mountains. They passed a waterfall, and mounted slowly to the inn, perched obtrusively on the hill-side, red flag flying, stolkjaerres and carrioles crowded about.

Supper ended, they strolled out; golden lights lingered in the sky, and the mountains rose against it in royal purple. The roar of the fos reached them brokenly, and as they crossed the zigzagged road, by grassy cuts, to this sound was joined that of advancing wheels and voices. Two stolkjaerres passed along the road below, two people walked, a word, a light laugh, came up.

“The Martyns,” said Mrs Ravenhill.

No one answered. They stood and watched the little cavalcade slowly mounting. Shadows deepened, the clear air was fragrant with newly-mown grass, a star trembled into sight. It was very solemn and peaceful.

Chapter Four.

At Six in the Morning.

By fits and starts Wareham was an early riser, and the next morning he was out between five and six. By that time the sun was high in the heavens, dews were dried, life—insect and plant-life—was in eager movement. A cottage with a wonderful roof, lying not far from the foot of the fos, had attracted him the day before; he crossed the zigzags, made out a narrow path over short grass, and reached it.

It was a tiny cottage, built partly of stones heaped roughly one on the other, partly of boards of many shapes and sizes, a hut full of odd cranks and changes, deep eaves on one side, a perched-up window on another. But what had attracted Wareham to closer inspection was the roof, lovely with waving grass, sorrel, starlike daisies, and a mass of lilac pansies. It was the subject Mrs Ravenhill would pounce upon to sketch, and he felt a gentle gratitude towards the Ravenhills for the small demands they made upon him. An extraordinarily stony little path flung itself headlong towards the lake, through tall emerald-green rye; he stumbled down a few yards to look back at the hut, standing out against a violet mountain, all the colours sharply insistent in the clear morning air. To his extreme astonishment he saw Miss Dalrymple appear on the crest of the hill, and make her way down towards him. She came lightly and firmly, stepping from stone to stone without hesitation. She wore a white dress, and the impression she gave was of some one younger than he had fancied her. As she drew nearer the impression strengthened by her calling out gaily—

“I have just discovered what it is all like; Sunday morning, the freshness, and the enchanting air. Do you know?”

“No.” He added in spite of himself—“Tell me.”

“The opening to the last act of Parsifal.”

“I dare say. But I am no musician.”

“Nor I. But I suppose one need not be a painter to be reminded of a picture. However, I did not come after you to talk about Parsifal.” She stood in the narrow pathway looking down upon him, and spoke with extreme directness. “I saw you from the window, and, as I wished to say something, I followed—”

He bowed. She looked beyond him.

“I have known you two days, but of course have heard of you enough, and though you may not believe it, no one wanted you home from India more than I. I fancied from what I gathered that you might understand.”

He steeled himself against the flattering softness of her voice.

“Because I was Hugh Forbes’ friend?”

“Yes,” she returned quickly—“for that reason. You might have saved him suffering. For I am afraid he has suffered.”

“You are afraid. Do you doubt?”

“Not now.”

“Compassion has awakened tardily,” he said, with a laugh, which brought her eyes upon him.

“Wait a moment,” she said suddenly. “The grass on this bank is dry. Let us sit down. Now go on.”

Seated, she was still above, and her dark eyes rested on his face. He found it difficult to say what a moment before had seemed easy. “He will feel his hurt all his life.”

This time her eyebrows went up.

“Oh, no!”

“I know him,” persisted Wareham.

“So I thought. But you are mistaken. His feelings cry out, and are quickly consoled. In a year he will have forgotten them.”

“Your doctrines are convenient.”

She breathed quickly, but appeared to wait for more.

“To break off your engagement without so much as a word as to the why! To refuse even to see him! Caprice could hardly show itself more cruelly.”

Anger leapt into her eyes.

“You allow yourself strong expressions, Mr Wareham!”

“If you do not like them it appears to me that I am the last person to whom you should speak. You may not know what Hugh is to me.”

“If I did not, I should not be talking to you at this moment,” she retorted, flinging back her head. “Should I discuss the subject with an indifferent person?”

It had been good to him to feel the impetus of his own anger, he courted, encouraged it. A secret fear made him dread a softer mood. He kept his eyes upon a butterfly, balancing itself on an ear of rye. As he did not answer, she went on—

“Taking it from your point of view only, for I suppose you would be incapable of a broader outlook, do you consider a lingering end more merciful than one which is short and sharp? I have never for a moment regretted the manner of the doing.”

“You have regretted something,” said Wareham quickly, recognising that she laid a scarcely-perceptible stress on one word, and beginning to think that she intended him to undertake the mission of reconciliation. A drag of reluctance he believed to belong to disapproval.

“Perhaps,” she said, with hesitation.

“Isn’t it a little late?”

It struck him that his question had an offensive air, but she appeared not to have heard it; she was looking beyond him at the glowing lake, and the mountains which bordered the green waters.

“I am ready to own that I was to blame,” she went on, still slowly; “but I shall always think that he ought to have understood.”

“What?”

“What can’t be put into words. Why, I did not care to marry him.”

“You are enigmatical.”

She made an impatient movement.

“At any rate, it should be enough for you that I did not like him well enough.”

“And that is your explanation?”

“What; else?”

“It had occurred to me that the match might not have been considered sufficiently brilliant for the beautiful Miss Dalrymple.” She did not reject the supposition with anger as he perhaps expected, merely shook her head.

“You are like the rest of the world,” she said resignedly, so that he immediately felt shame for his own stupidity, but had nothing to say against it. He took refuge in pointing out that they had placed themselves in the line of a procession of caterpillars, all apparently on their way to the lake, and that several were at that moment on her dress. She brushed them off with indifference. “Why should you have fastened on that motive?” she asked.

“Was it so unlikely?”

“Your friend rejects it.”

“Yes. He believes—still believes—nothing of you but what is good.”

“Dear Hugh!” she breathed softly. Wareham started with amazement.

“You like him still!”

“I have never ceased to like him.”

For the first time in their talk he had turned his eyes on her face, and met her look full. Sitting there, the lovely lines of her figure curved against the waving rye, the warm brown tints of her hair caught by the sunshine, eyes in which the fire was veiled by long lashes, a mouth slightly drooped and softened; all this close to him, and seen in the divine freshness of the young day, sent an intoxicating throb of delight into his heart. Clinging to a bending purpose, he stammered—“Then—then—”

“I shall not marry him. Make him understand this.”

He looked away—closed his eyes, reckless whether she saw the movement or not, only conscious that the momentary madness had passed. It sharpened his voice as he said—“Do not expect me to succeed. I told you that you were enigmatical, and I repeat my words. Nothing that you have said alters the cruelty of dismissing poor Hugh in the sudden and unexpected manner you adopted.” She rose, without at first speaking, but stood in the same place until she said slowly—“Perhaps. But it was difficult to act.”

The words that were on his lips seemed glued there; by an effort he succeeded at last in bringing them out.

“May I tell Hugh to hope?”

“Oh, no,” she said composedly. “Certainly not. My mind is absolutely made up. Urge him to think no more of me; above all, not to try to see me. It is quite useless.”

Wareham smiled.

“He will thank me.”

“If he does not, I shall,” she said softly; and again he was conscious of the strange throb which had surprised him before. This time it was slighter, and he did not look or speak, while in another moment she turned and began to climb the stony path.

Wareham followed slowly, more perturbed than he would have cared to own. He had failed in discomfiting her, as he had never doubted his power of doing, once they met; and though no blame had been cast on Hugh, he had an angry and unwilling feeling that if it was want of love which had broken off the marriage, the lover himself should have been the first to realise it. Hugh had never suffered him to suppose this could be the cause. He thrust away the feeling irritably. Was he to blame Hugh for the act of a heartless girl?

At the top of the path, a very poor old woman stood outside the hut, holding a goat by a cord. Anne, perhaps glad of the interruption, began to talk to her. Wareham stood a few feet off, and she presently came back to him.

“She is not so old as she looks. I thought her a hundred, but that was her husband who went down the path just now. I would ask her about the caterpillars, only I haven’t an idea what is Norwegian for caterpillar. Have you?”

He was as ignorant.

“She is not begging,” Anne continued, “though I am sure she is dreadfully poor, and in spite of all the laws of political economy, I shall give her a krone.”

He neither objected nor encouraged; and his self-respect was partly restored by standing aloof in a position of indifference. Anne, smiling, glanced at him between half-shut eyelids, and went off again. He followed. The old woman, almost beside herself with delight, seized her hand, and shook it with rapturous gratitude. Blessings of every kind were invoked, and showered also, undeservedly, upon Wareham. Then she made vigorous signs that Anne was to stay where she was, while she herself hobbled into the hut.

“What is to follow?” asked Wareham.

Anne shook her head. “I shall certainly wait and see. What can come out of that poor little place? Not!” She turned upon him a horrified face—“Oh, no!”

“What?”

“I believe—I am sure—she is bringing me a tumbler of goat’s milk! Of all things that I loathe—”

Her face was tragic. Wareham was prepared to see her decline the gift, but had to own to injustice. She took the tumbler, drank to the end, and thanked the old woman with a sweet courtesy. If, after it, she moved quickly away, she told Wareham that it was to rescue him from a similar fate. He owned that he could not have been so heroic, and that she had surprised him.

“What else was there to do?” she asked simply.

Her mood had changed. All the way back to the inn she talked gaily and lightly about the country, their fellow-travellers, and the children they met. He found his conception of her lost, not to be called back, and between this and that grew bewildered. There was nothing for it but to follow her lead, and to set Hugh’s wrongs on one side. They went there easily, and left the ground more pleasantly open, so that he reached the door in eager talk, and, what was worse, with desire for more.

He kept silence to the Ravenhills as to his morning, never even telling Mrs Ravenhill of the little cottage with pansied roof, which he had ostensibly sought for her. Something in him, something which he did not choose to admit, but which secretly controlled him, made him averse from admitting any one to the place where this morning he had met Anne: he told himself that he wished to put away the recollection of a painful incident. Painful it should have been, and must be.

It was Sunday; a little service was held in the salon. Afterwards, except at meals, Wareham saw no more of Miss Dalrymple. He went out and walked far over the hills with the clergyman, whose wife was at last tired, but whose own energy was unfailing. He carried it into botany, and though Wareham knew nothing of the subject, the triumph with which a rare discovery was hailed gave relish to the walk. Would Millie have liked something different? She made no complaint, but at supper chatted cheerfully of the cottages into which she had penetrated; the children’s shake of the hand for “tak” when she gave them sweets; the strings of fresh, kindly-faced women coming back from their walk of miles to the nearest church. Millie had won the children’s hearts, and the next morning, when, under a sky of tender northern blue, they started on their walk up the pass, they came smiling round, no longer in Sunday scarlet skirts and green aprons, but in work-a-day clothes, to wish her good-morning and farewell.

The air was pure and sweet, soft yet exhilarating. The stolkjaerres were to carry only luggage to the head of the pass, Mrs Ravenhill declaring herself ready for the five miles walk. The clergyman and his wife were ahead of them.

They went up gradually towards the heights. The mountains fall away on either side, and it is a wide desolate-looking expanse through which the road to Odde curves and zigzags. Patches of snow lie in sun-forgotten gullies, or crown the higher summits. All along the road tall posts are set at intervals to mark the track on those gloomy days of winter when the light of stars shines on one vast sheet of snow, filling the broad valley cup, and smoothing every rough outline. Something of this melancholy solitude remains throughout the year; not a tree breaks the sweep, not a building asserts itself. Walk for hours, and it is unlikely that you meet a human being; the only trace of his activity is the white road which twists upwards. But on a July morning the world under your feet is astir with gladness; the springy turf is starred with myriads of tiny flowers; shrubs of the dwarf cornel peep at you with white brown-eyed blossoms, and the boggy land, through which melting snows are making their way, feed the bright green succulent winter chickweed, or the delicate bells of the false lily of the valley.

And it was across this beautiful upland world, making short cuts from zigzag to zigzag, that Millie, as young as the summer and as happy, went her way. Young Grey had, without deliberate arrangement, become a sort of hanger-on of the party, and he was here. From such small adventures as sticking in a bog, or being forced to wade a stream, merriment flowed joyously. Now and then they sat down, rather from wishing to linger than from need of rest; and it was in one of these halts that, their own carriages having reached a higher level, they beheld two others crawling up the road, and presently a shout reached them from a long spindle-legged figure striding towards the group, and waving a stick to arrest attention. Young Grey sprang to his feet and waved energetically in return.

“It’s Colonel Martyn, and there’s Miss Dalrymple in the carriole!” he exclaimed. “What a shame that she isn’t up here!” He was darting off, when reflection brought him back with—“You don’t mind my trying to persuade her to come with us, Mrs Ravenhill?”

“How should I? By all means persuade her.”

He was off like an arrow from a bow, and Mrs Ravenhill praised his good-nature. Wareham chimed in; Millie sat silent.

Miss Dalrymple did not leave the little carriage, and young Grey did not return. Colonel Martyn was a melancholy substitute. Naturally it fell to Mrs Ravenhill to cheer him, and Wareham and Millie wandered on together. She avoided touching Anne’s name: he repeated it more than once to himself, that he might impress on his mind a stronger sense of his relief in not having her there. All Millie’s little prettinesses he made an inward note of, and extracted admiration, telling himself that here was a sweeter charm. If such a thing had been possible, it might have seemed that he fashioned them into a shield. But why? And against what?

It gave Millie great pleasure to reach the snow-beds, though their edges were little more than crusts, under which trickled out the melting water; and when a sudden shade came between them and the sun, and looking up, they realised for the first time what a bank of cloud was sweeping down from the north, she professed a strong desire to see a storm in these desolate regions. At the top of the pass, where lies a sullen lake, slaty grey now with menacing shadow, the stolkjaerres were waiting, their own and the Martyns’. And, as there opened before them a vast faraway whiteness of snow, unbroken and eternal, a driver, pointing, said the word which they had long expected—“Folgefond!”

“Where is Tom?” Mrs Martyn demanded hastily.

Mrs Ravenhill reported that he had left her to make his way up a hill, from which he foretold a view. “He said he would overtake us.”

“And I am in mortal terror already!” cried his wife. “The skydsgut says we go down a tremendously steep descent, and that a dreadful storm is coming. Thunder frightens me to death.”

Consolation was offered, but failed to soothe. A livid shadow which touched the snow set her trembling. She desired Miss Dalrymple to take Colonel Martyn’s place by her side, then looked imploringly at Wareham.

“I am ashamed—it is wretched to be such a coward—but Mr Grey is with Mrs Ravenhill—would you mind coming close behind in Anne’s carriole, Mr Wareham? The comfort that it would be!”

Wareham perceived that his attendance was resolved upon. He made a slight demur.

“Of course if I can be of any use—”

“The greatest! You would not condemn me to stay on this dreary spot until Colonel Martyn has finished his survey?”

“Ought we to leave him behind?”

“Ought he to have deserted us? Pray let us start. Anne, beg Mr Wareham not to delay. There, I am sure I heard thunder!”

“One moment.” Wareham made a quick step to where Millie stood, a little aloof.

“You bear?” he said, in a low voice. “Are you alarmed?”

If there was effort, Millie did not show it. She said cheerily—

“Not in the least.”

“The woman is absurd, but I suppose one must humour her.”

“Of course. Besides, as she says, we have Mr Grey.”

“Why couldn’t she appeal to him?”

His reluctance contented her, and pacified himself.

Waterproofs were hastily pulled on, for the storm advanced rapidly; clouds, black as ink, brooded on the mountains, blotted out the sky, and before they had gone far, poured down torrents of rain. The turmoil was magnificent, and Wareham could not but excuse Mrs Martyn’s fears, when he noted the acute angles of the steep descent, and heard the thunder crashing overhead. He could see her grasping her companion’s arm, and looking round in terrified appeal, but in the hurly-burly, voice was mute. Yet so swift was the rush of the storm, that by the time they reached more level ground, it was fairly over, and, drawing up, Mrs Martyn was able to bewail herself under an outbreak of sunshine.

Wareham sprang out of his carriole, and went to theirs.

“Safely through it,” he said, smiling.

“But it was awful, awful!” moaned Mrs Martyn. “I have just told Anne that my one comfort was in knowing that you were close behind.”

“A lightning conductor!” Anne said mockingly. “I believe I should have preferred you at a greater distance, for if we had come to grief, you would certainly have been on the top of us.”

“I am afraid you are very wet?” He eyed her anxiously.

“Nothing to mind. But the others? Ought they not to be in sight?”

He felt a twinge of shame.

“I think they ought. I will go back and see.”

Mrs Martyn called after him that she was sure they would be here in a moment, and that it was only because their ponies were not so good that they were behind, but he was already running back. She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly.

“Manners!” she exclaimed. “Tell the man to go on, Anne. I don’t mean to wait in the road for Mr Wareham’s pleasure.”

Anne said coolly—

“Why should you? Besides, he belongs to them.”

“Belongs? Nonsense! Do you suppose he thinks of marrying that child?” She took off her felt hat, and shook the wet from it.

“Why not?”

“Absurd! An insignificant little creature, with no attraction except a dimple, which she doesn’t know how to show off. You have only to lift your little finger, Anne, and he would be at your feet.”

Anne showed no surprise, and made no disclaimer.

“And it would be better than that last foolish affair from which you were only just saved.”

She repeated the word slowly. “Saved? And what saved me?”

“Oh, don’t be vexed! Nothing, my dear, but your own worldly wisdom, which came to the rescue in the nick of time, as I always knew it would.” Mrs Martyn laughed.

The girl had pulled the hood of her coat over her head to protect it from the rain. She let it slip back, and it showed her face grave.

“Why must you all talk of my worldly wisdom!” she exclaimed. “Am I so hateful that you can’t give me credit for a good impulse?”

“Oh, I think you have impulses—it was no doubt an impulse which landed you in the entanglement to which I was referring—but then, happily, you retract in time. Recollect, you can’t do this all your life. I wish you were safely married.”

Anne drew a deep breath, then laughed.

“When I am, the somebody, whoever he is, will have to sweep me away like a whirlwind—”

“Why: What do you mean?”

“I can’t stand the hesitation, the thinking about it. I invariably begin to repent, and if he hesitates—he is lost.”

Mrs Martyn opened her eyes roundly.

“So that is your theory? I hardly thought you owned one.”

Anne went on as if she had not spoken.

“I mean to marry, and it appears that I have not the power of falling in love. If I take the leap I must do it at a gallop. Now do you understand?”

“A little. This last man, did he represent a whirlwind? My dear, you let it go too far with him, and he could not be expected, poor fellow, to see the absurdity as we all saw it.”

Anne’s eyes darkened.

“There was no absurdity. If I had cared a little more, I would have married him.”

“If he had happened to have twenty thousand a year instead of one, you mean. No, Anne, no. Nothing short of a brilliant marriage will satisfy you.”

Anne looked as if she were going to reply, but checked herself, and turned her head in another direction. Mrs Martyn yawned.

Chapter Five.

The Skittishness of Fate.

Before Wareham reached the companions he had deserted, it was evident that something was amiss, for both Mrs Ravenhill and Millie were on foot, and their skydsgut led the pony. Millie, however, called out to him that no harm had happened, and he then saw that Colonel Martyn was with them.

“What has gone wrong?” he asked, as he came up. “There’s a very disorganised look about you.”

“We were nearly disorganised altogether,” said Mrs Ravenhill gravely, for she was not well pleased at Wareham’s leaving them. “We might have been, if Colonel Martyn had not come to the rescue.”

Wareham asked what had happened.

“I suppose the man drove too fast, and that fierce clap of thunder startled the pony, for he went over the edge.”

“Good heavens!”

Colonel Martyn interposed to explain that fortunately the descent was not sheer, and the ground was soft. Moreover, the skydsgut jumped off, and held on like death.

“Mr Grey too. And cut his hand,” Millie broke in, with a grateful glance at the young man. He turned red.

“Oh, that’s nothing.”

“Well, as nobody will accept the honours of the situation, I shall take them myself,” said the girl, laughing. “Know then, Mr Wareham, that mother and I showed immense presence of mind in refusing to be shot out when the jerk came, and in scrambling over the back when we realised that we were still there.”

“Then?”

“Then the pony was unharnessed, the stolkjaerre dragged back, and—here we are!”

She spoke lightly, but she was white and trembling. Colonel Martyn inquired where his people were.

“I left them in the road below,” said Wareham briefly.

“Then we’ll sort ourselves again, and I’ll go on.”

As he strode away, Mrs Ravenhill called after him, “Thank you for your help.”

“He enjoyed it,” said Millie. “It was the nearest approach he could have had to a steeplechase, and has quite raised his spirits.” Wareham felt so unconscionably guilty, that it might be supposed something else was really scourging him, and using his small neglect for a lash. He murmured—

“I am thankful he was here. If I had dreamed of real danger—”