William Le Queux (continued 3)

How had it come about that one with such striking qualifications should exhibit a certain underlying sadness, as if the world had already proved a very disappointing place? Youth and good looks usually secure for their owner a good time. Girls with half her attractions could find plenty of admirers. What evil fate dogged her that she had to regard a perfectly common act of kindness as something to be exceptionally grateful for?

“I have never been petted nor spoiled, even as a child,” she answered gravely. “My father and mother were ignorant of the duties, as they were of the instincts, of parenthood. And since my poor pretence of a home was broken up, I have been a derelict and a wanderer, sometimes a tolerated guest, rarely, I fear, a very welcome one in the houses of other people.”

“But you are happy here, surely?” he suggested. After saying so much, she could hardly regard the question as an impertinent one. He longed to hear her history. Well, if he came and cultivated her, and let her see how sympathetic he could be, one day she would tell him.

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of indifference.

“My cousin is peculiar in many ways, and her devotion to play is an obsession. We have very little in common; still, it would not be fair to say she was difficult to get on with. I have been with her now for more than eighteen months, and although we have often held totally different opinions, I cannot remember that we have ever had a real quarrel. And, anyway, it is a home and a shelter, and that is something.”

Not much enthusiasm here, certainly. Mrs L’Estrange had been dismissed with a very negative kind of faint praise. Her excellence seemed to lie rather in the absence of bad qualities than the possession of good ones.

And yet, he could not bring himself to believe that Miss Keane was an ill-natured girl, or of an unresponsive temperament. He had to admit that his impressions of his hostess were not too favourable.

She was outwardly genial, and at times gushing. Yet he fancied he could read behind this plausible exterior the signs of a hard, worldly nature. There was no softness in her glance, no tenderness in her rather hard, staccato tones.

A girl with those glorious eyes, and mobile face, with the delicate complexion that flushed and paled by turns, must surely be sweet and sympathetic, and responsive to affection. How her voice had thrilled with emotion when she thanked him. If she was disappointed in her cousin, it must be the fault of the elder woman, who could not give what was demanded by the younger and more ardent temperament.

He would have lingered longer, trying to pierce the riddle from these disjointed remarks, but they were interrupted by Tommy Esmond, who came bustling into the hall, flushed with victory.

“Never had such luck in my life. Just wiped the floor with them,” he explained excitedly. “You left your good influence behind, Miss Keane. A few minutes sufficed for victory.”

“I am very glad, but I think my powers for good must be very limited, for I brought bad luck to your friend,” was her smiling rejoinder.

He turned briskly to the young man. “It is a perfect night, Spencer. Shall we walk down to the Club to get a breath of fresh air, and turn in there for a quiet smoke?”

Spencer nodded assent, and held out his hand to Miss Keane.

“Well, good-bye for the present.”

“And I hope you will come and see us again soon. Don’t wait for Mr Esmond to bring you: after our thrilling experiences of to-night, we are more than ordinary acquaintances. We are at home nearly every night, if you want to gamble. And, if you would like a little rational chat instead, come in one afternoon to tea.”

“Thanks, I will. My card-playing fit has passed for a little time. Once again, good-bye.”

And, as soon as they were in the street, Esmond burst in with the question he was longing to ask.

“Well, what do you think of her? Did I exaggerate?”

“Not in the least,” answered Spencer, speaking less seriously than he felt, he did not quite know for what reason, unless it was that with a man of his friend’s calibre, he always had a tendency to discuss things lightly. “No, I don’t think you have exaggerated a bit this time; so many of your swans have been geese, but this is a real swan, at last. She is very lovely; even in her terror she looked beautiful, and she has a peculiar, elusive charm. She makes you want to know more of her, and penetrate the mystery which seems to hover around her.”

“I can’t say I see any mystery, myself.” Esmond spoke rather sharply, for such a good-natured little man.

“Perhaps it is too strong a word. But I take it, you know something of the ménage, and can enlighten me on one point. What is her position there: paid companion, a passing guest, or does she share the flat with her cousin on some sort of terms?”

It was a little time before Esmond answered. “I have never rightly got at that myself. Sometimes I have thought one thing, sometimes another. But I am pretty sure she is poor: in fact, she has admitted as much.”

“Poverty is relative after all, and it depends on how she was brought up. She seems to dress well, and that cannot be done without money.”

Yes, Esmond admitted that she was turned out well. But he either could not, or would not express any positive opinion upon the delicate subject of Miss Keane’s finances.

“Does she ever play? She didn’t touch a card while we were there, only flitted about from table to table.”

No, Esmond had never seen her play since he had frequented the house. It was clear, therefore, she did not make any pocket-money out of gambling. He had to admit that she seemed to act as deputy hostess, and, he believed, wrote most of her cousin’s notes; in other words, made herself useful.

All this information, such as it was, he imparted, as it seemed to Spencer, with some reluctance. Perhaps his keen admiration prompted him to hide anything that served to show her in a dependent position. And Spencer desisted from any further cross-examination on this head.

On one point, however, he was determined to elicit a positive expression of opinion from the cautious little man.

“What is the mystery of the bounder cousin? You must admit he has cad stamped all over him, his speech, his person, his gestures.”

Tommy could establish no defence for the gentleman in question. “No, he is past criticism, I allow. The result of some mésalliance, I suppose; his mother a very common person doubtless. But then, many highly respectable people have skeletons like that in their cupboards.”

“The mystery is that he finds his way, cousin as he may be, into any decent house. Mrs L’Estrange we know to be a woman of good family. You would think she would lock and bolt the door against a creature like that. What is he supposed to be, if he has any profession beyond that of his intense bounderism?”

“Something in the City, I am told,” replied Esmond shortly. “Something connected with finance; stockbroker or something.”

“It must be a shady kind of finance, if he has anything to do with it,” growled the young man. “To think of his claiming relationship with that exquisite girl.”

Chapter Eleven.

It would be idle to assume that a man of Guy Spencer’s natural advantages had reached the age of thirty without experiencing a few affairs of the heart. But he had never been deeply touched, and his friend Tommy Esmond was right when he described him as not very susceptible to feminine influence.

The one feeling which had lasted for some years, was a pronounced affection for his cousin Nina. He felt as much at home with her as he would have done with a favourite sister, had he possessed one. But the regard had a warmth in it that is lacking in fraternal relations.

He knew that Lady Nina was not indifferent to him, that she allowed him to assume a certain air of proprietorship in the disposal of dances, in the claim to her society when he was disposed to enjoy it. He knew also that it was a match which would be warmly approved of by his invalid uncle.

Without being guilty of undue vanity, he felt pretty certain that if he proposed he would be accepted. And once or twice he had been very near to taking the decisive step. He never could quite understand what it was that made him hesitate.

The fact of his hesitation proved to himself, as well as to the young lady concerned, that much as he might like his cousin, he was certainly far from being deeply in love with her.

She was a pretty, winsome girl, possessing an upright, straightforward nature, and quite attractive in a simple, frank fashion. There was nothing subtle or mysterious about her, you could read her like an open book. She was a good daughter, she was the type of girl who could not help making a good wife.

Some day, no doubt, he would put the fateful question, and by her acceptance be made, in conventional parlance, the happiest of men. But although he would know he had chosen very wisely, and look forward to a placid kind of happiness, he was doubtful if Nina’s smiles and kisses would ever thrill him, if with her he would ever learn the meaning of real love.

He was not by any means sure that he was capable of very strong attachment. He had indulged in a few fancies, but they had only exercised a very small portion of his thoughts. Up to the present, he had certainly not experienced the wild ecstasies, the mingled joy and pain of the true lover.

For the first time in his life, he had been seriously perturbed by the advent of Stella Keane. He had not fashioned in his imagination any particular ideal, any special type of woman who would make to him an irresistible appeal. But, if she had been Lady Nina, if he had met her in his own world, he would have owned at once this was the girl for whom he had been waiting.

Her image pursued him persistently in his waking and his leisure hours. He could recall every word she had spoken during the short time they had spent together. He could see her a dozen times a day standing in the “Excelsior” dining-room, paralysed with terror.

He remembered the break in her voice, the mist in her beautiful eyes, when she had thanked him. And ever and again, he longed to fathom the mystery of her loneliness, the cause of that sadness that was always lurking underneath.

Was it wise to pursue the acquaintance, with the pretty certain result of intensifying the interest he already felt in her? He had no liking for Mrs L’Estrange, a woman merely on the fringe of his world, or her gambling circle. If he wanted to lose or win money, there were plenty of other houses where he could indulge his fancy.

And he knew nothing of Miss Keane’s antecedents. The only thing he did know was that she had a cousin who was obviously a bounder of the first water. Tommy Esmond knew nothing about her either, or, if he did know, would not tell.

For three days he wavered, one moment eager to rush off to the flat, the next determining that it would be better not to renew the brief acquaintance.

On the fourth day, his impulse conquered his prudence. He told himself soothingly that his visit was due to curiosity, that he merely wanted to penetrate the mystery of her loneliness, her unprotected position.

The bounder cousin was coming out as he entered. Mr Dutton nodded affably to him with a greasy and familiar smile. Spencer acknowledged him in the coolest fashion compatible with bare civility. Why were there people, he wondered, whom you instinctively wanted to kick, for no apparently sufficient reason?

Miss Keane was alone. Mrs L’Estrange, she explained, was in bed with a racking headache. She had lost heavily the night before, and this was the usual penalty she paid for losing.

“Hardly worth the candle, is it?” he said lightly, as he took his cup of tea from her. A slight frown crossed his brow as he observed the empty cup of “the bounder” on the table. Did he come here often? was his thought. Perhaps he was in love with her. But it was surely beyond the limits of possibility that she could ever return the affection of such a creature.

He would see what he could get out of her. “I met your cousin as I came in. I suppose he is a frequent visitor?”

She did not look in the least conscious or embarrassed by the question. “Oh yes, he comes very often. He is about the only one of my relatives I have any acquaintance with. My father’s mode of life estranged all the others.”

Spencer thought it would have been a good thing if Mr Dutton had been as sensitive to the disqualifications of the late Mr Keane as the rest of her connections. But, of course, he could not say so.

“He is not in the least like you.” Then, after a pause, he added boldly, and perhaps a little rudely: “I should never have dreamed you were related.”

She quite understood what he meant, and there was a lurking humour in her smile, as she answered:

“Poor old George, he is a good sort, but quite a rough diamond. His mother married a self-made man, of course, for his money. That may account for a great deal you have noticed.” Spencer had the grace to look confused. It was evident he had conveyed his private impression of Mr Dutton very distinctly to her clear young vision. But she did not seem offended, only slightly amused, at the poor figure cut by Cousin George in the estimation of a person in a superior world.

Anyway, that little mystery was explained. There was nothing unusual in poor gentlewomen marrying self-made men, for the sake of money. The noble family of Southleigh had many such mésalliances amongst its aristocratic records.

But it was a relief to find Stella herself under no delusions concerning the young man in question. He did not think it possible she could, but as diplomatically as was possible, she admitted that Mr Dutton was not what is, technically called, a gentleman.

“He is the only relative with whom I am on speaking terms,” she added, after a pause, “for reasons of which I have already given you a hint. And I think I have grown rather to look forward to his visits.”

Her observant eyes noticed a quick stiffening in his manner. She could guess his thoughts. How was it possible for a refined young woman to ever look forward to the visits of a person like Mr Dutton, cousin though he might be?

“You, of course, have heaps of relations; you can pick and choose,” she went on, as if eager to explain to his fastidious taste her toleration of a man, so obviously the denizen of an inferior world. “You cannot, I daresay, imagine the loneliness of a girl of my age, debarred, through no fault of her own, from the society of her own kith and kin.” Here was an opportunity to engage her in personal talk. He had not hoped she would take him into her confidence on his first visit.

He leaned forward, and there was an eager note in his voice. “I formed an idea of you in the first few moments of our acquaintance, that you were not happy, that you were, in a sense, isolated, and that you had known more of sorrow than joy in your short life.”

She mused a moment, and then answered him in grave tones:

“You were quite right. I feel it is the impression I must convey to either friend or stranger, an impression I shall always convey. For, if a great and overwhelming happiness were to come to me to-morrow, I could never forget the past years of sadness.”

“But, surely, you must have some happy memories? There were gleams of brightness in your childhood?”

“No,” she said, and there was a fierce vehemence in her voice. “They were the most miserable—an indifferent mother, a careless father, a roof and a shelter, food and clothing sufficient, if not in abundance, but no home, as it is understood by more fortunate children.”

“And when that home, or the wretched pretence of it, was broken up, you were thrown upon the mercy of the world,” he questioned, “with no kindred, no friends to stretch out a helping hand?”

“Our relatives had long before ceased to take any interest in the daughter of a ruined gambler. I was thrown, in a certain sense, on the mercy of the world. But for a small pittance, which my father could not deprive me of, I should have starved, for he left nothing behind him but debts.”

She was not, then, absolutely penniless. Something had been saved from the wreck. He wondered if Esmond knew this. And yet, if she told a comparative stranger this at their first real interview, she must have told him, who seemed to be on the footing of a friend of the house.

“I had no real friends,” she went on; “but in the course of a wandering life—when my father owed too much in one place he removed to another—I had picked up a few acquaintances. With these I made a home, on and off, for longer or shorter periods.”

“And you have come to anchor here with Mrs L’Estrange, who is your cousin, one of the few relatives who did not visit the sins of the fathers on the children.”

Her voice was a little scornful. “The cousinship is a very distant one. And, as she is an inveterate gambler herself, but more lucky than my father, she could hardly look upon gambling in another as a deadly sin.” He nodded his head in agreement. He did not want to talk himself, for fear he should interrupt the flow of her reminiscences; she was evidently in a confidential mood this afternoon.

“I saw her a few times when quite a child, and then she vanished like the others. A couple of years ago, we met in Devonshire at the house of a mutual acquaintance. She seemed to take a fancy to me. In the end, she proposed that I should, for the present, make my home with her. She has only one interest in life, play. She is a very lazy woman. She hates writing the briefest note, and housekeeping is abhorrent to her. I attend to her correspondence, I order the dinner and look after the servants. I am not exactly eating the bread of charity,” she concluded with a little mirthless laugh, “because I give some work in exchange for my food. My own little pittance provides me with clothes.”

He wondered what the little pittance represented in annual hard cash. She was dressed quietly but in good taste, and he was judge enough of woman’s apparel to know that the material of her dress was expensive. On her slender fingers glittered a few valuable rings, heirlooms probably saved from the clutches of the gambling father. She did not convey the impression of poverty, but perhaps she was clever, and knew how to make the best of a small income.

There was a long silence, and it almost seemed as if she had forgotten his presence. For she sat with a musing look in her beautiful eyes, her thoughts evidently in the past, conjuring up Heaven knows how many painful memories.

Then she came back to herself, and turned to him with an apologetic smile. “I am afraid I have bored you to tears with my stupid personal history, but I will finish by telling you one little thing that may amuse you.”

He protested, of course, that he had not been in the least bored, only too painfully interested.

“Well, I am not a person easily crushed, and although a physical coward and frightened of raids and thunderstorms, I am not a moral one. When I began to review my position, I tried to hit upon some way of making money.”

Was she fond of money, he wondered? Well, perhaps, like most women, she wanted money to buy herself pretty things. There was nothing unusual in that.

“When I was a schoolgirl, I was supposed to show some artistic talent; I got several prizes. So I set to work and painted some half-a-dozen small things, in what I conceived to be a popular style, and took them round to as many dealers. In a week my hopes were shattered. One straightforward creature told me frankly that they just attained the schoolgirl level of excellence, but that I should never become an artist. It was not in me.”

“A crushing blow, indeed,” said Spencer sympathetically.

“I then turned to writing. Here, at any rate, was a profession that required no previous painful training, only powers of observation, some imagination, and a certain fluency of expression. I wrote some short stories which I thought good, which I still think good. History repeated itself. I sent them to a dozen editors, one after another. In every case, they were declined with thanks.”

“I daresay they were quite good, and they were not taken because you didn’t happen to be in the ring,” was Spencer’s consoling comment.

“Well,” she exclaimed brightly, “there is an end of my reminiscences for to-day. Let us talk of anything and everything else. Have you seen Mr Esmond lately? He has not been near us since the night he came with you.”

Shortly afterwards he took his leave, he had stayed unconsciously long as it was.

“I shall come again soon, if I may, to listen to some more reminiscences,” he said, as he shook hands. And she had given him permission, with the brightest of smiles.

He had not learned half as much as he wanted, but he had gathered something. The bounder cousin was the son of a self-made man, a parvenu. And Stella Keane was not absolutely penniless, she had enough money to buy herself clothes. Did Tommy Esmond know as much as this? And if he did, why had he not said so?

Chapter Twelve.

Although unsuspicious by nature, Guy Spencer had mixed much in the world and seen a good deal of life. Attracted as he was by the charming Stella, there was a something about the atmosphere of that flat in Elsinore Gardens which created an unfavourable impression.

Of Mrs L’Estrange’s antecedents there was no question. She was a woman of good family, she could produce chapter and verse for her ancestors. And yet, why was she not in a better environment?

Clearly, she was on the downward slope. But was there anything remarkable in that? Heaps of members of aristocratic families were in the same sort of predicament, from various causes, through certain circumstances.

Had he not received a letter a few days ago from the daughter of a well-known earl, imploring him for a loan of ten pounds, for the sake of old friendship?

The writer was some twenty years his senior, and she had tipped him when he was at Eton. She now dated her letter from a suburb in the extreme west of Kensington. If she, with all her advantages of birth and connection, had fallen by the wayside, why not a comparatively obscure person like Mrs L’Estrange?

It was very easy to see it. Mrs L’Estrange was of a Bohemian temperament, and probably a great spendthrift. She had made considerable inroads into whatever fortune she originally possessed, and had developed into an adept card-player, with a view to supplementing the little income that was left to her.

And Stella Keane, that beautiful, sad girl, with the tragic history of worthless parents behind her, was the victim of fate. She was not happy in her cousin’s home, amidst this gambling, card-playing set. She, at least, was pure, whoever else might be defiled. On that he would stake his existence.

For a few days he thought a great deal about the subject, and during those few days he kept away from Elsinore Gardens and denied himself the pleasure of listening to a further instalment of Miss Keane’s reminiscences of her unhappy history.

If he were going to fall in love, he told himself sternly, he would fall in love with a woman of his own world, not with a girl, however beautiful and interesting she might be, who was only a hanger-on of a woman well-born, but evidently déclassée, a woman no longer moving in the sphere to which she had been accustomed. In these reflections, he showed sound sense.

But for a certain event that happened in the course of the next few days, he might have adhered to his good resolutions and have finally dismissed Miss Keane from his serious thoughts. And, in that case, this story would not have been written.

And then the event happened. Returning home to his rooms one night, about twelve o’clock, his man told him that Mr Esmond was waiting for him in the sitting-room.

He found the little rotund man sitting in an easy-chair, white-faced, the marks of agitation written all over his countenance.

Wondering at this unusual spectacle—Tommy was frequently fussy, but always self-contained—Spencer advanced, and held out his hand.

“What’s up, Tommy? You’re a late visitor, but always welcome.” He pointed to the decanters standing on the sideboard. “I hope you have helped yourself?”

To Spencer’s great surprise, the little man did not take the proffered hand. He spoke in a hoarse, choking voice, his lips twitching.

“I’ve helped myself once too often, Spencer. And I can’t take the hand of an honest man, for reasons. You’ve got it at once.”

Spencer had average brains, but he was not very quick to realise the meaning of unexpected situations. At first, he thought the little man had been drinking.

“Sit down, Tommy, and get it off your chest. What in the name of wonder is the matter?” he said kindly. He was rather fond of Tommy in a casual sort of way.

Esmond did not sit down at once, but went over to the sideboard, and mixed himself a stiff tumbler of whisky-and-soda. He gulped it down at a draught, and then took an armchair.

“You won’t begrudge me that, I know,” he said, speaking in the same strained, hoarse voice. “It’s the last drink I’ll have in your rooms, the last drink in any house in England, I should say. I’m done for, old man, to-morrow I clear out, eat my heart away in some beastly foreign hole.”

No, Spencer’s first surmise had been incorrect. The man was not drunk, not even elevated. His face was chalk-white, and he was trembling all over as if he had been stricken with palsy. But he was perfectly sober.

Spencer took a chair himself, and spoke a little sternly. “Pull yourself together, old man, and speak out. At first I thought you had had a drop too much. But I see that’s not the case. Out with it. You’ve been waiting some time, my man informs me. You want to tell me something. Tell it.”

Tommy Esmond moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and spoke.

“I don’t quite know what instinct prompted me to come to you. We haven’t known each other so very intimately, after all, but I always felt you were a bit more of a Christian than the other chaps I have known, less of a Pharisee—that you would be more likely to find excuses for a poor devil who had yielded to temptation.”

“Do get on,” said Spencer a little impatiently. He did not at all like the turn the conversation was taking.

Tommy spoke brokenly, he could not put his words together very coherently, it appeared. But his halting utterance was simply due to emotion.

“I was at Elsinore Gardens to-night, playing cards. You know Elsinore Gardens, Mrs L’Estrange’s flat?”

He was quite sober, but his agitation made him wander a bit, or he would not have put the question.

“Of course I know Mrs L’Estrange’s flat. It was you who took me there,” said Spencer.

“Yes, we went there on the night of the raid, but I was not playing at your table. I remember you lost, and I won. Well, somebody has to lose, and somebody else has to win.”

Spencer made no comment on this obvious truism. Tommy Esmond again moistened his dry lips with his tongue. He was a long time in coming to the point, but he came to it at last.

“Well, old man, I was playing with an old pal of mine, with whom I have been in business for years. We had a nice code of signals arranged. I was as cautious as I could be, but my partner had been dining out, and he was a bit indiscreet. There were three or four men watching us, they caught us both, although, as I tell you, I was cautious. But I made one slip, and they were down on me like a knife. You don’t know my partner. It is the end of him. But it is the end of Tommy Esmond also.”

To say that Spencer was disgusted would be to convey a faint idea of his feelings. And yet, as he looked at the huddled, trembling form in the chair, his sentiment was rather one of compassion than loathing. What was there behind? What tragedy of circumstance had driven this apparently light-hearted, butterfly little creature to such crooked ways?

“You’re an old hand, then? It’s not the first time you’ve cheated?”

Tommy Esmond smiled wanly. He did not answer the question at once.

“What age do you guess me, Spencer?”

“At a casual glance, a little over fifty. You may be older. Looking at you closely, you do seem a bit made up, dye and all that sort of thing.”

“My dear sir, I am old enough to be your father. I shall never see sixty again.”

“And when did you take to this game?” Esmond thought a little before he replied, he was evidently counting the years.

“When I was twenty-two I got an entrée into society. I was then enjoying an income of two pounds a week, I was a clerk in an insurance office. At twenty-four I left the insurance business and started cheating for a living.”

Spencer uttered a horrified ejaculation. He had never come across anything quite like this, at any rate, in actual experience.

“Would you like to know something of my history, or would you like to kick me out at once, and have done with it?” asked Esmond quietly.

But there were still some remnants of compassion in Spencer. And he was also a little curious. He was dealing, after all, with a human document. Tommy’s revelations would add to his experience of life.

“Tell me all you would like to say,” he said.

“It will be a relief to unbosom myself, after the years I have led this life,” was Esmond’s answer. “When I left Elsinore Gardens with my life in ruins, I felt I could have shrieked it all out to the policeman standing at the corner. I came on here, because I thought you would listen to me, because I felt sure you were not a Pharisee.”

Spencer motioned him to the sideboard. “Mix yourself another stiff peg, and steady your nerves. Then tell me as much as you like.”

Esmond went over and helped himself. After a few seconds the ague-like trembling ceased, and he was able to speak in a fairly steady voice.

“My father was a solicitor in a small way of business in an obscure town in the west of England. There were three children—an elder brother, myself, and a sister. My elder brother succeeded to the practice and is still in the same place, making both ends meet on a microscopic income. My sister is dead.

“My father was a God-fearing, deeply religious man, and did more than his duty by his family. He scraped and pinched to give us a good education, that being the only capital he could leave us. I was placed in an insurance office, the head of which was a distant connection of my mother’s.

“If I had chosen to be content with my lot I daresay in time I might have done fairly well, as I had more than average abilities, and gave complete satisfaction in the performance of my duties.

“Unfortunately, I ran across, by the purest accident, a young man some couple of years my senior. His father, a man of very good family, had died a short time previously and left him a very decent income of about two thousand a year. He had been at a private school with me when we were boys.

“This young man took a violent fancy to me, I was slim and not bad looking in those days. He had the entrée to some of the best houses in London through his aristocratic connections. He took me with him everywhere, as his bosom friend. I had certain social instincts, derived from Heaven knows where, and I soon found my feet. In twelve months I was able to run alone, sometimes I was able to get into houses where even he could not gain a footing. He laughingly declared that I had beaten him in the social race, but he was a good-natured fellow, without a particle of envy or meanness in his nature, and he was rather proud than otherwise that the pupil had outstripped the master.”

He paused for a moment. It was evident, that having kept silence for so many years, it was an enormous relief to unbosom himself.

In spite of his disgust, Spencer could not but feel interested in this bit of life-history. He had often felt curious as to Tommy Esmond’s past, and now that curiosity was going to be satisfied. He understood now why the little man had never made any but the most distant allusions to his home or his relatives.

“The life suited me down to the ground, but there was always the terrible problem of ways and means, good clothes, travelling, expensive flowers, etc, etc. I had got to three pounds a week, but that doesn’t go far in the circles to which I had been transplanted. It began to dawn upon me that, delightful as the life was, I was playing the fool, and neglecting the substance for the shadow. People asked me to their big parties, often to their dinners and to week-ends, but there was no money in it. In fact, I was getting out of my depth. I had already been obliged to borrow small sums from money-lenders to cover my expenses.

“Bitterly I made up my mind that sooner or later I must cut it, and take life seriously, like the poor man I was. I belonged to a good club where I had all my letters addressed. I lodged in a little street in Bloomsbury, in cheap apartments. My friend alone knew this address.

“He would have helped me to a considerable extent, but, strange to say, considering what I did afterwards, I shrank from accepting actual cash from him.”

Spencer interrupted him for a second. “You would not sponge upon your friend, instead you took to cheating your acquaintance. I take it that is what you are going to tell me.”

Esmond nodded. “Quite right. I had made up my mind to cut it, and disappear from a world in which I had no right to intrude. I had even made up my mind as to the exact date at the close of the season when I would disappear, and return to the humdrum life from which my friend roused me.

“A few days before that date, something very strange happened; my life has always been full of surprises. A few weeks before the fixed date, I had made the acquaintance of a young nobleman, a member of one of the best-known families in England. He was then about thirty, very handsome, very popular with both men and women. He is dead now, but, of course, I shall not mention his name, which would startle you if you heard it.

“As I have said, his family was a very distinguished one, but poor for its position. My friend, whom for the sake of convenience I will call Lord Frederick, lived in good style, never seemed short of cash, and paid his debts promptly. Those who knew were sure that he got little or no help from his family, yet he betted at race-meetings, played cards nearly every night, and lived generally the life of a man with a fair income.

“His own explanation was, that he had some intimate friends on the Stock Exchange who put him on to any good thing going. In the course of the year, according to his own account, he made a considerable sum out of racing.

“Lord Frederick, like my first friend, took considerable notice of me after we had become acquainted. Several times he invited me to his club. Afterwards he told me that he had a premonition I should be useful to him.

“I shall never forget that night when the deadly temptation came to me, when I learned what manner of rascal he was. It was the close of the season. In a very few days more I should have looked my last on this gay and alluring existence, should have ceased to lead this double life of a poor clerk by day, a young man of fashion by night.”

Spencer suddenly interrupted. “But was there not a great risk of detection? Were you never recognised in the City by some chance West End acquaintance.”

“Up to then, no. Of course, I must have been found out in time, if only from the suspicious circumstance that I could never accept any day invitations. This was one of the reasons that weighed most strongly with me in the resolve to give it up. I could not bear the thought that the Tommy Esmond who bore himself so bravely in his new world, who had managed to outlive all curiosity as to his antecedents, should be discovered in his true colours, a poor City drudge in an insurance office.

“To return to my story. I had dined with Lord Frederick at the —. No, I will not give the name of the club, one of the most exclusive in London: it might put you on his track. He had ordered a choice dinner, and he plied me liberally with wine. My heart was very full at the prospect of having to say good-bye to this luxurious life, in a very few days’ time.

“After dinner we went into the smoking-room, which was nearly empty, as most of the members had left London. There were only two other occupants, and they were at the far end of the apartment. Practically, we had the place to ourselves.

“He urged me strongly to take a trip over to Paris as his guest. I should have loved to go, but the wrench had to be made some time, it might as well be made now. Besides, I was heavily in debt, for a poor man, and I had not the cash to purchase the necessary outfit for such a trip.

“He would not accept my first refusal, but tried to persuade me into reconsidering. When I still persisted, he bluntly asked me my reasons.

“As I have said, I was very depressed that night at the prospect of all I was saying good-bye to. This mood was responsible for my blurting out a great portion of the absolute truth.

“I explained to him that I had already accepted too much of his hospitality, which my circumstances did not enable me to return, that I could no longer take advantage of his generosity.

“After this avowal, he did not speak for some little time, all the while regarding me with an intense gaze that embarrassed me very much.

”‘Thanks for telling me the truth,’ he said at length. ‘Your confidence is quite safe with me.’ He added after a pause, ‘So you are a poor man, in spite of the fact that your appearance does not suggest the fact. Well, I may tell you that from the first moment I made your acquaintance I was pretty certain you were.’

“I told him a little more. ‘I am so poor,’ I said frankly, ‘that I cannot afford to keep up appearances any longer. In a few days I shall leave a world I ought never to have entered. Anyway, it is the last time I shall dine with you, and I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again, unless we run across each other by chance in a very different sphere.’

”‘You have absolutely made up your mind to do this, for the reasons you have given?’ he asked presently.

”‘Absolutely,’ I replied. ‘I may say it is Hobson’s choice. I am heavily in debt. If I cut my wants down to next to nothing, it will take me a year to pay off what I owe.’ I laughed bitterly—‘Unless I turned thief, I could not possibly go on.’

”‘I don’t want to force your confidence,’ was Lord Frederick’s next remark. ‘But having had a taste of this rather glittering world, I presume you will leave it with considerable regret.’

”‘I dare not say what I feel,’ I said with conviction. ‘It seems to me that in the old life to which I am returning I shall suffer the tortures of lost souls.’

“Then he shot at me an extraordinary question. ‘I wonder whether you would care to become a partner in my business?’

“My heart suddenly grew light. Was there a chance that I could still keep on, that through his assistance I could find a decently paid occupation? After all, I only wanted a few hundreds a year more. A bachelor can live in the best society on comparatively little, but he must have that little, and the insurance office did not furnish it.

”‘If I were competent enough,’ I faltered.

“He smiled; I thought there was a little touch of a sneer in that smile. ‘Oh, I think you would be competent enough. But I am not at all sure that you would like the business sufficiently.’

”‘I can’t say positively, of course, till I know the nature of it. But I don’t think I should be very difficult to please, nor do I want any extravagant remuneration, just enough to keep up a decent appearance.’

”‘The share would be half, neither more nor less,’ he said curtly; then he relapsed into a long silence, as if he were thinking very hard.

“When he spoke it was in a low, strained voice. ‘Look here, Esmond, I don’t know very much of you. But I believe you to be a gentleman. The business I am engaged in is a very peculiar one, and it is more than probable it will not appeal to you. If you refuse, you are to give me your word of honour that this conversation between us shall be forgotten.’

“I gave him more than my word, I added my solemn oath that I would never divulge a syllable.

“I had for some little time felt that there was a mystery about him. I hazarded to myself that he was perhaps engaged in some spying work repugnant to any man of fine susceptibilities but quite remunerative.

“I was startled, and to an extent horrified, by what he told me. He was a professional card-sharper, made his living by robbing his rich acquaintances. He had been at the game since he was twenty-five.

”‘I do pretty well, as you can guess, by the way in which I live,’ he remarked at the conclusion of his strange confession. ‘But with a smart confederate, and I am sure you would prove one, I could quadruple my gains. One is hampered by working alone. It’s a scoundrel’s business, of course. But I can always persuade myself I am not really doing very much harm, certainly not as much as the swindling sort of company-promoter. I win money from rich fools, rob them, if you like; it does at least as much good in my pockets as theirs.’

“I suppose there was already some moral kink in me waiting to blossom forth under proper encouragement. For though I was very much startled, I cannot say that I was profoundly shocked, as I might have been by a less subtle form of robbery.

“I did not accept or refuse that night, I wanted to think. I knew it was the turning of the ways. On the one hand well-paid roguery, with the accompanying delights of the fashionable world, on the other the deadly, drab life of the poor City drudge. In the morning my mind was made up. I went into partnership with my new friend.”

“And you made a fortune, I suppose?” asked Spencer, in a very cold voice.

Esmond shook his head, and Spencer was not at all sure that the next words were truthful ones.

“No, a comfortable living, nothing more. We made a good deal, but we had to lose a good deal, too, in order to avert suspicion.”

“Your friend is dead, you say. So you went on with it after his death?”

“Yes, for a little time alone. Then I, too, got in a partner, the man who was with me to-night.”

There was a long silence between the two men. Spencer broke it first.

“And what are your plans?” he asked.

“I shall sneak out of the country to-morrow morning and make my way to France. I shall hide myself in some little out-of-the-way village under an assumed name, and rust out.” The little man rose and looked at his former friend with an embarrassed air. “Well, thanks for having listened to me so patiently. It has been a tremendous relief to me to pour it all out.”

He did not offer his hand, for he felt certain it would not be taken. Spencer stopped him as he was at the door.

“You have money, I suppose, something put by out of your—your winnings?”

Esmond’s voice was hesitating. Again it was very doubtful if he was speaking the truth. “Hardly a sou out of them. It was lightly come, lightly go, all the time. But my father left me a little bit which will keep me going in a cheap place.”

Spencer did not believe him. The probability was he had put away safely a snug little nest-egg, in view of the detection which might come at any moment of such a hazardous occupation.

“One word before you go,” said the young man finally. “Is there much cheating going on at Elsinore Gardens?”

Esmond turned and looked the speaker straight in the face. This time he certainly seemed to be speaking the truth, but he might be a most accomplished liar.

“None at all, except when I and my partner were there. If there had been, I should have spotted it. I’m awfully sorry for Mrs L’Estrange, for it having happened at her house, for I daresay people will hint nasty things.”

“She didn’t suspect anything, then?”

“Not a bit,” replied Esmond. “We didn’t play there more than about twice a week, and we never went in for high stakes. And, of course, we had to lose pretty often, to make things look square.”

“And Miss Keane suspected nothing either.” As he remembered the girl’s beautiful face, and sad history, Spencer felt almost ashamed of himself for putting the question.

“Bless your soul, no, a thousand times no.” The little rogue seemed to speak with unusual warmth. “Why, she loathes cards, she never can be got to join in. She has suffered too much from gambling.”

He went out of the room slowly and into the night. Spencer half pitied the poor devil who had made such a hash of his life through his desire to step out of his own class. He sat down and ruminated a long time over the strange history which had been unfolded to him.

The next morning, the fugitive, Tommy Esmond, caught the morning train from Charing Cross. He looked very sad and woebegone, a pitiable figure, friendless and alone.

But not quite friendless. A young woman closely-veiled and dressed very plainly rose up from one of the seats as he came on the platform, and touched him lightly on the arm. He recognised her, and glanced round anxiously.

“It was very dear and sweet of you to come, Stella, but very imprudent. You might be seen by half a dozen people.”

“I know,” answered Miss Keane, for the closely-veiled woman was she. “I got your letter this morning and could not bear you should go without a last good-bye. Well, I can see you are anxious. I will say it, and get back.”

She lifted the veil for a second, and held up her face. The little man kissed her hastily, and then made for his train.

It was evident he had one friend left in the London he was flying from as a fugitive and outlaw, one woman who pitied him.

And, at the same time that Stella was walking swiftly from the station, Guy Spencer was making up his mind that he would pay a visit to Elsinore Gardens in the afternoon, to see how the land lay there.

Chapter Thirteen.

About five o’clock on the afternoon of the day following Esmond’s confession, Guy Spencer rang the bell at Mrs L’Estrange’s flat in Elsinore Gardens.

The decorous-looking butler opened the door. He seemed to wear a sad and chastened demeanour, as if overborne with the tragic events of the previous night. Of course, all servants know what is going on in the house of their employers. A scandal such as this must have quickly penetrated to them.

“Is Mrs L’Estrange at home?”

The sad-faced butler answered at once; he could tell a lie with as much grace as anybody, but here there was no need to lie.

“Mrs L’Estrange is at home, sir, in a manner of speaking, but she is very ill, as a matter of fact in bed. Of course she cannot see any visitors.”

“Oh, I quite understand,” said Spencer hastily. “Is Miss Keane in? If so, I would like to see her for a few moments.”

The melancholy man in black opened the door a few inches. “Miss Keane is in, sir, but I am afraid she is not very well, either. Will you kindly step in, sir, and I will find out if she can see you?”

It was evident that Tommy Esmond and his equally nefarious partner had cast a gloom over the whole establishment. Spencer was ushered into the pretty drawing-room. In a few moments, Stella Keane came in. She was evidently under the stress of great emotion. There were dark shadows round the eyes, as if she had passed a sleepless night. Even her perfect mouth had a listless droop.

But, in spite of her pallor, the dark shadows round her eyes, and that pathetic droop, she was still very beautiful. Pathos became her. Guy Spencer’s heart gave a great leap as he saw her. There was about her an overpowering, an irresistible fascination.

She advanced towards him with outstretched hands. She spoke in a broken voice, the perfectly moulded lips trembled:

“It is so sweet of you to come. Of course you have heard? It is all over the town by now. Oh, this thrice-accursed gambling, the love of which induces decent men to cheat, and become outcasts from their world.”

She spoke with the deepest emotion, her bosom heaving, her voice broken by the catchings of the breath.

“He was such a good little man, he was always so kind to me,” she went on. “And last night those awful happenings. Branded a cheat, he and his friend, and they could not deny it. They had to slink out. I have hardly closed my eyes during the night, Mr Spencer; my poor cousin is prostrated.” She added with a shudder: “My girlhood was passed amidst a gambling set, but I never had an experience like this.”

She collected herself, and rang for tea. “You will sit down,” she said. “You can understand I should have denied myself to anybody but you, I am so terribly upset. It is still like a nightmare.”

Spencer sat down as he was bidden. “I had a visit from Esmond last night,” he said briefly. “He came straight on from Elsinore Gardens. He told me what had happened, he told me the whole history of the terrible thing, how he has been making his living by cheating at cards, since he was a young man.” Miss Keane raised her hands in mute deprecation. “How awful! That, of course, I did not know. I had a letter from him this morning, apologising, if one can apologise for such a thing, telling me he was going to live abroad under an assumed name. It was a very short letter. His chief concern seemed to be that he had, incidentally, made it unpleasant for Mrs L’Estrange.”

“How does Mrs L’Estrange take it?”

Miss Keane shrugged her shoulders. “She is a little bit hysterical, you know. One moment, she vows she will shut up the flat and go abroad, for fear of the nasty things that people will say. The next moment, she says that, confident in her perfect innocence, she will stay and face the music, and give her parties as usual.”

“Has she asked your advice?” queried Spencer.

“She has, and my advice is to go on as usual. It is not her fault that blacklegs have crept into her circle. They creep into the best houses, the best clubs. So long as this curséd gambling goes on, there will be sharpers.”

“That’s true,” remarked Spencer, remembering a few episodes that had occurred in his time. “And, I suppose, you will still cast in your lot with her?”

The look on the beautiful face grew more pathetic than ever.

“What can I do, Mr Spencer? I have told you my position. I wish my cousin were a different woman altogether, I wish she were not so infatuated with this horrible gambling. But I cannot influence her. She is too old and set to turn over a new leaf.”

Every moment the girl’s fascination took a deeper hold of him. She was so very beautiful, so very seductive. But he still kept himself in check.

“Tell me what actually happened last night. How were Esmond and his partner found out?”

There was a little interruption by the solemn-faced butler who brought in tea. Miss Keane busied herself amongst the cups before she replied.

“It is, as I told you, all a nightmare to me. I was wandering aimlessly about; as I have told you before, I never play, I loathe cards too much. Suddenly there was a scene at the table where Mr Esmond and his partner were playing. Three men were standing watching the game, they had come here often, I knew their names.”

“They were friends of Mrs L’Estrange?” queried Spencer.

Just a faint shade of hesitation crept into the low voice.

“Oh yes, friends of my cousin.”

“Straight sort of chaps, of course.”

“I have no doubt of that. They accused Mr Esmond and his partner, Major Golightly, of cheating. Of course the charge was denied, but very half-heartedly. These three men were backed by others who had seen something suspicious. It seems Mr Esmond and his partner had aroused suspicion before. Finally they confessed, and slunk out of the house.”

She paused a moment, and then laid her hand impulsively on his arm.

“That first night you came to our house, you lost. Did you play at the same table with Tommy Esmond? I forget.”

The answer came straight. “No, I lost something, what was it?—something about a hundred and fifty. But Tommy Esmond did not rook me that time, he was playing at another table. I remember he was very cock-a-hoop, he was winning hand over fist. I say, I know I am putting a very impertinent question, but were Tommy Esmond and his partner, this Major Golightly, the only sharpers who came to this flat? Did I lose my hundred and fifty, or whatever it was, quite honestly?”

Miss Keane covered her face with her hands for a few seconds, and when she took them away, he could see that tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks.

“Heaven knows, Mr Spencer, I don’t. My cousin is a strange woman. She is fond of gaiety, of excitement. She asks people about whom she knows nothing to her flat, I think,” she added with an hysterical laugh; “she fancies she is making herself a queen of Society. If she can get her rooms full that is all she wants. When she does that, she fancies herself the Duchess.”

“I think I understand,” said Spencer gravely. “And I take it you would give heaven and earth to get out of this environment?”

“If you only knew how I loathe it,” she cried, in a fervent tone. “Sometimes I think I would rather run away and be a shopgirl or a waitress, to get rid of this horrible atmosphere.”

Guy Spencer was very perturbed. He rose and walked up and down the room—it was his habit to walk about, even in confined spaces, when he was in an emotional mood.

At length he turned, and faced her squarely. “Look here, Miss Keane. It’s rather nonsense talking about being a waitress or a shopgirl. You told me you had a small income saved from the wreck. How much is it? I am asking in no spirit of impertinent curiosity. I have a reason for asking.”

She hesitated for a moment before she replied: “Something like a hundred a year—paid to me quarterly by my cousin, Mr Dutton, who is my trustee.”

“Then you are not exactly a pauper. Shopgirls and waitresses don’t earn that.”

“But it would help,” said Miss Keane, in a stifled voice. “A hundred a year does not go far; with clothes and everything.”

He longed to take her in his arms there and then and ask her to be his wife, so far was he subjugated by her subtle fascination. But certain things occurred to him. He thought of his old ancestry, his uncle whose heir he would be, even a faint idea of his cousin Nina flashed through his mind. What would his relatives say to a marriage like that, the marriage with a girl, however beautiful, picked up in a flat, owned by a woman of good family but doubtful reputation?

But he could not afford to lose her. He was rich, he could indulge any passing whim. Out of his new-born ideas he spoke.

“Miss Keane, I am very interested in you. Will you agree to look upon me as a friend?”

She looked up at him from under downcast eyes.

“Mr Spencer, somehow I have always looked upon you as a friend, as something different from the ordinary man I meet in a place like this.”

“You want to get out of this atmosphere, away from your card-playing cousin, who cannot keep her parties free from disgraceful scandals.”

“I have told you how fervently I long to say good-bye to it all.”

Spencer had made up his mind as to what he was going to do. It was quixotic, but then he was a quixotic person. And, anyway, he was marking time. He would ask her to marry him in the end, but, at the moment, he did not clearly see his way to do so.

“Suppose a woman friend offered to lend you five hundred pounds, to enable you to get clear of this stifling atmosphere, what would you say? You could go and live where you like and look around.”

“If a woman friend asked me that I think I should say, yes.”

“You have agreed that I am your friend, true, a man friend,” said Guy. “Suppose I made you the same offer, what is your answer?”

“From a man friend I fear my answer must be an unhesitating ‘no,’ even to you.”

He admired her answer. He could gather from it that she respected herself too much to snatch at any offer that came along.

But he would play with her still. “Why?” he asked.

The beautiful eyes, still a little clouded with her tears, met his unfalteringly.

“You know as well as I do,” was her answer. “I am poor, Mr Spencer, but I am very proud.”

He sat down beside her, and took her hand in his.

“I admire you for that answer, Stella. I may call you Stella, may I not? But I am not quite the ordinary type of man. I am going to speak quite plainly to you. If you accept that five hundred pounds, I am not going to ask you for any return. I want you to understand that.”

She shot at him a swift glance from under the downcast eyes.

“You are a man out of a thousand, nay, out of ten thousand,” she said, and in her voice there was a note of great appreciation. If Stella Keane ever felt a good impulse in her life, it was towards this man who was doing his best to befriend her.

“Listen to me,” said Spencer persuasively, her delicate hand still lying in his. “I don’t know that I have done much good to other people in my life, but I do want to help you. I should like to get you out of this beastly hole. My proposal is, that I shall take for you a little furnished flat and supplement your income, or give you the five hundred pounds down, to do what you like with. It is for you to choose.”

“You would do this for me?” said Stella softly. “You must really like me, then! Men don’t do this sort of thing for women unless they like them.”

“I like you very much, Stella, and I want to help you.”

He knew that he could take her in his arms and kiss her at his will. But he forebore. He was not going to spoil this somewhat idyllic wooing.

“It cannot take place for a week or so,” she said presently. “I cannot quite leave my cousin in the lurch. I must give her some sort of notice. Of course, I can make the excuse that the events of last night have completely shattered my nerve.”

“I don’t wonder,” was Spencer’s comment. “Now, about this little matter we have been speaking of. I think it would be better if I paid this money into your bank, and left you to make your own arrangements. I suppose you have a bank?”

Yes, Miss Keane had a banking-account, a very small one. She smilingly remarked that it would give the manager a shock when such a large sum was paid into it.

“I will draw the money in cash to-morrow and bring it to you,” said Spencer. “Then nobody will be able to guess from whom it comes.”

He rose, he could not trust himself to stay very much longer. At any moment his reserve might break down. He might be impelled to change the rôle of the benevolent friend into that of the ardent lover.

And for a long time after he had left, Stella Keane sat absorbed in the most serious thoughts.

There was no doubt he was ardently in love with her. But he was not yet quite prepared to screw up his courage to the sticking place.

It was easy to understand. The obligations he owed his family were weighing on his mind. The woman he made his wife would one day be the Countess of Southleigh. He had to think of all this. And all he knew about her was learned from her own statement, and she had a cousin who was, from his point of view, certainly not a gentleman.

Above all things, Stella Keane was a very business-like young woman, and never shrank from looking facts squarely in the face. She must play a waiting game. Guy Spencer was very deeply in love, but he was not a hotheaded, impetuous boy, the sort of amorous youth who runs off with a chorus-girl, regardless of consequences. Lovers of this kind were very rarely met with.

If Guy Spencer did marry her, and she could not at the moment be sure he would, he would be fully conscious of the disadvantages to himself entailed by such a marriage. Would her fascination be strong enough to conquer his better judgment?

At any rate, for the present he was prepared to advance her five hundred pounds, and ask nothing but her friendship in return. It was an offer that she would have been a fool to refuse.

Presently she rose and went up to Mrs L’Estrange’s bedroom. That sorely perturbed lady had risen, flung on a dressing-gown, and was reclining on a sofa.

“I can’t sleep, I only fidget and fidget about,” was the explanation. “So I thought I might as well get up.”

“Very wise,” said Stella calmly. “You’re a little bit too hysterical, you know. You should keep your nerves in order as I do mine.”

“Not always,” was the sarcastic rejoinder. “They go to pieces in thunderstorms and air-raids, don’t they?”

“The exception proves the rule, my dear lady. Well, I haven’t come up here to indulge in a sparring match. I have some very great news for you. Mr Spencer called this afternoon; he hasn’t left me very long.” The elder woman became interested at once. “You don’t mean to say he has asked you to marry him?”

Stella laughed. “No, he hasn’t, although it will not be my fault if he doesn’t later on. It seems Tommy Esmond called on him last night, and made a clean breast of his whole history.”

Mrs L’Estrange frowned. “Then I think he was a great fool. Everybody, of course, will know what actually happened, that he was discovered cheating. But he need not go and tell him more than he would learn from general rumour.”

Stella’s face hardened a little. “You must make some allowances for him. He must have been in a terrible state of tension when he felt that his career was ended. He was so very proud, you know, of the position in society that he had won for himself. He must have felt like a man on the eve of execution. He was hardly responsible for his thoughts or actions. He is very highly-strung.”

Mrs L’Estrange spoke more gently. “Yes, of course. I am sorry I said that, my dear. And after all, it doesn’t make any difference how much he told or how little. The result to him is the same. And now for your great news, what are they? You say Spencer has not asked you to marry him.”

Stella told her of Guy’s suggestion, and her acceptance of it. “It is too good a chance to refuse. So, my dear, I shall have to leave you at the earliest possible moment.”

It was some time before the elder woman seemed quite able to grasp it. When she did, her astonishment seemed unbounded.

“Of all the strange things I have ever heard,” she began, but Stella cut her short with a little mocking laugh.

“Not quite so strange when you think it quietly out,” she said. “If he really knew anything about me, if I could produce a few respectable relatives, if I had some of your blue blood in my veins, he would have proposed this afternoon.”

Mrs L’Estrange nodded her rather dishevelled head. “I think I see.”

“He is very much in love with me,” went on Stella quietly. “Anyway, so much so that he doesn’t want to lose sight of me, while he is making up his mind. Hence his offer.”

“But he could see you here.”

Stella shook her head. “He would loathe this house after what occurred last night, and he thinks I am in an unholy set. He really is an awful dear, you know, so high-minded and upright. His great aim is to get me away from the environment.”

Mrs L’Estrange settled herself comfortably amongst her sofa cushions. She was an excitable and fussy person about trifles, but she took the great things of life with a calm and equal mind.

“Well, my dear, go as soon as it suits yourself. You have been a good pal to me, and I shall be sorry to lose you. But if you have got a decent chance you would be a fool not to take it.”

Miss Keane was strongly of the same opinion. Anyway she was glad the interview was over, that Mrs L’Estrange had taken everything in such good part. She might have turned nasty if the mood had seized her.

Later on, Miss Keane wrote a long letter to Tommy Esmond to an address which he had communicated to her in his note of the morning.

The same evening, she held a long conversation with her cousin and trustee, Mr Dutton, who came to Elsinore Gardens in obedience to an urgent summons on the telephone.

Chapter Fourteen.

Lady Nina Spencer sat in the drawing-room of the big house in Carlton House Terrace, awaiting the few guests who had been invited to a small, informal dinner-party. Her father, very infirm for his years, sat opposite to her in a big easy-chair.

The Earl spoke in his low, quavering voice: “I have nothing to say against the woman herself, judging from what little we have seen of her. She has very perfect manners, just a trifle too perfect. I can quite understand that for the average man she possesses considerable charm, and she has great good looks. Many people would call her beautiful. But I can only repeat what I said on the day I received Guy’s letter announcing his clandestine marriage: ‘The pity of it.’”

Lady Nina was a quiet, robust and practical young person, fond of looking facts in the face, and looking at them very squarely.

She had been as much shocked at her cousin’s rash marriage as the Earl himself, but it was an accomplished fact. Only two courses were open: the first to have nothing more to do with Guy and his wife, the second to admit the wife to a guarded intimacy.

Lord Southleigh had declared warmly, in his first disgust, that he would never look upon his young kinsman’s face again. But Nina had prevailed with milder counsels. Guy was his heir, and in the course of Nature would succeed to the family honours. They would not cut themselves adrift from him, and they must make up their minds to tolerate this wife, of whose antecedents he could give no satisfactory account. The one fact he did mention, that she was a cousin of Mrs L’Estrange, did not weigh much with them.

Mrs L’Estrange came of a fairly good family, so far as birth counted, but it was both impecunious and addicted to making unfortunate alliances. One of her sisters had run away with a good-looking young fellow who had been her father’s valet. She was a woman who would have a good many undesirable relatives knocking about. Miss Stella Keane, the daughter of an impoverished Irishman, might well belong to this band of undesirables. More especially as Guy’s statements about her antecedents were of the most bald and unsatisfactory nature.

It was all very sad and regrettable from every point of view, but, as Nina calmly pointed out, several young heirs to peerages had been running amok lately, in the matrimonial sense, and taking their wives from very questionable quarters. Guy might have married some coarse and common creature from the music-halls. It was unfortunate, in a way, that he had a considerable fortune of his own, and could snap his fingers at the displeasure of his relatives, if they presumed to show it.

But, somehow, knowing Guy as well as she did, Nina did not believe that the future Countess of Southleigh, who would, in due course, wear the family jewels, was likely to be coarse or common. Guy was too fastidious, too innately a gentleman, to be snared by a creature of that kind.

And, on her first introduction, the young wife made a much more favourable impression than might have been anticipated, considering the prejudices arrayed against her.

She was not in the least servile or obsequious in the presence of these two very aristocratic persons, but she bore herself with a certain kind of shrinking modesty, as if asking pardon for having intruded into the family. Her attitude to her husband appeared to be one of shy adoration, tempered with perfect good taste. Her deep affection for him, while not obtrusive or ostentatious, seemed to express itself in her tender glances, the soft cadences of her voice when she addressed him.

Nina made up her mind to one thing, that, if she was not genuinely and devotedly in love with him, she must be one of the most perfect actresses to be met with off the stage.

And Guy was still infatuated. When he had made her that strange offer, he knew that he was drifting, but he had still left some small remnant of self-control. But her fascination had proved too strong. Every day she wove the chains more strongly round him.

And then there came a time when absence from her was unbearable, when he took to counting the hours that elapsed between their next meeting. The end was inevitable. The moment came when he definitely made up his mind that he could not break away; that existence without her would be intolerable.

They were married quietly before the registrar, a strange wedding for the heir to the Southleigh earldom. No relatives of his were present, as he had forborne to give them any notice of his intention. She was unattended also. Even her cousin, Mr Dutton, did not put in an appearance. Knowing her future husband’s dislike of the young man, she had not paid him the compliment of requesting his attendance.

The day before the marriage, she spoke to him in a tremulous voice and with tears in her eyes.

“Guy, darling, I have said very little about this before, but you must not think I am blind to the sacrifices you are making. From to-morrow I bid adieu to my past life, to all the few friends and acquaintances I have made; I know that you will be happier by my doing so. Henceforth I devote my whole life to you. Your people shall be my people, if they will forgive me and have me.”

He clasped her to his breast with a lover’s rapture. How sweet and womanly she looked as she uttered those words in her low, broken tones. He understood what she meant. For his sake she was going to give up all that shady L’Estrange crew, to see as little of her objectionable cousin as possible. She explained, later on, that she could not ignore him altogether, as he had the management of her small affairs in his hands. But all this could be conducted by correspondence.

Guy was delighted. He knew well enough that his own world would not accept his marriage kindly, that they would never take his wife to their offended bosom. But they would rub along somehow. There were plenty of men he could bring to their house, and perhaps a few decent women who were perfectly respectable, but not too strait-laced. And, anyway, the world was well lost for love like this.

It cannot be said that, on the social side, their existence was a very brilliant one. It did not matter so much to Guy, he had never been over-fond of society. He liked his men friends, and having been a bachelor so long, he was fond of club life. He got quite as much amusement and distraction as he wanted.

His wife had many lonely hours, but she was wise in this respect that she never sought to chain him to her side. Whenever he came home he found her there waiting for him, affectionate and welcoming. Perhaps, after her stormy and chequered past, what would have been dullness to others seemed to her the peace she had been longing for.

She got on very well with her husband’s male friends, most of whom openly expressed amongst themselves their admiration for her. If she had been a woman of a flirtatious temperament she could have had a good time without overstepping the bounds of decorum. But she never exceeded the limits of strict friendship. She never indulged in an intimacy that could have the least element of danger in it. The general vote was, that she was very beautiful, very charming, in a quiet, elusive way, but naturally of a cold and unimpassionable nature. Only for her husband did her glance take on a warmer expression, her voice a tenderer tone.

The few women who came to the house found her unsatisfactory. The impression made upon them—and women are pretty shrewd when dissecting one of their own sex—was that she was a person who lived too much within herself, had a rooted disinclination “to let herself go” in those little confidential chats which are indulged in when no men are present. And for that studied reticence there must be some cogent reason. Above all, she never referred to her girlhood, never made any allusions to her family. The general impression was that Mrs Spencer had something to hide.

Anyway, after many months of married life, Guy was still as much in love with her as ever, and he was always profoundly touched by the pretty and impressive way in which she insisted that all the advantages were on her side, that she could never repay him sufficiently for the sacrifices he had so cheerfully made.

Of course Guy knew nothing of what his friends were saying; the men who admired her beauty, and were disappointed at the negative qualities which accompanied it; the women who found her unsatisfactory and were determined that she had something to hide.

All he knew, and was content in knowing, was this—that after many months of matrimony, for they had been married few weeks before the Armistice was proclaimed—that Armistice which was to be the precursor of a golden era—he was quite happy. She was a perfect wife, from his point of view, and he never looked back with the faintest misgiving. What he had done then, he would do again to-day, in spite of the fact that her reticence with regard to the past was as profound with him as with the various acquaintances who occasionally visited her.

Not even the close intimacy of married life had elicited any of those allusions and confidences which enable one to piece together, in some measure, the life-history of the person who makes them. But Guy had a generous nature, and was one of the least suspicious of men. He attributed this strange reticence to the fact that the past contained nothing but painful memories, that even to the man she loved she could not reopen the old wounds.

On this particular night, Lady Nina was awaiting her guests. It was a little dinner-party to meet the young married couple, six in all, herself and father, Mr and Mrs Spencer, a young woman friend of the hostess, and an old friend of the Southleigh family, Hugh Murchison, already met with in the early chapters of this history.

Murchison was the first arrival. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bad wound in the leg. He had been laid-up for a very long time at his own home with the effects of shell-shock. He had only been in London for a few days, and it was ages since the Southleighs had seen him. They welcomed him warmly.

After a little desultory conversation Nina spoke:

“You know from my note that you are here to-night especially to meet Guy and his wife, the wife that he sprang upon us in such a sudden and dramatic manner.”

“Yes, I understood that. You know I have been out of the world so long, and more than half the time not in my right senses, that I had heard nothing of the details till, a day or two ago, I picked it up from club gossip. Then I was told that Guy had picked up a girl from nowhere, about whom nothing was known, and married her on the sly at a registry-office. I suppose it would be too unkind to assume that Guy had gone off his head?”

Lord Southleigh growled out from his easy-chair. “Of course he was off his head when he did it. And the devil of it is he seems just as much off his head now. They are like turtle-doves, my dear boy, after several months of marriage.”

Lady Nina laughed. “My dear father gets more cynical every day. He insinuates as a general proposition, anyway it can be deduced from his remarks, that every man who marries a girl for love ought to be disillusioned shortly after the honeymoon. Well, certainly Guy is as much in love as ever, and, to be quite fair, she seems just as much in love with him.”

“She’s putting it on, I suppose,” suggested Hugh, who in a less obtrusive fashion was nearly as cynical as his host. “If she came from nowhere, and nobody knows anything about her, we may safely assume that she married him for his money, and that he was too infatuated to recognise the fact. Is she very bewitching?”

“She is certainly very good-looking,” was Nina’s reply. “Many people say she is beautiful. From a man’s point of view, she would be considered very charming in a subtle and elusive sort of way. Of course, my father hates her, it is a terrible shock to his pride to think she is going to inherit the family honours. Guy could have married anybody, although there would always have been still the danger that he would have been married for his money. When it comes to this point, there is not much difference between the well-born and low-born adventuress.”

From which remarks it will be gathered that the Lady Nina Spencer was a young woman of independent opinions, and not too strongly imbued with caste prejudices.

Hugh reflected for a few moments. His thoughts had travelled back to those days at Blankfield, which now seemed so very far off. What folly will not a certain type of man commit for the sake of a pretty woman? Jack Pomfret, in a moment of frenzy, had taken his life when he found he was tied up to a girl the accomplice and the decoy of a criminal.

And Guy Spencer, a man of a very different type from the easy-going, pleasure-loving Pomfret, had made a hash of his opportunities, flouted his family obligations, to pursue the desire of the moment, to marry out of his own class.

“What I hear is, that there is something very mysterious about her, that she preserves a strange reticence as to her past, makes no allusion to family or relatives. Does Guy know what other people do not know, and is he keeping his mouth shut? It is strange. Even if a man marries a ballet-girl, it comes out sooner or later that her father was a railway porter, or something of that sort.” He pulled himself up suddenly, and added, awkwardly: “I say, you know, I am afraid I have been very indiscreet. I forgot for the moment that she is one of the family now.”

A deep growl came from the Earl’s armchair: “She is not one of the family, she never will be. If the young fool had not been left that money by his godmother he would never have dared to do this disgraceful thing. By gad, Hugh, it is over a hundred years since there was such a mésalliance in our family: please Heaven it will be a hundred years before there is another.”

Nina took up the conversation at the point where her angry father left it.

“Of course, Hugh, you can say what you like. You are our old friend; you are Guy’s for that matter, and we are prepared to discuss this thing with you quite frankly. Guy may know more than we imagine; personally, I think he knows very little, and only what she has told him.”

“But surely, she must have given some particulars of herself,” cried Hugh, in amazement that a man like his friend Spencer, endowed with a fair share of common-sense, should take a wife upon trust, as it were. To be sure, Pomfret had done the same thing, but then poor old Jack, possessor of many excellent qualities, was singularly deficient in brain-power. He was one of those who never looked before they leaped.

Nina shrugged her shoulders. “All we know is that she was a Miss Stella Keane, the daughter of a man who gambled away his fortune at cards and on the race-course. As for relatives, she has for cousin a Mrs L’Estrange, a woman of good birth, but of somewhat shady reputation, who no longer mixes with her own class. There is another cousin, a man whose name I forget. I gather more from what has been omitted than what is actually said, that he is not a very desirable person, and has not visited Mrs Spencer since her marriage. That is all I have learned during these many months.”

“Not much, certainly. And I suppose the lady dries up when you try to approach her on the subject.”

“Oh yes, her manner then is very marked,” was Nina’s answer. “At the slightest question she seems to become frozen, to shut herself up within her shell. You know, Hugh, I was prepared to make the best of it all for Guy’s sake, although, of course, I quite sympathise with my father’s resentment. I have nothing to say against her manners or her appearance. If not a lady, she is most ladylike, and she never offends. But all the same, I can’t take to her. To me there seems something about her secretive and underhand. She appears to adore Guy, but, as you have suggested, that may be very accomplished acting.”

At this point, Miss Crichton, Lady Nina’s friend, was announced. She was not in the inner counsels of the Southleigh family, so no further allusion was made to Guy’s wife.

A few moments later the Spencers arrived. Guy shook his old friend Murchison warmly by the hand, they had met of late years only once or twice during Hugh’s brief leave from the Front. When they had exchanged a few mutual inquiries, the young husband turned to his wife, looking very slender and elegant in a filmy cream confection.

“Stella, one of my oldest friends, Hugh Murchison. We were boys together. You must have heard me speak of him.”

The young woman held out her hand with a charming smile that lighted up the rather sad face, and made her look what so many of her admirers said she was, quite beautiful.

“Yes, Major Murchison, I have heard of you from my husband, and how much you have suffered in this cruel war. You must come and see us, and renew your old friendship.”

For a moment Hugh could not speak. The room seemed suddenly peopled with ghosts of the past, summoned by the soft tones of that charming voice, so low and sweetly modulated. Then, collecting himself with a great effort, he dropped her hand, and made some formal answer. And at that moment the butler announced that dinner was served.

Chapter Fifteen.

Small and informal dinner-parties can be either very lively or very dull, depending, no doubt, upon the careful selection of the guests, also on the personality of the host and hostess, who can sometimes exercise magnetic influence.

Nina was, as a rule, a very vivacious hostess. Her father was uncertain. If he were in a congenial atmosphere, amongst his old friends and comrades, he would radiate geniality. But if there was one guest who did not quite hit it off with him, between whom and himself there was an undefined spirit of personal antagonism, he dried up at once, and became gloomy and morose.

To-night, as his guest of honour, sitting at his right hand, he had the niece-in-law whose entrance into the family he had so bitterly resented. During the long courses he hardly spoke a word. He was rude almost to boorishness.

But although Stella was fully conscious that she was there on sufferance, her admirable self-control enabled her to comport herself with unruffled demeanour. If this spiteful old man hoped that he was annoying her with his churlish behaviour, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was hurt. She ignored him, as he purposely ignored her.

Miss Crichton, a cheerful, chatty young woman, whose flow of good spirits made her welcome at many houses, sat on the other side of the host. Finding Lord Southleigh disinclined to conversation, and guessing the reason of it, she divided her remarks between Stella Spencer and Murchison, who sat next her.

A good-hearted girl, she felt just a little bit sorry for Stella. Lord Southleigh was not playing the game. His attitude was altogether illogical. It was open to him to refuse to receive his unwelcome niece at all, that would have been perfectly comprehensible. But having admitted her to his house, it was in the worst possible taste to so openly proclaim his dislike and detestation.

Lady Nina talked brightly to her cousin Guy, in the random flashes of her conversation, taking in the others, with the solitary exception of her father, who sat there glum and silent, in one of his blackest and most unapproachable moods. And Miss Crichton did her best, really working very hard to counteract the sombre influence of the taciturn host.

But in spite of the brave efforts of the two young women there was no exhilaration in the air, only a sort of well-defined depression, such as is felt in the atmosphere before the faint rumblings of a thunderstorm. Nobody really felt comfortable, not a single guest would feel anything but relief when the tedious evening drew to a close.

Guy Spencer was relieved, in a way, that his uncle had ostensibly buried the hatchet, but still he never felt happy in that uncle’s house. The strong disapproval was there, if suppressed for the sake of politeness.

These little informal dinners, given at long intervals to impress upon him that he was still a recognised member of the family, bored him extremely. They were always strictly limited as to numbers, and the other guests were generally people of no importance, on the outer fringe of that society in which the Southleighs moved.

It was difficult to know what Stella was feeling, for she had such admirable self-control. But if she was a sensitive woman she must have been cut to the heart by the behaviour of her elderly relative. And her suffering must have been more poignant from the fact that this contemptuous behaviour must be apparent to every other member of the party.

While the two young women were chattering away, battling, as it were, against the general depression, Hugh Murchison was trying to collect his thoughts.

Strange that his recollections had harked back to that tragedy at Blankfield while Nina was speaking of the young Mrs Spencer. And, if his memory and his eyesight were not playing him false, he was sitting opposite to the unhappy Pomfret’s widow.

Six years make a considerable difference in the personal appearance of any man or woman, and they had made a difference in her. If he had met her in the street, he would not have known her. Perhaps he would not have known her to-night, but for that sudden accidental throwing back of the memory of old times. In other words, if his mind had not been accidentally diverted to Jack Pomfret, he would have failed to recognise the woman whom he once knew under the name of Norah Burton.

And yet could he be sure? Let him think a little. Six years ago Norah Burton looked twenty, and Davidson the detective assured him she was at least four years older than she looked—the appearance of youth, he had added, was one of her assets.

This young woman did not look a day older than twenty-six, and taking the computation of the years, she must be at least thirty. But if she were Norah Burton, and had retained that priceless asset of youth, she would still have that four years’ advantage.

Then Norah Burton’s hair was fair and wavy, Stella Spencer’s was dark. Still it is easy for a woman to alter the colour or the appearance of her hair. If Stella Keane had arisen, like the phoenix, from Norah Burton, she would alter herself in every detail, so far as Nature permitted her.

Still, it is said that everybody in the world has a double. Often in his own experience he had claimed acquaintance with somebody whom he had mistaken for an old friend, and smilingly apologised for his error. Norah’s good looks had been of a rather uncommon kind, but there must be dozens of women in the world more or less like her.

Then, as Miss Crichton’s harmless chatter flowed on, he thought of other things. Norah had an obscure past, on which such guarded confidences as she permitted herself to indulge in threw little or no light. It would appear that Stella Keane’s history moved much on the same lines. There were only vague intimations, nothing definite, nothing satisfactory.

There was another point of resemblance. Norah had one male relative who came out into the open for inspection, in her case a brother, afterwards discovered to be a criminal. Stella Keane had one male relative also, in her case a cousin, of whom nothing was known, except that he was an undesirable person who had not visited his relative’s house since her marriage, no doubt for reasons well-known to himself and Stella.

Ergo the undesirable cousin was lying low, as George Burton would have lain low, when Jack Pomfret had openly acknowledged Norah as his wife.

And yet—and yet—was there anything in these suspicions? Was he not allowing himself to be misled by a chance resemblance, by random coincidences?