Ancestors by Gertrude Atherton

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PART I

1904

I

Miss Thangue, who had never seen her friend's hand tremble among the
teacups before, felt an edge on her mental appetite, stimulating after
two monotonous years abroad. It was several minutes, however, before she
made any effort to relieve her curiosity, for of all her patron-friends
Victoria Gwynne required the most delicate touch. Flora had learned to
be audacious without taking a liberty, which, indeed, was one secret of
her success; but although she prided herself upon her reading of this
enigma, whom even the ancestral dames of Capheaton looked down upon
inspectively, she was never quite sure of her ground. She particularly
wished to avoid mistakes upon the renewal of an intimacy kept alive by a
fitful correspondence during her sojourn on the Continent. Quite apart
from self-interest, she liked no one as well, and her curiosity was
tempered by a warm sympathy and a genuine interest. It was this capacity
for friendship, and her unlimited good-nature, that had saved her,
penniless as she was, from the ignominious footing of the social
parasite. The daughter of a clergyman in a Yorkshire village, and the
playmate in childhood of the little girls of the castle near by, she had
realized early in life that although pretty and well-bred, she was not
yet sufficiently dowered by either nature or fortune to hope for a
brilliant marriage; and she detested poverty. Upon her father's death
she must earn her bread, and, reasoning that self-support was merely the
marketing of one's essential commodity, and as her plump and indolent
body was disinclined to privations of any sort, she elected the role of
useful friend to fashionable and luxurious women. It was not an exalted
niche to fill in life, but at least she had learned to fill it to
perfection, and her ambitions were modest. Moreover, a certain integrity
of character and girlish enthusiasm had saved her from the more
corrosive properties of her anomalous position, and she was not only
clever enough to be frankly useful without servility, but she had become
so indispensable to certain of her friends, that although still blooming
in her early forties, she would no more have deserted them for a mere
husband than she would have renounced her comfortable and varied
existence for the no less varied uncertainties of matrimony.

It was not often that a kindly fate had overlooked her for so long a
period as two years, and when she had accepted the invitation of one of
the old castle playmates to visit her in Florence, it had been with a
lively anticipation that made dismay the more poignant in the face of
hypochondria. Nevertheless, realizing her debt to this first of her
patrons, and with much of her old affection revived, she wandered from
one capital and specialist to the next, until death gave her liberty.
She was not unrewarded, but the legacy inspired her with no desire for
an establishment beyond her room at the Club in Dover Street, the
companionship of friends not too exacting, the agreeable sense of
indispensableness, and a certain splendor of environment which gave a
warmth and color to life; and which she could not have commanded had she
set up in middle years as an independent spinster of limited income. She
had received many impatient letters while abroad, to which she had
replied with fluent affection and picturesque gossip, never losing touch
for a moment. When release came she had hastened home to book herself
for the house-parties, and with Victoria Gwynne, although one of the
least opulent of her friends, first on the list. She had had several
correspondents as ardent as herself, and there was little gossip of the
more intimate sort that had not reached her sooner or later, but she
found subtle changes in Victoria for which she could not as yet account.
She had now been at Capheaton and alone with her friend for three days,
but there had been a stress of duties for both, and the hostess had
never been more silent. To-day, as she seemed even less inclined to
conversation, although manifestly nervous, Miss Thangue merely drank her
tea with an air of being too comfortable and happy in England and
Capheaton for intellectual effort, and patiently waited for a cue or an
inspiration. But although she too kept silence, memory and imagination
held rendezvous in her circumspect brain, and she stole more than one
furtive glance at her companion.

Lady Victoria Gwynne, one of the tallest women of her time and still one
of the handsomest, had been extolled all her life for that fusion of the
romantic and the aristocratic ideals that so rarely find each other in
the same shell; and loved by a few. Her round slender figure, supple
with exercise and ignorant of disease, her black hair and eyes, the
utter absence of color in her smooth Orientally white skin, the mouth,
full at the middle and curving sharply upward at the corners, and the
irregular yet delicate nose that seemed presented as an afterthought to
save that brilliant and subtle face from classic severity, made her
look--for the most part--as if fashioned for the picture-gallery or the
poem, rather than for the commonplaces of life. Always one of those
Englishwomen that let their energy be felt rather than expressed, for
she made no effort in conversation whatever, her once mobile face had of
late years, without aging, composed itself into a sort of illuminated
mask. As far as possible removed from that other ideal, the British
Matron, and still suggesting an untamed something in the complex centres
of her character, she yet looked so aloof, so monumental, that she had
recently been painted by a great artist for a world exhibition, as an
illustration of what centuries of breeding and selection had done for
the noblewomen of England.

Some years before, a subtle Frenchman had expressed her in such a
fashion that while many vowed he had given to the world an epitome of
romantic youth, others remarked cynically that his handsome subject
looked as if about to seat herself on the corner of the table and smoke
a cigarette. The American artist, although habitually cruel to his
patrons, had, after triumphantly transferring the type to the canvas,
drawn to the surface only so much of the soul of the woman as all that
ran might admire. If there was a hint of bitterness in the lower part of
the face, from the eyes there looked an indomitable courage and much
sweetness. Only in the carnage of the head, the tilt of the chin, was
the insolence expressed that had made her many enemies. Some of the
wildest stories of the past thirty years had been current about her, and
rejected or believed according to the mental habit or personal bias of
those that tinker with reputations. The late Queen, it was well known,
had detested her, and made no secret of her resentment that through the
short-sighted loyalty of one of the first members of her Household, the
dangerous creature had been named after her. But whatever her secrets,
open scandal Lady Victoria had avoided: imperturbably, without even an
additional shade of insolence, never apologizing nor explaining;
wherein, no doubt, lay one secret of her strength. And then her
eminently respectable husband, Arthur Gwynne, second son of the Marquess
of Strathland and Zeal, had always fondly alluded to her as "The
Missus," and lauded her as a repository of all the unfashionable
virtues. To-day, presiding at the tea-table in her son's country-house,
an eager light in her eyes, she looked like neither of her portraits:
more nearly approached, perhaps, poor Arthur Gwynne's ideal of her; not
in the least the frozen stoic of the past three days. When she finally
made an uncontrollable movement that half-overturned the cream-jug,
Flora Thangue's curiosity overcame her, and she murmured, tentatively:

"If I had ever seen you nervous before, Vicky--"

"I am not nervous, but allowances are to be made for maternal anxiety."

"Oh!" Miss Thangue drew a deep breath. She continued, vaguely, "Oh, the
maternal role--"

"Have I ever failed as a mother?" asked Lady Victoria, dispassionately.

"No, but you are so many other things, too. Somehow, when I am away from
you I see you in almost every other capacity."

"Jack is thirty and I am forty-nine."

"_You_ look thirty," replied Flora, with equal candor.

"I am thankful that my age is in Lodge; I can never be tempted to enroll
myself with the millions that were married when just sixteen."

"Oh, you never could make a fool of yourself," murmured her friend.
Then, as Victoria showed signs of relapsing into silence, she plunged in
recklessly; "Jack is bound to be elected. When has he ever failed to get
what he wanted? But you, Vicky dear--is there anything wrong? You had a
bulky letter from California the day I arrived. I do hope that tiresome
property is not giving you trouble. What a pity it is such a long way
off."

"The San Francisco lease runs out shortly. Half of that, and the
southern ranch, are my only independent sources of income. The northern
ranch belongs to Jack. All three are getting less and less easy to let
in their entirety, my agents write me, and I feel half a pauper
already."

"This is not so bad," murmured Flora.

"Strathland would bundle me out in ten minutes if anything happened to
Jack."

"It would be a pity; it suits you." She was not referring to the hall,
which was somewhat too light and small for the heroic mould of its
chatelaine, but to the noble proportions of the old house itself, and
the treasures that had accumulated since the first foundations were laid
in the reign of Henry VI. There were rooms hung with ugly brocades and
velvets never duplicated, state bed-chambers and boudoirs sacred to the
memory of personages whose dust lay half-forgotten in their marbles; but
above all, Capheaton was famous for its pictures. Not only was there an
unusually large number of portraits by masters scattered about the
twenty rooms that lay behind and on either side of the hall, but many
hundreds of those portraits and landscapes from the brushes of artists
fashionable in their day, unknown in the annals of art, but seeming to
emit a faint scent of lavender and rose leaves from the walls of
England's old manor-houses and castles. In the dining-room there was a
full-length portrait of Mary Tudor, black but for the yellow face and
hands and ruff; and another, the scarlet coat and robust complexion
still fresh, of the fourth George, handsome, gay, devil-may-care; both
painted to commemorate visits to Capheaton, historically hospitable in
the past. But Lord Strathland, besides having been presented with six
daughters and an heir as extravagant as tradition demanded, was poor as
peers go, and had more than once succumbed to the titillating delights
of speculation, less cheering in the retrospect. Having a still larger
estate to keep up, he had been glad to lend Capheaton to his second son,
who, being an excellent manager and assisted by his wife's income, had
lived very comfortably upon its yield. Upon his death Elton Gwynne had
assumed possession as a matter of course; and a handsome allowance from
his doting grandfather supplementing his inheritance, the mind of the
haughty and promising young gentleman was free of sordid anxieties.

Lady Victoria's satirical gaze swept the simpering portraits of her
son's great-aunts and grandmothers, with which the hall was
promiscuously hung.

"Of course I am as English as if the strain had never been crossed, if
you mean that. But I'd rather like to get away for a while. I really
ought to visit my California estates, and I have always wanted to see
that part of America. I started for it once, but never even reached the
western boundaries of New York. One of us should spend a year there, at
least; and of course it is out of the question for Jack to leave England
again."

"You would not spend six months out of Curzon Street. You are the most
confirmed Londoner I know."

"Do you think so?"

Miss Thangue replied, impulsively, "I have often wondered if you
numbered satiety among your complexities!"

This was as far as she had ever adventured into the mysterious
backwaters of Victoria's soul, and she dropped her eyelids lest a
deprecating glance meet the contempt it deserved; both with a due regard
for the limit imposed by good taste, despised the faint heart.

"I hate the sight of London!" Her tone had changed so suddenly that
Flora winked. "If it were not for Jack I would leave--get out. I am sick
of the whole game."

"Oh, be on your guard," cried her friend, sharply. "That sort of thing
means the end of youth."

"Youth after fifty depends upon your doctor, your masseuse, and your
dressmaker. I do not say that my present state of mind is sown with
evergreens and immortelles, but the fact remains that for the present I
have come to the end of myself and am interested in no one on earth but
Jack."

Miss Thangue stared into her teacup, recalling the gossip of a year ago,
although she had given it little heed at the time: Victoria had been
transiently interested so often! But all the world knew that when Arthur
Gwynne was killed Sir Cadge Vanneck had been off his head about
Victoria; and that when obvious restrictions vanished into the family
vault he had left abruptly for Rhodesia to develop his mines, and had
not found time to return since. Sir Cadge was about the same age as the
famous beauty, and rose quite two inches above her lofty head. People
had grown accustomed to the fine appearance they made when
together--"Artie" was ruddy and stout--and although Victoria reinforced
her enemies, for Vanneck was one of the most agreeable and accomplished
men in London, the artistic sense of that lenient world was tickled at
their congruities and took their future mating for granted; Arthur
Gwynne was sure to meet his death on the hunting-field, for he was far
too heavy for a horse and rode vilely. When he fulfilled his destiny and
Vanneck fled, the world was as much annoyed as amused. But they were
amused, and Flora Thangue knew that this gall must have bitten deeper
than the loss of Vanneck, who may or may not have made an impression on
this woman too proud and too spoiled to accept homage in public
otherwise than passively, whatever may have been the unwritten tale of
her secret hours. The excuses hazarded by Vanneck's friends were neither
humorous nor sentimental, but no one denied that they were eminently
sensible: his first wife had died childless, his estates were large, his
title was one of the oldest in England. But although no one pitied
Victoria Gwynne, many were annoyed at having their mental attitude
disarranged, and this no doubt had kept the gossip alive and been a
constant source of irritation to a woman whose sense of humor was as
deep as her pride.

Flora replied at random. "Jack couldn't very well get on without you."

His mother's eyes flashed. "I flatter myself he could not--at present.
If Julia Kaye would only marry him!"

"She won't," cried Flora, relieved at the change of tone. "And
why do you wish it? She is two years older, of quite dreadful
origin--and--well--I don't like her; perhaps my opinion is a little
biased."

"She is immensely rich, one of the ablest political women in London, and
Jack is desperately in love with her."

"I cannot picture Jack in extremities about any one, although I don't
deny that he has his sentimental seizures. He even made love to me when
he was cutting his teeth. But he doesn't need a lot of money, you rank
higher than she among the political women, and--well, I believe her to
be bad-tempered, and more selfish than any woman I have ever known."

"He loves her. He wants her. He would dominate any woman he married. He
is such a dear that no woman who lived with him could help loving him.
Moreover, she is inordinately ambitious, and Jack's career is the most
promising in England."

"Jack is far too good for her, and I am glad that he will not get her. I
happen to know that she has made up her mind to marry Lord Brathland."

"Bratty is a donkey."

"She would be the last to deny it, but he is certain to be a duke if he
lives, and she would marry a man that had to be led round with a string
for the sake of being called 'your grace' by the servants. She'll never
be anything but a third-rate duchess, and people that tolerate her now
will snub her the moment she gives herself airs. But I suppose she
thinks a duchess is a duchess."

"Money goes pretty far with us," said Lady Victoria, dryly.

"Doesn't it? Nevertheless--you know it as well as I do--among the people
that really count other things go further, and duchesses have been put
in their place before this--you have done it yourself. Julia Kaye has
kept her head so far because she has been hunting for strawberry leaves,
and there is no denying she's clever; but once she is in the upper
air--well, I have seen her as rude as she dares be, and if she became a
duchess she would cultivate rudeness as part of the role."

"We can be rude enough."

"Yes, and know how to be. A parvenu never does."

"She is astonishingly clever."

"Duchesses are born--even the American ones. Julia Kaye has never
succeeded in being quite natural; she has always the effect of
rehearsing the part of the great lady for amateur theatricals. Poor
Gussy Kaye might have coached her better. The moment she mounts she'll
become wholly artificial, she'll patronize, she'll give herself no end
of ridiculous airs; she won't move without sending a paragraph to the
_Morning Post_. The back of her head will be quite in line with her
charming little bust, and I for one shall walk round and laugh in her
face. She is the only person that could inspire me to such a vicious
speech, but I am human, and as she so ingenuously snubs me as a person
of no consequence, my undazzled eyes see her as she is."

Lady Victoria, instead of responding with the faint, absent, somewhat
irritating smile which she commonly vouchsafed those that sought to
amuse her, lit another cigarette and leaned back among the cushions of
the sofa behind the tea-table. She drew her eyelids together, a rare
sign of perturbation. The only stigma of time on her face was a certain
sharpness of outline and leanness of throat. But the throat was always
covered, and her wardrobe reflected the most fleeting of the fashions,
assuring her position as a contemporary, if driving her dressmaker to
the verge of bankruptcy. When her bright, black, often laughing eyes
were in play she passed with the casual public, and abroad, as a woman
of thirty, but with her lids down the sharpness of the lower part of the
face arrested the lover of detail.

"Are you sure of that?" she asked, in a moment.

"Quite."

"I am sorry. It will be a great blow to Jack. I hoped she would come
round in time."

"She will marry Brathland. I saw Cecilia Spence in town. She was at
Maundrell Abbey with them both last week. You may expect the
announcement any day--she'll write it herself for the _Morning Post_.
How on earth can Jack find time to think about women with the immense
amount of work he gets through?--and his really immodest ambitions!
By-the-way--isn't this polling-day? I wonder if he has won his seat? But
as I said just now I do not associate Jack with defeat. His trifling
set-backs have merely served to throw his manifest destiny into higher
relief."

"The telegram should have come an hour ago. I have few doubts--and yet
he has so many enemies. I wonder if we shall be born into a world, after
we have been sufficiently chastened here, where one can get one's head
above the multitude without rousing some of the most hideous qualities
in human nature? It is a great responsibility! But there has been no
such speaker, nor fighter, for a quarter of a century." Her eyes glowed
again. "And heaven knows I have worked for him."

"What a pity he is not a Tory! He could have a dozen boroughs for the
asking. I wish he were. The whole Liberal party makes me sick. And it is
against every tradition of his family--"

"As if that mattered. Besides, he is a born fighter. He'd hate anything
he could have for the asking. And he's far too modern, too progressive,
for the Conservative party--even if there were anything but blue-mould
left in it."

"Well, you know I am not original, and my poor old dad brought us up on
the soundest Tory principles; he never would even compromise on the word
Conservative. But considering that Jack is as Liberal as if the taint
were in the marrow of his bones, what a blessing that poor Artie did not
happen to be the oldest son. Cecilia says they were all talking of it at
Maundrell Abbey, where of course it is a peculiarly interesting topic.
That ornamental and conscientious peer, Lord Barnstable, has never
ceased to regret his father's death, for reasons far removed from
sentimental. He told Cecilia that Lord Strathland almost confessed to
him that he would give his right eye to hand over his old shoes to Jack,
not only because he detests Zeal, but because it would take the backbone
out of his Liberalism--"

"And ruin _his_ career. Thank heaven Zeal is engaged at last. They will
marry in the spring, and then the only cloud on Jack's horizon will
vanish."

"What if there were no children?"

"There are so much more often than not--that is the least of my worries.
He had five girls by his first wife; there is no reason why this
splendid cow I have picked out should not produce a dozen boys. I never
worked so hard over one of Jack's elections--not only to overcome Zeal's
misogyny, which he calls scruples, but I had to fight Strathland every
inch of the way. When I think of Jack's desperation if he were
pitchforked up into the Peers--you do not know him as I do."

"Well, he is safe for a time, I fancy. There has been consumption in the
family before, and always the slowest sort--"

A footman entered with a yellow envelope on a tray.

Lady Victoria opened it without haste or change of color.

"Jack is returned," she said.

"How jolly," replied the other, with equal indifference.

II

"You look tired--I will take you up to your room. Vicky has so many on
her hands."

The American rose slowly, but with a flash of gratitude in her eyes.

"I am tired, and I don't know a soul here. I almost wish Lady Victoria
had not asked me down, although I have wanted all my life to visit one
of the ancestral homes of England."

"Oh, you'll get over that, and used to us," said Miss Thangue, smiling.
"Your staircase is behind this door, and we can slip out without
attracting attention. They are all gabbling over Jack's election."

She opened a door in a corner of the hall where the newly arrived guests
were gathered about Lady Victoria's tea-table, and led the way up a wide
dark and slippery stair. After the first landing the light was stronger,
and the walls were, to an inch, covered with portraits and landscapes,
the effect almost as careless as if the big open space were a
lumber-room.

"Are they _all_ old masters?" asked Miss Isabel Otis, politely, her eyes
roving over the dark canvases.

"Oh no; the masters are down-stairs. I'll show them to you to-morrow.
These are not bad, though."

"What a lot of ancestors to have!"

"Oh, you'll find them all over the house. These are not Gwynnes. This
house came to Lord Strathland through the female line. It will be Jack's
eventually--one way or another; and Jack must be more like the Eltons
than the Gwynnes--unless, indeed, he is like his American ancestors."
She turned her soft non-committal eyes on the stranger. "You are his
thirty-first cousin, are you not?"

"Not quite so remote. But why do you call him Jack? He is known to fame
as Elton Gwynne."

"His name is John Elton Cecil Gwynne. We are given to the nickname these
days--to the abbreviation in general."

They were walking down a corridor, and Miss Thangue was peering through
her lorgnette at the cards on the doors.

"I know you are on this side. I wrote your name myself. But exactly
where--ah, here it is."

She opened the door of a square room with large roses on the white
wall-paper, and fine old mahogany furniture. The sofa and chairs and
windows were covered with a chintz in harmony with the walls. "It is
cheerful, don't you think so?" asked Miss Thangue, drawing one of the
straight curtains aside. "Vicky had all the rooms done over, and I chose
the designs. She is quite intolerantly modern, and holds that when
wall-paper and chintz can save an old house from looking like a
sarcophagus, why not have them? That bell-cord connects with your maid's
room--"

"I have no maid. I am not well off at all. I wonder Lady Victoria
thought it worth while to ask me down."

"Dear me, how odd! May I sit with you a little while? I never before saw
a poor American girl."

"I'll be only too grateful if you will stay with me as long as you can.
I am not exactly poor. I have a ranch near Rosewater, some property and
an old house in San Francisco. All that makes me comfortable, but no
more; and there are so many terribly rich American girls!"

"There are, indeed!" Miss Thangue sat forward with the frank curiosity
of the Englishwoman when inspecting a foreign specimen. But her
curiosity was kindly, for she was still a girl at heart, interested in
other girls. Miss Otis, looking at her blond, virginal face, took for
granted that she was under thirty, and owed her weight to a fondness for
sweets and sauces.

"How can you travel in Europe if you are not rich?" demanded Flora. "I
never dare venture over except as the guest of some more fortunate
friend."

"Are _you_ poor?" asked Miss Otis, her eye arrested by the smart little
afternoon frock of lace and chiffon and crepe-de-chine.

"Oh, horribly. But then we all are, over here. If it were not for the
Jews and the Americans we'd have to make our own clothes. The
dressmakers never could afford to give us credit."

"They all looked very wealthy down-stairs."

"Smart, rather. This happens to be a set that knows how to dress. Many
don't. You know something of it yourself," she added, with a frank
survey of the girl's well-cut travelling-frock and small hat. "Lots of
Americans don't, if you don't mind my saying so--for all their
reputation. I went to a dinner at an American Legation once and two of
your countrywomen came with their hats on. They had brought letters to
the Minister, and he hadn't taken the precaution of looking them over.
He was terribly mortified, poor thing."

She related the anecdote with philanthropic intention, but Miss Otis put
her half-rejected doubts to flight by remarking, lightly:

"We don't do that even in Rosewater."

"Where _is_ Rosewater? What a jolly name!"

"It is in northern California, not far from Lady Victoria's ranch and
what is left of ours. I have spent most of my life in or near it--my
father was a lawyer."

"Do tell me about yourself!" Like most amiable spinsters, she was as
interested in the suggestive stranger as in a new novel. She sank with a
sigh of comfort into the depths of the chair. "May I smoke? Are you
shocked?"

Then she  apprehensively, fearing that her doubt might be
construed as an insult to Rosewater.

But Miss Otis met it with her first smile. "Oh no," she replied. "Will
you give me one? Mine are in my trunk and they haven't brought it up."
She took a cigarette from the gayly tendered case and smoked for a few
moments in silence.

"I don't know why you should be interested in my history," she said at
last in her slow cold voice, so strikingly devoid of the national
animation. "It has been far too uneventful. I have an adopted sister,
six years older than myself, who married twelve years ago. Her husband
is an artist in San Francisco, rather a genius, so they are always poor.
My mother died when I was little. After my sister married I took care of
my father until I was twenty-one, when he died--four years ago. There
are very good schools in Rosewater, particularly the High School. My
father also taught me languages. He had a very fine library. But I do
not believe this interests you. Doubtless you want to know something of
the life with which Lady Victoria is so remotely connected."

"I am far more interested in you. Tell me whichever you like first. How
_are_ you related, by-the-way?"

"Father used to draw our family tree whenever he had bronchitis in
winter. One of the most famous of the Spanish Californians was Don Jose
Argueello. We are descended from one of his sons, who had a ranch of a
hundred thousand acres in the south. When the Americans came, long
after, they robbed the Californians shamefully, but fortunately the son
of the Argueello that owned the ranch at the time married an American
girl whose father bought up the mortgages. He left the property to his
only grandchild, a girl, who married my great-grandfather, James Otis--a
northern rancher, born in Boston, and descended from old Sam Adams. He
had two children, a boy and a girl, who inherited the northern and
southern ranches in equal shares. The girl came over to England to visit
an aunt who lived here, was presented at court, and straightway married
a lord."

"Then you are second cousin to Vicky and third to Jack. I had no idea
the relationship was so close."

"It has seemed very remote to me ever since I laid eyes on Lady Victoria
down-stairs. Father made me promise, just before he died, that if ever I
visited Europe I would look her up. Somehow I hadn't thought of her
except as Elton Gwynne's mother, so I wrote to her without a qualm. But
I see that she is an individual."

"Rather! How self-contained our great London is, after all! Vicky has
been a beauty for over thirty years--to be sure her fame was at its
height before you were old enough to be interested in such things. But I
should have thought your father--"

"He must have known all about her. It comes back to me that he was very
proud of the connection for more than family reasons, but it made no
impression on me at the time."

"Proud?"

"Yes, he was rather a snob. He was very clever, but he fell out of
things, and being able to dwell on his English and Spanish connections
meant a good deal to him. I can recite the family history backwards."

"But if he was clever, why on earth did he live in Rosewater? Surely he
could have practised in San Francisco?"

"He drank. When a man drinks he doesn't care much where he lives. My
father had fads but no ambition."

"Great heaven!" exclaimed Miss Thangue, aghast at this toneless
frankness. "You must have been glad to be rid of him!"

"I was fond of him, but his death was a great relief. He was a hard
steady secret drinker. I nursed him through several attacks of delirium
tremens, and was always in fear that he would get out and disgrace us.
Sometimes he did, although when I saw the worst coming I generally
managed to get him over to the ranch. Of course it tied me down. I
rarely even visited my sister. My father hated San Francisco. He had
practised there in his youth, promised great things, had plenty of
money. The time came--" She shrugged her shoulders, although without the
slightest change of expression. "I never lived my own life until he
died, but I have lived it ever since."

"And the first thing you did with your liberty was to come to Europe,"
said Miss Thangue, with a sympathetic smile.

"Of course. My father and uncle had got rid of most of their property
long before they died; there isn't an acre left of our share in the
southern estate. But my uncle died six years ago and willed me all that
remained of the northern, as well as some land in the poorer quarter of
San Francisco. I could not touch the principal during the lifetime of my
father, but we lived on the ranch and I managed it and was entitled, by
the terms of the will, to what I could make it yield. When I was finally
mistress of my fortunes I left it in charge of an old servant, sold
enough to pay off the mortgage on a property in San Francisco I
inherited from my mother, and came to Europe with a personally conducted
tour."

Miss Thangue shuddered. The phrase unrolled a vista of commonness and
attrition. Miss Otis continued, calmly: "That is the way I should feel
now. But it was my only chance then; or rather I had seen enough of
business to avoid making mistakes when I could. In that way I learned
the ropes. After we had been rushed about for six weeks and I could not
have told you whether the Pitti Palace was in Italy or France, and the
celebrated frescos were one vast pink smudge, the party returned and I
wandered on by myself. I spent a winter in Paris, and months in
Brittany, Austria, Italy, Spain--Munich." It was here that her even
tones left their register for a second. "I studied the languages, the
literatures, the peoples, music, pictures. In Munich"--this time Flora's
alert ear detected no vibration--"and also in Rome, I saw something of
society. It was a life full of freedom, and I shall never cease to be
grateful for it, but I must go home soon and look after my affairs. I
left England to the last, like the best things of the banquet. I hope
Lady Victoria--I shall never be able to call her Cousin Victoria, as I
remember father did--will be nice to me. I have seen a good deal of
life, but have never had a real _girl's_ time, and I should love it.
Besides, I have a lot of new frocks."

"I am sure Vicky will be nice to you. If she isn't, I'll find some one
that will be. You might marry Jack if you had money enough. We are dying
to get him married--and a California cousin--it would be too romantic.
And you would hold your own anywhere!"

But Miss Otis expanded a fine nostril. "I have no desire to marry. I
feel as if I had had enough of men to last until I am forty--what with
those I have buried, and others I have known at home and in Europe--to
say nothing of the executors of my uncle's will, who did not approve of
my coming abroad alone and delayed the settlement of the estate as long
as possible. And now I have had too much liberty! Besides, I have seen
'Jack's' picture--two years ago, in a magazine. I will confess I had
some romantic notions about him: imagined him very dashing, bold,
handsome; insolent, if you like--the traditional young aristocrat,
glorified by genius. He looks like Uncle Hiram."

"Is that who Jack looks like? We never could make out. No, Jack is not
much to look at, except when he wakes up--I have seen him quite
transfigured on the platform. But he is as insolent as you could wish,
and has a superb confidence in himself that his enemies call by the most
offensive names. But he is a dear, in spite of all, and I quite adore
him."

"Perhaps; but life, myself, so many mysteries and problems, upon which
I have barely turned a dark lantern as yet, interest me far more than
any man could, unless he were superlative. I have had my disillusions."

She lit another cigarette, and for a few moments looked silently out of
the window at the darkening woods beyond the lawn. Flora Thangue
regarded her with a swelling interest. It was a type of which she had no
knowledge, evidently not a common type even in the hypothetical land of
the free; she had visited New York and Newport and known many Americans.
True, she had never met the provincial type before, but she doubted if
Rosewater had produced a crop of Isabel Otises. What was at the source
of that cold-blooded frankness, so different from the English fashion of
alternately speaking out and knowing nothing? Was she merely an
egoist--it ran in the family--or did it conceal much that she had no
intention of revealing? Her very beauty was of a type rarely seen in the
America of to-day, prevalent as it may have been a hundred years ago:
she looked like a feminine edition of the first group of American
statesmen--although black Spanish hair was pulled carelessly over the
high forehead, a heavy coil encircling the head in a long upward sweep,
and the half-dreaming, half-penetrating regard of the light-blue eyes
was softened by a heavy growth of lash. The eyebrows were low and thick,
the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the
lower was firm and full. It was the brow, the profile, the strength of
character expressed, the general seriousness of the fine face and head,
that made her look like a reversion to the type that gave birth to a
nation. But Miss Thangue had seen too much of the world to judge any one
by his inherited shell. She had observed many Americans with fine heads
and bulging brows concealing practically nothing, insignificant German
heads whose intellects had terrified her, the romantic Spanish eyes of
the most unromantic people in Europe, English pride and an icy mask of
breeding guarding from the casual eye the most lawless and ribald
instincts. Therefore had she no intention of taking this new specimen on
trust, much as she liked her, and she speculated upon her possibilities
in the friendly silence that had fallen between them. Life is composed
of individuals and their choruses, and Flora, humorously admitting the
fact, was far more interested in others than in herself.

Only in the dense silky masses of her black hair and the almost stolid
absence of gesture did the American betray her Spanish ancestry; but how
much of the Spaniard, subtle, patient, vengeful, treacherous, mighty in
passive resistance and cunning, lay behind those deep fearless blue eyes
of her New England ancestors? Or was she not Spanish at all, but merely
a higher type of American--or wholly herself? Would Jack, susceptible
and passionate, a worshipper of beauty down among the roots of his
abnormal cleverness and egoism, fall in love with her? And what then?
The girl, with her strong stern profile against the shadows, her low
brooding brows, might wield a power far more dangerous than that of the
average fascinating woman, if her will marshalled the rest of her
faculties and drove them in a straight line; although the luminous skin
as polished as ivory, the low full curves and slow graceful movements of
her figure added a potency that Flora, always an amused observer of men,
would have been the last to ignore. Victoria, high-bred, fastidious,
mocking, yet unmistakably passionate and possibly insurgent, was of
that mint of woman about whom men had gone mad since the world began.
But this girl, who might be as cold as the moon, or not, looked, in any
case, capable of clasping a man's throat with her strong little hand,
and gently turning his head from east to west. At this point Miss
Thangue rose impatiently and rang a bell. Jack's career was almost at
the flood. No woman could submerge his intellect and stupendous
interests for more than a moment.

"Order lights and have your trunks brought up," she said. "I will send
one of the housemaids to help you dress. My room is over on the other
side of the house--go through that door opposite, and down a corridor
until you come to another long hall and staircase like the one on this
side. You will find my name on the door. Knock at about a quarter-past
eight and I will go down with you. Vicky may be in an angelic humor and
she may not. It depends mainly upon whether Jack condescends to turn up.
I suppose you know all about him; it would hardly do for you to face him
and his mother if you didn't. He has travelled quite exhaustively in the
colonies and given us some of the most informing literature on that
subject that we have. He was out in Africa when the Boer War broke out,
and once before in India, when there was fighting, volunteered both
times and did brilliant service. He has no end of medals with clasps.
Then he suddenly went in for politics and announced himself an
uncompromising Liberal. It nearly killed his grandfather--Lord
Strathland--for Jack is the one person on earth that he loves as much as
himself; and it has alienated many of his relatives on both sides--which
gave him one more chance to win against terrific odds; he enjoys that
sort of thing. He had been in but two years when there was a general
election, and he has only just got back--he contested three divisions
before he won his seat this time, and he had almost as hard a fight
before. Vicky, who hates the Gwynnes, with the exception of Lord Zeal,
the heir, besides believing in Jack as you would in Solomon, has
steadily upheld him; and she is a powerful ally--not only one of the
most distinguished of the political women, but still turns heads when
she chooses, and her game is generally in the cabinet preserves, when it
is not in the diplomatic. I must run. Put on your most fetching gown.
Julia Kaye, a detestable little parvenu, is here. Jack is in love with
her and she has chosen another. It will be a cousinly duty to console
him. Then you can turn him over to some one else. Ta, ta!" Her last
words floated back from the depths of the corridor; a clock was striking
and she had pattered off hastily.

III

The "Jack," whose more distinguished patronymic was so gayly caracolling
down the road to posterity, had arrived, and after dressing hastily,
sought his mother. Her hair was done, her gown laced; she dismissed her
maid at once, and while her eyes melted, in the fashion of mothers, she
embraced her son with something more than maternal warmth: a curious
suggestion of relief, of stepping out of her own personality and leaving
it like a heap of clothes on the floor. This attitude had occasionally
puzzled her idol, but he was too masculine to analyze. She was his best
friend and a delightful person to have for a mother; her soul might be
her own possession undisturbed. He admired her almost as much as he did
himself, and to-night he kissed her fondly and told her gallantly that
she was looking even more beautiful than usual.

"It is all this white after the dead black," said Lady Victoria, smiling
appreciatively. "I am thankful that prolonged mourning is out of date;
it made a fright of me and was getting on my nerves." She wore no jewels
save a high diamond dog-collar and a few sparkling combs in her hair,
but she made a superb appearance with the long white sweep of shoulders
and bust, her brilliant eyes and smart tailed gown of black chiffon and
Irish lace. Her arms, no longer rounded as when artists had fought to
paint her, were but half-revealed under floating sleeves, and her fair
tapering hands were even younger than her face.

She opened a large black fan and moved it slowly while looking intently
at her son's bent profile. "Something has gone wrong," she said. "Have
you seen Julia Kaye again?"

"No, I was invited to Maundrell Abbey last week, but couldn't manage it,
of course. And I knew she was to be here. Nothing has gone wrong--but I
had rather a shock this morning. I met Zeal at the club. He looks like a
death's head. He vowed he was taking even better care of himself than
usual, but his chest is bad again. He talked about going to Davos--the
very word makes me sick! In the next breath he said he might go out to
Africa. Can't you hurry on his marriage?--persuade Carry that it is her
duty to go with him?"

"I should have no difficulty persuading Carry. The rub is with him.
Compulsory asceticism has bred misogyny, and misogyny scruples. He says
that he has sins enough to his account without laying up a reckoning
with posterity. If it were not for you I should agree with him. I feel
like a conspirator--"

"There is no reason why his children should be consumptive. Carry's
physique is Wagnerian, and she is just the woman to look after her
children herself. Zeal's health was thrown to the dogs by a weak
indulgent frivolous mother, and what she left him he disposed of later
when he made as great an ass of himself as might have been expected. He
is a hypochondriac now and would keep a close watch on his heir's health
and habits; you may be sure of that. He ought not to be in London
now--it is stifling--went up for some business meeting or other--seemed
to wish to avoid details. I hope to heaven he has not been relieving the
monotony of his life by some rotten speculation. I begged him to come
down here, but he wouldn't--says that his hand is no longer steady
enough to hold a gun--it's awful!--worse because I'm not merely fond of
him and regretting the possible loss of a good friend--I have felt like
a beast all day. But I can't help it. For God's sake write and persuade
him to go to Davos at once--and picture the delights of a pretty and
devoted nurse. I feel as if I had ashes in my mouth--and yesterday I was
so happy!" he burst out, with the petulance of a child.

"I will write to-night," she said, soothingly. "He has a very slow form
of consumption; I have the assurance of his doctors. And at least he has
committed himself with Carry, and announced his intention to marry as
soon as a sojourn somewhere has made him feel fit again. You know how
much better he always is when he comes back. Put it out of your mind
to-night. I want you to be as happy as I am. Everybody is talking of the
brilliance of your campaign--"

"Much good brilliance will do me if I am to rot in the Upper House!"

"Put it out of your mind; don't let apprehension control you for a
moment. Believe me, will-power counts in life for more than everything
else combined, and if it isn't watched it weakens."

"All right, mummy. You are never so original as when you preach. So
Julia Kaye came down this afternoon? Talk about will. Mine should be of
pure steel; I have ordered her out of my consciousness these last weeks
at the point of the bayonet. She has written me exactly three times.
However--those letters were charming," he added, with the sudden smile
that transfigured his face, routing the overbearing and contemptuous
expression that had won him so many enemies; friends and flatterers and
the happy circumstances of his life had combined thoroughly to spoil
him. "Do you maintain that will can win a woman?" he added, sharply.

She was the woman to laugh outright at such a suggestion. "No, nor that
it can uproot love, although it can give it a good shaking and lock it
in the dark room. I doubt if you love Julia Kaye, but you will find that
out for yourself. You might bring her to terms by flirting a little with
your American cousin--"

"My what?" He opened his eyes as widely as he had ever done when a
school-boy.

"Of course--I forgot you know nothing of her. She wrote me from
Ambleside--I infer she has been 'doing' England; and as her credentials
were unimpeachable I asked her down. She has inherited a part of the
northern estate and was brought up in the neighboring town of
Rosewater--the American names are too silly. She seems quite _comme il
faut_ and is remarkably handsome. I detest Americans, as you know, but
there certainly is something in blood. I liked her at once. She looks
clever, and is quite off the type--none of the usual fluff. If she
doesn't bore me I shall keep her here for a while."

"I wish you would adopt her," he said, fondly. "I shouldn't be jealous,
for I hate to think of you so much alone." He rose and kissed her
lightly on the forehead, experience teaching him to avoid a stray hair
from the carefully built coiffure. "I'll see if I can waylay Julia on
the stairs; she is always late. Keep from eleven to twelve for me
to-morrow morning. I want to tell you about the campaign. It was a
glorious fight!" His eyes sparkled at the memory of it. "I felt as if
every bit of me had never been alive at once before. My opponent was a
splendid chap. It meant something to beat him. The other side was in a
rage!--more than once yelled for half an hour after I took the platform.
When I finished they yelled again for half an hour--to a different
tune." His slight, thin, rather graceless figure seemed suddenly to
expand, even to grow taller. Some hidden magnetism burst from him like
an aura, and his cold pasty face and light gray eyes flamed into
positive beauty. "It was glorious! Glorious! I was intoxicated--I could
have reeled, little as they suspected it. I wouldn't part for a second
with the certainty that I am the biggest figure in young England to-day.
I hate to sleep and forget it. If I cultivated modesty I should renounce
one of the exquisite pleasures of life. Humility is a superstition. The
man who doesn't weed it out is an ass. To be young, well-born, with
money enough, a brain instead of a mere intelligence, an essential
leader of men--Good God! Good God!" Then he subsided and blushed, jerked
up his shoulders and laughed. "Well--I never let myself go to any one
but you," he said. "And I won't inflict _you_ any longer."

IV

"I wish the old homes of England had electric lights," thought Miss
Otis, with a sigh.

There were four candles on the dressing-table, two on the mantel-shelf;
beyond the radius of their light the room was barely visible. She
carried one of the candles over to the cheval-glass and held it above
her head, close to her face, low on either side.

"I feel as if I had been put together by some unpleasant mechanical
process. It is well I am not inordinately vain, but when one puts on a
new dress for the first time--" She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly,
replaced the candle, and walked up and down the room swinging the
train--her first--of the charming gown of pale blue satin; patting the
hair coiled softly about the entire head in a line eminently becoming to
the profile, and prolonged by several little curls escaping to the neck.

She felt happy and excited, her fine almost severe face far more
girlishly alive than when she had told her story, provocatively dry, to
Flora Thangue. She directed an approving glance at the high heels of her
slippers, which, with her lofty carriage, produced the effect of
non-existing inches. She was barely five feet five, but she ranked with
tall women, her height as unchallenged as the chiselling of her profile.

"What frauds we all are!" she thought, with a humor of which she had
not vouchsafed Miss Thangue a hint. "But what is a cunningly made
slipper on a foot not so small, at the end of a body not quite long
enough, but an encouraging example of the triumph of art over nature?
Not the superiority, perhaps, but they are the best of working
partners."

She sat down and recalled the conversation with her new friend, giving
an amused little shudder. She had heard much of, and in her travels come
into contact with, the cold-blooded frankness of the English elect; with
whom it was either an instinct or a pose to manifest their careless
sense of impregnability. When pressed to give an account of herself the
dramatic possibilities of the method suddenly appealed to her,
accompanied by a mischievous desire to outdo them at their own game and
observe the effect. She had found herself as absorbed as an actress in a
new and congenial role.

"After all," she thought, "clever women make themselves over in great
part, uprooting here, adopting there, and as we have so little chance to
_be_ anything, there is a good deal to be got out of it. If one cannot
be a genius one can at least be an artist. I have never had much cause
to be as direct as stage lightning, but as I enjoyed it I suppose I may
infer that even brutal frankness is not foreign to my nature. Perhaps,
like father, I am a snob at heart and liked the sensation of a sort of
artistic alliance with the British aristocracy. Well, if I develop
snobbery I can root out that weed--or persuade myself that some other
motive is at the base of a disposition to adopt any of the
characteristics of this people: a woman can persuade herself of any
sophistry she chooses. Not for anything would I be a man. Absolutely to
accept the facts of life, even the ugly unvarnished fact itself, and at
the same time to invent one's own soul-tunes--that is to be a woman and
free!"

A printed square of card-board on her writing-table had informed her
that the dinner-hour was half-past eight. She looked at her watch. It
was five minutes to the time. Once more she peered into the glass, shook
out her skirts, then sought a door in a far and dusky corner. It opened
upon a long dimly lit corridor which led into another at right angles,
and Isabel presently found herself at the head of a staircase similar to
the one on her side of the house. Here, too, the walls were hung with
portraits and landscapes, and as far down as the eye could follow; but
after glancing over them for a moment with the recurring weariness of
one who has seen too many pictures in the hard ways of European travel,
her eyes lit and lingered on the figure of a young man who stood on the
landing, his back to her, examining, with a certain tensity, a canvas on
a level with his eyes.

"Uncle Hiram--John Elton Cecil Gwynne! What a likeness and what a
difference!"

The young Englishman's hair, pale in color and very smooth, was worn
longer than the fashion, the ends lilting. As he turned slowly at the
rustle of descending skirts, this eccentricity and his colorless skin
made him look the pale student rather than the gallant soldier, the best
fighter on the hustings that England had seen for five-and-twenty years.
As Isabel walked carefully down the slippery stair she veiled her eyes
to hide the wonder in them. She had expected personality, magnetism, as
a compensation for nature's external economies. His apparent lack of
both made him almost repellent, awakened in Isabel a sensation of
antagonism; and the cool speculation in his light gray eyes merely
accentuated his general dearth of charm. True he had height--although
his carriage was unimposing--his head was large and well-proportioned,
his nose and chin salient, but the straight heavy mouth was as
contemptuous as a Prussian officer's, and in spite of his grooming he
looked old-fashioned, absurdly like the Uncle Hiram who had been a
country lawyer and farmer, and had always worn broadcloth in the hottest
weather--except, to be sure, when he wore a linen "duster," or sat on
the veranda in his shirt-sleeves, his feet on the railing.

However, she smiled, and he smiled politely in return, advancing a few
steps to meet her. "I hope you have heard of me," she said. "Your mother
is so busy--English people are so indifferent to details--I am your
cousin, Isabel Otis--"

"Of course my mother has spoken of you. I am very glad to see you in my
house," he added, hospitably. "Shall I show you the way?"

He made no further remark as they descended the darker section of the
stair, and she could think of nothing to say to him. Nor did she
particularly care to think of anything, the American in her resenting
his lack of effort. But as they reached the door she paused abruptly.

"I forgot! Miss Thangue asked me to knock at her door--"

"You take us too seriously," he said, with a slight sneer. "Flora has
evidently forgotten you; she came down a quarter of an hour ago."

Isabel lifted her head still higher, annoyed at the angry blood that
leaped to her face. "I am afraid I am rather literal," she said, with
more hauteur than the occasion demanded. "But perhaps you will tell me
where to go. There seems to be a bewildering number of rooms. After
three years of lodgings in Europe, to say nothing of the modest
architecture of Rosewater, I feel as if astray in a maze."

"You got that off as if you were a masquerading princess," he said, with
a flicker of humor in his eyes. "Americans generally bluff the other
way." He opened the door. "We meet here in the hall. There is my mother.
You are not obliged to speak to her, you know. We are less formal in
life than in novels." With this parting shot he left her abruptly and
joined a small dark woman with a plebeian face, a sensual mouth, and
magnificent black eyes.

"The rude beast!--Julia Kaye, of course." But Isabel forgot them both in
the novelty of the scene. The square white hall was lit with wax-candles
and shaded lamps, and filled with the murmur of voices--beautiful
gowns--the sparkle of jewels. Isabel dismissed the memory of early
trials, the long years she had lived in the last three, her philosophic
resignation to the disillusions and disappointments with which her
liberty had been pitted; it was her first appearance in the world of
fashion--which she entered, after all, by a sort of divine right.
Trepidation was undeveloped in her, and when she had stood for a moment,
quite aware that her proud and singular beauty had won her instant
recognition, she walked over to her hostess.

No fresh demand was made on her courage. Lady Victoria's earlier mood of
colossal indifference had been dissipated by her son's return. She
greeted Isabel with a dazzling smile and a winning gesture.

"Isn't Jack a darling? Isn't he a dear?" she commanded. "I have put you
on his left, that you may be sure not to be bored. What hair! That is
_your_ legacy from Spain. I have the eyes, but I never had a foot of
hair. I hope you are comfortable. I expect you to remain a week. I am so
glad that Jack will be here. The place is intolerably dull without him."

Isabel, warming to such maternal ardor in a beauty whose years were
prematurely emphasized by a son as conspicuous as Elton Gwynne, summoned
a few vague words of enthusiasm. She was reproached politely for
wandering about England for two months before discovering herself to her
relatives; then, Lady Victoria's interest waning, she turned to a young
man, handsome and Saxon and orthodox, and said, casually, "Jimmy, you
will take in Miss Otis."

Dinner had already been announced. The twain, in complete ignorance of
each other's identity, walked through a long line of rooms, almost
unfurnished but for the scowling or smiling dead crowding the walls.
Isabel decided that she would be as effortless as the English and see
what came of it. The practised instinct of the American girl, added to
the excessive hospitality of the Californian, would have led her to put
her companion immediately at ease, but not only was she fond of
experimenting with racial characteristics upon her own hidden
possibilities, but she was intensely proud, and the English attitude had
stung her more than once.

"Why should I please them?" she thought, contemptuously. "Let them
please me."

Her companion betrayed no eagerness to please her; and during the first
ten minutes at table he talked to Gwynne about the late elections.
Evidently, he too had emerged from the political fray triumphant. Isabel
sat like a stately picture by Reynolds, and after her slow gaze had
travelled over the dark full-length portraits of the kings and queens
that had honored Capheaton, it dropped to the more animated faces in the
foreground. The men were good-looking, with hardly an exception; judging
by their carriage they might all have been army men, but as every word
that floated to the head of the table was political, they possibly had
followed their successful host's example and adopted an equally
intermittent career. One or two of the women were almost as handsome as
Lady Victoria, with their superb figures, their complexions of claret
and snow, that blending of high breeding and warm palpitating humanity
one never sees outside of England. But others within Isabel's range were
too haggard for beauty, although one had a Burne-Jones face and her eyes
gazed beyond the company with an expression that made her seem pure
spirit; but she too looked tired, delicate, curiously overworked.

Opposite Isabel was a tall buxom young woman of the purest Saxon type,
who was talking amiably with the man on her right, and occasionally
shaking with deep and silent laughter; her intimate casual manner, her
slight movements, her accentuation, manifestly bred in the bone.
Suddenly it was borne in upon Isabel's always sensitive consciousness
that she was the only haughty and reserved person present, and she felt
provincial and laughed frankly at herself. The lady across the table
claiming the attention of the host, she turned to her own partner. Her
black eyelashes were long, and under their protecting shadow she swept a
glance at the card above the young man's plate. It was inscribed, "Lord
Hexam." She saw her opportunity and asked, ingenuously:

"How can you be a member of the House of Commons?"

He looked up from his fish and replied, somewhat cuttingly, "By
contesting a borough and getting elected."

"But I thought a peer could not be in the House of Commons."

"He can't."

"Then how can you be?"

"I am not a peer." He looked very much annoyed.

"But you are Lord Hexam."

He answered, sulkily: "I happen to be the son of a peer."

"Are you irritated because I know nothing about you?" asked Isabel,
cruelly. "Do you suppose I have wasted my time in England reading
Burke?"

"No, there are too many sights," he replied, more cruelly still.

"They are far more interesting than most of the people I have met." Then
she changed her tactics and smiled upon him; and when she smiled she
showed a dimple hardly larger than a pin's head at one corner of her
flexible mouth. For the first time he looked under her eyelashes into
the odd blue eyes, with their dilated pupils and black rim edging the
light iris. He suddenly realized that she was beautiful, in spite of the
three little black moles on her face--he detested moles--and smiled in
return.

"I am afraid I was rude. But I am really shy, and you quite took it out
of me. I am more afraid of the American girl than of anything on earth."

"How did you know I was an American?"

"By your accent." He laughed good-naturedly. "Now I am even with you."

"Well, you are. Californians pride themselves upon having no accent."

"Oh, it is not nearly so bad as some. But it is there all the same. Not
a twang nor a drawl, but--well--every country has its unmistakable
stamp."

"Well, I have no desire to be taken for anything but an American," she
said, defiantly. "A Californian, that is. After all, we are quite
different. But we do have an appalling variety of accents in the United
States. I have lived abroad long enough to discover that. When I am an
old maid I am going to mount the platform and preach the training of the
voice in childhood. I have taken a violent dislike to more than one
clever American man merely because he trailed his voice through his
nose. I don't mind our vices being criticised as much as our crudities."

"I never before heard an American girl make a remark that indicated the
least interest in her country--even when--pardon me--they brag. They
generally give the impression that they don't even know who happens to
be the President of the moment. Somehow, you look as if you might."

"I was brought up by a man, and my uncle was a great politician in a
small way. That is to say he was identified with country politics only,
but he and my father were everlastingly discussing the national issues.
Of course you have only met girls from the great cities, where the men
are too busy making money to take any interest in public affairs. The
women rarely hear them mentioned, practically forget there are such
affairs--except on the Fourth of July, which they resent as a personal
grievance. I have met scores of them in Europe. To know anything of
politics they regard as the height of bad form."

"Sometimes I wish that our women would let them alone for a while. That
is my sister over there," indicating the lady with the Burne-Jones face.
"She has worn herself to a shadow working for her husband, who is in the
House, and she is heart and soul in politics--which she regards as a
sort of divine mission. She is on several committees, is far more useful
to her husband than his secretary, for she has the gift of style--and no
one would accuse Rex of that--and during an election she never rests.
Besides which, of course she has her little family, the usual number of
establishments to look after, and great social pressure. I always
maintain that our women are of immense service to us, but many of them
are physically unfit. I expect to see my sister go to pieces any day,
and as she is little short of an angel it worries me."

"She does look angelic," said Isabel, sympathetically. "Is that what is
the matter with the rest of them?--the thin ones, I mean?"

"Generally speaking. The thinnest is my cousin. I went in for a cup of
tea a week or two before the end of last session. There were several of
us about the tea-table when a footman entered and muttered something to
her, and with a vague word of apology she left the room and did not
return for half an hour. I thought the baby must be dying, and was about
to ring, when she reappeared and remarked that she had been sitting at
the telephone listening to a paper her husband had just finished on one
of the questions before the House. Some of them stand it better." He
indicated a fair beautiful creature with a determined profile and deep
womanly figure. "There is Mrs. Sefton, for instance. She presides at
committee meetings--she is great on colonial politics--for three or four
hours at a time, and always sails out as fresh as a rose; but she has
buried her husband and entertains when and whom she chooses. Lady
Cecilia opposite understands politics as well as any woman in England,
but does not go in for them--Spence isn't in the House; that may account
for it!"

"Your fashionable women do not in the least resemble ours," said Isabel,
meditatively. "They are far more like the women of our small towns."

"What!"

"It sounds paradoxical, but it is more than half true. Say two-thirds;
the other third is all in favor of your women, for obvious reasons. But
those I speak of, the best women of every small town, are constantly
active in civic affairs. Most of the sanitary improvements and the
educational, all schemes for parks and better streets, come from them.
There is no village too small to have its 'Woman's Improvement Club.'
And it is the women that have saved all the historical buildings in the
country from destruction."

"I thought they went in for Browning Societies."

"Doubtless you would scorn really to know anything of American humor.
Perhaps our comic papers have never heard of the Improvement Clubs, or
find nothing in them that is humorous. Not that I would decry the
Browning Clubs, nor any literary clubs, however crude. It is all in the
line of progress. 'Culture' is a tempting morsel for the jokemaker, but
as an alternative for dull domesticity and the vulgar inanities of
gossip it is not to be despised."

"By Jove, you are right," said Hexam, not without warmth.

"Is my fair cousin converting you to something?" asked the host. His
voice had been little heard, and he looked sulky.

"Cousin?"

"Yes, he is my cousin," said Isabel, with the accent of resignation.
Hexam laughed. Gwynne looked as if the grace of humor had been left out
of him. Isabel, innocent and impassive, turned her eyelashes upon her
partner. "I was quite wild to meet my cousin," she went on, in the
toneless voice that contrasted so effectively with her occasional
extravagance of speech; "and now I find him the precise image of my
uncle Hiram, who never spoke to me except to say: 'Little girls should
be seen and not heard,' or 'Run off to bed now, little one.'"

Without repitching her voice she yet infused it with a patronizing
masculinity that once more startled Hexam into laughter, and caused a
silent convulsion in the massive frame of Lady Cecilia Spence.

"She knows that was a bit of vengeance," thought Isabel. "But of course,
manlike, he'll never suspect it." She turned her deep thoughtful gaze
full upon her cousin. His eyes were glittering under their heavy lids.
He replied, suavely:

"I hope you will find us more polite--if less picturesque. I cannot
flatter myself that my likeness to your uncle Hiram extends that far.
'Precise image'--is not that perhaps a bit of national exaggeration?"

"Well, I take that back," said Isabel, sweetly. "But you really might be
his son instead of his second cousin."

"Perhaps that accounts for a good many things," said Lady Cecilia. "You
know, Jack, I have always said there was something exotic about you. You
are much too energetic and progressive for this settled old country. If
you had been born in America I suppose you would have been president at
the earliest moment the constitution permitted."

He hesitated a moment, then delivered himself of a bombshell. "I was
born in America," he said.

His eyes moved slowly from one stupefied face to another. "As I left at
the age of five weeks I can hardly claim that the incident left an
indelible impress. But the fact remains that I should be eligible for
the presidency if I chose to become an American citizen."

Isabel looked at her relative with an accession of interest; he had
suddenly ceased to be an alien, become in a measure a personal
possession. "Come over and try it," she said, impulsively. "_There_ is a
career worth while! A young country as full of promise as of faults!
Think of the variousness of achievement! England's history is made. If
you are all they claim, you might really make history in the United
States. If I only had a brother--" Her eyes were flashing for the first
time. "However--they say you love the fight. It is far more difficult to
become a president of the United States than a prime-minister of
England, for with us family influence counts for nothing."

"I am afraid I have not the qualities that do count. To be as frank as
yourself--I don't think I could stand your politics."

"But think of the excitement of really sounding your capacities!"
Impersonality was an achievement with Isabel and she could always
command it. "You can never do that here, no matter how brilliant your
success. There must always be the question of how far you would have
gone without your family, and friends of equal power. The ugliest lesson
of life is its snobbishness. Even when the herd can expect no return, a
blind instinct--doubtless an inheritance from the days when there were
but two classes--drives it to beat the drums for the socially elect. We
have enough of that in America, heaven knows, but the best thing that
can be said of American politics is that they are free of it. Besides,
if our politics are bad, so much the better for you. You might do for
the United States what your English great-grandfather helped to do for
this country in 1832. You might be another 'Great Revolutioner,' like
your still more illustrious ancestor, Sam Adams. You'll never, never
have such an opportunity to become a great historical figure over here,
for English dissatisfaction hardly counts, and in the United States
there are increasing millions that demand reform, a closer approach to
the ideal republic promised by their ancestors, and the man for the
hour."

The angry glitter had left his eyes and he was looking at her with
interest and curiosity. He respected her courage and obvious power to
rise above the personal attitude of her sex.

"I dislike intensely many things in your country," he said, slowly; "but
I will confess that it interests me greatly. If it has failed in some of
its original ideals it has at least continued to be a republic for more
than a century; and when one considers its enormous size and conflicting
elements--for I suppose you will not claim that you are a homogeneous
race--that is very inspiring! It makes one believe that fundamentally
the country must be sound--that unswerving fidelity to an ideal. It is a
great thing! a stupendous thing! I wish I knew that I should live to
see England, all Europe, a republic. There is no other state fit for
self-respecting men--that voice in the selection of their own rulers."

"By Jove, Jack!" cried Lord Hexam. "I never heard you go as far as that
before."

"Possibly you never will again. I have no desire to rank with those
brilliant failures that are born before their time, and no intention of
wasting my energies on the unattainable. Moreover, radicals and
socialists per se are merely a nuisance. The Liberal party is the only
choice in England to-day, and when I get it at my back, I can, at least,
after I have led it to a stronger position, fight for the soundest of
the extremist dogmas, as well as for the reorganization of the House of
Peers. Hereditary legislation in the twentieth century and the most
civilized country in the world! Why not an hereditary army and navy?
Russia has few greater anachronisms. And when one thinks of the careers
it has ruined! Look at Barnstaple."

The two men plunged into discussion, and Isabel, her eyes expressing a
polite interest, studied the face of her cousin. She appreciated for the
first time something of its power. A brief illumination of his eyes had
betrayed the soul of the idealist; a passion that in a less sound mind
might result in fanaticism. He was talking with none of the fiery
enthusiasm that made him so irresistible a public speaker, but his
negative suggestion of vitality, of mature thought, his very lack of
every-day magnetism, fascinated her; not the woman, but the acute,
receptive, and antagonistic intelligence. As he sat there talking, with
hardly a change of expression in his voice or on his cold face, faintly
sneering, he seemed to be holding his powers in solution; to have
resolved them for the time being into their elements, that they might
rest and recuperate. While no doubt in first-rate physical condition, he
looked as if he had not a red corpuscle in his body, and this very
contrast to the warm full-blooded people surrounding him gave him a
distinction of his own, the distinction of pure brain independent of
those auxiliaries that few public men have been able to dispense with.
It was obvious that he was too self-centred, too haughtily indifferent,
or too spoilt, to make any effort in private life to charm or bewilder;
when he vanquished from the platform it was by the awakened rush of the
forces within him; and this very indifference, this contemptuous
knowledge of his mighty reserves, this serene faith in his star,
invested his personal unattractiveness with a formidable significance.
Isabel's imagination dilated him into a disembodied intellect surrounded
by mere statues of human flesh. As she left the dining-room the illusion
vanished. She liked him less than ever, nevertheless wished that he were
her brother and the rising star in American politics.

V

As the women entered a large room on the opposite side of the central
hall, where coffee was to be served, Flora Thangue laid her hand
deprecatingly on Isabel's arm. "I was so sorry not to be able to wait
for you," she said. "But I had a distracted note from Vicky at eight
asking me to dress as quickly as I could and see if the cards on the
table were all right: the new butler is rather a muff, and such a
martinet the footmen dare not interfere. I was delighted to see that
Jack had taken charge of you. What do you think of our infant prodigy?"

"I have had little chance to think anything," said Isabel, evasively.
"Is he the typical Englishman--I mean apart from his peculiar gifts?"

"Only in certain qualities. You see he has Celtic blood in him: of
course the Gwynnes had their origin in Wales; and then he is one-fourth
American, isn't he? I can't say how far that inheritance has influenced
his character, but there is no doubt about the Celtic. Outwardly he is
even more impassive than the usual Oxford product, and if he had been
born a generation earlier he would have had all sorts of affectations.
But affectation, thank heaven, is out of date. We wouldn't tolerate a
Grandcourt five minutes. Whom should you like to talk to? You will have
enough of me."

"I am sure there is no one I shall like half so well," said Isabel,
truthfully; and Flora loved her for not being gracious. "I think I
should like to know Mrs. Kaye."

"If you ever do, please give me the benefit of your investigations.
There are as many opinions of her as there are of cats. Vicky believes
in her and I don't. Jack is in love with her--with certain of his Celtic
instincts gone wrong."

She led Isabel over to Mrs. Kaye, who sat alone on a small sofa, sipping
her coffee and absently puffing at a cigarette. She was exquisitely
dressed and jewelled, and her little figure was round and symmetrical;
but nothing could obscure the ignoble modelling of her face. She might
have been misunderstood for a housemaid masquerading had it not been for
an air of assured power, a repose as monumental as that of a Chinese
joss.

She had cultivated a still radiance of expression which, when she
thought it worth her while, broke into a tender or brilliant smile;
although even then her large, ripe mouth retained a hint of the
austerity her strong will had imposed upon it--to the more complete
undoing of the masculine host. She smiled graciously as Miss Thangue
murmured the introduction and moved away, but did not offer the other
half of the sofa, and Isabel fetched a chair.

"You are the American cousin, of course," she said, with a slight lisp.
"We were all talking about you down at our end of the table, but I could
not see you until just now. I long to go to America, your novels
interest me so much. But one is always so busy--one never gets time for
the Atlantic. Lady Victoria says you come from that wonderful country,
California, but of course you know New York and Newport still better.
All Americans do."

"I have never seen Newport, and passed exactly a week in New York before
sailing."

Mrs. Kaye's expressive eyes, which had dwelt on Isabel with flattering
attention, fell to the tip of her cigarette. "No? I thought that all
smart Americans came from that sacred precinct."

"I am not in the least smart. I don't really _know_ half a dozen people
in America outside of the county in which I have spent the greater part
of my life--not even in San Francisco, where I was born." Isabel held
her cigarette poised in one slender hand, letting her eyes fall
deliberately on the broad back and flat nails of the exquisitely kept
section on Mrs. Kaye's lap. "So far, in my small social ventures I have
felt the necessity of little beyond good manners and a small independent
income. This is my first excursion into the great world, and of course
my cousin is too secure in her position to care whether I am smart or
not. Miss Thangue, the only other woman I have talked with, is far too
amiable and well-bred. Am I to understand that I shall be tried by New
York measurements and found wanting?"

"Oh no!" Mrs. Kaye's bright color had darkened. "On the contrary, the
English are always rather amused at American distinctions. It only
happens that all my friends are New-Yorkers."

She was a very clever woman, for snobbery had blunted and demoralized
only one small chamber of her brain, and she had as comprehensive a
knowledge of the world as any woman in it. Nevertheless, as her powerful
magnetic eyes met the ingenuous orbs opposite, she was unable to
determine whether the barbed words, quivering in a sore spot, had been
uttered in innocence or intent. "Of course one doesn't meet so many
Americans, after all. Naturally, the New-Yorkers bring the best
letters." She paused a moment as if ruminating, then delivered herself
of an epigram: "New York is the great American invention for separating
the wheat from the tares."

"Indeed!" Isabel was too surprised to strike back.

"It is well known that it is one of the most exclusive social bodies in
the world. You have far less difficulty over here."

"That may be merely owing to the fear that affects all new social
bodies. I have the honor to know the leader of society in St. Peter--a
town of ten thousand inhabitants near my own--and she is frightfully
exclusive. She is so afraid of knowing the wrong sort of people that she
is barely on nodding terms with the several thousand new-comers that
have added to the wealth and importance of the town during the last ten
years. Consequently, her circle is as dull as an Anglo-Saxon Sunday. I
fancy the same may be said of New York, for its fashionable set is not
large and its interests are far from various. From all I have heard,
London society alone is perennially interesting, and the reason is,
that, absolutely secure, it keeps itself from staleness by constantly
refreshing its veins with new blood, exclusive only against
offensiveness. Of course you are a daughter of a duke or something," she
added, wickedly. "Everybody here seems to be. Don't you feel that your
ancestors have given you the right to know whom you please?--instead of
eternally plugging the holes in the dike."

In spite of her sharpened wits, Mrs. Kaye smiled radiantly into Isabel's
guileless eyes. "I am not the daughter of a duke; I wish I were!" she
exclaimed, with a fair assumption of aristocratic frankness. "But your
point is quite correct." Again she appeared to ruminate; then added:
"The British aristocracy is to society what God is to the
world--all-sufficient, all-merciful, all-powerful."

"And she would sacrifice Him and all his archangels to an epigram,"
thought Isabel, who was somewhat shocked. "How fearfully clever you
are!" she murmured. "Do you think in epigrams?"

"Epigrams? Have I made one? I wish I could. They are immensely the
fashion."

"I should think you might have set it--"

She did not finish her sentence, for the ear to which it was addressed
suddenly closed. Lady Cecilia Spence had sauntered up, and Mrs. Kaye
hastily made room for her on the sofa, turning a shoulder upon Isabel. A
faint change, as by the agitation of depths on the far surface of
waters, rippled her features, and Isabel, summoning the impersonal
attitude, watched her curiously. It was her first experience of the snob
in a grandiose setting, but it was the type that had aroused her most
impassioned inward protest all her life: the smallest circles have their
snobs, and, like all the unchosen of mammon, she had had her corroding
experiences. But her high spirit resented the power of the baser
influences, and, with her intellect, commanded her to accept the world
with philosophy and the unsheathed weapon of self-respect. In the
present stage of the world's development it was to be expected that the
pettier characteristics of human nature would predominate; and perhaps
the intellectually exclusive would not have it otherwise.

Mrs. Kaye, polite tolerance giving place to the accent of intimacy,
began: "Oh, Lady Cecilia, have you heard--" and plunged into a piece of
gossip, no doubt of absorbing interest to those that knew the
contributory circumstances and the surnames of the actors, but to the
uninitiated as puzzling as success. Lady Cecilia's eyes twinkled
appreciatively, and her wells of laughter bubbled close to the surface.
Isabel, completely ignored, waited until the story was finished, and
then made a deliberate move.

"How interesting!" she exclaimed. "Won't you tell me the names of the
people?"

Mrs. Kaye, without turning her head, murmured something indistinctly,
and lit another cigarette. "Won't you have a light, Lady Cecilia?" she
asked.

"Please give me one," said Isabel, sweetly. She reached out and took the
cigarette from Mrs. Kaye's faintly resisting hand. "Thank you. I am lazy
about looking for matches. Do you smoke a lot?"

But Mrs. Kaye, irritated, or having reached the conclusion that the
newcomer was not in the very least worth while, said with soft fervor to
her who was: "How delightful that dear Jack was returned! Of course you
are as interested in his career as the rest of us."

"I should be a good deal more so if his mother had turned him across her
knee a little oftener--or if I could shake him myself occasionally."

Isabel, satisfied, more amazed than ever at the infantile ingenuousness
of the snob, rose, and was about to turn away when she met Lady
Cecilia's eyes. They were full of amusement, and there was no mistaking
its purport. In a flash Isabel had responded with a challenge of appeal,
which that accomplished dame was quick to understand.

"Please don't go," she said. "I came over here to talk to you. We are
all so interested in the idea that Vicky is half an American--we had
quite forgotten it. Did you ever see any one look less as if she had
American cousins than Vicky? She might easily have a whole tribe of
Spanish ones."

"Well, she has, in a way." And in response to many questions Isabel
found herself relating the story of Rezanov and Concha Argueello, while
Mrs. Kaye, whatever may have been her sensations, rose with an absent
smile and composedly transferred herself to an equally distinguished
neighborhood.

"I wonder if she has ever tried to condense rudeness into an epigram,"
said Isabel viciously, pausing in her narrative.

Lady Cecilia shook expressively. "At least she has not made an art of
it," she said. "They never do."

VI

The next morning, Isabel, after little sleep, rose early and went out
for a walk. She had sat up until eleven, listening to the puzzling jets
of conversation, or watching the Bridge-players, and when she had
finally reached her room, tired and excited, Flora Thangue had come in
for a last cigarette and half an hour of chat. Her first evening in the
new world had had its clouded moments, for it was impossible not to feel
the alien, and the kindness of English people, no matter how deep, is
casual in expression. But on the whole she had felt more girlishly happy
and ebullient than since her sister had gone her own way and left a
heavy burden for young shoulders behind her. In the freedom of a girl in
Europe, no matter how prized, there is much of loneliness in idleness, a
constant attitude of defence, moments of bitter wonder and disgust, and,
to the analytical mind, an encroaching dread of a more normal future
with a chronic canker of discontent.

Isabel had by no means passed her European years in the procession that
winds from the Tiber to the Seine, prostrating itself at each successive
station of architecture or canvas; nor even devoted the major portion of
her time to the investigation of the native, deeply as the varying types
had interested her. Her intellectual ambition, as is often the case with
the American provincial girl, had been even stronger than her desire for
liberty and pleasure, and she had spent several months with the
archaeological society of Rome, read deeply in Italian history and art,
attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and spent nearly a year in Berlin,
Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, studying that modern stronghold of dramatic
literature, the German Theatre.

It had been the living dream of long winter evenings, when she had not
dared to join in the festivities of the other young folk lest her father
should stray beyond her control; he would, when the demon was quiescent,
sit at home if she read to him, and she had learned to read and dream at
the same time. It was only at the beginning of her third year of
liberty, when, in spite of shifting scenes, the entire absence of daily
cares and of heavy responsibilities involving another had given her
longer hours for thought and introspection, that the poisonous doubt of
the use of it all had begun to work in a mind that had lost something of
the ardor of novelty. The eternal interrogations had obtruded themselves
in her unfortunate girlhood, and she had questioned the voiceless
infinite, but angrily, with youth's blind rebellion against the
injustice of life. The anger and rebellion had been comatose in these
years of freedom, but the maturer brain was the more uneasy, at times
appalled. For what was she developing, perfecting herself? She had no
talent, with its constant promises, its occasional triumphs, its
stimulating rivalries, to give zest to life; and there were times when
she envied the student girls in Munich with their absurd "reform dress,"
their cigarettes and beer in cheap restaurants and theatres, their more
than doubtful standards. Although she had her own private faith and
never hesitated to pray for anything she wanted, she was not of those
that can make a career of religion; her mind and temperament were both
too complex, and she was unable to interest herself in creeds and
theologies--and congregations.

Now and again she had considered seriously the study of medicine,
architecture, law, of perfecting herself for criticism of some sort, for
she had spoken with a measure of truth when she had assured Flora that
she had no wish to marry. In her depths she was--had been--romantic and
given to dreaming, but the manifold weaknesses of her father--who had
been one of the most brilliant and accomplished of men, a graduate of
Harvard, and the possessor of many books--and the selfish and tyrannous
exactions which had tempered his enthusiasm for all things feminine, the
caustic tongue and overbearing masculinity of her uncle, who had been as
weak in his way as her father, for he had lost the greater part of his
patrimony on the stock-market, and the charming inconsequence of her
brother-in-law, who loved his family extravagantly and treated them like
poor relations, had not prepared her to idealize the young men she had
met in Rosewater and Europe. She had been sought and attracted more than
once during her years of liberty, but her prejudices and the deep cold
surface of temperament peculiar to American girls of the best class,
lent a fatal clarity of vision; and although she had studied men as
deeply as she dared, the result had but intensified the sombre threat of
the future. It was quite true that she had half-consciously believed
that hope would live again and justify itself in Elton Gwynne, and the
disappointment, at the first glimpse of his portrait, was so crushing
that she had buried her sex under an avalanche of scorn.

But scorn is far more volcanic than glacial and a poor barrier between
sex and judgment. It needed more than that, and more than disillusions
of the second class, no matter how inordinate, to give a girl the cool
reality of poise that had stimulated the curiosity of Miss Thangue; and
this Isabel had encountered, during the most critical period of her
inner life, in the beautiful city by the Isar. The experience had been
so brief and tremendous, the incidents so crowding and tense, the climax
so hideous, that she had been stunned for a time, then emerged into her
present state of tranquil and not unpleasant philosophy--when the
present moment, if it contained distraction, was something to be
grateful for; otherwise, to be borne with until the sure compensation
arrived. The future had neither terror for her nor any surpassing
concern, although all her old impersonal interest in life had revived,
and she was still too young not to be very much like other girls when
circumstances were propitious. And at last she had conceived--or
evolved--a definite purpose.

This morning she was living as eagerly as ever during her first deep
months in Europe. The excitement of the evening still possessed her; she
had held her own, received homage, lived a little chapter in an English
novel; above all, she was young, she was free, she was no longer
unhappy; and she loved the early morning and swift walking.

It was Sunday; the shooting would not begin until the morrow; everybody
except herself, apparently, still slept; the breakfast-hour was
half-past nine. She walked down a long lane behind the lawns and entered
the first of the coverts. There was a drowsy whir of wings--once--that
was all. There was a glint of dancing water in the heavier shades, a
rosy light beyond the farthest of the trees in the little wood where the
delicate pendent leaves hung asleep in the sweet peace. There was not an
expiring echo of her own wild forests here; nor any likeness to the
splendid royal preserves of Germany and Austria, with their ancient
trees, their miles of garnished floor, the sudden glimpse of chamois or
stag standing on a rocky ledge against the sky as if drilled for his
part. These woods had a quality all their own: of Nature in her last
little strongholds, but smiling, serenely triumphant, of tempered heat
without chill, above all, of perfect peace.

Nothing in England had impressed Isabel like this atmosphere of peace
that broods over its fields and lanes, its woods and fells, in the
evening and early morning hours; the atmosphere that makes it seem to be
set to the tune of Wordsworth's verses, and to keep it everlastingly
old-fashioned and out of all relation to its towns. As she left the wood
she saw a big hay-stack, as firm and shapely of outline as a house, not
a loose wisp anywhere. A girl, bareheaded, was driving a cow across a
field. A narrow river moved as slowly as if the world had never
awakened. The road turned to her right and led to an old stone village
with a winding broken street and several oak-trees, a pump, and a long
green bench. It might have been the Deserted Village, for the English
rise far later than the Southern races that have fallen so far behind
them in importance and wealth. Beyond the village, on a rise of ground,
was the church, its square gray tower crumbling down upon its ancient
graves. In the distance were farms, coverts, another village, a gray
spire against the blossoming red of the sky; and over all--peace--peace.
Had anything ever really disturbed it? Would there ever be any change?
England had been devastated to the roots, would be again, no doubt, but
unless it became one vast London, it would brood on into eternity with
the slight defiant smile of a beautiful woman in an enchanted sleep.

"Are you, too, an early bird?"

Isabel flew out of her reverie. Lady Victoria was approaching from a
forking road. She wore a short skirt, leggings, and heavy boots; and she
was bright, fresh, almost rosy from swift walking. "I have gone five
miles already," she said, smiling. "But I believe you were sauntering."

"Only just now--to absorb it all. I, too, can do my five miles an hour,
although Californians are the laziest people in the world about
walking."

"Then if you are up to a sharp trot we'll go to that farthest village.
My land steward has been telling me a painful tale about one of my young
women, and I intend to ask her some embarrassing questions while she is
still too stupid with sleep to lie."

"Your young women? Is all this your estate?"

"It belongs to Strathland, but I have lived here since I married, and
now the place is virtually Jack's. These people have been my particular
charge for thirty years and will continue to be until my son marries.
There are only about a hundred families on the estate altogether, but
they keep one busy."

"I can't imagine you in the working role of the Lady Bountiful. Last
night, at least, if I had written to my friend, Anabel Colton, I should
have devoted pages to your more famous attributes, but I should never
have thought of this."

"Indeed? If one could languish through life in the shell of a mere
beauty that life would be a good deal simpler proposition than it is.
Unfortunately there are complications, and, agreeable or not, one
accepts them as one does enemies, husbands, stupid servants, and all
other mortal thorns. But I am not uninterested in my people here, not by
any means, and they bore me less than going to court and visiting my
father-in-law. I watch them from birth, see that they are properly
clothed and fed, that they go to school as soon as they are old enough,
later that they find a situation here or elsewhere--those that have no
work to do at home. My son gives the young men and women a complete
wardrobe when they start out to win their way in life, and the details
fall on me. It means correspondence, mothers' meetings, and all that
sort of thing. Even during the London season I come down once a month.
Of course it is a bore, but on the whole tradition is rather kind than
otherwise in making life more or less of a routine."

"Wouldn't you miss it if your son married?" Isabel wondered if this
woman had really given her the impression of tragic secrets, unlimited
capacities for both license and arrogance. In this early morning
freshness there was hardly a suggestion of the woman of the world,
barely of the great lady; and in the rich tones of her voice there was a
genuine note of interest in her poor.

"Oh, I should always keep an eye on them; young wives have so many
distractions. If I had to give them up--yes, of course it would mean a
vacancy in my collection of habits; one side of me clings strongly to
traditions and duty. The other--well, I'd like to be a free-lance in the
world for a while--although," she added, with a sharp intonation, "I
don't suppose I should stay away from Jack very long. It is a great
relief to have a vital interest in life outside one's self. You, of
course, are not old enough to have discovered that; and, indeed, I am
not always so sure that it is possible."

Isabel did not ask her if she would not be jealous of the wife who must,
if he loved her, take the greater part of all that her "Jack" had to
give; she divined in this many-sided woman a quality in her attitude
towards her son with which ordinary maternal affection had little in
common. Her fine eyes flashed with pride at the mention of his name, and
it was more than evident that he was her deep and abiding interest; but
this keen and curious young student of life had never seen any one less
maternal. Lady Victoria's attitude, indeed, might as reasonably be that
of a proud sister or wife. When he was beside her she looked almost
commonplace in her content. The moment he passed out of her sight some
phase of individuality promptly lit its torch. Last night Isabel had
seen her stand for half an hour as motionless as some ivory female
Colossus, only her eyes burning down with slow voluptuous fire upon an
adoring little Frenchman. She had looked like a Messalina petrified with
the complications and commonness of the modern world; possibly with the
burden of years, Isabel had added, in girlish intolerance of the wiles
of which youth is independent. She had been far from falling under her
spell, although not wholly repelled by the glimpse of this worst side of
a woman far too complex to be judged off-hand. This morning she liked
her suddenly and warmly, and, with the lightning of instinct, divined
why she worshipped her son and still was willing to have him marry and
swing aside into an orbit of his own. All she needed was a certain
amount of his society, opportunities to work for him, the assurance of
his success and happiness. He was a refuge from herself; in his
imperious demands her memory slept, her depths were stagnant. But Isabel
was still too young, in spite of her own experience, more than dimly to
apprehend the older woman's attitude, and the innumerable and various
acts and sufferings, disenchantments and contacts that had led up to it.
Victoria seemed to her the most rounded mortal she had met, and yet with
an insistent terror in the depths of her riven and courageous soul, the
terror of the complete, the final disillusion. Between that moment and
her too exhaustive knowledge of life stood the magnetic figure of her
son, safeguarding, almost hypnotizing her. She was as incapable of
jealousy as of aching vanity in the fact of a son whom the world was
never permitted to forget. She had done with little things, and Isabel,
with young curiosity, wondered in what convulsion the last of them had
gone down.

Lady Victoria, unconscious of the analytical mind groping to conclusions
beside her, was revolving the midnight comments of Flora Thangue, and
her own impressions of this American relative whose sudden advent, taken
in connection with her eighteenth century beauty and undecipherable
quality, wrought the impression of a symbolic figure swimming out of
space. Lady Victoria was far too indifferent to analyze the problems of
any woman's soul, but she was keenly alive to the vital suggestion of
power in the girl, and of the strong will and intellect, the command
over every faculty, evidenced in the strong line of the jaw, the stern
noble profile, the calm searching gaze so difficult to sustain. None
knew better than Victoria the value and rarity of a free and courageous
soul. Such a woman must, when more fully developed, throw the whole
weight of her character into the scales balancing for the few whom she
recognized as equals and accepted as friends. If she had had "some
smashing love affair," as the more romantic Flora suggested, so much
the better.

She said, with a perfectly simulated impulsiveness:

"Of course you understand that I meant what I said last evening. And not
merely a week; you must pay us a long visit, if it won't bore you. But
the house will rarely be empty now that the shooting has begun, and
there is always something going on in the neighborhood. Later comes the
hunting, and I am sure you ride."

"Oh yes, I ride! I have spent about half my life on a horse. I want to
stay more than I can tell you, but before long I must go home. The same
safe old bank that has charge of your ranches looks after my small
affairs, and I have a man on the farm that has been in the family for
forty years; otherwise I should never have dared to leave my precious
chickens; but Mr. Colton writes me that Mac is failing, and before the
rainy season commences I must look into things myself."

"Chickens?" said Lady Victoria, much amused. "Do you raise chickens?"

"Rather; and not in the back yard, neither. I have about a thousand of
the most beautiful snow-white Leghorns with blood-red combs you ever
saw; and I have incubators, runs, colony-houses, and all the rest of it.
They are raised on the strictest scientific principles and yield me the
greater part of my income. That is the reason I feel obliged to
return--if Mac is no longer able--or willing--to get up at night. One
must not neglect the chicks--the little ones. I doubt if real babies are
more trouble. I don't mind telling you that I have resolved to make a
fortune out of chickens, if only that I may be able to live as I should
in San Francisco. But I must go back and do the greater part of the work
myself."

"Make a fortune--out of chickens! How odd that sounds! Not in the least
romantic, but rather the more interesting for that. But why don't you
let your ranch for dairy and grazing purposes, as we do? They bring us
in a very good income--have done, so far."

"There are about nineteen thousand acres in Lumalitas, and some forty
thousand in the southern ranch. I possess exactly three hundred and
thirty-two, forty-five of which are marsh. You have now nearly the whole
of the original grants, for as my father and uncle sold or mortgaged
portions--and could not pay--your agents bought in. You may remember."

"There is seldom any correspondence. Mr. Colton has always had a free
hand--yes--I do recall--vaguely. So I am profiting at your expense. I am
afraid that must seem unjust to you."

"Not in the least. I did not choose my paternal relatives, but I long
since accepted them with philosophy. I am thankful to have anything. Why
don't you go to California and look at your property?--live on it for a
few years? You could make far more out of it if you ran it yourself. The
lease of Lumalitas must expire very soon. I do wish you would come and
pay me a visit, and--Mr.--what on earth am I to call him?"

"Jack, of course," said Lady Victoria, warmly, although she would have
been swift to resent the liberty had the new relative been so
indiscreet.

"I never could manage Jack--never! I can't feel, see him, as Jack. I
think Cousin Elton will do."

"Quite so. I shouldn't wonder at all if we went. Jack is rather keen on
American politics, knows his Bryce--I suppose it is in the blood. He
even takes in an American Review. I have always rather wanted to visit
California, and started for it once upon a time--on my wedding journey.
But we were entertained so delightfully in New York and Washington that
before we realized what an American summer meant it was too hot to cross
the continent, and we accepted an invitation to the Adirondacks,
intending to return to England in the course of a month. But Arthur
broke his leg, and by the time he was well again it was not safe for me
to travel. So we rented a place in Virginia, where there was good sport,
and there Jack was born. Here we are. Rest under that tree while I
interview the erring maiden."

VII

Isabel sat on the bench under an ancient oak for half an hour or more,
but took no note of the time. In rural America one always seems to hear
the whir of distant machinery and responds to its tensity in the depths
of some nerve centre; but in England's open the tendency is to dream
away the hours, the nerves as blunt as in the tropics; unless, indeed,
one happens to be so astir within that one rebels in responding, and
conceives of ultimate hatred for this incompassionate arrogant peace of
England.

Isabel had been roused from her mood of unreasoning content by her
contact with the older woman, but for a few moments her thoughts waved
to and fro in that large tranquillity like pendent moss in a gentle
breeze. There was a stir of life in the little village; a window was
thrown open; a man came out to the pump and filled a bucket with water;
a child cried for its breakfast; the birds were singing in the trees.
But they barely rippled the calm. Isabel's eyes dwelt absently upon a
white line along a distant hill-top, made, no doubt, by Caesar's troops;
for she had heard that the mosaic floors of Roman houses had been
discovered under one of the fields in the neighborhood. This
information, imparted by Lord Hexam's cousin, Mrs. Throfton, a lady
interested in neither Bridge nor gossip, had not excited her as it might
have done before her archaeological experience at headquarters, but she
was glad to recall it now, for that white road, sharply insistent in the
surrounding green, was one of the perceptible vincula of history.

It was all old--old--old; an illimitable backward vista. And she was as
new, as out of tune with it as the motorcar flashing like a lost and
distracted comet along that hill-top in a cloud of historied dust: she
with her problems, her egoisms, the fateful independence of the modern
girl. In a fashion she was one of the chosen of earth, but she doubted
if the women who had toiled in these villages, or in centuries past had
lived their lives in the mansions of their indubious lords, had not had
greater compensations than she. Unbroken monotony and a saving sense of
the inevitable must in time create for the soul something of the
illimitable horizon of the vast level spaces of the earth.

And she? At twenty-five she had lost her old habit of staring with
veiled eyes into some sweet ambiguous future, her girlish intensity of
emotion. But her theories, in general, were sound, and she had ticketed
even her minor experiences. She knew that character was the most
significant of all individual forces, and that if developed in strict
adjustment to the highest demands of society, dragging strength out of
the powers of the universe, were it not inborn, the book of one's
objective future at least need never be closed prematurely by those
inexorable social forces, which, whatever the weak spots on the surface
of life, invariably place a man in the end according to his deserts. She
had seen her father, with all his advantages of birth and talents, and
early importance in the community, gradually shunned, shelved, dismissed
from the daily life of steadier if less gifted men, almost unknown to
the young generation. He had clung to certain strict notions of honor
through it all, however, and at his death the county had experienced a
spasm of remorse and attended his funeral; the sermon had been eloquent
with masterly omissions, and even the newspaper that had vilified him in
his days of political influence came out with an obituary, which, when
included in some future county history, would give to posterity quite as
good an impression of him as he deserved.

And James Otis had had his virtues. One of his claims to redemption
survived in his daughter. He had reared her in the strict principles and
precepts of his New England ancestors, many of which are generally more
useful in the life of a man. This early instillation, taken in
connection with himself as a commanding illustration in subcontraries,
had given Isabel a directness of vision invaluable to a girl in no haste
to place her life in stronger hands. Whatever her dissatisfactions and
disillusions, her road lay along the upper reaches; the second rate, the
failures from birth, the criminal classes, far below. Her start in life
was indefectible, and she knew that did the necessity arise to-morrow
she could support herself and ask no quarter.

Perhaps, she mused, she would be happier in the necessity, for the
problem of roof and bread is an abiding substitute for the problem of
what to do with one's life. But she had never known an anxious moment
regarding the bare necessities, and although there was something
pleasantly stimulating in the prospect of making a fortune and being
able to live as she wished in the city of her birth--the only object for
which she retained any passion in her affections--she smiled somewhat
cynically at the modest outlook.

Environments like the present were uplifting, almost deindividualizing,
and there had been a time when she had known seconds in the face of
nature's surprises that were distinct spiritual experiences. She
believed they would return when she was in her own land once more, and
Europe a book of fading memories. Her love of beauty at least was as
keen as ever, and now that Europe was off her mind, leaving the proper
sense of surfeit behind it, no doubt she would have a sense of actually
beginning life when the time came to take an active part in it, and she
assumed a position of some importance in her own community. She was far
too sensible for ingratitude, and fully appreciated the gifts that life
had so liberally dealt her. And she fully believed in work as the
universal panacea. The mere thought of a busy future brought a glow to
her heart. She rose with a smile as Lady Victoria emerged from the
cottage at the upper end of the village.

Lady Victoria was not smiling. Her brows were drawn, and she looked
angry and contemptuous.

"The little idiot!" she exclaimed, as they started briskly for home.
"This is the first failure I have had in ten years. That is one of my
boasts. And I took particular pains with that girl. Now Jack will have
the agreeable task of coercing the man into marrying her, for it appears
that his ardor has cooled."

Her brow cleared in a few moments, but she seemed to have had enough of
conversation, and it was evident that words for words' sake, or as a
flimsy chain between signposts of genuine interest, had no place in her
social rubric. Isabel, who was equally indifferent, strode along beside
her without so much as a comment, and so confirmed the good impression
she had made on her mettlesome relative. As they approached the house,
Lady Victoria turned to her with a smile that brought sweetness to her
eyes rather than any one of her more dazzling qualities.

"I am generally in my boudoir at five," she said. "Come in this
afternoon for a chat before tea, if you have nothing better to do. Now
run and get ready for breakfast."

VIII

Whether or not Mr. Gwynne had made up his mind to follow his mother's
advice and employ a new weapon in his siege of Mrs. Kaye, or whether,
like common mortals, he was subject to the natural impulses of youth,
the most novel of the guests of Capheaton found herself on his right in
the informality of breakfast, and the object of his solicitude. He
fetched her bacon and toast from the sideboard, and when he discovered
that she did not like cream in her tea, carried her cup back to his
mother and waited for the more pungent substitute. And then he actually
made an effort to entertain her. There was a flicker of surprised
amusement in the neighborhood, but Isabel accepted his attentions as a
matter of course, assuming that the young gentleman felt refreshed after
a night's rest in his own bed, or had awakened to a sense of her
importance as a member of his family. It was not until she caught Mrs.
Kaye's eye and read a contemptuous power to retaliate, that she
experienced a certain zest in the situation. With the magnetism of
intelligent interest in her own eyes, she turned to Gwynne with a
question that betrayed a flattering acquaintance with one of his less
popular books, then hung upon the monologue of which he promptly
delivered himself. It was characteristic that he either contributed
little to the conversation or monopolized it; and he reflected, as he
talked of the personal experience which led up to the episode of her
interest, that he had never before gazed into eyes at once so lovely and
so fine. He disliked American girls, partly because they had shown no
disposition to join the ranks of those that lived to spoil him, partly
because he believed them to be shallow and cold. Some of the married
women had attracted him, but not before they had lived long enough to
develop the stronger qualities of the older races; he had his ideals and
was not easily satisfied. He was deeply in love with Mrs. Kaye, for her
brilliant subtle mind and powerful appeal to his passions had blinded
him to her defects, and he was convinced that his heart had travelled to
its predestined goal. Nevertheless, he decided that his new cousin, if
as cold as the rest of her youthful compatriots, was worth cultivating
for her intelligence and obvious talent for good-comradeship.

But in a moment a subject was started that entirely diverted his mind
and upset the lively tenor of the breakfast-table.

"Where is Lorcutt?" asked some one, abruptly, referring to a brother of
Lord Brathland, who had lost heavily and cheerfully at Bridge the night
before.

Isabel's eyes happened to have wandered to the face of the man opposite.
To her surprise it became livid. He turned instantly to Gwynne, however,
and said: "I should have told you--I quite forgot--he asked me to make
his excuses. He got a telegram--bad news--Bratty is dead."

Involuntarily Isabel glanced at Mrs. Kaye; Flora had hinted to her of
the lady's designs. That face for once was ghastly and unmasked, but the
eyes were not glittering with grief.

"Impossible!" she cried, sharply. "Lord Brathland? Why--I saw him only
two days ago, in London. He was as well as possible."

The others barely noticed her. Their astonished eyes were fixed on the
first speaker, Captain Ormond, who was sitting very erect, as if to
receive the questions fired at him as a brave man faces the hiss of lead
on the field.

"I know little," he replied; "except that Brathland was suddenly
attacked by appendicitis two nights ago and that an operation was
immediately performed--"

"Friday night!" cried Mrs. Kaye. "Why he spent an hour with me that
afternoon, and was to dine with Lord Zeal and Lord Raglin and half a
dozen other men that night--they all came up to London to talk over one
of Sir Cadge Vanneck's mines. Why--I remember you were to be there.
Surely Lord Brathland was well then?"

"He was looking very seedy when he came in. I happened to sit next to
him--told him he ought to go home. Finally he got so bad he decided
that he would, and as he left the table he fainted. Several of us saw
him to bed. He said he didn't want his family fidgeting him, and the
surgeon said he would be all right in a few days. I thought he was out
of danger when I came down last night, so said nothing about it to
Harold."

"Was he taken home?" asked Gwynne, whose eyes had never left Ormond's
face.

"No--to Raglin's room up-stairs. The dinner was at the Club."

"I cannot understand why his family was not summoned at the last!"
exclaimed Lady Victoria.

"Well, there's only the old duke and Harold, you see. Dick is out in
Africa. I suppose they didn't want to agitate the duke until the last
moment and couldn't find Harold until this morning. Besides, Raglin was
with him, and he is a relative, at least. It is awfully sudden. I have
been upset ever since Harold woke me up this morning and told me; and
hated to speak of it."

"Who was the surgeon?" asked Gwynne.

"Ballast."

"Ballast? Who is he? Why not one of the big men, in heaven's name?"
cried Mrs. Kaye.

"Well--they were all out of town--naturally enough at this time of year.
We had to take what we could get. No doubt Lester or Masten was
telegraphed for later. I--all of us--left the affair in Raglin's hands."

The company broke into general comment, and under cover of the confusion
Isabel distinctly heard Gwynne demand:

"What's up your sleeve, Ormond?"

And the response: "For God's sake, old chap, don't ask!"

IX

Gwynne had never recognized the contingency of a serious rival in the
affections of the woman he had elected to mate, and had he heard of the
late Lord Brathland's attentions it would not have occurred to him that
Mrs. Kaye could weigh a prospective dukedom against the reflected
glories of his own career. He intended to be prime-minister before he
was forty, and older and soberer heads shared his confidence. It was
true that Mrs. Kaye was an emphatic Conservative--scorning even the
compromise of Liberal-Unionism--and that so far he had been unable to
convert her; but he did not take any woman's political convictions very
seriously, knowing that they commonly owed their inspiration to social
ambition, a desire for a career, or to marital comradeship. The latter
he made no doubt would operate in his own case as soon as the lady gave
him the opportunity to demand it as his right; and his sharp political
discussions with her were among the spiciest of his experiences. She
rarely expressed herself in every-day language; and although it had
crossed his mind that epigrammatic matrimony might grow oppressive, he
had reminded himself that her speech was but a part of a too cultivated
individuality and would be unable to endure the strain of daily
intercourse. Although he had in his composition little of the femininity
that gives a certain type of man a sympathetic comprehension of women,
his Celtic blood imparted a subtle understanding of their foibles of
which he was but half aware. More than once this subconscious
penetration had induced a speedy recovery from misplaced affections; but
the toils of Julia Kaye, who piqued, allured, repelled, dazzled, now and
again snubbed every one else for his sake, bound him helpless. He was
grateful for his mother's abetment, although it somewhat surprised him;
but his mother was the woman of whom he had the least comprehension.

So far Mrs. Kaye had ignored his several proposals, but of this he
thought nothing. He would have cared little for a woman to be had for
the asking; and he rather welcomed any treatment that stirred the
somewhat sluggish surfaces of his nature.

He had determined, however, to force a definite answer from her during
this visit, and although he was far too courteous a host to embarrass a
guest, he knew that were Mrs. Kaye deliberately to grant him a private
interview he should be at liberty to press his suit.

Immediately after the hour in the smoking-room that followed breakfast,
he started in search of her; but although many of the women were
scattered throughout the lower rooms, reading, writing, gossiping, he
saw nothing of his inamorata. Flora Thangue happened to be standing
alone, and he went up to her impulsively.

"Do you know if Julia has gone to church?" he asked, without
circumlocution.

"She went to her room directly after breakfast. I fancy she is rather
cut up over Lord Brathland's death," replied the astute Miss Thangue.

"Of course; we all are--poor Bratty! He was rather a bounder, but it is
natural to recall his virtues. Flora, go and tell her I want her to come
for a walk. I can't go to her room myself, and I don't care to send a
servant."

Miss Thangue reflected. Probably this was the most favorable moment for
a repulse that he could have chosen. She was sincerely fond of him and
distrusted Mrs. Kaye as much as she disliked her.

"Very well," she said. "I will see what I can do."

Mrs. Kaye admitted her promptly and presented an unstained front,
although her color was lower than usual. She was a woman of too much
natural and acquired poise to remain askew under any shock. But she had
experienced an hour of mixed emotions in which a confused and wondering
sense of defeat was paramount. It had left her a little aghast, for
although she had met with the inevitable snubs in her upward course, she
rarely permitted them to agitate her memory in these days when she had
grown to believe herself one of the spoiled favorites of destiny; and
her fibres were by no means sensitive. But this sudden blow was a
reminder that fate had been capricious to spoiled darlings before. She
had stood almost motionless before the window from the moment she had
entered her room until Miss Thangue knocked at the door, and by that
time she had repoised herself and set her heavy mouth in a hard line as
she reflected upon her own will as a factor in any game with life.

"Jack wants you to go for a walk," announced Miss Thangue, who saw no
occasion for subtlety.

"That means he intends to propose again," said Mrs. Kaye, in her
carefully modulated voice. "I don't know that I care about it. I have
letters to write."

"Why not get it over? You could compel him to believe, if you chose,
that you have no intention of marrying him, and it would be rather a
kindness; he has so much else to think about, and he certainly should
have a free mind before the opening of Parliament. If you really did
Jack any harm," she added, deliberately, "Vicky would never forgive
you--nor a good many others."

"I wouldn't do him any harm for the world," said Mrs. Kaye, casting down
her eyes and looking very young and innocent. "But I should hate to give
him up. After all, there is no one half so interesting. Well, I'll go
down and have it over."

A few moments later she joined Gwynne at the foot of the staircase, and
they went out to the woods. She looked her best in a smart walking-frock
of white tweed, and a red toque; for the tailor costume modifies where
the elaborate accentuates.

Her brilliant eyes melted as Brathland's name was mentioned; naturally
at once.

"What a dreadful--shocking thing!" she cried. "I do not realize it at
all. Poor dear, we were such friends--and I saw him only a few hours
before. Have you heard anything more?"

"Ormond ran off to town directly after breakfast--as if he were afraid
of being asked too many questions. I have an idea that he kept the cat
in the bag. I saw my cousin Zeal yesterday, and thought he looked as if
he had something besides his health on his mind."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Kaye, startled. "What else could it be?"

"Well, Bratty was rather a flasher," said Gwynne, innocently. "The
dinner may not have been at the Club at all, and there is a little
chorus-girl that engaged the fickle Bratty's affections for a time, and
proclaimed her desire for vengeance from the house-tops when he
transferred himself to a rival at the Adelphi. She is a Neapolitan, and
that sort may carry a stiletto even in prosaic old London. Or perhaps
poor Bratty was despatched with the carving-knife. No wonder he didn't
want his family. But whatever it was, he has paid the penalty himself,
poor chap, and no doubt the matter will be hushed up."

"How disgusting! I don't want to think of human slums on this heavenly
Sunday morning."

"Nor to be proposed to, I suppose?"

"I don't mind, Jack dear."

She looked girlish and very piquant. Jack took her hand. She did not
withdraw it, and they walked silently in the shadowed quiet of the wood.
His heart beat almost audibly. Never before had she given him such
definite encouragement. He could think of nothing to say that would not
sound banal to this woman of the ready tongue. But agitation unlocks
wayward fancies and sends them scurrying inopportunely across the very
foreground of the mind. The vagrant hope that she would not accept him
in an epigram restored his balance, and he turned to her with his
habitual air of confidence, albeit his eyes and mouth were restless.

"I want an answer to-day," he said, boldly. "And there is only one
answer I will take. I have let you play with me, as that seemed to be
your caprice, and I love caprice in a woman. But there is an end to
everything and I want to marry before Parliament meets."

"And you never thought I would not marry you?" she asked, in some
wonder.

"I have never faced the possibility of failure in my life. And you are
as much to me as my career. I cannot imagine life without either."

He suddenly put his hand under her chin and lifted her face; she was of
tiny stature and this disadvantage in the presence of man was not the
least subtle of her charms. "Say yes quickly," he cried, and the
strength of his will and passion vibrated to her through the medium he
had established. But she pouted and drew back.

"Perhaps I want a career of my own. You would swallow me whole."

"You could become the most powerful woman in the Liberal party--have a
salon and all the rest of it."

"I happen to be a Conservative."

"What has that to do with it? Or politics with love, for that matter?
Tell me that you love me. That is all I care about."

"It is only during the engagement that love is all. Marriage is the
great public school of life; the passions fall meekly into their proper
place--beside the prosaic appetites, the objective demands; somewhat
below the faculties that distinguish the higher kingdom."

"Indeed? Well, I am sanguine enough to believe that we would prove the
exception. I hardly dare think of it!" he burst out. "For God's sake
keep your epigrams for other people and be a woman pure and simple."

She looked both as she permitted her full red mouth to tremble and his
arms to take sudden possession of her.

X

In the large liberty of an English country-house Isabel might have found
the long morning tedious had she been of a more sociable habit. Lady
Victoria, Mrs. Throfton, and Lady Cecilia Spence went to church; all
three, as great ladies, having a dutiful eye to the edification of
humbler folk. Flora Thangue spent the greater part of the morning
writing letters for her hostess, the men fled to the golf-links, and the
rest of the women not engaged in vehement political discussion, or
Bridge, were striding across country. Isabel, tempted by the charmingly
fitted writing-table in her room, although an indolent correspondent,
wrote a long and amply descriptive letter to her sister, which her
brother-in-law, being more than usually hard up at the moment of its
arrival, transposed into fiction and illustrated delightfully for a
local newspaper. Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing
her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores,
the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys. She had a
quick instinct for the best in all things, but cared less for pictures
than for other treasures of the past: marbles, the architecture in old
streets, hard brown schlosses on their lonely heights, the Gothic spaces
of cathedrals, the high and fervent imaginations, immortal yet nameless,
in the carvings on stone; the jewelled facades of Orvieto and Siena,
the romantic grandeur of the Alhambra.

She opened a door at the back of the central hall and found herself in a
pillared corridor with a door at either end. Both rooms were open, and
as a blue cloud hung about the entrance to the left, she turned to what
proved to be the library of Capheaton. It was a square light apartment,
with the orthodox number of books, but with so many desks and
writing-tables that it looked more like the business corner of the
mansion. Here, indeed, as Isabel was to learn, Lady Victoria held daily
conference with her housekeeper and stewards, interviewed the women of
the tenantry, and those active and philanthropic ladies of every
district that aspire to carry the burdens of others. Here Gwynne kept
his Blue Books and thought out his speeches, but it was not a favorite
room with the guests.

Isabel had found many books scattered about the house, solid and
flippant, old and new, but nothing by her host. She rightly assumed that
his works would be disposed for posterity in the family library, and
found them on a shelf above one of the large orderly tables. As a matter
of fact she had read but two of his books, and she selected another at
random and carried it to a comfortable chair by the window. The work was
an exposition of conditions in one of the South African colonies,
containing much criticism that had been defined by the Conservative
press as youthful impertinence, but surprisingly sound to the
unprejudiced. What had impressed Isabel in his other books and claimed
her admiration anew was his maturity of thought and style; she saw that
this volume had been published when he was twenty-four, written,
doubtless, when he was a year or two younger. She felt a vague pity for
a man that seemed to have had no youth. Since his graduation from
Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly, for he appeared
to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel. She wondered if
he would take his youth in his bald-headed season, like the self-made
American millionaire.

His style, pure, lucid, virile, distinguished, might have been the
outcome of midnight travail, or, like his eloquence on the platform, a
direct flight from the quickened brain. It certainly bore no resemblance
to his amputated table talk. But in a moment she dismissed her
speculations, for she had discovered a quality, overlooked before, but
arresting in the recent light of his cold arrogance and haughty
self-confidence. Behind his strict regard for facts and the keen insight
and large grasp of his subject, which, without his evident care for the
graces, would have distinguished his work from the dry report of equally
conscientious but less gifted men, was the lonely play of a really lofty
imagination, and a noble human sympathy. As she read on, this warm
full-blooded quality, tempered always by reason, grew more and more
visible to her alert sense; and when the fires in his mind blazed forth
into a revelation of a passionate love of beauty, both in nature and in
human character, Isabel realized what such a man's power over his
audience must be; when this second self, so effectually concealed,
suddenly burst into being.

"It is too bad a woman would have to live with the other!" she thought,
as she raised her eyes and saw Gwynne emerge from the woods with Mrs.
Kaye. "I cannot say that I envy her."

"By Jove, they have an engaged look!"

Isabel turned with a start, but greeted Lord Hexam with a smile. He was
as yet her one satisfactory experience of the young English nobleman,
whom, like most American girls, she had unconsciously foreshadowed in
doublet and hose. Hexam was quite six feet, with a fine military
carriage; he had been in the Guards and had not left the army until
after two years of active service; his blue eyes were both honest and
intelligent, and he was generally clean cut and highly bred.

He drew up a chair beside Isabel and reflected that she was even
handsomer than he had thought, with the sunlight warming the ivory
whiteness of her skin, although it contracted the mobile pupils of her
eyes; and that little black moles when rightly placed were more
attractive than he had thought possible. They gave a sort of daring
unconscious eighteenth-century coquetry to what was otherwise a somewhat
severe style of beauty. But he was a man for whom a woman's hair had a
peculiar fascination, and while they were uttering commonplaces at
random his eyes wandered to the soft yet massive coils encircling
Isabel's shapely head, and lingered there.

"Pardon me!" he said, boyishly. "But I always thought--don't you
know?--that hair like that was only in novels and poems and that sort of
thing. Is it all your own?" he asked, with sudden suspicion.

"You would think so if you had to carry it for a day. I should have had
it cut off long ago if it had happened to be coarse hair. It is an
inherited evil of which I am too vain to rid myself. The early Spanish
women of my family all had hair that touched the ground when they stood
up. I have an old sketch of a back view of three of them taken side by
side; you see nothing but billows of fine silky hair. But I have put it
out of sight, as it looks rather like an advertisement for a famous hair
restorer."

"I'd give a lot to see yours down. It's wonderful--wonderful!"

"Well, I have promised a private view to some of the women. If Lady
Victoria thinks it quite proper perhaps I'll admit you."

"I'll ask her for a card directly she comes home. Let it be this
afternoon just after tea."

"I wonder if they really are engaged," said Isabel, who had been told
that Englishmen never paid compliments, and was growing embarrassed
under the round-eyed scrutiny. Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye had paused by a
sundial.

"Who? Oh yes, I should think so, although there was some talk that poor
Bratty--but no doubt that was mere rumor, or Mrs. Kaye wouldn't be on
with Jack like that. By Jove, he is engaged. I never saw him look
so--so--well, I hardly know what."

"Do you approve of the match?"

"If my consent is asked I shall give them my blessing. He is the salt of
the earth, although a bit lumpy now and then; and she is such a jolly
little thing, full of genuine affection--just the wife for Jack."

"You believe in her, then?" Isabel wondered, as many another has done,
at the miasma that seems to rise and dim a man's perceptive faculties
when he is called upon to estimate the worth of a fascinating woman.

"Rather! Don't you?"

"She struck me as being one of the few people without a redeeming
virtue. To be sure that has a distinction of its own."

"Oh!" He wondered if so handsome a girl shared the common rancor of her
age and sex against charming young widows.

"And the worst mannered," continued Isabel, who knew exactly what he
thought. "And plebeian in her marrow. I wish my cousin had chosen Miss
Thangue or any one else."

"But he couldn't marry Flora," said the literal young nobleman. "She
hasn't a penny, and is the friend of all our mothers. But I'm sorry
you've such a bad opinion of Mrs. Kaye. She's tremendously popular with
us. I'm not one of her circle--retinue would be more like it; but I've
always thought her the brightest little thing going, and I'm sure she
wouldn't harm a fly."

"I'm sure she would do nothing so little worth her while. Well, there is
no need for your eyes to be opened; but I wish that my cousin's might
be. I suppose that you have the same faith in him that so many
others--himself included--seem to have."

"Rather!--You are a most critical person. Haven't you?"

"I think I have. In fact I am sure of it. That is the reason I have been
wishing he were an American."

He laughed boyishly. "That is a good one! But we need him over here. You
haven't the slightest idea how much. We get into a blue funk every time
Zeal takes a cold on his chest. To quote Mrs. Kaye, 'A Liberal peer is
as useful as a fifth wheel to a coach, and as ornamental as whitewash.'
Clever, ain't it?"

"I think people are touchingly easy to satisfy! I have been treated to
several of Mrs. Kaye's epigrams and heard as many more quoted. It seems
to me that nothing could be easier than the manufacture of that popular
superfluity."

"Perhaps--with time to think them out beforehand. Anyhow, it's rather
jolly to hear things you can remember."

"I should be the last to deny her cleverness," said Isabel, dryly. But
being by no means desirous that he should find her too acid, she dropped
her eyes for a moment, then raised two dazzling wells of innocence. "I
am tired of the subject of my cousin and Mrs. Kaye," she murmured. "Are
you as ambitious as Jack?"

"No use." He stared helplessly down into the blue flood. "There is no
escape from the 'Peers' for me, although my father, I am happy to say,
is as healthy as I am. But after the brain cells become brittle--one
never knows. I too am a Liberal, and am getting in all the good work of
which I am capable while there is yet time. I don't go as far as
Jack--don't want to see the 'Peers' chucked. I have a strong reverence
for traditions, and no taste whatever for democracy--that would be too
long a step. And I think a man should be content to be useful, do the
best he can, in his own class; and be loyal to that class whatever
happens. Of course I understand Jack's point of view, because I
understand him so well, and know that he would be the most maimed and
wretched man on earth in the Upper House; but personally, I think one
should be prepared to accept inherited responsibilities."

And then, as they were both young, and mutually attracted, they found
many subjects of common interest to keep them in the library until the
gong summoned them to luncheon.

XI

Flora Thangue, after luncheon, took Isabel out in a pony cart, and
although too loyal to gossip intimately about her patrons, incidentally
directed a search-light into certain of their recesses; a light that was
to prove useful to Isabel in her future intercourse with them, although
it did not in the least prepare her for an experience that awaited her
later in the day. Miss Thangue's mind was occupied at first with the
obvious engagement of Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye.

"That woman was born to upset calculations!" she exclaimed. "Yonder is
the castle of the dukes of Arcot. We are going over to a party to-morrow
night. It really looks like a castle with all those gray battlements and
towers, doesn't it? We don't call every tuppeny-hapenny villa inhabited
by a nobleman a 'castle' as they do in Germany and Austria. Well--that
clever little panther! I'd like to pack her into one of her own epigrams
and bury her alive. I _know_ she was as good as engaged to Brathland.
Now, having decided that, all things considered, Jack is the best match
going--for everybody believes Lord Zeal to be worse than he is--well!
there is something appalling in a woman who can adjust herself as
quickly as that; whose caprices, sentiments, passions, all natural
impulses, are completely controlled by her reason. I wish Vicky saw
through her; she has so much influence over Jack, and such deadly
powers of ridicule. But Vicky, like all spoiled women of the world, is
as much the victim of the subtle flatterer as any man, and Julia Kaye
has managed her beautifully. She considered Jack for a bit before she
was sure of Brathland. Vicky's real reason for indorsing Julia
Kaye--between us--is because she believes her to be one of that small
and select band that can hold a man on all his various sides, and she
wants to avoid the probability of an absorbing and possibly tragic
liaison--like Parnell's, for instance--which might interfere with,
perhaps ruin, Jack's career. That is all very well, as far as it goes,
but I believe Julia Kaye to be so entirely selfish that when Jack finds
her out he will sicken of life. I have had the best of opportunities to
study women, and I have brought Jack up--I had the honor to be the
highly idealized heroine of his calf-love, and have been

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.