Belchamber

her quickened respiration showed her interest; and at the stanza beginning ‘When I was wont to meet her,’ she half raised herself, saying eagerly, ‘I like that; read that bit again, please; do you mind?’ and on Sainty’s complying, she repeated dreamily to herself, as though the words called up some image that gave her pleasure,

‘Who did you say wrote that?’ she asked. ‘Oh! of course, yes, Tennyson,’ and with a great sigh she sank back on her cushions. Then she looked suddenly at him, as though she feared she had betrayed something, and flushed crimson. ‘Go on,’ she murmured; ‘beg pardon,’ and relapsed into her habitual expression of polite endurance. Next day she asked him to lend her the book, as she wanted to copy some of it out.

Sainty was delighted, but surprised.

CHAPTER XV

Lady Eccleston’s business kept her in London longer than she expected. Each day brought hurried notes from her, full of regrets and apologies, compunction for all the trouble they were giving, but joy that her dear child was in such good, kind hands, and a plentiful supply of a mother’s blessings. She was a swift and copious letter-writer, economising time by the ruthless excision of articles, pronouns, and other short words. Tommy always declared that his mother could write two letters at once, one with each hand, and interview the cook at the same time.

Breakfast in bed was the last lingering trace of Cissy’s mysterious ailment, by the time her parent reappeared upon the scene.

‘What have you done to my little girl?’ cried Lady Eccleston in a transport of gratitude; ‘she is a different child.’ And truly it would have been hard to find a more blooming specimen of girlhood. Indeed, when you come to think of it, six weeks is a liberal allowance of time for a perfectly healthy young woman to get over the effects of a momentary immersion in cold water.

‘You have been so kind to my darling,’ Lady Eccleston said to Sainty. ‘She has been telling me of all your delightful talks and readings; it is just what she needed, a little intercourse with a really cultivated mind. She has always felt the dissatisfaction of the frivolous life of society; there has been the desire to improve herself, the love of reading, but no one to guide her taste, or put her in the right way. Now, if you would draw up a little table of reading for her, tell her what to read, and in what order and connection, it would be just everything for her; and perhaps even her ignorant old mother might find a little leisure now and then to profit by your help. One is never too old to learn, you know.’

So Sainty drew up tables, lent books, and marked passages, like the simple little pedant that he was, but without producing any very marked impression on Cissy’s fundamental ignorance. Sometimes he wondered if the girl were not very dull at Belchamber, and how it was that people who had always seemed to have so many engagements could spare so much time to one house. It is true that Lady Eccleston was perpetually threatening departure, but she was as often persuaded to remain by the very mildest expostulation that civility demanded.

At last a date was definitely fixed, and Sainty had to acknowledge to himself that he would miss the charming companion of his walks and drives. He felt tolerably sure that he was not in the least in love with Cissy, but he had come to feel a sort of tender protecting friendship for her, an interest in her welfare, and a desire to shield her from evil and unhappiness. Thus, one day, when he had heard raised voices and rather excited talking as he passed Lady Eccleston’s door, and Cissy had appeared at lunch with red eyes, he burned to know what was wrong, and if possible to help and comfort her. Sorrow seemed so inappropriate to this bright young creature; yet, during the last few days of the Ecclestons’ stay, the air was heavy with suppressed tears. It was like the weather when people look each evening at the clearing heavens and say, ‘There must have been a storm somewhere’; an actual shower would have been a relief. To a person of Sainty’s temperament such a state of things was unendurable. He could not ask Cissy what was wrong; she who had been so ready to walk, or drive, or read, seemed suddenly to have become unapproachable.

One day he watched the mother and daughter returning from a walk. They were talking excitedly in low hurried voices and with a good deal of gesture; it was obvious even at a distance that they were discussing no ordinary topics, and what is more that they were having a decided difference of opinion. Lady Eccleston seemed to be appealing urgently about something. Sainty saw her lay her hand not too gently on her daughter’s arm, but the girl threw it off with an impatient gesture, broke from her, and fairly ran towards the house.

So swift and unexpected was her coming that Sainty had no time to withdraw, and they met in the hall. Cissy’s face was working, her eyes dry and burning.

‘Miss Eccleston—Cissy,’ said Belchamber, ‘what is wrong? Can I do anything——’

At sight of him she started away like a shying horse.

‘Oh, let me alone!’ she cried, and hurried upstairs, and Sainty could hear her sobbing as she went. At that moment Lady Eccleston appeared upon the scene, with heightened colour and decidedly out of breath. An indefinable change came over her expression as she saw the young man, a certain exultation seemed to leap in her eyes, to be immediately extinguished in a confusion which had every appearance of being genuine.

‘Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, moving eagerly to meet her, ‘what is the matter with Cissy?’ He did not notice that in his excitement he had twice called the girl by her Christian name.

‘O Lord Belchamber, how unfortunate! I would have given worlds not to have met you just now. Give me a minute or two, I’m all upset.’

Sainty opened the door of the morning-room and ushered the agitated lady in there. His heart was beating uncomfortably; he felt something decisive was going to happen. Lady Eccleston sank into a chair and struggled with emotion, giving vent to a series of little sniffs and hiccoughs, and dabbing her eyes and mouth with her pocket-handkerchief.

‘To-morrow we should have gone, and you need never have known,’ she said at last in broken accents.

‘Known what? I don’t understand.’

‘I blame myself,’ Lady Eccleston went on, not heeding the interruption. ‘It was my fault; I ought to have had more foresight and discretion; I see it all now. If Sir Thomas had only been spared it would never have happened; he had such sterling sense.’

‘Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ Sainty asked.

‘I alone am to blame,’ Lady Eccleston repeated tragically. ‘Of course I see it now. You are both so young, so pure-minded, so unsophisticated; and dear Lady Charmington has lived so long out of the world; but I ought to have seen. Oh! I am inexcusable. But I did hope at least you would never know’; and like Agamemnon she once more veiled her grief.

‘I might have known, I might have been sure,’ she continued after a pause. ‘Heaven knows I have enough reason to know how malicious people are, but my belief in my fellow-creatures is incurable. I can not bring myself to realise the love of scandal in evil-minded people.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Sainty, now thoroughly alarmed. ‘What can you mean? Surely no one has presumed——’

‘People have talked,’ Lady Eccleston mourned. ‘Cissy being here so long, and my leaving her here, and all. It seems people have drawn all sorts of silly conclusions. I have been asked—— I can’t say it; you can guess what; and the poor child has had letters, hints, and congratulations, and all that; you can fancy it has upset her terribly; she is almost beside herself; I can do nothing with her; you saw her just now’; and Lady Eccleston took a little side-glance at Sainty behind her pocket-handkerchief. ‘Of course, I understand perfectly, and so does she; but I see how it would strike outsiders. Oh! why is one always wise after the event? Now you see why I am so angry with myself.’

Sainty was much perturbed. ‘This is monstrous, monstrous!’ he cried; ‘that she should be annoyed, distressed in this way, is horrible. I hope, Lady Eccleston, you don’t think that I have behaved badly, that I have taken any advantage of the confidence with which you have honoured me.’

‘Oh dear no, Lord Belchamber; you have been kindness itself, and so has your dear mother. I never can forget all your goodness. I knew how absolutely I could trust you; but I ought to have thought, to have remembered. Well, I had hoped and meant that at least we alone should bear the burthen. This is an ill return to make to you for all your sweetness and hospitality. You will wish you had never heard our name.’

‘Believe me, I am not thinking at all about myself. The one question is, how is Miss Eccleston to be shielded from any annoyance in the matter? It is intolerable that she should have to suffer.’

‘How like you! always so noble and unselfish,’ said Lady Eccleston fervently. ‘I shall always remember how splendidly you have behaved. I don’t blame you for a single instant, but I can never forgive myself. It is so like me; I am so impulsive. I thought only of the immense benefit it would be to her intellectually, the intercourse with such a mind as yours. I should have recollected there were dangers; that at her age the intellect plays but a very small part beside the heart——’

‘Good gracious! you don’t mean that she has thought me capable of pestering her with my attentions? I knew well enough that I was only allowed such liberty because—because I was different from other men.’

‘No, no; I don’t think she thought anything of it. I should have known that it was only your kindness to a poor little invalid, your desire to instruct a little ignoramus. But Cissy is very young; she may have fancied—— Oh! I don’t know what I’m saying.’

Sainty had grown very pale; he had to hold on to a table for support.

‘Lady Eccleston,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you can’t mean to imply that Miss Eccleston could possibly care for me in that way.’

‘Lord Belchamber, this is unfair,’ cried Lady Eccleston, starting up. ‘You have no right to try and force the child’s poor little secret from me. You found me all unstrung after a terrible talk with her, and I have let out far more than I should. I have told you I entirely exonerate you from all blame; I appreciate that your motive was pure kindness. Is not that enough for you? If people have been tiresome and tactless it is not your fault, still less hers, poor girl. I blame myself, as I say, more than I can tell you, but that has nothing to do with you. If I have been foolish I am more than punished; but I only regret that I cannot bear all the punishment; we never can. The fault or folly, call it what you will, was mine, but much of the price must be paid by my poor innocent child—that is the thought that unnerves me’; and her ladyship once more had recourse to her pocket-handkerchief. ‘She has no father,’ she wailed; ‘her brothers are mere children in knowledge of the world; and I, her mother, who should have shielded her from trouble, in my blind, foolish desire to procure her a little intellectual advantage, have brought on her the bitterest trial of her life.’

Sainty was twisting his stick in his fingers in great agitation. ‘It is too bad, too bad,’ he said, ‘that she should be pestered like this and made unhappy. I would do anything in my power to repair the harm of which I have been the unwitting cause. But if the trouble is, as I suppose, only what stupid people have been saying or writing to her, I don’t see what I can do. Poor child! I can well understand how her pride and delicacy must have been hurt.’

‘No, no; there is nothing to be done, nothing,’ said Lady Eccleston. ‘I never meant that you should know; and, Lord Belchamber, promise me one thing: never refer to this to Cissy; she would die of shame, if she thought I had told you. We are going to-morrow; try and forget what I have said, especially—especially——’ and she broke off abruptly, and made a stumbling grope at the door-handle, as though she would leave the room.

‘Stop a minute, please,’ Sainty cried, interposing. ‘Don’t go. I don’t want to be indiscreet, but you said something just now which seemed to hint—— Oh! I know it’s incredible; but don’t you see, it would make all the difference whether her distress came only from the mortification of people having coupled our names, or if it was possible that she could look on me as—as——’

‘Say no more, say no more. I understand you perfectly,’ interrupted Lady Eccleston. ‘You are the soul of punctilious honour. You are capable of any sacrifice, if you thought that even, as you said just now, unwittingly you had made a poor girl care for you; but I have not said it, and I will not say it. I have pride for her, as I should have it for myself. I would never admit it. You are perfectly justified in believing that her distress arises solely from what people have said,’ and this time the lady, with a magnificent gesture of renunciation, really did get to the door, and left Sainty in a whirl of conflicting emotions. Was it possible that he had touched the heart of this beautiful young creature? It was inconceivable that she should be in love with him, and he turned with a pathetic smile to the long glass between the two tall windows. Yet her mother had seemed to hint it. If it were so, then there was nothing simpler than saving her from trouble. A word would do it. But it could not be; the thing was unthinkable. And he fell to wondering if he wished to think it, or not. What was his feeling towards her? Was this protecting, pitying tenderness, this longing to interpose between her and sorrow, was this love? It was very unlike what he had dreamed it to be. But was not everything in life strangely unlike our young idea of it? And ought he to consider his own feelings in the matter at all? If, however innocently, he had led her to think he cared for her, if in her youth and inexperience she had mistaken his friendship, his interest in her studies, for a warmer feeling; above all, if the inscrutable workings of the female heart had led her for some mysterious reason to return it, was he not in honour bound to think only of her happiness in the matter? If a young and beautiful woman had done him this honour, was it for him, him of all people, to feel anything but humblest gratitude? The thought was not without a certain sweetness that a woman had recognised the qualities of his head and heart, to the extent of forgetting his lack of all that women most prized in man, strength, courage, virility. He acknowledged that a man could not have done so, that had the positions been reversed, had he been handsome, vigorous, physically attractive, she ugly, misshapen, unhealthy, no beauties of the soul would have stirred in him the wish to make her his wife. He bowed his head in awe before the greater spirituality of woman; even a thoughtless London girl brought up among worldly surroundings and low ideals was capable of higher flights than the most refined and least carnal of men. And he had presumed to patronise, almost to look down on her, because she had not dulled the edge of her originality with much reading. After all, why did he hesitate? Had he not dreamed of some such possibility as this, yet hardly dared to hope for it? Was it likely that two women would be found willing to overlook his many deficiencies? was not this precisely the one chance of his life? His mother had said she wished him to marry. His mother! Strange that he had not thought of her sooner! He would go and consult his mother; she would know better than any one how to advise him.

Lady Charmington listened indulgently to his recital. She did not seem surprised.

‘I thought all that poetry reading would come to something of the sort,’ she said.

‘I can’t make out now,’ said Sainty, ‘whether what is troubling her is anything more than resentment of idle gossip, the natural repulsion of a delicate-minded girl from having her name coupled with a man’s.’

‘Oh, I suspect it is more,’ said his mother. ‘But you? Are you fond of the girl on your side?’

‘I don’t know that I am in love with her, even now, and I certainly never dreamed of the possibility of her being in love with me.’

‘Well, her mother certainly gave you to understand that she was; it is unfortunate if you have made the poor girl care for you, and don’t feel you can return it.’

‘Good heavens, mother! If it were possible that such a creature had really stooped to love me, I ought to thank her on my knees.’

‘I don’t quite see that; but I should be sorry to have any one able to say that you had trifled with her. You see, her mother left her in my charge; and I suppose I ought not to have let you be so much alone together.’

‘But surely,’ cried Sainty, ‘you don’t think I am capable of taking advantage of the confidence reposed in me, to—to—— Oh! the idea is ludicrous; you must see its absurdity.’

‘I must say you have given the girl every reason to think you liked her,’ said his mother judicially. ‘I have never seen you show the same desire for anybody’s society before; it is not surprising if she mistook the nature of your attentions. Pretty girls are not in the habit of having young men so devoted to the improvement of their minds.’

‘I would not “behave badly,” as people call it, for worlds,’ said Sainty. ‘I only can’t get over the extreme grotesqueness of its being possible for me to do so. In spite of both you and Lady Eccleston, it still seems to me quite incredible that I should rouse any such feeling in her.’

‘There is a very simple way of finding out,’ said Lady Charmington.

‘But how if in her kindness and inexperience she is mistaking pity, gratitude, affection—call it what you will—for Love? It is possible even (God forgive me for thinking of such a thing!) that the surroundings, the place, the name, the whole business may have acted on her almost unconsciously, and helped her to mistake her own heart.’

‘Judge not,’ said Lady Charmington, with all the air of one who had never done such a thing in her life; ‘I should be sorry to think so badly of the poor child as that.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean to blame her. I am sure she would not consciously have let such considerations weigh with her; but it seems so abnormal that any woman should feel anything like love for me, that I am still trying to find some explanation to fit the facts.’

Lady Charmington laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘My dear boy,’ she said, ‘you are not called upon to understand her feelings; what you have got to do is to try and understand your own. It has been the dearest wish of my heart to see you happily married; especially since your brother’s behaviour has brought such bitter sorrow and disgrace upon us all. Here is a nice, good girl, well brought up, and I think she loves you. The question is whether you like her well enough to make her your wife.’

Sainty shook his head. ‘The question is whether I could make her happy,’ he said; ‘what have I to give her in exchange for the priceless treasure of a good woman’s love?’

Dinner that evening was a cheerless meal. Lady Charmington, never a great talker, was more than ordinarily silent. Belchamber made several attempts to start a conversation on indifferent subjects, and Lady Eccleston chattered feverishly, with one eye on him and one on her daughter, who sat sullen and defiant and ate nothing. Sainty’s heart smote him as he looked on her. Whether their two mothers were right or not, he would speak to her after dinner. If she took him, he would consecrate his life to her happiness. If, as he still thought far more likely, their wishes had misled them, and she did not care for him, she had only to refuse him, and her pride was healed. Then, when her friends said, ‘We thought you were going to marry Lord Belchamber,’ she would only have to say, ‘He wanted me to, poor man, but I couldn’t do it.’ That he was thinking entirely of her happiness showed how little he was really in love with her, but that neither affected his decision nor seemed to him to matter in the least.

Lady Charmington was a skilled and experienced knitter, and Lady Eccleston, who kept a bit of property crochet to hook at when she was with other women who worked, became surprisingly interested in the intricacies of the garment on which her friend was engaged. Her voluble inquiries and apologies for her own stupidity kept up a running accompaniment to the click-clack of the needles and Lady Charmington’s occasional terse explanations. Cissy had withdrawn to the extreme other end of the long room in which they sat, and pretended to immerse herself in a book. Sainty drew a chair up to hers, so as to interpose the view of his own back between her and the two older women.

‘Miss Eccleston,’ he said, ‘I have got something I want to say to you.’

Cissy looked up from her book. ‘Yes?’ was all she said. Her attitude expressed only weariness; she did not appear to be at all fluttered.

‘You are worried, unhappy,’ Sainty went on. ‘I am afraid you have been annoyed by people gossiping about your stay here, about the relations between you and me.’ He spoke in a low voice, for her ear alone; he was looking into her eyes, trying to surprise some indication of what effect his words had on her. Cissy did not look down or betray any embarrassment.

‘I suppose mamma told you that?’ she said.

‘I can’t bear to see you like this, and to know that, however unintentionally, I am the cause.’

‘Oh! that’s all right; I am sure you meant nothing but what was kind.’

‘Miss Eccleston—Cissy, I want to tell you I am quite well aware of the extreme unlikelihood of your being able to care for me. I understand that you should be angry and sore at vulgar people’s mistaking the nature of our friendship. I am not silly or vain enough to suppose that you would be willing to marry me; but remember if any one ever says anything more to you about this, your position is quite simple; you have only to say you have refused me——’

Cissy never shifted her calm, level gaze. ‘Lord Belchamber,’ she said quietly, ‘am I to understand that you are proposing to me?’

‘I don’t for a moment expect you to accept me; I just want you to know, and other people to know, that if you don’t it is entirely because you don’t wish to.’

‘I see; you mean you will make me a sham proposal, on the distinct understanding that I say “no,” so that I may have the satisfaction of telling my friends that I might have been a marchioness if I’d liked; but you’d be awfully sold if I said “yes.”’

‘You know I don’t mean anything of the sort,’ said Sainty. ‘But I know how hopeless it is that a girl like you should care for a man like me, and I wouldn’t insult you by supposing that anything I have to offer could make any difference. I don’t want to add to your troubles the pain of thinking I had hoped you might accept me and that you have got to disappoint me.’

‘Then it is a bonâ fide offer that you are making me?’ said Cissy sardonically; her tone expressed anything but exultation, and though she still looked at him her eyes seemed to be looking at some one else a long way off. ‘It’s the queerest proposal, I should think, any one ever made,’ and she gave a little dry laugh. ‘Take care I don’t accept it. Whatever you may think, a little pauper like me might well be tempted by what you have to offer, as you call it.’

‘I don’t like to hear you talk like that,’ Sainty said. ‘I know it is only a joke, but there are things I don’t like joked about. That’s the way you used to talk, but you’ve been so different lately.’

‘Lord Belchamber,’ said Cissy, ‘let’s understand one another. If you are making me an offer out of chivalry, that I may have an answer to people’s malicious chatter, I can only say I’m very much obliged to you; but if you really want me to marry you, I’m quite ready to do so. I can’t say fairer than that, can I? After all,’ she added in a softer tone, ‘quite apart from worldly considerations, I think I might do much worse for myself; you’ve been very good to me, and you’re a much better sort than—than most of the men I’ve met,’ and for the first time she looked away, and gave a little sigh.

Sainty was much moved. ‘Cissy,’ he said, ‘do you really mean that in spite of everything you think you could love me a little?’ and he tried to take her hand; but at the touch of him the girl flung herself back into the furthest corner of the big chair in which she sat, and her glance once more crossed his, steel-bright like a rapier. ‘Do I understand,’ she asked, ‘that I have your authority to announce our engagement to our respective parents?’

Sainty stared blankly; he could only nod. Cissy wheeled her chair sharply back, and called out, ‘Mamma! Lord Belchamber has proposed to me, and I have accepted him.’

Lady Eccleston was across the room in two bounds. ‘My darling, what a way to tell me such a thing! You really are the strangest child. What can Lord Belchamber and Lady Charmington think of you? Dear Lady Charmington, you must forgive my Cissy; she’s so excitable, I think happiness has turned her head a little; and mine too, for that matter, for it would be useless to pretend I’m not delighted, only it is all so sudden, so unexpected,’ and she clasped her daughter to her heart, and kissed and wept over her in the most approved fashion. Cecilia did not return her mother’s kisses; she looked at her with a very queer eye indeed, before which Lady Eccleston’s effusiveness drooped a little. She turned to her future son-in-law and held out both her hands. ‘Dear Sainty (I may call you Sainty?), I must kiss you too,’ she cried.

As Sainty submitted to the threatened salute, it struck him as grimly humorous that it should not be his intended who kissed him, but her mother.

Cissy crossed the room, and picked up the ball of wool which Lady Eccleston had shed in her rapid transit, and by which she was still fastened like a spider to the place where she had been sitting. ‘Lady Charmington,’ she said, ‘mamma has adopted your son with great readiness; have you nothing to say to me? Are you not pleased?’

Lady Charmington had risen and laid aside her work. ‘Of course I am pleased,’ she said; ‘I have wished, of all things, to see Sainty married; but, my dear,’ she added, something in the girl’s manner seeming to strike her as peculiar, ‘I hope you are not taking this solemn step lightly; have you examined your heart, and asked God’s blessing on what you are doing? Are you sure you love my son enough to be happy with him, and to make him happy?’

But Lady Eccleston was a whirlwind of tears, protestations, laughter, and congratulation; she caught them all up, and swept them away in the current of her rejoicing. No one else was allowed to say anything.

Sainty also had drawn near, and now stood before his mother. She took a hand of each of the young people in hers, and said solemnly ‘God bless you, my children.’

At the moment Sainty had a vision of the intensity with which she had cursed her other son, on a like occasion, and thought irresistibly of the fountain that ‘sent forth sweet water and bitter.’ The context rang in his head like a knell: ‘My brethren, these things ought not to be.’

CHAPTER XVI

The wedding was fixed for the first week in June. As Lady Charmington said, there was no reason for delay, though it must be owned that neither of the young people seemed very eager to press on the date. Lady Eccleston could not have borne a wedding in Lent, and Lady Charmington had a lingering old Scottish superstition, of which she was heartily ashamed, against May marriages. All things considered, the beginning of June seemed plainly indicated. Everybody would be in town then, and it was to be a London wedding. Cissy grumbled a good deal at having to miss the season; but her mother affected to treat her lamentations as a joke.

‘Of course she doesn’t mean it,’ she said, in answer to Sainty’s expression of his willingness to consult Cissy’s wishes in everything. ‘You know how absurd my children are; they always must make a joke of everything, but it doesn’t mean that their hearts are not in the right place; under all their nonsense, which I never check, for I do so love to see them merry, they have very serious feelings about all the big things of life.’

A cousin of Lady Eccleston’s, who was married to a newly-made peer with a large income, and who had never before shown the slightest inclination to do much for her poorer kinsfolk, expressed her approval of Cissy’s brilliant match by offering the use of her house for the occasion.

‘It is very good of dear Louisa,’ said Lady Eccleston, ‘and I must own we should have been sadly squashed in our little bicoque. Still, if we hadn’t always been as sisters, I couldn’t have taken it from her. Poor dear! It is such a bitter regret to her having no children of her own. Naturally, mine are a great deal to her; and I can quite understand her pleasure in having Cissy married from her house. Don’t think I’m ungrateful to the dear creature, Sainty, but I own in my heart I would rather have had the girl go to her bridal from her own and her mother’s little home; but that is entre nous, my dear boy; I wouldn’t hurt poor Louisa’s feelings for worlds.’

Sainty found being engaged very different from anything he had read of it. Things seemed so little changed with him, that he wondered at times if it could really be he who was to be married in a few weeks. Was it possible that at a date definitely fixed, and not very far distant, his whole being was to undergo this tremendous transformation, was henceforth to be linked in closest union with a creature of whom he knew practically nothing, and that not for a season, like any other circumstance in life, but as long ‘as they both should live,’ ‘till death did them part’? The prospect terrified rather than attracted him.

Sometimes he tried to feel elated at the thought that he was to join the ranks of normal happy people who love and are loved, was to lead about a wife like other men, and hold up his head among his fellows. He told himself that this supremest gift was far beyond anything he had dared to hope. It was to no purpose. He might be flattered, grateful, touched, but he was conscious of none of that blissful thrill that is said to transfigure existence and make a heaven on earth. Sometimes he wondered how it had all come about so suddenly. Everything he had done had seemed not only natural, but inevitable at the time. He had walked into the situation as simply as going in to dinner; yet now there were moments when the thought of what they had both undertaken appalled him. He was as frightened for Cissy as for himself. Did she know what she was doing, what it meant? A dozen times a day he recalled the scene in the library, her hard, unflinching gaze, the mocking tones of her voice. Was that the way that a woman made the ‘irrevocable sweet surrender’ to a man who had won her heart? If she had made a mistake, if she did not love him, ought she not still to be saved from the fate she had accepted, even at the eleventh hour?

He saw extremely little of his betrothed. He had never had much to do with engaged couples, but he had an impression that they were generally left a good deal alone together, that people and things combined to respect the privacy of mutual love; yet from the day of his engagement it was no exaggeration to say that he had hardly seen Cissy alone for five minutes. It is true that she had not actually left Belchamber next morning; but after their surprising freedom from other claims, both she and her mother seemed now all impatience to be gone, and during the time that they remained, they were mostly shut up in their own rooms announcing the event to a hundred correspondents, or dashing off their thanks for the congratulations that arrived by every post. ‘She must really get home, and begin to see about clothes; there was none too much time, and this was such a bad time of year; just when every one was busy.’ Cissy was sure, if she delayed another day, she ‘shouldn’t have a decent rag to her back, and should have to be married in her petticoats.’

From the day they went to town there began a round of shoppings and tryings-on, of scribbling notes, unpacking, cataloguing, and rapturously thanking for wedding-presents, which, as Cissy was marrying a rich man with a house full of beautiful things, were, of course, far more numerous and costly than if she had married a curate, or a captain in a marching regiment. Then the list of people to be invited to the wedding had to be discussed ad infinitum, at first with regard to the size of the house in Chester Square, and after the cousin’s offer, to be enlarged, amended, and corrected. With every fresh batch of presents, the number swelled of those whom it was deemed indispensable to ask, till it seemed to Sainty that there was not a stranger in the whole great indifferent city who had not been called in to assist at his nuptials.

He also had come to town, as in duty bound, and was staying with his uncle Firth, but though he spent several hours a day in Chester Square, he found himself horribly in the way there. Lady Eccleston and Cissy sat squashed sideways by the open drawers of their respective writing-tables, like people playing a perpetual duet on two organs with all the stops pulled out. The absurdly inadequate pieces of furniture on which women transact business became so littered with lists, letters, acceptances, refusals, the drawers so bulged with stacks of silver-printed invitations and stamped envelopes, that the little hands with the scratching pens seemed by their perpetual movement to be feverishly preserving an ever narrowing space for themselves, as ducks keep a hole open in a rapidly freezing pond.

Of happy interchange of rapturous feelings, murmured talks in quiet corners, or those long palpitating silences that lovers know, too blissful to be marred by talk, our engaged couple had no experience. Though Sainty was far too delicate-minded for the mere physical aspects of courtship to appeal strongly to his imagination, it did occur to him that an occasional embrace was not inappropriate between people about to be married; but on the one occasion when he attempted anything of the sort, he had been repulsed with such energy and decision that he had immediately desisted. He had a conviction that Cissy thought him a fool for accepting defeat so easily, but to struggle for a kiss like an enamoured costermonger was repugnant to all his ideas. So he continued to meet and greet his promised bride as though she were the most indifferent of strangers.

One morning at breakfast he asked his uncle if he ought not to make his betrothed a present. Lord Firth came out from behind the morning paper with a bound.

‘My dear boy! do you mean to say you haven’t done so?’

‘Not yet,’ said Sainty; ‘but I supposed, of course, I should have to.’

‘Not even a ring?’ asked Lord Firth. Sainty was forced to admit it.

‘Why, the very day she accepted you, you ought to have given her a ring; if you hadn’t got one fit to offer her, you should have telegraphed to town at once for some. You must get one at once and take it to her; and, of course, you must give her other things too, a tiara or necklace or something really handsome, and a bag or dressing-case. You know the kind of thing. Find out from her mother what she’s got, and which she would like, and get the duchess to help you choose things; she knows what’s what. They must think it very odd that you haven’t done it already.’

‘There are the emeralds,’ said Sainty.

‘Of course she’ll have them to wear,’ said his uncle, ‘but you can’t give them to her, because they are heirlooms. As it happens, the one thing you are rather poor in is jewellery. Your grandmother had a lot, but it was her own, and you may believe she didn’t leave any behind her; your mother never cared for it, and never had much. She will probably give your wife, or leave her, what she has; but of course you must see that she has the proper things, and do the thing well. Don’t be stingy about it.’

The duchess was delighted to help, and echoed Lord Firth’s astonishment at Sainty’s dilatoriness in the matter.

‘You really are the most extraordinary boy,’ she said. ‘I’m just going for my walk; we’ll go round to Rumond’s at once and see what he’s got.’

‘We’ve been expecting a visit from your lordship,’ said the great jeweller unctuously, ‘ever since we heard the happy news. May I be permitted to offer my congratulations on the event? We have always had the honour of supplying your family, and hoped that on such an occasion you would not desert us. I was remarking to Mr. Diby only the other day that I had been wondering we did not get a telegram to go down to Belchamber—either he or I would have been delighted; but you preferred to wait till you came to town: quite right, quite right.’

They were ushered into a little sanctum, where presently on a mat of dark blue velvet were displayed treasures which made Sainty blink, and of which the prices gave him cold shivers down his back. The duchess handled and appraised the gems with the sangfroid of long habit; but her grandson had never in his life had occasion to buy any jewellery, and had not the faintest idea of what such things were worth. To deck the bright curls of a woman with the cost of a hospital, or hang the price of a working-men’s college round her neck, seemed to him absolutely vicious; it had a horrible flavour of that life into which he had obtained his only glimpse at Arthur’s supper-party—poor Arthur, whom almost alone he would have cared to have near him on his wedding-day, and who he knew would not be there, because his wife could not be asked.

He left the shop with a horrible sense of guilt, and a feeling that the act which in him would be applauded as a fitting generosity was very much in the same category with his brother’s prodigalities, not differing in kind, but only so much more blameworthy as it was so much greater in degree. Arthur, he felt sure, would not have hesitated to hang the girl of his heart in jewels, nor have wasted a thought on what it cost, and again he wondered whether his qualms were the result of his well-known parsimony, or one more proof that he was not really in love with her who was to be his wife.

It was soon clear that Cissy did not share his views on these subjects; the evening on which his presents arrived in Chester Square was the only occasion since their betrothal on which she expressed anything resembling affection for him. Her eyes sparkled like the diamonds in her little crown as she tried the things on, and pirouetted about the room with them. She waltzed up to Sainty and dropped him a deep curtsey. ‘How does my lord and master think I look?’ she said coquettishly; and then in a sudden gust of gratitude she caught his hands in hers, and for the first time bent forward and kissed him. Sainty blushed hotly; this kiss, which spontaneously given would have meant so much to him, was like the stamp on a receipt for cash value received; and it was the last, as it had been the first, of their singular courtship.

As the weeks passed, Cissy grew stranger and more unlike herself. The intervals of feverish gaiety, which had marked the earlier stages of her engagement, became rarer, and were succeeded by fits of gloom and depression that seemed utterly foreign to her nature. Whatever she might be at other times, that came to be the mood in which she invariably received Belchamber. She never willingly addressed him, and there were days when it seemed beyond her power to speak peaceably to him. Sometimes she was so rude that Lady Eccleston would playfully remonstrate, or Tommy would burst out with, ‘Hang it all, Cissy, you’ve no right to speak to Sainty like that. If I was him, I’m jiggered if I’d stand it.’

They had never from the first been allowed many unwitnessed interviews, but now it seemed to Sainty that it was Cissy herself who carefully avoided any occasion of finding herself alone with him, and if ever she could by no means escape, she would take refuge from his attempts at conversation in sullen monosyllables, and sometimes even in absolute silence.

One day he asked her in desperation if she felt she had made a mistake—if she wanted to be released. ‘It is not too late,’ he said, ‘but it soon will be; if you repent of what you have done, if you want me to give you back your freedom, in mercy to yourself, to me, speak while there is yet time.’

‘Cissy,’ he pleaded, after waiting in vain for any answer, ‘if you don’t feel that you love me enough, don’t do a thing that will ruin both our lives.’

‘Do I seem as if I loved you?’ she asked brutally.

‘So little, that I can’t help feeling that the idea of marrying me is repugnant to you. If so, never mind me; have the courage to put a stop to the whole thing; a word from you will do it.’

‘Oh! will it? It is not as simple as all that.’

‘I will help you in any way I can; I will do anything you want.’

Cissy continued to stare into the fire in silence; she had never once looked at him. ‘I don’t know what I do want,’ she said at last, hopelessly.

Sainty was about to say more, but at that moment, with a great admonitory rattling of the door-handle, Lady Eccleston hurried in, with her arms full of parcels.

‘More presents, children,’ she cried gaily; ‘here, Sainty, come and take this top one off, or I shall drop it. That makes three hundred and seventy-nine. Ouf! I’m glad I’ve no more daughters to marry.’

‘Listening! I thought so,’ cried Cissy, starting up, and without a glance at the gifts from which her mother was beginning to remove the wrappings she left the room. At No. 379, fans and smelling-bottles, and even small articles of jewellery, were becoming a drug in the market. Lady Eccleston got very red, but took no notice, affecting to be absorbed in undoing a bit of ribbon that had got into a knot. ‘“With best wishes, Mr. and Mrs. Bonham Trotter,”’ she read; ‘really very good of them. We hardly know them, and I hadn’t meant to ask them. It is the seventeenth pair of paste buckles, but they are pretty though not old, and they come in for shoes. Who’s this? “Every good wish, Mr. Austin Pryor.” What a beauty! It is the prettiest fan she has had; really charming! What can this be? A pincushion! “Fondest love from Miss Henrietta Massinger.” What rubbish. I wish people wouldn’t send all this trash. Give me the green book on my writing-table, Sainty, and let’s enter them before I forget it. Three more notes for that poor child to write, and she’s tired out; any one can see it.’

‘Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, ‘do you think Cissy’s only tired? To me she seems very unhappy——’

‘Tired, my dear boy, worn out; her nerves are in fiddle-strings; I shall be thankful for her sake when it’s all over,’ and she murmured as she wrote, ‘Pair of paste buckles, Mr. and Mrs. Bonham Trotter, 377. Tortoiseshell fan, Watteau subject, Mr. Austin Pryor, 378. Embroidered velvet horseshoe pincush——’

‘Do stop writing a minute, and listen to me,’ said Sainty. ‘It’s your daughter’s happiness that is at stake. Tell me, truly, do you think she loves me?’

‘Loves you! My dear Sainty, what a question! Of course she loves you,’ cried Lady Eccleston. ‘Miss H. Massinger, No. 379,’ and she looked up with a bright smile, as she rubbed energetically on the blotting-paper. ‘Have you been having a lovers’ quarrel?’ she asked.

‘No, no, nothing of that sort; but you yourself must have seen how oddly she behaves. She never will be alone with me for a minute if she can help it; she hardly ever speaks to me, and if I speak to her, as often as not she doesn’t answer me. It is the queerest way of showing love.’

Lady Eccleston smiled again, a little indulgent smile full of finesse.

‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘is that all? How little you know girls. Can’t you understand that to a girl of Cissy’s temperament, so absolutely pure and modest, marriage represents the unknown, the terrible; the prospect of it fills her with a thousand tremors and apprehensions. Believe me, a girl who can approach her wedding-day with calm nerves and a cheerful, smiling face, is either a cow, and has no sensibilities, or else she knows a great deal too much.’

‘But she looks at me really as if she hated me,’ Sainty persisted. ‘If she has mistaken her feelings, if the idea is repugnant to her, if she feels that, having once given her word, she is bound, either out of consideration for me, or fear of all the talk, to go through with things, is it not our duty, yours and mine before all others, to save her from herself while there is yet time?’

‘Dear modest fellow! Every word you say makes me love you more, and convinces me how exactly you are suited to such a nature as Cissy’s; I see how well you will understand her; how patient, how gentle you will be with her. As to her behaviour to you, I know; I feel for you a dozen times a day; but you must not doubt her affection. Good gracious! I treated my poor dear husband a thousand times worse when we were engaged. My mother used to say she didn’t see how he stood it; but the dear man had endless patience; he never doubted; and he soon succeeded in reconciling me to my fate,’ added the lady, with a modest simper, ‘when once we were married.’

‘Maidenly tremors are all very well,’ said Sainty, ‘but Cissy’s behaviour gives me the impression of a much deeper seated repugnance. Don’t, for pity’s sake, let her wreck her life if she isn’t sure she cares enough for me to marry me.’

‘You are generous, considerate, unselfish as ever,’ cried Lady Eccleston. ‘But trust me who know her so well. My dear Sainty, do you suppose if I were not absolutely sure this marriage was for my child’s happiness, that I, her mother, who must have her welfare at heart, should not be the first to oppose it?’

After that there seemed nothing more to be said. Still Sainty was not satisfied, and he determined to carry his perplexities to his uncle, on whose sterling commonsense he had often leaned comfortably in boyhood.

Lord Firth looked grave, and pursed up his mouth judicially.

‘This is awkward,’ he said, ‘infernally awkward. Do you mean to say you want to get out of it?’

‘Oh no! not for myself at all. I don’t say I’m desperately in love; but I don’t know that I ever should be. As long as I thought Cissy cared for me, I was very much honoured, and ready to devote my life to making her happy; but as the time comes nearer, I am more and more convinced that she does not love me. She may have felt sorry for me; she may have let herself be dazzled by what she would gain in a worldly way. I don’t pretend to understand why she took me; but I am sure that she repents what she has done, that, if it could be managed for her, she would be glad to be released.’

‘Have you told her so? Have you offered to release her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what did she say?’

‘She said nothing. When I pressed her she said she didn’t know what she wanted. Then her mother came in, and Cissy went out of the room.’

‘Did you say anything about it to the old woman?’

‘Yes; I said what I’ve just told you.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘Oh, she said girls were always like that, that I didn’t understand them—which God knows I don’t—that a modest girl was always in a funk before marriage, and that she would be all right afterwards.’

‘Hm,’ said Lord Firth. ‘Well, I’m an old bachelor, and don’t know much about them either; they’re queer creatures. I always vaguely distrust that Eccleston woman; but I’ve no reason for supposing she would sell her daughter, and I must say the girl never struck me as being particularly under her mother’s thumb. On the contrary, she’s always been rather pert to her when I’ve seen her.’

‘I can’t make it out; it all seems a hopeless tangle,’ said poor Sainty.

‘The whole business struck me, when I heard of it, as being rather rash and ill-advised,’ said his uncle. ‘If I had been consulted, I should have suggested you had better both have been a little surer of your own feelings before announcing the engagement. I suspected your mother and Lady Eccleston of cooking up the affair when I heard of the Ecclestons being so much at Belchamber, but I didn’t feel called upon to interfere. It was obviously desirable that you should marry, and if you fancied Miss Cissy, I knew nothing against the girl, though I don’t much care for the mother. Besides, you are of age, and capable of arranging your own life without the interference of a guardian.’

‘Then you think there is nothing to be done?’

‘I don’t see what. You say you’ve offered the girl to break it off, and she didn’t seem to wish it, or at least wasn’t sure, and that her mother assured you she was only shy. What more can you do? If you want to back out, it’s another matter. Though it would look very bad so near the time, I suppose it might be done.’

As a last resort, Sainty wrote to his mother, though he felt sure what her answer would be; and sure enough Lady Charmington wrote with no uncertain pen. ‘If you had any misgivings you had better not have been in such a hurry to propose. Now it is altogether too late to go back on your word. I consider that you are bound in honour almost as if you were already married. It would be abominable to throw the girl over at the eleventh hour, when she has got her things, and all the invitations are out for the wedding. Think of the mortification to her, of the scandal it would cause. People might even say you had found out something against her. It would be enough to prevent her making another match, for every one would know of it, and talk about it.’

Sainty was struck for the hundredth time with the inevitability of his mother’s misapprehension. She passed over in silence all question of Cissy not caring for him, which was the one point on which he had insisted, and instantly assumed that his misgivings arose from nothing but the fatal weakness of his character, which made flight his one impulse in face of any decisive act.

Sainty had made his last effort, and proceeded to drift resignedly with the stream. There was just one other person to whom he had momentarily thought of applying for counsel and help, and that was his old friend Mrs. de Lissac; but Alice had behaved rather strangely, he thought, about the whole matter. On first coming to London, he had gone to see her as a matter of course; but though she had made a grand dinner for him and Cissy in honour of the engagement, and had showered magnificent presents on them both, the old cordial welcome was somehow lacking. She seemed ill at ease with him, and had fluttered hastily away from all attempts on his part to talk about Cissy, displaying positive terror if he showed any disposition to become confidential.

Nothing was easier than to discourage Sainty from talking about himself. If his confidences were not met, as Alice de Lissac had always hitherto met them, more than half-way, they died a natural death.

The day of Belchamber’s nuptials dawned inevitably in its turn. No convulsion of nature destroyed Lord Firth’s comfortable bachelor quarters, or buried the north side of Chester Square in ruins. Sainty got through the morning somehow, in a sort of waking dream, listening abstractedly to Gerald Newby, who had come up from Cambridge at his request to act as his ‘best man,’ and had much to say on many subjects, from the marriage-service of the Church of England—of some parts of which he strongly disapproved—to the tyranny of custom which imposed the high hat and frock coat, garments neither comfortable, convenient, nor æsthetically beautiful.

Lady Charmington, who was staying at Roehampton with old Lady Firth, brought her mother in for an early lunch as the wedding was fixed for half-past two.

At the appointed time Sainty found himself planted by a great bank of palms and heavy-scented white flowers that made him feel sick. From where he stood the whole great church was visible. Dimly, as through a mist, he could descry his mother, straight and stern, in puritanical drab, beside the huddled white chuddah and nodding plumes of his grandmother, the duchess strapped into a petunia velvet, with a silver bonnet whose aigrette seemed to sweep the skies, his Aunt Eva in a Gainsborough hat, taking rapid notes for the Looking-glass, and Claude, slim, cool, and elegant, his beautifully gloved, pearl-grey hands crossed upon his cane, which he had rested on the seat beside him as he stood sideways looking for the bride. Behind them a sea of faces, mostly unknown, of light colours and black coats, of feathers, flowers, and laces, stretched back to where, in a cloud of pink and white, the bridesmaids clustered round the door, holding the great bouquets of roses he had so nearly forgotten to order for them.

The organ boomed, and the knowing-looking little choristers in their stiff surplices went clattering down the aisle followed by a perfect procession of smug ecclesiastics, among whom Sainty caught a fleeting glimpse of dear old Meakins from Great Charmington. Lady Eccleston, emotional, devotional, and gorgeous as the morning, rustled hastily to her place in the front pew where George and Randolph were already nudging each other and giggling. Then the little white-robed boys began to come back, shrilly chanting, and as the choir separated to right and left Sainty could see Tommy, very solemn and as red as the carnation in his buttonhole, and on his arm a vision of soft shrouded loveliness, coming slowly towards him. All the riddle of the future was hid in that veiled figure. How little he really knew what was in the little head and heart under all that whiteness; was it happiness or misery she was bringing him? an honoured, dignified married life, an equal share of joys and sorrows, ‘the children like the olive branches round about their table’? or a loveless existence, the straining bonds of those unequally yoked, the little sordid daily squabbles that eat the heart, perhaps even shame, dishonour ...? What thoughts for a bridegroom stepping forward to meet his bride at the altar! But who is master of his thoughts?

CHAPTER XVII

The Duke of Sunborough having only a castle in Scotland, a palace in the Midlands, a detached house with a garden in the centre of London, a shooting-lodge in the north of England, and an old manor-house on the border of Wales, had acquired in his stormy youth a little place in Surrey some twelve or fifteen miles from town, a villa with terraces and cedar-trees and hothouses and shady lawns sloping to the river, where, if Rumour may be credited, there had sometimes been fine goings-on, but which was now only used on rare occasions for what it has become the fashion to call ‘week-end parties.’

This modest retreat, which would have seemed to most people a good-sized country-house, had been lent to the young couple for their honeymoon, and thither they repaired, for greater state and privacy, in a large closed carriage with four horses and postillions, their two new dressing-bags sitting solemnly opposite to them on the back seat, while the servants and luggage went by train.

Cissy, attired in the latest fashion and the palest hues, with a very white face and very red eyes and nose, sat huddled in one corner and stared out of the window, occasionally dabbing her features with a little damp ball of a pocket-handkerchief. From the other end of the long seat, on which a third person could easily have found room between the little bride and bridegroom, Sainty watched her compassionately. He contrasted the woebegone aspect and silent aloofness of his companion with the cheerful garrulity of the same young lady when she had driven about the country with him only a few months before. Then, had she seemed depressed or unhappy, he would not have hesitated to ask the cause of her melancholy, to offer help or at least consolation. Why, now, was he afraid to attempt to comfort or even to make a movement towards her? The explanation seemed a strange one: then she had been an acquaintance, now she was his wife. His wife! The words struck with a certain irony on his startled consciousness. It was that half-hour in church which was to make them ‘one flesh’ which had thrust them so far asunder.

At last the silence became unendurable.

‘Cissy,’ he said suddenly, ‘are you very miserable?’

His voice breaking in on the monotonous sounds of their progress startled himself hardly less than his companion.

Cissy shook herself and raised her head.

‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, without looking round.

‘Because of me?’

‘Yes—because of you.’

‘Why, what have I done?’ There was a relief in speech. If she would only talk, no matter what she said; she might abuse him, accuse him—anything was better than that horrible mute damp woe. But Cissy would not answer.

‘Won’t you tell me how I have offended you? What have I done that you don’t like?’

‘You’ve married me,’ she snapped at him.

‘Isn’t that a little unjust?’

‘Most likely it is, horribly unjust. I don’t care if it is. I hate myself and you and everybody, and I wish I was dead.’

‘Cissy, Cissy,’ cried Sainty, dreadfully pained, ‘don’t say such things.’

‘Then why did you ask me?’ she retorted; ‘why can’t you let me alone?’

Sainty told himself that if there was ever a moment for patience it was now; so much might depend on what he said next. He made a motion as though he would take her hand, but at that there flashed out of her face a look so evil, such a genuine naked horror as civilisation seldom lets us show. Sainty fell back appalled; he felt that he had seen in her eyes the very bottom of her feeling towards him, and viewed in the light of that revelation the whole hopelessness of their future relations stood momentarily clear before him. He lay back dazed and frightened, thankful as a man to whom lightning has shown the danger of his surroundings for the friendly darkness that once more veils them from his sight; and for the rest of the drive neither occupant of the carriage said a word.

When at last they drew up at their destination the house was on Cissy’s side, and as soon as a bowing servant had opened the carriage-door she jumped out before Sainty could offer her any assistance. A little shower of rice that had lodged in the folds of her gown fell pattering from her in the precipitancy of her flight, which caused a discreet grin on the damp, red faces of the postillions and of the duke’s under-butler, who had been sent down to help Sainty’s valet with the service.

Belchamber caught a glimpse of an inscription framed in laurel leaves stretched across the lintel, of which all that was clear to him were the words ‘happy pair,’ as he followed his bride into the hall. Here the women who had charge of the house were drawn up together with Cissy’s new maid and his own valet.

The housekeeper had embarked on a little speech, evidently prepared with care. ‘May I be permitted,’ she was saying, ‘on behalf of myself and fellow-servants, to welcome your ladyship on this auspicious occasion, and to wish you and the marquis every happiness, and I am sure we shall do our very best to make you comfortable, and his lordship too.’ Seeing that Cissy stared at the woman with a dull eye, Sainty came to the rescue.

‘I am sure we are both very much obliged to you all,’ he said, ‘but Lady Belchamber is very tired, and would be glad to see her room, if you will show it to her.’ Cissy started at the sound of her new name in the mouth of her husband, but moved off in the wake of the housekeeper, who had dropped from the monumental tone of her welcome into a more comfortable colloquialism. ‘I am sure your ladyship must be tired—it’s a most trying day; and you’ll like to see your room, and would you like a cup of tea or anything after your long drive? Dinner isn’t ordered till eight, and it’s only half-past six. Tea is set out in the morning-room, but it will be quite easy to bring it up to you. I have tried to think of everything, but, of course, anything your ladyship wishes altered....’ Sainty heard her voice growing fainter down the corridor as Cissy and the maid followed her to the staircase. He watched the little procession out of sight and then turned wearily into the first room he came to and dropped with a long sigh upon the gaudy chintz flowers of a comfortable easy-chair. For him, too, the day had been ‘trying’ in more ways than one.

His man brought him a cup of tea and said that ‘her ladyship’ was having hers in her room and was going to rest till dinner-time. He had not yet been four hours wedded, and he noted with shocked surprise the distinct relief with which he hailed the prospect of being free for a little from the strain of his wife’s presence. Four hours! The morning seemed a hundred years ago! For the rest of his natural life had he got always to face this mute resentment? And for what? He had not forced her to marry him; indeed he had adjured her not to. It was unheard of that she should treat him as a criminal; he examined his conscience and found that so far from having anything with which to reproach himself, he had behaved to her throughout with the most scrupulous consideration. Could Lady Eccleston be right, and might Cissy’s behaviour be nothing but the natural nervousness of a modest young woman? Were girls always so terrified in presence of the bridal mysteries? If that were all, she might count on his perfect sympathy. No girl could be more of a stranger to all that side of life than he, or approach it with more invincible shyness. In all their talks it had seemed to him that the balance of true modesty had been rather on his side than hers; he had often been shocked by things she had said, but he could recollect no occasion on which any remark of his had appeared to embarrass her in the least.

Tired nature must have come to rescue him from his many perplexities, for he was recalled to consciousness from a doze by the clock striking a half-hour, and finding it was half-past seven, he decided to go upstairs and get ready for dinner. He had no difficulty in finding his room. Through almost the first door on the upper landing he saw his new brushes adorning the dressing-table, his clothes laid out upon the bed. As he turned in, he noticed the sharp click of a key in another door from that by which he had entered, and which evidently communicated with the next room, for behind it he could hear sounds of people moving about, the opening and shutting of drawers and cupboards, and occasionally Cissy’s voice speaking to her maid. That he heard all these sounds but indistinctly was presently explained to him. Having changed his clothes he tapped discreetly, and receiving no answer proceeded to turn the handle; to his pleasure it yielded; he had been mistaken then; she had not the distrust of him he had fancied. But his gratification was shortlived; there were double doors between the rooms, and the inner one was quite securely fastened.

‘Who’s there?’ cried Cissy sharply.

‘I hope you’re rested,’ Sainty called in a voice which he tried to make pleasantly indifferent; ‘I’m going down, shall I tell them to get dinner, or are you not ready?’

‘I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t wait for me,’ she called back, but made no offer to undo the door.

Dinner was not a cheerful meal, when presently Cissy appeared in a smart new tea-gown, and took her place opposite to him. She crumpled her bread and drank a great deal of water, and played with the wine-glasses and her rings and the lace upon her dress. The meal passed almost in silence, the two men gliding softly about and handing the dishes. Cissy ate nothing, and Sainty felt obliged to break and taste a long succession of undesired meats.

‘They have given us much too much,’ he said. ‘We must tell that good lady to-morrow that we don’t want all these things.’

Cissy assented indifferently.

‘You’re not eating anything,’ Sainty said, after a pause.

‘I’m not hungry. I had tea so late.’

Sainty found himself talking to the servants, and asking for things he did not want, to break the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.

If Cissy ate nothing while the servants were present, she made up for it when they had left the room, by piling a whole dish of strawberries on her plate, covering them with cream, and eating them voraciously. Sainty watched her uneasily, with a sudden dread that she might be going mad.

Things were not much more lively after dinner. The smiling housekeeper had explained that she had not had the drawing-room lit up as she thought they would be more ‘cosy’ in the ‘boodwar.’ Cissy sank deep in a big armchair, and appeared to be immersed in a novel she had brought with her. Sainty tried to read too, but his attention wandered; his eyes fell first on his companion, the swirl of diaphanous drapery that escaped from the arms of her chair and flowed out upon the floor like water between the piers of a bridge, the little foot in its bead-wrought slipper, the hands flashing with new rings that held the gaudy book-cover like a shield between her face and him. From her they roved to her surroundings. The room in which they sat had been decorated about the year 1860 by Italian artists. Trellised grape vines were painted on the walls, mixed with roses and large blue flowers of the convolvulus family. Birds of gay plumage and highly imaginative butterflies were sprinkled about them, and here and there a plump cupid in a pink loincloth stood poised on one foot among the foliage, swinging a basket of flowers. Cupids, indeed, were everywhere; several of them floated round a hook in the sky-coloured ceiling, and made believe that it was not it, but they, who supported the glass chandelier. They crawled in white marble all over the bulging sides of the low flamboyant mantelpiece. On the French clock above it, a gilt Eros perpetually clasped his Psyche, while from the console between the elaborately draped windows, a biscuit representation of the same divinity held his finger discreetly to his lips.

The note of old-fashioned gaiety which is somehow lacking in our more correct modern apartments seemed specially to fit the place to be the frame of love. Its amoretti and impossible flowers, its white marble and gilding and pale silks, suggested accustomed complicity. In presence of what human kisses had those little ormolu lovers continued their indifferent embraces? What scenes of passion had been multiplied in endless reproduction by those tall opposing mirrors? Perhaps in that very room, Sainty thought, his grandmother might have been tempted towards the breaking of those same vows he had that day taken on himself. He came on her portrait presently in a book of beauty, bound with much tooling in faded crimson calf, which he was idly turning over on the red velvet centre-table. He took it over and showed it to Cissy.