BOOK I

CHAPTER I

A HOME-COMING

The lilacs in the station-yard at Kencote were heavy with their trusses of white and purple; the rich pastures that stretched away on either side of the line were yellow with buttercups.

Out of the smiling peace of the country-side came puffing the busy little branch-line train. It came to and fro half a dozen times a day, making a rare contact between the outside world and this sunny placid corner of meadow and brook and woodland. Here all life that one could see was so quiet and so contented that the train seemed to lose its character as it crept across the bright levels, and to be less a noisy determined machine of progress than a trail of white steam, floating out over the grazing cattle and the willows by the brookside, as much in keeping with the scene as the wisps of cloud that made delicate the blue of the fresh spring sky.

The white cloud detached itself from the engine and melted away into the sky, and the train slid with a cheerful rattle alongside the platform and came to a stand-still. Nancy Clinton, who had been awaiting its arrival with some impatience, waved her hand and hurried to the carriage from which she had seen looking out a face exactly like her own. By the time she had reached it her twin sister, Joan, had alighted, and was ready with her greeting.

"Hullo, old girl!"

"You're nearly ten minutes late."

The twins had been parted for a fortnight, which had very seldom happened to them before in the whole nineteen years of their existence, and both of them were pleased to be together once more. If they had been rather less pleased they might have said rather more.

More was, in fact, said by the maid who stood at the carriage door with Joan's dressing-bag in her hand.

"Good-afternoon, Miss Nancy. Lor, you are looking well, and a sight for sore eyes. We've come back again, you see, and don't want to go away from you no more. Miss Joan, please ketch 'old of this, and I'll get the other things out. Where's that porter? He wants somebody be'ind 'im with a stick."

"Hullo, Hannah!" said Nancy. "As talkative as ever! Come along, Joan. She can look after the things."

The two girls went out through the booking-office, at the door of which the station-master expressed respectful pleasure at the return of the traveller, and got into the carriage waiting for them. There was a luggage cart as well, and the groom in charge of it touched his hat and grinned with pleasure; as did also the young coachman on the box.

"I seem to be more popular than ever," said Joan as she got into the carriage. "Why aren't we allowed a footman?"

"You won't find you're at all popular when you get home," said Nancy. "The absence of a footman is intended to mark father's displeasure with you. He sent out to say there wasn't to be one, and William was to drive, instead of old Probyn. Father is very good at making his ritual expressive."

"What's the trouble?" enquired Joan. "My going to Brummels for the week-end?"

"Yes. Without a with-your-leave or by-your-leave. Such a house as that is no place for a well-brought-up girl, and what on earth Humphrey and Susan were thinking of in taking you there he can't think. I say, why did you all go in such a hurry? You didn't say anything about it when you wrote on Friday."

"Because it was arranged all in a hurry. Lady Sedbergh is going through a month's rest cure at Brummels, and she thought she'd have a lively party to say good-bye before she shuts herself up. It was Bobby Trench who made her ask us, at the last moment."

"Joan, is Bobby Trench paying you attentions? You never told me anything in your letters, but he seems to have been always about."

Joan laughed. "I'll tell you all about Bobby Trench later on," she said. "I've been saving it up. Mother isn't annoyed at my going to Brummels, is she?"

"I don't think so. But she said Humphrey and Susan ought not to have taken you there without asking."

"There wasn't time to ask. Besides, I wanted to go, just to see how the smart set really do behave when they're all at home together."

"Well, how do they?"

"It really is what Frank calls 'chaude étoffe.' I don't wonder that Lady Sedbergh wants a rest cure if that's how she spends her life. On Sunday we had a fancy dress dinner—anything we could find—and she came down as the Brummels ghost in a sort of nightgown with her hair down her back and her face whitened. She looked a positive idiot sitting at the head of the table. She must be at least fifty and the ghost was only seventeen."

"What did you wear?"

"Oh, I borrowed Hannah's cap and apron; and Susan's maid lent me a black dress. I was much admired. Susan was a flapper. She had on some clothes of Betty Trench's, who is only fourteen, and about her size. She looked rather silly. Humphrey was properly dressed, except that he wore white trousers and a pink silk pyjama jacket. He said he was Night and Morning. He looked the most respectable of all the men, except Lord Sedbergh, who said he wasn't playing. He's a dear old thing and lets them all do just what they like, and laughs all the time. Bobby Trench was a bathing woman, with a sponge bag thing on his head. He was really awfully funny, but he was funniest of all when he forgot what he looked like and languished at me. I was having soup, and I choked, and Lord Rokeby, who was sitting next to me, thumped me on the back. All their manners are delightfully free and natural."

"Well, you seem to have enjoyed yourself."

"We finished up the evening with a pillow fight. Fancy!—Lady Sedbergh and some of the other older women joined in, and made as much noise as anybody. You should have seen Hannah's face when I did at last get into my room, where she was waiting for me. She said a judgment was sure to fall on us for such goings on."

"A judgment is certainly going to fall on you, my dear. Father will seize you the moment you get into the house and ask you what you mean by it."

"Dear father!" said Joan affectionately. "It is jolly to be home again, Nancy. How lovely the chestnuts are looking! Dear peaceful old Kencote!"

They drove in through the lodge gates, where Joan received a smile and a curtsey, and along the short drive through the park, and drew up beneath the porch of the big ugly square house. Mrs. Clinton was at the door, and Joan enveloped her in an ardent embrace, which was interrupted by the appearance of the Squire, big and burly, with a grizzled beard and a look of self-contented authority.

"I've got something to say to you, Miss Joan. Come into my room."

He turned his back and marched off to the library, in which he spent most of his time when he was indoors.

Joan, after another hug and kiss, followed him. It may or may not have been a sign of the deterioration in manner, wrought by her visit to Brummels, that she winked at Nancy over her shoulder as she did so.

"Aren't you going to kiss me, father?" she asked, going up to him. "I am very pleased to see you again, and I'm sure you're just as pleased to see me."

The face that she lifted up to him could not possibly have been resisted by any man who had not the privilege of close relationship. The Squire, however, successfully resisted it.

"I don't want to kiss you," he said. "I'm very displeased with you. What on earth possessed Humphrey and Susan to take you off to a house like that, without a with-your-leave or a by-your-leave? And what do you mean by going to places where you knew perfectly well you wouldn't be allowed to go?"

"But, father darling," expostulated Joan, with an expression of puzzled innocence, "I knew Lord Sedbergh was an old friend of yours. I didn't think you could possibly object to my going there with Humphrey and Susan. They only got up their party on Friday evening, and there wasn't time to write home. Why do you mind so much?"

"You know perfectly well why I mind," returned the Squire irritably. "All sorts of things go on in houses like that, and all sorts of people are welcomed there that I won't have a daughter of mine mixed up with. You've been brought up in a God-fearing house, and you've got to content yourself with the life we live here. I tell you I won't have it."

"Well, I'm sorry, father dear. I won't do it again. Now give me a kiss."

But the Squire was not yet ready for endearments.

"Won't do it again!" he echoed. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that. If you can't go on a visit to your relations without getting into mischief you'll stop at home."

"I don't want anything better," replied Joan tactfully. "I didn't know how ripping Kencote was till I drove home just now. Everything is looking lovely. How are the young birds doing?"

"Never mind about the young birds," said the Squire. "We've got to get to the bottom of this business. You must have known very well that I should object to your going to a house like Brummels. When that young Trench came here a few years ago you heard me object very strongly to the way he behaved himself. Cards on Sunday, and using the house like an hotel, never keeping any hours except what suited himself, and I don't know what all. Did they play cards on Sunday at Brummels?"

Joan was obliged to confess that they did.

"Of course! Did you play? Did Humphrey and Susan play?"

"Oh no, father; I don't know how to play and I wouldn't think of it," replied Joan hurriedly, to the first question.

"Did you go to church?"

"Oh yes, father. I went with Lord Sedbergh. He is a dear old man, and hates cards now."

"I don't know why you should call him an old man. He is just the same age as I am. It's quite true that we were friends as young fellows. But that's a good many years ago. He has gone his way and I have gone mine. I don't suppose he is responsible for all the folly and extravagance that goes on in his house; still, he lives an altogether different sort of life, and we haven't met for years. If he remembers my name it's about as much as he would do."

"Oh, but he talked a lot about you, father. He told me all sorts of stories about when you were at Cambridge together. He said once you began to play cards after dinner and didn't leave off until breakfast time the next morning."

"H'm! ha!" said the Squire. "Of course young fellows do a number of foolish things that they don't do afterwards. Did anyone but you and Lord Sedbergh go to church on Sunday?"

Joan was obliged to confess that they had been the only attendants.

"Well, there it is!" said the Squire. "Out of all that household, only two willing to do their duty towards God Almighty! I shall give Humphrey and Susan a piece of my mind. I blame them more for it than I do you. But at the same time you ought not to have gone, and I hope you fully understand that."

"Oh, yes, father dear," replied Joan. "You have made it quite plain now. Don't be cross any more, and give me a kiss. I've been longing for one ever since I came in."

The Squire capitulated. "Now run away," he said when he had satisfied the calls of filial affection, and paternal no less. "I've got some papers to look through. What you've got to do is to put it all out of your mind, and settle down and make yourself happy at home. God knows I do all I can to make my children happy. The amount that goes out in a house like this would frighten a good many people, and I expect some return of obedience to my wishes for all the sacrifices I make."

When Joan had left him the Squire went to find his wife.

"Nina," he said, "I'm infernally worried about Joan going to a house like Brummels. The child's a good child, but wants looking after. She ought never to have been allowed to go up to Susan. I thought trouble would come of it when it was suggested."

Mrs. Clinton did not remind her husband that both the twins had stayed with their sister-in-law before, and that beyond a grumble at anybody preferring London to Kencote he had never made any objection.

"I think they ought not to have taken her away on a visit without asking," said Mrs. Clinton. "But Joan and Nancy are grown-up now, and I think they are both too sensible to take any harm by being with Susan. What I feel is that they must see things for themselves, and not be kept always shut up at home."

"Shut up!" repeated the Squire. "That's a foolish way of talking. Home is the best place for young girls; and who could wish for a better home than Kencote? The fact is that this London life is getting looser and more immoral every day. Look what an effect it is having on Humphrey and Susan! What with all that money that old Aunt Laura left them, and the allowance I make to Humphrey, and the few hundreds a year that Susan has, they could very well afford to keep up quite a nice little place in the country, and live a sensible healthy life. As it is they live in a poky flat that you can hardly turn round in, and yet they spend twice as much money as Dick, who is my eldest son, and is quite content to live here quietly in the Dower House and not go running about all over the place. And they spend twice as much as Walter, who has a family to keep. And they don't really get on well together, either. Their marriage has been a great disappointment—a disappointment in every way. The fact is that a young couple without any children to look after and keep them steady are bound to get into mischief, especially if they've got the tastes that Humphrey and Susan have, and enough money to gratify them. Nina, I hate this set of people that they make their friends of. Did you know that that Mrs. Amberley was staying at Brummels?"

"I saw her name in the paper," said Mrs. Clinton.

"A nice sort of woman for a young girl like Joan to be asked to meet! She's a notoriously loose character; and a good many other members of the party are no better than they should be. Lady Sedbergh herself is a frivolous fool, if she's no worse, and as for that young cub who came here a year or two ago, I don't know when I've seen a young fellow I object to more. I believe Sedbergh himself has the remains of decency and dignity; but what does one person count amongst all that vicious gang? Upon my word, Humphrey and Susan ought to be whipped for taking a girl of Joan's age to such a place. The children shan't go to stay with them again. The fact is that they can't be trusted in anything. Well, I can't stay talking here; I must go back to my papers."

In the meantime Joan had retired with Nancy to their own quarters. They still occupied one of the large nurseries as their bedroom, and used the old schoolroom as a place where they could enjoy the privacy necessary for their own intimate pursuits. Their elder sister and three of their brothers were married, their governess had left them at the end of the previous year, and as a rule they had these rooms on the second floor of the East wing entirely to themselves. But at this time, Frank, their sailor brother, was at home on leave, and had taken up his old quarters there. He was a rising young lieutenant of twenty-six, and the twins had been presented to their sovereign and let loose generally on a grown-up world. But between them they managed to produce a creditable revival of the period when the East wing had been full of the noise and games of childhood; for they were all three young at heart and the cares of life as yet sat lightly on them.

"Frank and I have started schoolroom tea again," said Nancy, as she and Joan went up to their bedroom together. "He says he wants eggs, after being out the whole afternoon; and mother doesn't mind. You will preside over the urn at five o'clock."

"Jolly!" said Joan. "Where is Frank?"

"He hacked over to Mountfield to see Jim and Cicely." (Cicely, the eldest of the Clinton girls, had married a country neighbour, Jim Graham, and lived about five miles from Kencote.) "But he said he would be back for tea. I suppose you calmed father down all right?"

"Oh yes. He's a dear old lamb, but he must have his say out. You only have to give him his head, and he works it all off. You know, Nancy, although father is rather tiresome at times, he is much better than all those silly old men you meet about London. He is over sixty, and he doesn't mind behaving like it. A lot of them expect you to treat them as if they were your own age, whether they are married or not."

"You seem to have gone through some eye-opening experiences."

"I have. I feel that I know the world now."

She had taken off her hat, and stood in front of the glass, touching the twined masses of her pretty fair hair. The lines of her slim body, and her delicate tapering fingers, were those of a woman; but the child's soul had not yet faded out of her eyes, and still set its impress on the curves of her mouth.

"Tell me about Bobby Trench."

Joan laughed, with a ringing note of amusement. "Of course you know why we were all given such a sudden and pressing invitation to Brummels," she said.

Nancy jumped the implied question and answer. "Well, it was bound to come sooner or later," she said. "With both of us, I mean; not you only. There is no doubt we possess great personal attractions. But I don't think you have much to boast about, if it's only Bobby Trench. What is he like? Has he changed at all since he came here?"

"Oh, he is just as silly and conceited as ever; but love has softened him."

"I shouldn't want him softened, myself. He'd be sillier than ever. Tell me all about it, Joan. How did he behave?"

Joan told her all about it; and the recital would not have pleased Mr. Robert Trench, if he had heard it. With those cool young eyes she had remorselessly regarded the antics of the attracted male, and found them only absurd. But she had not put a stop to them.

"You know, Nancy," she said guilelessly, "it's all very well to talk as they do in books about a man being able to make a girl like him if he keeps at her long enough; but I am quite sure Bobby Trench could never make me like him—in that way—if he tried for a hundred years. Still, it is rather nice to feel that one is grown up at last."

"The fact of the matter is, you have been flirting with Bobby Trench," said Nancy; "and you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

But Joan indignantly denied this. "What I did," she said, "was to prevent his flirting with me."

There was a moment's pause. Then Nancy said unconcernedly, "I suppose I told you that John Spence came here."

Joan turned round sharply, and looked at her. "No, you didn't," she said.

After another moment's pause, she said, "You know you didn't."

Then came the question: "Why didn't you?"

"He was only here for two nights," said Nancy. "At the Dower House, of course. If I didn't tell you, I meant to."

Joan scrutinised her closely, and then turned away.

"He was awfully sorry to miss you," Nancy said. "He told me to give you his love."

"Thank you," said Joan, rather stiffly.

John Spence was a friend of Dick Clinton, who had managed his estates for him for a year. He had first come to Kencote when the twins were about fifteen, and had impressed himself on their youthful imaginations. He was nearly twenty years older than they, but simple of mind, free of his laughter, and noticeably warm-hearted. He liked all young things; and the Clinton twins had afforded him great amusement. He had been to Kencote occasionally as they were growing up, and the elder-brotherly intimacy with which he had treated them at the first had not altered. He was the friend of both of them, but when he had come twice to Kencote to shoot, during the previous season, he had seemed to show a very slight preference for the society of Joan. It had been so slight that the twins, who had never had thoughts which they had not shared, had made no mention of it between them.

But now, at a stroke, the great fact of sex came rushing in to affect these young girls, who had played with it in a light unknowing way, but had never felt it. They could amuse themselves, and each other, with the amorous advances of Bobby Trench, but the fact that Nancy had omitted to tell Joan of John Spence's visit was portentous, slight as the omission might seem. Their habitual intercourse was one of intimate humour, varied by frank disputes, which never touched the close ties that bound them. But this was a subject on which they could neither joke nor quarrel. It was likely to alter the relations that had always existed between them, if it was not faced at once.

It was impossible for either of them not to face it. For the whole of their lives each had known exactly what was in the mind of the other. Each knew now, and the knowledge could not be ignored.

"Well, he was awfully nice," said Nancy, rather as if she were saying something she did not want to. "I liked him better than ever. But he sent his love to you."

"I don't see why you shouldn't have told me that he had come," said Joan.

But she saw very well, and in the light of her seeing John Spence ceased to be the openly admired friend of her and Nancy's childhood, and became something quite different.

CHAPTER II

A VULGAR THEFT

In the great square dining-room at Kencote the Squire was sitting over his wine, with his eldest and youngest sons.

From the walls looked down portraits of Clintons dead and gone, and of the horses and dogs that they had loved, as well as some pictures that by-gone owners of Kencote had brought back from their travels, or bought from contemporary rising and since famous artists. There were some good pictures at Kencote, but nobody ever took much notice of them, except a visitor now and then.

Yet their presence had its effect on these latest members of a healthy, ancient line. No family portraits went back further than two hundred years, because Elizabethan Kencote, with nearly all its treasures of art and antiquity, had been burnt down, and Georgian Kencote built in its place. Even Georgian Kencote had suffered at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at the hands of a rich and progressive owner; rooms had been stripped of panelling, windows had been enlarged; and, but for a few old pieces here and there, the furniture was massive but ugly. The Clintons were as old as any commoner's family in England, and had lived at Kencote without any intermission for something like six hundred years; but there was little to show it in their surroundings as they were at present. Only the portraits of the last six or seven generations spoke mutely but insistently of the past, and their prototypes were as well-known by name and character to their descendants as if they had been known in the flesh.

To us, observing Edward Clinton, twentieth century Squire of Kencote, with the eldest son who would some day succeed him, and the youngest son, who had taken to one of those professions to which the younger sons of a line undistinguished for all except wealth and lineage had taken as a matter of course throughout long generations, this background of family portraits is full of suggestion. One might ask how much of the continuity of life and habit it represents is stable, how much of it dependent upon fast-changing circumstance. How far is this robust elderly man, living on his lands and desiring to live nowhere else, and the handsome younger man, whose life has been spent in the centre of all modern happenings,—how far are they what they appear to be, representative of the well-to-do classes of modern England; how far is their attitude to the life about them affected by ideas inherent in their long descent? Are they really of the twentieth century, or in spite of superficial modernity, of a time already passed away?

One might say that the life lived by the Squire was the same life, in all but accidentals, as that of the squires who had gone before him, and whose portraits hung on the walls, and that it would be lived in much the same way by the son who was to come after him. And so it was. But the lives of those dead squires had been part of the natural order of things of their time. Their lands had provided for it, and of themselves would provide for it no longer. It was only by the accident of our Squire being a rich man, and being able to leave his son a rich man, that either of them could go on living it. To this extent his life was not based upon his descent, and was indeed as much cut off from that of the previous owners of Kencote as if he had been a man of no ancestry at all, whose wealth, gained elsewhere, enabled him to enjoy an exotic existence as a country gentleman. If wealth disappeared the long chain would be broken, for a reason that would not have broken it before.

But, when that is said, there still remains the whole ponderous weight of tradition, which makes of him something different from the rich outsider who, with no more than a generation or two behind him, or perhaps none at all, comes in to take the place of the dispossessed owner whose land alone will no longer support his state. What that counts for in inherited benevolence and sense of responsibility, qualified by strange spots of blindness where the awakened conscience of a community is beginning to see more clearly, it would be difficult to gauge. What one may say is that some flower whose perfume one can distinguish should be produced of a plant so many centuries rooted; that twenty generations of men preserved from the struggle for existence, and having power over their fellows, should end in something easily distinguishable from a man of yesterday; that such old established gentility should have some feelings not shared by the common mass, some peculiar sense of honour, some quality not dependent upon wealth alone, some clear principle emerging from the mists of prejudice and the mere dislike of all change.

So we come back to the Squire sitting with his sons over their wine, their pictured forebears looking down on them from the walls, and wonder a little whether there is anything in it all, or whether we are merely in the company of a man to whom chance has given the opportunity of ordering his life on obviously opulent lines, like many another with no forebears that he knows anything of.

Dick Clinton had held a commission in His Majesty's Brigade of Guards up to the time of his marriage four years before, and had been very much in the swim of everything that was going on in the world of rank and fashion. Now he lived for the most part quietly at the Dower House, which lay just across the park of Kencote, and busied himself with country pursuits and the management of the estate to which he would one day succeed. He was beginning ever so little to put on flesh, to look more like his father, to lose his interest in the world outside the manor of Kencote and the adjacent lands that went with it. But he was not yet a stay-at-home, as the Squire had long since become, and he and his wife had just returned from a fortnight in London, well primed with the interests of their former associates.

"Have you heard about this business at Brummels?" he said, as he passed the decanter.

The Squire frowned at the mention of Brummels. "No. What business?" he asked.

"Lady Sedbergh has had a pearl necklace stolen. It's said to be worth ten thousand pounds; say five. She says that she kept it in a secret hiding-place, and the only person who could have known where it was is Rachel Amberley. She accuses her of stealing it. There's going to be a pretty scandal."

The Squire frowned more ferociously than ever. "That's the sort of thing that goes on amongst people like that!" he said with disgust. "They have no more sense of honour than a set of convicts. A vulgar theft! And there's hardly one of the whole lot that wouldn't be capable of it."

"Well, I don't know about that," said Dick; "but if Mary Sedbergh can be believed, there's not much doubt that Mrs. Amberley walked off with it. It seems that there's an old hiding-place in the morning-room at Brummels. You press a spring in the wainscot, and find a cupboard."

"There are plenty of those about," said the Squire. "Anybody might find it. Still, I've no doubt that she's right, and it was that Mrs. Amberley who actually did steal it."

Frank laughed suddenly. He was accustomed to suck amusement out of the most unlikely sources, and his father, whether unlikely or not, was one of them. "Why does she think Mrs. Amberley found it?" he asked.

"Because she showed her the hiding-place in a moment of expansion. It isn't just a cupboard behind the panelling. When you've found that you have only begun. There is another secret place behind the cupboard itself. Only Sedbergh and his wife knew of it. It's a secret that has been handed down; and well kept."

"Then why on earth did she tell a woman like Mrs. Amberley about it?" enquired the Squire.

"I don't know; though it's just like her to do it. I think Mrs. Amberley was at school with her, or something of that sort. She had a big party at Brummels, and then emptied the house and went through a month's rest cure there. At the end of the month she looked for her necklace, and found it gone. A diamond star had gone as well; but other things she had put away had been left."

"So, whoever the thief was, she had a month's start," said Frank.

"Yes. Sedbergh was called in, and they both went straight to Rachel Amberley and offered to hush it all up if she would give back the necklace."

The Squire snorted.

"Rachel Amberley bluffed it out. She said she would have them up for scandal if they breathed a word of suspicion anywhere. They have been breathing a good many. In fact, it's all over the place. And nothing has happened yet. Everybody is wondering who will make the first move."

"She won't," said the Squire, who had never met Mrs. Amberley. "I am not in the way of hearing much that goes on amongst people of that sort, now, but she's a notoriously loose woman. That's why I was so annoyed when I heard that Joan had been taken to a house where she was staying. By the by, this affair didn't take place at that particular time, did it?"

"Yes. That's when it happened."

The Squire's face was blacker than ever. "Then it will be known who was of the party," he said. "Our name will be dragged into one of these disgraceful scandals, and every Dick, Tom, and Harry in the country will be talking about us. Upon my word, it's maddening. I suppose I can't prevent Humphrey and Susan keeping what company they please, but it makes me furious every time I think of it—their taking Joan there."

"I don't suppose Joan's name will come out," said Dick. "There were lots of people in the house at the time, and they are not likely to mention all of them."

The Squire was forced to be content with this. "Well, don't say anything about it to her," he said. "It's an unsavoury business, and the less she knows about that sort of thing the better."

"You can't keep her shut up for ever," said Dick; but his father pressed more insistently for silence. "I don't want it mentioned," he said irritably. "Please don't say anything to her—or you either, Frank."

Frank was mindful of this injunction when he next found himself alone with his sisters, which was at tea-time the next day. But he saw no harm in mentioning the name of Mrs. Amberley. What had Joan thought of her during that visit to Brummels, made memorable by the disturbance that had affected her home-coming?

"Oh, I'm sick of Brummels," she said. "Anyone would think it was—well, I won't sully my lips by repeating the name of the place. Anyhow, it was a good deal more amusing than Kencote."

"Kencote is the jolliest place in the world," said Frank. "You and Nancy are always running it down."

"It may be the jolliest place in the world to you," said Nancy, "because you are here so seldom, and you do exactly what you want to do when you are here. It is pretty slow for Joan and me, boxed up here all the year round."

"Well, never mind about that," said Frank, "I want to know how the notorious Mrs. Amberley struck you, Joan."

"Is she notorious?" asked Joan. "She struck me as being old, if you want to know. Much older than mother, although I suppose they are about the same age, and mother's hair is white, and hers is vermilion."

"Did you talk to her at all?"

"Not much. She isn't the sort of person who would care about girls. And I don't suppose they would care much about her, unless they were pretty advanced. I'm not, you know, Frank. I'm a bread and butter Miss from the country. I keep my mouth shut and my eyes open."

"At the same time," said Nancy, "our splendid youth is really a great attraction. If Joan and I had lived in the eighteenth century, we should have been known as the beautiful Miss Clintons. And we should have had a very good time."

"You have a very good time as it is," said Frank, "only you're not sensible enough to know it. You ought not to want anything much jollier than this."

The windows of the big airy upstairs room were wide open to the summer breezes. Outside, the spreading lawns of the garden, bordered by ancient trees, and the grassy level of the park lay quiet and spacious, flooded with soft sunshine. There was an air of leisure and undisturbed seclusion about the scene, which was summed up in this room, retired from the rest of the house, where the happiness of childhood still lingered. It was not surprising that Frank, coming back to it after his long sea wanderings, should have been seized by the opulent tranquillity of his home. He was as happy as he could be, all day and every day, woke up to a clear sensation of pleasure at finding himself where he was, and watched the dwindling tail of his leave with hardly less regret than the end of the holidays had brought him during his schooldays. At twenty-six, with ten years of the sea and the responsibilities of his profession behind him, he had stepped straight back into his boyhood. He was not reflective enough to realise that time would not stand still for him in this way for ever. It seemed to him that, whatever else might change, Kencote would always be the same, and he could always recapture his boyhood there. That was partly why he disliked to hear his young sisters belittling its comparative stagnation, which was to him so delightful. He had thought them absurdly grown-up when he had first come home; but that effect had worn off. He was a boy, and they were children in the schoolroom again, their father and mother downstairs, out of the way of their noise. So it would be when he came home again in two or three years' time. So it would always be, as far as it was in him to look ahead.

But his sisters had other ideas. Their wing-feathers were growing, and they were already beginning to flutter them. Perhaps in after years, whatever happiness might come to them—and all life in the future was, of course, to be happy, as well as much more exciting—they too would look back upon these midsummer months with regret, and wish for their childhood back again.

A few days later Joan and Nancy were taking a country walk with their dogs. They were about a mile away from Kencote, when a motor-car came suddenly along the road towards them, driven by a smart-looking young man in a green hat and a blue flannel suit. The girls were on the grass by the side of the road holding two of the dogs until it should have passed, when to their surprise it stopped, and a cheerful voice called out, "Hullo, Miss Joan! Here's a piece of luck! I was just on my way to see you."

Joan stood upright with a blush on her face, which she would have preferred not to have shown, while Mr. Robert Trench jumped down from the car and advanced to shake hands with her. He also shook hands with Nancy, remarking that he remembered her very well, and should have known her anywhere by her likeness to her sister.

"What remarkable powers of observation you have!" observed Joan, rallying her forces.

Bobby Trench only grinned at her. "Chaffing, as usual!" he said. "But, bless you, I don't mind. I say, I suppose you have heard about this beastly thing that has happened at Brummels—about my mother's necklace?"

"No, I haven't," said Joan.

"What, not heard that it was stolen! Why, it was when you were staying in the house too. Everybody is talking about it. Wherever have you been burying yourself that you've heard nothing?"

"At home at Kencote," replied Joan. "You don't think I brought the necklace away with me, do you?"

Bobby Trench grinned again. "We were talking it over last night," he said. "I think we have seen everybody that was in the house at the time except you, and I said, 'By Jove! I wonder whether Miss Joan noticed anything?' We don't want to leave any stone upturned, so I said I would run down and look you all up. It must be years since I came to Kencote. You were both jolly little kids then."

"I beg your pardon," said Nancy, "we were fifteen. We weren't kids at all."

"I apologise," said Bobby. "Anyhow, I thought it was a chance not to be missed. Now, did you notice anything, Miss Joan? Oh, I forgot; I haven't told you the story yet."

"I think you had better do that first," said Joan.

Bobby Trench then told them the story, and when he came to describe the hiding-place Joan gave an exclamation.

"Is it just where that little Dutch picture hangs?" she asked. "The one with the old woman cleaning a copper pot?"

"Yes. That's the place," said Bobby. "Why? Do you know anything about it?"

Joan's face was serious. "Are you quite sure that Mrs. Amberley took the necklace?" she asked.

"We're about as sure as we could be, unless we had actually seen her doing it. I'll tell you what we have found out afterwards. You didn't see her opening the cupboard by any chance, did you?"

Joan did not reply for a moment. Nancy looked at her with some excitement on her face. "What did you see?" she asked.

Still Joan seemed unwilling to speak, and Bobby Trench said, "If you did see something, you ought to let us know. It's a very serious business. The things stolen are worth pots of money, and we know perfectly well that it can only be Mrs. Amberley who has taken them. Besides, we've pretty well proved it now. We have found people to whom she sold separate pearls; but for goodness' sake don't let that out yet. I only tell you so that you may know that it wouldn't only rest on you."

Joan raised her eyes to his. "I went into the morning-room," she said, "and Mrs. Amberley was standing with her back to me by the fireplace."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Bobby Trench, staring at her as if fascinated.

"She turned sharp round when I came in," said Joan, "and then she asked me if I didn't love old Dutch pictures, and showed me that one. That is why I remembered about it."

"Was she actually looking at it when you came in?"

"Well, no. I don't think she was. It was just a little to the right of where she was standing. I had forgotten all about it, but I remember now that when she mentioned the picture I thought to myself that she seemed to have been looking at the bare panels, and not at the picture at all. Besides, she was blushing scarlet, and it was just as if I had caught her in something."

"By Jove! you must jolly nearly have caught her with the panel open. Did you notice anything odd about the wall she was standing in front of as you came in?"

Joan thought for a moment. "No, I didn't," she said decidedly.

"Had she got anything in her hand?"

Joan thought again. "I didn't notice," she said. "But I believe she kept her hands behind her while she was talking to me. She didn't talk long. Just as I was looking at the picture she suddenly said she had some letters to write, and went out of the room."

Bobby Trench, with growing excitement, asked her further questions—as to the time at which this had happened, as to the exact words that Mrs. Amberley had said.

"We've hit the bull's eye this time," he said. "What a brilliant idea it was of mine to come and ask you! Look here, hadn't we better go and talk to Mr. Clinton about it? He's an old friend of my father's. I expect he'll be pleased to be able to give us a hand up over this business."

"I should think he would be delighted," said Nancy drily. "Will Joan have to give evidence at a trial?"

"Oh yes. There'll be a trial all right. We've got the good lady sitting, now. But you won't mind that, will you, Miss Joan? If you'll both hop in, I'll drive you back. We can take the dogs, too, if you like. I hope Mr. Clinton will be in. I shall be glad to see him again."

CHAPTER III

THE SQUIRE IS DRAWN IN

If Bobby Trench really felt the pleasure he had expressed at the prospect of seeing Mr. Clinton again, it was a sensation not shared by the Squire, when his motor-car came swishing up the drive, and he alighted from it in company with Joan and Nancy.

Some few years before, Humphrey Clinton had brought him to Kencote for some winter balls. Lady Susan Clinton, a distant connection, now Humphrey's wife, and her mother, had been members of the house-party, and trouble had ensued. They belonged to the fast modern world, which the Squire abominated. They had essayed to play Bridge on Sunday; Bobby Trench had tried to get out of going to church, had made havoc of punctuality, had, in fact, seriously disturbed the serene, self-satisfied atmosphere of Kencote. And the Squire had never forgiven him. He was a "young cub," the sort of youth he never wished to see at Kencote again, outside the pale of that God-fearing, self-respecting country aristocracy which was to the Squire the head and front of all that was most admirable and best worth preserving in the body politic.

Bobby Trench had been hardly less free of criticism on his own account. Kencote was a cemetery of the dead, a little bit of Hampstead stuck down ten miles from nowhere, which came to the same thing; its owner was an old clodhopper. Never again would he permit himself to be inveigled into paying such a visit.

Yet here he was, advancing across the turf to where the tea-table was spread in the shade of a great cedar, with an ingratiating smile on his face, and apparently no doubt of the prospective warmth of his welcome.

"How do you do, Mrs. Clinton? Years since I saw you. How do you do, Mr. Clinton? You don't look a day older. The governor sent you messages, in case I should be lucky enough to see you. We are all at Brummels for the week-end. I started at ten this morning; made about a hundred miles of it; lunched at Bathgate. By Jove, you live in a past century here! Wonderful peaceful country, but a bit dull, eh?"

The Squire had somewhat recovered from his surprise during this speech, and was prepared to abide by his principles of hospitality, in spite of his distaste for Bobby Trench, and all he represented. But the last comment aroused his resentment, and emphasised the distance that lay between him and this glib young man.

"We don't find it dull," he said; "but I dare say people who spend their lives rushing about from one place to another and never settling to anything might. They are welcome to their tastes, but the less I have to do with them the better I'm pleased."

Bobby Trench laughed good-humouredly. "Well, it's true we are rather a rackety lot nowadays," he said. "I don't know that you haven't got the best of it, after all. I sometimes think I shouldn't mind settling down in the country myself, and doing a bit of gardening. We've started gardening at Brummels. We quarrel like anything about it; it's the greatest sport. You don't go in for it here, I see. But it's a jolly place. You've got lots of opportunities."

The Squire found himself fast losing patience. It was true that he did not go in for gardening, in the modern way, judging that pursuit to be more fitted for the women of the family. Mrs. Clinton had her Spring garden, in which she was allowed to have her own way, within limits, in the matter of designing patterns of bright-coloured flowers; and she was also allowed a say in the arrangement of the summer bedding, as long as she did not interfere too much with the ideas of the head gardener. But as for altering anything on a large scale, or even additional planting of anything more permanent than spring or summer flowers, that was not to be heard of.

And yet the Squire did love his garden, as he loved everything else about his home. He knew every tree and every shrub in it, and was immensely proud of the few rarities which every old garden that has at some time or other been in possession of an owner who has taken a living interest in it possesses. He knew nothing of the modern nurseryman's catalogue, but would gratefully accept a cutting or a root of something he admired from somebody else's garden, and see that it was brought on well and planted in the right place. He belonged to the days of Will Wimble, who was pleased "to carry a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchange a puppy between a couple of friends that lived perhaps on the opposite sides of the county"; and who shall say that that intimate sort of knowledge of an old-established garden gives less pleasure than the constant changes which modern gardening involves? If his great grandfather, who had called in an eighteenth century innovator to sweep away the old formal gardens of the Elizabethan Kencote, and lay the ground they covered all out afresh, had stayed his hand in the same way, he would have done a good deal better.

The Squire swallowed a cup of tea and rose from his seat. "Well, I have a great deal of work to get through," he said, "so I'll ask you to excuse me. Remember me to your father. It's years since we met, but we were a good deal together as young fellows."

He held out his hand. It was as near a dismissal as he could bring himself to utter under the circumstances. He would have liked to be in a position to tell Bobby Trench that he did not want him at Kencote, and the sooner he went the better; but he could not very well put his meaning into words.

"Oh, but wait a minute," said the totally unabashed Bobby. "I've come over on important business, Mr. Clinton. I particularly want to have a word with you."

"Well, then, come into my room when you have had your tea," said the Squire. "One of the girls will show you the way."

"Well, it's about Miss Joan I wanted to talk to you," persisted Bobby. "Of course, you've heard of that unfortunate business at Brummels when she was there a few weeks ago—my mother's necklace being stolen, I mean."

The Squire's face showed rising temper. "I did hear of it," he said. "Dick told me, and I asked him particularly not to say anything about it to Joan. I don't want my girls to be mixed up in that sort of thing. Have you told her about it?"

Bobby Trench, marking the air of annoyance, chose to meet it with diplomatic lightness. "Well, none of us want to be mixed up with that sort of thing," he said with a smile. "But I'm afraid we can't help ourselves in this instance. Yes, I told Miss Joan. Of course I thought she knew."

The Squire sat down again, the frown on his brow heavier than ever. "I must say it's very annoying," he said. "To be perfectly frank with you, I was annoyed at my daughter being taken to Brummels at all. Your father is an old friend of mine, and I should say the same to him. I don't like the sort of thing that goes on in houses like yours, and I don't want my children to know the sort of people that go to them. I may be old-fashioned; I dare say I am; but to my mind a woman like that Mrs. Amberley is no fit person for a young girl to come into contact with, and——"

"Well, you're about right there," broke in Bobby Trench, who may have been surprised at this exordium, but was unwilling to have to meet it directly. "She's no fit person for anybody to come in contact with, as it turns out. Still, she's all right in a way, you know. She and my mother were friends as girls, and, of course, her people are all right. We couldn't tell that——"

"I don't care who her people were," interrupted the Squire in his turn. "She might be a royal princess for all I care; I say she would still be a disreputable woman. What's happened since only shows that she will stick at nothing. I should have objected just as much to a daughter of mine being asked to meet her if this vulgar theft hadn't happened. In fact, I did object. And a good many other people that haven't got themselves into trouble by stealing necklaces are no better than she is. It's the whole state of society, or what is called such nowadays, that I object to. I won't have my girls mixing with it. There are plenty of good people left who wouldn't have such women as Mrs. Amberley inside their houses, and they can find their friends amongst them. I'm annoyed that you should have said anything to Joan about what has happened, and I don't want the subject mentioned again."

"Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Clinton," said Bobby. "But we were bound to leave no stone unturned to get at the truth of things; and as it turns out Miss Joan will be a very valuable witness on our side. She saw Mrs. Amberley at the hiding-place, and can only just have escaped seeing her take out what was in it. She——"

"What's this?" exclaimed the Squire terrifically.

Joan met his gaze unflinchingly. The state of her conscience being serene, she was in truth rather enjoying herself, and her father's asperities had long ceased to terrify either her or Nancy. "I told Mr. Trench what I saw," she said. "Of course I hadn't thought about it before, because I knew nothing of what had happened."

"What did you see?" enquired the Squire.

She told him. He received the information with a snort. "You saw a lady looking at a picture," he said. "What is there in that? I've no doubt that Mrs. Amberley did take the necklace, but if she is going to be charged with it there's not the slightest necessity for your name to be brought in at all. What you saw amounted to nothing."

"Oh, but I think it did," said Bobby Trench. "It was what she looked like when Miss Joan caught her. You said yourself that she looked as if she had been doing something she oughtn't to have done, and was startled at your coming in, didn't you, Miss Joan?"

"Yes," said Joan. "It was just like that. And she blushed scarlet, and then ran away suddenly."

"The fact is," said her father, "that you have imagined all this, because of what you were told. You think you will gain importance by telling a story of that sort; but I tell you I won't have it."

"Oh, father dear," expostulated Joan, "I wouldn't tell stories, you know. I haven't imagined anything. It was all just as I have said."

"Well, then, you had better forget it as soon as you can," said the Squire, changing his ground. "It's a most unpleasant subject, and I won't have you talking about it, do you hear?—either you or Nancy. Now mind what I say."

He rose from his seat again, as if the subject was finally disposed of. And again Bobby Trench arrested his departure. "I'm afraid we can't leave it like that, you know, Mr. Clinton," he said. "Miss Joan's evidence is of the greatest possible importance to us. I'm bound to tell my people. Besides, surely you wouldn't want to keep a fact like that back, would you? The necklace is worth six or seven thousand pounds, and if we bring the theft home to Mrs. Amberley, my mother may get some of the pearls back. We've already traced some of them, and know that she has been disposing of them separately."

"Tell your people by all means," said the Squire. "But don't let Joan's name be brought into the trial. I insist upon that. I won't have it."

Bobby Trench stared at this exhibition of blindness to the necessities of the case. He made no reply, probably reflecting that the subpoena which would be served upon Joan would bring those necessities home to the Squire as readily as anything, and that it would be unnecessary to bring additional wrath upon himself by explaining matters beforehand.

It was Mrs. Clinton who, observing his face, said, "I think Mr. Trench means that it will be necessary for Joan to give evidence of what she saw at the trial, if it comes to that," she said.

"What!" exclaimed the Squire, bending his brows upon her. "What can you be thinking of to suggest such a thing, Nina? A girl of Joan's age to give evidence at a criminal trial! A pretty idea, indeed!"

He transferred his glare upon Bobby, who felt uncomfortable. "Absurd old creature!" was his inward comment, but as he made it he looked at Joan, standing in her white frock under the shade of her big hat, and the picture she made appealed so forcibly to his æsthetic sense that he was impelled to an endeavour to put the situation on a better footing. It would never do to go away saying nothing, and then to launch the bombshell of a subpoena into peaceful, prejudiced Kencote. It would bring Joan into the witness-box, but it would certainly keep Bobby Trench away from her, in the worst possible odour with her resentful parent.

"I know it's a most awful bore, Mr. Clinton," he said. "I'll promise you this, that if Miss Joan can be kept out of it in any way, she shall be. I should hate to see her in the court myself."

"You won't see her there," said the Squire decisively. "But you'll excuse my saying that it won't matter to you one way or the other where you see her. I will write to your father about this business. It's all most infernally annoying, and I wish to goodness you had kept away from us—although I should have been glad enough to see you here if this hadn't happened."

The last statement was not in the least true, but was drawn from him by the contest going on in his mind between his strong dislike of Bobby Trench and his sense of what was required of him towards a guest. He compelled himself to shake hands of farewell, and marched into the house, the set of his back and the way he held his head indicating plainly that he would give free rein to the acute irritation he was feeling when he got there.

There was a pause when he had disappeared through the windows of the library, and then Mrs. Clinton asked quietly, "Do you think there is any chance of Joan not being required to give evidence at the trial?"

"Well, I'll tell you exactly how it is, Mrs. Clinton," said Bobby, relieved at being able to address himself to somebody who was apparently capable of accepting facts. "If Mrs. Amberley would admit that she had stolen the necklace, and give back the pearls she hadn't made away with, we should drop it, and there wouldn't be any more bother. But I'm bound to say that I don't think she will now. It's gone too far. She brazened it out when my father and mother charged her with it, and she'll go on brazening it out. I think it is bound to come into the courts."

"Will she be charged with the theft?"

"That's not quite settled on. She threatened to bring an action against us if we talked about it. And, of course, we have talked. We are quite ready to meet her action, and would rather it came on in that way. But if she doesn't make a move soon, we shall be obliged to. It will be the only chance of getting anything back. We have had detectives working, and it is quite certain that she has sold pearls in Paris within the last month. They are ready to swear to her. She has pawned one in London, too—in the city. So you see we're quite certain about her. Yet it would only be circumstantial evidence, for, of course, nobody could swear to separate pearls; and she might get off. What Miss Joan saw would clinch it. I'm awfully sorry about it, since Mr. Clinton feels as he does, but I'm bound to say that I think she ought to be prepared to give her evidence. It wouldn't be fair on us to hold it back, even if it was possible—now would it?"

Mrs. Clinton seemed unwilling to express an opinion, but she told her husband later on, when Bobby Trench had taken himself off, that she feared there would be no help for it, Joan would have to give her evidence, whether they liked it or no.

And so it proved. In answer to his letter to Lord Sedbergh, the Squire received an intimation from his old friend that they had decided to prosecute at once. They had learnt that Mrs. Amberley, who was getting cold-shouldered everywhere, was making arrangements to leave England altogether. They were on the point of having her arrested. He was very sorry that a girl of Joan's age should be mixed up in such an unpleasant affair, but it must be plain that her evidence could not be dispensed with, and he hoped that, after all, the ordeal might not be such a very trying one for her. She would only have to tell her story and stick to it. Everything should be done on their side that was possible to make things easy for her, and the affair would soon blow over.

The Squire, raging inwardly and outwardly, had to bow to circumstances. The day after he had received Lord Sedbergh's letter a summons came for Joan to present herself at a certain police court, and he and Mrs. Clinton took her up to London the same afternoon.

CHAPTER IV

JOAN GIVES HER EVIDENCE

The June sunshine, beating through the dusty windows of the Police Court, fell upon a very different assembly from that which was usually to be found in that place of mean omen.

The gay London crowd that was accustomed to pass continuously within a stone's throw of its walls, without giving a thought to those dubious stories of the underworld which were daily elucidated there, had made of it the centre of their interest this morning. Many more than could be accommodated had sought for admission, in order to witness a scene in which the parts would be taken, not by the squalid professionals of crime, but by amateurs of their own high standing. The seedy loafers who were accustomed to congregate there had been shouldered out by a fashionable crowd, amongst which the actors who were to take part in the play found themselves the objects of attentions which some of them could well have dispensed with.

Joan sat between her father and mother, outwardly subdued, inwardly deeply interested. Behind the natural shrinking of a young girl, compelled to stand up and be questioned in public, there was the pluck of her race to support her. It would not be worse than having a tooth stopped, and that prospect had never deterred her from appreciation of the illustrated papers in the dentist's waiting-room. So now she sat absorbed by the expectation of what was about to happen, and felt exactly as if she were waiting for the curtain to go up on the first scene of a play she eagerly wanted to see.

She had almost come to feel as if she had been brought up to London to be accused of a crime herself. Her father had been very trying, continually harping back upon that old grievance of her having gone to Brummels in the first instance, and adding to it irritable censure of her fault in unburdening herself to Bobby Trench without consulting him beforehand. She held herself free of offence on either count, but had diplomatically refrained from asserting her innocence, to avoid still further arraignment. She had been inundated with instructions, often contradictory, as to how she should act and speak in the ordeal that lay before her; and if she had been of a nervous temperament might well have been driven into a panic long before she had come within measurable distance of undergoing it, and thus have acquitted herself in such a way as to draw an entirely new range of rebukes upon her head. Her mother had simply told her that she must think before she said anything, and not say more than was necessary; and her uncle, the Judge, at whose house they were staying, had repeated much the same advice, and had made light of what she would have to undergo. So, with her mind not greatly disturbed on that score, she felt a sense of relief at being now beyond her father's fussy attempts to blame and direct her at the same time, and able to turn her mind to the interests at hand.

The Squire would probably, even now, have been at her ear with repetitions of oft-given advice had not his own ear been engaged by Lord Sedbergh, who sat on the other side of him.

Lord Sedbergh was an amiable, easy-going nobleman, not without some force of character, but too well off and indolent to care to exercise it in opposition to the society in which circumstances compelled him to move. He and the Squire had been friends at Eton, and also at Cambridge, after which Lord Sedbergh had embraced a diplomatic career, until such time as he had succeeded to the family honours, while Edward Clinton, after a brief period of metropolitan glory as a cornet in the Royal Horse Guards, had married early and settled down to a life of undiluted squiredom. The two had actually never met for over thirty years, and were now discovering that their youthful intimacy had not entirely evaporated during that period. At a moment more free from preoccupation they would have embarked on reminiscences which would have shed considerable warmth on this late meeting; and even as it was the Squire felt that his old friend was still a friend, and that it was not such a bad thing after all to be in a position to lend strength to his just cause.

"That's a very charming girl of yours, Edward," Lord Sedbergh was saying. "Bright and clever and pretty without being spoilt, as young women so quickly are now-a-days. We made great friends, she and I, when she stayed with us. I wish we could have spared her this, but I don't think she will be much bothered. They are bound to send the case for trial, and I should think the lady would reserve any defence she may have thought of putting up. Still, I don't like to see young girls brought into a business of this sort, and if we could have done without little Joan's evidence I should have been pleased."

The Squire was soothed by the expression of this very proper spirit, and after a little further conversation was even inclined to think with less annoyance of Joan's disastrous visit to Brummels, since the owner of that house was apparently sane and right-minded, whatever might be said of his family and their associates.

"My boy Bobby," said Lord Sedbergh, "has thrown himself into clearing this up heart and soul. He has a head on his shoulders, and I doubt if we should have been in the position we are if it hadn't been for him."

But the Squire was still incensed against Bobby Trench, and was not prepared to give him credit for being anything but the shallow-pated young fool with the over-free manners who had figured so frequently of late in his diatribes. He might have given some expression to this view of his friend's son, for he had not been accustomed in those early years of comradeship to hold back his opinions, and he was getting to feel more than ever that time and absence had wrought little change between them. But at this moment the curtain rang up for the play, and his attention was diverted.

There was something of a sensation when Mrs. Amberley stood up before the Court ready to meet her accusers. The Squire's face, as he set eyes upon her for the first time, expressed surprise, condemnation, and disgust. The surprise was at the appearance of a woman of striking if somewhat strange and to him repellent beauty, whose eyes and cheeks flamed indignant protest against her situation, when he had expected to see some sort of haggard siren in an attitude combined of shame and impudence. The condemnation was directed against her air of arrogant scorn, and the bold way in which she looked round upon the assembled throng, allowing her gaze to rest upon those who had brought her there in such a way that she seemed to be the accuser and they the accused, and Lady Sedbergh for one dropped her eyes, unable to meet it. The disgust was at her appearance and attire, which seemed to the Squire a bold flaunting of impudent wickedness in face of highly-placed respectability, as represented by the wives of people like himself, who were not ashamed to show the years which the Almighty had caused to pass over their heads, and wore clothes which might indicate their rank, but were not intended to exhibit the unholy seductions of sex.