The Vision of Desire

CHAPTER XXI THE RETURN

The October sunshine slanted across Berrier Cove, flinging a broad ribbon of light athwart the water and over the wet, shining sands left bare by the outgoing tide. Its furthermost point reached almost to Ann’s feet, where she sat in a crook of the rocks, resting after a five-mile tramp along the shore before she tackled the steep climb up to the Cottage.

The sea was wonderfully calm to-day—placid and tranquil as some inland lake, and edged with baby wavelets which came creeping tentatively upward to curl over on the sand like a fringe of downy feathers. Ann could not help vividly recalling the day when she had so nearly lost her life at that very spot. It seemed incredible that this quiet sea, with its gentle, crooning voice no louder than a rhythmic whisper, could be one and the same with the turbulent, thunderous monster which had almost beaten the breath out of her body.

And then her thoughts turned involuntarily to Brett Forrester. He was not unlike the sea, she reflected, in his sudden, unexpected changes of mood—with the buoyant charm he could exert when he chose, and that contrasting turbulence of his which left whoever ventured to oppose him feeling altogether breathless and battered.

Latterly, Ann had been finding it very difficult to understand him. Since the night of the dinner on board the Sphinx he had studiously refrained from the slightest attempt to make love to her. Sometimes, indeed, she was almost tempted to ask herself if that violent scene on the yacht could really have occurred between them or whether she had only dreamt it. It seemed so entirely incompatible with the easy attitude of friendliness which he had adopted towards her ever since. She would have liked to interpret this as signifying that he had accepted her refusal as final, but some inward prompting warned her that Brett was not the man to be so easily turned aside from his purpose. Meanwhile, however, it was a relief to be free from the subtle sense of importunity, of imperious demand, of which, when he chose, he could make her so acutely conscious.

Thinking over all that had passed between them on the yacht, she wondered curiously why he had so persistently referred to Tony. It seemed almost as though he were jealous of the boy—regarded him as some one who might prove an obstacle to the accomplishment of his own desires. Yet she could not recall anything which might have given him that impression. There had been nothing in the least loverlike in Tony’s attitude towards her during his visit to the Cottage.

On the contrary, she had been inwardly congratulating herself upon the fact that he had evidently determined to abide by the answer she had given him that night in Switzerland, as they came down from the Roche d’Or—although she would not have been the true woman she was if she had not secretly wondered a little at the apparent ease with which he had adapted himself to the altered relations between them! Pride had counted for a good deal. That she guessed. But, since Tony’s departure, she had begun to speculate whether there might not perhaps be some other reason which would better account for his submitting without further protest to her decision. And in a brief sentence, contained in a letter she had received from him only that morning, she thought she had discovered the key to the mystery.

It was in the name Neville that Ann thought she detected a clue to Tony’s altered demeanour. She recollected having met Lady Doreen on one occasion, about a year ago, when she herself had been paying a flying visit to the Brabazons at their house in Audley Square—a frail slip of a girl with immense grey eyes and hair like an aureole of reddish gold. She had been barely seventeen at that time, slim and undeveloped, and her delicacy had added rather than otherwise to her look of extreme youth. Ann had regarded her as hardly more than a child. But she knew that a year can effect an enormous alteration in a girl in her late teens—sometimes seeming to transform her all at once from immature girlhood into gracious and charming womanhood. Lady Doreen had “come out” since Ann had met her, made her curtsy at Court and taken part in her first London season, and it was not difficult to imagine her, delicate though she might be, as extremely attractive and invested with a certain ethereal grace and charm peculiarly her own.

And that Tony had seen a good deal of her in town last July Ann was aware. He had mentioned her name more than once during his visit to the Cottage, and it seemed to Ann quite likely that, sore because of her own definite refusal of him, he had sought and found consolation in the company of Lady Doreen.

Looking back, she fancied she remembered a certain shy embarrassment in Tony’s manner when he had spoken of her. She had thought nothing about it at the time, being preoccupied with her own affairs, but now, in the light of this new idea which had presented itself to her, she felt convinced that there was something behind the slight hesitation Tony had evinced when referring to the Nevilles.

A little smile, almost maternal in its tenderness, curved her lips. She had always hoped that Tony’s love for her might prove to be only a red-hot boyish infatuation, grounded on propinquity and friendship, which the passage of time would cure, and if, now, man’s love was being born in him and she could keep the old friendship, it would give her complete happiness. But she questioned rather anxiously whether Doreen Neville was possessed of a strong enough character to keep him straight. She was so sweet and fragile—the kind of woman to be petted and cossetted and taken care of by some big, kind-hearted man, not in the least the type to steady a headstrong young fool, bent upon blundering on to the rocks.

Tony’s letter was in the pocket of her coat, and, pulling it out, she ran through it again. There was no further mention of Doreen Neville, but she found that there was a postscript scribbled in a corner, in Tony’s most illegible scrawl, which she had overlooked when reading the letter at breakfast time.

Ann’s heart contracted suddenly. Was she ever likely to forget—to forget that day when, for the first time, Eliot Coventry’s grey, compelling eyes had met and held her own? Since then she had touched heights and depths of happiness and despair which had changed her whole outlook on life. Love had come to her—and gone again, and only through sheer pluck and a pride that refused to break had she been able to face the fact and hide her hurt from the world at large.

Eliot’s sudden disappearance from Silverquay last month had made things a little easier for her. He had left home the day following that of the dinner-party on board the Sphinx, and the knowledge that there was no danger of meeting him had helped to lessen the strain, she was enduring. Previously she had been strung up to a high nervous tension by the ever-present fear of running across him unexpectedly, and it had brought her infinite relief when she learned that he had gone away. Since then a strange numbness seemed to have taken possession of her. It was as though some one had closed the door on the past, very quietly and carefully.

Dully she recalled the night after Eliot had shown her he had no intention of claiming her love as a succession of interminable hours of mental and physical agony. But now she was hardly conscious of pain—only of a stupefied sense of loss. She felt as if her life were finished, as though all the days and years that lay ahead of her were entirely empty and purposeless. Sometime or other, she supposed, she would come alive again, be able to feel and realise things once more. But she dreaded the coming of that time. Better this apathy, like the stupor of one drugged, than a repetition of the anguish she had already suffered.

It seemed as if she were endowed with a species of double consciousness—an outward, everyday self which laughed and talked quite readily with the people she knew, walked and rode, read and wrote letters just like any one else, and a strange inner self which led a dumb, dreaming existence, drearily remote from everything that made life keen and sentient.

Suddenly a tremor of wind ran between the great boulders of the cove, whining eerily. It savoured of coming autumn, and Ann watched the quiet sea bunch itself up into small, angry tufts of foam as the breeze which seemed to have sprung up from nowhere fled across it. Then, feeling suddenly chilled, she rose from where she was sitting and turned rather wearily homeward.

Her way lay through the village, and as she climbed the steep hill which rose abruptly from the bay, in first one cottage, then another, lights twinkled into being, like bright, inquisitive eyes peering through the falling dusk. Absorbed in her thoughts, she had lingered on the shore longer than she intended, and when she reached the top of the hill she instinctively quickened her pace and hastened along the somewhat lonely stretch of road which led to the Cottage.

Just as she was within a short distance of the gate, she caught the sound of footsteps coming from the opposite direction. There were few people abroad in the lanes, as a rule, at this hour of the evening, and the idea that the approaching pedestrian might prove to be a tramp leaped quickly to Ann’s mind. She was seized with a sudden nervousness, born of the dusk and loneliness of the road and of her own bodily fatigue, and she broke into a run, hoping to reach the Cottage gate before the supposed tramp should turn the corner. But the steps drew nearer—striding, purposeful steps, not in the least like those of a tramp—and an instant later the figure of Eliot Coventry rounded the bend in the road and loomed into view.

Ann’s heart gave a sudden leap, then started beating at racing speed. The meeting was so utterly unlooked-for that for a moment a feeling akin to terror laid hold of her. Taking the last few yards which still intervened betwixt her and the safety of the Cottage at a rush, she almost fell against the gate, seeking with blind, groping fingers for the latch. But it seemed to be wedged in some way, and she tore at it unavailingly.

“Let me open that for you.”

Eliot’s voice, rather grave but with the ghost of a quiver in it which might have betokened some inward amusement, sounded above her head. Then, as she still struggled vainly to move the recalcitrant latch, he went on quietly:

“Are you trying to run away from me—or what?”

Ann straightened herself and made a snatch at her fugitive dignity.

“No—oh, no,” she said, endeavouring to steady her flurried tones. Her heart was still playing tricks, throbbing jerkily in her side, and her breath came unevenly. “Only you startled me. I thought you were a tramp.”

She fancied he concealed a smile in the darkness.

“Not very complimentary of you,” he answered composedly.

“It wasn’t, was it? I’m so sorry,” she agreed in eager haste. “Have you come to see Robin? I’m afraid he’s out. He said he should be back rather late to-night.”

“No,” he replied evenly, “I’ve not come to see Robin.” Then, with a sudden leap in his voice: “I came to see you, Ann.”

“To see me?” she murmured confusedly.

“Yes. Am I to tell you all about it out here in the cold, or may I come in?”

Without waiting for her answer, he quietly lifted the latch which had refused to move for her trembling fingers, and silently, half in a dream, she led the way into the house.

There was no light in the living-room other than that yielded by the logs which burned on the open hearth, but even by their flickering glow she could discern how much he had altered since she had last seen him. He was thinner, and his face had the worn look of a man who has recently passed through some stern mental and spiritual conflict. There were furrows of weariness deeply graven on either side the mouth, and Ann felt her heart swell within her in an overwhelming impulse of tenderness and longing to smooth away those new lines from the beloved face. Before she knew it, that imperative inner need had manifested in unconscious gesture. Her hands went out to him as naturally and instinctively as the hands of a mother go out to her hurt child.

But he did not take them in his. Instead, he seemed almost to draw away from her, his hands slowly clenching as though the man were putting some immense compulsion of restraint upon himself.

“I’ve come back, Ann,” he said slowly. “I’ve come back.”

Her outstretched hands dropped to her sides. She was trembling, but she forced herself into speech.

“Why did you go?” she asked very low.

“I went—to see if I could live without you, to try and put you out of my life.... And I can’t do it.” He spoke with a curious deliberation. “If ever a man fought against love, I fought against it. I’d done with love—it’s the thing I’ve cut out of my plan of life these ten years.” His mouth twisted wryly as if even yet the memory of the past had power to stab him. “I distrusted love. And I distrusted you.” He stopped abruptly, still conveying that impression of a man forcibly holding himself in check.

“And—and now?” Ann’s voice was almost inaudible.

They had been standing very still, held motionless and apart by a strange intensity of feeling, but unconsciously she had drawn closer to him as she spoke. As though her instinctive little movement towards him snapped the last link of the iron control he had been forcing on himself, he suddenly bent forward, and, snatching her up into his arms, held her crushed against his breast, kissing her with the overwhelming passion of a man who has been denied through dreary months of longing. Heedless of past or future, Ann yielded, surrendering with her lips the whole brave young heart of her.

Presently his clasp relaxed, and she drew a little away from him.

“Ann,” he said unsteadily, “little dear Ann!”

She met his gaze with eyes like stars—clear and unafraid.

“You haven’t said you trusted me!” A note of tender amusement quivered in her voice. “Do you, Eliot?”

For a moment his eyes seemed to burn out at her from under his heavily drawn brows.

“Trust you?” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know whether I trust you or not!... But I know I want you!”

And once more he swept her up into his embrace.

“My beloved!”

His kisses rained down on her face—fierce, imperious kisses that seemed to draw the very soul out of her body and seal it his, and when at last he let her go she leaned against him, tremulously spent and shaken with the rapture of answering passion which had kindled to life within her.

“Tell me you love me!” he insisted. “Let me hear you say it—to make it real!”

And turning to give herself to him again, she hid her face against his shoulder, whispering:

“Oh, you know—you know I do!”

Half an hour later found them still together, sitting by the big, old-fashioned hearth which Eliot had plied with logs till the flames roared up the chimney. Robin had not yet come back; he had ridden into Ferribridge early in the afternoon, leaving word that he would probably be late in returning. Once Maria had looked into the room to ask if she should light the lamps, and the lovers had started guiltily apart, Ann replying with hastily assumed indifference that they did not require them yet. Old Maria, whose eyesight was still quite keen enough to distinguish love, even from the further side of a room lit only by the lambent firelight, retired to her own quarters, chuckling to herself. “So ‘tez the squire as was courtin’ the chiel, after all. An’ me thinkin’ all along as how ‘twas young Master Tony! Aw, well, tez more suitin’ like, for sure—him with his millions and my Miss Ann.” Maria’s ideas as to the riches with which the owner of Heronsmere was providentially endowed might be hazy, but at least she did not err on the side of underestimating them.

Meanwhile, Eliot and Ann, placidly believing that Maria was none the wiser for her brief entrance into the room—all newly-acknowledged lovers being apparently blessed with an ostrich-like quality of self-deception—continued talking together by the firelight.

“That first day I saw you,” Eliot was saying. “It was at the Kursaal. Do you remember?”

Ann laughed and blushed a little.

“I’m not likely to forget,” she said mirthfully. “You were so frightfully rude.”

“Rude? I?” He looked honestly astonished.

“Yes. Didn’t you mean to be? I was sympathising with you so nicely over losing at the tables—and you nearly bit my head off! You looked down your nose—it’s rather a nice nose, by the way!”—impertinently—“and observed loftily: ‘Pray don’t waste your sympathy’!”

Eliot laughed outright.

“Did I, really? What a boor you must have thought me!”

“Oh, I did”—fervently. “And then there was the day of the Fêtes des Narcisses, when I hit you with a rosebud by mistake. You glared at me as if I’d committed one of the seven deadly sins.”

“So you had—if occupying the thoughts of a ‘confirmed misogynist’ who had forsworn women and all their ways counts as one of them!”

A silence fell between them. The lightly uttered speech suddenly recalled the past, and each was vividly conscious of the bitter root from which it sprang. The man’s face darkened as though he would push aside the memory.

“But that’s past,” said Ann at last, very softly.

He turned to her curiously.

“So you know, then?”

She flushed.

“Yes, I know—I heard. People talk. But I’ve not been gossiping, Eliot—truly.”

A brief smile crossed his face.

“You—gossiping! That’s good. But I might have guessed you would hear all about it. Even one’s own particular rack and thumbscrew aren’t private property nowadays”—bitterly. “I wonder how much you know. What have you heard?”

“Oh, very little—” she began confusedly, her heart aching for the bitterness which still lingered in his voice.

“Tell me,” he insisted authoritatively. “I’d rather you knew the truth than some garbled version of it.”

Very reluctantly Ann repeated what she had learned from Mrs. Hilyard—the bare facts of that unhappy episode in his life which had turned him into a soured, embittered man.

“Anything more? Do you know who the woman was—her name?”

“No. Only that she was very young”—pitifully.

“I believe,” he said, cupping her face in his hand and turning it up to his, “I believe you are actually sorry for her?”

“Yes, I am. I’m sorry for any one who makes a dreadful mistake and loses their whole happiness through it,” she answered heartily.

“I’m afraid I don’t take such a broad-minded view of things,” he returned grimly. “I haven’t a forgiving disposition, and I believe in people getting what they deserve. You’d better remember that”—smiling briefly—“if ever you feel tempted to try how far you can go.”

“Do you know, I think you’re going to prove rather an autocratic lover, Eliot?” she said, laughing gently.

“All good lovers are,” he answered, drawing her into his arms once more with a sudden, swift jealousy. “Don’t you know that? It’s the very essence of love—possession, A man asks everything of the woman he loves—past, present, and future. He will he satisfied with nothing less.”

The words, uttered with an undercurrent of deep passion, struck a familiar chord in Ann’s mind. They were like, and yet unlike, something she had heard before. For a moment she puzzled over it, the connection eluding her. Then, all at once, it flashed over her, and she remembered how Brett Forrester had said: “The past doesn’t matter to me. It’s the future that counts.” These two men, Eliot and Brett, loved very differently, she thought! With Brett, love meant a passionate determination to possess the woman he desired whether she surrendered willingly or with every fibre of her spirit in revolt. But to Eliot, love signified something deeper and more enduring. He wanted all of the woman he would make his wife—soul as well as body, past as well as future, the supreme gift which only a woman who loves perfectly can give and which only a man whose love is on the same high plane should dare to ask.

“I should never be content with less,” Eliot went on. “I think if you were ever to fail me, Ann—” He broke off abruptly, as though the bare idea were torture.

“But I shan’t fail you!” she replied confidently. “I love you”—simply. “And when one loves, one doesn’t fail.”

His arms tightened their clasp about her till she could feel the hard beating of his heart against her own.

“Heart’s dearest!” he murmured, his lips against her throat.

Presently she lifted her head from his shoulder and regarded him with questioning eyes.

“You didn’t tell me what would happen to me if I did fail you?”

“Don’t speak of it!” he said sharply.

“But it’s just as well to know the worst,” she persisted laughingly. She felt so sure—so safe—with his arms round her that she could afford to joke a little about something that could never happen. “Would you cut off my head—as Bluebeard cut off the heads of his wives?”

For a moment he made no answer. Then:

“I should simply wipe you out of my life. That’s all.”

He spoke very evenly, but with such a note of absolute finality in his quiet voice that Ann quivered a little as she lay in his arms—as one might wince if any one laid the keen edge of a naked blade against one’s throat, no matter how lightly.

“Ah! Don’t let’s talk of such things!” she cried hastily. “Don’t let’s spoil our first day, Eliot. Do you realise”—with a radiant smile—“that this is the first—the very first—day we have really belonged to each other?”

So they talked of other things—the foolish, sweet, and tender things which lovers have always talked and probably always will—things which are of no moment to the busy material-minded world as it bustles on its way, but which are the frail filaments out of which men and women fashion for themselves dear memories that shall sweeten all their lives.

But time will not wait, even for lovers, and Eliot had been gone over an hour when at last Robin returned from Ferribridge.

“Cast a shoe and had to wait an unconscionable time to get my horse shod,” he explained briefly.

“You must be starving,” commiserated Ann, “I’ll tell Maria to bring you in some supper at once. I’ve had mine.” But she omitted to add she had hardly eaten anything at the little solitary meal which succeeded Eliot’s departure.

Maria’s indignation as she carried out the half-touched dishes had been tinctured with a certain philosophic indulgence. “Ah, well!” she commented. “They do say folks that be mazed wi’ love can’t never fancy their victuals. Seems like tez true.” In response to which Ann had merely laughed and kissed her weather-beaten old cheek.

In true masculine fashion, it was not until the cravings of his inner man were satisfied that Robin began to observe anything unusual in the atmosphere. But when at last he had finished supper, and was filling his beloved pipe preparatory to enjoying that best of all smokes which follows a long day’s riding and a cosy meal, it dawned upon him that there was something unaccustomed in Ann’s air of suppressed radiance. She was hovering about him, waiting to strike a match for him to light up by, when the idea struck him. He regarded her attentively for a minute or two with his nice grey-green eyes and finally inquired in a tone of mild amusement:

“What is it, sister mine? Has some one left us a fortune, or what? There’s something odd about you to-night—an air of—je ne sais quoi!”—with an expansive wave of his hand.

“‘I’m engaged to be married, sir, she said,’” remarked Ann demurely.

“Engaged? Great Scott! Who to?” Robin manifested all the unflattering amazement common to successive generations of brothers when confronted with the astounding fact that the apparently quite ordinary young woman whom they have hitherto regarded merely as a sisterly adjunct to life has suddenly become the pivot upon which some other man’s entire happiness will henceforth turn.

But afterwards, when he had had time to assimilate the unexpected news, he was ready to enter whole-heartedly into Ann’s happiness—just as throughout all their lives he had been always ready to share with her either happiness or pain, like the good comrade he was.

“I shall miss you abominably,” he declared. “In fact, I shall forbid the banns if Coventry wants to carry you off too soon.”

“You absurd person!” She laughed and kissed him. “Why, living at Heronsmere, I shall be able to look after you both. Little brother shan’t be neglected, I promise you!”

They sat over the fire talking till the grandfather’s clock in the corner struck twelve warning strokes. Robin knocked out the ashes of his pipe.

“We’d better be thinking of turning in, old thing,” he observed. “Even newly-engaged people require a modicum of sleep, I suppose”—smiling across at her.

“We’re not telling people we’re engaged, yet,” Ann. cautioned him.

Robin looked up.

“No? Why not?” he asked laconically.

“I wanted—I thought it would be nice to have a few days just to ourselves,” she replied uncertainly.

“That’s not the only reason.”

Ann hesitated.

“No,” she acknowledged at last. “It isn’t. Perhaps I’m ‘fey’ to-night. I don’t feel quite material Ann yet”—with a faint smile. “And—somehow—I’d rather no one knew for a little while.”

CHAPTER XXII WILD OATS

Lady Susan came briskly into the morning-room at White Windows, and the four privileged members of the Tribes of Israel who, being allowed the run of the house, were basking in front of a cheery fire, rose in a body and rushed towards her, jealously clamouring for attention. She patted them all round with a beautiful impartiality, cuffed the Great Dane for trampling on a minute Pekingese, settled a dispute between the truculent Irish terrier and an aristocratic Chow, and proceeded to greet her nephew.

“I’ve got an errand for you this morning, Brett,” she remarked, as she poured out coffee.

Forrester, who was lifting the covers of the hot dishes on the sideboard, glanced round over his shoulder.

“At your service, most revered aunt. What particular job is it? Which will you have? Bacon and eggs, or fish?”

“Bacon. I want you to go over to Heronsmere, if you will, and bring back that pedigree pup Mr. Coventry promised me.”

Brett surveyed the privileged classes on the hearth-rug with a ruminative eye.

“Are you proposing to add yet another to your collection of dogs?” he inquired with some amusement. “You must pay over quite a young fortune to the Government every year in the shape of dog-licenses.”

Lady Susan smiled deprecatingly.

“Well, I really didn’t intend to add to their number just at present,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t resist a pup by Mr. Coventry’s pedigree fox-terrier. It’s a first-class strain, and he promised he’d pick me out a good puppy.”

“Then hadn’t you better wait till he comes hack to make the selection for you?”

“He is back.”

Brett, who was in the middle of helping the bacon and eggs, paused abruptly, and a delicately poached egg promptly slid off the spoon he was holding and plopped back upon the dish, disseminating a generous spray of fat.

“Damn!” he ejaculated below his breath. “Who told you Coventry was back?” he went on in an expressionless voice.

Lady Susan chuckled and tried to restrain the Irish terrier’s manifest intention of leaping on to her lap.

“My dear boy, haven’t you learned yet that nothing takes place in a tiny village like Silverquay without everybody’s knowing all about it—and a little more, too! The comings and goings of an important personage like the owner of Heronsmere certainly wouldn’t be allowed to pass without comment.” Here she quieted the Irishman’s misplaced exuberance with a lump of sugar. “Through the comparatively direct channel of my maid, who had it from Mrs. Thorowgood, the laundress, who had it from the unsullied fount of Maria Coombe herself, I’ve even received the additional information that Mr. Coventry paid a long visit to Oldstone Cottage yesterday.”

“He probably would,” returned Brett. “After being away nearly three weeks he’d naturally want to see his agent.”

“Only,” remarked Lady Susan reflectively, “it appears that he must have gone to see his agent’s sister. Robin was in Ferribridge yesterday. I met him just setting off there, and he said he’d got a long afternoon’s work in front of him.”

Brett preserved a brooding silence.

“I merely told you by way of giving you a friendly warning,” observed his aunt, after a moment.

His blue eyes flashed up and met the mirthful dark ones scanning his sulky face amusedly.

“Thank you,” he said grimly. “I’ll see that your warning is not neglected.”

“Now what in the world did he mean by that?” Lady Susan asked herself, and the question recurred to her again when, an hour or so later, he swung down the drive in the dog-cart at a reckless pace which sent a shiver through her as she watched him turn the corner almost on one wheel.

She was under no delusions respecting her nephew, as she had once admitted to Ann. But she was indulgently attached to him, and so genuinely devoted to Ann herself that she would have welcomed a match between the two. During the time they had lived together she had grown to love Ann almost as a daughter, and she felt that if she became her niece by marriage the girl would really “belong” to her, in a way. She had even come to a mental decision that if such a desirable consummation were ever reached she would settle a fairly large sum of money upon Ann on her wedding day. “For,” as she shrewdly argued to herself, “Brett’s already got more than is good for him, and every woman’s better off for being independent of her husband for the price of hairpins.”

She had seen comparatively little of Coventry and Ann together. Moreover, although she guessed that the former might be attracted to a limited extent, she did not regard him as a marrying man, nor had she the remotest notion of for how much he counted in Ann’s life. Had she suspected this, she would most certainly have let things take their course, and the little warning hint which she had half banteringly dropped at breakfast, and which was destined to bear such bitter fruit, would never have been uttered.

Forrester covered the few miles that separated White Windows from Heronsmere at the same reckless pace at which he had started. He seemed oblivious of the animal between the shafts of the high dog-cart, directing it with the instinctive skill of a man to whom good horsemanship is second nature. His thoughts were turned inward. His eyes, curiously concentrated in expression, gleamed with that peculiar brilliance which was generally indicative with him of some very definite intensity of purpose. The groom who took charge of the foam-flecked horse when he reached Heronsmere glanced covertly at his arrogant face and opined to one of his fellows in the stables that “Mr. Forrester had precious little care for his horseflesh. Brought his horse here in a fair lather, he did.”

Coventry, who was attending to a mass of correspondence when Brett was shown into his study, shook hands with the superficial friendliness that not infrequently masks a secret hostility between one man and another.

“Hope I’m not disturbing you?” queried Brett lightly.

Eliot shook his head.

“I’ve no particular love for my present task,” he replied, with a gesture towards his littered desk. “I’m trying to overtake arrears of correspondence. Sit down and have a smoke.” He tendered his case as he spoke.

“Price you’ve got to pay for three weeks’ gallivanting, I suppose?” suggested Brett, helping himself to a cigarette and lighting up.

“I should hardly describe my recent absence from home as—gallivanting,” returned Eliot, with a brief flash of reminiscence in his eyes.

“No? Well, you don’t look as if it had agreed with you too well, whatever it was,” commented the other candidly. “I should say you’ve dropped about half a stone in weight since I last saw you.”

“Just as well—with the hunting season commencing,” returned Eliot indifferently.

Brett nodded, and, changing the subject, proceeded to explain the object of his visit.

“The prospect of an addition to her kennels produces much the same effect on Aunt Susan as the promise of a new toy to a kiddie,” he added. “She’s almost dancing with impatience over it.”

Coventry smiled.

“We won’t keep her in suspense any longer, then,” he replied. “You shall take the pup back with you. Come along to the stables and I’ll show you the one I thought of sending her.”

He rose as he spoke, tossing the stump of his cigarette into the fire, and Brett followed him out of the house and down to the stables where, in an empty horse-box, the litter of puppies at present resided. Cradled in clean, sweet-smelling straw, they were all bunched together round a big bowl of bread and milk—a heterogeneous mass of delicious fat roly-poly bodies and clumsy baby paws and tails that wagged unceasingly. At sight of the visitors, they deserted the now nearly empty bowl of food and galloped unsteadily towards them, squirming ecstatically over their feet and sampling the blacking on their boots with inquisitive pink tongues.

“This is the chap,” said Coventry. And stooping, he singled out one of the pups and picked it up.

All the hardness went out of Brett’s eyes as he took the little beast from him and fondled it, the puppy responding by thrusting against his face an affectionate moist black muzzle, still adorned with drops of milk from the recently concluded morning feed.

“He has all the points,” remarked Eliot. “I think he’s the pick of the litter.”

“Undoubtedly,” agreed Brett, casting a knowledgeable eye over the others. “Though they’re a good lot, and you ought to find a winner or two amongst them.”

“Like to see the horses?” asked Coventry, and Brett assenting very willingly, they made a tour of the stables.

“That’s a nice little mare,” remarked Forrester, pausing by the stall of a slim chestnut thoroughbred, who immediately thrust her head forward and nosed against his shoulder.

“Yes. And knows her job in the hunting field, too. I’m going to offer her to Miss Lovell for the season.”

The puppy Brett was carrying in the crook of his arm uttered a plaintive squeak as the breath was abruptly jerked out of his fat little body by the sudden pressure of the arm in question.

“An offer that won’t be rejected, I imagine,” replied Brett. He accompanied his host out of the stables, and the two men turned towards the house. “Miss Lovell’s quite a good horsewoman—and a very charming young person into the bargain.”

“Very charming,” agreed Coventry shortly. The idea of discussing Ann with any one, above all with Brett Forrester, was utterly distasteful to him.

“A somewhat flighty young monkey, though,” pursued Brett pensively. “It’s that touch of red in her hair that does it, I suppose.” He laughed indulgently.

Coventry making no reply, he continued conversationally:

“You never inquired into her past history, I suppose, when you engaged her brother as your agent?”

Inwardly Coventry anathematised the promise he had given Ann to keep their engagement secret for the present. It sealed his lips against the innuendo contained in Forrester’s speech.

“I certainly did not,” he responded frigidly. “I was not engaging—her.”

Brett appeared entirely unabashed.

“No. Or you might have found she couldn’t show quite such a clean bill as her brother,” he returned, smiling broadly.

By this time they had re-entered Coventry’s study. Decanter and syphon, together with a couple of tumblers, had been placed on the table in readiness by a thoughtful servant. Eliot glanced at these preparations with concealed annoyance, but, compelled by the laws of hospitality, inquired curtly:

“Will you have a drink?”

Brett assented amicably and established himself in a chair by the fire, the puppy sprawling beatifically across his knees while he pulled its satin-smooth ears with caressing fingers.

“You can never trust red hair,” he went on, accepting the drink Coventry had mixed for him. Then, catching the other’s eye, he threw back his head and laughed with that impudent, friendly charm of his that discounted half his deviltries. “Oh, I can guess what you’re thinking! And you’re quite right. I ought to know—because I’m one of the red-headed tribe myself.”

“It certainly passed through my mind,” admitted Eliot.

“Well, you can’t trust ‘em. It’s true. There’s always a bit of the devil in them. And I happen to know that that demure little person down at your cottage has sown quite a sprinkling of wild oats.”

“Wild oats in a woman are a very different thing from wild oats in a man,” remarked Eliot, pouring himself out a whisky.

“Yes. But they’re a deal more nearly related nowadays than they were before the war. Staying the night at a hotel with a man pal is sailing a trifle near the wind, don’t you think? Anyway, it’s carrying a flirtation rather far.”

The syphon, beneath Eliot’s sudden pressure, squirted out a torrent of soda. Brett’s eyes scintillated as he watched the slight accident.

“You’re implying a good deal, Forrester,” said Eliot gravely, as he dried his coat with his handkerchief.

“Oh, I know what I’m talking about. I was there, you see, and caught the little limb of Satan red-handed, so to speak—though, of course, she doesn’t know it.” Then, as Eliot remained stonily silent, he proceeded loquaciously: “It was last June or thereabouts. I was stopping a night or two at the Hotel de Loup, up in the mountains above Montricheux—know it?”

“Yes, I know it,” replied Coventry mechanically.

“There wasn’t a soul in the place except me—out of the season, you know. And one beastly cold night, when I marched into the hotel after a confounded long tramp, who should I see but a man I knew saying good-night to an uncommonly pretty girl at the bottom of the stairs. I kept tactfully out of the way till the good-nights were over, as I thought at first he must have committed matrimony while I’d been abroad and that they were on their honeymoon. I never got the chance to ask him, as he bolted past me down one of the corridors before I had time to speak. So I took a squint at the hotel visitors’ book and found they’d registered as ‘G. Smith and sister’! That settled it. The chap’s name wasn’t Smith, and I happened to know he’d never had a sister—either by that name or any other! So I just chuckled quietly to myself and mentally congratulated him on his good taste—the girl was quite pretty enough to excuse a slight deviation from the strict and narrow path.” He paused to light a fresh cigarette, his eyes, between narrowed lids, raking the other man’s impenetrable face. Throughout the telling of the story Coventry had sat motionless, like a figure carved in stone. Only, as the recital proceeded, his eyes hardened slightly and his closed lips straightened into a stern, inflexible line. Having lit his cigarette, Forrester airily resumed the thread of his narrative.

“What follows is really rather interesting—the long arm of coincidence with a vengeance! My revered aunt brings me to Oldstone Cottage and sends me into the garden on a voyage of discovery to find Miss Lovell. And I find her asleep in the hammock—the identical young woman I’d seen up at the Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon.”

“Brabazon!” The name seemed jerked out of Coventry’s lips without his own volition. A curious greyish pallor had overspread his face, and behind the hardness of his eyes smouldered a savage fire that seemed to wax and wane, struggling for release.

“Yes, Brabazon,” replied Brett carelessly. “It seems he and old Sir Philip and Aunt Susan and Miss Lovell were all stopping at Montricheux. I’d no idea my aunt was staying there, or I’d have run down and looked her up. But we hardly ever correspond. My address is always such a doubtful quantity”—with a laugh. “You see, I’m liable to dash off to the ends of the earth at a moment’s notice, if the spirit moves me.” He rose, tucking the puppy under his arm. “Well, I must be getting back. Aunt Susan will be on tenterhooks till she sees this youngster.”

Coventry accompanied him to the door and signalled to the groom who was walking Brett’s horse slowly up and down.

“I shouldn’t repeat that story to any one, if I were you, Forrester,” he said, speaking with some effort, as they shook hands.

“Good Lord! Not I! What do you take me for?” laughed Brett easily. “I only thought it might amuse you, Lovell being your agent.”

The groom brought the horse and trap to a standstill in front of the house door, and touched his hat.

“I’ve kept the horse moving about, sir, as he was a bit hot,” he said, addressing Brett.

The latter nodded and tipped the man generously. Meanness, at least, was not included amongst his many faults.

“Quite right,” he replied. “Got a basket handy for the pup?”

The man lifted down from the front of the dog-cart a basket he had put there in readiness, and the puppy, wailing pathetically, was deposited inside.

“Never mind, old man,” observed Brett, bestowing a final reassuring pat on the small black and tan head. “It’ll soon be over.”

A minute later he was driving swiftly down the avenue, an odd expression of mingled triumph and amusement in his eyes.