IS IT BLACKMAIL?

Mr. Wedmore repeated his comment: "Curious, isn't it?" before Max could reply. At last he nodded, and handed back the paper to his father. Then he turned his chair toward the fire, and stared at the blazing coals. He had lost his appetite; he felt cold, miserable.

His father could not help noticing that something was wrong with him; and, after watching him furtively for a few minutes, he said, with an abruptness which made Max start:

"Did you see anything of Dudley when you were in town?"

Max changed color, and glanced apprehensively at his father, as if fearing some suspicion in the unexpected question.

"No, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I called at his chambers; but they told me he had gone away for the holidays and had left no address. All letters were to be kept for him till his return."

Both question and answer had been uttered very softly, but Max saw, by the look on Doreen's face, as she glanced over from the other side of the table, that she guessed what they were talking about, if she had not heard their words.

"Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Max?" asked she, as she came round to him. "We've kept everything about for you, and we want the table."

"Well, you can have it," said he, jumping up, quickly, and making for the door. "I don't want any breakfast this morning."

"Nonsense. You will not be allowed to leave the room until you have had some," retorted his sister, as she sprang at him and attempted to pinion his arms. "We allow no ill-temper on Christmas Eve, especially as we've got a surprise for you—a beautiful, real surprise. Guess who is coming this morning to stay till New Year!"

Queenie had come up by this time, and the two girls between them brought their brother back to the table, where the younger sister began to pour out his coffee.

But Max refused to show the slightest interest in the coming guest, and would not attempt to guess who it was. So they had to tell him.

"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently, at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted. Now, don't you know who it is?"

To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr. Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr. Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted, and that he would then make up his mind to settle.

"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"

"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember her, of course."

"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest and the everythingest girl you had ever met."

"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."

Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's hand, at the sound of her voice.

Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:

"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without waiting for Max's valuable adoration."

He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and to carry him off for the tête-à-tête he was so anxious to put off.

What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said he had found out nothing?

Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the question. To look back now, in the handsome, spacious house of his parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had passed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max could hardly believe in his own experiences.

Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?

The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside, back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his imagination only.

He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy remembrance, when he snatched the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.

In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.

The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush bore the marks of the marauder.

The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it passed from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.

Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all enjoying the story of the master's freak.

The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy with yard-broom and leather.

Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.

"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"

"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' nobody saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about. A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the young master was affected by this story.

The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman "who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending Christmas at The Beeches.

He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.

Or was it—could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state of his feelings toward her.

And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an ambush on the stairs.

"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use! No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me—tell me what you know, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have the truth."

"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.

Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.

"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."

Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger against the man seized him, and he frowned.

"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given you up!" said he, ferociously.

"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"

"Well, then, I'll tell you. He is off his head. He has got mixed up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with for half an hour, and—and—and—well, they say—the people say he's done something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"

He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her hands. Then she said in a whisper:

"You don't mean—murder?"

Her brother's silence gave her the answer.

There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her breath:

"Poor Dudley!"

Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.

"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't you?"

"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."

"Don't you call murder, manslaughter—whatever it is—unworthy?" asked Max, irritably.

"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than for any other criminal. And—and"—her voice gave way and began to shake with tears—"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I—I want to help him, or—or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"

Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister, he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:

"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself again, and—and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and see."

But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself.

Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew where, and did not return home until dusk.

Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other. And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.

So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in. It was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp. A musty smell from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.

Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to right and left.

Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.

Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then gave two taps more.

There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the stack, followed by the striking of a match.

Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.

"Hello!" said he.

She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead man, had never expected to see him again—alive.

MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.

Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs. Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the unexpected meeting had upon her.

For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her—at this helpless, infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes—he shivered.

"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound her to this wicked old woman.

Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural thing in the world:

"Where's your friend, young man?"

"W—what friend?" stammered Max.

"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf for, eh?"

Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's faded eyes.

"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply. "Who sent you? Not he, I know! When he's got anything to do at the wharf he comes himself."

And Mrs. Higgs gave an ugly, mirthless chuckle.

As Max stared at the withered, lined face, which was growing each moment more repulsive in his eyes, a feeling of horror and of intense pity for Dudley seized him. To be pursued, as his friend evidently was pursued, by this vicious old hag, was a fate hideous enough to expiate every crime in the Decalogue.

A little rapid reflection made him decide that a bold course of defiance was the best to be taken. Whatever Dudley might have done, and whatever terrors Mrs. Higgs might hold over his head, it was very certain, after all, that the evidence of such a creature, living in such an underground fashion, could never be a serious danger to a man in his position. Dudley himself seemed rather to have lost sight of this fact, certainly; but it could not be less than a fact for all that.

"Mr. Horne is not likely to trouble you or the rest of the thieves at the wharf again," said Max, with decision. "He's gone abroad for a holiday. And if you don't take yourself off at once, or if you turn up here again, or if you attempt to annoy us or Mr. Horne, in any way whatever, you'll find the police at your heels before you know where you are."

Then into her dull eyes there came a look of malignity which made Max doubt whether he had done well to be so bold.

"Thieves, eh? Tell your friend we're thieves, and see what he says to that! Police, eh? Tell your friend that, tell your friend that, and see whether he'll thank you for your interference!"

"Mr. Horne is away, as I told you."

"Away, is he? But he won't be away long. Oh, no; he'll come back—he'll come back. Or if he doesn't," added Mrs. Higgs, with complacency, "I'll fetch him."

"Well, you've got to leave this place at once," said Max, with decision. "We don't allow strangers in the barn, and if you don't go quietly at once, I must send somebody to turn you out."

Mrs. Higgs kept her eyes fixed upon him with her usual blank stare while he said this in a very loud and decided tone. When he had finished she suddenly blew out the light with so much unnecessary force that Max felt something like a gust of wind upon his face.

"Turn me out!" and she laughed harshly. "Turn me out! Send for the police to do it, if you like."

Max went out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and to turn out the strangers they might find there.

But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.

This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish, had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the evening's entertainment.

"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the servants like the idea?"

"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and mamma has been all day trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the notion was distasteful to everybody had made papa more obstinate than ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."

Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log, had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or they should not be merry at all.

The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the greater part of his life immersed in day-books and ledgers and the details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in common.

Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to give a dance at which masters and servants should join hands and make merry together. He had never assisted at one of these balls, and he refused to listen to his wife's suggestion that it should take place in the servants' hall, that the servants should be allowed to invite their own friends, and that the family should limit itself to one brief dance with their dependants and then leave them to enjoy themselves in their own way.

No, it was his will that the dance should be held in the hall of the house, and that the pictures of the Illustrated Christmas Numbers should be realized to the utmost.

Dinner, therefore, was scrambled over in a hurry, and the family with their guests went upstairs to the drawing-room or out to the billiard-room, while preparations were made for the great event of the evening, the lighting of the Yule Log and Sir Roger de Coverley.

Then the first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement scarcely to be tolerated and never to be encouraged.

He soon made an opportunity of devoting himself to Doreen, who was playing the lightest of light music at the piano in the corner of the room.

It had been a fancy of Mr. Wedmore's, who had his own way in everything with his wife, to have this drawing-room, which was large and square and lighted by five windows, three at the front and two at the side, furnished entirely with old things of the style of eighty years back, with Empire chairs, sofas and cabinets, as little renovated as possible. The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but picturesque and graceful.

The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull sage-green and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less massive harpsichord.

It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur round the bottom of the skirt.

"My purpose in coming here to-night, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay, when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to you to-morrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."

"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.

She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner—a nervous excitement which presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The Shop-Girl" with an energy which was meant to have the effect of checking his solemn ardor.

But the curate had the stuff of a man in him, and did not mean to be put off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room, which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily. Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who was staying with them for Christmas.

"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is—is—in fact, very near my heart."

This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about anything—anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going downstairs to—to dance—in a few minutes."

It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply ignored it.

"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a—what a deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have flattered myself that—"

"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example. I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal about me—a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that perhaps he will come back some day and tell me I was right."

Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face before was there still.

"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope to—to—in fact, to get over it. But—but these are trials which may be, perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond suffering. And—and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad to—to—to—"

"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"

He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.

"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore, though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration toward you!"

Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old days!

"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that—that you should feel—"

She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with great abruptness:

"Do you feel anything in the matter? Really feel, I mean? I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so nicely, if you did."

He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was humanly possible.

Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said softly:

"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to you? To the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"

Doreen looked startled.

"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."

"Why—especially to me?"

"Well, I'm not good enough."

"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean it to be so."

"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to people I hate, and—and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"

This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.

After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:

"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."

"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."

Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making excuses for her and in believing them.

"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."

Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.

"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I were ever foolish enough to marry—and it would be foolishness in a spoiled creature like me—I should want a husband who could accommodate himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves to anything or anybody."

The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted. Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.

"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"

"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that a true woman can bring to the man she loves."

Doreen threw up her head quickly.

"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I ought not to do—one of the unconventional and so unchristian things—to own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore—proud, stuck-up Doreen—is breaking her heart for the sake of a man who—who—" Her voice broke and she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't know—it's so difficult to know."

She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party down to the hall.

Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart young men from the garden and stable to enter.

But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.

Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long since gone by. He at last succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the prettiest housemaid.

Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the dance in the circumstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why couldn't papa, dear old, stupid papa, leave them out of the affair, and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their assistance?

The pause had made the ladies so frigid and the men-servants so shy, the pretty housemaid so merry and the plain ones so solemn, that disaster threatened the gathering, when Mr. Wedmore and the cook made their opportune appearance.

Max, his cousins and young Hutchinson gave three cheers, in the midst of which demonstration the Rev. Lisle Lindsay endeavored to make his escape by the front door.

Unhappily, Mr. Wedmore, elated by his victory over the cook, espied him, and straightway forbade him to leave the house until after "Sir Roger." In vain the curate protested; pleaded the privileges and exemptions of his sacred calling.

Mr. Wedmore was obdurate; and, to the disgust of everybody, including himself, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay found himself told off to dance with the pretty housemaid, being the only man in the room who was not anxious for the honor.

This mishap cast a gloom over the proceedings. The rest of the gentlemen found it hard to extract a word from the other maids, who all considered themselves slighted. And Mr. Wedmore had great difficulty in persuading the men-servants to come forward and take their places by the partners he chose for them. To get them to choose for themselves was out of the question, after one young gardener had availed himself of the invitation by darting across the floor and asking Miss Queenie, in a hoarse voice and with many blushes, if she would dance with him.

Of course, this piece of daring made a sensation so great that to get another man follow the bold example was impossible.

In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company being quite as ill matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke, sputtered out into blackness, to everybody's relief.

The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard work.

When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her eyes.

"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well together."

"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself into the room.

A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.

Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state of prosperous tranquility. Max had had a fresh situation discovered for him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant's office, as he had wasted it in other offices many times before. His father's chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a city office.

It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley Horne's chambers.

There was a long delay, and Max, after a second knock, was going to withdraw, in the belief that Dudley was not in, after all, when he heard slow steps within, and paused.

The door was opened a very little way, and Dudley looked out.

Max stared at him for a moment without speaking. For over his friend there had passed some great change. Dudley had never been florid of complexion, but now he looked ghastly. His face had always been grave and strong rather than cheerful, but now the expression of his countenance was forbidding.

He looked at Max, glanced down the stairs, and nodded without a smile.

"Hello!" said he, with the letter of familiarity, but without its spirit. "Haven't seen anything of you for a century. Up in town again, eh?"

"Yes. Can't I come in?" said Max.

Dudley had come outside instead of inviting his friend in. At these words, however, he turned abruptly, and himself led the way into the little ante-chamber.

"Oh, yes, oh, yes, come in, of course. Come in."

Max accepted the cool invitation in silence, shut the door behind him, and followed his friend into the sitting-room, where the table was laid for a solitary dinner.

But it was the writing-table which caught the eye of Max and riveted his attention. For a photograph lay there, a woman's photograph, and as it was just in front of the chair Dudley had been using, as if he had been occupied in looking at it, it was not unnatural that the brother of Doreen should be curious to know whose picture it was.

So Max got around the table quickly by the opposite way to that which Dudley took, and threw himself into a chair by the writing-table in such a position that he could see what was on it. And he saw two things: One was that the photograph was that of Doreen; the other that a postal order for one pound, which lay beside the photograph, and upon which the ink was not yet dry, was made out to "Mrs. Edward Jacobs."

Max felt himself blushing as Dudley snatched up the postal orders—there were two of them—and slip them into an envelope. Then the eyes of the two men met. And Dudley knew what Max had seen.

He seemed to hesitate a moment, then glanced at Max again, sat down to the writing-table, and took up a pen. As he directed the letter, he said quietly:

"Do you know whom I'm sending this money to?"

"Well, I did catch sight of the name," stammered Max, unable to hide the fact that the question was an embarrassing one to him.

"Yes," went on Dudley, as he showed him the directed letter, "it is to the widow of the poor devil who was found in the Thames the other day—man who was once in my late father's employment—Edward Jacobs."

"Oh, yes, I've heard," stammered Max again.

The incident of Dudley sending money to the woman would have seemed to him trivial and even natural enough, if it had not been for the curious look of hard defiance which Dudley gave him out of his black eyes. It was like a challenge; it set his friend wondering again, asking himself again all those tormenting questions about Edward Jacobs's death which he had allowed to slip into a back place in his thoughts.

As he looked down at the end of the white table-cloth which touched the floor a loud laugh from Dudley startled him and made him look up. And when he did so the conviction that his friend was mad, or, at least, subject to attacks of insanity, flashed into his mind more strongly than ever. Dudley was leaning back, tilting his chair till it touched the dinner table, distending his jaws in a hard, mocking laugh as unlike mirth as possible.

"Oh, yes, so I've heard—so I've heard!" repeated he, mockingly. "And, of course, that's all you've heard, isn't it? And you've never taken the trouble to make any personal inquiries in the matter? Or thought of taking a journey, say, as far as Plumtree Wharf to make any private investigations?"

Max was startled. He saw clearly enough that which he would fain have denied—that Dudley was in communication with the people at the wharf, from whom he must have obtained this information. For a moment he was silent. It was not until Dudley's harsh laughter had died away, and he, rather surprised to see how quietly Max took his accusation, had wheeled round in his chair to look at his friend, that Max said:

"Well, I did go to the wharf. And I'll tell you why. Doreen is breaking her heart about you, and she would have me find out what was wrong with you."

Then there was silence.

"God bless her!" said Dudley at last, in a hoarse whisper.

Another silence.

"What did you tell her?" whispered Dudley.

"What could I tell her? I said you were mad."

"And what did you—think?"

"Well, I hardly know myself."

"That's right! That's the proper attitude!" cried Dudley.

And then he laughed again uproariously.

And in the midst of his laughter there was a knock at the door.

For a moment neither man moved. Then Dudley got up slowly and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Max heard him open the outer door, and then he heard a voice he knew—a young girl's voice—say:

"This is Mr. Dudley Horne's place, and you are Mr. Dudley Horne?"

"Yes."

"Then let me come in. I've come from—"

The voice dropped, and Max did not catch the rest.

"Stop! I'll speak to you here," said Dudley, trying to keep her in the little ante-room.

But the girl came straight in. It was Carrie.

A SORCERESS.

Max was standing on the other side of the lamp, and Carrie did not see him. She announced her errand at once in a straightforward and matter-of-fact manner.

"Dick Barker's been nabbed for stealing a watch. You've got to get him off."

"What do you mean? I've got to get him off?" cried Dudley, indignantly.

Carrie laughed.

"It's the message I was told to give you; that's all."

"Well, take this message back: that I refuse to have anything to do with your pickpocket."

Carrie turned to the door.

"All right. I'm to say that to Mrs. Higgs?"

"Stop!" thundered Dudley.

Carrie paused, with her hand on the door.

"Did Mrs. Higgs send you?"

"Yes."

"Then wait a minute."

All the indignation, all the defiance, had gone from his tone. He looked anxious, haggard.

Carrie sat down like an automaton in the chair nearest to the door.

There was a silence of some minutes' duration when Carrie announced herself as a messenger from Mrs. Higgs.

Dudley, who had either forgotten the presence of Max or was past caring how much his friend learned, since he already knew so much, walked up and down between the fireplace and the bookcase on the opposite wall, evidently debating what he should do. Carrie never once raised her eyes from the carpet, but sat like a statue beside the door, apparently as indifferent as possible as to the message she should take back.

Max had risen from his seat and was standing where he could get a full view of her over the lamp on the dinner-table between them. Perhaps it was the yellow paper shade around the light which made the young girl's face look so ghastly, or the rusty black clothes she wore. A plain skirt, the same that she had worn when he saw her first, a black stuff cape of home-made pattern, and a big black straw hat which had evidently done duty throughout the summer; all were neatly brushed and clean, but well-worn and lusterless, and they heightened the appearance of deadly pallor which, struck Max so much.

Her eyes he could not see; her scarlet lips were tightly closed, and her face seemed to him to wear an air of dogged determination which helped him to understand how it was that she had escaped the perils of her unprotected girlhood. Certainly it would have taken a good deal of courage, impudence or alcoholic excitement to make a man address to this statuesque and cold-faced creature a flippant word.

She did not see Max, who kept so quiet that it was easy for her to overlook the presence of a third person in the room. He watched her intently, taking even more interest in her under these new conditions than he had done before. Would she retain her cold look and manner when he made his presence known to her, as he intended presently to do? The question was full of interest to him.

Presently Dudley stopped short in his walk, right in front of Carrie, who seemed, however, unconscious of or indifferent to the fact.

"Who are you?" he asked, abruptly.

Carrie looked up and surveyed him as if from a great distance.

"I don't know," she answered, rather quaintly, but evidently unconscious of the oddity of her own answer. There was a moment's pause, and then she asked, briskly:

"However, that doesn't matter to you, does it?"

"Well, yes, it does. You come here as a messenger. Now, I want to know your credentials."

"I don't know what you mean. I live with Mrs. Higgs. She makes me call her 'Granny.'"

Dudley at once became strongly interested.

"Live with her, do you, and call her Granny? I've never seen you when I have visited Mrs. Higgs."

"I've seen you, though. I've seen—"

She stopped.

Dudley's hand, the one Max could see from where he stood, moved convulsively. After another short pause, Carrie raised her head, and their eyes met. Each evidently saw something oddly interesting in the face of the other.

"I shall have to make some inquiries about you," said he at last.

"Very well. You can go and make them."

Her tone was matter-of-fact, but neither impudent nor defiant. She did not seem to care.

"This Dick Barker, who has been nabbed, as you elegantly express it, is some sweetheart of yours, I suppose? And you have persuaded Mrs. Higgs to send me this absurd message, asking me to appear for him?"

"No. He's nothing to me. Mrs. Higgs wants him got off, because if he's convicted he'll tell all he knows, or at least enough to set the police on."

"And what is that to me?"

Another pause, during which she looked down. Then Carrie raised her eyes again, and looked at him steadily.

"Oh, well, you know best."

Dudley turned away, muttering something under his breath. But the next moment he faced her again.

"And you are waiting to take my answer back?"

"Mrs. Higgs said there would be no answer."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"To see whether there is one or not."

"And you're going straight back with it to your granny, whatever it is?" asked Dudley, with the same sharp tone of cross-examination.

"No. I am not going back to her. But I shall give the message to some one who is."

There was another pause, longer than any of the previous ones. Then Dudley said, shortly:

"You need not wait here any longer. I am going to see her myself."

Carrie had got upon her feet in the automatic manner she had maintained throughout the interview.

"Going to the wharf, are you?" she said, with the first sign of human interest she had shown. "Oh, very well."

There was something noticeable in her tone, something which made Max suspicious and anxious on his friend's account. He came round the table with rapid steps, touched Dudley's shoulder, and said, in a low voice:

"I'll go with you!"

At the sound of his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight. The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full of the old charm he remembered:

"You! Is it you?" Then, breathlessly, with a change to anxiety in her voice: "And are you going, too?"

"Yes. I'm going with my friend," said Max, as he came forward and held out a hand, into which she put hers very shyly; "from what I remember of my visit to your place, I think two visitors are better than one."

"I don't know whether granny will think so," said Carrie, still in the same altered voice.

She was shy, modest, charming. All her femininity had returned, and both the young men felt the influence of the change.

Dudley, who had instinctively stepped back to make way for his friend, was watching them both with surprise and uneasiness.

"We must risk Mrs. Higgs's displeasure," said Max, dryly, "unless, indeed, Dudley," and he turned to his friend, "you will give up this expedition altogether, as I strongly advise."

But Dudley had made up his mind. He did not want Max to go with him, but he was resolved to go to the wharf. And his friend's heart failed within him at the news.

"Don't you think it would be advisable to get a policeman to accompany you?" he hazarded in a low voice.

But Dudley started violently at the suggestion.

"Policeman!" repeated he in a louder tone than Max had used. "Good heavens, no!"

Max, looking round, saw that Carrie had overheard; but she betrayed no emotion at the suggestion, even if she felt any.

Dudley pulled out his watch.

"I have an appointment for this evening," said he; "I must get out of it. Max, if you persist in going with me to the wharf, you're a fool. When your friends are doing well, you should stick to them; when they have got into a mess, you should have appointments elsewhere." Although he spoke cynically, there was underneath his scoffing tone a strain of tenderness. He turned quickly to the girl at this point, as if afraid of betraying more feeling than he had intended to do. "You've delivered your message," said he, sharply, "now you can go."

But Carrie lingered. Looking shyly at Max, she said in a low voice:

"Have you made up your mind that you will go with him?"

"Yes," said Max.

"All right," nodded Carrie. "Then I'll go, too."

Dudley looked down at the girl with an impatient frown on his face.

"Supposing we don't want you?" said he, dryly.

"You will," she answered briefly, without even looking at him.

Dudley considered for a moment, and then said shortly:

"All right. We may as well keep an eye on you."

Carrie laughed, and then remained silent. As for Max, he was struck with an odd likeness between the girl's dry, short manner of speaking to Dudley and Dudley's manner of speaking to her.

At that moment there was an interruption in the shape of the waiter from a neighboring restaurant, who came in with the dinner Dudley had ordered for himself.

"I shan't want it now," said Dudley, as the man put down the covered dishes on the table.

"Why, surely you're not in such a hurry that you haven't time to dine?" said Max.

Dudley made an impatient gesture.

"I can get a biscuit somewhere, if I want it. I can't eat just now."

"Let me eat your dinner for you, then," said Max. "I've had none. And if I'm to go rambling all over the town to look after you, I shall want something to keep me going."

"All right," said Dudley. "I'm to come back here for you, then?"

And he took up his overcoat. Max began to help him on with it.

"Come in here a moment," said Dudley, in the same dry, abrupt manner as before; "I want to speak to you."

Max followed him into the ante-room, and Dudley shut the sitting-room door.

"That girl," said he, with, a frown—"where did you pick her up? At the wharf?"

"I met her there. She was walking about outside, afraid to go in. The old woman had left her there alone, with a—a—dead body in the place."

At these words a change came over Dudley's face.

"You had better have left her alone," said he, sharply. "I wonder you hadn't more sense than to take up with a girl like that."

Max fired up indignantly.

"Like what? There's nothing wrong with the girl—nothing whatever. Surely her behavior to-night showed you that."

"Her behavior!" said Dudley, mockingly. "Do you mean her behavior to me, or to you?"

"Both. It was that of a modest, straightforward girl."

"Very straightforward—to me. Very modest to you. But I would not waste too much time over her virtues if I were you."

"I don't want to waste any," replied Max, shortly. "I don't see how we can shake her off, since she has offered to go back to the wharf with us. But I shall only be alone with her for the few minutes you leave us here. Or, better still, I'll go with you, and wait while you see your friend."

"What friend?"

"I thought you said you had an appointment with some one, and were going to put him off."

"Oh, yes. Well, let us go to him now."

And Dudley softly opened the outer door.

Max perceived that what he proposed was to give Carrie the slip. He drew back a step.

"We can't go without telling her, at least I can't. The girl's quite right. It would be safer for her to go with us. For it's an awful place, not fit to trust oneself in."

"And you think it would be the safer for the presence with us of one of the gang?"

"She is not one of the gang!" cried Max, involuntarily raising his voice. "I'd stake my life on there being no harm in her!"

The door of the sitting-room was opened behind them, and Carrie came out.

"I couldn't help hearing what you said," she said, quietly. "But you needn't quarrel about me. One of you says there's no harm in me; the other says there is. I dare say you're both right. If you don't want me to go to the wharf with you, Mr. Horne, why, I won't go, of course. Good evening."

She wanted to go out, but Dudley stood in the way, preventing her.

"You're quite wrong, I assure you," said he, quickly. "There has been a little discussion about it, certainly; but I think you and my friend are quite right, and it would be much better if you would go with us—much better. Pray don't be annoyed at anything I've said. Remember, I have never seen you before, while my friend, who knows you better, naturally appreciates you more."

Carrie maintained an attitude of cold stolidity while Dudley spoke.

"Am I to go with you now, then?" she asked, coldly, when he had finished speaking.

"Well, no, I think not. It will only take me ten minutes to go down into the Strand and put off the fellow I was going to the theatre with. I'll come back here, and we'll all go on together."

Carrie looked at him steadfastly while he spoke, and he returned her gaze. For a few moments there was silence, and then it was broken by an exclamation from Max. He was staring first at one and then at the other with a face full of perplexity.

"Do you know," cried he at last, "that when you both look like that, and I turn from one to the other, it is as if I were looking all the time at the same face?"

Both Dudley and Carrie looked startled as they withdrew their eyes from each other's face. Then each sought the eyes of the other again as if it were furtively. Dudley seemed, of the two, the more impressed by his friend's words. He laughed with some constraint.

"Fanciful, very fanciful," said he, mockingly. "What likeness can there be between a girl with a white face, fair hair and blue eyes," and he gave a glance at Carrie which had in it something of fear, "and a man of my type?"

Max looked at him, and then said slowly:

"It's not in the features, I know; it's not in the coloring; but it is there, for all that."

"The young lady will not feel flattered," said Dudley, ironically. "I will leave you to make your peace with her, and when I come back, in ten minutes, I expect to find you both ready to start."

He had his hand on the door, when some thought seemed to strike him, and he hesitated and turned to put his hand on the shoulder of Max. Then he swung the young man round in such a way that his own back was turned to Carrie. Looking steadily and with a certain look of affectionate regard into his friend's face, he formed with his lips and eyes a final warning against the girl. Then, with a nod, he went out, closing the door behind him.