It was on the way, though. This was the news that Quisanté, in the interval between his return from electioneering and the meeting of Parliament, brought back day by day from his excursions to the City and his conversations with Mandeville. He was careful to explain to his wife that he was no "guinea-pig," that he did not approve of the animal, and would never use his position to pick up gain in that way. But he had leisure—at least he could make time—and some of it he proposed to devote to starting a really legitimate and highly lucrative undertaking. The Alethea Printing Press was to revolutionise a great many things besides the condition of Quisanté's finances; it was not an ordinary speculative company. Marchmont's phrase came in here, and May used it neatly and graciously. Quisanté, much encouraged, plunged into an account of the great invention; if only it worked as it was certain to work, there was not one fortune but many fortunes in it. "And it will work?" she asked. "If we can get the capital," he answered with a confident air. "I shall try to interest all my friends in it," he went on. "You can help me there." May looked doubtful, and Quisanté grew more eloquent. At last he held up a sheaf of papers, saying triumphantly,

"Here are favourable reports from all the leading experts. We shall have an array of them in the prospectus. Of course they're absolutely impartial, and they really leave no room for doubt." He held them out to her, but she leant back with her hands in her lap.

"I shouldn't understand them," she protested. "But they all agree, do they?"

"Yes, all," he said emphatically. "Well, all except one." His brow wrinkled a little. "Mandeville insisted on having an opinion from Professor Maturin. I was against it. Maturin's absurdly pessimistic."

"He's a great man, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose so,—he's got a great reputation anyhow."

"And he's against you?"

"The fact is that his is only—only a draft report. So far as it goes, it's not encouraging, but he's never had the facts really laid before him."

"You'd better go and lay them before him," she said very gravely.

Quisanté caught eagerly at the suggestion.

"Exactly what I proposed to Mandeville!" he cried. "The prospectus won't be out for nearly a month yet, and I shall go and see Maturin. I know——" He rose and began to walk about. "I know Maturin is wrong, and I know that I can show him he's wrong. I only want an hour with him to bring him round to my view, to the true view."

"Well, why haven't you been to see him?"

"I tried to go, but he's ill and not equal to business. As soon as he gets better I shall go. To put his report in as it stands would not only do us infinite harm—in fact we couldn't think of it—but it wouldn't be just to him."

"But if he won't change his opinion?"

"Oh, he must, he will. I tell you it's as plain as a pikestaff, when once it's properly explained."

"I'm sure you'll be able to convert him, if anyone can," said May soothingly.

"I must," said Quisanté briefly, and sat down to his papers again.

For an hour or two he worked steadily, without a pause, without an apparent hesitation. That fine machine of his was ploughing its straight unfaltering way through details previously unfamiliar and through problems which he had never studied. From five to seven she sat with a book in her hands, feigning to read, really watching her husband. He could not fail, she said to herself; he would make the Alethea Printing Press a success, irrespective of the actual merits of it. Was that possible? It seemed almost possible as she looked at him.

"It's bound to go," he said at last, pushing away the papers. "I'm primed now, and I can convince old Maturin in half an hour." He held up the Professor's report. "He must withdraw this and give us another."

Alas, there are things before which even will and energy and brains must bow. As he spoke the servant came in, bringing the Evening Standard. May took it, glanced at the middle page, and then, with a little start, looked across at her husband. He saw her glance. "Any news?" he asked.

"The Professor can't be convinced," she said. "His illness took a sudden turn for the worse last night and he died this afternoon at three o'clock."

Quisanté sat quite still for a few minutes, the dead Professor's report on the Alethea Printing Press still in his fingers.

"What'll you do now?" she asked, with the smile of curiosity which she always had ready for his plans. Would he pursue the Professor beyond Charon's stream?

He hesitated a little, glancing at her rather uneasily. At last he spoke.

"One thing at all events is clear to me," he said. "This thing doesn't represent a reasoned and well-informed opinion." He folded it up carefully and placed it by itself in a long envelope. "We must consider our course," he ended.

In a flash, by an instinct, May knew what their course would be and at whose dictation it would be followed.

"Of course," said Quisanté, "all this is strictly between ourselves."

Her cheek flushed a little. "You mustn't tell me any more business secrets. I don't like them," said she, and she turned away to escape the quick, would-be covert glance that she knew he would direct at her.

Money was necessary; votes had been necessary; old Foster smiled in fat shrewdness from the mantelpiece. May Quisanté was less sure that she knew the worst.

CHAPTER XV.

A STRANGE IDEA.

The next few weeks were a time of restless activity with Alexander Quisanté. Again he was like an electric current, not travelling now from constituency to constituency, but between Westminster and his cousin Mandeville's offices in the City. In both places he was very busy. His leader had declared for a waiting policy, and an interval in which the demoralisation of defeat should pass away; the party must feel its feet again, the great man said. Constantine Blair was full of precedents for the course, quoting Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham, and all the gods of the Parliamentarian. Brusquely and almost rudely Quisanté brushed him, his gods, and his leader on one side, and raised the standard of fierce and immediate battle. The majority was composite; his quick eye saw the spot where a wedge might be inserted between the two component parts and driven home till the gap yawned wide and scission threatened. The fighting men needed only to be shown where to fight; they followed enthusiastically the man who led them to the field. Leaders shook grey heads, and leader-writers disclaimed a responsibility which primá facie had never rested on them; Quisanté was told that he would wreck the party for a quarter of a century to come. It would perhaps have been possible to meet Constantine Blair's precedents with other precedents, to quote newer gods against his established deities. That was not "Sandro's way"; here again he was content to be an ancestor, the originator of his methods, and the sufficient authority for them.

He was justified. The spirit of his fighting men ran high, and his fighting men's wives grew gracious to him. The majority, if they scowled at him (as was only to be hoped), began to scowl furtively at one another also and to say that certain questions, on which they were by no means of one mind, could not permanently be shirked and kept in the background. Some of them asked what their constituents had sent them to Westminster for, a question always indicative of perturbation in the parliamentary mind; in quiet times it is not raised. The Government papers took to observing that they did not desire to hurry or embarrass the Government, but that time was running on and it would be no true friendship to advise it to ignore the feeling which existed among an important, if numerically small, section of its followers. Altogether at the opening of the session the majority was much less happy, the minority in far finer feather, than anybody had expected. Only officialdom or ignorance could refuse the main credit to Alexander Quisanté.

"I declare," said Lady Castlefort—and her opinion was not one to neglect—"May Gaston was right to take the man after all. He'll be Prime Minister." And she settled her pince-nez and looked round for contradiction. She loved argument but had made the mistake of growing too important to be differed from. None the less on this occasion a sweet little voice spoke up in the circle.

"I wouldn't marry him if he were fifty times Prime Minister," said Lady Richard Benyon. "He's odious."

"God bless me!" murmured the Countess, genuinely startled. "Well, you'll see, my dear," she went on, nodding emphatically. "He's the only man among them." Her eye fell on Weston Marchmont. "Oh, yes, I see you're there," she said, "and I'm very glad you should be."

"It's always a pleasure to be here," he smiled urbanely.

"Especially, apparently, when you ought to be at the House," she retorted, glancing at the clock. "However to-day you've heard more truth here than you're likely to there, so I forgive you."

"More truth here? But Quisanté's making a speech!"

"Oh, you're very neat," she said with an open impatience. "You can score off a woman at her tea-table; go and score off the other side, Weston, and then you may do it as much as you like to me. As if anybody cared whether Mr. Quisanté speaks the truth or not!" He came up to her and held out his hand, smiling good-naturedly. She gave him hers with a laugh, for she liked him much and did not like Quisanté at all. "It's your own fault, that's why you're so exasperating," she half-whispered as she bade him good-bye.

Here was one side; on the other the men of the City came to know Quisanté too, but, as befitted persons engaged in the serious pursuit of dealing with money, gave more hesitating and guarded opinions; no party spirit led them astray or fired them to desperate ventures. However there was no denying that the Alethea Printing Press sounded a very good thing, and moreover no denying that measures had been skilfully taken to prevent anybody having a share in that good thing without paying handsomely for the privilege. The Syndicate, speaking through Mr. Mandeville its mouthpiece, by no means implored support or canvassed new partners; it was prepared to admit one or two names of weight in return for substantial aid. Mandeville did nothing of himself; he referred to the Board, and the Board's answers came after Alexander Quisanté's hansom had flashed back to Westminster. But a few did gain admittance, and these few were much struck by the reports on the Alethea, all of which had been sent back for revision to their respective authors, accompanied by some new and important facts. These latter did not, as it turned out, alter the tenor of the reports, but it had been thought as well to afford an opportunity for reconsideration in the light of them; so Mandeville explained, seeming always just a little nervous over this matter of the reports.

"We had hoped," he said to one gentleman who was rather important and rather hard to satisfy, "to fortify ourselves with Professor Maturin's opinion. But unfortunately he died before he could complete his examination, and nothing on the subject was found among his papers."

"That's a pity. Maturin would have carried great weight."

"We were quite alive to that," Mandeville assured him with a somewhat uneasy smile. His feelings were not unlike those of a quiet steady-going member of Quisanté's party in Parliament. "We have no doubt of what his opinion would have been, had he been able to study our additional facts and been spared to complete his report. As it was, he had only discussed the matter informally with one or two of us." And when he was left alone, he murmured softly, "I suppose that's how Alexander meant me to put it." But he rather wished that Alexander had been there to put it himself.

It is perhaps needless to say that Aunt Maria, sturdily fulfilling her destiny in life, was deeply concerned in the fortunes of the Alethea Printing Press. But large as was her stake—and the possibilities of loss at least were for her very large—she was not disturbed; she said that heaven alone knew whether there was anything in the thing, but that she knew that Sandro would make people think there was. Nor did she share in any serious degree the fears which afflicted her nephew's wife; Sandro always had a case, and she did not doubt that he would have a very good one whereby to justify any proceedings he might take in regard to the Alethea. So she lived frugally, hoped magnificently, and came often to Grosvenor Road to pick up what crumbs of information she could. Here she met Lady Castlefort and nodded her rusty bonnet at that great personage with the remark that she was glad people were waking up to what there was in Sandro; it was time, goodness knew. Lady Castlefort was for the moment taken aback.

"Mr. Quisanté has had certain—er—difficulties to overcome," she murmured rather vaguely, and was not reassured by a dry chuckle and the heartfelt exclamation, "I should think so!" Altogether it was difficult to make out exactly what Mr. Quisanté's aunt thought of him.

Here the old lady met also the Dean of St. Neot's, who called every now and then because he liked May and wished to show that he bore no malice about the Crusade; but the subject was still a sore one, and he was as little prepared to be chuckled at over it as Lady Castlefort had been over her diplomatic indication of the fact that Quisanté's blood was not blue nor his manners those of a grand old English gentleman.

"Sandro knew all along that there wasn't much in that, but it was something to begin with," Aunt Maria remarked to the uncomfortable Dean. She herself had dragged in the Crusade, to which she referred so contemptuously.

"Miss Quisanté will do anything in the world for my husband," May interposed, "but nothing'll persuade her to say a good word for him."

"As long as that's understood, she does him no harm. We discount all you say, Miss Quisanté."

The Dean's affability was thrown away on Aunt Maria.

"I know what I'm talking about," she remarked grimly, "and as far as your Crusade goes, I should think you'd have seen it yourself by now."

The Dean had seen it himself by now, but he did not wish to say so in the presence of Quisanté's wife. May's laugh relieved him a little.

"The Dean's very forgiving," she said, "and Alexander's doing well now, anyhow, isn't he?"

The Dean agreed that he was doing well now—for in spite of his disclaimers of partisanship there was a spice of the fighting man in the Dean—and repeated Lady Castlefort's prophecy, reported to him by Lady Richard. The rusty black bonnet nodded approvingly. "I knew that was a sensible woman, in spite of her airs," said Miss Quisanté.

Lastly, among those whom Miss Quisanté encountered at her nephew's house was Lady Mildmay, and this interview took a rather more serious turn. In after days May used to look back to it as the first faint sign of the new factor which from now began to make itself felt in her life and to become a very pressing presence to her. She did not enjoy the friendship which the Mildmays forced on her, but it was impossible to receive it otherwise than with outward graciousness; the cordiality was so kind, the interest so frank, Sir Winterton's gallantry so chivalrous, his wife's gentleness so appealing. When Lady Mildmay was announced May found time for a hasty whisper to Aunt Maria: "Take care what you say about Alexander before her." Doubts must not be stirred in the Mildmay mind; the Mildmays must be kept in their delusion; to help in this was one of the duties of Quisanté's wife.

Lady Mildmay smiled gladly on Aunt Maria.

"I'm so pleased you're here," she said, "because I know you'll second me in what I'm going to venture to say to Lady May. I know I'm taking a liberty, but I can't help it. Meeting people now and then, you do sometimes see what people who are always with them don't. Now don't you, Miss Quisanté?"

"And vice versâ," murmured Aunt Maria; but May's eye rested on her warningly, and she refrained from pointing her observation by any reference to Sandro.

"I'm quite sure your husband is overdoing himself terribly," Lady Mildmay went on. "I saw him the other day walking through the Park, and he looked ghastly. I stopped him and told him so, but he said he'd just been to his doctor, and that there was really nothing the matter with him."

"I didn't know he'd been to the doctor lately. He seemed pretty well for him," said May. Aunt Maria said nothing; her keen little eyes were watching the visitor very closely.

"I've seen a lot of illness," pursued Lady Mildmay in her gentle voice, "and I know. He's working himself to death; he's killing himself." She raised her eyes and looked at May. Kind as the glance was, May felt in it a wonder, almost a reproach. "How comes it that you, his wife, haven't seen it too?" the eyes seemed to say in plaintive surprise. "Are you sure there's nothing wrong with him?" she asked.

"Wrong with him? What do you mean?" The question was Aunt Maria's, asked abruptly, roughly, almost indignantly. Lady Mildmay started. "I—I don't want to alarm you, I'm sure," she murmured, "but I don't like his looks. Do, do persuade him to take a rest."

Both of them were silent now; Lady Mildmay's wonder grew; she did not understand them; she saw them exchange a glance whose expression she could not analyse.

"He wants absolute rest and care, the care you could give him, my dear," she said to May—such a care she meant as her loving heart and hands would give to handsome Sir Winterton. "Go away with him for a few months and take care of him, now do. Keep all worries and—and ambitions and so on away from him."

May's face was grave and strained in a painful attention; but on Miss Quisanté's lips there came slowly a bitter little smile. What a picture this good lady drew of Sandro and his loving wife, together, apart from the world, with ambitions and worries set aside! Must the outlines of that picture be followed if—well, if Sandro was to live?

"I hope you're not offended? Seeing him only now and then I notice the change. Winterton and I have both been feeling anxious about it, and we decided that you wouldn't mind if I spoke to you."

"You're too good, too good," said May. "We don't deserve it." Lady Mildmay smiled.

"I know what a strain the election was," said she. "Even Winterton felt it, and Mr. Quisanté never seems to rest, does he?" She rose to go, but, as she said good-bye, she spoke one more word, half in a whisper and timidly, "I daresay I'm wrong, but are you sure his heart's quite sound?" And so she left them, excusing herself to the last for what might seem an intrusion, or even a slight on the careful watch that an affectionate wife keeps over her husband's health.

May walked to the hearthrug and stood there; Aunt Maria, sitting very still, glanced up with a frightened gaze, but her speech came bitter with aggressive scorn.

"What does the silly creature mean?" she asked. "There's nothing the matter with Sandro, is there?"

"I don't know that there is," May answered slowly.

"The woman talks as if he was going to die." Still the tone was contemptuous, still the look frightened. "Such nonsense!"

"I hope it is. He's not strong though, is he?"

Miss Quisanté had often said the same, but now she received the remark irritably. "Strong! He's not a buffalo like some men, like Jimmy Benyon or, I suppose, that poor creature's husband she's always talking about. But there's nothing the matter with him, there's no reason he shouldn't—no reason he should fall ill at all."

"She thinks he ought to rest, perhaps give up altogether."

"Altogether? Nonsense!" The tone was sharp.

"Well, then, for a long while."

"And go away, and let you coddle him?"

"Yes, and let me coddle him." May looked down on Aunt Maria, and for the first time smiled faintly.

"The woman's out of her senses," declared Aunt Maria testily. "Don't you think so? Don't you think so?"

"I don't know," was all May could say in answer either to the irritation of the voice or to the fear of the eyes. The old lady's hands were trembling as she raised them and gave a pull to the bow of her bonnet-strings.

"He'll see me out anyhow, I'll be bound," she said obstinately. She was fighting against the bare idea of being left with a remnant of life to live and no Sandro to fill it for her; what a miserable fag-end of empty waiting that would be! She glanced sharply at his wife; she did not know what his wife was thinking of.

"I'll ask him," said May, "and I must insist on knowing." She paused and added, "I ought to have noticed and I ought to have asked before. But somehow——" The sentence went unfinished, and Aunt Maria's sharp unsatisfied eyes drew no further answer. May kissed her when they parted; whatever this idea might mean to her, whatever the strange tumult it might raise in her, she read well enough the story of the old lady's rough tones, shaking hands and frightened eyes. To the old woman Sandro was the sum of life. She might sneer, she might scorn, she might rail, she might and would suffer at his hands. But he was the one thing, the sole support, she had to cling to; he kept her alive. Yet the last words that Miss Quisanté said were, "I expect Sandro wanted to wheedle something out of that woman, and has been playing one of his tricks to get a bit of sympathy." Then she climbed slowly and totteringly down the stairs.

Left alone, May Quisanté sat in apparent idleness, letting her thoughts play with a freedom which some people consider in itself blameworthy, though certainly no action and often no desire accompany the picture which the mind draws. She said to herself, "Supposing this is true, or that more than this is true, supposing his heart is unsound, what does it mean to me?" What it excluded was easier to realise than what it meant. Unless Quisanté were to have not existence only, but also health, such health at least as enables a man to do work although not, may be, to glory in the doing of it, unless there were to the engine wheels sound enough to answer to the spur of the steam that his brain's furnace made, nothing could come about of what Lady Castlefort's Mightiness prophesied, nothing of what friends and enemies had begun to look for, nothing of what May herself had grown to regard as his future and hers, as the basis, the condition, the circumstances, of her life and of his. An old thought of her own came to her, back from the dim region of ante-marriage days, the idea to which the Henstead doctor had given a terse, if metaphorical, expression. Quisanté was their race-horse, their money was on him, they wanted a win for the stable. If this or more than this were true, then there would be no win for the stable; the horse was a grand horse, but he wouldn't stand training. What was left then? An invalid and the wife of an invalid, coddlings, cossetings, devotion, ambition far away, life kept in him by loving heart and loving hands. Hers must be the heart and the hands. Hers also were the keen eyes that knew every weakness, every baseness, of the man to whom heart and hands must minister, but would see no more the battle and the triumph and the brilliance which set them sparkling and seemed to make the world alight for them.

For a little while the third thing, the remaining possibility, was unformulated in her thoughts; perhaps she had a scruple which made her turn away from it. But her speculations would not be denied their irresponsible freedom of ranging over all the field of chance. If it were true, if more than it, more than the kind timid woman had dared to say, were true, he might die. He might die, not in some dim far-off time when nature made the thing seem inevitable, when he had lived his life, been Prime Minister and so forth, and she had lived hers, filling it with work for him, and with looking on at him and with endurance of him, but sooner, much sooner, almost now, when he had not lived his life, while hers was not exhausted, when there would still be left to her another of her own to live after he was gone. It was strange to think of that, to see how what had seemed to be irrevocable and for ever, to stretch in unfaltering perpetuity to the limits of old age, might so easily, by the occasion of so small a matter as a heart not sound, turn out to be a passing thing, and there come to her again freedom, choice, a life to be re-made. If that happened, how would she feel? At the new-learnt chance of that happening, how did she feel? Very strange, very bewildered, very upset; that was her answer. Such a thing—Quisanté's death she meant—would mean so much, change so much, take away so much—and might give so much. Her thoughts flew off to the new life that she might live then, to the new freedom from embarrassments, from fears and from disgusts, to a new love which it might be hers to gain and to enjoy. People said that it was always impossible to go back—vestigia nulla. But that event would open to her a sort of going back, such a return to her old life and her surroundings as might some day make the time she had spent with Quisanté and its experiences seem but an episode, studding the belt of long days with one strange bizarre ornament.

And on the other side? There was the greatest difficulty, the greatest puzzle. She had not failed to understand the roughness of Aunt Maria's tones, her frightened eyes and the shaking of her hands. It would be very strange to see an end of him, to know that he would never be Prime Minister and so forth, to look on at a world devoid of him, to live a life in which he was only a memory. How were the scales to be held, which way did the balance incline? She could not tell, and at last she smiled at her inability to answer the riddle. It would amuse people so much, and shock some people so much and doubtless so properly, if they knew that she was sitting in her drawing-room in the afternoon, trying to make up her mind whether she would rather her husband lived or that he died. Even there the fallacy crept in; she was not desiring either way; she was simply looking at the two pictures which the two events painted for her fancy; and she did not know which picture she preferred. So all was still bewilderment, all still rocking from the sudden gust that had proceeded out of dear Lady Mildmay's gentle lips. But the undercurrent of wonder and of reproach that there had been in the warning May Quisanté now almost missed. By an effort at last she realised its presence, the naturalness of it, and its rightness. But still it seemed to her a little conventional, something that might be supposed to be appropriate, but was not, if the truth were faced. "Alexander and I have never been like that to one another—at least never for more than a very little while," was the form her thought about it took.

When he came in that evening, she found herself looking at him with wonder, and with a sort of scepticism about what her visitor had said. He seemed so full of life; it was impossible to think of him as being likely, or even able, to die. But she had made up her mind to open the subject to him, to force something from him, and to learn about this visit to the doctor which he had so studiously concealed from her. She gave him tea, and was so far affected by her mood as to show unusual kindness towards him, or rather to let her uniform friendliness be tinged by an affection which was not part of her habitual bearing; with the help of this she hoped to lead up to a subject which her own strangely mixed meditations somehow made it hard for her to approach. But Quisanté also had a scheme; he also was watching and working for an opportunity, and seeing one now in her great cordiality of manner he seized it with his rapid decisiveness, cutting in before his wife had time to develop her attack. He pressed her hand as she gave him his cup, sighed as though in weariness, took a paper from his pocket, and laid it on the table, giving it a tentative gentle push in the direction of her chair.

"We've got the Alethea afloat at last," he said. "There's the prospectus, if you care to look at it." With this he glanced at the clock, sighed again and added, "I must be at the House early this evening. By Jove, I'm tired though!" This little odd ineradicable trick of his made May smile; he was never so tired as when he had a risky card to play; then, indeed, he affected for his purposes some sort of reconcilability with those incongruous ideas of collapse and mortality that Lady Mildmay had suggested. He inspired May, as he did sometimes now, with a malicious wish to make him show himself at his trickiest. Fingering the prospectus carelessly, she asked,

"I suppose it sets out all the wonderful merits of the Alethea, doesn't it? Well, I've heard a good deal about them. I don't think I need read it."

"It gives a full account of the invention," said Quisanté, wearily passing his hand across his brow.

"Have you put in Professor Maturin's report?" She was not looking at him, but smiling over to Mr. Foster on the mantelpiece. There was a moment's pause.

"The facts about Maturin are fully stated. You'll find it on the third page." He rose with a sigh and threw himself on the sofa; he groaned a little and shut his eyes. May glanced at him, smiled, and turned to the third page.

"In addition to the foregoing very authoritative opinions, steps were taken to obtain a report from the late Professor Maturin, F.R.S. Professor Maturin was very favourably impressed with several features of the invention, and was about to pursue his investigations with the aid of further information furnished to him, when he was unfortunately attacked by the illness of which he recently died. The Directors therefore regret to be unable to present any report of his examination. But they have every reason to believe that his opinion would have been no less encouraging than those of the other gentlemen consulted."

May turned back to the list of directors. Three out of the six she did not know; the other three were Quisanté himself, Jimmy Benyon, and Sir Winterton Mildmay. The presence of these two last names filled May with a feeling of helplessness; this was worse than she had expected. Of course neither Jimmy nor Sir Winterton had heard anything about the Maturin report; of the other three she knew nothing and took no thought. Jimmy, not warned, alas, by that affair of old Foster's note, and Sir Winterton, in the chivalrous confidence of perfect trust, had given their support to Quisanté. The use he made of their names was to attach them to a statement which she who knew of the Maturin report could describe only in one way. She looked round at her husband's pale face and closed eyes.

"I thought you were supposed to tell the—I mean, to state all the facts in a prospectus?" she said.

Quisanté sat up suddenly, leant forward, and spread his hands out. "My dear May," he replied with a smile, "the facts are stated, stated very fully."

"There's nothing about the report the Professor did give. You remember you told me about it?"

"Oh, no, he gave no report."

"Well, you called it a draft report."

"No, no, did I? That was a careless way of speaking if I did. He certainly sent me some considerations which had occurred to him at the beginning of his inquiry, but they were based on insufficient information and were purely provisional. They did not in any sense constitute a report. It would have been positively misleading to speak of them in any such way." He was growing eager, animated, almost excited.

May was not inclined to cross-examine him; she knew that he would develop his case for himself if she sat and listened.

"The whole thing was so inchoate as to be worth nothing," he went on. "We simply discarded it from our minds; we didn't let it weigh one way or the other."

"The directors didn't?" That little question she could not resist asking.

"Oh, it was never laid before them. As I tell you, Mandeville and I decided that it could not be regarded as a report, or even as an indication of Maturin's opinion. We only referred to Maturin at all because—because we wanted to be absolutely candid."

May smiled; absolute candour resulted, as it seemed to her, in giving rise to an impression that the Professor had been in favour of the merits of the Alethea.

"And you won't show it to the directors?"

"No," said Quisanté, "certainly not." He paused for a moment and then added slowly, "In fact it has not been preserved. What is stated there is based on my own personal discussions with the Professor, and on Mandeville's; the few lines he wrote added nothing."

It had not been preserved; it had sunk from a report to a draft report, from a draft report to considerations, from considerations to a few lines which added nothing; the minimising process, pursued a little further, had ended in a total disappearance. And nobody knew that it had ever existed, even as considerations, even as a few lines adding nothing, except her husband, cousin Mandeville, and herself.

"If the Professor himself," Quisanté resumed, "had considered it of any moment, he would have kept a copy or some memorandum of it; but there was not a word about it among his papers."

There was safety, then, so far as the Professor was concerned; and so far as Quisanté was concerned; of course, also, so far as cousin Mandeville was concerned. But Quisanté's restless eyes seemed to ask whether there were perfect safety all round, no possibility of Jimmy or Sir Winterton or anybody else picking up false ideas from careless talk about the few lines in which the Professor had added nothing. For an instant May's eyes met his, and she understood what he asked of her. She was to hold her tongue; that sounded simple. She had held her tongue before, and thus it happened that Sir Winterton was her husband's friend and trusted him. Now she was again to be a party to deceiving him, and this time Jimmy Benyon was to be hoodwinked too. She was to hold her tongue; if by any chance need arose, she was to lie. That was the request Quisanté made of her, part of the price of being Quisanté's wife.

She gave him no pledge in words; a touch of the tact that taught him how to deal with difficult points prevented him from asking one of her. But it was quite understood between them; no reference was to be made to the few lines that the Professor had written. Quisanté's uneasiness passed away, his headache seemed to become less severe; he was in good spirits as he made his preparations to go to the House. Apparently he had no consciousness of having asked anything great of her. He had been far more nervous and shamefaced about his betrayal of the Crusade, far more upset by the untoward incident of Mr. Foster's letter. May told herself that she understood why; he was getting accustomed to her and she to him; he knew her point of view and allowed for it, expecting a similar toleration in return. As she put it, they were getting equalised, approaching more nearly to one another's level. You could not aid in queer doings and reap the fruits of them without suffering some gradual subtle moral change which must end in making them seem less queer. As the years passed by, the longer their companionship lasted, the more their partnership demanded in its community of interest and effort, the more this process must go on. As they rose before the world—for rise they would (even the Alethea would succeed in spite of the Professor's burked report)—they would fall in their own hearts and in one another's eyes. This was the prospect that stretched before her, as she sat again alone in the drawing-room, after Quisanté had set out, much better, greatly rested, in good spirits, serene and safe, and after she had pledged herself to his fortunes by the sacrifice of loyalty to friends and to truth.

Yes, that was the prospect unless—she started a little. She had forgotten what she had meant to ask him; she had not inquired about his visit to the doctor nor told him that kind Lady Mildmay was anxious about his health. It had all been driven out of her head, she said to herself in excuse at first. Then she faced her feelings more boldly. Just then she could have put no such questions, feigned no such interest, and assumed no show of affection or solicitude. That evening such things would have been mere hypocrisy, pretences of a desire to keep him for herself when her whole nature was in revolt at having to be near him. Her horror now was not that she might lose him, but of the prospect that lay before her and the road she must tread with him. Trodden it must be; unless by any chance there were truth, or less than the truth, in what good Lady Mildmay said.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE IRREVOCABLE.

So far as May Quisanté's distress had its rise in her husband's treatment of Sir Winterton Mildmay, she was entitled to take some comfort from that gentleman's extreme happiness. He had lost a seat in Parliament, thanks to Tom Sinnett and the account to which Tom Sinnett had been turned; he had been caused to represent to the world that the Alethea Printing Press had lost Professor Maturin's express approval only by the accident of the Professor's lamented decease. The one wrong he forgot, the other he did not know. It was a favourite tenet of his that an English gentleman ought to be able to turn his hand to everything—everything honourable, of course—and should at once shine in any sphere of practical activity. He saw the triumph of his opinion, and found his own delight, in his new part of a business man. His brougham rolled down to Dowgate Hill almost every day; he delighted to lunch with Mandeville or to entertain the Secretary of the Company at the midday meal; business could be made to last till three when there was no Board, till four if there were; then Sir Winterton drove to his club and sat down to his cards with a rich consciousness of commercial importance. He believed in the Alethea with a devotion and a thoroughness second only to the unquestioning faith and obedience which he now had at the service of Alexander Quisanté. Many an amazed secret stare and many a sour smile his eulogies drew from cousin Mandeville; for even in his enthusiasm Sir Winterton praised with discrimination; it was the sterling worth, the heart of the man, that he admired; shallow people stuck at superficial defects of manner; not such was Sir Winterton. "I trust him as I do myself," he used to say to Lady Mildmay, and she, in honest joy, posted off with the testimonial to May Quisanté; besides she was eager to seize a chance of throwing out another hint or two about Quisanté's health.

The Alethea, at least, seemed to be going to prove worthy of these laudations. There really had, it appeared, been some good reason why the Professor should reconsider his considerations. The invention stood the test of criticism and experiment; it saved a lot of expense; the idea got about more and more that it was an uncommonly good thing; the two or three papers which were inquisitive about the actual views of the Professor were treated with disdain (one with advertisements also) and their clamour went almost unnoticed. There was a demand for the shares. Sir Winterton pointed out to Weston Marchmont what a mistake he had committed in not accepting the offer of an allotment which had been made to him.

"The only thing for which I value independent means," said Marchmont, "is that they relieve me from the necessity of imposing on the public. I suppose my ancestors did it for me."

Sir Winterton laughed serenely. "We're serving the public," said he. Then he remembered the new man of business in him, and added, with a slyness obvious from across the street, "Oh, and ourselves too, ourselves too, I admit that."

"And you, Jimmy?" asked Marchmont, turning to him; they made a group of three at the club.

"I don't think Quisanté'll go far wrong," said Jimmy. "You know Dick's gone in too?"

"What, after the Crusade?"

"This is another sort of game," said Jimmy, with a grim smile; he had gone in after both the Crusade and the Sinnett affair. He turned to Sir Winterton; "Old Foster of Henstead's in it too; he's pretty wide-awake, you know."

"Oh, we Henstead fellows have heads on our shoulders," said Sir Winterton, but he looked a little less happy; he had never acquitted Foster with the confidence that Quisanté had won from him.

"And you'll grow rich against your wedding, Jimmy?" asked Marchmont.

Again Jimmy smiled. The wedding was near now, and the next day he was going to Ashwood to meet Fanny Gaston.

"You're going to Dick's on Friday, aren't you?" he said to Marchmont.

"I believe I am."

"Ah, then you shall hear about our show from Quisanté himself."

"What?" Weston Marchmont's tone expressed surprise rather than pleasure.

"May's going to be there, and he's coming for the Sunday. Amy fought hard, but Dick said he must come, because he was going to be a connection." Jimmy's slow smile endured all through this speech; he had a sense of humour which he treated gravely.

"I didn't know he was coming," said Marchmont. Sir Winterton broke into a hearty laugh.

"You're the most prejudiced fellow in the world, Marchmont," he said. "I tell you what, though," he went on. "Do persuade Lady May to take care of her husband, or get him to take care of himself. My wife's been at her again and again, but nothing's done. The man's not well, he'll break up if they aren't careful." He paused, and a puzzled look came over his handsome candid face. "If I was half as bad as he is, my wife'd have me in bed or off to the seaside in a jiffy," he ended.

The silence that followed struck him much as May's and Aunt Maria's had struck his wife. Neither he nor his wife were accustomed to the way in which people who knew Quisanté close at hand came to stand towards him.

"I suppose Lady May's not what you'd call a very domestic woman?" he hazarded. "Charming, most charming, but full of politics and that sort of thing, eh?"

To Weston Marchmont it seemed simplest to laugh and say, "I suppose so." Sir Winterton's mind had need of categories, and was best not burdened with the complexities of an individual. But Jimmy was not so wise.

"I don't think she cares a hang about politics, except so far as Quisanté's concerned in them," he said.

Sir Winterton looked more puzzled still. "Nothing's any good unless he keeps his health," he murmured. He was uncomfortable; he liked May very much, and did not welcome the thought of there being any truth in the idea of indifference and carelessness about her husband at which Lady Mildmay had sorrowfully hinted. "That's his wife's first business anyhow," he ended, a trifle defiantly. But his challenge was not taken up by either of his friends. He went home with his high spirits rather dashed.

On the Friday Marchmont found himself travelling down to Ashwood in company with Mr. Morewood. The painter had an extreme fit of his mocking acidity; he refrained his tongue from nobody and showed no respect for what might be guessed to be delicate points with his companion. Quisanté's success was his principal theme; he exhibited it in its four aspects, political, social, commercial, and matrimonial.

"I've talked," he said, "to Constantine Blair, to Lady Castlefort, to Winterton Mildmay, and to Jimmy Benyon. There's nothing left for all of us but to fall down and worship. On to your knees with the rest of us, my friend! In every relation of life the man is great. You'll say he's objectionable. Quite so. Greatness always is. You're still pleasant, because you haven't become great."

"A few people think you a great artist."

"Quite a few," grinned Morewood. "I can still set up for being pleasant."

This mood did not leave him with his arrival at Ashwood. He reminded Marchmont of a monkey who had some trick to play, and grinned and chattered in anticipation of his cruel fun; his smile was most mocking when he greeted May Quisanté. She was in high spirits; girlish gaiety marked a holiday mood in her. Morewood seemed to encourage it with malicious care, letting it grow that he might strike at it with better effect later on. Yet what did the man know, what could he do? And though Dick Benyon winced at his darts, and Jimmy grew a little sulky, May herself seemed unconscious of them. She was ready to meet him in talk about her husband and her husband's plans; she laughed at his jibes in all the apparent security of a happy confidence. Such a state of things exactly suited Lady Richard; she would not wish May to be pained, but she enjoyed infinitely any legitimate "dig" at her old enemy. May fought with equal gallantry and good temper.

"Success is our crime," she said gaily at dinner. "Mr. Morewood can't forgive it. You call us Philistines now, I expect, don't you?"

"Philistines in the very highest degree," he nodded.

"I know," she cried. "The only really cultivated thing is to fail elegantly."

"Let's bow our acknowledgments," Morewood called across to Marchmont.

"Oh, no, Mr. Marchmont isn't like that. He doesn't even try. Well, perhaps that's still more superior." She smiled at Marchmont, shaking her head. "But we try, we try everything."

The "we" grated still on Marchmont's feelings, and the worse because it seemed to come more easily and naturally from her lips. Yet that might be only the result of practice; she had looked at him in a merry defiance as the last words left her lips.

"And you get other people to try your things too," pursued Morewood.

"Look here, you don't mean me, do you?" Jimmy Benyon put in. "Because I'm not trying Fanny; on the contrary, she's trying me."

"What, already?" asked Dick with exaggerated apprehension. "What'll it be when you're married?"

"Ah," said Morewood, "now what is it when you're married? Does any duly qualified person wish to answer the question?" His mischievous glance rested again on May Quisanté.

"Oh, marriage is all right," said Dick, raising his voice to allow his wife to hear. "At least it's not so bad as things go in this world. It's giving a shilling and getting back eleven-pence."

There was a little murmur of applause. "I declare every married person at the table seems to endorse the opinion," said Marchmont with a laugh. "We'll keep our shillings, I think, Morewood."

"You'd better wait till somebody offers you change," advised Lady Richard.

"Meanwhile we've had an admirable expert opinion," said Marchmont.

"Which we believe," added Morewood, "as implicitly as we do in the excellence of the Alethea Printing Press."

"Hallo, are you in it too?" cried Dick. "You see we're all disciples," he added to May. She smiled slightly and turned to Jimmy Benyon who was by her, as though to speak to him; but Morewood's voice cut across her remark.

"No, I'm not. I'm a sceptic there," he said.

"Oh, well, you don't know anything about it," Dick assured him placidly. If plain-speaking were the order of the day, the Benyon family could hold their own.

"I bet he hasn't read the prospectus," said Jimmy.

"Couldn't understand it, if he had," added Dick, after a comforting gulp of champagne.

"You're really splendid people to be in with," said May, looking gratefully from one brother to the other. They were so staunch, and alas, how had they been treated!

For a moment Morewood said nothing; he sat smiling maliciously.

"Shall I give my authority?" he asked. "It won't do you any harm if I do, because I can't call him to give evidence."

"We had all the best authorities," said Dick Benyon, "as you'd know if you'd read the prospectus."

"Hang the prospectus! What's the good of reading a man's puff of his own wares? But I'm certain you hadn't one authority."

"Well, who's your authority?" asked Jimmy, with a contempt that he took no trouble to conceal.

"What he said was confidential, you know——"

"Oh, you won't get out of it like that. We're all friends here. Fire away."

Thus exhorted, and indeed nothing loth—for he had not read the prospectus and knew not the full extent of what he did—Morewood drew his malicious little bow and shot his arrow, sharper-pointed than he fancied. "I suppose you'll admit," said he with the exaggerated carelessness of a man with an unanswerable case, "that poor old Maturin was some authority, and he told me in confidence—I asked him about it, you know, just to be able to warn you fellows—that there was an absolutely fatal defect in your machine."

To score too great a triumph is sometimes as disconcerting as to fail. There was no chorus of indignation, no denial of Maturin's authority, no good-natured scoffing such as Morewood had expected. He looked round on faces fallen into a sudden troubled seriousness; no voice was raised in protest, gay or grave. In an instant he knew that he had done something far beyond what his humour had suggested; but what it was or how it came about, he could not tell.

The Benyon brothers were not over-ready of speech in a difficulty; their thoughts were busy now, but their tongues tied. Marchmont found nothing to say; he could not help raising his eyes under half-drooped lids till they rested on May Quisanté's face. There was a moment more of silence; then, answering the tacit summons of the table, May Quisanté spoke. She leant forward a little, smiling, and spoke clearly and composedly.

"Oh, you misunderstood him," she said. "He was consulted, but fell ill before he could go into all the facts or write his report. But he had expressed a favourable opinion of the Alethea to my husband." She paused, and then added, "If you'd taken the trouble to read the prospectus you'd have known that, Mr. Morewood."

Little Lady Richard laughed nervously, glanced round, and rose from the table; it was sooner than the ladies were wont to move but, as she said, nobody seemed to be eating any fruit, and so there was nothing to stay for. The men sat down again. Morewood perceived very clearly that a constraint had come upon them; but he was possessed by curiosity.

"Well, I should like to see the prospectus now," he said.

"You'll find one or two over there," said Dick, jerking his head towards a writing-table, but not rising.

Morewood made in the direction indicated, a low mutter from Dick following him. Then Jimmy observed:

"He doesn't understand a thing about it, you know, and of course he didn't follow what Maturin said."

The others nodded. This explanation was indeed the simple one; in most cases it would have been accepted without demur; or recourse would have been had to the hypothesis of a sudden change in the Professor's opinion; indeed Marchmont broached this solution in an off-hand way. Neither view was explicitly rejected, but a third possibility was in their minds, one which would not and could not have been there, had any one of the three had the settling of the prospectus and conducted the business with Maturin. But Alexander Quisanté, assisted only by cousin Mandeville, had conducted the business and drawn the prospectus.

Morewood came back, sat down, and poured out a glass of wine.

"Yes, I see what it says," he observed. His mood of malice was gone, he looked troubled and rather remorseful. "Well, I only repeated what Maturin said. I'd no idea there was anything about him in the prospectus."

The two reasonable views were suggested again by Dick and Marchmont.

"It's impossible that I misunderstood him, but of course he may have changed his mind." He paused, seeming to think. "I gather that he put nothing in writing?" he went on. "He only talked to you about it?"

After a little pause Jimmy Benyon said, "Not exactly to us—to the people at the office, you know. And there was nothing in writing as you say—at least so I understand too."

Morewood passed his hand through his hair; the ruffled locks intensified the ruefulness of his aspect; he had before his eyes the picture of May Quisanté's silence and her so careful, so deliberate little speech after it. He tossed off his wine almost angrily, as Dick Benyon rose, saying, "Let's have coffee in the garden. It's a splendid night." He added with a rather uneasy laugh, "Quisanté's coming to-morrow! We'll leave him to tackle you himself, Morewood."

Lady Richard and Fanny Gaston were sitting in the garden by the drawing-room window when the men joined them; Morewood dropped into a chair by Lady Richard and, looking across the lawn, saw May strolling by herself on the walk that bounded the shrubberies. He took his coffee in silence and then lighted his pipe; the vanity of cigarettes was not for him. At last he said confidentially,

"I've a sort of feeling that I've made an ass of myself."

Lady Richard glanced round; Fanny had gone across to the other group; nobody was in hearing.

"Do you know," she said in a low voice, "I believe that man's been up to some trick again. You know how he treated us over the Crusade? Now I suppose he's going to ruin us!" The satisfaction of a justified prophet seemed to mingle with the dismay of a wife and the anger of a sufferer; Lady Richard had expected nothing less all along!

"I'm afraid I rather—well, that Lady May didn't like it."

"Poor dear May must know what to expect by now."

"Perhaps she never knows what to expect. That'd be worse." The remark was a little too subtle for Lady Richard's half-attentive ear. She contented herself with sighing expressively. Morewood looked across the lawn again; the slow-walking figure had disappeared, presumably into the shrubberies. Two or three moments later he saw Marchmont strolling off in that direction, cigar in mouth and hands in pockets. He rose, shook himself, and cried to the brothers, "Oh, in heaven's name, come and play pool." Jimmy refused and paired off with his fiancée, but Dick agreed to billiards, saying as they went in, "It'll keep you from making a fool of yourself any more." Morewood, finding his own impression of his conduct thus confirmed, grunted remorsefully as he took down his cue.

Marchmont crossed the lawn and the path, and was hidden by the shrubberies. Lady Richard watched till she could see him no more, and then went indoors with another sigh; this last was a disclaimer of responsibility; if Marchmont liked to comfort May, it was no business of hers.

He loitered on, not admitting that he was looking for May, but very sore to think that she had wandered away to a sad solitude rather than be with her friends; since she did that, she was wounded indeed. There was a seat round an old tree-trunk at the farther side of the shrubbery; the memory of it really directed his apparently aimless steps, and as he approached it he threw away his half-smoked cigar; he thought he would find her there; what he would say to her he did not know.

He was right. There, she sat, very still, and looking pale under the moon. Coming up to her he said, "I know you want to be alone, don't you?" She smiled and answered, "No, stay. I'm glad to have you," and he sat down by her. She was silent, her eyes gazing steadily in front of her; the air was sweet and very still. Now he needed no telling that his guess at the situation had been right, that she had shielded her husband at her own cost; her face told him what the cost seemed to her. A great indignation against the man filled him, gaining unacknowledged reinforcement from the love he himself had for the woman. He had wrought for himself a masterpiece of pure and faultless beauty; when another took it from him, he had endured; now the other spoilt and stained and defiled it; could he still endure? It seems sometimes as though the deep silence of night carries thoughts from heart to heart that would be lost in the passage through the broken tumultuous sea of day. The thought that was in him he felt to be in her also, changed as her mind would change it, yet in essence the same. She had now no ironical smiles for him, no fencing, and no playing with her fate; and he had for her no talk of loyalty. The time for these was gone in the light of the confidence that her silence gave him; it told him everything, and he had no rebuke for its openness. At last he put out his hand and lightly pressed hers for a moment. She turned her eyes on him.

"It's a little hard, isn't it?" she asked. "I can stand most things, but it's hard to have to tell lies to your friends." Her voice rose a little and shook as the composure which she had so long kept failed her. "And they know I'm lying. Oh, I don't deceive them, however hard I try. They don't tell me so, but they know. I can't help it, I must do it. I must sit and do it, knowing that they know it's a lie. For decency's sake I must do it, though. Some people believe, the Mildmays believe; but you here don't. You know me too well, and you know him too well."

"For God's sake, don't talk like that," said Marchmont.

"Don't talk like that! The talk's not the harm. If you could tell me how not to live like that!" Her self-control broke utterly; she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

"For God's sake!" he murmured again.

"Oh, you don't know. This is only the crown of it. It goes on every day. I'm coming not to know myself, not to be myself. I live scheming and lying. I've given everything, all my life. Must I give myself, my own self, too? Must I lose that for him?"

Her bitter despairing words seemed to him what at that moment her mood made them seem to herself, the all-sufficient all-embracing summary of her life; she had then no thought of another side to it, and into that she gave him no insight. He counted as dead for her all the high hopes and the attractive imaginings with which Quisanté once had fired her. Dead for her they were at that moment; she could see nothing but her husband's baseness and a baseness bred by it in herself; her bond to him was an obligation to dishonour and a chain of treachery. She abandoned to Marchmont's eyes all the hidden secrets of her misery; in this she seemed also to display before him the dead body of her hopes, her interest, her ambitions. Giving all, she had gained nothing; so her sobs said. But only for moments does life seem so simple that a sob can cover all of it.

Presently she grew calmer. "I've never broken out like this before," she said, "but it's rather bad to have to look forward to a life of it. And it'll get worse, not better; or if it doesn't get worse it'll mean that I'm getting worse, and that'll be worse than all." She smiled forlornly. "What a tangle of 'worses' I've tied it up in, haven't I?"

She did not seem to be ashamed of her breaking-out, but rather to be relieved by it, and to feel that it had helped to establish or renew an intimacy in which she found some pleasure and some consolation; at least there was one friend now who knew exactly how she stood and would not set down to that own self of hers the actions that he might see her perform in Quisanté's service. "You once told me I ought to take a confidante," she reminded him. "I don't suppose you thought I should take you, though."

She had had her outburst; his was still to come. Yet it seemed rather as though he acted on a deliberate purpose than was carried away by any irresistible impulse; he spoke simply and plainly.

"I love you as I've always loved you," he said.

"I know, and I've taken advantage of it to inflict all this on you." Her eyes rested on his for some moments, and she answered his glance. "No, I can't escape that way. I'm not talking of running away; of course I couldn't do that." She laughed a little and even he smiled. "But I can't escape even in—in spirit by it. Sometimes I wish I could. It would change the centre of my life, wouldn't it? Perhaps I shouldn't mind the things that distress me so much now. But I can't."

"You don't love me? Well, you never did." He paused an instant and added in a puzzled way, "Somehow."

"Yes, it's all 'somehow.' Somehow I didn't; I ought to have. Somehow I've got where I am; and somehow, I suppose, I shall endure it." She laid her hand on his. "I should actually like to love you—in a way I do. I'm afraid I've very little conscience about it. But somehow—yes, somehow again—it's all a hopeless puzzle—I can't altogether, not as you mean. I understand it very little myself, and I know you won't understand it at all, but—well, Alexander imprisons me; I can't escape from him; as long as he's there he keeps me." She looked in Marchmont's face and then shook her head, half-sadly, half-playfully. "You don't understand a bit, do you?" she asked.

"No, I don't," he said bluntly, with an accent of impatience and almost of exasperation. Recognising it, she gave the slightest shrug of her shoulders.

"It's my infatuation again, I suppose, as you all said when I married him. It makes you all angry. Oh, it makes me angry too, as far as that goes."

"He's ruining your whole life."

She made no answer, relapsing into the still silence which had preceded her tears. Marchmont was baffled again by his old inability to follow the movements of her mind and the old sense of blindness in dealing with her to which it gave rise. Owing to this he had lost her at the first; now it seemed to prevent him from repairing the loss. In spite of all that they had in common, in spite of the strong attraction she felt towards him and of the love he bore her, there was always, as she had said once, at last a break somewhere, some solution in the chain of sympathy that should have bound them together. But he would not admit this, and chose to see the only barrier between them in the man who was ruining her life.

"You'd be yourself again if only you could get away from him," he murmured resentfully.

"Perhaps; I never shall, though." She added, laughing a little, "Neither will you. I've made you an accomplice, you're bound to a guilty silence now." Then, growing grave, she leant towards him. "Don't look like that," she said, "pray, pray, pray don't. I haven't spoilt your life as well as my own? No, you mustn't tell me that." Her voice grew very tender and low. "But I can say almost all you want. I wish I had loved you, I wish I had married you. Oh, how I wish it! I should have been happy, I think, and I know I—I shouldn't have had to live as I do now and do the things I have to do now. Well, it's too late."

"You're very young," he said in a voice as low as hers. "It mayn't always be too late."

She started a little, drawing away from him. He had brought back thoughts which the stress of pain and excitement had banished from her mind.

"You mean——?" she murmured. "I know what you mean, though." Her face showed again a sort of puzzle. "I can't think of that happening. I tried the other day—à propos of something else; but I couldn't. I couldn't see it, you know. It doesn't fit my ideas about him. No, that won't happen. We must just go on."

The wind had begun to rise, the trees stirred, leaves rustled, the whole making, or seeming to her ears to make, a sad whimsical moaning. She rose, gathering her lace scarf closer round her neck, and saying, "Do you hear the wood crying for us? It's sorry for our little troubles." She stood facing him and he took both her hands in his. "You look so unhappy," she said in a fresh access of pity. "No use, no use; it'll all go on, right to the end of everything. So—good-bye."

"He's coming to-morrow, isn't he?"

"Yes, he's coming to-morrow. Good-bye." She smiled a little, feeling Marchmont's hands drawing her to him. "Oh, kiss me then," she said, turning her cheek to him. "It'll feel friendly. And now we'll go in."

They had just started to return when they heard steps in the wood, and a moment later her name was called in Dick Benyon's voice. Marchmont shouted in answer, "Here we are," and Dick came along the path.

"I couldn't think where you'd got to," he said.

"That's because you've no romance in you," said May. "Or you'd have known we should be wandering in the wood in the moonlight. Ah, she's gone under a cloud now, but she was beautiful. Are we wanted, though?"

"Well, in the first place I think you've been quite long enough for propriety, and in the second a man's brought a wire for you, and he's waiting to see if there's an answer."

"Under that combination of moral and practical reasons we'll go in," said May, laughing. Marchmont, less ready in putting on his mask, said nothing but followed a step or two behind. "I expect the wire's from Alexander," she went on, "to say he's going to make a speech somewhere and won't come to-morrow."

Dick turned to her with a quick jerk of the head; a moment later he was covered with confusion, for her bitter little smile told him that he had betrayed the joy which such a notion gave him. To all of them it would be a great relief that Quisanté should not come while the memory of the scene that Morewood had caused at dinner was still so fresh. Dick, though he attempted no excuse, felt himself forgiven when May took his arm and thus walked back to the house.