Mrs. Pocklington gasped. The note was little better than an assignation! “I shall show this to your father,” she said, and swept out of the room.

Laura sat down and wrote an exact copy of the offending document, addressed it, stamped it, and put it in her pocket. Then, with ostentatious calmness, she took up “Jack’s Darling,” and appeared to become immersed in it.

Mrs. Pocklington found it hard to make her husband appreciate the situation; indeed, she had scarcely risen to it herself. Everybody talks of heredity in these days: the Pocklingtons, both people of resolute will, had the opportunity of studying its working in their own daughter. The result was fierce anger in Mrs. Pocklington, mingled anger and admiration in her husband, perplexity in both. Laura’s position was simple and well defined. By coercion and imprisonment she might, she admitted, be prevented sending her letter and receiving a reply, but by no other means. Appeals to duty were met by appeals to justice; she parried entreaty by counter-entreaty, reproofs by protestations of respect, orders by silence. What was to be done? Laura was too old, and the world was too old, for violent remedies. Intercepting correspondence meant exposure to the household. The revolt was appalling, absurd, unnatural; but it was also, as Mr. Pocklington admitted, “infernally awkward.” Laura realised that its awkwardness was her strength, and, having in vain invited actual physical restraint, in its absence walked out and posted her letter.

Then Mrs. Pocklington acted. At a day’s notice she broke up her establishment for the season, and carried her daughter off with her. She gave no address save to her husband. Laura was not allowed to know whither she was being taken. She was, as she bitterly said, “spirited away” by the continental mail, and all the communications cut. Only, just as the brougham was starting, when the last box was on, and Mr. Pocklington, having spoken his final word of exhortation, was waving good-bye from the steps, Laura jumped out, crossed the road, and dropped a note into a pillar-box.

“It is only,” she remarked, resuming her seat, “to tell Mr. Neston that I can’t give him any address at present.”

What, asked Mrs. Pocklington of her troubled mind, were you to do with a girl like that?

CHAPTER XVIII.
GEORGE NEARLY GOES TO BRIGHTON.

One evening, about a week after what Mr. Espion called the final esclandre, Tommy Myles made his appearance in the smoking-room of the Themis. More important matters have ousted the record of Tommy’s marriage and blissful honeymoon, and he came back to find that a negligent world had hardly noticed his absence.

“How are you?” said he to Sidmouth Vane.

“How are you?” said Vane, raising his eyes for a moment from Punch.

Tommy sat down by him. “I say,” he remarked, “this Neston business is rather neat. We read about it in Switzerland.”

“Been away?”

“Of course I have—after my wedding, you know.”

“Ah! Seen Punch?” And Vane handed it to him.

“I had a pretty shrewd idea of how the land lay. So had Bella.”

“Bella?”

“Why, my wife.”

“Oh, a thousand pardons. I thought you rather backed Mrs. Witt.”

“My dear fellow, we wanted her to have fair play. I suppose there’s no question of the marriage now?”

“I suppose not.”

“What’s the fair Mrs. Witt going to do?”

Vane wanted to be let alone, and Tommy worried him. He turned on the little gentleman with some ferocity. “My dear Tommy,” he said, “you backed her through thick and thin, and blackguarded George for attacking her.”

“Yes, but——”

“Well, whoever was right, you weren’t, so hadn’t you better say no more about it?” And Mr. Vane rose and walked away.

In fact, he was thoughtful. What would Mrs. Witt do next? And what would George Neston do? Vane knew of cases where the accusation suggests the crime; it seemed not unlikely that if George had to bear the contumely attaching to a connection with Mrs. Witt, he might think it as well to reap the benefit. He might not have sought to win her favour yet, but it was very possible he might do so now. If he didn’t—well, some one would. And Mr. Vane considered that he might find it worth his while to be the man. His great relatives would cry aloud in horror; society would be shocked. But a man will endure something for a pretty woman and five thousand a year. Only, what did George Neston mean to do?

It will be seen that Sidmouth Vane did not share Laura Pocklington’s conviction that George cared nothing for Mrs. Witt. Of course he had not Laura’s reasons: and perhaps some difference between the masculine and feminine ways of looking at such things must be allowed for. As it happened, however, Vane was right—for a moment. After George had been for a second time repulsed from Mrs. Pocklington’s doors, finding the support of his friends unsatisfying and yearning for the more impassioned approval that women give, he went the next day to Neaera’s, and intruded on the sorrow-laden retirement to which that wronged lady had betaken herself. And Neaera’s grief and gratitude, her sorrow and sympathy, her friendship and fury, were all alike and equally delightful to him.

“The meanness of it!” she cried with flashing eyes. “Oh, I would rather die than have a petty soul like that!”

Gerald was, of course, the subject of these strictures, and George was content not to contradict them.

“He evidently,” continued Neaera, “simply cannot understand your generosity. It’s beyond him!”

“You mustn’t rate what you call my generosity too high,” said George. “But what are you going to do, Mrs. Witt?”

Neaera spread her hands out with a gesture of despair.

“What am I to do? I am—desolate.”

“So am I. We must console one another.”

This speech was indiscreet. George recognised it, when Neaera’s answering glance reached him.

“That will make them talk worse than ever,” she said, smiling. “You ought never to speak to me again, Mr. Neston.”

“Oh, we are damned beyond redemption, so we may as well enjoy ourselves.”

“No, you mustn’t shock your friends still more.”

“I have no friends left to shock,” replied George, bitterly.

Neaera implored him not to say that, running over the names of such as might be supposed to remain faithful. George shook his head at each name: when the Pocklingtons were mentioned, his shake was big with sombre meaning.

“Well, well,” she said with a sigh, “and now what are you going to do?”

“Oh, nothing. I think some of us are going to have a run to Brighton. I shall go, just to get out of this.”

“Is Brighton nice now?”

“Nicer than London, anyhow.”

“Yes. Mr. Neston——?”

“Yes, Mrs. Witt? Why don’t you come too.”

“At any rate, you’d—you and your friends—be somebody to speak to, wouldn’t you?” said Neaera, resting her chin on her hand and gazing at George.

“Oh yes, you must come. We shall be very jolly.”

“Poor us! But perhaps it will console us to mingle our tears.”

“Will you come?” asked George.

“I shan’t tell you,” she said with a laugh. “It must be purely accidental.”

“A fortuitous concurrence? Very well. We go to-morrow.”

“I don’t want to know when you go.”

“No. But we do.”

Neaera laughed again, and George took his leave, better pleased with the world than when he arrived. A call on a pretty woman often has this effect; sometimes, let us add, to complete our commonplace, just the opposite.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he argued to himself. “I don’t know why I should get all the blame for nothing. If they think it of me, I may as well do it.”

But when George reached his lodgings, he found on the table, side by side with Mr. Blodwell’s final letter about the Brighton trip, Laura Pocklington’s note. And then—away went Brighton, and Neaera Witt, and the reckless defiance of public opinion, and all the rest of it! And George swore at himself for a heartless, distrustful, worthless person, quite undeserving to receive such a letter from such a lady. And when the second letter came the next morning, he swore again, at himself for his meditated desertion, and by all his gods, that he would be worthy of such favour.

“The child’s a trump,” he said, “a regular trump! And she shan’t be worried by hearing of me hanging about in Mrs. Witt’s neighbourhood.”

The happy reflections which ensued were appropriate, but hackneyed, being in fact those of a man much in love. It is, however, worth notice that Laura’s refusal to think evil had its reward: for if she had suspected George, she would never have shown him her heart in those letters; and, but for those letters, he might have gone to Brighton, and——; whereas what did happen was something quite different.

CHAPTER XIX.
SOME ONE TO SPEAK TO.

Being a public character, although an object of ambition to many, has its disadvantages. Fame is very pleasant, but we do not want everybody in the hotel to point at us when we come down to dinner. When Neaera went to Brighton—for it is surely unnecessary to say that she intended to go and did go thither—she felt that the fame which had been thrust upon her debarred her from hotels, and she took lodgings of a severely respectable type, facing the sea. There she waited two days, spending her time walking and driving where all the world walks and drives. There were no signs of George, and Neaera felt aggrieved. She sent him a line, and waited two days more. Then she felt she was being treated as badly as possible—unkindly, negligently, faithlessly, disrespectfully. He had asked her to come; the invitation was as plain as could be: without a word, she was thrown over! In great indignation she told her maid to pack up, and, meanwhile, sallied out to see if the waves would perform their traditional duty of soothing a wounded spirit. The task was a hard one; for, whatever Neaera Witt had suffered, neglect at the hands of man was a grief fortune had hitherto spared her.

She forsook the crowded parade, and strolled down by the water’s edge. Presently she sat down under the shade of a boat, and surveyed the waters and the future. She felt very lonely. George had seemed inclined to be pleasant but now he had deserted her. She had no one to speak to. What was the use of being pretty and rich? Everything was very hard and she had done no real harm, and was a very, very miserable girl, and—— Under the shade of the boat, Neaera cried a little, choosing the moment when there were no passers-by.

But one who came from behind escaped her vigilance. He saw the gleam of golden hair, and the slim figure, and the little shapely head bowing forward to meet the gloved hands; and he came down the beach, and, standing behind her for a moment, heard a little gurgle of distress.

“I beg your pardon,” said he. “Can I help?”

Neaera looked up with a start. The upright figure, bravely resisting a growing weight of years, the iron-grey hair, the hooked nose, and pleasant keen eyes seemed familiar to her. Surely she had seen him in town!

“Why, it’s Mrs. Witt!” he said. “We are acquaintances, or we ought to be.” And he held out his hand, adding, with a smile, “I am Lord Mapledurham.”

“Oh!” said Neaera.

“Yes,” said the Marquis. “Now, I know all about it, and it’s a burning shame. And, what’s more, it’s all my fault.”

“Your fault?” she said, in surprise.

“However, I warned George Neston to let it alone. But he’s a hot-headed fellow.”

“I never thought him that.”

“He is, though. Well, look at this. He asks Blodwell, and Vane, and me—at least, he didn’t ask me, but Blodwell did—to make a party here. We agree. The next moment—hey, presto! he’s off at a tangent!”

Neaera could not make up her mind whether Lord Mapledurham was giving this explanation merely to account for his own presence or also for her information.

“The fact is, you see,” the Marquis resumed, “his affairs are rather troublesome. He’s out of favour with the authorities, you know—Mrs. Pocklington.”

“Does he mind about Mrs. Pocklington?”

“He minds about Miss Pocklington, and I suspect——”

“Yes?”

“That she minds about him. I met Pocklington at the club yesterday, and he told me his people had gone abroad. I said it was rather sudden, but Pocklington turned very gruff, and said ‘Not at all.’ Of course that wasn’t true.”

“Oh, I hope she will be good to him,” said Neaera. “Fancy, if I were the cause——”

“As I said at the beginning,” interrupted the Marquis, “I’m the cause.”

“You!”

Then he settled himself by her side, and told her how his reminiscence had been the first thing to set George on the track of discovery, whence all the trouble had resulted.

“So you see,” he ended, “you have to put all your woes down to my chatter.”

“How strange!” she said, dreamily, looking out to sea.

The Marquis nodded, his eyes scanning her face.

Then she turned to him suddenly, and said, “I was very young, you know, and—rather hungry.”

“I am a sinner myself,” he answered, smiling.

“And—and what I did afterwards, I——”

“I came to make my confession, not to hear yours. How shall I atone for all I have brought on you? What shall I do now?”

“I—I only want some friends, and—and some one to speak to,” said Neaera, with a forlorn little sigh.

The Marquis took her hand and kissed it gallantly. “If that is all,” said he, smiling, “perhaps we may manage.”

“Thanks,” said Neaera, putting her handkerchief into her pocket.

“That’s right! Blodwell and Vane are here too, and——”

“I don’t much care about them; but——”

“Oh, they’re all on your side.”

“Are they? I needn’t see more of them than I like, need I?”

The Marquis was not young, no, nor inexperienced; but, all the same, he was not proof against this flattery. “Perhaps they won’t stay long,” he said.

“And you?” she asked.

He smiled at her, and, after a moment of innocent seriousness, her lips wavered into an answering smile.

The Marquis, after taking tea with Neaera and satisfying himself that the lady was not planning immediate flight, strolled back to his hotel in a thoughtful mood. He enjoyed a little triumph over Mr. Blodwell and Sidmouth Vane at dinner; but this did not satisfy him. For almost the first time in his life, he felt the need of an adviser and confidant: he was afraid that he was going to make a fool of himself. Mr. Blodwell withdrew after dinner, to grapple with some papers which had pursued him, and the Marquis sat smoking a cigar on a seat with Vane, struggling against the impulse to trust that young man with his thoughts. Vane was placidly happy: the distant, hypothetical relations between himself and Neaera, the like of which his busy idle brain constructed around every attractive marriageable woman he met, had no power to disturb either his soul or his digestion. If it so fell out, it would be well; but he was conscious that the object would wring from him no very active exertions.

“Mrs. Witt expected to find George here, I suppose?” he asked, flicking the ash from his cigar.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Anything on there?”

“Nothing at all, my dear fellow,” replied the Marquis, with more confidence than he would have shown twelve hours before. “She knows he’s mad about little Laura Pocklington.”

“I’ll call on her to-morrow,” said Vane, with his usual air of gracious condescension.

“She’s living very quietly,” remarked the Marquis.

Vane turned towards him with a smile and almost a wink. “Oho!” he said.

“Be respectful to your elders, you young dog,” said the Marquis.

“You make us forget your claims in that respect. You must be more venerable,” answered Vane.

After a moment’s silent smoking, “Why don’t you marry?” asked the Marquis. It is a question which often means that the questioner’s own thoughts are trending in that direction.

“I’m waiting for that heiress.” Then he added, perhaps out of good nature, “If it comes to that, why don’t you?”

“I’m not anxious to have people pointing at me for an old fool.”

“Oh, hang people! Besides, you’re not old.”

“Fifty-six.”

“That’s nothing nowadays.”

“You’re laughing!” said the Marquis, suspiciously.

“Upon my honour, no.”

The Marquis laughed too, and put his cigar back in his mouth. He took it out again almost at once. “It wouldn’t be bad to have a son,” he said. “I mean an heir, you know.”

“The first step is a wife then, no doubt.”

“Most women are so tedious. Still, you understand my feeling?”

“I might in your position. For myself, I hate brats.”

“Ah, you will feel it some day.”

Vane thought this rather barefaced. “When did it attack you?” he asked with a smile.

“This afternoon,” answered the Marquis, gravely.

Vane’s cynical humour was tickled by the dénoûment this admission suggested. “Gad! I should like to see Gerald Neston’s face!” he chuckled, forgetting his own designs in his gratification.

“Of course she’s—well, the deuce of a flirt,” said the Marquis.

Vane risked a philosophical generalisation. “All nice women are flirts,” he said. “That’s what you mean when you call them nice.”

“Very pretty and attractive, though.”

“And the shoes?”

“Damn the shoes!” said the Marquis.

The next morning, Mr. Blodwell and Sidmouth Vane went to London; but the society papers recorded that the Marquis of Mapledurham prolonged his stay at Brighton.

CHAPTER XX.
FATE’S INSTRUMENTS.

Summer and autumn came and went. The season died lingeringly and suffered its slow resurrection. Grouse and partridges, autumn scares and vacation speeches, the yield of the crops and the beginning of the session each had their turn of public favour, and the great Neston sensation died away, galvanised now and again into a fitful spasm of life by Mr. Espion’s persevering battery. His efforts were in vain. All the cats were out of all the bags, and the interest of the public was satiated. The actors in the drama, returning to town, as most of them did in the winter, found themselves restored to obscurity; their story, once so eagerly dished up as the latest gossip, was now the stale stock of bores, useful only to regale the very young or the very provincial palate.

All at once, there was a revival. A rumour, a piquant rumour, began to be whispered at the clubs. Men again looked at Gerald Neston, wondering if he had heard it, and at George, asking how he would take it. Mr. Blodwell had to protest ignorance twenty times a day, and Sidmouth Vane intrenched himself in the safe seclusion of his official apartment. If it were true, it was magnificent. Who knew?

Mr. Pocklington heard the rumour, but, communing with his own heart, held his tongue. He would not disturb the peace that seemed again to have settled on his house. Laura, having asserted her independence, had allowed the subject to drop; she had been bright, cheerful, and docile, had seen sights, and gone to entertainments, and made herself agreeable; and Mrs. Pocklington hoped, against a secret conviction, that the rebellion was not only sleeping but dead. She could not banish herself from London; so, with outward confidence and inward fear, she brought her daughter home in November, praying that George Neston might not cross her path, praying too, in her kind heart, that time might remove the silent barrier between her and her daughter, against which she fretted in vain.

But certain other people had no idea of leaving the matter to the slow and uncertain hand of time. There was a plot afoot. George was in it, and Sidmouth Vane, and Mr. Blodwell; so was the Marquis, and another, whose present name it would ruin our deep mystery to disclose—if it be guessed, there is no help for it. And just when Laura was growing sad, and a little hurt and angry at hearing nothing from George, she chanced to have a conversation with Sidmouth Vane, and emerged therefrom, laughing, blushing, and riotously happy, though the only visible outcome of the talk was an invitation for her mother and herself to join in the mild entertainment of afternoon tea at Vane’s rooms the next day. Now, Sidmouth Vane was very deceitful; he, so to say, appropriated to his own use and credit Laura’s blushes and Laura’s laughter, and, when the invitation came, innocent Mrs. Pocklington, without committing herself to an approval of Mr. Vane, rejoiced to think it pleased Laura to take tea with any young man other than George Neston, and walked into the trap with gracious urbanity.

Vane received his guests, Mr. Blodwell supporting him. Mrs. Pocklington and her daughter were the first arrivals, and Vane apologised for the lateness of the others.

“Lord Mapledurham is coming,” he said, “and he’s been very busy lately.”

“I thought he was out of town,” said Mrs. Pocklington.

“He only came back yesterday.”

The door opened, and Vane’s servant announced with much pomp, “The Marquis and Marchioness of Mapledurham.”

The Marquis advanced straight to Mrs. Pocklington; then he took Neaera’s hand, and said, “You have always been good to me, Mrs. Pocklington. I hope you’ll be as good to my wife.”

It was hushed up as far as possible, but still it leaked out that, on this sole occasion, Mrs. Pocklington was at a loss—was, in fact, if the word be allowable, flabbergasted. Vane maliciously hinted at burnt feathers and other extreme remedies, and there was really no doubt at all that Laura untied her mother’s bonnet-strings.

Neaera stood looking on, half proud, half frightened, till Laura ran to her and kissed her, and called her the best friend she had, with much other emotional language.

Then Mrs. Pocklington came round, and took a cup of tea, and, still unconsciously doing just as she was meant to do, drifted into the balcony with the Marquis, and had a long conversation with him. When she came back, she found Vane ordering a fresh pot of tea.

“But we must really be going,” she said. “Mustn’t we, Laura?” And as she spoke she took her daughter’s hand and patted it.

“Do you expect any one else, Vane?” asked Mr. Blodwell.

“Well, I did, but he’s very late.”

“Where can he have got to?” asked Neaera, smiling.

“Oh, I know where he is,” said Vane. “He’s—he’s only in the next room.”

Everybody looked at Mrs. Pocklington and smiled. She looked at them all, and last at her daughter. Laura was smiling too, but her eyes were eager and imploring.

“If he wants any tea, he had better come in,” said Mrs. Pocklington.

So the pair of shoes wrought out their work, giving society yet another sensation, making Neaera Witt a great lady, and Laura Pocklington a happy woman, and confirming all Mrs. Bort’s darkest views on the immorality of the aristocracy. And the Marquis and George Neston put their heads together, and caused to be fashioned two dainty little shoes in gold and diamonds, and gave them to their wives, as a sign and remembrance of the ways of destiny. And Neaera wears the shoe, and will talk to you quite freely about Peckton Gaol.

The whole affair, however, shocked Lord Tottlebury very deeply, and Gerald Neston is still a bachelor. Whether this fate be a reward for the merits he displayed, or a punishment for the faults he fell into, let each, according to his prejudices or his experience, decide. Non nostrum est tantas componere lites.

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