“What did he want coming to-day at all for? He might have waited.”

Aunt Aggie, however, did not like to be interrupted when she was discussing her health, so she said now sharply: “Just look at your hands, Henry—Why can’t you keep them clean. I should have thought going up to Cambridge—”

“Oh! I’m all right,” he answered, impatiently. “Anyway, I wonder what he told grandfather.”

“Why, what could he have told him?” said Aunt Aggie, eagerly, looking up.

“Oh, I don’t know—nothing—Only ... Oh, Rocket, ask them to make some fresh tea. Let me have it in here.”

“Certainly, Mr. Henry,” said Rocket, removing the tea-pot with an air of strong disapproval.

“Really, Henry!” Aunt Aggie exclaimed. “And simply for yourself! Why, even though I’ve had the most trying headache all day, I’d never venture to give so much trouble simply for myself.”

“Oh, I daresay you’ll have some when it comes,” Henry answered, carelessly—then, pursuing his thoughts, he continued: “Well, he won’t be coming back to Garth with us—that’s one comfort.”

“Oh, but he is!” cried Aunt Aggie, excitedly. “He is! Your mother’s asked him to come back with us, and he’s accepted. I simply don’t understand it. Your mother dislikes him as much as the rest of us do, and why she should ask him! It can’t be for poor Katie’s sake. She’s miserable enough when he’s at Garth. I’m sure if things go on like this much longer I shall go and take a little house by myself and live alone. I’d really rather than all this unpleasantness.”

This threat did not apparently alarm Henry very greatly, for, bursting out suddenly, he cried: “It’s beastly! perfectly beastly! There we’ve all got to sit watching him make Katie miserable. I won’t stand it! I won’t stand it!”

“Why you!” said Aunt Aggie, scornfully. “How can you prevent it! You’re only a boy!”

This epithet stung Henry to madness. Ah, if Aunt Aggie only knew all, she’d see that he was very far from being ‘only a boy’—if she only knew the burden of secret responsibility that he’d been bearing during all these weeks. He’d keep secret no longer—it was time that everyone should know the kind of man to whom Katherine was being sacrificed. He turned round to his aunt, trembling with anger and excitement.

“You talk like that!” he cried, “but you don’t know what I know!”

“What don’t I know?” she asked eagerly.

“About Philip—this man Mark—He’s wicked, he’s awful, he’s—abominable!”

“Well,” said Aunt Aggie, dropping her needles. “What’s he done?”

“Done!” Henry exclaimed, sinking his voice into a horrified and confidential whisper. “He’s been a dreadful man. Before, in Russia, there’s nothing he didn’t do. I know, because there’s a friend of mine who knew him very well out there. He lived a terribly immoral life. He was notorious. He lived with a woman for years who wasn’t his wife, and they had a baby. There’s nothing he didn’t do—and he never told father a word.” Henry paused for breath.

Aunt Aggie’s cheeks flushed crimson, as they always did when anyone spoke, before her, of sexual matters.

At last she said, as though to herself: “I always knew it—I always knew it. You could see it in his face. I warned them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

Henry meanwhile had recovered himself. He stood there looking into the Mirror. It was a tragic moment. He had done, after all, what, all these months, he had determined to prevent himself from doing. He saw now, in a flash of accusing anger, what would most certainly follow. Aunt Aggie would tell everyone. Philip would be dismissed—Katherine’s heart would be broken.

He saw nothing but Katherine, Katherine whom he loved with all the ardour of his strange undisciplined quixotic soul. He saw Katherine turning to him, reproaching him, then, hiding her grief, pursuing her old life, unhappy for ever and ever. (At this stage in his development, he saw everything in terms of ‘for ever and for ever’.) It never occurred to him that if Philip were expelled out of the Trenchard Eden Katherine might accompany him. No, she would remain, a heart-broken monument to Henry’s lack of character.

He scowled at his aunt, who sat there thrilled and indignant and happy.

“I say!” he burst out. “Of course you mustn’t tell anybody!”

Aunt Aggie nodded her head and her needles clicked.

“It must remain with wiser and older heads than yours, Henry, as to what ought to be done ...” then to herself again: “Ah, they’ll wish they’d listened to me now.”

“But I say,” repeated Henry, red in the face, standing in front of her, “you really mustn’t. I told it you as a secret.”

“A secret! When everyone in London knows! A nice thing they’ll all think—letting Katherine marry a man with such a reputation!”

“No, but look here—you wouldn’t have known anything if I hadn’t told you—and you mustn’t do anything—you mustn’t really. Katie loves him—more than ever—and if she were to lose him—”

“Much better for her to lose him,” said Aunt Aggie firmly, “than for her to be miserable for life—much better. Besides, think of the abominable way the man’s deceived us! Why, he’s no better than a common thief! He—”

“Perhaps he hasn’t deceived her,” interrupted Henry. “Perhaps he’s told her—”

“Told her!” cried his aunt. “And do you really suppose that Katherine would stay for one moment with a man whose life—My dear Henry, how little you know your sister. She certainly has changed lately under that dreadful man’s influence, but she’s not changed so fundamentally as to forget all principles of right and wrong, all delicate feeling.”

“I don’t know,” said Henry slowly, “I don’t believe we do know Katie a bit. Girls are so queer. You think they don’t know a thing about anything, and really they know more than you do.... Anyway,” he went on eagerly, “you mustn’t say a word. You mustn’t really. You must give me your promise.”

But before Aunt Aggie could do more than shake her head there was an interruption. The door opened and Philip entered. Aunt Aggie at once rose from her chair, and, with a rustle and a quiver, without looking at the young man, without speaking left the room.

Henry remained, staring at Philip, confused and bewildered, furious with himself, furious with Aunt Aggie, furious with Philip. Yes, now he had ruined Katherine’s life—he and Philip between them. That he should not consider it possible that Katherine should have her life in her own hands to make or mar was characteristic of the Trenchard point of view.

Philip, conscious of Aunt Aggie’s exit, said: “I was just going—I came back to fetch a book that I left here—one that Katherine lent me.”

Henry made his usual lurching movement, as though he would like to move across the room and behave naturally, but was afraid to trust himself.

“That it?” he asked, pointing gloomily to a novel on the table near him.

“That’s it,” said Philip.

“Hullo!” cried Henry, looking at it more closely. “That’s mine!” It was indeed the novel that had to do with forests and the sea and the liberty of the human soul, the novel that had been to Henry the first true gospel of his life and that had bred in him all the troubles, distrusts and fears that a true gospel is sure to breed. Henry, when the original book had been delivered back to Mudie’s had with ceremony and worship bought a copy for himself. This was his copy.

“It’s my book,” Henry repeated, picking it up and holding it defiantly.

“I’m very sorry,” said Philip stiffly. “Of course I didn’t know. Katherine spoke as though it were hers.”

“Oh, you can take it,” Henry said, frowning and throwing it back on the table.

Philip looked at him, then suddenly, laughing, walked over to him, “What’s the matter, Henry?” he said catching his arm. “I’ll have it out with the lot of you, I swear I will. You, none of you, say anything—you all just look as though you didn’t know me. You yourself, these last months, have looked as though you’d like to stick a dagger into my back. Now, really, upon my word, I don’t know what I’ve done. I’m engaged to Katherine, but I’ve behaved as decently about it as I can. I’m not going to take her away from you all if I can help it. I’ve made up my mind to that, now that I see how much she cares for you all. I’ve done my best ... I really have. Now, what is it?”

Henry was, in spite of himself, touched by this appeal. He glanced at Philip’s face and thought, again in spite of himself, what a nice one it was. A horrible suspicion came to him that he liked Philip, had always liked him, and this abominable whisper, revealing treachery to all his principles, to all his traditions, to all his moral code, above all to Katherine, infuriated him. He tore his arm away.

“If you want to know,” he cried, “it’s because I think you’re a beast, because you’re not fit to touch Katie—because—because—I know all about you!”

Philip stood there; for a moment a smile trembled to his lips, then was dismissed.

“What do you mean?” he said, sternly.

“Mean?” cried Henry, allowing himself to be carried along on a tide of indignation that seemed, in some way, in spite of itself, to be quite genuine. “Mean? I mean that I’ve known for weeks and weeks the kind of man you are! I know what you did in Moscow for years and years, although you may look so quiet. Do you think you’re the sort of man to marry Katherine? Why, you aren’t fit to touch her hand.”

“Would you mind,” said Philip quietly, “just telling me exactly to what you are referring?”

“Why,” said Henry, dropping his voice and beginning to mumble, “you had—you had a mistress—in Moscow for years, and everyone knew it—and you had a baby—and it died. Everyone knows it.”

“Well,” said Philip quietly, “and what then?”

“Oh, you’re going to deny it, I suppose,” said Henry, “but I tell you—”

“No,” said Philip, “I’m not going to think of denying it. I don’t know where you got your information from, but it’s perfectly true. At the same time I can’t see that it’s your particular business or, indeed, anyone’s. The affair’s absolutely done with—old history.”

“No, I suppose,” cried Henry, “it doesn’t seem to be anything to you. You don’t know what a decent family thinks of such things. It’s nothing to you, of course. But we happen to care for Katherine more than—more than—you seem to know. And—and she’s everything to us. And we’re not going to let her—to let her marry someone who’s notoriously a—a bad man. No, we’re not. It may seem odd to you, but we’re not.”

Philip was standing now beneath the Mirror, in front of the fireplace, his hands behind his back.

“My dear Henry,” he said, “it’s extremely pleasant to me to hear that you’re so fond of Katherine—but has it ever occurred to any of you that she may possibly have a life of her own, that she isn’t going to be dependent on all of you for ever?... And as for you, Henry, my boy, you’re a nice character, with charming possibilities in it, but I’m afraid that it can’t be denied that you’re a bit of a prig—and I don’t know that Cambridge is exactly the place to improve that defect.”

Philip could have said nothing more insulting. Henry’s face grew white and his hands trembled.

His voice shaking, he answered: “You can say what you like. All I can tell you is that if you don’t give up Katherine I’ll tell Father at once the sort of man you are—tell them all. And then you’ll have to go.”

At Philip’s heart there was triumph. At last the crisis was threatened for which he had, all this time, been longing. He did not for an instant doubt what Katherine would do. Ah! if they drove him away she was his, his for ever! and, please God, they would never see Glebeshire again!

He was triumphant, but he did not give Henry his mood.

“You can do what you please, my son,” he answered, scornfully. “Tell ’em all. But brush your hair next time you come down to the drawing-room for tea. Even in Russia we do that. You don’t know how wild it looks.... Now, just hand me that book and I’ll clear out. Meanwhile don’t be so childish. You’re going to Cambridge, and really must grow up. Take my advice. Brush your hair, put on a clean collar, and don’t be a prig.”

Henry, white with passion, saw nothing but Philip’s face. Philip the enemy and scorn of the house, Philip the ravisher of Katherine, Philip author of all evil and instigator of all wickedness.

He picked up the book and flung it at Philip’s head.

“There’s your book!” he screamed. “Take it!... You—you cad!”

The book crashed into the centre of the mirror.

There was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole room seemed to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old prints and water-colours, the green carpet, the solemn book-cases, the large arm-chairs—and with the room, the house, and with the house Westminster, Garth, Glebeshire, Trenchard and Trenchard tradition—all represented now by splinters and fragments of glass, by broken reflections of squares and stars of green light, old faded colours, deep retreating shadows.

“Oh!” cried Henry! “Oh!”

“Thank Heaven!” laughed Philip triumphantly. “One of you’ve done something at last!”

CHAPTER III
ANNA AND MRS. TRENCHARD

That return to Garth was, for everyone concerned, a miserable affair. It happened that the fine summer weather broke into torrents of rain. As they drove up to the old house they could hear the dripping of water from every nook and corner. As Henry lay awake that first night the hiss and spatter of the rain against his window seemed to have a personal grudge against him. “Ah—you fool—s-s-s—you s-s-s-illy a-s-s-s. Put your pride in your pocket—s-s-s-illy a-s-s.”

When he slept he dreamt that a deluge had descended upon the earth, that all were drowned save he, and that he was supported against the flood only by the floor of the house that swayed and swayed. Suddenly with a crash in it fell—he awoke to find that he had tumbled out of bed on to the carpet.

For days a steaming, clammy mist, with a weight and a melancholy peculiar to Glebeshire, hung over the world.

They lived in hot steam, their hair was damp and their hands chill. It was poor days for the beginning of August. Rebekah was in a bad temper; no one knew what it was that had displeased her, but she had a wicked nephew who wrote, at certain times, to plead for money, and always for many days after receiving a letter from him she was displeased with everyone. She walked now like a tragedy queen in her tall white cap and stiff white apron; only Mrs. Trenchard could be expected to deal with her, and Mrs. Trenchard had other things that occupied her mind.

Henry’s eye was now forever on his mother. He waited for the moment when Aunt Aggie would speak, that quite inevitable moment.

He thought that he had never truly seen his mother before. In old days, in that strange, dim world before Philip’s arrival, she had seemed to him someone to be cherished, to be protected, someone growing a little old, a little cheerless, a little lonely. Now she was full of vigour and dominion. When she said to him: “Did you put on that clean under-clothing this morning, Henry?” instead of sulking and answering her question with an obvious disgust, he assured her earnestly that he had done so. He admired now her strong figure, her pouring of tea at breakfast, her sharp rebukes to the gardener, and her chiding of Uncle Tim when he entered the drawing-room wearing muddy boots. Yes, he admired his mother. So he trembled at the thought of her cold, ironic anger when she heard of Philip’s past.

On the day after their arrival at Garth he told Millie what he had done. He had long ago realised that, since her return from Paris, Millie had been a quite unaccountable creature. It was not only her French education. He attributed this change also to the dire influence of Philip. He noticed with disgust that she behaved now as though she were a woman of the world, implying, at the same time, that he was still an uncleanly and ignorant schoolboy. He knew that she would be indignant and scornful at his indiscretion, nevertheless he was driven by loneliness to confide in her.

They walked together to the village that they might fetch the afternoon post, otherwise unrescued until the following morning.

Millie was in a bad temper.

“I never knew anyone walk in the mud as you do, Henry. Your boots are filthy in a minute. You walk into every puddle you can see. You always did.”

The trees hung ghostly out of the mist like mocking scarecrows. Every once and again moisture from somewhere trickled down between Henry’s neck and collar.

“Look here, Millie,” he said gloomily, “I want your advice.”

“You’ve done something silly again, I suppose,” she answered loftily.

Glancing shyly at her, he thought that she was looking very pretty. Strange, the number of new things that he was noticing now about the family. But she was pretty—a great deal prettier than Katherine; in fact, the only pretty one of the family. He liked her soft hair, so charming under her large flopping garden-hat, her little nose, her eyes black and sparkling, the colour of her cheeks, her tall and slim body that carried her old cotton dress so gracefully. Everything about her was right and beautiful in a way that no other members of the family could achieve. Katherine was always a little clumsy, although since her engagement to Philip she had taken more care.... There was something light and lovely about Millie that no care would produce if you had not got it. He was proud of her, and would have liked that she should be nice to him.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been an awful fool.... I’ve told Aunt Aggie about Philip.”

Millie stopped and stood, staring at him.

“You’ve told Aunt Aggie?” she cried furiously.

“Yes,” he repeated, blushing, as he always did when he was scolded.

“Oh! you silly ass!” She was so deeply exasperated that she could scarcely speak.

“You SILLY ass! I might have guessed it—And yet all the time I’d hoped that at least.... And Aunt Aggie of all people!... and now Katherine and mother!

“Oh, you chattering, blundering idiot!”

She walked forward at a furious pace; he plunged after her.

“That’s all right,” he said, “when you’ve done cursing you’ll be cooler. I know I’m an ass, but Aunt Aggie irritated me and got it all out of me. Aunt Aggie’s the devil!”

“Of course she is, and of course you’ll choose her out of everyone, when she hates Philip and would wring his neck to-morrow if her hands were strong enough.”

“Well, I hate him too,” said Henry.

“Oh, no you don’t,” answered Millie, “you think you do. You’re proud of thinking you hate him, and you lose your temper because he laughs at you, and then you throw books at his head, but you don’t really hate him.”

“How do you know I throw books at his head?”

“Oh, you don’t suppose we, any of us, believed that story about you and Philip having a kind of game in the drawing-room just for fun.... Father was furious about it, and said the mirror was unreplaceable, and the sooner you went to Cambridge and stopped there the better—and I think so too. Oh! you’ve just spoilt everything!”

“It’s only about Katie I’m thinking,” he answered doggedly. “It may, after all, be true what Aunt Aggie said, that it will be much better for her in the end for the thing to be broken off, even though it hurts her now.”

“Better for her!” cried Millie scornfully. “Don’t you know that, however deeply she loved Philip when it all began, it’s nothing to the way that she loves him now?... Of course now there’ll be a scene. Philip will be turned off for ever and—” She broke off, then said, staring at Henry: “Supposing, after all, Katie were to go with him!”

Henry shook his head. “She’d never do that, however much Philip is to her. Why, it would mean giving up Garth and us for ever! Mother would never forgive her! After all, she’s only known Philip six months, and I heard her say the other day in London she loves Garth more than ever. And even if Mother did forgive her, in the end she’d never be able to come back here as one of us again. You and I will love her whatever she does, but Mother and Father and the aunts ... I believe it would simply kill them—”

“I’m not so sure,” said Millie slowly, “that Mother thinks that. I believe she’s half afraid of Philip running off and then Katie following him. That’s why she’s been so nice to him lately, although she can’t bear him. Of course if she knew all this that we know he’d have to go—she wouldn’t have him in the house five minutes, and Father would do what Mother told him of course. And now that you’ve been an idiot enough to tell Aunt Aggie, it’s all up.... The only hope is that Katie will chuck it all and follow him!”

“What!” cried Henry aghast. “You’d like her to!”

“Why, of course,” said Millie, “there isn’t anything compared with the sort of thing Katie feels for Philip—Home and the family? Why, they’ve all got to go in these days! That’s what people like the aunts and fathers and the rest of the old fogeys round here don’t see. But they’ll have to see soon.... But mother’s cleverer than they are. At least she is about Katie, because she loves her so much.”

“My word!” said Henry, in the husky voice that always came when he admired anybody. “You’ve changed an awful lot lately, Millie.”

“Yes, I suppose I have,” she answered, complacently.

They talked very little after that, for the reason that in the village Henry bought Millie some bulls-eyes, because he felt in a confused kind of way that he admired her more than he had ever done.

Millie had also another reason for silence; she was thinking very hard. During those few days in London she had lived in a world of thrilling expectation. She hoped that every moment would announce the elopement of Katherine and Philip. After her conversation with her sister, it had seemed to her that this elopement was inevitable. On every occasion of the opening of a door in the London house her heart had leapt in her breast. She had watched the lovers with eyes that were absorbed. Ah! if only they would take her more thoroughly into their confidence, would put themselves into her hands. She’d manage for them—she’d arrange everything most beautifully. This was the most romantic hour of her life....

But now, after Henry’s revelation, Millie’s thoughts were turned upon her mother. Of course her mother would expel Philip—then there was a danger that Philip would return to that living, fascinating creature in Russia, the mysterious, smiling Anna. Millie had created that figure for herself now, had thought and wondered and dreamed of her so often that she saw her bright and vivid and desperately dangerous, thin and dark and beautiful against a background of eternal snow.

There they were—her mother and Anna and Katherine, with Philip, poor Philip, in between them all. It was truly a wonderful time for Millie, who regarded all this as a prologue to her own later dazzling history. She did not know that, after all, she blamed Henry very desperately for his foolishness. The thrilling crisis was but brought the nearer.

Meanwhile the first thing that she did was to inform Katherine of Henry’s treachery.

Katherine received the news very quietly.

“And now,” said Millie eagerly, “what will you do, Katie darling?”

“Wait and see what Mother does,” said Katie.

“She’ll be simply horrified,” said Millie. “If she sends Philip away and forbids you ever to see him again, what will you do?”

But Katherine would not answer that.

“Let’s wait, Millie dear,” she said gently.

“But you wouldn’t let him go?” Millie pursued, “not back to Russia and that awful woman.”

“I trust Philip,” Katherine said.

“You can never trust a man,” Millie said gravely. “I know. One of our girls in Paris was let in terribly. She—”

Katherine interrupted her.

“Philip isn’t like anyone else,” she said.

And Millie was dismissed.

But when Katherine was alone she sat down and wrote a letter. This was it:

Meanwhile the family life proceeded, outwardly, on its normal way. August was always a month of incident—picnics to Rafiel and St. Lowe and Damen Head, sometimes long expeditions to Borhaze or Pelynt, sometimes afternoons in Pendennis or Rothin Woods. There were expeditions in which relations from Polchester or Clinton, or friends from Liskane and Polewint shared, and, in the cover of them, the family supported quite successfully the Trenchard tradition of good manners, unruffled composure, and abundant leisure. As members of a clan so ancient and self-reliant that no enemy, however strong, however confident, could touch them, they sat about their luncheon baskets on the burning sand, whilst the fat pony cropped in the dark hedges above the beach and the gulls wheeled and hovered close at hand.

This was well enough, but the long summer evenings betrayed them. In earlier days, when relationships were so sure and so pleasant that the world swept by in a happy silence, those summer evenings had been lazy, intimate prologues to long nights of undisturbed sleep. They would sit in the drawing-room, the windows open to the garden scents and the salt twang of the sea, moths would flutter round the lamps, Millie would play and sing a little at a piano that was never quite in tune. Aunt Betty would struggle happily with her “Demon Patience,” George Trenchard would laugh at them for half-an-hour, and then slip away to his study. Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie would knit and discuss the village, Henry would lie back in an arm-chair, his nose deep in a book, Katherine would be at anybody’s service—the minutes would fly, then would come Rebekah with hot milk for some and toast-and-water for others, there would be prayers, and then “good-night, ma’am”. “Good-night, sir”, from the three maids, the cook and Rebekah, then candles lighted in the hall, then climbing slowly up the stairs, with clumsy jokes from Henry and last words from Mrs. Trenchard, such as “Don’t forget the Williams’ coming over to-morrow, Katie dear,” or “Some of that quinine for your cold, Aggie, I suggest,” or “I’ve put the new collars on your bed, Henry,” then the closing of doors, then a happy silence, utterly secure. That had been the old way.

Outwardly the August nights of this year resembled the old ones—but the heart of them beat with panic and dismay. Philip had thought at first that it was perhaps his presence that caused the uneasiness, and one evening he complained of a headache and went up to his room after dinner. But he learnt from Katherine that his absence had merely emphasised everything. They must be all there—it would never do to show that there was anything the matter. Millie played the piano, Aunt Betty attempted her “Patience” with her usual little “Tut-tut’s” and “Dear me’s.” Mrs. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie sewed or knitted, but now the minutes dragged in endless procession across the floor, suddenly someone would raise a head and listen, Henry, pretending to read a book, would stare desperately in front of him, then noticing that Aunt Aggie watched him, would blush and hold his book before his face; with relief, as though they had escaped some threatening danger, they would greet the milk, the ‘toast-and-water’, the maids and the family prayers.

There was now no lingering on the staircase.

There are many families, of course, to whom the rebellion or disgrace of one of its members would mean but little, so slightly had been felt before the dependence of one soul upon another. But with the Trenchards that dependence had been everything, the outside world had been a fantastic show, unreal and unneeded: as the pieces of a pictured puzzle fit one into another, so had the Trenchards been interwoven and dependent ... only in England, perhaps, had such a blind and superior insularity been possible ... and it may be that this was to be, in all the records of history, the last of such a kind—“Nil nisi bonum”....

To Philip these summer days were darkened by his consciousness of Mrs. Trenchard. When he looked back over the months since he had known her, he could remember no very dramatic conversation that he had had with her, nothing tangible anywhere. She had been always pleasant and agreeable to him, and, at times, he had tried to tell himself that, after all, he might ultimately be happy ‘eaten up by her,’ as Jonah was by the whale. Then, with a little shiver, he knew the truth—that increasingly, as the days passed, he both hated and feared her. She had caught his will in her strong hands and was crushing it into pulp.

He made one last effort to assert himself, even as he had tried his strength against Katherine, against Henry, against Aunt Aggie, against old Mr. Trenchard. This little conversation that he had in the Garth garden with Mrs. Trenchard upon one of those lovely summer evenings was of the simplest and most undramatic fashion. Nevertheless it marked the end of his struggle; he always afterwards looked back upon those ten minutes as the most frightening experience of his life. Mrs. Trenchard, in a large loose hat and gauntleted gardening gloves, made a fine cheerful, reposeful figure as she walked slowly up and down the long lawn; she asked Philip to walk with her; the sun flung her broad flat shadow like a stain upon the bright grass.

They had talked a little, and then he had suddenly, with a tug of alarm at his heart, determined that he would break his chains. He looked up at her placid eyes.

“I think,” he said—his voice was not quite steady—“that Katherine and I will live somewhere in the North after our marriage. Quite frankly I don’t think Glebeshire suits me.”

“And Katie,” said Mrs. Trenchard, smiling.

“Katie ... she—she’ll like the North when she’s tried it for a little.”

“You’ll rob us of her?”

“Not altogether, of course.”

“She’ll be very miserable away from Glebeshire ... very miserable. I’ve seen such a nice little house—Colve Hall—only two miles from here—on the Rafiel road. I don’t think you must take Katie from Glebeshire, Philip.”

That was a challenge. Their eyes met. His dropped.

“I think it will be better for her to be away after we are married.”

“Why? Do you hate us all?”

He coloured. “I’m not myself with you. I don’t know what to do with your kind of life. I’ve tried—I have indeed—I’m not happy here.”

“Aren’t you selfish? If you rob Katie of everything—will you be happy then?”

Yes, that was it. He could see their future life, Katherine, longing, longing to return, excited, homesick!

Although he did not look up, he knew that she was smiling at him.

“You are very young, Philip,” she said. “You want life to be perfect. It can’t be that. You must adapt yourself. I think that you will both be happier here in Glebeshire—near us.”

He would have broken out, crying that Katherine was his, not theirs, that he wanted her for himself, that they must be free.... Of what use? That impassivity took his courage and flattened it all out as though he were a child of ten, still ruled by his mother.

“Shall we go in?” said Mrs. Trenchard. “It’s a little cold.”

It was after this conversation that he began to place his hope upon the day when his Moscow misdeeds would be declared—that seemed now his only road to freedom.

Upon one lovely summer evening they sat there and had, some of them, the same thought.

Millie, slim and white, standing before the long open window, stared into the purple night, splashed with stars and mysterious with tier-like clouds. She was thinking of Anna, of all that life that Philip had, of what a world it must be where there are no laws, no conventions, no restraints. That woman now had some other lover, she thought no more, perhaps, of Philip—and no one held her the worse. She could do what she would—how full her life must be, how adventurous, packed with colour, excitement, battle and victory. And, after all, it might be, to that woman, that this adventure meant so little that she did not realise it as an adventure. Millie’s heart rose and fell; her heart hurt her so that she pressed her hand against her frock. She wanted her own life to begin—at once, at once. Other girls had found the beginning of it during those days in Paris, but some English restraint and pride—she was intensely proud—had held her back. But now she was on fire with impatience, with longing, with, courage.... As she stared into the night she seemed to see the whole world open, like a shining silver plate, held by some dark figure for her acceptance. She stretched out her hands.

“Take care you don’t catch cold by that open window, Millie dear,” said her mother.

Henry also was thinking of Anna. From where he sat he could, behind his book, raising his eyes a little, see Philip. Philip was sitting, very straight and solid, with his short thick legs crossed in front of him, reading a book. He never moved. He made no sound. Henry had, since the day when he had broken the mirror, avoided Philip entirely. He did not want to consider the man at all; of course he hated the man because it was he who had made them all miserable, and yet, had the fellow never loved Katherine, had he remained outside the family, Henry knew now that he could have loved him.

This discovery he had made exactly at the moment when that book had fallen crashing into the mirror—it had been so silly, so humiliating a discovery that he had banished it from his mind, had refused to look into it at all.

But that did not mean that he did not contemplate Philip’s amazing life. He contemplated it more intensely every day. The woman had all the mystery of invisibility, and yet Henry thought that he would know her if he saw her. He coloured her according to his fancy, a laughing, tender figure who would recognize him, did she meet him, as the one man in the world for whom she had been searching.

He imagined to himself ridiculous conversations that he should have with her. He would propose to marry her, would declare, with a splendid nobility, that he knew of her earlier life, but that “that meant nothing to him.” He would even give up his country for her, would live in Russia, would ... Then he caught Philip’s eye, blushed, bent to pull up his sock, said, in a husky, unconcerned voice:

“Do play something, Millie. Something of Mendelssohn.”

Philip also was thinking of Anna. Through the pages of his stupid novel, as though they had been of glass, he saw her as she had last appeared to him on the platform of the Moscow station. She had been wearing a little round black fur hat and a long black fur coat, her cheeks were pale, her eyes mocking, but somewhere, as though in spite of herself, there had been tenderness. She had laughed at him, but she had, for only a moment perhaps, wished that he were not going. It was that tenderness that held him now. The evening, through which he was now passing, had been terrible—one of the worst that he had ever spent—and he had wondered whether he really would be able to discipline himself to that course on which he had determined, to marry Katherine under the Trenchard shadow, to deliver himself to Mrs. Trenchard, even as the lobster is delivered to the cook. And so, with this desperation, had come, with increasing force, that memory of Anna’s tenderness.

He did not want to live with her again, to renew that old life—his love for Katherine had, most truly, blotted out all the fire and colour of that earlier passion, but he wanted—yes, he wanted most passionately, to save his own soul.

Might it not, after all, be true, as that ghostly figure had urged to him, that it would be better for him to escape and so carry Katherine after him—but what if she did not come?

He heard Mrs. Trenchard’s voice as she spoke to Millie, and, at that sound, he resigned himself ... but the figure still smiled at him behind that glassy barrier.

Katherine also thought of Anna. She was sitting just behind Aunt Betty watching, over the old lady’s shoulder, the ‘Patience’.

“There,” said Aunt Betty, “there’s the ten, the nine, the eight. Oh! if I only had the seven!”

“You can get it,” said Katherine, “if you move that six and five.”

“How stupid I am!” said Aunt Betty, “thank you, my dear, I didn’t see.”

Katherine saw dancing in and out between the little cards a tiny figure that was yet tall and strong, moving there a teasing, taunting puppet, standing also, a motionless figure, away there, by the wall, watching, with a cynical smile, the room. Beneath the thin hands of the old lady the cards fluttered, shifted, lay with their painted colours on the shining table, and, in accompaniment with their movement, Katherine’s thoughts also danced, in and out, round and round, chasing the same old hopeless riddle. Sometimes she glanced across at her mother. Perhaps already Aunt Aggie had told her.... No, she had not. Her mother’s calm showed that she, as yet, knew nothing. Katherine, like the others, did not doubt what her mother would do. She would demand that the engagement should be broken off; they would all, ranged behind her broad back, present their ultimatum—And then what would Katherine do?... Simply, sitting there, with her fingers fiercely interlaced, her hands pressed against her knee, she did not know. She was exhausted with the struggle that had continued now for so many weeks, and behind her exhaustion, waiting there, triumphant in the expectation of her success, was her rival.

Then, suddenly, as they waited there came to them all the idea that the hall door had been opened and gently closed. They all, Mrs. Trenchard, Aunt Aggie, Millie, Henry, Katherine, started, looked up.

“Did someone come in?” said Mrs. Trenchard, in her mild voice. “I thought I heard the hall door—Just go and see, Henry.”

“I’ll go,” said Katherine quickly.

They all waited, their heads raised. Katherine crossed the room, went into the hall that glimmered faintly under a dim lamp, paused a moment, then turned back the heavy handle of the door. The door swung back, and the lovely summer night swept into the house. The stars were a pattern of quivering light between the branches of the heavy trees that trembled ever so gently with the thrilling sense of their happiness. The roses, the rich soil soaked with dew, and the distant murmur of the stream that ran below the garden wall entered the house.

Katherine waited, in the open door, looking forward. Then she came in, shutting the door softly behind her.

Had someone entered? Was someone there with her, in the half-light, whispering to her: “I’m in the house now—and I shall stay, so long as I please—unless you can turn me out.”

She went back into the drawing-room.

“There was no one,” she said. “Perhaps it was Rebekah.”

“There’s rather a draught, dear,” said Aunt Aggie, “my neuralgia ... thank you, my dear.”

“I’ve done it!” cried Aunt Betty, flushed with pleasure. “It’s come out! If you hadn’t shown me that seven, Katie, it never would have come!”

Upon the very next afternoon Aunt Aggie made up her mind. After luncheon she went, alone, for a walk; she climbed the fields above the house, threaded little lanes sunk between high hedges, crossed an open common, dropped into another lane, was lost for awhile, finally emerged on the hill above that tiny Cove known as Smuggler’s Button. Smuggler’s Button is the tiniest cove in Glebeshire, the sand of it is the whitest, and it has in the very middle a high jagged rock known as the Pin. Aunt Aggie, holding an umbrella, a black bonnet on her head and an old shabby rain-coat flapping behind her, sat on the Pin. It was a long way for her to have come—five miles from Garth—and the day was windy, with high white clouds that raced above her head like angry birds ready to devour her. Aunt Aggie sat there and looked at the sea, which approached her in little bowing and beckoning white waves, as though she were a shrivelled and pouting Queen Victoria holding a drawing-room. Once and again her head trembled, as though it were fastened insecurely to her body, and her little fat, swollen cheeks shook like jelly. Sometimes she raised a finger, encased in a black glove, and waved it in the air, as though she were admonishing the universe.

She clutched vigorously in one hand her umbrella.

She gazed at the sea with passion. This love for the sea had been a dominant power in her ever since she could remember, and had come she knew not whence. It had been, in earlier days, one of the deep, unspoken bonds between herself and Katherine, and it had been one of her most active criticisms of Millie that ‘the girl cared nothing about the sea whatever’. But she, Aunt Aggie, could not say why she loved it. She was no poet, and she knew not the meaning of the word ‘Enthusiasm’. She was ashamed a little of her passion, and, when she had walked five miles to Smuggler’s Button or seven miles to Lingard Sand ‘just to look at it’, she would walk stiffly home again, would give no answer to those who asked questions, and, if driven into a corner would say she had been ‘just for a walk.’ But she loved it in all its moods, grave, gay and terrible, loved it even when it was like a grey cotton garment designed for the poor or when it slipped into empty space under a blind and soaking mist. She loved the rhythm of it, the indifference of it, above all, the strength of it. Here at last, thank God, was something that she could admire more than herself.

She had, nevertheless, always at the back of her mind the thought that it would be bad for it if it knew how much she thought of it; she was always ready to be disappointed in it, although she knew that it would never disappoint her—she was grim and unbending in her attitude to it lest, in a moment of ecstasy, she should make cheap of her one devotion. To-day she did not actively consider it. She sat on the rock and made up her mind that she would take steps ‘that very day.’ Harriet, her sister-in-law, had, during these last months, often surprised her, but there would be no question of her action in this climax of the whole unfortunate business.

“The young man,” as she always called Philip, would never show his face in Trenchard circles again. Harriet might forgive, because of her love for Katherine, his impertinence, his conceit, his irreligion, his leading Henry into profligacy and drunkenness, she would not—could not—forgive his flagrant and open immorality, an immorality that had extended over many years. As she thought of this vicious life she gave a little shiver—a shiver of indignation, of resolution, of superiority, and of loneliness. The world—the gay, vital, alluring world, had left her high and dry upon that rock on which she was sitting, and, rebuke and disapprove of it as she might, it cared little for her words.

It was, perhaps, for this reason that she felt strangely little pleasure in her approaching triumph. She had hated “the young man” since her first meeting with him, and at last, after many months of patient waiting, the means had been placed in her hands for his destruction.... Well, she did not know that she cared to-day very greatly about it. She was old, she was tired, she had neuralgia in one side of her face, there was a coming headache in the air. Why was it that she, who had always held so steadily for right, whose life had been one long struggle after unselfishness, who had served others from early morning until late at night, should now find no reward, but only emptiness and old age and frustration? She had not now even the pleasure of her bitternesses. They were dust and ashes in her mouth.

She resolved that at once, upon that very afternoon, she would tell Harriet about Philip—and then suddenly, for no reason, with a strange surprise to herself, she did a thing that was quite foreign to her; she began to cry, a desolate trickling of tears that tasted salt in her mouth, that were shed, apparently, by some quite other person.

It seemed to her as she turned slowly and went home that that same Woman who had encountered life, had taken it all and tasted every danger, now, watching her, laughed at her for her wasted, barren days....

By the time, however, that she reached Garth she had recovered her spirits; it was the sea that had made her melancholy. She walked into the house with the firm step of anticipated triumph. She went up to her bedroom, took off her bonnet, washed her face and hands, peeped out on to the drive as though she expected to see someone watching there, then came down into the drawing-room.

She had intended to speak to her sister-in-law in private. It happened, however, that, on going to the tea-table, she discovered that the tea had been standing for a considerable period, and nobody apparently intended to order any more—at the same time a twinge in her left jaw told her that it had been foolish of her to sit on that rock so long.

Then Philip, who had the unfortunate habit of trying to be friendly at the precisely wrong moment, said, cheerfully:

“Been for a walk all alone, Aunt Aggie?”

She always hated that he should call her Aunt Aggie. To-day it seemed a most aggravated insult.

“Yes,” she said. “You’ve had tea very early.”

“George wanted it,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who was writing at a little table near a window that opened into the sunlit garden. “One never can tell with you, Aggie, what time you’ll like it—never can tell, surely.”

There! as though that weren’t directly charging her with being a trouble to the household. Because they’d happened to have it early!

“I call it very unfair—” she began nibbling a piece of bread and butter.

But the unfortunate Philip gaily continued: “When we are married, Aunt Aggie, and you come to stay with us, you shall have tea just when you like.”

He was laughing at her, he patronised her! He dared—! She trembled with anger.

“I shall never come and stay with you,” she said.

“Aunt Aggie!” cried Katherine, who was sitting near her mother by the window.

“No, never!” Aunt Aggie answered, her little eyes flashing and her cheeks shaking. “And if I had my way you should never be married!”

They all knew then that at last the moment had come. Henry started to his feet as though he would escape, Katherine turned towards her mother, Philip fixed his eyes gravely upon his enemy—only Mrs. Trenchard did not pause in her writing. Aunt Aggie knew then that she was committed. She did not care, she was glad if only she could hurt Philip, that hateful and intolerable young man.

Her hands trembled, her rings making a tiny clatter against the china; she saw only her sister-in-law and Philip.

Philip quietly said:

“Why do you hope that Katherine and I will never marry, Aunt Aggie?”

“Because I love Katherine—because I—we want her to make a happy marriage. Because if she—knew what I know she would not marry you.”

“My dear Aggie!” said Mrs. Trenchard, softly, from the writing-table—but she stayed her pen and waited, with her head turned a little, as though she would watch Katherine’s face without appearing to do so.

“And what do you know,” pursued Philip quietly, “that would prevent Katherine from marrying me?”

“I know,” she answered fiercely, the little gold cross that hung round her throat jumping against the agitation of her breast, “that you—that you are not the man to marry my niece. You have concealed things from her father which, if he had known, would have caused him to forbid you the house.”

“Oh! I say!” cried Henry, suddenly jumping to his feet.

“Well,” pursued Philip, “what are these things?”

She paused for a moment, wondering whether Henry had had sufficient authority for his statements. Philip of course would deny everything—but she had now proceeded too far to withdraw.

“I understand,” she said, “that you lived in Russia with a woman to whom you were not married—lived for some years, and had a child. This is, I am ashamed to say, common talk. I need scarcely add that I had not intended to bring this disgraceful matter up in this public fashion. But perhaps after all it is better. You have only yourself to blame, Mr. Mark,” she continued, “for your policy of secrecy. To allow us all to remain in ignorance of these things, to allow Katherine—but perhaps,” she asked, “you intend to deny everything? In that case—”

“I deny nothing,” he answered. “This seems to me a very silly manner of discussing such a business.” He addressed his words then to Mrs. Trenchard. “I said nothing about these things,” he continued, “because, quite honestly, I could not see that it was anyone’s affair but my own and Katherine’s. I told Katherine everything directly after we were engaged.”

At that Aunt Aggie turned upon her niece.

“You knew, Katherine? You knew—all these disgraceful—these—” Her voice broke. “You knew and you continued your engagement?”

“Certainly,” answered Katherine quietly. “Whatever life Philip led before he knew me, was no business of mine. It was good of him to tell me as he did, but it was not my affair. And really, Aunt Aggie,” she continued, “that you could think it right to speak like this before us all—to interfere—”

Her voice was cold with anger. They had none of them ever before known this Katherine.

Aunt Aggie appealed to her sister-in-law.

“Harriet, if I’ve been wrong in mentioning this now, I’m sorry. Katherine seems to have lost her senses. I would not wish to condemn anyone, but to sit still and watch whilst my niece, whom I have loved, is given to a profligate—”

Katherine stood, with the sunlight behind her; she looked at her aunt, then moved across the room to Philip and put her hand on his shoulder.

They all waited then for Mrs. Trenchard; they did not doubt what she would say. Katherine, strangely, at that moment felt that she loved her mother as she had never loved her before. In the very fury of the indignation that would be directed against Philip would be the force of her love for her daughter.

This pause, as they all waited for Mrs. Trenchard to speak, was weighted with the indignation that they expected from her.

But Mrs. Trenchard laughed: “My dear Aggie: what a scene! really too stupid. As you have mentioned this, I may say that I have known—these things—about Philip for a long time. But I said nothing because—well, because it is really not my business what life Philip led before he met us. Perhaps I know more about young men and their lives, Aggie, than you do.”

“You knew!” Henry gasped.

“You’ve known!” Aggie cried.

Katherine had, at the sound of her mother’s voice, given her one flash of amazement: then she had turned to Philip, while she felt a cold shudder at her heart as though she were some prisoner suddenly clapt into a cage and the doors bolted.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Trenchard, “Mr. Seymour came a long time ago and told me things that he thought I ought to know. I said to Mr. Seymour that he must not do such things, and that if I ever spoke of it to Philip I should give him his name. I disapprove of such things. Yes, it was Mr. Seymour—I think he never liked you, Philip, because you contradicted him about Russia. He’s a nice, clever boy, but I daresay he’s wrong in his facts....” Then, as they still waited in silence, “I really think that’s all, Aggie. You must forgive me, dear, but I don’t think it was quite your business. Katherine is over age, you know, and in any case it isn’t quite nice in the drawing-room—and really only because your tea was cold, Aggie dear.”

“You’ve known ... you’ll do nothing, Harriet?” Aggie gasped.

Mrs. Trenchard looked at them before she turned back to her writing-table.

“You can ring for some fresh tea if you like,” she said.

But for a moment her eyes had caught Philip’s eyes. They exchanged the strangest look. Hers of triumph, sarcastic, ironic, amazingly triumphant, his of a dull, hopeless abandonment and submission.

Her attack at last, after long months of struggle, had succeeded. He was beaten. She continued her letter.

CHAPTER IV
THE WILD NIGHT

Ten minutes later Katherine and Philip were alone in the garden. There were signs that the gorgeous summer afternoon was to be caught into thunder. Beyond the garden-wall a black cloud crept toward the trees, and the sunlight that flooded the lawn seemed garish now, as though it had been painted in shrill colours on to the green; the air was intensely hot; the walls of the house glittered like metal.

They stood under the great oak bobbing in front of them.

“Well,” said Philip at last, “that’s the end, Katie dear—your mother’s a wonderful woman.”

Katherine was silent. He went on:

“That was my last hope. I suppose I’d been counting on it more than I ought. You’d have come with me, I know, if they’d turned me out? Not a bit of it. Your mother’s a wonderful woman, I repeat.” He paused, looked into her eyes, seemed to be startled by the pain in them. “My dear, don’t mind. She only wants to keep you because she can’t get on without you—and I shall settle down all right in a bit. What a fuss, after all, we’ve been making.”

Katherine said: “Tell me, Phil, have there been times, lately, in the last week, when you’ve thought of running away, going back to Russia? Tell me honestly.”

“Yes,” he answered, “there have—many times. But I always waited to see how things turned out. And then to-day when the moment did come at last, I saw quite clearly that I couldn’t leave you ever—that anything was better than being without you—anything—So that’s settled.”

“And you’ve thought,” Katherine pursued steadily, “of what it will be after we’re married. Mother always wanting me. Your having to be in a place that you hate. And even if we went to live somewhere else, of Mother always keeping her hand on us, never letting go, never allowing you to be free, knowing about Anna—their all knowing—you’ve faced it all?”

“I’ve faced it all,” he answered, trying to laugh. “I can’t leave you, Katie, and that’s the truth. And if I’ve got to have your mother and the family as well, why, then, I’ve got to have them.... But, oh! my dear, how your mother despises me! Well, I suppose I am a weak young man! And I shall forget Russia in time.... I’ve got to!” he ended, almost under his breath.

She looked at him queerly.

“All right,” she said, “I know now what we’ve got to do.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Wait. I must go and speak to Uncle Tim. I shall be an hour. Be ready for me out here under this tree in an hour’s time. It will be seven o’clock.”

“What do you mean?” he asked her again, but she had gone.

She had picked up an old garden hat in the hall, and now very swiftly hurried up the village road. She walked, the dust rising about her and the black cloud gaining in size and strength behind her. Uncle Tim’s house stood by itself at the farther end of the village. She looked neither to right nor left, did not answer the greeting of the villagers, passed quickly through the little garden, over the public path and rang the rusty, creaking bell. An old woman, who had been Uncle Tim’s housekeeper for an infinite number of years, opened the door.

“Ah, Miss Kathie,” she said, smiling. “Do ee come in. ’E’s gardenin’, poor soul. All of a sweat. Terrible ’ot ’tis, tu. Makin’ up thunder I’m thinkin’.”

Katherine went into the untidy, dusty hall, then into her uncle’s study. This had, ever since her childhood, been the same, a litter of bats, fishing-rods, specimens of plants and flowers drying on blotting paper, books lying in piles on the floor, and a pair of trousers hanging by a nail on to the back of the door.

She waited, seeing none of these familiar things. She did not, at first, see her uncle when he came in from the garden, perspiration dripping down his face, his old cricket shirt open at the neck, his grey flannel trousers grimed with dust.

“Hullo, Katie!” he cried, “what do you want? And if it’s an invitation to dinner tell ’em I can’t come.” Then, taking another look at her, he said gravely, “What’s up, my dear?”

She sat down in an old arm-chair which boasted a large hole and only three legs; he drew up a chair close to her, then suddenly, as though he saw that she needed comfort, put his arms round her.

“What’s the matter, my dear?” he repeated.

“Uncle Tim,” she said, speaking rapidly but quietly and firmly, “you’ve got to help me. You’ve always said that you would if I wanted you.”

“Why, of course,” he answered simply. “What’s happened?”

“Everything. Things, as you know, have been getting worse and worse at home ever since—well, ever since Phil and I were engaged.”

“Yes, I know,” he said.

“It hasn’t been Phil’s fault,” she broke out with sudden fierceness. “He’s done everything. It’s been my fault. I’ve been blind and stupid from the beginning. I don’t want to be long, Uncle Tim, because there’s not much time, but I must explain everything so that you shall understand me and not think it wrong. We’ve got nearly two hours.”

“Two hours?” he repeated, bewildered.

“From the beginning Mother hated Phil. I always saw it of course, but I used to think that it would pass when she knew Phil better—that no one could help knowing him without loving him—and that was silly, of course. But I waited, and always hoped that things would be better. Then in the spring down here there was one awful Sunday, when Aunt Aggie at supper made a scene and accused Philip of leading Henry astray or something equally ridiculous. After that Philip wanted me to run away with him, and I—I don’t know—but I felt that he ought to insist on it, to make me go. He didn’t insist, and then I saw suddenly that he wasn’t strong enough to insist on anything, and that instead of being the great character that I’d once thought him, he was really weak and under anyone’s influence. Well, that made me love him in a different way, but more—much more—than I ever had before. I saw that he wanted looking after and protecting. I suppose you’ll think that foolish of me,” she said fiercely.

“Not at all, my dear,” said Uncle Tim, “go on.”

“Well, there was something else,” Katherine went on. “One day some time before, when we first came to Garth, he told me that when he was in Russia he had loved another woman. They had a child, a boy, who died. He was afraid to tell me, because he thought that I’d think terribly of him.

“But what did it matter, when he’d given her up and left her? Only this mattered—that I couldn’t forget her. I wasn’t jealous, but I was curious—terribly. I asked him questions, I wanted to see her as she was—it was so strange to me that there should be that woman, still living somewhere, who knew more, much more, about Phil than I did. Then the more questions I asked him about her the more he thought of her and of Russia, so that at last he asked me not to speak of her. But then she seemed to come between us, because we both thought of her, and I used to wonder whether he wanted to go back to her, and he wondered whether, after all, I was jealous about her. Then things got worse with everyone. I felt as though everyone was against us. After the Faunder wedding Henry and Phil had a quarrel, and Henry behaved like a baby.

“I’ve had a dreadful time lately. I’ve imagined anything. I’ve been expecting Phil to run away. Millie said he would—Mother’s been so strange. She hated Phil, but she asked him to Garth, and seemed to want to have him with her. She’s grown so different that I simply haven’t known her lately. And Phil too—it’s had a dreadful effect on him. He seems to have lost all his happiness—he hates Garth and everything in it, but he’s wanted to be near me, and so he’s come. So there we’ve all been.” She paused for a moment, then went on quickly. “Just now—this afternoon—it all came to a climax. Aunt Aggie had found out from Henry about the Russian woman. She lost her temper at tea, and told Mother before us all. Phil has been expecting this to happen for weeks, and had been almost hoping for it, because then he thought that Mother and Father would say that he must give me up, and that then I would refuse to leave him. In that way he’d escape.

“But it seemed”—here Katherine, dropping her voice, spoke more slowly—“that Mother had known all the time. That horrid Mr. Seymour in London had told her. She’d known for months, and had never said anything—Mother, who would have been horrified a year ago. But no—She said nothing. She only told Aunt Aggie that she oughtn’t to make scenes in the drawing-room, and that it wasn’t her business.

“Philip saw then that his last chance was gone, that she meant never to let me go, and that if she must have him as well she’d have him. He’s sure now that I’ll never give Mother up unless she makes me choose between him and her—and so he’s just resigned himself.”

Uncle Tim would have spoken, but she stopped him.

“And there’s more than that. Perhaps it’s foolish of me, but I’ve felt as though that woman—that Russian woman—had been coming nearer and nearer and nearer. There was an evening the other night when I felt that she’d come right inside the house. I went into the hall and listened. That must seem ridiculous to anyone outside the family, but it may be that thinking of anyone continually does bring them—does do something.... At least for me now she’s here, and she’s going to try and take Phil back again. Mother wants her, it’s Mother, perhaps, who has made her come. Mother can make Phil miserable in a thousand ways by reminding him of her, by suggesting, by ...” With a great cry Katherine broke off: “Oh, Mother, Mother, I did love you so!” and bursting into a passion of tears, clung to her uncle as though she were still a little child.

Then how he soothed her! stroking her hair, telling her that he loved her, that he would help her, that he would do anything for her. He held her in his arms, murmuring to her as he had done so many years ago:

“There, Katie, Katie ... it’s all right, it’s all right. Nobody will touch you. It’s all right, it’s all right.”

At last, with a sudden movement, as though she had realised that there was little time to waste, she broke from him and stood up, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief; then, with that strange note of fierceness, so foreign to the old mild Katherine, she said:

“But now I see—I see everything. What Millie said is true—I can’t have it both ways, I’ve got to choose. Mother doesn’t care for anything so much as for beating Philip, for humiliating him, for making him do everything that she says. That other woman too—she’d like to see him humiliated, laughed at—I know that she’s like that, cruel and hard.

“And he’s only got me in all the world. I can beat that other woman only by showing her that I’m stronger than she is. I thought once that it was Phil who would take me and look after me, but now it is I that must look after him.

“If we stay, if we do as Mother wishes, we shall never escape. I love everything here, I love them all, I can’t leave them unless I do it now, now! Even to-morrow I shall be weak again. Mother’s stronger than we are. She’s stronger, I do believe, than anyone. Uncle Tim, we must go to-night!”

“To-night!” he repeated, staring at her.

“Now, at once, in an hour’s time. We can drive to Rasselas. There’s the London Express at eight o’clock. It’s in London by midnight. I can wire to Rachel. She’ll have me. We can be married, by special licence, to-morrow!”

He did not seem astonished by her impetuosity. He got up slowly from his chair, knocked over with his elbow the blotting-paper upon which were the dried flowers, swore, bent down and picked them up slowly one by one, rose at last and, very red in the face with his exertions, looked at her. Then he smiled gently, stroking his fingers through his beard.

“My dear, how you’ve changed!” he said.

“You understand, Uncle Tim,” she urged. “I couldn’t tell Millie. They’d make it bad for her afterwards, and it would hurt Mother too. I don’t want Mother to be left alone. It’s the only thing to do. I saw it all in a flash this evening when Mother was speaking. Even to-morrow may be too late, when I see the garden again and the village and when they’re all kind to me. And perhaps after all it will be all right. Only I must show them that Phil comes first, that if I must choose, I choose Phil.”

She paused, breathlessly. He was grave again when he spoke:

“You know, my dear, what you are doing, don’t you? I won’t say whether I think you right or wrong. It’s for you to decide, and only you. But just think. It’s a tremendous thing. It’s more than just marrying Philip. It’s giving up, perhaps, everything here—giving up Garth and Glebeshire and the house. Giving up your Mother may be for ever. I know your Mother. It is possible that she will never forgive you.”

Katherine’s under lip quivered. She nodded her head.

“And it’s hurting her,” he went on, “hurting her more than ever anything has done. It’s her own fault in a way. I warned her long ago. But never mind that. You must realise what you’re doing.”