CHAPTER III

THE DAY

The next morning, a rather grey and chilly Sunday, Ted Urquhart came to Eleanor in her little "office" and asked her, with simple directness, whether she would mind fixing a day, as soon as possible, for their marriage.

Eleanor, obviously startled, looked at him over the desk at which she sat. He had drawn a chair up to face her.

"Soon? H-How do you mean, Ted?" she asked. "I thought you might be going away so soon."

"So I may. That was the reason," he told her. "I mean if it's not—if it's not inconveniencing you very much, Eleanor—that I wish you'd see your way to marrying me, just quietly, you know, in the little church in the village, perhaps, before I'm ordered off."

"Oh!" said Eleanor, with a little gasp, "I never thought of that."

"I know it's abrupt," said the young man. "But you know lots of people in the Services are fixing it up this way just now. I believe they're making it much easier for couples to get special licenses, or to get married without any banns, and ... and so forth. It—er—I—er—Well! It seems under the circumstances rather a—a sensible plan, I think—if we were——"

Here he checked himself. He had nearly used the unfortunate expression "turned off!" But it is only the joyous bridal of which a grim joke may be made.

He altered it tritely to

"—married before I had to leave you, Eleanor."

Eleanor asked, still in that startled tone, "Does Father think so?"

"Oh, yes! Yes. Uncle Henry and I talked it over last night," said Ted Urquhart, leaning his cleft chin on his brown hand and his elbow on his knee as he sat a little forward, not looking at his fiancé. "Your father quite ... agreed with me. I think he—he wishes it too, Eleanor."

"Oh, does he?" murmured Eleanor. "Yes, I suppose he would."

Evidently she was still very much surprised, almost dazed, he thought, by the suddenness of this plan. Evidently she scarcely knew what to say.

There was only one thing that Ted Urquhart hoped she wouldn't say.

Namely, that she did not wish their marriage to take place before he went.

For he wished it. He wished it, as he put it incoherently to himself, over and done with. He wanted to do his duty by his people—and then to clear! He wanted it settled for good and all. Also—he wanted to do all he could to rid himself of the power of an obsession that tortured him still, however he fought it down. That golden-haired witch! That mocking girl who could speak tenderly enough to the other man—the man she was going to marry! Ted Urquhart could feel furious with her. He could tell himself all her faults. (She was vain, flippant, irresponsible, insolent!) He could snub and ignore her, and put aside for days the thought of her. He could school himself not to look. But at the bottom of his heart he could not yet forget that fatal apprehension under which he'd been when first he met her; that delusion that she, and none other, was intended to be his. He must forget it. He must not run any risk of coming back, at the end of other fighting, to begin that struggle over again.

"If I were married," thought the young man in his desperation, "it would have to mean the end of all that."

So, anxiously, he watched Eleanor's little dark, restrained face, waiting for her answer.

It came, quiet and matter-of-fact.

"Very well, Ted."

"You mean you will, Eleanor?" he took up quite eagerly. "That you'll let me settle it up at once?"

"Yes."

"Good," said young Urquhart, with a sigh of relief. "Now, the question is, what day will suit you?"

"Oh—how much longer do you think you will be here?" asked his fiancée.

"A matter of a week or so, I expect," he told her. "Ten days, I should think, at most."

"Ten days," murmured Eleanor. "Now, just let me look at my fixtures, please, Ted, and I will see what I am doing this week."

She opened a desk-drawer to her right, took out a neat leather-bound book and began turning over the pages, murmuring—

"Sunday to-day. Monday I'm motoring up to town for all day. Tuesday, the Reservists' wives here. Wednesday—I know there was something on Wednesday, but I must have forgotten to note it. I'll ask Rosamond. Thursday I promised to let Miss Fabian come down again to give her lecture to the Reservists' wives——"

Ted Urquhart sat, his glance straying about the small, neat room so full of a girl's kindly preoccupations with her poorer sisters. His impatient eyes, rather listless now, rested on the framed "groups" of uniformed crêche-nurses with babies; on the files, the long red row of Whitaker's almanacks, the small side-table with the typewriter.... He was morosely glad that his wife would always have so much to occupy her. It would at least keep her from missing what he could never give her. Would she think of missing it? Would she, in her queer little matter-of-fact way, imagine that he was, naturally, as self-contained as she herself? Or did she just think, vaguely, that "men were like that"?

He watched her. And he wondered whether any other girl on earth would have taken just like this the function that used to be called in her grandmother's time "naming the Happy Day."

She had finished turning over the leaves of that little book. She looked up for a moment as she said composedly, "Friday is free. I could marry you, if you liked, on Friday, Ted."

"Oh, thanks so much," said the young man quickly. "It's really awfully good of you not to mind a rush like this—a wedding without—without any of the things a girl expects—a big party, and a trousseau, and a——"

He stopped again.

He felt he could not use the word that belongs to courtship as naturally as "Dearest" and "Darling" belong; the pretty word "Honeymoon." Not here. Not now.

He went on—"without any sort of a wedding-trip abroad, or anything. I suppose——"

"What?" said the bride-to-be, as he paused once more.

"I suppose you'll let me take you up to town for the week-end, won't you?" said her fiancé rather hurriedly. "That is, if I haven't already got my orders. We could—go round and look up various people, to say 'Good-bye,' you know——"

There rose up in his mind the relentless suggestion that the bride to whom he would presently be saying "Good-bye" would be very different from the usual ("Brainless, Army,") type of the soldier's young wife; the girl who smiles resolutely through her tears, and whose agony at parting is kept at bay by her pride and joy at sending forth her man to fight.

Eleanor would feel no pride; nothing but the Fabian-instilled conviction that it was "a useless, wasteful risk of life," ... and "wrong"!

She herself was always so anxious to do what was "right"—even by him.

"Just as you like, Ted," she said.

She fastened the little engagement-book and opened the drawer in which it was kept.

"Thank you," said the bridegroom-to-be again. And he rose.

He knew what he ought to do now.

Up to now there had been no word of endearment between this engaged couple, nothing but her Christian name and his. Up to now there had been no caress but that twice-daily cousinly peck on the cheek. But now—when she'd just promised to become his wife within the week! Oh, it would be too cruelly casual to let the occasion pass absolutely unmarked except by a cool word of thanks—

He drew a step nearer to the little stiff, grey-gowned figure with the dark head bent over the drawer of her desk.

He began, awkwardly, "Well——"

He ought to call her "Dear"!

Why should it come so ludicrously hard?

"Well, Eleanor," he said, "you've been uncommonly kind to me about all this."

A nice object-lesson he was, he thought savagely, for any young man who considered that which girl he got engaged to wasn't, after all, a matter of paramount importance! But it was too late to think of that now....

Eleanor's face was still averted as she slipped the book into the drawer.

Clumsily, abruptly, he closed his own fingers over her other little brown hand as it lay on the desk.

He'd got to say "Aren't you going to let me have a kiss to clinch it?"

Every fibre in him seemed to draw back in revolt from what he had to do. But, dash it, he must!

He held her hand for another horrible second....

And at that moment the door of the office opened, and there entered Miss Rosamond Fayre, dressed for Church, and carrying a large sheaf of white Bride-lilies for the flower-service.

The scent of them trailed behind the girl as she walked quickly through the office and into the drawing-room beyond.

Eleanor, hastily withdrawing her hand, called, "Oh, Rosamond——"

But the secretary-girl had passed through the drawing-room and into the hall beyond.

"Fetch her—just ask Miss Fayre to come to me, please, Ted. I want her," said Eleanor, putting an end to this interview on a bright conclusive note. "She might as well, before I forget, send off the notice of this wedding to the Morning Post."

CHAPTER IV

"ON ACCOUNT OF THE WAR"

There was no mention of its being "on account of the War" in that announcement that "the marriage arranged between Edward Clive Urquhart and Eleanor, only child of Henry Urquhart, Esquire, of Urquhart's Court, Kent, would take place very quietly" on the Friday of that same week.

Ted Urquhart, boyishly sulking (as older men than he will sulk), determined that Miss Fayre should hear nothing of his volunteering until he'd actually got his orders.

And Eleanor said nothing.

So that Miss Fayre, the secretary-girl, was left wondering over the cause of this unexpectedly abrupt arrangement.

Why were not Eleanor and her dear Ted, to whom the War meant apparently nothing but a crowding of the newspapers with one monotonous subject—why weren't they going to have a big wedding and a reception with scarlet-and-white tents on the great green lawn where Eleanor's Hen-party had gathered? and Eleanor was leaving herself no time to get her things!

She said she wasn't getting "things." Truly they were the most unbelievable couple who had ever announced their intention of getting married "without any fuss."

"'Fuss' means such different things to different people," reflected Rosamond Fayre. "To me fuss would mean asking all the people I'd never liked to come in a body and stare at me while I made embarrassing mistakes over the Marriage-Service. Eleanor calls 'fuss' any attempt at getting pretty new frocks! Well, even a young man who's strong and fit and says he'll be damned if he'll go to the War isn't any more surprising than a young woman who doesn't take any interest in wedding-garments!"

Such interest as was taken in this sudden wedding seemed to be supplied by old Mr. Urquhart. It was he who stipulated that since all the Mrs. Edward Urquharts since before the time of the Romney had been wedded in white, Eleanor must follow suit. Also Eleanor, though there would be no guest to see her, must wear the veil of old Limerick lace that had decked her mother's bridal. He fetched it himself from its casket of cedar-wood and brought it to the drawing-room and to the Urquhart engaged pair. And he would have thrown it over Eleanor's little black blot of a head, to try the effect; but here Rosamond Fayre, bringing in a note of thanks for Eleanor's signature, intervened.

"Oh, but she mustn't try on 'the' veil," said her secretary, smiling, "before 'the' day, Mr. Urquhart; it's so unlucky!"

"Rosamond always has some proverb about 'Luck,'" said Eleanor. "Or about what something 'means'!"

Ted Urquhart thought, "Yes. Last time she spoke to me it was to say what passing a person on the stairs meant!"

"Ah, my dear Miss Fayre, how refreshing it is to find a girl still holding to all the little decorative feminine superstitions!" sighed the elder Urquhart. "Were I even twenty years younger, and you ten years older, I should venture to beg you to wear 'the' Urquhart veil on 'the' day yourself. You would remind us of—ah—the nymph Arethusa smiling through the spray of the brook that engulfed her! You would look like——"

Here Ted Urquhart, muttering some improvised excuse about a telephone-call, got up and went out of the room. His uncle presently followed him; leaving the bride-to-be and Rosamond with the filmy folds of that Limerick lace spread out between them.

Eleanor tossed her end of the soft veil on to her secretary's lap.

"Fold it up again, please," she said, rather brusquely, "and put it into the bottom drawer of my wardrobe."

Rosamond folded the lace and then rose, holding it across her long arm. In her eyes was the sparkle of thriving rebellion. For now the secretary-girl had come to hate her surroundings.

She resented these so-superior Urquharts, who took it upon themselves, forsooth, to represent that civilisation for which other men were leaving home and comfort with a cheer, were tramping, unwashed and footsore and hungry, the roads of France, were fighting against odds, were giving up their young and joyous lives.... Why, sometimes she could not help realising that those valuable English lives were only lost thanks to the other stay-at-home, pacific English of the Urquhart type.... Yes! They who wouldn't listen! They who refused to prepare! They who caused to be looked upon as unnecessary or contemptible that career which has been rightly called "The Lordliest Life on Earth!" These people were as truly "the Enemy" as Germany had ever been. England's strength had been sapped in English homes like Urquhart's Court.

Rosamond hated this Court.... She loathed this sluggish little back-water in Kent....

She must get away to where she could feel the throb and stir of her country's indignant heart, her own thrilling in sympathy.

She spoke upon an impulse. "Eleanor, is there anything else you want me to do for you—upstairs? Before I go to pack?"

Eleanor, in the sofa corner, looked up at her somewhat severely.

"Pack? I haven't asked you to pack anything for me, Rosamond."

"No. They're my own boxes that I want to pack," replied the secretary-girl evenly. "I supposed that you wouldn't be needing me any more now——"

"Oh, but——!"

"—and I've been wanting to ask you if you could spare me at once, instead of my waiting here any longer."

"Why?" asked Eleanor bluntly. "I don't ask you to go just because I'm to get married. I shall be going on with everything, just the same."

"I know. I imagined you would be," said Rosamond demurely, looking down at her and then away about the room. "But—I think I would rather go."

"But—quite lately, you spoke as if you would be so s-s-sorry to leave the Court, This," said Miss Urquhart, "is new, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," murmured Rosamond.

Then she lifted her bright head and looked full at the other girl sitting there among the mellow chintz cushions, backed by that stately, complacent room with its Chippendale and china, its prints, its whole air of "Nothing can touch, nothing change me." And suddenly it seemed as if the antipathy that had smouldered so long between them flashed into a flame.

Rosamond cried: "No! No, this isn't anything new. I ought to have gone away before. It isn't worth it. We—— We don't get on. We're such different kinds, Eleanor. It's been an armed neutrality, all the time. Hasn't it?"

"Certainly not. On my s-s-side," retorted Eleanor Urquhart angrily, "there has been n-n-nothing 'armed.' I hate any idea of quarrelling or——"

"Then I must go," said Rosamond desperately, "or we shall quarrel."

"But why? What about?"

"Nothing. Everything. The War, mostly. Yes, the War. That must be—that's what has made everything different, I suppose," cried Rosamond hurriedly. "I can't feel that there's all that going on outside—while I live peacefully on here among a set of people who don't care, who don't understand. It's an atmosphere that stifles any one who really cares. I want to be somewhere else! I want to get something else to do."

"Very well," said Eleanor, coldly displeased.

"I'm sorry——;

"It doesn't matter," said Eleanor stiffly. "I shall have to try and get a Lady Miriam Hall girl in your place. If you really want to go like this, at a moment's notice, I w-w-won't stand in your way."

"Thank you," said Rosamond Fayre.

The flame had died down again. She said deprecatingly, "I hope you don't mind—I hope you won't think it unkind and rude of me to go before Friday."

"Friday? Why Friday?" asked Miss Urquhart, adding, "Oh, when I'm married. Why should I mind your not being there? Of course it is not 'rude.' Nobody will be coming to the wedding, practically nobody."

"If you wished," added Rosamond, "I could stay for the meeting of the Reservists' Wives——"

"Oh, no. Please don't trouble," said Eleanor. "I can manage perfectly. When do you want the motor?"

Miss Fayre left Urquhart's Court before tea-time.

"Please say good-bye to your father for me. I didn't find him in his study," she told Miss Urquhart at parting. Her hand was on the door of the car as she turned once more and added to the small sedate figure standing in the ivy-framed entrance beneath the stone shield with the crest, "I hope you—you'll accept my best wishes for yourself, Eleanor——"

It sounded absurdly stiff, to an engaged girl of her own—Rosamond's age! But no stiffer than Eleanor's "Thank you, Rosamond. And if any letters come for you, where shall they be sent?"

"Oh, I'll write and let you know in a day or two," said the girl in the motor. "I don't know myself, yet, where I shall be going to, or what I shall be doing. Good-bye."

The slow train was more than half-way to Charing Cross station before any plan had formulated itself in her own mind.

Where should she go? She knew nobody in London whom she would care to ask to put her up. Mrs. Bray was in town, Rosamond knew; and Mrs. Bray was always kind. But—could she go to Cecil's mother? ...

"Some people would think I might do worse than accept poor Cecil next time he asked me," thought Rosamond, with her blue eyes on the white column of train-smoke trailing beside the window and half blotting out the miles of outer-London backyards, where, among the inevitable washing, Union Jacks and French flags now flapped in the breeze. "Anyhow, Cecil is ready to do his duty as a man. Quite a dear—and nice to look at—and well-off—and adores me—what a pity that all these things don't make a ha'porth of difference when it comes to whether you want to marry a person! I can't. No. I won't go to his mother."

She dismissed also the thought of the tiny stuffy Bloomsbury room she had occupied while she was working at the Midas.... She had nearly two months' salary in her pocket; enough to do better on, at least for the present.... Pondering on her next move, she brushed a crumb off her lap, and rejoiced girlishly for a moment over the hang of the black skirt. Her little dressmaker had managed rather cleverly—

The thought gave her an idea....

At Charing Cross she had her two trunks and one hat-box put into a cab; a grass-green taxi bearing in scarlet letters that appeal then so startlingly novel to so large a class of mind—

"YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU!"

and she gave the driver an address near Victoria.

It was in a side-street off Ebury Street that the taxi drew up before a modest brass plate inscribed "MADAME CORA: MODES, ROBES ET TROUSSEAUX"; and Rosamond's little dressmaker came to the door herself.

"How d'you do, Mrs. Core?" said Rosamond, holding out her hand as she stood on the whitened step.

"Miss Fayre. Well, I never!" exclaimed the little dressmaker, in a quick, twittering voice, with scarcely a stop between her words. She was a small, neat, fair-haired creature, with the alert eyes and void of illusion of the woman who has had to fend for herself since her youth. "If I wasn't thinking of you this very morning and your rose-pink I made you last month. How's it look on, Miss Fayre? Doing you well?"

"It's very pretty, but I haven't really worn it yet," began Rosamond, smiling. "I've——"

"Not had any occasion, Miss Fayre? Nobody worth while? Dear, dear. Come in, won't you?"

"Yes, I want to know if you'll take me in for some time?" explained Rosamond Fayre. "You used to have a room——"

—"and my young gentleman left it only this morning," said the little dressmaker. "Usual reason for everything these days, Miss Fayre, on account of the War. Good position he had in a Bank! Chucked it, as he said. Enlisted to go and have a pot at Geyser Bill——"

Five minutes later saw Miss Rosamond Fayre disposing her trunks as Mrs. Core's lodger, in a room whose windows looked above gray roofs and red chimney-pots out towards the towering shaft of the Cathedral.

"Hope you'll be comfortable here, Miss Fayre, I'm sure," said little Mrs. Core, bustling in with a jug of hot water. "You'll excuse the young gentleman having left up all his photos," with a nod towards framed portraits of Miss Lydia Kyasht, of Sam Langford, Lord Kitchener, Carpentier, and of a group of cricketers that hung upon the florally-papered walls. "His clothes I said he'd got to store. So there's heaps of room in here for your things.... This black serge," she touched Rosamond's skirt with a proprietary finger, "wears well, don't it? ... M'm! Long time before any o' my clients come for any more pretty frocks now. As for such a thing as The Newest Paris Winter Fashions, Miss Fayre, it'll be a case of puzzle find 'em on most of us. All on account of this War! As far as the style of our clothes go," laughed the little dress-maker, "we shall be 'stuck so,' like they say to children making faces when the wind changes."

"What a good thing we're 'stuck' while frocks are so pretty, then," smiled Rosamond, slipping off her simple coat, "instead of being frozen into the fashions of gored skirts or leg-o'-mutton sleeves!"

"You're right," said Mrs. Core devoutly, unfolding a clean towel as she spoke. "By the way, I got a letter from that Miss Urquhart o' yours saying how pleased she was with the tussore coat. Old-fashioned little piece, isn't she? Frumpy, I'd call her. Doesn't pay for dressing. Most expensive materials she always goes in for, too. Very well off she'll be, of course. Well! I'm afraid you'll find this rather a change after living in that swagger Court, Miss Fayre——"

But as Rosamond Fayre glanced round the neat room, with its naïvely hideous decorations, at the resolute cheery face of her little landlady and at the smoke-grey glimpse of London outside, she shook her bright head with a quick smiling sigh of relief.

She felt that all she needed was exactly this—a thorough change from everything to do with Urquhart's Court; indeed, never again to see anything called Urquhart!

CHAPTER V

LONDON IN KHAKI

The whole of the next day Rosamond Fayre spent in walking about a city that seemed to her oddly transformed from the London that she had known.

For this was the first time that she had been up to town since the outbreak of War.

It was a glorious morning; the perfect harvest weather still unbroken. Overhead soft white mackerel clouds sailed over a sapphire sky; the September sunshine bathed the pavements as Rosamond sped briskly along, turning first towards Victoria, and noting, with bright eyes, all that seemed so different.

The first thing that struck her was the number of people of every kind who thronged the streets. Every sort of person seemed to find it possible, these days, to take an hour or so "off"—at half-past eleven in the morning!—from Cityfied-looking men in top hats and morning-coats, to bands of tiny street-boys who paraded past in all the pomp and circumstance of uniforms made out of newspaper tied with string and with drums of biscuit-boxes, shouting, "It's a long wy to Tipperary, it's a long wy to gow!"

And in proportion to there being more people abroad, the horse and omnibus traffic was thinner. There were fewer omnibuses than taxis whisking past, each bearing the scarlet signal of that message, worded with varying degrees of urgency, "Enlist for the War!" "Young Men of London, Join the Army Now!" "YOU are wanted TO-DAY!"

Rosamond found herself wondering if it were her imagination or a fact that the faces of those who passed her wore a new expression; a look more alert, more alive, and more determinate than that she had been accustomed to see on London faces in the time—now so far behind them all!—of Peace? That all-pervading type, the Flapper, seemed to be in abeyance—her place was taken by bonnie and resolute-faced young women, many wearing the badge of a Woman's Help Corps. Perhaps War smoothed out "types"—artistic freaks—by-products—resolving London's citizens into women and men?

Outside Victoria the traffic became a thickening throng. There was a stir and a running and a noise of cheering. But even tall Rosamond, hurrying towards that scene of interest, could not see much over the heads of the many who pressed between her and the Regiment marching into the station. Just a glimpse of lines of rifles above flat-topped caps, a glimpse of that stream of khaki dividing the darker crowds and flowing rhythmically past....

"Off!" said some one near Rosamond to some one else in the crowd, and a voice answered with a note of desperate gaiety, "Ah, well, we shall see 'em turning up again with a bar or two to their medals, please God—(if that that number's not still engaged by the Kaiser)——"

A hand seemed to grip at Rosamond's heart, a lump came into her throat so that she could only whisper below her breath, "Good luck to them!" It was pride for those who went, sorrow for those who might not return, and yet another feeling which was not yet quite clear to the girl herself.

She went on, past Westminster, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, noticing the busy trade of the newspaper-sellers with their arresting posters—

"DESPERATE FIGHTING IN FRANCE!"

"France!" she thought, with a smile and a sigh. How little she, or any of those kindly village-folk in France had dreamt that fighting would desolate all that holiday place before the summer was over. She supposed that every man she'd ever seen there would be now with the French Army; from the Monsieur of the Hotel down to the polite black-eyed youth at the Debit Tabac, who had finished his military service, he'd told Rosamond, last year; adding, "You have no military service in England, Mademoiselle? It is droll, that."

Rosamond had even then considered that it was more than droll that the men of her country should jib at what these young Continentals took as a matter of course, namely, that every man should be trained to bear arms, and that drill and discipline were no hardship, but a privilege. Even before then she had always wondered why some sort of military training was not as universal among young Englishmen as, say, learning to swim? There need be no "conscription" for that?

Perhaps it was just the mere words "conscription" and "compulsory" to which people seemed to object? Perhaps the actual sacrifice of a little personal liberty would find them ready enough?

For now, at last, it seemed if that spirit permeated All-London....

At every turn she was met by the sight of that concealing and significant colour which is made up out of these three mingled: the brown of earthworks, the green of trampled grass, the sandy-yellow of guarded coast. Drab and ugly enough in itself, yet now as glorious wear as is the richest red in the British Army, khaki was everywhere; swinging down the streets, crowding the tops of omnibuses, filling private motor-cars now labelled in staring letters, "O.H.M.S." Through the great windows of the Clubs, Rosamond caught glimpses of khaki, with here and there a splash of scarlet. "Staff," she supposed. And in Piccadilly she passed a not-to-be-forgotten group of three, standing at the corner by Stewart's. Two of them, very slim and young, were in uniform. These were talking eagerly to the third who stood between them. He was a mere lad; eighteen, nineteen? Small, younger than Cecil Bray, and of the type of youngster that instantly brings the thought, "How very lovely his sister must be!" He wore an ordinary blue lounge suit and a bowler, but there was that about him which marked him out as no uniform could have done. For his dainty, girlishly-featured, resolute little face was bronzed from weeks in glaring sunshine, and his right arm hung in a sling.

This child was a wounded officer, one of the very first of them, home from the Front. And as she passed up Bond Street—with the eyes of all three boys turned to follow her for a moment—Rosamond heard the youngest of them saying, "Don't know, but as soon as I can get my ruffian of a doctor-man to let me go back, I——"

So young, and so unperturbed! The sight of him made Rosamond Fayre realise what had been at the back of her mind all the time that she had been watching these signs of the times of England at War, with the best of her sons armed, or preparing to arm.

It was the thought of another young man whom she knew, and who was making no such preparation.

Ted Urquhart must be seven or eight years older than this youngster who was fuming to be sent back to face danger and what Rosamond thought must be worse, discomforts of the most sordid kind; lack of the most elementary comfort, water, sleep! Ted Urquhart, as far as physique went, was twice the man that this little officer-boy was.

Ted Urquhart—well, what was the use of thinking about him? Fortunately—for no one likes to have to associate with "wasters" in time of War!—Fortunately, Rosamond would never see him again.

But everywhere she saw something to remind her of him and of how he'd failed. In every Bond Street shop-window that showed field service equipment and uniforms and boots; in the very posters of "England Expects—" and "Tommy Atkins"; in the badges worn on so many civilian coats; "O.B.C."——"U.P.S."; in the trays of street-vendors who sold the French and English and Belgian colours instead of roses and carnations, "Not flowers, but flags!"—Why, it was London's motto now.

Yet Ted Urquhart, in white flannels, lounged and loitered among the hollyhocks and dahlias at Urquhart's Court.

She caught scraps of conversation from the people hurrying past her—and no one seemed to be speaking, except of War.

"Like to get hold of all those fellows who've been pooh-poohing for years the 'German Scare,' as they——"

"And if we could have sent double the number of men at once, this affair would have been over in——"

"A letter this morning;"—this was a woman's voice—"no postmark, of course; and he mayn't let us know where they were, or what they were doing, but he sounded cheery and——"

—"Says he met some one who actually saw them! ... two train-loads! ... noticed the odd uniform——"

—"The very people who owe their fortunes to the fact that we've got an Army!"

"Yes! And who used to impress upon us that the Boy-Scout movement had absolutely nothing to do with 'any nonsense about being prepared for War, or Invasion.' But perhaps they'll know better——"

"Ah, half the people in this country ought to go down on their knees to make a public apology to Lord Roberts!"

"Don't you think five thousand recruits a day is enough?" This was from a lady who walked beside a white-moustached old soldier. And Rosamond, going by, with pricked-up ears, heard him answer: "In what they call 'the families' of England, there's not a man left to-day. Not a man."

"Not a man?" Only Ted Urquhart, of The Court!

As day wore on, more and more newspaper-sellers appeared in the streets, hawking the seventh and eighth "War-editions" with the flash of black letters across pink posters——

ALLIES GAIN GROUND
(OFFICIAL)

Among them little neatly-dressed French women with tricolour ribbons about their jackets and with straight fringes cut above their dark, anxious eyes, were offering "Le Cri de Londres." ...

And then more people in the streets, more people....

Rosamond Fayre, after one of those hybrid tea-shop meals dear to the heart of women, strolled back again towards Westminster, and through the archway into Dean's Yard, stopping at the echoing sound of words of command.

"'S' you wur! ... 'Shun'! ... By—your—Left—T——"

There was a crowd at the railings. The railings themselves were hung everywhere with coats and Norfolk jackets and headgear of every sort; straw hats, bowlers, soft felt hats, caps. And beyond in the square beneath the plane-trees young men in white or coloured shirt-sleeves marched and formed fours and marked time.

"Recruits," a Special Constable with a striped armlet on his sleeve told Rosamond, "for the London Scottish. Framing splendidly, they are! Oh, yes, men drilling in all the Parks now, too...."

(—"Right-T——whee—ull!" and a steady rhythmic tramping of feet....)

Rosamond Fayre stood watching the grand lads, the big company-officer who moved up and down before them.

And she thought, "Not one of those looks any more like a soldier than Mr. Ted Urquhart, who isn't soldiering at all!"

The September dusk fell over streets only half-lighted. Some lamps had covers on the top, some were ochred over. London looked odd without her electric signs and with Piccadilly and Oxford Street all dim. Gone was that soft and golden glare, and the red haze in the sky! People's heads were lifted up to that slate-coloured sky, and Rosamond caught scraps of talk about the patrolling airship. Under the dim lights girls passed, with men in khaki beside them, khaki-sleeved arms about waists. And once again Rosamond Fayre found herself thinking of a young man not in khaki.

He was really not worth it! Not even worth wondering over!

Perhaps he thought that text held good for his case: "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come"? He would be married to Eleanor in a few days—two days' time now.

Rosamond sighed as she walked homewards.

This must be because she was very tired. She had been walking about all day, looking at things.

Of all these scenes that which was to remain with her longest was what she'd seen as she had passed Whitehall. In the wide road there had been a sudden scurrying forward of a crowd that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. On the tops of omnibuses passengers had stood up to look, had craned their necks to gaze after a figure in frock-coat and top-hat, who had just left a car, and was ascending the steps of the War Office. Small, white-haired, stately and indomitable, he was not to be mistaken.

His name had passed from mouth to mouth.

"See him? ... It's him.... That's him.... Lord Roberts!"

Full of the picture, Rosamond's mind would link it for ever to the next sound that had struck upon her ears.

It had been that of a bugle; industriously practised by a lad in the park near by. Rosamond Fayre knew that bugle-call. She knew the words the soldier fits to it.

"I called them; I called them!
They wouldn't come. They wouldn't come.
I called them——"

And amongst those who wouldn't answer, the case of Mr. Ted Urquhart seemed to her the most disgraceful.

Perhaps it was rather odd that though she'd left The Court and the Urquharts behind her for ever, Rosamond should find herself thinking of him—them even more constantly than when she was among them.

This could only be because she had taken a really strong dislike to them.

She concluded that it must be that.

And so she went slowly home, through the darkened Buckingham Palace Road, to bed, hearing another bugle-call, the Last Post sounded from the near Barracks—and wondering where it would be heard by Cecil Bray ... and by every other young man she'd seen who that day had done his duty.

CHAPTER VI

RECRUITING-RIBBONS

"This is all very well, but I can't go on like this as if I were 'a lady of leisure,'" thought Rosamond Fayre on the morning after that day which she'd spent walking about London. "I shall simply have to set about looking for some job."

But even as she made herself ready in her simple black jacket, her small black hat with the one pink velvet single rose, she realised that this was a time when people were losing their usual jobs rather than getting new ones. She would find it harder than ever to obtain work as a typist, a secretary, a cashier.

Once, when she had been first confronted with that problem of wage-earning, the tall supple girl had been asked if she would take a post as mannequin in a Wigmore Street atelier—"but now that would be 'off' too, I expect," thought Rosamond, as she walked along. "War does show up how utterly superfluous most single women's occupations are! What can I do?"

About one thing she made up her mind.

She would not apply to the Red Cross Society, saying that she was ready to do "anything."

Rosamond realised how much valuable time of busy women was being taken up by just such applications.

She knew that womanly pity for wounded soldiers does not in itself constitute a "gift" for nursing; that excellence in housework and the constitution of a dray-horse are far more needful assets for a nurse. So, if she could not be of use in this capacity, at least she would not cumber the ground for those who could....

But what else was there?

"I suppose I might try one of my old agencies," she thought as she sprang on to a 'bus in Victoria Street, "and at least put my name down for——"

Here the 'bus, giving a lurch, precipitated Rosamond on to the lap of another girl who was sitting on the front seat.

"So sorry," said Rosamond, stooping to pick up a sheaf of papers that the other girl had dropped. "I'm afraid one's blown over the side there——"

"It doesn't matter at all," the other girl reassured her with the friendly smile which stranger seemed to give stranger without reserve in those days. "Perhaps some young Johnny will pick it up and save me the trouble of having to thrust it into his hand. These are just recruiting pamphlets; I've hundreds of them left."

Rosamond, as the 'bus jogged along towards the Abbey, regarded her with interest. She was dark-eyed and slender and pale with the clear pallor of the London indoor worker; and she wore a bunch of red-white-and-blue ribbons pinned to the breast of her brown cloth jacket.

Rosamond asked her if she belonged to any sort of recognised Society.

"No; oh, no. I'm just doing this on my own. There doesn't seem to be anything else to do. I lost my job (I was typist to a German Film Agency) the week War was declared," the girl said quite cheerfully, "and I don't seem to find another. No, I don't know what I shall do next; but then, who does? Who knows what's going to happen? Only, I don't think any of us will be allowed to starve or turned out into the street for quite a bit," said the girl. "So I typed out a lot of these sort of tracts—some of them are extracts from Blatchford's things—and bits of Lord Roberts' speeches, and Kipling's verses and so on—and distribute them. I daresay the men read them; anyhow, they don't tear them up while I'm there. So I hope they take them on into the public-houses—When I see men walking along, I always imagine they're just off to get a drink somewhere, don't you?—and discuss them together. It does no harm. And it may keep them from forgetting what they ought to be doing, even if they aren't doing it!"

"It's disgraceful if they aren't," said Rosamond, warmly. "Where do you go, to serve these out?"

"On Sundays I've been going up the River. Yes; there are rather a lot of men idling about there, still," said the recruiting-girl. "In flannels, punting, with Union Jack cushions and a girl in a pretty frock——"

"No self-respecting girl ought to allow herself to be seen about with such a 'man,'" protested Rosamond Fayre, but the other shrugged her slim, rather bent shoulders.

"All very well if all women could manage to think alike on just one subject for just one week. But they can't," she said philosophically. "Perhaps two or three of us might turn down a 'nut' who was slacking; but he knows only too well that for those three there'd be a dozen girls ready to leap at the chance of his taking them up the River. That's the whole trouble. I believe that there's nothing women couldn't do, if there were only not quite enough of us to go round. But—There are too many girls!"

Rosamond protested. "Not too many of the right kind! Those other girls would have to know that they were only taken when the best had turned their backs; they're only the second choice."

"They wouldn't mind. Some girls don't mind anything, as long as they get a fellow of their own," the ex-typist returned with bright acceptance of fact, "as long as they aren't left one of the million superfluous women—or is it three million?"

"It seems to alter so," said Rosamond, "every time one hears the statistics."

"Well, statistics wouldn't matter to you. If there were five women to every man, you'd be the girl who got him," averred the other girl with a generously appraising glance. "May I ask if your own boy's at the Front?"

Rosamond coloured—for no earthly reason,—answering candour with candour. "He would be, if I'd got one, but I haven't."

"Now, isn't Life rum," said the other girl, reflectively. "Teeth like that, and not a nut to crack with 'em. Well, well! Here's where I get off," she added, as the 'bus jolted to a standstill beside the pavement near Whitehall. "Good luck and good-bye—unless you'd like to come and help me to distribute my tracts——"

Rosamond Fayre answered almost before she knew what she had decided to say.

"Yes! Why not?" she said, rising and following the other girl down the steps of the 'bus. "I'll come with you if you'd like me to——"

"Good!" said the recruiting-girl. And as they reached the entrance to the Horse Guards she divided her sheaf of pamphlets, giving half to Rosamond. Together they passed the mounted Lifeguardsmen at the entrance to the Horse Guards; they walked through the shadow of the arches under the clock and out into the sunny spaces with the tall grey Admiralty buildings to the right of them, the recruiting-tents to the left, the green trees of the Park, mellowing now to brown, facing them as they stood, blinking for a moment after the shadow.

On the wall of a shed near by a knickerbockered lad in a wide hat and a grey flannel shirt stiff with badges stood pasting up notices with the air of one firmly convinced that the safety of an Empire rests upon his efficiency. He was, of course, a Boy Scout.

Rosamond's companion turned towards him.

"I say, sonny, let's have one of your posters," she begged. "One of those about 'Why Britain is at War.'"

"Can't spare one, Miss," he said, scarcely turning his bright eyes from his work. "They'll give you some if you apply at that tent over there," he pointed with his paste-brush. Then, drawing up his small sturdy figure, this twelve-year-old added with all the authority of a full General, "Tell them a SCOUT sent you."

Five minutes later the recruiting-girl had fastened one of these posters to her jacket, sandwich-man-fashion, and had pinned her own bunch of red-white-and-blue ribbons to the breast of Rosamond's coat.

"We'll stand here by the entrance," she said to Rosamond. "Always a heap of men here, passing at their dinner-hour, or hanging about to see people coming through from the War Office. Think they'll get a glimpse of 'K.' p'raps. Give one to everybody; I'll take the ones on the left."

The groups of people formed, broke up, re-formed and passed. And now Rosamond wondered—not that so many young men were drilling and in uniform, but that there still remained so many in civilian get-up. She chose to watch the next six who passed her and who took her pamphlet civilly enough, wondering what kept them as they were, summing them up in her rapid, perhaps inaccurate feminine fashion. From among the women, the work-girls, the old or middle-aged men who walked in the midday sunshine of the parade, she picked out what seemed to her the potential recruits.

Here was the first. "One."—A young fellow of twenty-two or three, perhaps; black coat, shop-assistant class. Pale, slenderly-built, but healthy-looking.... Six months, a year's soldiering would make as good a man of him as that sentry, pink-cheeked and stalwart and gorgeous in his long black boots and white buckskin breeches, whose sword gleamed to the salute as a tall officer swung by, with a rainbow-coloured line of ribbon across his breast.

"He could enlist," decreed Rosamond, as the young fellow took the pamphlet, with a clearly rueful glance.

"You never know," returned the other recruiting-girl. "Might have an invalid mother who'd nobody but that to support her. He might want to go all right, but it's not all honey for the soldier's dependants, so——"

"Two" went by; a small, alert Cockney, red-neckerchiefed coster type, bright-eyed, sharp-featured.

"Undersized, I suppose," thought Rosamond, glancing down at the narrow chest of the little fellow who took her pamphlet with a cheerful—

"Ah, I'm too big to send against those pore Germans; must give 'em fair play, Lady!"

"Plenty of the French Tommies looked smaller," thought Rosamond.

"Three" passed with "Four"; men of twenty-eight to thirty-three, say. Soft green felt hats, much gesture as they talked, bold black glances—Jews! They were probably making money still, even out of this War. A little, theatrical-looking lady, daintily-dressed, walked between them with a clash of gold trinkets, leaving a whiff of perfume on the fresh breeze.

Rosamond's companion gave a philosophic sniff.

"Number Five" went by; a rather well-made, rather well-dressed youth of twenty, with "colours" in his tie. He was hatless. A horse-chestnut was not more polished than his smooth head and the boots that matched it. He took the bill that Rosamond offered—it was headed by a verse entitled "The Shirker." He gave a glance at it, at her; and then stopped. The expression on his not uncomely face was distinctly peevish, so was the tone of his voice as he addressed Miss Fayre.

"I say! Look here! I'm getting abso-lutely fed with this!" he exclaimed crossly. "All you girls keep on asking a fellow why he isn't at the Front——"

Rosamond's blue eyes echoed his query.

"Well! A fellow's done his best, don't you know!" he told her, still in that exasperated tone. "Twice I've applied to those guys at the War Office, besides writing and writing to those Territorial Johnnies. They don't seem—ah—to want a fellow. I'm keen enough to fight, or to do anything. But they don't seem to have another blessed commission to give a fellow——"

"Oh, a commission—but why wait for that?" asked Rosamond Fayre. "Why not join Lord Kitchener's Army?"

"Me?" barked the auburn-haired youth.

"Yes! why not? You're 'between nineteen and thirty-five,' I expect?" suggested the fair girl, quite gently. One or two elderly men paused to regard the little scene; a nurse with a Red Cross on her coat, and holding a white-jerseyed two-year-old by the hand, listened smiling as Rosamond added, "You're 'physically fit,' aren't you?"

"Ra-ther! Of course a fellow's physically fit! When he can break records—ah—for swimming the——"

"Splendid," said Rosamond, soothingly. "Then since you want to get out to the Front, why don't you enlist?"

"As a common soldier?" took up this patriot, disgustedly. "Oh, dash it—look here, you know! A fellow's a gentleman—ah—by birth and education——"

"Yes! That is exactly how I should have described you," said Rosamond, finding it a little difficult to speak as evenly as she would have wished.

"Well, then, you see!" took up the auburn-haired youth. "A fellow can't mix with all the tag-rag and bobtail of the slums, what? Hang it all! Fellow doesn't want to have to sleep fourteen in a tent, or whatever it is, with beastly unwashed Tommies!"

Rosamond could only glance at her companion. The other hardier girl came forward briskly.

"'Unwashed'?" she echoed. "Wouldn't you rather have unwashed Englishmen than the other kind spreading themselves all over the Horse Guards here? Germans don't go in for too many baths, I can tell you; I know, because I've worked for 'em in an office that wasn't one bit fresher than one of those tents you're shying at. As for you, you'd be as unwashed as our Tommies yourself at this minute if you were doing your duty. Aren't you afraid you're a bit of a snob?"

"I'm afraid," said the young man rebukefully, "that you're just suffragettes!"

"I never was! I'm engaged to an unwashed Territorial, thank you! And anyhow there isn't such a thing as a suffragette left nowadays. You are behind the times. Good-bye!" the recruiting-girl dismissed him with a little nod and the quotation—

"'For we don't want to lose you
But we think you ought to go!"

The auburn-haired Exquisite went; muttering something about what a fellow had to put up with, just because those blighters at the War Office——

Rosamond laughed, with the other girl. The Nurse, the tiny boy who was all eyes for the sentry's cuirass, and the old gentlemen passed on towards the Mall. A knot of working-girls—probably members of Eleanor's Club—went by chattering, arm-in-arm, into Whitehall. There was a little pause before any young man came along to be classified as "Number Six."

Rosamond took another handful of bills from her companion; she was smiling, speaking to her when, from the direction of Wellington Square, that Sixth young man walked by.

Rosamond, talking to the other girl, had not noticed him as he strode past. He halted abruptly; turned back, faced that tall, fair girl in black, with the bunch of recruiting-ribbons fluttering above her breast. The shadow of his arm as he lifted his hat fell across her sheaf of papers.

Rosamond Fayre's eyes turned from her companion to confront the second tall and stalwart young civilian who had that morning stopped before her.

And then an odd thing happened; a thing bewildering but swiftly gone as the sudden flash in the sun of a heliograph message.

For at the sight of this sixth young man Rosamond Fayre almost uttered a little "oh—" and she knew herself to be colouring hotly. She had felt for the second time in her life that indescribable and sudden thrill of delight; warm and young and not-to-be-denied. The first time had been at Eleanor's Hen-party, when Mr. Ted Urquhart had asked Eleanor's secretary for that waltz (which she had refused).

This second time it was at the mere unexpected sight of Mr. Ted Urquhart here in London.

Then in a flash it had gone, and she knew that she must have been dreaming to imagine that it had ever been.

She glanced unsmilingly up at Eleanor's dear Ted; he was still wearing that grey suit; still determined that he'd be damned if he'd go to the War.

"How do you do, Miss Fayre?"' he said.

For a second Rosamond wondered which would best convey her disapproval of a young man of this calibre; silence or speech? Then she said, "Good-morning," allowing her gaze to wander to the Wireless masts above the Admiralty buildings which she could observe beyond Mr. Ted Urquhart's shoulder.

He stood there—as if he had anything to say! As he stood, half-a-dozen working-men in corduroys came up and held out horny hands for papers from these girls, pressing about them. Rosamond proffered no recruiting-pamphlet to Mr. Ted Urquhart. She felt that she need not take of him even as much notice as she had bestowed upon the other shirker, the gentleman (by birth and education) who could not enlist. She was not any longer at that Court—of his.

And still Eleanor's dear Ted waited. He spoke, rather stiffly. "Have you—any message for down there? Could I do anything—for you——?"

"Oh, I don't think so," answered Miss Fayre in cool surprise, "thanks."

She turned from him, making it her business to hand a pamphlet of each sort in her sheaf to the nearest passer-by; needlessly enough! since this chanced to be an officer in Naval uniform, who thanked her with much grace, much play of the reprobate and, sea-blue eye under the peak of his white cap.

And when, having uttered a hasty "Pass them on, please!" she turned again, Mr. Ted Urquhart had taken himself off; he had disappeared through the arches and across the courtyard into Whitehall. That way lay the War Office—with which, of course, Mr. Ted Urquhart had no business.

And Rosamond had 'absolutely no' business (as she seemed to be continually reminding herself) with Mr. Ted Urquhart. Why need she feel sore and ashamed about his defection? That was for Eleanor to feel—fortunately Eleanor, being a Pacifist, didn't feel it. What difference could it have made to Rosamond if she'd heard that Mr. Ted Urquhart had volunteered as soon as War broke out? Ah, yes! it would have made a difference! That is, she would have felt then that all the men were standing together. Now she knew that one was holding back. And it had "rubbed it in" so to have lived for all those weeks in the same house with him.

Well, she'd left now!

She'd have to make herself forget it.

She was sorry that here, in the midst of such different surroundings, she had been reminded of it all again.

She wished she'd never seen him....

That is, she wished she hadn't seen him just now....

"I say, my dear——"

Rosamond came back with a start to her surroundings, and to the other girl who touched her arm, and went on. "I've got rid of all mine now, and it's nearly two. (What about five-pennyworth of something to eat in an A.B.C.? Come along.) If we haven't sent any of them to the Front, we've shown them what they're thought of at the Back. What price Gilbert the Filbert, eh? And weren't you crushing to your tall friend in grey!"

"He wasn't a friend," Rosamond assured her hastily, as the two walked up to the Strand together. "He was merely a man I met while I was working for the girl he's engaged to."

"Engaged, is he?" said the London girl, with an odd, quick glance.

Rosamond said: "He's to be married to-morrow."

And that thought, which had even less to do with her than the thought of Mr. Ted Urquhart generally, recurred to her again and again. Even while she sat in the tea-shop, sharing with that other girl a meal composed of a cup of Bovril, a soup-plateful of peaches-and-cream—even when she said good-bye to this new friend, made another appointment with her, and turned towards that Agency where she must put down her application—even while she walked back along Oxford Street noting the "Business As Usual" signs, and the inevitable bright be-flagged war-maps, those war-telegrams in every shop-window—even while, back in her Ebury Street room, she took down her heavy hair to brush out the London dust, she found herself ridiculously unable to keep that irrelevant memory out of her mind.

Mr. Ted Urquhart and Eleanor were to be married to-morrow!

Very quietly, in that little village Church with the grey spire like a pepper-castor peering above the dull green cliff of elm.... They'd all motor there together, Rosamond supposed; thinking of them all in a series of pictures clear and distinct to her mind as any thrown upon a cinema-screen. There'd be old Mr. Urquhart, with his grey elf-lock and his Tennysonian hat, full of allusions to the "Dame Eleanors" and the "Mistress Edward Urquharts" who had been brides in the course of the last five centuries; there'd be Eleanor with that dream of a Limerick lace veil softening the matter-of-fact, conscientious little face, standing rather stiffly before the altar, with perhaps a splash of jewelled colour—purple, scarlet, orange—flung from the panes of the old stained-glass window upon her white wedding-dress. Repeating, in that trite young voice that had dictated so many business-letters, "I, Eleanor, take thee, Edward Clive——" And Edward Clive—Eleanor's dear Ted? He would be towering by a head and shoulders above the small compact figure of the bride: with that inscrutable sun-burnt face of his giving away as little as usual of what he was feeling at the moment. He'd be wearing the morning-coat, the conventional grey trousers of the bridegroom——

"Odious rig!" thought Rosamond Fayre. "No wonder a man always looks his very worst at his wedding, unless he elects to get married in uniform!"

But there'd be no question of uniform at Urquhart's Court.

There was the question of the vow to "obey," though.

Rosamond remembered that the name of Eleanor Urquhart had been signed to more than one petition for the disuse of this obsolete absurdity.

"As if it mattered whether a woman said it, or meant it, or what. If she was marrying a real man, he'd make her want to," thought this retrograde Rosamond, brushing her shining mane out before the ex-bank clerk's small mirror.

The echo of other scraps of that service drifted through her golden head. She'd heard many brides-to-be discussing it as "unnecessary," and "horrid," and "awful." But to her it seemed that so much of it was stately, beautiful. "To have and to hold ... till death do us part." Could that be bettered? Softly Rosamond repeated it to herself. And then, "With my body I thee worship." What poet had ever put into the mouth of a lover such a line as this that the bride-groom must be saying to-morrow?

Here, abruptly, Rosamond turned to answer a tap at the door.

"Brought you up a nice hot cup o' tea, Miss Fayre," announced her little landlady, entering. "I'll put it down on the chest-o'-drawers here. Dear me, what hair you have, to be sure. Never saw anything like it. Seems a pity there's nobody but other girls allowed a look at it all down like that. Got a bit of a headache, have you?"

"No! Thank you very much," said Rosamond. "I haven't a headache. But I'd love a cup of tea, Mrs. Core. Nothing to eat, thank you."

"Thought you seemed a bit quiet when you came in?" suggested Mrs. Core with that quick glance and void of illusion which she had in common with the little typist of the German cinema-agency and the Horse Guards Parade. "No! P'raps it's only natural we should all feel quieter these days, Miss Fayre. I'll take the cup down presently."

Even as Rosamond, with her hair streaming over her blue crêpe kimono, sat on the edge of the "camp-bed" that Mrs. Core's last lodger had left for a more comfortless Camp—even as she sipped the welcome tea, the girl's thoughts flew back once more to that tormenting—no, that irrelevant subject of the Urquhart wedding to-morrow.

This time to-morrow Eleanor and her dear Ted would be having tea together for the first time as a married couple! Rosamond wondered where it would be. In the train, probably, going off somewhere.... Rosamond wondered how Eleanor was feeling about it all.

Probably just the same as usual! Probably not in the least agitated or excited or suffering from any symptom of the malady that Miss Fayre had heard described as "Bridal Fluster!" Probably putting aside all thought of to-morrow's event while she busied herself with what seemed of equal importance—to-day's meeting at The Court of the Reservists' Wives!

"I daresay it was because of the meeting that her dear Ted was packed off up to Town this morning," reflected Rosamond as she set down her empty cup. "Or perhaps he came up—it's a thing a man's supposed to leave to the last minute!—to buy the wedding-ring?"

Her ringless, pretty hands went up to her hair again, dividing, before she coiled into the heavy knot, that warmed and scented shawl of gold. "A pity," the little landlady had said, "that no one but other girls were allowed to see it"——

With a curious little stab of—what must be resentment, since pain and longing it could not be—Rosamond remembered that once she had been seen with all the glory of her hair tumbling about her, far below her waist, by a man. By the man who had run up to her help that morning on the sea-shore in France—the man who had then scraped acquaintance with her, without saying who he was—the man who was Eleanor's property—the man who had turned out to be a shirker and a coward—the man who had surprised Rosamond into that first mad moment of throb and thrill, before she'd snubbed him on the Horse Guards Parade....