CHAPTER VII

THE RESERVIST'S WIFE

While Rosamond Fayre, with recruiting-ribbons at her breast, had been surrounded by men on the sunlit Parade, Miss Eleanor Urquhart had been preparing for another Hen-party at Urquhart's Court.

Very different, this one, from the gay gathering of Club girls that had been scattered like a giantess' piece-box of many colours over the great green billiard-table of a lawn, that afternoon not many weeks ago!

For this party did not fill the whole lawn, but only a few garden benches that were set out under the lime-trees that had already shed a light carpet of dead leaves which would have been beheld with horror by Mr. Marrow—on a far corner of that lawn.

Eleanor, the chairwoman of that meeting, standing by a table that was put to face the rows of seated women, wore the "responsible"-looking grey costume that she had worn on the other occasion. Her friend, Miss Fabian, who, all pince-nez and superiority, was to address the meeting, wore under her cape of Art-green cloth with the collar of Vorticist embroidery, the same brown-patterned Liberty gown; but the dress of the Reservists' wives was soberer and in many cases shabbier than the pink and Saxe and sky-blue bravery that had adorned the party of Eleanor's Club girls. Those girls had chattered and giggled and shrieked aloud in the high tide of exuberant spirits, but there was little laughter or noise among these women. The Club girls had sung musical-comedy choruses, and had played kissing-games and had waltzed to the music of the blue-and-white uniformed band; but here was no singing, no dancing; and, in the now historic phrase, "this was not the time to play games." These wives of men who had rejoined their old regiments were of varying ages and varying classes, from a bonneted and shawled flower-seller to a retired lady's maid, in a hat and a black frock that had been made (originally) in Vienna; but upon the faces of nearly all of them there was to be seen the levelling look of strain, of responsibility. For at such a time "women must weep" is not the motto for such as they, but "women must work."

To find reasonably-paid work for each of these left-behinds was now Eleanor's care. In the large book before her on the table there was entered—in the pretty, clear handwriting that was so successfully modelled on the writing of her late secretary—a suggestion for employment opposite each name that she had just taken down.

"And now, before we all go into the dining-room for tea," she concluded, "my friend, Miss Octavia Fabian, will say a few words to us explaining why our country is at War, and what we hope the results of this War will be."

Miss Fabian rose, and the decorous silence in the ranks of the Reservists' wives became troubled by gusts of whispering here and there that made a background for the high-pitched, clear-cut tones of Miss Fabian's platform voice.

"Now, what I have to Explain to you wives of our soldiahs——"

"—Six of 'em, and always kept as any one could see them! When I took them to the Institute the Matron said, 'Well, if all the children we had brought here was as——'"

"Same battery as my old——"

"Rent? I says, whatever's 'rent,' I should like to know——"

"Ah, she's one o' the lucky ones; never bin so well off in her life. He used to drink every penny she made, and now what's she got? Separation allowance and half-pay from his firm, if you please; bought herself a new 'at, new boots. All she's got to do now is walk out in 'em and get off again!"

"Order, please! Hush!" from Miss Urquhart.

Then, louder from the speaker in the green cape, "We intend that aft-ah this deplorable War, there can be No furth-ah War. We are fighting for that Great Aim. We are fighting (paradoxically enough!) for Disarmament! We are fighting so that our children and our children's children need Nev-ah know what fighting Is——"

"—soon as he read that piece in the Mirrer about that charge of his old Rigiment he says to me, 'Good-bye, Annie,' he says, 'I'm off. Don't care if my time is up,' he says, 'I'm goin' to rejoin, if they'll 'ave me.' And o' course they——"

"Will you all p-p-please be quiet until Miss Fabian has finished," interposed the chairman once more. Then she turned, to find, waiting at her elbow, the tall young parlour-maid in blue with silver buttons, who had replaced Mr. Beeton the butler (now Petty Officer Beetles).

"What is it, White?" murmured her mistress. "I said——"

"If you please, Miss, a young—a young Person has just arrived who says she must see Miss Urquhart at once," whispered the parlour-maid, conveying all her scandalised disapproval of this intruder in one sedate glance. "I said you were engaged, Miss, but the—the Person said it was important and she must see you yourself, at once. She didn't give any name."

"Is she a Reservist's wife?" murmured Miss Urquhart; upon which the sedate White replied, "I shouldn't imagine so, Miss, but she has a little baby with her."

"Perhaps I'd better come," said Eleanor. With an apologetic glance at the back view of Miss Fabian's Art-green cape, she slipped away from the meeting under the limes, and walked across the lawn beside the parlour-maid.

"Where is she—in the Hall?"

"Oh no, Miss; she didn't want to come into the house, she said. And when she heard you'd got a meeting, she wouldn't come on to the Terrace. She said she wanted to speak to you by yourself, and she'd wait at the back. She gave the little baby to Mrs. Marrow to hold, Miss, and she went towards the kitchen-garden; walking up and down; I wondered if perhaps she weren't quite right in her head; she looked quite wild, somehow——"

"Poor thing, what can it be?" said Miss Urquhart wonderingly, and she sped towards the walled kitchen-garden at the back of the Court.

She opened the green door which pushed softly against the great dark cushion of the rosemary bush that grew beside the wall. The rest of that brick wall of mellow-red and yellow was a backing for great spreading fans of plum and apricot. Half a dozen forcing frames were ranged in between it and the thick box border that edged the path. And on the path, between those frames and the prickly ranks of the gooseberry bushes in the opposite bed, she beheld, striding away from the door, the buxom figure of a young woman clad in a skirt of large black-and-white check, and a belted frieze sports-coat of a most brilliant and arresting pink; the colour of the brightest rhododendron, the most garishly gay petunia. Her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of this garment; her head, in a lurid crimson casque of a hat, was held defiantly erect.

As the door opened to admit Miss Urquhart, the girl in the flaring pink coat wheeled round and turned her comely, excited face upon her.

"Pansy! It's you?" cried Eleanor astonished.

Then, as she came forward to meet the Principal Boy, that astounded look faded from Miss Urquhart's small face, leaving it disapproving beyond description; searching, hard.

For Pansy Vansittart was the very last visitor whom Eleanor had expected or wished to see, since enquiries that she had lately been making about her seemed likely to be true.

There was a cloud of the blackest suspicion over Pansy's good name.

A rumour of it had reached Urquhart's Court as long ago as the day of the Girls' Garden Party, when Miss Fabian had mentioned that friend of hers who collected rents, and who knew "something to the discredit" of Miss Urquhart's theatrical protegée.... That friend, who had been away, had returned and had furnished Miss Fabian with further particulars of what she knew. Miss Fabian had only to-day passed them on to the Head of the Girls' Holiday Hostel Club.

No wonder Miss Urquhart scarcely expected to see this girl before her, here!

In her austerest voice she began, "Well, Pansy. I am surprised. Have you anything to say to me——"

"I have, Miss Urquhart. I should think I had. Several things!" cut in the Principal Boy in her loudest and least abashed tone. She stood there, her feet in their showily-buckled shoes planted well apart on that path; her handsome head well up, her face pale beneath its inevitable powder, and her brown eyes ablaze with temper. "I want to know, for a start, if you aren't ashamed of yourself?"

Eleanor, rooted to the spot beside the rosemary bush, was for a moment struck dumb by this unlooked-for opening. It was one which she thought might have been more suitably turned upon Miss Vansittart herself. But there was no trace of shame or even nervousness in that young woman's wrathful gaze as she glared down upon the Court's young mistress and, without waiting for any answer, went on with her indictment:

"Nosing and busybodying into my affairs, you've bin! Writing letters! Sending to my old address! Setting the landlady on to Mag about my concerns! It's not what any lady would do, that's flat!"

Eleanor, with a very stiff backbone, interposed: "I think you are forgetting yourself——"

"What?" (Staccato.) "Me? Haw!" (Still more staccato.) "Tell me who started it—that's what I'd like to know. That's what I'd like to know! Who sent that little freak of an Autumn Daisy pokin' round my place and wantin' to know everything from the hot-water pipes down to what time everybody came in at night, the——"

She paused. No epithet to be found even in Pansy's vocabulary could have conveyed the withering scorn of that short pause.

She went on again. "I know who it was, as a matter of fact. Ho, yes! It was that Miss Four-eyes Fabian of yours! She's the one! She's one o' those spiteful cats who's never happy unless she's raking up anything she can against any girl who happens to be good-looking; she hasn't got any chance of a young man of her own, no, and she'll see that nobody else has, too, without she can make things hot for her! Rakin' up and snuffin' out, the——"

Here another of those brief but pregnant pauses, while Eleanor, flushed and angry, would have spoken. Pansy's "Huh!" cut like a pistol-shot across any attempt at interruption. The warm quiet of that sunny garden fled; walls and bushes and frames and vegetable-beds seemed to ring, to echo again with the storming of that young woman with that voice, those garish garments.

"Taking away a girl's reputation. Thinks nothing o' that, she don't! ... A respectable girl! Girl that's always been being got at, as a matter of fact, for being so particular and strait-laced! Starting a pack of lies about her, and people jorin'——!"

"Do you mean that this is not true?" Eleanor slipped in hastily and edgeways. "This that Miss Fabian's friend——"

"There! A-har! Didn't I know it——"

"—that Miss Fabian's friend told me was known for a fact? She said that when she called at your rooms at that place in Brixton," persisted Miss Urquhart, "that she actually saw you, and that you did not deny——"

"'Course I didn't deny anything! Deny? What's the good of denying anything to a little flannel-face with a voice like an ungreased wheel that came pokin' round with her, 'Are you Miss Vansittart?' 'Guilty!' I said; and me that hadn't had time to get dressed, with me hair all down and my pink matinée on. 'Come in, do. This way! I'd better put you on the Free List,'" I said, and pretty satirically, too, which she didn't take in. "'Have a good look round, old dear.' Which she did. Hoo! I couldn't help seein' the funny side," enlarged Pansy indignantly, "when me Aunt Geranium began putting her eyes on stalks to gape round my place at all Ma's furniture"—a gasp for breath here—"and the big gramophone in the corner and the siphons and the ash-trays" (gasp) "and my photographs of the other girls and the comedian in our Company and some of the little things drying on the fire-guard" (pant) "and The London Mail! It amused me!" declared Pansy with another angry hoot. "And when she said to me, 'I hear some of the tenants are complainin' because you never came in till midnight.'" (gasp). "'Midnight if I'm lucky,' I said. 'It's oftener one and two G.M.!' She said, 'Very unpleasant for a young woman to walk down this lonely new road alone, so late?' I said, 'Must be! I generally take good care to have a young man, to hang on to, with me!' And she" (gasp) "looked all ways for daylight and said, 'No, really. Do you really mean to admit that you return every night at those disgraceful hours and with a MAN?' and I" (gasp) "just said the nastiest thing I could think of."

Here Pansy, with another hoot, tossed her crimson casque and laughed into Eleanor's apprehensive little face as she concluded with that "nastiest thing" she had hurled at the rent (and scandal) collecting spinster.

"I said, 'Yes; Miss!'"

"W-w-w-well, then, I d-d-don't see how you can d-d-defend your conduct," took up Eleanor, with an energetic though stammering attempt to regain her legitimate footing. "And b-b-besides that, there is another thing. The m-m-maid told me j-just now that you b-b-brought a b-b-baby with you, and that the g-gardener's wife is minding it for you now. Is it your s-sister's child?"

"No fear!" retorted Pansy promptly. "Let my sister cart her own little handfuls about! It's mine, that is."

"Yours?" said Eleanor, with a deepening of the hardness on her face. "Then it was all true. You have got a baby——"

"Why shouldn't I?" snapped the Principal Boy.

"A baby——"

"Yes. Why not? Haven't I been married gettin' on for two years now——"

"Married?" echoed the stupefied Eleanor. "You're married?"

The breast of Pansy's petunia-pink frieze coat seemed to swell as a sail that takes the breeze. With another toss of her whole person she retorted, "You don't give me much chance, do you, Miss Urquhart? You don't take much for granted! As soon as you've made sure there's a kid, you—ah, you're as bad as the other one!" Her face, no longer pale, deepened in colour almost to the crimson of her hat. "If you don't believe me, Miss Urquhart, you'd better look at these——"

She plunged her hand into one of the hip-pockets of her coat, drew out a long packet of papers and thrust them upon the younger girl.

"Here's my marriage-lines, see? Read 'em," she commanded. "Yes, you read 'em; here you are. 'Pansy Teresa Price,' understand? That's me. Vansittart's only my stage name, as any o' the girls could have told you, if you'd agone about asking them in the right way," snorted the Principal Boy. "And here's my other name, Hawkins!" She stabbed the certificate with a nicotine-gilded forefinger. "Here he is: 'George Herbert Stanley Hawkins'—that's the 'young man' I used to come home with every night at those 'disgraceful hours'—yes, and stay home with, too. (More than some o' them do!) Think o' that! That's my Stanley! That's my husband! 'Cinematograph Operator'; that's his occupation. Was then, I mean. Want to know what his present shop is? What he's doin' now, Miss Urquhart? He"—with another proud heave of that petunia-pink bosom—"he's reelin' off another sort o' pictures"—with a brisk circular gesture—"of those heathen Germans! Yes. He's working a machine-gun somewhere in France at this minute, bless 'im! That's where he is; with his old battery that he served with in the Bor' War! That's right. Well! And so you'd a party for Reservists' Wives here to-day, Miss Urquhart. Pity you never thought to give me a call!"

"How w-w-was I to know that you were a Reservist's wife?" demanded the discomfited Eleanor, not unnaturally rather cross. "How c-c-could any one have thought you w-were a m-married woman?"

At this Pansy's temper, that seemed for the minute abating, suddenly flared up again. She kicked the path with the wooden Louis heel of her shoe as she exclaimed, "Not 'a married woman!' Me! A married woman, ah, and a good wife—which is more than you'll ever be, Miss Urquhart, for all those sparklers on your finger there, and for all this swanky house-and-grounds that you're getting married for!"

"There is no n-n-n-need," Eleanor began, set-faced, "to be insolent, Pansy."

"Insolent? Shall be insolent if I like—I shall say what I like to you for once, Miss Urquhart, and do you good," cried the Principal Boy, her bell-like tones shaking afresh with anger. "Don't think I don't see through you—a nice kind of sweetheart you'd make to any man—let alone the one who's the misfortune to be cast for the intended! I bet that's never been anything but a dead frost since the curtain went up on it! I bet he's never been encouraged to catch you in his arms and fairly eat you up with kisses, same as a girl's got to expect when she's promised herself to a fellow!"

Here, Eleanor Urquhart, standing there small and undefensive, winced. She winced distinctly. She put out the spare brown hand that wore the Urquhart ring, and gave a little clutch, as if for support, to the rosemary bush beside her. She held on to a bunch of the sturdy twigs, thick with dark, aromatic leaves. Her other hand went to the breast of her grey jacket and she cleared her throat with a little choking sound that was rather pathetic. But she did not move the relentless Principal Boy. Pansy, who had lashed herself up into growing excitement, went on.

"Ah, you look down on me, Miss Urquhart. You think I'm 'not a lady,' but I tell you what it is—I know you're not a woman! Ah, and he knows it too, your Mr. Urquhart does. A pretty wash-out that'll be, you getting tied up to him! For"—Pansy wound up with a piece of tried feminine philosophy—"if you can't keep a young man before you've got him, when can you, I should like to know?"

Here Eleanor, still clutching the rosemary twigs, suddenly raised the dusky head which had dropped on to her slight chest. Blankly, incredulously, her dark eyes met the angry, taunting eyes of the woman of whom she'd thoroughly "got the back up."

"Pansy!" she exclaimed, "I d-don't understand. I w-w-want to know what you m-mean by what you've just said. 'Not k-keep him'?"

"Oh, you know you haven't! You know you haven't!" Pansy persisted, roused, angry, the worst in her nature awake and anxious to hurt the fellow-woman to whom she had always been subconsciously antagonistic. "Any one could see with half an eye who all his eyes were for! If I'd only seen him at the Party here, I should have been on to it, watching him follow her about like—why, like the limelight follows the leading lady round the stage in her big scene! You weren't on in that, Miss Urquhart! Let alone that time in France, at the Hostel——"

"What was that?" Eleanor, her eyes fixed on the Principal Boy, demanded, very sharply. "What was that at the Hostel?"

"Only the same thing—only more so. He was her shadow, was your handsome young man. He couldn't help himself!" enlarged the Principal Boy. "He was hers for a word, for a look——"

"Who d'you mean? Tell me. You must tell me," said Eleanor Urquhart, peremptorily, with a sharp, shrill note in her voice that sounded odd in her own ears. "I have a right to know."

"You're a fool if you don't know already," retorted the downright pantomime girl. "I mean her you left to look after us there; Miss Fayre. D'you suppose that good-looking young fellow wasn't head over ears in love at first sight with that peach of a girl?"

There was a silence in that sunny garden; through which floated from the house the deep and distant purr of the gong for tea. Then Eleanor, still with that odd new note in her voice, said, "This must be a mistake."

Pansy laughed unsympathetically.

"A mistake? Not of mine, Miss Urquhart. Why, you should have seen him! Every time he gave her a look, well, it might as well have been a arm round and have done with it! And didn't he let out to me himself that he'd been chasing round the rocks and everywhere that morning trying to find Miss Fayre? Didn't he get me to get the other girls out of the way that afternoon so that he should have the stage to himself to talk to her? Not that I heard a word after," the Principal Boy added, "turned him down proper, I shouldn't wonder. Got a best boy of her own, has our Miss Fayre, I expect. But if there wasn't any poaching on your preserves that week, it wasn't any credit to your young Mr. Ted!"

"Are you sure?" began Eleanor, a little gaspingly. "Pansy! Are you——"

But her small and agitated voice was interrupted by a volume of sound that came from beyond the closed green door of the garden; a noise as of a young and healthy bull-calf, bellowing.

The door behind Eleanor was pushed open and the noise increased almost deafeningly as there appeared the aproned, rosy and plump wife of Mr. Marrow the ex-gardener bearing in her arms a white-plush-coated child of eight months, his white woolly cap bristling with War-badges, his eyes tightly closed, and his mouth stretched to a cavern emitting roar after roar.

"Can't do anything with him," explained Mrs. Marrow in a shriek above the uproar, with an apologetic dip towards Miss Urquhart. "He woke up sudden, and I suppose finding hisself all among strangers, pore lamb, in a place he wasn't used to——"

"Oh, lor! Givvim to me, then. Come on, Herbert," exclaimed Mrs. Stanley Hawkins, grabbing her son, not too gently, into her petunia-pink embrace. "There! Tinker! Young Terror, ain't you? Leave orf——"

And, as if by magic, the bellowing ceased. With the vibrations of it still quivering in the air, with the tears still rolling down the rose-red and bulging cheeks, the Pantomime-girl's baby drew a long, sobbing breath and then grinned the ineffable grin of Naughtiness Triumphant.

"Ah," said the baby-boy. "M'—gur!"

The next thing to happen was as sudden and as unexpected as that lull to a tempest.

For Miss Eleanor Urquhart, moving rapidly as she was never known to move, took a hasty diffident step towards the group, gazed with a moved and transfigured face upon Master Herbert Hawkins, and cried aloud, "Oh, Pansy, what, what a darling! ... Oh! You sweet! ... Can't I hold him for just a minute?"

"Well, if he'll go to you——" returned the young Mother, taken aback and mollified; and Eleanor put out her hands, cooing invitation.

For a moment the child hesitated. Then the complacent grin creased his pink face once more, and he stretched out his little arms, stiff in the thick plush sleeves, towards the instinctively-recognised, the born Baby-worshipper.

And for the next few minutes those two wives saw Eleanor Urquhart absolutely at her best; holding and playing with a little child. For she was of the type of which the perfect nurse is made; and not the good-natured, capable Mrs. Marrow, not the sumptuous Pansy, not the beautiful Rosamond, beloved of men, well-fitted to be the mother of men, would ever learn quite that lovely gesture with which plain, severe little Eleanor cradled in her arms another woman's child.

"I didn't ought to have said off all I did say to you, Miss Urquhart, but I was wild," admitted Pansy, ruefully, as she took leave at the garden-door of the little organiser whom she had never resented less. "It's not you; it's those friends of yours I haven't been able to stick; if you don't mind me saying so; still, if there weren't some o' that sort, there'd be one sort less. And I've been to blame, myself. I know I didn't ought to have passed myself off as a single young girl and gone to that Hostel, but there! Nobody calls themselves 'Mrs.' in my profesh'; and I swear none of those other girls, Miss Urquhart, had a word of anything Married, as you might call it, from me. I——"

("OOgully-googully," said Pansy's baby-boy.)

"N-n-n-never mind, Pansy. You go and have some tea with Mrs. Marrow, will you?"

"It was all because I was weaning my little Herb!" the Principal Boy persisted. "He'd always slept in an old property-box in the dressing-room while I went on, Miss Urquhart, and I'd given him his feed at ten there, regular, every night. (More than lots of 'em would!) And I said, 'Well, if I've got to drop it, go away I must, and so——"

("Goo an' glue," said the baby.)

"It is all right," said Miss Urquhart, standing there with one finger still lingering in the baby-boy's pink clutch. "We'll forget about it now."

"There's something else I was gassing about," added the young Reservist's wife, uneasily, "that I didn't ought, and that I've p'raps got off all wrong, and that I hope you'll forget, too——'

"Very well, Pansy," said Miss Urquhart with her most business-like nod of farewell. "Good-bye, you Duck—" to the baby.

Pansy knew, as well as Eleanor knew herself, that what she had said about a fiancé and about another girl was something not to be readily "forgotten" by a bride-to-be.

And Eleanor Urquhart, outwardly busied with the tea for the Meeting, thought of little else but that "something" for the rest of the afternoon—except of the slow passage of the time to the hour when Ted Urquhart had said he would be coming back, from his business in London, to The Court.

With a beating heart and a catch at her throat the girl who was to be married on the morrow decided, "I shall speak to him about it. I shall ask him."

CHAPTER VIII

ALLIES

The Reservists' Wives, together with Miss Octavia Fabian, who for the first time that she had visited The Court had not been pressed to stay for dinner, had all gone by the time that Ted Urquhart, rather out of spirits and irritable, returned to his house from a day in London spent between the War Office and the outfitter's. All was in order now. He might expect to be off on the following Monday or Tuesday, ready, married, will made, everything. There were a few people to say Good-bye to. One young woman, to whom he'd thought he'd like to say a friendly Good-bye, after all had turned her back on him just as he was opening his mouth to say it. Well, the other one had agreed without demur to becoming his wife at once. And in the late afternoon sunlight this girl was waiting to meet him on the Terrace as he jumped down from the motor; she came quickly forward, and for the first time since he and she had been engaged, young Urquhart saw that Eleanor, his betrothed, seemed really glad to see him.

"You are late, aren't you?" she said in a queer breathless little voice. "I thought you were never coming back, Ted."

"Do you know, that is the nicest thing you have ever said to me, Eleanor?" said Ted, looking down upon the prim little figure, and feeling rather touched. She did care then, whether he came or went? Well, that was something, when another girl had just shown him so very plainly that she preferred him to go. Eleanor, after all, had got a scrap of ordinary womanly feeling for him tucked away under all that chilly and matter-of-fact crust of hers? That was an edge of silver to the black cloud of depression into which there seemed to be setting the sun of this day before Ted Urquhart's wedding.

He smiled quite gratefully down into the big anxious brown eyes that the bride-to-be lifted to his face.

"It isn't so very late," he suggested. "Half an hour before we dress. What about going for a stroll all round? We may not have time to-morrow. Or are you tired, Eleanor?"

"N-no. Oh, no. I'm not tired. Let's go for a walk before we go into the house. I'd like it," said Eleanor, quite eagerly. "I—I w-wanted to have a little talk with you, if I could."

"Rather," he said, brightening a little. "Come along."

He tossed his hat on to a chair in the hall, and came down the steps again. "We'll do the grand tour of our estate, shall we?" said Ted Urquhart with determined cheerfulness to the girl so soon to be his wife. They turned along the Terrace to the right, towards the park that led through the rose-garden, and to the new fish-pond.

"It's a jolly evening, isn't it?" said the bridegroom-to-be, raising his eyes to the apricot sky patterned with pink fleecy clouds. The soft air with the September nip in it was full of the scent of tall tobacco-plants that grew jungle-thick at the back of the herbaceous border on the south of the rose-garden; nearer to the path were clumps of ragged glowing double dahlias, sulphur-yellow, orange, cardinal-red; a huge blot of richest purple marked the China asters and next to these ran a long splash of shrieking scarlet, salvias. "Gorgeous weather for autumn; I've never seen this bit of the garden look so ripping," said young Urquhart, gazing at the English flowers under the English sunset. "This is my good-bye to it, Eleanor."

"Yes," said Eleanor, with that agitated little quaver in her voice that moved him and hurt him because it lacked power to move him more. At least the little thing was sorry he was off. The near parting was stirring up what feelings she had; or the near wedding.

Some girls were like this, he thought; made on such conventional lines that when they really definitely belonged to a man they were automatically "fond" of him; sad to think of his going. And when—if he came back, Eleanor would become as automatically glad to welcome her husband.

That thought brought a gleam of comfort. There was just a sporting chance that he and she, together, might find married happiness at last—at least, as much happiness as many couples.... They would be not strangers, but allies even if they never might be lovers. If only he had never seen another; if only he had never given himself up to those mad dreams of that golden-haired girl pacing this very garden at his side!

"Come and have a look at the pond," he said hastily to Eleanor, who was strangely silent as they walked along. All her usual store of trite little platitudes seemed to have forsaken her; she seemed to have nothing to say this evening. And yet she had volunteered that she'd wanted "a little talk" with him! Perhaps she only wanted to be, quite quietly, with him. Perhaps she didn't want to speak at all.

But when they reached the round pond with the grey stone border and stood looking at that smooth mirror to the sky, blotched at one side with lily-pads, Eleanor Urquhart spoke, her queerly agitated little voice breaking through the heavy country quiet.

"Ted! I want to say something to you!"

"Oh, yes?" He turned, looking down at her again.

"It—it's rather d-d-difficult!"

"Is it?" said Ted Urquhart, encouragingly, and wondering what this might be. Perhaps she was going to ask him what he wished done about some business or other in the event of his being wiped off the slate out there? It was rather "difficult," perhaps, for a girl who was not yet a wife to ask for her instructions as a widow, he thought whimsically as he added kindly, "surely you can tell me—we're getting married to-morrow, and——"

"That's just it," gasped Eleanor. She clenched her small hands. There lingered on her palms the aromatic scent of the rosemary twigs she had clutched at for support when Pansy blurted out those revelations in the kitchen-garden. The memory of what that girl had said spurred Eleanor to bring out, with a little breathless rush, what she herself wanted to say.

"Ted! Is it true? Something I heard. S-something somebody has just t-told me. That you liked somebody ... were in love with somebody else?"

Young Urquhart's tall elastic figure seemed to stiffen all over into angry alertness.

"Who?" he demanded.

He meant "who said it?" But Eleanor mistook his question and answered without reserve.

"They said you were in love with Rosamond Fayre."

"What's this?" he took up angrily. "Who's been talking to you?"

"Pansy Vansittart—you know her——"

—"Oh, Lord," from Ted below his breath.

—"was here this afternoon. She was very angry. She said it to hurt me, I think," his fiancée explained rapidly. "But I want to know, from you, whether it's really true?"

The tall young man and the small girl stood confronting each other above their own contrasted reflections in the still waters at their feet.

He spoke quietly now.

"Eleanor, will you believe me? I swear that there is nothing—absolutely nothing between me and any woman. Since I've been engaged to you I haven't said a word to any woman that you could not have heard."

"B-but that's not what I asked you!" the engaged girl took up with a helpless, repudiating gesture of her hands. "Why do m-m-men always answer one like this? Always something that's got nothing to d-do with the question! Is it true? What Pansy said! Is it? I want to be told!"

"Well, but look here—" began the young man, cruelly embarrassed, bewildered.

He took a few steps away from the side of the lily-pond, towards the path that went up beyond the clipped, box-peacocks-and-windmill hedge, to the smaller lawn where Eleanor's girls had danced. Eleanor followed him; every movement of her small figure, the pose of her dark head one urgent, repeated demand.

"Is it true?"

"Look here, Eleanor," he began again. "I must tell you that she—the girl you speak of—would simply—Well! I don't know what she'd do for surprise if she heard what you said. She—why, if it ever occurred to her——"

"N-never mind her. That isn't it. Oh," Eleanor cried desperately, "c-c-can't you answer what I'm asking you? Ted!" she put out a hand and clutched his sleeve even as she had clutched that rosemary bush. "This is the first time I've ever asked you to d-do anything for me. Won't you do this?" Her voice was the voice of an appealing and frightened child. "Ted! Will you tell me?"

"All right. I will tell you," said the young man quickly and firmly. That touching, unexpected, girlish appeal had made up his mind for him. The poor child! Poor little mite, hiding that jealous affection until admission was forced from her like this! There remained only one thing for the man she cared for to do. Namely, to obey the Eleventh Commandment at Eton; to tell a lie, to tell a good 'un, and to stick to it. And so he declared, without a quiver, "It's all a mistake, Eleanor! It isn't true."

"Not true?" muttered Eleanor, and her hand dropped from his sleeve. "You're sure, Ted?"

"Quite sure," insisted Ted Urquhart briskly. "It was all rot, my dear."

The next moment the small girl at his side had made such an impulsive movement that he thought she was going to fling her arms wide to him.

But she had only taken a couple of steps backward.

There was a rustic bench beside that path, backed by the clipped hedge. Blindly, and as if pushed down by a crushing blow, Eleanor's compact little figure collapsed upon that seat. She dropped her dusky head upon both her hands and broke into uncontrollable sobs....

Poor little soul! Poor, overwrought little thing—Lord, how he wished she wouldn't! ... Even if she were crying for joy—what could be done to stop it?

Suffering acutely from this sight of a woman in tears—Eleanor, of all women!—and on his behalf, too!—Ted Urquhart plopped down hastily beside his fiancée on the bench.

"Eleanor. Look here, Eleanor, please——"

He put his long arm about her shoulders.

He was ill-prepared for the brusque, the intense gesture with which Eleanor drew herself back.

"No. Oh, Ted, if you don't mind, I can't bear to be touched!"

"Sorry," he said, mystified, and dropping his arm. "What have I done——?"

"Oh, nothing. I know you can't help it, but-b-b-but oh! it was so awful when you said that just now," sobbed Eleanor Urquhart out of her handkerchief. "All—all the afternoon since Pansy spoke I've been thinking—and thinking—M-M-M-Making up my mind that she m-m-must be right! G-G-Going back and remembering things and thinking I'd n-n-noticed! F-Feeling quite c-convinced that you did c-care for Rosamond, and that it was all t-t-true! And now you say it isn't. Oh! Oh! After I'd hoped——"

"Hoped," echoed Ted Urquhart blankly. "I don't understand, Eleanor. I don't quite understand. D'you mean—? Can you mean you wanted it to be true that I cared for somebody else?"

"Yes! Of c-course!" sobbed the bride-to-be desperately. "Because then—then I needn't—I shouldn't be exp-pup-pected to marry you to-morrow!"

"Good Heavens!" said the bridegroom-to-be, sitting up very straight and staring at her. "Is this how you feel about it, Eleanor?"

"Yes! I'm sorry! I c-c-can't help it! I have tried!" declared Miss Urquhart, struggling to fight down her sobs. "I thought I could d-do it! F-For Father's sake and everybody's! I thought I could bear it all, without showing anything! I thought I could be strong and bub-brave enough——'

"Brave enough?"

"Yes, and so I was; until there s-seemed to be a chance of g-getting out of it! And n-now—even if that isn't true about Rosamond—of c-course I hate p-put-ting you out and d-disappointing Father and all that! B-B-Breaking my word at the eleventh hour! Cuc-can-celling my appointments—a thing I never do, really," wept Miss Urquhart, defensively, "still, I c-can't do the other. Oh, don't ask me to go on with that dreadful wedding to-morrow, Ted——"

She turned to him, her small face broken up, quivering.

"L-l-let me off!"

"But of course. Oh! Certainly. Rather," broke in Ted Urquhart, precipitately but mechanically, for he was almost numb with amazement over the true cause of the girl's emotion. "I say—please don't consider yourself bound in any way, please let me give you back your freedom," he concluded, "here and now!"

"Oh, you are good!" cried Eleanor, one tremble of relief. "If you're sure you don't m-mind very much——"

"It's quite all right," he said, too discomfited for further words. "Quite all right. I ought to have guessed, perhaps. If you'd said a word——"

"Oh, but I was t-trying—so hard—not to show how I minded——"

Ted Urquhart gave a short and very bitter laugh. "I seem to be remarkably unlucky in the way of pleasing any woman," he said. And he raised the gallant young head of which nine out of ten women would not have denied the attractiveness, and stared away above the lime-trees. He scarcely saw that quickly yellowing sky, speckled with homing rooks; what he saw was a picture of the golden knot of hair above the supple shoulders of that girl who'd also turned her back on him. "I am sorry," he muttered, half to himself, "that I manage to put you off like this——"

"Oh, it isn't you, Ted. I don't think that being engaged to you would be worse than being engaged to lots of other people," pleaded Eleanor deprecatingly, raising her blurred eyes to his again. "It's only that I hated it so, especially when the actual D-Day was fixed! And then—it got n-n-nearer and nearer to b-being m-married! Oh! I tried to th-think of how F-Father wished it, and of how k-kind you'd been;—b-but all the time I knew how I should hate being your w-wife—Anybody's, I mean!" she corrected herself, hastily, picking and clutching at a wet handkerchief. "I always think a m-married woman is only half an ind-d-dividual, as Miss Fabian says. She g-gives up her p-personality, her privacy! she isn't herself, somehow, any more; oh, I couldn't!" she pleaded, bewilderedly. "I don't know why I'm like this——

"Don't, child—don't," said young Urquhart, confused beyond words at this burst of confidence, unrestrained as are the rare confidences of the naturally self-contained. "Don't bother to explain——"

"Yes. I must ex-pup-plain," she persisted. "I don't want you to think it's only because it was you that I was so ded-dreadfully miserable when I was engaged! It would have been the same with anybub-body else. I don't know whether it's because I d-do so detest the scent of their cigarettes, or if it's because of their gruff voices, or what, but——"

Here, with a rush of unmistakable sincerity, the little philanthropic worker voiced a keynote to her own character.

She cried—

"I don't like Men! I don't like any men at all. I never have. I never could! There, Ted."

Ted Urquhart regarded her; this young woman of a type not uncommon in this world, but nearly always misunderstood.

At the head of the same type stands Joan of Arc, the saint, the Saviour of her country, leader of soldiers—who was the sweetheart of no soldier, of no man. Of the same type one sees many and many a noble woman-worker, a born Nurse, a Heaven-sent tender of little children. To the Eleanor-type, Love for a man is limited to nurse-love for him at the age of Pansy's baby-boy. She can delight in the sight of that fruit of Love. But the sweetness of its blossom sickens and disgusts her. Not for her is the gay warfare between man and maid—ending in joyous surrender. The caress revolts her.

To the end, men will say of that inborn aversion, "Ah! Sour grapes! Pretends she doesn't care for men, just because she's never had the chance of a man making love to her!"

Perhaps Ted Urquhart, that Brainless Army type, was still rather more understanding than many of his sex. He actually realised that it was not out of place to say to his cousin, "I see. Will you forgive me for having made you put up with what must have been rather a beast of a time for you?"

One moment later he was holding that little spare brown hand of Eleanor's in the warmest, most affectionate grip it had ever known.

"Oh, Ted, don't apologise! I knew you didn't know how I hated it all. And you've been so nice now. I shall like you so," she admitted with a gulp, "as a cousin!"

"Well, that's something saved out of the fire," he said, with a queer mixture of ruefulness and amusement in his tone. "I hate being bad friends with any one——"

Here he had another pang, thinking of some one, a girl so different from the type of Eleanor, who was still "bad friends" with him. He went on quickly to the girl beside him. "So, in spite of this bust-up, and of the War, and what not, we two are parting friends, at all events. Aren't we?"

"Oh yes! Of course. I—I never seemed to know you before," she said. "You were just—a man, a man that I'd got to put up with. It was awful! All your little ways——"

"May I ask which little ways?"

"Oh, none p-particularly. Only everything you did! You would talk to me. You would look at me!" complained his ex-fiancée, to his dumb surprise. "However, that's all over now. This makes such a difference," she said, drawing a long breath and disengaging one of the hands; her left one. "I can give you this back now——"

"This" was the famous Urquhart sapphire, set with diamonds, that Eleanor drew off as gladly as another engaged girl might have assumed her ring.

"Wear it on the other hand, then, won't you?" suggested her ex-fiancé gently. "Just to show there's no ill-will—a dis-engagement present, eh? Please do. I'd like you to——"

"But when you get married," objected his cousin, "this ring is supposed to go to your wife!"

"All right, all right. Perhaps you'll send it to me," said young Urquhart, briefly, "when there's a wife to think of. You keep it, Eleanor."

He rose, as she did. They began to stroll down that path, round to the lime-tree Avenue that Ted had once paced alone, when he had wondered in what words he could most gently break to Eleanor that he wished to cancel that futile and flavourless engagement of theirs.

And now it was she who had found the words to break it off.

In the shadows under the limes her voice broke the stillness again.

"Ted! I do think it's a pity!"

"What's a pity? If you can't," he said soothingly, "you can't."

"I d-don't mean it's a pity we aren't getting married. I mean it's rather a pity that, after all, you don't care for Rosamond Fayre."

"Oh, that," he said curtly. "Rather a good thing, actually. The girl never could stand me."

"Couldn't she? Why not? She never said so."

"H'm," said Ted Urquhart, and closed his lips as he paced along by the side of the other girl who had not been able to "stand" him, at least as a prospective husband. Then there fell upon him, suddenly, a great and aching need to talk about that first girl, to some one, any one. The little cousin at his side was not (now) unsympathetic. He turned to her and said, quickly, "Besides! Supposing that had been true—what your friend Miss Pansy made up her mind about! I should have had no chance to cut that other fellow out."

"What other fellow?"

"Man she—Miss Fayre—was engaged to."

Out of the dusk Eleanor's voice sounded mildly surprised.

"I don't think Rosamond—I'm sure she wasn't engaged to be married."

"Oh, I think she was," said Ted Urquhart.

And the dreariness of his tone struck through even the calm absorption of the girl who had just regained her freedom, and who said, quickly, "Why are you so sure about Rosamond?"

Again he laughed that short and bitter laugh, pausing for a moment under the limes just at the spot where, weeks before in the dusk, he had caught that soft sound of a kiss that had been his torture ever since. But he only said briefly, "Well, Eleanor, you saw them too. You saw the fellow when he came down to call on her."

"Nobody came to call on Rosamond here, though," objected Eleanor, "except that young Mr. Bray whom Father took such a fancy to."

"Well, that's what I meant."

"Oh, but, Ted," protested Eleanor, quite eagerly, "I am sure Rosamond doesn't want to marry him!"

"Are you?" said Urquhart. Hope, last of all feeling to die, seemed to stir for a second within him, as he added quickly, "Is that just what you think? Or have you any special reason for saying this?"

Eleanor, bright and matter-of-fact as if no crucial words were passing her lips, uttered the sentence that caused that stirring Hope to leap to life in her cousin's heart.

"Yes, I have a special reason, Ted."

What was this?

"What is it?" he demanded brusquely. He took her by the arm. "I say, Eleanor! If there's anything in this, for God's sake tell me what you know!"

"You do care, then? How frightfully queer men are! I should never understand them. How is one to tell what they mean?" reflected Eleanor aloud. And she went on to say, "Well! Only a week or two ago I asked Rosamond if she would give me Mr. Cecil Bray's address. You know he got on so well with Father about those genealogical charts and all that, I thought he'd cheer Father up, and that it would be nice to ask him down for the week-end, as he couldn't stay last time. But Rosamond said—was that the dressing-gong?"

"What," demanded Urquhart, "did she say?"

"She said, 'Oh, do you mind not asking him while I'm in the house?'"

"She said that?" took up Ted Urquhart in an expressionless voice. "Perhaps it was because she didn't want the affair given away."

"No, it wasn't," insisted Eleanor, "because I said, 'But, Rosamond, don't you want him here with you? I thought he was such an old friend of yours?' And she s-s-s-"

It seemed to Eleanor's listener that he waited for an hour while Eleanor got the better of that little stutter of hers and went on.

"Rosamond said, 'He is an old friend, but he's always asking to be something more. And I don't wish it."

"She said she 'didn't wish it?' You're certain of that, Eleanor?" her cousin said breathlessly. "What do you suppose she meant by it?"

"I thought she meant what she said, at the time. But really it's so difficult to tell, it seems to me," complained Miss Urquhart. "First people say one thing—and then another. Like you, when you said——"

"I know," interrupted the dazed Ted feverishly. "That is, I don't know what I said, or what I'm going to say. I only know I've got to say something, and as soon as I can manage it, to Her——"

"To Rosamond Fayre, d'you mean?" took up Eleanor; even Eleanor's instinct could recognise and apply that capital H in the young man's voice.

"Yes."

"Very w-well; then I'll give you her address and you can motor yourself back to town this evening while I talk to Father," planned his cousin swiftly. "I broke off the engagement, you know. I have to explain that——"

"Will you also explain that I shall never come down to the Court again except as a guest—your guest?" put in young Urquhart. "I say, though—perhaps I'd better stay," ruefully, "and tell that to Uncle Henry myself——'

"You can tell him anything l-later. You'd better go now, m-my dear boy. I know you w-want to. And g-give my love to Rosamond," she added quite diffidently. "Ask her if she'll come down. If not, I'll come and see her. I—I—I——You know, being engaged made me all so upset and cross," declared his cousin, "that I was rude to her, I'm afraid, before she w-went. I've been horrid——"

"Eleanor, you've been a little trump!"

"You've been so good to me, Ted," declared his new ally affectionately.

He took both her hands again as they reached the house.

"Eleanor," he began again, unsteadily laughing a little, for his head was still in a whirl, "I say, I haven't been smoking. D'you think you could bring yourself to let me have a kiss, Dear?"

Apparently Eleanor could; quite promptly.

But as her ex-fiancé strode off towards the garage and she turned into the house, she thought to herself, "Thank goodness he never said those sort of things to me while we were engaged! It would have been nearly as bad as what Pansy said. Oh, I could never have stood it," decided the girl who was destined to remain Miss Urquhart, and to be happy in her lot, "if there had been much more love-making like that!"

CHAPTER IX

WAR-PAINT

All the way up to town again Ted Urquhart drove along the Kentish roads like a madman, not caring if he were stopped, but knowing that this would be unlikely to occur.

For in these days the police did not readily hold up a motor-car that was speeding along apparently upon urgent business, and driven by an officer wearing His Majesty's uniform. And this—the one rather theatrical act of his life—Mr. Ted Urquhart had committed.

He had, after his interview with Eleanor, lingered at Urquhart's Court not long enough to have anything to eat ("dinner? Shan't want it," he'd smiled at the enquiring parlour-maid), but sparing himself just the time to get into the khaki and the accoutrements that had come home.

This would save some explanation to Miss Fayre. She'd see that, whether at the eleventh hour or not, he'd volunteered. He needn't tell her that.

He debated what he would tell her; how he'd begin; picking and choosing and altering sentences as he whizzed along with stretches of road, gates, and hedges springing into the focus of his headlight for a flash, then dropping behind. That planning, too, he presently dropped behind him.

He remembered how much of his time since he'd met that girl had been passed in just this profitless occupation of making up his mind that he must say something to her. And then something else had invariably happened to put a stopper on it. There should be no stopper to-night....

That day in France he'd had "something to say" to her—and she'd nipped it in the bud with the curtest little snub he'd ever received.

That afternoon when he'd returned to the Court he'd had "something" to say. He'd arranged just what crows he had to pluck with that golden-haired minx—and then had come the staggering revelation that the girl with whom he'd fallen in love was not the girl he had to marry.

That evening after the Hen-party he'd had "something to say," something crucial—and it had been swept aside by another revelation, causing him to believe that she was engaged to another man.

Even to-day on the Horse Guards Parade he had nearly said "something" else. It was only a Good-bye—but she'd turned her back on it!

And to think that She had never had an idea of all these planned "somethings" of Ted Urquhart! So far as his courtship of Rosamond Fayre—for, looking back on all the mistakes and tangles and misunderstandings, he could only admit that the impulse and mainspring of Courtship was there—So far the courtship had gone on in the depths of his own heart only. It had all taken place, as Pansy would say, "off ... There should be a change to-night....

Then as he sat with his hands on the wheel, his impatient eyes fixed ahead, a thought steadied and sobered him. There remained that unforgetable moment under the lime-trees, the hardest that Ted Urquhart had ever lived through. There remained that sound of a kiss to another man....

The memory of it dashed all the mad rush of hopeful high spirits in which he'd whirled the car down the avenue and out on to the London Road.

It was a very grave-faced young man in khaki, with a heart that seemed sinking into his brown boots and with the look in his eyes of a man who is staking his all upon a single throw, who pulled up at last in the little street off Ebury Street, who jumped out of the car and knocked at that green door with "Madame Cora's" brass plate affixed.

Madame Cora, startled, opened the door with a "now-whatever's-this" look on her astute small face.

"Good-evening!" said the tall and khaki-clad apparition who stood on the whitened step blocking out the view of the dimmed street-lamps. "Could you tell me if this is where Miss Fayre is staying?"

"Ah! ... Yes, it is," said the landlady swiftly.

In a flash she had arrived at one of those conclusions, which right or wrong, women preface with the phrase "Something told me...."

"If this young officer here isn't what it's all about that's making Miss Fayre seem so quiet these days!" thought the landlady with conviction. "Moping up in her room this minute over the Ad-Verts in the Morning Post. This must be the meaning of it all, true as I stand here. Fancy."

"Could I see her?" asked the tall visitor, moving so that the light of the hall gas fell upon the resolute and tanned face under the Service cap, upon the light, impatient eyes, upon the firm mouth with the small cropped moustache.

"Smart fellow, I call him; nice couple they'd look," thought the little landlady even while she replied doubtfully, "Well, I don't know. I think Miss Fayre was dressing to go out to a party or something——"

The visitor's face became blankness incarnate at the news.

"Still, I'll run up and see if she'll speak to you a minute before she goes," amended the landlady. "If you'll go in there a minute I'll just pop up."

The young man went into the room she indicated; a small parlour of which the whole of one side was taken up by a long pier-glass. A round table occupied the centre of the room under the gasolier; it was piled high with Fashion-papers; "Modes Parisiennes," "Delineators," "Chics." A chiffonier at the side held books of patterns (cloth, satin, Japanese silks) and a silver-topped biscuit-box. The mantelpiece and over-mantel were crowded with cheap china; the pictures were an enlarged photograph of the late Mr. Core in Freemason's insignia, a coloured print of "Carnation, Lily, Rose," from the Tate Gallery, and another of a picture called "Reunion." A couple of albums spread among the fashion-papers showed that Madame Cora had, some years ago, collected picture postcards. Also snapshots....

All these, with other details, the visitor was to be allowed ample time to study while he waited, fuming, for the girl he had come to see.

For Mrs. Core, "popping" upstairs to Miss Fayre's room, thought to herself, "I shan't tell her who's come to see her, no fear! Flurrying and hurrying her; and her in that old crêpe blouse when I know for certain she'd want to look specially nice. She shall, too."

With a tap at the door the little woman slipped into the room where Rosamond Fayre sat on the edge of her narrow bed, studying her Morning Post listlessly enough.

"Not busy, are you? Wish you'd do something to please me," said the landlady ingratiatingly. "Will you, Miss Fayre?"

"What is it?" asked Rosamond, looking up with a rather subdued little smile.

"Well, I've never had a sight of that pink lisse of yours, since I sent it home.... Wish you'd just slip it on now to let me have a look, could you? ... In this long drawer is it? ... Ah! ... It'll go over your head.... Tuck this thing here down a bit more ... That's right. There ... I'll do you up."

And her clever, hard-worked fingers busied themselves with the fastenings of that dress that Rosamond Fayre had only worn once—for five minutes. She'd tried it on just that one evening at The Court, and had nearly gone down to dinner in it. Then she'd taken it off again.... Three corolla'd, petal-flounced, rose-pink, it really was, as she'd thought, a flower turned into a frock.

"Looks beautiful on you, Miss Fayre, and no mistake," declared the little dressmaker decidedly, as she put her head on one side to contemplate that shining vision of gold and ivory and rose. "Pity you can't go about all day long in evening dress, with your shoulders and neck! Pity you aren't just off to a dance now, eh? Got any sort of a wrap to wear with this?"

Rosamond murmured something about the black satin cape in the cupboard. She felt, however, that she would never be going off to a dance again as long as she lived. Somehow she had a presentiment that nothing interesting could ever happen to her again; somehow this evening everything seemed over.... Over....

"Throw that coat across your arm then, just to try the effect as if you were off out. Your hair's all right as it is. Lovely. But slip on those little suede slippers o' yours. You can't really tell a dress with the wrong shoes," decreed Madame Cora, for the moment all costumier. "Now look at yourself—Gracious! Can't see much of yourself in this rubbishy little shaving-mirror, can you? Remind me to put you another one in to-morrow. Better pop down now and take a look at yourself in the long glass in my fitting-room—dear."

Shrewd kindliness glinted in the eyes, out of which all illusions had been wiped, as the little woman-toiler hurried downstairs with the Beauty in the pink frock that had been the work of her hands.

"Give her every chance, at all events," was the unspoken thought of Mrs. Core. "If that's the One and Only she'll be thankful for ever that she had on her pink when he came. Supposed to make no difference to the man what a girl's got on! It's her the difference is made to. Shan't forget my poor Harry comin' up to the scratch when I was all anyhow and my head tied up for the Spring-cleaning. Way men spoil things if they can! ... But whatever's happened or going to happen about Miss Fayre and her young gentleman that's in this tearin' hurry to see her she'll be glad she was turned out daintily for the occasion. Him in uniform and all."

Here the little woman opened the door of that small fitting-room. She gave one last touch, that was almost a gentle push, to the back of the pretty pink bodice.

"Some one that you know in there!" she announced. Then, standing outside herself, she closed the door, briskly and decisively, upon the entrance of Rosamond Fayre.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST LINE

Rosamond, coming into the room, beheld first of all a stalwart and obstinate-looking back, clad in khaki.

The owner of the back was sitting at the journal-littered table. His head was bent down over something that he seemed to have taken out of his tunic-pocket.

A young man—in khaki? Ah, yes; Miss Fayre jumped at once to the idea of the only young man in that rig who was likely to be calling upon her. Why had he? What a pity! She'd hoped it was over, the good-bye to that young man. Still, she was bound to be "nice" to him—poor, poor fellow! She came forward with a little rush as she cried, "Why, I thought you were off, Cecil?"

The young man stood up. At first she was only surprised at the height of him in that get-up. She hadn't remembered that Cecil was so tall?

He turned.

"Sorry," he said. "It isn't Cecil."

And he looked straight into her eyes.

She gave a breathless little gasp.

"Oh! It's—Why—Is it Mr. Urquhart?"

"Yes," said Mr. Urquhart, gloomily.

He felt that this was the worst start that could possibly have been made. He didn't know what to say next. All he could think of saying was, "It isn't 'Cecil.'"

"No. I see, now," said the girl, wishing that she could speak without that silly, that idiotic flutter (of astonishment). "I—I thought for a minute it was Mr. Bray, because he's in the Territorials. I thought it must be. I didn't expect to see you—in uniform."

"Obviously not," said he, grimly.

She wished again that this surprise hadn't taken her breath away and made her hand shake. She steadied it on the back of the chair, and stood facing him, all at sea.

"Is it really—Are you joining, too, then?"

"Of course I'm joining," he told her, resentfully. "After being kept waiting since the day War was declared. That was when I wanted to join."

"Oh, was it?" said Rosamond Fayre.

And that part of the surprise fell away from her.

"Of course" he was joining. How could she have ever thought that he'd thought of doing anything else? Wasn't the instant impulse to strike for his country altogether characteristic of the man? Wasn't he a soldier's son and a born soldier himself? That uniform looked more natural to him than any clothes she'd seen him in, thought Rosamond confusedly. That jacket that looked as if it had been born on him and grown with him; that Sam Brown belt, the sword, those buttons and badges, the turn-down collar about his strong throat with the gold safety-pin beneath that knitted tie of khaki silk. That tie took Rosamond's attention. It was one of those foolish little details that do catch a woman's interest, so hard to fix on larger matters afoot. Rosamond found that tie delightful. She loved that tie ... only the tie, of course.... So this explained matters. Of course he'd been waiting to join (little fool that she'd been, to put him down as a shirker!) and of course this was why his wedding had been hurried on for to-morrow.

It was a War-wedding, and Eleanor would be a War-bride!

Still flutteringly Rosamond suggested, "Eleanor—I suppose it was Eleanor who sent you to me with—with some commission for me?"

"No," he said.

He stared at her as he spoke; feasting at last the impatient eyes that he had schooled not to look on the rose-pink jewel in its ramshackle setting of a little gaslit-room. How perfect she was, how lovely! It seemed to him at that moment that there was no war, no vaster issues, that all he prayed his gods for was

"This girl to falter in his arms and tingle in his blood."

Was she to be his? Was she? The fear that after all she might not listen, presently, parched his mouth and made him speak brusquely, almost gruffly.

"I mean, Eleanor did send me——"

"You said just now she didn't," said Rosamond Fayre, looking at his Service-cap flung down on the table, and giving a little laugh, rather a forced little laugh. "Which do you mean, Mr. Urquhart?"

"Both, in a way," he answered, still looking hard at her. It was ghastly, this forcing of the lips to say certain words before the things with which his heart was crammed were allowed a hearing. He began to speak quickly, to gabble almost, in his hurry to get this part of it over and to come to what he really wanted to say.

"Eleanor did send me, but what I really came about was, what I had to settle up with you on my own account, Miss Fayre."

"Oh, yes?" she returned.

That fluttering shyness left her; thank goodness! It left her sore, and angry, and proud; just as she would have wished to feel. She laid the black silk cape she had been carrying down on the table beside his cap. She drew herself up, this young and lovely Juno. On the defensive? Yes; it was—with rather a hard note in her pretty voice that she continued: "So this is about—what?"

"You don't know, perhaps——"

He said it simply. But she chose to take it as irony.

"Yes. I suppose I do know. I suppose you want to have it out with me," she said a little defiantly, "about the letters? The ones I wrote for Eleanor."

"Well, I was going to speak about those, as a matter of fact," he admitted, jockeying about for a fresh start. "But you do take things for granted, don't you? The wrong things into the bargain. You've done that all this time about me!"

"Which time?" demanded Rosamond Fayre.

"All the time I've known you. From the beginning, when——"

"When you thought," she took up quickly, "that I was a girl you might get to know without letting her know who you were!"

He, hotly, took her up here. "I never thought that!"

"But you did it."

"But what I thought was—I thought," he began, and wound up bluntly, in confusion, "I thought that you were somebody else. I imagined, like an ass, that you were Eleanor."

"I—Eleanor?"

"Well, I'd never seen her," he began to explain. "When I went over to France——

"To spy," said Rosamond angrily, "on me—on her—on your fiancée——"

"Look here! 'Spy' is a very ugly word, especially just now," urged young Urquhart. "Can't you draw it a little more mildly than that? You never have given me any chance. I know it was a stupid thing to do. But I think I paid for it, don't you? You saw to that."

"I suppose you mean by writing that note to say that I knew who you were at the time," said the girl.

"That—and other things," said the man.

"Other things?"

"Yes," he said, flushing at the remembrance of her demure gibes, her glances, given or averted. "You know quite well you've never done anything but laugh at me——"