I.

A man about thirty-four years of age was sitting a few years ago in his bachelor rooms in one of the inns of court. It was a spring afternoon, warm for the season; the window was open, and above the high-shouldered brick buildings a glimpse of eastern sky appeared, with a pinkish flush upon it, reflected from the sunset clouds in the opposite quarter of the heavens. Through the window were also visible the boughs of a tree upon which the bright green buds were beginning to unfold; and a couple of sparrows were chirping to one another as they fluttered from twig to twig. A muffled hush was in the air, peculiar to these London enclosures, into which horses and vehicles seldom enter; the roar of the great thoroughfare, though only a few rods distant, being almost inaudible to the occupant of this quiet chamber; while the light ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece, and the twittering of the birds, were both perceptible to him.

He sat heavily and motionlessly in his chair—a tall, powerfully-built man with gloomy brow and a thick dark beard. In his right hand he held an envelope, which had been torn open; but, after reading the enclosure, he had mechanically put it back. The envelope bore the name of Geoffrey Herne, in a woman's handwriting, and the London postmark. About half an hour had gone by since Herne read the letter, during which time he had been sitting as he was now, plunged in thought. His meditations had not, however, been occupied all that time with the subject of the letter; but certain passages in his past life had been passing in review before his mind: passages in which Ellice Quentin was the central figure. She was a slender girl when he first knew her, looking taller than she was, with strange grey-green eyes, and a clear but bright colour in her cheeks. Her face was very attractive to some people, though it had no pretensions to regular beauty; the features were delicately but oddly formed, indicating a refined and talented but wayward and unaccountable nature. In her ordinary home life, and also when she was in the company of those she did not like, she was silent, repellent, and cold; but she not seldom in favouring circumstances kindled into brilliance of talk and action; and there was a vein of passion in her which was itself the secret of her frequent coldness. Her lips, red as blood, were gracefully moulded and were perfectly under her control; by subtle modulations she could render them expressive of any emotion. Her figure was slight at this time, and scarcely as fully developed as that of most girls of her age; but she never made an ungainly movement, or fell into an awkward position; and she had such a genius for costume that whatever she put on straightway seemed to become an organic part of her. Her wrists were slender and long, and her fingers tapered almost to a point: Geoffrey Herne had felt their touch upon his face as soft as the thrill of delight that at the same moment swept his heart. But that was not until many months after their first meeting, which was unromantic enough; Mr. Quentin having invited him to dinner to discuss some professional business (Herne was a barrister). Ellice had treated him on this occasion with undisguised superciliousness, somewhat to Herne's amusement at first; for Mr. Quentin—an obese and ineffective elderly gentleman—though he boasted of blue blood somewhere in his veins, was far from being in a prosperous or dignified worldly condition; was very poor, in fact, and thought of nothing but obtaining possession of some property to which he had a very questionable claim. Meanwhile tradesmen used to present their bills with annotations at the bottom, intimating a desire more or less urgent to have them settled at once. Hereupon poor Mr. Quentin would wince and splutter; but Ellice, leaning back in her chair, with her hands folded on her lap, would meet his eye coldly and narrowly, with a sarcastic smile curling one side of her lips. Mr. Quentin would rather face a score of insolent creditors than that little smile of his daughter's. For Ellice was a natural aristocrat far more than an hereditary one—she was born for a life of luxury and fastidious refinement, and her father could not help recollecting, at these moments, that he had thrown away eighty thousand pounds of money which should have been hers upon the turf; nor had he the consolation of reflecting that Ellice was ignorant of this fact. Ignorant of it! He sometimes shuddered to think how many facts discreditable to him that cold, silent girl probably knew. She was not always silent either; she could utter agonising remarks in a semi-jocose way. But let us do the young lady justice. It was within Mr. Quentin's memory that once, when he had returned home late at night, after a miserably unsuccessful interview with his lawyers, and had let himself into the house noiselessly with his latch-key, dreading to encounter Ellice's unsympathetic look, he had suddenly felt two slender arms drawn tightly about his neck in the darkness, and a hot and wet cheek pressed against his own. At that the unfortunate man had broken into sobs; Ellice had tried to soothe him, and sitting on his knee, with her head against his shoulder, had spoken to him such words as he had not heard since he and his dead wife were young. But after awhile she had fallen silent, and in the midst of an incoherent monologue of his on the subject of his wrongs and misadventures, she had risen abruptly and left him, with only a curt good-night. She was a strange girl.

Geoffrey Herne's first impression of Ellice had not been particularly favourable, and if she had behaved as most young ladies would have done under the circumstances, he might probably have never bestowed a second thought upon her. But her gratuitous arrogance, after amusing him for awhile, began to pique him; and being possessed of an exceedingly keen tongue and wit of his own, he was tempted to enter into conversation with her. The dialogue which followed was probably worthy of a listener more intelligent than Mr. Quentin; the upshot of it being (so far as Herne was concerned) that he found it would require all his wit, and more than all his temper, to hold his own fairly against this oblique-eyed young lady, with her curving scarlet lips. They parted that night on terms of almost open hostility, and Herne, as he went homewards, more than once found his brows drawing together and his lips compressed at the recollection of the things she had said to him. 'She is a lady, though—confound her impudence!' was the sum of his mental comments. Her image was very vivid in his memory—unpleasantly so, indeed; not only that, but the intonation of her voice—her way of lifting back her head with a kind of haughty surprise when he addressed her; the gesture of her hands and shoulders—all were present to him. Moreover he recalled one or two instances in which she had unmistakably had the better of him in the duel of words, and his face grew hot anew with a really disproportionate vexation. He would rather have made a fool of himself before the Lord Chief Justice of England than before that slender girl of twenty. He then resolved that he would avoid seeing her for the future; but he finally modified his determination so far as to tell himself that he would first give her such evidence of his superior qualities as should make her regret ever having had the temerity to provoke him.

As it turned out, this was a much longer and more arduous enterprise than he had anticipated; insomuch that after several months had gone by he did not seem much nearer the consummation than at first. The antagonism between him and Ellice had been—superficially, at least—constant and unrelenting; but meanwhile he had incidentally come to know her well, and he was too clear-sighted a man not to perceive that she was beginning to be indispensable to him. The discovery occasioned him much anxiety and inward struggle. His predilections had for years been against marriage, and he certainly had little encouragement to think that Ellice would ever dream of marrying him. One day, however, after a peculiarly bitter passage-at-arms, he rose and took up his hat to depart. He had something to say first, though, which had been on his mind for a week or two past.

'You are going?' she said indifferently, or, rather, with an air as of relief.

'Yes, I am going; and, as I shall probably not see you again, I will say good-bye.'

'Oh! You have had enough of it at last?'

'I am going to Australia.'

She looked slowly up at him as he stood near her chair, and looked slowly down again, while the colour gradually deepened in her cheeks. 'This is really the most entertaining thing I have heard from you in a long time,' she said lightly after awhile.

'It is the part of wisdom not to outstay one's best witticism,' returned Geoffrey in the same tone; 'so I'll be off at once. Good-bye.' He held out his hand.

'Good-bye,' she answered coldly. But she did not look up, or move her own hand.

'You won't shake hands?'

'What is the use, since we are never to meet again? If you are going, you can go without that.'

'Well, I suppose I can,' said he; and after standing a moment, during which she made no sign except to draw one deep breath, he turned and walked with a heavy tread to the door.

'Mr. Herne!' he heard her say as he laid his hand upon the latch. He looked round without speaking. She beckoned him to her with a movement of the head and hand.

'Excuse me,' she said, 'but I think you—you have left something. Will you come back here a moment?' There was a vibration in her voice that was new to Geoffrey. He came back.

'You were going away without shaking hands,' she said, looking up at him with a curious smile.

'You said that——'

'Oh, well, don't let us quarrel any more; I am tired of it. Here is my hand.'

Geoffrey took it. How soft it was—and how cold! It lay lightly in the embrace of his fingers, but he could perceive a slight tremulousness in it, which seemed also to pervade her whole body.

'You spoke of my having left something——' he began at length.

Her hand suddenly became alive in his, and grasped it tightly. She drew it to her cheek, that was as smooth as the petal of a lily; then slowly turned her face until her lips rested on it. All the blood flew tumultuously through Geoffrey's veins and sang in his ears. He was on his knee beside her, and looking in her eyes, which met his for a moment, and then sank.

'Now go to Australia!' she said in a whisper.

'Ellice—Ellice! Were you the thing I was leaving behind, my dear?' he said, bending forwards till his lips touched hers.... After that there could be no more misunderstandings.

Geoffrey Herne did not go to Australia, either alone, as he had arranged to do, or with Ellice as his wife, as he perhaps might have done; for at this time she would have followed him anywhere in the world—or out of it. But it was decided that they should remain in England, where Geoffrey had good practice as a barrister, in addition to his settled income of six hundred pounds, and be married in May—that is, in about six months. Mr. Quentin put on a portentous aspect when he was first informed of the affair, protruding his under lip and rubbing slowly behind his ear with his middle finger. He sighed and muttered something about having once anticipated a 'more brilliant future—no offence to you, Herne, of course—for his dear Ellice.' But as a matter of fact he was by no means averse to the match, if he had not actually done what he could to promote it. There is apt to be a good deal of humbug inwoven in the characters of elderly men who have seen better days and are not resigned to worse ones. Geoffrey perceived that Mr. Quentin desired to make a merit of doing what really was pleasing to him; and it was not in an expectant son-in-law's heart to object to that. So matters on that side went smoothly.

To make the same remark regarding his relations with Ellice would be a triumph of understatement. These two found heaven in each other. 'I was made to love and to be loved,' she once said to him, as they sat together in the little parlour on Christmas Eve. 'Be sure you make me love you enough!'

'If you had told me to be sure to love you enough——'

She smiled and said, 'Never mind about that: that will be my affair. But I must love so as to forget everything!' He was sitting on a low stool at her feet, his head leaning against her side. She let one arm fall about his neck, and her soft hand caressed his bearded cheek. 'As I love you at this moment,' she continued, in a tender murmur.

He took her hand in his and kissed the soft palm. 'What is it you wish to forget?' he asked presently.

'To tell you would be to remember.'

'But I wish to know.'

'I am not your wife yet: I shall not tell you.... I wish to forget that I have only three dresses, and that you are not the eldest son of an earl.'

Geoffrey leant back his head till he could see her face, and laughed.

'Don't! Worse things have happened,' she said quickly.

'Worse than what?'

'Nothing. Do you think me beautiful?'

'I love you too much to know whether you are beautiful or not. I used to think you were beautiful some time ago, I believe.'

'You do not know what I can be yet. Loving you will make me seem beautiful—even to you!'

'Is that why you want to love me?'

'I don't know. It suits me. I wanted it. I wanted many things, but that most—at least now. Don't you sometimes think it would be wise to die?'

'I haven't thought so since I thought of going to Australia.'

'That isn't what I meant. This is a heavenly happiness; there cannot be another so good; and yet I ... we might try others. Sometimes I feel as if all the world would be too little for me.'

'I shall never want any other kind of happiness; I shall only want more of this kind,' remarked Geoffrey, who did not know that Ellice was opening to him deeper glimpses of her inner self than anyone—than even she herself—had ever before been in the way of getting. He did not know, and therefore, in the security of his well-being, he did not look. But long afterwards he understood.

The weeks and the months went by, and the lives of the lovers grew to be more than ever one delicious life. Ellice's prophecy proved true: she did become more beautiful, in every way. Her moods, her silences, her coldness, were gone; she was even-tempered, blithe and tender; her singular eyes glowed with luxurious light; the curving of her lips was eloquent of refined enticement.

'Did any woman ever love as I do?' she sometimes asked. 'Do I overflow your heart?'

Geoffrey could have but one answer to such questions; and then she would add, 'This is my world, darling; keep me in it!' When they parted in the evening she would whisper to him, 'I do not like to have you leave me; something might happen....' And Geoffrey, as he made his nightly way back to London from the little Putney villa, would image his coming married life in bright colours upon the darkness, and smile to himself at what he took to be Ellice's wayward or superstitious forebodings. 'I am not going to be one of those sentimental dastards who are afraid of their own good luck,' he said comfortably to himself. 'Ellice is in the unsubstantial idealism of love as yet; when we really come together she will forget her premonitions. Earthquakes do not seek people out merely because they are happy; and it would be more reasonable to suppose that those persons attract the lightning into whose souls the iron has already entered. Ha! that is rather a neat figure. I think that would be a good subject for a sonnet.'

This last observation will enable the reader to comprehend how hopelessly in love Geoffrey must have been. But he was not even embarrassed at his condition; he prided himself on it, as if no one had ever thoroughly sounded the depths of the master passion before him. No; neither poetry, romance, nor history were able to furnish him with a parallel to his love; he had practically invented it. 'Not that I take any credit to myself for that,' he would protest modestly to solitude; 'no doubt there have been plenty of fellows who had as much capacity for love as I—or nearly as much. But then I always have the advantage of them in this—that I love Ellice! and that is enough to make a Titan out of a pigmy.' In short, Geoffrey was well content, and convinced that the universe must have been after all created by a personal and benevolent God; though in his former days he had shared the doubts of the late Mr. Mill and others on that subject. He even found latent charms in poor old Mr. Quentin, who was the father of all fascination, and must therefore have it in him somewhere. Mr. Quentin talked about his 'claim' after dinner, with a sort of sapient vapidity of tone and phrase; and pointed out to Geoffrey how probable it was, after all, that his long-baffled hopes would be realised. Geoffrey said that no doubt it was probable enough. He was thinking of Ellice, and arguing that a world which could produce her could surely produce so comparatively contemptible a miracle as the success of Mr. Quentin's suit. It would be little less than a miracle if it occurred. Geoffrey, who, from friendly motives, had at one time investigated the matter almost as thoroughly as a solicitor could have done, knew enough about it to know that. Nevertheless, he now, in the opulence of his felicity, agreed with Mr. Quentin, that all might turn out as he wished. Mr. Quentin, who had great faith in the judgments of those who agreed with him, mentioned what Geoffrey had said to Ellice the next morning. Ellice, who was lifting spoonfuls of coffee from her cup and letting them trickle back again, replaced her spoon quietly in the saucer on hearing this, and became meditative, with chin on hand and downcast eyes.

'What would you do if you got this property, father?' she enquired after a while.

'Take you up to London, and present you to our gracious Sovereign, and let you mingle among those to whose rank in life you were born,' replied he eloquently. 'As for myself,' he continued, lifting up his double chin and settling his stock, 'I shall—should enter Parliament and—and——'

'Give the State the benefit of your experience of unpaid tradesmen's bills,' interposed Ellice sarcastically. It was the old tone, unused by her since her betrothal; but a change seemed all at once to have come over her. Her father's under lip fell, and he stared at her in a piteously crest-fallen way. She pushed back her chair from the table, folded her arms, and gazed intently at the fire. The silence lasted some time. At length she said slowly, still keeping her eyes on the fire, 'I hope, for both our sakes, you will never get it.'

'For both our sakes——?' began Mr. Quentin, with a remonstrative emphasis on 'both'; but his daughter again interrupted him.

'When I say "both," I do not mean myself and you. But what absurdity it all is!' she broke off with a short mocking laugh. 'I might as well hope that the Queen will not come out here this afternoon, and take a cup of tea with us.'

'Well, I must say, Ellice, that I don't understand all this,' exclaimed Mr. Quentin, clearing his throat and pulling down his waistcoat with the air of a man who feels he has been unfairly attacked. 'If you care nothing for ease and dignity yourself, that is no reason why you should grudge your father the means of—hm—comfort and consideration appropriate to advancing years. And hereafter, when I am gone——'

Ellice put up her hand, and a curious smile crossed her lips. 'You are too imaginative, father,' she said, in a quiet, but no longer antagonistic, voice. 'I am very matter-of-fact, and I can see that if what you wish came to pass, it would be the ruin of my happiness. And I daresay you remember that when I am not in a good humour I am not pleasant company. For heaven's sake do not let us mention this foolish subject any more.'

She got up and went out of the room; and Mr. Quentin, after standing for several minutes with his back to the fire, now putting his hands beneath his coat tails, now thrusting them in his pockets, and now inserting his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat in the jerky manner of one whose composure and self-esteem have been exasperated, pulled from his breast-pocket a large leather-covered memorandum-book, opened it, and applied his thick nose diligently to its contents. After a prolonged investigation, he closed it, and ejaculating 'Fifteen thousand a year! and got by a fluke! Why mayn't a fluke transfer it to me?—and then, I fancy, I should see my way to a better match for Ellice than this affair with Herne,'—he buttoned his coat, took a cheroot from the stand on the mantelpiece, lit it, sighed, and walked out.

It is always a question whether, after all our efforts, calculations, and precautions, the issue of events does not remain precisely as much beyond prediction as would have been the case had we forborne to disquiet ourselves. One grey, moist morning, towards the end of May, and about three weeks before the predicted wedding-day, Ellice was walking along one of the suburban roads that lead towards London, in a state of unusual excitement. Her eyes were fixed in preoccupation, her colour was high, and her lips occasionally moved, as if under the influence of vivid thought. Presently the figure of Herne appeared coming along in the opposite direction at his customary long, measured stride. It was his habit when he took a holiday to walk out from London to the Quentins' villa in Putney; and Ellice had expected to meet him. To Geoffrey, however, the encounter was an unlooked-for pleasure; and when he recognised Ellice from afar, he began to make gestures expressive of satisfaction. He did not notice that she made no response to them.

When they met he took her hand and kissed it. The road was only half a country one; several houses were within sight, and he probably thought that a warmer greeting would be open to objection. But Ellice raised her eyes to his with a curiously intent look, in which there was a subtly enlightening expression, readable only to a lover, and which informed Geoffrey that he might follow the dictate of his heart. He was not the man to neglect such a permission, and he stooped and kissed her lips. At the same time he apprehended that some wheel or other must be out of gear: women are seldom heedless of conventionality if their minds are serene.

'Have you come to carry me home with you?' he asked jocosely.

'Let us walk towards London,' answered Ellice, slipping her hand through his arm and causing him to turn. 'I am not going to be at home to-day.'

'Where shall we go, then?'

'Anywhere! I don't care where. To London.'

'By all means. But then there is no necessity for walking. The train will be quicker.'

'No; I prefer to walk—for the present,' said Ellice, speaking quickly and nervously, and pressing her companion's arm between her hands.

'And how long may we be away?'

'I never wish to go back!'

Geoffrey's face suddenly became grave. Her tone and her whole manner now confirmed him in his first suspicion—that something was wrong. He glanced down at Ellice, rapidly passing in mental review all probable or possible causes of the difficulty. At length he said:

'Have you had a row with your father?'

'Yes—no; that is no matter. I want to talk only about ourselves. Do you love me?'

'If we are going to talk about that, it will take some time. One day is not long enough for me to tell you how much I love you.'

'Do you love me enough to do anything for me, or with me?' She moved her free hand down his sleeve to his hand, and repeated, 'Anything?'

'I love you: there is no stronger word or thing that I know of,' replied Geoffrey, feeling, indeed, an immense gush of tenderness in his heart, which his anxiety deepened.

She made no immediate answer, but Geoffrey felt that she was full of restrained excitement, and he insensibly prepared himself for some kind of shock. In this short space he recognised that there might be much in Ellice which he had never known or comprehended.

'But there are so many things in the world!' she broke out suddenly and vehemently. 'Why are they there unless we were meant to have some relation to them? Wealth, and society, and power, and fame; to be able to go where you like and do what you will; to carry out all that is in your mind, without any hindrance from mean and contemptible obstacles that degrade you as well as imprison you! How can one even love with one's whole heart if all those things are wanting? Are you sure you could, Geoffrey?'

'I don't expect to have perfection in everything,' replied he, beginning to feel relieved; 'but the question is, whether all these things you speak of are better worth having than love. Of course, it would be pleasant to have both; but, as a matter of fact, most people seem to get either the one or the other, and not both—except those poor devils who get neither.'

'Oh, I know it—I know it. That is perfectly true, though I don't know why it should be so—I don't think it ought to be so.' She relinquished his arm, and began feverishly to pull off her gloves. 'It is hateful to have to choose,' she added.

'Luckily, we are spared that pain, at all events,' remarked Geoffrey with a smile.

Ellice stopped in her walk, and turning a little towards him, looked at him attentively. She had the air of mentally putting some alternative before herself, and deciding which course she would pursue. She then walked on more slowly, with her eyes downcast.

'One thinks what one would do in such and such a case, even when it does not actually come to pass,' she said. 'A great fortune is a great thing—it is something real. Suppose you had to choose between a great fortune and me?'

'It would be choosing between a great fortune and a greater. Of course I should take the greater,' returned Geoffrey, feeling a certain intellectual satisfaction in his answer. But Ellice pressed her scarlet lips together, as if rejecting any merely complimentary or epigrammatical evasion of her enquiry. She was, in fact, more in earnest than he was, because he had come to the conclusion that she was merely disquieting herself, as women sometimes will, about an imaginary, not to say impossible, contingency. The best way to treat such conduct was to laugh at it.

'But you are a man,' she resumed presently, 'and it would be different with you, because when a man has not got a fortune, he always thinks he can make one. But if you were a woman?'

'In that case I should get the man to decide for me.'

She came close to his side and once more took his arm. 'Yes,' she said, speaking rapidly, 'yes, to feel that a thing is done and cannot be undone. It is so terrible to wait, Geoffrey; something might happen—you might die, or——Geoffrey, I wish it were done.'

'You wish what were done?' demanded he, looking down at her, while his heart gave a bound.

She made no other reply than to meet his eyes intently, the colour gradually overspreading her face.

'That we were married?' he asked at length, in a low tone.

She gave a sudden sigh; then a smile trembled across her lips for a moment, but without affecting the earnestness of her brow.

'Then something has happened?' said Geoffrey, heavily and gravely. 'Tell me.'

'I have told you. What more can I say? I am afraid: I want to be safe!'

'I would have married you six months ago if you would have had me,' said Geoffrey, almost coldly; for he dreaded lest passion should hurry him on to do something which, while for the moment satisfying Ellice, might in the end lead her to reproach him. It was difficult to think clearly at such a juncture, and yet something must be thought and said at once, for no lover can endure to seem in need of stimulus from his mistress. 'Does your father know of this?' he asked.

'No; he would prevent it,' she answered excitedly. 'Geoffrey, do not stop to think whether this is wise or foolish. Do not ask me.... We are together. This is the time.'

'But unless we have a special licence—and that is impossible!'

'Impossible?'

'Ellice—you are not of age.'

She turned very pale, and slowly let go his arm. 'You should not have thought of that—you do not love me.' She turned away, and her hands fell to her sides.

Geoffrey made no reply; for, man of the world and strong though he was, he was trembling all over, and could not trust his voice to speak.

'Good-bye,' said Ellice presently, still keeping her face averted.

'Look at me, my girl!' he exclaimed, taking hold of her wrist: and at his touch she did look up at him for a moment with a singular expression, half wayward and half winning, which he remembered vividly for a long time afterwards. He continued: 'We cannot break the law. If we love each other we can marry in three weeks——'

She raised her other hand quickly, and he stopped. After a pause she said, 'Geoffrey, look at me—look in my eyes, dear. I love you—not in three weeks, but—now.'

The tone in which the words were spoken made Geoffrey feel as if his ordinary life were taken away from him, and a new, perverted, delirious life put in its place. Instinctively, he sought self-defence in incredulity; but it was in vain—there was no mistaking what her eyes said, whatever construction might be forced upon her words. For an instant, a fire sprang up in his own eyes; but then, with a savage effort of the will, he dropped her wrist and said huskily:

'No!'

'Well, it is fate!' returned Ellice with a light sigh. Presently she bit her lip, and gave a little laugh. 'How seriously we have been taking things: anybody would suppose that we—meant something. Good-bye, Geoffrey.'

'What do you mean by good-bye?'

'Nothing; only that I am going home, and that you are not to come with me. Oh, you need not look solemn, or angry. But I must go alone, really.'

'What——'

'And I will write to you to-morrow, and tell you why. Good-bye; we must not do more than shake hands on this street corner, with that chemist's shop opposite, and the waggon coming along. Good-bye until to-morrow.'

'This is strange!' was all that Geoffrey could mutter. She went away from him, walking lightly and swiftly, turning her head towards the right or the left occasionally, but never looking back. Presently he saw something fall from her dress and flutter to the ground without her noticing it; and after she had passed out of sight he walked slowly to it, and picked it up. It was a little black bow. Geoffrey pinned it inside his coat. The next day he received the following letter:

'The person with whom we have been having the lawsuit about the property died last week, and left the property to us, on condition that I married his nephew.'

And at the bottom of the page was added: 'Do not hate me always.'

Geoffrey Herne took this shock with a serenity that surprised himself. Indeed, he got so far as to say, after a few days, that he was glad it had turned out so. Of course he never answered the letter, and he never spoke to anyone of the episode of his engagement to Miss Quentin. It had been known to but few of Herne's acquaintances; and if they learnt the sequel they were all too considerate, or too cautious, to discuss the matter with him, or in his presence. To tell the truth, he was not a very genial companion. He had always had a biting tongue, and now it had become almost venomous. Whenever he saw an opening for saying a cruel witty thing, he said it unhesitatingly, and without compunction, no matter if it were at the expense of his dearest friend. 'I must have my little joke,' he would reply if any remonstrance were attempted. The men in his club began to fight rather shy of him; no one could get the better of him in repartee, and he was noted for never forgetting or forgiving a slight or an ill-turn, even if it were unintentional. 'Herne will have his revenge if he waits a year for it,' used to be said of him in reference to such affairs. It was worth nobody's while to be his enemy, and nobody knew how to be his friend. He saw very little of society; but he worked with vigour at his profession, and every month added to his reputation as a barrister. 'He will be Q.C. before he's forty if he keeps on,' was prophesied of him by a certain learned judge, not given to reckless predictions. It was evident, therefore, that his love-disappointment had done him no harm.

One day, contrary to his usual custom, he accepted an invitation to a garden-party at Lady Feuilleton's suburban villa. It was a gentle June afternoon, a year and a month after his last interview with Ellice Quentin. A broad rectangular lawn, soft and deep to the foot, was surrounded with tall limes and elms, whose voluminous leafiness cast grateful shadows athwart the turf. Beneath the trees a path lay in sunshine-fretted gloom. The house, with its balcony and open windows, stood at one end of the lawn; at the opposite end a marquee had been set up; a large sheet of canvas had moreover been pinned down upon an area of the level turf as a dancing floor. Chairs of designs more or less fantastic were placed in straggling groups along the shady side of the lawn, and these were occupied by men and women in summer attire—it was very warm—and bright-coloured parasols and fans made the scene lively as well as lovely. When the music began the charm was complete.

Geoffrey Herne, however, appeared to feel particularly morose, and spoke in a tone which, though punctiliously courteous, had a covert sneer underneath it. In reality, he was perhaps not morose; on the contrary, he may have felt a piteous forlornness at the heart, of which he was ashamed, and which he desired to conceal. His hostess, a vivacious, Parisian-looking little lady, was paying him special attention, and chatted to him inveterately. At last Herne said he must go home; Lady Feuilleton expostulated volubly, and ended by proposing that he should accompany her into the house, and drink a glass of iced claret-punch with her. Herne thought that would be as good a way as any of preparing his escape, and therefore he complied. They entered the parlour arm-in-arm. The change from sunlight to gloom rendered objects almost undistinguishable, and Geoffrey tripped over something which turned out to be the skirt of a lady's dress, and he made his apologies without discerning the features of the lady to whom he was making them. She had been sitting down—she rose hurriedly, but said nothing in reply.

'Have you come for a freshener, too, Lady Feuilleton?' said a man's voice, which, for some reason, immediately inspired Geoffrey with a feeling of aversion and contempt.

'Who are you, pray?—Why, Mr. Amidon, I declare!' exclaimed the hostess. 'And who is this with you? surely not your wife?'

'Incredible, but true!' replied the other, with a short cackling laugh.

'Dear me! what is society coming to! I'm so delighted—so good of you to come. How do you do, dear? Oh! and let me introduce my friend Mr. Geoffrey Herne—Mrs. Amidon. You ought to get on capitally together; you are both so sarcastic! We came to get some iced punch: have you had any? Well, you must join us. Dear me! Mr. Herne, can you lift that jug? it's so heavy. Just a glass all round, and then I must run back to my guests. What a lovely dress, dear!'

'Capital punch, upon my soul!' said Mr. Amidon, as he set down his emptied glass. He and Lady Feuilleton chatted together for a minute or two, laughing and fencing. He was a youngish-looking man, with a flaxen moustache and pale grey eyes, rather red round the edges. His complexion was not good, and when he laughed his chin retreated towards his throat and he twisted his shoulders. Geoffrey stood looking at him in silence. Mrs. Amidon had again sat down in a chair beside the table and was fanning herself. Presently Mr. Amidon expressed an intention of accompanying Lady Feuilleton back to the garden, and they went out, leaving Mrs. Amidon and Geoffrey to 'become acquainted,' as Lady Feuilleton put it. When they were gone, Mrs. Amidon closed her fan and looked up.

'Will you sit down by me for a moment, Geoffrey?' she said.

'Of course you understand, Mrs. Amidon,' said he, 'that I should not have come here if I had expected to meet you.'

'Then I am glad you did not know. I have wanted to meet you and talk with you. And, after all, that proves me to be charitable; for people generally dislike and avoid those whom they have injured.'

'Without calling your charity into question, Mrs. Amidon,' said Geoffrey, 'I may be permitted to relieve you from the burden of supposing that you have injured me. I should put it upon another ground—that we are apt to shun those who have benefited us. In an indirect way I may have benefited you, by keeping you occupied until Mr. Amidon was ready to come forward.'

She was looking at him while he spoke with her head a little on one side, her scarlet lips occasionally moving slightly. Now her eyelids drooped, and she sighed.

'I have looked forward to this meeting often,' she said, 'and I was prepared to hear you say worse things than that. Perhaps, after all, you have not cared so much as I thought you would. I have no heart to fight with you, Geoffrey, as we used to fight in——'

She paused. Her persistence in calling him Geoffrey produced an effect upon him. The sound penetrated far into him, and set vibrating chords which long neglect had scarcely rendered less sensitive. He was further disturbed by her not attempting to defend herself: not that anything could make her conduct defensible, but the blow that provokes no return loses half its virtue to the striker. And, finally, it must be confessed that her aspect and propinquity were not without their influence. She was more fully developed, more beautiful than when he saw her last; and there were slight modifications in her manner and expression which were on the side of gentleness and sadness, and which moved Geoffrey to unwilling sympathy. Perhaps she had suffered enough to conciliate even his resentment.

'What do you think of Mr. Amidon?' she enquired presently.

'I have not had much opportunity of judging; but I should think,' said Geoffrey, with diminishing bitterness, 'that he would be a very suitable husband for you.' It struck him as peculiar that Ellice, in spite of her culpability towards himself, did not shrink from meeting his eyes, or from introducing topics of conversation which might have been supposed at least as unwelcome to her as to him. But hers had always been a strange and unaccountable character.

She opened and closed her fan, glanced out of the window towards the sunlit lawn, then back at him, and said: 'Do you want to—leave me?'

A minute before Geoffrey had fancied that he did wish to leave her; now, for some reason, he changed his mind, and dropped into a chair opposite her.

'What do you want of me?' he asked.

'Do I look the same to you as when you saw me last?'

'You look better than you did then—handsomer—and you are more expensively dressed. And, of course, the fact that you are one of the leaders and ornaments of society has its effect upon me.'

'Geoffrey, it may not be often that we come across each other again; why should we hold masks before our faces? We have been intimate. You have not forgiven me for leaving you. You have said to yourself, "If she had loved me she would have given up the world for me"; and so you concluded that I was a hypocrite from the beginning. But if I had been a hypocrite, I would have married you; or I would never have let you know that I loved you.'

'Probably I don't understand you—and never did.'

'No man ever was your rival, Geoffrey; the world was your rival; but yet you should not be jealous; because, though it drew me irresistibly, it never drew that best part of me that was yours. I could not have lived without the world—without longing for it; and I could not live with the world without longing for——Forgive me!'

'Take care what you say now, Ellice! You touch fire!' exclaimed Geoffrey in a suppressed growl, with a glow kindling under his gloomy brows.

She rose quickly from her chair, moved close to him, and laid her hand upon his.

'Burn me, then!' she answered, with a strange, tragic smile. And while they confronted each other, she continued: 'My sin was that I preferred living falsely with the world, to living falsely with you.'

'You made the world a bad place for me,' returned Geoffrey; but his tone was no longer stern, and his hand now held hers. 'I had but one love, unfortunately, and that was yours. But you have a husband.'

'I have a name,' she answered carelessly, 'which I wear as I wear this hat, because it is the fashion. Only the one is called a husband and the other a hat.'

'That is not the whole of it. You can change your hat to-morrow; but there is only one way for a woman to get rid of a husband.'

'What difference about him, Geoffrey, if you will be my friend?'

'Your friend?' he repeated sharply, dropping her hand.

'Oh, do not be angry again!... no, no, not that! do not ask me to do that!... I am not so selfish, nor so wicked, Geoffrey, as to wish you to—to give up your life to what has not, after all, been wholly yours. I am not worth that. I only ask that you should be my friend. Help me to live so as to respect myself. What can I say? I know that what is past cannot be recalled; you can never feel towards me as you might have done if—if I had been less weak. But I am so lonely; I hoped you could——'

'No: that won't do! nothing like that,' interrupted Geoffrey in a heavy voice. 'I am not a monster of virtue and self-restraint, Ellice: and I'm not a cur either. Do you suppose your husband would fall in with this arrangement. And do you suppose that I would condescend to sneak about his premises, having a secret understanding with his wife—secret from him? It is true enough that there can no longer be a fresh and pure love between you and me; but there can be no friendship—because, for good or evil, I love you still! I can commit a crime, but I will tell no lie, nor live one. Everything must be open and above board between us and the world, or there must be nothing at all.'

'Oh, Geoffrey, this is terrible!' murmured Ellice, letting her folded hands hang before her. In fact, she had not anticipated his attitude; she was a woman who wanted much, but who was not, perhaps, willing to go all lengths in order to get it. At the same time she could not help admiring what he had said and liking him all the better for it; and she certainly did not admire Mr. Amidon, or passionately like the fashionable life which they led, and of which she had seen enough clearly to comprehend its limitations. Nevertheless, a woman who has achieved a position before the world will hesitate profoundly before abandoning outward conventionality for avowed outlawry. Compromises are more convenient. But how if a stubborn man persists in refusing to stoop to compromise? The compromise was in itself reasonable in the highest degree, if not also in the highest degree moral; but that evidently made no impression on Geoffrey.

There was a sound of voices and laughter approaching the open window; Lady Feuilleton and Mr. Amidon were coming back from the lawn. Ellice took up her fan nervously, and passed a hand over her hair. She had been able to entertain such reflections as the above, while the man with whose soul she had played fast and loose was standing, as it were, with the sword at his heart. He now spoke again; and the words in which he began made her start, for it brought back to her memory another scene of a year and a month before. Only this time he did not grasp her wrist.

'Look at me, my girl! I will wait in the drawing-room of the Lansdowne Hotel this evening from nine o'clock until eleven. If I see you there, there will be no trouble in getting free from your husband. If not, never try to see me again. You will have done worse than murder.'

The others came in, full of badinage and liveliness. Lady Feuilleton protested that she believed Mr. Herne and Mrs. Amidon had been flirting.

'Quite the contrary,' returned Mrs. Amidon, smiling composedly. 'Only we have been discovering that we knew each other long ago, and that I have lost the wager we made as to which of us would be married first. I will pay it now,' she added, taking a white rosebud from the vase on the table. She went up to Geoffrey and slipped it into the button-hole of his coat. As she did so, she murmured below her breath, with a glance into his eyes:

'Before this fades——!'

And then Geoffrey, with a very brief adieu, went out.

There can be little doubt that, when Ellice did that, and said those words, she was resolved to meet Geoffrey in the Lansdowne drawing-room, between nine and eleven o'clock; and at all events she could not endure to be left in an awkward or unpicturesque situation. But unfortunately it was then only six in the afternoon; three hours in which to wait, to reconsider, to doubt. It would be doing her injustice to say that there was not a struggle. The struggle was even carried to such a pitch that, at half-past nine, a hansom cab drove up to the corner of the street below the Lansdowne Hotel, and a lady got out of it, veiled, with a satchel in her hand. She paid the cabman, and then walked along towards the hotel. The broad bay window of the drawing-room abutted upon the sidewalk; a street lamp stood on the opposite side of the road. As the lady passed the window she glanced up, and saw a man seated there with a newspaper, which he was not reading, in his hand. Her knees trembled, but she said to herself: 'If he looks out and recognises me, I will go to him.' Even then he turned, slowly, and looked out; she stood still, unable to move. He must have seen her; but he did not recognise her; after a moment he turned away. Then she faced about, and ran back along the sidewalk, with what feelings in her heart who can tell? The hansom had not yet gone from the place where she left it; and she was driven back to her house in Mayfair, where she was to receive some distinguished guests.

II.

Geoffrey Herne's reflections were upon these matters, as he sat in his chair on the spring day with which this story began. An interval of two years had elapsed since he waited for Mrs. Amidon in the drawing-room of the Lansdowne Hotel. During that period his professional success had been rather on the wane. He was as clever and sarcastic as ever—perhaps more so; but he neglected his work. He was morose and indolent; the stimulus to achieve great things was lacking. He conceived himself to have fathomed life and to have proved it worthless. 'What is the odds what a man does? The devil is at the bottom of it all!' he sometimes would remark. His more philosophical and healthy-minded friends detected something petulant or childish in this attitude of his; and the futility of their attempts to induce him to 'throw it off' served to confirm them in their opinion. It should be understood that nothing definite was known about what had occurred further than that Herne had had a row with some woman. But other men have had rows with women, and got over it.

The letter which Herne had just received and read was not long, though it was sufficiently suggestive; and it may as well be given here: