Ancestors: A Novel

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Ancestors

A Novel

By Gertrude Atherton

Copyright, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS. New York and London

_All rights reserved._

Published September, 1907.

TO Emma Beatrice Brunner

Part I

1904

I

Miss Thangue, who had never seen her friend's hand tremble among the teacups before, felt an edge on her mental appetite, stimulating after two monotonous years abroad. It was several minutes, however, before she made any effort to relieve her curiosity, for of all her patron-friends Victoria Gwynne required the most delicate touch. Flora had learned to be audacious without taking a liberty, which, indeed, was one secret of her success; but although she prided herself upon her reading of this enigma, whom even the ancestral dames of Capheaton looked down upon inspectively, she was never quite sure of her ground. She particularly wished to avoid mistakes upon the renewal of an intimacy kept alive by a fitful correspondence during her sojourn on the Continent. Quite apart from self-interest, she liked no one as well, and her curiosity was tempered by a warm sympathy and a genuine interest. It was this capacity for friendship, and her unlimited good-nature, that had saved her, penniless as she was, from the ignominious footing of the social parasite. The daughter of a clergyman in a Yorkshire village, and the playmate in childhood of the little girls of the castle near by, she had realized early in life that although pretty and well-bred, she was not yet sufficiently dowered by either nature or fortune to hope for a brilliant marriage; and she detested poverty. Upon her father's death she must earn her bread, and, reasoning that self-support was merely the marketing of one's essential commodity, and as her plump and indolent body was disinclined to privations of any sort, she elected the role of useful friend to fashionable and luxurious women. It was not an exalted niche to fill in life, but at least she had learned to fill it to perfection, and her ambitions were modest. Moreover, a certain integrity of character and girlish enthusiasm had saved her from the more corrosive properties of her anomalous position, and she was not only clever enough to be frankly useful without servility, but she had become so indispensable to certain of her friends, that although still blooming in her early forties, she would no more have deserted them for a mere husband than she would have renounced her comfortable and varied existence for the no less varied uncertainties of matrimony.

It was not often that a kindly fate had overlooked her for so long a period as two years, and when she had accepted the invitation of one of the old castle playmates to visit her in Florence, it had been with a lively anticipation that made dismay the more poignant in the face of hypochondria. Nevertheless, realizing her debt to this first of her patrons, and with much of her old affection revived, she wandered from one capital and specialist to the next, until death gave her liberty. She was not unrewarded, but the legacy inspired her with no desire for an establishment beyond her room at the Club in Dover Street, the companionship of friends not too exacting, the agreeable sense of indispensableness, and a certain splendor of environment which gave a warmth and color to life; and which she could not have commanded had she set up in middle years as an independent spinster of limited income. She had received many impatient letters while abroad, to which she had replied with fluent affection and picturesque gossip, never losing touch for a moment. When release came she had hastened home to book herself for the house-parties, and with Victoria Gwynne, although one of the least opulent of her friends, first on the list. She had had several correspondents as ardent as herself, and there was little gossip of the more intimate sort that had not reached her sooner or later, but she found subtle changes in Victoria for which she could not as yet account. She had now been at Capheaton and alone with her friend for three days, but there had been a stress of duties for both, and the hostess had never been more silent. To-day, as she seemed even less inclined to conversation, although manifestly nervous, Miss Thangue merely drank her tea with an air of being too comfortable and happy in England and Capheaton for intellectual effort, and patiently waited for a cue or an inspiration. But although she too kept silence, memory and imagination held rendezvous in her circumspect brain, and she stole more than one furtive glance at her companion.

Lady Victoria Gwynne, one of the tallest women of her time and still one of the handsomest, had been extolled all her life for that fusion of the romantic and the aristocratic ideals that so rarely find each other in the same shell; and loved by a few. Her round slender figure, supple with exercise and ignorant of disease, her black hair and eyes, the utter absence of color in her smooth Orientally white skin, the mouth, full at the middle and curving sharply upward at the corners, and the irregular yet delicate nose that seemed presented as an afterthought to save that brilliant and subtle face from classic severity, made her look--for the most part--as if fashioned for the picture-gallery or the poem, rather than for the commonplaces of life. Always one of those Englishwomen that let their energy be felt rather than expressed, for she made no effort in conversation whatever, her once mobile face had of late years, without aging, composed itself into a sort of illuminated mask. As far as possible removed from that other ideal, the British Matron, and still suggesting an untamed something in the complex centres of her character, she yet looked so aloof, so monumental, that she had recently been painted by a great artist for a world exhibition, as an illustration of what centuries of breeding and selection had done for the noblewomen of England.

Some years before, a subtle Frenchman had expressed her in such a fashion that while many vowed he had given to the world an epitome of romantic youth, others remarked cynically that his handsome subject looked as if about to seat herself on the corner of the table and smoke a cigarette. The American artist, although habitually cruel to his patrons, had, after triumphantly transferring the type to the canvas, drawn to the surface only so much of the soul of the woman as all that ran might admire. If there was a hint of bitterness in the lower part of the face, from the eyes there looked an indomitable courage and much sweetness. Only in the carnage of the head, the tilt of the chin, was the insolence expressed that had made her many enemies. Some of the wildest stories of the past thirty years had been current about her, and rejected or believed according to the mental habit or personal bias of those that tinker with reputations. The late Queen, it was well known, had detested her, and made no secret of her resentment that through the short-sighted loyalty of one of the first members of her Household, the dangerous creature had been named after her. But whatever her secrets, open scandal Lady Victoria had avoided: imperturbably, without even an additional shade of insolence, never apologizing nor explaining; wherein, no doubt, lay one secret of her strength. And then her eminently respectable husband, Arthur Gwynne, second son of the Marquess of Strathland and Zeal, had always fondly alluded to her as "The Missus," and lauded her as a repository of all the unfashionable virtues. To-day, presiding at the tea-table in her son's country-house, an eager light in her eyes, she looked like neither of her portraits: more nearly approached, perhaps, poor Arthur Gwynne's ideal of her; not in the least the frozen stoic of the past three days. When she finally made an uncontrollable movement that half-overturned the cream-jug, Flora Thangue's curiosity overcame her, and she murmured, tentatively:

"If I had ever seen you nervous before, Vicky--"

"I am not nervous, but allowances are to be made for maternal anxiety."

"Oh!" Miss Thangue drew a deep breath. She continued, vaguely, "Oh, the maternal role--"

"Have I ever failed as a mother?" asked Lady Victoria, dispassionately.

"No, but you are so many other things, too. Somehow, when I am away from you I see you in almost every other capacity."

"Jack is thirty and I am forty-nine."

"_You_ look thirty," replied Flora, with equal candor.

"I am thankful that my age is in Lodge; I can never be tempted to enroll myself with the millions that were married when just sixteen."

"Oh, you never could make a fool of yourself," murmured her friend. Then, as Victoria showed signs of relapsing into silence, she plunged in recklessly; "Jack is bound to be elected. When has he ever failed to get what he wanted? But you, Vicky dear--is there anything wrong? You had a bulky letter from California the day I arrived. I do hope that tiresome property is not giving you trouble. What a pity it is such a long way off."

"The San Francisco lease runs out shortly. Half of that, and the southern ranch, are my only independent sources of income. The northern ranch belongs to Jack. All three are getting less and less easy to let in their entirety, my agents write me, and I feel half a pauper already."

"This is not so bad," murmured Flora.

"Strathland would bundle me out in ten minutes if anything happened to Jack."

"It would be a pity; it suits you." She was not referring to the hall, which was somewhat too light and small for the heroic mould of its chatelaine, but to the noble proportions of the old house itself, and the treasures that had accumulated since the first foundations were laid in the reign of Henry VI. There were rooms hung with ugly brocades and velvets never duplicated, state bed-chambers and boudoirs sacred to the memory of personages whose dust lay half-forgotten in their marbles; but above all, Capheaton was famous for its pictures. Not only was there an unusually large number of portraits by masters scattered about the twenty rooms that lay behind and on either side of the hall, but many hundreds of those portraits and landscapes from the brushes of artists fashionable in their day, unknown in the annals of art, but seeming to emit a faint scent of lavender and rose leaves from the walls of England's old manor-houses and castles. In the dining-room there was a full-length portrait of Mary Tudor, black but for the yellow face and hands and ruff; and another, the scarlet coat and robust complexion still fresh, of the fourth George, handsome, gay, devil-may-care; both painted to commemorate visits to Capheaton, historically hospitable in the past. But Lord Strathland, besides having been presented with six daughters and an heir as extravagant as tradition demanded, was poor as peers go, and had more than once succumbed to the titillating delights of speculation, less cheering in the retrospect. Having a still larger estate to keep up, he had been glad to lend Capheaton to his second son, who, being an excellent manager and assisted by his wife's income, had lived very comfortably upon its yield. Upon his death Elton Gwynne had assumed possession as a matter of course; and a handsome allowance from his doting grandfather supplementing his inheritance, the mind of the haughty and promising young gentleman was free of sordid anxieties.

Lady Victoria's satirical gaze swept the simpering portraits of her son's great-aunts and grandmothers, with which the hall was promiscuously hung.

"Of course I am as English as if the strain had never been crossed, if you mean that. But I'd rather like to get away for a while. I really ought to visit my California estates, and I have always wanted to see that part of America. I started for it once, but never even reached the western boundaries of New York. One of us should spend a year there, at least; and of course it is out of the question for Jack to leave England again."

"You would not spend six months out of Curzon Street. You are the most confirmed Londoner I know."

"Do you think so?"

Miss Thangue replied, impulsively, "I have often wondered if you numbered satiety among your complexities!"

This was as far as she had ever adventured into the mysterious backwaters of Victoria's soul, and she dropped her eyelids lest a deprecating glance meet the contempt it deserved; both with a due regard for the limit imposed by good taste, despised the faint heart.

"I hate the sight of London!" Her tone had changed so suddenly that Flora winked. "If it were not for Jack I would leave--get out. I am sick of the whole game."

"Oh, be on your guard," cried her friend, sharply. "That sort of thing means the end of youth."

"Youth after fifty depends upon your doctor, your masseuse, and your dressmaker. I do not say that my present state of mind is sown with evergreens and immortelles, but the fact remains that for the present I have come to the end of myself and am interested in no one on earth but Jack."

Miss Thangue stared into her teacup, recalling the gossip of a year ago, although she had given it little heed at the time: Victoria had been transiently interested so often! But all the world knew that when Arthur Gwynne was killed Sir Cadge Vanneck had been off his head about Victoria; and that when obvious restrictions vanished into the family vault he had left abruptly for Rhodesia to develop his mines, and had not found time to return since. Sir Cadge was about the same age as the famous beauty, and rose quite two inches above her lofty head. People had grown accustomed to the fine appearance they made when together--"Artie" was ruddy and stout--and although Victoria reinforced her enemies, for Vanneck was one of the most agreeable and accomplished men in London, the artistic sense of that lenient world was tickled at their congruities and took their future mating for granted; Arthur Gwynne was sure to meet his death on the hunting-field, for he was far too heavy for a horse and rode vilely. When he fulfilled his destiny and Vanneck fled, the world was as much annoyed as amused. But they were amused, and Flora Thangue knew that this gall must have bitten deeper than the loss of Vanneck, who may or may not have made an impression on this woman too proud and too spoiled to accept homage in public otherwise than passively, whatever may have been the unwritten tale of her secret hours. The excuses hazarded by Vanneck's friends were neither humorous nor sentimental, but no one denied that they were eminently sensible: his first wife had died childless, his estates were large, his title was one of the oldest in England. But although no one pitied Victoria Gwynne, many were annoyed at having their mental attitude disarranged, and this no doubt had kept the gossip alive and been a constant source of irritation to a woman whose sense of humor was as deep as her pride.

Flora replied at random. "Jack couldn't very well get on without you."

His mother's eyes flashed. "I flatter myself he could not--at present. If Julia Kaye would only marry him!"

"She won't," cried Flora, relieved at the change of tone. "And why do you wish it? She is two years older, of quite dreadful origin--and--well--I don't like her; perhaps my opinion is a little biased."

"She is immensely rich, one of the ablest political women in London, and Jack is desperately in love with her."

"I cannot picture Jack in extremities about any one, although I don't deny that he has his sentimental seizures. He even made love to me when he was cutting his teeth. But he doesn't need a lot of money, you rank higher than she among the political women, and--well, I believe her to be bad-tempered, and more selfish than any woman I have ever known."

"He loves her. He wants her. He would dominate any woman he married. He is such a dear that no woman who lived with him could help loving him. Moreover, she is inordinately ambitious, and Jack's career is the most promising in England."

"Jack is far too good for her, and I am glad that he will not get her. I happen to know that she has made up her mind to marry Lord Brathland."

"Bratty is a donkey."

"She would be the last to deny it, but he is certain to be a duke if he lives, and she would marry a man that had to be led round with a string for the sake of being called 'your grace' by the servants. She'll never be anything but a third-rate duchess, and people that tolerate her now will snub her the moment she gives herself airs. But I suppose she thinks a duchess is a duchess."

"Money goes pretty far with us," said Lady Victoria, dryly.

"Doesn't it? Nevertheless--you know it as well as I do--among the people that really count other things go further, and duchesses have been put in their place before this--you have done it yourself. Julia Kaye has kept her head so far because she has been hunting for strawberry leaves, and there is no denying she's clever; but once she is in the upper air--well, I have seen her as rude as she dares be, and if she became a duchess she would cultivate rudeness as part of the role."

"We can be rude enough."

"Yes, and know how to be. A parvenu never does."

"She is astonishingly clever."

"Duchesses are born--even the American ones. Julia Kaye has never succeeded in being quite natural; she has always the effect of rehearsing the part of the great lady for amateur theatricals. Poor Gussy Kaye might have coached her better. The moment she mounts she'll become wholly artificial, she'll patronize, she'll give herself no end of ridiculous airs; she won't move without sending a paragraph to the _Morning Post_. The back of her head will be quite in line with her charming little bust, and I for one shall walk round and laugh in her face. She is the only person that could inspire me to such a vicious speech, but I am human, and as she so ingenuously snubs me as a person of no consequence, my undazzled eyes see her as she is."

Lady Victoria, instead of responding with the faint, absent, somewhat irritating smile which she commonly vouchsafed those that sought to amuse her, lit another cigarette and leaned back among the cushions of the sofa behind the tea-table. She drew her eyelids together, a rare sign of perturbation. The only stigma of time on her face was a certain sharpness of outline and leanness of throat. But the throat was always covered, and her wardrobe reflected the most fleeting of the fashions, assuring her position as a contemporary, if driving her dressmaker to the verge of bankruptcy. When her bright, black, often laughing eyes were in play she passed with the casual public, and abroad, as a woman of thirty, but with her lids down the sharpness of the lower part of the face arrested the lover of detail.

"Are you sure of that?" she asked, in a moment.

"Quite."

"I am sorry. It will be a great blow to Jack. I hoped she would come round in time."

"She will marry Brathland. I saw Cecilia Spence in town. She was at Maundrell Abbey with them both last week. You may expect the announcement any day--she'll write it herself for the _Morning Post_. How on earth can Jack find time to think about women with the immense amount of work he gets through?--and his really immodest ambitions! By-the-way--isn't this polling-day? I wonder if he has won his seat? But as I said just now I do not associate Jack with defeat. His trifling set-backs have merely served to throw his manifest destiny into higher relief."

"The telegram should have come an hour ago. I have few doubts--and yet he has so many enemies. I wonder if we shall be born into a world, after we have been sufficiently chastened here, where one can get one's head above the multitude without rousing some of the most hideous qualities in human nature? It is a great responsibility! But there has been no such speaker, nor fighter, for a quarter of a century." Her eyes glowed again. "And heaven knows I have worked for him."

"What a pity he is not a Tory! He could have a dozen boroughs for the asking. I wish he were. The whole Liberal party makes me sick. And it is against every tradition of his family--"

"As if that mattered. Besides, he is a born fighter. He'd hate anything he could have for the asking. And he's far too modern, too progressive, for the Conservative party--even if there were anything but blue-mould left in it."

"Well, you know I am not original, and my poor old dad brought us up on the soundest Tory principles; he never would even compromise on the word Conservative. But considering that Jack is as Liberal as if the taint were in the marrow of his bones, what a blessing that poor Artie did not happen to be the oldest son. Cecilia says they were all talking of it at Maundrell Abbey, where of course it is a peculiarly interesting topic. That ornamental and conscientious peer, Lord Barnstable, has never ceased to regret his father's death, for reasons far removed from sentimental. He told Cecilia that Lord Strathland almost confessed to him that he would give his right eye to hand over his old shoes to Jack, not only because he detests Zeal, but because it would take the backbone out of his Liberalism--"

"And ruin _his_ career. Thank heaven Zeal is engaged at last. They will marry in the spring, and then the only cloud on Jack's horizon will vanish."

"What if there were no children?"

"There are so much more often than not--that is the least of my worries. He had five girls by his first wife; there is no reason why this splendid cow I have picked out should not produce a dozen boys. I never worked so hard over one of Jack's elections--not only to overcome Zeal's misogyny, which he calls scruples, but I had to fight Strathland every inch of the way. When I think of Jack's desperation if he were pitchforked up into the Peers--you do not know him as I do."

"Well, he is safe for a time, I fancy. There has been consumption in the family before, and always the slowest sort--"

A footman entered with a yellow envelope on a tray.

Lady Victoria opened it without haste or change of color.

"Jack is returned," she said.

"How jolly," replied the other, with equal indifference.

II

"You look tired--I will take you up to your room. Vicky has so many on her hands."

The American rose slowly, but with a flash of gratitude in her eyes.

"I am tired, and I don't know a soul here. I almost wish Lady Victoria had not asked me down, although I have wanted all my life to visit one of the ancestral homes of England."

"Oh, you'll get over that, and used to us," said Miss Thangue, smiling. "Your staircase is behind this door, and we can slip out without attracting attention. They are all gabbling over Jack's election."

She opened a door in a corner of the hall where the newly arrived guests were gathered about Lady Victoria's tea-table, and led the way up a wide dark and slippery stair. After the first landing the light was stronger, and the walls were, to an inch, covered with portraits and landscapes, the effect almost as careless as if the big open space were a lumber-room.

"Are they _all_ old masters?" asked Miss Isabel Otis, politely, her eyes roving over the dark canvases.

"Oh no; the masters are down-stairs. I'll show them to you to-morrow. These are not bad, though."

"What a lot of ancestors to have!"

"Oh, you'll find them all over the house. These are not Gwynnes. This house came to Lord Strathland through the female line. It will be Jack's eventually--one way or another; and Jack must be more like the Eltons than the Gwynnes--unless, indeed, he is like his American ancestors." She turned her soft non-committal eyes on the stranger. "You are his thirty-first cousin, are you not?"

"Not quite so remote. But why do you call him Jack? He is known to fame as Elton Gwynne."

"His name is John Elton Cecil Gwynne. We are given to the nickname these days--to the abbreviation in general."

They were walking down a corridor, and Miss Thangue was peering through her lorgnette at the cards on the doors.

"I know you are on this side. I wrote your name myself. But exactly where--ah, here it is."

She opened the door of a square room with large roses on the white wall-paper, and fine old mahogany furniture. The sofa and chairs and windows were covered with a chintz in harmony with the walls. "It is cheerful, don't you think so?" asked Miss Thangue, drawing one of the straight curtains aside. "Vicky had all the rooms done over, and I chose the designs. She is quite intolerantly modern, and holds that when wall-paper and chintz can save an old house from looking like a sarcophagus, why not have them? That bell-cord connects with your maid's room--"

"I have no maid. I am not well off at all. I wonder Lady Victoria thought it worth while to ask me down."

"Dear me, how odd! May I sit with you a little while? I never before saw a poor American girl."

"I'll be only too grateful if you will stay with me as long as you can. I am not exactly poor. I have a ranch near Rosewater, some property and an old house in San Francisco. All that makes me comfortable, but no more; and there are so many terribly rich American girls!"

"There are, indeed!" Miss Thangue sat forward with the frank curiosity of the Englishwoman when inspecting a foreign specimen. But her curiosity was kindly, for she was still a girl at heart, interested in other girls. Miss Otis, looking at her blond, virginal face, took for granted that she was under thirty, and owed her weight to a fondness for sweets and sauces.

"How can you travel in Europe if you are not rich?" demanded Flora. "I never dare venture over except as the guest of some more fortunate friend."

"Are _you_ poor?" asked Miss Otis, her eye arrested by the smart little afternoon frock of lace and chiffon and crepe-de-chine.

"Oh, horribly. But then we all are, over here. If it were not for the Jews and the Americans we'd have to make our own clothes. The dressmakers never could afford to give us credit."

"They all looked very wealthy down-stairs."

"Smart, rather. This happens to be a set that knows how to dress. Many don't. You know something of it yourself," she added, with a frank survey of the girl's well-cut travelling-frock and small hat. "Lots of Americans don't, if you don't mind my saying so--for all their reputation. I went to a dinner at an American Legation once and two of your countrywomen came with their hats on. They had brought letters to the Minister, and he hadn't taken the precaution of looking them over. He was terribly mortified, poor thing."

She related the anecdote with philanthropic intention, but Miss Otis put her half-rejected doubts to flight by remarking, lightly:

"We don't do that even in Rosewater."

"Where _is_ Rosewater? What a jolly name!"

"It is in northern California, not far from Lady Victoria's ranch and what is left of ours. I have spent most of my life in or near it--my father was a lawyer."

"Do tell me about yourself!" Like most amiable spinsters, she was as interested in the suggestive stranger as in a new novel. She sank with a sigh of comfort into the depths of the chair. "May I smoke? Are you shocked?"

Then she colored apprehensively, fearing that her doubt might be construed as an insult to Rosewater.

But Miss Otis met it with her first smile. "Oh no," she replied. "Will you give me one? Mine are in my trunk and they haven't brought it up." She took a cigarette from the gayly tendered case and smoked for a few moments in silence.

"I don't know why you should be interested in my history," she said at last in her slow cold voice, so strikingly devoid of the national animation. "It has been far too uneventful. I have an adopted sister, six years older than myself, who married twelve years ago. Her husband is an artist in San Francisco, rather a genius, so they are always poor. My mother died when I was little. After my sister married I took care of my father until I was twenty-one, when he died--four years ago. There are very good schools in Rosewater, particularly the High School. My father also taught me languages. He had a very fine library. But I do not believe this interests you. Doubtless you want to know something of the life with which Lady Victoria is so remotely connected."

"I am far more interested in you. Tell me whichever you like first. How _are_ you related, by-the-way?"

"Father used to draw our family tree whenever he had bronchitis in winter. One of the most famous of the Spanish Californians was Don Jose Argueello. We are descended from one of his sons, who had a ranch of a hundred thousand acres in the south. When the Americans came, long after, they robbed the Californians shamefully, but fortunately the son of the Argueello that owned the ranch at the time married an American girl whose father bought up the mortgages. He left the property to his only grandchild, a girl, who married my great-grandfather, James Otis--a northern rancher, born in Boston, and descended from old Sam Adams. He had two children, a boy and a girl, who inherited the northern and southern ranches in equal shares. The girl came over to England to visit an aunt who lived here, was presented at court, and straightway married a lord."

"Then you are second cousin to Vicky and third to Jack. I had no idea the relationship was so close."

"It has seemed very remote to me ever since I laid eyes on Lady Victoria down-stairs. Father made me promise, just before he died, that if ever I visited Europe I would look her up. Somehow I hadn't thought of her except as Elton Gwynne's mother, so I wrote to her without a qualm. But I see that she is an individual."

"Rather! How self-contained our great London is, after all! Vicky has been a beauty for over thirty years--to be sure her fame was at its height before you were old enough to be interested in such things. But I should have thought your father--"

"He must have known all about her. It comes back to me that he was very proud of the connection for more than family reasons, but it made no impression on me at the time."

"Proud?"

"Yes, he was rather a snob. He was very clever, but he fell out of things, and being able to dwell on his English and Spanish connections meant a good deal to him. I can recite the family history backwards."

"But if he was clever, why on earth did he live in Rosewater? Surely he could have practised in San Francisco?"

"He drank. When a man drinks he doesn't care much where he lives. My father had fads but no ambition."

"Great heaven!" exclaimed Miss Thangue, aghast at this toneless frankness. "You must have been glad to be rid of him!"

"I was fond of him, but his death was a great relief. He was a hard steady secret drinker. I nursed him through several attacks of delirium tremens, and was always in fear that he would get out and disgrace us. Sometimes he did, although when I saw the worst coming I generally managed to get him over to the ranch. Of course it tied me down. I rarely even visited my sister. My father hated San Francisco. He had practised there in his youth, promised great things, had plenty of money. The time came--" She shrugged her shoulders, although without the slightest change of expression. "I never lived my own life until he died, but I have lived it ever since."

"And the first thing you did with your liberty was to come to Europe," said Miss Thangue, with a sympathetic smile.

"Of course. My father and uncle had got rid of most of their property long before they died; there isn't an acre left of our share in the southern estate. But my uncle died six years ago and willed me all that remained of the northern, as well as some land in the poorer quarter of San Francisco. I could not touch the principal during the lifetime of my father, but we lived on the ranch and I managed it and was entitled, by the terms of the will, to what I could make it yield. When I was finally mistress of my fortunes I left it in charge of an old servant, sold enough to pay off the mortgage on a property in San Francisco I inherited from my mother, and came to Europe with a personally conducted tour."

Miss Thangue shuddered. The phrase unrolled a vista of commonness and attrition. Miss Otis continued, calmly: "That is the way I should feel now. But it was my only chance then; or rather I had seen enough of business to avoid making mistakes when I could. In that way I learned the ropes. After we had been rushed about for six weeks and I could not have told you whether the Pitti Palace was in Italy or France, and the celebrated frescos were one vast pink smudge, the party returned and I wandered on by myself. I spent a winter in Paris, and months in Brittany, Austria, Italy, Spain--Munich." It was here that her even tones left their register for a second. "I studied the languages, the literatures, the peoples, music, pictures. In Munich"--this time Flora's alert ear detected no vibration--"and also in Rome, I saw something of society. It was a life full of freedom, and I shall never cease to be grateful for it, but I must go home soon and look after my affairs. I left England to the last, like the best things of the banquet. I hope Lady Victoria--I shall never be able to call her Cousin Victoria, as I remember father did--will be nice to me. I have seen a good deal of life, but have never had a real _girl's_ time, and I should love it. Besides, I have a lot of new frocks."

"I am sure Vicky will be nice to you. If she isn't, I'll find some one that will be. You might marry Jack if you had money enough. We are dying to get him married--and a California cousin--it would be too romantic. And you would hold your own anywhere!"

But Miss Otis expanded a fine nostril. "I have no desire to marry. I feel as if I had had enough of men to last until I am forty--what with those I have buried, and others I have known at home and in Europe--to say nothing of the executors of my uncle's will, who did not approve of my coming abroad alone and delayed the settlement of the estate as long as possible. And now I have had too much liberty! Besides, I have seen 'Jack's' picture--two years ago, in a magazine. I will confess I had some romantic notions about him: imagined him very dashing, bold, handsome; insolent, if you like--the traditional young aristocrat, glorified by genius. He looks like Uncle Hiram."

"Is that who Jack looks like? We never could make out. No, Jack is not much to look at, except when he wakes up--I have seen him quite transfigured on the platform. But he is as insolent as you could wish, and has a superb confidence in himself that his enemies call by the most offensive names. But he is a dear, in spite of all, and I quite adore him."

"Perhaps; but life, myself, so many mysteries and problems, upon which I have barely turned a dark lantern as yet, interest me far more than any man could, unless he were superlative. I have had my disillusions."

She lit another cigarette, and for a few moments looked silently out of the window at the darkening woods beyond the lawn. Flora Thangue regarded her with a swelling interest. It was a type of which she had no knowledge, evidently not a common type even in the hypothetical land of the free; she had visited New York and Newport and known many Americans. True, she had never met the provincial type before, but she doubted if Rosewater had produced a crop of Isabel Otises. What was at the source of that cold-blooded frankness, so different from the English fashion of alternately speaking out and knowing nothing? Was she merely an egoist--it ran in the family--or did it conceal much that she had no intention of revealing? Her very beauty was of a type rarely seen in the America of to-day, prevalent as it may have been a hundred years ago: she looked like a feminine edition of the first group of American statesmen--although black Spanish hair was pulled carelessly over the high forehead, a heavy coil encircling the head in a long upward sweep, and the half-dreaming, half-penetrating regard of the light-blue eyes was softened by a heavy growth of lash. The eyebrows were low and thick, the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the lower was firm and full. It was the brow, the profile, the strength of character expressed, the general seriousness of the fine face and head, that made her look like a reversion to the type that gave birth to a nation. But Miss Thangue had seen too much of the world to judge any one by his inherited shell. She had observed many Americans with fine heads and bulging brows concealing practically nothing, insignificant German heads whose intellects had terrified her, the romantic Spanish eyes of the most unromantic people in Europe, English pride and an icy mask of breeding guarding from the casual eye the most lawless and ribald instincts. Therefore had she no intention of taking this new specimen on trust, much as she liked her, and she speculated upon her possibilities in the friendly silence that had fallen between them. Life is composed of individuals and their choruses, and Flora, humorously admitting the fact, was far more interested in others than in herself.

Only in the dense silky masses of her black hair and the almost stolid absence of gesture did the American betray her Spanish ancestry; but how much of the Spaniard, subtle, patient, vengeful, treacherous, mighty in passive resistance and cunning, lay behind those deep fearless blue eyes of her New England ancestors? Or was she not Spanish at all, but merely a higher type of American--or wholly herself? Would Jack, susceptible and passionate, a worshipper of beauty down among the roots of his abnormal cleverness and egoism, fall in love with her? And what then? The girl, with her strong stern profile against the shadows, her low brooding brows, might wield a power far more dangerous than that of the average fascinating woman, if her will marshalled the rest of her faculties and drove them in a straight line; although the luminous skin as polished as ivory, the low full curves and slow graceful movements of her figure added a potency that Flora, always an amused observer of men, would have been the last to ignore. Victoria, high-bred, fastidious, mocking, yet unmistakably passionate and possibly insurgent, was of that mint of woman about whom men had gone mad since the world began. But this girl, who might be as cold as the moon, or not, looked, in any case, capable of clasping a man's throat with her strong little hand, and gently turning his head from east to west. At this point Miss Thangue rose impatiently and rang a bell. Jack's career was almost at the flood. No woman could submerge his intellect and stupendous interests for more than a moment.

"Order lights and have your trunks brought up," she said. "I will send one of the housemaids to help you dress. My room is over on the other side of the house--go through that door opposite, and down a corridor until you come to another long hall and staircase like the one on this side. You will find my name on the door. Knock at about a quarter-past eight and I will go down with you. Vicky may be in an angelic humor and she may not. It depends mainly upon whether Jack condescends to turn up. I suppose you know all about him; it would hardly do for you to face him and his mother if you didn't. He has travelled quite exhaustively in the colonies and given us some of the most informing literature on that subject that we have. He was out in Africa when the Boer War broke out, and once before in India, when there was fighting, volunteered both times and did brilliant service. He has no end of medals with clasps. Then he suddenly went in for politics and announced himself an uncompromising Liberal. It nearly killed his grandfather--Lord Strathland--for Jack is the one person on earth that he loves as much as himself; and it has alienated many of his relatives on both sides--which gave him one more chance to win against terrific odds; he enjoys that sort of thing. He had been in but two years when there was a general election, and he has only just got back--he contested three divisions before he won his seat this time, and he had almost as hard a fight before. Vicky, who hates the Gwynnes, with the exception of Lord Zeal, the heir, besides believing in Jack as you would in Solomon, has steadily upheld him; and she is a powerful ally--not only one of the most distinguished of the political women, but still turns heads when she chooses, and her game is generally in the cabinet preserves, when it is not in the diplomatic. I must run. Put on your most fetching gown. Julia Kaye, a detestable little parvenu, is here. Jack is in love with her and she has chosen another. It will be a cousinly duty to console him. Then you can turn him over to some one else. Ta, ta!" Her last words floated back from the depths of the corridor; a clock was striking and she had pattered off hastily.

III

The "Jack," whose more distinguished patronymic was so gayly caracolling down the road to posterity, had arrived, and after dressing hastily, sought his mother. Her hair was done, her gown laced; she dismissed her maid at once, and while her eyes melted, in the fashion of mothers, she embraced her son with something more than maternal warmth: a curious suggestion of relief, of stepping out of her own personality and leaving it like a heap of clothes on the floor. This attitude had occasionally puzzled her idol, but he was too masculine to analyze. She was his best friend and a delightful person to have for a mother; her soul might be her own possession undisturbed. He admired her almost as much as he did himself, and to-night he kissed her fondly and told her gallantly that she was looking even more beautiful than usual.

"It is all this white after the dead black," said Lady Victoria, smiling appreciatively. "I am thankful that prolonged mourning is out of date; it made a fright of me and was getting on my nerves." She wore no jewels save a high diamond dog-collar and a few sparkling combs in her hair, but she made a superb appearance with the long white sweep of shoulders and bust, her brilliant eyes and smart tailed gown of black chiffon and Irish lace. Her arms, no longer rounded as when artists had fought to paint her, were but half-revealed under floating sleeves, and her fair tapering hands were even younger than her face.

She opened a large black fan and moved it slowly while looking intently at her son's bent profile. "Something has gone wrong," she said. "Have you seen Julia Kaye again?"

"No, I was invited to Maundrell Abbey last week, but couldn't manage it, of course. And I knew she was to be here. Nothing has gone wrong--but I had rather a shock this morning. I met Zeal at the club. He looks like a death's head. He vowed he was taking even better care of himself than usual, but his chest is bad again. He talked about going to Davos--the very word makes me sick! In the next breath he said he might go out to Africa. Can't you hurry on his marriage?--persuade Carry that it is her duty to go with him?"

"I should have no difficulty persuading Carry. The rub is with him. Compulsory asceticism has bred misogyny, and misogyny scruples. He says that he has sins enough to his account without laying up a reckoning with posterity. If it were not for you I should agree with him. I feel like a conspirator--"

"There is no reason why his children should be consumptive. Carry's physique is Wagnerian, and she is just the woman to look after her children herself. Zeal's health was thrown to the dogs by a weak indulgent frivolous mother, and what she left him he disposed of later when he made as great an ass of himself as might have been expected. He is a hypochondriac now and would keep a close watch on his heir's health and habits; you may be sure of that. He ought not to be in London now--it is stifling--went up for some business meeting or other--seemed to wish to avoid details. I hope to heaven he has not been relieving the monotony of his life by some rotten speculation. I begged him to come down here, but he wouldn't--says that his hand is no longer steady enough to hold a gun--it's awful!--worse because I'm not merely fond of him and regretting the possible loss of a good friend--I have felt like a beast all day. But I can't help it. For God's sake write and persuade him to go to Davos at once--and picture the delights of a pretty and devoted nurse. I feel as if I had ashes in my mouth--and yesterday I was so happy!" he burst out, with the petulance of a child.

"I will write to-night," she said, soothingly. "He has a very slow form of consumption; I have the assurance of his doctors. And at least he has committed himself with Carry, and announced his intention to marry as soon as a sojourn somewhere has made him feel fit again. You know how much better he always is when he comes back. Put it out of your mind to-night. I want you to be as happy as I am. Everybody is talking of the brilliance of your campaign--"

"Much good brilliance will do me if I am to rot in the Upper House!"

"Put it out of your mind; don't let apprehension control you for a moment. Believe me, will-power counts in life for more than everything else combined, and if it isn't watched it weakens."

"All right, mummy. You are never so original as when you preach. So Julia Kaye came down this afternoon? Talk about will. Mine should be of pure steel; I have ordered her out of my consciousness these last weeks at the point of the bayonet. She has written me exactly three times. However--those letters were charming," he added, with the sudden smile that transfigured his face, routing the overbearing and contemptuous expression that had won him so many enemies; friends and flatterers and the happy circumstances of his life had combined thoroughly to spoil him. "Do you maintain that will can win a woman?" he added, sharply.

She was the woman to laugh outright at such a suggestion. "No, nor that it can uproot love, although it can give it a good shaking and lock it in the dark room. I doubt if you love Julia Kaye, but you will find that out for yourself. You might bring her to terms by flirting a little with your American cousin--"

"My what?" He opened his eyes as widely as he had ever done when a school-boy.

"Of course--I forgot you know nothing of her. She wrote me from Ambleside--I infer she has been 'doing' England; and as her credentials were unimpeachable I asked her down. She has inherited a part of the northern estate and was brought up in the neighboring town of Rosewater--the American names are too silly. She seems quite _comme il faut_ and is remarkably handsome. I detest Americans, as you know, but there certainly is something in blood. I liked her at once. She looks clever, and is quite off the type--none of the usual fluff. If she doesn't bore me I shall keep her here for a while."

"I wish you would adopt her," he said, fondly. "I shouldn't be jealous, for I hate to think of you so much alone." He rose and kissed her lightly on the forehead, experience teaching him to avoid a stray hair from the carefully built coiffure. "I'll see if I can waylay Julia on the stairs; she is always late. Keep from eleven to twelve for me to-morrow morning. I want to tell you about the campaign. It was a glorious fight!" His eyes sparkled at the memory of it. "I felt as if every bit of me had never been alive at once before. My opponent was a splendid chap. It meant something to beat him. The other side was in a rage!--more than once yelled for half an hour after I took the platform. When I finished they yelled again for half an hour--to a different tune." His slight, thin, rather graceless figure seemed suddenly to expand, even to grow taller. Some hidden magnetism burst from him like an aura, and his cold pasty face and light gray eyes flamed into positive beauty. "It was glorious! Glorious! I was intoxicated--I could have reeled, little as they suspected it. I wouldn't part for a second with the certainty that I am the biggest figure in young England to-day. I hate to sleep and forget it. If I cultivated modesty I should renounce one of the exquisite pleasures of life. Humility is a superstition. The man who doesn't weed it out is an ass. To be young, well-born, with money enough, a brain instead of a mere intelligence, an essential leader of men--Good God! Good God!" Then he subsided and blushed, jerked up his shoulders and laughed. "Well--I never let myself go to any one but you," he said. "And I won't inflict _you_ any longer."

IV

"I wish the old homes of England had electric lights," thought Miss Otis, with a sigh.

There were four candles on the dressing-table, two on the mantel-shelf; beyond the radius of their light the room was barely visible. She carried one of the candles over to the cheval-glass and held it above her head, close to her face, low on either side.

"I feel as if I had been put together by some unpleasant mechanical process. It is well I am not inordinately vain, but when one puts on a new dress for the first time--" She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, replaced the candle, and walked up and down the room swinging the train--her first--of the charming gown of pale blue satin; patting the hair coiled softly about the entire head in a line eminently becoming to the profile, and prolonged by several little curls escaping to the neck.

She felt happy and excited, her fine almost severe face far more girlishly alive than when she had told her story, provocatively dry, to Flora Thangue. She directed an approving glance at the high heels of her slippers, which, with her lofty carriage, produced the effect of non-existing inches. She was barely five feet five, but she ranked with tall women, her height as unchallenged as the chiselling of her profile.

"What frauds we all are!" she thought, with a humor of which she had not vouchsafed Miss Thangue a hint. "But what is a cunningly made slipper on a foot not so small, at the end of a body not quite long enough, but an encouraging example of the triumph of art over nature? Not the superiority, perhaps, but they are the best of working partners."

She sat down and recalled the conversation with her new friend, giving an amused little shudder. She had heard much of, and in her travels come into contact with, the cold-blooded frankness of the English elect; with whom it was either an instinct or a pose to manifest their careless sense of impregnability. When pressed to give an account of herself the dramatic possibilities of the method suddenly appealed to her, accompanied by a mischievous desire to outdo them at their own game and observe the effect. She had found herself as absorbed as an actress in a new and congenial role.

"After all," she thought, "clever women make themselves over in great part, uprooting here, adopting there, and as we have so little chance to _be_ anything, there is a good deal to be got out of it. If one cannot be a genius one can at least be an artist. I have never had much cause to be as direct as stage lightning, but as I enjoyed it I suppose I may infer that even brutal frankness is not foreign to my nature. Perhaps, like father, I am a snob at heart and liked the sensation of a sort of artistic alliance with the British aristocracy. Well, if I develop snobbery I can root out that weed--or persuade myself that some other motive is at the base of a disposition to adopt any of the characteristics of this people: a woman can persuade herself of any sophistry she chooses. Not for anything would I be a man. Absolutely to accept the facts of life, even the ugly unvarnished fact itself, and at the same time to invent one's own soul-tunes--that is to be a woman and free!"

A printed square of card-board on her writing-table had informed her that the dinner-hour was half-past eight. She looked at her watch. It was five minutes to the time. Once more she peered into the glass, shook out her skirts, then sought a door in a far and dusky corner. It opened upon a long dimly lit corridor which led into another at right angles, and Isabel presently found herself at the head of a staircase similar to the one on her side of the house. Here, too, the walls were hung with portraits and landscapes, and as far down as the eye could follow; but after glancing over them for a moment with the recurring weariness of one who has seen too many pictures in the hard ways of European travel, her eyes lit and lingered on the figure of a young man who stood on the landing, his back to her, examining, with a certain tensity, a canvas on a level with his eyes.

"Uncle Hiram--John Elton Cecil Gwynne! What a likeness and what a difference!"

The young Englishman's hair, pale in color and very smooth, was worn longer than the fashion, the ends lilting. As he turned slowly at the rustle of descending skirts, this eccentricity and his colorless skin made him look the pale student rather than the gallant soldier, the best fighter on the hustings that England had seen for five-and-twenty years. As Isabel walked carefully down the slippery stair she veiled her eyes to hide the wonder in them. She had expected personality, magnetism, as a compensation for nature's external economies. His apparent lack of both made him almost repellent, awakened in Isabel a sensation of antagonism; and the cool speculation in his light gray eyes merely accentuated his general dearth of charm. True he had height--although his carriage was unimposing--his head was large and well-proportioned, his nose and chin salient, but the straight heavy mouth was as contemptuous as a Prussian officer's, and in spite of his grooming he looked old-fashioned, absurdly like the Uncle Hiram who had been a country lawyer and farmer, and had always worn broadcloth in the hottest weather--except, to be sure, when he wore a linen "duster," or sat on the veranda in his shirt-sleeves, his feet on the railing.

However, she smiled, and he smiled politely in return, advancing a few steps to meet her. "I hope you have heard of me," she said. "Your mother is so busy--English people are so indifferent to details--I am your cousin, Isabel Otis--"

"Of course my mother has spoken of you. I am very glad to see you in my house," he added, hospitably. "Shall I show you the way?"

He made no further remark as they descended the darker section of the stair, and she could think of nothing to say to him. Nor did she particularly care to think of anything, the American in her resenting his lack of effort. But as they reached the door she paused abruptly.

"I forgot! Miss Thangue asked me to knock at her door--"

"You take us too seriously," he said, with a slight sneer. "Flora has evidently forgotten you; she came down a quarter of an hour ago."

Isabel lifted her head still higher, annoyed at the angry blood that leaped to her face. "I am afraid I am rather literal," she said, with more hauteur than the occasion demanded. "But perhaps you will tell me where to go. There seems to be a bewildering number of rooms. After three years of lodgings in Europe, to say nothing of the modest architecture of Rosewater, I feel as if astray in a maze."

"You got that off as if you were a masquerading princess," he said, with a flicker of humor in his eyes. "Americans generally bluff the other way." He opened the door. "We meet here in the hall. There is my mother. You are not obliged to speak to her, you know. We are less formal in life than in novels." With this parting shot he left her abruptly and joined a small dark woman with a plebeian face, a sensual mouth, and magnificent black eyes.

"The rude beast!--Julia Kaye, of course." But Isabel forgot them both in the novelty of the scene. The square white hall was lit with wax-candles and shaded lamps, and filled with the murmur of voices--beautiful gowns--the sparkle of jewels. Isabel dismissed the memory of early trials, the long years she had lived in the last three, her philosophic resignation to the disillusions and disappointments with which her liberty had been pitted; it was her first appearance in the world of fashion--which she entered, after all, by a sort of divine right. Trepidation was undeveloped in her, and when she had stood for a moment, quite aware that her proud and singular beauty had won her instant recognition, she walked over to her hostess.

No fresh demand was made on her courage. Lady Victoria's earlier mood of colossal indifference had been dissipated by her son's return. She greeted Isabel with a dazzling smile and a winning gesture.

"Isn't Jack a darling? Isn't he a dear?" she commanded. "I have put you on his left, that you may be sure not to be bored. What hair! That is _your_ legacy from Spain. I have the eyes, but I never had a foot of hair. I hope you are comfortable. I expect you to remain a week. I am so glad that Jack will be here. The place is intolerably dull without him."

Isabel, warming to such maternal ardor in a beauty whose years were prematurely emphasized by a son as conspicuous as Elton Gwynne, summoned a few vague words of enthusiasm. She was reproached politely for wandering about England for two months before discovering herself to her relatives; then, Lady Victoria's interest waning, she turned to a young man, handsome and Saxon and orthodox, and said, casually, "Jimmy, you will take in Miss Otis."

Dinner had already been announced. The twain, in complete ignorance of each other's identity, walked through a long line of rooms, almost unfurnished but for the scowling or smiling dead crowding the walls. Isabel decided that she would be as effortless as the English and see what came of it. The practised instinct of the American girl, added to the excessive hospitality of the Californian, would have led her to put her companion immediately at ease, but not only was she fond of experimenting with racial characteristics upon her own hidden possibilities, but she was intensely proud, and the English attitude had stung her more than once.

"Why should I please them?" she thought, contemptuously. "Let them please me."

Her companion betrayed no eagerness to please her; and during the first ten minutes at table he talked to Gwynne about the late elections. Evidently, he too had emerged from the political fray triumphant. Isabel sat like a stately picture by Reynolds, and after her slow gaze had travelled over the dark full-length portraits of the kings and queens that had honored Capheaton, it dropped to the more animated faces in the foreground. The men were good-looking, with hardly an exception; judging by their carriage they might all have been army men, but as every word that floated to the head of the table was political, they possibly had followed their successful host's example and adopted an equally intermittent career. One or two of the women were almost as handsome as Lady Victoria, with their superb figures, their complexions of claret and snow, that blending of high breeding and warm palpitating humanity one never sees outside of England. But others within Isabel's range were too haggard for beauty, although one had a Burne-Jones face and her eyes gazed beyond the company with an expression that made her seem pure spirit; but she too looked tired, delicate, curiously overworked.

Opposite Isabel was a tall buxom young woman of the purest Saxon type, who was talking amiably with the man on her right, and occasionally shaking with deep and silent laughter; her intimate casual manner, her slight movements, her accentuation, manifestly bred in the bone. Suddenly it was borne in upon Isabel's always sensitive consciousness that she was the only haughty and reserved person present, and she felt provincial and laughed frankly at herself. The lady across the table claiming the attention of the host, she turned to her own partner. Her black eyelashes were long, and under their protecting shadow she swept a glance at the card above the young man's plate. It was inscribed, "Lord Hexam." She saw her opportunity and asked, ingenuously:

"How can you be a member of the House of Commons?"

He looked up from his fish and replied, somewhat cuttingly, "By contesting a borough and getting elected."

"But I thought a peer could not be in the House of Commons."

"He can't."

"Then how can you be?"

"I am not a peer." He looked very much annoyed.

"But you are Lord Hexam."

He answered, sulkily: "I happen to be the son of a peer."

"Are you irritated because I know nothing about you?" asked Isabel, cruelly. "Do you suppose I have wasted my time in England reading Burke?"

"No, there are too many sights," he replied, more cruelly still.

"They are far more interesting than most of the people I have met." Then she changed her tactics and smiled upon him; and when she smiled she showed a dimple hardly larger than a pin's head at one corner of her flexible mouth. For the first time he looked under her eyelashes into the odd blue eyes, with their dilated pupils and black rim edging the light iris. He suddenly realized that she was beautiful, in spite of the three little black moles on her face--he detested moles--and smiled in return.

"I am afraid I was rude. But I am really shy, and you quite took it out of me. I am more afraid of the American girl than of anything on earth."

"How did you know I was an American?"

"By your accent." He laughed good-naturedly. "Now I am even with you."

"Well, you are. Californians pride themselves upon having no accent."

"Oh, it is not nearly so bad as some. But it is there all the same. Not a twang nor a drawl, but--well--every country has its unmistakable stamp."

"Well, I have no desire to be taken for anything but an American," she said, defiantly. "A Californian, that is. After all, we are quite different. But we do have an appalling variety of accents in the United States. I have lived abroad long enough to discover that. When I am an old maid I am going to mount the platform and preach the training of the voice in childhood. I have taken a violent dislike to more than one clever American man merely because he trailed his voice through his nose. I don't mind our vices being criticised as much as our crudities."

"I never before heard an American girl make a remark that indicated the least interest in her country--even when--pardon me--they brag. They generally give the impression that they don't even know who happens to be the President of the moment. Somehow, you look as if you might."

"I was brought up by a man, and my uncle was a great politician in a small way. That is to say he was identified with country politics only, but he and my father were everlastingly discussing the national issues. Of course you have only met girls from the great cities, where the men are too busy making money to take any interest in public affairs. The women rarely hear them mentioned, practically forget there are such affairs--except on the Fourth of July, which they resent as a personal grievance. I have met scores of them in Europe. To know anything of politics they regard as the height of bad form."

"Sometimes I wish that our women would let them alone for a while. That is my sister over there," indicating the lady with the Burne-Jones face. "She has worn herself to a shadow working for her husband, who is in the House, and she is heart and soul in politics--which she regards as a sort of divine mission. She is on several committees, is far more useful to her husband than his secretary, for she has the gift of style--and no one would accuse Rex of that--and during an election she never rests. Besides which, of course she has her little family, the usual number of establishments to look after, and great social pressure. I always maintain that our women are of immense service to us, but many of them are physically unfit. I expect to see my sister go to pieces any day, and as she is little short of an angel it worries me."

"She does look angelic," said Isabel, sympathetically. "Is that what is the matter with the rest of them?--the thin ones, I mean?"

"Generally speaking. The thinnest is my cousin. I went in for a cup of tea a week or two before the end of last session. There were several of us about the tea-table when a footman entered and muttered something to her, and with a vague word of apology she left the room and did not return for half an hour. I thought the baby must be dying, and was about to ring, when she reappeared and remarked that she had been sitting at the telephone listening to a paper her husband had just finished on one of the questions before the House. Some of them stand it better." He indicated a fair beautiful creature with a determined profile and deep womanly figure. "There is Mrs. Sefton, for instance. She presides at committee meetings--she is great on colonial politics--for three or four hours at a time, and always sails out as fresh as a rose; but she has buried her husband and entertains when and whom she chooses. Lady Cecilia opposite understands politics as well as any woman in England, but does not go in for them--Spence isn't in the House; that may account for it!"

"Your fashionable women do not in the least resemble ours," said Isabel, meditatively. "They are far more like the women of our small towns."

"What!"

"It sounds paradoxical, but it is more than half true. Say two-thirds; the other third is all in favor of your women, for obvious reasons. But those I speak of, the best women of every small town, are constantly active in civic affairs. Most of the sanitary improvements and the educational, all schemes for parks and better streets, come from them. There is no village too small to have its 'Woman's Improvement Club.' And it is the women that have saved all the historical buildings in the country from destruction."

"I thought they went in for Browning Societies."

"Doubtless you would scorn really to know anything of American humor. Perhaps our comic papers have never heard of the Improvement Clubs, or find nothing in them that is humorous. Not that I would decry the Browning Clubs, nor any literary clubs, however crude. It is all in the line of progress. 'Culture' is a tempting morsel for the jokemaker, but as an alternative for dull domesticity and the vulgar inanities of gossip it is not to be despised."

"By Jove, you are right," said Hexam, not without warmth.

"Is my fair cousin converting you to something?" asked the host. His voice had been little heard, and he looked sulky.

"Cousin?"

"Yes, he is my cousin," said Isabel, with the accent of resignation. Hexam laughed. Gwynne looked as if the grace of humor had been left out of him. Isabel, innocent and impassive, turned her eyelashes upon her partner. "I was quite wild to meet my cousin," she went on, in the toneless voice that contrasted so effectively with her occasional extravagance of speech; "and now I find him the precise image of my uncle Hiram, who never spoke to me except to say: 'Little girls should be seen and not heard,' or 'Run off to bed now, little one.'"

Without repitching her voice she yet infused it with a patronizing masculinity that once more startled Hexam into laughter, and caused a silent convulsion in the massive frame of Lady Cecilia Spence.

"She knows that was a bit of vengeance," thought Isabel. "But of course, manlike, he'll never suspect it." She turned her deep thoughtful gaze full upon her cousin. His eyes were glittering under their heavy lids. He replied, suavely:

"I hope you will find us more polite--if less picturesque. I cannot flatter myself that my likeness to your uncle Hiram extends that far. 'Precise image'--is not that perhaps a bit of national exaggeration?"

"Well, I take that back," said Isabel, sweetly. "But you really might be his son instead of his second cousin."

"Perhaps that accounts for a good many things," said Lady Cecilia. "You know, Jack, I have always said there was something exotic about you. You are much too energetic and progressive for this settled old country. If you had been born in America I suppose you would have been president at the earliest moment the constitution permitted."

He hesitated a moment, then delivered himself of a bombshell. "I was born in America," he said.

His eyes moved slowly from one stupefied face to another. "As I left at the age of five weeks I can hardly claim that the incident left an indelible impress. But the fact remains that I should be eligible for the presidency if I chose to become an American citizen."

Isabel looked at her relative with an accession of interest; he had suddenly ceased to be an alien, become in a measure a personal possession. "Come over and try it," she said, impulsively. "_There_ is a career worth while! A young country as full of promise as of faults! Think of the variousness of achievement! England's history is made. If you are all they claim, you might really make history in the United States. If I only had a brother--" Her eyes were flashing for the first time. "However--they say you love the fight. It is far more difficult to become a president of the United States than a prime-minister of England, for with us family influence counts for nothing."

"I am afraid I have not the qualities that do count. To be as frank as yourself--I don't think I could stand your politics."

"But think of the excitement of really sounding your capacities!" Impersonality was an achievement with Isabel and she could always command it. "You can never do that here, no matter how brilliant your success. There must always be the question of how far you would have gone without your family, and friends of equal power. The ugliest lesson of life is its snobbishness. Even when the herd can expect no return, a blind instinct--doubtless an inheritance from the days when there were but two classes--drives it to beat the drums for the socially elect. We have enough of that in America, heaven knows, but the best thing that can be said of American politics is that they are free of it. Besides, if our politics are bad, so much the better for you. You might do for the United States what your English great-grandfather helped to do for this country in 1832. You might be another 'Great Revolutioner,' like your still more illustrious ancestor, Sam Adams. You'll never, never have such an opportunity to become a great historical figure over here, for English dissatisfaction hardly counts, and in the United States there are increasing millions that demand reform, a closer approach to the ideal republic promised by their ancestors, and the man for the hour."

The angry glitter had left his eyes and he was looking at her with interest and curiosity. He respected her courage and obvious power to rise above the personal attitude of her sex.

"I dislike intensely many things in your country," he said, slowly; "but I will confess that it interests me greatly. If it has failed in some of its original ideals it has at least continued to be a republic for more than a century; and when one considers its enormous size and conflicting elements--for I suppose you will not claim that you are a homogeneous race--that is very inspiring! It makes one believe that fundamentally the country must be sound--that unswerving fidelity to an ideal. It is a great thing! a stupendous thing! I wish I knew that I should live to see England, all Europe, a republic. There is no other state fit for self-respecting men--that voice in the selection of their own rulers."

"By Jove, Jack!" cried Lord Hexam. "I never heard you go as far as that before."

"Possibly you never will again. I have no desire to rank with those brilliant failures that are born before their time, and no intention of wasting my energies on the unattainable. Moreover, radicals and socialists per se are merely a nuisance. The Liberal party is the only choice in England to-day, and when I get it at my back, I can, at least, after I have led it to a stronger position, fight for the soundest of the extremist dogmas, as well as for the reorganization of the House of Peers. Hereditary legislation in the twentieth century and the most civilized country in the world! Why not an hereditary army and navy? Russia has few greater anachronisms. And when one thinks of the careers it has ruined! Look at Barnstaple."

The two men plunged into discussion, and Isabel, her eyes expressing a polite interest, studied the face of her cousin. She appreciated for the first time something of its power. A brief illumination of his eyes had betrayed the soul of the idealist; a passion that in a less sound mind might result in fanaticism. He was talking with none of the fiery enthusiasm that made him so irresistible a public speaker, but his negative suggestion of vitality, of mature thought, his very lack of every-day magnetism, fascinated her; not the woman, but the acute, receptive, and antagonistic intelligence. As he sat there talking, with hardly a change of expression in his voice or on his cold face, faintly sneering, he seemed to be holding his powers in solution; to have resolved them for the time being into their elements, that they might rest and recuperate. While no doubt in first-rate physical condition, he looked as if he had not a red corpuscle in his body, and this very contrast to the warm full-blooded people surrounding him gave him a distinction of his own, the distinction of pure brain independent of those auxiliaries that few public men have been able to dispense with. It was obvious that he was too self-centred, too haughtily indifferent, or too spoilt, to make any effort in private life to charm or bewilder; when he vanquished from the platform it was by the awakened rush of the forces within him; and this very indifference, this contemptuous knowledge of his mighty reserves, this serene faith in his star, invested his personal unattractiveness with a formidable significance. Isabel's imagination dilated him into a disembodied intellect surrounded by mere statues of human flesh. As she left the dining-room the illusion vanished. She liked him less than ever, nevertheless wished that he were her brother and the rising star in American politics.

V

As the women entered a large room on the opposite side of the central hall, where coffee was to be served, Flora Thangue laid her hand deprecatingly on Isabel's arm. "I was so sorry not to be able to wait for you," she said. "But I had a distracted note from Vicky at eight asking me to dress as quickly as I could and see if the cards on the table were all right: the new butler is rather a muff, and such a martinet the footmen dare not interfere. I was delighted to see that Jack had taken charge of you. What do you think of our infant prodigy?"

"I have had little chance to think anything," said Isabel, evasively. "Is he the typical Englishman--I mean apart from his peculiar gifts?"

"Only in certain qualities. You see he has Celtic blood in him: of course the Gwynnes had their origin in Wales; and then he is one-fourth American, isn't he? I can't say how far that inheritance has influenced his character, but there is no doubt about the Celtic. Outwardly he is even more impassive than the usual Oxford product, and if he had been born a generation earlier he would have had all sorts of affectations. But affectation, thank heaven, is out of date. We wouldn't tolerate a Grandcourt five minutes. Whom should you like to talk to? You will have enough of me."

"I am sure there is no one I shall like half so well," said Isabel, truthfully; and Flora loved her for not being gracious. "I think I should like to know Mrs. Kaye."

"If you ever do, please give me the benefit of your investigations. There are as many opinions of her as there are of cats. Vicky believes in her and I don't. Jack is in love with her--with certain of his Celtic instincts gone wrong."

She led Isabel over to Mrs. Kaye, who sat alone on a small sofa, sipping her coffee and absently puffing at a cigarette. She was exquisitely dressed and jewelled, and her little figure was round and symmetrical; but nothing could obscure the ignoble modelling of her face. She might have been misunderstood for a housemaid masquerading had it not been for an air of assured power, a repose as monumental as that of a Chinese joss.

She had cultivated a still radiance of expression which, when she thought it worth her while, broke into a tender or brilliant smile; although even then her large, ripe mouth retained a hint of the austerity her strong will had imposed upon it--to the more complete undoing of the masculine host. She smiled graciously as Miss Thangue murmured the introduction and moved away, but did not offer the other half of the sofa, and Isabel fetched a chair.

"You are the American cousin, of course," she said, with a slight lisp. "We were all talking about you down at our end of the table, but I could not see you until just now. I long to go to America, your novels interest me so much. But one is always so busy--one never gets time for the Atlantic. Lady Victoria says you come from that wonderful country, California, but of course you know New York and Newport still better. All Americans do."

"I have never seen Newport, and passed exactly a week in New York before sailing."

Mrs. Kaye's expressive eyes, which had dwelt on Isabel with flattering attention, fell to the tip of her cigarette. "No? I thought that all smart Americans came from that sacred precinct."

"I am not in the least smart. I don't really _know_ half a dozen people in America outside of the county in which I have spent the greater part of my life--not even in San Francisco, where I was born." Isabel held her cigarette poised in one slender hand, letting her eyes fall deliberately on the broad back and flat nails of the exquisitely kept section on Mrs. Kaye's lap. "So far, in my small social ventures I have felt the necessity of little beyond good manners and a small independent income. This is my first excursion into the great world, and of course my cousin is too secure in her position to care whether I am smart or not. Miss Thangue, the only other woman I have talked with, is far too amiable and well-bred. Am I to understand that I shall be tried by New York measurements and found wanting?"

"Oh no!" Mrs. Kaye's bright color had darkened. "On the contrary, the English are always rather amused at American distinctions. It only happens that all my friends are New-Yorkers."

She was a very clever woman, for snobbery had blunted and demoralized only one small chamber of her brain, and she had as comprehensive a knowledge of the world as any woman in it. Nevertheless, as her powerful magnetic eyes met the ingenuous orbs opposite, she was unable to determine whether the barbed words, quivering in a sore spot, had been uttered in innocence or intent. "Of course one doesn't meet so many Americans, after all. Naturally, the New-Yorkers bring the best letters." She paused a moment as if ruminating, then delivered herself of an epigram: "New York is the great American invention for separating the wheat from the tares."

"Indeed!" Isabel was too surprised to strike back.

"It is well known that it is one of the most exclusive social bodies in the world. You have far less difficulty over here."

"That may be merely owing to the fear that affects all new social bodies. I have the honor to know the leader of society in St. Peter--a town of ten thousand inhabitants near my own--and she is frightfully exclusive. She is so afraid of knowing the wrong sort of people that she is barely on nodding terms with the several thousand new-comers that have added to the wealth and importance of the town during the last ten years. Consequently, her circle is as dull as an Anglo-Saxon Sunday. I fancy the same may be said of New York, for its fashionable set is not large and its interests are far from various. From all I have heard, London society alone is perennially interesting, and the reason is, that, absolutely secure, it keeps itself from staleness by constantly refreshing its veins with new blood, exclusive only against offensiveness. Of course you are a daughter of a duke or something," she added, wickedly. "Everybody here seems to be. Don't you feel that your ancestors have given you the right to know whom you please?--instead of eternally plugging the holes in the dike."

In spite of her sharpened wits, Mrs. Kaye smiled radiantly into Isabel's guileless eyes. "I am not the daughter of a duke; I wish I were!" she exclaimed, with a fair assumption of aristocratic frankness. "But your point is quite correct." Again she appeared to ruminate; then added: "The British aristocracy is to society what God is to the world--all-sufficient, all-merciful, all-powerful."

"And she would sacrifice Him and all his archangels to an epigram," thought Isabel, who was somewhat shocked. "How fearfully clever you are!" she murmured. "Do you think in epigrams?"

"Epigrams? Have I made one? I wish I could. They are immensely the fashion."

"I should think you might have set it--"

She did not finish her sentence, for the ear to which it was addressed suddenly closed. Lady Cecilia Spence had sauntered up, and Mrs. Kaye hastily made room for her on the sofa, turning a shoulder upon Isabel. A faint change, as by the agitation of depths on the far surface of waters, rippled her features, and Isabel, summoning the impersonal attitude, watched her curiously. It was her first experience of the snob in a grandiose setting, but it was the type that had aroused her most impassioned inward protest all her life: the smallest circles have their snobs, and, like all the unchosen of mammon, she had had her corroding experiences. But her high spirit resented the power of the baser influences, and, with her intellect, commanded her to accept the world with philosophy and the unsheathed weapon of self-respect. In the present stage of the world's development it was to be expected that the pettier characteristics of human nature would predominate; and perhaps the intellectually exclusive would not have it otherwise.

Mrs. Kaye, polite tolerance giving place to the accent of intimacy, began: "Oh, Lady Cecilia, have you heard--" and plunged into a piece of gossip, no doubt of absorbing interest to those that knew the contributory circumstances and the surnames of the actors, but to the uninitiated as puzzling as success. Lady Cecilia's eyes twinkled appreciatively, and her wells of laughter bubbled close to the surface. Isabel, completely ignored, waited until the story was finished, and then made a deliberate move.

"How interesting!" she exclaimed. "Won't you tell me the names of the people?"

Mrs. Kaye, without turning her head, murmured something indistinctly, and lit another cigarette. "Won't you have a light, Lady Cecilia?" she asked.

"Please give me one," said Isabel, sweetly. She reached out and took the cigarette from Mrs. Kaye's faintly resisting hand. "Thank you. I am lazy about looking for matches. Do you smoke a lot?"

But Mrs. Kaye, irritated, or having reached the conclusion that the newcomer was not in the very least worth while, said with soft fervor to her who was: "How delightful that dear Jack was returned! Of course you are as interested in his career as the rest of us."

"I should be a good deal more so if his mother had turned him across her knee a little oftener--or if I could shake him myself occasionally."

Isabel, satisfied, more amazed than ever at the infantile ingenuousness of the snob, rose, and was about to turn away when she met Lady Cecilia's eyes. They were full of amusement, and there was no mistaking its purport. In a flash Isabel had responded with a challenge of appeal, which that accomplished dame was quick to understand.

"Please don't go," she said. "I came over here to talk to you. We are all so interested in the idea that Vicky is half an American--we had quite forgotten it. Did you ever see any one look less as if she had American cousins than Vicky? She might easily have a whole tribe of Spanish ones."

"Well, she has, in a way." And in response to many questions Isabel found herself relating the story of Rezanov and Concha Argueello, while Mrs. Kaye, whatever may have been her sensations, rose with an absent smile and composedly transferred herself to an equally distinguished neighborhood.

"I wonder if she has ever tried to condense rudeness into an epigram," said Isabel viciously, pausing in her narrative.

Lady Cecilia shook expressively. "At least she has not made an art of it," she said. "They never do."

VI

The next morning, Isabel, after little sleep, rose early and went out for a walk. She had sat up until eleven, listening to the puzzling jets of conversation, or watching the Bridge-players, and when she had finally reached her room, tired and excited, Flora Thangue had come in for a last cigarette and half an hour of chat. Her first evening in the new world had had its clouded moments, for it was impossible not to feel the alien, and the kindness of English people, no matter how deep, is casual in expression. But on the whole she had felt more girlishly happy and ebullient than since her sister had gone her own way and left a heavy burden for young shoulders behind her. In the freedom of a girl in Europe, no matter how prized, there is much of loneliness in idleness, a constant attitude of defence, moments of bitter wonder and disgust, and, to the analytical mind, an encroaching dread of a more normal future with a chronic canker of discontent.

Isabel had by no means passed her European years in the procession that winds from the Tiber to the Seine, prostrating itself at each successive station of architecture or canvas; nor even devoted the major portion of her time to the investigation of the native, deeply as the varying types had interested her. Her intellectual ambition, as is often the case with the American provincial girl, had been even stronger than her desire for liberty and pleasure, and she had spent several months with the archaeological society of Rome, read deeply in Italian history and art, attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and spent nearly a year in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, studying that modern stronghold of dramatic literature, the German Theatre.

It had been the living dream of long winter evenings, when she had not dared to join in the festivities of the other young folk lest her father should stray beyond her control; he would, when the demon was quiescent, sit at home if she read to him, and she had learned to read and dream at the same time. It was only at the beginning of her third year of liberty, when, in spite of shifting scenes, the entire absence of daily cares and of heavy responsibilities involving another had given her longer hours for thought and introspection, that the poisonous doubt of the use of it all had begun to work in a mind that had lost something of the ardor of novelty. The eternal interrogations had obtruded themselves in her unfortunate girlhood, and she had questioned the voiceless infinite, but angrily, with youth's blind rebellion against the injustice of life. The anger and rebellion had been comatose in these years of freedom, but the maturer brain was the more uneasy, at times appalled. For what was she developing, perfecting herself? She had no talent, with its constant promises, its occasional triumphs, its stimulating rivalries, to give zest to life; and there were times when she envied the student girls in Munich with their absurd "reform dress," their cigarettes and beer in cheap restaurants and theatres, their more than doubtful standards. Although she had her own private faith and never hesitated to pray for anything she wanted, she was not of those that can make a career of religion; her mind and temperament were both too complex, and she was unable to interest herself in creeds and theologies--and congregations.

Now and again she had considered seriously the study of medicine, architecture, law, of perfecting herself for criticism of some sort, for she had spoken with a measure of truth when she had assured Flora that she had no wish to marry. In her depths she was--had been--romantic and given to dreaming, but the manifold weaknesses of her father--who had been one of the most brilliant and accomplished of men, a graduate of Harvard, and the possessor of many books--and the selfish and tyrannous exactions which had tempered his enthusiasm for all things feminine, the caustic tongue and overbearing masculinity of her uncle, who had been as weak in his way as her father, for he had lost the greater part of his patrimony on the stock-market, and the charming inconsequence of her brother-in-law, who loved his family extravagantly and treated them like poor relations, had not prepared her to idealize the young men she had met in Rosewater and Europe. She had been sought and attracted more than once during her years of liberty, but her prejudices and the deep cold surface of temperament peculiar to American girls of the best class, lent a fatal clarity of vision; and although she had studied men as deeply as she dared, the result had but intensified the sombre threat of the future. It was quite true that she had half-consciously believed that hope would live again and justify itself in Elton Gwynne, and the disappointment, at the first glimpse of his portrait, was so crushing that she had buried her sex under an avalanche of scorn.

But scorn is far more volcanic than glacial and a poor barrier between sex and judgment. It needed more than that, and more than disillusions of the second class, no matter how inordinate, to give a girl the cool reality of poise that had stimulated the curiosity of Miss Thangue; and this Isabel had encountered, during the most critical period of her inner life, in the beautiful city by the Isar. The experience had been so brief and tremendous, the incidents so crowding and tense, the climax so hideous, that she had been stunned for a time, then emerged into her present state of tranquil and not unpleasant philosophy--when the present moment, if it contained distraction, was something to be grateful for; otherwise, to be borne with until the sure compensation arrived. The future had neither terror for her nor any surpassing concern, although all her old impersonal interest in life had revived, and she was still too young not to be very much like other girls when circumstances were propitious. And at last she had conceived--or evolved--a definite purpose.

This morning she was living as eagerly as ever during her first deep months in Europe. The excitement of the evening still possessed her; she had held her own, received homage, lived a little chapter in an English novel; above all, she was young, she was free, she was no longer unhappy; and she loved the early morning and swift walking.

It was Sunday; the shooting would not begin until the morrow; everybody except herself, apparently, still slept; the breakfast-hour was half-past nine. She walked down a long lane behind the lawns and entered the first of the coverts. There was a drowsy whir of wings--once--that was all. There was a glint of dancing water in the heavier shades, a rosy light beyond the farthest of the trees in the little wood where the delicate pendent leaves hung asleep in the sweet peace. There was not an expiring echo of her own wild forests here; nor any likeness to the splendid royal preserves of Germany and Austria, with their ancient trees, their miles of garnished floor, the sudden glimpse of chamois or stag standing on a rocky ledge against the sky as if drilled for his part. These woods had a quality all their own: of Nature in her last little strongholds, but smiling, serenely triumphant, of tempered heat without chill, above all, of perfect peace.

Nothing in England had impressed Isabel like this atmosphere of peace that broods over its fields and lanes, its woods and fells, in the evening and early morning hours; the atmosphere that makes it seem to be set to the tune of Wordsworth's verses, and to keep it everlastingly old-fashioned and out of all relation to its towns. As she left the wood she saw a big hay-stack, as firm and shapely of outline as a house, not a loose wisp anywhere. A girl, bareheaded, was driving a cow across a field. A narrow river moved as slowly as if the world had never awakened. The road turned to her right and led to an old stone village with a winding broken street and several oak-trees, a pump, and a long green bench. It might have been the Deserted Village, for the English rise far later than the Southern races that have fallen so far behind them in importance and wealth. Beyond the village, on a rise of ground, was the church, its square gray tower crumbling down upon its ancient graves. In the distance were farms, coverts, another village, a gray spire against the blossoming red of the sky; and over all--peace--peace. Had anything ever really disturbed it? Would there ever be any change? England had been devastated to the roots, would be again, no doubt, but unless it became one vast London, it would brood on into eternity with the slight defiant smile of a beautiful woman in an enchanted sleep.

"Are you, too, an early bird?"

Isabel flew out of her reverie. Lady Victoria was approaching from a forking road. She wore a short skirt, leggings, and heavy boots; and she was bright, fresh, almost rosy from swift walking. "I have gone five miles already," she said, smiling. "But I believe you were sauntering."

"Only just now--to absorb it all. I, too, can do my five miles an hour, although Californians are the laziest people in the world about walking."

"Then if you are up to a sharp trot we'll go to that farthest village. My land steward has been telling me a painful tale about one of my young women, and I intend to ask her some embarrassing questions while she is still too stupid with sleep to lie."

"Your young women? Is all this your estate?"

"It belongs to Strathland, but I have lived here since I married, and now the place is virtually Jack's. These people have been my particular charge for thirty years and will continue to be until my son marries. There are only about a hundred families on the estate altogether, but they keep one busy."

"I can't imagine you in the working role of the Lady Bountiful. Last night, at least, if I had written to my friend, Anabel Colton, I should have devoted pages to your more famous attributes, but I should never have thought of this."

"Indeed? If one could languish through life in the shell of a mere beauty that life would be a good deal simpler proposition than it is. Unfortunately there are complications, and, agreeable or not, one accepts them as one does enemies, husbands, stupid servants, and all other mortal thorns. But I am not uninterested in my people here, not by any means, and they bore me less than going to court and visiting my father-in-law. I watch them from birth, see that they are properly clothed and fed, that they go to school as soon as they are old enough, later that they find a situation here or elsewhere--those that have no work to do at home. My son gives the young men and women a complete wardrobe when they start out to win their way in life, and the details fall on me. It means correspondence, mothers' meetings, and all that sort of thing. Even during the London season I come down once a month. Of course it is a bore, but on the whole tradition is rather kind than otherwise in making life more or less of a routine."

"Wouldn't you miss it if your son married?" Isabel wondered if this woman had really given her the impression of tragic secrets, unlimited capacities for both license and arrogance. In this early morning freshness there was hardly a suggestion of the woman of the world, barely of the great lady; and in the rich tones of her voice there was a genuine note of interest in her poor.

"Oh, I should always keep an eye on them; young wives have so many distractions. If I had to give them up--yes, of course it would mean a vacancy in my collection of habits; one side of me clings strongly to traditions and duty. The other--well, I'd like to be a free-lance in the world for a while--although," she added, with a sharp intonation, "I don't suppose I should stay away from Jack very long. It is a great relief to have a vital interest in life outside one's self. You, of course, are not old enough to have discovered that; and, indeed, I am not always so sure that it is possible."

Isabel did not ask her if she would not be jealous of the wife who must, if he loved her, take the greater part of all that her "Jack" had to give; she divined in this many-sided woman a quality in her attitude towards her son with which ordinary maternal affection had little in common. Her fine eyes flashed with pride at the mention of his name, and it was more than evident that he was her deep and abiding interest; but this keen and curious young student of life had never seen any one less maternal. Lady Victoria's attitude, indeed, might as reasonably be that of a proud sister or wife. When he was beside her she looked almost commonplace in her content. The moment he passed out of her sight some phase of individuality promptly lit its torch. Last night Isabel had seen her stand for half an hour as motionless as some ivory female Colossus, only her eyes burning down with slow voluptuous fire upon an adoring little Frenchman. She had looked like a Messalina petrified with the complications and commonness of the modern world; possibly with the burden of years, Isabel had added, in girlish intolerance of the wiles of which youth is independent. She had been far from falling under her spell, although not wholly repelled by the glimpse of this worst side of a woman far too complex to be judged off-hand. This morning she liked her suddenly and warmly, and, with the lightning of instinct, divined why she worshipped her son and still was willing to have him marry and swing aside into an orbit of his own. All she needed was a certain amount of his society, opportunities to work for him, the assurance of his success and happiness. He was a refuge from herself; in his imperious demands her memory slept, her depths were stagnant. But Isabel was still too young, in spite of her own experience, more than dimly to apprehend the older woman's attitude, and the innumerable and various acts and sufferings, disenchantments and contacts that had led up to it. Victoria seemed to her the most rounded mortal she had met, and yet with an insistent terror in the depths of her riven and courageous soul, the terror of the complete, the final disillusion. Between that moment and her too exhaustive knowledge of life stood the magnetic figure of her son, safeguarding, almost hypnotizing her. She was as incapable of jealousy as of aching vanity in the fact of a son whom the world was never permitted to forget. She had done with little things, and Isabel, with young curiosity, wondered in what convulsion the last of them had gone down.

Lady Victoria, unconscious of the analytical mind groping to conclusions beside her, was revolving the midnight comments of Flora Thangue, and her own impressions of this American relative whose sudden advent, taken in connection with her eighteenth century beauty and undecipherable quality, wrought the impression of a symbolic figure swimming out of space. Lady Victoria was far too indifferent to analyze the problems of any woman's soul, but she was keenly alive to the vital suggestion of power in the girl, and of the strong will and intellect, the command over every faculty, evidenced in the strong line of the jaw, the stern noble profile, the calm searching gaze so difficult to sustain. None knew better than Victoria the value and rarity of a free and courageous soul. Such a woman must, when more fully developed, throw the whole weight of her character into the scales balancing for the few whom she recognized as equals and accepted as friends. If she had had "some smashing love affair," as the more romantic Flora suggested, so much the better.

She said, with a perfectly simulated impulsiveness:

"Of course you understand that I meant what I said last evening. And not merely a week; you must pay us a long visit, if it won't bore you. But the house will rarely be empty now that the shooting has begun, and there is always something going on in the neighborhood. Later comes the hunting, and I am sure you ride."

"Oh yes, I ride! I have spent about half my life on a horse. I want to stay more than I can tell you, but before long I must go home. The same safe old bank that has charge of your ranches looks after my small affairs, and I have a man on the farm that has been in the family for forty years; otherwise I should never have dared to leave my precious chickens; but Mr. Colton writes me that Mac is failing, and before the rainy season commences I must look into things myself."

"Chickens?" said Lady Victoria, much amused. "Do you raise chickens?"

"Rather; and not in the back yard, neither. I have about a thousand of the most beautiful snow-white Leghorns with blood-red combs you ever saw; and I have incubators, runs, colony-houses, and all the rest of it. They are raised on the strictest scientific principles and yield me the greater part of my income. That is the reason I feel obliged to return--if Mac is no longer able--or willing--to get up at night. One must not neglect the chicks--the little ones. I doubt if real babies are more trouble. I don't mind telling you that I have resolved to make a fortune out of chickens, if only that I may be able to live as I should in San Francisco. But I must go back and do the greater part of the work myself."

"Make a fortune--out of chickens! How odd that sounds! Not in the least romantic, but rather the more interesting for that. But why don't you let your ranch for dairy and grazing purposes, as we do? They bring us in a very good income--have done, so far."

"There are about nineteen thousand acres in Lumalitas, and some forty thousand in the southern ranch. I possess exactly three hundred and thirty-two, forty-five of which are marsh. You have now nearly the whole of the original grants, for as my father and uncle sold or mortgaged portions--and could not pay--your agents bought in. You may remember."

"There is seldom any correspondence. Mr. Colton has always had a free hand--yes--I do recall--vaguely. So I am profiting at your expense. I am afraid that must seem unjust to you."

"Not in the least. I did not choose my paternal relatives, but I long since accepted them with philosophy. I am thankful to have anything. Why don't you go to California and look at your property?--live on it for a few years? You could make far more out of it if you ran it yourself. The lease of Lumalitas must expire very soon. I do wish you would come and pay me a visit, and--Mr.--what on earth am I to call him?"

"Jack, of course," said Lady Victoria, warmly, although she would have been swift to resent the liberty had the new relative been so indiscreet.

"I never could manage Jack--never! I can't feel, see him, as Jack. I think Cousin Elton will do."

"Quite so. I shouldn't wonder at all if we went. Jack is rather keen on American politics, knows his Bryce--I suppose it is in the blood. He even takes in an American Review. I have always rather wanted to visit California, and started for it once upon a time--on my wedding journey. But we were entertained so delightfully in New York and Washington that before we realized what an American summer meant it was too hot to cross the continent, and we accepted an invitation to the Adirondacks, intending to return to England in the course of a month. But Arthur broke his leg, and by the time he was well again it was not safe for me to travel. So we rented a place in Virginia, where there was good sport, and there Jack was born. Here we are. Rest under that tree while I interview the erring maiden."

VII

Isabel sat on the bench under an ancient oak for half an hour or more, but took no note of the time. In rural America one always seems to hear the whir of distant machinery and responds to its tensity in the depths of some nerve centre; but in England's open the tendency is to dream away the hours, the nerves as blunt as in the tropics; unless, indeed, one happens to be so astir within that one rebels in responding, and conceives of ultimate hatred for this incompassionate arrogant peace of England.

Isabel had been roused from her mood of unreasoning content by her contact with the older woman, but for a few moments her thoughts waved to and fro in that large tranquillity like pendent moss in a gentle breeze. There was a stir of life in the little village; a window was thrown open; a man came out to the pump and filled a bucket with water; a child cried for its breakfast; the birds were singing in the trees. But they barely rippled the calm. Isabel's eyes dwelt absently upon a white line along a distant hill-top, made, no doubt, by Caesar's troops; for she had heard that the mosaic floors of Roman houses had been discovered under one of the fields in the neighborhood. This information, imparted by Lord Hexam's cousin, Mrs. Throfton, a lady interested in neither Bridge nor gossip, had not excited her as it might have done before her archaeological experience at headquarters, but she was glad to recall it now, for that white road, sharply insistent in the surrounding green, was one of the perceptible vincula of history.

It was all old--old--old; an illimitable backward vista. And she was as new, as out of tune with it as the motorcar flashing like a lost and distracted comet along that hill-top in a cloud of historied dust: she with her problems, her egoisms, the fateful independence of the modern girl. In a fashion she was one of the chosen of earth, but she doubted if the women who had toiled in these villages, or in centuries past had lived their lives in the mansions of their indubious lords, had not had greater compensations than she. Unbroken monotony and a saving sense of the inevitable must in time create for the soul something of the illimitable horizon of the vast level spaces of the earth.

And she? At twenty-five she had lost her old habit of staring with veiled eyes into some sweet ambiguous future, her girlish intensity of emotion. But her theories, in general, were sound, and she had ticketed even her minor experiences. She knew that character was the most significant of all individual forces, and that if developed in strict adjustment to the highest demands of society, dragging strength out of the powers of the universe, were it not inborn, the book of one's objective future at least need never be closed prematurely by those inexorable social forces, which, whatever the weak spots on the surface of life, invariably place a man in the end according to his deserts. She had seen her father, with all his advantages of birth and talents, and early importance in the community, gradually shunned, shelved, dismissed from the daily life of steadier if less gifted men, almost unknown to the young generation. He had clung to certain strict notions of honor through it all, however, and at his death the county had experienced a spasm of remorse and attended his funeral; the sermon had been eloquent with masterly omissions, and even the newspaper that had vilified him in his days of political influence came out with an obituary, which, when included in some future county history, would give to posterity quite as good an impression of him as he deserved.

And James Otis had had his virtues. One of his claims to redemption survived in his daughter. He had reared her in the strict principles and precepts of his New England ancestors, many of which are generally more useful in the life of a man. This early instillation, taken in connection with himself as a commanding illustration in subcontraries, had given Isabel a directness of vision invaluable to a girl in no haste to place her life in stronger hands. Whatever her dissatisfactions and disillusions, her road lay along the upper reaches; the second rate, the failures from birth, the criminal classes, far below. Her start in life was indefectible, and she knew that did the necessity arise to-morrow she could support herself and ask no quarter.

Perhaps, she mused, she would be happier in the necessity, for the problem of roof and bread is an abiding substitute for the problem of what to do with one's life. But she had never known an anxious moment regarding the bare necessities, and although there was something pleasantly stimulating in the prospect of making a fortune and being able to live as she wished in the city of her birth--the only object for which she retained any passion in her affections--she smiled somewhat cynically at the modest outlook.

Environments like the present were uplifting, almost deindividualizing, and there had been a time when she had known seconds in the face of nature's surprises that were distinct spiritual experiences. She believed they would return when she was in her own land once more, and Europe a book of fading memories. Her love of beauty at least was as keen as ever, and now that Europe was off her mind, leaving the proper sense of surfeit behind it, no doubt she would have a sense of actually beginning life when the time came to take an active part in it, and she assumed a position of some importance in her own community. She was far too sensible for ingratitude, and fully appreciated the gifts that life had so liberally dealt her. And she fully believed in work as the universal panacea. The mere thought of a busy future brought a glow to her heart. She rose with a smile as Lady Victoria emerged from the cottage at the upper end of the village.

Lady Victoria was not smiling. Her brows were drawn, and she looked angry and contemptuous.

"The little idiot!" she exclaimed, as they started briskly for home. "This is the first failure I have had in ten years. That is one of my boasts. And I took particular pains with that girl. Now Jack will have the agreeable task of coercing the man into marrying her, for it appears that his ardor has cooled."

Her brow cleared in a few moments, but she seemed to have had enough of conversation, and it was evident that words for words' sake, or as a flimsy chain between signposts of genuine interest, had no place in her social rubric. Isabel, who was equally indifferent, strode along beside her without so much as a comment, and so confirmed the good impression she had made on her mettlesome relative. As they approached the house, Lady Victoria turned to her with a smile that brought sweetness to her eyes rather than any one of her more dazzling qualities.

"I am generally in my boudoir at five," she said. "Come in this afternoon for a chat before tea, if you have nothing better to do. Now run and get ready for breakfast."

VIII

Whether or not Mr. Gwynne had made up his mind to follow his mother's advice and employ a new weapon in his siege of Mrs. Kaye, or whether, like common mortals, he was subject to the natural impulses of youth, the most novel of the guests of Capheaton found herself on his right in the informality of breakfast, and the object of his solicitude. He fetched her bacon and toast from the sideboard, and when he discovered that she did not like cream in her tea, carried her cup back to his mother and waited for the more pungent substitute. And then he actually made an effort to entertain her. There was a flicker of surprised amusement in the neighborhood, but Isabel accepted his attentions as a matter of course, assuming that the young gentleman felt refreshed after a night's rest in his own bed, or had awakened to a sense of her importance as a member of his family. It was not until she caught Mrs. Kaye's eye and read a contemptuous power to retaliate, that she experienced a certain zest in the situation. With the magnetism of intelligent interest in her own eyes, she turned to Gwynne with a question that betrayed a flattering acquaintance with one of his less popular books, then hung upon the monologue of which he promptly delivered himself. It was characteristic that he either contributed little to the conversation or monopolized it; and he reflected, as he talked of the personal experience which led up to the episode of her interest, that he had never before gazed into eyes at once so lovely and so fine. He disliked American girls, partly because they had shown no disposition to join the ranks of those that lived to spoil him, partly because he believed them to be shallow and cold. Some of the married women had attracted him, but not before they had lived long enough to develop the stronger qualities of the older races; he had his ideals and was not easily satisfied. He was deeply in love with Mrs. Kaye, for her brilliant subtle mind and powerful appeal to his passions had blinded him to her defects, and he was convinced that his heart had travelled to its predestined goal. Nevertheless, he decided that his new cousin, if as cold as the rest of her youthful compatriots, was worth cultivating for her intelligence and obvious talent for good-comradeship.

But in a moment a subject was started that entirely diverted his mind and upset the lively tenor of the breakfast-table.

"Where is Lorcutt?" asked some one, abruptly, referring to a brother of Lord Brathland, who had lost heavily and cheerfully at Bridge the night before.

Isabel's eyes happened to have wandered to the face of the man opposite. To her surprise it became livid. He turned instantly to Gwynne, however, and said: "I should have told you--I quite forgot--he asked me to make his excuses. He got a telegram--bad news--Bratty is dead."

Involuntarily Isabel glanced at Mrs. Kaye; Flora had hinted to her of the lady's designs. That face for once was ghastly and unmasked, but the eyes were not glittering with grief.

"Impossible!" she cried, sharply. "Lord Brathland? Why--I saw him only two days ago, in London. He was as well as possible."

The others barely noticed her. Their astonished eyes were fixed on the first speaker, Captain Ormond, who was sitting very erect, as if to receive the questions fired at him as a brave man faces the hiss of lead on the field.

"I know little," he replied; "except that Brathland was suddenly attacked by appendicitis two nights ago and that an operation was immediately performed--"

"Friday night!" cried Mrs. Kaye. "Why he spent an hour with me that afternoon, and was to dine with Lord Zeal and Lord Raglin and half a dozen other men that night--they all came up to London to talk over one of Sir Cadge Vanneck's mines. Why--I remember you were to be there. Surely Lord Brathland was well then?"

"He was looking very seedy when he came in. I happened to sit next to him--told him he ought to go home. Finally he got so bad he decided that he would, and as he left the table he fainted. Several of us saw him to bed. He said he didn't want his family fidgeting him, and the surgeon said he would be all right in a few days. I thought he was out of danger when I came down last night, so said nothing about it to Harold."

"Was he taken home?" asked Gwynne, whose eyes had never left Ormond's face.

"No--to Raglin's room up-stairs. The dinner was at the Club."

"I cannot understand why his family was not summoned at the last!" exclaimed Lady Victoria.

"Well, there's only the old duke and Harold, you see. Dick is out in Africa. I suppose they didn't want to agitate the duke until the last moment and couldn't find Harold until this morning. Besides, Raglin was with him, and he is a relative, at least. It is awfully sudden. I have been upset ever since Harold woke me up this morning and told me; and hated to speak of it."

"Who was the surgeon?" asked Gwynne.

"Ballast."

"Ballast? Who is he? Why not one of the big men, in heaven's name?" cried Mrs. Kaye.

"Well--they were all out of town--naturally enough at this time of year. We had to take what we could get. No doubt Lester or Masten was telegraphed for later. I--all of us--left the affair in Raglin's hands."

The company broke into general comment, and under cover of the confusion Isabel distinctly heard Gwynne demand:

"What's up your sleeve, Ormond?"

And the response: "For God's sake, old chap, don't ask!"

IX

Gwynne had never recognized the contingency of a serious rival in the affections of the woman he had elected to mate, and had he heard of the late Lord Brathland's attentions it would not have occurred to him that Mrs. Kaye could weigh a prospective dukedom against the reflected glories of his own career. He intended to be prime-minister before he was forty, and older and soberer heads shared his confidence. It was true that Mrs. Kaye was an emphatic Conservative--scorning even the compromise of Liberal-Unionism--and that so far he had been unable to convert her; but he did not take any woman's political convictions very seriously, knowing that they commonly owed their inspiration to social ambition, a desire for a career, or to marital comradeship. The latter he made no doubt would operate in his own case as soon as the lady gave him the opportunity to demand it as his right; and his sharp political discussions with her were among the spiciest of his experiences. She rarely expressed herself in every-day language; and although it had crossed his mind that epigrammatic matrimony might grow oppressive, he had reminded himself that her speech was but a part of a too cultivated individuality and would be unable to endure the strain of daily intercourse. Although he had in his composition little of the femininity that gives a certain type of man a sympathetic comprehension of women, his Celtic blood imparted a subtle understanding of their foibles of which he was but half aware. More than once this subconscious penetration had induced a speedy recovery from misplaced affections; but the toils of Julia Kaye, who piqued, allured, repelled, dazzled, now and again snubbed every one else for his sake, bound him helpless. He was grateful for his mother's abetment, although it somewhat surprised him; but his mother was the woman of whom he had the least comprehension.

So far Mrs. Kaye had ignored his several proposals, but of this he thought nothing. He would have cared little for a woman to be had for the asking; and he rather welcomed any treatment that stirred the somewhat sluggish surfaces of his nature.

He had determined, however, to force a definite answer from her during this visit, and although he was far too courteous a host to embarrass a guest, he knew that were Mrs. Kaye deliberately to grant him a private interview he should be at liberty to press his suit.

Immediately after the hour in the smoking-room that followed breakfast, he started in search of her; but although many of the women were scattered throughout the lower rooms, reading, writing, gossiping, he saw nothing of his inamorata. Flora Thangue happened to be standing alone, and he went up to her impulsively.

"Do you know if Julia has gone to church?" he asked, without circumlocution.

"She went to her room directly after breakfast. I fancy she is rather cut up over Lord Brathland's death," replied the astute Miss Thangue.

"Of course; we all are--poor Bratty! He was rather a bounder, but it is natural to recall his virtues. Flora, go and tell her I want her to come for a walk. I can't go to her room myself, and I don't care to send a servant."

Miss Thangue reflected. Probably this was the most favorable moment for a repulse that he could have chosen. She was sincerely fond of him and distrusted Mrs. Kaye as much as she disliked her.

"Very well," she said. "I will see what I can do."

Mrs. Kaye admitted her promptly and presented an unstained front, although her color was lower than usual. She was a woman of too much natural and acquired poise to remain askew under any shock. But she had experienced an hour of mixed emotions in which a confused and wondering sense of defeat was paramount. It had left her a little aghast, for although she had met with the inevitable snubs in her upward course, she rarely permitted them to agitate her memory in these days when she had grown to believe herself one of the spoiled favorites of destiny; and her fibres were by no means sensitive. But this sudden blow was a reminder that fate had been capricious to spoiled darlings before. She had stood almost motionless before the window from the moment she had entered her room until Miss Thangue knocked at the door, and by that time she had repoised herself and set her heavy mouth in a hard line as she reflected upon her own will as a factor in any game with life.

"Jack wants you to go for a walk," announced Miss Thangue, who saw no occasion for subtlety.

"That means he intends to propose again," said Mrs. Kaye, in her carefully modulated voice. "I don't know that I care about it. I have letters to write."

"Why not get it over? You could compel him to believe, if you chose, that you have no intention of marrying him, and it would be rather a kindness; he has so much else to think about, and he certainly should have a free mind before the opening of Parliament. If you really did Jack any harm," she added, deliberately, "Vicky would never forgive you--nor a good many others."

"I wouldn't do him any harm for the world," said Mrs. Kaye, casting down her eyes and looking very young and innocent. "But I should hate to give him up. After all, there is no one half so interesting. Well, I'll go down and have it over."

A few moments later she joined Gwynne at the foot of the staircase, and they went out to the woods. She looked her best in a smart walking-frock of white tweed, and a red toque; for the tailor costume modifies where the elaborate accentuates.

Her brilliant eyes melted as Brathland's name was mentioned; naturally at once.

"What a dreadful--shocking thing!" she cried. "I do not realize it at all. Poor dear, we were such friends--and I saw him only a few hours before. Have you heard anything more?"

"Ormond ran off to town directly after breakfast--as if he were afraid of being asked too many questions. I have an idea that he kept the cat in the bag. I saw my cousin Zeal yesterday, and thought he looked as if he had something besides his health on his mind."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Kaye, startled. "What else could it be?"

"Well, Bratty was rather a flasher," said Gwynne, innocently. "The dinner may not have been at the Club at all, and there is a little chorus-girl that engaged the fickle Bratty's affections for a time, and proclaimed her desire for vengeance from the house-tops when he transferred himself to a rival at the Adelphi. She is a Neapolitan, and that sort may carry a stiletto even in prosaic old London. Or perhaps poor Bratty was despatched with the carving-knife. No wonder he didn't want his family. But whatever it was, he has paid the penalty himself, poor chap, and no doubt the matter will be hushed up."

"How disgusting! I don't want to think of human slums on this heavenly Sunday morning."

"Nor to be proposed to, I suppose?"

"I don't mind, Jack dear."

She looked girlish and very piquant. Jack took her hand. She did not withdraw it, and they walked silently in the shadowed quiet of the wood. His heart beat almost audibly. Never before had she given him such definite encouragement. He could think of nothing to say that would not sound banal to this woman of the ready tongue. But agitation unlocks wayward fancies and sends them scurrying inopportunely across the very foreground of the mind. The vagrant hope that she would not accept him in an epigram restored his balance, and he turned to her with his habitual air of confidence, albeit his eyes and mouth were restless.

"I want an answer to-day," he said, boldly. "And there is only one answer I will take. I have let you play with me, as that seemed to be your caprice, and I love caprice in a woman. But there is an end to everything and I want to marry before Parliament meets."

"And you never thought I would not marry you?" she asked, in some wonder.

"I have never faced the possibility of failure in my life. And you are as much to me as my career. I cannot imagine life without either."

He suddenly put his hand under her chin and lifted her face; she was of tiny stature and this disadvantage in the presence of man was not the least subtle of her charms. "Say yes quickly," he cried, and the strength of his will and passion vibrated to her through the medium he had established. But she pouted and drew back.

"Perhaps I want a career of my own. You would swallow me whole."

"You could become the most powerful woman in the Liberal party--have a salon and all the rest of it."

"I happen to be a Conservative."

"What has that to do with it? Or politics with love, for that matter? Tell me that you love me. That is all I care about."

"It is only during the engagement that love is all. Marriage is the great public school of life; the passions fall meekly into their proper place--beside the prosaic appetites, the objective demands; somewhat below the faculties that distinguish the higher kingdom."

"Indeed? Well, I am sanguine enough to believe that we would prove the exception. I hardly dare think of it!" he burst out. "For God's sake keep your epigrams for other people and be a woman pure and simple."

She looked both as she permitted her full red mouth to tremble and his arms to take sudden possession of her.

X

In the large liberty of an English country-house Isabel might have found the long morning tedious had she been of a more sociable habit. Lady Victoria, Mrs. Throfton, and Lady Cecilia Spence went to church; all three, as great ladies, having a dutiful eye to the edification of humbler folk. Flora Thangue spent the greater part of the morning writing letters for her hostess, the men fled to the golf-links, and the rest of the women not engaged in vehement political discussion, or Bridge, were striding across country. Isabel, tempted by the charmingly fitted writing-table in her room, although an indolent correspondent, wrote a long and amply descriptive letter to her sister, which her brother-in-law, being more than usually hard up at the moment of its arrival, transposed into fiction and illustrated delightfully for a local newspaper. Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores, the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys. She had a quick instinct for the best in all things, but cared less for pictures than for other treasures of the past: marbles, the architecture in old streets, hard brown schlosses on their lonely heights, the Gothic spaces of cathedrals, the high and fervent imaginations, immortal yet nameless, in the carvings on stone; the jewelled facades of Orvieto and Siena, the romantic grandeur of the Alhambra.

She opened a door at the back of the central hall and found herself in a pillared corridor with a door at either end. Both rooms were open, and as a blue cloud hung about the entrance to the left, she turned to what proved to be the library of Capheaton. It was a square light apartment, with the orthodox number of books, but with so many desks and writing-tables that it looked more like the business corner of the mansion. Here, indeed, as Isabel was to learn, Lady Victoria held daily conference with her housekeeper and stewards, interviewed the women of the tenantry, and those active and philanthropic ladies of every district that aspire to carry the burdens of others. Here Gwynne kept his Blue Books and thought out his speeches, but it was not a favorite room with the guests.

Isabel had found many books scattered about the house, solid and flippant, old and new, but nothing by her host. She rightly assumed that his works would be disposed for posterity in the family library, and found them on a shelf above one of the large orderly tables. As a matter of fact she had read but two of his books, and she selected another at random and carried it to a comfortable chair by the window. The work was an exposition of conditions in one of the South African colonies, containing much criticism that had been defined by the Conservative press as youthful impertinence, but surprisingly sound to the unprejudiced. What had impressed Isabel in his other books and claimed her admiration anew was his maturity of thought and style; she saw that this volume had been published when he was twenty-four, written, doubtless, when he was a year or two younger. She felt a vague pity for a man that seemed to have had no youth. Since his graduation from Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly, for he appeared to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel. She wondered if he would take his youth in his bald-headed season, like the self-made American millionaire.

His style, pure, lucid, virile, distinguished, might have been the outcome of midnight travail, or, like his eloquence on the platform, a direct flight from the quickened brain. It certainly bore no resemblance to his amputated table talk. But in a moment she dismissed her speculations, for she had discovered a quality, overlooked before, but arresting in the recent light of his cold arrogance and haughty self-confidence. Behind his strict regard for facts and the keen insight and large grasp of his subject, which, without his evident care for the graces, would have distinguished his work from the dry report of equally conscientious but less gifted men, was the lonely play of a really lofty imagination, and a noble human sympathy. As she read on, this warm full-blooded quality, tempered always by reason, grew more and more visible to her alert sense; and when the fires in his mind blazed forth into a revelation of a passionate love of beauty, both in nature and in human character, Isabel realized what such a man's power over his audience must be; when this second self, so effectually concealed, suddenly burst into being.

"It is too bad a woman would have to live with the other!" she thought, as she raised her eyes and saw Gwynne emerge from the woods with Mrs. Kaye. "I cannot say that I envy her."

"By Jove, they have an engaged look!"

Isabel turned with a start, but greeted Lord Hexam with a smile. He was as yet her one satisfactory experience of the young English nobleman, whom, like most American girls, she had unconsciously foreshadowed in doublet and hose. Hexam was quite six feet, with a fine military carriage; he had been in the Guards and had not left the army until after two years of active service; his blue eyes were both honest and intelligent, and he was generally clean cut and highly bred.

He drew up a chair beside Isabel and reflected that she was even handsomer than he had thought, with the sunlight warming the ivory whiteness of her skin, although it contracted the mobile pupils of her eyes; and that little black moles when rightly placed were more attractive than he had thought possible. They gave a sort of daring unconscious eighteenth-century coquetry to what was otherwise a somewhat severe style of beauty. But he was a man for whom a woman's hair had a peculiar fascination, and while they were uttering commonplaces at random his eyes wandered to the soft yet massive coils encircling Isabel's shapely head, and lingered there.

"Pardon me!" he said, boyishly. "But I always thought--don't you know?--that hair like that was only in novels and poems and that sort of thing. Is it all your own?" he asked, with sudden suspicion.

"You would think so if you had to carry it for a day. I should have had it cut off long ago if it had happened to be coarse hair. It is an inherited evil of which I am too vain to rid myself. The early Spanish women of my family all had hair that touched the ground when they stood up. I have an old sketch of a back view of three of them taken side by side; you see nothing but billows of fine silky hair. But I have put it out of sight, as it looks rather like an advertisement for a famous hair restorer."

"I'd give a lot to see yours down. It's wonderful--wonderful!"

"Well, I have promised a private view to some of the women. If Lady Victoria thinks it quite proper perhaps I'll admit you."

"I'll ask her for a card directly she comes home. Let it be this afternoon just after tea."

"I wonder if they really are engaged," said Isabel, who had been told that Englishmen never paid compliments, and was growing embarrassed under the round-eyed scrutiny. Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye had paused by a sundial.

"Who? Oh yes, I should think so, although there was some talk that poor Bratty--but no doubt that was mere rumor, or Mrs. Kaye wouldn't be on with Jack like that. By Jove, he is engaged. I never saw him look so--so--well, I hardly know what."

"Do you approve of the match?"

"If my consent is asked I shall give them my blessing. He is the salt of the earth, although a bit lumpy now and then; and she is such a jolly little thing, full of genuine affection--just the wife for Jack."

"You believe in her, then?" Isabel wondered, as many another has done, at the miasma that seems to rise and dim a man's perceptive faculties when he is called upon to estimate the worth of a fascinating woman.

"Rather! Don't you?"

"She struck me as being one of the few people without a redeeming virtue. To be sure that has a distinction of its own."

"Oh!" He wondered if so handsome a girl shared the common rancor of her age and sex against charming young widows.

"And the worst mannered," continued Isabel, who knew exactly what he thought. "And plebeian in her marrow. I wish my cousin had chosen Miss Thangue or any one else."

"But he couldn't marry Flora," said the literal young nobleman. "She hasn't a penny, and is the friend of all our mothers. But I'm sorry you've such a bad opinion of Mrs. Kaye. She's tremendously popular with us. I'm not one of her circle--retinue would be more like it; but I've always thought her the brightest little thing going, and I'm sure she wouldn't harm a fly."

"I'm sure she would do nothing so little worth her while. Well, there is no need for your eyes to be opened; but I wish that my cousin's might be. I suppose that you have the same faith in him that so many others--himself included--seem to have."

"Rather!--You are a most critical person. Haven't you?"

"I think I have. In fact I am sure of it. That is the reason I have been wishing he were an American."

He laughed boyishly. "That is a good one! But we need him over here. You haven't the slightest idea how much. We get into a blue funk every time Zeal takes a cold on his chest. To quote Mrs. Kaye, 'A Liberal peer is as useful as a fifth wheel to a coach, and as ornamental as whitewash.' Clever, ain't it?"

"I think people are touchingly easy to satisfy! I have been treated to several of Mrs. Kaye's epigrams and heard as many more quoted. It seems to me that nothing could be easier than the manufacture of that popular superfluity."

"Perhaps--with time to think them out beforehand. Anyhow, it's rather jolly to hear things you can remember."

"I should be the last to deny her cleverness," said Isabel, dryly. But being by no means desirous that he should find her too acid, she dropped her eyes for a moment, then raised two dazzling wells of innocence. "I am tired of the subject of my cousin and Mrs. Kaye," she murmured. "Are you as ambitious as Jack?"

"No use." He stared helplessly down into the blue flood. "There is no escape from the 'Peers' for me, although my father, I am happy to say, is as healthy as I am. But after the brain cells become brittle--one never knows. I too am a Liberal, and am getting in all the good work of which I am capable while there is yet time. I don't go as far as Jack--don't want to see the 'Peers' chucked. I have a strong reverence for traditions, and no taste whatever for democracy--that would be too long a step. And I think a man should be content to be useful, do the best he can, in his own class; and be loyal to that class whatever happens. Of course I understand Jack's point of view, because I understand him so well, and know that he would be the most maimed and wretched man on earth in the Upper House; but personally, I think one should be prepared to accept inherited responsibilities."

And then, as they were both young, and mutually attracted, they found many subjects of common interest to keep them in the library until the gong summoned them to luncheon.

XI

Flora Thangue, after luncheon, took Isabel out in a pony cart, and although too loyal to gossip intimately about her patrons, incidentally directed a search-light into certain of their recesses; a light that was to prove useful to Isabel in her future intercourse with them, although it did not in the least prepare her for an experience that awaited her later in the day. Miss Thangue's mind was occupied at first with the obvious engagement of Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye.

"That woman was born to upset calculations!" she exclaimed. "Yonder is the castle of the dukes of Arcot. We are going over to a party to-morrow night. It really looks like a castle with all those gray battlements and towers, doesn't it? We don't call every tuppeny-hapenny villa inhabited by a nobleman a 'castle' as they do in Germany and Austria. Well--that clever little panther! I'd like to pack her into one of her own epigrams and bury her alive. I _know_ she was as good as engaged to Brathland. Now, having decided that, all things considered, Jack is the best match going--for everybody believes Lord Zeal to be worse than he is--well! there is something appalling in a woman who can adjust herself as quickly as that; whose caprices, sentiments, passions, all natural impulses, are completely controlled by her reason. I wish Vicky saw through her; she has so much influence over Jack, and such deadly powers of ridicule. But Vicky, like all spoiled women of the world, is as much the victim of the subtle flatterer as any man, and Julia Kaye has managed her beautifully. She considered Jack for a bit before she was sure of Brathland. Vicky's real reason for indorsing Julia Kaye--between us--is because she believes her to be one of that small and select band that can hold a man on all his various sides, and she wants to avoid the probability of an absorbing and possibly tragic liaison--like Parnell's, for instance--which might interfere with, perhaps ruin, Jack's career. That is all very well, as far as it goes, but I believe Julia Kaye to be so entirely selfish that when Jack finds her out he will sicken of life. I have had the best of opportunities to study women, and I have brought Jack up--I had the honor to be the highly idealized heroine of his calf-love, and have been more or less in his confidence ever since. In certain ways I understand him better than his mother does, for she has seen too much of the worst side of men, and is at heart too _blasee_ to have much respect for or knowledge of their spiritual side; and if I have ever had any maternal spasms in my virtuous spinsterhood they have been over Jack. Can't you help us out?" she asked, turning suddenly to the stranger, to whom she was powerfully attracted. "Are you as indifferent as you look?"

"I have no idea! But although I should not in the least object to be cast for a part in this domestic drama, I don't care for it at the price of too much 'Jack.' To attempt to cut out Mrs. Kaye I should need a little genuine enthusiasm; and frankly, your beloved prodigy does not inspire it. I like Lord Hexam far better."

"Oh, Jimmy! He's a fine fellow, but only a type."

"He hasn't a rampant ego, if that is what you mean. And for every-day purposes--" She shrugged her shoulders. "I could endure and even be deeply interested in Elton Gwynne if he happened to be my brother and I could hook my finger in his destiny; but in any other capacity--no, thank you!"

"Are you going to marry Jimmy?"

"I did not even know he was not already married. Do you see nothing in a man but a husband over here? If I ever do marry it will not be before I am forty."

"That is rather long--if you see much of the world meanwhile! And Jimmy, although there is not much money in the family--about twenty thousand a year--would be a very good match. He will be Earl of Hembolt--a fine old title."

"You assume that such a plum may be pulled by the first comer."

"Rather not! But you Americans have such a way with you! What is more to the point, I never saw him so bowled over."

"Well," said Isabel, imperturbably, "I will think of it. This English country and these wonderful old houses, with their inimitable atmosphere, appeal to me very strongly. I have more the feeling of being at home here than I had even in Spain, where I have roots. And socially and picturesquely, there is nothing to compare with the position of an English noblewoman."

Flora turned her eyes frankly to the classic profile beside her. Isabel had removed her hat, and, framed in the heavy coils of her hair, her features impressed the anxious observer as even more Roman than early American; although had she but reflected she would have remembered that the type of the Caesars had its last stronghold in the United States of the eighteenth century. Isabel looked like a very young Roman matron, but her resemblance to the stately effigies in the galleries of Florence and Rome, strong in virtue or vice, was so striking that once more Flora longed for her support. A woman with such capabilities would be wasted in the role of a mere countess--but as the wife of an aspiring Liberal statesman! She devoutly wished that the American had arrived six months earlier, or that Brathland still lived.

But she was a very tactful person and was about to drop the subject, when Isabel slowly turned her eyes. They looked so much like steel that for the moment they seemed to have lost their blue.

"I have made up my mind to do something to prevent this marriage," she announced. "I do not know what, as yet. I shall be guided by events."

And Flora devoutly kissed her, then gossipped pleasantly about the other guests and the people in the neighborhood. Isabel was curious to know something of the duchess she was to meet on the morrow.

"Does she really look like a duchess?" she asked, so innocently that Flora laughed and forgot the Roman-American profile, and the fateful eyes that had given her an uncomfortable sensation a moment before.

"Well--yes--she does--rather. It is the fashion in these days not to--to be smart above all things, excessively democratic, animated, unaffected, clever. But our duchess here is rather old-fashioned, very lofty of head and expression. She has a look of floating from peak to peak, and although passee is still a beauty. To be honest, she is hideously dull, but as good a creature as ever lived, and all that the ideal duchess should be--so high-minded that she has never suspected the larkiest of her friends."

"Well, I am glad she looks the role. I have artistic cravings."

They drove for an hour through the beautiful quiet green country, past many old stone villages that might have been the direct sequence of the cave era. An automobile skimmed past and the pony sat down on its haunches. Isabel had a glimpse of a delicate high-bred face set like a panel in a parted curtain.

"That is the duchess," said Miss Thangue. "She wouldn't wear goggles for the world, and only gets into an automobile occasionally to please the duke. There is nothing old-fashioned about him."

"She looks as if her name ought to be Lucy," said Isabel, to whom the pure empty face had appeared like a vision from some former dull existence, and left behind it an echo of insupportable ennui.

XII

Isabel had looked forward all day to the promised talk with the somewhat formidable relative for whom, however, she had conceived one of those enthusiasms peculiar to her age and sex. Her wardrobe was barren of the costly afternoon gowns smart women affect, but she put on an organdie, billowy with many ruffles, that consorted with the season, at least. Blue cornflowers were scattered over the white transparent surface, and she possessed no more becoming frock. Had she been on her way to a tryst with Lord Hexam she would have thrust a rose in her hair, accentuated the smallness of her waist with a blue ribbon, the whiteness of her throat with a line of black velvet; but she had the instinct of dress, which teaches, among many things, that self-consciousness in external adornment provokes amusement in other women.

She had not the least idea where to find Lady Victoria's boudoir, although a casual reference by Flora Thangue suggested that it was on the bedroom floor. She lost herself in the interminable corridors and finally ran into Elton Gwynne.

"Your mother expects me--where is her boudoir?" she asked.

He was at peace with the world, and answered, good-naturedly: "I'll pilot you. Her rooms are over on the other side."

"You look as if you should be congratulated about something," she said, demurely. "There are all sorts of rumors flying about."

She had half-expected to be snubbed, but he was not in the humor to snub anybody. "You can congratulate me!" he said, emphatically. "The most wonderful woman in the world has promised to marry me."

"I hope you will be happy," said Isabel, conventionally. She resented his sudden drop from his pedestal, for he looked sentimental and somewhat sheepish. Still, her youth warmed to his in spite of herself, and again he noticed with a passing surprise that her eyes were both lovely and intellectual. He was hardly aware that coincidentally his Julia's eyes met his mental vision with a glance somewhat too hard and brilliant, but he caught Isabel's hand and gave it a little shake.

"Thank you!" he exclaimed. "That was said as if you jolly well meant it. There are my mother's rooms."

He went off whistling, and Isabel raised her hand and looked at it meditatively; his own had been unexpectedly warm and magnetic. She had imagined that his grasp would be cold and loose.

He had indicated a private corridor, and she entered it and approached a door ajar. There was no response to her knock, but as she was expected, and Lady Victoria no doubt was still dressing, she pushed open the door and entered. The room was empty, but Isabel was instantly impressed with its reflection of an individuality, although of a side that had attracted her least. Here was none of the old-time stiffness of Capheaton, and there was a conspicuous absence of dead masters and their pupils. It was not a large room. The walls were covered with a Japanese gold paper to within four feet of the floor where it was met by a tapestry of Indian cashmeres, and from it was separated by a narrow shelf set thick with photographs in silver frames, and with odd and exquisite bibelots. On the walls were artists' sketches, and two or three canvases of the Impressionist and Secessionist schools, expressive of the ardent temperaments of their creators. In the place of honor was a painting of Salambo in the folds of her python.

There were several deep chairs and a mighty divan covered with gold-colored cushions and a tiger-skin, whose mate was on the floor. The gloom of the afternoon was excluded by heavy gold-colored curtains, and the only, but quite sufficient light, filtered through an opalescent globe upheld by a twisted bronze female of the modern Munich school, that looked like nothing so much as Alice elongating in Wonderland.

Isabel suddenly felt herself and her organdie absurdly out of place in this room with its enchantress atmosphere. She wished that Lady Victoria had made the appointment for the library, which was equally in tune with another side of her.

She was even meditating a retreat, inexplicably embarrassed, when an inner door opened and Lady Victoria entered. She wore a tea-gown of a sort, black and yellow, open over the soft lace of a chemisette, although a dog-collar of tiny golden sequins clasped her throat. In her hair a golden butterfly trembled, and in that light she would have looked little older than her guest had it not been for the expression of her face. It was this expression that arrested Isabel even more than the toilette, as she moved towards the divan without a word of greeting. It looked as if it had been put on with the costume, both intended to express a mood of the wearer: which might have been that of a tigress whose ferocity was slowly awakening with the approach of the victim. The black eyes were heavy with the lust of conquest, the points of the mouth turned up more sharply than usual; there was an insatiable vanity in the commanding poise of her head. She was as little like the woman of the morning as the sun is like the midnight, and Isabel experienced a positive terror of her.

Feeling sixteen and very foolish, she sank to the edge of a chair and muttered something about the charm of the room. Then, as Lady Victoria, who had arranged herself among the shining pillows, continued to stare at her with absolutely no change of expression, it dawned upon her that she had not been expected but that some one else was. With too little presence of mind left to retire gracefully and too much pride to appear to have ventured into the cave of Venus unasked, she managed to articulate her gratitude for the invita