“A STIFLING hot day!” General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his forehead indignantly. “What on earth this place can be like in June I can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate playing you these tricks.”

Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement.

“Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's American heat.”

“I like a climate you can depend on,” said the General, quite conscious that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by way of relief to some obscure annoyance. “Here we are sweltering in this abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's always in extremes—like the people.”

“I'm sorry to find you don't like the States, Uncle Archie.”

The young man sat down beside his uncle. They were in the deck saloon of a steamer which had left Washington about an hour before for Mount Vernon. Through the open doorway to their left they saw a wide expanse of river, flowing between banks of spring green, and above it thunderous clouds, in a hot blue. The saloon, and the decks outside, held a great crowd of passengers, of whom the majority were women.

The tone in which Roger Barnes spoke was good-tempered, but quite perfunctory. Any shrewd observer would have seen that whether his uncle liked the States or not did not in truth matter to him a whit.

“And I consider all the arrangements for this trip most unsatisfactory,” the General continued angrily. “The steamer's too small, the landing-place is too small, the crowd getting on board was something disgraceful. They'll have a shocking accident one of these days. And what on earth are all these women here for—in the middle of the day? It's not a holiday.”

“I believe it's a teachers' excursion,” said young Barnes absently, his eyes resting on the rows of young women in white blouses and spring hats who sat in close-packed chairs upon the deck—an eager, talkative host.

“H'm—Teachers!” The General's tone was still more pugnacious. “Going to learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the children here about what they're pleased to call their War of Independence. All that we did was to ask them to pay something for their own protection. What did it matter to us whether they were mopped up by the Indians, or the French, or not? ‘But if you want us to go to all the expense and trouble of protecting you, and putting down those fellows, why, hang it,’ we said, ‘you must pay some of the bill!’ That was all English Ministers asked; and perfectly right too. And as for the men they make such a fuss about, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Franklin, and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach American school-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was a man of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside my doors! And as for the Adamses—intriguers—canting fellows!—both of them.”

“Well, at least you'll give them George Washington.” As he spoke, Barnes concealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greater alertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from the doorway in the crowd outside was certainly pretty.

The red-faced, white-haired General paused a moment before replying, then broke out: “What George Washington might have been if he had held a straight course I am not prepared to say. As it is, I don't hesitate for a moment! George Washington was nothing more nor less than a rebel—a damned rebel! And what Englishmen mean by joining in the worship of him I've never been able to understand.”

“I say, uncle, take care,” said the young man, looking round him, and observing with some relief that they seemed to have the saloon to themselves. “These Yankees will stand most things, but—”

“You needn't trouble yourself, Roger,” was the testy reply; “I am not in the habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want to know is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey of yours?”

The young man's frown increased. He began to poke the floor with his stick. “I don't know why you call it absurd?”

“To me it seems both absurd and extravagant,” said the other with emphasis. “The last thing I heard of you was that Burdon and Co. had offered you a place in their office, and that you were prepared to take it. When a man has lost his money and becomes dependent upon others, the sooner he gets to work the better.”

Roger Barnes reddened under the onslaught, and the sulky expression of his handsome mouth became more pronounced. “I think my mother and I ought to be left to judge for ourselves,” he said rather hotly. “We haven't asked anybody for money yet, Uncle Archie. Burdon and Co. can have me in September just as well as now; and my mother wished me to make some friends over here who might be useful to me.”

“Useful to you. How?”

“I think that's my affair. In this country there are always openings—things turning up—chances—you can't get at home.”

The General gave a disapproving laugh. “The only chance that'll help you, Roger, at present—excuse me if I speak frankly—is the chance of regular work. Your poor mother has nothing but her small fixed income, and you haven't a farthing to chuck away on what you call chances. Why, your passage by the Lucania alone must have cost a pretty penny. I'll bet my hat you came first class.”

A SUDDEN hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below came the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on board, was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of the house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary lecture on the verandah, took them within; the railings across the doors were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.

Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more than a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried his white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain; the English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the other hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing old English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no Yankee smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth, combined with culture,—witness the books of the library,—with land-owning, a family coach, and church on Sundays: these things the Englishman understood. Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount Vernon's past, were strange to him.

They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and its balcony overlooking the river.

“This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died,” said the curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. “It is, of course, on that account sacred to every true American.”

He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G.W. and some scroll work. There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the winds breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape outside, the dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering invisibly, the generations of the future.

The General's patriotic mind was not alloyed by any harassing sense of humour; he therefore firmly reminded himself that no Englishman had a right to think of Washington as anything better than a traitor to his king and country; yet he admitted that it was perhaps natural that Americans should consider him a great man.

The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these privileged guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd was handed out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade together. An evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface of blue and gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled the house; blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia sparkled amid the coverts of young green.

Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed him; and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the young Englishman!—a magnificent figure of a man, in height and breadth and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her, possessed of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a man want with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first instinctive feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new companion, now that she began to realise him. As compared with the average man in Washington or New York, here was an exception—an Apollo!—for she too thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not remember that she had ever had to do with an Apollo before; young Barnes, therefore, was so far an event, a sensation. In the opera-house she had been vaguely struck by a handsome face. But here, in the freedom of outdoor dress and movement, he seemed to her a physical king of men; and, at the same time, his easy manner—which, however, was neither conceited nor ill-bred—showed him conscious of his advantages.

As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little. He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he belonged to the rich English world. His mother was a Lady Barnes; his father, she gathered, was dead; and he was travelling, no doubt, in the lordly English way, to get a little knowledge of the barbarians outside, before he settled down to his own kingdom, and the ways thereof. She envisaged a big Georgian house in a spreading park, like scores that she had seen in the course of motoring through England the year before.

“IS Miss Floyd at home?”

The questioner was Mrs. Verrier, who had just alighted from her carriage at the door of the house in Columbia Avenue inhabited by Miss Floyd and her chaperon.

The maid replied that Miss Floyd had not yet returned, but had left a message begging Mrs. Verrier to wait for her. The visitor was accordingly ushered to the drawing-room on the first floor.

This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's simplicity—like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued, even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white, showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and straight-legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have said, of any bourse moyenne with an eye for beauty. Fine photographs also, of Italian and Dutch pictures, suggested travel, and struck the cultivated cosmopolitan note.

Mrs. Verrier looked round it with a smile. It was all as unpretending as the maid who ushered her upstairs. Daphne would have no men-servants in her employ. What did two ladies want with them, in a democratic country? But Mrs. Verrier happened to know that Daphne's maid-servants were just as costly in their degree as the drawing-room carpet. Chosen for her in London with great care, attracted to Washington by enormous wages, these numerous damsels played their part in the general “simplicity” effect; but on the whole Mrs. Verrier believed that Daphne's household was rather more expensive than that of other rich people who employed men.

She walked through the room, looking absently at the various photographs and engravings, till her attention was excited by an easel and a picture upon it in the back drawing-room. She went up to it with a muttered exclamation.

“So she bought it! Daphne's amazing!”

For what she saw before her was a masterpiece—an excessively costly masterpiece—of the Florentine school, smuggled out of Italy, to the wrath of the Italian Government, some six months before this date, and since then lost to general knowledge. Rumour had given it first to a well-known collection at Boston; then to another at Philadelphia; yet here it was in the possession of a girl of two-and-twenty of whom the great world was just—but only just—beginning to talk.

“How like Daphne!” thought her friend, with malice. The “simple” room, and the priceless picture carelessly placed in a corner of it, lest any one should really suppose that Daphne Floyd was an ordinary mortal.

Mrs. Verrier sat down at last in a chair fronting the picture and let herself fall into a reverie. On this occasion she was dressed in black. The lace strings of a hat crowned with black ostrich feathers were fastened under her chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long, hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful beauty, were framed in and emphasised by them; her bloodless hands lay upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and visible sign of losses “far more deeply interfused.” As she sat apparently absorbed in thought before the picture, she moved, half consciously, so that she could no longer see herself in a mirror opposite.

Yet her thoughts were in truth much engaged with Daphne and Daphne's proceedings. It was now nearly three weeks since Roger Barnes had appeared on the horizon. General Hobson had twice postponed his departure for England, and was still “enduring hardness” in a Washington hotel. Why his nephew should not be allowed to manage his courtship, if it was a courtship, for himself, Mrs. Verrier did not understand. There was no love lost between herself and the General, and she made much mock of him in her talks with Daphne. However, there he was; and she could only suppose that he took the situation seriously and felt bound to watch it in the interests of the young man's absent mother.

Was it serious? Certainly Daphne had been committing herself a good deal. The question was whether she had not been committing herself more than the young man had been doing on his side. That was the astonishing part of it. Mrs. Verrier could not sufficiently admire the skill with which Roger Barnes had so far played his part; could not sufficiently ridicule her own lack of insight, which at her first meeting with him had pronounced him stupid. Stupid he might be in the sense that it was of no use to expect from him the kind of talk on books, pictures, and first principles which prevailed in Daphne's circle. But Mrs. Verrier thought she had seldom come across a finer sense of tactics than young Barnes had so far displayed in his dealings with Daphne. If he went on as he had begun, the probability was that he would succeed.

Did she, Madeleine Verrier, wish him to succeed?

Daphne had grown tragically necessary to her, in this world of American society—that section of it, at any rate, in which she desired to move, where the widow of Leopold Verrier was always conscious of the blowing of a cold and hostile breath. She was not excluded, but she was not welcome; she was not ostracised, but she had lost consideration. There had been something picturesque and appealing in her husband; something unbearably tragic in the manner of his death. She had braved it out by staying in America, instead of losing herself in foreign towns; and she had thereby proclaimed that she had no guilty sense of responsibility, no burden on her conscience; that she had only behaved as a thousand other women would have behaved, and without any cruel intention at all. But she knew all the same that the spectators of what had happened held her for a cruel woman, and that there were many, and those the best, who saw her come with distaste, and go without regret; and it was under that knowledge, in spite of indomitable pride, that her beauty had withered in a year.

And at the moment when the smart of what had happened to her—personally and socially—was at its keenest; when, after a series of quarrels, she had separated herself from the imperious mother who had been her evil genius throughout her marriage, she had made friends, unexpectedly, owing to a chance meeting at a picture-gallery, with Daphne Floyd. Some element in Daphne's nature had attracted and disarmed her. The proud, fastidious woman had given the girl her confidence—eagerly, indiscriminately. She had poured out upon her all that wild philosophy of “rights” which is still struggling in the modern mind with a crumbling ethic and a vanishing religion. And she had found in Daphne a warm and passionate ally. Daphne was nothing if not “advanced.” She shrank, as Roger Barnes had perceived, from no question; she had never been forbidden, had never forbidden herself, any book that she had a fancy to read; and she was as ready to discuss the relative divorce laws of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as the girls of fifty years ago were to talk of the fashions, or “Evangeline.” In any disputed case, moreover, between a man and a woman Daphne was hotly and instinctively on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself therefore with ardour into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's desertion, but the husband's suicide, which had been the cruel and indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made her very dear to Madeleine Verrier.

Now, as that lady sat in her usual drooping attitude, wondering what Washington would be like for her when even Daphne Floyd was gone from it, the afternoon sun stole through the curtains of the window on the street and touched some of the furniture and engravings in the inner drawing-room. Suddenly Mrs. Verrier started in her chair. A face had emerged, thrown out upon the shadows by the sun-finger—the countenance of a handsome young Jew, as Rembrandt had once conceived it. Rare and high intelligence, melancholy, and premonition:—they were there embodied, so long as the apparition lasted.

The effect on Mrs. Verrier was apparently profound. She closed her eyes; her lips quivered; she leant back feebly in her chair, breathing a name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded and the sunlight crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up; the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice was heard upon the stairs.

Daphne entered the room in what appeared to be a fit of irritation. She was scolding the parlour-maid, whose high colour and dignified silence proclaimed her both blameless and long-suffering. At the sight of Mrs. Verrier Daphne checked herself with an effort and kissed her friend rather absently.

“Dear Madeleine!—very good of you to wait. Have they given you tea? I suppose not. My household seems to have gone mad this afternoon. Sit down. Some tea, Blount, at once.”

Mrs. Verrier sank into a corner of the sofa, while Daphne, with an “Ouf!” of fatigue, took off her hat, and threw herself down at the other end, her small feet curled up beneath her. Her half-frowning eyes gave the impression that she was still out of temper and on edge.

“Where have you been?” asked her companion quietly.

“Listening to a stuffy debate in the Senate,” said Daphne without a smile.

THE reception at the White House was being given in honour of the delegates to a Peace Congress. The rooms were full without being inconveniently crowded, and the charming house opened its friendly doors to a society more congruous and organic, richer also in the nobler kind of variety than America, perhaps, can offer to her guests elsewhere. What the opera and international finance are to New York, politics and administration are, as we all know, to Washington. And the visitor from Europe, conversationally starved for want of what seem to him the only topics worth discussing, finds himself within hearing once more of ministers, cabinets, embassies, and parliamentary gossip. Even General Hobson had come to admit that—especially for the middle-aged—Washington parties were extremely agreeable. The young and foolish might sigh for the flesh-pots of New York; those on whom “the black ox had trodden,” who were at all aware what a vast tormenting, multitudinous, and headstrong world man has been given to inhabit; those who were engaged in governing any part of that world, or meant some day to be thus engaged; for them Washington was indispensable, and New York a mere entertainment.

Moreover Washington, at this time of the world's history, was the scene of one of those episodes—those brisker moments in the human comedy—which every now and then revive among us an almost forgotten belief in personality, an almost forgotten respect for the mysteries behind it. The guests streaming through the White House defiled past a man who, in a level and docketed world, appeared to his generation as the reincarnation of forces primitive, over-mastering, and heroic. An honest Odysseus!—toil-worn and storm-beaten, yet still with the spirit and strength, the many devices, of a boy; capable like his prototype in one short day of crushing his enemies, upholding his friends, purifying his house; and then, with the heat of righteous battle still upon him, with its gore, so to speak, still upon his hands, of turning his mind, without a pause and without hypocrisy, to things intimate and soft and pure—the domestic sweetness of Penelope, the young promise of Telemachus. The President stood, a rugged figure, amid the cosmopolitan crowd, breasting the modern world, like some ocean headland, yet not truly of it, one of the great fighters and workers of mankind, with a laugh that pealed above the noise, blue eyes that seemed to pursue some converse of their own, and a hand that grasped and cheered, where other hands withdrew and repelled. This one man's will had now, for some years, made the pivot on which vast issues turned—issues of peace and war, of policy embracing the civilised world; and, here, one saw him in drawing-rooms, discussing Alaric's campaigns with an Oxford professor, or chatting with a young mother about her children.

Beside him, the human waves, as they met and parted, disclosed a woman's face, modelled by nature in one of her lightest and deftest moods, a trifle detached, humorous also, as though the world's strange sights stirred a gentle and kindly mirth behind its sweet composure. The dignity of the President's wife was complete, yet it had not extinguished the personality it clothed; and where royalty, as the European knows it, would have donned its mask and stood on its defence, Republican royalty dared to be its amused, confiding, natural self.

All around—the political, diplomatic world of Washington. General Hobson, as he passed through it, greeted by what was now a large acquaintance, found himself driven once more to the inward confession—the grudging confession—as though Providence had not played him fair in extorting it—that American politicians ticians were of a vastly finer stamp than he had expected to find them. The American press was all—he vowed—that fancy had painted it, and more. But, as he looked about him at the members of the President's administration—at this tall, black-haired man, for instance, with the mild and meditative eye, the equal, social or intellectual, of any Foreign Minister that Europe might pit against him, or any diplomat that might be sent to handle him; or this younger man, sparely built, with the sane, handsome face—son of a famous father, modest, amiable, efficient; or this other, of huge bulk and height, the sport of caricature, the hope of a party, smiling already a presidential smile as he passed, observed and beset, through the crowded rooms; or these naval or military men, with their hard serviceable looks, and the curt good manners of their kind:—the General saw as clearly as anybody else, that America need make no excuses whatever for her best men, that she has evolved the leaders she wants, and Europe has nothing to teach them.

He could only console himself by the remembrance of a speech, made by a well-known man, at a military function which the General had attended as a guest of honour the day before. There at last was the real thing! The real, Yankee, spread-eagle thing! The General positively hugged the thought of it.

IN the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated. One was a well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features, a double chin, and abundant grey hair arranged in waved bandeaux above a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character, and a pair of challenging black eyes. Lady Barnes moved and spoke with authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions. She belonged to an English type common throughout all classes—quite harmless and tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by adversity.

And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity. Not much of it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through “great trials,” to the profit of her Christian character. She was quite certain, now, that everything had been for the best, and that Providence makes no mistakes. But that, perhaps, was because the “trials” had only lasted about a year; and then, so far as they were pecuniary, the marriage of her son with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance, and the chastened habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.

Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French, whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity in the broad muslin collar and cuffs—her curly brown hair simply parted on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head—her mouth a little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's discontents—she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness, as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a singular strength.

Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.

“You see, dear Mrs. French,” she was saying in a rapid, lowered voice, and with many glances at the door, “the trouble is that Daphne is never satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies over this dear old house, and now!—there's scarcely a thing in it she does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good enough for Daphne!”

The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.

“It's the ceilings, isn't it?” murmured Elsie French, glancing at the heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head, which had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing and felicitous.

“It's everything!” Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful. “I don't, of course, like to say it—but really Daphne's self-confidence is too amazing!”

“She does know so much,” said Elsie French reflectively. “Doesn't she?”

“Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person, whom she calls an ‘expert,’ to back her up. But I believe in liking what you do like, and not being bullied into what you don't like!”

“I suppose if one studies these things—” Elsie French began timidly.

“What's the good of studying!” cried Lady Barnes; “one has one's own taste, or one hasn't.”

Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a not very exacting tenant.

Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable. The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of married life, during which the young couple had rented various “places,” besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it—as Lady Barnes's tenants at a high rent—intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been invited to their councils.

Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the ancestral mansion of the Trescoes—such had been Lady Barnes's maiden name—she had received a severe shock. The outside, the shell of the house—delightful! But inside!—heavens! what taste, what decoration—what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces gone, the ceilings spoilt, the decorations “busy,” pretentious, overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys and worse Highmores—the most despicable collection of family portraits she had ever set eyes upon!

Roger had looked unhappy. “It was father and mother did it,” he admitted penitently. “But after all, Daphne, you know they are Trescoes!”—this with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.

Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young face. Yet it was a pretty mouth—the mouth, above all, of one with no doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had pronounced it “common” in her secret thoughts before she had known its owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the “bulwark of the teeth.” Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had arrived—with their baby girl—at Heston Park, after a summer of yachting and fishing in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.

MRS. BARNES, however, made no immediate reference to the matter which was in truth filling her mind. She avoided her husband and mother-in-law, both of whom were clearly anxious to capture her attention; and, by way of protecting herself from them, she spent the late afternoon in looking through Italian photographs with Dr. Lelius.

But about seven o'clock Roger found her lying on her sofa, her hands clasped behind her head—frowning—the lips working.

He came in rather consciously, glancing at his wife in hesitation.

“Are you tired, Daphne?”

“No.”

“A penny for your thoughts, then!” He stooped over her and looked into her eyes.

Daphne made no reply. She continued to look straight before her.

“What's the matter with you?” he said, at last.

“I'm wondering,” said Daphne slowly, “how many more cousins and great friends you have, that I know nothing about. I think another time it would be civil—just that!—to give me a word of warning.”

Roger pulled at his moustache. “I hadn't an idea she was within a thousand miles of this place! But, if I had, I couldn't have imagined she would have the face to come here!”

“Who is she?” With a sudden movement Daphne turned her eyes upon him.

“Well, there's no good making any bones about it,” said the man, flushing. “She's a girl I was once engaged to—for a very short time,” he added hastily. “It was the week before my father died, and our smash came. As soon as it came she threw me over.”

Daphne's intense gaze, under the slightly frowning brows, disquieted him.

“How long were you engaged to her?”

“Three weeks.”

“Had she been staying here before that?”

“Yes—she often stayed here. Daphne! don't look like that! She treated me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence about her.”

“You did care about her when you proposed to me?”

“No!—not at all! Of course, when I went out to New York I was sore, because she had thrown me over.”

“And I”—Daphne made a scornful lip—“was the feather-bed to catch you as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable to tell me?”

“Well, I don't know—I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!”

Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward laugh.

“I told you everything!” was the quick reply—“everything.”

Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions.

He had not been enough in love with her—then—to find them of any great account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically forgotten it—and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for the first time, without being “a bit upset”; mostly, indeed, by the boldness—the brazenness—of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child.

So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him. Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the deuce.

“Look here, dear!” he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his wife—“don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought. I forgot her, dear—bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!”

But Daphne still held him at bay.

“How long were you engaged to her?” she repeated.

“I've told you—three weeks!” said the man, reluctantly.

“How long had you known her?”

“A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father was Governor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand India for long together, and she used to stay about with relations. Why she took a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, and that kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she was talking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I do understand you.”

Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether in fact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite a different kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than a match for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He was engaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face.

“Whom did she marry?” asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.

“A fellow in the army—Major Fairmile—a smart, popular sort of chap. He was her father's aide-de-camp when they married—just after we did—and they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess—as she used to on us.”

“You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile—Mrs. Fairmile—yes, I remember,” said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red. “Your uncle—in town—mentioned her. I didn't take any notice.”

“Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!”

“It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her—your uncle and the others—knew what I didn't know!” cried Daphne, passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her all these years—that was what had happened; and now she had discovered it. That he could have a secret from her, however, was the real discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage.

During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and she had ended by laughing at herself.

Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy.

“Well, some of them knew,” he said, answering her last reproach. “And they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have told you, Daphne—of course I ought—I'm sorry. But the fact was I never wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?”

“Because I mean to go.”

“YOU'RE off to the meet?”

“I am. Look at the day!”

Chloe Fairmile, who was standing in her riding-habit at the window of the Duchess's morning-room, turned to greet her hostess.

A mild November sun shone on the garden and the woods, and Chloe's face—the more exquisite as a rule for its slight, strange withering—had caught a freshness from the morning.

The Duchess was embraced, and bore it; she herself never kissed anybody.

“You always look well, my dear, in a habit, and you know it. Tell me what I shall do with this invitation.”

“From Lady Warton? May I look?”

Chloe took a much blotted and crossed letter from the Duchess's hand.

“What were her governesses about?” said the Duchess, pointing to it. “Really—the education of our class! Read it!”

... “Can I persuade you to come—and bring Mrs. Fairmile—next Tuesday to dinner, to meet Roger Barnes and his wife? I groan at the thought, for I think she is quite one of the most disagreeable little creatures I ever saw. But Warton says I must—a Lord-Lieutenant can't pick and choose!—and people as rich as they are have to be considered. I can't imagine why it is she makes herself so odious. All the Americans I ever knew I have liked particularly. It is, of course, annoying that they have so much money—but Warton says it isn't their fault—it's Protection, or something of the kind. But Mrs. Barnes seems really to wish to trample on us. She told Warton the other day that his tapestries—you know, those we're so proud of—that they were bad Flemish copies of something or other—a set belonging to a horrid friend of hers, I think. Warton was furious. And she's made the people at Brendon love her for ever by insisting that they have now ruined all their pictures without exception, by the way they've had them restored—et cetera, et cetera. She really makes us feel her millions—and her brains—too much. We're paupers, but we're not worms. Then there's the Archdeacon—why should she fall foul of him? He tells Warton that her principles are really shocking. She told him she saw no reason why people should stick to their husbands or wives longer than it pleased them—and that in America nobody did! He doesn't wish Mrs. Mountford to see much of her;— though, really, my dear, I don't think Mrs. M. is likely to give him trouble—do you? And I hear, of course, that she thinks us all dull and stuck-up, and as ignorant as savages. It's so odd she shouldn't even want to be liked!—a young woman in a strange neighbourhood. But she evidently doesn't, a bit. Warton declares she's already tired of Roger—and she's certainly not nice to him. What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, do come and help us through.”

“What, indeed, can be the matter?” repeated Chloe lightly, as she handed back the letter.

“Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for you to ask, my dear,” said the Duchess quietly.

Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.

“Me?”

The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on a chair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile.

“What can you mean?” said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. “I can't imagine. And I don't think I'll try.”

She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore it again, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners, became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. The Duchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagement announced that morning in .

Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom—she was an excellent horsewoman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to her friends' servants—through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As for the Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearly pulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well.

If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old fiancée, whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetually together? Dinners at Upcott!—invitations to Heston!—a resolute frequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of it with Roger's goodwill, or his mother's,—Chloe admitted it. It had been the wife's doing—all of it. There had been even—rare occurrences—two or three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne had made him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, her diamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it was plain. “She wishes to keep us under observation—to give us opportunities—and then torment her husband. Very well then!—tu l'as voulu, Madame!”

As to the “opportunities,” Chloe coolly confessed to herself that she had made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of the neighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, it seemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to be discontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provoked Roger's former fiancée from the beginning; the money to envy, and the arrogance to chastisement. Why not? What is society but a discipline?

As for Roger, who is it says there is a little polygamy in all men? Anyway, a man can always—nearly always—keep a corner for the old love, if the new love will let him. Roger could, at any rate; “though he is a model husband, far better than she deserves, and anybody not a fool could manage him.”

It was a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warm October, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yet resigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fully green, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorse was yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through which Chloe passed, a few primroses—frail, unseasonable blooms—pushed their pale heads through the moss. The scent of the beech-leaves under foot; the buffeting of a westerly wind; the pleasant yielding of her light frame to the movement of the horse; the glimpses of plain that every here and there showed themselves through the trees that girdled the high ground or edge along which she rode; the white steam-wreath of a train passing, far away, through strata of blue or pearly mist; an old windmill black in the middle distance; villages, sheltering among their hedges and uplands; a sky, of shadow below widely brooding over earth, and of a radiant blue flecked with white cloud above:—all the English familiar scene, awoke in Chloe Fairmile a familiar sensuous joy. Life was so good—every minute, every ounce of it!—from the Duchess's chef to these ethereal splendours of autumn—from the warm bath, the luxurious bed, and breakfast, she had but lately enjoyed, to these artistic memories that ran through her brain, as she glanced from side to side, reminded now of Turner, now of De Wint, revelling in the complexity of her own being. Her conscience gave her no trouble; it had never been more friendly. Her husband and she had come to an understanding; they were in truth more than quits. There was to be no divorce—and no scandal. She would be very prudent. A man's face rose before her that was not the face of her husband, and she smiled—indulgently. Yes, life would be interesting when she returned to town. She had taken a house in Chester Square from the New Year; and Tom was going to Teheran. Meanwhile, she was passing the time.

A thought suddenly occurred to her. Yes, it was quite possible—probable even—that she might find Roger at the meet! The place appointed was a long way from Heston, but in the old days he had often sent on a fresh horse by train to a local station. They had had many a run together over the fields now coming into sight. Though certainly if he imagined there were the very smallest chance of finding her there, he would give this particular meet a wide berth.

Chloe laughed aloud. His resistance—and his weakness—were both so amusing. She thought of the skill—the peremptory smiling skill—with which she had beguiled him into the garden, on the day when the young couple paid their first call at Upcott. First, the low-spoken words at the back of the drawing-room, while Mrs. Barnes and the Duchess were skirmishing—

“I must speak to you. Something that concerns another person—something urgent.”

Whereupon, unwilling and rather stern compliance pliance on the man's part—the handsome face darkened with most unnecessary frowns. And in the garden, the short colloquy between them—“Of course, I see—you haven't forgiven me! Never mind! I am doing this for someone else—it's a duty.” Then abruptly—“You still have three of my letters.”

Amusing again—his shock of surprise, his blundering denials! He always was the most unmethodical and unbusinesslike of mortals—poor Roger! She heard her own voice in reply. “Oh yes, you have. I don't make mistakes about such things. Do you remember the letter in which I told you about that affair of Theresa Weightman?”

A stare—an astonished admission. Precisely!

“Well, she's in great trouble. Her husband threatens absurdities. She has always confided in me—she trusts me, and I can't have that letter wandering about the world.”

“I certainly sent it back!”

“No—you never sent it back. You have three of mine. And you know how careless you are—how you leave things about. I was always on tenterhooks. Look again, please! You must have some idea where they might be.”

Perplexity—annoyance!

“When we sold the London house, all papers and documents were sent down here. We reserved a room—which was locked up.”

“À la bonne heure! Of course—there they are.”

But all the same—great unwillingness to search. It was most unlikely he would be able to find anything—most unlikely there was anything to find. He was sure he had sent back everything. And then a look in the fine hazel eyes—like a horse putting back its ears.

All of no avail—against the laughing persistence which insisted on the letters. “But I must have them—I really must! It is a horrid tragedy, and I told you everything—things I had no business to tell you at all.”

On which, at last, a grudging consent to look, followed by a marked determination to go back to the drawing-room....

But it was the second tête-à-tête that was really adroit! After tea—just a touch on the arm—while the Duchess was showing the Nattiers to Mrs. Barnes, and Lelius was holding the lamp. “One moment more!—in the conservatory. I have a few things to add.” And in that second little interview—about nothing, in truth—a mere piece of audacity—the lion's claws had been a good deal pared. He had been made to look at her, first and foremost; to realise that she was not afraid of him—not one bit!—and that he would have to treat her decently. Poor Roger! In a few years the girl he had married would be a plain and prickly little pedant—ill-bred besides—and he knew it.

As to more recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must be civil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution known as “sitting out”; and “sitting out” is nothing if not conversational; and conversation—between old friends and cousins—is beguiling, and may be lengthy.

The ball at Brendon House—Chloe still felt the triumph of it in her veins—still saw the softening in Roger's handsome face, the look of lazy pleasure, and the disapproval—or was it the envy?—in the eyes of certain county magnates looking on. Since then, no communication between Heston and Upcott.

Mrs. Fairmile was now a couple of miles from the meet. She had struck into a great belt of plantations bounding one side of the ducal estate. Through it ran a famous green ride, crossed near its beginning by a main road. On her right, beyond the thick screen of trees, was the railway, and she could hear the occasional rush of a train.

When she reached the cross road, which led from a station, a labourer opened the plantation gates for her. As he unlatched the second, she perceived a man's figure in front of her.

“Roger!”

A touch of the whip—her horse sprang forward. The man in front looked back startled; but she was already beside him.

“You keep up the old habit, like me? What a lovely day!”

Roger Barnes, after a flush of amazement and surprise, greeted her coldly: “It is a long way for you to come,” he said formally. “Twelve miles, isn't it? You're not going to hunt?”

“Oh, no! I only came to look at the hounds and the horses—to remind myself of all the good old times. You don't want to remember them, I know. Life's gone on for you!”

Roger bent forward to pat the neck of his horse. “It goes on for all of us,” he said gruffly.

“Ah, well!” She sighed. He looked up and their eyes met. The wind had slightly reddened her pale skin: her expression was one of great animation, yet of great softness. The grace of the long, slender body in the close-fitting habit; of the beautiful head and loosened hair under the small, low-crowned beaver hat; the slender hand upon the reins—all these various impressions rushed upon Barnes at once, bringing with them the fascination of a past happiness, provoking, by contrast, the memory of a harassing and irritating present.

“Is Heston getting on?” asked Mrs. Fairmile, smiling.

He frowned involuntarily.

“Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;” the tone, however, belied the words. “When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to get him out.”

“The old house had such a charm!” said Chloe softly.

Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight before him. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind, asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not already somewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature—a slight coarsening of form—she thought she perceived them. Poor Roger!—had he been living too well and idling too flagrantly on these American dollars?

Suddenly she bent over and laid a gloved hand on his arm.

“Hadn't it?” she said, in a low voice.

He started. But he neither looked at her nor shook her off.

“What—the house?” was the ungracious reply. “I'm sure I don't know; I never thought about it—whether it was pretty or ugly, I mean. It suited us, and it amused mother to fiddle about with it.”

Mrs. Fairmile withdrew her hand.

“Of course a great deal of it was ugly,” she said composedly. “Dear Lady Barnes really didn't know. But then we led such a jolly life in it—we made it!”

She looked at him brightly, only to see in him an angry flash of expression. He turned and faced her.

“I'm glad you think it was jolly. My remembrances are not quite so pleasant.”

She laughed a little—not flinching at all—her face rosy to his challenge.

“Oh, yes, they are—or should be. What's the use of blackening the past because it couldn't be the present? My dear Roger, if I hadn't—well, let's talk plainly!—if I hadn't thrown you over, where would you be now? We should be living in West Kensington, and I should be taking boarders—or—no!—a country-house, perhaps, with paying guests. You would be teaching the cockney idea how to shoot, at half a guinea a day, and I should be buying my clothes second-hand through . Whereas—whereas—”

She bent forward again.

“You are a very rich man—you have a charming wife—a dear little girl—you can get into Parliament—travel, speculate, race, anything you please. And I did it all!”

“I don't agree with you,” he said drily. She laughed again.

“Well, we can't argue it—can we? I only wanted to point out to you the plain, bare truth, that there is nothing in the world to prevent our being excellent friends again—now. But first—and once more—my letters!”

Her tone was a little peremptory, and Roger's face clouded.

“I found two of them last night, by the merest chance—in an old despatch-box I took to America. They were posted to you on the way here.”

“Good! But there were three.”

“I know—so you said. I could only find two.”

“Was the particular letter I mentioned one of them?”

He answered unwillingly.

“No. I searched everywhere. I don't believe I have it.”

She shook her head with decision.

“You certainly have it. Please look again.”

He broke out with some irritation, insisting that if it had not been returned it had been either lost or destroyed. It could matter to no one.

IN the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while he lay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard his regular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, and lay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a night-light was burning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and went to the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; then, drawing up a chair, she sank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showed her small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair.

Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. It was as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar links and bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck of them she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing gradually used to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even a wild attraction and invitation.

So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meeting with a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had been engaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arranged beforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road, this!—not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. And if Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protect herself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not to be baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equal terms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband who could behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth, herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's whole being stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced the contest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her, kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast, to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for ever putting him away.

Anguish? Yes!—but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt a year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that she could bear her life, that she could sit there in the night stillness, motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly logical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. There was, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while she listened to her own mind—while she watched her own years go by.

It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. But on this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she became conscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life—a sudden violent turning against both—which naturally threw her back on the past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by way of guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly, now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development.

As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owed them anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And yet!—in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great tracts of primeval forest in the northern regions of the Prairie State, leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but building up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts of municipal “bossing” in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome fellow!—with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father, of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm and tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeous dresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers.

No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that Daphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter in any but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works and efforts.

She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going back in thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her three years of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as from the intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the clever lawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and the huge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search for education, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friends she had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She had been influenced by one milieu after another; she had worked hard, now at music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone to Socialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly of an ever-increasing ambition.

Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bitter contempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!—a hasty passion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was already false to her.

What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself in her reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden gust of physical inclination—by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him in Washington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first in his natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would have realised what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals and ambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life brought her? Had she ever been sure of Roger?—had she ever been able to feel proud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?—had she not been conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin, that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectual chances? And his tone towards women had always been a low one; no great harm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her.