Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE PROFESSOR’S EXPERIMENT

MRS. HUNGERFORD’S NOVELS

‘Mrs. Hungerford has well deserved the title of being one of the most fascinating novelists of the day. The stories written by her are the airiest, lightest, and brightest imaginable, full of wit, spirit, and gaiety; but they contain, nevertheless, touches of the most exquisite pathos. There is something good in all of them.’—Academy.

A MAIDEN ALL FORLORN, and other Stories. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘There is no guile in the novels of the authoress of “Molly Bawn,” nor any consistency or analysis of character; but they exhibit a faculty truly remarkable for reproducing the rapid small-talk, the shallow but harmless “chaff” of certain strata of modern fashionable society.’—Spectator.

IN DURANCE VILE, and other Stories. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘Mrs. Hungerford’s Irish girls have always been pleasant to meet upon the dusty pathways of fiction. They are flippant, no doubt, and often sentimental, and they certainly flirt, and their stories are told often in rather ornamental phrase and with a profusion of the first person singular. But they are charming all the same.’—Academy.

A MENTAL STRUGGLE. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘She can invent an interesting story, she can tell it well, and she trusts to honest, natural, human emotions and interests of life for her materials.’—Spectator.

A MODERN CIRCE. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘Mrs. Hungerford is a distinctly amusing author.... In all her books there is a “healthy absenteeism” of ethical purpose, and we have derived more genuine pleasure from them than probably the most earnest student has ever obtained from a chapter of “Robert Elsmere.”’—Saturday Review.

MARVEL. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth, 2s. 6d.

‘The author has long since created an imaginary world, peopled with more or less natural figures; but her many admirers acknowledge the easy grace and inexhaustible verve that characterize her scenes of Hibernian life, and never tire of the type of national heroine she has made her own.’—Morning Post.

LADY VERNER’S FLIGHT. Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d.; post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘There are in “Lady Verner’s Flight” several of the bright young people who are wont to make Mrs. Hungerford’s books such very pleasant reading.... In all the novels by the author of “Molly Bawn” there is a breezy freshness of treatment which makes them most agreeable.’—Spectator.

THE RED-HOUSE MYSTERY. Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d.

‘Mrs. Hungerford is never seen to the best advantage when not dealing with the brighter sides of life, or seeming to enjoy as much as her readers the ready sallies and laughing jests of her youthful personages. In her present novel, however, the heroine, if not all smiles and mirth, is quite as taking as her many predecessors, while the spirit of uncontrolled mischief is typified in the American heiress.’—Morning Post.

THE THREE GRACES. 2 vols., crown 8vo., 10s. net.

‘It is impossible to deny that Mrs. Hungerford is capable of writing a charming love-story, and that she proves her capacity to do so in “The Three Graces.”’—Academy.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly.

THE
PROFESSOR’S EXPERIMENT
A Novel

BY

MRS. HUNGERFORD

AUTHOR OF

‘MOLLY BAWN,’ ‘THE RED-HOUSE MYSTERY,’ ‘THE THREE GRACES,’ ‘LADY VERNER’S FLIGHT,’ ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III.

London

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1895

THE

Professor’s Experiment

CHAPTER XL.

‘Heart’s-ease I found where love-lies-bleeding

Empurpled all the ground;

Whatever flower I missed, unheeding,

Heart’s-ease I found.’

The day is still lingering, but one can see that night is beginning to coquet with it. Tender shadows lie here and there in the corners of the curving road, and in and among the beech-trees that overhang it birds are already rustling with a view to slumber. The soft coo-coo of the pigeon stirs the air, and on the river down below, ‘Now winding bright and full with naked banks,’ the first faint glimmer of a new moon is falling—falling as though sinking through it to a world beneath.

‘What are you thinking of, Susan?’ asks Crosby at last, when the sound of their feet upon the road has been left unbroken for quite five minutes. Susan has chatted to him quite gaily all down the avenue, and until the gates are left behind, but after that she has grown—well, thoughtful.

‘Thinking?’ She looks up at him as if startled out of a reverie.

‘Yes. What have you been thinking of so steadily for the past five minutes?’

Thus brought to book, Susan gives him the truest answer.

‘I was thinking of Lady Muriel Kennedy. I was thinking that I had never seen anyone so beautiful before.’

‘That’s high praise.’

‘You think so too?’

‘Well—hardly. She is handsome, very handsome, but not altogether the most beautiful person I have ever seen.’

‘To me she is,’ says Susan simply.

‘That only shows to what poor use you have put your looking-glass,’ says he, and Susan laughs involuntarily as at a most excellent joke. Crosby, glancing at her and noting her sweet unconsciousness, feels a strong longing to take her hand and draw it within his arm and hold it, but from such idyllic pleasures he refrains.

The dusky shades are growing more pronounced now: ‘Eve saddens into night.’ The long and pretty road, bordered by overhanging trees, though still full of light just here, looks black in the distance, and overhead

‘The pale moon sheds a softer day,

Mellowing the woods beneath its pensive beam.’

After a little silence Susan turns her head and looks frankly at him.

‘Are you going to be married to her?’ asks she, gently and quite naturally.

‘What!’ says Crosby. He is honestly amazed, and conscious of some other feeling, too, that brings a pucker to his forehead. ‘Good heavens, no! what put that into your head?’

‘I don’t know. I——’ She has grown all at once confused, and a pink flush is warming her cheek. ‘Of course I shouldn’t have asked you that. But she is so lovely, and I thought—I fancied——I am afraid’—her eyes growing rather misty as they meet his in mute appeal—‘you think me very rude.’

‘I never think you anything but just what you are,’ says Crosby slowly. ‘I wonder if you could be rude if you tried. I doubt it. However, don’t try. It would spoil you. As for Lady Muriel, she wouldn’t look at me.’

Susan remains silent, pondering over this. Would he look at her?

‘Should you like her to?’ asks she at last.

‘To look at me?’ Crosby is now openly amused. ‘A cat may look at a king, you know.’

‘Oh, but she——’

‘Is not the cat? That’s rude, any way. Susan, I take back all the handsome things I said of you just now. So I’m the cat, and she is the queen, I suppose. Well, no; I don’t want Queen Muriel to look at me. It would be rather embarrassing, considering all things. She is a very high and mighty young lady, you know, and I’m terribly shy. On the whole, Susan’—he pauses, and studies her a minute—‘I should prefer you to look at me.’

His studying goes for naught; not a vestige of blush appears on Susan’s face or any emotion whatever. His little flattery has gone by her.

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ says she.

‘Do I? You are often very deep, you know; but if you mean that perhaps I should like to marry Lady Muriel—well, I shouldn’t.’

‘How strange!’ says Susan. ‘I think if I were a man I should be dreadfully in love with her.’

Crosby laughs.

‘So you think you could be dreadfully in love?’ says he.

Susan’s lips part in a little smile.

‘Oh, not as it is. I was only thinking of Lady Muriel ... and you—that you ought to be——’

‘Dreadfully in love? How do you know I am not—with somebody else?’

She shakes her head.

‘No, you are not,’ says she. ‘After all, I think you are just as little likely to be dreadfully in love with anyone as I am.’

‘Susan! You are growing positively profound,’ says he.

They are now drawing near to the Rectory gates, and Susan’s fingers are stealing into her pocket and out again with nervous rapidity. Oh, she must give it to him now or never! To-morrow it will be too late. One can’t give a birthday gift the day after the birthday. But it is such a ridiculous little bag, and she has seen so many of his presents up at the Hall, and all so lovely, and in such good taste. Still, to let him think, after all his kindness, that she had not even remembered his birthday——

‘Mr. Crosby,’ says she, and now the hand that comes from the pocket has something in it. ‘I—all day, I’—tremulously—‘have been wanting to give you something for your birthday. I know’—she pauses, and slowly and reluctantly, and in a very agony of shyness, now holds out to him the little silken bag filled with fragrant lavender—‘I know’—tears filling her eyes—‘after what I saw to-day ... those other gifts, that it is not worth giving, but—I made it for you.’

She holds it out to him, and Crosby, who has coloured a dark red, takes it from her, but never a word comes from him.

The dear, darling child! To think of her having done this for him!... To Susan his silence sounds fatal.

‘Of course,’ says she, ‘I knew you wouldn’t care for it. But——’

‘Care for it! Oh, Susan! To call yourself my friend and so misjudge me! I care for it a good deal more, I can tell you, than for all those other things up there put together.’

There is no mistaking the genuine ring in his tone. Indeed, his delight and secret emotion amaze even himself. Susan’s spirits revive.

‘Oh no,’ protests she.

‘Yes, though! No one else,’ says Crosby, ‘took the trouble to make me anything! That’s the difference, you see. To make it for me—with your own hands. It is easy to buy a thing—there is no trouble there.’ He looks at her present, turning and twisting it with unmistakable gratification. ‘What a lovely little bag, and filled with lavender, eh?’

‘It is to put in your drawer with your handkerchiefs,’ says Susan, shyly still; but she is smiling now, and looking frankly delighted. ‘Betty made me one last year, and I keep it with mine.’

‘So we have a bag each,’ says Crosby, and somehow he feels a ridiculous pleasure in the knowledge that he and she have bags alike, and that both their handkerchiefs will be made sweet with the same perfume. And now his eyes fall on the worked words that lie criss-cross in one of the corners: ‘Mr. Crosby, from Susan.’

‘Do you mean to say you actually did that too?’ asks he, with such extreme astonishment that Susan grows actually elated.

‘Oh yes,’ says she, taking a modest tone, though her conceit is rising; ‘it is quite easy.’

‘To me it seems impossible. To do that, and only with one’s fingers; it beats typewriting,’ says he. ‘It is twice as legible. Do you mean to say you wrote—worked, I mean—that with a common needle and thread?’

‘I did indeed,’ says Susan earnestly, her heart again knowing a throb of exultation. Why, if he could only see the cushion she worked for Lady Millbank’s bazaar!

‘It must have taken a long time,’ says he thoughtfully. And then, ‘And to think of you doing it for me!’

‘Oh, for you,’ says Susan—‘you who have been so kind to us all! I’—growing shy again—‘I am very glad you really like that little bag; but it is nothing—nothing. And I was delighted to make it for you, and to think of you all the time as I made it.’

‘Were you, Susan?’ says Crosby, as gratefully as possible, though he feels his heart in some silly way is sinking.

‘I was—I was indeed!’ says Susan openly, emphatically. ‘So you must not trouble yourself about that.’ Crosby’s heart falls another fathom or two.

‘I’ll try not to,’ says he, with a somewhat melancholy reflection of his usual lightheartedness. They have arrived at the gate now, and Susan holds out her hand to him.

‘Remember you have promised to bring up the boys to-morrow for their gipsy tea,’ says he, holding it.

‘Yes.’ She hesitates and flushes warmly. ‘Might I bring Betty, too?’

‘Why, of course’—eagerly. ‘Give my love to her, and tell her from—my sister that we can’t have a gipsy tea without her.’

‘And Lady Forster?’ Susan grows uncertain about the propriety of asking Betty without Lady Forster’s consent.

‘Now, Susan! As if you aren’t clever enough to know that Katherine delights in nothing so much as young people—she’s quite as young as the youngest herself—and that she will be only too pleased to see a sister of yours.’

There is emphasis on the last word.

‘You think that she likes me?’ Susan’s tone is anxious.

‘I think she has fallen in love with you.’ She smiles happily and moves a step away. But his voice checks her: ‘Not the only one either, Susan.’

‘Oh, not Captain Lennox again! I have had one lecture.’ Susan looks really saucy, for once in her life, and altogether delightful, as she defies him from under her big straw hat.

‘No. I was thinking of——’

‘Yes?’—gaily.

‘Never mind.’

He turns and walks away, and Susan, laughing to herself at his inability to accuse her further, runs down the little avenue to her home. There is a rush from the lawn as she comes in sight.

‘Oh, there you are, Susan!’

‘How did it go off?’

‘Were they all nice? Were you nervous?’

‘Is the house lovely?’

‘Oh, it is!’ says Susan, now having reached a seat, and feeling a little consequential with all of them sitting round her and waiting on her words. ‘You never saw such a house! Much, much more beautiful than Lady Millbank’s.’

‘Well, we all know it’s twice—four times the size; but Lady Millbank’s furniture was——’

‘Oh, that’s all changed. Mr. Crosby has furnished his house all over again from beginning to end. Of course we’ve been through it many times when he was away, but now you wouldn’t know it. It appears he has had things stored up after his travels—left in their cases, indeed—that lately have been brought to light. The drawing-room is perfect, and—the pictures——’

‘And the people?’ asks Betty impatiently; she is distinctly material.

‘Very, very nice too—that is, most of them. Miss Prior was there. She—well, I can’t bring myself to like her.’

‘What did she do to you?’ asks Dom.

‘Oh, nothing; nothing really, only——’

‘That’s enough,’ says Carew. ‘You didn’t hit it off with her, evidently.’

Susan hesitates, and as usual is lost.

‘I can’t bear her,’ says she.

‘And that lovely girl who drove home with Mr. Crosby?’ asks Betty.

‘Ah, she is even lovelier than I thought,’ says Susan, with increased enthusiasm. She finds it quite easy to praise her now. ‘And so charming! She wished particularly to be introduced to me, and——’

‘Did she?’—from Betty. ‘What a good thing that she likes you! If she marries Mr. Crosby she may be very useful to us.’

‘I don’t think she is going to marry him,’ says Susan thoughtfully.

‘No?’—with growing interest. ‘They’—casting back her thoughts—‘looked very like it on Sunday. How do you know?’

‘I asked him,’ says Susan simply.

‘What!’ They all sit up in a body. ‘You—asked him?’

‘Yes. Does it sound dreadful?’ Poor Susan grows very red. ‘It’—nervously—‘didn’t sound a bit dreadful when I did it. And’—desperately—‘I did, any way.’

‘It wasn’t a bit dreadful,’ says Carew good-naturedly.

‘Not a bit. Go on, Susan.’ Dom regards her with large encouragement. ‘Did you ask him any more questions? Did you ask him if he would like to marry you? There wouldn’t be a bit of harm in that, either, and——’

‘Dominick!’ says Susan in an outraged tone.

Here Betty promptly catches his ear, and, pulling him down beside her, begins to pommel him within an inch of his life.

‘Never mind him, Susan. He’s got no brains. They were left out when he was born. Tell us more about your luncheon-party.’

‘There is so little to tell,’ says Susan in a subdued voice. Her pretty colour has died away, and she is looking very pale.

‘What about the poet?’

‘Oh, the poet! His name is Jones, of all the names in the world!’

Here she revives a little, and at certain recollections of the illustrious Jones, in spite of herself, her smiles break forth again. ‘He——’ She bursts out laughing. ‘It sounds horribly conceited, but I really think he believes he is in love with me. Such nonsense, isn’t it?’

(Oh, too pretty Susan! who wouldn’t be in love with you?)

‘I don’t know about that,’ says Dom, who has escaped from Betty’s wrathful hands and is prepared to go any length to prevent a recurrence of the late ceremonies. ‘He might do worse!’

‘And so the house is lovely,’ says Betty, with a regretful sigh. Now if only they would ask her there; but of course nobody remembers second girls.

‘Yes, lovely. The halls are all done up; and there are paintings on the walls; and as for the marbles, they are exquisite!’

‘Nice simple people, apparently,’ says Dom. ‘Were they glass or stone, Susan? Alleys or stony taws? Did you have a game yourself? I’m afraid our education has been a little neglected in that line; but, still, I can recollect your doing a little flutter in the way of marbles about half a decade or so ago; and you won, too!’

‘I suppose you think you’re funny,’ says Betty, which is about the most damping speech that anyone can make, but Mr. Fitzgerald is hard to damp. He gives her a reproachful glance and sinks back with the air of one thoroughly misunderstood.

‘For the matter of games, I suppose they’—Betty is alluding to Mr. Crosby’s guests—‘wouldn’t play one to save their lives; quite fashionable people, of course!’ Betty plainly knows little of fashionable people. ‘Hardly even tennis, I dare say. They would call that, no doubt, fatiguing. Were they—were they very starchy?’

‘So far from that,’ says Susan, ‘that——’ She hesitates. ‘I’m almost sure I heard quite right—and certainly Lady Forster asked Mr. Crosby to let me stay on this evening, and sleep there, so that I might take part in——’

She pauses.

‘Private theatricals?’ cries Betty excitedly.

‘No. I think it was a “pillow-scuffle” they called it.’

There is a solemn silence after this, and then, ‘A pillow-scuffle!’ says Betty faintly. ‘Are they so nice as that?’

‘They are. They are very nice, just like ourselves.’

This flagrant bit of self-appreciation goes for a wonder unnoticed beneath the weight of the late announcement.

‘Why on earth don’t they ask us to go up?’ says Dominick, who has many reasons for knowing he could do much with a pillow.

‘Well, they have asked you,’ cries Susan eagerly; ‘not for a pillow-match, but for afternoon tea in the woods to-morrow. She—Lady Forster, you know—was delighted when she heard of you boys, and she said I was to be sure and bring you. And there is to be a fire lit, and——’

‘Oh, Susan!’ cries Betty, in a deplorable tone, tears fast rising to her eyes; ‘I think you might have said you had a sister.’

‘So I did—so I did’—eagerly; ‘and you are to come too; and——’

‘Oh no! Not really!’

‘Yes, really.’

‘Oh, darling Susan!’

CHAPTER XLI.

‘As long as men do silent go,

Nor faults nor merits can we know;

Yet deem not every still place empty:

A tiger may be met with so.’

Friday has dawned, and is as delightful a day as ever any miserable out-of-door entertainer can desire; and Miss Barry, in spite of her tremors, and her fears for the success of this, her first big adventurous party, feels a certain sense of elation. Yes, to-day she is going to entertain all the party at the Park; yesterday the Park had entertained all her young people. The good soul (so good in spite of her temper and her peculiarities) has felt deep joy in the thought that the children had been not only invited, but actually sought after, by all those fashionable folk up there, and though she would have died rather than boast of it to her neighbours, being too well-born for boasting of that kind, still, her own heart swells with pride at the thought that, in spite of their poverty, the children’s birth has asserted itself, and carried them through all difficulties to the society where they should be.

So happy has she been in her unselfish gladness, that she has forgotten to scold one of them for quite ten hours. And now Friday, the day of her coming triumph, has arrived, and she has risen almost with the sun that has brought it. There is so much to be done, you see: the best table-cloths to be brought out, and the old Queen Anne teapot to get a last rub, and all the cakes to be made! There will be plenty of time for the baking of them before five o’clock, at which hour Lady Forster has arranged to come with all her guests.

Susan and Betty have been busy with the drawing-room—one of the smallest rooms on record; a fact, however, made up for lavishly by the size of the furniture, which would not disgrace a salon. It is now, to confess the truth, in the sere and yellow stage, and some of the chairs have legs that are distinctly wobbly, and by no means to be depended upon.

‘Hurry up, Susan!’ says Betty. ‘The room will do very well now, especially as no one will come into it. They are sure to stay in the garden this lovely evening. Come and see about the flowers for the table.’

‘Oh, look at that screen!’ cries Susan; and indeed, as a fact, it is upside down.

‘Never mind! Come on,’ says Betty impatiently, dragging her away. ‘Even if it is the wrong way up it doesn’t matter. It looks twice as Japanesey that way. I wonder if the boys have brought the fruit yet?’

When first Dominick had heard of Miss Barry’s intention of giving a party for the Park people, he had decided that at all risks it should be a success. But his quarter’s allowance was, as usual (he had received it only a month ago), at death’s door, and only thirty shillings remained of it. He had at once written to his guardian saying circumstances over which he had no control—I suppose he meant his inability to refrain from buying everything his eye lit on—had made away with the sum sent last June, and he would feel immensely obliged to Sir Spencer if he could let him have a few pounds more, or even give him an advance on his next allowance. The answer had come this morning, had been opened hurriedly, but, alas! had contained, instead of the modest cheque asked for, a distinct and uncompromising ‘No.’

‘Mean old brute!’ said Dom indignantly, referring, I regret to say, to his uncle. ‘I wrote to him for a bare fiver, and the old beast refuses to part. Never mind, Susan! We’ll have our spread just the same. I’ve thirty shillings to the good still, and that’ll get us all we want.’

‘No, indeed, Dom,’ said Susan, flushing. ‘You mustn’t spend your last penny like that. We’ll do very well as we are, with auntie’s cakes.’

‘We must have fruit,’ said Mr. Fitzgerald with determination. ‘Do you remember all those grapes yesterday, and the late peaches and things?’

Indeed they had had a most heavenly day yesterday—a distinctly rollicking day—in the woods, and had played hide and seek afterwards amongst the shrubberies, at which noble game Lady Forster and Miss Forbes had quite distinguished themselves, the latter beating Dom all to nothing in the dodging line, and reaching the goal every time without being caught. It had been altogether a splendid romp, and the Barrys had come home flushed and happy, and with so much to tell their aunt that their words tumbled over each other, and were hard to put together in any consecutive way. I think Aunt Jemima was a little shocked when Betty told her that Lady Forster had called Carew ‘a rowdy-dowdy boy,’ but she fortified herself with the thought that no doubt the world had changed a good deal since she was a girl—as no doubt it had. Any way, the children were delighted, and Dominick felt that nothing they could do for the Park people, and especially for that jolly Miss Forbes, could be good enough.

‘We must have some grapes,’ said he, ‘and even if it is to be my last penny, Susan, I am sure I can depend on you to patch up my old breeches so as to carry me with decency, if not with elegance, through the next two months.’

‘But, Dom—I really don’t think you should——’

‘Never mind her,’ Betty had said promptly here—Betty, who is devoid of any sort of false shame, and looks upon Dom as a possession; ‘of course we must have fruit.’

‘And those little cakes at Ricketty’s, with chocolate on them. Put on your hat, Betty, and come down town with me, and we’ll astonish the natives yet!’

But Betty had too much to do, and finally Carew had gone off with Dom on a foraging quest, and now, as the girls come out of the drawing-room, they meet the two boys ‘laden with golden grain,’ like the Argosy, and eager to display their purchases.

Such grapes! Such dear sweet little cakes! They are all enchanted; and soon the table, delicately laid out in a corner of the queer, pretty old garden, is a sight to behold! And beyond lies the tennis-court—one only, but so beautifully mown and rolled, looking like the priest of famous history, all ‘shaven and shorn.’

‘Didn’t I tell you it was a perfect old garden?’ Lady Forster is saying, addressing Lady Muriel, who is laughing, quite immensely for her, at one of Carew’s boyish jokes. Lady Forster is dressed in one of her smartest gowns—a mere trifle, perhaps, but done to please, and therefore a charming deed. And all her guests, incited by her, no doubt, have donned their prettiest frocks, so that Miss Barry’s garden at this moment presents a picture more suggestive of a garden-party at Twickenham than a quiet tea in the grounds of an old Irish rectory.

‘It is too pretty for anything,’ says Lady Muriel. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for a good deal. I think it was very kind of your aunt, Mr.——’

‘Carew!’ says he quickly.

‘May I? What a charming name! It was very kind of your aunt, Carew’—smiling—‘to ask us here.’

‘It is very kind of you to come,’ says Carew.

‘Do you run over to town?’ asks Lady Muriel. It has occurred to her that she would like to repay this pretty kindness of Miss Barry’s.

‘Oh no’—shaking his handsome head. And then frankly, ‘We are too poor for that.’

‘Ah! your sister ought to come,’ says she, after which she grows thoughtful.

Crosby glances quickly at her. He has heard that last remark of hers, and somehow resents it. Susan—in London!

He had taken his cup of tea from Miss Barry a little while ago, and carried it to where Susan is sitting, throwing himself on the grass at her feet, his cup beside him. Lady Muriel’s words grate on him. He looks up now at the pure profile beside him, and wonders what would be the result of starting Susan as a debutante in town under good auspices. What?

‘You are thinking,’ says Susan softly, breaking into his reverie gently.

‘Yes, I was thinking.’ He looks up at her. ‘If I said of you, would you believe me?’

‘Not a bit’—gaily. ‘Anyone would say that.’

‘Would they?’ His regard grows even more pronounced. How many have said that to her? How, indeed, could anyone refrain from saying it? And—he draws his breath a little quickly here, as conviction forces itself on him—and everyone with truth! ‘Susan, this is disgraceful!’ says he carelessly. ‘You must have had a long list of flirtations to speak like that.’

Susan laughs merrily. She is in high spirits. All is going so well, and even Lady Millbank has praised the tea-cakes—Lady Millbank, who never praises anything! But to-day Lady Millbank has changed her tune. Perhaps no one had been so astonished as she, to see all the Park people here to-day in this quiet old garden. She had been asked to meet them, of course, being a friend and distant relation of the Rector’s; but she had dreamed of seeing only Lady Forster, for half an hour or so, as a concession to her brother’s parish priest, and now—now—here they all are! All these smart people, who had refused to go to her only the day before yesterday! Now, horrid snob that she is, she goes quite out of her way to be nice to the Barrys.

‘A disgraceful list, indeed!’ says Susan, laughing down into Crosby’s eyes. Oh, what pretty eyes hers are!

‘You acknowledge it, then?’

‘Certainly. It is a list so bare that one must be ashamed of it. Not even one name!’

‘What about James, the redoubtable?’

‘Oh, if you are going to be stupid!’ says she; and, rising with a pretty show of scorn, she leaves him. It is not entirely her scorn of him, however, that leads her to this drastic step; it is an appealing glance from Betty, who is sitting near her aunt, looking perplexed in the extreme. There is cause for perplexity. Next to Miss Barry sits the poet! Unfortunately Miss Barry has heard a great deal about this young man and all his works, and plainly considers it her duty to live up to him, if possible, during his visit to the Rectory. She has now put on quite a literary air and her best spectacles, and is holding forth on literature generally, with a view to impressing him. She succeeds beyond her expectations. The great Jones, who is reclining beside her in an artistic attitude, becomes by degrees smitten into stone, so great, so wondrously surprising, are some of her utterances. Through all his astonishment, however, he holds on to the artistic pose. Having struck it with the intention of conquering Susan, he refuses to alter it until, at all events, she has had a good look. It may be a long time, poor girl! before she will get the chance of seeing anything like it again.

‘What’s the matter with his leg?’ asks Dom, who has just come up, in a whisper to Betty. ‘It’s got turned round, hasn’t it?’

‘It looks broken,’ says Betty. ‘But it’s all right. It’s a way he has with it. For goodness’ sake, Dom, stop auntie, if you can.’

But auntie is enjoying herself tremendously, and now, seeing her audience greatly increased, and the poet evidently much struck, her voice rises higher, and she beams on all around her.

‘My two favourite authors,’ she is now saying, ‘are—and I’m sure you will agree with me, dear Lady Forster, and you too, Mr. Jones: your opinion’—with alarming flattery—‘is indeed important—my two favourite authors are dear Wilkie Trollope and Anthony Collins!’

Great sensation! Naturally everyone is impressed by this startling declaration, and Miss Forbes is actually overcome. At all events, she subsides behind her parasol, and is for a little time lost in thought.

‘Yes, yes. Charming people—charming!’ says Lady Forster quickly, if a little hysterically; and the poet, having seen Susan’s eye upon him and his pose, and feeling that he has not endured the last half-hour in vain, struggles into a more every-day attitude. Pins and needles, however, having set in in the most posé of the legs, he is conscious of a good deal of unpleasantness, and at last a desire to get up. Essaying to rise, however, it distinctly declines to support him, and, to his everlasting chagrin, he falls ‘plop’ upon the ground again, in a painfully inartistic position this time.

‘Anything wrong, old man? Got a cramp?’ asks Captain Lennox, hauling him into sitting posture.

‘It is nothing, nothing,’ says the poet sadly. Oh, what it is to dwell in the tents of the Philistines! ‘I was merely overcome by the beauty of this divine spot.’ He gives a sickly glance at Susan. ‘Such tones, you know! Such colour! Such a satisfying atmosphere!’

Here Susan, who is under the impression that he is ill, brings him hurriedly a cup of coffee, which he takes, pressing her hand, and murmuring to her inaudible, but no doubt very ‘precious,’ things.

‘One yearns over the beautiful always,’ says he. It is plain to everyone that he is yearning over Susan, and Crosby, looking on, feels a sudden mad longing to kick him over the laurel hedge on to the road below. ‘And such a spot as this wakes all one’s dreams into life. Those trees! Those distant glimpses! The little soft throbs of Nature—Mother Nature! All, all can be felt!’

‘I wish to heaven I could make him feel something!’ says Sir William in a low but moving tone.

‘And there—over there; see those green glimpses, the parting of the leaves.’

‘Oh, go on, go on,’ says Miss Barry, growing tearful behind her glasses. ‘This is indeed beautiful!’

‘Dear lady, you feel it too! There’—pointing to where the Cottage trees seem to become one with those of the Rectory—at which Wyndham starts slightly, ‘one can see the delicate blendings of Nature’s sweetest tints, and can fancy that from between those pleasant leaves a face might once again, as in the old, sweet phantasies, peep forth. This dear place looks as if Hamadryads had not yet died from out the world: as if still they might be found inhabitating these lovely ways. Almost it seems to me as if their divine faces might even now be seen, peeping through those perfumed greeneries beyond.’

CHAPTER XLII.

‘Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords as any polysyllable in the language.’

Involuntarily, unconsciously, all their eyes follow his, to the trees in the Cottage grounds.

And there

‘All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.’

A profound silence falls on the group. Captain Lennox, whose eyeglass is immovably fixed on something in the distance, is the first to break it.

‘Almost it does!’ says he, mimicking the poet’s lachrymose drawl to a nicety. But no one laughs; they are all too engrossed with what they see, peeping out shyly from between the branches of those trees below, that seem to belong to the Rectory, meeting them as they do, and mingling with them so closely that one loses memory of the road that runs between. ‘I feel as if I saw one now. How do you feel, Forster?’

Sir William laughs.

‘A charming Hamadryad beyond dispute,’ says he.

Charming indeed! Crowned by the leaves that hang above her head, Ella’s face is looking out at them like some lovely vision. Her face only can be seen, but that very distinctly. To her, unfortunately, it had seemed quite certain that she could not be seen at all. It was so far away, and they would be talking and thinking, and it was so hard to resist the desire to see them. Carew had insisted on her being asked to join their party, and Susan had begged and implored, but Ella had steadfastly refused to accept the invitation. And then Susan had remembered that strange minute or two during her luncheon at the Park, and the evident anxiety of Mr. Wyndham that Mrs. Prior should know nothing about Ella, and had refrained from further pressing.

Now again this uncertain certainty occurs to Susan, and she makes a little eager gesture, hoping that Ella will see her and take the hint and go away. But, alas! Ella is not looking at her, or at Carew, or anyone, except—strange to say—at Mrs. Prior.

There is an intensity in her gaze that even at such a distance Susan, who is eminently sympathetic, divines.

‘It’s her bonnet!’ thinks Susan hurriedly; she had, indeed, been immensely struck by Mrs. Prior’s head-gear on her arrival. Such a tall aigrette, and such big wings at the sides! Again she makes little passes in the air, meant for Ella’s benefit, but again in vain. Turning with a view to enlisting Carew’s help, she finds herself close to Wyndham.

His face is livid. He is, indeed, consumed with anger. Good heavens, is the girl bent on his undoing? Is she determined wilfully to add to the already too risqué situation?

‘Carew might do something,’ whispers she to him softly. ‘He might run across and tell her she can be seen, or——’

She looks round for Carew, and Wyndham follows her lead, to see Carew behind an escallonia bush, waving his arms frantically in the air. There is intense anxiety in the boy’s air, but something else too. There is, as Wyndham can see, heartfelt admiration; and beyond all doubt the admiration outweighs the anxiety. He is conscious of a sensation of annoyance for a moment, then his thoughts come back to the more pressing need. He looks at Susan, and then expressively at Mrs. Prior, and Susan, in answer to his evident entreaty, goes quickly to her, and suggests softly a little stroll through the old orchard; but Mrs. Prior peremptorily puts her aside, and, taking a step forward, comes up to Wyndham, and looks straight at him in a questioning fashion, at which—as though by the removal of Mrs. Prior’s eyes from hers Ella all at once ceases to be under some strange spell—the charming head between the sycamore-trees disappears from view, and no more is seen of Mr. Jones’s Hamadryad.

‘“Though lost to sight, to memory dear!”’ breathes Captain Lennox sentimentally. ‘I feel I shall remember that goddess of the grove as long as I live.’

The tiny excitement is at an end for most of the guests, and they are now chatting gaily again of petty nothings, all except Mrs. Prior, who is still looking at Wyndham.

‘Who is that girl?’ asks she, in a low but firm tone. Wyndham would have spoken, but Carew breaks angrily into the conversation. His heart is sore, his boyish indignation at its height. Surely there had been disrespect in their tone as they spoke of Ella! He had specially objected to that word ‘Hamadryad.’

‘She is a young lady who has taken Mr. Wyndham’s cottage,’ says he, in his clear young voice, ‘and a friend of my sister’s.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘I congratulate you, Paul’—turning a withering glance on him—‘on your taste in tenants!’

The evening lights are falling—falling softly, tenderly, but surely. The crows are sailing home to their beds in the elm-trees, cawing as they come. The tall hollyhocks are growing indistinct, the tenderer colours fading into white. There is a rising odour of damp, sweet earth upon the air. Lady Forster is making little signs of departure—not hurried signs, by any means; she seems, indeed, rather reluctant to say good-bye, but Mrs. Prior has said something to her, on which she has risen, the others following her example. There is no doubt about Mrs. Prior’s anxiety to go. With her face set like a flint, she is already bidding Miss Barry a stiff farewell, and is waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Lady Forster.

‘Good-bye, Susan,’ says Crosby, coming up at this moment to the slim maiden who bears that name. ‘Though you deserted me so shamelessly a while ago, I bear you no ill-will. I understood the action. It was a guilty conscience drove you to it. I asked you a simple question, and you refused to answer it. I ask it again now.’ A pause, during which Susan taps her foot on the ground, and tries to assume a puzzled air that would not have deceived a boy. ‘And you still refuse, Susan?’—tragically. ‘Is it that you can’t?’

‘Can’t what?’—blushing fatally.

‘Can’t say that the redoubtable James is nothing to you.’

‘I suppose you want to drive me away again,’ says Susan demurely.

‘That subterfuge won’t answer a second time. Don’t dream of it. If you attempt to fly me now, I warn you that I shall grapple with that blue tie round your neck, and—you wouldn’t like a scene, Susan, would you? Come, is he nothing to you?’

‘I really wonder,’ says Susan, struggling with a desire for laughter that brightens up her pretty eyes and curves the corners of her lips, ‘that after all I have said before you should still persist in this nonsense.’

‘That still is no answer. I don’t even know if it is nonsense. I begin to suspect you of being a diplomatist, Susan.’

‘I am not,’ says she, a little indignantly. ‘I am nothing in the world but what you see—just Susan Barry.’

‘And that means—shall I tell you what that means?’ He is smiling lightly, easily, but a good deal of heartfelt passion can lie behind a smile. ‘Shall I?’

This is another question. But Susan, softly glancing, puts that question by.

‘What, no answer to anything?’

‘Not to silly things.’ She shakes her head. ‘Besides, it’s my turn now. Do you’—she lays her hand lightly on his arm and looks cautiously round her—‘do you think it—is all right?’

‘All right? How should I know? You refuse to answer me, and what do I know of James?’

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Her soft voice shows irritation, and her hand trembles on his arm as if she would dearly like to shake him. ‘I begin to hate James.’

‘Ah, now we get near the answer,’ says he. ‘I feel better. Go on. What’s to be all right?’

‘You saw Ella—Mr. Wyndham’s tenant, you know—in the tree over there a little time ago. What do you think about it? I thought Mrs. Prior looked put out. But what can it matter to her who is living there? Did she want the Cottage?’

‘It seems a fair solution of the problem,’ says Crosby thoughtfully, and, after all, truthfully enough. Certainly Mrs. Prior has worked for eighteen months, not only for the Cottage, but for the owner of the Cottage and all the rest of his possessions for her daughter.

‘But she won’t be disagreeable to poor Ella, will she?’

‘Won’t she, if she gets the chance!’ thinks Crosby. ‘Must see that she doesn’t get it, though. No, no; of course’—out aloud.

‘And you think it doesn’t matter her being seen; that nothing will come of it?’

‘Only a most infernal row,’ thinks Crosby again, but says: ‘Naturally nothing. Besides, Mrs. Prior is going home to-morrow.’

‘Oh, I’m glad of that,’ says Susan. ‘I didn’t like her expression when she saw Ella. And now I must go; Lady Forster wants to say good-bye to me.’ She turns, then runs back again. ‘Oh, a moment. Tell me’—looking at him eagerly, but shyly—‘you—do you really think it has gone off—well?’

The eyes are so anxious that Crosby feels it is impossible to jest here. This little party has seemed a great deal to her—quite a tremendous event in her calm, isolated life.

‘I heard Katherine say just now,’ says he, ‘that she had never enjoyed herself so much in all her life!’ And if he hadn’t heard Katherine say that, I hope it will be forgiven him.

‘And—and the others?’

‘“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,”’ quotes he solemnly. ‘In my opinion you will have to get up the sergeant and all his merry men to turn them out.’

‘Oh, now!’ says Susan, with a lovely laugh, that has such sweet and open gratification in it, ‘that’s too much. And you’—anxiously—‘you weren’t dull?’

He pauses; then: ‘I don’t think so.’ He pauses again, as if to more religiously search his memory. ‘I really don’t think so!’

At this Susan laughs with even greater gaiety than before, and he laughs too, and with a little friendly hand-clasp they part.

It doesn’t take the Barrys—that is, Susan, Dom, Carew, and Betty—a second after their guests have gone, to scamper down the road to the little green gate and beat upon it the tattoo that is the signal between them and Ella. And it takes only another moment for Ella herself to open the gate cautiously, whereupon she finds herself instantly with her hands full of cakes and fruit and sweets that they have brought her from their party, leaving the rest to the children, who had really behaved remarkably well all through the afternoon, thanks to the sombre Jacky, who had kept them under his unflinching eye.

‘Well, we’re alive,’ cries Betty. ‘Rather the worse for wear, but still in the land of the living. And, really, it went off miraculously well—for us. Not even a fly in the cream. You saw us, I know. How did we look?’

‘Oh, it was all so pretty—so pretty!’ says Ella, a little sadly, perhaps, but with enthusiasm that leaves nothing to be desired. ‘Yes, of course I saw you. I climbed up the tree. But’—nervously, looking at Susan—‘I’m afraid they saw me.’

‘Certainly they saw you,’ says Carew, a little hotly. ‘Why shouldn’t they?’

‘Oh no! I didn’t want that. I am sorry,’ says Ella, with evident distress. ‘I thought I was quite safe there—that no one could see me. But—Susan—did Mr. Wyndham see me?’

‘Yes,’ says Susan gently. Ella’s distress at once growing deeper, she goes on hurriedly: ‘But, as Carew says, why not? It is your own place—your own tree—and I have always said you ought to come out and mix with us.’

‘No, no!’—hurriedly. All at once it seems to her that she must tell Susan the whole truth; how it is with her, and her horror of being discovered by that man, and the past sadness of her life, and the present loneliness of it. But not now; another time, when they are quite alone.

‘The poet saw you, at all events,’ says Dom. ‘He’s not quite right in his head, poor old chap! and he got very mixed. He thought you were a Hindoo idol——’

‘Dominick!’ Betty turns upon him indignantly. ‘How disgracefully ignorant you are! After all papa’s teaching! Hamadryads aren’t Hindoo idols. They are lovely things. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

‘I am—I am,’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, with resignation. ‘I really don’t think I shall pass any exam.’

‘You don’t try,’ says Susan, with a slight touch of anger. ‘You don’t put your mind into your work. And it is such a shame towards father. Why don’t you try?’

‘He does try!’ says Betty angrily. She is so evidently on the defensive—on the side of the prisoner at the bar—that they all stare, a matter that brings her to her senses in a hurry. She to defend Dom, with whom she is always at daggers drawn! A gleam of pleasure in Dom’s eyes enrages her, and brings the crisis.

‘He does try,’ repeats she. ‘But’—with a glance at Dom meant to reduce him to powder—‘he has no brains.’

The glance is lost. Dom comes up smiling.

‘You’ve got it,’ says he. And then, ‘Anyway, Miss Moore, our only poet thought you were a sylvan goddess. Will that do, Betty? Didn’t he, Carew?’

‘He’s a fool,’ says Carew morosely.

‘Did you notice him, Ella?’ asks Betty. ‘A little man with a dismal eye and a nose you could hang your hat on? If poets are all like that, defend me from them! He goes about as if he was searching for a corner in which to weep, and he looks as if——’

‘“’E don’t know where ’e are,”’ quotes Dom.

‘Yes, I saw him. He was sitting near you, Susan; and I saw Mr. Wyndham, and——’ She pauses, and a faint colour steals into her cheeks. ‘Susan, who was that woman with the high things in her bonnet?’

‘High things!’ Susan looks puzzled, and Ella goes on to describe Mrs. Prior’s bonnet with more extreme accuracy.

‘That was Mrs. Prior—Mr. Wyndham’s aunt. Fancy your noticing her! Do you know, Ella, I can’t bear her, or her daughter. They are all so—so unreal—so cruel, I think——’

But Ella is hardly listening. Her eyes are troubled. She is thinking—thinking.

‘It is strange,’ says she at last, ‘but, somehow, it seems to me as if I had seen her before. Not here—not now—but long, long, long ago.’ She makes a little movement of her hands as if driving something from her, then looks at Susan. ‘It is nonsense, of course.’ She is very pale, and her smile is dull and lifeless. ‘But—I have seen her somewhere in my past—or someone like her; but not so cold—so cruel.’

‘She is Mr. Wyndham’s aunt,’ says Susan again. ‘Perhaps the likeness you see lies there.’

‘Perhaps so. But no, he is not like her,’ says the girl earnestly. ‘No, it is not Mr. Wyndham she reminds me of.’

‘My goodness, Susan,’ says Betty suddenly, ‘perhaps we should not have left all those cakes with the children. They will make themselves ill, and we shall have a horrid time to-morrow.’

‘Oh, and Bonnie!’ says Susan, paling. She kisses Ella hurriedly and races home again up the quiet little shadowy road, without waiting for the slower coming of those behind her.

CHAPTER XLIII.

‘Fortune makes quick despatch, and in a day

May strip you bare as beggary itself.’

‘Is this thing true, George?’