Lady Jim of Curzon Street: A Novel

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(Harvard University)

Popular Novels by Fergus Hume

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THE SECRET PASSAGE

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THE YELLOW HOLLY

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A COIN OF EDWARD VII.

The Philadelphia Item says: "This book is quite up to the level of the high standard which Mr. Hume has set for himself in 'The Mystery of a Hansom Cab' and 'The Rainbow Feather.' It is a brilliant, stirring adventure, showing the author's prodigious inventiveness, his well of imagination never running dry."

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THE PAGAN'S CUP

The Nashville American says: "The plot is intricate with mystery and probability neatly dovetailed and the solution is a series of surprises skillfully retarded to whet the interest of the reader. It is excellently written and the denouement so skillfully concealed that one's interest and curiosity are kept on edge till the very last. It will certainly be a popular book with a very large class of readers."

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THE MANDARIN'S FAN

The Nashville American says: "The book is most attractive and thoroughly novel in plot and construction. The mystery of the curious fan, and its being the key to such wealth and power is decidedly original and unique. Nearly every character in the book seems possible of accusation. It is just the sort of plot in which Hume is at his best. It is a complex tangle, full of splendid climaxes. Few authors have a charm equal to that of Mr. Hume's mystery tales."

12mo, Cloth bound, $ 1.25

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

LADY JIM of
CURZON STREET

A Novel

By
FERGUS HUME

Author of
"The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," "A Coin of Edward VII,"
"The Pagan's Cup," "The Yellow Holly," "The Red Window,"
"The Mandarin's Fan," "The Secret Passage," etc.

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1906, BY

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

Issued March, 1906

Lady Jim of
Curzon Street

LADY JIM OF CURZON STREET

[ CHAPTER I]

"We're on the rocks this time, Leah, smashin' for all we're worth. How we can win clear beats me."

With hands which had never earned a shilling thrust into pockets empty even of that coin, Jim Kaimes stretched out his long legs and surveyed his neat boots as he made this cryptic speech. His habit of expressing himself in a parabolic fashion was confusing to his friends. But five years of marital squabbling had schooled his wife into ready comprehension, and she usually responded without comment. On this occasion, however, the subject under discussion irritated even her healthy nerves, and she replied irrelevantly.

"Really, Jim, I wish you would talk English."

"Huh! Never knew I was talking Choctaw."

"You might be, for all the sense an ordinary person can make of it."

"Ah-a-a!" said Jim, with the clumsy affection of a bear; "but you're not an ordinary person, Leah. I'm the common or garden ass, that can't straighten things. Now you can."

"For want of a husband I suppose I must."

"Come now, Leah. Am I not your husband?"

"Oh yes!" she answered, with a flick of her handkerchief across a pair of scornful lips: "my husband, not a husband."

"What's the difference?"

"As if I could waste time in explaining. We have more serious matters to talk about than your want of brains."

"Serious enough," assented the man, sulkily; "but you know how to deal with trouble, Leah."

"I ought to," retorted his wife, with a shrug, "considering the experience I have had since marrying you. I wish I hadn't."

"So do I," confessed Jim; then mended his speech with a dim sense of having overstepped the mark: "No, by Jupiter, I don't mean that. You an' I get on very well, considerin' each swings on a private hook. You are not a bad sort, Leah, and I'm a--a--a--well, you know what I am."

"Not a diplomatist, certainly. Isn't this praise a trifle obvious? You don't mean it, do you?"

She looked at him wistfully, but her candid husband soon stopped any sentimental illusions she may have momentarily entertained. "Oh yes, I mean it in a sort of way. An' good temper on both sides will help us to push through the business quicker."

"You mean the Bankruptcy Court," snapped his wife.

"Perhaps I mean the Divorce Court," was his tart reply, but she was quite ready with an answer.

"On your own part, then; you can't say a word against me."

"Who said I could? You've got the one virtue that gives its name to the rest, and think yourself an angel."

"I had your assurance that I was an angel--once."

"No doubt. It's the sort of thing a man has to say to the woman he is engaged to."

"And never says to the woman he is married to!"

"Marriage isn't all honey, Leah, and----"

"Heavens!" Lady Jim addressed the ceiling; "as if I required telling. But compared with other women, Jim, I am not----"

"I never said you were," interrupted Kaimes, crossly. "I'd screw your neck if you went on like other women."

"Upon my word, Jim, I would admire you more if you did attempt something of that sort."

"Sorry I can't oblige you; but I'm a gentleman and bear an honoured name."

"An honoured name!"

"Sneerin' won't alter facts, Leah. The name of Kaimes has always been honoured----"

"Till you dragged it through the mud," interrupted Leah, in her turn. "The old Duke is all right, and Frith's a kind man, if somewhat dull. But you--oh heavens! to think that such a Saul should be amongst the prophets."

Jim, not understanding the scriptural allusion, thought he was being chaffed, a liberty which his bovine pride resented by two minutes of sulky silence. Moreover, he dreaded his wife's formidable tongue, the lash of which could cut through even his tough hide.

"How are we goin' to get through the business at this rate?" was his next contribution to the conversation. "You don't remember that I've to meet a fellow at the club to see about a bet. An' I haven't got one shillin' to rattle against another," declared Jim, pathetically.

"Well," was the sharp reply, "I have to shop this afternoon with but one miserable sovereign in my purse."

Lord Jim opened his sleepy blue eyes. "I say, you couldn't----?"

"No," said his wife, decisively. "I couldn't and I wouldn't, and I can't and I shan't. Perhaps you'll read the paper and let me think."

"All right," said Kaimes, reaching for the Sporting Times. "I want to see the bettin' on Podaskas."

"Betting will be your ruin."

"Has been," corrected Jim, chuckling; then reverted to his early metaphor: "We're on the rocks this time, Leah, and no mistake."

His wife cast a look of scorn on the pink-and-white face she had once thought handsome. And, indeed, Kaimes was good-looking in a heavy Saxon way. Tall and muscular, with the strength of a bull and the manners of a bear, he was precisely the sort of brutal athlete to attract women. They flocked round him like bees, and gave him more honey than was good for him. He accepted their endearments with the complacent vanity of an egotist, and took little trouble to please even the prettiest, whereupon he was adored the more.

Leah, with her elbows on the breakfast-table, stared at Jim's well-brushed head bending over the pink sheets, and asked herself, for the hundredth time, why she had married him. Physically he resembled a splendid Hercules, but in another sense the likeness was not a speaking one. He satisfied her eyes, and in no other way gave her pleasure. When he talked, he babbled vainly about himself and his doings, to the exclusion of any topic likely to interest other people. Possessed of that easy good-nature which refuses nothing, which costs nothing, Jim Kaimes was looked upon as "a good fellow," a title which covers a multitude of the minor sins. Jim would have been meritorious as a cave-man, and pre-historically perfect. As a civilised being he left very much to be desired.

The subject was neither agreeable nor inexhaustible, and Leah rose with a shrug of her shapely shoulders. Jim looked up.

"Well?" he asked encouragingly.

"Nothing!" said his wife, curtly, and moved to the window.

Here she leaned against the sash and looked at the narrow grey street which was such a good address to impress tradesmen, and so expensive to live in. Not that the question of rent troubled the pair. They paid none, and would have been as much insulted, if visited on quarter-day, as an Irish tenant. The Duke of Pentland at the time of their marriage had presented them with the furnished "10, Curzon Street," but hampered with certain restrictions. They could not sell it, or even mortgage it, nor could money be raised on the furniture. The Duke paid all rates and taxes, and saw to all repairs. Beyond dwelling in this very desirable residence, and calling it publicly their home, Lord and Lady Jim had no interest in it whatsoever. Both thought it was ridiculous that they could not turn the Curzon Street house into money, when they needed ready cash so badly.

And life was so hard to people of their standing and tastes. Leah came of a bankrupt family, and had brought nothing to Jim but her own clever, beautiful self. She considered the two thousand a year which the Duke allowed his second son opulence, until she learned what delightful things money could buy. Then Jim used a large amount of the quarterly payments on his own account, and tradesmen would not give her the delightful things without money. She certainly had bills in nearly every shop in Bond Street and out of it, but even bills had to be paid in the long run. The post brought a good many, and brought also lawyers' letters, not pleasant to read. Between them, this happy pair had mortgaged their income, and the money they had obtained was all gone. Now they had no income and many bills. What was to be done? This problem Jim had set Leah to solve, but clever as she knew herself to be, the solution was beyond her.

"Can't you borrow, Jim?" she asked, turning gloomily from the window.

"Perhaps a fiver," was the prompt response; "every one's as mean as mean. I've tried 'em all. And you?"

Leah shook her head.

"Twenty pounds, for all my asking."

"There's your godmother, old Lady Canvey," suggested Jim. "She's as rich as Dives."

"And, like Dives, won't give a penny to this Lazarus. She smiles, and talks epigrams, and preaches, but as to helping----" Leah shrugged her shoulders again.

The action drew her husband's attention to a very magnificent figure which was loudly admired. Jim had admired it himself before he had got used to seeing it in the breakfast-room. Now it struck him that this attraction might be turned into money.

"You're a ripping woman in the way of looks," he said, throwing down the newspaper; "if you went on the stage--eh?"

"As the fairy queen?" inquired his wife, scornfully: "that's about all I'm suited for. I know the things I can't do, Jim, and acting is one. Besides, think of what the Duke would say."

Jim yawned, and lighted a cigarette.

"He can't say more than he has said," he remarked, lazily. "'Sides, I never go to hear him preach, now."

"No; you send me."

"Why not? The Duke loves a pretty woman. You can twist him round your little finger."

"I can't twist any money out of him," said Lady Jim, irritably.

"More's the pity. We're on the rocks----"

"You've said that twice already."

"An' I'll say it again and again and again," snapped Jim. "You don't seem to realise the hole we're in."

"Don't I?" she queried, with an emotion she would never have shown in society. "I realise that I have one sovereign; and you----?"

"Only a fiver I intend to borrow from a sure man," said Jim; "but I say, what's to be done?"

"We must go through the court."

"What's the use of that? It'll only settle our debts. We want ready money. I don't care a straw about the tradesmen. Can't we let this house?"

"No; the Duke says we can live in it as long as we like, but if we leave he'll take it back again."

"It's like giving a boy half a crown and telling him not to spend it," said Kaimes, looking round. "If we only could! It's a jolly sort of room this, and we'd get a good rent for the house."

The room was indeed pretty, being decorated in a Pompadour manner. Its walls were adorned with white paper, sprinkled with bunches of roses tied with fluttering blue ribbons, and the carpet bore the same dainty design. The furniture was of white wood, upholstered in brocade, also diversified with roses and azure streamers. There were many delicate water-colour pictures, a grate and fire-irons of polished brass, and electric lights in rose-tinted globes. Even the grey December light streaming in through the two windows could not make the apartment look anything but clean, and delicate, and dainty, and delightful. It was an ideal nest for a young couple. But this one had outlived the honeymoon, and cared very little for the ideal.

"A very pretty room," said Jim, again; "and you're the prettiest thing in it, Leah."

She looked at him scornfully, and then glanced around. "I hate all this frippery" she said contemptuously. "Something more massive would suit me better."

"Well, you are a kind of Cleopatra, y' know."

If Jim's historical knowledge had been more accurate, he would have made a better comparison. Cleopatra, according to the latest discoveries, was small, foxy-haired, and dainty. She would have suited this Watteau-like room to perfection. But Lady Jim was as tall as any daughter of the gods, and bore herself after the imperial style of Juno, Queen of Olympus. Her hair was of a deep red, and she had a great quantity, as those who saw her pose in charity tableaux knew very well. Leah possessed the creamy complexion which usually goes with such hair, and a pair of large blue eyes, out of which her soul had never peered. They were hard eyes, shallow as those of a bird, and surveyed the world and its denizens with the inquiring expression of a cat on the look-out for titbits. Her lips were thin, and covered admirably white and regular teeth. It was a clever face, and beautiful in its serene immobility. Those who did not like Lady Jim called her a cat; but she was more like a sleek, dangerous pantheress, and woe to the victim who came under her claws. Yet she could purr very prettily on occasions.

"Well, Jim," she said more graciously, for she was sufficiently a woman to be pleased with her husband's grudging compliments. "Now that you have finished saying sweet things, what next?"

"This business. We're on the----"

"Jim, if you say that again I'll leave you to get out of the trouble yourself. You're my husband. Think of something."

"I can't--unless it's the insurance."

"The insurance," said Leah, thoughtfully; "twenty thousand pounds, isn't it, Jim?"

Her husband nodded. "Old Jarvey Peel, my godfather, had my life insured when I was a child, and arranged that his heirs should pay up the money every year to keep it in force. Then there's accumulations of sorts. I don't understand these stale things myself, Leah, but I know that there's over twenty thousand."

"Can't you raise money on it?"

"No; the old man arranged that I should lose it if I tried that game. Lord," said Jim, with disgust, "if I could have raised money I should have got rid of it, ages ago."

"But how does it benefit you?" asked his wife, curiously; "if the money is paid when you are dead, you won't have any fun. But I"--her eyes gleamed.

"Oh no, you don't," snapped Jim, not at all pleased at this hint; "you'd like to turn me into cash in that way, I know. But it so happens that the twenty thousand, and whatever additions may have come, will be paid to me when I'm sixty. Much fun in that, when I shan't have teeth to crack nuts."

"You're over thirty now, Jim."

"Thirty-five, and you're only five years younger; so when we get the cash at sixty there won't be any enjoyment left for either of us."

"Thirty-five from sixty," murmured Lady Jim. "Leaves how much, Jim?"

"Twenty-five," replied Kaimes, after wrinkling his brow and communing with his none too quick brain. "Beastly long time to wait."

Leah nodded. "There's no chance of your getting it sooner?"

"Not the slightest. I can't get a cent on it, and I can't sell it, and I can't use it in any way. Jarvey Peel was a silly old ass. Died worth no end of coin, and didn't leave me a penny."

"But if you died, Jim?"

"Drop it," retorted Kaimes, who did not at all relish the suggestion.

"Well, but supposing you did?" insisted Leah.

"Then I 'spose the money would be paid to you," said Jim, kicking the hearth-rug with a gloomy face; "but don't you make any mistake, Leah. I'm goin' to live right on to sixty and handle the money. I can't do much at that age, but I'll try hard to get through the lot before I slip off."

"And what about me?"

"Oh, you must look after yourself," said Jim, heartlessly; "but if you can think of some scheme to get the cash now, I'll give you half--there now. There's nothing mean about me."

"What's the use of talking rubbish?" said Lady Jim, crossly; "you won't die."

"Not to oblige you, my dear, so don't think it."

"Then don't let us talk any more of the impossible."

"Is it impossible?" asked Kaimes, cunningly.

Leah looked at him with wide, bright eyes. "What is it?" she asked.

"I might pretend to die, you know," said Jim, looking at her very directly; "then the cash 'ud be paid to you, and we could share."

"But it's ridiculous," cried Leah, raising her eyebrows; "you would have to give up your position and disappear."

"Who cares? You know I never stop longer in England than I can help. As to my position, it's all debts and duns, and squabbling with you. Oh, I'd give up the whole thing for the money!"

"You never think of me."

"Got enough to do to think of myself," grumbled Kaimes; "'sides, you don't care for me. As a widow you could have lots of fun on--on, say--five thousand."

"That's right, Jim, take the lion's share to yourself."

"Well, shouldn't I be paying the largest price for getting the cash?"

Leah shrugged her shoulders again. "There would be very little sacrifice in it so far as you are concerned," she said. "You've been three times to South America since we were married, and I presume with this money you would go there again."

"I'd go out of your life for ever."

"Oh, well," she said coolly; "I could show my respect to your memory by wearing a widow's dress. I expect I should look rather nice in a cap."

Lord Jim was rather disgusted. Little as he loved his wife, he expected her to be devotedly attached to him, and her ready acquiescence in his disappearance annoyed him greatly.

"You've got no heart."

"How clever of you to guess that! I gave it to you five years ago."

"And took it back before the honeymoon was over."

"Well, you see, Jim, you are so careless a man that I could not think of leaving the only heart I possess in your hands. Besides, so many women have given you their hearts that I thought you might confuse the lot."

Lord Jim did not like this banter, and said so in a few forcible words. Then he moved to the door, casting a disgusted look at a pile of bills on Leah's side of the table.

"What about this truck?"

"Oh, we'll pay them out of your insurance," laughed Lady Jim.

"Not much. I'm not going to disappear and give up everything for the benefit of a lot of measly tradesmen."

"I wish you wouldn't dangle grapes out of my reach," said his wife, pettishly; "you know it's not to be done."

Jim plunged forward, and, gathering up the mass of papers, threw them into the fire. "Pay them in this way, then," said he, enraged.

"I wish I could," sighed Leah, wearily, and looked at herself in the mirror. "Do stop worrying me, Jim. I'm getting to look quite old. Are you going out?"

"Yes. We've wasted an hour in talking about nothing. We're on the rocks, I tell you."

"And so," said Lady Jim, calmly, "you end where you began."

Jim looked up to heaven. "And this is a wife!" said he, plaintively.

"And this," she mocked, laying her hand on his shoulder, "is a probable bankrupt!"

"Not me. I'll clear out first to South America."

"Leave the insurance money to me, Jim," called Leah, as he banged the door. "Twenty thousand pounds," she soliloquised--"it's worth trying for. But I might as well cry for the moon;" and she sighed, the sigh of selfishness, unexpectedly thwarted.

[ CHAPTER II]

Lord And Lady Jim Kaimes were regarded as a most agreeable couple, and utilised this reputation to live on their friends. The husband was an admirable shot, a daring and judicious polo-player, and his skill at cards was as notable as his dexterity in golfing. Consequently, he was much in request, and benefited largely in free board and lodging. He was good-looking, which pleased the women, and good-natured, which satisfied the men. In wrestling and boxing Jim could more than hold his own, and always paid his gambling debts, even at the cost of allowing tradesmen to threaten legal proceedings. Thus, according to modern ideas, he was an honourable man and a good all-round sportsman, a credit to the British aristocracy and a pleasure to his numerous friends. "These be thy gods, O Israel!" A clergyman once preached on this text in Jim's accidental hearing, but Jim did not know what he meant.

The wife was a general favourite with the men, but women fought rather shy of her. She thought too much of herself, they said, and dressed altogether too well; and, moreover, never gave even the most bitter-tongued female a chance of talking scandal in connection with the honoured name to which Jim had called her attention. However, feminine artfulness led one and all to conceal this dislike, and Lady Jim received as much kissing and as many sweet words and invitations as her vain, hungry soul desired. She saw through the wiles of her own sex clearly, and knew that in nine cases out of ten the woman who kissed would have preferred to bite. But they knew that Lady Jim knew, and Lady Jim knew that they knew she knew, so everything went well. As to what was said behind her back Lady Jim cared not a snap of her fingers, and if any rival dared to attack her openly she was quite able to use a particularly venomous tongue, the safeguard against calumny which Nature had given her. And it must be said that she never went out of her way to harm any one: her position was that of a passive resister. As she pathetically observed, she was a contented woman, if only permitted to have her own way.

Certainly the women had cause to complain of Lady Jim's gowns, which were far beyond the ordinary female intellect in cut and fashion, in new material and up-to-date trimmings. She added her own ingenuity and taste to the creations of the dressmaker, and the result was always such a triumph as to lead the rest of her sex to doubt if Providence existed. It would have been even more aggravating than it was, had it been known that Lady Jim paid next to nothing for her gowns, and advertised the dressmaker instead of settling the bill. But Leah did not make this fact public. She was content to use her magnificent figure and good looks, and her popularity in society, to save a lean purse, and therefore was daily and nightly clad in the purple and fine linen which wrung envious tears from other women's eyes. Sometimes Lady Jim, fascinating a society-paper editor, would utilise his columns and circulation to advertise deserving tradesmen: while from these, in return, she exacted tangible gratitude in the welcome shape of gloves, handkerchiefs, scents, and similar needful if expensive commodities. Lady Jim never signed her name to these literary efforts, but they drew custom to the shop and filled her wardrobe with what she wanted at the moment, so she was not ambitious to be known as an authoress. Even Jim never knew how his wife, as he put it, "contrived the tip-top;" and privately thought that the age of miracles was not yet past, when Leah could make something out of nothing.

For five years, more or less, Lady Jim had been clothed as the lilies of the field, and had been supplied with nutriment by the lineal descendants of Elijah's ravens; but now things were coming to a crisis. The long lane down which she had marched as Solomon-in-all-his-glory was about to take a turning, and Lady Jim did not relish the new route. It led to second-rate lodgings at home or abroad, to the lack of frocks and a diminution of other women's envy, to the loss of a thousand and one luxuries which had become necessaries, and to a self-denying ordinance of which she did not approve. Something must be done to prevent the necessity of turning down this penurious alley, but when Lady Jim set out on her shopping excursion she did not very well see how she could avoid the almost inevitable.

Needless to say, Leah had a trifle more in her purse than the one sovereign she had admitted the existence of to Jim. To be precise, she possessed ten pounds, and that had to last a week as pocket-money. She felt very hard up as she stepped into her motor-car and whirled down the street. Had she possessed the lamp of Aladdin she would have made its slave bankrupt; and to think that seven days of desiring pretty things should be supported on ten pounds! The beggar at the gate of Dives could not have been poorer.

But there was no sign of penury on the surface. The unpaid sables Lady Jim wore were the best that the animal could give; the fur rug over her feet had cost enough to keep a poor family for six months in food and fire, though she, or rather Jim, was being dunned for the payment of that; the motor-car was one of the best and newest, and Lady Jim drove it with the reckless speed of a woman who thinks the world was created so that she should play Juggernaut. Having plenty of courage, and a love for playing with death, Leah was a daring and skilful driver. Before now she had swept round a corner with two wheels beating the air. But she had not as yet crushed any one under the said wheels, and she ascribed this luck to her peacock's feather. Like all who have small belief in the Deity, Lady Jim was superstitious in a small way. Her fetish was a peacock's feather, and so long as she had one about her, nothing, so she averred, could possibly go wrong. There was one now thrust into the left-hand lamp of the car, and the panels were painted with the same feathers, until they resembled the tail of Juno's favourite bird. Lady Jim might forget to go to church, or to say her prayers, or to thank God, but she never forgot the necessary peacock's feather which was to ensure prosperity and safety. She was reported to make genuflections before a shrine of this sort, but the report was probably exaggerated. No one knew what kind of a Baal she worshipped, but it is ridiculous to say that she did not adore at least one, for she was, in her way, a very religious woman.

Lady Jim raced her car out of Curzon Street, down Park Lane, and into Piccadilly, where she amused herself with dodging nervous people and shaving the wheels of vehicles drawn by humble quadrupeds. The chauffeur sat grimly silent, expecting an almost certain spill, with the calm of a fatalist. He knew it would come some day, in spite of his mistress's skilful driving, but he neither worried nor remonstrated. He was paid for a silent tongue and healthy nerves, and if his life was insured rather heavily, considering his profession, that was no one's business but his wife's, and she had already decided how to spend the insurance money. But the woman need not have been so sure of such good fortune. Lady Jim did not mind hurting other people, but she had an uncommonly good notion of how to preserve the only neck she possessed.

When the car reached Bond Street, Lady Jim, who was as calm as though she had finished a donkey-ride, stepped down and entered a jeweller's shop. Lately she had paid a trifle off his bill, and thought herself entitled to double the gross amount. The jeweller, knowing the Duke of Pentland had fifty thousand a year, and that Lady Jim was too pretty a daughter-in-law not to get her own way with so gay an old nobleman, did not object to his customer's purchases. If Lady Jim could not pay the Duke would, so she was permitted to take away several objects for which she had no use. Then she went to select some new hats, and look at the latest thing in frocks. A call at certain other establishments resulted in the car being heaped with expensive trifles for Christmas presents. Afterwards the car whirled into Oxford Street, returned to Piccadilly, and stopped every now and then like a bird of prey. At some shops she was received with sickly smiles; at others, which she favoured for the first time with her custom, with rejoicing grins: but out of every place Lady Jim walked calmly, with a shopman in the rear bringing parcels to increase the baggage on the car. She achieved the whole afternoon's work without once opening her purse. Could Rothschild have financed things better?

At five o'clock, with lighted lamps and unabated speed, Lady Jim drove her machine to Berkeley Square, and, leaving the chauffeur to choke and shiver in the damp fog, walked into a dull-looking house to see her godmother, Lady Canvey. She wished to ask the advice of that kindly, shrewd old pagan, and was not at all pleased when she found the Rev. Lionel Kaimes, trying to lead Lady Canvey in the right way. He had been trying to guide her heavenward for the last year, but the bright-eyed old dame still danced along the primrose path with nimble feet and an appreciation of the agreeable people who were dancing along with her to perdition.

"Well, my dear," said Lady Canvey, submitting her withered cheek to a conventional kiss. "Lionel, here, has been speaking of the devil, and you appear. There's some truth in proverbs, it seems."

"Oh, Lady Canvey," sighed a soft voice at the old pagan's elbow.

"I forgot, Leah, this is my 'Philip you-are-but-mortal' companion. You have not met her before, and I don't think you'll seek her company again. She's not quite your sort, my dear, not quite your sort. Joan, come and show yourself."

In response to this order a slim, tall girl, with a serious face, came forward shyly, and put out a timid hand. She was plainly dressed in a black stuff gown, without colour or ornament. Her hands and feet were slim and small; she had wavy brown hair twisted into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and the features of her somewhat pale face were delicately shaped. On the whole an uncommonly pretty girl, Lady Jim decided, after taking in all this at a glance, but less seriousness and brighter smiles would improve her looks. She was like Pygmalion's statue before the goddess had flushed its cold whiteness with rosy blood.

"How are you?" asked Leah, nodding in a friendly way, but without shaking hands. "You are one of Lady Canvey's discoveries, I suppose."

"My discovery," put in Lionel, cheerfully, and with a proud glance at the white-rose beauty of the girl. "Lady Canvey wanted a companion, and I brought her----"

"One of Fra Angelico's saints," finished Lady Jim, who was honest enough to confess inwardly that this ethereal loveliness was most attractive.

"Quite so," chuckled Lady Canvey, arranging many costly rings on a pair of knuckly hands. "Lionel knows how I enjoy the company of a saint."

"You must put up with a sinner for the time being," said Lady Jim, good-humouredly. "I have come to talk business."

"That means you intend to worry me," grumbled Lady Canvey, with a sharp glance from under her bushy eyebrows. "I hate being worried and bored."

"Oh, I shan't bore you."

"Yes, you will. Other people's affairs always bore me. I am not like his reverence here," and she waved her ebony cane towards the young curate, who laughed cheerfully.

"I admit there is some lack of resemblance," assented Lady Jim, dryly.

Then she looked from the young man to the old woman. Lionel was her husband's cousin, and should death make a clean sweep of the Duke, and Frith and Jim, he would inherit the title and the fifty thousand a year which Lady Jim coveted. This possibility, which it must be admitted was sufficiently remote, did not make Leah love the young man any the more. Besides, he was what she called "goody-goody," which meant that he had entered the service of his Master for use and not for show. As the curate of an exacting vicar in a Lambeth parish, he grubbed amongst the dirty poor, and dispensed soup, soap, shelter, and salvation. Rarely did Lionel come to the West End, as his task lay amongst the poor and lowly; but when he did venture into high places he always called on Lady Canvey, who had an odd kind of affection for him. "He's misguided, but genuine, my love," said the pagan, "and moreover, he amuses me!" which last statement amply accounted for the favour with which the old lady regarded him. Lionel was rather like Jim, tall and muscular and handsome. But his face had an intelligent look which Leah had never beheld in the dull visage of her husband, and his blue eyes had the bright, calm gaze of one whose faith is certain. He affected the usual clerical garb, but being only twenty-five, and boyish at that, his face wore a genial, cheerful, unworried expression, which made most people open their hearts. Like a doctor, a clergyman must have a good bedside manner, and this Lionel possessed. Moreover, his heart was kindly, and he was quick to observe the snubbed and neglected. This feeling drew him towards Joan, who had retreated, colouring painfully, when Lady Jim substituted a nod for a handshake. The girl was busy with a silver teapot, egg-shell china, and hot cakes, and presently handed a cup to the visitor. Lady Jim took it somewhat absently, and having satisfied herself with Lionel's looks and personality, turned her eyes on Lady Canvey.

Outwardly the old dame resembled the godmother of a fairy story, and would have been admirably suited to the pointed cap and scarlet cloak of a professed witch. Yet the remains of beauty lingered about her wrinkled face, recalling exciting Crimean days when she had been a belle. She was small and shrunken and bent, and sometimes her grey head shook with palsy. But her spirit was still vigorous and her brain clear, as could be seen by the steadiness of her piercing black eyes, diamond-bright and clear. She wore a lace cap, a dress of silvery grey satin, and many jewels costly but old-fashioned. Add to these a white China-crape shawl and an ebony cane, and behold the portrait of the lady known as the "cleverest old harridan in town." But that description was given by an enemy. Lady Canvey had a quick brain and a sharp tongue, yet her heart was as kindly as that of Lionel. Perhaps it was this which drew the young and old together.

The room was comfortable, and luxuriously furnished, but with the ugly taste of the Early Victorian epoch. Lady Canvey, now over eighty, clung to the decorations and colours which had been fashionable when she was young, and on stepping into the room Lady Jim felt as though she had slipped back to the time of the Great Exhibition. The motor-car outside, and the old lady in the red velvet armchair, represented widely-severed eras. And even Joan the saint and Lionel the curate seemed alien to the world Lady Jim inhabited. For that world closely resembled the one Noah had fled from into the ark, when the denizens "were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage"--though, to be sure, marriage nowadays, save as a visible sign of respectability, was not much considered.

"Well, godmother," said Lady Jim, thinking to curry favour with this she-Cr[oe]sus by using an approved, if somewhat obsolete, address, "you are looking well."

"Then I'm a living lie," retorted Lady Canvey, grimly. "How can you expect me to look well, when Lionel here has been quoting texts for want of originality?"

"I wanted you to hear the scripture," protested Lionel.

"That's your business," replied Lady Canvey, stirring her tea; "but I can hear the scriptures read when I please by Joan, who has a much sweeter voice than you, young man, as I suppose you think;" and she gave one of her dry chuckles.

The curate reddened, and Joan looked confused. Lady Jim, glancing from one serious face to the other, drew her own conclusions, and murmured something about a "sealed fountain." Lady Canvey, not being versed in biblical imagery, did not understand, but Lionel comprehended on the instant.

"I am glad to hear that you read your Bible, Lady James," he said quickly.

Leah hated to be addressed in this stiff manner; yet it seemed appropriate to the out-of-date room. But she had no desire to quarrel with her godmother's pet in the presence of that opulent lady, so she turned the tables on Lionel by looking shocked. "Of course I do. I am not a pagan."

"Then I must be one," snapped Lady Canvey; "for I wouldn't be you, Leah Kaimes, for the heaven I don't expect to go to."

"Hush! hush!" said Lionel, pained by this flippancy coming from those withered lips.

Lady Jim glanced at her opulent beauty in a dim mirror, framed in tarnished gold, and laughed softly. Her godmother saw the look and was swift to interpret its meaning.

"I was like that once," she said, in rather a quavering voice, "and you'll come to be such as I am, only you'll never wear so well. Oh, what an arm I had!" and she began to weep silently over her lost beauty.

While Lionel and Joan comforted the poor soul, Leah looked sympathetic but gave no assistance. She decided that Lady Canvey was in her dotage, and would be the more easily dealt with on that account. Her one desire, therefore, was to get rid of the two unnecessary people and begin operations at once. She hoped by skilful management to come away with a considerable cheque in Lady Canvey's shaky handwriting. Those drivelling tears meant a weak will, and that, to one of Leah's determination, meant money.

"About this business," she began, when the old woman was again her cheerful, cynical self: "could you spare me ten minutes, godmother?"

"Certainly, my dear. It's all I can spare you."

This was not a promising beginning, but Lady Jim knew she would not walk off with the spoils without a sharp brush for their gaining. She looked at Lionel, and then at the girl, whom she was sure in her own heart the curate loved.

"Have you ever heard Mr. Kaimes talk Chinese metaphysics, Miss Tallentire?" she asked Joan, having possessed herself of the companion's surname.

"No," said Joan, opening her violet eyes widely. "I am not clever enough to understand."

"Ask Mr. Kaimes if he doesn't think you are clever enough."

"Really, Lady James----"

"Lionel," interrupted Lady Canvey, sharply, "go into the conservatory with Joan. She will show you a new dwarf oak which I lately bought. Leah will entertain me. And I'm pretty sure," chuckled she, "that I shall entertain Leah."

"She's going to be nasty," thought Lady Jim, with a charming smile, and continued to smile until the curate and his unsuspecting companion went to see the dwarf oak and to talk Chinese metaphysics, which Leah was certain they would do. Lionel, with a defiant glance at his cousin, and with a colour which made him look unexpectedly handsome, followed Joan out of the stuffy room. When the door was closed, and the fire was unnecessarily poked up, and Lady Canvey was comfortably settled in her chair, after a word or two about the draughts which no one but herself could feel in that close atmosphere, Lady Jim waited patiently for her godmother to begin the battle.

She had not long to wait. Lady Canvey's eyes were bright, and Lady Canvey's spirit reared like a warhorse to plunge down on Leah. She sniffed once or twice, and looked sharply at the beautiful, smiling face. Then she delivered herself of a speech which put Lady Jim's late behaviour in a nutshell.

"Leah," said Lady Canvey, "you're a born cat."

[ CHAPTER III]

Lady Jim was not at all offended. She made every allowance for the querulous temper of old age, and still smiled.

"I rather like cats myself," she observed casually. "They know what they want."

"But they don't always get it, my dear," snapped Lady Canvey; adding inconsequently, "when the cat's in the dairy, she's after the cream."

"I don't think that's an original remark," said Leah, languidly, and loosening her furs, for the room really was heated like the conservatory, in which the lovers talked Chinese metaphysics. "Didn't George Eliot say something of the sort?"

"I never knew him," retorted Lady Canvey, wilfully dense. "You and your Chinese metaphysics indeed! I won't have it----"

"Have them," corrected Leah, gently, and unable to resist the opportunity.

Lady Canvey scowled like the fairy Caraboss, and continued, without heeding the impertinence, "Joan is the daughter of Lionel's vicar."

"I see, and he intends to be the vicar's son-in-law."

"What is that to you?"

"News!" expressed Lady Jim, serenely. "I never knew such a prig as Lionel could fall in love."

"His love is the love of an honest man," declared the old dame, striking her crutch on the carpet.

"I hope so, for the sake of his cloth."

"Chinese metaphysics indeed!" grumbled Lady Canvey. "The poor child did not know what you meant."

"She certainly seems to be somewhat dull."

"Dull yourself, Leah. She's a sweet-tempered, good, thoughtful girl."

"Oh, I didn't mean to say she was so dull as all those qualities imply," said Lady Jim, sweetly.

Lady Canvey looked wrathfully round for something to throw at her visitor's head. But the tea-table was too far away, and the old woman prized her cups and saucers. Finally she took refuge in a spiteful speech.

"She's an honest girl."

"I sincerely hope so, seeing she is your companion," replied Leah, not caring to take up so ridiculous a challenge. "When did you start her?"

"Leah!" Lady Canvey thumped the ground again. "Don't talk slang. If you wish to know, although I don't think it is any of your business, Joan Tallentire came to me two months ago, during which time you have not come to see me."

"I was abroad," apologised Lady Jim, stifling a yawn.

"Gambling at Monte Carlo, I'll be bound."

"I did meet Jim there. He lost heavily on the red. I won, and came home with enough to see me through the last month."

"Who were you living on abroad?" asked the old woman, contemptuously.

Lady Jim leaned back and placed her muff-chain between two very red lips.

"Let me think," she murmured, not put out in the least. "Oh, that little dowdy Australian woman, who is trying to get into society on her husband's money, asked me to stop at their villa."

"And you did?"

"For four weeks."

"And borrowed money, I'll be bound."

Lady Jim nodded blandly. "You can't expect me to live with pigs for nothing," she said, with the greatest coolness.

"You'd live with the devil and borrow from him, I believe," cried the exasperated Lady Canvey, glaring.

"I do live with one," assented her god-daughter; "but he's a stony-broke devil."

"More modern flowers of speech!"

"I didn't create the language."

"You can help using it."

"No. People wouldn't understand if I talked like Lady Jane Grey or Elizabeth Fry."

"They were good women."

"But so dull," objected Lady Jim. "Why is it good women are always dull and dowdy?"

"They are getting ready for the next world," mumbled Lady Canvey, solemnly.

"Their outfit can't cost much, then," declared Leah, flippantly; "but aren't we going to talk business? Think of that poor French, sitting in the motor-car all this time."

"You're sorry for him, I'm sure," said the old woman, ironically.

"Horribly," replied Lady Jim, calmly; "but at least the poor creature is cooler than I am. This room is stifling."

"Don't call your fellow-sinner a creature, Leah."

"Ah! Even had I not seen Lionel I could guess he had been with you, godmother. He loves the dirty and disreputable."

"And you love the rich and disreputable."

"That obvious speech is hardly worthy of your reputation," was Lady Jim's reply. Then she crossed her legs, rested her muff on her knee, and protested, "I can't wait here much longer----"

"On account of French?"

"No; but I'm going to dine at the Cecil to-night, with a boy in the Lancers. He's a nice boy."

"And a rich boy?"

"Of course! I don't like boys without money. But this business," she went on hurriedly. "Jim and I are in a hole."

"You ought to be in gaol," was the angry reply.

"That would be a hole," said Leah, good-humouredly; "but you don't want to see Jim and me in the bankruptcy court."

"Why should I bother? It's nothing to do with me!"

"I'm your god-daughter."

"You're a heartless cat," said Lady Canvey, angrily, and with her eyes scintillating like jewels. "It's no use, Leah. I've helped you and that rascal Jim over and over again. Apply to the Duke."

"Oh, we've done that. He won't give us a penny."

"Then ask some of those nice boys you talk of."

Lady Jim sat very upright in her chair, and a becoming colour heightened her beauty.

"I don't ask any men for money," she declared; "you know perfectly well, Lady Canvey, that I am any honest woman."

"And how dull that sounds," chuckled Lady Canvey, turning the tables; "you should be more original, Leah."

"I don't mind going out to dinner with a man," cried Lady Jim, feeling herself much aggrieved, "nor do I mind a box at the theatre, or some gloves or things of that sort, so long as Jim doesn't object.'

"Pooh! Much you care for Jim."

"I do. Jim's got a temper. He told me this very morning he'd screw my neck if I broke loose."

"Then I respect him for saying it," said Lady Canvey, energetically; "and I'd respect him still more if he did it."

"That's what I said to him," retorted Leah, grimly. "All the same, I am straight enough. No one can say a word against me."

"I'm glad to hear it. You have your good points, Leah," observed Lady Canvey, in a more kindly tone; "but you show your worst side to the world. Why not turn over a new leaf?"

"I'm just about to do so, and there's bankruptcy on the other side, unless you help us, dear godmother," she ended coaxingly.

"I won't," was the firm response. "It's like pouring water into a sieve. I've given you and Jim at least five thousand pounds. Where is it, I ask--where?"

"We must pay our bills."

"You ought to, but you don't."

"Money will go."

"In ways it shouldn't go," snapped the old woman, feeling herself mistress of the situation. "Don't talk nonsense to me, Leah. You and that rascal are a couple of spendthrifts. The Duke, bless him, started you both with a good home and a good income, and now----"

"Now we're on the rocks, as Jim cleverly puts it," said Leah, who could not help seeing the humour of the dilemma. "You didn't think Jim was so original, did you, godmother?"

"Leah, you're impossible!"

"I'm sure I don't know why you should say that," remonstrated Lady Jim. "I must keep up my position."

"It's not as if you had been expensively brought up," went on Lady Canvey, unheeding. "Your father was a wasteful pauper, for he got precious little off that estate of his in Buckinghamshire."

"And what he did get went into his own pocket," said Lady Jim, supplementing the family history; "but as my mother was dead, and I was his only daughter, he might have treated me better."

"Geoffrey Wain was like yourself, Leah--a hard-hearted, selfish----"

"Oh, spare me these adjectives," interrupted Lady Jim, rising. "My father is dead, so there's nothing more to say. If you can't help me, at least you needn't call me names."

"I beg your pardon," said Lady Canvey, very politely. "As I don't intend to give you a shilling, I have no right to tell you what I think of your doings. Will you ring the bell, please? I want Joan."

When Lady Canvey took this tone Leah knew well that the case was hopeless. In spite of senile weeping, it appeared that the old woman was not so easily beguiled as might have been expected. There seemed nothing for it but to leave in silence; but remembering how desperate was the position, Lady Jim refrained from ringing the bell and made a last appeal--this time on business grounds.

"If you will give me a thousand pounds for six months," she proposed, "my husband and I will pay it back with interest."

"And the security, my dear?"

"Our joint names," said Leah, with dignity.

"Ring the bell," was all the answer that Lady Canvey vouchsafed to this proposal; "and goodnight, my dear."

Lady Jim recognised that she was beaten, and nothing remained, but to retire with dignity. Pressing the button of the bell, she crossed to Lady Canvey and kissed her withered cheek with a caressing smile. "I am so pleased to see you looking so well," she said gently; "but I see signs of failing in your conversation."

"You won't see any signs of lending," was the grim response. "Oh, here you are, Joan," as that young lady entered the room with Lionel at her heels. "Send these people away, and read me a chapter out of that new novel which came yesterday."

"Goodnight," said Lionel, bending over the old lady, and kissing her hand with the tenderness of a son.

She twitched it away. "There--there--goodnight. Take Leah to that miserable creature who is perishing in her motor-car, and don't make love to her. She is one of those women who are a crown to their husbands."

Lady Jim did not wait to hear the old woman's chuckle as she fired this last shot, but swept out of the room, smiling kindly on Miss Tallentire. The curate followed her, and Leah began to consider what use she could make of him to farther her plans.

"Let me drive you to Lambeth," she said, while arranging her sables at the door.

Lionel laughed. "Lambeth would be shocked to see me arrive at my lodgings in such an up-to-date style," said he, pulling up the collar of his coat. "No, thank you, Lady James. I'll walk for a time, and then take a Westminster Bridge 'bus."

"No, you won't," she contradicted, in an imperious tone. "I wish to talk to you. Come, get in. French, you can go home."

"But the car, my lady?"

"I'll look to that. Do as you're told."

Looking rather apprehensively at the machine, which was humming and shaking in the bitter cold, French touched his cap and moved away. Leah stepped lightly in, and beckoned to Lionel with one hand, while she gripped the steering-wheel with the other.

"Come along."

The curate did not display much eagerness to come. "Is it safe?" he asked; "you've sent the man away."

"Because I want to talk privately with you. Safe!" she echoed in a tone of impatient scorn; "I'd drive a car against Edge himself."

"Oh, very well," said Kaimes, carelessly, and placed himself beside her. He was utterly devoid of fear, and if there was to be a smash, he was not unprepared to enter the next world. Lady Jim gave the wheel a twirl, and the car glided through the square under the grey muffling of the fog. Reckless as she was, Lady Jim had to steer carefully and move slowly, lest she should run into something, for the fog was a trifle thicker than it had been during the afternoon. All the same, her keen eyes could see clearly enough, and she was not at all afraid. Cool under all circumstances, Lady Jim would have hummed a ditty on the streaming bridge of a plunging, bucking tramp-steamer, going down in the bitter North Atlantic weather. Lionel marvelled at her composure, and wondered if even her dear intellect could grasp the meaning of death and its hereafter. But Lady Jim was thinking of this world rather than of the next, and talked of her troubles while steering the car down Piccadilly.

"Jim and I are in a hole about money," she announced abruptly, for there was no need to be diplomatic with this simpleton.

"That is not unusual," murmured Lionel.

She laughed and nodded. "No. We have both a wonderful capacity for getting through cash. Now we've got down to what an American girl called the bed-rock, and we want help."

"I never knew you when you did not want help," said the curate, wondering what was best to say; "and in some ways, your want is very dire."

"Don't preach, Lionel. Money is better than sermons."

"To such as you and Jim, no doubt. But setting aside the spiritual need, a sermon on your extravagance would do you good."

"I'm afraid not," rejoined Lady Jim, putting on the brake for the St. James's Street incline; "it would only go in at one ear and out of the other. When I want sermons I'll come and hear you preach in that dirty little church of yours. Meantime, you must help to get Jim and me out of this scrape."

Lionel was annoyed by her reference to his church, but from experience he knew it was worse than useless to argue with Lady Jim. "I cannot help you," he said stiffly; "you know my small means."

"Bless the man, I don't mean you to put your hand in your pocket. I am quite aware that the clergy are better at asking than at giving."

"You have no right to say that," remonstrated Kaimes, warmly. "We help the poor and needy."

"In that case you have now a chance of practising what you preach."

Lady Jim negotiated Cockspur Street and felt her way along Trafalgar Square in the hope of hitting Whitehall. Only when the car was buzzing down that thoroughfare did Lionel speak.

"I am sitting in a most expensive machine," he said, indignantly, "swathed in a costly rug, and beside a woman with a fortune on her back in the way of clothes."

"Then you ought to be very happy," said Leah, calmly; "but I'll drop you at Lambeth soon, and then you can get back to the mud and rags, which you seem to prefer."

"My meaning is, that if you were poor you could not afford these luxuries."

"Nonsense. It is only poor people who can afford them. The rich make their money by self-denial, and wearing clothes which don't fit, in houses furnished with the riff-raff of auction-rooms. Jim and I have been brought up to better things."

"To better worldly things," corrected Lionel, bitterly.

"And very pleasant they are, my dear man."

"It is people such as you and your husband who make the poor discontented," insisted the curate.

"I'm sure I don't see why the poor should be," murmured Lady Jim, vaguely; "there are lots of shelters and soup-kitchens and workhouses. And I always put ten shillings into the plate on Hospital Sunday, not to speak of the way in which I've danced and sung at performances--got up to help people who don't need the money so much as I do."

"Nero fiddling, while Rome burned."

"Well, and what else could the poor man have done?" retorted Leah. "There were no fire-brigades in those days, were there?"

Lionel felt helpless. "You don't understand!"

"Oh yes, I do. You mean to be nasty. If I were a vindictive woman I would drop you into the river, car and all"--they were crossing Westminster Bridge by this time--"but I always like to be nice. Being nasty brings wrinkles, and makes one so old. But about our trouble," she went on, determined to have her own way. "Lady Canvey won't help us, and no one else either. There's the Duke----"

"He has done enough for you."

"Not at all," Lady Jim assured him coolly. "He's kept us on bread and water--that's all."

"Oh!" Lionel was shocked at this ungrateful speech. "And you prefer pâté de foie gras and champagne?"

"Naturally! Not that I like pâté de foie gras. They torture the geese to get it, I believe, and it seems cruel to eat it."

"You have a tender heart," said Kaimes, sarcastically.

"It has been my ruin. But this trouble----" She harked back again to the one subject which occupied her thoughts. "Will you see the Duke, and ask him to give us--say--er--er--well, two thousand pounds?"

"No, I won't. You'll only waste it."

"That's so like you parsons," said Lady Jim snappishly: "we ask for bread, and you give us a stone."

"Two thousand pounds' worth of bread is a trifle too much to ask for."

"Not at all, I always ask for twice what I hope to get. But here we are on the other side of the water. I can't take the machine into your dirty little slums. Get down."

Lionel did so, and stepped on to the pavement. "Thank you for the drive," said he, lifting his soft hat.

Lady Jim nodded vaguely. "Won't you speak to the Duke?"

Kaimes hesitated. He did not wish to appear churlish; yet it seemed useless to interfere. "The Duke is very independent," he explained; "I don't think he'll listen to me."

"Oh yes, he will. You're a parson, and he is old enough to be afraid of the next world. Tell him we're cleaned out, and get Jim and me a thousand. And I tell you what," added Leah, generously. "If you do, I'll give you a ten-pound note for your charities, though I don't believe in helping paupers myself."

"Yet you ask help on that ground."

"Oh, I mean the unwashed paupers you're so fond of."

Lionel ruminated. "Do you and Jim go down to Firmingham for Christmas?"

"Yes. It will be horribly dull. The Duke is so fond of that old-fashioned Dickens Christmas, with its holly and mistletoe rubbish; but we must keep in with him. What of it?"

"Why not explain your position, and----?"

"Oh, we've explained it a dozen times. But the Duke doesn't seem to understand. Now, you can put the thing to him nicely."

"Well," said the curate, slowly. "I go to Firmingham at Christmas to preach, so I'll speak to the Duke."

"You're a brick," cried Lady Jim, holding out her hand. "I'll come and hear you preach when we're in Firmingham."

"I hope it will do you good," said Lionel, shaking hands. "You think me a prig, Lady James, but I assure you----"

"I know you do," said Leah, dreading further sermons; "but I must get home to dress. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," echoed Lionel, hopelessly, and saw the car glide away into the fog between the lines of blurred lights. "Poor woman!" he thought, turning towards his lodgings. "How terribly sad her spiritual position is! I trust she will get home safely, seeing she is so worldly."

He need not have troubled. Lady Jim reached Curzon Street in safety, and in very good spirits. Did not a peacock's feather adorn one of the motor-car lamps?

[ CHAPTER IV]

Firmingham was the smallest of the Duke of Pentland's country seats, and so cosy, that he invariably held his Christmas revels there, in preference to dispensing Yule-tide hospitality in more splendid mansions. Situated in a woody and elevated part of Essex--that county presumed to be a fog-tormented puddle--the quaint Georgian house was ideal in itself, and in the repose and charm of its surroundings.

Ugly it probably was when erected, but time had mellowed its glaring walls of red brick, and nature had draped them with hangings of dark green ivy. The square, lofty house, with its freestone ornamentation, its many windows and gigantic porch, stood on a slight rise, a position which enhanced its noble proportions. On three sides, level with the ground floor, extended broad greystone terraces, with shallow steps leading downward to smooth lawns. These, stretching for a considerable distance, terminated in flower-beds, now devoid of blossom and colour. And lawns, house, and flower-gardens were girdled by pines and oaks, sycamore-trees and elms, with noble examples of the birch, the beech, and cedars, proud and tall. A wide, straight avenue ran for a quarter of a mile through grim firs to ornate iron gates swinging between massive stone pillars, surmounted by the ducal arms. And these same gates gave entrance to a spacious and wild park, as delightful as that "wood near Athens" where Oberon tricked Titania.

The charming country outside this sacred enclosure appealed to artists in search of the picturesque. Certainly, the landscape was domestic and tame, for here nature yielded to the controlling hand of man. But the pleasant walks, the deep lanes, the ancient villages, and the comfortable farmhouses, sprinkled thickly for miles, made, in conjunction, a pretty picture of rural peace and contentment. And the contentment was genuine, for no better or more considerate landlord than the Duke existed. He was popular in the neighbourhood, and his sway almost imperial--a true king of the castle.

Jim and his wife drove from the station in quite a Darby and Joan style, and, through fear of the Duke, rather than in compliment to the season, were prepared to enact the parts of man and wife to perfection. It was rather hard for Leah to say pretty things to Jim in public, and for Jim to hover anxiously round Leah as a lover-like husband; but the Duke expected such behaviour, and they were astute enough not to disappoint him. In his rough tweeds, with jovial looks and hearty words, Jim was quite the English squire of the story-book, and shook hands with some of his father's tenants who haunted the local station in quite the "all-men-are-brothers" style. Leah also dispensed smiles and nods to marvelling villagers, who stared open-mouthed at her beauty. But in the comfortable brougham, Jim folded his arms and lapsed into sulky silence, and Leah yawned and looked out of the window for want of something better to do. They were off the stage now, and could take their ease.

Very wintry looked the landscape through which they passed. The meadow-lands were deep in snow, and gaunt, leafless trees started like black spectres from the milky ground. Ponds and ditches wore masks of darkly-green ice, and the frozen road rang like iron under the hoofs of the horses. A yellowish sky, with the promise of almost immediate snow, lowered over the starving world, and, for lack of foliage, the landscape widened to the observing eye. A dull crimson in the west showed that the sun was sinking in foggy splendour. The shrill voices of children, singing music-hall songs instead of carols, saluted their ears.

"Quite like a Christmas card, isn't it, Jim?"

"If it wasn't for the music-hall songs," assented her husband, looking out of his window. "Wonder if there'll be skatin'."

"I daresay. I hope so. I love skating."

"'Cause you can show off."

"We have each our little vanities, Jim," said Lady Jim, whom hope made good-humoured. "There's the church--what a pretty old building, and how well the snow contrasts with the red roof and the ivy!"

"We have to go there on Christmas Day," gloomed Kaimes.

"We must show an example to the lower orders," explained Leah, in her British-matron tone. "Besides, Lionel preaches."

"How awful! Why has the Duke put him in the bill?"

"Mr. Dane, the vicar, is ill, and asked Lionel to fill the pulpit. The Duke has nothing to do with it."

"Wish I had," grumbled Jim. "I'd have the sermon cut out."

"You'd have the church turned into a music-hall, I daresay," retorted his wife, contemptuously. "But you must be as nice as you know how to Lionel. Remember, he promised to speak to the Duke."

"I'll keep awake during his sermon, but I shan't promise to do more, Leah. You're runnin' this show."

"Quite so, but I don't want you to spoil it. Lionel has great influence with the Duke."

"Frightens the old man to death with texts and Tophet, I expect," said Jim, crossly. "I know these parsons."

"I was not aware that your circle of friends included such respectable acquaintances."

"Oh, I can hold a candle to a certain person as well as you, Leah. Who do we meet at Firmingham?"

"The usual dull lot," said Lady Jim, with a yawn. "Frith and his stupid little wife, who seems to model herself on David Copperfield's Dora. Then Lady Canvey, with her new companion, is sure to be present."

"Fancy havin' that death's-head at a Christmas feast. Who else, Leah?"

"That little Russian doctor, Demetrius. We met him at the Embassy, if you remember. Not the Russian Embassy, but the French. He's out of favour with the Czar, and dare not leave England in case he should be sent to Siberia."

"He can practise for it here," said Jim, shivering, "Beastly cold, isn't it, Leah? What's Demetrius doin' here?"

"Looking after the Duke's health. He says he can cure his gout."

"I hope he will," muttered Kaimes, devoutly. "For if Frith comes along we shan't get a shillin'!"

"I'm half afraid we shan't get one now," sighed Lady Jim. "Here's the avenue. What a charming place!"

"I'd let it out on buildin' leases, if I had it," remarked the prosaic Jim, "an' cut the timber. Lot of money in those trees."

"Don't look into jewellers' windows, Jim. You're not rich enough to buy the stock."

"Rich! It was as much as I could do to scrape enough together for our tickets."

"Ah, well," said Leah, reassuringly, as the wheels scrunched the frozen snow before the great porch, "we needn't spend anything here, except half a crown for the plate."

"Catch me wastin' money in that way," snapped Kaimes, swinging himself out to help his wife to alight. "Halloa, here's old Colley, lookin' like a dean as usual;" and Jim, again assuming his hearty manner and jovial leer, shook hands with the butler, whom he had known since Etonian days.

The house-party was composed of hostile elements; consequently, every one was compelled to adopt a forced air of Christmas peace and good-will, which rather tried jumpy nerves. The Duke dug up fossilised cousins to participate in the festive season, and these did not suit with some fashionable folk, who for various reasons, as they put it, "had to be nice to the dear old Duke." Mr. Jaffray and his poetic sister of fifty, who quarrelled incessantly, hardly suited the tastes of Mrs. Penworthy, as a daughter of the horse-leech and intensely up-to-date. Nor did Graham, the Little England politician, enjoy the company of Lord Sargon, a Tory, and a believer in the divine right of the last legal descendant of the Stuarts. Also, the various young women and men, who were really nobodies, and fancied themselves somebodies, found the parts they were expected to take in an old-fashioned Christmas rather a bore.

"The season of peace and good-will," explained the Duke, after dinner, when this collection of smartness and do wellness embellished the great drawing-room. "We must all love one another."

The company assented conventionally, and every one smiled violently on every one, to the amusement of Lady Canvey. "If this was the Palace of Truth," she announced, "there would be trouble."

"But the mellowing influence of the time----"

"Just so, Duke. But some people are like certain pears, they won't mellow--they only become sleepy. And that reminds me," she added, looking round for Joan. "I'll go to bed soon."

"Not on Christmas Eve," urged the Duke, bending over her chair. "We intend to keep Yule-tide as our ancestors did--snap-dragon, the mummers, the Christmas-tree, the carol-singers, and the ghost-stories."

"Not one of them clever enough to tell a real ghost story," snapped Lady Canvey, cynically examining faces old and young, made up and natural.

"Oh, I know a lovely, lovely tale," said Miss Jaffray, who was gowned girlishly in white, trimmed oddly with ivy, and who looked like a ruin.

"That will last till to-morrow morning," chimed in her brother, seeing an opportunity of being nasty; "snap-dragon is more fun. Eh, Lady Frith--you used to enjoy that once."

"I do so now--dear snap-dragon," said the Marchioness, who was sentimental and adored her tall lean husband; "but the Christmas-tree--oh, that is too sweet. Bunny and I met for the first time under a Christmas-tree, and he fell in love with me. Didn't you, Bunny?"

It was rather hard on Lord Frith that he should be addressed by this most inappropriate name. He was as stiff as a Spaniard, sad in his looks, and spoke little. Although eminently well-bred, and clever in a political way, he was not a genial personage. In this he differed from his father, for the Duke was stout and kindly looking, beaming with good-humour, and quite the style of host who would have figured in Sir Roger de Coverley's time. Report said that he had been much too gay in his youth, and that the late Duchess had put up with a great deal. Lady Canvey could have related stories about the Duke likely to be much more entertaining than the proposed ghost-tales. But she was fond of her host, who, like herself, was a link with the remote past, and never told stories out of school. When she and the Duke got together, they wagged their old heads over dead and done-with scandals, and lamented these days of vulgar and blatant sin. But whatever their pasts may have been, they were an ideal couple in the way of venerable looks and sweet old age. Quite a Philemon and Baucis of modern times.

Meantime, "Bunny" scowled on his frivolous little wife, and then gave her a sentimental smile. He was always torn between love and propriety, for Lady Frith, imitating Dora, as Lady Jim averred, said the most exasperating things in a sweet treble. He used to lecture her in private and explain what she should say; but these corrections always ended in tears on the part of the child-wife, and in complete surrender on the part of her doting husband. Lady Frith certainly could play her part in society excellently well on occasions, and was more shrewd than would have been guessed from her baby face and infantile manners. But she wanted to be original, and therefore plagiarised from Dickens' novel. This assumption of an imaginary character she called "possessing a personality."

Mrs. Penworthy was old wine in a new bottle: that is, she looked twenty-five, and acted like an experienced coquette of double the age. Married to a modern Job, called Freddy, whose meekness was proverbial, she led him about like a pet lamb and taught him a few parlor tricks, so that people might say, "What an attached couple;" which they did, tongue in cheek. A sweet look from Mrs. Penworthy warmed Freddy's heart for four and twenty hours, even though the cost of the merest glance sometimes ran into double figures. In his hours of leisure, which were few, he frequently told her that she was an angel; but the expression did not sound so agreeable on Freddy's lips, as on those of the half dozen nice boys who constituted her court.

She went everywhere and knew everyone, and did the things she ought not to have done, with discretion. Freddy thought her a playful kitten, quite blind to the fact that she had grown rapidly into a cat. But with smiling looks and sheathed claws, and Freddy's diamonds on her neck, she was a very pretty cat, and blinked sleepily at those who admired her, so long as Freddy gave her a silken cushion to rest on and plenty of cream to drink. Moreover, she only scratched those who could not scratch back.

"I really think it's awful fun," said Mrs. Penworthy to her court--"all this sort of thing, you know--holly and snow and----"

"And mistletoe," suggested one of the nice boys.

"Now if you talk like that, Algy, you shan't be spoken to for a week."

"A look is enough for me," whispered the adoring Algy.

"Naughty! What would Freddy say?"

Lady Canvey's sharp ears overheard the banter. "Were I Freddy I know what I'd say," she murmured grimly; then aloud, to spoil sport, "Is your husband here, Mrs. Penworthy?"

"Freddy? Oh, dear me, no. He's gone to Paris, or Peru, or--I forget exactly where--but it's something beginning with a 'P.' Dear Freddy," she laid an entirely useless fan on her lips, pensively, "he works so very, very hard."

"And quite right too," said Lady Canvey, bluntly, "seeing what a devoted wife he has."

"Ah, you don't know how Freddy tries me, dear Lady Canvey. I am devoted--that I am. But, you see, I took Freddy for better or worse."

"Oh no," corrected the old woman, tartly; "you took the better, and Freddy took the worse."

Mrs. Penworthy, not being ready with an answer, murmured something about "jealous old thing," and moved away with her court to where Lord Sargon was holding forth on his pet craze. "If only our ancient kings were back," he said, but not too loud, as the Duke might have disapproved of the disloyalty, "Christmas would be Christmas. In the good old times of the blessed martyr Charles----"

"The bad old times," contradicted Mr. Graham; "it was then that our beloved country began to annex places which are useless. Let us give up everything beyond the Channel, and attend to our own country. Then, indeed, Christmas will be Christmas."

"And the parish pump will pour forth beer," said Mr. Jaffray, referring to the badge of the Little Englander.

"Ah, the conduits ran wine in those sweet old days," sighed his sister, in her poetic vein.

"And people never washed," said a truculent old gentleman given to sanitation. "What I say is, let every house have a bath-room."

"I say, Jim, is this going to last for ever?" asked Leah, considerably bored by these intellectual fireworks.

"A week, anyhow," replied Jim, who was feeling happy after a large dinner; "but if you will come to the Zoo, Leah, you mustn't find fault with th' animals."

"They are scarcely so interesting."

"Oh! Animals don't talk, I 'spose you mean."

"You do," retorted Lady Jim, calmly. "There's Demetrius!" and she left her husband in the clutches of Mrs. Penworthy, with a whispered caution. "Don't let her go too far, Jim. This week we're the respectable middle-class pair, who live in slate-roofed houses."

Jim did not quite understand, but he vaguely guessed that he was to keep Mrs. Penworthy at a distance. For some minutes he did this, but she soon overcame his scruples, and begged him to take her to the picture gallery. The discreet court did not follow.

Constantine Demetrius was a small, dark, neat man with an ivory complexion, black hair, a waxed moustache, and a stereotyped smile. He was dressed perfectly in a foreign fashion, and placed his small feet together when he made his bow to Lady Jim. His English was much better than his morals, and perhaps this was why Lady Jim beckoned him to her side. Demetrius was one of her most ardent admirers, and she had a vague idea of making use of him. At present she did not see how to utilise his services, but if ever she required a thoroughly unscrupulous man, she knew that she would need him. Besides, he was really a clever doctor, and when Lady Jim was ill, she felt it would hasten the cure to think she was being attended to for nothing.

"What do you think of all this?" she asked him, when they were snugly bestowed in a cosy corner.

"It is very English," said the Russian, with a shrug.

"That means very dull!"

Demetrius clicked his heels together and made a bow from the middle of his body. "At present I cannot say so," said he, gallantly.

"And you wouldn't, if you thought so!"

"Madam, the truth to a ravishing woman----"

"Is like sunshine to a coal-miner: we get it so rarely. By the way, how is Mademoiselle Aksakoff?"

"She is well."

"And as pretty as ever?"

"I see nothing of beauty but what is before me."

"All the same, you will leave me and marry Mademoiselle Aksakoff."

Demetrius looked at Lady Jim with such fire in his dark eyes that she felt slightly uncomfortable in spite of her courageous nature. It was easy to play with the hearts of phlegmatic Englishmen, but to amuse herself with this fiery Slav was like trifling with a tiger. Nevertheless, Lady Jim, with a view to future contingencies, allured him with sweet looks, and tantalised him with half-granted favours. Katinka Aksakoff, the daughter of a Russian official attached to the Embassy, loved Demetrius even to the extent of helping him to escape the lures of the secret police, which would have drawn him to the Continent, en route for Siberia. Therefore she hated Lady Jim, because that astute diplomatist kept Demetrius dangling at her skirts in the bonds of a never-to-be-requited love, on the chance that some day she might require him. And the Russian knew that Leah Kaimes was a woman who wanted all for nothing, but, if possible, he intended to make his own bargain with her. Lady Jim was clever, but Demetrius thought he could entangle her.

"Monsieur Demetrius," she said after a pause, during which the fire died out of the Russian's eyes, "if you wanted money----"

"I would get it," said he, determinedly.

"But if you saw no way of getting it?"

"I would make the way."

"You can't make bricks without straw."

"Clever people can," replied Demetrius, dryly.

Lady Jim looked down at her rings.

"Are you clever?" she asked.

"To benefit some people I might be," he said in a low voice.

She stared straight before her, and noted that Lionel was chatting with Miss Tallentire. As yet the curate had not spoken with the Duke, so that was a quarter yet to be tried. Nevertheless, Lady Jim had a shrewd idea, in spite of the comedy being played by herself and Jim, and of Lionel's pleading, that the Duke would be adamant. It behoved her to have another string to her bow, and this she could find in Demetrius. But she did not know yet to what use she could put him. It was impossible to ask him to sway the Duke, strong as his influence was with that gouty nobleman. Lady Jim had a good deal of what she called pride, and did not intend to let Demetrius know her true position, if she could help it.

Before she could say anything, and really she did not know what to say, the Duke gave the signal for the commencement of the Christmas festivities. These were strong in intention, but weak in execution. The company burnt their fingers over snap-dragon, capered in Sir Roger de Coverley, tempted the Fates with roasting chestnuts, and finally adjourned to a large hall, where glittered a splendid Christmas-tree.

Then danced in the mummers, villagers all, tricked out as Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as the Terrible Turk, Santa Claus, St. George and the Dragon--a most meek beast--and with hordes of merry, laughing children. The Christmas-tree dropped its costly, many-coloured fruits into expectant laps, and a chorus of praise hymned the munificence of the gratified Duke. Even Lady Jim thanked him for the dainty gold-net purse which she received, and if she did peep in slyly to see whether it was lined with a cheque or a bank-note, that was only out of compliment to her father-in-law's known generosity.

"Santa Claus has not got a banking account," she murmured to her husband.

Jim, who was scowling at his gift,--a set of sleeve-links enamelled with the four vices--women, cards, drink, and racing,--growled.

"He's got a dashed lot of impertinence. As if I'd wear these things!"

"No," said Leah, tickled by the implied rebuke, "it doesn't do to wear your heart on your sleeve--links": a witticism which was entirely lost on Jim. He was one of the many obtuse swine who trampled on Leah's pearls.

What with eating and drinking, and professing seasonable sentiments which certainly did not come from the heart, everyone became bored and bilious and fractious. Leah surveyed the yawning revellers with a feeling that Christmas, old style, was a failure.

"You can't arrange an orgy," was her comment to Lady Canvey, "it must come by chance, to be successful."

"I don't think Pentland intended anything so disreputable," retorted the old dame, "consequently you are disappointed."

"Bored," Lady Jim assured her. "I suppose it's eating plum pudding which always makes me dull."

"But not good-natured."

"My digestion has its limits. Good night, godmother; I suppose it's time for you to be taken to pieces," and having stricken Lady Canvey dumb with rage, she slipped away to bed, wondering what would happen before next Christmas.

"Something must be done," she thought, wearily climbing the stairs. "If Lionel fails with the Duke, Demetrius might----"

Might what? She did not know. But she really did feel that something might be done with Demetrius.

[ CHAPTER V]

A congregation drawn to the Church of All Angels, by various inducements, filled it to overflowing the next morning. Some came because it was Christmas Day, others to hear Lionel Kaimes preach; many desired to see the ducal party, and one or two presented themselves in God's house to thank Him for the gift of His Son, sent to save a dying world. Knowing the Duke's old age impeccability, nearly all his guests were present and filled three large pews, to the wondering awe of the villagers and their wives. These last, especially, were distracted by the splendour of the ladies' dresses, and the variety of the new fashions. Many laudable imitations of those marvellous frocks were visible in country lane and village street before Easter.

Lady Jim and her husband discreetly sat in the body of the church, some distance from the pulpit, as Leah did not wish to come under the curate's eye. She thought he was quite capable of preaching at her, in which case a natural resentment would have led to a quarrel, prejudicial to the exercise of Lionel's good offices with the Duke. Moreover, Leah, occupied with her own thoughts, did not want to be distracted by a sermon of religious platitudes. She stood up and sat down mechanically, looking too flamboyant to be in harmony with the simplicity of the building. Tucked into the opening of her "Incroyable" coat, claret-coloured and with strikingly large buttons, she wore a cup-shaped nosegay of white and pink orchids. Her hat was large, with many feathers of the new Titian red, and resembled nothing in nature. She did not wear jewellery, but the vivid colours of her dress made up for the absence of gems. There was something tropical about Leah, and in that chill grey church she glowed like a gorgeous flower, all splendour and perfume and radiant vitality. Her exuberant beauty and colour attracted even the attention of Jim. He bent forward, when the prayer for the King's Majesty was being said:

"I believe you're enjoyin' it," muttered Jim, resentfully.

"H-sh-s-s-s!" breathed Leah, devoutly, and knelt in a saintly attitude which was far from expressing her real feelings. For the moment she did not pray herself, or think of the prayer that was being offered. Her thoughts were busy with bills and duns and Jim's defects, and the chances that Demetrius might prove useful. And when she did murmur a prayer, it was one of those which are rarely answered, or, if answered, turn to the confusion of the suppliant. Plenty of money, no trouble, much enjoyment, and the destruction of her enemies, were the elements which composed this remarkable petition. Lady Jim was not very clear as to whom she was asking, but she had a vague feeling, which she mistook for religion, that there might be Some One who could give her what she required. Moreover, it was just as well to be on the safe side. Yet, even as she tried the experiment, the earthly superstition asserted itself, and she carefully fingered a peacock's feather inside her muff. This serving of God and a fetish may seem ridiculous in a woman of Leah's capacity. Nevertheless, she devoutly believed that if the unseen Deity did not help her, the seen Baal would. And after all, was there not a cat of Heine's acquaintance, who made genuflections before a pink-ribboned flageolet? But cats, as the poet remarks, are so superstitious. And Leah the pantheress was of the feline tribe.

Having made herself safe with the Unknown, Lady Jim joined in the ensuing hymn bravely. She thought the words dreary and the tune barbarous, but the fervour of her deep contralto voice reached the Duke's ears, and he gave her an approving glance; so that was something gained. Leah would have gone through the whole collection of Ancient and Modern to learn the precise meaning of that look, but she was satisfied with guessing, and sat down cheerfully to be bored with the sermon. It occurred to her that the prayer had been heard, and would probably be granted. But whether by the peacock's feather, or the Deity of whom Lionel now began to speak, she could not determine.

"And His name shall be called Wonderful"--this was the curate's text, and he discoursed on it in a simple and impressive way. Speaking of the birth of Christ, of His teaching and plan of salvation, of His self-denying life and unwearying kindness, the young man's grave and tender periods shamed the most inattentive into thoughtfulness. Lionel was not a born orator, but he was very much in earnest, and preached with an emphasis which carried undeniable conviction. Mrs. Penworthy felt suddenly virtuous, and resolved to repeat as much of the sermon as she could remember to Freddy, so that he might not grumble so much over what the silly thing called "her extravagance." Even Lady Canvey wagged her aged head, and thought that she might help a few deserving paupers, if their needs could be supplied in moderation. Leah herself was impressed, to the extent of hoping that the Duke would see that it behoved him to fill the empty pockets of a deserving and pretty daughter-in-law. Jim would have approved of this sentiment, but all the time he was fast asleep, and woke up cross when she pinched him to rise for the Doxology.

Beyond a stray sentence here and there, Leah had not paid much attention: she had heard it all before, though some of the sentiments were new, and, as she thought, ridiculous. When the preacher was fairly started she relapsed into her own thoughts. These being unpleasant, she permitted her hard eyes to wander round the church. After a wondering gaze at the extraordinary fashions of the women, and a patronising examination of the decorations, she caught sight of a face belonging to a young man on the other side of the aisle. He was so like Jim that she involuntarily turned to see if her husband still slumbered placidly by her side. The double was dressed in grey tweeds and looked almost like a gentleman. He stooped a trifle, in spite of his square shoulders and stalwart figure, and every now and then coughed painfully. Apparently he was ill with some pulmonary complaint, which the freezing atmosphere of the church accentuated. Leah wondered at the resemblance, and thought of certain traditionary stories concerning the youthful days of the Duke. But after a second glance she decided that perhaps there was nothing in it. Jim was of a pink-and-white, bovine, commonplace type, and there were hundreds like him in manners and morals and looks. Moreover, she was so weary of seeing Jim's inane face over the breakfast-cups that she did not care to gaze at the imitation. Nevertheless, being a woman with the orthodox share of Eve's curiosity, she resolved to ask questions about this consumptive double. Mrs. Arthur, the Firmingham housekeeper, could doubtless tell some story, as she knew much more about the Duke than had ever appeared, even in the most scurrilous society paper. And Lady Jim knew how to make her talk.

When the plate circled, Leah quadrupled Jim's half-crown, and he did not approve when the piece of gold jingled amongst the silver.

"You've been borrowin'," Jim accused her in an angry whisper.

"Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow," sang Leah, without replying; and put her whole heart and voice into the hymn in the hope that some of the blessings might trickle her way. And why not, seeing that she had baited her hook with a sprat to catch the much-needed mackerel? But it was useless to explain this to Jim. He would not have understood such lavish fishing.

"It was really too lovely," Mrs. Penworthy assured the Duke at luncheon. "Mr. Kaimes spoke just the things I feel. And the decorations--oh, really--so very tasteful. But the mistletoe, Duke. I don't think there should have been mistletoe round the pulpit."

"Such an immoral plant," chimed in Lady Canvey, with sharp, twinkling eyes; "and so useless to some people, who can dispense with it as an excuse. I daresay the Druids were no better than they should have been."

"They were before my time," said Mrs. Penworthy, very prettily; "and you must have been quite a child then, dear Lady Canvey."

The sermon affected Lady Frith in another fashion.

"Oh, dear Bunny," she said to her saturnine husband, "what a lovely way Lionel puts things! Do let us help people. There's Leah, you know----"

"Exactly," assented Frith, dryly. "I do know, and for that reason I don't intend to waste money in that direction."

"But Lionel talked of aiding the poor and needy."

"That doesn't include the extravagant and ungrateful," retorted her lord. "You are an unsophisticated child, Hilda."

"Oh, Bunny, how could you call poor Leah and her husband names? We must love every one at this season."

"Oh, I'll love them as much as you please; but not to the extent of supporting them."

Plainly there was nothing to be got out of Frith, as Lady Jim decided when the Marchioness reported a part of this conversation later in the day. But she attempted to soften the Marquis by saying things which she knew the child-wife would babble again to her hard-hearted husband.

"Jim and I don't want money, dear," she said, kissing Lady Frith; "so long as Frith is nice to us, we don't care. You have your position to keep up, and we are nothing. But it was sweet of you to speak."

"Oh no," prattled Hilda, in her childish way. "I want every one to love me, ever so much."

"I am sure they do. Isn't Frith jealous?"

"As nearly jealous as a perfect man can be."

"I thought perfect men had no imperfection," retorted Lady Jim, ironically; "but it's all right, dear," another kiss--"we must bear our cross, as Lionel said this morning. Now I must go to see old Mrs. Arthur. One must be good to one's inferiors."

The result of this conversation was, that Lady Frith told her husband of Leah's pointedly correct humbleness; whereat the marquis laughed shortly. He quite understood Lady Jim's tactics, and was resolved that they should not succeed. Frith was one of the few men Lady Jim had never fascinated, and she hated to be under his clear-sighted gaze. If Hilda could have heard Leah's inward remarks as she proceeded to the housekeeper's room, she would scarcely have given so favourable a report.

"Good day, Mrs. Arthur," said Lady Jim, to the old-fashioned dame in the black silk and lace cap, who rose to drop a prim curtsey. "I have come to wish you the compliments of the season."

"Thank you, my lady. Won't you be seated?"

Lady Jim selected the most comfortable chair in the quaint small room, and graciously requested the housekeeper to resume her seat. Then she asked about Mrs. Arthur's cough, and her sailor son, and her married daughter, and after various other things in which she did not feel the least interest. The old woman, much impressed with Leah's condescension, and not sufficiently clever to see through her arts, expanded like a winter rose in this aristocratic sunshine. In a few minutes she was chatting quite at her ease, and with the discursive garrulousness of old age. This was the unguarded mood Leah desired for the satisfaction of her curiosity, and having created it by an appearance of the deepest interest in Mrs. Arthur's domestic small-beer chronicles, she proceeded to take advantage of the opportunity.

"The service was delightful this morning," she observed; "the decorations were charming and the congregation so attentive. I suppose you know every one in the village, Mrs. Arthur."

"I ought to, my lady. I am Firmingham bred and born."

"And a very good representative of the place," said Leah, kindly. "The villagers are really quite nice-looking--especially the men."

"If you saw my son----"

"Was he in church this morning?" asked Lady Jim, who knew very well that the young man was with his ship in Chinese waters. "I saw rather a handsome young fellow in one of the pews, but he looked ill. Of course, I thought him handsome," she went on carelessly, and with a soft laugh: "he was the image of my husband."

Mrs. Arthur looked rather nervous. "There is only one young man hereabouts who resembles Lord James," she observed, "and I do not wonder you saw the likeness, my lady. Harold Garth is like Lord James now, and is such as his Grace was in his youth."

"Oh!" Leah's eyes opened. "Do you mean to say----?"

"Nothing, my lady--nothing;" and Mrs. Arthur's hands fiddled nervously with the gold chain she wore round her neck. Then, woman-like, she went on to contradict herself. "Harold Garth has lately returned from Canada, where he went to farm."

"Garth? I seem to know the name!"

"I don't know who can have mentioned it to you, my lady. He is the only Garth in the district, and I daresay you never saw him before."

"Well, no; I must admit that I never have. Why?"

"Canada," explained Mrs. Arthur, vaguely. "He has been there for the last twenty years. He went out to make money, at the age of fifteen."

"And has apparently returned with consumption."

"Yes, poor lad; but the Duke is very kind to him."

Lady Jim laughed meaningly. "Oh, the Duke is very kind to him, is he? That's so like the Duke. Always thoughtful. Fifteen and twenty--he is about thirty-five."

"More or less, my lady."

"My husband's age," said Lady Jim, pointedly. "Yes, my lady," assented Mrs. Arthur, closing her lips firmly.

Leah tried another question. "Why doesn't this young man's family keep him instead of letting the Duke support him?"

"Harold Garth has no family, my lady. His mother is dead."

"And his father?"

Mrs. Arthur looked down. "I know nothing about his father," she said in low tones. "Harold is a lonely man, poor soul. He lives at the Pentland Arms, and Mrs. Kibby, the landlady, is as kind to him as though he were her own son. And his Grace--bless him--does all he can to smooth Harold's way to the grave. He sent that foreign doctor to----"

"Demetrius," said Lady Jim, quickly. "Oh, so Demetrius knows him?"

"Yes, my lady. He thinks he can cure him of this consumption. I do not think so myself" proceeded Mrs. Arthur, garrulously, "for Harold is booked for death. You can see it in his face. I believe his Grace wants him to go to a warmer climate."

"What a deep interest the Duke takes in this man!"

Mrs. Arthur looked up suddenly, and a flush dyed her withered cheek. The eyes of the two women met, and the situation was adjusted without words. After that interchange of glances Leah knew, as well as if Mrs. Arthur had explained at length, that Harold had ducal blood in his veins. "And that is why he is so like Jim," she thought, rising to go. "I hope the poor fellow will get well," she said aloud; "but really, he was foolish to venture into that cold church."

"I don't think he minds if he is dead or alive, my lady. He has no friends."

"Oh yes, the Duke----"

"Certainly his Grace, who is a friend to all," said Mrs. Arthur loyally.

Lady Jim laughed, and went away. She had learned all she wished to learn, but, beyond satisfying a passing curiosity, had no desire to pursue the subject. Still, she thought it would amuse her to ask Demetrius a few questions concerning this patient, and went in search of him. Somehow the subject of Harold Garth and his resemblance to Jim took hold of her imagination, and she could not put it out of her head. While she was thinking of other matters, the thought of the strange likeness--now fully accounted for--would slip in, and she would find herself pondering. Afterwards she declared that this insistence of a passing thought was the work of Providence, for so she called the peacock-feather Baal she served.

Demetrius was not in the house, having been called out to see some one who was ill in the village. So Lionel assured her, and moreover supplied her with the name of the patient. "It's a young fellow called Harold Garth," he said gravely; "he foolishly came to church this morning, and, being already ill, is worse from having ventured out."

"I never heard a parson call going to church foolishness before," said Lady Jim, surprised that the subject should crop up again in so unexpected a manner. "Who is Harold Garth?"

"A protége of the Duke's. He has just returned from Canada," said the curate, simply; "and, curiously enough, he is rather like the Kaimes family. Perhaps that is why the Duke is so kind to him."

"Perhaps it is," said Leah, wondering how much Lionel guessed. "I don't think I ever saw him," she added, mendaciously.

"If you did you would mistake him for your husband."

"How awful!" shuddered Leah. "As though one Jim wasn't enough to be bothered with. But can't we talk of something more interesting--your sermon, for instance?"

"I trust you found that interesting," said Lionel, smiling.

"Oh yes--it wasn't too long."

"I see"--dryly--"you judge the interest of a sermon by its length."

"Oh no--really, I quite enjoyed your preaching."

"I don't preach that people may enjoy, but that they may think seriously of what they are."

"I'm sure I think seriously enough, Lionel. Have you spoken to the Duke? No? I wish you would."

"To-morrow. This is Christmas Day, remember."

"As if I could forget, with all the nonsense that's going on here," retorted Lady Jim, glancing superciliously round at the decorations. "Every one is overdoing the brotherly business. I quite expected my maid to tell me that she loved me. And I don't see why you shouldn't ask the Duke to-day. You'll squeeze the money out of him the more easily while he's got this Christmassy emotion on."

"I don't squeeze money out of people," said Kaimes, stiffly.

"What a large income you must have, then."

"I live within it."

"That's nothing to boast of. I'd live within mine, if I had ten thousand a year."

"I doubt it," replied Lionel, who could not help laughing at her coolness; "you'd spend fifty thousand if you had it."

"Rather--if I were the Duchess of Pentland. But there's no chance of such luck. Frith's too healthy. Do smile again, Lionel--you've got such nice teeth, and look quite a good sort when you let yourself go."

"What am I to smile at?" asked the curate, with deliberate austerity.

"At me, and on me. I put ten shillings into the plate this morning."

Lionel was a thoroughly good young man, and had a great sense of the dignity of his cloth and the responsibility of his position. But he also possessed humour, and could not help retorting after the style of a certain witty bishop.

"That's the smallest fire insurance I ever heard of," said he, genially, and moved away, leaving Lady Jim amused.

"I didn't think he had so much fun in him," she thought, making for the library; "but the speech is too clever to be original"--which showed that Leah suspected the existence of the witty bishop.

But the word insurance put her mind on Jim's mad idea to pretend death and cheat the company out of twenty thousand pounds, with accumulations. Leah devoutly wished that the trick could be managed. Its success meant a clearance of debt and of Jim, when the millennium would come, and, as Mrs. Nickleby's admirer put it, "all would be gas and gaiters." She resolved to have another chat with Jim on the subject, and meantime went to seek for a novel. After boring herself with Mrs. Arthur and Lionel, she wished to read away a well-earned hour of peace.

But this for the moment she was not destined to enjoy. The library was empty, save for the presence of the last person whom Lady Jim wished to encounter. When Miss Jaffray looked up from a gigantic volume with an almost toothless smile, Leah turned to fly. But the old maid arrested her flight with a joyful shout. She usually did shout, as her brother was slightly deaf, which deceived her into thinking the entire human race was likewise afflicted.

"So sweet of you to come here," shouted Miss Jaffray. "I am just dying for some one to talk to."

If the decision had been left to Lady Jim, she would have gladly avoided the talk, to bring about this result. But it occurred to her scheming mind that this dull spinster was wealthy, and might be cajoled or frightened into lending money. Leah did not specify the sum, even in her own mind, as she did not know how much more this virgin soil would yield, if properly worked. Sitting down promptly, she began to chat on the first subject that came into her head.

"What are you reading so earnestly?" she asked sweetly.

"The Morte d'Arthur," said the spinster, fondling the ponderous tome which her weak knees could hardly support.

"Heavens!" thought Lady Jim, with a charming smile, meaning nothing, "am I to be bored with another Arthur?"

"The black-letter edition," went on Miss Jaffray, in a loud and oratorical voice. "Most interesting. So sweet to think of those dear dead days, when knights went about as troubadours with guitars in steel armour, dying for queens of beauty."

"Delightful," assented Lady Jim, yawning at the dullness of the picture; "but"--with a disparaging glance at the lettering--"isn't it rather like reading a German newspaper? I prefer novels myself."

"So do I, when not in a poetic humour," shouted her companion. "All the old, old masters of fiction. Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins. I love them all--every one."

"I seem to know those names," ventured Leah, carefully. "What did they write, Miss Jaffray?"

The spinster gasped. Brought up in a library, she could not understand this fashionable ignorance, which, truth to say, was partially assumed. Leah was by no means the ignoramus she made herself out to be. But, for the sake of business, she thought it judicious to foster Miss Jaffray's vanity by assuming an inferior position.

"Do you ever read?" asked Miss Jaffray, in the voice of Goliath challenging the army of Saul.

"Oh yes; society newspapers, and French novels."

"But they are so improper."

"Nothing amusing is improper to my mind," said Lady Jim, calmly; "and I really did skim through a page or two of Dickens. Horribly dull, I thought him."

"Oh!" Miss Jaffray gasped again. "He did so much good."

"Perhaps that is why his books are dull. Thoroughly good people are invariably----" Here she discreetly pulled the reins, as Miss Jaffray, considering herself good, might not relish the malicious witticism, presuming she could understand it. "I'll take you as my instructor, dear Miss Jaffray," added Leah, stifling another yawn. "Do tell me what to read."

"There's Wilkie Collins's Armadale," said the old maid, delighted at being put into the pulpit; "but you may think me rude for recommending that."

"Why should I?"

"There's a character in it so like you, in appearance," apologised Miss Jaffray; "in appearance only, you will understand. I should be sorry indeed to think that in morals you resembled Miss Gwilt."

"Miss--how much?"

"Gwilt. G-w-i-l-t," spelt the spinster--"the strange name of a strange woman. She's the character I spoke of. No, really you mightn't like her. She was--well--er--er--disreputable. Better begin with The Woman in White."

"Oh, I have heard of that. What is it about?"

"A striking resemblance between two women. One is passed off by her wicked husband as the other, and buried--to get money, you understand--a kind of fraud."

Leah turned cold and hot. It sounded as though this simple woman was explaining the contemplated deceit of herself and Jim. "I don't think I should like that book at all," she said, diplomatically cunning; "it sounds dull. I would rather read about the naughty woman--Miss--what's-her-name?"

"It's in yonder bookshelf," said Miss Jaffray, pointing a lean finger to the end of the room, "along with the rest of the master's novels. But please don't think that I fancy you resemble Miss Gwilt's moral character. You certainly have her auburn hair."

"Red hair," corrected Lady Jim, rising. "I'm rather proud of it."

"You ought to be," said the old maid, with simple admiration, and rising to put away her tome. "I can imagine you a queen of beauty in the dear old tournaments, with knights at your feet."

"Oh, many are there now, without tournaments," said Leah, with superb self-confidence; "but I prefer men of higher rank than knights. Though I will say," she added generously, "that men who have won knighthood are cleverer than those donkeys who inherit."

All this was Greek to Miss Jaffray, and after putting away her volume she departed, with a final recommendation about Miss Gwilt. Lady Jim walked to where Wilkie Collins's novels lined the shelf, and--needless to say--selected The Woman in White.

"I wonder if I can make fact out of fiction?" she asked herself.

[ CHAPTER VI]

It was Jim's custom to saunter into his wife's bedroom, before descending to make a hearty meal, and complain that he had rested badly. This was a pleasing fiction, as he slept like a dormouse, and snored steadily through the hours he allotted to sleep without even a dream. But on entering for his morning grumble, he was so surprised to find Leah in her dressing-gown before a brisk fire, with a breakfast at her elbow and a book open on her lap, that he forgot his egotism. Jim could scarcely believe his lazy eyes, for he knew well that Leah was no student.

"What's up?" he asked, after pausing at the door to say "By Jupiter!" with every appearance of surprise. "Got a headache?"

"If I had, should I cure it with a novel?" asked his wife, disdainfully.

"Don't know, I'm sure," replied Jim, with the matutinal good-humour of a healthy animal. "Doctors recommend such rum things nowadays. But it doesn't matter. I'm off to feed."

"Wait for ten minutes, Jim. I have something to say."

"You're not goin' to read, are you? I can't stand readin' on a empty stom--well, on nothin'."

"Have you ever heard of The Woman in White?" asked Leah, irrelevantly.

"No; who is she?"

"It's a novel."

"Don't read 'em. Real life's much more fun."

Lady Jim looked at him steadily. "We might turn this"--she touched the book lightly--"into real life."

"Goin' to make a play of it?" questioned Jim, obtusely.

"Well, you might call it a comedy," she answered. "I certainly do not want it to be a tragedy--though it might come to that," she ended in a lower tone.

Jim opened his puzzled blue eyes. "Want of breakfast, I s'pose," he ruminated, "but I don't know what you're talkin' about."

"I've passed a white night," announced his wife, abruptly.

"What's that?"

"The French expression for a wakeful night."

"But you say it in English, and how can----?"

"It's useless wasting French on a man who understands only the argot of the trottoir."

"You're wastin' it now. A wakeful night--eh? Why didn't you try that new sedative Demetrius gave you?"

"I didn't want to sleep. This book was too interesting. I wish you to read it;" and she extended the novel to her husband.

"What!!!" If she had offered poison Jim could not have betrayed more abhorrence. "Read? You--want--me--to--read?"

"Well, you know words of two syllables, don't you?" she retorted impatiently. "Take it."

Jim handled the book as though it were a scorpion, turning over a hundred leaves rapidly. "Love an' diaries, and--oh, bosh!"

"Not at all, unless bosh is your word for common sense. I see a chance of getting that money."

"What money?"

Leah made an impatient movement. "How dense you are! The insurance money, of course--the twenty thousand pounds. Suppose you died----"

"Stop it. I told you I wouldn't."

"And you told me that you might pretend to die."

"Oh, I was only talkin'. You don't want me to be buried alive!"

"It wouldn't be much good," said his wife, with a shrug. "We must have a genuine corpse--like you."

An inkling of her meaning stole into Jim's dull brain, and he sat down suddenly. "Go on," said he, hoarsely.

"Harold Garth is like you."

"Where the--what the--you saw him?"

"In church yesterday. He's ill with consumption, dying they say. Demetrius attends him. Supposing--supposing"--her imagination made her cheeks flush--"supposing--oh, you understand."

The sluggish comprehension of the man grasped her hinted scheme suddenly, and his eyes lighted up. "Supposing he died and was buried in place of me, you mean?"

"You don't suppose I mean murder, do you?" she cried, rising to the height of her tall figure and speaking irritably.

"You would if there was money in it," said Jim, grimly.

"It would be a natural death," went on Leah, rapidly, and pacing the room to relieve the strain on her nerves. "The poor fellow can't live long. If he died, and was buried as----"

"No go," contradicted Jim, rising in his turn. "Every one about here knows of the likeness; for which," he added slowly, "there's a reason."

"So I learned yesterday from Mrs. Arthur."

Jim was indignant. "Do you mean to tell me----?"

"I mean to tell you that I gathered the truth from what she left unsaid. You don't suppose that I require words to explain things."

"I don't see how it's to be managed," said Kaimes, reflectively.

"If it could be, would you surrender everything and----?"

"Yes, I would, for a quarter of the money. Then I'd go out of your life an' to Lima----"

"Lima," said Lady Jim, stopping suddenly. "Why to Lima? You've been there three times since we married."

"No end of a place, Lima," muttered Jim, feebly.

His wife looked at his colouring face attentively, and laughed in a short, rasping manner. An idea had occurred to her which she did not think it necessary to impart to Jim. "When you're legally dead," she said sharply, "I shall have no control over your life or movements. All I want to know is, if this business can be managed, will you do your share by disappearing?"

"Yes; but I don't see how----"

"Read that book, Jim, and you'll understand better. It gave me the idea, though our plot will be different in many ways."

"Well," said Jim, tucking the novel under his arm, "I'll dip into it."

"Don't let any one see you reading, and replace it in the library without any one knowing."

"Why should I?"

"You fool," snarled Leah, viciously; "if this thing is to be carried through safely, no suspicion must rest on either of us. Do you suppose that I have spoken to this double of yours, or have let any one know that I have read the book? I don't think it really matters much, as people are too stupid to see things; but it is just as well to be on the safe side."

"But I don't see how----" began Kaimes again, and again she cut him short.

"I do--I do. Demetrius attends this young fellow."

"Oh, and he--Demetrius, I mean----"

"Leave me to deal with him," she said confidently.

Jim flung the book on the floor, and looked at her with clenched hands. "What is this Demetrius to you?" he asked violently.

"A puppet I can pull the strings of," she retorted; "and be good enough to remember that you are not in a training-stable."

"If that beastly little Tartar----"

"My dear Jim," said his wife coolly, "if you ask me about Demetrius, I shall certainly ask you about Lima."

Kaimes was taken aback. "Lima," he stammered, flushing to the roots of his fair hair. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you can trust me to ask no questions, if you will mind your own business."

"As you are my wife, Demetrius is my business."

"Think of me as your widow then," she mocked, "and that I can't be without the aid of Demetrius."

"Why can't you speak plainly?"

"I might ask you the same question, but"--she picked up the novel and thrust it into Jim's unwilling hands--"I fancy you and I understand one another pretty well."

"I won't have any man making love to you."

"Very good," said Leah, calmly; "then you must remain a pauper, and my husband. I'm not going to all this trouble to share you with----"

"Well, with whom?--out with it!"

"I think you can answer that question best, Jim."

"Upon my honour----"

"Pah!" she said with disgust. "Hadn't we better leave honour out of this shady business we are about to embark in?"

"You really mean to----"

"I really mean to get that twenty thousand pounds!"

"You'll lose me," Jim reminded her uneasily.

Leah made a grimace. "My loss is another's gain," she said significantly. "Now go away, Jim. I have to dress in my best frock in order to fascinate Demetrius;" and she vanished into her dressing-room with a provoking laugh.

Lord Jim said something about Demetrius that involved the use of unprintable language. Then he slipped the book into the pocket of his shooting-jacket and lumbered downstairs. In spite of his squabbling with Leah, and the existence of some one in Lima, he was furiously jealous of Demetrius, and scowled at the Russian when they met. Demetrius rather liked that scowl, as he guessed the reason, and took it as a tribute to his fascinations. If he had known Lady Jim's real intentions, and that she intended to convert English rather than French fiction into everyday facts, he might not have smiled so victoriously over his coffee. But Demetrius made the fatal mistake of so many clever men: he knew he was clever, and thereby was not what he fancied himself to be. The true secret of success lies, not in knowing how clever oneself is, but how stupid other people are.

While Jim was growling over his provender, Miss Tallentire, who had finished her breakfast, slipped out of the room. She felt strange in the company of the frumps and fashionables which formed the house-party. Certainly the frumps were eating in private, and would not appear till the world was well-aired, and they had been "made-up" sufficiently well to prevent the younger generation being shocked. But the fashionable people came to breakfast in public, and Joan found the talk far above her comprehension. These languid creatures, who ate so little and talked so much, were like inhabitants of a strange planet, and it was with great relief that the girl found herself passed over. Of course, nobody thought of noticing Cinderella in her rags.

As Lady Canvey was being rehabilitated by a skilful maid, and would not be seen as the world knew her for at least two hours, Joan had this time to herself. The brightness of the day tempted her to assume hat and jacket for a morning walk, and she was shortly tripping over the crisp snow of the avenue. The glorious sunshine, the keen air, the dazzling whiteness of the snow, and the generally invigorating influence of this ideal winter morning stirred the current of her blood to nimbleness. Joan began to sing softly, and could hardly keep from dancing, so rapidly did her spirits mount skyward. At length, the place being solitary and she being recklessly young, a sudden impulse sent her flying like an arrow between the grim firs. Near the gates she shot directly into the arms of a man, and uttered an ejaculation. This was hardly to be wondered at, seeing that the arms closed tightly round her, and a pair of warm lips deepened the colour which exercise had brought to her cheeks.

"Lionel!" cried Joan; and "Darling!" replied Lionel, which sufficiently explains the feeling which existed between Lady Canvey's companion and Lady Canvey's pet.

These two babies, as the old lady called them, had been engaged for six months, but the fact was not generally known. The clerical parent of Joan had given his consent, on the understanding that Lionel was to possess a better income and the best vicarage obtainable before he made Joan Mrs. Kaimes. The young man had agreed readily enough, as he did not want to inflict his comparative penury, and poor lodgings, on the girl he so dearly loved. Joan and he had decided to wait for two years, and during that time Lionel was to reform Lambeth. He was attempting to do this with all the vigour of his energetic nature, and between times made love to Joan. Lady Canvey knew of the engagement, and would have had the couple married at once, since she could easily have given Lionel a living, and wished to do so. But the curate was anxious to become the vicar of Firmingham. The present incumbent was seriously ill, and in the event of death the Duke had promised that Lionel should fill the pulpit.

Therefore the lovers waited very happily, and if Firmingham did not come to them within the decreed two years, they were quite prepared to marry on the bread and cheese of a hard London life. Meantime, Joan was seeing a trifle of West End life under Lady Canvey's wing, and her earnings, as Lady Canvey's companion, were most acceptable to the hard-worked Mr. Tallentire and his wife. Thus it was that Joan returned Lionel's kiss, and only released herself from his loving arms when she remembered they were within sight of the lodge.

"Lionel, how can you?" she said, setting her hat straight.

"How can't I, you mean," he replied, smiling; "do you think I am as cold as the snow?"

"I don't know if you're as nice," pouted Joan, "or you would have asked me to walk with you this morning."

"No, dear," he said, gravely: "I could not have taken you to see Harold Garth. The poor fellow is too ill. But we can walk now. I have nothing to do, and--Joan, where are you going?"

"Back to the house. I won't be taken for a walk on nothing-to-do terms."

"You silly child!"

"You cruel boy!"

Then they kissed and made it up in full view of a red-breast, who cocked his head on one side and wondered why these human beings looked so pleased. Joan said "Shoo!" and he flew away to tell his wife, while the couple walked sedately through the gates, and into a world which their love created for themselves alone.

All the same, their conversation was a trifle prosaic. They read a letter which Joan had received from her mother about trouble over the Christmas gifts to the poor of the parish, and discussed this old woman who lived in a chilly garret, and that old man who dwelt like a troglodyte in a damp cellar, till the conversation became as sober as the looks of the village sexton whom they met. And he was a teetotaller.

But however enthusiastic human nature may be in the talking and doing of good works, love after all takes precedence of philanthropy, and shortly they began discussing themselves and their happiness. What they said does not matter much. Although foolish, it was sweet to them, and Joan's eyes sparkled like the icicles on the bleak hedge-rows at the looks her lover gave her. They walked in the pleasant Land of Tenderness, and down the by-lane of First Love. Joan had never seen the old French chart of that country, with its quaint names and odd geography, but neither Lionel nor herself needed its guidance. They had skimmed through the country before, and knew the lie of it extremely well.

The pair soared pretty nearly to the gates of their transcendental heaven, until the strain became too great for mere human effort, and they folded their wings of thought to drop earthward. That unfailing timepiece, the human interior, announced the hour of luncheon, and with some haste they turned homeward.

"I am hungry," said Lionel, ogreishly.

"Don't eat me," laughed Miss Tallentire; "you look as though you could!"

"You be Red Ridinghood and I the wolf," suggested Lionel.

"No. Do be serious, Lionel! I want you to tell me about this poor man you saw."

"Garth? Ah, he'll never see another Christmas. Consumption is wasting him to a shadow. In another three or four months----" Lionel broke off with a sigh, "Poor man!"

"Can't anything be done?" asked Joan, sympathetically.

"Everything possible is being done, Joan. The Duke is looking after Garth in every way--you know how kind he is. He even sent Demetrius to cure him, and if Demetrius can't, no one else can."

"But if he was taken to a warmer climate----"

"The end would only be retarded for a few months," interrupted the curate. "Demetrius says there is no hope. And I don't think the poor fellow is sorry to go, Joan. He has no relatives, and few friends. I fancy he has had a lonely life."

The tears filled Joan's brown eyes. "Poor fellow!" she echoed, stealing one hand into that of her lover's. "Fancy, if we----"

"I can't fancy it with you by my side. And what is more, I don't intend to fancy it," said Lionel, hastily. "Please God, you and I have many happy and useful years before us. How do you like the Firmingham vicarage, Joan?"

"Oh, it's lovely, and such a sweet church. But I fear it's too good to be true."

"Perhaps it's not what you want," joked the curate. "If I were the Duke, now!"

"Ah, that's impossible," she laughed, amused at the idea of being a duchess; "the very idea frightens me."

"It needn't," Lionel assured her: "you will never be called upon to wear strawberry leaves, unless the Duke and Frith and Jim all go the way poor Garth is taking. And then Frith's wife may have a little Lord Firmingham. I sincerely hope so, as it would never do for Jim to be the Duke of Pentland."

"You don't like him?"

"Not passionately," said the curate, dryly.

"His wife would make a splendid duchess."

"In looks, I have no doubt. But with fifty thousand a year and a great position, she and Jim would do good to neither God nor man."

"Lady James Kaimes seems very kind," observed Joan, timidly.

"It's all seeming. Of real, true, self-sacrificing kindness she knows absolutely nothing."

"But she is so beautiful, Lionel."

"So was Jezebel, I expect."

"Oh, Lionel!"

"Oh, Joan!" he mimicked. "Don't worry your head over Lady Jim. She will always get on well in this world, though I am very doubtful about her position in the next. Come," he pointed down the incline of the lane, "I'll race you to the bottom."

"We might meet some one."

"I don't care--I'm out for a holiday;" and away flew Lionel down the snowy lane, with his clerical coattails fluttering in the wind.

Joan, girlish and simple and extremely young, sped after him, and with rosy cheeks arrived at the goal before her lover.

"Come," said the curate, wiping his heated brow, "considering I won three flat races at the 'varsity, that's not bad, Joan."

"You humbug, as if I didn't see that you let me win.

"I'll be a tyrant after marriage," said Lionel, merrily. "Enjoy your little day, my love!"

"I am enjoying this day," said Joan, as they walked rapidly towards the park gates; "but what will Lady Canvey say?"

"Pooh! What does it matter? She was young herself a century ago."

"She's a dear old woman."

"No," contradicted Lionel, critically; "she is old and clever, but I should not call her a dear. That word suits some one else."

"Me," cried Joan, triumphantly.

"How clever of you to guess that! Hulloa, who is this?"

The gates were opened and a sledge issued, drawn by two black ponies. In it sat Lady Jim, who was driving, and Dr. Constantine Demetrius.

"What is she up to now?" Lionel asked himself. He was intensely distrustful of Lady Jim, but he did not explain this to Joan.

[ CHAPTER VII]

The sledge occupied by this well-matched couple might have been used by Pompadour, in the days when the finances of France were melting in the furnace of Versailles. The basketwork body of a swan, gilded and painted and elegantly fragile, rested delicately on slim steel runners, and glided over the frozen snow in the rear of two spirited black ponies. These, harnessed in the Russian fashion, with a paucity of trappings and many tiny silver bells, sprang forward, under Lady Jim's skilful guidance, as though they were rioting in a spring meadow. She and her companion were snugly wrapped in an opossum rug, which Leah, rather vulgarly, despised as a cheap article. Her mink cloak, with the snowy ermine scarf drawn through the shoulder cape in the latest fashion, had cost nearly ten times the amount, and Leah wore it with the proud consciousness that she owed no money for it. It was an early-winter present from Lady Frith, and she had accepted it on the generous ground that its cut and rich brown colour became her better than they would have suited the dowdy, insignificant Marchioness. But the little woman never knew that Lady Jim's good-nature had prevailed to this extent. She had thought to give Leah pleasure.

Demetrius, muffled in Muscovite sables, sat contentedly by this Tauric Diana, wondering why he had been graciously invited to drive with the goddess, after a hurried luncheon. The two were tête-à-tête, for the groom had been dispensed with as out of keeping with the novel vehicle. The excuse was artistic. Nevertheless, Demetrius suspected other reasons for the absence of an eavesdropping servant. What these might be he hoped to hear from Lady Jim.

But as yet she showed no disposition to speak frankly, for the Russian, in Jim's picturesque speech, was a gentleman to be handled "with the gloves on." Jim himself had impressed this on Leah, before he sat down to spell out The Woman in White. Needless to say, this unusual effort to improve what Jim was pleased to term his mind bored him extremely. "Not a word about racin'," grumbled Jim, skipping page after page. Still, as Leah pointed out the necessity of poaching on the domain of fiction, Jim sat at his lesson like a good little boy, and his wife drove out with her proposed victim. That the irony of fate might change the victim into a possible tyrant did not occur to Leah at the moment.

All the same, she was careful not to commit herself too hastily, and for two miles talked society-journal paragraphs with an assiduity at once boring and perplexing to Demetrius. Even when the sledge slipped, silent and ghost-like, over an Arctic waste, and they were alone to babble secrets to a frosty sky, Leah showed no disposition to come to the point. She wished Demetrius to question her, and then, by seeing into his mind, she could be guided as to the most selfishly-successful way of making up her own. But the doctor guessed her reason for this diplomatic silence, and knowing what a shameless capacity she had for word-twisting and for slipping out of untenable positions, he gave her no opportunity to overlook his hand. It was certainly, as he reflected, a game of skill, but what the precise style of game might be Demetrius could not guess. However, one thing was certain; this game, like all others, was being played for money. On Lady Jim's part, that is. Demetrius shuffled his cards for the stake of love, and so, having Leah Kaimes for an antagonist, lost at the outset. A game between a man and a woman, on amatory grounds, is always unequal. The one in earnest invariably loses.

"Does this remind you of the steppes?" asked Leah, waving her whip towards a desert of snow and ice. The polite conversation was still much in evidence.

"Somewhat, madame; but I cannot remember sledging across any steppe in such charming company."

"Ah! You have never driven Mademoiselle Aksakoff, then?"

"It is a pleasure yet to come."

"In Russia?"

"Why not? She may induce her father to make my peace with the Czar."

"You would be pleased?"

Demetrius shrugged his spare shoulders, and replied in the evasive manner which characterised this conversation on the part of both.

"I am well content with England," he remarked calmly. "Many people are pleasant, and all agreeable. Also, the Duke pays me well--too well, considering he is my solitary patient."

"I never knew a physician to quarrel with his fees before," laughed Lady Jim, flicking the ponies lightly; "and you have another patient, I understand--Mr. Kaimes said something about it."

"The young priest--ah, yes. He was at the gates with that most adorable young lady, whom I presume he will marry. Your Anglican priests, like our Greek popes, have that freedom, have they not?"

"You do not answer my question."

"Ah, pardon, madame," said the doctor, with an apologetic smile and his hands palm to palm. "Yes--it is so. I have another patient, a peasant--one Harold Garth," he pronounced the name uncommonly clearly.

"How well you speak English, Monsieur Demetrius! So many foreigners over-emphasise their 'h's', and slur their 'r's.'"

"We Russians have a capacity for tongues. I know five languages."

"Can you tell the truth in any one of them?" asked Lady Jim, rather rudely; but then she wished to make him lose his temper, in the hope of breaking down his reserve. But love had not yet blinded Demetrius, and he became offensively gentle.

"To you, madame, I always speak the truth."

"I take you at your word," said Lady Jim, smartly. "Why did you leave Russia, Monsieur Demetrius?"

"Madame, I come of a princely family, but for the sake of humanity I practised my profession in Moscow. A dear friend of mine foolishly joined the Anarchists, and an order was issued for his arrest. Fortunately, the official who signed the warrant was my patient, and I chanced to be with him when the paper was brought for his signature. He laid it aside for the moment, and I saw my friend's name. I therefore gave my patient a drug, which made him sleep for twenty-four hours, so that he could not sign. Meanwhile, my friend escaped--it matters not how--but he escaped, with my help. Through a rival doctor, my use of the drug to aid my friend became known, and I was accused of conspiring also. The governor of Moscow was enraged, and ordered my arrest in my friend's place. The prospect of Siberia was not pleasant, so I crossed the frontier after many delightful adventures, with the recital of which I shall not trouble you. Behold me, therefore, in your free country, madame, no longer a subject of the Czar, but your devoted slave."

He told the story, without preamble or excuse, in an unemotional and level voice, though all the time he wondered why Lady Jim desired to hear it. She gave him no explanation. "And if you go back to Russia?" she asked carelessly.

"I fear I shall never go back, madame."

"Who knows? Mademoiselle Aksakoff might----"

"Precisely, madame. She might, and, with small encouragement, she would. But her gaining of my pardon would assuredly lead to a marriage of gratitude."

"That would be no sacrifice."

"To many--no. To myself--madame, it is impossible!"

"Can you not make your peace without her influence?"

"Alas, no, madame. The Grand Duke was furious at my share in my friend's escape. He would give much to capture me, and should I set foot on the Continent"--he shrugged his shoulders significantly; "but the Third Section has no power in your land of liberty."

"The Third Section?"

"If it pleases madame better, the secret police. No; unless I marry Mademoiselle Aksakoff, of whom I admit my unworthiness, I must remain in exile--but it has many compensations," he added, bowing his head courteously to Lady Jim's profile.

"Quite so," she assented, scarcely heeding the compliment; then added thoughtfully, "You are a daring man, Monsieur Demetrius."

"Daring, when necessary, madame. But I confess to a love of ease."

Leah swung her ponies round a curve with careless dexterity. "It is not probable that any one will invite you to leave your lotus-eating, monsieur. Thank you for the story."

"It is at your service, madame."

Lady Jim hesitated. "You do not ask me why I requested you to relate it," she said at last.

"Your wish is a command. A command is never questioned."

"I might wish you to do something that you might question."

"Ah, no--believe me!"

"Don't jump in the dark," said Leah, with a hard little laugh; "by the way, this woman, for whom you ventured so much----"

"It was a man, madame."

"David and Jonathan in Crim Tartary, I suppose. They say," she gave a conscious laugh, "that a man would venture farther for a woman than for one of his own sex. You, I resume, are an exception."

"Madame, one does some things for friendship, but all things for love."

Leah glanced at the pale face beside her with a smile, and saw that the dark eyes were full of fire, "You are romantic."

"As is every man, when he loves, madame."

"I understand--Mademoiselle Aksakoff."

"You penetrate my thoughts admirably."

Lady Jim relieved her feelings by using the whip on the obedient ponies. Demetrius was clever and suspicious; also, as his story assured her, he was daring, clear-headed, and might be dangerous. If she gave this man a hold over her, he might be, and probably would be, unscrupulous enough to use his power. Moreover, Lionel had not yet asked the Duke, and there was always the chance that the money could be obtained without the necessity of plotting. Leah had taken the doctor for this delightful drive with the intention of speaking plainly; but his skilful use of words made her cautious. She was too clever a woman to build her tower without reckoning the expense.

Demetrius watched her with keen, questioning eyes and a perfectly impassive face, but he learned nothing. Lady Jim was quite as Oriental as himself in masking her emotions. Nevertheless, he guessed that the interest displayed in his past involved more than the satisfying of an idle curiosity. She wanted money--he was certain of that. But unless she intended to sell him to the Third Section, he could not conceive why she had forced his confidence. The enigma irritated him, though he paid a silent tribute to the diplomatic powers of this charming Englishwoman. But, cool and cautious as he was, her next speech nearly reduced him to the necessity of speaking plainly, although he regarded candour as a greater sin than making love to another man's wife.

"Now we'll drive home," said Leah, briskly.

"Ah, but no, madame. This is charming."

"And chilly. I am not a Russian, to revel in snow and ice."

"Madame, the fire in our veins prevents our feeling the disagreeables of nature. I am no phlegmatic Englishman."

"How interesting," said Leah, indifferently. "I wonder if the cattle will face this snowstorm."

They were driving straight into a chaos of eddying flakes, and meeting the sting of bitter sleet dashed in their blinking eyes by the wind. Demetrius bit his lips, and suppressed his fiery nature with an effort due to years of training. He could have killed this woman with her contemptuous indifference and impregnable self-possession. As the ponies plunged, with tossing heads and jingling bells, into that Arctic hurricane, he wished that the sledge would overturn, so that he might extort a word of gratitude by saving her life. But Leah's courage was as high as his own, and her strength greater, so it was quite probable that she would be able to look after herself. All he could do was to unflinchingly face the volleying snow, while Lady Jim dashed through the hostile elements like Semiramis in her war-chariot. With a turn of her wrist she prevented the frightened ponies dashing into a thorny hedge, with another turn swung the light vehicle away from a dangerous ditch, and then lashed the animals into a headlong gallop, which ended only when they trembled, with smoking flanks and drooping heads, before the Firmingham porch. And throughout that furious, rocking, blinding drive Demetrius sat grimly silent. Lady Jim was disappointed. It would have been more courageous and amusing had he made love to her in the jaws of death.

"Quite a Russian adventure," she said, tossing the reins to a groom, and jumped out, all colour and animation. "I hope you were not afraid, Monsieur Demetrius," she added unjustly.

"For you," he replied significantly.

With a rosy face and a display of white teeth, Leah faced him on the steps. "There was no need, I assure you. I can look after myself in every way."

"I can believe that, madame."

"Then why talk nonsense?"

"To amuse you."

"My good man, I don't want amusement, but help."

Demetrius started forward, impulsively. "Command me."

Lady Jim flung her wraps, her whip, her mink cape, and her gloves into his arms. "Thanks," she said carelessly, and turned towards the library, leaving her illegal admirer pale with rage.

She stopped laughing at the remembrance of his wrath when she saw Lionel studying a book near the window. "Well?" she asked, coming lightly towards him: "any news?"

"Yes; I have seen the Duke!"

"And he--and he----" her voice died away under stress of emotion.

"He will help you!"

Leah's first feeling was one of relief, and she was almost on the point of expressing gratitude, but a sudden remembrance that aid from the Duke meant the retention of Jim as a most undesirable husband, cooled the warm impulse. She recovered her self-command, and was about to go into figures, when Mrs. Penworthy with a noisy party bustled into the room, looking rather tousled and flushed.

"We have been playing 'Hunt the Slipper,'" she announced, in her high, thin voice, "and Algy found mine three times."

Lady Jim, annoyed at the irruption, glanced at Mrs. Penworthy's feet, which could scarcely have worn the slippers of Cinderella. "I can quite believe that," she said sweetly, and left the room smiling.

"What does she mean?" asked Algy, obtusely.

Mrs. Penworthy knew perfectly well what was meant, but was too feminine to explain, save in a way calculated to mislead her courtier. This could be done by arousing his egotism.

"She means that you are clever to play the game so well," was her explanation. "I rather think Lady Jim admires you, Algy."

The youth fondled what he called a moustache. "Rippin' woman, Lady Jim," said he, taking the speech literally.

"Go and tell her so," snapped Mrs. Penworthy, colouring angrily.

"You wouldn't like it."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," remarked the lady, fervently hating him for his stupidity, "than to see her dancing on you, as she does on all men who are foolish enough to make themselves carpets."

"I'm not a carpet."

"No! You're a tame cat."

"Then come and play Puss in the Corner," urged Algy, gaily, and Mrs. Penworthy consented, as this game had nothing to do with abnormal slippers.

Leah, pleased at having snubbed Mrs. Penworthy, whom she considered quite an improper person, went to look for Jim in his room. He was there, sure enough, lying on the sofa with the novel tossed carelessly on the floor, and a black pipe between his lips. Evidently he had not heard the good news.

"Jim," cried Leah, breathlessly, "the Duke will part."

"He has parted," growled Jim, swinging his long legs on to the floor and producing a cheque. "Look at that."

Lady Jim did. It was for two hundred pounds. "Oh!" She crushed it in her two hands, as though she were throttling his Grace. "What an insult!"

[ CHAPTER VIII]

Two hundred pounds. Lady Jim rapidly ran over in her mind such of the most pressing liabilities as she could recollect, and shuddered at a total of two thousand. They owed that, and many other debts which, for the moment, escaped her memory. So far as she could see, nothing remained but a compulsory journey through the court. Not that she really minded bankruptcy. Plenty of people, accepted as immaculate by society, made use of that desirable institution to get a receipt for past extravagances, on the plea of having lived beyond their incomes. She and Jim could make the same excuse with perfect truth, and would doubtless be enabled to make a fresh start. And if a few tradesmen were ruined, what did it matter? They always overcharged, and it might be a lesson to them not to worry customers.

No; the bankruptcy court matters very little, but the want of ready cash mattered a great deal. Leah cared nothing about paying the bills, but ardently desired to have a re-filled purse and no bother about such vulgar things as pounds, shillings, and pence. It was perfectly idiotic of the Duke to be so stingy. If he had come down with a thousand, she and Jim could have enjoyed themselves abroad for a couple of months, and meanwhile, he could have paid these troublesome tradesmen. But two hundred pounds! Did the old fool take them for the respectable middle-class couple, living in slate-roofed houses, to which she had alluded? Without Jim's assistance she could get rid of that trifle in a fortnight.

"I believe your father's brain is softening," she complained crossly.

"I'm not responsible for his crazy arithmetic," retorted Jim, with the helpful addition of a few adjectives.

But, beyond swearing as much as he dared in her presence, Jim could offer no assistance, and Leah concluded that, after all, it might be necessary to trust Demetrius. Her husband, having gained some faint idea of the novel, had ended in declining to turn fiction into fact. His remarks were not without shrewdness.

"The chap who writes the story knows what's goin' to happen," said Jim, when pressed for his opinion, "an' can invent circumstances to dodge results. But if we start a yarn of this kind on our own, we don't know what the end 'ull be."

"Oh yes!" protested Leah, very patiently, considering she disagreed entirely; "you'll disappear, and I shall become a widow with my share of the twenty thousand."

"An' how long will your share last?" asked Jim, derisively.

"That depends upon my mood. Some time, I expect, seeing that your death will force me into retirement, and crape is not so very expensive. And when you get through your lot, Jim, what will you do?"

"That's what I'm askin' you," said Jim, evasively; and continued hurriedly, lest she should insist upon a disagreeable explanation, "'Sides, there's my father to be considered."

"Since when have you taken him to your heart?"

"Oh, it's all very well talkin'. But your father's your father, when all's said an' done. The Duke doesn't think me a saint, but he'd be sorry to see me die."

"No one wants you to die," she said impatiently.

"That's bunkum, an'--an'--what's the word?"

"Might I suggest 'sophistry'?" said Lady Jim, quite aware that her reasoning was fallacious.

"Oh, you'll suggest anythin' to get your own way. But what I mean is that, though I do die, I don't really die."

"How clearly you put things, Jim. Please yourself. We must go back to town with this money, to be whitewashed;" and eyeing the cheque contemptuously, she saw that it was unfortunately made payable to Jim. Her husband stretched for the cheque and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

"I'm goin' to see the Duke m'self," he announced, "an' tell him everythin'."

"What, about the money we've raised on the income?"

"Every blessed thing," said Kaimes, doggedly; "he's my father, an' it's his duty to square things."

"He mightn't follow your reasoning," murmured Leah, with one hand on the mantelpiece and the other holding up her skirts to warm one foot. "But you can't make a much worse mess of it than Lionel has made. Two hundred pounds--he must have thought he was asking money for some old woman. Shall I come with you, Jim?"

"No." He halted at the door to deliver himself of the remark, "You're like a red rag to a bull."

"Oh, very well. I only thought you'd like me to translate your talk into something resembling English."

"Don't you fret yourself, I'll make him understand. An' if I do get things squared," cried Jim, warming at the thought of his heroism in facing an angry parent, "you'll have to drop spending money, an' live as other women do."

"Yes, dear James, and you'll live as other men do, won't you?"

"I'll do what I jolly well please. An' why James?"

"There never was a St. Jim, that I ever heard of," mused Leah, turning pensive eyes on her exasperated husband, "and as you wish to canonise yourself, of course you must change your name. Yes, James"--she moved swiftly towards him, and detained him gently by the lapels of his coat--"from this time forth we'll live in holy matrimony, and pig it on what's left of the income. Curzon Street given up, Bayswater remains, and there, James darling, we'll live a life of extremely plain living and high thinking."

"Don't talk bosh," growled Jim, trying to escape; but she held on.

"No, James, I won't, if you will only raise my intellect to the level of your own. And think what a delightful existence it will be, James. A cheap Bayswater dungeon, with three servants and the shopping done at Whiteley's. I'll turn my dresses and trim my hats and you'll give up your clubs, to curse in a stuffy drawing-room while you play bezique with your dear wife, till we go to bed at ten. No more betting on Podaskas, James; no more whist-drives, or bridge, or any such expensive naughtinesses. And how nice it will be for you, James, to flirt with those earnestly-fashionable suburban girls, who are just half an hour behind the times, and who----" Here Jim rent his garments from Leah's grasp, and departed in haste with an impolite word. His wife's humour did not appeal to him in the least, and he banged the door unnecessarily hard.

Leah returned to warm her toes and laugh till she cried. There was something excessively amusing in the idea of Jim setting up for a plaster saint. For once in his dull life he displayed a sense of humour, and she picked up the discarded novel with a fresh burst of laughter at the picture of the Bayswater ménage, as drawn by her fertile fancy. Jim as a middle-class Philistine tickled her even more than Jim in a stained-glass attitude, with an artificial halo misfitting his empty head.

But a remembrance of the cheque--payable to Jim--and of her husband's possible position at the moment, telling clumsy truths to an aggrieved father, made her serious. Certainly the Duke, pleased to hear his son speak honestly for once in a life of consistent fibbing, might shed tears over a hastily-produced cheque-book. Jim's falsehoods, in times of pressing need, were almost inspired, and it was not impossible that he might return with the loot. Then, the tradespeople being paid, Leah decided that she could run up fresh bills to any amount: they would be all the more eager to give her unlimited credit when they knew that the Duke was in the background. Decidedly the prospect was not so bad, and, after all, it might be dangerous to make real-life experiments in sensational fiction.

These common-sense reflections led Lady Jim to thank the watchful fetish for governing her tongue during the afternoon. Demetrius could be nasty when he liked. She was certain of that, and it was just as well to give him no chance. Some people carried tyranny to a ridiculous excess, and liked to hear their victims squeal unmeaningly. Leah did not belong to the squealing species, and vowed a vow that Demetrius should never have an opportunity of provoking such futile outcries. As a gleam of good sense warned her of possible danger, she decided to avoid the Russian, or only to flirt sufficiently to make him miserable and Jim cross.

Having settled the question in this sensible way, Leah sought her room to dress for the five o'clock muffin-scramble. She assumed the prettiest tea-gown she possessed, for the truly feminine purpose of irritating Demetrius into over-estimating what he had lost. Descending like a Homeric deity in a cloud--of lace--she went at once to the library, and restored to its place the text-book of her proposed fraud. Fortunately, the room was empty, so no one would ever know that the novel had been read with a view to plagiarism. Not that it mattered much now, since Jim was proceeding on the lines of "Honesty is the best policy." Leah hoped fervently that he would succeed, but felt more than a trifle doubtful. Jim was so new to this straightforward method of gaining his ends.

The house-party was picnicking in the winter-garden, a delightful Eden, where tropical plants flourished in defiance of the season. On its glass roof the hail rattled like small shot, and through its glass walls could be seen the bleak, wintry landscape, faintly white in the deepening gloom. These glimpses of the unpleasant increased the sense of comfort, and over-civilised humanity luxuriated in the warm atmosphere, as independent of nature's laws as the palm-trees under which it ate and drank and talked scandal. The frumps nibbled dry toast and sipped milk; the fashionables devoured dainty sandwiches and enjoyed the strongest of tea, and both aided digestion with chatter and laughter. It was the complacent contentment of animals, mumbling a plentiful meal, and for the moment all spiritual instincts were governed by material needs.

Mrs. Penworthy's courtiers were feeding their queen, who had a large appetite for so small a woman. After a full meal she was disposed to be amiable, even to Freddy, had he been there; but she became decidedly cross when some of the court deserted her for "that woman," as she termed Lady Jim. Leah was feminine enough to enjoy the fallen expression on Mrs. Penworthy's face, and accepted with marked pleasure the attentions of those who crowded round her. The sight gave Mrs. Penworthy a fit of indigestion, which prevented her enjoying a late dinner. It was hard that her vanity had to content itself with the banal compliments of the faithful Algy, who tried to be a host in himself, and was snubbed for his ambition.

"May I present my nephew to you?" asked Lord Sargon, in his thin, precise voice.

Leah intimated that she would be charmed, and found herself nodding to a slim, dark young man, clean-shaven and alert. He looked more alive than the languid youths around her, and she was not surprised when Sargon explained that Mr. Askew was a naval officer, who had lately returned from a five years' cruise.

"I thought you hadn't been wrapped up in cotton wool all your life," said Lady Jim, when Sargon had removed the attendant youths and the lieutenant was making himself agreeable in a bluff, briny way.

"Do I look so uncivilised?" he asked, with laughing eyes.

"Highly. You are the nearest approach to pre-historic man I have yet seen," said she, and thus was unjust to Jim.

"I am sorry----"

"Oh, there's no need to apologise. I daresay Circe found Ulysses very agreeable."

"Homer says so," answered Askew, who appeared to be well read; "but if I am Ulysses, you must be Circe."

"I accept the compliment!"

"Is it a compliment?" asked the pre-historic man, daringly.

"Unless meant for one it should not have been said."

"Beg pardon. I'm several kinds of ass. But I did mean it civilly, you know. Circe was a clever woman, whose magic turned men into outward semblances of their real characters."

Lady Jim smiled scornfully. "And if my magic could transform these," she glanced disparagingly round the place, "what a menagerie it would be! Pigs, and snakes, and parrots, and----"

"Dogs."

"Of the mongrel kind, Mr. Askew. Do you speak of yourself?"

He nodded laughingly. "Dogs are so devoted!"

"That means you wish to attach yourself to me," said Leah, gravely. "I might take you at your word--I need a friend; but Ulysses deserted Circe."

Askew laughed, and gazed admiringly at her beautiful, pensive face. "We talk parables, I think," he said, with assumed lightness.

"Prehistoric man always did, I understand."

"On the contrary, his speech was direct and blunt!"

"Mine will be now," smiled Lady Jim. "This cup has been empty for five minutes, and you never offered to----"

The young man took the tiny cup hastily. "But for the publicity of the place, I would ask you to tread upon my prostrate body."

Leah eyed his lithe, active figure as he went to the bamboo table presided over by Lady Frith. He was really a delightful sailorman, she reflected, and quicker than most of his sex to understand the unspoken. It might be more amusing to drop Demetrius and flirt with him. But then, his face was too honest, and he might object to being made use of.

"Men of that kind are so dreadfully in earnest," sighed Leah, with a sense of irritation; "they think a woman always means what she says."

Askew walked lightly over the mosaic floor with a fresh cup of tea and a plate of hot cakes. Some man bustled in his way, and he stopped to avoid an upset of his burden. At the moment, he glanced towards the Moorish door which admitted triflers into the winter paradise. To Lady Jim's wonderment, he started, and a look of surprise overspread his expressive face. Her eyes turned at once in the direction of the entrance, and she beheld Jim blinking his eyes at the dazzle of light. He looked heavy and sullen, which hinted that the interview with the Duke had not been successful. But Leah forgot that momentous question for the moment, as her quick brain was trying to understand Askew's look of surprise. Before she could ask herself what he could possibly know about Jim, he approached with the tea.

"This is nice and hot," he said, placing the plate on the table at her elbow and offering the cup. "I hope you'll forgive me for neglecting you."

"On one condition," replied Leah, stirring her tea.

"Consider it fulfilled," was the impetuous answer.

"Why did you look surprised when you saw that gentleman at the door?"

Leah pointedly suppressed the fact that Kaimes was her husband, as, if there was anything, she would learn it the more easily by pretending that Jim was a stranger. In fact, should Askew learn that the man who had startled him was her lawful lord, he might decline to open his lips. The lieutenant's next words proved the wisdom of her concealment.

"Oh, Berring," he said, carelessly. "Well, I was surprised to see Berring so unexpectedly."

"Is his name Berring?" asked Lady Jim, guessing that she was about to learn something connected with Jim's very shady past.

"Yes; I met him in Lima."

"Lima?"

"In Peru, and that's in South America."

Leah nodded. "I did learn geography at school," she said, setting down her empty cup; and when Askew coloured at the implied snub, softened it by asking a friendly question: "You are surprised at meeting Mr.--er--er--Berring, here?"

"Yes; I said so before. A nice sort of chap, but selfish."

"What a reader of character you are, Mr. Askew!" He looked up eagerly. "You know him, then."

"A little. Why do you ask?"

The young man stared at the ground, and replied in muffled tones: "I thought you might have met his wife."

"Mrs. Berring?"

"Of course."

Leah began to laugh. The idea that Jim might be a bigamist had never struck her before. She had guessed that there was a woman connected with those frequent journeys to Lima, but that Jim had adopted the Mormon religion was news. Some women would have been angry, but Leah had no amatory feelings likely to arouse jealousy, so she was frankly amused at her husband's duplicity. Also, she was sorry for Mrs. Berring, who perhaps was silly enough to love Jim.

"Is she a nice woman?" was her next question.

"She's an angel."

"That means, you love her."

"How do you----?"

"Because you are a brick wall I can see through, Mr. Askew. No; I have never met Mrs. Berring. Why did she throw you over and marry Mr.--er--Berring?"

Askew looked quite alarmed. "I say you are clever," he remarked.

"Why not? You called me Circe, and I must live up to the name. Well?"

"Well!" echoed Askew, blankly, and their eyes met. He coloured. "No, I can't tell you," he said quickly, for he guessed her desire.

"Yes, you can, and you will," rejoined Leah, composedly.

Jim was bearing the artillery of Mrs. Penworthy's eyes in his usual indifferent way, and showed no disposition to seek out his wife. Probably he would remain for the next hour in the clutches of the little woman, who was the limpet to Jim's rock. This being so, Leah began to ask questions which Askew hesitated to answer.

"We hardly know one another," he murmured, embarrassed. "I daren't tell you, Lady James."

"Ah! Then there's something improper in the matter?"

Askew flushed through his bronzed skin. "Not at all," he said in a brusque tone. "Señorita Fajardo is all that is good and holy and pure."

"What bread and butter!" thought Leah, wondering if Jim had stumbled upon a convent. But she was too wise to quote Byron to this young man, who apparently was simple enough to regard love as something sacred.

"Fajardo," she repeated. "A Spanish name."

"And a Spanish lady," he said, gloomily. "Lola Fajardo, of the Estancia, San Jago, near Rosario."

"I thought you said of Lima?"

"No; I met her there. She is in the habit of stopping at Lima with her aunt. But her true home is at Rosario, in the Santa Fe province of the Argentine republic. I wonder if Berring brought her to England. She was madly in love with him."

"She must have been, to marry him."

"Oh, Berring's a good-looking chap, and not bad," said Askew, with the innate chivalry of a man towards a successful rival. "I suppose they did marry."

"Oh! Then you are not certain?"

"No; I never even knew if they were engaged. But when I joined my ship again at Callao, every one said 'marriage'--they were so uncommonly thick. I must ask Berring."

"I'm sure he'll be delighted to afford you the information you seek," was Lady Jim's ironical reply.

"Have you seen Mrs. Berring?" asked the young man, eagerly.

"No; I don't think any Mrs. Berring is stopping here."

"Then perhaps he did not marry Lola, after all," cried Askew, rising hastily, and with flashing eyes, "unless"--his voice fell--"she is dead."

Leah yawned. "Really, I don't know," she replied; "you had better ask Mr. Berring. I see he is passing out of the garden with Mrs. Penworthy."

"In that case I can't spoil sport," laughed the lieutenant, with an obvious effort; "but later on."

"Later on, of course," she said, rising. "Here comes your uncle."

Lord Sargon advanced, and, with an apologetic look towards Leah, took Askew's arm. "I wish to present you to Lady Canvey," he said.

The young man looked towards his charmer. "Will you permit me to leave you for a time?"

"Certainly. You will find Lady Canvey delightful, and as pre-historic as you can wish. We may meet after dinner," and, with a nod, she left the winter garden for the purpose of seeking solitude. She wanted to think over Jim's iniquities, and to consider what use might be made of them for her own benefit.

Lady Canvey was delighted to receive Askew, as she liked handsome young men, especially when they were deferential and attentive, as this new acquaintance appeared to be. "Though I'm a bad substitute for Lady Jim," she remarked pleasantly. "Lady Jim?"

"That charming creature with whom you have been talking."

"Yes, of course, Lady Canvey. She is indeed charming."

"But private property. Her husband is the Duke's second son, at present in the clutches of that little harpy, Mrs. Penworthy. Don't you make love to Lady Jim, or you'll burn your fingers. I mistrust red-haired women, myself. But she and Jim match each other capitally. Their marriage was made in heaven;" and Lady Canvey chuckled.

"Is her husband here?" asked Askew, looking round, anxious to see who owned Circe-of-the-many-wiles.

"No; he went out with Mrs. Penworthy a quarter of an hour ago."

Askew remembered how Lady Jim had drawn his attention to an outgoing couple. "Didn't the lady go out with a Mr. Berring?" he gasped.

"No; with Lord Jim Kaimes!"

"And she--his wife--the lady I----" Askew stopped with a groan.

"Try an unmarried woman," advised Lady Canvey, misunderstanding his emotion. "It's more proper, and less expensive."

[ CHAPTER IX]

Keeping up the necessary Darby-and-Joan comedy, Kaimes strolled into his wife's dressing-room half an hour before dinner to inquire if she was ready. Leah had a second-hand view of him in a full-length mirror before which she posed, while her maid added a few final touches to an eminently successful frock. From the composed expression of his face she guessed that he had not yet renewed his acquaintance with Mr. Askew, and therefore must be ignorant that the free-spoken sailor had let the cat out of the bag. Lady Jim possessed the animal now, but she did not intend to reveal her capture until Jim explained how he had sped with the Duke. A slight nod towards the glass showed her husband that she was aware of his presence, and the maid continued to use experienced fingers. But Leah looked so charming, that further trouble in this way was like adding sugar to honey. Jim stared approvingly, and, when the maid was dismissed, saw his way to a compliment.

"You have the good points of several women rolled into one, Leah," he said, with the look of a sultan appraising an odalisque.

"That polite speech means much, coming from a man of your experience, my dear Jim. What good point of Mrs. Penworthy's have I annexed?"

"You're jealous!"

"Horribly! You are so deeply attached to that bundle of faded chiffon."

"I don't care two straws for her."

"Appearances are misleading, then. But," added Leah, remembering Askew's eulogy, "it may be that you prefer something that's good and holy and pure."

"I don't know why you should say that," grumbled Jim, annoyed at being credited with such primitive tastes.

"You may know before long," and she laughed at the thought of the marine bomb-shell which would shortly shatter Jim's complacency.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about," said Kaimes, with unaffected surprise, "an' I'm confoundedly hungry."

"Ah! Did the Duke's lecture give you an appetite?"

"Leah!" Jim became so serious as to look almost intelligent. "My father is the best man who ever wore shoe-leather."

"He is usually condemned to cloth boots for gouty feet," murmured Leah, patting the back of her head. "So you've pulled the wool over his eyes again?"

"I wish you wouldn't use slang," protested Jim, virtuously.

"I can't pretend to vie with Mrs. Penworthy's purity of speech, my dear man. How much have you got out of the Duke?"

"Well, he hasn't given me money----"

"Oh!"

"But he's promised----

"Ah!"

"I wish you'd let me speak," cried Kaimes, testily, "My father has promised to pay all the debts----"

"Good heavens! Is he aware of the amount?"

"Wait, I've not finished. He'll pay the debts, and reduce our income to a thousand a year till he recoups himself."

"Really! I thought you had seen your father, and not a money-lender. Have you accepted this most generous offer?"

"Yes, I have," said Jim, sulkily, and kicking a mat out of the way.

"I see. It's to be Bayswater after all, James."

"If you talk like that, I'll go down to dinner without you."

"By all means. You've taken away my appetite."

She laughed in a way calculated to still further infuriate Jim, who paced the room in a towering passion. Nevertheless, she was seriously angry. Had the Duke refused all help, it would have been more decent; but this bargain, which was all on one side, annoyed her beyond measure. What did the Duke mean by taking their money?

"It seems to me we've got to pay our own debts, then," she said, while Jim seethed like a whirlpool.

"An' why shouldn't we? It's only fair."

Leah stared, and began to think that Jim was too good for this world.

"I hope you are not going to die," she said, anxiously.

"Not in your way," cried Kaimes, misunderstanding her, "we aren't going to have any buryin' alive or substituted corpses, an' I'm goin' to hang on as a respectable member of society."

"I'll come and hear you preach, Jim."

"I'm preachin' now," raged her husband, "an' don't you make any mistake, Leah. I've told the Duke everythin'."

"How injudicious! He might have had a fit."

"He didn't even blame me," said Jim, breaking down, "an' there were tears in his eyes."

Leah laughed amazingly long and loud, considering the tightness of her corset.

"I wish I had been present. Did you cry too, Jim?"

"I jolly well nearly did," said Kaimes, truthfully, if ungrammatically, "though it's no good explainin' to an icicle like you. But the pater's goin' to pay the debts, free our income, an' let the Curzon Street house."

"Better and better. Then we do go to Bayswater?"

"He'll allow us one thousand a year till the debts are wiped off," went on Kaimes hurriedly, and wishing to get the explanation over, "an' we can go abroad for a couple of years."

"You can. I shan't!"

"As my wife, you must."

"As an individual, I shan't," retorted Lady Jim, calmly. She was getting over her rage now, as she foresaw a very different interview between herself and Jim before they retired for the night. "It is very good of you to have settled all this without consulting me. And now that you have done so, let us go to dinner."

"But I----"

"There's the gong," observed Leah, opening the door, "and I don't like cold soup."

"You'll have to like lots of things now you didn't like before," said Jim, as they went down.

"The selection doesn't include you, my good man, so don't be disappointed."

Jim could have shaken her, and began to understand why the lower orders indulged in wife-beating. But as they were entering the drawing-room at this moment, he had to play the part of a devoted husband. Leah floated radiantly into the brilliantly lighted apartment, and Jim sought out the oldest and ugliest woman he could find. When he thought of his wife, beauty sickened him for the time being. Thus it came about that Miss Jaffray had the pleasure of shouting into his ear throughout a long and wearisome dinner.

Whether it was the work of the fetish or of Lady Frith, Leah did not know, but she found herself seated at the table with Askew on her right hand.

The young man looked flustered, and ill at ease. "I'm so sorry!" he began apologetically, and, as she thought, tactlessly.

"That you're my neighbour?" she interrupted sweetly. "How unkind!"

"No! But I never knew he was your husband."

"Who? Mr. Berring?"

"Don't make it harder for me," he entreated softly. "I've been calling myself names ever since we parted."

"You should have left that to me, Mr. Askew."

"There's nothing in it, you know," he stuttered, heedlessly. "Of course, she never married him."

"I hope not, for the sake of morality," said Lady Jim, lightly, and thinking that the soup was worse than usual. "However, it doesn't matter. My husband is a modest man, and sometimes drops his title when travelling. I daresay, as Mr. Berring, he thought he was free to make love."

"But he wasn't," protested Askew, with a glance towards the unconscious Jim, who apparently had not recognised him.

"You should tell him so."

"I intend to--in the smoking room."

Lady Jim looked at him imperiously, and softened her voice to a very direct whisper. "Don't make trouble," she said, in a somewhat domineering tone; "that will do no good and much harm. And after all, married or unmarried, every man has a right to admire a pretty woman."

"But not to make love to her," muttered the young man, with another vengeful glance.

"I am no casuist," replied Leah, calmly; "and you should be pleased that things are as they are. You can now return to Lima, or Rosario, and marry the lady."

"She wouldn't have me!"

"Is she so much in love with Mr. Berring, then?"

"Please don't, Lady James. I can't talk like this to you."