Suspense, Volume 2 (of 3)
Date: 2024-09-23T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; War correspondents -- Fiction; Russo-Turkish War; 1877-1878 -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Suspense, Volume 2 (of 3)

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Title: Suspense, Volume 2 (of 3)

Author: Henry Seton Merriman

Release date: September 23, 2024 [eBook #74461]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1890

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSPENSE, VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***

SUSPENSE

BY

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN

AUTHOR OF 'YOUNG MISTLEY,' 'THE PHANTOM FUTURE'
ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1890

[All rights reserved]

Some there are who laugh and sing
While compassed round by sorrow;
To this ev'ning's gloom they bring
The sunshine of to-morrow.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAPTER

I. AT SEA
II. SISTERS
III. ALICE RETURNS
IV. TO THE FRONT
V. UNDER FIRE
VI. TRIST ACTS
VII. QUICKSANDS
VIII. MASKED
IX. IN CASE OF WAR
X. A PROBLEM
XI. MRS. WYLIE LEADS
XII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEA
XIII. CROSS-PURPOSES
XIV. A SOCIAL CONSPIRACY

SUSPENSE

CHAPTER I.

AT SEA.

One fine day late in the autumn of eighteen hundred and seventy-six, a steamer emerged from the haze that lay over the Atlantic and the northern waters of the Bay of Biscay. Those who were working in the fields behind the lighthouse of the Pointe de Raz saw her approach the land, sight the lighthouse, and then steer outwards again on a course due north through the channel dividing the Ile de Sein from the rocky headland jutting out from this most western point of Europe into the Atlantic.

Those on board the steamer, looking across the blue waters, saw the faint outline of a high broken coast, and all round them a sea divided into races and smooth deep pools large enough to anchor a whole fleet had there been bottom within reach. Islands, islets, and mere rocks; some jutting high up, some nestling low. A dangerous coast, and a splendid fishing-ground.

There were further points of interest on the waters; namely, a whole fleet of sardine-boats from Douarnenez and Audierne, scudding here and there with their bright brown sails, sometimes glowing in the sun, sometimes brooding darkly in the shadow. It was a beautiful picture, because the colours were brilliant; the blue sea gradually merged into bright green, and finished off in the distance with yellow sand or deep-brown cliff. The hills towards Breste, to the north, were faintly outlined in a shadowy haze of blue, while close at hand the long Atlantic sweep came bounding in and broke into dazzling white over the rocks.

On the deck of the steamer the passengers paused in their afternoon promenade, and, leaning their arms on the high rail, contemplated the bright scene with evident satisfaction. The small fishing-boats were of a more British build than most of them had seen for some years. The brown lug-sails were like the sails of an English fishing-boat, and many of these swarthy-faced wanderers had recollections of childhood which came surging into their minds at the sight of a blue sea with a brown sail on it. The high rocky land might well be England, with its neat yellow lighthouse and low-roofed cottages nestling among the scanty foliage and careful cultivation. It was so very different from Madras, so unlike Bombay, so infinitely superior to Hong Kong. The breeze even was different from any that had touched their faces for many a day, and some of them actually felt cold—a sensation almost forgotten.

The captain of this splendid steamer was a gentleman as well as a good sailor, and he endeavoured to make his passengers feel at home while under his care. Therefore he now walked aft and stood beside the chair of a beautiful woman who was always alone, always indifferent, always repelling.

'This is a pretty sight, Mrs. Huston,' he said pleasantly, without looking down at her, but standing beside her chair. He gazed across the water towards the Pointe de Raz, with the good-natured patience of a man who does not intend to be snubbed. Once, during his first voyage as commander, a woman had disappeared from the deck one dark night, and since then the shrewd 'passenger' captain had kept his eye upon pretty women who neither flirted nor quarrelled at sea.

'Yes,' was the indifferent answer; and the sailor's keen gray eyes detected the fact that the fair lashes were never raised.

'It brings the fact before one,' he continued, 'that we are getting near home.'

'Yes,' with pathetic indifference. She did not even make the pretence of looking up, and yet there was no visible interest in the book that lay upon her lap.

The sailor moved a little, and leant his elbows upon the rail, looking round his ship with a critical and all-seeing eye.

'I hope,' he said cheerily, 'that there is no one on board to whom the sight of Eddystone will not give unmitigated pleasure. We shall be there before any of us quite realize that the voyage is drawing to an end.'

Then the beautiful woman made a little effort. The man's kindness of heart was so obvious, his disinterested desire to cheer her voluntary solitude was so gentlemanly in its feeling and so entirely free from any suggestion of inquisitiveness, that she, as a lady, could no longer treat him coldly. All through the voyage this same quiet watchfulness over her comfort (which displayed itself in little passing acts, and never in words) had been exercised by the man, whose most difficult duties were not, perhaps, connected solely with the perils of the sea. She raised her head and smiled somewhat wanly, and there was in the action and in the expression of her eyes a sudden singular resemblance to Brenda Gilholme. But it was a weak copy. There was neither the invincible pluck nor the unusual intellectuality to be discerned.

'I shall be glad,' she said, 'to see England again. Although the voyage has been very pleasant and very ... peaceful. Thanks to you.'

'Not at all,' he answered with breezy cheerfulness; 'I have done remarkably little to make things pleasant. It has been a quiet voyage. We are, I think, a quiet lot this time. Invalids mostly—in body, or mind!'

At these last words the lady looked up suddenly into the captain's pleasant face. In her manner there was a faint suggestion of coquetry—so faint as only to be a very pleasing suggestion. Women who have been flirts in former years have this glance, and they never quite lose it. Personally speaking, I like it. There comes from its influence an innocent and very sociable sensation of familiarity with old and young alike. Someday I shall write a learned disquisition on the art and so-called vice of flirting. Look out for it, reader. Mind and secure an early copy from your stationer. From its thoughtful pages you cannot fail to glean some instructive matter. And ye, oh flirts! buy it up and show it to your friends; for it will be a defence of your maligned species. Flirts are the salt of social existence. A girl who cannot flirt is ... is ... well ... is not the girl for me.

The mariner looked down into the sad face, and smiled in a comprehensive way which seemed in some inexplicable manner to bring them closer together.

'Then,' said the lady, 'as I am in the enjoyment of rude health and likely to last for some years yet, I may infer that you know all about me.'

The captain looked grave.

'I know,' he answered, 'just little enough to be able to reply that I know nothing when people do me the honour of inquiring; and just sufficient to feel that your affairs are better left undiscussed by us.'

She nodded her head, and sat looking at her own hands in a dull, apathetic way. Woman-like, she acted in direct opposition to his most obvious hint.

'I suppose,' she murmured, 'that gossips have been thrashing the whole question out with their customary zest.'

'Ceylon is a hot-bed of gossips. Everyone is up in his neighbour's affairs, and a fine voyage in a comfortable steamer is not calculated to still busy tongues!'

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently, and looked up at him with a slight pout of her pretty lips.

'Who cares?' she asked with well-simulated levity. He, however, did not choose to appear as if he were deceived, which simple feat was well within his histrionic capabilities; for his life was one long succession of petty diplomatic efforts.

'I think,' he said coolly, 'that you have done perfectly right in keeping yourself quite apart from the rest of them.' He looked round upon the other passengers, seated or lolling about the deck, with a fatherly tolerance. 'And if I may suggest it, you cannot do better than to continue doing so for the next day or two. Avoid more particularly the older women. The jealousy of a young girl is dangerous, but the repelled patronage of an older woman, bristling with the consciousness of her own wearisome irreproachability, is infinitely more to be feared!'

This remark from the lips of a man who undoubtedly knew more than is usually known of the feminine side of humanity appeared to suggest material for thought to the somewhat shallow brain of his hearer. She dropped the lightly reckless style at once, and the thought that this honest and simple-hearted sailor was in love with her slowly died a natural death. There followed, moreover, upon its demise an uncomfortable suggestion that, although he was probably honest, he was not consequently simple-hearted—that he was, in fact, a match for her, and, knowing it, was not at that moment disposed to measure mental blades with her.

'I am glad,' she said humbly, 'that my sister will be at Plymouth to meet me.'

'Did you,' inquired the sailor, 'write from Port Said to Miss Gilholme?'

She raised her head with a questioning air, but did not look up.

'Miss Gilholme,' she repeated—'how do you know her name?'

'Oh,' laughed the captain, 'I am a sort of walking directory. There is a constant procession of men and women passing before me. Many of them turn aside and say a few words. Sometimes we find mutual acquaintances, sometimes only mutual interests. Sometimes they pass by again, and on occasion we become friends.'

'Then you have not met her?'

'No—I have not had that pleasure.'

'It is a pleasure,' said the beautiful woman very earnestly. Had she only known it, her face was infinitely lovelier in grave repose than in most piquante bouderie.

'I can quite believe it,' replied the sailor, with a gallantry which even Mrs. Huston could not take as anything more than conventional.

'She is my guardian angel!' murmured she pathetically.

Her companion smiled slightly, in a very unsympathetic way. His opinion of 'guardian angels' was taken from a practical and lamentably unpoetical point of view. Having played the part himself on several occasions with more or less conspicuous success, he inclined to a belief that the glory of guardian angelism is of a negative description. There are certain people in the world who will accept all and any service, and to whom the feeling of indebtedness is without a hint of shame. In time they come to consider such service as has previously and hitherto been rendered them in the light of a precedent. Gradually the debt seems to glide from the shoulders of the debtor to those of the creditor, and having once rendered a service, the renderer has simply placed himself under an obligation to continue doing so.

When Mrs. Huston, therefore, mentioned the fact that her sister was her guardian angel, the pathos of the observation was somewhat lost upon her hearer; who, moreover, was slightly prejudiced against Brenda because such guardian angels as had crossed his path were of a weak and gullible nature. He never made her acquaintance, but the impression thus conceived—though totally erroneous—was never dispelled by such small details of her story as came to his knowledge in later years.

'I hear,' the captain went on to explain, in his cheery impersonal way, 'scraps of family histories here and there, and then am rather surprised to meet members of these families, or persons connected with them.'

Mrs. Huston bravely quelled a desire to talk of her own affairs, and smiled vaguely.

'I have no doubt,' she said with mechanical pleasantness, 'that we have a great many mutual acquaintances—if we only knew how to hit upon the vein.'

'Of course we have—the world, and especially the Indian world, is very small.'

'I wonder who they are?' murmured Mrs. Huston, raising her eyes to her companion's face.

'Mention a few of your friends,' he suggested, looking down into her eyes somewhat keenly.

'No—you begin!'

He changed his position somewhat, and stood upright, free from the rail, but his glance never left her face.

'Theodore Trist!'

Instantly she averted her eyes. For a moment she was quite off her guard, and her fingers strayed in a nervous, aimless way among the pages of her open book. To her pale cheeks the warm colour mounted as if a glowing ruby reflection had suddenly been cast upon the delicate skin.

She expressed no surprise by word or gesture, and there was a pause of considerable duration before at length she spoke.

'Where is he now?' she asked in a low voice.

The captain stroked his grizzled moustache reflectively. He acted his part well, despite her sudden and lamentable failure.

'Let me think ... He is in Constantinople to the best of my knowledge. He is engaged in watching Eastern affairs. It seems that Turkey and Russia cannot keep their hands off each other's throats much longer. At present there is an armistice, but Trist has been through the late war between Servia and Turkey.'

'Do you know him well?' she asked at length, after a second pause.

'Yes. He is a friend of mine.'

'A great friend?'

'I think I may say so.'

'He is also a friend of ours—of my sister and myself,' said Mrs. Huston calmly.

She had quite recovered her equanimity by now, and the pink colour had left her cheeks.

'I have known him,' said the captain conversationally, 'for many years now. Soon after he made his name he went out to the East with me, and we struck up a friendship. He is not a man who makes many friends, I imagine.'

'No,' murmured Mrs. Huston, in a voice which implied that the subject was not distasteful to her, but she preferred her companion to talk while she listened.

'But,' continued the sailor, 'those who claim him as a friend have an unusual privilege. He is what we vaguely call at sea a "good" man—a man upon whom it is safe to place reliance in any emergency, under all circumstances.'

'Yes,' said the lady softly.

'He has been doing wonderful work out in the East since the beginning of the insurrection. We have a set of men out there such as no nation in the world could produce except England—fellows who go about with their lives literally in their hands, for they're virtually unprotected—men who are soldiers, statesmen, critics, writers and explorers all in one. They run a soldier's risk without the recompense of a soldier's grave. A statesman's craft must be theirs, while they are forced to keep two diplomatic requirements ever before their eyes. England must have news; the army authorities (whose word is law) must be conciliated. Travelling by day and night alike, never resting for many consecutive hours, never laying aside the responsibility that is on their shoulders, they are expected to write amidst the din of battle, on a gun-carriage perhaps, often in the saddle, and usually at night when the wearied army is asleep; they are expected, moreover, to write well, so that men sitting by their firesides in London, with books of reference at hand, may criticise and seek in vain for slip or error. They are expected to criticise the stratagem of the greatest military heads around them without the knowledge possessed by the officers who dictate their coming and their going, throwing them a piece of stale news here and there as they would throw a bone to a dog. All this, and more, is done by our war-correspondents; and amidst these wonderful fellows Theodore Trist stands quite alone, immeasurably superior to them all.'

The vehement sailor was interrupted by the sound of the first dinner-bell, and a general stir on deck. At sea, meal-times are hailed with a more visible joy than is considered decorous on land, and no time is lost in answering the glad summons.

Mrs. Huston rose languidly from her seat and moved forward towards the spacious saloon staircase.

'Yes,' she answered thoughtfully; 'Theo must be very clever. It is difficult to realize that one's friends are celebrated, is it not?'

The captain walked by her side, suiting his crisp, firm step to her languid gait, which was, nevertheless, very graceful in its rhythmic ease. Her voice was clear, gentle, and somewhat indifferent. On her face there was no other expression than the customary suggestion of pathetic apathy.

'I suppose,' she continued in a conventional manner, 'that he will not be home for some time.'

'No. There will be a big war before this question is settled, and Trist will be in the thick of it.'

With a slight inclination of the head she passed away from him and disappeared down the saloon stairs. The captain turned away and mounted the little brass ladder leading to the bridge with sailor-like deliberation.

'And, young woman,' he muttered to himself, 'you had better go down to your cabin and thank your God on your bended knees that Theodore Trist is not in England, nor likely to cross your path for many months to come.'

He looked round him with his habitual cheery keenness, and said a few words to the second officer who was on duty. Could he have seen Theodore Trist standing at that moment on the deck of a quick despatch-boat, racing through the Bosphorus and bound for England, he would not, perhaps, have laughed so heartily at a very mild joke made by his subordinate a few moments later.

'And yet,' he reflected as he made his way below in answer to the second dinner-bell—'and yet she does not seem to me to be the sort of woman for Trist—not good enough! Perhaps the gossips are wrong after all, and he does not care for her!'

CHAPTER II.

SISTERS.

More than one idler in Plymouth Station, one morning in October, turned his head to look again at two women walking side by side on the platform near to the London train. One, the taller of the two, was exceptionally beautiful, of a fair delicate type, with an almost perfect figure and a face fit for a model of the Madonna, so pure in outline was it, so innocent in its meaning. The younger woman was slightly shorter. She was clad in mourning, which contrasted somewhat crudely with the brighter costume of her companion. It was evident that these two were sisters; they walked in the same easy way, and especially notable was a certain intrepid carriage of the head, which I venture to believe is essentially peculiar to high-born Englishwomen.

By the side of her sister, Brenda Gilholme might easily pass unnoticed. Mrs. Huston was, in the usual sense of the word, a beautiful woman, and such women live in an atmosphere of notoriety. Wherever they go they are worshipped at a distance by those beneath them in station, patronized by those above them, respected by their equals, because, forsooth, face and form are moulded with delicacy and precision. The mind of such a woman is of little importance; the person is pleasing, and more is not demanded. Only her husband will some day awaken to the fact that worship from a distance might have been more satisfactory. The effect of personal beauty is a lamentable factor which cannot be denied. All men, good and bad alike, come under its influence. A lovely woman can twist most of us round her dainty finger with a wanton disregard for the powers of intellect or physical energy.

Brenda was not beautiful; she was only pretty, with a dainty refinement of heart which was visible in her delicate face. But her prettiness was in no way tainted with weakness, as was her sister's beauty. She was strong and thoughtful, with a true woman's faculty for hiding these unwelcome qualities from the eyes of inferior men. She had grown up in the shadow of this beautiful sister, and men had not cared to seek for intellect where they saw only a reflected beauty. She had passed through a social notoriety, but eager eyes had only glanced at her in passing. She had merely been Alice Gilholme's sister, and now—here on Plymouth platform—Alice Huston was assuming her old superiority. My brothers, think of this! It must have been a wondrous love that overcame such drawbacks, that passed by with tolerance a thousand daily slights. And Brenda's love for her sister accomplished all this. Ah, and more! In the days that followed there was a greater wrong—a wrong which only blind selfishness could have inflicted—and this also Brenda Gilholme forgave.

The sisters had met on the steamboat landing a few moments previously. A rattling drive through the town had followed, and now they were able to speak together alone for the first time. There had been no display of emotion. The beautiful lips had met lightly, the well-gloved fingers had clasped each other with no nervous hysterical fervour, and now it would seem that they had parted but a week ago. Emotion is tabooed in the school through which these two had passed—the school of nineteenth-century society—and, indeed, we appear to get along remarkably well without it.

'My dear,' Mrs. Huston was saying, 'he will be home by the next boat if he can raise the money. We cannot count on more than a week's start.'

'And,' inquired Brenda, 'can he raise the money?'

'Oh yes! If he can get as far as the steamboat office without spending it.'

Brenda looked at her sister in a curious way.

'Spending it on what ... Alice?'

'On—drink!'

Mrs. Huston was not the woman to conceal any of her own grievances from quixotically unselfish motives.

Brenda thought for some moments before replying.

'Then,' she said at length, with some determination, 'we must make sure of our start, if, that is, you are still determined to leave him.'

Mrs. Huston was looking down at her sister's neat black dress, about which there was a subtle air of refined luxury, which seems natural to some women, and part of their being.

'Yes, yes, I suppose we must. By the way, dear, you are in mourning ... for whom?'

'For Admiral Wylie,' replied Brenda patiently.

'But it is two months—is it not?—since his death, and he was no relation. I think it is unnecessary. Black is so melancholy, though it suits your figure.'

'I am living with Mrs. Wylie,' Brenda explained with unconscious irony. 'Are you still determined that you cannot live with your husband, Alice?'

'My dear, he is a brute! I am not an impulsive person, but I think that if he should catch me again, it is very probable that I should do something desperate—kill myself, or something of that sort.'

'I do not think,' observed Brenda serenely, 'that you would ever kill yourself.'

The beautiful woman laughed in an easy, lightsome way, which was one of her many social gifts. It was such a pleasantly infectious laugh, so utterly light-hearted, and so ready in its vocation of filling up awkward pauses.

'No, perhaps not. But in the meantime, what is to become of me? Will Mrs. Wylie take me in for a day or two, or shall we seek lodgings? I have some money, enough to last a month or so; but I must have two new dresses.'

'Mrs. Wylie has kindly said that you can stay as long as you like. But, Alice, it would never do to stay in London. You must get away to some small place on the sea-coast, or somewhere where you will not be utterly bored, and keep in hiding until he comes home, and I can find out what he intends to do.'

'My dear, I shall be utterly bored anywhere except in London. But Brenda, tell me ... you have got into a habit of talking exactly like Theo Trist!'

Brenda met her sister's eyes with a bright smile.

'How funny!' she exclaimed. 'I have not noticed it.'

'No, of course; you—would not notice it. When will he be home?'

The girl stopped and looked critically at an advertisement suspended on the wall near at hand. It was a huge representation of a coloured gentleman upon his native shore, making merry over a complicated pair of braces. She had never seen the work of art before, and for some unknown reason in the months—ay, and in the years that followed—her dislike for it was almost nauseating in its intensity.

'I don't know,' she replied indifferently.

'We,' continued Mrs. Huston, following out her own train of thought, 'are so helpless. We want a man to stand by us. Of course papa is of no use. I suppose he is spouting somewhere about the country. He generally is.'

'No,' replied Brenda, with a wonderful tolerance. 'We cannot count on him. He is in Ireland. I had a postcard from him the other day. He said that I was not to be surprised or shocked to hear that he was in prison. He is trying to get himself arrested. It is, he says, all part of the campaign.'

Again Mrs. Huston's pretty laughter made things pleasant and sociable.

'I wonder what that means,' she exclaimed, smoothing a wrinkle out of the front of her jacket for the benefit of a military-looking man, with a cigar in his mouth, who stared offensively as he passed.

Brenda shrugged her shoulders slightly, and said nothing. She did not appear to attach a very great importance to her father's political movements, in which culpable neglect she was abetted by the whole of England.

'What we require,' continued Mrs. Huston, 'is an energetic man with brains.'

'I am afraid that energetic men with brains have in most cases their own affairs to look after. It is only the idle ones with tongues who have time to devote to other people's business.'

'The "brute," my dear, is clever; we must remember that. And he is terribly obstinate. There is a sort of stubborn bloodhoundism about him which makes me shiver when I think that he is even now after me, in all probability.'

'We must be cool and cunning, and brave to fight against him,' said Brenda practically.

At this moment the guard came forward, and held the door of their compartment invitingly open. They got in, and found themselves alone. They were barely seated, opposite to each other, when the train glided smoothly away.

Brenda sat a little forward, with her gloved hand resting on the window, which had been lowered by the guard. They were seated on the landward side of the train, and as she looked out her eyes rested on the rising hills to the north with a vague, unseeing gaze.

A slight movement made by Mrs. Huston caused her at length to look across, and the two sisters sat for a second searching each other's eyes for the old heartwhole frankness which never seems to survive the death of childhood and the birth of separate interests in life.

'Theo,' said the elder woman significantly at last, 'is brave and cool and cunning, Brenda.'

The girl made an effort, but the old childish confidence was dead. From Theo Trist, the disciple of stoicism, she had perhaps learnt something of a creed which, if a mistaken one, renders its followers of great value in the world, for they never intrude their own private feelings upon public attention. That effort was the last. It was a beginning in itself—the first stone of a wall destined to rise between the two sisters, built by the gray hands of Time.

'But,' suggested Brenda, 'Theo is in Bulgaria.'

Mrs. Huston smiled with all the conscious power of a woman who, without being actually vain, knows the market value and the moral weight of her beauty.

'Suppose I telegraphed to him that I wanted him to come to me at once.'

Brenda fixed her eyes upon her sister's face. For a second her dainty lip quivered.

'You must not do that,' she said, in such a tone of invincible opposition that her sister changed colour, and looked somewhat hastily in another direction.

'I suppose,' murmured the elder woman after a short silence, 'that it is quite impossible to find out when he may return?'

'Quite impossible. This "Eastern Question," as it is called, is so complicated that I have given up trying to follow it—besides, I do not see what Theo has to do with the matter. We must act alone, Alice.'

'But women are so helpless.'

Brenda smiled in a slightly ironical way.

'Why should they be?' she asked practically. 'I am not afraid of Captain Huston. He is a gentleman, at all events.'

'He was!' put in his wife bitterly.

'And I suppose there is something left of his former self?'

'Not very much, my dear. At least, that phase of his present condition has been religiously hidden from my affectionate gaze.'

Brenda drew her gloves pensively up her slim wrists, smoothing out the wrinkles in the black kid. There was in her demeanour an air of capable attention, something between that accorded by a general to his aide-de-camp on the field of battle, and the keen watchfulness of a physician while his patient speaks.

'Theo,' she said conversationally, 'would be a great comfort to us. He is so steadfast and so entirely reliable. But we must do without him. We will manage somehow.'

'I am horribly afraid, Brenda. It has just come to me; I have never felt it before. You seem to take it so seriously, and ... and I expected to find Theo at home.'

'Theo is one of the energetic men with brains who have their own affairs to attend to,' said Brenda, in her cheery way. 'We are not his affairs; besides, as I mentioned before, he is in Bulgaria—in his element, in the midst of confusion, insurrection, war.'

'But,' repeated Mrs. Huston, with aggravating unconsciousness of the obvious vanity of her words, 'suppose I telegraphed for him?'

Brenda laughed, and shook her head.

'I have a melancholy presentiment that if you telegraphed for him he would not come. There is a vulgar but weighty proverb about making one's own bed, which he might recommend to our notice.'

'Then Theo must have changed!'

Brenda raised her round blue eyes, and glanced sideways out of the window. She was playing idly with the strap of the sash, tapping the back of her hand with it.

'Theo,' she observed indifferently, 'is the incarnation of steadfastness. He has not changed in any perceptible way. But he is, before all else, a war-correspondent. I cannot imagine that anyone should possess the power of dragging him away from the seat of war.'

Mrs. Huston smiled vaguely for her own satisfaction. Her imagination was apparently capable of greater things. It was rather to be deplored that, when she smiled, the expression of her beautiful face was what might (by a true friend behind her back) be called a trifle vacuous.

'He wrote,' continued the younger sister, 'a very good article the other day, which came just within the limits of my understanding. It was upon the dangers of alliance; and he showed that an ally who, in any one way, might at some time prove disadvantageous, is better avoided from the very first. It was àpropos of the Turkish-Christian subjects welcoming a Russian invasion. It seems to me, Alice, that our position is rather within the reach of that argument.'

'Being a soldier's wife, I do not know much about military matters; but it seems to me that a retreat should be safely covered at all costs.'

'Not at all costs,' said Brenda significantly. Her colour had changed, and there was a wave of pink slowly mounting over her throat.

Mrs. Huston smiled serenely, and shrugged her shoulders.

'I do not see,' she expostulated frankly, 'what harm there can be in calling in the aid of an old friend.'

'I would rather work alone!' was Brenda's soft reply.

And in those two casual remarks there lay hidden from the gaze of blinder mortals the story of two lives.

CHAPTER III.

ALICE RETURNS.

In her pleasant room on the second-floor of Suffolk Mansions, Mrs. Wylie awaited the arrival of the two sisters.

From without there came a suggestion of bustling life in the continuous hum of wheel-traffic and an occasional cry, not unmelodious, from enterprising news-vendors. Within, everything spoke of peaceful, pleasant comfort. There was a large table in the centre of the room literally covered with periodical and permanent literature—a pleasant table to sit by, for there was invariably something of interest lying upon it, a safe stimulant to conversation. The dullest and shyest man could always find something to say to the ready listener who sat in a low cane-chair just beyond the table, near the fire, with her back to the window. There were many strange ornaments about, and a number of curiosities such as women rarely purchase in foreign lands; also sundry small impedimenta suggestive of things nautical.

Withal there was in the very atmosphere a sense of womanliness. The subtle odours emanating from wooden constructions, conceived and executed by dusky strangers, were overpowered by the healthier and livelier smell of flowers. Heliotrope nestled modestly in low vases from Venice. There was also mignonette, and on the mantelpiece a great snowy bunch of Japanese anemones thrust into a bronze vase from that same distant land, all looking, as it were, in different directions, each carrying its graceful head in a different way, no two alike, and yet all lovely, as only God can make things.

I cannot explain in what lay the charm of Mrs. Wylie's drawing-room, though it must have emanated from the lady herself. There is no room like it that I know of, where both men and women experience a sudden feeling of homeliness, an entire sense of refined ease. The surroundings were not too fragile for the touch of a man, and yet there was in them that subtle influence of grace and daintiness which appeals to the more delicate fibres of a woman's soul, and makes her recognise her own element.

The widowed lady herself was little changed since we last met her in the Far North. But those who knew her well were cognizant of the fact that the outward signs of late bereavement so gracefully worn were no cynical demonstration of a conventional grief. The white-haired old man sleeping among the nameless sons of an Arctic land was as truly mourned by this cheerful Englishwoman as ever husband could desire. There was perhaps a smaller show of cultivated grief, such as the world loves to contemplate, than was strictly in keeping with her widow's cap. No lowered tones pulled up a harmless burst of hilarity. No smothered sighs were emitted at inappropriate times in order to impress upon a world, already full enough of sorrow, the presence of an abiding woe.

But Brenda Gilholme knew that the cure was incomplete. She had carried through, to the end, the task left her by Theo Trist. The Hermione lay snugly anchored by the oozy banks of a Suffolk river, and Mrs. Wylie was, so to speak, herself again—that is to say, she was once more a woman full of ready sympathy, gay with the gay, sorrowing with the afflicted. If Brenda in her analytical way saw and acknowledged the presence of a difference, it was perhaps nothing more than an overstrained feminine susceptibility. At all events, the general world opined that Mrs. Wylie was as jolly as ever. Moreover, they insinuated in a good-natured manner that the Admiral was, after all, many years her senior, and that she in all human probability had some considerable span of existence to get through yet, which he could not have shared owing to advance of infirmity.

One admirable characteristic had survived, however, this change in her life. The cheery independence of this lady was untouched by the hand of sorrow. It was her creed that at all costs a smile should be ready for the world. Regardless of criticism, she trod her own path through a hypercritical generation; and by seeking to cast the light of a brave hopefulness upon it, she illuminated the road on which her near contemporaries held their way. One great secret of her method was industry. In her gentle womanliness she sought work, not afar, but in her own field, and found it as all women can find work if they seek truly.

Even while she was awaiting the arrival of the sisters, she was not idle. On her lap there lay a huge scrap-book, and with scissors and paste she was busy collecting and arranging in due order sundry newspaper cuttings. That scrap-book will in after-years be historical, for it contained every word ever printed from the handwriting of Theodore Trist up to the date of the day when Mrs. Wylie sat alone in her drawing-room. From its pages more than one book on the art of making war has since been compiled, and from those printed words more than one general of many nationalities would confess to having learnt something.

The lady's quick ear detected the sound of a cab suddenly stopping, and when a bell rang a few moments later she laid aside her scissors and rose from her seat with no sign of surprise.

'I wonder,' she said, 'of what tragedy or comedy this may be the beginning.'

There was a certain matronly grace in her movements as she opened the door and drew Brenda Gilholme to her arms.

'Alice has come with me!' said the girl.

'Yes, dear,' replied Mrs. Wylie, and she proceeded to greet the taller sister with a kiss also, but of somewhat less warmth.

Then the three ladies passed into the drawing-room together. There was a momentary pause, during which Mrs. Huston mechanically loosened the strings of her smart little bonnet and looked round the room appreciatively.

'How perfectly delicious,' she exclaimed, 'it is to see a comfortable English drawing-room again! I almost kissed the maid who opened the door; she was such a pleasant contrast to sneaking Cingalese servants.'

Mrs. Wylie smiled sympathetically, but became grave again instantaneously. Her eyes rested for a second on Brenda's face.

'Alice,' explained Brenda, coming forward to the fireplace and raising one neatly shod foot to the fender, 'does not give a very glowing account of Ceylon.'

'Nor,' added Mrs. Huston with light pathos, 'of the blessed state of matrimony.'

Mrs. Wylie drew forward a chair.

'Sit down,' she said hospitably, 'and warm yourselves. We will have some tea before you take your things off.'

'And now Alice,' she resumed, after seating herself in the softly lined cane chair near the literary table, 'tell me all ... you wish to tell me.'

'Oh,' replied the beautiful woman, removing her gloves daintily, 'there is not much to tell. Moreover, the story has not the merit even of novelty. The raw material is lamentably commonplace, and I am afraid I cannot make a very interesting thing of it. Wretched climate, horribly dull station, thirsty husband. Voilà tout!'

'To which, however,' suggested Mrs. Wylie with a peculiar intonation, 'might perhaps be added military society and Indian habits.'

The younger woman shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

'Oh no!' she exclaimed irresponsibly. 'But all that is a question of the past, and the present is important enough to require some attention.'

She extended her feet to the warmth of the fire, and contemplated her small boots with some satisfaction.

'Yes...?'

'I have bolted,' she said, replying to the inferred query, 'and he is in all probability after me.'

Mrs. Wylie turned aside the screen which she was holding between her face and the fire. Her intelligent eyes rested for a moment on the speaker's face, then she transferred her attention to Brenda, who stood near the mantelpiece with her two gloved hands resting on the marble. The girl was gazing down between her extended arms into the fire, and a warm glow nestled rosily round her face. The eyes were too sad for their years.

'I am very sorry to hear it,' said the widow with conviction.

'There was no alternative. I could not stand it any longer.'

'How did you manage it?' asked Mrs. Wylie quietly, almost too quietly.

'Oh, I got rid of some jewellery, and there was a Captain Markynter who was kind enough to get my ticket and see me off!'

A peculiar silence followed this cool remark. Mrs. Wylie sat quite still, holding the palm screen before her face. Brenda stood motionless as a statue. Mrs. Huston curved her white wrist, and looked compassionately at a small red mark made by the button of her glove. At length the uneasy pause was broken. Without moving, Brenda spoke in a cool, clear voice, almost monotonous.

'Alice,' she explained, 'is a great advocate for masculine assistance. She considers us totally incapable of managing our own affairs, and powerless to act for ourselves. She has been regretting all day that Theo should be away, and consequently beyond our call.'

Mrs. Huston laughed somewhat forcedly, and drew in her feet.

'It is like this,' she explained. 'If my husband catches me I think I shall probably kill myself! Theo is so strong and reliable, and somehow ... so capable, that I naturally thought of him in my emergency.'

'Naturally,' echoed Mrs. Wylie mechanically.

At that moment she was not thinking whether her monosyllabic remark was cruelly sarcastic or simply silly. Her whole mind was devoted to the study of Brenda's face, upon which the firelight glowed; but in the proud young features there was nothing legible—nothing beyond a somewhat anxious thoughtfulness.

'I think,' continued Mrs. Huston, 'that we may count on a week's start. My affectionate husband cannot be here before then.'

To this neither lady made reply. The servant came in, and in a few moments tea was served. Brenda presided over the little basket table, and prepared each cup with a foreknowledge of the several tastes. During this there was no word spoken. From the nonchalance of the ladies' manner one might easily have imagined that the younger couple had just come in from a long day's shopping.

'Have you,' asked the widow at length, as she stirred her tea placidly, 'thought of what you are doing?'

'Oh yes!' was the laughing rejoinder, in which, however, there was no mirth. 'Oh yes! I have thought, and thought, and thought, until the subject was thrashed out dry. There was nothing else to do but think, and read yellow-backed novels, all the voyage home.'

'Then,' murmured the widow, with gentle interrogation, 'this Captain Parminter did not come home with you?'

Mrs. Huston changed colour, and her lips moved slightly. She glanced towards Mrs. Wylie beneath her dark lashes, and answered with infinite self-possession:

'No! And his name is Markynter.'

The palm-leaf did not move. Presently, however, Mrs. Wylie laid it aside, and asked for some more tea.

'Well,' she said cheerily, 'I suppose we must make the best of a very bad bargain. What do you propose to do next?'

In the most natural and confiding way imaginable, Mrs. Huston looked up towards her sister, who was still standing. There was an almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders.

'Brenda,' she answered, 'says that I must run away and hide in some small village, which is not exactly a cheerful prospect.'

'It would hardly do,' said Brenda, as if in defence of her own theory, 'to go down to Brighton and stay at the Bedford Hotel, for instance.'

'If,' added Mrs. Wylie in the same tone, 'you really want to avoid your husband, you must certainly hide; but I do not see what you can gain by such a proceeding. It can never be permanent, and you will soon get tired of chasing each other round England.'

'Perhaps he will get tired of it first.'

'If he does, what will your position be? Somewhat ambiguous, I imagine.'

'It cannot be worse than it is at present.'

'Oh yes,' replied the widow calmly. 'It can!'

She set her empty cup on the tray, and sat with her two hands clasped together on her lap. She had not come through fifty years of life, this placid lady, without learning something of the world's ways, and she recognised instantly what Alice Huston's position was. It was the old story which is told every day in all parts of the world, more especially, perhaps, in India—the wearisome tale of a mistaken marriage between a man of small intellect and a woman of less. If both husband and wife be busy, the one with his bread-winning, the other with her babies, such unions may be a near approach to animal happiness—no more can be hoped for. The very instincts of it are animal, and as such it is safe. But if one or both be idle, the result is simply 'hell.' No other expression can come near it.

Captain Huston's military duties were not such as occupied more than a few hours of the week, and during the rest of his existence he was actively idle. His mind was fallow; he was totally without resource, without occupation, without interest. There is no man on earth to beat the ordinary British military officer in downright futile idleness. The Spanish Custom-house official runs a close race with the Italian inn-keeper in this matter, but both enjoy their laziness, and are never bored. When our commissioned defender is naturally of an idle turn of mind, he is intensely bored; his existence is one long yawn, and the faculty of enjoyment dies a natural death within his soul. I can think of no more despicable sample of humanity than a man who cannot find himself something to do under all circumstances, and in all places; and surely no one can blame his Satanic majesty for a proverbial readiness to supply the deficiency from his own store of easy tasks.

If Alice Gilholme had searched through the entire army-list, she could scarcely have found a man less suitable to be her husband than Captain Huston. Petty, short-sighted jealousy on his part, vapid coquetry on hers, soon led to the inevitable end, and the result was thrown upon the hands of Brenda and Mrs. Wylie with easy nonchalance by the spoilt child of society.

It was no sudden disillusionment for Brenda, but merely one more wretched curtain torn aside to display the hideous reality of human existence and human selfishness. No thought of complaint entered the girl's head. With a pathetic silence she simply applied herself to the task set before her, with no great hope of reaching a satisfactory solution.

Before the three ladies had spoken further upon the subject chiefly occupying their thoughts, the drawing-room door was thrown open, and with studied grace William Hicks crossed the threshold.

The hat that he carried daintily in his left hand was not quite the same in contour as those worn by his contemporaries. To ensure this peculiarity, the artist was forced to send to Paris for his head-gear, where he paid a higher price and received an inferior article. But the distinction conferred by a unique hat is practically immeasurable and without price. Mr. Hicks' gloves were also out of the common; likewise his strangely-cut coat and misshapen continuations.

The tout ensemble was undoubtedly pleasing. It must have been so, because he was obviously satisfied, and the artistic eye is the acknowledged arbitrator in matters of outward adornment, whether it be of mantelshelves or human forms divine.

The three ladies turned to greet him with that ready feminine smile which is ever there to lubricate matters when the social wheel may squeak or grate.

'Oh, bother!' whispered Brenda to herself, as she held out her hand.

'What?' exclaimed Hicks, with languid surprise and visibly deep pleasure. 'Mrs. Huston! I am delighted. When I left my studio and plunged into all this mist and gloom this afternoon, I never thought that both would be dispelled so suddenly.'

'Is it dispelled?' asked Mrs. Huston, glancing playfully towards the window.

'In here it is. But then,' he added, as he shook hands with Mrs. Wylie, 'there is never any mist or gloom in this room.'

With a pleasant laugh, as if deprecating his own folly, he turned to greet Brenda, who had stood near the mantelpiece with her gloved hand extended. Then his manner changed. Moreover, it was a distinctly advantageous alteration. One would have imagined, from the expression of his handsome but thoroughly weak face, that if there was anybody on earth whom he respected and admired, almost as much as he respected and admired William Hicks, that person was Brenda.

For her he had no neatly-turned pleasantry—no easy, infectious laugh.

'I did not know you were coming home, Mrs. Huston,' he said, turning again to that lady. Then his social training enabled him to detect unerringly that he might be on a dangerous trail, and with ready skill he turned aside. 'This is not the best time of year,' he continued, 'to return to your native shores. Personally I am rather disgusted with the shore in question, but we must surely hope for some more sunshine before we finally bid farewell to the orb of day for the winter. We poor artists are the chief sufferers, I am sure.'

'At all events,' put in Mrs. Wylie easily, 'you take it upon yourselves to grumble most. There is always something to displease you—the want of daylight, the scarcity of buyers, or the hopeless stupidity of the hanging-committee.'

'I think I confine my observations to the weather,' murmured Hicks, gazing sadly into the fire, towards which bourne Brenda's glance was also apparently directed, for she presently pressed the glowing coals down with the sole of her dainty boot, and quite lost the studied poesy of the artist's expression. 'I am, I think,' he continued humbly, 'independent of buyers and hanging-committees. I do not exhibit at Burlington House, and you know I never sell.'

'Indeed,' said Mrs. Huston, with slight interest, for the elder lady had turned away and was busy with her second cup of tea, which was almost cold.

'No,' answered Hicks, with the eagerness that comes to egotistical talkers when they are sure of a new listener. 'No. I don't care to enter into competition with men who depend more upon conventional training than natural talent. The Royal Academy is only a human institution, and, perhaps, it is only natural that their own students should be favoured before all others. I am not an Academy student, you know!'

Mrs. Huston contented herself with no more compromising affirmative than a gracious inclination of the head. It is just possible that, fresh from Ceylon, and consequently deplorably ignorant of artistic affairs as she was, the knowledge that William Hicks was not an Academy student had been denied her. This most lamentable fact, however, if it existed, she concealed with all the cleverness of her sex, and Hicks came to the conclusion, later on, that she must have known. He could not conceive it possible that a woman moving in intelligent circles, although in the outer rims thereof, and far from the living centre of Kensington, could be unaware of such an important item in his own personal history; this being no mean part of the artistic history of the nineteenth century.

Enveloped as he was, however, in conceit, he had the good taste to perceive that his bewildering presence was on this particular occasion liable to be considered bliss of an alloyed description, and in a short time he took his leave.

As he was moving round and saying good-bye, Mrs. Huston returned to the artistic question, from which they had never strayed very far. Indeed, art was somewhat apt to become a nauseating subject of conversation wherever William Hicks was allowed to influence matters to any extent.

'You have never sent pictures to the Academy, then?' she asked innocently.

'Oh no!' he answered with mild horror. 'Good-bye, so glad to see you home again.'

And then he vanished.

Mrs. Wylie watched his retreating figure with a pleasant and sociable expression on her intelligent face.

'That,' she was reflecting, 'is a lie!' She happened to know that Hicks had been refused a place on the walls of Burlington House.

If I were a ghost, or if I ever come to be one, I shall not take up the old, time-worn craft of frightening people during the stilly hours. Instead of such uninteresting work, I shall make a collection in a phantom pocket-book of asides and murmured reflections. From such, an interesting study of earthly existence, and more particularly of social life, might well be made.

On those phantom pages might, for instance, be inscribed the reflections of William Hicks as he made his way down the broad staircase of Suffolk Mansions.

'Whew!' was their tenor; 'ran right into it. She's left him; I could see that. Seems to me she's on the verge of a catastrophe—divorce or separation, or something like that.'

In the drawing-room Mrs. Wylie was saying reflectively to either or both of her companions:

'This is the beginning of it. That man will tell everyone he meets before going to bed to-night that you are home. He did not ask where your husband was, which shows that he wanted to know; consequently he will wonder over it, and will take care to tell everyone what he is wondering about.'

CHAPTER IV.

TO THE FRONT.

A week later Brenda was sitting in the same apartment again. But this time she was alone. From pure kindness of heart Mrs. Wylie had managed to allow the girl an afternoon's leisure, and Brenda was spending this very happily amidst her books and magazines. She was, in her way, a literary person, this brilliant young scholar; but, belonging to a universal age, universality was also hers. With the literary she could show herself well-read; with the purely pleasure-seeking she could also find sympathy. In these times of mixed circles, men and women must needs be able to talk upon many subjects, whether they know aught about them or nothing.

Brenda Gilholme was not, however, a brilliant talker. She could have written well had she been moved thereto by that restless spirit which makes some people look upon existence as a blank without pens and paper. But as yet she was content to read, and her young mind thirsted for the grasp of other folks' thoughts as a fisherman's fingers itch for the rod.

During the last week Alice Huston's presence in Mrs. Wylie's household had not been an unmixed success. There was a slight and almost imperceptible impatience in the widow's manner, in the inflection of her pleasant voice, in her very glance when her eyes rested upon her guest's gracious form. Gradually the story had come out, and some details were related with unguarded carelessness, resulting in the conclusion, as far as Mrs. Wylie and Brenda were concerned, that Captain Huston might also have a story to tell, differing in tone and purport from that related by his wronged spouse. Her case against her husband was not very clear, and in her relation of it there was in some vague way a sense of suppression and easy adaptation both pointing to the same end. If Brenda felt this and drew her own conclusions from it, she allowed no sign of such conclusions to appear, but accepted the situation without comment. The natural result of this unfeminine behaviour was a wane of confidence between the sisters. It is easy enough, even for the most reticent person, to make known to some chosen familiar certain details hitherto suppressed when once the subject is broached; but to continue confiding in a bosom friend who accepts all statements without surprise, horror or sympathy is a different matter.

Brenda's manner of listening was neither forbidding nor indifferent. It was merely unenthusiastic, and its chief characteristic was a certain measured attention, as if the details were imprinting themselves indelibly upon a prepared mental surface, where they might well remain intact and legible for many years. Mrs. Wylie, glancing at the two sisters over her book, or her palm-leaf screen, conceived a strange thought. She imagined that she detected in Brenda's manner and demeanour a certain subtle resemblance to the manner and demeanour of one who was far away, and whose influence upon the girl's life could not well have been very great, namely, Theodore Trist.

When the war-correspondent was not on active service, he lived in London, and, as was only natural to one of his calling, moved in such intervals in a circle of men and women influential in the political world. He was a reticent speaker, but an excellent listener, and Mrs. Wylie, as the wife of an active naval politician, had many opportunities of watching in her placid way this strange young man among his fellows. Theodore Trist's chief fault was, in her eyes, a lack of enthusiasm. He waited too patiently on the course of events, and moved too guardedly when he moved at all. It was a very womanly view of a man's conduct, and one held, I think, by nineteen out of twenty mothers who have brought brilliant sons into the world.

These characteristics the widow now began to see developing subtly in the soul of Brenda Gilholme, and a keen study of the girl during this trying time only confirmed her suspicions. She began to feel nervously sure that the companionship of Mrs. Huston was bad for her, and with this knowledge to urge her she calmly forced her way in between the two sisters.

If Brenda lacked enthusiasm (which failure is characteristic of this calculating and practical generation), she atoned for the want by a wondrous steadfastness. By word, and deed, and silence, she demonstrated continuously her intention to stand by her sister and do for her all that lay in her power. In this spirit of dumb devotion Mrs. Wylie was pleased to see a suggestion of Theo Trist's soldierly obedience to the call of duty in which there was no question of personal inclination. She may have been right. Women see deeper into these subtle human influences than men. There are many small powers at work in every-day life, guiding our social barque, withholding us or urging us on, dictating, commanding, approving, or disapproving; and the motive of these is woman's will. The eye that guides is a woman's heart; the brake that checks is a woman's instinct. Mrs. Wylie was probably, therefore, quite right in her supposition; for it is such men as Theo Trist who leave the impress of their individuality upon those who come in contact with them—men who speak little and listen well, who think deeply and never speak of their thoughts. It is not your talkative man with a theory for every emergency, with a most wonderful and universal knowledge, who rules the world. The influence of these is comparatively small. Their experience is too vast to be personal, and thus loses weight. Their theories are too indefinite, too sweeping, and too general for practical application to human affairs, which are things not to be generally treated at all. We are a sheepish generation. Our thoughts are held in common; we theorize in crowds and hold principles in a multitude, but God's grand individuality is not dead yet. It lives somewhere in our hearts, and at strange odd moments we still act unaccountably, according to the dictates of that enfeebled organ.

There is a subtle difference between the male and female intellects respecting anxiety. Most women can conceal it better than their brothers and husbands when the necessity for concealment arises, but they suffer no less on that account. In fact, the weight of it is greater and more wearing, because in solitude they brood over it more than men. They have not the same power of laying it aside and taking up a book or occupation with the deliberate intention of courting absorption, as possessed by us.

Brenda was apparently immersed in the pages of an intellectual monthly review, but at times her sweet innocent eyes wandered from the lines and rested meditatively on the glowing fire. The girl was restless. She moved each time she turned a page, glancing sometimes at the small clock on the mantelpiece, sometimes towards the window, whence an ever-waning light fell gloomily upon her.

There was in her soul a vague sense of discomfort, which was as near an approach to imaginative anxiety as her strong nature could compass; and to this she was gradually giving way. Her interest in the magazine upon her lap had never been else than perfunctory, and now she could not take in the meaning of the carefully rounded and somewhat affected phrases.

Alice Huston had been a week in Mrs. Wylie's chambers, and there was no positive reason now to suppose that her husband was not in London. But the beautiful woman possessed little sense of responsibility, and none of consideration for others. She simply refused to leave town until the following Monday, because, she argued, the sound of wheels, the gay whirl of life, was so intensely refreshing to her. Mrs. Wylie would scarcely interfere, because she was not quite certain that Captain Huston was unfit to take care of his wife. She could not decide whether it was better to keep them apart or to allow Alice to run into the danger of being followed and claimed by her husband. The widow had very successfully followed a placid principle of non-interference all through her life, and now she applied it to the calamitous affairs of Captain and Mrs. Huston. She recognised very clearly that the man had made as evil a bargain as the woman. In both there was good material, capable of being wrought into good results by advantageous circumstances. The circumstance of their coming together and contracting a life-long alliance was disadvantageous to the last degree, voilà tout. It was a matter for themselves to settle. There are some people who, in a crisis, form themselves into a reserve—not necessarily out of range, but beyond the din and confusion of the melée: of these was Mrs. Wylie. If necessity demanded it, she was capable of leading an assault or withstanding an attack, but as a clear-headed, watchful commander of reserves she was incomparable.

Brenda knew this. She had an analytical way of studying such persons as influenced her daily life, and in most cases she arrived at a very accurate result. That Mrs. Wylie was watching events, but would not influence them, she was well aware, and, moreover, she now felt that someone was needed who would calmly step to the front and act with a bold acceptance of responsibility. That she herself was the person to take this position seemed undeniable. There could be no one else. No other could be expected to assume the task.

But there was another, and Brenda would not confess, even indefinitely in her own thoughts, that she knew it.

At length she laid her book down, and sat gazing softly into the fire. When the bell rang at the end of the long passage beside the kitchen-door, she never moved. When the maid opened the drawing-room door, with the mumbled announcement of a name to whose possessor no door of Mrs. Wylie's was ever shut, Brenda failed to hear the name, and half turned her head without much welcome in her eyes.

She was preparing to rise politely from her seat when a dark form passed between the window and herself. There, upon the hearthrug, within touch of her black skirt, stood Theo Trist! Theo—quiet, unemotional, strong as ever; Theo—with a brown face, and his bland, high forehead divided into two portions of white and of mahogany, where the fez had rested, keeping off the burning sun, but casting no shadow; Theo—to the fore, as usual, in his calm, reliable individuality, just at the moment when he was required.

Brenda gave a little gasp, and the eyes that met his were, for a second, contracted with some quick emotion, which he thought was fear.

'Theo!' she exclaimed, 'Theo!' Then she stopped short, checking herself suddenly, and as she rose he saw the frightened look in her eyes again.

They shook hands, and for a brief moment neither seemed able to frame a syllable. Brenda's lips were dry, and her throat was parched—all in a second.

He looked round the room as if seeking someone, or the indication of a presence, such as a work-basket, a well-known book, or some similar token. Brenda concluded that he was wondering where Mrs. Wylie might be, and suddenly she found power to speak in a steady, even voice.

'Mrs. Wylie is out!' she said. 'I expect her in by tea-time.'

He nodded his head—indicated the chair which she had just left—and, when she was seated, knelt down on the hearthrug, holding his two hands to the fire.

'Where is Alice?' he asked, in a peculiar monotone.

'She is out with Mrs. Wylie—— Then ... you know?'

'Yes, Brenda, I know!' he answered gravely.

The girl sat forward in her low chair, with her two arms resting upon her knees, her slim, white hands interlocked. For a time she was off her guard, forgetting the outward composure taught in the school of which she was so apt a pupil. She actually allowed herself to breathe hurriedly, to lean forward, and drink in with her eager eyes the man's every feature and every movement. He was not looking towards her, but of her fixed gaze he was well aware. The sound of her quick respiration was close to his ear; her soft, warm breath reached his cheek. With all his iron composure, despite his cruel hold over himself, he wavered for a moment, and the hands held out to the glow of the fire shook perceptibly. But his meek eyes never lost their settled expression of speculative contemplation. Whatever other men might do, whatever women might suffer, Theodore Trist was sufficient for himself. The flame leapt up, and fell again with a little bubbling sound, glowing ruddily upon the two faces. He remained quite motionless, quite cold. It was the face of the great Napoleon again—inscrutable, deep beyond the depth of human soundings, cruel and yet sweet—but the high forehead seemed to suggest an infinite possibility of something else; some lack of energy, or some great negation, which cancelled at one blow the resemblance that lay in lip and chin and profile.

Presently Brenda leant back in the chair. There was a screen on the table near her—Mrs. Wylie's palm-leaf—and she extended her hand to take it, holding it subsequently between her face and the fire, so that if Trist had turned his head he could not have seen anything but her slim, graceful form, her white hand and wrist, and the screen glowing rosily. He did not turn, however, when he spoke.

'I will tell you,' he said, 'how I came to know.'

Before continuing, he rubbed his hands slowly together. Then he rose from his knees and remained standing near the fire close to her, but without looking in her direction. He seemed to be choosing his words.

'I came home,' he said at length, 'from Gibraltar in an Indian steamer, a small boat with half a dozen passengers. There was no doctor on board. One evening I was asked to go forward and look at a second-class passenger who was suffering from ... from delirium tremens.'

He stopped in an apologetic way, as if begging her indulgence for the use of those two words in her presence.

'Yes...' she murmured encouragingly.

'It was Huston.'

As he spoke he turned slightly, and glanced down at her. She had entirely regained her gentle composure now, and the colour had returned to her face. Her attention was given to his words with a certain suppressed anxiety, but no surprise whatever.

'Did,' she asked at length—'did he recognise you?'

'No.'

'And he never knew, and does not know now, that you were on board?'

It would seem that he divined her thoughts, detecting the hidden importance of her question.

'No,' he answered meaningly, as he turned and looked down at her—'no; but he has not forgotten my existence.'

She raised her eyes quickly, but their glance stopped short suddenly at the elevation of his lips. It was only by an effort that she avoided meeting his gaze.

'I do not know,' she said with a short laugh, in an explanatory way, 'much about ... about it. Is it like ordinary delirium, where people talk in a broken manner without realizing what they are saying?'

'Yes; it is rather like that.'

She examined the texture of the screen with some attention.

'Do you mind telling me, Theo,' she asked at length evenly, 'whether he mentioned your name?'

Trist reflected for a moment. He moved restlessly from one foot to the other, then spoke in a voice which betrayed no emotion beyond regret and a hesitating sympathy.

'He said that Alice had run away to join her old lover—meaning me.'

'Are you sure he meant ... you?'

'He mentioned my name; there could be no doubt about it.'

Brenda rose suddenly from her seat and crossed the room towards the window. There she stood with her back towards him, a graceful, dark silhouette against the dying light, looking into the street.

He moved slightly, but did not attempt to follow her.

'It is rather strange,' she said at length, 'that the first name she mentioned on landing at Plymouth should be yours.'

A look of blank surprise flashed across his face, and then he reflected gravely for some moments.

'I am sorry to hear it,' he said slowly, 'because it would seem that my name has been bandied between them, and if that is the case my hands are tied. I cannot help Alice as I should have liked to do.'

'I told Alice some time ago that it would be much better for us to manage this ... this miserable affair without your help.'

'You are equal to it,' he said deliberately.

She laughed with a faint gleam of her habitual brightness.

'Thank you. That is a very pretty sentiment, but it is hardly the question.'

'My help,' he continued, 'need not be obvious to every casual observer. But I am not going to leave you to fight this out alone, Brenda. I was forced to leave you once, and I am not going to do it again. What does Mrs. Wylie say to it all?'

'Nothing as yet. She is waiting on events.'

'Ah, then, she is in reserve as usual. When the time comes, we may rely upon her help. But until then...'

'Theo,' interrupted Brenda in an agonized voice, 'the time has come!'

She started back from the window, her face as white as her snowy throat, her eyes contracted with horror.

'He is there!' she whispered hoarsely, pointing towards the window—'in the street. Coming into the house!'

Her little hands clutched his sleeve with a womanly abandonment of restraint, and he stood quite still in his self-reliant manhood. Then he found with surprise that his right arm was round her shoulders protecting her.

'Come,' he said with singular calmness—'come into another room. I—see him here.'

As he spoke he gently urged her towards the door, but she resisted, and for a moment there was an actual physical struggle.

'No,' she said, 'I will see him. It is better. Alice may come in at any moment, and before then I must know how matters stand between them.'

Trist hesitated, and at that moment the bell rang. They stood side by side looking at the closed door, listening painfully.

'Perhaps,' whispered Trist, 'the maid will say that Mrs. Wylie is out.'

They could hear the light footstep of the servant, then the click of the latch.

A murmur of words followed, ending in the raised tone of a male voice and a short sharp exclamation of fear from the maid.

Instinctively Trist sprang towards the door.

There was a sound of heavy footsteps in the passage. Trist's fingers were on the handle. He glanced towards Brenda appealingly.

'Leave it!' she exclaimed. 'Let him come in.'

Before the words were out of her lips the door was thrown open, concealing Theodore Trist.

CHAPTER V.

UNDER FIRE.

A tall, well-built man entered the room hurriedly and stopped short, facing Brenda, who met his gaze with gentle self-possession.

'Ah!' he muttered in a thick voice, and his unsteady hand went to his long fair moustache.

It was a terribly unhealthy face upon which Brenda's eyes rested inquiringly. The skin was cracked in places, and the cheeks were almost blue. The eyelids were red and the eyes bloodshot, while there was a general suggestion of puffiness and discomfort in the swollen features. The man was distinctly repulsive, and yet, with a small amount of tolerance, he was a figure to demand pity. Despite his dissipated air, there was that indefinite sense of refinement which belongs to birth and breeding, and which never leaves a man who has once moved among gentlemen. There was even a faint suggestion of military vanity in his dress and carriage, though his figure was by no means so smart as it must have been in bygone days.

The room was rather dark, and he glanced round, failing to see Theo Trist, who was leaning against the wall behind him.

'Ah!' he repeated; 'Brenda. I suppose you are in it, too!'

She made no reply, but stood before him in all her maidenly sweetness and strength, looking into his face through the twilight with clear and steady eyes which he hesitated to meet. Into his weak soul a flood of bitter memories rushed tumultuously—memories of a time when he could meet those eyes without that sudden feeling of self-hatred which was gnawing at his heart now. His tone was not harsh nor violent, but there was an undernote of determination which was not pleasant to the ear.

'Tell me,' he continued thickly, 'where my wife is to be found.'

Trist noticed that she never took her eyes off Huston's face, never glanced past the sleek, closely-cropped head towards himself. In some subtle way her wish was conveyed to him—the wish that he should remain there and continue, if possible, to be unnoticed by Huston. This he did, leaning squarely against the wall, his meek eyes riveted on the girl's face with a calm, expectant attention. From his presence Brenda gathered that strength and self-reliance which, I think, God intends women to gather from the companionship of men.

'No, Alfred,' she answered, using his Christian name with a gentle diplomacy which made him waver for a moment and sway backwards upon his rigid legs; 'I must not tell you that yet.'

'What right have you to withhold it?'

'She is my sister. I must do the best I can for her.'

He laughed in an unpleasant way.

'By throwing her into the path of the man she has always——'

'Stop!' commanded Brenda.

'Why? Why should I stop? I suppose Trist is in England. That is why she came home, no doubt.'

'She has never spoken to Theodore Trist since she married you. Besides, that is not the question. Tell me why you want to find Alice. What do you propose to do?'

'That is my affair!' he muttered roughly. 'You have no business to stand between man and wife. If you persist in doing so, it must be at your own risk, and I tell you plainly that you run a chance of being roughly handled.'

As he spoke he advanced a pace menacingly. Still she never betrayed Trist's presence by the merest glance in his direction. He, however, moved slightly, without making any sound.

Huston looked slowly round the room with bloodshot, horrible eyes.

'Tell me!' he hissed, thrusting forward his face so that she drew back—not from fear, but to avoid a faint aroma of stale cigar-smoke.

'No!' she answered.

'Deny that Trist loved Alice—if you dare!' he continued, in the same whistling voice.

Still she never called for Trist's assistance. She was very pale, and the last words seemed to strike her in the face as a blow.

'I deny nothing!'

'Tell me,' he shouted hoarsely, 'where Alice is!'

'No!'

'Then take that, you...'

He struck her with his clenched fist on the shoulder—but she had seen his intention, and by stepping back avoided the full force of the blow. She staggered a pace or two and recovered herself.

Without a sound Trist sprang forward, and the same instant saw Huston fall to the ground. He rolled over and over, a shapeless mass with limbs distended. As he rolled, Trist kicked him as he never would have kicked a dog.

'Oh ... h ... h ...!' shrieked the soldier. 'Who is that?'

'It is Trist ... you brute!'

But Huston lay motionless, with limp hands and open mouth. He was insensible.

Leaving him, Trist turned to Brenda, who was already holding him back with a physical force which even at that moment caused him a vague surprise.

'Theo! Theo!' she cried, 'what are you doing?'

He looked into her face sharply, almost fiercely—and she caught her breath convulsively at the sight of his eyes. They literally flashed with a dull blue gleam, which was all the more ghastly in so calm a face; for though he was ashen-gray in colour, his features were unaltered by any sign of passion. Even in his wild rage this man was incongruous.

'Has he hurt you?' he asked in a dull, hollow voice; and, while he spoke, his fingers skilfully touched her shoulder in a quick, searching way never learnt in drawing-rooms.

'No—no!' she cried impatiently. 'But you have killed him!'

She broke away from him and knelt on the floor, bending over the prostrate form of the soldier. Her bosom heaved from time to time with a bravely suppressed sob.

'Don't touch him,' said Trist, in an unconsciously commanding tone. 'He is all right.'

Obediently, she rose and stepped away, while he lifted the limp form, and placed it in a chair.

Slowly Captain Huston opened his eyes. He heaved a deep sigh, and sat gazing into the fire with a hopeless and miserable apathy. Behind him the two stood motionless, watching. Presently he began to mutter incoherently, and Brenda turned away, sickened, from the woeful sight.

'I wonder,' she whispered, 'if this sort of thing is to go on.'

Trist's mobile lips were twisted a little as if he were in bodily pain, while he glanced at her furtively. There was nothing for him to say—no hope to hold out.

They moved away to the window together without speaking, both occupied with thoughts which could not well have been pleasant. Trist's features wore a grave, concentrated expression, totally unlike the philosophical and contemplative demeanour which he usually carried in the face of the world. There was food enough for mental stones to grind, and he was not a man to take the most sanguine view of affairs. His philosophy was of that rare school which is not solely confined to making the best of other folks' troubles. His own checks and difficulties were those treated philosophically; while the griefs of others—more especially, perhaps, of Alice and Brenda—caused him an exaggerated anxiety. It has been the experience of the present writer that women are infinitely better fitted to stand adversity than men. There is a certain brave little smile which our less mobile lips can never frame. But Theodore Trist had lived chiefly among men, and his human speciality was the fighting animal. He knew a soldier as few of his contemporaries knew him; but of sweet woman-militant he was somewhat ignorant.

Perhaps he took this trouble too seriously. Of that I cannot give an opinion, for we all have an individual way of getting over our fences, and we never learn another. Personally, I must confess to a penchant for those men who go steadily, with a cool, clear head, and a firm hand, realizing full well the risk they are about to run—men who do not put a blind faith in luck, nor look invariably for Fortune's smiles.

In Trist's place many would have uttered some trite consolatory or wildly hopeful remark, which would in no wise have deceived a young person of Brenda's austere discrimination. In this, however, he fell lamentably short of his duty. After a thoughtful pause he merely whispered:

'Here we are again, Brenda—in a tight place. There is some fatality which seems to guide our footsteps on to thorny pathways. There is nothing to be done but face it.'

'Is it,' she asked simply, 'a case for action, or must we wait upon events?'

'I would suggest ... action.'

'Yes...' she said, in little more than a whisper, after a pause, 'I think so too—more especially now ... that you suggest it. Your natural bias is, as a rule, in the direction of masterly inactivity.'

He smiled slowly.

'Perhaps ... so!'

'Therefore your conviction that action is necessary must be very strong before you would suggest it.'

'I feel,' he said, with some deliberation, 'that it will be better to keep them apart in the meantime.'

A strange, uneasy look passed across the girl's face. It happened that there was only one man on all the broad earth whom she trusted implicitly—the man at her side—and for a second that one unique faith wavered. With a sort of mental jerk—as of a person who makes a quick effort to recover a wavering balance—she restored her courageous trustfulness.

'Yes,' she murmured, 'I am sure of it.'

'And I suppose ... I suppose we must do it. You and I, Brenda?'

It was a wonderful thing how these two knew Alice Huston. Her faults were never mentioned between them. The infinite charity with which each looked upon these faults was a mutual possession, unhinted at, half concealed. Brenda knew quite well what was written between the lines of his outspoken supposition, and replied to his unasked question with simple diplomacy.

'Yes—we must do it.'

Trist moved a little. He turned sideways, and glanced out of the window. His attitude was that of a man whose hands were in his pockets, but he was more than half a soldier—a creature morally and literally without pockets—and his hands hung at his sides.

'It is a ... a pretty strong combination.'

She smiled, and changed colour so slightly that he no doubt failed to see it.

'Yes,' she answered cheerfully. 'It succeeded once before. But Mrs. Wylie is not quite herself yet, Theo! That is why I don't want her to have any trouble in this matter. We have no right to seek her aid.'

The last words might easily have passed unheeded, but Brenda felt, even as she spoke them, that they contained another meaning; moreover, she recognised by his sudden silence that Trist was wondering whether this second suggestion had been intended. Uneasily she raised her eyes to his face. He was looking down at her gravely, and for some seconds their glances met.

If an excuse to seek Mrs. Wylie's assistance was hard to find, much more so was it open to question respecting Trist's spontaneous help. Why should he offer it? By what right could she accept it? And while they looked into each other's eyes, these two wondered over those small questions. There was a reason—the best reason of all—namely, that the offer was as spontaneous and natural as the acceptance of it. But why—why this spontaneity? Perhaps they both knew. Perhaps she suspected, and suspected wrongly. Perhaps neither knew definitely.

At last she turned her head, and naturally her glance was directed downwards into Piccadilly.

'There they are,' she whispered hurriedly, 'looking into the jeweller's shop opposite. What are we to do, Theo?'

He almost forestalled her question, so rapid was his answer. There was no hesitation, no shirking of responsibility. She had simply asked him, and simply he replied.

'Go,' he said, 'and throw some things into a bag. I will stay here and watch him. When the bag is ready, leave it in the passage and come back here. I will take it, go down, and take her straight away.'

'Where?'

'I don't know,' he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders.

There was a momentary hesitation on the girl's part. She perceived a terrible flaw in Trist's plan, and he divined her thoughts.

'It will be all right,' he whispered. 'No one knows that I am in England. I will telegraph to-night, and you can join her to-morrow. You ... can trust me, Brenda.'

There was a faint smile of confidence on her face as she turned away and hurried from the room.

Although her light footsteps were almost inaudible, the slight frôlement of her dress seemed to rouse the stupefied man on the low chair near the fire. Perhaps there was in the rhythm of her movements some subtle resemblance to the movements of his wife. He raised his head and appeared to listen in an apathetic way, but presently his chin dropped heavily again upon his breast, and the dull eyes lost all light of intelligence.

Trist turned away and looked out of the window. The two ladies were still lingering near the jeweller's shop. Alice Huston appeared to be pointing out to her companion some specially attractive ornament, and Mrs. Wylie was obeying with a patient smile.

The war-correspondent smiled in a peculiar way, which might well have expressed some bitterness, had he been the sort of man to speak or think bitterly of anyone. The whole picture was so absurdly characteristic, even to the small details—such as Mrs. Wylie's good-natured patience, scarce concealing her utter lack of interest in the jewellery, and Alice Huston's eyes glittering with reflex of the cold gleam of diamonds; for there is a light that comes into the eyes of some women at the mere mention of precious stones.

While he was watching them the ladies turned and crossed the street, coming towards him. He stepped back from the window in case one of them should raise her eyes, and at the same moment Brenda entered the room.

She glanced towards Huston, who was rousing himself from the torpor which had followed his maltreatment at Trist's hands, and which was doubtless partly due to the drink-sodden condition of his mind and body.

'All I want,' whispered the war-correspondent, following her glance, 'is three minutes' start from that man.'

'You had better go!' she answered anxiously below her breath.

'Yes; they are on the stairs ... but ... tell me, Brenda, promise me on your honour, that he did not hurt you.'

'I promise you,' she said, with a faint smile.

Then he left her.

CHAPTER VI.

TRIST ACTS ON HIS OWN RESPONSIBILITY.

As Mrs. Wylie made her way slowly and peacefully up the broad stairs, she suddenly found herself face to face with the man whom she had last seen in the still Arctic dawn, bearing the body of her dead husband down over the rocks towards her. She gave a little gasp of surprise, but nothing more. The next instant she was holding out her gloved hand to greet him. But even she—practised, gifted woman of the world as she was—could not meet him with a smile. In gravity they had parted, gravely they now met again. He was not quite the same as other men to Mrs. Wylie, for there was the remembrance of an indefinite semi-bantering agreement made months before, while the sunshine of life seemed to be glowing round them both—an agreement that they should not be mere acquaintances, mere friends (although the friendship existing between an elderly woman and a young man is not of the ordinary, practical, every-day type—there is a suggestion of something more in it), and Trist had fulfilled the promise then given.

He had taken her quite unawares, with that noiseless footstep of his which we noticed before, and the colour left her face for a moment.

'You!' she exclaimed; 'I did not expect you.'

As he took her hand his all-seeing gaze detected a slight indication of anxiety, and he knew that his presence was not at that moment desired by Mrs. Wylie. Due credit is not always given to us men for the possession of eyes. Our womenfolk are apt to forget that we move just as much as they, and in most cases infinitely more in the world, and among the world's shoals and quicksands. We may not be so quick at reading superficial indications as our mothers, sisters, or wives; but I think many of us (while keeping vanity in bounds) are much more capable of perceiving when our presence is desired or distasteful than is usually supposed. There are some of us, methinks, who, if chivalry failed to withhold our tongues, could tell of very decided preferences shown, and shown unsought; of glances, and even words, advanced to guide us whither the water runs smoothly. And let us hope that if such have been the case, we turn to the rougher channel we love better, without a smile of self-conceit.

Twice within the last hour Theodore Trist had perceived that there was a reason why those who held Alice Huston dearest should desire that he avoided meeting her. What this reason was her own husband had unwittingly told him; confirming brutally what he had read in Brenda's unconsciously expressive face a few moments before. And yet, in face of this undoubted knowledge, he seemed deliberately to court the danger that the two women feared, and sought to avert.

He was not a man to be blinded by a false impression. Nor was he one of those who act impulsively. His mind was of too practical, too steady, and too concentrated a type to be suddenly conquered by a mere prompting of the heart. At this juncture of his life he acted coolly and with foresight. Of Alice Huston he knew enough to feel quite sure of his mastery over her. If she loved him (which supposition had been thrown in his face many times since the evening when he had first been called upon to give assistance to those who stood in Captain Huston's little cabin), he did not appear in the least afraid of his own capability of killing that love.

He turned from Mrs. Wylie and greeted the younger woman, who followed her, with a self-possessed smile; and from his manner even Mrs. Wylie could gather nothing, and she was no mean reader of human faces. She glanced at them as they stood together on the stairs and asked herself a question:

'What part is he playing, that of a scoundrel or a fool?'

She could not conceive a third alternative just then, because she did not know Alice Huston so well as Theo Trist knew her.

Before Mrs. Huston, who was blushing very prettily, had time to speak, Trist imparted his news with a certain rapid bluntness.

'Your husband is upstairs,' he said. 'Brenda will keep him in the drawing-room for a few minutes. I have a bag here with some necessaries for you. Will you come with me, or will you go upstairs to your husband?'

'Will ... I ... go with you?' stammered the beautiful woman in a frightened whisper. 'Where to, Theo?'

Mrs. Wylie leant against the broad balustrade and breathed rapidly. She was really alarmed, but even fear could not conquer her indomitable placidity.

'I will conduct you to a safe hiding-place to-night, and Brenda will join you to-morrow morning,' said Trist in a tone full of concentrated energy, though his eyes never lighted up. 'Be quick and decide, because Brenda is alone upstairs with ... him.'

Mrs. Wylie's eyebrows moved imperceptibly beneath her veil. She thought she saw light.

Mrs. Huston played nervously with a tassel that was hanging from her dainty muff for the space of a moment; then she raised her eyes, not to Trist's face, but to Mrs. Wylie's. Instantly she lowered them again.

'I will go with you!' she said, almost inaudibly, and stood blushing like a schoolgirl between two lovers.

Mrs. Wylie raised her head, sniffing danger like an old hen when she hears the swoop of long wings above the chicken-yard. Her eyes turned from Alice Huston's face, with a slow impatience almost amounting to contempt, and rested upon Theodore Trist's meek orbs, raised to meet hers meaningly. Then somehow her honest tongue found itself tied, and she said nothing at all. The flood of angry words subsided suddenly from her lips, and she waited for the further commands of this soft-spoken, soft-stepping, soft-glancing man, with unquestioning obedience.

He moved slightly, looked down at the bag in his hand, and then glanced comprehensively from the top of Mrs. Huston's smart bonnet to the sole of her small shoe. He could not quite lay aside the old campaigner, and the beautiful woman was moved by a strange suspicion that this young man was not admiring her person, but considering whether her attire were fit for a long journey on a November evening.

'Come, then!' he said.

Still Mrs. Huston hesitated.

Suddenly she appeared to make up her mind, for she went up two steps and kissed Mrs. Wylie with hysterical warmth. This demonstration seemed to recall Trist to a due sense of social formula. He returned, and shook hands gravely with the widow.

'Go to Brenda!' he whispered, and the matron bowed her head.

Again she raised her eyebrows, and there was a flicker of light in her eyes like that which gleams momentarily when a person is on the brink of a great discovery.

The next minute she was running upstairs, while the footsteps of the two fugitives died away in the roar of traffic.

'Theo,' she said to herself, while awaiting an answer to her summons at her own door, 'must be of a very confiding nature. He expects such utter and such blind faith at the hands of others.'

The maid who opened the door was all eagerness to impart to her mistress certain vague details and incomprehensible sounds which had reached her curious ears. She had a thrilling tale of how Captain Huston, 'lookin' that funny about the eyes,' had rung loudly and pushed roughly through the open door; how there had been loud words in the drawing-room, and then a noise like 'movin' a pianer'; how a silence had followed, and, finally, how Mr. Trist (and not Captain Huston, as might have been expected) had left just a minute ago. But the evening milkman was destined, after all, to receive the first and unabridged account of these events. Mrs. Wylie merely said, 'That will do, Mary,' in her unruffled way, and passed on.

She entered the drawing-room, and found Brenda standing near the window, with one hand clasping the folds of the curtain.

Captain Huston was sitting on a low chair beside the fire, weeping gently. His bibulous sobs were the only sound that broke an unpleasant silence. Brenda was engaged in adding to her experiences of men and their ways a further illustration tending towards contempt. Her eyes were dull with pain, but she carried her small head with the usual demure serenity which was naught else but the outcome of a sweet, maidenly pride, as she advanced towards Mrs. Wylie.

'He is quite gentle and tractable now!' she whispered.

Mrs. Wylie took her hand within her fingers, clasping it with a soft protecting strength.

'Is he ... tipsy?'

'No!' answered Brenda, with a peculiar catch in her breath; 'he is only stupefied.'

'Stupefied ... how?'

'I ... I will tell you afterwards.'

The quick-witted matron had already discovered that some of her furniture was slightly displaced, so she did not press her question.

At this moment Captain Huston rose to his feet, and took up a position on the hearthrug.

'I do not know,' he said, with concentrated calmness, 'whether the law has anything to say against people who harbour runaway wives; but, at all events, society will have an opinion on the subject.'

He ignored the fact that he had in no way greeted Mrs. Wylie, addressing his remarks to both ladies impartially. By both alike his attack was received in silence.

'I will find her,' he continued. 'You need have no false hopes on that score. All the Theodore Trists in the world (which is saying much—for scoundrels are common enough) will not be able to hide her for long!'

Mrs. Wylie still held Brenda's hand within her own. At the mention of Trist's name there was an involuntary contraction of the white fingers, and the widow suddenly determined to act.

'Captain Huston,' she said gravely, 'when you are calmer, if you wish to talk of this matter again, Brenda and I will be at your service. At present I am convinced that it is better for your wife to keep away from you—though I shall be the first to welcome a reconciliation.'

He shrugged his shoulders and walked slowly to the door. It was Brenda who rang the bell. Captain Huston passed out of the room without another word.

It would almost seem that the ingenuous Mary anticipated the call, for she was waiting in the passage to show Captain Huston out. She returned almost at once to the drawing-room, with a view (cloaked beneath a prepared question respecting tea) of satisfying her curiosity regarding the sound which had suggested the moving of a 'pianer.' But there was no sign of disorder; everything was in its place, and Brenda was standing idly near the mantelpiece.

'We will take tea at once, Mary,' said Mrs. Wylie, unloosening her bonnet-strings.

Mary was forced to retire, meditating as she went over the inscrutability and coldness of the ordinary British lady.

'Ah!' sighed Mrs. Wylie, when the door was closed. 'Now tell me, Brenda! What has happened? Did these two men meet here? I am quite in the dark, and have a sort of dazed feeling, as if I had been reading Carlyle at the French plays, and had got them mixed up.'

'Theo came first,' answered Brenda, 'to warn us that Captain Huston had come home in the same steamer as himself, without, however, recognising him. While we were talking, the other came in. He did not see Theo, who was behind the door...'

'I suppose he was tipsy?'

'No; he was quite sober. He looked horrible. His eyes were bloodshot—his lips unsteady...'

Mrs. Wylie stopped the description with a sharp, painful nod of her head. To our shame be it, my brothers, she knew the rest!

'Was he quite clear and coherent?'

'Yes!'

'But ... just now...' argued Mrs. Wylie, vainly endeavouring to make Brenda resume the narrative—'just now he was quite stupid?'

'Yes.'

'What happened, Brenda?'

At this moment Mary brought in the tea and set it briskly down on a small table. Brenda stepped forward, and began pouring out.

'What happened, Brenda?' repeated Mrs. Wylie, when the door was closed.

Then she approached, took the teapot from her hand, and by gentle force turned the motherless girl's face towards herself.

'My darling,' she whispered, drawing the slim form to her breast, 'why should you hide your tears from me?'

I have endeavoured to make it clear that this girl was not an emotional being. There were no hysterical sobs—merely a few silent tears, and the narrative was continued.

'He came in, and asked me to tell him where Alice was. I refused, and then...'

'Then...?'

'He tried to hit me.'

'Tried ... Brenda?'

'Well ... he just reached me.'

'And ... Theo?' asked Mrs. Wylie. 'What did Theo do?'

There was a short pause, during which both ladies attended to their cups with an unnatural interest.

'I have never seen him like that before,' murmured the girl at length. 'I did not know that men were ever like that. It was ... rather terrible ... almost suggestive of some wild animal. He knocked him down and ... and kicked him round the room like a dog!'

'My poor darling,' whispered Mrs. Wylie. 'I ought never to have left you here alone. We might have guessed that that man Huston would be home soon. Did he hurt you, Brenda?'

'No; he frightened me a little, that was all.'

'I am very glad you had Theo!' Mrs. Wylie purposely turned away as she said these words.

Brenda sipped her tea, and made no reply.

It had been twilight when Mrs. Wylie returned home, and now it was almost dark. The two ladies sat in the warm firelight, with their feet upon the fender. Tea laid aside, they continued sitting there while the flames leapt and fell again, glowing on their thoughtful faces, gleaming on the simple jewellery at their throats. From the restless streets came a dull, continuous roar as of the sea. I hear it now as I write, and would fain lay aside the pen and wonder over it; for it rises and falls, swells and dies again, with a long, slow, mournful rhythm full of life, and yet joyless; soporific, and yet alive with movement. There is no sound on earth like it except the hopeless song of breaking waves. Both alike steal upon the senses with an indefinable suggestion of duration, almost amounting to a glimmer of what is called eternity. Both alike reach the heart with a subtle, undeniable lovableness. Londoners and sailors cannot resist its music, for both return to it in their age, whithersoever they may have wandered.

Mrs. Wylie it was who moved at last, rising with characteristic determination, as if the pastime of thought were a vice not wisely encouraged. She stood before Brenda in her widow's weeds, looking down through the dim light with a faint smile.

'Come,' she said; 'we must get ready for dinner. Remember that Mrs. Hicks is going to call for you at eight o'clock to take you to that Ancient Artists' Guild soirée. I should put on a white dress if I were you, and violets. The gifted William Hicks, whom we met in the Park this afternoon, asked what flowers he should bring, and I suggested violets.'

Brenda laughed suddenly, but her hilarity finished in a peculiar, abrupt way.

'Telle est la vie!' she murmured, as she rose obediently. 'What a labour this enjoyment sometimes is!'

CHAPTER VII.

QUICKSANDS.

'Wot's this—runaway couple?' asked a pallid and slipshod waiter of his equally-unwholesome colleague in the dining-room attached to a large City railway-station.

'D'no,' answered the second, with weary indifference; 'we don't offen see that sort down 'ere.'

'There's a sort,' continued the first attendant, pulling down his soup-stained waistcoat, 'o' haristocratic simplicity about them and their wants as pleases my poetic and 'igh-born soul.'

'Indeed,' yawned the other with withering sarcasm.

'Yes, indeed!'

The sarcasm was treated with noble scorn by its victim, who was called away at that moment by a bumping sound within the lift-cupboard.

In the meantime Trist and Alice Huston were turning their attention to dinner.

The novelty of the situation pleased the lady vastly. There was a spice of danger coupled with a sense of real security imparted by the presence of her calm and resourceful companion which she appreciated thoroughly. For Trist there was, however, less enjoyment in the sense of novelty. A war-correspondent is a man to whom few situations are, strictly speaking, novel, and it is, or should be, his chief study to acquire the virtue of adaptability, and never to allow himself to be carried away by the forces of environment.

His sense of chivalry was too strong to allow the merest suggestion of weariness, but in his inmost heart there was a vague uneasiness at the thought that there was still an hour before the train for the east coast left, not the station where they were at present, but one near at hand. He knew that to the fugitive every moment is of immeasurable value, but for the time being he feared no pursuit. His measures had been too carefully taken for that, and all the private detectives in London could not approach this impenetrable strategist in cunning or foresight.

Only an hour had passed since he and Alice Huston had met on the stairs of Suffolk Mansions, and since then the excellent construction of a London cab and the justly-praised smoothness of London roadways had effectually put a stop to any conversation of a connected or confidential nature.

At first Alice had been too frightened to resent this, and subsequently the manner of her companion, which was at once reassuring and repelling, had checked her efforts. Now the pallid waiters were almost within earshot, and Theodore Trist, who concealed a keen power of observation beneath a demeanour at times aggravatingly stolid, was fully aware that they were interested, and consequently inquisitive. The result of this knowledge was a singular lack of the ordinary outward signs of mystery. He spoke in rather louder tones than was his wont, told one or two amusing anecdotes, and laughed at them himself, while Mrs. Huston unconsciously aided him by smiling in a slightly weary way. This last conjugal touch of human nature went far to convince the waiter that the two were after all nothing more interesting than husband and wife.

'Theo, I have so much to tell you,' whispered Mrs. Huston once when the waiter was exchanging civilities with the cook's assistant down a speaking-tube.

'Yes,' replied Trist, interested in his bread; 'wait until we are in the train.'

'Where are we going?'

'I will tell you afterwards; these fellows might hear. Will you have wine? What shall it be, something light—say Niersteiner?'

He softened his apparent brusqueness with a smile, and she blushed promptly, which was an unnecessary proceeding. Trist's sang-froid was phenomenal.

By a simple subterfuge, of which he was almost ashamed, he had obtained tickets to a small east-coast watering-place without leaving any trace whatever, and at seven o'clock they left Liverpool Street Station, in the same compartment, without having allowed the railway officials to perceive that they were acquainted. There were but few first-class passengers in the train, and they were alone in the compartment. The light provided was not a brilliant specimen of its kind; reading or pretending to read was out of the question. There was nothing to do but talk, so Trist gave himself over to the tender mercies of his companion, and for the time vouchsafed his entire attention to the details of a story too common and too miserable to recapitulate here. Probably you, who may turn these pages, know the story; if not, an old traveller takes the liberty of wishing that you never may.

'And,' said Mrs. Huston between half-suppressed sobs, when the tale was told, 'I simply could not stand it any longer, so I came home. I ... I hoped, Theo, to find you in England, and when Brenda told me that you were in the East, busy with some horrid war, it was the last straw. I wonder why people want to fight at all. Why can't the world live in peace?'

Trist tugged pensively at the arm-rest, and looked out into the darkness without replying. He did not seem at that moment prepared to answer the extremely pertinent and relevant question propounded. If Mrs. Huston had expected a proper show of masculine emotion, she must have been slightly disappointed; for during no part of her narrative had the incongruous face opposite to her, beneath the ludicrous lamp, displayed aught else than a most careful and intelligent attention. What she required was sympathy, not attention. Her story was not calculated to withstand too close a study. Being in itself emotional, it was eminently dependent upon an emotional reception; it was, in fact, a woman's narrative, fit for relation by a peaceful fireside, in the hush of twilight, on the top (so to speak) of tea and muffins, and to a woman's ear. Retailed to a hard practical man of the world in a noisy train, where the more pathetic vocal inflections were inaudible; after dinner, and while narrator and listener wore thick wraps and gloves, it lost weight most lamentably. She ought to have thought of these trifles, which, however, are no trifles. You, dear madam, know better than to attempt to soften your husband's stony heart when he is protected by gloves, or boots, or top-coat. Ah! these little things make a mighty difference.

Trist was an ardent follower of that school of philosophy which seeks to ignore the emotions. By means of cold suppression he would fain have wiped all passions out of human nature, and, having moved amidst bloodshed and among men engaged in bloodshed, he had learnt that our deepest feelings are, after all, mere matters of habit. From the Eastern lands he knew so well, it is probable that he had brought back some reflection of that strange Oriental apathy of life which is incomprehensible to our more highly-strung Western intellects.

When Mrs. Huston pushed her dainty veil recklessly up over the front of her bonnet, and made no pretence of hiding the tears that rendered her lovely face almost angelic in its pathos, Trist made no further acknowledgment of emotion than a momentary contraction of the eyelids. He continued tugging pensively at the leather arm-rest, while his eyes only strayed at times from the flashing lights of peaceful village or quiet town to the beautiful form crouching against the sombre cushions opposite to him.

'Oh why ... did you ever let me marry him?' sobbed Alice miserably.

He glanced at her with a peculiar twist of his lips, downwards, to one side. Then he shrugged his shoulders very slightly.

'I? ... What had I to do with it, Alice?'

There was something in his voice, a certain dull concentration, which had the singular effect of checking her sobs almost instantaneously, although her breast heaved convulsively at short intervals, like the swell that follows a storm at sea, long after the rage has subsided.

She touched her eyes prettily with a diminutive handkerchief, and made an effort to recover her serenity, smoothing a wrinkle out of the front of her dress.

'Well,' she sighed, 'I suppose you had as much influence over me as anybody. And ... and you never liked him, Theo. I could see that, and lately the recollection of it has come back to me more vividly.'

'You forget that I was in China at the time of your engagement. My influence could not have been very effective at such a range—even if I had taken it upon myself to exert it, which would have been an unwarrantable liberty.'

'I was so young,' she pleaded, 'and so inexperienced.'

'Twenty-two,' he observed reflectively; 'and you had your choice, I suppose, of all the best men in London.'

In some vague way Mrs. Huston's eyes conveyed a contradiction to this statement, although her lips never moved. A man less dense than this war-correspondent appeared to be would have understood readily enough what that glance really signified.

'I hope,' he continued imperturbably, 'that this misunderstanding is only temporary...'

She laughed bitterly, and examined the texture of her lace handkerchief with a gracefully impatient poise of the head.

'Huston ... loves you.'

'And you,' she answered pertly, 'hate him! Why? Tell me why, Theo.'

'I hate no one in the world,' he answered. 'Not on principle, but because I have met no one as yet whom I could hate. There has invariably been some redeeming point.'

'And what is my husband's redeeming point?'

'His love for you,' answered Trist promptly, and with such calm assurance that his companion evacuated her false position at once, and returned to her original line of argument.

'I only had Brenda,' she murmured sorrowfully; 'and she is like you. She listens and listens and listens, but never gives any real advice.'

'If she had, would you have taken it?' suggested Trist.

The graceful shoulders moved interrogatively and indifferently.

'I suppose not.'

During the silence that followed, Trist looked at his watch, openly and without disguise. The journey, which was a short one, was almost half accomplished, and the train was now running at a breakneck pace through the level Suffolk meadows. Hardly a light was visible over all the silent land. There were no tunnels and no bridges, consequently the sounds of travel were reduced to a minimum. It is the petty local trains that make the most noise; the great purposeful expresses run almost in silence. In this, my brothers, I think we resemble trains in some degree. There are those among us who make little way upon Life's iron track with a great noise; and those who travel far are silent.

'I don't believe you care a fig what becomes of me!' said Mrs. Huston at length in a reckless way.

He looked at her with a slow grave smile, but made no other answer.

'Do you?' she asked coquettishly.

He was quite grave now, and her breathing became slightly accelerated.

'Yes!' quite simply.

Presently Trist roused himself, as if from unpleasant reflections, and began talking about the future.

'I should like to know,' he said, 'exactly what you think of doing, because I have not much time. At any moment Russia may declare war against Turkey, and I shall have to go at once.'

'If Russia declares war, I shall kill myself, I think.'

He laughed, and changed his position, drawing in his feet, and leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees.

'No,' he said with genial energy, 'I would not do that, if I were you. If I may be allowed to make a suggestion, it seems to me that you will do well to come to a distinct understanding with Huston, either through the mediation of Mrs. Wylie or by letter. You cannot go on long like this.'

'What sort of understanding?' she inquired, with that nonchalant impatience of detail which seems to be the special prerogative of beautiful women.

'Ask him to give you three months to think over matters; at the expiration of that time you can have an interview with him, and come to some definite agreement respecting the future.'

She sighed, and leant back wearily, looking at him in a curious, snake-like way beneath her lowered lids.

'Three months will make no difference.'

'Nevertheless ... try it.'

'I want,' she said in a dull voice, '... a divorce!'

For a moment a veil seemed to have been lifted from his eyes; all meekness vanished, and the glance was keen, far-sighted, almost cruel.

'You cannot get that, Alice. It is impossible!'

She turned her face quite away from him and looked out of the window, jerking the arm-rest nervously. Her breath clouded the glass. She murmured something inaudible.

'Eh?' he inquired.

'I could make it possible,' she said jerkily, and her voice died away in a sickening little laugh.

For some moments there was a horrible silence, and then Theo Trist spoke in a strange, thick voice, quite unlike his own.

'Alice,' he said, 'do you ever think of Brenda? Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?'

The words came as a cold and chilling surprise to Mrs. Huston, and she began slowly to realize that she had met with something which was entirely new to her. She had come in contact with a man upon whom the effect of her beauty was of no account. Her powers of fascination seemed suddenly to have left her, and across her mind there flashed a gleam of that unpleasant light by the aid of which we are at times enabled to see ourselves as others see us. It was only natural and womanlike that she should resent the shedding of this light, and visit her resentment, not upon the disclosure made by it, but on the illuminator of the unpleasant scene.

'Oh,' she muttered angrily, 'you are all against me! No one cares for me; no one makes allowances.'

Trist smiled in a slow, strong way which was infinitely pathetic.

'No,' he said, 'no one makes allowances; you must never expect that.'

Then Mrs. Huston's tears began to flow again, and the self-contained man opposite to her sat with white bloodless lips and contracted eyes staring into the blackness of the night.

CHAPTER VIII.

MASKED.

The soirée of the Ancient Artists' Guild was in the full flow of its success. There had been some excellent music, and the programme promised more. The brilliancy of the attendance was equal to the highest hopes of the most ambitious committee. Long hair and strange dresses vouched for the presence of self-conscious intellect; small receding foreheads, hopeless mouths, and fair but painted faces, announced the presence of that shade of aristocracy which prefers to patronize.

William Hicks was not on the committee of the Ancient Artists, but he moved about from group to group, dispensed ices, and exchanged artistic jargon with a greater grace than was at the command of that entire august body. By some subtle means, peculiarly his own, he managed to convey to many the erroneous idea that he was in some indefinite way connected with the obvious success of this soirée; and several stout ladies went so far as to thank him, later on, for a pleasant evening, which gratitude he graciously and deprecatingly disowned in such a way as to make it appear his due. The pleasant evening had been in most cases spent between a nervous concern as to the effect produced by personal and filial adornment, and an ill-disguised contempt for common women who flaunt titles and diamonds (both uncoveted) in the faces of their superiors, possessing neither. But we men cannot be expected to understand those things.

Chiefly was William Hicks' devotion laid at Brenda's feet. For her was reserved his sweetest smile, just tempered with that suggestion of poetic pathos which he knew well how to sprinkle over his mirth. To her ear was retailed the very latest witticism, culled from the brain of some other man, and skilfully reproduced, not as a cutting, but as a modest seedling. To her side he returned most often, and over her chair stooped most markedly.

It has been hinted already that Hicks, with all his talents and mental gifts, was not an observant man. In certain small diplomacies of social life he was no match for the quiet-faced girl whom he was pleased to honour this evening with his conspicuous attention.

She was miserably anxious, but she hid it from him; and he talked on, quite ignorant of the fact that she was in no manner heeding his words. Her quick, acquired smile was ready enough; when an answer was required, she was equal to the occasion. Ah! these social agonies! There is a sort of pride in enduring them with cheerful stoicism.

'I am glad,' murmured Hicks, with a deprecating smile, 'that my mother succeeded in dragging you here. It is a sort of intellectual treat for me. We painters are so incurably shoppy in our talk, that it is really a relief to have you at my mercy—so to speak. This is a success, is it not? There are a great many celebrities in the room.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes; and I always feel a slight difference in the atmosphere when there is someone present with a name one likes to hear.'

He looked round the room with glistening eye and delicate nostrils slightly distended, as if sniffing his native atmosphere of Fame.

'One can generally recognise a celebrated man or woman, I think,' he continued. 'There is an indefinite feeling of power—a strength of individuality which seems to hover round them like an invisible halo.'

'Ye-es,' murmured Brenda vaguely. A moment later she was conscious of having looked round the room as if in search of halos, and wondered uncomfortably whether her companion had seen the movement.

Then a stout lady, with a very dark complexion, suddenly raised an exquisite voice, and a complete silence acknowledged its power instantaneously. It was a quaint old song, with words that might have had no meaning whatever, beyond trite regrets for days that could never come again, had they been sung with less feeling—less true human sympathy.

Brenda literally writhed beneath the flood of harmony. She tried not to listen—tried vainly to look round her and think cynical thoughts about the hollow shams of society, but some specially deep and tender note would reach her heart, despite the wall of worldliness that she had built around it. It would seem that that stout cheery woman could see through the smiles, through the affected masks, and penetrate to the heart, which is never quite safe from the sudden onslaught of youthful memories surviving still, youthful hopes since crushed, and youthful weaknesses never healed.

Brenda looked round the room with a semi-interested little smile (such as we see in church sometimes when a preacher has got well hold of his audience), and suddenly her face grew white, her breath seemed to catch, and for some seconds there was no motion of her throat or bosom. Respiration seemed to be arrested. With an effort she recovered herself, and a great sigh of relief filled her breast.

Among a number of men beneath the curtained doorway she had recognised an upright sturdy form, beside which the narrower shoulders and sunken chests of poetic and artistic celebrities seemed to shrink into insignificance. The way in which this man carried his head distinguished him at once from those around him. He was of quite a different stamp from his companions, most of whom depended upon some peculiarity of dress or hair to distinguish them from the very ordinary ruck of young men.

Across that vast room Trist's eyes met Brenda's, and although his calm face changed in no way, betrayed by no slightest tremor that he had come with the wild hope of meeting her, his lips moved.

'Thank God, I have done it!' he muttered, beneath the whirl of polite applause that greeted the stout lady's elephantine bow.

At the other end of the room Hicks noticed with some surprise that Brenda drew her watch from her belt, and consulted it with particular attention. She was counting the number of hours since she had last seen Theodore Trist, with signs of travel still visible on his dress and person, just starting off on a new journey, without rest or respite. It was now midnight. She had never thought that he would return the same night—in fact, she was sure that he had not intended to do so. And here he was—calm, thoughtful, almost too cool as usual, without sign of fatigue or suggestion of hurry. His dress was faultless, his appearance and demeanour politely indifferent.

'I hope,' said Hicks meaningly, 'that you are not growing weary. It is early yet.'

He looked round the room, with a pleasant nod for an acquaintance here and there whom he had not seen before.

'Oh no,' said Brenda lightly in reply. 'I just happened to wonder what the time might be. I hope it was not rude.'

He laughed forgivingly, still looking about him.

'Ah!' he exclaimed in an altered tone. 'Is that not Trist? Dear old Theo Trist!'

'Yes.'

Brenda had apparently followed the direction indicated by her companion's gaze, and was now looking towards the new-comer with an inimitable little smile which completely quashed all attempts to divine whether she were surprised, or pleased, or politely interested.

Trist was making his way slowly across the room, exchanging greetings here and there. Brenda, in her keen observant way, conceived a sudden idea that his manner was not quite natural. Although of a kindly spirit, Trist was not a genial man with a smile full of affection for the merest acquaintance; and the girl, in some vague way, felt that he was shaking hands with men and women who were profoundly indifferent to him. Indeed, he seemed to go out of his way to do so.

'When did you get home?' she heard someone ask him; and the reply was delivered in clear tones, audible at a greater distance than Trist's voice usually was, as if with intention.

'This afternoon,' he said. 'Only this afternoon. I landed at Plymouth this morning.'

The next moment he was standing before her with his brown face bowed, his hand extended.

'You see, Brenda,' he said, 'I have turned up again. A veritable dove without the leaf in my mouth. I am an emblem of peace.'

Instinctively, and without knowing her motive, she answered in the same way, conscious that it was his wish.

'I am very glad to see you back,' she said.

Then he turned to Hicks, and shook hands with more warmth than that ethereal being had expected.

'You see, Hicks,' he said, 'I cannot resist flying at once to pay my respects at the shrine of Art—only arrived in London this afternoon, and here I am in full war-paint, with a flower in my coat and my heart in my eyes. What pictures have I to admire? You may as well tell me.'

Hicks laughed in his semi-sad way, and mentioned a few pictures of note, which were carefully remembered by his hearer. Then Trist turned to Brenda and offered her his arm.

'Will you come,' he said, 'and have some tea or an ice, or something?'

Brenda appeared to hesitate for a moment, then gave in with that reluctant alacrity which is to be observed when a lady is making a sacrifice of her own inclination.

As they moved away together through the crowded room there was a sudden hush, and succeeding it a louder buzz of expectant conversation. Trist looked over the heads of the people towards the little flower-bedecked platform at the end of the room.

'Ah!' he said; 'Crozier is going to sing. Shall we wait? It is a pity to miss Sam Crozier.'

Nevertheless he made no attempt to stop, and they passed through the doorway into a smaller gallery, which was almost deserted.

'I am in luck to-night; everything I have attempted has been a success. So we shall probably find the refreshment-room empty.'

She laughed in a nervous way, and her touch upon his arm wavered.

'We must run the risk,' he continued, 'of being talked about; but I must see you alone for a few minutes. It is strange, Brenda, that we are always getting into hot water together.'

'Oh!' she said indifferently, 'the risk is not very great. People do not talk much about me. Alice possesses that unfortunate monopoly in our family.'

'That is why I must see you.'

'Yes, ... I know.'

They had passed through the smaller room and out of it into a brilliant corridor, whence a broad flight of stairs led up to the refreshment-room.

'There is a sofa half-way up the stairs,' said Trist. 'It is a good position, quite out of earshot, and very visible—therefore harmless; let us occupy it!'

When they were seated, Brenda leant back with that air of grave attention which was peculiarly hers, and which, I venture to think, is rarely met with in women.

'When,' said Trist in a smooth and even tone, 'I got back to town, I figuratively tore my hair, and said to myself: "Where shall I find Brenda—where shall I find Brenda to-night?" I took a hansom back to my rooms, changed, and then drove to Suffolk Mansions. Mrs. Wylie told me where you were; I gave chase, and ... and I caught you.'

The girl turned her face slightly, and her childlike blue eyes sought his with a quaint air of scrutiny.

'When,' she said, 'you left Suffolk Mansions this afternoon with Alice, you had no intention of returning to London to-night.'

There was no mistaking the deliberation of her assertion. She was defying him—daring him to deny.

He met her glance for a moment—no longer.

'That,' he confessed airily, after a pause, 'is so!'

'And,' continued the girl with more confidence, 'since that time your views respecting Alice have become modified or changed in some way, perhaps?'

He moved with some uneasiness, and appeared particularly wishful to avoid encountering her frank gaze. He clasped his two hands around his raised knee, and stared at the carpet with a non-committing silence which was almost Oriental in its density.

'Brenda,' he whispered at length, 'I have had an awful scare!'

She drew in a deep breath with a little shivering sound, and moistened her lips—first the lower, and then the upper. There was a momentary gleam of short, pearly teeth, and the red Cupid's-bow of her mouth reassumed its usual contour of demure self-reliance.

There was a long pause, during which the faint echo of distant applause came to their ears.

'I wonder,' said the girl at length, 'how many men would have taken as much trouble as you have taken to-night for the sake of such a trifling affair as a woman's good name?'

A dull red colour slowly mounted over her white throat to her face—a painful blush of intense shame, which she was too proud to attempt to hide. The deliberation with which she spoke the words, and then held up her burning face that he might see, had he wished, was very characteristic.

Trist himself changed colour, and his firm lips opened as if he were about to reply hastily. He checked himself, however, and they sat through several painful moments without motion.

During that time their two souls merged, as it were, into a complete understanding—so entire, so perfect and faithful, that no spoken words could ever have brought its semblance into existence. He knew that his painful task was now finished, that Brenda now understood his reason for coming back to London at once. Moreover, he was aware that she had divined the cause of his sudden geniality on first arriving at the soirée, and there was no need to tell her that all London could now find out, if it pleased, that the war-correspondent, Theodore Trist, had arrived home from the East that afternoon, and was seen by many in the evening at a public place of entertainment.

But Brenda was not content with divination of motives. It was her evil habit to proceed to analysis, and in this pastime she made a mistake. Trist's motive in running away, as it were, from the dangerous proximity of a desperate and beautiful woman was clear; and although a large majority of men would, under the circumstances, have had the generosity to do the same, she was pleased to consider this act a most wondrous thing—her reason for doing so being that she was convinced that Trist loved her sister with all the cruel and taciturn strength of his nature. This was an utter mistake, and Theo Trist was unaware of its existence.

Ah! these little mistakes! We spend a small portion of our lives in making them, and the rest in trying to repair.

'Give me,' said Brenda, 'her address, and I will go to her to-morrow.'

'She is at the Castle Hotel, Burgh Ferry, Suffolk. There is a train from Liverpool Street Station leaving at ten o'clock to-morrow for Burgh Station, which is four miles from Burgh Ferry.'

'I have heard of the place,' said Brenda composedly. 'Have you been there and back this evening?'

'Yes. I just had time to install Alice comfortably in the hotel, which is really nothing more than an inn, and is the largest house in the village. I have a list for you—here it is—of things that Alice would like you to take to her to-morrow.'

Brenda took the paper and glanced at it rapidly.

'It is a long one,' she said with a short, hard laugh. 'Is she quite resigned to burying herself alive for a short time?'

'Ye—es.... I put things rather strongly. She has consented to communicate with her husband through Mrs. Wylie, with the view of coming to some sort of agreement.'

The girl drew a sharp breath of relief.

'There ... were ... a good many tears,' added Trist rather unevenly. 'I would suggest a good supply of books,' he said a moment later in a practical way. 'It is a dreadfully dull little place (which makes it safer), and too much thinking is hardly desirable at the present time.'

'It is questionable whether much thinking is profitable at any time.'

Trist looked at her in a curious, doubtful way, and then he rose from his seat.

'I will take you home now,' he said, 'if you are ready. It is nearly one o'clock.'

She rose a little wearily, and, lifting her gloved hand, skirmished deftly over her hair in order to make sure that it had not become deranged. He noted the curve of her white arm, and the quick play of her fingers, while he stood erect and motionless, waiting. No passing light of emotion was visible in his eyes, which possessed a strange, unreflective power of observation. That round white arm was looked upon as a beautiful thing, and nothing more. And she was a trifle weary. Her face betrayed no sign of mental or natural anxiety.

Then she took his arm, and they passed down the splendid stairs together. Co-heirs to a truly human inheritance of sorrow, they bore their burden without complaint or murmur, with a self-reliance behoving children of an acute civilization. For civilization will in time kill all human sympathy.

'I will go home with you,' said Trist, 'because some precautions are necessary in order to escape observation on your journey to-morrow, and I have several suggestions to make.'

CHAPTER IX.

IN CASE OF WAR.

As the winter settled over Europe—here with gloom and fog, there with bright keen frosts and dazzling snow—the feeling of anxiety respecting affairs in the East slowly subsided. The general conviction was that Russia would not move against her hereditary Moslem enemy until the winter was over; for even hatred, sturdy weed though it may be, is killed by cold.

Theodore Trist, fresh from those mysterious Oriental lands which are so much more romantic from a distance, gave no opinion upon the matter, because he was a practical business-man, and fully aware of the market value of his observations.

By ten o'clock on the morning following the soirée of the Ancient Artists, he alighted from a hansom cab opposite the huge office of the journal to which his pen was pledged. A few moments later he was shaking hands uneffusively with the editor. This gentleman has been introduced before, and men at his age change little in appearance or habit. His vast head was roughly picturesque as usual, his speech manly and to the point.

'Glad to see you back,' he said, in a business-like way. 'Sit down. None the worse, I hope?' he added, in a softer tone, and accompanied his observation with a keen glance. 'None the worse for the smell of powder again?'

'No,' was the answer. 'That smell never did any man much harm.'

The editor smiled, and drew some straggling papers together upon his desk.

'I want,' said Trist, after a pause, 'to make a lot of money.'

'Ah!'

'Enough,' continued Trist gravely, 'to put into something secure, and ensure a steady income in the piping times of peace.'

The editor clasped his large hands gravely with fingers interlocked, and placed them on the desk in front of him.

'That,' he said, with raised eyebrows, 'is bad.'

'But natural,' suggested the younger man.

'When a man of your age suddenly expresses a desire for something which...'

'He has never had,' remarked Trist meekly.

'Which he has never had or wished for, it is suggestive of a change—a radical change—in that man's plan of life.'

Trist raised his square shoulders slightly and respectfully.

'Now,' continued the editor, in his most solid and convincing way, 'you—Theodore Trist—are the most brilliant war-correspondent of a brilliant and war-like generation. You are, besides that, a clever fellow—perhaps an exceptionally clever fellow. But, my friend, there are many clever fellows in the world. It is an age of keen competition, and the first man in the race must never look back to see whose step it is that he hears behind him. We live in a time of specialities, and we must be content with specialities. You are a born war-correspondent, and I suppose your ambition is to prove that you can do something else—write a novel, or edit a religious periodical—eh?'

Trist laughed, and returned the gaze of a pair of remarkably bright eyes without hesitation.

'No,' he answered. 'I am content with the mark I have made, but there is not sufficient money to be gained at it, considering how much it takes out of a man. I am as strong as a horse yet, but I have noticed that there are some of us who, considering their years, are not the men they should be. It is a desperately hard life, and we are constantly required. If I live ten years longer, I shall be laid on the shelf, as far as active service goes.'

The editor looked much relieved, and, moreover, made no pretence of concealing his feelings.

'I have thought of that,' he said. 'Of course, we will take you on the editorial staff.'

'Now...?'

The elder man raised his head, and the kindly gray eyes searched his companion's face.

'Ah!' he said slowly. 'That is your game. Have you lost your nerve?'

'No.'

'Then you contemplate some great change in your plan of life.'

'Hardly,' returned Trist, with some deliberation; 'but I want to be prepared for such an emergency.'

'I am very sorry to hear it.'

'Why?'

'Because you are too young yet. And ... and, my boy, I don't want to lose the best war-correspondent that ever crossed a saddle.'

The object of this honest flattery shrugged his shoulders.

'There are plenty more coming on.'

The great man shook his head.

'Do you mean to tell me,' he asked, 'that you are going to turn your back upon a splendid career, and take up journalism? Why, my dear fellow, even at my age I would willingly change my chair for your saddle, and men say that I am at the top of the journalistic tree. Come, be candid; why are you giving up active service?'

'Because I am wanted at home, and because I must find some means of making a steady income.'

'Will you take my advice?' asked the elder man humbly.

They were like two friendly gladiators, these immovable journalists, each conscious of the strength that lay behind the gentle manner of the other, both anxious to avoid measuring steel.

Trist laughed good-humouredly.

'I will not promise.'

'No; that would be asking too much from a man who has made his own way with his own hands. My advice is: do nothing until the necessity arises. At the first rumour of war we will talk this over again. In the meantime, let us wait on events. You will write your leaders as usual, and I suppose you are busy with something in book form?'

'If,' answered Trist, 'there is war in Turkey, I will go, because I told you that I would, but that will be my last campaign.'

The editor looked at him with kindly scrutiny; then he scratched his chin.

'Why?' he asked deliberately, and with a consciousness of exceeding the bounds of polite non-interference.

'I cannot tell you—yet.'

There was a slight pause, during which neither moved, and the stillness in that little room which lay in the very heart of restless London was remarkable.

The editor looked very grave. There were no papers on his desk requiring immediate attention, but he held his pencil within his strong fingers ready, as it were, to add his notes to any news that might come before him. The responsibility of a great journalist is only second to that of a Prime Minister in a country like England, where the voice of the people is heard and obeyed. Had this man turned his attention to politics, he would perhaps have attained the Premiership; but he was a journalist, and from that small silent room his fiats went forth to the ready ears of half a nation. Few men read more than one newspaper, and we have not yet got over the weakness of attaching undue importance to words that are set in type; consequently the influence of an important journal over the mind of the nation to which it dictates is practically incalculable.

'You know,' said this modern Jove at length, 'as well as I do that there will be war as soon as the winter is over.'

In completion of his remark he nodded his vast head sideways, vaguely indicating the East.

'Yes,' was the meek answer; 'that is so—a war which will begin in a one-sided way, and last longer than we quite expect; but I will go.'

'I fancy,' remarked the editor after some reflection, 'that Russia will make a very common mistake, and underrate, or perhaps despise, her adversary.'

Trist nodded his head.

'They are sure to do that,' he said; 'but I suppose they will win in the end.'

'And you will be on the losing side again.

'Yes; I shall be on the losing side again.

Both men relapsed into profound meditation. Trist's meek eyes were fixed on the soft Turkey carpet—the only suggestion of ease or luxury about the room. The editor glanced from time to time at his companion's strong face, and occupied himself with making small indentations in his blotting-pad with the point of a blacklead pencil.

'Trist,' he said at length, 'I cannot do without you in this war.'

'The war has not come yet. Many things may happen before the spring; but I will not play you false. You need never fear that.'

Then he rose and buttoned his thick coat; for, like all great travellers, he wrapped himself up heavily in England. It is only very young and quite inexperienced men who gather satisfaction from the bravado of wearing no top-coat in winter.

'Good-bye,' he said; 'I must go up to the publishers.'

'Good-bye,' replied the editor heartily; 'look in whenever you are passing. I hope to see you one night soon at the Homeless Club; they are going to give you a dinner, I believe.'

'Yes; I heard something of it. It is very good of them, but embarrassing, and not strictly necessary.'

Trist passed out of the small room into a long passage, and thence into what was technically called the shop—a large apartment, across which stretched a heavily-built deal counter, and of which the atmosphere was warm with the intellectual odour of printing-ink.

The door-keeper, who persisted, in face of contradiction, in his conviction that Mr. Trist was a soldier, drew himself stiffly up and saluted as he held open the swing-door. It was one of those cold blustering days which come in early November. A dry biting south-east wind howled round every corner, and disfigured most physiognomies with patches of red, more especially in the nasal regions. Nevertheless, the air was clear and brisk—just the day to kill weak folks and make strong people feel stronger.

With his gloved hands buried in the pockets of his thick coat, the war-correspondent wandered along the crowded pavement of the Strand, rubbing shoulders with beggar and genius indifferently.

He was not a man much given to useless reflections or observations upon matters climatic, and so absorbed was he in his thoughts that he would have been profoundly surprised to learn that a biting east wind was withering up humanity. He looked into the shops, and presently became really interested in a display of rifles exposed in the unpretending window of a small establishment.

It is strange how the sight of those tools or instruments with which we have at one time worked for our living affects us. The present writer has seen an old soldier handle a bayonet in a curious reflective way which could not be misunderstood. The ancient warrior's face, in some subtle sense, became hardened, and his manner changed. I myself grasp a rope differently from men who have never trodden a moss-grown deck, and the curve of the hard strands within my fingers tells a tale of its own, and brings back, suddenly, ineffaceable pictures of the great seas.

Theodore Trist stood still before the upright burnished barrels which the poet has likened to organ-pipes, and to his mind there came the memory of their music, and the roar of traffic round him was almost merged into the grand, deep voice of cannon. It is in the midst of death that men realize fully the glorious gift of life, and those who have known the delirious joy of battle—have once tasted, as it were, the cup of life's greatest emotion—are aware that nothing but a battle-field can bring that maddening taste to their lips again.

This contemplative man breathed harder and deeper as his eyes rested on lock and barrel, and for some time he stood hearing nothing round him, seeing nothing but the instruments of death.

'Yes,' he murmured as he turned away at length. 'I must go to the Russian war. One more campaign, and then ... then who knows?'

CHAPTER X.

A PROBLEM.

Brenda left Mrs. Wylie at eleven o'clock, merely walking away from the door of Suffolk Mansions without wrap or luggage. She did not know whether she was being watched or no, but her plans were so simple, and yet so cunning, that the question gave her little trouble. Detection was impossible. Trist had seen to that, and his strategy had been the subject of some subdued laughter the night before, because Brenda complained that she felt like an army. He had unconsciously dictated to her, in his soft, suggestive way, and so complete were his instructions, so abject the obedience demanded, that there was some cause for her laughing dissatisfaction. With intelligence, education, experience, reading, and money it is no difficult matter to evade the closest watcher, and Trist was not at all afraid of such means as lay at Captain Huston's disposal for tracing the hiding-place of his wife.

When Mrs. Wylie found herself left alone, she proceeded placidly to await further events. She was convinced that, sooner or later, the husband of her protégée would appear. Whether this questionable honour would be conferred with bluster and righteous indignation, or with abject self-abuse, remained to be seen. Neither prospect appeared to have the power of ruffling the lady's serene humour. The morning newspaper received its usual attention, and subsequently there were some new books to be cut and glanced at. Lunch had already been ordered—lunch for two, and something rather nice, because Theo Trist had invited himself to partake of the lone widow's hospitality.

In her small way, Mrs. Wylie was likely to pass an eventful day, but the thought of it in nowise took away her interest in December's Temple Bar. She was one of those happy and lovable women who are not in the habit of adding to their grievances by anticipating them; for it is an undeniable fact that sorrows as well as joys are exaggerated by anticipation. Personally, I much prefer going out to get my hair cut as soon as ever I realize the necessity. It is a mistake to put off the operation, because the scissors seem to hang over one's luxuriant locks with a fiendish click during the stilly hours.

About twelve o'clock there was a knock at the door which shut off Mrs. Wylie's comfortable suite of rooms from the rest of the house.

'Ah!' murmured the occupant of the drawing-room. 'Our violent friend. Twelve o'clock: I must get him out of the house before Theo arrives.'

She leant back and tapped the pages of her magazine pensively with an ivory paper-cutter, while her eyes rested on the door.

In the course of a few moments there was audible the sound of murmuring voices, followed shortly by footsteps.

The door was thrown open, and William Hicks made a graceful entrée, finished, as it were, by the delicately-tinted flower he carried in his gloved fingers.

Mrs. Wylie rose at once with a most reprehensively deceitful smile of welcome. She devoutly wished William Hicks in other parts as she offered her plump white hand to his grasp.

The artist, with passable dissimulation, glanced round the room. No sign or vestige of Brenda! The rose was deftly dropped into his hat and set aside. It had cost two shillings.

'Ah! Mrs. Wylie,' he exclaimed, 'I was half afraid you would be out shopping. The wind is simply excruciating.'

'Then warm yourself at once. I am afraid I am alone.'

Hicks was, in his way, a bold man. He relied thoroughly upon a virtue of his own which he was pleased to call tact—others said its right name was 'cheek.'

'Afraid!' he said reproachfully, and with an inquiring smile.

'Yes—the girls are out.'

He laughed in a pleasant deprecating way, and held his slim hands towards the fire.

'How absurd you are!' he said. 'I merely ran in to ask if a lace handkerchief I found last night belonged to Miss Gilholme.'

He began to fumble in his pockets without any great design of finding the handkerchief. Mrs. Wylie spared him the trouble of going farther.'

'Bring it another time,' she said.

She knew the handkerchief trick well. It is very simple, my brother: pick up a lace trifle anywhere about the ballroom, and with a slight draft upon your imagination, you have a graceful excuse to call at any house you may desire the next afternoon. If there is not one to be found, one can easily buy such a thing, and it serves for years. No young man is complete without it.

For some minutes William Hicks talked airily about the soirée of the Ancient Artists, throwing in here and there, in his pleasant way, a blast upon his individual instrument, of which the note was wearily familiar to his listener.

At last, however, he let fall an observation which made Mrs. Wylie forgive him, 'à un coup,' his early call.

'I met,' he said casually, 'that fellow ... Huston this morning.'

Mrs. Wylie laid aside the paper-knife with which she had been trifling. The action scarce required a moment of time, but in that moment she had collected her faculties, and was ready for him with all the alertness of her sex.

'Ah! What news had he?' she inquired suavely.

'Oh, nothing much. We scarcely spoke—indeed, I don't believe he recognised me at first.'

Mrs. Wylie raised her eyebrows in astonishment.

'He came yesterday,' she said, 'to get his wife; and Brenda has gone away, too, so I am all alone for a few days.'

This was artistic, and the good lady was mentally patting herself on the back as she met Hicks's glance, in which disappointment and utter amazement were struggling for mastery.

'I do not think,' continued she calmly, 'that I shall stay in town much longer. I am expecting a houseful of quiet people—waifs and strays—at Wyl's Hall at Christmas, so must really think of going home. But I will call on your mother before going. Give her my love and tell her so.'

William Hicks was not the man to make a social blunder. He rose at once, and said 'Good-morning,' with his sweetest smile. Then he bowed himself out of the room, taking the two-shilling rose with him.

Mrs. Wylie reseated herself, and withheld her sigh of relief until the door had closed. She then took up her book again, but presently closed its pages over her fingers, and lapsed into thought.

'That young man,' she reflected, 'is finding his own level. He may give trouble yet; but Brenda goes serenely on her way, quite unconscious of all these little games at cross-purposes of which she is the centre.'

The good lady's reflections continued in this vein. She leant back with that pleasant sense of comfort which was almost feline in its supple grace. Her eyes contracted at times with a vague far-off anxiety—the reflex, as it were, of the sorrows of others upon her own placid life, from which all direct emotions were weeded now.

When, at length, the sound of a bell awoke her from these day-dreams, she rose and arranged the cheery fireplace with a sudden access of energy.

'I wonder,' she murmured, without emotion, 'who is coming now.'

With a glance round the room to see that her stage was prepared, she reseated herself.

Again the door opened, and this time the new arrival did not hurry into the room, but stood upon the threshold waiting. Mrs. Wylie looked up with a pleasant expectancy. It was Captain Huston.

The soldier glanced round the room uneasily, and then he advanced towards the fire without attempting any sort of greeting. Mrs. Wylie remained in her deep chair, and as the Captain came towards her, she watched him. His unsteady hands gave his hat no rest. Taking his stand on the hearthrug, he began at once in a husky voice.

'I have come to you, Mrs. Wylie,' he said, 'because I suspect that you know where Alice is to be found. This game of hide-and-seek to which she is treating me is hardly dignified, and it is distinctly senseless. If I choose to take decided steps in the matter, I can, of course, have her hunted down like a common malefactor.'

He spread his gaitered feet apart, and waited with confidence the result of this shot.

'In the meantime,' suggested Mrs. Wylie, with unruffled sweetness, 'it is really, perhaps, wiser that you should remain apart. I sincerely trust that this is a mere temporary misunderstanding. You are both young, and, I suppose, both hasty. Think over it, Captain Huston, and do not press matters too much. If, in a short time, you approach Alice with a few kind little apologies, I believe she would relent. You must really be less hard on us women—make some allowance for our more tender nerves and silly susceptibilities.'

By way of reply, he laughed in a rasping way, without, however, being actually rude.

'I have an indistinct recollection of having heard that before,' he observed, with forced cynicism, 'or something of a similar nature. The kind little apologies you mention are due to me as much as they are to Alice. Of course, she has omitted to draw your attention to sundry little flirtations...'

The widow stopped him with a quick gesture of disgust.

'I refuse,' she said deliberately, 'to listen to details. Alice will tell you that I treated her in the same way. These matters, Captain Huston, should be sacred between husband and wife.'

'Well, I suppose you have Alice's story through Brenda? It comes to the same thing. I can see you are prejudiced against me.'

Mrs. Wylie smiled patiently, with a suggestion of sympathy, which her companion seemed to appreciate.

'The world,' she said, 'is sure to be prejudiced against you in the present case. You must remember that the moral code is different for a pretty woman than for the rest of us. Moreover, the husband is blamed in preference, because people attribute the original mistake of marrying to him. I don't say that men are always to blame for mistaken marriages, but the initiative is popularly supposed to lie in their hands.'

Captain Huston tugged at his drooping moustache pensively. He walked to the window, with the assurance of one who knew his way amidst the furniture, and stood for some time looking down into the street. Presently he returned, avoiding Mrs. Wylie's eyes; but she saw his face, and her own grew suddenly very sympathetic.

He played nervously with the ornaments upon the mantelpiece for some moments, deeply immersed in thought. There was a chair drawn forward to the fire, at the opposite end of the fur hearthrug to that occupied by Mrs. Wylie. This he took, sitting hopelessly with his idle hands hanging at either side.

'What am I to do?' he asked, half cynically.

Before replying, the widow looked at him—gauging him.

'Do you really mean that?'

'Of course—I am helpless. A man is no match for three women.'

'To begin with, you must have more faith in other people. In myself ... Brenda ... Theo Trist.'

The last name was uttered with some significance. Its effect was startling. Huston's bloodshot eyes flashed angrily, his limp fingers clenched and writhed until the skin gave forth a creaking sound as of dry leather.

'D—n Trist!' he exclaimed. 'I will shoot him if he comes across my path!'

Mrs. Wylie did not shriek or faint, as ladies are usually supposed to do when men give way to violent language in their presence. But there came into her eyes a slight passing shade of anxiety, which she suppressed with an effort.

'But first of all,' she said, 'you must learn to restrain yourself. You must understand that bluster of any description is quite useless against myself or Theo. Alice may be afraid, but Brenda is not; and with Alice fear is closely linked with disgust. Do not forget that.'

She spoke quite calmly, with a force which a casual observer would not have anticipated. In her eagerness she leant forward, with a warning hand outstretched.

'And,' he muttered, 'I suppose I am to suppress all my feelings, and go about the world like a marble statue. It seems to me that that fellow Trist leaves his impression on you all. His doctrine is imperturbability at any price. It isn't mine!'

'Nor mine, Captain Huston. All I preach is a little more restraint. Theo goes too far, and his reticence leads to mistakes. You have been misled. You think that ... your wife and Theo Trist ... love each other.'

The soldier looked at her steadily, his weak nether lip quivering with excitement. Then he slowly nodded his head.

'That—is my impression.'

Mrs. Wylie evinced no hurry, no eagerness now. She had difficult cards, and her full attention was given to playing them skilfully. She leant back again in her comfortable chair, and crossed her hands upon her lap.

'Using primary argument,' she said concisely, 'and meeting opinion with opinion, I contend that you are mistaken. I will be perfectly frank with you, Captain Huston, because you have a certain claim upon my honesty. In some ways Alice is a weak woman. It has been her misfortune to be brought up and launched upon society as a beauty; a man who marries such a woman is assuming a responsibility which demands special qualifications. Judging from what I have observed, I am very much afraid that you possess these qualifications in but a small degree. Do you follow me?'

The man smiled in an awkward way.

'Yes. You were going to say, "I told you so."'

'That,' returned the widow, 'is a remark I never make, because it is profitless. Moreover, it would not be true, because I never told you so. Circumstances have in a measure been against you. You could scarcely have chosen a more dangerous part of the world in which to begin your married life than Ceylon. As it happens, you did not choose, but it was forced upon you. In England we live differently. A young married woman is thrown more exclusively upon the society of her husband; there is less temptation. You will find it less difficult...'

'Is married life to be described as a difficulty?' he interrupted.

Mr. Wylie did not reply at once. She sat with placidly crossed hands gazing into the fire. There was a slight tension in the lines of her mouth.

'Life,' she replied, 'in any form, in any sphere, in any circumstances, is a difficulty.'

After a moment she resumed in a more practical tone:

'Again, Alice is scarcely the woman to make a soldier's wife in times of peace. War ... would bring out her good points.'

Huston moved restlessly. Mrs. Wylie turned her soft gray eyes towards his face, and across her sympathetic features there passed an expression of real pain. She had divined his next words before his lips framed them.

'I am not a soldier, Mrs. Wylie.'

'Resigned...?' she whispered.

'No; turned out.'

Unconsciously she was swaying backwards and forwards a little, as if in lamentation, while she rubbed one hand over the other.

'Drink,' continued Huston harshly; '... drink, and Alice drove me to it.'

There was a long silence in the room after this. The glowing fire creaked and crackled at times; occasionally a cinder fell with considerable clatter into the fender, but neither of these people moved. At last Mrs. Wylie looked up.

'Captain Huston,' she said pleadingly.

'Yes.'

He looked across, and saw the tears quivering on her lashes.

'Come back to me to-morrow morning,' was her prayer. 'I cannot ... I cannot advise you yet ... because I do not quite understand. Theo Trist is coming to lunch to-day. Will you come back to-morrow?'

'I will,' he answered simply, and left the room.

CHAPTER XI.

MRS. WYLIE LEADS.

As Theodore Trist mounted the broad bare staircase of Suffolk Mansions, his quick ears detected the sound of Mrs. Wylie's door being drawn forcibly to behind departing footsteps.

He continued his way without increase of speed. The person whose descent was audible came slowly to meet him, and in a few moments they were face to face upon a small stone-paved landing.

Neither departed from the unwritten code by which Englishmen regulate their actions; they merely stared at each other. Trist was unchanged, except for a slight heaviness in build—the additional weight, one might call it, of years and experience; but Huston was sadly altered since these two had met beneath a Southern sky. Both were conscious of a sudden recollection of sandy plain and camp environments, and Huston changed colour slightly, or, to be more correct, he lost colour, and his eyes wavered. He was painfully conscious of his disadvantage in this trifling matter of appearance, and he had reason to remember with dread the ruthless penetration of the calm soft eyes fixed upon him. Years before he had suspected that Theodore Trist was cognizant of a trifling fact which had at times suggested itself to him—namely, that, despite braided coat and bright sword, despite Queen's commission and Sandhurst, he, Alfred Woodruff Charles Huston, was no soldier.

Each looked at the other with the hesitation of men who, meeting, recognise a face, and half await a greeting of some description. In a moment it was too late, and they passed on—one upstairs, the other down, with unconscious symbolism—having exchanged nothing more than that expectant, hesitating stare of mutual recognition and mutual curiosity.

Each was at heart a gentleman, and under other circumstances, in the presence of a third person, or with the view of sparing a hostess anxiety, they would undoubtedly have shaken hands. But here, beneath the eye of none but their God (who, in His wisdom, has purposely planted a tiny seed of divergence in our hearts), they saw no cause for acting that which could, at its best, have been nothing but a semi-truth.

When Trist greeted Mrs. Wylie a few moments later, he detected her glance of anxiety; but it was against his strange principles to take the initiative, so he waited until she might speak.

After a few commonplaces dexterously handled, she suddenly changed her tone.

'Theo,' she said with that abruptness which invariably follows after hesitation on the brink of a difficult subject, 'there was a man in this room ten minutes ago who announced his fixed determination of shooting you the very next time you crossed his path.'

The war-correspondent shrugged his shoulders, and turning sharply round, he kicked under the grate a small smoking cinder which had fallen far out into the fender.

'That man's statements, whether in regard to things past or things future, should be accepted with caution.'

'Then you met him on the stairs?'

'Yes; I met him on the stairs....'

'And...'

'And he did not shoot,' said Trist with a short laugh as he turned and faced Mrs. Wylie.

Then he did a somewhat remarkable thing—remarkable, that is, for a man who never gave way to a display of the slightest emotion, demonstrating either sorrow or joy, hatred or affection. He took Mrs. Wylie's two hands within his, and forced her to sit in the deep basket-work chair near the fire with its back towards the window.

Standing before her with his hands thrust into the pockets of his short serge jacket, he looked down at her with quizzical affection.

'Some months ago,' he said, 'we made a contract; you are breaking that contract, unless I am very much mistaken. You have allowed yourself to be anxious about me—is that not so?'

The widow smiled bravely up into the grave young face.

'I am afraid,' she began, '...yes, I am afraid you are right. But the anxiety was not wholly on your account.'

Trist turned slowly away. The movement was an excess of caution, for his face was always impenetrable.

'Ah!' he murmured.

'I am very anxious about Alice and Brenda.'

'Ah!' he murmured again, with additional sympathy.

She did not proceed at once, so he leant back in the chair he had assumed, and waited with that peculiar patience which seemed to belong to Eastern lands, and which has been noticed before.

'Theo,' she said at last, 'has it never struck you that your position with regard to those two girls is—to say the least of it—peculiar?'

'From a social point of view?'

'Yes.'

'If,' he said in a louder tone, on his defence, as it were, 'I were constantly at home, society might have something to say about it. But, as it happens, I am never long in London, and consequently fail to occupy that prominent position in the public esteem or dislike to which my talents undoubtedly entitle me.'

'Fortunately, gossip has not been rife about it.'

'Partly by good fortune, and partly by good management,' corrected Trist. 'With a little care, society is easily managed.'

'A tiger is easily managed, but its humours cannot be foretold.'

This statement was allowed to pass unchallenged, and before the silence was again broken, a servant announced that luncheon was ready. Mrs. Wylie led the way, and Trist followed. They were both rather absorbed during the dainty repast, and conversation was less interesting than the parlour-maid could have wished.

Had Trist been less honest, he could have thrown off this sense of guilt which weighed upon him. Like most reserved men, he was perhaps credited with a more versatile intellect than he really possessed. In his special line he was unrivalled, but that line was essentially manly, and the finesse it required was of a masculine order. That is to say, it was more straightforward, more honest, and less courageous, than the natural and instinctive finesse of a woman. This vague struggle with an over-susceptible conscience handicapped Trist seriously during the tête-à-tête meal, and rendered his conversation very dull. He was quite conscious of this, and the effort he made to remedy the defect was hardly successful. Men of his type—that is, men of a self-contained, self-reasoning nature—are too ready to consider themselves of that heavy material which forms the solid background of social intercourse. Their very virtues, such as steadfastness, coolness, complete self-reliance, are calculated to prevent their shining in conversation, or in the lighter social amenities. A little conversational impulse is required, a gay lightness of touch, and an easy divergence from opinions previously hazarded, in order to please the average listener; but these were sadly wanting in Theodore Trist.

He was merely a strong, thoughtful man, who could think and reason quickly enough when such speed was necessary, but as a rule he preferred a slower and surer method. He was ready enough to proffer an opinion when such was really in demand, and once spoken, this would change in no way. It was the result of thought, and he forbore to uphold a conviction by argument. Argument and thought have little in common. One is froth drifting before the wind, the other a deep stream running always. Trist held fixed opinions about most things, but it was part of his self-reliant and self-sufficing nature to take no pleasure whatever in convincing others that the opinion was valuable. If men chose to think otherwise, he tacitly recognised their right to do so, and left them in peace. Although he held certain doctrines upon the better or worse ways of getting through the span of a human life creditably, he was singularly averse to airing them in any manner.

Now, Mrs. Wylie, in her keen womanliness, knew very well how to deal with this man. She was quite aware that there was, behind his silent 'laisser-aller,' a clearly-defined plan of campaign, a cut-and-dried theory or doctrine upon which his most trifling action was based. There was an object aimed at, and perhaps gained, in his every word. If Theodore Trist was a born strategist (of which I am firmly convinced), and carried his principles of warfare into the bitter strife of every-day existence, he had in Mrs. Wylie an ally or a foe, as the case might be, whose manœuvres were worthy of his regard.

She possessed a woman's intuitive judgment, brightened, as it were, and rendered keener, by the friction of a busy lifetime; and added to this, she was in the habit of acting more spontaneously, and perhaps with a greater recklessness, than came within Trist's mental compass. These were her more womanly qualities, but her character had been influenced through many years by the manly, upright nature of her husband, and it was from him that she had acquired her rare doctrine of non-interference. In woman's weaker nature there is a lamentable failing to which can be attributed a large portion of the sorrows to which the sex is liable. This is an utter inability to refrain from adding a spoke to every wheel that may roll by. Interference—silly, unjustifiable interference—in the affairs of others is woman's vice. She can no more keep her fingers out of other people's savoury pies than a cat can keep away from the succulent products of Yarmouth. It has been said by cynical people that a woman cannot keep a secret, but that is a mistake. If it be her own, she can keep it remarkably well; but if it be the property of someone else, she appears to consider it as a loan which must not be allowed to accrue interest. I have tried the effect of imparting to a woman whom it affected but slightly, and to a man whose life would be altered in some degree by it, a piece of news under the bond of secrecy—a bond which expired at a given date. The man held his peace and went on his way through life unaffected, untroubled by the knowledge he possessed. I studied him at moments when a glance or a word might have betrayed to observant eyes the fact that he was in possession of certain information. He looked at me calmly, and with no dangerous glance of intelligence, subsequently talking in a manly, honest way which was in no degree a connivance at criminal suppression. The date given had not yet arrived, but the knowledge was fresh in his mind, and he treated the matter in an honourable, business-like way. I knew that my secret was buried in that man's brain as in a sepulchre.

The woman was uneasy. I could see that the secret oppressed her. She chafed at the thought that the date mentioned was still a long way ahead. She longed to talk of the matter to me, with a view, no doubt, of craving permission to tell one person, who would certainly not repeat it. By glance or significant silence she courted betrayal; and at one time she even urged me to impart the news to a mutual friend, in order, I take it, to form a channel or an outlet for her cooped-up volume of thought. Finally, I discovered that she had forestalled the date, by writing to friends at a distance, who actually received the letters before the day, but were unable to reissue the news in time to incriminate her.

It would appear that the same characteristic defect applies to the retention of a secret as to the restraint from interference. Perhaps it is a weakness, not a vice. Mrs. Wylie never sought confidences, as women, by nature unable to retain secrets, are prone to do. Her doctrine of non-interference went so far as to embrace the small matter of passing details. She placed entire reliance in Theodore Trist, and although his behaviour puzzled her, she refrained from asking an explanation of even the smallest act. She was content that his leading motive could only be good, and therefore felt no great thirst to know the meaning of his minor actions.

The cynical-minded may opine that I am describing an impossible woman. The fault is due to this halting pen. I once drew a woman who herself recognised the portrait—a critic said that the character was impossible and unnatural.

Mrs. Wylie was very natural and very womanly, after all. She had almost forced Theo Trist to invite himself to lunch, and her anxiety respecting Alice and Brenda had been made clear to him at once. She would not interfere; but she could not surely have been expected to refrain from suggesting to him that the world and the world's opinion, if of no value to him, could not be ignored by two motherless women.

She placed before him her views upon the matter, and then she proceeded to shelve the subject; but Trist failed to help her in this, contrary to her expectation. He was distinctly dull during luncheon, and made no attempt to disguise his preoccupation. Mrs. Wylie nibbled a biscuit while he was removing the outer rind of his cheese with absurd care, and waited patiently for him to say that which was undoubtedly on his lips.

The maid had left the room; there was no fear of interruption. Trist continued to amuse himself for some moments with a minute morsel of Gorgonzola; then he looked up, unconsciously trying the temper of his knife upon the plate while he spoke.

'I had,' he said, 'an interview with my chief this morning.'

'Ah! Sir Edward, you mean?'

'Yes,' slowly, 'Sir Edward.'

Mrs. Wylie saw that she was expected to ask a question in order to keep the ball rolling.

'What about?' she inquired pleasantly.

'I informed him that I proposed burying the hatchet.'

'You are not going to give up active service!' exclaimed Mrs. Wylie in astonishment.

'I promised to go to one more campaign—the Russo-Turkish—which will come on in the spring, and after that I shall follow the paths of peace.'

Mrs. Wylie rolled up her table-napkin, and inserted it meditatively into an ancient silver ring several sizes too large for it.

'I used to think,' she murmured, 'that you would never follow the ways of peace.' Then she looked across the table into his face with that indescribable contraction of the eyes which sometimes came even when her lips were smiling.

'I am not quite sure of you now, Theo,' she added gently, as she rose and led the way towards the door.

Trist reached the handle before her, and held the door open with that unostentatious politeness of his which made him different from the general run of society young men. As she passed, he smiled reassuringly, and said in his monotonous way:

'I am quite sure of myself.'

'Not too sure?' she inquired over her shoulder.

'No.'

In the drawing-room he succumbed to his hostess's Bohemian persuasions, and lighted a cigarette. He seemed to have forgotten his own affairs.

'About Alice,' he began—'que faire?'

For some reason Mrs. Wylie avoided meeting his glance.

'I told Alfred Huston,' she replied, after a pause, 'that I would communicate with Alice, and that I had hopes of their living happily together yet.'

Her tone was eminently practical and business-like. Trist answered in the same way.

'I told Alice,' he said cheerily, 'that I would ask you to communicate with Huston, with the view of coming to some definite arrangement. Hide-and-seek is a slow game after a time.'

'What sort of arrangement?'

'Well ... I suggested that he should agree to leave her unmolested for a certain time, during which she could think over it.'

Mrs. Wylie's smile was a trifle wan and uncertain.

'In fact, you made the best of it?'

'Yes. What else could I do?'

The widow looked at him keenly. It was hard to believe in disinterestedness like this; and it is a very human failing to doubt disinterestedness of any description.

'I told Alfred Huston,' she said disconnectedly, 'that I trusted you to do your honest best for all concerned in this matter.'

'Which statement Huston politely declined to confirm, I should imagine.'

Mrs. Wylie shrugged her shoulders. Denial was evidently out of the question.

'Then my name was brought in?' asked Trist in a peculiar way.

'Yes.'

'By whom?'

'By me. It would have been worse than useless, Theo, to have attempted ignorance of your influence over the girls.'

For a second time Trist avoided meeting his companion's glance.

'I told Sir Edward,' he said, after a considerable space of time, 'that I must be allowed to remain in England for some time to come; it seems to me that I should have done better had I asked to be sent away on active service without delay.'

'I should hardly go so far as to say that, Theo,' remarked Mrs. Wylie placidly; 'but I think you must be very careful. I only want to call your attention to the light in which your help is likely to appear in the eyes of the world.'

'You have no...'—he hesitated before saying the word 'man,' but his listener gave a little quick nod as if to help him—'man to help you, except me; and it seems better that there should be someone whom you can play, as it were, against Huston's stronger cards—someone of whom he is afraid.'

'Yes,' replied the lady with an affectionate smile; 'I quite understand your meaning; and I think you are right, although Alfred Huston is not an alarming person: he is very weak.'

'When he is sober,' suggested Trist significantly.

The sailor's widow was too brave a woman to be frightened by this insinuation, of which she took absolutely no notice.

'And,' she continued, 'I am convinced that this reconciliation is more likely to be brought about if it is left entirely in my hands. Your influence, however subtle, will be detected by Alfred Huston, and the result will be disastrous. Unless ... unless...'

She stopped in a vague way, and moved restlessly.

'Unless what?'

'Unless you go to Alfred Huston and convince him by some means that there is no love between you and Alice.'

The laughter with which he greeted this suggestion was a masterpiece of easy nonchalance—deep, melodious, and natural; but somehow Mrs. Wylie failed to join in it.

'No,' he said; 'that would not do. If Alice and I went together, and took all sorts of solemn affidavits, I doubt whether Huston would be any more satisfied than he is at present. The only method practicable is for me to hold myself in reserve, while you manage this affair.'

He had risen during this speech, and now held out his hand.

'I have an appointment at the Army and Navy,' he said, 'and must ask you to excuse me if I run away.'

Mrs. Wylie was left in her own drawing-room nonplussed. She gazed at the door which had just closed behind her incomprehensible guest with mild astonishment.

'That,' she reflected, 'is the first time that I have seen Theo have recourse to retreat.'

CHAPTER XII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEA.

It very often happens that the so-called equinoctial gales are behind their time, and do not arrive until Night has undoubtedly made good her victory over Day. When such is the case, we have a mild November, with soft south-westerly breezes varying in strength according to the lie of the land or the individual experience of farmer or townsman. At sea it blows hard enough in all good sooth, and there may be watery eyes at the wheel or on the forecastle; but there are no frozen fingers aloft, which is in itself a mercy. There is a good hearty roar through the shrouds, and certain parts of the deck are always wet, but the clear horizon and rushing clouds overhead are full of brave exhilaration.

On land, things are dirtier, more especially under foot, where the leaves lose all their crackle and subside odorously into mud. Water stands on the roadways, and in ruts elsewhere; and curled beech-leaves float thereon in vague navigation, half waterlogged like any foreign timber-ship. The tilled land, bearing in its bosom seed for next year's crops, or merely waiting fallow, is damp and soft and black; men walking thereon—rustic or sportsman—make huge impressions, and carry quite a weight on either foot. The trees stand bare and leafless, though rapid green mouldy growths relieve the wet monochrome of bark or rind.

Here, again, as at sea, the atmosphere is singularly gay and translucent. Things afar off seem near, and new details in the landscape become apparent. Any little bit of colour seems to gleam, almost to glow, and the greenness of the meadow is startling. Although there is an autumnal odour on the breeze, it has no sense of melancholy. The clouds may be gray, but they are fraught with life, and one knows that there is brightness behind. With motion, melancholy cannot live.

The effect of this soft breeziness upon different people is apparent to the most casual of observers. It freshens sailors up, and they pull on their oilskins with a cheery pugnacity; tillers of the land are busy, and wonder how long it will last; and hunting-men (provided only the land be not too heavy) are wild with a joy which has no rival in times of peace; timid riders grow bold, and bold men reckless. It is only folks who stay indoors that complain of depression. For myself, I confess it makes me long to be at sea, and although I can see nothing but sky and chimney-pots over the ink-stand, the very shades of colour, of dark and light, are before me if I close my eyes. It is a long rolling sweep of greeny gray, with here and there a tip of dirty white, and the line of horizon is hard and clear enough to please the veriest novice with the sextant.

In November, 1876, there were a few days of such weather as I have attempted to describe, and Brenda, who spent that time on the east coast of England, in a manner learnt to associate soft winds and clear airs with the much-maligned county of Suffolk. All through the rest of her life, through the long aimless years during which she learnt to love the verdant plains with their bare mud sea-walls, she only thought of Suffolk as connected with and forming part of soft autumnal melancholy. She never again listened to the wail of the sea-gull without involuntarily waiting for the cheery cry of the snipe. Never again did she look on a vast plain without experiencing a sense of incompleteness which could only have been dispelled by the murmurous voice of the sea breaking on to shingle.

The human mind is strangely inconsistent in its reception and retention of impressions. As in modern photography, the length of exposure seems to be of little consequence. Without any tangible reason, and for no obvious use, certain incidents remain engraved upon our memory, while the detail of other events infinitely more important passes away, and only the result remains.

Brenda and Alice only passed four days in the little hamlet selected for them by Theodore Trist as a safe hiding-place; but during that time a great new influence came into Brenda's soul.

She had always been sensitive to the beauties of Nature. A glorious landscape, a golden sunset, or the soft silver of moon-rise, had spoken to her in that silent language of Nature which appeals to the most prosaic heart at times; but never until now had one of earth's great wonders established a longing in her soul—a longing for its constant company which is naught else but passionate love. She had hitherto looked upon the sea as an inconvenience to be overcome before reaching other countries. Perhaps she was aware that this inconvenience possessed at times a charm, but not until now had she conceived it possible that she, Brenda Gilholme, should ever love it with an insatiable longing such as the love of sailors. On board the Hermione she had passed her apprenticeship; had, as the admiral was wont to say, learnt the ropes; but never had she loved the sea for its own grand incomprehensible sake as she loved it now.

Its gray mournful humours seemed to sympathize with her own thoughts. Its monotonous voice, rising and falling on the shingle shore, spoke in unmistakable language, and told of other things than mere earthly joys and sorrows.

I who write these lines learnt to love the sea many years ago, when I had naught else but water to look upon—from day to day, from morning till night, through the day and through the darkness, week after week, month after month. The love crept into my heart slowly and very surely, like the love of a boy, growing into manhood, for some little maiden growing by his side. And now, whether on its bosom or looking on it from the noisy shore, that love is as fresh as ever. The noise of breaking water thrills the man as it thrilled the boy—the smell of tar, even, makes me grave.

Men may love their own country, but the sea, with its ever-varying humours, kind and cruel by turn, exacts a fuller devotion. A woman once told me of her love for her native country. She happened to be a practical, prosaic, middle-aged woman of the world. We were seated on a gorgeous sofa in a blaze of artificial light, amidst artificial smiles, listening to the murmurs of artificial conversation. Something moved her; some word of mine fell into the well of her memory and set the still pool all rippling. I listened in silence. She spoke of Dartmoor, and I think I understood her. At the end I said:

'What Dartmoor is to you, the sea is to me;' and she smiled in a strange, sympathetic way.

That is the nearest approach that I have met of a love for land which is akin to the love of sea.

In Brenda's case, as in all, this new-found passion influenced her very nature. If love—love, I mean, of a woman—will alter a man's whole mode of life, of action, and of thought, surely these lesser passions leave their mark as well.

Undoubtedly the girl caught from the great sea some of its patient contentment; for the ocean is always content, whether it be glistening beneath a cloudless sky, or rolling, sweeping onwards before the wind in broad gray curves. Those who work upon the great waters are different from other men in the possession of a certain calm equanimity, which is like no other condition of mind. It is the philosophy of the sea.

At first Brenda had dreaded the thought of being imprisoned, as it were, in this tiny east coast fishing village with her sister. This was no outcome of a waning love, but rather a proof that her feelings towards her sister were as true and loyal as ever. She feared that Alice would lower herself in her sight. She dreaded the necessary tête-à-têtes because she felt that her sister's character had not improved, and could not well bear the searching light of a close familiarity.

After the first hour or two, however, the sisters appeared to settle down into a routine of life which in no way savoured of familiarity. The last two years had hopelessly severed them, and now that they were alone together the gulf seemed to widen between them.

Brenda was aware that some great change had come over her life or that of her sister. They no longer possessed a single taste or a single interest in common. Whether the fault lay entirely at her own door, or whether Alice were partially or wholly to blame, the girl did not attempt to decide. She merely felt that it would be simple hypocrisy to pretend a familiarity she did not feel. Yet she loved her sister, despite all. The tie of blood is strangely strong in some people; with others it is no link at all.

After an uncomfortable meal had been bravely sat out subsequent to Brenda's arrival, the younger sister announced her intention of going out for a long ramble down the coast. Alice complained that she had no energy, predicted that the dismal flat land and muddy sea were about to prove fatal to her health, and subsided into a yellow-backed novel. This was a fair sample of their life in exile.

Alice deluged her weak intellect with fiction of no particular merit, and Brenda learnt to love the sea. For her the bleak deserted shore, the long, low waves rolling in continuously, the dirty sweeping of sand-banks near the shore, and the endless fields of shingle, acquired a mournful beauty which few can find in such things.

Only once was reference made to Theodore Trist, and then the subject was tacitly tabooed, much to the relief of Brenda. This happened during the first evening of their joint exile. Doubtless a sudden fit of communicativeness came over Alice just as they come to the rest of us—at odd moments, without any particular raison d'être.

The miserable shuffling waiter had removed all traces of their simple evening meal, and Brenda was looking between the curtains across the sea, which shimmered beneath the rays of a great yellow moon. Alice had taken up her novel, but its pages had no interest for her just then. She had appropriated the only easy-chair in the room, and was leaning back against its worn leather stuffing with a discontented look upon her lovely face. Her small red mouth had acquired of late a peculiar 'set' expression, as if the lips were habitually pressed close with an effort.

'Theo,' she said, without looking towards the tall, slim form by the window, 'has changed.'

Brenda moved the curtain a little more to one side, so that the old wooden rings rattled on the pole. Then she leant her shoulder against the framework of the window, and turned her face towards the firelight. Her gentle gaze rested on the beautiful form gracefully reclining in the deep chair. She noted the easy repose of each limb, the proud poise of the golden head, and the clearcut profile showing white against the dingy background. There was no glamour in her eyes, such as would have blinded the judgment of nine men out of ten; but there was in its place the great tie of sisterly love.

Brenda, looking on that beauty, knew that it was the curse of her sister's life. Instead of envying her, she was mentally meting out pity and allowance.

'I suppose,' she said, without much encouragement in her manner, 'that we have all changed in one way or another.'

'But Theo has changed in more than one way.'

'Has he?'

'Yes. His manner is quite different from what it used to be; and he seems self-absorbed—less energetic, less sympathetic.'

Brenda did not answer at once. She turned slightly, and looked out of the window, resting her fingers upon the old wooden framework.

'You see,' she suggested, 'he has other interests in life now. He is a great man, and has ambition. It is only natural that he should be absorbed in his own affairs.'

Mrs. Huston raised her small foot, and rested the heel of her slipper on the brass fender, while she contemplated the diminutive limb with some satisfaction.

'I have met one or two great men,' she said meditatively, 'and I invariably found them very much like ordinary beings, rather less immersed in 'shop,' perhaps, and quite as interesting—not to say polite.'

Brenda winced.

'Was Theo not polite?'

'Hardly, my dear.'

As Mrs. Huston delivered herself of this opinion, with a faint tinge of bitterness in her manner, she turned and looked towards her sister, as if challenging her to attempt a palliation of Trist's conduct.

Brenda neither moved nor spoke. The moonlight, flooding through the diamond panes of the window, made her face look pale and wan. There were deep shadows about her lips. Without, upon the shingle, the sea boomed continuously with a low, dreamlike hopelessness.

I wish I were a great artist, to be able to paint a picture of that small parlour in an east coast village inn. But there would be a greater skill required than the mere technicalities of art. These would be needed to deal successfully with the cross-lights of utterly different hues—the cold, green-tinted moonlight, the ruddy glow of burning driftwood washed from the deck of some Baltic trader; and the reflection of each in turn upon quaint old bureaux, bright with the polish of half a dozen generations; gleaming upon Indian curio, and shimmering over the glass of dim engravings. All this would require infinite skill; but no brush or pencil could convey the old-day mournfulness that seemed to hang in the atmosphere. Perhaps it found birth in the murmuring rise and fall of restless waves, or in the flicker of the fire, in the quick crackle of the sodden wood. My picture should be called 'The Contrast,' and in the gloom of the low ceiling I should bring out with loving care two graceful forms—two lovely faces.

The one—the more beautiful—in all the rosiness of young life, glowing in the firelight. The other, pale and wan, with an exquisite beauty, delicate and yet strong, resolute and yet refined. Of two working in the field, one is taken, the other remaineth. Around us are many workers, and of every two we look upon, one seems to have the preference. One has greater joy, the other greater sorrow; and, strive as we will, think as we will, argue as we will, we can never tell 'why.' We can never satisfy that great question of the human mind. Life has been called many things: I can express it in less than a word—in a mere symbol—?—a note of interrogation, the largest at the compositor's command.

In this great field of ours, where we all work blindly, many are taken, and many left. Moreover, those who would wish to go remain, and those who cling to work are taken. She who grindeth best passeth first.

Brenda never answered her sister's challenge. She turned her eyes away, facing the cold moonlight, staring at the silver sea with eyes that saw no beauty there.

'O God!' she whispered, glancing upwards into the glowing heavens with that instinct which comes alike to pagan and Christian, 'send a great war, so that Theo may go to it.'

CHAPTER XIII.

CROSS-PURPOSES.

Mrs. Wylie had undertaken the task of reconciling Alice Huston and her husband without any great hope of success. The widow's married life had been an exceptionally happy one, but even in her case there had been small drawbacks, mostly arising, it is true, from the untoward work of fate, but, nevertheless, undoubted drawbacks, and undeniably appertaining to married life.

It would have been hard to find two people less calculated to assimilate satisfactorily than Alice and Alfred Huston; and yet there was love between them.

The weak-minded soldier undoubtedly loved his wife: as for her, it would be hard to give a reliable opinion. She was, I honestly believe, one of those beautiful women who go through life without ever knowing what love really is.

With another woman for his helpmate, Huston might reasonably have been expected to reform his ways. With another husband, Alice might have made a good and dutiful wife.

Assuredly the task that had fallen upon Mrs. Wylie's handsome shoulders was not overburdened with hope. She was, however, of an evenly sanguine temperament, and I think that it is such women as she who help us men along in life—women who trust for the best, and work for the best, without any high-flown ideals, without poetic notions respecting woman's influence and woman's aid; who, in fact, are desperately practical, and make a point of expecting less than they might reasonably get.

Mrs. Wylie was by no means ignorant of the fact that a reconciliation between such a couple as Mr. and Mrs. Huston was not calculated to be of a very permanent or deeply-rooted character; but she had lived a good many years in a grade of society which delights to watch the inner life of others. She had seen and heard of so many unsuitable matches, which, having been consummated, had proved the wonderful power of love. It is only the very young and inexperienced who shake their heads upon hearing of an engagement, and prophesy unhappiness. No man can tell to what end love is working. The wise are silent in such matters, because there are some mistakes which lead to good, and some wise actions of which the result is unmitigated woe.

The widow therefore held her peace, and set to work as if there could be but one result to her efforts. She communicated with Alice Huston in her hiding-place, with Captain Huston at the club of which he was still a member, and with Trist by word of mouth. Brenda was, so to speak, in the enemy's country. Her reports were therefore to be received, but no acknowledgment could be made. In this respect she was like a spy, because she was without instruction from headquarters, and, nevertheless, had to act and report her action.

Her first and, indeed, only communication reached Mrs. Wylie the morning after her interviews with Theo Trist and Captain Huston. It was only a few words scribbled on the back of a visiting card, and slipped into an envelope previously addressed and stamped:

'Whatever you do, keep Theo and Alice apart.'

Mrs. Wylie turned the card over and read the neatly-engraved name on the other side. Then she read the words aloud, slowly and thoughtfully, once more:

'Whatever you do, keep Theo and Alice apart.'

'Brenda knows,' reflected the practical woman of the world, 'that Huston is jealous of Theo. She also knows that I am quite aware of this jealousy. It would be unnecessary to warn me of it; therefore this means that Brenda has discovered a fresh reason.'

She broke off her meditations at this point by rising almost hurriedly, and walking to the window. For a considerable time she watched the passing traffic; then she returned to the fire-place.

'Poor Brenda!' she murmured—'my poor Brenda! And ... Alice is so silly!'

The connection between these two observations may be a trifle obscure to the ordinary halting male intellect; but I think I know what Mrs. Wylie meant.

Later on in the day she sent a note to Captain Huston, requesting him to come and see her, and by the same messenger despatched a few words to Theo Trist—her reserve force—forbidding him to come near.

'My reserves,' she said to herself as she closed the envelope energetically, 'are thus rendered useless; but Brenda is reliable. I must do as she tells me.'

Captain Huston received the widow's note at his club. It was only eleven o'clock, and, consequently, there was plenty of time before he need put in an appearance at Suffolk Mansions. He was an idle man, and, like all idle men, fond of lounging about the streets gazing abstractedly into shops, and getting generally into the way of such foot-passengers as might have an object in their walk.

There is no haven for loungers in London except Piccadilly in the morning, and to this spot the soldier turned his steps. After inspecting the wares of a sporting tailor, he was preparing to cross the road with a view of directing his course down St. James's Street, when someone touched him on the shoulder.

Huston turned with rather more alacrity than is usually displayed by a British gentleman with a clear conscience, and for some seconds gazed in a watery manner at a fair, insipid face, ornamented by a wondrous moustache. There was a peculiarity about this moustache worth mentioning. Although an essentially masculine adornment, it, in some subtle way, suggested effeminacy.

'Mr. ... eh ... Hicks,' murmured Huston vaguely, and without much interest.

Hicks forgave magnanimously this Philistine want of appreciation.

'Yes, Captain Huston. How are you?'

'I? ... Oh! I'm all right, thanks.'

There was a faint suggestion of movement about the soldier's left leg as if intimating a desire to continue on its way towards St. James's Street; but this was ignored by Hicks in his own inimitable way.

'I caught sight of you the other day,' he said graciously; 'and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Huston at Mrs. Wylie's.'

'Oh yes,' vaguely.

The soldier made a violent effort, pulled himself together, and stepped into the road. The artist stepped with him, and, furthermore, slipped his gloved hand within his companion's arm with a familiar ease which seemed to say that they would live or die together until the passage was safely accomplished.

'How is Mrs. Huston?' inquired he when they had reached the opposite pavement.

That lady's husband looked very stolid as he answered:

'Quite well, thanks.'

He mentally wriggled, poor fellow, and in sympathy his arm became lifeless and repelling. Hicks removed his hand from the unappreciative sleeve.

'Do you know,' he asked pleasantly, 'whether Trist happens to be in town?'

Huston began to feel uncomfortable. He was afraid of this society prig, and honestly wished to save his wife's name from the ready tongue of slander.

'I don't,' he answered abruptly—'why?'

This sudden question in no way disconcerted Hicks, who met the soldier's unsteady, and would-be severe, gaze with bland innocence.

'Because I happen to know a Russian artist who is very anxious to meet him, that is all.'

'Ah! I have seen him since I came home, but I could not say where he is now.'

If Hicks had been a really observant man (such as he devoutly considered himself to be), he would have noticed that his companion raised a gloved finger to his cheek, and tenderly pressed a slight abrasion visible still just on the bone in front of the ear.

'He is generally to be heard of,' said the artist in that innocently-significant tone which may mean much or nothing, according to the acuteness or foreknowledge of the listener, '... he is generally to be heard of at Suffolk Mansions. That is to say, when Brenda is staying there.'

Captain Huston's dull eyes were for a moment actually endowed with life. He stroked his drooping moustache, which was apparently placed there by a merciful Providence for purposes of justifiable concealment, and his moral attitude became visibly milder. He had just begun to realize that his own private affairs might not, after all, be of paramount importance to the whole of society.

'Is there,' he asked with military nonchalance, 'supposed to be something between Trist and Brenda?'

Hicks laughed, and, before replying, waved his hand gracefully to a friend in the stock-jobbing line, who had previously crossed the road in order to be recognised by him in passing.

'Oh no,' he answered cheerfully; 'I did not mean that at all. Now that I think of it, however, you were quite justified in taking it thus. They have always been great friends—that was all I meant. Their mothers were related, I believe.'

Captain Huston looked slightly disappointed. He did not, however, display such eagerness to walk either faster or slower, or in some other direction, now.

'Trist,' he observed as he opened his cigar-case sociably, 'is a queer fellow. Have a cigar?'

'Oh, I never smoke, you know—never. No, thanks.'

The captain grunted, and put his case back with a suppressed sigh. He had not known, but hoped. Then he waited for a reply to his leading and ambiguous remark.

'Yes,' mused Hicks at length; 'he is. I dined with him the night he left for the Servian frontier.'

This detail, interesting as it was, had but slight reference to the general characteristics of Theodore Trist. Huston tried again after he had lighted his cigar.

'One never knows where one has him.'

Hicks looked mildly sympathetic. He even gave the impression of being about to look in his pockets on the chance of finding the war-correspondent there.

'No; he is always on the move. I was once told that the Diplomatic Corps call him the Stormy Petrel, because he arrives before the hurricane.'

'And sits smiling on the top of the waves afterwards, while we poor devils sink,' added the soldier with a disagreeable laugh.

'He has not the reputation of being a coward,' said Hicks, who despised personal courage as a mere brute-like attribute.

The man of arms did not like the turn of the conversation.

'No; I believe not,' he said rather hurriedly, as if no man could be a coward. 'What I don't like about him is a certain air of mystery which he cultivates. It pleases the women, I suppose.'

'That,' suggested the other calmly, 'is probably part of his trade. If he talked much there would be nothing original left in him to write! All these diplomatic fellows get that peculiar reticence of manner—a sort of want of frankness, as it were. That is the great difference between art practised by the tongue, and art stimulated by the eye and created for the pleasure of the eye.'

Huston looked at the burning end of his cigar with bibulous concentration. He knew absolutely nothing about art, and cared less. It is just possible that, in his hideous ignorance, he doubted the purity of the pleasure vouchsafed by the pictorial productions of the artist at his side.

'We,' continued Hicks, with a deprecating wave of the hand, 'can always be frank. The bolder we are, the higher we aim, the ... eh ... the better.'

'Yes ... yes,' murmured Huston. 'But tell me—what made you think that Trist was out of town?'

'Oh, nothing!' airily. 'Nobody stays in town at this time of the year unless they can't help it; that is all! But I suppose these newspaper men hardly think of the seasons. They do not seem to realize the difference between summer and winter—between joyous spring and dismal autumn. I saw a man sketching the other day in a cold east wind on the Thames Embankment. He was only a "black and white" man, you know; but he seemed to know something about drawing. His fingers were blue.'

Like many weak-minded people, Alfred Huston was subject to sudden fits of obstinacy. He felt now that Hicks wished to lead him away from the subject originally under discussion, and in consequence was instigated by a sudden desire to talk and hear more of Theodore Trist.

'That is another thing,' he said, 'about Trist that I do not like. He pretends to despise personal discomfort. It is mere affectation, of course, and on that account, perhaps, all the more aggravating.'

'Carried away by enthusiasm, I suppose?'

The soldier laughed.

'Trist never was carried away by anything. He sits on a box of cartridges, and writes in that beastly note-book of his as if he were at a review. If all his countrymen were being slaughtered round him he would count them with his pencil and take a note of it.'

Hicks gave a few moments' careful attention to the curl of his moustache. Then he glanced curiously at his companion's vacant physiognomy. There was evidently some motive in this sudden attack on Trist. Both these men distrusted the war-correspondent, but were in no way prepared to test the value of that force which is said to arise from union. They distrusted each other more.

Presently they parted, each absorbed in his own selfish fears as before. Here, again, was Vanity and her hideous sister Jealousy. If one of these be not found at the bottom of all human misery, I think you will find the other. With these two men both motives were at work. Each was jealous of Trist, and neither would confess his jealousy to the other; while Vanity was wounded by the war-correspondent's simple silence. He ignored them, and for that they hated him. His own path was apparently mapped out in front of him, and he followed it without ostentation, without seeking comment or approbation.

William Hicks was, as Mrs. Wylie had said, finding his own level. He was beginning to come under the influence of a vague misgiving that his individuality was not such as commands the respect of the better sort of women. In his own circle he was a demi-god; but the gratification to be gathered from the worship of a number of weak-kneed uncomely ladies was beginning to pall. In fact, he had hitherto been intensely satisfied with the interesting creature called William Hicks; but now there was a tiny rift within the lute upon which he always played his own praises. He had not hitherto realized that man is scarcely created for the purpose of being worshipped by the weaker sex, and lately there had been in his mind a vague desire to be of greater account among his fellow-men. Of athletics, sport, or the more manly accomplishments he knew nothing; indeed, he had up to this period despised them as the pastime of creatures possessed of little or no intellect; now he was at times troubled by a haunting thought that it would have been as well had he been able to play lawn-tennis, to ride, or shoot, or row, or drive—or even walk ten miles at a stretch. This was not the outcome of any natural taste for healthy exercise, but a mere calculation that such accomplishments carry with them a certain weight with energetic and well-found young ladies. The curse of jealousy has a singular way of opening our eyes, mes frères, to sundry small shortcomings of which we were not aware before. When I saw Angelina, for instance, dance with young Lightfoot in former days, my own fantastic toes suddenly became conscious of clumsiness. Hicks was jealous of Theodore Trist, and while, in a half-hearted way, despising the sturdy philosopher's soldier-like manliness, he could not help feeling that Brenda Gilholme admired Trist for this same quality. He was fully satisfied that he was in every other way a superior man to the war-correspondent, although the latter had made a deep mark upon the road he had selected to travel; but he wished, nevertheless, that he himself could assume at times the quiet strength of independence that characterized Trist's thoughts and actions.

The young artist was celebrated in his own circle—that is to say, among a certain coterie of would-be artistic souls, whose talents ran more into words than into action. They admired each other aloud, and themselves with a silent adoration wonderful to behold. Most of them possessed sufficient means to live an idle, self-indulgent life in a small way. Such pleasures as they could not afford were conveniently voted unprofitable and earthly. They hung upon the outskirts of the best society, and were past-masters in the art of confusing the terms 'having met' and 'knowing' as applied to living celebrities. Among them were artists who had never exhibited a picture, authors who had never sold a book, and singers who had never faced an audience. The vulgar crowd failed to appreciate them, and those who painted and sold, wrote and published, sang and made money, tolerantly laughed at them. Hicks was clever enough to know that his mind was in reality of a slightly superior order, and weak enough to value its superiority much more highly than it deserved. He was undoubtedly a clever fellow in his way, but a moderate income and a doting mother had combined to kill in him that modicum of ambition which is required to make men push forward continuously in the race of life. Had he been compelled to work for his daily bread, he might have been saved from the clutches of London society; but as a rising young artist, with pleasant manners and some social accomplishments, he was received with open arms, and succumbed to the enervating round of so-called pleasure. He continued to be 'rising,' but never rose.

Hicks did not confess deliberately to himself that he was in love with Brenda Gilholme, but he made no pretence of ignoring the fact that she occupied in his thoughts a place quite apart. He respected her, and in that lay the great difference. The unkempt and strangely-attired damsels who were pleased to throw themselves mentally at his feet were not such as command respect. In his heart he despised them a little; for contempt is invariably incurred by affectation of any description.

And so each went on his way—the idle soldier, the vain artist, and the absorbed journalist, each framing his life for good or evil—pressing upward, or shuffling down, according to his bent; each, no doubt, peering ahead, as sailors peer through rime and mist, striving to penetrate the blessed veil drawn across the future. Ah! Let us, my brothers, thank God that, despite necromancer, astrologer, thought-reader, or chiromancer, we know absolutely nothing of what is waiting for us in the years to come. Could we raise that veil, life would be hell. Could we see the end of all our aims, our ambitions, our hopes, and our 'long, long thoughts,' there would be few of us courageous enough to go on with this strange experiment called human existence. Could we see the end, no faith, no dogma, no fanaticism even, would have power to prevent us questioning the existence of the Almighty, because we could never reconcile the beginning to that end. The question would rise before us continuously: 'If such was to be the end, why was the beginning made?' And turn this question as you will, explain it as you may, it is ever a question. The only safeguard is suppression. The question is not asked because life is so slow that the beginning is almost forgotten in the climax; and while we live through the earlier chapters, the last volume is inexorably closed.

CHAPTER XIV.

A SOCIAL CONSPIRACY.

About ten o'clock on the evening of the third day after the meeting with Captain Huston, William Hicks entered a large and crowded ball-room with his usual pleasant condescension.

The dance was of a semi-parliamentary character, and although the society papers were pleased to announce that all the 'best' people were out of town, there was a crowd of well-dressed men and women round the door when Hicks made his appearance. There were many greetings to be exchanged, a few diplomatic dances to be asked for, and then the artist leisurely stroked his golden moustache as he looked critically round the room.

His smiling face contracted into gravity for a moment, and it was only after a pause that he continued his investigations.

'Trist!' he murmured to himself. 'Trist here? What is the meaning of that? Is it war, I wonder? Or is Brenda coming? I will find out.'

Presently he moved away, and after some time joined a group of grave-faced elderly men, among whom Theo Trist was standing. There were politicians among these gentlemen, and several faces were of a distinctly foreign type, while more than one language could be heard. Hicks looked a trifle out of his element amidst such surroundings, and the foreign languages troubled him. No one looked towards him invitingly—not even Trist, who was talking with a broad-shouldered little man with a large head, and a peculiar listless manner which stamped him as an Oriental. Hicks did not even know what language they were speaking. It was not European in sound or intonation. Here and there he caught a word or a name.

Once he heard Trist mention the name of a Russian general then scarcely known. Though the pronunciation was rather different from that of most Englishmen, Hicks recognised the word 'Skobeleff,' and, glancing towards the smaller man, he saw upon his long, mournful features a singular look of uneasiness.

There was something fascinating about the man's face which attracted the artist's attention, and he stood gazing with a greater fixity than is usually considered polite. Without looking towards him, the Oriental was evidently aware of his attention, for he spoke to Trist, who turned with deliberate curiosity.

'Ah, Hicks!' he said, 'how do you do?'

Then he turned again to his unemotional companion and made a remark, which was received apathetically.

Hicks had not wished to make his advent so prominent. It now appeared as if he had sought out Trist for some special purpose, to make some important communication which could not brook delay.

Trist evidently read his action thus, for he left the group of statesmen and joined him. Hicks was equal to the occasion.

'You remember,' he said confidentially, as he touched his companion's sleeve and they walked down the room together—'you remember what I once told you about the Hustons?'

Trist's meek eyes rested upon the speaker's face with a persistence which was not encouraging to idle gossip.

'The night I left for Servia?' he inquired.

Hicks nodded his head.

'Yes. I remember.'

The artist paused, and his gloved fingers sought the beauteous moustache. Trist's calm eyes were not easy to meet. They were so unconsciously scrutinizing.

'Well, I saw Huston the other day,' he said at length. 'He has not improved in appearance. In fact, I should say that there is some truth in the story I repeated to you.'

There was no encouragement forthcoming, but Hicks was not lacking in assurance. He was a true son of the pavement—that is to say, an individual radical. His opinion was, in his own mind, worth that of Theodore Trist.

'There are,' he continued, 'other stories going about at present. Do you not think ... Trist ...—I mean, had we not better, for Brenda's sake, settle upon a certain version of the matter and stick to it? You and I, old fellow, are looked upon by the general world as something more than ordinary friends of Alice and Brenda. Mrs. Wylie is not going out just now. They have no one to stick up for them, except us. If you know more than you care to confess, I am sorry if I am forcing your hand....'

He paused again, and again his companion preserved that calm non-committing silence which he knew so well how to assume. He held a hand which could not have been forced by a player possessing ten times the power and ten times the cunning of William Hicks.

'But, Trist, I know what the London world is. Something must be done.'

Trist shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly.

'Silence,' continued Hicks significantly, 'in this case would be a mistake. I don't mind ... your knowing that it is not from mere curiosity that I am doing this. Brenda ... I want to save ... her ... from anything unpleasant.'

At this point Trist appeared to relent. It was not until afterwards that Hicks realized that he had learnt absolutely nothing from him.

'What do you think ought to be done?' he asked gently.

The question remained unanswered for some time, and then it was only met by another.

'Is Brenda coming to-night?'

'Yes.'

'And Alice?'

'No.'

They walked through the brilliant rooms together, each wondering what lay behind the eyes of the other, each striving to penetrate the thoughts of the other, to divine his motives, to reach his heart.

'I really think,' said Hicks at length, 'that it rests with you. You must say what is to be done, what story is to be told, what farce is to be acted. It seems to me that you know more about it than I do. Somehow I have lately dropped out of Mrs. Wylie's confidence, and ... and Brenda has not spoken to me about her sister.'

'But,' said Trist, 'I know nothing of what you refer to as the common gossip of ... of all these.'

He indicated the assembled multitude with a gesture which was scarcely complimentary. Hicks looked uncomfortable, and bit his red lip nervously.

'Don't be hard on us,' he pleaded with an unnatural laugh. 'I am one of them.'

'Tell me,' said Trist with a sudden gravity of manner, '... tell me what they are saying.'

'Well ... it is hardly fair to ask me.'

'Why?'

'Because you will not thank me for having told you. We ... we don't, as a rule, give the benefit of the doubt, you know.'

The elder man turned and looked at his companion with a slow smile.

'My dear Hicks,' he said, 'it is many years since I gave up caring what the world might say, or expecting the benefit of the doubt.'

'For yourself?'

'Yes; for myself. What do you mean?'

'I mean that they are not giving Alice the benefit of the doubt either.'

They happened just then to be near two chairs placed invitingly within an alcove by a soft-hearted hostess who had not yet forgotten her flirting-days.

'Let us sit down,' said Trist, indicating these chairs.

'Now,' he continued in a calm voice when they were seated, 'tell me what the world is saying about Alice.'

Hicks was not devoid of a certain moral courage, and for once in his life he was actuated by a motive which was not entirely selfish.

'They say,' he answered boldly, 'that she ran away from her husband to join you.'

To some natures there is a vague enjoyment in imparting bad news, and the dramatic points in this conversation were by no means lost to William Hicks, who was a born actor. His listener, however, received the news without the slightest indication of surprise or annoyance. He merely nodded his head and murmured:

'Yes; what else?'

'Oh ... nothing much—nothing, at least, that I have heard, except that Huston was supposed to have followed her home and caught her just in time. He is also said to have announced his intention of shooting you at the first convenient opportunity.'

Hicks ceased speaking, and waited for some exclamation of disgust, some heated denial or indignant proof of the utter falseness of the accusations made against Alice Huston. None of these was forthcoming. Theo Trist merely indicated his comprehension of the cruel words, and sat thinking. Beneath that calm exterior the man's brain was very busy, and as he raised his head with a slight pensive frown Hicks recognised for the first time the resemblance to the great Corsican which was currently attributed to the war-correspondent.

'Suppose,' said Trist at length, 'suppose that I were to walk arm-in-arm into this room with Huston. Would that do?'

'Can you manage it?' inquired the artist incredulously.

'I think so; if I can only find him. Suppose Huston were to dance with Brenda, and we were all to give it out that Alice is staying with her father in Cheltenham or somewhere.'

Hicks' first inclination was towards laughter. The proposal was made so simply and so readily that the whole affair appeared for a moment merely ludicrous.

'Yes,' he said vaguely; 'that will do; that will do very well. But ... is Huston invited?'

'I will manage that.'

There was a peaceful sense of capability about this man before which all obstacles seemed to crumble away. Hicks felt slightly dissatisfied. His own part was too small in this social comedy. The conduct of Brenda's affairs was slipping from his grasp, and yet he could do nothing but submit. Trist had unconsciously taken command, and when command is unconscious it is also arbitrary.

'I will go now and bring Huston,' he added presently, and without further words left his seat.

Hicks caressed the golden moustache, and watched him as he moved easily through the gay, heedless throng—a sturdy, strong young figure, full of manhood, full of purpose, the absurdly meek eyes shunning rather than seeking the many glances of recognition that met him on his way.

He went up to his hostess, and with her came apparently straight to the point, for Hicks saw the lady listen attentively and then acquiesce with a ready smile.

Nearly half an hour elapsed before Brenda arrived. She was one of a large party, and her programme had been in other hands before Hicks became possessed of it. He glanced keenly down the column of hieroglyphics. The initials were all genuine, but three dances had been kept by a little cross carefully inserted. Hicks obtained two waltzes, and returned the card with his usual self-satisfied smile. He knew that Brenda expected Trist, although she was not looking round as if in search of anybody. But he was fully convinced that there was some mystery on foot. One dance, he had observed, which was marked with a cross, was a square. Trist and Brenda had met by appointment—not as young men meet maidens every night in the year at dances for purposes of flirtation, or the more serious pastime of love-making, but to discuss some point of mutual interest.

As a rival Hicks had no fear of Theodore Trist, who, he argued, was a very fine fellow in his way, but quite without social accomplishments. He was a good dancer—that point he generously admitted—but beyond that he had nothing to recommend him in the eyes of a clever and experienced girl like Brenda, who had had the advantages of association with some of the most talented men of her day, and intimacy with himself, William Hicks. There was only that trivial matter of athletic and muscular superiority, which really carried no great weight with a refined womanly intellect. In a ball-room Theodore Trist, with his brown, grave face, his absorbed eyes, and his sturdy form, was distinctly out of place. He had not even a white waistcoat, wore three studs in the front of his shirt, and sometimes even forgot to sport a flower in his coat. His very virtues (of an old fashion), such as steadfastness, truth, and honesty, prevented him from shining in society. Fortunately, however, for his own happiness he was without vanity, and therefore unconscious of his own shortcomings. It is just within the scope of possibility that he was moved by no ambition to shine in society.

While the first bars of the waltz were in progress, Hicks found Brenda. He had little difficulty in doing so, because he had been watching her. Moreover, she was dressed in black, which was a rare attire in that room. In choosing this sombre garb she had made no mistake; the style suited exactly her slim, strong young form, and in contrast her neck and arms were dazzling in their whiteness.

They began dancing at once, and Hicks was conscious that there was no couple in the room so perfectly harmonious in movement, so skilled, so intensely refined.

'Trist,' he said presently in a confidential way, 'has been here.'

'Indeed!' was the guarded reply, made with pleasant indifference.

'Yes ... Brenda, he and I had a little talk, and, in consequence, he will be absent for some time, but he is coming back.'

'What,' she inquired calmly, 'did you talk about?'

All this time they were dancing, smoothly and with the indefatigable rhythm of skilled feet.

'It has come to my knowledge,' he replied, 'that gossip has connected the names of Alice and Trist, and there are foolish stories going about concerning Huston, who is said to be searching for Trist with the intention of shooting him. Trist has gone to bring Huston here; they will come into the room arm-in-arm. We arranged it, and I think no further contradiction is required.'

Had she winced he would have been aware of it, because his arm was round her yielding waist, and her hand was within his. She turned her head slightly as if to assist him in steering successfully through a narrow place; and he, glancing down, saw that her face was as white as marble, but her step never faltered. She drew a deep unsteady breath, and spoke in a grateful voice.

'It is very good of you ... both,' she said simply.

They continued dancing for some time before the silence was again broken.

'Some day, Brenda,' whispered Hicks, while preserving with immaculate skill an indifferent face before the world, 'I will tell you why I was forced to interfere even at the risk of displeasing you. Some other time, not now.'

A peculiar contraction seemed to pass over her face, and it was only with an effort that she smiled while acknowledging a passing bow from a girl-acquaintance.

Soon afterwards she began talking cheerily on a safer subject; and despite all his experience, all his cleverness, William Hicks could not bring the conversation round again to the topic she had shelved.

Her spirits seemed to rise as the evening progressed. There was a task before her, the dimensions of which were soon apparent. Almost everyone in the room had heard something of Alice, and the only contradiction possible, until Trist and Huston arrived, lay in the brave carriage of a cheerful face before them all.

There was a clock upon the mantelpiece of a small room where refreshments were set forth, and the merits of this secluded retreat were retailed by her to more than one of her partners. The pointers of the dainty timepiece seemed to crawl—once or twice she listened for the beat of the pendulum. Midnight came, and one o'clock. Still there was no sign of Theodore Trist. At two o'clock her chaperon suggested going home, and Brenda was compelled to apologize laughingly to several grumbling young men, who attempted to cut off her retreat at the door.

The spacious hall was full of departing guests; through the open door came the hoarse confusing shouts of policemen and footmen. Brenda pressed her hands together beneath her opera-cloak and shivered.

Theodore Trist never returned, and his absence passed unnoticed by all except William Hicks, who waited till the end.

END OF VOL. II.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

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Table of Contents

- SUSPENSE

- CHAPTER I. AT SEA.

- CHAPTER II. SISTERS.

- CHAPTER III. ALICE RETURNS.

- CHAPTER IV. TO THE FRONT.

- CHAPTER V. UNDER FIRE.

- CHAPTER VI. TRIST ACTS ON HIS OWN RESPONSIBILITY.

- CHAPTER VII. QUICKSANDS.

- CHAPTER VIII. MASKED.

- CHAPTER IX. IN CASE OF WAR.

- CHAPTER X. A PROBLEM.

- CHAPTER XI. MRS. WYLIE LEADS.

- CHAPTER XII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEA.

- CHAPTER XIII. CROSS-PURPOSES.

- CHAPTER XIV. A SOCIAL CONSPIRACY.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE