his greatness and his fame, there was some radiant creature,
smiling-eyed, who would be at his side in sorrow and in joy, through the
pain of striving and in the rapture of triumph. And now--now that the
years had developed themselves--what had become of these wistful hopes
and forecasts? Boyish nonsense, he would have said (except just at such
a moment as this, when the sudden sound of the organ seemed to call back
so much). He had encountered the realities of life since then; he had
chosen his profession; he had studied hard; he had achieved a measure of
fame. And the beautiful and wonderful being who was to share his
triumphs with him? Well, he had never actually beheld her. A glimmer
here and there, in a face or a form, had taken his fancy captive more
than once; but he remained heart-whole; he was too much occupied, he
laughingly assured Maurice Mangan again and again, to have the chance of
falling in love.

"Getting married?" he would say. "My dear fellow, I haven't time; I'm
far too busy to think of getting married."

So the radiant bride had never been found, even as the new Hallelujah
Chorus that was to thrill the hearts of millions had never been written;
and Linn Moore had to be content with the very pronounced success he had
attained in playing in comic opera, and with a popularity in the
fashionable world of London, especially among the women-folk therein,
that would have turned many a young fellow's head.

When they thought the service was about over they went round to the
porch and awaited the coming out of the congregation. And among the
first to make their appearance--issuing from the dusky little building
into this bewilderment of white light and green leaves--were old Dr.
Moore and his wife, and Miss Francie Wright, who passed for Lionel's
cousin, though the relationship was somewhat more remote than that.
Maurice Mangan received a very hearty welcome from these good people;
and then, as they set out for home, Lionel walked on with his father and
mother, while Lionel's friend naturally followed with the young lady.
She was not a distinctly beautiful person, perhaps, this slim-figured
young woman, with the somewhat pale face, the high-arched eyebrows, and
light-brown hair; but at least she had extremely pretty gray eyes, that
had a touch of shrewdness and humor in them, as well as plenty of
gentleness and womanliness; and she had a soft and attractive voice,
which goes for much.

"It is so kind of you, Mr. Mangan," said she, in that soft and winning
voice, "to bring Linn down. You know he won't come down by himself; and
who can wonder at it? It is so dull and monotonous for him here, after
the gay life he leads in London."

"Dull and monotonous!" he exclaimed. "Why, I have been preaching to him
all the morning that he should be delighted to come down into the
quietude of the country, as a sort of moral bath after the insensate
racket of that London whirl. But no one ever knows how well off he is,"
he continued, as they walked along between the fragrant hawthorn hedges;
"it's the lookers-on who know. Good gracious, what wouldn't I give to be
in Linn's place!"

"Do you mean in London, Mr. Mangan?" she asked, and for an instant the
pretty gray eyes looked up.

"Certainly not!" he said, with unnecessary warmth. "I mean here. If I
could run down of a Sunday to a beautiful, quiet, old-fashioned place
like this, and find myself in my own home, among my own people, I wonder
how many Sundays would find me in London? You can't imagine, you have no
idea, what it is to live quite alone in London, with no one to turn to
but club acquaintances; and I think Sunday is the worst day of all,
especially if it is fine weather, and all the people have gone to the
country or the seaside to spend the day with their friends."

"But, Mr. Mangan," said Miss Francie Wright, gently, "I am sure,
whenever you have a Sunday free like that, we should be only too glad if
you would consider us your friends--unless you think the place too
dreadfully tedious, as I'm afraid my cousin finds it."

"It is very kind of you--very," said he. "And I know the old doctor and
Mrs. Moore like to see me well enough, for I bring down their boy to
them; but if I came by myself, I'm afraid they wouldn't care to have an
idling, dawdling fellow like me lounging about the place of a Sunday
afternoon."

"Will you come and try, Mr. Mangan?" said she, quietly. "For Linn's sake
alone I know they would be delighted to have you here. And if it is rest
and quiet you want, can't we give you the garden and a book?"

"You mustn't put such visions before me," he said. "It's too good to be
true. I should be sighing for Paradise all through the week and
forgetting my work. And shouldn't I hate to wake up on Monday morning
and find myself in London!"

"You might wake up on Monday morning, and find yourself in Winstead,"
said she, "if you would take Linn's room for the night."

"Ah, no," he said, "it isn't for the like of me to try to take Linn's
place in any way whatever. He has always had everything--everything
seemed to come to him by natural right; and then he has always been such
a capital fellow, so modest and unaffected and generous, that nobody
could ever grudge him his good-fortune. Prince Fortunatus he always has
been."

"In what way, Mr. Mangan?" his companion asked, rather wonderingly.

"In every way. People are fond of him; he wins affection without trying
for it; as I say, it all comes to him as if by natural right."

"Yes, they say he is very popular in London, among those fine folk,"
observed Miss Francie, quite good-naturedly.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of his fashionable friends," Mangan rejoined.
"Being made much of by those people doesn't seem to me one of the great
gifts of fortune. And yet I wonder it hasn't spoiled him. He doesn't
seem the least bit spoiled, does he?"

"Really, I see so little of him," Miss Francie said, with a smile, "he
honors us with so few visits, that I can hardly tell."

"No, he is not spoiled--you may take my word for it," her companion
said, with decision. And then he added, "I suppose he gets too much of
that petting; he is kept in such a turmoil of gayety that its evil
effects have no time to sink into him. He is too busy--as he said this
morning about marrying."

"What was that, Mr. Mangan?" she asked.

"He said he was too busy to think of getting married."

"Oh, indeed?" she said, with her eyes directed towards the ground.
"We--we have always been expecting to hear of his being engaged to some
young lady--seeing he is made so much of in London--" She could say no
more, for now they were arrived at the doctor's house, which was
separated from the highway by a little strip of front garden. They
passed in through the gate and found the door left open for them.

"Well, Miss Savonarola," said Lionel, as he hung up his hat in the hall
and turned to address her, "how have you been all this time?"

"I have been very well, Mr. Pagan," said she, smiling.

"And how are all those juvenile Londoners that you've planted about in
the cottages?"

"They're getting on nicely, every one of them," said she, with quite an
air of pride; and then she added, "When is your Munificence going to
give me another subscription?"

"Just now, Francie," was the instant reply. "How much do you want?"

"As much as ever you can afford," said she.

He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coin, and began to pick out
the sovereigns. But Miss Francie, with a little touch of her fingers,
put the money away.

"No, Linn, not from you. You've given me too much already. You give too
freely; I like to have a little difficulty in obtaining subscriptions;
it feels nicer somehow. But if my funds should run very low, then I'll
come to you, Linn."

"Whenever you like, Francie," said he, carelessly; he poured the money
into his pocket again and bade Maurice Mangan come up to his room, to
get the dust of travel removed from his hands and face before going in
to luncheon.

Then while Mangan was busy with his ablutions in this small upper
chamber, Lionel drew a chair to the open window and gazed absently
abroad on the wide stretch of country visible from the doctor's house.
It was a familiar view; yet it was one not easy to get tired of; and of
course on such a morning as this it lost none of its charm. Everywhere
in the warm breeze and the sunshine there was a universal rustling and
trembling and glancing of all beautiful things--of the translucent
foliage of the limes, the pendulous blossoms of lilacs and laburnums,
the swaying branches of the larch, and the masses of blue
forget-me-nots in the garden below. Then there were all the hushed
sounds of the country: the distant, quick footfall of a horse on some
dusty road; the warning cluck of a thrush to her young ones down there
among the bushes; the glad voices and laughter of some girls in an
adjacent garden--they, too, likely to be soon away from the maternal
nest; the crow of a cock pheasant from the margin of the wood; the
clear, ringing melody of an undiscoverable lark. Everywhere white light,
blue skies, and shadows of great clouds slow-sailing over the young
green corn and over the daisied meadows in which the cows lay
half-asleep. And when he looked beyond that low green hill, where there
were one or two hares hopping about on their ungainly high haunches, and
past that great stretch of receding country in which strips of
red-and-white villages peeped here and there from the woods, behold! a
horizon as of the sea, faint and blue and far, rising and ever rising in
various hues and tones, until it was lost in a quivering mist of heat;
and he could only guess that there, too, under the glowing sky, some
other fair expanse of our beautiful English landscape lay basking in the
sunlight and sweet air of the early summer.

Of course Lionel was the hero of the hour when they were all assembled
in the dining-room--at a very sumptuously furnished board, by the way,
for the hale old doctor was fond of good living and a firm believer in
the virtues of port wine. Moreover, the young man had an attentive
audience; for the worthy old lady at the head of the table never took
her admiring eye's off this wonderful boy of hers; and Miss Francie
Wright meekly listened too; while as for Maurice Mangan, who was he in
his humble station to interrupt this marvellous tale of great doings and
festivities? Not that Lionel magnified his own share in these things;
nay, he modestly kept himself out altogether; it was merely to interest
these simple country folk that he described the grand banquets, the
illuminated gardens, the long marquees, and told them how the princess
looked, and who it was who had the honor of taking her in to supper. But
when he came, among other things, to speak of the rehearsal of the
little pastoral comedy, in the clear light of the dawn, by Lady Adela
Cunyngham and her friends, he had to admit that he himself was present
on that occasion; and at once the fond mother took him to task.

[Illustration: "_They passed in through the gate, and found the door
left open for them._"]

"It's wicked, Lionel," she said, severely; "it's downright wicked to
keep such hours. Look at the result of it all. You can't eat
anything--you're not taking a mouthful!"

"But, you know, mother, I'm not used to luncheon," he said, cheerfully
enough. "I have to dine at five every day--and I've no time to bother
with luncheon, even if I could eat it."

"Take a glass of port, my lad," the old doctor said. "That will put some
life into you."

"No, thanks," he said, indifferently, "I can't afford to play tricks. I
have to study my throat."

"Why, what better astringent can you have than tannic acid?" the old
gentleman called down the table. "I suppose you drink those washy
abominations that the young men of the day prefer to honest wine; what's
that I hear about lemonade? Lemonade!" he repeated, with disgust.

"It's home-brewed--it's wholesome enough; Miss Burgoyne makes some for
me when she is making it for herself," the young man said; and then he
turned to his mother: "Mother, I wish you would send her something from
the garden--"

"Who, Lionel?"

"Miss Burgoyne--at the theatre, you know. She's very good to me--lends
me her room if I have any swell friends who want to come behind--and
makes me this lemonade, which is better than anything else on a hot
night. Couldn't you send her something from the garden?--not
flowers--she gets too many flowers, and doesn't care for them; but if
you had some early strawberries or something of that kind, she would
take them as a greater compliment, coming from you, than if some idiot
of a young fool spent guineas on them at a florist's. And when are you
coming up to see 'The Squire's Daughter,' Francie? The idea that you
should never have been near the place, when I hear people confessing to
each other that they have been to see it eight and ten, or even a dozen
times!"

"But I am so busy, Lionel!" she said; and then perhaps an echo of
something that had been said in the morning may have recurred to her
mind; for she seemed a trifle confused, and kept her eyes downcast,
while Lionel went on to tell them of what certain friends of his were
going to do at Henley Regatta.

After luncheon they went out into the garden, and took seats in the
shade of the lilac-trees, in the sweet air. Old Mrs. Moore had for
form's sake brought a book with her; but she was not likely to read much
when the pride of her eyes had come down on a visit to her, and was now
talking to her, in his off-hand, light-hearted way. Maurice Mangan had
followed the doctor's example and pulled out his pipe--which he forgot
to light, however. He seemed dissatisfied. He kept looking back to the
house from time to time. Was there no one else coming out? There was the
French window of the drawing-room still open; was there no glimmer of a
gray dress anywhere--with its ornamentation of a bunch of scarlet
geraniums? At last he made bold to say to the doctor:

"Where has Miss Francie gone to? Isn't she coming out too?"

"Oh, she's away after those London brats of hers, I have no doubt," the
old gentleman said. "You won't see her till teatime, if even then."
Whereupon Mangan lit his pipe, and proceeded to smoke in silence,
listening at times and absently to Lionel's vivacious talking to his
mother.

In fact, before Miss Francie Wright returned that afternoon, Lionel
found that he had to take his departure, for there are no trains to
Winstead on Sunday, and he would have to walk some three miles to the
nearest station. When he declared he had to go, the old lady's protests
and entreaties were almost piteous.

"You come to see us so seldom, Lionel! And of course we thought you'd
dine with us, at the very least; and if you could stay the night as
well, you know there's a room for Mr. Mangan too. And we were looking
forward to such a pleasant evening."

"But I have a long-standing engagement, mother; a dinner engagement--I
could not get out of it."

"And you are dragging Mr. Mangan away up to town again, on a beautiful
afternoon like this, when we know he is so fond of the country and of a
garden--"

"Not at all," Lionel said. "I need not spoil Maurice's day, if I have to
spoil my own; he'll stay, of course; and I suppose Francie will be back
directly."

"I'm sure, Mr. Mangan," the old lady said, turning at once to her other
guest, "if Lionel must really go, we shall be delighted if you will
remain and dine with us--I hope you will--and you can have Lionel's room
if you will stay the night as well."

"Thank you, I couldn't do that," said he, very gratefully, "but if you
will have me, I shall be very glad to stay on, and go up by a late
train. In the meantime, I think I'll walk to the station with Linn."

"And come back with a good appetite for dinner," said the doctor,
calling after him. "We'll have something better than lemonade, I warrant
ye!"

They have slow trains on these Surrey lines on Sunday; by the time that
Lionel had got up to town and driven to his rooms and dressed, it was
very near the hour at which he was due at the Lansdowne Gallery, where
Lord Rockminster was giving a dinner-party, as a preliminary to the
concert and crush that were to follow. And no sooner had he alighted
from his hansom, and entered the marble vestibule of the gallery, than
whom should he descry ascending the stairs in front of him but Mr.
Octavius Quirk.

"Lady Adela hasn't let the grass grow under her feet," he said to
himself. "Captured her first critic already!"

Lady Adela was at the head of the stairs receiving her brother's guests;
and the greeting that she accorded to Mr. Octavius Quirk was of a most
special and gracious kind. She was very complaisant to Lionel also, and
bade him go and see if the place they had given him at dinner was to his
liking. He took this as a kind of permission to choose what he wanted
(within discreet limits); and as he just then happened to meet Miss
Georgie Lestrange, he proposed to that smiling and ruddy-haired damsel
that they should go and examine for themselves--and perhaps alter the
dispositions a little. So they passed away through those brilliantly lit
galleries (which served as a picture-exhibition on week-days), and at
the farther end of the largest room they found the oblong dinner-table,
which was brilliant with flowers and fruit, with crystal and silver. Of
course Lionel and his companion had to be content with very modest
places, for this was a highly distinguished company which Lord
Rockminster had invited; but at all events they made sure they were to
sit together, and that arrangement seemed to be satisfactory to them
both.

This was rather a magnificent little banquet; and Lionel, looking down
the long, richly colored table, may once or twice have thought of the
quiet, small dining-room at Winstead (perhaps with the curtains still
undrawn, and the evening light shining blue in the panes), and of the
solitary guest whom he had left to talk to those good people; but
indeed he was not permitted much time for reverie, for the young lady
with the _pince-nez_ was a most lively chatterer; she knew everything
that was going on in London, and seemed to take a particularly active
interest therein. Among other solemn items of information which she
communicated to her companion, she mentioned that the issue of Lady
Adela's novel had been postponed.

"Yes, it's quite ready, you know," she continued, in her blithe,
discursive, happy-go-lucky fashion; "all quite ready; but she doesn't
want it to go before the public until there has been a little talk about
it, don't you understand? She wants some of the society papers to
mention it; but she isn't quite sure how to get that done, and nobody
seems able to help her--it's really distressing. Do you see that hideous
creature down there at the corner?"

"Yes."

"He's a writer," observed this artless maiden, in mysterious tones.

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, he is--writes in all kinds of places. Why, now I think of it, Lady
Adela said he was a friend of yours! I'm sure she did. So you pretend
not to know him--is that on account of his complexion? Have you any more
such _beauties_ among your acquaintances, Mr. Moore? I thought he might
be taking me in to dinner; and that's why I was so glad you brought me
to look at the cards. Very rude, wasn't it? but you had permission,
hadn't you? And there's another one coming to-night."

"Another what?"

"A writing man. But this other one is an American. Of course Lady Adela
wants to have the curiosity of the American public excited just as well
as the English. Have you heard Lady Sybil's marching-song yet?"

"No."

"Well, I think it is charming--really charming. Rockminster was dining
with the officers of the Coldstream Guards the other evening, and he
promised to send a copy to the bandmaster as soon as it is published.
But Sybil wants more than that, of course; she wants to see whether the
commander-in-chief wouldn't recommend it, so that it could be taken up
by all the regiments. Wouldn't that be splendid?--to think that Sybil
should provide a marching-song for the whole British army!"

"Yes, indeed," said he, with great politeness. "And why shouldn't the
commander-in-chief recommend it? A marching-song is as important as a
new button. But I must get a look at the music, if we are all to join in
the chorus."

The dinner was not long-protracted, for there was to be a concert during
the evening; and, indeed, people began to arrive early--strolling
through the galleries, looking at the pictures, or talking together in
small groups. It was during this promiscuous assembling that Octavius
Quirk got hold of Lionel, and, with savage disgust, drew his attention
to a hostler-looking person who had just come into the room.

"Do you see that ill-conditioned brute; what's he doing here?"

Lionel glanced in the direction indicated.

"I don't know who he is."

"Don't you know Quincey Hooper? the correspondent of the _Philadelphia
Roll-Call_--a cur who toadies every Englishman he meets, and at the same
time sneers at everything English in his wretched Philadelphia rag."

Then Lionel instantly bethought him of Miss Lestrange's hint; was this
the correspondent who was to arouse the interest of the great American
Continent in Lady Adela's forthcoming novel, even as Octavius Quirk was
expected to write about it in England? But surely, with the wide
Atlantic lying between their respective spheres of operation, there was
no need for rivalry? Why did Mr. Quirk still glare in the direction of
the new-comer with ill-disguised, or rather with wholly undisguised,
disdain?

"Why," said he, in his tempestuously frothy fashion, "I've heard that
creature actually discussing with another American what sort of air a
man should assume in entering a drawing-room! Can you conceive of such a
thing? Where _did_ all that alarmed self-consciousness of the modern
American come from--that unceasing self-consciousness that makes the
American young man spend five sixths of his waking time in asking
himself if he is a gentleman? Not from the splendid assurance, the
belief in himself, the wholesome satisfaction of old John Bull. It's no
use for the modern American to say he is of English descent at all!"
continued this boisterous controversialist, who was still glaring at
the hapless mortal at the door, as if every windy sentence was being
hurled at his head. "Not a bit! there's nothing English about him, or
his ways, or his sympathies, or character. Fancy an Englishman
considering what demeanor he should assume before entering a
drawing-room! The modern American hasn't the least idea from whom he is
descended; what right has he to claim anything of our glorious English
heritage?--or to say there is English blood in him at all? Why, as far
back as the Declaration of Independence, the people of English birth or
parentage in the Eastern States were in a distinct minority! And as to
the American of the future--look at the thousands upon thousands of
Germans pouring into the country as compared with the English
immigration. That is the future American--a German; and it is to be
hoped he will have some back-bone in him, and not alarm himself about
his entering a drawing-room! America for the Americans?--it's America
for the Germans! I tell you this: in a generation or two the great
national poet of America will be--Goethe!"

Happily, at this moment, Lady Adela came up, and Lionel most gladly
turned aside, for she had evidently something to say to him privately.

"Mr. Moore, I want to introduce you to Mr. Hooper--to Mr. Quincey
Hooper--he doesn't seem to know anybody, and I want you to look after
him a little--"

"No, no, Lady Adela, you must really excuse me," said he, in an
undertone, but he was laughing all the same. "I can't, really. I beg
your pardon, but indeed you must excuse me. I've just had one dose of
literature--a furious lecture about--about I don't know what--oh, yes,
immigration into America. And do you know this--that in a generation or
two the great national poet of America will be Goethe?"

"What?" said she.

He repeated the statement; and added that there could be no doubt about
it, for he had it on Mr. Octavius Quirk's authority.

"Well, it's a good thing to be told," she said, sweetly, "for then you
know." And therewithal, as there was a sudden sound of music issuing
from the next gallery, she bade Lionel take her to see who had begun--it
was Lady Sybil, indeed, who was playing a solo on the violin to an
accompaniment of stringed instruments, while all the crowd stood still
and listened.

The evening passed pleasantly enough. There were one or two courageous
amateurs who now and again ventured on a song; but for the most part the
music was instrumental. A young lady, standing with her hands behind her
back, gave a recitation, and attempted to draw pathetic tears by
picturing the woes of a simple-minded chimney-sweep who accidentally
killed his tame sparrow, and who never quite held up his head
thereafter; he seemed to pine away somehow, until one morning they found
him dead, his face downward on the tiny grave in which he had buried his
little playfellow. Another young lady performed a series of brilliant
roulades on a silver bugle, which seemed to afford satisfaction. A
well-known entertainer sat down to the piano and proceeded to give a
description of a fashionable wedding; and all the people laughed merrily
at the clever and sparkling way in which he made a fool of--not
themselves, of course, but their friends and acquaintances. And then
Lionel Moore went to his hostess.

"Don't you want me to do anything?" he said.

"You're too kind," Lady Adela made answer, with grateful eyes. "It's
hardly fair. Still, if I had the courage--"

"Yes, you have the courage," he said, smiling.

"If I had the courage to ask you to sing Sybil's song for her?"

"Of course I will sing it," he said.

"Will you? Will you really? You know, I'm afraid those two girls will
never give enough force to it. And it is a man's song--if you wouldn't
mind, Mr. Moore."

"Where can I get the music? I'll just look it over."

Quite a little murmur of interest went through the place when it was
rumored that Lionel Moore was about to sing Lady Sybil's "Soldiers'
Marching Song," and when he stepped on to the platform at the upper end
of the gallery, people came swarming in from the other rooms. Lady Sybil
herself was to play the accompaniment--the grand piano being fully
opened so as to give free egress to the marshalled chords; and when she
sat down to the keyboard, it was apparent that the tall, pale, handsome
young lady was not a little tremulous and anxious. Indeed, it was a very
good thing for the composer that she had got Lionel Moore to sing the
song; for the quite trivial and commonplace character of the music was
in a large measure concealed by the fine and resonant quality of his
rich baritone notes. The chorus was not much of a success--Lady Sybil's
promised accomplices seemed to have found their courage fail them at the
critical moment; but as for the martial ditty itself, it appeared to
take the public ear very well; and when Lionel finally folded the music
together again, there was quite a little tempest of clapping of hands.
Here and there a half-hearted demand for a repetition was heard; but
this was understood to be merely a compliment to Lady Sybil; and indeed
Lionel strolled out of the room as soon as his duties were over.
Fortunately no one was so indiscreet as to ask him what he privately
thought of the "Soldiers' Marching Song," or of its chances of being
recommended to the British Army by his royal highness the
commander-in-chief.

When at length Lionel thought it was about time for him to slip away
quietly from these brilliant, busy, murmuring rooms, he went to bid his
hostess privately good-night.

"It was so awfully kind of you, Mr. Moore," she said, graciously, "to
give us the chance of making Mr. Quirk's acquaintance. He is so
interesting, you know, so unconventional, so original in his
opinions--quite a treat to listen to him, I assure you. I've sent him a
copy of my poor little book; some time or other I wish you could get to
know what he thinks of it?"

"Oh, yes, certainly. I will ask him," Lionel said; and again he bade her
good-night, and took his leave.

But as he was going by the entrance into a smaller gallery, which had
been turned into a sort of supper-room (there was a buffet at one end,
and everywhere a number of small tables at which groups of friends could
sit down, the gentlemen of the party bringing over what was wanted) he
happened to glance in, and there, occupying a small table all by
himself, was Mr. Octavius Quirk, Lionel at once made his way to him. He
found him with a capacious plate of lobster-salad before him, and by the
side of that was a large bottle of champagne.

"Going to sit down?" Quirk asked--but with no great cordiality; it was
for one person, not for two, that he had secured that bottle.

"No; I dined here," said Lionel, with innocent sarcasm.

"My dear fellow," observed the other, earnestly, "a good dinner is the
very best preparation in the world for a good supper."

"I hear Lady Adela has sent you her book; have you looked at it?" Lionel
asked.

"Yes, I have," said the other, with his mouth full of lobster-salad.
"Capital! I call it capital! Plenty of _verve_ and go--knowledge of
society--nobody can do that kind of thing like the people who are
actually living in it. Her characters are the people one really meets,
you know--they are in the world--they belong to life. Oh, yes, a capital
novel! Light, airy, amusing, sparkling--I tell you it will be the book
of the season!"

"Oh, I'm very glad to hear that," said Lionel, thoughtfully; and then he
went and got his light overcoat and crush-hat, and descended the wide
stone-steps, and made his way home to his rooms in Piccadilly.

CHAPTER V.

WARS AND RUMORS.

Little could Lionel Moore have anticipated what was to come of his
introducing his old comrade Nina to the New Theatre. At first all went
well; and even the prima-donna herself was so good as to extend her
patronage to Lionel's _protégée_; insomuch that, arriving rather early
at the theatre one evening, and encountering Nina in the corridor, she
said to her,

"You come into my room, and I'll show you my make-up."

It was a friendly offer; and the young Italian girl, who was working
hard in every way to fit herself for the stage, was glad to be initiated
still further into these mysteries of the toilet. But when she had
followed Miss Burgoyne into the sacred inner room, and when the dresser
had been told she should not be wanted yet awhile, Nina, who was far
from being a stupid person, began to perceive what had prompted this
sudden invitation. For Miss Burgoyne, as she was throwing off her
things, and getting ready for her stage-transformation, kept plying her
guest with all sorts of cunning little questions about Mr.
Moore--questions which had no apparent motive, it is true, so carelessly
were they asked; but Nina, even as she answered, was shrewd enough to
understand.

"So you might call yourself quite an old friend of his," the prima-donna
continued, busying herself at the dressing-table. "Well, what do you
think of him now?"

"How, Miss Burgoyne?" Nina said.

"Why, you see the position he has attained here in London--very
different from what he had when he was studying in Naples, I suppose.
Don't you hear how all those women are spoiling him? What do you think
of that? If I were a friend of his--an intimate friend--I should warn
him. For what will the end be--he'll marry a rich woman, a woman of
fashion, and cease to be anybody. Fancy a man's ruining his
career--giving up his position, his reputation--becoming nobody at
all--in order to have splendid horses and give big dinner-parties! Of
course she'll have her doll, to drive by her side in the Park; but
she'll tire--and then? And he'll get sick-tired, too, and wish he was
back in the theatre; and just as likely as not he'll take to drinking,
or gambling, or something. Depend on it, my dear, a professional should
marry in the profession; that's the only safe thing; then there is a
community of interests, and they understand each other and are glad of
each other's success. Don't you think so yourself?"

Nina was startled by the sudden appeal; but she managed to intimate
that, on the whole, she agreed with Miss Burgoyne; and that young lady
proceeded to expand her little lecture and to cite general instances
that had come within her own knowledge of the disastrous effects of
theatrical people marrying outside their own set. As to any lesson in
the art of making-up, perhaps Miss Burgoyne had forgotten the pretext on
which she asked Nina to come to her room. Her maid was called in to help
her now. And at last it was time for Nina to go, for she also, in her
humble way, had to prepare herself for the performance.

But this friendliness on the part of the prima-donna towards the young
baritone's _protégée_ did not last very long. For one thing, Lionel did
not come to Miss Burgoyne's sitting-room as much as he used to do, to
have a cup of tea and a chat with one or two acquaintances; he preferred
standing in the wings with Nina, who was a most indefatigable student,
and giving her whispered criticisms and comments as to what was going
forward on the stage. When Miss Burgoyne came upon them so employed,
she passed them in cold disdain. And by degrees she took less and less
notice of Miss Ross (as Nina was now called), who, indeed, was only Miss
Girond's under-study and a person of no consequence in the theatre.
Finally, Miss Burgoyne ceased to recognize Miss Ross, even when they
happened to be going in by the stage-door of an evening; and Nina, not
knowing how she had offended, nevertheless accepted her fate meekly and
without protest, nor had she any thought of asking Lionel to intervene.

But worse was to befall. One day Lionel said to her,

"Nina, I never knew any one work harder than you are doing. Of course
it's very handy your having Mrs. Grey to coach you; and you can't do
better than stand opposite that long mirror and watch yourself doing
what she tells you to do. She's quite enthusiastic about you; perhaps
it's because you are so considerate--she says you never practise until
the other lodgers have gone out. By the way, that reading dialogue aloud
is capital; I can hear how your English is getting freer and freer; why,
in a little while you'll be able to take any part that is offered you.
And in any case, you know, the English audiences rather like a touch of
foreign accent; oh, you needn't be afraid about that. Well, now, all
this hard work can't go on forever; you must have a little relaxation;
and I'm going to take you and Mrs. Grey for a drive down to Hampton
Court, and we'll dine there in the evening, in a room overlooking the
river--very pretty it is, I can tell you. What do you say? Will next
Friday do? Friday is the night of least consequence in a London theatre;
and if you can arrange it with Mrs. Grey, I'll arrange it with Lehmann;
my under-study is always glad of a chance of taking the part. You
persuade Mrs. Grey, and I'll manage Lehmann. Is it a bargain?"

So it came about that on a certain bright and sunny morning in June
Lionel was standing at the window of a private room in a hotel near the
top of Regent Street, where he proposed (for he was an extravagant young
man) to entertain his two guests at lunch before driving them down to
Hampton Court. He had ordered the wine and seen that the flowers on the
table were all right; and now he was looking down into the street,
vaguely noticing the passers-by. But this barouche that drove up?--there
was something familiar about it--wasn't it the carriage he had sent
down to Sloane Street?--then the next moment he was saying to himself,

"My goodness gracious! can that be Nina?"

And Nina it assuredly was; but not the Nina of the black dress and
crimson straw hat with which he had grown familiar. Oh, no; this young
lady who stepped down from the carriage, who waited a second for her
friend, and then crossed the pavement, was a kind of vision of light
summer coolness and prettiness; even his uninstructed intelligence told
him how charmingly she was dressed; though he had but a glimpse of the
tight-fitting gown of cream-white, with its silver girdle, the white
straw hat looped up on one side and adorned on the other with large
yellow roses, the pale-yellow gloves with silver bangles at the wrists,
the snow-white sunshade, with its yellow satin ribbons attached. The
vision of a moment--then it was gone; but only to reappear here at the
open door. And who could think of her costume at all when Nina herself
came forward, with the pretty, pale, foreign face so pleasantly smiling,
the liquid black eyes softly bespeaking kindness, the half-parted lips
showing a glimmer of milk-white teeth.

"Good-morning, Leo!"

"Good-morning, Nina! They say that ladies are never punctual; but here
you are to the moment!"

"Then you have to thank Mrs. Grey--and your own goodness in sending the
carriage for us. Ah, the delightful flowers!" said she, glancing at the
table, and her nostrils seemed to dilate a little, as if she would
welcome all their odors at once. "But the window, Leo--you will have the
window open? London, it is perfectly beautiful this morning!--the air is
sweet as of the country--oh, it is the gayest city in the world!"

"I never saw London fuller, anyway," said he, as he rang the bell, and
told the waiter to have luncheon produced forthwith.

Nina, seated at table in that cool summer costume, merely toyed with the
things put before her (except when they came to the strawberries); she
was chattering away, with her little dramatic gestures, about every
conceivable subject within her recent experience, until, as she happened
to say something about Naples, Lionel cruelly interrupted her by asking
her if she had heard lately from her sweetheart.

"Who?" she said, with a stare; and also the little widow in black looked
up from her plate and seemed to think it a strange question.

"Don't you pretend to have forgotten, Nina," Lionel said, reprovingly.
"Don't you look so innocent. If you have no memory, then I have."

"But who, Leo?" she demanded, with a touch of indignation.
"Who?--who?--who? What is it you mean?"

"Nina, don't you pretend you have forgotten poor Nicolo Ciana."

"Oh, Nicolo!" she exclaimed, with supreme contempt (but all the same
there was a faint flush on the clear olive complexion). "You laugh at
me, Leo! Nicolo! He was all, as they say here, sham--sham jewelry, sham
clothes, all pretence, except the oil for his hair--that was plenty and
substantial, yes. And a sham voice--he told lies to the _maestro_ about
his wonderful compass--"

"Now, now, Nina, don't be unjust," he said. "Mrs. Grey must hear the
truth. Mrs. Grey, this was a young Italian who wanted to be better
acquainted with Miss Nina here--I believe he used to write imploring
letters to her, and that she cruelly wouldn't answer them; and then he
wrote to Maestro Pandiani, describing the wonderful tenor voice he had,
and saying he wanted to study. I suppose he fancied that if the
_maestro_ would only believe in the mysterious qualities of this
wonderful organ of his he would try to bring them out; and in the
meantime the happy Nicolo would be meeting Nina continually. A lover's
stratagem--nothing worse than that! What is the harm of saying that you
could take the high C if you were in ordinary health, but that your
voice has been ill-used by a recent fever? It was Nina he was thinking
of. Don't I remember how I used to hear him coming along the
garden-paths in the Villa Reale--if there were few people about you
could hear his vile falsetto a mile off--and always it was:

   'Antoniella, Antonià,
    Antoniella, Antonià;
    Votate, Nenna bella, votate ccà,
    Vedimmo a pettenessa comme te stà.'"

"Leo," she said, with proud lips, "he never called me '_Nenna
mia_'--never! He dared not!"

In another instant, he could see, there would have been protesting tears
in her eyes; and even Mrs. Grey, who did not know the meaning of the
familiar Neapolitan phrase,[1] noticed the tremulous indignation in the
girl's voice.

    [Footnote 1: _Nenna mia_ or _Nenna bella_ is the pet phrase used by
    the Neapolitan young man in addressing his sweetheart. _Nenna_ has
    nothing to do with _Nina_, which is a contraction of Antonia.]

"Of course not, Nina," he said, at once; "I was only joking--but you
know he did use to sing that confounded 'Antoniella, Antonià,' and it
was always you he was thinking of."

"I did not think of _him_, then!" said she, almost instantly recovering
her self-control. "Him? No! When I go out--when I was going out in the
_Santa Lucia_, I looked at the English gentlemen--all so simple and
honest in their dress--perhaps a steel watch-chain to a gold watch--not
a sham gold chain to no watch! Then they looked so clean and
wholesome--is it right, wholesome?--not their hair dripping with grease,
as the peasant-girls love it. And then," she added, with a laugh, for
her face had quickly resumed its usual happy brightness of expression,
"then I grow sentimental. I say to myself, 'These are English
people--they are going away back to England, where Leo is--can they take
him a message?--can they tell him they were going over to Capri, and
they met on the ship--on the steamer--an Italian girl, who liked to look
at the English, and liked to hear the English speak?' And then I say 'No;
what is the use; what would any message do; Leo has forgotten me.'"

"Oh, yes," said he, lightly, "you must have been quite certain that I
had forgotten my old comrade Nina!"

They got a beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon for their drive down to
Hampton Court; nor was it fated to be without incident either. They had
passed along Oxford Street and were just turning out of the crowded
thoroughfare to enter Hyde Park--and Lionel, as a man will, was watching
how his coachman would take the horses through the Marble Arch--when
Nina said, in a low voice,

"Leo!"

"Well?" said he, turning to her.

"Did you not see?"

"See what?"

"The carriage that went past." Nina said, looking a little concerned.
"Miss Burgoyne was in it--she bowed to you--"

"Did she? I didn't see her--I'll have to apologize to her to-morrow,"
said he, carelessly. "Perhaps the compliment was meant for you, Nina."

"For me? Ah, no. Miss Burgoyne speaks no more to me."

"She doesn't speak to you? Why?" he asked, in some amazement.

The young Italian lady made a little gesture of indifference.

"How do I know? But I am not sorry. I do not like her--no! she is
not--she is not--straightforward, is it right?--she is cunning--and she
has a dreadful temper--oh! I have heard;--I have heard such stories!
Again, she is not an artist--I said that to you from the beginning,
Leo--no, not an artist: why does she talk to you from behind her fan,
when she should regard the others on the stage? Why does she talk always
and always to you, when she has nothing to say?"

"Oh, but she finds plenty to say!" he observed.

"Yes," said Nina, contemptuously, "she has always plenty to say to you
on the stage, if she has not a word the moment the scene is over. Why?
You don't understand! You don't reflect! I will tell you, Leo, if you
are so simple. You think she does not know that the public can see she
talks to you? She knows it well; and that is why she talks. It is to
boast of her friendship with you, her alliance with you. She says to the
ladies in the stalls, 'See here, I can talk to him when I please--you
are away--you are outside.' It is her vanity. She says to them, 'You can
buy his portrait out of the shop-window perhaps--you can ask him to your
house perhaps--and he goes for an hour, among strangers--but see
here--every night I am talking to him'--"

"Yes, and see here, Nina," he said, with a laugh, "how about my
vanity?--don't you think of that? Who could have imagined I was so
important a person! But the truth is, Nina, they've lengthened out that
comic scene inordinately with all that gagging, and Miss Burgoyne has
nothing to do in it; if she hides her talking behind her fan--"

"Hides?" said Nina, with just a trace of scorn. "No; she shows! It is
display! It is vanity! And you think a true artist would so forget her
part--would wish to show the people that she talks privately--"

"Miss Nina is quite right, you know, Mr. Moore," said the little widow
in black, and she was entitled to speak with authority. "I didn't think
it looked well myself. A ballet-girl would catch it if she went on the
same way."

"What would you have her do?" he said--for he was a very tolerant and
good-natured person. "Sit and look on at that idiotic comic gag?"

"Certainly," said the little dame, with decision. "She is in the scene.
She is not Miss Burgoyne; she is Grace Mainwaring; and she ought to
appear interested in everything around her."

"Oh, well, perhaps I have been to blame," he said, rather uneasily. "I
dare say I encouraged her. But really I had no idea the audience could
have noticed it."

"It was meant for them to notice it," Nina said, vindictively; and then,
as she would have nothing more to say on this wretched subject, she
turned to look at the gay lilacs and laburnums in the neighborhood of
the Serpentine, at the shimmering blue of the wide stretch of water, and
at the fleet of pleasure-boats with their wet oars gleaming in the
golden sunlight.

Her equanimity was soon restored; she would have nothing further to say
of Miss Burgoyne on such a gracious afternoon; and, indeed, when they
had crossed the Thames at Putney, and got into the opener country down
by Barnes and East Sheen and Richmond, she was chattering away in her
delight over everything they encountered--the wide commons, the
luxuriant gardens, the spacious mansions, the magnificent elms, the
hawthorn-trees, red and white, that sweetened all the soft summer air.
Of course when they arrived at the top of Richmond Hill they halted for
a minute or two at the Star and Garter to water the horses, while they
themselves had a stroll along the terrace, a cup of tea, and a look
abroad over the wide, hazy, dream-like landscape stretching far out into
the west. Then they crossed the river again at Richmond Bridge; they
bowled along by Twickenham and Teddington; finally they drove through
the magnificent chestnut-avenues of Bushey Park, which were just now in
their finest blossom. When they stopped at the Mitre, it was not to go
in; Nina was to be shown the gardens of Hampton Court Palace; there
would be plenty of time for a pleasant saunter before dinner.

Miss Burgoyne, indeed! Nina had forgotten all about Miss Burgoyne as the
little party of three passed through the cool gray courtyard of the
palace and entered into the golden glow of the gardens--for now the
westering sun was rich and warm on the tall elms and limes and threw
deep shadows on the greensward under the short black yews. They walked
down towards the river, and stood for a long time watching the irregular
procession of boats--many of them pulled by young girls in light summer
dresses that lent some variety of color to this sufficiently pretty
picture. It was altogether an attractive scene--the placid waters, the
soft green landscape, the swift, glancing boats, from which from time to
time came a ripple of youthful laughter or song. And indeed Nina was
regarding rather wistfully those maidens in palest blue or palest pink
who went swinging down with the stream.

"Those young ladies," she said, in an absent kind of way, to the little
widow, who was standing beside her, "it is a pleasant life they live. It
is all amusement. They have no hard work; no anxieties; no troubles;
everything is made gentle for them by their friends; it is one
enjoyment, and again and again; they have no care."

"Don't be so sure of that, Miss Nina," Mrs. Grey said, with a quiet
smile. "I dare say many a one of those girls has worked as hard at her
music as ever you have done, and has very little to show for it. I dare
say many a one of them would be glad to change her position for yours--I
mean, for the position you will have ere long. Do you know, Mr. Moore,"
she said, turning to Nina's other companion, "that I am quite sure of
this--if Miss Burgoyne's under-study was drafted into a travelling
company, I am quite sure Miss Nina here could take her place with
perfect confidence."

"I don't see why not," he said, as if it were a matter of course.

"Then you know what would happen," Mrs. Grey continued, turning again to
the young lady, in whose future she seemed greatly interested. "Miss
Burgoyne would want a holiday, or her doctor would order her to give her
voice a fortnight's rest, or she might catch a bad cold--and then comes
your chance! You know the music thoroughly? you know every bit of Miss
Burgoyne's 'business;' and Mr. Moore would be on the stage, or in the
wings, to guide you as to your entrances and exits. That will be a proud
night for me, my dear; for I'll be there--oh, yes, I'll be there; and if
I have any stage experience at all, I tell you it will be a splendid
triumph--with such a voice as yours--and there won't be any more talk of
keeping you as under-study to Miss Girond. No," she added, with a shrewd
smile, "but there will be something else. Miss Burgoyne won't like it;
she doesn't like rivals near the throne, from what I can hear. She'll
try to get you drafted off into one of the country companies--mark my
words."

"The country?" said Nina, rather aghast. "To go away into the country?"

"But look at the chance, my dear," said the little ex-actress, eagerly.
"Look at the practice--the experience! And then, if you only take care
of your voice, and don't strain it by overwork, then you'll be able to
come back to London and just command any engagement you may want."

"To come back to London after a long time?" she said, thoughtfully; and
she was somewhat grave and reserved as they strolled idly back through
the gardens, and through the Palace buildings, to the riverside hotel.

But no far-reaching possibilities of that kind were allowed to interfere
with Nina's perfect enjoyment of this little dinner-party that had been
got up in her honor. They had a room all to themselves on an upper
floor; the windows were thrown wide open; even as they sat at table they
could look abroad on the spacious landscape whose meadows and hedges and
woods stretched away into distant heights crowned by a solitary
windmill. Indeed, the young lady was so rude as to leave the table more
than once, and go and stand at the open window; there was a charm in the
dying-out of the day--in the beautiful colors now encircling the
world--in the hushed sounds coming up from the stream--that she could
not withstand. The evening glow was warm on the rose-hued front of the
palace and on the masses of sunny green foliage surrounding it; on the
still, blue river the boats were of a lustrous bronze; while the oars
seemed to be oars of shining gold as they dipped and flashed. By and by,
indeed, the glory faded away; the stream became gray and ghostly; there
were no more ripples of laughter or calls from this side to that; and
Nina resumed her place more contentedly at the table, which was all lit
up now. She made her small apologies; she said she did not know that
England was such a beautiful place. Lionel, who in no way resented her
thus withdrawing herself from time to time, had been leisurely talking
to Mrs. Grey of theatrical things in general; and, now that coffee was
coming in, he begged permission to light a cigarette. Altogether it was
a simple, friendly, unpretentious evening, that did not seem to involve
any serious consequences. As night fell, they set out on their homeward
drive; and through the silent country they went, under the stars. Lionel
left his two friends at their door in Sloane Street; and as he was
driving home to his lodgings, if he thought of the matter at all, he no
doubt hoped that he had given his friends a pleasant little treat.

But there was more to come of it than that. On the following evening
Lionel got down to the theatre rather later than usual, and had to set
to work at once to get ready, so that he had no opportunity of seeing
Miss Burgoyne until he actually met her on the stage. Now, those of the
public who had seen this piece before could not have perceived any
difference of manner on the part of the coquettish Grace Mainwaring
towards the young gentleman who had so unexpectedly fallen in her
way--to wit, Harry Thornhill; but Lionel instantly became aware of it;
and while he was endeavoring, after the fashion of the young stage
gallant, to convey to Miss Grace Mainwaring the knowledge that she had
suddenly captured his fancy and made him her slave for life, he was
inwardly reflecting that he should have come down earlier to the
theatre, and apologized to Miss Burgoyne for the unintentional slight of
the previous day. As soon as the scene was over and they were both in
the wings, he hastened to her (they had left the stage by opposite
sides) and said,

"Oh, Miss Burgoyne, something very awkward happened yesterday--I am so
sorry--I want to apologize--"

"I hope you will do nothing of the kind," said she, haughtily, "it is
quite unnecessary."

"Oh, but look here, I'm really very sorry," he was endeavoring to say,
when she again interrupted him:

"If you choose to go driving through London with chorus-girls," said
she, in measured and bitter tones, "I suppose your attention must be
fully occupied."

And therewith she marched proudly away from him; nor could he follow her
to protest or explain, for he was wanted on the stage in about a second.
He felt inclined to be angry and resentful; but he was helpless; he had
to attend to this immediate scene.

Meanwhile Miss Burgoyne did not long preserve that lofty demeanor of
hers; the moment she left him her rage got the better of her, for here
was the Italian girl most inopportunely coming along the corridor; and
just as poor Nina came up Miss Burgoyne turned to her maid, who was
holding open the dressing-room door for her, and said aloud, so that
every one could overhear,

"Oh, we don't want foreigners in English opera; why don't they take a
barrel-organ through the streets, or a couple of canaries in a cage?"

Nor was that all; for here was Mlle. Girond; and the smart little
boy-officer, as she came along the passage, was gayly singing to
herself,

   "Le rôti, la salade,
    L'amour, la promenade
      À deux dans les
        Dans les
      Deux dans les
    À deux dans les bluets!"

"Oh, there's another of the foreign chimpanzees!" exclaimed Miss
Burgoyne, in her fury; and she dashed into her room, and slammed the
door behind her.

Mlle. Girond stood staring at the door; then she turned to look at Nina;
then she burst out laughing.

"Quel ouragan, grand Dieu!" she cried. "Ma pauvre enfant, qu'allez vous
faire maintenant?" She turned to the door and laughed again. "Elle a la
tête près du bonnet, n'est-ce pas?--mon Dieu, elle s'enflamme comme de
la poudre!"

But Nina did not stay to make any explanation; somewhat paler than
usual, and quite silent and reserved, she took up her position in the
wings; nor had she a word to say to Lionel when he came off the stage
and passed her--with a nod and a smile of greeting--on his way to his
room.

Then things went from bad to worse, and swiftly. On the very next
afternoon, which was a Sunday, Lionel was about to walk down to Sloane
Street, to have a chat and a cup of tea with Mrs. Grey and Nina; but
before going he thought he would just have time to scribble a piece of
music in an album that Lady Rosamund Bourne had sent him and affix his
name thereto. He brought his writing materials to the table and opened
the big volume; and he was glancing over the pages (Lady Rosamund had
laid some very distinguished people, mostly artists, under contribution,
and there were some interesting sketches) when the house-porter came up
and presented a card. Lionel glanced at the name--Mr. Percival
Miles--and wondered who the stranger might be; then he recollected that
surely this was the name of a young gentleman who was a devoted admirer
of Miss Burgoyne. Miss Burgoyne had, indeed, on one occasion introduced
the young man to him; but he had paid little heed; most likely he
regarded him with the sort of half-humorous contempt with which the
professional actor is apt to look upon the moon-struck youths who bring
bouquets into the stalls and languish about stage-doors. However, he
told the house-porter to ask the gentleman to step up-stairs.

But he was hardly prepared for what followed. The young gentleman who
now came into the room--he was a pretty boy, of the fair-haired English
type, with a little yellow moustache and clear, gray eyes--seemed almost
incapable of speech, and his lips were quite pale.

"In--in what I have to say to you, Mr. Moore," he said, in a breathless
kind of way, "I hope there will be no need to mention any lady's name.
But you know whom I mean. That--that lady has placed her interests in my
hands--she has appealed to me--I am here to demand reparation--in the
usual way--"

"Reparation--for what?" Lionel asked, staring at the young man as if he
were an escaped lunatic.

"Your attentions," said the hapless boy, striving hard to preserve a
calm demeanor, "your attentions are odious and objectionable--she will
not submit to them any longer--"

"My attentions?" Lionel said. "If you mean Miss Burgoyne, I never paid
her any--you must be out of your senses!"

"Shuffling will do you no good," said this fierce warrior, who seemed to
be always trying to swallow something--perhaps his wrath. "The lady has
placed her interests in my hands; I demand the only reparation that is
possible between gentlemen."

"Look here, my young friend," Lionel said, in a very cool sort of
fashion, "do you want to go on the stage? Is that a specimen of what you
can do? For it isn't bad, you know--for burlesque."

"You won't fight?" said the young man, getting paler and more breathless
than ever.

"No, I will not fight--about nothing," Lionel said, with perfect
good-humor. "I am not such an ass. If Miss Burgoyne is annoyed because I
passed her on Friday without recognizing her, that was simply a mistake
for which I have already apologized to her. As for any cock-and-bull
story about my having persecuted her with odious attentions, that's all
moonshine; she never put that into your head; that's your own
imagination--"

"By heavens, you shall fight!" broke in this infuriate young fool, and
the next moment he had snatched up the ink-bottle from the table before
him and tossed it into his enemy's face. That is to say, it did not
quite reach its aim; for Lionel had instinctively raised his hand, and
the missile fell harmlessly on to the table again--not altogether
harmlessly, either, for in falling the lid had opened and the ink was
now flowing over Lady Rosamund's open album. At sight of this mishap,
Lionel sprang to his feet, his eyes afire.

"I've a mind to take you and knock your idiotic brains against that
wall," he said to the panting, white-faced youth. "But I won't. I will
teach you a lesson instead. Yes, I will fight. Make what arrangements
you please; I'll be there. Now get out."

He held the door open; the young man said, as he passed,

"You shall hear from me."

And then Lionel went back to Lady Rosamund's ill-fated album, and began
to sponge it with blotting-paper, while with many a qualm he considered
how he was to apologize to her and make some kind of plausible
explanation. Fortunately the damage turned out to be less serious than
at first sight appeared. The open page, which contained a very charming
little sketch in water-color by Mr. Mellord, was of course hopelessly
ruined; but elsewhere the ink had not penetrated very far; a number of
new mounts would soon put that right. Then he thought he would go to Mr.
Mellord and lay the whole affair before him, and humbly beg for another
sketch (artists always being provided with such things); so that, as
regarded the album, no great harm had been done.

But as he was sitting in Mrs. Grey's little parlor, at tea, Nina fancied
he looked a little preoccupied and was not talking as blithely as usual,
and she made bold to ask him if anything were the matter.

"Yes," said he, "something is the matter. I'm afraid I've made a fool of
myself." And then he added, with a smile, "Nina, I'm going to fight a
duel."

"A duel, Leo?" she said, faintly.

"Yes; and what I fear about it is the ridicule that may follow. But
don't be alarmed, Nina," he said, cheerfully, "I don't think I'm going
to fall on the deadly field of battle; I can take care of myself. The
trouble is that the whole thing is so preposterous--so absolutely
ridiculous! The fact is, what the young gentleman really wants is a
thorough good caning, and there's nobody to give it him. Very well, he
must have something else; and I propose to teach him a wholesome lesson.
I'm not going to take the trouble of crossing over to France or
Belgium--I dare say that will be the programme--for nothing. Then
there's another thing, Nina: I am the challenged party; I ought to have
the choice of weapons. Well, now, I am not a very good shot; but I'm
considered a very fair fencer; and I suppose you would say that I should
be magnanimous and choose pistols? Oh, no; I'm not going to do anything
of the kind. There might be a very awkward accident with pistols--that
is to say, if our bloodthirsty seconds put in more than half a charge of
powder. But with swords I fancy I shall be rather master of the
situation; and perhaps a little prod or a scratch, just to show him the
color of his own blood, will do him a world of good. It may turn out the
other way, no doubt; I've heard of bad fencers breaking through one's
guard just by pure ignorance and accident; but the betting is against
that kind of thing."

"But what is it all about, Leo?" Nina exclaimed; she was far more
concerned about this mad project than he appeared to be.

"Oh, I can't tell you that," said he, lightly, "without telling you the
name of the lady--for of course there is a lady in it--and that is never
allowed."

Nina sprang to her feet and stretched out her hands towards him.

"I know--I know!" she said, in a breathless sort of way. "Leo, you will
not deny it to me--it is Miss Burgoyne! Ah, do I not know!--she is a
serpent!--a cat!--a devil!--"

"Nina," he said, almost angrily, "what are you talking about? Do you
suppose Miss Burgoyne would want a duel fought just because I happened
to pass her, by accident, without raising my hat?--it's absurd."

"Ah, there is more than that, Leo!" Nina cried, eagerly; and then she
paused, in some hesitation and embarrassment. "Yes, there is more than
that," she repeated, as if with an effort, and there was a slight flush
in the pretty, pale face. "Why should I not say it to you? You are too
simple, Leo. You do not understand. She wishes to have the reputation to
be allied with you--in the theatre--out of the theatre. Then she sees
that you drive with me in an open carriage; she hates me--what more
natural? And she is angry with you--"

"Now, Nina," said he, "do you think any woman could be so mad as to want
to have a duel fought simply because she saw me driving past in a
carriage with Mrs. Grey and you--is it reasonable?"

"Leo, you did not see her last night," Nina said, but still with a
little embarrassment, "when she meets me in the corridor--oh, such a
furious woman!--her face white, her eyes burning. As for her insulting
me, what may I care? I am a foreigner, yes; if one says so, I am not
wounded. Perhaps the foreigners have better manners a little?--but that
is not of importance; no, what I say is, she will be overjoyed to have
you fight a duel about her--why, it is glory for her!--every one will
talk--your names will be joined in newspapers--when the people see you
on the stage they will say, 'Ah, ah, he is back from fighting the duel;
he must be mad in love with Miss Burgoyne.' A duel--yes, so unusual in
England--every one will talk--ah, that will be the sweetest music for
Miss Burgoyne's ears in the whole world--prouder than a queen she will
be when the public have your name and her name rumored together. And you
do not understand it, Leo!"

He had been listening in silence, with something of vexation deepening
upon his features.

"What you say only makes matters worse and worse!" he exclaimed,
presently. "If that were true, Nina--just supposing that were the true
state of the case--why, I should be fighting a duel over a woman I don't
care twopence about, and with a young jackass whom I could kick across
the street! That is what I ought to have done!--why didn't I throw him
down-stairs? But the mischief of it is that the thing is now inevitable;
I can't back out? I declare I never was in such a quandary in my life
before!"

"And you will go and put yourself in danger, Leo," Nina said,
indignantly, "that a deceitful woman has the pride to hear the public
talk! Have you the right to do it? You say there are sometimes
accidents--both with swords as pistols--yes, every one knows it. And you
put your life in danger--for what? You care nothing for your friends,
then?--you think they will not heed much if--if an accident happens? You
think it is a light matter--nothing--a trifle done to please a boy and a
wicked-minded woman? Leo, I say you have no right to do it! You should
have the spirit, the courage, to say 'no!' You should go to that woman
and say, 'You think I will make sport for you?--no, I will not!' And as
for the foolish boy, if he comes near to you, then you take your
riding-whip, Leo, and thrash him!--thrash him--thrash him!" Nina
exclaimed, with her teeth set hard; indeed, her bosom was heaving so
with indignation that Mrs. Grey put her hand gently on the girl's
shoulder, and reminded her that Lionel was in sufficient perplexity, and
wanted wise counsel rather than whirling words.

As for Lionel himself, he had to leave those good friends very shortly;
for he was going out to dinner, and he had to get home to dress. And as
he was walking along Piccadilly, ruminating over this matter, the more
he thought of it the less he liked the look of it: not that he had been
much influenced by Nina's apprehensions of personal harm, but that he
most distinctly feared the absurdity of the whole affair. Indeed, the
longer he pondered over it, the more morose and resentful he became that
he should ever have been placed in such an awkward position; and when he
was going up-stairs to his room, he was saying to himself, with gloomy
significance:

"Well, if that young fool persists, I'd advise him to look out; I'm not
going over the water for nothing."

CHAPTER VI.

A DEPARTURE.

There was but little sleep for Nina that night. She was sick at heart to
think that in return for the unceasing kindness Lionel had shown her
since her arrival in England, she should be the means of drawing him
into this foolish embroilment. She saw the situation of affairs clearly
enough. Miss Burgoyne was an exacting, irritable, jealous woman, who had
resented Nina's presence in the theatre almost from the beginning, and
who had been driven into a sudden fury by the sight of Lionel (he taking
no notice of her either) driving past with this interloping foreigner.
Moreover, Miss Burgoyne was inordinately vain: to have the popular young
baritone fight a duel on her account--to have their names coupled
together in common talk--what greater triumph could she desire than
that? But while Miss Burgoyne might be the ostensible cause of the
quarrel, Nina knew who was the real cause of it; and again and again she
asked herself why she had ever come to England, thus to bring trouble
upon her old ally and companion Leo.

And then in that world of visions that lies just outside the realm of
sleep--in which great things become small, and small things acquire a
fantastic and monstrous importance--she worried and fretted because
Lionel had laughingly complained on the previous evening that henceforth
there would be no more home-made lemonade for him. Well, now, if
she--that is to say, if Nina--were in her humble way to try what she
could do in that direction? It might not be so good as the lemonade that
Miss Burgoyne prepared; but perhaps Lionel would be a little generous
and make allowance? She would not challenge any comparison. She and Mrs.
Grey between them would do their best, and the result would be sent
anonymously to his rooms in Piccadilly; if he chose to accept it--well,
it was a timid little something by way of compensation. Nina forgot for
the moment that within the next few days an unlucky sword-thrust might
suddenly determine Lionel's interest in lemonade, as in all other
earthly things; these trivial matters grew large in this distorted land
of waking dreams; nay, she began to think that if she were to leave
England altogether, and go away back to Naples, and perhaps accept an
engagement in opera at Malta, then matters would be as before at the New
Theatre; and when Lionel and Miss Burgoyne met in the corridor, it would
be, "Good-evening, Miss Burgoyne!" and "Good-evening, Mr. Moore!" just
as it used to be. There would be no Italian girl interfering, and
bringing dissension and trouble.

But the next morning, when the actual facts of the case were before her
clearer vision, she had better reason for becoming anxious and restless
and miserable. As the day wore on, Mrs. Grey could hardly persuade her
to run down to the Crystal Palace for the opening of the Handel
Festival, though, as the little widow pointed out, Mr. Moore had
procured the tickets for them, and they were bound to go. Of course,
when once they were in the great transept of the Palace, in the presence
of this vast assemblage, and listening to the splendid orchestra and a
chorus of between three and four thousand voices dealing with the
massive and majestic strains of the "Messiah," the spell of the music
fell upon Nina and held absolute sway over her. She got into a curious
state of exaltation; she seemed breathless; sometimes, Mrs. Grey
thought, she shivered a little with the strain of emotion. And all the
time that Mr. Santley was singing "Why do the nations," she held her
hand tightly over her heart; and when he had finished--when the thrilled
multitude broke forth into an extraordinary thunder of enthusiasm--Nina
murmured to herself,

"It is--it is like to take my life-blood away."

But when they were in the train again, and on their way up to town, it
was evident to her companion that the girl had returned to her anxious
fears.

"Mrs. Grey," she said, suddenly, "I speak to Miss Burgoyne to-night."

"Oh, no, don't do that, Miss Nina!" said Mrs. Grey, with much concern,
for she knew something of the circumstances of the case. "I hope you
won't do that! You might simply make matters worse. Mr. Moore would not
have spoken to you if he thought you would interfere, depend upon that.
And if Miss Burgoyne is vexed or angry, what good would you do? I hear
she has a sharp tongue; don't _you_ try her temper, my dear," the little
woman pleaded.

But Nina did not answer these representations; and she was mostly silent
and thoughtful all the way to town. When they reached London, they had
some tea at the railway-station, and she went on at once to the theatre.
She was there early; Miss Burgoyne had not arrived; so Nina lingered
about the corridor, listening to Mlle. Girond's pretty chatter, but not
hearing very much.

At length the prima-donna appeared; and she would have passed Nina
without recognition, had not the latter went forward a step, and said,
somewhat timidly,

"Miss Burgoyne!"

"What?" said Miss Burgoyne, stopping short, and regarding the Italian
girl with a by-no-means-friendly stare.

"May I have a word with you?" Nina said, with a little hesitation.

"Yes; what is it?" the other demanded, abruptly.

"But--but in private?" Nina said again. "In your room?"

"Oh, very well, come in!" Miss Burgoyne said, with but scant courtesy;
and she led the way into her sitting-room, and also intimated to her
maid that she might retire into the inner apartment. Then she turned to
Nina.

"What is it you want?"

But the crisis found Nina quite unprepared. She had constructed no set
speech; she had formulated no demand. For a second or so she stood
tongue-tied--tongue-tied and helpless--unable to put her passionate
appeal into words; then, all of a sudden, she said,

"Miss Burgoyne, you will not allow it--this folly! It is madness that
they fight about--about nothing! You will not allow it!--what is it to
you?--you have enough fame, enough reputation as a prima-donna, as a
favorite with the public--what more? Why should you wish more--and at
such a dreadful risk?--"

"Oh, I don't know what you're talking about!" said Miss Burgoyne. "What
are you talking about?"

"The duel--" said Nina, breathlessly.

"What duel?"

Nina stared at her.

"Ah, you do not know, then?" she exclaimed.

"What don't I know?" Miss Burgoyne said, impatiently. "What are you
talking about! What duel? Is it something in the evening papers? Or have
you taken leave of your senses?"

Nina paid no heed to these taunts.

"You do not know, then," she asked, "that--that Mr. Moore is going to
fight a duel--with a young gentleman who is your friend? No?--you do not
know it?"

It was Miss Burgoyne's turn to stare in amazement.

"Mr. Moore?" she repeated, with her eyes (which were pretty and
coquettish enough, though they were not on the same plane) grown wide
and wondering. "A friend of mine? And you come to me--as if I had
anything to do with it? Oh, my goodness!" she suddenly exclaimed, and a
curious smile of intelligence began to dawn upon her face. "Has that
young donkey carried the matter so far as that?"

But she was not displeased; nay, she was rather inclined to laugh.

"Well, that would make a stir, wouldn't it? And how did you find it
out?--who told _you_? A duel? I thought he was talking rather
mysteriously yesterday morning--Conrad the Corsair kind of thing--glooms
and daggers--so it was a duel he was thinking of? But they are not
really going to fight, Miss Ross," continued Miss Burgoyne, who had
grown quite friendly. "You know people can't give up an engagement at a
theatre to go and fight a duel: it's only French gentlemen who have no
occupation who do that sort of thing. A duel?--a real, actual duel--do
you seriously mean it?"

The prospect seemed to afford her great satisfaction, if not even a
cause for merriment.

"Miss Burgoyne, you will not permit it!" Nina exclaimed.

"I?" said the other. "What have I to do with it? If two men want to
fight, why shouldn't they?" said she, with apparent carelessness.

"Ah, but you know well what you have to do with it," Nina said, with
some touch of scorn. "Yes, you pretend; but you know it well. The young
man he goes from you yesterday to provoke the duel--you have been
talking to him--and yet you pretend. You say, why should they not
fight? Then it is nothing to you that one friend or the other friend may
be killed?--that is nothing to you?--and you know you can prevent it if
you choose. You do not wish to interfere--it will be amusing to read in
the papers! Oh, very amusing! And if the one is killed?"

"But you know, Miss Ross, they don't go such lengths nowadays," said
Miss Burgoyne, with great good-humor. "No, no; it's only honor and glory
they go out for; it's only the name of the thing; they don't want to
kill each other. Besides, if two men mean to fight, how can a woman
interfere? What is she supposed to know of the cause of quarrel? These
things are not supposed to be known."

"Then," said Nina, whose lips had grown still more indignant and
scornful, "this is what I say: if anything happens, it is your
conscience that will speak to you in after time. You wish them to fight,
yes, for your vanity to be pleased!--you wish it said that they fight
about you! And that is a trionf for you--something in the papers--and
you do not care what harm is done if you are talked about! That is your
friendship!--what do you care?--any one may be sacrificed to your
vanity--"

"I suppose if they were fighting about you, you wouldn't say a word
against it!" observed Miss Burgoyne, coolly. In fact the vehement
reproaches that Nina had addressed to her did not seem to have offended
her in the least; for she went on to say, in the best of tempers: "Well,
Miss Ross, I have to thank you for bringing me the news. But don't be
alarmed; these dreadful duels, even when they get into the newspapers,
seldom show much harm done. And in the meantime will you excuse
me?--Jane is grumbling in there, I know. Tell me anything you may hear
about it by and by--and meanwhile I am very much obliged to you." So
Nina found herself dismissed, neither her piteous appeal nor her
indignant protest having had apparently any effect whatever.

But Miss Burgoyne, while transforming herself into Grace Mainwaring, had
plenty of time to think over this startling position of affairs, and to
consider how she could best use it to her own advantage. She had a
nimble brain; and it may have occurred to her that here was a notable
chance for her to display the splendid magnanimity of her
disposition--to overwhelm Mr. Lionel Moore with her forgiveness and her
generous intervention on his behalf. At all events, in the first scene
in which these two met on the stage, Harry Thornhill became instantly
aware that the merry and mischievous Grace Mainwaring appeared bent on
being very friendly towards him--even while she looked curiously at him,
as if there were something in her mind. Moreover, she seemed in
excellent spirits; there was no perfunctory "drag" in her give-and-take
speeches with the adventurous young gentleman whom fate had thrown in
her way. He was very well pleased to find the scene going so well; he
sang his share in the parting duet with unusual _verve_; she responded
with equal animation; the crowded house gave them an enthusiastic
recall. But the public could not tell that, even in the midst of this
artistic triumph, the audacious young lover had his own thoughts in his
head; and that he was really saying to himself, "What the mischief is
she at now?"

He was to learn later on in the evening. Just as he got dressed for the
ball-room scene, a message was brought him that Miss Burgoyne would like
to see him for a minute or two as soon as he was ready. Forthwith he
went to her room, tapped at her door, entered, and found himself the
sole occupant; but the next moment the curtain concealing the
dressing-room was opened about five feet from the ground; and there (the
rest of her person being concealed) he beheld the smiling face of Grace
Mainwaring, with its sparkling eyes and rouge and patches, to say
nothing of the magnificent white wig with its nodding sprays of
brilliants.

"Just a moment, Mr. Moore," said she, "and I shall be with you
directly"--and therewith the vision was gone, and the crimson curtains
came together again.

Very shortly thereafter the Squire's Daughter came forth in all the
splendor of her white satin and pearls; and she lost no time in letting
him know why he had been summoned.

"You are a very bloodthirsty man," said she, in accents of grave
reproach (though her eyes were not so serious), "and I am ashamed of you
that you should think of harming that poor boy; but I am not going to
allow it--"

"Why, who told you anything about it?" he said; for he could not pretend
not to know what she meant.

"A little bird," she made answer, with much complacence. "And the idea
that you should really want to do such a thing!--how many voices like
yours are there wandering about in comedy-opera that you should consider
you have any right to run such a risk? I don't mean being killed--I mean
catching a cold! I suppose you have got to take your coat and waistcoat
off--on Calais sands--with a wind blowing in from the sea; that is a
nice thing for your chest and throat, isn't it? Well, I'm going to step
in and prevent it. I consider you have treated me very badly--pretending
you didn't see me, when you were so very particularly engaged; but never
mind; I never bear malice; and, as I say, I'm going to step in and
prevent this piece of folly."

"Very much obliged, I am sure," he said, politely. "When men propose to
fight, it is so extremely pleasant to find a woman appear to throw a
protecting arm over them!"

"Oh, I am not going to be repelled by any of your ferocious sentiments,"
said she, good-naturedly. "I am a friend of both of you--I hope; and I
won't have anything of the kind--I tell you I won't allow it--"

"I'm afraid your intervention has come too late," said he, quietly.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Oh, it isn't worth speaking about," said he. "The young gentleman went
a little too far--he has got to be taught a lesson, that is all--"

"Oh, listen to him!--listen to his bloodthirstiness!" she exclaimed, in
affected horror; and then she suddenly altered her tone. "Come, now, Mr.
Moore, you're not seriously going to try to harm that poor boy! He is a
very nice boy, as honest and simple-minded as you could wish. And such a
pretty boy, too--no, no, it is quite absurd--"

"You are right there," said he. "It is quite absurd. The whole thing is
absurd. But it has gone too far."

Here Miss Burgoyne was called.

"Will you leave it in my hands?" she said, leisurely rising from her
chair, and tucking up her long train so that she might safely pass into
the wings.

"Certainly not," said he. "You have no right to know anything about it.
The quarrel was forced upon me; I had no wish to harm your pretty boy,
nor have I much now--except in trying to keep myself from being harmed.
But that is all over now; and this thing has to be seen through to the
end now."

He held open the door for her; and then he accompanied her along the
passage and up the steps, until they were both ready for their entrance
on the stage.

"Men are so obstinate," said she, with an air of vexation; "so obstinate
and foolish. But I don't care; I'll see if I can't get something done; I
won't allow two dear friends of mine to do anything so stupid if I can
help it. Why, the idea!--getting into a quarrel with a harmless young
fellow like that! You ought to have been kind to him for my sake--for he
really is such a dear boy--so simple and good-natured--"

"_But where is Grace?_" said a voice out there in the wide ball-room;
and as this was Miss Burgoyne's cue, she tripped lightly on to the stage
with her smiling answer: "_One kiss, papa, before the guests arrive._"
And, as it turned out, there was no further opportunity of talk that
night between Miss Burgoyne and Mr. Lionel Moore.

But two days thereafter, and just as Lionel was about to go out for his
morning ride, the house-porter brought him a card. It was Mr. Percival
Miles who was below.

"Ask the gentleman to come up."

Here were the preliminaries of battle, then. Lionel had a vague kind of
notion that the fire-eating youth ought not to have appeared in
person--that he ought to have been represented by a friend; however, it
was not of much consequence. He only hoped that there would be no
further altercation or throwing of ink-bottles; otherwise he considered
it probable that this interview would terminate in a more English manner
than the last.

The young gentleman came in, hat in hand. He was apparently very calm
and dignified.

"Mr. Moore," said he, slowly, as if he were repeating words already
carefully chosen, "I am about to take an unusual course. I have been
asked to do so--I have been constrained to do so--by the one person
whose wish in such a matter must be respected. I have come to apologize
to you for my conduct of the other day."

"Oh, very well," said Lionel, but somewhat coldly; he did not seem well
satisfied that this young man should get off so easily, after his
unheard-of insolence. Indeed, Lionel was very much in the position of
the irate old Scotchwoman whose toes were trodden upon by a man in a
crowd. "I beg your pardon," said the culprit. "Begging my paurdon 'll no
dae," was the retort, "I'm gaun to gie ye a skelp o' the lug!"

"I hope you will accept my apology," the pale-faced young gentleman
continued in the same stiff and embarrassed manner. "I don't know
whether it is worth while my offering any excuse for what I did--except
that it was done under a misapprehension. The--the lady in question
seemed annoyed--perhaps I mistook the meaning of certain phrases she
used--and certainly I must have been entirely in error in guessing as to
what she wished me to do. I take the whole blame on myself. I acted
hastily--on the spur of the moment; and now I am exceedingly sorry; and
I ask your pardon."

"Oh, very well," Lionel said, though somewhat ungraciously. "But you see
you are getting rather the best of this performance. You come here with
a ridiculous cock-and-bull story, you threaten and vapor and kick up
mock-heroics, you throw a bottle of ink over a book belonging to a
friend of mine--and then you are to get off by saying two or three words
of apology!"

"What can I do more?" said the humble penitent. "I have tried to
explain. I--I was as ready to fight as you could be; but--but now I obey
the person who has the best right to say what shall be done in such an
affair. I have made every apology and explanation I could; and I ask
your pardon."

"Oh, very well," Lionel said again.

"Will you give me your hand, then?" Mr. Percival Miles asked; and he
somewhat timidly advanced a step, with outstretched palm.

"That isn't necessary," said Lionel, making no other response.

The fair-haired young warrior seemed greatly embarrassed.

"I--I was told--" he stammered; but Lionel, who was now inclined to
laugh, broke in on his confusion.

"Did Miss Burgoyne say you weren't to come away without shaking hands
with me--is that it?" he asked, with a smile.

"Y--yes," answered the young gentleman, blushing furiously.

"Oh, very well, there's no trouble about that," Lionel said, and he
gave him his hand for a second; after which the love-lorn youth somewhat
hastily withdrew, and no doubt was glad to lose himself in the busy
crowd of Piccadilly.

That same afternoon Lionel drove down to Sloane Street. He was always
glad to go along and have a friendly little chat about musical affairs
with the eagerly enthusiastic Nina; and, as this particular evening was
exceedingly fine and pleasant, he thought he might induce her to walk in
to the theatre by way of Belgrave Square and the Green Park. But hardly
had they left the house when Nina discovered that it was not about
professional matters that Lionel wanted to talk to her on this occasion.

"Nina," said he, with befitting solemnity, "I have great news for you. I
am saved. Yes, my life has been saved. And by whom, think you? Why, by
Miss Burgoyne! Miss Burgoyne is the protecting goddess who has snatched
me away in a cloud just as my enemy was about to pin me to the earth
with his javelin."

"There is to be no duel, Leo?" she said, quickly.

"There is not," he continued. "Miss Burgoyne has forbidden it. She has
come between me and my deadly foe and held up a protecting hand. I don't
know that it is quite a dignified position for me to find myself in, but
one must recognize her friendly intentions, anyway. And not only that,
Nina, but she sent me a bottle of lemonade yesterday! Just think of it!
to save your life is something, but to send you lemonade as well--that
is almost too much goodness."

Poor Nina! If this careless young man had only looked at the address on
the wrapper of the bottle he could easily have guessed whose was the
handwriting--especially recognizable in the foreign-looking _L_ and _M_.
That timidly proffered little gift was Nina's humble effort at
compensation; and now he was bringing it forward as a proof of Miss
Burgoyne's great good-nature! And it was Miss Burgoyne who had
intervened to prevent this absurd duel--Miss Burgoyne, who knew nothing
at all about it until Nina told her! Nina, as they now walked along
towards Constitution Hill, was too proud to make any explanation; only
she thought he might have looked at the address on the wrapper.

"Seriously," he said to his companion, "seriously, Nina, she has put me
under a very great obligation and shown herself very magnanimous as
well. There is no doubt she was offended with me about something or
other; and she had the generosity to put all that aside the moment she
found I was embroiled in this stupid affair. And, mind you, I'm very
glad to be out of it. It would have looked ridiculous in the papers; and
everything gets into the papers nowadays. Of course that young idiot had
no right to go and tell her about the duel; but I suppose he wanted to
figure as a hero in her eyes--poor devil! he seems pretty bad about her.
Well, now that her intervention has got me out of this awkward scrape,
how am I to show my gratitude to her? what do you say, Nina?"

But Nina had nothing to say.

"There's one thing I can do for her," he continued. "You know how fond
actors and actresses are of titled folks. Well, Miss Burgoyne is going
down to Henley Regatta with a lot of other professionals, and I am going
too, with another party--Lady Adela Cunyngham has got a house-boat
there. Very well, if I can find out where Miss Burgoyne is--and I dare
say she will be conspicuous enough, though she's not very tall--I will
take Lord Rockminster to pay his respects to her and leave him with her;
won't that do! They have already been introduced at the theatre; and if
Rockminster doesn't say much, I have no doubt she will chatter enough
for both. And Miss Burgoyne will be quite pleased to have a lord all to
herself."

"Leo," said Nina, gently, "do you not think you yourself have too much
liking for--for that fine company?"

"Perhaps I have," said he, with perfect good-humor. "What then? Are you
going to lecture me, too? Is Saul among the prophets? Has Maurice Mangan
been coaching you as well?"

"Ah, Leo," said she, "I should wish to see you give it all up--yes--all
the popularity--and your fine company--and that you go away back to
Pandiani--"

"Pandiani!" he exclaimed. "Here's romance, indeed! You want us both to
become students again, and to have the old days at Naples back again--"

"No, no, no!" she said, shaking her head. "It is the future I think of.
I wish to hear you in grand opera or in oratorio--I wish to see you a
great artist--that is something noble, something ambitious, something to
work for day and night. Ah, Leo, when I hear Mr. Santley sing 'Why do
the nations'--when I see the thousands and thousands of people sitting
entranced, then I say to myself, 'There is something grand and noble to
speak to all these people--to lift them above themselves, to give them
this pure emotion, surely that is a great thing--it is high, like
religion--it is a purification--it is--'" But here she stopped, with a
little gesture of despair. "No, no, Leo, I cannot tell you--I have not
enough English."

"It's all very well," said he, "for you to talk about Santley; but where
will you get another voice like his?"

"Leo, you can sing finer music than 'The Starry Night,'" she said. "You
have the capacity. Ah, but you enjoy too much; you are petted and
spoiled, yes? you have not a great ambition--"

"I'll tell you what I seem to have, though, Nina," said he. "I seem to
have a faculty of impressing my friends with the notion that I could do
something tremendous if only I tried; whereas I know that this belief of
theirs is only a delusion."

"But you do not try, Leo," said this persistent counsellor. "No? life is
too pleasant for you; you have not enthusiasm; why, your talk is always
_persiflage_--it is the talk of the fashionable world. And you an
artist!"

However, at this moment Lionel suddenly discovered that this leisurely
stroll was likely to make them late in getting to the theatre; so that
perforce they had to leave these peaceful glades of the Green Park and
get into Piccadilly, where they jumped into a hansom-cab and were
rapidly whirled away eastward.

But if Lionel was to be reproached for his lack of ambition, that was a
charge which could not be brought against certain of those fashionable
friends of his at whom Nina (in unconscious collusion with Maurice
Mangan) seemed inclined to look askance. At the very height of the
London season Lady Adela Cunyngham and her sisters, Lady Sybil and Lady
Rosamund Bourne, had taken the town by storm; and it seemed probable
that, before they departed for Scotland, they would leave quite a trail
of glory behind them in the social firmament. The afternoon production
of "The Chaplet," in the gardens of Sir Hugh's house on Campden Hill,
had been a most notable festivity, doubtless; but then it was a
combination affair; for Miss Georgie Lestrange had shared in the honors
of the occasion; moreover, they had professional assistance given them
by Mr. Lionel Moore. It was when the three sisters attacked their own
particular pursuits that their individual genius shone, and marked
success had attended their separate efforts. His royal highness, the
commander-in-chief, it is true, had not as yet invited the colonels of
the British army to recommend Lady Sybil's "Soldiers' Marching Song" to
the band-masters of the various regiments, but, in default of that, this
composition was performed nightly, as the concluding ceremony, at the
international exhibition then open in London; and as the piece was
played by the combined bands of the Royal Marines, with the drums of the
1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Highland Pipers of the 2d Battalion
Scots Guards, and the drums of the 2d Battalion Grenadier Guards, the
resultant noise was surely sufficient to satisfy the hungriest vanity of
any composer, professional or amateur, who ever lived. Then not only had
Lady Rosamund exhibited a large picture at the Lansdowne Gallery (a
decorative work this was, representing the manumission of a slave, with
the legend underneath, "_Hunc hominem liberum esse volo_"), but also the
proprietors of an illustrated weekly newspaper had published in their
summer number, as a colored supplement, what she had ventured to call
"An All-the-year-round Valentine." She had taken the following rhyme (or
perhaps some one had found it for her)--

   "In these fair violets of the veins,
    The verdure of the spring remains;
    Ripe cherries on thy lips display
    The lustre of the summer day;
    If I for autumn were to seek,
    I'd view the apples on thy cheek;
    There's nought could give me pain in thee,
    But winter in thy heart to see."

--and she had drawn four pretty little landscapes, which, when
reproduced on one sheet by chromo-lithography, looked very neat and
elegant, while the fair artist was much gratified to observe her name
figuring on the placards at railway-stations or on the boards in front
of stationers' shops, as she drove along Kensington High Street.

But, of course, the crowning achievement of the gifted family was Lady
Adela Cunyngham's novel. If it was not quite the success of the season,
as far as the outer world was concerned, it certainly was the
most-talked-of book among Lady Adela's own set. Every character in it
was identified as somebody or another; and although Lady Adela, as a
true artist, maintained that she did not draw individuals, but types,
she could not stem the tide of this harmless curiosity, and had to
submit to the half-humorous inquiries and flattering insinuations of her
friends. As for the outer world, if it remained indifferent, that only
showed its lack of gratitude; for here, there, and everywhere, among the
evening and weekly papers (the morning papers were, perhaps, too busy
with politics at the time), attention was drawn to Lady Arthur
Castletown's charming and witty romance of modern life. Alp called to
Alp, and deep to deep, throughout Satan's invisible world; "Kathleen's
Sweethearts" was dragged in (apparently with ten men pushing behind) for
casual allusion in "Our Weekly Note-book;" Lady Arthur's smart sayings
were quoted in the gossip attached to this or that monthly magazine; the
correspondent of a country journal would hasten to say that it was not
necessary to inform _his_ readers that Lady Arthur Castletown was, in
reality, Lady Adela Cunyngham, the wife of the well-known breeder of
polled cattle, Sir Hugh Cunyngham of the Braes. In the midst of all this
Lionel went to his friend Maurice Mangan.

"Look here, Maurice," said he, "that book can't be as bad as you tried
to make out."

"It is the most insensate trash that was ever put between boards," was
the prompt reply.

"But how can that be? Look at what the papers say!"

"The papers--what papers? That isn't what the papers say--that is what
the small band of log-rollers say, calling industriously to one another,
like frogs in a pond. Didn't I tell you what would happen if you got
hold of Octavius Quirk, or any one of them? How many dinners did your
swell friends expend on Quirk?"

"Oh, I don't know. He is pretty often at the house."

"He is pretty often at the house, is he?" Mangan repeated.

"I hope they won't ask him to Scotland," Lionel said, ruefully. "I can't
bear the fellow; it's just as you say, he's always in a whirlwind of
insistence--about nothing; and he doesn't grin through a horse-collar,
he roars and guffaws through it. But then, you see, he has been very
kind about this book; and, of course, a new author, like Lady Adela, is
grateful. I admit what you say is right enough--perhaps the family are a
little anxious for notoriety; but so are a good many other people; and
there's no great harm in writing or painting or composing music as well
as you can. Mind, I think there's a little professional jealousy about
you, Maurice," continued this sage Mentor. "You don't like a woman of
fashion to come into your literary circles. But why shouldn't she? I'm
sure I don't object when any one of them tries to produce a little
dramatic or musical piece; on the contrary, I would rather help. And
look at Mellord--the busiest painter of the day--look at the trouble he
takes in advising Lady Rosamund; she has the free _entrée_ into his
studio, no matter who is sitting to him. I think, for amateurs, the work
of all the three sisters is very creditable to them; and I don't see why
they shouldn't like to have the appreciation of the public, just as
other people like it."

"My dear fellow," Mangan said, but with obvious indifference, "do you
think I resent the fact of your friend Lady Arthur or Lady Adela writing
a foolish novel? Far from it. You asked my opinion of it, and I told
you; if you don't see for yourself that the book is absolute trash--but
harmless trash, as I think--then you are in a happy condition of mind,
for you must be easily pleased. Come, let's talk of something worth
talking about. Have you been down to Winstead lately?"

"No--never since that Sunday."

"Do you know, your people were awfully good to me," this long, lank,
lazy-looking man went on--but now he seemed more interested than when
talking about Lady Adela's novel. "I never spent a more delightful
evening--never. I wonder they did not turn me out, though; for I stayed
and stayed, and never noticed how late it was getting. Missed the last
train, of course, and walked all the way up to London; not a bit sorry,
either, for the night was cool, and there was plenty of starlight; I'd
walk twice as far to spend another such evening. I--I'm thinking of
going down there next Sunday," he added, with a little hesitation.

"Why not?" Lionel said, cordially enough.

"You see," Mangan continued, still rather hesitatingly, "the fact
is--I'm rather in the way of getting illustrated papers--and--and summer
numbers--and children's books--I mean, when I want them, I can get
them--for lots of these things come to the newspaper offices, and
they're not much use to anybody; so I thought I would just make up a
parcel and send it down to Miss Frances, don't you understand, for her
sick children--"

"I dare say you went and spent a lot of money." Lionel said, with a
laugh.

"And she was good enough to write back that it was just what she wanted;
for several of the children--most of them, I should say--couldn't read,
but they liked looking at pictures. And then she was kind enough to add
that if I went down next Sunday, she would take me to see how the things
had been distributed--the pictures hung up on walls, and so
forth--and--and that's why I think I may go down."

"Oh, yes, certainly," Lionel said, though he did not understand why any
such excuse was necessary.

"Couldn't you come down, too, Linn?" Mangan suggested.

"Oh, no, I couldn't, I'm so busy," was the immediate reply. "I'm going
to Scotland the first or second week in August. The doctor advises me to
give my voice a long rest; and the Cunynghams have asked me to their
place in Ross-shire. Besides, I don't care about singing in London when
there's nobody but country cousins, and none too many of them. Of course
I'll have to go down and bid the old folks good-bye before starting for
Scotland, and Francie, too. Mind you tell that wicked Francie that I am
very angry with her for not having come up to see 'The Squire's
Daughter.'"

"Linn," said his friend, after a second, "why don't you take the old
people over to Aix or some such place for a month? They're so awfully
proud of you; and you might take Miss Frances as well; she seems to work
so hard--she deserves a rest. Wouldn't that be as sensible as going to
Scotland?"

"My good chap, I would do that in a moment--I should be delighted," said
he--for he was really a most generously disposed young man, especially
as regarded money; time was of greater consideration with him. "But it's
no use thinking of such a thing. The old folks are much too content with
home; they won't travel. And Francie--she wouldn't come away from those
precious babes. Well, I'm off. Mind you scold Francie for me!"

"Perhaps," said Mangan, as he accompanied his friend to the door.

So it was that on a certain evening in August, Lionel Moore drove up to
Euston Station and secured a sleeping-berth in the train going north;
and no doubt the consciousness that after a long spell of hard work he
was entering upon a well-earned holiday was a very welcome and
comfortable thing. If only he had been a little more reflective, he
might have set to work (here in the railway-carriage, as he lit his
cigar, and proceeded to fix up his reading-lamp) and gone on to consider
how entirely satisfactory all his circumstances were at this moment.
Prince Fortunatus, indeed! Was ever any one more happily situated? Here
he was, young, full of health and high spirits, excellent-tempered, and
sufficiently good-looking; he had acquired a liberal measure of fame and
popularity; he had many friends; he had ample means, for he did not know
the difference between a backer and a layer, nor yet the difference
between a broker and a jobber--in fact, gambling, either in stocks or on
the turf, had never even occurred to him as a thing worth thinking
about. But there was something further than all this for which he ought
to have been profoundly grateful. As the long train thundered away into
the night, there was no dull misery of farewell weighing heavily upon
him; there were no longing fancies wandering wistfully back to a certain
house, a certain figure, a pair of too-eloquent eyes. He dragged no
lengthening chain with him on this journey north. For, notwithstanding
his pleasant companionship with Nina, and her constant sympathy with him
and her interest in his professional career; notwithstanding the
affectionate regard of his cousin Francie, which was none the less
sincere that it remained unspoken and only to be guessed at;
notwithstanding the somewhat jealous favor which the prima-donna of the
New Theatre seemed inclined to bestow on him; notwithstanding the pert
coquetries and fascinations of Miss Georgie Lestrange, to say nothing of
the blandishments and pettings showered upon him by crowds of ladies of
exalted rank, this fortunate young man (so far at least as he was
himself aware) was going away to Scotland quite heart-whole.

CHAPTER VII.

IN STRATHAIVRON.

It was still early in the afternoon when Lionel found himself driving
along a loftily-winding road overlooking the wide and fertile valley of
the Aivron. Right down below him, and visible through the birch-trees,
was the river itself, of a brilliant, clear-shining blue, save where in
some more distant sweeps it shone a silver-white; on the other side of
the broad strath rose a range of hill fringed along its base with wood,
but terminating in the west in far altitudes of bare rock and heather;
while now and again he could catch a glimpse of some still more distant
peak or shoulder, no doubt belonging to the remote and mountainous
region of Assynt. And there, in the middle of the plain, stood the
shooting-lodge for which he was bound--a long, rambling building or
series of buildings, with all sorts of kennels and out-houses and
deer-houses attached; and as he was regarding this goal and aim of his
journey, and wondering how he was going to get across the swift-flowing
stream, behold! a white fluttering of handkerchiefs just outside the
porch. It was a signal to him, he knew; and he returned it more than
once--until, indeed, he discovered that his driver was leaving the road
and about to take the horses down a rudely cut track on the hillside.

"I say, isn't there a bridge anywhere?" he asked; for he was not used to
such exploits.

"Aw, no, there's no bridge," the old Highland driver said, coolly, as he
jammed down the brake. "But we'll do ferry well at the ford; the water
is not so high the now."

"And when the water is high, what do they do then?" Lionel asked, as he
regarded with some concern the almost vertical pole and the straining
harness.

"Aw, well, there uss a boat; and if there's a spate on the ruvver they
can come and go; but not with the heavy things. Ay, I hef seen tons of
coal waiting for them at Invershin for near a fortnight when there wass
a heavy spate on the ruvver. The leddies are so particular nowadays;
peat will not do for them for the cooking; naw, they must hef coal."

But now the horses were entering the stream, and the old man's loquacity
ceased. The animals, however, seemed quite accustomed to this
performance; without any hesitation they adventured into the rapid
current, and splashed their way forward, getting such footing as was
possible among the big, loose stones and shingle. Indeed, the passage
was effected with very little trouble, if with a good deal of jolting
and bumping; and thereafter there was a pleasant trot along some
sufficiently smooth greensward up to the door of the lodge.

Yes, here were the three tall and handsome sisters, looking very
picturesque in their simple Northern attire? and here was Miss Georgie
Lestrange conspicuous in a Tam o' Shanter of bright blue; and no sooner
had the young man descended from the wagonette than they surrounded him,
laughing and questioning, and giving him the heartiest of welcomes. How
could he answer them all at once? When the poor man was taken into the
dining-room, and set down to his solitary luncheon, they were all for
waiting on him and talking to him at the same time.

"It is so awfully kind of you to come," Lady Adela said, with one of her
most gracious smiles. "Now we shall hear about something else than dogs
and guns and grouse."

"Oh, Mr. Moore," cried Lady Rosamund (who was the youngest, and had a
bit of a temper, and was allowed to interfere when she liked), "do you
know a masque called 'Alfred'? You do? how delightful! Well, then, you
remember the visions of the future kings and queens that pass before
Alfred when he is in the Isle of Athelney? how can I get that done in
the open air? What kind of gauze do you use in the theatre? Could you
get me a bit? And would painted shades do instead of living
persons?--you see we have so few people to come and go on up here."

"And, Mr. Moore," cried Lady Sybil, "how are we to manage about an
accompaniment? A single violin is no use out in the open. Would it be
too dreadful if we had a harmonium concealed somewhere? We could get one
from Inverness; and you know a harmonium would do very well for the
music that introduces the visions."

"Mr. Moore," put in Miss Georgie Lestrange, with a complaining air,
"fancy their having given me another of Kitty Clive's characters; isn't
it too bad? Why, I'll go on and on until I identify myself with her
altogether; and then, you know, Kitty Clive wasn't--I'm afraid she
wasn't quite--"

"Oh, Mrs. Clive was all right; she was a great friend of Dr. Johnson,"
Lionel made answer, to reassure the young lady.

"But I wish you girls would leave off chattering, and let Mr. Moore get
something to eat," the young matron said, impatiently; and she herself
was so kind as to go and fetch the claret jug from the glide-table and
fill his glass.

However, there was peace in store for him. When he had finished with
this late lunch, Lady Adela begged him to excuse them if they left him
to shift for himself; they were busy dressmaking, she said. Would she
send for one of the keepers, who would show him one or two of the
nearest pools, so that he might try for a salmon? The gentlemen had all
gone down the strath, to test some new rifle, she thought; this was out
of consideration for her, for she could not bear shooting close to the
house; would he walk in that direction, and see what they were doing?

"Don't you trouble," he said, instantly. "You leave me to myself. I like
to wander about and find out my surroundings. I shall go down to the
river, to begin with; I saw some picturesque bits higher up when we were
coming along."

"You'll almost certainly find Honnor Cunyngham there," said Miss
Lestrange. "I suppose she has gone storking, as usual."

"Stalking?" said he, in some amazement.

"No, no--storking, as I call it. She haunts the side of the river like a
crane or a heron," said the red-haired damsel. "I think she would rather
land a salmon than go to heaven."

"Georgie," said the young matron, severely, "you are not likely ever to
do either; so you needn't be spiteful. Come away and get to work. Mr.
Moore, we dine at eight; and, if you are anywhere up or down the strath,
you'll hear the bell over the stables rung at seven, and then at
half-past."

So they went off and left him; and he was not displeased; he passed out
by the front door, lit a cigar, and strolled down towards the banks of
the Aivron. It was a bright and sweet-aired afternoon; he was glad to be
at the end of his journey; and this was a very charming, if somewhat
lonely, stretch of country in which he now found himself. The wide
river, the steep hillside beyond hanging in foliage, the valley
narrowing in among rocks and then leading away up to those far solitudes
of moorland and heather, broken only here and there by a single
pine--all these features of the landscape seemed so clear and fine in
color; there was no intervening haze; everything was vivid and
singularly distinct, and yet aërial and harmonious and retiring of hue.
But of course it was the stream--with its glancing lights, its living
change and motion, its murmuring, varying voice--that was the chief
attraction; and he wandered on by the side of it, noting here and there
the long, rippling shallows where the sun struck golden on the sand
beneath, watching the oily swirls of the deep black-brown pools as if at
any moment he expected to see a salmon leap into the air, and not even
uninterested in the calm eddies on the other side, where the smooth
water mirrored the yellow-green bank and the bushes and the overhanging
birch-trees. He sat down for a while, listening absently to this
continuous, soothing murmur, perhaps thinking of the roar of the great
city he had left. He was quite content to be alone; he did not even want
Maurice Mangan to be discoursing to him--in those seasons of calm in
which questions, long unanswered, perhaps never to be answered, will
arise.

Then he rose and went on again, for, from the high-road along which he
had driven, he had caught a glimpse of a wilder part of the glen, where
the river seemed to come tumbling down a rocky chasm, with some huge
boulders in mid-channel; and even now he could hear the distant, muffled
roar of the waters. But all of a sudden he stopped. Away along there,
and keeping guard (like a stork, as Miss Georgie Lestrange had
suggested) above the pool that lay on this side of the double waterfall,
was a young lady, her back turned towards him. So far as he could make
out, she wasn't doing anything; a long fishing-rod, with the butt on the
ground, she held idly in her right hand; while with her left hand she
occasionally shaded her face across towards the west--probably, as he
imagined, she was waiting for some of those smooth-sailing clouds to
come and obscure the too-fierce light of the sun. He knew who she was;
this must be Honnor Cunyngham, Lady Adela's sister-in-law; and of course
he did not wish to intrude on the young lady's privacy; he would try to
pass by behind her unobserved, though here the strath narrowed until it
was almost a defile.

He was soon relieved from all anxiety. Sharper eyes than his own had
perceived him. The young lady wheeled round; glanced at him for a
second; turned again; and then a thin, tall, old man, who had hitherto
been invisible to him, rose from his concealment among the rocks close
to her and came along the river bank. He was a very handsome old man,
this superannuated keeper, with his keen, aquiline nose, his clear, gray
eyes, and frosted hair.

"Miss Honnor says will you hef a cast, sir? There's some clouds will be
over soon."

"Oh, no, thank you, I could not dream of interrupting her," Lionel said;
and then it occurred to him that he ought to go and thank the young lady
herself for this frank invitation. "I--I'll go along and tell her so."

As he walked towards her he kept his eye, somewhat furtively, on her,
though now she had turned her back again; and all he could make out was
that she had a very elegant figure; that she was tall--though not so
tall as her three sisters-in-law; and that her abundant brown hair was
short and curly and kept close to her head, almost like a boy's. Were
not her shoulders a trifle square-set for a woman?--but perhaps that
appearance was owing to her costume, for she wore a Norfolk jacket of
gray homespun that looked as if it could afford a good defence against
the weather. She was entirely in gray, in fact; for her short-skirted
dress was of the same material; and so also was the Tam o' Shanter,
adorned with salmon flies, that she wore on her shapely head of
golden-brown curls. Oh, yes, she looked sufficiently picturesque,
standing there against the glow of the western skies, with the long
salmon-rod in her right hand; but he was hardly prepared for what
followed. The moment that she heard him draw near, she wheeled round and
regarded him for a second--regarded him with a glance that rather
bewildered him by reason of its transparent honesty and directness. The
clear hazel eyes seemed to read him through and through, and yet not to
be aware of their own boldness; and he did not know why he was so glad
to hear that she had a soft and girlish voice, as she said,

"You are Mr. Moore. I am Lady Adela's sister--of course you know. Won't
you take my rod? There will be some shadow very soon, I think."

"Oh, certainly not--certainly not," said he. "But I should be delighted
if you would let me stay and look on; it would interest me quite as
much--every bit as much."

"Oh, stay by all means," said she, turning to look at the western sky.
"But I wish you would take my rod. What are they all about to let you
come wandering out alone, on the first day of your arrival?"

"Oh, that's quite right," said he, cheerfully. "Lady Adela and the young
ladies are all busy dressmaking."

"Ye may be getting ready, Miss Honnor," old Robert interposed. "There'll
be a cloud over the sun directly."

Thus admonished, the tall young fisher-maiden stepped down by the side
of a rock overhanging this wide, black-swirling pool, and proceeded to
get her tackle in order.

"You know I'll give you my rod whenever you like to take a turn," said
she, addressing Lionel even as she was getting the fly on to the water.
"But we can't afford to waste a moment of shadow. I have done nothing
all day on account of the sunlight."

And now the welcome shade was over, and, after a preliminary cast or two
to get the line out, she was sending her fly well across, and letting it
drift quietly down the stream, to be recovered by a series of small and
gentle jerks. Lionel was supposed to be looking on at the fishing; but,
when he dared, he was stealing covert glances at her; for this was one
of the most striking faces he had seen for many a day. There was a
curiously pronounced personality about her features, refined as they
were; her lips were proud--and perhaps a little firmer than usual just
now, when she was wielding a seventeen-foot rod; her clear hazel eyes
were absolutely fearless; and her broadly marked and somewhat square
eyebrows appeared to lend strength rather than gentleness to the
intellectual forehead. Then the stateliness of her neck and the set of
her head; she seemed to recall to him some proud warrior-maiden out of
Scandinavian mythology--though she was dressed in simple homespun and
had for her only henchman this quiet old Robert, who, crouching down
under a birch-tree, was watching every cast made by his mistress with
the intensest interest. And at last Lionel was startled to hear the old
man call out, but in an undertone--"Ho!"

Honnor Cunyngham began coolly to pull in her line through the rings.

"What is it?" Lionel asked, in wonder.

"I rose a fish then, but he came short," she said, quietly. "We'll give
him a rest. A pretty good one, wasn't he, Robert?"

"Ay, he wass that, Miss Honnor, a good fish. And ye did not touch him?"

"Not at all; he'll come again sure enough."

And then she turned to Lionel? and he was pleased to observe, as she
went on to speak to him about her sisters-in-law and their various
pursuits, that, proud as those lips were, a sort of grave good-humor
seemed to be their habitual expression, and also that those
transparently honest, hazel eyes had a very attractive sunniness in them
when she was amused.

"The dressmaking," she said. "Of course you know what that is about.
They are preparing another of those out-of-door performances. Oh, yes,
they are very much in earnest," she went on, with a smile that lightened
and sweetened the pronounced character of her face.

"And you are to be entertained this time. They are not going to ask you
to do anything. Last time, at Campden Hill, you took a principal part,
didn't you?--but this time you are merely to be a guest--a spectator."

"And which are you to be, Miss Cunyngham?" he made bold to ask.

"I? Oh, they never ask me to join in those things," she said, pleasantly
enough. "The sacred fire has not descended on me. They say that I regard
their performances as mere childish amusement; but I don't really; it
isn't for a Philistine like myself to express disdain about anything.
But then, you see, if I were to try to join in with my clever sisters,
and perhaps when they were most in earnest, I might laugh; and
enthusiasts couldn't be expected to like that, could they?"

She spoke very honestly and fairly, he thought, and without showing
anything like scorn of what she did not sympathize with; and yet somehow
he felt glad that he was not expected to take a part in this new masque.

"From what I remember of it," said he, "I suppose it will be mostly a
pageant--there is plenty of patriotic sentiment in it, but hardly any
action, as far as I recollect. Of course, I know it chiefly because the
poet Thomson wrote it, or partly wrote it, and because he put 'Rule
Britannia' into it. Isn't it odd," he added, with a touch of adroit
flattery (as he considered), "that the two chief national songs of
England, 'Ye Mariners of England' and 'Rule Britannia' should both have
been written by Scotchmen?"

She paid no heed to this compliment; indeed he might have known that the
old Scotch families (many of them of Norman origin, by the way) have so
intermarried with English families that they have very little distinct
nationality, though they may be proud enough of their name. This young
lady was no more Scotch than himself.

"I will try him again now," said she, with a glance at the water, and
forthwith she set to work with rod and line, beginning a few yards
farther up the stream, and gradually working down to where she had risen
the fish. As she came near the spot, Lionel could see that she was
covering every inch of water with the greatest care, and also that at
the end of each cast she let the fly hang for a time in the current. He
became quite anxious himself. Was she not quite close to the fish now?
Or had he caught too clear a glimpse of the fly on the previous
occasion, and gone away? Yes, she must be almost over him now; and yet
there was no sign. Or past him? Or he might have turned and gone a yard
or two farther down? Then, as this eagerly interested spectator was
intently watching the swirls of the deep pool, there was a sudden wave
on the surface, she struck up her rod slightly, and the next moment away
went her line tearing through the water, while the reel screamed out its
joyous note of recognition. Old Robert jumped to his feet. At the same
instant the fish made another appalling rush, far away on the opposite
side of the river, and at the end of it flashed into the air--a swift
gleam of purple-blue and silver that revealed his splendid size. Lionel
was quite breathless with excitement. He dared not speak to her, for
fear of distracting her attention. But she was apparently quite calm;
and old Robert looked on without any great solicitude, as if he knew
that his young mistress needed neither advice nor assistance. Meanwhile
the salmon had come back into the middle of the stream, where it lay
deep, only giving evidence of its existence by a series of vicious tugs.

"I don't like that tugging, Robert," she said. "He knows too much. He
has pulled himself free from a fly before."

"Ay, ay, I'm afraid of that too," old Robert said, with his keen eyes
fixed on every movement of the straining line.

Then the fish lay still and sulked; and she took the opportunity of
moving a little bit up-stream and reeling in a yard or two.

"Would you like to take the rod now, Mr. Moore?" she said, generously.

"Oh, certainly not," he exclaimed. "I would not for worlds you should
lose the salmon--and do you think I could take the responsibility?"

He ceased speaking, for he saw that her attention had once more been
drawn to the salmon, which was now calmly and steadily making up-stream.
He watched the slow progress of the line; and then, to his horror, he
perceived that the fish was heading for the other side of a large gray
rock that stood in mid-channel. If he should persist in boring his way
up that farther current, would not he inevitably cut the line on the
rock? What could she do? Still nearer and nearer to the big boulder went
that white line, steadily cutting through the brown water; and still she
said not a word, though Lionel fancied she was now putting on a heavier
strain. At last the line was almost touching the stone; and there the
salmon lay motionless. He was within half a yard of certain freedom, if
only he had known; for the water was far too deep to allow of old Robert
wading in and getting the line over the rock. But just as Lionel, far
more excited than the fisher-maiden herself, was wondering what was
going to happen next, the whole situation of affairs was reversed in a
twinkling; the salmon suddenly turned and dashed away down-stream until
it was right at the end of the pool, and there, in deep water on the
other side, it resumed its determined tugging, so that the pliant top of
the rod was shaken as if by a human hand.

"That is what frightens me," she said to Lionel. "I don't like that at
all."

But what could he do to help her? Eager wishes were of no avail; and yet
he felt as if the crowning joy of his life would be to see that splendid
big fish safely out there on the bank. All his faculties seemed to be
absorbed in the contemplation of that momentous struggle. The past and
the future were alike cut off from him--he had forgotten all about the
theatre and its trumpery applause--he had no thought but for the unseen
creature underneath the water, that was dashing its head from side to
side, and then boring down, and then sailing away over to the opposite
shallows, exhausting every manoeuvre to regain its liberty. He could not
speak to her; what was anything he could say as compared with the
tremendous importance of the next movement on the part of the fish? But
she was calm enough.

"He doesn't tire himself much, Robert," she said. "He keeps all his
strength for that tugging."

But just as she spoke the salmon began to come into mid-stream again,
and she stepped a yard or two back, reeling in the line swiftly. Once or
twice she looked at the top of the rod: there was a faint strain on,
nothing more. Then her enemy seemed inclined to yield a little; she
reeled in still more quickly; knot after knot of the casting-line
gradually rose from the surface; at last they caught sight of a dull,
bronze gleam--the sunlight striking through the brown water on the side
of the fish. But he had no intention of giving in yet; he had only come
up to look about him. Presently he headed up-stream again--quietly and
steadily; then there was another savage shaking of his head and tugging;
then a sharp run and plunge; and again he lay deep, jerking to get this
unholy thing out of his jaw. Lionel began to wonder that any one should
voluntarily and for the sake of amusement undergo this frightful
anxiety. He knew that if he had possession of the rod, his hands would
be trembling; his breath would be coming short and quick; that a
lifetime of hope and fear would be crowded into every minute. And yet
here was this girl watching coolly and critically the motion of the
line, and showing not the slightest trace of excitement on her finely
cut, impressive features. But he noticed that her lips were firm;
perhaps she was nerving herself not to betray any concern.

"I think I am getting the better of him, Robert," said she, presently,
as the fish began to steer a little in her direction.

"I would step back a bit, Miss Honnor," the keen-visaged old gillie
said; but he did not step back; on the contrary, he crouched down by the
side of a big boulder, close to the water, and again he tried his gaff,
to make sure that the steel clip was firmly fixed in the handle.

[Illustration: "_And yet here was this girl watching coolly and
critically the motion of the line._"]

Yes, there was no doubt that the salmon was beaten. He kept coming
nearer and nearer to the land, led by the gentle, continuous strain of
the pliant top, though ever and anon he would vainly try to head away
again into deep water. It was a beautiful thing to look at: this huge,
gleaming creature taken captive by an almost invisible line, and
gradually yielding to inevitable fate. Joy was in Lionel's heart. If he
had wondered that any one, for the sake of amusement, should choose to
undergo such agonies of anxiety, he wondered no more. Here was the
fierce delight of triumph. The struggle of force against skill was about