that the outraged female proprietor of this staircase will not demand
my blood. Well, whatever happens, I suppose we shall not see the
amiable brothers to-night, and that will mean a _tête-à-tête_,' he
added, as he came out from his dusty retirement, and carefully removed
all traces of the same from his clothes. When he found himself once
more in the chill, foggy, outside air, he looked up and down the court,
and smiled.

'The situation becomes interesting,' he said to himself, 'and demands
another of these very excellent cigars.'

CHAPTER IX.

AT SPRAY'S BUILDINGS.

It seemed a very long walk home to Alice Hatfield, after that Sunday
evening lecture. She felt almost as though she could never reach her
lodging. It was such weary work to keep putting one tired foot before
the other. And somehow she was so much more easily tired now than she
used to be in her Derbyshire home, where she had been used to breast
the steepest hills without even a quickened breath. She wished she had
not gone; she had derived no pleasure from the evening, and had only
gained a sharper heartache from the sight of a certain face, which had
been, and was still for that matter, the dearest face in the world to
her. She felt re-awakened too in her a liking for a different life
among different surroundings; the life she had given up of her own free
will three months ago. She had been much alone in that other life, it
is true, and her thoughts had not made solitude sweet; but she had seen
_him_ sometimes, and now she was quite alone--always--save for the
few slight acquaintances she had made in the house where she lived.
In that other life, which now looked brighter than it had ever done
when it was hers, she had been racked and tortured by her conscience,
which had at last forced her to try and silence it by renouncing what
she had sacrificed everything to gain, and by voluntarily adopting
this strange, hard way of living. But now that that gloomy monitor was
on her side, it failed to give that comfort and support which one is
taught to expect from it.

'Be virtuous and you will be happy,' say the copy-books. A somewhat
higher authority (Professor Huxley) thinks otherwise. 'Virtue is
undoubtedly beneficent,' he says, 'but the man is to be envied to
whom her ways seem in any wise playful; and though she may not talk
much about suffering and self-denial, her silence on that topic may
be accounted for on the principle _ça va sans dire_. She is an awful
goddess, whose ministers are the furies, and whose highest reward is
peace.'

Alice Hatfield hadn't read Huxley, but if she had she would have agreed
with him in this; and now it seemed as though the furies were driving
her along the streets towards that miserable home of hers, where, so
far, no dove of peace had folded its wings.

It is given to all of us, at one time or another, to repent--more or
less--of the evil; but many of us also know what it is to look back,
with something like remorse, on what we believe to have been the good.
And good and evil, get so mixed up sometimes, when we have often heard
the world's 'right' skilfully controverted and made to seem wrong, by
the tongue whose eloquence once made wrong seem to us right.

Alice had to collect all her energies to enable her to climb the steep
dark stairs which led to her room, and when she had gained it at last,
and had lighted her little benzoline lamp, she sank down on her chair
bedstead, exhausted and breathless. What a hateful room it was; how
cold, and cheerless, and wretched. The few poor articles of furniture
did not relieve its bareness in the least. There was no fire, of
course, and her little lamp quite failed to light up the dark corners.
There must be something wrong with that lamp--it was going out
surely--the room was growing so dark; or was it her eyes from which the
power of seeing was going? The room seemed to swim before her sight,
and a feeling of deadly faintness came over her, a horrible sensation
of going through the floor. She staggered to her feet and drank some
water, which gave her strength to go unsteadily down to the floor
below, and to knock at the landlady's door.

'Oh, I am so ill--so ill! I think I'm dying,' she said, holding out
both hands as the woman appeared; 'help me.'

Then she knew no more. Her troubles, her tiredness, her regrets, her
very self, all were swallowed up in the horror of great darkness that
overwhelmed her.

'Here's a nice set out,' grumbled Mrs Fludger, as her lodger fell at
her feet; 'as if one hadn't enough troubles o' one's own--what with
Jenny being out o' work, and the master on the booze since Friday.
Jenny!'

'Here I am.'

Miss Jenny Fludger, a muscular young woman, with her hair in a long
beaded net, responded to the call, and lent her help in carrying
Alice back to her room. Then the unsympathetic hands of the two women
undressed the girl and laid her in her bed. Then they looked meaningly
at each other.

'If she don't soon come round I'll send Joe for the doctor,' said the
mother. 'You never knows what may happen.'

Then Mrs Fludger dashed cold water in the patient's face, slapped
her hands with a vigour that would have brought tears to her eyes
had she been conscious, and made a horrible smell with the benzoline
lamp and a pigeon's feather hastily begged from a lodger who had
leanings ornithological. Alice showing no signs of being affected
by the application of these generally efficacious remedies, Mrs
Fludger decided that this was a case of 'going off' quite beyond her
experience, and feeling the responsibility too much to be borne alone,
she despatched her third son in quest of a doctor, regardless of Miss
Jenny's opinion that the lodger was 'shamming.' Joe Fludger was not
particularly pleased at being sent. He was busy just then shaking up a
mangy kitten and a recently-acquired guinea-pig in a box, with a view
of getting them to fight, which they showed no signs of doing, and
he did not care to relinquish this enthralling pastime until he had
compassed his end. He put his two 'pets' into one pocket, hoping that
that position would urge them to fulfil their destiny and have it out,
and as he met several friends, and felt it incumbent on him to exhibit
his treasures to each of them, it was some time before he carried out
his instructions, and brought medical science, as represented by Dr
Moore, to 15 Spray's Buildings. But even when the doctor did at last
stand by her bedside, Alice was still insensible.

He raised her eyelids, felt her pulse, asked one or two brief
questions, and then stood holding her hand till she sighed, and moved
slightly.

'She's coming round,' he said. 'Not married, I see,' he added, glancing
at the hand he held, on which shone no golden circle, not even the
brass substitute which takes its place occasionally, when times are
very hard.

'Not as I ever heard of,' said Miss Jenny with a toss of the net, which
drew down upon her a glance of disapproval from the old doctor, and a
sharp recommendation from her mother to go downstairs. 'Give the girl
air; there's too many of us here a'ready.'

Miss Fludger withdrew with a gesture expressive of a sovereign contempt
for faints in general, and this collapse in particular.

'How does this poor thing get her living?' asked the doctor; 'she looks
as if she got it honestly.' He, being an observant man, glanced as he
spoke at the roughened forefinger of her left hand, and then round the
bare, dreary attic.

'Lord! doctor, how should I know? Do you think I puts all my lodgers
through their cataclysm before I takes 'em in?' said Mrs Fludger,
with some general recollection of the days when she went to Sunday
school. Mrs Fludger did not always manage to hit on the right word to
express the meaning she intended to convey, but she always found a word
something like the right one, and a word which really had a place in
the English dictionary; she had a rare dexterity in the finding of such
words, and a fine confidence in the use of them, which made them answer
her purpose admirably.

'You're better now, aren't you?' said the doctor, as Alice opened her
eyes. 'Here's a shilling, ma'am: can you send for some brandy?'

Mrs Fludger would go herself. Such an admirable opportunity for having
'two penn'orth' at the 'Hope' was not to be let slip.

'Don't be frightened,' he said, as the landlady left the room. 'It's
only the doctor. You've been overdoing it--working too hard, and eating
too little.'

'But I never felt like that before,' said Alice slowly and faintly. 'I
thought I was going to die.'

'Haven't you anyone belonging to you? You ought to be with friends just
now.'

'No. I'm quite alone, quite alone. Why just now?'

'My dear child, don't you know why?'

She did not answer, but looked at him with large, frightened,
questioning eyes; and before Mrs Fludger returned with a shrunken
shilling's-worth in a ginger-beer bottle, Alice had learned that that
which she had feared, till a sort of hope had grown out of the very
intensity of her fear--that which had seemed almost too terrible
to be possible--was to be. She now had that certainty which is a
spring of secret happiness to so many women, to some only a fresh
care and anxiety, and to some, alas! the sign and token of social
banishment--the warrant of disgrace and despair.

Doctor Moore spoke kindly, and with no note of censure in his voice.
He had a naturally tender heart, and long years of practice in a
poor neighbourhood had developed his sympathies, instead of blunting
them, as, unfortunately, happens in too many cases. He was an old man
now, and this was an old story to him; but his eyes were still sharp
enough to see that the girl before him did not belong to that class of
patients to whom such an announcement would have meant little more than
a temporary inconvenience and a trifling subsequent expense. He thought
to himself that he would look in in the morning and see the girl again.
There had been a look in her eyes as she listened to him that made him
feel that she wanted looking after.

'Give her some hot brandy-and-water, and let her go to sleep--that's
the best thing for her,' he said to Mrs Fludger as he came away. The
landlady accompanied him downstairs in a halo of apology for having
'such like' in her house, and when she had lighted him out she climbed
once more, protesting, to the attic, and having administered the brandy
as prescribed, came away, after bidding the girl 'good-night' not
unkindly.

But, all the same, she made up her mind that Alice must go. If the
girl had come there as 'Mrs' Anybody--and worn a ring, no questions
would have been asked by Mrs Fludger. There would then have been the
alternative of supposing that the Mr in the case was in the seafaring
way, or was enjoying a holiday upon the breezy slopes of Dartmoor. But
as she had chosen to neglect the payment of that slight tribute to the
proprieties which even this neighbourhood demanded, there was no help
for it--she must go. Besides, there might be difficulties about rent,
and even a want of money for the necessaries of life--and Mrs Fludger
was afraid to trust her tender heart. Even forty years of being pinched
and 'druv' had not quite dried up the milk of human kindness in her
bosom, and she felt that she would rather not have a lodger who would
excite her sympathy and possibly make demands upon her pocket. This
habit of 'not trusting our tender hearts' is not confined to the class
to which Mrs Fludger belonged. Others who have larger means of meeting
probable drafts on their 'tenderness' have also a way of pushing misery
out of sight, or handing it over to the emollient remedies of a Royal
Commission, which, of course, goes thoroughly into the matter. Does it?
The Royal Commissioners do not find their shoulders any easier under
the burden we have shifted on to them than we found ours, and not being
able to shift the weight again, they skilfully dissolve it, and give it
us back in the solution of a wordy report. And for Mrs Fludger, who had
to look sharp after every halfpenny, and who knew no higher morality
than that taught in the precept, 'Take care of number one,' which to
her meant the number nine, of whom Miss Jenny was the eldest, there was
more excuse than there is for the theoretical philanthropists who wear
purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.

But the landlady was not required to make the announcement which she
had proposed to herself, for when she went up to Alice's room the next
morning, to say that she wished to have a few words with her (and when
people say that, you may be sure the words are not going to be pleasant
ones), she found the girl already dressed--with her little belongings
arranged as for an immediate departure. So she changed her mind, and
instead of that speech about the few words, she said simply,--

'Good morning. You're better, I see.'

'Yes, thanks,' said Alice, hurriedly; 'and I think I would like to
leave this morning--and here is a week's money from last Saturday.'

Mrs Fludger rubbed her hands together in a little embarrassment.

'I don't say but you're in the right to go, and I hope you'll get on
all right, and not let your trouble play upon your mind too much; but
as for the money, never mind. It's only a couple of days, and I don't
grudge that. An' if you'll take my advice you'll go home to your own
folk, if you've got any. God-a'mighty knows it's hard lions with most
of us.'

Which Alice, listening sadly, interpreted to mean 'hard lines.'

And so it happened that her worldly goods were taken away on a
hand-barrow, she herself walking beside it--whither Mrs Fludger was
careful not to inquire; and Dr Moore, coming at noon, received the
comforting intelligence that the girl had gone home to her people; for
Mrs Fludger, like so many others, thought that her advice once given
could not fail to be taken.

CHAPTER X.

A SOCIALIST.

It was a bright, perfectly clear, moonlight night, one of those nights
in which there seems to be no atmosphere, in which the smallest
architectural details of every building show with even a greater
distinctness than in mid-sunshine. The great full moon and the vast
unfathomable expanse overhead seemed to have cast a spell of their own
peace over even London's unpeaceful heart. The streets were empty,
for the night had worn itself away to the only hour at which they are
really deserted.

The clocks had just expressed their different views on the subject of
two A.M. The night was so clear that Alice Hatfield, though her eyes
were smarting and aching, thought she could see the hands on the big
clock of St Paul's as she came on to Blackfriars' Bridge. She walked
slowly, and when she reached the second arch she stopped and leaned
her elbows on the parapet. How still the night was! The tide was high,
and had just started on its journey seawards; it seemed to flow in
one unbroken sheet save for the stir and fret that it made round the
supports of the bridge. The lights along the Embankment, with their
perfect reflections, might have seemed almost Venetian to anyone
inclined to take a more rose-coloured view of things than she. To her
they only brought a maddening remembrance of the time when she--not
alone then--had first seen them from the windows of the Arundel Hotel.
The noise of the water against the bridge was very like the sound of
the waters rushing round the stones in the Derbyshire streams--only
those waters had always made a song that was to be enjoyed, not
understood--and this dark tide, as it broke against the stone,
seemed to be whispering constantly some message to her, which she as
constantly, but vainly, tried to catch.

It made her shiver. She turned and leaned back against the parapet. The
other side of the bridge was in the ruthless hands of the paviors, who
had literally left no stone unturned in order to produce that utter
chaos in which the heart of the contractor delighteth. The large slabs
of paving-stones, standing and lying about in all sorts of positions,
made the place look--ugh!--like a graveyard, and the displaced earth
and heaps of sand looked like half-made graves, in which the spade and
pick of the sexton had ceased to clink. There was a bright red spot of
fire about a hundred yards from her--someone was comfortable beside it,
she supposed--and somehow she hated that patch of red light more than
anything else in the whole picture.

Alice had found a fresh lodging easily enough, and this time she had
adopted the badge of marital servitude, and had taken another name.
The new room struck her as cheerless and unwelcoming, and her poor
possessions looked less friendly than they had done in the old attic at
Spray's Buildings. Her bundle of work had been brought with the rest,
but she seemed to have no heart to begin it, nor yet to get herself
food, and she sat on there, hour after hour, till the sense of complete
isolation grew too much for her. At Spray's Buildings she had had no
friends, and had valued her few acquaintances but slightly, and she did
not realise the amount of comfort that could be got out of a chance
meeting with Miss Fludger on the stairs until such meetings were things
of the past.

'I will go out,' she had said, rising at last with a feeling that
even in strange and unregarding faces there would be companionship of
a kind. So she had left her room and had wandered about, passing more
than one spot hung thickly round with memories of her short day of
sunshine. Then when night fell she felt that she _could not_ go back to
that new inhospitable room of hers.

She pictured it dark, cheerless, and cold, shuddered as she thought of
the broad streak of moonlight which would come through the uncurtained
window, and lie on that bare floor. How dark the corners of the room
would be. So she wandered on, and the people grew scarcer and scarcer,
and she grew fainter and fainter. She would have been glad of food now,
but all the shops were shut, and when she came to Blackfriars' Bridge
she was too tired to go any further. And as she stood and looked at the
river gleaming in the moonlight, the question came into her mind.

'Need she go further? Was not this the fitting end for such as she?'

A spasm of madness caught her. What an easy way out of all her
troubles; what an obvious solution of all her difficulties!

She walked straight before her, stooping to pass under the protecting
pole in the middle of the road, falling once over a block of stone and
cutting her hands, she thought. She climbed the tomb-like stones, and
in a moment was on her hands and knees partly on the parapet and partly
on some stones that leaned against it. She looked over without changing
her attitude for quite a minute. It made her giddy to look down. She
could not stand up, as she had pictured herself doing when that madness
first came upon her.

She could drop over, though, and she would. Courage! In another minute
it would all be over.

She had made a movement to turn her feet towards the water, when her
shoulders were caught by two hands, and she was lifted bodily back on
to the bridge.

'You little fool!' said the owner of the hands, which gave her a little
shake before they loosened their hold of her. 'What do you want to go
drinking of that poison for? It ain't fit to drown a cat in, let alone
a human woman female.'

Alice's face was in her hands. She had sunk down against the stones on
which she had climbed before. She shivered.

'Oh, I am so cold!' she said, almost in a whisper, without taking her
hands away. The madness had died out of her completely.

'You'd have been colder if it hadn't been for me; and oh, the taste in
your mouth would have been something dreadful. Come and have a drop of
my missus's coffee, by my fire; it's a deal sweeter than wot you was
after. The Government ought to take it up,' he said, sententiously, but
whether he meant the river, the coffee, or the fire, he did not explain.

He helped her to rise, took her by the elbow in a sort of
amateur-constable way, and led her over and round the snares and
pitfalls which lay between them and that red eye which had seemed to
watch them.

It was a sort of openwork iron pot, full of hot coals, and a species
of shelter was contrived round it by means of a judicious arrangement
of paving stones and tarpaulin. When he had made her sit down on an
inverted basket placed in the warmest corner by the fire, she glanced
at him for the first time. He was a big, burly, black-bearded man; he
had a kindly expression, and merry eyes, with a sort of cast in one of
them which made it difficult to be sure which way he was looking.

'Still cold?' he asked, with one eye on her and the other apparently on
the pole star. 'Have this coat; I'm warm enough. I had to hurry up so
to catch you, young woman.'

He threw a rough pea-jacket round her as she said, looking down,--

'How did you catch me? Where did you come from?'

'Where did I come from? Why, from here. Directly I saw you cross the
road I knew what was up. I never would let anyone go into that ditch if
I could help it. It ought to belong to the Commissioners of Sewers,' he
ended, having apparently changed his mind concerning the administrative
functions of 'Government.'

'The question is,' he went on, 'where did you come from, and what did
you come for?'

'I've come from Gray's Inn Road,' she said.

'How lucky, now. I live that way. I shall be able to see you home in an
hour or two, when my mate comes to take his turn. You'll just have time
to get warm. Here, drink this coffee. Had any tea?'

She shook her head.

'Any dinner?'

'No.'

'Nor any breakfast neither, I'll back. I suppose you're hard up; that's
enough to make anyone go anywhere but into that,' with a backward jerk
of his thumb towards what seemed to be his pet aversion. He was a man
whose occupation caused him to pass a good deal of his time on bridges,
and he knew the river and the smells thereof.

'No,' said Alice, 'I'm not very hard up, and I'm in work, too; but I
moved into a new place to-day, and I felt too lonely to bother about
dinner or anything, and I expect going without made me a bit wild and
soft like.'

'Have some of this,' was his answer, and soon Alice began to feel a
returning sense of physical comfort steal through her, as she sat
resting by the cheering fire, drinking the hot coffee from a tin mug,
with a slice of bread and cheese on her knee, while her companion
kept up a constant ripple of somewhat inconsequent talk, which was
his notion of 'making conversation' for his guest. She took her part
in the dialogue with an ease which surprised herself. It seems very
strange that people should not be more affected than they generally
are by having been face to face with death. The fact is, that it is so
impossible to realise subjectively what death is, that people feel less
awestruck at having been so near it than they do at having been within
an ace of having their leg broken, or of being marked with small-pox.
Perhaps this is why so many men sleep sound sleeps and eat hearty
breakfasts just before execution.

It was a long time since anyone had thought it worth while to talk so
much to Alice, and she felt so interested, and withal so comfortable,
that it never occurred to her that this interlude of warmth and
companionship must soon be over, and that then she would have to
face the desolate streets and that cheerless room. Of seeking again
the chill refuge from which her new acquaintance had saved her she
certainly never thought. That madness was over.

Her black-bearded preserver was in the midst of an economic
dissertation of a somewhat confused character on the reasons of hard
times and bad wages, when a black shadow falling on a moonlit slab of
stone close by them made them both look up.

'Why, if it isn't Mr Peter Hitch,' said the pavior. 'So you're out
again, sir? Chilly night, ain't it? Come and have a warm. This young
woman's had a warm, and she feels better for it, I'll be bound.'

The new-comer sat down on some boards near the fire with a graceful
salutation towards Alice.

'It _is_ cold,' he said, with a distinctly foreign accent. 'You are the
lucky one, Mr Toomey, with your warm fire.'

Alice glanced furtively at the stranger. He was tall, and was not
dressed as she would have expected Mr Toomey's friends to be. He wore
a grey military cloak with a high collar, and a large soft felt hat.
The brim was turned up in a rather unusual way in front, and leaving
exposed as it did a broad, well-shaped forehead and piercing grey eyes,
gave to the whole face a bold and daring look. He did not seem to look
at Alice at all, and yet he had hardly been seated a minute before he
turned to her and said,--

'Forgive me, but I feel as if you were a sort of acquaintance already.
I sat just behind you at a lecture in Soho last night. I am not
mistaken--you were there, weren't you?'

The introduction of a third person to the enjoyment of the fire and
shelter had brought back to Alice the full consciousness of her
position, but the new-comer spoke to her so deferentially, and treated
her so exactly as if they had met in quite an ordinary way, and there
were nothing unusual in the situation, that she felt herself grow a
little more at ease again as she answered, 'Yes; I was there.'

'Why, I'm blest if I wasn't there, too,' broke in Toomey, 'and a rare
good 'un he was as spoke. Countryman o' yours too, eh, Mr Peter Hitch?
By the way,' he added, as the other nodded assent, 'I was wanting to
have a word or two with you, if miss here will excuse us. It's on the
subject as you knows on,' he explained, seeing the other's look of
surprise, and embellishing his speech by sundry winks, to which his
visual peculiarities imparted an unusually enigmatical character.

The two men stepped a few paces away, and then Toomey said,--

'I say, mister, I'm in rather a tight place, and perhaps you can tell
me a way out of it. That there young woman' (here he lowered his voice)
'would have been down somewhere off Greenwich by this time if it hadn't
been for me--the tide was just on the turn. I stopped her going over,
and now I feel responsible, like. I did think of taking her home to the
missus, but my Mary Jane, though she have the kindest heart, has a
sharp tongue, and I don't know quite how she might take it, nor what
she might say in the first surprise, like, before she could be got to
listen to reason, and that pore young thing's in trouble enough, I
know, without being jawed at, and I can't abide jaw myself neither. And
yet I don't like to lose sight of her just yet, and what am I to do?'

'I will charge myself with her,' said the other, without the slightest
hesitation. 'You can trust her to me, friend Toomey, can you not?'

'I'd trust you with anything, sir,' said Toomey.

The other went straight back to the fire where Alice sat, already deep
again in her own bitter thoughts.

'I am going home now, and as I go I will see you to your house. Come.'

She rose at once, and held out her hand to Mr Toomey.

'Thank you so much,' she said, 'for all your goodness. Good-bye.'

'Good-bye,' said Toomey, shaking her hand vigorously. 'This gentleman
will take good care of you.'

'Take my arm,' said her escort, when they got on to the pavement. 'As
you go to the Agora, I suppose we are interested in the same subjects,
and perhaps know some of the same people. Do many of your friends go
there?'

'I don't know anyone who goes there. I've never been there before
myself.'

'Did you go by chance?'

'No.' She hesitated a moment. 'I wanted to hear the lecture.'

'Then we do take an interest in the same subjects. Which way do you
go?' he asked, as they reached Ludgate Circus.

'Straight on; I am living near Gray's Inn Road.'

'Are you living with friends?'

'No, I am living alone.'

'Are your parents living?'

'Yes,' she answered. 'Oh, yes.'

From anyone else she could and would have resented such questioning,
but there was something about this man that compelled her to answer him.

'Were they unkind to you?'

'No, no!' cried Alice. 'They have always been the best of the best to
me.'

'Kind parents living,' he said musingly, 'and you are not with them.
Our good friend yonder told me how he met you. Tell me--what does it
all mean? It will be to your good to tell me.'

'What do you want to know?'

'Everything.' He laid his hand on the hand that was on his arm. 'I know
you will tell me.'

And very much to her own bewilderment, she found herself telling him,
not all, but enough for him to be able easily enough to guess all. She
laid most stress upon the sense of desolation which had come over her
in her new lodgings, and on the resistless impulse that had driven her
out into the streets. When once she had begun to speak, she found a
quite unexpected relief in the telling of this story which had never
passed her lips before.

'It is the loneliness I mind now,' she ended; 'not the work, though
that is hard enough.'

'The greater part of life is hard,' said her companion, 'and the best
thing in it for some of us is to be able to make the lives of others a
little less hard. I think it possible I may be able to make your life
somewhat easier for you. At any rate I think I could manage to get you
work which would be better paid for than your tailors' sewing.'

'Thank you,' was all Alice said. 'You are very kind.'

'I shall do that for you with much pleasure, but in return you must do
something for me. I cannot part from you until you have promised me
never again to attempt what you were prevented in to-night.'

'I cannot promise never to do it. All I can say is, I do not mean to
now.'

'At any rate, promise that you will do nothing till you have seen me
again.'

'Yes, I will promise that. I wonder whether the house door will be
unlocked. We are close there now. If it is not, I must walk about till
morning.'

'I must walk with you in that case, so we will see before I leave you
whether it is or not.'

She looked at him, and for the first time realised that her companion
was not of her own class.

'No; don't come further than here. I only came here to-day, you know,
and I must not be seen walking with a--a--_gentleman_.'

'Am I a gentleman? I am afraid all your countrymen would not give me
that title; men call me a Socialist. Ho-la--you've heard that name
before? Does it frighten you?'

'No, I am not frightened.'

'I will wait here,' he said, 'till I see if your house receives you.
If not, come back to me, and we will walk together till it can. I will
come and see you to-morrow--or rather this--evening, and I hope to
bring good news. Do not be down-hearted; things will look brighter this
time to-morrow.'

'Oh, I must not forget to ask your name. Did Mr Toomey call you right?'

'Ah, no,' he said, smiling; 'our good Toomey is not a linguist. My name
is Petrovitch. What is yours? I must know that, because of asking for
you when I come. I will come in the evening.'

'My name is--Mrs--Mrs Litvinoff. Good-bye.'

'Good-bye,' he said, with a start and quite a new expression on his
face. 'I will come at _noon_.'

CHAPTER XI.

COUNT LITVINOFF IS SYMPATHETIC.

At the moment when Mrs Fludger's sense of propriety was being outraged
by what she termed, in a subsequent recital of her wrongs to her
first-floor front, 'that shindy on the stairs,' Miss Stanley was lying
on the sofa in the sitting-room at Morley's Hotel, reading the novel
that had taken the last season by storm, and pushed everything else out
of sight on the bookstalls. But even the thrilling interest of this
work did not keep her from falling fast asleep in the middle of the
fourth chapter; and she passed the next half hour in a dreamland more
pleasant than Morley's Hotel; for that hostelry, especially when her
father was, as usual, in the City, seemed to her to be deadly dull. She
had just come back to the world of solid furniture and characterless
window curtains; her first waking thought was that some tea would be
worth anything to her just then--except the trouble of getting up
to ring for it--and she wished dreamily that waiters could know by
intuition when they were wanted. It almost seemed as if they did, for a
tap came at the door, and she had to stop her reflections to say,--

'Come in.'

'Mr Richard Ferrier,' said the waiter who appeared. 'Are you at home,
ma'am?'

'Oh, yes; show him up,' she said; and to herself, wonderingly,
'How funny of him to come at this time.' Then, as he entered, 'Good
afternoon, Mr Ferrier. What a dreadful day! Papa has not come home yet.'

'I am very sorry to say,' said Richard, as he took her offered hand,
'that I shall not be able to come this evening.'

'Oh, I'm so sorry!' she said, cheerfully. 'I hope there's nothing
wrong. Can't your brother come, either?'

'I don't know, Miss Stanley,' he answered, leaning one arm on the
mantelpiece, and looking down, but not at her, though she had seated
herself in a low chair near the fire, and was quite within easy visual
range. 'I am not likely to know much more about my brother.'

'Not know much more about your brother, Mr Richard?' she said, opening
her eyes very wide. 'What can you mean? Surely you haven't quarrelled?'

'I suppose we have quarrelled. At anyrate, my brother told me half an
hour ago never to speak to him again on this side of the grave.'

Clare felt that this promised to be several degrees more interesting
even than her book. She couldn't help wondering what they had
quarrelled about. Was it perhaps--

'What did you say to him?'

'I said nothing--he went away, and I came here.' He spoke in that
particularly even and monotonous voice which, with some people, is
always the token of suppressed agitation.

'I mean what had you said to make him say that?'

'I told him the truth.'

'But perhaps you said the truth too sharply, and, besides, you ought to
make it up with him--especially as you're the eldest. It's so terrible
for brothers to quarrel.' She ended with a little didactic air which
became her very well.

'I am afraid this is one of the quarrels that can't be made up. I can't
alter facts; neither can he, unfortunately.'

'Is it so very serious?' she asked. 'Oh--papa will be so sorry. But
you'll feel differently when you have had time to think it over.'

'Circumstances don't change by being thought over.'

'No, but our view of them does.'

'Well, I can say this, Miss Stanley; if ever I could change my opinion
of my brother's conduct I should be only too glad, and I should be the
first to make advances towards reconciliation.'

'Why, surely, Mr Roland's done nothing wrong?'

'You may be sure he has, in my opinion at least, or I should not have
spoken to him as I did; knowing, too, all that it involved,' he added
in a lower voice.

'Oh, yes,' said Clare in quite an awestruck tone--all that her father
had told her about old Mr Ferrier's will coming into her mind with a
rush. 'Why, I had forgotten that.'

'Yes,' said Richard, looking straight at her for the first time that
afternoon, 'I shall lose my living, and more, the hope of my life; but
at anyrate, thank God, I keep my honour, and he has lost even that.'

Clare returned his gaze steadily.

'You have no right to say that, unless you are quite, quite, quite
sure,' she said rather haughtily.

She had no motive for that little speech, save a natural love for fair
play, but he read in it a desire to champion his brother against his
attack, and he was goaded to the point of indiscretion.

'I am so sure,' he answered bitterly, 'that sooner than touch hands in
friendship with him again, I am giving up all my chances in life, and
with them the hope of winning you. Don't say anything,' he went on,
seeing that she was about to speak. 'I had no right to say that. I did
not mean to annoy you with any hint of my vain devotion, but I couldn't
help saying it. Consider it unsaid if you like, but don't be vexed
with me. There is one thing I must ask you. I should be untrue to my
love for you if I did not ask it. Do not let my brother win what his
fault forbids me to try for.'

She rose.

'I have given you no right to talk in that way, nor to ask me any such
promise, and I will promise nothing since I know nothing,' she said,
indignantly.

'Then at least it shall not be my fault,' said Richard with equal fire,
'if you do not know what every woman he comes near ought to know. He is
not free to offer love to any woman. He owes all the love he is capable
of to a woman he has ruined and deserted.'

Miss Stanley looked at him coldly and contemptuously. He stood silent a
moment, and in that moment felt the utter falseness of the step he had
taken. She turned slightly away from him, and he knew that there were
no more words to be said on either side.

'Good-bye,' he said; 'I shall not be at all likely to trouble you
again.'

'Good afternoon,' she said, without moving; and he went out. Now,
indeed, everything was over.

Clare, left to herself, sank down again in her low chair, and knitted
her brows in annoyed meditation. Quarrels, separations, and crushing
impertinent people with 'dynamic glances' were all very well in novels,
but in real life it was much nicer to have things go smoothly. She
could not quite foresee all the complications that this quarrel might
lead to, but she knew that it would make a great difference at Firth
Vale. Aspinshaw would be duller than ever. Would Roland come this
evening? Could what Dick had said be true? If it was, she thought, he
had no right to say it to her; and it was mean of him to say it to
anyone behind his brother's back. Count Litvinoff would be sure to
come, at anyrate. 'Let's hope _he'll_ be entertaining,' she said to
herself.

When a woman is bored, or tired, or vexed, or perplexed, or worried,
after a quarrel, or before a journey, there is one resource to which
she always flies. Miss Stanley rang for tea.

The waiter who announced Mr Ferrier had quite settled in his own mind
that in so doing he was ushering in one of the chief characters in a
love scene, but when he caught sight of the young man's face as he
came from Miss Stanley's presence, he decided that the scene in which
Mr Ferrier had just played his part, had not had much love-sweetness
about it, at anyrate. Count Litvinoff, coming up the stairs a moment
afterwards, met Dick going down, and thought so too.

'Ah! Mr Ferrier,' he said genially; 'we are to be fellow guests
to-night, I believe.'

'I think not,' said Dick, shaking hands; 'I shall not be able to come.'

Litvinoff's face fell, and he looked quite naturally grieved.

'How unfortunate,' he said.

'I say,' said Richard, after a minute's pause, 'were you in a place
called Spray's Buildings, a turning out of Porson Street, about an hour
ago? You'll think it strange of me to ask, but I have a particular
reason for wanting to know.'

'Porson Street--Porson Street. I've heard the name somewhere, but I
certainly haven't been there this afternoon.'

The Court of St Petersburg had evidently missed a good diplomatist in
Count Michael Litvinoff. The lie was admirably told.

'No,' said Richard, 'I didn't suppose you had, but I thought I'd just
set my mind at rest about it.'

'May I ask,' said Litvinoff, leaning on the banisters and idly swinging
his eyeglass by the guard, 'why your mind was disturbed concerning my
incomings and outgoings?'

'You are quite right. It is no business of mine; but I asked, in order
to verify or disprove a statement of my brother's.'

'So your brother, at anyrate, honours me with his interest, does he?'

'You'd better ask him--good afternoon.'

'A sweet disposition that,' observed Litvinoff, when, having watched
the other out of sight, he turned towards his room. 'They ought to
teach politeness at Cambridge, and put it down among the extras. By
the way, there may be something to be got out of our brother. Things
are getting too mixed to be pleasant. Wonder whether he'll turn up
to-night?'

He did turn up, in such a state of depression as to promise to be a
thorough wet blanket on all the fires of social gaiety. In fact, none
of the little party which assembled round Mr Stanley's dinner-table
were in a state of mind to make them what is called good company.
Roland was thoroughly unhinged by the events of the afternoon, which to
him had been so utterly unexpected, and were so completely unexplained.
It needed a determined effort on his part to listen to Mr Stanley's
commonplaces instead of thinking out some means of compassing a
reconciliation with his brother. He felt sure that their quarrel hinged
on a mistake, but what that mistake was, or what its subject was, he
was at a loss to conjecture.

Clare was listless and _distraite_. She was intensely annoyed by the
remembrance of that little episode with Richard, and, though she
told herself that she did not believe a word he had said, she found
it hard to forget it and to treat Roland as usual. She had not had a
chance of telling her father anything about Richard, for Litvinoff had
been punctual, and Mr Stanley had come back from the City late, and
cross as well as late; and the old gentleman's continued references
to the absentee, and his regrets for the 'sudden business' which had
prevented him from being present, made matters several degrees more
uncomfortable than they would otherwise have been.

Litvinoff had his own reasons for not feeling very joyous on this
occasion, but he had not had three years of wandering in exile among
all sorts and conditions of men for nothing, and he was able to put his
own personal feelings on one side, and to do what was exacted by the
proprieties. No one could have told from his manner that he had a care
in the world. More than this, he succeeded after a while in inspiring
the others with some of his own powers of self-repression; and though
they did not perhaps feel more festive, they made a successful effort
to seem so, in order to be not out of harmony with what seemed to them
to be his gaiety and light-heartedness.

During the earlier part of the evening he devoted himself entirely
to Mr Stanley, a real act of self-abnegation in any young man, when
Mr Stanley's daughter was in the room. But Mr Stanley was interested
in the financial condition of United States railways, and Count
Litvinoff--odd thing in an exile--knew absolutely everything that was
to be known about the financial condition of United States railways,
and, what was better, he had a friend who knew even more than that,
and whose knowledge was quite at Mr Stanley's service. If during the
long conference on these entrancing topics he cast occasional glances
across the room to where Clare and young Ferrier sat talking, they were
certainly not envious ones, for 'the gentle Roland' did not seem to be
having a good time of it. Litvinoff took pity on him presently, and
came to the rescue.

'Are we to have no music, Miss Stanley?' he asked, when the subject of
the financial condition of the United States railways was exhausted for
the time being, and his host showed decided symptoms of a desire to
descant on the beauties of 'our great Conservative institutions, sir,'
and 'the glorious Constitution which,' etc.

Miss Stanley felt that singing to three people would be better than
talking to one, and in the intervals between the songs that followed
she and Litvinoff seemed to conspire to keep the conversation general.

'Penny Napoleon,' so often a refuge of the bored and the uncongenial,
helped the long evening to its end, and though the last state of it was
better than the first, everyone was glad to say good-night to everyone
else.

The two young men, by the way, did not say good-night to each other
when they left the Stanleys.

'Come and have a cigar,' said Litvinoff, precisely as he had done on
the last occasion of their meeting there. And Roland, nothing loth
to defer the moment of being alone again with his own perplexities,
consented.

But even in the Count's comfortable little sitting-room his
perplexities pursued him, and in more objectionable shape, too. For the
first words his companion uttered, after he had supplied his guest with
one of his special cigars and a tumbler of something unexceptionable,
with lemon, hot, were--

'Your brother tells me you're taking an interest in my movements, Mr
Ferrier.'

'How do you mean?'

'I had the felicity to meet him to-day, and he asked me--rather
bluntly, perhaps--if I had been this afternoon in some street, the
name of which escapes me at the moment--Morford Street, was it? I told
him no, and begged to know the reason of his question. He then said he
wished to verify (I think those were his exact words) a statement of
yours. I asked him, did you take an interest in my movements? He then
said, in a manner _tant soit peu_ abrupt, 'You'd better ask him,' and
vanished into the Ewigkeit. _Voilà_, I _have_ asked you.'

Roland took two or three puffs at his cigar, and surrounded himself
with a little cloud of smoke. Then he rose and stood with his back to
the fire, and in that attitude he looked, Litvinoff thought, uncommonly
like his brother.

'Look here,' he said slowly, 'according to the laws of etiquette and
all that sort of thing, I have known you far too short a time to think
of talking to you about my relations with my brother, but I am horribly
perplexed about him; and since he has let you know that there is
something wrong between us, I may as well tell you all I know about it.
I need hardly say that all I say to you is said in strict confidence.'

The Count bowed.

'For some time we have not been upon the very best of terms; but that's
neither here nor there. There was nothing seriously wrong between us.
This morning, without any apparent cause, he made a kind of veiled
accusation against me, which I could not understand, and even went so
far as to tell me I ought not to go near--'

He hesitated. Litvinoff made an interrogatory movement, which prevented
his stopping short, as he seemed inclined to do.

'Miss Stanley,' he ended.

'Ah, so?' said the other, raising his eyebrows, and looking
sympathetically interested.

'We had a sharp word; but I should not have thought much more of it if
it hadn't been for what came later. This afternoon I was going to see
a man you introduced me to the other night, Lenoir, who, I thought, I
remembered lived in Porson Street.'

'Ah, yes, it was Porson Street your brother named,' interrupted
Litvinoff.

'As I was looking about for him I fancied I caught sight of _you_, but
it was foggy, and when I followed the man into a house, it turned out
not to be you. At least, I suppose not.'

'No, no; it certainly was not I.'

'Well, as I was looking about, bewildered, on a staircase, I met my
brother, who, I suppose, had followed me. He asked me what I wanted
there. I told him. He said I was a scoundrel and a liar. Of course, I
couldn't stand that, so I let out at him, and came away--and there the
matter stands. What do you make of it?'

'Excuse me,' said the other, 'does your brother drink?'

'Certainly not; he's one of the most temperate men I know.'

'Could he have done it because--But ah, no, that is quite impossible.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Is your brother in love with Miss Stanley?' said Litvinoff, slowly and
directly.

'I think he is. What made you think so?'

'It was coming from her presence that I met him.'

'By God! That may account for her manner to-night,' said Roland in a
low tone, but not so low but that Litvinoff heard him, and read his
thought almost before he heard his word.

'No, no, that is quite impossible; dismiss that from your mind. He
would never be so base as to traduce you to her. Besides, where is the
motive, unless he fears you? Is there perhaps some other lady in the
case?'

'No.'

'He told you you were not worthy to go near Miss Stanley,' said the
other, lowering his voice deferentially at her name. 'That can only
mean one thing.'

'It may mean that he is mad, or--by Jove!--it may mean one other thing.
But of that other thing I am as innocent as you are.'

If he was as innocent as Count Litvinoff looked, he was innocent
indeed.

'Perhaps it will arrange itself. Quarrels about ladies often adjust
themselves--or rather the lady usually adjusts them.'

'This,' said Roland, 'is more serious than most quarrels for both of
us, and more serious than I can tell you; but I think I've troubled you
enough with our family affairs. I'll say good-night.'

Litvinoff came down to the door with him, and helped him on with his
coat. As he did so, he said softly,--

'If it is any comfort to you, your brother did not seem to have
prospered in his suit. He looked distressed, and, fancied, remorseful.
Good-night. Ah, what a lovely night. The fog has quite cleared up. How
lucky for you. _Au revoir!_'

CHAPTER XII.

SUCCESSFUL ANGLING.

'The only good thing about life is that it's interesting, but it's
quite possible to have too much interest at once, and then it begins to
be irritating and depressing, and the best sedative is tobacco, and the
best stimulant is whisky.'

So said the Count when he returned to his room, and he accordingly
acted on his convictions. But both whisky and tobacco seemed to fail
of the effect expected of them. He sat looking broodingly at the fire
for a moment or two; then he got up, paced the length of the room, and,
turning sharply, stamped his foot on the ground, muttered a curse or
two, and flung his hands out with a vigorous gesture of annoyance.

'So, these sons of the millowner--these playfellows of childhood, these
friends of innocence--are _men_, not ugly, not fools, and not better
than their fellows. This Richard is apparently so much interested as to
go nearly mad about her disappearance; and as for Roland, there must
have been pretty strong grounds before his brother would have started
that charming scene on the staircase. I wonder if conscience had as
much to do with her conduct as I believed. As a rule, when a woman
gives up the substantial goods of this life, it's as well to look for
some more commonplace motive than conscientious scruples. Perhaps it
was only a yearning towards the old love. Pardieu, though,' he added,
with something like a laugh; 'the old love and conscience together
don't provide very good quarters. It would be too much to believe that
that little rustic had actually humbugged me. But it's not impossible,
young man,' and he glanced mockingly at his reflection over the
mantelpiece; 'and at present I should advise you to go to bed; you'll
need all your senses about you to-morrow. The threads are lying loose
round, as the Yankees say, and you must gather them up.'

He finished his glass of grog.

'I would have given a few hundred francs to have been present in spirit
at that interview which depressed la belle Clare and crushed the
unhappy Richard. But perhaps a little adroitness to-morrow will fill up
the blanks of to-day. And as for the other matter, the future is more
to me than the past--to conclude with a fine revolutionary sentiment.'

'I'm sorry I shall have to be out all the morning again,' said Mr
Stanley next morning at breakfast, as he opened his letters. 'Would you
like to come with me?'

'No, thanks, papa,' said Clare. She had been into the City with him
before, and had a vivid recollection of draughty passages, steep
staircases, and impertinent glances from junior clerks.

'What will you do with yourself all the time?' asked her father. 'You
can't be always reading.'

'I'll run over to the National Gallery, I think, and spend an hour or
two there.'

'Why, you've been there once with me.'

'It's no good going to a picture gallery _once_.'

'I don't know that it's any _good_, my dear, but it's quite enough
for me. However, please yourself--please yourself.' To Mr Stanley's
idea it was quite as safe to send a daughter alone to the National
Gallery as to send her to church on a week day. The two places seemed
to him to be the one as uninteresting as the other, and both of them as
absolutely free from possible snares and pitfalls as any convent in the
land. 'I meant to have given you lunch at the "Ship and Turtle,"' he
went on.

'My dear papa, I'm not greedy. I'm not an alderman.'

'The aldermen of London are an essential--'

'An essential part of the British Constitution,' she interrupted,
laughing. 'Yes, I know, dear, and I'm not an essential part. That's
just the difference.'

With which she smoothed his hair, arranged his tie, kissed him on both
cheeks, and watched him out of sight from the window. Then she went and
wrapped herself in a good deal of brown fur, and walked quickly across
the square to the hideous casket in which the nation cherishes its gems
of art.

She was wandering from one picture to another in a desultory sort of
way, and thinking, it must be confessed, more of her own affairs than
of the paintings, when she almost ran against Count Litvinoff, who was
standing, his hat off and his hands behind him, in rapt contemplation
of the Martyrdom of Saint Somebody.

He turned and bowed, with an air of pleased surprise. She had never
seen him look so little English--so very foreign.

'Ah! this is good fortune,' he said; 'your father is with you?'

'No,' said Clare. 'Papa doesn't care about pictures, except pictures of
dead fish and game, and horses and fat cattle; and I don't care about
the City--at least, not the parts of it that he goes to--and this is a
sort of paddock where I am allowed to run loose when he is away.'

'I often spend an hour here; I find pictures help one to think. How do
you like this Claude?'

Then the conversation was all picture for a while, and at last they
sat down on one of the few seats provided by the munificence of a
thoughtful Administration for such lovers of art as care to stay in the
Gallery long enough to get tired.

They were silent for a little while.

'Are you not well, Miss Stanley?' he said presently.

'Oh, dear me, yes; I'm very well. Do I look ill?' she asked quite
frankly, looking at him with her eyebrows raised.

'Ah, no; you look--' he hesitated, 'as you always do,' he ended, as
though that was not what he would have liked to say.

'Why do you ask, then?'

'Because I fancied last night that you were in some kind of pain, and I
have been uneasy ever since about it.'

'Last night? You're very kind: there wasn't the least ground for your
uneasiness.'

'I was not the only one who thought so.'

'I am afraid the evening must have been very dull, then, if it gave two
people that impression.'

'Oh, dulness was out of the question to _me_,' he said, with an
eloquent look. 'But I suppose we couldn't expect Mr Roland to be very
cheerful, under the circumstances.'

'What circumstances?' questioned Clare, who was beginning to feel
rather uncomfortable.

'He has had what I believe in England is termed a "row" with his
brother.'

'How do you know?' she asked, quickly. 'Oh, I beg your pardon.'

'Never do that; but, indeed, had you not asked me, I was going to tell
you, for I am in a difficulty. Although I know your language well, I do
not so well know your social customs. Shall we see Mr Richard again, do
you think?'

The question was put so innocently, and the Count appeared so really
perplexed, that Miss Stanley stifled the evasive answer that first
occurred to her, and said simply,--

'No, I don't.'

'Then a great part of my difficulty vanishes. I am ashamed to trouble
you about my dilemmas; but I have been wondering whether I ought to
know them _both_, since they have so quarrelled, or whether it is not
incumbent on me to take one side or the other.'

'If you take sides at all,' said Clare, 'you should take the side you
think right.'

'I am here amongst Englishmen. Being in Rome I must do as Rome does,
and I do not know what is right and wrong to English people.'

'Right is right all the world over,' said Clare, adding, as a saving
clause, 'if you can only see which is right. But you are not the only
one who is in a dilemma.' Then, driven by an irresistible desire to
know how the quarrel struck him, she asked him directly,--

'Which do you think is in the wrong?'

'There are some things which brothers might pardon in each other, but
which to other men would be unpardonable.'

'Do you think, then, that Roland Ferrier has done anything
unpardonable?' She had felt intensely annoyed at the turn the
conversation had taken, but since it had taken this turn, she was
determined to learn as much from it as possible.

'I don't think he has done anything the world would not pardon, and we
must remember that the greater part of the fault lies in his bringing
up.' He said this with a delicate air of chivalrously making the best
of a bad cause.

'If the world pardons the unpardonable,' said Clare, feeling that she
was skating on very thin ice, and not quite knowing how to get back to
the bank again, 'so much the worse for the world.'

'I knew you would say that.'

'And,' she went on, forgetting how little she had told her companion,
'if I could only be sure that all Richard said was true, I would accept
no one's ruling but my own on such a question.'

Litvinoff's eyes gave one little flash at the admission contained in
this speech, but he said quite quietly,--

'Well, no one can possibly know. I presume he must at least believe it.'

'Yes, he certainly does. This quarrel, as you perhaps know, means ruin
to them both.'

'Ruin!' he cried; 'then it must not go on.'

'You are very good to take such an interest in the Ferriers.'

'Ah,' he said sadly, 'I have known ruin, and it is hard if the innocent
one suffers with the guilty.'

He looked about as little like a ruined man as it was possible to be.
His dress was perfect, though it had a certain foreign air that was
not to be traced to that too great prominence of shirt collar and
prodigality of cuff, that shininess of hat and boot, that exuberant
floridity of necktie, which are the signet of the _flâneur_ of the
boulevards. Above all, his nails were unexceptionable.

'Their father left it in his will,' said Miss Stanley, bluntly, glad to
get away from the subject of Roland's possible _lâches_, 'that if they
quarrelled they lost all their money.'

'They were ever given to quarrelling, then?' asked Litvinoff.

'No, I don't think so; but Mr Ferrier was old and very funny.'

'He seems to have been prophetic in this instance; or perhaps he knew
what they were likely to quarrel about.'

Clare stroked her muff with her kid-gloved hand, and wondered whether
the late Mr Ferrier had thought they were likely to quarrel about her.

'This affair of the unfortunate girl Alice Hatfield--' he was
beginning, when Clare rose.

'It is quite time I went back,' she said chillingly, and she turned and
walked out. He followed her humbly. When they had passed down the steps
he said,--

'I have offended you, but you must forgive me. I am ignorant of English
customs. You had talked to me of the misdeed, and it did not seem to
be wrong to name the victim. I ought to have recognised the gulf which
separates the personal from the impersonal.'

There was a suspicion of irony in his voice, and she did not answer,
only quickened her pace a little.

'Forgive me,' he said, in a tone low, and one more earnest than any she
had yet heard him use. 'You must forgive me. I would not offend you for
all the world, not to gain every end I have ever fought for, to realise
every hope I have ever cherished.'

She turned and looked right into his eyes, and in them read nothing but
perfect honesty and sincerity.

'I have nothing whatever to forgive, Count Litvinoff,' she said. 'Pray,
let us change the subject;' but all the ice was gone from her voice,
and he at once plunged into a diatribe against the carelessness of
omnibus drivers.

He said good-bye to her outside the hotel. At the top of the steps she
turned and looked after him, and was not a little vexed with herself
for having done so, for he was looking after her with an expression in
his eyes which said, to her at least,--

'Whatever the ends I have fought for, or the hopes I have cherished,
may have been in the past, the object of my every dream and aspiration
is now yourself, Clare Stanley.'

CHAPTER XIII.

A FAIR MORNING'S WORK.

Petrovitch waited at the corner for some moments, but as his _protégée_
did not return, he concluded that she had found the house door open,
and would be all right, so he turned his face west. The new feeling
that had possessed him at the sound of Alice's surname had, while he
waited, only shown itself in a restless movement of his hand over his
beard; but now it found vent in the swinging pace at which he walked.
He slackened it now and again, to glance with a frown at the heaps
of dirty rags that filled the corners of doorways and the embrasures
of walls, and hid human flesh and blood: the flesh and blood of your
brothers and sisters, my esteemed Royal Commissioners. These door-steps
and archways and out-of-the-way corners are not, of course, to be
included in an investigation into the homes of the poor; but perhaps
they might be if these royal, noble, and eminent brothers realised that
these are the only homes of a large proportion of the poor.

Petrovitch only stopped once, and that was before a door-step on which
something gleamed brightly, and caught his attention. There was a group
there of the usual type--a man and woman, and a child, a little girl,
from whose eyes the gleam came. She was sitting up, her elbow on her
knee and her chin on her hand; a wizened, stunted child of some eight
or nine years, with tangled dark hair that fell over her face, and
through which her eyes were staring wide and vacant at the clear sky.
As he stopped she transferred the gaze to him, but it was still a gaze
void of hope and expectation. He did not speak to her, but patted her
shoulder, dropped some coppers and a bar of chocolate in her lap, and
hurried on, with a muttered curse which the child did not hear.

He stopped no more till he reached a tall house in a quiet street near
Portland Road Station. He let himself in with a key, and softly mounted
the stairs to the second floor. The room he entered was large, and
looked bare until one noticed the shelves on shelves of well-bound,
well-kept books, the pigeon-holes full of manuscripts, the brackets
supporting good busts and statuettes, the one or two choice prints, the
antique writing-table and chairs. There were no curtains to the window,
and there was no carpet to the floor; but there was a reading-lamp of
uncommon design, with a green shade. It was the luxury of literary
asceticism.

Petrovitch turned up the lamp and rekindled his fire. Then he went into
the adjoining room, from which presently came the sound of splashing
water, followed by hard breathing, as of one wrestling with a rough
towel. It was a ghastly hour for tubbing, and many an Englishman who
plumes himself on taking a bath at eight or nine in the morning would
have shuddered at the idea of thus taking one four or five hours
earlier; but it seemed to agree with Petrovitch, for he came back to
the fireside glowing, and seeming to have washed from his face the look
of mingled weariness and anger which he had brought in with him.

His hand hovered a moment along the line of a certain bookshelf, then
he picked out a book, and for the next three hours read steadily, only
pausing to make notes.

At seven o'clock he shut his book gently, replaced it carefully on its
shelf, very deftly and quickly prepared his breakfast, and, having
eaten it, put on his hat and a black coat and went out again.

Now, for the first time, he thought over his night's adventures, for
during the time he had spent in his room he had not allowed himself to
think of them. He had the capacity of dismissing utterly from his mind
anything about which he did not want to think. It was time enough to
think when he could act, and he had known that he could not act till
the morning. Now, two minutes' thought decided the course his action
should take.

By half-past eight o'clock he had knocked at the door of 15 Spray's
Buildings, and had been directed to the room of Mrs Fludger. That lady
was surrounded by the family linen--some just as it had been discarded
by the family, some in the wash-tub, and some hanging on lines slung
across the room at a convenient height for dabbing itself wetly in the
faces of possible visitors. The room appeared to be furnished chastely
and simply with the tub and lines before mentioned, and nothing else
whatever; for the remainder of the furniture had been heaped in one
corner, in order that the washing might not be impeded, and was not
noticeable at the first glance. Mrs Fludger had her arms bared for
toil. She wore a dress with no appreciable waist and no distinctive
colour. A woollen shawl wound her figure in its embrace, a black bonnet
of no particular shape, and of antique appearance, was on the extreme
back of her head, where it was supported, by no visible agency, in
defiance of the laws of gravitation.

'Now then, my good man,' she began, in answer to Petrovitch's tap at
the open door, 'we don't want no Scripture reading here. Thank the
Lord, I knows my Bible duty, and does it, which wasn't I up this very
morning afore five, which is more than you can say, I'll go bail.
There's some needs talking to. Why don't you go after my master an'
teach him the ten commanders if you _wants_ to Bible read?'

'But I don't want to Bible read,' said Petrovitch, as she ended with a
snap of her teeth, and recommenced the action of 'soaping in,' which
her vigorous speech had suspended. 'I only wish to ask you of a Mrs
Litvinoff?'

'Don't know the name.'

'Perhaps I mistake the name; I ask of the young woman who left here
yesterday morning.'

'Oh, her!' with contemptuous emphasis; 'bless you, her name ain't
nothing like that; no more nor yours nor mine. Her name's Hatfield; and
she ain't a missus neither, without she was married yesterday.'

'I hope she did no wrong here, that you are not angry with her,' said
he, as though feeling Mrs Fludger's displeasure to be the severest
punishment of misdoing.

'No,' said Mrs Fludger, a little softened, 'I'm not angry with her; but
will you jest be good enough to say what you want and have done with
it, as my washing's all behind as it is?'

'I have a quite special reason,' he said, 'for wishing to befriend her.
I am sure you will be willing to help me to give her help by telling me
all you know about her.'

'Oh, Lord bless the men!' said Mrs Fludger, with an impatient
intonation, dipping a blue-bag into a pail, 'I don't know nothing about
the gal. She was here two months or more, and not a soul ever come
a-nigh her, and now, afore she's been gone two days, here's half a
dozen gentlemen comes after her. You ought to be able to do something
'andsome for her among you all. Why, only yesterday two young swells
was a'most a-comin' to blows over her outside this very door, a-makin'
a perfick inharmonium o' my stairs, to say nothing o' the gent as
went a-makin' inquiries o' the ground-floor front, as was quite the
improper person to imply to, not being responsible, and knowin' nothing
about the lodgers.'

'I am exceedingly sorry to give you any further trouble, madam, but, as
I know you are the only person who can inform me, I must ask you why
this young woman left.' He spoke so gravely that Mrs Fludger seemed
impressed. She lowered her voice a little as she answered,--

'She heard something as wasn't to her liking.'

'Not from you, I am sure.'

'Well, no; it warn't from me, though I should have told her fast enough
if I had known myself, and, since you must know the ins and outs of it,
she was taken bad on Sunday night, and my Joe went for the doctor, and
if you're curious you'd better ask him, for he's more time for jaw than
me, not having got nine children and a husband as is always in liquor.'

Petrovitch thanked her, and asked the address of the lucky doctor whom
Fate had spared these inflictions.

Mrs Fludger gave it, squeezing the soapsuds off her lean arms as she
spoke.

'Thank you very much,' he said; 'good-bye,' and held out his hand as
though he had known her for years. This was partly because he thought
it was the English thing to do in parting with one's equals, and partly
because he went enough among poor people to know that their troubles
are not made lighter by an assumption of superiority on the part of
their visitors. It was a matter of course with him, but Mrs Fludger was
particularly gratified. She gave him her damp hand, and returned his
shake with heartiness.

'Well, now,' she said, 'if I've been a bit short, you must set it down
to the washin', and I couldn't get it out o' my head that you was one
of the religious sort. And I hope the young woman won't come to no
hurt, and I will say as you look more the sort to do her good than them
young sparks as come here yesterday, with their cussin', and swearin',
and yellow kid gloves.'

An opinion in which her hearer concurred.

Dr Moore was not surprised at the inquiries with which Petrovitch
called upon him ten minutes later. He had sojourned long enough in the
land of the hard-up, and had seen enough of the seamy side of life, to
have left off being surprised at the many threads and ties which bind
together people whom one would imagine to be the very last to have any
concern in each other's existences.

But before he answered any of the questions, he said,--

'Excuse me; but may I ask what interest you have in this poor girl? Are
you a City missionary?'

The other smiled grimly.

'Not I; but there must be something very devout in my appearance.
Evidently extremes meet in me. I encountered a hostile reception at
Spray's Buildings through being taken for a Bible-reader.'

'Ah, well, I can't wonder; they do make themselves disliked. They're
very good people, but they haven't a nice way with them, somehow, have
they? Then, what is your motive for these questions?'

For answer the other told him frankly enough all that had passed the
night before, adding that before he made any effort on her behalf he
wished to verify her story as far as possible.

'But the landlady told me she had gone home to her people.'

'Ah, that was Mrs Fludger's little romance,' said Petrovitch, shrugging
his shoulders. 'I wish she had gone to her people, poor child; but I am
afraid that is what she will not do.'

'I am very glad,' said Dr Moore, 'that someone does take an interest in
her, but I must say I wish it was a woman instead of a man, for it is a
woman's care and kindness she will need by-and-by.'

'So I imagined,' said Petrovitch thoughtfully, 'and I suppose the best
I can do towards her is to try and find for her such care and kindness.'

'I am afraid it will be difficult; women are angels, certainly, but
they are very apt to be hard on each other.'

'Very much like the rest of us. But, like the rest of us, they can
sometimes be got to hear reason.'

'That's not the general opinion of women,' said Dr Moore, laughing;
'but I hope you're right. I have seen a great many of these sad cases,'
he went on, gravely, 'but very, very few of the others. We're all much
too ready to cast stones, and it's two to one if a girl's in trouble
that a female priest or Levite comes by, and not a good Samaritan.'

The doctor was pleased with his visitor, whose face and figure were not
quite like those that usually faced him in his drug-scented surgery,
and when the interview ended it was he who offered the hand-shake.

As Petrovitch came out of the door he glanced at his watch.

'Now for a third interview,' he thought, and he did not think in
English. 'Only two hours and a-half in which to work a miracle.'

If this man had no connection with the Bible reading and City
missionary fraternity, he had at least one thing to which they lay
claim--the faith which moves mountains; but it was faith in humanity,
and faith in himself.

He only knew one woman who combined the strength of character and the
kindness of heart necessary for his purpose, and of her it had been
said only the night before, by the one who ought to have known her
best, that she had a sharp tongue. Mr Toomey had not adhered strictly
to truth in telling Alice that he lived up in the direction of Gray's
Inn Road, vaguely. His household gods were enshrined 'out Bermondsey
way,' and thither Petrovitch now betook himself.

Mrs Toomey welcomed him in an off-hand manner, which showed that she at
least did not suspect him of being a Bible-reader. She asked him in,
and he passed up the narrow passage where two Toomeys of tender years
were playing at houses with a profusion of oyster-shells. A third of
still smaller size was in the mother's arms.

'Toomey's a-bed,' she said, as she set a chair for Petrovitch, 'and I
wonder you're not. He told me he saw you on the bridge in the beginning
of the morning. What have you done with that poor thing?'

'Nothing yet.'

'What are you going to do?'

'That's just what I want you to tell me,' he answered, and forthwith
began gently to unfold his plan, which was neither more nor less than
that Mrs Toomey should let Alice rent her spare room, and should be as
kind to her as possible. But Mrs Toomey, as might have been expected,
didn't see it at all. She had much the feeling of the elder brother of
the Prodigal--that it was hardly fair to those who had done their duty
thus to help out of their difficulties those who had not.

'This is the great privilege of those who do their duty,' said he, 'to
be able to help those who have not done it.'

'That's all very well,' said Mrs Toomey; 'but what's to become of
example if the good and the bad gets treated alike?'

'It isn't that; what I want is to give the bad--who is not so very bad
in this case--a chance of being better.'

But she was not silenced. She ran over the whole scale of objections,
moral and conventional, to his proposition, and to each and all of them
he found an answer, and sat there quietly persistent, until at last he
drove her back upon 'What will people say?'

'As far as I'm concerned they can say what they like, but if you care
about people's opinion, it is easy to guard yourself against it by
telling them nothing. No one would know more than you chose to tell
them.'

'That's honest, isn't it?' asked Mrs Toomey, patting the baby, who was
choking himself with his fist.

'Well, honesty doesn't consist in publishing other people's affairs to
all your neighbourhood. And, my good Mrs Toomey, don't you see that the
very fact of her being in your house would stop questions?'

'I'm no hand at arguing,' said Mrs Toomey at last, 'but I know you've
some sense, sir, and I don't think you'd press a thing like this
without there was some rhyme or reason in it; but the most I can say
is, me and Toomey'll talk it over; but the truth is, I've never had
nothing to say to that sort o' girls, and I don't like to begin at this
time o' day. And even if my man agrees, I won't promise about it until
I've seen the young woman, for what's the good of Providence giving
us common sense if we're not to put it to use, instead of trusting to
hearsay and other people.'

'Quite right; that's a first-rate principle. If all the world would
think like that we should see some changes. I will tell her you have a
room to let, and advise her to apply for it, and then you can see her
and act as you choose. But I feel sure beforehand how it will be.'

And as he bade her good-bye he did feel quite sure that he had not
spent that half-hour in vain.

'I really feel like a City missionary, or a newspaper correspondent,
after all these interviews. Now for the last and most interesting.'

But when he reached Mrs Litvinoff's room he found her out. There was no
answer to his repeated knocks, so at last, as the key was in the door,
he opened it, almost fearing to find her in another of those fainting
fits. But the room was empty. He hesitated a moment, and then entered.
It wanted a few minutes to noon; he would wait till the appointed
time, and while he waited he wondered, as he had been wondering all
the morning, why she had taken this name of Litvinoff. Was it simply
because Litvinoff had been the first name that had come into her head,
or for some deeper or more important reason?

The room was very neat, and did not offer much entertainment to the eye
or employment to the mind; but there were four or five books on the
mantelpiece, and he was drawn towards them by a natural attraction.
It was one of his habits always to take up a book, if one was within
reach. They were very nicely bound, he noticed, except two small
volumes at the end of the row, in which he smiled rather sadly to
recognise a Bible and Prayer Book. He ran over the titles--one or
two novels, 'The Children's Garland,' 'Mrs Hemans,' and, strange
accompaniment, Swinburne's 'Songs before Sunrise.'

He took it out and opened it. On the first page was written, 'To Alice,
from Litvinoff.'

He stood looking at it fixedly--so absorbed that he did not hear
Alice's foot on the stairs, nor notice the rustle of her dress in the
room, till she said,--

'Have you been here long? I am so sorry I had to run out for some
thread for my work. I thought I should have been back before.'

She was a little out of breath with running upstairs, and a little
flushed, too. He now saw that she was prettier than he had thought, but
he also saw more plainly the hollows in her cheeks and the dark circles
round her eyes.

'I must make a confession,' he began at once, turning to her with the
book in his hand. 'I have asked myself, was it chance made you take
this name of Litvinoff? But I see now you have a right to it.'

She turned her head and looked towards the window in silence for a
moment. Then she said,--

'I do not know that I have a right to any name except the one I was
born to; but if I have a right to any it is to the one written there.'
It was said slowly and with evident effort. She threw her bonnet on the
table, leaned her elbows on the window-ledge, and looked out.

'Won't you sit down?' she asked, after a minute, without looking round.

He took a chair, and said, 'Then it wasn't only for the lecture you
went to Soho?'

'No.'

'See here, Mrs Litvinoff; I know the Count, and I and others are much
interested in his career. I wish you to believe that I would not ask
you questions from idle curiosity. His own welfare depends to a great
extent on what we may hear of him.'

'I have nothing but good to tell you of him.'

'But, madam--forgive me--how about last night? He has deserted you?'

'No,' said she, steadily; 'don't make any mistake. I left him. He was
never anything but good to me.'

'You are not married to him?'

'Don't ask me any more questions,' said Alice. 'I can't tell you
anything.'

'Mrs Litvinoff,' said Petrovitch, very gently and very gravely, 'I beg
you for his sake to tell me all you can of him. You know the sort of
dangers run by a man in such a position as his; and from many of these
dangers we can help to screen him. I am a friend to all who are friends
of Litvinoff. Think of me not as a man and a stranger, but as the
friend of him, and tell me frankly all there is to tell.'

It was characteristic of the man who spoke that he should be able
to make an appeal which would move this girl, who had not known
him twenty-four hours, to tell him all that she had felt it to be
impossible to tell her foster-brother, Richard Ferrier. For she did
tell him.

The substance of her story was this: She had been staying with an aunt
who kept a small hotel in Liverpool, when she had met Litvinoff, and
had seen a great deal of him. He had seemed to her to be different from
all the other men she had ever seen, and though she could not help
being pleased by his admiration, she had felt that the difference in
their station was such that she could not properly fill the position
of his wife. His grave and respectful manner and the perfect deference
with which he always treated her had made it impossible for her to
suppose that his wish was other than to make her his wife. So, though
all her inclinations would have kept her in Liverpool, she had, after
a severe struggle with herself, shortened her visit, and returned to
Derbyshire without bidding him good-bye.

He had followed her, and one evening when she was walking alone she had
met him. Of course, there had been explanations. He had implored her
not to send him away--to let him be always as happy as he had been that
month at Liverpool. He met her objections as to the difference in their
position by telling her that he was an outcast and an exile, and had
no position. Would she not make his hard life a little easier to him?
At every word he said she felt her resolutions melting away; but her
parents, would they ever consent to her marriage with one who held such
opinions as his?

Then he had told her gravely and tenderly that he was at war with
society and with most of its conventions, and that for him to marry in
the ordinary sense of the word would be to compromise and deny every
principle on which his life was founded. The true marriage, he had
maintained, was fidelity, and mutual love was more binding than could
be a ceremony in which one of the performers did not believe. He loved
her he had said, far too dearly to wish to deceive her in the smallest
degree about his sentiments, and so he felt bound to tell her that to
him a legal marriage would be for ever impossible. In spite of that,
would she not be noble enough to trust her life entirely to him, and be
his wife?

This had been so completely unexpected as to be a great shock to her,
and she had felt at once that, however she might decide, it would be
out of the question to tell or ask her parents about it. Her choice lay
between them and her lover. We know how she chose.

Of her time of happiness she said very little, but her hearer gathered
that, though Litvinoff had left her much alone, she had had no reason
to doubt that he still cared for her.

But the influence of her early training, though it had sunk into
abeyance in the hour of strong temptation, had slowly and surely
reasserted itself as the months went by. She had striven still to
believe that she was acting rightly, but at last it became impossible
to her to persuade herself that she had any right to be a law unto
herself. So at last she had left her lover, with no farewell but a
letter, in which she had tried to tell him how it was. She had felt a
pleasure in the hardness of the life that followed--had vaguely felt it
to be in some sort an expiation of her wickedness.

'You see,' she ended, 'if I had believed as he did, perhaps I should
have been right to act as I did; but I believed in all the things that
he denies, and so I was wrong to dare to take his views of good and
bad for me, while all the time I kept my own old thoughts of what was
really good and bad. I can't explain myself well, but you see what I
mean--don't you?'

'Yes,' answered Petrovitch, rising; 'I see that another life has been
sacrificed upon the altar of an abstraction. If it gives you happiness
to give yourself pain, at anyrate I should think your wickedness, as
you call it, was expiated now. Has he never tried to find you out?'

'He may have tried,' said Alice, 'but he has not succeeded.'

'Would you not go back to him--now that you have another life than your
own to think of?'

Alice darted a quick glance at him, and turned very white.

'No, unless that happened which never can happen--if his belief
changed. But I cannot go on talking like this; it is torture to me--and
to what end?'

'I told you--for his good and yours. However, to business. Of course,
since you have undertaken that tailor's work you must finish it; but
after, I will get you work better paid. And this room--you do not like
it? Mrs Toomey has a room to let, and I am sure she will like to have
you for a lodger. Will you go there and see it, and if you like it move
there? I will lend you money for moving and for present expenses, and
you can pay me when you settle to work again.'

'But why,' asked Alice, half turning round to look at him, 'why are you
so kind? Why do you help me so?'

'I help you,' he answered, laying some money on the table, 'because to
me you are truly Litvinoff's wife, and I am the true friend of all who
are friends of him.'

Alice knocked at Mrs Toomey's door about three o'clock that afternoon.
Mrs Toomey, her baby in her arms, and an air of reserving judgment
about her, showed the room she had to let, which was convenient and
exquisitely clean.

Alice followed her into the parlour afterwards.

'I think it only fair to tell you,' she began confusedly, 'that I am
not really Mrs Litvinoff--but--'

The other interrupted her.

'I know all about it,' she said, bluntly, 'and now I've seen
you--'specially as you were going to tell me, so honest and fair--I'm
sure we shall get on very well. And no one sha'n't ever know anything
from me, and let bygones be bygones betwixt us. If you'd like to move
in at once, why do, and come and have a cup o' tea with me when you've
fetched your things.'

There was no mistaking the cordiality which had replaced Mrs Toomey's
half distrust as soon as she saw that her would-be lodger had no
intention of coming there under false pretences.

And so, a few hours later, Alice had effected her moving, taken
possession of her room, and was sitting by Mrs Toomey's spotless
hearth, with her feet on the brilliant steel fender, her face brighter
than it had been for many a long day, while the children stared at her
with wide but friendly eyes, and Mrs Toomey's baby lay contentedly on
her lap.

The day had been at its beginning so wild, so bitter, so full of
horrible possibilities; this was a peaceful--almost a happy--ending to
it. Alice felt the change keenly, and there was gratitude to Petrovitch
in every word she spoke to the mother, every smile she gave to the
little ones.

CHAPTER XIV.

A PEACEMAKER.

On the morning after that which he had spent in the study of Art, Count
Litvinoff was busily engaged in turning out the pockets of coats, and
'making hay' of the contents of portmanteaus, conducting a vigorous
search for something or other, and singing softly to himself the
while,--

  'Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round;
  Every day beneath his sway fools old and young are found.
  'Tis love, 'tis love that makes the world go round.'

'It may do that,' he said, dropping suddenly into prose, 'but it
doesn't find missing property. I shall have to buy one, which will be
annoying, when that one has been kicking about ever since I came from
Liverpool. Ah! here it is. I've saved at least four and sixpence, which
to a man in my delicate position is a largish sum. For, after all, you
can't insult a man by pursuing him about London with a cigar-case that
cost less.'

He opened the little crocodile-skin trifle and looked into it.

'It has been used as a letter-case before now, and it would rather
complicate matters if I left one of somebody's notes sticking in the
lining. Things are a little bit that way as it is. The world is very,
very small. A remark, by the way, which is invariably made by people
who have more than one creditor. But it is strange that I should have
run right into the midst of this Ferrier set. One would think that
there was only one county in England, and that was Derbyshire.'

He sighed a little, but brightened as his eye fell on the chair which
Roland had occupied two nights before. His voice took up the song again
as he returned his belongings to something like order. He had just
made his sitting-room presentable again when the waiter appeared, and
offered, with an air of virtuous and respectful protest, a folded piece
of paper, which had been white once, but since that time had apparently
sojourned in the pockets of one who carried his meals about with him.

'Seductive billet-doux,' said Litvinoff, as he took it. 'Is it by
chance a tinker's bill?'

'It was brought, sir,' said the waiter, 'by a man who appears to be a
foreigner. He said he'd wait for an answer.'

'Show that distinguished gentleman up.'

While his order was being obeyed, Litvinoff looked at the paper again.
It was not a letter or a bill, after all; but seemed intended to answer
the purpose of a visiting card, for all that was written on it was
'Johann Hirsch.'

Litvinoff was not altogether unaccustomed to being called upon by
foreign gentlemen with bold and original views on the subject of
visiting-cards. He never refused to see any of these visitors, and
always sent them away charmed with the beauty of his sentiments and
the liberality of his intentions, and occasionally with something more
substantial.

As the waiter closed the door and retreated with a glance of politely
veiled contempt, the man whom he had shown in came forward, and
Litvinoff recognised in him at once the person who had been so
interested in the 'Prophetic Vision' on Sunday evening. He offered the
visitor his hand with sunny cordiality.

'I am delighted to see you. I have not forgotten your kind interest in
my lecture at the Agora. Please take that arm-chair.'

The other did so.

'I speak English not well,' he began. 'Perhaps the Herr Count speaks
German?'

'Certainly,' he replied, in that language; 'but to my friends I am not
Count, but Citizen Litvinoff.'

'I cannot claim to be a friend of yours,' said the other, who seemed to
speak under the influence of some constraint; 'but I am a friend to the
cause you advocate. I do not come to you for myself, but to ask you to
help another, who is in sore trouble and distress.'

'I am very sorry. Who is he?'

'It is a woman. The wife of an exile, one of us, separated from her
husband by circumstances I may not tell of, but which are not to the
discredit of either.'

'What is her name?' asked Litvinoff, a shade more interested than if it
had been the exiled husband who needed relief.

'I don't know her name,' said Hirsch; 'but she is very poor and very
proud, and I am afraid very ill.'

'Unfortunate combination,' muttered the Count, below his breath, in
English.

'But, my good friend Hirsch, how do you propose to give money to this
distressed lady, whose name you do not even know?'

'There is only one from whom she will take it, and from him I come.
He will give it to her. You will have no credit for your generosity,
citizen, for she will not know from whom it comes.'

'I don't think credit is what we work for, _nous autres_,' said the
Count, with a slightly injured air.

'I must tell you the truth,' answered the Austrian, with a shrug of
his shoulders and an outward gesture of the palms of his hands.

'Doubtless; but may I not know the name of the benefactor from whose
assistance this lady's pride does not shrink?'

'Assuredly; he told me that if I mentioned his name to you, it would be
enough to guarantee your attention.'

A very slight change passed over the Count's face, and yet there seemed
nothing in that speech to stir up uneasiness. The expression was so
transient that it escaped the sharp eyes that watched him from under
Hirsch's shaggy eyebrows.

'Distress itself is the best guarantee for my attention.'

He rose and unlocked a despatch box and took out a cheque-book.

As he took up a pen and sat down he asked,--

'What is our friend's name?'

'His name is Petrovitch. You knew him in Russia, I believe.'

'I have heard much of him lately in London, but I have never been so
fortunate as to meet him here.'

'He was with me at the Agora on Sunday.'

Litvinoff looked up pleasantly from the cheque he had been filling in.

'Ah, so,' he said, 'I wonder he could not have answered you about the
pamphlet.'

'He could have done,' said the other rather grimly, 'if I had thought
of asking him, but I did not think of doing so.'

'Well, I must hope soon to meet Citizen Petrovitch. In the meantime
give him this, with my best hopes for the welfare of his lady friend. I
wish it may be useful, small though it is.'

'There's no doubt about that,' said Hirsch, rising as the other held
out the cheque, and glancing at the two figures on it, before folding
it very small and concealing it in an inner part of his nondescript
garments.

'By the way,' said Litvinoff, 'I've made that out to Petrovitch's
order, as I did not know the lady's name.'

'It is better so perhaps,' said Hirsch. 'Good day.'

'Do not go yet,' said the other, hospitably; 'won't you stay and have
some lunch?'

'Thank you, no; I have eaten.'

'Well, at anyrate, you'll have a glass of wine, won't you?'

'I am not thirsty, I thank you; good day.'

'Good day,' said the Count, shaking hands cordially. As the door closed
behind the other he sank into an arm-chair.

'What an exceedingly fatiguing person. He chooses amiable and courteous
messengers, this Petrovitch. I wonder if I _did_ know him in Russia.
My memories of childhood's hour are singularly confused, but it's
impossible to remember everybody, that's one comfort. It is remarkable
how well people remember me, when there's anything to be got by it.
This princely drawing of cheques, however, will come to an abrupt
termination shortly, and then--I wonder exactly how long it will be
before I send in my name to people on dirty bits of paper as a preface
to requests for cheques for destitute lady friends?'

He deftly rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and then said, musingly,--

'That property in Volhynia, would it be possible--By heaven, it would
be a gallant attempt--it would be almost genius. As a forlorn hope it
would be sublime; but I have still some hopes that are not forlorn, and
the position of an English landowner is not unenviable. It would at
anyrate enable one to give cheques with a freer hand to any mysterious
stranger with dirty linen whose anonymous lady friends may happen to be
hard up. Hullo, my friend!'--as his eye fell on the cigar-case--'I'd
almost forgotten you. I suppose I must be about my business. There are
very few men, I am convinced, who work as hard for "the daily crust" as
I do.' He flung the end of his cigarette in the fire, and put on his
coat.

'And now,' he said, taking up his hat, 'to seek the Midland Hotel, and
face whichever Ferrier the Fates may send me. Probably I shall have my
walk for nothing; they will be engaged in business, these interesting
victims of a misunderstanding which I so deeply deplore.'

He smiled hopefully at himself in the glass, and went out.

'Is Mr Ferrier in?' he asked, when he reached the Midland Hotel, and
the answer being 'Yes,' he turned into the coffee-room to wait, still
uncertain as to which brother he should see.

It was Richard who came down to him after a few minutes--Richard, whose
face, ulster, and soft hat all seemed to be of the same shade of drab.

'Good morning, Count Litvinoff,' he said; 'can I be of any service to
you?'

'It was your brother I wished to see,' said the Count. 'He did me the
honour to spend a few moments at my rooms last night, and I think this
must be his. May I trouble you to give it to him?'

Here he produced the cigar-case.

'I don't think it belongs to my brother,' said Richard, 'and I'm sorry
I can't do anything in the matter; but I sha'n't see him again.'

'Ah! you are leaving London?'

'I'm leaving this hotel.'

'Well, perhaps you are right to seek one more cheerfully placed. You
are not looking well; perhaps this situation depresses you?'

'Oh, I'm all right, thanks. I'm rather glad you happened to call,
because I shall perhaps not see you again. I'm afraid I was rather
uncivil yesterday, and, if so, I'm sorry: I didn't intend it, but it
struck me afterwards that it might seem so to you. The fact is, I was
horribly put out about something.'

'Oh, don't mention it. I saw then that you were annoyed about
something, and now I know what it was. I know enough of English
manners, Mr Ferrier, to know that here a stranger's interference in
personal or family matters is the unpardonable sin. But my faith, you
know, compels me to set aside conventions that are only conventions,
and to try to give help wherever help can be given.

'I am so complete a stranger,' he went on, regardless of a slight
movement of impatience from the other, 'so utterly, so palpably
disinterested, that I hope I may without offence say to you what I
intended to say to Mr Roland.'

'I don't see that anything could be said to my brother without offence
that could not equally well be said to me.'

'This, then, is what I would ask. Is there anything I can do to effect
a reconciliation between you and your brother, and prevent this breach
from growing wider?'

'I had never told you that there was any breach,' Richard said stiffly.

'No,' he said, 'but all others have not your powers of reticence.'

'I presume my brother has been confiding in you.'

'Your brother told me--what perhaps his pride forbade him to tell
you--that you had accused him of something of which he assured me he
was as innocent as--as I am,' ended Litvinoff, raising his eyebrows
ingenuously.

Richard's first impulse was to request the Count to mind his own
business, but he remembered that the interferer was a foreigner, and
besides, Litvinoff's manner was so honest, and what he said was true
enough. He certainly must be disinterested. So he constrained himself
to say, with very little change of manner,--

'If my brother wishes to disprove any charges I may bring, he'd better
disprove them to me.'

'But are you quite sure that you were not mistaken? May not your
feelings on another matter have predisposed you to believe without
evidence enough in this?'

'I quite fail to understand,' said Richard, frowning.

'Is it not possible that you may have thought of him less as your
brother than as your rival?'

'If you have anything more to say that _needs_ saying, I shall be glad
if you will say it plainly.' Richard spoke angrily.

'Plainly, then--you also are a suitor for the hand of Miss Stanley?'

Ferrier's hand clenched itself, and then made a little movement which
seemed quite involuntary. The blood rushed to his face as he spoke.

'May I ask who gave you that piece of false information?'

'Certainly you may ask,' answered Litvinoff, smiling very sweetly.
Other people's tempers did not seem to affect him much. 'You may ask,
but I--I must not reply.'

'It is lucky that I don't need your answer. There's only one person who
would have told you such a lie, and for the future you'd better keep
your interference for him, as he seems to like it.'

'And you, perhaps you'd better keep your insolence for those who'll
stand it,' said Litvinoff, with the same gentle smile. 'Perhaps
our next meeting may be in a country where it is customary to
avenge insults in some other way than what you call, I think, a
rough-and-tumble fight. _Au revoir!_'

'You don't seem to find other countries very anxious to have you, since
you have had to run away from one at least,' said Richard passionately.

'Oh, delicacy and nobility of English chivalry!' said the Count,
turning at the door to favour the other with one last smile. 'How
unfortunate for Miss Stanley that you at least are impossible. Pouf!
The _bourgeoisie_ is the same, all the world over!'

He lingered in the hall to make himself a cigarette, half expecting
Richard to follow him, but as he did not, strolled slowly away into the
street.

Richard remained standing in the coffee-room with one hand on the table
by which the conversation had taken place.

He felt indignantly injured by Litvinoff's interference, and in the
first moments of passion felt sure that his interference had not been
disinterested. But as he grew calmer, and was able to think the matter
out quietly, he could not suggest to himself any possible reason for
the Count's wishing to adjust the quarrel between himself and Roland,
except the one he had given. Yet, even if the Russian had been merely
filling the _rôle_ of 'friend of humanity,' Dick felt glad that he had
shown resentment. One might overlook intermeddling which had its rise
in an overpowering interest in one's own personality; but when one
was included merely in a vast aggregate like humanity, the compliment
which might have been as salt to over-officiousness did not exist,
and the conduct of the Count became simply offensive. But, after all,
most of his resentment was levelled at the man who had put this weapon
into the Russian's hands. Had his brother completely lost all sense
of honour--of decency even--that he should thus make him, Richard,
the subject of confidence with a stranger? And such confidences, too;
confidences that hinged on _her_ name.

'But why should I expect anything better from him, after his conduct to
that poor child?'

Then he thought of all he fancied he had discovered about Alice, and
all the little things that had aggravated the quarrel with Roland. All
the substance of the quarrel would not, perhaps, seem insurmountable if
it were written here in detail, but to Richard and his brother these
things appeared in far other proportions. The mutual jealousy and
distrust that had been growing up between them in the past months was
as so much dry tinder ready to catch fire at any spark of a pretext for
anger which either might have lighted on.

And this case of Alice was something more than a trifling pretext.
Richard himself was neither an angel nor a monk, but at least he played
the game of life according to the rules. And, consequently, he felt
towards his brother much as an old _écarté_ player might towards a man
who kept kings up his sleeve.

He decided to spend a few more hours in the search for Alice, which,
hitherto unavailing, he had kept up for the last two days, and then he
would go down home and see Gates, and Roland would have his wish. The
same roof should not cover them again.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CLEON.

'Well, I hope you will enjoy the evening, my dear; at anyrate, it will
be a new experience for you, and will show you that some of us can be
earnest even in the midst of our life of frivolity and heartlessness.
You know, I have been a Socialist almost from my birth.'

The speaker sighed gently, and adjusted the folds of her rich black
satin dress.

'Oh, I am sure I shall enjoy it immensely, dear Mrs Quaid,' answered
Clare Stanley, she being the person addressed; 'you know, since papa
was rescued from those dreadful horses, I have taken such an interest
in all these questions. It is too good of you to have asked such an
outsider as I am to a gathering like this. I don't feel frightened of
you, because I know how kind you are, but I'm afraid I shall be at a
loss with all the rest of the clever people.'

Mrs Quaid smiled benignantly. 'Oh, my _dear_, intellect is _not_ what
we care for. The great thing is _character_.'

Mrs Quaid emphasised every third or fourth word in such a way as to
give to her smallest remarks an apparently profound significance. She
was a distinguished member of the Cleon, a small society which met at
the houses of members for the purpose of discussing social questions.
To-night the meeting was to take place in her own drawing-room, and
she had invited her daughter's school friend, Clare Stanley, to spend
the evening, which that young woman was glad enough to do, as her
father was going to dine at the 'Travellers'' with a friend, and she
did not care to face the long lonely evening in the hotel sitting-room.
Besides, Mrs Quaid in herself was always amusing to the girl, whose
sharp eyes noticed all the little inconsistencies overlooked by more
constant associates. Mrs Quaid had, as she said, been a Socialist
almost from her birth, and repudiated with scorn what she termed the
'sad distinctions of class,' but she had such tender consideration
for those who did not share her views that she never invited those
whom she naïvely styled 'one's _own_ friends' to meet any of those
members of the working class whom she warmly but fitfully patronised.
She was one of those who, while professing the strongest sympathy with
the fashionable Socialism, are able to avail themselves of all the
advantages which the present system offers to a limited number; and
while ardently looking forward to a time when all men would be equal,
appear to view with sweet resignation the probable continuance of the
present system during their lifetime and that of their children.

On this particular occasion both she and her daughter, a charming
specimen of frank English girlhood, were more interested than usual in
the business before them.

This evening was to be a field night. The secretary of the Cleon had
captured a genuine Russian Socialist, and the society was disposed to
make the most of him.

Nearly every member was to bring a friend, so the gathering would be a
large one. It was very amusing to Miss Stanley to watch the arrivals,
and to ticket them in her own mind each with his appropriate epithet,
and the more uncomplimentary these epithets were, the more demure and
unconscious she looked. Mrs Quaid introduced to her several personal
adherents, for the Cleon, like larger assemblies, was not without its
party differences. Miss Stanley did not feel particularly drawn towards
any of them. _They_ had not had to fly across Russian frontiers, nor
had they ever, to her knowledge, imperilled their lives at the heads of
runaway horses.

There was a Civil Service clerk whose strong point was statistics,
and another one whose strong point was so obvious an adherence to
the principles of the hostess, that he was secretly styled by the
irreverent Irreconcilables 'the member for Quaid.' He was an advocate
for short hours of labour, particularly in Government offices. Then
there was an enthusiastic young stockjobber, with a passion for
morality in public life, who believed in levelling down--to the
level of stockjobbers, and who systematically avoided revolutionary
literature, on the grounds that it would prevent his keeping good
tempered, and he wished to keep good tempered, which Clare thought very
nice of him.

Then there was the man whose friends thought he was like Camille
Desmoulins, and the man who himself thought he was like Danton.

Then there was a George Atkins, whose care for humanity in the abstract
was so great as to soar far above the level of his own wife, who was
popularly supposed to have rather a bad time of it.

The 'great proletariat,' on whose behalf the Cleon met and discussed,
was represented by one stone-mason. Clare was surprised when she heard
what his calling was, as there was nothing in his dress or bearing to
distinguish him from the other men present. Perhaps that was why Mrs
Quaid had specially invited him.

There were about a score of other members who were less noticeable
on account of any peculiarity. They formed the real strength of the
society, and did all the work, owing to which it held a position in the
Socialist movement altogether out of proportion to its numbers.

The majority of the ladies gave a business-like aspect to the evening
by severely retaining their outdoor garments. Some of these were of
peculiar shape and make, a fact which Mrs Quaid explained in a whisper
to be the result of their employment of inexperienced dressmakers, on
the highest moral grounds.

By the time Clare had noticed all this the room was pretty full, and as
everyone talked at once, and very loud, one might, by shutting one's
eyes, have fancied oneself at an ordinary 'at home,' instead of at a
serious gathering, whose note was earnestness, and whose _motif_ was
social regeneration.

She was just thinking something like this when Mrs Quaid touched her on
the shoulder.

'Clare, my love,' she said, 'you _must_ let me introduce _dear_ Mr
Petrovitch to you. You know he has been so exceedingly good as to
consent to read us a paper to-night.'

Clare knew by experience that all her hostess's male friends were
'dear,' and her female ones 'sweet,' for at least three weeks after
their first introduction, but when she turned to receive Petrovitch's
bow, it did strike her that the epithet was more than usually
incongruous. He was about the last person, she thought, to whom terms
of indiscriminate endearment could be applied.

After the Continental manner, he had put on evening dress. The wide
shirt-front showed off the splendid breadth of a chest that would not
have disgraced a Life Guardsman in uniform. Miss Stanley, as she looked
at him, admitted to herself that on some people the claw-hammer coat
was not without its æsthetic attraction.

As the people settled down into chairs he took a seat beside her, but
in such a position that she could see his face without turning her own.

Then, after a few business preliminaries, Petrovitch began to speak.
He did not read, as had been announced, but spoke from notes, with
a little hesitation, caused, perhaps, by his speaking in a foreign
language. To most of his hearers what he had to say was well-known, no
doubt; but to Clare all he said came as a revelation. She had come to
be amused, to criticise, to 'make fun,' perhaps; but what she heard
from this man beside her was not in the least amusing or funny. It
seemed to her more like the gospel of a new religion. She listened
intently, and after a while, unconsciously influenced by the interest
and light in her face, he began to feel less and less as though he
were talking to the room, and more and more as though he were speaking
solely to the girl beside him. If he saw comprehension in her eyes, he
did not trouble to explain a point further; if he saw a question there,
he answered it; a doubt, he solved it. Some eyes are easy to read, and
Petrovitch was a master of that art.

The girl was no fool, and though the whole theory of Socialism was
new to her, she was able to follow the rigorous train of logic with
which he led up to his conclusions. He attacked all the stock ideas
which she had been brought up to respect. It somehow did not seem like
blasphemy. He flung scorn and derision on the social ideals which she
had heard lauded from her cradle. Some things which she had been taught
to consider admirable and desirable, grew, as he spoke of them, to seem
mean and paltry. Life, as she listened, took new meanings, and became
of deeper significance. Even the affairs of every day, the chance
stories of misery, and the 'painful' paragraphs of the newspapers,
which she felt, and shuddered as she felt, had hitherto seemed only
occasions for the sprinkling of a little Radical rose-water--little
stings of passing horror, which heightened rather than detracted from
the pleasures of existence--seemed now to be worth considering in some
other light.

This was not the first time that Clare's heart had been stirred and
her sympathies quickened by a spoken discourse. More than once she
remembered having left the doors of parish church or cathedral in a
tumult of emotion when some specially earnest and eloquent preacher
had succeeded in casting a new and fierce light into the inmost depths
of her soul; but, she remembered, those feelings had been transient,
and strong though the new convictions and resolutions had been when
she left the sacred portals, the small things of life--the duties of
school, the light worries of home, the social _bagatelles_, things
trivial and tenuous enough in themselves--had soon settled down upon
her like a thick atmosphere, and by their aggregate weight had crushed,
not out of existence, but back to her soul's remoter recesses, the
new-born life.

As Petrovitch finished speaking, and, folding up his notes, thanked
his hearers for their patience and attention, she wondered to herself,
so quick is thought, whether what had happened before would not happen
again, and whether by this time to-morrow her mind would not be running
with its accustomed smoothness in its accustomed channels. She hoped
no; she feared yes. But somehow something seemed to tell her that in
these past experiences her emotions only had been affected, but that
this time her reason also had been forced into life and action, and it
would be harder to chloroform that, she thought.

For some minutes after he had ceased she was so preoccupied with these
thoughts that she hardly noticed the sharp fire of questions which was
levelled at him from visitors in different parts of the room. When she
did begin to listen to them, it was only to wonder how people could so
have misunderstood what seemed to her so clear. There was one lady in
particular who asked inconsequent questions in such a feebly deliberate
manner, dropping her words out as though they were some precious elixir
of which it was not well to give out much at a time, that Clare felt
an insane desire to shake her words out of her, and at the same time a
little sense into her.

The genial young stockbroker wanted to know whether the best part of
Petrovitch's scheme was not included in the present Radical programme,
but his suggestion was received with disapprobation by the large
majority, and he hastily withdrew into obscurity. It struck Miss
Stanley that all the questions and remarks were on side issues, and
left untouched the main contentions.

When the chairman of the evening announced that the discussion was
at an end, everybody rose and began to talk at once--in most cases
_not_ about the paper. Perhaps they were all glad to get away from the
larger questions of life's possibilities, and to return to the trivial
personalities which form the chief interest of most of our lives.

'You are interested in these questions, Miss Stanley?' Petrovitch said,
as he turned to bid her good-night.

'I--I--shall be.'

'Yes, I think you will. Good-bye.'

He left alone, and at once, telling his hostess he had an appointment
to keep.

Just outside the door he met Count Litvinoff's visitor of the morning.
Hirsch had evidently been waiting for him with some impatience. He
turned, and they walked away together.

'I've been here some time,' he said. 'I thought you must have gone.'

'I am sorry,' said Petrovitch; 'I could not leave earlier.'

'Little good you'll do in a house like that,' grumbled Hirsch, knitting
his brows. 'Casting pearls before swine.'

'Not quite that, my good Hirsch. Casting seed upon stony ground, maybe,
but I am much mistaken if some has not fallen upon virgin soil, and
then my evening has not been wasted. How did it fare with you this
morning?'

Hirsch silently produced Litvinoff's cheque, not quite so fresh-looking
as when he had received it.

'Ah, as I expected!' said the other, glancing at it under a lamp.
'Ten pounds is not illiberal. You see, he does not keep so tight a
purse-string as you thought.'

'Lightly won lightly spent. Donner wetter! he gained it easily enough.'

'This is not spent--it is given. Don't be unjust.'

'Gott in Himmel! You're a good man, Petrovitch. You seem to have no
faults.'

'Ah! so it may seem to you who have known me only three months, but
I have known myself more than a score of years, and I know that I am
full of them. Come home with me and have a smoke, and we'll talk about
something else.'

'And how have you liked it, my dearest Clare? Have you been terribly
bored--or puzzled perhaps--since you are not used to these discussions?'

'I have never been more interested than I was by Mr Petrovitch,' said
Clare, with perfect truth.

'Ah, yes,' said Mrs Quaid enthusiastically; 'so sweet, isn't he?'

Clare did not answer, but as she drove home it occurred to her that the
principal ingredient in Petrovitch's character was not exactly sugar.

CHAPTER XVI.

GOING HOME.

There are people, we are told, on whom the rapid action of railway
travelling acts as a soothing influence; but to the majority of us,
when suffering from any loss or grief, a long train journey is simply
maddening. The rattling of the windows, the vibration of the carriage,
the banging of doors and shouting of porters at the stations, the
prolonged and ear-piercing shriek of the whistle, occurring at such
moments as to convince the thinking mind that it is not let off with
any good intention or to serve any useful purpose, but simply to
gratify the torturing instinct of the engine-driver at the expense
of the passengers' nerves and tempers--all these only aggravate any
trouble which may be part of one's invisible luggage. For all these
together are not enough to distract one from the contemplation of
one's special skeleton, and each is in itself enough to keep one from
contemplating it with any good result. And as for seeing the bright
side of one's troubles, that is quite impossible when one is moving at
the rate of fifty miles an hour; the only wonder is that more people
are not overcome by the peculiarly dismal aspect which one's position
assumes under these circumstances, and that we don't hear of more
suicides in railway carriages.

The three o'clock Midland express was tearing through the quiet
country. A faint mist lay over the fields and hedges, faint, but still
thick enough to hold its own against the pale yellow sunbeams that
seemed striving to disperse it.

Richard Ferrier, idly gazing at the flying hedges and gates and squalid
cottages, did not feel any less sad for the sadness of the outside
world through which he was speeding home.

He had spent the previous evening in a vigorous search after Alice--a
search which had been unsuccessful, even though he had offered Mrs
Fludger the best inducement to frankness. It had needed that golden
token to mitigate the wrath with which she had received his first
question. She had, indeed, hinted, not darkly, in the first flush of
indignation, at worse designs on his part than even Bible-reading; but
gold itself, though it had softened her asperity, had been powerless to
extort from her any information of the slightest value. Having tried
all he knew, and failed, to discover any trace of what he sought,
Richard had given up the search. He had met Roland once on the hotel
staircase. They had passed each other like strangers.

As the train rushed on, he went over and over again all the
circumstances of his quarrel with his brother. A fire of hate burned
in him fiercely, a stern and deep indignation surged in his heart,
and blinded his eyes to any possible palliation of his brother's
conduct. This state of mind was the outcome of months of heart soreness
and suppressed bitterness of spirit,--months in which he had vainly
tried to disguise from himself that if Clare Stanley did incline to
one more than the other, it was Roland who was the favourite. During
that month of Roland's unexplained holiday Richard had fancied he
made some progress in her good graces, but when his brother came back
again she had turned on him just the same smiles and glances that had
bewildered Dick. And from that time it had seemed to him that Roland
was gradually elbowing him out. Miss Stanley had a taste for poetry,
and Roland read poetry extremely well. Miss Stanley called herself a
Radical, and Roland had been a shining light on that side in a small
debating society at Cambridge. Miss Stanley liked to chatter about Art,
and Roland always had a stock of the latest Art prattle at the tip of
his tongue. Roland had grown fond of solitary walks, and in these was
constantly meeting Miss Stanley 'by accident'--'accident' which Richard
could not always bring himself to believe in. It was to be noticed, by
the way, that in the walks of both these young men all roads led, not
to Rome, but past Aspinshaw. Richard had borne all this, sustaining
himself with a hope that Miss Stanley did not really feel interested so
much in Roland as in the tastes he affected. He had still hoped that
she might come to care for him,--for the man who loved her with such a
passionate intensity. It is so hard, so very hard, to believe that the
love that is everything to us is absolutely nothing to the beloved. Men
have even dreamed that their passion could warm marble to life. How
much easier to fancy that it can stir a heart to love.

But the sting in the pain he had suffered while his lady smiled on
Roland had been a half unselfish fear that these smiles of hers were
being bestowed on a man unworthy of them. Now that he believed this
unworthiness to be proved, all the latent doubts, distrusts, suspicions
he had kept down 'sprang full statured in an hour,' and with them
sprang a hatred of his brother, so fierce as to frighten himself; for
however he might seek to deceive himself about it, he knew in his
inmost heart that it was less as a heartless profligate than as a
possibly successful rival that he had learned to hate him.

But he knew that now this rivalry could not be successful. His great
love for her prevented his seeing the realities that underlay the
superficial side of her character, so that he actually believed her to
be the last woman in the world one could dare to ask to share poverty.
He knew that his own chance, such as it had been, was lost; but he
knew, too, that his brother's chance was also at an end. This did not
make him less determined that the quarrel should be _à outrance_.

'Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face' is such a wildly
irrational act that one would never expect any reasonable being to be
guilty of it, and yet hundreds of people do it every day. Dick was
doing it now, practically, though he kept reminding himself that this
was really the only honourable course open to him, and that he was
influenced mainly by irreproachable motives.

It was nearly eight o'clock when his journey ended at Thornsett Edge.

He went straight into the dining-room, where Miss Ferrier sat filling
in the groundwork of some canvas slippers, which she hastily pushed
out of sight when she saw him. It was one of her habits, kept up since
the days when they were children, to make some present for each of the
brothers every year, and give it to them at Christmas as a 'surprise.'

'My dear Dick, how ill you look! Why didn't you write? Have you had any
dinner?'

'No, auntie,' said he, kissing her. 'Just order up something cold, will
you? I want to run up to Gates this evening. I won't wait for anything
to be cooked.'

Miss Letitia suppressed her curiosity as to what could be taking Dick
to his father's solicitor at this time of night, and hurried off to
see about the meal herself. While he was busy with the cold beef and
pickles he told her briefly that he had run down on business, which had
been rather worrying lately.

'That accounts,' said the good lady, 'for your looking so poorly. I
hope you've not been keeping bad hours.'

'Not I!' said Dick, as he drew the cork of a bottle of stout. 'Nor yet
bad company, aunt--don't you think it.'

'And how is Roland?' she asked, at last; but at the same minute Dick
pushed his chair back, and rose.

'I'm off to Gates now,' he said. 'I shall be back some time to-night.
And I say, auntie, have my father's room got ready for me. I should
like to sleep there.'

When he had put on hat and great coat, he put his head in again at the
room door.

'After all, I think I'll have my own room.'

He found Mr Gates sitting smoking very comfortably in the society of
two of his bosom friends, with whom he had that day enjoyed some very
good shooting.

'Can I see Mr Richard Ferrier?' he cried, when a servant took him the
name. 'I should think I could. Come in, Dick, my boy; you're just in
time to help finish the bottle. Stevens is full already--he's missed
every bird he's aimed at to-day--and Clark is too sleepy to appreciate
good stuff.'

The other men laughed, and all shook hands with Dick, and made room for
him in the little circle which they formed round a splendid fire.

'I suppose the Aspinshaw people will soon be down now,' Gates went on;
'in fact, I heard so from Stanley.'

'I came down on business,' said Dick, as the three other men burst out
laughing.

'Of course,' said Gates; 'you went to town on business just when they
went.'

The duet of less than half-sober laughter with which Mr Gates's guests
received this suggestion brought the colour to Richard's cheeks.

'I want to speak to you in private,' he said, 'if your friends will
excuse us.'

'Oh, they won't mind,' said Mr Gates, his cheerfulness unabated by the
sharp tone in which Richard spoke. 'Come along; let's get the beastly
business over.'

Richard followed him into another room. Mr Gates set down on a table
the brass candle-stick he had brought in; both men remained standing.

'I have come up to ask you to take immediate steps to stop working the
mill. I suppose we must give the men some notice?'

'Have you gone mad, boy? What on earth should you close the mill for?'

'It will be closed under the provisions of my father's will, which, I
believe, you drew up, Mr Gates.'

Mr Gates sat down heavily on the nearest chair.

'You don't mean to say you've been quarrelling already?'

Richard made an impatient gesture of assent.

'You're both of you too old and too sensible to let a quarrel like this
stand between you and your living,' said Gates seriously. 'What's the
trouble?'

'I can't tell you what our quarrel is about. My brother can do so if he
likes; but it is impossible--please understand me thoroughly, Mr Gates,
it is quite impossible that Roland and I can ever work together again.'

His tone was so decided, his face so firm, that Gates saw plainly that
what he said he meant, and that this was no quarrel to be got over by
'being slept upon.'

'May I ask,' he said, when he had risen and taken a turn or two up and
down the room, 'how you propose to get your living?'

'I shall have a little, I believe, without the mill, and I am not an
absolute fool; and, if the worst comes to the worst, I suppose my hands
are of some use,' holding them out, with a laugh.

'And what will Roland do?' said the lawyer, more to gain time than
because he expected any answer.

'You forget, sir,' said Richard haughtily--and as he spoke the other
noticed how much older he seemed to have grown in the last month--'you
forget, sir, that my brother's affairs no longer concern me in the
least.'

'Well, I can do nothing till I hear from him. That'll be time enough,
God knows.'

'You know best, sir,' said Richard. 'I've done my duty in telling you;
I shall write to the trustees to-night.'

'Well,' said Gates, with a shrug of his shoulders, 'what must be must.
I can only hope you'll think better of it. Why, it's perfect madness.
Do let me try to arrange matters between you.'

'You had better address yourself to Roland. Don't make any mistake,
Mr Gates. This is quite as much my brother's quarrel as mine. Only
three days ago he told me never to speak again to him on this side of
the grave, and swore that the same roof should not continue to cover
us both. I must be off now. I'm sorry to have troubled you at such an
hour. Good-night.'

Gates let him out. As he closed the front door after watching him down
to the gate,--

'How in the world,' he said, 'did such a hard-headed man of business as
old Dicky Ferrier ever manage to get two such hare-brained young fools
as these boys? Why, it's beastly unnatural,' he added discontentedly.
'But it's the same old tale, I suppose--"All along of Eliza." A good
business smashed up, and two young fellows going straight to the dogs,
because of that damned girl'--with a backward jerk of his head in the
direction of Aspinshaw, as he returned into the cloud of smoke in which
his two friends were dozing placidly.

Richard went quickly away under the arching interlaced boughs of the
garden trees. When he reached the road he did not turn his face towards
Thornsett Edge, but went up the hill that lay at the back of the house.
Across the fields, where no track was visible, but where he could
have found his way blindfold, through narrow lanes with stone walls,
past more than one farmstead, now settled down into the restfulness of
night, always upwards he went, until he reached the little church that
crowned the hill and kept watch over the dead that crowded under its
shadow.

The young man passed into the graveyard and made his way to a very
white stone, that showed strikingly among the dun-coloured monuments
about it.

Light fleecy clouds were being blown over the face of the waning moon,