Hasn’t there ever really been a hooded friar seen stalking through this
crypt at night?”

“They do say--You know all the dead earls lie here for a week; and on
alternate nights the tenantry and the servants sit up. Those people
are superstitious, and they vow that they see shadowy forms way over
there; of course lamps are hung on the columns near by--perhaps I can
show you a whole chest full of the silver lamps that have been used
for centuries. They make the rest of the crypt fairly black, and it
is easy enough to imagine anything. The interment always takes place
at midnight, by torchlight, even when there is a moon; and there is
popularly supposed to be an old abbot telling his beads just behind the
procession.”

“How simply gorgeous! Of course I don’t want Lord Barnstaple to die,
but I should _love_ to be in at that sort of thing. When Mr. Geary died
of course he was just laid out in the back parlour--drawing-room I
shall always call it hereafter; poor Mrs. Geary has never been out of
California since she left the immortal South--and he really did look
so uninteresting, and his casket was so hideously expensive. But an
earl--laid out in a crypt--of an ancient Abbey--with tenantry kneeling
round and shivering at hooded friars in the background--I’m really
alive for the first time! Is there an Abbey we could rent anywhere? I’d
only want it for about six months, but I’d have a simply heavenly time
so long as the novelty lasted.”

“It would take you six months to get used to the size of it,” said
Randolph, “and by the time it had begun to fit perhaps you would feel
that everything else was commonplace.” He spoke to Coralie, but he
looked at Lee.

She smiled and brought her lashes together. “Sometimes there are things
one wants more than magnificence,” she said. “Well--Emmy must be
awake. I’ll go and speak to her about Tom.”

For Tom was in London and had asked his sister to make known that he
desired an invitation to the Abbey, and had come to England merely to
look upon its future _châtelaine_.

Lee found Lady Barnstaple in one of her freshest and fluffiest wrappers
and in one of her ugliest tempers--attributable doubtless to the fact
that Mr. Pix, after three days of hard shooting, had been obliged to go
to London on business, and had not yet returned.

“Ask all California if you like,” she said crossly, “but tell them to
keep out of my way. I know their airs of old.”

“It’s not at all likely that your guests would put on airs with you.
For the matter of that you have the rank that all good Americans
approve of--”

“Some people are putting on airs with me,” said Lady Barnstaple darkly.

This was an obvious opportunity to approach a delicate subject, but Lee
shrank from it. Moreover, the thing would have run its natural course
before her return and one more unpleasantness been avoided. Lady Mary’s
advice was wise and appealed to her present craving for a long period
of irresponsibility. So she said instead:

“I think of going to California for a visit--with Mrs. Montgomery,
about the middle of October.”

Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes and stared at her daughter-in-law. Even
in the pink light it was evident that she changed colour. She dropped
her eyes suddenly.

“California is a long way off,” she said dryly. “I wonder Cecil
consents; but these little separations are always advisable. How long
shall you stay?”

“A year, possibly. I am going to take Mary Gifford with me if Mrs.
Montgomery will invite her--as of course she will.”

“Oh, do marry her to Randolph Montgomery! It would be an act of
charity.”

“How pleased she would be! But I think it can be managed, particularly
as Tiny likes her; and Mrs. Montgomery would be sure to fall in love
with her and conceive it her mission to modify her voice.”

“Well, I hope she’ll stay in California. I’m sick of her. I’m sick of
the rudeness of English people, anyhow.”

“You have cultivated their rudeness with a good deal of energy.
It seems to me that most Americans cultivate that attribute more
successfully than they cultivate any others of the many English
attributes they admire so profoundly,” Lee observed.

“Well, I wish you’d let me alone!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. “Don’t
speak another word to me to-day.”

Lee hastily retreated and sent off a telegram to Tom, then went out in
search of the others. She found them by the lake feeding the swans.

“The swans and the peacocks make it all just perfect!” cried Coralie.
“I want Ned to sit up all night with me in the crypt to see if there
won’t be a ghost, and he won’t do it.”

“As if there were such things,” said Mr. Geary disdainfully.

Lee turned to Randolph. “You look a whole generation older than Ned,”
she said, with the sensation of having just made the discovery of how
much improved he was. “I believe you could almost bring yourself to
believe in a ghost.”

He smiled and opened her parasol. “And you, I am afraid, have taken on
at least a century--without being aware of the fact. I am afraid you
will realise it when you return to California.”

“I want California more and more every day.”

“We shall see. The changes of association are very subtle. I can only
hope they are not so deeply wrought in you as they sometimes appear to
be--that you will really enjoy your year in California, I mean.”

They were walking toward the fell, and the others were some distance
behind.

“I am going to ask Aunty to invite Mary Gifford to go back with us. She
is my best friend here and she is simply dying for a change.”

“I am sure mother will be delighted. She will undertake her reformation
at once.”

“That is what I told Emmy. How do you like her--Mary, I mean?”

“She interests me very much, if only to see how wide she can open her
mouth.”

“No, but seriously--Mary is such a problem to me.”

“Well, she’s a beauty, like a blue and white moonlight in mid-winter;
and has a tantalising sort of elusiveness. I detest Englishwomen as
a rule, but I never met a woman before who talked so loud and at the
same time suggested an almost exaggerated shrinking and modesty. The
combination is certainly striking.”

“It isn’t that she’s really cold,” said Lee, with the deep subtlety of
her sex, “but she’s never met the right man. I only hope she won’t fall
in love with you, but she admires you tremendously.”

“Ah!”

“Do pay her a lot of compliments and show her a lot of little
attentions; Englishwomen get so tired of doing all the work. But don’t
make love to her.”

“I have no intention of making love to her,” said Randolph; but if he
had a deeper meaning he kept it out of his eyes--those eyes which had
lost their nervous facility of expression, and rarely looked otherwise
than cold and grey and thoughtful.

Tom arrived next morning, talkative, restless, and irresponsible; but
although he frankly avowed himself as much in love as ever, he hastened
to add that he would not mention it any oftener than he could help. For
several days Lee neglected the other guests and devoted herself to her
old friends. The last three had certainly brought the breezes of the
Pacific with them, and they talked California until Lady Mary, who had
joined them several times, declared she could stand it no longer.

“I’ll go with you gladly if Mrs. Montgomery will take me; and I intend
to make love to her, you may be sure,” she said to Lee, “but I really
can’t stand feeling so out of it. And besides you are all so intimate
and happy together, it’s almost a sin to intrude. You’re looking much
brighter since they came.”

“It has done me good to see them again, and it’s made me want to go
back more than ever.”

“I can understand. But it’s a pity Cecil can’t go with you. He’s
looking rather glum. Is that what’s the matter with him?”

“I am not sure,” said Lee uneasily. “I’m going to have a talk with
him on Sunday. I did say something about it on Monday night, but of
course--well----”

“It’s hard to persuade an English husband that he’s got to conform
to the American habit of matrimonial vacations and plenty of them.”
Lady Mary laughed. “Speaking of vacations, Mr. Pix is taking rather a
long one, but I believe he returns on Monday. I can’t quite make out,
but I fancy the men have rather snubbed him--as much as they decently
can. He must feel frightfully out of it. I only hope he won’t lose his
temper. He’s got a nasty one, and if he let it go he’s underbred enough
to shriek out anything. I saw with my own eyes that Lord Barnstaple
avoided playing with him the night before he left. Of course Lord
Barnstaple carried it off as he does everything, but I think the man
noticed it all the same.”

“Then I wish he had pride enough to keep out of the house, but of
course he hasn’t.”

“Your Californians now are so different. They are quite _comme il
faut_----”

“Mary Gifford, you are really intolerably rude!”

“Upon my word I don’t mean to be. And as you know, I want to marry
one.” She paused a moment, then raised her cold blue eyes to Lee’s.
“I too have a will of my own,” she announced, “and when I make up my
mind to do a thing I do it. I am going to marry Mr. Montgomery, and
whether you go back to California or not I am going with my future
mother-in-law.”

“Of course I shall go; and it is seldom that a woman--particularly
a beauty--fails to get a man if she makes up her mind to it. He is
interested; there’s that much gained.”

CHAPTER XIX

Mrs. Montgomery arrived the next day without Tiny, whose children were
ailing. As the following day was Sunday, and as Mrs. Montgomery would
hardly let Lee out of her sight, the definite understanding with Cecil
had to be postponed. She had seen practically nothing of him since
Tuesday. Mr. Geary and Mr. Brannan laughed at the bare idea of tramping
about all day carrying a heavy gun, nor did they, nor Coralie, fancy
the idea of luncheon on the moor. They wanted Lee to themselves, and
they had a little picnic every day. Mrs. Montgomery was too old for
picnics, and Lady Mary announced her intention of taking the good lady
on her own hands. Before sunset she had bewildered and fascinated her
victim, and by noon the next day had received the desired invitation.

“I wish I could have had the bringing up of her,” said Mrs. Montgomery
earnestly to Lee. “She’s really very peculiar, and has shockingly bad
manners, but with it all she is high-bred; it’s really very strange.
With us it’s either one thing or the other. And she’s so sweet. I’m
sure if I scold her a little after a while she won’t mind it a bit.”

“I’m sure she’ll take it like an angel,” said Lee, who had told Mary
what she was to expect, and could still hear that young lady’s loud
delighted laugh. “And be sure you’re good to her. She’s very much alone
in the world.”

Lee’s conscience hurt her less at this deliberate scheming than it
might have done a few weeks since, for she had by this time convinced
herself that Mary was really in love with Randolph; and she was
certainly a wife of whom any man might be proud.

On Tuesday evening as Lee and her friends were descending the fell--on
whose broad summit they had laughed the afternoon away, and Lee had
been petted and flattered to her heart’s content--she paused suddenly
and put her hand above her eyes. Far away, walking slowly along the
ridge of hillocks that formed the southeastern edge of the moor, was
a man whose carriage, even at that distance, was familiar. She stared
hard. It was certainly Cecil. He was alone, and, undoubtedly, thinking.
She made up her mind in an instant.

“I see Cecil,” she said. “I’m going to bring him home. You go on to the
Abbey.” And she hurried away.

Doubtless he had been there for some time, and had sought the solitude
deliberately: the men were shooting miles away; apparently even
sport had failed him. She made tight little fists of her hands. Her
morbidity had not outlasted the night of her momentous interview with
her husband, but her old friends had both satisfied her longings for
previous conditions, and rooted her desire for a few months’ freedom.
It was true that, with the exception at Randolph, they bored her a
little at times, but the fact remained that they symbolised the freest
and most brilliant part of her life, and that they were in delightful
accord with the lighter side of her nature. Cecil, outlined against the
sky over there in the purple, alone, and, beyond a doubt, perturbed and
unhappy, made her feel as cruel and selfish as she could feel in her
present mood. She rebelled against the serious conversation before her,
and wondered if she had slipped from her heights forever. They had been
very pleasant.

Cecil saw her coming and met her half-way. She smiled brilliantly,
slipped her hand in his, and kissed him.

“You are thinking it over,” she said, with the directness that he liked.

“I have been thinking about a good many things. I have been wondering
how I could have lived with you for three years and known you so
little. I hardly knew you the other night at all, and I never believed
that you would care to leave me.”

“Cecil! You are so serious. You take things so tragically. I _can’t_
look at it as you do, because I have seen women going to Europe all my
life without their husbands. One would think I was wanting to get a
divorce!”

“Are you trying to make me feel that I am making an ass of myself? I
think you know that I have my own ideas about most things, and that
I am not in the least ashamed of them. I married you to live with
you, to keep you here beside me so long as we both lived. I have no
understanding of and no patience with any other sort of marriage. And
I think you knew when you accepted me that I had not the making of an
American husband in me.”

“I never deluded myself for a moment. And you must admit that I have
been English enough! Believe me when I say that a brief relapse on my
part is necessary----”

“I cannot understand your having a ‘relapse’ unless you are tired of
me.”

“I am not in the least tired of you; no one could ever tire of you. It
is all so subtle----”

“Don’t talk verbiage, please. There are no subtleties that can’t
be turned into black and white if you choose to do it. I can quite
understand your being homesick for California, and I’ve fully intended
to take you back some day. But you might wait. I have kept you pretty
hard at the grind, and if it were not for all the political work I’ve
got to do this autumn and winter, I’d take you over to the Continent
for a few months. And after a year or two we shall do a great deal of
travelling, I hope: I want more and more to study the colonies.”

“That is one reason I thought it best to go now--you are going to be so
busy you won’t miss me at all. When you’re travelling about, speaking
here and speaking there, you’ll be surrounded by men all the time. You
won’t need me in the least.”

“It is always the greatest possible pleasure to me to know that you are
where I can see you at any moment, and that you have no interests apart
from my own.”

“That is just the point. I should like a few trifling ones for a time.
If you want it in plain English, here it is--I want to be an Individual
for just one year. I made a great effort to surrender all I had to you,
and you must admit that I was a success. But reaction is bound to come
sooner or later, and that is what is the matter with me.”

Cecil stood still and looked at her. “Oh,” he remarked. “That is it?
Why didn’t you say so at once? I ought to have expected it, I suppose.
I saw what you were before I married you--about the worst spoiled woman
I had ever met in my life. But you had brains and character, and you
loved me. I hoped for everything.”

“And you can’t be so ungrateful as to say that you have been
disappointed.”

“No. I certainly have not been--up to a week ago: I thought you the
most perfect woman God ever made.”

Lee flushed with pleasure and took his hand again.

“I wouldn’t make you unhappy for the world,” she said. “Only I thought
I could show you that it was for the best. We are what we are. Brain
and will and love can do a great deal, an immense amount, but it can’t
make us quite over. We bolt our original self under and he gnaws at
the lock and gets out sooner or later. The best way is to give him his
head for a little and then he will go back and be quiet for a long time
again. But----” she hesitated for so long a time that Cecil, who had
been ramming his stick into the ground, turned and looked at her. “If
I can’t make you agree with me,” she said, “I won’t go.”

“But you would stay unwillingly.”

“Oh, I do want to go!”

“Then go, by all means,” he said.

CHAPTER XX

During the following week Lee was not so absorbed in her friends that
she would have been oblivious to a certain discomposure of the Abbey’s
atmosphere, even had Mary Gifford not called her attention to it. Some
of the guests had given place to others, but the Pixes, Lady Mary, and
the Californians still remained. Of course they were all scattered
during the day, but the evenings were spent in the great drawing-room
and adjoining boudoirs and billiard-room, and it was obvious to the
most indifferent that there was a discord in the usual harmony of the
Abbey at this season. Lady Barnstaple’s temper had never been more
uncertain, but no one minded that: Emmy was always sure to be amusing,
whether deliberately or otherwise; that was her rôle. Nor was any one
particularly disturbed by the increased acidity of Lord Barnstaple’s
remarks; for when a man is clever he must be given his head, as Captain
Monmouth had remarked shortly before he left; “and some pills are
really cannon balls,” he had added darkly.

Mr. Pix was the disturbing element. He had managed to keep an effective
shade over the light of his commonness in London, for he did not go
out too much and was oftener in Paris. Moreover, Victoria, who was
painfully irreproachable, had provided a sort of family reputation
on which he travelled. But in the fierce and unremitting light of a
house-party he revealed himself, and it was evident that he was aware
of the fact; his assumption of ease and of the manner to which his
fellow-guests were born grew more defiant daily, and there were times
when his brow was dark and heavy. Everybody wondered why he did not
leave. He handled his gun clumsily, and with manifest distaste, and it
was plain that he had not so much as the seedling of the passion for
sport. Nevertheless he stuck to it, and asserted that he longed for
October that he might distinguish himself in the covers.

If the man had succeeded in giving himself an acceptable veneer, or if
he had had the wit to make himself useful financially to the men with
whom he aspired to associate, he would have gone down as others of his
gilded ilk had gone down; but, as it was, every man in the Abbey longed
to kick him, and they snubbed him as pointedly as in common courtesy to
their host they could.

“I am actually uneasy,” said Lady Mary to Lee one evening as they stood
apart for a moment in the drawing-room. The guests looked unconcerned
enough. They were talking and laughing, some pretending to fight for
their favourite tables; while in the billiard-room across the hall a
half-dozen of the younger married women were romping about the table,
shrieking their laughter. But Victoria Pix, looking less like a marble
than usual, stood alone in a doorway intently regarding her brother,
who was also conspicuously alone. And although Emmy was flitting about
as usual, there was an angry light in her eyes and an ugly compression
of her lips.

“I wish it were the last of September,” replied Lee.

“So do I--or that we were in California. I feel as if some one had a
lighted fuse in his hand and was hunting for dynamite. It’s really
terrible to think what might happen if that man lost his temper and
opened his mouth.”

“I don’t want to think of it. And where there are so many people
nothing is really likely to happen; there are so many small diversions.”

But she broached the subject to Cecil as they were walking along the
corridors to their tower some hours later. Apparently they were the
best of friends again, for Cecil was not the man to do anything by
halves. He had not even returned to the subject; and if he were still
wounded and unquiet he gave no sign.

“I wish that horrid Mr. Pix would go,” said Lee tentatively. “He’s so
out of it, I wonder he doesn’t.”

“I can’t imagine what he came for. I never saw a man look such an ass
on the moors.”

“He must get on your father’s nerves.”

“I fancy he does. I suppose Emmy asked him here. She could hardly avoid
it, she’s so intimate with Miss Pix. By the way, that woman actually
talked at dinner to-night; you may not have noticed, but I had her
on my left; I suppose I’m in Emmy’s bad graces for some reason or
other. But she really seemed bent on making herself entertaining. She
has something in her head, I fancy. If less of it were snobbery she
wouldn’t be half bad.”

“Fancy what you escaped. If you had never come to America they might
have married you to the Pixes.”

“The person has yet to be born who could do my marrying for me,” said
Cecil; and there was no doubt that he knew himself.

CHAPTER XXI

The next afternoon as Lee was taking tea with the other guests
in the library she happened to glance out of the window, and saw
Lord Barnstaple returning from the moors, alone. It was an unusual
occurrence, for he was an ardent and vigorous sportsman. Ten minutes
later she became aware that a servant in the corridor was endeavouring
to attract her attention. She went out at once and closed the door. The
servant told her that Lord Barnstaple desired an interview with her in
his own sitting-room; he feared interruptions in her boudoir.

Lee went rapidly to his rooms, curious and uneasy. She felt very much
like running away, but Lord Barnstaple had been consistently kind to
her, and was justified in demanding what return she could give him.

He was walking up and down, and his eyebrows were more perturbed than
supercilious.

“I want to know if you will give me a little help,” he said abruptly.

“Of course I will do anything I can.”

“I want that bounder, Pix, put out of this house. I can’t stand him
another day without insulting him, and of course I don’t want to do
that. But he is Emmy’s guest and she can get rid of him--I don’t
care how she does it. Of course I can’t speak to her; she would be in
hysterics before I was half through; and would keep him here to spite
me.”

“And you want me to speak to her?”

“I’m not asking you to undertake a very pleasant task; but you’re the
only person who has the least influence over her, except Cecil--and I
don’t care to speak to him about it.”

“But what am I to say to her? What excuse?”

Lord Barnstaple wheeled about sharply. “Can’t you think of any?” he
asked.

Lee kept her face immobile, but she turned away her eyes.

Lord Barnstaple laughed. “Unless you are blind you can see what is
becoming plain enough,” he said harshly. “I’ve seen him hanging about
for some time, but it never occurred to me that he might be her lover
until lately. I don’t care a hang about her and her lovers, but she
can’t bring that sort to the Abbey.”

“I can tell her that everybody is talking and that the women are
hinting that unless she drops him she’ll be dropped herself.”

“Quite so. You’ll have a nasty scene. It is good of you to undertake it
without making me argue myself hoarse.”

“I am one of you; you must know that I would willingly do anything for
the family interests that I could.”

“You do belong to us,” said Lord Barnstaple with some enthusiasm.
“And that is what Emmy has never done for a moment. By the way,” he
hesitated, “I hate to mention it now, it looks as if I were hastening
to reward you; but the fact is I had made up my mind to give you my
wife’s jewels. They are very fine, and Emmy does not even know of their
existence. I suppose it would have been rather decent of me to have
given them to you long ago: but----”

Lee nodded to him, smiling sympathetically.

“Yes,” he said, “I hated to part with them. But I shan’t mind your
having them. I’ll write to my solicitors at once to send them down;
I’ve got to pass the time somehow. For Heaven’s sake come back and tell
me how she takes it.”

“I don’t suppose I shall be long. I haven’t thanked you. Of course I
shall be delighted to have the jewels.”

“You ought to have the Barnstaple ones, but she’s capable of outliving
the whole of us.”

CHAPTER XXII

As Lee walked along the many corridors to her mother-in-law’s rooms she
reflected that she was grateful Lord Barnstaple had not refrained from
mentioning the diamonds: their vision was both pleasing and sustaining.
She was obliged to give serious thought to the coming interview, but
they glittered in the background and poured their soothing light along
her nerves.

Lady Barnstaple had but just risen from her afternoon nap and was
drinking her tea. She looked cross and dishevelled.

“Do sit down,” she said, as Lee picked up a porcelain ornament from the
mantel and examined it. “I hate people to stand round in spots.”

Lee took a chair opposite her mother-in-law. She was the last person to
shirk a responsibility when she faced the point.

“You have seemed very nervous lately,” she said. “Is anything the
matter?”

“Yes, everything is. I wish I could simply hurt some people. I’d go a
long ways aside to do it. What right have these God-Almighty English to
put on such airs, anyhow? One person’s exactly as good as another. I
come from a free country and I like it.”

“I wonder you have deserted it for five-and-twenty years. But it is
still there.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you’d like to get rid of me. But you won’t. I’ve
worn myself out getting to the top, and on the top I’ll stay. I’d be
just nothing in New York. And Chicago--_good_ Lord!”

“You’ve stepped down two or three rungs, and if you’re not careful
you’ll find yourself at the foot--”

“What do you mean?” screamed Lady Barnstaple. “I’ve half a mind to
throw this teacup at you.”

“Don’t you dare to throw anything at me. I should have a right to
speak even if I did not consider your own interest--which I do; please
believe me. Surely you must know that Mr. Pix has hurt you.”

“I’d like to know why _I_ can’t have a lover as well as anybody else.”

“Do you mean to acknowledge that he is your lover?”

“It’s none of your business whether he is or not! And I’m not going to
be dictated to by you or anybody else.”

Lady Barnstaple was too nervous and too angry to be cowed by the cold
blue blaze before her, but she asserted herself the more defiantly.

“I have no intention of dictating to you, but it certainly is my
business. And it’s Lord Barnstaple’s and Cecil’s--”

“You shut up your mouth,” screamed Lady Barnstaple; her language always
revealed its pristine simplicity when her nerves were fairly galloping.
“The idea of a brat like you sitting up there and lecturing me. And
what do you know about it, I’d like to know? You’re married to the
salt of the earth and you’re such a fool you’re tired of him already.
If you’d been tied up for twenty years to a cold-blooded brute like
Barnstaple you might--yes, you might have a little more charity----”

“I am by no means without charity, and I know that you are not happy.
I wish you were; but surely there are better ways of consoling
oneself----”

“_Are_ there? Well, I don’t know anything about them and I guess you
don’t know much more. I was pretty when I married Barnstaple, and I
was really in love with him, if you want to know it. He was such a
real swell, and I was so ambitious, I admired him to death; and he was
so indifferent he fascinated me. But he never even had the decency
to pretend he hadn’t married me for my money. He’s never so much as
crossed my threshold, if you want to know the truth.”

“People say he was in love with his first wife, and took her death very
much to heart. Perhaps that was it.”

“That was just it. He’s got her picture hanging up in his bedroom;
won’t even have it in his sitting-room for fear somebody else might
look at it. I went to see him once out of pure charity, when he was
ill in bed and he shouted at me to get out before I’d crossed the
threshold. But I saw _her_.”

“I must say I respect him more for being perfectly honest, for
not pretending to love you. After all, it was a square business
transaction: he sold you a good position and a prospective title.
You’ve both got a good deal out of it----”

“I hate him! I hate a good many people in England, but I hate him the
most. I’m biding my time, but when I do strike there won’t be one ounce
of starch left in him. I’d do it this minute if it wasn’t for Cecil.
What right has he got to stick his nose into my affairs and humiliate
the only man that ever really loved me----”

“If you mean Mr. Pix, it seems to me that Lord Barnstaple has
restrained himself as only a gentleman can. He is a very fastidious
man, and you surely cannot be so blind as not to see how an
underbred----”

“Don’t you dare!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. She sprang to her feet,
overturning the tea-table and ruining her pink velvet carpet. “He’s
as good as anybody, I tell you, and so am I. I’m sick and tired
of airs--that cad’s that’s ruined me and your ridiculous Southern
nonsense. I’m not blind! I can see you look down on me because I ain’t
connected with your old broken aristocracy! What does it amount to,
I’d like to know? There’s only one thing that amounts to anything on
the face of this earth and that’s money. You can turn up your nose at
Chicago but I can tell you Chicago’d turn up its nose at you if it had
ever heard of you. You’re just a nonentity, with all your airs, and all
your eyes too for that matter, and I’m known on two continents. I’m the
Countess of Barnstaple, if I was--but it’s none of yours or anybody
else’s business who I was. I’m somebody now and somebody I’m going to
stay. If I’ve gone down three rungs I’ll climb up again--I will! I
will! I will! And I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I haven’t a penny left!
Not a penny! Not a penny! I’m going to kill myself----”

Lee jumped up, caught her by the shoulders and literally shook the
hysterics out of her. Then she sat her violently into a chair.

“Now!” she said. “You behave yourself or I’ll shake you again. I’ll
stand none of your nonsense and I have several things to say to you
yet. So keep quiet.”

Lady Barnstaple panted, but she looked cowed. She did not raise her
eyes.

“How long have you been ruined?”

“I don’t know; a long while.”

“And you are spending Mr. Pix’s money?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do the Abbey lands pay the taxes and other expenses?--and the expenses
of the shooting season?”

“They pay next to nothing. The farms are too small. It’s all woods and
moor.”

“Then Mr. Pix is running the Abbey?”

“Yes he is--and he knows it.”

“And you have no sense of responsibility to the man who has given you
the position you were ready to grovel for?”

“He’s a beastly cad.”

“If he were not a gentleman he could have managed you. But that has
nothing to do with it. You have no right to enter a family to disgrace
it. I suppose it’s not possible to make you understand; but its honour
should be your own.”

“I don’t care a hang about any such high-falutin’ nonsense. I entered
this family to get what I wanted, and when it’s got no more to give me
it can be the laughing-stock of England for all I care.”

“I thought you loved Cecil.”

The ugly expression which had been deepening about Lady Barnstaple’s
mouth relaxed for a moment.

“I do; but I can’t help it. He’s got to go with the rest. I don’t know
that I care much, though; you’re enough to make me hate him. What I
hate more than everything else put together is to give up the Abbey.
And you can be sure that after the way Mr. Pix has been treated----”

“Mr. Pix will leave this house to-night. If you don’t send him I shall.”

“You’re a fool. If you knew which side your bread was buttered on
you’d make such a fuss over him that everybody else would treat him
decently----”

“I have fully identified myself with my husband’s family, if you have
not, and I shall do nothing to add to its dishonour. There are worse
things than giving up the Abbey--which can be rented; it need not be
sold. The Gearys would rent it to-morrow.”

“If you think so much of this family I wonder you can make up your mind
to leave it.”

Lee hesitated a moment. Then she said: “I shall never leave it so long
as it needs me. And it certainly needs somebody just at present. Mr.
Pix must leave; that’s the first point. Lord Barnstaple and Cecil must
be told just so much and no more. Don’t you dare tell them that Mr. Pix
has been running the Abbey. You can have letters from Chicago to-morrow
saying that you are ruined.”

“If Mr. Pix goes I follow. Unless I can keep the Abbey--and if I’ve got
to drop out----”

“You can suit yourself about going or remaining. Only don’t you tell
Lord Barnstaple or anybody else whose money you have been spending.”

“I’d tell him and everybody else this minute if it weren’t for Cecil.
He’s the only person who’s ever really treated me decently. And as for
the Abbey----”

She paused so long that Lee received a mental telegram of something
still worse to come. As Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes slowly and
looked at her with steady malevolence she felt her burning cheeks cool.

“He wouldn’t have the Abbey, anyhow, you know,” said Lady Barnstaple.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you jabbering with Barnstaple and Cecil not long since about
the Abbey and its traditions, but either they hadn’t told you or you
hadn’t thought it worth remembering--that there is a curse on all Abbey
lands and that it has worked itself out in this family with beautiful
regularity.”

“I never heard of any curse.”

“Well, the priests, or monks, or whatever they were, cursed the Abbey
lands when they were turned out. And this is the way the curse works.”
She paused a moment longer with an evident sense of the dramatic. “They
never descend in the direct line,” she added with all possible emphasis.

“I am too American for superstition,” but her voice had lost its
vigour.

“That hasn’t very much to do with it. I’m merely mentioning facts. I
haven’t gone into other Abbey family histories very extensively, but
I know this one. Never, not in a single instance, has Maundrell Abbey
descended from father to son.”

Lee looked away from her for the first time. Her eyes blazed no longer;
they looked like cold blue ashes.

“It is time to break the rule,” she said.

“The rule’s not going to be broken. Either the Abbey will go to a
stranger, or Cecil will die before Barnstaple is laid out in the
crypt----”

Lee rose. “It is an interesting superstition, but it will have to
wait,” she said. “I am going now to speak to Mr. Pix--unless you will
do it yourself.”

“I’ll do it myself if you’ll be kind enough to mind your business that
far.”

“Then I shall go and tell Lord Barnstaple that you have consented----”

“Ah! He sent you, did he? I might have known it.”

Lee bit her lip. “I am sorry--but it doesn’t matter. If to-day is
a sample of your usual performances, you can’t expect him to court
interviews with you.”

“Oh, he’s afraid of me. I could make any man afraid of me, thank
Heaven!”

CHAPTER XXIII

Lee returned to her father-in-law more slowly than she had advanced
upon the enemy. She longed desperately for Cecil, but he was the last
person in whom she could confide.

Lord Barnstaple opened the door for her.

“How pale you are!” he said. “I suppose I sent you to about the
nastiest interview of your life.”

“Oh. I got the best of her. She was screaming about the room and I got
tired of it and nearly shook the life out of her.”

Lord Barnstaple laughed with genuine delight. “I knew she’d never get
the best of you,” he cried. “I knew you’d trounce her. Well, what else?”

“She promised to tell Mr. Pix he must go to-night.”

“Ah, you did manage her. How did you do it?”

“I told her I’d tell him if she didn’t.”

“Good! But of course she’ll get back at us. What’s she got up her
sleeve?”

“I don’t think she knows herself. She’s too excited. I think she’s
upset about a good many things. She seems to have been getting bad news
from Chicago this last week or two.”

“Ah!” Lord Barnstaple walked over to the window. He turned about in a
moment.

“I have felt a crash in the air for a long time,” he said pinching
his lips. “But this last year or two her affairs seemed to take a new
start, and of course her fortune was a large one and could stand a good
deal of strain. But if she goes to pieces----” he spread out his hands.

“If Cecil and I could only live here all the year round we could keep
up the Abbey in a way, particularly if you rented the shootings; but
our six months in town take fully two thousand----”

“There’s no alternative, I’m afraid: we’ll all have to get out.”

“But you wouldn’t sell it?”

“I shall have to talk it over with Cecil. The rental would pay the
expenses of the place; but I can’t live forever, and when I give place
to him the death duties will make a large hole in his private fortune.
I have a good many sins to repent of when my time comes.”

He had turned very pale, and he looked very harassed. Lee did not fling
her arms round his neck as she might once have done, but she took his
hand and patted it.

“You and Cecil and I can always be happy together, even without the
Abbey,” she said. “If Emmy really loses her money she will run away
with Mr. Pix or somebody. We three will live together, and forget all
about her. And we won’t be really poor.”

Lord Barnstaple kissed her and patted her cheek, but his brow did not
clear.

“I am glad Cecil has you,” he said, “the time may come when he will
need you badly. He loves the Abbey--more than I have done, I suppose,
or I should have taken more pains to keep it.”

Lee felt half inclined to tell him of Randolph’s promise; but sometimes
she thought she knew Randolph, and sometimes she was sure she did not.
She had no right to raise hopes, which converse potentialities so
nicely balanced. Then she bethought herself of Emmy’s last shot, which
had passed out of her memory for the moment. She must speak of it to
some one.

“She said something terrible to me just before I left. I’d like to ask
you about it.”

“Do. Why didn’t you give her another shaking?”

“I was knocked out: it took all my energies to keep her from seeing it.
She said that Abbey lands were cursed, and never descended from father
to son.”

Lord Barnstaple dropped her hand and walked to the window again.

“It has been a curious series of coincidences in our case,” he said,
“but as our lands were not cursed more vigorously than the others,
and as a good many of the others have gone scot free or nearly so,
we always hope for better luck next time. There is really no reason
why our luck shouldn’t change any day. The old brutes ought to be
satisfied, particularly as we’ve taken such good care of their bones.”

“Well, if the Abbey has to go, I hope the next people will be haunted
out of it,” said Lee viciously. “I must go and dress for dinner. Don’t
worry; I have a fine piece of property, and it is likely to increase
in value any day.” She felt justified in saying this much.

“You had an air of bringing good luck with you when you came. It was a
fancy, of course, but I remember it impressed me.”

“That is the reason you didn’t scold me for not bringing a million, as
Emmy did?”

“_Did_ she? The little beast! Well, go and dress.”

CHAPTER XXIV

As Cecil and Lee were descending the tower stair an hour later he said
to her:

“Don’t look for me to-night when you are ready to come home; I am
coming straight here after dinner. It’s high time I got to work on my
speeches.”

She slipped her hand into his. “Shall I come too and sit with you?”

He returned her pressure and did not answer at once. Then he said: “No;
I think I’d rather you didn’t. If I am to lose you for a year I had
better get used to it as soon as possible.”

She lifted her head to tell him that she had no intention of leaving
him for the present, then felt a perverse desire to torment him a
little longer. She intended to be so charming to him later that she
felt she owed that much to herself. But she was dressed to-night for
his special delectation. If Cecil had a preference in the matter of
her attire it was for transparent white, and she wore a gown of white
embroidered mousseline de soie flecked here and there with blue.

They were still some distance from the door which led into the first
of the corridors, for the stair was winding, worn, and steep, and, in
spite of several little lamps, almost dark. Cecil paused suddenly and
turned to her, plunging his hands into his pockets. She could hardly
see his face, for a slender ray from above lay full across her eyes;
but she had thought, as she had joined him in the sitting-room above a
few moments since, that he had never looked more handsome. He grew pale
in London, but a few days on the moors always gave him back his tan;
and it had also occurred to her that the past two weeks had given him
an added depth of expression, robbed him of a trifle of that serenity
which Circumstance had so persistently fostered.

“There is something I should like to say,” he began, with manifest
hesitation. “I shouldn’t like you to go on thinking that I have not
appreciated your long and unfailing sacrifice during these three years.
I was too happy to analyse, I suppose, and you seemed happy too;
but of course I can see now that you were making a deliberate--and
noble--attempt--to--to make yourself over, to suppress an individuality
of uncommon strength in order to live up to a man’s selfish ideal.
Of course when I practically suggested it, I knew what I was talking
about, but I was too much of a man to realise what it meant--and I had
not lived with you. I can assure you that, great as your success was, I
have realised, in this past week, that I had absorbed your real self,
that I understood you as no man who had lived with you and loved you
as much as I--no man to whom you had been so much, could fail to do.
I am expressing myself about as badly as possible, but the idea that
you should think me so utterly selfish and unappreciative after all
you have given up--have given me--has literally tortured me. I don’t
wonder you want a fling. Go and have it, but come back to me as soon as
you can.”

She made no reply, for she wanted to say many things at once. But it is
possible that he read something of it in her eyes--at least she prayed
a few hours later that he had--for he caught her hard against him and
kissed her many times. Then he hurried on, as if he feared she would
think he had spoken as a suppliant.

When she joined him in the corridor the Gearys were waiting for them,
and Coralie immediately began to chatter. Her conversation was like
a very light champagne, sparkling but not mounting to the brain. Lee
felt distinctly bored. She would have liked to dine alone with Cecil
and then to spend with him a long evening of mutual explanation and
reminiscence, and many intervals. She answered Coralie at random, and
in a few moments her mind reverted with a startled leap to the pregnant
hours of the afternoon. Could she keep Cecil ignorant of the disgrace
which had threatened him? Had Pix gone? Would Emmy hold her counsel?
She had forgotten to ask Lord Barnstaple to keep away from her; but
such advice was hardly necessary.

“Where on earth did you disappear to this afternoon?” Coralie was
demanding. “I hunted over the whole Abbey for you and I got lost and
then I tried to talk to _that_ Miss Pix and she asked me all about
divorce in the United States--of all things! I wonder if she’s got
a husband tucked away somewhere--those monumental people are often
bigger fools than they look. I told her that American divorces were
no good in England unless they were obtained on English statutory
grounds--we’d known some one who’d tried it. She looked as mad as a
hornet, just like her brother for a minute. And he fairly makes me ill,
Lee. Just fancy _our_ having such people in the house. I must say that
the English with all their blood----”

“Oh, do keep quiet!” said Lee impatiently. Then she apologised
hurriedly. “I have a good deal to think about just now,” she added.

Coralie was gazing at her with a scarlet face. “Well, I think it’s
about time you came back to California,” she said sarcastically. “Your
manners need brushing up.”

But Lee only shrugged her shoulders and refused to humble herself
further. She was beset with impatience to reach the library and
ascertain if Pix had gone.

He was there. And he was standing apart with his sister. His set thick
profile was turned to the door. He was talking, and it was evident that
his voice was pitched very low.

As the company was passing down the corridor which led to the stair
just beyond the dining-room, Lady Barnstaple’s maid came hastily from
the wing beyond and asked Lee to take her ladyship’s place at the table.

It seemed to Lee as the dinner progressed that with a few exceptions
every one was in a feverish state of excitement. The exceptions were
the Pixes, who barely made a remark, Cecil, who seemed as usual and
was endeavouring to entertain his neighbour, and Lord Barnstaple,
whose brow was very dark. Mary Gifford’s large laugh barely gave its
echoes time to finish, and the others certainly talked even louder
and faster than usual. Randolph alone was brilliant and easy, and, to
Lee, was manifestly doing what he could to divert the attention of his
neighbours. Before the women rose it was quite plain that they were
really nervous; and that the influence emanated from Pix. His silence
alone would have attracted attention, for it was his habit to talk
incessantly in order to conceal his real timidity. And he sat staring
straight before him, scarcely eating, his heavy features set in an ugly
sneer.

“I’m on the verge of hysterics,” said Mary Gifford to Lee as they
entered the drawing-room. “That man’s working himself up to something.
He’s a coward and his courage takes a lot of screwing, but he’s getting
it to the sticking point as fast as he can, and I met him coming out of
Emmy’s rooms about an hour before dinner. I ran over to speak to her
about something, but I was not admitted. He looked as if they’d been
having a terrible row and he was ready to murder some one. I’m in a
real funk. But if he’s meditating a _coup de théâtre_ we can baulk him
for to-night at least. It’s a lovely night. Get everybody out-of-doors
and then I’ll see that they scatter. I’ll start a romp the moment the
men come out.”

“Good. I’ll send up for shawls at once. I’ll tell Coralie to look after
Lord Barnstaple; she always amuses him. Then--I’ll dispose of Mr. Pix.”

“Oh, I wish I could be there to see. He’ll sizzle and freeze at once,
poor wretch. Well, let’s get them out. I’ll deposit Mrs. Montgomery in
the Sèvres room, and tell her to look at the crockery and then go to
bed.”

Lee had intended to return with Cecil to the tower and inform him that
his bitter draught was to be sweetened for the present, but Pix must be
dealt with summarily. If she did not get him out of the house before
Lord Barnstaple lost his head there would be consequences which even
her resolute temper, born of the exigencies of the hour, refused to
contemplate.

The women, pleased with the suggestion of a romp on the moor, strolled,
meanwhile, about the lake, looking rather less majestic than the
swans, who occasionally stood on their heads as if disdainful of the
admiration of mere mortals. When the men entered the drawing-room Lee
asked them to go outside immediately, and Coralie placed her hand in
Lord Barnstaple’s arm and marched him off.

Lee went down to the crypt with them, then slipped back into the
shadows and returned to the drawing-room. Pix had greeted her
suggestion with a sneer and a scowl, but it was evident that his plans
had been frustrated, and that he was not a man of ready wit. He had
sat himself doggedly in a chair, obviously to await the return of
Lord Barnstaple and his guests. He sat there alone as Lee re-entered,
looking smaller and commoner than usual in the great expanse of the
ancient room, with its carven roof that had been blessed and cursed,
and the priceless paintings on the panels about him. The Maundrells
of Holbein, and Sir Joshua, and Sir Peter seemed to have raised their
eyebrows with supercilious indignation. He was in accord with nothing
but the electric lights.

As Lee entered he did not rise, but his scowl and his sneer deepened.

She walked directly up to him, and as he met her eyes he moved
slightly. When Lee concentrated all the forces of a strong will in
those expressive orbs, the weaker nature they bore upon was liable
to an attack of tremulous self-consciousness. She knew the English
character; its upper classes had the arrogance of the immortals;
millions might bury but could never exterminate the servility of
the lower. Let an aristocrat hold a man’s plebeianism hard against
his nostrils and the poor wretch would grovel with the overpowering
consciousness of it. Lee had determined that nothing short of insolent
brutality would dispose of Mr. Pix. And for sheer insolence the true
Californian transcends the earth.

“Why haven’t you gone?” she asked as if she were addressing a servant.

Pix too had his arrogance, the arrogance of riches. Although he turned
pale, he replied doggedly:

“I’m not ready to go and I don’t go until I am. I don’t know what you
mean.” He spoke grammatically, but his accent was as irritating as only
the underbred accents of England can be.

“You know what I mean. You saw Lady Barnstaple this afternoon. She told
you you must go. We don’t want you here.”

“I’ll stay as long as I----”

“No, my good man, you will not; you will go to-night. I have ordered
the carriage for the eleven-ten train to Leeds, where you can stay the
night. Your man is packing your box.”

“I won’t go,” he growled, but his chest was heaving.

“Oh yes you will, if you have to be assisted into the carriage by two
footmen.”

He pulled himself together, although it was evident that his nerves,
subjected to a long and severe strain, were giving way, and that the
foundations of his insolence were weakened by the position in which she
had placed him. He said quite distinctly:

“And who’s going to feed this crowd?”

“My husband and myself; and I’ll trouble you for your bill.”

“It’s a damned big bill.”

“I think not. I have no concern with what you may have spent elsewhere.
I shall ascertain exactly when my mother-in-law’s original income
ceased and I know quite as well as you do what is spent here; so be
careful you make no mistakes. Now go, my good man, and see that you
make no fuss about it.”

The situation would unquestionably have been saved, for the man was
confounded and humiliated, but at that moment Lord Barnstaple entered
the room.

“My dear child,” he said, “I was a brute to leave this to you. Go out
to the others. I will follow in a moment.”

Lee, who was really enjoying herself, wheeled about with a frown. “Do
go,” she said emphatically. “Do go.”

“And leave you to be insulted by a cur who doesn’t know enough to stand
up in your presence. I am not quite so bad as that.” He turned to Pix,
whose face had become very red; even his eyeballs were injected.

“I believe you have been told that you cannot stay here,” he said. “I
am sorry to appear rude, but--you must go. There are no explanations
necessary, and I should prefer that you did not reply. But I insist
upon you leaving the house to-night.”

Pix jumped to his feet with hard fists. “Damn you! Damn you!” he
stuttered hysterically, but excitement giving him courage as he went
on: “and what’s going to become of you? Where’ll you and all this land
that makes such a h--l of a difference between you and me be this
time next year? It’ll be mine as it ought to be now! And where’ll
you be? Who’ll be paying for your bread and butter? Who’ll be paying
your gambling debts? They’ve made a nice item in my expenses, I can
tell you! If you’re going to make your wife’s lover pay your debts of
honour--as you swells call them--you might at least have the decency to
win a little mor’n you do.”

He finished and stood panting.

Lord Barnstaple stood like a stone for a moment, then he caught the man
by the collar, jerked him to an open window, and flung him out as if he
had been a rat. He was very strong, as are all Englishmen of his class
who spend two-thirds of their lives in the open air, and his face was
merely a shade paler as he turned to Lee. But she averted her eyes
hastily from his, nevertheless.

“Doubtless that man spoke the truth,” he said calmly, “but she must
corroborate it,” and he went towards the stair beyond the drawing-room
that led to his wife’s apartments.

Lee ran to the window. Pix was sitting up on the walk holding a
handkerchief to his face. No one else was in sight. Presently he got to
his feet and limped into the house. Lee went to the door opposite the
great staircase and saw him toil past: it was evident that he was quite
ready to slink away.

She sat down and put her hand to her eyes. It seemed to her that
they must ache forever with what they had caught sight of in Lord
Barnstaple’s. In that brief glance she had seen the corpse of a
gentleman’s pride.

What would happen! If Emmy lost her courage, or if her better nature,
attenuated as it was, conquered her spite, the situation might still
be saved. Lord Barnstaple would be only too willing to receive the
assurance that the man, insulted to fury, had lied; and, above all,
Cecil need never know. There was no doubt that Lord Barnstaple’s
deserts were largely of his own invoking, but she set her nails into
her palms with a fierce maternal yearning over Cecil. He was blameless,
and he was hers. One way or another he should be spared.

She waited for Lord Barnstaple’s return until she could wait no longer.
If he were not still with Emmy--and it was not likely that he would
prolong the interview--he must have gone to his rooms by the upper
corridors. She went rapidly out of the drawing-room and up the stair.
She could not be regarded as an intruder and she must know the worst
to-night. _What_ would Lord Barnstaple do if Emmy had confessed the
truth? She tried to persuade herself that she had not the least idea.

CHAPTER XXV

He was sitting at his desk writing; and as he lifted his hand at her
abrupt entrance and laid it on an object beside his papers she received
no shock of surprise. She went forward and lifted his hand from the
revolver.

“Must you?” she asked.

“Of course I must. Do you think I could live with myself another day?”

“Perhaps no one need ever know.”

“Everybody in England will know before a week is over. She gave me to
understand that people guessed it already.”

“_This_ seems such a terrible alternative to a woman--but----”

“But you have race in you. You understand perfectly. My honour has been
sold, and my pride is dead: there is no place among men for what is
left of me. And to face my son again! Good God!”

“Can nothing be done to keep it from Cecil?”

“Nothing. It is the only heritage I leave him and he’ll have to stand
it as best he can. It won’t kill him, nor his courage; he’s made of
stronger stuff than that. And if I’ve brought the family honour to
the dust, he has it in him to raise it higher than it has ever been.
Never let him forget that. You’ve played your part well all along, but
you’ve a great deal more to do yet. You’ll find that Fate didn’t steer
you into this family to play the pretty rôle of countess----”

“I am equal to my part.”

“Yes: I think you are. Now--I have an hour’s work before me. I can’t
let you go till I have finished. You are a strong creature--but you are
a woman, all the same. You must stay here until I am ready to let you
go.”

“I want to stay with you.”

“Thank you. Sit down.”

He handed her a chair, and returned to his writing.

Lee knew that if he had condemned her to the corridor under a vow of
secrecy she should have paced up and down with increasing nervousness.
But she felt calm enough beside him. He wrote deliberately, with a
steady hand, and out of the respect he commanded she felt as profound a
pity for him as she would feel when she stood beside him in the crypt.
The soul had already gone out of him: it did not even strike her as
eerie that the vigorous body beside her would demand its last rites in
an hour.

Although taught to forgive her father, she had been brought up in a
proper disapprobation of suicide. The impressions rooted in her plastic
years rose and possessed her for a moment: but she wisely refused to
consider what was none of her business. She did not even argue Lord
Barnstaple’s case, nor remind herself that she understood him. It was
exclusively his own affair, and to approve or condemn him was equally
impertinent.

Her chair faced the window. The crystal moon hung low above the park.
The woods looked old and dark: night gave them back their mystery. The
lovely English landscape was steeped in the repose which the centuries
had given it. The great forests and terrible mountains of California
may have been born in earlier throes, but they still brooded upon the
mysteries of the future. England was worn down to peace and calm by
centuries of passing feet. She had the repose of a great mind in the
autumn of its years.

Lee melted into sympathy with the country of her adoption. California
loomed darkly in the background, majestic but remote, and folding
itself in the mists of dreams. It had belonged to her, been a part of
her, in some bygone phase of herself. She was proud to have come out of
it and glad to have known it, but it would be silent to her hereafter.
She was as significantly a Maundrell as if she had been born in her
tower; for she was, and indivisibly, a part of her husband.

She was too sensible to waste time in upbraiding herself for her
conduct of the past fortnight. It had been as inevitable as exhaustion
after excitement, or mental rebellion after years of unremitting
study; and the suffering it had caused could easily be transformed
into gratitude. The important points were that her reaction had worn
itself out, and that the tremendous climax on its heels had forced her
prematurely into the consciousness that the three years’ effort to be
something she had not developed in the previous twenty-one, had changed
her character and her brain as indubitably as the constant action of
water changes the face of a rock. One month of her old life would have
bored her to extinction. Two months and she would have anathematised
the continents of land and water between herself and her husband. A
fortnight later she would have been in her tower. Solemn as the passing
moments were, she could not ignore the prick of ironical relief that
her future was to lack the determined effort of the past three years.
Her new self would fit her with the ease of a garment long worn. Love
had sustained her when she had desired nothing so much as happiness;
but she knew that she had hardly known the inchoation of love until
to-night. Cecil, in his terrible necessity, had taken her ego into his
own breast.

Her thoughts went to him in their tower, writing, like his father,
but with far less calm; for he grew nervous and impatient over his
work. It seemed a strange and terrible thing that he should sit there
unconscious of the double tragedy preparing for him, but she was glad
to prolong his unconsciousness as long as she could. And she would be
the one to tell him.

Lord Barnstaple laid down his pen and sealed his letters. He stood up
and held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said.

They shook hands closely and in silence. Then she went out and he
closed the door behind her. She stood still, waiting for the signal.
She could not carry the news of his death to his son until he was gone
beyond the shadow of a doubt. It was so long coming that she wondered
if his courage had failed him, or if he were praying before the picture
of his wife. It came at last.

CHAPTER XXVI

She walked rapidly along the corridor toward the tower. But in a moment
or two she turned back and went in the direction of the library. It
was Randolph’s habit to read there when the other guests were playing
and romping. To-night’s frolic would certainly not have appealed to
him. It was more than possible that he was there alone, or in his room;
and to-morrow he must go with the others. It might be years before she
would see him again, and it would be culpable not to make him a last
appeal. If the Abbey was lost it should not be for want of effort on
her part.

Randolph was in the library, and alone. He rose with a brilliant smile
of pleasure, then stood and looked hard at her.

“Something has happened,” he said. “You look as if you had just come
back from the next world.”

“You are not so far wrong. Lord Barnstaple has just killed himself.
Things had come to his knowledge that I hope you may never hear. But he
is dead, and to-morrow you will have gone.”

They were standing close together.

“You will not return to California with us.”

“I would never leave Cecil Maundrell for an hour again if I could help
it.”

They exchanged a long look, and when it was over each understood the
other. Lee looked down; then, in the unendurable silence, raised her
eyes again. She averted them hastily. His were the eyes of men who look
their last. It was the second time she had looked into a man’s soul
to-night, and she felt cold and faint. What should she see in Cecil’s?

And how was she to speak of the Abbey in the face of a tragedy like
this? She turned to go, but her feet clung to the floor. The Abbey
was Cecil’s, and Cecil’s it must remain if its rescue were within the
compass of her determined hands. But words were hard to find.

Then she remembered that she had very eloquent eyes, and that Randolph
was versed in their speech. She raised them slowly and let them travel
about the beautiful old room, then out to the cloisters under whose
crumbling arches hooded shadows seemed passing to and fro; then raised
them once more to his with an expression of yearning and appeal.

“Is it true that Lady Barnstaple is ruined?”

“She has not a penny.”

There was another silence, so intense that they heard the echo of a
laugh, far out on the moor.

Randolph picked up a book from the table, and examined its title, then
laid it down again, and turned it over.

“I have never yet broken my word,” he said.

Lee flashed him a glance full of tears and tribute. Then once more that
night she shook hands with a man who was sick with the bitterness of
life.

She left the library and went rapidly down the corridor. As she passed
Lord Barnstaple’s door she noted with gratitude that there was no sign
of discovery. If the blow could be softened it was by her alone.

She was traversing the last corridor but one when her eyes were
arrested by the chapel and the churchyard on the hill. She paused
a moment and regarded them intently. A week from to-night she and
her husband would follow Lord Barnstaple up that hill to the vault
beneath the chapel’s altar. She had hardly realised his death before,
but that solitary hill, cold under the moonlight, cold in its bosom,
coldly biding its Maundrells, generation after generation, century
after century, made the tragedy of the earl’s death one of the several
sharply-cut facts of her life. They were five; she counted them
mechanically: the violent death of her father, her meeting with Cecil,
the death of her mother, her union with her husband, the violent death
of her husband’s father. There was certainly a singular coincidence
between the first and the last.

As she continued to look out at the graveyard, dark even under the
moon, and wondering if the next great fact in her life would be the
birth of a child, to be borne up that hill supinely in his turn,
following the father who had gone long since, she became aware that
the word coincidence was swinging to and fro in her mind, although the
other words of its company had gone to their dust-heap. She frowned
and reproached herself for giving way to melancholy; then reflected
that she would be less than mortal if she did not ... the reiteration
of the word annoyed her, and in a moment she had fitted it into her
conversation with Lord Barnstaple that afternoon.

Her stiffening eyes returned to the hill, and their vision stabbed
through the mounds to the bones of the abbots, whose brothers had
cursed the Abbey. It had been but a coincidence perhaps, but it had
worked itself out with astonishing regularity.

Lee became conscious that she was as cold as ice. The Abbey was saved
to the Maundrells. Was Cecil dead? Had he died before his father?
Nothing could be more unlikely, for he was the healthiest of men, and
there was no one to murder him.

She shook herself violently and took her nerves in hand. Two years ago
she would have flung off the superstition as quickly, but to-day the
old world and all its traditions had taken her imagination into its
mould. Had Pix--or that silent, persistent, unfathomable woman, his
sister----

She ran towards the tower, gripping her nerves; for if Cecil were
there she would have need of all her faculties. It was no part of her
programme to burst in upon him and scream and stammer her terrible
bulletin. But she was a woman, frightened, horrified, overwrought with
hours of nervous tension. When she reached the stair her knees were
shaking, and she climbed the long spiral so slowly that she would have
called her husband’s name could she have found her voice. She wished
she had asked him to write in her boudoir, whose open door was as black
as the entrance to a cave; but he was--should be--in his own little
sitting-room above.

She climbed the next flight with something more of resolution; courage
comes to all strong natures as they approach the formidable moments
of their lives. At the last turning she saw a blade of light, but the
door was too thick to pass a sound. When she reached it her fear and
superstition, and the obsession they had induced, left her abruptly,
and she opened the door at once. Cecil was writing quietly.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.