“Thank you very much, but I have a carriage downstairs,” said Constance.
“If you would show me the way—it is so very complicated.”

“Certainly, Miss Fearing.”

Constance wondered why he repeated her name so often, whether it was a
habit he had, or whether he was nervous, or whether he thought it good
manners. She was not so much impressed with him at first sight as she
had expected to be. He had not said anything at all clever, though it
was true that there had not been many opportunities for wit in the
conversation that had taken place. He belonged to a type with which she
was not familiar, and she could not help asking herself whether George
had other friends like him, who, if she knew them, would call her by her
name half a dozen times in three minutes, and if he had many of them
whether, in the event of her marrying him, she would be expected to know
them all and to like them for his sake. Not that there was anything
common or vulgar about this Johnson whom George praised so much. He
spoke quietly, without any especial accent, and quite without
affectation. He was dressed with perfect simplicity and good taste,
there was nothing awkward in his manner—indeed Constance vaguely wished
that he might have shown some little awkwardness or shyness. He was
evidently a man of the highest education, and George said he was a man
of the highest intelligence, but as Constance gave him her hand and he
closed the door of the brougham, the impression came over her with
startling vividness, that Mr. Johnson was emphatically not a man she
would ask to dinner. She felt sure that if she met him in society she
should feel a vague surprise at his being there, though she might find
it impossible to say why he should not. On the other hand, though she
was aware that she put herself in his power to some extent, since it was
impossible that he should not guess that her interest in George Wood was
the result of something at least a little stronger than ordinary
friendship, yet she very much preferred to trust this stranger rather
than to confide in any of the men she knew in society, not excepting
John Bond himself.

At five o’clock on the day agreed upon, Constance was informed that “a
gentleman, a Mr. Johnson,” had called, saying that he came by
appointment.

“You are so kind,” said Constance, as he sat down opposite to her. He
held the manuscript in his hand. “And what do you think of it? Am I not
right?”

“I am very much surprised,” said the pale young man. “It is a remarkable
book, Miss Fearing, and it ought to be published at once.”

Constance had felt sure of the answer, but she blushed with pleasure, a
fact which did not escape Johnson’s quiet scrutiny.

“You really think Mr. Wood has talent?” she asked, for the sake of
hearing another word of praise.

“There is more talent in one of his pages than in the whole aggregate
works of half a dozen ordinarily successful writers,” Johnson answered
with emphasis.

“I am so glad you think so—so glad. And what is the first thing to be
done in order to get this published? You see, I must ask your help, now
that you have given your opinion.”

“Will you leave the matter in my hands, Miss Fearing?”

Constance hesitated. There was assuredly no one who would be more likely
to do the proper thing in the matter, and yet she reflected that she
knew nothing or next to nothing of the man before her, except from
George’s praise of his intelligence.

“Suppose that a publisher accepts the book,” she said warily, “what will
he give Mr. Wood for it?”

“Ten per cent on the advertised retail price,” Johnson answered
promptly.

“Of every copy sold, I suppose,” said Constance, who had a remarkably
good head for business. “That is not much, is it? And besides, how is
one to know that the publisher is honest? One hears such dreadful
stories about those people.”

Johnson laughed a little.

“Faith is the evidence of things unseen, supported by reasonable and
punctual payments,” he said. “Publishers are not all Cretans, Miss
Fearing. There be certain just men among them who have reputations to
lose.”

“And none of them would do better than that by the book? But of course
you know. Have you ever published anything yourself? Forgive my
ignorance——”

“I once published a volume of critical essays,” Johnson answered.

“What was the title? I must read it—please tell me.”

“It is not worth the trouble, I assure you. The title was that—_Critical
Essays_ by William Johnson.”

“Thank you, I will remember. And will you really do your very best for
Mr. Wood’s book? Do you think it could be published in a fortnight?”

“A fortnight!” exclaimed Johnson, aghast at Constance’s ignorance.
“Three months would be the shortest time possible.”

“Three months! Dear me, what a length of time!”

Johnson rapidly explained as well as he could the principal reasons why
it takes longer to publish a book than to write one. He exchanged a few
more words with Constance, promising to make every effort to push on the
appearance of the novel, but advising her to expect no news whatever for
several months. Then he took his leave.

Half an hour later Constance was at her bookseller’s.

“I want a book called _Critical Essays_, by William Johnson,” she said.
“Have you got it, Mr. Popples?”

She waited some time before it was brought to her. Then she pretended to
look through it carefully, examining the headings of the papers that
were collected in it.

“Is it worth reading?” she asked carelessly.

“Excellent, Miss Fearing,” answered the grey-haired professional
bookseller. He had known Constance since she had been a mere child with
a passion for Mr. Walter Crane’s picture-books. “Excellent,” he
repeated, emphatically. “A little dry perhaps, but truly excellent.”

“Has it been a success, do you know?”

“Yes, I know, Miss Fearing,” answered Mr. Popples, with a meaning smile.
“I know very well. I happen to know that it did not pay for the
printing.”

“Did the author not even get ten per cent on the advertised retail
price?” Constance inquired.

Mr. Popples stared at her for a moment, evidently wondering where she
had picked up the phrase. He immediately suspected her of having
perpetrated a literary misdeed in one volume.

“No, Miss Fearing. I happen to know that Mr. Johnson did not get ten per
cent on the advertised retail price of his book; in point of fact, he
got nothing at all for it, excepting a number of very flattering
notices. But excuse me, Miss Fearing, if you were thinking of venturing
upon publishing anything——” His voice dropped to a confidential pitch.

“I?” exclaimed Constance.

“Well, Miss Fearing, it could be done very discreetly, you know. Just a
little volume of sweet verse? Is that it, Miss Fearing? Now, you know,
that kind of thing would have a run in society, and if you would like to
put it into my hands, I know a publisher——”

“But, Mr. Popples,” interrupted Constance, recovering from her amusement
so far as to be able to interrupt the current of the bookseller’s
engaging offers, “I never wrote anything in my life. I asked out of
sheer curiosity.”

Mr. Popples smiled blandly, without the least appearance of
disappointment.

“Well, well, Miss Fearing, you are quite right,” he said. “In point of
fact those little literary ventures of young ladies very rarely do come
to much, do they? To misquote the Laureate, Miss Fearing, we might say
that ‘Men must write and women must read’! Eh, Miss Fearing?”

The old fellow chuckled at his bad joke, as he wrapped up the volume of
_Critical Essays_ by William Johnson, and handed it across the table.
There were only tables in Mr. Popples’s establishment; he despised
counters.

“Anything else to serve you, Miss Fearing? A novel or two, for the May
weather? No? Let me take it to your carriage.”

“Thanks. I am walking, but I will carry it. Good evening.”

“Good evening, Miss Fearing. Your parasol is here. Walking this evening!
In the May weather! Good evening, Miss Fearing.”

And Mr. Popples bowed his favourite customer out of his establishment,
with a very kindly look in his tired old spectacled eyes.

Constance had got what she had come for. If William Johnson, author of
_Critical Essays_, a journalist and a man presumably acquainted with all
the ins and outs of publishing, had made nothing by his successful book,
George would be doing very well in obtaining ten per cent on the
advertised retail price of every copy of his novel which was sold.
Constance had been mistaken when she had doubted Johnson, but she did
not regret her doubt in the least. After all, she had undertaken the
responsibility of George’s book, and she could not conscientiously
believe everything she was told by strangers concerning its chances. Mr.
Popples, however, was above suspicion, and had, moreover, no reason for
telling that the _Critical Essays_ had brought their author no
remuneration. Johnson’s face, too, inspired confidence, as well as
George’s own trust in him. Constance felt that she had done all she
could, and she accordingly made her preparations for going out of town.

She was glad to get away, in order to study herself. The habit of
introspection had grown upon her, for she had encouraged herself in it,
ever since she had begun to feel that George was something more to her
than a friend. Her over-conscientious nature feared to make some mistake
which might embitter his life as well as her own. She was in constant
dread of letting herself be carried away by the impulse of a moment to
say something that might bind her to marry him, before she could feel
that she loved him wholly as she wished to love him. On looking back,
she bitterly regretted having allowed him to kiss her cheek on that
morning in the Park. She had been under the influence of a strong
emotion, produced by the conclusion of his book, and she seemed in her
own eyes to have acted in a way quite unworthy of herself. Had she been
able to carry her analysis further, she would have discovered that
behind her distrust of herself she felt a lingering distrust of George.
A year earlier she had thought it possible that he was strongly
attracted by her fortune. Now, however, she would have scouted the idea,
if it had presented itself in that shape. But it was present,
nevertheless, in a more subtle form.

“He loves me sincerely,” she said to herself. “He would marry me now, if
I were a pauper. But would he have loved me from the first if I had been
poor?”

It was not often that she put the question, even in this way, but as it
belonged to that class of vicious inquiries which it is impossible to
answer, it tormented her perpetually by suggesting a whole series of
doubts, useless in themselves and mischievous in their consequences. She
was convinced of two things. First, that she was unaccountably
influenced by George’s presence to say and do things which she was
determined at other times that she would never say or do; and, secondly,
that whether she loved him truly or not she could not imagine herself as
loving any one else nearly so much. Under these circumstances, it was
clearly better that she should not see him for a considerable time. She
would thus withdraw herself from the sphere of his direct influence, and
she would have leisure to study and weigh her own feelings, with a view
to reaching a final decision. Nevertheless she looked forward to the
moment of parting from him with something that was very like pain.
Contrary to her expectations, the interview passed off with little show
of emotion on either side.

They talked for some time about the book, Constance assuming an air of
mystery as regards its future and George speaking of it with the utmost
indifference. At the last minute, when he had risen to go and was
standing beside her, she laid her hand upon his arm.

“You do not think I am heartless, do you?” she asked, looking at a
particular button on his coat.

“No,” George answered. “I think you are very sincere. I sometimes wish
you would forget to be so sincere with yourself. I wish you would let
yourself run away with yourself now and then.”

“That would be very wrong. It would be very unfair and unjust to you.
Suppose—only suppose, you know—that I made up my mind to marry you, and
then discovered when it was too late that I did not love you. Would not
that be dreadful? Is it not better to wait a little longer?”

“You shall never say that I have pressed you into a decision against
your will,” said George, betraying in one speech his youth, his
ignorance of woman in general and his almost quixotic readiness to obey
Constance in anything and everything.

“You are very generous,” she answered, still looking at the button. “But
I will not feel that I am spoiling your life—no, let me speak—to keep
you in this position much longer would be doing that, indeed it would.
In six months from now you will be famous. I know it, though you laugh
at me. Then you will be able to marry whom you please. I cannot marry
you now, for I do not love you enough. You are free, you must not feel
that I want to bind you, do you understand. You will travel this summer,
for you have told me that you are going to make several visits in
country-houses. If you see any one you like better than me, do not feel
that you are tied by any promises. It would not break my heart, if you
married some one else.”

In spite of her calmness there was a slight tremor in her voice which
did not escape George’s ear.

“I shall never love any one else,” he said simply.

“You may. I may. But waiting must have a limit——”

“Say this, Constance,” said George. “Say that if, by next May, you do
not love me less than you do now, you will be my wife.”

“No. I must love you more. If I love you better than now, it will show
that my love is always to increase, and I will marry you.”

“In May?”

“In May, next year. But this is no engagement. I make no promise, and I
will take none from you. You are free, and so am I, until the first of
May——”

“I shall never be free again, dear,” said George, happily, for he
anticipated great things of the strange agreement she proposed. He put
his arm about her and drew her to him very tenderly. Another second and
his lips would have touched her cheek, just where they had touched it
once before. But Constance drew back quickly and slipped from his arm.

“No, no,” she laughed, “that is not a part of the agreement. It is far
too binding.”

George’s face was grave and sad. Her action had given him a sharp thrust
of painful disappointment, and he did his best not to hide it. Constance
looked at him a moment.

“Am I not right?” she asked.

“You are always right—even when you give me pain,” he answered with a
shade of bitterness.

“Have I given you pain now?”

“Yes.”

“Did you think, from the way I behaved, that I would let you kiss me for
good-bye?”

“Yes.”

“You shall not say that I hurt you, and you shall not go away believing
that I deceived you,” said Constance, coming back to him.

She put her two hands round his neck and drew down his willing face.
Then she kissed him softly on both cheeks.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I did not mean to hurt you. Good-bye—dear.”

George left the house feeling very happy, but persuaded that neither he
nor any other man could ever understand the heart of woman, which, after
all, seemed to be the only thing in the world worth understanding. He
had ample time for reflection in the course of the summer, but without
the reality before him the study of the problem grew more and more
perplexing.

The weather grew very warm in the end of June, and George left New York.
He had written much in the course of the year and had earned enough
money to give himself a rest during the hot months. He tried to persuade
his father to accompany him and to spend the time by the seaside while
George himself made his promised visits. But Jonah Wood declared that he
preferred New York in the summer and that nothing would induce him to
waste money on such folly as travelling. To tell the truth, the old
gentleman had grown accustomed to rigid economy in his little house in
town, but he could not look forward with any pleasure to the discomforts
of second-rate hotels in second-rate places. So George went away alone.

He had already begun another book. He did not look upon his first effort
in the light of a book at all, but he had tasted blood, and the thirst
was upon him, and he must needs quench it. This time, however, he set
himself steadily to work to do the very best he could, labouring to
repress his own vivacity and trying to keep out of the fever that was
threatening to carry him away outside of himself. He limited his work
strictly to a small amount every day, polishing every sentence and
thinking out every phrase before it was set down. Working in this way he
had written about half a volume by the end of August, when he found
himself in a pleasant country-house by the sea in the midst of a large
party of people. He had all but forgotten his first book, and had
certainly but a very dim recollection of what it contained. He looked
back upon its feverish production as upon a sort of delirious dream
during which he had raved in a language now strange to his memory.

One afternoon, in the midst of a game of lawn-tennis, a telegram was
brought to him.

“Rob Roy and Co. publish book immediately England and America. Have
undertaken that you accept royalty ten per cent retail advertised price.
Wire reply. C. F.”

George possessed a very considerable power of concealing his emotions,
but this news was almost too much for his equanimity. He thrust the
despatch into his pocket and went on playing, but he lost the game in a
shameful fashion and was roundly abused by his cousin Mamie Trimm, who
chanced to be his partner. Mamie and her mother were stopping in the
same house, by what Mrs. Sherrington Trimm considered a rather
unfortunate accident, since Mamie was far too fond of George already. In
reality, the excellent hostess had an idea that George loved the girl,
and as the match seemed most appropriate in her eyes, she had brought
them together on purpose.

As soon as possible he slipped away, put on his flannel jacket and went
to the telegraph office, reading the despatch he had received over and
over again as he hurried along the path, and trying to compose his
answer at the same time. Constance’s message seemed amazingly neat,
business-like and concise, and he wondered whether some one else had not
been concerned in the affair. The phrase about the royalty did not sound
like a woman’s expression, though she might have copied it from the
publisher’s letter.

George had formerly imagined that if his first performance were really
in danger of being published, he should do everything in his power to
prevent such a catastrophe. He felt no such impulse now, however.
Messrs. Rob Roy and Company were very serious people, great publishers,
whose name alone gave a book a chance of success. They bore an
exceptional reputation in the world of books, and George knew very well
that they would not publish trash. But he was not elated by the news,
however much surprised he might be. It was strange, indeed, that a firm
of such good judgment should have accepted his novel, but it could not
but be a failure, all the same. He would get the proofs as soon as
possible, and he would do what he could to make the work decently
presentable by inserting plentiful improvements.

His answer to Constance’s telegram was short.

“Deplore catastrophe. Pity public. Thank publisher. Agree terms. Where
are proofs? G. W.”

By the time the proofs were ready, George was once more in New York,
though Constance had not yet returned. He was hard at work upon his
second book and looked with some disgust at the package of printed
matter that lay folded as it had come, upon his table. Nevertheless he
opened the bundle and looked at them.

“Confound them!” he exclaimed. “They have sent me a paged proof instead
of galleys!”

It was evident that he could not insert many changes, where the matter
was already arranged in book form, and he anticipated endless annoyance
in pasting in extensive “riders” of writing-paper in order to get room
for the vast changes he considered necessary.

An hour later he was lying back in his easy-chair reading his own novel
with breathless interest. He had not yet made a correction of any kind
in the text. It was not until the following day that he was able to go
over it all more calmly, but even then, he found that little could be
done to improve it. When he had finished, he sent the proofs back and
wrote a letter to Constance.

“I have read the book over,” he wrote, among other things, “and it is
not so bad as I supposed. I know that it cannot be good, but I am
convinced that worse novels have found their way into print, if not into
notice. I take back at least one-tenth of all I said about it formerly,
and I will not abuse it in the future, leaving that office to those who
will doubtless command much forcible language in support of their just
opinion. Am I to thank you, too? I hardly know. There are other things
for which I would rather be in a position to owe you thanks. However,
the die is cast, you have made a skipping-rope of the Rubicon and have
whisked it under my feet without my consent. Let the poor book take its
chance. Its birth was happy, may its death at least be peaceful.”

To this Constance replied three weeks later.

“I am glad to see that a disposition to repentance has set in. You are
wise in not abusing my book any more. You ought to be doing penance in
sackcloth and ashes before that bench in Central Park on which I sat
when I told you it was good. The children would all laugh at you, and
throw stones at you, and I should be delighted. I am not coming to town
until it is published and is a success. Grace thinks I have gone into
speculations, because I get so many letters and telegrams about it. I
shall not tell you what the people who read the manuscript said about
it. You can find that out for yourself.”

George awoke one morning to find himself, if not famous, at least the
topic of the day in more countries than one. A week had not elapsed
before the papers were full of notices of his book and speculations as
to his personality. No one seemed to consider that George Winton Wood,
the novelist, could be the same man as G. W. Wood, the signer of modest
articles in the magazines. The first review called him an unknown person
of surprising talent, the second did not hesitate to describe him as a
man of genius, and the third—branded him as a plagiarist who had stolen
his plot from a forgotten novel of the beginning of the century and had
somehow—this was not clear in the article—made capital out of the
writings of Macrobius, he was a villain, a poacher, a pickpocket
novelist, a literary body-snatcher, in fact in the eyes of all but the
over-lax law, little short of a thief. George knew that sort of style,
and he read the abuse over again and again with unmitigated delight. He
had done as much himself in the good old days when the editors would let
him. He did not show this particular notice to his father, however, and
only handed him those that were favourable—and they were many. Jonah
Wood sat reading them all day long, over and over again.

“I am very glad, George,” he said, repeatedly. “I am very proud of you.
It is splendid. But do you think all this will bring you much pecuniary
remuneration?”

“Ten per cent on the advertised retail price of each copy,” was George’s
answer.

He entered the railway station one day and was amazed to see the walls
of the place covered with huge placards, three feet square, bearing the
name of his book and his own, alternately, in huge black letters on a
white ground. The young man at the bookstall was doing a thriving
business. George went up to him.

“That book seems to sell,” he said quietly.

“Like hot cakes,” answered the vendor, offering him his own production.
“One dollar twenty-five cents.”

“Thank you,” said George. “I would not give so much for a novel.”

“Well, there are others will, I guess,” answered the young man. “Step
aside if you please and give these ladies a chance.”

George smiled and turned away.

                              CHAPTER XI.

Sherrington Trimm had kept Mr. Craik’s secret as well as he could, but
although he had not told his wife anything positive concerning the will
that had been so hastily drawn up, he had found it impossible not to
convey to Totty such information about the matter as was manifestly
negative. She had seen very soon that he considered the inheritance of
her brother’s money as an illusion, upon which he placed no faith
whatever, and she had understood that in advising her not to think too
much about it, he meant to do more than administer one of his customary
rebukes to her covetousness. At last, she determined to know the truth
and pressed him with the direct question.

“So far as I know, my dear,” he answered, gravely, “you will never get
that money, so you may just as well put the subject out of your mind,
and be satisfied with what you have.”

Neither diplomacy nor cajolery nor reproaches could force anything more
definite than this from Sherrington Trimm’s discreet lips, though Totty
used all her weapons, and used them very cleverly, in her untiring
efforts to find out the truth. Was Tom going to leave his gold to a
gigantic charity? Sherry’s round, pink face grew suddenly stony. Was it
a hospital or an asylum for idiots?—he really might tell her! His
expression never changed. Totty was in despair, and her curiosity
tormented her in a way that would have done credit to the gad-fly which
tortured Io of old. Neither by word, nor look, nor deed could Sherry be
made to betray his brother-in-law’s secret. He was utterly impenetrable,
as soon as the subject was brought up, and Totty even fancied that he
knew beforehand when she was about to set some carefully-devised trap
for him, so ready was he to oppose her wiles.

On the other hand since old Mr. Craik had recovered, his sister had
shown herself more than usually anxious to please him. In this she
argued as her husband had done, saying that a man who had changed his
will once might very possibly change it again. She therefore spared no
pains in consulting Tom’s pleasure whenever occasion offered, and she
employed her best tact in making his life agreeable to him. He, on his
part, was even more diverted than she intended that he should be, and he
watched all her moves with inward amusement. There had never been any
real sympathy between them. He had been the first child, and several
others had died in infancy during a long series of years, Totty, the
youngest of all, alone surviving, separated from her brother in age by
nearly twenty years. From her childhood, she had always been trying to
get something from him, and whenever the matters in hand did not chance
to clash with his own interests, he had granted her request. Indeed, on
the whole, and considering the man’s grasping character, he had treated
her with great generosity. Totty’s gratitude, however, though always
sincere, was systematically prophetic in regard to favours to come, and
Tom had often wondered whether anything in the world would satisfy her.

Of late she seemed to have developed an intense interest in the means of
prolonging life, and she did not fail to give him the benefit of all the
newest theories on the subject. Tom, however, did not feel that he was
going to die, and was more and more irritated by her officious
suggestions. One day she took upon herself to be more than usually
pressing. He had been suffering from a slight cold, and she had passed
an anxious week.

“There is nothing for you, Tom,” she said, “but a milk cure and massage.
They say there is nothing like it. It is perfectly wonderful——”

Her brother raised his bent head and looked keenly at her, while a sour
smile passed over his face.

“Look here, Totty,” he answered, “don’t you think I should keep better
in camphor?”

“How can you be so unkind!” exclaimed Totty, blushing scarlet. She
rarely blushed at all, and her brother’s amusement increased, until it
reached its climax and broke out in a hard, rattling laugh.

After this, Mrs. Trimm grew more cautious. She talked less of remedies
and cures and practised with great care a mournfully sympathetic
expression. In the course of a week or two this plan also began to wear
upon Craik’s nerves, for she made a point of seeing him almost every
day.

“I say, Totty,” he said suddenly. “If anybody is dead, tell me. If you
think anybody is going to die, send for the doctor. But if they are all
alive and well, don’t go round looking like an undertaker’s wife when
the season has been too healthy.”

“How can you expect me to look gay?” Totty asked with a sad smile. “Do
you think it makes me happy to see you going on in this way?”

“Which way?” inquired Mr. Craik with a pleased grin.

“Why, you won’t have massage, and you won’t take the milk cure, and you
won’t go to Aix, and you won’t let me do anything for you, and—and I’m
so unhappy! Oh Tom, how unkind you are!”

Thereupon Mrs. Trimm burst into tears with much feeling. Tom Craik
looked at her for some seconds and then, being in his own house, rang
the bell, sent for the housekeeper and a bottle of salts, and left Totty
to recover as best she might. He knew very well that those same tears
were genuine and that they had their source in anger and disappointment
rather than in any sympathy for himself, and he congratulated himself
upon having changed his will in time.

The old man watched George Wood’s increasing success with an interest
that would have surprised the latter, if he had known anything of it. It
seemed as if, by assuring him the reversion of the fortune, Tom Craik
had given him a push in the right direction. Since that time, indeed,
George’s luck had begun to turn, and now, though still unconscious of
the wealth that awaited him, he was already far on the road to celebrity
and independence. The lonely old man of business found a new and keen
excitement in following the doings of the young fellow for whom he had
secretly prepared such an overwhelming surprise. He was curious to see
whether George would lose his head, whether he would turn into the
fatuous idol of afternoon tea-parties, or whether he would fall into
vulgar dissipation, whether he would quarrel with his father as soon as
he was independent, or whether he would spend his earnings in making the
old gentleman more comfortable.

Tom Craik cared very little what George did, provided he did something.
What he most regretted was that he could not possibly be present to
enjoy the surprise he had planned. It amused him to think out the
details of his future. If, for instance, George took to drinking and
gambling, losing and wasting at night what he had laboured hard to earn
during the day, what a moment that would be in his life when he should
be told that Tom Craik was dead, and that he was master of a great
fortune. The old man chuckled over the idea, and fancied he could see
George’s face when, having lost more than he could possibly pay, his
young eyes heavy with wine, his hand trembling with excitement, he would
be making his last desperate stand at poker in the quiet upper room of a
gambling club. He would lose his nerve, show his cards, lose and sink
back in his chair with a stare of horror. At that moment the door would
open and Sherry Trimm would come in and whisper a few words in his ear.
Tom Craik liked to imagine the young fellow’s bound of surprise, the
stifled cry of amazement that would escape from his lips, the doubts,
the fears that would beset him until the money was his, and then the
sudden cure that would follow. Yes, thought Tom, there was no such cure
for a spendthrift as a fortune, a real fortune. To make a man love
money, give it to him all at once in vast quantities—provided he is not
a fool. And George was no fool. He had already proved that.

There was something satanic in Mr. Craik’s speculations. He knew the
world well. It amused him to fancy George, admired and courted as a
literary lion, but feared by all judicious mammas, as only young, poor
and famous literary lions are feared. How the sentimental young ladies
would crowd about him and offer him tea, cake and plots for his novels!
And how the ring of mothers would draw their daughters away from him and
freeze him with airs politely cold! How two or three would be gathered
together in one corner of the room to say to each other that two or
three others in the opposite corner were foolishly exposing their
daughters to the charms of an adventurer, for his books bring him in
nothing, my dear, not a cent—Mr. Popples told me so! And how the
compliment would be returned upon the two or three, by the other two or
three, with usurious compound interest. Enter to them, thought Craik,
another of their tribe—what do you think, my dears? Tom Craik left all
that money to George Wood, house, furniture, pictures, horses and
carriages—everything! Just think! I really must go and speak to the dear
fellow! And how they would all be impelled, at the same moment, by the
same charitable thought! How they would all glide forward, during the
next quarter of an hour, impatient to thaw with intimacy what they had
lately wished to freeze with politeness, and how, a little later, each
would say to her lovely daughter as they went home—you know Georgey
Wood—for it would be Georgey at once—is such a good fellow, so famous
and yet so modest, so unassuming when you think how enormously rich he
is. Is he rich, mamma? Why, yes, Kitty—or Totty, or Dottie, or Hattie,
or Nelly—he has all Tom Craik’s money, and that gem of a house to live
in, and the pictures and everything, and your cousin—or your aunt—Totty
is furious about it—but he is such a nice fellow. There would not be
much difficulty about getting a wife for the “nice fellow” then, thought
Thomas Craik.

And one or other of these things might have actually happened, precisely
as Thomas Craik foresaw if that excellent and worthy man, Sherrington
Trimm had not unexpectedly fallen ill during the spring that followed
George Wood’s first success. His illness was severe and was undoubtedly
caused by too much hard work, and was superinduced by a moderate but
unchanging taste for canvas-backs, truffles boiled in madeira and an
especial brand of brut champagne. Sherry recovered, indeed, but was
ordered to Carlsbad in Bohemia without delay. Totty found that it was
quite impossible for her to accompany him, considering the precarious
state of her brother’s health. To leave Tom at such a time would be
absolutely heartless. Sherrington Trimm expressed a belief that Tom
would last through the summer and perhaps through several summers, as he
never did a stroke of work and was as wiry as hairpins. He might have
added that his brother-in-law did not subsist upon cryptograms and brut
wines, but Sherry resolutely avoided suggesting to himself that the
daily consumption of those delicacies was in any way connected with his
late illness. His wife, however, shook her head, and quoting glibly
three or four medical authorities, assured him that Tom’s state was very
far from satisfactory. Mamie might go with her father, if she pleased,
but Totty would not leave the sinking ship.

“Till the rats leave it,” added Mr. Trimm viciously. His wife gave him a
mournfully severe glance and left him to make his preparations.

So he went abroad, and was busy for some time with the improvement of
his liver and the reduction of his superfluous fat, and John Bond
managed the business in his stead. John Bond was a very fine fellow and
did well whatever he undertook, so that Mr. Trimm felt no anxiety about
their joint affairs. John himself was delighted to have an opportunity
of showing what he could do and he looked forward to marrying Grace
Fearing in the summer, considering that his position was now
sufficiently assured. He was far too sensible a man to have any scruples
about taking a rich wife while he himself was poor, but he was too
independent to live upon Grace’s fortune, and as she was so young he had
put off the wedding until he felt that he was making enough money to
have all that he wanted for himself without her aid. When they were
married she could do what she pleased without consulting him, and he
would do as he liked without asking her advice or assistance. He
considered that marriage could not be happy where either of the couple
was dependent upon the other for necessities or luxuries, and that
domestic peace depended largely on the exclusion of all monetary
transactions between man and wife. John Bond was a typical man of his
class, tall, fair, good-looking, healthy, active, energetic and keen. He
had never had a day’s illness nor an hour’s serious annoyance. He had
begun life in the right way, at the right end and in a cheerful spirit.
There was no morbid sentimentality about him, no unnecessary development
of the imagination, no nervousness, no shyness, no underrating of other
people and no overrating of himself. He knew he could never be great or
famous, and that he could only be John Bond as long as he lived. John
Bond he would be, then, and nothing else, but John Bond should come to
mean a great deal before he had done with the name. It should mean the
keenest, most hardworking, most honest, most reliable, most clean-handed
lawyer in the city of New York. There was a breezy atmosphere of truth,
soap and enterprise about John Bond.

Before going abroad Sherrington Trimm asked Tom Craik whether he should
tell his junior partner of the existence of a will in favour of George
Wood. Mr. Craik hesitated before he answered.

“Well, Sherry,” he said at last, “considering the uncertainty of human
life, as Totty says, and considering that you are more used to Extra Dry
than to Carlsbad waters, you had better tell him. There is no knowing
what tricks that stuff may play with you. Let it be in confidence.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Trimm. “I would rather trust John Bond than trust
myself.”

The same day he imparted the secret to his partner. The latter nodded
gravely and then fell into a fit of abstraction which was very rare with
him. He knew a great deal of the relations existing between Constance
and George Wood, and in his frank, lawyer-like distrust of people’s
motives, he had shared Grace’s convictions about the man, though he had
always treated him with indifference and always avoided speaking of him.

There are some people whose curiosity finds relief in asking questions,
even though they obtain no answers to their inquiries. Totty was one of
these, and she missed her husband more than she had thought possible.
There had been a sort of satisfaction in tormenting him about the will,
accompanied by a constant hope that he might one day forget his
discretion in a fit of anger and let out the secret she so much desired
to learn. Now, however, there was no one to cross-examine except Tom
himself, and she would as soon have thought of asking him a direct
question in the matter as of trying to make holes in a mill-stone with a
darning-needle. Her curiosity had therefore no outlet and as her
interest was so directly concerned at the same time, it is no wonder
that she fell into a deplorably unsettled state of mind. For a long time
not a ray of light illuminated the situation, and Totty actually began
to grow thin under the pressure of her constant anxiety. At last she hit
upon a plan for discovering the truth, so simple that she wondered how
she had failed to think of it before.

Nothing indeed could be more easy of execution than what she
contemplated. Her husband kept in a desk in his room a set of duplicate
keys to the deed boxes in his office. Among these there must be also the
one that opened her brother’s box. These iron cases were kept in a
strong room that opened into a small corridor between Sherrington
Trimm’s private study and the outer rooms where the clerks worked. Totty
had her own box there, separate from her husband’s and she remembered
that there was one not far from hers on which was painted her brother’s
name. She would have no difficulty in entering the strong room alone, on
pretence of depositing a deed. Was she not the wife of the senior
partner, and had she not often done the same thing before? If her
brother had made a new will, it must be in that box, where he kept such
papers as possessed only a legal value. One glance would show her all
she wanted to know, and her mind would be at rest from the wearing
anxiety that now made her life almost unbearable.

She opened the desk and had no difficulty in finding the key to her
brother’s box. It was necessary to take something in the nature of a
deed, to hold in her hand as an excuse for entering the strong room, for
she did not want to take anything out of it, lest John Bond, who would
see her, should chance to notice the fact and should mention it to her
husband when he came back. On the other hand, it would not do to deposit
an empty envelope, sealed and marked as though it contained something
valuable. Mrs. Trimm never did things by halves nor was she ever so
unwise as to leave traces of her tactics behind her. A palpable fraud
like an empty envelope might at some future time be used against her. To
take any document away from the office, even if she returned the next
day, would be to expose herself to a cross-examination from Sherrington
when he came home, for he knew the state of her affairs and would know
also that she never needed to consult the papers she kept at the office.
There was nothing for it but to have a real document of some sort. Totty
sat down and thought the matter over for a quarter of an hour. Then she
ordered her carriage and drove down town to the office of a broker who
sometimes did business for her and her husband.

“I have made a bet,” she said, with a little laugh, “and I want you to
help me to win it.”

The broker expressed his readiness to put the whole New York Stock
Exchange at her disposal in five minutes, if that were of any use to
her.

“Yes,” said Totty. “I have bet that I will buy a share in something—say
for a hundred dollars—that I will keep it a year and that at the end of
that time it will be worth more than I gave for it.”

“One way of winning the bet would be to buy several shares in different
things and declare the winner afterwards. One of the lot will go up.”

“That would not be fair,” said Totty with a laugh. “I must say what it
is I have bought. Can you give me something of the kind—now? I want to
take it away with me, to show it.”

The broker went out and returned a few minutes later with what she
wanted, a certificate of stock to the amount of one hundred dollars, in
a well-known undertaking.

“If anything has a chance, this has,” said the broker, putting it into
an envelope and handing it to her. “Oh no, Mrs. Trimm—never mind paying
for it!” he added with a careless laugh. “Give it back to me when you
have done with it.”

But Totty preferred to pay her money, and did so before she departed.
Ten minutes later she was at her husband’s office. Her heart beat a
little faster as she asked John Bond to open the strong room for her.
She hoped that something would happen to occupy him while she was
within.

“Let me help you,” he said, entering the place with her. The strong room
was lighted from above by a small skylight over a heavy grating, the
boxes being arranged on shelves around the walls. John Bond went
straight to the one that belonged to Totty and moved it forward a little
so that she could open it. She held her envelope ostentatiously in one
hand and felt for her key in her pocket with the other. She knew which
was hers and which was her brother’s, because Tom’s had a label fastened
to it, with his name, whereas her own had none.

“Thanks,” she said, as she turned the key in the lock and raised the
lid. “Please do not stay here, Mr. Bond, I want to look over a lot of
things so as to put this I have brought into the right place.”

“Well—if I cannot be of any use,” said John. “I have rather a busy day.
Please call me to shut the room when you have finished.”

Totty breathed more freely when she was alone. She could hear John cross
the corridor and enter the private office. A moment later everything was
quiet. With a quick, stealthy movement, she slipped the other key into
the box labelled “T. Craik,” turned it and lifted the cover. Her heart
was beating violently.

Fortunately for her the will was the last paper that had been put with
the others and lay on the top of them all. The heavy blue envelope was
sealed and marked “Will,” with the date. Totty turned pale as she held
it in her hands. She had not the slightest intention of destroying it,
whatever it might contain, but even to break the seal and read it looked
very like a criminal act. On the other hand, when she realised that she
held in her hand the answer to all her questions, and that by a turn of
the fingers she could satisfy all her boundless curiosity, she knew that
it was of no use to attempt resistance in the face of such a temptation.
She realised, indeed, that she would not be able to restore the seal,
and that she must not hope to hide the fact that somebody had tampered
with the will, but the thought could not deter her from carrying out her
intention. As she turned, her sleeve caught on the corner of the box
which she had inadvertently left open and the lid fell with a sharp
snap. Instantly John Bond’s footstep was heard in the corridor.

Totty had barely time to withdraw the key from her brother’s box and to
bury the will under her own papers when John entered the room.

“Oh!” he exclaimed in evident surprise, “I thought I heard you shut your
box, and that you had finished.”

“No,” said Totty in an unsteady voice, bending her pale face over her
documents. “The lid fell, but I opened it again. I will call you when I
come out.”

John returned to his work without any suspicion of what had happened.
Then Totty extracted a hairpin from the coils of her brown hair and
tried to lift the seal of the will from the paper to which it was so
firmly attached. But she only succeeded in damaging it. There was
nothing to be done but to tear the envelope. Still using her hairpin she
slit open one end of the cover and drew out the document.

When she knew the contents, her face expressed unbounded surprise. It
had never entered her head that Tom could leave his money to George Wood
of all people in the world.

“What a fool I have been!” she exclaimed under her breath.

Then she began to reflect upon the consequences of what she had done,
and her curiosity being satisfied, her fears began to assume serious
proportions. Was it a criminal act that she had committed? She gazed
rather helplessly at the torn envelope. It would be impossible to
restore it. It would be equally impossible to put the will back into the
box, loose and unsealed, without her husband’s noticing the fact the
next time he had occasion to look into Tom Craik’s papers. He would
remember very well that he had sealed it and marked it on the outside.
The envelope, at least, must disappear at once. She crumpled it into as
small a compass as possible and put it into her jacket. It would be very
simple to burn it as soon as she was at home. But how to dispose of the
will itself was a much harder matter. She dared not destroy that also,
for that might turn out to be a deliberate theft, or fraud, or whatever
the law called such deeds. On the other hand, her brother might ask for
it at any time and if it were not in the box it could not be
forthcoming, and her husband would get into trouble. It would be easy
for Tom to suspect that Sherrington Trimm had destroyed the will, in
order that his wife, as next of kin and only heir-at-law should get the
fortune. She thought that, as it was, Tom had shown an extraordinary
belief in human nature, though when she thought of her husband’s known
honesty she understood that nobody could mistrust him. He himself would
doubtless be the first to discover the loss. What would he do? He would
go to Tom and make him execute a duplicate of the will that was lost.
Meanwhile, and in case Tom died before Sherrington came back, Totty
could put the original in some safe place, where she could cause it to
be found if necessary—behind one of those boxes, for instance, or in
some corner of the strong room. Nothing that was locked up between those
four walls could ever be lost. If Tom died, she would of course be told
that a will had been made and was missing. John Bond would come to her
in great distress, and she would come down to the office and help in the
search. The scheme did not look very diplomatic, but she was sure that
there was nothing else to be done. It was the only way in which she
could avoid committing a crime while avoiding also the necessity of
confessing to her husband that she had committed an act of supreme
folly.

She folded the paper together and looked about the small room for a
place in which to hide it. As she was looking she thought she heard John
Bond’s step again. She had no time to lose for she would not be able to
get rid of him if he entered the strong room a third time. To leave it
on one of the shelves would be foolish, for it might be found at any
time. She could see no chink or crack into which to drop it, and John
was certainly coming. Totty in her desperation thrust the paper into the
bosom of her dress, shut up her own box noisily and went out.

She thought that John Bond looked at her very curiously when she went
away, though the impression might well be the result of her own guilty
fears. As a matter of fact he was surprised by her extreme pallor and
was on the point of asking if she were ill. But he reflected that the
strong room was a chilly place and that she might be only feeling cold,
and he held his tongue.

The paper seemed to burn her, and she longed to be in her own house
where she could at least lock it up until she could come to some wise
decision in regard to it. She leaned back in her carriage in an agony of
nervous fear. What if John Bond should chance to be the one who made the
discovery? He probably knew of the existence of the will, and he very
probably had seen it and knew where it was. It was strange that she had
not thought of that. If, for instance, it happened that he needed to
look at some of her brother’s papers that very day, would he not notice
the loss and suspect her? After all, he knew as well as any one what she
had to gain by destroying the will, if he knew what it contained. How
much better it would have been to put it back in its place even without
the envelope! How much better anything would be than to feel that she
might be found out by John Bond!

She was already far up town, but in her distress she did not recognise
her whereabouts, and leaning forward slightly looked through the window.
As fate would have it, the only person near the carriage in the street
was George Wood, who had recognised it and was trying to get a glimpse
of herself. When he saw her, he bowed and smiled, just as he always did.
Totty nodded hastily and fell back into her seat. A feeling of sickening
despair came over her, and she closed her eyes.

                              CHAPTER XII.

George Wood’s reputation spread rapidly. He had arrested the attention
of the public, and the public was both ready and willing to be amused by
him. He had finished the second of his books soon after the appearance
of the first, and he had found no difficulty in selling the manuscript
outright upon his own terms. It was published about the time when the
events took place which have been described in the last chapter, and it
obtained a wide success. It was, indeed, wholly different from its
predecessor in character and presented a strong contrast to it. The
first had been full of action, passionate, strange, unlike the books of
the day. The second was the result of much thought and lacked almost
altogether the qualities that had given such phenomenal popularity to
the first. It was a calm book, almost destitute of plot and of dramatic
incidents. It had been polished and adorned to the best of the young
writer’s ability, he had put into it the most refined of his thoughts,
he had filled it with the sayings of characters more than half ideal. He
had believed in it while he was writing it, but he was disappointed with
it when it was finished. He had intended to bind together a nosegay of
sweet-scented flowers about a central rose, and when he had finished,
his nosegay seemed to him artificial, the blossoms looked to him as
though they were without stems, tied to dry sticks, and the scent of
them had no freshness for his nostrils. Nevertheless he knew that he had
given to his work all that he possessed of beauty and refinement in the
storehouse of his mind, and he looked upon the venture as final in
deciding his future career. It is worse to meet with failure on the
publication of a second book, when the first has taken the world by
surprise, than it is to fail altogether at the very beginning. Many a
polished scholar has produced one good volume; many a refined and
spiritual intelligence has painted one lovely scene and dropped the
brushes for ever, or taken them up only to blotch and blur incongruous
colours upon a spiritless outline, searching with blind eyes for the
light that shone but once and can never shine again. Many have shot one
arrow in the air and have hit the central mark, whose fingers scarce
knew how to hold the bow. The first trial is one of half-reasoned,
half-inspired talent; the second shows the artist’s hand; the third and
all that follow are works done in the competition between master and
master, to which neither apprentice nor idle lover of the art can be
admitted. He whose first great effort has been successful, and whose
second disappoints no one but himself, may safely feel that he has found
out his element and known his own strength. He will perhaps turn out
only a dull master at his craft as years go on, or he may be but a
second-rate artist, but his apprenticeship has been completed and he
will henceforth be judged by the same standard as other artists and
masters.

George Wood had followed his own instinct in lavishing so much care and
thought and pains upon the book that was now to appear, and his instinct
had not deceived him, though when he saw the result he feared that he
had made the great false step that is irretrievable. Though many were
ready to accept his work on any terms he was pleased to name, yet he
held back his manuscript for many weeks, hesitating to give it to the
world. The memory of his first enthusiasms blended in his mind with the
beauties of tales yet untold and darkened in his eyes the polish of the
present work. Constance admired it exceedingly, saying that, although
nothing could ever be to her like the first, this was so different in
every way, and yet so good, that no unpleasant comparisons could be made
between the two. Then George took it to Johnson who kept it a long time
and would give no opinion about it until he had read every word it
contained.

“This settles it,” he said at last.

“For better or for worse?” George asked, looking at the pale young man’s
earnest face.

“For better,” Johnson answered without hesitation. “You are a novelist.
It is not so broad as a church-door, nor so deep as a well—but it will
serve. You will never regret having published it.”

So the book went to the press and in due time appeared, was tasted,
criticised and declared to be good by a majority of judges, was taken up
by the public, was discussed, liked and obtained a large sale. George
was congratulated by all his friends in terms of the greatest enthusiasm
and he received so many invitations to dinner as made him feel that
either his digestion or his career, or both, must perish in the attempt
to cope with them. The dinner-party of to-day, considered as the reward
of merit and the expression of good feeling, is no novelty in the
history of the world’s society. Little Benjamin was expected to eat
twelve times as much as any of his big brothers because Joseph liked
him, and the successful man of to-day is often treated with the same
kindly, though destructive liberality. No one would think it enough to
ask him to tea and overwhelm him with the praises of a select circle of
fashionable people. He must be made to eat in order that he may
understand from the fulness of his own stomach the fulness of his
admirer’s heart. To heap good things upon the plate of genius has been
in all times considered the most practical way of expressing the public
admiration—and in times not long past there was indeed a practical
reason for such expression of goodwill, in that genius was liable to be
very hungry even after it had been universally acknowledged. The world
has more than once bowed down from a respectful distance, to the
possessor of a glorious intelligence, who in his heart would have
preferred a solid portion of bread and cheese to the perishable garlands
of flowers scattered at his feet, or to the less corruptible monuments
of bronze and stone upon which his countrymen were ready to lavish their
gold after he was dead of starvation.

A change has come over the world of late, and it may be that writers
themselves have been the cause of it. It is certain that since those who
live by the pen have made it their business to amuse rather than to
admonish and instruct their substance has been singularly increased and
their path has been made enviably smooth. Their shadows not only wax and
follow the outlines of a pleasant rotundity, but they are cast upon
marble pavements, inlaid floors and Eastern carpets, instead of upon the
dingy walls and greasy mud of Grub Street. The star of the public amuser
is in the ascendant, and his “Part of Fortune” is high in the
mid-heaven.

It has been said that nothing succeeds like success, and George very
soon began to find out the truth of the saying. He was ignorant of the
strange possibilities of wealth that were in store for him, and the
present was sufficient for all his desires, and far exceeded his former
hopes. The days were gone by when he had looked upon his marriage with
Constance Fearing as a delicious vision that could never be realised,
and to contemplate which, even without hope, seemed to be a dangerous
piece of presumption. He had now a future before him, brilliant,
perhaps, but assuredly honourable and successful. At his age and with
his health and strength the possibility of his being broken down by
overwork or illness did not present itself to him, and, if it had, he
could very well have afforded to disregard it in making his
calculations. The world’s face showed him one glorious catalogue of
hopes and he felt that he was the man to realise them all.

And now, too, the first of May was approaching again and he looked
forward to receiving a final answer from Constance. Her manner had
changed little towards him during the winter, but he thought that little
had been for the better. He never doubted, now, that she was most
sincerely attached to him nor that it depended on anything but her own
fancy, to give a name to that attachment and call it love. Surely the
trial had lasted long enough, surely she must know her own mind now,
after so many months of waiting. It was two years since he had first
told her that he loved her, a year had passed away since she had
admitted that she loved him a little, and now the second year, the one
she had asked for as a period of probation had spent itself likewise,
bringing with it for George the first great success of his life and
doubling, trebling his chances of happiness. His growing reputation was
a bond between them, of which they had forged every link together. Her
praise had stimulated his strength, her delicate and refined taste had
often guided the choice of his thoughts, his power of language had found
words for what was in the hearts of both. George could no more fancy
himself as working without consulting Constance than he could imagine
what life would be without sight or hearing. Her charm was upon him and
penetrated all he did, her beauty was the light by which he saw other
women, her voice the music that made harmony of all other sounds. He
loved her now, as women have rarely been loved, for love had taken root
in his noble and generous nature, as a rare seed in a virgin soil,
beautiful from the first and gaining beauty as it grew in strength and
fulness of proportion. His heart had never been disturbed before, by
anything resembling true passion, there were no reminiscences to choke
the new growth, no dry and withered stems about which the new love must
twine itself until its spreading leaves and clasping tendrils made a
rich foliage to cover the dead tree. He, she, the world, love,
reputation, were all young together, all young and fresh, and full of
the power to grow. To think that the prospect of such happiness should
be blighted, the hope of such perfect bliss disappointed was beyond the
power of George’s imagination.

The time was drawing near when he was to have his answer. He had often
done violence to himself of late in abstaining from all question of her
love. Earlier in the year he had once or twice returned to his old way
of talking with her, but she had seemed displeased and had put him off,
answering that the first of May was time enough and that she would tell
him then. He had no means of knowing what was passing in her mind, for
she was almost always the same Constance he had known so long, gentle,
sympathising, ready with encouragement, enthusiastic concerning what he
did well, suggestive when he was in doubt, thoughtful when his taste did
not agree with hers. Looking back upon those long months of intimacy
George knew that she had never bound herself, never uttered a promise of
any sort, never directly given him to understand that she would consent
to be his wife. And yet her whole life seemed to him to have been one
promise since he had known her and it was treason, in his judgment, to
suspect her of insincerity.

In the last days of April, he saw less of her than usual, though he
could scarcely tell why. More than once, when he had hoped to find her
alone, there had been visitors with her, or her sister had been present,
and he had not been able to exchange a word with her without being
overheard. Indeed, when Grace was established in the room he generally
made his visits as short as possible. There was something in the
atmosphere of the house, too, that filled him with evil forebodings.
Constance often seemed abstracted and preoccupied; there appeared to be
a better understanding between the sisters in regard to himself than
formerly, and Grace’s manner had changed. In the old days of their
acquaintance she had taken little pains to conceal her dislike after she
had once made up her mind that George loved her sister, her greeting had
been almost haughty, her words had been few and generally ironical, her
satisfaction at his departure needlessly apparent. During the last month
she had relaxed the severity of her behaviour, instead of treating him
more harshly as he had expected and secretly hoped. With the unerring
instinct of a man who loves deeply, concerning every one except the
object of his love, George had read the signs of the times in the face
of his old enemy, and distrusted her increasing benignity. She, at
least, had come to the conclusion that Constance would not marry him,
and seeing that the necessity for destruction was decreasing, she
allowed the sun of her smiles to penetrate the dark storm-clouds of her
sullen anger. George would have preferred any convulsion of the elements
to this threatened calm.

Constance Fearing was in great distress of mind. She had not forgotten
the date, nor had she any intention of letting it pass without
fulfilling her engagement and giving George the definite answer he had
so patiently expected. The difficulty was, to know what that answer
should be. Her indecision could not be ascribed to her indolence in
studying the question. It had been constantly before her, demanding
immediate solution and tormenting her with its difficulties throughout
many long months. Her conscientious love of truth had forced her to
examine it much more closely than she would have chosen to do had she
yielded to her inclinations. Her own happiness was no doubt vitally
concerned, but the consideration of absolute loyalty and honesty must be
first and before all things. The tremendous importance of the conclusion
now daily more imminent appalled her and frightened her out of her
simplicity into the mazes of a vicious logic; and she found the
labyrinth of her difficulties further complicated in that its ways were
intersected by the by-paths of her religious meditations. When her
reason began to grow clear, she suddenly found it opposed to some one of
a set of infallible rules by which she had undertaken to guide her whole
existence. To-day she prayed to heaven, and grace was given her to marry
George. To-morrow she would examine her heart and ascertain that she
could never love him as he deserved. Could she marry him when he was to
give so much and she had so little to offer? That would be manifestly
wrong; but in that case why had her prayer seemed to be answered so
distinctly by an impulse from the heart? She was evidently not in a
state of grace, since she was inspired to do what was wrong. Selfishness
must be at the bottom of it, and selfishness, as it was the sin about
which she knew most, was the one within her comprehension which she the
most sincerely abhorred. But if her impulse to marry George was selfish,
was it not the direct utterance of her heart, and might this not be the
only case in life in which she might frankly follow her own wishes?
George loved her most truly. If she felt that she wished to marry him,
was it not because she loved him? There was the point, again,
confronting her just where she had begun the round of self-torture. Did
she love him? What was the test of true love? Would she die for him?
Dying for people was theatrical and out of fashion, as she had often
been told. It was much more noble to live for those one loved than to
die for them. Could she live for George? What did the words mean? Had
she not lived for him, said her heart, during the last year, if not
longer? What nonsense, exclaimed her reason—as if giving a little
encouragement and a great deal of advice could be called living for a
man! It meant more than that, it meant so much to her that she felt sure
she could never accomplish it. Therefore she did not love him, and it
must all come to an end at once.

She reproached herself bitterly for her weakness that had lasted so
long. She was a mere flirt, a heartless girl who had ruined a man’s life
and happiness recklessly, because she did not know her own mind. She
would be brave now, at last, before it was quite too late. She would
confess her fault and tell him how despicable she thought herself, how
she repented of her evil ways, how she would be his best and firmest
friend, his sister, anything that she could be to him, except his wife.
He would be hurt, pained, heartbroken for a while, but he would see how
much better it had been to speak the truth.

But in the midst of her passionate self-accusation, the thought of her
own state after she should have put him away for ever, presented itself
with painful distinctness. Whether she loved him or not, he was a part
of her life and she felt that she could not do without him. For one
moment she allowed herself to think of his face if she told him that she
consented to their union at last, she could see the happy smile she
loved so well and hear the vibrating tones of the voice that moved her
more than other voices. Then, to her inexpressible shame, there arose
before her visions of another kind, and notably the face of Johnson, the
hardworking critic. All at once George seemed to be surrounded by a host
of people whom she did not know and whom she did not want to know, men
whom, as she remembered to have thought before, she would not have
wished to see at her table, yet friends of his, faithful friends—Johnson
was one at least—to whom he owed much and whom he would not allow to
slip out of his existence because he had married Constance Fearing. She
blushed scarlet, though she was alone, and passionate tears of anger at
herself burst from her eyes. To think of that miserable consideration,
she must be the most contemptible of women. Truly, the baseness of the
human heart was unfathomable and shore-less as the ocean of space
itself! Truly, she did not love him, if she could think such thoughts,
and she must tell him so, cost what it might.

The last night came, preceding the day on which she had promised to give
him her decisive answer. She had written him a word to say that he was
expected, and she sat down in her own room to fight the struggle over
again for the last time. The morrow was to decide, she thought, and yet
it was impossible to come to any conclusion. Why had she not set the
period at two years instead of one? Surely, in twelve months more she
would have known her own mind, or at least have seen what course to
pursue. Step by step she advanced once more into the sea of her
difficulties, striving to keep her intelligence free from prejudice, and
yet hoping that her heart would speak clearly. But it was of no use, the
labyrinth was more confused than ever, the light less, and her strength
more unsteady. If she thought, it seemed as though her thoughts would
drive her mad, if she prayed, her prayers were confused and senseless.

“I cannot marry him, I cannot, I cannot!” she cried at last, utterly
worn out with fatigue and anxiety.

She threw herself upon her pillows and tried to rest, while her own
words still rang in her ears. She slept a little and she uttered the
same cry in her sleep. By force of conscious and unconscious repetition
of the phrase, it became mechanised and imposed itself upon her will.
When the morning broke, she knew that she had resolved not to marry
George Wood, and that her resolution was irrevocable.

To tell him so was a very different matter. She grew cold as she thought
of the scene that was before her, and became conscious that her nerves
were not equal to such a strain. She fancied that the decision she had
reached had been the result of her strength in her struggle with
herself. In reality she had succumbed to her own weakness and had
abandoned the contest, feeling that it was easier to do anything
negative rather than to commit herself to a bondage from which she might
some day wish to escape when it should be too late. With a little more
firmness of character she would have been able to shake off her doubts
and to see that she really loved George very sincerely, and that to
hesitate was to sacrifice everything to a morbid fear of offending her
now over-delicate conscience. Even now, if she could have known herself,
she would have realised that she had by no means given up all love for
the man who loved her, nor all expectation of ultimately becoming his
wife. She would have behaved very differently if she had been sure that
she was burning her ships and cutting off all possibility of a return,
or if she had known the character of the man with whom she had to deal.
She had passed through a sort of nervous crisis, and her resolution was
in the main, a concession to her desire to gain time. In making it she
had thrown down her arms and given up the fight. The reaction that
followed made it seem impossible for her to face such a scene as must
ensue.

At first it struck her that the best way of getting out of the
difficulty would be to write to George and tell him her decision in as
few words as possible, begging him to come and see her a week later,
when she would do her best to explain to him the many and good reasons
which had contributed to the present result. This idea, however, she
soon abandoned. It would seem most unkind to deal such a blow so
suddenly and then expect him to wait so long before enlightening him
further upon the subject. Face him herself, she could not. She might be
weak, she thought, and she was willing to admit it; it was only to add
another unworthiness to the long list with which she was ready to accuse
herself. She could not, and she would not tell George herself. The only
person who could undertake to bear her message was Grace.

She felt very kindly disposed to Grace, that morning. There was a
satisfaction in feeling that she could think of any one without the
necessity of considering the question of her marriage. Besides, Grace
had opposed her increasing liking for George from the beginning, and had
warned her that she would never marry him. Grace had been quite right,
and as Constance was feeling particularly humble just then, she thought
it would be agreeable to her pride, if she confessed the superiority of
Grace’s judgment. She could accuse herself before her sister of all her
misdeeds without the fear of witnessing George’s violent grief. Moreover
it would be better for George, too, since, he would be obliged to
contain himself when speaking to her sister as he would certainly not
control his feelings in an interview with herself. To be short,
Constance was willing in that moment to be called a coward, rather than
face the man she had wronged. Her courage had failed her altogether and
she was being carried rapidly down stream from one concession to
another, while still trying to give an air of rectitude and
self-sacrifice to all her actions. She was preparing an abyss of
well-merited self-contempt for herself in the future, though her present
satisfaction in her release from responsibility had dulled her real
sense of right and had left only the artificialities of her morbid
conscience still sensitive to the flattery of imaginary self-sacrifice.

An hour later she was alone with her sister. She had greeted her in an
unusually affectionate way on entering the room, and the younger girl
immediately felt that something had taken place. She herself was
smiling, and cordial in her manner.

“Grace, dearest,” Constance began, after some little hesitation, “I want
to tell you. You have talked so much about Mr. Wood—you know, you have
always been afraid that I would marry him, have you not?”

“Not lately,” answered Grace with a pleasant smile.

“Well—do you know? I have thought very seriously of it, and I had
decided to give him a definite answer to-day. Do you understand? I have
treated him abominably, Grace—oh, I am so sorry! I wish it could all be
undone—you were so right!”

“It is not too late,” observed Grace. Then, seeing that there were tears
in her sister’s eyes, she drew nearer to her and put her arm round her
waist in a comforting way. “Do not be so unhappy, Conny,” she said in a
tone of deep sympathy. “Men do not break their hearts nowadays——”

“Oh, but he will, Grace! I am sure he will—and the worst of it is that I
must—you know——”

“Not at all, dear. If you like I will break it to him——”

“Oh, Grace, what a darling you are!” cried Constance, throwing both her
arms round her sister’s neck and kissing her. “I did not dare to ask
you, and I could not, I could not have done it myself! But you will do
it very kindly, will you not? You know he has been so good and patient.”

There was an odd smile on Grace’s strong face when she answered, but
Constance was not in a mood to notice anything disagreeable just then.

“I will break it to him very gently,” said the young girl quietly. “Of
course you must tell me what I am to say, more or less—an idea, you
know. I cannot say bluntly that you have sent word that you have decided
not to marry him, can I?”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Constance, suddenly growing very grave. “You must
tell him that I feel towards him just as I always did——”

“Is that true?”

“Of course. I always told him that I did not love him enough to marry
him. You may as well know it all. A year ago, he proposed again—well,
yes, it was not the first time. I told him that if on the first of
May—this first of May—I loved him better than I did then, I would marry
him. Well, I have thought about it, again and again, all the time, and I
am sure I do not love him as I ought, if I were to marry him.”

“I should think not,” laughed Grace, “if it is so hard to find it out!”

“Oh, you must not laugh at me,” said Constance earnestly. “It is very,
very serious. Have I done right, Grace? I wish I knew! I have treated
him so cruelly, so hatefully, and yet I did not mean to. I am so fond of
him, I admire him so much, I like his ways—and all—I do still, you know.
It is quite true. I suppose I ought to be ashamed of it—only, I am sure
I never did love him, really.”

“I have no idea of laughing at the affair,” answered Grace. “It is
serious enough, I am sure, especially for him.”

“Yes—I want to make a confession to you. I want to tell you that you
were quite right, that I have encouraged him and led him on and been
dreadfully unkind. I am sure you think I am a mere flirt, and perfectly
heartless! Is it not true? Well, I am, and it is of no use to deny it. I
will never, never, do such a thing again—never! But after all, I do like
him very much. I never could understand why you hated him so, from the
first.”

“I did not hate him. I do not hate him now,” said Grace emphatically. “I
did hate the idea of his marrying you, and I do still. I thought it was
just as well that he should see that from the way one member of the
family behaved towards him.”

“He did see it!” exclaimed Constance in a tone of regret. “It is another
of the things I inflicted on him.”

“You? I should rather think it was I——”

“No, it was all my fault, all, everything, from beginning to end—and you
are a darling, Gracey dear, and it is so sweet of you. You will be very
good to him? Yes—and if he should want to see me very much, after you
have told him everything, I might come down for a minute. I should so
much like to be sure that he has taken it kindly.”

“If you wish it, you might see him—but I hardly think—well, do as you
think best, dear.”

“Thank you, darling—you know you really are a darling, though I do not
always tell you so. And now, I think I will go and lie down. I never
slept last night.”

“Silly child!” laughed Grace, kissing her on both cheeks. “As though it
mattered so much, after all.”

“Oh, but it does matter,” Constance said regretfully as she left the
room.

When Grace Fearing was alone she went to the window and looked out
thoughtfully into the fresh, morning air.

“I am very glad,” she said aloud to herself. “I am very, very glad. But
I would not have done it. No, not for worlds! I would rather cut off my
right hand than treat a man like that!”

In that moment she pitied George Wood with all her heart.

                             CHAPTER XIII.

When George entered the drawing-room he was surprised to find Grace
there instead of Constance, and it was with difficulty that he repressed
a nervous movement of annoyance. On that day of all others he had no
desire to meet Grace Fearing, and though he imagined that her presence
was accidental and that he had come before the appointed time he felt
something more of resentment against the young girl than usual. He made
the best of the situation, however, and put on a brave face, considering
that, after all, when the happiness of a lifetime is to be decided, a
delay of five minutes should not be thought too serious an affair.

Grace rose to receive him and, coming forward, held his hand in hers a
second or two longer than would have been enough under ordinary
circumstances. Her face was very grave and her deep brown eyes looked
with an expression of profound sympathy into those of her visitor.
George felt his heart sink under the anticipation of bad news.

“Is anything the matter, Miss Fearing?” he inquired anxiously. “Is your
sister ill?”

“No. She is not ill. Sit down, Mr. Wood. I have something to say to
you.”

George felt an acute presentiment of evil, and sat down in such a
position with regard to the light that he could see Grace’s face better
than she could see his.

“What is it?” he asked in a tone of constraint.

The young girl paused a moment, moved in her seat, which she had
selected in the corner of a sofa, rested one elbow on the mahogany
scroll that rose at the end of the old-fashioned piece of furniture,
supported her beautifully moulded chin upon the half-closed fingers of
her white hand and gazed upon George with a look of inquiring sympathy.
There was nothing of nervousness nor timidity in Grace Fearing’s nature.
She knew what she was going to do and she meant to do it thoroughly,
calmly, pitilessly if necessary.

“My sister has asked me to talk with you,” she began, in her smooth,
deep voice. “She is very unhappy and she is not able to bear any more
than she has borne already.”

George’s face darkened, for he knew what was coming now, as though it
were already said. He opened his lips to speak, but checked himself,
reflecting that he did not know the extent of Grace’s information.

“I am very, very sorry,” she continued, earnestly. “I need not explain
matters. I know all that has happened. Constance was to have given you a
final answer to-day. She could not bear to do so herself.”

Grace paused an instant, and if George had been less agitated than he
was, he would have seen that her full lips curled a little as she spoke
the last words.

“She has thought it all over,” she concluded. “She does not love you,
and she can never be your wife.”

There was a long pause. Grace changed her position, leaning far back
among the cushions and clasping her hands upon her knees. At the same
time she ceased to look at the young man’s face, and let her sight
wander to the various objects on the other side of the room.

In the first moment, George’s heart stood still. Then it began to beat
furiously, though it seemed as though its pulsations had lost the power
of propelling the blood from its central seat. He kept his position,
motionless and outwardly calm, but his dark face grew slowly white,
leaving only black circles about his gleaming eyes, and his scornful
mouth gradually set itself like stone. He was silent, for no words
suggested themselves to his lips, now, though they had seemed too ready
a moment earlier.

Grace felt that she must say something more. She was perfectly conscious
of his state, and if she had been capable of fear she would have been
frightened by the magnitude of his silent anger.

“I have known that this would come,” she said, softly. “I know Constance
better than you can. A very long time ago, I told her that at the last
minute she would refuse you. She is very unhappy. She begged me to say
all this as gently as possible. She made me promise to tell you that she
felt towards you just as she had always felt, that she hoped to see you
very often, that she felt towards you as a sister——”

“This is too much!” exclaimed George in low and angry tones. Then
forgetting himself altogether, he rose from his seat quickly and went
towards the door.

Grace was on her feet as quickly as he.

“Stop!” she cried in a voice not loud, but of which the tone somehow
imposed upon the angry man.

He turned suddenly and faced her as though he were at bay, but she met
his look calmly and her eyes did not fall before his.

“You shall not go away like this,” she said.

“Pardon me,” he answered. “I think it is the best thing I can do.” There
was something almost like a laugh in the bitterness of his tone.

“I think not,” replied Grace with much dignity.

“Can you have anything more to say to me, Miss Fearing? You, of all
people? Are you not satisfied?”

“I do not understand you, and from the tone in which you speak, I would
rather not. You are very angry, and you have reason to be—heaven knows!
But you are wrong in being angry with me.”

“Am I?” George asked, recovering some control of his voice and manner.
“I am at least wrong in showing it,” he added, a moment later. “Do you
wish me to stay here?”

“A few minutes longer, if you will be so kind,” Grace answered, sitting
down again, though George remained standing before her. “You are wrong
to be angry with me, Mr. Wood. I have only repeated to you my sister’s
words. I have done my best to tell you the truth as gently as possible.”

“I do not doubt it. Your mission is not an easy one. Why did your sister
not tell me the truth herself? Is she afraid of me?”

“Do you think it would have been any easier to bear, if she had told
you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Grace asked.

“Because it is better to hear such things directly than at second hand.
Because it is easier to bear such words when they are spoken by those we
love, than by those who hate us. Because when hearts are to be broken it
is braver to do it oneself than to employ a third person.”

“You do not know what you are saying. I never hated you.”

“Miss Fearing,” said George, who was rapidly becoming exasperated beyond
endurance, “will you allow me to take my leave?”

“I never hated you,” Grace repeated without heeding his question. “I
never liked you, and I never was afraid to show it. But I respect
you—no, do not interrupt—I respect you, more than I did, because I have
found out that you have more heart than I had believed. I admire you as
everybody admires you, for what you do so well. And I am sorry for you,
more sorry than I can tell. If you would have my friendship, I would
offer it to you—indeed you have it already, from to-day.”

“I am deeply indebted to you,” George answered very coldly.

“You need not even make a show of thanking me. I have done you no
service, and I should regret it very much if Constance married you. Do
not look surprised. My only virtue is honesty, and when I have such
things to say you think that is no virtue at all. I thought very badly
of you once. Forgive me, if you can. I have changed my mind. I have
neither said nor done anything for a long time to influence my sister,
not for nearly a year. Do you believe me?”

George was beginning to be very much surprised at Grace’s tone. He was
too much under the influence of a great emotion to reason with himself,
but the truthfulness of her manner spoke to his heart. If she had
condoled with him, or tried to comfort him, he would have been
disgusted, but her straightforward confession of her own feelings
produced a different effect.

“I believe you,” he said, wondering how he could sincerely answer such a
statement with such words.

“Thank you, you are generous.” Grace rose again, and put out her hand.
“Do you care to see her, before you go?” she asked, looking into his
eyes. “I will send her to you, if you wish it.”

“Yes,” George answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I will see
her—please.”

He was left alone for a few minutes. Though the sun was streaming in
through the window, he felt cold as he had never felt cold in his life.
His anger had, he believed, subsided, but the sensation it had left
behind was new and strange to him. He turned as he stood and his glance
fell upon Constance’s favourite chair, the seat in which she had sat so
often and so long while he had talked with her. Then he felt a sudden
pain, so sharp that it might have seemed the last in life, and he
steadied himself by leaning on the table. It was as though he had seen
the fair young girl lying dead in that place she loved. But she was not
dead. It was worse. Then his great wrath surged up again, sending the
blood tingling through his sinewy frame to the tips of his strong
fingers, and bringing a different mood with it, and a sterner humour. He
was a very masculine man, incapable of being long crushed by any blow.
He was sorry, now, that he had asked to see her. Had he felt thus five
minutes earlier, he would have declined Grace’s offer and would have
left the house, meaning never to re-enter it. But it was too late and he
could no longer avoid the meeting.

At that moment the door opened, and Constance stood before him. Her face
was pale and there were traces of tears upon her cheeks. But he was not
moved to pity by any such outward signs of past emotion. She came and
stood before him, and laid one delicate hand upon his sleeve, looking up
timidly to his eyes. He did not move, and his expression did not change.

“Can you forgive me?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“No,” he answered, bitterly. “Why should I forgive you?”

“I know I have not deserved your forgiveness,” she said, piteously. “I
have been very, very wrong—I have done the worst thing I ever did in my
life—I have been heartless, unkind, cruel, wicked—but—but I never meant
to be——”

“It is small consolation to me to know that you did not mean it.”

“Oh, do not be so hard!” she cried, the tears rising in her voice. “I
did not mean it so. I never promised you anything—indeed I never did!”

“It must be a source of sincere satisfaction, to feel that your
conscience is clear.”

“But it is not—I want to tell you all—Grace has not told you—I like you
as much as ever, there is no difference—I am still fond of you, still
very fond of you!”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, George, are you a stone? Will nothing move you? Cannot you see how
I am suffering?”

“Yes. I see.” He neither moved, nor bent his head. His lips opened and
shut mechanically as though they were made of steel. She looked up again
into his face and his expression terrified her.

She turned away, slowly at first, as though in despair. Then with a
sudden movement she threw herself upon the sofa and buried her face in
the cushions, while a violent fit of sobbing shook her light frame from
head to foot. George stood still, watching her with stony eyes. For a
full minute nothing was audible but the sound of her weeping.

“You are so cold,” she sobbed. “Oh, George, you will break my heart!”

“You seem to be chiefly overcome by pity for yourself,” he answered
cruelly. “If you have anything else to say, I will wait. If not——”

She roused herself and sat up, the tears streaming down her cheeks, her
hands clasped passionately together.

“Oh, do not go! Do not go—it kills me to let you go.”

“Do you think it would? In that case I will stay a little longer.” He
turned away and went to the window. For some minutes there was silence
in the room.

“George——” Constance began timidly. George turned sharply round.

“I am here. Can I do anything for you, Miss Fearing?”

“Cannot you say you forgive me? Can you not say one kind word?”

“Indeed, I should find it very hard.”

Constance had recovered herself to some extent, and sat staring vacantly
across the room, while the tears slowly dried upon her cheeks. Her
courage and her pride were alike gone, and she looked the very picture
of repentance and despair. But George’s heart had been singularly
hardened during the half-hour or more which he had spent in her house
that day. Presently she began speaking in a slow, almost monotonous
tone, as though she were talking with herself.

“I have been very bad,” she said, “and I know it, but I have always told
the truth. I never loved you enough, I never cared for you as you
deserved. Did I not tell you so? Oh yes, very often—too often. I should
not have told you even that I cared a little. You are the best friend I
ever had—why have I lost you by loving you a little? It seems very hard.
It is not that you must forgive, it is that I should have told you so
that I should—you kissed me once—it was not your fault. I let you do it.
There seemed so little harm—and yet it was so wrong. And once, because
there was pain in your face, I kissed you, as I would have kissed my
sister. I was so fond of you—I am still, although you are so cruel and
cold. I did think—I really hoped that I should love you some day. You do
not believe me? What does it matter! You will, for I always told you
what was true—but that is it—I hoped, and I let you see that I hoped. It
was very wrong. Will you try—only try to forgive me?”

“Do you not think it would be better if you would let me leave you, Miss
Fearing?” George asked, coming suddenly forward. “It can do very little
good to talk this matter over.”

“Miss Fearing!” exclaimed the young girl with a sigh. “It is so long
since you called me that! Do you want to go? How should I keep you? Only
this, will you think kindly of me, sometimes? Will you sometimes think
that I helped you—only a little—to be what you are? Will you say
‘Good-bye, Constance,’ a little kindly?”

George was moved in spite of himself, and his voice was softer when he
answered her.

“Of what use is it, to speak of these things? You know all that you have
been to me in these years, better than I can tell you. It turns out that
I have been nothing to you—well, then——”

“Nothing to me! Oh George, you have been everything—my best friend——”
She stopped short.

His heart hardened again. It seemed to him that every word she spoke was
in direct contradiction to her action.

“Will you tell me one thing?” he asked, after a pause during which she
seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears again.

“Anything you ask me,” she answered.

“Have you come to this decision yourself, or has your sister influenced
you?” His eyes sought hers and tried to read her inmost thoughts.

“It is my own resolution,” she answered without wavering. “Grace has not
spoken of my marrying you for more than a year.”

“I am glad that it is altogether from your own heart——”

“Can you think that I would have taken the advice of some one else?”
Constance asked, reproachfully.

“I do not know. It matters very little, after all. Pardon me if I have
been rude or hasty. My manners may have been a little ruffled by
this—this occurrence. Good-bye.”

She took his hand and tried to press it, looking again for his eyes. But
he drew his fingers away quickly and was gone before she could detain
him. For one moment she sat staring at the closed door. Then she once
more hid her face in the deep soft cushions and sobbed aloud, more
passionately than the first time.

“Oh, I know I ought to have married him, I know I really love him!” she
moaned.

And so the first act of Constance Fearing’s life comedy was played out
and the curtain fell between her and the happiness to grasp which she
lacked either the will or the passion, or both. She had acted her part
with a sincerity so scrupulous that it was like a parody of truth. She
had thought of marrying George Wood with delight, she had broken with
him in the midst of what might be called a crisis of doubt, and she had
parted from him with sincere and bitter tears, feeling that she had
sacrificed all she held dear in the world to the ferocious Moloch of her
conscience.

To follow the action of her intelligence any farther through the mazes
of the labyrinth into which she had led it would be a labour so
stupendous that no sensible person could for a moment contemplate the
possibility of performing the task, and for the present Constance
Fearing must be left to her tears, her meditations, and her complicated
state of mind with such pity as can be spared for her weaknesses and
such kind thoughts as may be bestowed by the charitable upon her gentle
character. It will be easier to understand the strong passion and the
bitter disappointment which agitated George Wood’s powerful nature
during the hours which followed the scenes just described.

His day was indeed not over yet, though he felt as though the sun had
gone down upon his life before it was yet noon. He was neither morbid
nor self-conscious, nor did he follow after the chimera introspection.
He was simply and savagely angry with Constance, with himself, with the
whole known and unknown world. For the time, he forgot who he was, what
he was, and all that he had done or that he might be expected to do in
the future. He knew that Constance had spoken the truth in saying that
she had promised nothing. The greater madman he, to have expected
anything whatever! He knew that her whole life and conversation had been
one long promise during nearly two years—the more despicably heartless
and altogether contemptible she was, then, for since she had spoken what
was true she had acted what was a lie from beginning to end. Forgive
her? He had given her his only answer. Why should he forgive her? Were
there any extenuating circumstances in her favour? Not one—and if there
had been, he knew that he would have torn that one to tatters till it
was unrecognisable to his sense of justice. Her tears, her pathetic
voice, her timidity, even her pale face—they had all been parts of the
play, harmonic chords in the grand close of lies that had ended her
symphony of deception. She had even prepared his ears by sending Grace
to him with her warm, sympathetic eyes, her rich, deep voice and her
tale of spontaneous friendship. It was strange that he should have
believed the other girl, even for one moment, but he admitted that he
had put some faith in her words. How poor a thing was the strongest man
when desperately hurt, ready to believe in the first mockery of sympathy
that was offered him, ready to catch at the mere shadow of a straw blown
by the wind! Doubtless the two sisters had concocted their comedy
overnight and had planned their speeches to produce the proper effect
upon his victimised feelings. He had singularly disappointed them both,
in that case. They would have to think longer and think more wisely the
next time they meant to deceive a man of his character. He remembered
with delight every cold, hard word he had spoken, every cruelly brutal
answer he had given. He rejoiced in every syllable saving only that “I
believe you” he had bestowed on Grace’s asseverations of friendship and
esteem. And he had been weak enough to ask Constance whether Grace had
spoken the truth, as if they had not arranged between them beforehand
every sentence of each part! That had been weakness indeed! How they
would laugh over his question when they compared notes! By this time
they were closeted together, telling each other all he had said and
done. On the whole, there could not be much to please them, and he had
found strings for most of his short phrases after the first surprise was
over. He was glad that he disbelieved them both, and so thoroughly. If
there had been one grain of belief in Constance left to him, how much he
still might suffer. His illusion had fallen, but it had fallen
altogether with one shock, in one general and overwhelming crash. There
was not one stone of his temple whole that it might be set upon another,
there was not one limb, one fragment of his beautiful idol that might
recall its loveliness. All was gone, wholly, irrevocably, and he was
glad that it was all gone together. The ruin was so complete that he
could doubtless separate the memory of the past from the fact of the
present, and dwell upon it, live upon it, as he would. If he met
Constance now, he could behave towards her as he would to any other
woman. She was not Constance any more. Her name roused no emotion in his
heart, the thought of her face as he had last seen it was not connected
with anything like love. Her false face, that had been so true and
honest once! He could scorn the one and yet love the other.

If George had been less absorbed in his angry thoughts, or had known
that there was anything unusual in his expression, he would not have
walked up Fifth Avenue on his way from Washington Square. The times were
changed since he had been able to traverse the thoroughfare of fashion
in the comparative certainty of not meeting an acquaintance. Before he
had gone far, he was conscious of having failed to return more than one
friendly nod, and he was disgusted with himself for allowing his
emotions to have got the better of his habitually quick perception. At
the busy corner of Fourteenth Street he stopped upon the edge of the
pavement, debating for a moment whether he should leave the Avenue and
go home by the elevated road, or strike across Union Square and take a
long walk in the less crowded parts of the city. Just then, a familiar
and pleasant voice spoke at his elbow.

“Why, George!” exclaimed Totty Trimm. “How you look! What is the matter
with you?”

“How do you do, cousin Totty? I do not understand. Is there anything the
matter with my face?”

“I wish you could see yourself in the glass!” cried the little lady
evidently more and more surprised at his unusual expression. “I wish you
could. You are as white as a sheet, with great rings round your eyes.
Where in the world have you been?”

“I? Oh, I have only been making a visit at the Fearings. I suppose I am
tired.”

“The Fearings?” repeated Totty, with a sweet smile. “How odd! I was just
going there—walking, you see, because it is such a lovely afternoon. You
won’t come back with me? They won’t mind seeing you twice in the same
day, I daresay.”

“Thanks,” answered George, speaking hurriedly, and growing, if possible,
paler than before. “I think it would be rather too much. Besides, I have
a lot of work to do.”

“Well—go in and see Mamie on your way up. She is alone—got a horrid
cold, poor child! She will be so glad and she will give you a cup of
tea. You might put a little of that old whiskey of Sherry’s into it. I
am sure you are not well, George. You are looking wretchedly. Good-bye,
dear boy.”

Totty squeezed his hand warmly, gave him an earnest and affectionate
look, and tripped away down the Avenue. George wondered whether she had
guessed that there was anything wrong.

“I suppose I ought to have lied,” he said to himself, as he crossed the
thoroughfare. “They will—but I cannot do it so well. I ought to have
told her that I had been to the club.”

Totty Trimm had not only guessed that something was very wrong indeed.
She had instinctively hit upon the truth. She, like many other people,
had seen long ago that George was in love with Constance Fearing, and
she had for a long time been glad of it. During the last three or four
days, however, she had changed her mind in a way very unusual with her,
and she had been hoping with all her heart that something would happen
to break off a match that seemed to be very imminent. The matter had
been so constantly in her thoughts that she referred to it everything
she heard about the Fearings and about George. She had not really had
the slightest intention of going to the house in Washington Square when
she had met her cousin, but the determination had formed itself so
quickly that she had spoken the truth in declaring it. She made up her
mind to see Constance the moment she had seen George’s face and had
learned that he had been with her. She pursued her way with a light
heart, and her nimble little feet carried her more lightly and smoothly
than ever. She rang the bell and asked if the young ladies were at home.

“Yes ma’am,” answered the servant, “but Miss Constance is not very well,
and is gone to her room with a headache, and Miss Grace said she would
see no one, ma’am.”

“I just met Mr. Wood,” objected Totty, “and he said he had been here
this afternoon.”

“Yes ma’am, and so he was, and it’s since Mr. Wood left that the orders
was given. Shall I take your card, Mrs. Trimm, ma’am?”

“No. It is of no use. You can tell the young ladies I called.”

She descended the steps and went quickly back towards Fifth Avenue.
There was great joy and triumph in her breast and her smile shed its
radiance on the trees on the deserted pavement and on the stiff iron
railings as she went along.

“That idiotic little fool!” said Mrs. Sherrington Trimm in her heart.
“She loves him, and she has refused one of the best matches in New York
because she fancies he wants her money!”

She reflected that if Mamie had the same chance, she should certainly
not refuse George Winton Wood, and she determined that if diplomacy
could produce the necessary situation, she would not be long in bringing
matters to the proper point. There is no time when a man is so
susceptible, so ready to yield to the charms of one woman as when he has
just been jilted by another—so, at least, thought Totty, and her worldly
experience was by no means small. And if the marriage could be brought
about, why then——Totty’s radiant face expressed the rest of her thoughts
better than any words could have done.

While she was making these reflections the chief figure in her panorama
was striding up the Avenue at a rapid pace. Strange to say his cousin’s
suggestion, that he should go and see Mamie had proved rather attractive
than otherwise. He did not care to walk the streets, since Totty had
been so much surprised by his appearance. He might meet other
acquaintances, and be obliged to speak with them. If he went home he
would have to face his father, who would not fail to notice his looks,
and who might guess the cause of his distress, for the old gentleman was
well aware that his son was in love with Constance and hoped with all
his heart that the marriage might not be far distant. Mamie would be
alone, Mamie knew nothing of his doings, she was a good girl, and he
liked her. To spend an hour with her would cost him nothing, as she
would talk the greater part of the time, and he would gain a breathing
space in which to recover from the shock he had received. She was indeed
the only person whom he could have gone to see at that moment without
positive suffering, except Johnson, and he was several miles from the
office of Johnson’s newspaper.

As he approached the Trimms’ house his pace slackened, as though he were
finally debating within himself upon the wisdom of making the visit.
Then as he came within sight of the door he quickened his steps again
and did not pause until he had rung the bell. A moment later he entered
the drawing-room where Mamie Trimm was sitting in a deep easy-chair,
among flowers near a sunlit window. She held a book in her hand.

“Oh George!” she cried, blushing with pleasure. “I am so glad—I am all
alone.”

“And what are you reading, all alone among the roses?” asked George
kindly.

“What do you think?”

Then she held up the novel for him to see. It was the book he had just
published.

                              CHAPTER XIV.

Mamie Trimm was one of those young girls of whom it is most difficult to
give a true impression by describing them in the ordinary way. To say
that her height was so many feet and so many inches—fewer inches than
the average—that her hair was very fair, her eyes grey, her nose small,
her mouth large, her complexion clear, her figure well proportioned, to
say all this is to say nothing at all. A passport, in the days of
passports, would have said as much, and the description would have just
sufficed to point out Mamie Trimm if she had found herself in a company
of tall women with black hair, large features and imposing presence. It
would have been easier for a man to find her amongst a bevy of girls of
her age, if he had been told that she possessed a charm of her own,
which nobody could define. It would help him in his search, to be
informed that she looked very delicate, but was not so in reality, that
her figure was not only well proportioned, but was very exceptionally
perfect and graceful, and that, but for her well-set grey eyes and her
transparent complexion, her face could never have been called pretty.
All these points may have combined to produce the aforesaid
individuality that was especially hers. Little is known, I believe, of
that fair young girl of whom Charles Lamb wrote to Landor—“Rose Aylmer
has a charm that I cannot explain.” Mamie Trimm was George Wood’s Rose
Aylmer.

He had known her all her life and there was between them that sort of
intimacy which cannot exist at all unless it has begun in childhood. The
patronising superiority of the schoolboy has found a foil in the
clinging admiration of the little girl who is only half his age. The
budding vanity of the young student has delighted in “explaining things”
to the slim maiden of fourteen who believes all his words and worships
all his ideas, the struggling, striving, hardworking beginner has found
comfort in the unfailing friendship and devotion of the accomplished
young woman whom he still thinks of as a child, and treats as a sister,
not realising that the difference between fourteen and seven is one
thing, while that between five or six and twenty, and eighteen or
nineteen is quite another.

When a friendship of that kind has begun in childish years it is not
easily broken, even though the subsequent intercourse be occasionally
interrupted. Of late, indeed, Constance Fearing had taken, and more than
taken Mamie’s place in George’s life. He had seen his cousin constantly
of course, but she had felt that he was not to her what he had been,
that something she could not understand had come between them, and that
she had been deprived of something that had given her pleasure. On the
other hand, it was precisely at this time that she had made her first
appearance in society and her life had been all at once made very full
of new interests and new amusements. She had been received into the
bosom of social institutions with enthusiasm, she had held her own with
tact, she had danced at every ball, had received offers of marriage
about once in three months, had refused them all systematically and was,
on the whole, in the very prime of an American girl’s social career. If
her head had been turned by much admiration, she had concealed the fact
very well, and the expression of her attractive face had not changed for
the worse after two years of uninterrupted gaiety. She was still as
innocently fond of George as she had been when a little girl and if the
exigencies of continual amusement had deprived her of some of his
companionship, she looked upon the circumstance with all the fatalism of
the very young and the very happy, as a matter to be regretted when she
had time for regrets, but inevitable and predestined. Her regrets,
indeed, had not troubled her much until very lately, when George’s
growing reputation had begun to draw him into the current of society.
She had seen then for the first time that there was another person,
somewhat older than herself, in whose company he delighted as he had
never delighted in her own, and her dormant jealousy had been almost
awakened by the sight. It seemed to her that she had always had a prior
right and claim upon her cousin’s attention and conversation, and she
did not like to find her right contested, especially by one so well able
to maintain her conquests against all comers as was Constance Fearing.
In her innocence, she had more than once complained to her mother that
George neglected her, but hitherto her observations on the subject had
received no sympathy from Mrs. Sherrington Trimm. Totty had no idea of
allowing her only child to marry a penniless man of genius, and though,
as has been set forth in the early part of this history she felt it
incumbent upon her to do something for George, and encouraged his
visits, she took care that he should meet Mamie as rarely as possible in
her own house. As for Sherrington Trimm himself, he cared for none of
these things. If Mamie loved George, she was welcome to marry him, if
she did not there would be no hearts broken. George might come and go in
his house and be welcome.

Mamie Trimm’s undefinable charm doubtless covered a multitude of
defects. She was of course very well educated, in the sense in which
that elastic term is generally applied to all young girls of her class.
It would be more true to say that she, like most of her associates, had
been expensively educated. Nothing had been omitted which, according to
popular social belief can contribute to the production of a refined and
accomplished feminine mind. She had been taught at great pains a number
of subjects of which she remembered little, but of which the transient
knowledge had contributed something to the formation of her taste. She
had been instructed in the French language with a care perhaps not
always bestowed upon the subject in France, and the result was that she
could read novels written in that tongue and, under great pressure of
necessity, could converse tolerably in it, though the composition of the
shortest note plunged her into a despair that would have been comic had
it been less real. She possessed a shadowy acquaintance with German and
knew a score of Italian words. In the department of music, seven years
of study had given her some facility in playing simple dance music, and
she was able to accompany a song tolerably, provided the movement were
not too fast. On the other hand she danced to perfection, rode well and
played a very fair game of lawn-tennis, and she got even more credit for
these accomplishments than she deserved because her naturally
transparent complexion and rather thin face had always made the world
believe that her health was not strong.

In character she was neither very sincere, nor by any means
unscrupulous. Her conscience was in a very natural state, considering
her surroundings, and she represented very fairly the combination of her
mother’s worldly disposition with her father’s cheerful, generous and
loyal nature. She was far too much in love with life to be morbid, and
far too sensible to invent imaginary trials. She had never thought of
examining herself, any more than she would have thought of pulling off a
butterfly’s wings to see how they were fastened to its body. Her
simplicity of ideas was dashed with a sprinkling of sentimentality which
was natural enough at her age, but of which she felt so much ashamed
that she hid it jealously from her father and mother and only showed a
little of it to her most intimate friend when she had danced a little
too long or suspected herself of having nearly accepted an offer of
marriage. It was indeed with her, rather a quality than a weakness, for
it sometimes made her feel that life did not consist entirely in
waltzing a dozen miles every night and in talking over the race the next
morning. The only visible signs of this harmless sentimentality were to
be found in a secret drawer of her desk and took the shape of two or
three dried flowers, a scrap of ribband and a dance programme in which
the same initials were scrawled several times. She did not open the
drawer at dead of night and kiss the flowers, nor hold the faded ribband
to her hair, nor bedew the crumpled little bit of illuminated cardboard
with her warm tears. On the contrary she rarely unlocked the receptacle
unless it were to add some new memento to the collection, and on such
occasions the principal reason why she did not summarily eject the
representatives of older memories was that she felt a sort of
good-natured pity for them, as though they had been living things and
might be hurt by being thrown away. Her dainty room contained, indeed
more than one object given her by George Wood, from a collection of
picture-books that bore the marks of age and rough usage, to her first
tennis racquet, now battered and half unstrung, and from that to a
pretty toilet-clock set in chiselled silver which her cousin had given
her on her last birthday, as a sort of peace-offering for his neglect.
It never would have entered her head, however, to hide anything she had
received from him in the secret drawer. There was no sentimentality
about her feelings for him, and if there was a sentiment it was of the
better and stronger sort. She felt that she had a right to like George,
and that his gifts had a right to be seen. Once or twice, of late, when
she had been watching him through the greater part of an evening while
he talked earnestly with Constance Fearing, Mamie had felt an itching in
her fingers to take everything he had given her and to throw all into
the street together; but she had always been glad on the next day that
she had not yielded to the destructive impulse, and she had once dreamed
that, having carried out her dire intention George had picked up the
various articles in the street and had brought them back to her, neatly
packed in a basket, with a sardonic smile on his grave face. Since then,
she had thought more of Constance than of George’s old picture-books,
the worn-out racquet, or the clock.

Mamie bore no malice against him, however, though she was beginning to
dislike the name of Fearing in a way that surprised herself. If George
talked to her at a party, she was always herself, graceful, winning and
happy; if he came to see her, the same words of welcome rose to her lips
and the same soft colour flashed through the alabaster of her cheek, a
colour which, as her mother thought, should not have come so easily for
one who was already so dear. The careful Totty heard love’s light tread
afar off and caught the gleam of his weapons before it was yet day, her
maternal anxiety had been stirred, and the devotion of the social
tigress to her marriageable young had been roused almost to the point of
self-sacrifice. Indeed, she had more than once interrupted some pleasant
conversation of her own, in order to draw Mamie away from George, and
more than once she had stayed at home when Mamie was tired with the
dancing of the previous night lest in her absence George’s evil genius
should lead him to the house. Fortunately for her, no one had given her
more constant and valuable assistance than George himself, which was the
reason why Totty had not ceased to like him. Had he, on his part seemed
as glad to be with Mamie, as Mamie to be with him, the claws of the
tigress would have fastened upon him with sudden and terrible ferocity
and would have accompanied him to the front door. There would now in all
likelihood be a change in the tigress’s view of the matter, and what had
until lately seemed one of George’s best recommendations, would soon be
regarded in the light of a serious defect. The position of the invader
had been very much changed since the day on which Totty Trimm had been
left alone in the strong room for a quarter of an hour, and had brought
away with her the last will and testament of Thomas Craik.

If George had ever in his life felt anything approaching to love for
Mamie, he could not have failed to notice that Totty had done all in her
power to keep the two apart during the past three years, in other words
since Mamie had been of a marriageable age. But it had always been a
matter of supreme indifference to him whether he were left alone with
her or not, and to-day it had not struck him that Totty had never before
proposed that he should go and spend an hour with her daughter when
there was nobody about. Totty herself, if her heart had not been
bursting with an anticipated triumph, would have been more cautious, and
would have thought twice before making her suggestion with so much
frankness. In the moment of her meeting with him and guessing the truth
so many possibilities had suggested themselves to her that she had not
found time to reflect, and she had for an instant entertained the idea
of returning immediately from Washington Square to her own home, in
order to find George there and perform the part of the skilful and
interested consoler. A very little consideration showed her that this
would be an unwise course to pursue, and she had adopted a plan
infinitely more diplomatic, of which the results will be seen and
appreciated before long. In the meantime George Wood was seated beside
Mamie and her flowers, listening to her talk, answering her remarks
rather vaguely, and wondering why he was alive, and since he was alive,
why he was in that particular place.

“You look tired, George,” said the young girl, studying his face. “You
look almost ill.”

“Do I? I am all right. I have been doing a lot of work lately. And you,
Mamie—what is the matter? Your mother told me just now that you had a
bad cold. I hope it is nothing serious.”

“Oh, it is nothing. I wanted to read your book, and I did not want to
make visits, and I had just enough of a cold to make a good excuse. A
cold is so useful sometimes—it is just the same thing that your writing
is to you. Everybody believes it is inevitable, and then one can do as
one pleases. But you really do look dreadfully. Have some tea—with a
stick in it as papa calls it.”

Mamie laughed a little at her own use of the slang term, though her eyes
showed that she was really made anxious by George’s appearance.

“Thank you,” he answered. “I do not want anything, but I am very tired,
and when your mother told me you were all alone at home I thought it
would do me good to come and stay with you a little while, if you would
talk to me.”

“I am so glad you came. I have not seen much of you, lately.” There was
a ring of regret in her voice.

“You have been so gay. How can I get at you when you are racing through
society all the year round from morning till night?”

“Oh, it is not that, George, and you know it is not! We have often been
in the same gay places together, and you hardly ever come near me,
though I would much rather talk with you than with all the other men.”

“No you would not—and if you would, you are such a raving success, as
they call it, this year, that you are always surrounded—unless you are
sitting in corners with the pinks of desirability whose very
shoe-strings are a cut above the ‘likes o’ me.’ When are you going to
marry, Mamie?”

“When somebody asks me, sir—she said,” laughed the young girl.

“Who is somebody?”

“I do not know,” answered Mamie with an infinitesimal sigh. “People have
asked me, you know,” she added with another laugh, “any number of them.”

“But not the particular somebody who haunts your dreams?” asked George.

“He has not even begun to haunt me yet. You do, though. I dreamed of you
the other night.”

“You? How odd! What did you dream about me?”

“Such a funny dream!” said Mamie, leaning forward and smelling the roses
beside her. It struck George as strange that the colour from the dark
red petals should be thrown up into her face by the rays of the sun,
though he knew something of the laws of incidence and reflection.

“I dreamed,” continued Mamie, still holding the roses, “that I was very
angry with you. Then I took all the things you ever gave me, the
picture-books, and the broken doll, and the old racquet and the clock—by
the by, it goes beautifully—and I threw them all out of my window into
the street. And, of course, you were passing just at that moment, and
you brought them all into the house in a basket, nicely done up in pink
paper, and handed them back to me with that horrid smile you have when
you are going to say something perfectly hateful.”

“And then, what happened?” inquired George, who was amused in spite of
himself.

“Oh, nothing. I suppose I woke just then. I laughed over it the next
morning.”

“But what made you so angry with me?”

“Nothing—that is—the usual thing. The way you always behave to me at
parties.”

George looked at her in silence for a second, before he spoke again.

“Do you mean to say that you really care,” he asked, “whether I talk to
you at parties, or not?”

“Of course I care!” exclaimed the young girl. “What a question!”

“I am sure I cannot see why. I am not a very amusing person. But since
you would like me to talk to you, I will, as much as you please.”

“It is too late now,” answered Mamie, laying down the roses she had held
so long. “Everything is over, or will be in a day or two, and you will
not get a chance unless you come and stay with us this summer. Why do
you never come and stay with us? I have often wondered.”

“I was never asked,” said George indifferently. “I could not well come
without an invitation. And besides, I have generally been very busy in
the summer.”

“Did they never ask you?” inquired Mamie in evident surprise. “Mamma
must have forgotten it.”

“I daresay,” George replied, rather dreamily. His thoughts were
wandering from the conversation.

“She shall, this time,” said Mamie with considerable emphasis. Then
there was silence for some moments.

George did not know what she was thinking and cared very little to
inquire. He was conscious that the surroundings in which he found
himself were soothing to his humour, that Mamie’s harmless talk was
pleasant to his ear, and that if he had gone anywhere else on that
afternoon, he might have committed some act of folly which would have
had serious consequences. He was neither able nor anxious to understand
his own state, since, whatever it might be, he desired to escape from
it, and he was grateful for all external circumstances which helped his
forgetfulness. He was no doubt conscious that it would be out of the
question to recover from such a shock as he had received without passing
through much suffering on his way to ultimate consolation. But he had
been stunned and overcome by what had happened. The first passion of
almost uncontrollable anger that swept over his nature had left him dull
and almost apathetic for the time, bruised and willing to accept
thankfully any peace that he could find.

Presently, Mamie turned the conversation to his books and talked
enthusiastically of his success. She had read what he had written with
greater care and understanding than he had expected of her, and she
quoted whole passages from his novels, puzzling him sometimes with her
questions, but pleasing him in spite of himself by her sincere and
admiring appreciation. At last he rose to leave her.

“I wish you would stay,” she said regretfully. But he shook his head.
“Why not stay the rest of the afternoon?” she suggested. “We are not
going out this evening and you could dine with us, just as you are.”

This was altogether more than George wanted. He did not care to meet
Totty again on that day.

“Then come again soon,” said Mamie. “I have enjoyed it so much—and we
are not going out of town for another fortnight.”

“But you may not have another cold, Mamie,” George observed.

“Oh, I will always have a cold, if you will come and sit with me,”
answered the young girl.

When George was once more in the street, he stared about him as though
not knowing where he was. Then, when the full force of his
disappointment struck him for the second time, he found it hard to
believe that he had been spending an hour in careless conversation with
his cousin. He looked at his watch mechanically, and saw that it was
late in the afternoon. It was as though a dream had separated him from
his last interview with Constance Fearing. Of that, at least, he had
forgotten nothing; not a word of what she had said, or of what he had
answered, had escaped his memory, every syllable was burned into the
page of his day. Then came the great question, which had not suggested
itself at first. Why had all this happened? What hidden reason was there
in obedience to which Constance had so suddenly cast him off? Had she
weakly yielded to Grace’s influence? He had little faith in Grace’s
assurance that she had been silent, nor in Constance’s confirmation of
the statement. And Constance was weak. He had often suspected it, and
had even wondered whether she would withstand the pressure brought to
bear upon her and against himself. Yet her weakness alone did not
explain what she had done. It had needed strength of some sort to face
him, to tell him to his face what she had first told him through her
sister’s words. But her weakness had shown itself even then. She had
wept and hidden her face and cried out that he was breaking her heart,
when she was breaking his. George ground his heel upon the pavement.

Her heart, indeed! She had none. She was but a compound of nerves,
prettiness and vanity, and he had believed her the noblest, bravest and
best of women. He had lavished upon her with his lips and in his books
such language as would have honoured a goddess, and she had turned out
to be only a weak shallow-hearted girl, ready to break an honest man’s
heart, because she did not know her own mind. He cursed his ignorance of