marcb 6am 
 
 By 
 
 Trcdcric 
 
 Huthor of 
 In tb Oalley, OK Damnation of tlwron Ulaw, tc. 
 
 new Vork 
 D. Hpplcton and Company 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1896, 
 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
n 
 
 TO OUR FRIEND 
 
 JULIA .,_ 
 
 T 
 
 248946 
 
MARCH HARES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON the morning of his thirtieth birthday, 
 Mr. David Mosscrop lounged against the low 
 stone parapet of Westminster Bridge, and sur 
 veyed at length the unflagging procession of 
 his fellow-creatures plodding past him north 
 ward into the polite half of London town. 
 
 He had come upon the bridge in a melan 
 choly frame of mind, and had paused first of 
 all gloomily to look down at the water. His 
 thoughts were a burden to him, and his head 
 ached viciously. This was no new experience 
 of a morning, worse luck ; he had grown ac 
 customed to these evil opening hours of de 
 pression and nausea. The fact that it was his 
 birthday, however, gave uncomfortable point 
 to his reflections. He had actually crossed 
 
Hares. 
 
 the threshold of the thirties, and he came into 
 the presence of this new lustrum worse than 
 empty-handed. He had done none of the 
 great things which his youth had promised. 
 He had not even found his way into helpful 
 and cleanly company. The memory of the 
 people with whom he spent his time nowadays 
 in particular, the recollection of the wastrels 
 and fools with whom he had started out yes 
 terday to celebrate the eve of his anniversary 
 made him sick. He stared down at the 
 slowly-moving flood, and asked himself angrily 
 why a man of thirty who had learned nothing 
 worth learning, achieved nothing worth the 
 doing ; who didn t even know enough to keep 
 sober over-night, should not be thrown like 
 garbage into the river. 
 
 The impulse to jump over the parapet 
 hung somewhere very close to the grasp of his 
 consciousness. His mind almost touched it as 
 his eyes dwelt upon the broad, opaque mass of 
 shifting drab waters. He said to himself that 
 he had never before been so near the possibility 
 of deliberate suicide as he was at this moment. 
 
March Hares. 3 
 
 He did not allow the notion to take any more 
 definite shape, but mused for a while upon the 
 fact of its lying there, vaguely formless at the 
 hack of his brain, ready to leap into being at 
 his will. Of course, he would not give the 
 word : it was merely interesting to think that 
 he was in the same street, so to speak, with 
 the spirit of self-murder. 
 
 After a little, the effect of this steadily 
 drifting body of water seemed to soothe his 
 vision. He grew less conscious of mental dis 
 turbance and physical disgust alike. Then he 
 stood up, yawned, and glanced at the big 
 clock-tower, where the laggard hands still clung 
 to the unreasonable neighbourhood of seven 
 o clock. For some reason, he felt much better. 
 The sensation was very welcome. He drew a 
 long breath of satisfaction, and, leaning with 
 his back to the stonework, fell to watching 
 the people go past. By a sudden revulsion of 
 mood, he discovered all at once that the excess 
 of the night was now offering him compensa 
 tions. His brain was extremely clear, and, 
 now that the lees of drink were gone, served 
 
March Hares. 
 
 him with an eager and almost fluttering acute- 
 ness which it was pleasant to follow. 
 
 He noted with minute attention the vary 
 ing types of workmen, shopgirls, clerks, and 
 salesmen as they trooped by in the throng, 
 and found himself devoting to each some ap 
 propriate mental comment, some wondering 
 guess into their history, or some flash of specu 
 lation as to their future. The instantaneous 
 play of his fancy among these flitting items 
 brought great diversion. He rollicked in it 
 picking out as they trudged along side by side 
 the book-keeper who was probably short in 
 his accounts, the waiter who had been backing 
 the wrong horses, the barmaid with the 
 seraph s face who at luncheon time would be 
 listening unmoved to conversation from City 
 men fit to revolt a dock labourer. It was in 
 deed as good as a play, this marvellous aggre 
 gation of human dramatic possibilities surging 
 tirelessly before him. He wondered that he 
 had never thought of seeing it before. 
 
 From amusing details his mind lifted itself 
 to larger conceptions. He thought of the 
 
Ma/rch Hares. 5 
 
 mystery of London s vast economy ; of all its 
 millions playing dumbly, uninstructedly, al 
 most like automata, their appointed parts in 
 the strange machinery by which so many 
 droves of butchers cattle, so many thousands 
 of tons of food and trucks of clothing and 
 coals and oil were brought in daily, and Baby 
 lon s produce was sent out again in balancing 
 repayment. The miracle of these giant scales 
 being always kept even, of London s ever- 
 craving belly and the country s never-failing 
 response, loomed upon his imagination. Then, 
 stifling another yawn, it occurred to him that 
 a brain capable of such flights deserved a bet 
 ter fate than to be banged out by a dirty tide 
 against some slime-stained wharf-pile down 
 the river. Yes, and it merited a nobler lot in 
 life, too, than that of being nightly drenched 
 with poisonous drink. Decidedly he would 
 forswear sack, and live cleanly. 
 
 The hour struck in the clock-tower. The 
 boom of the great bell swelled hopefully upon 
 his hearing. The chime of the preceding 
 quarter had saddened him, because he heard 
 
March Hcvres. 
 
 in it the knell of thirty wasted years. The 
 louder resonance now bore a different mean 
 ing. A birthday exposed a new leaf as well as 
 turned down an old one. The twenties were 
 behind him, and undoubtedly they were not 
 nice. Very well ; he turned his back upon 
 them. The thirties were all before him ; and, 
 as Big Ben thundered forth its deep -voiced 
 clamour, he straightened himself, and turned 
 to look them confidently in the face. 
 
 His eyes fell upon the figure of a young 
 woman, advancing in a little eddy of isolation 
 from the throng, a dozen feet away. Even on 
 the instant he was conscious of a feeling that 
 his gaze had not distinguished her from the 
 others by mere chance; it was, indeed, as if 
 there were no others. In the concentrated 
 scrutiny which he found himself bending 
 upon her, there was a sense of compulsion. 
 His perceptions raced to meet and envelop 
 her. 
 
 She was almost tall, and in carriage made 
 the most of her inches. She had much yellow 
 hair of a noticeable sort, pale flaxen in bulk 
 
March Ha/i*es. 
 
 but picked with lemon in its lights, about her 
 brows. He thought that it was dyed, and in 
 the same breath knew better. He mastered 
 the effect of her fine face with its regular 
 contour, its self-conscious eyes, its dainty rose- 
 leaf of a chin thrust reliantly forth above a 
 broad, white throat all in some unnamed frac 
 tion of a second. 
 
 The impression of her filled every corner 
 of his mind. He tried to think about who 
 and what she was, and only built up scaffold 
 ings of conjecture to knock them down again. 
 She was a girl who tried on mantles and 
 frocks in some big Regent Street place : no, 
 the lack of dignity in such an avocation would 
 be impossible to one who carried her chin so 
 high. A woman journalist? No, she was too 
 pretty for that. What was she type- writer, 
 restaurant- waitress, saleswoman? No, these 
 all wore black, with white collar and wrist 
 bands ; and her apparel was of an almost flar 
 ing order. Her large-sleeved bodice of flow 
 ered blue silk, snug to the belted waist, sug 
 gested Henley rather than the high road out 
 
8 March Hares. 
 
 of squalid Lambeth. Her straw sailor-hat, 
 jauntily borne on the primrose fluff and coils 
 of hair, belonged, too, not a mile lower on the 
 river than Teddington. She should by rights 
 have a racquet in her hand, and be moving 
 along over the close-shaved lawn of Rane- 
 lagh s park, on a hazy, languid summer after 
 noon. What on earth was she doing on West 
 minster Bridge, at this ridiculous hour, in this 
 dismal company ? 
 
 Then speculation died abruptly. She was 
 close to him now, and he recognized her. She 
 was a young woman whom he had seen in the 
 British Museum reading-room a score of times. 
 Her face was entirely familiar to him. Only 
 the other day he had got down for her, from 
 the county-histories shelves, two ponderous 
 volumes which she had seemed unable to man 
 age by herself. She had thanked him with a 
 glance and a pleasant nod. He seemed to re 
 call in that glance a tacit admission that they 
 were old acquaintances by sight. He looked 
 her square in the eye, meanwhile, the inner 
 muscles of his face preparing and holding in 
 
March Hares. 9 
 
 readiness a smile in case she gave a sign of re 
 membering him. 
 
 For a moment it appeared that she was 
 passing without recognition. He had the 
 presence of mind to feel that this was a gross 
 and inexcusable mischance. His feet instinc 
 tively poised themselves to follow her, as if it 
 were for this, and this only, that they had tar 
 ried so long on the bridge. 
 
 Before he could take a step, however, she 
 had halted, and, in a wavering fashion, moved 
 sidelong out of the main current of pedestrian- 
 ism. She stood irresolutely by the parapet for 
 a few seconds, with a pretence of being inter 
 ested in the view of the river and the prim 
 stretch of Parliamentary architecture on its 
 right bank. Then, with a little shrug of de 
 cision, she turned to him. 
 
 " It is a fine morning," she said. 
 
 He had stepped to her side, and he bent 
 upon her now the smile which had so nearly 
 gone a-begging. " I was afraid you hadn t 
 noticed me and I had quite resolved to go 
 after you." 
 
10 Mar cli Hares. 
 
 She flashed inquiry into his face, then let 
 her glance wander vaguely off again. " Oh, I 
 saw you well enough," she confessed, with a 
 curious intermingling of hesitation and bold 
 ness ; " but at first I wasn t going to pretend 
 I did. In fact, I don t in the least know why 
 I did stop. Or, rather, I do know, but you 
 don t, and you never will. That is to say, / 
 shan t tell you ! " 
 
 " Oh, but I do know," he answered genial 
 ly. " How should you imagine me so deficient 
 in discernment ? Only only, I think I won t 
 tell either." 
 
 She looked at him again with a kind of 
 startled intentness, and parted her lips as if to 
 speak. He fancied that he caught in this gaze 
 the suggestion of a painful and humbled diffi 
 dence. But then she tossed her head with a 
 saucy air and smiled archly. " What a tre 
 mendous secret we shall carry to our graves ! " 
 she laughed. " Tell me, do you sleep on the 
 bridge ? One hears such remarkable stories, 
 you know, about the readers at the Museum." 
 
 He regarded her with pleasure beaming in 
 
March Hares. 11 
 
 his eyes. " No, I go entirely without sleep," 
 he replied, with gravity, " and walk about the 
 streets turning a single idea for ever in my 
 mind ; and every morning at daybreak oh, 
 this has gone on for years now I come here 
 to watch for the beautiful girl with the yellow 
 hair who some time is to come up to me and 
 remark, It is a fine morning. A fortune 
 teller told me, ever so long ago, that this was 
 what I must do, and I ve never had a moment s 
 rest since." 
 
 " You must be very tired," she commented, 
 " and a good deal mixed in your mind, too, 
 especially since yellow hair has come so much 
 into fashion. And did the fortune-teller men 
 tion what was to happen after the the beau 
 tiful lady had really appeared ? " 
 
 " Ah, that is another of my secrets ! " he 
 cried, delightedly. 
 
 They had begun to stroll together toward 
 the clock-tower. The throng bustling heed 
 lessly past with hurried steps gave them an 
 added sense of detachment and companion 
 ship. They kept close together by the para- 
 
12 March Hares. 
 
 pet, their shoulders touching now and again. 
 When they reached the end of the bridge, and 
 paused to look again upon the river prospect, 
 their manner had taken on the ease of people 
 who have known each other for a long time. 
 
 The tide was running out now with an 
 exaggerated show of perturbed activity. The 
 girl bent over, and stared at the hurrying 
 current, sweeping along in swirling eddies 
 under the arch, and sucking at the brown- 
 grey masonry of the embankment wall as it 
 passed. Her silence in this posture stretched 
 out over minutes, and he respected it. 
 
 At last she had looked her fill and turned, 
 and they resumed their walk. " I could never 
 understand drowning," she remarked, musing 
 ly ; " it doesn t appeal to me at all, somehow. 
 They talk about its being pleasant after the 
 first minute or so, but I don t believe it. 
 Do you?" 
 
 " There might possibly be some point about 
 it if one could choose the fluid," he replied, 
 achieving flippancy with an effort. " Like the 
 Duke of Clarence, for example." 
 
March Hares. 13 
 
 " How do you mean ? The papers all said 
 it was influenza. Oh, I see you mean the 
 Shakespeare one." Her good faith was un 
 doubted. "But no, we were speaking of 
 drowning of suicide." 
 
 " No, we weren t," he said, soberly. The 
 memory of his own mood a brief half-hour 
 ago stirred uneasily within him. " And we re 
 not going to, either. What the mischief have 
 you young and healthy and happy and pretty 
 as a peach to do with any such things ? " 
 
 " In fact," she went on thoughtfully, as if 
 he had not spoken, " all kinds of death seem 
 an outrage to me. They make me angry. It 
 is too stupid to have to die. What right have 
 other people to say to me, Now you must 
 die ? I was born to live just as much as they 
 were, and I have every whit as much right on 
 the earth as they have. And I have a right 
 to what I need to keep me alive, too. That 
 must be so, according to common-sense ! " 
 
 Mosscrop had listened to this declaration 
 of principles but indifferently. A sense of 
 drowsiness had stolen over him, and, yielding 
 
14 Ma/rch Hwres. 
 
 to it for the moment, he had hung his head, 
 with an aimless regard upon the pavement. 
 All at once he caught sight of something that 
 roused him. His companion s little boot, dis 
 closed in movement beneath her skirt, was 
 broken at the side, and almost soleless. He 
 lagged behind for a step or two, and made 
 sure of what he saw. The girl in the silken 
 blouse was shod like a beggar. 
 
 " Which way are you going ? " he asked, 
 with a pretence of suddenly remembering 
 something. He had halted, and they stood at 
 the corner, looking up Whitehall. He smoth 
 ered a yawn with a little explanatory laugh. 
 " I made rather a night of it it s my birth 
 day to-day and I m half asleep. I hadn t 
 noticed where we d walked to. I hope I 
 haven t taken you out of your way." 
 
 The girl hesitated, looked up the broad, 
 stately street, and bit her lip in strenuous 
 thought of some sort. 
 
 " Good morning, then ! " she blurted out, 
 confusedly, and turned to move away. 
 
 The impulse to be quit of her had been 
 
March Hares. 15 
 
 very sharply defined in his mind, and had dic 
 tated not only his words, but his awkward, 
 half-shamefaced, half-familiar, manner in sug 
 gesting a parting. Now it vanished again with 
 miraculous swiftness. 
 
 " No, no ! You mustn t go off like that ! " 
 he urged, and sprang forward to her side. " I 
 only asked you which was your way." 
 
 She was blinking her eyes in a struggle to 
 regain facial composure. He could see that 
 she had been on the point of tears, and the 
 sight moved him to recklessness. It was not 
 surprising to hear her confess : " Me ? I have 
 no way." 
 
 He took charge of her with a fine paternal 
 tone. " Oh yes, you have ! Your way is my 
 way. You are going with me. It s my birth 
 day, you know, and you have come to help me 
 celebrate it. What do you say to beginning 
 with a special breakfast ? or perhaps you ve 
 spoiled your appetite already. But you can 
 pretend to eat a little." 
 
 The girl laughed aloud, with pathetic irony 
 at some conceit which curled her lip in scorn- 
 
16 March Hares. 
 
 ful amusement. Words rose to her tongue, 
 but she forbore to utter them, and stared up 
 the street. 
 
 " You ll come along, won t you ? " He had 
 held up his hand, and a four-wheeler, with a 
 driver and horse of advanced years and deject 
 ed aspect, was crawling diagonally across the 
 roadway toward them. 
 
 She took courage to look him frankly in 
 the face. " I shall be very much obliged to 
 you, indeed," she said, keeping her voice up 
 till the avowal should be finished. " I ve had 
 no breakfast." 
 
 The ancient cab, with a prodigious rattling 
 of framework and windows for its snail s prog 
 ress, bore them along past Trafalgar Square, 
 and westward through narrow streets, already 
 teeming with a busy, foreign-looking life, till 
 it halted before a restaurant in one of the 
 broader thoroughfares of Soho. 
 
 When they had alighted, and the sad old 
 driver, pocketing his shilling in scowling 
 silence, had started off, a thought occurred to 
 Mosscrop. 
 
March Hares. 
 
 " I tell you what we ll do," he broke forth. 
 " We ll decree that it s your birthday, too, so 
 that we can celebrate them together. That 
 will be much more fun. And before we go 
 into breakfast, I must get you a little present 
 of some sort, just to mark the occasion. Come, 
 you haven t anything to say about it at all. 
 It s my affair, entirely." 
 
 He led the way along past several shops, 
 and halted in front of a narrow window in 
 which a small collection of women s boots was 
 displayed. A man in shirt-sleeves and apron 
 had just taken down the shutter, and stood 
 now in the doorway, regarding them with a 
 mercantile yet kindly smile. 
 
 "It is the best Parisian of make," the 
 shoeman affirmed, to help forward Mosscrop s 
 decision. 
 
 " You can see how different they are from 
 ordinary English things," said David, argu- 
 mentatively. "The leather is like a glove, 
 and the workmanship observe that ! I don t 
 believe any lady could have a more unique 
 present than a pair of real French boots." 
 
18 March Hares. 
 
 The girl had come up, and stood close be 
 side him, almost nestling against his shoulder. 
 He saw in the glass the dim reflection of her 
 pleased face, and moved toward the door as if 
 it were all settled. Then, as he stepped on 
 the threshold, she called to him. 
 
 "No please!" she urged. "I think we 
 won t, if you don t mind." 
 
 " Of course we will ! " he insisted, turning 
 in the doorway. "Why on earth shouldn t 
 we? It s your birthday, you know. Come, 
 child, you mustn t be obstinate ; you must be 
 nice, and do what you re told." 
 
 As she still hung back, shaking her head, 
 he went out to her. "What s the matter? 
 You liked the idea well enough a minute ago. 
 I saw you smiling in the window there. Come ! 
 don t let a mere trifle like this spoil the be 
 ginning of our great joint-birthday. It s too 
 bad of you ! Won t you really have the boots 
 from me ? " 
 
 " Well," she made answer, falteringly, " it s 
 very kind but if I do, I d rather you didn t 
 come into the shop that is, that you went out 
 
March Ha/res. 19 
 
 while I was trying them on because well, it 
 is my birthday, you know, and I must have 
 my own way a little. You will stop outside, 
 won t you?" 
 
 This struck him as perhaps an excess of 
 maidenly reserve. He smiled impatiently. 
 " By all means, if it is your whim. But but 
 I m bound to say I suppose different people 
 draw the line at different places, but feet always 
 seemed to me to be relatively blameless things, 
 as things go. Still, of course, if it s your 
 idea." 
 
 "No, if you take it that way," she said, 
 "we ll go and get our breakfast, and say 
 no more about it." She found the for 
 titude to turn away from the window as she 
 spoke. 
 
 " If / take it that way ! " The perverse- 
 ness of this trivial tangle annoyed him. " Why, 
 I consented to stop outside, didn t I ? What 
 more is demanded ? Do you want me to pass 
 a vote of confidence, or shall I whistle during 
 the performance, so that you may know I am 
 cheerful, or what? Suppose I told you that I 
 
20 March Hares. 
 
 had been a salesman in a boot-shop myself, 
 and had measured literally thousands of pretty 
 little feet would that reassure you ? I might 
 come in, then, mightn t I ? " 
 
 " No you never were that you are a gen 
 tleman." She stole a perplexed glance up at 
 him, and sighed. " I should dearly love the 
 boots but you won t understand. I don t 
 know how to make you." Looking into his 
 face, and catching there a reflection of her 
 own dubiety, she burst suddenly into laughter. 
 " You are a gentleman, but you are a goose, 
 too. My stockings are too mournful a patch 
 work of holes and darning to invite inspection 
 if you will have it." 
 
 " Poor child ! " He breathed relief, as if a 
 profoundly menacing misunderstanding had 
 been cleared up. " Here, take this and run 
 across to that fat Jewess in the doorway there. 
 She will fit you out." 
 
 Presently she returned, with beaming eyes, 
 and an air of shyness linked with compla 
 cent self-approbation which he found de 
 lightful. 
 
Ma/rch Ha/res. 21 
 
 " Oh, I should simply insist on your com 
 ing in now" she cried gaily, at the door of the 
 boot-shop, in answer to his mock look of def 
 erential inquiry. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 "THERE surely was never such another 
 breakfast in the world ! " 
 
 She spoke with frank sincerity. Upon 
 afterthought she added : "I don t believe any 
 woman could order a meal like that. You 
 men always know so much about eating." 
 
 Mosscrop leant back in his chair, crossed 
 his knees, and took a cigar from his pocket. 
 His mind ran in pleasurable retrospect over 
 the dishes a fragrant omelette with mush 
 rooms, a sole Marguerite, a delicate little steak 
 that had been steeped in oil over night, a 
 pulpy Italian cheese which he never got else 
 where than here. The tall-shouldered, urn- 
 shaped green bottle on the table still held a 
 little Capri, and he poured it into her glass. 
 
 " Yes," he assented, " I find myself paying 
 
Ma/rch Hares. 23 
 
 more attention to food as I get older. It is 
 the badge of advancing years. It is a good 
 little restaurant, isn t it ? I come here a great 
 deal." 
 
 " And that is how you are able to order 
 such wonderful breakfasts for hungry young 
 ladies. It comes of practice. Do they all en 
 joy it as much as I have ? " 
 
 " You mustn t ask things like that," he re 
 monstrated, smilingly, as he lit a match. " I 
 hope you don t mind? thanks." He re 
 garded her contemplatively through the dis 
 solving haze of the first mouthful of smoke. 
 They had the small upstairs dining-room to 
 themselves, and she, from her seat by the win 
 dow, let her glances wander from him to the 
 street below, and back again, with a charming, 
 child-like effect of being delighted with every 
 thing. The sight of her opposite him stirred 
 new emotions in his being. He imported a 
 gentle gravity into his smile, and dropped the 
 jesting tone from his voice. "No we must 
 play that I have never breakfasted with any 
 body before like this either here or any- 
 
24 March Hares. 
 
 where else. Let us both start fresh on our 
 birthday. We wipe everything off the slate, 
 and make a clean beginning. First of all, you 
 haven t told me your name." 
 
 " My name is Vestalia Peaussier." 
 
 " Then you are not English ? I could have 
 sworn you were the most typically English girl 
 I d ever laid eyes on." 
 
 " My father was a French gentleman an 
 officer, and a man of position. He died 
 killed in a duel when I was very young. I do 
 not remember him at all. My mother brought 
 me away from France at once. She was dread 
 fully crushed, poor lady. She was the daugh 
 ter of a very old Scottish house it had been 
 a runaway love match and her people, my 
 grandparents " 
 
 "What part of Scotland? What was 
 their name? I am a Scot myself, you 
 know." 
 
 Yestalia paused briefly, and sipped at her 
 wine. " I was going to say my grandparents 
 behaved so unfeelingly to my mother that she 
 never permitted herself to mention their name. 
 
March Hares, 25 
 
 I do not know it myself. I gathered as a child 
 from poor mother s words that they were ex 
 tremely wealthy and proud, and had a title in 
 the family. It is not probable that I shall ever 
 learn more. I should not wish to, either, for 
 it was their hard cruelty which broke my 
 mother s heart. She died two years ago. 
 Poor unhappy lady ! " 
 
 Mosscrop nodded sympathetically. "And 
 were you left without anything ? " 
 
 " My mother s private fortune had been 
 diminished to almost nothing by bad invest 
 ments and the treachery of others before her 
 death. I had no one to advise me I was all 
 alone and the lawyers and others probably 
 robbed me cruelly. Only a few of her old 
 family jewels were left to me and one by one 
 I had to part with these. Some of them, I 
 daresay, were of great antiquity and priceless 
 value, if I had only known, but I was forced 
 to sell them for a song. There were wonder 
 ful signet-rings among them, all with the 
 crest of the family I suppose it must have 
 been her family and at first I thought of 
 
26 Ma/rch Ha/res. 
 
 using it to trace them but then my girlish 
 pride " 
 
 "What was the crest?" asked David. 
 " Perhaps it wouldn t be too late, now." 
 
 Again Vestalia hesitated. Then she shook 
 her head. "No; dear mamma s wishes are 
 sacred to me. I do not wish to learn what 
 she thought it best to keep from me. " 
 
 "Well and when the jewels were all 
 sold?" 
 
 " Long before that I had begun to work 
 for my living. I write a good hand naturally. 
 I got employment as a copyist, but that did 
 not last very long. I was ambitious, and I 
 thought I might work my way into literature. 
 But it is a very disheartening career, you 
 know." 
 
 Mosscrop had lifted his brows in some 
 surprise. He nodded again, with a cursory 
 "Ay!" 
 
 " The editors were not at all kind to me," 
 she went on. "I toiled like a slave, but I 
 hardly ever got anything accepted, and then 
 you had to wait months for your pay, and 
 
March Hares. 27 
 
 perhaps not get it at all. I should have 
 starved long ago, if I hadn t met an American 
 woman at the Museum who was over here get 
 ting up pedigrees. Oh, not for herself. She 
 made a regular business of it. Rich Ameri 
 cans paid her to hunt up their English an 
 cestors, in genealogies and old records, and on 
 tombstones and so on. I was her assistant for 
 nearly a year, and things went fairly well with 
 me. But three months ago she was taken ill 
 and had to go home, and there I was stranded 
 again. I tried to go on with some of the jobs 
 she left unfinished, but the people had gone 
 away, or hadn t confidence in so young a per 
 son, and well that s all. My landlady turned 
 me out at six o clock this morning, and she 
 has seized the few poor things I had left and 
 here I am." 
 
 The young man lifted his glass, and 
 clinked it against hers. " I am very glad that 
 you are here," he said ; and they smiled wist 
 fully into each other s eyes as they finished the 
 Capri. 
 
 " It is a heavenly little break in the clouds, 
 
28 March Hares. 
 
 anyway," she went on, dreamily. "It isn t 
 like real life at all : it is the way things hap 
 pen in fairy stories." 
 
 " Quite so. Why shouldn t we have a fairy 
 story all by ourselves ? It is every whit as easy 
 as the stupid, humdrum other thing, and a 
 million times nicer. Oh, I m on the side of 
 the fairies, myself." 
 
 She looked out, in an absent fashion, at 
 the windows across the way. The light be 
 gan to fade from her countenance, and the 
 troubled lines returned. "Every day for a 
 fortnight I have been answering advertise 
 ments," she went on, pensively ; " some by let 
 ter, some in person. There were secretaries 
 places, but you had to know shorthand, and 
 the typewriter, and all that. Then somehow 
 all the vacancies for shop-women got filled 
 before I applied, or else people with experi 
 ence in the business were preferred to me. I 
 even went in for the lady-help thing a 
 kind of domestic servant, you know, only you 
 get less pay and don t wear a cap but nobody 
 would have me. My hair was too good and 
 
March Hares. 29 
 
 my boots were too bad. The lady of the 
 house just stared at these two things, every 
 place I applied at, and said she was afraid I 
 wouldn t answer." 
 
 The picture she drew was painful to Moss- 
 crop, and he made an effort to lighten it with 
 levity. " I confess I didn t think very highly 
 of your boots, myself," he said, cheerily, " but 
 I admire your hair immensely." 
 
 " Oh, but you are a man ! " 
 
 He chuckled amiably at the implication of 
 her retort, and she laughed a little, too, in a 
 reluctant way. " It occurs to me," he ven 
 tured, pausing over his words, "that men 
 seem to have played no part whatever in the 
 story of your life." 
 
 " No, absolutely none," she answered, with 
 prompt decision. " I have never before been 
 beholden to a man for so much as a biscuit or 
 a shoe-button. I don t know that you will be 
 lieve me when I tell you, but I ve never even 
 been alone in a room with a man before in my 
 life." 
 
 " Of course, I believe what you say. It is 
 
30 March Hares. 
 
 remarkably interesting, though. Come! First 
 impressions are the very salt of life. I should 
 dearly like to know what you think of 
 the novel experience, as far as you ve 
 gone." 
 
 She seemed to take him seriously. Plac 
 ing her elbows on the table, and poising her 
 chin between thumbs and forefingers, she be 
 stowed a frank scrutiny upon his face, as in 
 tent and dispassionate as the gaze which a 
 professor of palmistry fastens upon the lines 
 of the client s hand. 
 
 "First of all," she said, deliberately, "I 
 am not so afraid of you as I was." 
 
 " Delightful ! " he cried. " Then I did in 
 spire terror at the outset. It has been the 
 dream of my life to do that if only just once. 
 I feared I should never succeed. My dear 
 lady, you have rescued me from my own con 
 tempt. My career is not a blank failure after 
 all. We must have coffee and a liqueur after 
 that ! " 
 
 He pressed the bell at his side. She frowned 
 a little at his merry exuberance. 
 
March Hares. 31 
 
 " I am not joking," she complained. " You 
 asked me to say just what I felt." 
 
 He nodded his contrition as the waiter left 
 the room. 
 
 " Yes, do," he urged. " I will keep as still 
 as a mouse." 
 
 " I am not as afraid of you as I was," she 
 repeated, dogmatically. " But I think, even if 
 I knew you ever so well, I should always be 
 just the least weeny bit afraid. I can see that 
 you are very kind my Heavens ! nobody else 
 has ever been a hundredth part as kind to me 
 as you are but all the same yes, there is a 
 ~but, if I can explain it to you I get a feeling 
 that you are being kind because it affords you 
 yourself pleasure, rather than because it helps 
 me. No that is not quite what I mean either. 
 It seems to me that a man will be much kinder 
 than any woman knows how to be, so long as 
 he feels that way; but when he doesn t feel 
 that way any more well, then he ll chuck 
 the whole thing, and never give it another 
 thought." 
 
 " That is very intelligent," said Mosscrop. 
 
32 March Hares. 
 
 He had the appearance of turning it over in 
 his mind, and liking it the more upon con 
 sideration. " Yes, that is soundly reasoned. 
 I can well believe your mother was a Scots 
 lass." 
 
 Vestalia flushed, no doubt with pride. 
 
 " Well, then, hear me out," she said, with 
 a pleasant little assumption of newly-gained 
 authority. " Now, I ve hardly known a man 
 to speak to that is, a gentleman, as a friend, 
 you know if I m justified in calling you so 
 on such short acquaintance or no, I mustn t 
 say that, must I ? We are friends but it s a 
 new experience, quite, to me. As you say, I 
 have my first impression of what it is like to 
 have a man for a friend." 
 
 The waiter, pushing the door open with 
 his foot, brought in a tray with white cups 
 and silver pots, and wee tinted glasses, and a 
 tall, shapeless bottle encased in a basket-work 
 covering of straw. 
 
 "I ordered maraschino," remarked Moss- 
 crop, as the man poured the coffee. " If you 
 prefer any other, why, of course " 
 
Mafrch Hares. 33 
 
 " Oh no ; whatever you say is good, I take 
 with my eyes shut." 
 
 She sipped at the little glass he had filled 
 for her, and then, with a movement of lips 
 and tongue, mused upon the unaccustomed 
 taste. An alert glance shot at him from her 
 eyes. 
 
 " I hope " she began to say, and stopped 
 
 short. 
 
 "You hope what?" 
 
 " No ; I won t say what I was going to. It 
 would have been a very ungrateful speech. 
 Only, you must bear in mind that I hard 
 ly know one wine from another, and I am 
 leaving myself absolutely in your hands. Youj 
 will see to it, won t you, that that I don t 
 drink more than I ought." 
 
 Mosscrop waved his hand in smiling re 
 assurance. 
 
 " But now for that famous first impression 
 of yours." 
 
 She narrowed her eyelids to look at him, 
 and he found her glance invested with some 
 thing like tenderness of expression. Her head 
 
34 Marcli Hares. 
 
 was tilted a bit to one side, so that the light 
 from the window fell full upon the face. It 
 was a more beautiful face than he had thought, 
 with exquisitely faint and shell-like gradations 
 of colour upon the temples and below the ears, 
 where the strange but lovely primrose hair be 
 gan. A soft rose-tint had come into her 
 cheeks, which had seemed pallid an hour be 
 fore. The whole countenance was rounded 
 and mellowed and beautified in his eyes, as he 
 answered her lingering, approving gaze. 
 
 " My impression ? " she spoke slowly, and 
 with none of the assurance which had marked 
 her earlier deliverance. " Well, you know, I 
 don t feel as if I knew men any more than I 
 did before. I only know one man a very, 
 very little. I don t believe that other men are 
 at all like him, or else we should hear about it 
 The world would be full of it. No one would 
 talk of anything else. But the man I do know 
 that is, a little well, I d rather know him 
 than all the women that ever were born, even 
 if I had to be afraid of him all the while into 
 the bargain." 
 
March Hares. 35 
 
 Mosscrop laughed. 
 
 " We did well to label it in advance as a 
 first impression. It is the judgment of a babe 
 just opening its eyes. My dear child, I m 
 afraid this isn t your birthday, after all. 
 You re clearly not a year old yet." 
 
 "You always joke, but I m in sober ear 
 nest." She indeed spoke almost solemnly, and 
 with an impressive fervour in her voice. 
 " You do impress me just like that. I wish 
 you d believe that I m saying exactly what I 
 feel. Mind, I expressly said, I don t suppose 
 for a minute that other men are like you." 
 
 " No, you re right there," he broke in. 
 
 Her manner, even more than the speech, 
 affected him curiously. He drained his 
 liqueur at a gulp, stared out of the window, 
 fidgetted on his chair, finally rose to his 
 feet. 
 
 " You re right there ! " he reiterated, biting 
 his cigar and thrusting his hands deep in his 
 pockets. She would have risen also, but he 
 signed to her to sit still. " Other men are not 
 like me, and they can thank God that they re 
 
36 March Hares. 
 
 not. They know enough to keep sober; I 
 don t. They are of some intelligent use in 
 the world ; I m not. They lead cleanly and 
 decent lives, they control themselves, they 
 make names for themselves, they do things 
 which are of some benefit at least to somebody. 
 Ah-h ! You hit the nail on the head. They 
 are different from me ! " 
 
 She gazed up at him, dumb with sheer 
 surprise. He took a few aimless steps up and 
 down, halted to scowl out of the window at 
 the signs opposite, and then flung himself 
 into the chair again. Sprawling his elbows 
 on the table, he bent forward and fastened 
 upon her a look of such startled intensity that 
 she trembled under it and drew back. 
 
 "Why, do you know, you foolish little 
 girl," he began, in a hoarse, declamatory 
 voice, " that a few minutes before you came 
 along, there on the bridge, I was going to 
 throw myself into the river, because I wasn t 
 fit to live. Do you realize that I had sat in 
 judgment upon myself, and condemned myself 
 to death death, mind you ! because I was 
 
March Hares. 37 
 
 an utterly hopeless creature, a waste product, 
 a drunkard, a sterile fool and loafer, a veri 
 table human swine ? That is the truth ! Do 
 you know where I spent last night where I 
 woke up, sick with disgust for myself, this 
 morning ? No, you don t ; and there s no need 
 that I should tell you." 
 
 " I don t care ! " The girl s lips propelled 
 the words forth with extraordinary swiftness, 
 but the eyes with which she regarded her com 
 panion, and the rest of her face, grown pale 
 once more, remained unmoved. 
 
 " No, you don t care ! " he groaned out a 
 long sigh, and went on with waning vigour. 
 " But / care ! It is something to me that 
 I am what I am; that I have wasted 
 my life, that I have done nothing, and 
 worse than nothing, with my chances, that 
 I " 
 
 " You misunderstand me," Vestalia inter 
 posed, with a perturbed simulation of calm. 
 " What I meant was that whatever happened 
 last that is, at any time before this morning 
 makes no difference whatever in my my 
 
38 March Hares. 
 
 liking for you." Her eyes brightened at the 
 thought of something. " It was you yourself 
 who said we would wipe the slate clean, and 
 begin all over again quite fresh. Don t you 
 remember? And we were to have our own 
 fairy story, all to ourselves. You do remem 
 ber, don t you ? " 
 
 He still breathed heavily, but the gloom 
 upon his face began to abate as he looked at 
 her. He moved one of his hands forward on 
 the table to the neighbourhood of hers, and 
 stroked the cloth gently as if it were her hand 
 he touched. A weary smile, born in his eyes, 
 strengthened and spread to soften his whole 
 countenance. 
 
 " Yes, I remember everything," he mused, 
 with a kind of forlorn gladness in his tone. It 
 seemed an invitation to silence, and they sat 
 without words for a little. 
 
 With a constrained air of having con 
 vinced herself by argument that it was the 
 right thing to do, Vestalia all at once lifted 
 her hand, and laid it lightly on his. He 
 fancied that it trembled a little. His own 
 
March Hares. 39 
 
 certainly shook, though he pressed it firmly 
 upon the table. 
 
 " Now the bad spirits have all gone," he 
 said ; " it is fairyland again." 
 
 " Ah, we must keep it so," she answered, 
 and pressed his hand softly before she with 
 drew her own. The black mood had fled 
 from him as swiftly as it came. Vestalia s 
 eyes beamed at the sight of his restored good- 
 humour with himself, and she nodded gay ap 
 probation. 
 
 " I fancy we ve about exhausted the de 
 lights of this place," he remarked, after a 
 brief silence filled for both of them with a 
 pleasantly sufficient sense of friendship at 
 its ease. "I ll pay the bill, and we ll tod 
 dle." 
 
 She glanced about her. "I shall always 
 remember this dear little stuffy old room. I 
 almost hate to leave it at all. I want to fix in 
 my mind just how it looks." 
 
 " Oh, we ll come often again," he re 
 marked, lightly. Then it occurred to him 
 that this assurance contained perhaps an ele- 
 
40 March Hares. 
 
 ment of rashness. "Have you got anything 
 special to do to-day?" he asked, with awk 
 ward abruptness. 
 
 The question puzzled and troubled her. 
 " I was going to celebrate my birthday," she 
 murmured, with a wistful, flickering smile 
 ready to fade into depression. 
 
 " Of course you are ; that s all settled," he 
 responded, making up by the heartiness of his 
 tone for the forgetful stupidity of his query. 
 " What I meant was what were you thinking 
 of doing before before you knew you had a 
 birthday on hand ? " 
 
 Vestalia examined the bottom of her coffee- 
 cup, and poked at it with the spoon. " Me ? 
 Oh, I had several things to do," she made re 
 ply, hesitatingly. " I had to find something 
 to eat, and contrive how to earn some money, 
 and hunt up a new lodging, and see how I was 
 going to feed myself to-morrow, and and 
 other small matters of that sort." 
 
 His comment was prefaced with a kind, 
 sad little laugh. 
 
 " You must go to the old place, and get 
 
March Hares. 41 
 
 your things," he said. " How much do you 
 owe?" 
 
 " I d rather not go back at all." She ven 
 tured to look up at him now. " I don t want 
 ever to lay eyes on that old hag again." 
 
 " But your things. If I sent a commis 
 sionaire, would she give them up? on pay 
 ment of the bill, of course." 
 
 " They re not worth a bus-fare they re 
 really not. You see," she went on with her 
 reluctant confidences, " I had to pawn every 
 thing. These clothes I have on are every rag 
 I have left." 
 
 Mosscrop, regarding her with a sympa 
 thetic gaze, recalled very clearly the gown she 
 used to wear at the Museum. It was a queer 
 colour a sort of rusty greenish-blue ; it was 
 of common stuff, and made without a waist, 
 in some outlandish Grosvenor Gallery fashion 
 novel to his eye. The practical side of him 
 stumbled at this memory. " But if you had 
 to pawn things," he said, "I should have 
 thought these silks you have on would have 
 gone first. That frock you used to wear at 
 
42 March Hares. 
 
 the Museum, for instance you could only 
 have raised a few pence on that whereas 
 these things I m afraid, my young friend, 
 that you haven t a good business head." 
 
 " Oh, better than you think," she retorted, 
 with downcast eyes. Her further words cost 
 her a visible effort. " I thought it all out, and 
 I saw that my only chance was to hang on to 
 these clothes. If people didn t happen to look 
 at my boots, I was all right. Men don t notice 
 such things much you yourself didn t at 
 first. And my skirt would hide them, more 
 or less." 
 
 He looked at her averted face, slowly as 
 similating the meaning of what she said. 
 Then he hastily turned his chair side wise, 
 rang the bell for the waiter, lit a fresh cigar, 
 and blew out the match with a sigh which 
 deepened into an audible groan. 
 
 "What else could I do?" she faltered, 
 with a flushing cheek, and a tear-dimmed 
 stare out of the window. " Nothing but throw 
 myself into the river. And that I won t do. 
 They have no right to insist upon my doing 
 
March Hares. 43 
 
 that. If I was old and horrid, it wouldn t 
 matter so much. But I m young, and I want 
 to live. That s all I ask just the chance to 
 live. And that I won t let them rob me of, if 
 I can help it." 
 
 The waiter, counting out the change, em 
 braced the couple in a series of calm, side 
 long glances. He expressed polite thanks for 
 the shilling pushed aside toward him, and 
 closed the door behind him when he left 
 the room with an emphasized firmness of 
 touch. 
 
 Mosscrop rose. " Come, child," he said, 
 briskly. " Cheer up ! Look up at me let s 
 see a smile on your face. A little brighter, 
 please that s more like it. Now we have 
 wiped the slate clean ! We begin absolutely 
 fresh. Dry your eyes, and we ll make a start. 
 We ve got those celebrated birthdays of ours 
 to look after and it s high time we set 
 about it." 
 
 She stood up, and smilingly obeyed him 
 by dabbing the napkin against her nose and 
 
 brows. She moved across to the mirror above 
 4 
 
44 March Hares. 
 
 the mantel, and smiled again at what she saw. 
 Then she looked down at her boots, and her 
 face took on a radiance, which it kept, as she 
 descended close behind him the narrow stair 
 way. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THERE was a bar at the front of the res 
 tauranta cheerful, domestic bar of the Ital 
 ian sort, with a bright-eyed, smiling, middle- 
 aged woman in charge. She knew Mosscrop, 
 and flashed a kindly glance of southern com 
 radeship at him as he came forward, and 
 stopped and drew his cheque-book from his 
 pocket. There were also two girls in the bar, 
 and they knew him too, and grinned gently at 
 his salute. Vestalia watched them narrowly, 
 and fancied that one of them also winked. 
 
 " I had to stop and get some more money," 
 he explained, when they were in the street to 
 gether. " There isn t another place in these 
 parts where they would change a cheque." 
 
 " I noticed that they seemed to know you," 
 she replied, with reserve. 
 
 45 
 
46 March Ha/res. 
 
 " Dear people that they are ! " he cried. 
 " The sight of them in the morning is always 
 delightful to me. Did you observe it the 
 extraordinary cheerfulness of them all ? You 
 saw how the girls chaffed the ice-man, and 
 how the fellow who brought in the soda-water 
 cases had his joke with the waiters, and how 
 madame clucked and chuckled like a good 
 hen, as if they were all her brood, and every 
 body seemed to like everybody else ? " 
 
 "I didn t get the notion that they were 
 very keen about me" remarked Vestalia. " As 
 a matter of sober fact, they scowled." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Of course they were defer 
 ential to you you represented a sort of digni 
 fied unaccustomedness to them, and they 
 were afraid to beam at you. But bless you, 
 they re as simple and as sweet-hearted as chil 
 dren. They laugh and smile at people just 
 out of pure native amiability. The place is as 
 good as a tonic to me of a morning when I am 
 feeling blue and out of sorts." 
 
 " But you are not this morning," she re 
 minded him. 
 
MarcJi Hares. 47 
 
 For answer he drew her hand through his 
 arm. They fell into step, and moved along at 
 a sauntering gait on their way toward Oxford 
 Street. 
 
 It was mid-August, and there had been a 
 shower overnight. The pavement still showed 
 damp in its crevices, and the air was clear and 
 fresh. A pale hazy sunshine hegan to mark 
 out shadows in the narrow thoroughfares. 
 By-and-by it would be hot and malodorous 
 here, but just now the sense of summer s 
 charm found them out even in Soho. 
 
 She had asked him about himself. The 
 question had risen naturally enough to her 
 lips, and she had propelled it without diffi 
 dence. But when the words actually sounded 
 in her own ears, they frightened her. The 
 inquiry seemed all at once personal to the 
 point of rudeness. The possibility of his re 
 senting her curiosity rose in her mind, and on 
 the instant flared upward into painful cer 
 tainty. 
 
 " Oh, forgive me ; I had no business to ask 
 you ! " she hurriedly added. 
 
48 March Hares. 
 
 He laughed, and patted her arm. " Why 
 on earth shouldn t you ? " 
 
 " I spoke without thinking," she faltered. 
 " I suppose that is, it occurs to me perhaps 
 gentlemen don t like to be questioned what 
 I mean is, you didn t answer, and I was 
 afraid " 
 
 "Afraid nothing!" he reassured her. 
 "You mustn t dream of being stand-offish 
 with me. I shall get vexed with you if 
 you do. My dear little lady, there isn t any 
 thing in the world that you re not as free as 
 air to say to me, or ask me. I only hesitated 
 because" he began, smiling in a rueful, 
 whimsical way down at her "because it s 
 too complicated and sinister a recital to rush 
 lightly into. My name is David Mosscrop, 
 and I am an habitual criminal by profession. 
 That will do to start with." 
 
 Yestalia looked earnestly into his face for 
 some sign that he was jesting. It was a 
 clean-shaven face, cast by nature in a mould 
 of gravity. The eyes had seemed a pleasant 
 grey to her first cursory examination; but 
 
March Ha/res. 49 
 
 now, on closer scrutiny, there might be a 
 hardness as of steel in their colour. The lips 
 and chin, too, had a sharpness of line that 
 could mean unamiable things. And yet, how 
 could she credit his words ? It was true, she 
 recalled, that by all accounts many superior 
 gamblers, burglars, and other evil characters 
 were in private life most kindly persons of 
 notoriously generous impulses. Pictures of 
 the outlaws of romance, from Kobin Hood to 
 Dick Kyder, crowded upon her mental vision. 
 The countenance into which she tremulously 
 stared might have belonged to any of them a 
 little blurred by the effects of recent drink, a 
 trifle stained in its lower parts by the need of 
 a razor, yet adventurous, subtle, courageous ; 
 above all, commanding. Her heart fluttered 
 at the thought of her own temerity in leaning 
 on his arm, and she shot a swift glance for 
 ward toward the big thoroughfare they were 
 nearing, where there would be crowds of 
 people to see her. Then she tightened her 
 hold, and said to herself that she didn t mind 
 a bit. 
 
50 March Hares. 
 
 " You said I might ask anything I liked," 
 she found herself saying. " What is your 
 special line of crime ? " 
 
 " Well, specifically, I don t know just how 
 they would define me. I am not quite a con 
 fidence-man, because nobody ever reposes an 
 atom of confidence in me. Mine is a peculiar 
 sort of case. I cannot be said to deceive any 
 one by my game, and yet, undoubtedly, I 
 come under the general head of impostors. I 
 make my living by obtaining money under 
 false pretences." 
 
 The girl was frankly mystified. This 
 sounded so poor and mean that her instincts 
 fluttered back to the original notion that he 
 was joking. Sure enough, she could see the 
 laughter latent in his eyes, now that she 
 looked again. 
 
 " You re just fooling ! " she protested, and 
 tugged admonishingly upon his arm. "Tell 
 me what it is you do, quick ! " 
 
 "How do you know I do anything?" he 
 demanded. He hugged her arm against his 
 side, to show what great fun it all was. 
 
March Hares. 51 
 
 "Why shouldn t I be a gentleman at large? 
 There are such things, you know." 
 
 She shook her head. " Gentlemen at large 
 don t read hard at the Museum in August. I 
 never understood they were much given to 
 reading at any time of year, for that matter. 
 No, I know you do something. You are in a 
 profession ; I can see that. You are not a 
 doctor ; you are too polite and kind-mannered 
 for that. I thought at first that you were a 
 journalist, but they don t have cheque-books. 
 Oh, tell me, please ! " 
 
 He laughed gaily. " Ten thousand guesses 
 and you d never hit it. My dear lady, I pro 
 fess Ouldees." 
 
 Vestalia pondered the information with 
 gravity for a little, stealing sidelong glances 
 to learn if this was more of his fun. " You 
 can see how ignorant I am," she remarked at 
 last. " You will recognise presently that you 
 are wasting your time with me. What are 
 Culdees? Or is it a thing? I assure you I 
 haven t the remotest notion." 
 
 " It is a secret," he assured her, in tones 
 
52 March Hares. 
 
 which strove to be serious, but revealed a 
 jocose note to her ear. 
 
 She shook his arm gleefully. " As if we 
 could have secrets on our birthday ! " she 
 cried. " Tell me instantly all about Culdees ! 
 I insist." 
 
 " But I don t know anything about them. 
 That is the secret nobody knows anything 
 about them. I draw a salary for devoting 
 three weeks each year to explaining to a class 
 of young men who desire to know nothing 
 whatever about the Culdees, that if they did 
 wish to learn about them they couldn t pos 
 sibly do it." 
 
 " Are there any more jobs like that, that 
 you know of ? " inquired the girl. " It would 
 just suit me." Then she spoke less flippantly. 
 " I m afraid you ve already discovered how 
 shallow and ill-informed I am. You do not 
 think it is worth while to talk seriously with 
 me!" 
 
 He seemed much affected by her rebuke. 
 " My dear lady " he began, in earnest dis 
 claimer. 
 
Mcvrcli Hares. 53 
 
 "No; what I mean is " she interrupted 
 him pleased by his show of contrition, but 
 even more interested in the now of her own 
 ideas, and the sound of her own voice, which 
 had taken on musical intonations, and deli 
 cately-measured cadences since breakfast that 
 were novel to her delighted hearing-s^"what I 
 mean is, men do not have any real intellectual 
 respect for women ; they do not think of them 
 in their deep-down thoughts as their mental 
 equals; they still regard them, as their an 
 cestors did thousands of years ago, as mere 
 toys, playthings, creatures to pat on the cheek 
 and talk pleasant nonsense to, when there is 
 nothing better to do. And the worst of it is 
 that so many women a large majority are 
 contented with this, and aspire to nothing 
 higher, and they set the rules for the rest; 
 and hence young women who have ambitions, 
 and do desire to make themselves the equals 
 of men, and set up high ideals of intellectual 
 life, they they find themselves find them 
 selves " 
 
 "Find themselves being regarded with 
 
54 March Hares. 
 
 much very genuine liking and friendship by 
 those to whom they are good enough to give 
 their company," Mosscrop finished the sen 
 tence for her. He smiled to himself as ho 
 pressed her arm still more closely. The girl 
 was not accustomed to drink, and the Capri 
 and maraschino had gone to her tongue. He 
 was pleasantly conscious of their influences 
 himself, and upon second thought he liked his 
 companion all the more for the innocent fear 
 lessness with which she had followed his ex 
 ample. The charm of the whole experience 
 strengthened its hold upon him. He looked 
 down with tenderness upon her. " Yes, very 
 genuine friendship and gratitude," he reiter 
 ated, with ardour in his low voice. 
 
 She did not conceal the enjoyment she had 
 in both look and tone. " The idea of real 
 companionship is so precious in my eyes," she 
 murmured " a true communion of minds. 
 There is nothing else in life worth living for. 
 Do you think there can be any real friendship 
 without genuine intellectual respect?" 
 
 " Oh, I wouldn t lay too much stress on 
 
March Hares. 55 
 
 that myself," he answered, lightly. "I find 
 that the fellows I really like the most the 
 men that I take the most solid comfort in 
 putting in time with are tremendous duffers 
 from any intellectual point of view, but of 
 course " he found himself hastily adding 
 "that is among men. I have never known 
 anything at all about women friends that is, 
 of what one may honestly call friends. But I 
 am learning fast. I have reached the point of 
 forming an ideal : she must be tall, with her 
 hat just brushing above my collar. She must 
 have the most wonderful pale yellow hair in 
 the world, and the prettiest face, and new 
 French boots and " 
 
 "You don t care in the least what kind 
 of a mind she has," put in Vestalia, dole 
 fully. 
 
 " Ah, you didn t let me finish. She will 
 have a spirit brave and yet tender, a mind 
 broad and capable yet without arrogance, a 
 temperament attuning itself to each passing 
 mood, sunny, shadowed, merry, pensive, ad 
 venturous, timid all as full of sweet little 
 
56 March Hares. 
 
 turns and twists and unexpected things in 
 general as an April day. I don t want her 
 learned: I should hate her to be logical. I 
 like her just as she is : I wouldn t have her 
 changed for the world." 
 
 In details the definition perhaps left some 
 thing to be desired. But its form of presen 
 tation brought a flush of satisfaction to Ves- 
 talia s cheek. She nestled closer still against 
 his shoulder for a dozen paces or so, and when 
 she drew away then, let him feel that it was 
 because they were at Oxford Street, and for 
 no other reason. 
 
 " Oh, the beautiful day ! " was all she said. 
 
 They turned to the right, and sauntered 
 aimlessly along down the broad pavement, 
 pausing now and again to glance over some 
 tradesman s display, then drifting onward 
 again, close together. Before a bookseller s 
 window at a corner they made a more consid 
 erable halt. Mosscrop scanned the rows of 
 titles minutely, talking as he did so. Thus 
 between comments on the volumes they looked 
 at, and idle remarks on subjects which these 
 
March Hares. 57 
 
 suggested, she picked up this further account 
 of her new friend s affairs. 
 
 " I told you I was a Scotchman," he said. 
 " I was the son of a factor, a sort of steward 
 over a biggish estate, and I never did any 
 thing but go to school from the earliest 
 moment I can remember. It is as if I was 
 born in a class-room, and cradled on a black 
 board. It is a terrible land for that ; tuition 
 broods over it like a pestilence. Their idea is 
 to make of each child s brain a sort of intel 
 lectual haggis ; the more different kinds of 
 stuff there are in it, the greater the fame of 
 the teacher and the pride of the parents. I 
 shudder now when I think how much I knew 
 at the age of twelve. As for my eighteenth 
 year, when I took the Strathbogie exhibition, 
 Confucius, John Knox, and Lord Bacon rolled 
 in one would have been frightened of me. 
 My information was appalling. My mother 
 died from sheer excess of astonishment at hav 
 ing given birth to such a prodigy. My father 
 took to drink. The magnificence of my at 
 tainments not only threw him off his balance 
 
58 March Hares. 
 
 it debauched the entire district. It is the 
 law of history, you know, that communi 
 ties and nations progress to a certain point, 
 achieve some crowning deed in a golden age 
 of splendid productiveness, and then wither 
 and go off to seed. Well, my parish, having 
 produced me, reached its climax. Industry 
 flagged, enterprise died down ; the very land 
 ceased to grow as much corn to the acre as 
 formerly. The people could do nothing but 
 congregate at the taverns and discuss with 
 bated breath my meteoric progress across the 
 academic heavens. Oh, I was a most remark 
 able young man ! 
 
 "It happened that there was also a re 
 markable old man in my neighbourhood. He 
 came from nobody in particular, and went 
 away young. People had long since forgotten 
 that there had been such a lad, when one day 
 he returned to us, well along in years, and in 
 famously rich. I don t mean that he had come 
 wrongfully by his money. God knows how 
 he got it ; the story ran that it had something 
 to do with smoked fish. Whatever its source, 
 
March Hares. 59 
 
 his wealth was wanton, preposterous, criminal 
 in its dimensions. He had no kith or kin 
 remaining to him. Of course we knew he 
 would build and endow an educational estab 
 lishment. All rich old Scotchmen do that, as 
 an ordinary matter. They have, reared for us 
 such myriads of brand-new colleges and semi 
 naries on every hillside that I marvel even the 
 rabbits and pheasants can escape learning to 
 spell. There are* logarithms in the very at 
 mosphere. 
 
 " But this old man was not to be put off 
 with a mere academy. He piled up a verita 
 ble castle of instruction, a first-class fortress 
 of learning. And he had an idea of some 
 thing which should be unique among all the 
 schools of the world. It was all his own idea. 
 Even in Scotland it had not occurred to any 
 one else. You must know that in early Scotch 
 ecclesiastical history, say from the eighth to 
 the twelfth centuries, there are occasional 
 mentions of some bounders called Culdees, 
 who seem to have run a little sacerdotal show 
 
 of their own, something between hermits and 
 5 
 
60 March Hares. 
 
 canons-regular it is absolutely impossible 
 now to make out just what they were. But 
 this extraordinary old man was quite clear in 
 his mind about them. He had reasoned it all 
 out for himself. He said that Culdees was, 
 of course, a mere popular corruption of Chal- 
 dees. He loved to argue this with all comers, 
 and he did so, my word for it, he did ! Now 
 nobody in Scotland ever agrees with any view 
 or opinion advanced by any other person, but 
 the art of disagreeing has been reduced, by 
 ages of use, to a delicately-modulated system. 
 Everybody disputed his ridiculous notion of 
 the < Chaldees they would have fought it 
 just as stoutly if it had been a wise one but 
 he was a very rich man, and he had benevo 
 lent intentions toward the district, and so they 
 roared him gently as any sucking dove. 
 They couldn t admit his contention, oh no, 
 but they let him feel that they were thinking 
 about it, that it had made an impression on 
 their minds, that in due time they might see 
 it differently. 
 
 " The upshot was that the old fool estab- 
 
March Hares. 61 
 
 lished a Culdee Chair in the faculty of his 
 new college, and made it worth more money 
 than any other professorship of the lot. The 
 celebrity of my performances at school was 
 fresh then, and reached his ears. He gave 
 the billet to me, and confirmed it to me in 
 his will when he died, a year later and that 
 is all." V 
 
 " And you actually only work three weeks 
 a year ? And get paid a whole year s salary 
 for that?" 
 
 Vestalia regarded him with astonishment, 
 as she put the question. 
 
 They had strolled meanwhile down the 
 great thoroughfare, crossed it, and passed into 
 a narrower lateral by-way. 
 
 " It is hardly even three full weeks work," 
 he replied. " There is nothing to do in the 
 way of fresh discovery. Beeves and Skene 
 and other fellows have gleaned the last spear 
 of straw in the stubble. I do go through the 
 form of getting up some lectures each Au 
 tumn, but it is really such dreadful humbug 
 that I m ashamed to look the students in the 
 
62 March Hares. 
 
 face, let alone my fellow-professors. Fortu 
 nately, most of the latter are clergymen, and 
 that makes it a little easier. They know that 
 they are as big frauds as I am, in their own 
 line of goods, and so we say nothing about it." 
 
 " What struck me," she began, hesitatingly, 
 " you spoke rather what I mean is, you don t 
 appear to be very grateful to the old gentle 
 man who arranged all this for you and to me 
 it seems the most wonderful thing I ever heard 
 of. I should thank his memory on my bended 
 knees every day of my life if / were the Pro 
 fessor of Culdees. I couldn t find it in my 
 heart to poke fun at him; I should think 
 of him and revere him as my benefactor, 
 always ! " 
 
 " Hm m ! " said Mosscrop. " I m not sure 
 I don t wish he d never been born, or had 
 choked on a bone of one of his own damned 
 Finnan haddies, before ever he came back 
 to us ! " 
 
 The ring in his voice, like a surly rattling 
 of chains, brought back to her vividly the 
 scene of his despondency at the restaurant. 
 
March Hcvres. 63 
 
 She made haste to lay her hand upon his 
 arm. 
 
 " Oh, do you see where we are ? " she cried, 
 vivaciously, snatching at the chance of di 
 version. 
 
 Sure enough, a section of the Museum s 
 stately front lay before them, filling to top- 
 heaviness the perspective of the small street. 
 They had wandered instinctively toward this 
 pre-natal rendezvous of their friendship. 
 Their eyes softened now as they looked at the 
 grey, pillared block of masonry stretching 
 across the end of their by-way. 
 
 "It draws us like a magnet," said Moss- 
 crop. " Come, what do you say ? Shall we 
 go in for an hour, and wander about as if we 
 were nice rural people come up to London to 
 see the sights? I should like to myself." 
 
 " The dear old place ! " sighed Vestalia, 
 with mellow tones. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 IT was a long hour that the Museum 
 claimed from them. 
 
 " This is what always attracts me most of 
 all," said Mosscrop upon entering. He turned 
 to the left, and led the way into the little gal 
 lery of the Eoman portrait-busts. " Very often 
 I never go any farther than this. The mod- 
 ernness of these fellows is a perpetual marvel 
 to me. It is as if we met them every day. 
 Look at Caracalla and Septimius Severus; 
 they are exactly like Irish members. And see 
 Pertinax, here ; I know at least ten old farmers 
 about Elgin who might be his own brothers. 
 Observe this man Hadrian. He is the abso 
 lute image of Francis the First. You know 
 the portraits of him at Hampton Court what ? 
 never been there ? Ah, that s a place we will 
 
 64 
 
March Hares. 65 
 
 go to together. There is one picture of Francis 
 there he is very drunk, apparently, and has 
 got hold of the hand of the Duchess of Some- 
 thing-or-other, and she is in her cups, too, and 
 the inane, leering, almost simian happiness of 
 the two oh, it is worth a long journey just to 
 see that one picture." 
 
 "It doesn t sound very inviting," com 
 mented Vestalia. " Tipsy women are repul- t 
 sive, whether they are duchesses or not." 
 
 Mosscrop chuckled. " Oh, but you must 
 make allowances for the period. It was the 
 Eenaissance, the joyful, exuberant, devil-may- 
 care Kenaissance. If once you catch the 
 inner spirit of it, you will feel that it was the 
 most glorious of periods. And Francis the 
 First was the living, breathing type of it. 
 There was a man for you ! He celebrated his 
 birthday all the year round. And in this 
 particular instance, why, I daresay it was 
 the Duchess s birthday too. I should have 
 thought you would take a more lenient view 
 of such a pleasing double anniversary." 
 
 Vestalia looked doubtfully at him. " I 
 
66 March Hares. 
 
 hope you don t mean that / am in my cups, as 
 you call it," she said. 
 
 He laughed her suspicion down. " No, I 
 won t let you hint at such an absurd thing. 
 My dear friend, I must cultivate your sense of 
 humour. The roots exist, but the growth is 
 choked by the weeds of Lambeth or was it 
 Kennington ? We must have them up." 
 
 " But I don t know when you are joking," 
 she protested. " Besides, I always understood 
 that the Scotch were not a joking people." 
 
 " Ah, you confuse two things. It is said of 
 us, with some justice, that we are slow to com 
 prehend the jokes of others. But of the mak 
 ing of jokes by ourselves there is no end. 
 And ah, here is Nero. I love Nero ! " 
 
 " Is that a joke, too ? " 
 
 " Ah, no," he answered, more seriously. 
 " It is in my nature to love all the people 
 whom history has picked out to condemn. If 
 you knew the sort of creatures who wrote the 
 histories the old chronicles and records and 
 so on you would understand my point of 
 view. They were full of all meannesses and 
 
March Hares. 67 
 
 narrow bigotries ; they calumniated everybody 
 they couldn t blackmail. Take the case of 
 Eichard Lionheart and his brother John, in 
 your own English history. The former was 
 a ferocious and turbulent blackguard, who 
 neglected all his duties of kingship without 
 shame, plundered his own subjects by torture 
 and rapine, and was altogether a curse to his 
 own people and everybody else. The mere 
 trick of his having a taste for songs and music 
 saved him. He buttered up the bards, and 
 they fastened him in history as a hero. It is 
 precisely the same thing that is done now by 
 politicians who take pains to make friends 
 with the newspapers. On the other hand, 
 John was a model monarch, diligent, hard 
 working, extraordinarily attentive to his duties, 
 travelling for ever up and down the country 
 to hold courts of justice, and right the wrongs 
 poor people suffered at the hands of the 
 barons and the abbots and other powerful 
 ruffians. It is plain enough that the poor 
 people loved him ; after all these centuries his 
 name continues to be the most popular baptis- 
 
68 March Hares. 
 
 mal name among them. But the bards and 
 monkish chroniclers were in the pay of the 
 barons and abbots, and they paint John for us 
 as the most evil scoundrel in English history. 
 That s the way it has always been done. I 
 should like to have Nero s side of his story. 
 I know he must have been a splendid fel 
 low, to have got the historians so violently 
 against him. I shouldn t be surprised if he 
 was really almost as fine as Kichard the 
 Third." 
 
 " How amusing ! " said Vestalia at this 
 point, and Mosscrop was swift to take the hint. 
 They moved on through the Greek rooms, 
 where the girl had more of a chance. She 
 had known a few of the students who are ac 
 customed on giving days to offer up sacrifices 
 of time and crayons and good white paper in 
 front of the more fashionable statues, and this 
 had provided her with what seemed to her 
 companion an exhaustive familiarity with 
 Hellenic art. This advantage followed and 
 remained with her amid the sombre and lofty 
 fragments of the Mausoleum, and shone about 
 
March Hares. 69 
 
 her when they confronted the frieze of the 
 Parthenon. 
 
 " It is not my subject," he remarked, de 
 lightedly. " This is a Hermes, you say, and 
 that a Winged Goddess of Victory. Ah, and 
 this is a River God. I don t think I ve ever 
 been here before. It is charming to come 
 with you. We supplement each other. Sure 
 enough, I ought to have foreseen that you 
 would know about Greek art. It is just the 
 field that would attract a beautiful young 
 woman. It fits you it belongs to you." 
 
 " Now now ! " she admonished him, hold 
 ing up a finger in playful protest. 
 
 "Oh," he urged, "if I m not to say that 
 you are beautiful, we might as well not have 
 any birthday at all. That is its most elemen 
 tary fact lying at the very foundation of every 
 thing. To ignore it would be like trying to 
 celebrate the Fifth of November without a 
 guy." 
 
 Again she shot a glance of dubiety at him. 
 " I don t know in the least how to take that," 
 she confessed, with a quiver on her lip. 
 
70 March Hares. 
 
 He laughed outright at this, and gaily 
 patted her on the shoulder. " This unnatural 
 Attic levity of mine is all the fault of the 
 frieze. I m a cat in a strange garret here. 
 Hasten with me to the Assyrian rooms, if you 
 want to see the utmost height of solemnity it 
 is given to mortals to attain." 
 
 He was not quite as good as his word, 
 when they began loitering along before the 
 carved tablets from Nineveh and Khorsabad. 
 Instruction he could not help piling upon his 
 companion, for this was Ms subject, but he 
 found himself seasoning it with all sorts of 
 sprightly commentaries on the serious text. 
 Of grave and sportive alike he had so much to 
 say that Vestalia took his arm, and leant upon 
 it as they made their slow progress through 
 the long corridors. The contact was exhilarat 
 ing to him. He could not be sure that she 
 was assimilating any large proportion of his 
 discourse, but her pretence of interest at least 
 was very pretty, and the touch of her arm in 
 his was full of inspiration to his tongue. 
 
 Down in the basement, or crypt, he stood 
 
March Hares. 71 
 
 before the lions of Assur-Banipal, and talked 
 at length. She said she had read Byron s 
 " Sardanapalus," and he told her how those 
 detestable linguists, the Greeks, had altered 
 the name, and how the Assyrian legends of a 
 great warrior and sovereign had become twist 
 ed in the Hellenic after-version to depict a 
 sublimation of debauched effeminacy and lux 
 ury run mad. She listened with her shoulder 
 against his but now he had other auditors 
 as well. 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," the urgent and anxious 
 voice of a stranger said close behind him, 
 "but you seem to be extraordinarily well 
 posted indeed on these sculptures here. I 
 hope you will not object to my daughter 
 and me standing where we can hear your 
 remarks." 
 
 Mosscrop turned, and saw before him an 
 elderly man, with a mild expression, and hair 
 and beard of extreme whiteness. He was 
 soberly attired, and carried in his hand a 
 broad-brimmed hat of woven white straw. 
 He bowed courteously, and indicated by a 
 
72 March Ha/res. 
 
 gentle gesture the young lady standing at 
 his side. 
 
 " I should delight, sir, to have my daughter 
 be privileged to profit by your remarks," he 
 repeated, and bowed again. 
 
 The daughter was a dark, well-rounded 
 girl, dressed with much elegance. Her face 
 was strikingly Oriental in type, with coal-black 
 tresses drawn low over the temples, and a skin 
 of a uniform ivory hue. She said nothing, 
 but looked at Vestalia s hair. 
 
 Mosscrop spoke somewhat abruptly. " You 
 are certainly welcome, but it happens that I 
 have finished my remarks, as you call them." 
 
 "That is too bad," replied the stranger, 
 with a sigh of resignation. "I overheard 
 enough to convince me that they were first- 
 rate. It is our misfortune, sir, mine and my 
 daughter s, to have arrived too late. I pre 
 sume, sir, that you have given special attention 
 to this branch of study ? " 
 
 The Professor of Culdees nodded briefly. 
 
 " And may I take the liberty of inquiring, 
 sir," the old man persisted, "whether you 
 
Ma/rch Ha/res. 73 
 
 are professionally engaged in transmitting to 
 others the knowledge which you have thus 
 acquired ? " 
 
 A stormy grin began twitching at the cor 
 ners of Mosscrop s mouth. He nodded again. 
 
 " My purpose in putting the question is 
 not one of idle curiosity, sir," the other went 
 on. " My life-long desire to visit Europe, and 
 behold its venerable ruins and its remarkable 
 accumulations of objects of historical and 
 artistic interest, has attained fulfilment at a 
 period, unfortunately, when the burden of my 
 years, while not incapacitating me from the 
 enjoyments of the mind, renders me less ca 
 pable of searching out new information than 
 I should once have been. It also, I see only 
 too clearly, unfits me to act as a guide and 
 interpreter, amid these treasures of the storied 
 past, to a young mind so much fresher and 
 more eager than my own. I recognise this, 
 sir, frankly, and I should be glad to discuss 
 some possible arrangement, with the proper 
 persons, by which my deficiencies might be 
 supplied in this connection." 
 
74 March Hares. 
 
 The elaborate and deferential courtesy 
 with which the old gentleman spoke made a 
 curt answer impossible. Mosscrop looked 
 from father to daughter with a puzzled smile. 
 
 " You are Americans, I take it ? " 
 
 " We are from Paris, sir." He made haste 
 to add, "From Paris, Kentucky. I obtrude 
 the explanation, because I find that among 
 foreigners there is frequently a tendency to 
 confuse our city with the celebrated me 
 tropolis on the Continent, which bears the 
 same name, but is a place of an entirely 
 different character. To a scholar like your 
 self, however, I might have realised that such 
 an error would be impossible. I ask your 
 pardon, sir." 
 
 " Oh, don t mention it," replied Mosscrop, 
 lightly. He could not recall ever having 
 heard of such a place before, and for a 
 moment was tempted to say so. But there 
 was an effect of sweet simplicity in the old 
 man s face and manner which restrained his 
 tongue. " Well," he said instead, " what is it 
 that you wish? I am not sure that I have 
 
March Haves. 75 
 
 entirely caught your idea. Do you want some 
 one to go round with you and show you 
 things?" 
 
 "Not in the ordinary meaning which 
 would attach to that description," the other 
 answered. " We do not require to have things 
 shown to us in the literal sense of the word, 
 but I had thought that if we were attended 
 in our inspection of the various objects of 
 interest for which Europe is justly famous, 
 by some person of erudition and also of an 
 exceptional style of delivery, the experience 
 would be of much greater practical value to 
 my daughter. Of course, sir, I am aware that 
 professional assistance of this high character 
 is not to be obtained without commensurate 
 compensation, but that is a consideration 
 which presents no obstacles to my mind." 
 
 David felt Vestalia s hand trembling upon 
 his arm. 
 
 " I can see," he said, more amiably, " that 
 such a relation might be extremely welcome 
 to many deserving and very capable men. 
 But at the moment I regret to say I can 
 
76 March Hares. 
 
 think of none to recommend to you. Besides, 
 you don t know me from Adam; so how 
 could I give a character to any one else ? " 
 
 " I beg your pardon sir," rejoined the old 
 gentleman, "but we took the liberty of fol 
 lowing close behind you all through the last 
 two long hallways. You were apparently so 
 engrossed with your subject that our prox 
 imity escaped your attention, but we have 
 listened with the deepest interest, and I may 
 say improvement as well, to everything which 
 has fallen from your lips. I have thus, sir, 
 been able to form an estimate of your individ 
 ual characteristics not less than of your ac 
 quirements. I may add, sir, that I am espe 
 cially impressed by the fact that my daughter, 
 from first to last, displayed an exceptional 
 eagerness to miss nothing of your discourse. 
 As the principal object of my visit to Europe, 
 as, indeed, of my whole existence, is to 
 provide the highest forms of intellectual 
 pleasure and edification for my daughter, I 
 cannot close my eyes to the discovery that 
 your remarks upon Assyrian history produced 
 
March Hares. 77 
 
 a much more profound impression upon her 
 young mind than anything which it has been 
 within the scope of my own diminishing 
 powers to produce for her consideration. I 
 have rarely seen her so absorbed, even at our 
 best lectures." 
 
 David stifled a yawn, and made a little 
 bow in which, as he turned, he strove to 
 include the young American lady whose 
 culture was the object of so much solicitude. 
 His movement surprised upon her coun 
 tenance an expression of scornful weariness, 
 which seemed to render the whole face alert 
 and luminous with feeling. At sight of his 
 eyes, her sultana-like features composed them 
 selves again to an almost stolid tranquillity. 
 She regarded him with indolence for an 
 instant, then looked calmly away at things in 
 general. There was to be read in that tran 
 sient glance a challenge which stirred his blood. 
 
 " Well, what you say is, beyond doubt, 
 flattering," he remarked to the father, in a 
 slightly altered voice. "It might be that 
 that I could find some one for you." 
 
78 Mwch Hares. 
 
 The old gentleman bowed ceremoniously. 
 " Permit me to say, sir, that I have found the 
 some one a person possessing unique quali 
 fications for the position which I have out 
 lined. I need nothing now but the power to 
 influence his decision in a manner favourable 
 to my aspirations." He turned to Vestalia. 
 "I am emboldened, madame, to crave your 
 assistance in reconciling your husband to my 
 project." 
 
 Vestalia s hand fluttered sharply on 
 David s arm, and she parted her lips to 
 speak. At the moment, there was audible 
 a derisive sniff from the daughter. 
 
 " It is my rule never to interfere," Vestalia 
 answered with sudden decision, and in a 
 coldly distinct voice. "He is quite capable 
 of settling such matters for himself." She 
 looked from father to daughter and back with 
 an impressive eye. 
 
 Mosscrop laughed uneasily. "Well I m 
 afraid you must take it that this is settled I 
 scarcely see my way to avail myself of your 
 very complimentary offer." 
 
March Hwres. 79 
 
 The American caught the note of hesita 
 tion in his voice. " Perhaps you will turn it 
 over in your mind," he said, fumbling with a 
 hand in his inner breast-pocket. " Allow me, 
 sir, to hand you my card. Adele, you have a 
 pencil? Thank you. I will inscribe upon it 
 the name of the hotel at which we are 
 residing." 
 
 Mosscrop took the card, glanced at it, 
 and nodded. "In the extremely improb 
 able event of my changing my mind, I will 
 let you know," he said. " Good day." 
 
 As they were parting, the father seemed to 
 read in the daughter s eye that he was forget 
 ting something. He hesitated for a brief 
 space; then his kindly face brightened. 
 " Excuse me, sir," he observed, " but I have 
 neglected to inform myself as to your identity 
 if I may presume to that extent." 
 
 David felt vainly in his pocket. "I 
 haven t a card with me. My name is David 
 Mosscrop. The Barbary Club will find me. 
 I will write it for you." 
 
 The old man scrutinized the scrawl in his 
 
80 March Hares. 
 
 note-book, and then, after more bows, led his 
 daughter away. She walked after him in a 
 proudly indifferent fashion, with her head in 
 the air, and something almost like a swagger 
 in the movements of her form. 
 
 Mosscrop watched them with a ruminating 
 eye till they had left the room. Then he 
 glanced at the card, and gave a little laugh. 
 "Mr. Laban Skinner, Paris, Kentucky. 
 Savoy Hotel," he read aloud. 
 
 " Skinner ? Is their name Skinner ? " 
 demanded Vestalia with eagerness. 
 
 "None other. Why? It s a good name 
 for them, isn t it?" 
 
 " Oh yes good enough," the girl replied, 
 speaking now with exaggerated noncha 
 lance. 
 
 " Quaint people these Americans are ! " 
 commented Mosscrop. " If I were to put 
 that old chap s speeches down literally in a 
 book nobody would credit them. Fancy the 
 fate of a young woman condemned to be 
 dragged around the globe chained to a 
 preposterous old phonograph like that! It 
 
Mar cli Hares. 81 
 
 really wrings one s heart to think of it. 
 Mighty good-looking girl too." 
 
 Vestalia withdrew her arm. "Perhaps," 
 she said, icily, " if you were to make haste you 
 might overtake them. I must insist on your 
 not allowing me to detain you, if you are so 
 interested. I shall do quite well by myself." 
 
 Mosscrop gathered her meaning slowly, 
 after a grave scrutiny of her flushed and 
 perturbed face. When it came to him, he 
 shouted his merriment. A glance around the 
 chamber showed him that they were alone 
 with the lions and carved effigies of Sardanapa- 
 lus. He thrust an arm about Vestalia s waist, 
 and gave it a boisterous though fleeting squeeze. 
 
 "Why, you dear little canary-bird of a 
 creature, do you suppose I ve been forgetting 
 you ? " he cried. " Haven t I been thinking 
 every minute of the touch of your arm in 
 mine ? Haven t I been cursing that old wind 
 bag ceaselessly because he was interrupting 
 our birthday ? Look up at me ! Truly now, 
 aren t you ashamed ? " 
 
 She suffered him to raise her face, his 
 
82 March Hares. 
 
 finger under her chin, and she made a brave 
 effort to smile back at the glance he bent 
 upon her. " If it is truly oh, ever so truly 
 still our birthday the same as it was before," 
 she made wistful answer. 
 
 " It is a hundred times more our birthday 
 than ever ! " he protested stoutly. 
 
 An elderly keeper in uniform shuffled his 
 way into the room. 
 
 " Well then," whispered Vestalia, " let s go 
 somewhere else to celebrate the rest of it. All 
 these stone animals and images and mummies 
 I don t feel as if they brought me luck on 
 my birthday." 
 
 So they wandered forth into the sunshine 
 again, and Mosscrop confessed himself glad 
 of the change. Where should they go ? He 
 found himself empty of suggestion. Respon 
 sibility for the decorous entertainment of a 
 young lady in the daytime was a novel experi 
 ence, and he said so. 
 
 " Oh, let us just stroll about," she urged. 
 " I love these old Bloomsbury Squares. They 
 are so stupid." 
 
March Hares. 83 
 
 Luncheon hour came, and presented itself 
 to Mosscrop as a welcome pretext to take 
 a hansom. A certain formless apprehension 
 of meeting some one he knew though why 
 this should be dreaded he could not for the 
 life of him have told had alloyed the 
 pleasure of his ramble. They drove to 
 another restaurant, this time a larger place 
 in a more pretentious quarter and though 
 they had a little table to themselves, the 
 room was full of others. 
 
 David knew about luncheons as well as 
 breakfasts. He gave the waiter very minute 
 instructions about having a grouse split and 
 grilled, and he ran his eye over the list of 
 champagnes with the confident discrimination 
 of an expert. " I will give that number 34A 
 one more trial," he said to the butler. " Cool 
 it to 48, and we will see what it is like then." 
 
 Vestalia noted that he spoke to waiters 
 in a soft, grave tone, with shades of gentle 
 melancholy and of affectionate authority 
 subtly blended in it, which he used to no one 
 else. He produced the impression upon her 
 
84 March Hares. 
 
 of being at his very best at a table. She 
 particularly liked him when he took the 
 cork from the butler, and tenderly pinched 
 with thumb and finger as he scrutinised it, 
 and then smiled courteous approbation to the 
 servant. This person wore a chain round his 
 neck, and the bottle he brought was swathed 
 in starched napery and the girl observed 
 both with the interest that attaches to nov 
 elty. But it was even more interesting to see 
 how perfectly her companion presided over 
 everything. 
 
 She herself was much less at ease. David 
 noticed that she kept her hands in her lap 
 under the table as much as possible during 
 the meal, and that there was an air of con 
 straint in her general deportment which had 
 been lacking at breakfast. He put it down 
 to her shyness among so many busy people 
 in the thronged apartment, and talked briskly 
 at intervals to re-assure her. Especially he 
 charged himself with the duty of keeping her 
 glass filled, and he was almost peremptory in 
 his tone with her about the grouse. She ate 
 
Ma/rcli Hares. 85 
 
 her piece to the end with meek resolution 
 after that. 
 
 When they were again in the open, he 
 rallied her upon the diffidence she had dis 
 played. " You mustn t mind a lot of fellows 
 being about," he said in a paternal way. 
 "They go where there is the best kitchen, 
 and it s the part of wisdom to go there too ; 
 besides, they re only too pleased to see a pretty 
 face among them. Didn t you feel how proud 
 I was of you, all the while ? " 
 
 Outside she had quite regained her spirits 
 and assurance. She smiled with frank gaiety 
 at him. " I ll tell you how to be prouder 
 still," she said. " I know you won t mind my 
 saying so but I ought really to have some 
 gloves." 
 
 " I m a brute not to have thought of it," 
 Mosscrop reproached himself. " Here s a 
 place, just at hand. I can come in, this time, 
 I suppose, without question." 
 
 She held up a finger at him, in mock mo 
 nition. Then, as they turned to enter the 
 shop, she whispered : " I saw that American 
 
86 March Hares. 
 
 girl looking with all her eyes at my bare 
 hands." 
 
 " Oh, pshaw lots of women don t wear 
 gloves. You mustn t be so suspicious of 
 everybody that looks your way. A hundred 
 to one they re thinking about themselves all 
 the time." 
 
 "Ah, but you don t know women," she 
 halted midway in the entrance to murmur. 
 " I could read it in her eyes that she d noticed 
 I had no ring." 
 
 " Well, and there too," protested Mosscrop, 
 " you exaggerate the importance of the thing. 
 Lots of women don t wear rings, either that 
 is, on ordinary occasions." 
 
 She danced her eyes at him in merriment. 
 " Perhaps you didn t notice that I was sup 
 posed to be a married lady," she said, and then 
 turned abruptly to the counter. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 " AH me ! Even the longest and happiest 
 day must have an ending ! " sighed Vestalia. 
 
 " It is not a new thought," replied David. 
 " But I have never before comprehended how 
 unwelcome it could make itself." 
 
 They spoke to each other in soft, regret 
 ful, musing tones, through the still darkness 
 of the clouded summer night. They had been 
 the last to quit the Greenwich boat, on its last 
 return to its City moorings, and they halted 
 for a moment on the floating pier after the 
 others had gone the gentle undulation of the 
 tide beneath their feet, their gaze dwelling 
 upon the black silent expanse of the river. 
 
 In retrospect, the day had been very long 
 indeed, and altogether happy. Its structure 
 of delight had been reared on the simplest and 
 
 87 
 
88 March Hares. 
 
 most innocent of foundations. They had gone 
 first to the Zoological Garden, which fortu 
 itously suggested itself to Mosscrop s mental 
 search as an unexceptional resource. Nor did 
 inspiration fail him there, for when the great 
 man-eating cats had been fed, and the, foul 
 hyenas next door had yelped themselves 
 hoarse, and the charms of natural history had 
 otherwise begun to wane, the notable thought 
 of the fish dinner at Greenwich rose with 
 splendid opportuneness in his mind. 
 
 It was after this feast, while the two 
 strolled beneath the big trees, that twilight 
 found them out. The shadows, as they deep 
 ened among the distant shipping, and stole 
 downward to dim the reflected whiteness of 
 the eastern sky beyond the river, brought rev 
 erie in their train. Mosscrop found a bitter 
 taste in his cigar, and lit another impatiently. 
 The girl leant upon his arm with a new sug 
 gestion of dependence. They moved down to 
 the wharf by tacit consent, before the ap 
 pointed time, and, taking their seat on a bench 
 at the end, looked absently at the water with 
 
Mwch Hares. 89 
 
 but an occasional word. Evening closed in 
 about them as they sat thus. Then the boat 
 came, and they went on board, and established 
 themselves in relative seclusion at the stern, 
 still in almost unbroken silence. 
 
 And now the completed journey lay behind 
 them as well. They stood close together, 
 swaying with the slight motion of the raft 
 upon the lapping waters, and ruminating 
 sadly upon the fact that their day was done. 
 
 " We finish as we began with the river," 
 murmured Vestalia. She trembled to his 
 touch as she spoke. 
 
 " Do you remember Henley s lines," said 
 David, meditatively 
 
 " The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), 
 A sense of space and water, and thereby 
 A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky, 
 And look, look ! a tangle of silvery gleams, 
 And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, 
 His dreams of a dead past that cannot die. " 
 
 " No, it cannot die," said Vestalia, slowly. 
 " But its burial time is close at hand, none the 
 less. Ah, the beautiful day ! " 
 
90 March Hares. 
 
 They turned and paced up the ascent, and 
 then through obscure, deserted thoroughfares 
 made their way at length to the open space 
 about St. Paul s. The clouds had parted, and 
 the great dome loomed in immensity against a 
 straggling light from the sky. They paused 
 to look at it, and while they stood the fleecy 
 mists far overhead cleared away, and the 
 round moon s full radiance flooded the pros 
 pect. Mosscrop gazed up at the flaring satel 
 lite, then down at his companion. A new 
 thought sparkled in his eyes. 
 
 " And ah, the beautiful to-morrow, too ! " 
 he said, confidently. " My good child, do you 
 conceive that the world comes to an end when 
 the sun goes down ? Am I less your friend by 
 moonlight than I was in the day-time ? Are 
 we changed by the fact that the lamps are 
 lit?" 
 
 Vestalia turned her face into the shadow, 
 and said nothing. Mosscrop felt her deep 
 breathing against his arm. 
 
 " You have been very dutiful and obedient 
 all day," he began, as they moved along to- 
 
March Hares. 91 
 
 ward Ludgate Hill. " I repudiate the sugges 
 tion that you are capable of mutiny now. Let 
 us speak plainly, dear little lady. How can you 
 suppose that, having watched over you all day 
 and gladly made myself responsible for your 
 well-being since before breakfast, I could wash 
 my hands of you now, and calmly say good 
 bye at a street corner ? " 
 
 " You have been very very kind," faltered 
 Vestalia. 
 
 "And for that reason it follows that I 
 should be very callous and brutal now, does 
 it ? I don t see the logic myself." 
 
 " I haven t meant that at all," she inter 
 posed in a low voice. She bent her head so 
 that Mosscrop could not see her face. 
 
 " We will develop and analyze your mean 
 ings at our leisure," he said, with a note of 
 authority. " It is more important for the mo 
 ment to make clear what / mean. The facts 
 are simplicity itself. You have no home, no 
 belongings, no place to sleep, no knowledge 
 of where the morning s breakfast is to come 
 from. You are a beautiful girl, and it is true 
 
92 March Hares. 
 
 our civilisation is so arranged that beautiful 
 girls rarely starve to death. I do not recall 
 having heard of a single instance, for that 
 matter. But your position makes an impera 
 tive demand for assistance from somebody. 
 It cried aloud for help at an early hour this 
 morning. It happened that the appeal was 
 heard and answered. If we were superstitious, 
 we should call it providential." 
 
 " Oh, but I do ! " protested the girl. 
 
 " Very well, then, we are superstitious, and 
 it was providential. These things are gov 
 erned, I am informed, by immutable laws. 
 Ergo, it is still providential. Who are we, 
 that we should fly in the face of Providence ? 
 I adjure you to put away such impious 
 thoughts ! " 
 
 A little sobbing catch of the breath was 
 her only answer. He divined that there were 
 tears in her eyes, and slowed his pace as they 
 walked along in the gloom of the deserted 
 descent. At the bottom, under the bridge, 
 the sparkling lights of Fleet Street recalled 
 to him that shops were still open. 
 
Mcvrcli Hwres. 93 
 
 " I mentioned that you had no belongings," 
 he resumed, after they had traversed the Cir 
 cus in silence. "There are little odds and 
 ends of things that you want the necessities 
 of the toilet, et cetera. Here is a shop ; take 
 this sovereign and get the bits of haberdash 
 ery that occur to you such as a lady would 
 put in her dressing-bag if she were to stop 
 overnight in the country. I will go across the 
 way and get the bag itself, and come back for 
 you." 
 
 He performed his part of the enterprise 
 with an almost childlike delight. Ladies 
 dressing-bags cost more than he had imag 
 ined, but the shopman said he would take a 
 cheque. David found something to his mind 
 a dainty yet capacious trifle, with pretty sil 
 ver flasks ranged on one side, and a surpris 
 ingly comprehensive collection of small imple 
 ments scissors, curling-tongs, a manicure set, 
 and other tools the significance of which he 
 could not even guess packed about in quaint 
 little pockets and crevices. The outer leather 
 was rich to the eye and delicate to the touch. 
 
94 March Hares. 
 
 A few doors away shone the symbolical 
 red and blue lights of a chemist. Hurrying 
 thither, he flung himself eagerly into the task 
 of buying fluids to fill those imposing flasks. 
 The shopman advised him, at first coldly, then 
 with rising enthusiasm. The best perfumes 
 and vinaigres were expensive, certainly, but 
 then they were the best, and would vouch for 
 themselves to any cultivated feminine mind. 
 There were recondite soaps, and cosmetics to 
 thrill any gentle heart. And in the matter of 
 brushes here were some silver-backed, and 
 the comb also to match the flasks. So the 
 list was filled out, and David wrote another 
 cheque with a proud smile. 
 
 Vestalia stood at the door of the shop, 
 waiting with a small paper parcel in her 
 hands. Mosscrop was disappointed at its size, 
 and thrust it into the bag with a disdainful 
 shove. They strolled on up the street, and he 
 looked into every lighted window with a hope 
 ful eye. The display of mere masculine or 
 neutral wares affronted him. The shopping 
 fantasy possessed his soul. 
 
March Hares. 95 
 
 "But you really ought to have them. 
 You re not behaving nicely to me in continu 
 ally saying * no, " he urged more than once, 
 as the pressure of his companion s arm drew 
 him away from the tempting windows. She 
 did consent at last to the purchase of some 
 slippers and he saw to it that they were the 
 choicest that the shelves afforded soft, luxu 
 rious little things, with satin linings and 
 buckles of mother-of-pearl. When these went 
 into the bag, it was filled. He recognised the 
 fact with a regretful sigh. 
 
 The creaking old clock-machinery in the 
 belfry of St. Clement Danes set itself in mo 
 tion as they passed, and the ancient chimes 
 clanged out the full hour. It was nine o clock. 
 
 " I had some thought of a music-hall," he 
 remarked. " But we ve had a pretty full day 
 and a long day, too. I know you must be 
 tired." 
 
 " Perhaps just a little," she answered, 
 softly. 
 
 " Then we ll go home," he said, with de 
 cision. 
 
96 March Hares. 
 
 It was not a part of London which Vestalia 
 knew very well. Mosscrop led her along the 
 Strand for a little way, then crossed and went 
 up a side street, then turned into a still nar 
 rower by-way. The ragged loungers on the 
 walk had an evil aspect, and almost every 
 building seemed to be a public-house. At the 
 last corner a piano-organ of unusual volume 
 shook the air with deafening mechanical din. 
 The man turned the crank so fast, and the 
 dancing children in the radiance from the 
 open-doored tavern on the pavement raised 
 such a racket of their own, that she could 
 barely distinguish the movement of the vulgar 
 tune. On the borders of darkness beyond 
 were discernible still other children, playing 
 noisily about at the base of groups of fat 
 women in fog-coloured shawls and white 
 aprons. Over all the tumult and squalid clus 
 terings of humanity there brooded the acrid, 
 musty stench of an antique mid-London slum. 
 
 The two turned under an archway, and as 
 by magic the atmosphere freshened and the 
 hubbub ceased. A small square of venerable 
 
March Hares. 97 
 
 buildings disclosed itself vaguely in the uncer 
 tain light from the sky. Here and there a 
 lamp behind some curtained window made a 
 dim break in the obscurity. The faint sweet 
 moaning of a cello rose from somewhere at 
 the farther end of the space. A stout man 
 with a gold band upon his tall hat revealed 
 himself for a noiseless moment, lifted his fin 
 ger in salute to Mosscrop, and melted away 
 again into the shadows. Whether they had 
 passed him, or he them, Yestalia could hardly 
 tell. It was all very strange and a little 
 sombre. A streak of moonlight glanced down 
 between shifting clouds, and fell across the 
 fronts of the houses opposite. There were 
 pale grey tablets of ornamentation set into 
 their mass of dusky brickwork, which looked 
 like tombstones. The girl trembled, and hung 
 back upon Mosscrop s arm as if to halt. 
 
 Suddenly, after a brief preliminary scale 
 of piano notes, a woman s clear, practised 
 voice fell upon the silence in a song a 
 grave and simple melody full of tenderness. 
 They paused to listen for an instant, and 
 
98 March Hares. 
 
 Vestalia traced the sound to an illuminated 
 upper floor at the end of the square. 
 
 " Then people live here ! " she said, with 
 hesitating re-assurance in her voice. 
 
 " Bless you, yes," replied David. " We 
 live here, among others." 
 
 He entered the open doorway of the house 
 next to that before which they had paused. 
 The hall was lighted by a single gas-jet at the 
 rear, which only deepened the darkness of the 
 narrow staircase up which he led the way. It 
 was a very ancient and ricketty staircase, with 
 steps worn into queer bumps and hollows by- 
 generations of feet. There was not room for 
 her to walk abreast of her guide. He strode 
 ahead, striking matches on the wall as he 
 went. She followed him timorously up the 
 winding ascent, noting the rows of names 
 painted on the big closed doors of each land 
 ing they passed. 
 
 Mosscrop stopped only when the stairs 
 came to an end. He put down the bag, and 
 she heard the rattle of a key in a lock. Then 
 a match was struck, and a sudden flare of 
 
March Hares. 99 
 
 gas lit up the small square hall-way they 
 stood in. 
 
 As he pushed open a door to the left, he 
 turned with a smiling face towards his com 
 panion. He discovered her drawn back at 
 the edge of the stairs, her hands pressed 
 against her bosom. Her eyes were fastened 
 on him with a troubled look, and the sound of 
 her breathing, quick and laboured, reached 
 his ears. 
 
 " These stairs are the very deuce when 
 you re not used to them," he said, pleasantly. 
 " I oughtn t to have rushed you up them at 
 such a pace." 
 
 " That doesn t matter," panted the girl. 
 " It is I who oughtn t to have come up at *" 
 all." 
 
 David s smile deepened and mellowed as 
 he regarded her. " My dear Vestalia," he be 
 gan, laying a slight and kindly stress upon 
 this first use of her name, " you speak hastily. 
 You must offer no further remarks until you 
 have quite recovered your breath. I will em 
 ploy the interval by calling your attention to 
 
100 March Hares. 
 
 the inscription on the closed door, there, op 
 posite to mine. You will observe that it is 
 * Mr. Linkhaw. Have you ever heard it be 
 fore ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " And are you conscious of no novel emo 
 tions at hearing it now ? Does not the sight 
 of those painted letters cause you to thrill 
 with strange and mysterious sensations? No? 
 "What becomes then of the boasted intuition 
 of the feminine mind ? " 
 
 There seemed to be a jest hidden some 
 where in all this, and she smiled plaintively, 
 dubiously. She took her hand from her 
 breast, to show that her breathing was calmer. 
 
 " You really assure me," he went on, with 
 a twinkling eye, " that the spectacle of this 
 particular sported-oak does not especially stir 
 your pulses, and peculiarly impress your im 
 agination ? " 
 
 "Why should it?" 
 
 " Why indeed ! Ah, young woman, your 
 sex gets much credit that it ill deserves. A 
 mere man could do no worse in the matter of 
 
Rwres. 101 
 
 instinct. My dear friend, behind that door 
 lies your present abode. That name Link- 
 haw is the sign of your home and you 
 looked at them both and never guessed 
 it!" 
 
 Vestalia did not so much as glance at the 
 door in question, but she gazed with much in- 
 tentness at Mosscrop. " I don t understand 
 what it is all about ? " she said, slowly. 
 
 He had stepped inside his own door, 
 lighted the gas and pulled down the blinds. 
 He returned, and stretched out his hand to 
 take hers. " Do me the honour to come in 
 and sit down," he said, holding up her gloved 
 fingers, and bowing over them. " You are my 
 nearest neighbour, and yet you have never 
 called upon me." 
 
 She followed him into his sitting-room, 
 and took the easy chair he wheeled out toward 
 the table for her. It was a larger apartment 
 than the narrow staircase and cramped land 
 ing had promised. The ceiling was low and 
 dreadfully smoky, it was true, and the appoint 
 ments and furniture were old-fashioned. But 
 
102 March Hwres. 
 
 the whole effect, if somewhat meagre and un 
 adorned, was comfortable and honest. 
 
 " Put off your hat and gloves, and look as 
 if you felt at home," urged David. " You ve 
 but a step to go." 
 
 He busied himself meanwhile in bringing 
 from a recess of the sideboard two tumblers, a 
 heavy decanter filled with an amber liquid, 
 and a big bottle of soda water. 
 
 "You ll join me in some whisky and 
 soda?" he asked pleasantly, fumbling with 
 the wire. 
 
 " Oh mercy, no ! " said Vestalia. " Eeally 
 I mustn t touch anything more. I see now 
 that I have been drinking far too much, all 
 day long." 
 
 " Tut ! " he answered. " How could there 
 be too much on a birthday? And now I 
 think of it, there were two of them ! I pledge 
 my word, it has been a singularly dry occasion 
 for a double birthday. We must hasten to 
 make good the deficiency." 
 
 Vestalia had drawn off her gloves. She 
 rose now, and standing before the mantel-mir- 
 
March Hares. 103 
 
 ror, lifted her hat from her head. Then she 
 turned and, half-playfully, half in pleading, 
 shook her bright curls at him. " I thought it 
 was going to be different hereafter," she said, 
 softly. 
 
 He looked inquiry for an instant, then 
 nodded comprehension. " Ay," he said, with 
 gravity, " you re a wise virgin. This one glass 
 shall last me the night. You are very wel 
 come here, my lady ! " 
 
 She smiled at the lifted tumbler, over 
 which his eyes regarded her. " What lots of 
 books you have!" she exclaimed, a moment 
 later, and began an inspection of the room, 
 lingering in turn before each of the old prints 
 on the dingy walls, and examining the rows of 
 volumes in detail. He loitered beside her for 
 a little, passing comments on what seemed to 
 interest her. Then he disappeared in an ad 
 joining room, and returned presently in a loose 
 velveteen jacket and slippers. He took the 
 famous dressing-bag from the table. 
 
 "Your visit isn t at all over yet," he re 
 marked ; " but I am consumed with a desire to 
 
104 March Hares. 
 
 see you sitting opposite me, here, in those wee 
 soft slippers of yours. It will make a sweet 
 picture for me to carry into dreamland. And 
 so first I will show you your new home." 
 
 She followed him out into the hall, and 
 then through the doors he unlocked into the 
 apartments of the mysterious " Mr. Linkhaw." 
 The first room disclosed itself, when the gas 
 was lit, to be similar to David s in size, but all 
 else was strangely different. The Turkey red 
 carpet was brilliant, almost garish, in its new 
 ness, and the ceiling was covered with a bright 
 pink paper. All round three sides were broad 
 divans, heaped with soft red cushions and 
 downy pillows. No chairs were to be seen. 
 More singular still, the walls were crowded 
 with the stuffed heads of animals bisons, 
 bears, moose, elks, antelopes, wolves, and end 
 less varieties of deer. Vestalia gazed at these 
 trophies of the chase with surprise. 
 
 " Linkhaw is a mighty hunter before the 
 Lord," Mosscrop explained. " Yon is the bed 
 room. It is fairly carpeted with the skins of 
 tigers, lions, leopards, and such like beasts. If 
 
March Hares. 105 
 
 you dream of jungles and Noah s ark to-night, 
 and don t like it, we ll throw them all out in 
 the morning." 
 
 " But what am I doing in this Mr. Link- 
 haw s rooms ? " inquired the girl. " I don t 
 understand it at all. Suppose he should 
 come?" 
 
 David laughed lightly. "It s a far cry 
 from Uganda to Dunstan s Inn. Or maybe 
 he s in the Hudson Bay Territory. It s a year 
 and more since I knew of his whereabouts. 
 The most unheard-of and God-forgotten 
 wilderness on earth that s where you may 
 always count on his being, unless he has 
 learned of some still more impossible and re 
 pellent wild, just discovered, in the meantime. 
 He is an old friend and school-fellow of mine, 
 and leaves his keys with me. I just have a 
 look at the place now and then, to keep the 
 laundress up to the mark." 
 
 He passed on into the bedroom, struck a 
 light, and threw a scrutinising glance round. 
 " You ll be needing fresh sheets and the like," 
 he said, returning. " I ll bring them." 
 
106 March Ha/res. 
 
 He came back with an armful of linen, and 
 heaped it on the bed. " Now you re right as 
 a trivet," he cried, cheerily. " Everything has 
 been aired. And now I ll be waiting for you 
 to come back to me, with the pretty little 
 slippers. Mind, I m capable of great excesses 
 in drink if you delay over-long." 
 
 Vestalia s delay was inconsiderable. They 
 sat for an hour or more, she with the dainty 
 new footgear on the fender, he, lounging low 
 in his chair, stretching out his own feet close 
 to the rail beside hers. " I could wish it were 
 winter," he mused, once, "so that we might 
 have a fire. We have an old saying about two 
 pairs of slippers on the hearth. I never 
 thought before what homely beauty there was 
 in it. Ah, there ll be cool nights coming on 
 now, and then we ll start a blaze. But even 
 with a black grate, it is the dearest evening of 
 my life." 
 
 " And of mine," responded the girl. 
 
 Hours later, David still sat by the empty 
 fireplace, and ruminated over his pipe. He 
 had put the decanter and glass resolutely back 
 
March Hwres. 107 
 
 into the sideboard, and turned a key on them. 
 He had taken down a book, but it lay unre 
 garded on the floor beside him. He desired to 
 do nothing but think, and yet even that it was 
 not easy to contrive. Thoughts would not 
 marshal themselves in any ordered sequence. 
 
 The whole day had yielded an extraordinary 
 experience, involving all thoughts of moment 
 ous possibilities, which he said over and over 
 again to himself demanded the coolest and 
 most conservative consideration. But when 
 he strove to fasten his mind to the task, 
 straightway it swerved and curveted and 
 danced off beyond control. ^ One memory re 
 turned to him ceaselessly : the way Vestalia had 
 risen finally to say good-night, and insisted 
 strenuously on his not quitting his chair, and 
 then, all at once, had bent swiftly down and 
 kissed him before she ran from the room. 
 And well, why not ? he asked himself at last ; 
 why shouldn t he abandon himself to remem 
 bering it? What else was there equally well 
 worth recalling? The early morning on the 
 
 bridge rose again before him; the tenderly 
 8 
 
108 March Hares. 
 
 compassionate intimacy which, stealing slowly 
 over them, seemed yet to have burst forth in 
 ripe fulness from the very beginning ; the de 
 lightful meals together, the long walks and 
 talks, the little gifts which brought such hap 
 piness to the donor ; the languorously sad 
 dened twilight on the river, the silent home 
 coming, the surprise, the kiss so the sweet 
 chain of reverie coiled and unfolded itself, 
 with quickened heart-beats for links. 
 
 Once a thought came to him a thought 
 which seemed hard and cold as his native 
 granite, and rough with the bristling spikes of 
 his own hillside heather that he had spent in 
 that one day more than his whole week s in 
 come. In other times the fact would have 
 disturbed David. Now he looked it calmly in 
 the face, and smiled at it derisive dismissal. 
 The savings of a year, or of four years what 
 were even they when weighed in the balance 
 against the fact that next door, under these 
 very roof-beams, the dear Vestalia was peace 
 fully sleeping? 
 
 It must have been long after midnight 
 
Mwrch Hares. 109 
 
 when, in the act of filling his pipe once more, 
 it occurred to him to go to bed instead. Upon 
 reflection, he was both tired and sleepy. He 
 rose and yawned, and then smiled upon his 
 own image in the mirror at remembering how 
 happy he was as well. It was a queer mess, to 
 be sure, but there was no element in it which 
 he regretted or would have changed. It was 
 all delicious, through and through. 
 
 As he glanced again at his reflection in the 
 glass, and warmed his heart by the flame of 
 triumphant joy which gleamed through the 
 eyes he looked into, a sudden rhythmical noise 
 rose upon the profound stillness of the old 
 inn. It caught his ear, and he turned to 
 listen. 
 
 " It is that blessed creature snoring breath 
 ing, I mean," was his first thought. But no, 
 it was in too rapid a measure for that. Then 
 the sound waxed louder, and he recognised that 
 it was of footsteps steadily ascending the stairs. 
 " The watchman, coming to make sure of the 
 lights," he thought, with re-assurance. 
 
 But this hypothesis fell to the ground also. 
 
110 March Hares. 
 
 The footsteps mounted to the landing close 
 outside. The noise ceased, and then there 
 came the unmistakable jingle of a key nay, 
 the very grating of it in the lock of the door 
 opposite. 
 
 David s veins, for a confused moment, ran 
 cold. Then, with an excited ejaculation, he 
 ran to his door, and flung it open. 
 
 " Stop that, you idiot ! " he commanded, in 
 muffled but ferocious tones. 
 
 " Ah, Davie, Davie ! Still at the bottle ! " 
 replied a well-known voice from out of the 
 obscurity. 
 
CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 MOSSCKOP groaned at recognition of the 
 voice in the dark. 
 
 " Of all inopportune creatures in the animal 
 kingdom ! " he bewailed under his breath. 
 " Sh ! for Heaven s sake, man, don t talk so 
 loud. Come inside here, and walk softly." 
 
 "What is it you re stalking, Davie 
 snakes ? " queried the newcomer, with obvious 
 sarcasm. But he lowered his voice, and came 
 forward into David s room. The latter closed 
 the door noiselessly, and drew a long sigh of 
 consolation. The two men looked at each 
 other for a minute in silence. 
 
 " You don t mean that there are burglars in 
 the house ? " asked the intruder. A gleam of 
 hopeful light shone in his eyes as he spoke, 
 
 then died down at David s shake of the head. 
 111 
 
112 Mwrch Hcvres. 
 
 j* 
 
 The Earl of Drumpipes, in the peerage of 
 
 Scotland, was a year younger than his friend 
 the Culdee Professor. The gaslight revealed 
 him now to be a tall, burly, rubicund man, 
 with a broad, strongly-marked face of a severe 
 aspect. His yellowish hair was cut close over 
 a head which seemed unduly large for even his 
 powerful frame, and was thinning towards 
 baldness on the top. The collar of a woollen 
 shirt showed a good deal of his thick neck, 
 burnt a bright red at the back by a fiercer sun 
 than warms these British islands. His promi 
 nent blue eyes bulged forth more than ever, 
 now, in mystified inspection of David s coun 
 tenance. While he still gazed, it occurred to 
 him to hold out his hand, as mighty as a black 
 smith s, in perfunctory greeting, and David 
 took it with an effusiveness which was novel 
 to them both. 
 
 " I m really delighted to see you, Archie. 
 I give you my word I am ! " he protested, eagerly. 
 
 " You have your own way of showing it," 
 growled the other. "Yet you seem sober 
 enough. What ails you, man?" 
 
March Hares. 113 
 
 " Oh, the strangest story ! " said David. 
 " Sit down here, and I ll get out the whisky." 
 He busied himself between the sideboard and 
 table, talking as he did so, while the other 
 sprawled his large bulk in one of the easy chairs 
 and lit a pipe. 
 
 " See here, Drumpipes, damn it all," he be 
 gan, " I m a gentleman, am I not? " 
 
 if You are a professional man, a person of 
 education," the Earl assented, cautiously. 
 
 " Well, this is the first day in long years 
 that I have felt like a gentleman." 
 
 " You were ever a bit susceptible to hallu 
 cinations, Davie," said the other. " There s a 
 streak of unreality in your nature. Hold 
 there ! Not so much soda. I m sore in need 
 of a bath, I know ; but everything at its proper 
 time. Well, go on how are you accounting 
 for this extraordinary occurrence? You ve 
 felt all day like a gentleman ! It arouses my 
 curiosity." 
 
 " Chuck that, Archie, or you ll hear noth 
 ing at all." 
 
 " Very well, my boy. I ll just drink this, 
 
114 March Hares. 
 
 then, and go to my bed. It will be welcome, 
 I can tell you." 
 
 He drained the tumbler, and made as if to 
 rise. David hurled himself forward with a re 
 straining arm. "Don t be an ass, old man! 
 I ve told you once, you mustn t go near your 
 place to-night," he urged petulantly. "I ll 
 give you my bed, and I ll sleep on the sofa 
 here. It s all right, I assure you. If you 
 must know, there is somebody sleeping in your 
 room." 
 
 The Earl frowned up at his friend. " That 
 was not in the bargain, Mosscrop," he said, 
 with sharpness. " I don t like it." 
 
 " All I can say is," retorted David, " that 
 if you d been in my place you d have done the 
 same thing or no, I m not so sure about that ; 
 but under the circumstances it was the only 
 thing / could do. It s a young lady who is 
 occupying your room, Drumpipes." 
 
 "Aha!" cried the Earl, "let s have her 
 out ! I m not so sleepy as I thought. You 
 can do something in the way of a supper, 
 can t you?" 
 
March Ha/res. 115 
 
 " No, I can t, and if I could I wouldn t. 
 You misapprehend the situation entirely, my 
 
 friend. This is a poor girl who " and 
 
 David went on and told, in brief fashion, the 
 story of the day. 
 
 " Nine pounds odd your whistle cost you, 
 eh, Davie?" was the listener s comment, at 
 the conclusion of the narrative. " Well, each 
 man has his own notion of what he wants for 
 his money. It is not mine, I ll say frankly. 
 And what s the programme for to-morrow? 
 South Kensington Museum and Hampton 
 Court? The next day you might do the 
 Tower and Epping Forest. Then Westmin 
 ster Abbey and Eichmond but you ll come 
 soon to the end of your rope. And sooner, 
 still, I m thinking, to the end of your banking 
 account." 
 
 " That s my affair," returned Mosscrop, 
 testily. 
 
 "I might be said to have some small 
 concern in the matter," Drumpipes observed, 
 " seeing that I provide furnished lodgings for 
 this beautiful experiment in combined philan- 
 
116 Mwrch Hares. 
 
 thropy and instruction. But you re drink 
 ing nothing." 
 
 " No ; I had my one glass before you 
 came. I m taking care of myself these 
 days." 
 
 " And high time, too ! " admitted the can 
 did friend. " I ll not say you ll not be the 
 better for it." 
 
 " Well, and don t you see ? " urged Moss- 
 crop, with earnestness, "it s just the fact of 
 her being there yonder that makes it seem 
 worth while to go to bed sober. It alters my 
 whole conception of myself. It gives me en 
 tirely new ideas of what I ought to do. So 
 long as I led this solitary life here there was 
 nothing for me but to drink. But it s differ 
 ent now." 
 
 The Earl grinned. "And how long will 
 you be content to have this improving influ 
 ence radiated to you from across the pas 
 sage ? " he asked, with cynicism. " Supposing, 
 of course, that I give up my rooms to the re 
 form-dynamo, so to speak." 
 
 " Oh, of course, no one is asking that of 
 
March Hares. 117 
 
 you. Obviously, your return makes other ar 
 rangements imperative." 
 
 "What will the other arrangements be 
 like?" 
 
 " That remains to be seen. But I m quite 
 clear about one thing. I will not turn back 
 from what I have undertaken. She shall not 
 know what want is, and she shall be respected. 
 I swear that, Drumpipes ; and I want you to 
 remember it." 
 
 " Oh, I respect her immensely already," 
 said the Earl. " By George, a girl must pos 
 sess extraordinary qualities who can come out 
 early and catch a Professor of Culdees off her 
 own bat, and work him for a tenner, and then 
 leave him to forswear whisky on one side of a 
 passage while she sleeps the sleep of the just 
 in borrowed apartments on the other. It s 
 really splendid, old man. I take off my hat 
 to her." 
 
 "Archie," remarked David, slowly, "I m 
 smaller than you are, and no athlete, God 
 knows; but if we have any more of that I 
 will hit you in the eye, and chance it." 
 
118 March Hares. 
 
 Drumpipes was amused at the notion, and 
 chuckled. Then his face and voice lapsed 
 into solemnity. "Davie," he said, "I ve no 
 wish to vex you, but it s a bad business. 
 You ll not win your way through without 
 much expense and soreness of heart. You 
 can take that from me, who should know if 
 any man does." 
 
 Mosscrop accepted the portentous gravity 
 of the tone in good faith. He nodded, as he 
 looked hard at his friend. " Ay, I know," he 
 said, softly. " But I have no despair, and few 
 doubts about it all, Archie. I am very happy 
 in the thought of going forward with it ; so 
 happy that I see I never knew what happi 
 ness meant before. And if we ll put it at 
 the worst possible if disappointment should 
 come out of it, why, I shall already have had 
 the joy. And even if it broke me, what 
 would it matter? I should only be back 
 again where I was yesterday, and no one on 
 earth would be the worse for that. But with 
 you it was different." 
 
 The Earl nodded in turn, and smoked his 
 
March Hares. 119 
 
 pipe. At last, without lifting his voice or dis 
 closing special interest in his news, he said, 
 " Man, she s dead." 
 
 David s eyes dilated. "What s that she 
 your wife, do you mean, is dead ? " 
 
 "Ay, four months since," replied the 
 other quietly. 
 
 Mosscrop came over and shook hands with 
 his friend. "I will take a drink with you, 
 after that," he said, and filled a glass. " Tell 
 me about it." 
 
 " I know nothing about it except that she 
 is dead. That is enough, quite enough." He 
 lifted his tumbler. "Here s to the heating 
 arrangements in the warmest corner down 
 below." 
 
 "A foul cat!" said David, with a harsh 
 tremor in his voice, sipping the toast. 
 
 "A very pretty woman," answered the 
 Earl, musingly. " Hair like a new primrose, 
 face like an earl Christian martyr, dearest 
 little feet you ever imagined. You never saw 
 her. You would have wanted to die for her 
 on the spot. She would have made a single 
 
120 March JIares. 
 
 bite of you, my friend. I was a good deal 
 tougher mouthful, but I got mangled more or 
 less in the operation. These are the things 
 that make one grateful for the religious in 
 fluences of childhood. I should be down 
 hearted just now if I were not able to believe 
 in a Hell." 
 
 " There is no doubt about the thing she 
 is really dead ? " 
 
 " Dead as a mackerel, thank God. My 
 lawyers certify to the blessed event. They 
 ought to know. They have stood in the 
 breach for four years, warding off writs, in 
 junctions, mandamuses, and appeals, with 
 which she and the unscrupulous scoundrels, 
 her solicitors, bombarded them. The costs 
 those ancient parties must have charged up 
 against me ! Man, I m fair frightened to go 
 into the City and face them. There are three 
 attempts at judicial separation, one divorce 
 suit, two petitions for restoration of conjugal 
 rights, three examinations of witnesses by 
 commission, four appeals the thought of 
 those bills sickens me, Davie." 
 
March Hares. 121 
 
 "You re well out of the noose at any 
 cost." 
 
 " Well, then, if your neck is free, keep it 
 so, man ! " 
 
 David smiled with gentle self-assurance. 
 
 " Ah, laddie, if you could have seen the 
 innocence of her. She drank Capri at break 
 fast, and then champagne at luncheon, and 
 more of the same at dinner, with old tawny 
 port on top of it all as trustingly and con 
 fidingly as a babe. It softened one s heart to 
 see her lack of guile, her pretty inexperience." 
 
 The Earl sniffed audibly. " Ch, ay, it s a 
 beautiful spectacle, no doubt, and very touch 
 ing. The pity is that magistrates will not 
 always view it in that light next morning. 
 But then so many things look different in the 
 morning." 
 
 Again Mosscrop smiled. " Save your 
 moans, Archie," he advised, " till you see her 
 yourself. You ll meet the lady at breakfast." 
 
 " I m damned if I do," said Drumpipes. 
 
 "Now then, you re talking like an idiot. 
 You, a hunter of lions and crocodiles and 
 
122 March Hares. 
 
 wild asses of the desert, to turn tail and run 
 from one wee yellow-headed lassie ! and 
 desert an old friend, moreover, who needs 
 your advice and judgment in the most im 
 portant matter of his life ! You know you re 
 flatly incapable of it." 
 
 "I ll not promise to be civil to her if I 
 stop," the other growled. " The mere thought 
 of yellow-haired women is nauseating to me. 
 Why on earth, man, if you must make a 
 stark-staring lunatic of yourself, could you 
 not hit on a decent and reputable colour ? " 
 
 "Never a dye has touched it," protested 
 David. " It s as natural as the sunshine and 
 as radiant." 
 
 " Then you re a ruined man, Davie," the 
 Earl gravely declared, between puffs at his 
 pipe. " There may be some saving quality in 
 a woman who merely dyes her hair. An hon 
 est nature may persist beneath the painted 
 wig, in spite of her endeavours. But if she s 
 a tortoise-shell tabby born, then you might 
 better be dead than sitting there mooning 
 about her. I give you up as a lost creature ! " 
 
March Hares. 123 
 
 " Then all the more reason you should 
 help me to cook a fine breakfast, to confront 
 my doom upon," replied Mosscrop, lightly. 
 " I didn t quite promise that I d call her in 
 time to assist. It will be more of a surprise 
 to have it all ready, spread in her honour, 
 when she comes in. What do you think of 
 soft roes grilled on toast, eh? You can get 
 them in tins. And some little lamb cutlets 
 or perhaps venison and then some eggs 
 Bercy you do those fit for a queen, and we 
 might have " 
 
 " The truth is," put in the other, reflect 
 ively, " that black is the only wholly satisfy 
 ing hair for a woman. The intervening com 
 promises all the browns and chestnuts and 
 reds and auburns are a delusion. I see that 
 very clearly now. Give me the hair that 
 throws a purplish shadow, glossy and thick 
 and growing well down upon the forehead, 
 and then a straight-nosed face, wide between 
 the eyes and rounded under the chin, and a 
 complexion of a soft, pale olive. There s 
 
 nothing else worth talking about." 
 9 
 
124 MarcJi Hares. 
 
 " I had thought of those small Italian 
 \ sausages, but I don t know that in hot weather 
 they " 
 
 "Oh rot!" said the nobleman. "Who 
 wants to talk about muffins and ham fat at 
 this time of night ? Have you no poetry in 
 you, man? There was a divine creature on 
 the steamer coming over great eyes like a 
 sloe, and the face of a Circassian princess, 
 calm, regal, languid, yet with depths of pas 
 sion underneath that seemed to call out to you 
 to risk your immortal soul for the sake of 
 drowning in them " 
 
 " My word, here is cheek, if you like ! " 
 burst in Mosscrop, stormily. " You won t let 
 me talk about my girl at all ; you sneer and 
 gibe and croak evil suspicions, and make a 
 general nuisance of yourself at the least men 
 tion of her and then you suppose I m going 
 to sit patiently and listen to such blithering 
 twaddle as this. Damn it all, a man s got 
 some rights in his own room ! " 
 
 " I m told not," commented the Earl, 
 grimly. 
 
Mar cli Hares. 125 
 
 " Now, why hark back to that ? " demanded 
 David, with a show of petulance. " It s all 
 settled and done with, hours ago. But what 
 I was saying was, it isn t the decent thing for 
 you to to obtrude talk of that sort just to 
 throw ridicule on a subject that I feel very 
 keen about." 
 
 Drumpipes yauned frankly. " It s time 
 you turned in, Davie," he remarked. " The 
 lack of sleep aye makes you silly. I ve no 
 wish to ridicule your subject, as you call her. 
 It s not at all necessary. You ll see for your 
 self how ridiculous it is in the morning. It 
 merely occurred to me that if we must talk of 
 women, I d something in my mind worth the 
 while no strolling yellow-headed vagrant 
 picked up at random on a bridge, but a gen 
 tlewoman in education and means and man 
 ners. Man, you should see her teeth when 
 she smiles ! " 
 
 "Archie," replied David, solemnly, "I 
 should think your own better instincts might 
 prompt you to recall that you ve only been a 
 widower four months." 
 
126 March Hares. 
 
 " Four months ? Four hundred years ! " 
 cried the Earl, stoutly. He reached round and 
 replenished his glass. " It is with the great 
 est difficulty that I recall any detail of the 
 matrimonial state. CAlready the memory of 
 my first pair of breeks is infinitely fresher to 
 me than any of it*-. In another week or so the 
 last vestige of a recollection of it will be clean 
 gone. And a good riddance, too ! " 
 
 " It was an ill thought to remind you of 
 it," admitted Mosscrop. "Devil take all 
 women or all but one " 
 
 "And she black-haired," interposed the 
 Earl. 
 
 " Deuce seize them all but two, then, for 
 the rest of the night. Where have you been 
 the long year-and-a-half , Archie ? " 
 
 "Just looking about me," replied the 
 other, with nonchalance. " Bechuanaland for 
 a time, but it s sore overrated. Then I had a 
 shy at the Gaboon country, but there s a con 
 spiracy among the niggers to protect the 
 gorilla I think he s a sort of uncle of theirs 
 and a white man can do no good by himself. 
 
March Hares. 
 
 I thought there might be some decent sport 
 over in Brazil, where they advertised a revolu 
 tion on, and I tried to travel around with the 
 rebels for a while, but it wasn t up to much. 
 You brought down an occasional half-breed 
 Portugueser with epaulettes on, but you 
 couldn t eat em, and you didn t want em 
 stuffed at any price; and besides, when you 
 came to find out, the whole war was merely a 
 fight between two firms of coffee-traders in - 
 New York, and that wasn t good enough. I 
 tell you what, though," he went on, with more 
 animation, " Arizona is damned good fun. I 
 haven t seen anything better anywhere than a 
 good, square cattle-lifter hunt. They got up 
 three or four, just on my account, I imagine, 
 after they found I could ride, and shoot at a 
 gallop. The charm of the thing is that there s 
 no close season for cattle-thieves, and they re 
 game to the death, I tell you. I got potted 
 twice, and once they let daylight straight 
 through me. I had to lie up for repairs for 
 nearly three weeks. They went and hung the 
 fellow while I was in bed. We had words 
 
128 March Sores. 
 
 about that. I insisted it wasn t sportsmanlike 
 and that they ought to have given him a 
 horse, and then sprung him out of a trap or 
 something of that sort, and let him have a run 
 for his money, the same as we do with rabbits 
 that the ferrets bring up. But they couldn t 
 see it, and so I turned it up and came North. 
 They ll ruin the whole thing, though, if they 
 don t chuck that foolish hanging business. 
 The first thing they know, everybody ll stop 
 running off cattle, just as a protest, and then 
 their place won t be worth living in. It ll be 
 a pity, because a cow-boy gone wrong is really 
 the best thing there is. He s as good as a 
 Bengal tiger and a Eussian wolf together, with 
 a grizzly bear thrown in. You may quote me 
 as saying so." 
 
 "I shall not fail to do so," said David. 
 " Come, drink up your liquor, and we ll 
 toddle. I m fair glad to see you back whole 
 and sound, laddie and more still, a free 
 man." 
 
 He brought forth from the bedroom a 
 pillow and some blankets, and began arrang- 
 
March Hcvres. 129 
 
 ing them upon the sofa. "And are the 
 Americans so daft about lords and titles as 
 they re made out?" he asked as he worked. 
 " Did they humble themselves before the 
 handle to your name ? " 
 
 Drumpipes sat up. " Do you suppose I m 
 such an abandoned ass as to travel with a 
 title ? " he demanded. " Man, if you knew 
 what it cost me, even without it, it would turn 
 your hair grey. Ten dollars here, twenty 
 dollars there, seven dollars and a-half some 
 where else one steady and endless drain on 
 the purse, till the marvel is I was able to get 
 out at all ! And there s no third-class on the 
 railways whatever. It s just terrible, Davie ! 
 And as ill-luck would have it, I couldn t even 
 come home steerage on the steamer. There 
 were passengers that I knew in the first cabin, 
 and so I had to throw away more money 
 there. And I m not like you I ve no 
 ten-pound notes to spare for my day s amuse 
 ment." 
 
 "No, you re not like me," responded Moss- 
 crop, in no sympathetic tone. " I have my 
 
130 March Hares. 
 
 magnificent 432 per annum, which is over 
 eight guineas a week. And you you have 
 only a paltry four thousand odd, not more 
 than ten times as much. I wonder you ve 
 kept off the rates so long, Archie." 
 
 " Ah, I know all that," protested the Earl. 
 "But you have no damned position to keep 
 up. You must remember that, Davie, It s a 
 very important fact. It makes all the differ 
 ence in the world." 
 
 " But you only keep it up in your own 
 mind, and that s not an expensive place. 
 There s "been no year since I first knew you, 
 either as Master of Linkhaw or since you 
 came into the whole of it, that you ve spent 
 the half of your income. To hear you talk, 
 one would think you d been scattering your 
 capital as well with both hands." 
 
 " Ah, but those lawyers bills, Davie ! 
 What think you now should they be like? 
 Six hundred, eh ? Or may be seven ? " 
 
 "You ll know soon enough. I ll not en 
 courage you to pass a sleepless night. Come 
 now. You ve got things in your bag here, 
 
March Ha/res. 131 
 
 haven t you ? I can let you have whatever 
 you lack." 
 
 "No, you keep your bed. I ll sleep out 
 here," said Drumpipes. "I m a deal more 
 used to roughing it than you are. I give you 
 my word, I shall sleep here like a top." 
 
 Mosscrop strove to resist, but his friend 
 was resolute, and the sofa had to be surren 
 dered to him. He rose, yawning, and began 
 to throw off his outer garments. " I ve paid 
 as high as eleven shillings for a bedroom for 
 one night in ISTew York city ! " he affirmed, 
 drowsily, " although, to give the Devil his due, 
 they make no charge for candles and soap., 
 Man, if they d known I was an Earl, they d 
 have lifted all seven of my skins." 
 
 " Oh, but they have a reputation for acu 
 men," urged Mosscrop, drily. " They d have 
 comprehended fine that you were but a Scotch 
 Earl. Good night ! " 
 
 The broad daylight woke David up nearly 
 an hour later than it should have done. He 
 had produced upon himself during the night 
 an impression of sleeping very little and that 
 
132 March Hares. 
 
 a light and dainty slumber, ready and eager 
 on the instant of need to dissolve into utter 
 wakefulness. Yet it was the fact, none the 
 less, that he had ingloriously overslept him 
 self. The watch on his table pointed to half- 
 past eight. 
 
 He hurriedly drew on some of his gar 
 ments, and stepped into the sitting-room to 
 rouse the Earl. To his great surprise that 
 nobleman had disappeared. The tumbled 
 bed-clothes showed where he had slept. There 
 was his hand-bag, duly packed and closed, at 
 the foot of the sofa. 
 
 Reasoning that Drumpipes had not prom 
 ised to breakfast, and was a perverse creature 
 anyway, and probably had been worried by 
 early brooding over those lawyers bills into a 
 restless mood, Mosscrop returned to his room, 
 and completed the work of dressing. He 
 shaved with exceptional care, and bestowed 
 thought upon the selection of a neck-tie. It 
 occurred to him that he had some better 
 clothes than those he had worn yesterday, and, 
 though he begrudged the time, the temptation 
 
March Hares. 133 
 
 to make the change was irresistible. He did 
 not regret yielding, when he surveyed his full- 
 length image in the mirror on his wardrobe 
 door. He seemed to himself to look years 
 younger than he had done before that momen 
 tous birthday. He smiled and nodded knowing 
 ly at the happy and confident face in the glass. 
 Under the circumstances, he should need 
 help with the breakfast. The midnight notion 
 of getting everything ready before he called 
 his guest, submitted to abandonment without 
 a murmur. He reverted joyfully to the origi 
 nal idea of letting her share all the delightful 
 fun of preparing the meal. His fancy played 
 with sportive tenderness about the picture of 
 her, here in his tiny scullery which served as 
 a kitchen, her sleeves rolled up, a towel pinned 
 round her waist for an apron, actually cooking 
 things for them both to eat. Very likely he 
 knew more about that sort of thing than she 
 did ; he beheld himself giving her instructions, 
 as they bent together over the big gas cooking- 
 stove. Could anything be more deliciously 
 homelike than that? 
 
134 March Hares. 
 
 That contrary, cross-grained Drumpipes 
 had predicted that the whole thing would 
 seem ridiculous to him in the morning. He 
 affirmed to himself with fervour that it 
 seemed more charming than ever as he went 
 out into the passage, and knocked on the op 
 posite door. 
 
 There seemed to be no answering sound, 
 and he struck the panel more sharply, with 
 his ear lowered to the keyhole. Still no re 
 sponse came. 
 
 "I am going to Covent Garden for 1 a few 
 minutes," he called through the keyhole ; 
 " shall I find you ready to help me when I 
 get back?" 
 
 Since this, too, brought no reply, he took 
 out his duplicate key and cautiously opened 
 the door. The question, repeated in a much 
 louder tone, died away in profound silence. 
 The glass eyes of a moose on the wall opposite 
 stared at him with an uncomfortable fixity. 
 
 The bedroom door was ajar, and David was 
 emboldened to stride forward and beat smartly 
 on it with his fist. Again he did this, and 
 
March Hares. 135 
 
 then, while a strange excitement welled up 
 ward within him or was it a sinking move 
 ment instead? flung the door open and 
 looked in. 
 
 There was no Vestalia here at all ! 
 
 The details that the bed was neatly made 
 up, that the room showed no trace of recent 
 occupancy, and that the dressing-bag was gone, 
 soaked themselves vaguely through his mind. 
 He looked about, both in this and the outer 
 apartment, for a message of some kind, quite 
 in vain. 
 
 His pained attention wandered again in 
 haphazard fashion to the head of the moose, 
 fastened between two windows. The fatuous 
 emptiness of its point-blank gaze suddenly in 
 furiated him, and he dealt its foolishly elon 
 gated snout a resounding whack with his open 
 hand. The huge trophy toppled under the 
 blow, swung half-loose on its fastening, then 
 pitched with a crash to the floor. 
 
 Mosscrop kicked it violently again and 
 again where it lay. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MOSSCEOP had not the heart to breakfast 
 alone in his deserted lodgings. 
 
 The impulse to get away mastered him on 
 the instant of its appearance. He strode forth 
 as if delay were fraught with sore perils. At a 
 shabby luncheon-bar in the Strand below he 
 consumed a cup of abominable coffee and a dry 
 sausage-roll in the same nervous haste. The 
 barmaid in attendance was known to him. She 
 annoyed him now by displaying in her manner 
 the assumption that he wished to laugh and 
 joke with her as usual. He glowered at her 
 instead, and met her advances to conversation 
 with a curt nod. 
 
 " You must have got out of the wrong side 
 of the bed this morning," she commented 
 loftily. 
 
 136 
 
March Hares. 137 
 
 "Very likely," he answered with cold brev 
 ity, counting out the necessary coppers and 
 turning on his heel. 
 
 Outside he seemed to himself to choose the 
 direction of his steps quite at random. He 
 walked slowly, trying to fasten his brain down 
 to the task of conjecturing what on earth it all 
 meant. Alas, his mind was as empty as those 
 desolate rooms up at the top of Dunstan s Inn. 
 The power of coherent speculation had left 
 him. It was hardly possible even to arrange 
 in decent sequence the details of what had 
 happened. An indefinitely sweeping rage at 
 destiny in general oppressed all his faculties. 
 He muttered meaningless oaths under his 
 breath as he went along, directed at an intan 
 gible " it " which was equally without form and 
 personality, a mere abstract symbol of the uni 
 versal beastliness of things. 
 
 The notion of cursing Vestalia did not sug- 
 gest itself. So far as he had any intelligible 
 thoughts about her, they were instinctively ex 
 culpatory. She seemed indeed to have behaved 
 stupidly, but it must have been under a mis- 
 
138 MwrcJi Hares. 
 
 apprehension of some sort. Something per 
 verse had happened to lead her off into a fool 
 ish course of action. He resolutely declined 
 to open his mind to any other view of her. 
 She must have quitted the Inn for some reason 
 which wholly satisfied her sense of honourable 
 conduct. What was this reason? Had she 
 conjured it up out of her own meditations, or 
 had it been furnished to her from an external 
 source ? 
 
 All at once he stopped short, mental and 
 bodily progress alike arrested by a striking 
 thought. "Damn him! he murmured to 
 himself, as he turned this new idea over. Now 
 that it had come to him, he fairly marvelled at 
 the dulness which had failed to discover it at 
 the beginning. It was as plain as the nose on 
 one s face the Earl had bidden Vestalia to be 
 gone. " Ah, that miserly, meddling fool of a 
 Drumpipes ! " he groaned, between clenched 
 teeth. 
 
 This laying bare of the mystery brought no 
 consolation. The day was as irretrievably 
 ruined, the tender little romance as ruthlessly 
 
Ma/rcfi Hcvres. 139 
 
 crushed, as ever. A certain doubtful solace 
 seemed to offer itself in the shape of a quarrel 
 with Drumpipes, but Mosscrop shook his head 
 despondently at it. What good would that 
 do ? And for that matter, how should one go 
 to work to quarrel with that tough-hided, fatu 
 ous, conceited, dense-witted, imperturbable, 
 and impenetrable idiot ? He would never even 
 perceive that the attempt was being made. 
 David piled up in reverie the loathly epithets 
 upon the over-large bald head of his friend 
 with a savage satisfaction. " You preposter 
 ous clown!" he snarled at the burly blond 
 image of the absent nobleman in his mind s 
 eye. " You gratuitous and wanton ass ! Oh, 
 you unthinkable duffer ! " 
 
 And somehow there was after all a kind of 
 relief in these comminatory exercises. The 
 dim light of a possible diversion began to filter 
 through the storm-cloud of Mosscrop s wrath. 
 He was still bitterly depressed, and furious as 
 well, of course, but self-possession was returning 
 to him, and with it the capacity for planning and 
 
 ordering his movements. It occurred to him 
 10 
 
140 March Hares. 
 
 that he ought to do something to turn his 
 thoughts temporarily at least from this world- 
 weary sadness. 
 
 Up on the opposite corner his eye caught 
 the legend " Savoy Street." He stared at the 
 small sign, perched above the dingy brick cor 
 nice of the first-floor, for a moment with an 
 unreflecting gaze. Then he turned and walked 
 briskly down the steep hillside thoroughfare, 
 and into the courtyard of the great hotel 
 which, like the street and the quarter, com 
 memorates in its name the first of a long and 
 steadfast line of needy Continental princes 
 whose maintenance the British tax-payer has 
 found himself fated to provide. 
 
 At the desk, he wrote out a card and 
 sent it up as an accompaniment to the in 
 quiry whether Mr. Laban Skinner was in or 
 not. 
 
 No, it was reported presently ; Mr. Skinner 
 had gone out but the young lady was in. 
 
 David pondered this unexpected intelli 
 gence. " Did she tell you that she was in ? " 
 he asked the boy, suspiciously. 
 
March Ha/res. 141 
 
 Yes ; she had done so. 
 
 Mosscrop discovered that he had been quite 
 unprepared for this. He knit his brows and 
 ruminated upon it. His impression had been 
 at the time that the girl disliked him, or at 
 least disliked the proposition which her absurd 
 father had made. It seemed to him, more 
 over, that he disliked her in turn. She had 
 stared rudely at poor Vestalia but then it 
 should be remembered in fairness that all 
 women did that to one another. Her attitude 
 towards him had been ostentatiously apathetic, 
 almost to the point of insolence ; and yet he 
 recalled that in that moment when he had 
 caught her unawares, she had been displaying 
 a notable interest in what was going on. The 
 notion that there had been a sort of challenge 
 underlying the mask of studied indifference 
 she had presented to him returned to his mind. 
 And he still needed diversion, too, as much as 
 ever. 
 
 " If you will show the way," he said to the 
 boy at this juncture. 
 
 The lift bore them a long distance upward, 
 
142 March Ha/res. 
 
 quite to the roof it seemed. David formed 
 the impression that rents must be cheap at 
 that altitude; but when he took the first 
 glance round the sitting-room into which he 
 found himself presently ushered, the idea van 
 ished. 
 
 It was a large and imposingly-appointed 
 room, exhaling, as it were, an effect of high- 
 priced luxury. The broad windows at the 
 front came down to the floor, and opened upon 
 a balcony. There were awnings hung outside 
 to ward off the sunshine, and this threw the 
 whole apartment into a mellow twilight, con 
 trasting sharply with the brightness of the 
 corridor Mosscrop had just quitted. 
 
 He looked about him, hesitatingly, to make 
 sure that there really was no one in the room. 
 The glimpse of some white drapery fluttering 
 against the edge of a chair out on the balcony 
 caught his eye, and he moved across to the 
 nearest open window. The noble prospect of 
 the Thames viewed from this height impressed 
 itself with great vividness upon his mind, even 
 in advance of his perception that he had in- 
 
Ma/rch Hares. 143 
 
 deed found Miss Skinner. He looked down 
 ward with a gaze which embraced both the 
 girl and the river, and for a moment they pre 
 served an equally unconscious aspect. 
 
 The young lady then lifted her head, side- 
 wise, and acknowledged Mosscrop s presence 
 by a slow drooping movement of her black 
 lashes. "How do you do?" she remarked, 
 placidly. "Bring out a chair for your 
 self." 
 
 He did as he was told, and seated himself 
 near the balustrade, so that he partially faced 
 her ; but he looked again at the wonderful pic 
 ture below, to collect his thoughts. 
 
 " I had no idea it was so magnificent up 
 here," he said at last. 
 
 " Indeed," commented his companion. It 
 was impossible to say whether the remark was 
 in the nature of an exclamation or an inquiry. 
 Mosscrop found himself compelled to glance 
 up, if only to determine this open ques 
 tion. 
 
 The realisation that she was extremely well 
 worth looking at swept over him like a flood, 
 
144 March Hares. 
 
 at the instant of his lifting his eyes. It suited 
 her to be bare-headed, and to wear just the 
 creamy white cashmere house-gown that he 
 beheld her in. The glossy plaits and masses 
 of her hair were wonderful. In the softened, 
 tinted half-shadow of the awning her dark 
 skin glowed with a dusky radiance which fas 
 cinated him. Her mien was as imperious as 
 ever, but it suggested now an empress disposed 
 to play, a sultana whose inclination was for 
 amusement. 
 
 " Did you come up to see the view ? I dare 
 say it is even better from the leads. You call 
 them leads here, don t you? Your novels 
 always do, I know." 
 
 This speech of hers, languidly delivered, 
 had its impertinent side, without doubt, but 
 Mosscrop caught in its tone a not unamiable 
 intention. She did not smile in response to 
 the puzzled questioning of his swift glance, 
 but he convinced himself none the less that it 
 was a pleasantry. He noted in this instant of 
 confused speculation that she had a book in 
 her lap a large, red-covered volume with 
 
March Hares. 145 
 
 much gilt on the binding and that she 
 kept a finger in it to mark some particular 
 place. 
 
 " Your father was good enough to ask me 
 to call," he reminded her, with gentleness. 
 " I asked for him, and I " 
 
 " You are disappointed to find him out ? " 
 
 Yes; there could be no doubt she was 
 amusing herself. " Oh, that depends," ven 
 tured David, with temerity. 
 
 The girl surveyed him at her leisure. " If 
 I remember aright," she said, " you were in 
 vited conditionally. You were to come, or 
 rather to communicate with us, if you decided 
 to close with my father s offer. So I suppose 
 you ve made up your mind to accept." 
 
 " Well, I should like to talk more about it ; 
 get a clearer idea of what was proposed." 
 
 " My father takes great pains in expressing 
 himself. I should have said his explanation 
 was as full as anything could well be on this 
 earth." 
 
 " To speak frankly," replied David, " I got 
 the idea that you didn t care much about your 
 
146 March Hares. 
 
 father s scheme in fact, that you disliked it. 
 That s what I wanted to be clear about. It 
 would be ridiculous for me to be going round, 
 delivering instructive lectures to you on an 
 tiquities and ruins and so forth, and you hat 
 ing me all the while for a bore and a nui 
 sance. It would place us both in a false 
 position." 
 
 "And you can t stand false positions, 
 eh?" 
 
 Mosscrop rose. " I m afraid I can t stand 
 this one, at all events," he answered, with dig 
 nified brevity. 
 
 "Oh, you mustn t think of going!" his 
 hostess protested, with a momentary ring of 
 animation in her voice. " My father s liable 
 to return any minute, and he d be greatly put 
 out to find he d missed you." 
 
 " I could wait for him in the reception 
 room downstairs," he suggested, moodily 
 " or, for that matter, I don t know that it s 
 very important that we should meet at all." 
 
 " I don t call that a bit polite," she com 
 mented. 
 
March Hares. 147 
 
 "I m afraid your standards of politeness 
 are beyond me," he began, formally. Then 
 the absurdity of the thing struck him, and he 
 grinned in a reluctant fashion. "Do you 
 really want me to stay ? " he asked, with the 
 spirit of banter in his tone. 
 
 " Oh that depends," she mocked back at 
 him. " If you can be amusing, yes." 
 
 " Just how amusing must I be ? " He 
 dropped into his chair again, and this time 
 laid his hat aside. 
 
 " Oh, say as much so as you were yesterday 
 with the young lady of the butter-coloured 
 hair. I think that would about fill the 
 bill." 
 
 Mosscrop ground his teeth with swift an 
 noyance. Then he chuckled in a mood of 
 saturnine mirth. Finally he sighed, and dole 
 fully shook his head. 
 
 " Ah, yesterday ! " he mourned, drawing a 
 still deeper breath. 
 
 " You were extremely entertaining, then," 
 pursued the other, ignoring his emotions. 
 "Do you find yourself as a usual thing, I 
 
148 March Hares. 
 
 mean varying a good deal from day to day ? 
 I ask entirely from curiosity. I ve never met 
 anyone before in precisely your position." 
 
 " No, I should think not ! " he assented, 
 with gloomy emphasis. I" I can well believe 
 that my position is unique in the history of 
 mankind. Such grotesque luck could scarcely 
 repeat itself. But I beg your pardon it isn t 
 a thing that would interest you ; I had no 
 business to mention it at all5 
 
 "It was I who mentioned it, I believe," 
 she corrected him calmly. 
 
 There was obvious meaning in her insist 
 ence. He looked up at her in vague surprise, 
 the while he mentally retraced the steps by 
 which the conversation had reached this 
 point. There was undoubtedly a very know 
 ing expression in her eyes. Clearly she had 
 meant to associate Vestalia with what she de 
 scribed as his position the position which she 
 deemed so unusual ; it was equally plain that 
 she desired him to understand that she did so. 
 It was impossible that she should know any 
 thing of what had happened. He searched 
 
March Hares. 149 
 
 his memory, and made sure that no personal 
 hint of any sort had drifted into that ram 
 bling discourse of his in the Assyrian corri 
 dors, which the Americans had more or less 
 overheard. What then was she talking about ? 
 
 Ah, what indeed? She lay back in her 
 chair, and met his gaze of bewildered interro 
 gation with a fine show of composure. She 
 looked at him tranquilly through lazy, half- 
 closed eyelids. His suspicions discerned be 
 neath the passive surface of this regard ani 
 mated under-currents of ironical amusement 
 and triumph. There was nothing overt upon 
 which he could found the challenge to an ex 
 planation, but as he continued to scrutinise 
 her, he could fancy that her whole presence 
 radiated the suggestion of repressed glee. 
 Whatever the mystery might be, she was ex 
 tracting great delight from her possession of a 
 clue to it. 
 
 " Yes, it was you who mentioned my posi 
 tion," he remarked, groping lamely for some 
 sure footing on which to redress his disadvan 
 tage. " I don t know that I quite follow you ; 
 
150 March Hares. 
 
 wherein do you find my position, as you term 
 it, so exceptional ? " 
 
 " You yourself have boasted that it couldn t 
 be matched in all history," she reminded him. 
 Her tone was casual enough, but the sense 
 of sport began to gleam unmistakably in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Now you argue in a circle," he remon 
 strated, with a shade of professional acerbity 
 in his voice. " Your remark came before 
 mine, and hence cannot possibly have been 
 based upon my subsequent comment. If I 
 may be permitted the observation, they seem 
 to teach logic but indifferently in the United 
 States." 
 
 " Oh, that is why we came here," retorted 
 the girl, with ostentatious naivete. The con 
 ceit pleased her so much that she bent for 
 ward, and assumed the manner of one com- 
 ^municating an important fact. " That is why 
 I had my father make you an offer at once. 
 You know, most professors, and teachers, and 
 so on, are so hard to understand. But the 
 moment I laid eyes on you I said, There s a 
 
March Hares. 151 
 
 man that I can see through, as if he were 
 plate-glass ; I can read him like a book. And, 
 of course, that must he the most valuable of 
 all qualities in an instructor." 
 
 " So I am entirely transparent, am I ? I 
 present no secrets to your gaze ? " Mosscrop 
 spoke like one in whom pique and a sense of 
 the comical struggled for mastery. " Then I 
 cannot do better than beg you to tell me some 
 things about myself. Why, for example, do I 
 sit here patiently and submit to be laughed at, 
 heckled, satirised, and generally bully-ragged 
 by a young lady, whose title to do these things 
 is not in the least apparent to me ? " 
 
 "Why, don t you remember? You re 
 waiting for papa." 
 
 " And incidentally providing his offspring, 
 in the interim, with much harmless and chaste 
 entertainment," put in Mosscrop, drily. " I 
 am charmed to have diverted you so success 
 fully. It occurs to me, since you are so readi 
 ly amused, that you must have been wofully 
 bored before I made my happy appearance." 
 
 "Oh, quite the contrary," exclaimed the 
 
152 March Hares. 
 
 girl, with a sudden stress in her tone, which 
 hinted that this was what she had been wait 
 ing for. She opened the volume, as she spoke, 
 at the place marked by her finger. " I was 
 f reading in the Peerage, you know. It is a 
 most entrancing book. I am never dull when 
 I am reading about earls and things." 
 
 " I have heard that the work enjoys a re 
 markable popularity in your country," David 
 remarked, sourly. 
 
 " There is such romance in it ! " she went 
 on, in mock rhapsody ; " it makes such ap 
 peals to the imagination ! It puts you at once 
 in an atmosphere of chivalry, of knightly ad 
 ventures and exploits, of tournaments and 
 chain-armour, and courts of love " 
 
 " And of divorce, and bankruptcy, too," he 
 interposed. " Don t forget those." 
 
 The girl looked grave for a moment, and 
 nodded her head as if in relenting apology. 
 Then she recovered her high spirits by as 
 swift a transition. 
 
 " And such splendid old names as you get, 
 too ! " she continued, with her eyes on the 
 
March Hares. 153 
 
 open page. "Listen to this, for example. 
 Could anything be finer ? " 
 
 DRUMPIPES, Earl of. (Sir Archibald-Coro- 
 nach-Dugal-Strathspey-Malcolm-Linkhaw) Vis 
 count Dunfugle of Inverdummie, and Baron 
 Pilliewillie of Slug- Angus, Morayshire, all in the 
 peerage of Scotland, and a Baronet of Nova 
 Scotia. Born August 24th, 1866. Succeeded 
 his grandfather as 19th Earl January 10th, 
 1888. Married May 2nd, 1890, Janet-Eustasia- 
 Marjory, 3rd daughter of the Master of Craigie- 
 whaup by his wife, the Hon. Tryphena Pincock 
 (who deceased March 6th, 1879), elder daughter 
 of the 4th Baron Dubb of Kilwhissel. Seat, 
 Skirl Castle, near Lossiewink, Elgin. Club, 
 Wanderers. 
 
 She read it all with marked deliberation 
 and distinctness of utterance. When she fin 
 ished, silence reigned for some time on the 
 balcony. 
 
 " Well, am I not right? " she asked at last, 
 lifting her head, and flashing the full richness 
 of her black eyes into Mosscrop s face. " Don t 
 you admit the inspiration of such names ? " 
 
 David answered in a hesitating, dubious 
 manner. " I am more curious about the source 
 and scope of your inspiration," he said. 
 
154 March Ha/res. 
 
 " Unhappily, it cannot be pretended that you 
 are transparent. You confront me with an 
 opacity against which my feeble wits beat in 
 vain. I can see that it is known to you that 
 I know Drumpipes. But why this fact should 
 assume in your mind such portentous and 
 mysterious dimensions, and why you should 
 treat it with the air of one who has unearthed 
 a great conspiracy, a terrible secret, I can t for 
 the life of me comprehend." 
 
 " Ah, you are more complicated than I had 
 thought," she replied. "I did not imagine 
 you would keep up the defence so long." 
 
 "Me? a defence? never," cried David, 
 incited in some vague way by this remark to 
 an accession of assurance. " I defend nothing. 
 I surrender with eagerness. I roll myself at 
 your feet, Miss Skinner. All I crave in return 
 is that you will put a label on my submission. 
 It may be weak, but I should dearly like to 
 know what it is that I am abandoning." 
 
 " What I should suggest that you give up 
 is your attempt to deceive me us as to your 
 identity." 
 
March Hares. 155 
 
 "Ah! am I indeed someone else, then? 
 Upon my word, I can t congratulate the other 
 fellow." 
 
 " You wrote your name down for my father 
 yesterday, and again on this card here this 
 morning, as Mosscrop David Mosscrop." 
 
 He assented by a nod, and allowed the be 
 ginnings of an abashed and contrite look to 
 gather upon his face. 
 
 " Well, it just happened that, the moment 
 I first laid eyes on you, I knew who you really 
 were. By the merest accident, your picture 
 had been shown to me by a gentleman who 
 knows you intimately, and is indeed distantly 
 related to you on shipboard coming over. I 
 recognised you instantly, there in the Museum, 
 and I made papa speak to you. I was curious 
 to see what you would say and do." 
 
 "I m afraid you were disappointed. Did 
 you think I would shout and dance, or what ? " 
 He struggled with some degree of success to 
 speak impassively. 
 
 " I had never met any one before in your 
 
 position in life, and I had the whim to experi- 
 11 
 
156 March Hares. 
 
 merit on my own account." She said this as 
 if defending her action to herself more than to 
 her auditor. 
 
 " And may I have my little whim gratified 
 too ? " he asked. " I am extremely curious to 
 know how you like your experiment as far as 
 you have got with it." 
 
 She did not answer immediately, and he 
 occupied the interval by an earnest mental 
 scuffle after some clue to what she was driving 
 at. He knew of no man who possessed his 
 portrait at least among those who went down 
 to the sea in ships. He had had no photo 
 graph taken for years, to begin with. A dis 
 tant relation of his, she had said, and on a very 
 recent voyage from America. Who the deuce 
 could it be ? "What acquaintance of his had 
 been of late in America ? All at once the an 
 swer leaped upward in his mind. He laughed 
 aloud, with an abruptness which took him not 
 less than his companion by surprise. But then 
 a puzzled scowl overshadowed the grin on his 
 countenance. He saw a little way farther into 
 the millstone, but that was all. 
 
Ma/rch Hares. 157 
 
 " I hope you don t regret your experiment," 
 he repeated. "It would have been simpler, 
 perhaps, if your father had mentioned that 
 you were friends of Mr. Linkhaw s. That in 
 itself would have been an ample introduc 
 tion." 
 
 " Perhaps we should have done so, had you 
 been alone." Her tone was cool to the verge 
 of haughtiness. 
 
 He rapidly considered what this might 
 mean. Her remark clearly indicated that Ves- 
 talia s presence had seemed to her reprehen 
 sible. Why ? There was some intricacy here 
 which he could not fathom. That confounded 
 Drumpipes had told her what ? Eureka ! He 
 had it ! The picture that she had seen was a 
 little cheap ambrotype of Drumpipes and him 
 self, standing together, which had been made 
 by a poor devil of a wayside photographer, two 
 Derby days before. Undoubtedly that was 
 what the Earl had shown her the only one 
 he could have shown her. And why of 
 course Drumpipes had pointed him, David, 
 out as the Earl. What his motive could have 
 
158 March Hares. 
 
 been, heaven only knew, but this was palpably 
 the key to the riddle. 
 
 He grasped this key with decision, on the 
 instant. He straightened himself, frowned a 
 little, and laboriously stiffened the tell-tale 
 muscles about his mouth. 
 
 " I don t think I quite like this notion of 
 Linkhaw s babbling about me and my affairs," 
 he said, with austerity. 
 
 " Oh, I assure you," she protested, anxious 
 ly, " he was very cautious. He only gave the 
 most sparing answers to my questions. I had 
 to literally drag things from him." 
 
 " But what business had he showing my 
 picture about to begin with? He shall hear 
 what I think of it! Men s allowances have 
 been stopped for less than that." 
 
 " It will be very unjust indeed if you visit 
 it upon him," the girl urged, almost tremu 
 lously ; " it was all my fault. I asked him 
 one day if he had ever met a nobleman, and 
 he, quite as a matter of course, mentioned that 
 one of his own relatives was an Earl. One 
 day, later, he was showing me a little tin-type 
 
Ma/rch Hares. 159 
 
 of himself, and he merely said that you were 
 the other person in the picture, that was all." 
 
 " And then you proceeded to drag things 
 from him. I believe that was your phrase," 
 remarked David, in a severe tone. The sensa 
 tion of having this proud and insolent beauty 
 in a tremor of entreaty before him was very 
 delightful. 
 
 " Naturally, I asked him questions," she 
 replied, with a little more spirit. " Earls don t 
 grow on every bush with us. And for that 
 matter, why, goodness me! he did nothing 
 but praise you from morning till night. By 
 his account, one would think butter wouldn t 
 melt in your mouth. He made you out a 
 regular saint. I was quite prepared to see you 
 with a halo round your head and instead, 
 I " 
 
 She stopped short, with a confused and 
 deprecatory smile. David, noting it, rejoiced 
 that he had taken a peremptory tone about the 
 garrulous Linkhaw. 
 
 " Instead, you discovered that I was a mere 
 flesh and blood mortal like the rest." He per- 
 
160 March Hares. 
 
 mitted himself to unbend, and even to smile 
 a little, as he furnished this conclusion to her 
 sentence. " Was it a very painful disillusion 
 ment ? " 
 
 " Oh, I ve read and heard enough about 
 the lives that your class lead here in Europe," 
 she replied, with a marked reversion toward 
 her former manner. " I don t pretend that I 
 was really surprised." 
 
 David assumed a judicial expression. 
 " Considering the way we are brought up, and 
 the temptations that are thrust upon us," he 
 said, impartially, " I would not say that we 
 are so much worse than other men." 
 
 " But you are pretty bad that you must 
 admit." 
 
 Before David had satisfactorily framed the 
 admission expected of him, the sound of an 
 opening door and of footsteps came from within. 
 
 " It is papa," whispered the girl, leaning 
 forward in a confidential manner. " I m going 
 to tell him," 
 
 " I see no valid objection," answered David, 
 with dignity. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 As the balcony was too small for another 
 chair, and Mr. Skinner did not come to the 
 window, his daughter led her guest into the 
 sitting-room. 
 
 " Papa," she said, " you will recall the gen 
 tleman whom we met yesterday at the British 
 Museum." 
 
 Mr. Skinner lifted to its place the pince- 
 nez which depended on a gold thread from the 
 lapel of his carefully-buttoned frock-coat, and 
 scrutinised the person indicated in a painstak 
 ing manner. 
 
 " Ah, yes, indeed," he said, continuing his 
 gaze, but with no salutation, and no offer of 
 the hand. 
 
 " It s so dark in here, I don t believe you 
 do," she remarked, to cover the awkwardness 
 
 161 
 
162 March Hares. 
 
 of the moment. " The sun has gone now, any 
 way," and she moved back and put a hand 
 upon the awning-cord. 
 
 " Permit me," said David, hurrying to her 
 side, and pulling at the shade. 
 
 " He s out of sorts about something," the 
 girl murmured furtively. " Don t mind it ; 
 just leave him to me." 
 
 In the brightened light, Mr. Skinner s de 
 meanour seemed no more cordial. He re 
 garded his visitor with a doubtful glance, and 
 gave indications of a sense of embarrassment 
 in his presence. The daughter, however, was 
 in no respect dismayed by her responsibility. 
 
 " Papa," she said with brisk decision, " it 
 was all a joke yesterday. Our friend was so 
 amused by your offer yesterday " 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Adele," the father 
 interposed ceremoniously, " but it becomes 
 immediately incumbent upon me to express 
 my dissent. To obviate any possible miscon 
 ception, it should be explicitly stated that, al 
 though it is true that the task of formulating 
 the proposal to which you allude did un- 
 
Ma/rch Hwres. 163 
 
 doubtedly devolve upon me, the proposition 
 itself, both in spirit and suggestion, originated 
 in your own consciousness." 
 
 " All right," she hurriedly went on, " have 
 it anyway you like. The point is that this 
 gentleman thought it was funny, and so he 
 capped it with his own little joke by pretend 
 ing to be some one else. He made up that 
 name he gave you on the spur of the moment, 
 just for sport. He came here this morning, 
 just to explain. He was nervous about the 
 deception, innocent though it was. Papa, let 
 me introduce to you Mr. Linkhaw s relation, 
 of whom he spoke so often, you know the 
 Earl of Drumpipes." 
 
 Mr. Skinner took in this intelligence with 
 respectful deliberation. He bowed mean 
 while, and, after a moment s deferential hesi 
 tation, shook hands in a formal way with Da 
 vid, and motioned him to a seat. 
 
 " Sir," he began, picking his phrases with 
 even greater care, " you will excuse me if I do 
 not address you as c My Lord, since it is a 
 form of words which I cannot bring myself to 
 
164 March Hares. 
 
 regard as seemly when employed by one hu 
 man being toward another ; but I gather from 
 my daughter s explanation that your state 
 ments yesterday concerning your identity were 
 conceived in a spirit of pleasantry. Under 
 ordinary circumstances, sir, the revelation that 
 an entirely serious and decorous suggestion of 
 mine had been received with hilarity might 
 not convey to my mind an exclusively natter 
 ing impression. But I do not, sir, close my 
 eyes to the fact that a wide gulf of usage and 
 custom, and, I might say, of principles, sepa 
 rates a simple Jeffersonian Democrat like my 
 self from the professor of an hereditary Euro 
 pean dignity. I am therefore able, sir, to ac 
 cept, with comparatively few reservations, the 
 explanation which you have tendered to my 
 daughter, and vicariously, as I understand it, 
 to me." 
 
 David repressed a groan, and hastily cast 
 about in his mind for a decent pretext for 
 flight. " I assure you that it greatly relieves 
 me to find you so courteously magnanimous," 
 he said. " I merely yielded to the playful im- 
 
Maxell Ha/res. 165 
 
 pulse of the moment ; and as your daughter 
 has so kindly told you, I made haste thereafter 
 to repair my error, when its possible misinter 
 pretation occurred to me." He bowed again, 
 in response to the other s solemn genuflection, 
 and looked toward the door. 
 
 "I should be pleased, sir," Mr. Skinner 
 said, " if you would honour us by remaining 
 to luncheon." 
 
 " Ah, I should have liked that so much," 
 answered David, with fervour, " but unhappily 
 I have an engagement at Marlborough House. 
 It will be no end of a bore, but it can t be 
 helped. An invitation there, you know, is 
 equivalent to a command. That is one of the 
 drawbacks of a monarchy but of course every 
 system has its weak points." 
 
 "That is a generalisation," returned Mr. 
 Skinner, " to which I am not prepared to give 
 unmeasured adhesion. I will explain to you, 
 sir, briefly, the reasons which dictate my hesi 
 tation to entirely " 
 
 " I m afraid, Mr. Skinner, that I must tear 
 myself away," put in David, anxiously con- 
 
166 March Ha/res. 
 
 suiting his watch. "The Prince never for 
 gives a fellow being late. He has to live so 
 much on a time-table himself, you know, for 
 ever catching trains, and changing his uni 
 forms, and turning up at the exact minute all 
 over the place, laying corner-stones, and open 
 ing docks and unveiling statues, and so on, 
 that it makes him intolerant of other people s 
 lapses. And he s got a fearful memory for 
 that sort of thing." 
 
 "I assume that you speak of the Heir 
 Apparent," commented the other. " Am I to 
 understand that you live in a state of personal 
 subjection that a nobleman in your position, 
 for example, contemplates with apprehension 
 the contingency of causing even the most triv 
 ial and transitory displeasure to the person 
 age alluded to ?" 
 
 "Apprehension, my dear sir? Positive 
 horror! Ah, you little know the reality! 
 Thoughtless people see us from the outside, 
 and they lightly imagine that our lives are one 
 ceaseless round of luxurious gaiety and gilded 
 pleasure. They fancy that to have titles, to 
 
March Hcvres. 167 
 
 bear hereditary distinctions, to fill high places 
 at Court, must be the sum of human happiness. 
 Of course, I suppose we do have a better time 
 than the average, but we pay a price for it. 
 We smile, it is true, but there is always a 
 " shudder beneath the smile. A mere breath, a 
 suspicion, the veriest paltry whim of royal dis 
 favour, and we might better never have been 
 born ! And so," he finished with an uneasy 
 graciousness, " you will understand my abrupt 
 leavetaking now." 
 
 " I promise myself on another occasion, 
 sir," said Mr. Skinner, with more warmth, 
 " the privilege of discussing these topics with 
 you at length. I do not deny that I am my 
 self, to-day, somewhat preoccupied, and lack 
 ing in the power of intellectual concentration. 
 Another occasion, I trust, will find me better 
 fitted to bestow upon these subjects the alert 
 ness of comprehension and clarity of judg 
 ment which their importance demands. At 
 the moment, I confess my mind is burdened 
 with another matter." 
 
 " 0, papa you haven t gone and lost your 
 
168 March Hares. 
 
 letter of credit ! " The girl intervened with 
 accents of alarm. 
 
 The old gentleman shook his head, and 
 smiled in a dubious fashion. " No," he re 
 plied, hesitatingly, "it is merely that I I 
 have been enjoined to secrecy about a very 
 curious and interesting revelation which has 
 been made to me, and concealment is pro 
 foundly alien to my nature. The necessity for 
 maintaining a mysterious reserve weighs upon 
 me, sir, with unaccustomed oppression." 
 
 "It is something that you have learned 
 this morning ? " demanded the daughter. " I ll 
 make you tell me as soon as we re alone." 
 
 " Ah, that cannot be," the father answered. 
 " My faith has been honourably pledged, and 
 must be scrupulously observed." 
 
 " But surely it couldn t have been stipu 
 lated that / was not to know," she urged. 
 "That would be absurd. And besides, who 
 knows of even my existence over here ? " 
 
 "Incomprehensible as it may appear to 
 your perceptions," responded Mr. Skinner, " it 
 happens that you were particularly alluded to 
 
March Hares. 169 
 
 in the terms of the confidential compact im 
 posed upon me." 
 
 " Then you had no business to enter into 
 it at all," she replied, vigorously. " Papa, I 
 am surprised at you ! " 
 
 There was something in his thoughts 
 which lit the old gentleman s dry countenance 
 with a transient gleam of enjoyment. "I 
 hazard the humble opinion that your surprise 
 will be appreciably augmented when, at the 
 proper time, the truth shall have been re 
 vealed to you." He turned, with the flicker- 
 ings of a whimsical smile in his eye, to their 
 guest. "It is an extraordinary coincidence, 
 sir ; but you are also in a manner associated 
 with the occult event to which I may not at 
 present more pointedly refer." 
 
 David musingly looked the old gentleman 
 in the eye. "Yes, I know," he answered; 
 " but I agree with you that it should not be 
 divulged to your daughter. As you have said, 
 we men of the world are in duty bound to 
 keep a decent veil drawn over certain phases 
 of life. I am quite with you in that, sir ; wo 
 
170 March Hares. 
 
 cannot sufficiently respect and guard the 
 sweet-minded innocence of our young 
 ladies." 
 
 Mr. Skinner looked hard at the nobleman, 
 and drew up his slender figure. " My mem 
 ory, sir," he announced stiffly, " fails to recall 
 any observation resembling in the slightest 
 degree, either in form or sentiments, that 
 which you have ascribed to me. j Forgive me, 
 sir, if I venture to further remind you that I 
 have no desire to regard myself, or to be re 
 garded, as a man of the world, in the sense in 
 which I understand that term to be used by 
 the aristocratic class in Great Britain." 
 
 The young lady seemed to share her 
 father s feelings in the matter. "You must 
 remember, Lord Drumpipes," she put in, 
 coldly, " that our standards in such things are 
 not yours. I daresay it seems natural enough 
 to one in your position, and with your ante 
 cedents and associations, that a venerable, 
 white-haired old gentleman should have dis 
 graceful secrets which he ought to conceal 
 from his family ; but we take a different view 
 
March Hares. 171 
 
 of the meaning of the word gentleman, and 
 of the obligations which it involves." 
 
 " Ah, now I have offended you ! " cried 
 David, with a show of remorse. "I assure 
 you that my only thought was to help your 
 good father out of a fix. If I have done 
 wrong, I beg you will put it down to my over- 
 eagerness to be of assistance. And now," he 
 stole a dismayed glance at his watch, " now I 
 really must run. Good-bye! Good-bye, Mr. 
 Skinner. Eemember that I count upon that 
 famous discussion with you. And you may 
 rely entirely upon my discretion in the mat 
 ter of your secret, you know." 
 
 Father and daughter stood for a moment, 
 gazing at the door behind which their noble 
 guest had disappeared. Then the girl turned 
 her eyes with decision upon the author of her 
 being. 
 
 "Papa," she said, with calm resolution, 
 " what did he intend to convey by his remarks 
 about this secret of yours ? " 
 
 " "Why, Adele," the other protested, falter 
 ing a little under her look, " you yourself re- 
 12 
 
172 March Hares. 
 
 pudiated, in the most eloquent and unanswer 
 able words, the bare suggestion that I could 
 possibly be animated by the desire to cloak 
 any unworthy deed or incident from your 
 observation." 
 
 "That was for his benefit," she replied, 
 tranquilly. " I was determined that he should 
 know what we thought of Ms code of morals. 
 But that does not at all affect the question of 
 what you have been doing. Do I understand 
 that you are going to insist on refusing to tell 
 me where you have been, whom you have seen, 
 what your so-called secret is about ? " 
 
 "Adele!" he urged, "I really must pre 
 serve a reticence as to the essential details of 
 the matter in question perhaps only for a 
 few days at least until the obligation of se 
 crecy is removed. You would not have me 
 recreant to my plighted faith, would you ? " 
 
 "But what business had you going and 
 making her any such promise ? " 
 
 " Her ! " Mr. Skinner said, feebly smiling ; 
 "you jest, my dear Adele. How can you 
 conceivably imagine it was a her ? " 
 
Ma/i ch Hares. 173 
 
 " I don t imagine ; I know," responded the 
 daughter, with a hard, dry smile. " You have 
 been seeing that yellow-haired girl that Lord 
 Drumpipes had with him at the Museum yes 
 terday. The letter which summoned you 
 forth this morning was from her. You made 
 some paltering excuses to me, and went out to 
 meet her and you won t look me in the eye 
 and deny it." 
 
 In truth he did not take up her challenge. 
 He hung his head, looked away, and shuffled 
 with his feet. " All I am at liberty to say," 
 he remarked at last, with visible emotion, " is 
 that my grief at being compelled to rest tem 
 porarily under the unwelcome shadow of your 
 suspicion is, to some slight extent, mitigated 
 by the consciousness that when you know all 
 you will do ample justice to the probity of my 
 motives and the honourable character of my 
 actions. I might even go further, and express 
 the conviction that the outcome will be of a 
 nature to afford you unalloyed personal satis 
 faction." 
 
 That may all be," returned Adele ; " but, 
 
174 March Hares. 
 
 in the meantime, you don t go out in London 
 any more by yourself ! " 
 
 Mosscrop laughed to himself as he ran 
 down the stairs of the hotel. The spirit of 
 mirth remained with him while he more 
 slowly ascended the flight of steps, and the 
 dingy passage and covered by-way leading up 
 to the Strand. It was the most comical thing 
 he had ever heard of, and he chuckled again 
 and again during the climb. But upon the 
 bustling crowded thoroughfare it somehow 
 ceased to seem so funny, or at least its value 
 as a source of entertainment began to dimin 
 ish rapidly. He found his mind reverting ir 
 resistibly to the disappointment of the early 
 morning. The image of Vestalia rose upon 
 his mental vision, and would not go away. 
 He brooded over it as he walked, and recog 
 nised that intervening incidents and personali 
 ties had in no sense dimmed his interest in it. 
 He pictured her wonderful hair again, her 
 bright-faced smile, her dear little airs and 
 graces, with a yearning emptiness of heart. 
 
March Hares. 175 
 
 The luncheon obtainable at the Barbary 
 Club was even more unpalatable than usual, 
 which was saying much. The familiar fact 
 that the waiters were Germans struck him 
 afresh, and took on the proportions of an in 
 ternational grievance. There were some fel 
 lows upstairs playing at what they supposed 
 was whist. He stood for a while over the 
 shoulders of a couple of the gamesters, and 
 noted, with a cynical eye, the progress of their 
 hot rivalry as to which should contribute the 
 larger incapacity and the finer stupidity to 
 the losing of the rubber. When they asked 
 him if he wanted to cut in, he turned away 
 with a snort of derisive scorn. 
 
 Over in the billiard-room there were only 
 the marker and the member who played far 
 worse than anybody else in the club. David 
 sourly consented to occupy himself with this 
 egregious outsider, and was beaten by him. 
 The result was so clearly due to accident that 
 he laid some money on the next game. Again 
 the duffer fluked like mad, and won, and in a 
 third game his luck was of such a glaring 
 
176 Ma/rch Ha/res. 
 
 character, that Mosscrop could not refrain 
 from loud comment. This his antagonist re 
 sented. They parted with harsh words, and 
 Mosscrop, cursing the hour when it first oc 
 curred to him to identify himself with such a 
 squalid pot-house, hastened angrily to shake 
 its dust from his feet. 
 
 He made his way, by devious streets whose 
 old book-stalls for once beckoned him in vain, 
 to Bloomsbury and the Museum. A kind of 
 idea had grown up unobtrusively in the back 
 ground of his thoughts, that possibly he might 
 find Vestalia there. It assumed the definite 
 outlines of an expectation as soon as he en 
 tered the building. When he stood in the 
 reading-room itself, and began a systematic 
 scrutiny of its radiating rows of readers, it 
 was with as much confidence as if he had 
 come by appointment. The failure to dis 
 cover her disturbed and annoyed him. He 
 made a slow tour of the inner circle, then an 
 other of the broader outer ring, and suffered 
 no one of the professed students to escape his 
 examining eye. 
 
Ma/rcTi Hares. 177 
 
 What a crew they were! He had never 
 realised it before. His hostile inspection laid 
 bare the puerile devices of the young fools 
 who came by concerted arrangement, took 
 down books at random, and, sitting close to 
 gether, carried on clandestine flirtations under 
 the sightless mask of literature. He glowered 
 with a newly-informed vision at the extraor 
 dinary females whom no one had planned to 
 meet the lone women with eccentric coiffures 
 and startling costumes, who emerge from 
 heaven knows where, and mysteriously gather 
 here in quest of something which it seems in 
 credible that even heaven should be able to 
 define. Observing now the vacuous egotism 
 of their flutterings and posturings in other 
 people s way, the despairing clutch at public 
 attention made by their outlandish vestiture 
 and general get-up, David s thoughts settled 
 grimly upon the fact that there were lands, 
 the seats of ancient civilizations, where super 
 fluous female children were drowned at birth. 
 Here, lie reflected, with sullen irony, we teach 
 them to read and write, and build and stock 
 
178 March Hares. 
 
 a vast reading-room for them instead. His 
 mood preferred the Ganges to the Thames. 
 
 There was more pathos in the spectacle of 
 another class of habitual attendants the poor, 
 shabby, hungry serfs of the quotation mer 
 chant. Mosscrop knew the genus by sight, 
 and in other times had had amusement from 
 their contemplation. Now a sombre rage pos 
 sessed him as he beheld them toiling unin- 
 telligently, hopelessly, under the lash of starva 
 tion. He watched one of the slave-drivers for 
 a while, a short, red man, of swollen spiderish 
 aspect, who moved about keeping these sweated 
 wretches at their toil, now doling out a few 
 pence to one who could remain erect unnour- 
 ished not a minute longer, and who slunk out 
 forthwith with a wolfish haste, now withering 
 some other with whispered reproaches of 
 threats. Mosscrop longed to go and break this 
 creature s neck, or at the very least to kick him, 
 with loud curses and utmost contumely, from 
 the room. 
 
 He went out himself, instead, animated by 
 a freshening spirit of resentment at the futility 
 
March Ha/res. 179 
 
 of existence. From sheer force of habit, he 
 dawdled in front of shop- windows, turned over 
 books and prints in one after another of his 
 accustomed resorts for second-hand merchan 
 dise, and otherwise killed time till the dinner 
 hour. But he did it all without any inner 
 pretence that the process afforded him consola 
 tion. Even when he met some fellows from 
 the Temple, in Chancery Lane, and joined 
 them in a series of visits to ancient bars in the 
 vicinity, where they all stood at wearisome 
 length, and argued with intolerable inconse 
 quence about wholly irrevelant matters over 
 their drinks, his thoughts maintained a moody 
 concentration upon the theme of his personal 
 unhappiness. The stray contributions which he 
 offered to the general conversation were all of 
 an acrid, not to say truculent, character. He 
 had a sort of dour satisfaction in the utterance 
 of offensive gibes and bitter jokes. Twice the 
 threat of an altercation arose, in consequence 
 of these ill-natured comments of his, and David 
 sullenly welcomed the imminent quarrel ; but . 
 the intervention of the others, without any help 
 
180 March Hares. 
 
 from him, cleared the atmosphere again. Even 
 the peacemakers, however, evinced the opinion 
 that he was behaving badly, and nodded cheer 
 ful adieus when at last he declared that they 
 were a parcel of uninspired loons, with whom 
 he marvelled to find himself consuming valu 
 able time. They lifted their glasses at him 
 mockingly as he strode away, with the gleam 
 of an unexpressed " good riddance ! " in their 
 eyes. 
 
 The consciousness that he had made him 
 self disagreeable to these fellows had its uses as 
 a counter-irritant to his inner self-disgust. It 
 rendered solitude at least a trifle more support 
 able. He bought a novel, and read it beside 
 his plate at Simpson s, where the heavy joints 
 and weighty old ale just fitted his mood. The 
 book was one which the papers were talking of 
 for the moment. David reflected grimly as he 
 skimmed the opening chapters that Vestalia 
 had asked him why he didn t write a Scotch 
 novel. They were all the vogue, she said, and 
 while the fashion lasted, it was nonsense for 
 any Scotchman to pretend that he could not 
 
March Hares. 181 
 
 profitably occupy his leisure time. He had re 
 plied, with some flippancy, that his imagina 
 tive powers might compass the construction of 
 a tale, but were unequal to the task of invent- , 
 ing also a whole dialect to tell it in. Now, as 
 the whim returned to him, his fancy parodied 
 a title for this unborn work. How would " A 
 Goddess, Some Merely Ordinary Fools and 
 Lord Drumpipes " do ? 
 
 Ah ! that Drumpipes ! David paid his bill, 
 lit a cigar, and sallied forth, suddenly informed 
 with the notion of going to the Inn, and hav 
 ing it out with the Earl. He doubled up his 
 fists as he hurried along. 
 
 The top floor at Dunstan s was wrapped in 
 darkness. Mosscrop knocked and kicked first 
 at " Mr. Linkhaw s " door to make sure that no 
 one was in, then opened his own, and struck a 
 light. The apartment wore still in his eyes 
 the chill desolation of aspect which he remem 
 bered from the morning. There had been a 
 change in the weather, and the suggestion of a 
 fire was in the damp air. He put on his loose 
 jacket and slippers, recalling sadly as he did 
 
182 March Hares. 
 
 so the vision he had beheld only twenty-four 
 hours before, of that pretty little ermined foot 
 gear on the fender beside his, in front of the 
 glowing grate. He brought out the decanter 
 and a glass, and sighed deeply. 
 
 Then all at once he caught sight of some 
 thing white in the letter box. In the same 
 instant he was tearing open a stamped en 
 velope, addressed in a large, strange hand 
 which yet he knew so well, and excitedly 
 striving to gulp in the meaning of the whole 
 written page before him, without troubling to 
 read the lines in their sequence. Yes, it was 
 from her, and yes, it contained words of 
 kindness and even of tenderness which shone 
 brilliantly forth here and there from the con 
 text. He pulled himself together, and walk 
 ing over to the light, began resolutely at the 
 beginning. 
 
 " DEAR MR. MOSSCROP, I hope you were 
 not very much disappointed at finding me 
 gone this morning, or rather, I hope you were 
 a little disappointed, but will not be so any 
 
March Hares. 183 
 
 longer when you get this explanation. I don t 
 know either that it can be called an explana 
 tion, for it doesn t seem to me that I am at all 
 able to explain even to myself, much less to 
 you. 
 
 " The fact is that you were so kind and so 
 sweet to me, that I simply had to do what I 
 have done. I saw it all, after we had parted. 
 Under the circumstances, and especially con 
 sidering the delicate and noble manner in 
 which you had treated me, it was the only 
 thing I could do ! 
 
 " I should have left a message for you in 
 your letter-box, but there was not a scrap of 
 paper, not even a book out of which I could 
 tear a fly-leaf, in Mr. Linkhaw s room, nor 
 writing materials of any sort. I have bought 
 this paper at the stationer s, and am writing 
 this note in an hotel writing-room. 
 
 "The dear dressing-bag, and the other 
 beautiful things which I owe to you, I took 
 away with tne because it would have broken 
 my heart to leave them, and I felt sure you 
 would be glad to have me take them. Every 
 
184 March Hares. 
 
 time I look at them, and all other times too, I 
 shall think of the best man I ever knew or 
 dreamed of. Something very important has 
 occurred, which may turn out to be of the 
 greatest possible advantage to me. It is very 
 uncertain as yet, and I cannot tell you about 
 it at present, but soon I hope to be able to 
 do so. 
 
 " In the meantime, please believe in my 
 undying gratitude. VESTALIA." 
 
 David drew a long breath, poured a drink for 
 himself, lit his pipe, and sat down to read the 
 letter all over again. He arrived slowly at the 
 conclusion that he was glad she had written it 
 but beyond that his sensations remained ob 
 stinately undefined. The girl had disappeared 
 behind a thick high wall which his imagina 
 tion was unequal to the task of surmounting. 
 A few stray facts assumed a certain distinct 
 ness in his mind : she had evidently gone off. 
 quite of her own accord, and she had appreci 
 ated the spirit of his attitude towards her the 
 previous day, and she had encountered on this, 
 
March Hares. 185 
 
 the following day, something or somebody 
 which might bring her good luck. What kind 
 of good luck ? he wondered. 
 
 There was an implied promise in her words 
 that he should be informed when this mys 
 terious beneficence assumed shape. This had 
 very little comfort in it for him. In fact, 
 he found he rather hated the idea of her 
 enjoying good luck in which he had no 
 share. 
 
 Suppose instead that it didn t come off. 
 Would she return to him then, or at least let 
 him know, so that he might hasten forward 
 again as her special providence ? 
 
 Ah, that is what he had wanted to be her 
 providence. The notion of doing everything 
 for her, of being the source of all she had, of 
 foreseeing her wants, inventing her pleasures, 
 ministering joyfully to the least of her sweet 
 little caprices the charm of this role fascinated 
 him more than ever. He recalled in detail, 
 the emotions of delight he had experienced in 
 buying things for her. By some law which 
 he recognised without analysing, the greatest 
 
186 March Hares. 
 
 pleasure had arisen from the purchase of the 
 articles which she needed most. There had 
 been only a moderate and tempered ecstasy in 
 paying for champagne, but oh, the bliss of 
 buying her boots, and those curling-irons, and 
 the comb ! He thrilled again with it, in 
 retrospect. What would it have been to 
 see her clad entirely in garments of his pro 
 viding ? 
 
 But the cage was empty the bird had 
 flown. Would she come back again? Was 
 there really the remotest hint of such a possi 
 bility in her letter ? 
 
 No. He read it still again, and shook his 
 head at the fender with a despairing groan. 
 The gloom of his reverie benumbed his senses. 
 He let his pipe go out, and suffered the glass 
 at his elbow to remain untouched, as he sat 
 with his sad thoughts for company, and did 
 not even hear the footsteps which presently 
 ascended the stairs. 
 
 A soft little knock at the door startled 
 him from his meditations. He stood up, 
 with his heart fluttering, and lifted his hand 
 
March Hares. 187 
 
 in wonderment to his brow. Had he been 
 asleep and dreaming ? 
 
 The dainty tapping on the panel renewed 
 itself. David moved as in a trance toward the 
 door. 
 
 13 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MOSSCROP turned the spring-lock noise 
 lessly, and drew the door open with caressing 
 gentleness. His eyes had intuitively prepared 
 themselves to discern the slender form of 
 Yestalia in the dim light of the passage. 
 They beheld instead, with bewildered repul 
 sion, a burly masculine bulk. Wandering 
 upward in angry confusion from the level on 
 which they had expected her dear face, they 
 took in the fatuous, moon-like visage of Lord 
 Drumpipes. 
 
 " Dear God ! " groaned David, in frank 
 abandonment to disgust. 
 
 "I came up quietly this time," said the 
 Earl. " You made such a row about my 
 being noisy last night, I thought to myself, 
 4 Now, anything to please Davie ! I ll steal up 
 like a mouse iii list-slippers. " 
 
 188 
 
Ma/rch Ho/res. 189 
 
 David scowled angry impatience at him. 
 "Who the deuce cares what you do?" he 
 demanded, roughly. "You might have 
 marched up with a Salvation Army band, for 
 all it matters to me." 
 
 "Ah," said Drumpipes, placidly pushing 
 his way past Mosscrop through the open door. 
 " Well, give me a drink, Davie, man, and then 
 tell me all about it. Where may the lady be 
 at the present moment ? " 
 
 Mosscrop came in, and produced another 
 glass with a gloomy air. He watched the 
 Earl seat himself in the biggest chair and 
 help himself from the decanter, and light his 
 pipe, all in moody silence. " She s gone 
 away," he said at last, coldly. 
 
 " And a good job, too ! " remarked the 
 other. " Distrust all yellow-hair, Davie ! 
 Have you been in my place and seen what 
 that woman did? There was my Athabaska 
 moose actually torn from the wall, and pulled 
 to bits on the floor! It s a matter of fifty 
 shillings, or even more, Davie. Considering 
 what you d already spent on her, I call that 
 
190 March Hares. 
 
 heartless behaviour on her part. She must be 
 a bad sort indeed to take all you would give 
 her, and fool you to the top of your bent, and 
 then wantonly destroy property that she knew 
 you d have to make good, before she took 
 French leave. Ah, women are not given that 
 kind of hair for nothing ! You re well out of 
 a thankless mess, Davie." 
 
 Mosscrop looked musingly at his friend. 
 He smiled a little to himself, and then sighed 
 as well. A calmer temper returned to him. 
 " I don t take your view of it, Archie," he said, 
 almost gently. " I have been as sad about it 
 as a child who s lost its pet, but I m less dis 
 consolate than I was. Some compensations 
 occur to me and besides, I have a letter from 
 her. It came to-night, and from its tone " 
 
 "Burn it, man, burn it!" the other ad 
 jured him, with eager fervour. " Drive the 
 whole business from your mind ! If you ll 
 give me your solemn word, Davie, not to see 
 her again " the Earl paused, to invest his 
 further words with a deeper gravity " if you ll 
 promise faithfully to have no more to do with 
 
March Ha/res. 191 
 
 her, I ll forgive you the moose. I said fifty 
 shillings, but I doubt your getting a good job 
 much under three pounds. Well, then, if you 
 say the word, I ll pocket that loss. Hang it 
 all, you re my boyhood friend, and I d go to a 
 considerable length to save you from a dan 
 gerous entanglement of this sort. Although 
 it was by no means an ordinary head. Man, I 
 fair loved that moosie ! " 
 
 Mosscrop s smooth-shaven and somewhat 
 sallow visage had gradually lost its melancholy 
 aspect. A cheerful grin began now to play 
 about the corners of his mouth. " Archie," he 
 said with an affectation of exaggerated seri 
 ousness, " a moose more or less is not worth 
 mentioning by comparison with the situation 
 which is about to confront you. I know the 
 particular beast you speak of. It was not up 
 to much. The fur was dropping out in patches 
 on its neck, one of its eyes was loose, and the 
 red paint on the nostrils was oxidized. You 
 would not have got twelve-and-six for it any 
 where in the world. But if it had been the 
 choicest trophy that was ever mounted, and 
 
192 Mcvrch Ha/res. 
 
 then its value were multiplied a hundred-fold, 
 it would still be a waste of your time to give 
 it a second thought. Graver matters demand 
 your attention, Archie." 
 
 The Earl s countenance lengthened, and he 
 set down his glass. He apparently did not 
 trust himself to speak, but stared in alarmed 
 inquiry at his friend. 
 
 " As you said a while ago," pursued David, 
 with vexatious deliberation, "we have been 
 pals from boyhood. My father was your 
 grandfather s man of business, and was your 
 factor till his death. You and I played to 
 gether before we were breeched. We went to 
 school together, and I spent more holidays at 
 Skirl with you than I did at home. So I know 
 the ins and outs of your family and its affairs 
 practically as well as you do. I know your 
 sisters " 
 
 " You don t mean that Ellen has given up 
 her Zenana mission work in Burmah, and re 
 turned here to England ? " Drumpipes inter 
 posed, with a convulsive catch in his breath. 
 
 " ~No ; the Lady Ellen, so far as I know, is 
 
March Hares. 193 
 
 still peacefully occupied in harrowing up the 
 domestic life of the Orient in her well-known 
 and most effective manner." 
 
 "Well, anything else must be a minor 
 evil," said the Earl, with an accent of relief. 
 " Whichever of the rest of them it is, Davie, I 
 tell you at the outset that I wash my hands of 
 the business. My sisters rendered the first 
 twenty-five years of my life a torment upon 
 earth. They bullied me out of all peace in 
 life as a youngster ; they made my rotten mar 
 riage for me ; they took my money and then 
 blackened my character in reward ; they " 
 
 " Oh, I know all those gags by heart," in 
 terposed Mosscrop. " They re really very de 
 cent bodies, those sisters of yours ; if they had 
 a fault, it was in believing that they could 
 make a silk purse out of a sow s ear. But it s 
 not about them at all that I was speaking. 
 The point is, Archie, that I have made the 
 acquaintance of Mr. Laban Skinner and his 
 extremely attractive daughter." 
 
 The Earl took in this intelligence with 
 ponderous slowness. He sipped at his glass in 
 
194 March Ha/res. 
 
 silence, and then stared for a little at his 
 friend. "Well, what is there so alarming 
 about that ? " he demanded at last, roughen 
 ing his voice in puzzled annoyance. " They re 
 respectable people, aren t they? And what 
 the deuce are you driving at, anyway ? " 
 
 " Ah, if you take that tone with me, old 
 man, I pull out of the affair at once." 
 
 Drumpipes scowled. " What affair ? How 
 do you know there is any affair ! And what 
 business have you got being in it, if there is an 
 affair ? You re over-officious, my friend. You 
 take too much on yourself." 
 
 Mosscrop laughed with tantalising enjoy 
 ment in his eyes. " Confess that you think of 
 making a Countess of the lady." 
 
 "Well, and what if I do?" the Earl re 
 torted. " Damn it all, man, I haven t to ask 
 your leave, have I ? And, come now, I put it 
 to you straight, have you ever seen a finer 
 woman in your life ? " 
 
 David lifted his brows judicially, and held 
 his head to one side. " Oh, I m not saying 
 she s amiss in externals," he admitted. 
 
March Hares. 195 
 
 " Man, she s wonderful ! Just wonder 
 ful ! " cried the other. " Did you mind her 
 walk ? It is as if she d never been outside a 
 palace in her life. And the face, the eyes, the 
 colour, the figure what Queen in Europe can 
 match them? Man, since I first laid eyes on 
 her, I ve not been myself at all. The thought 
 of her bewitches me. I hardly know what 
 I m doing. I ve been to-day to my tailor s, 
 and I gave him orders that fair took his breath 
 away. The most expensive clothes, and even 
 furs, I ordered with as light a heart as if it were 
 a matter of sixpences. The man knows me 
 from childhood, and he gazed at me as if I was 
 clean daft. He was shaking his head to him 
 self when I came away. Oh, I m quite a dif 
 ferent person, I assure you. I literally hurl 
 money about me, nowadays." 
 
 " You must indeed be in love," said Moss- 
 crop. <s The father he gives one the notion 
 of a man of wealth." 
 
 The Earl s face glistened. "He s in the 
 Standard Oil Company ! " he whispered, im 
 pressively. 
 
196 Marcli Hares. 
 
 This fact created an atmosphere of digni 
 fied solemnity for itself. The two men looked 
 at each other gravely for a while, saying noth 
 ing. Then the Earl, with a contemplative air, 
 refilled his glass. 
 
 "She is the most beautiful woman I ve 
 ever known," he said, earnestly ; " and I think 
 she will marry me." 
 
 "Physical beauty and Standard Oil do 
 make an alluring combination," remarked 
 David philosophically ; " but " 
 
 " Oh, there are no * buts, " Drum- 
 pipes insisted. " She s as fine in mind 
 and temper as she is in body. I m very 
 particular about intellect, as you know, 
 and I ve studied her closely. She has a 
 very sound brain, Davie for a woman. 
 But how on earth did you come to stumble 
 upon them ? " 
 
 Mosscrop did not explain. "The thing 
 that impressed me about her, curiously 
 enough," he said, with tranquil discursiveness, 
 " was her extremely democratic aversion to 
 our ranks and hereditary titles. She and her 
 
March Hares. 197 
 
 father seem to be the most violent anti-aristo 
 crats I ever knew." 
 
 " Yes, that is a trifle awkward," the Earl 
 admitted. " I don t think it s more than 
 skin-deep with the old man, but Adele that s 
 her name, as beautiful as herself, isn t it ? 
 she s tremendously in earnest about it. That 
 has rather queered my pitch I haven t told 
 them, you know, about the title and all that. 
 They know me just as simple Mr. Linkhaw." 
 
 " Simple is so precisely the word," com 
 mented Mosscrop. 
 
 " Well, what was I to do ? " the other pro 
 tested in self-defence. " I was travelling un 
 der that name in Kentucky went there to 
 look at a big sale of thoroughbreds, you know 
 and met the father, and then I met the girl, 
 and they had me to their house in the country 
 a magnificent place, by George and she 
 had so much to say against the classes here, 
 and took such a strong position against titles 
 and all that why, I would have been a jug 
 gins to tell her at the start; and after, it 
 gradually occurred to me that I wouldn t say 
 
198 March Hares. 
 
 anything at all, but just go on and win her as 
 plain Mr. Linkhaw. Then I could be sure I 
 was being loved for myself alone, couldn t I ? " 
 
 "Your sentimentality is most touching," 
 said David ; " but I fear it will cost you 
 heavily." 
 
 " Oh, by the way, yes," remarked Drum- 
 pipes, collecting his thoughts ; " you said 
 something awhile ago about there being a 
 bother of some sort. What is it ? " Then an 
 idea occurred to him, and he lifted his head 
 eagerly. " You haven t gone and blabbed 
 about me, have you told her who I was, and 
 all that?" 
 
 " Quite the contrary," smiled David. " It 
 was she who recognised me at once as the Earl 
 of Drumpipes. It seems you showed her my 
 picture on shipboard, and told her who I was, 
 and all about me. Do you recall the inci 
 dent?" 
 
 The Earl nodded, foolishly. " It s my con 
 founded imagination," he groaned. " I m al 
 ways making an ass of myself like that. God 
 only knows why I should have gone out of my 
 
March Hcvres. 199 
 
 way to invent that idiotic rubbish. But you 
 get awfully hard up for conversation on ship 
 board, you know. And so it all came out, and 
 she s chuckling to think what a clumsy liar 
 and guy I made of myself and I ve gone and 
 ordered all those clothes and " 
 
 "Be reassured, most noble Thane," cried 
 David, gaily. " There has been no disclosure. 
 Nothing came out. I accepted the situation. 
 I did not for an instant betray you. I said, 
 * Certainly: I am the Earl of Drumpipes, 
 without so much as the nicker of an eyelid. 
 There s friendship for you, if you like." 
 
 "And did she believe" the Earl began 
 to ask. Then he choked with rising mirth, 
 gasped, rolled about in his chair, and finally 
 burst forth in resounding laughter. " She 
 thinks you you " he started out again, and 
 once more went off in loud merriment. " It s 
 the funniest thing I ever heard of," he mur 
 mured at last, restoring his composure with 
 difficulty, and grinning at Mosscrop through 
 eyes wet with joyful tears. 
 
 " It delights me to see how keenly the 
 
200 March Hares. 
 
 humorous aspect of the matter appeals to 
 you," observed David, "because there is an 
 other phase of it which may seem to be de 
 ficient in gaiety." 
 
 " No ; you as the Earl, that s too funny ! " 
 persisted Drumpipes, with a fresh outbreak of 
 laughter. But this somehow rang a little false 
 at the finish. A half-doubtful look came into 
 his eyes, and sobered his countenance. " But 
 you ll stand by me in this thing, old man, now 
 that you ve begun it, won t you ? " he asked, in 
 in an altered tone. 
 
 " But I didn t begin it," David pointed out 
 calmly. " You began it yourself, and she took 
 it up of her own accord. I ve simply sacri 
 ficed myself in your interest. I stood still, 
 and heard my motives aspersed, my character 
 vilified, my objects in life covered with con 
 tumely, all on account of your hereditary 
 crimes, and took it all like a lamb. But to 
 assume that I m going to do this again, or in 
 definitely, is another matter. I don t mind 
 submitting to a single temporary humiliation 
 for a friend s sake, but to make a profession of 
 
March Hares. 201 
 
 it is too much. If it were even a decent full 
 blown peerage it might be different, but to be 
 traduced for nothing better than a Scotch title 
 no, thank you ! " 
 
 "You re not the friend I took you for," 
 commented the Earl, in depressed tones. 
 "For that matter," he added, defiantly, "we 
 were Pilliewillies in Slug-Angus before the 
 Campbells were ever heard of, or the Gordons 
 had learnt not to eat their cattle raw. And 
 no Linkhaw has ever said to a Mosscrop, * I 
 see you re in a hole and I ll leave you 
 there. " 
 
 David smiled. "No, you would always 
 give a hand for a fixed price. Well, Archie, 
 I m not saying I won t see you through all 
 this, but there must be conditions. And 
 there must be a plan. What on earth do 
 you intend to do ? " 
 
 "Well, my idea is," the other answered, 
 hesitatingly, " that I should ask her to be my 
 wife while she still supposes I am merely Mr. 
 Linkhaw. She is like all American girls in 
 this, that she believes entirely in love matches. 
 
202 March Hares. 
 
 So if she will marry me as Mr. Linkhaw, it 
 will signify that she loves me. Very well then, 
 that being the case, I can say to her afterward 
 that I ventured upon a trifling deception, solely 
 to have the chance to win the woman I wanted, 
 and to make sure that I was being loved for 
 myself alone. And then, hang it all, I don t 
 believe it lies in any woman s skin to be angry 
 at finding that she s been made a countess un 
 awares. If I said I was an Earl and turned 
 out not to be one, then she d have a grievance, 
 but it s the other way about." 
 
 " Precisely," put in David, " that particu 
 lar ignominy is reserved for me. But suppose 
 she doesn t accept you." 
 
 "That s hardly worth supposing. It s as 
 good as understood between us, I think, that 
 she will accept me." 
 
 " But then suppose she jilts you, after you 
 disclose to her that you are not plain Mr. 
 Linkhaw." 
 
 " If that s well managed, I m not afraid of 
 it, either. You see, her father s not an out- 
 and-out American. He was really born in 
 
March Hares. 203 
 
 England, and went out there as a boy. That s 
 a very curious thing, you know. Englishmen N 
 who go there, and like the place, get to be 
 more American than the Yankees are them 
 selves. But they don t change their blood, do 
 they? And women are pretty much alike, * 
 too, whatever their blood may be. They re all 
 organised to stand a coronet on the corner of 
 their pocket handkerchiefs. No, it ll be all 
 right, if only you stay by me." 
 
 " Ah, now we come to realities," said Moss- 
 crop, genially. " It ll be rather an expensive 
 business, Archie. I have very high notions, 
 iny friend, as to the scale on which an Earl 
 should comport himself. I could not dream 
 of doing the thing on the thrifty and con 
 tracted basis which suits you. The task is a 
 difficult one to me. I shall have to sit and 
 look entirely devoid of mental sensations of 
 any sort for hours at a time. I know nothing 
 of football and cricket, and have not the name 
 of a single jockey on my tongue; this will 
 render conversation an embarrassing matter 
 
 for me. I shall suffer continually from the 
 14 
 
204 March Hares. 
 
 knowledge that I am being regarded as a 
 vicious fool, a rake, a gambler, and libertine of 
 the most heartless description, and this will 
 wear a good deal on my nerves. Compensa 
 tion of some sort I must have. Now, I enter 
 tain the theory that a nobleman should never 
 have any small change about him at all. Tips 
 to waiters I would make a great point of. 
 They should invariably be of gold. To slip a 
 sovereign into a hall-porter s hand is also a 
 valuable action. His subsequent demeanour 
 gives the cue to the attitude of the whole 
 visible world toward you. A four-in-hand to 
 Brighton is good substantial form, too, if 
 enough pains be taken with the outfit. A 
 private hansom in town is, of course, indis 
 pensable. I realise, Archie," he concluded 
 apologetically, " that I am not displaying a 
 specially comprehensive grasp of the require 
 ments of rank. I can only think of a few 
 things now, on the spur of the moment ; but I 
 will concentrate all my energies on the task 
 once I take it up in earnest. You may trust 
 me to rise to the occasion. I will be a noble- 
 
Ma/rch Ha/res. 205 
 
 man that mere baronets will turn round in the 
 street to look after." 
 
 Drumpipes exhibited a wan and troubled 
 smile. " You d have your joke, Davie, out of 
 any man s distress," he said, weakly. 
 
 " Joke ! " cried Mosscrop. " You make a 
 woful error there, Archie. Never was man 
 more serious." 
 
 " But there d be no opportunity for you to 
 spend money, or display yourself," urged the 
 other. " Not, of course, that I would be 
 grudge a pound or two, more or less, if there 
 were a real need of it. But in this case, the 
 whole point is that you should lie low, and not 
 be seen any more. There is no necessity that 
 she should meet you again. In fact, the more 
 I think of it, the clearer it is that she shouldn t. 
 It might spoil everything, don t you see ? " 
 
 " Oh no, my lad ! " rejoined David, cheer 
 fully. " I m not of the hermit variety of 
 aristocrat. I m the kind of Earl who s on the 
 spot, and who lets people know that he is 
 present. I will have rings on my fingers and 
 bells on my toes. I will why, let me see ! " 
 
206 March Hares. 
 
 His face brightened at some wandering 
 thought. "Why, man, I have a birthday in 
 six days time ! That s it, the 24th. I knew 
 there was the difference of a year lacking a 
 week between us. She read it to me this morn 
 ing out of the peerage August 24th. Very 
 well, then, I will celebrate the anniversary as 
 it has never been celebrated before. I will 
 provide an entertainment for my immediate 
 friends upon a scale befitting my position and 
 the importance of the event commemorated. 
 What do you think of a special saloon-carriage 
 to Portsmouth, and a dinner on my yacht, eh? 
 One could be hired and manned for the occa 
 sion, and a staff of cooks and servants sent 
 down from an hotel here. Or could you get 
 them in Portsmouth? Does anything more 
 appropriate occur to you ? " 
 
 " Go on with your jest," replied the other, 
 sullenly. "All I can say is, it s in damned 
 bad taste, though. Here I am in this predica 
 ment, and you pour vinegar into my wounds 
 instead of oil." 
 
 " Standard Oil, I assume that you refer to. 
 
March Hares. 207 
 
 No, you shall have the oil, Archie. You shall 
 be my guest on the occasion, and you shall 
 meet Mr. and Miss Skinner. We four will 
 constitute the party ; and I will provide such 
 an engaging spectacle of the nobleman, the 
 bearer of hereditary dignities and titles, seen 
 close at hand among his intimate friends, that 
 the lady will be moved to admiration. She 
 will say, c Ah, I never guessed before how de 
 lightful an Earl could be, how perfect in man 
 ners, how admirable in tact, how superb in his 
 capacity as host. I will reconcile her to the 
 aristocracy en bloc" 
 
 " Say, you know," interposed Drumpipes, 
 " I m not sure there isn t something in that." 
 
 " Something in it ? My dear sir, it s 
 rammed with fructifying probabilities. I give 
 this party, and I do it as an Earl should do 
 things. I exert myself to fascinate this trans- 
 Atlantic twain. I lead their imaginations 
 captive to my hereditary seductiveness. I 
 make them feel that to be the guests of an 
 Earl is more than beauty and fine raiment 
 and Standard Oil. I excite them to a warm 
 
208 March Hares. 
 
 glow of tenderness toward feudalism, a mood 
 that melts at mere thought of the mediaeval. 
 At that psychological moment you jump in 
 and intimate that you re something of an Earl 
 yourself and there you are ! " 
 
 Drumpipes nodded approving comprehen 
 sion, while he pondered the project thus out 
 lined. " I m not sure I don t like the scheme," 
 he repeated. " It s risky, though. She s fear 
 fully keen of scent, that girl is. If you didn t 
 play it for all you were worth, every minute, 
 she d twig the thing like a shot. You d leave 
 her with me a good deal, wouldn t you, and 
 devote yourself to the old man ? That would 
 be the safest, you know." 
 
 " That would hardly do. It wouldn t be 
 in character. When an Earl is giving a party, 
 and there is a beautiful young woman about, 
 he doesn t go and talk with windy old fossils 
 in frock-coats. It would look unnatural. It 
 might as like as not excite suspicion. And 
 now you d better clear out. I want to go to 
 bed." 
 
 The Earl rose, stood irresolute for a mo- 
 
March Hares. 209 
 
 ment, and then put a hand on Mosscrop s 
 shoulder. " Davie," he said gravely, " there s 
 one thing you must remember. You re not a 
 good man to handle money if I didn t know 
 your forbears, I d never credit your being a 
 Scot at all remember, laddie, that those law 
 yers have run up terrible bills against me, 
 and farm values have all dropped in the most 
 fearful fashion, and I ve not kept so tight a 
 hand on the purse-strings of late, myself, as 
 usual, and so do this thing as moderately " 
 
 " Oh, you be damned ! " laughed Mosscrop, 
 and pushed him from the room. 
 
 When he was alone, the notion of going 
 to bed seemed to have lost its urgency. He 
 lighted his pipe, and sat down to read Vesta- 
 lia s letter once again. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 AT breakfast, three mornings later, Mr. 
 Laban Skinner and his daughter dallied over 
 their plates, and sent the waiter out again 
 with some asperity when he, taking it for 
 granted they must have finished the meal, 
 came in to clear the table. 
 
 Each had been reading a letter, from the 
 early morning mail. 
 
 " It is an invitation from the Earl of 
 Drumpipes," remarked the father, regarding 
 his daughter over his pince-nez, " expressing, 
 in what I am constrained to describe as some 
 what abrupt and common-place terms, his de 
 sire that we should consider ourselves as his 
 guests during the entire day upon the ap 
 proaching 24th instant, the occasion being the 
 
 anniversary of his birth." He handed over 
 210 
 
Mar cli Hares. 211 
 
 the note for her inspection as he spoke. 
 " The impression which his phraseology pro 
 duces upon me," he added, "is that of one 
 performing a perfunctory act of courtesy to 
 foreigners of his acquaintance, to whom he 
 extends the ceremonial proffer of a hospitality 
 which he assumes will be declined." 
 
 " Oh, not at all, papa," commented Adele, 
 briefiy glancing at the note. " All noblemen 
 write in that formal way. It is a part of 
 their bringing-up. No ; he wants us to come, 
 right enough. I have a letter here from Mr. 
 Linkhaw, explaining the thing. Of course it 
 was a suggestion of his." 
 
 " I venture the hope," said Mr. Skinner, 
 " that he improves the opportunity to also ex 
 plain the otherwise unintelligible fact that 
 during an entire week we have had neither 
 ocular evidence nor any other tangible mani 
 festation of his presence upon this side of the 
 Atlantic. I do not hesitate to avow my sur 
 prise at what, after his manifold and, I might 
 say, even importunate professions of eagerness 
 to place his services at our disposal in London, 
 
212 March Ifares. 
 
 I find myself unable to refrain from regarding 
 as his indifference to our our being here." 
 
 "No," said Adele, confidently, "it s all 
 right. He was kept longer in Scotland than 
 he expected very urgent family business of 
 some sort and only arrived in London a 
 couple of days ago, and has been up to his eyes 
 in work since he came. Besides," she contin 
 ued with a little smile, " he is very frank ; he 
 says he has no clothes fit to go about in Lon 
 don with, but his tailor is working at some 
 new ones for him day and night, and they are 
 promised for the 23d, so that at the birthday 
 
 party next day " 
 
 " I am far from presuming, Adele," inter 
 rupted the father, gravely, " to ascribe to you 
 a deficiency or obtuseness of perception where 
 considerations of delicacy are involved ; but I 
 think I am warranted in pointing out that at 
 home, at least in the social environment to 
 which you have been from your infancy accus 
 tomed, a young gentleman would intuitively 
 eschew a subject of this nature in his corre 
 spondence with a young lady." 
 
Mcurch Ha/res. 213 
 
 " Oh, they re different here," explained the 
 daughter, with nonchalance. " They talk 
 quite openly over here of lots of things which 
 we never dream of mentioning. You remem 
 ber that lady in front of us at the theatre last 
 night when the men in their dress suits came 
 over to talk with her between the acts how 
 she told them right out, that although it was 
 so hot she had to fan herself all the while, still 
 her legs felt quite shivery. Now, a speech like 
 that would stand Louisville on its head, let 
 alone Paris, Kentucky, but here it passes with 
 out the slightest notice. It s the custom of 
 the country. I rather like it myself." 
 
 Mr. Skinner sighed, and pecked timorously 
 at his egg with a spoon. " I am not wanting, 
 I trust, in tolerance for the natural divergences 
 of habit and manner which distinguish the 
 widely-separated branches of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, or in a desire to accommodate myself to 
 their peculiarities when I confront them in the 
 course of foreign travel ; but I with difficulty 
 bring myself to contemplate with satisfaction 
 the method of partaking of a soft-boiled egg 
 
214 March Hares. 
 
 which obtains favour in these islands. To my 
 mind, the negation of the principle of a centre 
 of gravity involved in the construction of this 
 egg cup, combined with the objectionably in 
 adequate dimensions of the spoon " 
 
 " Dig it out on to your plate, then ; the 
 waiter won t come in again till I ring," sug 
 gested the daughter. 
 
 " I prefer the alternative of abstention," he 
 answered. " The spectacle of stains upon the 
 cloth or upon the plate would be equally sug 
 gestive to the servant s scrutiny." 
 
 He rose as he spoke. Adele, gathering up 
 the letters, did likewise, and rang the bell. 
 
 Mr. Skinner, having glanced out at the 
 river panorama from the balcony window for 
 a little, and then looked over the market 
 columns of a newspaper, turned again to his 
 daughter. 
 
 " I gather that we are to accept the invita 
 tion of the Earl of Drumpipes," he remarked, 
 tentatively. 
 
 Adele nodded. " TVhy, of course," she 
 said ; " that s to be the formal beginning of 
 
Ma/rch Hares. 215 
 
 everything. It is intended to make our posi 
 tion here perfectly regular. Lord Drumpipes 
 is the head of Mr. Linkhaw s family. It is 
 entirely becoming that he should take the 
 initiative in recognising us." 
 
 " Ah yes, in recognising us," he repeated. 
 " I suppose, Adele, it would be futile for me 
 to recur to the question whether you have 
 sufficiently weighed the opposing considera 
 tions with regard to Mr. Linkhaw, and 
 the " 
 
 " Mercy, yes ! " interposed Adele, with 
 promptitude. " Don t let s have that all over 
 again. I ve quite settled everything in my 
 own mind." 
 
 " Since I was afforded the opportunity of 
 personally observing and conversing with the 
 Earl of Drumpipes," pursued the father, " and 
 of thus forming authoritative conclusions as to 
 the British nobility in general, I have devoted 
 much thought to the subject. While I do not 
 suggest that my well-known views upon the 
 aristocratic institution, as a whole, have under 
 gone any perceptible transformation, I do not 
 
216 Ma/rch 
 
 shrink from the admission that the thought 
 of being connected by marriage with the bearer 
 of an hereditary title no longer presents itself 
 to me in such repulsive colours as was former 
 ly the case. If, therefore, with your undoubted 
 advantages, it should occur to you to entertain 
 the idea of a possible alliance with the nobil 
 ity, I would not have you feel that my convic 
 tions formed a necessarily insuperable barrier 
 
 " No, no ! " the daughter broke in, with a 
 laugh. "I ll promise to disregard your con 
 victions as much as you like. But now I want 
 you to go out, and kill time by yourself some 
 where till luncheon. I want to be left alone. 
 There is some place where elderly American 
 gentlemen can go, isn t there, without getting 
 into mischief ? Oh yes, you must go, and not 
 just downstairs to hang about the hotel en 
 trance, but straight away somewhere. Why ? 
 My dear papa, I have my secrets as well as 
 you." 
 
 "But that secret of mine," he protested 
 feebly, " I assure you, Adele, that it is really 
 
March Hares. 
 
 nothing at all. That is, it does involve mat 
 ters both interesting and important ; but the 
 fact that I am precluded from mentioning 
 them is in the nature of a pure accident, and 
 wholly without significance." 
 
 " Good-bye till luncheon time," answered 
 Adele, with affable firmness. " And mind you 
 quit the premises." 
 
 Mr. Skinner found his hat, smiled dubi 
 ously at his daughter, and without further 
 parley took himself off. 
 
 Adele, left alone, looked at the watch in 
 her girdle, and compared its record with that 
 of the ornate clock on the mantel. She took 
 up the paper and ran an aimless eye over one 
 page after another. Then she walked about 
 with a restless movement, pausing from time 
 to time to bend a frowning yet indifferent in 
 spection upon the scene spread out beyond the 
 balcony. 
 
 At last there came a tap on the door, and 
 at sound of this, even as she called out a 
 clear, commanding " Come ! " she withdrew 
 all signs of perturbation, or of emotion of 
 
218 Mwrch Hcvres. 
 
 any sort, from her beautiful dark counte 
 nance. 
 
 It was Vestalia who entered the room 
 Vestalia, clad in daintily unpretentious and 
 becoming garments, neatly gloved, and with 
 much radiant self-possession upon her pretty 
 face. She paused upon the threshold, nodded 
 rather than bowed to her hostess, and let a 
 little smile sparkle in her eyes and play about 
 her rosebud of a mouth. 
 
 " Your father does not succeed very well in 
 keeping his secrets, I observe," she remarked, 
 pleasantly, by way of an overture to conversa 
 tion. 
 
 " "Won t you please to be seated," said 
 Adele, with exaggerated calmness. She her 
 self took a chair, and slowly surveyed her vis 
 itor as she went on : " My father has no se 
 crets from me. He tries to have once in a 
 blue moon but it doesn t come off. I may 
 tell you frankly, however, that he has in this 
 case told me nothing. I found your address, 
 and other information, in looking through his 
 pockets. I am under no obligation to tell you 
 
March Hares. 219 
 
 this : I simply feel like it, that s all. I hate 
 dissimulation." 
 
 " And I suppose you have your things made 
 up without pockets," suggested Yestalia, ami 
 ably. 
 
 Adele put some added resolution into her 
 glance. " I wrote asking you to call," she 
 said coldly, "because it became a nuisance 
 not to know what you were up to." 
 
 " Ah," replied Vestalia, " it looks as if your 
 father must have destroyed some of our cor 
 respondence. How thoughtless of him ! " 
 
 Miss Skinner paused, and knitted her 
 queenly brows a trifle. She did not seem to 
 be getting on. " I have no wish to waste 
 time in trying to be funny," she avowed, after 
 some hesitation. "Now that you are here, 
 have you any objection to telling me why you 
 swore my father to keep a secret from me ? " 
 
 " Oh, just a whim of mine, nothing more," 
 Vestalia assured her, lightly. "I frequently 
 have notions like that, that I can t in the least 
 account for." 
 
 " No, you had a reason," insisted the other, 
 15 
 
220 March Ha/res. 
 
 with gravity. " And you must tell me what it 
 was. I have been frank with you." 
 
 "And I will not be behind you in can 
 dour," said Vestalia, as if won by an appeal to 
 her better self. "It was because you looked 
 at me in the Museum as if you thought my 
 hair was dyed." 
 
 " Well, so it is, isn t it ? " demanded Adele, 
 bluntly. 
 
 " Upon my honour, no ! " the other replied. 
 " And now you look at me as if you thought 
 that that wasn t much to swear by. It s pos 
 sible that you do not realise it, but your eyes 
 leave something to be desired in the matter of 
 politeness." 
 
 "I m afraid that s true," Adele assented. 
 " I have an effect of looking very hard at 
 things, simply because I m near-sighted. I 
 ought to wear glasses, but they do not suit 
 me." 
 
 "Yes," said Vestalia, with a meditative 
 look, " it would be a pity for you to put them 
 on. They would detract from your face. It 
 is very beautiful as it is for a dark style." 
 
Mwrch Hcvres. 221 
 
 " Sometimes I feel that I am almost tired 
 of being dark/ confessed Adele. " Your hair 
 is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I 
 could see that your gentleman-friend at the 
 Museum admired it immensely." 
 
 "Oh yes, he said so repeatedly," Vestalia 
 replied, with a demure display of pleasure at 
 the recollection. 
 
 Again there was a little pause. Then Miss 
 Skinner essayed another opening. " Your 
 name Peaussier would indicate French ex 
 traction," she remarked. " And French people 
 are so very dark, as a rule, aren t they ? My 
 mother was a Creole from Louisiana, you 
 know and I suppose that accounts for my 
 colour." 
 
 " "Well, my mother was Scotch," explained 
 Vestalia, " and they are sandy." 
 
 "The Scotch gentleman that you were 
 with at the Museum he was decidedly a dark 
 man," suggested Adele, with a casual man 
 ner. 
 
 " Now that I think of it, so he was," said 
 Vestalia. 
 
222 March Ha/res. 
 
 The measured and ceremonious ticking of 
 the expensive clock on the mantel had the si 
 lence to itself for a space, while the two ladies 
 looked at each other. 
 
 " So you won t tell me anything ? " Miss 
 Skinner exclaimed at last. 
 
 " The trouble is, don t you see, that I am 
 quite in the dark as to what you want to 
 know. If you will tell me just what was in 
 your father s pockets, I can judge then what 
 gaps exist in your information." 
 
 Adele laughed aloud. " I believe you are 
 really a tip-top good fellow, in spite of every 
 thing," she declared. " Do tell me what it is 
 you are doing! I assure you you re utterly 
 wrong in thinking that I am a person to guard 
 against, to keep secrets from. Come, don t 
 you see how much I really like you? And 
 you won t trust me ! I suppose it is the 
 blonde temperament, suspicious and unrespon 
 sive and calculating. Or no, I don t mean 
 that, you know I don t, but you might repose 
 more confidence in me, when I have told you 
 everything." 
 
March Hares. 223 
 
 " Everything ? " murmured Vestalia, 
 sweetly. 
 
 " About papa s pockets, you know." 
 
 "Ah, yes." 
 
 " It was all your fault," urged Adele. " It 
 was you who drove me to it. And if you don t 
 tell now, goodness only knows what crimes I 
 may not be driven to commit, in addition." 
 
 " Let me hasten to avert this woful catas 
 trophe," cried Vestalia. " The matter is sim 
 plicity itself. I am by profession, trade, 
 whatever you call it, a tracer of pedigrees, 
 genealogies. I served my apprenticeship un 
 der an American lady, who worked entirely 
 for American customers. She is dead now, 
 and the business is broken up, and I have 
 been idle for a long time. When I saw your 
 father and heard his name, a thought occurred 
 to me. I know a good deal about the Skin 
 ners in England." 
 
 " Papa was born in England himself, you 
 know," interposed Adele, with rising interest. 
 
 " Yes, I know," Vestalia went on. " As I 
 said, I have exceptional sources of information 
 
224 March Hares. 
 
 about the family, and it occurred to me that 
 very likely he would be glad to have the records 
 searched, and a full pedigree drawn up. I 
 wrote to him, accordingly he had mentioned 
 this hotel and I came and saw him downstairs 
 in the reception-room, and he seemed delighted 
 with the idea, and gave me a commission at 
 once. What was more important still, he was 
 kind enough to pay me something in advance. 
 It came just at the moment to to supply a 
 very urgent want, too, I can tell you." 
 
 " Ah, poor girl ! " said Adele, tenderly. 
 " But why on earth were you afraid that 1 
 should know ? I don t believe your story about 
 the hair, you know." 
 
 " Eeally it was that," protested Vestalia. 
 " I could see that you didn t like me. I was 
 afraid of you that is, of your prejudicing 
 your father against me. And if you only knew 
 how desperately I was in need of the job ! 
 Don t you remember, you did look very sharply 
 at me." 
 
 " If I did, it was because I was surprised to 
 to see who you were with." 
 
March Ha/res. 225 
 
 "How do you mean?" queried Vestalia, 
 puzzled. " We were both entire strangers to 
 you, surely." 
 
 " No. I recognised the gentleman from a 
 picture I had seen of him. I had a kind of 
 idea that he was not precisely a nice gentleman 
 for you to be with." 
 
 " Then you had a preposterous and wickedly 
 mistaken kind of idea," said Vestalia, with de 
 cision. " There isn t a truer or nobler-spirited 
 gentleman on this earth than he is. I have 
 reason to know what I say. If anybody has 
 told you otherwise, you have been lied to, that s 
 all." 
 
 " Dear, dear, how much you are in earnest," 
 cried Adele. " You must be my friend, and 
 defend me behind my back like that, too. If 
 he liked your hair immensely, why, so do I." 
 
 " Don t let us joke about him," put in Ves 
 talia, with seriousness. "I feel very keenly 
 about my obligation to him. He saved my 
 life and and I d rather talk about something 
 else. We were speaking of the Skinners and 
 their pedigree." 
 
226 March Ha/res. 
 
 Adele assented, with, an inclination of the 
 head, to the diversion, though her eyes retained 
 their gleam of surprised curiosity. " Yes, the 
 Skinners," she said, vaguely. 
 
 "I can trace them up to Sir Theobald 
 Skinner, Knight, who obtained a grant of the 
 Abbey lands of Coggesthorpe, Suffolk, in 1541 
 who in turn was the grandfather of Walter 
 Skinner, who married Elizabeth, daughter and 
 co-heir of John Banstock, Esquire, of Meechy, 
 Norfolk, and became first Lord Gunser." 
 
 Adele pricked up her ears. "What is 
 that? Are we related to the nobility? Oh, 
 that is what papa meant by something interest 
 ing and important ! Who would have supposed 
 he could be so sly? Oh, sure enough, that 
 
 would account for " She broke off short, 
 
 and smiled, first knowingly to herself, then 
 with frank cordiality to Vestalia. " Oh, go 
 on," she urged. " Tell me about our lords." 
 
 Yestalia shook her head. " We that is, 
 you have no lords nowadays," she admitted, 
 ruefully. "The Gunser peerage became ex 
 tinct in the male line nearly two hundred years 
 
March Hares. 227 
 
 ago. The collateral branches of the family 
 sank to be yeomen on the soil their ancestors 
 had owned some of them became even peas 
 ants, agricultural labourers. There are no 
 prosperous or polite Skinners nowadays ex 
 cept your immediate branch." 
 
 "And even I haven t got polite eyes," 
 laughed Adele. " Yes, I remember papa tell 
 ing how poor his people were. He hardly 
 knew the taste of meat, he said, till he went to 
 America as a boy. And so you have traced all 
 his relations out. Are there any cousins or 
 near connections living now, do you know? 
 He had a brother older than himself, Abram 
 was his name, I fancy, and he enlisted in the 
 army and went to the dogs, I think. At 
 least, father never heard of him after 
 ward." 
 
 " He is dead," Vestalia re-assured her. 
 " He did go to the dogs, as you say. He had 
 some sons, but they are dead too." 
 
 "And so there were actually Skinners in 
 the peerage!" mused Adele, aloud. The 
 thought seemed to excite her. She rose and 
 
228 March Hares. 
 
 looked at herself in the mirror, over Vestalia s 
 head. The latter stood up as well. 
 
 "Oh, must you be going?" said Adele. 
 " There was so much I wanted to say to you. 
 We must meet soon again. I am going to in 
 sist upon that. You see, I know absolutely 
 no one over here of my own sex, except you. 
 It will be different in a few days, now, but 
 that won t make any difference with my liking 
 you. Oh, yes I wanted to ask you do you 
 know a Mr. Linkhaw ? " 
 
 Vestalia looked blankly at her interrogator 
 for a moment, then flushed a little and smiled 
 confusedly. " I have heard the name," she 
 replied, " but I have never seen the gentleman 
 bearing it." 
 
 Adele drew her brows together in a half- 
 frown. " He is a great friend of the gentle 
 man who was with you at the Museum," she 
 said, doubtingly. 
 
 " Yes, I gathered that," answered Vestalia. 
 " It was in that way that I heard the name." 
 
 " Eeally, how curiously we two are mixed 
 up together ! " cried the other, with dawning 
 
March Hares. 229 
 
 impatience. " You could tell me ever so many 
 things that I am dying to know, if you only 
 chose to. It is provoking to have to grope 
 about in the dark like this. And you won t 
 even get vexed with me, and talk back. Even 
 that way I might learn something and we 
 could make it up afterward, as easy as not." 
 
 "Ah, but that is what I came resolved 
 under no circumstances to do," explained Yes- 
 talia, with affable placidity. " Nothing would 
 tempt me to get vexed with you." 
 
 " Suppose I insisted upon talking unpleas 
 antly about the gentleman at the Museum," 
 suggested Adele, with potential malice in her 
 tone. 
 
 " I don t say you can t grieve me and hurt 
 me, but you can t make me angry with you. 
 You see, I know things which you don t know, 
 which would entirely alter your views about 
 me, and about other matters, if you were aware 
 of them. So it would be unfair in me to 
 blame you for remarks made in ignorance of 
 the truth." 
 
 " But it is precisely against this ignorance 
 
230 March Hares. 
 
 that I protest with all my might ! " said Adele 
 with vehemence. "It is that that is unfair. 
 It makes me ridiculous." 
 
 " I don t see the sense of it myself," agreed 
 Vestalia, simply. " I always thought it would 
 be the simplest course to tell you everything 
 at once. Or no what have I said ? " she has 
 tened to add, in deprecation of the other s 
 kindling eye ; " I didn t feel that way at first. 
 It was I who originally suggested that you 
 shouldn t be told, at the start. I was afraid 
 of you, you know. But now I feel quite dif 
 ferently. I would gladly have you know 
 everything but your father has other views. 
 It is his secret, now, much more than it is 
 mine. I don t think there is any reason why 
 I shouldn t tell you that much." 
 
 " Oh-h ! " groaned Adele, in wrath at her 
 helplessness. " Well, tell me this, anyway, 
 how long is this tomfoolery to be kept 
 up?" 
 
 " No, don t ask me," answered Vestalia, 
 sympathetically at last. " I don t know. I 
 can only say that I m as tired of it now as you 
 
Mar cli Hcvres. 231 
 
 are. I wish you would believe that. It would 
 make me easier in my mind." 
 
 " Well, I do believe it, then," the dark girl 
 replied, with impulsive readiness. " Oh, and 
 something occurs to me that I daresay you 
 can tell me. You remember the day at the 
 Museum. Well, the gentleman who was with 
 you called here next day, papa having in the 
 meantime seen you secretly, downstairs. Now, 
 papa seemed clearly annoyed with that gentle 
 man, when he came up and found him here. 
 Now, why was that ? " 
 
 Vestalia reflected. It was evident enough 
 that the question honestly puzzled her. " All 
 I can think of," she replied, after considera 
 tion, " is that your father had taken it for 
 granted that this gentleman was my husband 
 and when it came out in our interview that 
 he wasn t then your father questioned me very 
 closely about him, and it happened that it was 
 a subject upon which I couldn t very well tell 
 him much, and I daresay he formed an unfa 
 vourable opinion of Mr. Mosscrop on that ac 
 count. That is the only explanation I can 
 
232 Marcli Hares. 
 
 think of. I know he said he thought it would 
 be well for me not to see him again, or even 
 hold communication with him but I did 
 write him a letter that very day all the same." 
 
 It was Adele s turn to ponder. " But 
 why," she began, hesitatingly, "why should 
 papa take it upon himself to tell you what to 
 do and not to do ? What business is it of his ? 
 And, if he disliked the thing, why should he 
 remain friendly to you, and snub the gentle 
 man you call Mr. Mosscrop? Not that he 
 minded it, or that it amounted to anything, 
 but it puzzles me that papa should behave in 
 that curious fashion." 
 
 " Yes, it would have been more natural to 
 show the woman the cold shoulder, and think 
 nothing amiss of the man," assented Vestalia, 
 gravely. " I quite agree with you there." 
 
 " Well, that is the way of the world, isn t 
 it ? " put in Adele, in apologetic tones. " Don t 
 dream that I suggest anything wrong." 
 
 " Oh no," said the other patiently, but with 
 a note of weariness in her voice. " It doesn t 
 matter, one way or the other." 
 
March Hares. 233 
 
 "You love him, then?" Adele s black 
 eyes glowed with a sudden kindly warmth 
 which went to Vestalia s heart." 
 
 "Oh, how can I tell you?" she faltered. 
 "It is all so stupid and I am so unhappy? 
 He was goodness itself to me, and he must 
 think that I behaved like a brute a common 
 girl of the streets or meaner still, for at least 
 it s said they have some sense of gratitude. 
 He came like Providence itself to help me, 
 when I was absolutely starving and turned out 
 of doors like a dog and I was grateful, and 
 yet here he must be thinking that I m the 
 very scum of the earth ! " 
 
 She gazed at her companion out of swim 
 ming eyes, and for answer Adele kissed her. 
 
 " I will go now," she stammered, hastily, 
 as if the caress had further unnerved her. 
 " I ve stayed longer than I meant. Yes, I will 
 come again if you tell your father that I ve 
 been, and he says I may come." 
 
 " I d like to see him say anything else ! " 
 cried the young lady from Paris, Kentucky. 
 " The idea ! " 
 
234 March Hares. 
 
 And when the door had closed upon 
 Yestalia, this dark beauty clenched her hands, 
 and strode indignantly about the room, and 
 repeated between set teeth, "The very 
 idea ! " 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 VESTALIA paused at the street entrance of 
 the hotel, and looked doubtfully up the hill 
 toward the shifting outline of the strident, 
 crowded Strand. 
 
 The prospect repelled her, and she bent 
 her slow steps in the other direction. Cross 
 ing the empty, sun-baked roadway of the Em 
 bankment, she strolled westward in the partial 
 shade of the young lime-trees, which maintain 
 a temerarious existence along the line of the 
 river s parapet. 
 
 She looked over the stonework to the water 
 from time to time as she walked, and every 
 glance instinctively wandered up-stream to 
 ward the stretch of Westminster Bridge, poised 
 delicately in the noonday haze across the body 
 of the sleepy flood. The stately beauty of the 
 
 16 235 
 
236 March Ha/res. 
 
 opposing piles of buildings which, it linked 
 one with the other, and brought together into 
 the loftiest picture the Old World knows, 
 came as she moved toward it to soothe and 
 uplift her spirits. Her lips parted with pleas 
 ure at the spectacle, and at the thought that 
 there, in that glorious span between St. 
 Thomas and St. Stephen s, her own romance 
 had been born. 
 
 The warm serenity of the scene, the inim 
 itable composure of its vast parts, lying under 
 the sunshine in such majestic calm, seemed to 
 chide the weak flutterings and despondencies 
 to which she had surrendered her bosom. The 
 romance which absorbed her mind, of which, 
 indeed, her whole being had become a portion, 
 had its home there, in the heart of that be 
 nignant grandeur. The grace and charm and 
 noble strength of what she gazed upon re 
 buked her timid want of confidence in Des 
 tiny, as it shapes itself on Westminster Bridge. 
 She walked forward with a firmer step, her 
 head up, and her eyes drying themselves by 
 the radiance of their own glance. 
 
March Hares. 237 
 
 And so, being borne along by the power 
 ful spell which this great vista has cast about 
 her, she had no sense of surprise when it 
 caught up also David Mosscrop in its train, 
 and placed him at her side. It was at the 
 corner of the bridge, and a momentary clus 
 tering of pedestrians brought to a stand-still 
 by a policeman s uplifted hand had diverted 
 her thoughts, and then someone touched her 
 on the arm. 
 
 She turned and drank in what had hap 
 pened with tranquil, tenderly self-possessed 
 eyes. She gave no start, as of a mind caught 
 unawares. She was conscious of no wonder, 
 no tremor of disturbance at the unexpected. 
 The luminous regard in which she embraced 
 the newcomer was as unreasoningly ready for 
 him as are the spontaneous raptures of dream 
 land. No words came to her lips, but it was 
 in the air that she had known he was com 
 ing. 
 
 " I was just going to hunt a fellow up at 
 his club across there," said Mosscrop, his 
 coarser masculine sense suggesting an explana- 
 
238 March Hares. 
 
 tion, " and I chanced to look over here, and I 
 made sure it was you, and " 
 
 He stopped short too, and the slower fires 
 kindled in the glance which met hers. They 
 looked into each other s eyes, in a long mo 
 ment of silence. He drew her arm in his, 
 while the glamour of this sustained gaze rested 
 still upon them. Then, with a lengthened 
 happy sigh she spoke. 
 
 "I want to go again to that dear little 
 place where we breakfasted," she said softly. 
 " You must let me have my own way. I have 
 money in my purse, now, and you must come 
 and lunch with me. And it must be oh, it 
 must be there." 
 
 They drove thither, this time in a high- 
 hung, sumptuous, noiseless hansom, which 
 sped with an entranced absence of motion 
 through the busy streets. 
 
 " It is like fairyland again," she whispered, 
 nestling against him in the narrow, deeply- 
 padded enclosure. And he, resting his hand 
 upon hers under the shelter of the 
 closed doors, breathed heavily, and mur- 
 
March Hwres. 239 
 
 mured a cadence without words in ecstatic 
 response. 
 
 In some ridiculous fraction of time they 
 were at their journey s end. The impression 
 of having travelled on a magic carpet was in 
 their minds as, almost ruefully, they woke 
 from their day-dream of arrow-flight through 
 space, stepped out, and paid the cabman. 
 They laughed together at the thought, with 
 out necessity of mentioning what amused 
 them. Vestalia, before they entered the res 
 taurant, drew her companion a few doors up 
 the street, and halted before the narrow win 
 dow of the old French bootmaker s shop. 
 Here they laughed again, he merrily, she with 
 a lingering, mellow aftermath of feeling in her 
 tone. 
 
 It was only when they were seated in the 
 little room above and she had drawn off her 
 gloves, and after a joyous insistence upon do 
 ing it all herself, had chosen some dishes from 
 the card and sent the waiter off with the order, 
 that their tongues were loosened. 
 
 David leaned back in his chair, and beamed 
 
240 March Hares. 
 
 broad content. He began to talk in the 
 measured, smooth-flowing tone which she re 
 membered so well. " First of all, dear girl," 
 he said, "I want to put on the record my 
 boundless delight at finding you once more. 
 I take off my hat to the gods. They have de 
 vised in my behalf a boon which swallows up 
 all the imaginable ills of a lifetime. I swear 
 to complain of nothing they do for the rest of 
 my days. They have given you back to me ; 
 and if I am dull enough to lose you again, 
 why, I will bow my head submissively to the 
 deserved mishaps of an ass." 
 
 The girl s blue eyes twinkled with a soft, 
 glad light. "It is a great joy to hear your 
 voice again," she said, gently. "The echoes 
 of it have kept up a little faint murmur in my 
 ears ever since we parted, as if some spirit was 
 holding a phantom shell close to my head. 
 And now it is as if we hadn t parted at all, 
 isn t it? I mean, for the present." 
 
 " Ah, it matters so little what you mean," 
 he replied, in affectionate banter. "I erred 
 once, to my profound misfortune, in deferring 
 
March Hares. 241 
 
 to your mental processes, and permitting them 
 to translate themselves into actions. Do not 
 think that I shall be so weak again. The key 
 shall never fail to be turned on you here 
 after." 
 
 She laughed gaily, and shook her head in 
 
 playful defiance. " Ah, but suppose " she 
 
 began, and then let a glance of merry archness 
 complete her sentence. 
 
 " I confess to curiosity," he said. " I 
 should prize highly your conception of the 
 motives which prompted you to run away 
 from me." 
 
 Her mood sobered perceptibly. " I did it 
 because it was right." 
 
 " As a mainspring of human action, that 
 is inadequate," he commented. "Almost all 
 painful and embarrassing things are right, but 
 wise people avoid them as much as possible 
 none the less." 
 
 " No, it was right for me to go," she per 
 sisted. " I couldn t stay and be dependent 
 upon someone else, no matter who that some 
 one elso was. Your kindness to me that whole 
 
242 March Hares. 
 
 day was more grateful to me than you can 
 think. I was so frightened in that early 
 morning there on the bridge, so desolate and 
 helpless and sick with dread of what was going 
 to become of me, that I didn t dream of hesi 
 tating to take shelter in your your friend 
 ship. It was like going under some hospitable 
 roof while there was a drenching rain outside, 
 and I was very thankful for the refuge. But 
 when it cleared up, I couldn t go on staying, 
 just because I had been made welcome, now, 
 could I?" 
 
 " Since you ask me, I declare with tearful 
 emphasis that you could." 
 
 "No, seriously," urged Vestalia; "don t 
 you agree with me that women should be just 
 as self-reliant and independent as men ? " 
 
 " Me ? I agree absolutely. I would have 
 women insist upon the most unflinching inde 
 pendence, all the world over. I feel so keenly 
 on that point, that out of the entire sex I 
 would make only one exception. Very few 
 people would take such an advanced position 
 as that, I imagine. Just fancy how far I go ! 
 
March Hares. 243 
 
 There are hundreds of millions of women, and 
 I would have them all independent but just 
 one. By a curious accident it happens that 
 you are that one but you will be fair-minded 
 enough to recognise, I feel convinced, that 
 this is the merest chance." 
 
 She made a droll little mouth at him, and 
 he went on : 
 
 " Yes, it is very strange. I cannot pretend 
 to account for it, but you do undoubtedly form 
 an exception to what would otherwise be a 
 universal rule. The thought of other women 
 earning their own living fills me with joy. I 
 am fascinated by it, I assure you. I feel like 
 bursting into song at the barest suggestion of 
 the idea. But this very excess of reverence 
 for the general principle begets a correspond 
 ing vehemence of feeling about the one soli 
 tary exception. That is in accordance with a 
 natural law. Surely you respect natural laws ? 
 Well, the vaguest adumbration of an idea of 
 your doing things for yourself convulses me 
 with rage. The notion that my right to take 
 entire charge of you is disputed seems mon- 
 
244 Marcli Hares. 
 
 strous and abominable to me. It is a denial 
 of my mission on earth, and I am bound to 
 combat it with all my powers." 
 
 Vestalia smiled. "I see what you mean. 
 You are just an old prehistoric savage like the 
 rest of your sex. Your one idea is to drag a 
 woman off into your cave and keep her there, 
 with a big rock rolled up in front of the door 
 when you re away." 
 
 " I would not have you disparage the 
 primitive instincts," urged Mosscrop, with an 
 air of solemnity. " My word for it, we should 
 be an extraordinarily uninteresting lot without 
 them. They are the abiding bone and flesh 
 and muscle of humanity, upon which it pleases 
 each foolish generation in turn to stretch its 
 own thin, trivial pelt of fashionable conven 
 tion. My desire to seize you, and drag you off 
 to my own cave, and make a life s business of 
 keeping you there, always beautiful, always 
 happy, always replenishing the well-spring of 
 joy in my existence you choose that as some 
 thing typical of the primeval man surviving 
 within me. Let me tell you, sweet little Ves- 
 
Marcli Hares. 245 
 
 talia, that the human mind would cease to 
 morrow from its eternal wistful dream of 
 progress if it were not for the hope that ad 
 vancing civilisation will bring improved facili 
 ties for that sort of thing. The world would 
 wilt, and curl up like a sapless leaf, and drop 
 from its solar stem into gaseous space, if that 
 anticipation were taken away. The race keeps 
 itself going only by cherishing the faith that 
 sometime, somewhere in the golden future, 
 this planet will be arranged so that the right 
 woman will always get into the right cave. 
 That is what people mean when they speak of 
 the millennium." 
 
 " That is all very well," said Vestalia, " but 
 it deals with everything from the man s point 
 of view. Consider the other side of the case. 
 What do you say to the woman s disinclination 
 for cave-life is that not entitled to respect ? " 
 
 " Possibly," answered David, reflectively 
 " if one were able to believe in it." 
 
 The waiter entered at this point with a 
 burdened tray in his arms, and Vestalia took 
 up the wine list " Which is it that we had 
 
246 Mcvrch Hares. 
 
 that in the lovely high green bottles, with 
 arms like a vase ? " she asked Mosscrop. " We 
 must have the same again." 
 
 "You have told me nothing as yet," said 
 David, reproachfully, when they were alone 
 again, "of all the thousand things I long to 
 know." 
 
 " It is so hard to tell," she explained, with 
 hesitation. " That is, there are things that I 
 am supposed not to tell to anybody, at pres 
 ent, at least. And as for what I ought not to 
 tell you why I have been instructed to avoid 
 you altogether. I was even told not to write 
 you but I did all the same just once." 
 
 David took a crumpled envelope from an 
 inner pocket over his heart, held it up for her 
 inspection, and replaced it. But even as he 
 did so sombre shadows began to gather on his 
 face. He laid down his knife and fork, and, 
 biting his lips, looked out of the window. 
 
 Vestalia swiftly recalled gruesome associa 
 tions with that look. She stretched forth her 
 hand, and laid it on his arm. " You mustn t 
 look out there," she protested. " It has a bad 
 
Marcli Hares. 247 
 
 effect on you. Look me in the face instead 
 please ! " 
 
 He shook his head impatiently, and stared 
 with dogged, blinking eyes at the opposite 
 roofs. "You don t realise what it has all 
 meant to me," he said at last, his gaze still 
 averted. The quaver in his voice profoundly 
 affected the girl. 
 
 " Listen to me David," she said, with 
 something of his pathos reflected in her tone. 
 "Turn and look at me. I haven t the heart 
 for even a moment of misunderstanding to 
 day. There isn t anything on earth I won t 
 tell you. But you must look at me ! " 
 
 He slowly obeyed her, and she saw that 
 there were tears in his eyes. " But apparently 
 there are things which it would be merciful 
 not to tell me," he said, struggling for an in 
 stant for composure. Then his brows knitted 
 themselves, and flashes played in the darkness 
 of his glance. "Who forbids you this or 
 that ? " he demanded, the angry metallic growl 
 rising in his voice. " Four days ago you were 
 all alone in the world ! You told me so ! In 
 
248 Ma/rch Hovres. 
 
 detail you assured me of your isolation. What 
 are you talking about now? You speak of re 
 ceiving instructions to avoid me altogether, 
 to write no letter to me ! Oh, I ask for no ex 
 planations " he went on stormily, pushing 
 
 back his chair to rise from the table " don t 
 think I claim any right to question you. But 
 I find myself mistaken, that is all ! I am a 
 silly duffer at a game of this sort. I take 
 things in earnest, while the others are laugh 
 ing in their sleeves. Well, I ve had my lesson. 
 Before God, I ll never " 
 
 Vestalia screamed at him. She had half- 
 risen in her place, gazing with bewildered, 
 affrighted eyes, till some vague inkling of his 
 meaning dawned upon her brain. " Foolish 
 David ! Foolish ! " she cried aloud now. 
 " Stop it ! Stop it ! You don t know what 
 you re saying ! Keep still, and let me talk to 
 you ! " 
 
 She bent across the table, and peremptorily 
 shook his shoulder to enforce her words. 
 " You re all wrong ! " she clamoured, as his 
 tempest of wrathful words subsided. Upon 
 
March Hares. 249 
 
 the silence which followed she implanted 
 firmly the added comment : " Oh, you 
 goose ! " 
 
 He looked up sullenly to her, as she stood 
 now erect and, meeting the glance in her 
 eyes, felt himself clinging to it. There was 
 for him the effect of sunshine in it of clouds 
 parted, of radiance and calm, restored about 
 him. Breathing hard, he gazed into her face, 
 and came somehow to know from what he saw 
 in it that he had been making a fool of him 
 self. This perception assumed sharp out 
 lines in his mind before she had spoken a 
 word. 
 
 " Now, will you behave yourself, and listen 
 to me?" she demanded, with austerity. His 
 shattered aspect of contrition was a sufficient 
 answer, and she seated herself confidently. 
 " Now I will explain things to you although 
 you don t deserve it in the very least," she be 
 gan, in formal tones. " To commence with, 
 you remember that American father and 
 daughter that we met at the Museum, down in 
 the basement? well, it happened that hap- 
 
250 March Jfares. 
 
 pened that Oh, my poor boy, how could you 
 think so stupidly of me ? " 
 
 David had drawn up to his place again. 
 He held Vestalia s hands in his at this junc 
 ture, somehow, and the enchanted table nar 
 rowed itself until there was no barrier of space 
 between their lips. 
 
 The little kiss sweetened the air. The two, 
 even while they exchanged a glance of shy sur 
 prise, thought of it with reverence. They in 
 stinctively gave to its contemplation a moment 
 of tender silence. 
 
 " How shrewd you were in discerning my 
 leaven of savagery," he remarked at last. " Or 
 leaven? we d better say principal ingredi 
 ent ! " 
 
 " I like you that way," said Vestalia, 
 quietly. 
 
 He smiled at her in dreamy incredulity. 
 " I wonder if you do," he mused. " They say 
 women do like men who beat them. The 
 police courts seem to support the idea. But 
 there is a difficulty, you see. If you liked me 
 because I behaved badly to you, then I should 
 
March Hares. 251 
 
 dislike you on precisely that account. So you 
 mustn t suggest approbation. No, I was very 
 rude and stupid, and I am profoundly ashamed 
 of myself. I should be ashamed to offer an 
 excuse, too, if it were not just the one it is. 
 I happen to be head over heels in love with 
 you, dear little lady." 
 
 " And precisely what is that an excuse 
 for ? " demanded the girl, with a fine show of 
 ingenuous calm. 
 
 " For letting my luncheon get cold," he re 
 plied, taking up his fork. 
 
 With the laughter of pleased children, 
 they resumed the broken course of the meal. 
 
 " It doesn t begin to be as nice as your 
 breakfast," she commented after a little. 
 
 " I don t think it is a day for things to 
 eat," he said, pushing the plate aside. " I 
 want to do nothing but just look at you per 
 haps talk a little but hear you talk much 
 more. I am conscious of an indefinite hunger 
 for the mere visual charm of you, sitting there 
 opposite me. It seems as if it would take 
 years to satisfy that alone. Do you know that 
 17 
 
252 March Ha/res. 
 
 you are very beautiful, dear, in your new 
 Clothes?" 
 
 She regarded his face with a keen, almost 
 anxious glance, before she let the softer look 
 dominate her own. " I am going to hurry to 
 tell you where I got them," she said. " They 
 are the gift of my uncle my father s brother. 
 This was what I was beginning to explain 
 when when you got so unhappy." 
 
 Yes that is the merciful word un 
 happy," he assented, with gratitude. " I have 
 been deeply out of sorts mentally since I 
 lost you that night. There is a special devil 
 inside of me, Vestalia, who sometimes lies low 
 for long periods, and hardly reminds me of 
 his existence, but since last Thursday he has 
 been out on the war-path, night and day. My 
 nerves are stretched like fiddle-strings, just 
 with the effort of holding him. The sight of 
 you is death to him, dear. He is gone now 
 clean out of existence. And while you stay, 
 he won t return. But the wretch has left 
 me tired and a little tremulous. I want to 
 rest myself by just looking at you." 
 
March Hares. 253 
 
 She, smiling with demure pleasure at his 
 speech and his look, related to him briefly the 
 story of the Skinner pedigree. " It occurred 
 to me the minute I woke up in the early 
 morning," she declared. " I shall always be 
 lieve that I really dreamed it first. Are you 
 interested in dreams ? " 
 
 " Oh immensely at the time." 
 
 " JSTo ; but there is something in them. I 
 assure you, the idea never entered my head the 
 day we met them. But before I was fairly 
 awake next morning, lo, there it was, all 
 worked out. The old gentleman was polite 
 ness itself. He came down immediately, when 
 I sent my note upstairs. When I told him 
 about wanting to make a pedigree of the 
 Skinners, the notion appealed to him at once. 
 Then I told him about something else, and 
 that appealed to him a good deal more." 
 
 Vestalia paused here, and began to regard 
 her companion with signs of diminishing con 
 fidence. " I can t go any farther without mak 
 ing a most humiliating confession to you," she 
 faltered. 
 
254 March Hares. 
 
 "Then don t go any farther, I beseech 
 you," he answered. "Truly, I do not find 
 myself stirred very much by this entire dem 
 onstration of your ability to do things off your 
 own bat. It is independent and praiseworthy 
 and all that, no doubt, but I still have a linger 
 ing feeling that you ought to have stayed to 
 breakfast, you know, and left mere commercial 
 details to me. And I certainly shrink from 
 humiliating confessions. Skip the unpleasant 
 parts. We will have no skeletons at our feast 
 to-day." 
 
 "Ah, but they can t be skipped," sighed 
 Vestalia. She drew nearer to him, across the 
 table, and lowered her voice. " I foolishly told 
 you some things that were not so that first 
 morning," she confided in doleful tones. " It 
 was a kind of romance about myself that I had 
 built up in my own mind, and without much 
 thought I gave it to you as truth. So long as 
 I kept it to myself it did no harm ; it even 
 made life easier and more endurable for me, 
 like a poor child making-believe that she and 
 her rag doll are princesses. But it was differ- 
 
March Hares. 255 
 
 ent to tell you. My father was not a French 
 gentleman. He was not an officer, and he 
 wasn t killed in a duel. He was never in 
 Prance any more than I was. My mother was 
 Scotch, but she did not belong to any noble or 
 wealthy family. She did not leave any family 
 jewels with a crest on them, and no one 
 cheated her out of a private fortune, because 
 she never had such a thing. It was just my 
 individual fairyland that I described to you as 
 real. I didn t even tell you my true name." 
 
 David smiled solace upon her distressed 
 aspect. " You speak as if it were of impor 
 tance. Dear child, do we value a rare and 
 beautiful lily the less, because the gardener 
 has put the wrong label on it by mistake? 
 Tut tut ! Names and lineage and all that 
 it is the idlest stuff on earth to me. The story 
 that you told me was pleasant in my ears only 
 because it came from your lips. The discovery 
 now that it was all yours that it was not the 
 mere recital of dull facts, but was the child of 
 your own inner imaginings why that only 
 makes it the more delightful to me. I simply 
 
256 March Hares. 
 
 gave it store-room in my memory before; I 
 love it now and at the same time I find I 
 have quite forgotten it. There is a paradox 
 for you ! " 
 
 Vestalia essayed a smile through her tears. 
 "You are always kinder than even I expect 
 you to be," she faltered ; " but I did tell you a 
 a story, and by rights you should be very 
 angry with me." 
 
 David laughed. " Hans Christian Ander 
 sen told me many stories, but I worshipped 
 him increasingly to the end. Dear lady, the 
 stories are the only veritable things in life. 
 The alleged realities of existence pass loj us, or 
 roll over us, and leave us colourless and empty. 
 The genuine possessions of our souls the 
 things that shape and decorate and furnish 
 our spiritual habitations are the things that 
 never happened. I note a twinkle in your eye. 
 You fancy that I have said an inept thing. 
 You think that I shall have to go back and 
 explain that at least what has happened to us 
 forms an exception to the rule. Ah, sweet 
 little Vestalia, have you forgotten your own 
 
Mar cli Hares. 257 
 
 remark, here in this very room ? It isn t like 
 real life at all, you said ; it is the way things 
 happen in fairy tales. I take my stand upon 
 that definition. We have deliberately repudi 
 ated what are described as the realities of life. 
 We discard them, cut them dead, decline to 
 have anything whatever to do with them. We 
 declare that it is fairyland that we are living 
 in, and that we refuse to come out of it to the 
 end of our days." 
 
 Vestalia gazed into his eyes with wistful 
 tenderness. "To the end of our days!" she 
 murmured softly, wonderingly. Then she re 
 called the task still unfinished. " I took the 
 name of Peaussier," she forced herself to con 
 tinue, " because it was a translation of my 
 own name. I looked in the dictionary, and 
 found that it was the French for Skinner." 
 
 David lifted his brows. " You don t mean 
 " he began, confusedly. 
 
 " Yes ; " she forestalled his question. " The 
 old gentleman at the Savoy is my father s own 
 brother. My father was Abram Skinner. He 
 was not a lucky man, or, in his later years, a 
 
258 March Hares. 
 
 very nice man either. He was always poor, 
 and toward the end he was in other troubles 
 too. My home was a thing to shudder at the 
 recollection of. I ran away from it after 
 mother died, and he s gone, too, now. I 
 changed the name, to wash my hands of the 
 whole miserable thing. And then to think of 
 the wonderful chance to stumble upon my own 
 uncle, a man of fortune and education, and the 
 kindest heart alive is it not the most extraor 
 dinary thing that ever happened in this world ? " 
 Very possibly it might be regarded as ex 
 traordinary out in the so-called world," Da 
 vid assented, reflectively. " But it is just the 
 thing that would be expected in fairyland. 
 Yes, it seems, on the face of it, a beneficent 
 occurrence. It is good for you to be seized 
 and possessed of a rich uncle from some 
 points of view. But from others a doubt 
 suggests itself, Vestalia, whether your uncle 
 is well-affected toward the fairies. Standard 
 Oil does not lend itself without an effort to 
 the fantastic. What if your uncle beckons 
 you to come forth from fairyland ? " 
 
March Hares. 259 
 
 " And leave you behind is that what you 
 mean ? " asked Vestalia, slowly. " That would 
 depend depend on how much you wanted 
 me to stay." 
 
 David put out his left hand to take hers, 
 where it lay upon the cloth. With his right 
 he drew out his watch. " The name Skinner," 
 he said, " is all right for the folk at the Savoy. 
 It is not a suitable name for you. I sympa 
 thise fully with your impulse to abandon it. 
 The expedient which you adopted was, no 
 doubt, the best that offered itself at the mo 
 ment, but I think I know a better. I must 
 leave you now, and hurry into the City. This 
 is Monday. Dear love, on Thursday I claim 
 the whole day from you. We will breakfast 
 here at eight it is not too early, is it? or 
 say rather that at just eight I will come and 
 find you on Westminster Bridge. The day 
 must begin there, mustn t it ? And strange 
 ly enough Thursday is in a sort another 
 birthday of mine." 
 
 "And of mine too?" she asked, with a 
 light in her eyes. 
 
CHAPTER XIT. 
 
 IN the early afternoon of Thursday, David 
 Mosscrop walked apart on shaded gravel-paths, 
 beneath arches of roses and the feathered can 
 opy of cedars high above, with Adele by his side. 
 
 " Oh, it s all right. The waiter will come 
 out and tell us when it is ready," he said re 
 assuringly, in comment upon her backward 
 glance. " I want to speak with you. There 
 was no such thing as a word with you by your 
 self on the road." 
 
 " Why, we talked every mortal minute," 
 she protested. 
 
 " Ah yes, we talked, but I don t recall that 
 anything was said." 
 
 " I daresay my conversation is empty to the 
 last degree," she observed ; " but I am usually 
 spared such frank statements of the fact." 
 
 260 
 
March Hares. 261 
 
 " Ah, but I want to be thought of as some 
 thing a little different from the usual," urged 
 David. 
 
 " Your efforts in that direction have been 
 extraordinarily successful. Pray, do not im 
 agine that they are unappreciated. I admit 
 freely that you seem to have quite exhausted 
 the unusual, my Lord." 
 
 " No ; I ve still got something up my 
 sleeve," said David, lightly enough. But the 
 tone in which she had uttered those final two 
 words caught his attention. They carried a 
 suggestion of emphasis which fell outside the 
 bounds of genial banter. Meditating upon it 
 he stole a covert glance at her, and encountered 
 two wide-awake black eyes intently scrutinising 
 him in turn. " It was about that I wished to 
 consult you," he added, conscious of an em 
 barrassed tongue. 
 
 "Won t it be better to stick to scenery?" 
 she asked. Yes, there was undoubtedly a 
 mocking touch in her voice. " That is so safe 
 a subject. This dear old hotel here, now, how 
 perfectly satisfying it is! Those wonderful 
 
262 March Hares. 
 
 trees out in front, and the white chalk hill be 
 hind, and this garden, and then the comfort 
 and charm of everything inside, and the 
 thought that people have been coming here for 
 hundreds of years, or is it thousands ? it is so 
 different from anything we have in America 
 even in Kentucky. And then the whole drive 
 from London through such delicious country, 
 all so rich and smooth and neatly packed to 
 gether, and so full of the notion that people 
 are all the while planting and pruning and 
 admiring every inch of it that you can t help 
 feeling affectionately toward it yourself ! Per 
 haps there is a certain hint of the artificial 
 about it, but somehow that seems rather in 
 keeping with the day than otherwise, doesn t 
 it, my Lord?" 
 
 While he hesitated about an answer, she 
 touched him on the arm. " Here are papa and 
 Mr. Linkhaw coming along after us probably 
 to tell us luncheon is ready. Shan t we wait 
 for them ? " 
 
 " Heavens, no ! " cried David, starting for 
 ward. " We ve been chained to them on the 
 
March Hares. 263 
 
 top of the coach for two whole hours," he went 
 on, in defensive explanation of his warmth. 
 " Really, we have earned the right to a few 
 quiet words by ourselves." 
 
 " Oh, / don t mind," said Adele, quicken 
 ing her pace to suit his. " Only it s fair to 
 warn you, though, that my temper has its 
 limitations. I am a variable person. Some 
 times it happens that all at once I weary of a 
 joke, after it has been carried to a certain 
 length, and then I can be as unpleasant as they 
 make em." 
 
 " I find that my own sense of humour has a 
 tendency to flag under sustained effort, as I get 
 older," said David. " But there are so many 
 pleasantries afloat perhaps you wouldn t mind 
 indicating the one which particularly fatigues 
 you, and I will put my foot on it at once." 
 
 " Oh, by no means ! That would be far too 
 crude. "We are all your guests, and you are in 
 charge of the entertainment, and I couldn t 
 dream of suggesting anything." 
 
 " Except that you find yourself no longer 
 amused," ventured David, cautiously. 
 
264 March Hares. 
 
 "Oh, not at all." She spoke with per 
 functory languor, and simulated a little yawn. 
 " I daresay it is all immensely funny, only I 
 got up earlier than usual this morning, and 
 no doubt that has dulled my wits some 
 what." 
 
 David perceived on the instant how matters 
 stood. " I also rose at an extravagantly early 
 hour," he said, " and it is about my reasons for 
 doing so that I want to tell you. But, first of 
 all, let us be frank with each other. I have 
 done nothing but accede to a situation created 
 for me by Archie and yourself. It has been 
 within your power to end it at any moment 
 you choose. It has been all along much more 
 your joke than mine. It isn t fair to round 
 on me for merely humouring ) 7 our own con 
 ception of sport." 
 
 Adele halted momentarily, and surveyed 
 his composed, swarthy countenance with lifted 
 brows. " So you saw all along that / knew ! " 
 she exclaimed, in honest surprise. 
 
 "How could I have imagined that so 
 clumsy a performance as mine would deceive 
 
March Hares. 265 
 
 so clever a young woman?" lie rejoined, with 
 a sprightly bow. 
 
 " Oh, you did it awfully well," she assured 
 him, complacently. " But tell me, did Archie 
 suspect that / knew ? " 
 
 " I have been intimate with Archie from 
 the cradle," said David, " but I am still very 
 shy about forming opinions as to his mental 
 processes. In this case, however, I think it is 
 safe to say he didn t suspect and still doesn t 
 suspect." 
 
 "Poor old Archie," mused Adele, with a 
 ripening smile. " I knew who he was before 
 I d even laid eyes on him. A school-friend of 
 mine in Galveston wrote to me that she had 
 met a real Earl, who insisted on being known 
 as Mr. Linkhaw, and that he was returning to 
 England by way of Kentucky. I ve had three 
 months of the rarest fun in never letting on 
 that I had the remotest suspicion. You can t 
 imagine how comical it was. He used to get 
 quite tearful sometimes, I abused the aristoc 
 racy so fiercely. And then, the joke was, papa 
 began his whole idea of conversation is to 
 
266 March Hares. 
 
 take up to-day what I ve said yesterday, and 
 multiply my words by a hundred and twelve, 
 and produce the result as his own; and he 
 worked up the anti-Earl agitation till Archie 
 very nearly went off into chronic melancholia. 
 It was better than any comedy that ever was 
 written but then you stumbled your way into 
 the middle of it, and got it all twisted and 
 tangled up and it hasn t been so amusing 
 since then." 
 
 " My dear Miss Skinner," protested David, 
 " I think my entrance upon the scene deserves 
 a gentler verb. If you will search your mem 
 ory, you will find that I came in by express 
 invitation. It was you who deliberately thrust 
 my mock honours upon me." 
 
 "Oh, I know that," she responded, readily 
 enough. "I thought that would only make 
 the thing funnier still but somehow it hasn t. 
 It isn t anything about Archie and me, you 
 know. But there is another element in the 
 case that I feel very keenly about. It has been 
 puzzling me for days, but I only learned the 
 truth last night. I simply made papa tell me. 
 
March Hares. 267 
 
 I refused flat-footed to come here to-day, or to 
 do anything else that was reasonable, unless he 
 did tell me. I have a cousin here in England, 
 Mr. Mosscrop, a daughter of my father s own 
 brother, and she is one of the dearest girls that 
 ever lived." 
 
 " I can readily credit that," declared David, 
 pointing his meaning with a little inclination 
 of the head. 
 
 " Oh, she is far nicer than I am," cried 
 Adele. " She wouldn t trifle with the feelings 
 of the man she loved, or play tricks with him 
 just for the sake of fun. In fact, I almost 
 blame her for taking such things too seriously. 
 She hasn t had too easy a time of it, poor girl, 
 and it has made her, / think, altogether too 
 humble. She met a young man in the midst 
 of her troubles who, it seems, was civil to her, 
 and even kind as men go, and what does she 
 do but just sit down and worship the very 
 memory of him, and cry out her pretty blue 
 eyes over it and he he walks off and never 
 gives her another thought. That s the man 
 
 of it!" 
 
 18 
 
268 March Hares. 
 
 A gleam of indignation flashed through the 
 moisture in her own eyes as she bent them 
 upon her companion. Her bosom heaved the 
 more as she discerned a broad smile extending 
 itself upon his face. 
 
 " Although I might demur to details," he 
 said, restraining the gaiety which struggled 
 for expression in his voice, " I must not pre 
 tend to fail to recognise the portrait you have 
 drawn. I am the guilty man ! " 
 
 " You laugh at it ! " she exclaimed. " To 
 you it seems a joke ! " 
 
 "Are you so certain that there isn t a joke 
 concealed somewhere about it ? " he suggested, 
 calmly. 
 
 " I lose patience with you ! You make a 
 jest of everything. Tell me this much : Do 
 you or do you not know her present address?" 
 
 " I know precisely where she is to be found 
 at the present moment," said David, speaking 
 now with gravity. 
 
 " Well, and have you been there to see her ? 
 Have you written to her there? Have you 
 given her the slightest sign since she has been 
 
March Houses. 269 
 
 there of any desire on your part to ever see 
 her again?" 
 
 " I must answer JSTo to each question, I 
 am afraid," he responded, and had the grace 
 to hang his head. 
 
 His evident humility only momentarily im 
 pressed her. " I am disappointed in you," she 
 said. "Where will you find a sweeter or 
 truer woman? Don t think I am throwing 
 her at your head ! Quite the contrary. If 
 you were to ask for her now, I should advise 
 with all my might against you. But you have 
 behaved like a simpleton. I am going to 
 have her always live with me, or near me. 
 She is my own flesh and blood, and I love her 
 as if she were my sister. She doesn t know, 
 as yet, that I am aware of the relationship ; 
 but I have written to her this very morning, 
 telling her to come and see me to-night, when 
 I get back. I am going to spend some money 
 in Scotland." 
 
 " It will be profoundly appreciated, believe 
 me." 
 
 She sniffed at his interjection. " I intend 
 
270 March Hares. 
 
 to buy land right and left in Elgin, and if 
 Skirl Castle isn t good enough I don t think 
 much of it from the photographs we ll build 
 a bigger one, and we ll make that whole sec 
 tion hum ; and Vestalia shall be as big an heir 
 ess as it contains, and the lucky man who mar 
 ries her shall be treated like a brother of mine 
 and Archie s. And that is what you have 
 thrown away. I say it to you frankly, because 
 it is all over so far as you are concerned. She 
 will listen to me, and my mind is quite made 
 up and papa can tell you what that means ! " 
 
 " Even if your decision were not irrevoca 
 ble," said David, solemnly, " my answer would 
 of necessity be the same. I would do much to 
 please you, but I do not see my way to marry 
 ing your cousin." 
 
 They had paused to exchange these last 
 sentences, and now upon the instant the Earl 
 and his elderly companion came up. David 
 essayed a revelatory wink to the nobleman, but 
 it fell upon the stony places in Lord Drum- 
 pipes wondering stare. 
 
 Mr. Skinner wiped his brow decorously, 
 
March Ha/res. 271 
 
 and breathed appreciation of the halt. " Sir," 
 he began, addressing David, " I must assume 
 that I am enjoying the opportunity of study 
 ing a district of England peculiarly favoured 
 by Nature, and exceptionally embellished as 
 well by the hand of man ; but I wish to give 
 expression to emotions of unmixed delight at 
 all that I observe about me. "We have in 
 spected the internal appointments of the an 
 cient hostelry, and have revelled, sir, in the 
 luxurious yet studiously regulated beauties of 
 this garden, and I confess that the novelty of 
 the one and the charm of the other far surpass 
 anything " 
 
 " Papa," interposed his daughter, with cold 
 severity, " we will leave these gentlemen to en 
 joy the novelties and charms by themselves for 
 a few minutes, if you please. I have an ex 
 planation to make to you, since no one else 
 offers it, and I think it should be no longer 
 deferred." 
 
 She took her father s arm as she spoke, 
 and led him in a direct line across the sward 
 toward the broad, low-lying, ivy-clad rear of 
 
272 March Hares. 
 
 the hotel. "Oh, it s all right; they don t 
 mind your walking on the grass in England," 
 the two young men heard her say as she de 
 parted. 
 
 These partners in deception gazed after 
 her for a space. Then they looked at each 
 other. 
 
 " Davie, I don t like it," said the Earl. 
 
 "Don t like what?" 
 
 " I m afraid she s got some kind of an ink 
 ling. It looks as if a suspicion were dawning 
 in her mind. I warned you she was keen of 
 scent." 
 
 Mosscrop burst forth with a peremptory 
 guffaw of laughter. "You duffer of the 
 earth," he cried, " she knew all about you be 
 fore ever she laid eyes on you ! " He unfold 
 ed the chuckling narrative forthwith, to the 
 Earl s profound astonishment and concern. 
 
 " Why then, man," Drumpipes ejaculated 
 at last, staring hard at the close-cropped lawn, 
 " I can t tell in the least if she loves me for 
 myself alone." 
 
 " Oh, you read that in some novel," ob- 
 
March Hares. 
 
 jected David. " It s a mere phrase; it has no 
 significance in real life." 
 
 " Yes ; but," the other pursued, dejectedly, 
 " I don t see how I can make sure that she 
 loves me in any kind of way." 
 
 " At all events, she s going to marry you," 
 David re-assured him. " She mentioned the 
 fact to me, casually. And she s going to buy 
 up Elgin right and left, and build a new Skirl 
 Castle as big as Olympia, and generally make 
 everything else north of the Grampians 4 sing 
 small I believe that s the phrase." 
 
 The Earl assimilated this intelligence with 
 a kindling eye. "Man, it s fine!" he cried, 
 as the prospect spread itself out before his 
 mental vision. " Ah, poor Davie, you dinna 
 ken what it is to be in love ! " 
 
 Mosscrop sighed. " When you talk Scots, 
 Archie," he said, " I know it s going to cost me 
 money. I foresee that you ll kick about the 
 bill. But, hurry, man, and catch up with 
 them. She s quite capable of flouncing out of 
 the house, and dragging her father along, too, 
 while the fit is on her ; and that would only 
 
274 March Ha/res. 
 
 mean more bother to coax them back. Come 
 on!" 
 
 He started at a brisk pace in pursuit, and 
 Drumpipes strode eagerly beside him. They 
 overtook their guests on the very threshold of 
 the door, and the Earl called out a breathless, 
 entreating " Adele ! " The girl, upon reflec 
 tion, turned, and surveyed the pair with an 
 austere eye. 
 
 " Wait a moment, papa," she said in her 
 coldest tone ; " one of these two gentlemen 
 seems to feel authorised to address me by my 
 Christian name, and apparently has also some 
 communication to make to us." 
 
 "Well," stammered Drumpipes, hesitat 
 ingly, " there s an awfully good luncheon been 
 ordered, you know." 
 
 Mosscrop emitted an abrupt, resonant note 
 of laughter, and in the silence which ensued 
 displayed violent muscular efforts to keep a 
 grin from convulsing his face. 
 
 Adele preserved the severity of her aspect 
 for a little. " I think it might occur to you, 
 Lord Drumpipes," she began, markedly ad- 
 
March Hares. 275 
 
 dressing her remarks to the rightful bearer of 
 the title, " that after what has happened and 
 on this point, I can assure you my father feels 
 exactly as I do " 
 
 She stopped here, with the effect of appeal 
 ing to her father for immediate confirmation 
 of their inflexible joint attitude. 
 
 " I need scarcely observe," began Mr. Skin 
 ner, putting up his pince-nez and looking 
 down upon the two young men with sternness 
 from the vantage of the door-step, " that what 
 ever course my daughter deems it consistent 
 with her dignity to pursue, in the face of the 
 extraordinary, and, I may confidently add, un 
 precedented circumstances which we are called 
 upon to to confront, has my most unswerv 
 ing adhesion." 
 
 A waiter opened the door inward at this 
 instant, and overlaid Mr. Skinner s peroration 
 with a clear-cut message, Germanic in its non- 
 essentials, but broadly human in import. 
 
 The old gentleman gasped, twiddled the 
 string of his glasses in his fingers, and leant 
 his head sidewise toward his daughter. " Yes, 
 
276 March Hares. 
 
 but what is it we re going to do ? " he inquired 
 in a nervous whisper. 
 
 "Do?" cried Mosscrop, who had caught 
 her glance in his own, and convicted it of 
 latent merriment, " Do ? Why we re going to 
 laugh at a harmless pleasantry happily ended, 
 and pass in to luncheon." 
 
 " Yes, papa," said Adele, upon considera 
 tion, and with a dawning smile upon her lips, 
 " I think that is what we re going to do." 
 
 When they found themselves standing 
 about the table in the private room, overlook 
 ing through open French windows the de 
 lightful sunlit garden from which they had 
 come, Mosscrop seized the moment of hesi 
 tation about seats to hold up his hand. 
 Though he had been bereft of his borrowed 
 dignities, the air of natural command sat easi 
 ly upon him. 
 
 " I have to ask you for a minute or two of 
 delay," he said. " It will explain itself." 
 
 He wrote something on a card as he spoke, 
 and gave it to the waiter with a closely-guarded 
 whisper of injunction. As the servant left the 
 
March Ha/res. 277 
 
 room, David turned to the others with a radi 
 ant face. 
 
 " Mr. Skinner," he began, " and my younger 
 friends, there is a toast which in England is 
 always drunk standing. It occurs to me to 
 propose it to you, on this single occasion, be 
 fore we have taken our seats at all. As has 
 been remarked with characteristic perspicaci 
 ty, the circumstances which we find ourselves 
 called upon to confront are extraordinary 
 in character, and altogether unprecedented. 
 Through the courtesy of my friends, I have 
 for a brief period had devolved upon me the 
 responsibility of behaving, at stated intervals, 
 as a member of the Scotch peerage should be 
 have. I view my deportment throughout this 
 ordeal, in retrospect, with a considerable de 
 gree of satisfaction. I have spared no pains 
 to realise my conception of the part. The es 
 sential thing about a successful peerage, I 
 take it, is that it should be invested, for ordi 
 nary eyes, with a glamour of unreality. A 
 Baron should be perceptibly romantic. A 
 Viscount, if he respects his station should 
 
278 March Hares. 
 
 quite envelope himself in the mists of the 
 improbable. As for an Earl, he should live 
 frankly in fairyland. My imagination does 
 not run to Marquises and Dukes, but I think I 
 may say I have grasped the ideal of an Earl." 
 
 " The true ideal of an Earl," interposed 
 Drumpipes, with inspiration, " is never to let 
 victuals get cold." 
 
 Mosscrop smiled and nodded. " Only a 
 minute more," he said. " I spoke about fairy 
 land. I have been under its spell all this 
 week. I have committed myself to its charm 
 for the rest of my days. When you return to 
 London this evening, northward, it is Archie 
 who will drive you. I go southward to the 
 Loire country instead, under the magic of the 
 enchantment which beckons and guides and 
 propels me, all in one. To quit riddles, good 
 people, you will notice that there is a fifth 
 place laid here before us. To connect this 
 fact with the toast, the seat is waiting for my 
 Queen. This is Sherry, decanted from the 
 Anchor s oldest bin. I suggest to you the 
 filling of your glasses." 
 
March Hares. 279 
 
 He moved toward the door as he spoke, 
 opened it, and turned to the others, with Ves- 
 talia on his arm. 
 
 " Mr. Skinner," he said gently. " "We crave 
 your approbation for what we have done. We 
 were married by the registrar of St. Dunstan s 
 at ten o clock this morning, and your niece 
 came on here direct by train, bringing her 
 luggage and my own, which I thank God de 
 voutly will always travel together in future. 
 We love each other very, very much." 
 
 There fell here upon the masculine vision 
 the spectacle of two women entwined in each 
 other s arms, and of two beautiful heads, one 
 raven-black, one glowing like light through 
 clouded amber, bent tenderly together. The 
 sound of little moans proceeded from this 
 swaying, interlocked group, and then of kisses 
 and of subdued ecstatic sobbing laughter. 
 
 Lord Drumpipes, staring vacantly from 
 these women to his boyhood friend, gulped his 
 sherry in an absent-minded way. David, in 
 rapid whispers, outlined meanwhile the situa 
 tion to his bewildered ear. 
 
280 March Hares. 
 
 " Eh ! " he called out at last. " It is the 
 same lassie? The yellow-haired one? The 
 one who smashed my moosie ? " 
 
 " Shut up, you loon ! " growled David 
 fiercely, under his breath. " Is this the time 
 to blab about such things ? / kicked your 
 your old cow into splinters, and I ll serve the 
 rest of the idiotic show the same way if you 
 mention the word moose. Chuck it, man ! 
 That s a thing for the girls to tell each other 
 a year hence, perhaps. Have some delicacy 
 about you ! " He turned to Mr. Skinner, who 
 stood as one petrified, his gaze riveted upon 
 the young women. 
 
 " I ve been explaining to my friend, Lord 
 Drumpipes," David said, lifting his voice, " the 
 romantic nature of my acquaintance with your 
 niece, my wife. I think you have been told 
 about it." 
 
 Mr. Skinner shifted his glance to the 
 speaker. " To some extent to some extent," 
 he murmured weakly. " It has taken me 
 greatly by surprise. I scarcely know " 
 
 David had advanced, and was holding out 
 
March H<wes. 281 
 
 his hand, with a confident, masterful sort of 
 smile. 
 
 " I suppose it s all right," the old gentle 
 man said, sending confused, appealing glances 
 toward his inattentive daughter. "Adele 
 seems not to object I take it for granted 
 that " 
 
 Adele lifted her head, and drew a protect 
 ing arm round Vestalia. "Hold up your 
 chin," she whispered, audibly. " They re 
 nothing to be frightened of. You know 
 everybody except your cousin Archie, and he s 
 only to be feared by creatures who can t shoot 
 back." 
 
 The bride, nestling against the other s 
 shoulder, raised a luminous face, and looked 
 about her with a smile of frank happiness. 
 " Frightened ?" she queried, and then shook 
 her fair head joyously in answer. 
 
 The waiter came in with the tureen. 
 
 THE END. 
 


 I