^^^i^^^^SlilliSiiilpiiii^^^^ 
 
 rou6hto} 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. George Papashvily 
 
MACMILLAN'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 FOES IN LAW 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/foesinlawOObrourich 
 
FOES IN LAW 
 
 RHODA BROUGHTON 
 
 Author cf " Cometh up as a Flower," " Good-bye, Sweetheart/ 
 ttCt% etc* 
 
 **God be with 700; let us meet m little aa we ceaT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1900, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Publbhed August, 1900. Reprinted 
 March, 1901 ; April, 1906. 
 Special edition, in paper coren. May, 1905. 
 
 VorfoootJ 19re<s : 
 Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
 GIFT 
 
1>Z7s 
 
 f- 
 
 FOES IN LAW 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The morning-room is comfortable, but so are 
 not its occupants — only two — of whom the one 
 has within the last five minutes sprung a mine upon 
 the other. It must have been inside this small 
 time-limit since the clock on the narrow eighteenth- 
 century mantelpiece had struck the half-hour, while 
 the footmen were carrying in the last lamp and 
 dropping the last curtain. This had happened be- 
 fore the catastrophe, and the index is now only mid- 
 way between the figures that indicate respectively 
 five and twenty and twenty to six. Yet within that 
 interval the relations between the two persons, late- 
 ly lounging in the comfortable ease of established 
 intimacy in their several arm-chairs, has under- 
 gone an earthquake change. She will never forget 
 that, instead of a cup of tea, he has asked her for 
 herself; and he will probably always remember that 
 she has kindly, and not very firmly, declined. He 
 has risen, and is standing with his back to the fire, 
 sadly and absently parting his clerical coat-tails 
 with an unconscious aspiration after warmth of 
 some kind, if not of the particular quality he has 
 demanded. 
 The girl is looking at him with a troubled, but not 
 
 032 
 
i FOES IN LAW 
 
 quite ungratified astonishment; the puppy is finish- 
 ing the bark which the young man's emotionally 
 raised tones had started; and the parrot is laughing 
 cynically. Though shrouded for the night, and 
 thus reduced to the mere evidence of his ears, he 
 knows what has happened. 
 
 " I was never so surprised in my Hfe." 
 
 "Were not you?" 
 
 " We were talking of — what? " — seeking to re- 
 cover the penultimate topic which now looks blue 
 with distance — " of the Church Congress, and sud- 
 denly, without any warning, you were in the middle 
 of this." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I was never so surprised in my life." The 
 repetition is bald, and she feels it so; yet only re- 
 iteration can relieve her. " I feel as if it must be, 
 somehow, my fault." 
 
 He shakes his head, but not with emphasis. 
 
 " I never was so surpr — r- " 
 
 Perhaps he can't bear the third repetition of her 
 phrase; for he breaks into, though only to appro- 
 priate, it. 
 
 " I was surprised too." 
 
 Her fair eyebrows, darker only by a shade than 
 her blonde hair, mount from straight lines into 
 arches. 
 
 *' Surprised! Your' 
 
 " Yes, at my own want of self-control." 
 
 " It was not a new idea, then? " she asks, with a 
 hesitating curiosity. " You had wanted to say it 
 before? " 
 
 ** Hundreds of times." 
 
 "How very odd!" 
 
FOES IN LAW 3 
 
 " I do not quite see where the eccentricity comes 
 in." 
 
 A note of soreness bids her bridle her amaze- 
 ment; and a very kind heart dictates an explaining 
 of it away. 
 
 "I should have as little suspected my real 
 brother. We have always been like bro " 
 
 " Do not descend to such a platitude," he says ir- 
 ritably. "As long as man is man, and woman, 
 woman, there will never be any brothers and sisters 
 except by blood." 
 
 This dogma is uttered as authoritatively as if it 
 had been launched from the pulpit under which his 
 hearer weekly sits; but clerical thunderbolts have 
 proverbially lost some of their old splitting and 
 searing power, and it is not without spirit that she 
 rejoins — 
 
 " But we have always been Randal and Lettice; 
 since the old days when I dug in the sands with you 
 at Margate, we have always been Randal and Let- 
 tice." 
 
 " I fail to see what bearing that has upon the fact 
 of my love for you." 
 
 " And though, of course, there was a gap in our 
 relations, while you were at Eton and Oxford, yet 
 when you took the curacy here we seemed to pick 
 up our old threads just where we had dropped 
 them." 
 
 *' Seemed to you, perhaps." 
 
 " I must have been obtuse, but I give you my 
 word of honour I had not the least suspicion. I 
 wish " — with a renewal of her former half-fasci- 
 nated curiosity — " that you would give me an idea 
 when this — this notion began to enter your head." 
 
4 FOES IN LAW 
 
 His eyes flash angrily. " If your only wish is to 
 ' peep and botanize ' over my sufferings, I do not 
 see what end is gained by my staying longer." 
 
 As he speaks he sends a glance through the not 
 particularly well-lit room towards the chair where 
 he had laid his hat and stick; but her voice, nearly 
 as indignant as his own, and her candid eyes arrest 
 his further action. 
 
 " I have not the least wish to ' peep and botanize * 
 over your sufferings " — the veiled parrot chuckles, 
 pleased at the phrase — " but you have taken my 
 breath away; and it would be nonsense to pretend 
 that you have not." 
 
 " If it is only the novelty of the idea " — his eye 
 releasing his hat, and with an obvious postpone- 
 ment of the intention of departure — " you would 
 soon get used to that." 
 
 " I do not think so." 
 
 But there is no great certainty in her voice, while 
 her look wanders irresolutely from the Hoppner an- 
 cestress let into the panel over the fireplace to the 
 Herodias which for the last two hundred years has 
 brazenly announced itself as a Leonardo. 
 
 He drops his coat-tails, and makes a forward step 
 off the hearthrug. 
 
 " Where there is already perfect sympathy " 
 
 " Perfect — no." 
 
 He reshapes his plea. " When two people have 
 as much in common as you and I — you will not, I 
 suppose, deny that we have a good deal in com- 
 mon?" 
 
 ** No, oh no; indeed we have! " 
 
 "Since I came I have even been an important 
 factor in your life?" 
 
FOES IN LAW 5 
 
 " I should be most ungrateful to deny it." 
 
 " We each supplement the other " — with grow- 
 ing enthusiasm, and accompanying the statement 
 by a second step forward; the third will land him at 
 her side — " each supplying what the other lacks. 
 You would give me ballast. I am conscious of my 
 deficiency in it; my action to-day proves, as I told 
 you just now, my want of self-control " — he lingers 
 for a moment over this confession of his frailties, as 
 if it were not wholly disagreeable to him — " while 
 
 I " He pauses, as if not quite sure how to word 
 
 the coming phrase. ** You will not misunderstand 
 me when I say that you are not pre-eminently im- 
 aginative." 
 
 ** I know I am not." 
 
 " Well, perhaps I might sometimes give your 
 thoughts the wings they lack." 
 
 He throws his shoulders back and his head 
 up. 
 
 She looks down, too unaffectedly humble to re- 
 sent his estimate of the amount possessed by her of 
 intellect's highest quality, but there is certainty in 
 the shake of her flaxen head. 
 
 " All that is not enough." 
 
 "Enough!" The impetus of the protest sends 
 him over the yard that parts them with a sudden- 
 ness that makes her jump. " Do you suppose that 
 that is all?" 
 
 His voice goes up at the last word with an accent 
 of pregnant scorn; and once again the puppy barks, 
 jumping down this time off Lettice's lap to do it 
 better. The lover's foot sketches a movement to- 
 wards kicking the little woolly interruption aside; 
 but he recollects himself in time, and goes on as if 
 
6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 he were not aware of the second that is being sung 
 to his love-chant. 
 
 ** It is always when one needs it most that the 
 power of expression fails one. But if I could make 
 you understand; if I were not daunted by your 
 coldness — it is a beautiful thing in its way, but I 
 have often felt it like a wall of snow between us — I 
 could tell you " 
 
 He stops, struggling with a real difficulty in ut- 
 terance. 
 
 " What could you tell me? " 
 
 Her limpid eyes are full of a thrilled curiosity as 
 she asks the question with something of the delight- 
 ful guilty quiver' of a child peeping into a forbidden 
 cupboard. Considering her good looks and her 
 twenty-two years, the commonplaces of a declara- 
 tion sound strangely original in her ears. 
 
 " I can tell you this, that my feeling for you, 
 which began by Hfting, has ended by lowering me. 
 You are blighting me — blighting my work. You 
 must have noticed the change from Sunday to Sun- 
 day. How starved and halting my utterances have 
 become! " 
 
 " You are always miles above the average! " she 
 answers, with a sweet openness of commendation 
 intended to take any sting out of the partial acqui- 
 escence in his self-depreciation which follows. " But 
 I have noticed that of late you have not been quite 
 up to your usual mark. I attributed it to the effects 
 of influenza." 
 
 " Did you? " he says, in a wounded voice at the 
 prosaic nature of her explanation. " I had thought 
 that you might have divined me better." 
 
 She shakes her head apologetically. 
 
FOES IN LAW 7 
 
 "At first/' he pursues in a feverish egotism of 
 retrospection, " nay, for many months you were an 
 untold help to me, an impetus, an impalsion! The 
 knowledge that your serious eyes were upon me, 
 that your clear brain was following me point by 
 point, keeping up with* me when I was painfully 
 conscious of having outstripped all the rest of the 
 congregation '* 
 
 " I think you are sometimes rather above their 
 heads," she puts in gently. 
 
 The interruption checks him for a moment; then 
 he goes off again at score. 
 
 '' But now — now — of late, the sensation of your 
 nearness paralyzes me." 
 
 " You ought not to be aware that I am there." 
 
 " I am thankful when you are not," retorts 
 he, violently, smarting under the low-voiced re- 
 buke. *' A few Sundays ago, when your place 
 was empty " 
 
 " I had a touch of influ " she begins, but 
 
 breaks off before finishing the offensive word. 
 
 " I blessed God for it! I breathed freer." 
 
 She looks up with an expression of half-at- 
 tracted, half-repelled wonder at the clean-shaved, 
 finely cut face, quivering with nervous excitement 
 above her, marvelling that her own charms, which 
 she has always considered of so jog-trot and in- 
 effective an order, or of which, to speak more 
 exactly, she has hitherto thought so little at all, can 
 have wrought such an alarming yet interesting 
 transmogrification in the fellow sand-digger of 
 seventeen years ago, and the platonic teacher and 
 comrade of the last twelve months. 
 
 " I am not of the stuff of which ascetics are 
 
8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 made," he says, with an erotic flash of his dark 
 eyes that renders the assertion almost superfluous. 
 ** With me, when the heart is starved the intellect 
 declines too. I need the blessedness of earthly love 
 to help me up the path of high endeavour. Think, 
 think twice before, without any adequate reason — 
 and you have given me no reason worth the name 
 — you refuse it me! " 
 
 The stringency of his urging, the imperative 
 amativeness of his look, fill her with a discomfort 
 that has yet an element of high excitement in it. 
 The double feeling expresses itself in a slight push- 
 ing back of her chair to increase the distance be- 
 tween them, and a hesitating quiver in the voice 
 that repeats her refusal. 
 
 " I can't give you what I have not got." 
 
 *' How do you know that you have not got it? " 
 he cries, unconsciously recovering the lost advan- 
 tage of extreme proximity, and lifting his tone 
 again till the sleepy puppy gives a suppressed 
 " WufT! " " How do you know what unused treas- 
 ures you may have been icily keeping under lock 
 and key? Are you quite, quite sure that from far, 
 far down in your being your heart is not crying out 
 to mine, as mine is to yours? " 
 
 The sensation that his eyes are literally boring 
 her through has become so overpowering that she 
 jumps up from her chair, dropping from her lap as 
 she does so the forgotten pet, who gives an injured 
 squeak; and, taking her lover's forsaken place on 
 the hearthrug, faces and answers him with a collect- 
 edness that seems easier now that he is no longer 
 hovering over her like a hawk over a mouse. 
 
 " I am quite sure.'* 
 
FOES IN LAW 9 
 
 "Thank you!" 
 
 The gratitude expressed has something of the 
 ironic quality of the hawker whose challenge to buy 
 his wares has been refused, and there is an oppres- 
 sive silence; it might be a final one, if the woman 
 could leave the crisis to end itself, but that is just 
 what she cannot bear to do. 
 
 " You must not think that I under-estimate what 
 you have been to me," she says, with a thrill in her 
 voice, which might revive the spirits of a less self- 
 confident person than the one addressed — " the 
 way in which you have enriched my life, by your 
 teaching, your books, your readings." She pauses 
 with a half-aghast question to herself as to whether 
 by her present action she is knocking on the head 
 all the intellectual pleasures to which she alludes. 
 " But even if I had for you the sort of — of over- 
 whelming feeling that you wish, and which I do not 
 even understand " 
 
 She looks up at him questioningly, her cool fair- 
 ness troubled. He is on the hearthrug too by this 
 time. 
 
 " If you would let me, I could make you compre- 
 hend it." 
 
 His voice is unrecognizable, and somehow her 
 hands have got into his. 
 
 " I do not want you to try " — extracting them, 
 but not easily. " If you succeeded — I do not think 
 you would — but if you did it would be disastrous." 
 
 " Disastrous? " 
 
 " Yes, disastrous. I mean nothing could come of 
 it." 
 
 The homely matter-of-factness of her phrase jars 
 upon him, and her freed hands make him angry. 
 
10 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " I fail to follow you/' 
 
 " You are asking me to marry you/' she says, 
 lifting the perfect honesty of her simple yet not 
 vapid face to his. " Well, I am not going to 
 marry." 
 
 This time he does really kick the puppy, though 
 not intentionally, but merely as a protest made by 
 all his ireful muscles against her sentence. 
 
 " Is this a specimen of the cant of the day? " 
 
 The incivility of the phrase raises her colour and 
 sends up her head. 
 
 " It is not cant. I shall not marry, simply be- 
 cause there is no room for marriage in my life." 
 
 Her sudden gentle stiffness warns him that he has 
 exceeded the limits of ill-temper allowed even to a 
 sufferer toasting on the gridiron of a refusal. 
 
 " Then you are going to sacrifice your whole life 
 to a Quixotism? " 
 
 " If you like to call it so." 
 
 A silence falls; both interlocutors brought up 
 against a brick wall, while the parrot tells himself 
 in a low voice the unintelligible stories about his 
 ribald past, with which he usually soothes his bed- 
 time hour. 
 
 After a while the girl, who has been looking 
 rather ruefully into the fire, says softly and apolo- 
 getically — 
 
 " He wants me far more than you do." 
 
 " Do not add insult to injury." 
 
 " But it is true. You have done without me very 
 comfortably — well, then, very uncomfortably, smce 
 you will have it so — for twenty-six years, and he has 
 never done without me, and he never shall! " 
 
 At the last clause her voice sinks; but what it 
 
FOES IN LAW II 
 
 loses in volume it gains in firmness, and her lover's 
 temper rises. 
 
 ** What senseless obstinacy!" is his not very 
 lover-like inward comment; but he only says — 
 
 "Has it ever struck you that a brother may prove 
 a broken reed to lean upon? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " That he may turn the tables upon you? " 
 
 " I do not know what you mean." 
 
 " That he may marry." 
 
 For the first time a brand of real indignation 
 kindles the depths of her eyes. 
 
 ** That shows how little you know him! With his 
 deep nature, after the terrible shipwreck he suffered 
 ten years ago, when he was so disgracefully treated, 
 he has never looked, never will look, at a woman 
 again! " 
 
 " And you think that such shipwrecks are always 
 final ?" 
 
 "I do not know about the generality; I know 
 that his is." 
 
 There is a quiet doggedness in her tone which 
 shows him that further scepticism would be danger- 
 ous. 
 
 " So this is your last word? " 
 
 " It must be." 
 
 " You send me empty away? " 
 
 There is a Biblical turn in the phrase, and the 
 depth of his reproach is conveyed by that drop of 
 the voice which has once or twice from his pulpit 
 sent a thrill, half religious, half sensuous, through 
 her. 
 
 " I must." 
 
la FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Do you realize what you are doing? Have you 
 counted the cost? '* 
 
 There is still that pulpit quality in his voice which 
 confuses her between the priest and the lover; and 
 the consciousness that his eyes are boring through 
 her like fiery gimlets, as she has seen them do 
 through his congregation when he has b^n driving 
 the sword of some burning truth up to the hilt in 
 them, makes her feel as if he were putting before her 
 a final and irrevocable choice between eternal good 
 and ill. 
 
 *' It has never struck me that there was any to 
 count," she answers, troubled. 
 
 " Do you understand what you are doing when 
 you turn me out to-night, and send me back to my 
 wretched apology for a home? " 
 
 " I fear you are very unconifortable," she says, 
 partly catching with relief at the chance of turning 
 the conversation, but also in real housewifely solici- 
 tude for his welfare. " Why do not you change 
 your lodgings? " 
 
 He waves away her matter-of-factness with a ges- 
 ture of boundless impatience. 
 
 " Is it possible that you think I am challenging 
 your pity for a few physical discomforts? If it were 
 only that " 
 
 He looks round contemptuously, but even as he 
 does so a heave of aesthetic disgust agitates him at 
 the memory of the down-at-heel slavey, the fire 
 habitually let out, the oleograph of the Queen and 
 Prince Albert, and the perennial smell of onic nj- 
 and paraffin to which he will have to carry back hi' 
 broken heart. Unconscious of the ignoble track^ • 
 thoughts have taken, she looks at him in silent 's- 
 
FOES IN LAW 13 
 
 tress, a distress so full of undisguised sympathy that 
 he falls to urgent pleading. 
 
 " I know it is not the highest kind of nature that 
 needs the heat of human sympathy before its fruits 
 can ripen to any purpose; but such as it is, it is 
 mine. Lettice, being what I am, how can I lift 
 other hearts up when my own is trodden in the 
 dust? How can I carry light and life to other souls 
 when there is nothing but darkness and death in my 
 own? '' 
 
 The exaggeration of the phrase is patent; and 
 something in it — she could hardly have told what 
 — shocks her; yet her rebuke is lenient. 
 . " If one has suffered one's self, one can surely 
 help others better.'* 
 
 Her protest is lost in the whirlwind of his 
 words — 
 
 " In after life you will have the satisfaction of say- 
 ing to yourself, * He had a career before him; he 
 would have had a career if I had not murdered it.' " 
 
 She lifts her drooped head with dignity and 
 spirit. 
 
 " I shall say nothing of the kind." 
 
 Once again through the blinding drift of his agi- 
 tation he feels that he is on the wrong course, and 
 is only damaging his cause. 
 
 " What am I saying? " he cries, clutching his 
 handsome dark head with a gesture that, though 
 theatrical, the dash of Irish blood which is in him 
 makes perfectly natural. " You are getting further 
 ^i^d further away from me. Put the right words 
 ^ifto my mouth. There must be some that would 
 '%ive you if I could find them. Are there none — 
 
14 FOES IN LAW 
 
 none? Are you really, really going to send me 
 away — send me away without a pang? " 
 
 Real feeling, coupled with the rhetorician's in- 
 stinct, has put him on the right tack this time. The 
 broken hoarseness of his usually tuneful voice, the 
 alternate halt and rush of his words, bring an an- 
 swering vibration into hers. 
 
 " Not quite without a pang." 
 
 He can scarcely get out his rejoinder. " Then if 
 this obstacle — this absurd " — once again he is on 
 dangerous ground, but quickly recovers his footing 
 — " if this obstacle that you think so insurmount- 
 able were removed, there would be nothing else be- 
 tween us? " 
 
 She fetches her breath quickly. " I do not say 
 that. I do not know. I can't tell you. How can I 
 when I can't tell myself." 
 
 " If he marries " 
 
 " What is the use of speculating on the impossi- 
 ble? " 
 
 Her voice is full of impatient, angry distress, and 
 he can get nothing more out of her. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The master of the house has been absent for a few 
 days, and his return by an evening train entails the 
 putting off dinner for half an hour. It is a respite 
 for which Lettice Trent is truly thankful, but of 
 which she feels the deplorable insufficiency. Half 
 an hour in which to grow familiar with the fact of 
 having seen the teacher at whose feet you have sat 
 for twelve months rolling metaphorically and al- 
 most literally at yours! Her life has not been rich 
 in acute sensations, and as she, with solitary flush- 
 ings, goes over the details of the interview, her 
 thoughts glide leniently over whatever of exaggera- 
 tion, rhodomontade, and bad taste it may have 
 called forth, to dwell with comparative complacency 
 upon the size and brilliancy of the passion she has 
 inspired. The idea is so new that she does not know 
 what angle to look at it from. His sufferings, her 
 own dense unsuspectingness; what will happen 
 when next they meet? — she will have to see him no 
 later than to-morrow, but that will be only in the 
 pulpit — whether under different circumstances she 
 could have answered differently? This last and 
 weightiest question brings back some return of the 
 quivering of flesh and spirit of half an hour ago; and 
 she has asked it of herself a hundred different times, 
 and answered it with a perpetual oscillation between 
 yes and no. 
 
 15 
 
x6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 The hundred and first query is cut in two by the 
 sound of the hall-door bell, that tells of her brother's 
 return. She hurries out to meet him — an imme- 
 morial custom — and they kiss each other with their 
 usual sober pleasure in reunion. It strikes her in- 
 deed with a tweak of compunction that his greeting 
 is rather more demonstrative — that he is a little 
 gladder to see her than usual. He is far from sus- 
 pecting the danger that has threatened him. Their 
 affection is not an ebullient one, but to-night the 
 consciousness of her half-treachery makes her add a 
 small exotic caress. 
 
 " How cold your hand is! '* 
 
 " Is it? I am not cold." 
 
 He is gladder than usual to be at home again. 
 What a happy tone in his voice! They reach the 
 morning-room hearthrug, and the traveller spreads 
 his palms towards the blaze, while the puppy humi- 
 liates herself — wrong way up — in uncalled-for boot- 
 lickings at his feet. 
 
 " You have not said, * How do you do? * to 
 Kirstie.'* 
 
 " How are you, Kirstie? " 
 
 His tone is kind, but absent. Usually he makes 
 a fuss in his grave way with the little dog. 
 
 "Well, how is London?" 
 
 " London was very well when I left it." 
 
 " As that was only two and a half hours ago, we 
 may hope it is well still." 
 
 " It was more than two and a half hours ago." 
 
 She looks inquiringly at him. 
 
 " It was two days ago. I left London on Thurs- 
 day." 
 
 The surprise in her look amounts to a query, but 
 
FOES IN LAW 17 
 
 she does not put it into words, knowing that he is 
 not fond of being questioned. She is rewarded. 
 
 " I was out of London; I was at Wimbledon.'* 
 
 "Wimbledon!" 
 
 " Yes, Wimbledon." 
 
 " I did not think that you knew any one at Wim- 
 bledon." 
 
 " Did not you? " 
 
 His speech, like his ideas, always moves slowly, 
 and his sister is used to waiting for the tardy births 
 of his brain. Nor is her curiosity so much excited 
 as it would usually be, the pre-occupation with her 
 own portentous piece of bottled news making other 
 topics seem far and faint. Her brother, apparently 
 not wishing to unfold himself further for the mo- 
 ment, turns the tables upon her, and his next re- 
 mark makes her feel getting upon very dangerous 
 ground. 
 
 ** And you? What have you been up to? " 
 
 " Oh, not much. I bicycled down into the village 
 to my carving-class after luncheon to-day. The 
 roads were horrible. I all but skidded twice — and 
 — Randal Chevening came to tea." 
 
 " And poetry-books? " 
 
 "No; no poetry-books; we — talked." 
 
 " Talk! Yes, that is about what he is good for." 
 
 The remark gives her a dreadful jar; and there 
 is an uneasy and unwonted jocosity about the tone 
 in which it is uttered that she does not recognize as 
 belonging to the speaker. Surely there is some- 
 thing odd about Jim to-night! Can he suspect? 
 Is that why he, usually the embodiment of large, 
 slow calm, is fidgeting about the room so tire- 
 somely? She finds no words in which to defend her 
 
t8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 priestly lover, and it is the impugner of his merits 
 who by-and-by comes back to the hearthrug and re- 
 sumes the conversation. 
 
 " You have not asked me why I went to Wimble- 
 don." 
 
 " I know that you do not like being asked 
 why." 
 
 He certainly is odd. He has been thinking of 
 Wimbledon the whole time, and has not known 
 what he was saying upon the other subject! 
 
 " I have something to tell you." 
 
 '* About Wimbledon?" 
 
 Her attention is fully aroused now, and her eyes 
 follow, with that vague fear which the unaccus- 
 tomed always gives us, his large fingers Hfting up 
 and setting down again the little Chelsea person- 
 ages that stand on the narrow ledge of the Adams 
 chimney-piece. 
 
 " I expect that it will surprise you." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "But I hope that, on the whole, you will be 
 pleased." 
 
 ''Pleased? " 
 
 What can this be the preamble to? He comes to 
 a dead stop, the line of his utterance evidently quite 
 blocked by the ponderousness of the unaccustomed 
 freight he is trying to send along it. How terribly 
 slow he is! It is a thought that, as a rule, his sister 
 never permits herself; but to-night it thrusts itself 
 inevitably upon her. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 Instead of a straightforward answer, he begins to 
 try back laboriously on his own trail. 
 
 " I do not know whether you have, noticed that I 
 
FOES IN LAW 19 
 
 have been to London — you have always thought it 
 was London — oftener than usual of late? " 
 
 " I do not think I have." 
 
 What can this be the preamble to? 
 
 " I have been for years meeting at the club ofif 
 and on a man who used to be in my regiment. He 
 left long before I joined, but he had been in it." 
 
 *' Yes? " 
 
 " He lives at Wimbledon now." 
 
 " Does he? " 
 
 Mr. Trent clears his throat, and stops once more. 
 So far they have only got back to their point of de- 
 parture. 
 
 " He was always inviting me to go down there to 
 golf with him." 
 
 " And you went? " 
 
 What heaviness is this that has come to sit upon 
 her chest? 
 
 " No, I did not, though I should have liked to try 
 the links; but I did not think it good enough." 
 
 There is an almost awed incredulity in his voice 
 as to a state of mind so past as to be now unbe- 
 lievable. 
 
 " So you refused? " 
 
 " Yes, I refused times out of mind; and then one 
 day I did not refuse, I accepted." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " I went to Wimbledon." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " And then I went again." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " And again." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " And again." 
 
20 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 A pause. 
 
 " Has your friend a wife? " 
 
 "No; he is a widower.*' 
 
 " Children? " 
 
 " Any amount." 
 
 " Grown up? " 
 
 "Three." 
 
 She knows what is coming now; but for the mo- 
 ment she cannot and will not let it come. She 
 snatches at the first question that occurs to her, to 
 stave it off for even a few seconds. 
 
 " What is the name of — of the family? " 
 
 " Kergouet." 
 
 "Kergouet? " 
 
 " Yes; it is an odd name. They came originally 
 from Brittany." 
 
 "Kergouet! " 
 
 " It does not sound English, but they are." 
 
 ''Kergouet! " 
 
 Her repetition of the word disconcerts him in the 
 highest degree. 
 
 " You — ^you will get used to the sound." 
 
 Once again she repeats it, regardless of his un- 
 easiness. 
 
 " Kergouet! I have heard the name before. One 
 cannot mistake it. It is not — it cannot be " 
 
 She breaks off; but he does not ask her to 
 finish her sentence. 
 
 " There was a man of that name — it was before I 
 was born, but I have heard of it, a scandalous case 
 — a man in your regiment who ran away with — not 
 the wife, but the — the mistress of a brother officer, 
 and had to leave the army! It was said that there 
 
FOES IN LAW 31 
 
 were peculiarly disgraceful circumstances. It can't 
 be that he was in any way related to — to " 
 
 Such a look as hers must drag a negative out of 
 him, one would think; but none comes. His large, 
 good, stupid face is set like a flint; and in his usually 
 unimportant eyes, small and palish, there is a depth 
 of obstinacy too profound for his sister to plumb. 
 
 " It is the same man; but you had better not say 
 anything more against him, as I am going to marry 
 his second daughter." 
 
 Miss Trent has never known what faintness 
 means, and now she catches for support neither at 
 table nor chair-back, nor does the room go round 
 with her; she only says very dis^tinctly — 
 
 " The daughter of a " 
 
 " He married her, and there never was a breath 
 of scandal about her afterwards. She made him an 
 excellent wife, and she is dead." 
 
 " I am not going to say anything against any of 
 them." 
 
 She sits down. Is it conceivable that she is really 
 hearing what seems to have entered her ears? that 
 the unsavoury story, which has been an unheeded 
 possession of her memory for years, relegated with 
 indifferent disgust to its remotest corner, should 
 now be dragged forth into its very front, and 
 apropos of what? Her brain refuses to open its 
 doors to admit such a monstrosity; and for some 
 moments she sits absolutely knocked out of time 
 by it. 
 
 His voice, full of a distress which he tries to hin- 
 der from being anger too, reaches her in bold plead- 
 ing. 
 
 " If you could only see Marie." 
 
22 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Her name is Marie? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "After?" 
 
 He sees and resents the drift of the question. 
 " I do not know after whom." 
 
 " How old is she? " 
 
 " Nineteen." 
 
 " And you are thirty-eight." 
 
 She regrets the useless dig as soon as it is de- 
 livered, and sees how he smarts under it. 
 
 " You can't regret the discrepancy more than I 
 do." 
 
 Another halt for breath and realization, her eyes 
 resting first on one, then on the other of her late 
 parents' chairs, sacredly kept since the hour of their 
 deaths to the identical spots occupied by them. 
 
 "Thank God they are dead! How could they 
 have borne it? " The reflection drives her ship- 
 wrecked vessel upon the rock of an unwise question. 
 
 " Is it quite — quite settled? " 
 
 " Absolutely. I asked her to marry me yester- 
 day evening." 
 
 " And she accepted you? " 
 
 " At once." 
 
 Another interval. The sister's eyes have moved 
 to the brother's face, and are resting there in an 
 unconscious openness of appraisement. Love in 
 her case is not blind, if indeed he ever is, and does 
 not merely put on the semblance of it to trick the 
 outside. She sees as clearly as could le premier 
 venu the clumsiness of her brother's figure, the want 
 of harmony in his large features, upon which her 
 own are delicate improvements; the pompousness 
 of manner which protects his deep shyness. Is it 
 
FOES IN LAW ^3 
 
 conceivable that the young adventuress who has 
 enmeshed him has had eyes to see the noble virtues 
 hiding beneath his unromantic exterior — the high 
 honour, the truth, the single-mindedness? Is not 
 it rather certain that she has cared nothing at all 
 for them, but has had her greedy eyes fixed wholly 
 upon his money and position? has looked upon him 
 as the ladder by which the whole disreputable rout 
 are to climb out of their mud? 
 
 Thoughts of this kind cannot but leave a print 
 upon the face behind which they are being hatched, 
 and that they have done so upon hers is evident 
 by the acute surface disturbance that has spread 
 over her brother's features, though it cannot affect 
 the dogged bliss in his eyes. With a heave of the 
 chest and a convulsive swallowing, the girl pulls 
 herself together. It is going to be, and she must 
 accept it. 
 
 " Is she pretty? " 
 
 " Wait till you see her." 
 
 At the conciliatory-sounding question his joy 
 has bloomed out as broad and flaring as a Byblu- 
 men tulip in a May noon. See her! Yes, that is 
 what will have to come next. She disguises the 
 inevitable shudder under a quick change of posi- 
 tion. He must not see the evidences of her disgust, 
 or they will rob her of the miserable little part in 
 him that may yet be left her. 
 
 " And clever? Amusing? " 
 
 " I dare say she is not what you would call clever, 
 not highly educated, but quick — quick as light- 
 ning! " 
 
 An odious hope, of which she is heartily ashamed, 
 darts up in Lettice's heart. The lively American 
 
^4 FOES IN LAW 
 
 who had jilted Mr. Trent ten years ago had been 
 "quick" too — "quick as lightning;" and it was 
 his perfect inability to keep up with her speed that 
 had motived her relinquishment of him and his 
 Georgian house, warmly as she had admired the 
 Adams ceilings and chimneypieces of the latter on 
 her solitary visit to it. Quick as lightning! The 
 brother's mind is usually tardy in following the 
 windings of another, but on this occasion love has 
 set a sharper edge on his wits, and he reads Let- 
 tice's thought. 
 
 " Yes, but she can put up with slow people." 
 
 Her silent acceptance — is it acceptance?— of this 
 makes him move restlessly, and in so doing tread 
 upon the still grovelling Kirstie's tail. Her pro- 
 testing squeak, so much in excess of what the in- 
 flicted injury merits, seems to them both a blessed 
 distraction. By the time that she is calmed, ex- 
 plained to, and set right way up, the air, to the man 
 at least, seems sensibly lighter. 
 
 " Of course, you are taken aback at first." 
 
 " Yes " — very slowly — " I am taken aback." 
 
 " But when you get used to it — when you get to 
 know her " 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 She cannot aid him in his efforts to hatch out the 
 addled egg of his bald consolation. 
 
 " You will see that, so far from having lost any- 
 thing, you have gained " 
 
 "Oh, do not say it!" she cries, with an even 
 acuter, and certainly better grounded, outburst of 
 pain than Kirstie's. 
 
 " I know what you are going to say, that I shall 
 
FOES IN LAW 25 
 
 have gained a sister, but do not. It is — it is — so 
 banal! Everybody says it, and it — it is not true." 
 
 He looks at her in a dismay as flat as his untrue 
 truism had been. 
 
 " I do not know what you mean. I will go and 
 dress for dinner." 
 
 He moves, not without dignity, doorwards; but 
 in a second she has sprung after him, realizing the 
 weightiness of the issue at stake — that those un- 
 sympathetic words now will for ever close the doors 
 of that heart, which for all her twenty-two years 
 have stood wide open to her. She must keep them 
 from banging to, even if the finger she puts into the 
 chink to stop them gets crushed to pieces in the 
 process. 
 
 *' Do not go! I want to hear a great deal more! 
 It is so sudden! I thought I had you all to myself, 
 as I have had for the last ten years." 
 
 He pauses, very placable, though the allusion 
 to the date of his former fiasco, upon which for 
 years they have both been strictly silent, brings a 
 small crease into his forehead. 
 
 "Ten years ago I made a great mistake; you 
 think that I am now going to make another. Well, 
 I am not! " 
 
 There is such a cocksure certainty of conviction 
 in his tone that she must needs catch an echo of it. 
 
 " I believe you," she says faintly. Then, with 
 much more emphasis and life, " And oh, you dear 
 fellow, I do hope you are going to be luckier this 
 time!" 
 
 The aspiration lacks nothing in tender heat and 
 sincerity, though the recurring allusion to the 
 American disaster is, perhaps, not quite happy. But 
 
36 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Mr. Trent, with that largeness of treatment and 
 overlooking of minutiae which makes intercourse 
 with men as a rule easier than that with women, ac- 
 cepts only what is agreeable in the phrase, and says 
 gratefully — 
 
 " Thank you, dear; please God, I shall." 
 
 With an unaccustomed caress she lays her cheek 
 against his sleeve. 
 
 " I had no business to count upon keeping you 
 always to myself." 
 
 " I was so likely to keep you always, was not I? " 
 
 " You were not likely, you were certain. No later 
 than to-day I sent away some one because I 
 thought you could not do without me! " 
 
 The bitterness of that misconception breeds a 
 sigh that refuses to be quite strangled. For a mo- 
 ment he is startled out of his ecstatic preoccupation. 
 
 " To-day? " 
 
 " Yes, this afternoon." 
 
 " This afternoon? Whom? " 
 
 " Randal Chevening." 
 
 The brother breaks into a laugh of indignant 
 amusement. 
 
 " He asked you to marry him? " 
 - " Yes." 
 
 " To go and live with him over the cheese- 
 monger's? " 
 
 " If you like to put it so." 
 
 " Impudent young dog! He would have been 
 better employed in the night-school, where Taylor 
 tells me he never sets foot, than making an ass of 
 himself about people who are meat for his mas- 
 ters!" 
 
 She turns away, dyed angry scarlet from head to 
 
FOES IN LAW 27 
 
 heel. In Jim's unaccustomed hand ridicule becomes 
 a bludgeon. Her gesture is so unmistakable that 
 Mr. Trent*s tone changes to one of alarmed affec- 
 tion. 
 
 " You do not mean to say that you care about 
 him? that you wish to go and live over the cheese- 
 monger's? " 
 
 She bursts into tears at this persistent setting of 
 her idyll in a contemptible light. Alone she might 
 have withstood it, but complicated by the dreadful 
 surprise the evening has brought her, it quite over- 
 sets her. 
 
 " At least I am wanted therel " 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Her tears were a dreadful mistake, but they were 
 not an irreparable one. Her brother, always slow to 
 take offence, least of all to-night desires or can 
 afford to resent them. If he did, to whom could he 
 pour out the narrative of his victory? Before the 
 evening is half over she has heard twice repeated, 
 with slow iteration of ecstasy — the difficult out- 
 bubbling of confidence of a constitutionally tongue- 
 tied man — the tale of the steps by which he has 
 climbed to his pinnacle. 
 
 Apparently there were only three of them in all 
 — the day when Kergouet pere had said, " Let me 
 introduce you to my daughter; " the day on which 
 she had allowed him the high privilege of tearing a 
 ripped braid off the bottom of her skirt, and had 
 shown no disapproval when he put it in his pocket; 
 and the day — the narrator's voice grows low as of 
 one entering a temple when he reaches it — on 
 which, apparently at the first hint of priest and altar 
 (this is a gloss of the hearer's), she had fallen into 
 his arms. 
 
 The sister listens with a smile of whose glassy 
 fixedness she is helplessly conscious, without being 
 able to change it, and a running inward commen- 
 tary which picks up ominous hints as it flows along 
 underground. She must be a slattern, or the braid 
 
 a8 
 
FOES IN LAW 39 
 
 would not have been hanging from her gown; a 
 coquette of a very contemptible type, or she would 
 not have allowed such an incident to become the 
 medium of an amatory demonstration; and totally 
 without dignity or delicacy, or she would not have 
 tumbled into his mouth at the third meeting, Hke an 
 over-rij>e plum. 
 
 Happily unaware of the exegesis of his text that 
 is going on at his side, Mr. Trent finishes his story, 
 and falls into a blissful introspection, which is 
 obviously marred only by the consciousness of his 
 own lameness in expressing his stupefaction of joy 
 and wonder. In the effort to remedy it he begins 
 again, but only to give up in despair the struggle 
 with his own congestion of words. 
 
 *' It is no use trying to describe her! " 
 
 " Does she — does she like the same kind of 
 things that you do? Has she the same sort of 
 tastes? " 
 
 " If she has not, she will soon acquire them; and 
 if she does not, it will not matter." 
 
 Perhaps he divines a snare set in the question, 
 for there is something bulldog-like in the tenacity 
 of grip upon his treasure that his words imply. 
 
 " She is fond of the country? " 
 
 " Yes, very fond; at least, I am sure she is. She 
 has not had much opportunity of trying it as yet." 
 
 " They have always lived in the sub — at Wim- 
 bledon? " 
 
 " No-o. They have had no fixed home. They 
 have been about the world a great deal." 
 
 Before Lettice*s mental eye process in ragged 
 row the names of the Continental resorts of the 
 shady English, and she wisely seeks no further to 
 
30 FOES IN LAW 
 
 localize her future sister-in-law. A polite generality 
 is her next venture. 
 
 " Living abroad gives people pleasant manners 
 — plenty of aplomb. I dare say that she will not be 
 nearly so shy of me as I shall be of her." 
 
 " She is not in the least shy." 
 
 " Her mother's daughter is scarcely likely to be!" 
 This is the sister's inward comment. Aloud she 
 says — 
 
 " Happy creature! " 
 
 " Not forward, either — not at all forward." 
 
 He smiles at some blissful recollection, and Let- 
 tice looks away. Her next question requires the 
 preface of a determined swallowing-down of some 
 choking repulsion. 
 
 " Is it to be soon? " 
 
 " Very soon. What is there to wait for? " 
 
 What, indeed? A foolish line from a super- 
 annuated song runs through the girl's head — 
 
 *• Wait till the clouds roll by ! " 
 
 In this case she would have to wait some time — 
 wait till the clouds roll away from the Kergouet 
 family; till the father is reinstated in the army he 
 has disgraced, and the dishonoured mother's mem- 
 ory whitewashed! Yes, there is certainly nothing to 
 wait for. The wedding might as well be to-morrow. 
 
 " Walt till the clouds roll by." 
 
 They seem to have gathered very thick upon Miss 
 Trent's head, as, on the following morning, after a 
 less sleepful night than she had ever passed since 
 her mother's last illness, she follows her brother to 
 church by the short cut through the park, which is 
 over-narrow to hold two abreast. For how many 
 
FOES IN LAW 31 
 
 years has she seen his broad back solidly plodding 
 on in front of her on their weekly course! It is im- 
 possible to realize, though she bends mind and 
 imagination to the effort from hall door to church 
 porch, that henceforth another figure than hers will 
 be treading in her brother's steps — a figure such as 
 it is yet not difficult to construct, given the facts of 
 its heredity. She interrupts the walk to church of 
 her future relative to question whether she will ever 
 go to church at all, but pulls herself up, shocked at 
 her own want of Christian charity; and through 
 the thick gloom of her forebodings the one ray of 
 light which illumines the situation, broadens and 
 brightens into a tremulous glow, as the solitary 
 church bell calls her ever nearer and louder from 
 the pretty mediaeval tower, which seems trying to 
 wrap itself in its ivy cloak from contact with the 
 bastardized, red brick eighteenth-century body. 
 
 Her emancipation has come as a bitter surprise, 
 but it has come. She is free, free to follow where a 
 passionate summoning voice last night called her 
 — a voice that seemed so certain of a fellow voice 
 answering it from her own deeps, as to confuse her 
 with leaping suspicion that it may be so! Within 
 a very few minutes she will have to hear that voice 
 again, decorously levelled, it is true, to his beauti- 
 ful, if rather dramatic, rendering of the Liturgy; 
 but still the very same voice that had told her from 
 the Manor hearthrug that he was no ascetic. Thank 
 Heaven, she will be spared the ordeal of hearing 
 him preach, since the vicar holds to his own pulpit 
 in the morning, though resignedly conscious of an 
 eclipse to which the comparatively empty morning 
 sittings bear irrefutable witness. 
 
32 FOES IN LAW 
 
 But Miss Trent has reckoned without the rela- 
 tive's death-bed, to which the Rev. John Taylor has 
 been suddenly summoned, leaving the whole weight 
 of the services upon his curate's shoulders. Dis- 
 may has seized her from the moment of her noting 
 the vicar's absence from the entering procession of 
 choir and clergy, a dismay which goes on steadily 
 heightening till it reaches its climax, when she be- 
 comes aware that Randal Chevening is in the pul- 
 pit, rising so awkwardly close above the front pew, 
 where — penalty of local importance — she and her 
 brother sit. She had never before found its near- 
 ness oppressive, but had rather rejoiced in the op- 
 portunities given of watching each eager thought, 
 each strong plea, dawn on the mobile features be- 
 fore being conveyed to the eloquent tongue of the 
 preacher. To-day her eyes are glued to the ledge 
 of prayer-books in front of her; yet she snatches 
 one snap-shot glance. It tells her that he is very 
 pale — that, perhaps, was to be expected — and that 
 his features look sharper and better chiselled than 
 ever from the impress they wear of severe mental 
 suffering. 
 
 He looks an embodiment of fire and fasting. 
 That the latter word but too probably expresses a 
 literal fact occurs regretfully to the housewifely 
 mind of Miss Trent, since, from what she knows of 
 it, his landlady's cuisine is but little Hkely to tempt 
 a love-sick appetite. From the Isle of Paphos, who 
 is there that does not know that onions and sardines 
 have for ever been excluded? 
 
 She listens with an unaccountable apprehension 
 for the text, and is relieved when it comes, for 
 
FOES IN LAW 33 
 
 surely it can have no reference to her and him — 
 " Thou shalt do no murder." 
 
 He gives it out in a lifeless voice, and his opening 
 sentences are pitched in a low, flat key, which 
 matches the commonplaces it conveys — common- 
 places suggested by the original fratricide. The 
 vicar himself could scarcely have been triter. But 
 it is not for more than a few minutes that he crawls 
 along the level. With a bound the dry theme has 
 sprung into life; it is throwing out branches and 
 tributaries on every side. It is burgeoning into a 
 hundred flowers of illustration. Cain is dismissed 
 after being cursorily used to demonstrate how im- 
 mensely his descendants have improved upon the 
 methods of the clumsy original artificer with the 
 bludgeon. 
 
 In a voice that has regained its clear volume, the 
 young prophet thundering above Lettice's head an- 
 nounces to the thin morning congregation, which 
 has not been thickened by any rumour of the vicar's 
 absence, that there are probably not many among 
 them who, if they have reached man- or woman- 
 hood, have not been to some extent guilty of the 
 worst form of fratricide — the murder of a brother's 
 soul. With a rush of strong phrases, a torrent of 
 what would be rhetoric if it were not so coloured by 
 potent feeling as to be beyond and above the windy 
 wordiness which the word often implies, he enu- 
 merates the different weapons with which we do 
 our killing — the butcher's knife of overt unkind- 
 ness; the strychnine and prussic-acid of unclean or 
 evil suggestion; the starvation of withheld sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 At the last clause he stops dramatically, and after 
 
34 FOES IN LAW 
 
 a pause which bathes the occupant of a front pew 
 in cold perspiration, goes on in a quiet, sad voice, 
 that though low is thrillingly audible through the 
 church, to paint a picture which, though too florid 
 in its details to satisfy the claims of perfect good 
 taste, has yet a moving quality of its own — of the 
 empty cup held up in the trembling hand of our 
 wayside brother, to be filled with the cool spring 
 water of a little love, a little pity, a little understand- 
 ing. We dash it aside — the preacher makes a the- 
 atrical gesture as of flinging something from him^ — 
 or we pass it by ignoringly. The crime in either 
 case is equal. There is not a pin to pick between 
 them! We pass by, and go about our work — ^very 
 possibly good work, or our play — innocent play 
 enough in all likelihood — and end our days with 
 prayer for our own spiritual welfare, that may be 
 both devout and sincere; but nevertheless we are 
 homicides! 
 
 His voice falls plumb down, and is extinguished 
 in a dramatic silence; then rises again, perfectly dis- 
 tinct, yet with a mufifled sound of woe in it. 
 
 The souls that we have slain outright, or 
 wounded to the death, may be poor stunted things, 
 with few potentialities of growth or expansion, or 
 they may — each word falls with slow, sad weight — 
 have contained the seeds of infinite soaring devel- 
 opment; but for us might have raised themselves 
 into giant trees, whose leaves would have been for 
 the healing of the nations, and under whose benefi- 
 cent shadow peoples yet unborn might have found 
 rest and refreshment. 
 
 Again he pauses, and passes his hand across his 
 forehead, as if to wipe away the pain that inward 
 
FOES IN LAW 35 
 
 vision has stamped there; and Lettice makes a 
 slight movement as of relief. 
 
 The worst must be over now. If he were only 
 not so dreadfully near. Even a few paces further 
 off her judgment would have come to her aid, 
 would have condemned the floridness of his rheto- 
 ric, and the badness of his taste; but here, imme- 
 diately below him, with the consciousness of his 
 pallid eager face right above her ostrich feathers, 
 with the sword of his trenchant, yet deeply emo- 
 tional, voice cutting through her very vitals, she is 
 capable of nothing but a crushing sense of the 
 enormity of the wrong she has done him. All the 
 same, it is cruel to pillory her thus publicly. 
 
 Forgetting in the painful confusion of her ideas 
 that the congregation is not behind the scenes of 
 last night's catastrophe, she has a suffocated sense 
 that each member of it must be making the appli- 
 cation; and from under her eyelids steals a horrified 
 glance round to verify this apprehension. The lady 
 whom nobody visits is sitting with her head bent 
 and hands tightly folded, as if in the corner of mem- 
 ory she were disinterring the bones of some vic- 
 tim such as the preacher has described. On the 
 other hand, the three old gentlewomen, who for 
 longer than Lettice can remember have flourished 
 in narrow gentility in three several village house- 
 lets, have their bonnets perkily lifted with a puzzled 
 air of titillation, coupled with a perfect innocence of 
 having ever had the chance of murdering anything. 
 
 But Jim? Surely after her confidence to him 
 last night — a confidence of which she has never re- 
 pented but once, and that has been ever since — 
 with him, at least, there can be no mistake as to the 
 
36 " FOES IN LAW 
 
 drift of the curate's tirade. Slow to wrath as he is, 
 it cannot fail but move him to the deepest resent- 
 ment. She scarcely dares carry her glance up to his 
 face. But it does not take a second to prove to her 
 how very unfounded her fears are. He is leaning 
 back in his corner with his arms folded, the slightest 
 hint of a beatific smile touching the corners of his 
 mouth, evidently perfectly unaware of the lurid 
 bolts flying round his head, or the smell of sulphur 
 in the air. 
 
 Never did Benediction dismiss a worshipper 
 more thankful to be set free than the one who, with 
 a sensation of having been undergoing the process 
 of flaying for the last half-hour, walks homeward 
 to the church gate, mechanically returning the salu- 
 tations she receives, but, contrary to her usual 
 friendly habit, not stopping to speak to any one. 
 She is glad that a tenant with a grievance button- 
 holes her brother on the way out, and so leaves her 
 a few moments for collection and recovery. At 
 first there is such a singing in her head, and such a 
 confusion of excitement and pain, that she can only 
 walk blindly on, with no definite thoughts; but as 
 the brush of the sharp autumn air on her face, and 
 the withdrawal of that thundering proximity, grad- 
 ually restore her to the possession of her senses, a 
 feeUng of hot indignation begins to supersede her 
 original remorse. It was an unworthy vengeance 
 — unworthy, most unworthy of him. 
 
 She pauses in her quick walk, looking appre- 
 hensively back to see whether Jim is likely to over- 
 take her before she has got her ruf!led countenance 
 back to seemly Sunday serenity. Instead of the 
 
FOES IN LAW 37 
 
 expected figure, she sees that of the object of her 
 ireful reflections hastening as fast as his long, black, 
 clerical legs will carry him in her track. It has been 
 a weekly habit for him to lunch with them on Sun- 
 day; but it has never occurred to her that the cus- 
 tom would not be intermitted to-day. Is it possi- 
 ble that he is capable of the bad taste of forcing 
 himself upon her after the morning's outrage? She 
 stands and awaits him with outwardly quiet dig- 
 nity, both hands remaining in the muflf that the 
 first sting of coming winter has made grateful. 
 
 " I followed you to say that I am afraid I cannot 
 lunch with you to-day." 
 
 She bends her head slightly in acquiescence; and, 
 after an irresolute look at her, he turns on his heel, 
 lifting his hat. It would be wiser to let him go, con- 
 tenting herself with the silent rebuke of her atti- 
 tude; but the unassumed wretchedness of his air 
 raises in her the remorse only so lately and partially 
 put to sleep. Perhaps she is indeed the homicide 
 that he has publicly proclaimed her to be; for he 
 looks half dead. 
 
 " You had no right to preach at me." 
 
 Is it wrath or relenting that unsteadies her voice? 
 He wheels round and faces her again, but no sound 
 of apology or denial crosses his lips. 
 
 " It was unworthy of you — most unworthy; it 
 was worse, it was a disgrace to your office! " 
 
 Her whip-lash cuts. She can see the red weal it 
 has raised across his white face; but he still takes 
 his chastisement dumbly. A revulsion comes. How 
 hicieously he must have suffered before he could 
 have descended to such a vengeance! 
 
38 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " You look as if you had not eaten anything for 
 a week." 
 
 " I have not." 
 
 It shows a prosaic fibre; but the thought of Mrs. 
 Barton's cuisine pleads her lodger's cause more 
 eloquently than any defensive oratory on his part 
 could have done with his present arraigner. 
 
 " Have you not slept either? " 
 
 " I did not go to bed last night." 
 
 " That was sensible." 
 
 There is a touch of the old friendliness in the 
 chiding tone, which she perceives too late to ex- 
 tract it. 
 
 " I suppose that every one knows best how to 
 treat their own diseases." 
 
 " I very much doubt it." 
 
 " And, moreover, I had to prepare — my — ser- 
 mon." He seems to have some difficulty in utter- 
 ing the words. " I did not know till last night 
 that I should have to take the vicar's place." 
 
 " If I had known it I should have stayed at 
 home." 
 
 Indignation is again getting the upper hand. 
 It is effrontery in him thus to allude to the de- 
 liberate planning of his offence in the night 
 watches. Once again the cut of her whip sum- 
 mons his blood to answer her. 
 
 " Do you suppose that any one but yourself 
 made the application? " 
 
 " Whether they did or no, it was equally inex- 
 cusable to make the pulpit the vehicle for convey- 
 ing your own private " 
 
 She pauses, unable to suit herself with a word. 
 
 " It was inexcusable," he says in a hollow voice, 
 
FOES IN LAW 39 
 
 his head dropping on his chest, and with an aban- 
 donment of all self-defence which must knock the 
 weapon out of any generous hand. 
 
 "What possessed you to do it?" she asks in a 
 mournful, mollified key. 
 
 " It was wrung out of me by my agony," he an- 
 swers, with his head still abased on his breast. 
 After a moment or two raising it, and with an ef- 
 fort at recovered self-respect, " And yet my mes- 
 sage was a true one. If there had been no you in 
 the case I should still have felt bound to deliver it. 
 I have always been overwhelmed by the sense of 
 the power of human souls over each other. If we 
 realized our capacity for harm in that way we 
 should never dare open our lips without an inward 
 prayer that we might not be doing some deadly 
 injury to our neighbour by our idle breath." 
 
 " I think that is an overstrained way of looking 
 at it," she says, but her voice trembles, the old 
 confusion between lover and apostle beginning to 
 blur her vision. 
 
 "Is it? It is my way." 
 
 He lifts his head again, and his fine face, intel- 
 lectual yet sensuous, looks at her with something 
 of its customary superiority won back. The 
 marks of suffering upon it are so legible to the 
 most cursory glancer that there is more of ruth 
 than wrath in her next words. 
 
 " I used to look forward to your sermons from 
 Sunday to Sunday, and now I shall have to give up 
 attending evening service." 
 
 " You need not," he answers in a stifled voice— 
 " at least, not for long." 
 »^ " Do you mean to say that you are going? " she 
 
40 FOES IN LAW 
 
 cries, in an accent of such real distress as brings a 
 slight wash of colour over the marble of his face — 
 " that I have driven you away? Oh, how I re- 
 proach myself! " 
 
 " You need not," he answers in a tone that with 
 so indulgent a Hstener may pass for magnanimous. 
 " I shall not be missed. Such gifts as I have 
 are not of the kind that are needed here" — he 
 looks round with an eye of lenient disparagement, 
 but whether of himself or of the distant school- 
 house and cottage roofs is uncertain — " and how- 
 ever little you realize — happily for yourself you are 
 not imaginative — what you have done, you must 
 see that it is impossible I could remain here." 
 
 Her eyes drop to the gravel path, and an indis- 
 putable sigh heaves the tails of her Httle sable boa. 
 
 " If I am to be ever fit for work again, I must go 
 away — go away from the one creature in the world 
 who completes my being, as I complete hers, be- 
 cause she has allowed a miserable molehill of an 
 obstacle to rise into an Alp between us." 
 
 His eyes are full of upbraiding, and the ill- 
 covered fire of last night's passion is breaking out 
 through the ventages of eye and mouth and quiv- 
 ering nostril. The apostle who all along has had 
 some difficulty in keeping his head above water is 
 entirely submerged in the lover. 
 
 Lettice stands in downcast distress that has yet 
 an element of acrid enjoyment. Half subjugated 
 by the contagion of his hot urgency, half taken off 
 her feet by the gust of his importunate asking, she 
 stands in vibrating uncertainty. When she left 
 home this morning she had fully intended to tell 
 him that the obstacle between them was removed, 
 
FOES IN LAW 41 
 
 but now that the moment for that admission is 
 come, something hinders its passage. Is this the 
 real thing — the thing that comes but once in a Hfe- 
 time? Is it? Is it? How is she to recognize it? By 
 what birth-mark? The question keeps putting 
 itself in ceaseless disquiet; but through all her being 
 there is such a noisy whirl that she cannot distin- 
 guish the answer. Her look, wandering helplessly 
 beyond her lover, alights on a solid figure stump- 
 ing along the path she has just trodden. She 
 recognizes it with a sense of respite. 
 
 "Here is Jim!" 
 
 A balked look of temper and misery on Cheve- 
 ning*s face answers the announcement. 
 
 " Does he know? " 
 
 The reply comes reluctantly. " Yes; I told him 
 last night." 
 
 " Was he very much upset? " 
 
 The state of mind presupposed in the question 
 is in such glaring contrast with fact that Miss 
 Trent smiles rather convulsively. 
 
 " I — I do not think he quite took it in." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 " We missed the vicar," says Mr. Trent at lunch- 
 eon. " I hope he will be back by next Sunday." 
 
 His sister glances at him apprehensively. With 
 all his air of detachment during the sermon, is it 
 possible that he had listened and understood? He 
 goes on placidly eating and commenting. 
 
 " Randal did not give us a very favourable speci- 
 men of his powers this morning, did he? But, of 
 course, he had to get it up in a hurry, and under 
 the circumstances one ought not to be hard upon 
 him." 
 
 Again she looks at him in nervous doubt. To 
 which set of circumstances does he allude — the 
 sudden call upon the curate's oratory or the state 
 of his affections? A slight smile determines the 
 point, and makes the listener feel an indignation 
 which the presence of the servants in the room 
 compels her to bottle, and thereby intensify. 
 They are no sooner gone than her ire finds vent 
 in words. 
 
 " I should have thought that at this moment you 
 were the last person who had a right to laugh at 
 him." 
 
 He looks up, grave at once. " Are our cases 
 quite parallel ones? I can keep a wife." 
 
 " So can he, perhaps, if he chooses one who 
 does not care about much keeping.*' 
 
 The words frighten her as soon as they are ut- 
 
 42 
 
FOES IN LAW 43 
 
 tered. Do not they seem to reflect by contrast 
 on her brother's choice? But, with his usual wise 
 slowness to notice missiles, whether brickbats or 
 pellets, which, if aimed at, do not hit him, he passes 
 her retort by. No offence for himself tinges the 
 affectionate fear for her written all over his broad 
 face. 
 
 " You do not look as if you were joking; but 
 you cannot be serious! " 
 
 "Cannot I?" 
 
 Her answer so deepens the alarm in his look that 
 she perversely expands her theme. 
 
 " Though I have been luxuriously brought up, I 
 am not naturally luxurious. I could live decently 
 
 upon a small income with a person I " 
 
 " Loved," she was going to say, but the verb re- 
 fuses to produce itself. 
 
 " With a person you " 
 
 "With a person I — I got on well with." 
 
 The excessive baldness of her climax relaxes the 
 tension of his face into a slight smile. 
 
 " If you have no better reason than that to 
 give for leaving me " 
 
 " Have not you filled my place? " 
 
 He glances round the large room with an ex- 
 pression of perturbed surprise ruffling his deep 
 placidity. 
 
 " Is not there room enough for you both? " 
 
 She has often felt tried by her brother's limita- 
 tions. His present inability to see the gigantic 
 object that blocks her own vision lands her in help- 
 less silence. 
 
 " If I had ten wives it would make no difference. 
 This is your home until you marry." 
 
44 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " I shall never- 
 
 The formula has sprung mechanically to her 
 lips for so long that now it has nearly reappeared 
 before she remembers that it has lost all its mean- 
 ing. 
 
 " Well, then, till you die." 
 
 She knows it is not true; yet this evidence of how 
 little she is ousted from his strong heart soothes 
 her soreness. 
 
 " Have you broken it to Miss Kergouet? " 
 
 " There was no question of breaking. You 
 * break * only bad news." 
 
 " How did she take it? What did she say? " 
 
 He leans back his head, and looks up as one 
 who would rapturously recover an utterance issued 
 from the skies. 
 
 " She said, * The more the merrier! ' " 
 
 Miss Trent shudders. The more the merrier! 
 That means that henceforth she herself is to be 
 only one of the Comus rout that are rushing with 
 lewd pipes and cymbals to invade the immemorial 
 quiet of her home ! But for the outrage of the 
 morning's sermon, what a holy, happy spot the 
 lodging over the cheesemonger's would now ap- 
 pear ! As it is, wherever she looks abroad there is 
 nothing but blackness. 
 
 While the days go on relentlessly towards her 
 doom, the Comus rout looms larger and the pulpit 
 insult less. She has abstained from evening 
 church on the fateful Sunday, and avoided the 
 village and the haunts most frequented by Cheve- 
 ning on the following day. Her pains are appar- 
 ently superfluous, since he makes no effort to see, 
 nor does he write, to her. 
 
FOES IN LAW 45 
 
 By Saturday the agitation of her own mind and 
 the consciousness of her foreboding as to the state 
 of his are more than she can bear, and on the after- 
 noon of that day she drives her little pony-cart 
 through the brooding vapour and copper and 
 orange glories of the park to the Vicaragej hoping 
 to combine the gaining some news of the object of 
 her misgiving with the necessary visit of con- 
 dolence on the death of the vicar's mother. She 
 meets the vicar himself, as she turn in at the gate, 
 and he escorts her into the house, apologizing as 
 he does so for his wife's absence. 
 
 " She has a headache — one of her worst." 
 
 He says it with a melancholy pride. Each of us 
 has his or her pet glory, and Mr. Taylor, though 
 the meekest of men and lowliest of Christians, finds 
 his in the unsurpassable ferocity of his wife's sick- 
 headaches. 
 
 " I am so sorry ! I only came in just to say 
 how much I sympathize — how grieved I was to 
 hear of your loss." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " I scarcely expected that you would be back 
 yet." 
 
 He sighs patiently. " It would certainly have 
 been more convenient to me to prolong my ab- 
 sence over to-morrow, as I had, of course, a good 
 deal of business to transact in connection with my 
 dear mother's affairs; but I had a letter from 
 Chevening, written evidently in such a state of 
 mental distress, and representing his need for im- 
 mediate change as so urgent that I thought it best 
 to return." 
 
 This explanation, though given without any 
 
46 FOES IN LAW 
 
 parade of complaint, reduces the condoling visitor 
 to a wide-eyed silence. Shock at the utter selfish- 
 ness of her lover's action has time to subside, or 
 perhaps rather to deepen into dread misgiving as 
 to the condition of a mind which can so forget the 
 charities, and even humanities of life before she 
 asks without flagrant faltering — 
 
 "Is he gone?" 
 
 " He went this morning. At the last moment 
 he seemed reluctant, and offered to take all the 
 services for me to-morrow, but I insisted on his 
 getting away at once. To tell you the trutij^, I 
 thought he was on the verge of a complete nervous 
 breakdown ! " 
 
 The good man's eyes are fixed upon Miss 
 Trent, as eyes naturally rest on an object immedi- 
 ately before them, but to her guilty consciousness 
 there is meaning and condemnation in their gaze. 
 
 "Indeed? It is rather hard upon you — ^just 
 now, too." 
 
 " Oh, I dare say work is the best thing for me; 
 and he would not have been any help to me in his 
 present state/' 
 
 The visitor receives this last unintended arrow 
 full in her breast, and its sting makes her tighten 
 her lips and throw her eyes on the Art Kidder that 
 carpets the Vicarage drawing-room. 
 
 " He has never been quite in his element here," 
 pursues the vicar, with a rather distressed wrinkle 
 on his forehead. " He has always felt himself 
 thrown away. With his gift " 
 
 Mr. Taylor pauses in surprise at the slight con- 
 tortion which, at the mention of his curate's en- 
 dowment, passes over his guest's features; but, 
 
FOES IN LAW 47 
 
 thinking he must have been mistaken, presently 
 goes on — 
 
 " The way in which he has filled the church is 
 nothing less than phenomenal ! " 
 
 There is a slightly rueful, if quite unenvious ac- 
 cent in the utterance of this tribute; yet he man- 
 fully adds to it — 
 
 " The number of communicants, too, is greatly 
 increased/' 
 
 Lcttice lifts her head, the reverent pride in her 
 priestly conquest, which had been her normal feel- 
 ing, beginning to revive. 
 
 " And yet he thinks that he has little effect or 
 influence in the parish ! " 
 
 The tone expresses admiring incredulity, and 
 the vicar is but human. 
 
 " It is chiefly strangers — the people who come 
 out of Stanway and Bradling to hear him " — nam- 
 ing two adjacent manufacturing towns — " who are 
 most impressed by him; but" — conscious of, and 
 instantly repentant for something unhandsome in 
 the turn of the phrase — " it is undoubtedly a great 
 gift, a very valuable gift." 
 
 Before Miss Trent leaves the Vicarage she has 
 ascertained that the knowledge of her brother's 
 engagement, and the consequent entire change of 
 her own outlook on life, had not reached the curate 
 before his departure. She does not know whether 
 she is relieved or disappointed; relieved at not hav- 
 ing at once to find new defensive weapons against 
 him, the old ones having snapped in two, or 
 disappointed at being no longer liable to the shock 
 of that assault which had given her the most 
 
48 FOES IN LAW 
 
 pungent sensations, whether of pleasure or pain, 
 that fate has yet afforded her. 
 
 Life would be very flat without him, if it were 
 not for that other subject of absorbing interest, 
 which makes it so much worse than flat. Yet even 
 with Miss Kergouet and her own soon-to-be-des- 
 ecrated home for rivals, Mr. Chevening does not 
 take a back seat in his lady's mind. There are few 
 of her waking, and not many of her sleeping, 
 dreams from which he is wholly absent. 
 
 Life with him would not be a bed of roses — 
 poor, irritable, high-strung. Her bark would 
 have no summer sea to sail on in his company. 
 But what noble and elevating excitement there 
 would be in breasting the storms and topping the 
 waves together ! And how he loves her ! To 
 him, at all events, she is indispensable; there can be 
 no mistake in this case as there was in that of her 
 brother. He cannot do without her. Wonderful 
 and awe-inspiring as is the fact, it is yet true that 
 health and brain-power are failing him under the 
 mere terror of not winning her. Deprived of her, 
 he is a wreck. With her at his side, to what 
 heights may he not soar ! Her feelings do not 
 always keep at this lofty level; but even at 
 their lowest, the cheesemonger's lodgings grow 
 more and more to be regarded by her in the 
 light of a desirable and even fragrant refuge. 
 How much of this is due to the increasing 
 bitterness that pinches her heart, as her span of 
 possession of her old home rapidly dwindles, she 
 does not ask herself. 
 
 Wandering through the familiar rooms, pacing 
 along the hallowed and haunted garden path§^ she 
 
FOES IN LAW 49 
 
 torments herself by trying to forecast with what 
 monstrosities of bad taste and ill-breeding they will 
 be disfigured. It is seldom that she can bring her- 
 self to frame a question as to the tastes or habits of 
 the family into which she is so soon to be brought 
 into such close relationship; but whenever she does 
 so, the answer — very contrary to the utterer's in- 
 tention — sends them down a peg lower in her esti- 
 mation. Her brother's lessening communicative- 
 ness, though he always replies cheerfully and 
 readily to her grudging queries, shows her that he 
 is aware of this result. 
 
 " I hope that Miss Kergouet will not think this 
 too shabby," she says one day, lifting her eyes to 
 the fine old Chinese paper which covers the walls 
 of the room in which they are sitting. "I suppose 
 she is sure to insist on the house being entirely 
 refurnished." 
 
 "And / am sure that she is sure not to insist upon 
 anything," he answers, wisely laughing at what its 
 owner is well aware is not a pleasantly turned 
 phrase. " I dare say she will think a Uttle clean 
 paint will not do us any harm, and there is no de- 
 nying that we do need some freshening up." 
 
 His sister continues ruefully to regard the tall 
 tree-trunks and branches, the gay flowers and 
 gayer birds, whose beauties no picture is allowed 
 to obscure; and, driven by that impulse to say a 
 more disagreeable thing because one has already 
 said a disagreeable one, she remarks — 
 
 " Well, I hope she will see her way to sparing 
 this ! " 
 
 It is impossible to treat the observation as a 
 joke; but the only indication Mr. Trent gives of 
 
50 FOES IN LAW 
 
 not having relished it is that he presently takes up 
 a book, and the rest of the evening is passed in 
 silence. 
 
 The full river of his blissful expansiveness has 
 seemed nearly to wash away her heart; yet when it 
 dwindles to a thin streamlet under the parching 
 influence of her want of sympathy, she tries to set 
 it flowing again. On the morning after the Chi- 
 nese-paper episode she obligingly attempts an 
 amende. 
 
 " You have never shown me Miss Kergouet*s 
 photograph. I suppose you have got one? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He adds nothing to the monosyllable; yet, to his 
 sister's ear, it plainly conveys that life in her ab- 
 sence would be impossible without such a stay. 
 
 " Will not you show it to me? " 
 
 He hesitates for a second. " If you do not 
 mind, I think not. To a person who does not 
 know her, no photograph gives an idea of her; the 
 colour, the life, the sparkle " 
 
 He breaks ofif, pulling himself up, as Lettice re- 
 morsefully divines, with a chilled recollection of 
 her reception of former raptures. As her face 
 falls, he adds with a rather uneasy kindliness — 
 
 " You will not have long to wait before you see 
 the original." 
 
 " So she tells me." 
 
 His look bespeaks pleased surprise. " She has 
 written to you." 
 
 " Yes; in answer to a letter of congratulation I 
 sent her a week ago." 
 
 If he perceives that this careful noting of the 
 date of her own communication implies reproach 
 
FOES IN LAW 
 
 SI 
 
 at the tardiness of the rejoinder, he shows it only 
 by an indulgent laugh. 
 
 " She is always a most reluctant scribe." 
 
 Miss Trent draws a letter from her pocket. 
 "Would you like to see it?" 
 
 " If you do not mind showing it to me." 
 
 She puts it into his hand, and watches him cov- 
 ertly while he reads it. To herself it had seemed 
 a deplorable production — the handwriting half- 
 educated, the phrasing slipshod and vulgar, and 
 one sentence disgraced by a flagrant fault in spell- 
 ing. She knows exactly the spot on the second 
 page where that slip occurs, and expects, half in 
 dread, half in malicious anticipation, the look of 
 shame and annoyance that will surely cross his 
 features when he reaches it. 
 
 But he has reached and passed it, with no sign 
 of a cloud dimming his brilliant satisfaction, and it 
 is with a distinct note of triumph that he gives the 
 letter back. 
 
 " And she means every word she says! " 
 
 The idea that her upstart supplanter's expres- 
 sions of pleasure in the prospect of their future re- 
 lationship could possibly be insincere had never oc- 
 curred to Lettice; and the suggestion ruffles her so 
 much that she cannot resist shooting one shaft. 
 
 " I suppose that Miss Kergouet has been edu- 
 cated chiefly in France? " 
 
 "Yes; I believe that she speaks French quite 
 as well as she does English." 
 
 " That would, no doubt, not be difflcult," is the 
 sister's inward comment; but her arrow having 
 completely missed its mark, she prudently keeps 
 the rest of her stock in her quiver for future use. 
 
52 FOES IN LAW 
 
 She has not, after all, much opportunity for em- 
 ploying them, as — partly, perhaps, to avoid them, 
 but chiefly through the waxing strength of the en- 
 chantment that binds him — her brother is less and 
 less at home. 
 
 And the little, dark days draw in and in, draw 
 on and on, galloping murkily to the now inevitable 
 goal. Lettice has not realized how much hope she 
 has nourished of some thunderbolted God descend- 
 ing, some earth-splitting or flood rising to avert 
 the catastrophe, until the small details of prepara- 
 tion bring home to her that neither God nor man 
 has any intention of interposing. Her last flicker 
 of hooe dies out on that day when she sees her 
 bridesmaid's dress laid out on the bed. 
 
 " It does not look much like you, *m! " says the 
 maid, hold-cheaply, picking up a scrap of the fabric 
 between her finger and thumb. " Will you try it 
 on at dressing-time to-night? " 
 
 "I will not try it on at all!" Then, noting a 
 something too much of sympathy in her attend- 
 ant's eye, she adds shortly, " There is no need. 
 It is sure to be all right! " 
 
 Only a week now parts her from the imminent 
 calamity. 
 
 " Marie wants you to go down a day earlier 
 than you propose," her brother says that same 
 evening. 
 
 "As the wedding is on the 15th, will not it be 
 soon enough for me to arrive on the 14th? " 
 
 " If you do not mind, she wants you to come on 
 the 13th." 
 
 " That we may have twenty-four hours in which 
 to make acquaintance? Oh, certainly." 
 
FOES IN LAW 53 
 
 " It IS not only that; she wants to have a sort of 
 rehearsal of the ceremony in the church on the day 
 before." 
 
 " A rehearsal in a church! That sounds rather 
 
 "Theatrical," she is going to say; but recollect- 
 ing in time that an allusion to the ostensible pro- 
 fession with which the bride's mother had coupled 
 a less proclaimable one is scarcely judicious, she 
 breaks ofif. It may be that his thought follows 
 hers, for a correction of the phrase follows more 
 briskly than is the wont of his slow speech. 
 
 " Rehearsal was not the right word. I ought 
 not to have used it. She only wants just to prac- 
 tice the procession — you know, it is to be rather a 
 big aflfair — so that there may be no hitch upon the 
 15th." 
 
 " I see/' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The 13th of December arrives, and the deposed 
 sovereign leaves her home for the last time as its 
 mistress. There has been nothing to break her 
 fall — no previous dismantling, or even lesser al- 
 teration — since the master of the house has de- 
 cided that all changes shall await the will of the 
 new queen. The rooms through which Lettice 
 walks, taking solemn good-bye, greet her with 
 their familiar air of mellow gentlehood, unsuspi- 
 cious of the red ruin that awaits them. 
 
 " But for the * rehearsal ' I might have had one 
 more day," she says to herself, an acrid tear steal- 
 ing into either eye. 
 
 As she advances on her journey, and the well- 
 known stations of the often-travelled railway-line 
 rapidly succeed each other, her express hurling 
 itself past them, her regrets yield somewhat to a 
 rueful curiosity. What will her first impression be 
 — worse than what imagination has bodied forth? 
 To be worse would be scarcely possible; yet to be 
 better is, in the highest degree, improbable. As 
 so often before, but with even greater vividness of 
 presentment, the personages of the drama into 
 which she has been pitch-forked pass before her 
 mind's eye — the terrible protagonist, with her "lit- 
 tle-milliner " prettiness, and her heart-breaking 
 " sparkle," probably desolatingly determined to be 
 
 54 
 
FOES IN LAW 55 
 
 sisterly; the blear-eyed old debauchee of a father; 
 the elder brother, who is " something " in a bank 
 — she has never demeaned herself to inquire what 
 — (he will probably end by robbing the till); the 
 actress-sister, who needlessly veils her total ob- 
 scurity on the stage by a nom-de-thedtre ; and the 
 background filled with a rabble of disorderly juve- 
 niles! 
 
 A journey to an unwelcome goal always seems 
 brief; and Euston's platform and line of expectant 
 porters surprise her by their too-soon appearing. 
 The drive across London, though her horse is 
 slow and lame, is also over too soon; and Victoria 
 — the very ante-chamber to the place of torment — 
 reached before she had thought it possible. Here, 
 at all events, she has the distraction of an enforced 
 change of idea. No lady's-maid who respects her- 
 self is ever known to arrive at a new place except 
 genteelly labouring under a sick-headache; nor is 
 Miss Trent's any exception to this golden rule. 
 In humanely ministering to her sufferings, in prop- 
 ping her limp back with rugs, in arranging her 
 with her face to the engine, and letting down the 
 window of the railway-carriage to give her air, 
 Lettice, for a few moments, forgets the abhorred 
 goal at which that railway-carriage is to land her. 
 
 She is congratulating herself on having the com- 
 partment to herself and her invaHd, when, the 
 guard's whistle having already blown, and the 
 train on the very edge of movement, a breathless 
 porter, staggering under the load of countless par- 
 cels, small and great, flings open the door, and a 
 young lady vaults in. The laden porter follows; 
 and by the time that her packages are piled in the 
 
56 FOES IN LAW 
 
 netting and under and over the three available 
 seats the train is in quickish motion, and Lettice 
 catches her breath as the man jumps dangerously 
 out. 
 
 The intruder gives a sigh of relief at her accom- 
 plished feat, clears her own seat of some " uncon- 
 sidered trifles '* that encumber it, and is about to 
 settle down in her corner, when her eye falls on the 
 open window. In a second she is across the car- 
 riage, and, with an airy " You don't mind? " be- 
 gins to pull up the sash. 
 
 Lettice lays her hand decisively upon the top. 
 " Excuse me, but this poor woman is ill. She 
 must have air." 
 
 " Air! On the 13th of December? " 
 
 " It is milder than many days in April; and, in 
 the case of a sick-headache " 
 
 " Sick-headaches ought to have reserved car- 
 riages! " retorts the young lady, half-laughing, yet 
 with undeniable rudeness. But she does not in- 
 sist, and confines her protest to rolling herself up 
 like a hedgehog in her wraps, and ostentatiously 
 closing her own ventilator. 
 
 Lettice shoots a glance of wondering indigna- 
 tion at such discourtesy; and the wonder, if not the 
 indignation, deepens as she realizes the extreme 
 youth and attractiveness of the criminal. By her 
 look she cannot have reached twenty years; and 
 her prettiness is of that decided and excessive kind 
 concerning which there can be no two opinions. 
 A beauty she undoubtedly is; a lady, despite her 
 behaviour, she may be, though not inevitably so. 
 Her dress, in its gay inexpensiveness, hints of a 
 doubtful fatherhood between France and Bohemia. 
 
FOES IN LAW 57 
 
 She meets Miss Trent's look with one of frank ill- 
 humour and defiance, under which there yet seems 
 to lurk an indication to laugh — of repentance or 
 remorse not a trace. 
 
 No further verbal amenities pass during the half- 
 hour which elapses before Wimbledon is reached; 
 and at that station Miss Trent's attention is too en- 
 tirely occupied in propping her flaccid maid and 
 looking after her own luggage for her to lay much 
 stress on the fact that her fellow-traveller is also 
 getting out. 
 
 With the help of a porter, Lettice has hoisted the 
 sufferer, who has given way with the completeness 
 common to her class, into a fly, and is telling the 
 address to the cabman — Acacia Lodge, St. Luke's 
 Road — when she is aware of her adversary once 
 more at her elbow. No sooner have the words 
 left her lips, than, to her great surprise, she sees 
 the latter coming up to her with outstretched hand 
 and a radiant smile. 
 
 " You must be Lettice? " 
 
 The revelation — and yet why had not she 
 guessed it all along? — is too sudden; and for a 
 moment the offered fingers in their very time-worn 
 Suede glove remain untaken, and Lettice stands, 
 one solid block of ice. Then she bethinks herself, 
 though the remembrance of the recent incivility 
 and the shock of the present discovery are too po- 
 tent to allow of her concocting much of a smile to 
 accompany her stiff little sentence. 
 
 " And you are Miss Kergouet? '* 
 
 The formality of the phrase, following upon the 
 glibness with which her own Christian name has 
 been pronounced, cannot be looked upon a§ 
 
58 FOES IN LAW 
 
 other than a snub; but the bride-elect, if she takes 
 her revenge, takes it gaily. 
 
 "I am; but I shall not be for long." 
 
 She laughs; and for a moment they stand taking 
 stock of each other. 
 
 " I cannot think why I did not guess it," says 
 Miss Trent, in a chilly, low key, " for you are al- 
 most exactly what I expected." 
 
 Since the idea of her future sister-in-law has been 
 derived wholly from the rhapsodies of a besotted 
 lover, this might pass muster as a compliment; but 
 it does not convey the impression of one. 
 
 " My photographs do not give much idea of 
 me. 
 
 In the mouth of one less lovely the words might 
 sound fatuous; but it would be so very difficult for 
 Miss Kergouet to think herself prettier than she is, 
 that in her it is only a plain statement of fact. 
 
 " My brother has never shown me your photo- 
 graph." 
 
 The other gives a little shrug. " That was un- 
 lucky as it turns out! " Then, with a slight laugh 
 that might mean to be propitiatory — " I dare say 
 we shall go on better than we began. Jim ought 
 to have told me how very fond of air you are." 
 
 The accusation is not a grave one, and yet there 
 is something in the turn of the phrase that irritates 
 inexpressibly her to whom it is addressed; the 
 tone of rather fault-finding ownership in which she 
 alludes to her /iance not the least. Nothing can be 
 stififer than her rejoinder. 
 
 " It was a case of common humanity." 
 
 The implication that the quality alluded to has 
 not been displayed by her interlocutor is so un- 
 
FOES IN LAW 59 
 
 mistakable that the latter can't avoid grasping it. 
 She looks thoroughly surprised. 
 
 " Maids are always sick travelling," she rejoins 
 with a large generality — " at least, so I am told, for 
 I never had one of my own, and I always say what 
 comes uppermost." 
 
 Miss Trent receives this announcement in freez- 
 ing silence, and puts her foot on the step of her cab. 
 
 " I will not offer to join you," cries the other, 
 jauntily signalling to a hansom; " there would not 
 be room for my packages and yours " — with a 
 smilingly malicious glance at the maid collapsed in 
 a corner of the four-wheeler. " A bientot.'* 
 
 " She is much worse than I expected. I did not 
 think it possible, but she is. And Jim expects me 
 to live with her! " 
 
 This is the cheerful turn to which Lettice's re- 
 flections are set during her half-mile drive. One of 
 her apprehensions has, at least, not been realized, 
 that of the exaggerated sisterly tenderness which 
 she has dreaded having to endure. She smiles 
 wrathfully. It is for insolence and incivility, on 
 the contrary, that she should have braced herself. 
 
 Her adversary receives her on the doorstep of a 
 smallish commonplace villa, with apparently not 
 the slightest remembrance of their past brush to 
 mar the easy cheerfulness of her welcome. 
 
 "I am afraid you will find us rather topsy- 
 turvy — that we always are — ^but more topsy-turvy 
 than usual with the preparations for this auspicious 
 event; but, as I dare say I shall only be married 
 once in my life, I was determined to have a splash 
 wedding; and if you have not got many servants, 
 that gives you a good deal to do." 
 
6o FOES IN LAW 
 
 She is walking along as she talks, and the end 
 of her sentence ushers the guest into a drawing- 
 room, the first glimpse of whose matchless disorder 
 takes her breath away. It seems to excite some 
 slight surprise, even in its mistress's mind. 
 
 " Those wretched children have been bear-fight- 
 ing again," she says in an explanatory key; " but I 
 suppose I must not be very much down upon them, 
 they are all so above themselves they scarcely 
 know what they are doing." 
 
 " Above themselves? " 
 
 "Yes, at being all together again; the four 
 young ones only arrived from Paris on Saturday. 
 Louis is at a lycee there,, and the others have been 
 staying at a pension, kept by a relative of dear 
 mother's, for lessons." 
 
 Miss Trent gives a stifled gasp; but it is not audi- 
 bly that she puts the question — 
 
 " Lessons in what? " 
 
 A few minutes later, to escape the suffocation of 
 constraint to hide what she is undergoing, Lettice 
 suggests being shown to her room, on the pretext 
 of having her own unpacking to do; but her com- 
 panion does not encourage the idea. 
 
 " I assure you there is no hurry. Heaven knows 
 when we shall dine to-night, or" — ^laughing — 
 " whether we shall have any dinner at all." 
 
 A moment later, as the other makes no comment 
 upon this encouraging statement, she adds — 
 
 " No doubt Jim has told you that we do not 
 keep very regular hours." 
 
 " No, I can't say that my brother mentioned it." 
 
 " He does not seem to have been very communi- 
 cative — ' poor old Jim ! ' — but he had always rather 
 
FOES IN LAW 6i 
 
 let somebody else do the talking for him, would 
 not he?" 
 
 Miss Trent shudders. " Jim " is bad enough, 
 difficult enough to hear without an irrational mad- 
 ness of protest, but ** poor old Jim! " 
 
 " He tried to reform us at first; but, on the con- 
 trary, we are on the high-road towards reforming 
 him. If any one is hungry or gets tired of wait- 
 ing, there is always a bit of cold beef, or a pate, or 
 something on the sideboard, and he can go in and 
 help himself." 
 
 It is all said without a trace of apology in the 
 words or the light high voice; but one glint from 
 the sparkling dark eyes — in sparkle as in every- 
 thing else Lettice's future relative far exceeds her 
 worst forebodings — makes the latter ask herself 
 whether there may not be a malicious intentional 
 over-colouring in the awful map of Bohemia thus 
 unrolled before her eyes. 
 
 She answers in the same spirit, " What a capital 
 plan!" 
 
 " I dare say we shall not sit down much before 
 nine. Father can't be back till late, nor Gabriel, 
 either." 
 
 " Gabriel! " 
 
 " Yes, Gabriel. Has not Jim mentioned him, 
 either? " 
 
 There is a faint echo of resentment in the non- 
 chalance of her voice. 
 
 " No, I can't say that he has." 
 
 "H'm! Well, Gabriel is my eldest brother, and 
 the pick of the basket." 
 
 She says it defiantly, and there is challenge in 
 her eye. 
 
62 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Miss Trent does not take up the gage. A horri- 
 ble speculation as to whether the pick of the basket 
 will feel himself entitled to make free with her 
 Christian name and how she shall stop him paralyz- 
 ing utterance. 
 
 " You will be all together for the last time," she 
 says presently, forcing utterance and a friendly 
 smile. 
 
 The other lifts her beautifully drawn eyebrows. 
 
 " For the last time here, perhaps." And her 
 future sister-in-law takes in with a sinking heart the 
 not obscure implication. 
 
 Miss Kergouet goes on. " And, of course, 
 Esmeralda can^t get back to dinner." 
 
 " Esme " 
 
 " Esmeralda, my eldest sister. Do you mean to 
 say that Jim has never mentioned herf Well, I 
 must say that he does not seem to have been very 
 forthcoming about his future relatives! " 
 
 She ends with a laugh that, though pretty and 
 rippling, is not quite good-humoured. 
 
 " He has spoken of her several times," rejoins 
 Lettice, with a guilty consciousness of how often 
 her own ungovernable distaste to the topic has 
 dammed the current of her brother's confidences; 
 " but I am afraid I had forgotten that her name 
 was " 
 
 " Esmeralda. She was named after dear mother. 
 Her theatrical name — perhaps you are not aware 
 that she is on the stage " (with a fine hint of irony 
 at ignorance so unlikely) — " her theatrical name is 
 Miss Poppy Delafield." 
 
 " I do not think " — with a lofty politeness — 
 " that I have ever had the pleasure of seeing her." 
 
FOES IN LAW 63 
 
 " Then you cannot have been at the Popularity 
 lately," cries the other, her lovely eyes shining like 
 angry jewels, " or you could not have failed to no- 
 tice her." 
 
 ''Miss Poppy DclaHcld! No; it is very stupid of 
 me, but I am afraid I can't recall her." 
 
 " Oh, her name is not oti the bills! " retorts Miss 
 Poppy's champion, with ostentatious carelessness, 
 as if in the case of so great an artist such a detail 
 were supererogatory. ** She has a waJk on in A 
 Woman's Danger^ but she is getting on splendidly 
 all the same." 
 
 " I have no doubt of it." 
 
 " I should have gone on the stage too if Jim had 
 not over-persuaded me into marrying him. I told 
 him at the time that I did not think he realized what 
 a sacrifice I was making for him; but at all events 
 I have rubbed it well in since." 
 
 The camel's back breaks. " I think, if you do not 
 mind, I will go to my room." 
 
 Miss Kergouet acquiesces nonchalantly, and 
 having inducted her guest into the desired bower, 
 leaves her with an equally nonchalant explanation 
 that the room is Esmeralda's, that it is not im- 
 probable that a good deal of her raiment may still 
 be lurking there, as well as stray articles of her own 
 trousseau; but that on occasions of this kind one 
 must be prepared to rough it a little. 
 
 The shutting of the door tells Lettice that the 
 infinitely desired solitude is attained; but at first 
 she does not seem to know how to use the precious 
 boon. She stands in the middle of the room, with 
 her arms hanging down by her sides, and her mouth 
 shut tight like a box. Her life hitherto has given 
 
64 FOES IN LAW 
 
 so little opening for the exercise of angry passions; 
 her course has run so smoothly on the wheels of 
 courteous good breeding, that she does not know 
 how to deal with the congestion of rage and dis- 
 gust that is suffocating her. Hardly conscious of 
 what she is doing, she begins to repeat to herself, 
 in a voice of quiet fury, the phrases that had broken 
 down her self-command — '' over-persuaded me into 
 marrying him," ** did not realize what a sacrifice I 
 was making for him," " have rubbed it well in 
 since." 
 
 Pored over in repetition they sound even more 
 monstrous than when airily shot out of the mouth 
 whose curved red loveliness fails to win their par- 
 don. 
 
 " Insufferable little upstart! When she ought 
 to be grovelling on her knees, thanking God that 
 Jim should have stooped to her! I will tell her so. 
 She piques herself on always saying what comes 
 uppermost. I will pay her the compliment of imi- 
 tating her." 
 
 ****** 
 
 Somewhere about nine o*clock a gong, violently 
 banged by an obviously amateur hand, which has 
 apparently usurped the office of the butler, tells 
 Miss Trent that the hybrid meal, not very confi- 
 dently promised by the mistress of the house, is 
 actually served. 
 
 " I must keep myself in hand," she says, with a 
 farewell glance at her own rigid face in the glass; 
 and so goes down, allowing herself no further de- 
 lay. Arrived on the ground-floor landing, she 
 looks in some uncertainty at the three or four 
 pitch-pine doors that open upon it, doubtful as to 
 
FOES IN LAW 65 
 
 which leads into the disorderly drawing-room, and 
 afraid of incautiously finding herself in the sanctum 
 of that as yet unknown horror the father of the 
 family, or of tumbling into the embrace of the 
 probably still more terrible — since a young vul- 
 garian is a far worse thing than an old one — eldest 
 son of the house. She is not long, however, in 
 being enlightened, though the method in which 
 the knowledge is brought to her is not perhaps 
 quite what she would have chosen. A more careful 
 look shows her that one of the doors is ajar, and 
 through it she catches a glimpse of a muslin-clad 
 figure standing before the fire; and which, though 
 she cannot see the whole of it, is obviously en- 
 twined with that of an unseen man, upon whose 
 shoulder its head is conjecturally laid. 
 
 Lettice hesitates. Jim must have arrived. Will 
 he bless her for breaking in upon the privacy of his 
 ecstatic greeting? That moment's vacillation is 
 Miss Trent's undoing. Through the half-open 
 door the high, piercing, clear voice whose utter- 
 ances have hitherto so very much displeased her is 
 heard in the accents of lamentation and complaint 
 that yet have a whiff of laughter about them. 
 
 " She is much worse than I expected, and I have 
 got to live with her for ever and ever and ever! 
 Pretty? Not in the least. Poor old Jim in petti- 
 coats." 
 
 The listener stands petrified; certainly with no 
 wish for further eavesdropping, but turned to stone 
 by the shock of what she has heard. Yet it is her 
 very own phrase that is returned upon her, " Much 
 worse than I had expected! " And to whom is the 
 confidence made? Not to Jim, since he would not 
 
66 FOES IN LAW 
 
 need to be told that she is not pretty — that she is 
 " poor old Jim in petticoats." 
 
 Whoever the man may be, it is impossible for 
 her to go in and ascertain — physically impossible 
 that, in the face of what she has just heard, she 
 should present herself to the person whose unvar- 
 nished opinion of her has just reached her tingling 
 ears. She turns, and runs upstairs again; but be- 
 fore she can reach her own room finds herself on 
 the landing all but in collision with a figure hastily 
 issuing from another. They jump apart. 
 
 " I beg ten thousand pardons. Miss Trent? '* 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 For a moment both are too much taken aback to 
 speak; but a single glance has explained to Lettice 
 that the tall spare personage against whom she has 
 cannoned, with his half-youthful air of ex-belhomme 
 and smart soldier, must be the master of the house. 
 It was not, then, to her parent that Miss Kergouet 
 had been detailing her woes. 
 
 The parent holds out his hand, but the action is 
 marked by that uncertainty and diffidence which 
 had been so conspicuously absent from his daugh- 
 ter's manner; and the guest at once thinks of the 
 cloud which in her mind has always enveloped him, 
 and from which indeed he is no more separable in 
 her thoughts than is Jupiter from his thunder-bolt 
 or Venus from her cestus. The sense of his obvious 
 want of ease and the consciousness of its cause, re- 
 stores her to self-possession. 
 
 "I heard a gong," she says, "and supposed " 
 
 " Of course, naturally," he breaks in nervously. 
 " It was one of the girls who sounded it. Of 
 
FOES IN LAW 67 
 
 course, she had no business; but they are in such 
 spirits— quite out of hand to-night." 
 
 The thought of the cause which has driven the 
 cadets of Kergouet to let out their exuberant joy 
 in beating tom-toms Hke savages, stiffens Miss 
 Trent's muscles. 
 
 " Perhaps I am too early? " she says, with a not- 
 consciously ironical look at a cuckoo clock on the 
 stairs, which, however, refuses to incriminate its 
 owner by the simple method of not going. " Miss 
 Kergouet told me that you were not very strict 
 about hours." 
 
 Something — perhaps the formality of the " Miss 
 Kergouet " — seems to heighten her companion's 
 discomfort. 
 
 " On the contrary, it is we who are late. I ought 
 to apologize! I am afraid we are incorrigible." 
 
 He concludes his sentence by a deprecating offer 
 to show her the way, and precedes her down the 
 stairs, ejaculating as he goes expressions of pleas- 
 ure at her arrival, and nervous assertions of Marie's 
 eagerness to make her acquaintance. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Protected by the aegis of her host's company, 
 Lettice does really enter the drawing-room this 
 time, and the two young women, who have at least 
 agreed in one thing — identity in the expression of 
 their reciprocal dislike — stand once again in each 
 other's presence. But the awkwardness of the 
 meeting for Miss Trent is much lessened by the 
 fact that the room is now full of figures, and the 
 noise of several ungoverned voices out-shouting 
 each other. 
 
 For a moment or two the new-comer cannot 
 quite distinguish which of the closely linked loud 
 group could have been the bride's confidant, so 
 deeply is he imbedded in a circle of younger 
 brothers and sisters, who evidently see him for the 
 first time since their arrival from Paris. But 
 though Marie has to a certain extent yielded to the 
 superior claims upon him of her juniors, she has 
 not quite loosed her hold, but has her hand still 
 passed through his arm. 
 
 A little shifting of the figures reveals that the 
 object of so much attention must be the nonpareil 
 elder brother Gabriel of his sister's hymn of praise, 
 the " something in a bank " of her own hold-cheap 
 classification. The group melts, and its component 
 parts are piloted to her with anxious politeness by 
 their parent. 
 
 68 
 
FOES IN LAW 69 
 
 " I think that these children have not as yet the 
 pleasure of knowing you. This is Gabriel, these 
 are Muriel and Sybil, this is Louis, and this little 
 fellow is Frank." 
 
 The introduction is immediately followed by the 
 rapid advance upon the guest of two tall half-grown 
 girls, who, without the slightest hesitation, and 
 much to her discomfiture, each imprint upon her 
 cheek a hard smacking kiss; a muffish-looking un- 
 English lad, with his hair en brosse, lays a salute 
 upon her hand, and the infant Frank, a child of five 
 or six, whose entrance into life must — as Miss 
 Trent instantly decides — have been coincident with 
 his mother's exit from it, extends to her a hand 
 sticky with much chocolate. The elder brother con- 
 tents himself with a bow. 
 
 " I suppose we may as well go into dinner," says 
 the young hostess, nonchalantly throwing the sug- 
 gestion at the guest. " The gong meant nothing, 
 it was Syb who sounded it; but we never have 
 things announced. Of course " — to her father — 
 " we will not wait for ' The Freak.* " 
 
 " Who is The Freak f " asks Lettice of her host a 
 minute later, when, having crossed the passage on 
 his arm, she finds herself sitting beside him at the 
 dinner-table. 
 
 The question is the first outcome of a desperate 
 resolve to keep herself in hand and be agreeable, 
 but the person to whom it is addressed seems to re- 
 ceive it with hesitating embarrassment. 
 
 " It is only a silly joke of Marie's, really not 
 worth explaining." 
 
 But, unfortunately, Marie has overheard. Down 
 the table come her ringing accents. 
 
70 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Jim is The Freak. I took him to Barnum's one 
 day, and he is so exactly Hke one of the fat men 
 there that I have called him ' The Freak ' ever 
 since." 
 
 Miss Trent had asked for the explanation, so 
 cannot complain at having got it; yet its unparal- 
 leled impertinence staggers her so much that she 
 has only just presence of mind left to turn her blaz- 
 ing eyes upon her own plate, but not before they 
 have met those of the young man absurdly called 
 Gabriel. If he were a member of any other family 
 she would say that his expressed a respectful com- 
 passion, but it is impossible that so delicate a senti- 
 ment can emanate from one of this rabble rout. 
 
 No awkward silence follows Miss Kergouet's 
 exegesis of her pleasantry, since silence and the 
 younger Miss Kergouets cannot co-exist. They 
 usurp the conversation, noisily relating their Pari- 
 sian experiences, contradicting each other freely, 
 and only uniting to " sit upon " the flaccid Louis, 
 and pamper with unwholesome delicacies the little 
 spoilt Frank. As to appetites, like ogres, they 
 unite voices like steam-whistles, the rest of the 
 company are relieved of the necessity of speech. 
 
 Marie has with Bohemian ease put both her 
 elbows on the table, and leaning one cheek against 
 her knitted hands, is carrying on an eager conver- 
 sation with her eldest brother. Her high-pitched 
 voice is tamed to almost a whisper, and she makes 
 no more effort to mitigate the din around her than 
 she would to stop a thunderstorm that had broken 
 over the house. 
 
 There being no call upon Lettice's tongue, and 
 the viands presented to her offering no great at- 
 
FOES IN LAW 71 
 
 traction to her palate, Miss Trent gives her eyes 
 free play, and scans with no lenient glance the 
 family which — since it is clear that he who espouses 
 one Kergouet espouses all — her brother is in forty- 
 eight hours to wed. It is impossible to deny that 
 good looks have been dealt out to them with no 
 grudging hand, to Marie most lavishly, to Gabriel 
 perhaps least. 
 
 Having made the circuit of the family, she be- 
 gins again with him. Yes, he is certainly the least 
 regularly handsome of them, and yet if she had to 
 decide which among these detestable faces were to 
 force themselves upon her daily life, she would 
 choose his. It has not the self-willed insolence of 
 Marie's, nor the impudent aplomb of the younger 
 sisters. In fact, she is not quite sure that a slight 
 skirt of the family cloud — the cloud in which they 
 ought all to be enwrapped, and from which most 
 of them are so brazenly free — does not lie across 
 his features. His eyes are not shifty like his 
 father's; they had met her own full and direct upon 
 their first introduction, though they have never 
 strayed towards her since, nor has his manner the 
 uneasy obsequiousness of his parentis, and yet 
 
 " I am afraid you find us rather noisy," says her 
 host, breaking in upon her observations in that de- 
 precatory tone which she has already charitably 
 docketed as " servile." 
 
 He looks at her out of the corner of his eye — 
 the eye of a reformed viveur, which, however sin- 
 cere and long-established the reformation, never 
 fails to tell ill-natured tales. The poor man has no 
 new sins to conceal, and his askance look is due 
 only to the fact that she frightens him very much 
 
72 FOES IN LAW 
 
 indeed. Also an experience stretching over many 
 years and showing you the majority of your ac- 
 quaintance invariably occupied by some object in 
 the opposite hedge when they meet you in the road, 
 does not conduce to making you bold-faced. 
 
 " To any one not used to a large family, I fear 
 we must seem rather overpowering." 
 
 " We are — we have been a very humdrum little 
 household, my brother and I," replies she, not able 
 to induce her tongue to frame the monosyllable 
 "Jim." "Ah, here he is!" 
 
 A smile of relief and affectionate pleasure breaks 
 over her face, giving scope to the only one of the 
 Kergouet family who is at leisure for the observa- 
 tion to notice what a wide range of expression she 
 can exhibit, and what very pretty teeth her hitherto 
 pinched lips have hidden. She stretches out her 
 hand to the hasty figure who must pass her to get 
 to its vacant place beside the hostess, but it does 
 not even perceive her. It is the first time that the 
 fact has been brought home to her that henceforth 
 she will be practically invisible to her brother. She 
 draws back her hand, but not before she is aware 
 that the same member of the family who had ob- 
 served its going out is aware of its ignominious re- 
 treat. 
 
 Marie flings her left hand to her lover non- 
 chalantly, and says — 
 
 " Do not apologize. You know that there is 
 nothing in the world I hate so much as punctuality. 
 These are the children " — waving her other hand 
 round the table. 
 
 At once four chairs are pushed back, and the in- 
 nocents alluded to precipitate themselves upon 
 
FOES IN LAW 73 
 
 their future brother-in-law. The girls lead the way, 
 and kiss him as smackingly and with as matter-of- 
 fact an absence of hesitation as they had done his 
 sister. He must be taken aback, in fact, he reddens 
 a little, yet there is no evidence that he disHkes the 
 assault. 
 
 His metamorphosis is even more complete than 
 Lettice had known it to be. The dinner is brought 
 back for him in tepid instalments, of whose un- 
 appetizingness he appears as unaware as he is of 
 everything else that is not Marie. The latter has 
 resumed her eager talk with her brother, despite 
 what Miss Trent has to admit to herself are the 
 persevering efforts of the young man to turn her 
 eloquence into that channel to which it now rightly 
 belongs. He does not succeed; but it is probably 
 due to him that she now and then throws a word, 
 or an eye-flash, or a pat on the coat-sleeve to her 
 neglected lover. The latter acquiesces with un- 
 clouded good humour, and there is not the faintest 
 shadow on the face he presents to his sister when 
 he takes the vacant seat on the sofa beside her — a 
 seat upon which there cannot be said to be much 
 run — in the drawing-room after dinner. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The monosyllable is perfectly understood by 
 both to be only a bid for the praise he is greedy to 
 hear. Yet all she answers is another " Well? " 
 
 He has to dot his i's. " Is she like what you ex- 
 pected?" 
 
 " Exactly, only more so." 
 
 She has taken pains with her tone, and ap- 
 parently with success, for he rejoins warmly — 
 
74 FOES TN LAW 
 
 " I knew that it would be all right when once 
 you saw her." 
 
 To agree in £o erroneous a conclusion or to de- 
 monstrate its falsity are equally impossible; so she 
 embarks on another branch of the subject. 
 
 " She seems very fond of her own family." 
 
 " Wrapped up in them! It is wonderfully pretty 
 to see her with them, isn't it? They are very at- 
 tractive? " — an inflection of anxious asking. " I 
 had not seen the children before." 
 
 " No? " 
 
 " They will wake us up, won't they? " ^ 
 
 " Are they to — to live at Trent? " 
 
 " No, not live; of course, they will be at school, 
 but they are to spend their holidays with us. I 
 promised her that she should not be parted from 
 them altogether. It would have broken her heart." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " And it will be a good thing for us, too, to have 
 a little more life about the house; we have been a 
 bit sleepy, haven't we? " 
 
 She does not answer, not from ill-temper, but 
 from heart-fullness. She had imagined herself to 
 have modelled their life so exactly upon his likings. 
 
 " Ah, they are singing that capital thing out of 
 The Ripping Girl^^ as a well-known music-hall song 
 of the moment comes, wafted by the conjoined lung 
 and voice power of the whole Kergouet family, 
 from the back drawing-room — 
 
 ** Oh, why was I left in the cart ?" 
 
 (humming delightedly). 
 
 A moment later, unable to resist a fascination as 
 strong as that of — 
 
FOES IN LAW 75 
 
 '* My mother Circe and the sirens three 
 Among the flowery-kirtled Naiades," 
 
 he flies to join the vocal band. 
 
 Little inclination as she has to do so, Lettice 
 feels that for the sake of appearances she must fol- 
 low his example, and has half risen to do so when 
 through the plushette portiere she sees the heir of 
 the Kergouets advancing to her rescue. 
 
 " I would not, if I were you,'* he says, answering 
 her intention. ** You will be better here — a little 
 further from our din." 
 
 She reseats herself. Of course, he will think it 
 necessary to sit down by her; but, after all, it is the 
 least of two evils, and she can keep him at a proper 
 distance. And as to talk, the clamour from the 
 next room has changed into a confused bawling. 
 In the elation of her spirits, the terrible Sybil is pro- 
 ceeding to demonstrate how well she can play the 
 piano by sitting upon it, and is being noisily hauled 
 off the keys by other members of her family. It 
 needs an excursion on the part of the elder brother 
 to quell the raging bear-fight. He returns vic- 
 torious, and apparently not at all ruffled; but there 
 is nothing like habit. 
 
 " We are not always as bad as this; to-night it is 
 a sort of Bump supper." 
 
 " Because you are Head of the River? " 
 
 The form her rejoinder takes is caused only 
 by an impulse to show that she is up in Oxford 
 phraseology; but the moment the words are out 
 of her mouth she sees the cynical irony of the in- 
 terpretation they may bear. Is it her fancy that he 
 gives a slight start? 
 
 " I dare say you will understand that if we were 
 
76 FOES IN LAW 
 
 not in such very high spirits, we might be in very 
 low ones." 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 " We are very glad that you should have her " 
 — glancing towards the piano — " but we can hardly 
 be said to be glad to lose her." 
 
 Even Miss Trent can find nothing servile in this 
 remark, nor do either words or tone betray any 
 consciousness of the magnificence of the bargain 
 struck by the Kergouet family. An indistinct sense 
 of apprehension that she will not be able to despise 
 him with as comfortable a completeness as she does 
 his father makes curt her next speech. 
 
 " You will doubtless still see a great deal of her." 
 
 " That is not quite the same thing as living to- 
 gether." 
 
 This is indisputable. 
 
 " And personally I shall not see a great deal of 
 her, as I have only a month's holiday in the year." 
 
 That he has divined Lettice's attitude of mind 
 towards his family is conveyed by his telling her 
 the fact in a tone which shows that he thinks he is 
 giving her a welcome piece of information. Her 
 drooping brow clears but little, yet he pursues in 
 the same strain. 
 
 " Esmeralda — she is my eldest sister — is very 
 much tied by her profession, she is not often free; 
 the children have other relations who will want 
 them for a good part of their holidays; and my 
 father scarcely ever pays visits." 
 
 In the watches of the subsequent night, Miss 
 Trent asks herself with uneasy astonishment what 
 could have prompted her to do it; but at this point, 
 having hitherto been sitting looking unfriendlily 
 
FOES IN LAW 77 
 
 straight before her, she turns her whole face sud- 
 denly upon the young man. 
 
 " Why are you telling me all this? '* 
 
 There is a moment's pause, though something 
 whispers her it is not of hesitation, on his part. 
 
 " Do you think that I need answer that ques- 
 tion? " 
 
 She feels herself changing colour. " Do not 
 questions generally expect an answer? " 
 
 " Well, then, I did it to relieve your mind." 
 
 The response that she has insisted upon makes 
 her extremely angry. He whom she had mentally 
 determined to keep in his proper place, well at a 
 distance, has evaded her guard, and got close up 
 to her; though by no means in the way she had 
 apprehended. 
 
 He has done a worse thing still, for he has made 
 her feel excessively small. 
 
 " I suppose that Miss Kergouet " she be- 
 gins, then pulls up short, recalling with confusion 
 the means by which she has learnt her future sister- 
 in-law's opinion of her. 
 
 He merely repeats, " Miss Kergouet," as if it 
 were a lesson in dictation that she were giving him; 
 but she divines the governed indignation with 
 which he receives the slight to his sister implied in 
 the shirking of her Christian name. 
 
 She replies unnecessarily to the guessed re- 
 proach. 
 
 " You must remember that I have never seen her 
 till to-day, and if you knew me you would under- 
 stand that I do not easily grow intimate with peo- 
 ple." 
 
 " Without knowing you, I understand it." 
 
78 FOES IN LAW 
 
 She turns over in her angry mind whether this is 
 not an impertinence; but before she can decide he 
 speaks again. 
 
 " Marie has told me " 
 
 " Yes, I know." 
 
 The red haste with which she interrupts him fills 
 him with surprise. 
 
 " What do you know? " 
 
 But Lettice has lost her head. A hundred years 
 ago she would have been said to *' arch her neck." 
 In 1900 she merely pulls it out like a telescope. 
 
 " I know that, highly as her expectations were 
 raised, she has found me far worse than she ex- 
 pected. Her voice is very clear, and I was unfor- 
 tunately close to the door of the room when you 
 were discussing me." 
 
 If her object were to put Kergouet out of coun- 
 tenance, she certainly succeeds; and yet somehow 
 he still seems to get the better of her. 
 
 " I must return your question upon you. Why 
 have you told me this? " 
 
 " I had no intention of telling you. I do not 
 know why I have done so now. After all, you were 
 not to blame. You are not responsible for your 
 sister's " 
 
 " I am quite willing to be responsible for her." 
 
 They look at each other combatively, and yet 
 with a contradictory sense of dawning reciprocal 
 attraction. If he were not a Kergouet, I should 
 like him for standing up for his sister, is the girl's 
 grudging thought; and. How extremely objection- 
 able she is making herself; but what did Marie 
 mean by saying that she was not good-looking? 
 is the no less unwilling reflection of the man. 
 
FOES IN LAW 79 
 
 The once more swelling mirth in the back room, 
 though neither interlocutor is conscious of hearing 
 it, fills up the stormful pause, and gives Lettice time 
 to regain something of self-control. 
 
 " It would have been better taste not to have 
 mentioned it.'* 
 
 The proud humility of the admission affects him 
 with a compunction so great that he himself feels 
 it to be out of drawing. But he has the sense not 
 to try to explain away the unexplainable. Yet he 
 must manage to put something mollifying into his 
 silence, for her neck — it is longer than is fashion- 
 able, but he likes it — begins to carry her head less 
 inimically erect, and that head — oh that Marie's 
 hair were ever so exquisitely neat ! — has something 
 of a rueful droop. 
 
 " We began badly. Without knowing who I 
 was, she was very rude to me in the train." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Were you rude too? " 
 
 " She has told you that I was? " 
 
 The unfashionable white column of her throat 
 is going to fell him again. 
 
 " You answer my question by another." 
 
 " I was not rude. I had to protect my unfortu- 
 nate maid; but I was not rude! I am never rude! 
 It would be contrary to all the traditions of my 
 family to be so." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 There is no hint of unbelief in his monosyllable, 
 nor any raising of an eyebrow; yet she knows that 
 he is perfectly unconvinced of her immutable 
 civility. 
 
8o FOES IN LAW 
 
 " You imply that " 
 
 " I imply nothing. I am not fond of implica- 
 tions." Miss Trent laughs angrily. " We are each 
 singing our own praises rather absurdly." 
 
 He leans back against the sofa-cushions, with his 
 hands knit behind his head, and gives a tired sigh. 
 
 " She is overdone and run down, and sorry to 
 leave us; but I suppose all that will not count for 
 much with you. First impressions are everything, 
 and you will go through life seeing her with your 
 mind's eye perpetually pulling up windows that 
 you wish to put down." 
 
 Stated thus, the case for the prosecution seems a 
 ludicrously bad one, and the prosecutor feels it. 
 
 " You are determined to put me in the wrong." 
 
 " You are mistaken. I have no wish to put you 
 in the wrong. I should like to put you in good 
 humour with us all, if I only knew how — for Marie's 
 sake." 
 
 She looks at him thoughtfully with a kindling 
 cheek at that, and a series of blue comparisons with 
 her eyes runs irrelevantly through his head. 
 
 " Do you expect me to bully her very much? " 
 
 " At first, perhaps, until you get used to her." 
 
 The honesty of his answer forbids her face to 
 cool. 
 
 " At first! " she repeats. " Well, there will be no 
 at last. I can relieve your mind, as you said just 
 now that you wished to do mine. I am not going 
 to live with them." 
 
 The joy she had expected to read in the face near 
 her is less apparent than its surprise. 
 
 " I had understood differently. I thought that 
 your brother refused to part with you." 
 
FOES IN LAW 8i 
 
 " I am of age." 
 
 A pause. The master-spirit, and the master- 
 lungs of Miss Sybil have again won the victory in 
 the adjoining room, but this time her elder brother 
 allows her to 
 
 •• Fill the air with barbarous dissonance " 
 
 unreproved. 
 
 " Marie has not an idea that she is turning you 
 out." 
 
 " No; she thinks that she will have to live with 
 me * for ever and ever and ever.' " 
 
 The phrase is so apparent a quotation that it 
 robs him of speech, and it is Miss Trent who re- 
 sumes. 
 
 " But she is not turning me out; I am turning 
 myself out." 
 
 He looks at her with a compassion that all her 
 raised quills cannot hinder. 
 
 " I wish it was not a law of nature that no one 
 can laugh without making some one else cry." 
 
 Her eyes meet his in undisguised astonishment, 
 and once again, as when he had seen her stretch an 
 unregarded hand to her brother, he realizes their 
 possibilities of gentleness. 
 
 " Are you trying to look at it from my point of 
 view? " 
 
 ** I can do it without trying." 
 
 Worn out with the successive mortifications and 
 disgusts of the day, wretchedly out of her element, 
 seething with miserable wrath and death-wounded 
 pride, it is no wonder that this shaft of sympathy 
 from the heart of the enemy's camp finishes off 
 
82 FOES IN LAW 
 
 poor Miss Trent. A horrible fear assails her that 
 in a moment irresistible tears will have mastered 
 her. It is an untold relief to find that her compan- 
 ion is doing the one wise thing under the circum- 
 stances, and leaving her to herself. By the time 
 that he returns with Marie in tow she is quite pre- 
 sentable. 
 
 " Gabriel says that you are tired. He thinks that 
 you would like to go to bed." 
 
 There is, at all events, no over-setting sympathy 
 in the tone, and Miss Kergouet utters her sentence 
 with a parrot-like air, which suggests dictation. 
 
 " I am rather tired." 
 
 " Of course, you would not care to stay up and 
 see Esmeralda? " 
 
 This query is not dictated. The form of it is 
 rather hostile; but there is an underlying incredu- 
 lity in her own statement. Does that person exist 
 who would not wish to stay up and see Esmeralda, 
 fresh from the glories of her " walk on "? 
 
 Lettice hesitates. Shall she take the olive- 
 branch, strange sport in vegetation as it is? The 
 whole family, quiet for the moment, await her de- 
 cision. Behind the sister's untidy Bohemian bril- 
 liance she sees the brother's eyes asking her to 
 assent. That decides her. 
 
 " Thank you; but I am afraid I am rather tired." 
 
 The girl turns away with an undisguised resent- 
 ment in the whisk of her skirt, and Gabriel lights 
 the guest's candle in silence. 
 
 Sometimes in after days she thinks that things 
 might have been different if she had stayed up on 
 that first night to see Esmeralda. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Though Lettice has declined to see Esmeralda, it 
 is beyond the power of walls and doors to prevent 
 her from hearing her. Very soon after leaving the 
 company her ears tell her that the Popularity has 
 restored the flower of its supers to her family; and 
 a voice of the same quality as Marie's, only much 
 more so — a very clarion of piercing soprano — 
 henceforth dominates the general din. 
 
 Esmeralda has evidently much to tell; and while 
 she narrates, the rest of the rout check their mirth 
 to listen. Even during the " Bump " supper that 
 follows, when everybody talks at once, and which 
 is prolonged well into the small hours, the new- 
 comer's voice finds its only real rival in Sybil's. 
 When at length a move is made bedwards, no one 
 seems able to get further than the passage outside 
 the guest's door, where alarums and excursions con- 
 tinue to take place, and would be continuing still, 
 but for the armed interposition of some one — Miss 
 Trent has not much difficulty in guessing whom. 
 This unseen deliverer, finding strenuous words and 
 ** hushes " unavailing, is clearly driven to lifting, 
 shoving, and pushing the members of his family 
 into their several rooms, and locking them in. Pro- 
 tests from inside, prettily set off by kicks on the 
 panels, make night lively yet a while longer; and 
 then at last silence falls. 
 
 «3 
 
84 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Lattice is awoke by her maid, who, recovered and 
 disdainful, apologizes for the lateness of her morn- 
 ing tea. 
 
 " I could not get it before. There was nobody 
 about. I never saw such a place. You can't get 
 anything." 
 
 " It is not of the least consequence." 
 
 " I asked what hour breakfast was at, and they 
 laughed and said there never was any particular 
 hour for anything here; that everybody had it just 
 when they liked in their bedrooms." 
 
 ^' It does not in the least matter." 
 
 " The ladies and the young gentlemen are all 
 running about the passages in their nightgowns. 
 I met the one that came last night — she is an ac- 
 tress, isn't she? — close to your door." 
 
 The prevalent enthusiasm for the drama has not 
 penetrated to the steward's room at Trent, and the 
 tone is not one of admiration. 
 
 " I suppose a wedding always upsets a house- 
 hold," replies her mistress, driven grudgingly to 
 the defence of the family; but not feeling able to 
 keep up the tone, feigns sleep to avoid the neces- 
 sity. 
 
 When she leaves her room, an hour and a half 
 later, the state of things is not materially changed 
 from that protestingly indicated by her maid. The 
 family is still pervading the passages, though the 
 nightgowns of the servant's heated fancy translate 
 themselves into more or less rumpled peignoirs. 
 The master of the house and his eldest son are the 
 only two absent from the promenade concert. 
 
 Esmeralda is one of the first to be met; and 
 neither the consciousness of a fringe, still very 
 
FOES IN LAW 85 
 
 much in bud, nor any bashfulness at the poor re- 
 pair of. her wrapper, impair the affectionate hveli- 
 ness of her greeting. 
 
 " We must introduce ourselves," she cries, gaily. 
 
 " I am Esmeralda, and you are " The word 
 
 " Lettice " is evidently trembling on her lips, but 
 something in the icy blue of the eye that meets her 
 freezes it there, and she substitutes, '' You are Jim's 
 sister, about whom he has raved so to us." 
 
 The ludicrous misapplication of such a verb to 
 her tongue-tied brother calls up a frosty smile, 
 which sets Esmeralda going again. 
 
 " I was so disappointed not to see you last night, 
 but they told me you were tired. I hope we did 
 not disturb you much. We tried to make as little 
 noise as we could." 
 
 A grotesque wonder as to what the Kergouet 
 notion of noise must be runs through Miss Trent's 
 brain, and perhaps relaxes her features a little. 
 
 " I am afraid the children got a little wild, but 
 we were really nearly as bad ourselves." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " Such a piece of luck does not happen every 
 day." 
 
 Lettice tries to smile. Can the good resolutions 
 she has been making while dressing — the com- 
 punction at her own behaviour which a disap- 
 pointed look seen through the flame of a bedroom 
 candle last night inspired — can they hold out 
 against the blatant exultation of this creature over 
 what she must know to be no subject of exultation 
 to her? 
 
 She struggles feebly. " I am glad you are 
 pleased." 
 
S6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 The face beaming below its crop of hair-curlers, 
 and like Marie's as the dreadful copies on female 
 easels on student days in the National Gallery are 
 like the Vierge des Rochers, falls a Httle. 
 
 " Oh, you have heard, then? " 
 
 '*Have heard? " 
 
 " Yes; my great piece of news — ^the piece of 
 news I brought down last night, which made us all 
 lose our heads? " 
 
 A ray of light begins to illumine the hopeless 
 mystification that the last two sentences have pro- 
 duced in Lettice's mind. It is not, then, their ex- 
 travagant good fortune in becoming connected 
 with herself that has set the Kergouets shout- 
 ing. 
 
 " No, I have not heard." 
 
 " Crawley, my manager, has promised me the 
 understudy of the soubrette's part in the new 
 piece. 
 
 She stops dramatically, as if comment could but 
 weaken the effect of this tremendous announce- 
 ment. 
 
 ** The understudy! " 
 
 " Yes; but it is really almost as good as having 
 the part. Miss Tiny Villiers, who plays it, had in- 
 fluenza badly twice last winter, and she is sure to 
 have it again." 
 
 There is such a certainty of being deeply inter- 
 esting, such an absolute want of suspicion as to not 
 being sympathized with in the whole tone of the 
 speaker, that Miss Trent is juggled for the moment 
 into thinking that she too must be wishing the 
 plague of " grippe " to alight on the unknown 
 artist. 
 
FOES IN LAW 87 
 
 " He told me only last night. It is so fortunate 
 that it should have happened just now, when we 
 are all so anxious to keep up Marie's spirits." 
 
 " Do you think her so much to be pitied? " 
 
 " Oh no. No, of course not. Of course, we 
 must all get married some time or other; and Jim 
 is an old darling. But the first break in a family is 
 always a bit of a wrench! " 
 
 This speech, like several former ones heard be- 
 neath the same roof, makes Miss Trent dumb. 
 What lesser effect could be produced by the ob- 
 vious fact that the whole clanjamfry of the Ker- 
 gouets are perfectly unaware of the gigantic coup 
 they have made, all their elation being reserved for 
 this miserable little bit of theatrical promotion! 
 
 The colloquy is broken into by the bride-elect, 
 who here issues from her bower with a toilette 
 somewhat more advanced than her sister's. She, 
 too, is in a dressing-gown, but the rings of her 
 beautiful dark hair are curling unconfined about 
 the low and lovely squareness of her forehead. 
 Seen beside the original, the execrableness of the 
 poor copy is more patent than before. 
 
 "So you have made acquaintance already!" 
 Marie says, in an off-hand voice, that has yet a 
 strong tinge of satisfaction in it. Then, turning to 
 Lettice with more cordiality than she has yet 
 shown — " Do you think Esmeralda like me? " 
 
 " Ye-es." 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the answer is evidently 
 the one expected, and gives complete satisfaction. 
 
 " I knew you would. When she is made up for 
 the stage we might be mistaken for one another." 
 
 " I should scarcely have thought that." 
 
88 FOES IN LAW 
 
 "We should have brought down the house as 
 ' Sebastian ' and ' Viola/ " 
 
 It is clear that the actress guesses at the 
 stranger's demurrer to this, for she says good- 
 humouredly — 
 
 " I am her understudy." 
 
 The word and its associations exhilarate them 
 both so much that they have to do a little bear- 
 fighting with their juniors, who have now joined 
 the group, to work it ofif; and the suggested need 
 of keeping up Marie's spirits recurs ironically to 
 her future sister-in-law's mind as she stands in her 
 tall, neat freshness — the typical morning English- 
 woman — watching them. 
 
 " You will not mind entertaining yourself, I dare 
 say, to-day? " says Marie, coming back out of 
 breath, and still off-hand, but not hostile. " I shall 
 be frightfully busy! My club girls are coming 
 down to see the presents, for one thing, and they 
 are not half unpacked." 
 
 " Your club girls? " — ^with a gasp of surprise at 
 this glimpse of unexpected philanthropy. 
 
 " Yes; I have a club of ballet-girls. Dear mother 
 began it." 
 
 " Indeed? " 
 
 " And my gown has never turned up; and there 
 is a mistake about the waiters; and some people 
 are coming to dinner to-night — I can't remember 
 who or how many, as I have mislaid most of the 
 notes, but I dare say it will be all right." 
 
 She says it with perfect serenity — a serenity 
 shared by all her listeners save one. 
 
 " And then there is a rehearsal at the church at 
 three," continues the bride. " Of course, it is a 
 
FOES IN LAW 89 
 
 bore to have to be married two days running, but 
 if you do a thing, you may as well do it well; and 
 if Jim is not coached beforehand, he is such a dear 
 old idiot that he is sure to get on my wrong side, 
 or put the ring on my wrong hand." 
 
 It is irrational of Miss Trent to think that her 
 sisterhood of a lifetime entitles her to feel indig- 
 nation at this little mushroom acquaintance of a 
 month calling her brother names; but its want of 
 reason does not prevent her from swelling in- 
 wardly, and repeating over to herself the words, 
 "Freak! ""Idiot!" 
 
 This being her attitude of mind, it is perhaps as 
 well that, for the rest of the day, she has no con- 
 tinuous intercourse with her future relation, being 
 aware of her only in sudden flashes, flying about 
 the house, pealing bells, boxing ears, sending wires, 
 giving orders in her ringing voice, and repeating 
 them still more ringingly, when, as seems often the 
 case, they are not attended to. She is to be seen in 
 her most characteristic light, perhaps, while ex- 
 hibiting her presents to the thirty or forty coryphees 
 who, about noon, inundate the house. 
 
 Lettice has volunteered her help in entertaining 
 them, but the loudness of their riotous voices and 
 the easy familiarity of their manners make her 
 shrivel into her shell; and she is wonder-stricken to 
 observe with how little apparent disrelish Miss Ker- 
 gouet allows them to insert their dirty hands within 
 her arm, to finger her dress, and even approach 
 their wild heads, and wilder plumes, to her lovely 
 face. 
 
 Jim has been pressed into the service, and does 
 great credit to his training by the unblenching way 
 
90 . FOES IN LAW 
 
 in which he bears the startling and affectionate can- 
 dour of the young ladies' comments upon his ap- 
 pearance and situation. 
 
 In the displaying of the wedding gifts new food 
 for astonishment is afforded to Lettice by the ob- 
 servation of how very much greater value is at- 
 tached by the bride to the tawdry trifles given by 
 some " old friend of dear mother's/' or obscure 
 player whose name has never reached the pubUc 
 ear, than to the solid values and refined beauties of 
 the offerings from the Trent side. 
 
 With an unbiassed mind Lettice might have con- 
 fessed that she whom she has dubbed an adven- 
 turess is at least quite innocent of greed; but prej- 
 udice forbids her to see anything in the preference 
 but want of taste. 
 
 The guests enjoy themselves so much that it is 
 difficult to induce them to depart, which they en- 
 tirely decline to do until all have embraced the 
 bride. Some of them — and it is not their fault 
 that it is a minority — snatch a kiss from the bride- 
 groom too. The exhibition and its attendant hu- 
 mours have taken so long that there is time for only 
 a very few mouthfuls of bolted luncheon before 
 the rehearsal in the church. It is with deep repug- 
 nance that Mr. Trent's sister takes part in this 
 manoeuvre, and with a very big heart that she walks 
 up the aisle alongside of Esmeralda, in the im- 
 probability for the occasion of a sealskin coat and 
 hat, and listening to the scarcely subdued invec- 
 tives of the also hatted and coated bride against 
 her page brothers for crowding too close to her, 
 and forgetting her oft-repeated information that 
 her train will be six yards long. There is a good 
 
FOES IN LAW 91 
 
 deal of scuffling between Muriel and Sybil as to 
 which shall occupy in the procession the left-hand 
 place next that side of the church which is to be 
 occupied by the bride's friends, their approval be- 
 ing the object coveted by both girls, who are ap- 
 parently quite indifferent to any notice from the 
 Trent half of the party. Esmeralda — as beaming 
 as she herself is inwardly protesting — whispers to 
 her a delighted query as to whether a wedding does 
 not always remind her of the church scene in 
 " Much Ado." She answers at once that it does 
 not, having yet to learn that the stage is the most 
 corroding of all professions, eating so deeply into 
 its votaries that they end, and sometimes indeed 
 begin, by seeing the footlights between them and 
 the whole scheme of creation. 
 
 The bride's exhortations are by this time di- 
 verted from her pages to her bridegroom, whom 
 she is rating, in a tone which only now and then 
 remembers to adapt itself to the sacredness of the 
 place, for his clumsiness in manoeuvring. She is 
 urging him not to forge ahead of her like a steam 
 tram, when they mount the chancel steps in their 
 advance to the altar; not to look too pleased, etc. 
 It is only for her father that she has nothing but 
 gentlest words and looks, as she gives him her di- 
 rections where to stand and what to do. 
 
 " I need not tell you not to look too pleased, 
 need I, darling?" Lettice overhears her softly 
 saying to him, and, to the girl's astonishment, she 
 sees two tears entangled in her fabulously long 
 eyelashes. 
 
 This pretty touch ought to have pleased Miss 
 Trent i but when we have made up our minds that 
 
92 FOES IN LAW 
 
 a fellow creature is unmitigatingly to be disap- 
 proved, nothing upsets our balance like the crop- 
 ping up of an inconvenient merit or grace; and 
 Lettice tries to persuade herself that the whisper, 
 so obviously intended for only one ear, is stagey. 
 
 The arrangement of details, the talking and 
 " hushing," and talking again, the disposition to 
 giggle on the part of the juniors, the grotesque 
 image of a performing bear, which will recur to her 
 in connection with the grave docility of her broth- 
 er's efforts servilely to obey his leader's orders, 
 combine to jade Lettice's spirits so much that on 
 their return to Acacia Lodge she asks to be allowed 
 to have tea in her bedroom. 
 
 Esmeralda insists on bringing it, and, with what 
 is real though unrecognized self-denial, since she is 
 dying to make one of the group that follows their 
 Marie about on this final day like Tantiny pigs, 
 stays half an hour with the guest to prevent her 
 feeling neglected. 
 
 There is more of intellectual effort in following 
 her conversation than might appear on the first 
 flash, since she introduces into it a great many per- 
 sons of both sexes of whom Miss Trent has never 
 before heard, but who all seem more or less to have 
 their habitation in the Green Room, by their Chris- 
 tian names, and with a naive confidence that the 
 hearer will know all about them. By the end of 
 the half-hour her head and ears are full of a whirl 
 of Reggies, and Willys, and Phyllises, and Flor- 
 ences. They are scarcely cleared of their unusual 
 inmates when she goes down to dinner. 
 
 The room is full of people, a great many more 
 than the young hostess's largest computation had 
 
FOES IN LAW 93 
 
 reckoned on having turned up, and dinner has to be 
 considerably delayed to allow of a relief table being 
 rigged up in a corner of the dining-room. No- 
 body seems to care a straw. At dinner, deposed 
 from her place of honour beside the host — for 
 which he thinks it necessary to offer her a long 
 and too humble apology — Lettice sits between a 
 couple of strangers, each of whom, through no 
 fault of theirs, has an elbow nestling in her ribs. 
 The expected waiters are still conspicuous by their 
 absence, so that the attendance is of the " scratchi- 
 est,'* and the food shows a disposition to fall short. 
 But again nobody seems to care a jot. Even dis- 
 tant Gabriel, whose dark glance she meets now 
 and again, gauging her condition rather anxiously 
 between the candle-shades, is merrier when he is 
 not looking at her than is quite consistent with her 
 good opinion of him. Her manner might show 
 this when he goes up to speak to her after dinner 
 were she not really glad to see him, since his com- 
 ing frees her from the delicate dilemma in which 
 Esmeralda has put her by claiming her joyful sym- 
 pathy in the news just brought by Ronny Howard 
 that Florrie Cavendish's engagement is on again. 
 
 " And has Miss Trent the faintest idea who 
 Florrie Cavendish is? '* 
 
 Lettice shakes her head. " I am afraid I have 
 not.'* 
 
 "You do not say so!" cries Esmeralda, genu- 
 inely surprised, but not at all offended. *' I 
 thought everybody knew Florrie; " and so goes oflF 
 to repeat her tidings to more understanding 
 ears. 
 
 " Esmeralda has a touching faith that every- 
 
94 FOES IN LAW 
 
 body knows and loves everybody else/* says her 
 brother. 
 
 It is to the touch of irony in his voice, even 
 more than his words, that her not very amiable 
 answer is addressed. 
 
 "How beautiful!" 
 
 He takes the wind out of her sails by ac- 
 quiescing. 
 
 " Yes, in a way I think it is." 
 
 " You do not suffer from the same amiable de- 
 lusion? " 
 
 '* No." 
 
 " Does — does Marie? " 
 
 It comes with difficulty, but there can be no 
 mistake as to the Christian name having been pro- 
 duced at last. 
 
 " Do you mean does she herself love everybody? 
 I should say not; but when she does care for people 
 she does it thoroughly." 
 
 Silenced for the moment by the emphasis of this 
 encomium, Lettice's eyes wander to the object of 
 it, who is rather obscured from sight by the fact 
 that both the large Muriel and small Frank are 
 sitting on her slender knees. She has caught one 
 of her father's hands as he passed near her, and is 
 detaining him by swinging it gently to and fro. 
 It is not a conventional attitude for the hostess of 
 a large party, but as in the case of the crowded din- 
 ner-table and over-taxed commissariat, everybody 
 seems to think it all right. 
 
 Lettice repeats the young man's words slowly. 
 
 " Does it thoroughly! For your father, for one? " 
 
 " I should rather think so." 
 
 Miss Trent's eyes have lit with unconscious dis- 
 
FOES IN LAW 95 
 
 paragement upon the damaged gentleman, but the 
 almost defiant championship in h;s son's voice 
 makes her drop them with an uneasy sense of 
 detection. 
 
 " And for Miss Esmeralda? " 
 
 " And for Miss Esmeralda." 
 
 " And for you? " 
 
 " I hope so." 
 
 " And for those two big girls? " 
 
 There is something contemptuous in her not 
 having taken the trouble to master their names, 
 which comes out more plainly in his echo of her 
 phrase — 
 
 " And for those two big girls." 
 
 Her memory recovers itself ere the next 
 question. 
 
 " And for Lewis and Frank? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And for— Jim? " 
 
 There is something significant, as both are 
 aware, in her putting this last name at the tail of 
 her queries. 
 
 " Would she be marrying him if she did not? " 
 
 His quiet ignoring of the possibility of sordid 
 motives does not hide from her that he has de- 
 tected her suspicions, and shame hurries her into 
 an illogical rejoinder. 
 
 " Then why does she call him names? " 
 
 "What names?" 
 
 " Freak, Luney! What point is there in calling 
 a person a lunatic when he is particularly remark- 
 able for common sense? " 
 
 " Perhaps that is the point." 
 
 A slight movement of eyelid and nostril Implies 
 
96 FOES IN LAW 
 
 that in her opinion it is a very poor one. Then it 
 strikes her that once again she is taking him to 
 task for crimes not his own, and she partially 
 softens. 
 
 " You have great influence with her — I can see 
 that — I, of course, have none. If you would you 
 might persuade her not to hold him up to ridicule 
 when they go home — not at first. He is very much 
 respected; people would not understand it." 
 
 The young man is listening with the most cour- 
 teous attention, and into his eyes — she cannot now 
 complain of their being too cheerful — has come a 
 look which, if it were not so unlikely, she would say 
 expressed undisguised pity and regret. It is with 
 a rather hopeless sigh that he answers — 
 
 " I will try; " adding a moment later, " And in 
 return, will you — I can imagine that to people you 
 loved you might be very " (he breaks off, ap- 
 parently finding the sought adjective unfindable) 
 — " will you try to hate her a Httle less? '* 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 That night Miss Trent is washed into slumber on 
 a sea of tears. Through all her twenty-two years 
 it has been an article of unquestioning faith in her 
 little circle that she is an extremely nice girl, and 
 the belief has insensibly penetrated herself. In 
 most of us there are heights of self-conceit that our 
 nearest and dearest have never scaled, depths of 
 humility that our nearest and dearest have never 
 plumbed. 
 
 Not until Gabriers request had laid it in the dust 
 did Lettice realize how excellent had been her 
 opinion of herself. He had not meant to humble 
 her, merely taking her unamiability for granted, as 
 a fact about which there could be no dispute, and 
 appealing to whatever there might be of good in 
 her to protect his cherished sister against its effects. 
 It gives the measure of how many steps she has 
 descended that a ridiculous streak of comfort 
 crosses her mind that he must have thought there 
 was some good in her, or he would not have ap- 
 pealed at all. This is followed by a flash of 
 angry astonishment that she should deign to care 
 what any member of the Kergouet family think of 
 her. But the first of the two impressions is the 
 stronger. 
 
 Sleep in any case would be difficult in the house 
 on the present occasion, since in it this marriage eve 
 
 97 
 
9$ FOES IN LAW 
 
 the night and morning noises meet as nearly as in a 
 railway hotel. 
 
 The wedding is to be an afternoon one, so that 
 one would have thought that there need not be 
 quite such a scrimmage to get the bride ready in 
 time as there is. Probably there is no need, though 
 it is true that the waiters continue not to turn up, 
 and are discovered at the last moment never to 
 have been ordered. But the real cause lies in the 
 fact that scrimmage is the natural element of the 
 family, in which they joy as the petrel in the storm. 
 The dressing of the bridesmaids, the getting the 
 brother pages into their white satin breeches, even 
 the pinning of the bride's veil, seem to be all 
 more or less conducted in the passage. Here the 
 family appear to run through the gamut of human 
 emotions, from the partly chocolate-fed, and all 
 chocolate-soothed grief of little Frank at his sister's 
 loss to the pale and useless ire of Louis, who, 
 goaded by some crowning insult from his terrible 
 seniors, is heard complaining in a French voice, 
 trembling with anger, to his elder brother — 
 
 " My sisters have called me a pig-idiot! " 
 
 For Gabriel is in the passage too, though he does 
 not make his toilet there; and though he seems to 
 frequent it more in the effort to evoke some order 
 out of the chaos than from any special preference 
 for it. 
 
 The head of the house appears there fitfully also, 
 always so riotously welcomed by his offspring when 
 he does, as to make Lettice ask herself the question, 
 whether to be well beloved the only preliminary 
 step really necessary is to disgrace yourself? He 
 offers her apologies, even more nervous than yes- 
 
FOES IN LAW 99 
 
 terday's, for his household's shortcomings, accom- 
 panied by a faltering hope that she has been attend- 
 ed to, and a still more faltering aspiration that 
 when next she does them the honour of visiting 
 them they will be able to make her more comfort- 
 able. 
 
 Miss Trent wonders afterwards whether it can be 
 due to the dumb entreaty, almost amounting to 
 command, in the son's eyes that she answers the 
 father quite kindly. There is a touch of the naivete 
 that distinguishes the whole family in the method 
 taken by the younger man to reward her. 
 
 *' It will soon be over now," he says, rolling an 
 arm-chair up to the drawing-room fire for her; 
 " and it is unlikely that you will ever again have to 
 see us all together.'* 
 
 She is dressed too soon, and the draughty house, 
 with every door open, makes her shiver in her thin 
 bridesmaid finery — finery made distasteful by being 
 Marie's choice. She ignores the offered chair, 
 beyond resting an indignant hand upon its back, as 
 she turns to face him. 
 
 " What right have you to say such a thing as 
 that to me? " 
 
 He is, perhaps, not quite as naif as the rest of his 
 family. 
 
 " I meant to be consolatory." 
 
 " You have taken a strange method." 
 
 Her voice is full of wounded feeling, and, richly 
 as she has deserved his snub, manlike, he already 
 regrets it. 
 
 " All I meant to say was that we have, perhaps, 
 a better chance of being liked as units than collect- 
 ively." 
 
loo FOES IN LAW 
 
 "Was that all you meant?" 
 
 Before the true directness of her look his own 
 wavers. 
 
 " No, I meant more. I meant to be disagree- 
 able, but I wwmean it." 
 
 Women are seldom generous to a disarmed 
 enemy. 
 
 " You cannot unsay it, any more than you can 
 unsay the cruel request that you made me last 
 night. If it is any satisfaction to you, I can tell 
 you that it made me shed bitter tears." 
 
 " You are not speaking seriously? " 
 
 " It is scarcely a subject upon which I am likely 
 to joke." 
 
 There is a pause of consternation on his part, of 
 modified enjoyment on hers. She pursues her ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 " At home I have always been thought to be at 
 least human ; the implication that I am not natural- 
 ly gave me something of a shock." 
 
 He has been wondering what has become of her 
 cheek roses, and the hearing that it is he who has 
 abolished them puts a compunction she cannot 
 mistake into his lowered voice. 
 
 " You have given me a shock. I had certainly 
 no wish to make you cry." 
 
 She abuses her superiority. " I feel sure that 
 you meant well; but in the instinct of defending 
 what you loved, you naturally did not pay much 
 attention to any pain you might be inflicting upon 
 a perfectly indifferent stranger." 
 
 He is conscious of an inward protest, grotesque in 
 its strength considering the circumstances, against 
 her application of the phrase to herself, coupled 
 
FOES IN LAW loi 
 
 with a repetition of that keen pleasure to the senses 
 which he has already received from her blond come- 
 Hness, her shining neatness; and joined to a pitying 
 insight into the physical pain which a creature so 
 exquisitely nice in every detail of her perfect finish 
 must have suffered from the equally perfect dis- 
 order of his belongings. 
 
 " You had no right to ask me not to hate Jim's 
 wife! You ought to have known that that was 
 impossible." 
 
 " I ought." 
 
 His acquiescence is less due to conviction than 
 to the delight of his ear in the pitch of her voice. 
 
 " On the other hand, I dare say I ought to have 
 tried to be more forbearing towards — your sister! " 
 
 This evidently seems to her to be an immense 
 admission; and whatever may be the brother's 
 opinion as to the suitability of the adjective, she 
 makes it with such a pretty air of generous concili- 
 ation that he cannot but accept it in the same spirit. 
 He reverts to his former method of consolation, 
 though it had not been particularly successful. 
 
 ** You will like her much better when you get 
 her away from the rest of us." 
 
 " Why do you harp upon that string? " she cries 
 in real displeasure, though her scarcely raised tones 
 show small likeness to the peacock wrath of Esme- 
 ralda or Marie. 
 
 " Do you wish to see us all together again? " 
 
 Her resource is one not devoid of dignity. 
 " These are the kind of things that people do not 
 say," she answers, and walks towards the door. 
 Here she goes near to colliding with the bride, who, 
 her toilette still in an inchoate state, and despite 
 
102 FOES IN LAW 
 
 the shrill remonstrances of her following, has 
 whirled downstairs in search of some forgotten 
 trifle. The sight of her brother's face makes her 
 forget it again. 
 
 " What have you been doing to her? " she asks 
 suspiciously. " She was as red as a peony." 
 
 " 1 have not been doing anything." 
 
 " What have you been saying, then? " 
 
 He hesitates. In an instant, regardless of her 
 laces and tulle, she has flung her arms round his 
 neck. 
 
 " Oh, my Gab, if you take to talking secrets that 
 you will not tell me to her, what good will my life 
 do me? " 
 
 " I have not been talking secrets." 
 
 She looses her hold just enough to get the proper 
 distance for reading his face. 
 
 " You are not beginning to like her? You do 
 not think her pretty? " 
 
 Once again his answer is not glib; and when it 
 comes she detects its evasiveness. 
 
 " I think her very — ^well-groomed," affection- 
 ately lifting a little wandering lock as he speaks, 
 and trying to restore it to its place, "which is more 
 than I can say for some other people! " 
 
 Marie pushes him away with a vigour equal to 
 that of her late embrace. 
 
 " She is like a Dutch garden! " 
 
 After that scrimmage resumes its sway for the 
 rest of the day. Never in later life will Lettice's 
 memory be able to present to her its events in any 
 likely or rational sequence. When was it discov- 
 ered that there was a mistake about the carriages as 
 well as the waiters? And who was it suggested 
 
FOES IN LAW 103 
 
 that the wedding should be put off till next day? 
 It must have been the bride herself. Was it going 
 to or returning from the church itself that the 
 hired landau which conveyed herself and her fellow- 
 bridesmaids galloped at such breakneck speed as 
 bespoke the excess of transport duty laid upon it? 
 Out of the blur of impressions rises a crowded 
 church, one aisle filled with well-known faces, all 
 — or she fancies so — stamped with the same im- 
 press of alert curiosity, which makes her avert her 
 own eyes with a sense of humiliated vexation; the 
 other thronged with perfectly unknown persons 
 who make up in numbers for whatever they may 
 lack in distinction; the back of two figures, the 
 shoulders of the smaller of which look suspiciously 
 as if she were sobbing; a cloud of clergy so numer- 
 ous that the Marriage Service seems hardly long 
 enough to afford each of them a sentence; and a 
 clash of bells which is perhaps the one among her 
 impressions that goes nearest to being a sharp one, 
 carrying with it as it does the flashed knowledge 
 that the odious and irrevocable has happened, and 
 that Marie Kergouet is in fact and for ever Marie 
 Trent. Was it before or after those bells that Es- 
 meralda had bid her in a penetrating whisper look 
 in the fifth row, and she would see her manager, 
 Crawley, sitting within two of Cissy Hartopp of 
 the Pleasantry, and next to Miranda Talbot of the 
 Sphere? 
 
 Then they are all back again at Acacia Lodge, 
 and the two dissonant bands of bride and bride- 
 groom's friends are jostling each other in unnatural 
 nearness through the overcrowded rooms. It is 
 not Esmeralda's fault if they do not amalgamate, 
 
I04 FOES IN LAW 
 
 as she slips and flits among the incongruous ele- 
 ments, introducing them to each other as far as, 
 and indeed a good deal further than, her know- 
 ledge of the names and titles of the unknown half 
 of the company extends, in the happiest confidence 
 that they will all be overjoyed to make each other's 
 acquaintance. 
 
 With reluctant admiration Lettice has to own 
 that, whatever the weak points they possess, the 
 Kergouet family are at all events strong in the 
 courage of their friends. And Esmeralda has a 
 good large field for her operations, since Jim has 
 had his kinsfolk and acquaintances summoned from 
 far and near, and they have answered to the call 
 like one man. With his plain, wide face transfi- 
 gured, he goes about radiantly reaping tributes to 
 his choice. Lettice reaps some too, but with less 
 consequent illumination. 
 
 " She is extraordinarily pretty, my dear," says a 
 smart cousin, putting up a tortoiseshell eyeglass — 
 " quite extraordinarily; but who are all these peo- 
 ple? I never seem to have met any of them before, 
 did you?" 
 
 A dull flush burns through the person addressed. 
 
 "I think they are chiefly theatrical; you know 
 that the elder sister has gone upon the stage." 
 
 " Theatrical? " — with greatly quickened interest. 
 "How exciting! But I do not recognize any of 
 them. Is Wyndham here? or Irene Vanbrugh? or 
 Ellen Terry? or Tree? " 
 
 " I do not know; I have not seen them." 
 
 Then comes the departure of the newly wedded; 
 Marie kissing and being kissed by everybody — 
 everybody, that is, who had occupied the left side 
 
FOES IN LAW 105 
 
 of the church aisle. On several necks she throws 
 herself. She is strained to many gaily draped 
 bosoms, and is with difficulty dissuaded from acced- 
 ing to little Frank's blubbered prayer to get into 
 the brougham with her. It is with obvious chok- 
 ing that she pours her last whisper into her father's 
 and Gabriel's ears, though her previous farewell 
 to her new sister-in-law had been marked by a little 
 cold hilarity. 
 
 " Good-bye. You can never call me Miss Ker- 
 gouet again." 
 
 Her brother's farewell follows. " Good-bye, 
 old girl! Take care of yourself. I dare say that 
 you will be home as soon as we." 
 
 She makes an inarticulate sound that cannot be 
 assent; then, with a pang of revolt against their 
 letting each other go for ever, as it certainly will 
 be, with such a trivial valediction, she clings to him 
 for a moment, faltering — 
 
 " I hope you will be very, very happy." 
 
 He returns her embrace most affectionately, but 
 she detects haste and absence in his clasp. 
 
 " Thanks, dear, thanks. There is not much 
 doubt about that. We ought to be oflf." 
 
 The crowd of well-wishers and rice-throwers 
 have turned inwards out of the nipping dusk as 
 soon as the carriage has disappeared; and Lettice 
 follows them, catching as she does so Esmeralda's 
 aspiration as heartfelt as high-pitched. 
 
 ''How I envy them! In Paris for a whole fort- 
 night! and Marie means to go to the theatre every 
 night." 
 
 " They have gone to Paris? " repeats the com- 
 rade addressed with surprised interest. " It was 
 
io6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 put in the papers that Lord Blank had lent them 
 his place in Hertfordshire." 
 
 " Marie would not hear of it. She says she will 
 have more country than she knows what to do 
 with for the rest of her natural life. Oh, Miss 
 Trent, I did not see you! Has not it gone off well? " 
 
 " Was there ever a wedding that did not go off 
 well? '* asks the voice of Gabriel, hastily interpos- 
 ing — " at least, in the opinion of the family that 
 shot it off? " 
 
 " They have promised to be back for the first 
 night of the new play. You ought to come too," 
 pursues Esmeralda, with her incorrigible confi- 
 dence in the sympathy of her fellow-creatures. 
 " Tiny Villiers is sure to get her influenza back 
 before January is over, and then / nip in. It is not 
 a big part, but one might make a good deal of it. 
 It depends entirely on the way you play it." 
 
 She flashes off to cry her bright confidence in the 
 friendly epidemic into a score of other ears, and 
 invite their owners to her contingent triumph; and 
 her brother remains facing that fellow bridesmaid, 
 the identity of whose dress with his sister^s — iron- 
 ical and momentary — only accentuates the im- 
 mensity of their difference. He devines that it is 
 the haste to be rid of that distasteful livery which 
 makes her say — 
 
 " I must go and change my gown." 
 
 " Must you? " 
 
 " Of course. I cannot go up to London in 
 this." 
 
 His eye travels with a look of acrid melancholy 
 over her gay costume. 
 
 " Will you ever wear it again? " 
 
FOES IN LAW 107 
 
 She starts at his having divined her intention of 
 committing the detested costume to the flames. 
 
 "Why shouldn't I?" 
 
 "But will you?" 
 
 " What can it matter to you whether I do or 
 not? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 There is a flat spiritlessness in the tone of his 
 renunciation, and his face looks as fagged as she 
 feels her own. To him also it has been a trying 
 day. At intervals, through its confusion and chaos, 
 she has caught sight of him now and again, and 
 almost always as propping his father's faint cou- 
 rage, shielding him from doubtful encounter, ward- 
 ing ofif possible mortification. 
 
 The outlaw for twenty-five years from the world's 
 favour has not apparently, even in a quarter of a 
 century, grown a thick enough skin to have faced 
 the ordeal of his first real return to it, if he had 
 not been so gallantly upborne by his son. But the 
 strain has left its mark on that son, and her com- 
 passion migrates for a moment from herself to 
 him. 
 
 " I think you are almost as glad as I am that it 
 is over." 
 
 " Quite." A moment later. " I wish we could 
 have made you more comfortable." 
 
 It is the identical aspiration which, issuing from 
 his father's mouth, had been treated with the dis- 
 dain its futility seemed to merit. Coming from the 
 son's it is differently treated, though it never oc- 
 curs to her to deny the discomfort which he 
 deplores. 
 
 " You, at least, have nothing to reproach your- 
 
io8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 self with. You have done your best to make it 
 easier for me/' 
 
 '' By making you shed bitter tears? Is that your 
 idea of hospitality? " 
 
 " You were quite right. I — I had been very 
 near hating Marie." As she makes the admission 
 her head sinks till her round chin almost touches 
 the entwined diamond initials of Jim's bridesmaid 
 locket upon her neck. " I have to thank you for 
 opening my eyes to the fact." 
 
 " Mine has been a graceful, pleasing task. If I 
 did not know to the contrary, I should feel sure 
 that your thanks must be ironical." 
 
 " I am never ironical; I suppose that I am too 
 matter-of-fact." 
 
 "Matter-of-fact!" he repeats slowly, not be- 
 cause he doubts the statement, which, indeed, he 
 does not, but from an inward wonder why the flat 
 quality in question suddenly appears to him as 
 dressed in Venus' cestus? 
 
 She takes his repetition as doubt, and brings au- 
 thority to back her. 
 
 " I have often been told, and by a person who 
 ought to and does know me intimately, that I am 
 wanting in imagination." 
 
 " Might I ask whether that person is a man or a 
 woman? " 
 
 " A— man." 
 
 The slight hesitation is not lost upon him, nor a 
 patent desire to get away from the subject which 
 she herself introduced. 
 
 " I should not have been easy in my mind if I 
 had not had the opportunity of thanking you be- 
 fore I left, and I want to tell you, too, that you 
 
FOES IN LAW 109 
 
 must not be unhappy about your sister, because 
 even if I go on hating her, it will not spoil her life, 
 since I am not to live with her." 
 
 ** Won't it spoil yours? " 
 
 The dejection of her answer is tinged with sur- 
 prise that this aspect of the case should have pre- 
 sented itself to Marie's brother. 
 
 " If it does, that will not affect her! " 
 
 He knows that it would be absurd to rejoin that 
 her happiness or unhappiness will affect him; yet 
 the words that would tell her so drive away all oth- 
 ers from his lips, and force him to silence. He can 
 only stupidly wonder for how much longer he will 
 have her standing there before him under the elec- 
 tric light, whose ill-shaded blinding inquisitiveness 
 fails to detect any minutest flaw in the grain of her 
 skin, the fresh tincture of her lips, or the nice per- 
 fection of her appointments. She has given him a 
 peep into a world of ordered beauty and refine- 
 ment which he looks in at with an exile's longing. 
 He must say something — anything to detain her a 
 few moments longer. 
 
 " You hav'e made your plans? " 
 
 " Not yet — not finally. They depend upon anoth 
 — upon other people." 
 
 " The people who think you wanting in im- 
 agination? " 
 
 This time she reddens frankly, and he realizes 
 the full intrusion upon her confidence of his ques- 
 tion — realizes, too, once again what her sliding 
 from compromising singular to colourless plural 
 means. 
 
 " I must really be going," she says, with a hur- 
 ried glance at a clock above their heads, which, 
 
no FOES IN LAW 
 
 being a Kergouet one, is, of course, not going; 
 " and in case I do not see you again in this crowd, 
 I will bid you good-bye." 
 
 To tell her how little likelihood there is of the 
 contingency she suggests would be to forfeit pres- 
 ent possession of the hand which, less small and 
 soft than Marie's, but long and fair and capable, 
 lies next moment in his. 
 
 " Thank you for having tried to make it easier 
 for me." 
 
 " Easier! " he repeats, with a sharp memory of 
 her tears. 
 
 " Yes, easier, though you did make me cry." 
 
 Coquetry is not in her, and in any case she would 
 not deign to coquet with such as he, yet there is a 
 half-maHcious sweetness leavening the sadness of 
 her smile. He holds her hand since she has given 
 it to him firmly, though with no impertinent 
 pressure. 
 
 " Good-bye," he says; then resolutely, and as if 
 defying her to contradict him, " In other circum- 
 stances we should have been friends." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 " I DARE say you will be at home as soon as we! " 
 These parting words of her brother's, spoken in 
 ignorance of her intention of forsaking him, have 
 rung ironically in Lettice*s ears; yet they come 
 nearly true. Christmas is spent by the bride-pair 
 in Paris, and the first night of Esmeralda's play has 
 delayed them yet a day or two in London, but early 
 January is to find them at Trent. 
 
 A slightly malicious smile touches Lettice's lips 
 as she reads the cast of the new play at the Popular- 
 ity, which reveals the fact that Miss Tiny Villiers 
 is as yet unscathed by influenza; but it is impossi- 
 ble to feel very ill-natured about poor Esmeralda, 
 and the fact does not elate the reader as much as 
 she would have thought that any misfortune to a 
 Kergouet must have done. 
 
 The cousins with whom she spends her own 
 Christmas and New Year, though a pleasant, 
 affectionate family, jar upon her feelings by persist- 
 ing in regarding her brother's marriage as a very 
 good thing for her. 
 
 " It was the only thing that could have freed 
 you," says her aunt, looking sensibly at her through 
 the spectacles that her acute eyes do not seem to 
 need ; " and poor Jim was growing very heavy and 
 droney. I never thought, after the Yankee catas- 
 trophe, that he would have binged himself up to 
 
 III 
 
H2 FOES IN LAW 
 
 ask any other woman. Perhaps this little minx 
 saved him the trouble. She looked quite capable 
 of taking the initiative." 
 
 The matron laughs, v^ith an inward thanksgiving 
 that the minx in question had not run across any- 
 thing male among her own brood before inflaming 
 the ponderous Jim. Her niece answers gravely — 
 
 " No, I do not think she did." 
 
 It is the idlest Christmas Miss Trent has ever 
 spent, and the sight of her relatives, cheerfully 
 bustling about their seasonable charities, brings to 
 her with added sting the fact that never again will 
 she play Protagonist in like bounties and festivities 
 at her late home. 
 
 Her brother sends her a handsome Christmas 
 present and a letter, through every line of which 
 strong affection breathes wherever blazing happi- 
 ness lets it show its nose. It ends with an erased 
 postscript. To reconstruct what its builder has 
 meant to destroy is certainly a mistake; but a sus- 
 picion that the P. S. is in her new sister-in-law's 
 handwriting lends Miss Trent the fatal ingenuity 
 necessary to decipher what must have run thus — 
 
 " Our minds are braced to finding you on the 
 doorstep." 
 
 The first outcome of her discovery is a red vow 
 never to cross the doorstep alluded to; but time, 
 coupled with the reflection that the sentence had 
 been erased, and must have originally done duty 
 for a pleasantry, make her modify this resolve. It 
 is incumbent on her to go back to Trent in order 
 to give up into the worthless hands which will 
 henceforth hold them the reins of her own dear 
 kingdom; to give Marie the opportunity, of which 
 
FOES IN LAW 113 
 
 she is sure not to avail herself, of acquitting those 
 duties to village, parish, schools and neighbours 
 which she is certain to neglect. It shall, at all 
 events, not be for want of having them faithfully- 
 pointed out to her. 
 
 " I would go back for the present," says the 
 sensible aunt. " But give them a Httle hoHday now 
 and then; visit a good deal, but make it your head- 
 quarters. I do not quite see what else is open to 
 you; nothing short of a miracle would turn you 
 into a club-and-flat girl, and if you and that pretty 
 little flyaway can't hit it off, why, you must marry.'* 
 
 " The refuge of the hopelessly commonplace and 
 antiquated! Must I? " replies the girl, with a smile 
 that is both sad and dry. 
 
 Must she? It is the answer to that question 
 which is still further enhancing the difficulty of the 
 question of her reappearance. 
 
 There is one welcome awaiting her of whose 
 warmth and sincerity she cannot doubt. Did ever 
 man write, or woman receive, such a letter as that 
 with which the curate of Trent has poured the Ni- 
 agara volume of his love and triumph on receiving 
 the news of her brother's engagement? It is so 
 blazing that she is afraid to come near it, and has 
 locked it into her despatch-box with a dread lest, 
 if she admits its closer proximity, it may set fire 
 to her too. The dread is mixed with the same tin- 
 gling curiosity as the sight of his ardours had in- 
 spired; the same half-frightened, half-delighted 
 wonder as to whether his tempestuous conviction 
 that, if she will let him, he can infect her with a 
 like fury of tenderness be true? 
 
 The dread and the fascination have been hers 
 
114 FOES IN LAW 
 
 ever since Chevening's command to her to answer 
 his adoration had broken upon her startled maiden 
 ear; but do they keep quite the same relative pro- 
 portion as before? Is not the dread rather more, 
 and the fascination rather less, than at first? And 
 if so, why? 
 
 She fails totally to answer these questions, her 
 thoughts getting so hopelessly mixed that when 
 she tries to solve them the words, '* In happier cir- 
 cumstances we should have been friends," keep 
 chiming senselessly in her ear instead. 
 
 She has not answered the letter. How dares she, 
 indeed? The least chilling phrase might drive him 
 to God knows what extremes of despair — suicide, 
 perhaps; for with all his gifts his is not a quite well- 
 balanced mind. Does she even wish to chill him? 
 
 She glances half timidly through the six volcanic 
 pages. Oh, how humble and awed she ought to be 
 at possessing such a love! Many women set forth 
 on their life journey fain to be content with a little 
 tepid, uncertain liking. How royally endowed she 
 has it in her power to start on the race! Even if 
 she can't glow with a heat that adequately answers 
 his — but can't she? A thrill seems to contradict the 
 inability. She must see him, hear him, touch him, 
 like the blind patriarch in the Bible story, before 
 she can decide whether he is in very truth the love 
 of her life or no. 
 
 And so it comes to pass that an early day in 
 January finds her driving through the lodge-gates 
 of her old home under the evergreen arches and 
 not yet dismounted " Welcomes " and " Health 
 and happiness," which rub into her the fact that the 
 new regime has begun. 
 
FOES IN LAW US 
 
 After all, it is the old regime in the shape of her 
 brother, and her brother alone, who meets her on 
 the doorstep, escorts her into the empty morning- 
 room, and makes her pour out her own tea. 
 
 " Marie is in the music-room. They cannot have 
 let her know. I'll go and tell her." 
 
 " Wait a moment. Do not be in a hurry. I 
 want to have a look at you. I want to see if you are 
 still Jim." 
 
 He answers gracefully, "Rot!" but lets her 
 stand opposite him, with a hand on each of his 
 shoulders, and answers with a look of unflinching 
 happiness her suspicious gaze. 
 
 " Well, may I go now? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Left alone, her eye hurries round the room in 
 search of change and deterioration. To a casual 
 eye there would not seem to be much of either, the 
 trivial blots of some large-framed photographs of 
 Miss Poppy Delafield in character excepted; but in 
 a second the room's lifelong occupant has detected 
 one which makes her start violently. What that 
 change is does not remain uncertain for one minute 
 after the return of Mr. Trent, apologetic and 
 wifeless. 
 
 " Oh, Jim, how could you allow it? " 
 
 " Allow what? " 
 
 " The chairs." 
 
 Mr. Trent's look follows with a disturbed expres- 
 sion his sister's, which is resting tragically upon the 
 two sacred, comfortable, but not handsome arm- 
 chairs, which, occupied in life by their parents, had 
 since their deaths never been moved one hair- 
 breadth from their respective positions near the 
 
ii6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 fireplace, but now, disgraced and banished, are 
 standing far off with their backs against the wall. 
 His voice in answering is guilty and troubled. 
 
 " She did not know. She had not an idea." 
 
 " And you did not tell her? " 
 
 " I did not like to, not just at the first — at the 
 first moment." 
 
 " I wonder she did not know by instinct." 
 
 " What didn't I know by instinct? " cries 
 a light piercing voice, and the culprit stands be- 
 tween them. 
 
 There is an ominous silence, during which Let- 
 tice takes in that her adversary, Frenchily tea- 
 gowned and chillily smothered about the throat in 
 white fur, is prettier than ever. The bride repeats 
 her question. 
 
 " What didn't I know by instinct? " — looking 
 insistently from one to the other. " It is the only 
 way that I ever do know anything." 
 
 " It is nothing — nothing," begins Mr. Trent, in 
 an apprehensive hurry quite new to him; but his 
 sister has no intention of letting the crisis be slid- 
 den over on rollers. With one direct thrust she 
 is at the heart of the matter. 
 
 " We were talking about the chairs.** 
 
 "What chairs?" 
 
 " I was remarking to Jim that they had been 
 moved." 
 
 " Why shouldn't they be moved? " 
 
 The eyes of both speakers are directed to the 
 spots whence the two rather lumbering articles of 
 furniture had been removed, and replaced by more 
 prepossessing specimens of the cabinet-maker's art. 
 
FOES IN LAW 117 
 
 Miss Trent rears her stature till she looks like a 
 block of pink ice. 
 
 " It is only that they were my father's and 
 mother's, and had not been moved since their 
 deaths." 
 
 A flood of crimson drowns the beautifully ap- 
 portioned red and Devonshire-cream white of 
 Marie's little face, and seems as if it would even 
 tinge her snowy furs. 
 
 " Your father's and mother's! Why on earth did 
 not you tell me, Jim? How could you have let me? 
 It is quite true, I ought to have known by instinct." 
 
 Before they guess what she is going to do, she 
 has raced to the distant wall, and begun with all 
 her small strength to tug at one of the banished 
 relics, and set its casters rolling towards its native 
 seat. 
 
 Jim bounds after her, with an agility as new as 
 his late flurried attempt at a laudable lie. 
 
 " Do not — do not! You will strain yourself. 
 Let me." 
 
 But she throws away his help and his hand. 
 " You ought to have told me," she says in a choked 
 voice, piloting her charge in angry independence 
 to its goal; and having insisted on performing a 
 like unassisted act of reparation towards its fellow, 
 she flies stormily out of the room. 
 
 " I knew that she would only need to be told," 
 says Lettice, perhaps a little aghast at the perfect 
 success that has attended her exhibition of can- 
 dour. 
 
 Her brother's sole reply is to give her one look 
 of a quality distinctly different from any he has ever 
 
ii8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 let fall upon her in all her twenty-two years, after 
 which he follows his wife from the room. 
 
 The Manes of the late Mr. and Mrs. Trent have 
 been magnificently appeased, but it is open to ques- 
 tion whether they themselves might not have 
 thought that the sacrifice had been accomplished 
 at a somewhat heavy cost. It can scarcely be con- 
 sidered a good beginning. 
 
 However, dinner may be said to pass off pretty 
 well, since it is not very obvious that Marie has 
 been crying, and the appearance of Kirstie in a 
 muzzle causes but a slight hitch in the general 
 amiability; a hasty explanation from Mr. Trent 
 that the measure is only a temporary one, rendered 
 necessary by the determination of that young lady 
 to do for Marie's tottering old Lulu, which had be- 
 longed to " dear mother," at once smooths the ris- 
 ing billows. Possibly Lettice feels that she has con- 
 quered enough for one day, and that to except 
 against any form of filial piety would sit ill upon her 
 at the present moment. 
 
 The January Sunday morning that follows dawns 
 lately bright, and some of its gilding seems to have 
 rubbed off on the Trent family. From the manly 
 simplicity of Jim's mind little affronts fall away, 
 unable to find a sticking-place, and there is not a 
 trace of resentment in his talk with his sister over 
 their tete-a-tete breakfast. Marie has from the first 
 scoffed away any idea of appearing with hideous 
 punctuality and impossible earliness at nine 
 o'clock." 
 
 Far from any huffy avoidance of his wife's name, 
 Mr. Trent's conversation runs mainly upon her 
 anxiety to make friends with everybody; upon the 
 
FOES IN LAW 119 
 
 invaluable quality of Lattice's help to her in this 
 direction, etc. 
 
 Lettice listens, half remorseful, half ashamed, yet 
 wholly hostile. 
 
 When the tardy bride at last comes upon the 
 scene, it appears that she has a slight cold; and 
 her husband urges her, with tender importunity, 
 not to risk worsening it by going to church. She 
 lightly flicks away his beseechments. 
 
 " Not go to church on my first Sunday! Not 
 sit, for the first time in my life, iti a pew at the top 
 of the church? Is it likely? Not see the rector and 
 hear the curate? Is that Hkely? " 
 
 There is a flash of malice and mirth in her eye as 
 she pronounces her last two aspirations; and a 
 trickle of cold water seems to steal down Miss 
 Trent's back. Jim has told Marie! Men always 
 prove their devotion to new wives by sacrificing old 
 secrets — other people's no less than, or instead of, 
 their own, to them! But Jim answers matter-of- 
 factly — 
 
 "You will not hear the curate; he does not 
 preach in the morning." 
 
 " Well, hear the vicar and see the curate, then. 
 That will do just as well." 
 
 It is in horrible trepidation — heart-sinkings 
 curiously linked with heart-leapings — that Lettice 
 treads the familiar path to church. Outwardly se- 
 date but inwardly trembling, she walks along a lit- 
 tle ahead of the other two, conning over to herself 
 topics of reassurance to still her pulses. At all 
 events, he who is making them throb will not be 
 beetling above her in the dreadful proximity of the 
 pulpit. The vicar cannot have a second mother to 
 
I20 FOES IN LAW 
 
 force, by injudiciously timed dying, his curate into 
 the preacher's place. To hear the devout music of 
 Chevening*s voice in the Liturgy must be wholly 
 pleasure; and she will be able to listen to Mr. Tay- 
 lor's platitudes with the lenient affection bred of 
 lifelong knowledge how well he lives up to them. 
 Add to which, the congregation will have none of 
 its usual attention to spare for herself, every eye 
 being inevitably bent on the bride. 
 
 The latter is full of alert interest as she skips 
 along, showering questions and comments, all 
 curiously towny and un-rural, upon her spouse, 
 who is so much occupied in answering, in fruitlessly 
 begging her not to let her gown trail, and in taking 
 care of her unnecessarily florid books of devotion, 
 as, for the first time in his life, to forget to relieve 
 his sister of her modest Prayer-book and Hymnal. 
 
 Even a dowdy bride may count upon being 
 looked at once in her life, and no one has ever yet 
 found it possible to help staring at Marie, whether 
 in wonder, admiration, or wrath. It is therefore 
 no marvel that as the new-comer trips up the aisle 
 in an extravagantly becoming toque, casting daz- 
 zling glances of half-smiling, if not very suitable 
 curiosity on this side and that, there is a very 
 audible rustle and shifting of positions among the 
 Trent flock. Even the lady whom nobody visits 
 casts a look from between her pariah eyelashes; 
 and the three discreet old gentlewomen make 
 scarcely disguised play with their elbows on each 
 others' ribs. 
 
 The clergy have entered, and the service has be- 
 gun. Thank Heaven, Mr. Taylor's mother has not 
 died again, for here he is in his place. Even Mrs. 
 
FOES IN LAW 121 
 
 Taylor has shaken off dull headache, and is sitting 
 quiet and recueillie, but deeply excited, in the Vicar- 
 age pew. 
 
 These facts Miss Trent has mastered by intuition, 
 since she never once lifts her eyes from her book. 
 Here, in God's House, Chevening must and shall 
 be to her only God's minister; nor shall any eye- 
 straying of hers tempt him to one of those glances 
 whose passion has no place here. She keeps her 
 resolve rigidly; but the bride is evidently less se- 
 vere, and the problem of keeping at bay her whis- 
 pered questions is only solved by a feigned deaf- 
 ness. Her husband has not the heart for such aus- 
 terity, and her little hissing queries keep dropping 
 into his ear throughout the service. 
 
 It is over now, and they are in the churchyard, 
 which is fuller than usual, both from a disposition 
 in the congregation to hang back and have a look, 
 and also because Marie has at once overriden and 
 trampled down the immemorial Trent custom of 
 remaining in the church till the last, and passing 
 out in unhampered dignity, as a gloss upon the 
 truism that we are all equal in the sight of God. 
 
 Marie is in the thick of the people at once, pant- 
 ing Jim toiling after her in vain with his presenta- 
 tions and slow smiles. She is shaking hands with 
 persons who have never hitherto got anything but 
 a bow, making jokes with people who have never 
 received anything beyond a formal " Fine day," 
 dancing upon custom, driving her coach through 
 tradition, rioting in revolution. 
 
 She is retrieved at last — she and her toque — 
 from among the gaping little crowd, who will have 
 to go home and lengthily ruminate over their Sun- 
 
122 FOES IN LAW 
 
 day dinners before they can hope, even approxi- 
 mately, to classify such a phenomenon. The Trent 
 family meanwhile take their homeward way. 
 
 " I hope you will not mind," says Jim, in a half- 
 apologetic voice to his wife, " but Chevening — that 
 is the curate, the man who read the service — has al- 
 ways been in the habit of lunching with us on Sun- 
 day, and he will very likely turn up to-day. You 
 will not mind? '* 
 
 ''Mind! I shall be cruelly disappointed if he 
 does not." 
 
 Lettice is, as before, stalking ahead, but her 
 tingling ears inform her too truly of the mis- 
 chievous ring in her sister-in-law's words. 
 
 " Oh, that is all right," rejoins Jim, relieved; 
 adding, with his unwonted heavy liveliness, " You 
 were quite bowled over, were you? " 
 
 She gives one of her high laughs. " Who could 
 refuse anything to a man with such a nose? " 
 
 Jim laughs, but the stalker ahead's comment is, 
 "What bad taste! What an odious pleasantry!" 
 She does not feel her brother's certainty that Ran- 
 dal will appear at luncheon. Will he dare trust 
 himself to meet her in the presence of a stranger, 
 even though he does not share the knowledge 
 which produces in herself so overpowering a shy- 
 ness, that Marie knows; that the cold glitter of 
 Marie's eyes will be upon them, detecting each 
 tremor, spying out each frailty? 
 
 The terror that her own undependable face will 
 betray quivers of expectation or a drop of disap- 
 pointment keeps her mewed up in her sitting-room 
 — the sitting-room which Mrs. Trent has as yet 
 ghown no signs of reiving from her — till long after 
 
FOES IN LAW 123 
 
 the gong has sounded. The family are already sit- 
 ting at the round table, and one of the three per- 
 sons present leaves his roast beef to get up and 
 shake hands with her. He has come, and it is 
 over! 
 
 The conversation at once resumes the track her 
 entrance had interrupted. Marie is pouring a 
 shower of questions over the visitor upon the 
 names, habits, and histories of the congregation; 
 the position in church and personal characteristics 
 of each of whom she is describing with an accuracy 
 that does more credit to her powers of observa- 
 tion than her devotion. Chevening is answering 
 her more rationally and collectedly than under the 
 circumstances Lettice could have hoped. After an 
 electric glance at herself — please Heaven, Marie 
 did not intercept it — he resumes his share in the 
 lively catechism. Lettice recovers her own com- 
 posure enough to verify the daring incautiousness 
 — nay, the perfect recklessness — of her sister-in- 
 law's queries and comments. 
 
 " And who was the tiny lady in one of the side 
 aisles in a pew by herself, sitting next a pillar — she 
 looked as if she was trying to hide behind it — 
 dressed in black, with a pretty little dismal face, 
 and who never lifted her eyes? '* 
 
 Randal's answer is not glib this time. " I think 
 you must mean Mrs. Fairfax." 
 
 " Fairfax! Oh! Is she a widow? " 
 
 " No, but her husband never comes to church." 
 
 " I liked her looks. Why wasn't I introduced to 
 her? " 
 
 The sharp click of the bride's question meets 
 only empty air. Then Randal replies lamely — 
 
124 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " She had probably got out of church before 
 you." 
 
 It would have been wise to leave the explanation 
 thus, but some latent exasperation of Miss Trent's 
 makes her improve upon it. 
 
 " Even if she had not, you would not have been 
 introduced to her." 
 
 *'Why?" 
 
 She looks round in vain upon three diversely un- 
 comfortable faces, and her '* Why? " has to be re- 
 peated again and more clarion-wise before Jim is 
 understood to mumble to his plate the explanation 
 that there is " a screw loose! " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 A SCREW loose! To the relief of all parties and the 
 astonishment of one, Mrs. Trent does not imme- 
 diately pursue the theme; but she recurs to it after 
 luncheon, when she and Lettice are alone together 
 for a few minutes in the morning-room. 
 
 " What was the screw loose about that poor little 
 woman? " 
 
 " Oh, the usual one." 
 
 " There are so many usual ones." 
 
 Lettice hesitates. She has no great dislike to the 
 idea of hurting her sister-in-law's feelings in small 
 things, but wittingly to remind her of her heredi- 
 tary disgrace is far beyond the scope of her ma- 
 levolence. 
 
 " Do you think there is any use in digging up an 
 old scandal? " 
 
 " Perhaps I shall not think it a scandal." 
 
 This schismatic utterance gives Lettice's tongue 
 the needed impetus. 
 
 ** She lived with her husband before she married 
 him." 
 
 " Perhaps he had a wife already." 
 
 " I believe he had." 
 
 " Then how could this one marry him? " 
 
 The topsy-turvy morality evidenced by this 
 question puts a good lump of ice into Miss Trent's 
 next tone. 
 
 " His wife naturally divorced him, and the per- 
 son who interests you became Mrs. Fairfax." 
 
 125 
 
126 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " And has she run quite straight ever sincel *' 
 
 " As far as I know. She lives very quietly, and " 
 — rather grudgingly — " is extremely charitable to 
 the poor.'* 
 
 " How long ago did it happen? " 
 
 " I really forget; eight or ten years." 
 
 Mrs. Trent takes a cigarette from a silver box 
 near her, adorned with a too-much flourished 
 monogram, and which Lettice has already recog- 
 nized as one of the objectionable wedding presents 
 from the distaff side, and, striking a match with a 
 vicious little scratch, as if she wished it were on her 
 sister-in-law's head, lights it. 
 
 " And you none of you go near her? " she says 
 in a voice which for her is low. 
 
 " She is, naturally, not visited." 
 
 Marie leans her head as far back as it will go 
 over the cushioned chair — not one of the sacred 
 ones — on which she is sitting, and gives a kick at 
 some imaginary object with one little swinging 
 foot. Then she sits up straight, and war is in her 
 great dark eyes. 
 
 " I dare say she is worth the whole Pharisaical 
 lot put together. I shall go and call on her to- 
 morrow." 
 
 But here the roof of Trent Manor is provi- 
 dentially saved from being blown off by the en- 
 trance of the two men. 
 
 " We have been quarrelling! " cries Marie, jump- 
 ing up, and making a raid upon Jim. " Come into 
 the conservatory, and I will tell you my version of 
 it. We have not had time, you say? Oh yes, we 
 have. We began at once." 
 
 In a moment she has whirled him off through 
 
FOES IN LAW 127 
 
 the glass doors, and in among the blossoming 
 camellias and Roman hyacinths. 
 
 The moment so trepidatingly expected has come. 
 The clergyman stands for quite a minute or two 
 watching the disappearing figures — presumably to 
 be sure that they are safely out of hearing — before 
 he joins Miss Trent at the fire, where, to give her- 
 self a countenance, she is picking up little hot coals 
 with a tiny pair of tongs, and dropping them into 
 the fire. If the lover's approach seemed a little de- 
 layed, he makes up for lost time. Tongs, fingers, 
 and all, are at once appropriated by him. 
 
 "Who was right?" 
 
 The attack is so unexpected in its taking-for- 
 grantedness that for a moment she acquiesces in it. 
 It is only when something in the young man's face 
 tells her that his audacities may not end where 
 they have begun, that she recovers herself enough 
 to resist. 
 
 In the effort to be free without any unladylike 
 scuffling, the tongs escape, and fall into the fender 
 with a clatter disproportioned to their small ele- 
 gance. The noise, and the prosaic stooping to pick 
 them up, set things on a better footing. She can 
 answer his question from a rational distance, and 
 in an almost rational voice. 
 
 " Right in what? " 
 
 " In the faith in a brother's celibacy." 
 
 The triumph of his smile jars upon her, and her 
 answering words let the feeling pierce through 
 them. 
 
 " Do you think there is ever any use in told-you- 
 so-ing? " 
 
 " My landlady must have thought I had gone 
 
128 FOES IN LAW 
 
 mad when I heard the news. I was in dreary sea- 
 side lodgings where Taylor had sent me, because 
 he saw I was going to break down. You had ab- 
 solutely unnerved me! " 
 
 There is such a quiver of reproach in his voice — 
 she had forgotten the full beauty of that organ — 
 coupled with such a jubilant implication that his 
 sufferings are all in the past, that a terrified wish to 
 put off the inevitable coming to close quarters 
 seizes the girl. 
 
 " It was a very great — a very painful surprise to 
 me. 
 
 "Painful! " he repeats, with a wounded intona- 
 tion — painful to get the order of release! You can 
 hardly expect me to sympathize with you there." 
 Then, seeing that no answering light comes into 
 her troubled face, he adds in a lighter key, and with 
 a meaning glance towards the conservatory door, 
 " One must allow that there were extenuating cir- 
 cumstances." 
 
 " If he had meant his remark to lift his love's 
 dropped lids, he is quite successful." 
 
 " Do you mean my sister-in-law's good looks? " 
 
 There is no mistaking the accent used, and a 
 transient flash of amusement qualifies the amorous 
 seriousness of Chevening's face. 
 
 " Well, yes, I imagine people might think her 
 pretty — people who had eyes to spare to look at 
 her." 
 
 The inference that the present speaker is not 
 provided with those conveniences is so obvious that 
 Miss Trent hurries to say with mollified mag- 
 nanimity— -» 
 
FOES IN LAW 129 
 
 " * Pretty ' expresses her most inadequately. She 
 is extremely beautiful in her style." 
 
 The magnanimity would have been more com- 
 plete without the last clause; but even as it stands 
 the tribute is a very respectable one. 
 
 " Do you think that I came here to-day to dis- 
 cuss her? " 
 
 There is a directness of purpose in his tone, 
 which only intensifies her desire to stave off the 
 crisis. 
 
 " I dare say that you had a little curiosity to see 
 what the person was like who had dethroned your 
 old friend." 
 
 *' Dethroned I Is it possible that that is the way in 
 which you look at it? " 
 
 There is in his tone such a lofty contempt for the 
 advantages he has not lost, that she despises herself 
 for having alluded to them; and mortification and 
 trouble combine to drive a drop of water into the 
 corner of each eye. 
 
 " What other way is there of looking at it? I 
 am dethroned." 
 
 He does not answer for the moment, except by 
 a diminution of distance between them; but she 
 feels, with an only half-dismayed excitement, that 
 her tears have quickened the pace. 
 
 " Why didn't you answer my letter? " 
 
 There is no sound in response, except that of the 
 parrot in the distance, practising his most realistic 
 accomplishment, a loose cough. 
 
 " Why didn't you? " 
 
 She thinks he is going to take her hands again, 
 and puts them behind her. 
 
 "Why didn't you?" 
 
I30 FOES IN LAW 
 
 How oppressive the furnace lit in his eyes is, and 
 this passionate monotony of repetition! She must 
 answer. 
 
 " I have not your faculty of expression, and I did 
 not know what to write." 
 
 There is a second of misery and menace in his 
 look; then the sun breaks out again with redoubled 
 power. 
 
 " You thought you could do it better face to 
 face." 
 
 As she neither yeas nor nays this explanation, he 
 goes on exultantly — 
 
 " That is the interpretation that I have been put- 
 ting upon it — that you meant me to put upon it, 
 didn't you? Dare I tell you how I thought you 
 would answer me? " 
 
 He has brought all his artillery to bear upon her, 
 adding that proximity which has often set fire to 
 the hitherto unsuspected tinder in many a heart. 
 
 She had wished ardently to see, to hear, to touch 
 him — it is not his fault that she has not had more 
 of the latter experience — in order to be sure that 
 this is indeed for her, as so undoubtedly for him, 
 the one master feeling of a lifetime; but now that 
 she has done all three she is quite as unsure as ever. 
 In the whirling uncertainty of her sensations there 
 is only one fixed thought: *' If I were quite sure, 
 what heaven it would be! " To this thought comes 
 added, as an unworthy rider, the recollection of 
 Marie's tasteless jest: " It would be impossible to 
 refuse anything to a man with such a nose." 
 
 The fiery whisper in which Randal repeats his 
 question, " Dare I tell you? " plainly shows that he 
 will very shortly answer his own question in the 
 
FOES IN LAW 131 
 
 afifirmative, unless she takes stringent measures to 
 prevent him. 
 
 She steps back a pace on to Kirstie, who is try- 
 ing to rub off her imposed muzzle against the fen- 
 der-bars, and says curtly — 
 
 " No, do not." 
 
 Then, with a new reaction, at sight of the ireful 
 beauty of her lover's face, and the consciousness of 
 her own racing blood, thinking in a kind of hot ter- 
 ror, " It may be the real thing, after all! I may be 
 throwing away the real thing, after all!" she re- 
 calls, and contradicts her first answer. 
 
 " Yes, do, if you wish." 
 
 A few moments later she is staggering away from 
 him. He has kissed her violently, and she has 
 kissed him back. It must be the real thing, or she 
 will never be able to bear to think of herself again. 
 
 Anti-climax follows rapidly. The innocent Kir- 
 stie, too young to understand the situation, and 
 mistaking the phenomena of love, which is itself a 
 species of war, for that vulgarer kind with which 
 she is better acquainted, anxious to join the melee, 
 gets her nose out sideways through her muzzle, and 
 makes for the clergyman's heels. The clamour 
 with which she accompanies this action brings the 
 host and hostess back out of the conservatory. 
 
 " What has happened to that little fiend? " cries 
 Marie's piercing treble. " Oh, she has got her 
 muzzle off! Jim, for Heaven's sake, pick up Lulu! " 
 
 Jim obeys; and in the little excitement that fol- 
 lows, the picking up of the doddering old relic of 
 " dear mamma " into the harbour of Jim's arms, 
 whence she shows the place where her teeth once 
 were at Miss Kirstie, who, standing on her stout 
 
132 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Scotch hind legs, with her forepaws propped 
 against Mr. Trent's shins, shouts her battle-cry up- 
 wards, and the final ejection of Miss Kirstie from 
 her own morning-room ought to give the two 
 actors in the preceding drama time to recover 
 themselves. 
 
 " She really is not fit to be at liberty/' cries the 
 bride, with lightening eyes. Then, turning to 
 Chevening, " Just feel how this poor old thing's 
 heart is beating. Did she succeed in biting a piece 
 out of you?" 
 
 Miss Trent's brain and senses are still beating 
 and whirHng, and it would be impossible to her to 
 look at the person addressed. But her buzzing ears 
 listen with confidence for his answer. He will not 
 give poor Miss Kirstie away for her faithful, if 
 erroneous, championship of the woman who has 
 just made him the enormous sacrifice of the first 
 kiss of her life. With what words of deHcate in- 
 cisiveness, mixed with occult hints of fervid grati- 
 tude, which only she can understand, will he rebuke 
 the interloper for her insolence and incivility? She 
 has not long to wait, but she can hardly believe in 
 the sentence which comes wafted on an angry 
 laugh. 
 
 " Little brute! It is not her fault if she did not." 
 
 " Did she go for you quite unprovoked? " pur- 
 sues the bride, with heated interest. " What had 
 you done to provoke her? " 
 
 The query is a natural one under the circum- 
 stances; but this time Chevening's answer is not 
 ready. 
 
 Lettice shoots a look of agonized appeal at her 
 fellow criminal, which she at once withdraws, hav- 
 
FOES IN LAW 133 
 
 ing only mastered the dreadful fact that a hair of 
 her own is flagrantly sticking on the shoulder of 
 his coat! Has Marie seen it? Was there a lurid 
 meaning in her apparently harmless question? She 
 peeps hurriedly at Mrs. Trent, but her eye's theft 
 brings no satisfaction with it. Marie has always 
 that horrid sparkle about her! Whether or no it 
 is intensified at this moment, poor Miss Trent is 
 quite unable to decide. She makes a bewildered 
 calculation as to how near the conservatory doors 
 the interrupters must have been when The Event 
 was happening. Very, very near, undoubtedly, and 
 yet, if — oh, horror of horrors! — they had seen, Jim 
 would never be speaking as he is in his level, placid, 
 everyday voice. 
 
 " Aberdeen terriers are always rather short in the 
 temper!" 
 
 It is his contribution of oil to the waves; and his 
 sister draws a reUeved inference from it. She has 
 nothing further to upset her through the brief 
 remnant of Randal's visit, during which he shields 
 her from notice by devoting himself entirely to 
 Marie and Lulu, asking the latter's age, and falsely 
 admiring her breeding and manners. 
 
 It is only when the visitor is gone, and Jim has 
 walked a few frosty paces of homeward way with 
 him, leaving the sisters-in-law alone together, that 
 a new and awful bolt falls and splits Lettice's head. 
 
 " It is a beautiful nose! " says Marie, cavalierly, 
 but without repeating her objectionable sentiment, 
 " and if I had not such a cold I should certainly go 
 to hear him hold forth to-night. I have a real ser- 
 vant's taste for evening church. But he deserves 
 to be better valeted. His landlady should not send 
 
134 FOES IN LAW 
 
 him out with long hairs on his coat-sleeve." Hav- 
 ing said it, she goes out of the room lilting. 
 
 It is upon an absolutely transmogrified world 
 that Miss Trent's eyes — late in closing — open next 
 morning. The change is not in the face of nature, 
 for the frost still holds, and from her bed she can 
 see its evidence written large on the cold red east, 
 on the iron trees and the mournful rooks. 
 
 It is within herself that the prodigious meta- 
 morphosis is wrought. Yesterday, as she lay here, 
 at the same hour, looking out at the same phe- 
 nomena, she was herself, her own. To-day ! Well, 
 it is the real thing! Never again must she allow 
 the possibility that it is not to cross her mind. It 
 must be! If it had not been, is it conceivable that 
 she — she of all people (he had told her that she was 
 made of snow, comes in soothing parenthesis) — 
 
 should have, of her own accord Yes, that is 
 
 what makes it so irrevocable, it was of her own ac- 
 cord. Well, there is nothing now left for her, no 
 shattering uncertainties or tormenting doubts, 
 nothing but to enter in and take possession of the 
 kingdom of heaven, whose key her own hand has 
 turned. 
 
 With thoughts so radiantly coloured as she tells 
 herself hers are, it is surprising that her maid on 
 calling her asks whether she has a headache. 
 
 At breakfast the illusion might be possible to 
 Miss Trent that the old regime still exists — the two 
 places laid; the emancipated and royally disobe- 
 dient Kirstie continually returning to the forbidden 
 ecstasy of routing through the shut window the 
 colony of expectant birds outside, and having her 
 
FOES IN LAW 135 
 
 sin repeatedly condoned by the weak-minded pair 
 inside. Yet there is a difference. Formerly the 
 brother and sister had never heeded whether they 
 were talking or not, in the reliant certainty of com- 
 plete understanding, whether mute or vocal. Now 
 there is a slight tendency towards making polite 
 conversation for each other; but it is not very 
 marked. There is in Jim's manner — to his trepidat- 
 ing sister's acute relief — no evidence that Marie has 
 imparted to him the discovery made by her terrible 
 eyes, and the catering for the birds is an immense 
 help. 
 
 Through the winter and far into the spring, when 
 they become picksome and dainty, the winged 
 singers are liberally entertained at Trent; and the 
 word must have gone about among them that it 
 is so, for they now daily crowd the terrace walk 
 in unscrupulous multitudes, pathetically hunger- 
 tamed, flying on little weakened pinions, and yet 
 with spirit enough left to peck and snub and eject 
 each other as occasion offers. 
 
 In holding back the struggling, straining Kirstie 
 from raiding them when the window is opened, in 
 pointing out to each other the new arrivals, in 
 counting the blue-tits standing on their heads in- 
 side the cocoa-nut, the finches pecking the sus- 
 pended lard, and the thirsty thrushes drinking out 
 of the earthen pans, brother and sister are them- 
 selves again. It is not Jim's fault that they do not 
 part without a slight jar, which begins by a polite 
 inquiry from Lettice as to the state of her sister- 
 in-law's cold. 
 
 " It is decidedly better. Why do not you go up 
 and see her? " 
 
136 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Do not you think that every Englishwoman's 
 bedroom is her castle? We might quarrel so early 
 in the morning " — laughing, not quite pleasantly. 
 " By-the-by, as she told you her version of our dis- 
 pute yesterday, I suppose I ought to tell you mine." 
 
 " She never told me any version," replies Jim, 
 sighing wearily. " She never mentioned it or you." 
 
 The implication that they had been occupied 
 with pleasanter topics than herself, though unin- 
 tended, galls Miss Trent so much as to drown the 
 remorse she would otherwise have felt at having 
 been so manifestly outdone in magnanimity. 
 
 " Marie announced her intention of calling on 
 Mrs. Fairfax." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well! " Seeing an unwonted danger-signal in 
 Jim's slow eye, she adds, " Of course she does not 
 know the carte-du-pays — what is possible and im- 
 possible here. Just conceive what our mother's 
 feelings would have been at such a suggestion! " 
 
 There is a moment's silence, during which the 
 thought may have crossed Jim's unimaginative 
 mind that there are advantages attached to being a 
 foundling. Then he says — 
 
 " If no one did anything but what their parents 
 had done before them, the world would not get on 
 much." 
 
 It is a truism of the purest dye, and uttered with 
 commendable temper, but to his sister it seems as 
 if the red flag of anarchy were waving in blood be- 
 fore her eyes. But even her sister-in-law's iniquities 
 recede into the background of her mind, whence 
 they had been only momentarily drawn, annihilated 
 by the overwhelming interest of her own affairs. 
 
FOES IN LAW 137 
 
 Randal will, of course, be here almost before she 
 can draw breath to ask Jim for her. He may ar- 
 rive at any moment. With his headlong passion 
 and the weapon she herself has put into his hand 
 he will expect to carry all before him. What may 
 be the effect of any obstacle put in the floodtide of 
 such a torrent she dares not speculate. 
 
 And Jim? Since his first contemptuous recep- 
 tion of the news of Chevening's declaration, on the 
 evening when he had announced his own marriage, 
 the subject seems to have passed absolutely from 
 his mind. Marie is, no doubt, the sponge that has 
 wiped it_away, as she has wiped all else. He has 
 seen, with apparent oblivion of any reason for a 
 difference, the reappearance of the curate at the 
 Sunday luncheon-table, nor did his face afterwards 
 show the least consciousness of anything abnormal 
 in the appearance of the two countenances so 
 guiltily conscious of their recent juxtaposition. Is 
 it possible that he can have utterly forgotten? 
 
 There is profound mortification in the thought 
 that it may be so; and yet the alternative, that a 
 wish to be rid of her may have reconciled him to 
 the prospect, is not much more comforting. To be 
 given up with reluctant blessings and regrets to her 
 lover is the boon to which, of all others, she must 
 now most aspire, but against being thrown into 
 his arms as into a waste-paper basket heart and 
 spirit revolt. Will it be better to prepare Jim a lit- 
 tle? 
 
 Recalling that she has already succeeded in 
 ruffling him, and realizing that in her present state 
 of high tension any repetition of the ridicule with 
 which he had received her former announcement 
 
138 FOES IN LAW 
 
 would be more than she could bear, she decides to 
 wait quietly for what will happen. But to wait 
 quietly — that is just what on trial seems most im- 
 possible. 
 
 She goes to her own sitting-room, the room over 
 her retention of which she has kept what so far 
 seems an unnecessarily bristling watch. The win- 
 dows command the park and the path by which the 
 expected one will approach. 
 
 In a half-fascinated fear of seeing him too soon, 
 she turns resolutely away. The room is crowded 
 with relics of her departed parent. It had been her 
 mother's, and in the first irrational devotion of her 
 grief she had resolved that nothing in it should 
 ever be changed. It has been impossible to adhere 
 quite literally to this determination. Time and 
 new tastes have made creeping encroachments; an 
 extra bookcase has been needed to contain the 
 books recommended, and in some cases given, by 
 Randal, but the character of the room is unaltered. 
 The bureau is the same one whose drawers and 
 pigeon-holes have since her earliest childhood been 
 filled with the accounts, records, and documents of 
 the numerous local charities founded or supported 
 by the late Mrs. Trent. She sits down at it, casting 
 her eyes with a melancholy pride over the neatly 
 docketed and admirably arranged files. How well 
 she has carried out tht charge that had devolved 
 upon her! 
 
 Perhaps it will be wise to glance in final survey 
 over the receipts, cheque-books, etc., before giving 
 them up into the hands — how woefully incompe- 
 tent! — of her successor. She carries out her in- 
 tention conscientiously, though ungi,ble to prevent 
 
FOES IN LAW 139 
 
 her thoughts fluttering agitatedly away from bene- 
 fit clubs and mothers' guilds, or to check the 
 palpitating listening for a door-bell which could not 
 possibly be audible. 
 
 Now and again, as evidences of her own method 
 and order meet her eye, the thought comes streaked 
 with satisfaction of what an admirable clergyman's 
 wife she will make. 
 
 A clergyman's wife! A clergyman! There is 
 something ludicrously incongruous between the 
 two phrases and her latest memory of him. What 
 was there of the spiritual guide and the earnest dis- 
 ciple in that mad embrace? 
 
 The answer comes clothed in scarlet, and her 
 forehead falls forward on a sheaf of Friendly Girls. 
 But she raises it presently, shaking off the virgin 
 shame that oppresses her. If it is the real thing, as 
 it is, as it is, as it is, there is nothing to blush for. 
 
 He has told her that his is not one of the exalted 
 natures that can do without the prop of human 
 love, that lacking it, soul and intellect starve and 
 perish. Well, he shall have it. Having once given, 
 there shall be no niggardly doling out of her gift. 
 He shall have " full measure, pressed down, and 
 shaken together, and running over." 
 
 She has plenty of time to plan her liberality, 
 plenty of time for her heart to glow and unglow 
 again, for the morning passes and nothing hap- 
 pens. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 By luncheon-time Miss Trent is in an unenviable 
 state of mind, but of the many hypotheses she has 
 started to account for the unaccountable, one has 
 ousted the others, namely, that he has been con- 
 temptuously dismissed by Jim, without any refer- 
 ence to herself. 
 
 The idea fills her with blazing indignation, and 
 she has to take herself well in hand before she can 
 respond, with tolerable calm, to the gong's admira- 
 bly punctual summons. 
 
 Jim is already in his place, and there is no sign 
 of guilt or agitation in his contented face and even 
 voice. 
 
 " Marie says we are not to wait for her." 
 
 It is a formula that both of them are destined 
 to become well acquainted with, and ultimately to 
 dispense with as superfluous. 
 
 When luncheon is half over the mistress of the 
 house saunters in, but even then does not sit down 
 in her place, but strolls round the table, picking a 
 grape here, cutting herself a slice of chocolate cake 
 there. She ends by setting Lulu upon the table- 
 cloth, and inviting her to walk across it to Jim. 
 
 The old dog, who in her day has been a beauty 
 and a Japanese spaniel, accomplishes this feat in 
 time, with only the two casualties of an overset 
 water-bottle and a broken flower-glass. 
 
 140 
 
FOES IN LAW 141 
 
 The performance is witnessed with an ire too 
 deep for barks by Miss Kirstie, who, seated on her 
 high chair, whence she is not allowed to extend 
 even a paw towards the board, testifies in short 
 muzzled howls against this disgraceful instance of 
 nepotism. 
 
 As far as inclination goes, her mistress could 
 bark too. She relieves her feelings by quoting im- 
 aginary remarks made by Kirstie upon favouritism, 
 interlopers, etc. 
 
 Marie rejoins, with improbably smart repartees, 
 attributed to the tottering Lulu. 
 
 Mrs. Trent gets so much the best of it in this 
 amiable game, that Kirstie's guns are soon silenced. 
 
 Whether pleased at her own success, or in con- 
 cession to a distressed wrinkle in her husband's 
 brow, Marie ceases to be Lulu's mouth-piece, and 
 addresses a civil question to her sister-in-law. 
 
 " Has she been out this morning? " 
 
 " No, she has not." 
 
 The other expresses polite surprise. " I thought 
 that you were such an out-of-door person — Jim 
 has always held you up to me as an example — that 
 you never could stay indoors in any weather." 
 
 Miss Trent winces. Does that hateful sparkle 
 and curiosity mean more than appears? 
 
 " I was busy " — adding, in elucidation, and with 
 a pale hope of being disagreeable — " busy looking 
 over the accounts of the societies I have managed, 
 before giving them over to you." 
 
 She is successful. For a minute Marie looks dis- 
 comfited, but cannot, in the end, be said to be 
 worsted, though her rejoinder is smilingly ad- 
 dressed to Jim. 
 
142 FOES IN LAW 
 
 "You kept the 'societies' dark! If you had 
 mentioned them you knew that I should have 
 shown you the door! " 
 
 Her delicate features resume their serenity. Al- 
 ready she has learnt that nothing stirs her sister-in- 
 law to such blind dumb wrath as the implication 
 that there ever was, or could be, any doubt as to 
 her own alacrity in accepting Mr. Trent. She has 
 eaten hardly any luncheon; but she strolls, pleased, 
 out of the dining-room, feeling that she has 
 " scored." 
 
 A little later, Lettice, restlessly walking about the 
 morning-room, overhears, through the open door, a 
 dialogue between the wedded pair, who have ap- 
 parently come into the hall. 
 
 " Have you finished your letters? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What a budget!" 
 
 There is no objectionable lilt in the voice that 
 answers — 
 
 " How should I live if I did not write to them? " 
 
 The rejoinder has a note of distress. " You miss 
 them as badly as you expected? " 
 
 No audible answer, but the clumsy haste of a 
 slov/ man in the consolatory. 
 
 " Summer will soon be here." 
 
 " Soon! " 
 
 " And meanwhile, when I can get away, we will 
 run up to the Albemarle for a fortnight or so; and 
 you shall go and see Esmeralda every night in the 
 new play. Every night! Gabriel shall take you. 
 Just you and he alone." 
 
 " No, no; you shall come too. I do not mind 
 my old Freak! " 
 
FOES IN LAW 143 
 
 The high gaiety is returning to her tones, 
 
 "And now you are going to let me drive you 
 down to the village in the pony-cart? " 
 
 " Yes; and you will take me to call on Mrs. 
 Fairfax? '' 
 
 " Of course, if you wish/' 
 
 " What would PoHceman X say? " 
 
 They have gone off laughing together before 
 Lettice realizes that the engaging sobriquet applies 
 to herself; and is evidently one habitually used be- 
 tween husband and wife. 
 
 Puzzled, mortified, miserable, she watches them 
 drive off, the fresh pony pulling like mad, the har- 
 ness-mounts flashing, and Marie, toqued like a 
 tropical bird, unsuitable, Londony, and lovely, 
 sending her sharp mirth through the stinging still- 
 ness of the air. 
 
 Miss Trent's eyes wander from her dwindling 
 relatives to the church path, upon which no human 
 speck is yet visible. What can have so changed 
 him? Illness? Perhaps, highly strung as he is, 
 weakened by previous suffering, the sudden reac- 
 tion from despair to such intense joy may have 
 brought on a return of nerve-breakdown. 
 
 As the hours pass, and he does not appear, this 
 theory establishes itself more and more firmly in 
 her mind. In restless discomfort she goes out-of- 
 doors, telling the butler — an inward blush accom- 
 panies the announcement — that she does not mean 
 to leave the gardens. 
 
 One of the head-gardener's boys has broken his 
 leg playing hockey on the ice, and she goes to see 
 him; the main motive of her visit leavened, per- 
 haps, by a hope of hearing soothing regrets for the 
 
144 FOES IN LAW 
 
 old regime from the boy's mother, to whom she has 
 always been specially kind. 
 
 Mrs. Macneill is not, apparently, of those who 
 " let others hail the rising sun ! " She prefers to 
 do it herself; and her enthusiasm is excessive over 
 the bride's beauty and the graciousness of her man- 
 ner, which seeriis to have consisted in slapping the 
 whole family on the back, literally as well as figur- 
 atively, when brought by Jim to make their ac- 
 quaintance. 
 
 It is with spirits, to say the least, not raised that 
 Miss Trent takes leave. 
 
 The coachman's wife has a quinsy, and the next 
 visit is paid to her. She is in bed, choking, and al- 
 most inarticulate, yet finds means to convey her 
 sense of the extraordinary rejuvenation wrought 
 by his marriage in the squire. Through the fumes 
 of a steam-kettle she sends her opinion that " he 
 does not look like the same gentleman." 
 
 Lettice Hstens in silence, and departs, saying to 
 herself that the feudal feeling is extinct. No hurry- 
 ing footman pursues her to stove or fernery; and 
 she is able to end her cold — in every sense — giro 
 undisturbed. 
 
 Jim returns alone to tea. " I left Marie at the 
 church. The brougham is to fetch her at half-past 
 six." 
 
 " At the church? " 
 
 " Yes, playing the organ. You know how mu- 
 sical she is! " 
 
 Lettice does not know it; the memory of the 
 punished piano and the deafening music-hall cho- 
 ruses in the Wimbledon drawing-room have led 
 her to no such conclusion. 
 
FOES IN LAW 145 
 
 " Did you leave her alone there? " 
 
 " Well, no, Chevening was with her; he had been 
 showing her the church, and he very good-natur- 
 edly offered to blow for her." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Marie asked him to dinner to-night. I — I hope 
 you do not mind? " 
 
 " Mind! Why should I mind? " 
 
 " Oh, that is all right." 
 
 The relief of his tone, coupled with the slight 
 trouble that had marked the announcement of his 
 wife's hospitahty, shows Lettice that he has not 
 forgotten. 
 
 All right! That is scarcely the epithet that his 
 sister applies to the situation when she escapes to 
 her room a little later to face it alone. 
 
 Mrs. Trent returns in tearing spirits, highly audi- 
 ble before she is well within the hall door, scorning 
 the summons of the dressing-bell, resolutely stay- 
 ing on in the morning-room with one paste-buckled 
 foot on the fender, and her Macaw toque a good 
 deal on one side, while she jubilantly goes over 
 again with Jim the details of what has evidently 
 been a triumphal progress through the village. 
 
 At dinner her radiancy and her volubility reach 
 a still higher level. She has a thousand questions 
 to put to Chevening as to his flock, and if he does 
 not immediately recognize by her description those 
 members of it to whom she is alluding, recklessly 
 mimics their peculiarities in utter disregard of the 
 silent critics in and out of livery behind her chair. 
 
 As Lettice listens she realizes with painful won- 
 der how much more the village has come out to its 
 new patroness in an hour than a lifetime of not con- 
 
146 FOES IN LAW 
 
 sciously condescending kindness had ever made it 
 do to its old one. The ancient gentlewomen living 
 each on her microscopic rentes in little houses 
 round the common, Miss Smith, Miss Butler, and 
 Miss Lamotte, have apparently confided to Mrs. 
 Trent dark suspicions of their " generals " and lit- 
 tle grievances against each other, such as her sister- 
 in-law has never evoked; and even Mrs. Taylor 
 — Lettice had thought that Mrs. Taylor would be 
 loyal — has breathed to this brand-new comer that 
 revolt against Providence for her unclerical paucity 
 of children and plethora of bilious headaches, which 
 Miss Trent had imagined to have been dropped 
 into her own safe ear alone. But worse follows. 
 
 " And the hall — the Rachel Hall, as you call it? 
 Why do you call it so? " 
 
 " It was built in memory of Mrs. Trent; her 
 name was Rachel,'* replies Randal, in a lowered 
 voice, stealing a surreptitious look across at 
 Lettice. 
 
 Her eyes are on her plate. She is dressed with 
 rigid simplicity; certainly paler, and if possible, 
 neater than ever, the little bunch of snowdrops she 
 wears completing the picture of almost awful 
 chastity which she presents. The wonder flashes 
 across the curate's brain whether this lofty virgin 
 can be the creature who twenty-four hours ago 
 clung about his neck with a passion scarcely infe- 
 rior to his own. 
 
 " Oh, I see! " — ^with a perceptible drop of the 
 voice too, and a slight respectful pause. Then, 
 with a thrill of delight and interest, " You give 
 plays and entertainments there? " 
 
 ** No-o; we have temperance meetings, and 
 
FOES IN LAW 147 
 
 University Extension Lectures, and sometimes a 
 magic lantern." 
 
 Marie's jaw drops for a moment, but only for a 
 moment. 
 
 " We must get up something when my sister 
 comes. That depends, of course, upon how long 
 the new play runs. You know that she is on the 
 stage — lucky girl! So should I be, if Jim had not 
 insisted on marrying me." 
 
 She heaves a loud sigh, and Lettice's large white 
 eyelids slightly quiver. All the servants are in the 
 room. Mrs. Trent's elbows are on the table — 
 where they mostly are — and her hands are flourish- 
 ing about. Her unusual amount of gesticulation 
 is, no doubt, part of the heritage from " dear 
 mamma." 
 
 " I want to get up a ballet," pursues Marie, giv- 
 ing a delighted glint of her eye in the direction of 
 the ice statue of disapproval on her left. " Mrs. 
 Taylor says that she has never seen a ballet! I have 
 a club of ballet-girls in London, and am going to 
 have them down here, three or four at a time, to 
 rest and recoup. Poor things, they are dreadfully 
 overworked! but they will not stay if they are not 
 amused — quite right, too." 
 
 She throws this gage across the table at Jim, 
 in obvious challenge; but his mode of taking it up 
 is to nod in baffling assent, with a smile that seems 
 to say, " You are not going to get a rise out of 
 me. 
 
 The bride turns again to Chevening. " Have 
 you ever acted? " 
 
 "Yes, now and then, before I took Holy 
 Orders." 
 
148 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Never since? " 
 
 Her little face is brimful of gay relish for the 
 flippancy of her implication. His ladylove listen- 
 ing in unspeakable protest, is pleased to hear some- 
 thing of the Apostle note that has always awed 
 herself in the stifif-backed quality of his rejoinder. 
 
 " Not consciously, I hope.'* 
 
 It is the one bright spot during dinner. Per- 
 haps because the rebuke is so absolutely ignored as 
 to lead only to a comprehensive offer to coach him 
 for any role he may like to undertake, and to 
 searching inquiries as to what class or part he most 
 shone in during his lay career, that the note of dis- 
 approval does not reappear. 
 
 What does reappear is Lulu, threading her 
 dilapidated way among the decanters; dropping 
 her early Victorian ringlets over the dishes; get- 
 ting her tail into the candles. And not a sign of 
 regret that Miss Kirstie's high chair knows her 
 no more comes to soothe her swelling-hearted 
 mistress. 
 
 Will Marie never remove her elbow and push 
 back her chair, and finish the cigarette, held so long 
 between two fingers in the eagerness of her chatter, 
 as to go out? She does so at last, and the ex-mis- 
 tress, chafed and mortified, passes, still downcast- 
 eyed, through the door. 
 
 Marie throws herself into a chair, and drawing 
 a candle towards her, lights a fresh cigarette. 
 
 " The conservatory is not lit," she says, " so I 
 can't take Jim there to-night; but I will join him 
 in the smoking-room." 
 
 She says it in her most off-hand way, and there 
 is no detectable malice in her eye; but Lettice 
 
FOES IN LAW 149 
 
 starts, wincing. There is no attempt to disguise 
 the fact that Mrs. Trent is behind the scenes. 
 
 " I can't think why he went into the Church," 
 pursues Marie, still enacting the proverbial fool's 
 part, but with no apparent consciousness of it. " I 
 am sure he has no vocation, and " — regretfully — 
 " he would have made a good actor." 
 
 It is too much, and poor Miss Trent gives herself 
 away. 
 
 " I think, if you do not mind, we will not discuss 
 him." 
 
 Mrs. Trent is as good as her word, and without 
 taking much trouble to disguise the overtness of 
 her intentions, leaps to her feet on the entrance of 
 the two men, and publicly recapturing her kicked- 
 off shoes, whirls the unprotesting, as much as un- 
 comprehending, Jim away into space. 
 
 Chevening looks after her for the few seconds 
 she remains in sight, before he faces his mistress 
 with the question — 
 
 " Does she know? " 
 
 Miss Trent is standing drawn up in ruffled, yet 
 trembling maidenliness against the jamb of the tall 
 chimney-piece. 
 
 " I do not know." 
 
 There is trouble and agitation and injury in her 
 whole aspect. The next moment she is clasped 
 without preface or permit to his high black breast. 
 
 Her first impulse is to escape from the sudden 
 taken-for-grantedness; but, remembering that it is 
 the real thing, and that her over-night action leaves 
 no doubt that she is as much swept oiT her feet as 
 he, she acquiesces, and her rejoinder to his per- 
 fervid "At last! " is so full of upbraiding passion 
 
15© FOES IN LAW 
 
 as to thrill with astonishment both herself and him. 
 Her stout virginal defence of the outworks had 
 not prepared him for so sudden and complete a sur- 
 render of heart and lips. 
 
 " Why is it at last? " her mouth sighs to his. 
 
 " You may well ask, sweet." 
 
 But it is several seconds before his sweet gets 
 any other explanation than inarticulate caresses. 
 
 " I have expected you all day." 
 
 They sit down at last, holding each other's hands. 
 
 " It has been a day of annoyances," the curate 
 begins, with a ring of unfeigned irritation in his 
 voice. " All morning I was with the vicar, trying 
 to get him to see reason." 
 
 *' About what?" 
 
 Chevening passes a long, well-bred hand — his 
 only free one — over his silky hair with a gesture of 
 impatience. 
 
 " I have been asked to preach at Swyndford, the 
 Duke of Swyndford's, on behalf of the Duchess's 
 Home for Fallen Mothers." 
 
 " Yes? and the vicar objects? " — incredulously. 
 
 " He made a difficulty over it. The date is, un- 
 luckily, that on which the Bishop of Stepney is to 
 preach at Bradling, and it seems Taylor had set his 
 heart upon going to hear him — at least, that is 
 what he said; perhaps, without his knowing it, a 
 little jalousie de metier came in too." 
 
 " Oh, no, I am sure not! " — ^warmly. " So you 
 have had to refuse? " 
 
 " No-o. The vicar is a right-thinking fellow, 
 and he saw at last that he had no business to stand 
 in my light. It is an opening fraught with possi- 
 bilities. The duke has an immense amount of pat- 
 
FOES IN LAW 151 
 
 ronage, which the duchess practically dispenses. It 
 may be the beginning of better things! Now more 
 than ever" — the falcon eye lightening, and chest 
 expanding — " with such an incentive as you have 
 given me, I am resolved not to be much longer 
 curate of Trent." 
 
 She listens doubtfully, halting between two opin- 
 ions, catching something of the flame of his ambi- 
 tion, yet not quite content with its quality, and 
 heartily distressed at the unselfish vicar having 
 been pushed to the wall. 
 
 "You are glad? " he asks, his own brow clouding 
 a little at the cloud on hers. " Oh, if you knew 
 what the thought is to me that never again in joy 
 or grief shall I be alone! " 
 
 For a second she feels oddly unresponsive; then 
 remembering, presses his hand. 
 
 " You have accounted for the morning," she 
 says, smiling; " but what about the afternoon? " 
 
 " It has been a day of contretemps! " he answers 
 with a recurrence of exasperation. " I was on rny 
 way to you, having only just escaped the clutches 
 of the printer's devil from Bradling, who came over 
 about the proofs of my Advent sermons. You 
 know I have been asked to publish them? " 
 
 " I did not know it." 
 
 Her eye shines. How gratifying! 
 
 " I was just getting on my bicycle when Jim 
 and his * missus * drove up, and I had to go with 
 them to show her the church, and then nothing 
 would serve her but she must try the organ — I 
 should think a banjo would be nearer her mark — 
 and I had to blow for her." 
 
 "What a hard fate!" 
 
152 FOES IN LAW 
 
 He detects a little point of jealousy in the good- 
 humoured irony of her phrase. 
 
 " It was to me. And by the time she had played 
 over every chant and voluntary she could lay her 
 hands on — a fine hash she made of them! — it was 
 too late." 
 
 There is such an unaffected weariness and impa- 
 tience in his tone, and the action that he fits to his 
 explanation is so tender and suitable, that the 
 weight which has been on it all day lifts partially — 
 she herself could not say why it does not entirely 
 — from her heart. 
 
 " I was disappointed," she says; then, feeling that 
 the expression is too tame for the situation, " That 
 goes without saying; but the more so because I 
 cannot bear that there should be a delay in telling 
 Jim. He would probably not make any difficulties 
 now." 
 
 There is a rather mournful emphasis on the ad- 
 verb, and its effect upon Chevening is not as exhil- 
 arating as might have been expected. 
 
 " He would say to me, ' May I ask how you pro- 
 pose to support my sister? ' " 
 
 " And you would answer, ' She is only too proud 
 and pleased to support me.' " 
 
 The girl accompanies this pretty presentation to 
 him of her loaves and fishes with a smile of real 
 pleasure, but he does not seem to hear. 
 
 " How can I make him understand that I have 
 a future? I know it" — ^with a raised elation of 
 voice, and flashing, confident eyes — " since last 
 night, I know it — know that I shall come to the 
 front, that I shall make myself felt; but by what 
 method can I convey that to him? Nothing short 
 
FOES IN LAW 153 
 
 of the accomplished fact will ever reach dear old 
 Jim." 
 
 The slight and unintended contempt oi the tone 
 used piques the really affectionate sister. 
 
 " We are cut out of the same block, he and I. 
 Marie said that I am * poor old Jim in petticoats.* 
 She applied it to the outside, but it is quite as true 
 of the inside." 
 
 " To the outside! " cries he, scanning the fair face 
 so close to his with passionate derision. ** Love in 
 her case must indeed be blind! " 
 
 Once again the reassuring thrill at his contact — 
 reassuring as to this being Love indeed — sends its 
 tremulous quiver over her. It silences her. 
 
 " Why should you ask his leave? " asks Randal, 
 presently, in a key that has less of tenderness than 
 of pride and revolt in it; " he did not ask yours." 
 
 The parallel jars upon her. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 The early days of a betrothal are generally sup- 
 posed to have less of alloy in their gold than is 
 to be found in any of the other occasions where 
 man's and woman's destiny meets. It is said that 
 the two sure ways of being spoken well of are to 
 be engaged to be married and to die. In both cases 
 only your virtues emerge like mountain-tops from 
 the sea of kindness that washes over you. 
 
 And if your situation produces this optimistic 
 view among your mere acquaintances, or the 
 friends who have mastered all your weak points, 
 what must it do in the case of the him or the her 
 to whom you have never shown any but your sun- 
 kissed side? And though it is a rule to which, as 
 every one knows, there is no exception, that an 
 intimate knowledge of any human creature must 
 reveal some unexpected frailty, some little unhand- 
 someness at best, yet each freshly troth-plighted 
 pair of lovers believes that the other will always 
 keep up to the same impossible level of beauty, 
 amiability, and tenderness upon which Love's first 
 valuation had set them. 
 
 When the inevitable discovery comes, it may 
 be of nothing worse than that he can't keep awake 
 while she is reading aloud to him, or that she has 
 some pet stinginesses with which he has no sym- 
 pathy, the disappointment is as great as would 
 
 154 
 
FOES IN LAW 155 
 
 Adam's have been if he had discovered in his flaw- 
 less Eve a hair-lip or club-foot. 
 
 Lettice's is not the same case as that of those 
 persons who fall into each other's arms out of the 
 blue, knowing nothing of one another's antece- 
 dents. She would have said that in Chevening's 
 character there was nothing left for her to learn. 
 The last year of intimacy has taught her not only 
 the keenness of his longings to spend the gifts of 
 which he can't but be conscious in leaving the 
 world a higher and better place than he found it, 
 but also the shortness of his temper when his lofty 
 aspirations have their Pegasus wings clipped by the 
 vicar, and are set to the obscure daily plough of 
 house-to-house visiting. She has, with thrilled 
 ears, heard him; has seen him, white with emotion, 
 thrust home into his hearers the sword of his fiery 
 warning against the sins of the flesh. Once or 
 twice it has struck her that there is a note of per- 
 sonal suffering in the burning words which picture 
 that warfare. She has listened to his phiHppics 
 against luxury; his scorn of cotton-wool-wrapped 
 bodies and naked souls; his noble pictures of the 
 severe high bliss of renunciation and abstinence. 
 But she has also known how thoroughly upset he 
 has been by some little extra nastiness in the food 
 provided by his landlady, and how much truth 
 there is in the accusation, gently, regretfully, and 
 only occasionally, brought against him by the vicar 
 of neglecting the schools. 
 
 He has always told her that his nature is not an 
 ascetic one, has implied that the meshes of sense 
 hold him with a tenacity superior to that with 
 which they grip others, and she has acquiesced in 
 
156 FOES IN LAW 
 
 silent sympathy with the stress of his fight, never 
 for a moment doubting the vigorous reality of his 
 resistance, nor his ultimate victory in the war. 
 
 She could not herself tell for how much the con- 
 viction that his future lies in her hands, to be made 
 or unmade by his love for her, has counted in her 
 abandonment of herself to him. There are chas- 
 tised pure souls whom a balked or betrayed devo- 
 tion to some human object lifts to a higher plane 
 of holiness and strenuous labour for God and man, 
 to whom the extinction of the earthly light serves 
 only to turn the heavenly from a glimmer into a 
 blaze; but to this saintly fellowship Lettice has long 
 known that her Randal does not belong. 
 
 Yet with all this preparation of foreknowledge 
 there is surprise, tinged with vague dread, in the 
 uneasy compound of feelings that she takes to bed 
 with her on this first night of her engagement. His 
 ambition is a familiar thing to her, sympathized 
 with and encouraged through many a warm twilit 
 hour, of champing revolt on his part against the 
 narrowness of his limitations, the lack of a larger 
 air in which to set free the message his labouring 
 soul has to tell the world. She has rejoiced with 
 him over each little indication that slowly but 
 surely he is beginning to be heard of beyond the 
 goose-haunted village green; has upborne him in 
 hours of desperation, when he has tramped up and 
 down the room, crying in heart-wrung accents, 
 " Am I going to my grave without having had any 
 audience but Miss Smith, Miss Butler, and Miss 
 Lamotte? " 
 
 Something in the tone in which he utters this 
 arraignment of providence always makes the parrot 
 
FOES IN LAW 157 
 
 scream, and the scolding and covering the too 
 sensitive bird with a snatched-up bit of brocade 
 has more than once brought a welcome relaxation 
 of tension to the suffering apostle and his confi- 
 dant. But the sympathy and encouragement have 
 always been poured forth so liberally in the ardent 
 faith that there is a message, and that it is to deliver 
 it that expansion and elevation are so passionately 
 craved. 
 
 Of the message there has to-day been little trace, 
 and there has been a good deal of frank worldliness 
 in the triumph of the lover's tone when announcing 
 the opening he sees ahead of him in the invitation 
 to preach at Swyndford. That the vicar should be 
 kicked into the corner, and that a duchess and 
 fallen mothers should be the first step in the ladder 
 that leads up to light, is no part of Miss Trent's 
 programme. 
 
 His disinclination to tell Jim of their engagement 
 has a possibly noble side, upon which she tries 
 through the watches of the night to keep her eyes 
 fixed. He is too proud to ask for her as a beggar; 
 he would fain come with something in his hand, 
 some opening prospect or beckoning hope, and 
 this most honourable desire perfectly explains the 
 apparently eager selfishness of his snatch at a 
 chance of distinction. Yet she passes a wretched 
 night, distressed by fears and misgivings. 
 
 Is his love for her, after all, going to materialize 
 instead of spiritualizing him? For her sake is he 
 going to snatch at the loaves and fishes which of 
 himself he would have contemptuously passed by? 
 
 '' Give me a little respite," he has said, just at 
 ihe end. " Our secret will never be the same thing 
 
158 FOES IN LAW 
 
 after it has been handled and pawed and jawed 
 over, and then I will go to Jim with my mendicant's 
 bowl and ask him to put you into it. We both 
 know what his answer will be, and he will be quite 
 right. I have nothing, I am nothing; and it would 
 be waste of breath to say to him as I say to you " 
 — his stature seems to increase by a full inch as he 
 disdainfully utters the words — " I shall not always 
 be curate of Trent." 
 
 It is with a heart not agitated by the bounding 
 motion appropriate to her situation that next 
 morning, about eleven o'clock, Lettice knocks at 
 the door of her sister-in-law's dressing-room. 
 
 " May I come in? " 
 
 " Who is If But come in, whoever you are." 
 
 Upon this reckless permission, whose full audac- 
 ity is not realized until the inchoate state of Mrs. 
 Trent's toilet is revealed, Lettice enters. 
 
 Marie's dressing has apparently been arrested 
 by two different and on the surface discrepant oc- 
 cupations, evidenced by the lotion-bottle from 
 which she is bathing Lulu's eyes, and the half-writ- 
 ten letter on the blotting-pad upon her knee. The 
 extreme lengthiness of her toilette operations is 
 due not to any excessive care in decorating herself, 
 but to the fact that at every stage of them they are 
 checked by the impulse — instantly obeyed — to- 
 wards some other and more interesting employ- 
 ment. Sometimes it is to clean a bird-cage, some- 
 times to try a new song on the banjo, sometimes 
 to run over the last items of stage news in a theatri- 
 cal paper; but there is always something, and that 
 something always makes her late. 
 
 She is never in the least repentant or regretful 
 
FOES IN LAW 159 
 
 that it IS so. Although she is ever prepared for 
 disapproval in her sister-in-law, she would be quite 
 unable to understand the distaste and indignation 
 with which her small white fur-and-satin-wrapped 
 figure and the sea of fine wavy hair billowing liber- 
 ally about her tiny face are regarded by her visitor. 
 
 Lettice's own toilet is always carried out with the 
 straight directness with which she attacks all the 
 problems of life, with which, were she a man and a 
 soldier, she would go up a breach. 
 
 " I am too early," she says, with an austere 
 glance at the tall clock on the landing, where she is 
 still standing. " I see that you are not ready." 
 
 " I am as ready as I shall be for some time to 
 come," replies Marie, brazenly; "but ready for 
 what? " 
 
 " You forget, perhaps" — with alarming civility — 
 " that I asked you to let me go over the accounts of 
 the societies, of which you will now have the man- 
 agement, before I give them up into your hands." 
 
 The hands mentioned fly up to the owner's face 
 and cover it, with the pettish gesture of a child 
 shirking physic, then drop down again. 
 
 " Why should I have the management of them? " 
 
 " Surely it is your place." 
 
 " I never do anything because it is my place." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Why should you give them up? You are here, 
 you will be here — till you marry." If there is no 
 great exhilaration in the voice that conveys this 
 statement of fact, there is undoubtedly a touch of 
 impudence in the rider added to it. " And perhaps 
 even then you may not be too far off to take charge 
 of them, and of us." - 
 
i6o FOES IN LAW 
 
 It is too much. The overheard " Policeman X '* 
 and Jim's laugh at it recur stingingly to a hearer 
 already overset by the impertinent bad taste of 
 Marie's implication. She draws the door towards 
 her in order to shut it on the outside, but the other 
 calls her back. 
 
 " Do not go. Let us have it out now. We are 
 bound to have it out some time." 
 
 Lettice returns with dignified reluctance. '' I do 
 not understand what you mean." 
 
 " Oh, you soon will," retorts Marie, with her 
 short, high laugh. " I mean that I am never going 
 to have anything to say to your societies and 
 things." 
 
 The dart is launched with a resolution that shows 
 how entirely in earnest the small hand that hurls 
 it is. 
 
 " Have you told Jim so? " 
 
 " Jim will be delighted. I mean, he will not care 
 twopence one way or the other." 
 
 She watches for a moment with subdued glee the 
 discomfited philanthropist before her; then — for 
 her — grows grave. 
 
 " Whatever you began, I should be sure to make 
 a mess of, and vice versa. If I am let alone I shall 
 do very well. I have my own little methods. I 
 see that I am going to get on very well with every- 
 body. I do not in the least expect you to believe 
 it, but wherever I have lived hitherto I have always 
 been rather liked." 
 
 There is a sort of wistfulness underlying the bel- 
 ligerence of her tone, and Lettice is not sure that 
 the nether lip of the Cupid's-bow mouth does not 
 twitch a little. She feels a momentary softening; 
 
FOES IN LAW i6i 
 
 but it disappears in a few seconds before the flip- 
 pant liveliness of Marie's next speech. To an un- 
 prejudiced spectator it might seem to be pride's 
 revolt against showing emotion before one so 
 hostile. 
 
 " Your Mothers' Unions, and your Home Mis- 
 sions, and your Guilds of the Good Shepherd, I 
 cannot away with them, so there's an end on't!'* 
 she cries, waving her red flag, and declaiming 
 theatrically. 
 
 " Then I need not trouble you any more." 
 
 The motion to withdraw is repeated, but is again 
 arrested. 
 
 " No, stay; I have not half done. We have not 
 nearly thrashed it out yet." 
 
 In her excitement she has sprung out of the arm- 
 chair in which, with her usual shiveriness, she has 
 been sitting nearly on the fire, rolling her writing- 
 pad into the fender, and advancing towards her 
 sister-in-law gesticulating. 
 
 " You love all this display and pomp! " she cries, 
 waving vaguely towards the inside luxury and the 
 outside silent stateliness. 
 
 " I do not know what you call display and pomp; 
 it is a very ordinary country house." 
 
 There is a proud humility in the tone which re- 
 veals that this is not her real opinion. 
 
 " Well, whatever it is, you love it; you love the 
 servants tumbling over each other, and the horrible 
 way that everything goes by clockwork. It is a 
 great blow to you to give it up — not to boss the 
 show any longer." 
 
 " I can't see what object is gained by telling me 
 this." 
 
i62 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Cannot you? Well, there is one. I want to 
 say once for all, Why do you give it up? " 
 
 " Why do I give it up? " replies Lettice, unbut- 
 toning her displeased blue eyes in unfeigned aston- 
 ishment. " Surely I need not answer that ques- 
 tion! " 
 
 " Why do you give it up? " repeats Marie, with 
 flaming urgency. " Why should not you go on 
 managing the household, and telling everybody 
 their duty, and sitting at the head of the table, as 
 you have always done? " 
 
 Then, as her hearer makes no answer beyond a 
 look of scorn, she gallops on. 
 
 " If you think I should mind or be jealous, you 
 are very much mistaken; I should be only too 
 thankful. I hate and detest the whole thing. It is 
 only for Jim's sake that I put up with it at all." 
 
 For once her implication of what she has sacri- 
 ficed in becoming Mrs. Trent is not made with its 
 usual purpose of "drawing" Miss Trent; but 
 nevertheless it has that efifect. 
 
 " I am afraid it is rather late to think of that 
 now." 
 
 " Oh no, it is not. I shall get on very well if I 
 am allowed to go my own way. In time, I dare 
 say, I shall grow to admire that little path mean- 
 dering across the dismal white sheet " — glancing 
 out with a groan at the park — " shall be able to 
 see those poor shivering deer without longing to 
 invite them in to get warm! It is the first time I 
 have wintered in England since I was ten, and oh, 
 I wish I could think it would be the last! " 
 
 She has brought back her eyes from the outer 
 world, and turned them upon her sister-in-law, with 
 
FOES IN LAW 163 
 
 what might be a half appeal in them, though her 
 last speech seems uttered more as a relief to herself 
 than with any expectation of sympathy. She 
 pauses a moment, her little restless hands pulling 
 at the ends of the rose-coloured sash of her dress- 
 ing-gown, then begins again. 
 
 " I loathe punctuality and order, and all the odi- 
 ous little virtues that go to make up a good mis- 
 tress of a house. I like to eat when I am hungry; 
 not when that horrible, inexorable gong commands 
 me to summon up an appetite. We had a gong at 
 Wimbledon, but, dear old thing! " — lapsing into 
 levity — '* it never meant anything at all." 
 
 Lettice does not try to laugh at the little joke, 
 nor does Marie expect it of her, having thus early 
 made the hopeless discovery — hopeless with a view 
 to possible friendship — that the same things never 
 amuse them. 
 
 The bride opens her floridly monogrammed 
 cigarette-case, which always jars upon Lettice^s 
 taste, as does the lighting up and puffing that 
 follows. 
 
 " So that is settled," she says, with a sigh of re- 
 lief, sinking again into her chair, picking up the 
 writing-pad from the fender, and recapturing Lulu 
 and the lotion-bottle. " We will both enjoy our- 
 selves in our own way; you shall have the birch-rod 
 and the sceptre, and the Friendly Girls, and all the 
 rest of it; and I will have Jim and Lulu " — lifting 
 the old dog's grizzled muzzle and kissing it — " and 
 we will all be as late and idle and foolish as we 
 like!" 
 
 " Jim never was late, or idle, or foolish," retorts 
 Lettice, unwisely rising to this galling fly. 
 
i64 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Oh, wasn't he? " replies Marie, with an exaspe- 
 rating air of interest and surprise. " Then it is 
 quite time that he began." 
 
 Mrs. Trent is as good as her word, and the days 
 and weeks that go by fully prove it. 
 
 The thought of how neglected and mismanaged 
 all her local philanthropies, now rolling on the 
 oiled wheels of long habit and efficient guidance, 
 would be, when fallen into the hands of her broth- 
 er's despised wife, has been one of the bitterest of 
 the grudges nursed by Lettice against the inter- 
 loper. But that ground is now knocked from un- 
 der her feet. At first she has not believed in 
 Marie's renunciation, and it has required the em- 
 phatic confirmation of Jim to persuade her of its 
 sincerity. 
 
 '' Marie has told you," he begins one morning 
 at the tete-d-tete breakfast, which is now their chief 
 opportunity for communicating with each other, 
 " that she does not wish to interfere with you in 
 any way." 
 
 Lettice looks up from the mess she is com- 
 pounding for the birds with as liberal a hand as if 
 their fairy godmother — the thaw had not blessed 
 them with pierceable clods and reachable worms. 
 She always feels a fear when with Jim now, from 
 the consciousness of what she is hiding from him; 
 and the ill-at-ease look that his face always now 
 takes when mentioning his wife to her, contrasted 
 with the naif freedom and expansiveness of his 
 early ebullitions, vexes her to the heart. He an- 
 swers her dumb inquiry. 
 
 " She wants you to understand that she will not 
 tamper with any of the charities that you have set 
 
FOES IN LAW i6s 
 
 going in the parish; she is sure that you manage 
 them so much better than she would." 
 
 "Did she say so?" 
 
 " I am not much given to romancing," replies 
 her brother, bluntly. " I should not have said so 
 if she had not." 
 
 " It is probably true," rejoins Lettice, " that I 
 do, and I should have been only too glad to help 
 her with all my experience; but do you think that 
 it can be quite right — quite doing her duty — to 
 shift the whole responsibility on to some one else's 
 shoulders? " 
 
 Mr. Trent is essentially a still man, yet there is 
 fidgetiness in the way in which he balances a knife 
 between his finger and thumb as he answers — 
 
 " I think that I should be glad if she did not hear 
 quite so much about her * duty ' just yet." 
 
 Miss Trent has been so little used to being 
 snubbed by her brother, that her cheek burns to 
 smarting under the reproof, but she tries to speak 
 moderately. 
 
 " It is not that I grudge the trouble; you know 
 I have always loved the sort of work. But even 
 waiving that question, do you know what else she 
 suggested? " The girl makes a dramatic pause, 
 and opens her eyes rather widely. " She sug- 
 gested that I should manage the household, and 
 sit at the head of the table. Is that also your 
 wish? " — with an accent of almost compassionate 
 incredulity. 
 
 Mr. Trent is resorting to what of late has been 
 his favourite method of defence against his sister, 
 and a very little space now parts him from the fine 
 
i66 FOES IN LAW 
 
 old mahogany door; but her final question makes 
 him turn. 
 
 " Let it be understood, once for all," he says 
 firmly, and not without dignity, " that I wish my 
 wife to have whatever can make this place and its 
 ways less irksome and disagreeable to her. She 
 has sacrificed so much in marrying me — almost 
 everything in the world that she cared for — that 
 the least I can do is to try and make her life as 
 tolerable to her as I can." 
 
 He is gone, his sister staring, moonstruck, after 
 him. It is the longest speech she has ever heard 
 him make, and the fullest confession of his 
 besotment. 
 
 Later, she comes across him again at the stables, 
 where she has gone to give her pony its morning 
 carrot; and it is with a pang that she sees his art- 
 less attempt to escape unseen into the harness- 
 room. 
 
 " Do not run away," she says, trying to smile; " I 
 am not going to say anything disagreeable." 
 
 He halts, only partially reassured. 
 
 " You left me in such a hurry this morning, that 
 you did not give me time to explain." 
 
 " I have not much opinion of explanations." 
 
 She sees that his ramparts are still bristling with 
 guns, but advances, waving a white flag. 
 
 " The reason why I was anxious for Marie to 
 take her proper place is that, of course, I shall not 
 long be here." 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " Of course, I am only here as a visitor; I am 
 naturally no longer going to live here." 
 
 " Where are you going to live? " 
 
FOES IN LAW 167 
 
 She hesitates, a momentary flush of resentment 
 against her betrothed for the equivocal position in 
 which his request for secrecy has put her darting 
 through her mind. 
 
 " There are plenty of places," she answers 
 lamely. 
 
 His own slow, good-humoured smile replaces 
 the dogged look of self-defence on Jim's face. 
 
 " Do not be an ass, old girl! " he says, taking 
 the cudgel out of his simple Saxon phrase by ac- 
 companying it with a friendly pat on the shoulder, 
 " and do not talk tommy-rot. Of course, you will 
 live here; and of course we shall all get on like — 
 like smoke, if only you will remember that the best 
 text in all the Bible is * Live and let live.* " 
 
 There is a slight choke in the laugh with which 
 she assures him that no such text exists, and Miss 
 Kirstie here comes to the rescue of a difficult situa- 
 tion by squeezing herself inside a loose box, and 
 trying the taste of the bay cob*s heels. He retorts 
 by lashing out at the place where her brains ought 
 to be; and in delivering and sending her off, 
 smacked and sulky, with her tail well down, brother 
 and sister seal and cement their peace. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 " Live and let live." It sounds the simplest, facilest, 
 slip-me-down-easy kind of injunction that could 
 be laid upon man or woman. Experience teaches 
 that no harder rule of conduct has ever been pre- 
 scribed. To "live** is difificult; to "let live" is, 
 to many natures, nearly impossible. It is so hard 
 to believe that those who differ from us radically 
 in aim, method, and conduct 9f life owe their un- 
 likeness less to the wilful wrong-headedness and 
 inherent turpitude with which we feel inclined to 
 credit them, than to a structural difference in mind 
 or constitution. To see ourselves as others see us 
 is a great gift. To see others as they see them- 
 selves is perhaps a greater, and it must have struck 
 most of us now and then that domestic life might 
 run on smoother wheels if we were able to see the 
 springs and pulleys of the human clocks that tick 
 beside us, instead of only their expressionless dial- 
 plates. 
 
 It is a physical impossibility to get into any one 
 else's bodily skin. Is it easier to do so in the case 
 of his or her mental and moral one? It is not the 
 abysmal deeps of differences in faith or principle 
 that make the most hopeless divisions between 
 members of the same household. These may be 
 silently respected, and cause no great friction in 
 detail. But how can one who rises with the lark 
 
 i68 
 
FOES IN LAW 169 
 
 and lies down with the lamb live in peace and 
 amity with another who would fain lie down when 
 the lark rises, and rise when the lamb retires? How 
 can she, every shining hair on whose sleek head 
 has its allotted place, really foregather with her 
 whose locks are as gaily free from any controlling 
 law as their mistress, whom not all the efforts of 
 an active, conscientious maid can keep untorn, 
 unchiffonee, straight? 
 
 Marie never defends or apologizes for her frail- 
 ties, but she sometimes gives a slight careless ex- 
 planation of them. 
 
 " I have never been used to going to bed," she 
 says. " When dear mother died, father used to like 
 us to sit up with him, to make him feel less lonely; 
 and afterwards, there never was enough time in the 
 day for all the things one wanted to do." 
 
 She gave a little sigh to the memory of the past 
 delightful scurry. The explanation is addressed to 
 her husband, but it is her sister-in-law who 
 responds. 
 
 " That was not much to be wondered at if you 
 never got up till twelve." 
 
 Miss Trent has tried to make her rebuke sound 
 gentle; but through the mildness of the key the 
 policeman's rattle is plainly audible. It may be 
 fancy that Marie's magnificent left eye closes in an 
 infinitesimal wink at Jim, and it also may not. 
 
 Whatever else Mrs. Trent is, she is at least a 
 woman of her word. She is never in time for din- 
 ner, nor does she ever manifest the slightest inter- 
 est, or attempt the smallest interference in Lettice's 
 management of her clubs, unions, and guilds. The 
 question of the headship of the dinner-table remains 
 
176 FOES IN LAW 
 
 in abeyance. Marie has forsaken it, on the double 
 plea of liking to have her back to the fire and to 
 be near Jim; and Lettice, naturally and justly, 
 refuses to resume it. 
 
 Since it is the wish of the mistress that no atten- 
 tion shall be paid to her vagaries, the mechanism 
 of the house remains unchanged. The bells and 
 gongo maintain the iron exactitude of their sum- 
 mons, and the little freakish refreshments at odd 
 hours, which are the bride's beau ideal of cuisine, 
 do not materially add to the labours of the foot- 
 man who carries them to the door of her boudoir 
 or the lady's-maid who takes them in. Strange to 
 say, even if some unaccountable quirk of their new 
 lady does drive them from their routine, and put 
 them to extra trouble, they do not seem to mind 
 it. 
 
 Mrs. Trent has that mysterious gift which always 
 does, and always will, defy analysis or definition — 
 " a way with her." The virtue of it does not lie 
 in her beauty — many Venuses have lacked it — nor 
 in her wisdom or her goodness. In both these 
 qualities her sister-in-law, mournfully reflecting 
 over the problem, pronounces her deplorably de- 
 ficient. Can it lie in that unhigh-bred, universal 
 familiarity of hers, that hail-fellow-well-metness 
 with all creation, which yet, as her critic must 
 grudgingly own, does not seem to provoke answer- 
 ing liberties? Can it reside in her taste for em- 
 piric remedies? for she dearly loves physicking. 
 
 It is some while before Lettice will admit to her- 
 self the patent fact how greatly the gardener's 
 broken-legged boy and the coachman's quinsied 
 wife prefer Marie's quack medicines, seasoned with 
 
FOES IN LAW 171 
 
 bad jokes, and her visits, to her own and the doc- 
 tor's orthodox treatment and grave benevolence. 
 
 Marie is not in the least benevolent; she would 
 tell you so herself. It would not express the case 
 rightly to say that she is " kind " to the people 
 about her. She is only, as it were, for her own 
 pleasure, deeply, deeply interested in them in pill- 
 ing and plastering and pulling their confidences out 
 of them by direct question and lively partaking. 
 
 The ulcer on little Sidney Plant's head, which 
 Lettice, duty-driven, surveys with inward nausea, 
 provokes in Marie only an acute desire to treat it 
 personally after her own method; and her small 
 forefinger travels round the repulsive area of pain 
 with unaffected enjoyment in ascertaining how 
 near her nice touch can go without hurting the 
 patient. 
 
 " I am a sawbones spoilt! *' she says, looking up 
 radiantly at Jim, who has run her to earth. "Why" 
 — plaintively — " do not you set up some ailment, 
 if it were only a boilf I should love to treat you 
 for it." 
 
 He answers her by a laugh that has a touch of 
 wonder in it. 
 
 " I always doctored the children," she goes on, 
 sitting back on her heels — she is kneeling by the 
 child's bed, and her great eyes growing wistful, as 
 they do when her own people are mentioned — 
 " and they do me credit, don't they? " 
 
 Mrs. Trent has no theories as to the rights to 
 equality of the race, her stock-in-trad-e in that com- 
 modity being mV, but she never can remember to 
 think of any difference in the social plane, whether 
 an inch hif^her or a foot lower of the person she 
 
172 FOES IN LAW 
 
 is talking to. Whether this be the master-key she 
 uses or some other, there can be no doubt that, in 
 several cases, she slips into the secret chamber of 
 hearts at whose front door Lettice has been deco- 
 rously ringing for years. 
 
 " How did you get the Growcotts to tell you 
 about Annie? " Miss Trent asks one day, when 
 her grudging wonder at conspicuous success of 
 her sister-in-law's has overcome her dislike to dis- 
 cussing her methods. 
 
 " I asked them." 
 
 " Asked them! Why, nobody has ever dared ap- 
 proach the subject! " 
 
 " Well, there is no subject I daren't approach, 
 so I did. I told them I did not think a pin the 
 worse of her." 
 
 " You did not! You couldn't! It was the most 
 aggravated case of immorality and deceit that has 
 ever happened in the parish! " 
 
 " I told them I felt certain I should have done 
 the same myself if I had been in her predicament; 
 and when that did not seem to console them much, 
 I added that I was not at all sure that you would 
 not, too! That fetched them round wonderfully! " 
 
 She is out of the room before the outraged 
 listener can hurl the richly deserved brickbat at 
 her head. 
 
 It is among her humbler surroundings — servants, 
 dependents, and tenants — that Mrs. Trent's first 
 successes are scored. Whether the same prosperity 
 will attend her among a higher class is a question 
 that Lettice asks herself with very mixed feelings. 
 Of course, she would be miserable at the idea that 
 Jim's wife should discredit him. This is the re- 
 
FOES IN LAW 173 
 
 spectable sentiment kept on show; but, packed 
 well under it, the girl is sometimes aware of a little 
 shabby hankering after finding some echo in other 
 breasts of her own deep dislike and disapproval. 
 
 The neighbours speed to call, curiosity adding 
 long wing-feathers to civility's pinions. They in- 
 vite the bride and bridegroom to dinner, and the 
 new pair go, Marie invariably late, having generally 
 mislaid the invitation, doubtful, but perfectly in- 
 different, as to whether or not it is the right day. 
 She always departs lamenting, jeering, and invok- 
 ing odd little curses on her hosts; she invariably 
 returns with some fresh food for her active imagina- 
 tion and insatiate curiosity about her fellow-crea- 
 tures to assimilate. 
 
 After the first of these functions Lettice cau- 
 tiously sounds her brother at breakfast next morn- 
 ing. 
 
 "Was it pleasant?" 
 
 " H'm! much the same as usual." 
 
 " You were rather late, were not you? " 
 
 " Marie did not notice when the carriage was 
 announced. She was interested talking to a young 
 Frenchman who is coaching the boys; he knew 
 Coquelin " — ^with an indulgent smile — " so, of 
 course, that set her ofif, and she did not perceive 
 that everybody but us had gone." 
 
 " Rather embarrassing." 
 
 " Not in the least. The boys swarmed round her, 
 and Sir James and milady joined in, and it was by 
 far the best bit of the evening." 
 
 "Oh! And were they amused? Did Marie 
 startle them at all? " 
 
 ** They did not confide it to me if she did." 
 
174 FOES IN LAW 
 
 The bristles, which have sprung into existence 
 with his marriage, are rising, and the questioner 
 desists. 
 
 Lettice will not now need to rely upon questions 
 for getting information as to Marie*s conduct in 
 society, since the return dinners to be given at 
 Trent will afford her opportunities for observation 
 on her own account. She awaits the first with tre- 
 pidating curiosity. The invitations have been sent, 
 and the arrangements made by herself, Mrs. Trent 
 being with difficulty brought to lend an ear to the 
 subject, but acquiescing with the greatest readiness 
 in everything proposed. 
 
 " I wash my hands of it! '* she cries, lifting her 
 fingers from the keyboard of the piano, where she 
 sits, and suiting her gesture to the words, " so that 
 if there is a catastrophe " 
 
 " I am not at all afraid of that " — ^with a dignified 
 confidence born of the memory of a hundred well- 
 ordered feasts. 
 
 " No," rejoins the other, with a look of thought- 
 ful humour; "there will not be even the excite- 
 ment of thinking that the cook may very likely be 
 found drunk under the kitchen-table ten minutes 
 before dinner-time, or that the food will not go 
 round. How dull!" 
 
 " Have you arranged how you will send the peo- 
 ple in to dinner to-night? " asks Lettice on the 
 afternoon of the appointed day. " Only three or 
 four of them have any real precedence; but the 
 less the precedence the greater the sensitiveness 
 generally." 
 
 A look of ineffable boredom passes over Marie's 
 face. 
 
FOES IN LAW 175 
 
 " Cannot 1 say ' I have not the least idea which 
 among you are the greatest swells, so sort your- 
 selves'?" 
 
 " You know that that is impossible." 
 
 " Is it? We always sorted ourselves at home. 
 You are going to say that that is not a parallel case. 
 I am afraid " — with a sigh that almost heaves Lulu 
 off her lap — " that it is not." 
 
 Miss Trent has bitted and bridled herself before 
 entering upon the present interview, so she only 
 says, glancing at a little diagram of the dinner- 
 table which she holds in her hand — 
 
 " Jim will, of course, take Lady Clapperton, and 
 you will go in with Lord Clapperton." 
 
 " Tit for tat! " replies Marie, blandly inattentive. 
 " And what am I to say to Lord Clapperclaw? " 
 
 From the days of the immortal " Miggs," with 
 her insulting " Miss Varson," and probably beford 
 that date, there has been a pecuHarly exasperating 
 quality in the wilful miscalling of a name, and the 
 Clappertons are dear to Lettice's soul. They have 
 been hereditary friends of the Trents for genera- 
 tions, the two families having for centuries trotted 
 through life alongside of each other, neck to neck 
 in the race, and though within the last thirty years 
 the Clappertons have shot ahead by dint of marry- 
 ing greater heiresses and possessing more brains, 
 the solid amity welded out of thousands of dead 
 kindnesses and buried sympathies still holds firmly. 
 
 " Lord Clapperton " — pronouncing the final syl- 
 lable very distinctly — " is a brilliant talker — most 
 great lawyers are. Many people think he will end 
 by being Lord Chancellor." 
 .. " That is not the same as Lord Chamberlain, is 
 
176 FOES IN LAW 
 
 it? " asks Marie, innocently. " If so, I could have 
 asked him why he made them take off Rats at the 
 Garrulity after it had only run three nights." 
 
 But Lettice is not to be " drawn." She dresses 
 for the party with her heart in her boots. The 
 reflection crosses her mind how very often it is 
 there now, coupled with a wonder that the posses- 
 sion of the love of her life — a term by which she 
 is always careful to allude to the curate to herself — 
 has so little power to raise her spirits. 
 
 Even his perfect sympathy with her — a sympathy 
 which he would like to make more overt than she 
 allows — upon the subject of Marie fails to be pro- 
 ductive of any real satisfaction. She is glad that 
 he dislikes Mrs. Trent, glad that his eye meets her 
 own now and again in understanding distaste and 
 disapproval; yet conscience and loyalty to Jim for- 
 bid her indulging in the unspeakable refreshment 
 of telling Randal, and letting him tell her, how 
 cordially both detest the new-comer. She feels 
 compelled, on the contrary, to put a drag upon the 
 wheel of his eloquence, and has to do so this very 
 evening. 
 
 The company have reached the dinner-table in 
 safe decorum. Marie has not, after all, insisted on 
 " shooing " them before her like a flock of turkeys. 
 She is not more than a quarter of an hour late in 
 appearing, and as the Clappertons have been de- 
 tained by the unpunctuality of the judge^s train 
 from London, she is in the room almost as soon as 
 they. By a string of accidents it happens that this 
 is her first meeting with them, and she begins at 
 once to talk to them with her usual high volubility, 
 no slightest consciousness of being on yi^W before 
 
FOES IN LAW 177 
 
 the arbiters of the neighbourhood lowering her 
 voice or lending a shade of diffidence to her man- 
 ners. 
 
 Lettice winces as snatches of Marie's rattling 
 chatter reach her across the room. Poor Jim! His 
 bride might have let it dawn more gradually upon 
 his oldest friends what a miracle of underbreeding 
 he has chosen to fill his mother's place! But she 
 is clearly determined that from the outset there 
 shall be no mistake. 
 
 " This is the first time I have witnessed your 
 public dethronement," Miss Trent's lover says to 
 her, neglecting his soup to glance with an expres- 
 sion in his eyes that startles even her — so full of 
 angry detestation is it — towards the head of the 
 table. 
 
 " It is not her fault; she hates being hostess." 
 
 " As she hates everything that looks like a duty," 
 he rejoins severely. 
 
 " She is much neater than usual to-night," says 
 Lettice, ashamed of the prick of satisfaction felt by 
 her, and laying about for something to commend, 
 " and has not nearly so many bangles on. If only 
 that dreadful bracelet with the photographs of 
 those twelve actors and actresses whom nobody 
 ever heard of could come to grief! " 
 
 " Why does Jim allow her to loll her arms about 
 the table in the way she does? " continues Randal, 
 not much attending to his fiancee's aspiration, but 
 continuing his own hostile observation. 
 
 The wrath of his tone is so disproportioned to 
 the cause that Lettice looks at him in wonder. 
 
 " How violently you dislike her! After all, she 
 
178 FOES IN LAW 
 
 has never done you any harm. I think you ought 
 to struggle against it." 
 
 " She is the type of woman that is, of all others, 
 most repellent to me,'* he answers in a key that 
 shows little inclination to take his love's Christian 
 hint in good part. " It was an evil day for the 
 parish when she came into it." 
 
 " The parish does not think so." 
 
 His vituperation has exceeded the bounds of that 
 moderate cavilling which gives her pleasure, and 
 some of the frightened surprise she feels must be 
 visible in her face, for with an apparent effort he 
 changes his venue. 
 
 " It is intolerable to me to see her in your place." 
 
 Her voice sinks. " Yet it is owing to her that I 
 am able to leave it." 
 
 He does not take up the challenge, and she 
 thinks he cannot have heard it. 
 
 " If you dislike the conditions in which you see 
 me — and you can't do so more than I do myself — 
 it Hes with you to take me out of them." 
 
 The overture, so out of keeping with the whole 
 tenor of her proud and modest life, painfully suf- 
 fuses her soft-textured face, and for a moment she 
 feels hotly indignant with him for that it has not 
 come from him. But the fiash of passionate grati- 
 tude with which he recompenses it effaces the im- 
 pression. 
 
 " How can I thank you? " 
 
 " By taking me to a six-roomed cottage where 
 there are no in-laws," she answers, the effort it 
 costs her to make a proposition so out of keeping 
 with her whole life and character lending it an ex- 
 aggerated emphasis. 
 
FOES IN LAW 179 
 
 " I really believe that you mezfri it," he answers, 
 with a sort of break in his voice. 
 
 " Show that you do," she says. 
 
 The words sound unbelievable in her own ears, 
 and she knows that they do so in his, with their 
 persistent initiative; yet the desperate logic of her 
 thesis that in such a love as theirs concealment and 
 coyness should have no place drives her on. 
 
 " You do not realize what this state of things is 
 to me — the hiding what there is no reason to hide, 
 the continual chafe and grate here " — with a glance 
 towards the head of the table. " If you did you 
 would take me away." 
 
 Her revolted blue eyes have lifted themselves in 
 bitter upbraiding to his, which plunge glowingly 
 into them. Both have absolutely forgotten their 
 dinners and their fellow-guests. 
 
 " You will drive me mad if you go on like this," 
 he says, breathing heavily. " Do you think that I 
 need any urging to take you to my arms? But I 
 must have something in my hand when I ask for 
 you." 
 
 " I am in no one's gift but my own," she answers, 
 with a revival of pride and self-respect. " You 
 yourself have told me so." 
 
 " Do you wish me to have the humiliation of tak- 
 ing all and giving nothing? " he asks from between 
 the teeth that excessive excitement makes him set. 
 " You have faith in me, but who else has? Wait, at 
 all events, till after the 20th — till after I have 
 preached at Swyndford." 
 
 " How very much you are counting upon that! " 
 she says uneasily. " What do you expect to come 
 of it?" 
 
 " I shall get a hearing. It is the only lever I have 
 
i8o FOES IN LAW 
 
 ever asked for. I did not think that my other self 
 would have needed to have that again explained." 
 
 There is impatience and reproach in his voice, 
 but her rejoinder is not framed with a view to 
 soothing him, and there is a distressed crease in her 
 brow. 
 
 " A lever to help you to what? A fat living, or 
 a fashionable pulpit? That is not what your other 
 self had planned for you." 
 
 A flash of hot indignation at being thus schooled 
 by his own disciple springs into his eyes, but it is 
 in a tone of resolved patience such as one would 
 employ to a slow-witted child that after a moment 
 he answers her. 
 
 " You are confounding the means with the end. 
 If I do passionately wish for the ' fashionable pul- 
 pit ' that you twit me with, it is because I know 
 that I have something worth hearing to say from it 
 — something that the world will be the richer for. If 
 I am anxious to climb the ladder, it is because more 
 people will hear me when I am at the top than when 
 I am at the bottom. The Swyndford pulpit is the 
 first rung." 
 
 His sentence, begun in careful self-restraint, ends 
 in open elation. His betrothed looks up at him in 
 troubled sympathy. Is it real inspiration that is 
 lightening in his hawk eye and dilating his fine nos- 
 tril? The answer comes blurred and undecipher- 
 able, like a bad telegram, from the bottom of her 
 heart. 
 
 " I wish it wa? over," she murmurs nervously. 
 " The very excess of your desire to excel your- 
 self " 
 
 " May give me stage-fright, as our hostess would 
 say," he interrupts, laughing derisively. 
 
FOES IN LAW i8i 
 
 " No, I do not think that there is much fear of 
 that." 
 
 "What would our hostess say?" cries Marie's 
 ringing voice, sent in defiance of convention flying 
 over orchids, guests, and Bleu-du-Roi Sevres china 
 to the distant speaker. " Something very much to 
 the point, I am sure." 
 
 Her hearing is as abnormal as her other gifts; 
 but apparently she does not care for an answer, re- 
 turning at once to the biographical explanation she 
 is evidently giving to Lord Clapperton of the the- 
 atrical bracelet, for whose destruction Lettice has 
 sighed. 
 
 The great lawyer is looking with grave attention 
 at the pretty slender arm lifted close to his near- 
 sighted eyes, and following with apparently ab- 
 sorbed interest the history of each medallion por- 
 trait, as in succession they are turned round for his 
 inspection. 
 
 Lady Clapperton is regarding the little drama 
 with a smile, that Miss Trent is certain must be 
 forced, through her tortoiseshell pince-nez, from 
 the other end of the table. She has said all that 
 she has to say to Jim — he is not a person with 
 whom conversation rolls on easy wheels — and has 
 been for some moments quite ready to go, a fact of 
 which Marie does not become aware for some time, 
 as indeed the separation of the sexes after dinner is 
 one of the subjects upon which she holds strong 
 opinions. When at last, her exegesis finished, she 
 makes up her mind to depart, her tones are clearly 
 audible in the regretful utterance to her neigh- 
 bour — 
 
 " I do wish that you were coming too." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Lettice had counted upon a half-hour*s talk with 
 her friend Lady Clapperton in the manless draw- 
 ing-room interval, a soothing talk, when the 
 hereditary ally would have shown, .by delicately 
 sympathetic indications, her perfect comprehension 
 of and fellow-feeling with Miss Trent's attitude of 
 mind towards her foe-in-law; and Lettice would 
 have salved her own conscience, and kept her loy- 
 alty to Jim by generous admissions and noble reti- 
 cences. But it soon appears she has reckoned 
 without her guest. Marie's offer of her cigarette- 
 box — at which a shudder runs over her sister-in- 
 law's frame — is followed, not by the disgusted 
 drawing up of Lady Clapperton's many-verte- 
 brated neck, which seemed the only possible an- 
 swer to it, but by an indulgent, laughing headshake, 
 and a subsidence together of the incongruous pair 
 upon a sofa. Then, as Lettice with inward groan- 
 ing verifies, the theatrical bracelet again comes 
 into play, and is a second time eagerly explained 
 to an apparently absorbed listener. 
 
 The ex-mistress of the house does not show the 
 heaviness of her spirit as she pays the pleasant and 
 equally divided attentions that she has always done 
 on like occasions to the rest of the company. She 
 is conscious that her manners are, and have always 
 been, thought good; but it is with a very distracted 
 attention that their habitual appreciators listen to 
 
 182 
 
FOES IN LAW 183 
 
 her to-night. Their eyes are continually straying 
 towards the daughter of Heth, who has slipped 
 from the sofa on to the floor at Lady Clapperton's 
 feet, and is breaking the butler's back in his en- 
 deavour to get the coffee-pot down low enough to 
 pour coffee into her cup at a respectful angle. 
 
 Whatever subject Miss Trent starts it invariably 
 circles round to the one which she is most resolute 
 to avoid. Even Mrs. Taylor, so long her own 
 sturdy henchwoman, and who ought to be used to 
 Marie by now, can talk of nothing else. Mrs. 
 Taylor's trips into society are few, thanks to that 
 remarkable speciality in sick-headaches which fills 
 her vicar with melancholy pride, but when she does 
 emerge she enjoys herself with improbable violence. 
 
 " You heard Mrs. Trent's plan of taking me to 
 the Empire? " she says, chuckling. " Was not it 
 original of her? Mr. Taylor was shocked at first " 
 — the vicar's wife belongs to the class who to their 
 nearest and dearest would always talk of their hus- 
 band as " Mr. Taylor " — " but now he owns that 
 with that way of hers she can carry off anything." 
 
 When the men enter, the vicar draws a chair up 
 between his spouse and Lettice. At a party it is 
 always the good man's impulse to join his wife, but 
 to-night she baffles him. 
 
 " I shall be a bad third," she says to Lettice, 
 bustling off, beaming with good spirits. " You and 
 Mr. Taylor have always so much to say to each 
 other." 
 
 Her lord looks after her apprehensively. " Poor 
 thing! how much she is enjoying herself, and yet 
 she knows that she will have to pay for it to-mor- 
 row," he says with sombre exultation. 
 
i84 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Lettice knows him too well to suggest that there 
 may be for once relache in Mrs. Taylor's post- 
 dinner-party agonies; and indeed her eyes and 
 thoughts have wandered from the excellent pair. 
 
 Randal is opening the piano at Marie's resonant 
 command, fetching her banjo, being scolded for 
 having brought the wrong music from the canter- 
 bury, and being finally packed ofif in favour of Lord 
 Clapperton, whom she insists on having turn over 
 the pages of her noisy song, a duty which the judge 
 performs as one might expect that he would. 
 
 Lettice's heart burns for her lover. How in- 
 tensely — with his deep antipathy to Mrs. Trent — 
 must he dislike the whole exhibition! His back is 
 turned towards his -fiancee, so she cannot see the 
 expression of his face, but she knows pretty well 
 what it is likely to be. Yet, to her surprise, he does 
 not accept his dismissal from the cave of harmony, 
 but mingles with the little crowd of black coats 
 that presently, thronging round, hide Steinway and 
 singer, and the voice whose grave melody has so 
 often thrilled her in intoning the Liturgy is plainly 
 audible in the braying chorus of the latest imbecili- 
 ties from the " Frivolity Girl." It is a strange 
 world! 
 
 The party breaks up at last, fully an hour later 
 than usual, though even then greatly against the 
 hostess's will, who begs the guests severally and 
 collectively to prolong their stay, and save her from 
 the odious necessity of going to bed. 
 
 The vicar has remained throughout the per- 
 formance by Lettice's side, with a look of puzzled 
 amusement on his face, which the share taken by 
 his curate in the musical orgy seems to heighten. 
 
FOES IN LAW 185 
 
 He leans across the arm of his chair to ask in a 
 subdued voice whether Lettice has heard that 
 Chevening is to preach at Swyndford on the 
 24th. 
 
 She nods assent, feeling a little prick of remorse- 
 ful gratitude to him for not alluding to the sacrifice 
 on his own part by which this has been made pos- 
 sible. 
 
 " He expects great things from it/' continues the 
 clergyman, looking with an air of troubled goodwill 
 towards his subordinate. " I only hope he will not 
 be disappointed." 
 
 The vicar has uttered Miss Trent's own misgiv- 
 ing — a thing that is always irritating — and perhaps 
 he is aware of some lapse from tact in his utter- 
 ance; at least, the shape of his next sentence looks 
 like it. 
 
 " I hoped that he was getting more reconciled to 
 his work here, fretting less over being thrown away 
 as he thinks he is; he is certainly much more active 
 in the parish than he used to be. I had noticed it 
 myself, and Mrs. Trent tells me that she is con- 
 tinually meeting him at the bedsides of those 
 among our sick people whom she has undertaken 
 in her droll way to doctor." 
 
 A slight and instantly checked dart of surprise 
 shoots across Lettice. It must be because so many 
 more interesting subjects have crowded them out 
 of Randal's memory, that he has omitted to men- 
 tion to her the insignificant fact of these rencoun- 
 ters, so distasteful to him. There is a slight 
 quickness in her voice as she answers dryly — 
 
 " It will not be very droll for them if she kills 
 them!" 
 
i86 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Then comes the break-up, and with it the 
 vicaress, full of elated gratitude for "the most 
 delightful evening she has ever spent, even here, 
 where the evenings are always delightful/' to fetch 
 her " Mr. Taylor." 
 
 At the very last Lettice gets a fragment of 
 speech with Lady Clapperton, but it is hardly of the 
 character she had planned, and she soon finds that 
 she may save her own " generous admissions and 
 noble reticences '* for a more propitious occasion. 
 
 " My dear, she takes one by storm! I had had 
 rather a prejudice against her. I may own it to you 
 now; but it is absolutely impossible to resist her. 
 And what a lovely creature! She tells me that she 
 has a sister who is far better-looking than herself 
 on the stage, and a most promising young actress. 
 What a strange new milieu for you! But we shall 
 all be the better for being waked up a little." 
 
 " That is what Jim tells me; but personally I 
 think I prefer being asleep." 
 
 She would not have said it had she not been 
 cross, jaded, and bitterly disappointed in the total 
 failure of sympathy where she had looked for it 
 most confidently; and the hereditary ally, with her 
 own sons secure, observes comfortably to her 
 sleepy judge on their homeward way that she 
 should have thought Lettice would have had the 
 sense to make the best of it, but that she is evi- 
 dently not going to do so. 
 
 " Of course, Mrs. Jim is as bad style as it is pos- 
 sible to be," pursues the lady, contentedly; " but 
 one forgives anything to such a face." 
 
 " I never know when a woman is bad style," 
 replies the judge, adjusting his head more satis- 
 
FOES IN LAW 187 
 
 factorily to his corner of the carriage; " and I am 
 
 very much in love with her! ** 
 
 ****** 
 
 It is a truism of truisms that our granted wishes 
 often mock us — turn round and snap maHcious 
 fingers in our faces. There are few things that 
 have been more ardently desired by Esmeralda 
 Kergouet and her married sister than that Miss 
 Tiny Villiers of the Garrulity should once more 
 fall a prey to influenza! But though the season is 
 singularly propitious — half the staff of the theatre 
 being laid low — and Miss Villiers herself takes the 
 malady severely and keeps it long, yet what does 
 this avail to her ardent young understudy, since 
 the piece itself is taken off? That incalculable fac- 
 tor, the British public, upon whose likings and 
 dislikings the oldest and subtlest manager is unable 
 to reckon with any certainty, has shown itself 
 unmistakably disapproving, and in the stock piece, 
 hastily put on to supply its place, there is no need 
 — even hypothetical — for Miss Poppy Delafield. 
 
 Loud and long are the laments of Marie, uttered 
 to any one who will listen to her. Warm and acute 
 is the sympathy of Mrs. Taylor, and amused and 
 interested that of Lady Clapperton, who happens 
 to call on the day when the thunderbolt has fallen. 
 
 " There is only one bright spot in the whole 
 thing," cries Mrs. Trent, with eyes made suddenly 
 more brilliant by a glorious idea, and taking for 
 granted, as she always does, that her subject is of 
 as enthralling an interest to her interlocutor as it 
 is to herself — " you will all see her much sooner 
 than you would otherwise have done. As she has 
 no engagements, she will be able to come down at 
 
i88 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Easter with the others. As I told you, all my peo- 
 ple are coming at Easter — father, the girls, the 
 boys, everybody but poor Gabriel; and, thank God, 
 Easter is early this year." 
 
 Miss Trent, who is present, quietly sewing, steals 
 a look at her family's friend. Lady Clapperton is 
 as aware as herself of the character and history of 
 Kergouet pere. Surely now, if ever, she will show 
 some sign of freezing up, or at least shrinking from 
 the implied project of bringing her acquainted with 
 the hopelessly damaged gentleman to whom Marie 
 owes her birth. Country memories for vice and 
 disgrace are long and retentive; witness poor Mrs. 
 Fairfax, unpardoned, unannealed, after ten im- 
 maculate years. 
 
 There is a second^s pause, when the half-hope of 
 hearing a merited snub dawns shabbily in Lettice's 
 heart. 
 
 "It is a very bright spot!" replies the visitor 
 with civil heartiness, and judiciously ignoring 
 " father." " From what you tell me I am dying to 
 meet her." 
 
 " And so you shall! " cries Marie, in the tone of 
 one conferring a deserved but high favour. " What 
 is more, you shall see her do something. I have 
 always meant to get up a little piece when the 
 children came — we all act, you know, it is in our 
 blood; light high comedy is her Hne, not farce — 
 and when she once gets an opening you will see 
 that she will be hard to beat." 
 
 Lady Clapperton is sure that she will, and goes 
 away almost as delighted with Mrs. Trent as she 
 is that that lovely alien is not her own daughter- 
 in-law; and with a compunctious inward amuse- 
 
FOES IN LAW 189 
 
 ment — though she is not a woman with a strong 
 sense of the ridiculous — at poor Lettice's glum an- 
 guish over her sister-in-law's Green-Room ecstasies. 
 
 Miss Trent does not forget at her next meeting 
 with her sweetheart to inquire casually why he has 
 never happened to mention his meetings with 
 Marie by the parochial sick-beds. He gives the 
 kind of answer that she had expected. 
 
 ** Surely we have enough of her as a topic with- 
 out her thrusting herself between us when we have 
 the good luck to be alone! " 
 
 He speaks with such an air of irritated ennui, 
 turning his head half away, that Lettice hastens to 
 soothe him. 
 
 " Thrusting herself between us I " she answers 
 with a little laugh of derision. " I do not think I 
 am much afraid of that." 
 
 He changes the topic quickly, and she gladly 
 follows his lead, to that subject whose interest 
 for them both never palls — Chevening's sermon at 
 Swyndford on the 24th. It has frightened the girl 
 to see what a toppling erection the hopes that both 
 of them are building on it, for she has caught the 
 infection of his eagerness, have risen to ere the 
 fateful date is reached. 
 
 He is so unnerved when he bids her good-bye 
 before setting oflF, that she puts all the bracing 
 quality she can into her parting speech. 
 
 " Do not think of your audience," she says, 
 with a seriousness that is touched with solemnity; 
 " think only of what you are saying, and — and " — 
 she hesitates perceptibly, for, after all, it is a reversal 
 of their proper roles; and of late the spiritual side 
 
190 FOES IN LAW 
 
 of their relation seems to have suffered some 
 ecHpse — " and of whose mouthpiece you are! " 
 
 The admonition sounds exquisitely trite in her 
 own ears, but he takes it in good part. 
 
 " You are right," he answers, almost humbly. 
 " I know the dangers to which my horribly 
 emotional nature expose me; but as long as I have 
 you beside me in body or in spirit they will not best 
 me!" 
 
 She hopes devoutly that it is true, and the wishes 
 and prayers that follow him, as she sits in h«r usual 
 place at evening service, with the placid, blunt ex- 
 cellence of the vicar's face above her instead of the 
 chiselled eagerness of her lover's, even though they 
 distract her from the good man's theme, will not 
 be reckoned very heavily against her. 
 
 The vicar is difficult to listen to, and yet his ser- 
 mons cannot be said to be unprofitable; their 
 kindliness, their humility, their devoutness lend to 
 the listener's wandering thoughts, without their 
 being aware of it, their own colour; and many a 
 one has left Trent church unsuspecting that the 
 good action on which he has resolved, or the ill of 
 which he has repented, are alike due to the in- 
 fluence of the dull preacher who has talked for five 
 and twenty minutes of he could not say what. 
 
 " I do not know when I have had such a beau- 
 tiful sleep," says Marie, in a very wakeful voice, as 
 they all walk swiftly home across the park, through 
 the muffled January evening. " But one cannot 
 quarrel with any one for putting one to sleep when 
 he sends one beautiful dreams. I dreamt that Craw- 
 ley had given Esmeralda the Juvenile lead." 
 
 Chevening is to spend the night following his 
 
FOES IN LAW 191 
 
 sermon- at Swyndford, and to meet his betrothed 
 with the least possible delay after his return. She 
 knows the hour at which his train is due, and has 
 calculated to a nicety the necessary extra moments 
 before he can appear. But the margin, which she 
 has been careful to make a liberal one, is exceeded 
 by two hours and more ere they meet. She has 
 tried to persuade herself that the delay is owing to 
 his having so much impressed his hosts that they 
 are loth to part with him. Her first glance at his 
 face tells her that this hypothesis is not the right 
 one. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The utter depression of tone with which he pro- 
 nounces the monosyllable would be enough answer 
 without the pallor of his look and the nerveless way 
 in which he collapses into the nearest chair. He 
 offers no embrace or even greeting. 
 
 " If you take my advice, you will show me the 
 door," he says presently, with a little January 
 laugh. " I am a failure — a rate! " 
 
 " What! " she cries, recalling the unstrung state 
 in which he had parted from her. " You did not 
 break down? " 
 
 " I might have done so, for all it would have 
 mattered." 
 
 " I do not understand " — looking bewildered 
 and frightened. " Was the church empty, do you 
 mean? " 
 
 " I do not know as to numbers. I never am 
 conscious as to whether I am speaking to many or 
 to few. I only know when there is any one out of 
 whom I can strike a spark." 
 
192 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " And in all that big church there was none? " — 
 incredulously. 
 
 "Not a soul!" 
 
 " The Swyndfords themselves? " 
 
 She makes the suggestion half shamefacedly, 
 feeling it to be degrading to him and herself to 
 treat such a sacred gift as a bid for a patron*s ap- 
 proval. 
 
 " I think the duke went to sleep." 
 
 "And the duchess?" 
 
 " She was not there. She had gone to hear the 
 Bishop of Stepney." 
 
 The murder is out! Lettice is conscious of a 
 flashed impression that the catastrophe thus re- 
 vealed was, in vulgar phrase, " a judgment " on her 
 lover for his selfishness towards the vicar; but she 
 is extremely shocked with herself for a thought so 
 inconsistent with the real thing. 
 
 There are a few moments' silence after the blow 
 has fallen. The lovers are, as usual, in the privacy 
 of Lettice's sitting-room, whither — so thin is now 
 the disguise that veils their engagement — the 
 young man is always shown by the servants with- 
 out any special directions. It is a good, pleasant, 
 useful room, with its air of mingled work and play, 
 and stamped with that exquisite neatness of its 
 owner which of late has tended to become carica- 
 tured. It seems as if every fresh laxity introduced 
 by Marie — unintentionally, for she has no ambi- 
 tion to be an innovator — into the rest of the house 
 must be expiated by some fresh rigour of nicety in 
 Lettice*s own domain. 
 
 The only flaw now in the bower's maidenly per- 
 fection is the idol of whom it has of late been the 
 
FOES IN LAW 193 
 
 shrine, and who now — in a prostration almost as 
 complete as Dagon's — lies crumpled and crump- 
 ling in one of its spotless chintz chairs. 
 
 His betrothed looks at the sufferer for a space 
 with distress in her steady blue eyes, then comes 
 and kneels down beside him. It is well for him 
 that he does not suspect the cause which brings her 
 there. It is a second and stronger impulse of hor- 
 ror at herself for the spasm of contempt that has 
 struck through all her being at his attitude. 
 
 Contempt! For him between whom and all other 
 men she has herself set the impassable barrier of 
 her own violent, voluntary kisses; for him whose 
 sustaining and humbly ministering to, in his high 
 career, is to be the one butt and end of existence; 
 for him who, if she does not love him with the one 
 exclusive passion of a lifetime, she must for ever 
 be degraded beneath her own feet in the dust! 
 
 Contempt! It is incredible, and yet none the less 
 true, that that one of Love's executioners who 
 perhaps does his work most swiftly and best has 
 touched her on the shoulder. It is, indeed, that 
 very executioner who sends her to his side. 
 
 He is lying with his face half hidden on his coat- 
 sleeve, and she touches his arm before she can rouse 
 his attention. 
 
 " I think you are taking it too much to heart," 
 she says, her voice all the gentler because of a 
 lurking terror that that horrible new note may 
 have got into it too. " I am afraid " — changing 
 the pronoun into the one that sweetly implies part- 
 nership — " that we have gone the wrong way to 
 work." 
 
 He sits up rather suddenly, as if something in the 
 
194 FOES IN LAW 
 
 timbre of her voice, soft as it is, had straightened 
 his spine. 
 
 " You think," he says, and his eyes have regained 
 their bright falcon look, " that it is wholly and 
 solely the blow to my self-love from which I am 
 sufifering. A more perfect sympathy would per- 
 haps have read a worthier motive into my disap- 
 pointment; but perhaps you are right." 
 
 There can be no mistake as to the reproach con- 
 veyed. Resentment at his injustice, lined with a 
 still more uncomfortable sense that perhaps it is 
 not injustice, after all, and that he has hit the nail 
 all too truly on the head, keep her proudly silent, 
 and lift her quietly from her knees. If the wounded 
 animal into whose gashes you are pouring your 
 kind medicaments turns round and snaps at you, 
 common prudence recommends you to put yourself 
 out of reach of his bite. 
 
 But the mood is short-lived, and the former pang 
 of self-horror displaces it. Is this the way in which 
 she is going to fulfil what is henceforth to be her 
 life-work — the sharing and lightening all the sor- 
 rows and burdens that will weigh upon the too 
 sensitive spirit of her Chosen One? What would 
 the real thing prompt her to do? To sit down upon 
 the arm of his chair and put her own arm round 
 his neck. Without a blench or a moment's delay 
 she does it. 
 
 " We are not going to improve things by quar- 
 relling over them? " she asks with a lightness that 
 does not come easily to her. " What I meant was 
 that I was afraid we had both been building too 
 much upon what we thought was going to be a 
 short cut to — to — our own happiness." 
 
FOES IN LAW 195 
 
 Her proximity improves his spirits, and since 
 she invited the caress she cannot complain of the 
 long straitness of his clasp. But to-day it brings 
 no thrill with it. 
 
 " Perhaps we need this discipline of disappoint- 
 ment," she says; and though she still employs the 
 plural pronoun, to her ear the phrase may have a 
 private fitness to her own case. 
 
 " Perhaps," he acquiesces heavily. 
 
 " And meanwhile " — trying to speak with a 
 bracing light cheerfulness — " we will not go in 
 search of any more 'openings.' When they are 
 good for us — when we are ripe for them — they will 
 come, never fear. And meanwhile " — she has been 
 more successful with him than with herself — 
 " meanwhile " — in a tone and with appropriate 
 action that ought to leave nothing to be desired — 
 " we have each other." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The expected advent of Mrs. Trent's family, so far 
 from lessening the volume of her correspondence 
 with every member of it, seems, on the contrary, 
 sensibly to have increased its bulk, judging by the 
 time she devotes to it. The candidates for her 
 surgery and the believers in her quack medicines 
 have so increased in the village that her delighted 
 attention to their claims, coupled with her always 
 perfect contempt for time, have made her, if possi- 
 ble, more irregular than ever in her hours. It is, 
 therefore, no surprise to Lettice that — Jim being 
 out shooting — she begins, continues, and finishes 
 her luncheon alone. 
 
 She is sipping her coffee afterwards in a very 
 flattened mood, when the sort of loquacious whirl 
 that always heralds Marie's approach announces 
 that her sister-in-law is nigh, and in another mo- 
 ment she stands before her. 
 
 Ever since the prodigious uplifting of Mrs. 
 Trent's always high spirits that has followed the 
 actual fixing the day on which the Kergouets are 
 to arrive, Lettice has been conscious of some tenta- 
 tive efforts on Marie's part to conciliate herself. 
 As her own dislike is not in the least lessened, she 
 compounds with her conscience for not responding 
 to advances which, after all, are fitful and dubious, 
 
 196 
 
FOES IN LAW 197 
 
 by pretending that they do not exist. There is 
 nothing dubious, however, to-day about Marie's 
 face and voice. Both express a high degree of 
 friendly indignation. 
 
 '' I call it a perfect scandal! " she cries, dropping 
 dov^n, with her usual flexible agility, on to the floor 
 at Lettice's feet. 
 
 The other regards her with distrustful astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " And you are not very easily scandalized, 
 either," she answers ungenially. 
 
 ** I mean, of course, the way in which they have 
 treated him." 
 
 A twilight glimmer of understanding, so dis- 
 agreeable that she refuses to own its existence to 
 herself, steals through a chink into Lettice*s mind. 
 
 *' You forget that I have no idea as to what you 
 are talking about." 
 
 Mrs. Trent would be much less quick-witted than 
 she is if she did not perceive the lofty aloofness of 
 the effort to keep her and her sympathy at arms' 
 length, and much less quick-tempered than she is 
 if she did not resent it. There is a change in the 
 strong partisanship of her first key. 
 
 " I am talking of Randal Chevening, and the 
 way in which your fine friends have treated him." 
 
 It would be difficult to say which clause of this 
 sentence is richest in exasperating power upon its 
 hearer, the familiarity of the " Randal " or the 
 assumption of social inferiority implied in " your 
 fine friends." 
 
 Marie has long discovered that to talk of the 
 upper classes as if she did not belong to them is 
 one of the deadliest weapons she possesses against 
 
I9S FOES IN LAW 
 
 her sister-in-law; and she would not have taken it 
 out of her armoury now if in her moment of ex- 
 pansion she had not been thrown back. 
 
 " Of course, I understand now what you are 
 alluding to," replies Lettice, her fair face rigid with 
 the effort at self-governance; ^' but even now I 
 cannot imagine how you came to hear it." 
 
 "A little bird sang it in my ear," replies the 
 other, with a glint of mirth at her victim's strug- 
 gles with indignant incredulity — " a little bird who 
 was so full of it that he would have sung it in any 
 one's ear. He walked " — dropping her feathered 
 metaphor — " back across the park with me. I met 
 him in the village, but he would not come in; he 
 was too much upset.'* 
 
 Lettice sits looking straight before her. She 
 cannot sort her emotions yet; only she knows that 
 they are all painful and humiliating, and that the 
 arch Love-slayer, whose first onset she had with 
 horror repulsed this very morning, is working his 
 way to the top. That Randal should have obtruded 
 his jeremiade upon Marie — not that she is not 
 always delighted to listen to people's jeremiades — 
 Marie, for whom the expressions of his aversion 
 have exceeded the bounds of Christian charity, and 
 driven herself, Lettice, into the unnatural position 
 of Mrs. Trent's defender! 
 
 Something in her face — some grey change that 
 for the moment ages and disfigures her — de- 
 molishes Marie's not very robust resentment at her 
 rebuke, and brings her back to kindliness. This is 
 the more virtuous, as she had several admirable 
 shafts still left in her quiver. 
 
 " Those kind of people are all alike," she says in 
 
FOES IN LAW 199 
 
 a tone very evidently meant to be conciliatory. " I 
 think he is uncommonly well out of them. We must 
 all try to cheer him up as much as we can. I will 
 get him to recite something at the Performance." 
 
 In a brighter moment Lettice might have felt a 
 certain disdainful amusement at such a remedy for 
 such an ill; but now the picture of her lover 
 mouthing on a stage under Mrs. Trent's instruc- 
 tions puts the finishing touch to her discomfiture. 
 Her countenance expresses as much, and under this 
 second though wordless snub the repressed wasp- 
 ishness breaks out again in Marie's next speech. 
 
 " Of course he ought to have more backbone; 
 but if God has not given you as many joints in your 
 spine as other people, why, there you are! I sup- 
 pose I feel it more strongly from having been used 
 to something so different." 
 
 " In whom? " asks Lettice, in a dreadfully polite 
 voice, and with a mental reference — of which her 
 hearer is perfectly and irefully conscious — to the 
 invertebrate humility of Marie's parent. 
 
 " In Gabriel — in my brother," replies she with 
 elaborate distinctness, the benevolence quite gone 
 out of her brilliant eyes, and a desperate challenge 
 in its place. 
 
 But Lettice does not pick up the glove. Gabriel! 
 His parting words are suddenly in her ears, " In 
 happier circumstances we should have been 
 friends." Towards Marie under no circumstances 
 could she ever have felt amity; but with him — yes, 
 it might have been possible. 
 
 Mrs. Trent is always as good as her word; in the 
 case of her philanthropic intentions towards the 
 dejected curate she is even better. The prepara- 
 
200 FOES IN LAW 
 
 tions for what Lettice has always qualified both to 
 herself and Chevening as the desecration of the 
 Rachel Hall are already in full swing. The plat- 
 form whence hitherto only Advocates of the Tea- 
 pot and Purveyors for the Waif and the Savage 
 have been heard is rapidly being turned into a 
 stage. A temporary Green-Room is beginning to 
 bulge out unbecomingly behind the memorial edi- 
 fice, and the knocking of the carpenters is loud in 
 the land. It is music in Marie's ears, a music 
 which she insists on every one whom she meets in 
 the village coming in to hear. The vicar, hurrying 
 home to a Confirmation Class; the vicaress, trot- 
 ting to congratulate or scold a new-made mother; 
 Mrs. Fairfax, stealing past with her deprecating 
 gait; — all are swept in willy-nilly, and ordered to 
 admire, to suggest, to criticize. Not many sug- 
 gestions, it is true, are made, and still fewer taken; 
 but the fact of having their opinion asked raises the 
 consulted ones* estimate both of themselves and 
 their patroness. 
 
 Not even the undisguised disapprobation of 
 Lettice is able to abate the piquant interest taken 
 by Mrs. Taylor in " wings " and ** flies," exits and 
 entrances. 
 
 " I have always had a taste for the stage, I 
 think," she says, and she has not the grace even to 
 be apologetic; "but I have had very Httle oppor- 
 tunity for gratifying it." 
 
 " Are you going to take a part in the per- 
 formance? " asks Miss Trent, with not only her lip, 
 but all her other features curling. 
 
 "Oh no, of course not!" laughing good- 
 humouredly; " though Mrs. Trent did suggest that 
 
FOES IN LAW 20I 
 
 I should prompt. She wants everybody to have a 
 share in the fun; but I should be too nervous, and 
 I should always come in at th^ wrong place, and I 
 could not rely upon this tiresome head " — touch- 
 ing it reproachfully. 
 
 The overflowing joy that sets the doors of Mrs. 
 Trent's heart open to all comers makes her, despite 
 signal previous miscarriages, essay another effort 
 against the impregnable fortress of her sister-in- 
 law's hostility. 
 
 " I am afraid you do not quite like these altera- 
 tions," she says in that off-hand voice which, as 
 Lettice might by this time have learnt, is some- 
 times the vehicle of some doubtful overture; *' but 
 as soon as I can get Jim to build me a real little 
 theatre, I will never use this again." 
 
 Miss Trent's only answer is to stand, tall and 
 silent, surveying with an unspeakable eye the chaos 
 of planks, laths, chips, before her. She has been 
 forced into the Rachel Hall by Jim, who, having as 
 usual driven Marie down to that scen-e where most 
 of her life is now spent, intercepts his sister passing 
 by with averted eyes to her Cottage Hospital, and 
 compels her to come in. He is sorry when he has 
 done it, and, what is more, so much frightened by 
 the expression that the first glance at the improve- 
 ments calls up on Miss Trent's face, that he feigns 
 a summons from one of the workmen outside, and 
 leaves his wife to face the uncubbed lioness whom 
 he has brought her as a playfellow. 
 
 Marie is as nearly undauntable as it is possible 
 for a human being to be; but at this moment she 
 is not in the best fighting trim. She has apparently 
 been taking an active part in the carpentering 
 
202 FOES IN LAW 
 
 operations, for she looks hot and flushed. A ham- 
 mer is in one hand, and a paper of tin-tacks in the 
 other; her garments and hair are thickly pow- 
 dered with grey dust, and there is a good-sized 
 smouch of whitewash on one cheek. 
 
 The extremely expressive silence in which Let- 
 tice receives her first would-be conciliatory obser- 
 vation, and the appalling austerity of the look that 
 stalks witheringly round her beloved erections, 
 make even her valiant spirit quail. She steps a pace 
 or two nearer, swinging her hammer nervously, 
 and lowering her sharp voice. 
 
 " Jim thinks that she — his mother " — with a very 
 respectful intonation — " would not have minded. 
 He said she liked to see people enjoy themselves."' 
 
 Miss Trent's lips twitch a Httle. " It is a point 
 that can scarcely be proved, so it is no use dis- 
 cussing it." 
 
 The words perhaps scarcely bear that reading, 
 but none the less do they carry to the hearer's 
 mind the impression that any mention by her of 
 " Jim's mother " is an insult to that departed lady. 
 With a quick change of mood she brings her ham- 
 mer down with a vicious tap on a bench near her. 
 
 " After all, it is only temporary; all this " — wav- 
 ing her bag of tacks theatrically round her — " will 
 disappear, alas! like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
 and when the S. P. G.'s and the G. F. S.'s and the 
 U. E. L.'s come back they will never suspect to 
 what iniquitous uses " — scornfully — " their hall 
 has been put." 
 
 Miss Trent stoops to no retort, and a sudden 
 draught, which tells of an opened door behind 
 them, makes a happy diversion by causing both 
 
FOES IN LAW 203 
 
 young women to look round. It is Chevening who 
 has entered. 
 
 " Come in," cries Mrs. Trent, allowing her voice 
 to regain its usual pitch, and perfectly regardless of 
 the audience of amused workmen. ** You are just 
 in time to see some fur and feathers flying. Which 
 do you back? " 
 
 The curate is not very ready with his answer, 
 perhaps because it is a point upon which he cannot 
 decide in a hurry, perhaps because antipathy to its 
 propounder chokes him. He gives her a look that 
 his fiancee finds undecipherable as he answers at 
 last— 
 
 " I prefer a masterly inaction." 
 
 " Now that you are here," Mrs. Trent cries, 
 seized by a new and delightful idea, flying towards 
 the stage and beckoning to him to follow her, " we 
 may as well have a rehearsal of * Ay, Mate! ' You 
 are to stand here, exactly in the middle, just where 
 this knot of wood is, and do not think about 
 ' Mate.* Mate is somewhere in the audience; and 
 you are not to saw the air with your arms; I will 
 show you the right kind of gesture." 
 
 " I have recited before, as I told you, at Oxford," 
 replies he, in a rather offended voice, and grudg- 
 ingly obeying her. 
 
 " And you think you know all about it," retorts 
 she, brusque but good-humoured. " Well, all the 
 same, you are going to be coached, and I am going 
 to coach you." 
 
 " Not to-day," he answers, averting his look 
 from the little dishevelled beauty gesticulating her 
 commands from the stage above him, and directing 
 it tow^ards the departing alternative, who is in the 
 
204 FOES TN LAW 
 
 act of letting in another draught by letting herself 
 out. 
 
 Marie makes no attempt to detain him. On the 
 contrary, she warmly agrees. 
 
 " Not to-day, of course. You had better hurry- 
 up " — with a glance of understanding amusement 
 and possibly compassion in her eyes, and heaving 
 a sigh. " There are any number of other days be- 
 tween now and Easter, alas! " 
 
 Randal has to hurry, for the pace with which 
 Lettice is stalking off her indignation is so good 
 as to make the small start in time she had got 
 equfvalent to a longer one. But he catches up the 
 flying fair as she turns into the lane ofif the village 
 street, in which the Cottage Hospital stands. 
 
 She turns a face more gracious than his fears had 
 bid him expect towards him. 
 
 " How did you know that I was there? " 
 
 The infinitesimal delay before he answers, " In- 
 stinct, I suppose," undeceives her. 
 
 " You did not know it? " she says, not quite so 
 genially. 
 
 " No " — rather reluctantly — " to say truth, I did 
 not." 
 
 " Then what took you there? " 
 
 "What indeed? Idle curiosity, I suppose — the 
 morbid wish to verify how far destruction and bad 
 taste could go." 
 
 Her conscience cannot approve the rancour of 
 the reply, nor yet the feeling of soothed satisfac- 
 tion it gives her. 
 
 " What is this ' Ay, Mate,' that Marie was talk- 
 ing about? " rejoins Miss Trent after a moment, in 
 a tone of dignified curiosity. 
 
FOES IN LAW 205 
 
 " Oh, that " — carelessly — " is the name of the 
 thing that she has ordered me to recite at the Per- 
 formance ** — with a sarcastic accent on the words. 
 
 " And you have consented? *' 
 
 He hesitates. " I dislike her too much to con- 
 tradict her." 
 
 " So you are going to obey her orders? " 
 
 He does not enjoy or much admire, as addressed 
 to himself, the tone employed, and there is dogged- 
 ness mixed with the apology of his reply. 
 
 " I thought, and think, that my presence on 
 the stage might raise the tone of the whole 
 show; and it is a fine thing — a very fine thing — 
 very dramatic." 
 
 There is undoubted hankering in the tone of his 
 plea, and she falls ruminatingly silent. A sort of 
 iu qiwqiie from her lover recalls her. 
 
 " I was surprised — more than surprised — to 
 meet you at the hall. What, in the name of all im- 
 probability, took you there? " 
 
 " Jim caught me as I was going by, and made a 
 point of it. He has always been very good to 
 me. 
 
 The final statement sounds irrelevant and flat 
 in Chevening's ears, and his speaking features ex- 
 press as much. 
 
 " I was exceedingly touched this morning. He 
 met me on the stairs and said, * Old Grant has had 
 a second stroke. No one ever survives a third.' " 
 
 " Why on earth were you touched at that? " 
 
 " Appleton, of which Mr. Grant is rector, is in 
 Jim's gift." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " It was his way of conveying to me — ^you know 
 
2o6 FOE^ IN LAW 
 
 he always hates explanations — that he recognized 
 — that he did not wish any longer to oppose " 
 
 She stops, with a vague chill shrinking from the 
 riveting word with which her sentence was to have 
 ended. He lifts his straight brows. 
 
 " Do you extract all that out of one fit? " 
 
 " There have been other indications," she says, 
 wincing a little under the light sarcasm of his tone. 
 " Straws show which way the wind blows. He has 
 often said lately that * It is astonishing how one's 
 point of view changes,' and that ' One must let 
 people be happy in their own way.' '* 
 
 Randal breaks into a bitter little laugh. " He 
 has chosen a strange way himself." 
 
 " Yes, yes," she answers, for once impatient of 
 his fleer; " but do not let us go over that again. I 
 want to tell you about Appleton. It is in the very, 
 very heart of the country, an entirely rural popu- 
 lation. It can hardly come under the head of an 
 * opening; ' but will you take it if he offers it to 
 you? " 
 
 They have reached the door of the Cottage 
 Hospital. The lane in which it stands is deep in 
 the mud of a clay soil and of February fill dyke; 
 but a belated snow wreath still lies under the north 
 hedge that faces it. Chevening's eyes are fixed 
 upon it. 
 
 "I have done with 'openings,'" he says gloomily. 
 " With you beside me, what does it matter where I 
 am.f^ 
 
 His look leaves the snow-patch and seeks hers, 
 which for the moment is almost as cold. A mo- 
 ment later he adds, contradictorily and with vio- 
 lence — 
 
FOES IN LAW 207 
 
 " I would give anything in the world to get away 
 from here; but " — with a smile that is less spon- 
 taneous than produced to meet the surprise in her 
 face — " we must wait for the third stroke." 
 
 Mrs. Trent's over-eagerness in the preparations 
 to celebrate her family's advent results in the fact 
 that the theatre, with its adjuncts, stands complete 
 in tantalizing perfection while yet Lent stretches, 
 immense and meagre, between her and her goal. 
 To bridge the gulf in some degree she whisks Jim 
 ofif to London, for the double purpose of buying 
 properties and hunting up recruits. 
 
 The problem of deciding upon what the play is 
 to be has been found so insoluble, owing to the 
 dispersion of the intending actors and the hopeless 
 differences of their opinions as voluminously con- 
 veyed by post, that a change in the programme has 
 been found necessary. The idea of a regular drama 
 has been given up, and a " Varieties Entertain- 
 ment," which will give opportunities for the gem of 
 the Kergouet talent to display every and all of its 
 facets, is substituted. 
 
 Whether " Ay, Mate," is to be hitched into a 
 place amid the heterogeneous display Lettice does 
 not stoop to inquire. A great stillness falls upon 
 the house when its noisy little mistress is tem- 
 porarily withdrawn. 
 
 " Is not it like heaven — I mean the peace and 
 silence? " asks Lettice of her lover, as she hands 
 him his cup of tea in the morning-room as of old. 
 
 As of old, the sacred chairs stand in their 
 hallowed ugliness, unoccupied and well in evi- 
 dence; as of old, the bright-cheeked Hoppner 
 ancestress smiles white-snooded from above the 
 
2o8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Adams chimneypiece, the parrot makes a sleepy 
 noise with his beak under his Hght covering, and 
 Miss Kirstie, muzzleless — but that she has been 
 for some time past, ever since she made up her 
 sensible Scotch mind that Lulu is an evil that must 
 be endured — sitting in prick-eared expectation of 
 her national short-bread. 
 
 " I have made the housemaid collect all those 
 detestable acting editions and sweep them off " 
 
 " Into the dust-hole? " 
 
 " No, into Mane's boudoir. Oh, never fear, they 
 will emerge again soon enough/* After a pause, 
 " It seems incredible that I could ever have been 
 fond of play." 
 
 " As Jim says, one's point of view changes," he 
 answers dryly. 
 
 But after a day or two — a day or two of de- 
 pressed restlessness which she cannot explain — 
 the wave of peace seems to flow over him too. 
 They fall insensibly back into their old ways. 
 Browning reappears on the scene; Marcus Aure- 
 lius; even Thomas a Kempis has a turn. Once 
 again she can resume her discipledom, and look 
 up, an attitude for which of late she has seemed to 
 have little need. 
 
 Lettice might think that the pre-deluge, pre- 
 Marie, pre-engagement period had returned, but 
 for an all-important difference. She tries to tell 
 herself that that difference is for the better; tries 
 to lash herself up to some measure of the ardour 
 that had inspired her first abandonment. But even 
 the memory of it seems to have grown irrecov- 
 erably faint. She succeeds in deceiving herself 
 even less than she does him; and that that is but 
 
FOES IN LAW 209 
 
 indifferently is proved by his repeated reproaches 
 to her for her unresponsiveness, her passiveness. 
 It is the worst that he can accuse her of, since she 
 never resists. Tired, at last, of his upbraidings, she 
 defends herself. 
 
 " I do not think you have much to complain of," 
 she says, stooping her burning face under what 
 feels a weight of shame at her own duplicity. 
 
 Her speech at least stems the torrent of his 
 complaints, and brings a startling change into his 
 key. 
 
 *' Shall I ever forget the divine surprise of that 
 moment! " he exclaims, in a tone of rapt reminis- 
 cence. *' You who had always been so stand-off, 
 my snowflake, my icicle! After that I knew I was 
 safe; that you were mine through all eternity. 
 With a woman like you, I knew what it implied — 
 what it must have cost you! I knew that for me 
 it was the real thing." 
 
 The real thing! Her own phrase, whose corners 
 have been rubbed off with incessant use. Then it 
 must be so. It must be the real thing. But if so, 
 what can the mock thing be like? 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Kergouets have arrived. The Lent, which 
 must surely this year have had a hundred and forty 
 instead of forty days in it, has run its lean race at 
 last, and Easter has blown the expected Argosy 
 into happy Mrs. Trent^s port by the breath of an 
 east wind — fittest breeze in Lettice's opinion, as 
 being most disagreeable. 
 
 Although two unexceptionable and well-turned- 
 out carriages go to meet them, there is something 
 in their arrival that irresistibly reminds one of a 
 circus. 
 
 Marie herself drives Esmeralda in her pony-cart, 
 and flourishes up to the door twirling her white 
 whip in triumph like a mop, and singing '* See the 
 Conquering Hero comes " at the top of her voice. 
 
 The omnibus follows, with Sybil driving, Jim 
 sitting beside her, to avert the certain catastrophe 
 which her startling method of taking corners and 
 shaving gate-posts must otherwise entail. On the 
 roof behind these are Muriel and the two boys; 
 Louis, pale with nervousness, clinging to the rail, 
 and being grossly insulted by his sister for his 
 pusillanimity. Inside, the profile of Kergouet pere 
 is visible, civil and drooping, apologizing by its 
 expression to the coachman for having been turned 
 off his box, and to the footman for intruding on 
 his privacy. 
 
 2ZO 
 
FOES IN LAW 211 
 
 From her sitting-room window an observer 
 whose delicacy has prevented her from forcing her- 
 self on the first raptures of the arrival notes these 
 phenomena. Presently that observer's eyes cease 
 to serve her, since the pageant fades, but then her 
 ears come into play. Large and thick as the house 
 is, its silence is abolished. The rout seems in every 
 portion of it at once. Of course, they can bear no 
 delay in verifying their ungodly gains — Marie's 
 achievement. She has never hitherto seemed par- 
 ticularly elated by it, as the listener must grudg- 
 ingly own, but now she can evidently not bear to 
 delay for a moment the exhibition of it. 
 
 Yet no; they are not giving her the trouble of 
 showing it to them, they are showing it to them- 
 selves. Peals of laughter, galloping feet, doors 
 opened and banged in a way that is new, and must 
 be offensive to their dignified mahoganyhood; the 
 cry of joy of the discoverer, and the whine of the 
 cuffed. 
 
 By-and-by the increased clamour tells Miss 
 Trent that the excursionists have invaded her pas- 
 sage. Presently feet and voices reach her door, 
 which, after a slight pause and the sound of an 
 ineffectual remonstrance, opens wide, and reveals 
 in the aperture the good-looking bold face and fig- 
 ure of Sybil, with her family echeloned behind her. 
 
 " I told her to knock," says Esmeralda, in smil- 
 ing apology, which yet she evidently thinks quite 
 needless, and advancing with outstretched hand, in 
 her usual happy confidence of giving and receiving 
 pleasure. 
 
 Esmeralda's eyes are generously blacked, and 
 nothing can be smarter or more towny than she 
 
212 FOES IN LAW 
 
 in her plenitude of white furs and white satin 
 garnitures. 
 
 Lettice shakes the offered hand and several oth- 
 ers, thinking herself fortunate in eluding all the in- 
 tended kisses except little Frank's. 
 
 " I am so glad to find you here," says the actress, 
 genially. " It was impossible to speak two con- 
 nected words to any one at the wedding " — with 
 a little shrill laugh. " We are seeing the house. 
 How splendid it is! — quite one of the 'Stately 
 Homes of England.* '* 
 
 Marie is standing on the threshold; she never 
 enters her sister-in-law's domain, nor with her will 
 would her family have now done so. Is it fancy, 
 or is it possible that she can have become so un- 
 Kergoueted as to wince slightly at her sister's 
 phrase? 
 
 " Come," she cries with a little accent of curt 
 command, "out with you! If we spend so much 
 time on the house, when are we to get to the 
 theatre? " 
 
 The magic words act like a spell. Muriel drops 
 the photograph she is handling, and Sybil ceases 
 making the mysteriously infuriating noises which 
 causes Miss Kirstie, with bristled back and vol- 
 leyed barks, to ask herself whether, contrary to all 
 experience and precedent, a telegraph boy can be 
 in the room? 
 
 They are gone, but not before the father of the 
 flock has slidden a hesitating apology across the 
 door-mat. 
 
 "These terrible children of mine! You must 
 think " 
 
 But before he can proceed further his married 
 
FOES IN LAW 213 
 
 daughter has hooked her arm in his and cantered 
 him off. 
 
 Soon after that silence settles down again. 
 They must have snatched tea in their usual Pass- 
 over fashion, for in half an hour the pony-cart has 
 come round again, and borne away Marie and 
 Esmeralda, while, guided by Jim, the rest of the 
 party, questioning, exclaiming, racing one another 
 along the church path, set off for no doubtful goal. 
 
 They are very very late in returning, Mrs. Trent 
 having entirely forgotten that she had invited the 
 vicar and Mrs. Taylor to dinner, and it is nearly nine 
 o'clock before the last laggard has reached the 
 dining-room. Can there be one missing still, or 
 has the butler miscalculated? For whom is the 
 vacant place, instinctively avoided, beside Lettice? 
 
 She does not spend much thought on it, her 
 attention being divided between throwing cold 
 water upon Mrs. Taylor's sotto voce ecstasies and 
 covertly watching Randal and his method of deal- 
 ing with Esmeralda. It is a surprise to his be- 
 trothed to see him. She had not known that he 
 was coming. Is he drawing the little embodied 
 volubility beside him out in sarcastic amusement 
 — not that Miss Poppy Delafield ever needs much 
 drawing — or is it merely disapproving endurance 
 that looks out of the eyes continually passing in 
 hostile comparison between the dazzling original 
 at the head of the table and its ludicrous little cari- 
 cature at his side? 
 
 " She looks professional," says Mrs. Taylor, 
 whose gaze has been wending with intense interest 
 from one to another of the strangers, and though 
 the adjective may sound equivocal, the tone in 
 
214 FOES IN LAW 
 
 which it is pronouncdd clearly shows that it is 
 meant to be complimentary. " I suppose they 
 must always touch up a bit, even in private life." 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " Does the Httle boy always dine as late as this? 
 Isn't it very bad for him? " 
 
 " I am sure I do not know " — rather impatiently. 
 " I suppose he always did at the foreign hotels 
 they " 
 
 Her sentence is never finished, cut off close by 
 the knife of a surprise. There is a stir in the room; 
 some one has entered, and most people are bound- 
 ing off their chairs and racing each other to sur- 
 round and embrace him. In a moment only the 
 Taylors, Chevening, and Lettice are left seated. 
 
 " Who is it? " asks the vicaress, in a whisper 
 made loud by excitement, not of Jim — he has 
 joined the gay throng of welcomers — but of his 
 sister. 
 
 The latter answers vaguely, " I — do not know." 
 Then chiding herself back into sense, " What am I 
 saying? It is Marie's eldest brother.'' 
 
 The hubbub ends at last in the new arrival being 
 allowed to go and change his dress, and the elated 
 juveniles ordered back to their seats by Marie. 
 
 Miss Trent's eyes are returning from the door to 
 which they have escorted one from whom his en- 
 veloping family have entirely hidden her when they 
 meet in pure accident those of her betrothed. The 
 latter are examining her with an expression of 
 acute surprise, mingled with what can't be, yet 
 looks like, acute displeasure. 
 
 Dessert is reached before the wayfarer reappears, 
 
FOES IN LAW 215 
 
 restored to the level of the rest of the world by a 
 bath and a tail-coat. 
 
 Marie has had a place set for him beside herself, 
 and something not unlike Mr. Chevening's un- 
 accountable expression darkens her blazing sun- 
 shine when the young man, quietly ignoring the 
 fact, drops into the seat which has been vacant all 
 through dinner beside Lettice. 
 
 Nothing can be more colourlessly courteous than 
 his greeting; and yet after it the girl knows that, 
 despite the Wall of China which his family had 
 built round him, he had been aware of her all along. 
 
 Several moments are spent in vociferous insist- 
 encies on the part of the hostess that he shall eat 
 the dinner which has been brought back for him, 
 and equally resolute, though calmer, assurances on 
 his part that he will not, having already dined in 
 the train. 
 
 " Is that true? " 
 
 This is Miss Trent's conversational opening, 
 which she did not find in any book. Her voice 
 is not quite so coldly assured as it usually is when 
 adapted to the use of Marie's family; but the con- 
 sciousness that two pairs of hostile eyes are fixed 
 upon her gives it a slight tremor. That Marie 
 should be annoyed by her brother preferring Let- 
 tice*s neighbourhood to her own fills the former 
 with a not quite Christian pleasure; but that 
 Chevening should be assuming silly proprietary 
 scowls is simply and unadulteratedly annoying. 
 
 "Why shouldn't it be?" 
 
 " It sets one at such a disadvantage to be eating 
 soup when other people are eating sweetmeats, that 
 I thought you might prefer the pangs of hunger." 
 
2i6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 He shakes his head, inwardly congratulating 
 himself that no vulgar claims of beef or mutton 
 need lessen the number of looks that he may count 
 out to himself at the high perfection beside him. 
 How incompletely — though he has thought of so 
 little else since they parted — has he remembered 
 her! The breeding, the pride, the exquisite groom- 
 ing, — memory has understated them all. 
 
 Since her connection with the Kergouet family 
 Miss Trent has adopted a style of even severer 
 simplicity than before; and to-night she is dressed 
 in the very gown, or its fac-simile, that had once 
 awed Chevening with its note of rigid virginity. 
 Snowdrops are over, so in that respect there is a 
 falling ofY; for the lilies-of-the-valley that replace 
 them at her breast, though pure, are not cold. 
 
 Though it is accident that has placed her oppo- 
 site Esmeralda, choice could not have served her 
 better for the enhancing by contrast of her lofty 
 charms; and as Gabriel answers with gentle bro- 
 therliness the stagily affectionate inquiries and 
 ejaculations shot across the flowers at him, some 
 door in his heart seems to shut with a hopeless 
 clang. 
 
 " You must be surprised to find me still here," 
 says the cold, low voice beside him, when Esme- 
 ralda's little shrieks allow it to make itself heard 
 again, " after all my asseverations to the contrary; 
 but, perhaps, you have forgotten that I did asseve- 
 rate." 
 
 " No, I have not forgotten." 
 
 " I fully meant them. at the time; but afterwards 
 — soon afterwards — circumstances occurred — it 
 seemed hardly worth while to make any change." 
 
FOES IN LAW 217 
 
 She does not herself comprehend what drives 
 her to this oblique confession, only that the need 
 is there. He is so long in rejoining that she looks 
 up half angrily at him. Ought he not to be highly 
 flattered by her admitting him even over the thres- 
 hold of her confidence? She finds his eyes riveted 
 upon Chevening, who for the moment has released 
 them from his surveillance, and is answering in a 
 sulky voice some rowdy joke thrown at him out of 
 her abundance by Marie. 
 
 Gabriel's dark head veers slowly round. " It is 
 hef " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 A pause. 
 
 " Does he still think you wanting in imagina- 
 tion? " 
 
 She gives a slight start. " You remember that 
 too? " 
 
 " I remember that too." 
 
 His tone makes her vaguely uneasy. She harks 
 back to his question. 
 
 "Why shouldn't he? How can any change in 
 our relations alter my deficiencies? '* 
 
 There is no answer. Gabriel has returned to his 
 scrutiny. 
 
 '' It hioht soon?'* 
 
 " I— I hope so." 
 
 Her lips quiver as she frames the lie. But it is 
 for his good. 
 
 " I hope you will be very happy." 
 
 He is taking it just as he should; yet the calm 
 goodwill, which an iron effort has driven into his 
 face and voice, makes her illogically dissatisfied. 
 
2i8 FOES IN LAW ^ 
 
 " Very happy? " she echoes, raising the thin 
 gold-brown line of her eyebrows. ** Who is thatf " 
 
 As if in reply to her question a peal of laughter 
 from Marie, in which Jim's voice, with that new 
 jollity that the last few months have put into it 
 joins, rings out. There comes a fraternal smile into 
 Gabriel's grave eyes. 
 
 " Aren't you answered? " 
 
 "Ami?"— cavillingly. 
 
 " You told me that I need not be afraid of your 
 spoiling her life? " 
 
 " I told you so because I thought I should not 
 have the chance — because I thought I was going 
 away," she answers, in haste to shake off the en- 
 comium which she is conscious of so Httle merit- 
 ing. " If I have not spoilt her life, well " — ^with a 
 nervous laugh — " perhaps it has not been for want 
 of trying." 
 
 She knows his face too little to decide whether 
 this is news that she is telling him. It would ,cer- 
 tainly be better taste not to inquire; and she has 
 always piqued herself upon her discretion, yet 
 
 " Has not Marie told you how badly we have 
 got on?" 
 
 It needs no narrow inspection to see that he 
 hesitates. 
 
 " I have seen her so seldom." 
 
 " She might have written it." 
 
 " She might." 
 
 "And hasn't she?" 
 
 The answer comes pointed by a direct look that 
 seems pregnant with reproach. 
 
 " Since she married she has never once men- 
 tioned your name to me." 
 
FOES IN LAW 219 
 
 The full weight of her own bad taste pulls Miss 
 Trent's chin down on her neck, from which, be- 
 cause the Kergouet necks are encumbered with 
 beads, even its customary string of real pearls is 
 absent. 
 
 " It is right that she should excel me in gen- 
 erosity as in everything else," the girl murmurs 
 bitterly. 
 
 He does not at once rejoin, sitting silently back 
 in his chair. She thinks that it is a just indignation 
 that checks his speech. In point of fact, he feels 
 that if he let himself utter at all, he will have to 
 tell her that earth has never shown him anything 
 fairer than the little cheveux follcts — carefully re- 
 strained from being too follets — on the warm nape 
 of her stately neck. 
 
 When he has at last convinced his lips that such 
 expression is impossible, they consent to say — 
 
 " And has she spoilt your life too? " 
 
 The relief of for once speaking out her true mind 
 is too intense for Lettice to realize the exquisite 
 unseemliness of choosing her present hearer as 
 confidant. Her eyes throw out sparks. 
 
 "Absolutely!" 
 
 With this pleasant adverb she leaves him. 
 
 When Miss Trent joins the little group of inter- 
 twined sisters and young brothers by the drawing- 
 room fire she finds Esmeralda firing off eager ques- 
 tions as to the name and nature of her late neigh- 
 bour at dinner. 
 
 " If it had not been for his waistcoat I should 
 have felt sure that he was on the stage. He has 
 such an actor's face!" 
 
 " He is not an actor," replies Marie, seizing as 
 
220 FOES IN LAW 
 
 she speaks Sybil's fingers, and extracting from 
 them the cigarette which that young creature had 
 just filched from the florid cigarette-box; *' he is 
 a curate — Mr. Taylor's curate — isn't he, Mrs. Tay- 
 lor? — curate of Trent; but he will not always be 
 so." 
 
 The last clause is given with a faint but unmis- 
 takable imitation of Chevening's voice and manner, 
 which reveals to his betrothed that she has not had 
 a monopoly of his confidences as to his future 
 greatness, but has shared them with the woman for 
 whom he has always professed so deep-rooted a 
 dislike. 
 
 " He would make a good lover," continues Es- 
 meralda, with professional zest. " We are rather 
 short of lovers just now. From the look of him, I 
 should think he could take Martin Hervey's parts; 
 don't you think so? " — turning with the civil im- 
 pulse to include her in the talk to Lettice. 
 
 The confused haste with which the latter changes 
 the subject brightens the twinkle in Marie's eye 
 which her own malice and Esmeralda's innocent 
 blundering have lit there. 
 
 The latter gabbles on in happy ignorance, de- 
 lighted with the sound of her own voice, with her 
 handsome surroundings, and with hearers whom 
 she is as sure of pleasing as of being pleased with. 
 
 " How did you think Gabriel looking? " she 
 asks, again pointedly addressing Lettice, with a 
 good-hearted wish that the ex-mistress of the 
 house shall not feel out of it. " Did you know he 
 was coming? You seemed so surprised. Mr. 
 Chevening — is that his name? — asked me why you 
 looked as if you had seen a ghost." 
 
FOES IN LAW 221 
 
 " I did not know that he was expected; Marie 
 had not mentioned it." 
 
 "Hadn't I? "—nonchalantly. "I suppose I 
 thought it would not interest you much." 
 
 Esmeralda breaks into a laugh. " Oh, that is not 
 fair, is it? But how did you think him looking? " 
 
 " I am afraid I did not think about it " — in 
 amiable tit-for-tat response to Marie's mimicry. 
 Then, with a faint compunction and an air of forced 
 interest, " Has he been ill? " 
 
 " Not ill — no ; he would kill me for saying he 
 was ill. He will never allow he is ill; only horridly 
 overworked. A bank is sad bondage, particularly 
 when you hate sitting on a high stool as much as 
 he does. He only took to it " — turning to Mrs. 
 Taylor with the usual expansive candour of her 
 family as to their private affairs — " because he 
 could not bear to be a burden on father, and there 
 did not seem to be any other opening. Wasn't it 
 beautiful of him? " 
 
 Mrs. Taylor's cordial "It was indeed!" is 
 scarcely needed to set the happy little actress off 
 again. 
 
 " What has pulled him down now so much — 
 don't you think that he looks pulled down? — is 
 that he has been nursing father through what we 
 all think must have been influenza. He did not 
 breathe a word of it to any of us, because he knew 
 what a state we should have been in. Wasn't it 
 unselfish of him? But it must have been influenza! 
 He had just the same symptoms as Tiny Villiers. 
 How do you think father looking? Oh, you have 
 never seen him before. How do you think him 
 looking? " — appeaUng to Lettice. 
 
223 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Miss Trent is spared yielding, as it is to be hoped 
 that she would not have done, to the temptation 
 of hinting that the subject is one upon which 
 neither her eyes nor thoughts would deign to em- 
 ploy themselves, by the interruption of piercing 
 shrieks of laughter from a distant part of the room, 
 which the children in their pilgrimage of investiga- 
 tion have lately reached. 
 
 " What have they got hold of now? '* cries Marie, 
 who has hitherto been puffing away in unusual si- 
 lence, whipping as she speaks her feet off the head 
 of the fire-dog on which they have been resting, 
 and flying to the scene of action. " Oh " — begin- 
 ning to laugh a little too, but taking the object of 
 ridicule out of her juniors' hands — " it is poor old 
 Lady Clapperton's photograph in her Drawing- 
 Room gown." 
 
 The young ones, much above themselves, try to 
 snatch it back, shouting — 
 
 "Oh, do let me have another look! What a 
 neck she has got — like a giraffe; and such a smart 
 frock! Isn't it just like the coronation robes Miss 
 Wilson wore in Henry the Eighth? " 
 
 " A giraffe in coronation robes!" They all catch 
 up the phrase, and repeat it with volleys of derisive 
 amusement; even little Frank lisping it as well as 
 he can after his betters. But Marie gets tired of 
 the joke. 
 
 " Come, that is enough. She is a good old sort, 
 and I will not have her made fun of any more." 
 
 And when Marie speaks in that tone they know 
 that she means it. Their subsiding mirth coincides 
 with the entry of the men. 
 
 The vicar, as always when he can't sink into a 
 
FOES IN LAW 223 
 
 seat beside his wife, makes for Miss Trent, but his 
 curate, having younger legs and a better right to 
 the post, outstrides him, and occupies it. 
 
 " Which of you has been so amusing? *' he asks, 
 sitting down in front of her so as to hide her from 
 the rest of the party, and with a decisive air of 
 monopoly which she could have spared. " Have 
 the Kergouet family been treating you already to 
 a taste of their professional gifts? '* 
 
 " They have been sharpening their Green-Room 
 wit upon dear Lady Clapperton,'* she answers; and 
 he notices that her face is still discoloured by some 
 strong and recent emotion. 
 
 " And the new-comer — the first walking gentle- 
 man? Is he worthy of his family? '* 
 
 There are pleasanter angles for conversation 
 than when a person sits down bang opposite to 
 you, and, with elbows on knees and hands gripping 
 his face, favours you with a sight of the whites of 
 his eyes. 
 
 Lettice changes her attitude slightly. " You 
 will be able to judge for yourself." 
 
 "Why did you look so taken aback when he 
 came into the dining-room? " 
 
 " I am not aware that I did.** 
 
 Her tone of chill displeasure ought to have 
 warned him that he has gone far enough. On the 
 contrary, it excites him to a further display of un- 
 wisdom. 
 
 " Then why did you change colour? ** 
 
 She gets up. " If this catechism has any mean- 
 ing at all, it is an insult! '* 
 
 Her move, if any one is at leisure to notice it, 
 may seem motived by the fact that Muriel has pro- 
 
224 FOES IN LAW 
 
 duced a phonograph, and is inviting every one to 
 speak down it. Lettice joins the group gathered 
 round the exhibitor in time to see the vicar in the 
 throes of a hopeless struggle to find something to 
 say, every idea vanishing when invoked. He has 
 finally to be prompted by his wife to a flat aspira- 
 tion that there may be a moon on the night of the 
 theatrical performance. 
 
 Mrs. Taylor follows with a larky one for an an- 
 nual repetition of the gaiety, and each person in 
 turn pumps up a platitude or a flippancy, accord- 
 ing to their different natures — alike only in the 
 invariable difficulty of conception. The machine 
 has apparently the same palsying effect as an ear- 
 trumpet. Even the Kergouet fluency is congealed, 
 and with the melancholy, Frenchified Louis the 
 family invention runs absolutely dry. He tries to 
 retire from the arena, but is kept there by the 
 pinching grip of a sister on each side. 
 
 "Do not be a fool!" cries Sybil, holding his 
 close-cropped head down to the trumpet. " Say 
 something — anything. Come, Til tell you what to 
 say " — ^bursting out laughing. " Say Lady Clap- 
 perton is a giraffe in coronation robes ! " 
 
 There is nothing that, in the position he at pres- 
 ent occupies, Louis Kergouet would not say, nor 
 does he see anything objectionable in the utterance. 
 He at once complies. 
 
 " Lady Clapperton is a giraffe in coronation 
 robes," he says as distinctly as he can, and with a 
 strong French accent. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 "What are they up to now? Who is Lady 
 Clapperton? '* 
 
 Miss Trent, turning an indignant back upon the 
 scene of ribaldry, finds herself face to face with 
 Gabriel, who, having been finishing his cigar in 
 Jim*s company, has only just entered the room. 
 There is the well-founded anxiety of one all too 
 versed in his family^s capabilities in the young 
 man's tone. 
 
 " Lady Clapperton is my oldest friend/* replies 
 Lettice, pregnantly. 
 
 He has time for a flashed thought of how 
 infinitely wrath becomes her; of how different its 
 ensigns are in her to what they are in his own 
 vociferous, gesticulating crew, before, with an in- 
 articulate sound of annoyance, he hurls himself 
 upon the criminals. All four have made a peniten- 
 tial exit bedwards before he returns. 
 
 He finds Miss Trent seated on an old-fashioned 
 round ottoman, with either side undefended. Her 
 owner is not in sight, and he can read no prohibi- 
 tion in the grateful blue gaze she lifts to him. 
 
 " You have sent them to bed? " 
 
 " I have sent them out of the room. Far be it 
 from me to presume to say that I have sent them 
 to bed. They never go to bed." 
 
 92$ 
 
226 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Marie never goes to bed," rejoins Lettice, 
 gloomily. 
 
 Both ruminate in silence upon this awful state- 
 ment for a moment, then Lettice says — 
 
 " Perhaps you now begin to understand what 
 I meant when I told you that my life is absolutely 
 spoilt." 
 
 The conclusion is a monstrously exaggerated 
 one to draw from such premises; even he, lost as 
 he is in the stupefaction of his wonder at that 
 astonishing finish to which all the beauty to which 
 he is accustomed seems mere sluttery, shows some 
 protest in his countenance, though his tongue 
 utters none. 
 
 " I have no intention of calling upon you for 
 sympathy," she says, with that dim sense of being 
 in the wrong which is always upsetting to the tem- 
 per. " Under the circumstances, it would be an 
 absurd anomaly that you should show nie any. I, 
 merely in self-defence, state the fact, in answer to 
 your inquiries — I should not, if you had not asked 
 me, as you did at dinner — that my whole existence 
 now is a ceaseless process of being rubbed the 
 wrong way." 
 
 It is an evening of comparisons. At the dinner, 
 to which she has just alluded. Miss Trent had 
 wasted many moments in watching the cynical 
 travel of her fiance's eyes from Esmeralda to Marie 
 and back again. She feels that Gabriel is institut- 
 ing a like comparison between herself and the little 
 " strayed reveller," who is looking more Bohemian 
 than ever with a fool's cap out of a cracker on her 
 head — a waggish parting token from little Frank. 
 
 " There is nothing more deteriorating to the 
 
FOES IN LAW 227 
 
 character," she goes on, still with that chafed sense 
 of her own bad taste lending defiance to her voice. 
 " Do you think that I am not aware that I have 
 deteriorated? If I had not, should I be now talk- 
 ing in this way to you? " 
 
 The question might seem a dangerous one, in 
 the opening it affords for fervid contradiction; but 
 Lettice has a not ill-placed confidence in her man. 
 No touchiest pride could extract a compliment out 
 of his answer. 
 
 " You spoke in much the same tone when last 
 we met." 
 
 " Thank you," she says, with an angry, low 
 laugh. " I understand the implication. I have not 
 deteriorated because it was impossible." 
 
 He receives this foolish utterance in silence; not, 
 as she imagines, out of wisdom, but because if he 
 speaks he knows he must say, *' Go on being angry; 
 go on talking nonsense; and let me go on looking 
 at you. I ask nothing better." 
 
 " You told me that it would come all right," she 
 resumes, in that key of anger — soft-spoken, re- 
 fined, but acute — that seems to lay the blame of her 
 miscarriage at his door. 
 
 "Did I?" he answers. "Yes, I believe I did. 
 But then I was acquainted with only one of the fac- 
 tors in the case. I knew Marie, but I did not know 
 you. I reckoned without my host." 
 
 The words are needlessly, oddly harsh, and Miss 
 Trent's cup runs over. She cannot guess that his 
 only alternative from implying that she is a virago 
 is to fall at her feet. And this is the ingrate to 
 whom she had, with such considerate delicacy, 
 broken the fact of her approaching marriage! 
 
228 FOES IN LAW 
 
 "I understand," she answers in a deeply wounded 
 tone. " It is the same with every one. The two 
 conventional figures pitted against each other, the 
 innocent, suffering, injured angel and the malevo- 
 lent fiend. All the appreciation, all the allowances, 
 
 all the sympathy for her, while for me " Her 
 
 voice snaps off short. 
 
 A pause. 
 
 " Is there none for you? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 He waits a moment or two till he can feel him- 
 self pretty well in hand, yet his words flock out at 
 last in a good deal less measured march than he had 
 intended. 
 
 " You are wrong. When I see you here sur- 
 rounded by us, I can quite understand how you are 
 counting the moments till your release." 
 
 She gives a slight start, and flashes a search- 
 light upon him to see whether he has any arriere 
 pensee in his words. But a glance assures her to 
 the contrary. Counting the moments till her release! 
 He who can credit her with that is no conjurer. 
 
 3|C 3|€ 3^ ^ ^ 9|C 
 
 It is a gay cavalcade that enters Trent church 
 next morning, really not very long after the bell 
 has ceased. The Kergouets are generally not 
 strong in church-going, less from intentional neg- 
 lect than from an innate inability to be ever ready 
 in time for anything. But to-day excitement and 
 curiosity have torn them out of bed at an un- 
 heard-of hour, have sent the four children expatiat- 
 ing about the gardens and stables while the April 
 sun is still in his infancy, and are now driving them, 
 
FOES IN LAW 229 
 
 clad in their liveliest clothes — and that is saying a 
 good deal — up the aisle of Trent church. 
 
 The eyebrows of his family express an un- 
 disguised surprise at finding their elder brother 
 already there, the only other occupant of the pew 
 being Lettice. He and she are at opposite ends 
 of it. The embryo disposition shown by the young 
 ones to scuffle for the seat next Gabriel is imme- 
 diately quelled by him, as is the superfluous rust- 
 ling and fidgeting with which their opening devo- 
 tions are accompanied. 
 
 Glory has its drawbacks, and the distinction of 
 occupying the front seats is perhaps dearly bought 
 by the inability to see any member of the con- 
 gregation except Mrs. Taylor, who, by being par- 
 allel, is sidelongly visible; but, having been seen, 
 gauged, and found wanting overnight, is a poor 
 substitute for the hats and faces tantaHzingly 
 guessed at behind. 
 
 There is in compensation, indeed, a near and 
 admirable view of the officiating clergy, the noun 
 in this case becoming virtually a singular one, since 
 the vicar receives about as much attention as his 
 spouse. There is also a good deal of interesting 
 reading on the seventeenth and eighteenth century 
 monuments in the chancel, and more recondite 
 study of the early English sentence that runs below 
 the stained window to the late Mr. Trent's memory 
 overhead. 
 
 Mr. Trent's daughter has resolved that her Sun- 
 day quiet and Sunday charity shall not be tested by 
 witnessing the entry of the group of " strolling 
 players " with whom Fate has connected her. She 
 
230 FOES IN LAW 
 
 has to this end set off earlier than her wont, but 
 she cannot quite escape the family. 
 
 As she issues from the side door she sees the 
 elder Kergouet and his son pacing slowly ahead of 
 her in the aimless enjoyment of cigarettes, fresh 
 air, and loafing. The parent is leaning on Gabriel's 
 arm, and there is an indefinable air of friendship 
 and good understanding about both their backs. 
 
 At the sound made by the door clanging behind 
 Lettice both men turn, and after a moment's hesi- 
 tation, during which the elder drops his son's arm 
 and a frightened look creeps over his face, they 
 come forward to meet her. 
 
 " You are, like us, tempted out by the beauty of 
 the morning," says Mr. Kergouet — he has long 
 dropped that military prefix, which can have noth- 
 ing but disagreeable associations for him — speak- 
 ing with uneasy elaborateness. " We are revelling 
 in the purity of your air. Oh '* — with a nervous 
 glance that takes in the Sundayness of her tout 
 ensemble — " I see that you are on your way to 
 church. Might we be allowed to accompany you 
 part of the way? " 
 
 There is nothing that Miss Trent wishes less than 
 to be seen entering or approaching her parish 
 church under the convoy thus offered; yet she an- 
 swers civilly enough — 
 
 " Certainly, if you feel inclined. It is rather a 
 pretty walk across the park." 
 
 Once before has she seen the same look oi 
 mixed apprehension, command, and entreaty in 
 Gabriel's dark eyes; then, as now, she had obeyed 
 it. Her virtue has its reward. 
 
 " I am not going to have you on my hands 
 
FOES IN LAW 231 
 
 again," says the young man, in a tone of protecting 
 caressingness which takes all roughness out of the 
 words. " At this rate you will knock yourself up 
 before the day is half over. You had better take 
 it easy, and " — with a flashed glance at her — " I am 
 sure Miss Trent will excuse you." 
 
 Miss Trent tries not to put too much willingness 
 into h€r endorsement of this dismissal; and Mr. 
 Kergouet's is, perhaps, not an inferior effort to dis- 
 guise his relief as he sets off homewards. 
 
 Gabriel lingers. " May I walk a few yards with 
 you? or would you rather I did not? " 
 
 She must make some assenting motion with 
 head or hand, for the next minute they are stepping 
 it side by side towards the as yet silent church 
 tower. Neither utters at first. Speech lends itself 
 better to complaint or aspiration than to the ex- 
 pression of still well-being. 
 
 With the man, at least, to-day it is deeply well 
 — in the possession of this to-day, that has scarcely 
 a yesterday, and certainly not a to-morrow. To- 
 morrow, as y^esterday, there will be the meagre 
 life of self-repression and self-sacrifice, the life of 
 warding off pain from and concocting pleasures 
 for others. To-day there is the clear blue ether, 
 the glazed buttercups, the pushing verdure impa- 
 tient of sheath and calyx, the sunshiny aloneness 
 with the woman loved, — all, not for somebody else, 
 but for him! 
 
 To her he leaves it to break the charm of 
 that bright silence, which in a tete-^tete spells 
 intimacy. 
 
 " You think me a very great shrew. You are 
 always expecting me to insult some one." 
 
232 FOES IN LAW 
 
 She says it half upbraidingly, yet as one whose 
 conscience is not absolutely clear. 
 
 " Do you mean that I was afraid you were going 
 to snub my father? " he answers, with a direct re- 
 sponse to her thought that she finds embarrassing. 
 
 " Ye-es." 
 
 His momentary pause shows her how true had 
 been her intuition. 
 
 " I thought that you probably did not realize 
 how weak his spirits always are, and how ill he has 
 been." 
 
 A rather rueful tenderness pierces through a 
 tone meant to be wholly matter-of-fact; and Let- 
 tice's cheek burns at having obtained as well as 
 merited the oblique reproach which she had asked 
 for. It is never too late to mend. She will sit by 
 Mr. Kergouet at luncheon, offer him pine lozenges 
 for his cough, and try to pay him compliments as 
 flat as his own. It is in this meritorious frame of 
 mind that Miss Trent nears the church, now fling- 
 ing the poignant gladness — ineradicably sad — of 
 its Easter bells over the heads of the gathering 
 flock. 
 
 The gate in the park palings, which opened will 
 make her one of them, is reached, and Lettice 
 pauses. 
 
 " Are you coming to church? " she asks. 
 
 It never occurs to him — so much, at least, of the 
 Kergouet remains — that the weekdayness of his 
 clothes can breed the dissuasion he suspects in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Mayn't I? " 
 
 *' It is not my house that I should give or refuse 
 you leave to enter," she answers, with that half- 
 
FOES IN LAW 233 
 
 priggish gravity which he thinks so beautiful; 
 while an earnest hope that Randal may be putting 
 the finishing touches to his sermon or be already 
 safely boxed up in the vestry crosses her perturbed 
 mind. 
 
 She had not seen Chevening again after their 
 brush on the previous evening; he had apparently 
 been too much upset by it to remain till the 
 break-up of the party, and must have gone home 
 in a frame of mind which she does not care to dwell 
 upon. 
 
 Throughout the service she is haunted by an 
 odious fear that he may be going to preach at her 
 again. The telling herself that it will be difficult 
 to drag invective and reproach into the joy and 
 exultation that befits an Easter Day discourse is 
 the only thing that supports her at all; and it is 
 with a feeling of long-breathed rehef that she finds 
 herself safely in the church porch without having 
 had her ears wounded by one sentence that could 
 have any possible application to herself or to their 
 quarrel. 
 
 " What a splendid sermon! " cries Esmeralda, as 
 the prism-coloured party from the Hall re-enter 
 the park, followed by the overt admiration of the 
 schoolchildren, and the more covert, but not less 
 acute, interest of the adults. " And how wonder- 
 fully good his business is — I mean " — correcting 
 herself — " his action, his gestures. He must have 
 had lessons from an actor, I am sure, hasn't he? " 
 
 "Has he?" asks Marie, tossing the question 
 lightly on to the preacher's owner. 
 
 " Not that I know of. I certainly hope not," 
 replies she, hastily. Then, conscious that Gabriel 
 
2$4 FOES, IN LAW 
 
 is too near for her to be able to snub his family 
 comfortably, she adds, " I mean the two professions 
 are so different, that what would be suitable for the 
 one would be most inappropriate to the other." 
 
 " Of course, of course," returns Esmeralda, 
 dimly aware that she has said the wrong thing, and 
 in an amiable hurry to repair it; " but it is not only 
 his action that I admired. He is so wonderfully 
 eloquent — says such beautiful, touching things." 
 
 " We have had nothing but brimstone all 
 through Lent," says Marie, with that glint in her 
 eye which Lettice has learnt to know as always ac- 
 companying a reprisal of some sort, and which she 
 now recognizes as the tit-for-tat of her own hit at 
 the stage. " The swells have been getting it so 
 hot that it is a thousand pities none of them were 
 there to hear it, unless you count us." 
 
 She laughs, as if there was something inherently 
 ridiculous in the idea of the Trent household com- 
 ing under the category indicated, and her family 
 innocently join. The shaft has been well planted. 
 
 It has been impossible to Lettice not to be aware 
 that the extreme virulence of Chevening's Lent 
 denunciations of the rich and great — their surface 
 benevolence, their real selfishness, their dram- 
 drinking philanthropy and their profound callous- 
 ness — has dated from his own rebuff at Swyndford; 
 nor has his discourse to-day, though in a quite dif- 
 ferent vein, pleased her better. It has sounded in 
 her ears unreal, shallow, sugary. She tries to drop 
 a Httle behind in order to chew the cud of the bitter 
 wonder whether it is in herself rather than in the 
 style of her lover's oratory that the change lies, 
 but Esmeralda defeats her intention. The good- 
 
FOES IN LAW 235 
 
 hearted little creature sees that something has 
 drawn a plait on Miss Trent's white forehead, and 
 she sets her simple wits to remove it. 
 
 " You do not know what a pleasure it is to us all 
 to see the wonderful way in which Marie has taken 
 to her new life. I really think she has not a regret. 
 It shows how good you have all been to her. Tiny 
 Villiers said, * She'll never stand it; she'll be back 
 in six months.' I shall write and tell her what a 
 mistake she has made." 
 
 The speaker pauses, as if expecting some sign of 
 approval; but as none comes she flows on happily, 
 her mind as unable to keep for two minutes off its 
 habitual track as the dyer's hand to lay aside its 
 indigo. 
 
 " What a beautiful place for a pastoral play this 
 would be — really far better than Combe Wood. 
 The orchestra might be hidden away there among 
 the trees, and that dip in the ground, with the 
 banks rising gently round it like an amphitheatre, 
 seems made for the audience. Oh, Mr. Chevening, 
 I never saw you coming! We were just discussing 
 your sermon. Aren't you dying to know what we 
 said about it? " 
 
 She shoots a look of stage coquetry at him out of 
 her blacked but harmless eyes, and then, having 
 been evidently posted as to the state of affairs, trips 
 off to join the others. 
 
 " Is it true? " 
 
 " Is what true? " 
 
 " What that little marionette said about your 
 discussing my sermon." 
 
 Lettice is looking straight before her. If Ran- 
 dal has forgotten his overnight crime, she has not. 
 
236 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Miss Kergouet was expressing her great ad- 
 miration for it." 
 
 " And Miss Trent? " 
 
 " There was no need, no room for me to say any- 
 thing." 
 
 " And is there no need now,'' he asks almost 
 indignantly — " now to tell me what I am thirsting 
 to hear, that the lapse of sympathy which I have 
 felt between us all through Lent is exchanged for 
 that oneness of thought and aspiration which we 
 once shared? " 
 
 " Do you mean," she answers dryly, '* did I like 
 your sermon? " Then, as he is too much taken 
 aback to respond, " Judging from your last night's 
 implication, you cannot think my opinion upon it 
 vrorth having." 
 
 It gives her no pleasure to quarrel with him, as 
 it would were she in love; but she owes it to her- 
 self — a phrase which people invariably employ 
 when they wish with a clear conscience to be dis- 
 agreeable to their acquaintances — not to let his in- 
 sult pass unnoticed. 
 
 " Is it possible that you are still resenting that 
 wretched little spurt of irritation? " he asks in 
 angry wonder. " Was it worth a second thought, 
 much less a whole night's brooding over? Is it 
 likely that I should be really jealous as to one who 
 had given herself heart and soul to me with the 
 generous abandonment you did — and jealous of a 
 Kergouet? " 
 
 Lattice cannot speak. Will he never let her hear 
 the last of those dreadful kisses? and even if he did, 
 would his silence destroy the fact of their having 
 been given — destroy the impassable barrier that by 
 
FOES IN LAW 237 
 
 them she has erected between herself and all other 
 
 created men save only this one? 
 
 ♦ ^ * * ,* * * 
 
 "We must have a rehearsal of 'Ay, Mate!'" 
 says Marie, at luncheon, in a voice of imperious 
 gaiety. " No time before the school? Stuff and 
 nonsense! it does not take twenty minutes. You 
 know I timed you yesterday. Esmeralda is dying 
 to hear it. She is sure, from your * action ' in the 
 pulpit, that you must have had lessons from an 
 actor." 
 
 The young clergyman's clear pale skin shows a 
 faint red. 
 
 " Isn't that rather a left-handed compliment? " 
 
 " It isn't a compliment at all, right or left," re- 
 plies she, bluntly; " but we must just run through 
 it. You are rather inclined to drag when they are 
 bringing the child's body up the shaft." 
 
 It is needless to say that Mrs. Trent has her way; 
 and though later, when they have adjusted their 
 differences, Chevening assures his betrothed how 
 very much d contre-coeur has been his acquiescence, 
 yet it is with no overt appearance of unwillingness 
 that he follows his hostess and her sister to the 
 music-room, whence poor Miss Kirstie is soon 
 heard being chucked out for having mistakenly 
 tried to set the mining tragedy to a suitable ar- 
 rangement of howls. 
 
 The rest of the party lounge about in the hall for 
 a few moments before separating. 
 
 "What is *Ay, Mate!'?" asks Gabriel, ap- 
 proaching, with an inward benison upon his sister, 
 the forsaken fair. 
 
 " It is a piece which Mr. Chevening is going to 
 recite at the Performance^ 
 
238 FOES IN LAW 
 
 She can't resist giving the last two words in 
 ironical italics. 
 
 " Is it all as grisly as the specimen Marie gave 
 us?" 
 
 Her ringless hand — the fingers of his own female 
 belongings are laden to the knuckles — is propping 
 her cloudy face. She drops it to answer him. 
 
 " I do not know." 
 
 " You have not heard it? " — ^with a surprise he 
 cannot hide, and a pleasure he does not try to ac- 
 count for. 
 
 " No." After an instant's pause, " I thought I 
 should be less nervous on the Day if I did not know 
 what was coming." 
 
 The sentence identifies her with Chevening's 
 success or failure; and, of course, in the circum- 
 stances nothing can be more proper and natural. 
 Neither of them knows, therefore, why Gabriel 
 asks — 
 
 " Shall you be very nervous? " 
 
 She answers with a stiff generality. " Do you 
 think that it is ever pleasant to hear any one break 
 down? " 
 
 The young man is saved the trouble of rejoining 
 by the approach of his father. 
 
 " I am in despair at interrupting you," says the 
 latter, with an apprehensive side look at Lettice; 
 " but our host " — never in the sister's hearing can 
 Mr. Kergouet bring himself to speak of his son-in- 
 law as Jim — " our host has suggested a visit to the 
 farm; and, great as the treat would be to me, I am 
 afraid I scarcely dare venture upon the walk with- 
 out the help of your arm." 
 
CHAPTER XVIir 
 
 Several times during the next day Lettice finds 
 herself wondering whether Gabriel must not wish 
 that he had not an arm at all, either literal or 
 figurative, so incessant and universal are his fami- 
 ly's claims upon it. His father's late influenza has 
 apparently hung that unlucky gentleman as a con- 
 tinuous ornament upon it. Whenever Sybil is not 
 grabbing it to force its owner's attention as umpire 
 to some clamorous dispute, Louis is laying a tim- 
 orously ireful hand upon it in protest against the 
 unspeakable humiliations to which his sisters sub- 
 ject him. Marie's decided hooking of her own into 
 it disposes of all other claimants except her father; 
 and they acquiesce — not quietly, for they never can 
 do anything quietly, but as in the inevitable, such 
 as bills, bruises, torn clothes — ^in her superior 
 claims. 
 
 It is his one holiday — the Easter Monday which 
 releases him from his stool and his ledger, and Miss 
 Trent divines how deep must be his longing to 
 spend every minute of it out-of-doors in the large 
 rapture of enjoyment that the common air, the 
 common sights of the country, breed in the city 
 pent. Yet there is not a sign of disappointment 
 in look or voice when he finds that he is to spend 
 the whole of it inside the Rachel Hall — a name now 
 
 239 
 
240 FOES IN LAW 
 
 sunk, to Lettice's mixed indignation and relief — in 
 that of " the Theatre." 
 
 The day of " the Performance " is alarmingly 
 near, considering the state of forwardness of the 
 preparations — a condition of things unavoidable 
 until the arrival of the actors. Now that they are 
 here the justice of Marie's fiat, that the whole day 
 and every day shall be spent in rehearsing, is not 
 disputed. Though the sun is sending through win- 
 dows and doors invitations worthy of Italy, such a 
 sharp eye is kept upon stragglers that not one de- 
 faulter has to be accounted for when the final scene 
 reaches the end of its first rehearsal — hopeless as 
 first rehearsals always are. 
 
 Gabriel has never attempted to straggle. 
 Through the long day he has coached, and 
 prompted, and criticized; quelled Muriel's gig- 
 gling attempts at gag, and quenched Sybil's horse- 
 play. His behaviour through the petty trials of 
 the day gives a spectator, sitting on a reversed 
 box halfway down the hall, a glimpse, as through 
 a wall-chink, into what his life has been. That 
 spectator is surprised to find herself there. 
 
 " You are not coming? " Gabriel has asked her, 
 when the general tohu-bohu of the morning's set- 
 ting ofif has given him a moment's freedom from 
 his family, glancing at the hopeless indoorness of 
 her hatless head. She shakes it. 
 
 "You do not know the history of the Rachel 
 Hall — of what is now called the Theatre? " 
 
 " No. Is it anything disagreeable? " 
 
 In his tone there is a touch of patient expecta- 
 tion of annoyance, and she feels ashamed of having 
 unnecessarily raked up her grievance to prick him 
 
FOES IN LAW 241 
 
 with. Yet she says, " You had better ask Marie," 
 and he leaves her. 
 
 Her seat on the reversed box later in the day is 
 Miss Trent's amende. 
 
 Mrs. Taylor has a box too — a box which she is 
 continually shifting to different distances from the 
 stage, having been seized upon — a most willing 
 capture — by Marie, and deputed the task of judg- 
 ing of the audibility or non-audibility of the per- 
 formers in different parts of the house. She is able 
 to give a most satisfactory report; and, indeed, the 
 not being easily heard is a weakness that can never 
 have been attributed to the Kergouet ladies. 
 
 To save time, it has been decided that there shall 
 be no return to the house for luncheon or tea, but 
 that both shall be eaten and drunk on the stage. 
 The contrary endeavours of the excellent servants 
 to make both repasts as orderly and regular, and 
 of the mistress to jmake them as scrambling as pos- 
 sible, result in the latter's attaining success enough 
 to enable her to say, looking round on her relatives 
 with a happy moist eye, and pledging them in claret 
 perversely drunk out of a champagne-glass, " This 
 is almost like old times! " 
 
 Sentimental reminiscence, however, is not al- 
 lowed to interfere with the business of the day, 
 and by the time that Lettice rather shamefacedly 
 enters they are all hard at it again. She sits down 
 inoffensively on her box, rather to one side, near a 
 door, so that she is the first object on which Mr. 
 Chevening's eyes light when he enters with the 
 haste of one who has cut some other occupation 
 short to secure his being in time. 
 
 " You here? " he exclaims in a key the delight 
 
a4a FOES IN LAW 
 
 of which — and, of course, there must be delight — 
 is a Httle obscured by surprise. " This is unex- 
 pected!" 
 
 Her answer is a bald " Yes," and he goes on. 
 
 " I thought that you were determined not to hear 
 me till the Day!" 
 
 His taking for granted — a natural enough in- 
 ference — that his own share in the show is the one 
 loadstone that could have overcome her aversion 
 from entering the desecrated memorial to her 
 mother throws upon her beam-ends a person who 
 is guiltily conscious of a memory from which " Ay, 
 Mate! " had for the time been completely sponged 
 off. Her reply is thus not quite ingenuous. 
 
 " You see, I have altered my mind." 
 
 Still he shows no great elation. " I dare say " — 
 there is a slight wrinkle between his brows — " that 
 you thought — that it struck you as possible that 
 you might make some suggestions — some criti- 
 cisms; but in a case of this kind one has one's own 
 conception, and one must stick to it." 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " I have had a good deal to bear already in that 
 
 way from " A motion of his head indicates 
 
 Marie, who, having now utilized Mrs. Taylor to 
 represent the leading gentleman, who is not to 
 arrive until the night before the play, is hanging 
 on the vicaress' neck, noisily sobbing, " You are — 
 you ever will be my own darling Reggy! " " She 
 always thinks herself qualified to teach anybody 
 anything; but I have taken a very firm line with 
 her. I have said, * Either I do it in my own way, 
 or I do not do it at all.' " 
 
 " And that threat always brings her round? " 
 
foes; IN LAW 243 
 
 Against her inclination, there is something coldly 
 rallying in her tone. 
 
 " You know under what pressure I undertook 
 it/' he says, drawing himself up, " and how in- 
 tensely I have always disliked it, and — her." 
 
 In rather ludicrous comment on this statement 
 comes Marie's intimate shout from the stage — 
 
 "Randal! Randal!" 
 
 It causes her brother, who is standing, as he has 
 been for hours, facing the performers with book 
 in hand, reproving, rebuking, exhorting, to look 
 round just in time to catch the expression of dis- 
 gust with which Mrs. Trent's liberal employment 
 of her fiance's Christian name always paints Let- 
 tice's face. The fiance himself misses it, having with 
 praiseworthy self-conquest sprung to obey a hest 
 which on his own showing is hateful to him. 
 
 There ensues a little burst of jackdaw chatter, 
 which gives Gabriel his opportunity. 
 
 " She did not mean any harm," he says, joining 
 Miss Trent, and speaking unnecessarily low consid- 
 ering the aegis of clamour that protects him. " She 
 always calls everybody by their Christian name, 
 and, you know, he will be her brother-in-law." 
 
 If the girl starts, she at least has the probity not 
 to deny the accuracy of the hit. 
 
 " Have I given you the right to read my 
 thoughts? " she asks haughtily. Then, with an 
 abrupt change of key, " Of course she has every 
 right to call him Randal. As you say, he will be 
 her brother-in-law." 
 
 The last words sound as if they had been said 
 through set teeth. 
 
 The departure of Gabriel to his stony-hearted 
 
244 FOES IN LAW 
 
 bank has, owing to the 130 miles which part Trent 
 from London, to take place in the small hours of 
 the morning, and to those who know the Kergouet 
 family it is needless to say that so admirable an 
 opportunity for an all-night sitting is greedily 
 seized upon. Only the authority of the brother, 
 of whom they are so flatteringly eager to see the 
 last, succeeds in driving Louis and Frank to bed 
 soon after midnight. 
 
 It is still later before Chevening, with rather lay 
 invectives against his landlady and his latchkeyless- 
 ness, reluctantly retires. It seems to Lettice that 
 he is anxious to see her off to bed before he does so. 
 
 " You have had enough of this, I should think? 
 You will not stay up any longer? " 
 
 She detects a strain of suspiciousness in the ques- 
 tion, and answers perversely — 
 
 " I do not know about that. I do not feel at all 
 sleepy." 
 
 " You will be rather de tropy' he says, evidently 
 inclined to be ruffled. " You are not expected to 
 be included in the ' send off * ! " 
 
 "No?" 
 
 She is conscious of being exasperating with her 
 cavalier monosyllable and her tapping foot; but 
 he has never yet been punished for his two-days*- 
 old outrage, and he may just as well be so now. 
 Yet he leaves his sting behind him. It is perfectly 
 true. What part has she in the loudly affectionate 
 farewells that in a couple of hours will make the 
 welkin ring? 
 
 She rises, and glances round the room. Neither 
 Marie nor her brother are visible. Half an hour 
 ago the former had gone through her favourite 
 
FOES IN LAW 245 
 
 hooking movement, and drawn him away to a 
 private conference. It will be needlessly uncivil 
 not to say good-bye to him. 
 
 Lettice sits down again. Could she overhear 
 the dialogue now going on between the two ab- 
 sentees, it might quicken her movements in the 
 direction desired by her betrothed. 
 
 " You are not listening to a word I say," Marie 
 is crying; " you are only thinking how soon I shall 
 release you. Well " — with a childishly pettish toss 
 of her head — " there is no accounting for taste." 
 
 They have known each other too thoroughly 
 through nineteen tenderly affectionate years for 
 her not to know that this is no random shaft, too 
 thoroughly for him to deny that it has hit. He 
 winces so evidently that her heart smites her. 
 
 " You shall have her! " she cries, generously 
 emphasizing her liberality by throwing her arms 
 round his neck. " I do not fancy her myself, as I 
 perhaps may have mentioned once or twice before; 
 but since you do, you shall have her." 
 
 ** Yes? " — with a melancholy light kiss on the 
 top of her head — " and shall I have the moon and 
 a few of the fixed stars too, to put in my pocket? " 
 
 " If they would do you any good, you should," 
 she answers, half laughing and half crying. " But 
 they would not. You would pull them out when- 
 ever you wanted to blow your nose." 
 
 He does not want to cry, and he can't laugh, so 
 he only silently returns her hug of sympathy. 
 
 " After all," says Mrs. Trent, optimistically, when 
 a slight pause has restored her to some, though 
 not very much, composure, " she does not treat 
 you as much like dirt as she does the rest of us. 
 
246 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Oh, if you ever do marry her, make her pay, I be- 
 seech you, for the way she looks at father! " Then, 
 feehng Gabriel's arms slacken a Httle at this un- 
 christian parenthesis, and determined to say some- 
 thing that will make them tighten again — " After 
 all, many more unlikely things have happened. 
 There is nothing in the way but that wind-bag, and 
 he is not really in the way." 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 But apparently Marie has gone rather further 
 than she had intended. 
 
 " I mean — well, I mean that a wind-bag can 
 never be much of an obstacle, can it? " 
 
 She has dropped her arms from round him, and, 
 fidgeting with a thumbed and torn copy of the play 
 left lying on a table near her, shows him only her 
 profile. Her brother forcibly turns her counte- 
 nance fully round again. 
 
 " You mean," he says, breathing with a shaki- 
 ness that brings ruefully home to her how bitterly 
 real and serious the matter is to him, " that Cheve- 
 ning does not care about her — that " 
 
 Since the young man does not finish his sentence 
 himself, he can't well expect his sister to do so, 
 and she does not. There is a silence, through 
 which come squeals of pain, that tell how Sybil, 
 freed from all irksome overseeing, is putting Muriel 
 through a discipline of pinches, to which no amount 
 of custom can reconcile that young creature's sur- 
 face. The ears of both preoccupied elders remain 
 dull to the appeal. 
 
 " I think," says Gabriel, at last, speaking with the 
 utmost difficulty, " that if you are not careful, you 
 will have trouble with that man." 
 
FOES IN LAW 247 
 
 She flings her head up, showing him, with no 
 attempt at concealment of them, a pair of scarlet 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Have you ever known me have trouble with 
 any man? Have you ever seen the man that I 
 could not keep in hand? " she cries, flashing and 
 sparkling all over, and with a voice unconsciously 
 lifting itself to a dangerously audible pitch. 
 
 " Hush! they will hear you." Then, in a moved 
 key, all the brotherly tenderness and confidence in 
 which cannot extract the jealous sting from the 
 sister's heart — " I am not in the least afraid for you 
 — I know what an excellent head you carry upon 
 that little fidgety body. But what about herf " 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 A WEEK of confusion, noise, and general upsetting 
 of the machine of life follows; not much inferior 
 in anarchy to the days preceding Jim's wedding. 
 The shortness of the time left for preparation, com- 
 bined with the various magnitude of the pro- 
 gramme, would be enough to account for a hand- 
 some sum of hurry and bustle in the best-trained 
 professional troupe; when to this is added the Ker- 
 gouet genius for the topsy-turvy, the chaos beg- 
 gars description. 
 
 The list of attractions is arranged — if that can be 
 said to be arranged which is disarranged every sec- 
 ond day — to ensure Esmeralda's appearance in al- 
 most every item, and the printer is in despair at 
 the alterations which he is continually and at an 
 impossible nearness to the time of distribution ex- 
 pected to make in the programmes. The telegraph 
 clerk is worked off her legs, and desperate appeals 
 for properties that, though indispensable, have 
 been forgotten, and actors who have made mis- 
 takes about trains, succeed each other without a 
 second's intermission along the wires. 
 
 Until the last moment it is doubtful whether the 
 leading gentleman's commanding officer will not 
 detain him for some paltry guard or duty, and when 
 hailed like dawn by the sleepless he at length ar- 
 rives, it is discovered that, though he has brought 
 
 848 
 
FOES IN LAW 249 
 
 a wardrobe of beautiful clothes, and a gentleman 
 to throw limelight upon him, he does not know a 
 word of his part. 
 
 " If you can only remember your cues it will be 
 all right," says Esmeralda, with her usual hopeful- 
 ness, " and we must all help you. That was what 
 happened the other night at the Agora. Since her 
 
 illness Miss has quite lost her memory; so 
 
 the whole company had to learn her part, and who- 
 ever was near at the moment prompted her." 
 
 The anecdote would doubtless reassure them all 
 by so illustrious a parallel, did they need it; but 
 as they are already on a toppling height of joyous 
 confidence, it is perhaps superfluous. And their 
 faith in themselves is gloriously justified. The 
 dress rehearsal has been as bad as it was possible 
 to be, a scene of wrangling and tomfooling which 
 there was no Gabriel to suppress, and the voice of 
 the prompter, though " loud in the land," unable 
 to make itself heard above the gabble of argument 
 and contradiction, and yet nobody had seemed the 
 least disturbed or apprehensive. 
 
 Esmeralda's optimistic quotation of the axiom 
 that " The worse the dress rehearsal, the better the 
 first night," is not needed to maintain an equa- 
 nimity of belief in the family troupe that nothing 
 can disturb. And the applause with which, at the 
 close of the Performance, on that first night the 
 curtain is rung down, or rather pulled across, justly 
 earned by the hitchless spirit that has characterized 
 the carrying out of the whole dramatic theme, 
 proves to Lettice — deeply disbelieving until belief 
 has been forced upon her — that they have not over- 
 rated their own gifts. 
 
250 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Really wonderful for amateurs! But then, Miss 
 Kergouet — what is her stage name, again? " (read- 
 ing from the list of performers) " Miss Poppy Dela- 
 field — is not an amateur. She is a professional, 
 though I do not happen ever to have seen her, do 
 you? and, of course, even one professional," etc. 
 
 The " one professional " certainly does not spare 
 herself. In the piece de resistance she doubles her 
 part, changing her costume and her appearance 
 with such surprising celerity and success that the 
 slower-witted among the audience do not recog- 
 nize the identity of the leading lady in picture-hat 
 with the pert boy in tights till near the end of the 
 play. She executes a classic dance; the draperies, 
 as Lettice hears Marie eagerly repeating to half a 
 score admirers, copied from a Greek vase in the 
 British Museum. She sings a topical song. 
 
 Sybil sings too, a ditty presumably picked up 
 from a cafe-chantant during her stay in Paris at 
 the pension " kept by a relation of dear mother's." 
 
 Most of the audience, not understanding a word 
 of it, applaud vociferously where they think jokes 
 appear to be, and say how good the singer's ac- 
 cent is. 
 
 On the other hand, the one or two men who 
 can follow it make such strong representations to 
 Jim upon the subject that it is replaced on the next 
 night — two night performances and one matinee 
 are given, to include all classes in the treat by — 
 " When Little Pigs begin to fly." 
 
 Perhaps what brings the house down most is 
 when little Frank trots across the stage in his 
 nightgown; but in such a unanimous hurricane 
 of approbation it would be invidious to particu- 
 
FOES IN LAW aji 
 
 larize. If the voice of criticism is heard at all it is 
 to the effect that there is not enough of Mrs. Trent; 
 and, indeed, throughout the performance the com- 
 parative indifference of the hostess to her own 
 glory, when compared with her strenuous ardour 
 in the display of her family, cannot escape observa- 
 tion. 
 
 " What do they say? " she asks in an excited 
 whisper of her husband whom she has forced on 
 to the first boards he ever trod in his life, to " walk 
 on " in a crowd from which it is not her fault that 
 the vicar himself is absent. " Do not they think 
 Esmeralda quite as good as Winifred Emery? " 
 
 " They want more of yow." 
 
 "Pooh!" she cries impatiently. "But they do 
 appreciate her, don't they? She is playing up 
 wonderfully, isn't she? It is such a chance for her 
 to be seen — such an advertisement — particularly 
 as the duchess has come, after all." 
 
 Yes, the Duchess of Swyndford has come; ar- 
 riving smilingly behind time — though that is a 
 weakness for which her present entertainer is 
 scarcely in a position to blame her — and spoiling 
 by the rustle and bustle of her entry, and that of 
 her party, the last scene of the lever de rideaii. 
 
 Had there not been a change in the programme 
 consequent upon Chevening's positive refusal to 
 incur the disadvantage of opening the ball, her 
 Grace would have rushed like a bull in a china-shop 
 into the explanatory opening stanzas of " Ay, 
 Mate!" and not a soul would have known what 
 it was about. 
 
 At all events, here she is. And to have secured 
 a duchess-of-all-work, who to the professions of 
 
252 FOES IN LAW 
 
 beauty, philanthropist, and social reformer, adds 
 those of the novelist and patron of the drama, is 
 no light feat. 
 
 Lettice, sitting on her right hand in the front 
 row, speculates rather uncomfortably as to whether 
 RandaFs first intimation of the presence of the 
 great lady, whose slight he had so bitterly resented, 
 will be the sight of her directly under his nose, and, 
 if so, what disastrous effect the discovery may have 
 upon his recitation? Is it within the bounds of pos- 
 sibility that he may break down? 
 
 She has only time for a gleam of rather bogus 
 self-gratulation that, after all, she must still care 
 for him, or she would not mind whether he did or 
 no, when he makes his entry. It is clear — though 
 not to the general public — that he did not know. 
 A slight quiver of the eyelids and pinching in of 
 the handsome lips tells his fiancee so. But she need 
 not have feared his breaking down. The opening 
 words reassure her on that head. The having for 
 an auditor the woman who had not thought him 
 worth hearing in the Swyndford pulpit, so far from 
 numbing his powers, seems to kindle them to a fire 
 of inspiration, unreached, unapproached before. 
 
 Lettice has never much admired "Ay, Mate!" 
 It has seemed to her false, tawdry, pernicious, 
 even, in its tending to kindle class hatreds; to vilify 
 the rich qua rich, and deify the poor qua poor. 
 But to-night, as interpreted by Randal, she cannot 
 deny its effective platform quality. 
 
 The reciter advances to the footlights, his tall 
 figure looking loftier than its wont upon the little 
 stage, and above the banked flowers. His beauti- 
 ful face is pale and serious; his eyes full of sombre 
 
FOES IN LAW 253 
 
 light. He begins in a quiet level voice, his utter- 
 ance so perfect that each low syllable reaches the 
 furthest corner of the hall, and continues in the 
 same key till the outline of his story stands out 
 clear and sharp. Then comes emotion, action, 
 never excessive, and apparently quite spontaneous, 
 as if arms and hands of their own accord took up 
 the theme of the eloquent tongue; then follows 
 denunciation that, keeping always on this side 
 rant, sends a shiver through the absolutely still 
 audience, and pathos, never maudlin, that brings 
 out stealthily pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 
 At the end he is thrice recalled to make his grave 
 bow of acknowledgment. 
 
 " But it is admirable! " cries the duchess, wiping 
 her eyes. " I must try to get him to do it for me 
 in London. Will he snub me, do you think, if I ask 
 him? What is his name? " — referring to her pro- 
 gramme. " The Reverend Randal Chevening. 
 Oh, of course. How stupid of me to ask! " — with 
 a polite little smile and bow. " He is such a splen- 
 did preacher, I am told; but I have never yet been 
 fortunate enough to hear him." 
 
 Her civil but perfectly unapologetic words re- 
 veal how entirely ignorant or forgetful she is of the 
 slight that had bitten so deep and rankled so long. 
 
 " He preached at Swyndford in the winter." 
 
 ''Did he? " — with an air of flattering incredulity 
 that such a fact could have escaped her memory. 
 " Oh yes, now I recall. It was for my Mothers; 
 and I was unable to be present. I was called away 
 to some tiresome corvee. I remember now how 
 exceedingly vexed I was." 
 
 It is not much later in the evening — during the 
 
254 FOES IN LAW 
 
 interval for refreshments — that Lettice hears and 
 sees the same soothing balms being poured into 
 her lover's wounds by the very hand that had made 
 them. She is able to trace in Randal the several 
 stages of formally endured introduction, gradually 
 clearing brow and relaxing lips, and final and com- 
 plete condonation. 
 
 And meanwhile the " Performance " rolls along 
 its brilliant and variegated course. The *' leading 
 gentleman," though he has sat up all night to 
 master his part, cannot be said to have assimilated 
 it very thoroughly. But as there is not one of the 
 Kergouets — and they are all playing in the piece — 
 who is not more than able and willing to cram him 
 with his words like a young pigeon with peas; and 
 as the splendour of his raiment and the dazzle of 
 his limelight quite take off attention from his oral 
 utterances, he does very well. 
 
 And if this is true of the weak point, what can 
 be adequately said of the strong ones? Esme- 
 ralda's topical song, the allusions in which, unlike 
 Sybil's cryptic French utterances, every one can un- 
 derstand; Esmeralda's classic dance, " copied from 
 a Greek vase; " Esmeralda's sounding box on the 
 ear, as a sparkling waiting-maid to a too enterpris- 
 ing young Clapperton (with whom, in rehearsal, 
 she has had infinite trouble to make him enterpris- 
 ing enough); Frank's nightgown rescue of his 
 mother (Marie) from a villain; — all pale in popu- 
 larity before the final appearance in front of the 
 curtain of Mrs. Trent, carrying in her arms a real 
 baby, lent for the occasion, and with which she has 
 been blessed between the second and third acts. 
 
 And now it is over. The last plaudits have died 
 
FOES IN LAW 255 
 
 upon the ear, the last carriage-wheel has rolled 
 away with its amused and supper-ward-looking 
 load; and now, through the noble mahogany 
 doors, the company has streamed into the festal 
 dining-room at Trent. It is a more mixed assem- 
 blage than the five Knellers and the one Rembrandt 
 have often looked down upon; for Marie has com- 
 pelled county, town, and' village to come in, " that 
 her house may be filled." 
 
 The jumble would, in the case of any other host- 
 ess, have given dire offence; but " little Mrs. Trent 
 is such a character, she can do anything." 
 
 The phrase has sounded over and over again in 
 Lettice's protesting ears. Why should " little Mrs. 
 Trent " have any such immunity from the rules 
 that bind, and have always bound, her betters? 
 The answer, doubtless, is, that to ignore the im- 
 possibility of any course of action is halfway to ac- 
 complishing it; but Lettice*s indignant question 
 being put only in her for interieur, there is naturally 
 no one to make this response. 
 
 It is well for Miss Trent's peace that she does 
 not know that among the invited guests had been 
 Mrs. Fairfax; but that lady, despite her one lapse, 
 is wise in her generation, and not even the pleasure 
 of comparing notes with Mr. Kergouet upon the 
 world's slaps can draw her from her safe retreat. 
 
 There is one other defaulter, in this case a most 
 unwilling one. The sword of sick-headache, un- 
 suspectedly hung all through the rehearsals over 
 Mrs. Taylor's devoted head, has fallen; and within 
 a mile of the applauses, the wine-cups, and the 
 jests, the drama's truest votary lies prone. 
 
 " I knew how it would be," says the vicar, with 
 
256 FOES IN LAW 
 
 the proud sadness of having once again proved 
 his indefeasible right to the custodianship of the 
 
 achingest head in shire. " It is always the 
 
 same. I do not know why poor Mrs. Taylor hoped 
 she might escape this time." 
 
 " She has two more chances," replies Lettice, 
 betrayed, contrary to her better judgment and to 
 her long knowledge of her vicar, into expressing 
 a more sanguine view. " We are to have the privi- 
 lege of seeing the whole show twice over again." 
 
 The good man looks hurt, as at one belittling 
 another's great distinction. 
 
 " It is one of her worst," he says very gravely; 
 " they never last less than three days." 
 
 " Is Jim really going to stand after all, next 
 election? " asks Lettice's other neighbour. Lord 
 Clapperton, casting an inquiring, though not-in- 
 the-least-objecting glance over the mixed assem- 
 blage. " Why do I ask? Oh, because I thought 
 it looked as if his missus was doing popularity. 
 She would be invaluable to him," he adds, casting 
 a gay old eye, not empty of envy, upon the place 
 beside the hostess, whence the Duke of Swyndford 
 has ejected him. " She might have let me sit on 
 her other side, instead of beckoning to that little 
 chap out of Brigg's Bank, as I saw her doing." 
 
 " She has a brother in a bank," replies Lettice; 
 " so perhaps that accounts for a preference that " 
 — with one of the smiles that, less often than of 
 old, turn her face from a pretty into a charming 
 one — " that is otherwise unaccountable." 
 
 We all know that to lead a horse to the water 
 and to make him drink are two different exploits. 
 Marie has led her horses to the water, and they 
 
FOES IN LAW i^y 
 
 have done for her what they would not have done 
 for any one else, i.e. they have forgiven her for 
 bringing them there; but further they tacitly de- 
 cline to go. 
 
 The party sorts itself, except in the case of the 
 duke and duchess — though, had it been left to 
 Marie, there would have been no except — and falls 
 into its natural sections. The three old maids — 
 Miss Smith, Miss Brown, and Miss Lamothe — who 
 see each other every day, and several times a day, 
 achieve what is always their prime object at a feast, 
 the sitting together; the brewer takes the wine- 
 merchant's wife, and the wine-merchant the brew- 
 er's, and the incandescent gas goes in alone. But 
 anyhow, by whatever methods they arrive, here 
 they all are; for ever afterwards in a position to 
 say that they have supped with a duchess, as Pepys 
 said he had "kissed a queen;" and to tell how, 
 at the head of her own table, they had seen Mrs. 
 Trent stand up, and, with her glass in her hand, 
 propose the toast of " The Drama." 
 
 It is responded to for Esmeralda by the leading 
 gentleman, who is only too delighted to have an 
 opportunity of identifying himself with the real 
 stage; and having a better command over his own 
 words than he had had over those of his part, 
 brings down the house by the humorous manner 
 in which he does so with pleasantries as brilliant 
 as his limelight. 
 
 When a certain pitch of human elation is 
 reached, it is a pity to waste good jokes upon it, 
 since bad ones do as well, if not better; and ere 
 the steady walls of the decorous eighteenth-century 
 house cease rocking with the company's mirth, 
 
258 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Mrs. Trent and her family have degenerated into 
 jokes, which, though perfectly harmless, would, for 
 their sheer badness, find admittance into no jest- 
 book. 
 
 Sybil, of course, tends towards horse-play, and 
 tries to hoist both dogs upon the supper-table and 
 incite -them to fight; but Miss Kirstie, whose 
 Covenanter blood revolts against play-acting, and 
 who fs already upset at having been mountebanked 
 into a Dog Toby collar in cut paper, shows such a 
 clean white row oi reasons against her exhibition 
 as not only arrests the project, but also puts an end 
 to the sitting, which otherwise might have lasted 
 till sunrise. 
 
 T* 3(C ^C 3|C 9|C 9|C 
 
 And now it is all over. The second and third 
 performances have followed the first into the past 
 — second and third performances alike unseen by 
 Mrs. Taylor, who, true to her husband's prevision, 
 rises from her sick-bed only in time to see the dis- 
 mantling workmen and property-laden carts un- 
 build the fabric of such high hopes. 
 
 Marie is almost as much cut up at the vicaress's 
 disaster as that lady herself, and spends herself in 
 efforts to repair the ill, nature of Fate by vivid 
 descriptions, posthumous dressings-up, and reit- 
 erated photographic groups, which turn the Vicar- 
 age drawing-room into a temple of Thalia. 
 
 Mrs. Trent's hands have indeed been full during 
 the eventful week, as to her other manifold labours 
 she has added that of personally assuring herself 
 that all the insignificant people have good places, 
 that the deaf are seated where they can hear, and 
 the purblind where they can see. She gallops 
 
FOES IN LAW 259 
 
 through it all somehow with indomitable spirit, 
 carrying her troupe with her to the brilliantly suc- 
 cessful close. 
 
 " When the Little Pigs begin to fly " has super- 
 seded Sybil's cafe-chantant song with universal ap- 
 probation, and being placed at a safe distance from 
 " Ay, Mate! " has not materially injured that tragic 
 utterance, which indeed brings out quite as many 
 pocket-handkerchiefs as at first. When their own 
 duchess had led the way, who would not blush not 
 to follow? 
 
 " Her Grace is really very much affected," Miss 
 Lamothe has said in a respectful whisper to one 
 of her cronies. " Now that she has turned her 
 face this way I can distinctly see a tear on her 
 cheek. Yes, she is wiping it away." 
 
 "Wiping it away!" repeats Miss Brown, whose 
 sight, although her hearing is better, is not so good 
 as her ally's. " Then she can't be as much made 
 up as they say." 
 
 "Are you converted?" Randal has asked his 
 iiancee, with a smile that he tries not to make too 
 triumphant, getting near her for the first time at 
 the very end of the revel. 
 
 The duchess has talked to Chevening all through 
 supper, turning her shoulder upon Jim. The ladies 
 whom Mr. Trent escorts to his own board invaria- 
 bly say how much they like him, but none of them 
 ever try to talk to him. There is a theory widely 
 held through the neighbourhood that he prefers 
 silence. It has not originated with nor is ever sup- 
 ported by himself, but the belief is too deep-rooted 
 now to be dislodged, and he acquiesces in it with 
 his usual good-humoured patience. 
 
26o FOES IN LAW 
 
 "Am I converted to what?" Then, ashamed 
 of a pretended ignorance that is merely petulant, 
 she answers, " I thought you did it well." 
 
 The encomium is evidently as much inferior in 
 warmth to what he has just been receiving, as was 
 Cordelia's profession of afifection to her sisters, 
 and his face falls. Her conscience smites her a 
 little for gratuitously snubbing him in his moment 
 of perhaps just elation, mainly because she herself 
 is feeHng cross and jaded. 
 
 " There can be no doubt as to its having been 
 a success." 
 
 " So she has been telling me " — with a slight 
 jerk of his head. " Of course, one cannot judge 
 of one's own performance, and equally of course 
 strangers say civil things to one; but from you, at 
 least, I knew that I should get the truth." 
 
 Once again conscience pricks. Is he so sure of 
 getting the truth from her? Is she not rather a 
 walking He in her relation to him? 
 
 " I think you did it admirably." 
 
 His face lights up. " If my dear Lady Veracity 
 tells me so, I may begin to believe it," he cries, 
 with a gaiety that seems to her out of drawing. 
 
 " You have been invited to repeat it in London." 
 
 " How did you know that? " — rather quickly. 
 
 " The duchess consulted me as to whether you 
 would be likely to snub her if she asked you." 
 
 There is a touch of banter in her voice. He 
 looks slightly confused. 
 
 " I believe she did say something about it " — 
 indifferently-^" but, of course, it is entirely out of 
 the question.*' 
 
 " I suppose so/' 
 
FOES IN LAW 261 
 
 This is not the rejoinder he had meant to re- 
 ceive, and she knows it. 
 
 ** So you have forgotten her Grace's trespasses?" 
 cries Marie, flying up to them in mad gaiety, the 
 last guest, except Randal, having at length de- 
 parted. " And you did it very thoroughly, too — 
 no half measures. I saw you at supper." 
 
 " I am flattered that you had so much attention 
 to spare for me," he answers resentfully, and flash- 
 ing at her one of those dark looks which have al- 
 ways puzzled Lettice. 
 
 " Ah, but, you see, his Grace was not begging 
 me to come and perform for him in London^ as her 
 Grace was you," retorts she, teasingly. 
 
 " You are very liberal of your * Graces,' " says 
 Lettice, tartly and jarred. 
 
 " I try to be," replies Mrs. Trent, maliciously. 
 " I called the duke ' your Grace ' every time I 
 spoke to him. Was not that right? " 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 The Kergouet visit lasts for a full fortnight after 
 their theatrical display. Why should they hurry 
 away when they are giving and receiving so much 
 pleasure? By the end of it Miss Trent doubts her 
 own identity. It is not as if she were able to be 
 merely an onlooker at their revels. Nolens volens, 
 they drag her into them. Nothing can make the 
 younger members of the family understand that 
 she dislikes and disapproves of them in the highest 
 degree, nor that there is any particular sacredness 
 about her sitting-room which on their wet-day in- 
 door rompings about the passages they freely use 
 as a bolt-hole. And although Esmeralda apolo- 
 gizes for and deprecates these intrusions, her own 
 droppings in, preceded ty a rap at the door which 
 does not wait for a permission to enter, dropping 
 in to tell Miss Trent she must be lonely and regale 
 her with orts and fragments from the theatrical 
 feast that is always being held in her own mind, 
 are in her victim's opinion a not inferior ill. The 
 visits have taken their rise in Esmeralda's requests 
 to Lettice to hear her words. 
 
 " I am always a slow study," says the little 
 actress, cheerfully; " but then, when once I have 
 got the words into my head they are there for ever. 
 There is not a single role I have ever learnt that I 
 
 262 
 
FOES IN LAW 263 
 
 could not say through now from beginning to end. 
 Would you care to try me? " 
 
 " Oh, by no means," returns Lettice, precipi- 
 tately. " Of course, I take your word for it." 
 
 It is certainly not Miss Trent's fault that, when 
 she is feeling most uncharitably towards Muriel 
 and Sybil for some freshly perpetrated enormity, 
 they should gallop up to her and, flinging their 
 arms about her neck, swear they had never known 
 what happiness was before. 
 
 " You are very fond of * swearing, ' " she an- 
 swers, disengaging herself, ruffled, the first time 
 this occurs. 
 
 ''Are we? " replies Muriel. Then, regretfully, 
 " We do not know many English oaths," but, with 
 recovered self-respect, " we know all the worst 
 French jurons.'" 
 
 It is not Lettice's fault that Louis, who is in- 
 clined to be a tell-tale — the vice of the oppressed — 
 makes her the confidante of his sister's iniquities, 
 nor that they in return utilize her as a means of 
 airing their estimate of him. 
 
 " We like Frank," they say on one of these occa- 
 sions; "but we get tired of people. We used to 
 like Louis, but " — eyeing him with dispassionate 
 disapproval — '* we do not like him at all now." 
 
 Louis's delicate, girlish face grows pink. " You 
 cannot possibly dislike me," he says, with his 
 strong French accent, " so much as I dislike you." 
 
 The range of the Miss Kergouets' crimes is 
 immense, embracing the most childish ones as well 
 as those of an almost grown-up cast. Released 
 from the confines of a narrow Paris appartement, 
 their joy in their emancipation seems as if it could 
 
264 FOES IN LAW 
 
 not translate itself adequately, except by trans- 
 gression of some law. They invade every province, 
 crying " Havoc " to the " Dogs of War " wherever 
 they go. They parade their wickednesses, as when 
 they buy shag illegally at the village shop, and 
 smoke it brazenly in the village street. In a root- 
 shed they find some dahlia tubers, cherished of the 
 gardener's soul, and hew them into bits. Asked 
 why they have committed this piece of wanton de- 
 struction, answer puerilely that they have been 
 playing at mashing potatoes. No babyish mischief 
 is too small, nor any half-grown-up indiscretion 
 too great for them. 
 
 Everywhere Sybil leads — dauntless, conscience- 
 less, unconquerable, hard as nails. She ends by 
 extracting an unwilling admiration from Miss 
 Trent, an admiration that dates from the day when, 
 within twenty-four hours, she flays her shin, has 
 her thumb pinched by a companion in the hinge of 
 a door, and runs a splinter of wood into the palm 
 of her hand so deep that it has to be extracted by 
 pincers — all without caring a straw. 
 
 At the end of the fortnight, despite the heavy 
 bill for repairs which marks their track wherever 
 they go, Lettice is surprisedly conscious that she 
 dislikes the Kergouet family distinctly less than she 
 did at the beginning. They enjoy themselves so 
 extravagantly, and are so absurdly persistent in 
 telling her so, and in trying to enlist her help in 
 securing a speedy repetition of their bliss, and to 
 the end remain so loyally unconscious of antipathy 
 or even unfriendliness on her part, that by dint of 
 ignoring them, these sentiments imperceptibly lose 
 much of their earlier vigour. 
 
FOES IN LAW 265 
 
 The Miss Kergouets are dreadful girls, being 
 and doing everything that is most offensive to her; 
 and yet there is something about their tremendous 
 vitality, their boisterous good-humour, their in- 
 vincible taking for granted that she sympathizes in 
 their terrible sports, that ends by partially disarm- 
 ing her. 
 
 " This is a white stone day for you, I suppose? " 
 says Marie, as she enters the dining-room on her 
 return from the highly emotional " send off " she 
 has been giving her relatives from the little local 
 station. The tears are rolling down her cheeks; 
 but through them defiance flashes — defiance 
 crossed by a sort of hankering after being contra- 
 dicted. 
 
 " Is it? " replies Lettice, coldly resenting this 
 gratuitous attempt to pick a quarrel. Then, rather 
 relenting at the sight of the small woeful loveliness 
 that even abundant crying cannot much deface, 
 she adds, " One gets used to anything." It is not 
 a very gracious concession, but she softens it by 
 adding with a smile, " I mean in the way of noise." 
 
 Mrs. Trent does not rejoin at once, standing 
 disconsolately looking out of window, whence not 
 even a trace of Sybil's or Muriel's breakages is vis- 
 ible to cheer her. Presently she returns to the 
 table, and, as if repeating unwillingly a lesson 
 learnt by rote, says — 
 
 " My father bid me thank you." 
 
 ** Thank me! For whatf " 
 
 The daughter shrugs her slight shoulders ex- 
 pressively. 
 
 " Father is always very courteous. You heard 
 
266 FOES IN LAW 
 
 Esmeralda her words, and you were fairly civil to 
 Gabriel. I suppose it was more than he expected." 
 
 Then her tears master her; and though she has 
 generally the indifference of a child or a savage as 
 to being seen publicly weeping, she now flies, car- 
 rying her grief with her, out of the room. 
 
 Miss Trent remains for a few moments staring 
 straight before her. So this is the whole sum of 
 human kindness in respect to the Kergouet family 
 that can be scraped up to her credit! She does not 
 know whether she ought to be remorseful or not. 
 She does not even know whether she is remorseful 
 or not. She only knows that her spirit sits heavily 
 upon its throne within her. To lighten it, to dis- 
 tract her thoughts, or perhaps solely because she 
 thinks it a duty, she goes, heavily still, to see a 
 sick woman in the village, only to find that the in- 
 vaHd, though politely trying to disguise the feel- 
 ing, is disappointed that she is not Marie. She 
 returns home more heavily, to be told that Mr. 
 Chevening has been waiting for her for half an 
 hour in her sitting-room. 
 
 Heavily still, most heavily, she joins him. He 
 has paid her several visits there during the past 
 fortnight, but the young Kergouets have so en- 
 tirely destroyed the privacy of the room by their 
 incursions — a result for which for once she heartily 
 blesses them — that Randal and she have scarcely 
 met as lovers. 
 
 The turning of love's bower into a railway wait- 
 ing-room naturally provokes much protesting ire 
 from the young man; but a proposal that they shall 
 defend themselves by locking the door against in- 
 truders meets with such lively dissent on th? part 
 
FOES IN LAW 267 
 
 of his lady-love that he does not repeat it. There 
 are no protecting Kergouets to-day, and she reads 
 the consequences to be expected in his eye, 
 
 " I have come to congratulate you.'* 
 
 "Upon what?" 
 
 The initial embrace has been got through. 
 
 " Upon the exodus! They are really gone? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Thank Heaven!" 
 
 She is still in her walking things, and, in order 
 to free herself from him, begins to take off her 
 feather boa. 
 
 " I think I am too wicked to-day to be able to 
 say or feel ' thank Heaven! * for anything." 
 
 Her tone expresses such utter out-of-tuneness 
 that he looks at her, startled. 
 
 " What does this mean? " 
 
 '* I do not know," she answers flatly. 
 
 " Is it the natural consequence of a swarm of 
 locusts having passed over you? " he asks, laugh- 
 ing satirically. " But they are gone." 
 
 " It has nothing to say to the swarm of locusts." 
 
 " Are you ill? " — recovering on this excellent ex- 
 cuse the momentarily lost proximity. " But no, 
 your eyes are as clear as crystal, your skin " 
 
 " Oh, my eyes and skin are all right," she 
 answers impatiently. 
 
 " There is something that is not all right about 
 you," he answers, reddening with displeasure, "and 
 I think I have a right to know what it is." 
 
 Her answer sounds irrelevant. " I have been to 
 see Mary Beech. I think she is certainly dying; 
 and she told me that you had not been near her for 
 ten days." 
 
268 FOES IN LAW 
 
 He loses his temper. " You mean to charge me 
 with neglect of duty? You have taken upon you 
 the role of censor? " he cries; then, after a minute 
 or two of angry silence, he resumes his self-com- 
 mand. " Possibly you are right; possibly, prob- 
 ably I have shared the general deterioration of 
 tone that has invaded the parish ever since " 
 
 " If you are alluding to Marie/* she breaks in, 
 " she is far more active in visiting the sick than you 
 ever were." 
 
 His jaw drops, petrifaction at this adoption of 
 the part of heated defender of what she has always 
 reprobated on the part of his fair one blunting at 
 first the force of the severe snub to himself. He 
 cannot be much more astonished at her partisan- 
 ship than she is herself. 
 
 No voice is heard for a space but that of Miss 
 Kirstie, who from her watch-tower on the window- 
 seat has spied a boy crossing the park. His uni- 
 form tells her that he is of that class whose heels 
 taste better than those of any other; and the little 
 diversion of conniving at her efforts to reach him 
 by opening the door for her to bundle out in pur- 
 suit restores speech to the lovers, or at least to one 
 of them. 
 
 " We have both deteriorated within the last 
 three months," Lettice says, in a voice of melan- 
 choly candour. " I am quite conscious of it my- 
 self; I was saying so only the other day to some 
 one." 
 
 He is far too much ruffled to give the amorous 
 contradiction to such a statement which he would 
 certainly have done half an hour before; and she 
 continues, with a partly conscious, partly uncon- 
 
FOES IN LAW 269 
 
 scious enjoyment of bracketing him with herself in 
 her depreciation. 
 
 " We are not so spiritually minded as we 
 were." 
 
 " We have certainly a good deal changed our 
 relative positions," he retorts, with a laudable 
 effort to disguise the poignant pique her candour 
 engenders. ** It is probably difficult to you to be- 
 lieve now that you once looked up to me." 
 
 If her thought were to translate itself into words, 
 it would run somewhat thus, *' Looked up to you? 
 That must have been a long time ago." But to say 
 so would be to burn her ships down to the water's 
 edge. She contradicts him as little as he had con- 
 tradicted her. 
 
 Her eyes wander to the window through which 
 Miss Kirstie — some kind friend having removed 
 all obstacles in the way of intervening portals to 
 her chase — is seen scampering as fast as her short 
 legs and fat body will permit in pursuit of the tele- 
 graph boy, who, knowing her all too well to tarry, 
 is showing her those appetizing heels of his only at 
 hopeless distance ahead. 
 
 " We ought not to have let her out," says Miss 
 Trent, with a lenient smile, and feeling a momen- 
 tary relief in the relaxed tension. 
 
 But to the other interlocutor the situation is far 
 too grave to permit of any interlude for Miss Kir- 
 stie's alarums and excursions. 
 
 " What is the drift of these home truths, if truths 
 they are, might I ask? " he inquires, with a pale and 
 rigorous politeness. 
 
 " What indeed? " she murmurs. 
 
ayo FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Are you leading up to telling me that you wish 
 to throw me over? " 
 
 The phrase strikes her as crude, even to shock- 
 ingness; and the tone in which she repeats it may 
 justify the instantly restored confidence of his look 
 and voice. 
 
 " No," he says, regarding her with a victor's eye, 
 which she finds hard to bear. " That is, of course, 
 nonsense. Such an expression could have no 
 meaning between you and me. After that first 
 sacred, sealing kiss " 
 
 " Am I never to hear the last of it? " she breaks 
 in, with a desperation that would sound extremely 
 comic to any dispassionate bystander; but is abso- 
 lutely without that element to its hapless utterer. 
 " Because I was once unladylike enough to take the 
 
 initiative No " — correcting herself, rearing 
 
 her fine throat, and looking squarely at him with 
 recaptured self-respect — " no, it was not unlady- 
 like, because I believed it to be the real thing, and I 
 wanted to show you that when I gave, I gave 
 freely." 
 
 " And now you have come to the conclusion that 
 it was not the real thing? " he asks, his confidence 
 obviously oozing away into angry, pale misgiving. 
 " You wish to take back your gift? That, thank 
 God, you can never do. No sponge can ever wipe 
 off the memory of that voluntary — yes, most vol- 
 untary — gift of yours from your memory any more 
 than from mine; but you have got as far as the 
 wish? I defy you to get further; and now you 
 would fain give freely to some one else." 
 
 " It is a perfectly unjustifiable assumption," she 
 repHes, almost inaudibly, from excess of anger. *' If 
 
FOES IN LAW 271 
 
 you cannot discuss the question without insulting 
 me 
 
 " I did not mean to insult you," he cries, drop- 
 ping down in sudden revulsion upon his knees and 
 lifting the hem of her gown to his lips. 
 
 The action strikes her as theatrical, and out of 
 taste; but there is no play-acting about the alarm 
 and misery of his eyes. 
 
 " What I meant to say was," she begins again 
 presently, in broken phrases, and with great difB- 
 culty, *' that even — granting I meant all you say — 
 by that — kiss — which I — do not attempt to deny; 
 yet — that supposing afterwards — later — we found 
 we had — made a mistake — what was intended for 
 a seal of eternal love — ought not to be turned into 
 a chain to tie two galley-slaves together." 
 
 *'A chain to tie izvo galley-slaves together! It has 
 come to that! " 
 
 The tragedy in his tone is better than anything 
 in " Ay, Mate! " and would be warmly relished by 
 the duchess could she hear it, having moreover the 
 superiority over his histrionic success of being ab- 
 solutely genuine. It does not make Lettice feel 
 the actual criminal that it would have done a couple 
 of months ago; but it revives in some degree the 
 sense of guilt towards him. 
 
 She looks at him with troubled eyes, trying by 
 their aid to reconstruct the person to whom she 
 had given that now incomprehensible embrace. 
 The explanation that dawns upon her as she looks, 
 that it was not this lover's at all — that it was Love's 
 own lips she had thought to kiss — can scarcely be 
 made clear to the counterfeit Eros. It is a diffi- 
 culty in which many women involve themselves, 
 
272 FOES IN LAW 
 
 but from which few extricate themselves quite 
 handsomely. 
 
 " I never said that it had come to that,'* she 
 answers. " I was only supposing a possibility." 
 
 " Three months ago would such a possibility 
 have seemed possible? " 
 
 She hesitates, probing memory to find how far 
 the roots of her disloyalty to him run back. 
 
 " We are neither of us what we were two months 
 ago,'' she answers evasively — " certainly not what 
 we thought we were going to be! Have we raised 
 and strengthened and ennobled one another, as we 
 planned? For myself, I can truly say that I never 
 recollect a time when I have done so little practical 
 good, and given way to so many unworthy tempers 
 and unchristian thoughts." 
 
 The quality of Christianity is, perhaps, not very 
 conspicuous in the elation felt by Miss Trent at the 
 liberal measure of speaking out she thus at last 
 allows herself. 
 
 " And you lay the blame upon me? " he asks with 
 a white protest of indignation that she cannot but 
 feel to be partly merited. 
 
 " No, that would not be fair; of course, a great 
 deal of it has been due to Marie; but even there " 
 — with a much greater ease of utterance than had 
 marked the beginning of her sentence, and a re- 
 newal of the sense of elation — " if you had taken a 
 dififerent tone, had been less prejudiced and bitter, 
 had soothed my feelings of exasperation instead of 
 stimulating them " 
 
 She stops suddenly. A piece of your mind is a 
 delightful present to make to a friend — upon occa- 
 
FOES IN LAW 273 
 
 sion; but the size must be proportioned to his 
 capacities, and you may overdo it. 
 
 The recipient of Miss Trent's bounty has sunk 
 down with bowed head before her beautifully neat 
 bureau, and from behind the long, high-bred hands 
 that hide his face comes a sound that might be mis- 
 taken for a sob. Her eyes take the shocked round- 
 ness of a child that has toppled down a china jar, 
 and after a moment's hesitation she goes up and 
 touches him. 
 
 The light contact brings him with a start to his 
 feet, and he faces her with dignity, and with a 
 countenance that, to her reHef, is not disfigured by 
 the moisture of tears. 
 
 " You have made your meaning very clear," he 
 says. " Your methods are always direct. I have 
 to thank you for giving me three months of your 
 life; which, though irksome to you, to me have 
 been " 
 
 He pauses with a determination, of which she 
 feels and respects the manliness, rather not to finish 
 his sentence at all, than to end it with a mendicant's 
 whine. His words set the door to freedom, which 
 she has been longing to break down even with axe 
 and crowbar, wide open without a push; yet she 
 makes no step towards passing through it. 
 
 " You are going very fast," she says with a sort 
 of gasp. 
 
 *' Faster than you wish? " 
 
 There is no revived confidence in his tone to 
 jar her, and its anger — there must be anger — is 
 shrouded in a mournfulness so opaque as to be 
 scarcely detectable through it. 
 
 " Yes, much faster." 
 
274 FOES IN LAW 
 
 She pauses; the longing for emancipation, now 
 that she has allowed herself once to look it in the 
 face, pouring over her in almost overwhelming 
 strength. But she has ever been a just woman, 
 and what sort of justice is this that she is meting 
 out to him? He has always been what he is how, 
 only that she had not the wit to see it. Is she to 
 punish him for her own blunderheaded blindness? 
 
 *' Because I suggest that our engagement has 
 not brought us quite all we hoped, you jump at 
 once to the conclusion that I want to break it off? " 
 
 "And you do not?" 
 
 The quickened breath and spurting words tell of 
 revived hope, and bring an answering repulsion to 
 the girl. 
 
 " I do not know what I wish," she says, walking 
 away from him towards the window. '' I want to 
 do right." 
 
 What there is in her words to bring it there she 
 cannot conceive, but his arm is suddenly round her 
 waist. 
 
 " If it is a question of conscience, let me decide 
 it for you," he whispers passionately. " You used 
 to bring your difficulties to me to solve." 
 
 The allusion is an unwise one. It brings before 
 her with such startling prominence the change 
 wrought in herself since the state of things to which 
 he refers, and the truth of which she cannot deny. 
 
 " A long engagement is always a trying thing," 
 she says, moving restlessly in the encircling ring of 
 clerical broadcloth, but not having the strength of 
 purpose absolutely to elude it; '' and you know it 
 is your own fault that it has been a long one. I 
 offered to marry you months ago." 
 
FOES IN LAW 275 
 
 " Are you going to punish me for having had 
 some self-respect? " he asks in a passion of upbraid- 
 ing, tightening his pressure, the pressure that had 
 once set her own blood answeringly tingling — a 
 recollection that enhances her present rage of re- 
 volt. 
 
 " It is no question of punishment," she answers, 
 turning her head right over her own shoulder in 
 flight from his lips; '* but of late we seem to have 
 influenced each other for ill instead of good. Marie 
 is a case in point." 
 
 An excess of proximity makes it difficult to de- 
 liver a homily eflfectively, and it is with a surprise 
 not inferior to her relief that at this stage Lettice 
 finds herself suddenly set free. 
 
 " We have been too much in sympathy about 
 her," she continues with much greater fluency; 
 " we have egged each other on in our want of 
 charity towards her. I was wrong to lay all the 
 blame on you just now. I do not think there has 
 been a pin to choose between us." 
 
 He receives the rebuke thus neatly halved in 
 motionless silence, and she cannot even see his 
 face. 
 
 " For that and for other reasons," she goes on, 
 " I have been thinking that it would be a good 
 thing — good for us both, I mean — if — if — we sepa- 
 rated for a short time." 
 
 She pauses, tentatively eyeing him to see how he 
 takes this cold douche; but the one quarter of his 
 face within eye-range does not enlighten her much. 
 She thinks he gives a slight start. 
 
 " It need not be for long," she goes on, ner- 
 vously feeling her way — " it need not be for long. 
 
276 FOES IN LAW 
 
 I should naturally be going up to London now. 
 Nobody would think it odd; it would create no re- 
 mark." 
 
 She calls a halt, but in vain. " There is neither 
 voice, nor any that answered." 
 
 " And when I come back " 
 
 He wheels round upon her, and at once the full 
 battery of his eyes — wronged, suspicious, woeful, 
 and fulminating — is playing upon her. 
 
 " And when you come back? " 
 
 The voice is the prophet's voice which has often 
 made the flesh of the female members of the Trent 
 congregation delightfully and awfully creep. 
 
 " When I come back," replies Miss Trent, un- 
 worthily and baldly, " perhaps things will be more 
 satisfactory." 
 
 It is not in the least what she had meant to say. 
 The thunder is gone out of his tones, and only in- 
 finite reproach left, when next he speaks. 
 
 " And you are going to leave me here to fight 
 alone against all the malign influences that " 
 
 She bursts into uneasy laughter. " Malign in- 
 fluences — here, in this dear little Sleepy Hollow? " 
 
 A heavier cloud than before passes over his face. 
 
 " In Holy Scripture," he says, " the devils were 
 inside the man, not outside." 
 
 " If that is the case, he would carry them with 
 him wherever he went," replies she, sententiously, 
 but with unanswerable logic. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 On the evening of the same day — that of the de- 
 parture of the Trent family — an almost incredible 
 quietude wraps the house. Even the high voice 
 of its mistress, generally so piercing and ubiqui- 
 tous, IS stilled. Not having her fellows to call to, 
 what pleasure is there in shrieking? The sight of 
 the microscopic dinner-table fills her eyes with 
 water; and Jim*s brilliant remark of what a differ- 
 ence there is between now and this time yesterday 
 is received in a convulsed silence. She has heroic- 
 ally kept her seat all through dinner, a concession 
 to Jim which she has for several weeks been trying 
 to make, but whose difficulty on the present occa- 
 sion Lettice perhaps appreciates even more than 
 does the object of it. 
 
 When the end of the much-abbreviated repast 
 sets her free, she wanders forlornly about, tenderly 
 touching the back of the chair upon which Mr. 
 Kergouet's limp head had rested, surreptitiously 
 kissing the paper-knife with which he had cut his 
 evening paper, going through a hundred little fool- 
 ish, loving antics. 
 
 For the first time in either of their lives a feel- 
 ing of genuine human pity towards her objection- 
 able, and though they get above their boots now 
 heart. 
 
 277 
 
278 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " We are certainly very dull," she says, when the 
 course of her melancholy flittings brings Marie 
 near. 
 
 The words are brusquely shot out, and have to 
 be severely pushed from behind in order to get 
 them out at all; and their veracity is not unim- 
 peachable, but their effect is immediate. 
 
 " Yes, aren't we? " cries the other, eagerly, drop- 
 ping down, with her astonishing suppleness, on the 
 carpet. " But " — with a rush of suspicion and a 
 darkening brow — " I suppose you meant it ironic- 
 ally." 
 
 " No, I did not. I do feel very dull to-night." 
 
 This, at least, is gospel truth. 
 
 " I am afraid you must have been nearly deaf- 
 ened now and then," rejoins the other, quite re- 
 assured, and her own voice beginning to lift itself 
 again from the dust of its dejected extinction; " but 
 though'their voices are loud, they are not disagree- 
 able, and though they get above their boots now 
 and then " 
 
 But Miss Trent has reached the end of her Chris- 
 tian tether; to acquiesce in encomiums of the Miss 
 Kergouets is still beyond her. 
 
 " Kept well in hand, and with proper discipline," 
 she begins, in a somewhat preachy key; but she is 
 not suffered to proceed far. 
 
 *' Proper discipline! Proper fiddlesticks! " cries 
 Marie, leaping up and making off, greatly offended. 
 So the olive branch is, in a measure, retracted. 
 
 It is offered, accepted, and dignifiedly resumed 
 or pepperily tossed back several times during the 
 ten days that elapse before Lettice's departure; 
 but, at least, there has been a question of it between 
 
FOES IN LAW 279 
 
 the two belligerents. Marie certainly after her 
 family's departure has less patently than before the 
 end in view of making Lettice squirm, by the vul- 
 garity of her remarks, before the servants; nor does 
 she, unless under great provocation, allude to " the 
 aristocracy." On the other hand, Lettice's sneers 
 at the stage are reduced to an average of six a day. 
 
 It is, perhaps, difficult to do full justice to a 
 whole-hearted dislike of two people at once; and 
 probably Miss Trent's reduced animus against her 
 foe is partly due to the daily growing repulsion she 
 feels from her " friend." Yet when she goes, 
 drawing long breaths of relief as each hoof-beat 
 of the horses that draw her to the station increases 
 the distance between her and his lips and arms, 
 she is still chained to him. How. can she, in bare 
 justice, rive that now eating fetter? What answer 
 that could satisfy her own conscience or honour 
 has she been able to make to the importunity of 
 his questions? 
 
 " What have I done? How am I different from 
 the man you kissed? Yes, kissed your whole soul 
 into! Never has any woman kissed me as you did. 
 I mean " — correcting himself — " my imagination 
 is not strong enough to picture a kiss that implied 
 a more absolute surrender of soul and body." 
 
 She shudders, though he does not see it; head 
 bent, and long arms hanging at her side in utter 
 self-abasement. Yes, it is true; horribly, degrad- 
 ingly, irrevocably true! Then he changes his 
 venue. 
 
 "Who needs you as I do? Who needs you at 
 all, except me? What are you to Jim now? Has 
 not that Merry Andrew, that rope-dancer " 
 
28o FOES IN LAW 
 
 She puts out her hand with a gesture of disgust, 
 in peremptory arrest. 
 
 "Stop!" she says. "We have had more than 
 enough of this." 
 
 He accepts her rebuke more meekly than she 
 had expected, and then, with a look of shame — 
 
 " You are right," he says. " I lose my balance, 
 I lose my head when I think of the way in which 
 she has superseded you everywhere but here!" — 
 striking himself on the heart; "but I will say no 
 more about her; only answer me truly. Who is 
 there, in all the wide world, that needs you — really 
 needs you, except me? And do / not need you? 
 Oh, if you could look in here! " — again smiting 
 himself on the heart — " and see how much — how, 
 beyond the poor-power of words to express, how 
 much!" 
 
 Gestures and manner may belong too much to 
 the decorated order; but through them the pene- 
 trating voice of Truth knells in her ears. He does 
 need her. There can be no doubt of that. And, as 
 he has truly said, everywhere, except with him, she 
 is superseded. 
 
 " Come back to me soon — soon-y' he murmurs, 
 passionately kissing the revolted pink ear, into 
 which he whispers his parting prayer, " my rudder, 
 my conscience, my salvation! " 
 
 T* #|t ^ 3|C ^ ^ 
 
 The words of whose adequacy to convey his own 
 heart-throes he has complained are quite as incom- 
 petent to express how glad his rudder, his con- 
 science, and his salvation are to drive away from 
 him. 
 
 It is April, verging on May, when they depart, 
 
FOES IN LAW 281 
 
 but September has come ripely in before they re- 
 turn to take up their triple office. Not till Miss 
 Trent gets well away to the secure haven of her 
 aunt's house in London does she fully realize the 
 enormity of the relief she feels at her escape. For 
 weeks, at least, she will not hear the odious formula, 
 " Mr. Chevening is in the boudoir, 'm; he has been 
 there a quarter of an hour." For weeks she may 
 bend her head in security over her books, without 
 her reluctant nape being surprised by drops of fire 
 from a burning mouth that has come up unawares 
 behind it. For weeks her waist will have no girdle 
 but its cool ribbon one, and her lips will be as much 
 at liberty as the smutty London air, which they 
 delightedly inhale at the thought. 
 
 The sensible aunt receives her with her usual 
 level goodwill, asks her how she gets on with 
 Marie, and whether there is going to be a baby. 
 
 The speaker answers the first of the two ques- 
 tions herself. 
 
 " Not that it matters much to you now whether 
 you do or not, as I suppose you will be marrying 
 almost directly yourself. Not till he gets a living? 
 And is he likely to get a living? I hear he is a 
 wonderful preacher. Yes, Madeline, I went to the 
 Ladies' Shirt Company about the muslin blouses. 
 They say you must have two dozen." 
 
 This last utterance is addressed to one of her 
 daughters, who, though the only good-looking 
 one, has perversely elected to espouse a young gen- 
 tleman who grows wines, that few people have as 
 yet been found thirsty enough to drink, in a South 
 American Republic, and is now being accoutred to 
 accompany him thither. 
 
282 FOES IN LAW 
 
 The mother has snubbed the aspirant as long as 
 there was any hope in snubbing, and has then with- 
 out transition or apology sensibly taken him to her 
 breast. To the rest of the household the lovers are 
 as unmixed an ill as permitted lovers are and must 
 always be and have been. 
 
 To Lettice they are a theme of incessant and 
 almost awful wonder. That any girl should wish 
 to be alone with her iiance has in the light of her 
 own experience become a monstrous improbability, 
 but that she should commit excesses of selfishness, 
 want of consideration, impatience, and ill manners 
 to attain that end strains her powers of belief al- 
 most to bursting-point. 
 
 The discovery that a like course of conduct is 
 expected of herself as soon as Randal shall appear 
 upon the scene fills her with such confused stupe- 
 faction that she has hardly breath left to protest. 
 Of what use to protest, since, thank Heaven, in the 
 face of her rigid stipulation to the contrary, it is 
 impossible that her betrothed should appear on the 
 scene to make apparent to her relatives what a 
 universe separates her condition from that of the 
 love-sick Madeline. But in this she is mistaken. 
 
 " I have heard from Randal that he is coming 
 up to-day," she says one morning, appearing at 
 breakfast with a very cloudy brow. 
 
 " Well, my dear," replies her aunt, with cheerful 
 resignation, "the blow is not an unexpected one. 
 The girls must have a holiday. Fraulein must visit 
 her friends, and you must have the schoolroom." 
 
 " Indeed we will have nothing of the kind," re- 
 plies the niece, with indignant precipitation. " We 
 have not the least wish to be alone. I mean, we 
 
FOES IN LAW 283 
 
 see so much of each other at home, and it is not 
 to see me that he is coming. The Duchess of 
 Swyndford has wired for him to recite at her con- 
 cert to-morrow. I suppose one of her performers 
 has fallen through." 
 
 "The Duchess of Swyndford's concert! I am 
 glad you reminded me of it. She made me take 
 tickets. What a tax these charitable entertain- 
 ments have become! So he is to recite at it? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Will he be comic or tragic? " 
 
 '* Oh, tragic — profoundly tragic." 
 
 Miss Trent wonders whether her relative detects 
 the note of irony so plainly perceptible to her own 
 ears that has crept into her voice. That relative's 
 next comfortable utterance — "I am glad of that; 
 comic recitations never make me laugh, but tragic 
 ones sometimes do " — proves that she has not. 
 
 Having added that of course he must come to 
 dinner, her mind returns to its mazy path among 
 mosquito curtains and gauze underclothing by the 
 banks of the River Plate. 
 
 Mr. Chevening's fiancee cannot be said to receive 
 him with effusion. 
 
 " This is against the bond," she says austerely, 
 holding out her hand at the longest stretch of a 
 perfectly straight arm to ensure a safe distance. 
 
 He answers her only by a look of deprecating re- 
 proach, and his whole air is so agitated that her 
 smitten conscience, or what she takes for such, 
 forces a milder tone into her voice. 
 
 " I am afraid you are feeling very nervous.'' 
 
 He makes a mute sign with the head, whether 
 of assent or protest she does not quite understand. 
 
284 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " It was very short notice." 
 
 The implication is obvious. 
 
 "You mean that I am a stop-gap," he says, 
 restored to speech by the hint and palely reddening. 
 " I do not think that as a rule I am wanting in 
 proper pride, but I did not see that this was a case 
 for its exercise. The excellence of the object " 
 
 " Yes, yes, of course." 
 
 The recovered apostledom of his manner re- 
 stores the steel casing to her heart. Her face must 
 be steely too, judging by the almost tremulous 
 doubtfulness of his next words. 
 
 " I know that you do not care about * Ay, 
 Mate! ' but you will come and hear me? " 
 
 " Won't it make you worse — more nervous — if 
 you know that I am there? " 
 
 The question is regretted as soon as uttered, 
 such a shower of rhetoric does it bring about her 
 ears in the shape of a fiery torrent of asseveration 
 that she is his rock, his bulwark, that it is only the 
 consciousness of having the aegis of her strong 
 presence that can uphold him through the ordeal 
 ahead of him. 
 
 One of the waves of contempt for which she has 
 long ceased to feel remorse washes over her, but 
 she complies, her heart leaden at the thought of 
 how dreadfully he needs her. 
 
 It is true that the admiration felt by Lettice for 
 the piece chosen by or rather for her lover — since 
 it was Marie's selection — has always been of the 
 smallest; yet on the present occasion she is con- 
 scious that that small has become very sensibly 
 smaller. It seems to her that the nervous excite- 
 ment of the reciter has made him exaggerate and 
 
FOES IN LAW 285 
 
 coarsen every point of what had been at Trent a 
 rendering admirable for restraint and reserve 
 power. 
 
 As she looks at him from under her eye-lashes, 
 while as the virtuous miner he hurls his denuncia- 
 tion of the upper classes at the delighted row of 
 peeresses before him, his betrothed makes a queer 
 inward measurement of the distance covered by her 
 since Easter in her travelling away from Love. 
 Then she had congratulated herself on feeling 
 nervousness lest he should break down. Here 
 and now would not she in her heart of hearts be 
 rather glad that some signal humiliation should 
 overtake him? 
 
 If, indeed, she cherishes such a wish, it is not 
 destined to be gratified. A hyper-fashionable 
 London audience, though the coldest created or 
 conceivable, is not as a rule very critical; and 
 though much too lazy to express admiration, is 
 quite capable of feeling it enthusiastically for the 
 second-rate and the tawdry. 
 
 Despite the inward disparagement of it by his 
 Hanceey Chevening's performance cannot be justly 
 classed under either of these heads; but his suc- 
 cess — and that at least is unquestionable — is chiefly 
 due to the piquancy of the contrast between the 
 melancholy distinction of his appearance — his high 
 nose, and admirably cut mouth — and the furious 
 Socialism of his utterance. He is new, he is hand- 
 some, and he has told the fair ones bang out to 
 their very faces, in a strong, if not very accurate 
 Yorkshire accent, that they are no better than they 
 should be! What more can be needed to complete 
 their subjugation? Naturally, nothing. Yet the 
 
286 FOES IN LAW 
 
 tribute he so amply reaps, it seems, have another 
 added to them. 
 
 " How did you thitik it went off? '* he asks, when 
 he comes to bid Lettice good-bye next morning, 
 the cousins, to her annoyance, fleeing before him 
 in such Passover haste as not even to have time to 
 take their kneeling-troughs with them. 
 
 She had contemned his over-night's despond- 
 ency as cowardly, but she disHkes his morning's 
 jubilation even more. 
 
 "Admirably!" 
 
 "I owe it all to you!" he cries, with exultant 
 emotion. " If you had not been there I do not 
 know what might not have happened; but when I 
 caught sight of your anxious face " — her eyebrows 
 rise imperceptibly — " in all that crowd I found it 
 in one second — I said to myself, * She shall not be 
 ashamed of me! ' and — ^you were not? " 
 
 There is such a hunger for her approbation in 
 the eyes that the great ladies had found so expres- 
 sive and charming that she is ashamed of her nig- 
 gard ability to give. Yet it remains inability. 
 
 " You were not ashamed of me? " he repeats. 
 
 " Not at all." ' 
 
 " Did you like the new way I gave, * Thou'rt a 
 good wench ' ? I know you did not care about my 
 first reading of it. Does it grow upon you at all? " 
 
 His persistence teases her. " What does it mat- 
 ter if it does not," she cries crossly, " when I am 
 in a minority of one? " 
 
 " It is because I am new, I suppose," he says, 
 with a faint smile of reminiscence, and a modesty 
 wliich her partiality labels as " mock." " Several 
 
FOES IN LAW 287 
 
 people have asked me to repeat it at their houses 
 in behalf of different charities." 
 
 Her eye rolls wildly. This means that he will 
 be running up again repeatedly in reply to the calls 
 of modish philanthropy. 
 
 *' Do not," she says brusquely. 
 
 His bright countenance clouds. " You disap- 
 prove? You are adverse? " 
 
 " I do not want you to dwindle from the apostle 
 I once thought you into a paltry drawing-room 
 reciter." 
 
 This is the nearest approach to a compliment he 
 can extract from her, and as she always manages 
 to get behind a chair when he approaches her, and 
 relentlessly reminds him of " the bond," he cannot 
 be said to have been much the gainer by his breach 
 of contract. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 For Miss Trent the summer passes with unex- 
 ampled rapidity. Usually she has been among the 
 earlier departures from London; among those to 
 whom town pleasures dwell only in the outskirts 
 of the heart, and country ones at its very centre. 
 This year she lingers till the end of all things, till 
 the wood pavement smells intolerably, and noth- 
 ing but caretakers and M.P.'s are left. 
 
 Miss Trent*s aunt is one of the few wives who do 
 not desert their toiling legislators, so she has the 
 excuse of staying on with her. Yachting is per- 
 fectly indifferent to her, yet she goes to Cowes. 
 Her garden has always hitherto seemed preferable 
 to the moors, yet she pays visits in Scotland. Any- 
 thing, anything to stave off the unavoidable return, 
 the unescapable decision. 
 
 Randal has not again transgressed against the 
 bond, though once or twice she hears of him 
 obliquely as in London, and " Ay, Mateing " — al- 
 ways with a buzz of applause about his name — at 
 various great houses. Since correspondence has 
 been forbidden by her equally with personal inter- 
 course, she cannot blame him for not imparting his 
 triumphs to her. She will doubtless hear plenty 
 about them soon now. 
 
 This is one of the oppressive thoughts — quite a 
 
 388 
 
FOES IN LAW 289 
 
 minor one — that pass through the head which she 
 reluctantly lifts from her pillow at the hotel at 
 Perth on the morning appointed for her return to 
 Trent. 
 
 It would be bad enough to be going back to the 
 same state of things as she had left there; but how 
 incomparably have her prospects worsened since 
 her departure! One on the top of another, and all 
 within the last week, swift and cruel as Job's mes- 
 sengers, the baleful tidings have battered her con- 
 sternated ears. Firstly, in a newspaper casually 
 picked up, her eye, glancing over the " Deaths," 
 takes in the announcement that old Mr. Grant of 
 Appleton has had his third stroke, and succumbed 
 to it. Secondly, the post brings her a note, almost 
 illegible through excitement, from Randal himself, 
 to tell her that he has just been informed by the 
 lawyer of an unknown old lady, lately deceased, 
 that in gratitude for the benefit her soul has de- 
 rived from his Advent Sermons she has left him 
 £30,000 at present invested in 2J per cent. Con- 
 sols. Lastly and worstly — if in such ills there can 
 be a worst — a wire — no other means can convey 
 such news fast enough — informs her that Cheve- 
 ning has been offered the incumbency of a fashion- 
 able Mayfair chapel. 
 
 She twists the pink paper of the telegram about 
 in her hands, smiling sardonically. Thirty thou- 
 sand pounds in Consols, and a chapel in Mayfair! 
 On the whole and nicely balanced, whicl> has been 
 most lucrative, the pulpit eloquence or the draw- 
 ing-room rant? 
 
 The question is not decided in her turbid mind 
 when, towards seven o'clock in the evening of a 
 
29© FOES IN LAW 
 
 noble September day, the carriage sent to fetch her 
 turns in at the Trent lodge gates. 
 
 Memory recalls her last return, the evergreen 
 arches and beribboned poles, erected to glorify 
 that marriage which she had resented with a vigour 
 of bitterness that now seems disproportioned to the 
 cause. Will there be poles and arches for her and 
 Randal? 
 
 The house has come in sight by now, and she 
 rubs her eyes. Is this the answer to her acrid, in- 
 ward question? Over the last gate there is an arch 
 of summer boughs, blossom-decked between, and 
 bearing on its summit in large red letters on a white 
 ground the inscription " Welcome home! " 
 
 A slight pang shoots across her. The Ker- 
 gouets must be here again. The trophy has been 
 put up in their honour. " Welcome home " indeed! 
 Well, that is something like impertinence! 
 
 The hall, when she enters it, is empty, and the 
 servants tell her that the whole of the party are out 
 on the cricket-ground; and thither she presently 
 pursues them. The way leads through the flower- 
 garden, on which, after the strenuous heat of the 
 day, the dews are beginning their noiseless fall. 
 
 She stops to admire the arrangement of colour 
 that had been the result of her own taste — the 
 superb cannas; the stalwart Hyacinthus candicans, 
 that show what lilies-of-the-valley would be if they 
 grew in Brobdingnag; the flagged glory of glad- 
 ioli; the splendid geraniums, arched and trained 
 over wickerwork till they simulate hillocks of scar- 
 let and rose — everything that is blazing, feathery, 
 aromatic. 
 
 She moves through it all with a creator's com- 
 
FOES IN LAW 391 
 
 placency. The garden is even better than it was 
 last year. Above it the sky arches, imitating its 
 gaudiness in the tints of her westward fires, and 
 flinging little plumes of carnation unexpectedly 
 high and far into the empyrean. 
 
 She walks through a world of blessed suavity, 
 fragrance, cool hush; and as she does so the boon 
 air wraps her round in a mantle of peace, and the 
 little jar caused by the arch and its inscription dies 
 out. It would be pleasant to come home, and to 
 design such another garden for next year, if 
 only 
 
 The " if only '* does not apply to Marie this 
 time. 
 
 The cricket-ground lies in the park, not far out- 
 side the garden bounds, from which a belt of shrub- 
 bery hides It. It is her ear which first informs her 
 that she is nearing the objects of her quest. 
 
 Yes, the Kergouets are here. That squeal is 
 unquestionably Louisas, and Sybil is pinching him. 
 The verification of her forebodings does not annoy 
 her nearly so much as she would have expected. In 
 fact, the memory of the young Kergouets' habitual 
 bursting into her sanctum and destroying its pri- 
 vacy flashes across her with a sense of relief. In 
 the future, as in the past, these vulgar romps may 
 be her best aegis. 
 
 The match is over, and the stumps drawn, as the 
 little stream of people, advancing from the tent 
 where Lettice herself has so often sat scoring 
 through a summer day, proves. 
 
 The two girls are the first to espy her, and, gal- 
 loping up, fling themselves upon her with a shock 
 of affection so violent as almost to bring her to 
 
aga FOES IN LAW 
 
 earth; Louis tries to kiss her hand, for which mark 
 of civility he is at once counselled by his sisters to 
 " get out; " and little Frank more successfully at- 
 tains her neck. 
 
 By this time the rest of the party have come up. 
 Marie drops the arm of a man in flannels — who is 
 not Jim — to wave a shut parasol round her head as 
 a sign of welcome which her sister-in-law doubt- 
 fully hopes is not ironical, and Jim says — 
 
 " Here you are! " 
 
 Here she is undoubtedly. 
 
 Gabriel says nothing, and takes off his straw hat. 
 Each one having greeted the newcomer in his or 
 her fashion, there is a little pause. 
 
 " How long have you been here? " Miss Trent 
 asks of one of her still closely attendant nymphs, 
 more for the sake of breaking a silence which 
 makes her feel unaccountably shy than for any 
 other reason. 
 
 " How long? " repeats Muriel, heaving a colossal 
 sigh. " Oh, do not let us count; it makes it go 
 faster if we count." 
 
 " We have arrived exactly a week ago/* says 
 Louis, Frenchily. 
 
 " A week ! Then how fresh your arch has kept ! " 
 
 " Our arch? " — in several voices. 
 
 " Yes, the one over the gate near the hall door." 
 
 " But that is your arch," bursts out Sybil, while 
 her juniors follow suit with the same words. " We 
 put it up in honour of you. Marie made us." 
 
 " Marie! " 
 
 The recipient of this most unexpected honour 
 cannot help the stupefaction of her voice, nor stifle 
 the prick of remorse at her own angry inward com- 
 
FOES IN LAW ^ 293 
 
 ment upon the impertinence of the " Welcome 
 home." It was to her, then, that these words were 
 addressed. 
 
 " It kept the children out of mischief, and — and 
 it was chiefly Gabriel's idea," replies Mrs. Trent, 
 with a most unwontedly sheepish air, and, for the 
 first time in Miss Trent's knowledge of her, look- 
 ing thoroughly out of countenance. 
 
 Lettice stands for a moment dumbfounded; then, 
 seeing a look of upbraiding negation shoot from 
 the brother's dark eyes towards his sister, she yields 
 to a sudden impulse. 
 
 " I do not believe it. I believe that it was a kind 
 thought of your own," she says, and so steps up 
 and kisses her. 
 
 It would be difficult to say whether the giver or 
 receiver of this caress is most covered with con- 
 fusion by it. They all move on homewards, the 
 young ones skirmishing ahead, around on the 
 wings, everywhere, bear-fighting, boxing, yelling 
 in their best manner. But Lettice only puts her 
 hands to her ears good-humouredly once or twice. 
 
 Marie has taken possession again of her brother's 
 arm — that arm which his family work so merci- 
 lessly hard — takes it with a little jealous air of 
 monopoly which makes Miss Trent ask herself with 
 a slight inward writhing of the spirit, '* Does she 
 imagine that I am likely to make any claim upon 
 it? " But she checks the nascent hostility of the 
 thought. This is the truce of God, and she will do 
 nothing to break it. It is not broken even a little 
 later, when the returned wanderer asks after Lulu, 
 missing her sister-in-law's little wheezy appendage 
 for the first time. 
 
294 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " Lulu is not here/' replies Marie, shortly, turn- 
 ing away her face. 
 
 " Not here? " 
 
 " She will never vex you again by walking about 
 the dinner-table," returns the other, flashing round 
 in tearful anger at Lettice's slowness of compre- 
 hension. 
 
 The latter does not take up the grossly un- 
 provoked challenge. On the contrary, a pang of 
 remorse shoots across her. So the poor old pro- 
 fessional beauty is dead. Miss Trent has had dear 
 dogs of her own to mourn, and it is a grief that she 
 can well enter into. But Marie will never believe 
 in her regret in the face of all the unkind comments 
 she had put into Kirstie's muzzled mouth upon the 
 departed. It is therefore to Gabriel that she nat- 
 urally turns with the ejaculation — 
 
 " Poor dear Lulu! I am so sorry! " 
 
 There is a sound of light flying steps — they are 
 in the hall by this time — and Marie is gone. 
 
 " She cannot yet bear to hear the poor old dog 
 mentioned," says Gabriel, half apologetically. 
 " You see, it was our mother's." 
 
 His voice sinks reverently as he names the dead 
 frailty who had been so well loved. Two tears 
 stand in the girl's eyes. 
 
 " I wish you could make her believe that I am 
 sorry." 
 
 The thought flashes across his memory of how 
 at Wimbledon he had made her weep. Then he 
 had not seen her tears, she had only told him of 
 them; now they shine before him, like dew on vio- 
 lets. How infinitely that moist compassion be- 
 comes her! 
 
FOES IN LAW 295 
 
 " I am sure that you were never unkind to her," 
 he says, gravely consoling. 
 
 She shakes her head, unalterably sleek and neat 
 after a whole day's dusty wayfaring. 
 
 *' I made Kirstie the mouthpiece of my own ill 
 nature about her." 
 
 They both laugh a little over this confession of 
 crime. Then, the friendly topic exhausted, there 
 falls a silence between them. 
 
 The intensity of his admiration for her has al- 
 ways made him shy of her, and now he catches at 
 any speech lest she should find his dumbness too 
 eloquent. 
 
 " I am afraid you will not credit it, but the put- 
 ting up that arch really was entirely Marie's idea." 
 
 " Is it possible? " 
 
 There is an almost awed incredulity in her voice, 
 which to any one unacquainted with the circum- 
 stances would seem absurdly out of proportion to 
 the cause. 
 
 " Indeed it is. She was exceedingly keen about 
 it; it was all her own thought." 
 
 His asseveration is so extremely earnest that a 
 spice of humour which in anybody else would be 
 coquetry flavours her rejoinder. 
 
 " You repudiate all the share she tried to saddle 
 you with in the welcome." 
 
 For the life of him he cannot help looking full at 
 her for one moment in answer, and the rebuke — ^for 
 it is one — sends her hurrying on. 
 
 " Then why did she deny it? " 
 
 He looks down reflectively, and there is a touch 
 of pitying tenderness in his voice. 
 
 " Poor Marie ! I think she was ashamed to own 
 it." 
 
296 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " It is always our good actions of which we are 
 ashamed/' replies she, with a streak of her pet 
 preachiness, which is redeemed by the April smile 
 that conveys the truism. 
 
 Miss Trent has not thought it necessary to in- 
 form her betrothed of the exact day of her return 
 home, nor has any one^ yet mentioned him. She 
 can hardly believe in her own good fortune when, 
 coming down to dinner, she looks round the draw- 
 ing-room apprehensively, but sees no trace of the 
 long black figure and the passionate white face, 
 which duHng the last six months have turned for 
 her from a dream to a nightmare. 
 
 " Is — any one coming to dinner? ** she asks, 
 rather consciously of Marie, who, astonishing to re- 
 late, is already down and flitting restlessly about. 
 
 At first Lettice thinks her sister-in-law cannot 
 have heard the question, for there is a few seconds' 
 delay before her nonchalant answer comes. 
 
 " Do you mean the Taylors? No, she has got 
 a heady and Mr. Taylor — poor man, there had been 
 such a long interval since the last that he was be- 
 ginning to be afraid his glory had departed — would 
 not leave her." 
 
 She laughs with averted face. 
 
 " You were not thinking of the Taylors, I ex- 
 pect," says Jim, sagaciously; ** you meant Cheve- 
 ning? Of course you told him you were coming 
 home to-day? " 
 
 His sister's guilty head shakes almost imper- 
 ceptibly. Her guilty eye meets another, not her 
 brother's, an eye full of what cannot really be the 
 apprehension it looks like. 
 
 " Oh, that accounts for it," rejoins Jim, with not 
 much attempt to disguise his astonishment at 
 
FOES IN LAW 297 
 
 methods of courtship so widely different from what 
 had been his own. '' I thought the vicar must be 
 mistaken when he told me Randal had chosen to- 
 day to run over to Swyndford to thank the 
 duchess.'^ 
 
 " What have you done to your thumb? " breaks 
 in Marie, coming to a brusque halt before her sis- 
 ter Sybil, one of whose members is tied up in a way 
 that betrays its having been in the wars. 
 
 " I sliced a bit of the top of it off cutting a tur- 
 nip," replies the young creature, with the most 
 unaffected indifference. 
 
 " She is obstinate to eat raw turnips and car- 
 rots," cries Louis, flushing with pleasure at this 
 opportunity of showing up his persecutor-in-chief, 
 ** although Mr. Haines tells her that if she persists 
 she will be full of worms." 
 
 His sister regards him with an eye promissory oi 
 future payment in full. 
 
 " That is what I wish," she says resolutely. " I 
 wish to be full of worms." 
 
 This appalling sentiment gains a well-deserved 
 box on the ear for the wounded heroine from her 
 married sister, and Louis obtains a milder form of 
 the same recompense from his elder brother, and 
 then they all troop into dinner, nobody a penny the 
 worse. 
 
 The Kergouets always eat and drink to the 
 sound of their own loud trumpets and shawms; nor 
 is the family music at all deteriorated in quantity 
 or quality since Lettice last heard it. Through 
 the customary din she finds some difficulty in mak- 
 ing Jim hear the numerous questions that his own 
 badness and Marie's non-existence as a corre- 
 
398 FOES IN LAW 
 
 spondent impel her to ask as to the couple's his- 
 tory since she parted from them. That they had 
 had a spell of London, shortened by Marie's having 
 racketed herself into illness, she already knows; 
 but there are naturally many details to be filled in, 
 and in order to obtain information upon them she 
 presently finds herself bawling almost to the dia- 
 pason of the rest of the company. Her inquiries 
 as to the one absent member of her in-law's family 
 she purposely addresses to that " in-law " herself. 
 
 *' How and where is " She hesitates for a 
 
 second. A perverse pride has always hitherto pre- 
 vented her speaking of or to Esmeralda by her 
 Christian name; to inquire after her now as " Miss 
 Kergouet " would be to break the truce of God. 
 A blessed evasion occurs to her just in time. "How 
 is Miss Poppy Delafield? " 
 
 There could not have been a happier question. 
 All except Gabriel answer at once. 
 
 " She is touring in the provinces with Crawley. 
 He has giveti her the juvenile lead. She is playing 
 at Glasgow to crowded houses. She has had won- 
 derful press notices. Marie has pasted them all into 
 a book; Lettice shall be shown them after dinner." 
 
 This last piece of information, with its appended 
 promise, is uttered only by the juniors; nor can 
 Marie tame her excited high voice enough to hin- 
 der Miss Trent from plainly overhearing the " You 
 shall do nothing of the kind; she would not care a 
 straw about them," which is meant to be a whis- 
 pered rebuke to the too expansive maidens. 
 
 "I do not call that kind of Marie," says Miss 
 Trent, turning with a heightened colour to her 
 left-hand neighbour, Marie's eldest brother. " I 
 
FOES IN LAW 299 
 
 should like to see them. They " — with a little 
 touch of malice — '* would remind me of Miss 
 Snevellici and Miss Ledrook." 
 
 " Do you call that quite kind? " he retorts, with 
 an answering spirit for which she does not think the 
 worse of him. 
 
 This is the nearest approach to a crack that the 
 truce of God receives throughout the evening. 
 
 " We have seen next to nothing of Randal 
 lately," says Jim, stirred into more communica- 
 tiveness than usual by the little fillip of his sister's 
 advent, " except in the pulpit, where he has been 
 giving us some pretty stiff pieces of his mind " — 
 with a comfortable laugh. " He is a queer chap. 
 When first we came down he was never out of the 
 house, morning, noon, or night, was he, Marie? " 
 
 Mrs. Trent's elbows are, as is her usual culpable 
 fashion, on the dinner-table, and instead of answer- 
 ing she lays one cheek on her folded hands, and 
 turns completely sideways towards her father. 
 
 Jim repeats the appeal as he always does in the 
 case of his fly-away partner, slowly and patiently 
 until she answers him. 
 
 '* Was he, Marie?" 
 
 His wife jerks herself round. " I did not hear 
 what you were talking about; " then resolutely re- 
 buries herself in conversation with her parent. 
 
 "Why did she say that ?" asks Lettice of Gabriel, 
 her blue eyes widely opened in astonishment at so 
 gratuitous a lie. " She heard perfectly." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 She does not exactly repeat the question to him 
 later in the evening when he joins her on the gar- 
 den bench, to which the excessive beauty of the 
 night has guided her. 
 
 The young Kergouets always consider that time 
 spent in sleep, time spent in study, time spent in- 
 doors, and time misspent are synonyms. They 
 have flung themselves into the perfumed twilight 
 the moment that the end of dinner, abridged by 
 them with Bohemian ease, lets them loose. 
 
 Lettice had not expected to be joined by Gabriel, 
 whom she had imagined pinned for the evening to 
 a reading-lamp, the papers, and his father. 
 
 " You have skimped your duties," she says to 
 him, letting fall the arms which have been lifted to 
 clasp hands behind her head, and sitting up, being 
 much too conventional to loll except in solitude; 
 but there is nothing unwelcoming in her tone. 
 
 " He went to bed; the heat tires him." 
 
 The young man gives the little piece of informa- 
 tion with no indication, as Marie would certainly 
 have done, of being aware that it will not interest 
 the person to whom it is addressed, and Miss 
 Trent is determined not to be behindhand in mag- 
 nanimous politeness. 
 
 " He looks better than he did at Easter. I have 
 been telling him so." 
 
 Their eyes meet in the moonlight, hers rather 
 
 300 
 
FOES IN LAW 30t 
 
 ashamed of her condescension, his trying not to 
 betray how plainly he sees her wings growing. 
 They sit silent for a moment or two, she absently 
 marvelling at the moonlit stature of the Harrisi 
 lilies, he with head thrown back, and absently stray- 
 ing among the planets. 
 
 The girl's voice has an uncertain note in it when 
 she next speaks. 
 
 " Has it ever struck you that Marie is — ^not — 
 very fond of — Randal? " 
 
 She jibs at the Christian name; yet to call her 
 avowed fiance " Mr. Chevening '* would be to 
 smack too much of the vicaress and her incorrigi- 
 ble " Mr. Taylor." 
 
 His answer, when it comes, seems scarcely worth' 
 the thinking over he spends on it before it appears. 
 
 "What has given you that impression to-night 
 especially? " 
 
 " You noticed her manner at dinner? '* she an- 
 swers shortly. 
 
 Again he pauses, head still thrown back, and eyes 
 travelling along the Milky Way. 
 
 " Even supposing that she does not, will it aflFect 
 you very much in the future? " 
 
 Lettice laughs dryly. " You mean that there 
 would be a want of balance in her preferring the 
 husband to the wife; that it is better that her par- 
 tiality should be evenly divided between us!" 
 
 He turns round upon her with Marie's own swift 
 ire. 
 
 " That speech is in your earlier manner." 
 
 She accepts his rebuke with a repentant gentle- 
 ness unlike herself. 
 
 " Yes," she says, " you are right, and a very dis- 
 
302 FOES IN LAW 
 
 agreeable manner it was, too; and what is more, 
 it does not at all represent my real attitude of mind. 
 To-night " — looking slowly round, and opening 
 her nostrils luxuriously to take in the universal 
 fragrance — " I feel in love and charity with every- 
 body — almost." 
 
 His heart throbs wildly at the limiting adverb. 
 To whom is her mental application of it? 
 
 " Almost! " he repeats half under his breath. 
 
 " Yes/' she answers. " You know that there 
 never yet was an amnesty without its exceptions." 
 
 Her clear eye glitters sternly in the silvered light. 
 He cannot know what a potent temptation is as- 
 saiHng her to tell him who the exception is. She 
 will not do it, and to-morrow morning the idea 
 will look incredible; but to-night, here among the 
 unearthly lilies, there is untold ease and reUef in 
 the mere thought of its possibility. 
 
 " I must apologize; but you cannot object to my 
 coming up so late once in a way." 
 
 Both interlocutors start violently. Neither has 
 heard the step of a man — he must have crossed the 
 noiseless grass instead of the creaky pebbles — com- 
 ing up behind them. Has he suddenly appeared to 
 rescue himself from the ignominy of those lower- 
 ing confidences about him? Can he have overheard 
 them, though unuttered? Is that the explanation 
 of the start he, too, gives — a start superior in vio- 
 lence to their own — as he ranges up opposite them? 
 
 " Lettice! " 
 
 " Why such surprise? " she asks, the sudden 
 shock of his bodily presence lending a tremulous 
 tartness to her greeting. " Did you think it was 
 my ghost? " 
 
FOES IN LAW 303 
 
 Inwardly she is saying, " Thank God he did not 
 find me alone here in the moonhght! Thank God 
 that Gabriel is here! " 
 
 " I — I did not know that you were back," says 
 Chevening, with an apparently uncontrollable agi- 
 tation which his lady-love attributes to the com- 
 panionship in which he has found her. " You never 
 told me." 
 
 His voice drops as if to rescue the reproach from 
 the intrusive ears of the third person. 
 
 " For whom did you take me? " asks she, hur- 
 riedly, having no very good answer for his upbraid- 
 ing. ** To whom did you think you were apologiz- 
 ing — to Marie? " 
 
 Randal is apparently too much occupied in con- 
 veying by his always expressive eyes to the other 
 young man that he considers him to belong to the 
 grand old Norman family of De Trop to answer. 
 
 Gabriel takes the hint, not because he is at all 
 frightened by the curate's scowl, but because he is 
 a believer in fair play. 
 
 Lettice sees him go with a sinking heart. In- 
 voluntarily she sketches a movement towards en- 
 trenching herself in the corner of the seat, by piling 
 the superfluous wraps which the servants have 
 brought out on the space beside her. 
 
 " Is it against me that you are building up that 
 barrier? " he asks, with an odd laugh. " Why did 
 not you erect it a little earlier? " 
 
 She rears her throat in silent scorn of the in- 
 sinuation. 
 
 " It is as little necessary now as it was a quarter 
 of an hour ago," he says, with an indignation which 
 
304 FOES IN LAW 
 
 she cannot but own has a certain just basis. "I 
 force my caresses upon no one/' 
 
 Doubtless it is but a trick of her own shamed 
 imagination; but Miss Trent reads in this speech 
 a reference to the time when her caresses were 
 forced upon him. Humbled, as always, by any 
 allusion to that dreadful epoch, she holds out a 
 troubled olive branch. 
 
 " I should have let you know the date of my 
 return, only that I felt sure you would learn it 
 here." 
 
 " I have not been near the place for a week," he 
 answers sullenly. " What should bring me here?" 
 
 The recollection of her brother's phrase, " morn- 
 ing, noon, and night," as applied to the earlier part 
 of Lettice's absence, flashes back on her puzzled 
 mind. 
 
 " Jim said that of late they had not seen much 
 of you; but that previously you had been here a 
 good deal." 
 
 The young man has sat down, contracting him- 
 self ostentatiously into the opposite corner of the 
 seat. He stoops now to pick up a pebble and aim 
 it viciously at one of the noiseless winged denizens 
 of the night, as it swoops by in that unpleasant and 
 unasked proximity which characterizes the fiitter- 
 mouse. 
 
 " I suppose," he says unreadily, " that we are 
 all prone to haunt the spots where our best hopes 
 lived and died." 
 
 The key is one of deep but unreproachful melan- 
 choly. And a pair of pincers, as so often before, 
 takes a nip out of her conscience. She was that 
 best hope. It is to her grave that he hM been 
 
FOES IN LAW 305 
 
 bringing the funeral flowers of his wilted hep.rt, 
 and acrid memories! " Morning, noon, and night." 
 Poor, poor Randal! 
 
 " I have been away from home too." 
 
 " Yes," she cries, making a great effort to lift 
 the conversation up into a lighter and less oppres- 
 sive zone, " I know. You have been returning 
 thanks for one of your many new blessings. What 
 a cornucopia! " — holding up her hands, then begin- 
 ning to check ofif on her fingers. " Appleton." 
 
 " You may leave Appleton out," he says con- 
 temptuously. " I have at least escaped that form 
 of decent sepulture." 
 
 " You have refused it? " 
 
 " Absolutely." 
 
 **And Tyburn Chapel? You have not refused 
 that? " 
 
 She cannot help the satiric touch, which he, 
 being unfortunately over-well versed in her tones, 
 instantly detects. 
 
 "Why should I?" 
 
 "Why indeed?" 
 
 She leans her head back on the bench, as Gabriel 
 had done, and her troubled eyes travel along the 
 same star-sown highway as his. Across it she sees 
 written in letters of flame her life forecast of nine 
 months ago, and its ironical fulfilment of to-day. 
 To walk beside an apostle along rough roads, hold- 
 ing his tired hand and strengthening him to blow 
 the silver 'trumpet of his Evangel in the dark places 
 of the earth — that was the forecast! To be the 
 appanage of a fashionable preacher, while he titil- 
 latingly lashes smart bonnets, and flourishes on 
 freely taken sittings — this is its fulfilment! 
 
3o6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 While they so sit, each chewing the cud of his 
 and her bitter thoughts, a noise of nearing laughter 
 reaches their ears, of chattering voices and skip- 
 ping steps; and from the shadow of a clump of 
 lime trees a group of three girls, or young women, 
 presently emerges, affectionately entwined and 
 dancing along. The middle one, when they are 
 near enough to be identified, is seen to be Marie; 
 but her supporters on either side are not her sisters, 
 as their rough laughs and wildly cockney accents 
 plainly proclaim. As their capering steps bring 
 them up to the solemn occupants of the bench 
 Marie cries out — 
 
 " Come and have a dancing lesson. These are 
 two of my club girls, Florrie and Beatrice. There 
 are six more somewhere about — oh!" suddenly 
 recognizing Randal, and with a startling change 
 of tone — " it is you, it it? I took you in the dis- 
 tance for — my brother." 
 
 The young man has stood up, and now bows 
 with an exaggerated courtesy. 
 
 " Unintentional compliments are always the most 
 valuable." 
 
 " The moon was behind a cloud, or I could not 
 have made such a mistalce,'^ she answers in a voice 
 perfectly unknown to Lettice; which has neither 
 sparkle nor playful jibe in it, and so turns on her 
 heel, and walks off between her two protegees, with 
 no longer any frisky spring in her feet. 
 
 Lettice looks and listens in puzzled dismay. 
 How acutely Randal and Marie dislike each other! 
 What immense strides their reciprocal aversion has 
 taken during her own absence! Yet when alone, 
 later on, she reckons up the evening's gains and 
 
FOES IN LAW 307 
 
 losses, she cannot help feeling that the account 
 stands more in her favour than she could have 
 hoped. Though she and Chevening had continued 
 sitting on their bench for an hour after Marie's 
 irruption, she had succeeded in staving off any and 
 all of those amorous onsets, the mere apprehension 
 of which had kept her shudderingly wakeful 
 through many previous nights. 
 
 After all, now she comes to think of it, there had 
 been nothing to stave. Her first action of piling 
 the wraps had given the key-note, and he had reli- 
 giously kept to it. He has really shown a great 
 deal of delicacy. When a man is a thorough gen- 
 tleman, you always know how to deal with him. 
 And yet restless unhappiness, balked yearning, 
 straining rebellion, had spoken in every line of that 
 haggard face. Tame and commonplace, as in rare 
 moments of self-abasement she calls herself, how 
 has she managed to light such volcanic fires in such 
 a man? Once the knowledge had filled her with 
 reverent gratitude, now it inspires in her nothing 
 but a sense of iron-clamped responsibility and 
 leaden dread. Those terrible eyes! How can the 
 fine ladies admire them! " Morning, noon, and 
 night?" 
 
 4c 4c 4c * ♦ 4c 
 
 September is our steadiest friend among the 
 year's twelve daughters, with their varied whimsies, 
 the one that oftenest plays the fairy godmother, 
 and seldomest the scolding shrew. She is no ex- 
 ception to her golden rule this year. Not once are 
 the young Kergouets reduced to playing " Bears " 
 in the passages, or turning Lettice*s discreet 
 maiden bower into a robber's cave. They have 
 
3o8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 more time, more spare energy, than at Easter — 
 since there are now no rehearsals to distract them 
 — for the prosecution of their terrible industries. 
 Yet after a day or two it is clear to Lettice that they 
 do much less mischief than on their former visit. 
 They chip bits out of themselves, and fall down 
 through trap-doors and off ladders quite as freely 
 as ever; but a quietly quelling word and eye suc- 
 cessfully check that havoc wrought on his earthly 
 goods which their good-natured brother-in-law 
 had on the former occasion let pass in smiling, if 
 regretful, patience. 
 
 Gabriel is the one person in the world admir- 
 ingly confessed by his family to be able and willing 
 to tackle Sybil. And to " tackle Sybil " when she 
 is as much above her boots, according to her rela- 
 tives' lenient phrase, and as determined to hoist her 
 compeers above them as she is throughout this 
 festal period, is no sinecure. 
 
 Marie is madly, wildly gay too, introducing her 
 club girls — of whom six dance in a ballet and two 
 make jams, and with all of whom you may count 
 upon being more intimate than you quite wish 
 within two minutes of your introduction to them 
 — right and left, to her startled friends in the vil- 
 lage: to Miss Smith, Miss Brown, and Miss Dela- 
 mothe; to shy Mrs. Fairfax and excited Mrs. Tay- 
 lor, who has a racy feeling of being a frequenter 
 of green rooms for ever after. 
 
 It is a standing marvel to Lettice how her sister- 
 in-law can endure and even enjoy the lavish endear- 
 ments of these demonstrative young ladies. 
 
 " Marie is the only real Radical I have ever 
 known," she says one day to Gabriel, in a tone of 
 
FOES IN LAW 309 
 
 troubled wonder, as she watches Florrie and Bea- 
 trice and Ada and May Violet clustered round 
 their hostess, and handling her hat, her hair, her 
 trinkets, without any opposition on her part. 
 
 " She is no great respecter of persons, is she? " 
 he answers. " She loves humanity, soaped or un- 
 soaped." 
 
 " I am some way from that," rejoins Lettice, with 
 an agreeable sense of virtue in confessing an im- 
 perfection which she has not the smallest intention 
 of correcting. " I snubbed May Violet only this 
 morning for poking her dirty fingers into my back 
 hair, to find out if I wore a pad." 
 
 " I was privileged to see and hear you." And 
 they both laugh. 
 
 The truce of God still lasts, and the occasional 
 chips it sustains no more impair its integrity than 
 do the barking of Sybil's shins or the three-cor- 
 nered pieces daily hammered and gouged and gim- 
 leted out of her flesh lessen that young lady's 
 enjoyment. Perhaps it runs the greatest peril 
 when Miss Kirstie, emboldened by having drawn 
 blood from Sybil's leg without anybody — least of 
 all the sufferer — seeing any cause to object, un- 
 wisely proceeds to sample the infant calves of little 
 Frank. Or perhaps it is in still greater danger 
 when Muriel, exhibiting her phonograph at a vil- 
 lage entertainment, at which Lady Clapperton is 
 present, unluckily puts in the cylinder which re- 
 cords in Louis's voice that " Lady Clapperton is a 
 giraffe in coronation robes! " It is only by a mira- 
 cle that the squeaky insult does not reach the ears 
 of its object. 
 
 There is nothing odd in the fact that incidents 
 
3IQ FOES IN LAW 
 
 such as these should produce some smart sparring. 
 What does strike Lettice as odd is the way in 
 which she has more than once found Marie sur- 
 reptitiously regarding her. There is no hostility 
 in the look, only investigation, questioning, anx- 
 iety. Could she overhear a conversation that takes 
 place between Mrs. Trent and her eldest brother 
 about a week after her return, she might gain 
 some enlightenment. They have been strolling 
 together silently before dinner, after a long day's 
 cricketing, when Marie speaks abruptly. 
 
 " You are worrying yourself badly over this." 
 
 "Aren't you?" 
 
 There is an unwonted sharpness in the tone. 
 
 "Of course I am; fretting myself to fiddle- 
 strings! But what is the use of fretting? You — 
 you do not think that she guesses — that she is 
 beginning to suspect? " 
 
 "How should she?" 
 
 " She is never very quick at seeing things. / 
 should have found out in one second." 
 
 A slight quiver running through the arm — the 
 hard-worked arm on which she leans — tells Marie 
 that even this slight disparagement is too much 
 for the hearer's patience. 
 
 " Do you think she will mind much? " 
 
 " Mind! " The arm drops hers with a vigorous 
 jerk, and its owner faces her with his whole pale 
 face on fire. " Mind, when she discovers that the 
 man whom she supposes to be hers heart and 
 soul, who ought never to be off his knees in grati- 
 tude for having had the unspeakable good fortune 
 to win her, should have " 
 
FOES IN LAW 311 
 
 A feverish little hand comes with a smack across 
 his lips, and cuts off the end of the sentence. 
 
 " You shan't say it! I won't hear it! " 
 
 After a tempestuous pause, with a return of the 
 old sisterly jealousy — 
 
 " Of course to you it seems incredible! " 
 
 Gabriel is much too miserable to reply, which 
 his sister perceiving, remorsefully rubs her cheek 
 up and down the sleeve of his jacket. Desisting, 
 she says in a horrified voice — 
 
 " All the same he will marry her, if some one 
 does not stop it. Some one ought to tell her.*' 
 
 ** Whof God forbid that any one should know 
 it except you and me, and the information would 
 not come very well from either of us." 
 
 There is the bitter distress in his accents of one 
 who sees no outlet from a hopeless strait. Neither 
 does she apparently; and it is he who presently 
 speaks again. 
 
 " Were you thinking of Jimf " 
 
 She gives a prodigious start, her whole little 
 nervous body in revolt. 
 
 "/im, not for worlds! I won't have my old 
 Freak worried ; and besides " — laughing hysteri- 
 cally — " he would never think me infallible again." 
 
 Both walk on a few paces, with heads dejectedly 
 drooping. 
 
 " I told you you would have trouble with that — 
 man." 
 
 " What is the good of reminding me of that 
 nowf " she cries, all her nerves on edge, and throw- 
 ing her head about as if to dislodge some odious 
 occupant from her brain. " Who could have 
 guessed it? Among all the men I had ever met — 
 
312 FOES IN LAW 
 
 and you know they were not few — I had never 
 come across one I was not quite equal to manag- 
 ing. How could I know that this — this reptile was 
 an exception? A clergyman, too! Faugh!" 
 
 A meditation upon the Christian graces of the 
 Rev. Randal Chevening keeps both suffocated for 
 a while. 
 
 " She has certainly every reason to bless our 
 family! " says Gabriel, first recovering speech, but 
 of a low and choking sort. "What more is there left 
 that we can rob her of? Home, position, brother, 
 and now " 
 
 It is almost the first taste of his rare severity that 
 Marie has ever in her life experienced, and it flings 
 her into a passion of tears. 
 
 " If I have robbed her of her brother, she has 
 certainly robbed me of mine." 
 
 To her consternation, she perceives that he is 
 beyond being affected by her agitation. 
 
 " You know that you are talking nonsense," he 
 answers gently, but coldly. 
 
 She clings about him in an absolute panic. 
 " Say that you don't think it was my fault. Say 
 that you do not think I was to blame." 
 
 With fever-trembling hands she pulls his face 
 round, compelling him to look into the wet wells of 
 her great eyes; and he, yielding to the lifelong habit 
 of protecting affection, puts his arm round her 
 waist. 
 
 " No," he says ruefully; "I believe that, as far 
 as intention goes, you were perfectly innocent." 
 
 Once again they are silent, wedged in that issue- 
 less impasse. Once again Gabriel takes the initia- 
 tive. 
 
FOES IN LAW 313 
 
 "There is no time to lose," he says, not chok- 
 ingly this time, but in a key of dogged resolution. 
 " Something must be done to save her. Even — 
 her worst enemy could not wish her such a fate.'* 
 
 " You were going to say ' even you' " replies 
 his sister, deeply wounded. ** Oh, how unjust you 
 are to me; and I was growing quite fond of her." 
 
 ''Were you?" he says, a sudden inspiration 
 lighting up flambeaux in his glowing eyes. " Then 
 prove it. Tell her! " 
 
 "Kill me at once!" cries Marie, theatrically 
 seizing the lappels of her white serge jacket, and 
 tearing them apart, as if to offer her heart to the 
 fraternal penknife. " I had far rather die. Sooner 
 than do it, I will die ! " 
 
 He turns from her, eluding her embrace. " Do 
 not shake me off because I am merely human," she 
 says, whimpering, and recapturing him. " Don't 
 you see that, considering how we have always hated 
 each other, it would be physically impossible for 
 me to own to her that " 
 
 She breaks off with a grimace of inexpressible 
 distaste, resuming, after a moment or two, in a 
 carneying key full of doubt and fright — 
 
 " Now, you have always been on good terms 
 with her. It would come much better from you'' 
 
 At that he shakes her off like a viper. 
 
 " From me? Do you know what you are say- 
 ing? If I had the boundless impertinence to inter- 
 fere, what would she — what could she think, but 
 that I was traducing him for — for my own ends? " 
 
 " Very well, then," replies Mrs. Trent, despe- 
 rately, beginning to run off towards the house, 
 "then there is no help for it. She must marry 
 
314 FOES IN LAW 
 
 him, and make the best of a bad bargain, as many 
 other women have done before her." 
 
 Her brother remains standing where she had 
 left him in the gathering dusk, his hands, nervous 
 as her own, tormenting each other. 
 
 " If there is no other way " he groans, lift- 
 ing to the just appearing luminaries above him a 
 face in which there are more lines than are ac- 
 counted for by his years. Later he adds under his 
 breath, " Surely the bitterness of death is past! " 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Even now that she has jetumed to his orbit, Mr. 
 Chevening is not able to pursue the courtship of 
 his betrothed as sedulously as might have been ex- 
 pected. Besides the work naturally entailed upon 
 him by his imminent departure and the engage- 
 ments which his future cure already bring, he is 
 threatened with a law suit by the relatives of the 
 old lady who, in gratitude for the spiritual food 
 with which he had fed her, has bequeathed him her 
 loaves and fishes. Counsel assures the legatee — 
 as is subsequently proved, rightly assures him — 
 that the angry claimants have not a leg to stand 
 on; but their ireful endeavours to prove that no 
 one, except of unsound mind, could think a vol- 
 ume of sermons an equivalent for £60,000 Consols, 
 give him a good deal of trouble. 
 
 When the lovers meet it is scarcely ever at the 
 house or in the grounds of her home. Almost al- 
 ways he finds some pretext — mostly that of the 
 impossibility of finding any privacy in the area 
 scoured by the admirably efficient roughriders of 
 Kergouet's Horse — for giving her a rendezvous in 
 the woods or lanes. 
 
 Is it the publicity of their meeting-places that 
 affords her that immunity from his embraces 
 which strikes her with astonished thankfulness as 
 too good to be true? Or is it that his pride still 
 
 31' 
 
3i6 FOES IN LAW 
 
 remembers the defensive wall of wraps which on 
 the first evening of her return she had built be- 
 tween them? She assigns it to the latter cause, 
 and as she looks in his haggard face, or evades the 
 dreadful light in his eyes, as she listens to his spas- 
 modic speech, or sees him lapse into moody silence, 
 her conscience smites her bitterly for the suffering 
 that the painful fight for self-control entails upon 
 him in the effort to suppress, for fear of offending 
 her, all outward evidences of the passion that is 
 eating out his vitals. Do the daily deepening 
 marks of struggle on his face, the feverish frag- 
 mentariness of his speech, the absolute disappear- 
 ance of all attempt at physical contact — even her 
 hand hangs untouched by him — mean that he has 
 realized the intensity of her own lothness, and that 
 he is wrestling and agonizing to be enabled to re- 
 nounce her? If he offers it, will she have any right 
 to accept such a sacrifice — to blast him with a 
 hopeless blight just at the opening of his career? 
 
 These are the questions that hammer with dis- 
 mal reiteration against the wall of her brain as she 
 sits beside him who is still her promised husband, 
 beneath a not yet carried corn-stook, under the 
 now needless chaperonage of the reapers, or saun- 
 ters dolefully through the nutty woods. 
 
 One day, when she has been at home about a 
 fortnight. Miss Trent finds herself at liberty from 
 her triste promenade, Mr. Chevening having been 
 summoned to Swyndford by his duchess to be 
 presented to some of the fairest and fashionablest 
 of his new flock at present visiting her. But for the 
 perpetual obsession of her heavy thoughts Lettice 
 would have had a pleasant day, and it is with an 
 
FOES IN LAW 5t| 
 
 almost happy look that she lifts her face from the 
 drawing-board, on which she has been figuring 
 forth the plan for next year's garden, to greet 
 Gabriel, come back from shooting. 
 
 " Begonias here/' she says, " white pansies and 
 heliotrope here, coreopsis and red nasturtium here, 
 and so on, and something tall and feathery in the 
 middle of each bed." 
 
 She points with her paint-brush to the little dabs 
 of colour that represent the prospective blooms, 
 and he notes with rapture that she has a smirch of 
 indigo on one cheek. Shall he tell her of it, and 
 shock her militant neatness, or shall he let it stay to 
 gratify his eye by its heightening of the " delicate 
 lodgment " it has found? He decides on the latter 
 course. She puts her paint-brush to her mouth, 
 and says sententiously — 
 
 " A garden is the one really unmixed pleasure 
 in life. There is nothing in the world at once so 
 soothing and so cheering." 
 
 " Have you needed cheering? " 
 
 " Why should I? "—sharply. 
 
 Here is his opportunity, the opportunity that he 
 lias been vainly seeking for a week, and reproach- 
 ing himself with his own cowardice in not making. 
 
 " You have looked — or I have imagined it — as 
 if you had something on your mind." 
 
 She puts her paint-brush into her water-tin, and 
 then into a cake of colour, with a dehberate move- 
 ment whose calm is contradicted by the shaking of 
 the brush in her fingers. 
 
 " I have something — a cart-load — on my mind,*' 
 she answers in a low voice, " and sometimes I think 
 I must unload it to — somebody, and then again I 
 
3i8 FOES IN LAW 
 
 am quite sure that I shall do nothing of the kind. 
 Come, they have all been to tea at the Vicarage; 
 shall we go and meet them? " 
 
 She rises, and puts her drawing implements hur- 
 riedly together, forgetting that the little pool of 
 carmine on her palette has not been transferred to 
 the Phlox Drummondi bed. 
 
 The resolution with which she waves aside the 
 topic, and the determination to talk of nothing but 
 la pluie et le beau temps, which she displays through- 
 out their walk across the park, render it impossible 
 for him to revert to a subject which she so 
 pointedly shuns, and he sees that his first oppor- 
 tunity for doing what nothing but the most mon- 
 strous anomaly could ever have laid upon him as 
 a duty to attempt is gone. He is, however, to be 
 given a second one. 
 
 "Who are the two people colloguing at the 
 gate? " asks Lattice, breaking ofT suddenly in the 
 middle of a feverish commonplace, such as she has 
 been pouring forth for the last half mile. " How 
 the days are beginning to draw in already! Why, 
 it is Randal " — with an intonation of surprise — 
 " and Marie! I do believe " — laughing uneasily — 
 " that they are quarrelling again ! They really 
 ought to be bound over to keep the peace. Oh, do 
 not let us join them, or they will appeal to us " — 
 turning hastily round, and beginning to retrace her 
 steps. " I do dislike being drawn into quarrels that 
 do not concern me." 
 
 Her companion looks at her with his heart in 
 his mouth. Is it possible that she is still blind? that 
 those eyes, clear as mountain brooks, can have seen 
 in the livid face on the other side of the wicket 
 
FOES IN LAW 319 
 
 nothing but trivial dislike for an uncongenial ac- 
 quaintance? His glance tells him that, inconceiv- 
 able as it seems, impregnable in the fortified castle 
 of her fixed idea, her eyes are still bound. It is for 
 him to tear the bandage from them, and the 
 moment has come. 
 
 '' Has it ever struck you to — to ask him v^hat 
 they quarrel about? " 
 
 Miss Trent draws up her neck v^ith a slight ges- 
 ture of hauteur. What suitable words would have 
 accompanied this mark of her displeasure will never 
 now be known, for before she can utter them she is 
 seized from behind by a pair of muscular young 
 arms, which lift her an inch or two from the 
 ground, and then drop her. 
 
 "Muriel bet me I could not lift you!" cries 
 Sybil's voice, breathless and boastful. " What do 
 you say now, heinf" Recovering her wind with 
 creditable rapidity, she adds, " Why did not you 
 come and fetch us, as you promised? You do not 
 know what you lost! We got Mrs. Taylor into the 
 swing. I thought she would ' crever ' with laugh- 
 mg. 
 
 " She feigned to be amused," says Louis, eager, 
 as usual, to discount his tyrant's glories; "but in 
 truth she wished you at the devil." 
 
 The wrangle lasts till they reach the house, and 
 Gabriel's second opportunity is gone. Recogniz- 
 ing that it has done so, he slips back from the noisy 
 group now enveloping Lettice to meet his sister. 
 The young man has not many yards to go before 
 he sees her hastening through the gathering 
 gloom, which is not yet opaque enough to conceal 
 the high state of agitation in which she is. 
 
320 FOES IN LAW 
 
 " He tracked me through the village," she says, 
 breathing heavily. " He implored me to listen to 
 him — to let him explain — apologize. I had to hold 
 the gate against him." 
 
 She clenches her little hands, as if to repeat that 
 potent resistance, the idea of which would in other 
 circumstances have made the hearer smile. 
 
 " Did she see? " — in a panting half whisper. 
 " Of course, she understands now? You shake 
 your head. No? Is it possible that any one can 
 be so thick-witted? " 
 
 The gathering dusk probably hides the wince 
 evoked by this last query, for she gallops on with 
 ever-swelling excitement. 
 
 " And you have not told her? You have 
 shirked it again? " 
 
 His long schooling in self-control has, perhaps, 
 never had a severer call upon it than that made by 
 the grossness of this injustice; but it stands the 
 strain. If his silence does not reproach her, his 
 word certainly do not. In a minute she is lashing 
 herself instead. 
 
 " What am I saying? Of course it is I that have 
 shirked it; I that shall go on shirking it until it is 
 too late. It is infamous of me to try to shift it on 
 to you; but oh!" — by this time her Httle, hot, 
 tragic face is buried in his chest — " you have car- 
 ried so many loads for me. Do not you think that 
 if you tried very hard you could carry this one 
 too? " 
 
 All thiough the evening Gabriel seeks for that 
 third opportunity, which, once grasped, he is reso- 
 lute not again to let slip. The person who must 
 ailford it to him seems, however, as determined to 
 
FOES IN LAW 
 
 321 
 
 elude as he to gain it. Fine as the evening is, in- 
 finitely tempting with its programme of stars and 
 scents, she refuses all invitations to go into the 
 garden, and sits beside a table with her large-lidded 
 eyes for the most part dropped upon a piece of 
 plain work, steadily sewing, an image of dainty 
 housewifely decorum. The table is that upon 
 which old Mr. Kergouet's reading-lamp stands, 
 and only by its width is she parted from Gabriel's 
 father, thus unconsciously employed as a lightning- 
 conductor. He is the only other occupant of the 
 room, and his son's eyes keep turning with 
 stealthy impatience to a neighbouring clock, as if 
 to hasten the arrival of that early hour at which his 
 invalid habits send the parent Kergouet to bed. 
 But to-night that parent has no intention of re- 
 tiring. Emoustille by the presence of his hand- 
 some and at least negatively civil neighbour, he 
 bestirs himself to pay her timorous compliments 
 upon her scissors, her thimble, her reels of cotton, 
 and the faded satin and mother-of-pearl fittings of 
 her old-world sandal-wood work-box. 
 
 When half an hour beyond his usual tether has 
 been given him, the son, unable any longer to gov- 
 ern his impatience, interposes. 
 
 " Father, do you know that it is eleven 
 o'clock? " 
 
 Docile as ever to his offspring's admonitions, the 
 senior rather unwillingly draws himself out of his 
 easy-chair. To the son's infinite annoyance, Miss 
 Trent rises too, and departs, bidding both men a 
 grave good-night. 
 
 As Gabriel's balked eyes follow the tall white 
 dignity crossing the hall, he sees the butler giving 
 
3aa FOES IN LAW 
 
 her a rather bulky letter, which has apparently 
 come by hand. She does not p^use to open it, but 
 pursues her upward way. Had Gabriel known that 
 that insignificant-looking missive would save him 
 for ever from the hideous necessity for finding a 
 " third time," he would have slept better than he 
 did. 
 
 * 3|J * * * * 
 
 Lettice is in no hurry to open her letter. Rec- 
 ognition of the handwriting in which it is addressed 
 forbids all anticipations of possible pleasure in its 
 perusal. She idly wonders, when at last, having 
 purposely loitered over her undressing, she breaks 
 the seal, why it is sealed? What makes it so big? 
 
 The answer comes quickly in a little shower of 
 notes and letters — a very little one. A single 
 glance tells her that they are of her own inditing, 
 the scanty crop of correspondence spread over the 
 months of her engagement. 
 
 Marie had called her thick-witted, and for the 
 first moment or two the significance of their home- 
 coming does not reach her. Then it dawns hastily 
 upon her. When an engagement is broken off, let- 
 ters and presents are sent back. 
 
 What does it mean? She snatches up the one 
 sheet — two sheets, which are not in her own, but 
 in Randal's handwriting, and begins to read — 
 though at first the lines mix and dance and overlap 
 each other. 
 
 "Though I have forfeited all right to care, I 
 cannot even now help a pang of agony at the know- 
 ledge that the sight of your own returned letters 
 — you cannot reproach yourself with having been 
 too prodigal of them — and what it implies, will fill 
 
FOES IN LAW 323 
 
 you with relief and joy. Yes, you are set free. I 
 have forfeited all claim to you. By the time you 
 read this I shall have gone out of your life for ever. 
 You have never loved me; not even at that mo- 
 ment when you offered me your cold lips, which 
 for once seemed warm and human. If you had 
 loved me, it might have been different. Together 
 we might have conquered the devil within me, for 
 I have struggled — I have! I have! I might have 
 come out of the contest with victory, instead of 
 as now, in utter shameful defeat." 
 
 The words wander across the page, half illegible; 
 but even if they were printed in the clearest type 
 they would for the moment carry no meaning to 
 the dazed reader. What does it mean? What is 
 it all about? Has he gone mad? She catches up 
 the sheet which in her bewilderment she has let half 
 slip through her fingers, and her eyes devour the 
 page that may — that must bring the elucidation of 
 this horrible mystery. 
 
 "I have succumbed to that temptation which 
 assailed me the first moment I saw her! " 
 
 Then, at last, the bandage is loosened from Let- 
 tice's eyes; the scales fall from them, and she sees. 
 It is Marie, Marie, Marie! She tears along. 
 
 " A fortnight ago, forsaken by you, by God, and 
 hounded on by the raging fiend within me, I went 
 mad, and spoke. I had no excuse, no palliation. I 
 knew, I know now that she loathes me, and yet I 
 spoke." 
 
 The latter phrases are barely decipherable. She 
 can no longer gallop. She must crawl. 
 
 " Every day since your return I have expected 
 you to ask me the reason of the miserable chapg<5 
 
$24 FOES IN LAW 
 
 that, as none knows better than I, has been patent 
 to every one but you. But cold, pure, and unim- 
 aginative, slow to suspect, slow to sec, you have 
 apparently — inconceivable as is such blindness — 
 perceived nothing. Well, at all events, you will see 
 now." 
 
 Then follows a dash and break. Is that all? No, 
 on another sheet there is still something. 
 
 " In one respect I can allay the fears that I know 
 will assail your piety. I shall not remain in Holy 
 Orders, but shall leave the Church which I have 
 disgraced." 
 
 There is no signature; nor any ending. 
 
 When one's world turns topsy-turvy, and one 
 finds one's self sitting on one's head, it is no great 
 wonder if one's ideas are at first a little brouilles, 
 and for some while the darkness of chaos reigns 
 in the girl's brain. Then gradually, in glimmer- 
 ings, in shafts, and finally in a dazzling deluge, light 
 pours in upon her. How inconceivably blind she 
 has been! Marie! One after one, then in troops, 
 then in armies, the indications, hints, incidents, 
 looks, words, which should have enlightened her, 
 march up and storm her memory. Marie! The 
 haggard, havocked face, the disconcerted speech, 
 the gloomy silences, the waste of flesh, even the 
 dreadful fervour of the kisses had all been for her. 
 
 A pang of unavoidable humiliation and self- 
 contempt at having ever imagined that attractions 
 so moderate, and a nature so commonplace as hers 
 could light such volcanic fires, flashes first across 
 her; but soon gives way to a worthier pain. Is 
 this what the apostle, with whom, less than a year 
 agfo, she had seen herself prophetically climbing 
 
FOES IN LAW $25 
 
 spiritual heights, drawn up by him to ever loftier 
 and loftier levels, has come to? 
 
 She had long known that he was not an apostle; 
 that it was only her own slowness of apprehension 
 and lack of intuition that could ever have thought 
 him one; but that he should have sunk in this 
 slough of sensual mire, without her own stupid 
 eyes ever having detected that his feet were even 
 remotely tending thither! If she had been fonder 
 of him, could she have saved him? 
 
 The hours pass unnoted by her, as in seething 
 confusion the images of the past course before her 
 mental vision. In the absolute upheaval of her 
 world, not only present and future are engulfed, 
 but the past has been swallowed too. It has never 
 existed as she had thought it. 
 
 One after one, she lives over the unreality of its 
 scenes. Here and there a taper of truth has been 
 held to her delusions, but she has always industri- 
 ously blown it out. The stealthy anxiety with 
 which Marie has scanned her face; Gabriel's obvi- 
 ous effort to give her some hint or warning; — how 
 is it possible that she could have helped compre- 
 hending their meaning? 
 
 She gets up heavily from the seat tefore her 
 dressing-table, at which she was sitting when the 
 cataclysm overwhelmed her, and turns out the 
 electric light. Darkness best matches such com- 
 munings as hers, and the sight of her own dis- 
 traught face in the toilet-glass irks her to madness. 
 
 Her whirling thoughts begin to roll in a new 
 channel. Why does she feel no anger against 
 Marie? Having deeply resented all the minor in- 
 juries inflicted on her by her sister-in-law, why 
 does she, now that Marie has dene fi^r the most 
 
326 FOES IN LAW 
 
 grievous wrong that one woman can inflict on an- 
 other, feel no animosity towards her? The prob- 
 lem repeats itself, with parrot-like sameness, 
 through the sable hours, and only dawn brings the 
 
 solution. 
 
 ****** 
 
 For once in her life Miss Trent is late for break- 
 fast, her maid having found her in so beautiful a 
 sleep as not to have the heart to disturb her. 
 
 When she at length, with trepidating anxiety as 
 to the construction that will be put upon her tardi- 
 ness, appears, she finds the Kergouet family gath- 
 ered round Jim at the hall door, giving their opin- 
 ions, with their usual vociferous freedom, upon the 
 points and paces of a pony which is being looked 
 at with a view to the reluctant Louis taking his first 
 lessons in riding upon it. Time being non-existent 
 for the Kergouet race, no one expresses surprise at 
 her late appearance. 
 
 Little Frank runs up to her. " Randal is gone! " 
 he cries, determined to proclaim his tidings before 
 any other member of his family can get ahead of 
 him, and with all that family's ease in the handling 
 of Christian names. " The postman brought the 
 news. When is he coming back? '* 
 
 The recipient of this piece of news is tinglingly 
 aware of a sort of shivering start on the part of two 
 members of the group at this abruptly volleyed 
 communication. The consciousness gives her back 
 her composure. She puts her hand kindly on the 
 child's head, and, looking over the top of it into 
 two terrified pairs of eyes, says very gently — • 
 
 " I thmk-^ever! " 
 
 FINIS 
 
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Brewster's Millions 
 
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 CASTLE CRANEYCROW. THE SHERRODS. 
 
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