SH ARROW
 
 S H A RR O W 
 
 BY 
 
 BETTINA VON HUTTEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "HE AND HECtTBA," "PAM," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 MCMXII
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Published, May, 1912
 
 TO MY FRIEND 
 
 ALEXANDER P. WATT, ESQ. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF MUCH KINDNESS 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 BETTINA VON HUTTEN 
 
 Pollensa, Mallorca 
 December, IQII 
 
 2229174
 
 SHARROW 
 
 PART ONE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OF course, the staircase, with its broad, polished balus- 
 trade, and the dizzy curves of its immense length, was a 
 thing of mystery and glory to Sandy. 
 
 To climb up to the balustrade, at the very top of the 
 house, just outside Cook's room (otherwise known as the 
 Witch's Cave), adjust yourself nicely on your stomach, paw 
 your person into at first slow, then ever increasing mo- 
 tion, and, disregarding the pressure of buttons on sensitive 
 parts, fly giddily down, flight after flight, breathless, ter- 
 rified, full to the brim of thrill and splendor this was 
 life. 
 
 Otherwise, 27 Guelph Square was a dull house. 
 
 It was possessed, Sandy knew, of several noteworthy 
 features, such as Adam's ceilings, and a niche painted by 
 Angelica Kauf mann ; but features never interest children : it 
 is the expression, whether of people or of houses, that 
 counts with them. 
 
 And the expression of 27 was one of resigned, middle- 
 aged, fat dullness. 
 
 It was even conceivable to the red-headed little boy's im- 
 agination that in its youth the house had been slimmer 
 and taller; that advancing age had spread it, as it had 
 spread Aunt Martha Timlow. 
 
 1
 
 2 SHARROW 
 
 It also had a strange smell that never changed. Grown 
 people had been known, on discreet approach to the sub- 
 ject, to deny the smell, but grown people are proverbially 
 Bhort-nosed. Sandy, always given to mental classification, 
 decided that 27 smelt of damp, and boiled vegetables, and 
 three o'clock in the afternoon the loneliest hour in the 
 twenty-four. 
 
 The rooms were high and shabbily furnished; they 
 were also untidy, and only comfortable rooms can survive 
 untidiness. 
 
 There were tall wooden cabinets filled with china ; there 
 was a large china monster with a venomous looking red 
 tongue and unnatural purple and red blotches all over him, 
 to say nothing of his anatomy being perforated by gilt- 
 edged holes. 
 
 This was, Sandy knew, A Treasure. 
 
 There were portraits on the wall, and it was depressing 
 to realize that one might grow to resemble one of them. 
 Most of the men had red hair; and no amount of imagina- 
 tion could delude the boy into believing that his own stiff 
 locks were anything but of the reddest. 
 
 Of course, if one grew to look like the Old Horror over 
 the drawing-room mantel-piece, suicide would be one 's only 
 resource. On the other hand, the one known as "your 
 Great-uncle Frederic" was not quite so bad. 
 
 Sandy was once disciplined with a hairbrush, on a very 
 sensitive place, for praying that, if he must look like any 
 of the Sharrows ', God would be so polite as to choose Uncle 
 Frederic as his prototype. 
 
 It was Bean who "disciplined" him. 
 
 Bean was his nurse, as she had been his father's, and, 
 Sandy suspected, his grandfather's, too. She was immor- 
 tally old and as cross as le diable. 
 
 At 27, it was not considered courteous to use bad language 
 in English.
 
 SHAKROW 3 
 
 Cook, on the other hand, while une grue, was a kind 
 soul who made very small tarts in a heart-shaped tin, and 
 smuggled them upstairs in her apron pocket, wherein also 
 dwelt her keys, her handkerchief, some small change, and 
 a leaky bottle of oil of eucalyptus. Sandy was not quite 
 eight when he found that he had for some time recognized 
 the fact that the two little boys in velveteen who frequently 
 haunted the kitchen, were, though bone of Cook's bone, 
 and flesh of her flesh, none the less non-existent in the eyes 
 of the law. 
 
 He also knew, though the source and hour of his en- 
 lightenment he could never recall, that Lionel, the elder 
 boy, was the son of a gentleman (in the shop- walking line), 
 and Milton, the cheerful result of a fleeting fancy on Cook 's 
 part for a policeman. 
 
 It was, Sandy thought, extremely interesting and diversi- 
 fying for brothers to have different fathers, and never to 
 have seen either of them. 
 
 Besides Bean and Cook, there lived at 27 Madame 's 
 maid-parlormaid, who had no fixed personality because she 
 departed every few weeks to be replaced by a new one, and 
 Adolphe, le valet de Monsieur. 
 
 Monsieur et Madame themselves could hardly be called 
 real inhabitants, for they were constantly away, either to- 
 gether, or, as happened once in a while, separately. 
 
 Sandy himself was, of course, the kernel of the universe, 
 and he never went away. 
 
 He and Bean lived in a large room at the back of 
 the house, a room whose windows overlooked the small 
 back-yard haunted by cats and sparrows. 
 
 Sandy's bed had eight legs; four short ones on which 
 it stood, and four long, curly ones stretched ceilingwards. 
 As if on the feet belonging to these latter legs, was spread 
 a taut canopy of faded green damask. 
 
 This bed was A Treasure, and more than once the little
 
 4 SHARROW 
 
 boy had been roused from his sleep to behold Monsieur et 
 Madame displaying his resting-place to a guest. 
 
 The buffet in the dining-room was, however, the greatest 
 Treasure of all. It was early Georgian and something in 
 Sandy's soul ached at its aspect. It was to him painfully 
 ugly. It reminded him of funerals and other heavy 
 horrors. 
 
 Who can describe the current of a child 's life ? The days 
 that seem hours, the hours that surely must be days; the 
 rain that is never going to cease; the sunshine that has 
 always been and shall always be. 
 
 Sandy loved the autumn and winter because then the 
 lamps were lit early, the fires kept him company, and 
 Cook liked his presence in the kitchen. 
 
 Spring and summer, on the other hand, made him lonely. 
 From two to four, any day in the year, was his worst 
 time; but on warm days it was a time of inexpressible de- 
 pression. 
 
 He always seemed to have a headache between these 
 two hours, even when he knew he hadn't. 
 
 Cook understood this phenomenon better than any one 
 else, and comforted him with apples and stayed him with 
 flagons of sweetest milk or lemonade, in the kindness of her 
 disreputable heart. 
 
 Kittens multiplied amazingly at 27. Sandy disliked them 
 with intensity, but Cook forced from him a certain grudg- 
 ing kindness. 
 
 "You 'adn't ought to pull their tails," she explained, 
 her shiny red face, with its pretty dimples, serious with 
 her educational purpose. " 'Oo made 'em?" 
 
 ' ' God, ' ' returned Sandy promptly with an air of render- 
 ing unto Caesar. ' ' Of course he did. ' ' 
 
 "Well, then!" 
 
 This was Cook's expression of convinced triumph. She 
 said, "Well, then," to nearly everything. Cook knew she
 
 SHARROW 5 
 
 was une grue ; Sandy told her so once when they quarreled. 
 
 But either she didn't know what the word meant, or 
 she didn't at all mind being one. 
 
 Adolphe despised Cook, and had no converse with her, 
 so he certainly did not elucidate, but on future occasions 
 Cook was known to apply the word transmuted in the 
 crucible of her accent into "groo" to other people, not- 
 ably to Monsieur, whom she hated. 
 
 "You mustn't say Monsieur is a grue," Sandy told her 
 one day, as he sat by the stove eating some warmed-up 
 veal gravy and a lump of bread. "He's my father." 
 
 And Cook, a prey to her own facile emotions, wept and, 
 pressing his face to her ample bosom, impaled his nose on 
 a pin. 
 
 Sandy knew that Cook was kept on in spite of her gruism 
 because she was the one woman in Great Britain who could 
 make good sauces. 
 
 And he knew that, although 'E was a groo, and she an- 
 other as bad, Cook stayed on for love of the poor child, the 
 poor child being himself. 
 
 But he never mentioned Monsieur's opinion to Cook, nor 
 Cook's to Monsieur. 
 
 The real peculiarity of the house was that, while no 
 two of its inhabitants liked each other, they stuck to each 
 other for reasons of convenience. And this Sandy knew. 
 
 Even his father and mother quarrelled; his father and 
 Cook quarrelled continually; Cook and Bean quarrelled; 
 Bean and Adolphe quarrelled ; and yet the maid-parlor- 
 maid 's was the only position occupied by a different indi- 
 vidual every few weeks. The others stayed. And, of 
 course, he, Sandy, stayed. 
 
 How Aunt Martha Timlow came to be Sandy's aunt, 
 Sandy did not know. She was unmarried, so to be his aunt 
 she should have been either a Sharrow or a Vautrec. And, 
 far from being a Vautrec, she was not even French.
 
 6 SHARROW 
 
 Periodically she appeared and stayed for what might 
 have been weeks, or months. 
 
 She filled all her time giving instructions to Sandy about 
 God. Sandy heard about God at breakfast (Monsieur and 
 Madame apparently lived without breakfast, but Aunt 
 Martha lined her great person every morning with layers 
 and layers of buttered toast soaked in tea) ; all the morn- 
 ing he was instructed as to the nature of God's malice; 
 the afternoons were given over for instances of God's 
 fiendish ingenuity in the matter of vengeance ; and at tea 
 God's delight in the destruction of His creatures was de- 
 picted with all Aunt Martha's skill. 
 
 But by supper time Sandy's incipient fears were extin- 
 guished by sheer boredom. 
 
 ' ' You must love God, ' ' Aunt Martha once said, far back 
 in the years, so far back that her disciple was eating bread 
 and milk out of a bowl with a spoon. 
 
 Sandy looked at her, his small three-cornered eyes with 
 their thick, dusty-looking lashes full of bored politeness. 
 
 "Why?" he asked. 
 
 Then when Aunt Martha went away, God, it seemed, went 
 with her, for no one in the house ever mentioned Him, 
 though Adolphe frequently referred to an apparently 
 secondary Deity of cheerful habits, called le bon Dieu 
 
 For years Sandy thought that God and le bon Dieu 
 were quite different persons.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MADAME was standing before her cheval glass, and her 
 blue satin frock was being laced up the back by the 
 maid-parlormaid. 
 
 Sandy sat on the floor, his legs crossed under him. It 
 was the autumn of 1874 and he was thirteen years 
 old. 
 
 He was a big-boned, ungainly child, as all the Sharrow 
 children are, however far removed from the burly parent 
 stem. His violently red hair was already beginning to tone 
 down to that duller tawniness characteristic of the family, 
 and his strangely-set gray eyes, deep under the bumpy, 
 hairless brows, were the noticeable feature of his white 
 face. 
 
 "Dieu, que tu es laid!" Madame observed, glancing at 
 him as she polished her nails on the palms of her hands. 
 
 Sandy grinned at her. 
 
 Not his the sensitiveness of many ugly children. Very 
 logically he blamed those Old Horrors on the drawing-room 
 walls for his lack of beauty. 
 
 "If you had been a girl," his mother went on, smiling 
 at him, "I should have had to overlay you. While you 
 were very little, I mean. It matters less in a boy." 
 
 Sandy liked her frock with its soft, full skirt over which 
 an absurd little transparent overskirt was draped. He 
 liked the round tucker with its narrow black velvet draw- 
 string. 
 
 She had the smoothest of ivory-colored arms and neck, 
 
 7
 
 8 SHARROW 
 
 and her face, with its curious purple mark on one cheek, 
 fascinated him, as it always did. 
 
 "Give me the rouge, Henderson." 
 
 This, of course, he loved. The round box, the hare's 
 foot, the slow disappearance of the ugly mark under its 
 application, the lovely pink glow on Madame 's white skin! 
 
 She was quite justified in rouging, even her enemies 
 admitted, poor soul ! the birthmark was so very disfiguring. 
 Once, on being asked what the birthmark was, his mother 
 had told her child that he, as a baby, had bitten her face. 
 She had never thought of her little joke again, but he had 
 never forgotten it. He was deeply sorry to have injured 
 Madame. 
 
 ' ' There that 's enough ? ' ' 
 
 'Yes, Madame," returned Henderson primly. She dis- 
 approved of rouge and liked her mistress to know that she 
 did. 
 
 "Is Monsieur ready?" 
 
 "I'll go and see," announced Sandy eagerly, scrambling 
 to his feet. 
 
 Both his father and mother had been away for several 
 weeks, and only just got back. It was delightful to have 
 them again. 
 
 Monsieur, who had finished dressing, was sitting at the 
 piano in his bedroom when Sandy entered. The situa- 
 tion of the piano was not stranger than many other things 
 at 27. 
 
 Monsieur played, Madame did not, and hated music, 
 so what, to either of them, more natural than the presence 
 of the little Broad wood opposite Monsieur's bed. 
 
 " 'Allo, son!" 
 
 "Bon soir, Monsieur," returned Sandy, courteously. 
 "Madame is ready if you are?" 
 
 Sydney Sharrow, a red-headed man very like his son, 
 smiled. He had a delightful smile that showed many white
 
 SHARROW 9 
 
 teeth. He loved his son, in his own way, and the child's 
 gift of unconsciously amusing him was very endearing. 
 
 "Are you always going to call us Monsieur and Ma- 
 dame?" he asked. 
 
 Sandy's eyes fixed themselves on his father's. 
 
 "Shall I not?" 
 
 "Well, I don't know. It was charming when you were 
 a little kid, but you are, let me see, eleven now, aren't 
 you?" 
 
 "Thirteen." 
 
 "Bless my soul, so you are. And I told the Old Chief 
 yesterday that you were eleven. "Well, so much the better. ' ' 
 
 "How?" Sandy inquired. 
 
 ' ' Oh, nothing. Or, yes, I might as well tell you. You are 
 invited to Sharrow to visit your great-uncle and the rest of 
 the tribe. You are to go next week. ' ' 
 
 Sandy did not answer. He had never been away from 
 home in his life, except for a fortnight at Eastbourne, 
 where Bean had a sister, every August. He felt suddenly 
 curiously rooted in Guelph Square. He felt as a mandrake 
 might be supposed I o feel before the approaching hand of 
 the uprooter has as yet touched it. 
 
 ""Well, aren't you glad?" asked his father, surprised 
 by his silence. 
 
 "Yes no I don't know. Is it a nice place?" 
 
 Sydney Sharrow laughed aloud. 
 
 " Is it a nice place ? Sharrow ? My dear son, surely you 
 are the first creature with a drop of Sharrow blood to ask 
 that question. It's it's Sharrow." 
 
 "Is it pretty?" 
 
 His father struck two chords on the piano, his bushy, 
 blonde brows drawn together. Then he rose. 
 
 ' ' I have neglected my duty, ' ' he said, taking the boy by 
 the shoulder. "This ought never to have happened. 
 Come."
 
 10 SHARROW 
 
 They went to the drawing-room, where Adolphe had 
 already lit the big oil-lamps. In a corner behind the door 
 hung a small water-color drawing of a vast old house 
 among trees. 
 
 "That's it." 
 
 Sandy felt that he was, in the French sense, assisting at 
 a scene. His father's voice was strange. 
 
 ' ' Have you seen this picture before ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 Then Sandy looked up at him. "I have often seen the 
 picture," he said, slowly, "but I never thought it was a 
 real place." 
 
 "Oh! What did you think it was?" 
 
 "I thought it was just a picture. An imaginary 
 place. ' ' 
 
 Sydney Sharrow burst out into a rough laugh. 
 
 "And so it is for me, and for you. As imaginary a 
 place as if the painter had made it up out of his own 
 head." He paused, his hand pressing heavily on the boy's 
 shoulder. "And all," he went on, "because of " 
 
 "Because of what?" 
 
 "Never you mind, my dear. The place is nothing to 
 us, but you'll have a good month there with your cousins. 
 And the Old Chief shall see that what I told him is true 
 
 Ah, here's Antoinette " He broke off and turned to 
 
 the doorway, in which stood his beautiful wife wrapped in 
 a delicate white crepe shawl. 
 
 His manner toward her when they were not quarrelling, 
 was always admirable. And Sandy admired. When he 
 had kissed his mother good-by, he turned to his father; 
 something had happened between them; he did not know 
 what it was, but it bore fruit in his next words. 
 
 "Good night Father."
 
 SH ARROW 11 
 
 "Tiens!" cried his mother gayly, "how you are grown 
 up! Are we no longer to be Monsieur et Madame ?" 
 
 ' ' Hush, my love, ' ' her husband said, offering her his arm, 
 "he is quite right. It is right that he should call me 
 father."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT was raining hard as the carriage drawn by the im- 
 mense bay horses turned into the avenue. 
 
 Sandy leaned out of the open window and gazed into the 
 vast darkness. It was not yet five o'clock, but the day 
 was of the blackest and under the old trees it seemed like 
 night. 
 
 The avenue was broad and very smooth, the carriage 
 proceeded as noiselessly as carriages could before the days 
 of rubber tires. 
 
 Sandy's red head bobbed from window to window as 
 he tried to see his surroundings. 
 
 Since the evening when he had been shown the picture, 
 his father had not mentioned Sharrow to him, yet somehow 
 he seemed to have learnt in the interim, much about it. 
 A seed had apparently been sown in his brain, and in the 
 silence it had grown. 
 
 He was coming not only to a house, to a place, but to a 
 new mental life. He was walking into a new set of feelings, 
 the feelings that made his jolly, careless father's voice so 
 different when he talked of the place. 
 
 It was, as his father had said, Sharrow; and, young as 
 he was, the boy was himself a Sharrow, and, therefore, 
 though he did not know why, the name meant to him 
 many things besides this beautiful old house the windows of 
 which, were beginning to gleam at him through the naked 
 trees. 
 
 The carriage skirted a long lake, its lamps giving glimpses 
 
 12
 
 SHARROW 13 
 
 of its sedge-grown shore, sped on for five minutes longer, 
 and then stopped. 
 
 Not a door, but an ancient iron gate was opened, light 
 streamed out, and Sandy was led by an old servant under 
 a low cupolaed tower into the courtyard. 
 
 Now there is much charm in an old courtyard, and 
 Sandy was one of those fortunate people whose feelers 
 are always out like invisible tentacles, ready to close on 
 things beautiful, and sad, and charming, and to make them ' 
 part of their own lives. 
 
 In the dramatic red light of two torches stuck into 
 iron rings on the walls, Sandy stood and looked around 
 him. The courtyard of Sharrow was henceforth to be 
 a part of his memory, hence of his mind, hence of him- 
 self. 
 
 The front of the house was said to have been restored, 
 after the wars, when Henry the Seventh was king; but 
 the rest of the house, except for some additions invisible 
 from the courtyard, was older, part of it presumably 
 Saxon. 
 
 Archaeologists differed, as archaeologists will, about the 
 different dates, but that did not matter. 
 
 The quadrangle, very irregular in character, with win- 
 dows round, and windows square, roofs of various heights, 
 and chimneys of several distinct kinds, had yet grown with 
 time, mellowed like a great fruit, into a most perfect 
 whole. Mosses and lichens, soft as whispering voices, lent 
 color to its old stone; the sun and rain of centuries had 
 blurred the dividing lines till all looked equally old, equally 
 ripe. And opposite the gate where Sandy had come in was 
 the door of the great hall. 
 
 The door frame of mellow stone was immensely high, and 
 rich with carving. In the center, at the top, stood the 
 Griffin holding the coat of arms. 
 
 By some freak of the newly-risen wind, the light of
 
 14 SHARROW 
 
 the nearer torch suddenly flared upwards, drawing with it 
 the eyes of the little boy. He knew the coat of arms, for 
 it was on his father's watch, and on various other things, 
 but here it was so large that for the moment it seemed 
 to him the largest thing in the world. He perhaps could 
 not see the words "Ce que Charreau possede, Charreau 
 garde," but he, of course, knew them to be there, and they 
 flashed at him as the red light danced down, leaving them 
 in darkness. 
 
 The exterior of the great hall was of small red bricks, 
 faced with warm-colored stone, and when the servant, who 
 had a cold in his head, sneezed violently, and opened the 
 great door with meaning, Sandy followed him meekly into 
 a beautiful Jacobean hall. 
 
 It reached to the roof, and was lighted by three large 
 oil lamps. Opposite the door a fire glowed under an im- 
 mense stone chimney-piece. 
 
 Sandy looked up and saw oak rafters and darkness. He 
 looked to his right and his left and saw oak paneled walls 
 empty of all pictures, but hung with curious old bits of 
 armor. 
 
 He saw four high windows with small panes. 
 
 He saw no carpet, but deer skins; he saw a long black 
 table and several uncomfortable looking black chairs. 
 
 "Aren't there any pictures?" he asked the servant. It 
 was the first word he had spoken. 
 
 "No, sir," the man answered. "The pictures are in 
 the picture gallery." 
 
 Then Sandy was led up an absurd little twisted stairway, 
 down a long passage (everything made of wood, no wall- 
 paper anywhere to be seen, and no carpets, which he 
 thought very strange), and then the servant paused, blew 
 his nose on a handkerchief that struck Sandy as extremely 
 large, and knocked at a door. 
 
 The old lord sat by the fire in a room which was, un-
 
 SHARBOW 15 
 
 expectedly, all white, with garlands of carved fruit on the 
 walls, and some dark pictures set into the panels. 
 
 When the door opened and his young guest came in 
 unattended, as had been arranged, the old man looked at 
 him steadily before he spoke. 
 
 Then he laughed. "Another red-head!" he said. 
 
 Sandy laughed, too. "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well, well, come in. Yes, your father was right. It's 
 a strong type, a very strong type, as you will see when 
 your cousins come in." 
 
 "How many are there?" asked Sandy. 
 
 "Three. And all of 'em healthy. Your father would 
 have been too clever to ask that." 
 
 The old man's fat red face was full of malice. He 
 looked very evil in the firelight. Then, having met Sandy 's 
 stare of blank non-comprehension for a full half minute, he 
 smiled and looked like an old bald-headed cherub. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he said, quietly. "Sit down." 
 
 Sandy obeyed. To him the gentleman opposite was only 
 another Old Horror as ugly as le diable, a possible fu- 
 ture resemblance to whom was a thing to be prayed 
 against. 
 
 "Did your father tell you that when he came here the 
 other day, he came for the first time?" pursued the uncon- 
 scious Old Horror. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Aha! Close-mouthed! Well, we're all that. So I 
 gather you know nothing whatever about your great-grand- 
 father?" 
 
 Sandy nodded. "Oh, yes, I do. We have a portrait 
 of him; he's the ugliest of the lot " 
 
 "I see." 
 
 Suddenly Lord Sharrow appeared to tire of the con- 
 versation, and rang the bell by the chimney-piece. 
 
 The door was immediately opened by a perfectly oiled
 
 16 SHARKOW 
 
 automaton in the shape of a servant in plain clothes, who 
 was sent for the young gentlemen. 
 
 There was a long unbroken silence, and then the young 
 gentlemen came in. Alexander, aged sixteen; Keith, aged 
 fourteen; and Paul, their cousin as well as Sandy's, aged 
 twelve Sharrows in their red-headed ugliness, all of them. 
 
 Sandy shook hands with them and answered one or two 
 jerky questions. 
 
 Then the old man, whom the other boys addressed as 
 Grandfather, rose. 
 
 "Sandy, you come with me," he began, and Sandy, 
 darting forward, cannoned into his eldest cousin. "Ah, 
 I forgot, you are, of course, Sandy, too," commented Lord 
 Sharrow. 
 
 ' ' Is is he Sandy ? ' ' our boy asked, rubbing his shoulder. 
 
 ' ' He is my heir ; we are all Sandys, ' ' was the dry answer. 
 Then, nodding to the two boys to follow him, the old man 
 left the room. 
 
 Down the oak-paneled passage they went, up a broad, 
 shallow staircase whose every step was worn to a deep 
 hollow, and into the largest room Sandy had ever seen. It 
 was the picture gallery, and unlighted but for one big lamp 
 standing near the door and throwing across the floor a yel- 
 low arrow of light. 
 
 Lord Sharrow took the lamp and went slowly along to the 
 left. 
 
 Presently he stopped and held up the lamp so that its 
 light flooded one picture. 
 
 "Quiche!" ejaculated Sandy. The Old Horror in ques- 
 tion was so very much uglier than any of the others. A 
 big Old Horror this, in steel armor from top to toe, his red 
 hair the only bit of warm color in the picture. 
 
 "I suppose you don't know who this is?" Lord Shar- 
 row 's eyes were very keen as he put the question. 
 
 ' ' It 's it 's one of the family right enough. ' '
 
 S H A K R O W 17 
 
 "It is the Marquis de Charreau, the first of the family 
 to settle in England. And, ' ' continued the old man, ' ' when 
 you are his age you will be the living image of him." 
 
 It was rude of the other Sandy to administer at this 
 juncture a sharp kick to his cousin. Our Sandy, red with 
 pain, made a face which his great-uncle saw. 
 
 "You so dislike looking like him?" he asked. 
 
 Sandy laughed. "No, sir but well, he isn't pretty, 
 is he?"* 
 
 Lord Sharrow chuckled. "No. Not pretty. Now run 
 away, you two, and make friends or enemies of each 
 other." 
 
 He himself did not appear at dinner, and on Sandy's 
 asking where he was, Paul answered casually that most 
 probably he was drunk.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LORD SHAEROW was a very rich man and he was a Shar- 
 row to the innermost depths of his wicked old being. 
 That means that he adored not only every stone and every 
 inch of oak in his wonderful house, but also every earth- 
 worm on the estate. "Was not the earthworm full of Sharrow 
 soil? 
 
 Young Paul, the delicate cousin whose family character- 
 istics seemed somehow faded (his hair, for example, was 
 pink, instead of red, his eyes less three-cornered than those 
 of the others, his ears less pointed), told Sandy all about 
 the family. 
 
 Paul lisped, because his tongue seemed a little too big 
 for his mouth. Sandy did not like him as much as he 
 liked the brothers, but Paul liked him so they were much 
 together. 
 
 "The fearful old creature in armor, the one I am so 
 like, he was the first, wasn't he?" Sandy asked others for 
 information. 
 
 "Not he. Noah was the first. A French Noah, I sup- 
 pose. Lor ' but we 're an old family ! You see, De Charreau 
 was the cadet of an old French tribe, and he ran away and 
 married somebody. Then his governor disinherited him, 
 and when King John took Angers, this chap was made a 
 prisoner. Somehow or other he got round the king (a 
 pretty rum pair they were, I gather)," added the learned 
 Paul sagely, "birds of a feather so, as Charreau was dis- 
 inherited, his wife came over to England, and King John 
 gave him a house, and he stayed." 
 
 18
 
 SHARKOW 19 
 
 "Was this the house?" 
 
 ' ' Yes. Only, of course, it was different then. Well, they 
 say he murdered his wife at all events, she died and he 
 married someone the King told him to she had money, 
 and here we are!" 
 
 ' ' I wonder, ' ' Sandy said, dreamily, ' ' if he had red hair. ' ' 
 
 "I suppose so. Oh, I know lots more about 'em. I'll 
 tell you some day. He was a duke's son in France, and 
 in Henry the Fifth's time his descendant went to France 
 with Henry and married one of Katherine's ladies-in- 
 waiting. ' ' 
 
 The two boys were sitting in what was called the Small 
 Hall, a wonderful oak room. The oak on the inner wall, 
 in its austere linen-fold pattern, was bleached by cen- 
 turies of sunlight to a pale straw color; that opposite, be- 
 tween the window and around the big fire-place, was nearly 
 black. 
 
 This peculiarity of coloring delighted Sandy, though he 
 could not have told why, and the bare room was his favorite 
 of all in the house. 
 
 To an unseen spectator the putative fly on the wall 
 the scene presented much charm. A big fire burned on the 
 hearth, and through the small leaded panes of the three 
 windows poured a pale December sun. 
 
 On the floor, at equal distances from the windows, lay 
 blotches of purple and amber light that which came 
 through the jewelled glass at the tops of the windows. 
 There were no rugs, but several well-worn old deer skins 
 lay on the floor. 
 
 There were no books, no flowers, no stuffs of any kind. 
 It was not really a room, it was a hall. It was just what 
 it had been for centuries. 
 
 And the two red-headed boys, eating nuts by the fire as 
 they solemnly discussed their ancestry, fitted well into the 
 scene.
 
 20 SHARROW 
 
 "It was my great-grandfather, then, whom your grand- 
 father says wasn 't married ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "But that's all rot," returned Sandy, inspired by re- 
 membrances of Cook and her offspring. " If he wasn 't mar- 
 ried, then we shouldn't be Sharrows at all." 
 
 "Well, you aren't. I mean to say," rectified Paul, 
 "we say you aren't." 
 
 ' ' Oh. And we say he was married ? ' ' 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 "And if he was, then " 
 
 ' ' Oh, if he was, then your governor would be Lord Shar- 
 row, you see, and you, my lovely cousin, his heir. Throw 
 me a nut, will you ? ' ' 
 
 "Well if our name isn't Sharrow, what is it?" 
 
 Paul paused, and then he said effectively, "Burton." 
 
 "Oh, get along! My name isn't Burton. Of course it 
 isn't. That's absurd." 
 
 "I don't see why." 
 
 "Well, it is. I mean to say one's name couldn't be 
 Burton." 
 
 Burton seemed to him a monstrously ugly word. 
 
 "That's what your grandfather said. He sued us." 
 
 "My grandfather," repeated Sandy, slowly, "sued 
 your grandfather this man." 
 
 "Yes. And lost his case, of course. Oh, it's no good, 
 my dear fellow, you are not the long-lost heir!" 
 
 Paul laughed. He had more of the malice of the family 
 than any of the boys. 
 
 And then, neither of them ever quite remembered how, 
 the two were at each other's throats. Hammer and tongs 
 they fought, and in the qaiet room was heard only the dull 
 thump of fist on flesh, and hard breathing. 
 
 They were fairly well matched, though Paul was the
 
 SHARROW 21 
 
 slighter, for he was uncommonly agile, and to a certain 
 extent a born boxer. 
 
 On and on they fought, Paul very red, Sandy very 
 white, until a spurt of blood from the latter 's nose splashed 
 everything with crimson. 
 
 Then Sandy spoke, with a kind of snort between his 
 
 words. "Damn you that isn't Burton blood " he 
 
 said. 
 
 And then, just as these things always happen in books, 
 and sometimes in real life, the old lord opened the door. 
 
 He did not interrupt them. On the contrary, he stood 
 quite still watching, with a keen pleasure in his red-edged 
 old eyes. 
 
 When at length Paul, by a well-placed blow, knocked 
 Sandy down, the old man spoke. 
 
 ' ' There, that will do, ' ' he said. ' ' Get up, Sandy. ' ' 
 
 Sandy got up. 
 
 ' ' I gathered from an impious remark I heard as I opened 
 the door, that you were fighting for your name. Is that 
 correct ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Yes, sir, ' ' mumbled Sandy, sullenly, fingering his swell- 
 ing nose. 
 
 "Well" the old man turned, and again opened the 
 door "you were quite right. That is not Burton blood 
 that is messing up my floor. The law proved that your 
 grandfather was not the heir of the title, but it gave him the 
 right to bear our name. Now shake hands." 
 
 The two boys shook hands, and the old man went out, 
 leaving them together.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LORD SHABROW had been amused and more than half 
 pleased by the Sharrow-Burton fight. 
 
 As a young man he had been brutal in his tastes, and 
 tastes rarely change with age ; the possibility for enjoyment 
 of them may fail, as fails the capacity for indulging them, 
 but fundamentally they survive. 
 
 And the drunken old peer, who, among other things 
 fully realized his own quality of a curiosity in these ab- 
 stemious days, knew that he had enjoyed the battle just 
 as much for the primary reason that it was a fight as for 
 the reason of its being. 
 
 The other Sandy, as our boy called, in petto, the heir, 
 was a fine manly lad, and the old man was duly proud 
 of him. Our Sandy, it was clear, was a quarrelsome young 
 beast, and that endeared him to his venerable relation. 
 
 A few days after the bloody event that pleased him, 
 the old man sent a servant to tell Mr. Alexander to come 
 to him. 
 
 The heir being, as all the Sharrows had always been, 
 Mr. Sandy, our boy was Mr. Alexander, which he detested. 
 
 Presently the servant came back. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Alexander must have gone out, my lord, ' ' he said. 
 "We can't find 'im." 
 
 "Where are the other young gentlemen?" 
 
 "Mr. Sandy and Mr. Keith are gone to White Shirley, 
 my lord ; Mr. Paul is in the library. ' ' 
 
 "Send Mr. Paul to me." 
 
 22
 
 SHAREOW 23 
 
 Paul came in, sucking his third finger to get off a large 
 ink-spot. 
 
 "Where's Alexander?" snapped his grandfather. It is 
 a rule of life that unoffending people should be far more 
 frequently snapped at than the actively troublesome. 
 
 Paul 's tongue seemed to swell as he answered. It always 
 seemed to swell when he was agitated. 
 
 "He's on the roof, sir." 
 
 "On the roofl" 
 
 "Yeth, thir." 
 
 Paul stood limply before him, wondering why his grand- 
 father always jumped on him. He did not know that 
 one kind of personality invariably rouses in stronger breasts 
 a wild yearning for jumping. 
 
 It appeared that Alexander liked roofs. He had found 
 a book about ' ' The House, ' ' and there was a chapter about 
 nothing but roofs and chimneys. So he had gone to investi- 
 gate. 
 
 "I told him you wouldn't like it, sir," added Paul, 
 eagerly. 
 
 ' ' Oh, you did ! Well, as it happens, I do, " the old man 
 answered, fiercely. "You may go." 
 
 Ten minutes later, Lord Sharrow, purple in the face, 
 and puffing very hard indeed, reached the top of one of 
 the myriad flights of stairs that burrowed through the old 
 house. 
 
 With a huge and rusty key, he opened a door across which 
 many industrious spiders had spun a thick fabric that 
 time had strengthened with dust, and went into a small 
 octagonal room. 
 
 There were four windows, set in six-foot-thick walls, a 
 much-hacked round table, and two leather-seated Cromwel- 
 lian chairs. Nothing else. 
 
 The old man sat down and looked around. He had not 
 been in the room for fifty years. The last time was when,
 
 24 SHARROW 
 
 as a very young man, he had brought Cyrilla Dallaford up 
 to see where, as a boy, he had once been incarcerated for a 
 week, for some crime or other, and whence he had, every 
 night, escaped, at risk of life and limb, over the roofs, to 
 play on his father and neighbors a series of mad tricks, 
 of which, owing to the apparently safe nature of his prison, 
 he had never been suspected. 
 
 He had been fourteen or fifteen then ; now he was seventy- 
 three. He chuckled aloud as he recalled his father's speech, 
 on the occasion of his reinstatement at the family board, 
 after his week's seclusion: "If you hadn't been locked 
 safely away, my son, I should have thrashed you on the 
 mere suspicion of having painted the rector's pony blue. It 
 smacks strongly of your kind of humor, but short of flying 
 you can't have got out of the tower, and I see no wings 
 yet." 
 
 And the culprit laughed aloud again, after all these 
 years, to think how well he had done his job. The rector's 
 pony had been so very blue ; and it had been such a long 
 time before the color finally faded away that the chil- 
 dren in the village came to regard the odd-looking animal 
 with the dull, cold eye of total indifference. 
 
 And now here was Sydney Sharrow's boy on the roofs! 
 So far as the old man knew, the only one beside himself to 
 indulge in that very perilous exploration. 
 
 The iron hasp which loosened the pivot-hung little win- 
 dow was stiff with rust. Lord Sharrow swore vividly as he 
 worked at it. 
 
 Presently it groaned, and ceded, and he put his head 
 forth into the pale sunlight. 
 
 "By Jove!" 
 
 He had forgotten how beautiful the roofs of his house 
 were. Flat, gabled roofs of stone, roofs of tiles, roofs of 
 silver, moss-covered shingle. From some four feet under- 
 neath the window where he stood, a very narrow ledge
 
 SHARROW 25 
 
 led to where, about six feet to the right, a bit of flat stone 
 coping gave better foothold and safer communication with 
 the bulk of the building. 
 
 That was where he, the Sandy Sharrow of so long ago, 
 had crept, night after night, to play his pranks. It made 
 his head swim now to look at it. 
 
 He had come hither because from this tower one was 
 supposed to have a better view of the roofs than from 
 any other point. He had often heard his father speak 
 of the view. He himself had never come back since that 
 spring day in 1822. Cyrilla Dallaford had jilted him, and 
 he had hated her until she died, twenty-five years later, but 
 for the sake of the memory of that day when she had let him 
 hold her little cool fingers in his, there, just where he 
 stood, he had never returned to the Tower Room. 
 
 Suddenly the old man shivered and glanced nervously 
 round him. There was a ghost near him, and he knew it. 
 
 He had not been a passive enemy ; he was resentful and 
 unforgetting ; more than once he had been able to do Mrs. 
 Wymondham a bad turn, and he had done it. 
 
 Once, even, in a time of great trouble she had turned to 
 him for help, and he had refused it brutally, almost with 
 insult. 
 
 And now she was dead, and he a very old man, and yet 
 here he stood, a boy just over twenty, holding ten cool 
 little eighteen-year-old fingers in his hands. 
 
 With an ugly oath Lord Sharrow left the window where 
 he was standing, and with much difficulty opened the next 
 one, which had practically the same view. 
 
 The beautiful, diversified, romantic roofs were, so far as 
 he could see, empty of life. Not even cats really cared for 
 the roofs of Sharrow. 
 
 "Young fool, where can he be? If I were not so con- 
 foundedly stiff, he'd have a caning for this!" 
 
 And then he saw Sandy. A small dark blue blob lying on
 
 26 SHARROW 
 
 the extreme edge of an isolated scrap of reddish-gold Eliza- 
 bethan roof. 
 
 It was too large for a cat, and it was not made of tiles, 
 or slate, so it followed that it must be Sandy. But what 
 in God's name was he doing? 
 
 The old man 's eyes were not very good, but he knew that 
 if the boy slipped so much as six inches he would be over 
 the edge and down into the courtyard, hundreds of feet 
 below. 
 
 The blue blob lay quite motionless; what if It was 
 
 many years since old Sharrow had had such a fright. He 
 felt vaguely sick, and his knees shook. Even he had never 
 dared to do that, and he had dared most things. 
 
 He sat down. He would not have dared to call, even if his 
 old voice could have carried so far. He must just wait. 
 
 And there in the little eight-sided room so full of ghosts, 
 he waited for a full half-hour, his hands like ice, a strange 
 and horrid sensation at the pit of his stomach. 
 
 Finally the blue blob moved. To be exact, it squirmed, 
 wriggled and then resolved itself, even to old eyes, into a 
 boy on very cautious all-fours. 
 
 Lord Sharrow, who had not been inside a church for 
 forty years, and who hated a parson as some very delicate 
 females say they hate cats, said, "Thank God!" When the 
 all-fours boy became a biped, and turned his footsteps to- 
 ward the tower, his great-uncle wiped his brow and rose. 
 
 Sandy sauntered around a safe-looking flat place, ex- 
 amined a chimney with his hands as well as his eyes, and 
 then, sitting down, slid to a lower level much nearer the 
 tower. 
 
 The old man leaned out. "Sandy," he said. He clean 
 forgot that this Sandy was Alexander. The boy looked 
 up. 
 
 "Yes, sir! I I'm just having a look at the roofs." 
 
 "So I see. What do you think of 'em?"
 
 SHARROW 27 
 
 He could see the smile that was his real answer, but 
 Sandy said the 1874 word for ripping. 
 
 "How did you get out?" 
 
 "From my window. I hope you don't mind, sir?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, no, not in the least. It has given me the most vivid 
 satisfaction to see you risking your life in this this damna- 
 ble way, ' ' exploded the old man. Then he swore hard for 
 quite a minute. When he finished, Sandy was laughing. 
 
 ' ' I am sorry, sir, but my word ! what perfectly glorious 
 language ! ' ' 
 
 It was hardly in Lord Sharrow to be ashamed of himself, 
 but he was certainly ashamed of having been heard. "Come 
 up here, I want to talk to you. You can get down over the 
 Peacock-room and up over " 
 
 But Sandy was already walking along the coping that 
 led to that awful ledge. Lord Sharrow shut his eyes. 
 
 "It's old age that makes a fool of me," he muttered 
 under his breath. And when Sandy was safely across and 
 climbing easily up the lightning rod to the window, he told 
 himself fiercely that every man ought to be put painlessly 
 to death at sixty, and every woman at forty-five.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WHEN Sandy had scrambled up over the window-sill and 
 stood rubbing the loose dust off his extremely dirty hands, 
 Lord Sharrow pointed to a chair. 
 
 "Sit down," he said. 
 
 Sandy obeyed in silence. 
 
 It was getting on toward four o'clock, and he, having 
 been roof-climbing since two, was tired. 
 
 "Well?" asked the old man. 
 
 The boy looked his inquiry, in turn. 
 
 ""You like my roofs, hey?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You like my house, I dare say?" 
 
 ' ' I think it is ' ' he stopped short. For some reason he 
 was suddenly shy as a young man might be in mentioning 
 an undeclared love. 
 
 "Well, go on. What do you think it is?" 
 
 "The most beautiful house in the whole world." 
 
 This was enough praise even for a Sharrow of Sharrow, 
 but it was not their way to acknowledge the receipt of that 
 enchanting conversational commodity. 
 
 ' ' And how many houses have you seen ? ' ' The old man 's 
 tone was sardonic, but Sandy did not wince. Things close 
 to him were so close as to be protected against sneers, and 
 later in life this fact deluded many people into thinking him 
 slow-witted. 
 
 "I've only seen three inside, but that doesn't matter. 
 It is the most beautiful house in the world." 
 
 28
 
 SHARROW 23 
 
 "Sandy never says that. ; ' 
 
 "I don't care." Our Sandy's ugly little face was 
 dogged. It was perfectly true that he did not care what 
 the other Sandy or anyone else thought about Sharrow. 
 
 The paling sunlight fell full on him as he spoke, and 
 the old man drew his rough brows sharply together. Syd- 
 ney had been right, this descendant of an illegal marriage 
 was more a Sharrow than any of them. 
 
 ' ' Don 't you wish you were Sandy ? " he asked, abruptly. 
 
 "I am." 
 
 "You are Alexander." Old Sharrow was teasing now, 
 with the malice characteristic of the family. 
 
 "I am Sandy. It doesn't matter," the boy declared with 
 finality, "how many other Sandys there are, I am Sandy, 
 too." 
 
 There was a pause, and the queer grin, with the forward 
 thrust of the jaw, died away from the old man's face. 
 
 Presently he said, "You are right. I had no right to 
 change your name. "We will, henceforth, call you Sandy. ' ' 
 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 Of course, they both were thinking that two Sandys in 
 one house would cause much confusion, but neither of them 
 considered that worth mentioning. There was always a 
 certain directness about them. They saw their wish clearly, 
 and did not see intervening obstacles. 
 
 ' ' Well, don 't you wish you were the other Sandy ? ' ' 
 
 Our boy laughed. His white front teeth overlapped a lit- 
 tle from left to right. His great-uncle's false ones did 
 the same. "No. I'd like to be your heir, but " 
 
 ' ' But you 'd rather be yourself than Sandy. I see. I also 
 think, ' ' he added slowly, ' ' that you are right. How much 
 do you know about the family history ? ' ' 
 
 Sandy leaned his red head against the leather-backed 
 chair he sat in. 
 
 "A lot. I know all about the first man King John's
 
 30 SHARROW 
 
 one, who was with the king at Runnymede. And I know 
 about the one who refused to go to the war in France and 
 said when the king said, 'By God! Sir Knight, you shall 
 go.' 'By God! Sir King, I will not.' And he didn't go 
 either. None of 'em of us ever did fight France, sir, did 
 they?" 
 
 "No and rightly. The kings had no right to ask it of 
 men who are French noblemen before they became Eng- 
 lish." 
 
 Sandy nodded. 
 
 ' ' And I read about the one, Simon, who went to Florence 
 and made rhymes at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 
 and married a Tornabuoni. How beautiful she must have 
 been if the picture in the book is like her ! ' ' 
 
 "Go on. You seem to have been studying the family 
 chronicle." 
 
 "I have. Paul showed me one or two books, and I 
 found the rest myself. Well, there was the one who went 
 to Rouen to see Joan of Arc. He was a painter, wasn't 
 he?" 
 
 "Yes, a very bad painter. He painted as they set fire 
 to the girl." 
 
 It greatly impressed Sandy to hear his great-uncle refer 
 to Joan of Arc as "the girl." It sounded, somehow, so 
 splendidly familiar with the great ones of the earth. 
 
 For half an hour he talked on, while the light faded, and 
 the old man listened. The boy was too young to see the 
 ugly, ruthless side of the lives of his ancestors ; too young 
 to realize that their constant loyalty to the crown, regard- 
 less of right or wrong, or pity for the oppressed, was a 
 selfish quality. To him their great characteristic, bravery 
 in battle, covered everything else. And brave they were. 
 Never from the day the wild young Frenchman had decided 
 to stay on in the country whither he had been brought a 
 prisoner of war, had there been a war in which England
 
 SHARROW 31 
 
 was involved (always excepting those with France, in 
 which, to a man, they stubbornly refrained from taking a 
 hand), without one or more Sharrows playing in it a 
 gallant, reckless, bloodthirsty part. 
 
 The old Barony dated from a battle-field. And yet, as 
 a kind of undercurrent in their natures ran the love of 
 the beautiful that sent Sir Simon in 1480 to see Flor- 
 ence to Lorenzo's Court, and led the "wicked" Mary 
 Sharrow to kill herself for love of one Edmund Spenser, 
 who called her "a short, dark mayde" and left her letters 
 unanswered. 
 
 But of all the Sharrows, Richard, a younger son, who 
 went to the Spanish Main with that great gentleman Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, and later lost his head at the Tower (less 
 loyal than the rest, it seems, and possibly more lovable) 
 was the boy 's favorite. Of him he talked so long that quite 
 suddenly night was on them, and the old man was fain to 
 lean on his arm as they went down the dark stairs. 
 
 "I will show you some day," Lord Sharrow said, as he 
 dismissed the story-teller, "some letters of Charles I to 
 the Sharrow of that day." 
 
 "Oh, sir, please show them to me now I mean to-mor- 
 row. ' ' 
 
 In the faint firelight coming through an open door, 
 Sandy's face was almost luminous with earnestness. 
 
 "No. They are you are too young. But they were 
 found in George Ill's time by a housemaid rummaging 
 in the attic. They were all crushed, as if someone had 
 crumpled them up to throw them away and then forgot. ' ' 
 The old man's voice died down. His pride in his family 
 was a fierce burning, never abating fire, but he was old, 
 and time had banked it with ashes. Now Sandy poked it, 
 and for the moment it flared up as strongly as Sandy's 
 own. 
 
 "There is a ring of Richard Sharrow 's," he went on,
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OUR Sandy's education had, up to the time of his visit 
 to his great-uncle, been conducted along what is best ex- 
 pressible by that now fashionable phrase, the lines of least 
 resistance. 
 
 He had had several daily governesses, all of whom had 
 possessed noses of the easily leadable kind. Blind to the 
 charms of the multiplication-table, deaf to the voice of 
 Lindley Murray, stonily indifferent to spelling, he was yet 
 so good-tempered (except when what is called in a temper) , 
 so ugly, so red-headed, so solemn and so merry, all in the 
 delightful mix-up that composes childhood, that Miss Old- 
 boy, Miss Fitzhardinge, and Miss Lute, all almost loved 
 him. 
 
 Miss Lute, a small, faded lady who carried biscuits in 
 a black satin bag, and ate them between meals, Sandy 
 loved in his turn. He called her, not without reason, 
 Crummy. She was crummy. He also partook of her bis- 
 cuits and found them delicious. 
 
 But when she tried to beguile him into the horrors of 
 seven times six and so on, she failed. 
 
 Now the other Sandy and Keith, had been much better 
 brought up. (Paul's father being a parson, it follows, 
 as day follows night, that he should be possessed of a dis- 
 gusting amount of knowledge.) 
 
 One night, some thirteen years before our Sandy's visit to 
 the house of his fathers, Lord Sharrow, who for many years 
 had been a widower, was sitting over his fire more than 
 
 34
 
 SHARROW 35 
 
 half drunk, when the door opened and his son, who had 
 married against his wishes and had not been home since, 
 came in. 
 
 Holding one of his hands, walked a small, red-haired boy 
 of three ; in his arm was a baby of about a month old. 
 
 ' ' Here they are, Father, ' ' Sandy Sharrow said. ' ' She is 
 dead." 
 
 He was a wild, half-mad man, the kind of son who breaks 
 the hearts of conventional parents, but his father was not 
 conventional, and had himself been far wilder. Besides, 
 it was now not Sandy who mattered. It was the little boy 
 at his side. 
 
 The old man, half sobered by the surprise, collected his 
 powers with a violent effort, and spoke. 
 
 "Is that," he asked, pointing to the sleeping baby, "a 
 girl?" 
 
 His son laughed. "Should I have brought you a girl?" 
 he retorted. 
 
 He had gone the next day, and his father never saw 
 him again. He had loved his wife, who had not been a 
 lady, with all the violence of his rough nature, which 
 seemed to be a throw-back to some half-civilized ancestor. 
 
 He would have been an excellent pirate ; as a nineteenth- 
 century gentleman he was a failure. 
 
 And his wife's death severed the last link that bound 
 him to decent living. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the dogs liked him. 
 
 Meantime, old Sharrow, caring very little about his son, 
 since his son had proved to be living a life that must cut 
 itself short, set himself to the task of bringing up the 
 boys. 
 
 He engaged the most expensive nurses for them, and, 
 when the time came, a governess so expensive that it seemed 
 she must prove wonderful. 
 
 She did, but she was wonderful in the wrong way.
 
 36 SHARROW 
 
 One day when she had been at Sharrow about a year, her 
 employer sent for her. 
 
 "Miss Ewing," he said, looking up at her (she was a 
 handsome, dark creature and wore welded around her neck 
 a silver snake of Eastern make) ' ' I have asked you to come 
 to me this morning to tell you that from the beginning of 
 next month you may consider yourself disengaged. ' ' 
 
 "Disengaged you mean to say " 
 
 "Precisely." He bowed his wicked old silver head. 
 
 "I may at least ask the reason why?" she asked with 
 hauteur. 
 
 "It is an indiscreet question." 
 
 "Nevertheless, I ask it." 
 
 "It is, then, because ever since you have been here, you 
 have been trying to marry me." 
 
 At this point she lost her head, and accused him of in- 
 sulting her. 
 
 "No," he answered, rising and opening the door with 
 the most infuriating courtesy, "you have insulted me by 
 believing me to be in my dotage. Good morning." 
 
 Miss Ewing was succeeded by Mrs. Reed. 
 
 Mrs. Reed possessed three excellent qualities; age, ugli- 
 ness, and a full consciousness of both. 
 
 But she was quite uneducated in the ways of educating 
 others, and her tenure was short. 
 
 Miss Gort (excellent in grammar but what Sandy called 
 short in everything else) stayed six months; Fraulein Was- 
 sermesser four (her letters to Germany would be good read- 
 ing for those who regard that country as Scythia and Eng- 
 land the only abode of light), and Mademoiselle Rouget, al- 
 ways called, through an unexpected bit of knowledge on 
 Sandy's part, Miss Mullet, nearly a year. 
 
 Then came Mr. Finucane, and he stayed until Keith 
 joined his brother at a prep school for Eton. 
 
 Mr. Finucane was a remarkably nice youth, and he made
 
 SHARROW 37 
 
 real boys of his charges, teaching them the joys of rats 
 and ferrets, the superiority of horses to mere ponies, the 
 very, very little difference wind and rain matter to fellows 
 who are fellows, and other things of the kind. 
 
 And Sandy now, at sixteen, and Keith at fourteen, were 
 very good sorts of fellows, indeed. 
 
 Sandy was not clever and Keith, who might have been a 
 musician in the right hands, hid his love of melody as if 
 it had been a dire disease, until it died. 
 
 They bade fair, at that time, to be exactly what they 
 eventually became, wholesome, honest Englishmen, clean 
 mentally and physically, unimaginative, brave, truth-telling 
 and dull. 
 
 There are many such, and they are by no means the 
 worst. 
 
 An epidemic of measles at Eton had sent them home that 
 November, and the Christmas holidays coming just as the 
 school bill of health became clean, they were at Sharrow 
 with Paul and our Sandy for over six weeks. 
 
 It was a mild, open winter, so the brothers had a glorious 
 time, hunting most days, walking and riding other days, 
 eating huge meals and digesting them magnificently, avoid- 
 ing their grandfather as much as they could, and being in 
 a casual, off-hand way, very kind to Paul and the new chap, 
 neither of whom counted in the least in their scheme of 
 life. 
 
 And on their side, Paul and the new chap paid little 
 heed to them. 
 
 They were on one side because the intimacy and the self- 
 centredness of the brothers forced them to that position, 
 but there was no real bond between them. Old Lord Shar- 
 row 's inviting them at all was only a proof of the strong 
 family feeling that has kept the Sharrows so intensely Shar- 
 row-like through all the centuries. His son had been al- 
 lowed to go his way without a word, once he had provided
 
 38 SHAEROW 
 
 an heir, but the son had been an exceptionally hopeless 
 case. This, of course, was his mother's fault. 
 
 The strength of the family type was always a wonder to 
 strangers, but it was perfectly clear to understand once 
 one was told. 
 
 The great raw-boned, red-headed Sharrow men were not 
 primarily women's men. They were not indifferent to the 
 charms of sex no long-enduring family can be but 
 women, as wives, at least, were quite secondary matters to 
 them. 
 
 They married for the most part with the care that most 
 men use only in their kennels and stables. They chose, not 
 companions for themselves, but mothers for their future 
 sons ; they married healthy, well-built, clean-blooded women, 
 and they never married relations. 
 
 The few among them who ignored this family law had 
 been punished in a way that added greatly to the belief 
 of the rest in the strength of it. 
 
 In Charles II 's reign Lord Sharrow married a delicate, 
 pretty, black-eyed child, maid-of-honor to Braganza's 
 Katherine. Their only son, whether by the direct judgment 
 of God, or by chance, was a hunchback, and to the present 
 day his physical defect was regarded by his descendants as 
 a disgrace. 
 
 He redeemed his father's fault, poor man, by taking to 
 wife the ugly, healthy, big-boned daughter of a Scotch peer, 
 and by producing by her, three physically faultless sons. 
 
 It was George Selwyn who said one day to the Regent 
 that it was for the Sharrows a matter of regret that men 
 are obliged to wear clothes. If they were not, he added, 
 they would be the handsomest men in the Kingdom. 
 
 Sandy wandering, as he often wandered, through the pic- 
 ture gallery, made for himself the great discovery. And 
 his great-uncle discovered him making it, which, of course, 
 was delightful for the old man.
 
 SHARROW 39 
 
 "Well?" the old man asked, blinking down at the boy 
 with very red eyes. 
 
 "I was just wondering," Sandy replied with the sim- 
 plicity that at that time distinguished him, "why they all 
 married such awful ugly women. ' ' 
 
 ' ' That is a very sensible question, and I will tell you the 
 answer to it. When a man is one of a very old, very il- 
 lustrious family, my boy, he is not just a man ; he is a link 
 in a chain. Do you see that?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 ' ' Well, a man who is a nobody is more or less at liberty 
 to do with his life what he likes. He may marry, for all 
 the harm he will do the world, a cook-maid. ' ' 
 
 Sandy watched him unblinkingly. 
 
 "And his children, being presumably the cook-maid's, 
 as well, may turn out what they like. It doesn't matter, 
 and they don't matter. You follow me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "But a man belonging to one of our great families, the 
 Howards, the Pembrokes, the Hertfords, or us we are 
 obliged by our position to think not only of the pretty face 
 that charms us for the moment, but of the future. ' ' 
 
 Sandy watched the old man with the deepest attention. 
 Psychologically, although he had never heard the word, 
 the old man interested him. 
 
 He had seen his great-uncle a little drunk, drunk, and 
 very drunk, and the well-informed Paul had told him facts 
 concerning certain sons and daughters of the old man whose 
 names, if they had any, were certainly not Sharrow, so that 
 the boy had a fairly good idea of the old man's moral 
 status. 
 
 Yet here was Sharrow, still shaky and red-eyed from the 
 effects of last night's port, the same old man he had heard 
 violently cursing his valet two hours before, the same old 
 man at whom, a few days before, an unwashed scoundrel
 
 40 SHARROW 
 
 had thrown bricks, calling him Father before the whole 
 village, as he drove out in his barouche here was the Baron 
 Sharrow of Sharrow, obviously a dissipated, violent, evil- 
 living old man, inculcating into him, Sandy, a principle 
 of the utmost self-denial in the matter the most vital, 
 even the child knew, of all matters in the world Love. 
 
 "Do you see what I mean?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Lord Sharrow, unsuspecting the scrutiny to which the 
 small green eyes were subjecting him, went on, warming 
 to his subject, in which he was absolutely sincere. 
 
 "Your great-uncle, that one there, in the blue coat do 
 you see his back?" 
 
 Sandy nodded. The painter had chosen for his subject a 
 pose that cruelly exposed the crookedness of his shoulders. 
 Or had the man with the hump, in his bitterness of soul, so 
 placed himself, victim of his father's disregard of the 
 family law? 
 
 ' ' His father married for love. Well what do you want 
 to say!" 
 
 "Only that all people who marry for love don't have 
 crooked children. Do they?" 
 
 ' ' No. Of course they don 't. And some attractive women 
 are healthy. Good God, yes! But well, I have answered 
 your question. Have you any others?" 
 
 ' ' No, sir, thank you. Except I wish you 'd tell me about 
 my great-grandfather. ' ' 
 
 "My Uncle Sandy? I will. He was married abroad, in 
 Bavaria. You would not understand the technicalities I 
 don't myself. But a new law had been passed, and he, not 
 knowing of it, did not conform to it. If he had been 
 married three weeks sooner, your father would be Lord 
 Sharrow to-day. That is all." 
 
 "And my grandfather went to law?" 
 
 4 ' He did. He sued me. You see, your great-grandfather
 
 SHARROW 41 
 
 married twice. Your grandfather was the first wife's son, 
 my father the second wife 's. Is it clear ? ' ' 
 
 Sandy nodded slowly. ' ' Yes, thanks. How did they find 
 out? I mean about the dates?" 
 
 Lord Sharrow scowled suddenly, and to the boy looked 
 more of an Old Horror than any of those on the walls. 
 
 "Are you going to claim the title?" he jeered, his jaw, 
 in which the yellow lower teeth looked like old fangs, 
 stuck out hideously. ' ' I advise you not to. ' ' Then he went 
 away, walking even now, in his gouty old age, with the 
 brave swing that marked the carriage of all the men of 
 the family. 
 
 Sandy flushed. He was angry. 
 
 He had meant nothing of the kind, and the old man 
 should have known it. 
 
 Sandy's jaw, though unfurnished with fangs, could stick 
 out as well as his great-uncle 's. 
 
 And it stuck out now.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ON the day before that appointed for our Sandy's re- 
 turn home, he was sent for by his great-uncle, and found the 
 old gentleman where he had never before seen him in his 
 study, at the large, business-like-looking writing table 
 whence he had dismissed the aspiring Miss Ewing. 
 
 Sandy did not know it, but Lord Sharrow for all his 
 handicaps of drinking, age, and gout, was a very shrewd 
 landlord and still directed the management of the vast 
 estate. 
 
 Mr. Dingle, the steward, was, his lordship was wont to 
 say, not one of the new-fangled sort who consider them- 
 selves gentlemen, and theorize about agriculture, but an 
 old-fashioned, upper-servant kind of man, who asked for 
 orders, obeyed those given to him, and saw that those 
 given to others were carried out. 
 
 Mr. Dingle, a pot-bellied man with an anxious eye in a 
 kindly, rubicund face, was in as great fear of his employer, 
 as if that old gentleman had been the other Old Gentleman 
 to whom one pays the compliment of capital letters. Be- 
 yond his qualities of fear and obedience, he possessed that 
 of silence. His worldly goods included besides a charming 
 Georgian house in the village, next to the bank, an as 
 charming daughter. 
 
 His life was not altogether an easy one, but he never 
 complained. Sometimes he would tell his troubles to his 
 foster-sister, Mrs. Babbage, the innkeeper's wife, and 
 Ellen Babbage, a wise woman in that she verj rarely spoke, 
 sympathized. 
 
 42
 
 SHARROW 43 
 
 The inn parlor was a pleasant room looking out over a 
 lawn as delicate and smooth as any his lordship could 
 boast ; the chintz was of that delightful kind that looks as if 
 it had grown in the room and yet never intended to be either 
 dingy or shabby. There was a corner cupboard full of 
 china which every traveller coming that way tried to buy 
 for a song (intending to sell it for a small fortune), only 
 to find that in the serene-faced Ellen he had met a woman 
 very wise in Chelsea Spode and Lowestoft, and appallingly 
 well versed in the current price of these enchanting prod- 
 ucts. 
 
 ' ' Oh, no, sir, ' ' she would say, gently, holding the cup or 
 teapot in question in her snowy apron. "I think you must 
 be mistaken. This is real old Lowestoft there 's the mark. 
 A month or so ago one sold at Carrington's for six 
 guineas." 
 
 And the gentleman, having jovially offered ten shillings 
 for the little thing to which he had "just taken one of his 
 fancies, ' ' usually felt the immediate need of solitude in the 
 garden, and a whisky-and-soda. 
 
 On that particular day Sandy, when Dingle had gone, 
 was told several things by his great-uncle. He was told 
 that he was to be educated, at which he showed no en- 
 thusiasm whatever. He had hitherto never connected 
 books with education that is to say, what he called real 
 books, in contradistinction to those unreal ones out of which 
 he had been expected to gather wisdom under Miss Oldboy 
 and Miss Lute. 
 
 "Are you not glad?" the old man asked sharply. 
 
 He did not believe in gratitude, but he expected expres- 
 sions of it. 
 
 "Y-yes. Am I to go to school?" 
 
 "You are. You are going to a preparatory school first, 
 and then to Marlborough. " 
 
 "Oh. Th-thankyou, sir."
 
 44 SHARROW 
 
 "Well, well, out with it what's the matter? I suppose 
 you expected Eton?" 
 
 He flushed a deep red, and his tusks showed. 
 
 Sandy flushed, too, and the old man and the boy looked 
 very much alike for a moment as they glared at each 
 other across the paper-strewn table. 
 
 At last Sandy spoke. 
 
 ' ' I didn 't expect anything, ' ' he said slowly, a nasty look 
 about his mouth, ' ' and I didn 't ask for anything. What 's 
 more, I don't know that I can accept anything from 
 you." 
 
 It is said that gentlemen, even wicked ones, no longer 
 swear. But this was in '74, and Lord Sharrow was a sur- 
 vival even then. What he said startled Sandy, so that 
 the boy stood as he did, stock still, only with a tremendous 
 effort. 
 
 Lord Sharrow 's last words were quotable. 
 
 * ' Oh, you don 't, don 't you ? Kindly tell me why ? ' ' 
 
 "Because you you seem to take for granted that I 
 want things. This is the second time you have done it. 
 And I don't like it." 
 
 There was a long pause, broken first by the whirring 
 and striking of the bronze clock on the mantelpiece. It was 
 four o'clock. Both of the people in the room always re- 
 membered that trifling fact. 
 
 When the echo of the final stroke had died into the soft 
 silence that seems to wrap rich men's houses, Lord Shar- 
 row spoke. 
 
 His face was still patched with color, but his jaw re- 
 treated into the proper perspective, and the gleam had gone 
 from his eyes. 
 
 "You are quite right," he said, "and I was wrong. I 
 beg your pardon." 
 
 Sandy, with a singularly unboyish air of dignity, bowed 
 without speaking, and the old man went on.
 
 SHARROW 45 
 
 "I think you will like Marlborough. It is a fine school. 
 And if you conduct yourself there in such a way as to 
 make you a credit to the name, I will send you to Cam- 
 bridge." 
 
 Sandy was not a forgiving person, and he was still very 
 angry. Indeed, it took him several years to forgive his 
 great-uncle's remark. 
 
 But he was a gentleman. He expressed his thanks in cor- 
 rect though rather halting terms, and the interview was 
 at an end. 
 
 When he had left the room, Lord Sharrow sat for some 
 time without moving, a brooding bend on his brows. He 
 liked Sandy better far than he liked his heir. He would 
 have loved to see our boy in his cousin's place. And yet, 
 though he was a very unscrupulous old man indeed, and as 
 strong-willed as only selfish people allow themselves to be, 
 it remains a fact that if he could in some way have broken 
 a law without fear of detection, and made our Sandy his 
 heir, he would not have done it. 
 
 And this not because of any inherent respect for the 
 law, either of God or of man, but because the one thing on 
 the face of the earth that he did respect and hold dear was 
 his family. And the other Sandy was the one intended by 
 the family to continue it, to create future Sharrows for 
 the old house. 
 
 Meantime Sandy was having another quarrel, this time 
 with Paul. He had gone straight to the Small Hall where 
 their first battle had taken place, intending to prowl up 
 and down until his temper had, what he called, sunk. It 
 was to him, in its rising, so like a tangible thing creeping 
 up his body till it reached his throat to choke his words, 
 then on to his eyes to make whatever he looked at appear 
 distorted, that its subsequent dying down seemed literally 
 a sinking. 
 
 But the little hall was not empty.
 
 46 SHARROW 
 
 Paul sat reading under a big lamp that threw a circle of 
 orange-colored light over him and the edge of the table. 
 
 Paul looked up. "Well?" he asked. 
 
 Paul was a boy of small vices. He was peevish and 
 given to white lies (the other boys said he had not the 
 courage necessary for big ones) and, above all, he was 
 curious. 
 
 "Well what?" Sandy's voice conveyed a warning, but 
 Paul did not notice it. His brain was far from his eyes 
 and his ears. 
 
 "What did he want you for?" The boys had been to- 
 gether when the message came. 
 
 ' ' He wanted me, ' ' Sandy growled, ' ' to tell me that Queen 
 Anne was dead, and Queen Victoria come to the throne." 
 
 "But, Sandy Queen Victoria came to the throne in 
 1837!" 
 
 Sandy crossed the room with the perfectly laudable pur- 
 pose of seeking solitude somewhere upstairs. As he reached 
 the door, Paul went on, lisping more than usual. ' ' I thay, 
 Thandy, do tell me " 
 
 Sandy, crimson with unjustifiable rage of the last-straw 
 order, turned and seemed for several minutes to be listening 
 to someone uttering the most horrible and blood-curdling 
 oaths. It was himself. 
 
 Paul put down his book and rose. 
 
 ' ' Thandy Tharrow, ' ' he gasped, blinking like a weasel as 
 he stared across the strong lamplight, "you ought to be 
 athamed of yourthelf. I ought to go and tell my great- 
 uncle at onth " 
 
 He did not say he meant to tell ; he did not mean to tell. 
 It was the only retort discourteous he could think of, but 
 it was fatal. 
 
 With a kind of roaring noise in his throat, Sandy was on 
 him, both hands clenched. 
 
 For several seconds there was, as on that other occasion,
 
 SHARROW 47 
 
 no sound in the room but that of the battering of fists. 
 Then there was a loud noise and a cracking sound, as Paul 
 spun across the floor, knocking a chair over, and then 
 going bang on his skull in a corner. 
 
 He lay quite still. 
 
 Sandy, his anger now quite gone, not from remorse 
 but from the relief of the violent exercise, stood looking 
 at him. 
 
 "Get up, Paul," he growled. "Someone will be com- 
 ing." Paul did not move. 
 
 Sandy, taking the great lamp, carried it with some diffi- 
 culty to the corner where his vanquished adversary lay. 
 He set the lamp down on the window-sill nearest at hand, 
 and kneeling looked closely at Paul. 
 
 His breathing was heavy, but no more irregular than 
 Sandy's own. Sandy went upstairs. 
 
 Paul came to dinner as usual, and no reference was 
 made to the fight, until the two boys were on their way 
 upstairs to bed. 
 
 Then, on the landing, Paul paused. 
 
 "I say, Sandy," he said, "where did you hear those 
 things you said ? ' ' 
 
 "What things?" 
 
 "When you when you swore so. Like a pirate in a 
 book it was, only better. Did you make it up?" 
 
 Sandy laughed. He was still angry, of course, with his 
 great-uncle, but he would not on that account give the 
 old man away. 
 
 "Cut along to bed, youngster," he answered good- 
 temperedly. 
 
 He felt suddenly extremely grown up.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AN accident on the line between White Shirley and Lon- 
 don prevented the early afternoon departure of Sandy and 
 Paul, who was to be met at Euston by his father, and it 
 was nine o'clock before the boys left the house for the sta- 
 tion. 
 
 Sandy had a solitary day, but not a lonely one. 
 
 To understand him at this time it must be remembered 
 that he had never before been away from London, and 
 what his life there, through the genial neglect of his par- 
 ents, had been. 
 
 He knew less of his father than he had learned of his 
 great-uncle in the six weeks he had been at Sharrow, for 
 his father had never talked to him, or tried in any way to 
 see into the mind of the human being for whose life he 
 was responsible. To him, Sandy was "the child," as for 
 a very long time he had been "the baby," and Sydney 
 Sharrow, though fond of him in a way, had, in ignoring 
 his possession of such a thing, unconsciously kept from 
 his son any knowledge of his own personality. They were 
 to each other simply the father and the child; and they 
 were utter strangers. 
 
 Sandy's mother was different. She had all the keen 
 quickness of insight of French women, and she knew that 
 her boy was a person and an intelligence, but she was so 
 impregnably selfish that she did not care in the least what 
 he or anyone else might be thinking about; so, as one's 
 thoughts in childhood form the alembic in which is dis- 
 
 48
 
 SHARROW 49 
 
 tilled the ultimate essence of one's character, she, too, was 
 an utter stranger to the little boy whose lack of beauty 
 offended her. 
 
 So Sandy had built for himself a small house of ideas 
 and dreams, incorrect for the most part, and absurd, but 
 still his mental home ; and therein he had dwelt, ignorant, 
 vaguely lonely, convinced without bitterness of his own lack 
 of consequence, years younger, in spite of the gravity and 
 courtesy of his manner, than most boys of his age. 
 
 Then he had come to Sharrow, one of the most beautiful 
 houses in England, full to the brim of historical interest, 
 and, most wonderful of all, he found that he was expected 
 by that strange old man, its present owner, to love the place 
 and to take pride in it, because he bore its name. 
 
 In the six weeks of his stay he had changed very much. 
 In the first place he had been furiously angry three times, 
 and he had never before known any emotion stronger than 
 childish temper that could be easily dealt with by Bean 
 and her ever-ready slipper. This new, governing anger 
 had surprised and a little frightened him, but he was at 
 the same time proud of it. 
 
 Then the passion of admiration that had sprung in his 
 heart for the old house at the very first moment of his 
 beholding it was a feeling so strong as to make him think 
 of it as a kind of power he had. 
 
 It was not, and never would be, his, yet because he was 
 a Sharrow there was in him this deep, reverent love for it 
 that made him perfectly happy just to stand on the wet 
 lawn in a cold wind and look at it. 
 
 He had never loved anything before, and he knew it. 
 Monsieur et Madame were his parents, and he loved them 
 in a way, because they were good to look at, and kind to 
 him, and, though this he did not understand, their quarrels, 
 sandwiched between long seasons of Victorian courtesy and 
 amused discourse, were picturesque and entertaining.
 
 50 SHARROW 
 
 Bean was just Bean. She had washed his ears, an un- 
 thankful task, ever since he could remember, and had a 
 way of dragging him nearer the wash-stand or the light, 
 as suited her, by the ear under immediate operation, in a 
 way that was painful, but that seemed to Sandy like a small 
 hitch in the scheme of things. 
 
 On the other hand, she knew all the fairy tales in the 
 world, and in certain moods told them to him with the 
 charm of the born story-teller. 
 
 He never analyzed her character or his own subjection 
 to her. She was just Bean. 
 
 Cook he was really fond of, and it was not altogether cup- 
 board love, for Cook possessed real charm. Still she was 
 Cook. 
 
 Whereas Sharrow, the House Sharrow, not the old lord, 
 was a thing beautiful, interesting, engrossing, and, some- 
 how, good. Surely it was good, the feeling it gave one as 
 one learned to know it. 
 
 Old Sharrow was not a man to be loved by a strange 
 little boy. No one loved him, as a matter of fact, and 
 Sandy, in spite of his great-grandfather's little blunder in 
 the matter of a date, had all the family shrewdness. He saw 
 quite plainly that the old man was vicious, uncontrolled, 
 violent and selfish. He did not love his great-uncle, but 
 somehow the talk in the Tower Room had given him a cer- 
 tain respect for his relative. He had, of course, been af- 
 fected by his glimpse at the one great quality of Lord 
 Sharrow 's nature: his respect for and love of his family; 
 but Sandy did not explain this to himself. 
 
 As the train sped through the wet night, and Paul slept 
 on the opposite seat, his mouth open with the vacant ex- 
 pression of those afflicted with adenoids, Sandy uncon- 
 sciously summed up the old man in one word. "Of course 
 
 he's an old beast," he thought, "and he drinks, but " 
 
 That "but" was the defense old Alexander Sharrow 's
 
 SHARROW 51 
 
 guardian angel was cherishing for him against the Day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 Sandy had said good-by to the house. For hours that 
 day he had wandered about its narrow, intricate corridors, 
 losing himself several times, going up and down the stair- 
 cases with which the old place was honeycombed. He had 
 gone into bedrooms and stared solemnly at the old carved 
 bedsteads, touching with gentle, curious fingers the stiff, 
 moth-eaten brocades of the curtains. 
 
 He had crept up the chimney where a priest had lived 
 hidden for a week in Bloody Mary's time; the little box- 
 like room was, although very stuffy, full of what an artist 
 would have told him was atmosphere, and a yellow crucifix 
 still hung on the wall; he had beguiled Mrs. Puddifant 
 into showing him the still room, where bunches of herbs 
 hung drying, and where pot-pourri lavender, and violet 
 balls, quaint essences with delightful old-world names, and 
 other wonders were still made. (The Babbage women had 
 been housekeepers at Sharrow in almost unbroken descent, 
 from mother to daughter, since James I's time, and Mrs. 
 Puddifant w r as a Babbage.) 
 
 "This," she told him with a pride he vaguely felt to 
 be every bit as respectable as his own feeling for the old 
 house she ruled, "is the Babbage nose." 
 
 He had spent hours looking at the pictures in the gallery, 
 dwelling with a somewhat gloomy satisfaction on the truth 
 to type that distinguished his forebears. They were still 
 Old Horrors, but there was distinction in being, in the nine- 
 teenth century, horrible in the same way that had afflicted 
 the Sharrows of the fourteenth. 
 
 He had even gazed with pity at the few portraits of the 
 ladies who had had the honor of being selected by the 
 Sharrow men to provide the world with successors to the 
 name. They were very plain, these healthy ladies of good 
 pedigree. The pretty Portuguese maid-of-honor whose son
 
 52 SHARROW 
 
 had been a cripple because she was pretty, was in eternal 
 disgrace, so her fair face did not adorn the walls 
 
 M. Forauvent, the chef, whom his employer always called 
 Volauvent, was rather a friend of Sandy's, and an hour 
 had been spent that afternoon in his fascinating vaulted 
 kingdom. 
 
 The pestle and mortar of solid brass with the coat of 
 arms raised on its side, in which had been crushed pounds 
 of rose leaves to make certain small wafers to delight the 
 palate of Charles II, was produced, and Sandy had studied 
 it in enchanted silence. 
 
 The great people who had come to Sharrow and left 
 memories of themselves within its walls were not all kings 
 and queens, in spite of the wise loyalty that had always 
 distinguished its possessors. The Sharrows had loved not 
 learning, perhaps, but the distinction conferred on it by its 
 owners, and hence they had known many famous students 
 and poets. 
 
 Erasmus, in his poor Oxford days, had been brought 
 home by Eric Sharrow one summer, and on one of the 
 diamond panes in the room where he had slept was still to 
 be seen a swallow in flight that he had scratched there, 
 initialling it with the date with a diamond ring belonging 
 to his host. 
 
 Sir Philip Sydney and the Sharrow poet (a very inferior 
 one, among the Elizabethans, but still the Family Poet) 
 quarrelled over a speech made by the latter, regarding 
 a lady of the Court, so Sydney had never seen the house. 
 This was, of course, regarded by all the Sharrows as more 
 his loss than theirs, but the fact remains, as facts will. 
 
 On the other hand, Lyly was a friend of our poet's, and 
 a frequent guest. 
 
 Then there was Voltaire, who had had a broken but long 
 correspondence with Maud Sharrow, the one who married 
 the Duke of Cressy and presented him with the indistin-
 
 SHARROW 53 
 
 guishable twins whose subsequent intrigues and impersona- 
 tion of each other caused the world so much amusement, 
 and trouble ; to go back, Spenser told the story of his cruel 
 Rosalind to Hector Sharrow, one summer's evening under 
 the old elms at the foot of the south terrace; Sir Walter 
 Raleigh once slept in the room with what for some reason 
 was called the Chinese bed ; probably no house in England 
 is richer than Sharrow in memories such as these. 
 
 But our Sandy bore in him the seed of that love of Roy- 
 alty which had always been so profitable to the family. He, 
 too, would have gone to Holland and returned to Scotland 
 with his king. He, too, would have fought and lost an 
 eye at Dunbar. And he, too, would, above all, have refused 
 the earldom offered after Charles landed at Dover. 
 
 ' ' Sire, ' ' the story puts into his mouth, ' ' I thank you, but 
 I will remain Baron Sharrow." 
 
 And Charles, grateful no doubt in his way to the man 
 who had shared his exile and fought with him, smiled. 
 One can see it. The hasty offer, as the two stood a minute 
 apart, waiting for the completion of the plans for the 
 march to London, the older man's bent head but firm 
 words, the victorious king's charming smile. It is said 
 Charles laid his hand on his friend's arm. " 'Ce que Char- 
 reau possede,' "he quoted, and let the matter drop. 
 
 This filled our Sandy with pride, and for some reason, 
 his queer little eyes with tears, as he thought of it and 
 Paul snored. Yet Sandy was only an outsider, owing to 
 that little mistake in Bavaria so many years ago. 
 
 The final stopping of the train at Euston woke him 
 from a broken, happy sleep ; and his father stood at the 
 window, with a worried-looking man in a shovel hat. 
 
 "Well," Sydney Sharrow asked, when the parson and 
 his boy left them, "how did you like it?" 
 
 Sandy blinked in the strong light. 
 
 "Very much," he said, laconically.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN thinking, later, of his own life, Sandy Sharrow always 
 felt that Fate had divided it into four parts. And the 
 first part ended one night a little less than a year after his 
 visit to Sharrow. 
 
 It was a particularly cold December night, and he had 
 just reached Victoria Station on his way home for the 
 Christmas holidays. 
 
 With a handshake he parted on the platform with Ben 
 Frith, his friend, whose father had come to meet him ; and 
 then, his bag in his hand, left the station intending to take 
 a cab. 
 
 His father had written that he could not meet the train, 
 and Sandy was glad. 
 
 Ben Frith was a London lover of the deepest dye, and as 
 no London lover is ever content to love in silence, Ben 
 had been proselytizing, and Sandy was an ardent con- 
 vert. 
 
 Before going to school, London had to Sandy meant 
 Guelph Square with its dull "gardens" wherein snobbish 
 children gave in little the social comedy of their elders; 
 an occasional walk with Bean, who had a niece married to 
 a pawnbroker in a neighboring thoroughfare; a vague 
 memory of the river glinting in the summer sun ; and one 
 fleeting, fascinating, dream-pregnant hour at Madame 
 Tussaud 's. 
 
 But Ben's father was a curator at the Museum, a dreamy, 
 vague man, like Charles Lamb, only without his powers 
 
 54
 
 SHARROW 55 
 
 of expression, and Ben, being a silent child who never in- 
 terrupted, Frith had for years taken him for what they 
 called Evening Walks. 
 
 Thus Ben had seen much of this dear town, and Sandy 
 was fired to do likewise. 
 
 He had told Ben about Sharrow about the concrete 
 Sharrow, not about the Feeling. That could not be talked 
 about, even if it were explainable, but Ben rather scorned 
 a mere house. 
 
 ' ' Wait till you see London, ' ' was his invariable reply. 
 
 And now Sandy stood at the corner of Vauxhall Bridge 
 Road, alone. It was half-past seven. He knew from Ben 
 about the marvellous streams that every night but Sunday 
 flow theatrewards. He knew of those most romantic things, 
 the queues awaiting the opening of the pit and gallery 
 doors; he knew about the carriages, miles and miles of 
 carriages, creeping in orderly sequence to the great doors 
 of the theatres. . 
 
 Something of the magic feeling inspired by Sharrow 
 came over him, as he stood there under a street lamp. It 
 was going to be wonderful. Ben was right. 
 
 A tall gentleman in clergyman's dress, with a little girl 
 in either hand, crossed the street to where he stood, and 
 for a moment the lamplight fell on them all. The three 
 looked at Sandy, and he looked at them. They saw an ugly, 
 red-headed schoolboy in clothes that were not shabby, but 
 were yet too small for him; a schoolboy with a firm- 
 pressed mouth as though he were thinking, and eyes 
 that, until he turned to look at them, were full of 
 dreams. 
 
 He saw a handsome man with a large benevolent nose and 
 the flexible lips of an orator, and two girls, the elder about 
 his own age, the younger perhaps about ten. They wore 
 ugly blue-and- white checked frocks, white stockings, ' ' pork- 
 pie" hats trimmed with bunches of red ribbons, and
 
 56 S H A R R O W 
 
 strange little cloaks. Sandy remembered these details all 
 his life, as he remembered their faces. 
 
 The elder girl had a dark, vivid face, with heavy eye- 
 brows. 
 
 The little one was as pretty that night, in her hideous 
 brown hat and cloak, as she was ten years later in the 
 flower of her glorious youth. Sandy realized that he had 
 never before seen blue eyes that were dark. 
 
 A great van lumbered by, and, blocked for a moment, 
 barred the way of the three people. 
 
 Sandy was staring at the little girl with such an ex- 
 pression of admiration that the gentleman laughed. 
 
 "What is your name, my boy?' : he asked, good-humor- 
 edly, but in a way that made Sandy know something of 
 interest was coming. 
 
 "Sharrow, sir." 
 
 The gentleman nodded his head with satisfaction. "Of 
 course it is I knew it ! And what are you or were you 
 looking so hard at my little girl for?" 
 
 The little girl smiled and was lovelier than ever, but 
 Sandy, overtaken by a fit of shyness, bolted away without 
 an answer, his usual courtesy flown to the winds. 
 
 He walked down Victoria Street into Queen Anne's Gate, 
 and crossed the Park. He was ashamed of his rudeness, 
 but he could not help doing what he had done. 
 
 It was just as Frith had said. Frith had said, "You 
 can't go out to post a letter in London without having an 
 adventure. ' ' 
 
 And surely this was an adventure ! Even now he could 
 see the lovely faces of the two little girls, and the smile 
 of their father, who had recognized Sandy for what he 
 was. 
 
 But when he had reached the far side of the Park, and 
 turned down Pall Mall, he forgot the adventure. It was 
 the first time he had ever been alone in London, and it was
 
 SHARROW 57 
 
 night, and yes, old Frith had been right. Hundreds 
 of faces passed him, happy, miserable, sordid; well- 
 dressed people, beggars everyone knows what the boy 
 saw that night, and many people can imagine what he 
 felt. 
 
 In carriages, lovely ladies (all ladies are lovely in car- 
 riages, at night, when one is Sandy's age) walking, girls 
 just as pretty but different, somehow. A drunken woman 
 was hurried along by a majestic policeman. Her language 
 reminded Sandy of old Sharrow. 
 
 Before the Haymarket Theatre he paused. 
 
 "It really was marvelous last night," a beautiful lady 
 with voluminous pink skirts held well up around what she 
 believed to be her ankles, said to the man with her, as they 
 hurried from their carriage. "Mrs. Bancroft is the most 
 enchanting little thing " 
 
 Sandy decided to see Mrs. Bancroft. 
 
 At Piccadilly Circus he took the wrong turning, although 
 the London-wise Frith had given him careful instruc- 
 tions, and turned up Glasshouse Street. Discovering his 
 mistake, he retraced his steps and asked another big police- 
 man to set him right. 
 
 The next thing of interest was a sign, "A. Milliken 's, 
 Silversmiths and Pawnbrokers." This place of business 
 was still open, and A. Milliken obviously doing what is 
 known as a roaring trade. 
 
 For no particular reason, except that he would have 
 liked to shake hands with the whole world that night, 
 Sandy went in. 
 
 But A. Milliken, though glad to see him, would not let 
 him stay. 
 
 "You'd better cut along 'ome, Mr. Sandy," that gentle- 
 man said, coaxingly, "this is no place for a young gentle- 
 man, and Julia Bean would give it me 'ot if I let you stay
 
 58 SHARROW 
 
 Clara would be delighted, though, if you'd go down the 
 alley and into the 'ouse " 
 
 But Sandy would not stop. 
 
 Sending his compliments to Mrs. Milliken, with the dig- 
 nity and grace that, inherited no doubt from his French 
 mother, as well as from those great courtiers, his ancestors, 
 distinguished him except in his occasionally shy fits, he 
 went his way. 
 
 Guelph Square was very dark and very gloomy after the 
 brightly lighted streets he had left. 
 
 And it was cold. There was no wind, and the bare street 
 stood motionless, as if frozen. Outside 27 Sandy stopped. 
 
 His feeling about the divisions of his life into distinct 
 parts was not wholly retrospective. He had a kind of 
 vague feeling that night that it was an epoch-making 
 one. Something had happened, or was going to. 
 
 Upstairs in his mother's room there was a light; a 
 shadow flitted across the blind ; the drawing-room, too, was 
 lighted. Inside there was warmth, and food, and Monsieur 
 and Madame, as in his thoughts he still called them. 
 
 Outside it was cold and he was alone, but it was Lon- 
 don: Ben's London. 
 
 On the doorstep he paused again, his hand on the bell. 
 No, not Ben's London; his Sandy's. He had won it for 
 himself that night 
 
 His father, his red hair ruffled as if he had been running 
 a nervous hand through it, met him at the drawing-room 
 door. 
 
 ' ' How are you ? ' ' he said. ' ' A happy birthday to you. ' ' 
 
 Sandy stared. Never before had his father remembered 
 his birthday. 
 
 "How did you know?" 
 
 Sydney Sharrow laughed nervously. "Your mother told 
 me. It is a curious, a most curious coincidence "
 
 SHARROW 59 
 
 "Where is she Mother, I mean?" 
 
 "Upstairs. She she is not well." 
 
 Sandy looked round the unhomelike room. The very 
 tall red curtains were drawn under their gilt cornices, the 
 medallioned carpet looked more worn than he had remem- 
 bered it. The chairs looked as stiff and as slippery as ever, 
 and the lamp smelt, just as it had always smelt. 
 
 "Not well?" Sandy was not alarmed. Alarm was not 
 the feeling in the air. 
 
 "No. You may come up and see " Sydney Sharrow 
 coughed ' ' them. ' ' 
 
 "Them?" 
 
 "Yes. You you have a brother. Born this morning."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CHRISTMAS is always a magic time to an imaginative 
 little boy, and that particular Christmas was the most 
 wonderful of all our Sandy's little-boyhood. 
 
 To begin with, Sydney Sharrow had apparently found 
 in this, his second fatherhood, that which had escaped 
 him in his first. Sandy never again wished, even sub- 
 consciously, to call him Monsieur ; out of Monsieur the little 
 mulberry-colored creature upstairs had created Sandy's 
 Father. 
 
 Even Bean and Cook noticed the difference. 
 
 "A different gentleman entirely," Bean declared, with 
 satisfaction, and Cook nodded genially. She disliked her 
 master, but she was a good soul and rejoiced in the bits 
 of good luck that came to others. 
 
 "About time," she qualified her approval with. "It's 
 Sandy as '11 see the change." 
 
 Sandy did. 
 
 His mother, too, prettier than ever in her new pallor 
 and slenderness, adorned with lace and ribbons, and as 
 pleased with her baby as if it had been a toy, and she a 
 child, seemed to love Sandy more than before. He was still 
 a trifle distant in his manner toward her, as her former 
 ways had taught him to be, but his politeness gradually 
 thawed, in the warm, steamy, scented atmosphere of the 
 nursery at bath-time. 
 
 Little Syd, handsome as he was to become later, was in 
 the days of his extreme newness as ugly as most other small 
 infants. 
 
 GO
 
 SHARROW 61 
 
 He was indefinite as to feature, deplorably hairless, and 
 of a strange over-ripe hue. As a generic specimen he needs 
 no description. But to Sandy he was George MacDonald's 
 "Baby Dear" just dropped from the skies, whence, as the 
 Scottish poet declares, he had got his eyes of blue. 
 
 His eyes were to be a melting hazel, splashed with dark 
 grey, but that Christmas they were of the milky purple 
 common to his age. He was a tiresome baby and frequently 
 yelled; to Sandy there was music in his wildest and most 
 sustained shrieks. 
 
 Bony Sandy, with a pillow on his uncushioned knees, 
 was sometimes allowed to hold the angel, and his ecstasy 
 was strange to see. The arrival of Syd had been a complete 
 surprise to him, and he was even now not quite certain 
 whence the child had come. He had outgrown the belief 
 common to children on this nice point, but he had as yet 
 acquired no other to supersede it. The subject had never 
 interested him. 
 
 But one evening when his mother had gone to sleep, and 
 he and his father in their new companionship sat together 
 by the library fire, Sandy approached it. 
 
 "Father," he asked, point blank, "how do little babies 
 come ? ' ' 
 
 Sydney Sharrow started. He was an easy-going man 
 who explained his mental laziness by saying that he took 
 things as they came. He had never given a thought to this 
 side of his son's development, and for a moment was dis- 
 concerted. 
 
 Then he said, simply, "Oh, you want to know about 
 that? Then I '11 tell you." 
 
 And Sandy listened gravely, while his father did what 
 the Germans call sexually enlighten him. 
 
 Sharrow did his part well. He was graphic, clear, clean. 
 And Sandy accepted his new knowledge in the same 
 way.
 
 62 SHARROW 
 
 After a very short version of the usual lecture had been 
 added to the facts, the father said, "So there you are, 
 my boy!" 
 
 And Sandy, staring into the fire, repeated slowly, "So 
 there I am." 
 
 He never forgot the scene, though at the time it did not, 
 thanks to his father's instinctive skill, either particularly 
 impress or particularly interest him. 
 
 He never forgot his father's grave, polite manner; the 
 crackle of the wood fire through the words; the shadows 
 on the ugly, steel-gray walls against which the books made 
 a not very imposing array. 
 
 A picture of Queen Victoria holding the infant Prince 
 of Wales in her arms hung by the mantelpiece, and some- 
 how the good lady's pretty, proud smile as she bent over 
 her baby seemed to give a kind of benediction to Sharrow 's 
 words. 
 
 In future years Queen Victoria and the little Prince 
 always seemed to have assisted at an important scene in 
 Sandy's life, and perhaps this fact added in some obscure 
 way to the intense loyalty that was born in him. 
 
 "A queer kid, Sandy is," Sydney Sharrow told his wife 
 that night as he sat with her during young Sydney's late 
 supper. When he had told her in what way he considered 
 their elder a queer offshoot, she smiled, her sudden brilliant 
 smile that charmed him as much as it had the day he mar- 
 ried her. 
 
 "I wonder whether he'll be like you," she explained, 
 "or like the ozzers." 
 
 She had long since mastered the difficult Britannic " th, " 
 but, like a wise woman, still used the pretty, soft substitute 
 for it of her early married life. Her husband liked her 
 to say "ozzers," so she said it. Wherein lieth wisdom 
 of an order not mean. 
 
 "Like the Old Chief? My dear Antoinette, my father
 
 SHARROW 63 
 
 was dominated by his wife, as you know; and in me, my 
 mother dominates. I am a mistake, as a Sharrow. I have 
 none of their faults and none of their virtues. Sandy is 
 different. He is a throw-back. He is a triple essence of 
 Sharrow. Be quite sure of that. If only" he broke 
 off and gazed absently at the mossy head of his younger 
 son as it nestled on his wife's breast. 
 
 She understood. "I know. If only they would all die, 
 the old gentleman, the cure, and the boys. But they will 
 not. Except in books, people don't." 
 
 "I don't want them to die," he retorted, a little 
 shocked, as he often was, by the nakedness of her opinions, 
 "but I wish I wish that old fool of a grandfather of 
 mine had had the wits to get married properly." 
 
 She was silent for a minute, and then she said, ' ' Sydney, 
 my dear, I am so glad that you are not triple essence de 
 Skarrow. ' ' 
 
 "Are you, my dear?" 
 
 Very Victorian, the little scene, the stiffly furnished 
 bedroom with its satin striped wall-paper, its ugly engrav- 
 ings, its wool-work fire-screen whereon disported a Chinese 
 lady with most un- Chinese red cheeks and modestly un- 
 Chinese petticoats. 
 
 Between the windows, with their closely drawn red stuff 
 curtain, stood a broad muslin-hung dressing table, like a 
 strayed, shapeless ballet girl. In the next room the baby's 
 nurse, nearly as shapeless but not in the least resembling 
 a ballet girl, coughed dismally from time to time. Mrs. 
 Humple disliked husbands who interrupted her baby's 
 meals, and had often warned her baby's mother that if she 
 talked or laughed during these functions, the baby would 
 subsequently have pain and roar in the night. 
 
 Sydney Sharrow liked his wife to be glad he was not 
 all Sharrow. 
 
 "Why, dear?" he asked presently, as Mrs. Huinple
 
 64 SHARROW 
 
 lumbered in, as if the soles of her feet were round, and 
 took the baby away. 
 
 "Because for a mere frivolous French woman they 
 would be very unsatisfactory, my dear. They are so 
 bony and rough mentally and they only think of their 
 land. Mon Dieu, rien que de leurs terres, Us pensent, ces 
 gens-Id!" she broke out, and he knew that she meant what 
 she said. Only at moments of deep sincerity did she speak 
 French. 
 
 He remembered her meeting with old Sharrow, at the 
 Royal Academy one day many years before, and how the 
 old man had terrified and infuriated her by his gruff 
 acknowledgment of her existence. He had no right to 
 be gruff, for Sydney was not his heir, even remotely, and 
 therefore could marry to suit himself alone, but the old 
 man was cross that day and he hated French women (after, 
 it was hinted, a fairly exhaustive study of them). 
 
 So he had been as nearly rude as possible, and Antoi- 
 nette had felt her beauty and youth insulted, and never for- 
 gave him. 
 
 "I hope Sandy the other one will marry a a 
 something quite awful," she went on vindictively, as Syd- 
 ney rose, "and I hope he will be very fast, and very 
 troublesome, and lead the old bear a a bear's dance!" 
 
 ' ' Hardly likely, you little fiend. Or at least, he will sow 
 his wild oats before he marries, and then marry well. They 
 all do. My God, if you could see the portraits of the 
 wives!" He laughed. 
 
 ' ' Excellent brood-mares, without a doubt, ' ' she answered, 
 which was desperately coarse in '75.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 "MY DEAR MOTHER, 
 
 Won't you please write and tell me how Syd is. It is 
 nearly two months since I heard from you or Father, and 
 I can't help worrying about him -(about the baby). I had 
 such awful dreams about him last night. Ben Frith says it 
 is because I had two goes of cheese at supper, but I say it 's 
 second sight. Is he all right? Do please write at once. 
 Did you all go to Paris, or didn't you? Is Father all 
 right again? I was rotten in Latin but did awfully 
 well in Greek. That 's because Greek is so pretty, and Latin 
 so ugly. 
 
 I got here yesterday, and Sandy and Keith were both 
 already here. Paul has the measles and couldn 't come. He 
 is going to be a parson, Keith says. Glad I 'm not. Great- 
 uncle has been having gout, and is as cross as seven sticks, 
 but he seems glad to see me. He says I grow more like him 
 every day, but I think he says it only to be nasty. 
 
 Sharrow is looking glorious. I do love Easter anyhow, 
 it's such a nice new season. Everything is as green as it 
 can be, and there are lots of crocuses in the park, and tulips 
 and things in the gardens. I do wish little Syd could see it. 
 I told Great-uncle all about him but he didn't seem inter- 
 ested. Syd will like playing in the old bowling alley, it 
 won't hurt him to fall down. I suppose he is learning to 
 walk, or is eight months too young? And has he any teeth 
 yet ? A fellow here says he ought to have at least four by 
 this time. His little sister did. But Ben says he's only 
 teasing me. 
 
 I had a grand gallop this morning on my new horse. 
 
 65
 
 66 SHARROW 
 
 His name is Roderick Dhu, and he's a beauty. "Wasn't 
 Great-uncle splendid to give him to me? 
 
 Give my love to Father. I wish Syd was old enough 
 for me to write to him. How is his hair coming on? Do 
 write soon. 
 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 SANDY SHARROW." 
 
 By which it will be seen that Sydney Sharrow and his 
 wife Antoinette had not written to their big son for weeks. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Sydney was in Paris, amusing him- 
 self after a row with his wife, and she had gone to Brighton 
 with the baby and quite forgotten the boy at Marlborough. 
 
 She could not help this. It was her nature to care for 
 but one person or one thing at a time, and for the present 
 her baby engrossed her utterly. 
 
 She loved her husband, but they had always quarrelled 
 every now and then, and when they did so they always 
 separated for a time. 
 
 As to him, he loved her, but was gaily, irresponsibly un- 
 faithful to her, in a way as common, though less frankly 
 so, in '76 as it is to-day. 
 
 In this he was emphatically not a Sharrow, nor in his 
 comparative untruthfulness. Being a gentleman, he con- 
 sidered himself truthful, but, being other things as well, 
 his instinct was always to avoid trouble, and that instinct 
 has made more liars than the busy devil himself. 
 
 So there they were, the Sydney Sharrows, at Easter time 
 in 1875, the father in Paris, doing those things which he 
 ought not to have done; the mother in Brighton, leaving 
 undone those things (with regard to her elder boy) which 
 she ought to have done; and Sandy himself at Sharrow, 
 both doing and leaving undone with the innocence of 
 fourteen. 
 
 And the old house laid on him for the second time the 
 spell of its age, its beauty, its mystery.
 
 SHARROW 67 
 
 Lord Sharrow, who of late had been drinking far too 
 much, was, as the boy wrote, very cross and very violent. 
 No one pleased him, not even his faithful valet, Waters. 
 
 Sandy the Heir bored him, not altogether unnaturally, 
 for Sandy the Heir was a conventional-minded youth 
 busy at that time in moulding himself after the ideal 
 Etonian. Keith was afraid of his grandfather, and showed 
 it, and so he was nearly hated by the old man. 
 
 Our Sandy came nearer than anyone else to amusing 
 his unreverend relation. 
 
 "You are at least ugly enough to deserve my considera- 
 tion, ' ' he told the boy, the evening after Sandy had written 
 to his mother. ' ' No fine-lady face about you \ ' ' 
 
 Sandy grinned. "No, I suppose not. I shall look just 
 like you, Great-uncle, when I am as old and my face is 
 as red. Particularly the nose," he added, meditatively. 
 
 Lord Sharrow swore. Then he laughed. 
 
 "What makes my nose red, do you think?" he asked, 
 maliciously, sure that this question would floor his op- 
 ponent. 
 
 "Brandy," said Sandy, with serenity. 
 
 The day was his. 
 
 Old Sharrow was a tyrant, but he was not a bully, and 
 he had a sense of humor that belonged rather to our gen- 
 eration than to his. Humor was not rife in the great 
 Queen's reign, though wit was more often met with than 
 it is nowadays. So this time he laughed long and loud, 
 and gave Sandy a sovereign which Sandy would not take, 
 saying that no boy ought to be tipped for cheeking his 
 great-uncle. 
 
 They parted better friends than ever, and the lonely 
 old man sat for a long time staring into the fire won- 
 dering not altogether unblasphemously why the gentle- 
 manly Sandy was his heir instead of Sandy the Bold and 
 Bad.
 
 68 SHARROW 
 
 The next morning at five our Sandy and Keith crept 
 down stairs, boots in hand, and paid a stealthy visit to the 
 larder preparatory to a long tramp. There was a glorious 
 feeling of adventure in the air as they stole past Lord 
 Sharrow's door. It almost seemed that if he awoke he 
 would instantly slay them, and that, of course, was a sen- 
 sation to be cherished. A board creaked, and they both 
 turned cold and slightly damp with terror. 
 
 ' ' Husssh ! ' ' hissed Keith, who was the more articulate of 
 the two. Sandy frowned hideously, and for a long moment 
 they stood as if transfixed. Then, nothing happening, they 
 went on their way. 
 
 Cold sausage, bread and butter, milk, and quite half 
 of a large lemon cheese-cake having somewhat assuaged 
 their appetites, the two pirates put on their boots and 
 went out by the kitchen door into the morning. 
 
 They were going to see a forbidden person living about 
 five miles away ; half a gypsy, wholly a poacher was Jasper 
 Glidden; a man of low and mysterious associates; a man 
 versed in the ways of ferrets, and rats, and prizefighters; 
 a man, in short, who had been warned off Sharrow 
 lands, and to speak to whom the boys were strictly for- 
 bidden. 
 
 But Glidden was, amongst other things, a breeder of 
 dogs, and according to the valuable information of a stable 
 boy (secretly related to him) he had at present a litter of 
 invaluable animals, one of which Jim knew he'd just give 
 away to the young gentlemen. 
 
 And to secure this animal the contrabrand expedition 
 was planned. 
 
 The morning was a beautiful late April one, the trees 
 misty with lace-like leaves, the grass glistening with dew, 
 and in the distance some one with a real gift was whistling 
 a queer little fluty tune that Sandy had never before 
 heard.
 
 S II A R R O W 69 
 
 It was a pretty, simple melody, redeemed from entire 
 commonplaceness by a little twist at the end, and as 
 the boys crossed the park, Sandy screwed up his thin lips 
 and began whistling it, too. 
 
 "Pretty tune," remarked Keith, stopping to retie his 
 bootlace. Sandy walked on, whistling under his breath. 
 
 The melody seemed to him a part of the morning, an 
 expression of the feeling of beautiful adventure that was 
 abroad in the green, clean world. 
 
 Now it so happened that the invisible whistler was an 
 early ploughboy leaving his recent job for one on a distant 
 farm. He passed on out of earshot, after walking outside 
 the far off wall parallel with our adventurers for some 
 three minutes. He never came back, they never knew who 
 he was, they had not even seen him. 
 
 So Sandy never knew what the tune was ; he never heard 
 anyone else whistle it except years later, a servant of his 
 own, who had, as he expressed it, picked it up, like, from 
 his master. 
 
 "Never whistle it again, Anderson," Sandy said. "I 
 never whistle it again, please." 
 
 And Anderson never did. 
 
 The boys went out by the river meadow, wetting their 
 feet in crossing the stream, and then tramped along the 
 highroad for a mile or two, when, on crossing a big bit 
 of common land they achieved the presence of Mr. Glidden. 
 The dog, which was, in another way, as ' ' igstraordinary an 
 animal" as his present owner declared it to be, changed 
 hands after half an hour's thrilling parley, and, trammelled 
 by a bit of rope, was led by its new masters homewards. 
 
 "Fine dog," commented Sandy gravely, as they reached 
 the stream. "I like the strain of bull in him, eh, Keith?" 
 
 The dog, whose hindquarters sloped in a way suggestive 
 of the swift greyhound, look up at the speaker and put 
 out its tongue. He had only one eye, owing to an accident
 
 70 SHARBOW 
 
 occurring shortly after birth, but Mr. Glidden had pointed 
 
 out the luminosity and beauty of the remaining one. 
 "I say, Sandy, he almost winked at you!" 
 Sandy and the beast looked at each other, and then 
 
 Sandy said, "You've named him, Keith. A winker he is, 
 
 and Winker he shall be ! "
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IT was still early. The clock was striking seven as the 
 travelers reached the path leading to the little Norman 
 church. Early service was well regarded in '75. 
 
 Several people were turning in at the open gate, and 
 looking up the path, Sandy stood still. 
 
 ' ' There goes Mrs. Burbage. I say, what a bonnet ! And 
 old Tinker. Oh, and Sally Dingle. Jolly girl, Sally 
 Dingle." 
 
 Then, across the road from the Vicarage, even now nearly 
 hidden among the trees, came a tall, thin gentleman. 
 
 "Is that the parson, Keith?" 
 
 "Yes. Mr. Wymondham. He's been away all winter. 
 One of his children is delicate, ' ' announced Keith as though 
 he himself had long since left childhood and its frailties 
 behind him. 
 
 Winker, it was plain, did not like clergymen. As the 
 Vicar drew nearer, the bull in the dog for the moment 
 predominated, and he assumed a fierce attitude, strained 
 at his rope and growled. 
 
 The Vicar, his thoughts obviously on higher things, did 
 not notice, and then something awful happened. Winker 
 jumped, his full weight on the rope. He jumped, he 
 growled, he was a beast of much menace. Sandy, holding 
 to the rope with all his strength, endeavored to quiet him, 
 yet swelled with pride. No nice boy wants his dog to 
 devour a clergyman, but there is no doubt about Sandy's 
 satisfaction in his dog's ferocity. 
 
 71
 
 72 SHARROW 
 
 Mr. Wymondham glanced kindly at the two boys as he 
 passed and was about to make some remark, when the rope 
 broke off short, and the man-eating Winker, propelled by 
 his own weight, rolled down the slope and was stopped by 
 the clergyman's thin, black legs. 
 
 Sandy gave a cry of alarm and dashed to the rescue, 
 but Winker, lying flat on his back, looked up at Mr. 
 Wymondham with a craven smile, dangling his paws idioti- 
 cally. 
 
 ' ' Oh I 'm so sorry, ' ' said Keith. 
 
 "Not at all, Keith. He he seems an amiable dog." 
 
 And Sandy and Keith were left alone, the sprawling 
 boaster between them. 
 
 After a minute, shame gave way to mirth, and they 
 were laughing helplessly, when someone else came down 
 the path from the Vicarage two people, to be exact one, 
 a tall, very thin lady in brown ; the other, a little girl in a 
 pink frock and a mushroom hat round which lay a wreath 
 of roses. 
 
 Sandy stood quite still, the broken rope dangling from 
 his hand. 
 
 She was the most beautiful little girl he had ever seen. 
 
 And vaguely she seemed familiar to him. Had he 
 seen her before? 
 
 "Good-morning, Viola," Keith was saying. 
 
 ' ' Good-morning, Keith. ' ' 
 
 The little girl had a prayer-book in her hands; she was 
 going to church. 
 
 Nodding to Keith, she passed on, followed by her gover- 
 ness, who presently turned. 
 
 "Oh, Keith, when Mary comes, will you tell her to 
 hurry, please? She'll be late, otherwise." 
 
 Winker arose, arranged himself truculently in a sitting 
 posture, and looked up as much as to say, "I am a dog to 
 beware of."
 
 SHARROW 73 
 
 The bell gave a final tinkle, the church path was empty. 
 
 "Come along, Sandy Winker '11 be hungry," said 
 Keith. 
 
 Sandy glanced at Winker. 
 
 "Who was that girl?" 
 
 "Viola Wymondham, of course. Isn't she pretty? 
 Mary's better fun, though. Come along." 
 
 They went home, and after a hasty breakfast, Sandy 
 broke tacit faith with Keith and went out again, alone. 
 
 He went back to the church and during a prayer peeped 
 in. She was there, the pink girl, her face hidden in her 
 hands. He had no idea how long matins could last, and 
 presently wandered down the slope at the back of the 
 church, and amused himself with a brook that ran there, 
 until the sound of voices should tell him that Viola Wy- 
 mondham had come into the everyday world again. 
 
 At the foot of the slope he stood still. 
 
 A pink-frocked, flower-hatted girl stood in the brook 
 nearly up to her middle, her skirts high-tucked. She waa 
 poking in the bed of the stream with a long stick. 
 
 Sandy stared, thinking for a minute that it must be 
 Viola. Then he remembered Mary, mentioned by the gov- 
 erness. 
 
 "Hallo!" 
 
 The pink girl turned. "Hallo, yourself!" 
 
 "If you are Mary Wymondham you're going to catch 
 it from your governess," he said with a chuckle, "for not 
 going to church, I mean." 
 
 She did not answer him, but stood with her dark brows 
 drawn together. 
 
 "Who are you?" she said at length, adding before he 
 had time to speak. "Oh, I know. You're a Sharrow, we 
 saw you at Christmas time on an island " 
 
 "I wasn't on an island at Christmas time. I was in 
 London."
 
 74 SHARROW 
 
 "Idiot! I mean an island in the street. It was out- 
 side Victoria Station. And father asked you if you weren 't 
 a Sharrow." 
 
 Sandy remembered. He did not remember this long- 
 legged, ugly child, but her beautiful sister. 
 
 She explained that, having run down to see if the lilies- 
 of-the-valley were ever going to come up, she had dropped 
 her prayer-book into the brook, and was fishing for it. 
 
 Two minutes later Sandy was in the water, and she on 
 the bank, drying her legs with tufts of damp grass. 
 
 And when church was over, and he just coming out of 
 the brook, down the slope walked Viola. 
 
 "Oh, Mary," she cried, pink with haste, "Miss Car- 
 bunkell is so angry with you ' ' 
 
 Sandy stood with wet legs, looking at her, and as he 
 looked he found himself singing, under his breath, the 
 ploughboy's melody.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SANDY was not a romantic boy, except in the matter of 
 Sharrow. He did not, as boys of fourteen sometimes do, 
 fall in love with Viola Wymondham at that most untender 
 age. 
 
 He did not write poetry to her, or pluck garlands to deck 
 her brow. But they became the greatest of friends and 
 there was in his manner, even when he teased her, a some- 
 thing of gentleness that Mary never experienced. 
 
 Mary of the high cheek-bones and rather Mongolian black 
 eyes was to him nearly the same as another boy; Viola 
 was, if not The Girl, at least Girl. 
 
 She was a good child, obedient and quiet-tempered, and 
 as such harvested much love from everyone around her. 
 Mary, rather bold, and unbeautifully brave, joined with 
 the others in adoring her sister. 
 
 Day after day during the Easter vacation the four chil- 
 dren played together in the budding summer weather. 
 
 Keith and Mary were usually partners, while Sandy 
 taught Viola various things she had never dreamed of. 
 As a parson's child she objected to birds' nesting, but she 
 loved to draw the leaves aside and look at the timid, nest- 
 ing mother. All her life she loved birds. 
 
 They had games of cricket, too, but Viola's little right 
 thumb got hurt one morning, so that in the future Sandy 
 always trembled for her, and preferred her to look on. 
 
 She it was who told him the names of all the different 
 flowers as they came up, and in her little garden the boy 
 
 75
 
 76 S H A R R W 
 
 worked manfully, digging, planting, and weeding, while 
 she squatted idly by his side, looking on. 
 
 She was, as Keith had said, delicate, and her delicacy 
 looked like laziness when one did not know. 
 
 Sandy learned to recognize it in a very uncomfortable 
 way. 
 
 They were coming home to the Vicarage for lunch one 
 warm morning, and he challenged her to race up the slope. 
 
 "Miss Carbunkell doesn't like me to run," she said, 
 hesitatingly. 
 
 * ' Nonsense, Vi, don 't be a laze. Come along ! ' ' 
 
 So on they flew, Sandy gallantly remaining a little be- 
 hind her. Just as they reached the top of the slope, the 
 little girl paused, held out one hand as in warning, and 
 dropped as if she had been shot. 
 
 When Sandy reached her and took her up, her head 
 fell back on his arm, and the dreadful limpness of her 
 neck nearly turned him sick. 
 
 He gave a loud cry, half a call, half a shriek. And at 
 the sound the Vicar came hurrying out of one of the French 
 windows of his study. 
 
 He was a kind, just man, but at the sight of his 
 daughter lying apparently lifeless in Sandy's arms, he 
 gave vent in his fright to a few sharp words of reproof to 
 the boy. 
 
 "You young idiot! You've been letting her run; she 
 may be dead " 
 
 He carried Viola into the house, and Sandy stood alone 
 in the sunshine, the very trees crumbling around him. 
 
 In the cool study, cold water and a few drops of sal- 
 volatile brought Viola to herself in a very short time, and 
 she was soon sitting very comfortably enthroned in all the 
 glories of her father's leather armchair. She and the Vicar 
 adored each other, whereas Mary, who greatly resembled his 
 late wife, the good man treated with an uneasy politeness
 
 SHARROW 77 
 
 rather amusing to those who remembered his treatment of 
 Mrs. Wymondham. Viola, who was quite unlike her 
 mother, the Vicar nearly an old man, although his chil- 
 dren were so young understood and idolized. 
 
 In one of his writing-table drawers dwelt a blue china 
 box always full of sweets, and now the invalid partook of 
 them recklessly. The Vicar said little to her of her faint- 
 ing fit ; it was considered wiser to ignore these occurrences 
 as much as possible. 
 
 They talked desultorily of pleasant things, the little girl, 
 of course, enjoying herself with great thoroughness. 
 
 The Empire clock struck one, and Viola gave a little 
 jump. 
 
 ''But where's Sandy, Daddy?" she said. "He'll want 
 to wash his hands before lunch." 
 
 Poor Mr. Wymondham felt a pang of remorse; he had 
 clean forgotten the boy. 
 
 "I will go and find him, my love," he answered, and 
 went out by the window. 
 
 To his horror Sandy was still standing in the middle of 
 the lawn where he had left him, his eyes fixed with a 
 strange glassy stare on the window through which the 
 Vicar had come. 
 
 "Sandy!" 
 
 Sandy did not move for what seemed a very long time. 
 Then he frowned, cleared his throat, and speculation came 
 back to his blank eyes. 
 
 "Is is she dead?" he asked. 
 
 "Nonsense! Of course she's not dead!" The Vicar was 
 frightened again and again cross. "Come on in to lunch. 
 But, mind, you must never let her run again. ' ' 
 
 "I didn't let her, sir. I made her," the boy retorted 
 quickly. "She said Miss Carbunkell didn't like her to 
 run, and I laughed at her so she did. It would have 
 been my fault," he went on doggedly, his mouth in its
 
 78 SHARROW 
 
 grimness so like his great-uncle's that even absent-minded 
 Mr. "Wymondham noticed it, ' ' if she was dead. ' ' 
 
 "Never mind that. Come in to lunch. Only remember, 
 never let her run again." 
 
 They went into the big, dark dining-room with its huge, 
 buffet like a catafalque, its ugly old portraits, its massive 
 silver, and had a very good lunch of the old-fashioned 
 kind. Sandy took a big slab of roast mutton on his plate, 
 but found to his horror that he simply could not eat it. 
 He had no appetite for the first time in his life. 
 
 He never forgot that meal, to the horror of which Mary 
 added by giving him a tremendous wigging about his crime 
 in allowing Viola to run. And Viola, who, in spite of all 
 the spoiling, was not a bit spoiled, ate much milk-pudding 
 and smiled at everybody. 
 
 It was the last day but one before the return to school, 
 and the next day it rained so that Sandy, who was af- 
 flicted with a slight sore throat, was forbidden to go to 
 the Vicarage. To console himself he repaired to the vast 
 attic with Keith, and they had a fine game of hide- 
 and-seek among the myriad heterogeneous objects stored 
 there. 
 
 Any garret is interesting, but this huge old place at 
 Sharrow was really full of fascination, it had been a store- 
 house for so many years. 
 
 There were trunks full of ancient finery, brocades and 
 velvets, broken chairs and sofas, a spinet, boxes full of 
 papers that looked very dull, and piles of dusty books 
 banished from the library as it was improved. There were 
 old curtains packed in camphor; there was a four-poster 
 bed without a mattress; there was a sedan chair, and the 
 bath chair in which Grandmother Sharrow had been drawn 
 through the park by a donkey. 
 
 The boys, of course, loved the place. 
 
 "I say, Keith, let's play 'I choose,' shall we?"
 
 SHARROW 79 
 
 Keith agreed, and at a signal both boys darted about, 
 peering behind and under things, opening boxes, drawing 
 aside screens and chairs, seeking the thing they should 
 "choose" for their own. 
 
 Sandy had just chosen an embroidery frame in which 
 still flaunted a pernicious bit of wool-work of the sixties, 
 when the other Sandy called his brother from the foot of 
 the stairs. 
 
 "Keith come along and explain to Barker about the 
 packing, will you?" 
 
 Keith departed glumly, and Sandy sat down in a corner 
 under a very cobwebby beam, and looked at his treasure. 
 After all, it wasn't pretty. He would choose something 
 else. 
 
 "Hallo! What's that?" 
 
 It was a neatly made chest, about a foot long and a little 
 less in width, with a rounded cover and an ivory keyhole. 
 The wood was very light, with a narrow border of some 
 darker kind. 
 
 The box was locked, but it was old, and as the boy worked 
 at it, the hinge gave way and he could open it. 
 
 It was a medicine chest ! 
 
 "I choose this," said Sandy aloud, delighted beyond 
 words. There were four squat bottles with glass stoppers, 
 and engraved flowers on their sides. There were four 
 little glass boxes, a long, rat-tailed silver spoon, and a thing 
 like a very flexible, narrow paper-knife a powder mixer, 
 though Sandy did not know this. 
 
 And in one of the boxes there still remained a few 
 grains of some coarse powder. 
 
 A most enchanting find. 
 
 Sandy sat there touching the things lovingly, sniffing 
 at the bottles, his mind back in Charles the Second's time. 
 As a matter of fact, the chest was Georgian, but that did 
 not spoil the boy's dream.
 
 80 SHAKROW 
 
 He imagined a doctor jogging along dark lanes on his 
 way to some sick person with the chest strapped to his 
 saddle. Possibly it had even been taken to the succor of 
 the poor king himself, who might have been taken ill 
 while indulging in his favorite game of hiding in some 
 luckless gentleman's chimney 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, I didn't hear," Sandy stam- 
 mered fearfully, for it was almost a shocking thing, so sur- 
 prising was it, to find Lord Sharrow standing before him 
 in that dusky, dusty place. 
 
 "I told Keith not to come just yet. I wanted to see 
 how you amused yourself. So this is it. What have you 
 found there?" 
 
 The old man fumbled at the hasp of the nearest window, 
 and as the dusty glass swung inwards, a small square of 
 watery sunlight showed on the floor. 
 
 "It's a a medicine chest." 
 
 "Oh. And you were dreaming over it." 
 
 Sandy blushed. It is a horrid word to a boy, dreaming. 
 
 "No, sir I was just imagining things " 
 
 Lord Sharrow, who looked very old and very frail as he 
 sat on a banished wood-box, took the chest and looked at it. 
 
 "Very pretty. Someone's travelling medicine cup- 
 board." 
 
 "Oh I thought it must have belonged to a doctor." 
 
 The old man glanced sharply at him. 
 
 "Have you ever heard of a Sharrow being a doctor?" he 
 inquired. 
 
 He, too, opened the old box and sniffed at its contents; 
 he, too, opened the bottles, and he declared he could smell 
 spirits in one. They both laughed at the joke. 
 
 From the floor below a big clock boomed out five strokes. 
 
 "Tea-time," said Lord Sharrow. It seemed that there 
 was a certain wistfulness in his voice, and in his eyes. 
 
 ' ' I I wanted to tell you, my boy, ' ' he began, as he rose,
 
 SHARROW 81 
 
 ' ' but there 's not much use. ' ' Then he burst out, " It 's a 
 damnable shame, that's what it is!" 
 
 Sandy stared. "What is, Great-uncle?" 
 
 In the quick gathering twilight the old man laid his 
 hand heavily on the boy's shoulder. 
 
 "That you are not my heir." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Yes. You ought to be. You are a real Sharrow; you 
 are as ugly, as red-headed, and and pig-headed as the 
 rest of us. And you have got the love of it all the old 
 name, the old place. You feel it. That young prig, the 
 other Sandy, would as soon own Blenheim Palace as Shar- 
 row!" 
 
 Sandy did not speak, but he understood. Sharrow was 
 in his very bones that afternoon. 
 
 "Where's that ring I gave you?" went on his great- 
 uncle suddenly. 
 
 "On my watch-chain. Mother said " 
 
 ' ' Never mind what your mother said. You are to wear it 
 on your finger from this day on. Do you understand?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well don't forget. And when I die, you are to 
 have five hundred a year of your own. It's all I can 
 leave away from my heir, and you shall have every penny 
 of it." 
 
 Sandy stammered something incoherent. Five hundred 
 a year of his own at his great-uncle's death meant nothing 
 to him. He was embarrassed and miserable in the presence 
 of an emotion he hardly understood, and, though grateful 
 in a vague way, he wanted to run downstairs and get out 
 of doors. 
 
 The old man suddenly understood and released him. 
 
 "There you may go on ahead. Take the medicine chest 
 to my room and I'll have it cleaned and put in order, and 
 you may have it. It 's of no intrinsic value, but you like
 
 82 SHARROW 
 
 it. Don't you?" he added again with the sad wistf illness 
 of the old trying to get into touch with the young. 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir," Sandy answered readily, for this gift 
 meant more to him than that future one of five hundred a 
 year. "Thank you so much." 
 
 But he did not go on ahead. 
 
 He went slowly downstairs with the old man, and 
 presently left him by the fire in his study, the yellow box 
 shining in the firelight beside him.
 
 PART TWO 
 
 AT THREE-AND-TWENTY 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 ON the evening of the 21st of December, 1883, Sandy 
 Sharrow and Ben Frith, his friend, turned out of Piccadilly 
 Circus, at about seven o'clock, and went along Shaftesbury 
 Avenue. 
 
 It was a wild night, the air was heavy and nearly greasy 
 with the on-coming of a fog, the streets coated with a 
 shiny, slippery mud. 
 
 "A real London night," Ben Frith said, wriggling his 
 head with satisfaction in a little way peculiar to him. 
 ' ' Makes one think of Dickens, doesn 't it ? " 
 
 Sandy looked down at him. "Makes me think of little 
 Syd," he answered, his ugly face tender. "I wonder if 
 he '11 like his watch?" 
 
 "Like it? A gold watch at eight! I should rather 
 think he would. I know someone who won't care for the 
 crest being on it, however, ' ' he added, a minute later, dodg- 
 ing two stout women who seemed bent on reducing his 
 little body to powder between them as they struggled to 
 pass each other. 
 
 ' ' You mean my great-uncle. No, he won 't like it, and I 
 don 't care whether he does or not. ' ' 
 
 Sandy's face was grim now, and Ben was silent. They 
 afforded a great study in contrast, these two young men. 
 
 Sandy was over six feet tall, and singularly well-propor- 
 
 83
 
 84 SHARROW 
 
 tioned. Even women realized that his grace of bearing 
 must mean strength, but men, who knew the significance 
 of proportion, looked long at him. 
 
 To crown his beautiful body, however, remained the old, 
 ugly Sharrow face, intensified by manhood. His white 
 brows still beetled over small three-cornered gray eyes, his 
 nose was large and bony, his mouth long and thin-lipped. 
 And under his immaculate silk hat, which was slightly on 
 one side, one caught a glimpse of very red hair, now well- 
 brushed and glossy, for Sandy was a dandy. 
 
 Ben Frith was so small that he might almost have gone 
 into one of the pockets of the light coat his friend wore. 
 His face was paper-white, his brow too broad, too high, 
 too bumpy. And his one good feature beautiful, happy, 
 brown eyes were hidden from the casual observer by 
 thick-glassed spectacles, behind which they seemed to bulge 
 like those of certain ants. 
 
 The friendship of the two young men had lasted without 
 a break ever since they had met, on Sandy's first appearance 
 at Marlborougb, and it was one of those beautiful friend- 
 ships that boys sometimes keep to the ends of very long 
 lives. I say boys keep, because, however old the two men 
 may live to be, in the friendship itself they remain boys to 
 the last. 
 
 Presently they crossed to the other side of the busy street. 
 
 Ben spoke again : ' ' How long is it since you saw him ? ' ' 
 
 "Just two years. Let's not talk about him. It always 
 makes me angry." 
 
 Sandy's frown drew his brows down in the old hideous 
 way, and under his young moustache, which was the pride 
 of his heart and as fluffy as a small bird's breast feathers, 
 his mouth was stern, the lower lip jutting out. 
 
 Ben, however, persisted mildly as was his way. "But, 
 Sandy it would be nice to have five hundred a year, now 
 wouldn't it? Think of all we could do with it."
 
 S H A R R W 85 
 
 Neither of them noticed the "we." 
 
 "I know. I'd love it. And God knows I need it. Syd 
 has got to go to a good school. I wonder how on earth " 
 he broke off abruptly. 
 
 "He's awfully old, Sandy." Ben took his friend's arm 
 as he spoke. ' ' Why don 't you make up with him ? ' ' 
 
 "Because he's old? Or because I want the money? 
 Shame on you, Ben ! ' ' 
 
 They had nearly reached the far end of the crowded 
 street and stood waiting for a break in the traffic. On the 
 near side, outside a small public house, stood a cart drawn 
 by a miserable, heart-broken-looking white horse. It was 
 a horse whose mere aspect sufficed to make one sorry for it, 
 but as the two young men watched it, something happened. 
 
 Its owner, a short, burly Italian, came out of the public 
 house and, climbing into the cart, struck his poor beast 
 with his whip. 
 
 Perhaps he was not a bad man; perhaps he had chil- 
 dren and was good to them; perhaps some woman loved 
 him. (Ben's remarks later.) 
 
 But h.e was tired and cross, and the brick-hauling busi- 
 ness had been bad that day. Also, the emollient wines of 
 his own land being inaccessible to him, he had been partak- 
 ing of cheap British gin. 
 
 So when his horse stumbled and fell in an irritating, 
 fumbling, unnecessary sort of way, the man climbed down, 
 swearing violently, and began beating it with the wrong 
 end of his whip. 
 
 "Sandy I say stop him!" Ben's face had a sort of 
 white tremor that Sandy knew meant a deep craving for 
 blood. 
 
 Sandy stepped forward. "I say, stop that,''" he said to 
 the Italian. "Stop it." 
 
 "Damn a you, mind your own b-beeziness, " was the 
 answer, and the force of the blows was redoubled.
 
 86 SHAKROW 
 
 It was a disgusting exhibition of sheer cruelty. Anyone 
 would have been justified in stopping it. But when the 
 whip struck the miserable animal in the eye and blood 
 gushed down its poor white face, Sandy lost his head. He 
 wrenched the whip out of the man's hand, and threw it 
 down, then he picked the man up and in a moment had 
 bent him double and sent him spinning after the whip. 
 
 It all happened in the drawing of a breath. The usual 
 mushroom-grown crowd had hardly had time to spring up 
 from under the paving-stones ; Ben 's expression had hardly 
 had time to change from the bloodthirsty to the terrified, 
 before Sandy, his own face as white as a sunburned, 
 healthy face ever can be, found himself under arrest. 
 
 The policeman, who happened to love animals, was sorry 
 to have to perform this particular duty, but his duty it 
 was, and the two young men speedily found themselves, 
 together with the Italian (very sick and very much fright- 
 ened, and much more uncertain on his legs than was strictly 
 necessary), on their way to the nearest police station. 
 
 Sandy walked in silence, the peculiar grace of his car- 
 riage, the famous Sharrow walk, accentuated by his angry 
 embarrassment. Ben trotted beside him, casting an oc- 
 casional anxious glance at his face. 
 
 "Shall I go on and explain?" he asked, presently. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "But Syd " 
 
 Sandy shook his head. "No. Perhaps some one will bail 
 me out I say, ' ' he interrupted himself sharply, and stood 
 still. "I say Milliken!" 
 
 They were passing a small pawnbroker's shop, in the door 
 of which, agog with the pleasant excitement of seeing a 
 gentleman under arrest, stood a small, fat man. On hear- 
 ing his name, he came forward, pushing his way through 
 Sandy's now stationary bodyguard of loafers and small 
 boys.
 
 SHAEROW 87 
 
 "Great Caesar's ghost!" he cried, "if it ain't Mr. 
 Sandy!" 
 
 Milliken was dirty, he was not shaven, the large diamond 
 in his checked red and white shirt front was offensively 
 false, but he was a friend in need. 
 
 Was he not Bean's own brother-in-law? And had he 
 not known Sandy since that gentleman was a very small 
 one indeed in embroidered muslin ? 
 
 Sandy explained, and Milliken, thrilled to his more or 
 less disreputable bones, accompanied the party to its des- 
 tination. 
 
 "Still got the red 'air, I see, sir," he ventured, "although 
 you're so grown. My word, but you're a fine big gentle- 
 man. Bigger than ever your poor father was, sir." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Julia Bean was in to see the wife the other day," 
 continued Milliken, hopping over something he had only 
 just perceived to be a component part of the group, a 
 strangely-built white dog, "and she told us the news. To 
 think of Master Syd being eight years old." Then, be- 
 cause he was a sentimental pawnbroker, he added, " 'Ow 
 time do fly, to be sure, sir. ' ' 
 
 Sandy shut him up and explained briefly why he had 
 called him. Milliken was delighted. Milliken was easy to 
 delight. 
 
 Half an hour later, the friendly policeman having dwelt 
 on the horrid nature of Sandy's provocation, Sandy was 
 set free on bail provided by the pawnbroker, and the three 
 men, followed by the strange-looking dog, went back to 
 Shaftesbury Avenue. 
 
 "I'm very much obliged to you, Milliken," Sandy said, 
 as they reached the little man's door. "I should have 
 hated to spend to-night in quod. It's it's my brother's 
 birthday." 
 
 "Is it now? Bless my soul, so it is, so it is. Why, I
 
 88 SHARROW 
 
 remember the day he was born. Clara was not well 'erself 
 it was only a few days before our twins was born. If we 
 might take the liberty, sir, of sending the young gent 
 a small token it would give the wife and me great 
 pleasure ' ' 
 
 The little man darted into his shop, and in a moment 
 reappeared with a small silver-topped riding crop in his 
 hand. This he insisted on Sandy's accepting, and, after 
 renewed civilities and thanks, our two young men finally 
 went on their way. 
 
 "The trouble is," Ben was saying as they came to the 
 Square, "that some day you will kill somebody. You must 
 learn to realize how strong you are, dear old chap." 
 
 Sandy nodded without pride, and without any particu- 
 lar interest. 
 
 "I know. It's my temper that does it. Once I'm thor- 
 oughly angry, I forget, you see. I say, Ben there's the 
 house. Lights all over it. I suppose the poor little chap 
 has been waiting. Let's hurry." 
 
 Ben smiled. He was of those who give everything they 
 have to everyone. His knowledge, which was rather un- 
 usual for so young a man, his simple art of living, his 
 very scant money these things were at the disposition of 
 anyone. Only one thing he kept for himself, the mean- 
 ing of a little queer, tender smile that sometimes came 
 to his face. And this was the smile with which he glanced 
 up at his big friend as the big friend said, "I suppose the 
 poor little chap has been waiting. ' ' 
 
 There was wistfulness in the smile, and deep love, and 
 something like mother-pity. 
 
 It was quiet in Guelph Square. The bare trees stood 
 motionless in the heavy atmosphere. The threatened fog 
 was beginning to creep along, rounding the angles of the 
 houses, blurring the lights, deadening the sounds of traffic. 
 The two young men's footfalls seemed loud in the compara-
 
 SHARROW 89 
 
 tive silence. They walked briskly on until they reached 27, 
 whose number was painted in white on the ruby-colored 
 fanlight over the door. 
 
 Sandy stood still, looking up. 
 
 And then there came to them, from a half-open window 
 on the drawing-room floor, that most beautiful and thrill- 
 ing of all sounds a boy's voice, singing. 
 
 "Good King Wenceslaus looked out 
 
 On the feast of Stephen, 
 
 When the snow lay all about 
 
 Crisp and cold and even." 
 
 If Ben Frith had had no idea who the singer was, he 
 would, after one look at Sandy, have known. Only one 
 person on the wide earth could bring just that look to 
 Sandy's face. 
 
 As the song went on, the young voice as pure and true as 
 an angel's must be, Sandy, without looking around, laid 
 his hand on Ben's shoulder, and the two stood thus linked, 
 while in the drawing-room little Syd sang on.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 OPENING the door with his latchkey, Sandy led the way 
 into the house, and having taken off their coats and hats 
 the two went quietly upstairs. 
 
 The singing had ceased, but some one was playing, and 
 playing very well, a berceuse of Gottschalk 's. 
 
 "Who is it?" Ben asked. 
 
 "I don't know. Probably the new governess." 
 
 Then they went in. 
 
 The room was little changed since that night nine years 
 ago when Sandy had learned that Sharrow was a real 
 place and not just a picture. 
 
 There was chintz now on the sofa and chairs and flow- 
 ers in vases and bowls, but the tall windows wore the same 
 ugly red curtains, and the wall-paper was the old one. 
 
 By the small basket-grate which glowed cosily, sat 
 Mrs. Sharrow dressed in flowing periwinkle-colored silk; 
 near her, on a hassock, his long hands held up to the fire, 
 Syd. 
 
 As the door opened, he jumped up, and rushing at his 
 brother was folded in great arms that presently lifted him 
 off the medallioned carpet, and carried him back to the 
 fire, where Ben was shyly shaking hands with his hostess. 
 
 Sandy kissed his mother, and they told each other, with 
 proper gravity, about their health conditions. 
 
 Then Sandy sat down and inspected his brother. He 
 studied him lengthwise and breadthwise; felt his arms 
 and bare calves, which, under baggy black velvet knee- 
 
 90
 
 SHARROW 91 
 
 breeches looked over thin and pale; he pulled down his 
 lower evelids and declared him to be ansemic ; he peered into 
 his mouth, and was satisfied with the small white teeth. 
 
 "You'll do, youngster," he declared, finally, "you'll 
 do." 
 
 The music, which had gone on softly during these pro- 
 ceedings, now ceased ; and the player approached the group 
 by the fire. 
 
 "Oh Sandy, this is Miss Penrose. My son and Mr. 
 Frith." 
 
 Miss Penrose sat down by a small, shiny work-table, 
 and busied herself with some lace which she was mend- 
 ing. It was a broad scarf of delicate tissue, on which were 
 embroidered flowers. And her small hands, as they plied 
 the healing needle, were nearly as white as the lace. 
 
 Sandy did not notice the new governess, after his first 
 bow, but Ben, the all-seeing, did. 
 
 And he saw a very charming person indeed, sitting there 
 in the lamp- and firelight. 
 
 Miss Penrose was about seven and twenty. She had 
 quantities of soft, dark hair which she wore in a kind of 
 coronet. She had an oval face of a smooth ivory texture, 
 and a beautiful little red mouth, a trifle too full, but very 
 pretty. And her eyes, which, as she worked, Ben could not 
 see, were edged with very long, up-curled, dark lashes. 
 
 She wore a russet brown silk dress adorned with miles 
 and miles of narrow velvet ribbon of the same color, but 
 round her neck there was something white, and soft, and 
 transparent, and her under-sleeves were the same. 
 
 It was a very old dress, for she was poor, and she herself 
 hated it with a bitterness that sometimes urged her to 
 tear it to bits. But it was her only one, and she had re- 
 cently refreshed it, as the French say, so to Ben's ignorant 
 eyes it was not only lovely but quite new. 
 
 Presently as she paused in her work, she looked up, and
 
 92 SHAREOW 
 
 lo! her eyes were as blue as Mrs. Sharrow's dress! Ben 
 rubbed his thin hands together; she interested him. 
 
 It was a cozy scene, and Ben enjoyed it. Antoinette 
 Sharrow had always been a pleasing study to him, even 
 when he was very nearly a child. He had first seen her 
 young, pretty, interesting, foreign and unlike English 
 women, with the baby Syd at her breast. The observant, 
 silent little boy had loved to watch her with her baby, 
 which was at once her idol and her plaything. He did not 
 understand in what she differed from his own mother 
 and the mothers of his various acquaintances, but he knew 
 that she did differ, and the difference had for him great 
 charm. 
 
 And, indeed, for the lover of miniatures she would have 
 been interesting to anyone. It was a miniature nature, but 
 as a small lake can have angry storms and comparatively 
 great depths as well as the ocean itself, so in Antoinette 
 Sharrow dwelt all the passions of larger natures. 
 
 She possessed a violent temper, an astonishing lack of 
 conscience, a jealous love of her husband, a mad impatience 
 of all trammels, and, after Syd's birth, as mad a mother- 
 love all on the smallest possible scale. 
 
 And, on her husband's death, when her baby was four 
 years old, a tiny revolution took place in her, and small 
 walls burst, small dams gave way, all her emotions flowed 
 into one channel, and the Frenchwoman at thirty-seven 
 became the French mother. 
 
 The change had not occurred unmarked by young Frith, 
 though he never mentioned it to Sandy. 
 
 And Sandy never noticed it at all. His mother had 
 always been a stranger to him. It was the older boy who 
 observed the sudden coming to the surface of those of the 
 French bourgeois virtues, the presence of which in his 
 pretty, flighty wife, Sydney Sharrow had never suspected ; 
 it was Ben who watched the rapid growth of middle-age in
 
 SHARROW 93 
 
 the still pretty woman, who at forty dressed as do others 
 at fifty-five. 
 
 And it was Ben who, when Sandy groaned over her lack 
 of common sense, her extravagance (all for Syd), her dis- 
 regard of discipline, her exaggerated, passionate love for 
 the child, who knew that, although in some ways a bad 
 mother and in no way a successful one, yet Antoinette was 
 thoroughly, and to the exclusion of everything else, a 
 mother. 
 
 She never guessed that the quiet, unobtrusive youth with 
 the ugly glasses and the shy ways, understood her as thor- 
 oughly as one human being can understand another, nor 
 that, as time went on, and Sandy once or twice came, in his 
 care for his brother, into direct opposition with her, Ben, 
 out of the depths of his comprehension, argued the case 
 from her point of view, and secured for her at least a 
 mitigation of the guardian brother's displeasure. 
 
 For Sandy himself stood well outside the sphere of her 
 motherhood. Probably she often forgot to remember that 
 the immovable young man whose will always broke hers 
 was other than a to her rather unsympathetic guardian of 
 her son. 
 
 This Sandy did not mind in the least. His father and 
 he had been friends for the last four years of his father's 
 life, and of him Sandy had many warm memories. Syd- 
 ney Sharrow was a man full of faults, but they were manly 
 faults, and he was of great use to his son at the time his 
 son most needed him. 
 
 Ben Frith, that night of Sandy's twenty-third birthday, 
 was thinking of these things as he sat hunched in a low 
 chair by the fire, watching the little group in whose midst 
 his place was so unexplained, yet so secure. 
 
 Sandy's ugly face was soft with happiness in the fire- 
 light; little Syd, a very handsome boy with rings of silky 
 black hair on his forehead and most un-Sharrow-like golden
 
 94 SHARROW 
 
 brown eyes, was happy, too ; Antoinette, her graceful head 
 bent over some needlework, was happy. He, Ben Frith, 
 was happy, as he always was when with Sandy. 
 
 And Miss Penrose, was she, too, happy? Ben wondered. 
 
 Then suddenly Mrs. Sharrow rose. 
 
 "Ah, voild it is nine. Come, let us look at the pres- 
 ents," she said. 
 
 Every one got up and there was a moment of ceremonious 
 hesitation. 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow then drew aside a tall black screen that 
 stood behind her chair, and a laden table was revealed in 
 the light of a tall lamp standing on it. 
 
 At 27 Syd 's birthday was a far greater festa than Christ- 
 mas. Preparations for it went on for weeks beforehand, 
 and even now, everybody knew, a very excellent supper 
 was being prepared in the kitchen. 
 
 Everyone stood in front of the table in silence for a 
 moment, and then burst into a chatter of excitement. 
 
 In the middle of the table stood a large pink cake, with 
 Syd's initials and two dates on it in silver and white 
 dragees. From under the cake flowed, like a stream after 
 a period of retirement underground, a pair of embroidered 
 braces. 
 
 On the right of the cake, occupying quite three-fourths of 
 the table were Syd's gifts. There were a dozen of the 
 finest cambric handkerchiefs embroidered by his mother; 
 three books, one of which, Ben perceived, was Froissart, in 
 French ; a handsome weather-glass ; a box of sweets ; a pair 
 of gold sleeve links; an elaborately framed, rather bad 
 copy of one of Murillo's Madonnas; a tennis racquet; a 
 pair of silver-backed hair brushes, and various other smaller 
 objects, presents from the servants. 
 
 Syd's joy was delightful to behold. He had a charming 
 way of expressing himself, and his eyes literally danced 
 in his head as he inspected his new possessions.
 
 S H A R R W 95 
 
 But when, finally, Sandy produced his gift, a very beau- 
 tiful little gold watch, the boy fairly threw himself into 
 his brother's arms in his ecstasy. 
 
 Ben watched from the fireplace, whither he had with- 
 drawn. 
 
 It was a pretty scene. 
 
 Presently, as Syd sat down with his mother on a distant 
 sofa to show her all the beauties of his treasures, Sandy 
 turned rather awkwardly to his own gifts. 
 
 He thanked his mother for some silk socks and a box of 
 cigars, shook hands with Ben on discovering a pipe in a 
 leather case, went into ecstasies over the small cuckoo clock 
 which was Syd's gift there were, Ben saw, real tears in 
 his eyes over this last monstrosity and finally, with a 
 rather red face, picked up a tomato-shaped pincushion of 
 scarlet silk, which was thickly studded with pins of all 
 sizes and kinds. 
 
 Ben cast a glance at the governess, who had gone back 
 to the piano and was softly playing. 
 
 "I say, Mother this this pincushion is awfully jolly," 
 Sandy began, holding it out toward her. 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow looked up vaguely. "Oh, yes that was 
 Miss Penrose's idea. She made those beautiful braces for 
 Syd, and then said she'd like to make you some little 
 thing." 
 
 Miss Penrose smiled as Sandy went to the piano and 
 held out his hand. Her smile was delightful, because it 
 displayed a dimple that at other times was hidden in her 
 right cheek. 
 
 ' ' You don 't mind ? ' ' she asked, her eyes, so blue, looking 
 into Sandy's. 
 
 "Mind? It was most kind," he returned. "And a 
 pincushion is such a useful thing, you know. ' ' 
 
 But he saw, Ben knew, neither the dimple nor the blue- 
 ness, and, Ben also knew, she saw that he saw neither.
 
 96 SHARROW 
 
 And this the pretty mother and her beautiful younger 
 son, on the sofa, their heads close bent over the gold watch ; 
 the prettier governess smiling at the ugly Sandy ; and little 
 Ben Frith, his secret smile stirring his lips as he watched 
 his friend these things, in the tall ugly room, with its red 
 curtains, its fire and lamplight, its deeply shadowed cor- 
 ners, its worn, cabbage-rose-bestrewn carpet, its good por- 
 traits of ugly, long since dead Sharrows this was the 
 scene that, a moment later, greeted the eyes, as he opened 
 the door, of old Lord Sharrow.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 FOR a long moment no one but Ben saw the newcomer, 
 and Ben made no move. Winker gave a low growl, but it 
 was unheeded. 
 
 The old man, and a very old man he looked to the boy 
 whose eyes were full of the youth of Sandy and Syd, stood 
 leaning heavily on his stick, his brows bent. 
 
 He was unbeautiful and savage-looking, his face bore 
 marks of dissipation, its lines were those cut by self-will, 
 selfishness, unscrupulousness. Ben, who had never seen 
 him before, shuddered. 
 
 Old age, whatever sentimentalists may say, is, being 
 after all only a form of decay, never beautiful in itself. 
 Some old people are beautiful because their lives have 
 been fine and brave and kind, but even they are beautiful 
 in spite of their age, not because of it. 
 
 And Lord Sharrow had not made for himself an old age 
 either pleasant or good to see. He looked a very satyr of 
 an old man, but he was so old that Ben hoped violently 
 that Sandy would not be too hard on him. 
 
 Presently, as if by instinct, everyone in the room turned 
 towards the door. 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow gave a little cry, Syd glanced inquiringly 
 at his brother, Miss Penrose, always correct, rose from the 
 piano and disappeared into the dusk of the far end of the 
 long room. 
 
 ' ' Well, Sandy ? ' ' the old man 's voice had an acrimonious 
 snap in it. but there was an undertone of anxiety as well. 
 
 97
 
 98 SHARROW 
 
 ' ' Well, sir ? " Sandy looked very big and very command- 
 ing as he stood silhouetted against the yellow lamplight. 
 His face was invisible. 
 
 Civility demanded that should ask the aged head of 
 his house to sit down, but the Sharrows never cared a but- 
 ton for civility. 
 
 There was a short pause, and then Lord Sharrow said 
 slowly: "I have not seen you for two years; you have 
 sent back the allowance I made you; you have refused to 
 come to my house." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "So as I am very old and have no time to waste, I 
 have come to yours." There was another silence, and 
 then the old man added suddenly: "I have come to ask 
 your pardon." 
 
 Sandy came toward him, his hand outstretched. 
 
 ' ' Thank you, sir, ' ' he answered, in a voice not quite free 
 from the lurking grudge. "I of course, I accept your 
 apology." 
 
 There was a little bustle, and many broken phrases of 
 greeting, and when the moment had passed, Lord Sharrow 
 sat by the fire, his hostess and Sandy near, young Syd in 
 front of him. 
 
 "So this is the bone of contention," Lord Sharrow said, 
 inspecting the boy with a grin. "Tant d'ceufs pour une 
 omelette!" 
 
 Ben, who knew that Sandy would not like to hear his 
 beloved brother called either a bone or an omelette, with- 
 drew, unseen, from the group by the fire, and joined the 
 governess, who had gone into the recess formed by the 
 curtains, and was looking out into the dreary night. 
 
 "The famous great-uncle," she said, giving the words 
 the inflection of a statement. 
 
 "Yes. He looks very old, doesn't he?" 
 
 ' ' He is very old, and very wicked, and very disagreeable,
 
 SHARKOW 99 
 
 and oh, very, very rich! I know all about him." Her 
 voice, which was a little veiled, was musical and low. 
 
 "Who told you?" Ben asked. 
 
 "Mrs. Sharrow, of course. She will be delighted that 
 he has come. Sandy seems to have been very silly about 
 him." 
 
 "Sandy," Ben retorted, accenting the name a little dryly, 
 " loves Syd, and " 
 
 "And Silenus didn't. Oh, 7 know," she repeated, with 
 a little toss of her head, whose prettiness was plainly visible 
 in the light from a street lamp. "And when the old man 
 told Sandy to invite whom he liked to Sharrow for Christ- 
 mas, and Sandy said, 'Of course, I will begin with my 
 mother and my brother, ' the old man said, ' I '11 be damned 
 if > " 
 
 She broke off, giggling, and as only a very attractive 
 woman can giggle inoffensively, this proved her charm, 
 for the critical Ben looked at her not only without disgust, 
 but with real pleasure. 
 
 ' ' Hush, they might hear you, ' ' he said, peering through 
 the curtains. But the talk by the fire had grown louder, 
 and as he spoke, Lord Sharrow 's voice reached them. 
 
 " though I was, of course, perfectly justified in re- 
 fusing to invite to my house someone I didn't want." 
 
 "Of course you were, sir. And so was I perfectly justi- 
 fied in refusing to go to a house where I didn't want to 
 go." 
 
 "You were a pig-headed young ass," snarled the old 
 man. 
 
 "Then I was a natural historical zoological freak and 
 ought to be at the Zoo ! ' ' 
 
 "Bravo, Sandy," murmured Ben, who had for a moment 
 feared a row. 
 
 "However, being now a very old man, and a very lonely 
 one, and being bored to tears by my excellent heir (who,
 
 100 SHARROW 
 
 by the way, is spending Christmas with the excellent and 
 dull family of his excellent and dull fiancee), I decided to 
 comfort my declining years not with apples and flagons, 
 but with the society of one of the few people" his voice 
 wavered a little "one of the very few people on earth 
 whom I like. So, Sandy, will you and your brother, and 
 Madame ta mere, naturellement, honor me by spending 
 Christmas with me at Sharrow ? ' ' 
 
 Sandy, who was now standing, hesitated, frowning a 
 little. Ben clutched the stiff stuff of the curtains. Was 
 Sandy going to refuse ? 
 
 Then Syd, who had the knack of the graceful thing, piped 
 up, "Oh, yes, Great-uncle, we will, won't we, Sandy? It 
 will be great fun. Sandy has told me all about it how 
 jolly it is." 
 
 ' ' Good ! Then that is settled. And now, Madame, ' ' the 
 old man went on a little hurriedly, ' ' will you give me some- 
 thing to eat ? I am very hungry. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow started. She had hitherto occupied the 
 position of interested onlooker, but now she stepped, as 
 hostess, into her own place. 
 
 ' ' We are going to have supper, ' ' she answered prettily, in 
 French, "the birthday supper, and I will have it sent up 
 at once. There is one bottle of poor Sydney's Chateau 
 Yquem left we will drink your health in it, Lord 
 Sharrow. ' ' 
 
 Lord Sharrow watched her as she left the room. 
 
 Then he took an envelope from his pocket and handed it 
 to Sandy. 
 
 "Don't open it now," he said. "If you had been nasty 
 you would never have seen it, but you have been remark- 
 ably civil, Sandy, for a Sharrow accepting an apology. 
 That's one of our worst moments, one of our many worst 
 moments. ' ' 
 
 Sandy held the envelope in an obviously unwelcoming
 
 S H A R R W 101 
 
 hand. Ben could see his profile now, and the jaw was 
 protruding a little. 
 
 He was about to speak when the old man held up a 
 warning finger. "Say nothing now, my boy," he said, 
 "and when you do open it, remember that it will mean 
 for the B. of C." 
 
 "The'B. of C.'?" 
 
 Syd was staring with all his eyes, and his great-uncle 
 laid one hand gently on his arm, looking, unseen by the boy 
 himself, at him. 
 
 Sandy gave a short laugh, was silent for a second, and 
 then with a low "Thank you, sir," put the envelope in 
 his pocket. 
 
 " 'B. of C.,' " repeated Miss Penrose curiously. "What 
 can he mean?" 
 
 Ben was silent. She was curious in a frank, inoffensive 
 way, but he was not going to tell her that the old man had 
 meant Syd, under the pseudonym of the Bone of Con- 
 tention. 
 
 "I say, Ben" Sandy was facing them now, and it 
 was plain that he sought to relieve himself of the embar- 
 rassment of further confidential talk with his great-un- 
 cle. 
 
 Ben and the governess came forward. 
 
 "Let me introduce my friend, Ben Frith, sir " 
 
 Old Sharrow smiled cordially, his tusks gleaming in the 
 firelight. 
 
 "Delighted to meet you," he said. "Sandy used to 
 talk about you in the old days before the war." 
 
 Before Sandy had time to introduce Miss Penrose, his 
 great-uncle went on, "And you? You are " 
 
 He held out his hand, and she took it. "I am Maggie 
 Penrose nobody at all and Sydney's governess." For 
 a moment her blue eyes gazed straight into Lord Sharrow 's, 
 and Ben, as he watched the little scene which seemed
 
 102 SHARROW 
 
 strangely and disproportionately full of intensity, noticed 
 in the ugly old face and the lovely young one, a subtle 
 resemblance. 
 
 "Maggie Penrose," the old man said, slowly, "a pretty 
 name, and a pretty young lady." 
 
 Then, as Mrs. Sharrow came back into the room and told 
 them that the feast was ready, he added to the girl, 
 rising, "And you, too, will honor me by coming for 
 Christmas to Sharrow."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SANDY, his dog at his heels, was out of doors before 
 eight o'clock on the morning of Christmas Eve. 
 
 They had arrived, his mother, Syd, Miss Penrose, and he, 
 late the night before, and he was impatient to see the old 
 place again. 
 
 The queer feeling he always had there, a feeling of pride, 
 and love, and a longing to be of it, and to do for it, that 
 it had always given him, was on him doubly strong, he 
 found. 
 
 During the eight years intervening between his first visit 
 and his famous Christmas holiday quarrel with his great- 
 uncle, he had been down many times, and had grown to 
 love the place as few children love anything. 
 
 Perhaps had he had a motherly mother and a real home, 
 his feelings would have been less strong, but as it was they 
 grew into a real, deep-rooted, silent passion before he was 
 of age. 
 
 He read every book on which he could lay his hands, in 
 which any reference to the family or the house was made; 
 when he had learnt enough Latin he got his great-uncle's 
 permission to go through the old papers, deeds of all kinds, 
 papal bulls and dull things of that sort that were kept in 
 iron-bound chests in the great library; the lonely boy, in 
 a word, put all the ardor of his nature into this love for 
 the house whence he had sprung. 
 
 And old Sharrow, of course, gave him every opportunity 
 of acquiring more of the knowledge he sought, and encour- 
 aged his passion in every way. 
 
 103
 
 104 S H A R R W 
 
 The other Sandy cared not at all for such puerilities. 
 For him the glories of cricket and boating, the satisfaction 
 of possessing first the perfect Eton, then the perfect Ox- 
 ford manners. He was an excellent, brave young man; 
 he rode straight, played straight, lived straight. He told 
 the truth and feared no man. But he had, for all these 
 good qualities, one terrible defect. He was dull. He bored 
 his grandfather. 
 
 And, furthermore, though he honestly did his best to 
 hide the fact, his grandfather disgusted him. 
 
 Old Sharrow, though he respected the boy's attempt at 
 concealment, was far too shrewd not to see the effect some 
 of his habits had on his heir, and, while he was glad his 
 heir had not these habits himself, yet the knowledge irri- 
 tated him. 
 
 Now our Sandy, with his violent temper that more than 
 once, as the years went by, got him into trouble, both at 
 school and at Sharrow, was not subject to small disgusts. 
 
 He was in some ways a throw-back ; the old man 's occa- 
 sional fits of malice made him angry, and he hated Paul, 
 because Paul was a liar. 
 
 But seeing his great-uncle drunk did not cause him any 
 acute discomfort. Drinking he regarded carelessly, as did 
 his ancestors in the reigns of the Georges. Swearing and 
 bad language had no distressing effect upon him, and, in- 
 deed, as he grew older, his own tongue was by no means 
 dainty. And these things which he carelessly accepted in 
 his great-uncle, his great-uncle observed with joy in him. 
 
 "You're fierce; you don't mince your words; you like 
 wine later you will like it too well, I daresay, and you will 
 like women too well. But at least you will be a man," 
 old Sharrow once told him. 
 
 And as Sandy grew taller and stronger, and the rough 
 vein in him became more prominent, the old man openly 
 rejoiced, and as openly lamented that the other Sandy, and
 
 SHARROW 105 
 
 not this one, was to be his successor in the old house they 
 both so loved. 
 
 Once the old man took his favorite abroad. 
 
 They went to Italy. Sandy was shown great statues 
 and great pictures, which he loathed, and some of the 
 world's great scenery, which he as strongly loved. 
 
 They stopped in Paris, coming home, and here the boy 
 fell in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. 
 
 "Now, if I could marry her," he declared, as they stood 
 looking up at her. ' ' She 's big and healthy enough for any- 
 body, but she 's not a frump ! ' ' 
 
 "No. I should imagine," the old man chuckled, "that 
 no one ever called her a frump." 
 
 And the Venus of Milo did not even smile. 
 
 Sandy was seventeen at this time, and he had an adven- 
 ture. 
 
 He was walking in the Luxembourg Gardens one morn- 
 ing, when, as he afterwards told his great-uncle, a lady 
 came up and spoke to him. 
 
 She wasn't very pretty, and she looked rather as if she 
 had just emerged from a flour-barrel, her face was so 
 covered with powder. 
 
 But she asked him the time, and the way to a certain 
 street, of which, strangely enough, he had never heard. 
 His excellent French surprised her, and he explained that 
 his mother belonged to that most delightful of nations. 
 
 The lady then invited him to invite her to lunch, which 
 he promptly did. 
 
 "You went to Foyot's," Lord Sharrow declared, when 
 the story was told to him later in the day. 
 
 "We did, and we had a delicious luncheon, and coffee, 
 and wine, and liqueurs. It was topping." 
 
 The old man looked at the young one. 
 
 "And then she asked you to go and look at her family 
 photographs. ' '
 
 106 SHARROW 
 
 "She did." 
 
 "My poor Sandy! And you went." 
 
 "Oh, no, my poor Great-uncle, I didn't. I said to her, 
 'Je vous remercie infiniment, ma petite demoiselle, mais je 
 n'en prends pas.' ' 
 
 All boys have adventures of different kinds, and Sandy, 
 of course, had his, but he told no one of them after this, 
 and whatever they may have been, it is certain that they 
 did him no harm. 
 
 He was a little rough, a little unlicked, but he was an 
 honest, decent-minded man who enjoyed life without get- 
 ting into any very bad scrapes. 
 
 One lady, serving, owing to a temporary eclipse of her 
 family fortunes, in a bar at Cambridge, did her best to 
 marry him, but, although he presumably succumbed to her 
 ruddy charms for a time, the succumbing proved to be even 
 more temporary than the downfall of her family greatness, 
 and he presently was able to assure the anxious Ben that 
 Gwennie had really behaved very well. 
 
 These unimproving reminiscences are necessary because 
 they explain more or less what kind of a young man, and 
 how far experienced, Sandy Sharrow was that December 
 morning in '85 as he walked round the old house he loved 
 and watched the sun settle on it for a fine winter's day. 
 
 So far in his life he had never had a grudging, envious 
 feeling against his cousin Sandy, and he had none then, 
 but his love for the old place was nearly a pain to him. 
 
 "By Jove, I wish I didn't feel quite quite like this," 
 he thought inarticulately. "When the Old Chief has gone, 
 I shan't be over welcome here, and " 
 
 The heir and he had never quarreled, and were perfect- 
 ly good friends, but there was no real bond between them, 
 and Sandy resented the other's indifference towards his 
 future possession as a passionate mother might resent indif- 
 ference towards her child.
 
 SHARROW 107 
 
 On several occasion during their boyhood Sandy had 
 tried to convey to his cousin something of his own feeling 
 for the place, but the elder boy did not understand. 
 
 "Of course," he said, wonderingly, his honest gray eyes 
 looking into the other's sparkling little ones, "it's a jolly 
 old place, and I'm jolly lucky to be going to have it, 
 but " 
 
 And when Sandy groaned, his senior told him to chuck 
 that rot and come for a ride. 
 
 As he grew older, Sandy, of course, became shy about his 
 love, and only to his great-uncle did he talk of it. 
 
 Often the two sat over the fire in the evenings, or walked 
 slowly through the rooms by day, and discoursed on the 
 feeling that bound them together; gradually Sandy's feel- 
 ing changed, and he found that it was not the house, won- 
 derful though it was, nor even the vast estate, that held 
 him in thrall. 
 
 It was Sharrow itself; the intangible thing that through 
 the slow centuries had grown and ripened, and become a 
 kind of magic atmosphere to be breathed only by those 
 in whose veins ran the blood of those men who had had 
 their being there. 
 
 "Even old Dingle seems to be part of it," the boy de- 
 clared once, "and the Babbages, and Linter I can't ex- 
 plain, Great-uncle." 
 
 "You needn't to me. I understand, my boy. And 
 it is because Dingle's people have lived here and served 
 us for upwards of two hundred years, while the 'Sheep- 
 shearers ' was built in Henry VIII 's time, and we still have 
 the book with the rents paid in Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
 and onwards, always by a Babbage, or a Babbage girl's 
 husband. As to Linter Charles II 's barber was a Linter, 
 and up at the farm they still have a glove brought back 
 by this fellow after the king's death, and said by him 
 he probably lied, but still it's the story to have been
 
 108 SHARROW 
 
 worn by the king. And so it goes, Sandy. They have 
 intermarried, these people; they are all cousins, or nearly 
 all of them, and thus Sharrow is a kind of vast web, well- 
 knit, strong." 
 
 "And in the centre sits the old spider you!" ended 
 the boy with a laugh, in which the old spider joined. 
 
 He was thinking of these things as he left the garden 
 and struck out across the wet grass towards the south ter- 
 race where the elm avenue was. 
 
 He would go to the village and see some old friends be- 
 fore he went in to breakfast. 
 
 The Feeling was very, very strong to-day as he walked 
 down the avenue of elms under which that hussy, Mary 
 Sharrow, had walked one never, by her, to be forgotten 
 evening with Edmund Spenser. 
 
 Even Edmund Spenser seemed, somehow, in the general 
 magic, to be a part of Sandy. 
 
 Rooks cawed hideously above him, whirling against the 
 pale winter sky, and rooks, too, belonged. 
 
 ' ' Every blessed thing does belong, old Winker, ' ' he said, 
 aloud. 
 
 He was glad ah, how glad he was ! to be back. 
 
 He had, since the day when his great-uncle, jealous of 
 his favorite's love for his little brother, refused to have 
 the little brother come to Sharrow for Christmas, never 
 referred to the matter to anyone but Ben, and even to Ben 
 his references had been few and brief. But, though his 
 anger towards his great-uncle had never for an instant 
 wavered, the separation from the old place had been to him 
 a grief deeper than the griefs that most young men know. 
 
 It had had one good effect; it had driven him to shun 
 dreams, and to work hard at Cambridge, but always in 
 his heart there had been a dull ache which he was liter- 
 ally afraid to investigate. He felt as though he had lost 
 more than he quite dared know. And now, he was back,
 
 SHARROW 109 
 
 and his great-uncle had been very generous, and openly 
 begged his pardon, thus assuaging his pride, and Syd 
 was here, too, and he had two thousand pounds at his 
 bank, and Syd was to go to Eton! 
 
 The thing that finally broke down his pride had been 
 the fact of his great-uncle's having, unknown to him, put 
 Syd up for Eton years ago, because Sandy had once con- 
 fided to him his resolution that his little brother must go 
 there. When Lord Sharrow told him this, Sandy melted 
 quite suddenly, and peace reigned absolute. 
 
 To-day he would show Syd everything everything but 
 the roofs, that is. Their beauties were too fraught with 
 danger to be displayed to the precious youngster. 
 
 A couple of deer stood and watched the young man as 
 he crossed the glade where they were breakfasting. They, 
 too, were part, he thought, of it. 
 
 And then he heard something, and turned. 
 
 Standing in an open place, where the sun fell full 011 
 her, was Miss Pen rose, wearing an absurd, delightful Lit- 
 tle Red Riding Hood cape, the hood drawn close around 
 her face. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Sharrow," she cried, "how wonderful it all 
 is ! May I come with you, and will you tell me about it ? "
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IT is well known that in chemistry certain similar par- 
 ticles invariably attract each other and form themselves 
 into one mass. And everyone has noticed how, in places 
 where many people do together congregate, after the first 
 confusion of acquaintance-making is over, the process 
 known as the flocking together of birds of similar feather 
 invariably takes place. 
 
 And so it was in the small party at Sharrow. 
 
 Ben, an amusing remark of whose had decided the old 
 gentleman to invite him, and who had promptly accepted, 
 noticed this flocking, and some of it was enlightening to 
 him. 
 
 He had expected Mrs. Sharrow to flock by herself, so 
 to speak, and he knew, of course, that Sandy and Syd 
 would never be far apart. But the sympathy between 
 Lord Sharrow and the little governess was at first a sur- 
 prise to him. 
 
 The old man's pleasure in the girl's prettiness was not 
 remarkable, but what at first puzzled the onlooker was her 
 evident liking for him. 
 
 And liking, he soon found, was not quite the word. It 
 was more than a superficial enjoyment of each other's 
 society that drew these two outwardly so almost absurdly 
 dissimilar people together; it was a kind of natural turn- 
 ing towards each other of two people of one nationality 
 in a strange land. 
 
 "They seem to know each other to understand," Ben 
 decided presently. "They must be alike underneath." 
 
 110
 
 SHARROW 111 
 
 So the strange friendship, which was more like a mutu- 
 ally advantageous alliance, went on, and several days 
 passed. 
 
 One day at luncheon it was seriously endangered. 
 
 Miss Penrose, who had been for a walk, announced casu- 
 ally that she had met near the church the most lovely girl 
 she had ever seen. 
 
 "She was quite beautiful, Lord Sharrow," she went on 
 in perfect innocence of Sandy's warning frown, or the 
 old man's lowering face. "Who can she have been?" 
 
 "I don't know," answered Lord Sharrow, shortly. 
 
 "Have some ragout, Miss Penrose," Sandy put in, "or 
 shall I get you some ham?" 
 
 "Neither, thanks. But you must know, Lord Sharrow! 
 She was beautifully dressed, too, all in white, which looked 
 so quaint in winter, and oh, I really never saw anyone 
 quite so beautiful, nor ' ' her voice softened, and/ a pretty 
 note of real enthusiasm came into it ' ' anyone who looked 
 so good. She really was like an angel." 
 
 Old Sharrow pushed away his plate, his jaw working 
 nervously. "That lady, is a lady whose name is never 
 mentioned in my house," he said, evidently trying to con- 
 trol very strong anger. "You, of course, could not know 
 this, Miss Penrose, but now I have told you." 
 
 There was a short silence, after which someone cast an 
 inane remark on the troubled waters, and, everyone snap- 
 ping conversationally at it, order was restored. 
 
 After lunch Sandy buttonholed Miss Penrose. 
 
 "I say, you did put your foot in it," he cried, boyishly. 
 ' ' It must have been Viola Wymondham, the Vicar 's daugh- 
 ter, you saw very fair, was she?" 
 
 "Yes. But what has the Vicar's daughter done that 
 her name is taboo?" 
 
 "Nothing, of course. But her grandmother jilted my 
 great-uncle when he was young, and "
 
 112 S HARROW 
 
 The governess stared. "Great heavens ! You don't mean 
 to say that he visits the sins of the grandmother " 
 
 ' ' Yes, he does. So please never mention her again. But 
 I know you won't." 
 
 "No, I won't. Will you give me another billiard les- 
 son this afternoon, Mr. Sharrow? I have been prac- 
 tising. ' ' 
 
 "Have you? Good; but I can't now. I must be off. 
 I am rather in a hurry." 
 
 She glanced at him. "Oh, well, I am sorry the old gen- 
 tleman is so odd about her. I should have loved to meet 
 her." 
 
 Sandy burst out laughing. "How artful you are, Miss 
 Penrose! You are perfectly right; I am going to the 
 Vicarage. I have known the Wymondham girls ever since 
 I was so high, and I shouldn't have known they were back 
 but for you." 
 
 There was malice in his eyes as he laughed and left her. 
 He was no coxcomb, but he was no fool, and he knew per- 
 fectly well that the pretty governess was what in petto 
 he called "after him." 
 
 And she saw that he knew it, and did not greatly care. 
 
 After nine years of good luck, bad had come. She 
 had fallen in love with the ugly big brother of her young 
 charge. She did not mind Sandy thinking that she wanted 
 to flirt with him, which she saw was all that he had as yet 
 perceived, but she bitterly resented the silent little Ben's 
 keener insight, and presently sought him out for the pur- 
 pose of lying him out of his belief. 
 
 "How delightful Mr. Sharrow is," she began, care- 
 lessly glancing at a picture in The Illustrated London News 
 as she spoke. 
 
 Ben grunted: "Yes; a good chap." 
 
 "He I like him so much." 
 
 "So I have thought."
 
 S H A R R O W 113 
 
 "Ah, you noticed? Well, you are a silent person, Mr. 
 Frith; one can trust you." 
 
 Ben rose. "Don't. I advise you not to. I am liable to 
 attacks of the most terrific indiscretion. The things I tell 
 then oh, Lord I" 
 
 But she only laughed, and she was so pretty when she 
 laughed that he stood looking at her. 
 
 "Did you ever meet a man at Cambridge an Oriel 
 man named Butler? Rather clever, I believe." 
 
 "Butler? Stewart Butler? They called him The Mag- 
 got. Of course, I know old Maggot " 
 
 "No, no," she interrupted, " 'my man's' name is Cuth- 
 bert. Cuthbert Charlton Butler." 
 
 Ben reflected. "No I don't think I knew him. I came 
 down this term, you know but why do you ask?" 
 
 "Oh, I wondered. He Mr. Sharrow looks so awfully 
 like him, that's all. It's quite uncanny. Red hair, even. 
 Well, good-by, I must get my things, we are going to walk 
 to White Shirley, Syd and I." 
 
 She left the hall where they had been sitting, and for a 
 few minutes Ben stood reflecting. 
 
 "So that's it, is it? A resemblance. I wonder. Mr. 
 Cuthbert Charlton Butler. I believe she made it all up, 
 the little minx." 
 
 But he did not believe this, and it was the exact truth. 
 
 The little minx, who had made it all up, went her way 
 
 rejoicing. 
 
 ************ 
 
 It was a dull day, and a little later, through the dullness, 
 Sandy came home. The Misses Wymondham, but that 
 morning returned from the south of France, were both 
 out with their father. 
 
 He was sorry, for Viola had been his only girl friend, 
 and he had not seen her for nearly five years. 
 
 When he was sixteen, a bad attack of typhoid fever had
 
 114* SHARROW 
 
 made a temporary invalid of the little girl, and an aunt 
 who lived near Cannes had fetched her and her sister for 
 a prolonged visit. 
 
 After this, the southern climate proving suitable, the 
 two children had been kept there off and on for the next 
 few years, and, their visits to Sharrow not coinciding with 
 Sandy's, they had not met. 
 
 The very evening of the day of his famous quarrel with 
 his great-uncle, they had arrived at the Vicarage; but he, 
 in his rage, had gone without remembering their existence, 
 and thus from his seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year, 
 Sandy had not seen them. 
 
 However, he decided he would call again the next day, 
 for see them he must. Viola must be beautiful now, judg- 
 ing from Miss Penrose's description. 
 
 He chuckled at the thought of Miss Penrose. She amused 
 him, but he liked her, for she seemed really devoted to 
 Syd. 
 
 Also, she was very pretty. 
 
 He was met in the hall by a servant, who told him that 
 Lord Sharrow wished to see him. 
 
 He found the old man limping uneasily up and down 
 his little white paneled sitting-room, a frown on his face. 
 
 "Where have you been?" the old man asked. 
 
 Sandy, scenting battle, hesitated for a moment. Then 
 he said quietly: "To call at the Vicarage." 
 
 "I knew it! I knew it and I won't have it." 
 
 The room was nearly dark, for rain was coming on, and 
 only the firelight lightened the room. 
 
 "You won't have me call at the Vicarage, sir?" 
 
 "No, I won't have it." 
 
 Sandy frowned. He didn't wish to be angry with this 
 poor old man who was kind to him, but the poor old man 
 was singularly irritating at times. 
 
 "I am sorry, sir. I like the Wymondhams."
 
 SHARROW 115 
 
 His gentleness surprised Lord Sharrow. 
 
 "Look here, Sandy. I don't usually explain things, 
 but those people did me the greatest injury anyone ever 
 did me in all my life. They are my enemies. You you are 
 my guest, and and " 
 
 "Mr. Wymondham never injured you, sir. As to the 
 girls, they're almost children." 
 
 Lord Sharrow sat down. "Wymondham's mother made 
 me what you see. I was not a bad young man, Sandy; 
 I was something like you a little wild, rough, impatient 
 but I was not bad. And," he paused, his face in a sudden 
 leap of the firelight rather piteous in his pity for his own 
 youth, "Cyrilla Dallaford well, I suppose she broke my 
 heart. She hurt me so that I did not care what became 
 of me, or what I did it was then that I began to drink. 
 Out of a well-meaning, gentlemanly boy she made a des- 
 perate adventurer, a man who spent the best years of his 
 life in trying to fight and in failing. Cyrilla Dallaford 
 was my ruin, Sandy." 
 
 "Cyrilla Dallaford has been in her grave many years, 
 Great-uncle. Can't you forgive her?" 
 
 "No," shouted the old man fiercely. "Never. I never 
 forgive. We Sharrows don't. You will not, when your 
 time comes. I hate them all, Dallafords and Wymondhams. 
 And that is why I ask you my guest " 
 
 Sandy bent to him and laid his hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "Very well, Great-uncle. I will respect your wish. I 
 will not call at the Vicarage again," he said, quietly.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 BEN, when told of the interview and Sandy's promise, of 
 course approved his friend's course. 
 
 "You couldn't very well do anything else, Sandy, but 
 I confess I am surprised, all the same. ' ' 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because it wouid have been far more like you to insist 
 on going to the Vicarage, to throw the cheque into the old 
 man 's face, and to rage out of the house for a few years. ' ' 
 
 Sandy laughed. "I jolly nearly did," he confessed. 
 "He has no business to impose his sixty-year-old feud on 
 me. But well, of course, I am his guest, and he is very 
 old." 
 
 Ben looked up from the briarwood pipe whose brown 
 sides he was caressing with the palm of his hand. "Bosh !" 
 he said. "If it wasn't for the kid, you'd have had a row 
 and cleared out." 
 
 Sandy did not answer. 
 
 The two young men were sitting together in Sandy's 
 own den, which was none other than the octagonal room 
 in the tower, whence Lord Sharrow had long ago watched 
 him explore the roofs. The room had been "his" for 
 many years, and was still full of his boyish treasures. 
 
 It was a pleasant place, though small, the views from its 
 windows were varied and beautiful, one of them giving 
 on the park, toward the church, the short gray spire of 
 which could be seen amongst the trees. 
 
 Even now, at night, with its seven curtains close-drawn, 
 
 116
 
 S H A R R O W 117 
 
 and a fire burning on the small stone hearth, it had a great 
 charm of its own. The curtains, found years ago by Sandy 
 in a trunk in the attic, were delightful, though more fitted 
 to a boudoir than to a room made, all but the floor, com- 
 pletely of dark gray stone. They were of deep red silk, 
 rather faded and even a little tattered now, since Mrs. 
 Puddif ant's needle had for ten years forgotten to attend 
 to them, and on them was a raised pattern of bunches of 
 grapes, in the same color. 
 
 Sandy loved his curtains. 
 
 The friends had retired early to this eyrie the evening of 
 the interview, for it was presumably the last one on which 
 they would be free to do exactly as they liked. 
 
 The next morning Sandy the Heir, Keith, and Paul 
 were coming for New Year's Day, and they would have 
 to be polite. 
 
 The wind had risen and howled around the tower in a way 
 that enhanced their shut-in coziness as they sat smoking. 
 
 The clock struck ten. 
 
 "So you won't see the Wymondham girls at all this 
 time," Ben observed, after a long silence. 
 
 ' ' Oh, shan 't I ? Of course I shall. I only promised not 
 to call at the Vicarage, not not to see them. I shall write 
 to the Vicar and explain he has always been awfully kind 
 to me and then I shall look out for the girls from here, 
 and meet them in the road." 
 
 "From here?" 
 
 Sandy rose and drew back the curtains from one of the 
 windows. 
 
 "Yes. See that bit of white there in the moonlight, to 
 the left ..of those cedars? That's the road outside the 
 Vicarage gate. They can't get out of their garden with- 
 out passing over that very place. So all I have to do is to 
 watch from here, see which direction they take, and hare 
 after them."
 
 118 SHARROW 
 
 "Sister Ann, Sister Ann ! But you can't sit here all day 
 watching for them." 
 
 Sandy laughed. "Every morning of their lives, unless 
 it is pouring with rain, the girls go for a walk as soon as 
 breakfast is over. And breakfast's at nine. So you see!" 
 
 They stood for a moment looking out at the moonwhite 
 world. The tower was so high that the country spread 
 under them almost like a map. Far off to the left, they 
 saw White Shirley with its sleeping factories lying in a 
 long fold of the river; to the right, Brocket Wood, the 
 boundary of the estate on that side, lay, a great black blot 
 against the sky, some three miles away, and in the sky the 
 moon sailed along, apparently blown by the wind, through 
 great flakes of black-edged white clouds. 
 
 It was cold, for Sandy had opened the window wide, but 
 the two young men stood disregarding the wind, gazing 
 at the lovely country. 
 
 "I say, Sandy, what is that big house over there by 
 Brocket?" Ben asked, leaning out and pointing. 
 
 "Bargrave Abbey. Belonged to the Pierrpoints till last 
 year. When they went broke they sold it to an Ameri- 
 can, I think." 
 
 "Looks a big place." 
 
 "It is. I went once with the Chief to call, when I 
 was a youngster. It's moated and has a ghost, and all 
 that sort of thing. It was the ghost, I believe, that did for 
 the American. ' ' He closed the window, and Ben remarked 
 largely : 
 
 "I don't like Americans, they are so un-English, and 
 the more they try to be English, the more American they 
 become!" 
 
 "Well, I don't know many. This chap's son is a good 
 sort he's at Oxford I believe he's a blue. I met him 
 once at some fellow's rooms, and he's very decent-looking. 
 Give me the baccy, there's a dear fellow."
 
 S H A R R W 119 
 
 When the incursion of young men took place the next 
 morning, Ben watched the governess with some interest. 
 For a poor girl, pretty, but in a dependent position which 
 was for the present by her host's express wish, suspended, 
 there must be, he knew, some excitement in being the 
 only young woman in the house with five young men. 
 
 "She'll make a dead set for the heir," Ben decided, 
 "and she'll fail, and then she'll fall back on Keith or 
 Sandy. Paul is too young. She wouldn't be a human 
 girl if she didn't try to marry some one of them." 
 
 But he was wrong. Miss Penrose made no dead set at 
 anyone. 
 
 Sandy the Heir and his brother, after a few civil words, 
 seemed to forget her existence, and young Paul, now a 
 slight youth with a moist red mouth, stared at her in vain, 
 for she hardly noticed him. She was very charming these 
 holiday days, for she was not only delightful to behold, but 
 tactful, pleasant, and, in an inconspicuous way, useful to 
 everybody. And, as has been said, she seemed quite un- 
 elated by the amount of young masculinity that surrounded 
 her. 
 
 Ben watched closely, but even he could observe nothing of 
 the man-hunter in her, so he became a little ashamed of 
 himself and tried, by a new friendliness in his manner, to 
 make up to her for his unjust suspicions. 
 
 And when she told him one day when he found her stand- 
 ing by a window with tears in her eyes that she was lonely, 
 he melted altogether. 
 
 "I know so am I, a bit. I miss my old father very 
 much he's in Germany looking up some things for the 
 B. M. the British Museum, you know that's why I'm 
 here. I say, Miss Penrose, suppose we have a game of 
 billiards?" 
 
 Sandy and Syd, those first days, were together nearly 
 all the time. There were so many things Sandy wished
 
 120 SHARROW 
 
 to show his brother, things that had thrilled him to the 
 marrow when he was Syd's age. 
 
 So, his arm laid across the youngster's shoulders, he 
 led him all over the great house, upstairs and down, into 
 room after room, showing him its wonders, explaining to 
 him its treasures, telling him in simple language incidents 
 in its history that had years ago so enthralled him himself. 
 
 And Syd, wide-eyed, sweet-tempered, and perfectly do- 
 cile, allowed him to show, to explain, to expound. 
 
 But that was all. 
 
 Syd possessed within him none of that thing which 
 drew his brother and the old lord so closely together. 
 His beautiful young face never flushed at the stories his 
 brother told him, his heart never changed its pleasant, 
 languid beat for a quicker one. 
 
 Even the suits of armor in the Great Hall failed to 
 rouse him, and finally Sandy grew impatient of his ac- 
 quiescent "How jolly!" uttered at polite and dutiful 
 intervals. 
 
 "Good gracious, Syd," Sandy burst out, as they stood 
 before the figure of a man in full armor, mounted on a 
 completely caparisoned horse, ' ' don 't you feel it ? " 
 
 Syd looked up, his delicate mouth just stirred by a 
 smile. "Don't I feel what, Sandy, dear?" 
 
 Ben, who had just come in, listened attentively, his eyes 
 fixed on the boy's face. 
 
 "Why the the wonder of it all the beauty hang it, 
 I can't explain it to you, if you don't feel it for your- 
 self!" 
 
 Sandy's voice was still impatient, but there was in it 
 an under-current of something deeper than impatience. 
 
 Syd smiled at him. "I do feel it, Sandear," he answered, 
 using his baby corruption for "Sandy, dear." "I think it 
 is all awfully jolly. But I think I like the Yellow Draw- 
 ing-room best, the little gilt chairs are so pretty ! ' '
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 ON the afternoon of the last day but one of the old year, 
 Sandy and Miss Penrose sat together over the fire in the 
 Small Hall. 
 
 Syd had gone for a ride with Keith, who had taken a 
 fancy to the boy, the old lord was shut in his room with 
 a cold, Ben was writing letters, and Mrs. Sharrow pre- 
 sumably taking a nap. 
 
 So it had naturally followed that the two young people 
 who had nothing in particular to do should find themselves 
 together. 
 
 Sandy was smoking cigarettes, and lay back very com- 
 fortably in his chair, which, stern and straight-backed in 
 itself, was made habitable by the presence of a deerskin 
 pillow, Mrs. Sharrow 's Christmas gift to her host. 
 
 It was pleasant to be there in the firelight smoking 
 and watching a woman who, he had just begun to realize, 
 was exceptionally pretty and attractive. 
 
 Miss Penrose wore that day a charming blue frock with 
 little frills of lace at the throat and wrists, and in her 
 soft dark hair she had woven a blue ribbon. 
 
 The feeling of being well-dressed as well as beautiful 
 gave the girl a new confidence, although she was never af- 
 flicted by a lack of that useful quality. 
 
 She felt, as Sandy's eyes rested peacefully on her face, 
 that there was after all no reason on earth why she might 
 not succeed in marrying him. He was not the heir, he was 
 of no paramount importance in the world, he was not 
 
 121
 
 122 S H A R R O W 
 
 rich. And she, penniless though she was, was of gentle 
 birth and had undoubted beauty. 
 
 "What are you thinking about?" he asked idly. 
 
 "About you," with placidity. 
 
 "You flatter me." 
 
 "Oh, no I was only thinking how extraordinarily like 
 you are to the family portraits. The man in the chain- 
 armor, in the gallery he might be you." 
 
 Sandy burst out laughing and lit a fresh cigarette. 
 
 "No, you are right. Your thoughts certainly were not 
 flattering me ! Isn 't he the most misbegotten old brute you 
 ever saw in your life?" 
 
 She shook her head. "His face is not handsome, cer- 
 tainly, but he is a fine big creature." 
 
 "Thanks!" 
 
 They were flirting now, idly and innocently, as every- 
 body in the world but the born idiots or disgustingly mal- 
 formed has flirted at some time or other. 
 
 And for a rainy winter afternoon in a beautiful room 
 lighted only by a dying fire, it may be doubted whether a 
 better sport can be found. , 
 
 "That ribbon in your hair is jolly," Sandy remarked, 
 presently. "It makes you look like a picture " 
 
 ' ' Ah, but what picture ? Not one of the Sharrow dames, 
 I trust?" 
 
 They laughed again, and Sandy rang for tea. 
 
 "We might as well have it, though it's very the others 
 won't be in for a long time, and if we wait for half an 
 hour that young worm, Paul, will be joining us." 
 
 "Yes. You don't like Paul, then?" 
 
 "No. Neither do you. He's oh, tea, please, John 
 he gets on my nerves somehow, and his lisp makes me 
 want to be sick." 
 
 They drank their tea, had the tray taken away, 
 and then Sandy persuaded the girl to smoke a cigar-
 
 S H A R R O W 123 
 
 ette. ' ' You can throw it into the fire if anyone comes, ' ' he 
 said. 
 
 Cigarette smoking was nearly a crime for a woman in 
 '85. 
 
 And she had, in spite of her varied experiences, never 
 before tried smoking, so it was rather thrilling, particu- 
 larly when Sandy's hand, in lighting her cigarette, chanced 
 to touch her chin and lingered there a second. 
 
 In the faint light he saw her flush. 
 
 A few moments later they busied themselves with the 
 now dying fire, and this time, as she reached for the poker, 
 her hand touched his. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Sandy hastily. 
 
 She turned and smiled at him, drawing a trifle nearer. 
 
 Sandy kissed her. 
 
 She was a pleasant person to kiss, not only because 
 her skin was smooth and cool, but because she very ob- 
 viously liked it. Something in the way she pressed her 
 cheek to his stirred him, and he caught her round the 
 shoulders, turned her head with his right hand, and kissed 
 her mouth. 
 
 Five minutes later he received a summons to go to his 
 great-uncle. 
 
 He found the old man wrapped in a gray plaid, bending 
 over his fire. 
 
 ' ' What have you been doing, Sandy ? " he asked, without 
 looking up. 
 
 "Sitting in the Small Hall, sir/' 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "With whom, then?" 
 
 A little surprised, the young man answered, "With 
 Miss Penrose. The others are all out or busy. Frith is 
 writing letters." 
 
 ' ' I see. So you ' ' Lord Sharrow rubbed his hands gently
 
 124 SHARROW 
 
 together, and they shone nearly transparent against the 
 red flames, "so you have been amusing yourself by mak- 
 ing love to the governess." 
 
 Sandy was silent for a second, "I don't see why you 
 should assume that, sir, because we had tea together. ' ' 
 
 "Tea and toast, and kisses." 
 
 Sandy started, and his hand flew to his hair. Was it 
 untidy? No, to his relief it was perfectly smooth. There 
 was a pause, and then Lord Sharrow went on, the gibing 
 note still in his voice : 
 
 ' ' She 's a pretty girl I should have kissed her myself 
 a few years ago." 
 
 "I don't think, Great-uncle, that you have any right 
 to assume " Sandy began hotly, but the old man inter- 
 rupted him. 
 
 ' ' Assume, assume, who the devil 's assuming ? I saw you, 
 as it happens. Now, then! What have you to say?" 
 
 The young man had nothing to say. "But I don't 
 understand," he stammered, utterly taken aback. 
 
 Lord Sharrow then drew away from the fire, sat upright 
 in his chair, and Sandy saw that he was shaking with 
 laughter. 
 
 "You silly young idiot! How could I possibly see you? 
 Did you never hear of bluff? A noble game, Sandy, and 
 a most useful one. Well, so she has got her own way at 
 last, has she?" 
 
 Sandy was white with anger. "I can't very well tell 
 you what I think of your noble game, sir," he said rapidly, 
 "so I had perhaps better go 
 
 "Oh, yes go, and hasten back to the maligned virgin 
 and console her for what she doesn't know, with more 
 kisses! Don't be a fool. And as to kissing the girl kiss 
 her as much as you like only, no nonsense about marry- 
 ing her, mind." 
 
 "Marrying her! But such an idea "
 
 S H A R R O W 125 
 
 ' ' Never entered your mind. I know that. It rarely does 
 enter the man 's mind until the woman puts it there. Well, 
 it has come into hers. She has fallen in love with you, 
 though God knows you're no beauty, and she means to 
 marry you if she can. So I sent for you to warn you. 
 That's all, my boy," he added, suddenly gentle. "You 
 may go."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 SANDY went down the little corkscrew staircase very 
 quietly, placing his feet with care on each hollowed oak 
 step. 
 
 Instead of going back to the Small Hall, he turned to 
 the left at the foot of the stairs, and. finding a cap of 
 Keith's on a chest, went out. 
 
 It had been raining at intervals all day, but for the 
 moment the only moisture that fell was that which dripped 
 from the eaves and from the bare boughs of the trees. 
 
 It was only five o'clock, and in the west a break in the 
 clouds showed a faint glory of gold rapidly fading to 
 gray. This was the side of the house where the moat 
 had not been drained and lined with turf, so the door led 
 on to a small bridge leading over dark gleaming water to 
 a slope down which one went toward the wild part of the 
 park and White Shirley. 
 
 Sandy took off Keith's cap, and stood for a moment on 
 the bridge; the damp was grateful to him for he was 
 aflame with anger, and something like shame. 
 
 The old man was a beast, but suppose the old man 
 were right? 
 
 He, Sandy, had meant by his half-dozen kisses only 
 just that half a dozen kisses ; and even without his great- 
 uncle 's warning he might by this time have regretted them, 
 for, after all, the girl was in his mother's employ, and 
 thus deserved far more chivalrous consideration than if she 
 had been merely one of his fellow-guests. His great-uncle 
 
 126
 
 S H A R R O W 127 
 
 had had no business to say that she wanted to marry him, 
 but suppose she did? 
 
 lie knew quite well as he stood there on the old nail- 
 studded footbridge in the dusk that his kisses had meant 
 to her far more than hers, sweet though they were, had 
 meant to him. 
 
 Besides he flushed again as he put his hand into his 
 pocket and pulled out a bit of blue satin ribbon. She had 
 drawn it out of her hair and given it to him "as a re- 
 membrance." 
 
 The ribbon, as he held it in his hand, gave out a faint 
 smell of something supposed to be like new-mown hay. 
 It was not in the least like new-mown hay, but it was very 
 sweet, and he remembered that as he kissed her the same 
 scent had assailed him from her hair, her skin, her frock. 
 
 "He had no right to play me that trick, he's an old 
 satyr," he reflected, pressing the ribbon for a moment to 
 his face, and then putting it into his pocket. "He had no 
 right to assume anything so absurd, and I will show her 
 the ruin by moonlight to-night ! ' ' 
 
 Whistling, he went across the bridge, down the silvery 
 slope, and, turning sharp to his left, started by a footpath 
 towards the village. 
 
 Mr. Dingle, the steward, and his widowed daughter who 
 lived with him, greeted their distinguished guest warmly, 
 and he was constrained to accept a glass of elderberry wine 
 and a large slice of excellent seed-cake, the recipe for which 
 was one of the Dingles' family secret. 
 
 Dingle, who had grown to be very fat, presented, as he 
 sat in his pleasant parlor, on the walls of which were 
 hung samplers worked by his ancestresses, a delightful pic- 
 ture. 
 
 Randolph Caldecott of blessed memory would have re- 
 joiced in him with his honest red face and his dignity. 
 
 Sally, still pretty, still a flirt, though the mother of stal-
 
 128 S H A R R O W 
 
 wart twins, to one of whom Sandy was godfather, wore a 
 large white apron over her black frock, and was as jolly 
 as chuckling, as contented a young widow as one would 
 wish to see. 
 
 ' ' How I loved that ship when I was a youngster, ' ' Sandy 
 observed, munching cake and trying to forget the taste 
 of the wine as he manfully bolted it, "and the big pink 
 shells. I still believe they're the biggest shells in the 
 world, Dingle!" 
 
 "The biggest in Sharrow, at all events, sir," returned 
 Dingle placidly, with the air of a man producing a smash- 
 ing bit of confirmation. "Lord, Lord, Mr. Sandy, it does 
 seem a long time since that first day when you came riding 
 along on that black pony of Master Keith's, and told me 
 'is lordship wanted me. Do you remember? 'A jolly old 
 wigging you're going to get, Mr. Dingle/ you said, sir, 
 and I did!" 
 
 "Poor Father, he still does," Mrs. Linter declared, nip- 
 ping delicately with a pointed lip at her glass of wine. 
 
 'Is lordship's temper doesn't improve with age, sir, 
 does it?" 
 
 "No, poor old man." 
 
 There was no impropriety in this talk, no hint of dis- 
 respect in the manner of the steward and his daughter. 
 They were old-fashioned folk who would have gone to 
 the stake for Sharrow as an institution to which they be- 
 longed ; but as they did belong to it, and work for it, they 
 felt a placid right to criticise it, and this Sandy under- 
 stood. 
 
 "Mr. Sandy well, sir?" asked Dingle presently. 
 
 "Yes. Has a fine moustache, and is, as you of course 
 know, engaged. He will, of course, be coming to see you 
 soon he only got here on Tuesday." 
 
 "Oh, yes, he'll be coming. Always polite, Mr. Sandy, 
 always considerate "
 
 S H A R E W 129 
 
 The old man's voice held level on the last word, as he 
 paused, and Mrs. Linter waved a dimpled hand in affec- 
 tionate reproach. 
 
 "Now, Father, don't you say it! You know that Mr. 
 Sandy our Mr. Sandy here doesn't like it. 'E never 
 did." 
 
 Sandy rose. "Never mind, Dingle," he said, shaking 
 hands with his hostess. "Sally bullies the life out of 
 you, so you'd better obey her. But I know what you 
 mean, and I fear I rather like to have you think it. Good- 
 by, Sally; good-by Dingle. I shall be seeing you soon at 
 the house, no doubt." 
 
 He went out into the now lamplit street of the little 
 village, and, turning to his right, went towards the inn. 
 
 There he would kill two birds with one stone, call on his 
 old friend, Mrs. Babbage, and get something to take the 
 taste of that confounded concoction of Sally Linter 's out of 
 his mouth. 
 
 Sharrow village was small and straggling. It con- 
 sisted of two dozen or so houses set down on the edge of 
 an irregularly shaped green on one side of which gleamed 
 a horsepond. 
 
 The cottages were for the most part thatched, and many 
 of them were very old, and seemed to have grown into 
 the earth from which the whitewashed stones had been 
 torn. 
 
 The inn was opposite the horsepond, and was a fairly 
 large house, one of the oldest in the place. 
 
 Over its door, which led into a cobbled courtyard, swung 
 an ancient sign, bearing its name in black letters on a 
 white ground: "The Sheepshearers ' Arms." 
 
 Sandy paused at the door, and looked about him. 
 
 There was the blacksmith's shop where once he and 
 his first horse, Rhoderick Dhu, had taken refuge, on his 
 way home from a hunt, from a terrific thunderstorm. He
 
 130 S H A R R W 
 
 could still hear the strange reverberation of the thunder 
 among the iron things in the shed. 
 
 On the other side of the road was Mrs. Gidding's sweet- 
 shop. Oh, vanished bulls '-eyes, and lost Edinburgh rock! 
 
 As he stood there, something white came scurrying down 
 the road, and, with a final elastic bounce, lay sprawling at 
 his feet a panting, gasping something too fat underneath 
 (its underneath was now uppermost), a something de- 
 lighted, servile, triumphant. 
 
 "Winker, you scoundrel, how did you get out?" He 
 bent and patted the dog whom he loved. "I left you in 
 the Small Hall sleeping the sleep of satisfied gluttony 
 did she let you out, eh? Did pretty Maggie open the 
 door for you?" 
 
 He paused a moment, for he had never before used the 
 girl's name, and then went under the whitewashed arch- 
 way, and into the inn. 
 
 They were glad to see him. Mrs. Babbage herself 
 bustled forward to meet him, bade him mind not to bump 
 his head in the doorway ; Lord, but he 'ad grown ! 
 
 And then, as he stood still shaking hands with the 
 three or four villagers who were wetting their various 
 whistles, as one of them quite superfluously explained, the 
 door leading from the bar into the hostess's private parlor 
 opened suddenly, and Sandy forgot to give his hand to old 
 Peter Bustard, Farmer Linter's shepherd, and stood star- 
 ing stupidly. 
 
 "Oh, Sandy, don't you know me?" 
 
 Viola Wymondham came forward into the glare of the 
 oil lamps, her father's parishoners making respectful way 
 for her, and held out her hand. 
 
 "Viola!" 
 
 "Yes. And you didn't know me. Now isn't that un- 
 kind, Mrs. Babbage? Peter Bustard always knows me, 
 don't you, Peter?"
 
 S H A R R O W 131 
 
 Peter, who was well over eighty, was a little senile, but 
 he burst into an understanding roar of delight at this 
 most excellent joke. 
 
 Five minutes later, Sandy, having explained to Mrs. 
 Babbage that he must walk home with Miss Viola but 
 would call again very soon, found himself in the dusky 
 village street with the woman he loved.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 NEVER for one instant did Sandy ask himself what it 
 was that had happened to him. From the minute when 
 the door opened and she stood on the threshold, a little 
 cloud of tobacco smoke floating between her and him, he 
 knew that he loved her. 
 
 There she stood, his wife. It was rather overwhelming 
 but beautifully simple. 
 
 She wore dark furs out of which her little fair head 
 rose like a flower, and she had a buoyant walk that not 
 even the abominable greasy cobblestones of the village 
 could discourage. 
 
 She had a rather serious little manner, a sort of aloof- 
 ness that to him was perfection, and she told him her 
 simple news in a gentle voice that ravished him. 
 
 Yes, Mary was well, and her father, too, bar his occa- 
 sional attacks of bronchitis. Yes, she was glad to be back 
 at home ; yes, she felt the cold a little. Oh, dear, no ! she 
 was no longer delicate. That is to say, not very. 
 
 And Sandy literally drank her words. 
 
 The air was by this time soaked with moisture, though 
 no rain fell, and the earth gave out a cool, spicy smell 
 that reminded them that spring was somewhere in the 
 future. 
 
 "Look, Sandy, all the trees are covered with drops of 
 water how pretty it is!" 
 
 They paused where the light flowed into the narrow 
 channel of the village street, and looked at the branches 
 
 132
 
 S HARROW 133 
 
 of the trees that hung over the road from the doctor's 
 garden. 
 
 The lamp over the surgery door cast a red halo around 
 the girl's upturned face. Sandy looked at her, not at 
 the trees. 
 
 "You are sure you quite understand about my not call- 
 ing ? " he asked presently, although she had already assured 
 him that no one at the Vicarage had taken offense at his 
 note. 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes, Sandy ! We were sorry, but of course we knew 
 that you couldn't do anything else. How how wicked of 
 him, isn't it, still so to hate poor grandmamma? Perfectly 
 absurd ! ' ' 
 
 They had turned into a path leading across the park 
 towards the Vicarage, and under the dark trees her laugh 
 echoed gayly. 
 
 "If only you could have seen grandmamma, Sandy. 
 Why, she had quite a long beard and was so fat she 
 couldn't move!" 
 
 "She hadn't a beard when she was young, Vi," he 
 returned gravely, "and I can quite understand him." 
 
 She stood still, her little figure close to him, her face 
 a mere luminous blot in the darkness. 
 
 "You can understand? Why, Sandy, to hate someone 
 for fifty years because she wouldn't marry you?" 
 
 Still he was grave. "Yes, I can. Of course, it would 
 depend on the person." 
 
 There was a long pause, then he added, jerkily, "You 
 see, Viola, you don't quite understand. He he loved 
 her." 
 
 He had never before in his life used the wonderful 
 word in any connection with himself, and its use, even 
 in this circuitous way, made his breath catch in his 
 throat. 
 
 "He loved her," he repeated, as they walked slowly
 
 134 S H A R E W 
 
 on, and, downright being though he was, he was epicure 
 enough to enjoy the subtlety of such love-making. 
 
 They hardly spoke again, for she, too, felt the magic of 
 the thing, though she did not recognize it. 
 
 They crossed the bit of woodland, and turned down the 
 long path which, because it was a right of way, and led 
 to the hated Vicarage, was hidden even from the upper- 
 most windows of the house by a huge hedge. 
 
 Now it was quite dark, and Sandy longed with all his 
 might to offer Viola his arm. But he did not do it, for 
 he did not quite dare. They had parted as children what 
 if she should feel it to be a kind of travesty of grown-up- 
 ness, and laugh ? 
 
 Once he stumbled and cannoned sideways against her. 
 He never forgot that. 
 
 When the silence was at last broken, it was, of course, 
 by her. 
 
 "I do wish he wasn't so silly; it is a shame that we 
 can't see you, now we are here. There are so many 
 things I want to ask you, and to tell you. ' ' 
 
 "Are there, Vi?" 
 
 His voice was so beautifully gentle that she started, 
 and then said, "You have changed, Sandy!" 
 
 "Yes, I was a child then. Now I am a man. I am 
 twenty-three. ' ' 
 
 "And I'm nineteen." 
 
 "I know. Mary is twenty-two. Oh, I have not for- 
 gotten. To-morrow we are having a party lots of people 
 are coming. My great-uncle is quite excited about it. We 
 are going to dance, and play old-fashioned games. If 
 only " 
 
 "Oh, snapdragon? I do love snapdragon, Sandy. I 
 think of all the heavenly things, it's snapdragon. Oh, 
 dear!" 
 
 Sandy hated his great-uncle so at that moment that she
 
 SHARROW 135 
 
 heard his teeth gritting against each other, and hastened 
 to console him. 
 
 "Don't be angry, Sandy I am absurd and childish to 
 mind about a little English country party. Why, I've 
 been to court V 
 
 "You haven't!" 
 
 "I have, and not only here but at Rome. And I have 
 had," she added importantly, "two proposals." 
 
 Sandy did not answer. 
 
 They had reached the end of the path and were walking 
 along the South Avenue towards the Vicarage gate. 
 
 "One of them was a prince, too!" 
 
 "Pooh! An Italian prince," he retorted, very sore and 
 thirsting for that alien noble's blood. 
 
 The Vicarage was before them now, a long, low, com- 
 fortable old house, and its windows on the two lower 
 stories were glowing with the reddish lamplight that is so 
 much cosier than electric lights of any kind. 
 
 "I suppose I may go to the door?" 
 
 ' ' Of course you must. It would be most rude to let me 
 go up that great path all by myself," she laughed. 
 
 They stood under the porch, saying good-by, for several 
 minutes. 
 
 "Let me call Mary out here, just to say how do you 
 do. She'd love to see you." 
 
 "No, no, it wouldn't be fair. I've given him my word, 
 but I wish I had him here to tell him what I think. ' ' 
 
 As he spoke, the door opened suddenly and the Vicar 
 appeared, his finger to his lips. 
 
 "Hush I thought I heard talking. Sandy, your uncle 
 is here how d'you do, my boy? glad to see you. He has 
 had an attack of some kind I heard him groaning as I 
 came home he was in the copse behind the church, and I 
 had him brought in here. He is better now, but has gone 
 to sleep."
 
 136 S H A B R W 
 
 "My great-uncle here! Good heavens, sir! We had bet- 
 ter get him home before he comes to himself. ' ' 
 
 "No, that's quite all right. He he is too too well- 
 bred to say a word under the circumstances. I think he 
 knew, or very nearly knew, when he came out of his faint, 
 where he was come in, children, come in; it is very damp 
 and he asked for you. I was just going to send William 
 up to the house for you." 
 
 Sandy remembered the old hall with its antlered hat-rack, 
 its ochre-colored shiny paper in imitation marble, its shal- 
 low staircase with the spindly handrail. 
 
 The old engraving of Nelson at Trafalgar still hung 
 beside the gilt mirror opposite the hatrack, and, through 
 the open door on the left, the light of the Vicar's fire 
 danced, as of yore, on the bare oak floor. 
 
 "He's in my study ah, here's Mary. How is he, my 
 dear?" 
 
 Mary, whose sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and 
 who held a large handkerchief, folded bandage-wise, and 
 smelling of vinegar, nodded to Sandy. 
 
 "How do you do?" she said, civilly. "Glad to see you 
 again. He's still asleep, Father, but I think he will wake 
 soon; he's restless." 
 
 She was tall, very tall beside her sister, and was, Sandy 
 saw at a glance, well-developed and strong looking. As in 
 her childhood, her dark eyebrows nearly met over her 
 straight, well-cut nose, and her cheek-bones were too high. 
 
 She had a clear, smooth, rather dark skin with a faint 
 color in the cheeks, and her large mouth was red. 
 
 A plain young woman, but very nice looking. That is 
 what nine people out of ten said of Mary Wymondham, and 
 she knew it and did not care a rush. 
 
 Viola took off her hat, her furs, and her coat. Sandy 
 watched her. 
 
 They had gone into the dining-room, which was opposite
 
 S H A E E O W 137 
 
 the study, so as to be near at hand when Lord Sharrow 
 should waken. 
 
 "The house looks pretty much the same," young Shar- 
 row remarked. "How well I remember it all! Do you 
 remember the day you fainted, and I thought you were 
 dead? I do." 
 
 "I don't. I often fainted, you know." 
 
 "But you don't now?" At the nervous anxiety in his 
 voice, she turned away from the fire and looked at him. 
 
 "Oh, Sandy, how funny you look when you're serious! 
 Dear me, how bushy your eyebrows are!" 
 
 "Are they? Did Mary call us? Hush! No it's all 
 right. I say, Vi, perhaps he'll have to make up with your 
 father now." 
 
 Mary came to the door. 
 
 "Sandy," she said deliberately, a little louder than 
 would have been necessary, but for the old listener in the 
 other room, "I am so glad you have come. Lord Sharrow 
 is better now, and wishes to see you." 
 
 The old man lay on the Vicar's worn leather sofa, a 
 green and red worsted pillow under his head. He was 
 pale, but looked otherwise quite all right. 
 
 "Ah, you've got here," he observed, as Sandy came 
 in, "that's right. I had a bad turn in the wood, and and 
 Mr. Wymondham had me brought in here. It was very 
 kind of him. Will you ask him to come to me, as I am still 
 too weak to go to him? I wish to thank him for his kind- 
 ness. ' ' 
 
 Sandy was deeply sorry for the unforgiving old man, 
 as he saw his struggle to be courteous ; there was something 
 fine in the triumph of breeding over enmity. 
 
 "I am glad you're all right again, sir," the young man 
 said, gently. "Shall I send for a carriage?" 
 
 "No, thanks. Mr. Wymondham" the utterance of the 
 name itself seemed half to choke old Sharrow, but he said
 
 138 S H A R R O W 
 
 it with peculiar clearness "has offered to send me in his 
 pony-carriage. Just ask him kindly to come to me, will 
 you?" 
 
 The Vicar, himself an old, white-haired man with a 
 weary stoop to his thin shoulders, came at the bidding of 
 his mother's old lover, and stood mildly before him. 
 
 "I wish, Mr. "Wymondham," Lord Sharrow said, sitting 
 up, and arranging his scant, unreverend gray hairs with one 
 hand, while he leaned on the head of the sofa with his 
 other arm, "to give you my sincere thanks for your kind- 
 ness in bringing me to your house and caring for me." 
 
 "My dear Lord Sharrow, it was nothing nothing," be- 
 gan the Vicar nervously. 
 
 "You would have done as much for anyone no matter 
 whom," interrupted the older old man, just the shadow 
 of a sneer marring the courtesy of his manner. ' ' I under- 
 stand that, of course, Mr. Wymondham, but," and his voice 
 changed, as his face cleared again, to one of greater gentle- 
 ness than Sandy could remember in him, "you have been 
 more than Christian-like, you have been truly kind. Just 
 as I regained my wits I heard you speak to your 
 daughter." 
 
 There was a pause during which Viola drew nearer to 
 her father, who cast a look of almost agonized appeal to 
 Sandy. 
 
 Then Lord Sharrow struggled to his feet and, standing 
 for the first time in his life in the house of the man 
 he had chosen to consider his enemy, he faced that man 
 and went on speaking. 
 
 "You said to your daughter, 'Oh, Mary, my dear, the 
 poor old man, the poor old man ! ' ' 
 
 After a pause he added, "And you were right. I have 
 hated your mother a most beautiful woman, sir, a most 
 beautiful woman for over sixty years. I never forgave 
 even you for the wrong she did me long before your birth.
 
 S H A R R O W 139 
 
 But I am just that: a poor old man. And, James Wy- 
 mondham," he held out his veined and knotted hand, 
 ' ' I now ask you will you and your mother, forgive me ? ' ' 
 
 The Vicar could not speak. Sandy glanced at Viola, and 
 then, because her eyes, too, were full of tears, at the 
 ceiling. 
 
 The two old men shook hands. 
 
 Sandy looked on, his thick, dusty-looking eyelashes wet, 
 There was something very pathetic in this late reconcilia- 
 tion. That it was too late for any practical good to come 
 of it, made it, somehow, more poignant. 
 
 He remembered vaguely what he had heard of James 
 Wymondham's early struggles, the poverty that was his 
 only heritage from his father, who died in his childhood; 
 he knew that poor Cyrilla had on one occasion made a 
 frantic appeal to her old lover, only to be repulsed by 
 silence. 
 
 And now the boy whom Lord Sharrow might have 
 helped was an old man himself. 
 
 After a long pause during which the two hands were 
 firmly clasped, Lord Sharrow said, with an air of relief, 
 "We will go now, Sandy." They went, almost in silence. 
 
 As they drove homewards in the ancient pony carriage 
 in which Cyrilla Wymondham had driven her little son 
 Jimmie half a century before, the old man gave a sudden 
 chuckle. 
 
 "A strange scene it must have been, eh, Sandy?" 
 
 "What scene, sir?" 
 
 "Why, James Wymondham and me solemnly shaking 
 hands ! She would have laughed, you know. She did laugh 
 at most things." 
 
 Sandy turned and looked at him in the moonlight. 
 
 "Surely, sir, you were not not just " 
 
 "Shamming, you want to say. Well, why don't you 
 say it?" snapped his great-uncle. "No. I am still, thank
 
 140 SHAREOW 
 
 God, capable of seeing the funny side of a thing, but I 
 was not shamming, Sandy. ' ' 
 
 They drove on in silence. 
 
 Suddenly Lord Sharrow asked sharply: "What is that 
 you are whistling?" 
 
 Sandy hesitated. "I I don't know what it is, sir; I 
 heard a boy whistle it one morning, years ago " 
 
 As he spoke, he realized that the air had not come into 
 his memory for a long time. It was seeing Viola that had 
 recalled it.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THEIR arrival at home was attended with some excite- 
 ment, for Lord Sharrow had been suffering from a cold 
 that day, and had declared himself too unwell to leave his 
 own rooms. 
 
 "And then, sir," his valet told Sandy, when the invalid 
 had been established by his fire, "when I went in with 
 'is tea, 'e 'ad gone out. I was extremely alarmed, sir, but 
 I daren 't do anything, for if I 'ad gone out after 'im, 'e 'd 
 'ave" poor Waters broke off, for his thoughts hardly 
 bore expression, even to an old friend like Sandy. 
 
 "I know, Waters, I know. Well he seems to have had 
 some kind of a fit very slight, luckily and just by chance, 
 Mr. Wymondham found him, in the coppice near the 
 church, and had him carried to the Vicarage." 
 
 "My Gawd, sir!" 
 
 Waters had been his lordship's valet for over twenty 
 years, and of course knew of the enmity between The 
 House and the Vicarage. 
 
 Mrs. Puddifant, nee Babbage, who had been housekeeper 
 for an even longer time, took the liberty of coming to 
 Sandy's room for fountain-head information. 
 
 Then he had to explain to his mother, who was all for 
 sending for leeches to apply to the back of the august in- 
 valid's neck; to Sandy the Heir, who had a right to know, 
 and whose handsome young face wore, during the recital, 
 an expression that would not have been amiss if his sov- 
 ereign had been in question, so polite was he and so im- 
 
 141
 
 142 SHARROW 
 
 personal were his feelings ; Keith, too, asked a few questions, 
 and even red-lipped Paul, whose interest took the form of 
 scarcely veiled regret for the heir's sake, that, as he said, 
 "nothing really vital had happened." 
 
 "Nothing really mortal, you mean," retorted Sandy, in 
 the frank disgust Paul so often inspired in him. "For a 
 budding parson, Paul, you really are rather too much of a 
 rotter." 
 
 "Not at all," Paul retorted with his musical laugh. 
 "Lots of parsons are rotters!" 
 
 Then little Syd came and curled up on the arm of his 
 brother's chair, as Sandy finally sat down in the Small 
 Hall to rest. 
 
 "Poor Great-uncle," the boy said, his arm around 
 Sandy's neck, "how dreadful to be ill in the wood, all 
 alone! Has he made up with Mr. Wymondham, Sandy?" 
 
 "You young magpie! What do you know about Mr. 
 Wymondham ? ' ' 
 
 "All," declared Syd, emphatically. "Miss Penrose told 
 me. She says he'll have to invite the Pretty Girl to the 
 party now, too." 
 
 Sandy started. Miss Penrose, whose existence he had 
 utterly forgotten, came with a shock to his memory. Could 
 it be only four hours since he had sat in that very chair 
 and kissed her? 
 
 It seemed years ago or, more exactly, it seemed as if 
 another young man had sat there, a young man with 
 whom this present Sandy had nothing whatever to do. 
 But the young woman whom that other young man had 
 kissed was she right.? Would Lord Sharrow now invite 
 the Vicarage people to the dance the next night? In that 
 case Sandy would show her the things he loved this very 
 room, the picture gallery, the library no, on second 
 thoughts he would not bring her here, to the Small Hall; 
 it would not be
 
 S H A R R O W 143 
 
 "Sandear, do you like Miss Penrose?" 
 
 The boy's voice startled the dreaming man. 
 
 "Miss Penrose? Yes, yes, of course, Syd. She is very 
 nice. Why?" 
 
 "Because Paul told Ben that she is a wise little wench. 
 I don't like the word wench; it sounds like a kitchen- 
 maid." 
 
 "By the way, Syd (never mind what Paul says, he never 
 matters), where is old Ben? I want to see him." 
 
 "He's in your room. He told me to tell you that you 
 would find him there, and I forgot. I'm so sorry, San- 
 dear. ' ' 
 
 Sandy rose. "It doesn't matter, Syddikin. I must go 
 and talk with him now." 
 
 Ben was smoking and reading Loftie's "London." The 
 crimson curtains were drawn ; the Tower Room looked very 
 cozy. 
 
 "Hallo, Ben!" 
 
 ' ' Hallo, Sandy ! I thought I 'd best get out of the way 
 when Miss Penrose told me you had driven up in state in a 
 pony-carriage was she right in saying it was the 
 Vicar's?" 
 
 ' ' Yes. But damn Miss Penrose ; she seems to know every- 
 thing. How on earth did she come to recognize that pony- 
 cart?" 
 
 "Better ask her," returned Ben placidly, taking off 
 his disfiguring spectacles and blinking at his friend. 
 
 Sandy stuffed a pipe with tobacco, and set it alight. 
 Then, leaning forward and staring into the fire, he -said : 
 
 "Ben, old boy something to tell you." 
 
 "Fire away Romeo." 
 
 Even in the solemnity of the moment Sandy burst out 
 laughing. "Yes, don't I look a Romeo! But why do you 
 call me that. ' ' 
 
 "Because you come from the Vicarage, and because
 
 144 SHAREOW 
 
 oh, well, I don't know why, but it's Viola Wymondham, 
 Sandy?" 
 
 There was a pause, and then Sandy said, softly, "Yes, 
 Ben, it's Viola Wymondham." 
 
 They had been friends for so many years that Sandy 
 felt not the least awkwardness in making his avowal. 
 
 "Where did you see her?" 
 
 ' ' Met her at the ' Sheepshearers ', ' and walked home with 
 her. Ben, she's well, you must see her. I can't ex- 
 plain." 
 
 His face was, in the firelight, almost beautiful as he 
 spoke. Ben watched him with a look in his eyes that would 
 not have been amiss in those of a devoted mother. 
 
 "The Old Chief and her father shook hands," Sandy 
 went on, presently, less momentously and puffing hard at 
 his pipe, which, to tell the truth, was a little rank. ' ' It was 
 a rather fine sight : the Old Chief very shaky and not 
 nearly so purple as usual, begging the other old boy's 
 pardon." 
 
 "By Jove!" 
 
 "Yes. He's an awful old scoundrel, of course, but his 
 manners are wonderful when he wants them to be. Mary 
 and Viola and I looked on as if it had been, well Irving. 
 Viola's eyes were all wet. It was very affecting." 
 
 Ben nodded. "Must have been, Sandy I'm glad, for 
 you." 
 
 ' ' Yes, I knew you 'd be. Oh, Ben ! ' ' 
 
 There was long pause. Then suddenly Sandy sprang 
 up. 
 
 "Good heavens, man! I must dress. Why didn't you 
 remind me?" 
 
 Ben, who was dressed, and whose very tight-fitting 
 clothes betrayed the fact that he had grown since their 
 young days, sat on, smoking, for a few minutes and then
 
 SHARROW 145 
 
 opened a window and let the cold wind blow over him, to 
 get rid of the smell of tobacco. 
 
 After which he went down the long winding stairs and 
 gave a bang on Sandy's bedroom door. 
 
 There was no answer, and, when he had waited a moment, 
 he went in. The room was empty, and, judging by its 
 aspect of having been torn to bits by a tornado, Ben de- 
 cided that its owner had dressed in a hurry. 
 
 Sandy, indeed, had been summoned to Lord Sharrow. 
 
 ''Sandy," the old man snapped, "tell Sandy to send 
 cards to the Vicarage for to-morrow night, and to write a 
 personal note saying that he and I shall be much disap- 
 pointed if Mr. Wymondham and his daughters do not 
 come. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 ' ' This is the correct thing to do, you understand. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Are you a parrot that you can say only one phrase?" 
 Lord Sharrow 's voice was positively malevolent. 
 
 "No, sir. I can say that, too. I am an accomplished 
 bird." 
 
 "Hold your tongue. Sandy, I wish you might write the 
 note to bid those charming young things to my house, but 
 it's no good. Sandy is my heir, and you you are not 
 of the slightest importance." 
 
 ' ' Never mind that, Great-uncle. ' ' The young man spoke 
 almost sweetly in his understanding of the old man's jest. 
 "I am of importance to some people to Syd, and to you, 
 and to Ben, and perhaps, someday, I shall be to some- 
 body else." 
 
 With one of its disconcertingly sudden changes, Lord 
 Sharrow 's face was again lowering and vindictive. 
 
 ' ' Remember make love to her as much as you like, but 
 and your allowance depends entirely on my will; it is not
 
 146 S H A R R W 
 
 yet settled on you. And one word of marriage to that 
 woman, and " 
 
 Sandy, to his surprise, interrupted him by a peal of 
 laughter. 
 
 "You needn't worry about that, sir! I have no more 
 idea of marrying Miss Penrose than than you have." 
 
 "Oh, you haven't? Very well," mumbled his great- 
 uncle, only half mollified. "Be very careful, though. She 
 is far cleverer than you, far cleverer. Perhaps you 
 wouldn 't mind giving me your word of honor that you will 
 never marry her?" 
 
 "Certainly, sir. I give you my word of honor never to 
 marry Miss Penrose." 
 
 Then he went down stairs, his heart as a bird in his 
 breast.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THERE were so many young men at Sharrow that some of 
 them of necessity played the part of stage-chorus to our 
 two principals the two Sandys. 
 
 And, if the history of Sandy the Heir were being writ- 
 ten, our Sandy, he of no importance, would, of course, 
 fade into the dullness of outline shown in this narrative by 
 the heir. 
 
 Maggie Penrose, in whose breast sang no bird that night, 
 talked but little during the late dinner. She watched, 
 instead, the faces around the table, and, as she expressed 
 it to herself, wondered. 
 
 She wondered, because she had a keen imagination 
 the keenest, bar Ben Frith 's, in the party what each 
 young man was thinking as he took unto himself the con- 
 ventional amount of soup, fish, entree and joint. 
 
 Sandy the Heir looked quite as usual. He was sorry 
 the old man had been seedy, but was too honest and too 
 decent to give a thought to might-have-beens. Moreover, 
 he had plenty of money and no debts. 
 
 Keith, no doubt vivid enough to himself, presented, be- 
 cause deeply bored by everyone in the house, and inter- 
 ested only in the prospects of hunting, a very shadow} 7 
 aspect to the girl. He hardly seemed real. 
 
 Little Ben Frith she respected, but she feared him, as 
 well. He saw, she knew, almost as much as herself. 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow, the rouge carefully concealing her ugly 
 stain, saw only Syd, and him mentally, for he was in bed. 
 
 147
 
 148 SHARROW 
 
 Remained only our Sandy, who was Maggie Penrose's 
 Sandy, too, and something had happened to him, she knew. 
 Never before had his strange little eyes held quite that 
 look, nor his mouth worn quite that expression. 
 
 On the possibility that Sandy was still deeply affected 
 by his great-uncle's indisposition, the shrewd girl wasted 
 not a thought. She was too clever for that. But, because 
 she was a woman, she was not too clever to make the mis- 
 take of, if not decidedly believing, at least hoping that she 
 went for something in his change of aspect. 
 
 She was not young enough or innocent enough to think 
 that her battle was won because he had kissed her, but her 
 experience told her that he was not less inflammable, in 
 spite of his rugged face, than other young men of his age. 
 And, gazing at him as he ate his fish with such a splendid 
 disregard of possible bones that only the theory of guardian 
 angels could explain his not choking to death, she re- 
 membered that he had agreed to take her to see the 
 ruin by moonlight that night, and the prospect held com- 
 fort. 
 
 It must be remembered that she was really in love 
 with him. She was an adventuress in that she had only 
 her wits to live by, and in that she had always intended 
 to marry for position ; to exchange her youth, her beauty, 
 and her charm, for a fixed place in the world. 
 
 But in a measure she deserved respect, because, being in 
 the house with Sandy the Heir and Keith, who had to have 
 a very decent fortune left him by an uncle of his mother 's, 
 she made not the slightest attempt to attract the attention 
 of these two young men, but gave herself up entirely to the 
 marrying of our Sandy, who had 500 a year, and had, 
 as she knew, charged himself with the education of his 
 brother. 
 
 She had, at least, the bravery of her love, and as she 
 watched Sandy, reckless with fish-bones, and then bolting
 
 S H A R R O W 149 
 
 his beef with as great a disregard for his digestion in his 
 absent-mindedness, she loved him very dearly. 
 
 He, meantime, was thinking about her. He had kissed 
 her, and he knew that she cared for him in a way, although, 
 in his new-found reverence for it, he would not have 
 dreamed of applying to her feeling the sacred word 
 "love." 
 
 A beguin, he called it. Yes, just a beguin. But because 
 no goodness on earth could possibly equal that of Viola, he 
 wished to be as good as lay in his black and evil nature, 
 and no one knows how black and evil he thought himself 
 in comparison with Viola. 
 
 And kissing women one does not love suddenly appeared 
 to him as something closely approaching a crime. 
 
 He had been a beast, and the poor girl might have mis- 
 understood him. He rose from the table with a fixed de- 
 termination in his mind. 
 
 He played a game of billiards with the other Sandy, 
 talked about the chance of mild weather holding with 
 Keith, and then went to the Yellow Drawing-room, where 
 the two ladies were reading. Ben was in the library, he 
 knew, and Paul, who sat at the piano, picking out a song 
 from the score of "Patience," did not count. 
 
 "Miss Penrose, " he called out, as he opened the door, 
 ' ' come along out and have a look at the ruin. It 's a glori- 
 ous night, and I have something to tell you." 
 
 She rose, flushing a little, and lamenting his lack of at- 
 mosphere. A trifle of mystery in his manner would have 
 pleased her more. 
 
 "Do you mind, Mrs. Sharrow?" she said. 
 
 "No, of course not. But get something to put around 
 you, or you'll take cold." 
 
 Miss Penrose 's prettiest shawl already lay on a chest 
 near the moat-door, out of which Sandy had that afternoon 
 gone, all unsuspectingly, to meet his fate.
 
 150 S H A R R W 
 
 She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders, and in 
 silence followed him out on to the little bridge. 
 
 "A jolly night, isn't it?" he began, nervously. 
 
 "Yes. 'In such anight as this 
 
 She knew that he read Shakespeare, but he did not 
 respond now, and stood, looking very big, leaning on the 
 hand-rail that had been added to the ancient bridge after 
 a child of the family had, in Queen Anne 's day, fallen from 
 it into the water and been drowned. 
 
 "Miss Penrose " 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Sandy?" 
 
 "You don't want to go to the ruin," he said, hurriedly. 
 "It's a goodish bit of a walk, and the grass is damp. Look 
 here, I wish to apologize to you." 
 
 "To apologize?" 
 
 "Yes. I was a brute, this afternoon, and I beg your 
 pardon." 
 
 There was a long pause. 
 
 "Will you forgive me?" 
 
 ' ' Yes. ' ' She spoke very slowly, pulling the fringe of the 
 shawl over her face, so that he could not see her expres- 
 sion. "Yes but I do not see that I have anything to for- 
 give. It was my fault." 
 
 "Oh, no!" Sandy protested with energy, "not a bit of it. 
 It was mine, the fault, entirely. It was just that well, 
 you did look so infernally pretty in the firelight I suppose 
 I lost my head. Young men do, you know," he added, in 
 the wisdom of his young love. 
 
 "Do they?" Maggie Penrose asked softly. She was 
 clever enough to let him do the talking, knowing that the 
 more he said the more chance there was that she might 
 entrap him. 
 
 "Yes. I well, I have asked your pardon, and you have 
 given it to me. Shall we go back?" 
 
 "Not quite yet. It is so cool and lovely here. And
 
 S H A R R W 151 
 
 Paul is in the drawing-room. He, too, thinks that young 
 men lose their heads only he thinks it beforehrnd, as a 
 justification of whatever he wants to do." 
 
 "Paul is a beast," said Sandy, with emphasis. "Has 
 he been annoying you ? ' ' 
 
 "No no not exactly. That is, he has annoyed me, 
 but he may not have meant to. I fear, ' ' she added, with a 
 little rueful laugh, "that his very existence annoys me!" 
 
 "lam sorry. If he does anything, just tell me, will you, 
 and I'll " 
 
 She laid a pretty hand on his arm. "Oh, no, no. You 
 must not. You must not say a word to him. It is only 
 that I hate being touched by people I do not love, and 
 he comes very close to one." Then she added: "Mr. 
 Sandy, do not think you annoyed me this afternoon. I 
 said it was my fault, and it was. I could have stopped 
 you, but I didn't, because well, you are Syd's brother, 
 and, after all you kissed me because you liked me, at least 
 at that minute, and I am so lonely, I like to be liked ! ' ' 
 
 Sandy knew that she was telling him with remarkable 
 clarity that she liked him to kiss her ; and that her attitude 
 in so doing amounted to an invitation to repeat the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 He saw all this, and disliked her for it, even while he 
 was sorry for her, while her little plaint, "I am very 
 lonely, ' ' touched him. 
 
 He stood rigid in the moonlight, his arm in its inexpres- 
 siveness feeling to her sensitive hand like a stone balustrade, 
 or a window-sill. 
 
 "Oh, now I see! Now I understand! You are not 
 shocked at yourself," she cried, suddenly, looking up at 
 him, her face quivering, "you are shocked at me. You 
 think / was a brute, as you put it. You think I was fast, 
 and unwomanly!" 
 
 Eeal tears sprang to her beautiful eyes, and how was
 
 152 SHARROW 
 
 he to know that they were tears of anger and wounded 
 vanity, as well as of hurt love ? 
 
 He had hurt a woman, and he felt a villain. But he did 
 not move, even now. He was as immobile as a statue. 
 
 "I say, don 't think that. It's absurd! Of course I knew 
 
 that that " He wanted to say that her yielding had 
 
 been prompted only by kindness, but he was very young, 
 and he was truthful. So his words stumbled, and stopped, 
 as she put her head against his arm, and burst into real 
 tears. 
 
 "I am so ashamed," he went on, gazing desperately 
 over her head into the darkness under the trees. "I was 
 a swine." 
 
 ' ' It was only because I was so lonely. I haven 't a rela- 
 tion in the world, ' ' she sobbed, forgetting the claims of two 
 sisters and three aunts, all resident in Wimbledon, "and 
 Mrs. Sharrow has been so kind to me just like a 
 mother ' ' 
 
 Sandy's set face relaxed into a not quite pleasant grin. 
 The idea of his mother being to anyone but Syd "just like 
 a mother," held for him a rather bitter amusement. 
 
 "Oh, I could kill myself for being such a fool!" the girl 
 went on with passion in her voice, raising her head ar.d 
 showing her tear-stained face. "It seemed for a moment 
 as if you were my brother, as well as Syd's." 
 
 This time his grin was mental, for she was looking at 
 him, but grin he did, for he was not so young nor such 
 a fool as to believe in the truth of this charming 
 touch. 
 
 He knew perfectly well that she was in love with him 
 in her way, a way, of course, that would be to Viola's, 
 when Viola did come to love him, as the light of a penny 
 dip to the glory of the sun. 
 
 ' ' Well, well, well, ' ' he said, gently, patting her arm with 
 the air of an ancient uncle, "wipe your eyes, and we will
 
 S H A R R O W 153 
 
 go back to the others. I thank you for forgiving me, and 
 I will never offend you again." 
 
 They returned to the house, and Miss Penrose favored 
 the company, at Mrs. Sharrow's request, with a little 
 Chopin. She played softly, delicately, and not even Sandy 
 dreamed of the torrent of rage that was in her heart. It 
 is very probable that she loved him for his resistance more 
 than ever ; but it is equally true that she hated him as well. 
 
 He had made several mistakes, in his young wisdom, 
 and, even while she played, she began to see vaguely that 
 there must be some concrete reason for his change of man- 
 ner. 
 
 And, of course, from the very second of this perception 
 she set her wits to work to find out the reason. 
 
 "Play the Berceuse," suggested Paul, who was leaning 
 over the piano. 
 
 And presently the lulling, dreamy melody filled the 
 lamplit room, sending by its magic everyone who heard it 
 to his or her little private dreamland. 
 
 Sandy, of course, was with Viola; Keith, who had come 
 in to chat with his so-called ' ' aunt, ' ' whom he rather liked, 
 dwelt for a few minutes in a happy country where it never 
 froze, and where his new horses feared no jump; Sandy 
 the Heir took mild pleasure in the thought of his fiancee, 
 who was to become his wife in the autumn ; Mrs. Sharrow 's 
 whole being was with Syd, in a rosy future quite unlike 
 anything likely to come to pass ; and even Paul was dream- 
 ing. His dreams were centred in the pianist. He was to 
 be a parson, and he was no fool. Therefore, it is improb- 
 able that he saw Maggie Penrose as a parson's wife. But 
 his thoughts were certainly centred in her. 
 
 And the girl herself, as her soft, strong fingers made the 
 piano sing the exquisite melody, thought thoughts strangely 
 at variance with it.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 SANDY the Heir received his grandfather's guests, the 
 following evening, and he did it very well, with much dig- 
 nity and even a certain charm. 
 
 Nearly everyone came who had been invited, for a party 
 at Sharrow was a very unusual event, the last having taken 
 place five years ago, on the occasion of the coming of age 
 of its future master. 
 
 So the county, as the White Shirley Monitor expressed 
 it the following day, was fully represented. 
 
 People were naturally curious about the young man 
 who was to come into the vast and ancient property ; there 
 was about the Sharrow history much that was rather hor- 
 rible, something even approaching the disgraceful, but 
 there was much of real romance. 
 
 It is rare for all the men of the house, almost without 
 exceptions, to carry out its traditions as did the Sharrows. 
 They had been, as history as well as memory reminded 
 people, almost all of them wild as hawks in their youth, 
 and then after marriage, while always retaining a certain 
 strain of fierceness and roughness, very decent members of 
 society. 
 
 The present lord had broken the record by remaining a 
 profligate to the extreme limits of old age, but even he had 
 done well by his lands, and would, people said, leave more 
 than he had received. Moreover, the story of his misfor- 
 tune in love was public property, and had never been for- 
 gotten; he had some excuse. 
 
 154
 
 SHARROW 155 
 
 And now here was the heir apparently bent, by his ex- 
 treme correctness, on further denying the old tradition. 
 
 "I vow I should be afraid to give one of my grand- 
 daughters to him," one old woman declared, with vehe- 
 mence, as she settled at whist in the Chinese Room. ' ' These 
 Sharrows can't be respectable all their lives; not one of 
 'em ever has, according to the story, and this boy surely 
 has not had his fling. He's bound to have it sooner or 
 later." 
 
 "Perhaps his grandfather's double share will go down 
 to his account even things up," suggested her partner 
 with a chuckle. "I am sorry the old villain is ill, I 
 haven 't seen him for fifteen years, and should like to. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, so should I. I, you know, was to have been poor 
 dear Cyrilla's maid-of-honor I saw a lot of him at that 
 time." 
 
 The other lady at the table turned to her interestedly. 
 "Oh, did you, Lady Charlotte? Do tell me about him. 
 Was he very attractive? My father used to say " 
 
 But Lady Charlotte brooked no rivals. "Your father 
 my dear Audrey, hardly knew Sandy Sharrow at all. Was 
 he attractive? Dear me, yes. He was wonderful. As 
 ugly Q s sin, you know, like all of 'em, but with a charming 
 manner, and the most beautiful voice ! The young man 
 who is dancing so much with Jimmie Wymondham's girl is 
 like him, I should say, only rougher. There were moments 
 when Sandy was not rough, and then, my dear, no words 
 on earth can express his smoothness!" 
 
 ' ' Really ? And who is the boy dancing with Viola Wy- 
 mondham ? ' ' 
 
 "That's another Sandy Sharrow, Sydney Sharrow 's 
 son but you never saw Sydney. He married a French 
 woman." 
 
 Mr. Boreham saw that Lady Charlotte wished him to 
 subside and let her talk, but he would not. He was a
 
 156 SHARROW 
 
 small, compact man with an obstinate chin and a prodigious 
 memory. 
 
 ' ' This Sandy, ' ' he went on deliberately, ' ' is the old gen- 
 tleman 's favorite. He is a nice boy, but I should not call 
 him fascinating, as his great-uncle must have been." 
 
 "Bosh!" exploded Lady Charlotte, "what boy of 
 twenty-three ever was fascinating? Sharrow was twenty- 
 seven when he married. Now then, Mr. Boreham, suppose 
 we get on with the game?" 
 
 Viola, in white, was wonderfully lovely, and Sandy dwelt 
 from men apart in a heaven inhabited only by her and 
 him. He danced, though with vigor, without any remark- 
 able grace, yet she gave him all the dances he dared ask 
 for. 
 
 Keith, who danced perfectly, devoted himself to Mary 
 Wymondham, who excelled her sister as he did his cousin. 
 
 "Vi dances well," the youth remarked, as he and Mary 
 waltzed, "but not nearly as well as you." 
 
 "Nonsense!" Mary's eyes rested on her sister with an 
 expression of almost passionate love. 
 
 * ' It isn 't nonsense. She 's light because she weighs noth- 
 ing; you're light because you are marvellously well-bal- 
 anced." 
 
 They stopped dancing, and Mary said in an abrupt way 
 that seemed natural to her. "Let's go up in the gallery 
 and look on for a while, shall we ? " 
 
 He assented, and they climbed the stairs and sat down, 
 leaning their arms on the broad oak balustrade. 
 
 It was a beautiful sight, the Great Hall full of dancers. 
 
 They were silent for a minute, and then the young man 
 and the girl, who had been playmates in their childhood, 
 turned and looked at each other. 
 
 "You have changed since I saw you last, Keith," she 
 said. "Let me see, when was it?" 
 
 "I don't know. Wasn't it at Lady Armerod's ball?"
 
 SHAEEOW 157 
 
 ' ' No, I was in France then. It must have been two years 
 ago yes, it was. I saw you one day in the village, don't 
 you remember?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course. It rained and we all took refuge 
 at the doctor's. Well so I'm changed?" 
 
 "Yes. You aren't a real Sharrow, you know. Sandy 
 isn't, either I mean your brother but he is more than 
 you. ' ' 
 
 ' ' If you mean that we are not as ugly as Chinese goblins, 
 thanks in his name and mine." 
 
 The young man laughed and bowed. 
 
 "You certainly aren't ugly. He is really handsome. 
 But you aren't Sharrow-y at all, are you?" 
 
 "Our hair is red." 
 
 "Eeddish. Your noses are too small," the girl went on 
 thoughtfully, her eyes noting with great calm each feature 
 as she named it, "your mouths aren't stern enough, your 
 chin doesn't stick out at all." 
 
 "Thanking you again and again the other Sandy must 
 be more satisfactory to your critical eye." 
 
 Mary laughed. "He is! He is really absurdly like 
 his great-uncle, isn't he?" 
 
 ' ' He would be pleased at that ! ' ' 
 
 "Well, but isn't he? I haven't seen him angry, but I'm 
 sure his jaw protrudes, now doesn't it?" 
 
 Keith, who did not care much for women, and was 
 rather bored, laughed. "If it will do you any good, Mary, ' ' 
 he said, "I don't mind telling you that when he is angry 
 he is as ugly as the very devil himself ! ' ' 
 
 She glanced at him. 
 
 "Thanks. Now let's go down. You want to dance." 
 
 He did not protest, and presently left her standing by her 
 father, and went to seek a partner. 
 
 Her father was talking to an old man whom she did 
 not know, and so for some time the girl stood studying
 
 158 SHARROW 
 
 in detail the scene which, as a whole, had been so effective 
 from the gallery. 
 
 There were about thirty couples on the floor, but it was 
 not at all crowded because the hall was very large. There 
 was Sandy the Heir waltzing with one of Lady Charlotte 
 Grantley's granddaughters, and Keith with a pretty wo- 
 man in old gold satin, and yonder young Paul stood talk- 
 ing to his partner. 
 
 Mary wondered who she was. Whoever she was, the 
 Vicar's daughter decided with a fastidious shrug, she was 
 flirting with Paul, whose smooth, apricot-colored cheeks 
 had flushed to a warmer hue than that which they naturally 
 wore. 
 
 The strange girl, like several other women present, wore 
 black, but Mary knew that this glittering garment was ex- 
 pensive as well as becoming. Vaguely it made her think of 
 the stage. 
 
 "Sandy." 
 
 Our Sandy stopped, Viola was dancing with Sir John 
 Wycherley, and he was waiting for her. 
 
 "Hullo, Mary, not dancing? Come along " 
 
 "No, thanks, I'd rather look on. Sandy, tell me, who is 
 the pretty woman Paul is making love to?" 
 
 "Paul? I can't see oh, yes. It's Syd's my brother's 
 governess, Miss Penrose." 
 
 He eyed the split thumb of his second pair of gloves 
 as he spoke. Mary eyed him. 
 
 "A flirt," she said. 
 
 Sandy chuckled. "Is she? Yes, I dare say. Pretty, 
 isn't she?" 
 
 "Extremely. Paul thinks so, too." 
 
 "Paul does. I hope he's not annoying her." There 
 was real anxiety in his eyes as he leaned forward to try to 
 catch another glimpse, through the shifting foreground, of 
 his cousin.
 
 SHARROW 159 
 
 "She doesn't look annoyed, Sandy. I don't like her." 
 
 Mary's voice was always sure, but it was surer than 
 usual as she uttered these words, and her face was stern. 
 She was a person of strong likes and dislikes, and he 
 remembered, always too cocksure to be perfectly agree- 
 able. 
 
 "Don't you? I am sorry for her. It must be horrible 
 for a girl earning her own living " 
 
 Then Viola came in sight, being subjected by her un- 
 skillful partner to a series of jerks and bumps of which 
 he, judging by his serene face, was happily unconscious. 
 
 Mary watched as Sir John cannoned into a fat lady 
 and during the subsequent apologies allowed Sandy to 
 carry off his pretty partner. 
 
 Miss Penrose watched the little incident, too, and Mary 
 caught a glimpse of her face as Sandy and Viola passed 
 them. 
 
 "Handsome girl, the governess, eh?" asked Sir John, 
 joining her. "My wife says she looks dangerous, and, by 
 Jove ! I believe she does. ' ' 
 
 "Lady Wycherley seems to be very discriminating," re- 
 turned Mary absently. "No, thanks, I'd rather not dance." 
 
 Meantime Paul was having a very good time, as he put 
 it mentally. Never before had Miss Penrose been so charm- 
 ing to him, and, hopeful sign, she certainly was flirting with 
 him, even while she asked questions about Mary Wymond- 
 ham. 
 
 Paul had known the Vicarage girls ever since he was a 
 very small boy, although they had of late years been a 
 great deal away ; and now, as he watched his companion 's 
 beautiful face, glowing and eager as he had never yet seen 
 it, he consciously allowed her to draw him, telling her, be- 
 cause it kept her by his side, all he knew of Mary. She 
 did not mention Viola. 
 
 "She isn't handsome, but she looks very nice," was
 
 160 SHARROW 
 
 Miss Penrose's comment, when he could think of no more 
 to say. "I wonder whom she will marry." 
 
 "What on earth has made you so interested in Mary 
 Wymondham ? ' ' the young man asked. ' ' She isn 't the least 
 your sort or mine, either," he added hastily. "She's a 
 regular young God Almighty knows everything, and 
 wants to rule everybody. Now Viola ' ' 
 
 But Miss Penrose shrugged her shoulders. "The other 
 one does not interest me. She is a bread-and-butter miss, 
 although so lovely." 
 
 "Let's go and have some claret-cup. She's not my 
 kind, either. But," he added, with a chuckle, "don't let 
 Sandy hear you say that my cousin, I mean." 
 
 She took his arm. "Yes, I should love something cold 
 to drink. Oh, then, ' Sandy ' is interested in her ? ' ' 
 
 Paul laughed, for once in his life quite without malice. 
 
 "Where are your eyes? ' he asked.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE next day Lord Sharrow had two very strange and 
 very important interviews. The first of these came to him 
 without his own volition, the other he arranged himself. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon and the house seemed very 
 quiet, for Sandy the Heir, Keith, and Ben Frith had gone. 
 
 Lord Sharrow, who was tired of his own rooms, and yet 
 not sufficiently recovered to subject himself to accidental 
 intercourse with the members of his house-party, had had 
 "Waters install him in the Chinese Room, and there, sur- 
 rounded by Chinese monsters, vases, and bronzes, the old 
 man was encamped by the fire. 
 
 When Sandy knocked, and was bidden to enter, he 
 stood for several seconds in silence. 
 
 The beauty of the old-fashioned lighting systems is that 
 under them the room is as subject to change of expression 
 as is the human face. 
 
 The brilliance of an oil lamp, is, owing to the state of its 
 wick, the amount of oil in it, the very outdoor atmosphere, 
 subject to great variations; the shadows made by it vary 
 in intensity, and even in size ; what one evening remains 
 in relative obscurity, can the next glitter bravely, while the 
 foreground of the night before retires into duskiness. 
 
 The fairy qualities of wax candles need no comment. 
 
 Now Sharrow was lighted from garret to cellar by 
 lamps and candles. And Sandy, going into the Chinese 
 Room that evening, stood still in the doorway to look at his 
 old relati\e in this new frame. 
 
 161
 
 162 S H A E R W 
 
 The walls of the room were hung in once white, now 
 ivory-colored, satin, completely covered with a web of 
 finest, most delicate embroidery. 
 
 Seen in detail, Sandy knew, there were small mandarins 
 in red and yellow and blue, going up nearly perpendicular 
 staircases; there were be-trousered ladies of high degree 
 sitting in pagodas drinking tea; there were lions, griffins, 
 strange dogs, and dragons rich in spangled tail. There 
 were fabulous flowers and lovely willows weeping green 
 tears in a high wind which luckily refused to ruffle the 
 mandarins and the ladies. It was wonderful embroidery, 
 and of great value, but to the young man it had that day 
 a new and rather startling aspect. 
 
 It was a magnificent background for a red-faced, sinis- 
 ter old man, who, wrapped against a possible taint of chill 
 in the rarely-used room, sat by the fire in a mandarin's 
 coat of blue, embroidered all over with malevolent looking 
 dragons. 
 
 "Come in, Sandy, come in. Shut the door, will you? 
 "Well, what are you looking at? Oh, at this!" He 
 glanced down at his coat with a smile that did not 
 lessen his resemblance to a jabberwock-like, porcelain 
 monster who sat on a tall teak-wood tub behind him. 
 "It's a fine coat, if you like chinolseries. Well, what has 
 happened ? ' ' 
 
 Sandy stood before him. "Great-uncle," he said, rather 
 solemnly, ' ' I have something to tell you. ' ' 
 
 The porcelain dragon seemed to wink in the lamplight, 
 but the old man's face wore a peculiar, arrested look. 
 He waited in silence, his dark veined hands folded on a 
 big golden sun. 
 
 "I wish to marry," Sandy went on, slowly, "and you 
 have been so very kind to me I thought I would tell you 
 before I say anything definite to her." 
 
 Lord Sharrow did not move.
 
 SHARROW 163 
 
 "I of course, I am not sure about her answer," Sandy 
 went on, simply, "but I think she will have me." 
 
 Presently he added, "Of course, I am not nearly good 
 enough for her." 
 
 There was another pause, and then at last Lord Shar- 
 row spoke: 
 
 "Miss Penrose, I suppose?" 
 
 "Good heavens, sir, TIC!" 
 
 "No? Then who? You have seen no one here. Some- 
 one in London?" 
 
 ' ' I know I have seen her only a little, Great-uncle, but 
 one look was enough. It's Viola, of course." 
 
 It must be borne in mind that for over sixty years 
 Alexander Sharrow had hated with a hatred that was 
 Old Testament-like in its intensity both the woman he had 
 always thought of as Cyrilla Dallaford, and her descend- 
 ants. It must not be forgotten that he knew his own life 
 to have been wasted, and that he blamed Cyrilla Dallaford 
 for that waste; that he knew himself to have had great 
 gifts, and to have neglected them for her sake. He had 
 loved his hatred and cherished it, and he believed it to 
 be a perfectly justifiable one. 
 
 And he was eighty years old, he was ill, and Sandy, 
 the one human being whom he loved, wished to marry the 
 girl in whose veins ran the blood of his enemy, and the 
 man for whose sake he had been betrayed. 
 
 Very quietly, without a single violent word, Lord Shar- 
 row refused his consent to his great-nephew 's marriage with 
 Miss Wymondham. 
 
 "You know my reasons," he added, still without mov- 
 ing. "If you disobey me, I will never see you again, and 
 I will never again give you one penny. I have no more to 
 say. Good evening. ' ' 
 
 Sandy turned, and marched out of the room. 
 
 He would, he knew, never forget the scene : all the little
 
 164 SHARROW 
 
 Chinamen climbing their stairs in the lamplight; the 
 smiling green and white animal on the barrel-like stand ; the 
 hideous old man, very pale, in his embroidered coat. 
 
 Sandy went to the hall door, and out into the courtyard 
 he so loved. 
 
 It was a dark, cloudy evening, and the flames of the big 
 torches were already blowing about in their corners, cast- 
 ing great shadows up the walls and across the cobblestones. 
 The moon was hidden by a huge black cloud, and a few 
 drops of rain began to fall. 
 
 Sandy stood, his hands in his pockets, his smooth, red 
 head shining in the torchlight. He had not told his great- 
 uncle quite all the truth, though he had told him nothing 
 but the truth. He was sure that Viola cared for him. He 
 had known last night, and that day at luncheon at the 
 Vicarage had, though he had not seen her alone, made him 
 doubly sure. He never doubted but that she would, if she 
 loved him, marry him without a penny, but he could not 
 do her that wrong. They must wait, and he would work. 
 
 The fact that he was not adapted to any particular 
 work did not occur to him. He was young; he was healthy 
 surely he could do what so many other young men had 
 succeeded in doing. 
 
 He would go to the Vicarage at once, and ask her to 
 wait for him. And then he would tell his great-uncle 
 and leave Sharrow forever. 
 
 Some one opened the door of the Great Hall to the 
 right of where he stood, and he caught a glimpse of the 
 fireplace gilded by the dancing flames of a great log. His 
 heart contracted as if a hand were crushing it. 
 
 Leave Sharrow? Suddenly all the old feeling came 
 over him; the love that was almost a pain; the dream- 
 feeling that it was a part of him, and he a part of it. 
 
 For a long moment he yearned over the old place, his 
 brows drawn down over his eyes that were almost hidden
 
 S H A R R O W 165 
 
 in a network of wrinkles, his hands clenched in his pock- 
 ets. He loved it horribly. Life would be an imperfect 
 thing without it; with it, a great part of his own self 
 must go. 
 
 Then his face cleared slowly, the blood rushed back to 
 his cheeks, he drew his cramped hands out of his pockets, 
 looked at them curiously, stretched the fingers, and drew 
 a deep breath. 
 
 "Then it must go," he said, aloud.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 "MR. SHARROW Sandy." 
 
 He started, for out of the shadows opposite him, coming 
 from a small staircase leading up to the more modern of 
 the bedrooms, came Maggie Penrose. 
 
 She wore a sealskin jacket, Lord Sharrow 's Christmas 
 present, and a little round cap of the same fur. And in the 
 torchlight he could see that she was deeply excited. 
 
 "Listen," she said, hurriedly, catching his arm. "I 
 know all about it, and you must let me help you." 
 
 "Help me? But how do you know?" 
 
 "I know because he told me," she declared boldly, 
 "Lord Sharrow, I mean. I went in to play cribbage with 
 him, and he burst out and told me all about it. And 
 oh, don't do anything stupid!" 
 
 Sandy hated her knowing, and he resented his great- 
 uncle's telling her. 
 
 "I am going out," he said. "Good-by." 
 
 She caught his arm. "But you can't go without a hat, 
 and it's going to pour. Come back in just for a minute, and 
 I will tell you how you can make him forgive you. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Confound it, Miss Penrose ! I beg your pardon, but I 
 wish you'd let go my arm. And I need no forgiveness 
 from Lord Sharrow." 
 
 "I know, I know. Don't take up my every word. Try 
 and get the sense " 
 
 "I know the sense of only one thing," he answered, 
 more gently, but his jaw still protruding a little. "Thanks 
 
 166
 
 S H A R R W 167 
 
 very much for wishing to help me, but I must go now. 
 Good-by." 
 
 Seeing that she might as well expect to move the house 
 itself as to make him give up his newly crystallized plan, 
 she said no more. He walked quickly across to the tower 
 and had already disappeared under its shadow when she 
 called to him. 
 
 ' ' Remember Syd, ' ' she said. 
 
 He stopped, and she judged by the unbroken silence that 
 he had not even turned. Then the old gate-porter, who had 
 heard him coming, opened the big doors leading to the 
 avenue, and Sandy stood silhouetted against the gleam of 
 the lake and the darkness of the western sky. 
 
 "Never mind, John," she heard him say, in a strange 
 voice, as though he had a bad cold, "I I have forgotten 
 something and must go back. ' ' 
 
 The girl stood looking at him as he returned to her 
 side. 
 
 "You told me to remember my brother," he said heavily. 
 "You are right. Thanks." 
 
 And again she stood alone in the windy darkness, the 
 rain splashing her hot face, as he crossed the court and 
 went into the Great Hall. 
 
 After a few minutes she went in, and without taking off 
 her jacket, went straight to the Chinese Room. 
 
 "Well?" the old man asked impatiently looking up. 
 "Did you catch him?" 
 
 "Yes. He was just going to the Vicarage, and I cut him 
 off (I saw him from my window), in the courtyard. He 
 wouldn 't listen to me, though I told him I had come from 
 you " 
 
 "You idiot! I beg your pardon, but why in Heaven's 
 name did you tell him that? The very thing to send him 
 off hot-foot to the girl!" 
 
 "Not at all," she retorted calmly, unfastening her jacket
 
 168 SHARROW 
 
 and sitting down unbidden. "I didn't tell him that you 
 had sent for me to tell me I told him I came in to play 
 cribbage, as usual, and that you well, just told me, on an 
 impulse. ' ' 
 
 "Oh! Well, that's a little better," he conceded, grudg- 
 ingly. 
 
 "A 'little better?' It was the only thing to do. You 
 must remember he doesn't like me. I shouldn't have been 
 able to keep him for one second without telling him I had 
 seen you." 
 
 Old Sharrow rose and moved restlessly about the beau- 
 tiful room, looking so much one of themselves among the 
 costly and hideous monsters of the collection that the 
 girl's quick eyes saw the resemblance as Sandy's had. 
 
 "And he came back in with you?" 
 
 "No. He said he was going to the Vicarage. He left 
 me, and went as far as the Tower door, and then" she 
 made a little dramatic pause ' ' I had a flash of genius. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh ! And what may your flash of genius have been ? ' ' 
 He sneered, but she did not care. 
 
 ' ' I said two words to him. Now, Lord Sharrow, you are 
 so much cleverer than I see if you can guess the two 
 words that brought him back into the house!" 
 
 "Nonsense of course I can't guess. Tell me tell me 
 at once," he insisted. She smiled, and did not reply. 
 
 "Tell me." This time there was pleading in his voice. 
 
 "I said, 'Remember Syd.' " 
 
 After a short silence Lord Sharrow said, "You are right. 
 It was a flash of genius. I was right in telling you. You 
 have a brain. 'Remember Syd.' Yes, I can put on that 
 screw. And," his voice rose angrily, "by God, I will! I 
 forgave the man, and asked them here had to he had 
 been kind to me. But I would rather see the boy dead 
 than married to Cyrilla Dallaford's daughter." 
 
 "Granddaughter," corrected Miss Penrose.
 
 S H A E E W 169 
 
 He nodded. "Of course, of course granddaughter. 
 Well, if he does marry her, his beloved Syd can go to the 
 Blue Coat School for all I care. Not one penny will I 
 give towards his education not one farthing. And I will 
 tell him so, too. Just ring the bell, please, will you?" 
 
 She did not move. It was, she realized with great 
 poignancy, the turn in the tide of her affairs. Lord Shar- 
 row meant to use her ; she could, with a little skill, manage 
 to use him. 
 
 "The bell is at your elbow," he added. 
 
 She rose. 
 
 "Lord Sharrow," she began, very slowly, her fingers 
 interlaced, her eyes downcast, "may I speak to you quite 
 frankly?" 
 
 He grunted assent, his eyes on the bell. 
 
 "What you wish is to prevent your great-nephew's mar- 
 rying Miss Wymondham?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And you would do nearly anything to prevent such a 
 marriage?" 
 
 "Nearly anything? I would do anything on earth to 
 prevent it. And I will prevent it, too, I'll I'll " 
 
 She held up her hand. "Please let me finish. Then, if 
 you do not like my plan, I will ring the bell, and you can 
 send for him, and and spoil it all in your own way." 
 
 "What do you mean?" he growled, but looking at her 
 with unwilling interest. 
 
 ' ' I mean this. He is already very angry with you, and 
 mind you, I have seen him since you did, and I know 
 what his state of mind is. At one word from you he would 
 take Syd, marry Miss Wymondham and leave the country 
 to 'make his living' in Australia or America!" 
 
 The old man heard the scorn underlying her words, 
 "make his living," and his attention deepened and quick- 
 ened. For several minutes he sat watching his confederate,
 
 170 S H A R R W 
 
 while she unfolded to him a plan that had two great 
 merits: it was very simple, and it would undoubtedly 
 keep Sandy near his great-uncle for a year. 
 
 The girl spoke rather slowly, a thing that invariably im- 
 presses hot-headed people, and she spoke with an assump- 
 tion of authority that left to the old man only a passive 
 part to play. 
 
 And he was very tired. 
 
 Presently she paused, and he answered her. 
 
 "I agree with you," he said, "and I will take your ad- 
 vice. Will you do your first part this evening, and let 
 me know, before I go to bed, what he says?" 
 
 "I will, Lord Sharrow." 
 
 "I will not ask you," he said with a change of voice 
 that did not escape her quick ear, "why you are so beau- 
 tifully ready to sacrifice yourself on the altar of friend- 
 ship to a poor old wreck like me." 
 
 She looked him full in the eyes. "Do not sneer," she 
 said. "You know quite well why I wish to prevent his 
 marrying Viola Wymondham. I love him myself, and you 
 know it. Therefore, it is not kind to jeer at me." 
 
 ' ' I beg your pardon, Miss Penrose. You are quite right 
 to rebuke me, and I beg your pardon. But I think it fair 
 to tell you that I will never consent to his marrying you, 
 either." 
 
 She started and flushed. "Sandy Sharrow would never 
 dream of marrying me," she said, with the dignity that 
 had impressed him before, "because he does not love me. 
 There will never be any question of that." 
 
 "Good. Then our unholy pact is sealed. Wait a mo- 
 ment." He opened the drawer of one of the inlaid cabinets 
 and, returning to her, handed her a small jade god, beau- 
 tifully carved. 
 
 "This old person," he told her, as she took it and held 
 it under the lampshade to inspect it, "is a Chinese devil-
 
 SHARROW 171 
 
 god. It seems, under the circumstances an appropriate 
 gift from me to you " 
 
 ' ' Thanks. ' ' She unfastened a little gold chain from her 
 neck and slipped it through a hole in the carving in the 
 infinitesimal monster's anatomy. "I will wear him al- 
 ways. And if ever I decide to break our partnership, I 
 will give him back to you. ' ' 
 
 They shook hands gravely and parted, the old man 
 standing for some time where she had left him, his face 
 thoughtful.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 MAGGIE PENROSE had agreed without demur to Lord Shar- 
 row 's classifying their pact as an unholy one, but as a mat- 
 ter of fact it was one which could have been told to anyone 
 and received approval. 
 
 It was simply this. His great-uncle disapproving his 
 marriage with Miss Wymondham, Sandy was to put it off 
 for one year, thus securing for his young brother the educa- 
 tional advantages he craved for him. 
 
 It was bribery, but bribery that sounded perfectly justi- 
 fiable, and as such Sandy was bound to accept it. 
 
 "You will promise, sir, to let us marry, if I wish, one 
 year from to-day, and to send Syd to Eton and Oxford?" 
 the young man said when his great-uncle had confirmed 
 Miss Penrose's interpretation of his intentions. 
 
 "I will. If, at the end of the year, you and Miss Wy- 
 mondham still wish to marry, I will settle on you the five 
 hundred a year you are now having as an allowance. You 
 may do what you like with it, and your brother's education 
 will continue to be my affair." 
 
 "You will promise?" 
 
 It was about eleven or'clock, and the two men sat in Lord 
 Sharrow's sitting-room. The sunlight, pale but beautiful, 
 streamed in over the carved white woodwork, and brought 
 into unwonted distinctness the dark old pictures let into 
 the panels. Sandy stood thinking by one of the win- 
 dows, his big shoulders nearly shutting out the light 
 from it. 
 
 172
 
 SHARROW 173 
 
 It seemed quite reasonable ; to his bodily ears it sounded 
 an offer such as no young man would be justified in refus- 
 ing ; it was more than fair it was even kind, for there was 
 no reason why the old man should undertake Syd's educa- 
 tion, a thing he had never suggested before. And yet 
 Sandy hesitated, as one hesitates on a dark staircase, feel- 
 ing for a step that is not there. 
 
 ' ' I don 't see why you should dislike her less in a year 's 
 time than you do now, ' ' he said, presently, in a hesitating 
 voice. 
 
 ' ' Then you are a very ungallant lover ! Could I not be 
 vanquished by a closer acquaintance ? Could not her mani- 
 fold virtues " 
 
 "No, sir." Sandy wheeled round, and faced him. "I 
 don't think you could. I know I couldn't, if I had hated 
 a family, root and branch, for sixty years. And I am sure 
 you couldn't. That is why I don't accept your offer, 
 which is, of course, a most generous one, at once. It it 
 sounds all right, but I am not quite sure. There seems 
 to be something I don't yet quite get at." 
 
 His great-uncle loved him very much at that moment, 
 but he did not say so. 
 
 Instead, he asked with great suavity, "And, may I ask, 
 if you do not accept my generous offer, because of this 
 black something which you cannot quite get at, how do you 
 intend to live?" 
 
 "I could live all right, sir. I have a hundred a year of 
 my own, and I own the house in Guelph Square. And I 
 could work. But you have me on the hip about Syd. 
 There's the truth." 
 
 Eventually, after a day's reflection, during which the 
 astute Maggie persuaded the old man to refrain from say- 
 ing a word to him on the matter, Sandy accepted his 
 great-uncle's offer, and a few days later returned to 
 Cambridge, an engaged man, for Viola accepted him with-
 
 174 S H A R R O W 
 
 out a moment's hesitation, and James Wymondham shook 
 him by the hand, and told him that he would be glad to 
 give him his little girl when the time came. 
 
 "The time will come in less than a year, sir four days 
 less than three hundred and sixty-five. Oh, Vi!" 
 
 They were very happy, the tall ugly young man and his 
 beautiful little sweetheart. No unwise stipulations about 
 secrecy were made by Lord Sharrow, so the congratulations 
 that they received from gentle and simple were many, and 
 served to consolidate what still seemed to Sandy like a 
 dream of impossible bliss. 
 
 Old Dingle had, it transpired, seen in them one day, 
 years ago, a future couple! 
 
 "You were holding her on your horse, Roderick Dhu, 
 and she wore a pink frock, with 'er 'air all round 'er face, 
 and I said to Sally didn 't I, my girl ? ' there 's the future 
 Mrs. Sandy!'" 
 
 "You did, indeed, Father. Now, Miss Viola, just another 
 teeny drop of the wine I made it myself, it couldn't hurt 
 a baby." 
 
 Wonderful dream-days, never to be forgotten. Never to 
 be forgotten, too, the lovers told each other, was Miss 
 Penrose's sympathy and kindness. 
 
 "If it hadn't been for her the fat would have been in 
 the fire now, ' ' Sandy said, laughing, but serious-eyed. ' ' In 
 fact, Miss Penrose, we owe it all to you." 
 
 Maggie Penrose did not answer for a moment. Sandy and 
 Viola were walking hand in hand, like two children, and 
 she was on Viola's other side. 
 
 ' ' I didn 't make you love each other, ' ' she said, presently, 
 clearing her throat. 
 
 "No. God did that" 
 
 Viola spoke quite simply, as parsons' well-brought-up 
 daughters used, but the governess started. She was a trai- 
 tor, but not yet an altogether hardened one, and she had
 
 SHARROW 175 
 
 been taught to believe in the God to whom of late she had 
 hardly given a thought. 
 
 And then, as she invented some excuse, and hurried 
 back to the house, she told herself hotly that as yet 
 she had done nothing to hurt the lovers. "I can just clear 
 out, and the old man will have to keep his word. No one 
 else will ever 'do it' if I don't. And I won't. No, 1 
 won't. He'd never look at me, anyhow, and now he does 
 like me, at least. ' ' 
 
 But that evening Sandy listened while she played, the 
 little green god gleaming on her white neck, and she fell a 
 degree deeper in love with him. 
 
 She went to bed declaring to herself that she did not care 
 if he never married her that she knew he never would do 
 that but that she might manage to catch a certain kind of 
 love from him on the rebound. And she told herself that 
 she would "do it." 
 
 Even now she was not sure what it was with which she 
 had charged herself. She had told Lord Sharrow that in 
 the year granted to her she would manage to break the en- 
 gagement, and definitely prevent the marriage from ever 
 taking place, but she had no distinct plan. She was one of 
 those who trust to luck, and to whom a year seems an eter- 
 nity. 
 
 And in the loneliness that followed Sandy's return to 
 Cambridge, the interminable length of each day, as it 
 dragged by, strengthened the girl in her resolve.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 MRS. SHABBOW and Syd and his governess stayed on and 
 on at Sharrow. The elder woman liked being there, for it 
 enhanced her boy's importance in her own eyes, and, as 
 she believed, in those of other people. 
 
 Syd, a most amiable child, enjoyed the country life, and 
 during the next two months he developed very satisfactor- 
 ily. His thin legs and arms hardened, his delicate face 
 grew broader and less girlish, and the color in them took 
 on a more boyish brown. 
 
 He learned to ride, and to Lord Sharrow 's surprise for 
 the old man had hitherto made no secret of the fact that 
 he regarded the boy rather as a milksop showed a real 
 talent for the management of horses. 
 
 "Sits like a Centaur, by Jove," the old man declared 
 one day shortly before the Easter holidays, when he, driv- 
 ing back from White Shirley, had chanced to see the boy 
 take a rather dangerous fence. "Looks nearly as well as 
 Keith. H'm he must have a horse." 
 
 It is hard to say how much of real generosity there was 
 in the old man. He was certainly free-handed, but possi- 
 bly there was too much self-gratification in his gifts to have 
 them greatly counted unto him. 
 
 So, a fortnight later, when Sandy came for his holidays, 
 his young brother met him at the station, mounted on a 
 magnificent little mare. 
 
 The boy refused to let his treasure be ridden home by a 
 groom, even for the joy of coming in the dog-cart with 
 
 176
 
 S H A R R W 177 
 
 Sandy, and rode by the dog-cart's side, handsome, proud, 
 pirn pant. 
 
 Sandy eyed him as they made their way homewards in 
 the bright spring sunshine. The boy had grown, developed, 
 become handsomer and less pretty, and he sat his horse 
 as if he and it were indeed one. 
 
 "You've grown, kid," he said gruffly. "Who per- 
 suaded mother to let you wear human clothes instead of 
 that beastly velvet?" 
 
 In the matter of Syd's dress, although in nearly every 
 other she had learned to obey her big son, Antoinette had 
 hitherto been immovable. 
 
 "Great-uncle." 
 
 "How'd he do it?" 
 
 Syd chuckled as Stareyes picked her way daintily 
 through a puddle. "By raising his eyebrows." 
 
 "By ?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. Every time I came near him he'd take a bit 
 of velvet between his finger and thumb and look at it 
 without saying a word, but with his eyebrows climbing 
 up to his hair. At first she used to ask him if he didn't 
 like it, and to explain that it was the very best to be got 
 at Marshall and Snelgrove's, but he never answered; he just 
 wriggled his eyebrows so at last she took me to town. We 
 had a glorious feed, Sandear, and saw Toole, and she got 
 me a lot of these things, ' ' glancing with satisfaction at his 
 serviceable tweeds. 
 
 Sandy blessed his great-uncle's eyebrows. 
 
 "And the tutor?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, he 's a topper. Got a blue at Oxford for throwing 
 the hammer, and knows no end. I really like Greek now." 
 
 Sandy nodded and remained in meditative silence for a 
 time. Presently, as they clattered over the murderous cob- 
 bles of the village, he shouted to his brother : ' ' What about 
 Miss Penrose, Syd?"
 
 178 SHARROW . 
 
 Syd bowed with foreign grace to the doctor's old-maid 
 sister, and then, in the sudden quiet of the high road, an- 
 swered the question. 
 
 "Oh, she's all right. She plays to me a lot now, and 
 is working like fury at her own music, since she hasn't 
 had to bother with me." 
 
 "I see. But is she staying on?" 
 
 "I don't know, but I should think so. No one seems 
 to think of her going. Besides, where should she go ? She 's 
 awfully poor, you know, and she likes Sharrow. ' ' 
 
 On the arrival of Mr. Boniface, the tutor, Maggie had 
 gone to her employer and suggested her own immediate 
 departure. Mrs. Sharrow demurred, but feebly. 
 
 "I don't want to lose you, Miss Penrose; I shall miss 
 you dreadfully," the French woman said. "But I sup- 
 pose, now that he has a tutor " 
 
 "Exactly. I shall hate going, but it would be a great 
 expense to have us both." 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow, of course, then "consulted" her host, 
 with the result that Miss Penrose 's valuable services were, 
 on behalf of her late pupil, musically, and on that of her 
 late pupil's mother, socially, retained for an indefinite 
 period. 
 
 "She is so easy to manage," Maggie said, later, to the 
 old man, "it seems a shame to do it." 
 
 "A womanish and foolish argument. Besides, everyone 
 in the world can be managed in some way. The trouble 
 sometimes is to find the way," declared her ally with his 
 least pleasant grin. 
 
 So, but for the addition of George Augustus Boniface, 
 a shy, powerful man with the great love of sport that Lord 
 Sharrow had insisted on in Syd's tutor, the little house- 
 party remained what it had been left by Sandy on his de- 
 parture for Cambridge. 
 
 Boniface, whose shyness was constitutional, was in the
 
 SHARROW 179 
 
 presence of ladies nearly mute, and this fact, which re- 
 sulted in his more or less complete absorption of his pupil 's 
 time, was a welcome one to the old man. 
 
 "No, Antoinette," the tyrant declared, when the tutor 
 had been there about a fortnight, "I will not send him 
 away and get a Miss Nancy who would, by spending all 
 his time with you and Miss Penrose, make of the boy a 
 greater milksop than he already is. Boniface remains." 
 
 "Syd is not a milksop," the widow protested, passion- 
 ately. 
 
 "And I say that he is." 
 
 Under the rouge, the purple of the poor woman's birth- 
 mark darkened slowly. ' ' Oh, if we only were not so poor, ' ' 
 she said, rapidly, in her own tongue. "If only my poor 
 Sydney had lived!" 
 
 The old man studied her face as if her anger was a spec- 
 tacle produced to amuse him. 
 
 ' ' If your poor Sydney had lived, ' ' he began, suavely, and 
 then, remembering that she was his guest and bound to 
 be grateful to him, he stopped short, adding in his gentlest 
 voice that voice which old Lady Charlotte Grantly had 
 qualified as smooth ' ' My dear lady, let us not quarrel. As 
 Sydney has gone, will you not try, in the all-important 
 matter of bringing up your son, to trust to my judg- 
 ment?" 
 
 So she dried her eyes and forgave him, and a little later 
 wrote to Bean, who was in London, that she was much 
 pleased with the new tutor, who, while perhaps a trifle 
 gauche, was a fine manly young man, beautifully adapted 
 to counteract in poor little Syd certain girlish character- 
 istics that had of late begun to disquiet his mother. 
 
 And Bean, who was that afternoon offering a hospitable 
 cup of tea to her old enemy, the mother of Lionel and 
 Milton, read the letter aloud. 
 
 Mrs. Bilkington, now long since safe in the folds of mat-
 
 180 SHARROW 
 
 rimony, and living in some state in Somers Town, listened 
 with the deepest interest. 
 
 "Always was a little girlish, wasn't 'e?" she said, as 
 the letter was restored to its envelope. "Sandy was more 
 my style. ' ' 
 
 "Well, Cook I mean to say, Mrs. Bilkington that's 
 just according to taste, as I always say. For those who 
 like strength, of course, Mr. Sandy is the one; but Syddy 
 is a sweet boy very sweet, and as 'ansome as 'ansome. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, 'e is that. Sandy never was for looks, was 'e? 
 Lor, I can see him now, showing me the portraits and ask- 
 ing me, so anxious, did I think 'e would grow up to look 
 like 'em?" 
 
 Bean sighed. ' ' 'E 'as done, too. But 'e 's a fine young 
 man, for all that, Cook. The other day he came to see me, 
 and blest, if 'e didn't bring 'is young lady's likeness to 
 show me!" 
 
 Mrs. Bilkington 's interest was intense. "Oh, now, 
 Nurse, do tell me about 'er. Pretty, I 'ope ? ' ' 
 
 "As a picture. Of course, I always think 'pretty is as 
 pretty does,' but then, 'e says she's an angel; she cer- 
 tainly looks like one." 
 
 Thus Somers Town took an interest in Sharrow, for Mrs. 
 Bilkington returned to her domestic hearth full of this 
 chronicle of high life, and with it duly entertaining her 
 friends. 
 
 And down in the green country Sandy and Viola spent 
 long hours together: in the woods, where his great fingers 
 gathered thin-stemmed spring flowers for her, while the 
 silky young leaves shivered over their heads; in the dull 
 rooms of ,the Vicarage transfigured for him by her pres- 
 ence, to the greatest beauty ; in the old house itself, where, 
 by the hour, he showed to her its and his treasures, read 
 or told her its history, tried to reveal to her its magic. 
 
 In the last point he failed utterly. She "admired," she
 
 SHARROW 181 
 
 was sometimes even enthusiastic, but she never caught his 
 fine rapture. It was not in her, the blood to which the 
 very atmosphere of the house was as a torch to kindle, 
 and fire, and uplift. 
 
 The little alien governess was, had he but known it, of 
 all the people under its roof, after his great-uncle and 
 himself, the one who came the nearest to feeling what he 
 felt. 
 
 Syd, though always ready to listen, to admire what he 
 saw thrilled his big brother, and really loving his Frois- 
 sart and other tales of knightly deeds, yet never knew why 
 Sandy's voice grew so strange at times as he told him 
 stories in the twilight of the bold Sharrows. Any knight 
 was as good to Syd as a Sharrow, provided he was brave 
 and romantic, but only a Sharrow made Sandy's eyes 
 glow in that particular way. The younger boy, who was 
 an expressive, used to ask his brother, his mother, even 
 Viola, whom he adored, why this was. 
 
 Sandy, who was an inexpressive, talked to no one, not 
 even to his sweetheart, about his brother's failure to un- 
 derstand. Viola was Viola, but Syd was Syd. 
 
 He was of those whose loves and friendships never over- 
 lap. Personal discussion of his dear ones with each other 
 was an impossibility to him; each love, each friendship, 
 he kept, so to speak, in an air-tight compartment; they 
 never touched each other.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 MAGGIE PENROSE, at this time, was living breathlessly. 
 She had not as yet raised a finger to further the fulfilling 
 of her agreement with Lord Sharrow. Spring had come; 
 all the world was green; she was young; her own beauty 
 was to her at that time as a sharp weapon which, at any 
 moment, she might use. 
 
 In a word, she felt her power generally, without any 
 specific end in view. It is a wonderful sensation, this of 
 being able to do anything it comes but seldom, even to 
 the few who ever experience it, and it is a powerful intoxi- 
 cant. 
 
 What she would have to do to prevent Sandy's mar- 
 riage, she did not know, but during the spring days she 
 knew that when the time came, she could do it. 
 
 So, deliberately, she drifted. And, during her period 
 of keen passivity, she saw circumstances moulding them- 
 selves to her ultimate end. 
 
 Without her taking one step to secure it, Viola's friend- 
 ship began to come her way. The younger girl, often a 
 little bored by her sister's strenuousness, liked the gov- 
 erness, whose grace and beauty pleased her, and who, as 
 the Vicar's younger daughter put it, never bullied her. 
 
 That Mary did bully her sister, there is no denying, 
 although it was the bullying of great devotion. Mary, 
 who since her childhood had had impressed upon her the 
 necessity for her replacing, to the best of her ability, their 
 dead mother, had early developed a wisdom regarding 
 
 182
 
 S H A R R W 183 
 
 draughts, shawls, overshoes, and other such tiresome mat- 
 ters that at times made life a thing almost burdensome to 
 Viola. 
 
 Viola hated shawls, overshoes, camomile tea, and what, 
 generically, may be termed "fuss." And the robust Mary, 
 who had never had a cold in her life, appeared to revel in 
 them in her relation to her sister. 
 
 Viola was never out of temper, never impatient, and 
 Mary had no suspicion that her attentions were irritating; 
 but Viola, loving her sister deeply, was yet, at times, bored 
 to death by her. 
 
 And Maggie Penrose was an ideal antidote to Mary. So 
 the two girls became friends, and, as the fashion of the 
 day prescribed, used to practise duets together. This gave 
 them hours of dual solitude, in which Maggie learned to 
 know very well the girl Sandy Sharrow meant to marry. 
 And even while she never mentioned her discoveries to a 
 soul, while, even, with a strange delicacy she rarely put a 
 leading question to the simpler girl, yet at the back of 
 her brain was a slowly-growing accumulation of knowledge 
 regarding Viola which Maggie knew would some day be 
 of use to her. 
 
 Lord Sharrow, who grew stronger with the increase of 
 power in the sun's rays, used occasionally to come and sit 
 in the drawing-room, newspaper in hand, during the prac- 
 tising of the duets. 
 
 At first his presence embarrassed the friends, but after 
 a while they grew used to it, and sometimes quite forgot 
 it. 
 
 On these occasion the old man gleaned, in his turn, bits 
 of information that pleased him. He rarely mentioned 
 Sandy to Miss Penrose, although they played cribbage 
 together every afternoon, but she knew that his determina- 
 tion against the marriage had never faltered. 
 
 He was, she realized, but staying his hand, giving her a
 
 184 SHARROW 
 
 chance; if, when he considered her time ripe, she did 
 nothing, he would put her aside as a worthless tool and 
 take the direction of affairs himself. 
 
 And she would be obliged to go forth into the world 
 again, begin a fresh struggle for her very bread, and lose 
 even the occasional sight of Sandy. 
 
 She was not a born adventuress, for the excitement of 
 the hazard had no charm for her. She was not one of those 
 not very unusual women who are capable of enjoying the 
 uncertainty of life, who can buy a good meal with their 
 last sovereign, and laugh as they do it. She liked security 
 and good food, and a good bed, and here all the good 
 things of life were hers. She would not lose them, even 
 though she could never win Sandy's love, but the time 
 had not yet come when she must act. So spring came to 
 its full beauty and she had done nothing but allow Viola 
 to make a friend of her, and to trust her. 
 
 One morning when Sandy and Viola and Syd had gone 
 for a long ride, the summons she had for days been ex- 
 pecting came to Miss Penrose from Lord Sharrow. 
 
 The day was very mild, so warm that the old man was 
 in the rose garden, walking gently about among the glis- 
 tening greenery with a plaid over his shoulders. 
 
 "Good morning, Miss Penrose." They shook hands 
 politely, and she joined him in his walk. 
 
 "Isn't that wall beautiful?" he began, pointing to the 
 south wall, which, indeed, was a marvel of ripe stone, 
 arabesqued with lichens, stonecrop, and other delicate 
 sprouting things. "If only age improved us humans as 
 its does stone. A hundred and fifty years ago that wall 
 was in its newness an eyesore. And now look at it!" 
 
 He spoke sadly. Sometimes of late she had been on the 
 edge of thinking that his cynicism grew less, but an occa- 
 sional outburst of it had always undeceived her. 
 
 "Stone walls don't think, for one thing," she suggested,
 
 S H A R R W 185 
 
 as they stopped to walk around a huge toad, who was sun- 
 ning himself in their route. 
 
 He glanced at her. "No, presumably not. And we do, 
 and thus wear out our muscles and tissue, you mean. I 
 daresay. By the way, that is why I asked for the honor of 
 your society for a little while this morning. What do you 
 think about my great-nephew?" 
 
 His voice changed sharply at the last words, but it was 
 not its business-like tone that caused her to flush angrily 
 and look away. It was because never once since the be- 
 ginning of their acquaintance, during either their days of 
 ceremoniousness, their strange little friendship, or their 
 conspiracy, had he spoken to her of Sandy otherwise than 
 as "my great-nephew." 
 
 He had often been sarcastic and disagreeable to her, 
 more than once he had been rude (although he invariably 
 apologized for such a lapse), but none of his words ever 
 annoyed her so much as the two, "my great-nephew." 
 They seemed to put between her and him a barrier of caste, 
 and he, watching her sideways, misunderstood. 
 
 "You think I am hurrying you. You are wrong. This 
 is April, so you have only eight months in which " 
 
 "But I am not at all sure that I am going to do it," 
 she burst out, giving way to the temper that she as a rule 
 kept battened down by her will. "I rather like Viola." 
 
 It was an absurd speech as well as an injudicious 
 one, and she knew it, but for the moment she did not 
 care. 
 
 A gardener was trimming a high espalier rose at the far 
 end of the garden, and the clipping sound of his shears 
 rang out rhythmically. The old man glanced at the green 
 god. 
 
 "Ah! You rather like 'Viola'!" 
 
 She whirled around. "Yes, Lord Sharrow, and you 
 needn't emphasize the name. She calls me Maggie, and
 
 186 SHARROW 
 
 I call her Viola, and I really can't see that it is anything 
 to you. ' ' 
 
 He laughed, his dark teeth showing behind his discol- 
 ored lips, his red-edged old eyes crinkling with amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 "I see. Very well, then, my dear Miss Penrose, you and 
 Viola are friends. Is that why you are going to allow 
 Sandy to marry her ? I thought you loved him yourself. ' ' 
 
 The gardener was whistling now, a popular waltz. He 
 was a young man, and fond of music. 
 
 Suddenly the girl's eyes filled with tears, and she felt 
 weak all over, as though she were going to faint. 
 
 "I do, Lord Sharrow, indeed I do. And that is why I 
 sometimes think I had better not interfere " 
 
 It was made on pure impulse, the speech, for she had 
 never seriously contemplated staying her hand, but its 
 effect was electrical. 
 
 For ten minutes the old man talked, brooking no inter- 
 ruption. He spoke quietly, rapidly, with a choice of 
 words that struck her as remarkable, with a force of argu- 
 ment that would have convinced her had she not already 
 been convinced. 
 
 And, finally, he clinched things by a compliment. 
 
 "You have told me that you are poor," he said, "and 
 I am rich. It would be easy for me to offer you a heavy 
 bribe. But your being what you are, closes my mouth 
 in that respect. It would be to insult you. So do not use 
 my powerlessness against me." 
 
 That evening Miss Penrose made the first move in her 
 game. 
 
 When Sandy, having taken Viola home after luncheon 
 and stayed to tea, came into the Small Hall, his clothes 
 were glistening with drops of water. It had come on to 
 rain, and he was wet and cold. 
 
 "No tea going?" he asked.
 
 S H A E R W 187 
 
 "Yes, but have a brandy and soda instead; you will 
 take cold, you are so wet." 
 
 *' Brandy and soda?" He hesitated, and she rang the 
 bell. 
 
 "Yes. 'Why not?" 
 
 He did not answer ; she gave the order when the servant 
 came in, and Sandy sat down by the fire, enveloped with 
 peaty steam from his drying tweeds, a stiff brandy and 
 soda at his elbow.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 VIOLA WYMONDHAM could never recall the occasion on 
 which she first knew that Sandy had a fondness for brandy. 
 
 Later, on looking back and probing her memory, it 
 seemed to her that she had always known it, yet she knew 
 that could not be. As a matter of fact, it was Maggie 
 Penrose who hinted at it as a kind of heritage, and in this 
 the ex-governess told the strict truth, as fortune by some 
 freak granted her the doing on many occasions as she pur- 
 sued her end. 
 
 Over and over again it happened that the truth thus 
 turned itself to a weapon in her hand, and this caused a 
 feeling almost of righteousness to grow up within her. 
 
 If she had been forced to many lies, her own iniquity 
 could not but have become clear to her, and this, for she 
 needed her own approbation, would have hampered her 
 to a certain extent. 
 
 But as she was telling for the greater part of the time 
 only the pure truth, how could it be that she was doing 
 wrong? And Sandy did like brandy. 
 
 This he had found out when he was a child, and his 
 great-uncle had given him bits of sugar dipped in it. As 
 a youth of nineteen he had once drunk himself into a 
 heavy sleep, but after a horror-stricken morning in which 
 he beheld himself another such as his great-uncle, he had 
 taken a vow not to touch the stuff for a year. 
 
 He had kept his vow, but at the end of the year, to try 
 his strength, he bought a bottle of Three Stars, and, keep- 
 
 188
 
 SHARROW 189 
 
 ing it in a cupboard, took a glass every afternoon. He 
 never took more than one glass, and thus, having proved 
 himself his own master, allowed himself the occasional joy 
 of a drink. 
 
 For it was to him, unfortunately, a real joy. He did 
 not bolt the brandy, nor drown it with a careless spurt 
 of syphon water. With the connoisseur's eye he measured 
 it into a glass, and with deep attention added the desired 
 exact amount and it was an infinitesimal one of soda. 
 Then he sat down in a comfortable chair, and very slowly, 
 luxuriously, sipped, holding each mouthful in his mouth, 
 moving his tongue in it as a tired man moves in his bath, 
 and then letting it slide slowly down his rapturous throat. 
 
 And this was his only secret. Even Ben Frith had no 
 idea of his friend's danger. To Sandy himself it seemed 
 no danger, because he could check his desire for a second 
 glass. He honestly believed that he was safe, and, in the 
 arrogance of his youth, looked down on his great-uncle 
 for his lack of self-control. 
 
 Only three times in his life had he taken what he him- 
 self admitted to be "too much." Once, on the occasion 
 already referred to; once, when Syd had pneumonia and 
 he, Sandy, had sat up with him for three nights and could 
 find no rest in his anxiety, and the evening of the day when 
 he had rushed in a rage away from Sharrow after quar- 
 reling with his great-uncle. This last time the brandy had 
 been the accompaniment of other pain-deadeners, and he 
 had awakened in a place the memory of which always 
 caused him a sharp twinge of pain. 
 
 And now, in his great happiness, he found brandy-and- 
 soda to be met with in greater frequency than ever be- 
 fore at Sharrow. 
 
 Like many men who nearly or quite deserve the name 
 of drunkard, Lord Sharrow disliked seeing spirits about 
 his house. No whiskey ever came in with the tea at Shar-
 
 190 SHAREOW 
 
 row, and only wines were served with the meals. So Sandy 
 observed with surprise that this order of things had 
 changed. 
 
 One day he was told why. It appeared that the doctor 
 had ordered Miss Penrose to drink a glass of weak brandy 
 and soda twice a day, as a tonic. 
 
 "Old Gill ordering 'speerits' to a patient? By Jove, 
 that is a change! Miss Jeannie will be murdering him." 
 
 "Oh; it wasn't Dr. Gill," interposed Maggie, hastily. 
 "I saw my own doctor when I went to London the other 
 day " 
 
 Sandy, his mustache still wet with brandy, eyed her 
 benevolently. "I am so sorry you have been seedy," he 
 said. "When were you in town?" 
 
 She bit her lip, furious with herself, for she had not 
 been to town at all. Suppose he mentioned her visit to 
 Syd, or to his mother. 
 
 But Sandy, to whom she and her doings were of the 
 most sublime indifference, never gave the matter another 
 thought. For the moment he was happy. 
 
 Although he was a particularly big, strong man, and 
 as healthy as a man could be, he was peculiar in that even 
 one drop of spirit went to his head. It made him not 
 quarrelsome or sombre, but it rocked him in exquisite bliss ; 
 two swallows of brandy made him love all the world. Four 
 glasses did not make him stagger or speak indistinctly. 
 
 Maggie watched him closely. She meant to ruin what he 
 considered his happiness, but she loved him and had no 
 wish to make a drunkard of him. 
 
 Once he refused to have "some of the medicine," as 
 she put it, nipping gingerly at her own glass of very weak 
 spirits and water, which she detested. 
 
 ' ' No Viola doesn 't like me to, ' ' he said, laughing. ' ' She 
 thinks it wicked, bless her!" 
 
 Maggie said nothing, but she smiled.
 
 SHARROW 191 
 
 Now Sandy could be like a stone image for immobility 
 if he thought anyone was trying to control him. But he 
 was as far from suspecting the girl whom he believed to 
 have befriended him as he was from suspecting Viola her- 
 self, and her smile, because she was a pretty woman and 
 he a very young man, piqued him. 
 
 Moreover, the day was cold, and an east wind banged 
 at the window and reminded him that his fingers had been 
 chilled as he rode home from a very bad day's hunting. 
 
 "One of the last runs we shall get, too," he grumbled. 
 "A disgusting day " 
 
 "Why not change your mind, then?" 
 
 He did, and was soon restored to a balmy humor in 
 which no east wind raged. 
 
 When the young man went back to Cambridge for his 
 last term, his great-uncle sent with him, as a gift, several 
 cases of wine. 
 
 "But I rarely touch wine, sir," Sandy said, when the 
 intention was made known to him. "Don't like it." 
 
 ' ' Ah ! Very well, I '11 have Brownlow put in some of the 
 old cognac " 
 
 There was a short pause, and then Sandy said shortly: 
 "Thank you, sir." 
 
 Then he went, and once more dulness reigned at Shar- 
 row. 
 
 To Maggie it was almost intolerable, for she had seen 
 so much of Sandy during the short holiday that she missed 
 him at every turn. He had grown older, too, changing 
 more rapidly than the short lapse of time would seem to 
 explain, since the coming of the new year, and her com- 
 panionship had been valued by him. He believed her to 
 be a good sort, and told her so on more than one occasion, 
 and she knew that he still thought himself to have been 
 a bounder in kissing her. 
 
 And she, violently in love with him, had, although of ne-
 
 192 SHARROW 
 
 cessity passing hours of something approaching torture, 
 when she knew him to be with Viola, or when he talked to 
 her of his future, been very happy. 
 
 His trust and friendship were, morals to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, as dear to her as if she had fully deserved 
 them, and she had made the very utmost of them both. 
 
 And Sandy, for his part, had, if not forgotten his sus- 
 picions of what she had felt for him, at least put them 
 aside long since as absurd. If she had had any nonsense 
 in her head about him, he argued, would she have come to 
 the rescue as she did about Viola? And would she be so 
 fond of Viola as she undoubtedly was ? 
 
 The Easter holidays, then, passed most happily for all 
 at Sharrow, and when Sandy had gone back to the 'Varsity 
 Mrs. Sharrow, Syd, Mr. Boniface, and Miss Penrose re- 
 turned to the quiet of Guelph Square.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 "Vi, darling, can't you tell me?" 
 
 "Can't I tell you what?" 
 
 "What it is that is troubling you." The elder girl's 
 voice was very gentle as she spoke, but Viola did not 
 answer. 
 
 They were sitting on a pile of new-mown hay in an 
 upland meadow not far from Broekett Wood. Their 
 walk had been long, but Viola had of late taken to long 
 walks. In the bright sunlight they made a pretty picture, 
 for Viola sat under a pink silk umbrella not a sunshade, 
 but a huge, old umbrella that had been a caprice of her 
 mother's years and years before and Mary wore a cot- 
 ton frock of a pleasant cool green, trimmed with straps 
 of white pique. 
 
 On the ground under them lay a letter, closely written 
 in a small hand. It was from Sandy, Mary knew, and 
 yet she had been told only that Syd was better and that 
 they were coming home in ten days' time. 
 
 Mary Wymondham hated asking questions, and to put 
 unwelcome ones, which would be received as an intrusion, 
 caused her almost physical pain. 
 
 But, she asked herself sadly, was she not Vi's Little 
 Mother ? She must try to help her darling. 
 
 So presently she began again. 
 
 "If it's only that poor little Syd's illness prevented 
 Sandy's coming, I could understand, dearest but is it? 
 He writes nearly every day ; you know, how miserable he is 
 
 193
 
 194 SHAEROW 
 
 to be separated from you it isn't his fault in the least 
 and yet, you seem to me to be nearly angry with him. ' ' 
 
 Viola turned away her head. 
 
 ' ' I am angry, ' ' she declared, fiercely. ' ' I I hate him ! ' ' 
 
 Mary sighed. "No, you don't, Vi. You are just being 
 a goose now. He hasn't done a thing to make you hate 
 him, and you are unjust and unkind to him." 
 
 Viola then burst into tears, and Mary flung both arms 
 around her and held her close, murmuring all sorts of 
 silly, charming pet names and words of comfort into her 
 ears. 
 
 But the elder girl was alarmed; even allowing for her 
 sister's nervous exaggeration of trifles, and her childish 
 impatience of events, Mary knew that something must be 
 wrong. 
 
 However, she waited, and presently Viola blew her nose 
 on her sister's handkerchief, pushed her curly hair out 
 of her eyes, and sat up. 
 
 "Mary," she said, "Sandy drinks." 
 
 Mary started. ' ' No, no, it isn 't true. It can 't be ! Who 
 told you?" 
 
 "Well, I know he takes brandy. I saw him once, and 
 he told me that that he loves it. Three times he has been 
 drunk." 
 
 "Viola! You can't mean what you're saying! When 
 did you ever see Sandy Sharrow drunk?" Mary rose and 
 stood looking down, her dark eyes afire with indignation. 
 "I don't believe it." 
 
 "I didn't say I had seen him drunk. He told me him- 
 self that he had been 
 
 Mary knelt suddenly in the sweet, warm hay. "Vi, 
 dear, if poor Sandy confessed that to you his fault if 
 he really told you, whom he loves so, that he was drunk, 
 don't you see that you ought never, never to tell a soul? 
 Not even me ? "
 
 S H A R R W 195 
 
 "There's no harm in my telling you. You are my 
 sister. ' ' 
 
 "I know, I know of course, I am your sister. But he 
 is your lover, dading he's going to be your husband 
 oh, Vi!" 
 
 There was a pause, and then, because Viola was fright- 
 ened, and because she was weak, she took from her pocket 
 a second letter. 
 
 "I'll read you what Maggie says," she began, but Mary 
 interrupted her. 
 
 "You haven't told her? Oh, Viola, I don't see how 
 you could. Father would die if he knew ! ' ' 
 
 Vi gave a little sob. 
 
 "Of course, I didn't tell Maggie. It was she who warned 
 me, and asked me to help him. You see, Mary, she noticed 
 it at Easter. And she was so nice about it, and made me 
 promise never to tell him. She said I might influence 
 him " 
 
 "I've seen Maggie Penrose drink brandy herself," 
 snapped Mary, fiercely. "I loathe the woman, and I dis- 
 trust her. Well? And then you wrote to her?" 
 
 "She drank it by the doctor's orders. No, I didn't 
 write. But last week she wrote me this. Let me see. 'I 
 am so glad your cold is ' no, that 's not it. ' Syd is really 
 better, and I get out every day for an hour' no oh, yes, 
 here it is. 'I hope, Viola dear, that you don't forget to 
 remind Sandy sometimes about that of which we know. 
 I have given up my b. and s., because it seemed to make 
 him want some ; but, of course, I can 't mention it to him. 
 And I have been thinking for a long time over something 
 that happened last week, and whether I ought to tell you. 
 I hate to, for it will hurt you, but I feel that for both your 
 sakes I ought to.' ' 
 
 "Oh, do stop, Vi! I can't listen. Tell me what it is, 
 can't you, instead of reading it?"
 
 196 SHARROW 
 
 And so, sitting under the rose-colored umbrella, Viola 
 told her. 
 
 Sandy had taken too much spirits one night when he 
 was out, and Maggie, hearing him try to open the door 
 with his latch-key, had let him in. 
 
 "He did not stumble, she says," Viola explained, her 
 lip curling fastidiously, "but he could not speak, and was 
 as white as a ghost, and went straight to the library, and 
 went to sleep on the sofa and slept for thirteen hours. ' ' 
 
 Mary rose again, too indignant to sit still, her dark 
 cheeks crimson. ' ' If he didn 't stumble, and didn 't speak, ' ' 
 she said, sharply, "how did Maggie Penrose know he was 
 drunk? Being pale is no sign nor is sleeping thirteen 
 hours." 
 
 "But Maggie says -" 
 
 "Viola Wymondham, you don't even try not to believe 
 this awful thing. I won't believe it, and you just let your- 
 self. I shall ask Sandy myself the very minute he comes. 
 Then we shall see." 
 
 She set her mouth firmly. She had always liked Sandy 
 and she meant to stand by him. 
 
 But Viola only sighed, and took up Sandy's letter, on 
 which a beautiful green grasshopper was sunning him- 
 self. 
 
 "I did ask him," she said, "and here's his answer: 
 'You ask me about the brandy. Darling, I am not a 
 drunkard. Are you bothering your precious head about 
 that ? I made my confession to you once, and now I have, 
 alas, to make another. Since I saw you, I have once had 
 too much to drink. But I was not drunk, and it was only 
 once. Forgive me.' That's all he says, but " 
 
 Mary was silent and looked very grave. 
 
 "All men drink a little, I suppose," she began, hesi- 
 tatingly, "but Sandy ought not to. Lord Sharrow's ex- 
 ample ought to teach him that."
 
 S H A R R O W 197 
 
 Three days later, Syd being now fairly convalescent 
 from his fever, Sandy came to Sharrow. 
 
 After greeting his great-uncle, who had been to Paris, 
 and come back, having apparently renewed his youth 
 there, he went to the Vicarage. His mother had sent by 
 him an invitation to Viola to come to Guelph Square for 
 a week. 
 
 "Syd can't spare me for long yet," he declared, "al- 
 though the dear old thing is coming on famously he's 
 grown a foot, sir so mother hopes you'll let Vi come. It's 
 very cool in town, and there are some good plays on. 
 Maggie can chaperone us, and it will be a change for Vi." 
 
 The Vicar agreed readily to the plan, and thus Sandy 
 and his love traveled up to town early the next morning. 
 As they left Victoria Station, Sandy put up his stick and 
 stopped the hansom. 
 
 "There that island there, where the old man is stand- 
 ing, is where I first saw you, Viola. I should like," he 
 added, her hand in his, "to put up a stone there with the 
 date on it. Oh, blessed day!" 
 
 To Maggie Penrose, shut up for weeks as she had been 
 with Syd and a very good nurse she was, attaching his 
 mother to her very strongly by her devotion and gentle- 
 ness Viola's visit came as a rather unwelcome inter- 
 ruption. 
 
 Syd had been very ill "with typhoid, and Sandy had 
 hardly left him for uncounted nights and days, and the 
 common anxiety of the brother and the governess had 
 drawn them very close together. 
 
 Once when Syd had, after hours of pain, fallen asleep 
 with his head on the girl's arm. Sandy had knelt by her 
 and held her in his arms to relieve her cramped position. 
 His mother was seated at the foot of the bed, and the 
 doctor had been there part of the time, but it seemed to 
 Maggie that she and Sandy were alone in the world. She
 
 198 SHARROW 
 
 could feel his heart beat, and, as he whispered to her now 
 and again, his breath stirred her hair. 
 
 She never forgot that night. 
 
 Often and often, too, the hazards of turn-about nursing 
 brought it to pass that she and Sandy lunched or dined 
 alone together, and then, in the domestic intimacy of the 
 hurried meal, she could almost imagine that they were 
 married. 
 
 Sometimes he brought her a handful of flowers, and 
 these she carefully dried and kept in her Tennyson a 
 large, green volume he had given her on her birthday. 
 
 To the terror-stricken mother, the girl's quiet, cool pres- 
 ence was as balm, and Sandy himself grew really fond of 
 her who was so good to his brother and so unthoughtful 
 for herself. 
 
 "You must go to bed," he said one night, just before 
 the crisis, "you really must, or you'll be crocking up your- 
 self, and then where should we be?" 
 
 It was after midnight, and they stood on the landing 
 near the Angelica Kaufmann niche. Maggie, who wore 
 a blue dressing-gown for she had been on duty in the 
 sick room for the past three hours was very tired. Her 
 eyes were heavy, her face pale, but she looked unusually 
 pretty. 
 
 "I'll lie down on the sofa in the library." 
 
 "You'll do nothing of the kind. You are going to bed. 
 Come along up you go." 
 
 He laid a brotherly arm round her, and pushed her 
 towards the stairs. 
 
 "I'd far rather " 
 
 "Now, look here, Maggie," he insisted, kindly, "you 
 are done up, and you must rest. There's a dear. 
 Come " 
 
 "I am so tired," she murmured, half because she 
 felt faint, half because his arm was around her.
 
 S H A E E W 201 
 
 visit to Guelph Square, Viola had seen neither brandy nor 
 signs of brandy in her lover. They had gone to a play, 
 and supped afterwards at a very resplendent new hotel; 
 they had spent an afternoon at the National Gallery, and 
 another at the Zoo. And Sandy had been delightful. 
 
 Viola would have been perfectly happy but for the re- 
 minder given her every day, by her sister, of the skeleton 
 in poor Sandy's cupboard, and this cupboard was, to its 
 supposed owner, as empty of a skeleton as the Vicar's own. 
 
 Sandy, having made the confession, which he believed it 
 to be his duty to make, to his sweetheart, stopped his occa- 
 sional glass of brandy and forgot all about it. 
 
 Wine, he detested; whiskey, he mildly disliked; and 
 now that he had, after Viola's timid inquiry after her re- 
 ceipt of Maggie's letter, not tasted a drop of brandy, he 
 felt as sure of himself as if he had never tasted it in his 
 life. 
 
 "But Mary does torment you, darling. Is she worry- 
 ing you about silly little parish doings? If she is, I'll 
 write and stop it." 
 
 Viola drew back with a little tremor. "Oh, no, Sandy, 
 you mustn't write to her. She hasn't mentioned parish 
 affairs except that Julia Mitten has twins, and that 
 isn't her fault. Oh, no, Sandy. You mustn't be cross 
 with Mary. She is so good, and she is so fond of you. 
 
 You don't know how she likes you, and " Viola bit 
 
 her lips ; she had nearly betrayed the fact that Mary stood 
 up for him, and that, of course, would have led to ques- 
 tions, and been fatal. 
 
 Viola was loyal, and she had promised Maggie never 
 to tell Sandy what Maggie had thought it her duty to tell 
 about him. But she loved Mary more than all the Maggies 
 in the world, even though Mary did ' ' fuss, ' ' and she could 
 not let Sandy think hardly of her sister. 
 
 "It's it's just a little worry of Mary's own," she fal-
 
 202 SHARROW 
 
 tered, lying very badly, but as best she could, to protect 
 the two girls. And Sandy believed her, of course. 
 
 Then in came Maggie, delightfully pretty in lilac-col- 
 ored muslin, with a black velvet ribbon around her throat, 
 and the three began making plans for the day. 
 
 "You are pale, Sandy," Maggie remarked, presently, 
 helping herself to marmalade; "is your head bad again?" 
 
 He frowned slightly. 
 
 "No not very. It's going to be a hot day, that's all." 
 But she watched him closely all that day, and the next. 
 His face was a little thin, its bony structure showing 
 through flesh that was less ruddy than formerly, and his 
 eyes were sunk deep in his head. 
 
 Once, in talking to him, she laid her hand for a second 
 on his, and his was hot. Her heart smote her. If he were 
 going to be ill, what should she do? 
 
 But he seemed to get no worse, and by making an effort, 
 which she alone saw, he prevented any notice being taken 
 of his health by his mother or Viola. 
 
 All Viola observed was that he was what she called 
 "cross." Little things seemed to irritate him: a sudden 
 noise would make him jump ; any continuous discussion 
 annoyed him. "All right, then, I agree to anything," he 
 would say, "only let's decide quickly." 
 
 He was conscious of these things himself, and tried to 
 maintain his usual manner, but vainly. 
 
 Once he confided to Maggie. "I say," he whispered, 
 hurriedly, meeting her on the stairs, "I've told Vi I'm 
 going out don't say you've seen me. I have a touch of 
 neuralgia and am going to try to sleep for an hour. Would 
 you mind waking me at six?" 
 
 And at six she stood by his bed, on which he had thrown 
 himself, fully dressed, looking at him. 
 
 He was sleeping soundly, but his bushy brows were 
 knitted and his face troubled. Her heart ached as she
 
 S H A R R O W 203 
 
 studied him. Then, very gently, she stooped and just 
 touched his brow with her lips, which she pointed so as 
 to make her touch as light as possible. He did not move, 
 and she knelt, tucking her ugly little talisman into her 
 bosom, to prevent its falling on his face. 
 
 "Sandy," she whispered, her face close to his own, 
 "Sandy I am going to hurt you, but it is for your 
 good. She is not worthy of you no one is that, my beau- 
 tiful darling, but she is a coward. You frighten her even 
 now, and she has no backbone. She is only pretty. And 
 if you married her, you would lose the money, and you 
 couldn 't care for Syd Oh, it is for your good, it is ! And 
 then, when she has deserted you for she will desert you 
 Mary wouldn't, but she will then you will come to me, 
 and I will take care of you. I won't tell you any lies 
 then ; you will know that I love you, and, though you won 't 
 love me, you will like me, and and oh, so help me, God ! 
 I will be good to you, so help me, God ! ' ' 
 
 It was the nearest approach to a prayer that she had 
 ever made in her life. 
 
 For a long time she knelt there in the cold, rather bare 
 room, her face hidden, while the man slept heavily. 
 
 Then she rose, composed her face, and woke him. 
 
 "Wake up, Sandy. It's six o'clock," she said. 
 
 He stared, and muttered Viola 's name. Then he opened 
 his eyes, and stared dully at her. 
 
 "Oh, it's you, Maggie. Six, is it? All right. I'll 
 come. Oh, my head!" 
 
 He groaned and closed his eyes again. 
 
 "Viola is dressing, Sandy and, as she thinks you are 
 out " 
 
 "All right. I'll get up. Thanks, Maggie." 
 
 She went slowly downstairs and into the deserted draw- 
 ing-room. She pulled the heavy red curtains, rearranged 
 the chairs, and filled the vases with flowers that had just
 
 204 SHARROW 
 
 come. And as she worked, her light touch bringing the 
 gaunt room to a semblance of beauty, she reflected. 
 
 Sandy was going to be ill. Therefore, her time would 
 come. He must not be ill in England, or Viola would, of 
 course, fly to help nurse him. He must not be ill before 
 their quarrel took place, or that same quarrel would never 
 be. It must all happen at once. 
 
 When she had removed the stale flowers, and her work 
 was done, she stood still in the middle of the room, her 
 arms crossed, her head bent. Only one thing was wrong. 
 Lord Sharrow ought to be at hand. 
 
 Why, she could not quite express to herself, but the 
 feeling was strong. The old man ought to be wherever the 
 rupture between Sandy and Viola took place. 
 
 Should she wait? Or should she summon her old con- 
 federate ? 
 
 Still, to her furious annoyance, unable to decide, she 
 went to her room, opened with a corkscrew a fresh bottle 
 of Three Star brandy, and, pouring a big drink into a 
 glass, crossed the passage to where Sandy was dressing. 
 
 "This may do your head good," she said, as he peered 
 round the door, half his face covered with lather. 
 
 His eyes shone. "Thanks. I never heard of its being 
 
 good for headache before, but " The smell reached 
 
 him, and he held out an icy hand. "You are a good sort, 
 Maggie. ' ' 
 
 As she went to her room, Mrs. Sharrow called up the 
 stairs: "Oh, Sandy, I have just had a telegram from your 
 uncle. He is in town, at Bell's Hotel in Dover Street."
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 THE two girls met in the drawing-room before dinner 
 and stood at the tall window looking out into the square. 
 
 The wind had come up, and great clouds obscured the 
 clarity of the sky. The old trees, dust-laden and nearly 
 black, tossed and whispered as if in fear of the coming 
 storm. 
 
 Viola shuddered. "I do so hate thunder," she said, 
 nervously. 
 
 Maggie gave a little laugh. ''Thunder never hurt any- 
 one." 
 
 "Oh, I know that, of course; but the lightning is at 
 least beautiful, and thunder is hideous it does frighten 
 me, Maggie, whether you think it silly or not ! ' ' 
 
 Maggie glanced at her. Viola was as a rule not at all 
 irritable, but it chanced that the girls had never been to- 
 gether when a heavy storm was in the air, and Maggie 
 knew that Viola's nerves had never been very strong. 
 
 The tightening of Viola's lips, the line between her 
 brows, her slight pallor, the sharpness in her voice all 
 these things seemed somehow to hold possibilities for Mag- 
 gie; it was as if they were so many little allies, marshal- 
 ling themselves, unbidden, on her side. 
 
 Viola wore that evening a charming new frock of flow- 
 ered silk muslin, and in her hair she had stuck a rose. 
 She made a delightful picture standing against the dark 
 square of the window. Maggie regarded her thoughtfully. 
 
 A low rumble of thunder broke the quiet, and Viola drew 
 back. 
 
 205
 
 206 SHARROW 
 
 "Oh, Maggie, do close the window!" 
 
 "It will be dreadfully hot, dear " 
 
 Viola, with the little frown of exasperated nerves, at- 
 tacked the window herself, closing it with a bang, and, as 
 she did so, Sandy came in. 
 
 He was extremely pale, but greeted them cheerfully, 
 and, as it was Mrs. Sharrow's turn to dine upstairs with 
 Syd, the three went in to dinner. 
 
 The dining-room, with its forbidding Georgian side- 
 board, dark walls, memorial-tablet-like mantelpiece, and 
 thick curtains, was stifling. 
 
 Sandy, without speaking, jerked the curtains back as 
 far as they would go, and opened the window. A flash 
 of lightning seemed to split the sky as he did so, and it 
 thundered. 
 
 Viola moved uneasily in her chair. "Oh, Sandy," she 
 said, "what a horrid storm!" 
 
 "It may clear the air; the heat is intolerable to-night," 
 he returned. Then, with a visible effort, he complimented 
 her on the frock, and tried to eat his dinner. 
 
 His head, Maggie could see, was splitting, and food ob- 
 viously disgusted him, but he did his best. 
 
 They were planning a drive to Virginia Water for the 
 next day, when a terrific clap of thunder seemed to shake 
 the house. Viola gave a sharp scream. 
 
 Sandy's hands flew to his head. "Don't scream, Vi," 
 he begged, hurriedly. "I I can't stand it." His gesture 
 and his words were involuntary, Maggie saw, but Viola, 
 who was really frightened, was angry. 
 
 "I hated your opening the window," she said, her 
 voice higher than usual. ' ' Thunder always makes me ill. ' ' 
 
 He tried to smile at her, and drank some water. "I 
 am sorry, dear." 
 
 The electricity gathered force, the heat seeming to come 
 in at the windows in waves.
 
 S H A R R W 207 
 
 Presently, at the very crisis of the storm, when a blaze 
 of lightning was followed almost instantly by a deafening 
 roar of thunder, Viola, her exasperated nerves quite mas- 
 tering her, gave several ear-piercing shrieks, and Sandy 
 rose. 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, Viola," he cried, his face con- 
 torted with what Maggie knew to be pain far more than 
 anger, "stop that! It it is perfectly absurd " 
 
 And he left the room, slamming the door. 
 
 "Wasn't he horrible, Maggie?" Viola began, when the 
 sound had died into a silence broken only by the furious 
 lashing of rain on the windows. 
 
 "And oh, Maggie, he has been drinking again. I I 
 smelt it when he kissed me ! " 
 
 Maggie's task was made easier to her by her honest 
 scorn for the silly little creature. 
 
 If Sandy had drunk petroleum it would not have shat- 
 tered her love, and, strong in this strength, she despised 
 Viola. 
 
 "Did you, dear?" she said, gently. 
 
 "Yes. It oh, Maggie, it made me feel quite sick." 
 
 Maggie did not speak. The less she said, the safer, she 
 knew, would be her future. 
 
 After one or two more bursts of thunder the storm died 
 away, and the two girls went into the drawing-room. Here 
 they sat on a little satin sofa and continued their talk. 
 
 "I don't think he has before since I came, do you?" 
 Viola asked, presently. She was very fond of Sandy, and 
 began to long to make up. 
 
 There was no answer, and she repeated her question, 
 adding, "Oh, he has, and I didn't know, and you did, and 
 you didn 't tell me ! " 
 
 "But, Vi, darling, how could I? I am not sure, after 
 all, and I want you to be happy." 
 
 Viola drew away from her. "Maggie," she said, sol-
 
 208 SHARROW 
 
 emnly, her little figure in its flowered frock bolt upright 
 in the shadowy room, "you must tell me. If ever I saw 
 him you know drunk, I I never could love him any 
 more. ' ' 
 
 "Couldn't you?" The other girl eyed her with such 
 open scorn that only Viola's tremendous self-centredness 
 prevented her perceiving it. 
 
 "No. He would kill my love. Besides I am so afraid 
 of drunken people," she added in a lower voice. 
 
 And again Maggie felt honestly justified in separating 
 Sandy from such a weak idiot. 
 
 "I have not seen him drunk again," said Maggie, truth- 
 fully. 
 
 "But you know he has been drinking, and / know he 
 has to-night. That 's why he was so cross at dinner ! ' ' 
 
 Maggie listened keenly. This argument was worth gold 
 to her. 
 
 ' ' And he would always be cross when he had been drink- 
 ing," Viola went on, "and he is exactly like Lord Shar- 
 row when he scowls." 
 
 Maggie felt as must have felt the man into whose mouth 
 flew ducklings already roasted/ She had an exquisite feel- 
 ing that all she had to do was to sit still on that sofa 
 and let the gods and Viola bring Sandy to her waiting 
 arms. 
 
 She did not speak. And in the silence Sandy called 
 from the landing above, "Maggie! I say, Maggie " 
 
 She turned her head, but did not rise. He was coming. 
 "Yes, Sandy." 
 
 "Where is that stuff you gave me some of before din- 
 ner? I want a little more." 
 
 "Oh, it's on my dressing-table, Sandy; help yourself." 
 
 "Thanks." 
 
 They heard his retreating footsteps, and then Viola 
 asked curiously, "What stuff?"
 
 SHARROW 209 
 
 Maggie answered with perfect serenity, knowing that 
 Sandy would never tell, "Only some court-plaster. He 
 cut himself, shaving." 
 
 The room was warm, and presently she rose and went 
 to a window. 
 
 The evening was now beautiful; faint moonlight fell on 
 the newly washed trees in the square, making of it a little 
 fairyland in which a man and a woman walked, his arm 
 around her waist. 
 
 Maggie stood staring at them as if held by a charm. 
 Would Sandy, poor, innocent, brave old Sandy, now 
 drinking brandy in his bedroom, ever walk like that with 
 her? 
 
 It was quite true that her love, for all its evil, was 
 strong above the influences of circumstances. Sandy 
 might drink, he might steal, he might betray her, yet she 
 would continue to love him. She was not a good woman, 
 but her love was fine in its immutability, and she knew 
 it, and felt the fact to be her justification. 
 
 The man in the square had sat down on a bench and 
 drawn the woman to his side. She put her head on his 
 shoulder and they sat apparently in silence, in the pale 
 light. Still Maggie watched them. 
 
 "Play something to me, won't you, dear?" 
 
 Maggie went slowly to the piano and sat down at it. 
 She struck one chord, and rose. 
 
 No. If she played, Sandy might come down before the 
 brandy had done its work. She made some excuse, and 
 the two girls went up to see Syd. 
 
 "Where is Sandy?" Mrs. Sharrow asked, looking up 
 from her place by the bed. She and Syd were playing 
 old maid. 
 
 "In his room," answered Viola, coldly. 
 
 Mrs. Sharrow turned to Maggie, and then again to the 
 younger girl.
 
 210 S H A R R W 
 
 "In one of his black fits, is he?" asked his mother, 
 lightly, quite without malice. 
 
 "Yes; he left the table in a temper, and has not ap- 
 peared since." 
 
 "Oh, never mind Sandy, Vi," put in Syd, in the thin, 
 high voice of invalid children, "he gets what he calls 
 'the black dog' every now and then, but it doesn't mat- 
 ter. Dear old Sandear!" 
 
 Syd, with his transparent, bony face and cropped, black 
 hair, was comfortably propped up with pillows; the gas 
 glared down on the tumbled bed, on his thin hands, and 
 on the green leather board on which the cards lay. The 
 walls of the room were covered with yellow roses of hide- 
 ous and impossible design, and on them hung the steel 
 engravings that Sandy had known in his little-boyhood. 
 
 There were no Treasures in this room, except, on a small 
 table in the corner, the old medicine chest, given long 
 since to Sandy, and which Sandy had transferred to his 
 brother. 
 
 Maggie stood and watched the little homely scene as 
 Viola joined in the game, the mother and the future 
 daughter-in-law, in their pretty, simple frocks, devoting 
 themselves to amusing the invalid boy. 
 
 Although the room was ugly with the left-over ugliness 
 of mid-Victorian era, the picture was a charming one, 
 and the looker-on appreciated it. 
 
 But, before long, after she had noiselessly arranged one 
 or two things that were out of place, and set a jug of 
 crimson roses on the landing for the night, she went up- 
 stairs. 
 
 Sandy's door was ajar, and she looked into his room. 
 Through the frame made by the twisted posts of his bed, 
 she saw him sitting by his table, a book on his knees, 
 Winker asleep at his feet. By his side stood a bottle, his 
 water-carafe, and a half-empty glass.
 
 S H A R R O W 211 
 
 "Hello, Maggie; that you?" he asked. 
 She went in. "Yes; how's the head?" 
 "0 beastly! I can't imagine what's got into it!" he 
 answered, not quite distinctly. He spoke with the greatest 
 good humor, and bade her sit down. 
 
 He was in his shirt-sleeves, and forgot to apologize ; she 
 had never come into his room except on short errands be- 
 fore, and he did not notice it. She glanced at the brandy 
 bottle; it was one-third empty. 
 
 With a shudder she realized that, although one drink 
 affected him pleasantly, it would take an appalling amount 
 to reduce him to the condition necessary to her purpose. 
 And suppose, indisposed as he undoubtedly was, it should 
 make him seriously ill? With resolution she banished 
 the thought. 
 
 "What a beautiful bed that is," she began, leaning 
 against a chair. 
 
 ' ' Yes. It 's very fine. My grandfather bought it s-some- 
 where." He took another drink, and then set down the 
 glass. 
 
 "By Jove, I've had enough of this stuff! It made me 
 feel better, and I kept on and on " 
 
 He took up the bottle, and looked at it. "You must 
 excuse my greediness, Maggie. I my head was in-toler- 
 able just after dinner. The storm, I daresay. I must 
 *go to Viola now. I owe her an apology for being cross. ' ' 
 
 He rose, but she motioned him back to his chair. 
 
 "Vi is playing old maid with Syd," she told him. "Sit 
 here till your head is quite all right; it will be far 
 wiser. ' ' 
 
 "But isn't poor Vi annoyed with me?" he insisted, 
 settling himself comfortably. "I was rude to her." 
 
 ' ' Nonsense ! I tell you she 's playing old maid. Give me 
 a wee drop of your brandy, will you?" 
 
 She tasted it, and uttered a little cry, ' ' Oh, how strong !
 
 212 S H A R R W 
 
 Drink it, and then mix me some very weak; there isn't 
 another glass." 
 
 Gravely he obeyed her, and then, still talking, he poured 
 another big drink for himself. 
 
 "You don't like it?" he asked her. "No? Well, I'll 
 tell you a secret, Maggie." He took a great draught. 
 "I I love it brandy. I hate wine and and whiskey. 
 But brandy, it it yes, I love it. Are you shocked?" 
 
 His speech was thickening rapidly now, and his eyes 
 shone in an odd, glassy way. 
 
 "Shocked? No, certainly not. Well, look here, Sandy, 
 I've got something to do it will take me about an hour. 
 Then I '11 get Vi into the drawing-room Syd will be asleep 
 by that time and you can come down and apologize to 
 her. See?" 
 
 "Yes, I'll come and apologize to Vi. Will you call me?" 
 
 She hesitated, walking slowly to the door. Then she 
 said, her hand on the knob. "No. When you hear me 
 playing, just come down." 
 
 "All right," said Sandy.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 LORD S HARROW'S man, Waters, had been allowed to go 
 that evening to see his married daughter, so one of the 
 waiters, an elderly man, named Wilson, was assisting the 
 old gentleman with his toilet for the night, when a lady was 
 announced. 
 
 Lord Sharrow was over eighty, but he raised his an- 
 cient head as the announcement was made, and drew his 
 plush dressing-gown closer round his thin old legs. 
 
 "A lady, Robert?" 
 
 "Yes, m' lord." 
 
 "Why the devil isn't Waters here, confound him! He 
 could have gone and seen whether I wished to see her or 
 not. What's she like, Robert?" 
 
 "A young lady, m' lord, and very pretty, if I may say 
 so, and a young lady, m ' lord, as is a young lady ! ' ' 
 
 "Go and ask her name." 
 
 While the man was away, Lord Sharrow put back into 
 his mouth one or two back teeth that he had removed; 
 and struggled, with the patient Wilson's aid, into his 
 pumps, which hurt him. 
 
 And two minutes later, he and Maggie were shaking 
 hands. 
 
 "Lord Sharrow," she began, without preamble, but 
 speaking deliberately, her gaze full on his, "they will 
 quarrel to-night, and to-morrow or the next day he will 
 leave England." 
 
 "The deuce he will! How do you know?" 
 
 213
 
 214 SHARROW 
 
 "I have no time to explain now. You must trust me, 
 and in three days' time I will write to you and tell you 
 all about it." 
 
 The old man made a slight movement that meant, she 
 knew, rising anger. 
 
 "Do not be angry, I beg of you," she went on. "I 
 have worked very hard, and I am on the point of suc- 
 cess. If I cannot leave you within ten minutes with what 
 I need, everything may fail." 
 
 Her reasonable, unexcited voice filled him, in spite of 
 himself, with confidence. He knew that she was telling 
 him only what was true. 
 
 "You want money?" 
 
 "Yes. I want a hundred pounds." 
 
 "I haven't as much here to-night." 
 
 ' ' Then give me what you have, and you can send me the 
 rest." 
 
 He got up. "Miss Penrose," he said, "you ask a great 
 deal of me not the money, but the confidence. However, 
 I will do what you ask. You are a clever woman." 
 
 As he spoke, the clock struck once. Maggie glanced at 
 it, paying so frankly no heed to the old man's compli- 
 ment that he smiled as he opened a drawer and took a 
 leather case from it. 
 
 "You are not vain," he commented, counting bank- 
 note after banknote onto the table. 
 
 She watched him, her blue eyes grave. "No, I am not 
 vain. ' ' 
 
 "I have forty-five pounds here. Will they do?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She folded the notes into a small packet and thrust it 
 into the front of her frock. Then she held out her hand. 
 
 "You may rest well to-night, Lord Sharrow, " she said, 
 as he took it. "Your great-nephew will never marry Viola 
 Wymondham. ' '
 
 S H A R R W 215 
 
 "You are sure?" 
 
 "I am sure." 
 
 "Remember, if you ever persuaded him to marry you," 
 he began, brutally, but unconsciously so, in the pressure 
 and the haste she made him feel so keenly. 
 
 ' ' There will never be any question of his marrying me, ' ' 
 she answered, without offence. ' ' Good-by. ' ' 
 
 "Good-by. You will write? I am a very old man, 
 and " 
 
 "I will write." 
 
 As she reached the door, he called her back. "Mind 
 you, if ever you let him know that I had a finger in this, 
 I w m " 
 
 ' ' What will you do, old man ? ' ' she asked, suddenly ex- 
 pressing a fierce contempt. 
 
 He quailed a little, but recovered himself immediately, 
 and retorted, ' ' I will tell him your share. ' ' 
 
 Her eyes blazed. "If you let him know that I have 
 done one thing to prevent his marrying the woman whose 
 grandmother made a laughing-stock of you a hundred 
 years ago, I will " 
 
 For a moment, in the hideous banality of the hotel sit- 
 ting-room, these two savage creatures glared at one an- 
 other almost murderously. 
 
 Then the old man, scorning the vulgarity of her per- 
 sonal attack, bowed with exquisite grace. 
 
 "Dear lady," he said, as softly as a cat purring, "I 
 have against your amiable threat a sovereign safeguard 
 I am so old, so very old, that I should surely be dead and 
 in my grave before your vengeance could reach me. ' ' 
 
 Maggie left the room without a reply, for which she 
 had no time. Her hansom was waiting, and in a minute 
 the horse was clip-clopping over the wet stones towards 
 Bloomsbury. 
 
 During the drive, she accomplished the perfecting of
 
 216 S H A R R W 
 
 her plans. The necessity for great hurry, instead of dull- 
 ing, stimulated her every nerve. If she had had more time 
 to think, the difficulties before her might have appalled 
 her and lamed her powers. But she had no time. At 
 Eagle Place she sent herself a telegram, purporting to be 
 from one of her sisters, urging her to come at once to the 
 bedside of another sister. 
 
 This was for Mrs. Sharrow's eye, for Mrs. Sharrow had 
 always known of the existence of these two ladies, whom 
 she had denied to Sandy. 
 
 As she reached 27, the clock of St. Giles' church struck 
 ten. 
 
 Letting herself noiselessly into the house, she took off 
 her wrap, hid it under a sofa in the drawing-room, and 
 then went upstairs. 
 
 The little party in Syd's room was just breaking up. 
 She joined it, kissed the boy good-night, and, when Mrs. 
 Sharrow was shut safely into her bedroom, marched the 
 sleepy Viola down into the drawing-room. 
 
 "Have you not seen Sandy, Vi?" 
 
 Viola yawned. "No. Poor old Sandy! Syd said he had 
 a headache; I ought not to have yelled like that; it does 
 hurt one's head. I suppose he's gone to sleep. Syd has 
 been showing me his scrap-books. Sandy made them 
 has made them for years all sorts of verses, and stories, 
 and pictures really awfully nice. He is a dear, Sandy. 
 And I was a beast to be cross just because he had taken 
 a little brandy. Why, even father does, once in a while, 
 and father's a clergyman." 
 
 Maggie controlled her face with an effort. Her wis- 
 dom in deciding to get Sandy out of the country was made 
 more evident than ever. This idiot not only did not know 
 her own mind; she had no mind to know. In which she 
 was as utterly wrong as strong people, in judging the 
 weak, are apt to be.
 
 SHARROW 217 
 
 Viola yawned again. "Well, good-night, dear, I'm go- 
 ing to bed." 
 
 Maggie ran her fingers over the keys of the piano. ' ' All 
 right. Wait just a minute, though. Have I ever played 
 you this?" 
 
 She began to play, and Viola stood near the door, at 
 first irresolute, kept only by politeness, and then held by 
 the enchantment of the music. 
 
 It has been said that Maggie was a good musician, and 
 never in her life, before or after, did she play as she 
 played that night. What it was that she played, she did 
 not know it was just the flowing from her fingers to the 
 keys of the charm she wished to make Sandy, alone in 
 his room, feel through the fumes of the brandy. 
 
 Suppose he had taken too little and was now all right? 
 She knew as little about the effects of spirits as most 
 women know; suppose he had taken too much, and lay in 
 a sodden sleep? 
 
 She played on and on, and Viola listened, her face 
 flushed, her hands clasped. She had sunk on a low chair, 
 and her eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the open door. 
 
 A little melody that Sandy often whistled came into 
 Maggie's mind, and half unconsciously she wove it into 
 what she was playing. 
 
 In the narrow hall the gas was turned on full, and the 
 broad rail of the stairs, down which Sandy had slid in 
 his childhood, glistened in its glare. 
 
 Maggie played louder. Supposing Sandy did not hear? 
 Two or three crashing chords sounded through the quiet 
 house, and then the calling, fascinating, insidiously coax- 
 ing melody went on and on. It was like a voice drowning 
 all resistance by its sweet persistence. 
 
 A door opened upstairs. Viola did not hear it, but Mag- 
 gie did, and the persuasiveness of the music was redoubled. 
 Suppose he had opened his door only to listen?
 
 218 S H A R R O W 
 
 The player closed her eyes, her face, in its intensity, 
 was nearly awful. Her entire will-power was centred in 
 the drawing downstairs of the man she loved. 
 
 And slowly, his feet heavy, his big body once or twice 
 bumping against the wall or the banisters, he obeyed her 
 call past Syd's door, where the boy he adored lay already 
 asleep, past his poor, inefficient mother's, and down, down, 
 out of the darkness into the light. 
 
 Maggie opened her eyes. Viola, wrapt in the music, 
 had not yet heard the sound of footsteps. 
 
 But Maggie counted them. There were fourteen steps 
 from the next landing. He had come down six. 
 
 She played on very softly, afraid of breaking her own 
 incantation. She wondered what the little melody was, 
 she would ask him some day. 
 
 "Seven, eight, nine, ten" Viola's wide eyes stared 
 
 unseeing at the unsteady bulk now between her and the 
 wall "eleven, twelve, thirteen " 
 
 Viola gave a loud scream. 
 
 Sandy stood in the doorway. He was still in his shirt- 
 sleeves, his dress-shirt was stained with brandy he had 
 spilt, his red hair was ruffled, his face as white as paper. 
 He was a sight dreadful to behold, and Maggie shuddered 
 as she rose and involuntarily stepped forward. 
 
 "Good evening," Sandy said, slowly, swaying in the 
 doorway; "that'sh very beau'ful thing you were p-play- 
 ing." 
 
 Viola screamed again, and rushed to the farther end of 
 the room. 
 
 Sandy gave a foolish laugh, and lunged after her. 
 
 "Hello, Vi," he said; "didn't s-see you. I I have 
 come come" he banged into the piano and knocked 
 over a bowl of flowers "to 'pologize." 
 
 Maggie Penrose slipped past him, and softly closed the 
 door.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 It is characteristic of the way the lives at 27 Guelph 
 Square had long since been shaped that, all through the 
 long night of horror and fear and degradation, Antoinette 
 Sharrow should sleep like a child. 
 
 No one gave a thought to the guarding of her rest, for 
 no one gave a thought to her. The servants were sup- 
 posedly in bed, but in reality both the cook and the house- 
 parlormaid were out, and poor old Bean's hearing was 
 no longer keen. Therefore, a boy bringing Maggie Pen- 
 rose's telegram to herself, a few minutes after her mo- 
 mentous closing of the drawing-room door, gave the bell, 
 in his hurry to be gone, peal after peal, until finally Mag- 
 gie herself opened to him. 
 
 And Mrs. Sharrow slept quietly on, smiling in her sleep. 
 
 Maggie had gone straight up to her own room on leaving 
 Viola and Sandy, and spent the first ten minutes in putting 
 together her small possessions. 
 
 Then, when the telegram had come, she tore it open 
 and left it on the table just inside the street door. 
 
 In the drawing-room she could hear the sound of voices. 
 Sandy had evidently made an effort to pull himself to- 
 gether, and seemed to be trying to explain to Viola, who 
 repeatedly interrupted him. 
 
 The clock on the landing ticked with the sudden weighty 
 loudness that we all have known in crises. 
 
 Maggie sat down on the lowest step, leaning her fore- 
 head against the fluted rails, and fixed her eyes, as well 
 as her ears, on the drawing-room door. 
 
 219
 
 220 S H A R R W 
 
 She wondered that Viola should stay so long with the 
 drunken man. But the longer the better. The more Sandy 
 tried to talk, the more he would disgust and frighten her. 
 
 Maggie, now that she had time to think, was not free 
 from fear herself. But hers was another terror. Sandy 
 was ill; she knew little of illness, but even she could not 
 fail to know that the alternate burning and freezing of 
 his hands meant fever. Typhoid, she knew, was not con- 
 tagious, but suppose that he as well as Syd had caught the 
 germs at White Shirley, where there had been several 
 cases, Sandy's developing slower because of his greater 
 vitality. 
 
 And suppose he were going to die? His misery at 
 losing Viola would, of course, militate against his recov- 
 ery; and all this excitement, perhaps even the terrible 
 amount of brandy he had drunk that night, might increase 
 his danger. The girl's heart seemed to turn cold within 
 her. 
 
 "Bah I am a coward," she told herself, impatiently, 
 rising and leaning against the door to listen. 
 
 She must act, not think. 
 
 For a minute she could hear nothing; then Sandy said, 
 less thickly than he had spoken when he first came down- 
 stairs, but evidently with a great effort, "I tell you Vi, 
 it's absurd; I am not drunk. I was ill, I tell you, ill, and 
 someone someone" Maggie clenched her hands in a 
 fit of helpless terror; suppose he told her name! But 
 Sandy could not remember, and went on, stumbling a 
 little, "Someone gave me some brandy, because I was ill. 
 My head was b-bad. Oh, yes," he added, just as Mag- 
 gie's deep breath of relief left her lungs, "it was M-Maggie 
 gave it to me." 
 
 "That is a lie. Maggie never gave you brandy," re- 
 torted Viola, sharply. "How horrible of you to lie about 
 poor Maggie ! ' '
 
 SHARROW 221 
 
 There was a short pause, during which Maggie again 
 asked herself why on earth Viola stayed with him. 
 
 "Oh, no," he agreed, hazily; "of course, it wasn't 
 Maggie. Maggie's a good sort. I like Maggie " 
 
 The girl they were thus protecting against each other, 
 bit her lips. They were making things unnecessarily hard 
 for her, and she felt an impulse of anger towards them 
 both. 
 
 "Let me go, Sandy. I have no more to say." 
 
 "No, you shall stay here until I have finished. Now 
 don't s-struggle, Vi, or you'll hurt your wrists." 
 
 So he was keeping her by force. 
 
 "I tell you I am not drunk." 
 
 Then Maggie, in her strained attention, heard a sound 
 that made her laugh. The sound of the impact of flesh 
 Viola's absurd little hand on Sandy's face! 
 
 He, too, laughed. Then he kissed her, and there was 
 confused noise, as of a scuffle, a scraping of stuffs, and 
 the tinkle of the smashing of glass. Maggie opened the 
 door. 
 
 Sandy had set Viola on the piano, on a piece of old 
 brocade, and had evidently been holding her there. Now, 
 however, she was in his arms, struggling to get down, and 
 the brocade piano cover had in some way got fastened 
 to his cuff, and to the trimming on her frock. On the 
 dark wood of the piano lay an overturned vase, some 
 roses, and a pool of water. 
 
 "Sandy!" 
 
 At the sound of her voice, Sandy set down his captive, 
 and she flew to Maggie, dragging the yellow and gold 
 brocade after her like a huge tail. 
 
 She was crying, furious, and frightened. 
 
 Maggie put her arms round her. 
 
 "Are you not ashamed, Sandy?" 
 
 Sandy contemplated them gravely. "She says I'm
 
 222 SHARROW 
 
 dr-drunk. You tell her I'm perfectly s-shober." Then 
 he added, "Look a' that water on th' piano somebody 
 ought to wipe it up." 
 
 Viola was now sobbing wildly, the horror and indignity 
 of her quarter of an hour's captivity having quite broken 
 down her nerves. Maggie soothed her. 
 
 "Hush, dearest, don't cry " 
 
 The clock struck once. It seemed to the elder girl in- 
 credible that only an hour before she had said good-night 
 to Lord Sharrow. Half -past ten only! 
 
 "Bedtime." Sandy stood swaying near the piano. 
 He had forgotten that Viola was angry with him. He 
 was sleepy. 
 
 Suddenly he sat down on the sofa near the flower-filled 
 fire-place, and drew up his feet. 
 
 "Oh, Maggie, look at him. Isn't it disgusting? And 
 to think that I might have married him!" 
 
 Viola's small face was calm now, and her mouth set. 
 There was left in her only loathing for the man she had, 
 only an hour ago, believed herself to love. 
 
 She looked at him as his glassy eyes closed with quiet 
 contempt. And Maggie looked at her with a contempt so 
 fierce, so indignant, that even Viola, had she turned, must 
 have seen. But Viola did not turn. Sandy was snoring 
 now. 
 
 "Come, Vi, you must go to bed." 
 
 "To bedl I am going to my aunt in Queen Anne's 
 Gate. I would rather die than stay another minute in 
 this house. Will you whistle a four-wheeler for me, 
 Maggie?" 
 
 "But, Vi, to-morrow morning will do just as well " 
 
 ' ' No. I am going now. Aunt Minnie had a dinner party 
 to-night, she will not even have gone to bed." 
 
 "Sandy will bombard the house in the morning, remem- 
 ber, to apologize "
 
 S H A R R W 223 
 
 Viola possessed, for all her youth and her gentle beauty, 
 a large share of that old-fashioned quality, hauteur. 
 
 "I think," she said, quietly, "that Sandy will never 
 again try to speak to me." 
 
 She took up a lamp as she spoke, and, carrying it to a 
 writing-table, set it down, seated herself, and began to 
 write. 
 
 Maggie stood still where she had been left. Everything 
 she wanted was coming her way ; Viola was going, she was 
 writing to Sandy a letter that would drive him out of his 
 mind, he would rush away, and she, Maggie, would go 
 with him. 
 
 Sandy snored on. 
 
 There were eleven great medallions in the carpet be- 
 tween Maggie and the still open window, and four from 
 the fireplace to the door; there were three lamps in the 
 room ; six bowls or vases of flowers ; there were two bronze 
 pheasants on the mantelpiece; and, chairs, there were one, 
 two, three, four Maggie dared not let herself think. 
 Sandy's utter helplessness, as he slept, and Viola writing 
 the letter that was to break his heart if she thought 
 no, she mustn't. 
 
 Suddenly the moon sent a shaft of light in sideways and 
 illumined the face of Great-uncle Frederic, Sandy's bug- 
 bear as a child. 
 
 Great-uncle Frederic looked amused. He seemed to 
 watch Maggie with interest. Almost she could have said 
 that he winked at her. 
 
 The quiet, broken only by the scratch of Viola's pen, 
 was nearly unbearable. Then a hansom, jerking by, 
 brought a relief that seemed physical, and Viola rose. 
 
 She looked years older than her age, and her very walk 
 had gained the dignity of definite resolve. 
 
 "Here is my letter to Mrs. Sharrow I have told her 
 only that our engagement is broken, and I beg you to say
 
 224 SHARROW 
 
 no more and here is my letter to Sandy. Do not give it to 
 him until he is quite sober." 
 
 She handed the envelopes, both of which were carefully 
 sealed, to Maggie, and left the room. 
 
 A minute later, a sharp whistle broke the silence, and, 
 after a long interval, another. 
 
 Maggie did not move. 
 
 Presently Viola, wrapped in a great shawl, came down- 
 stairs, and paused at the door. 
 
 "Good-by, dear Maggie," she said, "I shall see you 
 again soon." 
 
 "I I am going away. One of my sisters there's the 
 telegram " 
 
 Viola read it mechanically. 
 
 "Oh, I am so sorry. I hope she'll soon be better. I 
 shall make Aunt Minnie take me away somewhere, to- 
 morrow when we come back, I'll write. Good-by, dear." 
 
 They kissed, and parted. 
 
 The four-wheeler rumbled away, and when it had turned 
 the corner, Maggie closed the house door, and went back 
 into the drawing-room.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 SANDY slept until three o'clock. Then, moaning, he 
 awoke to the most terrific headache he had ever had in his 
 life. 
 
 Maggie, in the old blue dressing-gown that had seen so 
 much service in Syd's sick room, sat beside him. 
 
 "Who what's the matter?" he mumbled, immediately 
 repeating his question with great distinctness. "What's 
 the matter, Maggie?" 
 
 "How is your head?" 
 
 "Splitting. What on earth" he sat up, throwing off 
 the afghan she had covered him with, and looked down 
 at his stained shirt, and his shirt-sleeves, and his shabby 
 old slippers. 
 
 Then, after a pause, he said : ' ' Have I been drunk ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, Sandy." 
 
 For a moment he hid his face in his hands, and she saw 
 his knuckles whiten in their nervous contraction. "Viola 
 was here, wasn't she?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She has gone to bed?" 
 
 "She has gone." 
 
 He rose, accepting her words in the sense of his own 
 and walked to the looking-glass. 
 
 "Did she see me like this?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Maggie wanted to say more, her parrot-like repetition of 
 the word annoyed herself, but she could find no others. 
 
 225
 
 226 SHARROW 
 
 "Was I very bad?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He went to the window, his feet not quite certain even 
 yet, and leaned forward to get the chill air on his face. 
 She wondered if he were sober enough to understand the 
 letter; she could not be sure. 
 
 "Get me some brandy and water, Maggie, will you?" 
 he asked, without turning. 
 
 "Oh, Sandy " 
 
 ' ' Don 't bother. It will straighten me out. Only a little, 
 mind." 
 
 She obeyed, running upstairs, and, stumbling heavily 
 just outside Mrs. Sharrow's door, made a loud noise. 
 Clambering to her feet, without a thought for the sleeper, 
 she rushed to her room, then to Sandy's, and brought back 
 to him the drink he wanted. 
 
 He swallowed it, without a word of thanks, and then 
 sat down near the window. 
 
 "I shall be all right in a minute now. Dear old Mag- 
 gie, it was just like you to sit up with a swine like 
 me " 
 
 ' ' Nonsense, Sandy. ' ' 
 
 "It's true. You have always been good to me. You 
 are a real friend after Ben, I suppose, the best friend 
 I have in the world. ' ' 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 The room was very cold now, and she shivered a little. 
 Presently he rose, walked about for a minute or two, and 
 came and stood in front of her. 
 
 "Maggie will you call Viola, please? I want to speak 
 to her." 
 
 "I can't, Sandy." 
 
 "You must, dear. You see she is so good, so so 
 young. I can't have her waking up to-morrow morning to 
 all the horror of to-night. It would hurt her. ' '
 
 S H A R R W 227 
 
 ; But- 
 
 " Don't argue. Be my sister and help me. I have been 
 the most awful beast a man could possibly be she must 
 have been shocked out of her life, and she must see me as 
 I am now. I am perfectly sober now." 
 
 She watched him anxiously. Was he as sober as he be- 
 lieved himself to be? 
 
 She rose and, without a word, gave him Viola's letter. 
 It covered two sides of the sheet and was closely written. 
 
 He read it twice. 
 
 ' ' Do you think she means this ? ' ' 
 
 His voice was so unlike his own that she started as if a 
 stranger had suddenly come into the room. 
 
 "I have not read the letter, but yes, she means it." 
 
 "Read it." 
 
 There was in his white face, not the despair she had 
 expected; there was furious anger, and she was glad. 
 
 Viola's letter was beautifully written, its writing as 
 undisturbed as if it were a school essay; her style was 
 measured and almost literary. But there breathed in every 
 word a cold disgust, a repulsion that brought an angry 
 flush to Maggie's cheeks. 
 
 She called him only one name, but that, from the fas- 
 tidious Viola, told volumes. She said that she would 
 rather die than marry a sot. 
 
 And he knew that she meant it; that to her he was 
 a thing ignoble and vile; that her chiefest thought, as 
 she wrote, was self-congratulation in her escape from 
 him. 
 
 One sign of girlish despair, one tear-blot, one absurdity 
 of exaggeration and Sandy would have hoped. This cold, 
 well-balanced expression of disgust was the letter of a 
 woman who knew her own mind, and her mind was such 
 that he would have died where he stood rather than ever 
 make one move toward her.
 
 228 SHARROW 
 
 "A nice letter, eh?" he sneered. 
 
 Great-uncle Frederic, now emerging from the gloom of 
 night the lamps had long since gone out, and Maggie's 
 candle was guttering in the socket watched with interest, 
 and Sandy's sneer equalled his own in malevolence. 
 
 "I am a sot. What I did is vile. She would rather 
 die than marry me. Good! Ask her to come downstairs, 
 will you, Maggie?" 
 
 Maggie would have liked to bring Viola before the 
 furious man, to hear his arraignment ; but Viola had gone. 
 
 She told him this, and he accepted it quietly. 
 
 "Love is a beautiful and noble thing, isn't it?" he said. 
 "It makes women brave, doesn't it? And they are loyal 
 creatures, women. Maggie," he took up a faded rose from 
 the pool on the piano, and looked at it, ' ' if Viola had mur- 
 dered her own father, it could not have hurt my love for 
 her. I would have died for her, and rejoiced. I'd have 
 been broken on the wheel, or roasted alive for her. And 
 this is the way she treats me. ' ' 
 
 "She is a fool," Maggie answered passionately. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "No. She is a weakling, and that is worse, for it has 
 made of her a traitor." 
 
 "It was dreadful, Sandy, and she is young " 
 
 "So am I young," he thundered, "and do I not know 
 that it is dreadful ? It would never have happened to-night 
 if I had not been ill you gave it to me you know. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I know. But you mustn't be unjust," she re- 
 peated, "it was dreadful." 
 
 Suddenly he reeled where he stood, and held out his 
 arms blindly. 
 
 She caught him, and helped him to a chair. He was 
 fainting just as Syd had fainted before he fell ill. 
 
 Again rushing to the top of the house, she brought down 
 an unopened bottle of brandy, and, knocking the top off
 
 S H A R R O W 229 
 
 against the steel grate, poured some into a little flower 
 bowl, and gave it to him. 
 
 It revived him, but it revived, with his strength, all his 
 fury against Viola. He raved, called her names, threatened 
 her, he even reviled her father for bringing her up to have 
 no loyalty, no courage. 
 
 His own fault, he had by this time quite forgotten. 
 He was to himself simply the victim of her monstrous 
 injustice. 
 
 Maggie caught his hand in hers once; it was burning. 
 His bloodshot eyes looked on fire, his face, ravaged with 
 fever and alcohol, was dreadful to behold. 
 
 For the first time she was afraid. 
 
 At half-past four he rushed from the room, and, stum- 
 bling horribly, went upstairs. 
 
 He came down a few minutes later, carrying a leather 
 bag, carelessly closed, and a greatcoat over his arm. 
 
 "Good-by," he said, "I am going. I am going where I 
 belong to Hell. She shall know it, too." 
 
 This was more than she had bargained for, but she 
 could not stem his resolve. 
 
 "I am going all alone," he said, bombastically. "The 
 Sot is going." 
 
 In her despair she burst into tears, dreadful, burning 
 tears, that disfigured her face, swelling her lips and nose 
 in two minutes. Sandy came back from the door and put 
 his arms round her. 
 
 "Why, Maggie mustn't cry for a Sot! No one cries 
 for a Sot! Come, come " 
 
 She clung to him. "Sandy I can't bear it. I can't let 
 you go like this " 
 
 Her plans were forgotten, the part she had played in 
 his ruin. All that she knew was that she loved him, and 
 that he was going. 
 
 He was touched, even in his frenzy. "Maggie, dear,
 
 230 SHARROW 
 
 don't. Why do you care so much what becomes of me?" 
 
 "I love you, Sandy," she sobbed. 
 
 He drew back and looked at her. "You love me? The 
 drunkard you sat by all night ? Little Maggie, little Mag- 
 gie " 
 
 "Let me come with you?" she begged. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Please, Sandy." She wound her arms around, kissed 
 his hot face, her body close to his. ' ' I know you don 't love 
 me, but I I do love you. Let me come with you I have 
 money we will go abroad, out of this dreadful coun- 
 try " 
 
 His bewildered mind seemed to try to collect itself as 
 she clung to him, and he gazed, frowning, at his Great- 
 uncle Frederic. 
 
 Then he said, slowly, "All right. You are worth ten 
 Violas, Maggie. Come along perhaps I shall love you 
 some day. ' '
 
 PART THREE 
 
 AT THREE-AND-THIRTY 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 ONE morning in late October, in the year 1894, the 
 cheerful sun, peering in at the window of a room high 
 up in a cheap hotel in the Rue du Bac in Paris, saw on 
 the pillow the face of a sleeping old man. 
 
 It was a pleasant, rosy face, and its fringe of clean 
 white hair gave it a look of benevolence, and even of inno- 
 cence. 
 
 On the marble-topped table by the bed lay a large silver 
 watch on a stout chain, a leather wallet secured by a 
 rubber band, a glass half full of water, and a carefully 
 opened letter. 
 
 On a chair were neatly spread the old man's clothes; 
 rough, purplish-brown tweeds, folded with care. Over the 
 back of the chair hung a clean shirt, with J. D. embroidered 
 on the flap. His boots, being invisible, were presumably 
 in the hands of the cleaner somewhere below stairs. 
 
 The ' ' Due de Bourgogne ' ' was not a first-class hotel, nor 
 did it belong, even, to the second rank. Clearly it was 
 cheap, and probably its sordid roof had seen strange sights. 
 The stained yellow walls of No. 13 had, one may assume, 
 looked down many a time on sleepers very different from 
 the old gentleman occupying the room that October morn- 
 
 231
 
 232 S H A R R O W 
 
 ing. He looked, in his healthy goodness, out of place there. 
 
 Presently he stirred, moved, and awoke. 
 
 His small blue eyes gazed round him for a moment, as if 
 he expected other surroundings. Then, obviously he re- 
 membered where he was, and what had brought him there, 
 and he took up his watch. 
 
 "Nine o'clock!" he exclaimed in English. "Bless my 
 soul, I must hurry." 
 
 He rang, asked for ' ' Ochode, ' ' and when it came in what 
 looked to him like a chocolate pot for two, asked for more. 
 
 Then he rose, washed, and quickly put on his clothes. 
 When he had finished his toilette and tied his spotted tie 
 to his satisfaction, he pocketed his wallet, his watch, and 
 his letter, and went down the interminable and dangerously 
 slippery stairs to the dining-room. 
 
 He had come from England the day before, he had 
 slept ten hours, and he craved for eggs, bacon, toast, 
 marmalade, and the bad coffee of his class. 
 
 He was given one very small egg in a battered metal 
 egg-cup, and a cup of coffee that he found delicious. 
 
 The room, long, narrow, glossy, and dirty, was stuffy ; all 
 the windows were closed. He opened one, and found him- 
 self staring at a lady who stood at her window, three yards 
 away, in her chemise, brushing her hair. 
 
 He rushed back to his table, crimson with the thought of 
 having distressed a lady, and asked for more coffee. 
 
 Presently the door opened, and a small dark man en- 
 tered. 
 
 "Mistaire Dingle?" the dark man asked. 
 
 And our old friend John Dingle nodded and invited his 
 guest to sit down. 
 
 John Dingle had come to Paris by his employer 's orders, 
 on purpose to see this M. Octave Loiseau, and it was M. 
 Loiseau's letter that had greeted him on his arrival and 
 lain all night on the table by his bed.
 
 SHARROW 233 
 
 But he considered it, with all respect to Lord Sharrow, 
 a dirty business, that of the private detective, and M. 
 Loiseau was of that interesting order. 
 
 M. Loiseau, in his turn, could make nothing of the rosy, 
 fat, old man in the clothes of a lunatic, who was so keen on 
 jam, whatever that unobtainable delicacy might be. 
 
 It was now ten o'clock late for John Dingle. 
 
 "Well," he said, as he finished his breakfast, and rose, 
 "let's get to work." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 They went out over the cobbles that led from the court- 
 yard into the street, and stood near the door. 
 
 "We will walk, heint And you will tell me about it," 
 suggested the detective. 
 
 But Dingle shook his head. "You begin," he said. 
 "Have you found him?" 
 
 ' ' No. For two days I have searched ; many people knew 
 him a year, two, four, six years ago, but now pouf he 
 exists not." 
 
 ' ' He does exist, ' ' contradicted the old man, stoutly, ' ' and 
 he has got to be found. " 
 
 They walked towards the quai and presently sat down 
 outside a cafe, and Loiseau ordered an absinthe. 
 
 ' ' I have the letters, ' ' the Frenchman began, as the sugar 
 melted in the little flat, pierced spoon. "The main facts 
 I know. It is thus. Ten years ago he left England, very 
 angry. For six years after that, his mother had news 
 sometimes ' ' 
 
 "Regularly. Every summer his brother came to him in 
 France for six weeks. He travelled, went all over the 
 East, spent a year shooting in Africa. At any time," 
 Dingle went on, impressively, "up to eighteen months ago, 
 we could have found him in a month's time." 
 
 "I see. And eighteen months ago pas no more let- 
 ters, no more news."
 
 234 SHARROW 
 
 "Just so." 
 
 "What kind of a man is he? He love society the 
 ladies, heint" 
 
 "Everything that's right 'e likes, does Mr. Sandy." 
 Dingle spoke stoutly, but his honest face had suddenly 
 clouded. 
 
 "He is not married, I understand." 
 
 ' ' So far as we know no. ' ' 
 
 Loiseau was disgustingly business-like. He took out a 
 grimy little book, licked his finger, turned several pages 
 and began. 
 
 "Void mes notes. Age 33 ; tall, strong, very well-dressed. 
 Not handsome ; hair red ; wears a ring with a crest cut on an 
 emerald. Bien. Has been in Paris a good deal in the last 
 ten years, but none of the tradespeople who knew him have 
 seen him for many months. 
 
 "His letters are all at his banker's he has not been 
 there for well over a year. About thirteen months ago 
 a lady called with a note from him, and got them. Now," 
 the little man added, with a change of tone from the 
 demonstrative to the speculative, ' ' I ask myself : who is the 
 lady!" 
 
 Dingle gave a kind of snort. 
 
 "That doesn't matter at all," he declared. "We want 
 to find 'im. The lady is none of our business." 
 
 Loiseau eyed him with scorn. "You have put the mat- 
 ter into my hands; well, what / say is this: Cherchons la 
 femme. Seek the woman." 
 
 And they sought. 
 
 They went first to the prefecture de police, they went 
 again to the shops where Lord Sharrow had taken Sandy 
 years ago, and where they knew he had traded ; they went 
 to the bank, and John Dingle learned that the lady had 
 not been very young, but decidedly good looking, and 
 that her appearance had given the clerk to think things.
 
 S H A R R O W 235 
 
 "Was she French?" asked the detective. 
 
 "No, she was English, and I think had been here be- 
 fore. One of our gentlemen thought he had seen her with 
 Mr. Sharrow " 
 
 Dingle mourned inwardly. 
 
 And when evening came they were still seeking. 
 
 It was a beautiful evening, and the detective, true to 
 his principles, was ' ' looking for the woman ' ' in the Champs 
 Ely sees. 
 
 They walked slowly along, always on the point of bid- 
 ding each other good-night, always waiting for one more 
 carriage to pass. 
 
 Suddenly the Frenchman had an idoa. "How about 
 money? He must have been having it sent out from 
 England." 
 
 "His lordship himself thought of that. His London 
 bankers gave him a big advance a year ago sent it to 
 the bank here. Since then they have not heard of him." 
 
 Loiseau shook his head. 
 
 "He had some motive for that. He has left the coun- 
 try." 
 
 "But a lady who has known him all her life is sure 
 that she saw him at the the big Spring Race Meeting in 
 June " 
 
 "Le Grand Prixl" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The detective, his eyes still fixing each carriage as it 
 passed, shrugged his shoulders. "Well in that case, he 
 is living under an assumed name." 
 
 Dingle started angrily, his honest face red. 
 
 "He is not doing that, I'll be bound," he declared with 
 vehemence. "He's not one to be ashamed of his own 
 name." 
 
 "No. But he may think his own name might be 
 ashamed of him."
 
 236 SHARROW 
 
 Dingle hated him. 
 
 A moment later, and the two men had parted for the 
 night, and Dingle went heavily back toward the Place 
 de la Concorde. 
 
 His old heart was sad. He knew that Loiseau was in 
 his line the best that money could buy, but he hated that 
 such a man should come in touch with the old house he 
 had served all his life. And the man's taking for granted 
 that Sandy was not all he ought to be, hurt Dingle's 
 pride. 
 
 He turned towards the bridge and stood looking at the 
 rush of the swollen river. He had never been in Paris 
 before, and he loathed it. Two girls passed him and 
 laughed. He thought that they were laughing at him. 
 He wanted to be back in his own country, in his own 
 village, with his own fat daughter to comfort and pet 
 him. 
 
 He felt, in the crowd, as an insular, reticent British egg 
 might feel on suddenly finding itself a part of a French 
 omelette. 
 
 Suddenly an open cab went by, going across a bridge. 
 The lady in it turned as she passed him, and he saw her 
 face. 
 
 He knew her, but could not place her. He couldn 't place 
 her, but he knew she was necessary to him. 
 
 He hurried after the cab, elbowing his way through 
 the crowd, unheeding the cries of "boor" and "clown" 
 that were hurled at him. 
 
 At the far end of the bridge, he jumped into a cab, and, 
 pointing with the stick that had prodded so many pigs, 
 pierced so many clods, in Sharrow, toward the lady he was 
 following, said to the cabman: "Ally." 
 
 The cabman, who, by a miracle, was a genial man, and 
 fully sober, understood and, lashing his beast, made after 
 the quarry.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WHEN the first cab pulled up at a large door in the 
 Rue des Saints Peres, its pursuers were at some distance 
 behind, but by the time the lady had paid her Jehu, and 
 placated his storm of abuse by another and apparently 
 reluctant contribution, John Dingle had come up to her. 
 
 She was slim, charmingly dressed, and it seemed to him, 
 young. 
 
 He hesitated for a moment, and then, as she went in 
 under the porte-cochere, he stopped her. 
 
 "Surely, Madam," he said, baring his old bald head, 
 "you are Miss Penrose?" 
 
 Now everyone likes to be remembered, and nearly every- 
 one is conscious of a pleasant feeling of gratification on 
 having his or her name remembered with glibness, after a 
 long period of years, by a mere acquaintance. 
 
 She turned, smiling. 
 
 "Yes that is, I used to be Miss Penrose. But I am 
 afraid 
 
 A blackbird in an osier cage hung outside a window in 
 the courtyard burst into a trill of lovely melody, and 
 somehow the bucolic sound gave her a clue. 
 
 "Wasn't it in England? Surely it was at Sharrow," 
 she cried. 
 
 "Yes I am John Dingle, the steward." 
 
 ' ' Of course you are ! How do you do ? And how de- 
 lightful of you to remember me ! Will you" she hesitated 
 a little, and then went on, cordially "will you not come 
 upstairs with me, and tell me the news?" 
 
 237
 
 238 SHARROW 
 
 The old man assented, paid his cabman, and stumped 
 heavily beside her as she went up, up, up, with graceful 
 lightness of foot. And then she made him sit down near 
 an open window, and poured out some wine for him. 
 
 In the clear light that, so high was the room, still filled 
 the sky, he now saw things that had escaped him in 
 the street. 
 
 Her dress was well cut and well put on, but it was 
 shabby ; one of her small boots was carefully patched, and 
 her face was wan. She looked poor. 
 
 The old man watched her sympathetically as she bustled 
 about, putting away her hat and gloves, folding a news- 
 paper, pushing into greater prominence on the table a 
 potted fuschia covered with bells. 
 
 The room was rather bare, but spotlessly clean. On its 
 scrubbed and waxed floor lay a long strip of cheap carpet. 
 
 The chairs and sofa were of the rigid French kind, and 
 covered with dark green satin, except the bergere in which 
 the old man was resting his tired bones. It was of old 
 leather. The table, very highly polished, was decorated 
 with small red and white crocheted mats, and over the 
 gilt mirror pink mosquito netting was draped against the 
 onslaughts of flies. 
 
 To a Frenchman the room showed not only comparative 
 poverty, but something close to the real, vital kind. This 
 was hidden from the Englishman, because to him satin on 
 chairs and gilding on picture frames meant a certain sort of 
 luxury. 
 
 And there were flowers, and a canary in a new cage. 
 
 The wine did him good, for he was over sixty, and he 
 had had a hard day. 
 
 "How is your pretty daughter?" Maggie asked, coming 
 at last and sitting down by him. 
 
 "She is enjoying excellent health, thank you. Too 
 stout, of course, but she gets about as quick as many a
 
 SHARROW 239 
 
 thinner woman and you did I understand you to say 
 you were married?" 
 
 The sky was changing to a warm apricot now, and 
 gold-edged clouds peered above the roofs opposite. 
 
 "I am a widow," Maggie Penrose said, composedly. 
 
 ' ' They will ask me at home, ' ' he returned, to explain his 
 curiosity. Meeting her was to him a real adventure, even 
 if he had not felt vaguely that she might help him to find 
 Sandy. 
 
 She winced at the simple good faith of his words, al- 
 though she was glad in a way to hear them, for they as- 
 sured her that Lord Sharrow had kept his promise. 
 
 "My poor husband died three years ago," she went 
 on, "and I have lived here ever since." 
 
 "You you have no children?" 
 
 "No." She sat in the shadow of the curtain; so he 
 did not see the quick flush that swept up her face at the 
 question. 
 
 "That is a pity," he said, with innocent sympathy. 
 Suddenly he noticed her start, her eyes fixed on the oppo- 
 site side of the room. 
 
 "Mr. Dingle," she said, rising, "have you noticed that 
 perfectly lovely cloud over there, to the left?" 
 
 She pointed and, perforce, his eyes followed her indi- 
 cation. But he knew, as he turned and she slipped be- 
 hind him, that she was getting between him and some- 
 thing she didn't wish him to see. 
 
 He stared at the cloud for a moment, heard the light 
 jar of a closing drawer, and resumed his seat. 
 
 "Miss Penrose." he said, bluntly, "I have come to Paris 
 to look for Mr. Sandy." 
 
 "For" she put her hand to her side and sat down, 
 quickly "for Mr. Sandy? Is he not in England?" 
 
 "No," answered the steward, his face suddenly shrewd 
 as he looked at her.
 
 240 SHARROW 
 
 And she knew that he knew she was tacitly lying. 
 
 "I saw him once, four years ago," she continued dog- 
 gedly, trying to smile, "but since then no. I supposed 
 he was in England." 
 
 Dingle was puzzled. He did not lightly incline to think 
 
 ladies lied, and yet "It's this way," he began, slowly, 
 
 leaning his hands on his stick, his chin on his hands. 
 "His lordship is a very old man. He's over ninety, and 
 hasn't done more than get from his bed to his chair, and 
 from his chair to his bed, for the past three years. And it 
 is absolutely necessary that 'e should see Mr. Sandy before 
 'e dies. Ab-so-lute-ly necessary. 
 
 "He has been advertising for over six months in papers 
 all over the world, his solicitor himself came over here in 
 June and tried to find 'im. They have written to dozens 
 of people in different places, who would 'ave recognized 
 'im if he had been there, they have done everything they 
 can think of. And they can't find 'im. So I finally per- 
 suaded 'is lordship when they decided to get a a detec- 
 tive to look for him here in Paris, to let me come, too. I 
 thought he might mind it less" he paused, casting 
 about for words to express his thought "I thought he 
 might mind it less if he was found by one from the old 
 place. ' ' 
 
 In the gathering gloom, Maggie Penrose leaned towards 
 him. "I see," she said gently. 
 
 "And when I saw you, I thought you might know some- 
 thing to tell me." 
 
 "No. I can tell you nothing, Mr. Dingle." 
 
 He rose, straightening his back with a jerk. 
 
 "That does not mean that you know nothing. "What," 
 he asked her sternly, "did you hide away from me in that 
 drawer, a minute agone?" 
 
 It never even occurred to her to tell him that that was 
 her concern alone. She was silent.
 
 S H A R R W 241 
 
 "You know where he is, you have seen him," he went on, 
 passionately. 
 
 She raised her head. 
 
 "I haven't seen Sandy Sharrow to speak to for over a 
 year." 
 
 This time she spoke the truth, and the old steward knew 
 it. 
 
 ' ' Look here, Mrs. you have not told me your name you 
 must tell me all you know about 'im. ' ' 
 
 "Is it Lord Sharrow who wants to know?" 
 
 He could no longer see her face, but her dark figure 
 stood out against the bare wall, and he knew that she 
 was tense with interest. 
 
 "It is," he said slowly, "entirely for his own good." 
 
 ' ' Are you sure of that ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Am I sure ? "Would I, John Dingle, who- have known 
 'im since 'e was a little red-headed child would I harm 
 'im?" 
 
 "No," she answered, very low. "I am sure you would 
 not. Well, sit down again, and I will tell you." 
 
 Dingle obeyed, and waited with bucolic patience while 
 she lighted a green-shaded lamp, drew the curtains, and 
 came back to him. In her hand she held a silver photo- 
 graph frame. This she gave to him. 
 
 "Is that yes, it is 'im. Well, well he looks 
 older." 
 
 ' ' He is older ; we are all that, ' ' she returned without bit- 
 terness, sitting down. "And that picture was taken two 
 years ago." 
 
 Clasping her hands on the edge of the table, and looking 
 steadily at the old man, she began. 
 
 ' ' I will not tell you the beginning of the story ; he may 
 tell you that, or not, as he pleases. I will go back to one 
 night, a year ago this very night. You must understand, 
 Mr. Dingle, ' ' she hesitated, trying to find words that would
 
 242 S H A R R O W 
 
 not hurt him in his innocence of life, "that we had been 
 living together off and on for several years." 
 
 He nodded, without speaking. 
 
 ' ' He was not always with me, for he is restless ; he gets 
 'go-fever' every now and then, and has to travel. He went 
 to Africa once, and stayed two years; then he went East, 
 and he he left me for six months in Ceylon, while he went 
 to Saigon and Burmah and the Settlements. He is, as I 
 said, restless." 
 
 "But excuse my interrupting you every summer, ex- 
 cept one, his brother was with him." 
 
 She nodded. "Yes. And I was not. He used, at those 
 times, to pull himself together" she bit her lip, but as 
 Dingle did not speak or appear to have noticed her slip, 
 went on hurriedly, "but in the end he always came back to 
 me. So I waited." 
 
 Some one was drawing water at the well in the court 
 below, and she paused until the creaking noise had 
 ceased. 
 
 "But a year ago he left me, and he will never come 
 back." 
 
 "He isn't deadt" ejaculated the old man, half rising. 
 
 Her little gesture reassured him. "No, he is not dead. 
 I wish he were." 
 
 "You mustn't say that, my dear," he said kindly. "He 
 will be happy yet he is young." 
 
 "Yes, he is young. Well, to go on, he left me. He 
 will not read my letters, when I write, nor see me when I 
 go to his house. He hates me." 
 
 "His house! Then he is here in Paris?" 
 
 "Yes. Come with me." 
 
 Leading him through a passage to her tiny kitchen, she 
 opened a window and pointed to a kind of broad terrace 
 several floors lower than where they stood. 
 
 "There, you see those two lighted windows, behind the
 
 S H A R E O W 243 
 
 terrace, over the garden? That is his house, those are his 
 windows. ' ' 
 
 Tears of relief and joy stood in the old steward's eyes, as 
 he gazed. 
 
 "Thank you thank you," he said. "You are good." 
 
 " I ! Ask him when you see him ask him if I am good. 
 And he will tell you that I am a plotter, and a liar, and 
 a thief; he will tell you what I did, and how, after nine 
 years of devotion and patience ah, yes, I have been pa- 
 tient he left me for it as if I had been poisonous, when 
 he found it out a year ago this very night. The long arm 
 of coincidence, eh?" 
 
 "Poor girl! poor girl!" 
 
 If she had cried, Dingle would have tried to comfort 
 her, but quite suddenly she was calm again, and led him 
 back to the salon. 
 
 "It is Place de 1'Arbre Vert 16," she said, as he took up 
 his hat. "Wait, 111 write it down." 
 
 He put the paper safely into his wallet, shook' hands with 
 her, and she opened the door. 
 
 "Make him go back to England, if you can," she said. 
 "That may save him, even yet!" 
 
 "Save him?" 
 
 "Yes. Make him go. And, some day, write and tell me. 
 My name here is Madame Brown." 
 
 He was half-way down the dark stairs, when she called 
 him: 
 
 "Mr. Dingle, wait. His name, at that address, is M. 
 Alexandre, ' Mr. Alexander. ' Don 't forget. ' ' 
 
 "So that detective was right," the old man thought, 
 sadly, as he went out into the lighted street.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 JOHN DINGLE could never recall anything about the 
 meal he had that evening at a neighboring restaurant, ex- 
 cept that the radishes were partly peeled, and looked as if 
 they wore fantastic pink jackets over their little white 
 bodies. 
 
 After many months of disappointment, Sandy was 
 found, and it was to the faithful old servant a matter of 
 warm self-congratulation that it was he, and not the de- 
 tective (who in his mind was closely, if vaguely, connected 
 with burglars), who had found him. 
 
 Maggie Penrose's story had somewhat disquieted him, 
 but as he ate his dinner the comfort of the food and the 
 warmth of the restaurant for he was chilly with fatigue, 
 though the evening was warm gained on him, and he lost 
 all misgivings in the satisfaction of the main point. 
 
 Sandy was even now within a stone's throw of him, and 
 he it was who had found him. 
 
 When he had paid his modest reckoning, Dingle rose and 
 waited patiently at the restaurant door until an empty 
 fiacre passed. This he hailed, and standing up in it, stood, 
 like Mr. Boffin, with his stick under his arm, until he had 
 found the paper Maggie had given him. 
 
 "Ally," he said, and the man, holding the paper for a 
 moment to his lamp, drove slowly away. 
 
 At the far end of the next street, the fiacre pulled up 
 at a low door leading into a small, irregular place, a back- 
 water of old Paris. 
 
 244
 
 SHARROW 245 
 
 " Ally," repeated the steward. 
 
 "On n'y passe pas en voiture, M'sieur," explained the 
 man rapidly, " c'est un cul-de-sac." 
 
 Out shot the stick. ' ' Ally. ' ' 
 
 He was curt, le vieux copain, but he had a smile, but, 
 name of little St. Antoine, a smile-! 
 
 "Je r'grette, M'sieur, mais y a pas moyen. Regardez 
 mon sapin y resterait pince." 
 
 He pointed to the low archway, and the steward under- 
 stood. 
 
 ' ' All right. I '11 walk. You wait here. Understand ? ' ' 
 
 After a pause, fishing painfully in the depths of his 
 memory, he added: "Attendez." 
 
 And it is to be doubted whether he or the cabman were 
 the more delighted over this inspiration. 
 
 The old man went his way into the Place de 1'Arbre 
 Vert, feeling that the mysteries of the French language 
 were greatly exaggerated. 
 
 The Place of the Green Tree was old and treeless in 
 Henry the Fourth's time. Its cobbles, huge, round, and 
 separated from one another by deep interstices in which 
 grass grew, were as large as cabbages ; of those cobbles that 
 make one pity the ladies of long ago, when coaches were 
 springless and hung on leathern straps at the best. 
 
 The tall old houses in the Place, which may be de- 
 scribed as a rough triangle, had roofs that seemed to 
 come down over their brows as if they did not court recog- 
 nition, and several of them were empty. They looked, in 
 the light of the oil lamp that was the Place's only source 
 of light, as if the hand of time had never been laid on 
 them. They were very old, very gray, very shabby, but they 
 appeared to be just as they had been left on the day of 
 their completion, hundreds of years ago. They had never 
 been restored. 
 
 And over their great doors, coats-of-arms were still hang-
 
 246 SHARROW 
 
 ing, having escaped the destruction of the revolutionary 
 patriots, because even then the Place de 1'Arbre was too 
 old, too secluded, too insignificant to matter. 
 
 Only a few lights burned at the windows, and under 
 the lamp old Dingle stopped, looking around him. There 
 were no numbers to be seen anywhere. 
 
 He was about to go back to the cabman when a little 
 girl came out of the nearest door, a jug in her hand. On 
 her, out of the darkness, came a most alarming apparition, 
 who thrust a scrap of paper under her nose, and said 
 determinedly, "Oo?" 
 
 Being a woman child in France, she wept aloud, for the 
 purpose of luring from his box in la maison du coin, the 
 porter, Auguste. 
 
 He came, and fiercely, with the air of being the world's 
 only champion of womankind, flung himself towards the 
 malefactor. When a bit of paper was, in his turn, thrust 
 under his nose, and "00" was roared at him, he was 
 staggered. 
 
 He read, almost in spite of himself. 
 
 Then he sulked. "Eh bien, qu'est-ce que vous voulez 
 que je fasse, moif" 
 
 "Mr. Sharrow." 
 
 "M. T" 
 
 "Sharrow. No, no, Mr. Alexandre." 
 
 In spite of his saying the name in English, the porter 
 understood. 
 
 "M. Alexandre oui, c'est bien id " 
 
 Besides ally and attendy, the steward understood an- 
 other word. This chanced to be oui. 
 
 The little girl rushed away to the well which presently 
 yielded to her grinding, and brought up water for her 
 jug. 
 
 And the porter, explaining that at his master's that 
 evening there was of the world, flatly refused to let this
 
 SHARROW 247 
 
 old person, whom he qualified as a rustic, to interrupt the 
 festivities. Poor Dingle tried coaxing, then he tried 
 threats. All in vain. Auguste was a young man, and very 
 strong. 
 
 Presently he led the Englishman to the extreme edge of 
 the Place, and, pointing upwards, said more gently, for 
 he was not a bad fellow and the light showed him that 
 the rustic had a good face: "Vous voyez?" 
 
 It was now about ten o'clock, and the night was very 
 dark. Around the stone coping that edged the terrace 
 Dingle had seen from Maggie Penrose's kitchen, Chinese 
 lanterns, swung on a wire, moved gently in a light breeze, 
 and beyond, from two tall open windows poured the sound 
 of voices. 
 
 "I see. It's a party. Ill wait." 
 
 Auguste hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders, and went 
 back to his pen-like room where he was reading, "Le Cow- 
 boy des Montagues Rocheuses." 
 
 Obviously there was no harm in the old man, who, having 
 gone down and dismissed his cab, sat down on a bench 
 and waited with the patience never known to those who 
 dwell in cities. 
 
 Ladies came out on to the terrace, and their voices were 
 shrill. They were joined by several men, and they all 
 smoked, and all laughed. 
 
 Someone in the lighted room was singing now ; a woman 's 
 voice rang out, nasal and bold. When the song ceased, 
 everyone clapped and laughed loudly. 
 
 Then nearly all those on the terrace went in. Only one 
 man remained, and one lady. The steward could see by 
 the swaying light from the lanterns, the glimmer of her 
 bare shoulders. They did not talk, the two; they sat 
 quiet, the man's arms on the coping. 
 
 Presently a church clock, very far off, struck eleven, or 
 twelve, Dingle lost count, and did not know which. Then in
 
 248 SHARROW 
 
 one of the windows another figure appeared a man 's. He 
 nearly fell as he joined the man and the woman who did 
 not talk; he caught himself, and sat down with his back 
 to the listener. 
 
 In the breeze the lanterns swayed more rapidly. The 
 woman was singing again, and other voices joined in. 
 
 Suddenly the man by the coping put up his hand and 
 tilted the lantern over his head. For a moment nothing 
 happened, then the gaudy paper caught fire, and flared up. 
 The man rose, tore it down, and threw it over the edge 
 of the terrace. As he did so, the fierce light danced for 
 one second over his face. It was Sandy Sharrow. 
 
 "Mr. Sandy!" 
 
 The man started, and the woman near him rose and 
 with him peered down into the darkness. 
 
 "Mr. Sandy!" 
 
 The old servant stood on tip-toe as he spoke, and then, 
 in the great silence for the music had ceased he dis- 
 tinctly heard the man he sought cry in a queer, frightened 
 voice, "Great God did some one call me?" 
 
 And then Dingle spoke again. 
 
 "It is me, John Dingle, sir. May I come up?"
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 THE old man stood at the door of the great room, blinking 
 like an owl in the bright light. 
 
 There were about a dozen people crowding around him; 
 he was, to them, an unexpected delight, a curiosity, and 
 they were not of those who conceal their amusement. 
 
 "Where is Mr. Mr. Alexander?" he asked, a little 
 tremulously. 
 
 And a young woman clad in black lace over flesh-colored 
 silk, a combination that led to extraordinary effects, laid 
 her hand on his arm. 
 
 " 'E is on ze terrace," she said, in very bad English. 
 "Come allez-vous-en, monstres I will conduct you." 
 
 "Brava, Lise!" 
 
 " Ecoute-moi ga, Use qui parle Anglais!" 
 
 They all laughed and talked at once. 
 
 The old man raised his grave, worn eyes, and looked at 
 them. These were queer people, he felt, to be Mr. Sandy's 
 guests. 
 
 Some of them were silenced for a moment by his glance, 
 and he was allowed to go his way with the accomplished 
 pink-and-black Lise. 
 
 The walls were hung in pink satin brocade, and there 
 were flowers everywhere. The floor was like brown ice. 
 And everywhere was light, the crude, glaring light of un- 
 shaded electricity. 
 
 Near the window old Dingle slipped, and would have 
 fallen had not Lise caught him. He thanked her, stood 
 for a moment to recover himself, and she said kindly: 
 
 249
 
 250 SHARROW 
 
 "Very silly peoples never mind, Alexandre glad to 
 see you." 
 
 He was grateful to her and smiled at her, still leaning 
 on his arm. 
 
 They passed out through the window, and there in the 
 cool darkness, leaning against the coping, stood Sandy ; the 
 steward recognized his big shoulders. 
 
 "Mr. Sandy!" the old man's voice broke a little, as he 
 faltered the words. 
 
 Sandy did not move, and Lise continued to advance. 
 
 Then suddenly Sandy sat down on the coping, and 
 covered his face with his hands. 
 
 There was a long silence. Then, at a noise behind them, 
 Lise turned, and, seeing a bouquet of curious faces at the 
 window, slammed the shutters as if she meant to smash 
 them all. 
 
 Presently Sandy spoke. 
 
 "How do you do, Dingle," he said, holding out his hand. 
 He spoke so strangely that the old man turned instinctively 
 to the young woman. 
 
 "Eh, out," she explained easily; "it is late at this hour 
 he is always how says one drrrunk!" 
 
 "Oh, my dear God!" whispered the old man, in reverent 
 anguish. 
 
 "It is true; D-Dingle i-it is late. Lise," he added, 
 sharply, and continued to speak for a moment in rapid 
 French. 
 
 She nodded, 
 
 "Bien." 
 
 She drew Dingle to a chair, and, making him sit down, 
 laid her hand on his, while Sandy walked swiftly, but in 
 jerks, to the window and went into the house. 
 
 " 'E come back 'e drink water and wash 'is counte- 
 nance. What beautiful weather we have been having 
 lately!"
 
 S H A R R O W 251 
 
 This abrupt transition to excellent English, made poor 
 Dingle fear he was losing his reason. 
 
 "Yes beautiful," he stammered, staring at her. 
 
 She burst out into a funny little tinkle of laughter. 
 
 "Ca, c'est du livre," she explained. "Zat I learn in ze 
 book Alexandre gave me." 
 
 They sat for a while in silence, and then there was a 
 sound at the window. 
 
 Sandy came slowly towards them, holding himself very 
 erect, his face set. His hair, the old man saw, was wet, and 
 one side of his collar was limp. He had been washing in 
 cold water. 
 
 "I am better now," he began, in an even, rather sing- 
 song voice, sitting down. "Now then, Dingle, what is it? 
 Is Lord Sharrow dead?" 
 
 Lise listened and watched eagerly, her little black eyes 
 glittering like a mouse 's under her oddly clumped hair. 
 
 "No, Mr. Sandy. His lordship is as well as one of his 
 great age could hope to be." 
 
 "Well, then?" 
 
 "Shall I speak before the lady, sir?" 
 
 Sandy glanced at her. "Oh, yes," he said carelessly, 
 "she doesn't matter." 
 
 "Then" instinctively the old servant got up. "It is 
 this, sir. His lordship wishes you to come back at once, 
 and I have come to to fetch you." 
 
 Sandy gave a hoarse laugh. 
 
 ' ' Aha ! I was sent away ; now I am brought back ! De- 
 lighted. "Well I am glad to have seen you, Dingle, but 
 you must go back, and give Lord Sharrow this message. 
 Tell him, that I, Alexander Sharrow, outlaw and scapegrace, 
 would not soil my hand by touching his, nor dishonor my 
 manhood by looking into his treacherous eyes. There that 
 is my message." 
 
 "But, Mr. Sandy, I "
 
 252 SHARROW 
 
 "Hold your tongue, Dingle. You don't know what 
 what you're talking about. You don't know what he did 
 to me, he and that ' ' he used a word the steward had heard 
 only occasionally in Church, in the First Lesson. 
 
 1 ' But he is ninety-four years old. ' ' 
 
 "What the devil does it matter to me if he is nine 
 hundred years old?" asked Sandy with such ferocity that 
 Dingle drew back from him with horror. "I believe he is 
 nine hundred or nine thousand years old. Only the devil 
 himself could plan what he planned, and do what he did. 
 No, go, Dingle you are an honest man, and a good one. I 
 am sorry you have to serve a a swine like Lord Sharrow. ' ' 
 
 High up, above rows of dark windows, was one little red 
 light. It was the light of Maggie Penrose's kitchen. The 
 old man unconsciously looked towards it, and Sandy 
 saw. 
 
 "There just where your eyes are now," he went on, his 
 eyes glaring, "is where she lives. And even now, probably, 
 she is looking down at my lights here. She saw my guests, 
 heard my music and it tears her to pieces. A year ago 
 to-night I found her out, her and the old demon who dared 
 to send you to me. And I told her what she was, and left 
 her. And if the two of them lay rotting in a ditch, and I 
 ould save them by raising a finger they should rot, and 
 kites should feed on them!" 
 
 He strode away to the further end of the terrace, and 
 stood there, his back turned to the old man and the 
 woman, who in the faint light looked as if her nakedness 
 were only veiled by black lace. 
 
 "Go now," the woman whispered, "go quickly, M'sieur. 
 He is mad to-night. Whatever you wish he will not make. 
 He is furieux but yes, furious. ' ' 
 
 But Dingle shook off her hand and rose. 
 
 "Mr. Sandy, "he called. 
 
 Sandy turned. Someone inside was playing a waltz, and
 
 S H A E R W 253 
 
 through the slits of the shutters odd slices of shadow 
 moved in the lantern light. The guests were dancing. 
 
 "Please go, Dingle," Sandy said. 
 
 "No. You must come to Sharrow." 
 
 "I will never come to Sharrow." But he turned and 
 walked slowly toward the old man who summoned him 
 with such strange peremptoriness ; between them, the girl, 
 in her indecent black draperies. 
 
 "Your great-uncle cannot live long " 
 
 "Ah, he wishes to make his soul, is that it? He wants 
 my forgiveness ? Tell him he may ask for that again when 
 he has roasted in Hell for a thousand years " 
 
 "Mr. Sandy," Dingle said, after a pause, "I have come 
 to tell you that you are your great-uncle's heir." 
 
 The waltz went on, and several women laughed at once. 
 The shadow-slices danced more wildly. 
 
 Sandy did not speak. 
 
 "You you are to be Lord Sharrow, when that old man 
 dies." 
 
 "Are you mad, Dingle? No, you are not mad. I am 
 drunk. That's it," the younger man said, standing still. 
 
 "You are not drunk, and I am not mad. It is true. 
 Master Sydney found some paper in an old medicine chest 
 it's a marriage certificate." 
 
 Sandy opened the shutters and stood in the doorway. 
 He said something very quietly, and it was met with a 
 shout of laughter; he said it again, and the music ceased. 
 He waited for what seemed to be a long time, and the 
 sound of voices within gradually died away. 
 
 Then he came back to the edge of the terrace. 
 
 "They have gone," he said. '"Now, then, Dingle, tell 
 me that again."
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 THEY talked, the two men, till nearly five o'clock, the 
 mouse-eyed Lise sitting by them. When two o'clock struck, 
 and the old man shuddered, they went into the house, and, 
 crossing the ballroom-like apartment, settled themselves 
 in a small shabby room like a study. 
 
 Here Lise sat on the floor, her head resting, uninvited, 
 against Sandy's knee. Sometimes she dropped off to sleep, 
 and then her quaint little face, under its liquid powder 
 and its rouge, looked almost like that of a child. 
 
 In a basket in a corner an old white dog lay asleep. 
 He was a grandson of Winker, Sandy explained, shortly. 
 
 Over and over the old man told the story of the dis- 
 covery of the marriage certificate. 
 
 "They had been married secretly in Switzerland six 
 months before the German marriage they went through for 
 the sake of the daughter who was coming. They doubted 
 the legality of the Swiss marriage, it seems, but it, and not 
 the other, was all right. I don 't know all the details but 
 it is quite certain. Mr. Bolsover himself went to the place. 
 I think, sir, you would not be quite so hard on the old 
 gentleman if you knew how glad he was. Why, when he 
 told me, he he broke down, Mr. Sandy. 'Is lordship 
 cried!" 
 
 Sandy's grim face did not relax. There seemed to be no 
 pity in him. 
 
 He had changed far more than the ten years which 
 had passed seemed to justify. His red hair was as red 
 
 254
 
 SHARROW 255 
 
 as ever, but it had receded from his brow and his eyes 
 were set in deep hollows, and surrounded with wrinkles 
 that no man of thirty-three should have. 
 
 But it was his mouth that made his old friend's heart 
 ache. 
 
 Always a thin mouth, and long, it now tnmed down at 
 the corners as if it could never move, and the corners 
 were buried in a fold that extended from his nose ,to his 
 chin. 
 
 His always slightly underhung low r er jaw protruded now 
 even when his face was in repose, and between his eyes was 
 stamped a sign like a small, inverted horseshoe. He looked 
 fifty, and he looked as hard and cruel as the old lord 
 himself. 
 
 Once his face softened suddenly. It was when the 
 steward chanced to mention Syd's joy in the discovery. 
 
 ' ' How is my brother 1 " he asked. 
 
 "He is a a beautiful young man. And good, sir." 
 
 ' ' Yes, yes, he 's a good boy. I I have not seen him since 
 the 30th of May, 1893. That was in the Vosges." 
 
 "I know. He he was very sorry, sir, that that you 
 did not write," ventured Dingle. 
 
 "I could not write." 
 
 "I see, sir. Since since Mrs. Sharrow's death, he has 
 lived in Italy he is very fond of music " 
 
 Sandy, who was softly pulling a lock of Lise's hair, 
 much as if it had been a pet dog's tail, looked up. 
 
 "Ah then my mother is dead?" he asked, calmly. 
 
 "She died in the autumn of '93." 
 
 "Poor mother!" his voice was gentle. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 There was a pause, after which Sandy said, suddenly: 
 
 "Dingle, how did you find me?" 
 
 "Miss Penrose told me, sir. I met her in the street, 
 quite by chance."
 
 256 SHARROW 
 
 "Ah! My great Lord Sharrow will be pleased to hear 
 news of her. They were friends and allies. ' ' 
 
 "Mr. Sandy, I don't quite understand, and I have no 
 right to ask you to explain things to me, but it is painful 
 to me, as an old man who knew you as a little child, to 
 hear you sneer like that." 
 
 Over the sleeping mouse, Sandy stretched out his hand, 
 on which the green ring sparkled. 
 
 1 ' I beg your pardon, Dingle. I have been rude. But I 
 am not a good man, nor a pleasant companion. Life has 
 taught me to be a bully and a a selfish beast. But to you 
 I would be kind if I could. Listen. She is asleep, poor 
 child I will tell you. You will not repeat this to any one. 
 Ever?" 
 
 "No, Mr. Sandy." 
 
 "Well, then, here is my story. It won't excuse me 
 no nothing external excuses anybody. But it will help 
 to explain me, perhaps." 
 
 The glaring electric light, unwavering, unbeautiful, un- 
 poetic, streamed down on his hard, ravaged face, and on 
 the tawdry figure of the sleeping woman. In his basket 
 the old dog growled in his dreams. The city was very still. 
 And Sandy Sharrow told his story. 
 
 "When you saw me last, Dingle the day I came to tell 
 Sally and you of of my engagement I was a boy of 
 twenty- four. I wasn't a young girl, but I was a decent boy 
 enough, and I had in my heart something that would have 
 made of me a more than decent man. You know what I 
 mean. You know, I dare say, of my great-uncle's stipula- 
 tions about our engagement. 
 
 "Well, I distrusted him; even then I distrusted him, 
 but I loved my brother, and I was too happy to allow 
 a vague feeling against my great-uncle to upset my broth- 
 er's life. Then there was my brother's governess. 
 
 '*! had flirted with her a little; I kissed her once, but
 
 SHARROW 257 
 
 I meant no harm, and once I had seen Miss Wymondham, 
 I begged her, Miss Penrose 's, pardon. I never touched her 
 again until afterwards. Then comes what those two 
 did." He paused, drew a deep breath, and went on, the 
 determination to speak, calmly written on his face. 
 
 "They put their heads together to break off my en- 
 gagement. And, being clever, they found a clever way to 
 do it. I suppose you have not been told? No? They 
 made me drink. It was ingenious. It was born in me to 
 love spirit brandy. As a child I loved the smell and taste 
 of it. And once, when I was under twenty, I drank too 
 much. This I told Miss Wymondham, because I thought 
 I ought to. Then Miss Penrose set to work. She fright- 
 ened Miss Wymondham. And after that, the devil him- 
 self, apparently, came to the rescue of Lord Sharrow and 
 his friend. 
 
 "When my brother had typhoid fever I once drank too 
 much and went to sleep in the library. This was told to 
 Miss Wymondham. It was exaggerated, of course. She 
 wrote and asked me, and I acknowledged it. Even now 
 I'm not a liar, and in those days I always told the truth. 
 
 "And finally, when Miss Wymondham came to visit my 
 mother, their opportunity came." 
 
 He broke off for a minute as Lise turned, grunting sleep- 
 ily, and leaned her other cheek against his knee. 
 
 "I had been sitting up for six weeks, I had been nearly 
 out of my mind with anxiety, and I was twenty-four. 
 For days I had had such a headache that I could hardly 
 see. I can remember, even now, how things seemed to wave 
 when I looked at them. I was ill. Good God, if it had been 
 Syd they did it to, I should however, it was not Syd. Well, 
 Maggie Penrose bided her time ; she came to my room and 
 gave me a stiff drink of brandy while I was dressing. And 
 after dinner I had quarrelled with Miss Wymondham 
 I took more. I took enough to deaden the pain, and then
 
 258 SHARROW 
 
 remembering, mind you sat down with my dog, to wait 
 till I could go down and apologize to Miss Wymondham. 
 Then Maggie came to my room. She gave me more she 
 made me drunk. I kept on drinking. And, finally, an hour 
 later, I heard her signal she was playing. She was play- 
 ing a little melody that had always been associated," he 
 went on, dreamily, as if to himself, "with Viola. Drunk as 
 I was, I recognized it well, her playing was the signal for 
 me to go down and apologize. So down I went, so drunk 
 I could hardly stand, and made a fool of myself before 
 the woman who had promised to be my wife. ' ' 
 
 "Poor girl poor young lady!" murmured the steward, 
 softly. 
 
 Sandy stared at him with haggard eyes. "Yes, poor girl! 
 But also poor boy! Remember, Dingle, I adored her. 
 And I believed her to be as good as God. And she wrote 
 me a letter and called me a sot. So I went away, and 
 made myself what she believed me to be. I was a fool, but 
 I was twenty-four." 
 
 The dog in the basket scratched himself; a clock struck. 
 
 " Twenty- four. I rushed away as two years before I had 
 rushed away from Sharrow. Only this time, Maggie 
 Penrose came with me." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 ' ' Yes. She didn 't tell you ? She was, ' ' he added, j ustly, 
 "very good to me. I was as miserable a young ass as ever 
 lived, and as reckless. She did her best, once she had got 
 me away from Viola, to save me. But I would not be 
 saved. And so I wallowed with the swine. Some swine 
 have excellent manners and remarkably well-trained minds. 
 I saw much, even learned much. Also, I drank much." 
 
 He laughed bitterly. 
 
 "But your brother? He came to see you every sum- 
 mer " 
 
 "Yes. He does not know. I have not been weak,
 
 SHARROW 259 
 
 Dingle I have been bad. When I chose I stopped. And 
 Syd I have not hurt him. He does not know." 
 
 After a pause he went on in a different voice. "A 
 year ago to-night, quite by chance, I found a letter of Mr. 
 Bolsover's to Miss Penrose. It was written by Lord Shar- 
 row's wish, and it betrayed things. I then searched her 
 papers and found other letters, a round dozen, and a little 
 jade ornament he gave her to ratify their bargain. Why 
 she had kept them, God only knows women do queer 
 things but there they were. And that is the end of my 
 story. ' ' 
 
 He rose, and opened the window. It, too, looked out on 
 the terrace. 
 
 The sky was already growing lighter, and the trees in the 
 garden beyond showed as individuals against its pallor; a 
 bird chirped. 
 
 Sandy walked out without a word, and stood in the chill 
 dawn. Presently, the old man, who stood behind him, 
 noticed the red light in the high room opposite sink, rise, 
 and go out. 
 
 "You see?" asked Sandy. "She is going to bed. She 
 is tired of watching me." 
 
 "Poor soul!" 
 
 "Ay, poor soul. She has ruined me, Dingle. You have 
 come too late. I believed in her. She was good to me in 
 my desolation, and she she cared for me so much that 
 I grew fond of her." 
 
 Another bird stirred and chirped, and somewhere a cock 
 crowed. Sandy, his voice clear, his face held up to the 
 sky, seemed purified by the dawn. 
 
 Behind him lay the past years, and by his chair, sleeping, 
 the poor Lise. 
 
 Before him, the growing light. 
 
 The old man laid his hand on the young man's arm. 
 
 ' ' And now, I am not fit for Sharrow. ' '
 
 260 S H A R R W 
 
 "You are, you are, Mr. Sandy," protested Dingle, tears 
 running down his old cheeks. "There is time yet " 
 
 After a pause he added, tremulously: 'You won't re- 
 fuse to come? You will come?" 
 
 Sandy turned, and held out his hand. "Yes, I will 
 come, ' ' he answered gravely. ' ' I must come. ' '
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 ONE day in November, a man walked into Rome by the 
 Porto del Popolo. 
 
 He was very dusty, his clothes were patched, torn, and 
 weather-worn. His boots, which showed signs of having 
 been cobbled many times, were nearly worn out. 
 
 Strapped across his back was a small knapsack, and 
 under his hat he wore a colored handkerchief, knotted into 
 a kind of cap. He wore a rough, unkempt beard. 
 
 Two priests, meeting him, bowed courteously; obviously 
 a pilgrim, and as such, meriting respect. 
 
 Inside the Gate, the pilgrim stood still, looking around 
 him with the air of one glad to arrive at his journey's 
 end. 
 
 It was a glorious day ; the trees on the Pincio were still 
 fully leaved, and near the obelisk stood a girl selling 
 flowers. 
 
 Seeing him, she came forward, holding out a bunch of 
 violets, and he, laughing, showing strong white teeth, gave 
 her a small piece of silver and drew the little bouquet 
 through his buttonhole, where it made in its freshness a 
 contrast to the rest of his belongings. 
 
 He walked slowly across the Square to the right, and sat 
 down outside a cafe of the humblest sort. 
 
 Although it was November, a striped awning still hung 
 over the rush-bottomed chairs and wooden tables. The 
 summer had been long, and the autumn a rare one. 
 
 "A glass of est-est-est," the wayfarer told the waiter, in 
 very fair, but plainly foreign Italian. 
 
 261
 
 262 SHARROW 
 
 Then he sat resting, sipping the delicious wine made fa- 
 mous long ago by the German bishop who drank so much 
 on his pilgrimage to the Holy City that they had to bury 
 him on the way. 
 
 It was eleven o'clock, and Domenico, the padrone, was 
 kept busy, for his wine is good, and wise men in Italy 
 go where the wine is good, even to humble trattorie like 
 this one. 
 
 Two officers, brilliant as parrots in their different uni- 
 forms, sat at a table near the foreigner. 
 
 He displeased them for two reasons: he was obviously 
 very poor, and he was a foreigner. 
 
 A rich American or Englishman is welcome in Rome, but 
 foreigners in ragged clothes and broken boots are not be- 
 loved, the Italian market being already glutted with such 
 objects of home manufacture. 
 
 So the officers discussed the mascalzone as he sipped his 
 wine. 
 
 An old woman carrying a baby came and partook of a 
 red syrup in a thick glass; a wild-haired German painter, 
 with very large red hands, drank half a flask of chianti in 
 one breath, and departed. 
 
 Then came two Englishmen, sitting down near our pil- 
 grim and ordering, as he had done, the yellow wine of the 
 bishop. 
 
 "Delicious stuff, isn't it?" the elder of the two said. 
 
 The shabby pedestrian smiled as he sipped his own. It 
 was to him so very delicious after his seven-hour tramp 
 that morning. 
 
 "Exquisite! I'd like to take some home with me, only 
 they say it doesn't bear transportation." 
 
 The pilgrim set his glass down suddenly. He could 
 not see the speaker's face, but he knew his voice. 
 
 After a while the voice went on, "Look at that poor 
 chap, Marston, sound asleep ! ' '
 
 SHARROW 263 
 
 "Yes. He looks dead beat. Is he a tramp, I wonder, or 
 a 'holy pilgrim'? They are sometimes hard to tell apart!" 
 
 The elder man laughed as he spoke, but the younger went 
 on: "I don't know that coat was made for him it's well 
 cut, and it fits him even now. Come down in the world, I 
 dare say." Then he added lightly: "Poor devil! Come 
 along, the duchess will hate us if we're late for lunch " 
 
 When their voices and footsteps had died away, the man 
 they had discussed raised his head. His lean, burnt face 
 was wet with tears. 
 
 Presently he made his way down the Via de Babuino and 
 turning off it, engaged a room at a small inn. 
 
 He sent a servant to the station, and when the man re- 
 turned with a small, shabby trunk, no more was seen of 
 the guest for an hour. Then there appeared at the bureau 
 of the hotel a gentleman dressed in dark blue, brown boots 
 polished to the color and gloss of horse-chestnuts, and an 
 old Panama hat. 
 
 The padrona looked up. "The gentleman wishes to 
 see " she suggested, staring at this unusual caller. 
 
 "I am the gentleman of No. 4," he answered her, cour- 
 teously. "I walked to Rome that is why I was so shabby 
 and now I go out to seek a barber." 
 
 The old woman's eyes flashed. 
 
 "A holy pilgrimage!" she cried, for she was old enough 
 to be religious. And she crossed herself in congratula- 
 tion. 
 
 The gentleman held his beard in his hand, and smiled 
 at her, a strange expression in his eyes. "Yes a kind 
 of pilgrimage," he assented, slowly. "Without doubt, a 
 kind of pilgrimage." 
 
 Half an hour later he returned, showing, where the 
 beard had been, a reddish jaw and chin that contrasted 
 strongly with the brown of the upper part of his face. 
 He paid his bill, made his adieux with the leisurely polite-
 
 264 S H A R R W 
 
 ness of one who has travelled much in polite countries, and, 
 his box on a cab, went his way. 
 
 Mr. Alexander Sharrow was well received at the hotel, 
 where he had already stayed more than once, and made an 
 excellent luncheon. 
 
 The mditre d'hotel, hovering around with the wine card, 
 was dismissed. 
 
 "No, thanks, Paolo I don't want any wine." 
 
 But Paolo was of those gifted mditres d'hotel who never 
 forget the tastes of a good customer. 
 
 "Should I forget that, sir? I, Paolo? No it is the 
 Tre Stelle the Three Star of Martell that il Signore likes. 
 It was to ask if I am to fetch a large or a small bottle." 
 
 Sandy shook his head. "No, I don't want either, 
 thanks." And Paolo was convinced that only illness could 
 have wrought this fearful change. 
 
 Two hours later Sandy arrived at the villa on the Janicu- 
 lum. 
 
 While he waited in the drawing-room, he stood for some 
 minutes in front of a large mirror. He saw a lean, weather- 
 beaten face, apparently the face of a man close on fifty, but 
 it looked the face of a healthy man of close on fifty. The 
 eyes were clear under their bushy brows, the grim mouth 
 looked as though it could smile. 
 
 "A good deal better," he told himself, sadly, "but- 
 Then the door opened, and Syd came flying in, in a velvet 
 coat and purple leather slippers. 
 
 "Sandy! My dear old Sandy! I was asleep when the 
 man told me, and I couldn't believe him so I rushed 
 down, just as I was. If it hadn't been you, I should have 
 murdered whomever it was!" 
 
 He held Sandy's hand in both his, and then, with a 
 little gurgle of laughter, flung his arms around the elder 
 man's neck and kissed him. 
 
 "Now then, if you're ashamed of me for that but you
 
 S H A R R O W 265 
 
 aren't. It has been such ages. Sit down, dear old chap, 
 and tell me all about it. Where on earth have you been 
 all this time?" 
 
 Sydney Sharrow was nineteen years old, and a very beau- 
 tiful boy. He was slim, and his shoulders were too nar- 
 row, but he walked well, with a little swagger that be- 
 came him. And his head was, in its way, wonderful. There 
 was in it with its soft dark hair which, when he was warm 
 or there was rain in the air, curled round his forehead like a 
 child's, his golden-brown eyes, and the mellow tone of his 
 skin little or nothing of the Sharrows. 
 
 His mother had always declared him to be like her 
 people, but he was not at all like her. 
 
 And now, since Sandy had seen him, he had grown, and 
 on his short lip grew a tiny moustache not nearly so big 
 as one of his brother 's eyebrows. 
 
 Sandy studied him as they talked, and presently Sandy 's 
 face had so melted into happiness that the boy himself 
 noticed it. 
 
 "That's right," he said, "let your old face do as it 
 likes. It wants to be cheerful; you seem to be holding 
 it back. Laugh, and be happy, for to-morrow you die." 
 
 " Do I ? I hope not, ' ' the elder man was suddenly very 
 grave. 
 
 ' ' Nonsense ! I 'm rather given to cynicism, ' ' the boy de- 
 clared, deeply interested in himself; "but I suppose all 
 musicians are." 
 
 "How goes the voice?" 
 
 "It's good, Sandy, it really is. The maestro seems de- 
 lighted with my progress. I work awfully hard, too. 
 Hardly ever go out at night, and that sort of thing. One 
 has to respect one's moyen," he added with a touch of 
 importance. 
 
 ' ' Of course. I suppose you have to be careful, too, what 
 you eat and drink?"
 
 His voice maintained a careful level, and he looked at 
 his own brown hand as he spoke. 
 
 Syd smiled. ' ' Rather ! No nuts, you know, nor vinegar 
 sweets don't matter. As to drink I loathe spirits and 
 wine, don't you?" 
 
 There was a short pause. 
 
 "Yes, I loathe spirits and wine. I have given them up. 
 To-day, however, I took a glass of wine when I arrived. 
 I went to Ciarro's and tried a wine I used to like. It is 
 called est-est " 
 
 Syd's eyes grew enormous over the marvel of this co- 
 incidence. 
 
 "You did? Why, Sandear, how wonderful! So did I! 
 I, too, went to Ciarro's with Charles Marston, the painter 
 and I, too, drank est-est-estl What a funny thing! Sup- 
 pose we had met there. How small even Rome is, and it is 
 much bigger than the world!" 
 
 Then Sandy told his plans. He had come to Rome on 
 purpose to see his brother, and was going back home, in 
 two or three days. Would Syd go with him? 
 
 No, Syd couldn't. He must stand by the maestro or 
 the maestro would not stand by him. But he would come 
 for their birthday, and the holidays. Was Sandy not 
 thrilled to death by finding himself to be the heir? 
 He Syd had nearly gone out of his mind when Mary 
 wrote to him about it, and then, when they couldn't 
 find Sandy, Syd had really thought his mind would give 
 way. 
 
 4 ' Where were you all the time ? " he added, glowing with 
 fresh curiosity. 
 
 "Like everybody who is searched for, I was ridiculously 
 near at hand. Old Dingle found me in Paris!" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Yes, he did. By the way, you say Mary wrote to you 
 about it. Mary Wymondham, I suppose ? ' '
 
 S H A R R W 267 
 
 "Rather. She always writes to me. We're great pals. 
 She's a dear, Mary is." 
 
 "Not married?" 
 
 "Not she. Hasn't time, I daresay. Since the Vicar 
 died, and Viola married I suppose you had cards? she 
 lives in the doctor's Gill's, you know. Gill has built him- 
 self a villa, if you please, on the Dipwater Road a real 
 proper villa, with tiles and turrets, and machicolations and 
 things!" 
 
 Sandy was silent. He had not known that Viola Wy- 
 mondham was married, and even now the news hurt him. 
 He no longer loved her, but she was a part of his youth, 
 and she, too, was gone. 
 
 ' ' A villa, ' ' he repeated mechanically. ' ' How awful ! So 
 Mary lives in the Corner House. A charming little place ! 
 I remember stealing plums in the garden."
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 SANDY SHARROW, in his self-inflicted pilgrimage to Rome, 
 was not actuated by religious motives. Although, when he 
 had made the decision, the rather absurd side of which he 
 plainly saw, all that was romantic in him, as well as prac- 
 tical, rose to greet it. The reasons for this were simple. 
 
 For the past year, ever since his discovery of Maggie's 
 connivance with his great-uncle to separate him from 
 Viola, his downward course had continued with greatly 
 accelerated speed, and he had deteriorated physically as 
 well as morally, with frightful rapidity. 
 
 Having lost Viola not only as a wife, but, what to a 
 man of his temperament was even worse, also as an ideal, 
 he had rioted wildly for many months, as he had declared 
 to Maggie his intention of doing. 
 
 He was young enough to take a savage joy in revenging 
 himself on Fate by not only giving full rein to, but in 
 cultivating, as well, the worst impulses within him. 
 
 If the fever that seemed that last night in Guelph 
 Square to be attacking him had really done so, the chances 
 are that it would, in the course of its run, have burnt 
 the madness out of him, and left him, as it has left many 
 a man, too weak for anything but mild resignation. 
 
 But by some freak of the gods, not his madness but his 
 fever passed away, as if the force of his will to ruin him- 
 self vanquished the mere bodily ill; and the day he and 
 Maggie Penrose reached Paris he disappeared, and was 
 gone for nearly a month. 
 
 Finally, when he did come back, he found Maggie pale, 
 
 268
 
 S H A R R O W 199 
 
 And then he caught her up, carried her upstairs, and 
 laid her on her bed. 
 
 That had been a moment that repaid her for days and 
 days of weary watching over Syd. 
 
 And now, when he was really becoming fond of her, 
 and her plot beginning, she knew, to have its due effect on 
 Viola, the gods had sent Viola to Guelph Square. 
 
 Maggie felt that the gods were on her side.
 
 SANDY, in his rather selfish joy in having Viola to him- 
 self, made a grave mistake. Mary's presence might, at 
 that juncture in his life, have made a huge difference to 
 him and saved him much suffering. 
 
 But Mary fussed and tried to control both people and 
 events, so he rejoiced that Mary was safely at the 
 Vicarage, and refused to allow his mother to invite the 
 elder girl. He wanted to have Viola for his very own for a 
 few days, as later she would always be. 
 
 He felt for Mary the slight current of irritability that 
 is often the effect of one strong nature upon another, even 
 before their two wills have ever come into conflict. 
 
 And thus, even the elder girl's daily letter to her sis- 
 ter annoyed him. 
 
 He was extremely tired those early days of Viola's 
 visit, for he had been under a tremendous mental strain 
 for the past three months, and it now began to tell on him. 
 
 "What on earth does Mary find to write about every 
 day that makes you unhappy, beloved?" he asked, one 
 morning, before his mother and Maggie had come into 
 the ugly dining room. 
 
 "It doesn't make me unhappy, Sandy," she faltered. 
 She could not tell him that Mary's letters always exhorted 
 her to watch over him, and to believe in him. Poor Mary 's 
 letters did not irritate Viola; they bored her by continu- 
 ally reminding her of a thing she wished to forget. 
 
 During the three days that had already elapsed of her 
 
 200
 
 S H A R R W 271 
 
 But Maggie dreaded Syd's visits, for each one was suc- 
 ceeded by a period of unspeakable horror to her. ' ' Making 
 up for lost time," he called it in dreary jest. 
 
 His terrible heritage, nursed by his own will, would have 
 killed him long since but for his brother and Maggie. Her 
 efforts to save him were not altogether a failure, for he 
 was a kind man by nature, and her misery grieved him. 
 
 ' ' All right ; I '11 be good now for a fortnight, ' ' he would 
 say occasionally, and then they would walk or drive, or 
 go for a journey somewhere; and he, during the time, con- 
 fined himself rigorously to whatever amount of brandy he 
 had decided to allow himself. 
 
 These periods were her only reward for what she had 
 done, and they were, at best, a tragic one. She loved 
 him, and she had wrought his ruin. That was the thought 
 that never left her. 
 
 One thing was spared her. She was not a very jealous 
 woman, and if she had been, the women in Sandy's life 
 would hardly have stirred her jealousy; they were so ut- 
 terly indifferent to him, he so soon tired of them, so 
 frankly despised them. 
 
 "You are the only woman in the world I care a rap 
 about, ' ' was a phrase of his that was music to her. And it 
 was the truth. 
 
 So when he found, through the hazard of a fallen letter, 
 what the only woman for whom he eared a rap had done, 
 his blaze of scorn and hate passed over like a fire, burning 
 and blackening her. 
 
 And when he had gone, she was alone in the waste 
 made by her own hands. 
 
 She was to be pitied, in spite of all that she had done, 
 for no punishment equals the horror of solitary confine- 
 ment ; and she was thus condemned to solitary confinement 
 of the soul until she should die. 
 
 And he, in his rage, plunged lower and lower into the
 
 272 SHARROW 
 
 mire, until, as Lise had told John Dingle, he was always 
 drunk late in the evening, and, indeed, sometimes all day as 
 well. 
 
 Even Syd was forgotten. 
 
 He had now no friend. All the world was evil and 
 false, and only brandy made him forget. 
 
 The poor Lise, as he called her, was not bad for one of 
 her kind, and when he allowed her to hang the walls of his 
 big salon with pink brocade, and to cover her own meagre 
 little body with the stuffs she coveted, she was content. 
 It pleased her to be called "Madame" by the concierge, 
 and, ma foi, for her part, she was not afraid of a drunkard. 
 There were worse things. Besides, she loved Jules, the 
 dear little Jules who painted, and Alexandre was kind 
 to Jules. 
 
 John Dingle came to the Place of the Green Tree like an 
 angel from heaven to deliver Sandy from himself. And 
 Sandy, waking the next morning, quite sober, knew it. 
 
 Sharrow was to be his, and he must arise, and go out to 
 a place of purification to make himself fit to touch the 
 meanest stone of the old place. 
 
 Gravely he told Lise that he was leaving; gravely he 
 gave her money, kissed her little round forehead with 
 surely the most innocent kiss placed there since she had 
 left her mother's arms; gravely he got rid of his house 
 and his servants, all but his valet, Anderson, an English- 
 man he had picked up in Hong Kong. 
 
 And then he pondered where he should go, how he 
 could clean himself. 
 
 One afternoon he went out to the Forest of Vincennes 
 to walk in the wood. He could get no drinkable brandy 
 there, and he would be alone. He had a great desire for 
 solitude. 
 
 Evening came, and he still walked among the great trees, 
 unable to come to any decision.
 
 SffARKOW 273 
 
 Old Dingle had returned to England, bearing Sandy's 
 promise to be at Sharrow within six weeks. The six weeks 
 were to be passed in pulling himself together. But where ? 
 And how? 
 
 Presently he came to a small chapel in the wood; a 
 little gray building filled now with darkness in which 
 glowed only the red light before the altar. 
 
 Tired with his long tramp, Sandy went in and sat down. 
 It was a very humble place. The wooden Christ on the 
 Cross was hideous, and needed fresh paint; the windows 
 were of plain glass. But it held one vital, interesting 
 thing : a man kneeling before the altar. 
 
 The man was praying, and did not look up. Sandy 
 watched him. It never occurred to him to pray, too, but 
 the man interested him. 
 
 And when the long prayer was over, Sandy followed the 
 man, who, he saw, was old and work-worn, out into the 
 gathering dusk under the great trees. 
 
 The wind had come up, and the trees were all in mo- 
 tion, the motion that makes them such vital things. 
 
 Sandy spoke to the man, whose blackened face and hands 
 proclaimed him to be a charcoal-burner, and asked his way 
 to the nearest village whence he could return "by train to 
 Paris, and, as it was the man's own way, they walked on 
 together. 
 
 "I saw you in the church." 
 
 "Out, M'sieur." 
 
 ' ' It must be good to pray. ' ' 
 
 The old man shot a suspicious glance at him. 
 
 "But, yes " 
 
 They went along for several minutes, and then Sandy 
 said: 
 
 "Look here, my friend, I am in trouble. Advise me." 
 
 "I? Monsieur laughs at me." 
 
 "No. Listen. I have been very bad. I have wasted the
 
 274 SHARROW 
 
 years of my life that should have been the best; I have 
 wasted my youth, my health, my brain. I have given up 
 my country, my family, my home. And now I am sorry. 
 What shall I do?" 
 
 The old man stopped. The gentleman spoke French like 
 a Frenchman, but he was not French. Therefore, the 
 chances were that he was mad. Surely this was a strange 
 question to ask an old peasant ! 
 
 "Tell me," Sandy said, gently. "You are old, and 
 you are fresh from your prayers. What shall I do?" 
 
 The trees were barer here, and beyond their great 
 branches the stars shone in the sky. The tiny village, 
 a little congeries of charcoal-burners' huts, was not far 
 distant, and lights were in the windows already. 
 
 At last the charcoal-burner spoke. 
 
 "I am an ignorant man, sir I can't read or write I 
 can but burn charcoal. But I come from Brittany, and 
 there we love the Holy Church and our Blessed Lady. I 
 think if I were you and I wanted to be good again, I should 
 make a pilgrimage to some holy shrine, and there I should 
 pray " 
 
 "Yes I see. And where? To what shrine?" 
 
 "Well I am poor, I could not go far. But you you 
 are rich, sir, you could even go to Rome!" 
 
 And thus was set in Sandy 's brain the germ of the idea 
 of his rehabilitating pilgrimage. His ends were hygienic, 
 rather than religious; the long tramp would harden his 
 muscle, help him to master his craving for spirit, teach 
 him to sleep and to eat again. The air would refresh him, 
 the rough fare in the country inns would heal his outraged 
 digestion. And the solitude, among ever-changing scenes, 
 would regain for his mind the balance it needed. 
 
 He would walk to Rome. It should be his penance and 
 his pilgrimage.
 
 CHAPTER XLVI 
 
 AND the pilgrimage had done its work. 
 
 The man who spent the next few days in Rome with 
 his brother was not the man who had left England nearly ten 
 years ago; he was gone, and not even the miracle worker 
 of Galilee could bring him back to life. But that other 
 man, he of Paris, lay in his grave as well, and this Sandy 
 knew and for this he gave thanks. 
 
 The spirit within the grave, quiet man with the distin- 
 guished carriage and the sad mouth, was a new spirit cre- 
 ated by the mystery of God from the other two, and as yet 
 he was a stranger to the man in whose body he had come 
 to live. 
 
 Syd, who was bubbling over with the joy of his nineteen 
 years, treated Rome as something he himself had discov- 
 ered, and to his brother he proudly displayed it. 
 
 Together they visited the galleries, the churches, the 
 wonderful gardens that are perhaps the best of all. 
 
 And Sandy listened kindly to the boy, never impatient 
 of being told, hastily or incorrectly, things which he him- 
 self knew all about. 
 
 It mattered nothing to him when Syd attributed to some 
 Pope Clement the crime or the good deed of one of the 
 Alexanders ; but the boy 's enthusiasm, his air of utter hap- 
 piness mattered everything to him. 
 
 Sandy submitted, too, with the greatest patience, to the 
 amused snubs youth has always in affectionate readiness for 
 the elder members of its family. 
 
 275
 
 276 SHAEROW 
 
 Sandy, admiring marble pillars and gold ceilings, was 
 told with a shriek of horror that he must reform his taste. 
 
 "It's awful, Sandy, really awful!" the young purist 
 cried. "Dear old chap, you mustn't like the rococo!" 
 
 And Sandy, feeling like an old man, smiled, and prom- 
 ised. He remembered Syd's childish love for the yellow 
 satin drawing-room, but he said nothing. His own taste 
 in pictures had always been deplorable, and it had not im- 
 proved. The only interest lay for him in the story it told, 
 so he found real (but reprehensible) pleasure in some of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth century historical paintings 
 that plaster the walls of Rome. 
 
 He liked soldiers in armor rushing through a break in a 
 wall, clambering, with the indifference of bloodthirstiness, 
 over dead men, or hewing each other down. 
 
 He liked the classical narrative paintings the old 
 JEneas borne from the flames of Troy by the man who 
 subsequently boasted of the deed; Hector dead on his 
 shield; and the rest miles and miles of stories in color. 
 
 And over his taste Syd groaned in comic, but quite 
 serious dismay. It seemed to him of the utmost importance 
 that Sandy's taste should be reformed, and cheerfully, 
 with the beautiful courage of youth, he set himself to the 
 task. Unconsciously he showed his brother how very 
 vast he felt to be the difference between their ages. 
 
 "Of course, it's cheek," he would say, "a kid like me 
 telling a man like you these things, but well, you see, 
 I have always been so fond of artistic things." 
 
 And Sandy would smile his grave smile that never 
 seemed to touch his eyes, and answer: "Fire away, oh, 
 youth, thy servant heareth." 
 
 Once Sandy was taken to lunch with a friend of the 
 boy's. 
 
 "She's a dear old thing awfully keen on art, and all 
 the things that really matter and very good-looking, too, ' '
 
 S H A R R O W 277 
 
 Syd added, with his air of extreme sapience, ' ' for a woman 
 of her age. You '11 see. ' ' 
 
 And what Sandy saw, when they reached the duchess's 
 villa, his eyes prepared to receive an old lady, was a woman 
 of rather more his own age, lavish as to war-paint, and, 
 moreover, a woman with whom he himself had once had an 
 intense though fleeting intimacy. 
 
 Not in the least discountenanced, she greeted him with 
 pleasure, and informed him that his baby brother was 
 the only real love of her life. 
 
 She added that he, Sandy, had changed, had grown 
 unjustifiably old, and that she was delighted to see him 
 even though he did remind her of times antediluvian. 
 
 Then, as they ate their excellent risotto with truffles, she 
 favored him with a brief but picturesque account of her 
 first husband's death and her marriage with the duke, 
 which absent gentleman was, she declared, something over 
 a hundred years old. 
 
 "And you?" she resumed, with a vivacity which seemed 
 to Sandy to be somewhat lugubrious, "you are married, of 
 course? Have you children?" 
 
 Syd burst out laughing. "Sandy married; good Lord, 
 no," he declared with authority, seizing the conversational 
 helm. "Imagine old Sandy with a wife and family!" 
 
 The duchess, who had heard of the turn in the wheel of 
 her old friend's fortunes, turned her eyes, which were 
 rather glassy and swollen under their penciled brows, on 
 the young man. 
 
 ' ' Touch wood, my friend, ' ' she said with a little smile ; 
 ' ' your brother is still young ! ' ' 
 
 Syd was silent for a moment. "Oh, I see," he said at 
 length. "I hadn't thought of that. Until you do marry, 
 Sandy, I am your heir-apparent, ain't I?" 
 
 Sandy nodded. ' ' You are. ' ' 
 
 He said no more, and the duchess changed the subject.
 
 278 S H A R E W 
 
 After lunch Syd went into the next room, on a sign 
 from his hostess, to look at some old engravings she had 
 deniche chez un vieux fourbe d'antiquaire, and Sandy and 
 the lady smoked their cigarettes on a small terrace over- 
 hanging the umbrageous and be-statued garden. 
 
 ' ' You were surprised to see me, eh ? " she began, settling 
 herself on her chaise-longue. 
 
 ''No." 
 
 "But he did not know I knew you I did not tell him." 
 
 ' ' To tell the truth, ' ' Sandy returned, not without malice, 
 "I had clean forgotten you." 
 
 "Bear!" 
 
 "Yes, I am a bear. And, my dear Duchess, bears pro- 
 tect their cubs." 
 
 ' ' Ah ! I thought you had no cubs ? ' ' 
 
 "Syd is my cub. Let me see I am three-and-thirty ; 
 you are two or three years older than I. Syd is nineteen. 
 So remember, Belle Dame aux Mains Blanches," he added, 
 very gently, using his whilom pet name for her, "hands 
 off." 
 
 "You remember the old name, at all events Sandy. 
 However, you wrong me. I may not be very good, but I 
 have some sense of humor. And, as you rightly, though 
 rudely, say, I am thirty-five years old, and your cub ig 
 nineteen. Even if he were attracted by me, which he really 
 isn't, I should not make myself a laughing-stock by re- 
 sponding to his infantile ardor." 
 
 "Good!" 
 
 After a pause, during which he sat in unconcealed ab- 
 straction, she asked a question which, although she did 
 not know it, touched the matter occupying his thoughts. 
 
 "And the boy is your heir?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Until you marry, my friend, remember that " 
 
 In spite of her multi-colored past, her paints and dyes
 
 SHARROW 279 
 
 and crayons, she was a kind woman, and presently, as he 
 continued to sit there smoking in silence, she added : ' ' Don 't 
 let him learn to regard himself as your heir, Sandro mio 
 it would be cruel. ' ' 
 
 He looked up, recognizing the real good will in her 
 words. 
 
 "But he is my heir, Maddalena; I shall never marry." 
 
 It was a strange thing that, for all his love for Syd, the 
 idea that his great good fortune was to descend on the 
 boy had never before occurred to him. 
 
 Probably because he was mentally as well as physically 
 ill when the news came, and because the subsequent weeks 
 had been passed in a fierce struggle to retrieve himself, the 
 only thought he had had regarding the boy was that he 
 could now see him again and be with him. 
 
 Ironical it was that the tremendous importance of what 
 he could now give his brother should have dawned on him 
 as the result of a word uttered by this woman with whom 
 his brief liaison had almost completely died from his 
 memory. 
 
 Sharrow was his, but he was no longer fit for it; his 
 young enthusiasms, his young ambitions, were gone; gone, 
 too, the very power of rejoicing in having for his own the 
 place he had so deeply loved. 
 
 This had been the sad refrain of his thoughts, during his 
 long tramp southwards. And, when the fierce craving for 
 spirit came over him, it had been his strongest temptation. 
 Sharrow had come too late. He could be no good to it, in 
 his deep un worthiness ; it could no longer make him 
 happy. 
 
 Once, in a little inn in the St. Gothard Pass, his enemy 
 had so nearly worsted him that he had a glass of rough 
 cheap brandy poured out, and was about to pour it down 
 his longing throat, when his eyes fell on his ring. Ce que 
 Charreau possede, Charreau garde.
 
 280 SHARROW 
 
 With an oath, he flung the stuff, for lack of a better 
 place, on the floor. 
 
 Sharrow was his now. He would keep it. 
 
 But now, sitting there, looking into the sunlit cypresses 
 in the Duca de Roccagliano 's garden in Rome, a faint stir- 
 ring of the old feeling came to him : the Sharrow Feeling 
 the beauty and mystery and coolness of the old place. 
 Starting, mentally, to catch it, it flew away like a gay 
 butterfly, and was lost. 
 
 But he had felt it flutter; it still lived within him, and 
 it might come back. 
 
 He rose. "Forgive my being rude I was always rude, 
 you know you used to say so. But I must go. There is 
 something I must tell my brother." 
 
 She held out her hand. "Very well. Something has 
 happened to you something mental. Come to see me 
 again before you go. And I have not congratulated you 
 yet, but I am very glad for your good fortune." 
 
 He held her hand in his for a moment. "I am sorry 
 I misjudged you about my brother," he said. "You are 
 very attractive, you know." 
 
 Then he and Syd walked away in the pleasant autumn 
 sunshine back over the bridge of St. Angelo, behind St. 
 Peter's, &nd up the long winding road among the trees to- 
 ward the villa where the boy was living with friends. 
 
 On the little plateau in front of San Pietro in Montorio, 
 Sandy, who had been very silent, stopped. 
 
 Syd, whose French blood predominated much more than 
 Sandy's did in him, had slipped his arm through his 
 brother's, and, thus linked, they stood looking down at 
 the view that surely is the most beautiful view of a great 
 city in the whole world. 
 
 "Syd." 
 
 "Sandear?" 
 
 Syd, as he spoke, hastily pulled off his hat, bowing to
 
 S H A R R W 281 
 
 an old man dressed in black that gave him, in some 
 subtle way, the air of being connected with the Catholic 
 Church, and a girl, evidently his daughter. 
 
 "That's Don Ramon Suarez, Sandy," Syd explained, 
 with a touch of pride in the acquaintance. "He was the 
 lay secretary to the Archbishop of Barcelona, and it is 
 his 'History of the Last Hundred Years of the Papacy' 
 that caused all the talk and lost him his position. An 
 awfully brilliant man." 
 
 "Looks like an old rat." 
 
 ' ' He does, rather ! And his daughter plays the piano bet- 
 ter than any woman I have ever heard, bar Teresa Car- 
 refio. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Does she ? Delightful. Syd, there is something I wish 
 to say to you. ' ' 
 
 The boy again took his arm, and stood leaning affec- 
 tionately against him as he spoke. 
 
 "Syd do you understand what Sharrow is?" 
 
 "Rather! Awfully jolly old house, and lots of money, 
 I suppose. ' ' 
 
 Sandy sighed. He remembered his fruitless efforts of 
 long ago to convey to the boy what he himself thought 
 about it. 
 
 "No, no; not that. It is hard to explain, but I will try, 
 and you must be patient and listen." 
 
 "All right. I say, Sandear, if Senorita Maria Paz does 
 come out as a professional pianist, perhaps we could give 
 her a leg up in London. She really plays magnificently, 
 and she 's a nice girl, though not a bit pretty, poor thing. ' ' 
 
 ' ' All right, Syd, we '11 try, ' ' returned Sandy patiently. 
 
 Then, standing there in the Roman sunshine, he made 
 his declaration of faith. 
 
 "Just as the earthworm is a part of its clod of earth, 
 and the clod of earth part of the field, and the field a part 
 of the whole estate, so, it seems to me, that you and I,
 
 282 SHARROW 
 
 Syd, are a part of Sharrow. Not of the concrete place it- 
 self, of course, but of it as a system, an idea, a fabric. 
 And just as the acres of Sharrow are a part of the king- 
 dom, so the history of Sharrow is a part of the history of 
 England and so on, until we find ourselves, just you and 
 me, two ordinary men, an integral part of the history of 
 the world, and the universe." 
 
 Syd listened, his beautiful face turned to the view be- 
 low them. 
 
 "According to the Bible," he murmured, as if half 
 asleep, "every man is a part of the universe." 
 
 ' ' I know ; but try to understand what I mean ; I am not 
 talking about souls. Well England is full of rich men, 
 and beautiful estates, and historical names. But many of 
 the historical names have changed hands over and over 
 again, through deaths, marriages, and even through bar- 
 gains with the Church or the King. There are, of the old, 
 original families who go straight back, without a break, 
 to their founders, but very few left. And of these we 
 Sharrows are one. We are, among the transferred names 
 and the new peerages, a kind of Old Guard. That is one 
 thing I want you to remember. We belong, you and I, 
 to a kind of nobility among the nobility, and it is a 
 great heritage." 
 
 ' ' I 'm a Socialist, ' ' murmured the boy, with a little smile. 
 
 "No, you're not; you're a Sharrow. But this isn't the 
 the best side of it, Syd, this material side. There is a kind 
 of feeling I can't express it's like a scent, or a color a 
 kind of realization of belonging to to the Thing. Of of 
 being a crumb in the loaf, a leaf on the tree, a thread in the 
 fabric. And it is at once the proudest and the humblest 
 feeling in the world ; it makes one long to die for the name, 
 for the place to give one 's very blood for it. ' ' 
 
 "Do you feel like that, Sandy?" Syd spoke very seri- 
 ously.
 
 SHARROW 283 
 
 "Yes. And when I was young, there was in it a a 
 glory that I can't find words for. You are young now, 
 Syd. And I want you always to remember this one thing. 
 You are a part of Sharrow and Sharrow will one day 
 be yours. I shall never marry." 
 
 The boy turned, his eyes wet. "Nonsense, San dear; of 
 course you will! Why, you aren't old; you're really quite 
 young," he added, with what was evidently a generous ex- 
 aggeration of his own convictions. "You 11 marry, and 
 I'll be Uncle Syd!" 
 
 Sandy shook his head, smiling a smile that was intensely 
 sad. 
 
 "No, I shall never marry. You must marry. You must 
 marry while you are young a good woman and I will be 
 Uncle Sandy." 
 
 Then they walked slowly up the hill.
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 IN the arm-chair in which Sandy had, twenty years ago, 
 first seen his great-uncle, his great-uncle received him when 
 he came as his heir. 
 
 The old man, now the oldest peer in the kingdom, sat 
 wrapped in a wadded dressing-gown and several shawls 
 by a great fire, for he was always cold ; he had been freez- 
 ing, he himself was wont querulously to quaver, for years. 
 And the afternoon was a bitter one in late November. 
 
 On a small table close to the arm-chair stood a clock with 
 peculiarly large figures on its white face, a pair of tor- 
 toise-shell rimmed spectacles, a bottle and glass, that were 
 evidently wedded, and a coil of black rubber terminating in 
 a kind of brass-lined petunia of giant growth. 
 
 Lord Sharrow was nearly blind, and even more nearly 
 stone deaf. The only faculty old age had been powerless 
 to injure in him was that of speech. 
 
 In a high peevish tone he now berated his nurse, a placid- 
 faced woman in blue and white uniform, who sat by the 
 window engaged, as if in unconscious irony, in knitting 
 a garment such as, close on a century ago, some long since 
 dead woman had knitted for the old man for whose death 
 she, the nurse, so patiently waited. 
 
 "The train must be in long ago long ago," he fretted. 
 ''He hasn't come. I suppose he has stopped in London 
 to amuse himself. He was always a selfish young dog. If 
 he does not come soon, I won't receive him. Nurse, do you 
 hear me?" 
 
 284
 
 SHAREOW 285 
 
 "I hear you, Lord Sharrow." Her shout reached him 
 as a whisper. 
 
 "I think I'll have some of my tonic. I feel weak 
 very weak. No one realizes how weak I am," he whim- 
 pered, his claw-like hands twisted together piteously. 
 
 Holding a napkin carefully under his chin, she poured 
 the medicine into his poor old mouth. 
 
 "It is only four now," she shouted into his better ear. 
 "The train wasn't due till three-forty-five." 
 
 "Did they send the new car? "Which car did they 
 send?" 
 
 "They sent the new Mercedes, Lord Sharrow." 
 
 "Probably broken down." 
 
 None of the merciful dullness of mind often incident 
 to great age had been granted to Alexander Sharrow. In 
 the prison of his decaying faculties his mind, reduced 
 in volume but as keen as ever, struggled like a squirrel in 
 its wheel. 
 
 He knew that he was old and deaf and half blind, and 
 tied to his chair by his weakness. And for these things he 
 despised himself, and raged at the powers that had created 
 him to mock at him. 
 
 And Nurse Blake, with the sad serenity of her kind, 
 went back to her chair and began the second sleeve on the 
 tiny garment she, in the rare moments of her freedom from 
 the man who had so nearly ceased to be, was making for 
 the man or woman who did not yet live. 
 
 After a while, Waters, now gray and old himself, came 
 quietly in and mended the fire. 
 
 "The motor is coming up the drive, my lord," he said, 
 very loud. 
 
 "Damn you, speak up, can't you?" 
 
 1 ' Give him his trumpet, "Waters, ' ' suggested Nurse Blake. 
 "Mr. Sharrow won't be able to make him hear without 
 it."
 
 286 S H A R R W 
 
 Waters again bellowed the news, and Lord Sharrow 
 heard him. 
 
 ' ' Good ! Am I all right, Waters ? Take away that medi- 
 cine glass." 
 
 The man obeyed, switched on the electric light installed 
 in 1890 and left the room, the nurse following him 
 quietly. 
 
 The clock ticked in the silence, and the old man waited. 
 Sandy was coming. He had wronged Sandy, he had sent 
 the boy whom he loved as much as he was capable of lov- 
 ing any human being out into the wilderness, broken- 
 hearted. And yet, on the extreme edge of the grave, 
 he awaited the return of the man he had so dreadfully 
 injured, with a leap of the heart that brought a faint color 
 to his ancient cheeks. 
 
 When the door opened, and Sandy stood in it, his face 
 white, stern, yet in its very immobility showing how deeply 
 he was shaken, the old man spoke. 
 
 ' ' Well, come in, come in. I can 't stand a draught. ' ' 
 
 Sandy closed the door. 
 
 Ten years ago his old kinsman had been, though already 
 ancient, yet a foeman worthy of his steel. There were 
 things Sandy had wished to say on his return to the home 
 of his fathers things, the saying of which would have 
 been a relief to his soul. 
 
 He had not forgiven his great-uncle, he had not forgiven 
 Maggie Penrose; he never would forgive them. This im- 
 mutability of resentment was a part of his very being ; he 
 had not created it ; he was powerless, even had he so wished, 
 to destroy it. It was like a rib of naked rock in his mental 
 lands. 
 
 But unless this man who had destroyed him could be 
 brought to know, even as his accomplice, the woman, knew, 
 how his wrath would endure through all eternity, Sandy 
 knew he would find no peace. He had come with words in
 
 SHARROW 287 
 
 his mouth, and the words fell back, unspoken, into his 
 heart. 
 
 His enemy had, in his partial death, passed beyond his 
 mark. 
 
 "How do you do, sir?" he said. 
 
 "I am very well, Sandy, very well for a man of my 
 age. Since Lord Balmarnock died, last spring," Lord 
 Sharrow answered, with a macabre vanity, "I am the old- 
 est peer of the realm ! But come in come in. Sit there, 
 where I can see you. I I have longed for you to come, 
 Sandy." His voice broke. 
 
 The big man obeyed, sitting down in a little white chair 
 he remembered well, and submitted, when his great-uncle 
 had carefully fitted on his spectacles, to a prolonged scru- 
 tiny. 
 
 "Well, well, well. Just the same just the same." 
 
 "No, sir; I am not the same." 
 
 ' ' Hold your tongue ! I say you are. You are exactly, ' ' 
 insisted the old gentleman with satisfaction, "what I was 
 at your age ! ' ' 
 
 Sandy was silent. 
 
 The interview seemed to him to be a mere painful trav- 
 esty of the one he had expected. Another hope, and a 
 very strong though not a very worthy one, was shattered 
 the hope of telling his great-uncle in plain English what 
 he, his heir, thought of him. The phrases, appropriate to 
 the purpose, had been for weeks growing up in Sandy's 
 mind, phrases bitter, curt and poignant that one satisfac- 
 tion, at least, should be his. And now, he knew, it never 
 should. 
 
 Lord Sharrow had escaped his vengeance. 
 
 Presently the old man began to cry, beating his hands 
 together with a little dry sound not unlike that of the 
 scraping of autumn leaves. 
 
 "Oh," he moaned, "I am so old, so old!"
 
 288 S H A R R W 
 
 The nurse came in, and gave him a glass of port and 
 water, crumbling bits of biscuit into his toothless old 
 mouth. 
 
 "Your coming has excited him," she said to Sandy. 
 "Now, don't cry, Lord Sharrow. You must sleep now, 
 and, when you wake up, Mr. Sharrow will come back to 
 you." 
 
 Sandy left the room without being noticed by the old 
 man, and went downstairs. He was tired, mentally and 
 physically. He felt as if he had been beaten all over. 
 
 Sharrow seemed to stand aloof, to frown at him. He 
 was all unworthy to be even a leaf on its tree. It had 
 come, as so many things in this sad world do come, too 
 late.
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 One evening, a few days before Christmas, Mary Wy- 
 mondham sat in her drawing-room in the Corner House, 
 making, with a great show of tissue paper, scarlet ribbon, 
 and sprigs of holly, her Christmas packages. 
 
 It was a pleasant room, compounded of things given 
 to her grandmother on the occasion of her wedding, seventy 
 years before, and things bought by or given to her grand- 
 mother's son, Mary's father, when he married, in 1860 or 
 thereabouts. 
 
 The carpet, a plain green one, was new; but the chintz 
 of the chairs and curtains had come from the Vicarage 
 drawing-room, and had been much washed, and nearly as 
 often mended. 
 
 Mary loved it because she had known its absurd foliage, 
 diversified by parrots of tropical hue, ever since she could 
 remember. 
 
 The room, which was rather large, had three windows, 
 all looking on the lawn just within the green gate opening 
 on to the road at the end of the village. It was thus pleas- 
 antly light, even in the winter, and now, at four o'clock, 
 the red firelight from the big hearth was only just begin- 
 ning to gain on its rival. 
 
 From a dark portrait opposite the fireplace a lady in 
 powder smiled down at the solitary woman as she worked 
 with a big ivory paper-cutter and her scissors, folding the 
 crisp white paper, cutting it with the paper-cutter into 
 the desired size, then deftly making the packet, tying it 
 
 289
 
 290 SHARROW 
 
 with the ribbon, snipping the ribbon when she had made 
 the bow, and with a deft touch inserting a sprig of holly 
 under it. 
 
 "Six," she declared aloud, with satisfaction. 
 
 In her pleasant drawing-room, Mary Wymondham was 
 a pleasant sight. She wore a very well-cut coat and skirt 
 of dark tweed, a silk shirt with a silk collar and a bright 
 green tie, tied like a man's, the collar being held in place 
 under the tie by a gold safety-pin a thing not so usual 
 then as it is now, and which gave her an air of peculiar 
 neatness. 
 
 She had never, even as a young girl, been pretty, and 
 now, at two-and-thirty, no one would have applied the word 
 to her. Her dark face, with its alert brown eyes under 
 heavy black brows, and its rather high cheek-bones, was too 
 strong for prettiness, too irregular for beauty. 
 
 But as her natural impatience and high-handedness be- 
 came softened by time and the discipline that is the gift 
 of Heaven to everyone who does not reject it, her face 
 had gained something of gentleness that it had formerly 
 lacked. 
 
 She was happy as she worked at her attractive little 
 task; and when, as happened once or twice, she smiled 
 over one of her gifts, delightful dimples broke the surface 
 of her smooth brown cheeks. 
 
 "Eight!" 
 
 The clock struck half-past four as she spoke, and at the 
 same moment the garden gate clicked, and a man's foot- 
 steps came along past the window, crunching the gravel 
 energetically. 
 
 Mary "Wymondham glanced out, dropped a doll whose legs 
 showed an unregenerate desire for publicity, and, going 
 hastily to her writing-table, took a framed photograph 
 from it and was about to put it into the drawer. Then, 
 as the door-bell rang, she shook her head, and set the pic-
 
 SHARROW 291 
 
 ture back in its prominent place, and went back to the 
 fire. 
 
 ' ' Stuff and nonsense ! ' ' she said, under her breath. " I '11 
 do nothing of the sort." 
 
 When her little parlor-maid ushered in her guest, Miss 
 Wymondham held out both her hands to him, with frank 
 pleasure. 
 
 "How nice of you, Sandy; I am delighted. Sally, let's 
 have tea at once, please." 
 
 The little maid, who was a Babbage of the "Sheep- 
 shearers," and a godchild of old Dingle's fat daughter, 
 hurried away to Cook, full of importance. She knew all 
 about Mr. Sandy, the new heir, and only the other day she 
 had heard her great-uncle, John Dingle, singing his praises. 
 They should, she decided, have muffins positively dripping 
 with butter. And they did. 
 
 A plate, containing one of Sally Babbage 's mute tributes 
 to his greatness, on his knee, Sandy sat by the fire, wishing 
 with all his heart that he had not come. 
 
 He had been for weeks at Sharrow he could not say ' ' at 
 home" even to himself and for a fortnight had been try- 
 ing to make up his mind to call on his old friend. And 
 for a fortnight he had failed. 
 
 He had already seen Mary once at the house, when she 
 came to see Lord Sharrow, who was devoted to her; and 
 once in the village; and owing to her frank pleasure in 
 seeing him and her apparent forgetfulness of things that 
 had gone before, the meetings had passed off in comparative 
 comfort. 
 
 But in her own house, surrounded by the furniture from 
 the Vicarage, he could hardly avoid speaking of old times ; 
 in common decency he must express regret for her father's 
 death and, speaking of the father, who had always been a 
 good friend to him, how could he avoid mentioning Viola ? 
 
 Finally he had settled the problem in his own fashion;
 
 292 SHARROW 
 
 he would speak about the Vicar, and he would not speak 
 about Viola. And if Mary didn't like it, she must do the 
 other thing. 
 
 So he had come. 
 
 Mary asked him questions in a way that suggested to 
 him her potential excellency as a schoolmistress; questions 
 clear, deliberate, to the point, about Lord Sharrow's health, 
 about some cottages he had persuaded the old man to pull 
 down, about some village tragedy. 
 
 And he answered her, his eyes fixed on his muffin, which 
 dripped, powerless to charm his appetite, in order to see 
 as little as possible of the things that so called back to 
 him the old days that were so much deader than Noah. 
 He knew that the powdered lady was smiling at him with 
 a slight divergence in her black eyes ; in his boyhood he had 
 called her the old girl with the squint. 
 
 On the table by Mary lay a pair of ancient silver candle 
 snuffers that had held for him one of the strange, inex- 
 plicable charms things sometimes hold for romantic chil- 
 dren. 
 
 And beside Mary, a pile of books, dolls, stockings, shawls, 
 boxes of sweets, and other little gifts, lay on a small bam- 
 boo chair covered with printed, pomegranate-colored velvet ; 
 Vi 's own chair it had been ; a thousand times he had seen 
 her, as a demure little girl, sitting on it. 
 
 "Have you seen the other Sandy?" Mary's voice awoke 
 him with a start. 
 
 "Yes. I went up to town on purpose last week. He is 
 behaving splendidly, Mary, and so is his wife. It is 
 awfully rough on them ; they have twin boys, as I dare say 
 you know." 
 
 "Yes. I had heard, of course. It's lucky she has 
 money." 
 
 "Isn't it? Keith is all right in that way, too, Sandy 
 tells me."
 
 S H A R R O W 293 
 
 "Yes. It's a great pity he made that foolish marriage. 
 Have you seen Paul?" 
 
 "No. What has become of him?" 
 
 Mary tied the ribbon around the package on her knees 
 with a little jerk. "He's a curate somewhere in Somer- 
 setshire. He is not married. I saw him once at a concert 
 at St. James's Hall. He has grown very fat, although he's 
 so young, and his mouth is redder than ever. I never 
 could bear Paul." 
 
 Sandy laughed. ' ' I thought you were too good to dislike 
 anyone, Mary. ' ' 
 
 "Am I?" she retorted quickly, her brown eyes full of 
 firelight heightened by a flash of temper as she looked up, 
 slashing her scissors sharply together. "Am I such a bore 
 as that?" 
 
 "Nonsense you know what I meant. As to Paul, I 
 quite agree with you. There was always something wrong 
 about him" he bit his lip. What was he to criticise a 
 struggling young parson whose only real fault, so far as 
 he knew, was that his mouth was too red? 
 
 And Mary felt that his own words had somehow had 
 power to wound him. She said nothing, but her eyes 
 softened as they bent over her work. 
 
 "Speaking of meeting people," she resumed presently, as 
 he finally set his cup and untouched muffin on the tea table, 
 "I saw you, you know, at the Grand Prix this year." 
 
 "So Dingle told me." 
 
 ' ' You were walking with with some ladies ; and I was in 
 the Grand Stand, but I asked one of my party to take me 
 down, and we looked for you for nearly an hour, but you 
 had gone. I was so excited!" 
 
 "I remember. One of the ladies I was with fainted and 
 I had to take her home. Were you long in Paris?" 
 
 She hesitated. "About a fortnight." 
 
 And he knew that Viola had been there, too.
 
 294 SHARROW 
 
 Now Mary Wymondham, of course, knew quite well that 
 there was some mystery connected with Sandy, and she 
 had no intention of trying to solve it. But there was an- 
 other matter which, as she lived in Sharrow, and he was in 
 all probability to pass the rest of his days there, must, for 
 the sake of the comfort of their future intercourse, be 
 settled. 
 
 She pondered for a few minutes, and then, rising, went 
 to the writing table and, bringing back the photograph that 
 stood on it, handed it to Sandy. 
 
 "This is Viola's latest picture, Sandy. How do you 
 like it?" 
 
 He was not a tyrant nor a conceited man, but the tragedy 
 of his life and Viola Wymondham were one and the same 
 thing, and it came to him with a distinct shock that it 
 could be touched upon. It seemed to him that her name 
 should never have been mentioned to him; and here was 
 Mary asking him what he thought of her latest photograph ! 
 
 For a moment he did not speak because he could not, 
 and Mary saw it. There was to her, naturally enough, 
 more than a little absurdity in his attitude, for she knew 
 nothing of his life during the past ten years, and his grave 
 face now wore none of the more obvious traces of dissipa- 
 tion. Fundamentally a very healthy man, the six weeks 
 that had elapsed between the night when Dingle found 
 him and the day of his return to Sharrow had changed 
 him almost unbelievably. 
 
 He looked, now, a man older than his years, to be sure, 
 and a man who had suffered that was all. 
 
 But Mary, seeing this much, naturally did not attribute 
 all the suffering, the traces of which she saw, to his boy- 
 ish disappointment. Surely no man in his senses, she 
 reasoned as she now waited for him to speak, could care 
 for a woman after ten years' separation so much that he 
 could not bear to look at her photograph !
 
 S H A R R O W 295 
 
 To her healthy mind the idea was monstrous, and she 
 was about to set Sandy down as a poseur, when he rose, the 
 photograph still in his hand. 
 
 "It is a beautiful picture," he said, stammering a little. 
 "I hope Viola is well?" 
 
 As he said the words, there flashed through her mind 
 the scene in the Vicar's study when Lord Sharrow made 
 his famous apology. "A beautiful woman, sir a beautiful 
 woman," the old man had said. 
 
 And Sandy had said, "A beautiful picture." 
 
 He laid the photograph down on the table. 
 
 "Well, I must be off," he added, in his usual voice. 
 "My great-uncle always wants to see me before he goes to 
 bed." 
 
 "How is he?" 
 
 "Very feeble. Turner says he can't live for more than 
 a few weeks. I hope with all my heart he doesn't, poor old 
 man." 
 
 Mary nodded as they shook hands. "I hope so, too. 
 He will die happy now that you have come home." 
 
 Sandy did not answer, and after a moment took his 
 leave. 
 
 When he had gone, she cleared away her odds and ends 
 of paper and ribbon, and set her room in order. 
 
 "I hope he will come often," she said aloud, "but he 
 won't."
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 SYD came at Christmas, and to Sandy's great happiness 
 the boy seemed to have taken his sermon on Sharrow to 
 heart more than the older man had ventured to hope he 
 would. 
 
 "I I think I almost know what you mean by the Feel- 
 ing, Sandy," the boy said, as they came downstairs after 
 half an hour with the old lord. "Even the old boy up- 
 stairs awful and rather sickening, as he is, is a leaf on 
 the tree. And when he falls off then there is you." 
 
 "And you." 
 
 "Yes, and me. When I came into the Great Hall this 
 morning, and saw the old armor that they used to wear, 
 it well, it gave me a queer kind of sensation down my 
 spine. I hope," he added more thoughtfully than Sandy 
 had ever heard him speak, "that it is not just because it is 
 going to be mine some day and my son 's. ' ' 
 
 "No fear of that. It's it's that you are growing older. 
 You must read the books I used to love and if you like," 
 he continued, a little shyly, " I '11 tell you all I can remem- 
 ber about the house itself." 
 
 But Rome had evidently developed a new strain of 
 poetry in the boy; he showed a fondness for being alone, 
 and, as he wandered about the house, learning to know it, as 
 he told his brother, his large eyes were dreamy. Sandy was 
 more delighted than he would have believed himself cap- 
 able of being about anything. 
 
 He gave Syd the Tower Room, in which hung his old 
 cricket bat and his favorite pictures. 
 
 296
 
 SHARROW 297 
 
 "Ben and I used to sit here and talk by the hour," he 
 said, on the occasion of his first visit to his brother in his 
 new kingdom. "You remember Ben Frith?" 
 
 ' ' Of course ; how is he ? " 
 
 "I don't know. I I have lost him." On hearing his 
 own words, Sandy tried to laugh. "I mean to say that I 
 have not seen him since that time at St. Hubert neither 
 seen nor written to him." 
 
 He could not tell Syd that on the occasion of Ben 's com- 
 ing out to see him a I'improviste, having got his address 
 from Mrs. Sharrow, he had not welcomed the gentle in- 
 truder, and he had been so unlike his old self that Ben 
 had gone away hurt and angry. 
 
 Later, Ben had written, but his letter came at a time 
 when Sandy threw his post into the fire every day without 
 opening it. 
 
 Sandy stood by the window from which he had pointed 
 out to Ben the break in the trees under which the Wy- 
 mondham girls must pass when they went for their walks. 
 The past was so vivid to him at that minute that even Syd 
 seemed a phantom. 
 
 With an effort he collected himself and returned to the 
 fire. It was five years since he had seen Ben; he would 
 write to him, he said, sitting down and lighting a cigarette, 
 and invite him to Sharrow. 
 
 And Ben came. 
 
 He seemed smaller than before, and he was very shabby, 
 but he was still happy in his unclamorous way; London 
 made him happy, and books, and a potted hyacinth, and a 
 pair of new boots, and half a dozen oysters with a bottle of 
 chablis. 
 
 He had made no career for himself; his book of London 
 verses had never been written ; he earned a very small pit- 
 tance by doing research work under his father, for the Brit- 
 ish Museum. His father had married again a most sur-
 
 298 SHARROW 
 
 prising thing and the three and a little girl named Mary- 
 gold, whom even now Ben in his absent-mindedness called 
 his niece instead of his sister still lived on in the old 
 house. 
 
 "We are all going to pieces quite gently and noiselessly," 
 he explained. ' ' It is the only house in London where noth- 
 ing is ever renewed. The bath towels were the last thing 
 to give out we use ordinary towels for our baths now, and 
 they really do very well, only it takes one hours to dry 
 oneself; when they go I dare say we'll have to put on our 
 clothes without drying ourselves, and then we shall die 
 of pneumonia, and that will be the end of us." 
 
 He rubbed his thin hands together and seemed quite 
 pleased with the prospect. 
 
 "But what's your stepmother like, Ben?" 
 
 "Beads. Beads aU through." 
 
 "What on earth do you mean?" 
 
 "She's artistic, and wears one-piece frocks made of 
 flannel, with silk embroidery at the throat and wrists. And 
 she adorns herself with beads, long chains of 'em. You 
 know the kind." 
 
 "But why don't she buy bath towels and things?" 
 
 "Serena? Bless your heart, she has no money to buy 
 bath towels," elucidated Ben with the greatest calmness. 
 "She's a Buddhist." 
 
 Ben had forgiven Sandy without a word of reproach, 
 without even a question, and Sandy was deeply grateful 
 to him. Ben's life lay open as a book to his friend; it 
 apparently never occurred to the little scholar that Sandy's 
 book should not be closed to him. 
 
 And closed it was, and locked with a key, and the key 
 was thrown away, Sandy thought, forever. 
 
 Even had he been able, without pain to himself, to speak 
 of the things he had done and seen during that last decade, 
 he could not have mentioned them to Ben. There was
 
 S H A R R O W 299 
 
 about the shy, rather ridiculous-looking little man, a kind 
 of purity that a worse man than Sandy would have spared. 
 
 Once Sandy, in the middle of one of his bad nights, went 
 into Ben's room, and ruthlessly waked him. 
 
 ' ' I say, Ben, get up and talk to me, for God 's sake ! ' ' 
 
 Ben sprang out of bed as if the house had been on fire. 
 He was an absurd sight with his skinny, yellow legs and 
 his old-fashioned night-shirt trimmed with narrow red 
 braiding the work of the Buddhistic Serena. 
 
 "All right, old chap," he returned, rubbing his eyes. 
 * * What 's wrong ? Anybody ill ? " 
 
 "No, but I can't sleep and and I don't want to be 
 alone." 
 
 "Right." Ben pulled on his trousers, wrapped his yel- 
 low satin eider-down around him, and, sitting cross-legged 
 on his bed, waited. 
 
 To his surprise, Sandy began talking very rapidly, with 
 an unusual flow of words, about politics. He was, he de- 
 clared, an out-and-out Unionist; he damned one minister, 
 laughed at another, predicted the immediate downfall of 
 another. 
 
 Ben listened, open-mouthed. He had never before known 
 Sandy to show the slightest interest in politics. 
 
 Presently he ventured a remark that showed his utter 
 ignorance as to whether the Prime Minister of the day 
 was a Liberal or a Unionist, and Sandy laughed a nervous 
 laugh that gradually turned to his normal one, and seemed 
 to calm him. 
 
 "Poor old Ben get back into bed, I was a brute to dis- 
 turb you, but you don 't mind, do you ? ' ' 
 
 "Of course I don't, and I wish you'd give me a few 
 more tips about these these matters of public interest. ' ' 
 
 "No; to bed you go. I'm all right now good-night." 
 
 But Ben lay a long time wondering what it had all 
 meant.
 
 300 SHARROW 
 
 The next morning at breakfast Syd looked up from his 
 letters, and exclaimed suddenly: 
 
 "I say, Sandy, you do look seedy. Look as if you'd 
 been on a terrific bust." 
 
 Sandy, who was pouring himself a cup of black coffee, 
 knocked the silver coffee-pot against his cup with such force 
 that the delicate porcelain shattered, and the coffee splashed 
 on the table cloth. 
 
 "Don't talk rot, Syd I have not been on a 'terrific 
 bust' you know quite well that I never drink a drop of 
 any kind of spirits and I wish you wouldn't make vulgar 
 jokes!" 
 
 The boy stared. "Sorry, old man you do look bad, 
 though; doesn't he, Ben?" 
 
 "Very. If it were me, I'd have a stiffish brandy and 
 soda," prescribed Ben with a knowing air. "You must 
 have got a chill, Sandy." 
 
 But Sandy declared himself to be perfectly well, and 
 shortly afterwards went out for a long ride. 
 
 "Nervy," Syd explained, "awfully nervy, the dear old 
 boy. My uncle is very trying, and I rather think Sandy 
 hates him." 
 
 "Nonsense! He used to be very fond of him." 
 
 ' ' I know, ' ' answered the boy with his new air of thought- 
 fulness, "but I've seen Sandy look at him once or twice 
 as one looks at a rat in a trap or at someone who is 
 behind bars, but who is safe from one only because of the 
 bars." 
 
 ' ' I wonder ! At all events, if it 's his doing, it must soon 
 cease he can't possibly live much longer. And then " 
 
 Syd nodded. "Yes. Then it'll be Sandy's turn. I say, 
 Ben, did you know he was never going to marry?" 
 
 " No ; who says he isn 't ? " 
 
 "He did. He told me that as he wasn't going to, I was 
 his heir, and that I must. Marry, I mean."
 
 S H A R R W 301 
 
 Ben puffed at his pipe, and ruffled his nearly impalpable 
 hair into a kind of aureole. 
 
 ''That's a pity. He ought to marry. Too good to 
 waste." 
 
 "Yes, he is. But as long as he won't " The boy 
 
 hesitated, blushing a little. 
 
 "As long as he won't," Ben agreed, eyeing him with 
 grandfatherly solicitude, "you must. All right, Syd. You 
 might marry my little nie sister. She's four, and very 
 pretty." 
 
 "Pooh," returned Syd, feeling his moustache; "she's 
 years too young."
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 ONE evening early in February, Syd asked Sandy to 
 come to London with him for a concert that was to be 
 given the next day at the Bechstein Hall by Senorita 
 Maria Paz Suarez. 
 
 "Me? My dear boy, I can't tell 'God save the Queen' 
 from the 'Marseillaise'." 
 
 Syd laughed. "Well, as she isn't going to play either 
 the one or the other, that doesn't much matter. Come 
 along, Sandy, it will please her awfully." 
 
 Sandy, who lay almost invisible in a huge leather chair 
 in the smoking-room, crossed his legs. 
 
 "I don't know that I care very much about pleasing 
 Spanish pianists do you, Ben?" 
 
 "Not" a rap. Nothing is of profounder indifference to 
 me," declared Ben, "except possibly Kooshians." 
 
 Syd, who stood on the hearthrug, shook his head im- 
 patiently. 
 
 "Nonsense! They are awfully poor, and she is doing 
 it to help her father educate her two sisters ; and I well, I 
 told Don Ramon I 'd try to get some people to go. ' ' 
 
 "That's different," observed Sandy. "Ben shall go." 
 
 "All right, Kid," Ben agreed. "I will, I don't mind at 
 all, and I'll take Serena and Marygold. They'll like it." 
 After a moment he added: "I rather like piano-playing; 
 but little concerts like this always make me want to cry 
 the many seats that are always empty ; the day clothes of 
 the audience, of whom many are obviously 'paper'; the 
 
 302
 
 SHARROW 303 
 
 gloom for it invariably rains ; the nervousness of the per- 
 former 's mother and sisters and friends. The very piano 
 looks lonely, as if it had wandered in under the impression 
 that its pals, the drums and the fiddles, were to be there, and 
 then, when the debutante comes on, her knees shaking, 
 her hands, one knows, as cold as ice my knees shake, and 
 I have to blow my fingers to keep 'em from freezing. Bah ! 
 it 's a dreadful form of amusement. ' ' 
 
 ''You won't see Maria Paz's knees shaking," Syd 
 laughed, "nor her hands getting blue." 
 
 Out of the depths of his comfortable chair Sandy 's head 
 emerged, slowly, like a watchful snail from its shell. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked. 
 
 Syd laughed again. "Because you won't. You can't 
 see what doesn't exist, you know, and she is as brave as a 
 little lion. I never knew a gamer girl. Besides, she knows 
 she can play. Her little thin hands are like a bird's claws, 
 but they are strong" he paused, with a thoughtful sip of 
 his soda-water "as a baboon's." 
 
 Sandy dropped comfortably back into the shadow. 
 * ' Sounds a fascinating lady, ' ' he said, ' ' with her claws as 
 strong as a baboon's hands." 
 
 "Yes, Syd," joined in Ben, "better be careful; these 
 languorous Spaniards, you know, are dangerous." 
 
 Syd smiled, a peculiar, thoughtful smile. "I think," he 
 said slowly, "that Maria Paz Suarez is as ugly a woman as 
 I ever saw in my life. She knows it, too." 
 
 "Poor girl!" said Sandy, striking a match, whose light 
 showed a power of sympathy on his face. "A dreadful 
 handicap for a woman of her metier. I saw her in Rome, 
 Syd ; I remember her father, but didn 't notice her. ' ' 
 
 "No, one wouldn't. "Well, she is as thin as a rail, her 
 skin is sallow, her eyes little and queer-set, her mouth is 
 oh, very ugly, though her teeth are good, and she has no 
 more figure than a lead pencil."
 
 304 SHARROW 
 
 "Poor thing!" Ben looked ready to weep as he polished 
 his spectacles furiously with his handkerchief. "It's a 
 shame that a girl should ever be so utterly without charm. 
 Poor soul! she's doomed to failure in London, then. She'd 
 stand a far better chance if she played rather badly, and 
 had beautiful hair, or or pretty eyes. ' ' 
 
 He was really painfully sorry for the girl he had never 
 seen. Pity rose to a passion in him. 
 
 But Syd shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, she's not a 
 monster, you know, Ben. And she plays like an angel, / 
 think." 
 
 Sandy rose. "Well, now to bed; I'm dead with sleep. 
 We can take the eleven-forty-five, have plenty of time for 
 lunch, and then well go and support the claw-handed 
 gorilla. ' ' 
 
 "I'll send a wire to Serena," added Ben, "and I can 
 get one or two men to go, if you like, Syd. ' ' 
 
 They went slowly upstairs, parting at Ben's door. 
 
 "It's awfully good of you two," Syd said. "Poor Don 
 Ramon will be awfully grateful." 
 
 When, the next afternoon, the three men watched the 
 debutante as she settled herself at the lonely looking piano, 
 Ben whispered: 
 
 "You're a slanderer, Syd; she isn't in the least like a 
 gorilla. ' ' 
 
 "Shut up, Ben!" retorted the boy. "I never said she 
 was. ' ' 
 
 A sallow-faced woman in a blue-white frock trimmed 
 with cheap lace, her oily black hair arranged in the Japan- 
 ese looking aureole that in '95 was not so common as it is 
 now, her flat, bony wrists, boldly naked, the pianist was 
 in truth very ugly, very unattractive. 
 
 When she was settled to her satisfaction, she swept her 
 audience with a look that seemed to express a fierce loathing 
 for every individual member of it, gave a little shrug, as if
 
 S H A R R W 305 
 
 fo herself she said: "Oh, well, I suppose I must play, little 
 though you deserve it," and began the first number. 
 
 It was a Chopin etude, and she treated it as if it had 
 been a mouse, and she a cat; she positively tore its vitals 
 out, with a malignance and a brilliancy that were strange. 
 Her triumph, though Sandy and Ben were too ignorant 
 to know it, lay in that the strangeness of her interpretation 
 drew all attention away from her technique. One took for 
 granted that her fierce little fingers were perfectly accurate, 
 that her strength and her exactness were well balanced and 
 unerring. One wondered only at the things the music 
 meant, as she ripped it out of the patient ivory, holding 
 up with malicious glee, it seemed to the interested audi- 
 ence, a rather unpleasant secret of the life of the late 
 Frederic Chopin. 
 
 When she ceased playing, and sat immovable, her hands 
 lying on her lap, Ben said under his breath: "Well, by 
 Jove ! she can play ! ' ' 
 
 Sandy said nothing, but sat with his brows pulled down, 
 until his eyes were nearly hidden. 
 
 The audience, which was of the entirely unappreciative 
 kind that so often falls to the lot of debutantes, clapped 
 mechanically. At the back, some newcomers chattered 
 about the rain, which, it appeared, was pelting. 
 
 "Well, Sandy," asked Syd anxiously, "wasn't I right?" 
 
 Sandy turned, his face tender. "You were, Sydkin; I 
 should say she is wonderful. And it's nice of you to take 
 such an interest in the poor thing. I tell you what, we'll 
 see what we can do to help her." 
 
 The boy's face glowed. "Thanks, Sandy. If you could 
 know how they live, poor things, to keep the little sisters 
 in a good convent school I can't tell you how I respect 
 Maria P&z." 
 
 Maria Paz, still with her air of fierce scorn of her hearers, 
 now cast another pearl before them.
 
 306 SHARROW 
 
 It was a pearl of exceeding delicacy and lustre, this 
 time, a thing so ethereal and whimsical that, if the spirit 
 that had inspired her rendering of the etude had still 
 abided under her flat, cashmere chest, it would have been 
 trampled to pieces. 
 
 But the girl apparently had at her call a series of goblin 
 controls, and this one was an elf of such exquisite cobweb 
 lightness that even the wet people at the back stopped 
 fidgetting and listened. 
 
 Her face had changed, too, and she seemed to be listen- 
 ing with a sort of malicious mischief to the whispered story 
 her fingers were coaxing out of the piano. 
 
 It was thus with every number of her very well chosen 
 and varied programme. 
 
 And, as her face changed, except in the one point of 
 her settled scorn for the audience, with every number, 
 Sandy watched her with interest. 
 
 She was unlike any woman he had ever seen ; she was, as 
 Ben had said, utterly without charm ; she was ugly, and she 
 was dressed as only a middle-class Spanish woman can 
 dress. 
 
 But she had a strong personality, and it seemed to send 
 out some tentacle or other which fastened on him. 
 
 There, too, was the knowledge that she sacrificed herself 
 for the education of her sisters. 
 
 Sandy glanced at Syd; he understood and he sympa- 
 thized strongly with the girl who had done, was doing, lit- 
 erally, those things which he would so gladly have done 
 for his brother. 
 
 At the end of the concert, when two baskets of flowers 
 had been handed up to Sefiorita Suarez, and the audience 
 was leaving the room, Ben was stopped by a rather bat- 
 tered looking man with a shining bald head and a reddish 
 nose.
 
 SHARROW 307 
 
 "Hallo, Frith! you here? I've just been talking to Se- 
 rena. She looks very happy." 
 
 ' ' She is ; she 's always happy. I say, Copley, it 's a bit of 
 luck meeting you ! What about this girl, eh ? I mean the 
 pianist? Good, isn't she?" 
 
 "Have you been losing your heart to the dreamy Span- 
 iard. The first sight of her is something of a blow, isn't 
 it?" said the man, who was the accredited musical critic 
 of a popular morning paper. 
 
 "She's a friend of a friend of mine. How is her 
 playing?" 
 
 Copley's face grew suddenly serious. "I'll tell you, 
 Ben, in my humble opinion the girl 'd be a very great 
 artist but for one thing." 
 
 Sandy and Syd stood listening, with rather dispropor- 
 tionately eager faces. 
 
 "But for what one thing?" Ben insisted 
 
 "This. She isn't. A great artist, I mean. She's got 
 a really extraordinary technique, like a man's, nearly 
 and she's as clever as the old Nick. But she's she's jeer- 
 ing all the time. I firmly believe," added the oracle, who 
 really was a very conscientious man, and, as he himself 
 would have said, never lied about his own job, "that she 
 knows herself that she's a a kind of humbug, and she is 
 laughing at herself and at everyone she can fool, the whole 
 time." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," Syd interrupted, coming nearer. 
 "You are writing up the concert, aren't you?" 
 
 "I am." 
 
 Ben introduced them, and Syd went on, "Well, you see, 
 I know her, and you are wrong. She is most serious about 
 the music, and does not blaguer it at all. It's it's her 
 whole life." 
 
 Copley, who looked, with his flattish nose and upturned
 
 308 SHARROW 
 
 moustache, rather like an unsuccessful satyr, studied the 
 boy's ardent face in silence for a moment. 
 
 Then he said rather gently: "Ah, well if you know 
 her ! And as you do, here 's a word of advice, Mr. Sharrow : 
 whether the lady is in earnest or not has, of course, less 
 than nothing to do with her success or failure as a pianist 
 in London. Serious musicians have been known to fail," 
 he added dryly. "But if she wants to make money, you 
 get your mother or your sister to tell her how to dress, 
 and to make her wash the oil out of her hair a female 
 Liszt would starve in London, if she was a frump." 
 
 When Sandy and Ben and Syd reached the door, it was 
 pouring, and they waited while a poor wretch, far gone in 
 consumption, fetched them a cab. 
 
 "That's very good advice of your friend's, Ben," Syd 
 said, his brows knit thoughtfully. ' ' Her clothes are appall- 
 ing. She has to make 'em all herself, poor soul, but the 
 Duchess says her bad taste is a real gift. I say, Ben, per- 
 haps your stepmother could give her a tip. ' ' 
 
 Ben whistled. "You've never seen Serena! Ah," he 
 added, as a thin woman in a dark green dressing-gown but- 
 toned up the back, over which she wore a man's mackin- 
 tosh coat, came vaguely toward them, as if not quite sure 
 whether they were phantoms. With one hand she was 
 twisting a chain of bright blue beads that hung around her 
 neck. 
 
 The child with her was charming, and stood holding 
 Ben's hand affectionately, as he introduced Sandy and 
 Syd. 
 
 Serena was delighted to meet them. Henry had lost his 
 goloshes and she was sure she didn't know where on earth 
 he had left them. Her smile, though vague, was in- 
 tensely sweet, and her eyes were like those of a very young 
 girl. 
 
 "But," she went on, retrieving Marygold's hand, as the
 
 SHARROW 309 
 
 derelict returned with the cab, "he hadn't caught cold 
 after all, so it didn't matter." 
 
 She refused Sandy's offer of a lift, not by saying she 
 would not accept it, but by smiling, murmuring something, 
 and disappearing in the crowd. 
 
 "Father thinks she is so practical," Ben said with a 
 chuckle. "They are beautifully happy." 
 
 On their way to Sandy's club, Sandy asked Syd if he 
 had sent Miss Suarez any flowers. 
 
 No, Syd had forgotten. "Better send her some now, it 
 will please her. Tell the man to stop at Solomon 's. ' ' 
 
 And when Syd had made his selection, Sandy ordered a 
 second offering. 
 
 "No, I'll not send my card no use in that," he ex- 
 plained to Syd, ' ' as she doesn 't know me ; but it will please 
 her, poor thing!" 
 
 "She will be," Ben added benevolently, "a much be- 
 flowered baboon. ' '
 
 CHAPTER LI 
 
 THE next morning Syd brought several newspapers into 
 Sandy's room before the elder brother was up. 
 
 "I say, Sandy," cried the boy indignantly, "two of the 
 papers don't even mention it, and the other one says " 
 
 "Don't mention what?" yawned Sandy, who had had 
 one of his bad nights, and was consequently sleepy and 
 tired. 
 
 "The concert, of course. The Standard says, 'Miss 
 Suarez possesses a fine technique, and we may hope to hear 
 her again' now isn't that beastly?" 
 
 "There are more than three morning papers in this 
 town, my son. Tell Anderson to get the lot." 
 
 "Thanks, I will. But, oh, they will be so disappointed. 
 They had counted on a success, and it meant such a lot to 
 them." 
 
 Sandy, partly because he had been really interested in 
 the strange little Spaniard, and partly because it was one 
 of his principles to try to turn his mind from brooding 
 by applying it to a contemplation of the affairs of other 
 people, roused himself and sat up in bed, his red hair 
 ruffled, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep. 
 
 "Draw my bath, Anderson, will you and then go out 
 and get as many of the morning papers as you can." 
 
 The man did as he was bidden, and while Sandy splashed 
 in the next room, Syd talked to him through the half open 
 door. The boy's sympathy pleased his brother. 
 
 310
 
 SHAREOW 311 
 
 Syd had always been a lovable boy, but he had been very 
 difficult to stir; his imagination had seemed to refuse to 
 kindle at any external torch ; Sandy had never forgotten his 
 vain efforts to make his brother love Sharrow as he did. 
 And as Syd grew up, this indefinable aloofness had not left 
 him. It could hardly be stigmatized as selfishness, for he 
 was warm-hearted and generous; but he appeared to be of 
 those people who must always act on an impulse from 
 within their own souls, whose emotions no hand can stimu- 
 late into action. 
 
 Rome had done him good; he was more sympathetic, 
 made more of an effort to understand what other people 
 were feeling ; he seemed to have lost a delicate shell he had 
 hitherto worn, and to be more approachable. That he, a 
 beauty-loving boy of twenty, should so champion the ugly 
 woman he had likened to a baboon seemed good to Sandy ; 
 it showed real kindness. 
 
 Thus Sandy, as he shaved and dressed, and Syd, search- 
 ing the papers in vain for any of the appreciation and 
 praise he wanted for his friend. 
 
 "Poor Don Ramon," the boy mourned. "He will be 
 so sad." 
 
 "And she, too, of course." 
 
 "No, she will be very angry, and all the bones in her 
 face will show," Syd said, thoughtfully. "It's funny, San- 
 dear, she is so ugly, but her bones are really rather beauti- 
 ful." 
 
 "Ben would say it's a pity she doesn't wear them out- 
 side, then. Eggs and bacon, Syd?" 
 
 But presently, when they had finished breakfast, and 
 gone out to visit Syd's tailor, their thoughts again went 
 back to the poor foreigners whose welcome had been so 
 meagre. 
 
 "Would she play in drawing-rooms?" Sandy asked sud- 
 denly, to the surprise of the Alsatian tailor, who nearly
 
 312 SHARROW 
 
 swallowed a pin in his amazement over the totally irrele- 
 vant remark. 
 
 But Syd did not find the remark other than most a pro- 
 pos, for it nearly answered a thought of his own. 
 
 "I don't know. I should think she'd have to. They 
 must live." 
 
 "I was wondering if Lady Hainault might engage her. 
 She rather likes you, doesn't she?" 
 
 Syd blushed a little. Lady Hainault was an old lady 
 possessed of so many granddaughters and great-nieces that 
 any young man might blush at the thought of her. 
 
 Sandy, whom Ben had told what Syd had hinted about 
 his matrimonial plans, laughed slyly. ' ' The Freckled Bar- 
 rington Twin is your favorite, isn't she?" 
 
 "Shut up! Does that sleeve look all right to you, 
 Sandy?" 
 
 "Quite." 
 
 They went into the black, wet street, and stood looking 
 at the gathering fog. 
 
 ' ' I say, Sandy, I can 't stand this ! Think of those poor 
 souls who never even saw a fog before, sitting in rotten 
 cheap lodgings reading those awful papers. I'm going to 
 see them." 
 
 "Do. We'll lunch at the club at two, and then we can 
 consult, and if necessary (only if strictly unavoidable, 
 mind) look up Lady Hainault. She is, I understand, visit- 
 ing Sir John Barrington in Eccleston Square. ' ' 
 
 It did him good to chaff Syd; it did him more good to 
 see the boy developing into a gentle-hearted man; and 
 Sandy knew that his own future lay almost entirely in 
 Syd's hands. When Syd married, his wife should be 
 Sandy's daughter, his children Sandy's grandchildren. He 
 saw nothing ridiculous in this idea; he felt very old, and 
 Syd was far more like a son than a brother to him. 
 
 And the Freckled Barrington Twin, if the boy's fancy
 
 SHARROW 313 
 
 ever developed into anything more, would be very satis- 
 factory as the wife of the heir to Sharrow ; she was a tall, 
 strong, ungainly child at present, barely seventeen, but 
 she had beautiful shining eyes and a mind like an open 
 book. Her blood, too, was good. 
 
 His mind, thus occupied with match-making, Sandy went 
 back to his hotel for his umbrella. 
 
 On his table he found two letters which had been sent 
 on from Sharrow. One was a bill, the other, which he read 
 through with an unmoved face, was a wild appeal for for- 
 giveness from Maggie Penrose. 
 
 "Can you never forgive me!" she wrote. "Is there no 
 pity in you? Sandy, Sandy, I am punished enough. I 
 don't ask for much just write and say you forgive me, and 
 will one day consent to seeing me sometimes as a friend. 
 Send me just one word, 'yes,' that I may have some peace." 
 
 He tore it into many pieces and dropped them into the 
 waste-paper basket. Fool, to expect forgiveness from 
 him! 
 
 And Syd, coming back full of excitement, found his 
 brother looking old and stern, as he had looked sometimes 
 in Rome. 
 
 ' ' Anything wrong, Sandy ? ' ' the boy asked. ' ' No ? Good. 
 Well it's just as I feared the old man is in despair. 
 They they say such strange things in Latin tongues, don't 
 they? I mean about God, and the Madonna." 
 
 "Yes. And she the girl?" 
 
 "Furious. Says all English are peegs her English is 
 so funny and she will never play again. She will be a 
 cook or a crossing-sweeper, but never a pianist. I was so 
 sorry! Their rooms are so awful, in an Italian hotel in 
 Soho. And Spaniards are used to such beautiful cleanli- 
 ness, you know; their little apartment in Rome was like a 
 new pin. Ugh! it's awful." His young face was pale with 
 sympathy. "I say, Sandy, I suppose you couldn't ask
 
 314 SHARROW 
 
 them to Sharrow for a few days. It seems to be the old 
 man's pride that is so hurt, and that " 
 
 Sandy hesitated. "I don't like asking people there 
 he is so very feeble." 
 
 "But he told you to treat the house as if it were yours, 
 Sandear." 
 
 "I know." Sandy was silent a moment, then added: 
 "All right, Syd, I will. You are right, it'll soothe the 
 poor old man 's pride ; and they are quiet people. ' ' 
 
 The next day but one, Don Ramon Suarez and his daugh- 
 ter arrived at Sharrow.
 
 CHAPTER LII 
 
 SANDY, in spite of his interest in Maria Paz Suarez, saw 
 but little of her during her stay. He was at that time 
 extremely busy with various matters connected with the 
 administration of the estate, his tasks being made the more 
 difficult by the necessity of submitting each detail, as the 
 work went on, to Lord Sharrow. The old man's mind, as 
 his body grew more feeble, seemed to become clearer and 
 stronger than it had been for some time past. 
 
 Every day, after working for several hours with the 
 steward, Sandy was obliged to submit what he had planned 
 to the old man for approval, and he was amazed at the 
 nonogenarian 's memory and tenacity of detail. 
 
 Wrapped in one or other of his gay dressing-gowns, Lord 
 Sharrow sat in his great chair by the fire and listened as 
 Sandy read aloud his notes. Then, extending a claw-like 
 hand, the owner of the estate took the papers, put on his 
 tortoise-shell spectacles, and with eyes verified his ears, 
 as if he mistrusted tk absolute veracity of his ear-trumpet. 
 
 As a rule, Sandy's ideas pleased him, but occasionally 
 he would take his huge blue pencil and laboriously cross 
 out a part of, or even everything he had read, and Sandy's 
 work had to be done over. 
 
 "I am not dead yet, you see," he used to say with his 
 ancient chuckle. "It's marvellous what total abstinence 
 and early hours will do for a man, eh, Sandy?" 
 
 And Sandy would bow gravely, and go his way. He had 
 not forgiven his enemy and made no pretence of having 
 
 315
 
 316 SHARROW 
 
 done so. Luckily, his great-uncle did not care a rush about 
 his forgiveness. 
 
 Nurse Blake, remembering her patient's extreme impa- 
 tience for his newly-discovered heir's arrival, once ex- 
 pressed to that heir her surprise at Lord Sharrow's appar- 
 ent indifference to him, now that he was there. 
 
 "He used to put himself into a fever, sir," she said 
 once ; ' ' day after day it went on ; where you were, why 
 they couldn't find you, why you didn't come. Once he 
 made himself very bad in the night over the idea that you 
 were dead. It was really quite painful I was so sorry for 
 him. And now that you are here " 
 
 Sandy looked past her and out of the window, a little 
 smile on his face. 
 
 "That's just it, Nurse I am here. It was not the man 
 he was fretting for, it was his heir." 
 
 And yet, as he walked, an hour later, to Dingle's, to 
 tell him that the morning's work had been in vain and 
 must be entirely done over again, he thought of his own 
 words, and wondered. 
 
 Was it only that that he was the heir? 
 
 He recalled a thousand things in the past that showed 
 real affection for him on the old man's part; the ring he 
 wore was a proof of this, the allowance that had been sent 
 regularly to his banker's during the long years of his un- 
 broken silence. And how many things had his great-uncle 
 said to him in his boyhood that showed beyond a doubt 
 how welcome he would have been, even then, as his heir. 
 
 "He did like me," Sandy declared, under his breath, 
 "even in spite of what he did. He was fond of me." 
 
 He had reached Dingle's beautiful little Georgian house, 
 and as he rang the bell, he added, in silence: "Poor old 
 man!" 
 
 Impersonally through the medium of his brain, he could 
 be sorry for his enemy in his weakness and extreme age,
 
 SHARROW 317 
 
 but, emotionally, he could never forgive what had been 
 done to him. 
 
 And as the dull days slipped by like drops of rain- 
 water on a window-pane, sliding almost unmarked in their 
 similarity to each other into eternity, he began to wonder 
 if the ancient man by the fire realized this. 
 
 Sometimes, when their work was over, on the days when 
 Lord Sharrow was what he called "better," the two men 
 would talk always about the thing that interested them 
 so deeply : Sharrow. 
 
 There was a bit of meadow-land to the westward, close 
 by where Sandy had so long ago bought his first dog, and 
 to the old and the young man the acquisition of these few 
 acres was a matter of paramount importance. 
 
 "It would round it off, Sandy just here it is, see?" 
 Lord Sharrow said, bending over the colored map that 
 Sandy had spread before him, ' ' round it off, and give us a 
 clear forty thousand acres. We must have it." 
 
 Unfortunately the owner of the coveted land was an 
 enemy of the house. Many years ago there had been trou- 
 ble connected with a right of way through a small wood 
 belonging to his great neighbor, and he had not forgotten 
 this. 
 
 Twice Sandy went to see him to try to persuade him 
 to sell the meadows, and twice he failed. Farmer Murdoch 
 would keep his meadows, because it pleased him so to do. 
 
 It was surprising to see how keen was Lord Sharrow 's 
 interest in these negotiations, and the vigor of his denun- 
 ciations of the wrong-headed farmer. 
 
 But in spite of his mental alertness, the old man was 
 failing fast, and gradually, Sandy saw, his mind began 
 to give up its hold on every idea save the one that had, 
 in spite of his badness, and through all his vicissitudes, 
 been the ruling one of his life. 
 
 He failed to recognize Syd one day when the boy came
 
 318 S H A R R W 
 
 in "to cheer the poor old dear up a bit"; and even Mary 
 Wymondham, who had been a great favorite of his during 
 the last few years, was met with a vacant nod. 
 
 Dr. Turner, old Gill's partner, told Sandy one day that 
 the end could not be far off. 
 
 "The early Spring days will do it," he said. "He will 
 probably go out quite quietly, like a spent lamp. There's 
 no more oil." 
 
 And yet the lamp occasionally nickered strongly for a 
 moment, always at something connected with Sharrow. 
 * Sandy was very gentle with the old man; his conscious- 
 ness of his real relentlessness, his undying resentment for 
 what the old man had done, made him a little ashamed 
 and lent to his manner a kindness that caused Mary Wy- 
 mondham 's fine dark eyes to look at him with a kindness 
 even greater, for hers came from her heart. 
 
 She did not know why Sandy hated the old man whose 
 name and honors he was to bear, and she asked no ques- 
 tions, but in their slowly growing friendship there came 
 to her the certain knowledge that it was so. 
 
 He greatly liked Mary. 
 
 Since the occasion of his first call, her sister's name had 
 not been mentioned. This concession the strong-willed 
 woman had seen to be necessary to the continuance of any 
 sort of ultimate intercourse between them. To her the 
 necessity seemed absurd, almost an affectation; but, recog- 
 nizing it, she accepted it, for to her the game was well 
 worth the candle. 
 
 And he, relieved from his fear of hearing Viola spoken 
 of, had gradually come to value the companionship of the 
 lonely woman. She loved Sharrow, knew everyone, man, 
 woman and child, on the great estate, and was very helpful 
 to him in his plans for the future. He could not, did not 
 attempt to tell her in what way he regarded his vast 
 heritage ; he was prevented by a kind of shyness from even
 
 S H A R R W 319 
 
 attempting to render articulate his deep feeling of respon- 
 sibility, but he felt that she understood to a greater extent 
 than anyone else. She was told of his continual disap- 
 pointments, of how the old man would, at a stroke of his 
 pencil, undo the work of hours. Her never interrupted 
 friendship with the different tenants and villagers, was 
 invaluable to him. Very often he went to her to talk 
 over his work. 
 
 Together they made plans for the new cottages Lord Shar- 
 row had given him permission to build in place of those 
 that had been torn down owing to sanitary deficiencies; 
 together they decided which of two farmers should be 
 given the lease of a farm newly fallen vacant through a 
 death. Her judgment, when unheated, was shrewd and just, 
 and her personal knowledge of the people whose lives were 
 so largely in his hands was of the greatest help to him. 
 
 He asked her once why she had never married, and she 
 told him, without embarrassment, her real reason. 
 
 "I suppose," she said, looking up from the map over 
 which she was poring, "it is very great vanity, but I 
 have never met a man I could love." 
 
 He was not greatly surprised. There was in her a cer- 
 tain quality of fineness that set her apart from other wo- 
 men in his eyes; she was obviously ^uite sufficient unto 
 herself, although, so far as he knew, really full of the 
 vanity she declared as her excuse for her celibacy. Her 
 life, with its daily round of the small duties and small in- 
 terests she loved, seemed full enough for her, and the beau- 
 tiful quiet of her old house at the edge of the village 
 seemed a fitting atmosphere for her. 
 
 One day Dr. Turner mentioned Mary to him in a way 
 which showed that everyone did not agree with him in 
 his unquestioning acceptance of her old-maid-hood. 
 
 The two men were coming downstairs from the sick-room, 
 as Miss Wymondham went up to it, and, as he reached the
 
 320 SHARROW 
 
 landing, the little doctor turned and watched her until 
 she had disappeared. 
 
 "It's a great pity she won't marry the Vicar," he said, 
 drawing on his shabby dogskin gloves which fastened 
 with metal clips and were troublesome in damp weather, 
 owing to rust. 
 
 "The Vicar! Does Pendleton want to marry her?" 
 
 "Of course he does. Always has, ever since he or any- 
 one else can remember." 
 
 Turner struggled into his brown great-coat and took up 
 his hat. "But she won't; never will, I suppose. It's a 
 pity. That woman," the little doctor added, "ought to be 
 a mother. " 
 
 ' ' So ought every woman. ' ' 
 
 "Not a bit of it! That's just where you're wrong. 
 Why, if two of 'em who have no right to and persist in 
 doing it as regular as clockwork every year weren't wait- 
 ing for me, I could prove the fallacy of that theory to you, 
 Mr. Sharrow! Every woman, indeed! Take that narrow- 
 hipped, flat-chested little foreign woman I saw a minute 
 ago. They say she plays the piano like a witch, and I 
 Jare say she does. But a mother ? Good Lord ! She is a 
 cerebral, that woman ; all brain, no bowels. No motherhood 
 in her. Probably lined with piano keys! I should be," 
 he added, as he opened the door, and Sandy listened 
 courteously, "sorry for the man who made her the mother 
 of his children. Good morning, Mr. Sharrow, good 
 morning. ' ' 
 
 Sandy had a queer little smile on his lips. Could it be 
 possible that Turner was conveying an indirect warning 
 to him? Could people be thinking that he was going to 
 marry Miss Suarez? He was genuinely amused by the 
 idea, for he had, as a matter of fact, seen so little of his 
 guest that he feared she would think him rude, and was 
 even now seeking Syd that the youth might convey to her
 
 S H A R R O W 321 
 
 an expression of Sandy's regret for the stress that forbade 
 his never frequent association with her. 
 
 He opened the door of the Chinese Room, a room which 
 it pleased his brother to use as a sitting-room, and went in. 
 
 It was raining hard, and a dark day. The fire was burnt 
 low, and the windows were faint grey patches streaked 
 with silver. 
 
 Sandy thought no one was there, and was about to go 
 out, when he saw Miss Suarez sitting, or rather lying, on 
 the hearth-rug. 
 
 Her attitude was such a queer one, she seemed so flat 
 on the floor, that he thought at first that she must be 
 crying, and was about to turn again to the door, when 
 without moving she raised her eyes to his. 
 
 He started; he had thought her face was hidden, that 
 the back of her head was turned toward him ; and now he 
 saw her eyes. He felt as though he had waked a coiled- 
 up snake. 
 
 "I am not crying," she said, "I am thinking." 
 
 "Do you often think in that position?" 
 
 With a deliberate movement that again made him think 
 of a snake, she uncoiled, and sat upright. 
 
 "Yes why not? I am anemic, and when my head is 
 low the blood gets in, and my brain works better." 
 
 She spoke slowly, carefully, and he observed that dur- 
 ing the week she had been at Sharrow her accent had im- 
 proved almost miraculously. 
 
 While he stood, looking very big and English, beside her 
 dark little person, she went on: "Your brother has just 
 told me of how he discovered in an old box the papers 
 that that give you all this." 
 
 "Yes. Strange, wasn't it? My great-uncle gave me the 
 box it was a medicine chest when I was a child. For 
 years it stood in my room, and I used to play with it. 
 Then I gave it to my brother, and he had it for years.
 
 322 SHARROW 
 
 If he hadn't chanced to drop it that day, the secret place 
 in the lid would never have been discovered, and my 
 cousin would have had everything." 
 
 Her eyes glinted in the firelight. 
 
 "And you? Where would you have been?" 
 
 He did not answer for a moment, and then with a shrug 
 said: "God knows. Wandering about, I dare say." He 
 went to the window, and stood looking out into the pour- 
 ing rain. 
 
 Where would he have been but for the hazard of Syd's 
 knocking the medicine chest off its shelf? In Paris still, 
 with Lise and the rest, sinking lower and lower, hopeless, 
 doomed. 
 
 The thought attuned his spirits to their old misery for a 
 moment; he was a very healthy man, but he had been a 
 drunkard for years, and his nerves were, of course, affected. 
 
 Down, down sunk his heart. What was the use? What, 
 now, was the use of anything ? Sharrow was to be his, and 
 he had lost the glory of it. 
 
 Maria Paz's voice roused him. 
 
 "Your brother said you are never going to marry," 
 she said. 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 Sandy turned, annoyed by her tactlessness, but when he 
 saw her face, he knew that she had spoken, not from a lack 
 of tact, but because, knowing that he would think her 
 words sprang from that lack, she had decided that his so 
 thinking was overbalanced by the importance of her object 
 in uttering them. 
 
 She had a good reason for being indiscreet. 
 
 "He says he is to marry and carry on the family." 
 
 "My brother seems to confide in you, Miss Suarez." 
 Sandy looked like his great-uncle as he smiled at her, de- 
 liberately teasing her by withholding the information she 
 wanted.
 
 S H A R.R W 323 
 
 "He does. You confide in Miss Vindham, and your 
 brother in me. So you are never to marry?" 
 
 He did not answer, and his smile grew more malicious. 
 Presently, without having granted her the satisfaction of a 
 statement of any kind, he left her. Was Turner right 
 after all? 
 
 Sandy was far from being a conceited man, but he knew 
 quite well what a matrimonial prize he must appear to be. 
 And this pathetic creature, could she have the vanity to 
 think that her poor charms could win for her such things 
 as those that apparently lay in his power to give a 
 woman ? 
 
 He smiled at the thought, but he was at bottom a chival- 
 rous man, and his smile was kind and sad. 
 
 The girl was so plain, so badly dressed, so surly, so lack- 
 ing in all the things of which sirens are made could she 
 be trying to set her poor cap at him ? 
 
 He paused on the stair. He had not been agreeable ; he 
 had teased her. Should he go back and try to be pleasant 
 to her? 
 
 He did not go. It was not worth while. She was 
 friendless in England; he had taken her and her dull old 
 father into his house ; he was trying, with old Lady Hain- 
 ault's help, to arrange some drawing-room concerts for her; 
 he would lend her father money; but he had work to do 
 and could not spare the time for another talk with her. 
 
 As he closed his study door, he said again, with his half- 
 shrug: "Poor soul!"
 
 CHAPTER LIII 
 
 AT the end of a fortnight the Suarez were still at Shar- 
 row, and Sandy was amused to see that Turner was not 
 the only person who considered that a word of warning 
 to him might not come amiss. 
 
 He had had one or two walks with Miss Suarez, and, in 
 the way she had first interested him, she continued to do 
 so. Her peculiar mind, her goblin-like interpretation 
 of the music which usually at all hours filled the Yellow 
 Drawing room, and a certain tenacity of purpose that 
 distinguished her, these things gave her a real value in his 
 eyes. 
 
 Her extreme adaptability, too, commanded his attention. 
 One evening she appeared at dinner in a black frock which 
 was so perfectly what, to a man's undiscerning eyes, a 
 woman's should be, that he marvelled. 
 
 ' ' Isn 't she clever, Sandy ? ' ' Syd asked with the triumph 
 his protegee's accomplishments invariably produced in him. 
 "She's made it all herself out of that awful high thing 
 with the orange bows." 
 
 "But how, Syd? It looks absolutely new even the 
 shape of the skirt, as far as I can see." 
 
 Syd laughed delightedly. "That's just it she has 
 copied Mary's the skirt is like Mary's sapphire velvet, 
 and the body like Mary's white one, with the sleeves of 
 that black one Lady Hainault wore at the Bazaar. ' ' 
 
 Lady Hainault, an old lady always ready to interest her- 
 self in new people, had been very kind about Miss Suarez. 
 
 324
 
 SHAREOW 325 
 
 She had arranged for her a series of concerts in town, 
 at the houses of people she had coaxed or bullied into com- 
 pliance with her wishes. 
 
 ' ' She makes my blood run cold with her music, ' ' the old 
 lady told Syd, "and Isabel says she knows she rides about 
 on a broomstick at night. Very interesting indeed." 
 
 Syd laughed, flushing. "It is good of you, Lady Hain- 
 ault, ' ' he said. ' ' You don 't know how plucky she is. ' ' 
 
 "Well, I don't know," the old lady returned, thought- 
 fully, "if I had had a face like that in my young days, I 
 should have drowned myself, so I think I do respect her 
 pluck. Isabel says " 
 
 Isabel was the Freckled Barrington Twin. 
 
 One day when Sandy was returning from a long tramp, 
 he met Miss Suarez and joined her. 
 
 It was a very cold day early in March; the black ash 
 buds were the only sign of spring, and an unrelenting east 
 wind swept over the land. 
 
 "I fear you must feel the cold very much," he began, 
 looking down at her. Her nose was nipped and red, her 
 lips nearly blue. 
 
 The little creature smiled, showing her one beauty, her 
 white teeth which glinted like a dog's. 
 
 "I like cold weather," she said. 
 
 "Ah?" He repressed a smile at the obvious untruth; 
 and she went on. 
 
 "Only in the morning do I freeze. While it is yet 
 dark, and the wind is black, and the road white " 
 
 "While it is yet dark?" 
 
 "Yes. When I'm going to Mass " she answered simply, 
 drawing her worn boa closer around her throat. 
 
 "Surely you don't go to Mass early in the mornings, 
 Miss Suarez?" 
 
 "Que si! In Spain we all go to Mass. It is a country 
 of Christians."
 
 326 SHARKOW 
 
 They walked on in silence for a moment, Sandy's foot- 
 steps ringing out on the frozen earth. 
 
 "Where do you go?" he asked presently. 
 
 "To Vite Shirley." 
 
 "But White Shirley is five miles away!" He was hor- 
 rified at the idea of his guest walking there in the cold 
 dawn. "My brother has been very careless. He should 
 have known, and sent you in a carriage. I do beg your 
 pardon, Miss Suarez it shall not happen again." 
 
 But she waved his concern away with a quick gesture of 
 her shabbily gloved little hand. 
 
 "Mais non your brother does know; and I wish no 
 carriage. It is well to walk to Mass." 
 
 It was another queer twist in her mentality, and it in- 
 creased his interest in her. That she should go to Mass 
 every day seemed strange to him, but that she should vehe- 
 mently and definitely refuse the carriage he urged her to 
 have puzzled him even more. She was so different from his 
 preconceived ideas of a Spanish woman ; she was so slight, 
 so lizard-like in her darting movements, so practical, and 
 yet she was, apparently, as bigoted a Catholic as the lan- 
 guorous ladies of his imagination. 
 
 The spring was a very late, and a bitter cold one, and 
 an English spring, even of the mildest kind, must be 
 a trial to the girl who had never before been in a northern 
 country. Yet she not only went to Mass at dawn, in an 
 unheated country church, but she persisted in going on 
 foot. 
 
 While he was musing on these things, she began to speak 
 of the concerts she was to give in London beginning the 
 next week. She expressed her gratitude to him and to 
 Lady Hainault, in her pretty English, and then she added 
 suddenly : 
 
 "But that is not the best of all. The best, that was 
 in inviting my old poor father here. He was unhappy
 
 S H A R R W 327 
 
 very unhappy he was hurted. And you asked us here, 
 and he is happy in his soul. For this I thank you." 
 
 Stopping suddenly, she held out her hand to him. He 
 took it because he could do nothing else. They had reached 
 the end of the village nearest the great park gates, and 
 stood within a stone's throw of Mary Wymondham 's house. 
 
 "I thank you," Maria Paz repeated, and he saw that her 
 odd black eyes, so unlustrous, so inexpressive, were wet 
 with tears, and that her face, though set, was quivering. 
 
 "You have nothing to thank me for," he said kindly, 
 for he knew that she was sincere. "I was delighted to 
 invite friends of my brother's " 
 
 As he spoke, the green garden gate of the Corner House 
 opened, and Mary Wymondham, dressed for walking, 
 came out. 
 
 Sandy started as guiltily as does every man caught in a 
 ridiculous position. 
 
 "You you really mustn't," he stammered to Maria 
 Paz. ' ' I it was nothing at all ' ' 
 
 Wheeling around, she saw Miss Wymondham, and her 
 expression changed with lightning rapidity to one of 
 knowing sympathy. 
 
 "Ah," she cried, "here is Miss Vindham!" 
 
 And before Mary had reached them, she had darted up 
 the slope and into a lane that led by a roundabout way 
 to the South Lodge. 
 
 "Ho, ho," cried Mary, as Sandy took off his hat, "and 
 why does she run away? Mine eyes have seen " 
 
 "She was thanking me for for inviting them here," 
 Sandy explained, with the lameness of the thoroughly in- 
 nocent. 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 He laughed ruefully. "Yes, she was, Mary. I know it 
 was an odd place to choose to do it in, but that's not my 
 fault, so you needn't sniff."
 
 328 S H A R R W 
 
 "I am not sniffing. I am sneering. Oh, Sandy, you poor 
 simpleton, can it be true what they're all saying?" 
 
 "What are they all saying?" 
 
 He turned and went back with her, turning off presently 
 into a lane, leading to Linter's Farm. 
 
 "Well what is it they are all saying?" 
 
 Mary was suddenly grave. "That you are going to 
 marry Miss Suarez." 
 
 Sandy stood still. "Who is saying such an idiotic thing 
 as that, Mary?" 
 
 "Well Sally Dingle asked me about it, and the Vicar 
 hinted that he had heard of it I don't know, Sandy, just 
 who has said it but it is in the air. I do hope," she added, 
 looking frankly at him, "that it isn't true." 
 
 "Of course it isn't true," he returned angrily. "You 
 ought to know me better. Why in God's name should I 
 marry that poor little thing?" 
 
 She did not speak for a moment, and then he went on in 
 a changed voice : ' ' Mary I want to tell you something. I 
 have told no one else, but you and I are friends. I am 
 never going to marry." 
 
 "Why, Sandy?" 
 
 He hesitated. "Because because I couldn't. I can't 
 explain, but the resolution it's more than a resolution, 
 it's just a plain fact is the result of my whole life. I 
 shall never marry. Syd must carry on the name. He 
 knows. ' ' 
 
 ' ' It seems a pity, Sandy, ' ' she said, thoughtfully, as they 
 reached the top of the hill and stood looking back at the 
 mist-dimmed view. "I am sorry." 
 
 And he knew that she was sorry, not because of his reso- 
 lution but for the causes that had led up to it. 
 
 After a few minutes, when they had been discussing 
 other things, she returned to the subject.
 
 S H A R R W 329 
 
 "I hope you have told what you have told me, to Miss 
 Suarez?" 
 
 "No, I have not told her, but " 
 
 "You ought to then." 
 
 Something in her voice drew his attention from what 
 he had been going to add that Syd had already told 
 Maria Paz of the family arrangement. 
 
 He saw by Mary's voice what was in her thoughts and 
 as he glanced at her he said: "Don't be unjust, Mary," a 
 glint in his eyes that had always meant teasing. 
 
 "Unjust?" 
 
 "Yes. You know that in the depths of your heart you 
 suspect poor Miss Suarez of things!" 
 
 She flushed like a rose; the sudden glow of color was 
 perhaps her one real beauty. 
 
 "What do you mean, Sandy?" 
 
 "Ha, ha!" 
 
 But she persisted, almost angrily, and finally he had to 
 explain. ' ' You think black thoughts of the poor girl. You 
 think she is plotting against my freedom." 
 
 Mary disliked the turn the conversation had taken, but 
 she was too honest to deny what he said. 
 
 ' ' "Well, yes, I do. I think that whatever you have deter- 
 mined upon, she is trying to marry you." 
 
 "Exactly. And you are wrong." He forgot, in the 
 vividness of his memory of Maria Paz's gratitude for his 
 kindness to her father and her, his own slight suspicions 
 of a few days before. 
 
 "Am I?" Miss Wymondham tossed her head, settling it 
 again with a regal air in her black furs. 
 
 "You are." Sandy watched her, unmoved, except to a 
 mild and slightly malicious amusement. ' ' She has no more 
 idea of marrying me than than you have." 
 
 For a moment she did not answer him, while she spoke
 
 330 SHARROW 
 
 to old Bustard's successor, who was passing with his flock 
 of sheep. 
 
 While they stood waiting for the little, dingy, dainty- 
 footed beasts to scurry by them, Sandy watched her. It 
 always had amused him to see Mary cross; she was so 
 very cocksure, as a rule, and so angry when proved to be 
 in the wrong. 
 
 When at length the last nervous ewe had got out of 
 their terrifying neighborhood, she turned, a trace of red 
 still in her cheeks. 
 
 "Men are, of course, always right in such matters," she 
 said scathingly. "That's why no man has ever been mar- 
 ried by surprise!" 
 
 "But, my dear girl, I am not a simpleton. I know 
 quite well that I should be considered a great parti. I 
 fully expect to be run after by mammas, and even by 
 maidens, during the next year or two, until my immutable 
 celibacy has become an understood fact. I know as well as 
 you do that the woman who married me would not be 
 marrying Sandy Sharrow; she'd be marrying great wealth, 
 an ancient title, and one of the most beautiful houses in 
 England. All that I grant you. What I say is, however, 
 that this poor little bony Spaniard is not setting her cap 
 for me. Of that I am sure she is commendably guiltless. ' ' 
 
 Mary gave a little sound which in a man might have 
 been classified as a snort. 
 
 "All right. I'm glad you think so." 
 
 "No, you're not. You despise me for thinking so!" 
 
 They had reached the door of the farmhouse, and as 
 she raised her stick to knock, she turned. 
 
 "You are a pig," she said, laughing, "and I am right, 
 as I always am."
 
 CHAPTER LIY 
 
 EARLY one evening four or five days after Sandy 's walk 
 with Mary to Linter's Farm, he had come in after a busy 
 afternoon at Coulter's End, where the new cottages were 
 in process of completion, and was sitting with a pipe over 
 the fire in his dressing-room. 
 
 The Suarez had gone to London the day before glanc- 
 ing at the clock, Sandy knew that at that very moment, 
 Maria Paz was probably finishing her concert in Lady 
 Hainault 's drawing-room. 
 
 They had gone, the Spaniards, full of gratitude, the old 
 man again holding up his head, twenty pounds of Sandy's 
 money in his pocket, to wrest from London society the suc- 
 cess professional London had denied to them. 
 
 ' ' By Jove ! I hope they '11 succeed, poor souls ! ' ' Sandy 
 thought, comfortably stretching his tired feet in his old 
 glippers. 
 
 In spite of the interest and curiosity he had felt in 
 Maria Paz, he was glad they had gone, and he had no wish 
 ever to see them again. He was glad to have been able to 
 help them, and gladder still that Syd had been so kind to 
 them ; but the eternal sound of the piano had begun to bore 
 him, and even Syd's generous enthusiasm was a little 
 wearying. 
 
 Syd was, as Sandy sat by the fire, swelling the applause 
 at Lady Hainault 's. The Freckled Twin was to be there, 
 and Sandy, when the whole party had a few nights before 
 dined with her grandmother, had tried his hand at a little 
 discreet match-making. 
 
 331
 
 332 SHARROW 
 
 "You like him?" he asked, a little shyness in his voice 
 that made the old lady wonder where he had been all 
 these years and why his face sometimes wore such a strange 
 look, when his voice seemed so charmingly young. 
 
 "Like him? I love the boy," she returned promptly. 
 
 "Well I wish your delightful granddaughter would." 
 
 "Which delightful granddaughter? I have fourteen." 
 
 Then Sandy had told her, very quietly, that Syd was his 
 heir, and that it was his wish that the boy should marry 
 young. 
 
 ' ' Bell is only seventeen, ' ' the old lady returned, hesitat- 
 ingly, "and is a perfect baby as yet, but I should, of 
 course, be delighted, if they should really like each other 
 later." 
 
 Then Sandy unfolded his plan, which had at least the 
 virtue of great simplicity. The two young things should be 
 "thrown together." 
 
 "Mary Wymondham will invite Miss Barrington to visit 
 her," he said, "and Syd will see her every day. She will 
 then learn to love the old place I should like her to do 
 that and they will get to know each other well. That, ' ' he 
 added, feeling very old indeed, but looking with his earnest 
 gaze very young to the ancient lady who listened so kindly 
 to him, "seems to me to be very important." 
 
 Then Lady Hainault had done a dreadful thing. She 
 asked him outright why he himself didn't marry, and 
 added that, as he seemed to like her family, she could offer 
 him a fine assortment of healthy young Hainaults, Bar- 
 ringtons, and Cresboroughs to choose from. 
 
 ' ' No, I shall not marry, ' ' he said after a pause. 
 
 "But surely you were engaged, weren't you, when you 
 were a youngster? I was in Egypt at the time, but Char- 
 lotte Grantly or some one wrote me " 
 
 "I was engaged, yes. But I shall never marry. Now 
 let's settle about this pretty Isabel. May she come to visit
 
 SHARROW 333 
 
 Mary Wymondham ? Look at them, they seem to like each 
 other, don't they?" 
 
 Syd and the Freckled Twin were giggling over the last 
 number of Punch, their heads close together. And the old 
 lady promised that when Mary sent the invitation it should 
 be accepted. 
 
 All these things went through Sandy 's mind that evening 
 as he warmed his feet by the fire. The next Monday would 
 bring the Freckled Twin to the Corner House, the first, 
 Sandy hoped, of many visits. And in three years' time, if 
 all went well, there would be a wedding in Eccleston 
 Square, and then Syd and his wife would come home to 
 Sharrow to live. 
 
 After all, Sandy thought, life held much that was good, 
 even for him. 
 
 His troubles seemed nearly over, in so far as they ever 
 could be over, while memory lasted. His struggle with 
 his craving for spirits was nearly won, the bad times grow- 
 ing less and less frequent, his victories easier and easier. 
 And little by little his love for Sharrow was regaining its 
 place in his heart. Every brick that was added to the 
 humble cottages at Coulter's End, for instance, gave him 
 a keen pleasure, and only the day before, when Farmer 
 Murdoch had finally promised to sell the meadows the old 
 lord so longed for, in his joy Sandy thought for one blind- 
 ing second that the Feeling was coming back to him. It 
 had not come, the glory of sensation, but it had not been so 
 near for years, and surely that was a hopeful sign. 
 
 Altogether he had not been so close to happiness for 
 many years as he was as the clock struck half -past six, and 
 someone knocked at the door. 
 
 "Come in." 
 
 The door opened, and, to his surprise, Mrs. Puddifant 
 entered. 
 
 She had been the housekeeper at Sharrow since long
 
 334 SHARROW 
 
 before he could remember, and was now so old that she pos- 
 sessed a deputy, who took from her shoulders as much of 
 her administrative burden as she could be prevailed upon 
 to relinquish, even to her niece. 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Pud ! ' ' Sandy rose, courteously, but the old nick- 
 name came unconsciously to his lips. 
 
 "Yes, sir, it's me." 
 
 Her large white hands folded on her stomach, she 
 stood respectfully before him, the gold cross that hung 
 around her neck rising and falling more quickly than 
 usual. 
 
 "I thought, sir, you wouldn't think I was takin' a lib- 
 erty, after all these years " 
 
 "Sit down, Mrs. Puddifant, do sit down. Of course, 
 there can be no question of a liberty has anything hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 "No. Mr. S no, sir. I prefer to stand, if you don't 
 mind. It's this. I thought you ought to know, sir, that 
 'is lordship 'as moved to the Blue Room. ' ' 
 
 "To the Blue Room?" Sandy stared, the pipe in his 
 hand. 
 
 "Yes, sir this afternoon. Not above an hour ago." 
 
 Her manner was extremely portentous, but to Sandy her 
 meaning was a mystery. 
 
 "My great-uncle has changed his bedroom, is that it?" 
 he asked, after a moment's hesitation. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well, but why shouldn't he? I don't understand. If 
 he has taken a fancy to another room sick people often 
 do " 
 
 Mrs. Puddif ant's respectful smile was not altogether de- 
 void of superiority. 
 
 "Oh, it isn't that, sir." 
 
 Her fat chins were flushed, her cap a trifle awry signs 
 of deep agitation, he knew.
 
 S H A R R W 335 
 
 "Well, suppose you explain, then," he said, good-hu- 
 moredly. 
 
 Mrs. Puddifant cleared her throat, and arranged her 
 thumbs with great care. 
 
 " 'Is lordship is going to die, sir." 
 
 "Why do you say that, Mrs. Puddifant?" 
 
 She pursed her lips, solemnly. 
 
 "Because I know it, sir. And 'e knows it. That's why 
 'e 'as moved back into the Blue Room. It's the room in 
 which you are all born, sir, and in which you all die." 
 
 Sandy was silent for a moment. "I see. And he has 
 had himself moved there to-day." 
 
 "An hour ago, sir. 'E never liked the Blue Room; 'e 
 always said there wasn't room for all the ghosts there 
 but 'e wouldn't die anywhere else, sir none of the Family 
 would." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 Mrs. Puddifant rearranged her thumbs. "And, oh, Mr. 
 Sandy," she burst out suddenly, forgetting his age and his 
 rapidly approaching dignities, '"e sent for me, to tell me 
 about 'is brother and I can 't tell you 'ow 'e looks ! Quite 
 different somehow, in that old bed with the blue curtains. 
 'E was born in it, and 'is father, and 'Eaven knows how 
 many more of the Family. And my own grandmother saw 
 the late lord lying there dead, a hundred and twenty years 
 ago, with lilies on his breast, sir, and 'is 'air powdered!" 
 
 The Feeling, in the silence that followed the old woman 's 
 little outburst, was very close to Sandy. He held his 
 breath, and waited. It passed, but it had been so near, so 
 near. 
 
 Presently Mrs. Puddifant, perhaps with an artistic in- 
 stinct against anti-climax, curtsied ponderously, and went 
 out, leaving him alone. 
 
 It was very pathetic, the dying old peer having his feeble 
 body carried to the bed in which he, like his forebears, must
 
 336 SHARROW 
 
 render up his last breath; there was in it a touch of the 
 romance that Sandy, as a child, had felt to be in his ter- 
 rible old relative. 
 
 He had told no one, not even Sandy, of his last move. 
 His servants had been ordered to bear him thither, and 
 there he now lay, awaiting death. 
 
 After a while Sandy went and knocked gently on the 
 door of the Blue Room, and asked the nurse whether he 
 might see his great-uncle. 
 
 She "went away, and presently returned. ' ' No, ' ' she said, 
 her pleasant face appearing in the light of the half-opened 
 door, "he prefers to be quite alone to-night." 
 
 So Sandy went back to his own fireside. Quite alone! 
 All his life Lord Sharrow had been in reality quite alone. 
 
 "If I were able to forgive him," the younger man 
 thought, sadly, "he would have me now, but I can't, and 
 he knows that I can't."
 
 CHAPTER LV 
 
 THE Freckled Twin came, and she and Syd walked and 
 rode and drove together, and Mary and Sandy watched 
 with a solicitude that was rather more maternal on his side 
 than it was on hers. 
 
 The girl's skirts had been let down, a fact which greatly 
 embittered her life, and her bright brown mane was rolled 
 into an uncertain ball on the back of her head. 
 
 "Mother says I ought to be ashamed of it," she told 
 Mary, "but it is so curly, and such a nuisance." 
 
 She was a charming young thing, her freckles, like 
 patines of leaf gold, enhancing the beauty of her white 
 skin, and in her rather gauche frankness and unromantic 
 fearlessness she delighted Sandy's heart. 
 
 "I adore Sharrow," she said once, when Mary had 
 brought her to dine at the house. ' ' I 'd rather own it than 
 any house in England." 
 
 And Sandy, after an amused glance at Mary, was 
 pleased to see Syd staring at his plate with a self-conscious 
 flush on his face. 
 
 Syd and the girl were the best of friends, and Sandy 
 often heard his brother's rather throaty tenor voice in the 
 Yellow Drawing-room, singing exercises to the vigorous 
 if not faultless accompaniment of the Freckled Twin. It 
 was not beautiful music that they made, but Sandy greatly 
 preferred it to the brilliant performances of Maria Paz. 
 
 April passed; the shadows under the trees in the park 
 were more decided, as the leaves thickened; the sky took 
 
 337
 
 338 SHARROW 
 
 on a deeper blue ; cuckoos called to each other in the woods, 
 and violets and primroses spangled the meadows. 
 
 Spring had come, and still Lord Sharrow lingered in 
 the Blue Room, awaiting the summons which seemed un- 
 willing to come to him. 
 
 The old man had never mentioned his change of room 
 to Sandy. As he grew weaker he seemed to grow more 
 grim, more silent. Sandy knew that he loathed the weak- 
 ness that chained him to his bed, that he cursed his great 
 age, that he longed to have it all over. But neither of the 
 two men ever mentioned death, until, one morning very 
 early, when April had just left the world, and May was 
 only three hours old, Nurse Blake knocked on Sandy 's door, 
 and waked him. 
 
 "He is going very fast," she said, looking very tall and 
 young in her gray dressing-gown, a long plait of dark hair 
 hanging over each shoulder, ' ' and he has asked for you. ' ' 
 
 Daylight came in at the windows of the Blue Room as 
 Sandy went quietly in and sat down by the bed. Lord 
 Sharrow, who had the curtains all drawn back, lay quite 
 quiet, his eyes half shut. He looked very small in the big 
 bed. His wizened face, but for the eyes, was like a crum- 
 pled bit of the linen, and the sheet and blanket lay almost 
 flat over his wasted body. 
 
 To Sandy it seemed that his body was already dead, only 
 the eyes still lived. 
 
 "Sandy!" The dying man's voice was crisp, like an 
 unexpected crackle of stiff paper. 
 
 "Yes, Great-uncle." 
 
 "Love the old place, won't you?" 
 
 "Yes, Great-uncle." 
 
 "About Maggie Penrose and me what we did," went 
 on the voice which was still Lord Sharrow of Sharrow, the 
 oldest peer in the realm. "I " 
 
 Sandy frowned. He wished his great-uncle would not
 
 S H A R K W 339 
 
 apologize at this late hour, or ask the forgiveness that he 
 could not grant. 
 
 "I am sorry," pursued the voice, with an effort, "that 
 you found out." 
 
 Sandy checked an involuntary smile. It was so thor- 
 oughly characteristic of the old man to regret, not his evil 
 deed, but that his evil deed had been found out! 
 
 "Never mind that now, sir," he said, with an effort. 
 
 "But I do mind. It must have hurt you it always 
 hurts to lose faith in a woman and I am sorry, Sandy. 
 When I was alive, I used to love you." He paused, moved 
 his head a little, and added, with something that tried 
 to be a laugh: "I have been dead for some years, you 
 know." 
 
 The daylight was stronger now, and the pale yellow 
 sky was flecked with faintly rose-colored clouds. The 
 nurse came back, dressed now in her neat uniform, a 
 glass containing some brown liquid in her hand. 
 
 "Here is your beef-juice, Lord Sharrow," she said, bend- 
 ing over the pillow. 
 
 She gave the beef-juice to her patient too quickly, and 
 he choked a little and said "damn!" in a very snappish 
 voice ; then he apologized to her, and she went away. 
 
 ' ' A nice young woman, Sandy ; she has been kind to me. 
 I should like her to have fifty pounds as a little present. ' ' 
 
 "Very well, sir." 
 
 ' ' Tell her I asked you to give it to her. ' ' 
 
 "Very well, Great-uncle." 
 
 Presently the invalid, whose eyes had been shut, opened 
 them. 
 
 "Mind! I won't have Pendleton here not till I'm dead. 
 I mean; when I am, he can do what he likes." 
 
 "Very well, Great-uncle." 
 
 An hour passed. The rose had faded from the sky, and it 
 was now a beautiful even turquoise; somewhere not far
 
 340 SHARROW 
 
 away a gardener was whistling at his work; the clock 
 struck seven. 
 
 Sandy opened his eyes with a start. He had been asleep. 
 Lord Sharrow had moved a little, and lay watching his 
 nephew. 
 
 "Tired, eh?" he said, as Sandy hid a yawn. "I am 
 sorry. ' ' Then he added, suddenly : ' ' Well I think there is 
 no more to say, Sandy. Love the old place. I I am glad ' ' 
 he held out his little dry, cold hand. ' ' Good-by. ' ' 
 
 The two men shook hands gravely. "Good-by, Great- 
 uncle." 
 
 "I suppose you can't forgive me, Sandy? Not even 
 now?" Something like amusement stirred the old face as 
 he spoke. 
 
 "You it ruined my life, Great-uncle " 
 
 "I know ten years of it but some people could for- 
 give even that. ' ' 
 
 Sandy felt that, notwithstanding the guest who hovered 
 at the door, the old man was half teasing him. 
 
 ' ' I know, sir ; but not we Sharrows. You couldn 't ; I 
 I can't. But " 
 
 "Well " croaked the voice, more faintly. "Go on 
 hurry!" 
 
 "I was going to say: I shall never forget that you were 
 good to me when I was a boy." 
 
 Sandy's eyes were wet, and the old man smiled almost 
 happily. "I see a tear," he murmured, "I see a tear " 
 
 His fingers fell limply from Sandy's, and he lay back 
 asleep. 
 
 An hour later, without waking, he died.
 
 CHAPTER LVI 
 
 ONE splendid June day, Mary Wymondham, a faded 
 pink sunbonnet on her head, a pair of garden shears in her 
 hands, was working among her roses. 
 
 Her garden, though not large, was a charming one, and 
 its clipped yews, rich hedges, and century-old lawns made 
 of it a very restful place indeed. 
 
 At her back, as she advanced in her leisurely work, fill- 
 ing a battered old basket with fresh roses and snipping 
 faded ones from the trees, was the house, and every step 
 brought her nearer to the double hedge beyond which lay 
 the bowling green. Perfect order reigned in her small 
 domain ; on the mellow-colored brick walls the newly 
 formed fruit lay sheltered by just the right number of 
 leaves, just sufficiently exposed to the benevolent sun; the 
 two great yews, one of which had lived at least its last 
 hundred years in the shape of a vast umbrella, the other 
 of which was a giant peacock, never looked either newly- 
 shaven, like a convict's head, or dishevelled, extremes not 
 unknown to the yews of most people. 
 
 In a niche between two bow-windows, a great lavender 
 bush spread itself luxuriously in the afternoon sun; and 
 bees hummed in a big mignonette bed. 
 
 At the far end of the garden, stood three old-fashioned 
 straw beehives, their yellow sides glistening; and in the 
 very center of the velvet lawn, under the drawing-room 
 windows, was an ancient sun-dial. The place looked the 
 very embodiment of peace and modest comfort. 
 
 341
 
 342 S H A R R W 
 
 Mary loved it. She was very happy that afternoon, after 
 her short stay in London, for various reasons, connected 
 with the village, dull reasons that would sound very bor- 
 ing, and which yet, in her intimate knowledge of the peo- 
 ple amongst whom she lived, were to her of great im- 
 portance. 
 
 In her little world things went well. Mr. Pendleton, the 
 Vicar, had promised not to propose to her again, a prom- 
 ise which was of great value to her since she never meant 
 to marry him and hated telling him so; her gardener's 
 little granddaughter was not going to die of her fall out of 
 the apple tree, after all; Coulter's End was a great suc- 
 cess; the church had been successfully enlarged without 
 being spoilt, and the new organ was quite delightful, even 
 though Sandy had got it from London and not from the 
 Norfolk builders she had recommended; and little Isabel 
 Harrington had told her two days before, when Mary 
 bade her good-by after a pleasant visit to Eccleston Square, 
 that she would, of course, come again to Sharrow in 
 July. 
 
 ' ' I like it frightfully, ' ' the girl had added, looking really 
 almost grown up in her smart afternoon frock. "I'd 
 rather be there than anywhere." 
 
 "Syd is a delightful young man, isn't he?" Mary had 
 asked, feeling rather a fiend, but longing for some definite 
 hope to take home to Sandy. 
 
 And the Freckled Twin had blushed, actually blushed, as 
 she replied that Syd was really rather a dear. 
 
 Mary had observed in Lady Harrington, to whom had 
 fallen the rather unfair lot of mothering nearly one-third of 
 old Lady Hainault's fourteen granddaughters, a disposi- 
 tion to help Time in his dealings with her fourth girl. 
 Isabel's skirts were down and her hair up rather early for 
 a member of the old-fashioned Harrington tribe ; and Emily 
 Harrington, who never mentioned Syd, assured her guest
 
 S H A R R W 343 
 
 that Bell really was wonderfully mature in some ways, 
 though she looked such a baby. 
 
 And now Mary was back, with the story of Bell's blush 
 already shaped, as she would tell it to Sandy, in her mind, 
 and a blackbird was singing like an angel in a cherry-tree, 
 and the roses were delicately baked in the sun, and gave 
 out a kind of triumphal essence of their own scent to their 
 mistress as she lovingly beheaded them to decorate her 
 dwelling. 
 
 Mary Wymondham detested Browning, or she would, as 
 she worked in her garden that afternoon, undoubtedly have 
 quoted "Pippa Passes." 
 
 The grandfather clock just within her house door struck 
 half-past three. In an hour's time Sandy would come, 
 and she would tell him as she mentally expressed it, in her 
 country simplicity, "all about London." 
 
 She had heard Paderewski play, and seen Mr. Charles 
 Wyndham's new comedy; she had dined at the "Carl- 
 ton" and had been at a very grand dinner-party at 
 Lady Hainault's. And then there was the story of the 
 Blush. 
 
 Having reached the far end of the rose garden, she came 
 slowly back, her white muslin skirts dragging softly on 
 the smooth grass, and sat down on the bench under the 
 copper beech that was one of her glories. 
 
 It was delightfully cool here, and she would wait till her 
 little maid, Sally, should pass the door or a window, and 
 then she would call to the girl to bring her out a tray- 
 full of vases ; there was no reason on earth why she should 
 not arrange her own roses in her own vases in her own 
 garden if she wanted to ! 
 
 But Sally did not come, and Mary sat lazily on. 
 
 Two very corpulent pigeons flew over the house and 
 settled on the grass near her. They belonged to her neigh- 
 bor, Mr. Attley, the draper, whose shop was so luckily
 
 344 SHARROW 
 
 farther up the street. Pigeons are pleasant things to watch 
 in a lazy mood. 
 
 Suddenly in the utter quiet there came a sound which 
 disturbed the dreaming woman even before she realized 
 what it was. 
 
 With a quick frown she raised her head to listen. Some- 
 thing seemed troubling her what was it? 
 
 A horse. 
 
 Down the cobbled street it came, the disquieting gallop- 
 ing. It had reached the ' ' Sheepshearers ' ' now she knew by 
 the momentary slackening necessitated by the gutter that 
 crossed the street there now it came on and on it was 
 going past no she rose and stood waiting for she knew 
 not what disaster; it was stopping; had stopped at her 
 door. 
 
 The green gate opened, and Sandy, not dressed for rid- 
 ing, but carrying a hunting crop, came in. 
 
 He came straight down the path, then crossed over the 
 grass toward her. 
 
 ' ' Mary, ' ' he said hoarsely, ' ' Syd 's married. ' ' 
 
 "Syd 
 
 ' ' Yes. To to that Spaniard. ' '
 
 CHAPTER LVII 
 
 THE telegram lay on the grass, and one of the pigeons, 
 who, after a temporary retirement to their own garden, had 
 come back, pecked at it tentatively. 
 
 It was very curt. "Was married to Maria Paz this 
 morning. Syd." That was all. 
 
 Over and over again it rang through Mary's brain as 
 she sat silent beside Sandy, who had hidden his face in his 
 hands. "Was married to Maria Paz this morning. Syd." 
 
 It seemed hours before Sandy finally sat up and pushed 
 his dishevelled hair off his forehead. His dry eyes were 
 bloodshot, his face very white. 
 
 Mary leaned forward and took his hand in hers. "Oh, 
 Sandy," she said, inarticulate in the presence of what she 
 knew was his despair. 
 
 He cleared his throat twice, and then spoke with an 
 effort. 
 
 "When when the thing came," he began slowly, "I as 
 soon as I believed it, I cursed her. I couldn't see, I 
 was so angry. And then his deceit occurred to me and" 
 he bit his bloodless lips fiercely ' ' I was afraid I 'd curse 
 him, so I came here." 
 
 She said nothing, her hand closing more firmly on his. 
 
 "You are the only friend I have in the world, Mary," 
 he resumed, again clearing his throat, "so I came to you." 
 
 It was at that moment, perhaps, that she first began 
 to realize what he was going to be to her. Her face was 
 beautifully gentle as she watched him, this man whose only 
 friend she was. 
 
 345
 
 346 S H A R R W 
 
 "I am glad you came, Sandy " 
 
 "Thanks. It's there's no use being angry; it's done. 
 I I don 't want to be angry ' ' his voice rose . suddenly, 
 and getting up he strode away from her toward the um- 
 brella-shaped yew. ' ' I don 't want, ' ' he went on, his words 
 gathering volume, "to be angry with little Syd God help 
 me!" 
 
 She was frightened, for the first time, perhaps, in her 
 life, for his lower jaw stuck out as his great-uncle's had 
 done, his teeth showed, and his eyes had a wild glare in 
 them. His last words sounded like a blasphemy, and she 
 knew that his anger toward his brother had forced them 
 from the lips he was trying to keep mute. 
 
 "Mary" he turned, beating his big brown hands help- 
 lessly together ' ' don 't don 't let me be angry with Syd. ' ' 
 
 "You will not be angry with him, Sandy," she said very 
 quietly, "because it would be unjust." 
 
 The dark red color that had been gaining in his face 
 ever since he rose faded very slowly. "Unjust?" he re- 
 peated, stupidly. 
 
 "Yes. Syd is a child. He is not even of age. She has 
 tricked him somehow." 
 
 His eyes softened with a natural expression. "You are 
 right. He is not of age. It can be annulled I'll go and 
 see Bolsover at once." 
 
 But she would not let him go to London that day. Syd 
 had, of course, taken his bride away, nothing could be done 
 without him, and Sandy was as weak as a man after a bad 
 fainting-fit. 
 
 He sat silently in her quiet drawing-room while she made 
 tea and gave it to him; he even drank his tea; his violent 
 anger was over, but this stupor of misery was nearly as 
 alarming. She had never before seen him angry, but the 
 Sharrow temper was a tradition to her; she had heard 
 many tales of it, and the mad things it had been known
 
 S H A R R O W 347 
 
 to cause its possessor to do, so she felt thankful, as she sat 
 there by the stricken man, that matters had been no 
 worse. 
 
 And presently, as the long summer afternoon changed 
 to evening, Sandy began to talk. 
 
 He told of his lonely little-boyhood, of the old house in 
 Bloomsbury, of Bean, and Cook, and the portraits ; he told 
 of his first visit to Sharrow and how he came to love it ; he 
 described with the vividness of deep feeling his strange 
 friendship with his old uncle, of their meeting-ground 
 wherein all differences of age and circumstances were for- 
 gotten ; he told of the books he had found and read, of the 
 almost holy things that Sharrow had gradually come to 
 mean to him, of the Feeling that used to lift him up into a 
 kind of heaven. 
 
 And Mary listened without a word, almost without mov- 
 ing. 
 
 On and on he talked, the velvety shadows crept over the 
 grass, dew fell, the sky glowed, darkened, and stars 
 came out. Sandy talked on and suddenly, when she had 
 grown so used to his voice that the silence seemed loud, 
 he broke off. He had come to where he fell in love with 
 Viola. 
 
 There was a long pause, and then Mary said quietly: 
 
 "Then Viola came I know, Sandy." 
 
 He looked up in the gloom, but her face was nearly in- 
 visible. ' ' You know how Viola came. Do you know how 
 she went ? ' ' 
 
 She hesitated, and then, because to her it was not only 
 the best, but the simplest thing to do, she told him the 
 truth. 
 
 "I know that she saw you when you had been drink- 
 ing." 
 
 He gave a dreary laugh. ' ' Yes. ... It was worse than 
 that, Mary. She saw me when I was very drunk. And I
 
 348 SHARROW 
 
 put her on the piano and wouldn 't let her get down. I had 
 le vin heureux in those days. Well she wrote me a letter 
 she called me things and I knew she would never for- 
 give me. So I went away. I took Maggie Penrose with me. 
 You remember Maggie Penrose?" 
 
 Mary had given a little start at the name. ' ' Yes ! and 
 you took her with you?" 
 
 "Yes. Oh," he added, again with a dreary laugh, "I 
 didn't seduce her. She wanted to come. She cared for 
 me. She was good to me, too, Mary. I if you knew about 
 those ten years, you wouldn't let me sit here!" 
 
 "Yes, Sandy, I would." 
 
 Her quiet voice had no hesitancy in it, and no mere con- 
 solation. It rang with the truth. 
 
 Sandy stirred in his chair. "Perhaps you would," he 
 agreed, listlessly; "perhaps it's only love that makes 
 women false and cruel." 
 
 He spoke without bitterness, but so drearily, so hope- 
 lessly, that Mary rose, and sitting down near him, laid her 
 hand on his. ' ' Go on, Sandy, ' ' she said ; ' ' tell me all there 
 is. We are friends." 
 
 "So we went away," he began, obediently. He told his 
 story in plain words, but without details. ' ' I was a drunk- 
 ard when they found me," he finished. 
 
 "You are no drunkard now." 
 
 "No. But my brother has deserted me now; fooled 
 and deserted me as your sister deserted and that other 
 woman fooled me. And he, too, loved me. That is per- 
 haps," he added, his voice dropping to a meditative tone, 
 ' ' my curse ; to be hurt by people who love me. ' ' 
 
 Little Sally, who had twice come to the door to announce 
 dinner, and twice been warned away by her mistress, told 
 Cook that she was sure his lordship had come to ask Miss 
 Mary to marry him. "He's talking about love," the little 
 maiden added, importantly.
 
 S H A R R O W 349 
 
 Sandy's talk about love was very sad hearing for his 
 friend. When it was over he rose. 
 
 "Thank you, Mary," he said; "you have been very pa- 
 tient. I never thought I could tell my miserable story to 
 any one, but I am glad I have told you. You know how 
 degraded I have been, how vile my life was until a hazard 
 brought me home " 
 
 ' ' Yes. And I have seen, ' ' she answered, ' ' how brave you 
 have been these last six months. I know what your ambi- 
 tions have been. They have not been for yourself " 
 
 "No," he thundered suddenly, "they were for Syd!" 
 
 ' ' Not altogether. They have been for the people God has 
 put more or less into your hands ; whose happiness depends 
 more or less on you; whose very health hangs more or less 
 upon your will, according to the way you choose to house 
 them " 
 
 "More or less, more or less," he repeated dreamily. 
 
 ' ' Yes. I don 't know, ' ' she went on, striking a match and 
 lighting the candles in a double-branched old silver candel- 
 abra as she spoke, ' ' whether you believe in God, Sandy. I 
 do." 
 
 He never forgot her expression as the four little flames 
 leapt into life at her bidding while she declared her simple 
 faith. 
 
 "I believe in God, and when I said more or less, I 
 suppose I meant that your share of responsibility is the 
 lesser because His is, of course, the greater. But yours is 
 there, and would be if Syd married half a dozen Span- 
 iards," she added, with a sudden nervous little laugh that 
 betrayed the tension she had been under. 
 
 After a pause as the candle-light steadied and shed 
 its soft radiance over that part of the room, he answered 
 her. 
 
 "Thank you again, Mary, I suppose I believe in God- 
 some one certainly made us but if you had not been here
 
 350 SHARROW 
 
 this afternoon, I I don't know what I shouldn't have 
 done." 
 
 Mary took his hand as he held it out, and her dark face 
 hardened suddenly. 
 
 "I hate that woman I always did, from the first mo- 
 ment I saw her. And she must be ten years older than 
 Syd. Oh, Sandy!" 
 
 Tears came to her eyes, and they were tears of helpless 
 rage. 
 
 Sandy smiled. "Poor old Mary!" he said. "I am so 
 glad you hate her ! "Well, good-by. I will come to-morrow, 
 and we will try to plan. I am sure the marriage of a minor 
 can be set aside." 
 
 Mary listened to his footsteps on the gravel. Then she 
 heard the gate bang. 
 
 Then she went to her room, knelt by her bed, and cried.
 
 CHAPTER LVIII 
 
 BUT Syd's marriage was not set aside. The next morn- 
 ing came a long letter from the boy, a letter so loving, so 
 incoherent, so full of hot self-accusations and fiery self- 
 defences, a letter so chivalrous and brave in his protection 
 of his lady, that Sandy showed it to Mary with his eyes 
 wet. 
 
 Syd loved Maria Paz. He had not meant to trick his 
 old Sandy, for he had never known that it was love till the 
 day of the concert at Lady Hainault's. Then she had 
 played a thing that just sang it to him, and he saw her as 
 she really was. 
 
 ' ' Do you remember my telling you her bones were beauti- 
 ful?" the boy wrote. "Well, it was her soul I saw, only 
 I didn't know it." 
 
 Mary groaned. 
 
 "Go on," Sandy said. 
 
 The concert had been early in April. Syd had not said 
 a word to Maria Paz until after the funeral. He had not 
 dared, she was so superior to him. And he had on two 
 occasions meant to tell Sandy, but somehow, remembering 
 how plain he himself had used to think his love, he had 
 not dared. Suppose Sandy had laughed! 
 
 Then, when Sandy was in town that fortnight after the 
 funeral, he was always being with the solicitor and things, 
 and Syd had not liked to interrupt. He had meant to tell 
 Sandy before he spoke to Maria Paz, but a week before the 
 writing of the letter he had lost his head and blurted it all 
 
 351
 
 352 SHARROW 
 
 out to her, and found that the miracle had happened ; she, 
 too, loved him. 
 
 "And Don Ramon had to go to Spain on business, San- 
 dear," the boy concluded, "and she wouldn't let him go 
 alone. You know how she always takes care of him. They 
 were going, and I Sandear, I found I couldn't bear it. 
 So I persuaded her. She didn't want to do it. She 
 wanted to wait, but I wouldn't. And I got a S. L., and we 
 were married this morning. ' ' 
 
 Mary had read thus far in a rapid undertone, but she 
 finished the letter in silence. Syd was so rapturous, so 
 grateful for his overwhelming good luck, and sure that, 
 when Sandy came to know his beloved as he did, Sandy, 
 too, would adore her, that the words did not bear repe- 
 tition. It would although she was convinced that 
 he had been tricked, that his bride was a scheming, bad 
 woman be a kind of sacrilege. He ended by giving 
 his address at Barcelona, where they were to arrive the 
 next night but one after the writing of the letter, and 
 where he knew Sandear would send him a wire of con- 
 gratulation with a kind message of some sort for "Mrs. 
 Syd." 
 
 There was a postscript which Mary did read aloud. 
 
 "It is so funny to think that I ever thought her ugly. 
 Of course, she was badly dressed, but her face is so won- 
 derful that I must have been mad to think she wasn't 
 lovely. And now that she has learned our English way of 
 dressing oh, well, you'll see. I am sure you and she will 
 get on famously. She admires you tremendously, does Mrs. 
 Syd!" 
 
 The two friends sat in Mary's drawing-room all the 
 morning. It was raining, a day of showers and spasmodic 
 sunshine. 
 
 They discussed the marriage from every possible point of 
 view, and, in every way, what step Sandy ought to take.
 
 S H A R R W 353 
 
 One thing was certain. If Sandy proposed to the young 
 husband that the marriage should be annulled, Syd would 
 never forgive him. 
 
 "Whether she is worth it or no, and, after all, Sandy," 
 Mary added in the increased wisdom that the night had 
 brought her, ' ' she may be. All one really knew against her 
 is her looks, and those she can't help. Whether she is 
 worth his love or no, she has got it, and he is happy. Now, 
 if you made a row, you'd not only fail to make him give 
 her up, but you'd lose his love for you. And that mustn't 
 be." 
 
 "I suppose you're right. But if I saw her now, I'd 
 I'd break her in two!" 
 
 Mary nodded. ' ' I know. And I 'd help you. Oh, Sandy, 
 we are very unregenerate, both of us, aren't we? As it 
 happens, though, they are in Barcelona, or will be to-night. 
 And they are married. I can think of only one thing to 
 do." 
 
 "And that is?" 
 
 His face was very old-looking, very haggard in the 
 morning light. 
 
 "Grin and bear it. Unpoetic advice, but I know no 
 better. If she loves him, I should think," her voice soft- 
 ened, a little, "that his love would bring out the best in 
 her." 
 
 "Should you, indeed?" he interrupted with a sudden 
 sneer. 
 
 She raised her head, and looked at him in reproof. 
 
 "Yes. My sister was a child, Sandy, and a weak na- 
 ture. This woman is nearly as old as I am now, and what- 
 ever else she may be, she is certainly a strong nature. Do 
 not compare the two, for I love my sister, though I saw her 
 fault towards you." 
 
 He held out his hand. "Forgive me. I beg your pardon. 
 Well, what must I do then?"
 
 354 SHARROW 
 
 "I should wire him to this Hotel of Four Nations, and 
 wish happiness to them both. ' ' 
 
 "Good God, Mary!" 
 
 "Well, I should. You can do as you like, of course, 
 but you asked my advice, and I am giving it you. Then 
 I should write to Syd. I should say that his marrying a 
 woman who was not an Englishwoman has been a blow ; 
 that you wish he had not married a woman older than him- 
 self ; that you are disappointed, but that that after all, 
 it is his affair, and that when they come back you will do 
 your best to be friends with her. Then I'd send them a 
 cheque and tell them to take their honeymoon wherever 
 they like and ask them to come to Sharrow for a long 
 visit say early in October." 
 
 "But why in October?" 
 
 She lost patience at his denseness. "Oh, you utter 
 goose!" she cried, "can't you see? By October you will 
 have got a little used to it ; you will be able to control your 
 temper, and to behave in a way that will keep his love 
 for you. Then she, having plenty of money, will refuse to 
 spend another winter in this 'peeg' of a climate, and off 
 slie will take him to Egypt or somewhere, and you will 
 be at peace again." 
 
 Sandy saw her wisdom, but she did not see, he thought, 
 what his loneliness would be. Syd was to have been with 
 him; to work with him; Syd's name was to have been as- 
 sociated with him in every kind of improvement he under- 
 took on the estate. 
 
 And now Syd was to be in Egypt with his wife. Poor 
 Sandy groaned aloud. 
 
 However, he finally agreed to what Mary said and they 
 walked together to White Shirley to send the telegram 
 to Barcelona. 
 
 Mrs. Pragholm studied the words with friendly curiosity, 
 which Mary saw.
 
 S H A R R W 355 
 
 "Isn't it a surprise, Mrs. Pragholm?" she said, just 
 touching Sandy's arm in warning. "Mr. Sydney is mar- 
 ried ! We none of us knew it was to be for some time. ' ' 
 
 "Dear me, Miss! I do 'ope Mr. San my lord, that 
 your lordship is 'appy about it. 'E do seem young, Mr. 
 Sydney ! ' ' 
 
 "He is very happy," Sandy replied with a feeling of 
 the deepest duplicity. 
 
 When they had gone their way, Mrs. Pragholm rushed 
 across to the "White Stag" to tell her crony, Miss Betsy 
 Finn, that Mr. Syd was married, and 'is lordship 'eart- 
 broken about it. The congratulations of the villagers and 
 the servants were but poor, perfunctory words. No one had 
 liked Maria Paz, and some of the peasants even inclined to 
 the belief that she was not a white woman. 
 
 Mrs. Puddifant celebrated the occasion by giving notice. 
 
 "Surely you won't desert me, Pud," Sandy protested, 
 "just because I have a sister-in-law?" 
 
 ' ' No, my lord, oh, no ! " the old woman replied, her hands 
 high-folded, "but at my time of life, I don't feel able 
 to undertake a new mistress." 
 
 "I am sure Mrs. Sharrow would never think of inter- 
 fering. ' ' 
 
 "Are you, my lord? Well, I can only 'ope your lord- 
 ship is right." 
 
 Sandy said no more. 
 
 Turner said that his opinion was of no value, but that 
 for his part he didn't care for women with yellow faces. 
 
 As to poor old Dingle, he said nothing, but his eyes were 
 eloquent of sympathy. 
 
 Sandy had a miserable week of attempted congrat- 
 ulations, and then the matter settled into the position 
 of an unalterable, accepted fact, and no more was said 
 about it. 
 
 Syd and his wife went to Norway and Sweden for the
 
 356 SHARROW 
 
 summer, and Sandy and Mary worked very hard, saying 
 but little about the young couple. 
 
 Sandy had grown older, and spoke less than before, but 
 he tried hard to be as interested in his new duties as he had 
 been before the news came, and Mary knew that his having 
 the will even to try meant much. 
 
 It was a warm, dry summer, and almost imperceptibly it 
 wore away into the autumn. One day in late September, 
 a wire came from Paris. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Sharrow were, it said, on their 
 way home.
 
 CHAPTER LIX 
 
 THE train was due at six in the evening, and at five 
 minutes before six, Sandy was at the station. He had 
 come in the big motor, and there was a cart for the lug- 
 gage. He greatly disliked his new sister, as he considered 
 Maria Paz, but as she was his sister, all honor should be 
 done to her. 
 
 It had rained all day ; the evening might have been 
 painted as a typical English October evening. The trees 
 near the station were not draped with fog, but they were 
 veiled with a delicate pearly mist that hid their angles and 
 lent them a grace unknown to their best summer days ; the 
 low-hung sky was gray, too, but a lead gray, heavy and 
 menacing, as if heavy with unborn rain. 
 
 Sandy, as he marched up and down the little platform 
 waiting for the train, noticed all these things, and the Eng- 
 lish soul of him rejoiced, as a Southerner's soul might re- 
 joice in the blue of his native sky, the clarity of his home 
 air. This was gray, and chill, and dull, but it was England, 
 and for hundreds of years different men of the Sharrow 
 stem had awaited the women who were God-bidden to carry 
 on the name, in just such dull, characteristic weather. 
 Sharrow brides had, of course, come in the glory of June, 
 the grandeur of August, as well; but these evenings like 
 molten granite were of all English evenings the most typ- 
 ical of the land. Maria Paz Suarez had been a Spaniard ; 
 Sandy disliked her; but now she was, by virtue of the 
 marriage sacrament of Syd's young love, the woman who 
 
 357
 
 358 SHARROW 
 
 was to carry on the old name ; her son was to be Sharrow of 
 Sharrow, and his sons were to replenish the land. And as 
 such Sandy awaited her, with honor and respect in his 
 heart. 
 
 The train was late; the station-master, a short, fussy 
 man with a manner, explained that a minor mishap on the 
 line had occasioned the delay ; he was apologetic, humble, as 
 is the way of English employes, yet he lost through his 
 manner no dignity through his humility. Sandy under- 
 stood, and gave him a cigar. 
 
 The clock struck. It was six o 'clock. 
 
 A local train came in, with the fuss habitual to insig- 
 nificant things. A woman with a baby in her arms and 
 another on the way had lost her ticket to Mendborough. 
 Sandy, with his heart full of love for women who were 
 bearing children, bought her a new ticket, and fetched 
 her a glass of beer and a sandwich from the little bar in the 
 station. 
 
 This Mr. Clawson, the station-master, considered deroga- 
 tory, but he dared not say so. So the commotion in his 
 small soul made no stir on the surface of his manner, and 
 Sandy never knew. Then the local train went its way ; 
 Sandy looked at his watch, and, his hands in his pockets, 
 began a regular tramp up and down the little platform. 
 He had made up his mind to receive Maria Paz as his sis- 
 ter. He had disliked her; even yet he could not divest him- 
 self of the idea that it was not from such as her that the 
 race of Sharrow should be reinforced. But Syd had, out 
 of all the world, chosen her to be his wife, and, as his wife, 
 she was a woman full of honor, a woman to be liked and 
 respected. 
 
 Therefore, as he walked there in the chill evening air, 
 while the occasional light of a train blurred the gray air, 
 he made up his mind that she should find in him a brother. 
 He would give her all that he could of brotherly affection
 
 S H A R R O W 359 
 
 and understanding, and she would in return give to his 
 house all the good that was in her. 
 
 There is much poetry in a railway station at all hours; 
 the meeting and parting of human beings contains all 
 that there is of happiness and tragedy in the wide world. 
 But at night when the light is the symbol of the coming 
 or going of a vast house full of lives, the drama and 
 romance are inexpressible. 
 
 The very rails, like polished arrows shooting into the 
 blackness, are pregnant with imaginative meaning, and to 
 the dreamer full of poetry. 
 
 Our poor Sandy, though he did not know it, was a 
 dreamer, and so this little country meeting-place of trains 
 fascinated him and gave his mind pause. 
 
 His whole life, he thought, was over, but Syd's young 
 one, as yet a mere blossom on a bare bough, was pregnant 
 with life, and would bear fruit. He, Sandy, would be the 
 gardener; his to shelter, to prune, to reap, for him must 
 be the love of the gardener. 
 
 His brother had chosen this dark little lizard-like woman 
 for his mate; to her he would give his children; through 
 her he would continue his race. And Sandy, the sterile 
 tree, would yet shadow the new root, and out of his 
 strength help it to wax strong and firm. As he walked 
 there, a commonplace enough figure in his long tweed 
 coat with its collar turned up around his ears against the 
 cold, Sandy yet embodied poetry in himself, for the old 
 Feeling had come back to him, and his love of his name, 
 of his house, burned once more in his heart. 
 
 Up and down he walked, his fists clenched hard in his 
 pockets, his rough brows drawn deep over his eyes. Syd 
 was coming, and Syd's wife; possibly, even, Syd's son. 
 
 Sandy knew that he would not ask Maria Paz if this last 
 possibility were a fact; but he wondered, and the wonder 
 warmed his heart.
 
 360 SHAEROW 
 
 There are in the world many women whose primary 
 functions are mother functions; there are few men who 
 are, before anything else, fathers. Sandy was one of these 
 few. His heart stirred physically as he thought of 
 Syd's son, a little being he could hold in his arms, and 
 give to Sharrow as he was giving Sharrow to him, Syd's 
 son! 
 
 It was nearly seven, and Sandy was in a deep dream 
 about this hypothetical child, when the train finally came 
 panting through the fog as if its arrested breathing pow- 
 ers had delayed its arrival. 
 
 "The train is coming, my lord " 
 
 And Sandy, quite forgetting that he was my lord, stared 
 blankly at his informant, the solitary porter of Sharrow 
 station, and then, remembering, laughed, gave the man 
 sixpence, and walked back to where a miniature bustle de- 
 clared the London train to be more than the fabric of a 
 dream. 
 
 Syd was out and on the platform almost before the train 
 had stopped. 
 
 ' ' Sandy dear old man ! ' ' 
 
 "Syd!" 
 
 The two men shook hands. Then Syd, turning, helped 
 his wife to alight, and presently Sandy found himself 
 shaking hands with Mrs. Sydney Sharrow. It is easy to 
 say that but for certain things one would not have known 
 some one, but Sandy was vitally conscious, as this little 
 ceremony was gone through with, that literally he would 
 not have recognized in his sister-in-law the Maria Paz who 
 had played and betrayed the secret of Chopin that day at 
 the Bechstein Hall. 
 
 This thin, little lady, who came out of her dark furs 
 as a chestnut would come all shinily out of its burr, was 
 very unlike the scrawny, red-armed girl of that day. , 
 
 Maria Paz Suarez had had small, sulky, black eyes, like
 
 S H A R R W 361 
 
 currants in a bun, Ben had said; this lady, this Mrs. 
 Sydney Sharrow, had small eyes, it is true, but they were 
 dark and lustrous, and dwelt on her brother-in-law's face 
 with a surety of purpose and a certainty of welcome that 
 the other could not have known. 
 
 "I am glad," she said, showing her pretty teeth, can- 
 didly, "to come home, dear Sandy." 
 
 And it was, even to his prejudiced ears, quite charming, 
 the way she said it. 
 
 She was coming home; she knew, and assumed in her 
 little speech, that he was a sterile root; that to her was 
 given the privilege of providing a new blossom for the 
 ancient root; yet in her manner was no triumph. There 
 was pride, but Sandy liked pride, and had no wish to 
 quarrel with her for the sentiment. Her mission was to 
 him a holy one; why, then, should she not feel and ex- 
 press her appreciation of its quality? 
 
 Gravely he shook hands with her. 
 
 ' ' You are welcome, ' ' he said, adding after a barely per- 
 ceptible pause, "my sister." 
 
 Syd, his eyes shining with unshed tears, took his broth- 
 er's arm, and gave it a very hard squeeze. 
 
 "Sandear, Sandear," he murmured, "she is an angel; 
 you will love her, and she will love you!" 
 
 At dinner, Sandy wondered why Maria Paz, hitherto 
 desolatingly flat-chested, should suddenly have become 
 possessed of such pretty curves; how her thin arms, still 
 thin, should seem merely lithe and slim ; how her oily black 
 hair should seem glossy and almost beautiful. And, be- 
 cause he was Sandy, he told himself that it was all be- 
 cause Syd loved her and she loved Syd that these miracles 
 had come to pass. 
 
 He connected not the hairdresser, nor the Parisian man 
 dressmaker with the change ; for all his sad enlightenment, 
 he did not realize the means that had been used to the end
 
 362 S H A R R W 
 
 which is only one way of saying that he was a man, not a 
 woman. 
 
 Maria Paz wore black, and in her hair was a gardenia. 
 Few women after the age of twenty can wear natural 
 flowers in their hair, but she could because she was Span- 
 ish, and because she had chosen her flower well. Of all 
 flowers, the gardenia is the least sincere, and it suited her 
 evenly waved, carefully dressed dark locks. 
 
 In her success she had blossomed; she was no longer 
 scrawny, and her forearms were not red as they had 
 formerly been. She was illuminated by the softening fire 
 of success, and, as manners maketh the man, so, surely, 
 clothes maketh the woman. Many lives mast have been 
 wrecked by a mistaken belief in the silly proverb about 
 beauty unadorned. 
 
 Maria Paz Suarez, covered as decency required and her 
 national bad taste chose, was worse than ugly; she was 
 nearly grotesque. Maria Paz Sharrow, covered as slightly 
 as decency required and covered by a French artist, was, in 
 her consciousness of looking almost better than her very 
 best, nearly a good-looking woman. 
 
 Sandy ate his dinner in a state of bewilderment. Syd 
 was so proud of his wife, so gloriously in love, so trium- 
 phantly a slave, that Sandy doubted his own senses. 
 
 Had he been mad about the Spanish girl? Had she 
 always been attractive, and he only a blind fool to doubt it ? 
 Then he remembered her blue-white frock and her red 
 wrist bones, and he bowed in the presence of a miracle. 
 
 "Well?" Syd asked, when Maria Paz had slid from the 
 room in her queer, almost imperceptible way, leaving the 
 two men alone. 
 
 "How do you mean 'well'?" 
 
 "Isn't she isn't she marvelous?" Syd had grown a lit- 
 tle heavier in the five months of his honeymoon; his face 
 was fuller ; his chest looked broader. His delicate look had
 
 S H A R R O W 363 
 
 gone, and he seemed older, but triumphantly, gloriously 
 older, as if he himself had willed the hastening of maturity. 
 
 Sandy's heart gave a little twist in his breast, a little 
 twist that mothers know. 
 
 "She is wonderful," he said, seriously. 
 
 Syd leaned towards him over the table. "I say, Sandy, 
 do you remember the concert? And the absurd things I 
 said to Ben? Well" the boy's voice deepened "I I 
 can't tell you how absurd it all seems now. I never knew 
 such a such a brain in my life. It's it's a kind of 
 miracle that she should care for a silly ass like me, and yet 
 she does." 
 
 There was a long pause, and in the silence, broken only by 
 the beautiful crackling sound of the fire, the sound that 
 of all others epitomizes ''home" to homesick British ears, 
 a question sprang into Sandy's mind. 
 
 It sprang, the question, into immediate maturity; there 
 was no hesitation in it no feeling of intrusion. It was his 
 to know, his to ask. 
 
 ' ' Syd, dear old boy, ' ' he said, holding out his thin hand, 
 and sliding into it Syd's smooth young one, "you mustn't 
 mind telling me; you've been married five months and I 
 I want to know is there going to be a baby ? ' ' 
 
 Syd's hand grasped his strongly. 
 
 "No, Sandy," the young husband answered, his dark 
 eyes on his brother's, "not yet."
 
 CHAPTER LX 
 
 MARY WYMONDHAM at this juncture did not fail Sandy. 
 He had indeed come to trust to her friendship and coopera- 
 tion, with an unquestioning kind of faith that would have 
 surprised him had he noticed it. But he did not; he ac- 
 cepted her much as a man accepts a sister, except for the 
 fact that his trust had grown slowly. 
 
 In his early youth he had not particularly liked her; 
 she was inclined to be dominating, and her quick tongue 
 had often embarrassed him to the point of exasperation, as 
 often happens between a quick-witted girl and a rather 
 slow-witted man. 
 
 Then, too, Mary was that tragic thing, the Plain Sister. 
 Viola's loveliness had been so exquisite, so overwhelming, 
 that Mary's good looks of health, honesty, and vigorous 
 young womanhood had never received even the scant meed 
 they deserved. She had been a kind of background to her 
 sister, and such was her adoration for Viola that she did 
 not mind this, nor ever raised a finger to point ever so 
 gently to her own good points. 
 
 Money was scarce at the Vicarage, and all the fine feath- 
 ers that she could collect, Mary gave ungrudgingly to 
 Viola. 
 
 And thus to Sandy Mary had appeared merely a good 
 sort, with a rather sharp tongue, and he had hardly ever 
 talked with her. 
 
 So when on his return he found her established in the 
 Corner House, her good qualities, mellowed as they were 
 
 364
 
 S H A R R W 365 
 
 by time, and softened by trouble, came to him with a kind 
 of surprise. Mary was gentle now, and understanding, and 
 sympathetic; these things astonished him faintly, but his 
 own liking for her did not astonish him, because he never 
 envisaged it. In the amazement of his new position, the 
 weight and splendor of his new responsibilities, the fact 
 that Mary Wymondham was his close friend escaped him, 
 he believed her to be an unimportant factor in his life, 
 whereas she knew that she was of great value to the iso- 
 lated, discouraged man whose heritage had come too late. 
 His fine, careless rapture was gone, as the flush in the sky 
 goes when once the sun is above the horizon; but the sun 
 has to run its course, and perhaps it never remembers the 
 flush that greeted it as it climbed over the edge of the 
 world. 
 
 Mary Wymondham was not a detestable woman, there- 
 fore it need not be said that she was nearly free from 
 vanity; but her sane, well-balanced mind possessed clear 
 eyes, and with them she saw how greatly Sandy needed her, 
 and she gave to him with both hands. 
 
 ' ' You must help me, Mary, ' ' he said to her the morning 
 after Syd's return with his wife. "I shall have a hardish 
 row to hoe, for I do not like her, and I never shall, but 
 
 ' ' But you must do your best ; exactly, Sandy. No more 
 do I like her, but there must be something in her that 
 you and I can't see, or Syd wouldn't love her I suppose," 
 she added, after a little pause, during which her well- 
 shaped brownish hands with their polished nails were busy 
 with some hyacinth bulbs she was potting. 
 
 Sandy looked at her hands with the far-off look in his 
 small gray eyes that would have seemed so much more ap- 
 propriate to Syd's lustrous brown ones. "Oh, no, there's 
 no doubt about that. He certainly loves her. In fact it's 
 a strange thing, Mary, but the boy seems almost to idolize 
 her. And even now, with all her improvements her good
 
 366 
 
 clothes, her well-dressed hair, all the little things a man 
 can't describe, but can only feel she is so desolatingly 
 ugly. She is like a lizard or something. Her eyes don't 
 seem to look at things, they seem to dart at 'em. She has 
 been playing the piano this morning, and he sat positively 
 drinking it in. It it was almost painful, Mary ; that beau- 
 tiful boy- 
 Mary rubbed some loose earth from her hands. ' ' It isn 't 
 really painful. You mustn't get hipped about it. After 
 all, she seems to be a singularly gifted woman, and Syd 
 is not singularly gifted." 
 
 Sandy frowned. This was one of her old-time speeches 
 that annoyed him. What she said was perfectly true, but 
 it seemed to him that she need not have said it. 
 
 Syd was Syd, and to Sandy the one really perfect thing 
 in the world. 
 
 Mary eyed him critically, her nose a little wrinkled, as 
 was her way when anything caused her to feel scornful. 
 Sandy was really rather idiotic about Syd, she thought, 
 and her thought was writ large in her face. 
 
 "Don't care for that remark, do you?" she asked him, 
 her nose resuming its customary smoothness as he did not 
 speak. Then he laughed. 
 
 "I am an ass, just as you think," he said, "but I feel 
 exactly as though he were my son, you know." 
 
 "H'm! Boys of fifteen don't generally have sons, do 
 they ? However, I know what you mean, and I meant only 
 that well, let's regard Maria Paz (detestable name!) as 
 spilt milk, and waste no tears on her." 
 
 Sandy wasted no tears on his sister-in-law. His manner 
 towards her was of a suavity so unusual in him that Syd 
 marvelled openly. 
 
 "I say, Sandear, you are a blessed old courtier," the 
 boy declared one day, as the two were on their way to 
 the stables to inspect a new Irish mare that Sandy was
 
 S H A R K W 367 
 
 giving Syd for a birthday present. ' ' Maria Paz says your 
 manners are as good as any Spaniard's, and that means a 
 lot from her, I can tell you!" 
 
 "Thanks," Sandy returned a little dryly, for he knew 
 what Syd had apparently never learned, that there were 
 many kinds of Spaniards, and that his sister-in-law did not 
 spring from the hidalgo class. He had been in Spain ; he re- 
 membered that the vast majority of that country's male 
 inhabitants went through life with a grave courtesy very 
 much marred by ruthless and constant spitting, and some 
 instinct told him that Maria Paz' mankind were of the 
 spitting kind. 
 
 "She says," continued Syd, as they reached the stables, 
 "that you are the only man in England who can bow." 
 
 Then Sandy used a rude monosyllable relative to the 
 after world, and told his young brother to tell his wife 
 not to make idiotic remarks. 
 
 "My manners are beastly," he declared, "and if they 
 weren't, she has no right to generalize about Englishmen, 
 of whom she knows only half a dozen at most. English 
 gentlemen have the best manners in the world. Tell her 
 so." 
 
 Syd laughed. He was never hurt by his brother 's rough- 
 ness, and he was too happy over Sandy 's apparent liking of 
 his wife to take exception to this minor outbreak. 
 
 The world was full of sun to Syd; he adored his wife, 
 all of whose best qualities were brought out by prosperity, 
 and her strange playing affected him almost as a charm 
 might have done. She could be a goblin at the piano, but 
 also she could be what seemed to him an angel. And he 
 saw and heard only the angelic in her. 
 
 As the autumn days shortened into winter ones Sandy, 
 much as he disliked Maria Paz, found himself more and 
 more bound to acknowledge that she had one great quality. 
 
 Maria Paz Sharrow could charm, and she could repel;
 
 368 SHAEROW 
 
 she could not bore. She was never in the way, nor out of it 
 when wanted. She seemed to possess a gift of being apro- 
 pos ; she never obtruded even the sight of herself. She was 
 quiet, dark, very silent ; one never felt, as Sandy put it to 
 Mary, the ' ' Oh, my God, is she being bored ? ' ' feeling. She 
 was one of the very few women who could be let, and who 
 let, alone. 
 
 "She is really not at all bad," Mary agreed, "and she 
 makes the boy so happy that he shines. She has rubbed him 
 with mental and moral phosphorus. And she played 
 divinely last night." 
 
 Old Lady Hainault was, of all the people invited to meet 
 the bride, the only who did not more or less succumb to 
 what seemed her unconscious charm. Maria Paz' charm 
 was not that of other women ; she neither smiled, nor flat- 
 tered, and she was not over amiable about her music, for 
 she played only and whenever the mood seized her. 
 
 Her black eyes looked steadfastly at people, but they 
 had no softness, no sweetness. She seemed in a curious 
 way to be saying mutely : " I won 't raise a finger to make 
 you like me; I will be passive: and if you all 'loathe me, 
 then I'll loathe you." 
 
 But people did not loathe her. 
 
 Only Lady Hainault told Sandy that she could not stand 
 the new Mrs. Sharrow. 
 
 "Of course, you'll say my nose is out of joint because 
 of Isabel. And my nose is out of joint. I wanted him to 
 marry her, because he was always a love of a boy, he is to 
 be rich, and so on. But it isn't that. It's this. Er shall 
 I go on ? I feel that I am about to become very rude. ' ' 
 
 "Become rude, then only go on," Sandy urged her. 
 
 The old lady eyed him with an expression that in her 
 youth had been seraphic. 
 
 "She is such a horrible little cad, you know," she said. 
 " Now ain 't I rude?"
 
 S H A R R O W 369 
 
 "You are, very." 
 
 Sandy's own expression was so unmoved that an instinct 
 of coquetry (which, like the worm, never dies), stirred her 
 ancient heart. 
 
 "If I were twenty years younger," she declared with 
 an archness that would have been macabre were it not for 
 the fact that she herself saw and laughed at its absurdity, 
 "your freedom wouldn't be worth a day's purchase. I 
 should marry you." 
 
 ' ' That would be, ' ' Sandy returned laughing, ' ' a case of 
 crabbed age and youth I being crabbed age. You are 
 younger than your twin granddaughter at this very min- 
 ute, Lady Hainault, and you know it." 
 
 So she liked Sandy very much. 
 
 And Maria Paz, always beautifully dressed, always fol- 
 lowed by Syd's adoring eyes, began, at Sandy's request, to 
 give dinner-parties at Sharrow, and at these parties she 
 learned learned the manners and ways of the people 
 amongst whom she had come to live. 
 
 She was adaptable as a clamberer, yet her manner 
 seemed always to be saying : " I will not budge to suit you ; 
 if you don't like me as I am, you can hate me; I don't 
 care." 
 
 Then, after a month of rain, during which she sat con- 
 stantly over a fire, with a thick, soft shawl about her shoul- 
 ders, came the birthday party, and the episode of the 
 orange-colored gown.
 
 CHAPTER LXI 
 
 FROM the moment of his first arrival at Sharrow the 
 room that had made the greatest appeal to Syd had been 
 the so-called Chinese Room. The faded colors on the satin 
 walls the ancient embroideries, not stretched but hung in 
 soft smooth folds had held for the boy some subtle charm, 
 and for the man the charm was the same. 
 
 Then, too, the old porcelain vases with their brave bright- 
 ness of colors, their apple green, their bullock-blood red, 
 were of the refined, subtle art that Syd best understood. 
 The grinning dragons were to him not curious, or repul- 
 sive; they possessed a real beauty. 
 
 Sandy, whose own associations with the room were not 
 very pleasant, had remembered his brother's old love for 
 it; and when the young married pair arrived they found 
 that the Chinese Room, to whose rather scant furniture 
 had been added a beautiful little Bechstein grand piano, 
 had been dedicated to their exclusive use. 
 
 Sandy, being of the old-fashioned type of man who has 
 fixed ideas about the general needs of women, had set 
 flowering plants about on the floor, and a couple of five- 
 foot-high rose glasses were continually replenished with 
 what the really pleased Maria Paz called "long-legged" 
 red roses. 
 
 "It is good of you, Sandy," she said, looking at him 
 with a queer little light in her eyes. "Thanks." 
 
 And Sandy knew that she knew of his deep-rooted dis- 
 trust of her, and that she had made up her mind never to 
 
 370
 
 S H A R R V 371 
 
 try to remove it. For this he respected her. In some ways 
 they were alike : in their powers of silence ; in their dogged 
 passivity; and greatly as he hated Syd's having married 
 her, he yet could not withhold from himself the knowledge 
 that she puzzled and interested him more than ever. 
 
 And as rooms often take on something of the character- 
 istics of the women who live in them, so the queer Chinese 
 Room with its faint embroideries, its vivid porcelains, its 
 all but priceless bronzes, grew to look, in Sandy 's eyes, like 
 his inscrutable little sister-in-law. 
 
 One thing, ever since her arrival, had brought his mind 
 to a halt: her clothes, her beautiful black, white, gray, or 
 mouse-colored frocks suited her to perfection, yet 
 he felt, somehow, in the depths of his unenlightened, mascu- 
 line brain that they did not express her. 
 
 "But they are beautiful," Mary Wymondham expostu- 
 lated, when he confided this inarticulate conviction to her. 
 "I never saw a better- dressed woman." 
 
 He nodded. "I know, of course, they are beautiful, but 
 they they aren't her, somehow. They don't speak for her 
 as well, as yours speak for you, for instance, Mary. ' ' 
 
 Mary blushed bravely, looking at him. "How dear of 
 you to say that ! But do you really think my tweeds and 
 flannels express all of me, Sandy ? ' ' 
 
 There was in her voice a certain wistfulness, which he 
 answered. 
 
 "And your beautiful soft velvets and your laces! Don't 
 forget your fine feathers. Yes, I do think your clothes 
 express you. I can't explain just what I mean, but I 
 do." 
 
 And Mary, still blushing, laughed, and understood. 
 
 The day before Sandy 's thirty-fourth and Syd 's twenty- 
 first birthday, a cousin of Maria Paz' came to Sharrow 
 a Seiiora Cristina Lopez. 
 
 The arrival of this unknown woman made Sandy very
 
 372 SHARROW 
 
 nervous. There was to be a birthday dinner and a dance, 
 and somehow, with the desolating extra sense that was his, 
 Sandy knew that Cristina Lopez would be what he men- 
 tally classified as dreadful. 
 
 "Maria Paz isn't dreadful," Mary suggested, "so why 
 should her cousin be?" 
 
 ' ' Every flock has its flower. I feel that Maria Paz is the 
 flower of hers. Although," he added, justly, "the old 
 father wasn't bad." 
 
 Cristina Lopez was "bad." She was a short, full- 
 bosomed Catalonian with much bluish-white rice powder 
 on her dark face, and with a harsh, loud voice. 
 
 She was the wife of a Barcelonian doctor, and, having 
 been several times to Paris, and once to Rome, she had a 
 delightful conviction that the world was hers. 
 
 As she drank her tea with an elegant curve of her little 
 finger on which gleamed a large turquoise, Sandy watched 
 her with a kind of impatient amusement. It was gall to 
 him that Syd's wife should be looked down upon, but life 
 had taught him its sad lesson of "after all, why not?" and 
 in her portentousness Senora Lopez was really funny. Syd 
 saw the portentousness, but he had not the sense of humor 
 of his lean- jawed brother. 
 
 "I say, Sandy," he murmured, while the Barcelonian 
 gave Maria Paz a voluminous and shrill account of the do- 
 ings of their acquaintances at home, "I am sorry." 
 
 "Sorry for what, old child?" Sandy stretched his long 
 legs, and looked at his shoes as he spoke. He had hoped 
 Syd would not notice. 
 
 "This this woman. She's fearful I" 
 
 "Rot!" 
 
 But Syd's face was flushed and he was biting his lips 
 nervously. "Isn't it funny how how near relatives can 
 differ?" 
 
 Sandy was about to agree with all the warmth of ac-
 
 S H A R R W 373 
 
 quiescence at his command, when Maria Paz rose with a 
 little shriek and darted across the firelight into the dark, 
 which she at once destroyed by a twist of the electric light 
 button. 
 
 ' ' He must come, ' ' she cried, more loudly than Sandy had 
 ever heard her speak, as she sat down at a writing table. 
 "Mi querido Miguel! N'est-ce pas, Seed? My cousin, 
 Miguel Fons, is in London. He must come, must he not, for 
 the fiesta to-night?" 
 
 Sandy rose. ' ' If you know the name of his hotel, Maria 
 Paz, you can get him on the telephone," he said, quietly. 
 "It is now five-and-twenty to six he could easily be here 
 in time for dinner." 
 
 She, too, rose, and stood facing him. Her small, fiery 
 face, with its curious subdued look, was turned steadily 
 to his, yet she seemed to be melting away behind it. It 
 was as if her spirit retired, leaving her eyes to guard its 
 flight. 
 
 Sandy waited, and after what was really only a second 
 or two, but which seemed a very long time to him, she 
 thanked him conventionally, and he rang and gave the 
 necessary order to the butler. 
 
 Syd was surprised, grateful, and ashamed of himself, 
 and, as usual with him, gave vent to his confused feelings. 
 
 "You're a wonder, Sandear," he said, laying his hand 
 on Sandy 's arm, ' ' you only like her, and I you know what 
 I feel; yet you are so so brave about her relations." 
 
 Sandy laughed. "Don't be a confounded young snob," 
 he said. "It's very nice that she wants them to come. 
 Maria Paz," he added in a louder voice, "I cannot speak 
 your beautiful language, but remember that my house 
 is your house, and all your friends are welcome to it." 
 
 He did not know why he said this, possibly it was to 
 combat a certain horror of the Spanish woman's people 
 that he could not conquer ; perhaps it was a fine feeling of
 
 374 SHARKOW 
 
 loyalty to his brother; perhaps, although this never oc- 
 curred to him, it was an instinctive sentiment of loyalty 
 to his own name, his own house. This woman was now a 
 Sharrow; therefore, her people must be, to a certain ex- 
 tent, his. 
 
 However this may be, it was with the determination to 
 do his duty to the fullest extent that he met Miguel Fons 
 just as the second dressing-bell went. A motor had been 
 sent to the train, and Sandy heard it stop, and went across 
 the court, where the great torches were burning steadily in 
 the quiet winter air, to meet his sister-in-law's cousin. 
 
 "How do you do?" he said gravely, as gravely as any 
 Spaniard, holding out his hand. 
 
 And then his heart sank, for Miguel Fons was very 
 loathsome to him. The man was small, delicate-looking, 
 and his great, wet black eyes swam languorously under 
 heavy lids. He was clean shaven, but needed the razor at 
 that minute, and his mouth was subservient as he gave a 
 warm hand for a second into Sandy's grasp. 
 
 It was plain that he was overawed by the gentleman 
 whose brother his cousin had married. 
 
 As they went back across the courtyard, the dark eyes 
 seemed to absorb its beauties in a way that was almost 
 offensive to Sandy. 
 
 At the door, the Spaniard bowed, and urged his host to 
 pass in before him. It was rather horrible, but Sandy, 
 with something he knew to be perilously near a frown, 
 insisted on his guest's preceding him, and his guest finally 
 obeyed. The man was, and looked, a cad. 
 
 With all his heart, as he dressed, Sandy wished that 
 Syd's sight might be blinded to this fact. Syd was so 
 happy, so proud of his wife, it seemed a pity that he should 
 have to blush for her relatives. 
 
 But a surprise was in store for Sandy.
 
 CHAPTER LXII 
 
 MIGUEL, clean-shaven and dressed in old but well-cut 
 clothes, had a quaint little success of his own. 
 
 Lady Hainault, who sat on Sandy's left, the duke and 
 duchess being present, informed her host that the beautiful, 
 velvet-eyed one had won her ancient heart. 
 
 "Very good-looking, isn't he? and so nice and foreign. 
 
 "Very foreign," Sandy agreed, dryly, inwardly mar- 
 velling at the lack of perception of stay-at-home English 
 folk. 
 
 "It's a pity your sister-in-law hasn't his looks," pur- 
 sued the old lady, greatly enjoying her aspic. 
 
 "There speaks your jealousy, Lady Hainault! Still bit- 
 ter about your match-making schemes ! ' ' 
 
 "I am. Aren't you? Although," she added, suddenly 
 serious, "I am sure she must be very nice, or Syd couldn't 
 be so in love with her!" 
 
 Miguel's manners, which were not of the best, caused 
 poor Syd acute misery, but the Spaniard made great prog- 
 ress with one of his neighbors, the pretty wife of a hard- 
 riding squire. Mrs. Merridew was a flirt, and, having flirted 
 with every flirtable man of her acquaintance, felt that in 
 flirting with a black-eyed Spaniard she was even though he 
 had, before a quick glance at her own manner of disposing 
 of them, eaten his peas with his knife enlarging her out- 
 look and increasing her knowledge of the world. 
 
 So the dinner went peacefully on, and towards the last of 
 it, Miguel, warmed with success and wine, made the speech 
 
 375
 
 376 SHARROW 
 
 that brought about the episode of the orange-colored 
 frock. 
 
 His English was rather attractive. At home he was a 
 dentist, and, his degree implying a knowledge of American 
 dental art, he had studied English for several years. The 
 hesitation necessitated by his limited vocabulary lent to 
 his words a grace unknown to the spate of his Spanish con- 
 versation ; he borrowed from his ignorance a false modesty 
 that, lighted by his velvety, mournful eyes, was charming. 
 
 "Ah, yes," Sandy heard him say, as he eyed the spoon- 
 fuls of ice on their way to his mouth, with a childish greed, 
 "my cousin is mucha clever very clever. And a great 
 musician. 'Er father, muy sabio, is a great scholar. A 
 wise man; un senor giudisimo. We are poor, but" he 
 shrugged his shoulders, and licked his spoon openly. 
 
 ' ' He is rather a dear, ' ' Lady Hainault whispered. ' ' And 
 aren't his manners too quaint?" 
 
 "But I like not her clothes close cloves como se 
 llama f clothes. I like splendid clo clothes. Nice colors. 
 Now it is all black. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Merridew, who wore scarlet, was flattered. 
 
 "But black suits Mrs. Sharrow so well," she protested. 
 
 Miguel, having taken some cheese, cut it into dice and 
 popped one into his mouth with his knife with admirable 
 agility. 
 
 ' ' Black ! For mornings- para ir a misa to go to Mass, 
 yes. But for her in Ingeland, no. You wear blue I mean 
 red. And how beautiful it is! My cousin should wear 
 colors and be beautiful, too." 
 
 Sefiora Lopez leant forward. She was gorgeous, though 
 tubby, in a frock covered with minute gold scales, and her 
 ornaments were topazes. 
 
 "Miguel," she called in her strident voice, continuing 
 for some seconds to speak in Spanish. 
 
 He raised his eyebrows. "All si? Bicn, bien. Good. My
 
 S H A R R O W 377 
 
 cousin tells me," he added, turning to Syd, "that she 
 brought from Paris an isplendid robe for Maria Paz! It 
 is well." 
 
 At this point, the duchess, who was greatly bored by 
 Miguel, began to talk to Sandy so that he did not catch 
 Syd's reply. That Syd was annoyed, however, could es- 
 cape no one. Miguel had got on his nerves; there was to 
 him no balm in the Spaniard's soft eyes, no fun in his 
 atrocious manners. He was bitterly ashamed of his wife's 
 relations. Turning to his wife, he said something that 
 Sandy did not hear, but Sandy's eyes were fixed on his 
 sister-in-law's face, while he politely responded to the 
 duchess's strictures on somebody's high notes at Covent 
 Garden, and he saw that Maria Paz was furious. Her 
 small face went white, as if somebody had blown out a light 
 behind it. 
 
 Then he heard a strident voice saying in English: "My 
 cousin is right; my husband has dressed me like an old 
 woman. These black-and-white things are of his choice, 
 not mine, and I like them not." 
 
 There was a short pause, at the end of which Syd was, 
 judging from his expression, about to make some concilia- 
 tory remark, when she interrupted him. 
 
 "After dinner, Mrs. Merridew, I will put on a dress 
 my cousin Cristina Lopez got for me in Paris. That will 
 show you that in matters of color your taste and mine 
 agree." . 
 
 Cristina Lopez smiled with a vast amiability at this 
 speech . 
 
 Miguel smiled languorously; Syd had turned white, and 
 now sat very erect, talking to his right-hand neighbor, who 
 was Mary Wymondham. 
 
 "Of course," Sandy heard the peacemaker say, "your 
 wife likes warm colors; all southerners do personally, I 
 agree with you that the grays and whites become her best.
 
 378 SHARROW 
 
 I have always so admired her clothes ; I was telling Sandy 
 so only the other day. But after all, Syd dear, I do think 
 you oughtn't to be cross with her for wishing to dress 
 according to her own taste." 
 
 Syd groaned. "I know, Mary, you are quite right, only 
 you see, it's a most curious thing, for a woman so artis- 
 tic, but " 
 
 Mary gave a little giggle so unlike her usual laugh that 
 he stopped short in his confidence, which was what she 
 wanted, and stared at her. 
 
 "I do hope she will play for us to-night," she hastened 
 to say. "The duke is so fond of music, it will be a real 
 treat for him." 
 
 Syd's face was clearing now. "Oh, yes, she'll play 
 she's so awfully kind, you know." 
 
 And Mary wondered how a youth so clear-witted could 
 be so blind. 
 
 Sandy, who was watching his brother's conversation with 
 his friend, saw with satisfaction that Mary was succeeding 
 in smoothing the young husband 's anger. Then he glanced 
 at his sister-in-law, and his heart fell. Maria Paz was still 
 angry, and it was a kind of malicious anger that half 
 frightened him. There was, it seemed to him, real venom 
 in her hard, high laugh. Her face had changed marvel- 
 lously, she looked now older and more common than he 
 had hitherto thought her. 
 
 Instinctively his eyes sought Mary's, and by her glance 
 he understood that she shared his uneasiness. 
 
 After the ladies left the dining-room, Sandy listened to a 
 long ducal discourse on the subject of the new Franz Hals, 
 bought by the government for the National Gallery. Poor 
 Sandy did not know whether a Franz Hals was a piece of 
 sculpture or a picture, but he listened with his smooth red 
 head bent politely to the old man's enthusiastic meander- 
 ings.
 
 SHARROW 379 
 
 And when presently he conducted his male guests back to 
 those of the feminine gender who were drinking coffee in 
 the Chinese Room, he knew that, as he expressed it, they 
 were in for a row. Maria Paz had, throughout the latter 
 part of dinner, looked like a lurid cloud; she meant mis- 
 chief. 
 
 ' ' The hands, my dear Sharrow, ' ' the duke was saying as 
 the door was opened, "are perfectly marvelous. Extraor- 
 dinary amazing Breaking off suddenly, the old 
 
 gentleman fumbled for his monocle and screwed it firmly 
 into his ancient eye. "By Jove!" he repeated, "amazing!" 
 
 In the middle of the room stood Maria Paz clad from 
 top to toe in bright orange-colored velvet. The gown was 
 extremely decollete, and her thin brown arms, on the lower 
 part of which a soft brown fur was very visible, were bare 
 to the shoulder, and separated from her neck only by a nar- 
 row strap that sparkled. Her hair was bunched out over 
 her ears, and in it she had stuck a huge, loose-leaved, crim- 
 son artificial flower. 
 
 Her face was as white as paper, but her thin lips were 
 scarlet and parted curiously over her white teeth. She 
 was moving very slowly to the rhythm of a strange minor 
 melody played by Miguel Fons, who sat sideways at the 
 piano, his legs crossed, a cigarette between his lips. 
 
 Sandy hardly realized at first that she was dancing, so 
 slow were her movements, but the duke enlightened him. 
 
 "A by Jove! And very well she does it! When I 
 was at the Embassy, at Madrid, there was a woman at the 
 Alhambra who" he broke off short, for the lady of his 
 reminiscence was hardly one to be compared to his host's 
 sister-in-law. 
 
 Suddenly Maria Paz spoke to her cousin. 
 
 "Toca mas airat, Miguel," she said sharply. 
 
 The scene would have been more dramatic if Maria Paz 
 had burst into a wild and indecent garrotin, but she did
 
 380 SHARROW 
 
 nothing of the sort. Instead, she stood there, swaying, her 
 willow wands of arms waving in the air, her eyes half 
 closed. She made not one gesture that could be taken ex- 
 ception to, her self-control was perfect, and yet the picture 
 she made was, in a subtle way, rather horrible. 
 
 Sandy glanced at his guests. The duchess, her lorgnon 
 close to her short-sighted eyes, was watching Maria Paz 
 with exactly the interest she would have accorded to a dan- 
 cer on the stage ; little Mrs. Merridew did not count ; Lady 
 Hainault and Mary Wymondham sat together, talking in 
 an undertone. 
 
 When the dancer saw Sandy, a little flicker seemed to 
 stir her face for a moment, and, after a few seconds of her 
 extraordinary flexile movements, she stood still, stopped 
 the music with a wave of her hand, and walked towards the 
 men. 
 
 "You never saw me dance before, Sydney," she said, 
 with fiercely held-back insolence, "did you?" 
 
 Syd drew a deep breath. "No," he answered. 
 
 "Well, I 'ope you like it?" 
 
 Before he could answer, Mary Wymondham came to her. 
 *'It was wonderful, Maria Paz," she said, "quite wonder- 
 ful. I did not know you danced. It is very smart in 
 town, you know, just now." 
 
 Maria Paz did not like Mary Wymondham, Sandy knew, 
 but something in the English woman's measured tact 
 touched the Spaniard . Her face softened, and she smiled. 
 
 "Thank you," she said, "we are not friends, but you 
 mean to be kind, and I know it. Shall I play for you ? ' ' 
 
 She played for nearly an hour, and so angelically that 
 everyone in the room listened in a kind of tremor. She 
 played Beethoven, and bits of Mozart, and a little of Cho- 
 pin in his simpler moods. Then she played Spanish folk 
 songs, minor, wailing things with a pathetic fall at the end 
 of every phrase, and queer oriental changes.
 
 S H A R R O W 381 
 
 "She is charming, Sharrow," the duke declared, as he 
 took his leave, "wonderfully gifted!" 
 
 Maria Paz had for once condescended to charm, and she 
 had succeeded. 
 
 Only Sandy and Mary, as he walked with her down the 
 frozen path that led through the park to her house, were 
 not pleased. 
 
 "Wasn't it awful, Mary?" Sandy asked. 
 
 "Yes, horrid! The dance itself was all right, though 
 well, you know what I mean; and the frock, though it 
 made her look like a gifted witch in a fairy-tale it was 
 all right, too. But " 
 
 They both looked up through the bare boughs to the 
 stars that shone in the arabesque of delicate branches and 
 twigs. Sandy finally spoke. 
 
 "I know what you mean; that what was all wrong was 
 that she did it on purpose to annoy Syd." 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "He was extremely angry at dinner, Mary. I saw you 
 soothing him. And afterwards while she was dancing, 
 I I don't think I ever saw the boy so furious. Hitherto 
 his share of the Family Temper has been a small one." 
 
 They walked quickly on, for the night was cold, and 
 talked little till they stood in Mary's quiet garden. Sandy 
 had opened the house door with her latch-key, and, as he 
 did so, a deep-voiced, deliberate clock in the hall struck 
 twelve. They both counted the strokes. 
 
 "How late!" Mary said, a little dreamily, giving him 
 her hand. ' ' I had no idea when she plays the piano, she 
 is a witch, an enchantress " 
 
 "Yes, Mary I'd rather have the boy die than suf- 
 fer " 
 
 She looked up into his gaunt face on which his own 
 sufferings had furrowed such deep, firm lines. 
 
 "He will not suffer, Sandy."
 
 382 SHARROW 
 
 "Why not? If he ever finds her out " 
 
 "But he won't. He forgot it all to-night when she 
 played. And she will always play to him." 
 
 Sandy sighed. "I daresay; but my nerves are wrong 
 of late, and I don't think," he added "that I could bear 
 that: to watch him suffer " 
 
 Mary stood in her open door listening to his footsteps 
 until they had died away. Then she went upstairs to her 
 room, and sat down in all her bravery of attire. 
 
 ' ' Mary Wymondham, ' ' she said aloud to herself, ' ' if you 
 are not very careful, he will guess. ' ' 
 
 Then she went to bed.
 
 CHAPTER LXIII 
 
 SENORA LOPEZ stayed only three days, but Miguel Fons 
 lingered on. 
 
 He liked his new quarters, and, having no misgivings 
 on the score of his own charms, stayed on and on and used 
 his tooth-pick with the confidence and enthusiasm com- 
 mon to Spaniards of his class. 
 
 Sandy, who had been in Spain, tried to be properly 
 grateful that the fellow did not spit on the floor, but this 
 was a negative comfort, and did not greatly help him. 
 
 Syd, charmed again by his wife's music, had either for- 
 given or forgotten the episode of the orange-colored frock, 
 and so, externally at least, peace reigned supreme in the 
 old house. 
 
 The winter was a mild one; the hunting excellent. Syd 
 hunted three or four times a week, and while he was away 
 Maria Paz sat in the Chinese Room. She had a nun-like 
 instinct ; she used the Chinese Room nearly as if it were a 
 cloister; some days Sandy never set eyes on her until din- 
 ner, and on Fridays and certain fast days she went without 
 dinner, not even coming to the table. 
 
 There was no affectation in her attitude toward religion, 
 but it nevertheless irritated Sandy extremely. Her daily 
 drives to "White Shirley he understood and even liked, but 
 her fasting annoyed him. He hated her face when it was 
 white and drawn with hunger; he disliked her quiet voice 
 of fast days; and his disquiet was increased a thousand 
 fold by his growing fear for Syd. 
 
 383
 
 384 S H A R R W 
 
 Why the boy did not see her as she appeared to Sandy, 
 Sandy could not tell, but he dreaded what seemed to him 
 to be the boy 's inevitable day of enlightenment with a nerv- 
 ous terror that to Mary was absurd. 
 
 "I tell you, I know Syd will never be unhappy," she 
 said more than once. 
 
 "And I tell you that I know he would die, not only of 
 grief but of mortification, if he ever came to see her as 
 she really is." 
 
 "As you think she really is, Sandy," she corrected. 
 "Why should you be so sure?" 
 
 Mary was growing gentler and kinder every day; her 
 quiet manner and brave eyes were the greatest comfort to 
 him at a time when he needed comfort more sorely than 
 he knew. 
 
 Syd's happiness was indubitable, but to Sandy it was the 
 happiness of one who, all unawares, has pitched his tent 
 on the slope of a volcano. 
 
 Sandy could not, try as he might, help watching for the 
 first symptoms of the eruption that was to blow his 
 brother's joy to atoms. And of all the weary watches in a 
 world full of weary watches, the weariest is that of the one 
 who knows that a great sorrow awaits an unsuspecting 
 happy person. 
 
 Maria Paz, meantime, had subsided into the dull-colored 
 French frocks with a good grace ; she did not dance again ; 
 she did nothing to disturb Syd. 
 
 By the hour she listened while Miguel discoursed to her 
 in the ugly Catalonian dialect ; she talked little, but listened 
 to her cousin with a kind of hypnotized pleasure that Sandy 
 one day remarked upon. 
 
 "What does Sefior Fons talk about?" he asked. "It 
 must be very interesting. ' ' 
 
 "Interesting? It is. It is of Barcelona that he talks 
 of the Rambla in the late afternoon when the sky is red;
 
 S H A R R O W 385 
 
 it is of the home of the aperitif when the men go to the 
 cafes to drink and the women walk up and down under the 
 big, ugly plane-trees and wonder about things, those of us 
 who do not yet know ; he tells me of our friends ; of those 
 who marry and those who die ; of the theatre, of our dear 
 plays in our dear dialect; of our grave Senors and our 
 beautiful fat old ladies; and of the little fans that wave, 
 wave, wave, just as the sea never ceases, so our little fans 
 never cease that is home, Sandy, ' ' she added fiercely, ' ' and 
 that is why I like to listen when my cousin Miguel speaks. ' ' 
 
 Sandy had never sc greatly liked her; this phase of her 
 mind corresponding closely to that of his which now ruled 
 his life; individual life seemed for him to have stopped; 
 henceforth Syd's life was to be his, and because Syd's lay 
 in this woman's hands, so to a certain extent did Sandy's. 
 
 And as he, the well-born gentleman, loved his estate, his 
 name, his house, so did the common little Catalonian whom 
 his brother had married love Barcelona, her native town. 
 
 "I fear you must be very homesick sometimes, Maria 
 Paz," he said, kindly. 
 
 She was sitting by the fire. It was a bitterly cold day 
 early in February, and the windows were whipped with 
 sleet. Syd was in town, and Sandy had drifted into the 
 Chinese Room solely because he was lonely. 
 
 Maria Paz sat bolt upright in a carved teak-wood chair 
 that the last lord but two had brought back from Peking. 
 
 Sandy 's mind realized with a kind of snap that his sister- 
 in-law did everything with more intensity than did other 
 people; if she loafed, her supple body was as apparently 
 boneless as that of a young Spanish fisherman's the most 
 lissom thing in the world and if it pleased her to sit up 
 straight, no stone Buddha in the whole of the East could 
 be more stonily erect. 
 
 When Sandy suggested that afternoon that she might 
 be homesick, she moved slightly, and looked at him.
 
 386 S H A R R O W 
 
 "Homesick? I? Do you not know that when I lived 
 in Barcelona we were poor, poor, poor? We lived in the 
 Calle S. Sebastiano, a street so narrow that by stretching 
 out my hand I could have stolen the food on my opposite 
 neighbor's table! And our clothes I made my sister's 
 clothes everything everything but her stockings, and we 
 lived on arroz rice and water soup. We had meat on 
 Sundays and fiestas. And all our pleasures we had through 
 kind persons. It was Miguel who told us my sisters and 
 me about the play. We went once or twice a year. And 
 in winter, we went to bed early, to keep warm. And, ' ' she 
 broke off with scorn, "and now you ask me if I am not 
 lonely!" 
 
 "Yes," Sandy answered, "I do. For I know you are! 
 You must miss the sun, and the color and the gaiety." 
 
 She laughed. "No. But I miss the noise. That you 
 cannot understand, but it is true. I miss the loud voices, 
 the vivid words, the great laughs of Barcelona. At night, 
 when we went to sleep, my sisters and I, with our window 
 open (only in the summer, of course), we could hear the 
 noise of the people, the life of the city below us the clang 
 of the electric trams the vast view of a great Spanish 
 city. Yes, that I miss. I like England well enough; I 
 like the grandeza of being your sister. But the quiet here 
 kills me; it is that. I want," she made an expressive 
 gesture of her little bony hands, ' ' the noise, the noise ! ' ' 
 
 And Sandy, for all the strength of his disagreeing with 
 her, understood. It was his gift and his curse at once, the 
 power of seeing both sides of every question. 
 
 "You must go to London for a few days," he said, 
 gently. "You can go to a big hotel, and see many people." 
 
 Maria Paz shrugged her shoulders. ' ' Bah ! There is in 
 London only a number of carriages and wagons, there is 
 no noise of people. It is that I want ; it is that that Miguel 
 gives me. Ah here he comes! Miguel," she went on, as
 
 SHARROW 387 
 
 Sandy rose unobtrusively as if his sitting down at all had 
 been merely a chance, ' ' come and talk to me of home. ' ' 
 
 Miguel, who was attired in a bright brown suit and a red 
 silk waistcoat, approached with an offensive gaiety all his 
 own. 
 
 "Bien, ~bien," he cried, in his vile French, "I will tell 
 you, but Lord Sharrow will be ennuye " 
 
 His smile, which was honestly meant to be ingratiating, 
 gave Sandy an almost irresistible longing to kick him. 
 
 ' ' I shall not be ennuye because I am going for a walk. ' ' 
 
 Miguel bowed, and, taking from his pocket a small book 
 of cigarette papers, proceeded to roll one of his cigarettes. 
 
 Maria Paz, of course, did not smoke, but she settled her- 
 self in her chair and eyed the making of the cigarette with 
 pleasure ; she loved the rank black tobacco. 
 
 Sandy went out into the chill, wet evening, and walked, 
 two hours up hill and down dale, as fast as he could go. 
 
 He could not turn his brother's wife's cousin out of his 
 house, yet the man was making his house unbearable to 
 him. 
 
 Some day, however, he reflected, some day sooner or later, 
 Miguel must of necessity go back to his clientele in Bar- 
 celona. It is to be feared that as Sandy pounded along 
 over the wet roads he invoked a plague of toothache on the 
 inhabitants of Barcelona.
 
 CHAPTER LXIV 
 
 IT was raining; all day long the bare trees had been 
 pearled with water, and the clouds looked like wads of cot- 
 ton wool that had been used to wipe up spilt ink. 
 
 Syd was hunting, and Sandy was at the Corner House 
 discussing the plans of a cottage hospital he was building 
 at the Brocket Wood end of the village. 
 
 Dr. Turner had come in during the afternoon, and his 
 practical suggestions had been of great use to Sandy and 
 Mary. The Vicar had likewise come, and his ideas were 
 listened to with deference, for he was a good, simple soul 
 and Sandy liked him. 
 
 Now Sandy and Mary sat alone over the fire and talked, 
 while Winker, who had added to his father's racial peculi- 
 arities a dash of Dachshund, and was a very strange looking 
 beast, slept on the rug. 
 
 "When do they go, Sandy!" Mary asked him, after a 
 long silence, which they neither of them noticed. 
 
 ' ' On Tuesday. Fons is going to-morrow thank God ! ' ' 
 
 "Good. He is terrific. I hope he won't come again 
 soon." 
 
 "I think not. Syd dislikes him." 
 
 "But Syd won't dare tell Maria Paz that he does!" 
 
 Sandy's almost white eyebrows contracted a little, and 
 she added hastily: "I mean to say he would hate to hurt 
 her." 
 
 "No, you don't: you mean that he is afraid of her, and 
 he is." 
 
 388
 
 S H A R R O W 389 
 
 "But, Sandy, that would be horrible!" 
 
 "It is. When he told her that she must get rid of old 
 Catalina, she hardly spoke to him for a week. He was 
 perfectly miserable about it it made me," he added, with 
 the sudden savage thrust of his jaw that made him so ex- 
 traordinarily like his great-uncle, "sick." 
 
 Mary nodded. She was sitting idly, her hands folded on 
 her lap. 
 
 "Catalina was a mischief-maker, and it was necessary to 
 get rid of her ; I know from Mrs. Puddif ant how she stirred 
 up quarrels between the Protestant servants and John, and 
 one of the kitchen maids. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, a liar, too. However, she's gone. And so they're 
 off on Tuesday. Poor Syd! I wonder how he'll like Bar- 
 celona. ' ' 
 
 "I don't know; I believe it's an awful place and the 
 Catalonians are the commonest of all Spaniards. She is 
 a queer woman; her relations and friends are a nuisance, 
 and yet I must say I like her for sticking to them. She 
 asked me to-day if she might invite another cousin, who is 
 a priest, to Sharrow during the summer." 
 
 Mary sat up. "Oh, my goodness, Sandy!" 
 
 "Yes. But of course I said I should be delighted. What 
 on earth could I say?" 
 
 "No. I should say no." Mary rose, and bending over 
 the dying fire struck it into momentary brightness. "I 
 would not ruin my house by having it infested with a lot of 
 low-class Spaniards. ' ' 
 
 Sandy stared, then he burst out laughing. "Well, upon 
 my word ! That 's pretty strong language from a lady who 
 continually urges me to patience, and who never fails 
 publicly to take the chief Spaniard's part!" 
 
 "I don't care," Mary insisted stoutly, "I mean every 
 word of it. That man Miguel is too horrible for words. 
 I I don't believe he is even clean and now a priest is
 
 390 S H A R E W 
 
 coming! If you died, she'd make Syd turn the old house 
 into an R. C. seminary." 
 
 "If I die, Mary dear, Syd will find himself very re- 
 stricted in his powers. The entail is strict. No matter 
 how how obedient he might become, he will not be able to 
 do anything as horrible as what you suggest. I I have 
 seen how things are going; her power over him is appall- 
 ing and I am making my will I'm going up to see 
 about it one day next week. Ben Frith is to be, in case of 
 my death, one trustee for for Syd's son and Sandy 
 Sharrow the other. He's a good sort, Sandy, and will, I 
 know, agree." 
 
 "I see. And if you and Syd died leaving no heirs 
 the other Sandy would come into everything?" 
 
 "Yes." Another silence fell. Sandy was glad that 
 he had spoken ; for some weeks he had wanted to take Mary 
 into his confidence regarding Syd's subjection to Maria 
 Paz* will, but he had hated to mention his brother's weak- 
 ness. 
 
 Now it was done and his mind was easier. 
 
 Mary understood; she would never tell any one of his 
 precautions and she would not love poor Syd the less for 
 his weakness. 
 
 The rain pattered softly against the windows; the fire 
 died down again ; and the scraping of the bough of a big 
 cedar against an angle of the roof over the drawing-room 
 told them that the wind had come up. 
 
 "I must be going," Sandy said lazily, his head leaning 
 against the back of his chair. "It must be nearly seven." 
 
 But he did not move. They were both of them lapped in 
 the luxury of idleness after hard work. 
 
 "I like that frock, Mary," he went on, presently. "Blue 
 is such a nice color." 
 
 She made a little murmuring sound of gratified agree- 
 ment, but did not speak.
 
 S H A R R W 391 
 
 It seemed to her that she had loved him all her life. 
 
 Again the cedar bough knocked softly against the roof; 
 the rain came down harder. 
 
 "Why don't you stay and dine with me?" 
 
 "Wish I could, but as it's that beast's last evening 
 hallo! what's that?" 
 
 The garden gate opened and closed with a bang, fol- 
 lowed by the sound of footsteps. 
 
 Mary's heart gave a great throb. It was thus that 
 Sandy's feet had sounded when he came to tell her of 
 Syd's marriage. 
 
 She half rose, and at the same instant she and Sandy 
 both turned to the nearer window. The footsteps broke into 
 a run. 
 
 Hatless, white, wild-looking, his hands beating feebly 
 against the pane, Miguel Fons stood staring into the room, 
 his mouth opening and shutting in apparent wordlessness. 
 With one stride Sandy was at the window, and opened it. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked sternly. 
 
 "It's it's " Miguel's tongue ran rapidly across his 
 
 dry, loosely-opened lips, and his yellow-tipped fingers 
 clutched upward in the firelight. 
 
 "What is it?" Mary stood by Sandy. 
 
 "It's it's Seed 'e is dead!" 
 
 Sandy drew back a step. 
 
 Mary stared a moment, and then said angrily: ."Non- 
 sense ! it 's impossible. Don 't stand there like a drivelling 
 idiot tell us at once, what has happened." 
 
 Then Miguel burst into tears, his hands pressed first 
 against his eyes, then together. 
 
 " It is true, ' ' he wailed. ' ' They 'ave brought 'im 'ome 
 'is 'is 'ead is all s-smashed to pieces ! ' '
 
 CHAPTER LXV 
 
 THE weeks that followed were the most tragic of Mary 
 Wymondham's life, but if she had been forced to lose her 
 memory of her whole life save that of a few weeks, she 
 would have chosen to keep clear in her mind those dreadful 
 ones immediately following Syd's death. 
 
 Things that happened later might seem to some women 
 to be worthier of the value she silently set on those stormy 
 spring days ; but to her the beauty and importance of her 
 whole life dwindled to nothing in comparison with them. 
 
 The horror of the night of the accident, dread and blight- 
 ing though it was, held for her a secret joy; she it was 
 to whom Sandy turned ; she it was who sat with him by the 
 bed where lay that thing, its face covered with a cloth, 
 that only a few hours before had been his brother and the 
 hope of his whole existence. 
 
 ''Don't leave us alone, Mary," Sandy had said to her, 
 as they reached the house after a breathless run through 
 the night. "Stay with me." 
 
 And she stayed. 
 
 Only while Turner and Sandy were in the library to- 
 gether did she see anyone but him, and then she was so 
 short and sharp with Maria Paz, who was in hysterics, that 
 to the end of her days the Spanish woman never forgave 
 her. 
 
 "You mustn't scream," Mary said, her large strong 
 hand holding Maria Paz firmly down on the sofa where 
 she had flung herself, and where she lay twisting and writh- 
 ing like an epileptic. "You must be quiet. Sandy will 
 hear you." 
 
 392
 
 SHARROW 393 
 
 Maria Paz burst into a flood of Spanish that sounded too 
 like vituperation greatly to impress Mary ; but the screams, 
 which were of a wailing, shrill quality almost eastern in 
 their regularity, ceased at once. 
 
 Then Mary sought Miguel. 
 
 He stood in the Chinese Room by the fire, and as she 
 entered he turned, his tobacco-box in his hand, a rectangu- 
 lar bit of white paper caught by its extreme edge in his 
 lips. 
 
 He had gone a strange grayish-yellow color, and his red 
 lips writhed a little, the cigarette paper trembling between 
 them. 
 
 " 'Ow is she?" he asked. 
 
 Mary looked at him. He was very repulsive to her, 
 and she had come to send him away, but she was sorry for 
 him, he was so disorganized, his black, glossy eyes held 
 such a look of terror. 
 
 "Maria Paz?" she returned, kindly enough. "She is 
 quite all right." 
 
 Her ears were waiting for the sound of the library door, 
 which sound would be the signal for her to return to 
 Sandy. She sat down, and, looking up at the Spaniard, she 
 began her task. 
 
 "Seiior Fons," she said, "I have only a moment in 
 which to talk to you, and a rather unpleasant thing to say. 
 So I will say it at once." 
 
 He lit his beautifully rolled cigarette, and drew a deep 
 puff of the acrid smoke of his contraband tobacco. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 ' ' I think that now that this terrible thing has happened 
 and Lord Sharrow is in such deep mourning, it would be 
 better if there were no guests in the house." 
 
 ' ' You mean you wish me to go ?" His voice was level, his 
 eyes half closed. 
 
 ' ' Yes. Do you not think it would be better ? ' '
 
 394 S H A R R W 
 
 He smoked in silence for a moment, and then answered 
 her with the dignity born even in underbred Spaniards. 
 
 "Perhaps you may be right, Miss Wymondham. I 
 will tell my cousin your words. ' ' 
 
 ''Please do not do that. Maria Paz is in great grief, 
 and " 
 
 "And I am her only relation here; the only one of her 
 own people. I cannot desert her unless she wishes me to 
 go." 
 
 Mary felt the strength of his argument, and knew that 
 there was only one way to smash it. 
 
 "You forget. It is not your cousin's house. It is Lord 
 Sharrow's house and he, I know, would prefer to be alone 
 in it just now." 
 
 The cigarette that was being rolled between Miguel's 
 lean fingers was quiet for a moment. 
 
 " 'E asked you to tell me to go?" 
 
 She knew that if she said yes, he would go at once. She 
 understood that, strange as his code was, it yet was a code, 
 and that he would follow it. 
 
 "No," she answered, "he did not ask me, but I have 
 known him all my life ever since I was a little girl, and I 
 know what he likes." 
 
 ' ' You mean that he does not like me ? " 
 
 "I did not mean that, but I believe it. I do not think 
 he likes you very much. ' ' 
 
 The Spaniard bowed. "He has been kind to me. And 
 I believe that you tell the truth. So I will go. But my 
 poor cousin must not be alone without any of her own peo- 
 ple pour la consoler." 
 
 "I think it would be fitting if her father came." 
 
 "No. But this does not interest you, Miss Wymond- 
 ham. Good-by." 
 
 He held out his hand, and it was clammy and cold like 
 a sick monkey's. In his eyes she read something akin to
 
 SHARROW 395 
 
 relief. He was glad to go; the horror of the dead man 
 upstairs was too much for him. He really felt that he 
 ought to stand by his cousin in her affliction, but every 
 nerve in him shrieked to get away. 
 
 Mary understood. She ordered a closed carriage to take 
 him to the station, knowing the southerner's dread of night 
 air, and it was she who bade him finally good-by, and 
 promised to write to him in London, to tell him about the 
 funeral. 
 
 When he had gone, she sat for hours beside poor Syd's 
 bed, Sandy by her, neither of them speaking. 
 
 She never forgot the hours as they passed away into 
 eternity: Sandy's face, white, grim, stamped by a look 
 of endurance as far removed from resignation as it was 
 from resentment; the cheery ticking of Syd's little travel- 
 ling clock on his dressing-table. 
 
 The horror of the whole thing sank deep into her soul 
 and she never forgot ; but she loved Sandy, and now in his 
 hour of need he had turned to her as naturally as a child 
 turns to its mother, and to the lonely woman this was of 
 an inexpressible sweetness. 
 
 When dawn came, she persuaded Sandy to drink some 
 tea, which womanish remedy he took without much diffi- 
 culty, seeming to find a certain comfort in its warmth. 
 
 She told him that Miguel Fons had gone, and he accepted 
 the news with an indifferent nod, but she knew that he was 
 glad. 
 
 The next day the rain began, the rain that in Sandy's 
 and Mary's minds was forever to be associated with that 
 terrible time. 
 
 It rained steadily, almost without an hour's relief, for 
 quite three weeks, and when, at length, the heavy clouds 
 parted sullenly, as if loth to do so, and a pale filmy blue 
 appeared, poor Syd had been over a fortnight in his grave, 
 the turf on it had turned to a vivid emerald, and all the
 
 396 S H A R R O W 
 
 letters and telegrams relative to the disaster had been an- 
 swered. The world went on just as before; another young 
 man was dead; people forgot to exclaim at the pity of it. 
 Syd was dead, and there was an end of him and of the 
 question. 
 
 And the little path behind the tall hedge was worn with 
 Sandy's feet as he went to and from Mary's house. 
 
 He was a little older-looking, a little thinner, a little 
 more silent, and to the average person of his acquaintance 
 that was all the change the catastrophe had wrought in him. 
 Only Mary knew that some spring within him had snapped ; 
 that he could never again be what he had been even since 
 his return home. 
 
 Miguel had come to the funeral, and left immediately 
 after in a manner most correct. 
 
 He had seen Maria Paz only once alons, and she appar- 
 ently had not suggested his staying on. 
 
 She, too, was absolutely correct. She wore very deep 
 mourning and a thick lace mantilla hid her hair when she 
 was in the house. Every day she went to Mass, and every 
 afternoon now she drove over to White Shirley to Vespers. 
 
 Her piety had won favor for her in the eyes of the ten- 
 ants and servants. Her small yellow face was wan, and 
 around her eyes were black sunken circles. Sandy told 
 Mary that he was surprised at the force of her grief. ' ' She 
 cared more than I knew," he said. 
 
 Mary only nodded. There seemed something in the at- 
 mosphere that she could not understand. She distrusted 
 something, she could not say what it was. 
 
 When Don Antonio came, Mary by chance was the one 
 who met him. 
 
 She was walking home from church one Sunday after- 
 noon when she saw, coming towards her in the rain, a tall 
 figure with kilted skirts and a long full cloak. 
 
 At first she thought it was a woman, but as she came
 
 S H A R R W 397 
 
 closer, she saw that it was a priest dressed in the manner 
 of a Spanish country cure. 
 
 The brim of his silk felt hat was turned up at the sides 
 flat against the low crown, his cloak was very long and 
 very full, and under his tucked up soutane she caught a 
 glimpse of gray woolen trousers. His steel shoe-buckles 
 glistened in the glancing light of a lantern he carried. 
 
 It was a strange figure to meet in an English country 
 road, and Mary knew instantly, even before he spoke, that 
 he was in some way linked with Maria Paz. 
 
 He greeted her as he passed, in the rural Spanish way, 
 and she went on home, expectant of news from Sandy. In 
 this she was not disappointed. 
 
 Sandy sat in his study half an hour later when old 
 Waters announced to him that a gentleman had come to see 
 Mrs. Sharrow, and had also asked for his lordship. 
 
 "It's a a priest, my lord, I fancy," the butler added, 
 "a a foreigner, sir." 
 
 Sandy rose. He had been writing cheques to settle some 
 small outstanding accounts of Syd's and his face was grim 
 with misery. 
 
 "I'll come in at once, where are they? In the Yellow 
 Dra wing-Room?" 
 
 "No, my lord, in the Chinese Room." 
 
 Don Antonio sat by the fire, his large muddy shoes 
 steaming on the fender. His hair, which was intensely 
 black, and close cropped, seemed to fit down over his brow 
 like a tight cap. 
 
 He rose when Sandy entered, and Maria Paz introduced 
 him as her uncle, Don Antonio Vila. 
 
 The priest's English was practically non-existent, and 
 his manner unconciliatory in the extreme. In halting Eng- 
 lish and a little French he explained to Sandy that he re- 
 garded Syd 's death as a direct sign from Heaven that God 
 was angry with Maria Paz for having married a heretic.
 
 398 SHARROW 
 
 "I weep for his soul," he added, his long, unshaven 
 upper lip pressing heavily on the under one, which was a 
 little pendulous and looked moist, ' ' but it is a punishment 
 for my niece." 
 
 "Will you have some tea?" Sandy asked him, and 
 Maria Paz explained that her uncle was not a young man, 
 and as, moreover, he suffered from rheumatism, she 
 had taken the liberty of asking him to spend the night at 
 Sharrow. 
 
 Sandy bowed. 
 
 It really seemed to him to matter extremely little who 
 spent the night at Sharrow, and he was too sorry for his 
 sister-in-law to resent anything that she might find comfort 
 in doing. 
 
 So Don Antonio spent the night in the room that had 
 been Miguel 's, and he spent thirty other nights in the same 
 room. 
 
 Maria Paz seemed to like having him there, and Sandy's 
 indifference to everything was too deep to be touched by 
 such a trifle. 
 
 The man was quiet, he never tried to talk to his host, 
 he gave no trouble to anyone. He was more like a tall 
 black ghost than anything else. 
 
 "At least," Sandy said one day to Mary, who was 
 protesting with him for allowing the priest a foothold 
 in the house, "he is better than Miguel. He doesn't spit 
 any more than Miguel, and he does not use scent on his 
 hair." 
 
 So the spring wore away, wearily enough, and the sweet 
 sunny days were an added pain, like the throb in a wound, 
 to Sandy in his loneliness. Every day he saw Mary, some- 
 times even twice in a day, and her kindness and under- 
 standing gentleness were his only comfort. 
 
 They talked together, and walked, but in one matter 
 she could not move him; he had stopped all the work he
 
 SHARKOW 401 
 
 walked slowly, with a kind of pomp, every inch c Spanish 
 parocco. 
 
 1 ' God 's ways, ' ' he was saying, as he and his host turned 
 for the twentieth time by a group of dusty oleanders, ' ' are 
 beyond our understanding. It is, of course, to you incom- 
 prehensible why He should have removed your brother." 
 
 Sandy made no reply. For some days the priest had 
 been trying to induce him to talk about Syd, and this, 
 courteous though he was forcing himself to be to the in- 
 truder, he would not do. 
 
 The old man was far more pervasive and dangerous than 
 the frankly vulgar Miguel, for, although he was nearly a 
 peasant, he was a reader, and had educated himself. He 
 had made friends with the servants, many of whom seemed 
 really to like him, and Sandy knew from Mrs. Puddif ant 's 
 demeanor that she suspected him of proselytizing. 
 
 He had, Sandy knew, some definite reason for trying to 
 lead the conversation to Syd, but the Englishman had made 
 up his mind to keep his poor brother's name as much out 
 of the Spaniard's mouth as possible. 
 
 So, looking up at the clouds which were now rapidly as- 
 suming an ominous saffron hue, Sandy was silent. 
 
 Don Antonio glanced at him sharply. "To you, no 
 doubt," he went on slowly, "it seems cruel that your 
 brother " 
 
 ' ' I beg your pardon I do not wish to be rude, Don An- 
 tonio, but I cannot possibly discuss my brother's death with 
 you." 
 
 The Spaniard had the thick, slightly pock-marked skin 
 so common in his country ; underneath its opaqueness there 
 now crept in a faint dark red flush. 
 
 "I see." He bowed suavely as he spoke, but the flush 
 remained. "I I had, however, a reason for wishing to 
 bring your mind to what you will forgive me for describ- 
 ing as a more normal state."
 
 402 SHARROW 
 
 Sandy looked at him with mild surprise. 
 
 "A reason?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 For a few minutes they walked on in silence, and then, 
 as they came into full view of the house, the priest held up 
 one of his white fat hands in a way that claimed his host 's 
 attention. 
 
 ' ' There is your house, ' ' he said in his curious, incorrect, 
 but perfectly understandable French. "It is a most beau- 
 tiful house; you are a very rich man a millionaire, I 
 daresay. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I suppose I am, ' ' Sandy admitted reluctantly, ' ' but ' ' 
 
 "Wait! Your home is of the oldest. You are what we 
 in Spain would call a Grandee am I not right ? ' ' 
 
 Sandy's idea of a Grandee of Spain formed a picture 
 so remarkably unlike his own raw-boned, red-headed self 
 that, but for the deep sadness which lay on his soul, as the 
 clouds lie against the mirth of a crimson sky, he would 
 have laughed aloud. As it was, he smiled, a melancholy 
 smile that in the bright sunlight plainly showed how much 
 deeper the events of the past months had furrowed the lines 
 in his face. 
 
 "You are then, in effect," pursued the priest, his dark 
 eyes fixed on his companion's face, "a man of much im- 
 portance. ' ' 
 
 "I daresay you think so it is very kind of you," 
 murmured Sandy, "but still I don't see what " 
 
 Whatever the faults of Don Antonio might have been, 
 servility was not one of them. He made a stern gesture, 
 frowned, and continued, as if disdaining to regard such 
 an interruption : " If you will have a little patience I will 
 explain, Lord Sharrow." 
 
 Lord Sharrow bowed. After all, the man was old, he was 
 his guest, and he was Syd's uncle by marriage. For these 
 reasons, then, Sandy owed him courtesy.
 
 SHAKROW 403 
 
 The wind had risen now, a hot wind that in stirring the 
 trees dislodged little clouds of dust that had been resting 
 on their leaves ; the western sky was a 'mass of scarlet and 
 gold, and against its glories of color the storm clouds 
 loomed blacker and blacker. 
 
 The storm was very near. Syd had loved what he called 
 a rattling good storm, and the words, suddenly floating 
 into Sandy's mind, hurt him like the turning of a knife in 
 a wound. 
 
 He was not given to self pity, but for a moment the 
 tragedy of his life seemed to him to blot out the world. 
 
 Maria Paz, who loathed the dusk, had turned on the light 
 in the Chinese Room, which faced that way. Sandy, gazing 
 at the old house, saw the ruddy windows, and knew that 
 the Spanish woman was there in the room his brother had 
 loved. Then another light flashed out into the golden 
 evening and another. 
 
 It was almost day out of doors, but in the house evening 
 had come ; the hour when lights are lit and poor men hurry 
 home to their wives, and children's faces are given a rub 
 by the maternal apron to smarten them up for Daddy's 
 coming; the hour when workers enter into their daily 
 heritage of rest after labor, that rest which people who 
 never work can never know; the hour when in churches 
 quiet people pray at Vespers; the hour when cows walk 
 in the stately measure of stupidity back to the farm; the 
 hour when factories release their crowds of girls anxious 
 for life ; the hour when trout go to sleep ; the hour when 
 youth awakes and mischief stalks abroad ; to many people, 
 not thinkers, no doubt, but imaginers, the best and fruit- 
 fullest hour of the twenty-four. 
 
 And there was Sharrow, after the somnolent afternoon, 
 waking up, preparing for the evening. Sandy stood still, 
 staring at it. It was his house, the house that he had for 
 so long adored, the house that formerly had meant to him
 
 404 SHARROW 
 
 the romance of the world. When that had ceased to be, 
 when he returned to it, a broken, world-hurt man, it still 
 contained much, for its old walls were to shelter Syd 
 Syd then had become his romance. 
 
 Now Syd had gone, and only the walls remained, and 
 they seemed to him an empty shell. He cared, it seemed 
 to him, very little for it. With Syd all the old magic had 
 gone. 
 
 He had talked to no one, not even to Mary, of what he 
 felt about Syd's death, but he himself knew. He knew 
 quite well that Syd's death meant to him a kind of passive 
 despair. There had been not one hour since that April 
 evening when Miguel brought the news, when he, Sandy, 
 would not have died, could he have been given the choice. 
 
 Syd was gone ; his life was over ; what might come hence- 
 forth was something extraneous, not his fault, not his merit . 
 His life was over, and his duties from now onward seemed 
 to him to be of the passive order. 
 
 He had sat all through a long night by the dead boy. 
 Syd, now, knew; he knew, it seemed to Sandy, all those 
 things that Sandy had missed. Syd was to die not only in 
 his own young frame, but in that he was never to have a 
 son. No little boy of Syd's was going to ride around Shar- 
 row on a pony, and learn to know the people and the place. 
 Sandy had planned these things, and they had turned to 
 naught. Syd and Syd's seed were to be nothing. God, or 
 the Prime Factor, had willed it so, and there was no appeal. 
 
 Sandy made no appeal, conscious or unconscious. To him, 
 things were; God was; Fatality was. And now, while he 
 awaited, in the great hush of the coming storm, the old 
 priest's words, he felt again, and of late he had many times 
 felt, the weight of the unavoidable. What was to come, was 
 to come, and not his to protest. 
 
 "My son," Don Antonio's voice was heavy with solem- 
 nity, "your brother is dead; he will have no son."
 
 S H A E E W 405 
 
 Sandy nodded, his eyes fixed on the yellow spots of light 
 that meant to his imagination the room where Maria Paz 
 was sitting; he could see her, her strange withdrawn look, 
 her extraordinary passivity of expression. 
 
 There she was, the woman who was to have carried on his 
 race ; the woman whom a bad-tempered horse had thwarted 
 in her life-work. Sandy knew the beautiful patience of 
 Latin women in the matter of child-bearing. He knew that 
 the protests of Protestant women again the illness, the suf- 
 fering of child-raising, was not theirs ; that they looked on 
 each child, if not in the ideal way, as a gift, then at least 
 as a duty, and that these duties they endured with dignity 
 and grace. 
 
 Maria Paz, he knefw, would have borne his brother a 
 round dozen of sons without a word of reproach. And now 
 there was no one. Syd was dead, the woman was to bear 
 no Sharrows. And he, in his blundering, tender, masculine 
 way, pitied her. 
 
 The clouds, now black, were luminous with sudden light- 
 ning as the two men again approached the house. 
 
 "Poor soul!" he was thinking. 
 
 Then on his dreaming ears fell the old priest's words, 
 that at first failed to penetrate to his mind, but words 
 that, when they did reach his brain, seemed for a moment to 
 stop its working. 
 
 "My son, you must marry; your family must not be 
 allowed to die out. You must seek a worthy wife, and you 
 must have a son."
 
 CHAPTER LXVII 
 
 AFTER the storm that night there followed a calm as 
 beautiful as dawn. In a gentle heaven shone stars so lovely 
 as to seem comprehensible to the least imaginative of men. 
 
 And Sandy Sharrow, in his great house, felt to the least 
 fibre of his being the wonder of this calm. 
 
 Shortly after twelve, he lighted a candle and, with it 
 in his hand, went all over his house. 
 
 Electric light could not have supplemented the amazing 
 sweetness of the feeling that pervaded him, whereas the 
 little yellow flicker of the candle seemed to help him to 
 understand. 
 
 He went first to the room where he had first seen his 
 great-uncle, years and years before, the old white-paneled 
 room with the little dark paintings sunk into the panelling. 
 He recalled the old man with his sinister face, sitting by 
 the fire ; he seemed once more to hear his voice. He remem- 
 bered the words the old man had uttered, and his own half 
 angry awe as he looked around the room. 
 
 That was his first station. 
 
 Then he went down the shallow stairs, where each step 
 was worn to a gentle hollow, to the Small Hall where had 
 taken place the famous Sharrow-Burton Battle. He re- 
 membered the old lord's dramatic entrance, his amused 
 laugh, his words. 
 
 He then went to visit the Great Hall, the Chinese Room, 
 where the old man had so bitterly refused to listen to his 
 love story; to his own room in the tower; to the vast, dusky, 
 mysterious others; to the courtyard. 
 
 406
 
 SHAKROW 407 
 
 In the courtyard, towards four o'clock in the morning, 
 the great torches still nickered in the iron rings. 
 
 Sandy remembered the night he had arrived; the first 
 invasion of his boyish spirit, of the strange, enveloping 
 Feeling; how the torchlight had flickered and leapt until 
 the old worn coat-of-arms with its grimacing griffin had 
 blazed in the surrounding gloom. 
 
 He recalled, too, the evening when Maggie Penrose had 
 waylaid him on this very spot, and influenced him to be 
 gentle with his old uncle ; how the pretty, blue-eyed gover- 
 ness had made him pause, and brought him back. 
 
 As he wandered about the silent house with his draught- 
 blown candle, Lord Sharrow remembered many things, and 
 of these his feeling for his little brother's governess was 
 not the least distinct. 
 
 He had, he knew, never loved her, but she had been kind 
 to him, and he seemed to have known from the very begin- 
 ning of things that she loved him. 
 
 The poor Sandy of nearly four-and-thirty, looking back 
 at the Sandy of twenty-three, did not wonder over much 
 at what he had done. 
 
 No man, it seemed to him, could do without love. And 
 Viola 's love being what it was, weak and worthless, Mag- 
 gie Penrose, even now when he knew her to have been an 
 intriguer and a liar, appeared to him to have been of better 
 fibre, of stronger stuff. He did not, that long night 
 through, knowing that he by no possibility could ever for- 
 give Maggie for fooling him, blame that other Sandy, that 
 disappointed, heartbroken boy, for taking what he could 
 get Maggie's love. 
 
 He was bitter, disillusioned, unhappy, but he was truth- 
 ful still, and the mature man paid to the unhappy boy the 
 tribute of acknowledging that, were history to repeat itself, 
 he would again seize the tangible, long-suffering, under- 
 standing love of the governess as some kind of compensa-
 
 408 SHARROW 
 
 tion for the romantic, but not weather-proof affection of 
 poor little Viola. 
 
 That night Lord Sharrow faced his past and his future. 
 No man has yet justly and impartially faced his present. 
 
 Sandy knew that he had given his idealistic boy's love 
 to poor, weak, little Viola Wymondham ; that he had given 
 Maggie Penrose, in return for a love strong enough to lead 
 her very close to criminal things, a merely grateful mix- 
 ture of physical attraction and despair. 
 
 He knew that in the succeeding years Maggie had poured 
 on his unworthy head a love that, though rooted in dis- 
 honor, was yet worth a thousand times what his feeling for 
 her was worth. He appreciated her self-abnegation, her 
 patience, her amazing long-suffering. 
 
 He knew that he had been unfaithful, selfish, and cruel 
 in his indifference to her. Yet, because his nature was fun- 
 damentally just, he did not exaggerate his faults nor her 
 virtues. 
 
 She had won him by fraud, but she had won him, in a 
 way, and he knew the game, pitiful as it was, had been to 
 her well worth the candle. 
 
 And Viola? 
 
 For years Viola had been to him a phantom he dared 
 not face. 
 
 That night, in the silence of his old house, he faced it, 
 and he knew. 
 
 He knew that the Viola he knew had been to a great 
 extent a creation of his own imagination. Behind her 
 lovely young face he had built an edifice of mental and 
 moral values of which the poor little thing had never even 
 dreamed. The fault had largely been his. With groans of 
 sheer sorrow, quite apart from repentance, he drew a pic- 
 ture of that evening in Guelph Square when he had come 
 down to the drawing-room drunk, and frightened her out 
 of her wits.
 
 SHARROW 409 
 
 He regretted, with the real regret of a mature man 
 who has lived and suffered, the silly deed of the boy he used 
 to be. Most men have known this regret and its bitterness. 
 
 Then, sitting at dawn in the vast waste of the Yellow 
 Drawing-room, a room he hated, Sandy faced his future. 
 
 Syd, the motive power of his recent new life, was dead. 
 
 If Syd was with God, or if he were a lump of reverting 
 clay, he did not know or ask. 
 
 Syd was gone. He would never again, whatever his soul 
 might do, be Syd, the animate, warm, beautiful boy Sandy 
 had adored. He was gone. He was no more. 
 
 Sandy would never again hear his laugh, see his eyes 
 crinkle with mirth, or watch his adoring aspect while his 
 wife played the piano. Syd had been ; he was not. 
 
 And Sandy still was. 
 
 The old priest, the horrid old man with the unshaved 
 blue chin and the sly quiet black eyes, had told Sandy that 
 he must marry, and by so doing perpetuate his race. The 
 Sharrows must not die out. 
 
 At this point in his reverie, the courtyard clock struck 
 five. 
 
 Sandy, his bony, harsh face white as paper in the unbe- 
 coming light of dawn, went to the nearest window and 
 looked out. The little simple air that years ago the plough- 
 boy had whistled, sounded again in his ears. It had become 
 a kind of sign to him. It had come back to him many 
 times, but of late always at times of crisis. 
 
 The night old Dingle had turned up in the Place of the 
 Green Tree, it had haunted him as he drank his absinthe ; 
 it had come to him in Rome, as he talked to the duchess, 
 and again as he waited at the station for the arrival of 
 Syd and his bride. The ploughboy had gone out of his life 
 without even having been seen that morning when he and 
 Keith had stolen out of the house and gone to Jasper's to 
 buy Winker, but the strange little melody had never gone
 
 410 SHARROW 
 
 out of his life ; it had stayed because it had become a part 
 of his mental fabric. 
 
 The old priest had said he must marry, and have a son. 
 The old priest was right. 
 
 Poor Sandy ! For all his sufferings, all his dumb resent- 
 ments, all his bitterness, for all thoughts, that had drawn 
 the deep lines in his face, there was in him, there would be 
 as long as life remained in him, this much of the boy: he 
 was romantic. 
 
 And in this age of practical people, perhaps a spirit of 
 romance has a certain value. 
 
 Sandy felt, he did not see, but he felt certain things. 
 
 And so in the ugly yellow satin room, as the faint sun- 
 light quietly spread, he felt these things: that he was still 
 a man young enough to have children ; to hold a little boy 
 of his own in his arms ; to hold it in his arms at the quaint 
 old stone font in the little church, while the priest gave it 
 its name; that he was still young enough to be kind and 
 good to a good woman who would trust him and give herself 
 to him; that, having a son, he could care in a way for his 
 son's mother; that, of all the beautiful and romantic things 
 in a beautiful and romantic world, Motherhood was the 
 most beautiful; that a little boy in his arms might almost 
 make up to him for Syd's going on before. 
 
 "I detest Maria Paz," he said, slowly, aloud, as the sun 
 came up over the oaks at the edge of the park. ' ' I don 't 
 like her, and I am glad her son is not to be Sharrow of 
 Sharrow. But I will be very good to her. Syd loved 
 her, and I will be good to her." 
 
 The sun, when he had finally cleared himself of the beau- 
 tiful shadows of the old trees, spread richly into the Yellow 
 Drawing-room. He laid patines of clear gold on the old oak 
 floor; caught sharp corners of the frames of old pictures; 
 lurked with a laugh in mirrors, and on the piano on which 
 Maria Paz had formerly played poor Syd's soul into mad-
 
 S H A R R O W 411 
 
 ness ; whitened the white keys, and blackened the black ones 
 into a semblance of night. 
 
 The rising sun must be a merry soul ; his mirror is hope- 
 ful. He must love cheery, lovely, riotous things. And if 
 the sun ever laughs, surely he laughed that morning, for 
 when he finally really swept past the windows and filled the 
 whole grand, ugly, Georgian room, there lay poor Sandy 
 Sharrow, exhausted with emotion and thought, his head on 
 a purple satin pillow on whose face was embroidered a 
 golden dragon, sound asleep, peace on his hollow eyelids, his 
 thin lips folded in a quiet smile. 
 
 Sandy had made up his mind.
 
 CHAPTER LXVIII 
 
 THERE is so much monotony in the life of any gentle- 
 woman living in a quiet English village that one hesitates to 
 inflict on the novel reader an exact account of her days. 
 
 And Mary Wymondham's life was so very still, so very 
 peaceful, externally, that one hardly knows how to develop 
 it verbally without the great offence of boredom. Yet there 
 she dwelt in her little Corner House, and there she lived 
 and had her being. 
 
 The sunny summer days slid sweetly by. She could 
 hardly distinguish Tuesday from Wednesday. She was 
 often surprised to find that bedtime had come again; and 
 yet time was passing and she knew it. 
 
 Thus several months slipped away. Mary marked the 
 weeks and days as they disappeared, in the simple way of 
 simple folk. The Monday must have been the 14th, be- 
 cause Julia Barton's twins were born on the 13th, because 
 the Vicar came to tea on the 16th. 
 
 The moon had been full the night she drove back from 
 Lady Barston's, therefore, according to the almanac, old 
 Jessaby must have been buried on the Friday and so on, 
 and so on. 
 
 Women who live vicarious lives, whose joys and sorrows 
 are the joys and sorrows of others, will understand this; 
 there are in England many such. 
 
 And the accruing, greedy kind, those whose only interests 
 are those strictly personal to themselves, will wonder. Let 
 them. 
 
 412
 
 S H A R R O W 413 
 
 Mary Wymondham, loving Sandy, was in a way divinely 
 happy, although he did not love her, for she was minister- 
 ing to him. All those long months after Syd's death, 
 Mary '& was the only hand whose touch could soothe Sandy. 
 And for the old-fashioned, generous-hearted woman this 
 was nearly enough; nearly, but not quite, for she was a 
 hot-tempered woman, and the whole of anything, bad or 
 good, was of a necessity bound to appeal more than the half 
 of anything, even of a thing in itself bitter. 
 
 As she sat there in her quiet drawing-room, surrounded 
 by the things her mother and her beautiful high-spirited 
 grandmother had loved, Mary Wymondham was not un- 
 happy. There was at the root of her heart a dull ache, but 
 there was no active discontent, no vital unrest. Sandy did 
 not love her, and she had always loved him, but she was 
 not modern enough for emotional resentment. 
 
 He was her friend, and she was his. He came to her for 
 comfort, for that peace which was, in his blighted life, the 
 thing nearest to happiness that he knew. She sympathized 
 with him, scolded him sometimes, she even bullied him, and 
 to her, her measure seemed to be, if not pressed down and 
 overflowing, at least fairly well filled. 
 
 Thus the summer passed, and autumn came, a yellow 
 and red autumn, full of fruit, warm colors, flowers, and 
 ripeness. And with it came to the quiet woman in the 
 quiet house a strange fulfilment of what seemed to her, 
 life. 
 
 It was a mellow day early in September. Mary sat on 
 the ground under the cedar tree under which a year be- 
 fore she had learned the news of Syd's marriage. She 
 wore a pale mauve muslin gown with, at the neck and 
 sleeves, a narrow edging of Irish crocheted lace. 
 
 Even in the soft late afternoon sun, in the green dimness 
 of the cedar, she did not look young. She looked precisely 
 what she was, a mature, healthy Englishwoman. Beside
 
 414 S H A R R W 
 
 her, on the close-cut grass, stood a great basket full of 
 lavender, and another receptacle, a green lined Spanish 
 bowl, a gift of Maria Paz, held the winnowed stemless 
 flowers, ready for the little muslin bags into which they 
 were being poured, and into which they were being tied 
 with narrow purple ribbon by Mary. 
 
 It was a delightful piece of work; the sun-dried flowers 
 dropped crisply off, between her fingers, into the bowl; 
 their scent pervaded the air, and on the grass lay the little 
 transparent bags that she had made that morning. 
 
 Perhaps of all scents, lavender is the most romantic. 
 Mary loved it, and its poesy had darkened her eyes, and 
 lent a certain languor to her fingers. 
 
 She thought, as she worked, of her grandmother, Cyrilla, 
 and of the story of the lavender bags Cyrilla had made for 
 Lord Sharrow. She wondered if her grandmother had 
 loved Lord Sharrow as she, Mary, loved Sandy! And, of 
 course, she could not answer her own question. 
 
 The backward years seemed so long. It was hardly pos- 
 sible that her grandmother could have cared for the old 
 man with the protruding jaw, as she, Mary, cared for 
 Sandy. Mary loved not only Sandy, but his griefs and his 
 scars. 
 
 The sun, warm and yellow, waned; the shadow grew 
 longer and blacker; evening was coming. And, pregnant 
 sign of emotion amongst women, Mary "Wymondham, busy 
 with her lavender, forgot her tea ! 
 
 There it stood on its silver tray, with its squat Georgian 
 tea-pot and its pretty Chelsea cup and saucer, neglected. 
 If well-brewed tea can think, its thoughts must have been 
 amusing. 
 
 Rooks cawed in the high trees, and the sun sank, as if 
 bored to death, down the uninterestingly dull western 
 sky. 
 
 Mary glanced upward, a little bunch of lavender in her
 
 S H A R E W 415 
 
 hand. Her mind was vaguely full of Sandy, though she 
 hardly knew that she was thinking of him. The thought 
 of him was like the delicate, pervasive, though unobtrusive 
 smell of the drying flowers in her hands. It scented the 
 air and made it pleasant, but it drew no attention to itself. 
 And there in the quiet garden she sat, not realizing of what 
 she dreamt, yet dreaming soft, sweet dreams of the man 
 she loved, while the pale sky turned to a faint glory of 
 color. 
 
 If it could be explained, it would be full of romance, but 
 it would be very difficult to draw the resemblance between 
 this woman's soul and the scent of the old-fashioned flower 
 she was shedding to sweeten her household linen. 
 
 And then, as the uppermost red rim of the sun disap- 
 peared between two cedar branches and the emerald green 
 of the lawn darkened to black, the wonderful thing hap- 
 pened. 
 
 The gate opened, and closed more softly. 
 
 "That you, Mary?" 
 
 At the sound of Sandy's voice she started. Her cool 
 hands had lain for some time motionless in the bowl. More 
 time had passed than she had realized. 
 
 "Yes it's me, Sandy." 
 
 Sandy, very tall and gaunt in his old gray flannel clothes, 
 came toward her, a kind of half smile stirring his thin 
 lips. 
 
 "I've been away," he said, a little nervously. 
 
 "Yes I know." 
 
 "London with dear old Ben. He has another small 
 sister the professor is a marvellous old man and I have 
 been visiting the other Sandys." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Sandy sat down on the bench, and sniffed. 
 
 "I say, how good you smell! What is it rose- 
 mary ? ' '
 
 416 S H A R R W 
 
 "Lavender, goose! Mine is sure to be better than yours, 
 this year I'm making little bags want one?" 
 
 Sandy, to her surprise, did not answer for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 Instead, he sat silent in the dusk, a handful of the sweet 
 herb held to his large, appreciative nose. 
 
 The upper windows of Mary's little house were lit now; 
 the small maid was obviously at work. 
 
 A cart rattled by, its sound, in reality near, apparently 
 deadened by the high stone wall. 
 
 It was so quiet so quiet ! 
 
 Suddenly through the dense leaves of the apple-trees, 
 to the west, something appeared a lovely soft light that 
 drew each twig with a pencil of fire. It was the moon 
 rising. 
 
 ' ' Look ! ' ' Mary said, laying her large, sweet-scented hand 
 on Sandy's arm. 
 
 She was so familiar with the idea of her own love for 
 him, so convinced that he not only did not, but never could 
 know, that she felt no embarrassment in touching him. 
 "Look!" 
 
 Sandy grasped her hand firmly, and for a few minutes 
 they sat there in the quiet little garden, hand in hand, 
 watching the moon rise between the branches of the gnarled 
 apple-trees. 
 
 They neither of them ever forgot the scene, the darken- 
 ing garden, the thickly foliaged trees, the growing glow in 
 the sky. 
 
 And then, when at last the moon, free from the trees, 
 rode high, Sandy spoke. 
 
 "Mary," he said, very gently, "I have something to say 
 to you." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She was mildly surprised, but only very mildly, and 
 did not even turn her eyes to his. Without turning she
 
 S H A R R W 417 
 
 could, with her mind, see him, his pale gaunt face, his 
 clear, light little eyes. 
 
 ''Ever since Syd died," Sandy went on, "I have been 
 thinking. Or rather ever since that old priest suggested 
 but never mind that." 
 
 He paused. "I have been thinking. Can you not guess 
 about what?" 
 
 Her hand lay quite quietly in his. ' ' No, Sandy, I don 't 
 think I can." 
 
 Her little garden was so near to her, so close; she knew 
 it so well. She was at home there, and her hand seemed 
 at home in his. She felt no shyness, no self-consciousness. 
 
 There was a short pause, and then, gathering her fingers 
 closer into his, he went on. "I have been thinking about 
 the old place, Mary, since his death. I have no heir. If I 
 died now, the other Sandy Sharrow would be " 
 
 "The other Sandy!" 
 
 "Yes. The other Sandy. Poor old Great-uncle! And 
 well, I want to keep it closer than that. Mary I sup- 
 pose, as far as a woman can know a man, you know what 
 there is to know about me." 
 
 For an almost imperceptible space of time she was 
 silent. Then she agreed simply: "Yes, Sandy." 
 
 ' ' And you know that my life is just about over. ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I loved Viola with all my heart. I did really. Then 
 there was Miss Penrose, and there were others. I have 
 not been good, Mary; I have even been indiscriminate. 
 And I never could love again, really, because well, I 
 suppose," he added with a laugh, "because I am not worth 
 it." 
 
 "Poor old Sandy!" 
 
 Even yet she did not understand, and the little squeeze 
 she gave his hand was nearly as impersonal as that of some 
 man friend might have been.
 
 418 S H A R R O W 
 
 Sandy smiled, but she was looking at the sky and did 
 not see. 
 
 ' ' Mary, ' ' he asked very gently, ' ' could you marry me ? " 
 
 For a long time it seemed to them both there was silence. 
 
 ''Me marry you?" She had never stammered before, 
 and she knew it. 
 
 "Yes I I don't love you in the way I loved Viola 
 but I like you, Mary, dear, more than I like anyone on 
 earth. And well" suddenly he rose and stood before 
 her. "If I am to have a son, I should rather he had your 
 qualities than the qualities of any woman I ever saw in my 
 life. Will you marry me?" 
 
 And then it seemed to Mary Wymondham for the first 
 time in her life that she must faint ; that she must let her 
 wits go, and sink in a kind of merciful sleep on the grass ; 
 that her nerves would bear no more; that she must rest, 
 and sleep and forget. 
 
 She clasped her hands in her lap, and looked bravely 
 up at Sandy, saying to herself that she would not faint. 
 
 "Will I marry you?" 
 
 "Yes. I am not a romantic lover, Mary," he returned, 
 "but I am very fond of you, and " 
 
 "But, Sandy, you don't love me." She rose, and stood 
 breast to breast with him, her brave eyes glowing in the 
 moonlight. 
 
 And Sandy was as brave as she. 
 
 ' ' Love you ? No, I won 't lie to you. When I was young 
 and good, I loved Viola. But now no, my dear, it isn't 
 love. I know I don't deserve you, and I know you don't 
 love me. But as I said before, if I could have a son like 
 you, I should thank God. I like you so much, Mary; and 
 I admire you and it sounds very dull, dear, but I 
 respect you. You are my best, my only friend. Marry me, 
 Mary." 
 
 He held out his hands, and she gave him hers. Poor
 
 S H A R R W 419 
 
 soul, she loved him so that she could barely see or speak. 
 But she kept her wits and said as he took her hands : 
 
 ' ' I understand, Sandy, and yes I will marry you. ' ' 
 
 And when he very gravely, very ceremoniously kissed 
 her, she seemed as grave, as ceremonious, as he. 
 
 "I'll do my best to be good to you, my dear," he said, 
 releasing her. 
 
 "And I will do my best, Sandy " 
 
 And the moon rose higher and higher, clearing the sky, 
 and in the garden stood the man and the woman looking 
 seriously at each other.
 
 CHAPTER LXIX 
 
 WHEN a man has for years loved a woman in vain, and 
 finally wins her, there must be in the mixture of his feel- 
 ings, a decided element of triumph. 
 
 Triumph may be a fine and uplifting sensation, but it 
 can be nothing to the exquisite humility experienced by 
 Mary Wymondham when Sandy asked her to be his wife. 
 
 She had loved him, it seemed to her, all her life. When 
 he came back and found her a mature woman, he grew 
 gradually to regard her as a friend, but to her a miracle 
 happened; she found that, though while she was a girl 
 she had not recognized her own love, it had yet been there ; 
 that the feeling she experienced now was not a new one, 
 but merely the continuance of an old one that time had 
 ripened and absence never weakened. 
 
 During the time of Viola's engagement, Mary had in her 
 heart always rebelled against her sister's passivity, and 
 when Viola returned, unengaged, after her visit to Guelph 
 Square, the elder girl's indignation against her had been 
 not only strong, but strangely articulate. 
 
 "You are a coward," she told Viola, her dark cheeks 
 ablaze, and Viola had wept. 
 
 But Mary, though a girl of strong partisanship, was not 
 of the kind who takes active steps. She believed her feel- 
 ing for Sandy to be one of simple friendship, yet she 
 made no move to assure him, in his voluntary exile, of her 
 sympathy. Viola, though, in her eyes, wrong to desert her 
 lover, was her sister, and the family feeling, so strong in 
 some people, so strangely absent in others, was in Mary 
 
 420
 
 S H A R R W 421 
 
 very powerful. So Mary said nothing to anyone except to 
 Viola, and when she found that her remonstrances only 
 caused Viola to cry and to repeat again each horrid episode 
 of the night in Guelph Square, she relinquished them and 
 said no more. 
 
 But she had never, great as was her love for her sister, 
 forgiven Viola for what she, Mary, stigmatized as her "lack 
 of backbone, ' ' and in her heart she had from the first taken 
 sides with Sandy. 
 
 And then when he came back, and she found that her 
 feeling had, from the very beginning, been love, she was 
 so used to the feeling itself, though the word was new, that 
 it hardly disturbed the smooth tenor of her life; she was 
 not upset, nor frightened, nor ecstatic. The treasure had 
 been hers all along, and her tardy recognition of it came 
 better late than never. 
 
 She had given to Sandy exactly what he wanted, a sane, 
 cool friendship ; the love dwelt apart from him in her heart, 
 and he knew not of its existence. 
 
 And now, as she sat alone by her little fire, she sat with 
 closed eyes, given up to the wonder of his wanting her for 
 his wife. The firelight played on her face with its strongly- 
 marked features, so free from any passion-marks, any lines 
 of active pain; it warmed her soft dark hair to gold; it 
 dwelt, as if lovingly, on the new beauty of her expression. 
 
 Sandy wanted her to be his wife. It was in all the world 
 the most wondrous thing, and its wonder made her beauti- 
 ful. Her imagination gave no heed to the immediate fu- 
 ture, but sprang ahead until she beheld herself the mother 
 of his son, and saw him holding in his lonely arms the 
 little creature who was to fill his heart. 
 
 She was so far from vanity that she made no determina- 
 tion, as most loving women would have done, to win his 
 love. He had asked her to be his wife, and she was content 
 with a heavenly content unknown to the selfish.
 
 422 SHARROW 
 
 The next afternoon Sandy came again. He kissed her 
 gravely, and they sat for hours talking together. He talked 
 as he had never done before about Viola, about Maggie 
 Penrose, about his life during those ten years. 
 
 "But you did love her?" she asked a little shyly. 
 
 "Maggie? No, dear I never loved her." He spoke 
 in a dry voice, but his mouth was a little set, and she knew 
 that it hurt him so to envisage the past. 
 
 "I I hoped you did, Sandy." 
 
 "Yes it would have been better, but she was very 
 good to me, Mary, in her way. She was patient, and 
 gentle, and long-suffering ' ' 
 
 "You were bad to her?" 
 
 Sandy shook his head wearily. "No not cruel, if you 
 mean that. I was never faithful to her. ' ' 
 
 Mary had the curiosity of most innocent women. "But 
 why?" 
 
 4 ' Why wasn 't I faithful to her ? Well it 's hard to say. 
 I suppose only a great love can keep an average man faith- 
 ful. Women don't understand. And I never loved her at 
 all so you see " 
 
 "And then when you found out about her plot, poor 
 soul ! you left her, and never forgave her. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Exactly. You know about my great-uncle. Well, I am 
 the same. We do not forgive!" 
 
 She looked at him. ' ' Perhaps you forgive without know- 
 ing it, Sandy." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 But Mary did not explain. There were many things she 
 meant to tell him, but not just yet, and there was to her 
 an exquisite luxury in the thought that she had before her 
 all the time of their two lives so much time in which to 
 tell him her thoughts, so much leisure, so little need for 
 haste. 
 
 And, indeed, there seemed little haste in anything those
 
 S H A R R W 423 
 
 months. September was a glorious time of long, warm 
 days and quiet, pleasant occupation. 
 
 Mary went to Scotland for the latter fortnight to see 
 Viola, who was home from Cape Town on a visit to her 
 husband's relations, but early in October she was back 
 again in her dear house that she loved, and once more saw 
 Sandy every day. 
 
 Sandy himself was content, but he was not happy. His 
 affection for Mary was great, but it was not great enough 
 to blot out the real emptiness of his life. He missed Syd 
 more and more, and more and more he disliked Maria 
 Paz. 
 
 She, for her part, went her way enveloped in a curious 
 apartness; she was, it seemed to her unwilling host, as 
 much like a disembodied spirit as a flesh and blood being 
 could be. He saw her every day, but she wore such a 
 withdrawn look that between his glimpses of her he so 
 nearly forgot her that their next meeting came on him 
 with a kind of shock. And the time was coming when he 
 must tell her his news. That the news would imply a wish 
 that she should betake herself elsewhere, he knew, and 
 he knew how bitter would be her resentment. She had 
 come to stay, and now her short tenure was up, and she 
 must go 
 
 Sandy dreaded his inevitable revelation, put it off for 
 weeks, and then one evening, as he walked home from 
 Mary's in the rain, he made a sudden resolution to get 
 it over. 
 
 It was a mild night in mid-October. Under low-hanging 
 clouds the sun had some time since disappeared, leaving 
 a chill yellow gleam in the sky. 
 
 Sandy walked quickly, his head bent. "If I tell her to- 
 night, she'll surely be gone in a week," he told himself, 
 "and then " 
 
 A faint glow of pleasure warmed his heart at the thought.
 
 424 S H A E R W 
 
 For many months his house had been pervaded by a Span- 
 ish atmosphere; now it would clear away, and he would 
 breathe better. 
 
 He and Mary would be married before Christmas, and 
 he would try to begin his life over again. Ben Frith was 
 coming in a day or two; old Ben, with his shabby clothes, 
 his pipe, and his dear, shy ways. They would talk, and plan, 
 and dream. Ben always brought to Sandy a fleeting sen- 
 sation of youth, as if Time had for a moment really turned 
 back in his flight. 
 
 Sandy stood for a minute or two in the courtyard, look- 
 ing about him. 
 
 The Feeling had gone; he had felt not the slightest 
 pulsation of it since Syd's death; with youth and hope 
 it had disappeared forever. 
 
 But Mary, his best friend, was coming to him as his 
 wife. She was good, he liked her, he would be glad to 
 have her as his son's mother. 
 
 He knew perfectly well that but for the necessity of 
 his having a son, he would never have dreamed of asking 
 Mary to marry him. He had no delusions about the nature 
 of his feeling for her; he knew that he did not love her. 
 She was his friend, and she was to be his wife, and the fact 
 gave him a certain comfortable sensation of satisfaction, 
 but that was all. 
 
 And he never dreamed that her feelings for him might 
 be of an intenser nature. 
 
 It was, so far as he knew, a simple arrangement that 
 involved no emotion of any kind. 
 
 The torches burnt very quietly in the damp air, as he 
 stood reflecting in the courtyard. The old house was so 
 beautiful, so romantic; he suddenly longed, with a fervor 
 that hurt, to find again the Feeling that used to cause him 
 such an intense joy. 
 
 And then he realized that within a year there might be
 
 SHARROW 425 
 
 within the old walls a little being to whom the Feeling 
 must be made everything. 
 
 He had planned his marriage expressly to have an heir, 
 but to-night for the first time it came home to him that his 
 heir was not to be an abstract part of the scheme of the 
 universe, but a living, breathing baby ; a little rosy bundle 
 that laughed and cried; and, later, a boy and a man. 
 Sandy's red head glowed for a moment in the torchlight as 
 he stood, hat in hand. Then he went in.
 
 CHAPTER LXX 
 
 MARIA PAZ was sitting stiffly in the teakwood chair by the 
 fire in the Chinese Room. She looked, as Sandy paused on 
 the threshold, as if she had not stirred for hours. 
 
 And she looked, he realized, as if she belonged to the 
 room as much as did the porcelain dragons. She was alien 
 in appearance to the rest of the house, but here she seemed 
 to fit. For a moment Sandy actually wondered if it would 
 really be possible to dislodge her? Whether she had not 
 taken such deep roots there that she could not be made to 
 go. 
 
 Then he closed the door, and joined her. 
 
 "Good evening." 
 
 "Good evening, Sandy." She did not look at him, or 
 stir. 
 
 "It's raining again." 
 
 "I know. I've been to White Shirley." 
 
 He was surprised. "This afternoon?" 
 
 "Yes. I have been to confession." 
 
 Sandy grinned a little, but tried to conceal it. What on 
 earth, he wondered, could she have to confess at least once 
 a week. 
 
 " It 's a pretty drive there, ' ' he went on, repentant of his 
 rudeness. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Of late she had grown more silent. She seemed never to 
 wish to talk ; she answered questions, but as curtly as possi- 
 ble, and never of her own accord started a conversation. 
 
 426
 
 S H A R E W 427 
 
 Then a long pause, during which Sandy studied her face 
 intently. She was pale, and her strange little eyes seemed 
 to have lost their lustre. 
 
 "Are you not well, Maria Paz?" he asked, kindly. 
 
 "No. And I am a black woman. When we black women 
 are ill we show it; we get uglier and uglier as you were 
 thinking just now about me." 
 
 She spoke unresentfully, but her guess had been correct, 
 and he was again touched with pity for her. 
 
 "Nonsense! I thought you looked pale, that was 
 all " 
 
 "How," interrupted Maria Paz, "is Mary Wymond- 
 ham?" 
 
 "She is well. I have just been to see her." 
 
 "She is always well and you have always just been to 
 see her." 
 
 In the firelight Sandy's lower teeth showed for a second 
 in the angry movement his jaw made; but he did not 
 answer. 
 
 Presently she went on, slowly and softly, but not at all 
 casually, he knew. 
 
 "You are her very good friend." 
 
 "Yes, I have known her all my life." 
 
 Here was, of course, his opportunity, but for some reason 
 he allowed Maria Paz to direct the conversation. 
 
 "She is a good woman, what you call very nice. But 
 she is dull, so dull!" 
 
 "I don't agree with you. She is quiet, but she is not 
 dull." 
 
 "You are dull yourself, Sandy, that is why you do not 
 feel it in her." 
 
 Rude as her words were, her manner was so simple as to 
 be absolutely inoffensive. Sandy laughed. "I suppose I 
 am," he returned, "but where are your Spanish manners 
 that you tell me so?"
 
 428 SHARROW 
 
 "You are good, Sandy. You are not unjust you would 
 never be unjust even to me, whom you do not like." 
 
 Sandy looked at her. ' ' I try to be just. ' ' 
 
 "Yes. It is a fine quality. And best of all is it to be 
 just to one whose nature is all against one's own taste " 
 
 "And you think I am just to you? I am glad, for I 
 want to talk to you about business to-night. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I know. About money." 
 
 "About money amongst other things, yes. I wish you to 
 accept from me an income for your life. Syd, as you 
 know, had no money of his own, but I wish you to have 
 the income I gave him. ' ' 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 "I will have my solicitor draw up the papers, so that, no 
 matter what happens to me, your future will be assured. ' ' 
 
 "Thanks." 
 
 She sat perfectly immobile, her eyes half closed, but he 
 knew that she was tinglingly alive ; that every nerve of her 
 was at its keenest. She seemed to be listening, listening, 
 trying to hear the thoughts that lay behind his words. 
 
 "I suppose," he went on slowly, "that you will wish to 
 go back to your own country " 
 
 "No!" Maria Paz' monosyllable rang out almost like a 
 shot, so decisive it was, so keen. 
 
 ' ' You prefer England ? ' ' 
 
 "I prefer my husband's country. I am an English- 
 woman now. I love the things he loved ; the place where he 
 lived " 
 
 "He 'lived,' " Sandy announced dryly, "in Blooms- 
 bury." 
 
 "But I he brought me here. Sandy," she turned sud- 
 denly and her eyes looked straight into his, "let me stay 
 here." 
 
 "At Sharrow?" 
 
 "Yes. I will get well, I will take care of your house;
 
 S H A R E O W 429 
 
 I will look after you. You do not like me, but I am clever ; 
 I can make you comfortable and I wish to stay here." 
 
 "But that can hardly be." He spoke gently, for he was 
 touched. He had not realized before that she was capable 
 of sentiment. 
 
 "Why can it 'hardly be'? I am over thirty; I am not 
 pretty; I am your sister. My uncle, a priest, would live 
 here, too there could be no scandal. And I love this 
 place, I tell you, I Sandy, I love Sharrow!" 
 
 Her voice had risen until she was now speaking in the 
 rough high tones characteristic of Catalonia. Sandy's 
 amazement grew. He knew that she was not acting. 
 In some strange way she had acquired a love of Syd's 
 home. 
 
 "Let me stay here, Sandy." Pleading seemed very alien 
 to her, yet the very roughness of her voice seemed to accent 
 its quality. 
 
 He rose. 
 
 "Listen, Maria Paz," he said. "I am glad you like 
 Sharrow. It would, of course, have been yours one day, if 
 my brother had lived. But he has gone. And this is 
 what I wished to tell you I am going to marry. I ain 
 going to marry Mary Wymondham." 
 
 Maria Paz stared at him until the stare had changed to a 
 glare. Then, without a word, she went out of the room. 
 
 She closed the door so softly that he could hardly believe 
 that she was in truth gone. But when he found that he was 
 indeed alone, he sat down in the chair she had occupied. 
 
 At that moment he liked her. The intensity of her feel- 
 ing for the home that had been her husband's, and was to 
 have been hers, was so akin to passion for the place that 
 he felt a thrill of real sympathy for her. It had all hung 
 by such a slight thread. If Syd had lived and she had had 
 a baby coming, the place would have been so strongly hers. 
 He, Sandy, would, in that case, have seemed almost an out-
 
 430 S H A R R O W 
 
 sider. And the accident of a shy horse had broken this 
 woman's life; changed its whole current. 
 
 Sandy was deeply sorry for her. 
 
 If Syd had only lived; if the plan made to all intents 
 and purposes by the gods had been allowed to hold good, 
 then he would have been already the dry branch of the 
 tree, and Maria Paz' son, the heir. 
 
 If only Syd could come in, muddy and merry, from a 
 long walk; if only Syd's son was to be the heir. 
 
 Sandy suddenly felt himself so old, so old too old to 
 marry and carry on the family. He wanted, it seemed, to 
 rest ; to sit by the fire and watch Syd 's boy playing on the 
 rug. His own life was over ; it was unfair that he should 
 have to marry and begin a lifelong farce of being a man of 
 his own generation; he was, he felt, his own grandfather. 
 
 Poor Mary ! As he sat there, he wished with all his heart 
 that a baby was on its way to Maria Paz, the woman he did 
 not love, because it would be Syd's baby, and its little life 
 would relegate him again to the obscurity of old age that 
 for the moment seemed the only thing worth having. 
 
 He dreaded marrying; he knew that he was not good 
 enough for Mary ; he knew that his life must be henceforth 
 one of effort. He must make her happy. And he did not 
 know how to do it. 
 
 The Mary who was his familiar friend, whose quiet tastes 
 he so well understood, left him ; in her place, he beheld the 
 woman, still young, suddenly raised to a great position, the 
 new wife, the young mother. And he was too old. 
 
 Sighing deeply, he rose and went upstairs. 
 
 He did not see Maria Paz again until the following night 
 after dinner. 
 
 He had worked hard all day, not going to see Mary, for 
 he was ashamed of his own thoughts, and he was very 
 tired. 
 
 Dingle had bored him ; a tenant had been troublesome,
 
 S H A R R W 431 
 
 and the cottage hospital, the work on which had just, owing 
 to Mary's pleading, been resumed, seemed at sixes and 
 sevens. Sandy wished that there were no such things on 
 the earth as cottage hospitals. 
 
 He had another worry, too a letter from a nun in the 
 Vosges, saying that Maggie Penrose was dying, and wished 
 to see him. 
 
 "She bids me say," the nun wrote, "that she is really 
 dying or you will not believe her. Poor lady ! it is indeed 
 true. It is her heart. She is as a machine overworked. 
 Our good doctor says three weeks or a month. ' ' 
 
 The letter had brought back many thoughts to him. 
 
 Poor, pretty Maggie! who had lied and plotted and 
 broken his heart, but because she loved him. 
 
 It seemed to the upright man an uncommonly bad reason 
 for doing what she had done, but he knew that she had 
 really loved him. And she lay there in the cold mountain 
 air, dying, and thinking of him. 
 
 He recalled her patience with him; her gentleness when 
 he came back to her ; her marvellous long-suffering. 
 
 ' ' I wonder, ' ' he said aloud to himself with a little smile, 
 "if I am forgiving her, as Mary said, without knowing it." 
 
 Then his mind reverted to Viola. Mary had told him of 
 her two children, both delicate both had undergone slight 
 operations, and she had had to leave them at home in Cape 
 Town, whither she was to go back in a fortnight's time. 
 Viola was more beautiful than ever, Mary had said, and so 
 interested in Mary's engagement. 
 
 "Tell him I send him my love," the younger sister had 
 said, "and if I ever hurt him, I am sorry." 
 
 If she had ever hurt him ! Poor Sandy's grim smile was, 
 as he recalled the words, rather piteous. He was not of 
 those happy men who regard their own sins through rose- 
 colored spectacles. He knew what he had originally been, 
 what he had become, and what he now was.
 
 432 SHARROW 
 
 Poor little Viola ! 
 
 He started. Was it he, Sharrow, who found himself 
 pitying the two women who between them had mined him ? 
 What had happened to him? Was even his Hebraic stern- 
 ness of hatred going from him? 
 
 If so it was Mary 's fault ; Mary with her sometimes rough 
 manner and her never-failing gentleness of heart. He re- 
 sented her influence, and hated himself for his susceptibility 
 to it. 
 
 How his old great-uncle would have despised him!
 
 CHAPTER LXXI 
 
 AND then the knock came to his door. He glanced at the 
 clock ; it was two minutes to eleven. 
 
 "Come in." 
 
 Maria Paz entered, a little sable figure, far more in 
 mourning, it seemed to him, than a fair woman could ever 
 be. Her very lips had lost their color, so that she was all 
 black and white. 
 
 ' ' I have something to tell you, Sandy, ' ' she said. 
 
 "Sit down." 
 
 She did not obey him. Instead she came and stood by 
 the chair from which he had risen. Her eyes were dropped. 
 He could see only the purple-stained upper lids. Her 
 hands were clasped before her, and on the left one he saw 
 the faint glimmering of Syd's ring. 
 
 ' ' I have come to tell you, ' ' she began, and then the clock 
 struck eleven, slowly, ponderously, and she awaited it with 
 a certain air of perfunctory politeness. 
 
 When it had ceased, she began again and went on simply 
 and without haste or hesitation : "I have come to tell you 
 that I am going to have a baby. ' ' 
 
 "You " 
 
 "Yes. It will be born in January." 
 
 Sandy leaned against the table. "Why did you not tell 
 me before?" His voice sounded to his own ears as if he 
 had acquired from her something of the Catalonian harsh- 
 ness. 
 
 "Because it was my secret. Syd's and mine." 
 
 433
 
 434 S H A R R O W 
 
 "Syd's? But Syd knew?" 
 
 "No. You will say he died without knowing. I know 
 that ever since he died he has known. And it has made 
 for me a closeness to him." 
 
 Sandy's eyes roamed helplessly across her little figure. 
 To him she looked exactly the same as she had always done. 
 But then, he knew little about such things. 
 
 "He will be your heir," Maria Paz declared, serenely, 
 sitting down. "His name will be 'Sydney'." 
 
 ' ' His name must be Alexander, I am afraid. But I I 
 congratulate you, Maria Paz. I you must see Turner to- 
 morrow." 
 
 "Why? I am not ill." 
 
 She looked, however, desperately ill, and he rang and 
 ordered for her some of the Vino Negro Syd had imported 
 for her. 
 
 She drank a glass obediently and then, holding it, empty, 
 but still glowing a light pink in the firelight, she resumed : 
 
 ' ' So now you will not marry Mary Wymondham. ' ' 
 
 Sandy started. The moment that she had made her an- 
 nouncement he had known that he need not marry. Syd's 
 baby would, of course, be his heir, and he had no doubt 
 whatever as to the child's sex. Poor Syd had after all 
 provided the old house with a future owner, and Sandy, 
 was free. 
 
 But he resented Maria Paz' remark. 
 
 ' ' We need not discuss my affairs, ' ' he said stiffly 
 
 Then a curious thing happened. Maria Paz laughed 
 aloud and in the quiet room, in the night, there was some- 
 thing not only unpleasant but, it seemed to Sandy's tense 
 nerves, almost horrible in her laugh. 
 
 "You promised your brother that he and his sons were 
 to be your heirs," she said. 
 
 Sandy did not answer. 
 
 "And you will keep your word, Lord Sharrow. And I
 
 S H A R R O W 435 
 
 will stay here, for it would not be fitting that your heir 
 should be born elsewhere." 
 
 "No, no of course you must stay here!" 
 
 At the eagerness in his voice, she smiled. 
 
 "I will stay," she said slowly, "just as long as I wish." 
 
 Sandy's head seemed to spin around. What on earth 
 was she driving at now ? he asked himself. 
 
 At first she had begged to be allowed to stay, and now 
 she was threatening to go. 
 
 "I will do all I can to make you comfortable," he stam- 
 mered, enveloped in the baffling fog of non-comprehension 
 that all men have felt at one time or another in dealing with 
 woman. 
 
 "Thank you. My cousin will come and look after me." 
 
 "Your cousin?" 
 
 "Yes, Pedro Fons, Miguel's brother. He is a doctor in 
 Catalonia." 
 
 1 ' No. I will have a Spanish doctor. I will have my own 
 cousin. And I will have my sister-in-law, Carmelita, as my 
 nurse. And Catalina, my maid whom you sent away, she, 
 too, will come back." 
 
 Sandy gasped at the sheer audacity of her. 
 
 "But Turner is an excellent doctor," he said, "and our 
 English nurses are the best in the world." 
 
 "No doubt. But I am a Spanish woman." 
 
 Her imperturbability quite unstirred, she continued to 
 look at him from his own chair; she had ousted him from 
 it, and it seemed to him that she was bent on ousting him 
 from his own house. Two more cousins and a maiu ! The 
 woman's family was as the sands of the sea. 
 
 "You forget, Maria Paz," he said, sternly, "my heir is 
 an Englishman." 
 
 "Possibly. But my son is a Spaniard." 
 
 Vague memories of words he had heard relative to the
 
 436 S II A R R O W 
 
 necessity for women carrying children having their own 
 way, came to his mind. She was obstinate, and foreign, and 
 detestable, but she was carrying Syd's child, and she loved 
 Sharrow. 
 
 "Listen, Maria Paz," taking her hand, and speaking 
 gently, ' ' we must not quarrel. We must both do all we can 
 for Syd's child. Will you write to-morrow for your rela- 
 tives to come ? I will do all I can to make you happy, and 
 you will not forget who your baby is." 
 
 She rose. "You are right. No, I will not forget, Sandy. 
 And when my people are here I shall perhaps be less 
 lonely. It is bad for my baby when I am lonely." 
 
 She said good-night with great dignity, and Sandy was 
 alone ; alone physically, but still in a room so crowded with 
 ghosts as to seem full of an inarticulate hum of voices. The 
 first thing he did was to write a letter to Sister Marie-Rose, 
 enclosing a kind note for Maggie Penrose. In the note he 
 expressed his regret to hear of her illness, and the forgive- 
 ness she asked for. He added that he could not come, 
 owing to important family matters, and remained her old 
 friend, Sharrow. 
 
 On re-reading his note he nearly burned it, its mild tone 
 seemed to him so absurd, so unlike himself. Then he re- 
 membered her kindness to him, and sealed and stamped the 
 letter. 
 
 Maggie Penrose was gone, she no longer belonged to his 
 life. She was to him as dead as his father and mother, the 
 old Vicar, his great-uncle, as Syd. 
 
 He had closed the episode with a few belated kind words. 
 He need never give her another thought. 
 
 But a week later he found himself in a little white- 
 washed room, high up near the snow-covered mountains of 
 La Schlucht, sitting by a narrow bed whereupon lay all 
 that was left of Maggie Penrose. 
 
 "But after writing that letter, Sandy," she asked him,
 
 S H A R R W 437 
 
 her hot hands clasping his, "why did you come? Was it 
 just my telegram of Saturday? Because because you 
 wanted a change of thought, is that it ? " 
 
 Her hollow blue eyes sparkled for a minute in ghastly 
 reminiscence of their old light flash. 
 
 ''Yes. How did you know?" 
 
 ' ' My dear, I love you. I know all about you. Besides, ' ' 
 she added laughing, "Mr. Dingle writes to me and tells me 
 all the news!" 
 
 "Dingle!" 
 
 "Dingle. Now listen, Sandy. I am grateful to you, oh, 
 so grateful to you for the letter. That meant real kindness. 
 And you can never know how glad I am to see your dear, 
 ugly face once more." 
 
 ' ' Poor Maggie ! do you care that much ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' That much ! And so, being a dying person, I am going 
 to take the privilege of all dying persons, and be a perfect 
 nuisance ' ' she broke off to cough, and he waited in silence 
 until she could resume. ' ' Your sister-in-law is clever, I am 
 sure, but she is not good for all her church-going, I know. 
 Dingle has written things quite innocently, and I have 
 pieced the whole thing together. Isn't this something like 
 it?" 
 
 She raised herself a little, arranged the frills of her 
 bed- jacket about her bony wrists, and went on with a 
 cheery, piteous smile. 
 
 "You and dear nice Mary Wymondham you are en- 
 gaged, or nearly " 
 
 "If Dingle writes you that, he is an impertinent 
 
 old " 
 
 "Hush! He didn't. I have guessed it. Mary is good, 
 but she is also a dear ! And she always cared for you. ' ' 
 
 Sandy rose impatiently. "Nonsense, Maggie, she's never 
 cared a rap about me." 
 
 "How cross you are! And how childish! However, I
 
 438 S H A R R W 
 
 daresay you expected tears and moral regrets and you get 
 instead this so I forgive you oh, Alexander ! Sit down, ' ' 
 she added, suddenly fretful ; " I am very weak, and I can 't 
 waste the little breath I have. I tell you, Mary always 
 loved you. And she was always worth a round dozen of 
 Violas. Then you ask her to marry you. Poor soul ! I can 
 imagine her happiness. And I have been glad for it. She 
 deserves even you, Sandy." 
 
 "Even me!" 
 
 ' ' Don 't be bitter. Oh, my dear, my poor love, you don 't 
 know yourself! Well, Madame Maria Paz doesn't like the 
 engagement. After it > not before, she tells you her news. 
 And she 's to have a Spanish doctor, a Spanish nurse, and 
 a Spanish maid. H'm!" 
 
 "Who told you this?" 
 
 "Never mind you that. Or, yes, I'll tell you. Dear old 
 Dingle ! Puddif ant told him, and one of the servants with 
 a clear keyhole ear told her. Oh, it's all perfectly authen- 
 tic, I assure you. Now I must ask you a question. Has she, 
 your sister-in-law, asked you to stop seeing Mary?" 
 
 "No, of course she hasn't." 
 
 "Then she will. She has told you to break your engage- 
 ment, of course because she is providing you with an 
 heir." 
 
 Sandy did not answer. He was very sorry for the 
 woman who lay dying, but he was angry with her for inter- 
 fering in his affairs. 
 
 ' ' Have you broken your engagement ? ' ' persisted Maggie, 
 gently, coughing a little. 
 
 ' ' I am sorry, Maggie, but I cannot discuss Miss Wymond- 
 ham with you or with anyone." 
 
 He rose and went to the window, where he stood looking 
 out into a scurrying snow. 
 
 There was a long pause, and then Maggie said faintly, 
 her eyes closed: "Very well, Sandy; I am sorry. But you
 
 SHARROW 439 
 
 are so blind, so blind. I fooled you as easily as I could have 
 fooled a baby, so why should not this other woman ? ' ' 
 
 "Why should my brother's widow wish to fool me?" 
 
 A nun came in and put a stick or two into the hideous 
 little iron stove in the corner. Then she lighted a lamp on 
 the base of which were painted crude red flowers, and went 
 quietly out. 
 
 "Why should your brother's wife wish to fool you? 
 Because she likes Sharrow; the consequence of being Mrs. 
 Sydney Sharrow of Sharrow ; because she came of common 
 people and prefers gentlefolks; because oh, Sandy, don't 
 be a perfect idiot!" 
 
 He laughed a little; the interview was so different from 
 the one he had pictured to himself during his hurried jour- 
 ney. It seemed strange that a dying woman should jeer at 
 him and call him names. 
 
 "If she wished to fool me, then," he returned, "in what 
 way could she ? I am giving her an allowance in any case 
 and " 
 
 "In what way could she fool you? Well I am getting 
 very tired, Sandear I beg your pardon for using Syd's 
 name for you it just came somehow I can't talk any 
 longer. Say good-by to me. Forgive me. I loved you! I 
 love you!" 
 
 "Good-by, Maggie. Poor little Maggie!" 
 
 She kissed his hand, and looked up, her eyes swimming 
 in tears. "Sandy make her see Turner. Don't believe 
 in anything until she has seen an English doctor." 
 
 She said no more, and after looking at her very sadly 
 for several minutes, he left the room and the hospital and 
 drove back through the snow to his train. 
 
 "Make her see Turner don't believe in anything till 
 she has seen an English doctor." 
 
 The suggestion was monstrous, absurd ; the prompting of 
 a fevered mind. He hated Maria Paz, and the arrival of
 
 440 SHARROW 
 
 her cousins and old Catalina, two days before his departure, 
 had not diminished his loathing of everything connected 
 with her. Pedro, the doctor, was even worse than Miguel, 
 and his use of a toothpick never seemed to cease. Carme- 
 lita, Maria Paz' sister-in-law, was a common, inquisitive 
 little woman with no teeth, and Catalina he had detested 
 before. 
 
 They were all horrible, and all horribly inappropriate to 
 Sharrow ; but they did not make of Maria Paz a cheat and 
 liar of the lowest description. He would forget poor Mag- 
 gie's suspicions.
 
 CHAPTER LXXII 
 
 THEY ordered dinner, the night of Sandy's return, for 
 eight, but Sandy was late, and it was nearly half-past nine 
 before they had finished dinner and sat again in the pleas- 
 ant, old-fashioned drawing-room. 
 
 Mary was wearing, womanwise, a new frock, in honor 
 of what to her was distinctly an occasion. It was a dark 
 blue frock of softest crepe, and over it she wore a fichu of 
 ancient, cobwebby lace that had belonged to Cyrilla her 
 grandmother. 
 
 Mary had anticipated admiration from Sandy that never 
 had come, and her story of the gift of the lace to her grand- 
 mother by his great-uncle, during the period of their brief 
 engagement, remained, through lack of query, untold. 
 
 Sandy was distrait and rather silent. He looked a little 
 older, a little more tired than he had looked the last time 
 she saw him; there was a weary expression in his eyes. 
 Mary, of course, wondered what had happened, but she said 
 nothing. He had told her that he had gone to France to see 
 a friend who was dying, but she knew no more, and she 
 asked no question. 
 
 After dinner he built up the fire and arranged her com- 
 fortably in an armchair. 
 
 The night was stormy but without rain, and the wind 
 howled dismally in the cedar-trees. By her little fireside 
 Mary Wymondham sat, her quiet, capable hands folded, her 
 eyes resting comfortably on her guest's face. 
 
 She was glad to see him ; so glad to have him there with 
 
 441
 
 442 SHARROW 
 
 her, and having given him the best dinner she could, she 
 waited for him to say what he had to say to her. What it 
 was she had no idea, but she knew that it was there in his 
 mind. If, she decided, he was going to ask her to marry 
 him soon, she would do so. She saw no reason for delay, 
 and coyness she hated. 
 
 "Mary something has happened." 
 
 "What it is?" 
 
 The wind ground the cedar boughs against the roof and 
 skirled in the chimney. 
 
 Sandy, who sat with an unlit cigarette between his fin- 
 gers, listened for a minute. Then as comparative silence 
 fell on the little house, he went on: 
 
 ' ' It 's this. Maria Paz is going to have a child. ' ' 
 
 "To have a child?" Mary spoke rather stupidly, it was 
 as if he was telling her that some unmarried woman was 
 going to have a child. Syd had been dead for what seemed 
 to her a long time ; a so long time that his quality of hus- 
 band, and possible father, had gone from her mind. 
 
 "But Sandy " she began, and then understanding 
 
 came to her. 
 
 "Poor Syd," she exclaimed. "What a pity he did not 
 live to see it!" 
 
 "Yes, it is a pity. She told me only a day or two be- 
 fore I went abroad. It is to be in January." 
 
 Mary raised her eyes and looked at him in obvious ab- 
 sent-mindedness. Plainly, she was counting. 
 
 "I am surprised," she said presently without affecta- 
 tion. 
 
 "So was I although I know very little of such mat- 
 ters." 
 
 "And then this is why the new cousin and the rest have 
 come." 
 
 "Yes. She wanted them and of course I could not say 
 no, now."
 
 S H A R R W 443 
 
 Mary smiled at his wisdom. "I see. I hope it will be 
 a boy, Sandy." 
 
 He lighted his cigarette, and then, leaning back in his 
 chair, began to talk quietly. The fire- and lamplight fell 
 full on his thin face, filling its hollows with shadows, 
 accentuating all its lines, until it looked almost like a 
 mask. 
 
 Mary watched it pitifully while he settled himself. Then 
 the meaning of his words began to reach her, and her eyes 
 stopped seeing. 
 
 "I promised Syd, as you know," he began, "that his son 
 should be my heir; I had no intention of ever marrying, 
 and I thought it only right to let the boy know. You will 
 remember this, Mary." 
 
 ' ' Yes, I remember, ' ' she murmured. 
 
 "I was glad that Syd had married you will also remem- 
 ber our plans about the Barrington girl. My life had been 
 such that I preferred to remain a bachelor, to let myself 
 seem as old" he paused, seeking for correct expression 
 "as old as I really was. Syd was learning all about the 
 place; he was growing to love it; I think his love for his 
 wife was broadening him, and teaching him." 
 
 "I think so, too." 
 
 "And he would, I know, have brought up his son in the 
 way fitting to his position." 
 
 There was a long pause, after which he threw his ciga- 
 rette end into the fire and lit another. 
 
 "Syd was so young, such a child himself, that I daresay 
 he didn't think much about his heir, but I did, Mary. 
 I thought about the little chap a lot. I used to dream 
 about him. I always liked babies, ' ' he added with a touch 
 of shyness, "and well, it seemed to me better that Syd's 
 son should have the old place than that that mine should. 
 Syd's boy seemed bound to be right, and I am so old " 
 
 "You are four-and-thirty, Sandy."
 
 444 SHAEEOW 
 
 "Yes. Well then Syd died. You know what his death 
 meant to me. There was little enough of youth left in me 
 already, God knows, but with him the rest went. For 
 months nothing mattered to me, nothing. I didn't even 
 really mind having Don Antonio in the house. It didn't 
 seem the same house, or the same place, at all." 
 
 "I know; I saw." 
 
 "If you had not been here, and so good to me, dear 
 Mary," he went on, looking at her with a grave affection 
 that hurt her horribly, "I could hardly have stayed here. 
 I should have cleared out gone very far away somewhere 
 it's an instinct some people have." 
 
 ' ' I know that, too, Sandy. I Ve got it myself. In fact, ' ' 
 she added with a smile, "I seem to know all that you have 
 said and possibly all that you are going to." 
 
 Sandy shook his head. "No, you don't. I am going to 
 do an abominable thing; I couldn't do it to any other 
 woman in the world but you, and that is because you are 
 my friend. Mary, now that Syd's boy is coming, I don't 
 want to marry. I I don't think I could." 
 
 The boldness of his words was merciful to her; any 
 excuses, any signs that he believed her to need pity, or 
 even consideration, would have been too much for her. 
 
 As it was, her way was clear. 
 
 She took from her finger the ring he had given her and 
 held it out to him. 
 
 Her hand was quite steady in the lamplight, and she 
 smiled, a kind, almost motherly smile. 
 
 "My dear Sandy, I quite understand, and I quite agree 
 with you. You must not break your word to Syd. His boy 
 must be your heir and you must bring him up yourself. 
 Let's forget all about our engagement and just go back 
 to our dear old friendship." 
 
 Sandy took the ring mechanically, and slipped it into 
 his pocket.
 
 but- 
 
 S H A R R W 445 
 
 Thanks, Mary. I knew you wouldn 't mind, of course, 
 
 ' ' Of course I don 't mind. Let 's say no more about it. ' ' 
 
 He was conscious, in the midst of his relief, of a faint 
 pang of disappointment. He had never thought she loved 
 him, and he was glad that she seemed to have no vanity for 
 him to hurt, but he seemed to have lost something. It oc- 
 curred to him that it was rather absurd to be missing 
 something he had never possessed, and yet he did miss it. 
 
 If he had loved Mary the chances were, he knew, that 
 he would have married her in spite of Maria Paz' revela- 
 tion ; he knew that he was not of the self-abnegating kind. 
 And he knew that he would never have dreamt of marrying 
 Mary but for the necessity of providing himself with an 
 heir. 
 
 He was not guilty of that extremely foolish thing, retro- 
 specting sentimentality, but he was a little disappointed 
 by Mary's bland acquiescence in his change of plan. 
 
 When, a few minutes later, he took himself off to the 
 station to meet Ben Frith, she shook hands with him quite 
 calmly and told him with a smile to come soon again. "I 
 shall be glad to see Ben, too," she added. "Bring him to 
 lunch one day." 
 
 What happened when the key had turned in the lock of 
 her bedroom no one but Mary herself ever knew. 
 
 The next day she was much the same as usual, and when 
 Ben, whose visit was a short one, came to lunch, he said 
 he found no difference in her except that her face was a 
 little thinner. 
 
 A week later Mary dined at the house and at dinner 
 made an announcement. "I have a bit of news for you 
 all, ' ' she said, ' ' and I hope you will be sorry. Guess where 
 I am going?" 
 
 No one answered for a moment, and then Maria Paz 
 looked up. "To Cape Town."
 
 446 SHARROW 
 
 Mary started. "How on earth " she began, her face 
 
 full of rather comical amazement, but, Ben saw, also sud- 
 denly pale. 
 
 "Your sister wrote to someone," Ben said, rudely inter- 
 rupting Maria Paz in her projected reply. "I forgot who, 
 but I think Mrs. Puddifant or was it Mrs. Dingle who 
 told me however, I do envy you. It will be a delightful 
 trip. Will you stay long ? ' ' 
 
 Mary looked at him steadily. ' ' Oh, no, only for about six 
 months. My sister's children were not well enough to come 
 back on this visit, but she couldn't let her husband come 
 alone, as he is very delicate. So she is, of course, anxious 
 to get back at once, and I have been with her only a fort- 
 night. So " 
 
 "So you, who have funked going out alone, are seizing 
 the opportunity to go with her ! I see. I envy you, it will 
 be ripping, getting away from our English winter." 
 
 Sandy watched the two speakers curiously. There was 
 something strange in their manner. They seemed to have 
 drawn mentally close together, to be facing some enemy, 
 their backs to a wall. He could not understand. 
 
 Then he glanced at Maria Paz, and saw in her face a 
 look of amused malice almost amounting to malignancy. 
 *As he watched her, she spoke. 
 
 "I did not hear from anyone that you were going away. 
 Mr. Frith was favored. But I knew." Again Sandy won- 
 dered. 
 
 He hated the idea of Mary's going, and after dinner he 
 told her so. 
 
 "You are deserting me, Mary," he began abruptly, as 
 she and Ben and he sat in the Small Hall. "Why are you 
 going just when I shall need you so ? " 
 
 She smiled. "You will not need me, Sandy; you will 
 be busy, and in January you will be less lonely, 
 remember!"
 
 SHARROW 447 
 
 But to-morrow these Spanish brutes are coming back 
 it's far worse than loneliness and I have got to depend 
 on you, ' ' he went on with the frank avowal of dependence 
 that it rather pleases strong people to make. He felt in- 
 jured, and showed it plainly. 
 
 Again she smiled. "Nonsense! Well, I have a bad head 
 and think I '11 be off home. Ben, be a dear and walk back 
 with me, will you?" 
 
 Sandy stared. Again he had the feeling that they were 
 joining forces against some enemy; but this time it seemed 
 that he himself was the enemy. He sat by the fire when 
 they had gone, miserably lonely. 
 
 Meantime, at her house door Mary said suddenly to 
 Ben, ' ' Thanks, Ben. It was good of you. ' ' 
 
 Ben blinked up at her. "I'm always good but I don't 
 know what you mean this time." 
 
 ' ' Yes, you do. You know perfectly well. He, of course, 
 told you that that our engagement is at an end, and you 
 saw that I am going away because I am hurt. Well I 
 don't mind your knowing, old Ben. He hasn't the slightest 
 idea, bless him, but I am hurt, badly." 
 
 They clasped each other's hand and stood in silence for 
 a minute. Then Mary added, simply: "I have always 
 loved him, and I always shall. But for the moment I am 
 done; I must go away." 
 
 Ben walked slowly back to the house, to find Sandy mute 
 and a trifle surly. 
 
 "What's wrong?" the little man asked with an air 
 of good cheer very vexing to his host, as he meant it to 
 be. 
 
 "Matter? Nothing. What should be?" 
 
 "I don't know, I'm sure. I thought perhaps you were 
 cross with Mary for going away. It does look rather like 
 deserting the ship, you know." 
 
 "Rot," Sandy growled with a frown. "Mary never de-
 
 448 S H A R R O W 
 
 serted anything in her life. And I have no right to be 
 cross with her." 
 
 Ben indulged in a grimace of delight, unseen by his 
 friend. "Of course you have no right of any kind over her 
 now, but oh, well, never mind; I was mistaken, that's 
 all.''
 
 CHAPTER LXXIII 
 
 MARY was to sail the sixteenth of October, and the 
 twelfth had come. 
 
 It was a cold, clear day, and Mary Wymondham, who 
 had been making some good-by calls among her poorer 
 friends in the village, was coming home when, just outside 
 the "Sheepshearers' Arms," she met Sandy. 
 
 "Mary," he called, before he had quite come up to her, 
 ' ' I have news for you ; the most wonderful news. ' ' 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 They shook hands and he turned back with her. 
 
 "Maria Paz is going to Barcelona the seventeenth. Until 
 until her illness is over ! ' ' 
 
 Mary stood still. ' ' To Barcelona ! But why ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' I don 't know. I haven 't seen her since. I heard. She 
 is at White Shirley this afternoon with Carmelita, and I 
 have only just heard. It seems that old Catalina got into 
 a temper with Jarvis and blurted out to him how glad she 
 would be to get away Jarvis told Mrs. Puddifant, and she 
 told me." 
 
 "But, Sandy ought the baby not to be born here?" 
 
 He drew a deep breath. "I don't know. I suppose so, 
 but for the minute I can feel nothing but relief. Think of 
 having the house clear of the lot of 'em, Mary ! ' ' 
 
 They walked rapidly on through the gathering darkness. 
 Mary was annoyed. 
 
 "I can't understand it at all unless it's just a a kind 
 of freak." 
 
 449
 
 450 SHARROW 
 
 "It must be that. Of course, I might insist on her 
 staying here, but well," he burst out with sudden vehe- 
 mence, "I simply can't. I shall be so glad when they have 
 gone. ' ' 
 
 '/They'll be back soon, remember." 
 
 "I know. But well, you can't ever know how I have 
 been dreading the winter; without you, too; that made it 
 much worse." 
 
 "Did it, Sandy?" She could not keep a certain dry- 
 ness out of her voice, and he turned. 
 
 ' ' Of course. Didn 't you know it ? Did you think I 
 liked your going away? I say there's the car and its 
 stopping at your house." 
 
 They hurried on and reached the gate just as Maria Paz, 
 very bulky in a big fur coat, was going in. 
 
 ' ' How do you do ? " she said politely. ' ' I was coming to 
 say bon voyage to you." 
 
 It was only the fourth or fifth time she had ever called 
 on Mary. Mary led the way to the drawing-room, and 
 ordered tea, while she explained the latest developments 
 of her plans ; how she was to meet her sister in town the 
 next day but one. 
 
 "How glad you must be!" Maria Paz said, sitting very 
 close to the fire. "It will be a delightful journey." 
 
 "Yes, I think I shall like travelling." 
 
 "When I am well I shall go somewhere," Maria Paz' 
 eyes were lowered as she spoke, and her face was its 
 stillest. 
 
 "When you are well? But you are going to Barcelona at 
 once ! ' ' 
 
 Mary set down the teapot and stared as she spoke. 
 
 The Spaniard did not move but she slowly raised her 
 eyes. ' ' What did you say ? ' ' she asked. 
 
 "I said only that I understood you were going away 
 now, at once. ' '
 
 S H A R R W 451 
 
 "Ah," Maria Paz drew a deep breath. ".Who told you 
 that lie?" 
 
 "I did," answered Sandy. 
 
 "And who told you?" 
 
 He stood with his arms folded, watching her. He had a 
 keen conviction that some plot was to be unravelled as he 
 stood there; that a crisis had come. 
 
 ' ' One of my servants told me. Your maid Catalina told 
 her. You are going to Barcelona on Friday. And you are 
 going to have your baby there. ' ' 
 
 Maria Paz rose. "Good. It is true. I am. And as 
 soon as I am able to travel, I will bring my son back to you, 
 Sandy. I was too lonely. I tried to stay, but I couldn't. 
 Sandj r , you do not much mind?" 
 
 Her voice was very gentle, her eyes seemed larger than 
 he had ever seen them as she looked imploringly at him. 
 
 "No I don't mind," he said. "There is no harm in 
 your going to your own country for your illness. ' ' 
 
 Mary rose suddenly, and switched on all the electricity, 
 changing the light from a soft one to a glare. 
 
 "As soon as you are well enough to travel," she said, 
 slowly, looking full into the other woman's face, "you will 
 bring back your son here. What if it happened to be a 
 daughter?" 
 
 Maria Paz' face gave one convulsive movement, and 
 then was as still as if frozen. 
 
 "I can understand your hoping that," she answered, 
 "but it will not happen. I am lucky." 
 
 "If it is a daughter it will not be Sandy's heir; his 
 cousin, Alexander Sharrow, the present heir-at-law, will 
 have everything on Sandy's death; or if he dies first, then 
 his son." 
 
 ' ' My baby is a son. ' ' 
 
 Sandy drew back from the hearthrug. He felt that he 
 was a spectator only, that he had no place on the stage of
 
 452 SH ARROW 
 
 the strange, tense little scene that was being enacted be- 
 fore him. 
 
 Mary, her furred hat still on her head, had taken off her 
 coat and stood, her well-built frame clearly defined in the 
 blaze of light. Her face was a little set, and red patches 
 glowed in her cheeks. She was very angry, and it occurred 
 to Sandy that he had not seen her angry for years. 
 
 Opposite her, her small white face smaller and whiter 
 than ever, among her dark furs, Maria Paz stood, shapeless 
 in her big coat. The two women eyed each other as duelists 
 might. And Sandy watched. 
 
 "What you say is dramatic," Mary answered her antag- 
 onist, "but it is nonsense. No one on earth can be sure 
 about a child's sex until it is born." 
 
 "I am not dramatic. It will be a boy." 
 
 Maria Paz' voice grew in monotony as Mary's temper 
 colored hers. 
 
 "You think I am going to Barcelona, and that, if I have 
 a girl, I can sell it, and buy a boy to bring back. ' ' 
 
 Sandy shrank from the cold contempt in the Spaniard's 
 voice. 
 
 Mary made a long pause. 
 
 Then she said very slowly. "Yes. I did think that at 
 first. But now I don't. Now I know that I was wrong." 
 
 They had both forgotten Sandy's presence. There was 
 in their battle something so intensely feminine, so beyond 
 his ken, that he himself felt nearly as if he w T ere not there 
 because he ought not to be. 
 
 ' ' Oh you know you were wrong. Well let me tell you 
 this, Mary Wymondham, good, honorable, perfect Mary 
 that I am right in what I know about you. You are going 
 away because, when Sandy broke his engagement when he 
 found he no longer needed you you have not forgotten his 
 reason you could not bear to stay here. It is because 
 you love him. You love him who does not, never did, love
 
 S H A R R O W 453 
 
 you. You love a man who asked you to marry him solely 
 because you are healthy." 
 
 Suddenly, before Sandy could speak, Mary had laid her 
 strong hands on Maria Paz' shoulders and stripped her 
 loose sable cloak from her. It lay like a vast soft shell on 
 the floor at her feet, and out of it rose her small figure, thin 
 and straight, almost boyish. 
 
 "Do not struggle, you impostor," Mary said in a hoarse 
 undertone. "You can't move until I allow you to. This 
 is the twelfth of October, you say your baby is coming 
 in January. It is a lie. You are not going to have either 
 a boy or a girl. As long as you live you cannot have a 
 Sharrow child. Now go ! " 
 
 Releasing her prisoner, Mary drew back, and as she did 
 so her eyes fell on Sandy. 
 
 "You see?" she cried, to him. "You understand. At 
 home she wore clothes that hid her, but going out with 
 her big cloak on she thought she was safe ! Do you see ? " 
 
 ' ' Yes, I see. Maria Paz " 
 
 Maria Paz looked at him. "She is a fool," she said, "a 
 fool, and an old maid." Then suddenly she had seized 
 the old silver candle snuffers that Sandy had known ever 
 since he was a child and struck Mary repeatedly in the 
 face with them. Even after Sandy had caught her she 
 managed with marvellous strength to give Mary another 
 blow. And as she struck she screamed and cursed in Span- 
 ish, biting at Sandy 's hands, and kicking him. 
 . It took all his strength to master her and when finally he 
 did so and turned to Mary, whose face was streaming with 
 blood, Maria Paz again beat him by going off into a kind 
 of hideous convulsion. 
 
 Together he and Mary worked over her; they gave her 
 water, bathed her face, forced a little sherry down her 
 throat, and, when at last she was still, Sandy carried her 
 to the car, explained to the chauffeur that she had fainted
 
 454 S H A R R O W 
 
 but was now better, saw the car disappear, and went back 
 into the house. 
 
 Mary's right eye was badly swollen, and her face was 
 cut in several places. She was pale, but she smiled when 
 Sandy entered. 
 
 "Oh, Sandy!" 
 
 "Mary I am so ashamed " 
 
 "No. I am only thankful that we found out in time. 
 She 'd have fooled you. ' ' 
 
 "Of course she would." 
 
 He stood in silence for a moment. Then he said, ' ' Mary, 
 don't go to Cape Town." 
 
 She sat down, holding a wet compress to her eye. 
 
 ' ' Nonsense of course I must go. Did you think it your 
 duty, because of what she said, to ask me again to marry 
 you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Oh, yes, you did. Well, it isn't. She lied." 
 
 Then suddenly she lowered the handkerchief and, forget- 
 ting her cuts and bruises, looked up at him. 
 
 ' ' No, she didn 't, Sandy, not in that and I won 't, either. 
 I do love you, my dear, I always have. But I won 't marry 
 you, and I am going to the Cape. ' ' 
 
 "Mary dear Mary there is no one in the whole world 
 of whom I am so fond as I am of you." 
 
 "I am sure of that. But I won't marry you. I couldn't 
 try that experiment again. It it hurt too much. But we'll 
 always be friends. Now you must go, for I must try to 
 patch up my wounds. Good-by. I'll see you before I 
 leave, I suppose." 
 
 They shook hands, and he left her. 
 
 He walked to the house, entered by the moat garden door, 
 and went straight to his own rooms. He did not come 
 down again that night. And Mary Wymondham sailed for 
 Cape Town on the sixteenth.
 
 CHAPTER LXXIV 
 
 IT was raining and snowing at once, the roads were a 
 porridge of thick brown mud, the trees looked piteously 
 wet and neglected in their nakedness. 
 
 Sandy stood at the library window looking out into the 
 darkness. An hour before his son had come into the world. 
 He had already seen him, already felt the strange feeling 
 as if his bones were turning to water, experienced by some 
 men at the first sight of their first-born. 
 
 Mary, his wife, was well ; she had refused to be treated 
 as an invalid ; she had smiled and given her baby from her 
 own arms into its father's. And now Lord Sharrow was 
 alone, trying to realize his great happiness. 
 
 He was very happy ; to-night was Christmas eve. He had 
 been married for over a year. Mary had come back after 
 what seemed to him an endless absence of six months, and 
 quite simply he had told her of his grand discovery. 
 
 "I love you, dear," he said. "Will you marry me?" 
 And he did love her with a deep, quiet affection that satis- 
 fied him completely. 
 
 And it had grown, this affection, as affection will when it 
 is based on respect and a community of interests. 
 
 In the light, as he stood by the window, Sandy's face 
 looked a very different one from the face we knew. The 
 lines were there forever, of course, but there was a new 
 softness about his ugly mouth, a new look in his eyes. 
 
 He rarely brooded now; he never did so deliberately, 
 and his remembrances of the sad things in his past were 
 
 455
 
 456 S HARROW 
 
 softened by his present peace. So there he stood looking 
 out into the night, while his new-born son lay sleeping 
 upstairs in the room in which his great-uncle had been 
 born and died. 
 
 And presently the rain ceased, the clouds broke, letting 
 a very faint glow of moonlight through. 
 
 Sandy smiled. He was too happy to form articulate 
 thoughts, but it was good to him that the clouds should 
 have parted just then. From where he stood he looked 
 across the lawn towards the west side of the park, and 
 presently there came a sound of distant voices, and from 
 the darkness of the trees issued forth a little crowd of 
 people. 
 
 There were about twenty of them, and of these two or 
 three were women. They came, talking in undertones, 
 across the lawn in the pale moonlight, and were about to 
 turn off towards the servants' quarters, when Sandy called 
 softly : 
 
 "Is that you, Dingle?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Sandy," came the old man's voice, and he 
 forgot to correct his mistake. 
 
 ' ' Come this way, will you ? ' ' 
 
 There was Dingle and his fat daughter, Sally ; there were 
 a Puddifant, two Linters, and old Bustard, the village 
 patriarch. 
 
 They came and stood under the window, and old Dingle 
 made a speech. 
 
 "We have been waiting for news at the 'Sheep- 
 shearers',' " he said, tears standing on his cheeks, his voice 
 shaking, "and it came half an hour ago one of the stable 
 boys brought it and we drank his health, my lord, and 
 yours, and then my girl Sally suggested we should come 
 
 and and tell you " He broke off, and Sally went on, 
 
 her arm through his, for he was failing of late. 
 
 "We know, my lord, that you will not take offense
 
 S H A R R O W 457 
 
 that you don't mind our having the feelings of friends as 
 well as of tenants." 
 
 Sandy cleared his throat. 
 
 "Wait a moment," he said. "I will fetch him." 
 
 Five minutes later the little band had trooped quietly 
 into the study, the window was shut, and Sandy stood be- 
 fore them with his son in his arms. 
 
 Tears stood on his lined cheeks as he bent over the little 
 bundle. 
 
 "My friends," he said, "here is my son." 
 
 Then they all tiptoed towards him and looked at the queer 
 little crumpled face of their future lord. 
 
 "Yes, he is beautiful, isn't he?" Sandy agreed, proudly. 
 "He weighs over eight pounds. He is a particularly fine 
 boy." 
 
 After a pause he went on: "I don't know how to tell 
 you how I feel about him and about Sharrow but I shall 
 try to make him a very good man, my friends, so that 
 when his time comes he may be a good friend to your chil- 
 dren and their children." 
 
 Old Bustard, the shepherd, who had not yet spoken, sud- 
 denly put his knotted hand to his eyes and began 
 to weep. 
 
 "God bless 'im," he quavered, "and you, your lordship, 
 and 'er ladyship, too. God bless the lot of ye ! I 'm ninety 
 I am, and Vll never be a friend to my grandchildren, 
 'cause I 'aven't got any, but I'm glad my old eyes 'as 
 seen 'im." 
 
 Sandy bent again over his son, and as he did so Sally 
 Dingle stepped forward and, with her hand, protected the 
 baby's face. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Sandy ! Mr. Sandy ! " she exclaimed, quickly, ' ' don 't 
 let tears fall on a baby's face. Every tear means a 
 grief for him." 
 
 "Oh, Sally!"
 
 458 S H A B R W 
 
 The fat widow, with her pretty smile, turned her palm 
 uppermost, and in it something glistened. 
 
 "I caught them," she declared; "it's all right." 
 
 "Thank you, Sally." 
 
 Then Sandy bade his friends good-by, and carried his 
 son back upstairs. 
 
 As he came down again, he stood suddenly still on the 
 stairs, and caught at the balustrade. He felt suddenly 
 giddy. 
 
 And as suddenly, as he stood there in the perfect silence 
 of the night, his face changed. 
 
 The Feeling had come back. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 (1)
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 NON-RE^E 
 
 SEP 2 0194 
 
 DUWJYKS.FROM DA 
 
 l m 
 
 RECE! 1
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAClLfl 
 
 A 000132214 8