2130609
 
 . OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES
 
 THE WHIPS OF TIME
 
 I AM GRATEFUL FOR LORD ANTHONY'S INTEREST," SHE RE- 
 TORTED. 
 
 [Seepage 177. Frontispiece
 
 THE WHIPS OF TIME 
 
 BY 
 
 ARABELLA KENEALY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "DR. JANET OF HARLEY STREET," "WOMAN AND 
 THE SHADOW," ETC. 
 
 Illustrated by 
 THOMAS MITCHELL PEIRCE 
 
 Boston 
 
 Little, Brown, and Company 
 1909 
 
 2130609
 
 Copyright, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published March, 1909 
 
 BJectrotyped and Printed at 
 THE COLONIAL PRESS: 
 
 C.H. Simon ds iS.Co^ Boston, U.S. A,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MAFTBK FAGB 
 
 PROLOGUE THE EXPERIMENT i 
 
 I. TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER ... 14 
 
 II. HOMER COTTAGE . . . . . .20 
 
 III. SCROPE-DENTON 31 
 
 IV. THE MISSES EPITHITE 37 
 
 V. " THE DUKE'S LADY " 44 
 
 VI. HESTROYDE AND LEGH 50 
 
 VII. JOAN .57 
 
 VIII. A MEETING 65 
 
 IX. LOWOOD CALLS ON LEGH .... 74 
 
 X. A HORSEWHIPPING 88 
 
 XL A NOTE 98 
 
 XII. MRS. BEAUMONT OF MOONBANK . . . 107 
 
 XIII. ALMA 117 
 
 XIV. YOUNG MUNNINGS 126 
 
 XV. A LETTER FROM HUMMERSTONE . . . 132 
 
 XVI. A LUNCHEON PARTY 142 
 
 XVII. FIRE! 151 
 
 XVIII. THE DUKE OF SAXBY 163 
 
 XIX. UNCLE TONY 169 
 
 XX. LORD ANTHONY 179 
 
 XXI. CYRIL HUMMERSTONE 183 
 
 XXII. PLOTS 192 
 
 XXIII. A Kiss 203 
 
 XXIV. A REBUFF 211 
 
 XXV. A LOVERS' QUARREL 218 
 
 V
 
 VI 
 
 XXVI. PLAYING WITH FIRE . . 
 
 XXVII. STILL PLAYING 
 
 XXVIII. HUMMERSTONE COMES BACK 
 
 XXIX. AFTER THE HONEYMOON 
 
 XXX. TROUBLE AT MOONBANK 
 
 XXXI. A NEW LEAF . . 
 
 XXXII. DEFEAT ..... 
 
 XXXIII. JOAN AND MARK . 
 
 XXXIV. A LETTER FROM UNCLE TONY 
 XXXV. PROFESSOR HUMMERSTONE . 
 
 XXXVI. BURGHWALLIS RETURNS 
 
 XXXVII. FLIGHT 
 
 XXXVIII. THE SEARCH . . . . 
 
 XXXIX. WITH JOAN . ... 
 
 XL. INSOMNIA . . . . 
 
 XLI. SACCHARIN .... 
 
 XLII. ILLNESS 
 
 XLIII. A Box OF CHOCOLATES 
 
 XLIV. NEMESIS 
 
 XLV. THE LAST 
 
 PAG 
 227 
 
 237 
 250 
 
 263 
 
 273 
 282 
 288 
 295 
 302 
 306 
 3 I2 
 
 323 
 3^ 
 
 332 
 338 
 
 347 
 353 
 360 
 
 364 
 372
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " I AM GRATEFUL TOR LORD ANTHONY'S INTEREST," 
 
 SHE RETORTED Frontispiece 
 
 THEN HE CAUGHT HER SLENDER BODY INTO HIS ARMS 
 
 AND STRENUOUSLY KISSED HER . . . Page 59 
 
 THE BECLOAKED, FURRED FIGURE OF A WOMAN HALF 
 
 RUSHED, HALF FELL, INTO THE ROOM ..." 15! 
 HER GLASS CRACKED AND FELL IN THREE PIECES AT 
 
 HER FEET "198
 
 THE WHIPS OF TIME 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 THE EXPERIMENT 
 
 " TELL you what it is, Lowood ! There's more rub- 
 bish talked to the square inch than there are fish in the 
 sea. Heredity! Everything is environment. A baby 
 comes into existence with its brain tablets like a set 
 of blank photograph films. From the moment these 
 are exposed to the light long before the child ac- 
 quires any conscious personality the sensitized brain 
 tablets are receiving impressions! The resultant con- 
 sciousness is the sum of these. The child's and 
 subsequently the man's or woman's character is the 
 resultant of early impressions, plus his outside condi- 
 tions and the forces with which he has to contend. 
 There is the thing in a nutshell. Thanks! I don't 
 mind if I do. Despite your theories you know how 
 to brew a cup of coffee. Or perhaps it is that your 
 apparatus is a better one than that of most chaps." 
 
 " There again comes in your materialism," Lowood 
 said. He filled his friend's cup from the little copper 
 apparatus, rather grimy without, albeit scrupulously 
 clean within, in which it was his custom to brew his 
 own after-dinner cup upon the dining-table. 
 
 " You forget there is always something over and 
 above that which can be seen and felt and weighed. 
 Now this coffee, for instance. I will give you the cof-
 
 2 The Whips of Time 
 
 fee caddy, the spoon with which I measured out my 
 quantities, water from the same jug, a fresh wick, and 
 methylated spirit from the same bottle. You shall 
 weigh and measure out your quantities precisely as I 
 have done. You shall let the coffee stand as long, 
 you shall pour it into the same cup and put the same 
 amount of milk and sugar in it. Yet I'll take any 
 odds you like that your coffee will be as different from 
 my coffee as your hair is different from mine, or as 
 our brains are different." 
 
 He smiled quietly. " In fact I don't mind betting 
 you that your coffee will be abomination." 
 
 " Done ! " exclaimed Hummerstone. " Of course, 
 it's all sheer rubbish on the face of it. You'll be tell- 
 ing me next that every coffee-berry has a soul." 
 
 " I won't go so far as that, although I believe it has 
 a sort of rudimentary individuality, something which 
 distinguishes it from its fellows. Every leaf on every 
 tree is different from every other. Every plum from 
 the same plum-tree has a flavour of its own. All 
 that, I suppose, is individuality and individuality, I 
 suppose, is the essential of a soul." 
 
 "Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish!" interposed a 
 harsh, derisive voice. 
 
 The occasion was so apt, and in one man's opin- 
 ion the charge so true that both men broke out 
 laughing. 
 
 " You see even the fowls of the air deride your 
 extravagant notions," Hummerstone said. 
 
 " Polly ! you traitor, to go over to the enemy ! " 
 Lowood turned to that which showed in the dusk 
 outside the circle of lamplight as a formless mass, but 
 which, upon closer inspection, proved to be a large 
 cage, muffled in a dilapidated green baize curtain. 
 For it was Polly's habit, when curtained for the night, 
 to wake up at intervals obsessed by a sense that some- 
 thing of the most intensely interesting nature was 
 taking place on the other side of her shroud, and forth-
 
 The Experiment 3 
 
 with to gnaw a peep-hole for her curiosity. Now, 
 through a recent peep-hole could be seen a patch of 
 grey plumage, and a shining, bead-like eye, fixing the 
 movements of the men with a consuming curiosity. 
 
 Hummerstone sitting near rearranged the curtain. 
 
 " Bad bird, Polly ! " he said. " You go to bed with 
 you." 
 
 Whereupon PoHy retorted in a vituperative tone: 
 
 " Old Microbe! Old Microbe! " 
 
 The men laughed again. If Polly did not under- 
 stand the English language she applied such words 
 of it as she knew with an appropriateness which made 
 the application seem all the more clever. 
 
 Lowood moved to the door, the coffee-apparatus in 
 a hand. 
 
 " I'll wash it out in the bathroom. Really, I haven't 
 the face to tell Rose we are going in for a second in- 
 stalment of coffee. I'll be back in two seconds." 
 
 He was back in two minutes, his dark face eager 
 and keen. As he came he took out his handkerchief 
 and mopped the dripping exterior of the dingy copper. 
 
 " I've rinsed it thoroughly. Not a trace of my cof- 
 fee remains to mitigate the flavour of yours. Now, 
 then, fire away ! " 
 
 With a shrugged shoulder and a derisive face, 
 which expressed his conviction that the result of the 
 experiment was a foregone conclusion, Hummerstone 
 measured his quantities and performed the various 
 operations which his friend enjoined. 
 
 He was a man of fresh complexion, colourless hair, 
 and a clear, cold eye of blue, of a curious, unpleasing, 
 flat expression, as though the iris were an outside 
 wall, instead of being a curtain dropped before an 
 inner chamber. 
 
 To state briefly what happened. The experiment 
 turned out as Lowood had predicted. Not only was 
 Hummerstone's coffee wholly unlike that his host had 
 made, it was execrable.
 
 4 The Whips of Time 
 
 Hummerstone admitted it. Indeed, there was no 
 denying it. 
 
 " But, of course," he said, " it goes without saying 
 that I must have done something different from you. 
 Without meaning it, perhaps, you omitted or added 
 some condition which existed or was absent in your 
 own case. On the face of it, a portion of the same 
 ground coffee, made with a portion of the same water 
 in precisely the same manner, must produce an infu- 
 sion of precisely the same flavour. On the face of it, 
 it must." 
 
 " On the face of it, I admit that it must. But you 
 see there is always something behind the face, the im- 
 material beyond the material, the incalculable in a 
 word, the incomprehensible, which meets us at all turns. 
 One man or woman is able to make plants grow and 
 blossom, while in the hands of another they either do 
 not thrive, or even fail and die. I believe each one of 
 us radiates an atmosphere, an aura, call it what you 
 will, and that this all the while exerts a subtle potent 
 influence on all we do and attempt. It determines luck 
 or ill-luck, makes our success or failure, rouses our 
 neighbour's affection or his antipathy, exerts in every 
 way an enormous influence on every step of our ca- 
 reers." 
 
 Hummerstone spread his hands, as though dismiss- 
 ing a subject which had ceased to interest him. 
 
 " At all events," he said in a bland voice which was 
 more chilling than frigidity, " I can scarcely say I feel 
 any very deep regret if I seem to have proved that my 
 aura is not conducive to making coffee." 
 
 Lowood, sensitive, enthusiastic, neurotic, winced 
 before the bland remark. Two men in talking are 
 forever treading upon each other's toes. Possibly it 
 does them no harm. Possibly it does them immense 
 good. Men should be of hardy growth, and too genial 
 an atmosphere is inimical to hardy growth. 
 
 The fact that his fellows tread upon his toes, how-
 
 The Experiment 5 
 
 ever, explains the preference man shows for the society 
 of the other sex. 
 
 Hummerstone had but few friends. One never 
 knew at what moment he might not turn and sneer. 
 A man or a woman who sneers is one with bad blood 
 in the heart. And his fellows instinctively shun the 
 man or woman with bad blood in the heart. 
 
 Lowood, however, was one of those warm-natured 
 enthusiasts who find all persons more or less agreeable, 
 for the reason that the genial atmosphere they them- 
 selves radiate thaws the ice and rounds the angles of 
 all who come within its influence. 
 
 To mollify his guest he now went to a cabinet, and 
 taking out an unopened box of cigars he broke its paper 
 wrappings, and untied it with the hand of one dealing 
 with a precious thing. Having opened the box he 
 extended it to Hummerstone with a propitiatory, ami- 
 able smile. 
 
 " Try one. They were given to me by Ganz, the 
 great cigar importer. He's a patient of mine. You'll 
 find them good." 
 
 " Thanks." Hummerstone took one. " What a 
 man you are for getting things given to you." 
 
 Lowood smiled. 
 
 " In this case I earned it," he said. " Ganz has a 
 deuce of a temper, poor old chap ! Victim of his own 
 nicotine. Gets awful dumps. I cheer him up a bit." 
 
 The table having now been cleared : 
 
 " What shall we do? " Lowood asked. " Cards? " 
 
 " Afterwards, perhaps. Let's talk first. I want to 
 tell you about something an experiment I'm going 
 to make." 
 
 " All right. Draw up to the fire. The cold is 
 arctic. We've got everything we shall want for a 
 good long evening coals, whisky, two syphons, 
 glasses. It's only a quarter to nine. We've got some 
 good clear hours before us. Fire away. What sort 
 of experiment? "
 
 6 The Whips of Time 
 
 " A psychological experiment. Listen. You know 
 I am doing locum at old Thistlewaite's little private 
 hospital in Harley Street. Well, we've got a run of 
 cases just now. And two in particular have taken my 
 fancy. I can't get them out of my head." 
 
 " All right. Tell me about it." 
 
 Hummerstone was silent for some minutes. Per- 
 haps a shade of constraint gathered on his face. 
 
 " It is good," he said, " old Ganz's cigar ! " 
 
 Then he resumed : " You've been reading the Sarah 
 Munnings murder case, no doubt. Woman who poi- 
 soned no end of persons, just for sheer devilry. 
 Trained as a nurse, in order to have a free hand and 
 no prejudice. I should think she must, on her own 
 confession, have poisoned at least twenty persons. She 
 was found guilty and sentenced to death. But on her 
 way back to prison she was taken so dangerously ill 
 that the prison-van was stopped at the nearest doctor's, 
 which chanced to be old Thistlewaite's. He saw that 
 she was at her last gasp. He had her taken into his 
 nursing-home, next door, where she's been ever since 
 too ill to be moved. Because of her condition, the 
 English law reprieves her from death, and commutes 
 the sentence to a life-imprisonment." 
 
 " I know. I wondered at the time whether it would 
 not have been more humane to put the poor wretch 
 into a lethal chamber and have done with her and her 
 line. What can the child of such a degenerate be ? " 
 
 " There you are again with your absurd notions of 
 heredity. In reality she is rather a handsome person." 
 
 "Well," Lowood said, "what more about it?" 
 
 Hummerstone continued that the woman was still 
 dangerously ill. To move her would mean death. She 
 had been permitted to remain where she was, in This- 
 tlewaite's private nursing-home, where she was occu- 
 pying a small room in the basement. 
 
 " Now I " He paused. He threw one glance of 
 interrogation at Lowood.
 
 The Experiment 7 
 
 Then : " I," he went on in his cold, hard voice, 
 " intend to try an experiment. At all events, in one 
 case, I'll show your theories of heredity to be without 
 foundation. The whole thing, as I tell you, is the 
 result of environment and early impressions. Now, 
 in the room above that of the murderess is a well-born, 
 highly-cultured young woman of good county family, 
 the people, in fact, of a place called Scrope-Denton, 
 in Gloucestershire. She, too, is an expectant mother. 
 The events are likely to occur on the same day, that 
 is to-day or to-morrow. When they do I have ar- 
 ranged a little series of manoeuvres by which I shall 
 send the nurses of the two patients for a minute from 
 the two rooms. In that minute I shall change the 
 infants, substituting the murderess' boy for the boy 
 of the woman of family. And, my dear chap," he 
 concluded complacently, " I am, as I tell you, willing 
 to wager anything you like that the murderess' boy, 
 because of the surroundings and advantages for which 
 he will have me to thank, will grow up to be as esti- 
 mable and as well-conducted a person as the rest of 
 his class. While the son of the well-bred, highly- 
 cultured lady will, from his early association and train- 
 ing, as inevitably go to swell the ranks of the sub- 
 merged tenth, as ducks take to water." 
 
 Lowood had got slowly to his feet and now stood 
 observing his friend from the other side of the fire- 
 place. 
 
 " Of course," he said quietly, " you are only joking." 
 
 "Joking!" Hummerstone retorted, "I assure you 
 I have never in my life been more serious. The thing 
 is an interesting scientific experiment. I shall follow 
 it up with the keenest attention, notebook in hand. Of 
 course I know precisely how it will turn out. It offers 
 no exciting possibilities to me. I am as strongly con- 
 vinced that the doctrine of heredity is rubbish as you 
 are convinced that it is a proven truth. At all events 
 I will show you one case to discredit your beliefs. Un-
 
 8 The Whips of Time 
 
 less this boy should happen to be a freak, and turn out 
 a criminal in spite of his surroundings." 
 
 " You seem to be very certain about the sex," Lo- 
 wood said quickly. A suspicion flashed across him, 
 that even while he was exerting his shocked wits to 
 gather whether Hummerstone was truly serious, the 
 appalling experiment had been already made, that the 
 son of the murderess had already been substituted for 
 that of the blameless lady. 
 
 " Oh, no doubt about the sex," Hummerstone as- 
 sented quietly, still further confirming the suspicion. 
 
 Then Lowood, having summoned his shocked wits, 
 expressed himself : 
 
 " Hummerstone, if I believed you in earnest I should 
 say you were the most consummate, unscrupulous ras- 
 cal I had ever met. To rob a decent woman a lady, 
 a lady entrusted to your professional care to rob 
 her of her child, and to substitute for it the child of 
 this unspeakable person, to be reared and cared for as 
 her own ! To expose her to the pain, in all probability 
 to the shame, which the inherited instincts of the mur- 
 deress' child must sooner or later bring upon her! 
 To " He paused, and controlling his voice, which 
 had grown high and impetuous, he began again 
 quietly : 
 
 " Look here, old man, you're not really serious, are 
 you ? What you mean is that the experiment would be 
 interesting. That I am willing to grant. It would be 
 if we were dealing with pawns on a chess-board, with 
 rose-grafting, or with bee-breeding, even perhaps with 
 your favourite rabbits and guinea-pigs. But when you 
 come to try such experiments on human beings, to 
 exploit maternity and a mother's rights in her child, 
 just for vulgar curiosity " 
 
 " Vulgar curiosity be hanged ! " Hummerstone in- 
 terrupted roughly. " It's a scientific experiment, I 
 tell you. It is for the advancement of science. Hang 
 it, man! give me credit for being in earnest. How
 
 The Experiment 9 
 
 else, except by experimental proof, can these ridiculous 
 theories be disproved? " 
 
 " A single case would not disprove them. You 
 would need some thousands of cases, at the very least, 
 before you would even throw a doubt on a fact so well 
 established." 
 
 " Well, we can have a thousand cases tens of 
 thousands of cases. It is a mere matter of time. We 
 must make a beginning. It is all this rubbishy senti- 
 ment that is the stumbling-block in the way of prog- 
 ress. And one would seldom find a case so essentially 
 suited to experiment as is this one. Here, on the one 
 hand, is a mere monster of callous crime, as this mur- 
 deress-mother plainly is. On the other is a woman 
 I have carefully ascertained this who is a person of 
 singular dignity, and amiability of character, healthy, 
 wealthy, cultured, her husband a man of fine old 
 county-stock and a large landowner. My dear Lo- 
 wood, you might wait a century before you would find 
 two such cases, from, as it were, the ends of the phys- 
 ical poles. And where one finds them brought together 
 under the same roof Why ! it would be an absolute 
 crime against science to allow some fantastic scruple 
 to bar so interesting an experiment." 
 
 " Such an experiment would be only justifiable if 
 the parents of the children were aware of and con- 
 sented to it." 
 
 Hummerstone scoffed. 
 
 " If they were aware of it the thing would have no 
 value. Unconsciously, even if not consciously, they 
 would be all the while subjecting the child to special 
 treatment, withholding this, and supplying that, with 
 a notion of counteracting what they believed to be 
 hereditary tendencies. In my case, both parents being 
 absolutely ignorant of the circumstances, the two boys 
 will be brought up normally and without any special 
 precautions. The one at least. The other won't be 
 overburdened by bringing up. But I shan't concern
 
 10 The Whips of Time 
 
 myself with him. He will naturally drift out of ob- 
 servation, will become a scallywag, a thief or a bur- 
 glar, simply because, from his earliest days, he will be 
 associated with such persons. On the other, I shall 
 keep an eye of the keenest interest. And, as I tell you, 
 no doubt before I die I shall see the murderess' son 
 a churchwarden, and a justice of the peace, perhaps a 
 noted and a knighted philanthropist." 
 
 " Are you thinking of choosing some dramatic 
 moment in his career for divulging to him the secret 
 of his true parentage?" Lowood inquired satirically. 
 
 " No," Hummerstone retorted. " That would be 
 more in your line than in mine. And there would be 
 no object in it. I have a scientific bent, and only the 
 scientific aspect of the question interests me. From 
 the other standpoint he'll be a jolly lucky beggar, and 
 ought to be profoundly grateful to me." 
 
 " Yes, but the good mother, and the good mother's 
 real son ? " 
 
 " Oh ! as for her," Hummerstone returned, " since 
 she will never know them, the circumstances will not 
 affect her a jot one way or the other. Her maternal 
 instincts will be satisfied by having a child she believes 
 to be her own. As I say, there's more rubbish talked 
 to the square inch than there are fish in the sea. From 
 the day of his birth to the day of her death, if he lives 
 so long, she will never have the faintest suspicion that 
 he is not her son. Nor will she be a jot less fond of 
 him than if he were." He laughed a confident, com- 
 placent laugh. 
 
 " As to the other boy," he resumed, " according to 
 your theories of heredity, the mere accident of his 
 environment will be of no significance. The child of 
 superior cultivated persons, he will, without difficulty, 
 rise superior to his surroundings, and will eventually, 
 by his own efforts and inherited instincts, replace him- 
 self upon the social level from which he will have been 
 temporarily removed."
 
 The Experiment 11 
 
 " I wouldn't go so far as that," Lowood objected. 
 " When you've got the whole weight of Society press- 
 ing you down into the gutter, it is no such easy task 
 to rise to the surface." 
 
 " No," Hummerstone retorted cynically, " that is 
 precisely what I say. But started floating comfort- 
 ably on the surface in a word, given a favouring 
 environment, and the murderess' son will hold his own 
 with the duke's." 
 
 Lowood shook his head. 
 
 " Facilis descensus ! The murderess' son will find 
 it far easier to revert to his mother's moral and social 
 level than will the other boy, no matter what his ca- 
 pacities, find it to rise to that from which he sprang." 
 
 " Well," said Hummerstone, calmly, " that is what 
 I am putting to the test. Admit that it will be an inter- 
 esting experiment." 
 
 Lowood changed his philosophic tone. 
 
 " Look here, Hummerstone," he urged, " you don't 
 really mean to do this thing." 
 
 " Look here, Lowood, I really mean to do it. As I 
 say, I was never more serious in my life." 
 
 Lowood flushed to the roots of his hair. Sensitive 
 and sympathetic, it was an effort to him to take up the 
 attitude to which his conscience now moved him. 
 
 " Then, why the deuce," he broke out, " did you 
 make me your confidant? I tell you I don't stand by 
 and see it done. It's it's devilish. Do you mean 
 to say you can't see it yourself? Hummerstone, for 
 Heaven's sake drop it. I've told you before, you've 
 got a blind spot where your conscience ought to be. 
 With you, what you call science is a fetish. Every- 
 thing must be sacrificed to it. But, for Heaven's sake, 
 stop short of this. This is devilish." 
 
 Hummerstone took his cigar from between his lips 
 and laughed. 
 
 " Lowood ! you're nothing but an old woman. You 
 ought to have been a parson, not a man of science."
 
 12 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Hummerstone," Lowood appealed excitedly, 
 " we're old friends, you and I. I don't want to do 
 anything unfriendly, but if you persist I swear I'll 
 warn somebody; I'll get a magistrate's warrant or 
 something to restrain you. I won't stand by and see 
 such a thing done. I swear I won't." 
 
 Hummerstone again took out his cigar, looked 
 across at his excited host and once more laughed. 
 
 He looked at him again, however, and did not laugh. 
 He could see that Lowood was in dangerous earnest, 
 his dark eyes burning in his sallow face, his hands 
 working nervously. 
 
 He remained silent for a minute. Then he said in 
 a bantering tone : 
 
 " Oh, all right ! Don't excite yourself. Your ser- 
 mon has converted me. Your light has found my 
 blind spot. I see the error of my ways. I'll refrain 
 from my experiment. The murderess' son shall grow 
 up in his normal murderous environment. The esti- 
 mable lady's son shall grow up in his normal estimable 
 surroundings. Everything shall be as Providence or- 
 dained. And let us live happy ever after. All the same, 
 my friend, you're a fool. And owing to your folly 
 science will have lost an interesting object lesson." 
 
 Lowood was only half convinced. For, despite the 
 other's bantering retraction, his cold eyes showed a 
 curious and repulsive eagerness, but, ever amiable and 
 optimistic, he hoped that he would keep his promise. 
 
 He moved impulsively over to him with a hand 
 outstretched. 
 
 " Thanks, for promising. Perhaps it seemed cur- 
 rish of me to threaten. But really, Hummerstone, seen 
 from a human, instead of from a coldly experimental 
 standpoint, the thing would be nothing less than fiend- 
 ish." 
 
 " Oh, all right ! " the other said roughly. " No need 
 for sentiment! And I'm not feeling particularly cor-
 
 The Experiment 13 
 
 dial to you. When it comes to threats of magistrates 
 and that sort of business " 
 
 The door opened. Rose, the parlour-maid who 
 attended upon the three young, struggling medicoes 
 waiting for patients behind the door in Queen Anne 
 Street, appeared. 
 
 " Dr. Hummerstone's wanted at Harley Street," she 
 announced with the calmness which some years of 
 familiarity with such summons had bred in her. 
 " Somebody has come for him in a cab. And he'll 
 please to go at once."
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TWENTY - THREE YEARS LATER 
 
 ON a windy morning in September, twenty-three years 
 later, Lowood, now a gaunt and iron-grey man, closed 
 the door of the house in Queen Anne Street for ever 
 behind him. 
 
 The door was no longer armoured with brass plates. 
 Now it bore no single one even, only a square patch, 
 which had the appearance of a gash upon its otherwise 
 smooth face, showed where Lowood's own plate had 
 long reigned in dignified solitude and whence it had 
 been recently removed. 
 
 For Lowood had prospered better than had those 
 medical fellows of his who had once shared the house 
 with him, competing in friendly rivalry for the goal 
 of a West-End practice. One after the other, the two 
 fellows had dropped away, one altogether from the 
 medical ranks, the other gravitating to the level of a 
 Bloomsbury dispensary. And Lowood had remained 
 alone, his growing practice enabling him to retain the 
 whole house, with the exception of an upper floor 
 which he let for a rent which paid his taxes. 
 
 For twenty-eight years he had been in practice. 
 During the first half of these carking poverty and 
 anxious cares had been his bedfellows, while for the 
 second half he had been so busy and hard-worked that 
 he and his bed had but the barest sleeping acquaintance. 
 
 Yet through all the monotonous grind of it, the 
 sombre procession of human wrecks which drifted 
 daily through his consulting-rooms, leaving their sal- 
 vage-dues of guineas, he had retained one hope.
 
 Twenty-three Years Later 15 
 
 " When I shall have saved enough to bring me in a 
 decent little income," he had told himself, " I will cast 
 my professional slough, will leave all this behind me; 
 will live for a few years at all events before I die." 
 
 Contemplative, sentimental, fond of Nature, he re- 
 garded his life with its monotonous routine, its prison 
 of four walls and four-and- forty cramping conven- 
 tions, as a penal servitude to which, for no fault of his 
 own, so far as he could see, save and except for his 
 natural desire not to starve, a mistaken civilisation had 
 condemned him. 
 
 For three weeks in every year he had allowed him- 
 self a respite. On an August morning when the great 
 City was groaning beneath the sultry sun and the stag- 
 nant, malodorous exhalations of its sanitary and moral 
 evils, he would, in a mood of savage ecstasy, don an 
 old pair of shoes, and a loose coat, and steal from his 
 house like a thief in the dawn, to trudge his way into 
 the country. No train for him, no tram, no motor ! 
 
 Even his feet were too quick for his mind's mood, 
 and when he had walked himself footsore, as a man 
 may do easily who for a year has only walked the dis- 
 tance from one professional duty to the next, he would 
 sleep for a night at some little wayside inn, or at a 
 farmhouse, or even in a barn, and not until the follow- 
 ing morning would he take train for some spot as far 
 removed from London as trams go. 
 
 Then for the space of three delirious weeks he would 
 remember not to die but to live, and would feast 
 his fancy on a promise he had made to himself that one 
 day he would so live every day in the year, and ^ , cr 
 go back to his professional servitude. 
 
 And this windy morning of September was the 
 morning of his first day of liberty of his first day of 
 life, as he regarded it. He drew to the door behind 
 him, the door with its oblong wound where his brass 
 plate had been, with unnecessary emphasis. It was 
 the full stop to his story of closing it behind him. But
 
 16 The Whips of Time 
 
 the energy was not without a certain nervous senti- 
 ment, which in a woman would have shown itself in 
 tears. 
 
 A moment later the sentiment had passed. He knew 
 that he was leaving behind him nothing regrettable, 
 nothing save habit, to which, as to an old coat, famil- 
 iarity had lent a sort of value. He walked down the 
 steps and crossed the pavement to the cab awaiting him 
 with an odd shivery sense of being in his shirt sleeves. 
 By the time he had reached the station, however, and 
 had taken his place in the train, reaction came. The 
 slight chill attendant on discarding a long-worn habit 
 was succeeded by the glow of embarking on a new 
 career. 
 
 He was even excited. His parchment face was lit 
 as though by a lamp behind it. His eyes, still dark 
 and keen and strangely young in his lined and sallow 
 face, sparkled with eagerness. 
 
 He looked like a man who had not only thrown off 
 a burden but like one who had some new alluring goal 
 in view. 
 
 And this he had. Otherwise it is probable he could 
 not so lightly have doffed the life habits of nearly 
 thirty years' standing. 
 
 A one-ideaed man, his nature was to throw himself 
 heart and soul into some or another project or specu- 
 lation and never to lose grip of it until he had wrested 
 from it all it had to yield. 
 
 Then only he would toss it aside with a sigh and 
 would find life a boredom until some other project or 
 idea took possession of him. 
 
 On the day on which he had found himself the 
 owner of a round sum, of which the interest would 
 enable him to live decently, in his quick, impulsive 
 fashion he had taken steps to dispose of his practice 
 and had written off to half a dozen house and estate 
 agents for lists of all the houses to be let in the United 
 Kingdom.
 
 Twenty -three Years Later 17 
 
 He had not read two before, in the same impulsive 
 fashion, he had made his plans. 
 
 For at the top of the third page of the second list 
 his eye was arrested by the word " Scrope-Denton." 
 
 " Now, where in the world have I heard of Scrope- 
 Denton?" he reflected with a puzzled frown. The 
 next moment memory flooded his brain. He felt the 
 bone-searching cold of a night he had described as 
 arctic; he saw Hummerstone seated on the other side 
 of his fireplace, in a chair he had since exchanged for 
 one more handsome if less comfortable. He smelt oid 
 Ganz's cigar. He recalled the flat-cold eye, heard the 
 bland, cold voice of his friend, in its preamble, 
 " You've been reading the Sarah Munnings murder 
 case," and so forth, until the whole project had been 
 unfolded. He recalled his own shocked emotions, his 
 horror at that notion of foisting the murderess' child 
 upon the innocent, high-bred mother. He recalled his 
 friend's bantering retraction under stress of his own 
 threats. He remembered the summons which had 
 abruptly ended their talk. He remembered how he 
 had lain awake till morning, possessed by a dread lest 
 in spite of everything Hummerstone would do, or had 
 already done, the appalling thing he contemplated. 
 
 For two whole years he had been unable to wring 
 a word from him upon the subject. He had merely 
 laughed and changed it. 
 
 Till one evening, when further taxed, he had ad- 
 mitted, with scarcely a tremor of his cold, heavy eye- 
 lids, with no shade of remorse in his chill, bland voice, 
 obviously without a sense that there was anything of 
 which to be ashamed, that he had indeed carried out 
 his intention. 
 
 " I have made a note of it for future reference," he 
 said ; " for the present I have dropped it from my mind. 
 The experiment is not ripe. Character is not estab- 
 lished until the subject is well into the teens. And my 
 experiment is at present a two-year-old."
 
 18 The Whips of Time 
 
 Then he had spoken of other things and had shortly 
 afterwards taken his leave. 
 
 There had been a third man present, a lawyer and 
 an old friend of Lowood's. So soon as Hummerstone 
 had gone he exclaimed : 
 
 " Hummerstone had better look out as to what he 
 is doing. The law doesn't let chaps play fast and loose 
 that way with other people's youngsters. Beastly 
 bounder thing to do, anyway." 
 
 Lowood had been for a while overcome. It affected 
 him profoundly. The thing seemed so dastardly, a 
 violation of all the ethics of professional and human 
 honour, this callous defrauding a mother of her child, 
 substituting for it the child of a monster of crime. 
 
 Who could say what horrible happenings the fraud 
 might not bring about? The environment into which 
 he would have been naturally born would no doubt 
 have served for a restraining force and safeguard for 
 the criminal child. In the position of greater respon- 
 sibility and freer action which had been artificially 
 thrust upon him, he would lack such restraining influ- 
 ence upon his inherited instincts, would have wider 
 scope for their indulgence. 
 
 It made him physically sick to think about it. He 
 conceived on the spot a violent and ineradicable aver- 
 sion to his old chum. Before Sibley and he parted 
 that evening he said : 
 
 " Look here, Sibley, I can't get this admission of 
 Hummerstone's out of my head. I suppose we can do 
 nothing now. One can't very well inform upon him. 
 Besides, we have no evidence. I don't even know the 
 mother's name, the date of the birth, or, in fact, any- 
 thing. I have only Hummerstone's word. And no 
 doubt he would say the whole thing had been a hoax. 
 But I should feel easier if, before you go, you would 
 draw up a legal statement of the case, setting forth his 
 admission. Let us both sign it. It might be of service 
 one day, though Heaven only knows how."
 
 Twenty -three Years Later Id 
 
 This Sibley had done. But: 
 
 " It will never be the least use," he had said. " Best 
 to leave bad alone instead of making it worse. And of 
 course Hummerstone would deny the whole thing, and 
 would say he had only been hoaxing us." 
 
 The document had been drawn up and signed. Lo- 
 wood, recalling the facts, knew that the statement was 
 safe at the bottom of his strong box. 
 
 But the whole series of events had escaped his 
 memory until the word " Scrope-Denton " at the top 
 of a page of the house-agent's list had started these 
 cinematograph recollections. 
 
 Scrope-Denton was, of course, the place which 
 Hummerstone had named as being the home of the 
 mother upon whom the murderess' boy had been 
 foisted. 
 
 Immediately his mind took fire. Scrope-Denton 
 should be his first halting-place. It would be interest- 
 ing to follow up Hummerstone's experiment. The 
 subject had never again been opened, and the men had 
 drifted apart. Whether or not Hummerstone had kept 
 in view the victim of his scientific curiosity he had no 
 means of knowing. But he himself was irresistibly 
 impelled to learn the sequel. 
 
 Twenty-three years had passed. If the child of the 
 murderess were still living, Scrope-Denton would 
 doubtless have interesting psychological developments 
 to show. 
 
 It was the anticipation of witnessing these which 
 filled his mind and lighted his eyes that morning of his 
 journey. Oddly enough he had never been able to free 
 himself of a conscience-stricken sense of complicity in 
 the affair. 
 
 Whatsoever might have happened or might be to 
 happen, could he consider himself wholly blameless? 
 
 Was there not something he might have done to 
 redress that terrible wrong which had been inflicted ?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HOMER COTTAGE 
 
 As he travelled he experienced a momentary setback 
 to his speculations. He remembered that he did not 
 know the name of the persons upon whom had been 
 thrust that cuckoo-offspring. 
 
 Hummerstone had told him no more than the name 
 of the little country town in which they lived, with the 
 qualification : 
 
 " They are the people of the place." 
 
 The setback lasted no longer than minutes. Then 
 he reflected that in such a country town as his flying 
 visit had shown Scrope-Denton to be he would have no 
 difficulty in identifying " the people of the place." 
 
 He had run down one early Sunday morning, re- 
 turning the same evening, having allowed himself an 
 hour in which to inspect the only available domicile 
 upon the house-agent's list. He asked no better. If, 
 as he was not able to doubt, it possessed a structure 
 of bricks and mortar, Homer Cottage had the grace 
 to conceal the fact within an artistic tangle of fine old 
 burnished ivy-leaves, which even muffled the two tall 
 chimney-stacks as though they had been long sore- 
 throats. 
 
 It was set in a prim old garden with a narrow box- 
 bordered gravelled walk up to the porch. And the 
 porch appeared as a mere clump of fragrant honey- 
 suckle obligingly parting in the middle to give entrance 
 to the cottage. On either side of the walk, set in 
 smooth lawns, stood a peacock on a pedestal, clipped 
 somewhat askew in yew, spreading a lopsided tail in
 
 Homer Cottage 21 
 
 which, behold! there were no jewel-eyes to justify the 
 vanity. 
 
 All this, seen in the mellow light of a softly-clouded 
 July afternoon, had made such a charming picture for 
 his town- jaded senses that he had mentally signed his 
 lease of tenancy before he had opened the tall white 
 gate admitting to it. 
 
 But on this later windy autumn afternoon, with drab 
 leaves everywhere, taking to their timid heels and 
 scuttling with scared aimlessness from one place of 
 refuge to another, as though, having set the fashion of 
 falling, they were suddenly abashed to find themselves 
 in a minority upon the ground, Homer Cottage looked, 
 perhaps, less inviting than it had done on his first visit. 
 The white gate had a rusty latch which lifted grudg- 
 ingly, a rusty hinge on which it opened stiffly. 
 
 The blinds of the windows were drawn like eyelids 
 upon unwelcoming eyes. As he walked up the straight 
 path, so clean-swept that it seemed to have been 
 scoured, the askew peacocks looked askance at him, 
 while the honeysuckle porch was a mere shroud of 
 shrivelled leaves. 
 
 The dark-tiled hall bore the aspect of a child whose 
 temper had been tried by having his face too vigor- 
 ously scrubbed. Under its soap-sud shine lurked sulky 
 recollections. 
 
 In the middle of the tiled floor stood the two little 
 elderly spinsters, Miss and Miss Ursula Epithite, 
 whose tenant he was about to be. 
 
 He had met and had found them quaintly amusing, 
 on his former visit. Now they stood waiting to greet 
 him, their fresh-coloured faces hard and unsmiling, 
 their eyes like flint stones. 
 
 " Oh ! good-evening, Dr. Lowood," the one he had 
 taken to be the elder, but who was in truth the younger, 
 addressed him. " I trust you have had a pleasant 
 journey." 
 
 There was such a sense of chill and unease about the
 
 22 The Whips of Time 
 
 house that Lowood, feeling in his amiable fashion the 
 necessity of some agreeable element, smiled and replied 
 that his journey had been all one could have wished. 
 He extended a cordial hand. But for some reason he 
 was unable to divine, the hand was ignored. 
 
 The two old fresh-coloured faces remained stormily 
 upturned to his tall height, the two pairs of flinty eyes 
 held his like bayonet-points. 
 
 " We apologise, doctor," Miss Ursula the younger, 
 who assumed the prerogative of the elder, resumed 
 with chill formality, " we apologise for trespassing in 
 your hall, but there is something I feel it my duty to 
 explain to you and I did not feel justified in permitting 
 my sister, who is not strong, to stand while I explain it 
 in the draught of the garden." 
 
 " But, my dear madam," Lowood said genially, feel- 
 ing rather mystified by her demeanour, " pray do not 
 apologise. And certainly do not on any account stand 
 in the draught of the garden, nor talk about trespass. 
 You are in your own house." 
 
 " Pardon me," Miss Ursula objected stiffly, " the 
 house is no longer ours. Your " 
 
 " Your legal tenancy began at twelve o'clock to-day," 
 Miss Epithite shrilled in a voice which was a bowdler- 
 ised edition of her sister's more severe one. 
 
 Miss Ursula turned upon her irritably. 
 
 " Pray, Charlotte," she said, " leave me to speak to 
 Dr. Lowood. You know I can never bear interrup- 
 tions. They confuse me. Besides, it takes longer for 
 two people to explain a thing than it does for one. 
 And I will not allow you to expose your neuralgia to 
 the draught from that window longer than is abso- 
 lutely necessary. You know there is always a slight 
 draught from that window." 
 
 Lowood was a man of tact. His professional ex- 
 perience had taught him many things. He began to 
 have an inkling of the meaning of his extraordinary 
 reception.
 
 Homer Cottage 23 
 
 He put out a hand to open the door nearest to him. 
 It was the right one. It had an air of preparation. 
 There were vases of flowers on the table. A fire 
 burned upon the hearth. 
 
 " But," he said genially, " I cannot permit Miss 
 Miss Charlotte - 
 
 " Miss Epithite," she corrected grimly, with an in- 
 jured glance at the sister who had usurped her pre- 
 rogative. 
 
 " I cannot permit Miss Epithite," he began again, 
 " to remain another moment in the draught if 
 draught there be." Both ladies turned upon him acri- 
 moniously. Both said together, " There has always 
 been a draught. The frame does not fit properly." 
 
 Then Miss Ursula turned upon Miss Epithite. 
 " Pray, Charlotte," she enjoined, " do not interrupt 
 me. You know interruptions confuse me." 
 
 Lowood threw the door wide. " Both of you, 
 please, come into this room, and, while we talk, sit 
 beside the fire." 
 
 Immediately the younger's hard eyes sought the 
 elder's with at the same time a question and a gleam 
 which said that whatsoever the answer might be it 
 would not in the slightest degree affect her own action. 
 
 Miss Epithite nodded, however, almost impercept- 
 ibly. But Lowood detected it. His perceptions were 
 singularly acute. 
 
 Miss Epithite turned again to him. 
 
 " You invite us to enter? " she demanded as a con- 
 stable cautions a prisoner he has arrested that all he 
 says or does will be used against him. 
 
 " I invite you to enter," Lowood replied ceremoni- 
 ously. " More than that," he added, " I invite you to 
 feel at home." 
 
 " Never, sir," cried Miss Ursula, with a flash of the 
 eye and a ring in her voice as of one who will go to the 
 stake for her principles. 
 
 They permitted themselves to enter just within the
 
 24 The Whips of Time 
 
 doorway. And there they stood firmly, their eyes fixed 
 obstinately on the floor, as though with the lease of 
 tenancy they had parted with the right even to glance 
 round upon their properties. 
 
 " I hope my sister and I have too much conscience," 
 Miss Ursula told him, with a stiff and bitter mouth, 
 " to feel at home in a house and a room that have 
 ceased to be ours." 
 
 Lowood perceived by this time that he might spare 
 himself the pains of attempting to propitiate these hard 
 old women. They had made up their obstinate old 
 minds, it was plain, to regard his tenancy as a usurpa- 
 tion, albeit he had without demur acceded to their 
 rather exorbitant terms and his tenancy was to suit 
 their own as much as his interests. 
 
 It was plain that they viewed him from the irrational 
 standpoint of a foe, who, contrary to their will and 
 principles, had been picketed upon them. 
 
 " Very well, ladies," he said quietly, " I am sorry 
 you should take so unusual a view of the relation of 
 landlord and tenant. I shall be pleased to learn in 
 what way I can be of service to you." 
 
 He was met by the same unflinching enmity. 
 
 " My sister and I have no intention whatsoever, 
 Dr. Lowood," Miss Ursula insisted in the same hard 
 voice, " of asking any favour of you. I thought only 
 that it had not been fully explained on your first visit 
 that we are not absolutely vacating the house, but pro- 
 pose in fact although our doing so will be quite 
 imperceptible to you to occupy three small rooms 
 which form an annex of the right wing of the cottage, 
 and which our father, John Epithite, built on to 
 Homer Cottage in the days of our greater affluence. 
 When you went over the house we carefully refrained 
 from showing you these rooms as we had it in our 
 minds that we might be unable to find accommodation 
 elsewhere, and might therefore be forced to fall back 
 upon the annex as our temporary home. This has
 
 Homer Cottage 25 
 
 happened. We must either leave the neighbourhood 
 in which we have we have " 
 
 " Resided," her sister prompted eagerly, pleased at 
 the opportunity of an edgewise word. 
 
 But Miss Ursula turned upon her harshly. " Pray, 
 Charlotte," she insisted, " do not continually interrupt 
 me ; ' resided ' was the word I was about to use 
 resided, Dr. Lowood, for a great number of years. 
 Our doing so will not inconvenience you in the least. 
 We have staked off a small portion of the orchard, 
 beyond which we shall never trespass. Unfortunately 
 it was impossible to do this without including a small 
 apple-tree which, of course, legally belongs to you. 
 Fortunately, it is old and the fruit of inferior flavour. 
 We trust, therefore," she concluded acidly, as though 
 the inferior flavour of the fruit had got into her voice, 
 " that this arrangement will be agreeable to you." 
 
 To speak frankly, Lowood found the arrangement 
 far from being agreeable. A kind man and a sensitive 
 one, the notion of keeping this hostile old couple for- 
 ever on the premises, to treat him as an unwelcome 
 intruder, no doubt to watch his every movement with 
 inimical eyes, was distinctly unpleasing. Had he had 
 a suspicion of such a condition of his lease, greatly as 
 Homer Cottage pleased him, he would, I think, have 
 declined unhesitatingly to occupy it. 
 
 Yet how could he now say anything but that their 
 proposition was to his taste, when he suspected that 
 the same narrow means which compelled them to let 
 their home to him was the reason also of their new 
 condition. 
 
 " The arrangement will give me no inconvenience 
 whatsoever," he said. " But pray use the garden when 
 and how you wish. It, like the world, is large enough 
 for all of us." 
 
 Miss Ursula bent a frosty head. " My sister and I 
 are obliged to you," she said frigidly, " but, as I have 
 already said, we ask favours from nobody. The small
 
 26 The Whips of Time 
 
 portion of the orchard which we have staked off will 
 be all we shall require. Come, Charlotte ! we must not 
 detain Dr. Lowood longer." 
 
 They moved to the door. Their black, shabby 
 gowns, both made precisely alike, were beaded all over 
 with bugles. The light from the two long windows of 
 the room, being caught and reflected by these, gave an 
 impression that their cold old persons were thinly 
 encrusted with ice. Lowood, receiving the impression, 
 smiled to himself as he held the door for them. Then 
 another thought occurring, he inquired on an impulse: 
 
 " Pray, Miss Epithite, can you tell me which is con- 
 sidered to be the family of most consequence in 
 Scrope-Denton ? " 
 
 The elder lady with a dip of her head relegated the 
 question to the younger who, harder and more domi- 
 nant, had always taken the lead. 
 
 Before replying Miss Ursula raised her hard eyes 
 and seemed to probe his for the motive of his question. 
 
 It seemed that she detected an unworthy one. 
 
 She said ungraciously : 
 
 " The Leghs of Hooton Hoo are not ' considered,' 
 Dr. Lowood, they are the family of most consequence 
 here. Hooton Hoo is a magnificent old place. And 
 the family came over with the Conqueror ! " 
 
 Lowood was agreeably surprised that she should 
 vouchsafe so much information to him in a sentence. 
 Till he saw from her eyes, which now turned upon her 
 sister with a species of challenge, that the information 
 was addressed rather to her than to himself. And he 
 guessed, from the sister's immediate and spirited pro- 
 test, that the subject had long been a bone of conten- 
 tion between them. 
 
 " Oh, no, Dr. Lowood," Miss Epithite objected. 
 " My sister mistakes. The Leghs of Hooton Hoo are 
 a good old family, of course, but they are less aristo- 
 cratic than the Hestroydes. You forget, Ursula," she 
 continued, turning upon her sister, " that Mowbreck
 
 Homer Cottage 27 
 
 Hall is really a handsomer house, if the park is smaller, 
 than that of Hooton Hoo. And the Hestroyde gentle- 
 men have more frequently married ladies of title than 
 the Leghs have." 
 
 " I repeat, Dr. Lowood," Miss Ursula insisted in a 
 terrifying voice, " since you asked me the question, 
 that the Leghs of Hooton Hoo are the family of most 
 consequence in Scrope-Denton. I have not yet broken 
 my sister of a delusion from which she suffers that 
 the Hestroydes of Mowbreck Hall, important though 
 they are, are of as much importance as the Leghs." 
 
 " But, Dr. Lowood," Miss Epithite insisted, in her 
 eagerness clutching at his nearest arm with a bony 
 hand, " everybody here will tell you, I assure you, that 
 the Hestroydes " 
 
 " Well, well, ladies," Lowood interposed amicably, 
 " pray, trouble no further. It is a point evidently too 
 nice to decide. But tell me of what the family con- 
 sists. Who are the members of it? " 
 
 " You mean of the Hestroydes ? " Miss Epithite said 
 quickly. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood means, of course, of the Leghs," Miss 
 Ursula asserted. " He was asking about the family 
 of most consequence here." 
 
 The two ladies exchanged combatant looks and 
 began both to speak at the same time. 
 
 Lowood raised a placatory hand. He kept his pa- 
 tience admirably. 
 
 "Well, ladies," he said, "to tell you the truth, I 
 am interested in both these families. Perhaps Miss 
 Epithite will be good enough to tell me about the Hes- 
 troydes and Miss Ursula will tell me of her friends, 
 the Leghs." 
 
 Now she turned her combatant looks upon him. 
 
 " Indeed," she protested coldly. " Do not suppose I 
 presume to claim the Leghs of Hooton Hoo for friends. 
 My sister and I do not pretend to be more than the 
 daughters of John Epithite who and his father be-
 
 28 The Whips of Time 
 
 fore him was the principal bookseller of Riccalby, 
 our county town; a man respected by all who knew 
 him, as I hope his daughters are too. But it would 
 be absurd to suppose that we have an acquaintance 
 with the Leghs of Hooton Hoo or " she darted a 
 sharp glance at her sister " or even with the Hes- 
 troydes of Mowbreck Hall." 
 
 Before Miss Epithite had had time to utter the retort 
 he could see she was preparing, Lowood said : 
 
 " At all events you will know of what the family 
 of the Leghs consists; how many sons and daughters 
 there are 
 
 " There are no daughters and no other sons except 
 Mr. Robert Legh, who is an orphan." 
 
 " About twenty-three years of age, is he? " 
 
 " About that age, I believe." 
 
 But Miss Epithite corrected her. " Oh, no, Ursula, 
 you forget. He can be only twenty-two. You re- 
 member that day Mrs. Legh first brought him to the 
 High Street. That was just twenty years ago, the 
 same year mother died. And he could not have been 
 a day over two years old. If you remember he wore 
 a white embroidered frock and his sleeves were tied up 
 with spotted ribbons. Not a day over two years old, 
 I'm sure he wasn't." 
 
 Miss Ursula, without appearing to have heard her, 
 repeated slowly: 
 
 " Just twenty-three, I should say, Dr. Lowood. If 
 anything perhaps a few weeks older." 
 
 " But, Ursula," Miss Epithite insisted, " surely you 
 forget. Young Mr. Hestroyde is twenty-three, and 
 I'm sure he looks two years older than Mr. Robert." 
 
 " They were born the same month, Charlotte," Miss 
 Ursula said acridly. " Their mothers were cousins 
 and were married the same day. The double wedding 
 of Mr. Legh, the principal gentleman of Scrope-Den- 
 ton, and of Mr. Hestroyde, the second principal gentle- 
 man, to two cousins, both on the same day and a
 
 Homer Cottage 29 
 
 grand wedding it was ! was the talk of the county. 
 And the infant sons of the two ladies were born the 
 same month a year later. There were great doings. 
 We heard of it in Riccalby." 
 
 " It was the first time for years a Hestroyde gentle- 
 man had married a lady without a title," Miss Epithite 
 rapped in. 
 
 " Were the boys born here? " Lowood inquired. 
 
 Miss Ursula threw a searching glance at him. 
 
 " I suppose you know," she said, " or you would not 
 ask. There was no doctor round about here of suffi- 
 cient importance to to preside at the birth of a 
 young Mr. Legh nor even of a young Mr. Hes- 
 troyde. The " she paused for terms of due deli- 
 cacy, but was too quick for her sister, who began 
 eagerly to supply them " the events were trans- 
 ferred to London. And I've heard that Mrs. Legh 
 and Mrs. Hestroyde, being much attached to one an- 
 other, went to the same nursing-home." 
 
 " You forget, Ursula," Miss Epithite began shrilly, 
 her eyes filling with fresh battle-light, " you for- 
 get " 
 
 But Lowood's patience now gave out. He felt him- 
 self unequal to another tussle from which each would 
 emerge more convinced than before of her own infalli- 
 bility. He made a slight movement as though in re- 
 sponse to some motion of departure upon their 
 parts. 
 
 " I am greatly obliged to you," he said. " One is 
 interested to know something of his neighbours." 
 
 The ladies had no alternative but to take their leave. 
 This they did with a sudden accession of the frost 
 which the warmth of battle had slightly thawed. 
 
 Lowood, closing the door behind them, moved to the 
 fire in order to warm his hands. 
 
 " The next time I seek information about these 
 Leghs and Hestroydes," he reflected, " I will seek it 
 outside Homer Cottage."
 
 30 The Whips of Time 
 
 Presently he rubbed his now thawed hands and 
 smiled into the fire. 
 
 " By Jove," he said aloud, " this is better than I 
 could nave anticipated. I have not only a fascinating 
 psychological study before me, but an interesting prob- 
 lem of identity. Upon which now of these ladies of 
 Scrope-Denton, each of whom seems to have an equal 
 claim to consequence, did Hummerstone palm off the 
 murderess' child? That is the problem I must set 
 myself to solve."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SCROPE - DENTON 
 
 FOR the week following upon his arrival at Homer 
 Cottage, Lowood allowed his problem to remain un- 
 assailed. 
 
 He gave himself up to the luxurious realisation of 
 that new freedom to which he had looked forward for 
 years. He drew deep draughts of it into his soul, at 
 the same time filling his long contracted lungs and 
 quickening his long under-aerated blood with clean 
 delicious air. The days were fine with the mellow 
 fineness of September, which, rich with the afterglow 
 of summer, yet holds a tang of winter freshness. He 
 spent them from early morning until evening in mak- 
 ing acquaintance with the neighbourhood. He was 
 well rewarded. The place was a little paradise. 
 
 Below was a charming indented stretch of pictur- 
 esque coast with a sheltered sea, out of which rose two 
 islands of rock, appearing, with their softly-rounded 
 backs, like mammoth mother and child turtles gently 
 afloat on the quiet waters. Above was a range of 
 mountains, the fine varying outlines of which lifted in 
 massive tranquillity cloudwards, like giants in converse 
 with God. Between sea and mountains lay the town, 
 half sheltered from the winds yet freshened by whiffs 
 of it, which came sweeping and eddying down the 
 mountain clefts, as though, suddenly finding them- 
 selves trapped in the valleys, they were making mad 
 efforts of escape. 
 
 The main street curved and straggled like a horse 
 zigzagging up a hill. From it at intervals roads and
 
 32 The Whips of Time 
 
 narrow pathways climbed the mountains or dropped 
 down to the sea. It was bordered with shops and 
 boasted a large, old-fashioned inn, which, having re- 
 cently added a new-fashioned wing, had straightway 
 called itself the " Grand Hotel." For the place was a 
 seaside resort for such as shunned the throng. 
 
 The church, too, stood in a curve of the highway; 
 a Norman building with a quaint churchyard and 
 lichen-embroidered tombstones, reminding the trav- 
 eller, as he went his way to purchase food and rai- 
 ment from the shops, that, take heed as he would to 
 his earthly requirements, it was but to little account, 
 since presently he too would lie mouldering there, and 
 his generation would no longer know him. 
 
 Next door to the church was the ivy-clad rectory, 
 and a door beyond, the doctor's house, which with its 
 burnished plate setting forth his calling proclaimed 
 that he at all events was prepared with drug and lance 
 to fight a valiant battle for all comers with that tyrant 
 who has a lien upon all bones. 
 
 Lowood smiled whimsically, noting his professional 
 brother's big brass plate and blood-hued lamp. 
 
 " I wonder if he mixes his drugs ' with brains, sir,' ' 
 he reflected, as doctors speculate upon one another's 
 methods. 
 
 At the end of a week Lowood had stayed his vora- 
 cious appetite for air and country scenery. And his 
 mental capacities began to ask for some more substance 
 than was supplied by a book and a chat with Polly. 
 
 For Polly, looking not an hour older for the quarter 
 of a century through which she had come with unas- 
 suaged curiosity, was now his fellow-inmate at the 
 cottage. 
 
 The change was vastly to her taste. Habit had 
 failed to convert her natural instincts to a liking for 
 fog and the dingy gloom of London dwelling-places. 
 She was a person of flamboyant tastes. No glare 
 could be too strong, no colours too garish, no sounds
 
 Scrope - Denton 33 
 
 too harsh, no flavours of the palate too pronounced for 
 her. For a week she sat dumb with ecstasy, set in the 
 sunshine of a window and sometimes of the garden, 
 where she made crooning little noises of delight inef- 
 fable, and pruned her wings and plumage as though 
 she considered this new entrancing scene an occasion 
 for smartening her toilette. 
 
 Lowood, seated in the next room, had been vastly 
 amused at Polly's first encounter with Miss Ursula one 
 morning, when the lady believed him to have gone out. 
 
 For it had not taken him long to discover that the 
 ladies, albeit they professed so unyielding a disinclina- 
 tion to trespass in his rooms while he was in them, 
 nevertheless haunted them like shadows the moment 
 he had quitted them. 
 
 He had reason to suspect that they scrutinised 
 closely each and all of his belongings, that they ran- 
 sacked his papers and even read his letters. 
 
 He could not help feeling annoyed. But he was too 
 much of a philosopher to mar his new enjoyment by 
 dwelling upon pin-pricks. 
 
 " When they have satisfied their curiosity they will 
 no doubt desert me for more fruitful pastures," he 
 decided. 
 
 Wherein he showed that, despite his large experi- 
 ence of human nature, there were depths in it he had 
 not probed. For curiosity is a fathomless pit which 
 only deepens the more one puts into it. 
 
 Polly, no doubt, could have told him of this. But 
 Polly was far too astute a person to give herself away 
 by confessing that she shared any of its weaknesses 
 with humanity. 
 
 Lowood, sitting reading in an adjoining room, had 
 heard a door open, had caught the clash of bugles and 
 divined that one of the ladies, believing him to have 
 gone out, had stolen into his room- 
 She had been doubtless informed by Lydia, her 
 maid-servant, of Polly's presence in the house. There
 
 34 The Whips of Time 
 
 was a pause now, however, as though she were taken 
 aback upon seeing the bird. 
 
 Lowood pictured to himself the keen, beadlike eye 
 wherewith Polly would pounce upon the stranger and 
 the stranger's bugles. 
 
 " And pray what are you doing here, you odd crea- 
 ture?" Miss Ursula demanded in a disapproving 
 voice. 
 
 To which, after a pause, Polly returned with mild 
 politeness, and with that singular talent for appropri- 
 ate remark which was her forte : 
 
 " My name's Polly." She paused again. Then 
 in a tone of the intensest interest she demanded, as she 
 had been taught : 
 
 " What's your name? " 
 
 Again Miss Ursula seemed to be taken aback. 
 
 " What is my name you impertinent minx ! " she 
 retorted. " Who ever heard of such assurance? " 
 
 Polly had been accustomed to inhabit the consulting- 
 room, where, safely ensconced behind a screen, and 
 listening with all her ears for that which passed upon 
 the other side of it, she had picked up a good deal of 
 professional information. 
 
 " Pray, Mrs. Smith," she now enjoined in a voice 
 which Lowood recognised as a parody of his own, 
 " pray be seated." 
 
 Lowood, stifling his laughter in the other room, 
 imagined a space of smothered indignation. Then 
 Miss Ursula, angrily : 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the sort, you impudent 
 wretch." 
 
 " Take a pill, dear lady, a small dinner pill," 
 Polly counselled blandly. 
 
 To which Miss Ursula, seething, " I never take pills, 
 you hussy." Whereat Polly replied, in the tone of 
 shocked astonishment which became the adherent of a 
 master who made his (and her own) livelihood by the 
 administration of pills :
 
 Scrope - Denton 35 
 
 " Oh, good gracious ! " 
 
 Then, having come to an end of her professional 
 reminiscences, or it may be detecting a hostile tone, 
 she relapsed, as all parrots do sooner or later, into 
 vituperation : 
 
 " Old Grumpy ! Old Grumpy ! " she rapped out 
 abusively. 
 
 "Old what?" demanded the lady, curiously. 
 
 Polly, the cue being given to her, completed the sen- 
 tence. " Old Grumpy ! Old Grumpy ! " 
 
 " Oh, so I am ' old Grumpy/ am I ? " Miss Ursula 
 said. " No need to ask who taught you that! A nice 
 gentlemanly thing to do, I'm sure." 
 
 " Good-morning, Mother Hubbard," Polly returned 
 in a tone of regretful but distinct dismissal. 
 
 Then had followed such an ominous silence that 
 Lowood, still stifling his laughter, had half wondered 
 whether Miss Epithite's indignation had caused her to 
 fall into a catalepsy or had incited her to a swift and 
 soundless murder. 
 
 He knew Polly too well, however, to believe that 
 she would have yielded up her life and impudence 
 without a shriek. 
 
 While he still wondered, the rustle of skirts and the 
 clash of bugles once more sounded. 
 
 Going presently into the room, Polly's silence was 
 explained to him by finding her cage enveloped in a 
 great woollen antimacassar, which had been done 
 either as a retaliative act on Miss Ursula's part, or it 
 may be to screen her movements from an observer so 
 dangerously clever. 
 
 Whatsoever the motive, Polly had industriously, and 
 perhaps spitefully, gnawed a large peep-hole in the 
 woollen atrocity, which had plainly been a work of 
 painstaking if mistaken artistic aspiration. 
 
 "Heavens! Polly!" he ejaculated, rescuing the 
 maltreated work of art and noting, with rueful eyes,
 
 36 The Whips of Time 
 
 the sincerity of her revenge. " How shall I ever 
 apologise to these old women ? " 
 
 Whereat Polly adroitly changed the subject, inform- 
 ing him in a gay and ribald voice that : 
 
 " Old King Cole was a mer-ry old soul ! 
 A mer-ry old soul was he ! "
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MISSES EPITHITE 
 
 LOWOOD, a few days after his arrival in Scrope-Den- 
 ton, received confirmation of that adage which assures 
 us that " the world is small." It would be more accu- 
 rate to say, not that the world is small but that the 
 orbits in which its denizens move are small, and that 
 the allied group of persons with whom our fates are 
 linked come therefore readily into relation. 
 
 In his isolated position of having no acquaintance in 
 the neighbourhood, Lowood, a gregarious and sociable 
 person, was thrown upon his " Epithets," as he styled 
 them, for brief exchanges of idea. As we take mus- 
 tard and cayenne pepper for their unpleasing, rather 
 than for their pleasing effects upon the palate, so from 
 time to time he returned to brief and acrid snatches of 
 the old ladies' talk. Their hard, fresh-coloured old 
 faces reminded him, as did their converse, of crab- 
 apples which had grown upon a tree in his father's 
 orchard, and which, although their sharp flavour had 
 set his teeth on edge, and could only be taken with a 
 valorous screwing up of will and face, yet had had a 
 certain gruesome fascination for him. 
 
 The annex of three rooms which they occupied was 
 sufficiently comfortable to relieve his mind of its first 
 sense of guilty compunction in usurping their home. 
 
 The compunction, however, still stirred when, on 
 seeking the orchard, he would find these two obstinate 
 old women seated, cloaked and bonneted, within the 
 small rectangle of grass (with the ill-flavoured apple- 
 tree in a corner) which with their own hard, old hands
 
 38 The Whips of Time 
 
 they had staked off for their personal use. They had 
 manufactured a fence of strips of wood split from egg- 
 boxes, painted green, and placed at more or less regu- 
 lar intervals, and connected by a length of old rope. 
 
 Within this reservation, with its fence about three 
 feet high, they sat for all the world, Lowood reflected, 
 like a couple of old ostriches; their backs turned reso- 
 lutely on that beyond which was leased to the usurper, 
 their eyes chained to their own portion of turf, and to 
 their own ill-flavoured apple-tree, or bent upon their 
 knitting or upon one another in the combatant looks 
 of some wordy war which, for the nonce, was waging 
 between them. 
 
 When Lowood approached they gave at first no 
 sign of perceiving him, and if he desired a sip of their 
 hard-savoured talk he was compelled to stand firm, 
 and by dint of speaking in a loud, insistent voice, as of 
 one calling to another across a distance, so to compel 
 their attention. 
 
 " Charlotte," Miss Ursula would then say, suddenly 
 lifting her eyes from her knitting, " I thought I heard 
 somebody speaking." 
 
 " No, Ursula," Charlotte would answer. " It was 
 only the wind in the apple-tree." She stated it always 
 in the singular, as though even the idea of the other 
 apple-trees had been let. 
 
 Usually it was not until he had turned to depart that 
 the old ladies, who in their hearts were dying for a 
 gossip, would seem to observe him. Then : 
 
 " Why, is that you, Dr. Lowood ? " Miss Ursula 
 would say sourly. " I suppose you are taking a stroll 
 in your orchard? " 
 
 " Yes," he would answer. " Will you ladies give 
 me the pleasure of your company?" 
 
 " My sister and I are obliged to you," she would 
 retort, " but we have already been walking in our 
 garden and find ourselves fatigued." 
 
 Their " garden " was about ten feet square, and of
 
 The Misses Epithite 39 
 
 this a third was taken up by the gnarled, sprawling 
 branches of the apple-tree. 
 
 Then they would fix him with their flinty eyes, 
 probing his face for the discomfiture they desired to 
 arouse in him. 
 
 But after a few mornings he ceased to be discom- 
 fited. He knew human nature sufficiently well to be 
 aware that they derived a greater portion of perverse 
 pleasure from their forced self -martyrdom than they 
 had ever derived from their free and unrestricted ten- 
 ure of the garden. 
 
 One morning, after some such preamble, he fell into 
 conversation with them, a conversation in which he 
 proffered the bread-and-milk of bland and banal ob- 
 servations and they returned to him (and to one an- 
 other) stones. 
 
 Finally, on leaving, for it was a converse of which 
 one might soon have had enough, he passed the morn- 
 ing paper across the egg-box fence. 
 
 ' You and Miss Epithite may like to glance it 
 through," he said, always, as everybody did, address- 
 ing himself to the dominant younger. "If you are 
 interested at all in murder cases, you will find a mys- 
 terious poisoning case on page four." Then, as the 
 thought engrossing the mind will out : 
 
 " It reminds me of the Sarah Munnings case," he 
 added, " if you happen to remember that." 
 
 The effect was astonishing. The old ladies simul- 
 taneously bounced from their chairs, their bugles clash- 
 ing, their spare frames rigid, their eyes flashing flinty 
 indignation. 
 
 " Sir," cried Miss Ursula, in a voice which for the 
 first time within his experience trembled, " you might 
 have spared us this." 
 
 " Spared you? " he repeated surprised. Then seeing- 
 that they were this time really moved and not wilfully 
 spreading the tails of their gowns for maltreatment, 
 he added apologetically:
 
 40 The Whips of Time 
 
 " I am sorry if I have roused unpleasant memories. 
 If so, it was of course quite accidental." 
 
 " Our name was mentioned in the papers. You seem 
 to know the case," Miss Ursula charged him. " How 
 can you have forgotten that it was our father's mis- 
 fortune to be nursed by that infamous woman! " 
 
 " Heavens," he broke in, " you do not mean that 
 your father was one of Sarah Munnings' victims?" 
 
 " Certainly not, Dr. Lowood," she snapped. " I 
 wonder you can think of such a thing " 
 
 " The idea ! " Miss Ursula ejaculated. 
 
 " Pray, Charlotte, do not interrupt me. I was about 
 to acquaint Dr. Lowood that our father, John Epithite, 
 lived respected by all who knew him, and died a re- 
 spectable death in his bed." 
 
 " I'm sure of it, of course," Lowood hastened to 
 affirm. " I am sorry to have caused you melancholy 
 recollections. But as you seemed moved by my chance 
 mention of the woman's name and said that your 
 father had been nursed by her " 
 
 " Two years before his death the creature nursed 
 him through an attack of relapsing fever," Miss Ur- 
 sula explained, " but he was in no way compromised. 
 He got well. And nobody ever ventured to suggest 
 that the creature ever gave him anything but what the 
 doctor had ordered for him. He died by the hand of 
 God, Dr. Lowood, decently in his bed. Sarah Mun- 
 nings had nothing to do with it." 
 
 " I am pleased to hear it," Lowood stated gravely, 
 although somewhere a sense of humour stirred at this 
 notion that to be unfortunate enough to be poisoned 
 entailed a loss of repute. " But as we have got upon 
 the unpleasant topic, and as you have no really sad 
 associations with it, may I ask (I am especially inter- 
 ested) if you can tell me anything about the woman, 
 what was her appearance, her manner " 
 
 " Certainly not," the lady protested. " I decline 
 altogether."
 
 The Misses Epithite 41 
 
 " And I do," Miss Epithite interjected. 
 
 " Charlotte, I beg you not to interrupt me. I was 
 about to inform Dr. Lowood that I decline altogether 
 to discuss the manner and appearance of that infamous 
 wretch." 
 
 Whereupon, with a stiff inclination of the head, she 
 turned her bugled back upon him and stalked into the 
 annex. 
 
 Miss Epithite followed, having first swept to him 
 a glance of mingled scorn of his conduct and pride in 
 her sister's proper rebuke to it. 
 
 He, upon his part, turned too upon his heel and, 
 smiling to himself, walked round the house, whence 
 passing down the gravelled walk, which was as 
 straight and narrow as the path of rectitude, between 
 the unfriendly peacocks, which up to this time had 
 not relaxed their hostile attitude, he betook himself, 
 hands in pockets, for a stroll. 
 
 As he went he encountered first the rector, a man of 
 a genial manner and a keen eye, and next the doctor 
 going his rounds, one in appearance rather like the 
 Father Xmas of the Yuletide numbers, with a kind 
 expression and an open ruddy countenance, the product 
 of fresh air, of a generous nature and of two decades 
 of good port. 
 
 Both of these gentlemen met him with the glance of 
 the intending caller upon a newcomer, a glance which 
 acknowledges without recognising the recipient. 
 
 He found the High Street astir. Persons were 
 gathered together in little knots, men and women and 
 children, all talking with their heads together, all with 
 their faces and the eyes in their faces turned the same 
 way. 
 
 There was a sense of expectancy upon the quiet air. 
 
 Lowood, as idle as the rest of them, stopped 
 also. 
 
 " What is happening ? " he inquired of a constable, 
 who was staring, but staring with a pretence which in
 
 42 The Whips of Time 
 
 his case was merely the stare of duty in the interests 
 of law and order. 
 
 " Why, sir," he returned with an assumed indiffer- 
 ence, " I believe Mrs. Beaumont's expected. The 
 Moonbank victorier and the brake for the servants and 
 luggage went by a quarter of a hour ago on its way 
 to the station. The ladies be comin' 'ome from furrin 
 lands, and the folk be lookin' to see 'em." 
 
 He glanced for one moment in the opposite direction 
 to prove that he was keeping a watch not only upon the 
 law and order in the direction of the station but also 
 upon the proprieties of the other way. 
 
 He was too eager, however, to make it more than 
 a glance. 
 
 The next moment it had veered about and was 
 gazing hard with those of his less responsible neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 " And who ? " began Lowood. Then, to condone 
 his ignorance upon a subject of such common interest, 
 he interjected : 
 
 " I am a stranger. Who, pray, is Mrs. Beaumont 
 of Moonbank ? " 
 
 "Mrs. Beaumont of Moonbank?" The constable 
 now gave his whole attention to him. He stared him 
 up and down with undisguised astonishment. Then : 
 
 " You must be a stranger here, sir, if you've never 
 heard tell o' Mrs. Beaumont. She's the talk o' the 
 place. Has been these ten years." 
 
 Heavens ! reflected Lowood. Is my confusion to be 
 still further confounded? Is there a third claimant to 
 the honour of being the family of most importance ? 
 
 " Is she the wife of the squire, or who is she? " 
 
 " She ain't that neither," the man said, still staring. 
 " We've got no squire here, not rightly no squire. 
 Muster Hestroyde an' Muster Legh, they be our two 
 gemmen. But naither of 'em's rightly squires." 
 
 " Who, then, is Mrs. Beaumont of Moonbank ? " 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Beaumont's the Book's lady. Moon-
 
 The Misses Epithite 43 
 
 bank is one o' the Book's properties, his fav'rite they 
 do say, tho' not his finest." 
 
 " What do you mean by the Duke's lady? Do you 
 mean she is the Duke's wife? " 
 
 The man shook a discreet head. 
 
 " As to wife, it ain't for me to speak. Some says 
 she is, more says she ain't. 'Tain't any o' my business. 
 Besides, if it was you can't go demandin' marriage 
 lines as tho' they was motorists' licenses. Even the 
 law 'as its limitations. A pity perhaps, becos o' letting 
 folks sometimes get out by its back doors. But I 
 thought there wasn't nobody hadn't 'card o' Mrs. Beau- 
 mont. She's know'd all over London, I've heard say." 
 
 " What Duke? " Lowood asked. 
 
 " Why, the Dook o' Saxby. An' a thunderin' big 
 Dook I'm told he is. Ef he was to do a murder, I've 
 heard father say, the King ud 'ave to 'ang 'im with his 
 own 'ands. No one else durstn't lay a finger on him. 
 Can't say if 'tis rightly the law. There's no case of a 
 Dook in a murder job since my time. An' before " 
 
 His gesture and tone left it implied that previous to 
 his time the law had been a thing beneath considera- 
 tion. 
 
 Then his pretence of indifference vanished. A sud- 
 den stillness of the murmuring groups, and the quick, 
 sharp trot of an octave of hoofs, brought his head 
 sharply about, lest his eyes, now casting duty and the 
 stranger to the winds, might lose one whit of the ap- 
 proaching spectacle. 
 
 And he was wise. It was a spectacle on which to 
 feast the gaze, on which to feel the senses filled for long 
 after the gaze had feasted. Lowood cordially con- 
 gratulated himself upon having chosen to take his stroll 
 in that opportune nick of time which so richly rewarded 
 him.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 " THE DUKE'S LADY " 
 
 THE Duke's horses stepped high and lightning-quick, 
 and, as though proud of their fine burden, swept the 
 Duke's lady up the quiet road in a delicious twinkling 
 of an eye. So much and no more was accorded of the 
 lovely vision. Then she was gone, leaving the mind 
 and retina of the beholder slightly dazed and stunned. 
 
 The two cockaded servants on the box, in their 
 brown and scarlet livery, wore too an air of arrogant 
 condescension, as though to them belonged some credit 
 in forming part of the pageant now accorded to the 
 common herd. 
 
 And the lady sat and slightly smiled as a Queen 
 does, to note the homage of her loyal subjects. Not 
 proud nor puffed up but receiving merely the right of 
 her estate. And she reigned by no accident of birth 
 but by an inherent birthright the right of a physical 
 peerlessness which set her above Queens and Em- 
 presses. For the first time in his life, Lowood, ever 
 a timid admirer of women, understood why the beau- 
 ties of former days had, like the lovely Miss Gunnings, 
 been mobbed in the streets, their loveliness exciting a 
 mental intoxication bordering on madness. 
 
 These are days of mediocrity. As the general brain- 
 standard is high, but we have no geniuses, so it is with 
 other things. We have good-looking, graceful and 
 charming women, but we have lost that exuberance of 
 physical health which gives rise to supreme beauty. 
 Nowadays women do not turn men's heads, scarcely
 
 " The Duke's Lady " 45 
 
 indeed do they turn men's eyes after them as they walk 
 through the streets. 
 
 The " Duke's lady " must have been a throw-back 
 to a type of former days, when Nature's hands were 
 fuller, when she fashioned out of no impoverished neu- 
 rotic clay, but in grand exotic flesh, rich in tint and 
 glow. 
 
 Every line was a curve of loveliness, full yet delicate, 
 flowing yet perfect, trembling with an exquisite poise 
 on the brink of excess. The great brilliant eyes would 
 have been too full had not their form been so exquis- 
 itely modelled, the dark lashes too long had not their 
 tips been twisted in a bewitching curl. 
 
 Her lips would have been over-ripe and over-rosy 
 save that their sweetness of curve preserved them from 
 voluptuousness. They parted slightly on two strands 
 of pearls which gleamed with a translucent lustre as 
 though they had been jewels artificially set there. 
 
 The face was of the purest oval, such as one sees 
 sometimes in Italy, an oval of strength and delicacy, 
 yet without hint of moral weakness or of constitutional 
 disease. 
 
 The hair was of rich amber (perhaps not unaided 
 by art), and broke into lustrous waves and ringlets, 
 suggesting rippling wine with the sun seen through it. 
 
 Much of this Lowood gathered in a glance. Later 
 he learned details, of the hazel colour of her eyes, the 
 exquisite veining of her skin, her perfumed breath, her 
 dimples, her melodious voice and laughter, of the way 
 her eyelashes became entangled when she trailed them 
 with an exquisite guile upon a cheek. 
 
 Now for the moment she was gone. Nothing re- 
 mained of the vision save the rear wheels of her hand- 
 some carriage sparkling in the morning light. There 
 was a hush as though all were retaining her image in 
 voluptuous rumination. Then the spell broke in a rush 
 of chatter. 
 
 ' There, sir," the constable said proudly, drawing
 
 46 The Whips of Time 
 
 a hand across his mouth, " that's our Mrs. Beaumont 
 o' Moonbank. An' a rare 'un folk thinks her." 
 
 " They're perfectly right," Lowood agreed. " I 
 have never seen anybody to compare with her." 
 
 " They say his Grace thinks all the world of her," 
 the constable confided with a sheepish look. He 
 seemed to feel that sentiment was derogatory to his 
 cloth. " Wuships the very ground she walks on." 
 
 " Who was she ? " Lowood asked. " You call her 
 Mrs. Beaumont." 
 
 " Ay, she calls herself so. It sounds furrin. An' 
 they say she came out of Paris, altho' rightly she's an 
 English lady born and bred." 
 
 " Wasn't there a lady with her? " 
 
 " There mostly is Miss Wenlith, her niece. But, 
 bless my soul, when Mrs. Beaumont's about you don't 
 see nobody else." 
 
 This was true. Yet beside the vision, in a modish 
 hat of pastel blue with plumes and diamond buckles, 
 he had received a faint impression of a pale, slight girl 
 in white, sitting upon the lady's left. 
 
 He had seen, too, that after the carriage had flashed 
 by, two young men on horseback, riding up the road, 
 had drawn rein as they met her, doffing hats with bent 
 heads and dropped eyes, in attitudes of marked respect. 
 When she had passed they had set their horses to a trot 
 and had ridden up the road by which she had come, 
 nodding here and there to the salutation of the grouped 
 townsfolk. 
 
 Lowood experienced a flash of recollection. Where 
 before had he seen the good-looking, fair young man, 
 whose eye seemed to rest upon him with a puzzled 
 glance? He let him slip. He could not place him. 
 Probably he resembled somebody else. England had 
 many such fair, lean, clean-skinned, well-set-up young- 
 sters. The man with him, who looked older, made a 
 striking contrast with him. Dark and handsome, he 
 was equally well-made, and had moreover a suppleness
 
 " The Duke's Lady " 47 
 
 of grace, which allied with his dark skin suggested an 
 Oriental strain. 
 
 The constable having departed to his duty : 
 
 " Who are the two gentlemen on horseback ? " Lo- 
 wood inquired of a rustic engaged in sweeping the 
 road. 
 
 The rustic jerked a thumb after the retreating fig- 
 ures, sitting their horses as though they had been part 
 of them. 
 
 "Them?" 
 
 To Lowood's nod : 
 
 " Whoi," he said, with some contempt upon so easy 
 a problem, " them's Muster Legh an' Muster 'Es- 
 troyde. Bin here ever since they was horned." 
 
 Lowood, resenting the shrivelling tone with which 
 his ignorance of local things was met, retorted sharply : 
 
 " But you see, I haven't." 
 
 And leaving the rustic to turn over this surprising 
 intelligence in his dull wits, he faced round and strode 
 up the road in the direction contrary to that taken by 
 the horsemen. 
 
 For much as he should have been, and was, inter- 
 ested in these young men upon whom he had un- 
 expectedly happened, the lure of beauty was still 
 stronger. 
 
 " I will see Moonbank before lunch," he told him- 
 self. " Before dinner I will look up Mowbreck Hall 
 and Hooton Hoo. By the way, at an offhand guess 
 I should say the dark young man is Munnings. Both 
 look thoroughbreds. But a strain of the Oriental, 
 being a strain of an old race, might have put that look 
 into Sarah Munnings' son." 
 
 A mile up the road, which all the while gently as- 
 cended and again descended, he came upon two beaten- 
 iron antique gates, their design a fantastic scroll pat- 
 tern, their supports two massive granite pillars, with 
 lions crouching on top. 
 
 From the gates a broad avenue of elderly handsome
 
 48 The Whips of Time 
 
 chestnuts marched straight and uncompromising, and 
 as though to martial music, to a handsome house. 
 This, grey and stern of aspect, stood square at the 
 raised end of the drive, with not only a who-comes- 
 here ? challenge under its bent bows, but with an aspect 
 of feeling itself wholly capable of dealing with any 
 who should have the boldness to walk beneath its eye, 
 unbidden and unwelcome, the quarter of a mile of 
 straight broad walk that eye commanded. Behind the 
 house, as though reinforcing it, rose a buttress of 
 mountain. 
 
 " I suppose this is Moonbank?" he inquired of a 
 man at work in the lodge garden. 
 
 " No, sir," he answered, " this is Mowbreck Hall 
 young Mr. Hestroyde's place. Moonbank's a half 
 a mile further on. Turn off to the right when you 
 come to the bridge. You'll see it right before 
 you." 
 
 He found it; a small palace in white marble, with 
 a dome and minarets, after the fashion of the Taj 
 Mahal, fantastic and beautiful, suggesting a casket 
 wherein life must be a string of fair days threaded on 
 a silken thread of pleasure. Niched on the shoulder 
 of a greenly-wooded hill, which bore it as with pride, 
 it nestled serenely, with Italian gardens, and pergolas, 
 set in tiers of terraces approached by gently rising 
 marble steps. Marble groups and single figures 
 gleamed amid the green, like classic persons walking 
 in a garden. Arbours and summer-houses of fantastic 
 shape were everywhere. The place looked so fairy-like 
 and so exotic that, in the moment of first seeing it, an 
 impression came of that palace which the magician of 
 the lamp transported from across seas in an Arabian 
 night. 
 
 Lowood was charmed. He found it difficult to tear 
 away his eyes from beholding so much unexpected 
 beauty. 
 
 When at last the necessities of luncheon could no
 
 " The Duke's Lady " 49 
 
 longer be hypnotised by his aesthetic pleasures, he 
 turned to leave, well pleased. 
 
 Scrope-Denton was proving itself no mere arena 
 for philosophical speculation. It possessed more than 
 its share, not only of natural beauty, but of points of 
 human interest.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HESTROYDE AND LEGH 
 
 HESTROYDE and Legh rode down the road through the 
 town, past the groups of watching people, for some 
 minutes in silence. Then Legh stooped forward to 
 flick off a pertinacious fly from his mare's neck. 
 
 " By Jove ! Mark," he said, " isn't she stunnin' ? 
 Every time I see her she seems more stunnin' than she 
 seemed before. Now with most women you find 
 you're a bit disappointed when you see 'em again. 
 While you haven't seen 'em your fancy has added 
 graces they don't possess." 
 
 The dark face beside him was grave and reflective. 
 
 " It does when you let it run away with you." 
 
 Legh made a gesture of impatience with his riding 
 crop. 
 
 " You're such a deuce of a philosopher," he said, 
 " or rather you pretend to be. I bet you can be as mad 
 as any of us when the time comes." 
 
 " Possibly," Hestroyde admitted. " But you know 
 as well as I do that these things are unsatisfactory. 
 It's all make-believe, a wretched travesty of the best 
 thing in life. You pay your money and love is 
 weighed out to you across the counter. The moment 
 you withhold the coin the commodity is handed across 
 the counter to some other who is prepared to pay, or 
 even while you pay is handed across the counter to 
 some other who will pay more. You know those two 
 marbles, * The Bought Kiss ' and ' The Kiss of Love,' 
 don't you ? Well, the faces of the women just express 
 what I mean."
 
 Hestroyde and Legh 51 
 
 " Oh, I know," Legh said. " But a man may ad- 
 mire a beautiful face without diving into the morals 
 of it. You're such a chap for dipping deep." 
 
 Hestroyde laughed. He passed to a lighter vein. 
 
 " Oh, I admire her with all my heart," he said. 
 " I never saw any face so perfect, in life or in pictures. 
 Lady Hamilton must have been that sort. But," he 
 grew grave again, " just now I can think of only one 
 woman. And whether she's a beauty or whether she 
 isn't, I haven't a notion. And I don't care. I only 
 know she's the woman for me." 
 
 Legh's face, too, became grave. But, being of san- 
 guine, impulsive temperament, the blood flushed hot 
 and high into it. 
 
 " For me too," he said sturdily. He broke into an 
 impetuous laugh. " And Lord help the one of us she 
 won't take ! " 
 
 After a pause : " I've half a mind to hope it will be 
 me. You'll take it so badly, old fellow. You're 
 deeper, and more set on things than I am." 
 
 " Thanks," Hestroyde said. He added : " I must 
 take what comes." 
 
 " Seems to me," Legh went on, " we both of us care 
 a jolly sight more for Joan than other chaps care. 
 We've all been brought up together. We were in love 
 with her while we were in knickers." 
 
 Hestroyde smiled a smile which contracted his lips 
 as the lips of a man contract at a physical pang. " I've 
 read somewhere," he said, " that all men in love think 
 nobody ever before cared so much as they do. You 
 see it's it's a unique experience for them." 
 
 They had reached now the last house, marking the 
 end of the town. The hedgerows on either side came 
 to an abrupt stop and there was spread before them a 
 stretch of common, with a fine air blowing, whip-like, 
 over its expanse of turf and purple heather patches. 
 By that simultaneous impulse common to persons who 
 live much in one another's company, both urged their
 
 52 The Whips of Time 
 
 horses to a gallop, and for some minutes went pound- 
 ing over the springy turf in an abandon of blood and 
 spirits. 
 
 When they came to a halt they were flushed and 
 breathless. 
 
 " Look here, Mark ! " Legh broke out tempestu- 
 ously, his gallop having flushed every fibre in him 
 with hot, generous blood. " Tell you what it is. You 
 shall try your luck first." 
 
 " I tried it," Hestroyde answered, with a touch of 
 bitterness. " We tossed last night and it went against 
 me. No, we'll play fair. You won first go, and first 
 go you shall have." His bitterness of tone increased. 
 " But I'm not generous like you. And I tell you I 
 hope to Heaven you'll fail." 
 
 Legh winced. 
 
 " I can only fail," he said. He drew a quick breath. 
 " Unless I win." 
 
 They rode on again in silence. 
 
 As they went he grew graver. " Haven't we made 
 a bit of a mistake," he said, " to choose the morning? 
 Sentiment goes better in the evening. Besides," he 
 added, with an abashed laugh, " it would come 
 easier when daylight wasn't staring a man out of 
 countenance." 
 
 " What's the odds? " Hestroyde said. " My diffi- 
 culty is, not to say it, but to keep it back. As to Joan, 
 night or morning will make no difference to her. She 
 knows her mind, and she'll speak it." 
 
 " Suppose she rejects us both? " 
 
 " It isn't likely," Hestroyde said. 
 
 His dark eyes glowed like shaded lights. Despite 
 the fears and trepidations a man must feel in putting 
 to the test some question upon which it seems to him 
 his life depends, he was confident about the issue. Had 
 she not shown in a hundred ways that she loved him ? 
 It was true she was a flirt, and being an heiress and a 
 most attractive girl she was ever surrounded by a knot
 
 Hestroyde and Legh 53 
 
 of admirers, to each of whom in his turn she gave 
 laughing encouragement. But in his heart of heart 
 (the niche in which she was enshrined) this one of 
 them was assured that her heart of heart was his. 
 Oddly enough, Legh, too, was assured that it was his, 
 a circumstance which shows that the lady in question 
 played the game of coquetry rather too strenuously 
 for its legitimate rules. But Hestroyde found no room 
 in his self-confidence for the generous compunctions 
 of Legh. His more intense and narrower nature 
 found, on this occasion, no room for more than two 
 persons the woman and himself. 
 
 Scrope-Denton was a centre of fine residences. 
 With its sheltered genial climate and its natural beau- 
 ties it seemed to have been planned to this end. One 
 had but to stroke the earth and immediately it sprang 
 into luxuriance. 
 
 Of these The Folly, where Joan Kesteven, the 
 county heiress, lived with her mother, was one of the 
 least pleasing. Her father, Sir Qarence Kesteven, 
 had belonged to another county, and had built this 
 house in Scrope-Denton in order to please his wife, 
 she desiring beyond all things to live near to her friend, 
 Mrs. Legh of Hooton Hoo. Accordingly having 
 bought the best site available in a neighbourhood in 
 which the best sites had been appropriated centuries 
 before, and as much land as the Burghwallises and 
 Hestroydes and Leghs had not already appropriated 
 by right or by might, he had had a house constructed 
 after his own notions. It turned out of course to be 
 a failure within and without, the latest modern im- 
 provements, the owner's original views and the canons 
 of art all treading upon one another's toes. 
 
 It was built of red brick and combined incongru- 
 ously Norman and Elizabethan styles. Its owner, who 
 had been a man of taste but not a practical architect, 
 not only confessed it a failure when completed, but 
 sardonically styled it The Folly, and, it was said, died
 
 54 The Whips of Time 
 
 of chagrin at the eyesore it made beside the other less 
 ambitious houses of the place. 
 
 As the two young men rode into view of the lodge 
 Legh's chaotic pulses once more flooded his face with 
 crimson. 
 
 " Well," he inquired, " am I to go first? " 
 
 " Yes," Hestroyde said, " since ' heads ' had it. I'll 
 trot up and down till you have done." 
 
 " I say," Legh appealed, turning his head, " wish 
 me luck, old chap." 
 
 " I tell you I can't do that," Mark answered, his 
 face ashen. 
 
 " Oh, well, here goes then ! " Legh said with a 
 breathless laugh. He rode in at the gate. It appeared 
 however that his hopes and courage were to be frus- 
 trated. Joan was out. And as she had promised him 
 the previous evening that she would be in, and as she 
 must, he had thought, have guessed the meaning of 
 his ardent tones and look, this was an unexpected 
 blow. Her ladyship, the servant said, would see him. 
 He did a brave best to recover from this check to his 
 hopes as he traversed the distance from the hall to 
 Lady Kesteven's boudoir. 
 
 " Joan asked me to apologise, Robert," she said, 
 greeting him cordially. " The bad girl expected you, 
 but she has gone off on one of her rambles. She 
 promised to be back in time to see you." 
 
 " Oh, it's of no consequence at all," the young man 
 answered. " I mean," he added nervously, " I can 
 wait, of course. I mean," he further added, " I shall 
 be delighted if I may talk to you while I wait." 
 
 His hostess smiled. Her eyes were large and dark, 
 with that pathetic look in them which is so frequently 
 associated with heart trouble. Indeed, the deep emo- 
 tions which are associated with such large dark eyes 
 sooner or later play havoc with the physical functions 
 of this impressionable organ. Joan's mother was an 
 invalid, her material life being restricted to the daily
 
 Hestroyde and Legh 55 
 
 exchange of her bedroom for the boudoir which was 
 her favourite room, in fine weather extending her 
 range of travel so far as the grounds. But to judge 
 from the deep and distant look in her. eyes and the 
 nervous tension of her thin face, one would have said 
 that in mind and feeling she travelled much farther 
 afield than did her more active neighbours. 
 
 Having no son of her own, Legh had been her pet 
 since his boyhood. Indeed, since the death of his 
 mother, whose devoted friend she had been, she had 
 proved a second mother to him. It was the dream of 
 her life (as it had been also that of his mother) that 
 Joan and he should be married. Hestroyde, for some 
 unaccountable reason, she had never liked. Her dislike 
 may have had no saner basis than that he and she were 
 of similar dark intense nature, although in Lady Kest- 
 even's case there could have been no suspicion of an 
 Oriental strain. But, as in electricity, so in human 
 nature, men and women are most strongly attracted 
 by opposite and repelled by like poles. 
 
 Knowing the young man thoroughly (as thor- 
 oughly, that is, as a woman ever knows a man) a flash 
 of intuition told her the errand upon which he had 
 now come. Try as he would to conceal his nervous 
 agitation (and for one of his impulsive candour he did 
 very creditably) it communicated itself presently to 
 her highly-strung nature. Suddenly her heart began 
 to beat violently, her hands to tremble. Soon she 
 could no longer tolerate the nervous perturbation ex- 
 cited by his presence. 
 
 " Robert," she said in a low, quiet voice, " I am not 
 feeling well. Go, like a good boy, to the billiard-room 
 and practise ' cannons.' I shall be better left to my- 
 self." 
 
 " Why, of course," he said, jumping to his feet and 
 looking at her with affectionate concern. " I hope I 
 have not bothered you. Can I get you anything? Or 
 shall I ring for Petherick? "
 
 56 The Whips of Time 
 
 She told him it was nothing. A few minutes of 
 complete quiet would restore her. 
 
 " May I look in before I go? " 
 
 " No, dear. Come to-morrow." 
 
 Their eyes met. He read in hers that she had 
 guessed his secret. She knew already what she found 
 again in his. 
 
 When he had gone she gave way to her excitability 
 in a violent fit of trembling. For, devoted to her as 
 Joan was, the girl was self-willed and kept her own 
 counsel, and she was as uncertain as was he and 
 almost as anxious as to what Joan's answer would be.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 JOAN 
 
 HESTROYDE, sitting his horse like a gloomy sentinel, 
 outside in the bend of the road, caught the sound of a 
 light step, heard the shrill of a whistle. 
 
 In a moment, without turning his head, he had 
 sprung from the saddle and was standing in the road, 
 his head turned and his eyes and his whole being to 
 the girl in the white frock, whose light step and her 
 call to her dog had roused him from his ruminations. 
 
 She came on leisurely toward him, betraying neither 
 haste nor tremor, her limbs moving with that melting 
 poise and freedom which are evoked in a woman by the 
 glow of a man's admiring eyes. It was as though she 
 found herself walking suddenly on magic ground. She 
 was not beautiful, scarcely pretty, although no man 
 could have suspected this, nor had he suspected would 
 he have admitted it. For she possessed to an excep- 
 tional degree the sorcery of sex, and this surrounded 
 her with such an attraction and glamour as wholly 
 prevented any man from critically judging of her per- 
 son or her actions. This and not youth although 
 it belongs sometimes to that period of youth in which 
 new-fledged powers are paramount, is the true beaute 
 du diable. And this she possessed in a remarkable 
 degree. 
 
 Albeit she would not have, as Mrs. Beaumont would 
 have (and it was whispered had), made a study for 
 the nude, her curves being too slight and ill-defined, in 
 her clothes, which she knew how to choose and to put 
 on, her figure was perfect.
 
 58 The Whips of Time 
 
 Hestroyde, his eyes magnetised by the grace and the 
 spell of her, groaned inwardly. If she should say 
 " No ! " how would he ever still his fevered passion 
 for her? 
 
 The next moment he cast to the winds friendship 
 and such honour as attached to the turn of a coin, and, 
 plunging strenuously forward, caught her two hands 
 in a passionate grip. 
 
 " Joan, Joan," he cried hoarsely, " I love you, I love 
 you. You were made for me, I cannot live without 
 you." 
 
 " But you need not crush my hands," she returned 
 calmly, trying, or pretending to try, to free them. Yet 
 the green eyes, which looked up to him from beneatl 
 her smart hat, the black pupils widening till the green, 
 were mere rims, were not calm. And one less fervidly 
 engrossed by his own agitations would have seen that 
 her nostrils vibrated and expanded emotionally. 
 
 " Joan," he pleaded. " Darling, say you love me. 
 Oh, I am mad mad about you." 
 
 " But suppose I don't ! Would you have me tell 
 fibs?" 
 
 " Anything, so long as you say ' Yes ! ' 
 
 She no longer tried to free her hands. She seemed 
 to find the situation and her power over him experi- 
 ences worth prolonging. 
 
 She screwed up her green, shining eyes. She re- 
 laxed her full lips (no man had ever been able to see 
 that her mouth was too large) on her strong white 
 teeth. 
 
 " Let me see now," she said with a tantalising dal- 
 liance, " I do like you a good deal. But I like so 
 many of you that the difficulty is to know which I like 
 best." 
 
 " Let it be me," he pleaded hoarsely. " Though 
 Heaven knows I'm not worth it. Joan, don't play 
 with me. Give me the right and I swear I will force 
 you to like me the best."
 
 
 
 THEN HE CAUGHT HER SLENDER BODY INTO HIS ARMS AND 
 STRENUOUSLY KISSED HER. 
 
 [Page 59
 
 Joan 59 
 
 She shook a white finger at him. 
 
 " There must be no compulsions," she protested. 
 " No tyranny, no jealousy, no black looks. If I say 
 ' Yes ' you must promise that I shall have my own 
 way in everything everything." 
 
 " I will promise anything if you will only say 
 ' Yes ! ' " he protested eagerly, and with as much sin- 
 cerity as men feel when they make promises beyond 
 their power to keep. 
 
 Her mood changed; her green eyes gleamed. 
 
 " I hate to say it," she said. " I hate to be bound. 
 I have always been free, have always done as I wished. 
 It will be like being caught and put in a cage." 
 
 " What nonsense," he insisted. " Married women 
 have far more freedom than girls. There will be no 
 mother to keep you in bounds." 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " Mother has never kept me in bounds has never 
 tried to. She knew it would be absurd. But you 
 won't be clever enough to know it." 
 
 " But, dearest," he said, his dark face glowing as 
 he realised that she was making her conditions of 
 surrender, " what are these desperate things you wish 
 to do? I have known you all your life and you have 
 always gone as straight as a die." 
 
 She laughed again. 
 
 " Of course I have, stupid. What else should I do ? 
 But domesticity is such a frightful harness. I shall 
 feel like one of those miserable horses one sees yoked 
 and blindfolded going round and round and round " 
 - her hands made supple, alluring movements 
 " for ever in the same monotonous circle." 
 
 He laughed and passionately caught one of the 
 hands to his mouth. He swept swift glances up and 
 down the road. Then he caught her slender body 
 into his arms and strenuously kissed her. 
 
 " Oh, don't," she cried, struggling to release her- 
 self. " Don't, Mark. I can't bear it."
 
 60 The Whips of Time 
 
 He released her, mortified. He did not detect, as 
 a man of wider experience would have done, that it 
 was not his, but her own roused passion at which she 
 had taken alarm. 
 
 Then his mortification was diverted by a new de- 
 velopment. It was his turn to cry out. Her dog, 
 a fine bull terrier, of a frightful aspect and of a sullen, 
 jealous temper, had, with a strangled roar, suddenly 
 sprung up and caught at one of his hands. 
 
 The next moment, remembering himself, he had let 
 go and was grovelling abjectly at his mistress's feet. 
 
 " Ugh ! you brute ! " Hestroyde ejaculated, startled 
 by pain from his amorous mood. He released Joan 
 and caught his bruised hand in the other, gripping it 
 tightly to numb the ache. 
 
 " Was it Bel ? " Joan asked, incredulous. She 
 looked from her lover to Belshazzar still grovelling in 
 the dust before her, betraying at the same time his guilt 
 and his contrition. " Mark, did Bel snap at you? " 
 
 The pain was passing. He laughed. 
 
 "Yes, the brute!" 
 
 " But I have never known him to do such a thing," 
 she said, even now incredulous. 
 
 He laughed again. In his mood, what was pain ? 
 
 " He was jealous at my kissing you," he said. " He 
 had never before known me to do such a thing." 
 
 The dog was now whining, lapping her feet and 
 tugging at her skirt to coax the anger out of her. She 
 looked down at him with a set face. 
 
 Then, " Let me see it," she said. 
 
 She took and examined the injured hand. She gave 
 a quick sigh of relief. 
 
 " The skin is only grazed. But there's the mark 
 of a horrid tooth." She trailed a finger over it. 
 
 " Don't think of it, dear," he insisted. " If I were 
 Belshazzar I'd do just the same to any brute but me 
 who should kiss you." 
 
 She dropped his hand. Her face hardened.
 
 Joan 61 
 
 " Give me your crop," she said in her strong-willed, 
 direct fashion. " Belshazzar must be taught a lesson." 
 
 He would not allow her to take it. " Don't waste 
 these grand minutes of mine. Don't think of any- 
 thing but me, dear." 
 
 She strove obstinately for it. Then she yielded. 
 For a moment she leaned her head against the arm 
 he began to steal about her. The next moment she 
 withdrew herself. 
 
 " My dear man," she cried briskly, " you really 
 must not do these things in the eye of the public road. 
 We shall be arrested. No wonder Belshazzar " she 
 shook a strong white finger at him " objected." 
 
 Belshazzar, who, to be out of the reach of 
 temptation, had retreated to a distance the moment his 
 mistress and Hestroyde approached, now gave a little 
 ludicrous howl, Nature having planned neither his 
 frame nor his voice to sentimental purposes. Then 
 as the lovers, laughing at him, turned and began 
 to walk toward the lodge, he got to his feet and 
 trotted in their wake, with the dejected air of one 
 deposed from a high estate. 
 
 So, Hestroyde leading his horse, they sauntered up 
 the drive, between them the slight embarrassment 
 natural to this sudden translation of an old familiar 
 friendship to a warmer romantic plane. 
 
 " By Jove ! " he said suddenly, in a flash of revela- 
 tion, " I had forgotten old Bob. And, by the way, how 
 do you come to be out walking when you had promised 
 to see him this morning? " 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 " We rode over together. Fact is, I was waiting 
 for him when you came and found me." 
 
 :< You speak as though I had been looking for you." 
 
 " Perhaps," he said fondly, " without knowing it 
 we have been looking for one another all these years." 
 
 She shook her head vehemently. 
 
 " I'm not sure. I'm not at all sure that you are my
 
 62 The Whips of Time 
 
 counterpart, my fate. I don't feel a bit as women in 
 novels do, quite seraphically happy." 
 
 She stopped and stood looking up at him, rebel 
 gleamings in her eyes. 
 
 " Mark," she said seriously, " I won't answer for 
 myself although I have said ' yes.' I hate being 
 bound. You must not try to master me. I will not 
 be ruled. You must let me do anything, everything, 
 I want to do. Or perhaps, after all, I shan't carry 
 this through." 
 
 He could not help feeling some disappointment and 
 chagrin. He felt that he was giving everything to 
 her. The exchange she offered was not fair. 
 
 " Don't say that, Joan," he pleaded. " I won't 
 interfere with you. And you'll soon get used to me. 
 It's only the strangeness." 
 
 " Well," she said, " it is best for you to know how 
 I feel." 
 
 "What did Bob want with me?" she asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 Her eyes scanned his fine profile. It betrayed noth- 
 ing. Let him not further fail his friend! Although 
 I cannot say that his lapse was giving him any f^reat 
 concern. Indeed, he congratulated himself that j-egh 
 had by it been spared the pain of a spoken rejection. 
 
 " Oh, nothing much," he said. " Something about 
 a horse, or a dog, or a gun, no doubt. What else do 
 we talk about down here? " 
 
 As they neared the house they saw that he was 
 standing on the steps. The billiard-table had not long 
 served as an outlet for his agitation. He had come 
 out to look for Joan's return. 
 
 He saw them before they had seen him. No doubt 
 he gleaned the truth. For by the time they had come 
 up with him his face was set and pale. All the ardent 
 expectation Hestroyde had last seen in it was gone. 
 
 " How do, Joan," he said quietly, as he went down 
 the steps to meet her. " What a person you are ! Said
 
 Joan 63 
 
 you'd be in, and kept me kicking my heels here half 
 the mornin' waitin' for you." 
 
 " Bobby, I'm frightfully sorry," she said. " I knew 
 it was something of no consequence. And," with a 
 laugh, " you're just as much at home here as at Hoo- 
 ton. I knew you'd find plenty of occupation." 
 
 But she turned her eyes rather guiltily from his set 
 face. Robert Legh with a set and sober face was a 
 new spectacle and one which pricked her con- 
 science. 
 
 Only a week before she had laughingly allowed him 
 to kiss her in the palm-house after dinner. And despite 
 her coquetry and her love of admiration perhaps 
 because of it it was not her habit to allow men to 
 kiss her. 
 
 He forced a smile. 
 
 " I've been practising cannons," he said, " and man- 
 aged some decent ones, just because there was nobody 
 there to see. But, I say, I must be off. I've got a 
 chap comin' to lunch. What I had to say will 
 keep." 
 
 He was not able to repress one little gulp. 
 
 " Bye-bye, Jo. Ta-ta, Mark." 
 
 He realised now in a sudden hardening of heart, as 
 his eyes would not go to his friend, that when he had 
 almost hoped that the prize would have been to him it 
 had been out of the glow of a heart assured of its own 
 success. 
 
 " May I come in to see Lady Kesteven ? " Hes- 
 troyde asked. 
 
 Joan's eyes were following Legh's stalwart figure 
 as he betook himself round to the stables for his horse. 
 Despite his strong, quick step she read dejection in 
 him. 
 
 She turned her head slowly about. " See mother ? " 
 she said. " Oh, no, go home. I'll tell her. I suppose 
 you know she'll be frightfully disappointed." 
 
 " Yes, I know. I'm no favourite of hers," he an-
 
 64 The Whips of Time 
 
 swered, his face clouding with the huffiness to which 
 dark men are prone. 
 
 Then his face glowed again, meeting the half- 
 smiling, shining eyes. 
 
 " Joan, dear Joan," he pleaded, " let me come in 
 for a minute to say good-bye decently." 
 
 " No," she resisted. And her tantalising, lingering 
 look upon him showed that it was a resistance. " We 
 can say it quite decently here." 
 
 She gave him a strong, white hand. " Good-bye," 
 she said. She gave him another tantalising glance. 
 " You may come again rather soon." 
 
 " I shall come to tea," he threatened. 
 
 " Do," she said. " It will make a pleasant party. 
 The Tempests are coming." 
 
 " Oh, you are too bad," he told her, with a vexed 
 lip. 
 
 She laughed and went into the house.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A MEETING 
 
 LEGH, riding home in a black study of depression, the 
 reins loose on his mare's neck, was recalled to himself 
 by the sight of a man approaching him. Recalled from 
 his sombre thoughts he looked, stared, and as he came 
 up with him drew rein. 
 
 " I thought it was you, Dr. Lowood," he said cor- 
 dially, " when I passed you this morning. You don't 
 remember me, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I remember you perfectly," Lowood, who was 
 returning from his jaunt to Moonbank, answered. 
 " You were a patient of mine about four years since. 
 You did not tell me you were a native of Scrope- 
 Denton." 
 
 " Didn't I ? No doubt I gave you my hotel address. 
 I say, you performed a perfect miracle in my case. 
 Saved my life as sure as fate. Not," he added, in a 
 sudden gloomy afterthought, " that life is much of a 
 thing." 
 
 " Oh, it is," the physician insisted, with a smile and 
 a keen glance. " If one is well, and well-off and 
 young. But I assure you, I performed no miracle ; 
 you had been smoking your nerves and your heart 
 to perdition. I said ' Limit your tobacco or you'll be a 
 hypochondriac at thirty.' You cured yourself by do- 
 ing that most rare of things, following your doctor's 
 advice." 
 
 " And was well in three weeks, sir. I thought I 
 was going all to pieces." 
 
 Lowood laughed, and looked him up and down.
 
 66 The Whips of Time 
 
 " My dear boy," he said paternally, " you are as 
 sound as the British constitution, perhaps sounder. 
 You'd take a considerable deal of killing." 
 
 " Thanks, sir," the young man said. " I feel pretty 
 fit. I suppose you're stopping with friends down 
 here." 
 
 " No," Lowood said. " I'm what you would call 
 ' on my own.' ' He smiled whimsically up at him. 
 " An expressive phrase, but one unsuited to the con- 
 sulting-room. I have taken Homer Cottage. I call 
 it Homer misnomered. Anything less Hellenic it 
 would be difficult to find." 
 
 " Jove ! Have the Epithets gone ? " 
 
 " So the joke isn't mine. Is it possible in these days 
 to be original? However, it was very obvious. No, 
 the old ladies live in a portion of the house they call 
 the annex. And although I should have been pleased 
 for them to use the garden, they have insisted on 
 fencing off a few square yards of it and sit there like 
 a couple of obstinate old ostriches with their heads in 
 the sand." 
 
 Legh laughed. 
 
 " How like them ! They're a couple of old char- 
 acters. Everybody knows them, and is amused by 
 them. Their father, and his father before him, were 
 the Riccalby booksellers, most decent old chaps. I 
 heard the old ladies had lost money. So you've settled 
 in Homer Cottage. If you're not doing a rest cure, 
 or a solitude cure, I should like to call." 
 
 " I shall be thankful. I'm doing no cure of any 
 sort. But I think I should soon need to do one if I 
 were to live much longer with the old bore I find 
 myself to be." 
 
 Legh beamed out of his mental clouds. Lowood 
 possessed the united charms of a candid sympathy and 
 a quaint humour. People took readily to him. 
 
 " You'll be an acquisition here," Legh said. " Whip 
 up our brains and that. We just wallow in sport, and
 
 A Meeting 6? 
 
 half the time are too dog-tired to know we have any 
 brains." 
 
 They exchanged " Good-morning ! " and Legh rode 
 on. Lowood looked after him. 
 
 " The dark one is Munnings," he again decided. 
 " This boy is the typical old English gentleman, the 
 finest stock and raw material in the world. The pity 
 of it is that it too frequently remains in the raw, is, 
 as he said, so often dog-tired with outdoor sports that 
 the brain gets no chance. And the men become heavy 
 and mindless toward middle-age. Though even then 
 they have still the fine elements of the best human 
 stuff in the world." 
 
 A few days later Homer Cottage was thrown into 
 a state of mental ferment. 
 
 " Ursula, when I saw young Mr. Legh stop his 
 horse and dismount at the gate, and walk up the drive, 
 and heard him ask for Him, you could have knocked 
 me down with a feather," Miss Epithite said. 
 
 " He hadn't mentioned a word of it," Ursula re- 
 plied. " What I want to know is, does He know him ? 
 And had He expected him ? " 
 
 They spoke in whispers, their heads crooked to- 
 gether. Legh was still in the house, but there was 
 not the smallest risk that their thin old voices could 
 have penetrated the walls and rooms between the annex 
 and the drawing-room. It was more a sense of de- 
 lightful mystery than a fear of being overheard which 
 caused them to speak in undertones. 
 
 " I'm afraid we shall never know that," Charlotte 
 said, with a desponding desperation, " never as long 
 as we live. Not unless," she added, " not unless we 
 were to ask Him." 
 
 Lowood had come by this time to be known between 
 them as He and Him, very much after the fashion it 
 was at one time the custom to speak of Napoleon 
 the Arch Foe of all.
 
 68 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Ask Him," Ursula repeated shrilly. " Charlotte, 
 Fm astonished at you. No power on earth would 
 induce me to ask anything of Him ! " 
 
 " Of course not, Ursula, of course not. Only I 
 should so like to know," Miss Epithite said pitifully. 
 
 " Then I can tell you. If He's what you think 
 I think absurdly an anarchist, or if He's what I 
 think and I think rightly a detective, young Mr. 
 Legh is not calling on him socially, but as a magistrate 
 in answer to some letter or something He has sent 
 him." 
 
 " But, Ursula, I've seen all his letters carefully. 
 And He hasn't written one to young Mr. Legh, nor has 
 young Mr. Legh ever written to him." 
 
 " He may have posted a letter himself. He's so 
 sly there's no knowing what he wouldn't do and if 
 young Mr. Legh meant to call, there'd be no need for 
 him to write. Besides, how do you know He has not 
 been to call at Hooton Hoo himself? He has assur- 
 ance enough for anything." 
 
 " But I don't think he has. I always see the way 
 he goes, and learn who he has met, and where. I 
 don't think He's called at Hooton Hoo. Besides, of 
 course, if, as I think, he is an anarchist, he would keep 
 as much away as possible from magistrates." 
 
 " That's another reason against him being an anar- 
 chist. He very likely has put his nose in at Hooton 
 Hoo. And it's absurd to think he's an anarchist. 
 There are no Russians or Czars in Scrope-Denton to 
 be blown up. What would he be doing here ? " 
 
 Miss Epithite had a flash of intelligence. 
 
 " You see, he may already have blown them up and 
 may be hiding." 
 
 Miss Ursula was impressed. This sounded prob- 
 able. But she reverted obstinately to her previous 
 view. 
 
 " It is all nonsense," she insisted. " Charlotte, how 
 can you talk such nonsense? The man is a detective
 
 A Meeting 69 
 
 trying 1 to trace some murderer or burglar, or to fix a 
 murder or a burglary on some innocent person. I 
 know the ways of these persons. You notice he has 
 two newspapers every blessed morning. What does 
 an honest-dealing man want with more than one daily 
 paper to take with his breakfast? And He sits with 
 his head buried in them sometimes until half-past ten. 
 And spectacles too." 
 
 " Perhaps he can't see without spectacles, Ursula. 
 I can't." 
 
 " But I can. And so can He, I'm sure, as well 
 as any honest-dealing man requires to see. I tell you 
 he's a detective, handsomely paid by the Government 
 to do some disgraceful work. If he was an anarchist 
 he'd be messing about with dynamite and things. And 
 there's not a trace even of gunpowder about the place." 
 
 " Still, I can't help thinking he must be an anar- 
 chist," Miss Epithite insisted timidly. " He has such 
 a mysterious manner. And he smiles so slyly." 
 
 " That is what detectives do, not anarchists, Char- 
 lotte." 
 
 "Yes, but, Ursula ' 1 
 
 But Ursula had come to the end of her patience. 
 With a gesture of exasperation she shelved the subject. 
 
 " What has he got for dinner this evening ? " she 
 asked inquisitively. 
 
 " Palestine soup with toast, and a grouse with Jeru- 
 salem artichokes, and chipped potatoes, and gravy, and 
 bread sauce, and toasted bread-crumbs. After that 
 an apple-charlotte made with apples out of his orchard, 
 and three pennyworth of cream, and castor sugar. 
 After that Camembert cheese, and biscuits and celery. 
 After that coffee." 
 
 The mouths of the old ladies watered, their hard 
 eyes grew misty. 
 
 "And we?" Ursula asked, for dramatic effect 
 rather than for information, their dietary being sub- 
 ject to but little change.
 
 70 The Whips of Time 
 
 " To-night we shall have poached eggs to our tea. 
 And Lydia has made a ginger cake." 
 
 Miss Ursula sniffed disdainfully. 
 
 " I suppose he has wine." 
 
 " A half bottle of claret with the name of some 
 French saint on the label." 
 
 " Then I'll be bound he's a Papist, perhaps even a 
 foreigner," Miss Ursula broke out vindictively. 
 
 In the meantime, unconscious of the hostile senti- 
 ments seething within thirty feet of them, Lowood and 
 Legh were fostering a friendship born of reciprocal 
 attraction, and assisted, on the young man's part, by 
 that gratitude which a warm-hearted patient is likely 
 to feel for a doctor to whom he believes he owes his 
 life; on Lowood's part by his psychological interest 
 in a human problem, as well as by certain paternal 
 instincts, which, having no other outlet, filled him 
 with benign yearnings toward the young of both 
 sexes. 
 
 " The dark young man I saw riding with you the 
 other day is Mr. Hestroyde of Mowbreck Hall, I un- 
 derstand. Fine-looking chap ! " Lowood said, his keen 
 eyes on his visitor, no trace in his level voice of his 
 desire to learn more of Legh's friend. 
 
 Legh's expression fell, his blue eyes lost some of 
 their light. 
 
 " Yes," he said, and relapsed into abstraction. He 
 roused himself with an effort. " I wanted him to come 
 with me this afternoon. He means to call on you. 
 But at present he has only one idea. He is just en- 
 gaged to be married." 
 
 Lowood wondered why the young man spoke de- 
 jectedly, decided that it was at the prospect of losing 
 his friend, then lost himself in a flash of interest at 
 the news. Things were complicating themselves. He 
 laughed cynically in his sleeve. What would the lady 
 who had engaged herself to him think if she should
 
 A Meeting 71 
 
 know that he was young Munnings, he wondered. 
 If he were indeed young Munnings ! 
 
 "To a local lady?" 
 
 " Yes, to Miss Kesteven. She lives with her mother 
 at The Folly, that queer-looking, red-brick house be- 
 tween this and Hooton. We have known he has 
 known her all his life." 
 
 Something in the way he caught his breath and 
 shouldered himself briskly out of the association sent 
 Lowood's eyes to him. In a flash he lighted upon the 
 truth. The flash was succeeded by another specula- 
 tion. Supposing Miss Kesteven had known all the 
 facts, would she have taken Munnings in preference 
 to Legh? It gave him an odd sense of power to feel 
 that the destinies of these young men were possibly in 
 his hands. 
 
 " I shall like to meet your friend," he told Legh. 
 He repeated that he was a fine-looking chap. 
 
 Then further rational talk was spoiled by the inter- 
 vention of Polly, who, having kept the visitor all the 
 while transfixed on the point of a bead-eye, decided 
 that he was a sufficiently agreeable person to be treated 
 to some of her talents. Accordingly she broke across 
 a pause by exclaiming, in tones of consternation : 
 
 " Where's my Polly gone ? Heavens ! Where is 
 Polly ? " leaving it to be supposed that she had sud- 
 denly gone to look for herself and had been overcome 
 by the shock to find that she was missing. 
 
 The young man laughed and went to her cage. She 
 ducked a confiding poll. 
 
 " How can I tell you won't take off the top of my 
 finger, old girl ? " he submitted warily. 
 
 " She won't," Lo\vood said, " she has a squaw-like 
 adoration for our sex. If you were a woman it would 
 be a different affair." 
 
 Polly not only permitted him to stroke her feathered 
 head, she even proffered medical advice. 
 
 " A teaspoon ful of Carlsbad for your liver for
 
 72 The Whips of Time 
 
 your liver, my dear sir," she bade him in a confiden- 
 tial undertone. 
 
 " Come up on Sunday, will you ? " Legh invited 
 Lowood when he rose to leave. " It's about the only 
 afternoon you'll find me in. Down here we call a day 
 wasted when we spend it in the house. But on Sunday 
 afternoons I'm nearly always in, recovering from 
 morning church." 
 
 Lowood walked down the garden path with him. 
 
 " By the way," he said whimsically, pointing to the 
 militant peacocks, " is it my fancy or do these fellows 
 look to you also as though they resented my tenancy 
 of Homer Cottage? To me they look absolutely 
 vicious." 
 
 Legh stared, first at the yew birds, then at Lowood. 
 It was plain he was mystified. Then he said practi- 
 cally : 
 
 " Why, they don't look quite right to me either. 
 I guess old Cooper clipped them instead of Hooper. 
 Hooper's the best topiarist about here." 
 
 Lowood gazed after his retreating back. 
 
 " I wonder what it feels like," he reflected, " to be 
 without imagination and to see things just as they 
 are, or as they are not ! It is all according to the view- 
 point." 
 
 He stepped back between his yew enemies with a 
 sense that they were pecking at his heels. 
 
 " Charlotte Epithite, did you hear that ? " 
 
 " What do you make of it, Ursula? " 
 
 " Make of it ? What else could anybody make of it, 
 Charlotte. Epithite? He's not only what he pretends 
 not to be, but he's not what he pretends to be." 
 
 " Isn't it the same thing, Ursula ? " Miss Epithite 
 protested with a timid obstinacy. 
 
 "The same thing! It's absolutely different. He 
 worms his way into our home, and us out of it, by 
 pretending to be Dr. Lowood, a London physician.
 
 A Meeting 73 
 
 But do you suppose that would be enough to make 
 young Mr. Legh invite him to visit at Hooton Hoo? 
 He must be a perfect master of crimes or he'd never 
 have got young Mr. Legh to invite him to Hooton 
 Hoo on Sundays." 
 
 Miss Epithite never forgot that she was the elder, 
 and therefore by right of birth entitled to take the 
 lead. Nor did her only less dominant will allow her 
 to forgive her sister for usurping that privilege. Ac- 
 cordingly she had a habit of retaliating upon her by a 
 species of sly ingenuousness. This she assumed now. 
 
 Looking into her sister's face she said : 
 
 " Oh, then, Ursula, you think that young Mr. Legh 
 has really a taste for criminals and other bad people, 
 if only they are bad enough ? " 
 
 "Did I say so, Charlotte?" was demanded in an 
 awful voice. " Have you ever heard me speak any- 
 thing but good of this young gentleman whom I re- 
 member when he was four years old " 
 
 " Oh, I think only three," Miss Epithite protested, 
 " because, if you remember, Ursula, he wore a white 
 embroidered frock and his sleeves were tied up with 
 blue ribbons, that afternoon when his dear mother 
 brought him to the High Street. But didn't you just 
 now say that if he hadn't been a perfect master of 
 crimes he never would have got young Mr. Legh to 
 invite him to Hooton Hoo of a Sunday ? " 
 
 This sly ingenuousness was the one weapon to which 
 Miss Ursula succumbed. It was baffling, outwitting 
 and elusive. One could no more corner it than one 
 could corner a shadow. When it had seemed to be 
 pinned to a spot it would run up the wall and begin 
 to dance upon the ceiling. Time and again she had 
 given herself a bad headache by striving with it. Now 
 she stalked before it into the house. But Charlotte 
 knew her strength. And the subject of young Mr. 
 Legh's predilection for criminals promised many a 
 delightful afternoon to her.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 LOWOOD CALLS ON LEGH 
 
 THE following Sunday, soon after lunch, Lowood 
 started for Hooton Hoo with a sense of pleasurable 
 interest. Since Legh had recognised him he had not 
 ceased to congratulate himself upon the circumstance 
 that all roads of illness lead to a London consulting- 
 room, a fact which had unlocked for him the door of 
 Scrope-Denton society, which otherwise might have 
 remained fast shut to all his efforts. 
 
 The afternoon was fine, though misty. He had 
 allowed himself plenty of time. He went, well pleased 
 in mind and leisurely of pace, through the rich flames 
 of gold and crimson which Nature had kindled, serving 
 at the same time for a splendid funeral pyre, and by 
 a proclamation of the ruddy life still left in her for 
 a covenant of her revivification. The flames were at- 
 tended by the crackling of leaves beneath the feet, and 
 by the flinging of a score of incense-like aromas on 
 the air. 
 
 The robins, looking in their autumn plumage as 
 though their plump scarlet breasts too had caught fire, 
 cast drops of sweetness which were as drops of vocal 
 honey on the fragrant silence. Now and again a wren, 
 one of the most exquisite and dainty of God's mani- 
 fold, manifest fancies, embroidered the air with even 
 a sweeter and more silver cadence. Through the haze 
 all looked brooding and mysterious, the mountains lost 
 in purple dreams. 
 
 Lowood's mind, absorbed into this sensuous reverie, 
 was suddenly caught back to the realities by the quick, 
 sharp click of hoofs. In an instant he recognised
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 75 
 
 the swift, precise trot of the Duke's horses. He 
 stopped, and stepping to the hedge plucked a spray 
 of blackberries, so giving himself opportunity and ex- 
 cuse for turning his head, and catching a glimpse of 
 the beautiful Mrs. Beaumont. It was but a glimpse, 
 a flash-light bewilderment of curves and lovely tints, 
 of red and white and amber, and the glance of a full 
 eye. Then she was gone, and his gaze riveted itself to 
 a gleaming amber knot upon a perfect nape, with a 
 white plume falling gracefully over it. He had time, 
 too, to note her companion, a slender dark girl, whose 
 beauty, if such she had, was eclipsed by the richer and 
 riper charms of her elder. 
 
 Again, as before, his attention was fascinated by the 
 human problem presented. Marriage has become so 
 mere a convention, one with which love has so seldom 
 to do, that it has ceased to surround itself with roman- 
 tic considerations. But illicit ties, being outside and in 
 violation of convention, are apt to suggest an impulse 
 of passion so strong as to have overridden custom and 
 considerations of repute. In point of fact such ties 
 are as conventional, and frequently even less devoid of 
 passion, than are marriages. 
 
 But the suspicion always lingers. And do as he will 
 to civilise all that is human and romantic out of him, 
 love remains still the one rose blooming in man's wil- 
 derness. Nelson lives less in our hearts and memories 
 for the mighty battles which he won than for his ro- 
 mantic devotion to the well-loved Emma. 
 
 With that shy idealisation of woman which so fre- 
 quently keeps men bachelors, she being an illusive 
 creature of the imagination rather than a flesh-and- 
 blood person to be acquired by conventional methods, 
 the episode of the Duke's lady had gone like a ferment 
 to Lowood's brain. 
 
 In that complex enigma the heart of a man of the 
 world, in this case a man whose rank and wealth and 
 freedom from material anxieties allowed him to shape
 
 76 The Whips of Time 
 
 his human chapter as he would, giving him the choice 
 of all the highest privileges material life offers this 
 man had chosen love. 
 
 Lowood had met him once at dinner at the house of 
 a distinguished patient. He recalled him as he had 
 seen him sitting at the foot of the table beside his 
 hostess, a heavy, red-faced, almost gross person, of an 
 arrogant eye and morose mien, yet with an occasional 
 lightening of expression and a smile and manner of 
 distinguished graciousness, as though beneath his bur- 
 den of boredom there lurked one softening memory, 
 one green spot to which his nature turned. 
 
 Lowood, recalling him, placed this green spot at 
 Moonbank, that casket wherein lay his jewel. Albeit 
 the attachment was strong enough, so report said, to 
 have kept the Duke from marrying, it is probable that 
 it was of a less romantic and chivalrous character than 
 Lowood supposed, his own austere life having kept the 
 sex-sense in him fresh and unspoiled as in a young, 
 enthusiastic man. Yet there was to eye and mind the 
 lovely woman cherished as a jewel, the great Duke 
 worshipping the ground beneath her feet. 
 
 It was not until he found himself before the door 
 of Hooton Hoo that he recalled his straying thoughts 
 from their new field of absorption. 
 
 Mr. Legh, the servant in a handsome livery in- 
 formed him, was at home. Lowood, admiring his fine 
 silken-stockinged calves and his shoulders made impos- 
 ing by their knots, followed him along a distance of 
 oaken-floored and ceilinged corridors, and richly car- 
 peted and tapestried rooms and ante-rooms. Then a 
 door was flung wide and immediately a glow of light 
 and colour, and a murmur of talk and laughter gave 
 place to the velvet silence of his going. 
 
 He found himself in a large library, rich with the 
 stained-glass windows of a century which knew and 
 kept the secret of rich colour. A glance showed him 
 walls lined from ceiling to floor with the bindings
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 77 
 
 of books, showed him a gallery running round the 
 room above, with smaller windows whence light fell 
 illuminant upon thoughtful bronze and marble heads. 
 
 Then he shook hands with Legh, a tawny-haired 
 giant in a lounge suit. Forthwith he was presented to 
 Miss Kesteven, and to Mrs. George Kesteven, her aunt, 
 who was chaperoning her. Finally to Hestroyde, 
 whose dark face had been the first thing he had seen on 
 entering. 
 
 Inclination drew him to Joan, whose beaute du 
 diable in a moment engaged his susceptible eye. But 
 duty chained him to Mrs. Kesteven. He compromised 
 by standing in the flesh beside the latter, while his sus- 
 ceptible eye dwelled pleased upon the former, who was 
 pouring tea with supple, alluring movements of body 
 and wrists. 
 
 " So pleased to meet you, Dr. Loder," Mrs. Keste- 
 ven told him graciously. She was a large, smart 
 woman dressed in red, with a restless, shallow expres- 
 sion and more of manner than of intelligence. 
 
 " I had the pleasure of reading one of your books 
 once, The Dynamite of Nerves, wasn't it? Intensely 
 interesting, but rather deep for an outsider. It was 
 such a very clever title. Because really, you know, 
 nowadays one's nerves do behave more like fireworks 
 than like telegraph wires. I believe nerves really are 
 only telegraph wires." 
 
 Lowood had too much tact to tell her the real title 
 of his book, which was Nerve Dynamics, too much tact 
 also to tell her that its clever relation to explosives was 
 entirely of her own creation. 
 
 " I am so glad you were interested," he mur- 
 mured. 
 
 "Oh, I was, frightfully. I remember some pictures 
 in it showing facial expressions. I found out from 
 them what was the matter with several of my friends ; 
 really some of the pictures would have done for por- 
 traits. You remember, Joan, how I told you that Mrs.
 
 78 The Whips of Time 
 
 de Lisle was hypochondriacal. Dr. Loder's clever book 
 showed that when all the lines of the face turn down 
 the person has hypochondritis." 
 
 " Hypochondritis " was a new word to Lowood. It 
 pleased him. He reflected, in his whimsical fashion, 
 that a disease should be at once invented to fit it. 
 
 Joan laughed, her ripe, large mouth parting pleas- 
 ingly upon her white teeth. 
 
 " It sounds a beastly sort of thing to have," she said, 
 with an engaging shudder of her shapely shoulders. 
 "Doesn't it, Bobby?" 
 
 " Perfectly rotten," he said cheerfully. " Hope it 
 isn't catchin'." 
 
 "Is it?" Joan asked, glancing into the visitor's 
 eyes, which she was fully aware were regarding her 
 with flattering interest. 
 
 " No," he said. He looked from her to Hestroyde, 
 who stood silent, his dark gaze and his tongue appar- 
 ently magnetised by her unresting, sinuous movements. 
 There was nothing neurotic about them, they appeared 
 rather to be the outcome of a superabundant vitality. 
 
 " I hope soon to return your call, Mr. Hestroyde," 
 he said. " It was good of you to take pity on the 
 bachelor hermit of Homer Cottage." 
 
 " Oh, not at all," Hestroyde said conventionally, 
 and returned to his observation of Joan, and to the 
 duty of passing cups and cake, to which she had 
 impressed him. 
 
 Mrs. Kesteven screamed. 
 
 " But really," she protested shrilly, in her skim-the- 
 surface fashion, " really you're not a bachelor, Dr. 
 Loder. Oh, what a shocking person ! in these days 
 when men are so scarce they're a positive luxury, like 
 orchids or dodoes, you know. I tell Joan she's sensible 
 to settle while she can. Make hay while the sun shines. 
 Nowadays a girl's summer is soon over." 
 
 " But nowadays," Joan said pertly, " women have 
 an Indian summer. If they don't marry at twenty they
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 70 
 
 marry at forty, and they have had twenty years of fun 
 and freedom to the good." 
 
 She cast an arch glance at Hestroyde. He was 
 about to speak but Mrs. Kesteven was before him. 
 
 " But we have changed all that ; young married 
 women between twenty and forty get all the fun and 
 freedom that is good for them, without any anxiety 
 at the end." 
 
 " So far as I have seen," Lowood said gallantly, 
 " charming women need feel no anxiety at any time, 
 because," he added drily, " with all due respect they 
 are always in a minority, and like pretty women there 
 are not enough of them to go round." 
 
 Mrs. Kesteven fixed him with her shrewd eyes. 
 
 ' That's theory," she said. " Some men deliber- 
 ately and in cold blood choose disagreeable and 
 downright objectionable women, just as some persons 
 prefer cayenne and pickles to sweets." 
 
 " It's true," he agreed. " The Skeleton Lady or the 
 Fat Woman of a show is always married. But the 
 average man is still sufficiently human to prefer some- 
 thing pretty and charming." 
 
 " Bravo! " Legh cried, " you bet we do, sir. We're 
 not quite asses. I say, I told you you'd polish up our 
 brains." He rubbed his hands delightedly. " Now 
 we're talkinV 
 
 But Mrs. Kesteven had had enough of it. Her shal- 
 low mind craved novelty. 
 
 " Do, Dr. Loder," she said earnestly, " tell me which 
 you consider more digestible (I love to get medical 
 opinion without paying for it), muffins or crumpets." 
 
 Lowood was at a loss. 
 
 " Really," he said, laughing, " I haven't considered 
 it. I should say they are a very fair match in indigesti- 
 bility. The truth is most things are digestible to 
 healthy digestions, most things indigestible to dys- 
 peptics. And faith has a great deal to do with it. No 
 doubt, if we had faith enough, we could digest moun-
 
 80 The Whips of Time 
 
 tains. Whereas if we take boiled rice in fear and 
 trembling we set our digestive organs into such a panic 
 that they transform our boiled rice into unboiled 
 paving-stones. The best way is to take anything in 
 reason that comes, and not to think about it." 
 
 " It's certainly the nicest way," Joan said, picking 
 her choice out of a big box of chocolates which Hes- 
 troyde passed her, " but I'm afraid it's the way to grow 
 fat." 
 
 She laughed confidently, in the serene assurance of 
 her lithe and slender body, as youth laughs at the 
 notion of other of the penalties which age inflicts, but 
 of which time has not yet given a threat. 
 
 Lowood felt himself drawn to her. With her fresh 
 fair complexion, her shining green eyes darting arrows 
 of coquettish glances, her red lips and dazzling teeth, 
 her abundant, well-dressed flaxen hair, she was the 
 embodiment of young and glowing health. And health 
 beyond all things is attractive to the physician, whose 
 life is for the most part passed in the gloomy vale of 
 valetudinarianism. 
 
 Knowing that he knew, he could not repress a slight 
 sense of antagonism against Hestroyde. A few days 
 before he had been going over the newspaper reports 
 of the trial of Sarah Munnings, which, at the time of 
 Hummerstone's revelations, he had carefully cut out 
 and pasted into a folio. The story showed such cal- 
 lous wicked-heartedness, cold-blooded murder for the 
 sake of wanton murder, the daily and intimate obser- 
 vation with cold and clever eyes (for the woman had 
 shown an amazing amount of intelligence) of suffer- 
 ings which did not appear to have stirred in her one 
 flash of pity. Men, women and children had been her 
 victims. And that her victims had, in some cases, been 
 attached to her and grateful for her ministrations and 
 pretended sympathy had not deterred her a whit. A 
 more blood-curdling story and one which left less 
 compassion for the criminal could not have been told.
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 81 
 
 Lowood was revolted by the thought of linking this 
 bright, young, well-bred creature to the son of such a 
 monster. Yet the keen, probing eyes he kept turning 
 upon the young man found in his appearance nothing 
 which unfitted him to be her mate. Indeed, where she 
 was no more than a bright, fresh, wholesome girl of 
 a singularly pleasing manner, Hestroyde showed fine- 
 looking even to the point of distinction, in both form 
 and face. His extreme darkness of skin was the 
 scientist's sole refuge. 
 
 Persons in whom there is an admixture of black 
 blood, he knew, are frequently gifted with exceptional 
 looks. It is as though the white blood illumining the 
 black reveals new vital hues of beauty, as a lamp 
 behind it will show the rich form and tints of an other- 
 wise sombre stained glass. Yet that such admixtures 
 are abnormal and evil, the product combining the vices 
 of white and of black blood without the virtues of 
 either, has been established beyond doubt. 
 
 So Lowood, despite the young man's handsome 
 looks, surmised something sinister and treacherous 
 behind them. He regretted that this alien element 
 entered in to confuse his psychological problem. 
 Otherwise, he had no doubt, young Munnings would 
 have been a low-browed, ordinary criminal, the typical 
 offspring of a vicious mother. 
 
 Yet even while he pondered his eyes sought Legh. 
 After all, despite appearances, this clean-skinned 
 young sportsman, the very picture of an English 
 country gentleman, might be Munnings. Nature 
 occasionally plays freaks, and the young man 
 might be a reversion to some ancestral type, the type 
 of some sturdy yeoman from whose simple virtues the 
 progenitors of the murderess had diverted. 
 
 In the end he shelved the problem. Time, and the 
 revelation of the young men's characters, would doubt- 
 less give him presently some ground to go upon. 
 
 While he reflected in the base of mental rumination,
 
 82 The Whips of Time 
 
 he carried on a falsetto of social banalities with Mrs. 
 Kesteven. Also he kept an eye on the younger mem- 
 bers of the party. He marked the rejected lover's 
 lugubrious glances at the fair one, his successful rival's 
 triumphant absorption in her, and her own guileful 
 coquetting with both, playing her charms in the glow 
 of their admiring eyes. 
 
 The girl is a flirt, he decided, yet he did not condemn 
 her so severely as he should have done. She played 
 her fish so prettily and seemed to take so much exu- 
 berant' pleasure in the sport that it appeared as though 
 she could not for the life of her refrain. 
 
 Yet, Lowood thought, noting the hot jealousy which 
 occasionally surged into Hestroyde's face, and the 
 gleamings as of sudden hope in Legh's, there will be 
 trouble about her between these young men if she is 
 not careful. 
 
 " I say, Joan," Legh exclaimed, as the ladies rose, 
 " where in the world is Belshazzar ? I didn't see him 
 come in and took it for granted he was in one of his 
 sulks and had gone to his favourite corner under the 
 settle. I never knew you to come without your faith- 
 ful henchman." 
 
 Every vestige of colour left her face, her red lips 
 set strongly. Lowood saw her cast a swift and, it 
 seemed to him, an angry glance at Hestroyde. Then 
 she replied in a toneless voice : 
 
 " Belshazzar has been misbehaving. I shall have to 
 get rid of him." 
 
 Legh laughed, a boyish, rather crude laugh. 
 
 " When the world comes to an end," he said. " We 
 call him your shadow. What has the old ruffian been 
 doing?" 
 
 " Snapping." 
 
 " Belshazzar snapping? Bless my soul, at whom? " 
 
 " Oh, don't bother," she cried sharply. " Do let us 
 go. We shall be late for church." 
 
 She gave her hand with a cold abruptness to Hes-
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 8S 
 
 troyde, the action and her avoidant eye forbidding 
 him to accompany her to the door as he was preparing 
 to do. Legh went, leaving Lowood and Hestroyde 
 together. 
 
 Lowood saw that the young man who had taken no 
 part in the talk about that which, he concluded, must 
 be Miss Kesteven's dog, was now very pale, and that 
 he seemed to be suffering from some agitation. 
 
 No doubt jealousy, he reflected. If that young 
 woman doesn't mind what she is about there will be 
 trouble. 
 
 He left Hestroyde to get over his agitation by him- 
 self, and began to examine the bookshelves, some rare 
 bindings upon which had caught his eye. Hestroyde, 
 apparently unaware or careless of his presence, stood 
 staring down into the log fire. 
 
 So soon as Legh returned Lowood proposed also to 
 take his leave. 
 
 " I, too, must be off," Hestroyde said quickly. 
 
 It was obvious that there was some embarrassment 
 between the friends. The successful lover was loth to 
 be left alone with his defeated rival. 
 
 " If I may, Dr. Lowood," he added, " I will walk 
 part of the way with you and show you a short cut 
 through the park." 
 
 " Why, I'll go too," Legh said ; " stretch my legs 
 and give the dogs a run. Come, dogs ! " 
 
 Immediately there was a joyous chorus. Three 
 large forms, which had been lying prone before the 
 fire, their jaws wedged dismally upon their forepaws 
 and their minds, no doubt, glowering upon the problem 
 of why three honest, well-intentioned creatures should 
 be compelled to practise the dull, social etiquette of 
 being seen and not heard, had leapt with a simultane- 
 ous bound to their feet and were giving joyful 
 tongue. 
 
 " Down, dogs, down ! " Legh commanded, although 
 he was as pleased as they. He added, with as much
 
 84 The Whips of Time 
 
 bitterness as was possible to one of his sanguine tem- 
 perament : 
 
 " There's one thing. Whatever happens we've 
 always got our dogs to be fond of us." 
 
 But the first breath of air as they passed into the 
 open dispelled his bitterness and self-commiseration. 
 
 " He's a thoroughly nice, warm-hearted youngster," 
 Lowood reflected, as the young man, forgetting his 
 own distresses, explained that the two houses, Hooton 
 Hoo and The Folly, lay, as the crow flew, back to 
 back with Mowbreck Hall and Moonbank. But be- 
 tween them was part of the range of hills, the parks 
 ascending these for a distance and then merging into 
 the wilderness of bracken and heather. 
 
 " But there's a narrow ravine between Moonbank 
 and The Folly which brings their park fences within a 
 few yards, and the houses within a quarter of a mile 
 of one another. By the road round the base of the hill 
 they're six miles apart." 
 
 " In other ways," Hestroyde put in with quiet irony, 
 " a good deal further apart than that." 
 
 " You must tell me about this beautiful Mrs. Beau- 
 mont," Lowood began, when the conversation was 
 abruptly changed by Legh opening a small postern gate 
 almost concealed by a mass of overhanging ivy. 
 
 " Now we are in Hestroyde's territory," he said, 
 smiling. " Once upon a time all the houses were 
 friends. Now the gate between Mowbreck and Moon- 
 bank is barricaded." 
 
 " Excluding the beautiful frail one." Legh laughed. 
 " It's the Moonbank side of the gate which has been 
 barred, by the Duke's orders. He allows no tres- 
 passers on his domain." 
 
 He paused and threw a quizzical glance at Lowood. 
 
 " Some day, perhaps," he added, " I'll tell you that 
 story." 
 
 Lowood pricked up his ears. But Hestroyde mut- 
 tered :
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 85 
 
 " By George, no, Bob." 
 
 " Oh, why not? " Legh persisted good-humouredly. 
 " It's a good story and Dr. Lowood won't blab." 
 
 Lowood professed not to hear the aside, but it added 
 piquancy to a prospect. 
 
 " Hello ! " Legh exclaimed suddenly, " where in the 
 world have the dogs got to ? " 
 
 He whistled and called, called and whistled. There 
 was no response. 
 
 " You two go on," he said, " while I go back. The 
 brutes are up to some mischief or other." 
 
 But Lowood and Hestroyde, having no better way 
 of putting in time, turned back with him. 
 
 " Where the deuce can they be? " their master said, 
 as no sign of them showed. 
 
 Then the Gordon setter dashed excitedly out from 
 a plantation, his tail sweeping, his ears tossing. He 
 gave short yaps of agitated explanation. Having 
 bounded nearly up to them, he suddenly turned round, 
 frisking back and plainly inviting them to follow. 
 
 " There's something up," Legh said. " Perhaps 
 Ranger has come to grief. If there is any possibility 
 of it Ranger always comes to grief. I say, you chaps 
 had better go on, hadn't you ? " 
 
 Hestroyde now showed some uneasiness. 
 
 " No," he said brusquely, " you two go on. I'll 
 find them." 
 
 He dropped into a light run, his lithe figure moving 
 with the ease and swiftness of a greyhound, the dog 
 frisking before him. Legh, taking infection, also ran. 
 Soon the three were lost to sight. Lowood followed 
 at his leisure, led by the excited yelpings of the dogs. 
 
 He came up with them soon, Hestroyde mortified, 
 Legh amazed, both staring down at something which 
 the dogs, now mute with triumph in their prize and 
 in their perspicacity, had unearthed. The something 
 was the limp and dismal body of a dead bulldog, his 
 coat earth-stained and sodden, his half-closed eyes
 
 86 The Whips of Time 
 
 glazed pitifully, a swollen, earth-stained tongue pro- 
 truding from his mouth. A small cleft in the broad 
 chest and a wide wound of torn flesh and clotted blood 
 in the back showed, the one where a bullet had entered, 
 the other where it had come out. 
 
 " Belshazzar, by Jove ! Poor old chap," Legh said, 
 as Lowood joined them. " What on earth does it 
 mean? " 
 
 Lowood's eyes were arrested by Hestroyde's ex- 
 pression. Shame, anger and concealment were in it. 
 He laughed uneasily. 
 
 " Behold the culprit ! " he said, forcing levity. 
 " Belshazzar bit my hand. Belshazzar had to be 
 punished. I'm sorry. But when bulldogs take to 
 snapping they must also take the consequences." 
 
 The explanation did not lessen Legh's amazement. 
 
 " But, I say," he expostulated, " you might have 
 given the poor beast another chance. He's always 
 been such a jolly, faithful old chap, so docile and 
 affectionate." 
 
 A little spasm twisted his lips as he looked down at 
 the sodden, ugly mass he had known as a strong and 
 active thing with a trenchant, honest will, a trusty 
 heart and a fine intelligence. 
 
 The dogs began now to be ashamed of their find. 
 The silence, and lack of commendation for which they 
 had looked, caused them to doubt their discretion in 
 unearthing it. They dropped their heads and stole 
 guilty, inquiring glances at one another, and at the 
 thing they perhaps felt they, too, must one day come 
 to. 
 
 Then Legh gave a little concerned whistle. 
 
 " Jove! what will Joan say? She idolised him." 
 
 " Joan knows," Hestroyde said curtly. There were 
 pride and temper in his voice. He was on the offen- 
 sive against blame. 
 
 " Joan knows ? " Legh repeated incredulously. He 
 was about to say more when Hestroyde cut him short.
 
 Lowood Calls on Legh 87 
 
 " If you two will go on," he said coldly, " I will put 
 Belshazzar where the dogs won't find him again." 
 
 Lowood and Legh walked on in silence. Then Legh 
 said, as though explaining the affair to himself: 
 
 " Hestroyde was afraid, of course, for Joan." 
 
 " No doubt," Lowood agreed. 
 
 But in his heart he reflected it was more probable 
 that Munnings had been afraid for himself.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A HORSEWHIPPING 
 
 LEGH seemed to have taken a liking to Lowood. No 
 doubt too he was suffering from the twofold distresses 
 of rejected suitor and neglected friend. For Hes- 
 troyde, ardently in love, had no time now for anyone 
 save Joan. 
 
 Lowood was pleased when, a few evenings later, 
 just as he had lighted up a pipe and was settling down 
 to a solitary evening with a book, Legh, in his dinner 
 suit, came in. 
 
 " If you can put up with me for an hour or so, sir," 
 he said diffidently, " you'll be doing a poor beggar a 
 good turn. Fact is I'm deuced hipped. Had a reg- 
 ular knockout blow, and it smarts." 
 
 Lowood, giving him a cordial welcome, had soon 
 heard the story of his love and of his failure. 
 
 " If there was any chance of there being two such 
 girls in the world," Joan's admirer said despondently, 
 " it would be another shop. But we've known one 
 another all our lives. And she's just clinkin'. But, 
 of course, I needn't tell you, you've seen her yourself." 
 
 Lowood was too kind-hearted to tell him that al- 
 though he had seen and had duly admired he had not 
 seen her with a lover's eyes. 
 
 " Oh," he said cheerfully, " there are still some nice 
 girls in the world. Why don't you get away for a bit ? 
 Wouldn't you forget it sooner ? " 
 
 " No. I'll stop and face the music. It would be 
 rather rotten to turn tail. Besides, I've got to get used 
 to it, you know, and I've arranged a lot of shoots
 
 A Horsewhipping 89 
 
 for this and next month. By the way, you shoot, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " No," Lowood said, " not since I was your age." 
 He smiled whimsically. " We doctors have a different 
 but an equally effective method." 
 
 The young man smiled too. 
 
 " Well, whatever some of you may do, you saved 
 my life, I know that. My hand trembled and my sight 
 was as dim as a cat's." 
 
 Presently he had forgotten his woes, and, reminded 
 by Lowood, was telling the story of Moonbank. 
 
 " It was like this," he said, with a laugh and a 
 slightly flushing cheek. " It was four years ago, Mark 
 and I were only asses of undergrads. We'd seen Mrs. 
 Beaumont driving and had heard all about her. Our 
 heads were fairly turned. You've seen her isn't she 
 enough to turn anybody's head ? " 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Well, then, we'd met her out in the afternoon and 
 we thought You know that smiling look some 
 women have in their eyes. It's there for everyone. 
 But we thought in this case it was there for us, a bit 
 of encouragement, in fact. We knew she must find it 
 beastly dull, cooped up there all by herself, with all the 
 women looking down on her and nobody going to the 
 house except the Duke occasionally. And when young 
 fools first learn that women aren't all they thought 
 they were, they go to the other extreme, and think all 
 women are tarred with the same brush." 
 
 :< Yes," Lowood said, watching his guest's face, 
 with its honest diffidence and the sanguine candour 
 which bespoke the clean, outdoor life. 
 
 " Well, that evening we'd been dining with old 
 Tempest and he had plied us with champagne. And 
 walking home the moon perhaps got into our heads. 
 We decided to go and serenade Mrs. Beaumont or 
 something try and get to speak to her. We hadn't 
 any very definite plan. Our blood was up and we ran
 
 90 The Whips of Time 
 
 most of the way through the park and in by the 
 gate I mentioned. The Duke had it barred and riveted 
 a week afterwards. Of course we were acting like a 
 couple of bounders, but we meant it only in a spirit 
 of adventure. 
 
 " It was about half-past eleven when we reached the 
 house. It was all lighted up. There was a room on 
 the second floor, a room with a balcony and large 
 casement windows opening on it, and the windows 
 were open. The curtains were only half drawn, and 
 we could see flowers and shaded lamps. We thought 
 she was there. 
 
 " Mark has a good baritone and I can sing a bit. 
 We struck up a duet. I tell you it didn't sound half 
 bad in the stillness of the night. After the first verse 
 we stopped and listened. Nothing happened. We 
 went on to the second. Still nothing happened. By 
 this time perhaps the champagne was working. We 
 started shinning up one of the pillars of the balcony, 
 and almost before we knew it we were standing in the 
 room." 
 
 " Well ? " Lowood said with a catch in his breath. 
 
 " Well," Legh returned, and laughed boyishly, " the 
 Duke was there." 
 
 " The deuce ! " Lowood commented. 
 
 " It was very much the deuce, I can tell you. I 
 never felt such a fool in all my life, nor so sober as 
 when I found myself face to face with him sitting up 
 straight in his chair and glaring into my eyes. I 
 scarcely saw the vision even and she was a vision, 
 all lace and silk and shining, smiling eyes and jewels, 
 who was seated on a little chair beside him with her 
 head against his knee. I don't think she would have 
 thought of it herself, but the Duke got up with a grand 
 air and set another chair for her a little distance off. 
 Then he came back and sat glaring at us. I tell you 
 we didn't know what on earth to say. We just stood 
 in the beautiful room, all flowers and curtains and
 
 A Horsewhipping 91 
 
 shaded lamps, we stood and felt like a couple of low- 
 down cads caught sneak-thieving. 
 
 " ' Well, gentlemen ? ' the Duke said, with a snarl at 
 the end of his voice. Then, as we still didn't speak, 
 but began to edge back to the window we had come 
 in by: 
 
 " * Well, gentlemen ? ' he said in a louder voice, with 
 a louder snarl at the end of it, which held us like a 
 lasso. His large red face got purple. ' I am waiting 
 for the explanation of what, without an explanation, 
 appears to be unwarrantable intrusion at an unwar- 
 rantable time of night.' 
 
 " Then Hestroyde said quietly : 
 
 " ' It is an unwarrantable intrusion, sir. We can 
 only apologise and go.' 
 
 " ' Not yet, sir,' the Duke rasped, ' not yet.' He 
 looked at Mrs. Beaumont, a look which seemed to go 
 through her. ' Was your visit to me or to this lady? ' 
 Then, as we were ashamed to speak, ' Are you ac- 
 quainted with this lady ? ' 
 
 " ' No, sir,' we both said at once. 
 
 " There was something in his eye which, even if she 
 had been our most intimate friend, would have made 
 us say ' No.' 
 
 " ' Was it your intention to force your acquaintance 
 upon her uninvited and at this time of night? No 
 doubt,' he added with a shrivelling contempt, ' you 
 were not prepared to find that the lady had somebody 
 here to protect her from your ruffian impudence.' 
 
 " I could stand it no longer, and called out : 
 
 " ' We're not such blackguards, sir. We lost our 
 heads, but we are not altogether blackguards. The 
 lady is so beautiful, we lost our heads.' ' 
 
 " I think the best thing you could have said under 
 the circumstances," Lowood commented. 
 
 " Well, the Duke seemed to think so. His face 
 softened. There was a bit of a smile under his mous- 
 tache. The lady herself gave a little laugh like run-
 
 92 The Whips of Time 
 
 ning water. The Duke rose again and opened a 
 door. 
 
 " ' Leave me, Emmy/ he said in a low voice, ' to 
 deal with this pair of young rascals.' 
 
 " She swept up out of her chair in her laces and 
 silks. She cast one melting and, it seemed, pitying 
 look at us, and turned to the door. Halfway through 
 she looked back at him and smiled. Such a smile! 
 What a face she has ! She said gently, ' Jack, don't 
 be too harsh with them, they're only boys.' Then he 
 shut the door after her. 
 
 " He drew a deep breath. He stood glowering at 
 us for a moment. Then he broke out into the most 
 awful language, foul, blasphemous, horrible, that I 
 have ever heard. We stood and took it, there was 
 nothing else to do. For the moment, with that lovely 
 creature in our minds and our impertinence brought 
 home to us, we felt we were all that he called us. 
 At all events I did. But at last I could stand it no 
 longer. 
 
 " ' Look here, sir,' I said, ' we're not all that or all 
 that you think us. We'd taken some champagne and 
 we lost our heads, but we're not such hogs as to have 
 been rude to any lady.' 
 
 " He calmed down a bit then. 
 
 " ' Prove it,' he said. He opened the door. He 
 looked back. ' I shall expect to find you here when I 
 return.' 
 
 " Of course we stopped. He came back in a few 
 minutes with something under his coat. Through it 
 all he remembered that he was a gentleman. He pro- 
 duced the thing from inside his coat. It was a long 
 horsewhip. 
 
 " ' Now, then, gentlemen,' he said, ' let us test the 
 sincerity of your apologies. You come here in the 
 dead of night and break into the room of a lady 
 of a lady,' he thundered a second time, ' supposing her 
 to be without protection. You expose her to calumny,
 
 A Horsewhipping 93 
 
 to misapprehension.' (I think from the jealous sparkle 
 of his eye that he was considering his own misappre- 
 hension had the incident been told to him.) ' Are you 
 prepared to take your punishment ? ' 
 
 " We were. Still remembering that he was a gen- 
 tleman, and knowing that the thing must be kept 
 between gentlemen, he closed all the windows, drew 
 down the blinds and locked the doors. 
 
 " Hestroyde said suddenly : 
 
 " ' I suppose you know that if we liked my friend 
 and I could murder you.' 
 
 " Saxby looked him up and down. 
 
 " ' Possibly,' he said, ' but I don't think you will.' 
 
 " Well, I've taken some swishing at Eton under old 
 Blank, but 'pon my word that was mere child's play 
 to what the Duke gave us. We were marked for 
 weeks. When he had finished he quietly held out his 
 hand. 
 
 " ' I trust, gentlemen, that you admit the justice of 
 my dealings. On my part, I see that I have had gen- 
 tlemen to deal with, and I ask no promises.' 
 
 " I shook hands with him. I was sore from head 
 to foot and the perspiration ran down me as it did 
 down the Duke. But I shook hands with him, I 
 thought he was in the right. But Hestroyde wouldn't. 
 I saw then that he had submitted not because he 
 thought he'd deserved it, but because he was too proud 
 to seem to funk it. But he wouldn't shake hands. He 
 looked the Duke straight in the eye. 
 
 " ' No,' he said, ' I'll see you in hell first.' 
 
 ' The Duke shrugged his shoulders. Then very 
 courteously he opened a window for us, and we went 
 down as we had come up; only the descent, for very 
 good reasons, was much more painful. Then, as I 
 tell you, a week afterwards the gate in the park was 
 barred up. I don't think I need tell you that was our 
 first and last visit to Moonbank." 
 
 " It was an adventure," Lowood said. He had been
 
 94 The Whips of Time 
 
 keenly absorbed. Legh had told his story well, it made 
 a cinematograph play of tense emotions. 
 
 " Who is the girl I see driving with Mrs. Beau- 
 mont?" 
 
 " That is Miss Wenlith, her niece. She lives with 
 her. And a rotten lonely sort of life it must be. I 
 don't believe they ever have a soul to visit them. And 
 of course all the women here look over their heads as 
 though they weren't here. The poor girl doesn't even 
 ride to hounds," he added in a tone of deep commis- 
 eration. 
 
 Lowood smiled. 
 
 " Perhaps that is less of a deprivation to her than it 
 would be to you. Now I, for example, although I am 
 fond of riding, should be bored to death if, instead 
 of following my own inclination, I were compelled to 
 follow the lead of a fox." 
 
 " I advise you not to say that down here, sir," Legh 
 told him solicitously. " Far better give out that you're 
 an atheist. It wouldn't make you half so unpopular." 
 
 " I'll try to be discreet," Lowood said, amused. 
 " But a man who neither hunts nor shoots, and seldom 
 goes to church, is liable to be regarded with suspicion 
 in the country." 
 
 " Unless, of course," Legh said on an inspiration, 
 " unless people label you clever or or eccentric. If 
 they can find a reason for you not doing the things 
 they do, they don't mind. But if they can't find any 
 reason it makes them begin to wonder whether, after 
 all, there is any reason why they should do them. And 
 people hate anything that unsettles them. It's so 
 much easier to continue to go the way you've always 
 gone." 
 
 Lowood smiled at his philosophy. 
 
 " And so," he said, " conventionality becomes the 
 grave of character. The very essence of living is to 
 develop along one's own, and along the lines of some 
 other person's requirements. It's the same with our
 
 A Horsewhipping 95 
 
 physical training and our education. Most of us are 
 born with weak spots, bodily or mental. If we let 
 Nature have its way and don't strain the nervous 
 forces, Nature will supply all the surplus force she can 
 lay hands on to strengthening our weak spots. So in 
 education, we lump everyone together, pass all through 
 the same mill, and do our utmost to crush our individ- 
 uality and personal aspirations, which are the expres- 
 sion of evolutionary needs. 
 
 " For example, a man's most pressing evolutionary 
 need may be to develop his artistic faculties. His 
 father says, ' Rubbish ! There's nothing in art now- 
 adays. You must go into the office and learn to keep 
 yourself.' He learns to keep himself at the sacrifice 
 of qualities without which his evolution stops short. 
 It is just the same as though his father said, ' My boy, 
 it's rough, I know, but it's all for the best. I must 
 put out one or both of your eyes, because it has been 
 found that in our business blind men do the best work 
 and make the biggest incomes. John, I am ready for 
 the red-hot knitting-needles.' ' 
 
 " Oh, well," Legh said contemptuously, " I must 
 say I despise those artist chaps not geniuses of 
 course but all these potterers who lounge about in 
 velvet coats and neck-ribbons, and look at pictures 
 with their eyes screwed up. They're as bad as poets. 
 What do men want with writing poetry? What men 
 want is blood and bone and no deuced nonsense about 
 'em." 
 
 Lowood laughed at his cut-and-dried notions. 
 
 " Men and their wants," he said, " are as diverse 
 as the sands of the sea. And one day we shall realise 
 this and shall so reconstruct our system that the pres- 
 ervation of personal faculty and character, and not 
 the building up of wealth, will be the be-all and end- 
 all of existence." 
 
 When, shortly afterwards, the young man departed, 
 an old head tied up in a shawl was thrust warily out
 
 96 The Whips of Time 
 
 of a window and his departure watched with inquisi- 
 tive eyes. 
 
 " Young Mr. Legh is walking down the garden 
 path, Ursula," was reported to her sister, already com- 
 fortably in bed ; " he's wearing dress-clothes and a 
 fawn overcoat. I could see them plainly in the hall 
 light. He does have his shirt-fronts got up beautifully, 
 it shone like glass. He is walking down the garden 
 path with him, they've got their heads together and 
 are walking very slowly. It's a cloudy night. I 
 shouldn't wonder if it rains before young Mr. Legh 
 gets home." 
 
 " And serve him right," Miss Ursula retorted 
 hoarsely from the bed-clothes, " for keeping such 
 company. If this goes on, I shall speak to the Vicar." 
 
 " What shall you tell him, Ursula ? " 
 
 " Did you ever know me at a loss what to tell any- 
 body, Charlotte?" 
 
 " Well, if you tell him he's a detective, Ursula, I 
 shall feel it my duty to tell him he's an anarchist. It's 
 cold, I think I'll shut the window." 
 
 " On no account, Charlotte, until you have seen him 
 come back decently into the house. I will have no 
 night prowlings at Homer Cottage." 
 
 " Of course not, Ursula. But what should you do 
 if he didn't come back say till three o'clock to- 
 morrow morning? " 
 
 For a while this proved a poser. Then Miss Ursula 
 rose to it. 
 
 " I should immediately arouse the neighbourhood," 
 she said in a voice so terrible that Miss Epithite, who, 
 despite her occasional rebellions, was at heart timid 
 and afraid of her sister, protested in a startled whis- 
 per : 
 
 " But he is coming back, Ursula, he really is. 
 There's no need to put ourselves about. There, now, 
 I can see his white shirt-front. He dresses for dinner 
 as though he was a gentleman. Now he's gone in
 
 A Horsewhipping 97 
 
 and shut the door. So I shall shut the window. My 
 feet are like stones." 
 
 But she waited till Ursula's silence consented. A 
 threat so alarming as that of arousing the neighbour- 
 hood had reduced her to her normal docility. Ursula, 
 in that mood, was a person to be respected. So soon, 
 however, as she supposed that natural drowsiness had 
 relaxed her bedfellow's iron will, her native obstinacy 
 gave a good-night flicker. 
 
 " If you were to arouse the neighbourhood, Ursula," 
 she said, " how do you think he'd like it ? He might 
 give notice. And he pays us five guineas a week." 
 
 Her calculation had been well timed. Ursula was 
 feeling drowsy; moreover, having read of it as a 
 means of inducing sleep, she had repeated her prayers 
 half a dozen times over and was on the point of drop- 
 ping off. But she had proved before the efficacy of 
 Scriptural quotation in stopping a disputant's mouth. 
 
 " Charlotte," she began severely, " * what shall it 
 profit a man ' 
 
 " But it couldn't profit anybody, Ursula, to lose a 
 lodger who was paying five guineas a week ! " 
 
 Dead silence succeeded. Charlotte rubbed her bony 
 hands together. For the second time that week she 
 had had the last word.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A NOTE 
 
 LOWOOD let himself loose sometimes in the autumnal 
 fastnesses of Scrope-Denton with a herbarium beneath 
 an arm. He was no keen botanist. But there were 
 certain medicinal specimens in which, as a doctor, he 
 was interested, and these he collected, classified and set 
 to mummify in his folio. 
 
 Once in a quiet lane he had come across a girl, also 
 with a herbarium beneath an arm, peering with bent 
 head and fixed gaze into a luxuriant ditch. Had she 
 been nearer to Moonbank some flash of association 
 would have informed him that this was Miss Wenlith, 
 the young relative who lived with Mrs. Beaumont. 
 As it was he got no farther than a puzzled sense that 
 he had seen her before but was unable to place her. 
 
 She lifted her head as he approached. Their looks 
 met. He derived an impression of a pale and sensitive 
 face lit by a pair of luminous eyes. These flashed in 
 a comprehending glance to some specimens he was 
 carrying in a hand and thence to his herbarium. A 
 second time her eyes met his, this time with the slight 
 shade of interest of one who recognises a fellow- 
 student. 
 
 Then she moved past him with an air of reserve, 
 touched perhaps with hauteur. 
 
 Two afternoons later the Misses Epithite received 
 the most serious of the succession of shocks which had 
 followed upon Lowood's tenancy. For as they sat in 
 their fenced-in bit of orchard, engaged in knitting, in
 
 A Note dd 
 
 quarrelling, and in watching for further derelictions 
 on the part of their tenant-aversion, the sound of car- 
 riage wheels was heard and they saw above the tall 
 yew hedge the head and liveried shoulders of the 
 Duke's coachman and footman. Then before their 
 outraged eyes the head and shoulders of the latter 
 disappeared, the white gate opened and the man stalked 
 up the drive between the malcontent peacocks. The 
 angle of the house now deprived them of further vis- 
 ion. But a half minute later their ears felt the arro- 
 gant sound of the knocker on their front door, in a 
 thunder which none but a footman belonging to a 
 family of consequence would have been able to elicit 
 from their modest knocker, this having had all of its 
 spirit and a great proportion of its substance long since 
 rubbed away. 
 
 To their straining ears there came the following 
 colloquy : 
 
 "Does Dr. Lockwood live here?" in the imperious 
 tones of a Duke's servant constrained by his duties to 
 recognise the existence of untitled beings. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood does," answered the unmoved voice 
 of Lowood's servant, Vox, with whom familiarity had 
 bred contempt, or at all events ease, in his bearing 
 toward the menials of rank. 
 
 " Will you give him this? " said the imperious voice, 
 a shade less imperious perhaps. 
 
 " I will, when he comes in," Vox returned indiffer- 
 ently, his intonation implying that he should not put 
 himself about in the slightest degree to do so. 
 
 Then the Misses Epithite, straining their eyes, saw 
 the liveried back go down the drive, saw the white gate 
 close and the second head and shoulders climb again 
 into place beside that which had sat in immovable 
 profile full in their gaze during the whole episode. 
 There was a sound of wheels and all was gone. 
 
 Now the old ladies had all their years proclaimed 
 their principles and shielded their modesty by ignoring
 
 100 The Whips of Time 
 
 absolutely the existence of any living occupant of 
 Moonbank. They had stared into space when the 
 name had been mentioned, as though their ears had 
 failed or had refused to record it. Accordingly they 
 were in a dilemma. It had become a very passion 
 with them to find failings in the man whom they re- 
 garded as having ruthlessly evicted them from house 
 and home. And if you make a point of picking holes 
 in persons the habit so grows that nothing will content 
 until they are in tatters. Hitherto Lowood had given 
 them no more than a loose end here and a puckered 
 thread there of which to lay hold. If, however, as it 
 now appeared, Mrs. Beaumont could be traced into 
 the pattern of his failings they would have wherewithal 
 to tear him shred from shred. But to do this, it was 
 first necessary .not only to recognise the existence of 
 this lady, but also to show cognisance of her character. 
 
 It was a struggle between delicacy and hatred. But 
 hatred, being the more robust faculty, won the day. 
 One waited long for the other to speak first. Char- 
 lotte, bringing her sly innocence to bear, with a sense 
 of triumph left it to Ursula. Let her now maintain 
 the lead she had usurped! While Ursula hoped that 
 Charlotte, from her standpoint of lesser responsibility, 
 would introduce the subject. Finally realising that 
 Charlotte had entered upon her role of obstinate silence 
 Ursula gave in. 
 
 " I thought I heard wheels, Charlotte," she said. 
 " And wasn't that a coachman's head above the hedge ? 
 You should see better than I as you wear glasses." 
 
 " I think it was a carriage, Ursula," Charlotte ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 " Do you think it was Dr. Sanders's carriage, 
 Ursula?" 
 
 " I think it must have been, Charlotte. Whose else 
 could it have been ? " 
 
 " But is anybody ill ? " 
 
 " Not that I have heard of."
 
 A Note 101 
 
 " Then why should Dr. Sanders's carriage stop here 
 if there's nobody ill here? And was that Dr. Sanders 
 who walked up the drive ? " 
 
 " It didn't look much like him, Ursula." 
 
 "Did it look at all like him, Charlotte? Surely it 
 was a taller man than Dr. Sanders. And it didn't 
 sound like Dr. Sanders's voice." 
 
 " Oh, I think it did a little, Ursula. If you noticed 
 it was rather gruff. And I've always told you Dr. 
 Sanders had too gruff a voice for a sick-room." 
 
 Ursula perceived a tedious halt and parley on this 
 well-threshed subject of the undue gruff ness of Dr. 
 Sanders's voice. She steered away from it. 
 
 " I thought the man looked like a footman in liv- 
 ery," she said. 
 
 " Perhaps he did, Ursula. But whose footman 
 could he have been? He didn't look like young Mr. 
 Legh's, nor like Mr. Hestroyde's. He may, of course, 
 have been Lady Kesteven's. Or he may have been 
 Mrs. Tempest's. Or, of course, Ursula, he may even 
 have been " 
 
 Ursula saw that unless she should capitulate this 
 invincible obstinacy might place three days' delay at 
 least between her and the joy of talking over Lowood's 
 newest role of viciousness. 
 
 " Charlotte," she commanded sternly, " I forbid you 
 to prevaricate. You know perfectly well that the car- 
 riage which stopped and the liveried servant were 
 the Duke of Saxby's." 
 
 It was so long since the name had passed her lips, 
 so long since it had entered Charlotte's ears, that both 
 ear and lip may be said to have staggered at its men- 
 tion. Nevertheless, when Charlotte had recovered 
 from the shock of it she recovered in her mood of 
 obstinacy. 
 
 " Why, and so do you know it, Ursula," she said 
 incorrigibly, " since you're no more blind than I am, 
 although you don't wear glasses."
 
 102 The Whips of Time 
 
 There was another long pause. Then obstinacy 
 once more triumphed. 
 
 " And what do you make of the Duke's carriage 
 stopping here and the Duke's man leaving a note for 
 Him, Charlotte?" 
 
 For the space of thirty seconds Charlotte remained 
 mute. Then she said, with a blend of the deepest 
 humility and the liveliest astonishment: 
 
 "Are you asking me what I think, Ursula?" as 
 though the world of her long and unjust subjugation 
 had suddenly tumbled down about her ears. 
 
 Ursula was equal to her. 
 
 " No, Charlotte, I am not. Your opinion is not of 
 the slightest value or you would have seen at a glance 
 that for Lowood to ask that infamous woman to stop 
 at our gate was not only a premeditated insult to us 
 but also a proof of his shameless character." 
 
 "What woman do you mean, Ursula?" Charlotte 
 asked ingenuously. " I saw only a footman." 
 
 " But you knew as well as I know that Mrs. Beau- 
 mont was in the carriage." 
 
 Charlotte, having rubbed in her little revenge, be- 
 came now too eager to discuss their tenant's infamy 
 to parley longer. She leaned forward eagerly, her 
 small crab-apple face becoming harder and ruddier and 
 perhaps her juices more sour at the prospect. 
 
 " Ursula," she said breathlessly, " I'd give my ears 
 to know what is in the letter." 
 
 " Well, you won't then," the latter retorted. " He'll 
 destroy it, the deceitful wretch ! " 
 
 " If he doesn't burn it, Ursula, but tears it only into 
 not too little bits, and doesn't mix it up with other 
 little bits 
 
 " He'll burn it," Ursula prophesied as one who 
 knew his character too well, " and before we can turn 
 round we shall have that woman sitting in our 
 drawing-room." 
 
 She described it as though it would be a species of
 
 A Note 103 
 
 sleight of hand. Hey presto ! here goes her letter into 
 the fire ! And so soon as the smoke of its burning had 
 cleared away Mrs. Beaumont would be seen to be 
 seated in the drawing-room of Homer Cottage with all 
 the assurance in the world. 
 
 Here now I will leave them, in order to rid my 
 reader of a curiosity which, if it should anyway ap- 
 proach to theirs, must be bordering on frenzy. I leave 
 them happily employed. The incident had broken a 
 silence which had been a ten years' martyrdom, such 
 as only a person consumed with curiosity in the neigh- 
 bourhood of such an episode as that of Moonbank, 
 and yet forbidden to speak of it, can suffer. 
 
 When Lowood reached home an hour later Vox 
 followed him into the drawing-room and closed the 
 door with a care which argued that he had some ink- 
 ling of the curiosity seething in the annex. He pro- 
 duced from his pocket a pink Court-shaped envelope, 
 with a large emblazoned ducal coronet in a corner and 
 a strong smell of white rose breathing from every pore. 
 
 " A note for you, sir. It was left by the footman 
 from Moonbank. The carriage with two ladies in it 
 stood waiting at the gate, sir." 
 
 Lowood took the note with a bewildered sense, part 
 ecstasy, part incredulity. He turned it about and ex- 
 amined it curiously. The strong perfume caused him 
 a chill of disillusion. Aphrodite should not scent her 
 letters like a fifth-rate actress. It would have amused 
 him to learn that Aphrodite did not dare to use her 
 scented notepaper when she was writing to the Duke. 
 Since he had characterised it, in his brusque fashion, 
 as a " filthy habit," she had set apart a little desk, 
 guiltless of sachets, wherein she kept paper and en- 
 velopes destined for him. And be it said, for the in- 
 formation of the curious, such paper and envelopes 
 bore no coronet. For the Duke was, as are so many 
 of his set, a great stickler about trifles. 
 
 " And where," Lowood asked, suspecting his serv-
 
 104 The Whips of Time 
 
 ant of being well informed upon a subject which also 
 interested his master, " where in the clouds is Moon- 
 bank, Vox?" 
 
 Vox sent him a discreet glance. His face was im- 
 perturbable. 
 
 " Why, sir," he said smoothly, " I'm told it is a 
 house not far from here and one of the Duke of Sax- 
 by's properties." He respectfully withdrew. 
 
 Lowood remained eyeing the pink coroneted envel- 
 ope with a quizzical smile. He studied the large, 
 careless handwriting, " Dr. Lowood, Homer Cottage," 
 with some attention. Like all men of aesthetic tem- 
 perament he found strong perfumes disagreeable. Ac- 
 cordingly he held it at a little distance. But he held 
 it with a sort of tenderness. 
 
 " Here," he mused aloud, " is a letter from perhaps 
 the loveliest woman in the world. Now what in the 
 world can perhaps the loveliest woman in it have to 
 say to me? " 
 
 Having indulged his fancy and exercised his curi- 
 osity he set about opening it. And being a bachelor 
 of precise habits he opened it with a little silver letter- 
 cutter, which had been a present from a grateful pa- 
 tient, and which he carried always in a vest pocket, 
 thereby incurring, according to the superstitious, the 
 danger of cutting all the friendships of his correspond- 
 ents. Fanciful persons pass their lives in conjuring 
 roseate hues which never were on land or sea but only 
 in their realm of fancy. Then when the hues fade into 
 the drab tints of fact they ask why, if born, they were 
 born to disappointment. 
 
 A more commonplace, uninspiring note than this 
 from the loveliest woman in the world could scarcely 
 have been penned. For the loveliest woman in the 
 world wrote a large, untidy hand, the letters ill and 
 loosely formed, the lines irregular and dancing up to 
 the right-hand corner of the scented paper. The paper 
 bore two blots, one large, with a few careless scratches
 
 A Note 105 
 
 across it which showed that the writer had remembered 
 her duty only to forget it before it was completed, the 
 other small enough, the writer had appeared to think, 
 to be regarded as a venial offence. 
 
 She presented her compliments to Dr. Lowood, and 
 as he was a doctor, as she had been told, she thought 
 he would know botany. And her niece, Miss Alma 
 Wenlith, was devoted to botany. So if Dr. Lowood 
 could make it convenient, as his time was not taken 
 up by practising, to kindly give her niece some lessons 
 in botany, she and Miss Wenlith would be very grate- 
 ful. Mrs. Beaumont trusted that Dr. Lowood would 
 not feel offended at Mrs. Beaumont's perhaps unusual 
 request, and also that he would allow her to offer him 
 some remuneration for his kind services. 
 
 Lowood, reading the letter from sundry standpoints, 
 was a little nettled. In the world he had abandoned, the 
 world of medicine, he had been for the comparatively 
 brief period of his transit something of a shining 
 light. And unaccustomed as he was to take conven- 
 tional views of life, he could not help seeing some- 
 thing of an enormity in this proposal that he should 
 depart from his orbit to teach botany to the niece of 
 a lady in Mrs. Beaumont's equivocal position. Apart 
 from the conventions, however, the human standpoint 
 showed him the lady of the equivocal position as one 
 of the finest masterpieces Nature had achieved in flesh 
 and blood. Moreover, there was the glamour of the 
 Duke's romantic attachment to her. After all, who 
 was he, plain Dr. Lowood, that he should not be proud 
 to obey the behests of a little white hand which had 
 been immortalised in marble by a great dead artist, 
 and which in the flesh was the only power the head 
 of one of England's greatest houses recognised. 
 
 The faults of her letter, and her obvious weakness 
 in spelling (for she had certainly first written "re- 
 muneration " with two n's, subsequently drawing a 
 careless pen through the superfluous one), lowered
 
 106 The Whips of Time 
 
 the altitude to which his sentiment had lifted her, yet 
 instead of diminishing, these things rather increased 
 his palpitant interest by bringing her nearer to his own 
 modest plane. 
 
 He smiled whimsically when, on sitting down to 
 reply to her, he found himself instinctively replacing 
 the old nib in his pen by a new one, and opening a 
 fresh packet of notepaper. He replied briefly that in 
 answer to Mrs. Beaumont's note Dr. James Lowood 
 would give himself the pleasure of calling upon her the 
 following morning. 
 
 That night he dreamed that on being ushered into 
 her presence the Duke stood before her, horsewhip in 
 hand, and administered to him a thrashing from which 
 he awoke with pains in every limb.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MRS. BEAUMONT OF MOONBANK 
 
 HOWEVER, when on the following morning he 
 presented himself at Moonbank, no such dramatic 
 development awaited him. 
 
 He gazed about him with the keenest interest, as a 
 gorgeous footman preceded him along a spacious cor- 
 ridor, of which the walls and ceilings sprawled with 
 Rubens's frescoes, chastened by clean dadoes of hot- 
 house plants. He was shown into a small boudoir of 
 which all that in most rooms is composed of wood was 
 here composed of silver. The beautiful mantelpiece 
 was wrought in this beautiful metal, the fender and 
 parts of the fireirons were also of silver. The white- 
 tiled fireplace showed a bevy of pink Cupids, who, in 
 the nudity common to Cupids, must have been glad of 
 the artificial warmth of the domestic hearth. Round 
 the room ran a silver cornice of embossed design, and 
 the chairs and tables, made of some dainty wood he 
 did not know, were richly encrusted with silver. Aqua- 
 relles of delicate tints harmonised charmingly with the 
 silken upholsteries, which were of a hue he believed 
 to be green although he suspected it might be blue. 
 The ovoid windows were framed in silver. They 
 showed enchanting views of hills and sky, which thus 
 had an appearance of silver-framed pictures. 
 
 The door opened and the loveliest woman in the 
 world stood smiling before him. He required all the 
 presence of mind at his command to prevent him from 
 breaking into barbarian exclamations. Surely no 
 woman had ever been so beautiful! She wore a white
 
 108 The Whips of Time 
 
 gown of silk simply made, or made with such guile as 
 to appear simple, or perhaps indeed simple and only 
 embellished by the lovely lines and curvings of the 
 perfect shape round which it flowed. 
 
 She must at this time have been forty, yet she had 
 preserved the graceful, albeit well-rounded, lines of 
 her youth. One might indeed have thought that age, 
 the most ruthless of beauty's foes, had in her case 
 stayed his hand, reverencing the miracle. 
 
 She extended a beautiful hand, a thing so exquisite 
 that the jewels flashing from it might well have been 
 a natural product of the exquisite flesh. She smiled 
 a revelation of pearls in a rose-heart. 
 
 " Good-morning, Dr. Lowood," she said in a voice 
 soft and tranquil and intimate as the cooing of doves. 
 
 He bent over the hand. His name uttered in that 
 voice was like a silver privilege. 
 
 " It is so kind of you to come," she said, a common- 
 place, but one which her voice so beautified that he was 
 mortified to find no greater words in which to answer 
 than a murmured : 
 
 " Oh, not at all. I am sure I am delighted." 
 
 Then he saw that the goddess was attended by a 
 satellite, the pale girl with luminous eyes whom he had 
 previously met in the lane. 
 
 He discovered later that she, too, had a charm and 
 a beauty of her own, but they were delicate and elusive 
 things less of the flesh than of the mind and nature, 
 and on first acquaintance quite eclipsed by the luxuriant 
 flesh beside her. 
 
 " This is my niece, Miss Wenlith," Mrs. Beaumont 
 said, presenting her. " She dotes on botany. She 
 would love to have somebody to teach her." 
 
 "Oh, will you, please?" the girl begged wistfully, 
 her luminous eyes alight. 
 
 " I shall be delighted," he said, although, if the 
 truth must be told, he had come with the full intention 
 of declining a task for which he felt himself to be un-
 
 Mrs. Beaumont of Moonbank 109 
 
 qualified. " That is," he corrected himself, " I shall 
 be delighted to teach you as much as I know, which 
 I must tell you is very little." 
 
 " But if you will help me to begin," she appealed. 
 " I have only just looked into the subject. I am so 
 ignorant. I find the long Latin names and scientific 
 words so confusing. If you will help me " 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 The luminous eyes brimmed over with light. " I 
 am so very grateful. There is so little to do here. I 
 have read and read till my brain is in a whirl. I feel 
 as though it needs something to steady it, something to 
 grapple with, something difficult and real." 
 
 " Alma gets so many ideas," her aunt said, with a 
 sort of puzzled plaintiveness, and as though her niece 
 had been subject to nettle-rash. " I tell her she reads 
 too much and thinks too much. It makes her pale and 
 nervous. Perhaps a tonic would really do her more 
 good than botany, Dr. Lowood." 
 
 She looked at her with a good-humoured concern. 
 Lowood, on his part, felt interested in the girl. Psy- 
 chologist as he was, his sympathy was roused by a 
 species of mental forlornness her words indicated. In 
 a moment he guessed a great gulf between the two 
 women. Here was a rarely beautiful body allied to an 
 ordinary mind. For the beauty's few words had re- 
 vealed a literalness of speech and a mental limitation 
 which made him think of an exquisite creature pastur- 
 ing pleasantly within a high-hedged paddock, serene, 
 well-pleased, and quite content without even a glance 
 over to see what might lie upon the other side. 
 
 On the other hand, the girl's slight, nervous frame 
 appeared to be thrilling with eager desire for knowl- 
 edge and life. She was a creature which would neg- 
 lect its pleasant pasture in order to be forever craning 
 its head to discover that which lay beyond. To one 
 of his temperament this mood of eager enthusiasm was 
 less pleasing than the tranquil content and rich calm
 
 110 The Whips of Time 
 
 of her relative. Such tranquil content and rich calm, 
 he had always told himself, were the normal and 
 delectable ideal of woman. The modern fretting fever 
 to be forever looking over into and annexing other 
 paddocks was the source, he thought, of all our modern 
 ills. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont dismissed her niece and her niece's 
 concerns. Lowood had consented to treat her mental 
 ailment. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she pleaded, her beautiful mouth 
 wreathing with smiles, " do now sit down and tell us 
 the news. We have just returned from Italy, and al- 
 though I am fond of Scrope-Denton it is not very 
 lively." 
 
 She shrugged a shoulder, which showed through its 
 silken covering as a rounded perfection. Repose and 
 happiness surrounded her like plump and smiling 
 cherubs. Her tranquil luxuriance seemed typical of 
 motherhood. Lowood reflected on the pity of it that 
 she was not in truth the mother of beautiful children. 
 Her case pointed a moral which his professional ex- 
 perience had frequently impressed upon him, that the 
 world is fast losing its charm and physical perfection 
 because by far the greater portion of its charm and 
 physical perfection are submerged into that under 
 world, the frail half-world, which is childless. 
 
 Invited to gossip he seated himself in one of the 
 silver-encrusted chairs. 
 
 " I am a newcomer," he said. " I know but little of 
 the place or its doings. For the present I am amusing 
 myself by making the acquaintance of its woods and 
 mountains." 
 
 " But I suppose people have called upon you," Mrs. 
 Beaumont said with a little envious avidity. 
 
 " Mr. Legh of Hooton Hoo and Mr. Hestroyde of 
 Mowbreck have done so." 
 
 He thought a wavelet of remembrance rippled the 
 shining eyes.
 
 Mrs. Beaumont of Moonbank 111 
 
 " Mr. Legh of Hooton Hoo is the handsome Indian- 
 looking young man, isn't he ? " 
 
 " No," he said, " that is Hestroyde. Legh is the 
 fair one." 
 
 " Then it is Mr. Hestroyde who is just engaged to 
 Miss Kesteven ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Do you consider her good-looking ? " 
 
 " Good-looking," Lowood said. In the presence of 
 this perfect beauty he could not call her more. 
 
 The perfect beauty seemed to understand. She gave 
 a little coo of pleasure. She was accustomed to such 
 tribute and only observed it when it was lacking. 
 
 " Perhaps she is clever," she said reflectively, as 
 though seeking about in her mind for some reason 
 sufficient to urge a man to engage himself to mere good 
 looks. 
 
 " She is bright and amusing, and I should say 
 certainly clever," Lowood replied. 
 
 Just a little glint darkened the eyes. Even the 
 loveliest woman in the world is not pleased to hear 
 another woman praised. 
 
 " And she is, of course, an heiress," she said, with- 
 out bitterness or cynicism, but merely as a statement 
 of fact. 
 
 Miss Wenlith broke in. 
 
 " I suppose the real reason Mr. Hestroyde has asked 
 her to marry him, Auntie Emmy," she said, with 
 an ironic inflection, " is because he is in love with 
 her." 
 
 " Yes, dear, I suppose so," her aunt assented placidly. 
 " I was wondering why." 
 
 " Perhaps she is his other soul," the niece submitted, 
 still ironically. 
 
 " Perhaps so," Mrs. Beaumont said. But Lowood 
 saw that the saying was no more than a phrase to her. 
 
 " Her complexion and figure are certainly good," 
 she added with conviction.
 
 112 The Whips of Time 
 
 She turned back to Lowood. In the placid paddock 
 of her mind she was content to chew the cud of one 
 idea without undue haste to find another, perhaps with- 
 out great facility for finding others. 
 
 " And when are they to be married ? " 
 
 " I believe there is no date fixed. From what I see 
 of them I should say the young couple have to get 
 through a good deal of stormy weather before they 
 come into haven." 
 
 At this scrap of personal gossip the beautiful face 
 became tinctured with pleasure; a curiosity which 
 seemed adorably childlike flashed into her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, do they quarrel, then ? " she asked. " What- 
 ever about? " 
 
 "I don't know that they quarrel, they seem very 
 devoted. But I imagine both have difficult tempera- 
 ments, and won't easily settle into harness." 
 
 " Joan told me " Miss Wenlith began, and caught 
 herself up sharply. 
 
 Lowood turned to her in surprise. He saw that her 
 face was pink, her expression dismayed, as of one who 
 had slipped into an indiscretion. 
 
 " You know Miss Kesteven then ? " 
 
 Her eyes dropped. She did not answer. Mrs. 
 Beaumont explained, in a constrained voice: 
 
 " Miss Kesteven and Alma met accidentally. 
 They just speak when they meet." He heard her 
 breath catch in her throat. Her lovely bosom rose and 
 fell to some quickened emotion. " We see very little 
 of the people here." 
 
 " You are like me, no doubt," Lowood told her. 
 " You do not perhaps care for sport. And the only 
 way to see anything of the people here is in the 
 hunting-field, or at the otter-pools, or in the stables 
 and kennels." 
 
 Her long lashes rested for a moment with a ravish- 
 ing embarrassment upon her peach cheek. Then she 
 swept up her eyes and met his serenely.
 
 Mrs. Beaumont of Moonbank 11B 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I do not ride at all. And Alma 
 cares little about it." 
 
 It was long before Lowood could make up his mind 
 to leave. While his reason told him that his time was 
 up, his senses were so hypnotised by the banquet of 
 beauty on which he was feasting that he sat like one 
 glued to the silver chair, his eyes riveted upon his 
 hostess. I will wait one minute longer, he kept telling 
 himself, just to get her face again at that beautiful 
 angle with her throat. Was there ever such a throat? 
 And then by the time he had charmed his artistic sense 
 once more with the face at that angle, there had ap- 
 peared some other pose, without seeing which again he 
 could not tear himself away. And her rich, low voice, 
 her cooing laughter, the perfume she breathed, the 
 way in which her amber hair dropped like a fine gold 
 curtain over her temples, about her ears, and fell into 
 burnished rings upon her neck, bewitched him. His 
 austere life had lifted his senses to the mental plane, 
 where they had become as it were mere stained-glass 
 plates through which his mind looked, enriched and 
 warmed. And he was able to see her as he might have 
 seen another lovely work of art, in another man's 
 gallery, without coveting, but with only grateful pleas- 
 ure for the boon of seeing. He had long resigned 
 himself to the fate of an onlooker rather than a 
 partaker of life. 
 
 At last, by a valiant effort, he rose to go. During 
 the whole of his visit she had uttered no more than the 
 veriest commonplaces. But the substance of what she 
 had said was but a common thread on which were 
 strung pearls and other gems, so beautiful her voice, 
 her mouth, and the ravishing creases and dimples the 
 muscles of articulation set rippling about it. Unlike 
 the women of her class she employed no arts or arti- 
 fices. Serenely confident in her charms, she made no 
 fatiguing efforts to charm. Unlike the women of her 
 class, such emotions as she possessed were centred in
 
 114 The Whips of Time 
 
 one man. And this, beyond all other things, gives to 
 a woman her most exquisite poise. 
 
 " But, Dr. Lowood," she urged timidly, " you have 
 not told us " 
 
 His tact interpreted her pause. 
 
 " It is unnecessary," he said, " to tell you what a 
 great pleasure it will be to me to give Miss Wenlith 
 my poor assistance in her studies." 
 
 Women are not beautiful for nothing. She did not 
 awkwardly detract from his gift by insisting upon that 
 remuneration which she had spelled with two n's. And 
 what were spelling or speech to the lovely gratitude 
 her eyes looked? 
 
 " How more than kind you are," his prospective pupil 
 said gratefully. He went out with the sense of a 
 man overburdened with benefits. He was one of those 
 persons who derive more pleasure from giving than 
 from receiving. 
 
 As he went down the marble steps his pleasant sim- 
 mer of sentiments received a shock. For he came face 
 to face with Joan Kesteven tripping lightly up them, 
 with an air of doing an accustomed thing. She was 
 dressed as though for motoring. He would not have 
 recognised her, muffled as her head and face were in a 
 hood and thick veil, had not a gust of wind suddenly 
 blown aside the veil and shown her face to him. 
 
 He found just enough presence of mind to lift his 
 hat and say, " How do you do? " 
 
 "How do, Dr. Lowood?" she returned lightly. 
 But her face showed some dismay as she passed 
 on. 
 
 A minute later he heard a step behind him. 
 
 "Dr. Lowood!" 
 
 He turned and looked into her half laughing, yet 
 discomfited, face. There was a little pause. Then she 
 said, rather brusquely, " Is anybody ill ? Or are you 
 a friend of Mrs. Beaumont? " 
 
 It is always best to explain upon the spot an equivo-
 
 Mrs. Beaumont of Moonbank 115 
 
 cal situation. He explained it. He told her, " No," 
 but that she had asked him to help Miss Wenlith with 
 her botany studies. 
 
 " Oh ! " was the comment. She seemed to find the 
 explanation dull. Then she shook a strong, white 
 finger at him. 
 
 " Don't you dare," she threatened, half laughing 
 and yet in earnest, " to say a word about seeing me 
 here. There would be an awful row." 
 
 " I shall say nothing, of course," he promised. 
 " But," he added, " I have seen more of life than you 
 have, and may I tell you that you are doing an impru- 
 dent thing? Secrets which servants share " 
 
 " I am known here as Miss Smith," she said. " I 
 always wear a thick motor veil over my face, although 
 I never motor. And the other servants in the place 
 copy their masters and mistresses and treat the serv- 
 ants here as though they had the plague." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " All that does not save your action from being most 
 unwise." At the back of his mind was her lover's 
 arrogant, jealous temper. 
 
 " But it's all rubbish," she cried hotly. " I'm not 
 a child. I like to know about things and to judge for 
 myself. Mrs. Beaumont is perfectly lovely. I never 
 saw anyone who was a patch upon her. And Alma is 
 as much a lady as I am, and a thousand times more 
 clever and interesting." She screwed up her eyes 
 wickedly. " The Duke is the only member of the 
 menage whom I haven't yet seen." 
 
 " Well," Lowood said, " of course you must do as 
 you choose." 
 
 " Why, of course," she said. " I won't be kept in 
 leading-strings. I must see life and the world as it is. 
 I came first out of curiosity. But now I'm very fond 
 of Alma, and of Mrs. Beaumont too, although she 
 always talks before me as though she had never been 
 out of the schoolroom."
 
 116 The Whips of Time 
 
 He raised his hat and turned. 
 
 " Now, remember, not a word," she admonished 
 him. 
 
 " Not a syllable," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ALMA 
 
 A FEW mornings later he awoke to the twittering of 
 a robin on his window-sill. Its light-hearted chirping 
 was like the expression of an odd light-heartedness in 
 his mind. His window was open. Through it came 
 the fresh, clean breath of a cold morning. A half- 
 lifted blind showed a white mist spread like a delicate 
 veil of tulle before the scene visible from his bed : a 
 swell of green hill, a curve in which the sky lay like 
 a magical blue draught in a translucent cup, a sombre 
 fringe of firs, like the fringe of a green garment which 
 dropped to the heels of the hill. 
 
 His mind vibrated pleasantly. His eyes went to the 
 neatly folded new suit of tweeds which Vox had laid 
 ready for his wearing. 
 
 Since his visit to Moonbank his brain had been a 
 sentimental ferment. As Legh had described the two 
 foolish boys who had swarmed up the pillars to her 
 window, her beauty having gone to their heads like 
 wine, so now her beauty had gone to his head too like 
 wine. 
 
 In his case it was the purest sentiment. His re- 
 pressed emotions had shrivelled into a bundle of dry, 
 sweet herbs, which still gave off delicate, intoxicating 
 aromas, but took no sap from the blood, had no roots 
 in the flesh. Being a mere sentiment he was able to 
 enjoy it to the full, pleasing himself with a shy, deli- 
 cious delusion that he was in love for the first time, 
 that the great emotion of which he had read and heard 
 so much was at last granted to him. He indulged it, 
 dwelt upon it, joyed in it, showing how unlike it was
 
 118 The Whips of Time 
 
 to the real thing. For there is this great difference 
 between a genuine, hopeless passion and mere senti- 
 ment, that while a man pursues the one, the other 
 pursues a man. A starving man only adds to his pain 
 by thoughts of food. 
 
 Eleven o'clock found him following a Moonbank 
 servant once more along the painted corridor. But 
 this morning he was not shown into the silver boudoir, 
 but into a library, of which the gay and elegant bind- 
 ings of its volumes augured little of seriousness within. 
 
 A bright fire burned on the hearth. Beside it Mrs. 
 Beaumont sat, threading strings of coloured beads 
 from a silver tray upon her knee. At her feet crouched 
 a white and tan Blenheim spaniel, gazing up into her 
 face as though her beauty were a thing to make a fond 
 little dog's eyes protrude from its foolish head. At 
 a table Miss Wenlith sat entrenched behind books, with 
 a sheaf of blank pages before her, in her eyes a great 
 hunger. 
 
 " How nice of you to come ! " she said, as she shook 
 hands with him. She pointed to her books. '" I am 
 all impatience to begin." 
 
 " We will not waste a minute," he returned, smiling, 
 and proceeded to waste many on the pearl and diamond 
 commonplaces which dropped from beauty's mouth. 
 Had he walked ? It was a nice morning for walking. 
 For her part she was afraid it was very idle of her, but 
 she disliked all exercise and always drove. Yes, Janita 
 was a sweet dog! But if she wasn't careful and stared 
 so hard, one day her big eyes would drop out. And 
 then what would her missis do ? 
 
 At which the little dog whined and wagged her 
 silken tail, and pricked her silken ears, and really stared 
 so hard and yearningly into her missis's face that it 
 was a wonder the prediction did not come to pass. 
 
 Then Mrs. Beaumont reapplied herself to her bead- 
 threading, which she did like a child, aimlessly and 
 slowly, stopping to look dreamily into the fire or out
 
 Alma 119 
 
 of the window, as though she found even this trivial 
 degree of mental concentration a tax. 
 
 Lowood sat down to the table beside Miss Wenlith. 
 During his walk he had plucked a handful of specimen 
 grasses and weeds. He laid them before her, and 
 taking from his pocket some small implements such as 
 botanists use, prepared to dissect them. 
 
 An eager, nervous hand was laid on his. 
 
 " No, please," she pleaded. " I can see it quite well 
 without hurting a petal." 
 
 " Why ! " he said, " it cannot feel. In any case it 
 will die. It is limp already." 
 
 " But of course it feels," she insisted. " Everything 
 that is alive feels. See how prettily it lifts its head. 
 It is like a small white star. Don't you think it feels 
 like a tiny lamp to light the way of ants and beetles? " 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont looked up from her beads. 
 
 " I'm afraid you'll find Alma odd," she said apolo- 
 getically. " She has lived so much by herself that she 
 has the queerest notions. She's actually fond of 
 worms." 
 
 " I'm not fond of them," the girl said. " They're 
 hideous and repulsive, but I'm sorry for them. They 
 are blind, and they spend all their lives in burrowing 
 underground. I can't see that they have a single 
 compensation. Of course I lift them out of the way of 
 feet and spades. I hate them to be hurt." 
 
 " Well, I don't like to tread on them," Mrs. Beau- 
 mont said. She gave a dainty shudder. " But I don't 
 mind other people treading on them or chopping them. 
 They don't really feel." 
 
 ' Then," Lowood said, " since you object to the 
 vivisection of chickweed, let us see what we can make 
 of it without." 
 
 ''' You think it silly and sentimental of me?" the 
 girl said, flushing. " But Nature and all living things 
 seem to me to be so wonderful and beautiful. Mutila- 
 tion is a sacrilege."
 
 120 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Perhaps you are right. But evolution hasn't gone 
 very far. We are still primitive savages employing 
 primitive ways." 
 
 " Uncle Tony says " She stopped to explain. 
 " I mean Lord Anthony Burghwallis. He is not really 
 my uncle, but I have always called him uncle, because 
 he is the brother of my uncle, by marriage, the Duke, 
 you know." 
 
 Mrs. Beaumost broke into a little outcry. 
 
 " Oh, you silly Janita, to swallow a bead ! And a 
 green bead too ! Dr. Lowood, do you think a green 
 bead might poison her?" 
 
 Lowood, looking into her embarrassed face, saw that 
 she was using Janita merely as a turning-point on 
 which to change an awkward topic. He gravely reas- 
 sured her that the little dog's chances of recovery from 
 a green bead he did not for a moment believe she had 
 swallowed were hopeful. 
 
 His eyes returned to Alma. There was no doubting 
 her ingenuous good faith. He realised in a moment 
 that she had no suspicion of the true facts. 
 
 " Uncle Tony used to call me a little fool," she con- 
 cluded, smiling. 
 
 The lesson continued. She was all quickness and 
 eagerness. As Lowood had divined upon making 
 her acquaintance, she possessed a rare order of 
 mind. 
 
 When the clock struck one : " I think," he closed 
 his book and said, " you have had enough botany for 
 to-day." 
 
 She too closed her book. 
 
 " I think," she said, with a firm little smile, " I have 
 had enough botany for all time. It seems to me to be 
 the most stupid study possible. I expected it to be a 
 sort of enchanted story, that it would tell me what the 
 flowers mean. To me each seems to have an individu- 
 ality, to be a sort of charming little person with fancies 
 and feelings and a story. And botany says nothing
 
 Alma 121 
 
 of this, but only gives them stupid disfiguring names 
 and ponderous classifications." 
 
 He was nettled. It had seemed to him that he had 
 rather excelled as a teacher and that his explanations 
 had been interesting and lucid. 
 
 " Do you think so? " he said. " The names, I admit, 
 are ponderous, but the classifications have reason in 
 them." 
 
 " No more reason, it seems, than to classify men and 
 women as blue-eyed or square-shouldered or long- 
 legged. It would not give you a notion of their char- 
 acters or whether they were horrid or delightful." 
 
 " You do not distinguish between art and science," 
 he said. " Art concerns itself with the form and 
 beauty of natural phenomena, science concerns itself 
 with the hard facts of similarity, dissimilarity, proper- 
 ties and so forth." 
 
 The girl's shining eyes were fastened eagerly upon 
 him, as though to probe the very soul of his reflections. 
 
 " Is there in Nature," she asked, " a dividing line 
 between the science and the art of things? Are they 
 not so much one that if you separate them you lose 
 half the truth? Isn't there a relation between the 
 beauty and form of things and their qualities? " 
 
 Lowood's chagrin gave place to surprised interest. 
 Her intense sincerity robbed her criticism of offence. 
 It was not the failure of the teacher but those she 
 regarded as the defects of the science of which she 
 complained. And he had known moods in himself in 
 which he had asked the same questions. 
 
 " You must go to the mystics," he said, " to learn 
 these things. But I warn you, you will not find com- 
 plete satisfaction. We have so long accustomed our- 
 selves to label this as science and that as art, and the 
 other as morality, that boundary hedges have grown 
 between, hedges which have of course no place in 
 Nature." 
 
 " It seems very stupid," she said, " to see with only
 
 122 The Whips of Time 
 
 half one's faculties. For instance, a month ago I 
 found Darwin's Origin of Species in the library. I 
 had read about it and craved to read it. When I found 
 it I simply took it into my hands and kissed it. For 
 a week I did not open it, but only thought about it, and 
 longed for it, and every now and again went and 
 looked at it to feast my eyes." 
 
 " What book did you say, Alma? " Mrs. Beaumont 
 inquired, having all at once detected a concrete fact 
 in the speculative talk. " How interesting it must be. 
 You must let me have it when you have finished with 
 it. But why, if you so wanted to read it, didn't you 
 buy it?" 
 
 " It was far more beautiful to find it unexpectedly," 
 her niece said, " like a shining gift dropped out of the 
 skies." 
 
 " Well," Lowood asked, " and did it repay all your 
 emotion when you read it ? " 
 
 The small, nervous face became a tragedy, her lu- 
 minous eyes drew behind clouds. 
 
 " It was the most horrible disappointment. All the 
 way through it was like a story with the point left out, 
 like a road which led to nothing. It was page after 
 page of a pigeon's feather developing spots and col- 
 ourings, and little dull details like that which seemed 
 to have no meaning in them. Of course the evolution 
 of the bird's wing must mean something. It must be 
 the filling in of some plan of perfection in God's mind. 
 Plato says, ' The good is the beautiful and the beau- 
 tiful is the good.' The marking of the pigeon's wing 
 must have a higher meaning. But Danvin never hints 
 at this. One might think he didn't believe in God or 
 that men had souls." 
 
 " In point of fact I believe he didn't. But it was 
 not his province. His province was to prove the 
 material, not the spiritual, side of evolution. Every 
 man to his trade, you know." 
 
 He rose.
 
 Alma 123 
 
 "And so you have done with your botany-master? 
 I must say you have made short work of me, and of a 
 science it has taken a number of very learned men a 
 very long time to construct." 
 
 She broke into a dismayed cry. Her hand clung 
 eagerly to his. 
 
 " But you are not saying good-bye ? " she said. 
 " Dr. Lowood, you will come again. It has been such 
 a delight to me to hear you talk. I meant to say only 
 that perhaps you would teach me something more 
 interesting than botany." 
 
 As though dreading to lose him, she caught at a 
 something. 
 
 ' Teach me astrology," she begged. 
 
 " Heavens ! " he cried, laughing, " I am not a pro- 
 fessional palmist." 
 
 " But is not astrology the science of the stars ? " 
 
 He saw that if she possessed some original notions 
 she was possessed also by some ignorances. 
 
 " I imagine you mean astronomy." 
 
 " I thought they were the same." She flushed. " I 
 know I am horribly ignorant. I only know what I 
 have picked up from books and from a French 
 governess, who thought of nothing but accomplish- 
 ments. But will you not teach me astronomy instead 
 of botany? " 
 
 Years earlier he had dipped into some popular man- 
 uals of the science, had even spent some evenings 
 gazing through telescopes. 
 
 " Well, then," he assented, " I have some delightful 
 books of Ball's and one of Flammarion's which is like 
 a romance. I will bring them in on Friday. But I 
 warn you astronomy also has dry-as-dust tables and 
 prosaic calculations." 
 
 He was saying good-bye to his hostess, for whose 
 sake, rather than for his pupil's, he had consented to 
 play first botanist and now astronomer, when the door 
 opened and " Miss Smith " was announced,
 
 124 The Whips of Time 
 
 So soon as the servant had gone she threw back her 
 thick motor veil. She put her two hands on Mrs. 
 Beaumont's shoulders and kissed one of her cheeks 
 with the intimacy of close acquaintance. 
 
 She laughed and kissed the other. 
 
 " The first kiss was to say ' How do you do? ' " she 
 said. " The second because you are so beautiful. 
 Every time I see you I am as much surprised as ever." 
 
 " My dear, how you talk," Mrs. Beaumont said 
 placidly. Miss Kesteven shook hands with Lowood. 
 Beneath her lowered lids her green eyes narrowed with 
 arch understanding upon the bond of secrecy between 
 them. 
 
 " Well, Herr Professor," she said lightly, " and how 
 does your pupil do ? " Without waiting for his answer 
 she kissed his pupil. 
 
 " You silly Alma," she rebuked her, " to waste your 
 time on books instead of being out of doors." Then 
 also without waiting for Alma's answer, in her stren- 
 uous, restless fashion she turned back to Mrs. Beau- 
 mont. 
 
 " Please, Mrs. Beaumont," she said, " I have come 
 to lunch. Have you got anything good ? Mother and 
 I have had an awful shindy and I'm in the sulks and 
 shan't go home. Mother says a girl who's engaged to 
 one man has no right to flirt with another. Did you 
 ever hear such old-fashioned rubbish? And besides, 
 I don't flirt; I've known Bobby Legh all my life. How 
 can I behave to him as though we have only been just 
 introduced ? I told her it was nothing but rot." 
 
 " Oh, my dear," Mrs. Beaumont protested with a 
 shocked air, "but you really didn't say that?" 
 
 Miss Kesteven laughed. " Say ' rot ' ! " she cried. 
 " But of course I did. It's the only sensible word 
 there is nowadays. ' Rot ' and ' rotten ' and ' rotter.' 
 Talk would be half blanks if they were left out. 
 Wouldn't it, Dr. Lowood ? " 
 
 " To my mind," he returned drily, " the blanks
 
 Alma 125 
 
 would be more expressive, because one could fill them 
 oneself with the suitable adjectives." 
 
 " But that's where the bore lies. Why use a 
 dozen words when one will do ? One can't stop to talk 
 like a book. And ' rot ' means everything." 
 
 " No," he insisted, " it means only one thing 
 matter in a state of decomposition. And you could 
 scarcely class Lady Kesteven's observations as matter 
 in a state of decomposition." 
 
 " Perhaps not," her daughter insisted energetically, 
 " but all the same they were rot." 
 
 Lowood took his leave, declining Mrs. Beaumont's 
 request that he, too, wouM join them at luncheon. 
 
 " I dare not," he said. " Young women in their 
 teens who dismiss a science centuries old in a few 
 words, and comprise the whole English language in 
 three letters, are alarming to a timid bachelor of old- 
 fashioned views." 
 
 He left the girls indignantly protesting against his 
 description of them as being " in their teens."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 YOUNG MUNNINGS 
 
 GOING home he was overtaken by Hestroyde. His 
 face was clouded with annoyance. He shook hands 
 with Lowood and walked on with him. 
 
 " Did you see Miss Kasteven anywhere on the 
 road? " he asked. " I saw her before me and hurried 
 to catch her up. But in the bend by Moonbank I lost 
 sight of her. She must have turned off, I suppose, by 
 Wren Lane, but I ran quite a distance down it and 
 saw nothing of her." 
 
 Lowood had a bias toward strict truth. It offended 
 him to make an answer which was verbally although 
 not actually true. But feeling that he had no 
 alternative, " I saw nothing of Miss Kesteven on the 
 road," he said. 
 
 Hestroyde, obviously disappointed to have missed 
 her, pursued the subject. 
 
 " She must, of course, have turned off down Wren 
 Lane. I was a fool not to go on, but having run a 
 mile I thought she could not have come so far in the 
 time and turned back, expecting still to catch her up 
 on the road. There were only Wren Lane and Moon- 
 bank by which she could have left the road." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " So it must have been Wren Lane. Because, of 
 course, she would be as unlikely to go near Moonbank 
 as she would be " (he made a gesture in the direction 
 of a small inn they were passing) " to go to the bar 
 of the Pig and Whistle there and call for beer." 
 
 As Lowood could not truthfully assent to this state-
 
 Young Munnings 127 
 
 ment, nor dissent from it without betraying the girl's 
 secret, he kept silence. 
 
 " One feels such a fool to have missed her," the 
 young man grumbled on, " besides the disappoint- 
 ment." 
 
 Lowood smiled to himself at all this fuss about 
 losing an hour of the company of one with whom he 
 was presently to spend his life. 
 
 " Why," he said, smiling openly, " you can make 
 up for it this afternoon." 
 
 " Yes, but " the young man began eagerly, then 
 bit his lip and stopped. He had been going to say 
 that he might, of course, see her in the afternoon, but 
 that the water had flowed beneath the bridge bearing 
 with it forever the possibility of his having also seen 
 her in the morning. 
 
 They walked on without speaking till Hestroyde 
 broke the silence. His face had now cleared, his voice 
 had lost its annoyance. 
 
 " It seems to me, sir," he said a trifle diffidently, 
 " that the goodness and innocence of women are great 
 things in life standbys and beacons and all that to 
 help men to be better and higher. Don't you think 
 so?" 
 
 ''' Why, yes," Lowood assented. " And it is right 
 that the men, being of coarser calibre, should stand 
 between these more delicate creatures and the harder 
 things of life. By that means they are able to preserve 
 their valuable delicate and subtle qualities. You 
 remember Jean Paul Richter, ' The purer the golden 
 vessel the more readily it is bent.' ' 
 
 But Hestroyde's philosophy was not proposing to 
 soar into abstract regions. It fluttered, a fond captive, 
 to her who had evoked it. 
 
 " Saxby," he broke out vehemently, " should have 
 kept his Moonbank in London, where nobody knows 
 anything of his next-door neighbour. Here it be- 
 comes a sort of object lesson in vice."
 
 128 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Oh, well," Lowood answered, " women are not 
 children. There is no use in keeping them so. 
 Innocence is really a higher quality than ignorance. 
 Innocence knows good and evil and chooses good." 
 
 " But to give them Mrs. Beaumont for a neigh- 
 bour ! " Hestroyde insisted. " It is a sort of personal 
 insult to our women to Lady Kesteven and Joan, 
 to Mrs. Tempest, and, while she was living, to my own 
 mother." 
 
 His mention of his mother, and in this relation, set 
 Lowood glancing at the clear-cut, haughty profile, just 
 now flushed with an indignation which, if righteous, 
 was also pharisaical. 
 
 Heavens ! he thought, if the man but knew ! Com- 
 pared with his own mother's, if he be indeed Mun- 
 nings, Mrs. Beaumont's transgressions are as light to 
 outer darkness. 
 
 " Oh, well," he said briskly, " Mrs. Beaumont is a 
 very beautiful person and apparently quite well- 
 behaved." 
 
 " I say nothing against her personally, of course," 
 Hestroyde admitted, " it is the principle. These 
 things, like sewers, should be kept from the sight of 
 our good women." 
 
 Is he an idealist? Lowood wondered. Or a prig? 
 Or is this counsel of perfection merely that quicken- 
 ing of the moral perceptions which comes of being in 
 love? 
 
 He accepted readily the young man's invitation to 
 lunch with him. The psychological problem of how 
 the son of Sarah Munnings had come to possess such 
 fine sentiments, and to what extent these sentiments 
 were real or fictitious, interested him. He walked 
 beside him up the straight, broad drive to the square, 
 forbidding-looking mansion. Inside it was spacious 
 and gloomy, and was presided over by a particularly 
 hideous and evil-looking ancestry, who frowned and 
 glowered from their portraits on the walls, a chamber
 
 Young Mannings 129 
 
 of family skeletons. Lowood, in his sensitive fashion, 
 felt almost uneasy beneath their uncanny scrutiny. 
 He reflected upon the anomaly of preserving this rec- 
 ord of unprepossessing forbears, who, save for the 
 fact that their position in life had enabled them to 
 be perpetrated in oils by old masters, were as humanly 
 discreditable as it was possible to be. 
 
 " You are thinking what an ugly lot we are," Hes- 
 troyde said, smiling slightly, as he detected his guest's 
 eyes upon the walls. 
 
 " I can't pretend that they are prepossessing," Lo- 
 wood said. " But I can at all events congratulate you 
 upon not resembling them. You owe it to your family 
 to place a portrait of yourself in every room." 
 
 Now Hestroyde smiled fully. It lightened his dark 
 face and showed a pleasant sweetness in it. 
 
 " I am so used to the ugly old chaps I don't notice 
 them now," he said. " But they got on my grand- 
 father's nerves. He said he'd be hanged (he began it 
 with a ' d ') if he'd add another qualified frump 
 or fright to the wall for fear they'd come tumbling 
 about his ears. He married an Italian peasant girl of 
 great beauty. My father was is still a very fine- 
 looking man." 
 
 " Then your father is still living? " 
 
 " Did you not know ? He met with a bad accident 
 out hunting, and has been paralysed for years. He 
 sees nobody. He hasn't even seen Joan Miss 
 Kesteven yet." 
 
 He did not add, that which Lowood learned later, 
 that the elder man, chafing beneath his affliction, was 
 a severe trial in his son's life, a trial which he was 
 known to bear with fortitude and gentleness. 
 
 They lunched in a gloomy dining-hall, which, oak- 
 walled, oak-floored and oak-ceiled, and the ceiling 
 being low and heavy, gave Lowood an impression of 
 being shut into some great coffer, of which the lid, 
 beneath the ministrations of the wicked-looking com-
 
 130 The Whips of Time 
 
 pany upon the walls, might at any moment be expected 
 to descend and crush them. 
 
 Hestroyde, who was accustomed to this sombre 
 eating-place, showed no lack of appetite or other sign 
 of uneasiness. And Lowood, following his example, 
 was ready, after his long walk, to do justice to the 
 cold meats and game and excellent claret set before 
 him. Young Hestroyde dispensed with no ceremony. 
 Two tall servants, so precisely of height and breadth 
 as to be an object lesson in the exactions of their mas- 
 ter, waited upon them with an air of undergoing penal 
 servitude. And the young man kept a sharp watch 
 upon them and reproved an omission with a severity 
 which showed an imperious and intolerant temper. 
 
 He reflected that a woman would be a godsend in 
 this sombre household, rendered to him more sombre 
 by his new knowledge of a paralysed head of it. Joan 
 Kesteven, with her cleverness and warm energy, would 
 bring a new wave of vital force and temperamental 
 sunshine into it. At the same time, still further real- 
 ising the young man's difficult temper, he realised that 
 she would bring also storm. For example, what a 
 tempest would rage when he should, as he must sooner 
 or later do, discover her friendship with Moonbank, 
 the very existence of which his exacting fastidiousness 
 desired to keep unknown to her! 
 
 Hestroyde did not appeal to him in the manner in 
 which Legh did. He lacked the latter's frank and 
 open genercas-heartedness. His nature was deeper, 
 more reserved, and, Lowood could not help admitting, 
 more complex and interesting. He was well read and 
 had a studious and philosophic bent which, but for the 
 outdoor habits to which he had been bred, would per- 
 haps have made a bookworm of him. 
 
 Yet, when he found himself yielding too much to 
 the young man's attraction, he recalled the incident of 
 the slain bulldog. The act, revengeful and petty, be- 
 trayed a vein of bad blood. For, not by a man's intel-
 
 Young Munnings 131 
 
 lectual tastes nor by his veneer of sentiments is he to 
 be judged, but by his impulses when stirred. 
 
 Lowood found himself, despite his natural justness, 
 biassed at every turn by his conviction that this was 
 Munnings. And the conviction made him believe 
 further that the young man's hauteur and fine senti- 
 ments were strained, that on the slightest provocation 
 they would go to pieces and reveal an evil nature. 
 
 " When we have finished our coffee," his host said, 
 " since you are so interested in the ancestral features 
 I will show you my mother's portrait. My grand- 
 father strongly impressed his views on my father. 
 ' For God's sake, Harry,' my father tells me he was 
 in the habit of saying, ' now that we have got a 
 straight nose in the family, do your best to keep it 
 there.' And my father also married a beauty." 
 
 When he presently rose, Lowood got to his feet in 
 a hurry. With keen interest he followed the young 
 man's supple figure down another lane of frowning 
 ancestors. 
 
 Now perhaps some light would be thrown upon the 
 mystery ! If her reputed son should resemble the por- 
 trait he was about to see it would be a strong reason 
 for suspecting Legh after all of being the murderess' 
 son.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A LETTER FROM HUMMERSTONE 
 
 THE portrait was a fine one by Millais. It held the 
 place of honour in a circular picture-gallery, lighted 
 from a dome-shaped window in the roof. In its crisp 
 freshness of colour and vigour of drawing it stood out 
 from the more subtle and elusive Reynolds and Hopp- 
 ners, perhaps a little crudely, but with that schoolboy 
 frankness and simplicity which characterise Millais' 
 portraits. 
 
 The first thing which impressed Lowood, however, 
 was its absolute lack of likeness in feature to Hes- 
 troyde. The lady of the portrait was as fair as he was 
 dark, as petite and rounded as he was tall and loose- 
 limbed. Her widely-opened, smiling blue eyes were 
 innocent of subtlety, of depth, of mental complexity. 
 
 " You resemble your father, I suppose," he said. 
 
 Hestroyde looked doubtful. 
 
 " At all events," he said. " I'm like him in being 
 dark." 
 
 " And who is the child holding your mother's hand ? 
 Have you a brother or a sister ? " He laughed. " For 
 the life of me I can't tell in that quaint dress whether 
 the child is boy or girl." 
 
 " It was a girl. She died of consumption when she 
 was six." 
 
 The child was like its mother, flaxen-fair and blue- 
 eyed, and smiling. The two pairs of eyes gazed 
 limpidly out from the canvas upon the life their 
 owners had quitted. 
 
 When Lowood reached home he went straight to 
 his desk and wrote to Hummerstone.
 
 133 
 
 Little by little the two men had dropped apart. 
 Hummerstone, cold of nature and absorbed in his 
 laboratory, had no need of friends. And after his so- 
 called " experiment " Lowood, who had mainly fos- 
 tered the intimacy, had no further need of him for 
 friend. 
 
 For years they had neither met nor had they corre- 
 sponded. Now, however, Lowood was beset by an 
 overmastering desire to clear up the mystery. It had 
 ceased to be an engrossing psychological speculation. 
 The persons composing it had become his neighbours 
 and friends. He felt that it was intolerable to play 
 detective to them. 
 
 Briefly he informed Hummerstone that he was now 
 living at Scrope-Denton. He recalled their conver- 
 sation of that memorable evening. He told him a 
 few facts about the two young men and begged him, 
 in the strictest confidence, to tell him the truth. Which 
 was indeed the murderess' son? He assured him that 
 the confidence would be a sacred and inviolable one. 
 What had been done had been done. Only grave harm 
 and distress could come of revealing it. Hummer- 
 stone might trust him implicitly to make no sort of 
 use of anything he might disclose. 
 
 He sealed and himself took the letter to the post- 
 office, where he had it registered and despatched. 
 
 He returned in time to see a carriage moving away 
 from the gate of Homer Cottage. He caught a 
 glimpse of a plumed hat and of a well-remembered 
 amber knot. 
 
 He was filled with disappointment. 
 
 " Aphrodite at my gates, perhaps within my doors, 
 and I abroad ! " he reflected. 
 
 He went, in a mood of vexation, up the gravelled 
 walk. As he went he wondered whether the ruffled 
 peacocks would have yielded to her beauty would 
 have smoothed their peevish plumage for her. 
 
 His sentimental ponderings were cut summarily
 
 134 The Whips of Time 
 
 short. In the hall Lydia, the Misses Epithite's austere 
 maid, awaited him with a grim face. 
 
 " If you please, sir," she said, with ill-concealed 
 rancour, " Misses Epithite would like to speak to you 
 immediately." 
 
 " Indeed," he said. " Will they come to me in the 
 drawing-room? Or, if they prefer it, I will go to 
 them." 
 
 " They will prefer to come to you," Lydia stated. 
 They preferred always to go to him. It appeared as 
 though they would lose no opportunity of setting foot 
 again in the abode he had usurped. 
 
 In less than a minute he was confronted by the hard 
 old apple-faces with their glinting eyes, just then glint- 
 ing with more than ordinary belligerence. 
 
 Obeying the civilities to which he had been trained, 
 he made a feint of placing chairs for them. 
 
 In a moment Miss Ursula pounced upon the feint 
 with flinty asperity. 
 
 " Thank you, we prefer to stand," she snapped. 
 
 She waited for him to spread still more of his cloak 
 on which for her to 'trample. This, however, taught 
 by experience, he did not do. He merely as they 
 were standing remained also standing. 
 
 Then Miss Ursula began, in a thin voice, etched 
 thinner than usual by some acrid emotion. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood, you remember when you took this 
 house you not only obtained references from us, but 
 we also asked references from you. We should not 
 have thought otherwise of letting the house we have 
 resided in for so many years." 
 
 Lowood bowed. 
 
 " You found our references irreproachable, I be- 
 lieve. Our father, John Epithite of Riccalby, was well 
 known all his life, and his father before him. Both 
 died respected by all who knew them." 
 
 As she paused for his reply he said, " Really, Miss
 
 A Letter from Hummerstone 135 
 
 Epithite, I need scarcely say I found these references 
 all that could be desired." 
 
 She lost control. Her thin old body seemed like a 
 dried reed shaken in a wind. 
 
 " And yet you disregard them, sir. You hold up 
 my sister and myself to the talk and discreditable gos- 
 sip of our neighbours." 
 
 " I think not," he said firmly. " I neither mean 
 nor have I acted with any sort of disrespect to you." 
 
 " Sir " Miss Epithite broke in. 
 
 Miss Ursula turned upon her. " Pray, Charlotte," 
 she protested, " do not interrupt me. You know I 
 can never bear interruptions." She turned again to 
 Lowood. 
 
 " This afternoon," she shrilled, pointing a quiver- 
 ing old finger at him, " this afternoon, for the second 
 time, the Moonbank carriage " 
 
 In a moment he knew what was coming. He was 
 one of those tolerant men who do not surround their 
 dignity with cheap defences. By this means people 
 came right upon it just when they believed it to be 
 non-existent. 
 
 Even the hard old eyes of the Epithites quailed now 
 beneath his sudden lightning-anger. 
 
 He stood above them tall and lean and very quiet. 
 
 " I allow nobody," he said in a tone of ice, " to 
 remark upon my acquaintance. Anything you do not 
 like it is in your power to put a stop to by terminating 
 my lease. Am I to regard this as a wish on your part 
 to end my tenancy of Homer Cottage? " 
 
 Seeing the effect upon them of his uncompromising 
 words, in his humane fashion he almost regretted 
 them. In a moment all their hardihood had gone. 
 They stood like two mechanical dolls of which the 
 springs had suddenly broken. 
 
 Miss Ursula, awed by what she had done, by the 
 unexpected rebellion of tjiis mild, civil man she had
 
 136 The Whips of Time 
 
 thought to bully into subjection collapsed utterly. She 
 gave a little gasp and stood in trembling silence. Her 
 sister rallied. With great presence of mind she be- 
 thought her to assume her weapon of ingenuousness. 
 
 " But, Dr. Lowood," she said, " it is only that the 
 Moonbank carriage cuts up the road before the gate 
 so. The horses are so spirited and paw so. They 
 make quite little pits. Ursula thought it made the 
 road unpleasant for you in wet weather. I assure you 
 it was only that. Pray, pray do not misunderstand 
 her. She had no idea of interfering with you in any 
 way. I'm sure you've behaved very handsomely." She 
 turned upon her sister. " Really, Ursula," she scolded 
 her, " you shall not vex Dr. Lowood so. What does 
 it signify about a puddle or two before the gate? I'm 
 sure Hindlip can fill them in with a handful of gravel 
 and nobody be the worse." 
 
 So scolding she dragged her away, for the first time 
 in her life cowed and submissive, for the first time 
 obedient to her sister's claim of age. Having gained 
 the annex, she too collapsed into a chair. 
 
 " And he pays us five guineas a week," she gasped. 
 " Oh, Ursula, what have you done ? " 
 
 Ursula was not so spent, however, as to be unequal 
 to fighting her sister and all the more vigorously be- 
 cause she felt it incumbent upon her to cover her 
 recent defeat. 
 
 " I done ! " she protested. " It was you who sug- 
 gested it." 
 
 " But I expected you to do it differently, to use tact 
 and and diplomacy. Now, if you had left it to 
 me " 
 
 Before the eyes of scorn, which Ursula turned upon 
 her, her little triumph dropped from her like a 
 borrowed feather. 
 
 " I think, perhaps, I could have done it better," she 
 concluded humbly. 
 
 Then the quarrel ceased, neither having spirit to
 
 A Letter from Hummerstone 137 
 
 sustain it. For should Lowood leave, not only would 
 they lose his very welcome rent, but he would take 
 with him all the zest and interest his presence added to 
 their lives. 
 
 All their giants had been slain so many times over, 
 their bones of contention gnawed so bare. And 
 Lowood had proved a most prolific giant. He had sup- 
 plied them with as many fresh bones as they could 
 daily cope with. His present, his past, his future, his 
 looks, his clothes, his food, his cigars, his umbrellas, 
 his neckties, his collars, his letters, his man-servant 
 and his remarks had opened up new worlds of contest. 
 Never before had they been so provided with daily 
 prey for wordy powder. The prospect of losing all 
 this and his rent sent their hardy old hearts down into 
 their elastic-sided boots. In their darkness of despair 
 and of a room they had not the heart to light by 
 kindling their lamp they even drew so near together as 
 to sit holding one another's hands. 
 
 " Is Dr. Lowood drinking his tea as though noth- 
 ing had happened, Lydia?" Miss Epithite demanded 
 eagerly when that austere person brought in their own. 
 
 " Looks as cross as two sticks," Lydia said mali- 
 ciously. " Whatever are you sitting in the dark for? " 
 
 Ursula uttered a sound like the gnashing of artificial 
 teeth. 
 
 " He isn't packing, I suppose? " she faltered. 
 
 " Why, is he going anywhere? " Lydia asked curi- 
 ously. " Or have you been nagging him so's you 
 think he'll leave? That'll be a pretty thing. To lose 
 a gentleman as liberal-'anded as he is with his things. 
 Couldn't you have kept a civil tongue in your heads? " 
 
 "Lydia, how dare you?" Miss Ursula cried in a 
 voice of outrage. " How do you dare to give me such 
 outrageous impudence? Leave the room this very in- 
 stant this very instant, I say." 
 
 Lydia continued to lay out her cups with delibera- 
 tion.
 
 138 The Whips of Time 
 
 " If I was to go," she retorted, " you'd have to set 
 your own tea. Not but what that wouldn't be better 
 than worriting a gentleman that's so liberal-'anded out 
 of the house with your tongues. I'll just tell you what 
 it is, then. If he goes, I goes. Blest if I haven't 
 stood it long enough. Thirteen year I've been at it. 
 And then just when we've got a liberal 'and and a 
 little life into the place you ups and spoils it all." 
 
 She whisked the last plate upon the table, she cuffed 
 the teapot's ears. Then she flung to the door. 
 
 Just as she was about to vanish through it, far too 
 exasperated to remain another moment, Miss Ursula 
 asserted herself with a chance of doing so effectually. 
 
 " Lydia," she shrilled, " I command you to leave 
 the room this very instant." She waited one dreadful 
 moment for Lydia to return. Then, as the door 
 slammed and her anxious moment passed, she said, 
 with waxing spirit : 
 
 ' You see, I stand no impertinence, Charlotte. I 
 will be obeyed in my own house." 
 
 Even in her mood of darkness Charlotte assumed 
 her ingenuous malice. For was not the house equally 
 hers? Was it not more hers indeed than Ursula's by 
 right of seniority? 
 
 " Oh, then, you think he really means to go, 
 Ursula?" 
 
 " Did I say so, Charlotte ? " 
 
 " No, but you called it your house, although, if he 
 stops, it's let to him." 
 
 They were too depressed to fight it out. They felt 
 the hand of the world even Lydia's as well was 
 this evening against them. They drank their tea and 
 chewed the cud of Lydia's heavy cake with bitterness. 
 
 To tell the truth, Lowood had meant only to read 
 his old tyrants a lesson. He was too well pleased with 
 Scrope-Denton, too engrossed by the interests it fur- 
 nished, to have any intention of leaving it. 
 
 Having administered his lesson he let the subject
 
 A Letter from Hummerstone 139 
 
 slip his mind. And Lydia's report that he was look- 
 ing as cross as two sticks was a piece of malicious 
 fiction upon her part. In point of fact, when she had 
 taken in his cup of tea she had found him smiling 
 above the letter which had occasioned all the trouble, 
 an earnest appeal from Miss Wenlith that he would 
 not desert her as he had threatened, but would be 
 delightfully kind enough to continue his visits to 
 Moonbank for the purpose of instructing her in some 
 or another 'ology. She wrote a firm and charming 
 hand. She was guilty of no blots and her spelling 
 was irreproachable. 
 
 A few days later Lowood found upon his breakfast- 
 table another letter, addressed in a hand which seemed 
 strange and yet familiar. For a moment he delib- 
 erated. Then the familiarity overbore the strangeness. 
 He pounced upon it. 
 
 Lydia, who was in the room, observing him with 
 narrow eyes, departed in haste to inform her mis- 
 tresses, with whom she had made her peace, that their 
 tenant had received a love-letter. She added, with 
 her accustomed spleen, that no doubt he would be 
 shortly leaving Homer Cottage in order to be married. 
 
 The letter was from Hummerstone. " And now," 
 Lowood told himself, " now the problem will be laid! 
 But I am prepared to stake all I possess in the world 
 that Hestroyde and not Legh is young Munnings." 
 
 Despite the many inconsistences of human nature 
 there is a great deal of consistency about individuals. 
 Although it is false to say that men are " much of a 
 muchness," it is true that a particular man is much 
 of a muchness. There are persons whose comings 
 and goings and doings and writings are ever a boon 
 and a pleasure to others. There are persons from 
 whom in one's whole experience of them no grain of 
 pleasure or of profit can be reckoned. 
 
 Hummerstone was one of these. He came always 
 empty-handed, although he at times went away with
 
 140 The Whips of Time 
 
 both hands full. Cheer flowed less cheerfully for his 
 presence, depression became gloom, irritability exas- 
 peration, grief a squalid calamity. As there are men 
 and women who are springs of benign influence in 
 the social desert, so there are men and women who 
 appear to radiate malign forces. 
 
 Lowood had long since recognised this untoward 
 characteristic of Hummerstone's. And yet out of his 
 sanguine temperament he now opened his letter with 
 pleased expectancy. 
 
 Having read, he laid it down in a rage. How did 
 the man maintain his circulation? How did it happen 
 that his blood did not freeze in that ice-box he called 
 his heart, freeze and extend along his blood-vessels 
 in icicles? Hummerstone expressed the month of a 
 year in Roman numerals, the day of the month in a 
 figure which was little larger than a dot. 
 
 He addressed his friend as " Dear Lowd." He 
 signed himself " T. H'stone." He refused point-blank 
 and with no mitigations to reveal the identity of the 
 changed infants. An accident so insignificant as 
 parentage, he said, was scientifically immaterial. The 
 subject had ceased to interest him. 
 
 By the time he had come to the signature, Lowood 
 knew that his decision was final, that sooner would 
 he squeeze blood out of a stone than a confidence from 
 " T. H'stone." In a fit of savage disappointment he 
 thrust the letter into the fire and whimsically looked 
 to see it extinguish the flames. 
 
 " Old Microbe ! " broke in Polly, suddenly, unearth- 
 ing a word which had long lain buried in the strange 
 yet subtle thimbleful of intelligence which was her 
 brain. 
 
 " Ah, Polly ! Polly ! " her master apostrophised her, 
 " are you a clever witch or merely a mechanical fool ? 
 In the old days Hummerstone never came in that you 
 did not greet him as * Old Microbe.' I have never 
 heard you say it since he ceased to come. Did some
 
 A Letter from Hummerstone 141 
 
 strange emanation from his letter recall him to your 
 absurd mind? " 
 
 But Polly refused always to be drawn into meta- 
 physical discussions. 
 
 She merely reiterated, " Old Microbe ! " with the 
 same unmistakable dislike she had always shown for 
 Hummerstone in the flesh.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A LUNCHEON PARTY 
 
 IT has been said, since it has become the fashion to 
 cut ourselves adrift from Divinity, that man proposes 
 and woman disposes. 
 
 Of the truth of the paraphrase Lowood had evidence 
 at a little luncheon-party to which he had invited Legh 
 and Hestroyde and Miss Kesteven, with the vicar and 
 his wife for chaperons. The vicar having to attend 
 a meeting of churchwardens, his wife came alone. She 
 was a large and muscular person who had been com- 
 pelled to exchange her womanly qualities for the 
 muscular ability to tramp from end to end of a large 
 and straggling parish. The result was that by the time 
 she had developed the muscles and strength which were 
 needed to visit all her parishioners, she had lost every 
 vestige of the personal influence and culture which 
 would have made her visits of value. Lowood disliked 
 her intensely. Her loud laugh and coarse personality 
 offended his fastidiousness at every turn. Lady Kes- 
 teven, however, whose fine and cultured qualities would 
 have lent distinction to the party, was too delicate for 
 parties. 
 
 Lydia cooked well and Vox wa*s an invaluable serv- 
 ant. The little function would have passed off excel- 
 lently had not a wicked spirit of contrariety entered 
 into Joan and set her playing off her two admirers one 
 against the other. The spirit was no doubt roused by 
 an honest endeavour on Legh's part to do that which 
 he would have described as " shutting down like a ton
 
 A Luncheon Party 143 
 
 of bricks " upon his sentiment for her. Her quick 
 wits soon found a change in him, his studied coolness, 
 his embarrassed silence, his averted eyes. Lowood 
 saw, by some hot-tempered glances she cast at Hes- 
 troyde, that she believed Legh's attitude to be the 
 outcome of an interference on her lover's part. It 
 acted like a call to arms. She plied every weapon in 
 her armoury to circumvent what she regarded as his 
 unwarrantable interference. She devoted herself 
 almost wholly to Legh, scarcely answering Hestroyde 
 when he addressed her, scarcely looking at him, and 
 when looking, arming her eyes with coldness or 
 hostility. 
 
 Lowood, seeing Hestroyde's temper rising, did all he 
 could to outwit her and to give a general and genial 
 turn to the conversation. He succeeded in part. She 
 rallied with spirit to his whimsical attacks. She opened 
 fire upon him from her green, attractive eyes. All 
 would have been well had not Mrs. Plumpton, all at 
 once divining a delicate situation, put a large foot 
 (hypertrophied by trudging) into it. 
 
 " Why," she protested with a heavy archness, " one 
 might think it was Mr. Legh and not Mr. Hestroyde 
 you were engaged to, Miss Joan. Poor Mr. Hes- 
 troyde hasn't had a show. No wonder he looks like 
 a thundercloud." 
 
 In a moment the thundercloud she pointed out in 
 Hestroyde's face burst over the table. 
 
 " Joan is making the most of her time," he broke out 
 savagely. " For I'll be hanged if I'll have my wife 
 flirting with every Dick and Tom and Harry as some 
 men do." 
 
 It was a coarse speech, and did not match his person- 
 ality or qualities. But jealousy of all the passions stirs 
 men's crudest depths. Lowood could see he was beside 
 himself with seething mortification. 
 
 There was a moment of dead silence. Joan's heavy 
 lids narrowed over a curious flattening which came
 
 144 The Whips of Time 
 
 into her eyes. She turned with a sinuous, strong grace 
 to Hestroyde. 
 
 " How would you prevent her? " she inquired with 
 scathing quietness. 
 
 Their eyes met in hot hostility, her pupils dilating 
 and contracting like living things in two green pools, 
 his fulminating light and darkness. He controlled 
 himself before replying. He forced a laugh. 
 
 " Oh ! I expect I'd strangle her," he said lightly. 
 But at the end of his light tone came a little weary 
 drag of hoarseness as though the man were goaded to 
 his limits. His eyes dwelled on her with savage fond- 
 ness. 
 
 The effect was instantaneous. While Mrs. Plump- 
 ton was forging another Malaprop bolt in her black- 
 smith brain, and Lowood was wondering whether he 
 would ever be forgiven in the parish if he were 
 suddenly to clap a hand before her stupid mouth, Joan 
 became transformed. 
 
 Her lids parted, the palpitating creatures in the 
 green pools lay still, while a streak of light, a scintilla- 
 tion as it seemed from the angry fires of his, was 
 mirrored on their surfaces. With a strange rigidity of 
 her supple body, as of one hypnotised, she leaned to 
 him. Lowood had seated them together, with Legh 
 and Mrs. Plumpton on the opposite side of the table. 
 Forgetting the presence of the others Joan suddenly 
 dropped her head and set a cheek against his shoulder 
 with a passionate, clinging gesture. 
 
 " Poor Mark ! " she murmured in a cooing voice, 
 " how cross he is ! " Her voice dropped to a whisper- 
 ing thread. " And all about nothing nothing at all." 
 
 Nobody who had seen the action, had seen the com- 
 plete surrender of her and had heard that cadence in 
 her voice, generally so crisp and decisive, could have 
 doubted that she loved him, that she felt in him her 
 mate. 
 
 Legh saw it. His eyes grew blank, and at the same
 
 A Luncheon Party 145 
 
 time guilty, as he realised how he had fallen away from 
 his resolutions. Hestroyde saw it. The anger died 
 from his eyes as they looked down melting to her face. 
 Lowood saw it, and by the light of what it told him 
 was presently amazed with an inexplicable astonish- 
 ment at something that was soon to happen. Even 
 Mrs. Plumpton gleaned an inkling of a feeling she 
 could only dimly comprehend, and by her silence pre- 
 served Lowood from his unpardonable impulse to clap 
 a hand before his guest's mouth. 
 
 Joan first recovered herself. She swung herself 
 upright. Her full lips parted upon her fine teeth. 
 
 " There now," she cried banteringly, " I have paci- 
 fied the monster, or he would have devoured us all." 
 She shook a playful finger at him. 
 
 " Really, Mark," she cried, " if you are so fierce I 
 shall be quite afraid to marry you." 
 
 The thunderstorm passed into sunshine. His face 
 beamed fondness. He looked at her in silence. Legh 
 bit his lip, crestfallen. 
 
 And then, before Lowood had time to stop her stupid 
 mouth, Mrs. Plumpton had launched her second bolt. 
 
 " That's right, Mr. Hestroyde," she bade him 
 sturdily. " Keep her in order. You remember the 
 proverb, ' Women and spaniels and walnut trees.' Now 
 if Captain Wood had only put down his foot from the 
 first and shown Sir William the door " 
 
 " But I cannot believe you don't smoke, Mrs. 
 Plumpton," Lowood broke in, thrusting a cigarette-box 
 under her eyes. " Really, you should sometimes take 
 a cigarette. It is an excellent substitute for talking. 
 And I can recommend these. Or perhaps you prefer 
 something stronger or something milder. Mr. Plump- 
 ton smokes, does he not? As a doctor I can 
 recommend an after-dinner cigarette to promote 
 sleep." 
 
 " Law ! Dr. Lowood ! " she exclaimed, foundering 
 beneath his torrent of remarks, " I smoke a par-
 
 146 The Whips of Time 
 
 son's wife! A pretty example that would be to set 
 the parish." 
 
 She put up a hand to her bewildered head. " I de- 
 clare I quite forget what I was saying." 
 
 " You were admiring my parrot," Lowood affirmed 
 mendaciously. " I quite agree with you. She really is 
 a very clever bird, and she makes most appropriate 
 observations. There are human beings," he persisted 
 slily, " who have a knack of saying the wrong thing. 
 Now Polly never does this. Her discretion is singu- 
 lar." 
 
 " Indeed," Mrs. Plumpton said, emerging with a 
 drenched demeanour from the torrent. 
 
 Even then she made another effort to recall the 
 subject. Failing, she accepted that he substituted. 
 
 " Yes, she looks a clever parrot. But they shriek 
 so. I can't bear them for that. It's like a knife run- 
 ning through one's head." 
 
 Polly, rinding herself an object of regard, mildly 
 recommended pills and relapsed into a gracious 
 silence. 
 
 The party broke up early. While the men were still 
 smoking, Joan also, with a challenging eye on Hes- 
 troyde, puffing with bravado at one of the cigarettes 
 Lowood had pressed upon the vicaress, the vicaress 
 rose and observed that she must really be going. 
 
 She apologised for disturbing the party. By sun- 
 dry half sentences and a species of indelicacy with 
 which she endeavoured to convey the fact that she was 
 too delicate-minded to state the reason openly, she 
 made it appear that she was bound upon some shady 
 and discreditable mission. In point of fact she was, 
 at great outlay of muscular effort and with credit to 
 her heart and sense of duty, merely going to visit a 
 poor woman of her husband's parish who had that 
 morning given birth to twins. 
 
 " Come, Miss Joan," she urged, " I will see you 
 safely off the premises before I go."
 
 A Luncheon Party 147 
 
 Joan looked at her defiantly. 
 
 " Why," she said sturdily, " Dr. Lowood can chap- 
 eron me Dr. Lowood and his Mrs. Polly. Polly 
 is as old as Methuselah and as wise as Solomon. 
 Aren't you, Miss Polly ? " 
 
 To which Polly retorted, in a tone of astonishment : 
 " Oh, dear! what can the matter be? " 
 
 Joan laughed. 
 
 " Even Polly thinks you are making an unnecessary 
 fuss, Mrs. Plumpton, and that I may be allowed to 
 finish my cigarette and coffee." 
 
 But Mrs. Plumpton's sense of duty would not allow 
 her to finish it unchaperoned. She reseated herself. 
 
 " I promised Lady Kesteven to look after you, Miss 
 Joan, and I'll not leave till I have seen you safely off 
 the premises." 
 
 Joan was chagrined. " That is what the policemen 
 say to burglars," she observed in a disgusted voice. 
 " Very well then, since you insist upon being my 
 keeper you will have to wait until your lunatic is 
 ready." 
 
 But Mrs. Plumpton did not wait graciously. Her 
 impatience to depart, expressed in fidgetings and 
 smothered exclamations, created an uncomfortable 
 atmosphere. Joan soon sprang to her feet. 
 
 "Oh, well! I am ready," she said crossly; "but I 
 will never forgive you for being so disagreeable. I 
 should have loved to tell people I go to bachelors' 
 smoking-parties at which I am the only woman." 
 
 In her gay fashion she swung across the room and, 
 taking her stand before a mirror, leisurely tilted her 
 very becoming hat to another angle and rearranged 
 the curls upon her brows. With her shapely, supple 
 back swaying to the movements of her lifted arms she 
 carried on a fire of talk and laughing observations, 
 under cover of which Mrs. Plumpton conveyed to 
 Dr. Lowood that Lady Kesteven had been anxious 
 about the girl since she had detected her at sixteen
 
 148 The Whips of Time 
 
 in an outrageous flirtation with a good-looking groom, 
 and that she had even written love-letters to him, 
 for the return of which her mother had been compelled 
 to pay the good-looking groom a considerable sum, 
 which she would not commit to figures, not having 
 proper authority for it. She thought Lady Kesteven 
 would be glad to see her safely married. Being such 
 an invalid she could not herself go about with and 
 look after her. 
 
 As all were to walk to their respective homes Lo- 
 wood joined the party. Joan's vicaress left them at 
 the gate, her indelicate mission lying in an opposite 
 direction. Lowood and Legh dropped behind, the lov- 
 ers walking in advance, Legh casting covetous glances 
 forward at them as they showed talking and laughing 
 affectionately. 
 
 " If I hadn't arranged for a number of shoots at 
 Hooton," he said in a stifling voice, " I'd get away for 
 a bit. Isn't she clinking? She's just full of life and 
 spirits." 
 
 " She's a nice girl," Lowood admitted, " but " 
 He broke off short. He had been about to say that 
 he knew one more to his taste, a memory of Alma 
 Wenlith and her sensitive, interesting face for the 
 moment effacing Joan's robuster charms. Seeing them 
 together as he had done, Joan's animal health and 
 colouring had suffered by contrast with Miss Wenlith's 
 more spirituelle quality. 
 
 But the same moment which suggested Miss 
 Wenlith as a substitute for Joan in Legh's affections 
 reminded him also that the girl's unfortunate position 
 placed her out of the running. Few men would have 
 been willing to take for wife a niece of Mrs. Beau- 
 mont of Moonbank. 
 
 " I think I have before told you," he said instead, 
 " that there are numbers of charming girls in the 
 world." 
 
 " Not numbers, I think," Legh insisted seriously.
 
 A Luncheon Party 149 
 
 ' There are a good many girls a man considers nice, 
 but when he begins to pin himself down to any one of 
 them he finds that although he might possibly be happy 
 enough with any one of them he can be just as happy 
 without her." 
 
 As Hestroyde wished to show Joan a new dairy he 
 had had built for her, they went round by Mowbreck. 
 The dairy was charming. Joan's green eyes sparkled 
 upon it. Nevertheless : 
 
 ' You stupid boy," she scolded him, " you've been 
 horribly extravagant." 
 
 His face fell. It was true. Some beautifully 
 painted tiles he had ordered had come to a much 
 larger sum than he had anticipated. And his means 
 were narrow. Her sharp eyes detected his fall of 
 expression. 
 
 " Look here," she broke out heartily, " I will " 
 
 But in presence of the scowl which immediately 
 darkened his face even her hardihood failed. He 
 forestalled what he guessed to be coming by suddenly 
 heading out of the dairy. 
 
 " We had better get on," he said brusquely. 
 
 Beyond the farm stood four fine corn-ricks. Hes- 
 troyde, pointing to them, called back to Legh : 
 
 " After all, I haven't sold them. I took your advice 
 and insured them heavily. I'm afraid I'm booked for 
 a big loss." 
 
 Legh explained that there being a local tradition to 
 the effect that about every thirty years every man was 
 liable to suffer from fire, and Mowbreck having es- 
 caped for thirty-seven years, he had persuaded Hes- 
 troyde, contrary to his habit, to insure these ricks. 
 This he had done rather heavily, so increasing his loss 
 should he fail to sell them. 
 
 When they arrived at The Folly Joan invited the 
 party in to tea. All declined. Lowood had letters to 
 write. Hestroyde had an engagement with his lawyer. 
 Legh, the only one without an adequate excuse, mut-
 
 150 The Whips of Time 
 
 tered something about a dog. Joan was offended. 
 With her eyes on Hestroyde she caught Legh by an 
 arm. 
 
 " Now, don't fib, Bobby," she said. " Do come in 
 and keep me company. I shall be all by myself." 
 
 Legh half yielded, then made a final effort of resist- 
 ance. 
 
 " Honour bright, Joan," he said, " I really can't. 
 I must see the vet. about old Towzer." 
 
 In a moment her laughing mood had gone. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood is horrid," she said vehemently. " I'll 
 never lunch with him again. And you two are simply 
 vile with your rotten excuses." 
 
 She turned on her heel and went in angrily. 
 
 Lowood had seen Hestroyde stiffen with jealous 
 rage when she caught Legh's arm. He now took a 
 sullen leave of them and walked back alone over the 
 hill.
 
 THE BECLOAKED, FURRED FIGURE OF A WOMAN HALF RUSHED, 
 HALF FELL, INTO THE ROOM. 
 
 {.Page 151
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 FIRE! 
 
 A FEW evenings later, as Lowood*5at drawn up to a big 
 fire, the night being desperately cold, there came a quick 
 tapping as of agitated fingers on the window panes. 
 Before he could make up his mind as to whether the 
 sound was a fact or a mere trick of idle fancy, it was 
 repeated. This time he could not doubt it. Quickly he 
 rose and opened the long casement window. The be- 
 cloaked, furred figure of a woman half rushed with a 
 biting blast, half fell, into the room. 
 
 " Oh, let me in," she faltered in agitated gasps. 
 " I'm just frozen. Please give me some wine or some- 
 thing." 
 
 She swept shivering to the fire. She knelt before it, 
 panting and thrusting her jerking, ungloved hands 
 close down upon it. She was trembling from head to 
 foot. At intervals a shuddering movement as of cold 
 or of supreme agitation shook her. 
 
 " Miss Kesteven ! " he exclaimed, amazed. " Are 
 you alone? " 
 
 " Yes," she said. " Oh, please give me some wine, 
 I am perishing with cold. This fire is 'delicious, de- 
 licious ! " 
 
 She crouched lower upon it, rubbing and warming 
 her empurpled hands and drawing in deep draughts of 
 the warm air. 
 
 " It will be worth waiting for a minute or two," he 
 told her as he replaced on the fire the small kettle from 
 which he had mixed his nightly draught of hot water 
 and whisky. He lighted a candle and went to the
 
 152 The Whips of Time 
 
 dining-room for port wine and a tumbler. By the time 
 he returned she was recovering. Her breath came 
 more calmly. 
 
 " I can quite believe," she said, turning to him with 
 a lively laugh, " that in Arctic places the parsons 
 frighten the people into being good by preaching that 
 the wicked place is snow and ice instead of fire. Cold 
 is more awful than heat." 
 
 The kettle now began to sing and to puff a steamy, 
 pleasant breath. He had soon prepared for her a 
 tumbler of steaming wine-negus. She drank deeply. 
 
 " That's clinking," she said. 
 
 She knelt, clasping the warm glass in both hands. 
 Then at his bidding she took the cosy chair he had 
 vacated. After another long draught of the warm, 
 fragrant mixture she emitted a sigh of satisfaction, 
 and leaned back her head luxuriously among the cush- 
 ions. Another draught, and she put down the empty 
 glass upon the table. Then she turned up a slightly 
 smiling face, from which the pinched colourlessness 
 was slowly melting again into roundness and pinkness. 
 
 " I suppose I must explain," she said. She glanced 
 about the room. Her eyes lighted upon a small old- 
 fashioned clock upon the mantelpiece. " Of course 
 this is shockingly improper. What would Mrs. 
 Plumpton say? " 
 
 " She would be duly scandalised, of course," Lowood 
 said. He awaited her explanation. It cannot be said 
 that he himself was wholly free from the emotion he 
 imputed to Mrs. Plumpton. 
 
 She turned up her green eyes, shining in the lamp- 
 light. 
 
 " I've been at Moonbank," she told him with a 
 challenging air. " Mother had had a bad day and 
 went to bed early. It was dull. I had nobody to talk 
 to, so I wrapped up and stole through the pass. By 
 the pass it is only about half a mile, you know, between 
 our house and Moonbank."
 
 Firel 153 
 
 " You chose a cold night for your expedition." 
 
 She shook her head, laughing. 
 
 " I didn't choose it. I should have preferred a 
 warmer one, but when the whim takes me I go." 
 
 " But how in the world do you come to be here? 
 Why didn't you take the short cut back again, instead 
 of coming round miles out of your way? " 
 
 Her eyes went back to the fire. She sat silent, her 
 face averted. Then she laughed again with some em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 " Oh, another whim ! " she said after a pause. 
 " The air seemed lovely when I left Moonbank crisp 
 and bracing, and I was warm and full of energy. It 
 seemed tame to go straight home to bed. I thought 
 I would stroll round by Mowbreck, I wanted to look 
 at the house by moonlight. It was just a whim. And 
 then " 
 
 She caught herself up sharply. She faced about 
 and fixed her shining eyes upon him strangely. 
 
 " That's all," she said suddenly. " There isn't any 
 more." 
 
 He became immediately aware that she was keeping 
 back the most important part of her adventure. His 
 conviction of her as a dangerous young woman was 
 confirmed. 
 
 " Well, now," he said, rising, " I must see you home. 
 You are thoroughly warmed, and the sooner you are 
 in bed with a hot bottle to your feet the better." 
 
 She did not rise, however. The light and animation 
 left her face. A curious lethargy stole over her. The 
 stimulating action of the wine was passing. And with 
 its passing she was relapsing into a state of nervous 
 depression in which she had flown shivering to his fire. 
 Exposure to cold, and it occurred to him some emo- 
 tional shock, were at work in her. 
 
 All at once, to his astonishment, she began to sob 
 and tremble. She looked wildly about her. She 
 jumped up and went to the window, and eagerly push-
 
 154 The Whips of Time 
 
 ing back the blind stared out. She returned and 
 dropped again into her chair. 
 
 " It was simply horrible, horrible ! " she cried, shud- 
 dering. " I shall never forget it. All flaring and 
 flaring!" 
 
 Lowood went over and laid a hand upon her 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Miss Kesteven," he said, " you are keeping some- 
 thing from me. You may count upon my confidence 
 and help if there is any good to be got by telling me." 
 
 She threw up her head. 
 
 " Why do you say I am keeping back something ? " 
 
 " I think so," he answered. 
 
 She paled. Her eyes filled with angry fear. 
 
 " What is it you think? " she cried vehemently. " I 
 have said nothing." 
 
 Then she controlled herself. 
 
 " It is true," she confessed. " There is something 
 more, but can I trust you ? " 
 
 He told her " Yes." 
 
 Still she hesitated. Then: 
 
 " Oh, I must tell somebody," she cried out. She 
 turned back to the fire and began to speak. 
 
 " I saw Mowbreck," she said quickly. " It looked 
 fine and imposing in the moonlight. It stood like a 
 block. Everything was quiet, and there was nobody 
 about. There were lights only in a few of the win- 
 dows. I walked about a little looking at the house. 
 Then I heard a dog howl a horrid howl. I didn't 
 like it. I thought I would get home as fast as I could. 
 But I had to pass the ricks you remember those 
 four ricks Mark pointed out to Bobby Legh the other 
 day?" 
 
 " I remember," Lowood said. " He had insured 
 them heavily." 
 
 Her eyes transfixed him with a curious startled look. 
 
 "Had he?" she said. 
 
 There was a long pause. He heard her breath
 
 Fire! 155 
 
 sweep jerkily, like an impeded tide, in and out her 
 lungs. 
 
 " I think you are mistaken," she asserted firmly. 
 
 " Well," he said lightly, " it is not of the slightest 
 consequence." 
 
 After another pause : 
 
 " When I came round by the ricks there was a man 
 there. I saw him plainly, standing in the moonlight. 
 It was almost as light as day." 
 
 Another pause. 
 
 "He startled you, no doubt." 
 
 " Yes, he startled me," she assented tonelessly. 
 Again she turned and looked at him. 
 
 " He was a strange man," she went on rapidly. " A 
 man I had never seen before, a tramp. He was not 
 like any man I have ever seen about here not like 
 any of the farm hands or any of Mark's men. He was 
 lame, very lame. He must have had a club foot or 
 something of that sort. He limped when he walked, 
 limped very badly. I could not help noticing it." 
 
 " Did he see you ? " 
 
 She waited before she spoke. Then she said 
 decisively : 
 
 " No. As soon as I saw him I slipped behind the big 
 barn. You see, I was afraid of him. He was a 
 strange, rough-looking man, with a great beard and 
 a red necktie, and ragged clothes. And I was afraid 
 of him." 
 
 " No wonder," Lowood said. " What was he doing 
 there?" 
 
 There was a very long pause. Then she stated 
 firmly: 
 
 " He was setting fire to the ricks." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " Lowood said excitedly, " do you 
 mean that he succeeded or that he only attempted to 
 fire them ? " 
 
 Again he overheard the tide of air passing and re- 
 passing harshly in her chest.
 
 156 The Whips of Time 
 
 " I think he succeeded," she answered. " It was all 
 flaming when I ran away. I was frightened when I 
 saw it flaring, and I ran away." 
 
 "But didn't you go to the house?" he protested. 
 " Didn't you raise an alarm? " 
 
 " No," she said, " I just ran away without thinking 
 of anything else. I was too frightened for words 
 when I saw it all blazing. And I just ran without even 
 thinking of where I was running. It wasn't till I got 
 to your gate and saw a light that I felt I couldn't run 
 any longer. I felt I should drop in the road." 
 
 "And you left the ricks burning?" Lowood said. 
 "How did he fire them?" 
 
 " He had a bottle of paraffin. He pulled out great 
 handfuls of straw from the side of a rick until there 
 was a hollow space. Then he soaked it with paraffin 
 and lighted a box of matches and threw it in. It flared 
 up ever so high." 
 
 " Incendiarism ! But, bless my soul ! by this time 
 the whole thing may be ablaze." 
 
 He got to his feet. 
 
 " I must give an alarm. One can't sit down over a 
 thing like this. If he failed first the ruffian will try 
 again. It may mean a heavy loss." 
 
 " But the ricks were insured," she said in a sup- 
 pressed voice. 
 
 Suddenly a horrible suspicion darted into Lowood's 
 mind. He thrust it away. What was this story of 
 a tramp? Incendiarism had always some motive of 
 profit or of revenge. What reason for revenge could 
 a tramp and a stranger have against Hestroyde ? What 
 profit could result to a stranger and a tramp from 
 firing Hestroyde's ricks? The demon of suspicion 
 added, Nobody but Hestroyde would profit. The 
 notion was unthinkable, and yet it persisted. He 
 recalled the young man's words. He had heard that 
 he was short of money, and that his approaching 
 marriage had entailed heavy expenses upon him. The
 
 Fire! 157 
 
 suspicion was monstrous! And yet for the life of 
 him he could not lay it. 
 
 Moreover, there was something strangely forced 
 and artificial in Joan's story; she seemed all the while 
 to be concealing something. And why had she so 
 insisted upon the personal characteristics of the tramp? 
 Would she indeed in her panic coming suddenly 
 upon him in the lonely night have noted all those 
 details of his clothes, his beard, his limp, his necktie? 
 His mind gave him in a twinkling a more probable 
 and deplorable version of the truth. 
 
 Her whim taking her, as she had said, to Mowbreck 
 had so chimed with some evil turn of Hestroyde's 
 destiny as to bring her there at the moment when he, 
 in order to recover the heavy insurance, was firing his 
 own ricks. Her circumstantial description of the tramp 
 was a mere blind to shield the real culprit. 
 
 She still further aroused his suspicion. 
 
 " You see, besides being so frightened," she said, 
 " if I had given an alarm people would have wondered 
 all sorts of things might have been said about my 
 being out and at Mowbreck at that time of night." 
 
 It was true, of course, but it was obviously not the 
 true reason of her silence. In her panic it was improb- 
 able that she would have seen this aspect of the case. 
 There was a far more probable explanation. Had she 
 given the alarm her lover might have been caught 
 under suspicious circumstances. He felt a sudden 
 strong compassion for her in her brave and quick- 
 witted efforts to screen him. 
 
 The stillness of the night was suddenly broken. 
 Sound rose braying on the air and set it shuddering. 
 It died in a long-drawn wail. Again it rose, again died 
 down. Miss Kesteven half sprang from her chair and 
 sank back again trembling in every limb. She covered 
 her ears with her hands. 
 
 " Oh, what is it ? What is it ? " she gasped. " Does 
 it mean danger ? "
 
 158 The Whips of Time 
 
 He told her it was only the fire-alarm. The ricks 
 were evidently burning. 
 
 " But is there any danger to anybody ? " 
 
 He thought none at all ; the ricks were at a distance 
 from the house. She grew calmer. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she said, " people in the house, the 
 Miss Epithites, or the servants, may be coming down. 
 I ought to slip away quietly at once. How could I 
 explain being here at this time of night ? " 
 
 " You are right," he said. " I'll get my coat and 
 hat. We will slip out by the dining-room window and 
 across the orchard to the road." 
 
 He was considering the conventions. But her next 
 words told him that she was considering something 
 else. 
 
 " Nobody must know a word," she said. " I must 
 not be brought into it must not be questioned. 
 Oh, there is that horrible shriek again ! Do let us 
 go." 
 
 They slipped out as he had planned, wisely, for the 
 upper window of the annex overlooked the path before 
 the house, and as they crossed the orchard he heard a 
 window flung up and sharp, excited voices in discus- 
 sion. For from the moment of awakening to the 
 Mowbreck fire-hooter a keen controversy had raged 
 between the startled ladies as to whether the sound 
 came from Simmonds' farm or from the Riccalby 
 Town Hall. 
 
 As they passed through a gap in the hedge and out 
 upon the road the sky over Mowbreck was red and 
 angry-looking, while below it swelled a sullen palpita- 
 ting cloud of smoke, fiercely illumined by the fire 
 beneath. Whiffs of the odour of burning came to 
 them. 
 
 Lowood, for lack of feminine apparel, had caught 
 up one of the woollen antimacassars with which Homer 
 Cottage was afflicted, and had thrown it round Joan's 
 head.
 
 Fire! 159 
 
 " Fire at Mowbreck ! " a man shouted breathlessly 
 as he ran past them. 
 
 Suddenly Joan stopped. 
 
 " I must know what is happening," she panted. " I 
 must turn back and find out what is happening at 
 Mowbreck." 
 
 Lowood would not hear of her return. Young and 
 vigorous as she was she was utterly worn out. Only 
 by a strong effort was she able to keep going. 
 
 " Be advised," he said. " If you do not wish to be 
 questioned keep out of the whole thing." 
 
 She made conditions. He must then leave her to 
 go on to Mowbreck and must send her an immediate 
 message. He did not like leaving her to find her way 
 home by herself, but on no other terms would she go 
 on. 
 
 He went back down the road. When he rounded 
 the base of the hill between Hooton Hoo and Mow- 
 breck he found the whole countryside bathed in ruddy 
 light, which, from a glowing centre, every few minutes 
 extended its range. Above this floated a large canopy 
 of smoke, rising and sinking, swirling and eddying, 
 to the wind currents and to draughts created by the 
 furnace of flame. 
 
 The road was as light as upon a summer evening. 
 All the little town seemed to have quitted their beds 
 and hastened with or in their eagerness raced breath- 
 lessly past him to the scene of action. Some talked 
 and laughed excitedly. Lowood, who had for some 
 years given up running, found himself moving with 
 the elder portion of the crowd, who, going more at 
 their leisure, found breath to exchange comments. All 
 knew for news travels even more quickly than fire 
 that the Mowbreck ricks were alight, that the 
 Riccalby fire-engine had not yet arrived, and that the 
 flames were well under way, but so long as the wind 
 kept in its present quarter there was no danger to the 
 house.
 
 160 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Insured, I suppose ? " Lowood heard one man 
 inquire. 
 
 " Ah ! " was the answer. " An' they do say heavily." 
 
 But there was no significance in either question or 
 answer. 
 
 Lowood arrived on the scene before the fire-engine 
 had done so. A cordon of men had been stationed 
 between a pump in a stable-yard and a big barn which 
 was in danger. The filled buckets were passed on 
 rapidly from hand to hand to half a dozen figures 
 which in active motion stood out black in the glare 
 upon the barn roof. Over this they dashed their 
 thimblefuls of water. The need for it was shown 
 in the clouds of steam which rose hissing as the water 
 flowed over the hot tiles. 
 
 For the ricks there was nothing to be done. By this 
 time they made a single mass of roaring flame, which 
 scorched the eyes and radiated a heat so intense as to 
 make proximity impossible. It showed like some evil 
 contest, as of vulture and doe, this swoop of the fire- 
 fiend upon the kindly innocent fruits of the earth. 
 And the fiend was now rending and devouring with 
 terrible jaws the very vitals of its prey. 
 
 Of the figures on the roof Lowood presently made 
 out one, a shapely, active frame, more agile, more 
 strenuous and more venturesome than the rest. This 
 was Hestroyde, who in his shirt-sleeves, begrimed 
 and with rough hair, was directing by word and by 
 example the little band of workers. 
 
 Till suddenly a cheer and shout arose, beginning 
 feebly in the distance and swelling to a roar which 
 made the arrival of the fire-engine a triumphal 
 progress. The knot of people swayed and broke. The 
 galloping horses dashed through importantly, and 
 came suddenly to a dramatic standstill. 
 
 In three minutes a thick rope of water was coiling 
 a snaky douche upon the predatory fiend. The monster 
 hissed and spat and fumed, but he desisted no whit
 
 Fire! 161 
 
 from his task. He was now at the heart of his gentle 
 quarry. The ricks were doomed. But the engine was 
 in time to save the barn, a corner of which had begun 
 to send up a plume of warning smoke amid the water 
 streaming down it. 
 
 With the arrival of the engine the roof cleared, and 
 Lowood was presently joined by Hestroyde. The 
 young man seemed pleasantly excited. He mopped 
 his moist and grimy face, and with a loss of his 
 habitual reserve nodded and smiled all round, thanking 
 his neighbours for their willing help and sympathy. 
 
 " It's warm work," he told Lowood, cheerfully. 
 " So you left your bed to see my ricks burn? " 
 
 " Yes," Lowood answered laconically. By the light 
 of what he suspected the young man's smiling cheerful- 
 ness appeared to be needlessly flippant. 
 
 " It's a decent bit of luck they're well insured," 
 Hestroyde went on. 
 
 As Lowood made no answer he moved on and shook 
 hands with Colonel Tempest, a spruce little fresh- 
 coloured man, who now came up as well-brushed 
 and equipped as though he had been going out to 
 lunch. 
 
 " Devil of a business this ! " he said ; " especially as 
 you don't insure." 
 
 " Luckily I did this time," Hestroyde told him. He 
 added, with what Lowood regarded as a dangerous 
 bravado, " Between you and me, this will be a good 
 night's work, so far as my pocket is concerned." 
 
 Lowood drew into the shadow of the house to pencil 
 and despatch a note to Joan Kesteven. To his amaze- 
 ment he found Legh there. He seemed to be suffering 
 from some agitation. Lowood saw that he kept close 
 within the shadow, his greatcoat muffled about his ears, 
 as of a man wishing to pass unrecognised. Lowood 
 wondered that being there he had not been among the 
 workers on the barn roof. It was his habit to be ready 
 and foremost in all activities.
 
 162 The Whips of Time 
 
 " How long have you been here? " he asked. " I 
 have only just seen you." 
 
 The young man started like one roused from a 
 dream. 
 
 " How long ? " he repeated mechanically. " Oh, for 
 some time for a long time in fact. I hadn't gone 
 to bed, and I rode down as soon as I heard the alarm." 
 
 " You were not with the bucket brigade? " 
 
 " The buckets? Oh, no. There were plenty of 
 hands." 
 
 When Lowood presently went home there were three 
 subjects in his speculative mind. The first was a 
 further confirmation, from the firing of the ricks, that 
 Hestroyde was Munnings. The second was the puzzle 
 of what part if any Legh had played in the 
 affair, or if merely suspicion of his friend were vexing 
 him. The third was whether Joan, who, he could not 
 doubt, had caught her lover in the act of arson, would 
 cast him off indignantly.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE DUKE OF SAXBY 
 
 ALMA WENLITH proved herself an apt pupil. She 
 found with astronomy none of the faults she had found 
 with the science of flowers. As Lowood had told her, 
 he had done little more than to skim the surface of 
 popular astronomy, and he was put to it to keep up 
 with the rapid pace of her absorbing diligence. 
 
 " She does nothing else," Mrs. Beaumont, still 
 placidly threading her many-coloured beads, informed 
 him. " She talks all day of horrerys " 
 
 " Remember, Auntie," Alma insisted with a little 
 laugh, " no aspirate." 
 
 " Oh well, then, orreries," her aunt corrected herself 
 tranquilly, " orreries and telescopes and sextons." 
 
 " Sextants," Alma again corrected. 
 
 " Yes, dear, but it's all the same to me. I don't 
 mean to fill my head with any such rubbish. How can 
 they possibly know it's all true, of things that are 
 millions of miles you told me it was millions of 
 miles away, Alma. And I can't see that it matters." 
 
 " But it is so interesting, so keenly interesting," 
 Alma said. " When we have finished our course of 
 evolution on this planet we shall go to others. No 
 doubt we shall, before we have finished, have lived 
 numbers of lives on each. Each star is a world 
 inhabited by beings like ourselves, or unlike ourselves. 
 I love to imagine the splendid beings with wonderful 
 powers, living wonderful lives in grander worlds than 
 ours. Because, compared with theirs, our poor little 
 world is only a dust speck and we are ants and beetles." 
 
 " You are far outstripping your astronomy-master,"
 
 164 The Whips of Time 
 
 Lowood told her. " In which of your text-books did 
 you find all this?" 
 
 " It isn't in the text-books. But Ball plainly thinks, 
 and Flammarion is sure, that the planets are inhabited 
 worlds, and when you know that it is easy enough to 
 imagine the rest. I particularly want to go to Saturn 
 and see how beautiful his belts must look. And some 
 of the planets have two suns two suns of different 
 colours." 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont regarded her with puzzled brows. 
 
 " This is how she talks for hours," she said. " Last 
 night I did all I could to make her decide whether her 
 new dinner frocks shall be a pink one and a green one, 
 or a maize and a heliotrope. She was so taken up 
 with the colour of the suns of Saturn that in the end 
 I had to choose the colours of her frocks myself." 
 
 Alma came down from the clouds. 
 
 " I suppose it was tiresome of me," she apologised, 
 " but, after all, it was safer to leave it to you, Auntie. 
 You understand clothes so perfectly." 
 
 " A good thing too, my dear, or you would make a 
 perfect fright of yourself. You once ordered a brown 
 frock trimmed with green. It set my teeth on edge." 
 
 " I know," Alma said. " It was hideous. They 
 put on the wrong green. I took the colouring from 
 some leaves. It was lovely in the leaves." 
 
 Lowood, while they were talking, had been conscious 
 of an undercurrent of bustle in the house. The door 
 opened and a short, red-fated man with an important 
 manner entered. One moment his eyes went to the 
 beautiful woman threading beads beside the hearth, 
 went and melted. The next moment they froze with 
 an unpleasant glare on Lowood, seated with an air of 
 intimacy in this house of his. Lowood knew him in 
 an instant for the Duke. As has been said he had met 
 him one evening at dinner. He rose and bowed. 
 
 Before any greetings were made Alma appeared to 
 discern that an explanation was required.
 
 The Duke of Saxby 165 
 
 " This is Dr. Lowood, Uncle," she said. " He is 
 kind enough to be teaching me astronomy. Dr. 
 Lowood, this is the Duke of Saxby." 
 
 The Duke flung an arrogant nod to him. 
 
 She crossed the room, and taking one of his hands 
 kissed him with dutiful affection on a cheek. 
 
 " And how do you do, Nunc dear ? " she questioned 
 playfully. 
 
 While she kissed him he still glared at Lowood, now 
 as though challenging him, if he dared, to have any 
 opinion upon the doings of this house. 
 
 Lowood saw that he was a person who, afflicted by 
 the misfortune of never having had restraints or 
 obligations set upon him, had all his life eaten too 
 much and drunk too much, and in all ways so pam- 
 pered and indulged the flesh, that he had become the 
 creature of every hot current which idly set and 
 swirled in his blood. A Duke he over lesser men, and 
 yet no Duke over the lower man which men lesser 
 than he held in subjection. 
 
 " Astronomy ! " he retorted upon Alma. " Rub- 
 bish ! " He pinched her delicate cheek between a 
 wine-coloured finger and thumb. " What does a 
 minx like you know of astronomy? " 
 
 " Nothing," she said quick-wittedly, " and that is 
 why I am learning." She tilted an offended chin. 
 " And women gave up being minxes when they gave 
 up being wenches, Uncle. Your vocabulary requires 
 bringing up to date." 
 
 " And what," Saxby questioned her, with a coarse 
 but kindly irony, " do you know about women? " 
 
 She opened her large eyes upon him with ingenuous 
 surprise. 
 
 " Why, everything," she said, " seeing that I am 
 myself a woman." 
 
 He looked at her attentively. 
 
 " Why, I suppose you are," he said, as though it had 
 only now occurred to him. " Yet surely it was only
 
 166 The Whips of Time 
 
 last week that I was buying a rocking-horse for 
 you." 
 
 " Last week ! " she cried. " It was fifteen years 
 ago. Old Rodrick hasn't been ridden for ten whole 
 years. He is stabled in a lumber room." 
 
 The Duke continued to eye her. He seemed to be 
 seeing her with some new vision. Then he turned to 
 Mrs. Beaumont, who from her chair at the fire had 
 sat smilingly observing them, a new light in her beau- 
 tiful eyes, a new happiness in her beautiful face. 
 Lowood he had apparently dismissed from his mind, 
 as he would have dismissed a footman or some fresh 
 piece of furniture to which his attention had been 
 called. He laid a hand upon Mrs. Beaumont's chair. 
 Lowood caught his breath to see the exquisite fondness 
 in the face she turned up to him. 
 
 " Come, Emmy," he said, " I have something for 
 you. I have left it in the boudoir." 
 
 She rose smiling. The little silver tray of beads fell 
 unheeded from her knees to the hearth. They went 
 out together. Lowood saw that before the door closed 
 the wine-coloured hand of this self-indulgent, arrogant 
 man had eagerly found her beautiful one. 
 
 Alma flew to the fireplace, and kneeling gathered up 
 the scattered beads and put them back upon their silver 
 tray. She looked up and glanced at the door. She 
 smiled reflectively. 
 
 " He has always something for her," she said in 
 a half-wondering voice, as much to herself as to Lo- 
 wood, " some pearls or diamonds or some beautiful 
 lace. Auntie and I see very few people, Dr. Lowood, 
 but am I not right in thinking that very few husbands 
 and wives are so devoted to one another after fifteen 
 years as are the Duke and Duchess ? " 
 
 She made a little smiling gesture to the door by 
 which they had gone out. 
 
 " Very few, I believe," Lowood said gravely. 
 
 " Do you not think the King is very cruel to keep
 
 The Duke of Saxby 167 
 
 them apart as he does? Uncle would love, of course, 
 to have her always with him." 
 
 " And the King? " Lowood said. 
 
 " The King, you know, is vexed because Uncle 
 would not marry his cousin, the Princess Monica of 
 Santanegro. Uncle does not take Auntie to Court. 
 But, of course, everybody knows. Don't they ? " she 
 demanded suddenly. 
 
 " Oh, no doubt," Lowood answered. 
 
 " We should love to go out more," she went on, 
 for the first time taking him into personal, instead of 
 merely mental, confidences. " It must be delightful 
 to go to Court and to meet all the great people, and 
 the great minds of the day. But because the King 
 is so vexed we are not able to go into the Duke's set. 
 And " (with that hauteur he had previously remarked 
 in her) " of course we cannot go into any other." 
 
 He reflected that the deception which was being 
 practised upon her was an unpardonable piece of 
 cruelty. Had she grown up with the truth she would 
 have learned to make the best of her unfortunate, 
 anomalous position. But with these exalted delusions 
 about her relation to her neighbours, a blow as bitter 
 as it was unsuspected was awaiting her. 
 
 " Living so much as I do in books," she resumed, 
 " I cannot help thinking that people's minds and 
 natures make a real aristocracy. I have read some- 
 where that they do, not money and rank. For instance, 
 it is absurd that Joan Kesteven has to visit us secretly. 
 She is, of course, quite a lady, yet Auntie says the 
 Duke would not permit us to know her. It would be 
 quite a breach of form for us to visit out of our set." 
 
 Lowood was aghast at the notion of her ingenuous 
 sensitiveness at the mercy of Miss Kesteven's habit of 
 indiscretion. He marvelled that the secret had not 
 long since been blurted out. 
 
 " Joan has asked me not even to nod or to smile 
 at her when I meet her in the road with other people.
 
 168 The Whips of Time 
 
 She says people have such absurd notions. I could not 
 make it out until I came across a passage in Thackeray 
 in which he says that men in certain social sets should 
 never confess to their friends that they know persons 
 of title. It creates such bitter jealousy. The result is 
 that I have never, since I was a child, known anyone 
 but Auntie and Uncle Saxby, and Uncle Tony (the 
 Duke's brother) and my French governess." She 
 told off her acquaintance on the slender fingers of one 
 hand, and had still a finger to spare. 
 
 " And now you," she added, smiling. " I have been 
 very glad to know you. Auntie is sweet and beautiful, 
 but she does not care for books. And Uncle Saxby 
 doesn't care for books and only makes fun of me 
 because I do. Uncle Tony I haven't seen for five 
 years. It was he who taught me to be fond of reading. 
 But he has been governing an island in the West 
 Indies, and has evidently forgotten us. Because 
 although he has been back in England a whole month 
 he has not once come to see us. So I depend upon 
 you to feed my hungry mind." 
 
 Looking at her with professional insight he reflected 
 that it would be better for her body were her mind 
 less fed. She was worn and white and nervous. In 
 her eyes was a mental fever which seemed to be con- 
 suming her young blood and health. She needed 
 association with the youth of her kind, young interests 
 and simple pursuits, in the place of this mental absorp- 
 tion which was sapping her powers. While one is 
 young one should live. Time and to spare for 
 philosophy when youth and the hour of roses have 
 gone by. 
 
 " Soon," he reflected, " she will be compelled to 
 take to spectacles and will acquire a red tip to her nose 
 and chronic indigestion. Her brain needs the balance 
 of the emotions. It would be an excellent thing for 
 her were she to fall in love."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 UNCLE TONY 
 
 As things turned out Alma was soon to receive that 
 impulse to the emotions which Lowood regarded as 
 being needed to balance her over-active brain. 
 
 One morning he found her dull and inattentive. 
 Her eyes, usually two steadfast lamps burning upon 
 shrines of knowledge, now kept wandering from her 
 books to stare abstractedly out of the windows. Her 
 mind too was obviously straying. Sometimes she did 
 not answer when he spoke, sometimes returned an- 
 swers which bore no relation to his questions. 
 
 Suddenly her whole aspect changed. She trembled 
 a little. A strange look of fear came into her eyes. 
 She threw out her hands. 
 
 "Ah, no! Not that! Not that!" she cried in a 
 tragic whisper. A minute later she went on with her 
 lesson, apparently quite unconscious of her strange 
 seizure. 
 
 Lowood was alone with her, Mrs. Beaumont having 
 left them. He regarded her seriously. This, which 
 appeared to him to be some mental aberration, was 
 plainly the outcome of an overtaxed brain. He deter- 
 mined to choose an opportunity of again urging upon 
 her, more seriously than he had already done, the 
 necessity of remitting her close studies, and of leading 
 a more normal life. The lesson went on as though 
 nothing had happened, till presently she lifted her 
 head and, with a look of rapt expectancy, sat staring 
 at the door. A man came in, a tall man, broad and
 
 170 The Whips of Time 
 
 lean, and of a fine, distinguished figure. His blue eyes 
 and his very fair moustache showed strangely in the 
 bronze which some tropical sun had laid upon him. 
 He halted just within the threshold and stood there 
 smiling slightly, yet with a certain nervousness drag- 
 ging at the corners of his mouth. 
 
 " Uncle Tony ! " she exclaimed. Then : 
 
 " Uncle Tony ! " she repeated in a voice of joy. 
 
 She flew across the room to him. She caught both 
 of his hands in hers, and with the confiding intimacy 
 of old acquaintance lifted her face for his kiss. 
 
 " Dear Uncle Tony," she said between laughing and 
 crying, " I thought you had forgotten us." 
 
 Whether because of his presence or from some other 
 cause Lowood could not decide, but the man from his 
 six-feet height kept his face out of her reach and 
 disengaged himself from her by putting his two hands 
 upon her shoulders and gently pushing her away, as 
 though to see her face. 
 
 " I hadn't forgotten you," he said. " And how has 
 the world been treating you while I have been away? " 
 
 He slid down a hand from her shoulder, and when it 
 found one of hers gripped it cordially. But Lowood 
 could see, by the rigidity of his arm, that he was still 
 warding off that embrace to which he had no uncle's 
 right. Her back was to Lowood, but he divined that 
 there was surprise in her face as she realised that her 
 terms with the newcomer were not to be those upon 
 which they had parted. He saw that the man, on his 
 part, glanced surprised at her, as though wondering 
 that she should have expected it. 
 
 " Why, the world has behaved very well," she 
 answered playfully. " Did you think it would have 
 devoured us ? " 
 
 " Sometimes it does," he answered, with a certain 
 gravity underlying his smile. 
 
 In age he looked forty. But Lowood judged him to 
 be some years younger, the added years of his appear-
 
 Uncle Tony 171 
 
 ance being attributable to the quicker waste of tissue 
 which attends life under tropical suns. His face was 
 lined, there was a streak of grey in his blond hair, 
 and his frame was spare with that spareness which 
 comes of fever. He looked, nevertheless, in good 
 health, a man who had begun life with a splendid 
 constitution, but of a temperament strenuous enough 
 to make inroads upon such a constitution. There was 
 a faint resemblance to the Duke about him, but only 
 such a family resemblance as is apparent when looked 
 for. This man had full blue eyes and some of the 
 strong heaviness of jaw of his brother. But this man 
 was a sportsman, and the paints and clean austerities 
 of the outdoor life had put fibre and strength into 
 even the defects of his qualities. 
 
 " Oh, I so missed you at first," Alma told him. 
 " For months I thought I couldn't bear it when 
 Sunday came and you did not." 
 
 She put out a hand, and with an air of deep content- 
 ment drew it gently down the arm nearest to her. 
 He withdrew the arm abruptly. He replied to the 
 astonishment in her face by saying lightly: 
 
 " I had fever, you know. One's bones keep a bit 
 sore." 
 
 From the checked sound in her voice when she next 
 spoke it seemed that she had gleaned an inkling of the 
 truth, that they were meeting on terms different from 
 those upon which they had parted. A moment of 
 constraint followed. Then she turned and returned 
 up the room. 
 
 " Come to the fire," she said. " You must feel it 
 cold after hot climates." 
 
 She introduced Lowood, whose presence she had 
 forgotten. The newcomer, it appeared, was Lord 
 Anthony Burghwallis. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood is kind enough to be reading astron- 
 omy with me," she explained. 
 
 Burghwallis shook hands with him.
 
 172 The Whips of Time 
 
 " What in heaven for ? " he asked, laughing. 
 
 Lowood, realising himself as superfluous, shortly 
 after took his leave. 
 
 Before he left he saw that Alma's face had under- 
 gone one of those transformations possible only to 
 highly organised natures, in which the flesh is so 
 vitalised that even the physical conformation changes 
 to their mood. The mental exaltation of her eyes had 
 given place to a soft glow. He saw for the first time 
 a tinge of delicate rose in her cheeks. For the first 
 time in his experience she looked pretty. 
 
 As he went out he reflected that here was a fine 
 complication. For i was plain to him, if not to 
 Burghwallis himself, that this affection which she 
 regarded as a dutiful matter-of-course was not at all 
 of the nature of a niece's. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont had arrived at the door as Lowood 
 went out. She was obviously on her way to greet the 
 visitor. Lowood noted more of tension perhaps 
 even of anxiety upon her accustomed beautiful 
 serenity than he had previously seen there. 
 
 Her anxiety, if such it were, was insufficient to 
 hasten her smooth pace. With her accustomed buoy- 
 ancy she floated up the room to where Burghwallis 
 and Alma, now seated one at either end of a velvet- 
 cushioned settle, were attentively observing, rather 
 than talking with, one another. Her beautiful flesh 
 was its own perfect mistress; whatsoever she may 
 have felt she betrayed no emotion in her placid greet- 
 ing. 
 
 " Lord Anthony," she said, and added, with that 
 conventionality which sounds always underbred, " this 
 is indeed a pleasant surprise." 
 
 He greeted her like an old friend. His eyes dwelt, 
 arrested, on the beauty which was so perfect as to be 
 ever an astonishment to those who had not looked 
 upon it for some time.
 
 Uncle Tony 173 
 
 Years earlier he had got into a habit of passing 
 some idle Sunday hours with her and the little girl 
 Alma, to whom he had taken a great liking. The 
 woman's sincere attachment to his brother and the 
 good influence she had exercised over him at a time 
 when his tendency to drink and to other evil ways 
 had threatened to make an old aristocratic name noto- 
 rious, had inspired him with a liking and sincerte 
 respect for her. At one crisis of the Duke's career 
 he had gone to her, harassed and overwhelmed by the 
 obligation of averting a public scandal. By her influ- 
 ence and sound good sense the crisis had been averted 
 and their name saved. 
 
 Profoundly grateful, he had formed a habit of 
 spending his Sunday afternoons with her and the 
 child. The Duke had at first been hotly jealous, but 
 had presently seen that Burghwallis' attraction was to 
 the child rather than to his inamorata. And the little 
 girl with the big luminous eyes and sensitive face, 
 who amused and interested him by her quick intelli- 
 gence and whimsical fancies, had learned to call him 
 uncle. 
 
 " You must be my uncle," she had told him gravely, 
 " because I read in a book that the husband of a little 
 girl's auntie was the little girl's uncle, and I read in 
 another book that the brother of a little girl's uncle 
 was her uncle as well." 
 
 Upon which Mrs. Beaumont and he had averted 
 their eyes from one another. And he had ever after- 
 wards passed for the uncle of the lady's niece. He 
 had not, however, expected, after five years of absence, 
 to find the girl still ignorant of the facts. 
 
 As he took Mrs. Beaumont's warm, soft hand in his 
 he looked at her with some dismay, perhaps with 
 disapproval. It was her duty to have explained the 
 case to Alma. Only great suffering and mortification 
 could result to her from the deferred explanation. 
 
 Knowing something of this beautiful person's early
 
 174 The Whips of Time 
 
 history it cannot be said that he cherished illusions 
 about her. But he had not realised the extent to 
 which her soft, pleasure-loving temperament had 
 caused her all her life to make gentle detours round 
 all disagreeable tasks and situations, and to leave 
 unpleasant duties undone. So she had kept her young 
 curves and dimples, and her undimmed brilliancy of 
 eye and of skin. 
 
 That she had brought up the girl as correctly and 
 as delicately as though she had been a young nun was 
 to her credit. Being keenly attached to Saxby, and 
 of an indolent, happy disposition, she had had little 
 or no temptation to stray from the luxurious environ- 
 ment in which he had set her, a jewel in a velvet- 
 cushioned coffer. Before his advent her career had 
 been brief and very rapid. Now she was resting on 
 her oars in a placid backwater, which was far more 
 to her taste. And amid the unpleasant things she had 
 left undone was the revelation to Alma of her true 
 position. 
 
 Perhaps Burghwallis' eyes told her that he blamed 
 her. Perhaps her rudimentary conscience pricked her. 
 The rich colour in her cheeks deepened slightly as her 
 liquid voice informed him that his presence was indeed 
 a pleasant surprise. 
 
 " I have only been home five weeks," he said, " and 
 I've been rushed off my feet." 
 
 "You have seen Uncle George, of course?" Alma 
 asked. " He paid us a flying visit a week ago." 
 
 There was a shade of arrogance in the voice of the 
 Duke's brother as he replied that he had seen the Duke. 
 One of the obligations of nobility is a profound rever- 
 ence for the members of its order. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont sat down like a goddess enthroning 
 herself. 
 
 " I suppose it was sadly hot where you've been," 
 she said, the gems on her fingers flashing in and out 
 of her draperies as she arranged these.
 
 Unek Tony 175 
 
 Burghwallis laughed. 
 
 "Scorching!" he said. "After it last week's 
 snow was a joy. I had much ado to keep myself 
 from going out and rolling in it, in the face of 
 Piccadilly." 
 
 " Oh, but fell us about your island," Alma begged 
 him. " Were there coral reefs and elephants and 
 cannibals and gorillas? And were there white people? 
 You never wrote a line." 
 
 " Why, I believe I didn't," he answered disingenu- 
 ously. 
 
 The truth was that having all at once realised that 
 the girl had become a woman he had fled the situation. 
 Any day might precipitate one of those scenes which 
 are so abhorrent to the masculine mind. Accordingly, 
 against his inclination, for he had a strong affection 
 for the girl, he had refrained from writing, thinking 
 it best to sever the acquaintance altogether, or at all 
 events to leave it in abeyance until the climax should 
 have been safely tided over. And then he had allowed 
 it to remain in abeyance. Perhaps he would not have 
 sought them out again on his return had not Saxby 
 himself suggested it. 
 
 " You won't find Emmy changed," he had said 
 boastfully. " Not a grey hair or a wrinkle." 
 
 " She's wonderful, I know," Burghwallis had 
 answered. 
 
 And now he had run down to see her and to see his 
 old pet, Alma. 
 
 Alma caught eagerly at his disingenuous answer. 
 
 " Or did you write ? " she asked. " And did the 
 letters miscarry? " 
 
 The wistful appeal of her eyes made him ashamed 
 of his disingenuousness. 
 
 " No," he said truthfully, " I didn't write. You 
 have no notion of the heaps I had to do, being 
 governor." 
 
 " Your word was law, of course. And did you wear
 
 176 The Whips of Time 
 
 a crown and order men to be beheaded if they dis- 
 obeyed you ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I surrounded my palace every 
 morning with a dado of fresh human heads stuck on 
 a palisade of spears." 
 
 " How cruel ! " Mrs. Beaumont commented tran- 
 quilly. " But I suppose you're not really in earnest. 
 Does the British Government allow things like that? " 
 
 Burghwallis and Alma exchanged laughing looks. 
 
 " Allow it ! " he exclaimed. " The Government 
 insists upon it." 
 
 " Really? " she said, " and did you stick up women's 
 heads as well? " 
 
 Then she protested to their laughter : 
 
 "Of course you are only making fun of me, but 
 how can one tell what they do in such places ? " 
 
 Her eyes stopped full on Alma. She regarded her 
 with attention. With that new glow in her eyes and 
 a tinge of colour lending animation to her shadowy 
 face she appeared quite pretty. Her luminous eyes, 
 with their long lashes and the violet hollows under 
 them, were even beautiful. From Alma her gaze went 
 to Burghwallis. Then her lids fell demurely. 
 
 " And what do you think of Alma? " she inquired of 
 him, carelessly. " Do you think she has improved ? " 
 
 For some reason Burghwallis seemed annoyed. He 
 gazed at Alma with elaborate attention. Then : 
 
 " No," he said bluntly, " she hasn't improved at all. 
 She looks thin and washed out. I believe you starve 
 her." 
 
 " Oh, what a thing to say ! " Mrs. Beaumont cried 
 warmly. " I can't force her to eat. She simply won't. 
 I've given up trying, in despair." 
 
 " You should put her in a corner or take away her 
 toys," Burghwallis said ironically. He turned to Alma 
 sharply. 
 
 " Why don't you eat your bread and milk and 
 porridge, you bad girl ? "
 
 Uncle Tony 177 
 
 There was manifestly some ill-humour underlying 
 his bantering tone, as though he were annoyed to have 
 her forced upon him as subject for thought, and as 
 though also he were taking refuge behind the notion 
 of her as a child. An expression of delicate pride 
 passed into the girl's face. 
 
 " Please talk of something more interesting," she 
 said sharply. 
 
 Burghwallis flashed an irritable eye. Perhaps he 
 resented sharp tones from Mrs. Beaumont's niece. 
 Perhaps he was annoyed that Mrs. Beaumont's niece 
 should possess delicate pride to be hurt. 
 
 " Now, don't be vexed, Alma," Mrs. Beaumont 
 interposed good-humouredly. " I am sure it is 
 very good of Lord Anthony to take an interest in 
 you." 
 
 The delicate pride became pride in arms. Now she 
 swung round her face and eyed him with an arrogance 
 which the Duke could not have surpassed. 
 
 " I am grateful for Lord Anthony's interest," she 
 retorted with a curling lip. 
 
 That ill-humour still goading him he replied to her 
 temper with temper. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " he said brusquely, " it is no affair of 
 mine, of course, what Miss Wenlith or anybody but 
 myself eats." 
 
 Her pride laid down its arms. But before doing so 
 it seemed to have wounded her, to judge by the as- 
 tonished pain in her eyes. This adored " Uncle " of 
 hers, who during his absence had been exalted in her 
 mind to heroic heights, met her as a mere acquaintance 
 and called her " Miss Wenlith ! " She regarded him 
 with mute and miserable reproach. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont, who knew a good deal about men, 
 saw that she had blundered, and knowing a good deal 
 about men she proffered balm. 
 
 " Lord Anthony," she said with liquid persuasion, 
 " you will stop to lunch, of course. You remember the
 
 178 The Whips of Time 
 
 flavour of our Moonbank pheasants. And I have still 
 some of that Chateau Lafitte you always liked." 
 
 Despite the voice and the allurements proffered, he 
 was on the point of declining when his eye met Alma's, 
 poignant and amazed. Perhaps he remembered with 
 justice that she was as ignorant of all the complexities 
 which made the situation so disturbing to him as she 
 was innocent of them. He forced good-humour. 
 
 " I shall be delighted," he said. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont rose. She had a dozen men-servants 
 at her command, and Burghwallis would have rung the 
 bell for her. But she rose and quitted the room, mur- 
 muring sweetly that she would tell somebody to do 
 something, which was quite inaudible. 
 
 She left these two together with an intention as 
 sincere and amiable, although slightly different from 
 that of the matchmaking mother who leaves her 
 daughter to make headway with an excellent pro- 
 spective husband.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 LORD ANTHONY 
 
 WHEN she had gone Alma met him with a straight, 
 reproachful look. 
 
 " Why have you come back a stranger ? " she asked. 
 
 He softened. 
 
 " I have not," he said. " But when people have 
 been separated for five years it takes a little while 
 to break a natural crust of time. I left you a young 
 person, and I find you a young woman." 
 
 " But I have not changed. And I have remembered 
 you so well that there is no crust to be broken. It is as 
 though you had left us only yesterday." 
 
 He led her away from this subject of their personal 
 relations. He inquired after dogs and horses he had 
 known at Moonbank. He bent and took up Janita, who 
 was sitting on her silken cushion, gazing out her full, 
 pathetic eyes into the fire, her tongue protruding like 
 the pink petal of a flower. 
 
 " This is a new pet," he said, fondling the pliant, 
 silken ears. 
 
 " Yes, isn't she sweet ? Uncle George brought her 
 down for Auntie two Christmases ago." 
 
 He set down the dog as hastily as he had caught her 
 up. She crept back to her cushion, every delicate limb 
 quivering with indignation. She cast a soft, resentful 
 look at him for the abruptness of his dealings. 
 
 Again Alma's " Uncle " had jarred upon his pride 
 and upon his conscience. Since he had been in the 
 cradle, and his brother, the Marquis, had been allowed 
 to dominate the nursery and all therein with will and 
 whip, he had been taught to revere this head of his
 
 180 The Whips of Time 
 
 family. Yet while his pride resented, his conscience 
 told him that the girl was innocent of the offence he 
 found in her words. She shelved the dangerous topic 
 by taking him to the stables, there to renew acquaint- 
 ance with old dog-and-horse- favourites. 
 
 The Moonbank stables were fit to have stabled 
 princes. The furnishings were of satin wood embossed 
 with silver. The floors were of art tiles beautifully 
 painted. Above his stall the name of each horse was 
 inscribed upon a silver shield, and in some were por- 
 traits in oils of the creature's sires. Their loin-cloths 
 were of brightly-coloured silks, woollen-lined. 
 
 The grooms and stable-helps wore picturesque brown 
 velveteens with orange vests and facings. They ap- 
 peared, as in " Gulliver," to be an inferior race, subject 
 to the high-born, beautiful creatures they served. 
 
 The coming of Alma and her companion was 
 greeted by joyful yelps and intelligent whinnyings. 
 Soon they were busy rewarding the pampered creatures 
 from the little piles of cut carrots and apples and bis- 
 cuits which the grooms had set ready for such visitors 
 as should desire to pay tribute. 
 
 In the genial natural atmosphere which animals 
 engender the crust Burghwallis had described soon 
 thawed. As he patted the heads and fondled the 
 muzzles of old four-legged acquaintance, flattered to 
 find himself remembered, strangeness and caste feeling 
 passed. 
 
 When luncheon was announced he came out of the 
 stables with Alma, laughing and chatting upon the old 
 familiar footing. The girl had always had a singular 
 charm for him. Her enthusiasms, innocent and some- 
 times absurdly high-flown, amused and pleased him. 
 She made him feel always that although he had adopted 
 the creeds and cynicisms of an effete age there were 
 beneath them a man still young and vigorous, a mind 
 still fresh, and an impulsive heart. 
 
 When she had been a child her small, trustful hand
 
 Lord Anthony 181 
 
 in his had filled him with longings for children of his 
 own. When he had seen womanhood gathering mys- 
 terious in her eyes he had left her with stirrings in his 
 heart for some unknown ideal woman who should love 
 him and whom he should love with a purer and higher 
 passion than was to be found in the artificial " affairs " 
 which made the pastime of his world. 
 
 Like other men he played the game of life as he 
 found it played. But like other men he knew in his 
 better moments that it was, after all, but a sordid 
 burlesque of that best thing in life, to love sincerely 
 and to be sincerely loved. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont, seated at the head of her luxurious 
 table while the liveried footmen poured rich cream into 
 her Borlasch, served quails with Muscat grapes to her, 
 and filled her glass with softly- foaming opalescent 
 wine, sat well content, leaving the conversation to these 
 two. Behind her beautiful face were a sensible mind 
 and a good deal of shrewd worldly wisdom. And 
 Alma's future more than anything else (except the 
 Duke's unfortunate love of drink) had caused her 
 uneasy hours. 
 
 Burghwallis was well off and kind and pleasant. 
 And Alma evidently liked him. Alma was handicapped 
 for marriage by her anomalous circumstances. More- 
 over, placed as they were by the Duke's imperative 
 orders, with no society of any sort, Alma did not 
 meet a man from one year's end to another. 
 
 Even had it been otherwise she could not expect to 
 find a husband of rank and position. And Mrs. Beau- 
 mont had a great opinion of rank and position. She 
 was quite sorry, when she thought about them, for the 
 wives of business and professional men who lived in 
 small houses and were compelled to sew and to mend, 
 and to walk on their own tired feet instead of driving 
 behind a pair of magnificent horses. Such women in 
 all their lives did not possess a jewel at which Mrs. 
 Beaumont would not have turned up her lovely nose.
 
 182 The Whips of Time 
 
 They wore serge and tweed gowns and ill-fitting boots. 
 They dressed their own hair, and lived on legs of 
 mutton and rice-puddings. She had a mild affection 
 for her sister's child and did not like to think of such 
 a fate for her. 
 
 Therefore, seeing Burghwallis resume his old 
 friendly relations with the household, she saw no 
 reason why Alma should not presently be mistress of 
 a Moonbank of her own.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 CYRIL HUMMERSTONE 
 
 LOWOOD had been mistaken in supposing that Joan 
 Kesteven would break off her engagement with Hes- 
 troyde. When he met them a week later at a dinner- 
 party at the Tempests they appeared to be upon 
 unusually loverlike terms. 
 
 The fire was apparently forgotten. If any other 
 shared Lowood's suspicions that the master of Mow- 
 breck had fired his own corn-ricks in order to obtain 
 the insurance dues, he at all events was not sufficiently 
 in the confidence of the county to hear of it. 
 
 Joan, remembering the midnight hospitality she 
 had claimed from Homer Cottage, narrowed her green 
 eyes upon her host of that occasion with a gleam of 
 significance and with that enjoyment of a secret under- 
 standing which is the very breath of life to some 
 principally feminine natures. 
 
 He reflected cynically that in her case " loved I not 
 honour more " had no place. The man's handsome 
 personality and physical spell were all she asked, or 
 were at all events sufficiently powerful to stifle her 
 demands for higher qualities. The reflection did not 
 raise his opinion of her. He knew that men reach 
 high levels mainly in proportion as women exact these 
 from them. 
 
 Legh was present. He, it seemed, had not forgotten 
 the fire. He showed still the moodiness and the dis- 
 quietude Lowood had seen in him that evening. 
 
 When the men quitted the dinner-table Hestroyde 
 made an impetuous plunge into the drawing-room
 
 184 The Whips of Time 
 
 which sent him halfway up it in search of Joan, before 
 he realised that she had slipped into a palm-shaded 
 recess beside the door. Lowood, cooler and more 
 observant, availed himself of the opportunity, and 
 dropped into a seat beside her. 
 
 She made but little disguise of the fact that the seat 
 might have been rilled more to her taste. But she 
 smiled pleasantly enough, her eyes inviting him to 
 admire her in a new dinner-gown which her glass, 
 and no doubt Hestroyde's glances also, had told her 
 was singularly becoming. It was green in colour, of 
 a delicate shade which threw up her strong pinks and 
 whites, and her moon-coloured hair, and repeated the 
 tints of her eyes. It was trimmed with moonlight 
 sequins and with knots of tinsel, and flowed like light 
 and water round the sinuous movements of her slender 
 shape. In her hair, knotted loosely on her white nape, 
 was a great crimson rose. 
 
 " Well, Miss Kesteven," Lowood said, " you took no 
 harm the other night. I expected to find you laid up 
 with a serious pneumonia." 
 
 She glanced quickly about her as though to assure 
 herself of that which Lowood had already assured 
 himself, that nobody was within hearing. 
 
 " I am never laid up," she said. " I am as strong as 
 a horse." She added, " It was shocking of me to run 
 the risk of compromising you, I know. Do you think 
 the Miss Epithites or anybody suspected you of having 
 a midnight visitor? " 
 
 " I am sure not or I should have heard of it. They 
 do not keep their suspicions to themselves." 
 
 " I am afraid you thought me ridiculous. I am not 
 given to nerves and rotten ways like that." 
 
 He changed the subject. 
 
 " I heard a bird whispering about a coming wed- 
 ding," he said. " But sometimes birds tell fibs." 
 
 There was just a heavy quiver of her white lids. 
 Then she gazed ingenuously at him.
 
 Cyril Hummerstone 185 
 
 " Now, I wonder if that absurd Mark Hestroyde 
 has been promising things in my name," she said. " I 
 am far too fond of my freedom to part with it for 
 years and years." 
 
 But there was something in her voice and in her 
 eyes, as they swept past him down the room and rested 
 with a sudden fixity upon some object there, which told 
 him the story was true. He had heard that the wed- 
 ding was fixed for April. Her eyes began to alter their 
 focus. Lowood had no power of vision in the back 
 of his head, yet he knew as well as though he could 
 see him that Hestroyde was approaching from the 
 rear. 
 
 He rose. , 
 
 " There is something I must say to Mrs. Tempest," 
 he said. 
 
 Hestroyde, grateful for the empty chair he left, 
 shook hands with him with an ardour of which 
 Lowood did not delude himself that he was the source. 
 But his face laid some misgivings the elder man had 
 been harbouring. After all, if heredity were a strong 
 force was not love even a stronger? Human nature 
 is not inert matter. It is vital and quick with regen- 
 erative potencies. Passion awakens these. A man in 
 love may rise Phoenix-like upon the ashes of his hered- 
 ity or of his past. 
 
 He walked home through a lightly-falling snow, his 
 feet gruntling in the crisping powder of a previous 
 shower. The cold was intense, a keen north-east wind 
 blowing in his teeth. He arrived benumbed at Homer 
 Cottage. Outside the door he shelled himself out of 
 his great coat, which was thickly encrusted, and shook 
 it free of snow. Then, with pleasing anticipations of 
 his fire, his cosy chair and a hot drink, he entered his 
 warm, bright room. 
 
 He found no bachelor solitude there. In his chair, 
 drawn up to the hearth, his feet upon the mantelboard, 
 between his lips a cigar the aroma of which was
 
 186 The Whips of Time 
 
 familiar, at his hand a steaming glass of which the 
 aroma was likewise familiar, sat a young man. On 
 seeing the master of the house enter the young man 
 reached down his feet from the mantelboard, removed 
 the cigar from his mouth, and rolled himself deliber- 
 ately to his legs. 
 
 " Hello, Godpa ! " he exclaimed facetiously, " I 
 wonder if you remember me." 
 
 Lowood looked him up and down with no very 
 friendly air. 
 
 " I can't say I do," he said; " but I suppose you must 
 be Cyril Hummerstone." 
 
 " Right you are," the newcomer said; "go up one 
 for not forgetting your dutiful godson." 
 
 Despite his easy manner there was an air of solicitude 
 about him. He was wasted and dissipated-looking. 
 His eyes were dull. His nose had a congested tip. 
 Added to these displeasing characteristics he was 
 shabby and threadbare, and one of his elbows had even 
 poked a hole in his sleeve, revealing a small slash of 
 white. His collar was crumpled, and at one side his 
 shirt-front, awry, showed a space of dingy flannel. 
 The hand he extended shook visibly. 
 
 It was impossible for him to suppose, from his un- 
 willing host's glances, that he was welcome. Indeed, 
 the man who could have welcomed so altogether un- 
 prepossessing and discreditable a guest must have been 
 a saint. 
 
 Weak and exhausted as he was, the underlying 
 anxiety as to his reception broke through his mask of 
 levity. He collapsed into his chair. 
 
 " For God's sake," he appealed hoarsely, " don't 
 turn me out. I'm I'm stony broke." 
 
 As has been said, Lowood's heart was kind, and he 
 was susceptible to the claims of youth. He set a hand 
 upon the young man's shoulder. 
 
 " Turn you out," he repeated. " Rubbish ! I'm 
 pleased to see you again."
 
 Cyril Hummerstone 187 
 
 The young man, broken with weakness and self-pity, 
 mutely held his hand in two trembling ones. 
 
 Then, " The guvnor's as hard as a flint," he said. 
 " I've gone the pace a bit. And he swears he'll do 
 nothing more for me." 
 
 Lowood had heard rumours of this " pace " which 
 Hummerstone's only son (the one person in the world 
 who had succeeded in arousing some affection in his 
 ice-heart) had been making. He knew that the father 
 had again and again forgiven him, again and again 
 had paid his debts and extricated him from difficulties. 
 His ambition had been that this, his only son, should 
 continue his own great lifework upon the Blood- Vessels 
 of the Tail of the Tadpole. But the boy showed no 
 interest in tadpoles. Until he was eighteen, being of 
 a cold and cruel disposition, he had displayed a keen 
 liking for the vivisections of his father's laboratory, 
 thereby deluding his father into the belief that his son 
 was a born scientist. 
 
 But a reaction had come. 
 
 Cyril had all at once transferred his attentions to the 
 music-hall stage. Fired by association with some shi- 
 ning lights of it he had wished beyond all things to 
 adopt it for a profession. Possessing no talent, how- 
 ever, to support his ambitions, he was forced to console 
 himself by paying tribute (out of his father's purse) 
 to those of its geniuses whom he delighted to honour. 
 
 He had passed one medical examination and had 
 been ploughed twice for the second. It seemed improb- 
 able that he would get further in medical science than 
 this. Lowood had not seen him for ten years, although 
 he had fulfilled his god-paternal promises by yearly 
 sending him a birthday cheque. 
 
 " I'm just out of hospital," Hummerstone explained, 
 " sprained my knee skating and got a nasty synovitis. 
 Guvnor's just mad because I'm not a measly book- 
 worm. Old Johnson ordered change of air, but guv. 
 wouldn't give me a cent. I thought perhaps you'd do
 
 188 The Whips of Time 
 
 
 
 the good Samaritan and take me in until I'm on my 
 legs again." 
 
 " With pleasure, of course," Lowood told him, 
 making the best of a distasteful obligation. " The air 
 here is excellent. It will soon set you up." 
 
 " I say," Hummerstone submitted, when he had 
 presently regained his ease, " I don't like to disgrace 
 you." He showed his threadbare coat with the hole in 
 an elbow of it. " I suppose you haven't got an old 
 suit you could rig me up with. My rotten tailor refuses 
 me any more credit. Like his deuced cheek, I'm sure." 
 
 Lowood possessed old suits, but as he was sincerely 
 attached to these he presented his godson with a new 
 one which he could better spare. Hummerstone was 
 normally a large and flaccid person with grey, unpleas- 
 ant eyes and a pink and white skin and immature 
 features, which had earned for him in the Hospital the 
 nickname of " Rag Doll." Just now, however, he was 
 wasted by late hours and sickness, and Lowood's long, 
 narrow garments fitted him, albeit somewhat tightly. 
 
 He came down next morning to breakfast in the new 
 suit. His air of anxiety had given place to one of limp 
 complacency. His pink and white skin and immature 
 features, together with his flaxen hair and a moustache 
 which would never get beyond the budding stage, lent 
 him a fictitious aspect of youthful ingenuousness which 
 his life and experiences belied. With his restored con- 
 fidence, and in his borrowed clothes, he was quite 
 presentable. He did his best to be agreeable with 
 sentiments and with a bland voice, which Lowood 
 found particularly displeasing. 
 
 " Look here, Godpa " he began confidentially, 
 when breakfast, to which he had done an injustice 
 which further offended Lowood's temperate tastes, was 
 finished. 
 
 But Lowood broke out testily : 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, call me by a less offensive 
 name ! "
 
 Cyril Hummerstone 189 
 
 Hummerstone glanced over at him shrewdly from 
 beneath his waxy lids ; he probably gathered that this 
 usually tolerant man could be savagely intolerant upon 
 occasions. 
 
 " Sorry," he apologised meekly. " Of course it was 
 only a joke. And I was going to make you my father- 
 confessor " 
 
 . " For goodness sake, don't do that either! Confes- 
 sion from one man to another is bad for the soul. 
 Women are the only persons who are good enough for 
 men to confess their sins to." 
 
 Hummerstone laughed coarsely. 
 
 "You mean because they're so often partakers?" 
 
 Lowood, every sensitive nerve in him on edge with 
 that which he could not help realising as inhospitable 
 irritation, retorted sharply : 
 
 " I meant nothing of the sort." 
 
 Hummerstone looked puzzled. He could not have 
 been called a clever person, although he knew enough, 
 as he would have styled it, " to come in when it rained." 
 He reverted to his purpose. 
 
 " I'm not going to snivel and snuffle," he said. " I've 
 had a good time, and don't regret it. But I am going 
 to turn over a new leaf. A man must settle. It's 
 deuced uncomfortable at home. Living with the guv. 
 is like living with a brick wall. It's time I looked out 
 for a home of my own. As far as I'm concerned this 
 medicine business is sheer rot ; I have no taste for look- 
 ing at people's tongues or feeling pulses. And the 
 physiology business is worse. Too much head work 
 and too little pay for my way of thinking. So I'm 
 thinking of chucking the wild-oat game and marrying." 
 
 " Well," Lowood said, " it's an excellent resolution 
 on your part, but it's a resolution that costs money. 
 How are you going to get over the ways and means 
 difficulty?" 
 
 " It solves the ways and means difficulty," Hummer- 
 stone said, " I mean, of course, to marry money and
 
 190 The Whips of Time 
 
 a nice girl too," he added, with a show of what he 
 plainly regarded as virtuous feeling. " I'm not going 
 to sell myself to any old hideous hag. The woman I 
 marry must be nice and nice-looking and all that. 
 Hang it ! I'm not altogether a mercenary hog." 
 
 " Well," Lowood said, wondering how long his sense 
 of the duties of a host would keep him from cuffing 
 his godson's ears, " I see no objection to your plan, 
 provided you are really determined to turn over a new 
 leaf. At the same time I must tell you it would be 
 more to your credit if you would first sit down to the 
 grind of passing your exam, as a proof of good faith." 
 
 " No, I'll be hanged if I'll do that," Hummerstone 
 blurted. " I tell you I've no taste for examining 
 tongues, so why waste time grinding at what will never 
 bring me in a red cent ? " 
 
 Lowood set a curb upon his tongue before he spoke. 
 Then he said evenly : 
 
 " You must do as you think best, of course. The 
 change here will set you up to begin your heiress-hunt 
 when you return." 
 
 " That was what I was going to talk about. I'm 
 going to begin at once. My heiress is on the spot and 
 is a friend of yours. Vox has been telling me the 
 county history. Lively chap, Vox ! " 
 
 Lowood had never regarded in this light the meek 
 and sober person who seemed to him so precise as to 
 be almost old-maidish in his ways. He reflected that 
 if no man is a hero to his valet, perhaps also no valet 
 is a man to his master. 
 
 ;< Yes," Hummerstone continued, caressing his large 
 knees, " from Vox's description I find Miss Kesteven 
 just to my taste." 
 
 " No doubt," his elder retorted ironically, " but you 
 are some weeks too late. Another man has also found 
 her to his taste. She is engaged to be married." 
 
 The information did not supply that check he had 
 expected.
 
 Cyril Hummerstone 191 
 
 "So Vox said," Hummerstone assented blandly; 
 " but I mean to have a try at cutting out this country 
 bumpkin. Heiresses in their own right, unencumbered 
 by parents of remarkable longevity, are scarce. Vox 
 says Miss Kesteven has nearly a quarter of a million. 
 And I don't mind telling you I have a way with 
 women."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 PLOTS 
 
 SUDDENLY all of Lowood's exasperation subsided. At 
 the moment when it was reaching saturation point his 
 sense of humour bubbled up. The young man's conceit 
 of himself, his frank avowal of his odious sentiments, 
 his impudent faith in his own powers of success, made 
 so extravagant a medley that he laughed outright. 
 
 He remembered Joan's eyes as they had melted at 
 Hestroyde's approach symptom significant indeed, 
 in one so strong-willed and capricious. He remem- 
 bered that Hestroyde's own criminal act had not 
 apparently injured him in her affections. He compared 
 the lover's dark beauty, his culture and grace, with this 
 pink-and-white flaccid and, it seemed to him, wholly 
 unattractive person. And he laughed, a little cruelly 
 perhaps, at the inflated pretensions of his godson. 
 
 A dull red crept slowly to the young man's brows, 
 slowly as though, although some sense of modesty 
 still dwelt in him, it was but languid and remote. 
 
 "Of course there's a chance of failure in every- 
 thing," he admitted. " Nothing is certain. A man can 
 only try. I tell you I know a good bit about women 
 and I have a way with them. At all events you'll 
 introduce me." 
 
 Lowood refused point-blank. 
 
 " I can be no party to such a plot, and I may as well 
 tell you that it would fail utterly. The girl is devoted 
 to Hestroyde." 
 
 For a minute the young man was taken aback. 
 Then he submitted blandly:
 
 Plots 193 
 
 " But if I shall fail, where would be the harm of 
 introducing me? " 
 
 " Miss Kesteven is a flirt, and Hestroyde's a difficult 
 chap. It would be easy enough to make trouble between 
 them." 
 
 All at once he found himself astonished at his own 
 irrationality. Less than twenty-four hours earlier he 
 had deplored the fact that Joan Kesteven, the county 
 heiress, was to be sacrificed to the son of the murderess. 
 And now he was doing his best to prevent disunion 
 between them. Hummerstone's bland grey eyes glinted 
 at his admissions. He seemed, however, to accept the 
 inevitable. 
 
 " You are hard on a chap down on his luck, putting 
 a spoke like this in his wheel," he grumbled lightly, 
 and said no more. 
 
 Lowood, seeing no drop in his spirits, but that on 
 the contrary these rose visibly as the day wore on, 
 decided that the young man had been merely ragging 
 him, and that he had not thought seriously of setting 
 up as Hestroyde's rival. He was vexed at having 
 allowed himself to be duped. 
 
 After lunch Hummerstone selected from the flower- 
 bowls on the table a bunch of pink carnations and a 
 spray of fern. These he made up, with deft fleshy 
 fingers, into an artistic buttonhole. Going to the glass 
 he adjusted it carefully in his coat, having first, with 
 a wink and a smirk at Lydia, borrowed a pin from that 
 austere person. 
 
 Polly, who from the moment of his arrival had 
 watched his movements with unwinking curiosity, 
 forgetting food and drink in her consuming eagerness, 
 now sidled after him to the corner of her cage and 
 eyed the pinning of the buttonhole with burning 
 interest. 
 
 Suddenly she broke out in a wheedling, squaw-like 
 voice : 
 
 " My name's Polly. What's your name? "
 
 194 The Whips of Time 
 
 " My name's Hummerstone," he answered, for the 
 first time noticing her. " What's your name? " 
 
 " My name's Polly," she repeated, hugely pleased. 
 " What's your name ? " 
 
 Then she was seized with a paroxysm of vanity to 
 show her tricks to him. She climbed her cage, she 
 rocked her body, danced, sang, shrilled, whistled. She 
 appeared to have lost her silly head completely, in a 
 fever to attract the notice of this large pink 
 person. 
 
 " Take care," Lowood said, uncertain of her in her 
 new excitement, as Hummerstone passed a careless 
 finger over the grey head stooped invitingly for his 
 caress. But he need not have feared. Polly found 
 the newcomer vastly to her flamboyant taste. Lowood 
 was quite disgusted by her squaw-like adulation. 
 
 " Oh, I have a way with 'em," Hummerstone re- 
 peated complacently. 
 
 Then he deserted her. 
 
 " By the bye," he said, " I think of going for a 
 tramp. My knee gets stiff. A walk will do it 
 good." 
 
 He returned minus his buttonhole and with a self- 
 satisfied smile upon his large face. He seemed vague 
 as to where he had been. 
 
 " Oh, just rambling," he answered. " All country 
 roads are much like others hills and hedges and 
 things. There seemed to be the usual number of hills 
 and hedges the way I went." 
 
 Lowood derived an impression that he was conceal- 
 ing something. It did not trouble him, however. He 
 did not suppose that any profit was to be gained by 
 probing his guest's vulgar mind. 
 
 Before the evening post his unwelcome guest had 
 borrowed a ten-pound note from him. 
 
 " I can't disgrace you here," he said again, with a 
 show of considerate compunction, " I'll just send for 
 a dress-suit and some shirts and things. To tell the
 
 Plots 195 
 
 truth, I had to pawn things to pay my debts. Hang 
 it all, a man must pay his debts! " 
 
 " Don't trouble about the dress-suit," Lowood told 
 him. " I will excuse your tweeds." 
 
 " Thanks awfully," Hummerstone said. " But 
 supposing " 
 
 He did not complete his sentence. But before bed- 
 time he had proved his discretion in sending for his 
 dress-suit. For Legh dropped in, and before he left 
 he reminded Lowood that he was engaged to dine 
 with him on New Year's Eve. 
 
 " And bring your friend, of course," he added. 
 
 Before Lowood could answer, although he could 
 only have answered in the affirmative, Hummerstone 
 had interposed with his everlasting: 
 
 " Thanks awfully." 
 
 And the thing was done. 
 
 " Hestroyde and Joan are coming," Legh told Lo- 
 wood. Hummerstone's eyes again glinted unpleas- 
 antly. While Legh had been there he had said little, 
 but had sat smoking quietly, his long legs outstretched 
 before the fire, at intervals lifting his pink lids upon 
 the visitor. 
 
 When Legh had gone he said rather offensively : 
 
 " So you see, my dear god-parent, in spite of your 
 objections I am to meet the heiress and her country 
 bumpkin after all." 
 
 Whereat Lowood had much ado to refrain from 
 bundling six feet of flaccid flesh and odious manners 
 out into the night. Later, he regretted bitterly that 
 any consideration whatsoever of his duties as host had 
 prevented him from carrying this laudable impulse of 
 his into effect. 
 
 Hummerstone seemed all at once to realise that he 
 was not commending himself to his godfather. As it 
 was part of his plan to extend his visit as long as 
 possible he turned over a new page of manners. He 
 said less and said it less offensively, made efforts
 
 196 The Whips of Time 
 
 (which did not come easily) to efface himself and to 
 keep out of his host's way. So Lowood came to suffer 
 him. 
 
 Another afternoon he chose a buttonhole and went 
 out strolling. Again he returned without his button- 
 hole and wearing a complacent smile. 
 
 Lowood was mystified when, upon taking him on 
 New Year's Eve to dine at Hooton Hoo (his dress- 
 suit having arrived just in time), Hummerstone 
 greeted Joan with the air of an old acquaintance. 
 She bridled and smiled at him with a gleam of under- 
 standing. 
 
 Lowood saw Hestroyde look the stranger up and 
 down with overbearing insolence, as though question- 
 ing what deuced right this fellow had to have known 
 Joan without his sanction. 
 
 " Miss Kesteven and I are old chums," Hummer- 
 stone said, with that cool audacity which, even when 
 unsupported by another quality, is an effective weapon 
 with some women. They mistake it for the boldness 
 which in the simpler days of marriage by capture 
 inflamed the suitor to dash into the cave or wigwam 
 and catch up his bride and make off with her. In 
 point of fact the underbred assurance of such men 
 as Hummerstone has nothing in common with 
 courage. 
 
 " Hummerstone did not tell me he knew you," 
 Lowood told her, surprised. 
 
 She did not answer, but regarded him with a piquing, 
 baffling smile, keeping watch out of the corner of an 
 eye for its effect on Hestroyde. 
 
 But Hestroyde, after his one overbearing glance, 
 thought better of his temper and greeted Lowood's 
 guest with civil friendliness. There was a new air of 
 proud proprietorship and responsibility about him since 
 Joan had fixed the date of their wedding. His reserve, 
 too, had thawed, and he was more genial, and betrayed 
 a sort of exalted joy, joy at high tension.
 
 Plots 197 
 
 Legh was a good host and he did well the honours 
 of his handsome house. 
 
 Beside these two, in whom the clean and wholesome 
 outdoor life had given a higher quality to the very 
 flesh of their bodies, Lowood was ashamed of his 
 charge, whose lax condition and dissolute look showed 
 cheap and underbred. But there are women for whom 
 a dissolute air has strong attraction. The attraction 
 has its source in vanity. Here now, they think, is 
 a man appreciative of feminine charm! Here now is 
 subject for subjugation. 
 
 Joan Kesteven was one of these. To Lowood, who 
 had seen her a week earlier beneath the spell of Hes- 
 troyde's higher manliness, the outrageous flirtation 
 she now proceeded to indulge with Hummerstone was 
 an amazement. He found it especially annoying 
 because it justified that assurance of Hummerstone's 
 at which he had openly laughed. He felt that he would 
 have liked to inflict a good wholesome shaking on her. 
 
 Hestroyde looked several times annoyed, but he bore 
 it on the whole with becoming equanimity. Lowood 
 reflected that perhaps he was beginning to realise what 
 manner of woman she was, and that he might as well 
 attempt to control her flirtations as try to keep ai 
 butterfly from fluttering. 
 
 There was a large party at Hooton Hoo. People 
 had driven in from long distances. After dinner there 
 was a ball, with a special cotillion arranged by Joan 
 and the Tempest girls. A few minutes before twelve 
 all the guests repaired, laughing and excited, to the 
 hall. Servants had passed glasses of champagne, and 
 as the clock struck twelve the great oak doors were 
 flung widely open, showing the fine old gardens, 
 thickly sown with snow and illumined by moonlight. 
 Then, as the cold blast which had swept in was again 
 shut out, all the guests raised and clinked glasses, and 
 drank to the health and good luck of the newly-entered 
 year.
 
 198 The Whips of Time 
 
 Joan, excited and audacious, wantonly turned from 
 the glass which Hestroyde, beside her, held towards 
 her own, and clinked glasses with Hummerstone, who 
 had taken his stand upon her other side. In her excite- 
 ment and wil fulness she struck the thin brim so 
 sharply against the other glass that her glass cracked 
 and fell in three pieces at her feet. And the wine was 
 spilled. 
 
 In a moment her lover, seeing the dismayed sobering 
 of her face, and knowing her to be superstitious, had 
 forgiven her rebuff and gave his full untasted glass to 
 her. She took it and drank it nervously. Then she 
 returned it to him. 
 
 " Oh, Mark! " she exclaimed, with a little shiver, " I 
 have drunk your luck. You have given me your luck." 
 
 " Never mind, darling," he whispered, " it's all the 
 same. And there is some left." 
 
 Smiling, he emptied the glass. But her light- 
 heartedness was gone for the evening. When they 
 returned to the drawing-room for games she kept 
 dutifully close to Hestroyde and gave scarcely another 
 glance at Hummerstone. 
 
 " Where had you met Miss Kesteven ? " Lowood 
 asked him when they were driving home. 
 
 Hummerstone laughed, a species of bland internal 
 laugh which Lowood abominated. 
 
 " I'll own up," he said. " That afternoon I went out 
 I went and called on her. I wrote your name on my 
 card and explained that I was your dutiful godson. 
 She didn't ask any questions. She likes men and she 
 was glad to have somebody to brighten a dull after- 
 noon. Beastly dull place the country, when all is said 
 and done ! Though, thanks to you, sir," he interposed 
 with forced deference, " I'm putting in a jolly good 
 time and making flesh like winking." 
 
 Lowood said nothing. He could not have said any- 
 thing without saying more than he wished to say. 
 After all, the man was a bounder. Why expect from
 
 HER GLASS CRACKED AND FELL IN THREE PIECES AT HER FEET. 
 
 [Pag-e 198
 
 Plots 199 
 
 him standards of which he was incapable? In his 
 exasperated aversion to his godson he forgot his 
 antagonism against Hestroyde. Munnings or not, he 
 was infinitely to be preferred to this man. 
 
 Next morning Hummerstone came in from a stroll 
 in a state of suppressed excitement. 
 
 " I'll depart from my bad ways," he told Lowood 
 in a bantering tone. " Black-looks shall keep his 
 heiress. I've been and gone and seen another who 
 knocks her into fits. Talk about love at first sight ! 
 I fell plumb in. Fairly took away my breath. By 
 Jove, who's your stunner who lives in a marble house 
 about two miles down the road and drives behind a 
 pair of spanking bays, coachman and footman in red 
 and brown livery?" 
 
 Lowood knew well enough who was his " stunner." 
 A swirl of hottest anger seized him. Was not Aphro- 
 dite herself sacred to this hooligan ? Had he seen her 
 in her chariot drawn by doves, the Goth would have 
 stoned the white, beautiful creatures. He controlled 
 his rage. His exotic sentiment was a thing too delicate 
 and shy to be betrayed, by even so much as a glimpse, 
 to Hummerstone's coarse eyes. 
 
 " I imagine you mean Mrs. Beaumont of Moon- 
 bank," he said indifferently. " She is regarded as the 
 local beauty." 
 
 " A widow ? A rich widow ? " was the eager ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Lowood explained. 
 
 The explanation, dry and ungarnished as it was, 
 appeared to stir that sense which was the young man's 
 sole approach to humour. He chuckled. He giggled. 
 He laughed outright. 
 
 " I say, how naughty ! Who'd have thought this 
 most old-maidish little hole had such an impropriety 
 stuffed away in it. Look here though, you must intro- 
 duce me to the Beaumont. You can't have any finicky 
 scruples that I'm not good enough for that quarter.
 
 200 The Whips of Time 
 
 She and I would get on like a house on fire. I felt 
 it in the air." His face sobered. " But what a beastly 
 complication ! Puts marrying her out of the question. 
 A man owes something to himself." 
 
 " Rather late in the day for you to discover that," 
 his mentor broke out savagely. 
 
 Hummerstone was slow to take offence. 
 
 " Hang it all," he said, " men and women are tarred 
 with different brushes. A man's wife has got to be as 
 straight as a die." 
 
 " Indeed." 
 
 " Well, that's my feeling about it," he insisted 
 virtuously. " All chaps are not so particular, I know. 
 I don't pretend to be a saint myself, but I draw the line 
 somewhere. And I should expect my wife to be above 
 suspicion, as Alexander said." 
 
 "Was it not Caesar?" 
 
 " It may have been. It was one of those chaps at all 
 events. And very creditable of him too. Society 
 would go to pieces if we didn't keep a bit up to the 
 mark." 
 
 " Keep other persons up to the mark, you mean." 
 
 " Yes. Wives especially." 
 
 " And so, in spite of temptation, you renounce your 
 intention of marrying Mrs. Beaumont? " Lowood said. 
 " Really, I scarcely know which to admire most, your 
 high principles or your conceit." 
 
 Hummerstone winced slightly. 
 
 " Now, you're ragging," he said. " Of course I 
 don't say for certain she'd have me. Any man may 
 come a cropper, I admit. Although, as I've told you, 
 I have a way with women. And you've seen how Joan 
 Kesteven took to me. Still, I'd like to know the 
 Beaumont. So if you know her " 
 
 " I don't know her sufficiently well to introduce you 
 to her." 
 
 There was a pause. Out of his small grey eyes 
 Hummerstone glanced at his host. He was not quite
 
 Plots 201 
 
 sure of the significance of his words. If he had laid 
 a stress on " you," he would have known what to 
 think. He was quite shrewd enough to have long 
 since detected that he was not persona grata with his 
 godfather. But the voice had been level in tone, and 
 the words might have meant that his acquaintance with 
 Mrs. Beaumont was insufficient to warrant introducing 
 to her any man of his acquaintance. 
 
 Hummerstone was smart where his own interests 
 were concerned. And his interests were strongly con- 
 cerned to continue to enjoy the hospitality of Homer 
 Cottage. Therefore, suspecting that for some reason 
 he was not ingratiating himself, he affected a contrite 
 humility. 
 
 " I say," he submitted, " you're a little hard on me, 
 aren't you, sir? I don't say I haven't made rather a 
 mess of my life, but I'm not a hardened ruffian. And 
 I don't mean any harm." 
 
 Lowood, always kind-hearted, was mollified. He 
 reflected again, as he had already reflected, that it was 
 really the young man's misfortune rather than his 
 fault that he was what he was. 
 
 " Why," he said, " I have not supposed you to be 
 a hardened ruffian. I merely told you I do not know 
 Mrs. Beaumont sufficiently well to make introductions 
 to her. Of course she isn't in the set down here." 
 
 " I suppose not, sir," Hummerstone answered duti- 
 fully. Then, as though he had ceased to be interested, 
 he rose and stretched his large limbs. 
 
 " I think I'll go out for a stroll. Can I do anything 
 for you in the village buy stamps, or sugar, or 
 cheese or anything?" 
 
 Lowood, softening to him, stiffened again into exas- 
 peration. Facetiousness was a vice for which he found 
 no excuse. The least a young man could do for his 
 elders was to take them seriously. He controlled him- 
 self sufficiently to say " No, thanks," instead of cross- 
 ing the room and cuffing his godson's large pink ears
 
 202 The Whips of Time 
 
 as he had once done when the latter had been a 
 schoolboy. 
 
 He watched him lounging down the garden path 
 between the peacocks. He was pleased to note the 
 sour disdain of these yew creatures, to read in their 
 ruffled plumage a fuller and more contemptuous degree 
 of aversion than they showed toward himself. 
 
 " Young man ! " he apostrophised the large tweed 
 form which had put on so much flabby flesh that the 
 tweeds, which had been his own, began to be absurdly 
 tight for it, " young man, some day you will get well 
 kicked, and may I be there to see." 
 
 He shook a futile fist after him. For he knew it 
 was more than probable that he was even now on his 
 way to repeat the sly manoeuvre by which he had forced 
 Miss Kesteven's acquaintance, and that by making a 
 similar unwarranted use of his host's name he might 
 also force himself upon Moonbank. 
 
 " Heaven send that Saxby will be waiting for him 
 with a horsewhip! " he chuckled with devout sincerity.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 A KISS 
 
 HUMMERSTONE, in point of fact, made straight for 
 Moonbank. But his plans were still in embryo. Even 
 as he went he was turning them over in his mind, and 
 was at the same time exasperated with himself for 
 wasting thought upon the Beaumont instead of devo- 
 ting all his energies to Joan. The one was play, the 
 other business. And for the moment ways and means 
 were a very pressing business, seeing that his father 
 obdurately refused to supply him with funds unless he 
 would return to his home and to the grind of study. 
 He could not indefinitely prolong his visit to Lowood. 
 And when the door of Homer Cottage should be closed 
 upon him the only other available doors of refuge 
 were those of the paternal home and of the workhouse 
 which a thoughtful State provided for him. He was 
 hard pressed indeed, and yet, having all his life indulged 
 his fancy, his fancy now drew him to Moonbank. 
 
 He had not the hardihood to intend, as Lowood 
 suspected, a repetition of his ruse with Joan. The 
 cases were different. Mrs. Beaumont was probably 
 a woman of the world, and would doubtless, because 
 of her ducal associations, have pretentious notions of 
 her importance. The thing needed thinking over. He 
 would stroll up and have a look at the house. Some- 
 thing might happen to further an introduction. At all 
 events he might catch a glimpse of a ravishing face 
 and of the charmer's amber wig. For he had decided 
 that it was a wig.
 
 204 The Whips of Time 
 
 Men of his stamp pride themselves upon what they 
 regard as a knowledge of the world, which with them 
 means that they take nothing for what it seems. In 
 point of fact it is even more deceptive to belittle all 
 things, great and small, than it is to mistake occasion- 
 ally a small thing for a large one. To point the moral 
 in this case, every ripple and curl of Mrs. Beaumont's 
 lovely hair were her own. Indeed, so luxuriously it 
 grew that to dispose of such an embarrassment of 
 riches sorely taxed the skill and temper of her maids. 
 
 Arrived at the gate of paradise, Hummerstone with- 
 drew into the ambush of a hedge and stood gazing up 
 the grounds as though for inspiration. As chance had 
 it something happened, not something which aided the 
 pursuit of his fancy, but something which tended in- 
 directly to the forthcoming of those he regarded as 
 his business prospects. 
 
 From where he stood he presently made out two 
 figures sauntering down the drive. As observant as 
 he was shrewd where his own interests were con- 
 cerned, in a moment he thought he had recognised one. 
 Surely the svelte and alluring shape on the left was one 
 he knew and admired. Yet it could not, of course, be 
 Joan .Kesteven. Moonbank would be the last place in 
 the county Lady Kesteven would permit her daughter 
 to visit. He glanced at the other. To his disappoint- 
 ment there showed no amber wig. Only a dark-haired, 
 pale young woman of a type which did not interest him. 
 
 As the two approached he heard their voices in a 
 lively and apparently a heated conversation. Surely, 
 he decided again, that was Miss Kesteven's quick, crisp 
 way of speaking, surely that clear, strong voice was 
 hers. But this girl's face and head were closely 
 muffled in a motor-hood and veil. And one did not 
 need to have known Miss Kesteven long to have 
 learned that, a perfect horsewoman, she had a 
 profound contempt for all mechanical modes of 
 progression.
 
 A Kiss 205 
 
 Having come to the gate the two girls stopped and 
 concluded their discussion. Then they laughed and 
 kissed with friendly fervour. They parted and re- 
 turned to re-kiss with renewed fervour. 
 
 ''' You dear old stupid," the muffled one said in Joan 
 Kesteven's voice, " you're absolutely wrong." 
 
 To which the other answered laughingly : 
 
 " I'm sure I am right. She wore a rose-pink Empire 
 frock and diamonds in her hair." 
 
 Then, as her friend passed out through the gate, she 
 put up her two hands and curled them, shell-like, about 
 her mouth. 
 
 " Good-bye Miss Smith," she called gaily. 
 
 " Good-bye Miss Telescope," was called back in 
 Joan's voice, and with a gush of Joan's clear laughter. 
 
 Hummerstone was certain it was she. He wedged 
 his large person closer within the hollow of the hedge. 
 His small eyes scanned her searchingly. He saw her, 
 with an air of impatience, stop and look up and down 
 the road. Nobody being in sight, she put up her hands 
 and freed herself of her thick hood and veil. She 
 drew in the air as though she had been in danger of 
 stifling. She rolled the hood and veil into a bundle 
 and stuffed them into a satchel she was carrying. 
 
 Hummerstone stepped calmly out of his hiding-place 
 and confronted her. 
 
 She was taken aback. She uttered a little " Oh ! " 
 and stared up at him, the reds and whites of her fine 
 complexion coming and going. 
 
 He extended a cool hand. 
 
 " How do ! " he said impudently. He pointed to her 
 bag. " Thought you hated motoring." 
 
 His eyes held her with the assurance of one who is 
 master of the situation. 
 
 " How long have you been here ? Where did you 
 suddenly appear from?" 
 
 " I was picking blackberries from the hedge." He 
 pointed to it.
 
 206 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Blackberries in January ! " she commented with a 
 curling lip. 
 
 " Well, I was looking for them. How is a Cockney 
 to know what month such things come into season ? " 
 
 " Why do you say I have been motoring? " 
 
 He pointed again to her bag. 
 
 " I saw you come down the Moonbank drive wear- 
 ing a motoring veil. And I saw you take it off. I 
 suppose while you were hobnobbing with Mrs. Beau- 
 mont your motor-gee bolted." 
 
 He admired the sanguine ebbing and flowing in her 
 cheeks. He enjoyed his sense of power and her dis- 
 comfiture. 
 
 " How do you know anything about Moonbank and 
 Mrs. Beaumont? " 
 
 She had been thrown off her guard and was not her 
 cool self. In every word and look she was further 
 betraying her sense of guilt and her fear of having 
 been found out. 
 
 " I am interested in Miss Kesteven's friends and in 
 Miss Kesteven's doings." 
 
 " It's rotten cheeky of you." 
 
 " No," he said, " it's my misfortune, not my fault, 
 to have met one woman in my life who makes every- 
 thing she does attractive, even when they are things 
 which would scandalise the county." 
 
 She eyed him resolutely. 
 
 " Look here," she said, " what do you mean? " 
 
 " Why," he answered firmly, " I mean that Lady 
 Kesteven and Mrs. Tempest and Mr. Hestroyde would 
 have fits if they knew you visited Moonbank and were 
 on terms with the Duke " 
 
 " It's a lie," she protested. " I have never in my 
 life spoken to him." 
 
 " Oh, I believe you," he said with an air of sincerity. 
 " But of course everybody isn't so trusting as I am. 
 They don't believe a thing just because it's told to them. 
 And Mr. Hestroyde "
 
 A Kiss 207 
 
 " believes everything I tell him." 
 
 " Mr. Hestroyde," he continued imperturbably, 
 " would be frightfully shocked at the notion of the 
 future Mrs. Hestroyde making a bosom friend of " 
 he spread his hands and seemed to drop a loathsome 
 thing " of Mrs. Moonbank." 
 
 "Let him be shocked!" she said truculently. "I 
 shall do just as I like." 
 
 She continued to stand. 
 
 " Which way are you going ? " he inquired. 
 
 " The way you are not." 
 
 " Then Mr. Hestroyde will be disappointed. Be- 
 cause I was on my way to Mowbreck." 
 
 He saw that she winced. He saw that her eyes 
 sought his in a sudden appeal. But he showed no sign 
 of seeing any of these things. He raised his hat with 
 an air of having been sadly and unjustly wounded, 
 then turned and walked down the road. 
 
 He heard her come after him. Still, showing no 
 sign he went on. She still followed. He guessed 
 that her pride and her fear were fighting a battle in 
 her. Fear won the day. Although Mark was her 
 slave she knew intuitively that there were things he 
 would not forgive in her. Friendship with Mrs. Beau- 
 mont, she suspected, was one of them. 
 
 " Mr. Hummerstone," she appealed. 
 
 When she had said it three times he stopped and 
 looked back. 
 
 " Oh, you are walking my way," he said. " So 
 sorry. I understood you to say you were going in the 
 other direction." 
 
 Meekness was not among her virtues. When yield 
 she did she did so with as much spirit as another would 
 have shown in resisting. 
 
 " Look here," she said, " you're not to tell tales, you 
 know. Mark wouldn't People might think it odd 
 of me to know Mrs. Beaumont." 
 
 " You mean you visit her on the sly ? "
 
 208 The Whips of Time 
 
 Her silence consented. 
 
 " And you ask me not to speak of it? " 
 
 She stood fixing him with obstinate, sparkling eyes. 
 She was unwilling to admit it in words. But Hummer- 
 stone was merciless. 
 
 " Oh, you don't ask me not to speak of it? " 
 
 She laid down her arms. 
 
 " Yes, I do," she insisted quickly. She added, with 
 some anxiety, " I beg of you not to do so." 
 
 He remained looking down at her. He felt that she 
 was at his mercy. 
 
 " What will you give me if I promise ? " 
 
 "Give you?" 
 
 " I'm sure you'll give me a kiss," he said blandly. 
 " It isn't much to ask for holding my tongue on such 
 a spicy bit of gossip." 
 
 " A kiss ! " she repeated incredulously. " You ? I 
 never heard such rotten impudence. I scarcely know 
 you " 
 
 " Oh, that's rubbish," he said. " You know me well 
 enough to ask a favour of me. And any woman knows 
 any man well enough to kiss him if she knows he won't 
 tell." 
 
 He looked up and down the road. It was deserted. 
 It was usually deserted. She was standing near to 
 him. He made a stride and put a large arm around 
 her. 
 
 " There's nothing in a kiss to make a fuss about," 
 he said, " and in this wicked world, you know, you 
 can't get something for nothing." 
 
 He stooped and, drawing her to him, kissed her once, 
 twice, three times, crushing her lips with his coarse 
 mouth. The first time she pushed angrily at him. The 
 second time her hand dropped. The third time she 
 trembled and stood passive. 
 
 When he moved on she remained for some moments 
 motionless. Then, as though following some blind 
 instinct, she moved after him and walked a pace behind
 
 A Kiss 209 
 
 him down the road. As she went with an air of dazed 
 submission her head drooped ashamed. They walked 
 for some distance in silence, her eyes bent to the 
 ground, his eyes from time to time stealing round upon 
 her. Each time they found her a small complacent 
 smile leaked beneath his red moustache. 
 
 Presently he spoke, remarking in a half whisper, as 
 though he feared to break a spell, upon a pretty cottage 
 nestling by the road. She glanced mechanically at it. 
 She assented tonelessly that it was pretty and that it 
 suggested love in a cottage. She spoke like a woman 
 stupefied. She raised her eyes and looked at him 
 surreptitiously. There was a sort of sickened fascina- 
 tion in them. He returned her glance with smiling 
 insolence. A little shivering movement shook her. 
 He spoke again. Again, still as though stupefied, she 
 acquiesced in what he said. 
 
 As they approached the gates of Mowbreck suddenly 
 there cantered out of a side lane into the road before 
 them a horse and rider ; a handsome, clean-limbed bay 
 with its clean-limbed, supple rider sitting it as though 
 he had been a part of it. As he rode out from the lane 
 his profile showed grave and with a certain exultation 
 in it. He did not turn his head, but engrossed by his 
 thoughts rode on before them and up through the 
 opened gates. 
 
 At the sight of him she came violently out of her 
 stupefaction. She started and stopped, all her body 
 rigid. In her eyes was a guilty fear. She stood in an 
 attitude of shrinking until he had disappeared. 
 
 Then she turned and looked at Hummerstone, who 
 too had stopped and was watching her, surprised. To 
 the roots of her fair hair her face flushed scarlet. Her 
 features became convulsed. She dashed at him and, 
 catching up one of his hands, caught it to her mouth 
 and bit through the flesh of the thumb right down to 
 the bone. Then she flung it from her. 
 
 " You beast! You brute! " she cried violently, and
 
 210 The Whips of Time 
 
 ran like a madwoman up that lane down which her 
 lover had just ridden. 
 
 Hummerstone looked after her in blank amazement. 
 Then pain recalled him to his injuries. He had learned 
 enough of medical art to take care of himself. He put 
 up his bitten thumb and sucked it. He had heard of 
 blood-poisoning from a bite. Then he bound it about 
 with his handkerchief. 
 
 " What a she-devil ! " he muttered. " Who'd have 
 thought it! She'd take some taming." 
 
 He embellished his remarks with adjectives unsuit- 
 able for these pages, for the numbness succeeding on 
 the bite of her strong teeth was beginning to pass into 
 severe aching. Moreover, he had experienced a check. 
 Here, now, might be an end to all his projects !
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A REBUFF 
 
 HE passed the Mowbreck gates without seeming to 
 observe them. And yet they must have been impressed 
 upon his subconsciousness, for a few yards beyond 
 them he turned sharply round and went back. A 
 dilatory lodge-keeper was just closing them. He 
 passed in and walked up the long drive, the old house 
 scowling down upon him. But he was not gifted with 
 imagination and he saw in it only a handsome mansion 
 which must cost a good sum to keep up. 
 
 Perhaps Hestroyde had seen him coming, for the 
 servant who opened the door told him that his master 
 was out. But Hummerstone, in his present mood of 
 mischief, was not to be denied. Pain, a desire for 
 retaliation, a determination to make trouble between 
 these two, a realisation that there was gain to be made 
 by such trouble, were seething in him. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Mr. Hestroyde is in," he insisted, " I saw 
 him riding up the drive. Tell him I have something 
 very important to say to him." 
 
 " He may have come in since, sir," the man ad- 
 mitted, overborne by his self-confidence. " Will you 
 come in, please, and I will see? " 
 
 He was conducted through a gloomy passage af- 
 flicted by a plague of Hestroydes. He had scarcely 
 seated himself in a small ante-room, dark with ancient 
 oak and faded crimson, when Hestroyde entered. 
 
 He was still in his riding-suit, his crop in a hand. 
 He wore his accustomed air of haughty reserve, but
 
 212 The Whips of Time 
 
 his manner was courteous and welcoming, although 
 Hummerstone was conscious of an Arctic atmosphere 
 which came with him into the room. 
 
 " How do you do ? " he said, shaking hands. " I've 
 only just come in. Been riding hard all day." 
 
 The Arctic atmosphere nipped some of the visitor's 
 sprouting assurance. He found all at once that his 
 presence demanded apology. He forced a smile, but 
 with all his impudence he could not make it an easy 
 one. 
 
 " You haven't called on me, I know," he said rather 
 lamely. " But you know my godfather, Lowood, so 
 well, and and I suppose you don't go in much for 
 ceremony down here, do you ? " 
 
 " Oh, not at all," Hestroyde said, in a tone so purely 
 conventional that nobody could have mistaken the 
 remark for a reply to Hummerstone's question. 
 " Pleased to see any friend of Lowood's, I'm sure. 
 Fine clever old chap, Lowood." 
 
 " Yes," Hummerstone assented eagerly, grateful for 
 the countenance of Lowood's merits. " A great man 
 in the medical world. Writes books, and no end of a 
 swell. Once he was called in to consultation about the 
 King." 
 
 " Indeed," Hestroyde said, with an air of being 
 impressed. 
 
 " Oh, yes," Hummerstone resumed, gathering con- 
 fidence in the reflected glow of his godfather's virtues, 
 " no end of a swell in the medical world, he is. I'm 
 quite proud to be his godson." 
 
 " Had tea? " Hestroyde asked, moving to the bell, 
 " or do you like something stronger ? " 
 
 " Well, as you ask me, I don't mind telling you I 
 do," Hummerstone told him with a familiar laugh. 
 He began to feel that he was getting on. He knew 
 his disabilities with men. The " way " he had with 
 women for some reason was not successful with his 
 own sex.
 
 A Rebuff 213 
 
 By the time he had drunk half a tumbler of whisky- 
 and-soda, with an eye upon a flagon of cherry-whisky 
 of a brand he knew and approved, he felt equal to the 
 task before him. 
 
 " I say," he began confidentially, suddenly breaking 
 away from the platitudes he and his host had, with 
 immense threshing of wits, contrived to beat out upon 
 the unsympathetic floor between them, " I say, Mr. 
 Hestroyde, I want to tell you something in confidence." 
 
 The dark young man, although he had an excellent 
 fire at his back, seemed to freeze suddenly upon his 
 hearthrug. 
 
 " Is it any business of mine? " he asked discourag- 
 ingly. 
 
 " I should say so," Hummerstone said. " It's about 
 the one person in the world you're most interested in." 
 
 The other lost a shade of colour from his dark skin, 
 but his eyes fastened on his guest without a quiver. 
 
 " How do you know who I am most interested in ? " 
 
 Hummerstone laughed beneath a knowing eye. 
 
 " I suppose the girl a chap is going to marry can be 
 described like that without being far out ? " 
 
 Hestroyde so far further froze that one might have 
 expected to hear the beverage in the glass he held 
 clink against its sides. 
 
 " For my part," he said distantly, " I prefer not to 
 hear the lady I am going to marry described at all." 
 
 " Of course," Hummerstone assented, " in a general 
 way you're right. But I have something very impor- 
 tant to tell you about Miss Kesteven, something you 
 ought certainly to know." 
 
 " I decline to hear it," Hestroyde rapped out. He 
 set his glass sharply upon the mantelpiece as though 
 setting a full stop to hospitalities. 
 
 Hummerstone spread his pink, flaccid hands. He 
 created always an impression of being filled with red- 
 dish sand instead of with blood. He was dense and 
 dull like a sandbag, and yet when one tried to lay hold
 
 214 The Whips of Time 
 
 upon him he slipped through the fingers heavily and 
 easily. 
 
 " I admit you'd be right in a general way," he said. 
 " I admire pride and all that. But I've seen more of 
 life than you have, living down here. And I'm doing 
 this for the girl's own good. She's risking her good 
 name. She's " 
 
 " Are you speaking of Miss Kesteven ? " Hestroyde 
 flashed in, in a voice which suggested thunder because 
 it flashed sharp and jagged like lightning. 
 
 " Yes," Hummerstone said, " I'm warning you of a 
 great danger she's running into. I'm " 
 
 " Don't ! " Hestroyde snapped. " Try some cherry- 
 whisky." 
 
 Hummerstone was not warned, however. 
 
 " You really must hear me," he insisted. " I can't 
 stand by and see a nice girl like that doing for herself. 
 The truth is she's hobnobbing with Mrs. Beaumont of 
 Moonbank. You know all about her, of course. I've 
 just seen Miss Kesteven come out of the house and 
 walk down the drive with her arm round the woman, 
 kissing and making a fuss of her." 
 
 This was not true, of course, he knew, but he knew 
 also that of course it might have been true. If with 
 Mrs. Beaumont's niece, why not equally with Mrs. 
 Beaumont ? 
 
 Hestroyde, despite his power of control, was young. 
 Hummerstone was able to gather, from a sudden sharp 
 contraction of his brows, that the blow he had dealt 
 was a heavy one. For the space of a minute he was 
 silent. Then he summoned his control and spoke. 
 
 " I assure you, you are mistaken," he said stifHy. 
 " Miss Kesteven has never met or spoken with that 
 lady." 
 
 " But I saw her myself," Hummerstone protested. 
 " I have only just now parted from Miss Kesteven and 
 she admitted it. Facts are facts, there's no getting 
 over them."
 
 A Rebuff 215 
 
 " Miss Kesteven had called, no doubt, to ask for a 
 subscription to some charity Society for Prevention 
 of Cruelty to Animals or something." 
 
 " I'm afraid it won't do," Hummerstone objected. 
 "If it had been only that she wouldn't have kissed her. 
 Besides, when I caught her in the act she confessed. 
 And look here, she even asked me not to tell you." 
 
 A quiver passed across Hestroyde's face. This proof 
 of Joan's desire to stand well with him touched him. 
 Then another aspect of the information touched him. 
 
 " And you have come straight to tell me," he said 
 drily. 
 
 Some of the red sand in his large body seemed to 
 spurt into Hummerstone's face. Even sand responded 
 to Hestroyde's scorn. 
 
 " I thought you ought to know," the informer 
 blustered, " it's only right for you to know. Girls 
 don't understand these things. People say all sorts 
 of things. Who'll believe that if Miss Kesteven goes 
 to Moonbank she isn't mixed up with the old Duke? " 
 
 Hestroyde gripped the crop in his hand with a vio- 
 lent exclamation. He took a violent step toward his 
 guest. Again the red sand shifted, this time it would 
 seem into Hummerstone's boots, for all of it left his 
 face and left it deathly white. 
 
 " I don't say it, of course," he protested in a hurry, 
 " I don't think it. I'm only telling you for Miss 
 Kesteven's good what other people will think and say." 
 
 Hestroyde remained gazing at him and breathing 
 hard. Then he seemed to recollect himself. He 
 crossed the room, and having set down his crop upon 
 a table, as though he were putting aside a temptation, 
 he returned to his place on the hearthrug. He forced 
 a chilling reserve. 
 
 " Let's talk of something else," he said in a tone of 
 insolent boredom. He added, in a tone of more inso- 
 lent suggestion, " That is if you are not in a hurry to 
 get back."
 
 216 The Whips of Time 
 
 This was too much even for the red sand. A hand- 
 ful of it seemed to spurt again into Hummerstone's 
 face, some of it being diverted on the way into his 
 throat, compelling him to give a little spasmodic choke. 
 Perhaps he thought to wash away the grit by finishing 
 the remainder of his whisky-and-soda, although one 
 might have supposed that pride would have moved him 
 to choke rather than to profit by the hospitality of a 
 host who showed so insolently eager to be rid of him. 
 He lost his self-possession. He ceased to have the 
 consistence of a well-stuffed sandbag and shambled to 
 his feet with the heavy limpness of one which has 
 leaked. 
 
 " I am rather in a hurry," he said, his words falling 
 one over another in their haste to be out. " But, look 
 here, I think you're making a bit of a mistake. I know 
 it doesn't look well ever to give people away, especially 
 women. But when you come to think it over you'll see 
 you've misjudged me. She can't know how serious 
 it is or she'd never do it. She lays herself open to 
 people saying no end of things. And I thought you'd 
 be the best person to tell her. And then " he stole 
 a glance from the young man's angry face to the 
 riding-crop on the distant table, and having done so 
 ended his sentence with a placatory smile " and then 
 you don't seem to like it." 
 
 Hestroyde said only, as though he had not listened 
 to a word : 
 
 " Oh, are you going? " He rang a bell and nodded, 
 ignoring Hummerstone's half-extended hand. His air 
 was one of supreme arrogance. 
 
 Having reached the door Hummerstone turned a 
 face which had the whiteness to be seen on the face 
 of a person who picks himself up after a bad encounter. 
 
 ." Look here," he appealed, " at all events you won't 
 say a word to Miss Kesteven? She might misunder- 
 stand my motive." 
 
 " I shall not mention your name to Miss Kesteven,"
 
 A Rebuff 217 
 
 Hestroyde retorted, with a laugh which stung like a 
 whip. 
 
 But the moment the door had closed one could 
 scarcely have suspected a man of the face he showed 
 of ever having laughed. He became possessed by a 
 fit of ungovernable fury. His eyes scintillated in his 
 dark face. He seemed to leap across the room and, 
 pouncing upon his riding-crop, he caught it up and 
 struck the table with it several times violently. For 
 the moment he was the living embodiment and heir of 
 all the ugliness of the ugly forbears surrounding him. 
 
 He was furious that Joan should have done this 
 thing, that the woman he loved and his future wife 
 should visit and should kiss Faugh ! this shame- 
 less, nameless creature; that she should deceive him, 
 should lay herself open to detection and betrayal by 
 that unspeakable bounder Hummerstone, should lay 
 herself open to the gossip and the condemnation of the 
 county. His own helplessness in the matter still 
 further enraged him. Nothing he could say or do 
 would in the least assist her to extricate herself from 
 the disgraceful and mortifying muddle into which she 
 had blundered. Nor, he feared, knowing her obsti- 
 nacy, would anything he could say or do restrain her 
 from still further involving herself. 
 
 She had been right when she dreaded for him to 
 learn of it. As he consumed himself with rage and 
 with mortification he felt that he could more easily 
 have forgiven anything to her than this.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A LOVERS' QUARREL 
 
 WHEN three days had passed without a glimpse or a 
 word from Mark, Joan guessed what had happened. 
 The two first days she had been too angry with herself 
 for submitting as she had done to Hummerstone's kiss 
 to feel more than a languid surprise at her lover's 
 defection. From being a haunting he had become a 
 wholly absent shadow. 
 
 Yet for the first two days his absence relieved her. 
 She recoiled from the notion of meeting him while 
 the memory of those large, loose lips on hers, and while 
 her sense of despicable guilt at her minutes of squaw- 
 like surrender were fresh in her mind. She should 
 have been equally ashamed of her equally squaw-like 
 retaliation. But I am bound to confess that this caused 
 her nothing but exultation. The athletic out-door life, 
 although it induces some honest, healthy qualities, 
 destroys the more subtle and finer shades of feeling 
 both in man and in woman. I suspect, like other good 
 things, it should be taken in moderation. 
 
 When the evening of the third day arrived without 
 news of Mark, or a note, or a basket of flowers, she 
 knew that Hummerstone had betrayed her. Immedi- 
 ately every other consideration vanished. Hummer- 
 stone and his kisses became mere surface troubles. 
 What would Mark do? Would he forgive her? She 
 knew his hot pride, his temper, his will like a string of 
 steel. Would he throw her over? 
 
 She could not sit still and nurse her panic. She got
 
 A Lovers' Quarrel 219 
 
 up and restlessly paced the room. She set a full stop 
 to each minute of pacing by pausing at a window to 
 sweep the drive for an approaching figure. 
 
 " Dear Joan," Lady Kesteven said plaintively, when 
 five minutes of this strenuous restlessness had got upon 
 her nerves, " can you not sit still ? What is the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing," Joan answered, and remained on her 
 full stop before the window. Then she moved to the 
 couch on which the invalid lay, beautifully darning one 
 of Joan's fine silk stockings. " Mark is frightfully 
 unforgiving, don't you think, Mater?" she said ear- 
 nestly. 
 
 Lady Kesteven gathered that Hestroyde's three 
 days' absence had had a reason, of which her wayward 
 daughter was the cause. Joan very seldom appealed 
 to her or to anybody for sympathy. Now, however, 
 her eyes and a certain tension in her features begged 
 it. 
 
 " Perhaps, dear," she said. She added, with a little 
 reassuring smile, " To anyone but you." 
 
 Joan shook her head. 
 
 " Some things," she said, " he would forgive in 
 anybody rather than in me." 
 
 " Perhaps, dear," her elder said again. " But those 
 are the things you would not do, I hope." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," Joan disclaimed. " I can 
 never be sure what I will or won't do. And Mark has 
 a beastly temper." 
 
 " But Mark is absurdly fond of you." 
 
 " And yet the exasperating thing is that sometimes 
 a man is so horribly particular, and sets ridiculous 
 importance on things that don't really matter, just 
 because he is fond of one." 
 
 Again she got restlessly to her feet and began to 
 pace the room. Then she remembered. 
 
 " Sorry, Mater," she said, " I forgot your poor 
 nerves. I'll go out and trot it off."
 
 220 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Do," her mother said. " You seem to be filled 
 with restless energy." She sighed. " I'm always 
 thankful when I see your fine health that I didn't trans- 
 mit my wretched nerves and feebleness to you." 
 
 Joan laid a quick, strong hand on the frail one 
 affectionately busy upon her stockings. (Lady Kes- 
 teven would allow nobody but herself to mend Joan's 
 stockings. ) 
 
 " Sometimes, I think," she submitted earnestly, 
 " that compared with you I'm only a rough animal. 
 I don't begin to know or to feel any of the nice things 
 you feel, Mater. You've got a mind like a like a 
 harp. A touch brings music out of it." 
 
 Lady Kesteven caught the strong hand to her lips. 
 They quivered while they kissed it. She loved Joan 
 with a passionate intensity. But Joan seldom allowed 
 herself to be loved or caressed. 
 
 " A poor old, worn-out harp, dear," she said rue- 
 fully, " overlaid with dust and fit only for the lumber 
 room." 
 
 " Oh, but that's rubbish," Joan protested brusquely, 
 by the very sincerity of her affectionate protest jarring 
 the invalid's nerves and setting her hands to tremble. 
 
 " Any room where you are is well, it's different 
 from any other place. It's restful and good and seems 
 to be filled with lovely influences. The only time I 
 feel good is when I'm with you. If it hadn't been for 
 you, Heaven knows what sort of a wretch I should 
 have been ! " 
 
 She caught herself up. 
 
 " Gracious ! I'm talking like a Sunday school. I'll 
 go out and trot it off." 
 
 She gave an affectionate squeeze of the hand to the 
 invalid and left her. 
 
 Outside the house the keen air of a February which 
 instead of filling dykes was freezing them, caused her 
 spirits and her independence to rise, reactionary. 
 
 " In for a penny, in for a pound," she told herself.
 
 A Lovers' Quarrel 221 
 
 "If Mark really makes up his mind I suppose I shall 
 have to give up seeing much of Alma and Beauty. So 
 as he hasn't chosen to come and see me himself I'll pay 
 what perhaps will be my last visit for some time to 
 Moonbank." 
 
 But Mrs. Beaumont and Alma had gone to London 
 for a day's shopping. She returned down the drive in 
 a mood of dejected aimlessness. Stopping in the road 
 outside to divest herself of the trappings of the myth- 
 ical Miss Smith, she was suddenly confronted by her 
 lover, who appeared, as Hummerstone had done a few 
 days earlier, to spring out of the hedge. 
 
 "What have you been doing at Moonbank?" he 
 asked angrily. 
 
 " So you've been spying on me," she retorted, trying 
 to gauge from his face the degree of his anger. Then, 
 pleased to see him after his unprecedented absence, she 
 smiled up at him. 
 
 " Why haven't you been to see me? " she said in a 
 coaxing voice. 
 
 " Give me an answer," he insisted. " What do you 
 mean by going to Moonbank, by being seen at such a 
 house? " 
 
 " Why, it's a lovely house," she said banteringly. 
 " All marble and flowers and silver. Mark, I thought 
 you had taste." 
 
 " You know well enough that it isn't fit for you to 
 set foot in. You must know the sort of person Mrs. 
 Beaumont is." 
 
 " She's a very nice person," she flashed out. " She 
 and Alma Wenlith live as quietly and respectably as 
 nuns. What harm can I get in going sometimes to see 
 them?" 
 
 " I say nothing about Miss Wenlith. But the other 
 is Joan," he broke out, " she is pitch for you to 
 touch." 
 
 " Beautiful pitch. Mark, it's all rubbish. You 
 know nothing about her. She's as quiet as a child, not
 
 222 The Whips of Time 
 
 half so rapid or so slangy as I am. And Alma is a 
 dear, and frightfully clever." 
 
 " I don't say a word about her, nor personally about 
 the other. I know nothing of either. I judge by the 
 circumstances and say it isn't a fit house for you to 
 visit." 
 
 She was relieved to find that he was rational enough 
 for quiet discussion. She knew her power over him, 
 and that when he would talk over things the battle was 
 always to her. It was only in his fits of unreasoning 
 temper, when he would neither listen nor talk, that she 
 wholly feared him. In such she knew him to be capable 
 of casting everything, even her, to the winds of his 
 blind angers. 
 
 Her experience with Hummerstone had profoundly 
 mortified her. It had shown to her another of those 
 which she described to herself as " rotten spots " in her 
 of which she was afraid. By contrast she saw Mark 
 and her affection for him as higher influences which 
 uplifted her above the level of such spots. After his 
 three days' absence he seemed to her to be so high and 
 handsome as to induce a mood in her of rare humility. 
 
 " Mark," she said seriously, " who knows that the 
 Duke and Mrs. Beaumont are not really married and 
 that the marriage is for some reason being kept secret ? 
 She seems like any other woman." 
 
 He scoffed. 
 
 " A man in his position does not allow his wife and 
 her reputation to lie under such a shadow. You have 
 no. business to sit in the same room with such a person, 
 to breathe the same air. Why," he added peevishly, 
 " do you attempt to defend your folly, Joan ? You run 
 the risk of all sorts of things being said. You must 
 know you do." 
 
 She rolled up her green eyes seductively. 
 
 "Well, what are you going to do about it?" she 
 challenged him. 
 
 His face fell.
 
 A Lovers' Quarrel 223 
 
 " What can I do ? " he asked. " I can only beg of 
 you not to commit such follies again, Joan. Joan, I 
 beg of you not to go near these persons again." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I can't do that," she said. " I don't say it was 
 wise of me to know them, seeing how rottenly people 
 talk, though they're not all saints themselves. But 
 having made friends with them I should be a cat to stop 
 going all at once. Besides, Mrs. Beaumont ought to 
 be given the benefit of the doubt. Alma is certain the 
 Duke and her aunt are married and that the secret is 
 kept for State reasons. She has never heard anything 
 else. She's frightfully proud. I believe she would 
 drown herself if she discovered. Some day I suppose 
 she will discover the truth if it is the truth." 
 
 " Why have you mixed yourself up in such things? " 
 he said in the same peevish tone. " In some ways you 
 are so sensible." 
 
 " I like to see things for myself. And Mrs. Beau- 
 mont is so lovely and Alma a dear. Besides, you are 
 leaving out the most important part my sense made 
 me go in a disguise. The servants know me as ' Miss 
 Smith.' Nobody has a notion that Miss Kesteven is on 
 visiting terms with Moonbank." 
 
 " Servants aren't easily deceived. No doubt they 
 know perfectly well who you are, and the disguise only 
 makes the thing seem worse. Joan, for Heaven's sake, 
 don't go again. Well and good if you really have es- 
 caped being known. But don't run more risks." 
 
 Again she shook her head. 
 
 " I couldn't all at once desert them," she insisted 
 staunchly, " it would be simply rotten. But, Mark, 
 as you're so mad about it " (she glanced, laughing, at 
 his rueful face) " I promise you not to go often. 
 Really, I won't. And nobody shall ever find me out." 
 
 She moved up to him and slid her arm within his. 
 She sighed. 
 
 " Old Mark, don't let us quarrel," she said earnestly.
 
 224 The Whips of Time 
 
 " That day when you asked me and I said * Yes ' I told 
 you I wasn't sure." Her voice dropped. " I'm sure 
 now. You're the only man in the world I really care 
 about, and you're the only man in the world I could 
 say this to. But you must take me as I am. There are 
 twisty ways in me, I admit, ways I can't help. But 
 I'm fond of you." 
 
 The hedges and ditches outside Moonbank seemed 
 destined to witness caresses. But, I think, if Joan, his 
 wayward, strong-willed Joan, had so spoken and clung 
 to his arm in Hyde Park, Hestroyde could not have 
 helped taking her into his arms as he now did and 
 straining her in silence to him. 
 
 Then they walked down the road together, hand in 
 hand, perfect peace and high spirits between them. 
 After all, Hestroyde was thinking, was she not good 
 enough and strong enough and straight enough to be 
 able even to touch pitch without defilement? She 
 asked him to take her as she was. Good Lord ! Was 
 he good enough to tie her shoe ? 
 
 When they came to that lane out of which three 
 days before he had ridden into the road as she had 
 followed Hummerstone, memory flashed a picture into 
 her. Before it her peace and her high spirits went 
 down. She was conscious of nothing but hatred. She 
 stopped and loosed her lover's arm. 
 
 " I want you to promise me something," she said 
 through her clenched teeth. The pupils in her green 
 eyes contracted. 
 
 He smiled down at her. 
 
 " I'd rather hear it first." 
 
 " Well, I want you to take a horsewhip and to horse- 
 whip that cad Hummerstone until " her pupils flew 
 suddenly wide till the whole eye looked as though made 
 of black velvet, her face turned a dull crimson 
 " until," she concluded, dwelling on each word as 
 though it had been a sweetmeat, " until he is covered 
 with blood from head to foot."
 
 A Lovers' Quarrel 225 
 
 " Joan ! " he said, staring at her. He was conscious 
 of a little disgust. She paid no heed to his disgust. 
 
 " And if you will not do it for me," she continued, 
 " I'll get Bobby Legh to do it. And I'll marry him 
 instead of you because he has done it." 
 
 " What have you against Hummerstone ? " 
 
 "He carried tales of me to you, Mark. How dared 
 you, dared you listen ? " 
 
 He shook his head in faint denial. The cad had 
 begged his silence. 
 
 " Oh, don't tell me lies," she cried. She paused, then 
 said deliberately, " And that is not all. He kissed me 
 by force in the road on Tuesday. And now, if you 
 have a spark of decent manliness in you, go and get 
 your horsewhip and horsewhip him till he is covered 
 with blood from head to foot." 
 
 She laughed at the effect of her words. It was not 
 a pleasant laugh to hear. But Hestroyde did not hear 
 it. Almost before she had finished her speech he had 
 gone down the road as swift and as light and as 
 straight as an arrow shot from a bow by a strong and 
 skilful hand. 
 
 In what manner Hestroyde wreaked his rage and 
 avenged his lady-love I cannot say. I do not think it 
 is possible by means of a horsewhip to induce the 
 dramatic and gory results which Joan's thirst for ven- 
 geance demanded. But I have learned from Lowood 
 that on a pleasant afternoon at about this date Hum- 
 merstone staggered into Homer Cottage with his coat 
 in shreds, a lip badly cut, a bleeding nose, an eye rapidly 
 closing, and "a general air of breathless exhaustion, as 
 of a man who had come off badly in a fight. 
 
 For a time he was too spent to enter into explana- 
 tions. Lowood, good Christian that he was, attended 
 to his needs, and soon had him somewhat restored and 
 with a cold water compress bandaged over his closing 
 eye. For a time he seemed disposed to weep, but a
 
 226 The Whips of Time 
 
 draught of strong, hot tea checked this disposition. 
 Presently he explained brokenly that he had missed his 
 footing in descending a steep bit of mountain and had 
 fallen, fallen, fallen, he said, over stones and through 
 hedges, until he thought he should never have stopped 
 falling. 
 
 Lowood, from his medical experiences, knew some- 
 thing of personal injuries, however. Hummerstone's 
 injuries were such as he believed could have resulted 
 only from one brutal, albeit effectual, weapon, the fist 
 of mortal man. 
 
 " So my wish after all was verified," he reflected, 
 perhaps out of the kindness of his heart, now that it 
 had been verified, regretful that he had wished it. 
 " The fool, after all, went to Moonbank and blundered 
 upon the Duke." 
 
 But I cannot say that any of his regrets remained 
 when, on the following morning, Hummerstone packed 
 up his impedimenta, leaving nothing behind him save 
 the rent coat, and went home to his father. 
 
 " I suppose, after all, there's nothing left for me but 
 to take up this infernal medicine business," he grumbled 
 savagely. 
 
 In his underbred rage he omitted to express one 
 word of gratitude for the month of hospitality Lo- 
 wood had extended to him. 
 
 Lowood knew men and life, and when Polly dis- 
 gusted him by openly mourning and refusing to be 
 comforted for the loss of her hero, he consoled her 
 by saying: 
 
 " He'll come back again, Polly, never fear. Have 
 you never heard the proverb of the bad penny ? " 
 
 Whereat Polly plucked up heart, and the cue being 
 given to her repeated cheerfully : 
 
 " One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 PLAYING WITH FIRE 
 
 BURGHWALLIS, finding a special charm in Alma Wen- 
 lith's society, slipped back into his old habit of visiting 
 Moonbank. He was perfectly aware that in doing so 
 he was acting in defiance not only of prudence, but 
 contrary to certain prickings of conscience. The situ- 
 ation was a dangerous one. 
 
 Alma was no longer a child, no longer even that 
 young person on the borderland between child and 
 woman in whom it is impossible for an adult man to 
 become very deeply interested. She was a woman, not 
 only personally attractive because of looks which were 
 wholly charming, and grey eyes which haunted, but 
 because also of her engaging sympathy and her rare 
 order of mind. 
 
 No doubt our faulty methods are to blame, but with 
 a number of women to develop their brains means to 
 develop the masculine side of their brains, thus spoiling 
 their specialised womanly qualities. But Alma's wom- 
 anliness was too inherent to be spoiled. It was not 
 a matter merely of a few false curves and pigments 
 which Nature, for her own purposes, lends to women 
 out of her property shop for half a dozen years. It 
 was womanliness from soul to finger-tips. If you had 
 put the minutest cell of her beneath a microscope the 
 woman sex would have been apparent in it suppos- 
 ing, that is, that we had the key to sex. 
 
 It is only men weaklings to whom masculine women 
 are attractive. To such men such women are stays and 
 props on which for helplessness to lean. To the truly
 
 228 The Whips of Time 
 
 manly man no spell in all the world compares with the 
 glamour irresistible of true womanliness. 
 
 Accordingly Burghwallis, in defiance of prudence 
 and of conscience, returned again and again to enjoy 
 the rare companionship of a mind and of a nature 
 which were all womanly for their exquisite delicacy 
 and emotional quality, and yet were as strong and as 
 true as were his own man's mind and nature. Habit 
 determines action. And men of his set, who have been 
 free all their lives to do the thing that pleases them, 
 find it more difficult to forego doing this than do men 
 whose lot has been cast in less easy lines. 
 
 He formulated nothing. He merely drifted pleas- 
 antly down a smoothly-gliding stream, not wholly un- 
 mindful that there were possible rapids in its course. 
 If he considered consequences he told himself that at 
 any moment, when he should find the situation becom- 
 ing too strong for him, he could " cut " it and go 
 abroad as he had done before. 
 
 Opinion changes from century to century. And 
 with the greater independence and freedom of women 
 men no longer accept the old-fashioned doctrine the 
 good, old-fashioned doctrine that to woman, by 
 reason of her more emotional temperament and of the 
 world's estimate of any lapse on her part, man owes 
 the chivalrous tenderness which will protect her even 
 from himself. 
 
 I cannot say that the good old-fashioned view, fine 
 and chivalrous though it was, did very much in prac- 
 tice to protect women. It was, at all events, a higher 
 creed than that which prevails to-day the creed that 
 women are eminently capable of looking after their 
 own interests, and that men, meeting them therefore 
 on equal grounds, may fairly take all they can get with- 
 out concerning themselves with obsolete heroics. 
 
 Burghwallis was above the average, however. He 
 suffered himself to drift idly down a pleasant stream, 
 but he had no goal in view. The fact that he had
 
 Playing with Fire 229 
 
 known Alma as a child, rather than his code of ethics, 
 safeguarded her against designs on his part. More- 
 over, their comradeship was so essentially a comrade- 
 ship of mind as to throw dust in his eyes when he 
 considered possible dangers. Heavens! what harm 
 could there be in talking astronomy and higher ethics ? 
 
 More frequently than not he checked wholesomely, 
 albeit playfully, her romanticism and impracticable 
 ideals, by his saner standard of worldly knowledge 
 and experience. What harm in talking of flowers and 
 dogs and horses? He set a guard upon himself. On 
 no occasion did he lapse into sentiment, nor employ 
 upon her arts of blandishment and masculine subjuga- 
 tion of which he was somewhat a master. 
 
 She no longer offered her cheek to him. She had at 
 once accepted the distance he had placed between them, 
 although perhaps she wondered sometimes at a footing 
 which was rather constrained for an uncle and niece. 
 
 When he thought about it he dismissed it as absurd 
 to vex his soul about a relation so platonic and correct. 
 If they were not niece and uncle they might well have 
 been for the lack of emotion between them. He could 
 not deny that he found her sometimes dangerously 
 attractive that when she talked, even although the 
 subject were astronomy, his attention was so far en- 
 grossed by the play of her grey eyes, by her voice, by 
 the movements of her flower-mouth, by the lighting 
 of her mobile face, that he lost the words of the partic- 
 ular 'ology for which these were the peg. 
 
 Once when, fondling Janita for some pretty intelli- 
 gence the little dog had shown, Alma stooped and 
 affectionately kissed the gentle, silken head, Burgh- 
 wallis had risen to his feet with a sudden swirl of 
 passion. He was overmastered by a hot desire to 
 take her hands, to touch her hair, to touch the petals 
 of the lips she wasted on a dog. But the impulse had 
 passed in the presence of her candid unconsciousness. 
 
 To himself his outburst needed no very profound
 
 230 The Whips of Time 
 
 explanation. He knew himself a man of ardent blood. 
 It was natural enough and had no particular signifi- 
 cance that he should wish to kiss her. There was a 
 fine and exquisite finish about her which seemed to 
 him to be more beautiful than beauty. It showed 
 like a spiritual attribute, a physical perfection which 
 appealed to the sense as a virtue. He thought her 
 little, shell-like ears, set with so much grace against 
 her delicate head, must catch finer vibrations than 
 were audible to cruder ears. Her grey eyes showed 
 luminous with visions. In her company a man was 
 ashamed to think coarsely. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont watched the progress of these things. 
 The progress seemed to be so satisfactory that it 
 smoothed perhaps the single crumpled rose-leaf on her 
 lace pillow an anxiety for Alma's future. For was 
 not Alma on her way to a Moonbank of her own? 
 Moreover, when Alma should have established herself 
 in her Moonbank that long-delayed but inevitable dis- 
 covery, the dread of which sometimes pricked her 
 the revelation of her own anomalous position would 
 come so much more easily. 
 
 It had been a May day in March, the air deliciously 
 warm, the sunshine seeming to sleep on the earth as on 
 a silken bed. Beneath the warmth, like a cool linen 
 sheet beneath an eider quilt, lay an invigorating touch 
 of north wind. 
 
 Burghwallis, tired of Piccadilly and of functions, 
 and the fatiguing exertions incumbent upon picking 
 a wary way among the matrimonial nets and wiles 
 which designing mothers and widows and girls assidu- 
 ously spread for his eligible feet, had cast off the dust 
 of such pitfall hospitalities and had escaped to Scrope- 
 Denton for a long day of sweet air and of quiet and 
 candid affectionate comradeship. 
 
 By some mischance the wire he had sent to announce 
 his coming had been delayed. There was no carriage,
 
 Playing with Fire 231 
 
 therefore, to meet him at the station. This pricked his 
 temper, and in his bored and rather dejected mood gave 
 him an irrational sense of being unwelcome. A peevish 
 impulse to return by the next train ruffled his mind. 
 Then he reflected that of course for some reason the 
 carriage had been delayed and that he would meet it on 
 his road up. He declined the uninviting local fly, rick- 
 ety and powdered with March dust, and proceeded to 
 walk up to Moonbank. 
 
 It was a distance of four miles. 
 
 He had dined out the previous evening and had 
 afterwards gone to a dance one of the early dances 
 by which vigilant mothers, who get up before the 
 season, propose to catch early worms. The result had 
 been that when his servant had called him he had 
 turned over and had fallen asleep again. When he was 
 obsequiously waked a second time it was so late that 
 he had been compelled to make a choice between break- 
 fast and his projected excursion to Scrope-Denton. 
 
 His body demanded breakfast. His soul asked a 
 tranquil day. Unusual to relate, his soul had the vic- 
 tory. He had dashed out of his bath and into his 
 clothes with so much expedition that he contrived to 
 catch the early train just as it was grunting out of the 
 station. 
 
 Having missed his breakfast he had been too savage 
 to accept on the journey such substitutes as the dry 
 buns and doubtful milk which were offered to him at 
 two of the stations at which the train stopped. He 
 was, therefore, ill-fortified for a four-mile walk. 
 Moreover, he had a little touch of fever which spring 
 had relit in him. He met no carriage on the road, and 
 arrived at Moonbank hot and dusty, very tired, and in 
 thorough ill-humour. 
 
 As he passed in at the gates and plunged into the 
 cool of a drive which curved, sheltered from the sun, 
 at the foot of a slope he came across Alma sitting on 
 a bank, her face turned in his direction, her eyes alight
 
 232 The Whips of Time 
 
 with expectancy. She rose smiling and went to meet 
 him, moving with a characteristic elasticity and light- 
 ness as of a creature sustained by hopes and aspirations. 
 
 He felt that with her came a wave of repose and of 
 refreshment which, reaching him before she herself 
 could, laid his peevish humour. By the time she had 
 slipped her warm friendly hand into his and had taken 
 him into her sweet, candid eyes, his fever and anger 
 began to drop from him as a slough. 
 
 " I knew you would come," she said. " I am so 
 glad. The day is so delightful." 
 
 " It was a bit of a trudge," he grumbled, manlike, 
 demanding sympathy. " It's as hot as June." 
 
 " If only you had sent a wire a carriage should have 
 met you. You look quite fagged." 
 
 " I sent a wire." 
 
 " It did not arrive." 
 
 " Some mistake of that ass Boulger. He's always 
 making mistakes. But if you got no wire why did you 
 expect me ? " 
 
 A little colour flowed into her cheeks. Lowood had 
 long ceased to regard her from the physician's stand- 
 point. The wan looks and fervid brain absorptions 
 which had caused him to prophesy dyspepsia and a red- 
 tipped nose had vanished with the more tranquil habit 
 of mind and body she had assumed since Burghwallis' 
 return. His coming had restored her mental balance 
 by giving a personal and emotional bias to her rela- 
 tions with everyday life. Man and woman are two 
 incompletions which, until they find their counterpart, 
 are ill-poised and prone to aberrations. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont no longer complained of Alma's lack 
 of interest in clothes. She had developed a wholesome 
 interest in her hats and frocks and in her general 
 appearance. Mrs. Beaumont, reading these symptoms 
 by the light of her worldly knowledge, would have 
 found incredible the truth that there was no design 
 in this, but that it was a purely instinctive and sponta-
 
 Playing with Fire 233 
 
 neous readjustment of her previously ill-balanced 
 forces. All at once things which had seemed not to 
 matter became things of importance. 
 
 To his question as to how she had known that he 
 was coming she replied: 
 
 " I always know when you are coming. It must be 
 a sort of wireless telegraphy." 
 
 Normal man is averse to phenomena out of the range 
 of everyday experience. They disturb his preconceived 
 notions of things. Being by nature conventional he 
 dislikes to have the ideas which he has neatly arranged 
 in pigeon-holes disturbed by notions for which he has 
 no pigeon-holes. 
 
 " You only guess that I am coming," he said. " It 
 is nothing more than that." 
 
 " Oh, but it is. I know as well as though I had 
 received a telegram. Suddenly, when I am not think- 
 ing about you, I receive an impression, ' He is com- 
 ing.' ' 
 
 " But I am not the only * he ' in the world." 
 
 " It means you always." 
 
 They walked on in silence. He breathed in the air 
 and the sunshine and the magnetic glamour of her. 
 At every step his spirits rose. Hunger became the 
 pleasing prelude to that good meal of which every man 
 who visited Mrs. Beaumont felt assured. 
 
 " I hope you find the impression that ' He is com- 
 ing ' a pleasing one," he said, smiling. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No. Although I am glad, of course, that you are 
 coming, the impression is attended by a sort of fear, 
 a little panic, for which there seems to be no reason. 
 It is as though you were going to do me some injury." 
 
 After a pause : 
 
 '' What injury am I likely to do you ? " 
 
 "None, of course," she said. "Why should you? 
 And I cannot believe you would injure anybody. You 
 are too kind."
 
 234 The Whips of Time 
 
 " I am very much like other persons." 
 
 Another pause. Then : 
 
 " It would express it more accurately if I said that 
 this panic I get about you is less a feeling that you are 
 going to injure me than that you have in some way 
 actually injured me, long and long ago." 
 
 Her intonation justified his ironical comment. 
 
 " Centuries ? " 
 
 She turned up a wondering face. 
 
 " That is the strange thing about it. It does seem 
 to have been centuries. I seem to look back into an 
 immense distance as though I were looking through 
 the wrong end of a telescope, and right at the end 
 of it, hazy and small, is some horrid, cruel thing 
 that I cannot define, but of which I am strangely 
 afraid." 
 
 " You should not give way to morbid fancies," he 
 told her rather irritably. " Because of course it is 
 nothing but a morbid fancy. You read and think too 
 much. Why don't you ride and play tennis and do 
 other normal things ? " 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " You forget I am so much alone. One cannot play 
 tennis single-handed." 
 
 He admitted that this was true. 
 
 " And in ' my study of imagination ' are so many 
 many things that are not to be found on the roads. 
 For instance, you are always to be found there." 
 
 " But it appears I am a sort of bugbear lurking 
 behind the door to hurt you." 
 
 She did not speak. 
 
 "If you only dive deep enough into your memory," 
 he resumed, " you will find a perfectly rational explana- 
 tion. When you were a child, perhaps I stole your 
 chocolates or cracked the skull of your pet doll, and you 
 brooded over it and magnified it till the sense of injury 
 got fixed in your mind, even although you have for- 
 gotten the cause of it,"
 
 Playing with Fire 235 
 
 " I don't think it is that," she said. " Shall I tell 
 you what I really think about it ? " 
 
 " Do." 
 
 " I think it was something that happened, some 
 wrong you did me, in a previous life. We have talked 
 of previous lives. You never quite admit that you 
 believe in them, although I cannot see how else so many 
 things can be explained. In our countless existences 
 it is likely that affinity brings us into relation again and 
 again with the same persons. I am convinced that I 
 knew you in a former life, and that this thing, whatso- 
 ever it was, happened to you and to me in that." 
 
 He kicked at a stone in his path. 
 
 " Upon my word," he said, " it's too bad to charge 
 me with crimes I committed centuries ago. I find the 
 crimes I've been guilty of within my own recollection 
 quite bad enough to answer for." 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " I don't charge you. It isn't of the slightest con- 
 sequence. It has all passed and we have begun afresh. 
 Even if you did injure me I have quite forgiven you. 
 I am glad we are such old acquaintance. I am sure it 
 was centuries ago, for I get momentary flashes of a 
 mediaeval castle, of pageants, of men in armour. I try 
 to fix them, to see them more clearly, and to find myself 
 and you in them. But they go as they come, like a flash 
 of lightning. And there is always that sense of fear, 
 that sense of some alarming thing." 
 
 " Well, I suppose I have expiated my crime against 
 you," he said cheerfully, " since you say you have got 
 over your hatred of me." 
 
 She turned her haunting, and at the moment it 
 seemed to him her haunted, eyes on him. His own met 
 and dwelled in them. He was conscious of a strange 
 sensation. His brain reeled. He felt himself caught 
 back back with a rush somewhere nowhere. 
 With an effort he recovered himself. He heard her 
 saying quietly :
 
 236 The Whips of Time 
 
 " did not hate you. I think I liked you a great 
 deal or you could not have hurt me so much." 
 
 They had come now to the marble steps before the 
 house. Mrs. Beaumont, standing beautiful and smiling 
 at the top, transformed them into the pedestal of a 
 classic. 
 
 " Alma said you would come," she greeted him. " I 
 suppose you wrote to her. I have ordered a specially 
 good luncheon."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 STILL PLAYING 
 
 SHE had not unduly raised his expectations. He de- 
 cided that Mrs. Beaumont's luncheon was something 
 worth having missed a breakfast for. When it was 
 over he said to Alma : 
 
 " It's too fine a day to waste indoors. Let us go out 
 and kill nothing." 
 
 " Do," Mrs. Beaumont said, " only don't ask me to 
 go with you. I wouldn't miss my afternoon siesta for 
 the world. It is the real beauty sleep, if women only 
 knew it." 
 
 " If they only knew you they couldn't doubt it," 
 Burghwallis said gallantly. 
 
 " I tell Alma," she said, with a gratified laugh, " that 
 she'll be an old hag by the time she is thirty if she 
 doesn't take more care of her looks. Nowadays women 
 rag themselves out till they're nothing but scarecrows. 
 Looks need as much taking care of I don't mean 
 face-washes and things as lace and pearls do." 
 
 " And they are far more precious things," Burgh- 
 wallis said. 
 
 " So they are," Mrs. Beaumont agreed seriously. 
 " And I tell her if she isn't careful she'll get thin. And 
 no man remains in love with a thin woman for longer 
 than three months." 
 
 Alma put up her hands to her shell-like ears. 
 
 " Oh, horrible materialism ! " she cried. " As though 
 love were a question of ounces. Love is a thing of the 
 soul."
 
 238 The Whips of Time 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont knew little about souls, and she knew 
 her limitations. She did not, therefore, pursue the 
 subject. 
 
 " Thin women don't ever hold men," she said. 
 " They haven't got any of what I heard somebody once 
 call ' magnetism.' ' 
 
 She departed smiling to her siesta and to preserve 
 that pearl beyond price her beauty. 
 
 Burghwallis turned to Alma. 
 
 " Don't be a scarecrow," he said. " Let us go out 
 and harvest our handsomeness by sitting in the sun- 
 shine." 
 
 " And tanning our complexions," she retorted gaily. 
 
 To one side of the house was an artificial lake, fed 
 by a small waterfall which dropped like a rope of spun 
 glass from a cleft in the mountain. In the middle of 
 the lake, surrounded by water-lilies now beginning to 
 spread their cool, green tables as though for aquatic 
 feasts, a little pagoda of white marble had been built. 
 To reach it it was necessary to embark in a light barge 
 which, luxuriously upholstered, was moored in a marble 
 boat-house. 
 
 " Come," he said, " let us brave the dangers of this 
 broad expanse of ocean and trust our lives upon that 
 marble continent I see before me." 
 
 " Isn't it absurd ! " she assented, laughing. 
 
 She stepped into the barge. 
 
 " The man who designed this garden must have had 
 a child's mind. It is full of such foolish little wonders, 
 winding paths that lead back to where they started 
 from, little amusing plots and tricks and surprises. 
 And yet although one sees that they are childish they 
 succeed in amusing and make one feel gay and delight- 
 fully foolish." 
 
 " It is good to feel gay and delightfully foolish," he 
 said. "Why gloom?" 
 
 The interior of the pagoda was a shimmering nest 
 of cushioned satin. When they had disembarked
 
 Still Playing 239 
 
 Burghwallis, for a freak, gave the barge a push and 
 sent it swirling across the lake. 
 
 " Oh, what have you done ! " she scolded him. 
 " You have burned our boats behind us. How shall 
 we manage to get back to the mainland when the sav- 
 age tribes come down upon us ? " 
 
 " If it comes to 1 that," he said boastfully, " I'll just 
 pick you up in my arms and carry you across." 
 
 He allowed himself a minute of masterful ardour, 
 induced perhaps by the slight muscular effort he had 
 made in rowing. She had seated herself upon the 
 curving cushioned seat of the pagoda. He stood in 
 his masterful mood, lean and shapely, towering above 
 her. Her eyes drew to his and met them full. The 
 blood rushed to her face in a sudden new self-conscious- 
 ness. Never again would they meet upon the plane of 
 uncle and niece. 
 
 " You would drop me in mid-ocean," she said 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " Do you challenge me ? " 
 
 There was dangerous mischief in his eyes. 
 
 " No," she said in a little panic, " of course not. 
 Somebody will come and push the barge back to us." 
 
 He suppressed his dangerous mood and moved to the 
 other end of the settle. 
 
 " If I sit here," he said tonelessly, " the smoke won't 
 blow into your eyes." 
 
 His business with his cigar relieved an ensuing 
 silence of some awkwardness. The pagoda had win- 
 dows all round. She gazed out through the window 
 at her end of the settle and he through the window at 
 his end. Then he broke out energetically: 
 
 " 'Pon my word, what a day! Isn't it? " 
 
 " Perfect." 
 
 " Like June." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The lake is as blue as the sky." 
 
 " Bluer."
 
 240 The Whips of Time 
 
 Another silence, during which they stared through 
 their respective windows. Then he broke out again : 
 
 " This is a precious sight better than Piccadilly. 
 Jove! how stuffy it must be in town to-day." 
 
 " Frightful ! I am so glad you thought of coming." 
 
 " So am I. 'Pon my soul, this uninhabitable island 
 is a success." 
 
 " It is simply beautiful." 
 
 I hear the unintelligent reader scoff. " These two 
 are represented as being a clever man and a clever 
 woman, yet two persons from an idiot asylum might 
 talk more cleverly." But I do not write for unintelli- 
 gence. The intelligent reader knows that clever men 
 and women are far too clever to talk cleverly to the 
 person with whom they are in love. They keep their 
 wit and smartness for any stray person with whom 
 they may go in to dinner. With the person beloved 
 they keep silence, or talk foolishness, and all the while, 
 their souls in their ears, they listen breathlessly lest 
 they should lose any one of the amazing things their 
 hearts are saying to one another. 
 
 He glanced at the delicate profile in which an eye 
 like a lambent mystery, made more mysterious by its 
 fine thicket of lashes, looked dreamily forth upon the 
 lake. 
 
 " Are you enjoying it ? " 
 
 " Loving it." 
 
 " You come here every fine day? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Often ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "How often?" 
 
 She laughed outright. 
 
 " The truth is I haven't been here since we came 
 last." 
 
 "Odd! if you like it." 
 
 " It is lonely to be on an island by oneself." 
 
 " I feel it rather nice."
 
 Still Playing 241 
 
 " But I am here." 
 
 " Yes," he said reposefully, " you are here." 
 
 He puffed at his cigar. 
 
 " So you do sometimes want something more than 
 your own and old Logwood's society ? " 
 
 She laughed again from sheer light-heartedness. 
 How absurd to call Lowood " Logwood " ! 
 
 " Sometimes." 
 
 "Not often?" 
 
 " Oftener than is good for me." 
 
 He puffed again in peace. The pagoda was filled 
 with an unclassic atmosphere. 
 
 " No doubt you'd like a string of silly young asses 
 dangling round you," he submitted savagely. 
 
 " It doesn't sound amusing." 
 
 " It always amuses girls of your age." 
 
 She turned a smiling, happy face. 
 
 " Why conjure unattainable delights? " 
 
 " There is no Act of Parliament to keep you from 
 havin' a string of silly young asses danglin' round you 
 if you want to," he said ; " if you do want to." 
 
 " But I don't. Old Logwood is enough." 
 
 " One old ass as good as six young uns ! Eh ? " 
 
 " It isn't at all an apt description of him. He is not 
 old, and he is far from being an ass." 
 
 " If you don't look out you'll be fallin' in love with 
 him, just because you never see another man from one 
 year's end to another." 
 
 " I see you." 
 
 Her eyes glanced a laughing challenge at him. He 
 discovered that he had been edging nearer to her. He 
 slid back to the other extreme end of the settle. A 
 surreptitious glance showed him a rose blooming out 
 on her cheek. Her dark lashes lay over it in a tremu- 
 lous poise. 
 
 He flushed. He fidgeted. Man of the world though 
 he was, his defences went down, leaving him, as he 
 felt it, a fool of a youngster, for the first time charged
 
 242 The Whips of Time 
 
 with hot and foolish exquisite impulses. To hold her 
 cool palm and slender fingers thrown carelessly upon a 
 cushion as though they had been things of little value. 
 To take them, to kiss them. To trace with a finger the 
 velvet outline of her cheek. To press his face to it, his 
 lips to it. To set a hand upon her shadowy hair. To 
 put his lips to it. To 
 
 He got to his feet, he had found himself once 
 more edging toward her. He plucked out the cigar 
 from his mouth, that cigar of fine aroma, and gaining 
 the door of the pagoda in two strides he flung it out 
 into the middle of the lake. It dropped, emitted a 
 little resentful hiss at the chilliness of its demise, and 
 sought an untimely grave. 
 
 " Well, of all the abominable impositions I have 
 smoked ! " he said, and ceased, a regretful eye upon 
 the little circling crease which marked its watery 
 end. 
 
 The abrupt action and exclamation startled her out 
 of her dream. Her eye, too, sought the dimpling 
 water. 
 
 " Was it ? " she said. " And it smelt so nice." 
 
 He stood with his back to her, his straight-built 
 back in its well-built coat. Her eyes dropped from it 
 shyly. A glow seemed to radiate from him, a thrill to 
 vibrate from him, a glow which was not light nor heat, 
 a thrill which was not contact, a thrill and glow which 
 wrapped her in warm, ineffable caresses. 
 
 " To get that boat ! " he said, breaking briskly in 
 upon her emotions, " that is the problem. -If I shout 
 will anybody come ? " 
 
 " Oh, are we going yet? " she said wistfully. 
 
 " Going ! " he repeated. " We can't stop here all 
 day." He curled a hand about his mouth. " Boat! " 
 he shouted. "Hello! Hel-lo-o-o! Boat ahoy!" 
 
 Half a dozen forms came hurrying to the edge of 
 the water. When he had given his instructions and a 
 sturdy fellow was wading his quickest to the drifting
 
 Still Playing 243 
 
 craft he half turned and cried dramatically, at the same 
 time avoiding her eyes : 
 
 " Saved ! Saved ! And I shall not be forced to make 
 a cannibal meal of you ! " 
 
 She did not know him in this mood. She was half 
 offended. 
 
 " How foolish you are," she rebuked him. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " a thundering fool." 
 
 She could not understand his sudden irritability. 
 She cast about in her mind for some cause she had 
 herself unwittingly supplied. In silence he punted her 
 across the lake. As they landed a stable clock struck 
 four. 
 
 " By Jove! " he exclaimed. He took out his watch. 
 " So it is, and I must catch the five o'clock train back 
 to town." 
 
 Her heart dropped into her shoes. It was as though 
 somebody had said, " Prepare to lose a limb ! " Their 
 day had been so dear, so intimate. All her incomple- 
 tions had found completion. Never before had she 
 guessed what he was to her. 
 
 " But will you not dine? " she said. " We always 
 dine early, so that you may return by the nine o'clock 
 train." 
 
 " But I must dine in town. Ton my soul I must." 
 He hurried on before her. " I will go on to order a 
 carriage. Who would have thought it was so late ? " 
 
 She was on the brink of tears. In the happy under- 
 current of her mind there had been a sense of exultant 
 security. She had been flattering herself that there 
 remained to her yet four hours, each containing sixty 
 golden minutes ( for the first time she understood why 
 minutes had been designated golden). Joy does not 
 always pass quickly. This day had not. Each minute 
 of it since he had come had felt like a golden bead 
 beneath her fingers, burnished, round and perfect, ere 
 she had slipped it upon a strand of charming memories. 
 And what if it passed? Was there not a lifetime of
 
 244 The Whips of Time 
 
 strands and strands of such golden, perfect beads to be 
 further told between them? And now suddenly the 
 rosary was snatched from her hand. He was to leave 
 four hours before his time. And it might be three 
 weeks before she would again see him. Oh ! tragedy 
 of niecely affection ! Three whole weeks without see- 
 ing him! 
 
 She dried the first tear of a threatened shower, and 
 with a sudden self-reproach flew to the house to order 
 tea for him before his journey. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont did not live by rule. The warm 
 afternoon resulted in a prolonging of her siesta. Tea 
 was not served at Moonbank until five. Alma found 
 the large drawing-room deserted. Her eyes went to 
 the little onyx Empire clock upon the mantelpiece. It 
 was only ten minutes past four. The carriage would 
 not be round until half-past. There was still a brief 
 record of golden blisses to be told. 
 
 Shorter, however, than she had thought, tea was 
 brought. Moonbank, which gave an impression of 
 having been transported from the skies at the rubbing 
 of a genie's lamp, was served as though by magicians. 
 The tall, velvet-footed servants might, for their smooth 
 celerity, have been electric motors. 
 
 " You need not wait," Alma told them. They van- 
 ished like shadows before light. But the onyx clock 
 had chimed the quarter, and its jewelled hand was 
 travelling on before Burghwallis came. 
 
 He had beaten a precipitate retreat in order to reflect 
 for five minutes alone upon the situation. His reflec- 
 tion did not apparently show the situation to him as 
 less disquieting than he had all of a sudden suspected 
 it to be. He was sufficiently experienced to recognise 
 his symptoms. It was a fever from which he had 
 suffered before. But experience told him that this was 
 a different and a vastly more aggravated form than any 
 previous attack. The few minutes he had stolen from 
 Alma's rosary of happy minutes had not sufficed to
 
 Still Playing 245 
 
 furnish him with decisions. They had only shown him 
 that the utmost self-discipline was necessary lest she 
 should detect his symptoms, lest his fever should move 
 him to babble deliriously. He summed it all up as 
 a pretty kettle of fish, and had no other thought but 
 to get out of the house before the kettle should 
 boil over. 
 
 "Tea?" he said lightly. Again he consulted his 
 watch. " Scarcely time, is there? " 
 
 " Plenty." 
 
 He avoided her eyes as he approached her for his 
 cup. 
 
 " Mrs. Beaumont still warding off the ravages of 
 time? You must say my good-byes." 
 
 He carried his cup back to the mantelpiece and stood 
 there drinking it, his eyes upon the clock. 
 
 " By the way," he said, " I'm afraid I shan't be down 
 again for some time. I'm just choked up with boring 
 functions and things." 
 
 " If they bore you why do you go to them? " 
 
 " How can one escape ? And what else is there to 
 do?" 
 
 " Thousands of things. You have the whole world 
 before you. You have rank and money." She 
 laughed. " By the way, I suppose you have money? " 
 
 " Some," he said vaguely. 
 
 " Well, then, you have rank and some money, and 
 time and energy and brains and tastes. You can make 
 precisely what you like of your life." 
 
 " Theories! " he said. " My life, my opinions, my 
 habits, my obligations were made for me centuries 
 before I was born. No persons are so bound and 
 cramped and fettered as are the persons of my set. 
 The things I do, the houses I visit, the persons to whom 
 I must be civil were preordained without regard to my 
 individual tastes. The wheels and levers of my exist- 
 ence compel me to do things almost as inevitably as 
 the wheels and levers of this clock drive its hands round
 
 246 The Whips of Time 
 
 and round its face from night till morning and again 
 from morning till night." 
 
 She saw the fallacy of his comparison. 
 
 " But a man is not a machine." 
 
 " That is just what he is. He is part of a big com- 
 plicated mass of machinery which must move with 
 regard to its other component parts. In proof of 
 which," he added, " you will see me, the moment the 
 clock chimes that is in three minutes precisely 
 start off as though I were a portion of its mechanism, 
 and make for the station. Although, if the truth must 
 be told," his eyes dwelt upon her as she presided charm- 
 ingly over the tea-table, " I have no particular desire 
 to catch the train or to do anything but what I am now 
 doing." 
 
 She lifted her head. 
 
 " Then don't go," she said. " Do what you choose 
 to do. Prove yourself a man instead of a machine." 
 
 He laughed enigmatically. 
 
 " It is far more prudent to be a machine. There, 
 now," as the clock chimed, " my lever has come into 
 action and I must go." 
 
 It was a lever which started also other portions of 
 the social mechanism. The door opened. A footman 
 entered. 
 
 " The carriage, my lord," he announced, and with- 
 drew. 
 
 Burghwallis set down his cup and moved to her. In 
 a moment she was trembling all over. The blood ebbed 
 from her face. Her haunted, haunting eyes lifted to 
 him with a profound wistfulness. Her lips unclosed 
 slightly upon her quickened breath. 
 
 He had not the habit of denying himself. His im- 
 pulses had been tempered by fastidious choice rather 
 than by ascetic principles. Drawn by her eyes and by 
 the honey of her parted lips he stooped and kissed them. 
 It was a half-smiling, affectionate kiss, A rather fond 
 uncle might have bestowed it. But hunger comes with
 
 Still Playing 247 
 
 eating. He would have been more than man, who, 
 finding such amazing sweetness, had not sought it 
 again. And again. And again. Until intoxicated by 
 the pure and subtle magic of her the very tumult it 
 excited in him forced him to desist. 
 
 " Good-bye ! " he muttered. " Good-bye ! " and was 
 gone. 
 
 Going, he felt himself to be a flame now rather than 
 a man. He derided the calm confidence with which he 
 had some minutes earlier described himself as a ma- 
 chine. With a sense of relief he returned into the grip 
 of convictions which were a safeguard the defer- 
 ential servants, the reserved demeanour, the refuge of 
 the opened carriage door through which he plunged, 
 the rapid going of the Duke's horses, bearing him from 
 her against his will, against the vehement setting of his 
 blood to her. 
 
 For the first time in his life he knew love in its 
 fulness. Looking back he saw that all he had previ- 
 ously taken for the sacred fire were but will-o'-the- 
 wisps, flickerings mere exhalations from the marshes 
 of his nature. Now the whole man, body, mind and 
 soul, was afire, one broad sheet of flame in which all 
 boundary lines were lost. 
 
 " Gather ye Roses," says the poet. And men go out 
 and gather Cabbages! Burghwallis' tastes had been 
 too fine to allow him to be satisfied with cabbages. But 
 the roses he had gathered he now saw had been artificial 
 ones, made of rose-coloured silk, it is true, and excellent 
 imitations. But beside this rose he had now gathered, 
 dewy, and fresh, and fragrant the rose of true love 
 the others showed fit only for the dust heap. And 
 yet this rose of love, this jewel of life which he now 
 held in his hand, was a forbidden thing. 
 
 It no more occurred to him that he could marry 
 Mrs. Beaumont's niece than it would have occurred to 
 him to throw himself beneath the wheels of the engine
 
 248 The Whips of Time 
 
 which was bearing him away from her. Such a thing 
 was out of the question. Only irresponsible youngsters 
 dragged fine old names in the dust by marrying ballet- 
 dancers and their kind. Full-grown men, with decent 
 self-respect and respect for their families, could no 
 more do these things than they could forge. It was 
 a matter upon which he had always held very strong 
 views. It seemed to him as much a sine qua non that 
 a man's wife should be of his own set as it appears 
 incumbent upon a middle-class man that he shall not 
 marry his cook. And Mrs. Beaumont's niece was out 
 of the question. 
 
 Wherefore his conscience writhed, a pale martyr in 
 the flame of his desire. For he had known Alma 
 since she had been a child. He remembered the cling of 
 her hot little trustful hand in his. And he was too 
 kindly and too scrupulous of heart to be the first to set 
 any woman upon that descent which his worldly expe- 
 rience had shown him was all too easy. Least of all 
 Alma Alma with her haunting eyes which cradled 
 so many fine and foolish illusions, her quick and pure 
 imagination, her belief and her trust in him. 
 
 Men of the world who think, separate women into 
 two classes, not good and bad women, that classification 
 is too crude, but wives and the other things. Some 
 of them avowedly prefer " the other things." But in 
 their minds these are placed " below the line," a black 
 dividing line which men draw even more cruelly than 
 do women. This line is drawn in superior men by a 
 fine fastidiousness which is Nature's morality, in lesser 
 men by a mere commercial distinction between the 
 things which are cheap and the things which are beyond 
 price. 
 
 Burgh wallis' conscience shrank from the thought of 
 Alma " below the line." He remembered the child's 
 trustful hand in his. He wrote to tell her a few days 
 later that he was going abroad again. He feared that 
 he would be too busy to run down to say good-bye.
 
 Still Playing 249 
 
 He wished her well with her astronomy and archaeology 
 and other dry-as-dust studies, although he thought it 
 would be far better for her if she were to spend more 
 time in walking and riding and in playing tennis. He 
 remained her affectionate " Uncle Tony." 
 
 So he left her, with a sudden icy terror in her heart, 
 on her lips the fiery memory of his kisses. Yet though 
 he left her he took fiery memories also, magnet memo- 
 ries, which would draw him back to her as inevitably 
 as the needle seeks the pole.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 HUMMERSTONE COMES BACK 
 
 LOWOOD found his pupil once more over-eager in her 
 studies. But where before her over-eagerness had been 
 the outcome of an intense nature seeking distraction 
 from loneliness, now he detected in it a strong and 
 distressing need for distraction from some hidden 
 trouble. He guessed that Burghwallis was its source. 
 Having seen the change his return had made in her, 
 having seen the preoccupied student bloom into a 
 woman with joy-lit eyes, and cheeks which grew roses 
 at a sound, he could not doubt the cause of her 
 reversion. 
 
 In his sympathetic way of interesting himself in 
 other persons' stories he wondered what had happened. 
 Had the man spoken ? Before he had ridden away had 
 he wounded the delicate pride he would doubtless 
 regard as a superfluous virtue in the niece of Mrs. 
 Beaumont ? Men do not expect fine conduct from one 
 another. It is for this reason that men are not ele- 
 vating company for one another. And it was for this 
 reason that Lowood did not now credit Burghwallis 
 with the compunctions and self -repression which had 
 indeed spurred him away. He concluded that either he 
 had ridden away, as men do (and seldom do for any 
 other reason), because he was indifferent, or that not 
 being indifferent he had spoken in such terms as only 
 Alma's pride had answered. 
 
 Then his attention was distracted by events occur- 
 ring nearer home, events which that act of Hummer- 
 stone's twenty-three years earlier had set in train.
 
 Hummerstone Comes Back 251 
 
 It was three weeks since Cyril Hummerstone had 
 cast off the dust of Scrope-Denton from his large feet, 
 had turned back his unpleasing countenance in the 
 direction of home and of work. Since his departure 
 Lowood had by contrast found his solitude at Homer 
 Cottage so delightful that he congratulated himself 
 upon having suffered the tyranny of an odious presence 
 because it had enabled him to enjoy more fully the 
 relief of its withdrawal. 
 
 In the meantime all had gone well with the persons 
 of his living drama. Hestroyde and Joan were model 
 lovers, employing the greater portion of the time they 
 spent together and this was by far the greater 
 portion of their waking time in falling in and out 
 of quarrels, a pastime which vastly pleased one of 
 them, and of which the other doubtless enjoyed the 
 making-up. Legh was still gloomy and sorry for 
 himself. But Lowood saw that he was becoming more 
 and more reconciled to the inevitable, and more able 
 to accept Joan as his friend and as his friend's wife. 
 
 The fears Lowood had once held for the smooth 
 running in harness of these two had been laid. Under 
 the influence of what he could not doubt was her sincere 
 attachment to Hestroyde, Joan was growing more and 
 more womanly and gentle. And although it seemed 
 that she could not wholly suppress, she had very much 
 tempered her natural proneness to make pretty and 
 unlawful eyes at every man she met. Of this no doubt 
 motherhood would cure her, Lowood thought. Thus 
 the drama he had feared might be a tragedy was work- 
 ing out smoothly. Save that of course it was all 
 wrong for Sarah Munnings' son to be the hero of the 
 piece, and that he should wrongfully have usurped 
 a considerable estate and the heritage of a long line, 
 and should now carry off the heiress and prize of the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 All this offended Lowood's sense of justice and pre- 
 vented him from personally liking the young impostor.
 
 252 The Whips of Time 
 
 Moreover, he could not forgive him for defrauding 
 Legh of the heiress and prize of the neighbourhood. 
 For, much as she cared for him, Lowood was unable 
 to believe that had she known the truth she would 
 still have taken Sarah Munnings' son for husband. 
 
 As for the real Hestroyde, he reflected, Heaven help 
 him! If he had survived, he had doubtless become one 
 of that submerged tenth to which Hummerstone's act 
 had consigned him. Many years earlier he had made 
 efforts to trace him. All he had been able to learn had 
 been that the murderess had died in prison shortly after 
 his birth, and that the child had been handed over to 
 her relatives. 
 
 Now, he decided, to complete the drama and to 
 satisfy the dues of justice the true Hestroyde should 
 turn up, a model youth who, having triumphed over 
 untoward circumstances, and having by some means 
 discovered his true origin, should establish himself as 
 heir to Mowbreck, should carry off Joan and live 
 happily ever after, leaving Hestroyde to revert to his 
 normal place amid the submerged. 
 
 It was now ten days before the wedding, however, 
 and there appeared no sign of any of these fine happen- 
 ings. Scrope-Denton was in a ferment. Flags for the 
 decoration of windows were to be bought in every 
 shop. It not being anticipated that Nature would per- 
 form a miracle for an occasion even so auspicious as 
 was this and put forth roses in April, art, in the shape 
 of the village school children, was engaged in fashion- 
 ing rather clumsy substitutes from sheaves of pink and 
 of white tissue paper. These were intended to festoon 
 the air above the heads of bride and bridegroom from 
 the lych-gate to the porch of the church. Real flowers 
 were to be strewn beneath their feet by little girls with 
 baskets. All the servants on the Kesteven and the 
 Hestroyde and the Legh estates had been promised a 
 whole day's holiday, and in the evening a supper, of 
 which even to think made men and women hungry.
 
 Hummerstone Comes Back 253 
 
 The women were never tired of talking over Joan's 
 trousseau. Much of it had been ordered in Paris, and 
 " Fancy that ! " in awestruck tones, attended by tongue 
 clickings to express feelings for which words were 
 inadequate, paid tribute to the detailed descriptions of 
 persons who were privileged to know. Joan's maid in 
 these days was a personage. Women and girls eyed 
 her with respect, for she had seen and had even touched 
 the Parisian marvels. But she was just then too high 
 and exalted a person to condescend to particulars. As 
 well expect to wring from a Prime Minister details of 
 Royal confidences. 
 
 The honeymoon was to be spent in Italy, at that 
 season a Hosanna of flowers, which, like a spring 
 eruption from a flower crater, covered the mountains 
 and valleys with a lava of pure colour and fine 
 fragrance. 
 
 Then, like an evil genius into the midst of all this 
 joyful flutter, Cyril Hummerstone blundered back to 
 Scrope-Denton. Lowood had had no word of his 
 coming. As he sat one afternoon engaged in letter- 
 writing there were sounds in the hall outside of an 
 arrival. The door opened and Hummerstone came in. 
 
 Squaw Polly of the vulgar tastes gave a shrill whoop 
 of delight and fixed an ecstatic bead-eye upon his large 
 and well-remembered person. As her master had 
 promised, the bad penny had again turned up. 
 
 From the moment in which their eyes met Lowood 
 divined that there was mischief in him. Behind a mask 
 of fawning sleekness, with which he cringed for 
 further hospitality, his eyes gleamed assurance, tri- 
 umph, spite. There was in his face that look of 
 repellent cruelty one sees sometimes in the face of a 
 boy who has caught some creature, has been bitten by 
 it, and is about to kill it painfully. 
 
 Lowood, giving him a tepid welcome, felt a sense of 
 apprehension. The cad had gone away crestfallen,
 
 254 The Whips of Time 
 
 repulsed, beaten. He had come back confident, inso- 
 lent, with a light of triumph in his small, pale eyes. 
 Why had he come back so soon ? Why had he come 
 back at all? In a moment he made up his mind that 
 he would not a second time be responsible for his pres- 
 ence in Scrope-Denton. He determined to refuse him 
 the shelter he was aware he would ask. 
 
 " Well, Hummerstone," he said, " I thought you 
 were buried in your books. You went away with good 
 resolutions." 
 
 " I've thought better of them," Hummerstone 
 replied. " At least, I've thought of better ones." 
 
 " You need not," Lowood told him drily. " You 
 cannot improve on your decision to settle down to work 
 and to make a career for yourself." 
 
 " Too much grind," Hummerstone said. " I'm not 
 built that way. I suppose you'll be kind enough to 
 put me up for a few days ? " 
 
 " I'm sorry to say ' No/ but I cannot." 
 
 This was a blow. Hummerstone drew in his breath. 
 He threw an inquiring glance beneath his heavy lids. 
 
 " Full up? " he asked. " Some other visitor? " 
 
 " No," Lowood said. He did not like to do this 
 thing, but the possible consequence of doing anything 
 else was still less to his taste. " I'll tell you the truth. 
 Your last visit here wasn't a success. I was glad you 
 picked up and hoped the air and rest had sent you 
 back to/work. But for some reason or another you 
 were not persona grata with my friends. I cannot ask 
 you to stop." 
 
 " I don't ask you to take me to see them," the young 
 man disclaimed eagerly. " I only want a day or 
 two." 
 
 By his eagerness Lowood was again horribly re- 
 minded of the cruel boy with the creature he was about 
 to kill painfully, the creature which had bitten him. A 
 day or two might be quite sufficient for him to do no 
 end of mischief, seeing the frame of mind in which he
 
 Hummerstone Comes Back 255 
 
 was and the nature of the elements with which he had 
 to deal. 
 
 " I have said it," he told him. " I regret that I 
 cannot have you." 
 
 For a half minute his intending guest was non- 
 plussed. He had regarded Lowood's hospitality as a 
 foregone conclusion. He slipped a surreptitious hand 
 into a trouser pocket. Lowood heard the meagre chink 
 of coin, saw a mean look come into his mean eyes. 
 Then he said carelessly: 
 
 " Then I shall have to put up somewhere else. 
 There's an inn, I remember. No doubt they'll do me 
 well enough there." 
 
 His resolve to remain, showing some determined 
 purpose, deepened Lowood's sense of apprehension. 
 
 " Take my advice and go home," he said. " I'll put 
 you up for the night if you'll go back in the morning." 
 
 Hummerstone hesitated. Perhaps, after all, he 
 might save his hotel costs. Then he shook his head. 
 
 " No. I may want longer. But, I say, I won't bear 
 malice. If you'll give me a dinner I'll eat it. And 
 I'll put up at the Spotted Pig, or whatever they call 
 their hole of an inn." 
 
 " They call it The Grand Hotel," Lowood said drily. 
 " And I daresay they'll give you a very decent substi- 
 tute for dinner there." 
 
 " So you won't give me a dinner even. I'm sure I 
 don't know what I've done. I suppose you've heard 
 something from Hestroyde." He turned away his 
 mean, cruel eyes. Lowood imagined that poor crea- 
 ture having its neck wrung slowly. " Well, you'll hear 
 more of me before I've finished with him. Ta-ta! 
 wicked Godpa ! I'm sorry you're so cross." 
 
 He went out. Lowood heard him arranging with 
 Vox to send down his baggage to the hotel. 
 
 " Now the Fates forbid," he reflected, and kept 
 reflecting all the evening, " that Hummerstone has 
 discovered the truth from his father and is going to
 
 256 The Whips of Time 
 
 carry the Sarah Mannings tale to Hestroyde or 
 to Joan." 
 
 He slept little that night. A sense of impending 
 trouble lay beside him and with an irritating elbow 
 poked him back to unquiet consciousness the moment he 
 dozed off. He could not believe that the elder Hum- 
 merstone would have betrayed the truth. He had 
 known him cold and heartless, but in all things save 
 those which his zeal called science a strictly honourable 
 man. The secret was also safeguarded by the fact that 
 its revelation would gravely discredit Hummerstone 
 himself, might even indeed render him liable to legal 
 penalties. He decided that it was more probable 
 the young man's business had nothing to do with the 
 changed infants. Such a secret in such hands was 
 a notion too disquieting to entertain. 
 
 Nevertheless, his breakfast was spoilt by a question 
 which faced him from the other end of the table. How 
 had Hummerstone spent the previous evening? How 
 the night? He almost regretted that he had not kept 
 him at the cottage in order that he might have checked, 
 or at all events might have kept himself informed of 
 his movements. 
 
 Immediately after breakfast he went out. He 
 turned instinctively in the direction of Mowbreck. 
 Little as he liked Hestroyde he realised that the young 
 man was blameless in his imposture, and that in his 
 usurpation of Mowbreck and in his appropriation of 
 Joan he had acted merely as other men do when they 
 take without question all of life which comes to their 
 hand. Certainly he had not deserved a fate so cruel as 
 that this revelation should be made to him just as the 
 cup of his success and happiness was at his lips. 
 
 He met Hestroyde in the drive. Even as he entered 
 the gates he saw the young man's tall form detach itself 
 from the glooming shadow of the house and come 
 swinging down the straight approach. In his buoyancy 
 of movement he seemed to be skimming the air.
 
 Hummerstone Comes Back 257 
 
 Lowood, with that injured sense which comes of having 
 missed the best thing in life, guessed that the lover was 
 skimming the air on his way to his lady. As they 
 neared he saw a shade of disappointment set upon the 
 lover's eager face. 
 
 " You were coming to see me," he said. " I will 
 turn back with you." 
 
 " No," Lowood insisted. " Certainly not. It is a 
 fine morning. I will turn back with you and walk 
 wherever you are going. It is as good a 'method as 
 any other of seeing a friend. And the walk from here 
 to The Folly is a charming one." 
 
 Hestroyde dropped his lids. 
 
 " How did you know " he began sheepishly, and 
 ended in a hearty laugh. " Well, it's no good denying 
 it. That is where I was going." 
 
 As they went Lowood, still with that sense of 
 grudging against Fate, noted his keen face, the light 
 in his eyes, his answers to questions which had not 
 been asked of him, all the symptoms of that rarest of 
 conditions, a mind preoccupied by happiness. It was 
 plain that Hummerstone's impending machinations had 
 not yet been carried out, or that, if so, they had not 
 yet reached this happy lover. 
 
 As they neared Joan's house it appeared that other 
 persons were early abroad that morning. A large 
 young man came out by the lodge gate and lounged 
 toward them down the road. It was Hummerstone. 
 When he saw them he turned red and pale, and seemed 
 at first to hesitate as to what he should do. Then, with 
 a sudden hardihood crisping his sloppy embarrassment, 
 he raised his hat and nodded carelessly to Lowood, 
 ignoring Hestroyde. But Lowood saw him shoot a 
 covert glance in the younger man's direction, and com- 
 pleting his comparison of the previous day, found in 
 his eyes the cruel triumph of the boy who has put out 
 the life of the creature which had bitten him. 
 
 So soon as he had passed :
 
 258 The Whips of Time 
 
 " What the deuce ! " Hestroyde- broke out, " has 
 that ?" He seemed to remember that Hummer- 
 stone was Lowood's friend. He reconstructed his 
 sentence. 
 
 " So your friend Hummerstone is with you again? " 
 he said, now with a slight sneer on " friend." He 
 glanced up at the house with an angry expression, as 
 though challenging the right of any person in it to be 
 visited by Hummerstone. 
 
 " No," Lowood said. " He is not with me. He is 
 stopping, I believe, at the hotel." 
 
 Hestroyde made no comment. He seemed to be 
 turning the circumstance over in his mind. 
 
 Lowood left him at the lodge gate. He turned back 
 and walked slowly in order that he might not overtake 
 Hummerstone, always a lounger. Presently Hestroyde 
 came hurrying after him. His face was set and Lo- 
 wood heard him breathing hard. 
 
 " Miss Joan out ? " he questioned sympathetically. 
 
 " Turner said so," Hestroyde answered with a curt 
 laugh. " A lie, of course ! She herself arranged for 
 me to come at half-past ten to drive with her." 
 
 " She has been called out, no doubt," Lowood said. 
 It occurred to him that she had gone perhaps to Moon- 
 bank. 
 
 Hestroyde made no answer. He appeared to be 
 thinking profoundly. Suddenly he broke out : 
 
 " What is Hummerstone doing here ? Why did 
 Joan see him ? " Then, without waiting for answers : 
 " There's some damned mischief up," he blurted sav- 
 agely. " I'll tell you what happened. When Turner 
 said she was out I thought he was making a mistake. 
 It wasn't likely that after asking me to drive with her 
 she would go out. I said, ' Oh, that's rubbish, I'll find 
 her in the drawing-room,' and pushed past him. When 
 I got in the first thing I saw was a man's glove lying 
 on a table somehow I knew it was Hummerstone's,. 
 Then I heard a sound of violent crying, sobbing and
 
 Hummerstone Comes Back 259 
 
 moaning horrible to hear, in the little alcove at the end. 
 It was Joan. Do you think I shouldn't know her 
 voice in a thousand although I had never heard her 
 cry?" 
 
 He broke off to draw his handkerchief over his 
 distressed face. 
 
 " There was something about it that told me not to 
 go in to her. I stood where I was and called ' Joan 1 
 Joan ! ' In an instant she was quiet. I called again. 
 Then I heard a step and the further door of the alcove 
 closed. After a minute Turner came again and told 
 me he had searched the house but that Miss Kesteven 
 was out. What has Hummerstone told her ? How the 
 deuce can anything he has told her make her cry like 
 that? Joan isn't given to crying." 
 
 Lowood, at a loss what to say, had an inspiration. 
 
 " Did anything take place between you and Hum- 
 merstone before he went away last time ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," Hestroyde said. " I thrashed him for kiss- 
 ing her against her will." 
 
 " Then he has told her." 
 
 " Pooh ! " Hestroyde said. " She herself asked me 
 to do it." 
 
 Lowood had been merely fencing against a convic- 
 tion which, from the moment he had seen Hummer- 
 stone's look of baleful triumph, had forced itself upon 
 him a conviction that Hummerstone had discovered 
 and had betrayed the secret. Now he was sure of it. 
 Only something of the gravest importance would, 
 under the circumstances, have induced Joan to see him. 
 Only some revelation about Mark would account for 
 her vehement weeping and for her sudden avoidance 
 of him. For any other trouble she would surely have 
 gone to him for comfort. 
 
 " If you take my advice," he told the young man 
 sympathetically, " you will keep away from her to-day. 
 To-morrow, whatsoever is troubling her may show in a 
 different light."
 
 260 The Whips of Time 
 
 He smiled when the lover, for answer, consulted his 
 watch. 
 
 " Why, it isn't eleven," he said blankly. 
 
 That evening after dinner Legh came in. He came 
 in with reluctance. His eyes went before him search- 
 ing the room. His reluctance passed. 
 
 " I say," he said soon, " so you've got Hummerstone 
 with you again." 
 
 When Lowood had explained : 
 
 " What the deuce is he here for? And after what 
 happened, what the deuce does Joan mean by going 
 about with him? This afternoon when I was driving 
 past I saw her with him down by Carnage's Pond. 
 They were talking with their heads together, and Joan 
 seemed to be crying and begging him to do something 
 or not to do something. When they saw me they 
 slipped behind a shed. What rotten thing is up? 
 Hestroyde would be furious if he heard of it. When 
 Hummerstone was here last Mark thrashed him for 
 kissing her against her will. And now she hobnobs 
 with him as though he were her greatest friend." 
 
 The sad drawback to being a general sympathiser 
 with the world is that when the world is in trouble 
 its woes become the general sympathiser's, and when 
 it is in joy it goes off and enjoys itself without even 
 troubling to whisper a blissful word to its poor 
 sympathiser. 
 
 The face of poor Lowood, under stress of these dis- 
 quieting confidences, became presently as long as a 
 fiddle. Of what use to fly the ills of life upon one's 
 own account, only to have one's meals and sleep spoilt 
 by the woes of others who had sought them? Again 
 and again he told himself that he had been a fool to 
 follow up the elder Hummerstone's fateful sowing and 
 to reap the whirlwind of it. Or, having followed it up, 
 why had he allowed his fool of a soft heart to care a 
 rap what might happen to Sarah Munnings' offspring 
 and the persons associated with him ?
 
 Hummerstone Comes Back 261 
 
 The thing pursued him on all sides. Even to Moon- 
 bank. Two days later, when he sought refuge there 
 from his anxieties, increased by the news he had had 
 that Joan still absolutely refused to see Hestroyde, 
 Alma inquired: 
 
 " What is wrong with Joan ? She came in last night 
 looking pale and ill. She talked quite wildly and 
 begged us several times whatsoever might happen still 
 to believe in her and to remain her friends. What does 
 she expect to happen? Her marriage with Mr. 
 Hestroyde is to be next week." 
 
 Lowood suggested that she was perhaps nervous at 
 the step she was about to take, or unhappy at the 
 thought of leaving her old home and her mother. 
 
 " It may be that, of course," Alma admitted. " But 
 it isn't like Joan to be nervous and unhappy about 
 trifles." 
 
 Then the cloud burst. 
 
 Three mornings before the day fixed for the wed- 
 ding, Vox, bringing in his master's tea, observed 
 blandly : 
 
 " I suppose you've heard the news, sir." 
 
 " Do you mean yesterday's news, Vox, or this 
 morning's? As I am only just awake and have no 
 wireless receiver at my bedside I have had no means of 
 hearing this morning's news." 
 
 Vox laughed smoothly. 
 
 " You will have your joke, sir," he said. " I sup- 
 pose, as it only happened the first thing this morning, 
 you can't have heard that Miss Kesteven went off at 
 daybreak in a motor-car with Mr. Hummerstone to 
 be married in London, and that Lady Kesteven isn't 
 expected to recover from the shock, and that everybody 
 says Mr. Hestroyde will shoot himself or Mr. Hum- 
 merstone before the day is out. You will take your 
 bath as usual at half-past eight, sir, I presume?" 
 
 " Then you're an ass," Lowood said, springing out
 
 262 The Whips of Time 
 
 of bed. " I'll take it now. Now, I tell you, Vox, if 
 ever you were quick ! " 
 
 " Certainly, sir," Vox assented. 
 
 The elopement of Joan Kesteven with Cyril Hum- 
 merstone on the eve of her marriage with Hestroyde 
 was a nine days' wonder in the county, and was even 
 recorded in some London journals as " A Startling 
 Event in County Society." Also it was utilised in 
 a well-known motor paper as a means of advertising 
 the particular brand of car which supplied the motor- 
 power employed for the event. As so recounted the 
 truants headed for London at a sustained speed of 
 sixty miles an hour, and the gallant and daring latter- 
 day Lochinvar, who carried off his heiress-bride from 
 the very arms of her prospective bridegroom, was 
 recorded as having stepped out of the car and into the 
 registrar's office, in which he was united to his happy, 
 blushing bride, as fresh as a lark and*' without having 
 turned a hair. 
 
 Vox's facts were true, although his surmises and 
 those of the county proved false. Lady Kesteven 
 recovered, her indignation against her errant daughter 
 serving as a spur to her shocked energies. And Hes- 
 troyde shot neither himself nor his rival. 
 
 Lowood saw him a few days after the event, the day 
 indeed fixed for his wedding. His face was the face of 
 a hard old man, lined, set, and as one cut out of stone. 
 His eyes too looked as though made of stone or of 
 water frozen to its depths. Lowood was appalled at 
 the change in him, at his silence, at his rigidity. 
 
 His physician's experience told him that some day, 
 perhaps ten years later, the shock and suffering the 
 young man was so vehemently repressing now would 
 show their handiwork, would in some mental or phys- 
 ical wreckage reveal the ravage done by this hidden 
 cataclysm of the emotions. And in proportion as he 
 now permitted it no outlet would it be found to have 
 worked havoc.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 AFTER THE HONEYMOON 
 
 To the day of his death Lowood never heard the 
 opinions of his neighbours upon Joan Kesteven's 
 escapade. For Hummerstone being his friend, and he 
 having been responsible for his introduction to Scrope- 
 Denton, men, and even women, forbore to speak 
 plainly before him. 
 
 The little animated groups he found in drawing- 
 rooms, with their heads together and with their tongues 
 going more or less all at the same time, fell silent at his 
 approach. But he knew from these sudden silences, 
 and from certain significant glances directed toward 
 himself, that the groups were discussing his godson 
 and his godson's bride. Also he had to endure for 
 some weeks a degree of coldness in the demeanour of 
 his neighbours, the expression of their disapproval of 
 him for having introduced the person who had made 
 havoc of the traditions and decorum of local society. 
 
 One or two dowagers of hardy middle-age openly 
 took him to task. 
 
 " We always thought you such a nice man, Dr. 
 Lowood," Mrs. Tempest told him, " till we knew your 
 godson. Why did you not do your duty, as the prayer- 
 book says you should, and bring up the young man in 
 the way he should go? As for Joan Kesteven, she 
 deserves to be publicly whipped. Lady Kesteven will 
 never again be the same woman. And she has always 
 been so delicate, poor thing, as it was." 
 
 Lowood disclaimed all responsibility with regard to 
 Hummerstone.
 
 264 The Whips of Time 
 
 " I had not seen him," he insisted, " for ten years. 
 I liked him no better than my neighbours did. At all 
 events he didn't elope from Homer Cottage. I refused 
 to take him in." 
 
 " Oh, well, you should have brought him up better," 
 the lady insisted, shaking her obstinate head at him. 
 
 Lowood cared not a rush for the censure of his 
 neighbours. On the contrary, as injustice always does, 
 it made him think better of himself than he had been 
 disposed to do, for he knew himself wholly blameless in 
 those particulars for which they blamed him. He knew 
 that if to blame he was to be blamed, not for Hummer- 
 stone's lack of up-bringing, but for having himself 
 come to Scrope-Denton. That step of his it was which 
 had drawn upon his friends there the evil consequences 
 of Hummerstone's act. For that Joan's elopement was 
 one of those consequences he could not doubt. 
 
 He was convinced that Cyril had gone to her that 
 morning with the story of Hestroyde's true parentage. 
 Whether her action in marrying Hummerstone had 
 been due to offended pride or to self-sacrificing devo- 
 tion to her lover he could not decide. 
 
 She might, in a fit of piqued anger at finding herself 
 on the brink of marrying the murderess' son, have 
 considered an elopement with Hummerstone the readi- 
 est way at the same time of breaking with Hestroyde 
 and of putting it out of his power to persuade her to 
 make so degrading a union. Or it might have been 
 that love for him and her wish to save him from bitter- 
 est humiliation had moved her to sacrifice herself on 
 Hummerstone's terms. 
 
 " All I can think is," Legh told Lowood the evening 
 of the elopement, " that she has suddenly gone staring 
 mad. Nothing else explains it. She was devoted to 
 Mark. She disliked Hummerstone, as her insisting 
 upon Mark thrashing him for kissing her shows. 
 Something or other must have driven her clean out of 
 her mind. That's all I can say about it."
 
 After the Honeymoon 265 
 
 " What does Hestroyde think ? Did she write or 
 make any explanation ? " 
 
 " I believe not a word. But he won't speak of her. 
 I went up to Mowbreck at once. I was afraid he'd put 
 a bullet through himself. He seemed like a dead man, 
 all the life struck out of him. The moment I went in 
 he looked me straight in the eyes and said, ' Look here, 
 Bob. If you are my friend you'll never again mention 
 her name to me.' He'd been going through it by him- 
 self. He looked frightful. I told him she must have 
 gone stark, staring mad, but he only said, as though 
 nothing had happened, that he was pleased to hear from 
 Simmonds that's his bailiff that there would be a 
 good hay crop. He's one of those deep down chaps, 
 I've never been able quite to understand him. I hope 
 to Heaven those two won't come back here to live. If 
 Mark were to see her with him I'm sure there would be 
 bloodshed." 
 
 But as he said he did not quite understand Hestroyde. 
 
 A month later Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Hummerstone re- 
 turned to Scrope-Denton and took up their abode at 
 The Folly. And there was no bloodshed. Lowood met 
 Hestroyde out riding a few days after their return. 
 His face was still hard and pale, his eyes still frozen- 
 looking. He gave the impression of a man putting an 
 iron control upon himself. But he replied pleasantly 
 to Lowood's greeting. He told him that he was on his 
 way to a horse fair and hoped to make one or two 
 good bargains. 
 
 " When he takes off that strenuous grip from him- 
 self, what will happen ? " Lowood asked himself. 
 " Will he run amuck in rage and passion, or will he 
 have a bad physical breakdown ? " 
 
 The county at first decided that it would not call. 
 Mrs. Hummerstone had transgressed beyond all 
 bounds. To ostracise her would be merely to express 
 a proper sense of the decencies. But Joan had no
 
 266 The Whips of Time 
 
 inkling of this. Heiress and spoilt pet of the neigh- 
 bourhood as she had been all her life, it did not occur 
 to her that in this as in other things she would not be 
 allowed to fly in its face without reckoning. 
 
 Accordingly, at the Riccalby Tulip Show, a popular 
 function which took place a few days after her return, 
 she turned up, a shade pale perhaps, but smiling and 
 defiant, and greeted all her friends as though nothing 
 out of the common had happened. 
 
 Her assurance staggered them. Their own curiosity 
 to probe the mystery weakened them. They had 
 known her since she had been a child, and moreover, 
 The Folly had always been the most hospitable and 
 lavish house for miles about. Before they knew what 
 they were doing they found themselves snaking hands 
 with her and asking when they would find her at 
 home. 
 
 Lowood, who was present, scanned her face eagerly 
 for a clue to the emotions through which she had 
 passed. Was she happy or unhappy? Experienced 
 psychologist as he was she baffled him. It may have 
 been that she was on her guard, was wearing a mask 
 against the curiosity of her neighbours. Beyond the 
 fact that she was pale and slightly thinner, she was 
 her old audacious self. Some of this Lowood attrib- 
 uted to insensitiveness. One more highly strung could 
 not, after an adventure so discreditable, thus have met 
 her friends. 
 
 She was alone. Had Hummerstone been with her 
 the probability is that the county would have adhered 
 to its half- formulated resolution and would have cut 
 the pair of them. 
 
 Lowood, keenly interested and not a little trepid 
 upon the situation, was among the first to call upon her. 
 Three other visitors were there. Their presence gave 
 him an opportunity of studying the bride with more 
 attention than he could have done had he found her 
 alone. Hummerstone was again absent. It appeared
 
 After the Honeymoon 267 
 
 that, despite his assurance, he was loth to meet his 
 neighbours. 
 
 She was dressed more elaborately than had been her 
 wont. Lowood surmised quizzically that her handsome 
 tea-gown of pearl-grey silk and chiffon, with a rose- 
 coloured sash falling Empire fashion to the hem of her 
 train from a large paste buckle at the back, had been 
 part of the trousseau designed for her marriage with 
 Hestroyde. Her fair hair was dressed with elaborate 
 care. He could not decide whether this greater atten- 
 tion to her toilette was a mere playing out of her role 
 of bride, or whether it was meant to hide a change 
 which he now saw had taken place in her. 
 
 Whether temporarily or not he could not judge, but 
 for the occasion all her old charm was gone, her buoy- 
 ancy, her spirits, her high poise. In their place were a 
 languor and an abstraction which made another person 
 of her. She attempted to conceal these by a gaiety 
 which was obviously forced. It showed her still less 
 like Joan than like some stranger who was impersonat- 
 ing Joan as he had previously known her. Her vivac- 
 ity, her alluring movements, the coquettish flashings of 
 her green eyes, even her vivid complexion, had all 
 suffered. It was as though a leaden film had settled 
 over her. 
 
 Yet her pose deceived all save Lowood. 
 
 " The bad girl is just her old lively naughty self," 
 Mrs. Eustace de Lisle, a person of consequence in the 
 county, told Lowood in an aside. " But where in the 
 world is the man ? I am dying to see this Romeo who 
 in a few weeks could cut out so handsome a person as 
 Hestroyde." 
 
 " I assure you he is no Romeo," Lowood said 
 bluntly. " He is most ordinary." 
 
 Mrs. de Lisle shook her head. She put up her 
 lorgnettes and glanced about the room for him. 
 
 " That is from a man's standpoint," she insisted. 
 " Some of these men who seem to other men to be quite
 
 268 The Whips of Time 
 
 ordinary are irresistible to our sex. And Joan was 
 really very fond of Mark. And so he seemed to be 
 of her. But he evidently cared less than we thought. 
 Really, he was quite the life and soul of Lady Bern- 
 bridge's party the other afternoon." 
 
 Lowood remained after the others. He saw that the 
 moment the door closed upon Mrs. de Lisle's handsome 
 black and white silk tail Joan set aside her gaiety. 
 She crossed the room, and with a dull air of relief sat 
 down beside him. 
 
 After a minute : 
 
 " Talk," she said, " tell me about Scrope-Denton 
 and what everybody has been doing " a little gleam 
 of her old mischief shot into her eyes " and saying," 
 she added. 
 
 He told her scraps of news. But he saw she was not 
 interested. He saw that she was listening for a name, 
 which in punishment of her sins he would not mention. 
 
 " And Alma and Mrs. Beaumont? " 
 
 " They are still here. Miss Wenlith and I were 
 roaming among the Pleiades on Wednesday." 
 
 " They're some sort of stars, I suppose," she said 
 languidly. " Hasn't Alma finished with her stars 
 yet?" 
 
 After a pause : 
 
 " Were Alma and Mrs. Beaumont frightfully 
 shocked about me ? " she asked with sudden brusque- 
 ness. 
 
 " They were duly surprised," he told her drily. 
 
 " They should have known me better than to be 
 surprised at anything I do," she said as drily, " I was 
 always a fickle sort of beast." 
 
 The door opened. Hummerstone lounged in, hands 
 in pockets. He wore an air of chuckling complacency 
 and looked smugly sleek. He had grown fatter since 
 Lowood had last seen him. No doubt the sense that 
 he was handsomely provided for for life had relieved 
 his mind of the bugbear, work.
 
 After the Honeymoon 269 
 
 He showed some embarrassment on seeing Lowood. 
 He had thought all the visitors were gone. The em- 
 barrassment was only momentary. His air of sleek 
 and gratified complacency returned. He lounged up 
 the room with a deliberation which was insolence. 
 
 " Hello, Godpa ! " he said. " You here? " 
 
 Lowood was too much engrossed in trying to dis- 
 cover the nature of the strong emotion which Hummer- 
 stone's advent immediately excited in his bride to 
 resent his insolence. She sat impassive, her eyes 
 dropped, that leaden film over every limb and feature. 
 He could not say whether beneath it were affection, 
 or hate, or anger, or pleasure. 
 
 Having dutifully shaken hands with his guest the 
 bridegroom seated himself on an arm of his wife's 
 chair. He turned his head and regarded her with a 
 smiling stare. Then, with an air of proprietorship, 
 he took that one of her hands which was nearer to him, 
 laid it familiarly upon his large knee and played with 
 it. 
 
 The hand remained passive, neither returning nor 
 resisting his caress. He slid the other arm across the 
 back of her chair, and still with that air of proprietor- 
 ship, began to rub his deft fat ringers up and down her 
 cheek. 
 
 Lowood, glancing sideways at her motionless face 
 and form, saw a strange lethargy steal over her. Her 
 eyes turned listlessly toward him like the eyes of a 
 woman drugged. 
 
 Hummerstone babbled all the while of places they 
 had visited, of sights they had seen during their bridal 
 trip. It appeared to have been a rapid race across the 
 Continent. They had flown, as the tourist crow flies, 
 from point to point of popular interest, merely setting 
 but not resting foot anywhere, an odious helter-skelter 
 through many impressions without halting to enjoy 
 one. 
 
 He assumed the air of a millionaire, boasted of the
 
 270 The Whips of Time 
 
 expensive hotels at which they had stopped, of the cost 
 of things they had bought, of the methods de luxe of 
 their journey, as though he considered that to spend 
 lavishly his bride's fortune was a noble art. 
 
 Joan scarcely spoke. Sometimes when Hummer- 
 stone demanded her corroboration she assented 
 mechanically to his proposition. 
 
 Lowood listened, concealing his disgust beneath a 
 show of interest. Hummerstone inwardly sneered at 
 his show of interest. Even Lowood the philosopher 
 was impressed, he thought, by his new importance. He 
 contrasted this show of interest with the cold shoulder 
 he had shown to him when last he had asked the 
 hospitality of Homer Cottage. He could not have 
 been made to understand that as the hunter, the scien- 
 tist, the religious, and all other devotees, will risk life 
 and limb in the acquisition of their quarry, so the 
 psychologist will, for the love of his art, risk snubs 
 and personal humiliations in order to hang another 
 character-scalp at his belt. 
 
 The Folly had now become for Lowood a centre of 
 interesting human developments. In order that he 
 might be in a position to study these closely he was 
 prepared even to be snubbed by Hummerstone. 
 
 When he presently rose to go Joan gave him a 
 languid hand. Her eyes were still the eyes of a woman 
 drugged. Hummerstone accompanied him to the door 
 and went with him out upon the steps in order to be 
 out of the hearing of a servant. 
 
 " So you see I got there after all," he told him with 
 an offensive triumph in his eye and voice. " I'm settled 
 handsomely for life." 
 
 Lowood looked him searchingly in the face. 
 
 " I should like to know how you managed it." 
 
 The young man laughed and turned upon his heel. 
 
 " I told you I had a way with 'em," he said. 
 
 Lowood had not gone far down the drive before he 
 heard a step behind him. He heard in it pursuit of
 
 After the Honeymoon 271 
 
 himself. He turned. Mrs. Hummerstone it was the 
 first time he had so called her in his mind came up 
 with him. She stood for some moments in silence. 
 The lethargy had passed. She was her old assertive 
 self. 
 
 Then: 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she said abruptly, " mother refuses 
 to say a word. You must tell me something. I can't 
 ask anybody else. How did Mark bear it ? Is he here 
 in Scrope-Denton ? " 
 
 " Yes. He bears it well outwardly. But I can 
 see that it has been a great blow to him." 
 
 She resumed, in the same abrupt tone: 
 
 " If he had been going to to do anything desper- 
 ate he would have done it at once, wouldn't he ? " 
 
 " Since you have mentioned the subject," Lowood 
 said, " may I tell you, Mrs. Hummerstone, that in my 
 opinion it would be not only kind but wise if you and 
 your husband were to leave Scrope-Denton for a time." 
 
 " Why ? Of what are you afraid ? " 
 
 " I am not afraid. But naturally it will be hard for 
 Hestroyde to meet you and your husband while his loss 
 is still fresh upon him." 
 
 " He can go away if he wishes," she said through 
 her teeth. 
 
 " No. His father is ill. Besides, Legh tells me he 
 is pressed for money. He has been spending a good 
 deal of late." 
 
 A hard look came into her eyes, as though she were 
 fortifying herself against the conscience which re- 
 minded her why Hestroyde had been spending his 
 money. 
 
 Then she broke out suddenly : 
 
 " I can't go away. I must stop here. I loathe 
 travelling. I won't go away." 
 
 "Of course you must do as you please. But " 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 She laughed harshly.
 
 272 The Whips of Time 
 
 "Will Mark shoot him?" 
 
 He was shocked. It seemed brutal of her so to 
 state it. 
 
 "Of course not," he said, " we don't live in days of 
 melodrama." 
 
 " Has he told Bobby Legh or you what he thinks 
 of me ? Oh, have you nothing to tell me ? " she broke 
 out with sudden heat. 
 
 He insisted that there was nothing to tell. Hestroyde 
 did not speak of her.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 TROUBLE AT MOON BANK 
 
 IT appeared that the gods were now raining down 
 upon Scrope-Denton the things which had been on 
 their knees. Moonbank came in for a missile. 
 
 A few mornings later Lowood, going to give Alma 
 a lesson upon something or another, was inquisitively 
 catechised. 
 
 " Joan Hummerstone how odd it sounds ! 
 came in last evening," Alma greeted him. She looked 
 at him with puzzled eyes. " If Joan didn't like Mr. 
 Hummerstone why did she marry him? " 
 
 He replied by another question. 
 
 " If Joan hadn't liked Mr. Hummerstone would she 
 have married him ? " 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " I have still another to ask. If Joan likes Mr. 
 Hummerstone why is she so dull and unhappy? She 
 is absolutely changed." 
 
 He fenced. He reminded her that he was a bachelor 
 and knew nothing of the ways and moods of women. 
 He added a devout " Thank Heaven ! " because he was 
 a bachelor. 
 
 She laughed again. 
 
 " I believe," she said, " that you are worse off than 
 any husband of one wife, because, so far as I can see, 
 all the wives and daughters of the place put their 
 troubles upon you. Had you been married, I, for 
 example, should never have ventured to rob your wife 
 of you in order to turn you into my astronomer." 
 
 He replied gallantly that he preferred to be her 
 astronomer to being any other woman's husband.
 
 274 The Whips of Time 
 
 " For such a pretty speech," she said, " I will show 
 you the lovely Florentine jewel-case Joan brought back 
 from Italy for me." 
 
 When she had gone he found his quick sympathies 
 engaged upon her case. Whatsoever the trouble 
 between her and Burghwallis, it was playing havoc 
 with her life. She was pale, with a distressing pallor. 
 She was obviously unhappy. In her eyes now were 
 neither lamps nor fires, but only a strange quenched 
 look which went to his soft heart. 
 
 " What fools these mortals be ! " he reflected, angry 
 with the sympathetic heart which gave him pangs and 
 had never given him blisses. 
 
 Turning his head, he caught in one of Beauty's 
 mirrors a glimpse of himself. His face was as long 
 as a fiddle. 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " he said testily, " what an old 
 fool am I. What business in the world is it of mine 
 if these silly women eat out their hearts? Not one 
 of them spares a moment's sentiment for me." 
 
 He took up a Morning Post which lay upon the 
 table in the folds in which it had lain unopened since 
 it had been handed in. Shaking it out with an energy 
 which he intended to divert his attention from feminine 
 distresses, his eye was caught by a headline. 
 
 " Great Heavens ! " he ejaculated. And a second 
 time, " Great Heavens ! " His eyes raked three lines 
 of print for all they held. 
 
 He laid down the paper aghast. Again his sym- 
 pathetic heart was at its follies. Again his face was 
 as long as a fiddle. 
 
 " And these poor women evidently haven't heard a 
 word," he reflected. 
 
 The Duke of Saxby was dead. The news was told 
 in three brief lines which had evidently been flung 
 into print at the moment of going to press. The Post 
 regretted to record the sudden death from apoplexy 
 of the Duke of Saxby. The death occurred late in
 
 Trouble at Moonbank 275 
 
 the evening at Saxby House, Piccadilly. His servant 
 going to his room had found him lying beside the 
 hearthrug. 
 
 While he sat staring at the paragraph, Alma re- 
 turned with the Florentine jewel-case. Behind her 
 came Mrs. Beaumont, beautiful, serene, and smiling. 
 For a moment his eyes reverted to the paragraph to 
 convince himself that he had not been dreaming. For 
 here was the Duke's lady, smiling and serene, while 
 the Duke lay dead in his great house in Piccadilly, his 
 eyes for ever closed upon her beauty, his wine-coloured 
 hand now blenched by death, never again to seek 
 hers. 
 
 Inexpressibly shocked, he greeted her mechanically, 
 then turned to admire Joan's present in the first con- 
 ventional words which came to his lips. All the while 
 he was wondering what he ought to do. Should he 
 break the news to them? Would it not be brutal to 
 leave them to find it in the paper, or to learn it from 
 some startled servant? 
 
 " I'm afraid you don't admire Florentine work," he 
 heard Alma say, disappointed, and as it seemed from 
 a distance. 
 
 He protested forcibly that he admired it beyond 
 all things. Overdone enthusiasm is as unconvincing 
 as is faint praise. Alma showed herself a little nettled. 
 She returned the really beautiful thing to its case as 
 though she were in haste to shelter it from his unap- 
 preciative eyes. 
 
 While he still deliberated, his course of action was, 
 as so often happens, determined for him. For Mrs. 
 Beaumont laid a little lovely hand upon the Post. 
 
 " I declare I haven't read a word of to-day's news," 
 she said. " I slept so badly after a horrid dream that 
 I dozed again after my morning tea and was down 
 shockingly late." 
 
 Lowood had no alternative. He took the paper 
 from her hand.
 
 276 The Whips of Time 
 
 " I am grieved to tell you," he said gently, " that 
 there is bad news in it." 
 
 Her large eyes lifted to his and widened upon him 
 like those of a frightened child. Her face became a 
 face of soft white wax. She tried to speak and failed. 
 Her wax lips would not formulate the words. But 
 he knew that she knew. She tried again. 
 
 " George is dead," she said in a hoarse whisper. 
 Then she dropped like a stone to the floor and lay 
 there in her silks and laces. Lowood had been just 
 in time to break the violence of her fall. Alma helping 
 him, he raised her in his arms and carried her to a 
 couch. She was quite insensible. 
 
 " Is it true ? Oh, is it true ? " Alma whispered, 
 appalled. 
 
 Lowood, in his capacity of physician, loosed the 
 patient's dress and chafed the chill, white, perfect 
 hands. The man in him groaned above her loveli- 
 ness. 
 
 " What will she do ? " Alma whispered, as though 
 afraid of recalling her to her loss. " She was so fond 
 of him. They were so fond of one another." 
 
 Tears rolled down her own white cheeks. 
 
 " Poor, poor Uncle George ! " 
 
 When Mrs. Beaumont presently recovered she fell 
 into a state of quiet weeping, the quiet weeping of a 
 heartbroken, docile child. Lowood withdrew, leaving 
 the women with their grief. Alma was to send for 
 him should she need help of any sort. 
 
 In the hall he found the servants talking with their 
 heads together. It was plain that they had heard the 
 news. They were discussing the effect upon them- 
 selves which this change in the fortunes of their mis- 
 tress would make. 
 
 " Has Mrs. Beaumont heard, sir ? " the man who 
 opened the door for him asked. 
 
 He told him " Yes." 
 
 The man shook his head.
 
 Trouble at Moonbank 277 
 
 " Filmer, his Grace's valet, said the last time he 
 was here that his Grace wouldn't hold out much 
 longer." 
 
 Lowood called in the evening to see Alma. 
 
 " She does nothing but cry," the girl said, herself 
 crying. " How terrible death is ! I have never known 
 it before." 
 
 Lowood was truly sorry for her. There was, he 
 reflected, a further blow coming to her. Now she 
 must learn the truth of her aunt's position. 
 
 For a whole week there was still the same story to 
 tell. Mrs. Beaumont did little but quietly cry. She 
 was docile and did what they bade her, eating and 
 dressing and living mechanically. But she cried 
 quietly during it all. 
 
 Lowood wondered what she would do presently 
 when she should have recovered sufficiently to face 
 the situation. The Duke, he supposed, had already 
 made settlements or would have left her handsomely 
 provided for. He did not know whether or not Moon- 
 bank were entailed. Otherwise it was likely Saxby 
 would have left the house to her with means sufficient 
 to maintain it. 
 
 He was undeceived. A week later he found the 
 household in revolt. The lodge-keeper was missing 
 from her post. He was compelled to open the gate 
 for himself. In the house the velvet-footed obsequi- 
 ousness was a thing of the past. The man who opened 
 the door to him did so with a sour brusqueness. An- 
 other footman in his shirt-sleeves was apparent in the 
 background. There was an undercurrent everywhere 
 of bustle and noise. 
 
 " Has anything happened ? " he asked. 
 
 " Happened ? " the servant retorted. " I should say 
 so indeed. They say his Grace haven't left her a penny 
 piece. And who's agoin' to pay us our wages is what 
 we all want to know." 
 
 He spoke disrespectfully. Why waste respect upon
 
 278 The Whips of Time 
 
 the visitor of a mistress who was unable to pay even 
 for service? 
 
 " I don't think you need alarm yourselves," Lowood 
 told him drily. " No doubt the Duke's executors will 
 see that you do not go unpaid." 
 
 " Yes, up to the day of his Grace's death, perhaps," 
 the man returned, " but she's responsible after. And 
 they say she haven't got a ha'penny to bless herself 
 with." 
 
 In the boudoir a black-robed person moved to meet 
 him. The news had dried her tears and had brought 
 her downstairs. Heartbroken as she undoubtedly was, 
 her shrewd sense told her that tears were no weapon 
 with which to meet such a crisis. 
 
 Scarcely waiting for his condolences: 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she broke out, " can you believe it? 
 After all these years he has left me destitute. And he 
 always promised to leave Moonbank to me and plenty 
 of money. Heaven knows what I am to do." 
 
 She was dressed in the latest and most sumptuous 
 mode of widow's mourning. When she had ordered 
 it, it had been in full confidence of ample means. 
 
 " Have you had definite and authorised news?" 
 
 " Yes. The lawyer was here yesterday. The will 
 has been read. It is twelve years old. He had made 
 a later one, but he had not signed it. My name is not 
 even mentioned in any document or paper, nor Alma's. 
 He always told me he would leave something to 
 Alma." 
 
 " The new Duke will perhaps make a settlement." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Not a penny," she said. " He always hated me. 
 He I ' 
 
 Lowood gathered that a time had been when she 
 had been called upon to decide between the two 
 brothers, and had chosen the reigning Duke in the 
 place of the mere heir-apparent. 
 
 " George has left Moonbank to Lord Anthony," she
 
 Trouble at Moonbank 279 
 
 resumed. " Just now Lord Anthony is abroad. But 
 the lawyer told me he had cabled that I was to be 
 allowed to remain on here as long as it was convenient 
 to me. It's very kind of him, I'm sure. He has 
 always been very kind to me and Alma." 
 
 Lowood suggested delicately that Lord Anthony 
 might come to the rescue. She shook her head dole- 
 fully. Lord Anthony was not at all well off. 
 
 " I have only my jewels," she said, and burst into 
 tears. It was as though she had said she had only 
 her soul to be exchanged for bread and butter. 
 
 When she had recovered : 
 
 " Miss Alma ' he began. 
 
 She flushed guiltily. 
 
 " Alma has never known the truth. I haven't liked 
 to tell her. She does not know now. She is very 
 angry with him for leaving me destitute. But I think 
 Alma will be all right. Lord Anthony is sure to see 
 to that. He has always been fond of her since she 
 was a child." 
 
 " You think he will marry her? " 
 
 She shifted uneasily. She avoided his eye. 
 
 " I think Alma will be all right," she repeated. 
 
 Alma came in. Her eyes burned in her pale face. 
 
 " I suppose auntie has told you," she broke out. 
 " Oh, wasn't it wicked of him to be so careless, to 
 leave the will unsigned? You poor dear," she went 
 on, turning to her elder, who began again to cry, " I 
 am sure he meant to do everything kind. He was 
 devoted to you. But what an abominable law it is, 
 Dr. Lowood, which gives a wife nothing unless her 
 husband formally leaves it. I told the lawyer so. He 
 couldn't deny it. He looked quite stupid and muttered 
 inaudible things. He seemed ashamed of being con- 
 nected with such an unjust law." 
 
 Lowood pictured the poor man's surprised discom- 
 fiture to find the girl ignorant of the facts. 
 
 " Luckily," she went on eagerly, " through your
 
 280 The Whips of Time 
 
 kindness I shall be able to teach to teach astronomy, 
 or, if it comes to that, to teach children reading and 
 writing." 
 
 Lowood eyed her ruefully. She knew nothing abso- 
 lutely of the life she had now to face. Who in the 
 world desired to learn astronomy? In these days of 
 cut-and-dried certificated knowledge, of what value 
 would be her wide but heterogeneous reading, her 
 storehouse of imagination, her fine order of mind? 
 And apart from all these things, what mother of a 
 family would entrust the education of her boys and 
 girls to a member of the Moonbank menage"? 
 
 " But, Alma," her aunt interposed, " I tell you Lord 
 Anthony " 
 
 The girl's face hardened. 
 
 " Yes, dear," she said quickly, " but don't tell me 
 again. Of course I cannot be dependent upon any- 
 body. And it will be really most interesting to get 
 one's own living." 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont swept her beautiful eyes to Lowood. 
 She lifted and dropped in despair her beautiful, help- 
 less hands. 
 
 " Alma knows nothing about things," she said. 
 
 On the steps, as Lowood went out, he met Joan, 
 still cloaked and veiled in her role of Miss Smith. 
 
 " Is it true that the old wretch has left her noth- 
 ing? " she demanded in her former direct fashion. 
 
 Lowood began to excuse him. There had been a 
 later unsigned will 
 
 " He ought to be whipped for not having signed 
 it," she said indignantly. " What are the poor things 
 to do?" 
 
 When Alma had told her all the woes and plans : 
 
 " It's all rubbish," she said practically, " for you 
 to talk of teaching. Nobody nowadays wants to know 
 any of the things you could teach. Who cares two- 
 pence for astronomy and mysticism? You must write 
 books. That's the thing for you to do. You know
 
 Trouble at Moonbank 281 
 
 so much and have so much imagination you could 
 write novels like a house on fire. And I'll take you 
 in, of course, if you will come. I will rig you up a 
 study in the tower." 
 
 Alma fell upon her neck and kissed her. 
 
 "Oh, Joan," she said, "how beautiful of you! 
 And do you really think I could write books ? " 
 
 Joan was convinced of it. There was no difficulty 
 about it at all. With so many notions as Alma had, 
 she had simply to write them down, divide them into 
 chapters, get them printed and published and the 
 thing was done. They would probably take the world 
 by storm. 
 
 " You may be a second Mrs. Browning," she in- 
 sisted. " Although I can't read poetry myself. It 
 seems such rot." 
 
 " But auntie " Alma said, and looked at auntie, 
 sitting forlorn in her chair. 
 
 Joan's face fell. She was obviously embarrassed. 
 She knew her world well enough to be aware that to 
 make the Duke's lady an inmate of her house was out 
 of the question. If her world would accept Alma it 
 was the very utmost to be expected of its charity. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont also knew the world. Joan's em- 
 barrassment and fallen face were open pages to her. 
 
 " Oh, I shall do well enough," she protested. 
 " There are numbers of things I can do. You know, 
 Alma, I sing, I have been trained." (Once upon a 
 time, although Alma knew nothing of this, she had 
 sung in public little songs of which Alma knew still 
 less.) "And I can dance." (The little songs had 
 been accompanied by little dances in tights and span- 
 gles. But of course Alma had no suspicion of either.) 
 " I can teach singing and dancing. And if the worst 
 comes to the worst I have my jewels." 
 
 Again she wept. Her jewels were the apples of her 
 eyes.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 A NEW LEAF 
 
 A PITIFUL fact of life is that no man knows his fellow's 
 heart. If he could see there, as he can see in his own, 
 the griefs and hopes, the fluttering- fears and aspira- 
 tions, the good intentions which are only just too weak 
 to translate themselves into actions in a word, all 
 those poor fledglings of our undevelopment which are 
 striving hard to fly, man's inhumanity to man would 
 cease. But the mask of flesh which conceals these per- 
 turbations is, it may be, a mask of smooth and well-fed 
 flesh, a confident gait, a cool eye and a controlled 
 manner. For this reason the half-hearted sinner, who 
 craves nothing more than for strength to turn over 
 a new leaf, may show to his fellows as a robust ruffian 
 who no doubt glories in his iniquities and pursues his 
 career of crime without a qualm. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont, like other human persons, was 
 aware within her lovely flesh of a conscience which 
 pricked her, of regrets because she was not a better 
 woman, of resolutions never again so long as she lived 
 to depart from the path of virtue. For she had not 
 been able to believe that her position was a vicious one. 
 She had been sincerely attached to the Duke. She had 
 nursed him devotedly through illness, had done her 
 best to save him from his besetting sin, drink, had 
 frequently mildly reproved him for swearing, and for 
 ten whole years had never thought of any other man. 
 Of course it was wrong. Neither the law nor the 
 Church had sanctioned their union. But she was so 
 fond of him that she had not been able to believe that 
 she was a wicked woman.
 
 A New Leaf 283 
 
 Now, however, a crisis had arisen. Those prickings 
 of conscience and fluttering aspirations were to be put 
 to the test. Had the Duke left her enough money to 
 live upon she was convinced she could have remained 
 a good woman for the rest of her life. She would even 
 when she should have been a little older have 
 gone about visiting the poor and practising other sim- 
 ilar virtues, and would have mourned her lost lover 
 as faithfully as though he had been her lawful husband. 
 
 But it costs money sometimes to maintain ideals. 
 And he had left her destitute. She could not therefore 
 afford to mend her ways after the luxurious and hand- 
 some fashion she had contemplated. Despite her grief 
 she could not help feeling a sad sense of injury against 
 him. He might have left her enough money to be 
 good upon, and yet to keep her jewels. 
 
 For a week after Joan's visit she pondered the 
 situation deeply deeply enough to cause her some 
 severe headaches in addition to her heartaches. Re- 
 lieved of the responsibility of Alma, who, if Burgh- 
 wallis did not do something for her, would soon be 
 making money by her books, she was free to do what 
 she would with her remaining years. 
 
 At the end of a week she had made up her mind 
 not very firmly, but definitely. She would be a good 
 woman. Her life hitherto had been happy and lux- 
 urious (her tears broke forth afresh). The remainder 
 of it should be good (a fresh rain of tears in self-pity 
 for all that she intended to renounce). 
 
 Alma observed that she sat absorbed for hours 
 poring over the advertisement columns of the news- 
 papers, that with her gold-handled scissors she cut out 
 little slips, while Janita stared out her big eyes in fond 
 astonishment to discover the meaning of this new 
 activity on the part of her adored mistress, an activity 
 which led to the heartless neglect of a little dog. To 
 Alma's questions she replied that she was trying to 
 amuse herself, but her puzzled brows and her dejected
 
 284 The Whips of Time 
 
 look made it appear that she was not very well suc- 
 ceeding. She pinned the slips carefully together with 
 an emerald-headed pin and put them away in a jewelled 
 reticule. 
 
 By this time the house had been reduced to order. 
 For Burghwallis had instructed his lawyers that until 
 he could return Moonbank was to be kept up at his 
 expense. Therefore the servants, although not now 
 particularly velvet-footed, did not go about in shirt- 
 sleeves. 
 
 At the end of another week, having now quite a 
 little sheaf of cuttings impaled upon her jewelled pin, 
 Mrs. Beaumont was ready for action. She amazed 
 Alma one morning by joining her at the eight o'clock 
 breakfast, which was Alma's custom, in order to allow 
 her a long day of work. The unprecedented act set 
 Alma's eyes opening. They opened still more widely 
 when she observed her relative more closely. In all 
 her experience of her she had never seen her dressed 
 like this. 
 
 She wore a plain and closely-fitting gown of some 
 black homely stuff. Alma supposed she must have 
 borrowed it from one of her maids. A little cambric 
 collar was its sole embellishment. Her beautiful amber 
 hair was parted simply on her brows and gathered into 
 a smooth knot behind. A cameo brooch, an exquisite 
 thing, and a wedding ring were all of her jewels. On 
 her amber hair was set a small black bonnet such as 
 lady's-maids sometimes wear. But on her amber hair 
 it did not look in the least like a lady's-maid's bonnet. 
 It suggested a charming freak on the part of Aphrodite 
 to masquerade as a genteel person of the lower middle 
 classes. Her lovely eyelashes were damp still with 
 tears she had shed upon seeing herself in this guise. 
 For she had an artistic taste in dress, and to the eye 
 artistic a bonnet is an abomination. Men have won a 
 D. S. O. for acts less brave than was hers when she 
 braced herself to face London in it,
 
 A New Leaf 285 
 
 There had been always a great gulf of reserve 
 between her and Alma, the gulf which separates 
 natures widely dissimilar. Alma made no remark 
 therefore upon the dress and bonnet, and when her 
 aunt announced briefly that she should be all day in 
 London she asked no questions. 
 
 When at half-past eight a carriage was announced, 
 Mrs. Beaumont rose in a state of agitation. Arrived 
 at the door, she turned back and, with a rare show 
 of emotion, kissed Alma affectionately. 
 
 " I'm so wretched, dear, you don't know," she said, 
 " But wish me luck." 
 
 Alma returned her kiss cordially. 
 
 " With all my heart," she said. " But what are 
 you going to do ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont looked about her with a shamefaced 
 air. Then finding nobody within hearing she said, in 
 a hurried, abased whisper : 
 
 " I am going to find a situation." 
 
 " A situation ! " Alma echoed blankly. 
 
 " Yes, dear," she tapped her jewelled reticule, " I've 
 cut out a lot of advertisements. I'm going to-day to 
 see all the people. You see, as he left me nothing I 
 must do something. And I shall get used to it in 
 time." 
 
 Alma was shocked. She found it pitiful this 
 spasm of practical effort on the part of the lovely, 
 helpless creature, whose luxurious life had so unfitted 
 her for practical efforts. 
 
 " Oh," she protested, " don't think of such a thing. 
 I shall be able by my books to make enough for both 
 of us." 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont shook her bonneted wise head. 
 
 " In a week or two we shall have to leave Moon- 
 bank. And your books are not begun yet. Books 
 take a long time to print, Alma. I once knew a writer 
 who starved to death because nobody would buy his 
 books; his name was Chalmers."
 
 286 The Whips of Time 
 
 " I am afraid, dear," Alma said compunctiously, 
 " until I can make a little money, you will have to sell 
 some of your jewels. Not those you like best, of 
 course, but some of the others. That would be much 
 nicer and more sensible than taking a situation." 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont's lovely mouth set. 
 
 " It may come to that," she admitted, " but if I 
 find a situation I shall be able to keep them." 
 
 That in such a situation as she was seeking she 
 would not be able to wear them seemed to have escaped 
 her. 
 
 Her maid brought in a black dolman. With rather 
 a disdainful nose she adjusted it over her mistress's 
 shoulders. If her mistress was poor now and was 
 going to see her lawyers it was no reason that she 
 could find to make herself a perfect frump. She was 
 under notice to leave. (Mrs. Beaumont's second maid, 
 on learning her mistress's destitute state, had quitted 
 the house indignantly. She would never have risked 
 her reputation by taking service at Moonbank had she 
 suspected that Moonbank would come to this summary 
 and discreditable end. Persons in Mrs. Beaumont's 
 position have much to endure from their servants.) 
 The maid who remained and disdainfully adjusted the 
 dolman was attached to her mistress, although she had 
 no patience with her for making herself into a frump. 
 That was not the way to recoup her fortunes. 
 
 When she had gone off in her dolman and bonnet, 
 shrinking abashed from the eyes of her unsympathetic 
 household (for positions such as hers succeed only 
 when they are notably successful), Alma sat for some 
 minutes in dejected thought. Life was cruel and un- 
 just. All was obviously wrong with a world which 
 could in the course of a week throw two women out 
 of a state of luxurious security into destitution, and 
 one of those women the most beautiful creature 
 in it. 
 
 Then it struck her sharply that under these circum-
 
 A New Leaf 287 
 
 stances there was no time to be lost. She repaired to 
 the library, where, having locked the door against 
 intrusion, she put a new nib into her pen and sat down 
 to write a book.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 DEFEAT 
 
 WHEN Alma had recognised the cruelty and the in- 
 justice of a world which in the twinkling of an eye 
 could so reverse the fortunes of two hapless women, 
 she believed that she had probed its heartlessness to 
 the core. That one so amiable and so superbly lovely 
 as was Mrs. Beaumont would meet a difficulty in 
 obtaining " a situation " did not occur to her. Who 
 would not be proud to make her a member of their 
 household by mere payment of a salary? 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont knew the world better, however. 
 She proved it by detracting from her charms as well 
 as she had been able, by donning a dowdy garb. In 
 point of fact, however, her dowdy garb added a bizarre 
 and extraordinary note to her appearance. Her beauty 
 appeared to be fairly bursting out of it. One no more 
 noted her dolman and bonnet than one notes the hum- 
 ble calyx out of which some lovely rose breaks. Save 
 that it gave her an appearance of masquerading. 
 
 In a state of sad trepidation she thrice passed and 
 repassed No. 33 Eaton Square before she found cour- 
 age to enter it. When finally she knocked upon the 
 door the footman eyed her with impertinent amaze- 
 ment. Yes, her ladyship was in but was very much 
 occupied. Would she state her business? Oh! she 
 had called about the advertisement for a housekeeper. 
 Would she step into the ante-room? 
 
 When presently she was ushered into Lady M.'s 
 presence, Lady M. preserved her self-possession to a 
 degree which did credit to her breeding. To her
 
 Defeat 289 
 
 breeding may also be accredited the fact that she put 
 a few questions to this extraordinary applicant for the 
 post of housekeeper. For from the moment the per- 
 fect face and amber head had met her gaze she had 
 merely smiled mentally at the notion of such a face 
 and head as a part of her menage. One had masculine 
 relations to consider. 
 
 She examined her curiously as Mrs. Beaumont ex- 
 plained that she was fond of housekeeping and had 
 always herself looked after things in her own house. 
 Then she rose, dismissing her. She would let her 
 know if she wished to hear further from her. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont departed, disappointed. As I have 
 said, she thought highly of rank. Lady M. was the 
 only countess on the little sheaf of advertisements in 
 her jewelled reticule. The jewelled reticule had not 
 escaped Lady M.'s observation. She wondered what 
 could have happened to set this person seeking her 
 living by work. She decided that the person was 
 either in the pay of some big gang of burglars who 
 had designs upon her husband's priceless miniatures, 
 or that the person could not be quite sober. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumont, sadly disconcerted, stood at a cor- 
 ner of the square and consulted her list for the next 
 and last title upon it. This was the lady of a mere 
 baronet. And after her prolonged association with a 
 duke Mrs. Beaumont had but small opinion of baro- 
 nets' ladies. 
 
 The baronet's lady did not trouble to ask her a 
 question. She did not even sit down. She was a 
 spare woman, of a mahogany, bilious skin and beady 
 black eyes. She merely entered the room, stared hard, 
 stared again as though she had received a personal 
 affront. Then as though the personal affront of her 
 visitor's beauty increased with each moment of its 
 presence she said rudely : 
 
 " Oh, you wouldn't do at all. You are not at all 
 the sort of person I require."
 
 290 The Whips of Time 
 
 She crossed the room and rang- a bell. And Mrs. 
 Beaumont, smarting all over, was bundled into the 
 street. 
 
 Dismayed and in a little panic, she sought a place 
 of refuge, somewhere in which she could sit quie'c and 
 recover herself. People advertised for a housekeeper, 
 and yet they did not seem anxious to engage a house- 
 keeper. Perhaps they did not like her to be so hand- 
 some. She signed. Her experience of life had shown 
 her that no women liked other women to be handsome. 
 She sighed again. Her experience of life had also 
 shown her that there were reasons for this objection 
 upon their parts. 
 
 When she found a confectioner's shop she slipped 
 inside to reinforce her courage and to assure herself, 
 by consulting a mirror, that her bonnet was not awry 
 or in some way so absurd as to create a prejudice 
 against her. The baronet's lady had looked at her as 
 she might have done had her amber hair been stream- 
 ing down her back. 
 
 The attendant who lounged forward to supply her 
 wants, when she asked for a bun brought her the 
 smallest and dryest one in the shop, and flung it ill- 
 naturedly before her. Half-spiteful, half-weeping, she 
 withdrew to stare at her from a distance. No woman 
 had a right to be so lovely when other women couldn't 
 get a man to look at them. It would serve her right 
 if the bun choked her. 
 
 The bun did not choke her, however. On the con- 
 trary, hard though it was and unpalatable, it amiably 
 supplied her with fresh force. And when she had 
 asked and procured from the spiteful girl a glass of 
 cherry-brandy, she felt quite courageous. 
 
 That doctor's wife in Cavendish Square might look 
 more favourably upon her. She could not be expected 
 to be so particular as were titled women. 
 
 The doctor's wife got so far as to ask her for ref- 
 erences. Not that she had the slightest intention of
 
 Defeat 291 
 
 engaging her, but because she was a kind-hearted 
 woman and could not easily invent an excuse for reject- 
 ing her. But the doctor's wife was not kind-hearted 
 after she had seen how the question of references con- 
 fused her visitor .and crimsoned her beautiful face. 
 The truth was that this matter of references had never 
 occurred to Mrs. Beaumont. It was so long since her 
 face had not been her fortune. 
 
 " One always, of course, requires references," the 
 lady said, and rose up in her chair very stiffly. 
 
 Again Mrs. Beaumont found herself in the street 
 and now with her heart descending toward her little 
 patent leather boots. Two of her proposed employers 
 of the morning had espied these elegant little boots 
 beneath her modest garb, and had found them to be 
 cloven hoofs. Even the Countess of M., her feet being 
 large, did not affect such boots. 
 
 I need not multiply examples. Mrs. Beaumont had 
 cut out with her gold-handled scissors, nine advertise- 
 ments for housekeepers and one for a companion. 
 
 The one for a companion seemed to be a little hope- 
 ful, as the old lady who required to be companioned 
 was blind. She was a gaunt, avid old woman, hungry 
 for life, for interest, for pleasure and amusement. Her 
 blindness prevented her from seeing the applicant. 
 But, like some frozen person set before a fire, she 
 basked in the luxuriant, warm atmosphere radiating 
 from her. She caught her warm hands into her old 
 chill ones. 
 
 " You are full of vitality and health," she cried 
 hungrily, " I can feel it in you. Yes ! come at once. 
 You are just the person I require. I felt young when 
 you entered the room. With you to hold my hands 
 and give me vital force I might live another twenty 
 years." 
 
 But this time Mrs. Beaumont fled of her own will 
 mustered her forces and fled ere she should faint 
 in the vampire presence which she felt was sucking out
 
 292 The Whips of Time 
 
 her life. Rather the Thames than to live with her, 
 she reflected, for the first time in her placid life admit- 
 ting a tragic thought. 
 
 Of her nine advertisements for housekeepers she 
 applied for seven only. Her seventh potential em- 
 ployer was a man, a rich financier with a house in 
 Park Lane. And this was the worst of all of her 
 experiences. It was the straw which broke the back 
 of her fine resolutions. Faint, sick and desperate for 
 the most terrible day in her life, she slipped into the 
 Park and sank exhausted on a bench. 
 
 In her recent luxurious career, sheltered (although 
 not under the law) from the rough and callous coarse- 
 ness of the struggle for existence, she had forgotten 
 what this struggle may be like. As a girl, early 
 orphaned, she had gone through similar experiences. 
 Her supreme beauty had shut all doors but one to her. 
 Fear, jealousy, envy and anger had thrust out their 
 hard, selfish hands and had slammed the other doors 
 in her beautiful face. And that one door had not even 
 a latch which needed lifting. It flung wide at a touch. 
 And if in those days before she had entered the for- 
 bidden land how much more now, when she had 
 long been a dweller therein, were the doors of virtue 
 and repute locked fast upon her? 
 
 Pitifully she remembered the Duke, who had wor- 
 shipped at the little blue-veined feet within her patent 
 leather shoes. So had he sheltered and made a fine 
 nest for her that she had forgotten the world of labour 
 which is paved with flint stones. Almost angrily she 
 hoped that where he was he would be hurt by knowing 
 the hardships through which she was passing. Miser- 
 ably she realised that there was but one way left to 
 her of life if she would keep her jewels. 
 
 At such a psychological crisis in a woman's career 
 is the man ever missing ? At this crisis in hers, as she 
 sat on the bench in the Park, spent and dejected of
 
 Defeat 293 
 
 body and of will, afraid and desperate, a man stopped 
 before her, raising his hat. 
 
 " Is it possible it can be you, Emmy? " he inquired 
 in French. 
 
 She glanced up and recognised him. 
 
 " Yes, it's me right enough," she returned dully, 
 relapsing into the mode of speech which had been hers 
 at that period of her existence at which she had known 
 him. 
 
 " After all these years," he said. 
 
 His keen eyes were scanning her from head to foot. 
 They halted, puzzled, on the bonnet. They found her 
 little pointed patent leather feet. He dropped beside 
 her on the bench. 
 
 " So Saxby's dead," he said. " Left you a fortune, 
 eh?" 
 
 " Not a penny," she replied sullenly. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said. Again his eyes went over her. 
 Despite her garb, her fatigue and her dejection, he 
 knew no woman who was a patch upon her. 
 
 " Come and have some tea," he said presently. 
 " You look tired." 
 
 She went. With a swelling heart. She had always 
 hated him. And she had been so fond of George. 
 
 So the one day of supreme aspiration in her life 
 turned out a brief, weak day of wretched failure. Had 
 any kind eye seen into her childish mind, any kind 
 hand stretched itself helpfully out to her, who knows 
 but that she might not have found strength to regen- 
 erate her nature ? Yet the laws of God are inscrutable. 
 His mills grind exceeding small. The evening of the 
 best day of her weak life plunged her into the worst. 
 It found her no longer in her bonnet and maid's gown, 
 but in a smart dinner-dress of handsome make, al- 
 though (because it had been bought ready-made) there 
 were creases in it which sorely vexed her. It found 
 her dining with her newly-found -old friend, striving 
 her hardest to make venal smiles and gaiety out of
 
 294 The Whips of Time 
 
 her share of a bottle of the best champagne the Hotel 
 Ritz afforded. 
 
 For she had been fond of the Duke, who had left 
 her destitute.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 JOAN AND MARK 
 
 LOWOOD returned from Moonbank with a grave face. 
 He knew, although Alma did not, the meaning of the 
 news she had conveyed to him. 
 
 The previous morning auntie had gone to town, and 
 in the evening a telegram had come from her explain- 
 ing that she had met some old friends and was going 
 with them for a visit to Paris. She would write from 
 there. Alma had been pleased. Poor auntie ! she said. 
 It would be a nice change for her and would distract 
 her thoughts. She was evidently to stay for some 
 length of time as she had asked that her maid and 
 Janita should be sent to her. 
 
 For her own part, Alma had said, it would leave 
 her more ffee to get over the beginning of her book. 
 She had found the beginning a sad difficulty. Once 
 make a satisfactory start and no doubt she would get 
 on apace. 
 
 Lowood had left her to make the start and had 
 walked home dejected. That bad devil! Not only 
 the best tunes but the lion's share of the beauty ! His 
 poor Aphrodite! How heavily handicapped she had 
 been for the race of civilised life, whom Nature 
 had so bountifully equipped. He wondered dismally 
 whether he could not himself have done something 
 better than this for her. 
 
 Near to Mowbreck he came upon Joan. It was the 
 third morning he had overtaken her loitering there. 
 That leaden look was on her. Her eyes were dull. 
 
 Despite her preoccupation she coloured at his ap-
 
 296 The Whips of Time 
 
 proach. It was her custom to take bulls by the horns. 
 So now she took meek Lowood. She did not offer 
 her hand to him in conventional greeting. She stood 
 before him with a sulky air. Then she said : 
 
 " I never tell lies to you, Dr. Lowood, because you 
 are too clever to believe them. You always know 
 what one means before one has had time to say it. 
 You know of course I am waiting to see Mark Hes- 
 troyde." 
 
 " How could I suppose you would do so unwise and 
 so unkind a thing, Mrs. Hummerstone? " he rebuked 
 her. " You can only pain him." 
 
 She uttered a hard little laugh. 
 
 " Oh, rubbish ! " she said, " you are too tragic. 
 These things don't hurt very much once they are 
 over. But he avoids me. I have never set eyes on 
 him since I came back. It's all rot absurd. We 
 can't go on playing the little old man and his wife 
 on a horsehair for the rest of our lives. When he 
 comes out I go in, and when I go in he comes out. It 
 is too impossible. I believe in having things out. I'm 
 going to have things out with him. I played him 
 what he believes was a rotten, mean trick. I am will- 
 ing to apologise. And then we can settle out again 
 into jog-trot friends. But I won't stand all this avoid- 
 ance business. It gets on my nerves horribly. I must 
 settle it one way or " 
 
 They were in sight of the lodge. As they were 
 standing her face was turned to it, Lowood's in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 Suddenly every trace of colour left her. Even her 
 lips paled. Her dull eyes lighted. She broke off short. 
 Then she said through her teeth : 
 
 " Please go on. He is here." 
 
 Lowood lifted his hat and went on down the road. 
 But at the first bend he stood waiting, his head crooked 
 forward, every cell in his brain straining to his ears. 
 For he remembered that she had done this man an
 
 Joan and Mark 297 
 
 irreparable wrong, that she was on her way alone 
 to meet him, and that he was Sarah Munnings' 
 son. 
 
 She stood waiting in the road, her breath coming 
 fast, a hard smile on her mouth. She saw from his 
 stiffened neck and from his eyes directed above her 
 head that he was intending to pass her without recog- 
 nition. The iron-bound scorn of his eyes and face 
 appalled her. Intolerant and difficult-tempered as he 
 had always been he had been amenable to her. She 
 saw now that she might as well seek to coax marble as 
 appeal to him. 
 
 There are women who until they have lost him do 
 not realise all that a man has meant to them. When 
 they have lost him they know that they have not only 
 lost, but that some other woman will find him. 
 
 Joan, despite the green eyes which are breeding- 
 pools for jealous thoughts, had never experienced the 
 slightest jealousy of Hestroyde. Since they had been 
 boy and girl he had been her romantic slave. She had 
 never seen him make love to any other girl. Of a 
 one-ideaed nature, she had been always his dominating 
 thought. But she saw now that she no longer domi- 
 nated him, that he had effectually cast her out. 
 
 A sudden desperation seized her. Before she knew 
 what she was doing she had moved in front of him 
 and had caught hold of one of his arms. 
 
 " You shall not pass me,'* she cried vehemently. 
 " Mark, I will have it out with you. I admit I seem 
 to have behaved shamefully. But you don't know all. 
 If you knew all you would understand, and and be 
 sorry for me." 
 
 He could not without violence release himself. He 
 eyed her stonily. 
 
 " Let go my arm," he insisted, " I have nothing to 
 say to you." 
 
 " But you shall say something," she cried master- 
 fully. " Or at all events you shall listen. You return
 
 298 The Whips of Time 
 
 my letters unopened. You avoid me. You treat me 
 like a dog. You shall hear that I don't deserve it, that 
 there was a reason for what I did, that there was 
 nothing else left for me to do." 
 
 " Kindly loose my arm," he insisted again arro- 
 gantly. " We can't fight in the open road." 
 
 " You shan't go without breaking my hands. You 
 shall hear me. It was for your sake more than for 
 my own that I did what I did. I made a terrible 
 discovery that meant shame to me and to you. I 
 married him to prevent it coming out, to keep us both 
 from being overwhelmed with horrible shame. I 
 wonder it didn't kill me. And you think it was a 
 mere caprice, that - 
 
 A long time had elapsed since she had seen him. 
 Her eyes dwelled hungrily upon his handsome, scorn- 
 ful face, his insolent eyes, his supple figure. 
 
 " Oh, do you think ? " she broke out vehemently 
 and stopped. 
 
 He stood unmoved as a rock. 
 
 "Why be melodramatic?" he returned with flick- 
 ing scorn. " I have asked no explanation. You pre- 
 ferred your sandy outsider. Well, you have got him." 
 
 She writhed beneath his light contempt. 
 
 " Oh, if I were to tell you the truth the truth," 
 she ground out between her teeth. 
 
 " It would be quite unconvincing," he said, " coming 
 from you. Now will you kindly loose my arm ? " 
 
 She pushed it from her in a rage. 
 
 In a moment he began to walk away, leaving her 
 with as much unconcern as though she had been some 
 beggar he had considered unworthy of coppers. 
 
 She stood looking after him. She watched him out 
 of sight, his light gait giving him an air of careless- 
 ness he probably did not feel. She watched the charm 
 and handsomeness which had so long been subject to 
 her, withdrawing for ever from her life. She knew 
 now that she had irretrievably lost him.
 
 Joan and Mark 299 
 
 Her whole aspect changed. There was a sudden 
 precipitation into actuality of all those differences in 
 her which had hitherto been mere suggestions. The 
 dulness shut down upon her eyes, no longer a fleeting 
 expression but a physical fact. From being green 
 pools rippling with life and light they became lustreless 
 and dark, suggesting stagnancy. The leaden hue Lo- 
 wood had observed marring her clear reds and whites 
 all of a sudden became indelible. It was as though 
 dust had been stirred into her blood, as though some 
 malign influence, a physical blight, a grave moral 
 deterioration, had stricken her within the space of 
 minutes. 
 
 " I say," Hummerstone said, eyeing her with an 
 unflattering regard as he met her crossing the hall, 
 " what's come over your looks, Jonah ? Before I 
 married you, you had such a stunning complexion. 
 Get Burnham to give you something for it. Perhaps 
 your liver's out of order." 
 
 She sent him one slow glance out of her dulled eyes. 
 He felt a little chill run up and down his spine. He 
 slunk away through the first door he found open. He 
 sank into a chair and wiped his face. He remembered 
 how she had once bitten his thumb to the bone. He 
 had never seen anybody, man or woman, look as she 
 had looked at him. He lit a cigar and went into the 
 grounds. He wanted to consider what she had meant 
 by looking at him like that. 
 
 Joan was proud of her gardens. She spared no 
 expense upon them. He found half a dozen men 
 busily engaged in bedding out choice annuals in the 
 borders round the house. They touched their caps 
 obsequiously. Their servility, flattering his small soul, 
 restored his self-assurance. After all, he was the 
 master of the house. True, and everybody knew it, 
 it was Joan's house and Joan's money. But a man 
 was his wife's master, therefore the master of all that
 
 300 The Whips of Time 
 
 was hers. There were other facts too, which made 
 her still more vassal to him. 
 
 'He stopped to watch their work. Then to reinstate 
 himself in his opinion and to raise himself in theirs 
 he directed them to do it differently. The head- 
 gardener, who was overlooking them, objected, in the 
 surly fashion of head-gardeners, that the borders had 
 always been arranged as they were doing them. He 
 added that Mrs. Hummerstone had expressly said that 
 they were to be so arranged. 
 
 " Look here," Hummerstone said rudely, " you just 
 do what I tell you and don't talk so much." 
 
 By the time he had seen the half-dozen men labori- 
 ously undoing that which they had spent a whole 
 morning in doing, his equanimity was quite restored. 
 He determined to give Joan a lesson. He was not 
 going to be looked at as she had looked at him. 
 
 He went into the house. She was sitting in a room 
 which opened off the hall. She seemed to be thinking. 
 She still wore her hat and coat. Her gloved hands 
 were twisting restlessly one with another in outward 
 token of some inner conflict. She was staring dully 
 through a window. She did not turn her head. One 
 might have supposed she had not heard him enter. 
 
 " I say ! " he said loudly, in order to attract her 
 attention. 
 
 He failed to attract it, however. She still stared 
 out through the window. He went up to her, and 
 catching her by a shoulder shook her slightly. 
 
 " I say," he said again, " I want to tell you some- 
 thing. You seem to be wool-gathering." 
 
 She brought her eyes slowly about with that new 
 languor which had come to her. They met his, dull 
 and sullen. But the look he had objected to was gone. 
 
 " I think you might have the decency," he blustered, 
 " to consult me about the garden. I have to see it as 
 much as you do. I found those idiots putting those 
 what-dye-call-'ems inside the thingy-me-jigs instead of
 
 Joan and Mark 301 
 
 outside. I pretty soon told them to put 'em outside. 
 Parsons had the cheek to tell me you ordered them 
 inside. Well, I like them better outside. You under- 
 stand? I like them better outside. And so they're 
 changing them." 
 
 " Are they ? " she said. Her wits, like her eyes, 
 seemed oddly dull that morning. It took her some 
 time to realise his meaning. Then he supposed that 
 she realised it, for she kept her eyes upon him and 
 smiled slowly. The look he had objected to was still 
 absent. But as he quitted the room, with a return of 
 his uncomfortable sensations, he was not sure that he 
 liked her smile better than he had liked her look.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 A LETTER FROM UNCLE TONY 
 
 ALMA came down to breakfast with an attack of her 
 old mental fever. The business of writing a book, the 
 necessities which spurred the writing of a book, had 
 for three days banished the wearying boredom of life 
 without Burghwallis, had banished the uncontrollable 
 yearning to see him again which of late had possessed 
 her. For three days of literary travail had given her 
 an inkling of the truth that the writing of a book is a 
 jealous task, and one which demands undivided atten- 
 tion and interests. 
 
 So far she had contributed nothing to her task 
 beyond a dozen daily sheets of scribbled foolscap, 
 which before night she had diligently torn to shreds, 
 in sensitive shame lest anyone might read a sentence 
 of the incompetent rubbish into which her teeming, 
 glowing thoughts had translated themselves. They 
 reminded her of the white-hot, brilliant showers she 
 had seen struck off on a blacksmith's anvil, which when 
 picked up later were but dull and worthless fragments. 
 
 But that morning waking early her brain had been 
 filled with that which seemed to her to be a superfine 
 plot for a novel. And she came down to breakfast 
 eager to 'commit it to paper. 
 
 She found on the table two letters, both bearing 
 foreign stamps and post-marks. As a child she had 
 always saved the best thing her nicest sweet, the 
 almond icing of her cake to the last. So now she 
 opened first the envelope addressed in Mrs. Beau- 
 mont's hand,
 
 A Letter from Uncle Tony 303 
 
 Only a practised writer is able to shelve the moving 
 circumstances of his own personal life for the moving 
 circumstances of the lives of his persons of fiction. 
 By the time she had read Mrs. Beaumont's letter 
 Alma's impressionable brain had not a plot or a spark 
 left in it. It was dull, black misery, lit by a flare of 
 shame. 
 
 For Mrs. Beaumont, aware that her path and 
 Alma's had now parted, and emboldened by distance, 
 had at last confessed the truth to her. She was no 
 mistress of the art of writing. And stated baldly as 
 she stated it, the truth did not make pretty reading. 
 She blamed Alma rather peevishly for being so foolish 
 as to believe that she had been George's wife. If she 
 had been his wife she would have been a Duchess and 
 there would of course have been a jointure for her. 
 In the long run wives always got the best of it. 
 
 Alma caught suddenly at a corner of the table in 
 order to steady herself in a world which rocked. The 
 room rang with shouts of shame. To her inexperience 
 the situation was a pillory upon which all eyes were 
 turned, a brazen circumstance which scandalised the 
 world. Her eyes drooped, her face became a hot flame, 
 feeling herself in that pillory. 
 
 Then with a little gasping cry she lifted her hands 
 and prayed to Heaven that the breakfast-room floor 
 might open and swallow up her and her shame in a 
 bottomless abyss. For Burghwallis knew. He knew 
 and had all along known. And she was her aunt's 
 niece, had lived with her, and had shared with her 
 the home and luxury which had been the price of her 
 dishonour. Her face flamed red again as a rush of 
 recollections fed her mind with new fuel for mortifi- 
 cation. A number of things were all at once explained. 
 She understood now the embarrassments of his return, 
 his inexplicable irritations and hauteur. 
 
 An hour passed. The table had been cleared. Her 
 cup of coffee had been sent away untasted. Upstairs
 
 304 The Whips of Time 
 
 lay her blank, inviting sheets of foolscap and a new 
 pen. Yet still she sat, with Mrs. Beaumont's well-read 
 letter in her pocket and with the other unopened letter 
 in her hand. How could she open it? How could she 
 read her humiliation stated in his words? Would he 
 bid her take up her shamed life and go about her 
 business? Would he tell her that the discreditable 
 bond being now at an end, she had no further claim 
 upon his friendship or his courtesy ? Her heart hard- 
 ened against him. He had known, and had known 
 that she was ignorant, and yet had not warned her. If 
 he had had the consideration of a true friend, would 
 he not have told the truth to her in order that she 
 might have extricated herself from so dishonourable 
 a situation? 
 
 She found courage presently to read the letter, 
 although in opening the envelope she was impressed 
 by the sense that her life's castle would come hurtling 
 about her ears. She broke into tears, a shower as 
 sweet and as warm and as fragrantly refreshing as 
 is April rain. She kissed every word of his brief note. 
 A dozen times she kissed his name. 
 
 Oh ! base ingratitude of a minute earlier ! Oh ! 
 base mistrust of a true and chivalrous gentleman, 
 whom she had ever known true and chivalrous. Base 
 wrong to Heaven and the High Powers which had 
 made of life a path of happiness beneath the sacred 
 shining of the sun of true affection! He knew her 
 ignorant of the wrong, knew her innocent. He was 
 clever enough not to blame her for that which was 
 none of her fault, chivalrous enough not to think less 
 of her for the accidental conditions under which he 
 had found her, brave enough to remain her friend in 
 the face of a scandalised world! 
 
 All this of course he did not say. He was a man 
 of few words. But were actions not greater than 
 words? And he was coming at once. He wrote that 
 he had just received the bad news. He had taken a
 
 A Letter from Uncle Tony 305 
 
 passage in the next home-going steamer and would 
 be with her almost as soon as his letter. He had 
 cabled to his lawyer that she and Mrs. Beaumont were 
 to remain on at Moonbank. She was not to feel one 
 care or anxiety. She was in his keeping. He signed 
 himself " ever her friend." A dozen times she kissed 
 the Tony under it. It was the sweetest, finest, funni- 
 est name in the world. 
 
 She forgot her shame. What was shame if she were 
 not shamed in his eyes? Who cared for the stupid 
 world? She forgot her book, her plots, her waiting 
 paper and her new pen. What were paper plots and 
 stories? She had a story of her own, a real story 
 which transformed the daisies into great white roses, 
 made every finch a nightingale, turned a slate sky into 
 a sapphire heaven, a sulky sun into a glory. 
 
 For despite the difficulties besetting her literary 
 beginnings, she was blessed (or cursed) with the tem- 
 perament of the writer, a temperament which is a 
 diamond prism showing the rainbow-wonders hid in 
 common life. Such a temperament is given that its 
 possessor may reveal the rainbow-wonders to those 
 who have no gift to see them. But when the artist 
 or writer uses his prism to show him the rainbow- 
 wonders of his own personal emotions, he must not 
 complain if the joys and pains revealed are rather too 
 exquisitely poignant for comfort.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 PROFESSOR HUMMERSTONE 
 
 LOWOOD, calling- at The Folly, was told that Mrs. 
 Hummerstone had been away, that she was every 
 minute expected back, and that Lady Kesteven would 
 be pleased to see him. Lady Kesteven had taken a 
 liking to him. He possessed the restorative and sooth- 
 ing presence of the true physician, which calmed and 
 repolarised deranged nerve-currents. 
 
 She raised herself upon an elbow of her couch to 
 welcome him. 
 
 " Joan and Cyril are overdue," she told him. 
 " They have been on a visit to Professor Hummer- 
 stone. You know Professor Hummerstone, I believe." 
 
 Of her views upon Joan's change of bridegrooms 
 she had kept her own counsel. Her oldest friends had 
 failed to extract from her a word of comment. 
 
 " It is Joan's own affair," she had insisted from 
 behind her shield of reserve. 
 
 But all had seen from her altered looks that the 
 shock had been great. And Lowood, having- seen 
 them once together, was aware that she needed all her 
 control to enable her to tolerate Hummerstone. She 
 had been sufficiently disappointed when Joan chose 
 Hestroyde in the place of Legh. But Hestroyde was 
 infinitely preferable to Hummerstone. 
 
 Lowood replied to her question that he and the 
 physiologist had been fellow-students. 
 
 To his surprise she told him that the elder Hum- 
 merstone would accompany his son and Joan on this 
 occasion.
 
 Professor Hummerstone 307 
 
 " Is Cyril like him? " she asked. 
 
 " As unlike as two men can be." 
 
 A few minutes later the two entered. Lowood 
 glanced with interest at his old chum. He was little 
 changed. There were the same cold, fresh complexion, 
 the same blue shallow eye, the same flat voice. It is 
 the emotions which change, and Hummerstone was 
 not troubled by emotions. He had that semblance of 
 refinement which sometimes comes from the substitu- 
 tion of wholly intellectual for human pursuits. 
 
 "Ah, Lowood." he said, "you here?" without 
 cordiality or surprise, but as though they had parted 
 an hour earlier. 
 
 With difficulty, for he spent all his days in labora- 
 tories, he manufactured some conventional remarks for 
 Lady Kesteven. He regretted that he could stop no 
 longer than one night. He was on his way to a Berlin 
 Congress of Physiologists. He thought Cyril looking 
 well. It was a disappointment to him that his son had 
 given up his work. 
 
 Cyril, overhearing, laughed coarsely. 
 
 " It wasn't good enough," he said. " No more 
 tadpole tails for me, Guv. You bet I knew what I 
 was about when I took Joan instead." 
 
 Lowood observed that his demeanour toward her 
 had changed. Where before he had shown self-con- 
 fident and overbearing, now there was a shade of 
 uneasiness, even of conciliation, in his treatment of 
 her. Lowood found something odd too in the elder 
 Hummerstone's attitude to her. He seemed to ignore 
 her, never once looking directly at nor addressing her. 
 And yet he was profoundly and uncomfortably con- 
 scious of her. While he laboured out his common- 
 places to her mother or talked with Lowood, his 
 attention was all the while engrossed by her. He 
 strained his ears to catch what she said. He watched 
 her from the corners of his eyes. The whole time an 
 undercurrent of his attention was nervously diverted
 
 308 The Whips of Time 
 
 to her. Lowood gathered that for some reason or 
 another he disliked or disapproved of her. He attrib- 
 uted his feeling to the fact that she had come between 
 him and Cyril, had frustrated effectually his last hopes 
 and ambitions for his son. 
 
 Cyril's underbred, covert allusions to his new pros- 
 perity, his attempts to impress his father by the hand- 
 some house and its costly equipments, the grounds 
 and the luxurious house, failed of their intention. 
 With all his faults, Hummerstone senior cared little 
 for money or for ostentation. He would have thought 
 more highly of his son as a poor but zealous scientist 
 than he thought of him as the master of a handsome 
 house and the husband of an heiress. 
 
 " Joan and the guv. were inseparables," Cyril said, 
 still with that air of desiring to flatter her. " She 
 showed quite a turn for science. I couldn't keep her 
 out of the laboratory. She was all the while peering 
 into bottles and dipping her ringers into drugs and 
 chemicals. Pity she wasn't the guv/s daughter. He 
 might have made a professor of her." 
 
 She turned her green eyes slowly toward him. She 
 said, in a slow, quiet voice : 
 
 " The poisons were so fascinating. Some of them 
 were simple white powders, as harmless-looking as 
 sugar. And yet he said that just a few crystals would 
 kill a person, would put him into horrible pain and 
 convulsions, or would kill him quite quietly. It seems 
 such a power for one person's life to depend on 
 whether another does or does not put a few crystals 
 of simple white powder in their food." 
 
 Lowood, standing by the elder Hummerstone, de- 
 tected a momentary oscillation of his cold eyelids, saw 
 that although his back was turned to her he seemed 
 to be hanging breathless upon every word. 
 
 " Joan," Lady Kesteven protested, " don't talk so. 
 To me poisons are detestable. I cannot understand 
 why God has allowed such things to be."
 
 Professor Hummerstone 309 
 
 " But you see," Joan replied in the same slow 
 fashion, " you and I are not at all alike. Seeing us 
 together nobody would suppose that we were mother 
 and daughter." 
 
 Again that oscillation of Hummerstone's cold lids. 
 Again he seemed to hang upon her words. Lowood 
 surmised that he was doing his utmost to gain some 
 inkling of his daughter-in-law's character, a character 
 which was doubtless a sealed book to him. 
 
 He found himself addressed. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood is great on heredity," she went on in 
 a bantering tone. " Perhaps he can tell us why I am 
 not in the least like my mother in face or in character. 
 She is too good for words. I can't be said to be 
 afflicted with virtues. She has brown eyes. I have 
 green. She is dark. I am flaxen. Come now, Dr. 
 Lowood, unriddle this riddle for us. Why am I so 
 absolutely different from my mother ? " 
 
 The day was cool. The elder Hummerstone im- 
 pressed one as a man who on the hottest day of August 
 might serve to chill a room. Yet he suddenly took 
 out his handkerchief, and with a curious sigh of dis- 
 tress trailed it across his brows and mouth. 
 
 " Good Lord, Joan, drop it ! " Cyril broke out irri- 
 tably. " Heaps of persons are not a bit like their 
 parents. Look at me and the guv. Who'd think from 
 looking at us that I am his son ? " 
 
 " I have never believed in heredity," his father 
 stated succinctly, half turning his head and eyes toward, 
 but turning them back before they were in line with 
 her. " I think it has never been scientifically proven 
 that there is anything in the doctrine of hereditary 
 transmission." 
 
 " But I was asking Dr. Lowood," Joan returned. 
 " I am sure Dr. Lowood will tell us that people do 
 inherit their parents' qualities. I know he believes 
 * like mother, like daughter.' ' 
 
 Lowood saw that the subject was profoundly dis-
 
 310 The Whips of Time 
 
 tasteful. He knew a reason why it should be distaste- 
 ful to the elder Hummerstone. But he was surprised 
 to find his old friend's conscience so uneasy upon this 
 subject against which his daughter-in-law had stum- 
 bled. He rose smiling. 
 
 " Another time," he said. " It is too complex a 
 matter to settle in a minute. And I must be off." 
 
 " Yes, hang it all," Cyril said, with an air of relief. 
 " Who wants to talk problems at afternoon calls ? " 
 
 " I'll walk part of the way with you," Hummerstone 
 said quickly. 
 
 Lowood, more punctilious than he as to the treat- 
 ment of a hostess, answered : 
 
 " Do, if Lady Kesteven will forgive me for running 
 away with her guest." 
 
 Outside the house Hummerstone once more wiped 
 his brows and mouth. 
 
 " I don't like that woman," he broke out with a 
 candour and an energy strange to him. 
 
 "Lady Kesteven?"* 
 
 " No, Cyril's wife. He was a fool to marry her." 
 
 " Joan ! " Lowood repeated, surprised. " I don't 
 agree with you. She is a healthy, handsome girl, and 
 a great heiress. I think Cyril has done far better than 
 he deserved." 
 
 " Handsome ? " Hummerstone echoed. " With that 
 expression ? " 
 
 Then, as Lowood said nothing: 
 
 " Healthy ? " he repeated, " with that complexion ? " 
 
 " Her complexion is naturally milk and roses," Lo- 
 wood defended her. " But she seems to have given 
 up her outdoor life. No doubt she'll get back her milk 
 and roses again." 
 
 " I don't like her," Hummerstone repeated obsti- 
 nately. " Cyril has acted like a fool." 
 
 That she had not shown to advantage upon this 
 occasion Lowood admitted. There had been an under- 
 current rancour in her persistence with a subject which
 
 Professor Hummerstone 311 
 
 no doubt she had discovered was unpleasant to her 
 father-in-law. Marriage with Hummerstone had cer- 
 tainly not improved her. Each time he saw her he 
 found her changed for the worse. She should have 
 married Hestroyde. Whatsoever his parentage his 
 influence over her had been for good.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 BURGH WALLIS RETURNS 
 
 ALMA sat in alternations of ecstasy and of anguish. 
 Pain is the obverse of joy, and according to the poten- 
 tiality for joy is the measure of possible pain. On 
 the other side of a great happiness is a great heartache 
 which from time to time obtrudes itself. 
 
 Burgh wallis was coming. She had had a letter from 
 him by the morning post. He had reached England 
 the previous day. He proposed to run down by the 
 ten o'clock train. 
 
 Nature, as though to reward her for her past love 
 of the Great Mother, had sent her a delicious day, a 
 day set and gleaming with jewels a sapphire sky, 
 a golden sun, an emerald earth, topaz and opal clouds, 
 diamond iridescent light a day which had lain all 
 night in a dew-bath and had emerged radiant, re- 
 freshed, and charged with loveliness and fragrance. 
 
 Alma did not, as she had done at his last visit, go 
 down the drive to meet him. A sweet shame withheld 
 her. That had been before he had kissed her. Since 
 he had kissed her, Nature (and Mrs. Beaumont) had 
 told her that her niecely relation to him was a fiction. 
 She sat waiting for him in the drawing-room, her 
 eyes going with delicious tremors to the little onyx 
 clock, the clock to which he had likened himself, an 
 affair of machinery which did that only which its 
 wheels and levers obliged it to do. And immediately 
 afterwards he had disproved the likeness by doing 
 that which no machinery under the sun could have 
 done.
 
 Burghwallis Returns 313 
 
 The memory of it sent her blood warm and tingling 
 to her lips. Her mouth felt to her like a sweet red 
 flower. Her breath came and went in it fresh and 
 fragrant. She had never before understood the mean- 
 ing of herself. He was the supreme reason of her. 
 Then there came the old familiar thrill of panic, the 
 momentary sense that in a long and long ago he had 
 done some injury to her, an injury so grave that the 
 memory of it had lasted into another life and yet had 
 not lessened her love for him. 
 
 By the time the door opened and he came in the 
 fear had passed. She felt nothing but joy. But the 
 fear still showed in her eyes, a haunted, haunting 
 expression. He saw it. It showed so appealing, so 
 wistful, so profoundly sad, that, knowing his own 
 mind, he paused in the act of taking her into his arms. 
 
 The masculine creature is strangely conventional. 
 From the day he goes to school his main ambition is 
 to be like other boys, at college to be like other youths, 
 later in the world to be like other members of his 
 clubs. To succeed in this ambition it is necessary for 
 him sturdily to repress and by habit to efface impulses 
 and aspirations of which he has never seen any indi- 
 cation in Jones or in Robinson. He would see the 
 absurdity of trying to reshape his features or to dye 
 his hair on the model of Jones or of Robinson. It 
 is only moral aspirations or emotional impulses which 
 he is convinced have never troubled Jones or Robinson 
 of which he is ashamed. 
 
 Burghwallis did not formulate his sense that Jones 
 or Robinson would laugh in the smoking-room at a 
 man who should alter his code of ethics for no sounder 
 reason than a wistful, profoundly appealing look in 
 a girl's eyes. Girls, till they were taught, knew little 
 about life. But it would be monstrous for men of the 
 world to reshape their lives on the pattern of a girl's 
 notions or of a girl's eyes. 
 
 Accordingly, having hitherto shaped his life on the
 
 314 The Whips of Time 
 
 pattern of the lives of other men, Burghwallis hesi- 
 tated for no longer than a moment. Then he recov- 
 ered himself. Jones and Robinson would laugh indeed 
 at a man who should be deterred by anything short 
 of an earthquake (or a scandal) in the very act of 
 kissing lips so young and fresh and wholly sweet as 
 were those upturned to him, trembling with ecstasy. 
 And having kissed them and felt her tender body 
 yielding to him, her cool, soft cheek against his virile 
 one, her delicate head and fragrant, magnetic hair laid 
 in the embracing angle of his throat and shoulder, all 
 her sweet, delicate womanhood streaming to him in 
 those magical wonders and confusions with which an 
 emotional woman yields the vials of her honey-charged 
 nature for the man she loves having known all this 
 there was no going back. Now, though he damn his 
 soul to all eternity, he must carry this thing through. 
 
 By this time Jones and Robinson were forgotten or 
 he would not thus have thought, because, so far as he 
 knew, neither Jones nor Robinson believed in a soul. 
 For Jones and Robinson were, like all men, frauds to 
 one another and carefully concealed, from all but 
 some woman they loved, the truth that they were bet- 
 ter men than other men who shaped their conduct by 
 their code suspected. 
 
 Burghwallis, by this time embarked on a storm of 
 passion, was prepared to employ every art and wile 
 he possessed to win through. He did not, however, 
 anticipate difficulties. Since last he had seen her she 
 had learned several things. The Duke's death would 
 have informed her of her aunt's true status and of a 
 fundamental fact of life. Her aunt's rapid lapse (for 
 he had put, of course, his own construction upon 
 Alma's news that Mrs. Beaumont was in Paris) would 
 have taught her other fundamental facts of life. And 
 then there was her unbefriended and penniless state. 
 In a practical world practical facts were of immense 
 account in shaping life and conduct.
 
 Burghwallis Returns 315 
 
 Yet although she had learned these all-important 
 facts she did not seem to be greatly concerned or 
 embarrassed. On the contrary, she had gone to his 
 arms as though mutely acquiescing in them. Dear 
 little girl ! How delicate and sweet she was. In her 
 black frock she looked as slender and as pliant as a 
 lily on its stem. She was more than beautiful. Mrs. 
 Beaumont in her luxuriant maturity and rich perfec- 
 tions was amazingly beautiful. And yet he had never 
 experienced one emotion for her. It was not the face 
 and the flesh, but the person behind the face and within 
 the flesh, which charmed. Mrs. Beaumont's perfect 
 hand, which the great artist had modelled, had never 
 sent a thrill through him. A touch of Alma's ringer, 
 far removed though it were from perfection, brewed 
 a storm of emotions in him as the fine electric contact 
 sets the elements of Nature thundering in the sky. 
 
 His heart swelled. So help him! he would love 
 and cherish her as the apple of his eye. He was no 
 light lover. There was not a light nor a treacherous 
 thought in him. He loved her sincerely, profoundly. 
 It was a tie which might bind for a lifetime. Such 
 things, although rare, had been and were possible with 
 a woman such as she. The thing might be an idyl. 
 Life, as he found it, was a good deal of a bore. Here 
 might be an oasis, a rose-garden, screened from all 
 eyes, unbelittled by conventions, refined, sweet, intel- 
 lectual, a well-spring of delicious happiness. All he 
 could give to her he would give home, love, luxury. 
 He knew the world. Such as it was it would be well 
 lost indeed to her for that he would give her in its 
 stead. 
 
 One thing his fastidiousness would withhold. 
 Lovely though it was, the scene of their idyl should 
 not be Moonbank. As their idyl should be unique, 
 so it should have a setting untainted by associations. 
 
 He knew of course that if he had been a Sir Galahad 
 he would have set her to learn typewriting or would
 
 316 The Whips of Time 
 
 have had her trained to some or another art or pro- 
 fession. He might even have settled a sum of money 
 upon her and have bidden her a chaste and last good- 
 bye. (It was abominable of George, by the way, to 
 have left the poor women unprovided for!) Unfor- 
 tunately he was no Sir Galahad; to tell the truth, the 
 man would have been kicked out of every club in 
 London, perpetually treading, as he would have done, 
 on Jones' and Robinson's toes. Besides, to leave her 
 would be abominably cruel. She was fond of him, 
 dear little girl ! 
 
 His reflections were not calm or coherent. He had 
 more engrossing occupation than to reflect. But one 
 thought and another cropped up at intervals, cropped 
 up like asps among the joys and roses of that jewelled 
 day, swiftly darting, softly hissing, scarcely heeded. 
 
 The lovers took their meals in the open air beneath 
 the trees, in an atmosphere charged with the sun- 
 warmed odours of a thousand flowers. They sat upon 
 a marble bench made comfortable with cushions, be- 
 fore them a marble table of old Greece, spread with 
 the foods of modern England. Two servants, who, 
 since Burghwallis had come, had reshod their feet with 
 velvet, waited upon them. 
 
 The hours flew like a flock of pearl doves in the 
 sun. They did not talk much. Nor, after their first 
 long kiss, did they kiss. They could not have kissed 
 with the windows of the house upon them. Had they 
 desired they might have withdrawn from the eyes of 
 the house. But there was no need. Their eyes 
 touched, their thoughts touched, sometimes their hands 
 touched. Between them was a current of emotions, 
 a magical tide between two banks, setting from that 
 bank which was Burghwallis, to break upon the other 
 bank, which was Alma. 
 
 Alma was for the first time in love, in love not only 
 with love, but in love also with her lover. The thing 
 was a marvel. She did not know herself. This Alma
 
 Burghwallis Returns 317 
 
 he had kissed was surely not the Alma whom he had 
 not kissed. She felt as though she were a treasure- 
 house of which somebody had found the key and had 
 shown her within herself an untold wealth of ecstasies. 
 She had been like a land, ice-bound and steeped in 
 lethargy, a land which the sun had now found and 
 set flowing with milk and with honey. 
 
 All that he was and did partook of the marvellous. 
 He was an incarnate mystery. His clothes were a 
 source of never-ceasing interest and astonishment, his 
 coat with its pockets and the odd warm things for 
 which at intervals he dived and brought out of them, 
 a pen-knife and a cigar-cutter, a jewelled cigarette- 
 case and a match-box, a letter-case stored with grave- 
 looking slips and memoranda, which he handled as 
 though they possessed some mysterious value for him, 
 a long silk purse heavy and tinkling with money 
 things so unlike a woman's properties. 
 
 She smiled to herself as a mother might smile at 
 her child's foibles, noting the guile with which on 
 returning his handkerchief to a pocket he so arranged 
 it that it should not bulge. And when his phenome- 
 nally smooth head was brushed accidentally by the 
 branch of a tree, he scrupulously plastered down a 
 disarranged lock. 
 
 These things showed to her like charming revela- 
 tions of simplicity in an otherwise intricate mind. It 
 was so engaging that this large, mysterious being to 
 whose nature she had no key should remember to think 
 of these details. 
 
 His necktie was blue, with white horseshoes all over 
 it. She wondered whether the fact that the colour 
 matched his eyes was a result of premeditation or of 
 chance. The horseshoes were large and rather loud. 
 A woman would not have chosen such a pattern. But 
 she liked that in him which chose the pattern, a manly 
 simplicity and mental breadth which did not vex itself 
 with minutiae.
 
 318 The Whips of Time 
 
 A bit of red sock was visible between a trouser-edge 
 and shoe, red silk sock with flowers which might have 
 been meant for very neat rose-buds embroidered across 
 the ankle. She smiled again gently. 
 
 How odd for a man, the late Governor of an island, 
 who had held men's lives and their fates in his hand, 
 to take vain delight in wearing silk-embroidered socks. 
 It seemed adorable in him, a peep of feminine weak- 
 ness which brought a recondite being into perspective 
 with herself. 
 
 Five times with pleased eyes she watched him light 
 a fresh cigarette. The act was attended by a good 
 deal of ceremonial. It suggested the performance of 
 a diminutive rite upon the altar of a small god. His 
 ringers moved with supple, practised gestures, diving 
 first into mysterious recesses for his cigarette-case, 
 unclosing it and selecting with deliberation, shutting 
 the case with a snap and returning it with one hand 
 to a pocket, while in the other he held with a sort 
 of reverence the light, white trifle. Then the match- 
 box was brought out, the match chosen and struck 
 and tilted at an angle in order to allow the flame to 
 grip. 
 
 The cigarette was set between the lips and the lids 
 dropped over the eyes as they carefully watched the 
 flame applied. The tiny flare lighted the face and the 
 blond moustache. Two or three puffs of white smoke 
 and the red end of the ignited weed glowed, while a 
 gleam of gratification as of a pleased palate and at 
 an achieved success succeeded an expression of slight 
 tension. The match was waved formally in the air, 
 extinguished and flung with a little precision to a 
 distance. Then, the rite over, life was resumed to the 
 aroma of fresh incense. 
 
 She was never tired of watching it. He endued it 
 with a species of guile which she found characteristic 
 and strangely attractive. The form attending it was 
 an expression of the highest breeding. None but a
 
 Burgh wallis Returns 319 
 
 man with centuries of leisure and culture behind him 
 could have made such a fine art of the small con- 
 vention. 
 
 To see it filled her with bewildering fondness. For 
 there is no quality which so appeals to women, high 
 or low, as does that of good breeding. 
 
 No need to talk or to kiss indeed while the space 
 between them was charged with a thousand such 
 delicate appreciations and interchanges. 
 
 She in her ignorance had never dreamed of the 
 joy that she now found, merely to be in his pres- 
 ence. 
 
 He, from his experience, knew that these rainbow- 
 hued, subtle emotions, for the first time revealed to 
 him, were richly rare, things of the iridescent loveli- 
 ness of bubbles. And yet could one but maintain the 
 conditions of their exquisite existence, they like the 
 bubbles were as intrinsically real as was the substance 
 from which they were spun. 
 
 Experiencing for the first time these magical illu- 
 sions which Alma's proximity spun out of his being, 
 he realised that all that was needed for their survival 
 was pure and delicate handling. Experiencing them, 
 he realised that sex may be a talisman to transmute 
 life to a fine art. No actuality he had ever known 
 had compared with the enchantment she now made for 
 him. 
 
 It evolved a new man in him. He felt new stirrings, 
 new illuminations, new expansions. Every movement 
 of her, every word, vibrated on strings hitherto un- 
 sensed. His mind was filled with harmony and with 
 colour. 
 
 Always before having known nothing better than 
 silken, artificial loves, perfumed with sachets, he had 
 laughed at the poets. Now he himself was a poet. 
 And Love was an idyl, a fresh fair rose in a fragrant 
 garden. 
 
 Life in the future would be a charmed thing, with
 
 320 The Whips of Time 
 
 this garden to which to return to pluck fair and fresh 
 roses. 
 
 All her seriousness had gone. An infective gaiety 
 which sprang from tender joy inspired her. Her 
 rare order of mind flowed in new channels of exquisite 
 folly, limpid, sparkling, joy-inspiring, the spontaneous 
 wit and laughter of souls. 
 
 He swore in his heart that this exquisite converse 
 should long suffice them. For months would he linger 
 in this outer Paradise, content with the fragrance 
 wafting from its gardens, with the blossoms overhang- 
 ing its walls, with its reflected radiance, with antici- 
 pations. Then he would put his yacht into commis- 
 sion and would take her for a beatified voyage round 
 the world. 
 
 Evening came. They had dined under the trees. 
 The stars began to swing out palpitating in the sky. 
 A night wind sprang fresh and cool. It struck a dif- 
 ferent mood in him. The poet gave place to the man. 
 After all life was real. When all was said and done, 
 months hence might never come. A runaway horse, 
 a wrong signal on a line, a broken railway axle, and 
 there was no to-morrow. A man might be wiped 
 out forever, or go hungering forever for that he had 
 failed to grasp while it was in his hand. 
 
 The marble table had been cleared. He lighted 
 another cigarette. He drew it fiercely. Under his 
 lids his blue eyes flashed to her as she sat in her white 
 gown with only a light scarf over her milk-white 
 shoulders. She looked across at him and smiled. 
 
 " Why are you suddenly angry ? " she said. " You 
 look quite fierce." 
 
 " I'm not angry. I am thinking." 
 
 The red tip of his cigarette glowed redder in the 
 night. A nightingale in an adjoining tree struck up a 
 faint sweet prelude. The moon swam, a silver cres- 
 cent in the ocean of the sky. The night seemed to 
 hold its breath.
 
 Burgh wallis Returns 321 
 
 There was a prosaic interruption. A footman com- 
 ing silently toward them, his tall shadow moving with 
 him on the grass. He approached and stood obse- 
 quiously : 
 
 " The carriage is round, my lord." 
 
 Burghwallis started and stared. Then he slightly 
 nodded his head. When the man had gone, Alma 
 could hear him breathing hard and rapidly. He did 
 not rise or move. He continued to smoke in silence. 
 The stable clock struck nine. 
 
 A minute passed. And still he did not move. The 
 silence became tense. The nightingale in the adjoin- 
 ing tree suddenly flooded the air with melody, then 
 waited listening. 
 
 " Now we shall have a duet," Burghwallis said. 
 His voice had a strange, suppressed sound. 
 
 Immediately from another tree a second nightingale 
 struck up. Again there was silence, as though the 
 little songsters were awaiting applause. 
 
 Then Alma said : 
 
 " Tony, you are forgetting the carriage." 
 
 " It's of no consequence," he answered slowly. 
 
 " But you will lose your train." 
 
 " It's of no consequence," he said again. " I shall 
 stop and listen to the nightingales instead of chasing 
 back to stuffy town." 
 
 She knew but little of conventions. They had made 
 no part of Mrs. Beaumont's education of her. But 
 she leaned forward and said earnestly : 
 
 " Tony, I think you ought to go. It would be 
 strange for you to remain, I think." 
 
 He threw away his cigarette. He moved up beside 
 her. He laid a hand on her bare arm. Her arm, 
 cool from the night air, shrank beneath it. 
 
 " It's all right, dear," he said, speaking quickly, 
 so that his words seemed to tread on one another. " It 
 would be a shame to spoil this lovely evening. The 
 heat has gone. There is a delightful breeze. The
 
 322 The Whips of Time 
 
 stars are coming out. Dear, may I not stop with you 
 and listen to the nightingales? " 
 
 " No, Tony," she insisted, with a catch in her 
 breath. " I don't wish you to. It seems so strange." 
 
 His hand slid down her arm to her hand and grasped 
 it. 
 
 " There can be nothing strange," he said, " between 
 you and me, Alma, who love one another." 
 
 He pressed her hand in silence. He lifted it to his 
 lips and set hot kisses on it. 
 
 " It's all right, darling," he said, " I'll go up to the 
 house and tell them."
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 FLIGHT 
 
 HE had been gone some time. As she sat beneath the 
 trees, her breath coming fast, an unintelligible quaking 
 at her heart, she was startled by a harsh whisper. 
 
 " Missie, come here into the shrubbery. I have 
 something to say to you." 
 
 She made out in the dark the gaunt, hard figure and 
 the unpleasing face of her old nurse. Since she had 
 been a child she had been accustomed to obey implicitly 
 her terse injunctions. The shrubbery lay close to 
 where she was sitting. Obediently she joined her 
 there. 
 
 "Well, Hannah, what is it?" Then, "But I am 
 not at all cold," she protested as the old woman, 
 without answering, began to muffle a long cloak about 
 her. She saw that she carried a bag and a hat of hers. 
 Silently she clasped the cloak. She thrust the hat into 
 her mistress's hands. 
 
 " Put it on, missie," she said, " and come away with 
 me. Your feet are on the broad road to destruction. 
 Your soul is in danger of hell fire. I've been with 
 you since you was in long clothes. I can't stand by 
 and see you go your aunt's way." 
 
 Alma angrily and indignantly combated the bitter 
 accusations into which she broke. How dared she say 
 such evil things? She would tell Lord Anthony. He 
 himself should scold her for her false and cruel 
 charges. 
 
 Yet even at the moment, hearing his return, she felt 
 a sudden sinking at the heart, a sudden fear of him. 
 Instinctively she caught the old woman's arm.
 
 324 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Hush ! " she whispered, " for Heaven's sake, 
 hush!" 
 
 Through the screen of the bushes she saw him 
 discover her absence, saw him glance impatiently about 
 for her. Her heart leapt into her throat for some 
 moments in which his eyes rested on the shrubbery. 
 Then, as he turned on his heel and went back to the 
 house, she fell into a fit of trembling. She began to 
 pin on the hat. 
 
 " Hannah," she said breathlessly, " where can I go? 
 There is nowhere for me to go." 
 
 Hannah was bonneted and cloaked, a grim figure in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 " There's money and a few things in the bag," she 
 said. " We can sleep at the hotel. We can go on to 
 London in the morning." 
 
 Alma shrank from the thought of this publicity. 
 
 " People will talk if we go to the hotel at this hour." 
 
 " Not so much as they would if we stopped here," 
 was the stern answer. 
 
 Alma, now trembling and eager, hurried down the 
 shrubbery to a small gate opening upon the road. The 
 situation, stated in the old woman's vigorous words, 
 had burned into her soul. Yet at the gate she turned. 
 
 "What will he say? What will he think?" she 
 faltered. 
 
 Hannah, for answer, set her strong old hands upon 
 her and turned her about upon her new road. 
 
 " We must get on, missie. It's late and a long walk 
 before us." 
 
 Then Alma had an inspiration. She would go to 
 Joan. Joan had invited her to stay with her. They 
 slipped back into the grounds, and getting out upon the 
 road through the pass were soon at The Folly. 
 
 It was not until she saw Joan's astonished counte- 
 nance, surmounted by Hummerstone's inquisitive one, 
 that Alma realised the unconventional circumstances of 
 her request to be taken in. Before she had time to
 
 Flight 325 
 
 betray her embarrassment, however, Hannah was 
 explaining. 
 
 " His lordship came to Moonbank all of a sudden 
 after dinner," she said mendaciously. " It's his house 
 now, and he thought the ladies was gone. So Miss 
 Alma thought of you, ma'am, as it wasn't the proper 
 thing for her to stop." 
 
 Joan laughed. 
 
 " What an embarrassing situation ! " She kissed 
 Alma. " Stop here of course. I'm pleased to have 
 you. Why, you're trembling all over." 
 
 " We came rather quickly," Alma said, picking 
 words in a desperate fashion out of the wreck of her 
 opal and diamond day.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 THE SEARCH 
 
 WHEN a man and a woman are in love their powers 
 are for the time so quickened as to partake of the 
 supernatural. In reality it is not supernatural, but 
 only the normal evolved to those finer issues which in 
 the course of development will presently be normal. 
 
 Burghwallis returning to the marble bench, a spot 
 charged with the emotions of the day, and finding 
 Alma gone, knew in a flash that she had deserted him. 
 Then, as we do upon such intuitive flashes of truth, he 
 summoned his reason to come blundering in, to assert, 
 to insist, to asseverate that the thing was absurd. 
 There were a dozen possible reasons for her absence. 
 Feeling chilly she might have gone in to the house for 
 a wrap. She might have gone in to give an order, to 
 get a hairpin for disarranged locks, a pin for a torn 
 frill, a glass of water because the hot day had made her 
 thirsty. 
 
 And yet while his hastily-summoned reason, a crude 
 and blundering servant, stammered these excuses, his 
 eyes raked the garden for her, his mind perturbed 
 dwelled, with an insight which only just failed of 
 being sight, upon the shrubbery where she was cower- 
 ing, in a panic lest he who some minutes earlier had 
 seemed to her to be a demigod, a beloved tower of 
 security, should find her. 
 
 He strode back to the house. With an eagerness 
 and haste which belied the specious assurances of his 
 reason he searched all the rooms upon the lower floor. 
 
 Yet still his reason fooled him. Now it was that
 
 The Search 327 
 
 she had found her pin or hairpin, had quenched her 
 thirst, had found her wrap. By this time she would 
 have returned to the garden. He went back to the 
 bench. His heart beat like a strong thing struggling 
 with stronger waters when he saw it empty. Had ever 
 bench appeared so empty as that which held its cold 
 white arms derisively toward him? Frantic, he flung 
 himself before it and kissed a dozen times the spot 
 where she had sat. It was not even warm from her 
 sweet presence. 
 
 Then, being a man of action and still deluded by 
 his reason, he ran lightly and quickly through the 
 grounds, searching every nook and arbour lest she 
 should be hiding in a sudden shy coquetry. He only 
 missed them by some seconds as she and Hannah 
 returned through the grounds to the pass. 
 
 He went back to the house and again searched all 
 the lower rooms. He rang a bell. To his question 
 where was Miss Wenlith the servant replied that she 
 was, he believed, in the grounds. He would inquire. 
 
 He came back to repeat that she was in the grounds. 
 She was nowhere in the house. 
 
 Burghwallis instructed that Hannah should be sent 
 to him. Hannah, it appeared, could not be found. 
 The first warmth which had visited his heart since it 
 had chilled at the sight of the empty bench now came 
 to it. 
 
 If he had driven her out into the night, a hapless, 
 helpless girl, at all events she was not alone. She had 
 with her, to protect her helplessness, a strong, shrewd 
 guide. 
 
 He sat down with his face in his hands. 
 
 God ! She was all he most loved in the world. And 
 he had driven her out, friendless, helpless, penniless. 
 Could he have done worse had he been her worst 
 enemy? This roof had for years been her home, and 
 he had denied her its shelter, had denied her common 
 hospitality, had asked such a price for the lodging of
 
 328 The Whips of Time 
 
 her gentle head, for the small matters of her food and 
 raiment that she had fled desperate into the night. 
 
 God! What a thing was a man, how base, how 
 selfish ! He saw in a flash amid his passion of revul- 
 sion the world of men, greedy and lustful, saying to 
 women, " Only on these terms shall you live, that you 
 barter your honour for bread and for shelter." Love? 
 Oh, Heaven ! Chivalry ? Oh, Heaven ! Nothing but 
 prate ! Damned prate ! He loved her with all his soul. 
 And he had driven her homeless into the night. 
 
 In a reaction he fell to blaming her. His pride and 
 self-esteem were hurt. He grumbled peevishly that 
 she had not cared how he would suffer. He reflected 
 savagely that she fled him as though he had been a 
 leper. 
 
 She rejected his love, his devoted and delicate love, 
 and all he would have given to her, as though they had 
 been beneath contempt. 
 
 He was roused by the entrance of Hannah. She 
 stood before him gaunt and quiet and inscrutable of 
 expression. 
 
 " Your lordship wished to see me." 
 
 He looked at her astonished. He looked past her 
 for a delicate, well-loved form. They had returned 
 then. Thank God ! Never again, so help him ! would 
 he drive her forth. 
 
 " Where is Miss Wenlith? " 
 
 Hannah pretended surprise. She glanced about the 
 room. 
 
 " I haven't seen her, my lord. They say she is in 
 the grounds." 
 
 " You have not seen her ? " 
 
 *' No, my lord, not since I helped her to dress for 
 dinner." 
 
 Hannah was possessed of sterling qualities. Among 
 these, however, was not so nice a sense of truth as 
 would stand in the way of that she regarded as her 
 duty.
 
 The Search 329 
 
 " Is that the truth or a lie ? " Burghwallis demanded 
 in a rage. Hannah's reappearance roused his anxieties 
 and self-accusals to a storm. After all, she was out 
 in the night, with no shrewd guide, but with only her 
 own fears and her despairs. 
 
 ' You have been out," he added sternly. 
 
 " Yes, my lord. I've been to supper with Mrs. 
 Dowson at the west lodge." She turned : " But I'll 
 go and find my mistress and tell her your lordship 
 wishes to see her." 
 
 She ducked her grim and scowling face and took her 
 leave. 
 
 After leaving Alma with Joan she had returned. 
 Joan had not invited and had obviously not expected 
 her to remain. Whereat her gnarled pride had taken 
 high offence even in the midst of graver issues. She 
 had come back quietly like an old mare returning to 
 its quarters. 
 
 Burghwallis was now desperate. She was out in the 
 night, homeless, and friendless, and alone. He pic- 
 tured her in her thin dinner frock, her delicate shoul- 
 ders and her bare arms exposed to the night airs. How 
 frantic must have been her dread of him of him 
 God forgive him! She had fled without word to 
 anyone, with no other thought but to escape 
 him. 
 
 He ran to the hall, and taking coat and hat went 
 out to seek her. The lake spread suddenly before him, 
 a broad and silver mystery, the marble pagoda standing 
 in its midst. 
 
 A sudden horrid terror smote him. He struck it 
 down. What madness it was ! Should he make 
 mountains of molehills, stab his heart with straws? 
 His sane, dear girl would never do that! 
 
 He set his face and passed it. He asked himself, 
 peevishly, why had she not spoken ? Why had she not 
 told him her scruples ? These things were so common. 
 Women in general thought so little of them. How
 
 330 The Whips of Time 
 
 could he have supposed that she would take it so 
 desperately ? 
 
 He believed she knew nobody in Scrope-Denton. So 
 far as he knew she had not a friend in the world. 
 
 He spent the night in forging up and down the 
 roads. They stretched before him, silver shining in 
 the moonlight, with scarcely a shadow on them. 
 
 Whatsoever her children's woes, Nature pursues her 
 broad and tranquil way. Every unhappy soul, she 
 knows, is in her large hands. This pain they suffer, 
 this remorse or grief which sends a dark, distracted 
 figure peering and threshing through her silver sleep, 
 frantically asearch for some poor friend who is in 
 danger of perishing by the way this pain, she knows, 
 is only growing pain, the rack on which man comes to 
 higher stature. 
 
 He wandered all night, at first with strenuous im- 
 pulses and method, searching every barn and hay-rick, 
 diving into every copse and dingle which might promise 
 cover to a delicate, frightened creature. Later, losing 
 hope, he searched aimlessly and distractedly, impelled 
 now only by distress. 
 
 He withstood all sickening promptings to search 
 pools and streams. These were mere morbid weak- 
 nesses, he told himself. Alma would never do that. 
 And if she had done it he was sure he would have 
 known. In his quickened consciousness he had a sense 
 of her weeping somewhere, upbraiding him, fearing 
 him, but still alive. 
 
 The silver burnish of the night dulled. The sicklied 
 moon showed like an anaemic spectre driven before a 
 band of lusty little morning clouds. All became grey 
 and shadowy as though before they had fled, the night 
 witches had sucked the colour and the substance out of 
 things. Nature turned in her bed and shivered, in two 
 minds as to whether she should get up that morning. 
 The earth groaned on its axis.
 
 The Search 331 
 
 The scene-shifters thrust in the wings of another 
 day's pageant. Slowly it moved into action, a bit of 
 bad, ill-defined drawing, with no half tones or colour. 
 Now, faint and dingy hues began to be picked out, 
 sodden and heavy like the colours in wet velvet. The 
 fields showed drenched with dew, their nap brushed 
 the wrong way. The earth had a half-drowned look. 
 
 The sun rose drowsily from its couch of clouds, a 
 blood-red ball, only half-inflated. Slowly it sucked 
 itself full from the vapours of the night, then gathering 
 buoyancy and poise began to balloon up the sky. The 
 flowers blinked out of their sleepy lids. They could 
 no longer pretend it was not morning. They yawned, 
 winked the tears from their lids and opened their many- 
 coloured eyes. 
 
 Before one had time to look round the heart of the 
 earth was again pulsating, its cheeks crimsoning and 
 aglow with life and light. 
 
 And through the wonder of it, without thought for 
 it, with haggard face and extinguished eyes, Burgh- 
 wallis returned to Moonbank. 
 
 A servant, sufficiently mindful of his duties to sup- 
 press his yawns, opened the door to him. As he went 
 upstairs to the room he had ordered to be prepared for 
 him, the man quenched the hall-light, which he had left 
 burning with a sense that it would in a measure con- 
 done this very late home-coming. 
 
 Burghwallis flung himself down upon his bed. But 
 not to sleep. Only to thresh from side to side of it, 
 obsessed by a dread that he had failed to find her 
 because he had shirked the ponds.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 WITH JOAN 
 
 WHILE he so sought and suffered, Alma lay safe in the 
 pretty room Joan had put at her disposal, safe but 
 overwhelmed with grief, now weeping passionately, 
 now sitting up wildly, asking herself what he was 
 doing, whether he was blaming her, was missing her, 
 was suffering, then covering her hot face with her 
 hands, ashamed to grieve for him, to think of him who 
 had thought of her so lightly. 
 
 Toward morning, refreshed by a heavy rain of tears, 
 she fell asleep and did not wake until a maid brought 
 tea to her. 
 
 She rose and dressed. She was aghast at her 
 reflection in the glass. Would Joan, inquisitive, com- 
 ment upon her tragic look and swollen eyes ? She did 
 her best to remove the traces of her suffering and went 
 down to breakfast. Joan made no comments. She 
 was absorbed in her own affairs. 
 
 Alma, despite her miseries, now that she made his 
 acquaintance, could not help wondering why she had 
 married Hummerstone. 
 
 The man was so commonplace and underbred. 
 Everything he said jarred on her tastes and sensibilities, 
 his mean sentiments, his pride in the power of money. 
 All that he did offended, his greedy and obtrusive way 
 of eating, his lack of courtesy at table. 
 
 She turned her eyes from him, ashamed to find 
 herself so hostilely criticising him. She had known no 
 men but the Duke and Burghwallis. She must not, of 
 course, expect all men to be equally well mannered,
 
 With Joan 333 
 
 Yet how could Joan have married him? She had 
 cried her eyes dry. But a lump rose in her throat as 
 she reflected that there was only one man in the world 
 whom she could understand any woman wishing to 
 marry. And he She dared not think of him. 
 
 To her amazement Joan and Hummerstone bickered 
 mildly throughout the meal. How could persons who 
 loved one another quarrel over stupid trifles? Joan 
 wished a blind drawn because the sun glared in her 
 eyes. Hummerstone, grumbling that he liked every 
 available ray of sunshine, drew down the blind inch by 
 inch, demanding with each inch, " Will that do? " " Is 
 that enough ? " and finally left it only half drawn, 
 insisting that she must be satisfied with that. 
 
 Whereupon, with a return of her old spirit, Joan had 
 swept to the window and had dragged down the blind 
 to its limit with a great rattle. 
 
 And then after a minute Hummerstone had lounged 
 up again from his chair and had raised it a third up 
 the window, complaining that he could not see what 
 he was eating. 
 
 Joan had made no further protest. But Alma saw 
 her steal a long, slow glance at him, a glance which 
 shocked her by its ugliness. She saw then that her 
 friend had greatly altered, that she had lost all her 
 brightness and buoyancy of look and of manner. She 
 had become almost plain. Surely she could not be 
 well. 
 
 There was a squabble over the sweetening of 
 Hummerstone's coffee. Instead of putting in sugar 
 from the basin on the tray, Joan produced a bottle of 
 white tabloids from her pocket, and selecting two with 
 a good deal of deliberation, dropped them into the cup 
 she had poured for him. 
 
 Alma supposed that this must be a standing point of 
 contention between them. He turned almost livid 
 she supposed from anger. His hands shook. When 
 the cup was passed to him he rose and violently poured
 
 334 The Whips of Time 
 
 its contents into a basin, washed out the cup and 
 carried it back to the tray. 
 
 He filled it himself from the coffee-pot and sweet- 
 ened it with sugar. 
 
 " You'll never get me to drink the filthy muck," he 
 said coarsely, " so it's no use trying." 
 
 " Why," Joan returned with a disagreeable silki- 
 ness of voice, " it is only saccharin. You are getting 
 far too stout." 
 
 At the same time she let her eyes dwell on him with 
 a repetition of that ugly look. 
 
 He sat for some time subdued, his face brooding. 
 At intervals he raised his eyes and stole a stealthy 
 glance at her. 
 
 These embarrassing passages-at-arms kept Alma 
 from dwelling on her griefs. They filled her with 
 astonishment. They were a wholly new experience. 
 Mrs. Beaumont's golden-tempered tranquillity had been 
 a species of virtue. During Alma's whole life with her 
 she did not remember to have seen her vexed or angry. 
 Never had she heard her utter a harsh word. Saxby 
 had been imperious and sometimes savage, and his 
 word had been law, albeit in small things such as that 
 adjustment of a blind he had always in an instant 
 yielded his own inclination to that of the women about 
 him. 
 
 Tony but she dared not remember Tony. 
 
 " Take my advice, Miss Wenlith, and never marry," 
 Hummerstone said presently, with a spiteful glance at 
 Joan. " Since I married her Jonah has turned out a 
 regular vixen." 
 
 "If she has it must be your fault," Alma retorted 
 with spirit. " She has always been exceedingly 
 amiable." 
 
 " Those are only company manners. Before I knew 
 her at home I believed too that butter would not melt 
 in her mouth." 
 
 Joan did not speak. She continued to eat her break-
 
 With Joan 335 
 
 fast in a silence to which her dull look gave a semblance 
 of sullenness. 
 
 Hummerstone leaned toward Alma. Dropping his 
 voice to a tone of intimacy he said, with a smirk : 
 
 " You and I are going to be chummy. We'll leave 
 her to scold by herself." 
 
 Alma considered him odious. 
 
 Joan's passivity surprised her. She had known her 
 always full of spirit and quick of retort. 
 
 Hannah came in in the course of the day. She 
 brought with her a selection from Alma's wardrobe. 
 
 " Lord Anthony is still at Moonbank, I suppose," 
 Alma said as the old woman, without a word of news, 
 proceeded to arrange the clothes in drawers and in 
 wardrobes. " Was he anxious last night when he 
 found I had gone ? " 
 
 " He did seem a bit put about," her nurse admitted. 
 " But this morning he's had his breakfast and gone for 
 a stroll." 
 
 Hannah, she knew, held no key to his heart. He 
 was the last man to betray emotion. And yet the 
 picture drawn in the bald, unsympathetic words filled 
 her with mortification. 
 
 Had he lost her as lightly as he had held her? 
 
 " They say in the servants' hall he be a great one 
 with the ladies," Hannah volunteered out of a ward- 
 robe. 
 
 The blood surged to her face. It drummed in her 
 ears like a Dead March drumming on the grave of her 
 illusions. 
 
 Presently she crossed the room, and with all the 
 energy left to her the energy of pride she kissed 
 her old friend's grim face. 
 
 " Thank you a thousand times, Hannah," she said, 
 " for what you did for me last night." 
 
 " Oh, that's nothing, missie," Hannah protested 
 like all grim persons embarrassed by a show of feeling.
 
 336 The Whips of Time 
 
 " You're like one of my own. I couldn't stand by and 
 see you go your aunt's way. Better only a crust of 
 bread, Miss Alma, as long as a woman goes right. 
 The other way always ends bad." 
 
 When she had gone Alma once more summoned her 
 pride, the last asset of her bankrupt heart. She sat 
 down to her writing-table, and taking her pen ran- 
 sacked her brain for thoughts. Presently the pen was 
 flying over the pages. 
 
 She wrote for two whole hours. Then, her face 
 burning and her eyes dry-hot from the fever behind 
 them, she read what she had written. It was fluent 
 and there were vitality and graphic touches in it. But 
 it was quite untrue to life, a mere epitome of all that 
 she had read about the falseness and the inconstancy of 
 men and of the faithful, tender hearts of women 
 crushed and mangled by such falseness. Her own case 
 pointed the moral. 
 
 She wept bitterly above it. It seemed to her to be 
 a masterpiece of miserable truth. And she wept 
 bitterly because it was the truth. 
 
 Before the day was out her pride-in-arms against 
 Burghwallis was reinforced by a lesser pride, the pride 
 of independence. For it became plain to her that Joan 
 did not want her at The Folly. She was not discour- 
 teous but she was absent and sullen. She neither 
 sought Alma nor appeared pleased when Alma joined 
 her. 
 
 Alma had no alternative but to avail herself for the 
 present of this negative hospitality. But it set her 
 smarting sorely and excited a wholesome counter- 
 irritant to her deeper griefs. The obligation to apply 
 herself heart and soul to the task of bread-winning 
 whipped up new strength of will and of purpose in her. 
 
 At tea the squabble of the saccharin tabloids was 
 renewed. Hummerstone started it by going to the tray 
 and putting two lumps of sugar into a cup.
 
 With Joan 337 
 
 " That is for me," he stated. " None of your 
 beastly tabloids this time." 
 
 But while his head was turned, as he went back to 
 his chair, Alma saw Joan whip out her bottle and 
 removing the sugar substitute tabloids for it. When 
 she had rilled it he took it from her with a grin of com- 
 placent triumph at having, as he supposed, outwitted 
 her. He drank half its contents at a draught. But as 
 he set it down he rolled the flavour on his tongue. He 
 glanced up suspiciously. He met her green eyes fixed 
 inscrutably upon him. 
 
 He sniffed his cup. He got up trembling, his face 
 a sickly green. 
 
 " You demon," he accused her violently, " you've 
 put some horrible thing into it. It tastes bitter. It 
 has made me feel sick." He strode to the door, his 
 long limbs flinging before him in a sort of agitated 
 incoordination. At the door he turned. 
 
 " Look here, Miss Wenlith," he said, " if I die of 
 poison you'll know my wife has done it with her 
 beastly messes." 
 
 He flung out of the room. 
 
 Joan, with her slow smile, refilled her cup. " The 
 silly man ! " she said in the same silky voice, " he has 
 quite a senseless prejudice against saccharin." 
 
 ' Then why give it to him ? " Alma asked. 
 
 " I don't like him to be fat," Joan said. She smiled 
 again. It was a horrid smile, Alma thought. 
 
 " The truth is," Joan told her later, " he is angry 
 at having to live here in the country. He hates the 
 country. And I hate the town. I will neither live 
 there nor will I give him money to live away from me. 
 I'm not altogether a fool." 
 
 " Joan, dear," Alma said sympathetically, " I'm 
 afraid you're not very happy." 
 
 Joan laughed scofrmgly. 
 
 " Is anybody happy ? " she retorted.
 
 CHAPTER XE 
 
 INSOMNIA 
 
 BURGH WALLIS wondered if it were a fact that for a 
 whole ten days he had not slept a wink. He doubted 
 if it could be true. He had never heard of a man lying 
 awake for ten days. He supposed he must have dozed 
 at intervals without observing it. Perhaps he had 
 slept as he walked. He walked a great part of the day. 
 Now he had searched all the ponds. But there might 
 be a last one, one hidden away among trees and grasses, 
 which he had not found. He was looking for it. 
 
 He denied this to himself, however. A man might 
 glance into a pond without admitting horrible possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 Alma would never have done that. She was still 
 alive and safe somewhere. Not happy or well off per- 
 haps. How could she be ? She might even be hungry 
 and cold and among grudging strangers. But she was 
 alive somewhere. 
 
 When she had fled she must surely have had some 
 purpose in her mind. She would not have rushed out 
 into the world without some bourne or purpose. 
 
 In England persons did not starve to death. There 
 were hospitals for those who fell sick. There were 
 workhouses. 
 
 He mopped his face thinking of Alma of the dainty 
 feet and delicate instincts lying in some coarse hospital 
 or workhouse bed, surrounded by the coarse poor. 
 
 The morning after her disappearance he had quietly 
 sent for detectives. But they had found no trace of 
 her. 
 
 He walked the greater part of the day and thought
 
 Insomnia 339 
 
 all night, such thoughts as were like flails threshing up 
 and down his brain till there was nothing left in it but 
 arid chaff. 
 
 The face which looked back at him out of the glass, 
 when he had sought for it, surprised him. Was this 
 his, this face with bunged-up, red-rimmed eyes, with 
 purple patches where it should have been pale and pale 
 patches where it should have been red ? His hands too 
 were mottled and congested like those of an old 
 drunkard. Indeed, he reflected, wondering, his whole 
 appearance was that of a man after a bout of heavy 
 drinking. 
 
 Yet he was not drinking. At all times abstemious, 
 he drank even less now because he needed to keep his 
 wits about him. And, so far as he remembered, he was 
 missing a number of his meals. 
 
 He wondered if hell could hold any torture more 
 awful than these sleepless nights, when all the blood 
 seemed to have been scorched out of his body and his 
 tissues to be filled with white, hot dust. White, hot 
 dust, too, on his tongue and in his brain, silting and 
 silting this way and that to every thought and move- 
 ment. 
 
 He had got back a touch of his fever. His joints 
 burned and ached. He felt altogether infernally 
 hipped. But he could not waste time in lying up. 
 Besides, his hot bed was an inferno from which he 
 thankfully escaped with each return of day. 
 
 Sometimes as a relief God, was it a relief? 
 amid his burning, threshing thoughts, there stole a 
 mirage, a cool, sweet oasis, a phantasy which mocked 
 and flouted him, a glimpse of tranquil, tender eyes, of 
 a voice that was balm, of a touch so cool, so pure, so 
 fond that every fibre in him shook with ecstasy. 
 
 A moment it lingered to charm and soothe his burn- 
 ing mind and body, laying the hot, driving dust. With 
 parched sighs he stretched his burning arms to it, he 
 breathed the fragrance of her into the furnace of his
 
 340 The Whips of Time 
 
 lungs, he thrust out his gaunt hot cheek for the coolness 
 of hers, he hungered for her, panted for her, drew her 
 down, down into his hollow heart, where the winds 
 shrieked desolately. Then she was gone gone. And 
 the winds howled more desolately and the hot dust 
 silted. 
 
 When morning came he looked back on the night and 
 cursed. What was he but a fool, a madman? When 
 had he found such transcendental potencies in any 
 woman ? Lips, hands, kisses ! a brief exchange, and a 
 nausea of disillusion. 
 
 But yet the conviction clove that this was different, 
 that here would be no disillusion. For though he craved 
 her kiss, her cheek, her hand, it was not only lips and 
 flesh he craved, but that something beyond of which 
 these were but instruments, as a flower is the vehicle of 
 loveliness and fragrance. 
 
 It was the desire of his soul for her soul which made 
 his poignancy of pain. 
 
 Lowood was surprised to receive a visit from the 
 local doctor. 
 
 Some civilities had passed already between them and 
 he liked the man. This morning Dr. Burnham wore an 
 air of trouble. He had a profound respect for Lo- 
 wood's professional skill and reputation. But knowing 
 him to have given up practice he felt diffident about 
 consulting him. He ventured, however, to invoke his 
 aid in lieu of summoning a London specialist. He had 
 been called in to Moonbank to see Lord Anthony 
 Burghwallis, who appeared to be suffering from some 
 obscure malady complicated by an obstinate insomnia. 
 
 Lowood, who had seen Alma and had learned some- 
 thing from her lips and still more from her silence, 
 in a moment guessed the nature of the malady. 
 
 He experienced a sense of spiteful gratification to 
 learn that the man had sufficient conscience to be unable 
 to sleep upon his sins.
 
 Insomnia 341 
 
 When he had seen him, however, humanity over- 
 came every other feeling. If suffering could expiate, 
 the man appeared to have expiated. For he was upon 
 the point of the most cruel form of death or of 
 madness. 
 
 The patient had little to tell him. He merely roused 
 out of a baking stupor, which was nothing like sleep, 
 to explain briefly that he could not sleep, that so far as 
 he knew he had not slept for ten days, that his eyes 
 and brain were like ovens and that altogether he felt 
 infernally hipped. A dose of morphia or something 
 would set him right, he supposed. He would be all 
 right if he could get a sleep. 
 
 A case so extreme was as trump to the war-horse. 
 Lowood in a moment was all zeal. At once he set to 
 work. He told him cheerfully that he would soon have 
 him asleep. The patient muttered something about 
 " grateful " and relapsed into his staring stupor. 
 
 At the end of twenty-four hours Lowood looked 
 grave. All his skill had failed. Burghwallis was 
 but twenty-four hours more fevered, more red-eyed, 
 more spent nearer, in short, to death or to mad- 
 ness. 
 
 Lowood had courage and resource. There was, he 
 knew, but one medicine to save his patient's life. If 
 to procure this for him lay in his power his patient 
 should have it. He made straight for Alma. After 
 beating a little about the bush he described the sufferer's 
 state. 
 
 " Please tell me nothing," he concluded. " From 
 words he has let fall in his delirium I know that anxiety 
 about you is the cause of his illness. Will you let me 
 take you to him ? " 
 
 " Oh, at once," she faltered. " Take me at once." 
 
 Lowood's plan of action was arranged. He had 
 undertaken to watch by the patient for an hour while 
 the nurse in attendance should go upon some mission 
 he had planned.
 
 342 The Whips of Time 
 
 During her absence Alma was to be introduced into 
 the sick-room. 
 
 An hour later he called for her. As they went he 
 entered into explanations. 
 
 " You believe, I know, in evolution." 
 
 She nodded impatiently. She hurried on. How 
 could he ask her at such a moment to consider trifles ? 
 
 " Every plane of Nature," he went on, " is in corre- 
 spondence with all other planes. The principles on all 
 planes are alike. They differ only in their degree of 
 development and in their potency. A principle is less 
 potent on the mineral plane than it is on the vegetable, 
 less potent on the vegetable than it is on the animal. 
 Are you listening? " 
 
 " Oh, as well as I can," she returned. 
 
 " Among her many potencies Nature possesses what 
 we know as healing principles. We have healing 
 principles in minerals, we have healing principles in 
 the vegetable world. And now listen we have yet 
 more highly developed healing principles in man. Man 
 in the course of evolution has gathered and stored in 
 his nature every principle of every plane beneath him, 
 and because he is Nature's most highly evolved mani- 
 festation all those principles are more potent in him 
 than they are on lower planes. This is the basis of a 
 new healing art. By the exercise of mind and will man 
 should be able to evolve from his being electric or 
 magnetic or vibratory forces corresponding to the 
 chemical and vital healing principles of the planes 
 below him." 
 
 " I am getting bewildered," she protested. " Must 
 you tell me all this now ? " 
 
 " Yes," he stated firmly, " because Lord Anthony's 
 life depends upon your knowing and understanding 
 what I tell you. In his case mineral and vegetable 
 principles and I have failed. It is you who must heal 
 him. It lies with you to evolve out of your latent 
 forces nerve vibrations, human electricity (call it what
 
 Insomnia 343 
 
 you will), which shall serve him for an opiate. Some- 
 where in you is the rest-diving, sleep-giving principle. 
 When you come into his presence summon out of you 
 this healing balm which shall put this poor man into 
 a refreshing sleep." 
 
 " Oh, but I have no such potency," she cried. " I 
 am neither witch nor god, but only an unhappy, power- 
 less woman. For the love of Heaven, Dr. Lowood, 
 save him by your great skill ! " 
 
 He caught and held her hand in his. 
 
 " My dear young lady," he insisted, " I have told you 
 nothing but the truth. You and you only can save him. 
 He is beyond all art of mine." 
 
 His words and touch restored her. After all, might 
 it not be true? Could Tony die while she so loved 
 him? She was filled with a passion of tenderness. 
 Could he die while she so thrilled with vital fondness 
 for him? 
 
 She waited in the shrubbery while the nurse was 
 sent upon her mission. 
 
 Then Lowood came down and admitted her by a 
 window opening from the lawn. 
 
 Burghwallis lay in his bed, his limbs relaxed as 
 those of a man who had ceased to fight. He was a 
 spectre of himself, gaunt and hollow-cheeked and 
 ashen, with livid patches on his cheek-bones, his lips 
 dragging from his teeth beneath the blond moustache 
 which showed incongruously debonair on such a face. 
 Out of their sunken sockets his bloodshot eyes stared 
 like eyes staring at horrid things. 
 
 His parched hands plucked at the bedclothes. His 
 breath came harsh. Sometimes he muttered hollowly. 
 
 Healing potencies? Heavens! Was she not all in 
 a moment teeming with them? Love and pity sped 
 down every wayside of her nature, sunning and quick- 
 ening them till they bloomed again with herb and 
 healing.
 
 344 The Whips of Time 
 
 She was down on her knees by his bed, her arms 
 about him, her cheek against his unshorn, burning 
 cheek, one of his hot, dry hands in hers. 
 
 He did not know her. Delirium had dropped her 
 scarlet curtain between his brain and all outside it. 
 
 Lowood, his back turned to them, heard him draw 
 some rapid, shallow breaths, feared for a minute they 
 would be his last, that the shock had been too much 
 for him. 
 
 Then he sighed, paused, and began again to breathe, 
 this time more quietly. 
 
 The room was steeped in silence in the sacred 
 silence of two locked souls. 
 
 Alma, surcharged with tenderness and pity, was 
 dimly conscious of some mystical battery within her 
 recharging his spent brain and nerves with life and 
 with sleep. 
 
 And Lowood, listening intently, presently heard the 
 senseless panting of delirium pass into the gentle 
 rhythm of refreshing sleep. 
 
 When presently he touched Alma on a shoulder and 
 she gently disengaged herself, he saw that the patient 
 was fathoms deep in slumber, his face calm, his eyes 
 closed, a half smile on his parched lips. 
 
 " For the next twenty-four hours a bomb-explosion 
 would scarcely wake him," he told her, smiling in 
 congratulation. " Come now, you did well, my pupil." 
 
 " You must never, never tell him," she entreated. 
 
 He pressed her hand. He went back to his patient, 
 thrilled by a strange exaltation. For the first time 
 in his starved life a woman had kissed his hand. It 
 taught him new things. It served for a practical illus- 
 tration of his theories. If a woman's gratitude could 
 so thrill him, was it strange that her love should be 
 a healing potency? 
 
 Burgh wallis slept, as Lowood had predicted, for a 
 day and a night. He awoke peevish but with his 
 brain restored to some sort of balance.
 
 Insomnia 345 
 
 " Has anybody been here? " was his first question. 
 
 To which the nurse in all good faith replied : 
 
 " Nobody except the doctors." 
 
 When he next saw him Lowood made a point of 
 saying casually : 
 
 " By the way, Miss Wenlith, who is stopping with 
 her friend, Mrs. Hummerstone, was asking after you 
 this morning. Can I give her any message ? " 
 
 There was a long silence. Then a muttered, " None, 
 thanks ! " came from the bed. 
 
 Lowood reflected that his patient would in all prob- 
 ability sleep again that night. 
 
 His patient spent a portion of it in fitting all the 
 adjectives at his command to the word " ass " and in 
 applying word and adjectives to himself. And " melo- 
 dramatic ass " was the one from which he derived the 
 greatest satisfaction. 
 
 Two mornings later he returned to town, anxiously 
 deliberating his plan of action. He had got himself 
 into a pretty muddle. Had he transgressed beyond 
 forgiveness ? 
 
 As for Jones and Robinson, they were a couple of 
 shallow snobs whose opinion wasn't worth cigar ash. 
 A man could marry whom he pleased and let all the 
 narrow-minded noodles of the clubs go hang ! 
 
 Men had faced fire and sword and every inconceiv- 
 able torture for the women they loved. Surely one 
 might brave a few senseless snickers ! 
 
 He passed some grim days at Boodles, sardonically 
 staring at the following announcement, which with his 
 own hand he had written upon a sheet of the imposing- 
 looking club paper : 
 
 " An engagement is announced between Lord An- 
 thony Burghwallis, third son of the fifteenth Duke 
 of Saxby, and Alma, only daughter of the late Sarah 
 Munnings, convicted of poisoning thirteen persons and 
 sentenced to be hanged." 
 
 I cannot say that he contemplated inserting the
 
 346 The Whips of Time 
 
 announcement in the Morning Post. And yet he cyn- 
 ically asked himself why not? Was it not the truth? 
 Was there a soul who would not soon know it? 
 
 At the time of the trial the papers had made much 
 of the fact that the murderess was the only sister of 
 the incomparably lovely Bet Beaumont, who was just 
 then turning all heads. 
 
 Gazing gloomily at the announcement, he mopped 
 his blond moustache. He thought he would rather 
 have faced the lions or the rack. But perhaps those 
 poor beggars who had tried the lions or the rack would 
 have preferred to substitute an announcement in the 
 Post. Good Lord! The test of a man was in facing 
 his music in whatsoever form it might come.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 SACCHARIN 
 
 LOWOOD was back again in harness. Scarcely was one 
 patient out of his hands before he had another. This 
 time the case was wholly ugly and made no appeal to 
 his romantic sentiments. 
 
 Legh, before the Hummerstones returned, had 
 packed up his guns and had gone off disgusted to 
 shoot big game. (Alas for it that men frequently 
 seek scapegoats for their large emotions in these fine 
 creatures!) He was convinced, he told Lowood, that 
 he could not have kept his hands from the bounder. 
 As for Joan, he hoped never again to see her face. 
 
 Hestroyde at this time appeared never to be at home 
 when called upon, nor to be out when others were 
 abroad. 
 
 Lowood was thrown therefore a good deal upon the 
 Hummerstones for society, a compulsion he found less 
 distasteful since Alma had become an inmate of the 
 house. 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " he told Cyril one day when he 
 was calling at the Cottage, " what has come to you ? 
 You're getting as thin as a rake. You look like white 
 paper. You'd better knock off or you'll be going to 
 pieces." 
 
 In a minute the man was trembling like a leaf, his 
 eyes going this way and that, his face a sickly green. 
 
 "Knock off?" he blurted savagely. "I'm not 
 drinking." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 " I swear I'm not."
 
 348 The Whips of Time 
 
 "Then what is it?" 
 
 " There's nothing," he insisted, almost shouting. 
 " I'm perfectly fit. Hang it ! what do you want to 
 scare a man for? I'm as fit as possible. What d'you 
 want to scare a man for ? " 
 
 Lowood shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Oh, all right," he said, " if you feel all right. I 
 only meant to give you a word in time." 
 
 " I don't want words in time or out of it," Hum- 
 merstone growled with stupid heat ; " nothing upsets 
 me like being told I'm ill. And I tell you I'm as strong 
 as a horse. Why shouldn't I be? In this dull hole 
 of a place there's nothing to make me anything else, 
 going to bed with the lamb and getting up with the 
 lark." 
 
 Lowood was sorry he had spoken. Yet the man 
 was so obviously ill that he could not have supposed 
 that to be told so would be news to him. He seemed 
 strangely affected by the warning. His complexion 
 retained for the rest of his visit the same sickly hue. 
 Lowood saw him surreptitiously go to the glass at 
 which he had once gaily adjusted a buttonhole, and 
 examine his face with scared looks, even thrust out and 
 inspect his tongue. 
 
 He turned round blustering. 
 
 " I'm all right," he protested again. " As strong 
 as a horse." He rubbed his cheeks briskly. " I've 
 got quite a colour." 
 
 " Oh, well," Lowood said, " you must know best, 
 of course, how you are." 
 
 The young man stretched a long leg on which a 
 trouser obviously bagged. 
 
 " Perhaps I'm a bit off my food and a trifle thinner. 
 But that's a good sign. A chap of my age oughtn't 
 to be too fat." 
 
 Polly, who had edged to the nearest corner of her 
 cage and was blinking her eyes in silent ecstasy upon 
 this heroic creature of her fancy, now said gently :
 
 Saccharin 349 
 
 " Kiss me ! Kiss me ! Kiss me, quick ! " 
 
 At the first sound, not realising whence it came, 
 Hummerstone started and stared round. Then seeing 
 her, in a fit of ungovernable fury he caught up an 
 antimacassar, rolled it into a ball and flung it at her 
 cage. 
 
 " You old fool ! " he said, " you made me jump." 
 
 Polly, unused to such violence, and greatly alarmed, 
 fluttered up and down her cage, uttering discordant 
 shrieks. 
 
 " Oh, stop her ! Great Scott ! stop her," Hummer- 
 stone shouted. He clapped his hands to his ears. He 
 seemed beside himself. " She'll drive me mad. My 
 nerves are perfectly rotten. I tell you she will drive 
 me mad." He began to stamp wildly up and down 
 the little room. 
 
 Lowood, seeing his disordered state, quietly carried 
 the cage into another room. 
 
 When he returned his visitor had dropped into a 
 chair and sat staring before him. 
 
 " I say," he broke out in alarm, " I suppose I 
 must be out of sorts. I never used to have nerves. 
 Now I shake at everything. What do you think it 
 is?" 
 
 Lowood made some professional inquiries. 
 
 " Look here," Hummerstone said, when these had 
 led to nothing, " do you think saccharin could have 
 anything to do with it ? Perhaps it doesn't suit every- 
 body. Did you ever hear of any one being poisoned 
 by saccharin, for instance ? " 
 
 Lowood reassured him. Upon which he reverted 
 to his former blustering confidence. He was perfectly 
 well. Perhaps he'd been smoking too much. Perhaps 
 he ought to cut tea. 
 
 Lowood did not know what to make of him. Obvi- 
 ously there was something wrong. 
 
 He showed blank with disappointment when Lo- 
 wood explained that he could not give tea to him.
 
 350 The Whips of Time 
 
 He had promised to drink tea with the Tempests. He 
 must set out immediately. 
 
 " Oh, I say," Hummerstone protested, " I reckoned 
 on getting tea here. Joan gives us such beastly muck. 
 I can't stand Joan's tea and coffee." 
 
 But Lowood must start at once. 
 
 " I have to offer my congratulations," he explained. 
 " You've heard, I suppose, that Hestroyde has en- 
 gaged himself to Molly Tempest." 
 
 Here now was news for Hummerstone. He forgot 
 about tea. Here now was news to carry home to Joan. 
 He rubbed his large soft hands. Something to avenge 
 his grievances. 
 
 He chuckled blandly. 
 
 " Molly is the second one, isn't she ? A little red- 
 haired, pudding-faced creature ? " 
 
 " She is a nice, fresh, lively little girl," Lowood 
 defended her. Poor man ! or happy man ! who saw 
 the whole sex through rose-coloured spectacles. 
 
 Hummerstone almost ran home. He was in a panic 
 lest somebody should call and should tell Joan the 
 news before he could. He wanted to see her face 
 when she should hear it. 
 
 Nobody had been. She was unwarned, her feelings 
 lying bare for laceration. When Alma had come 
 down, come down with the flushed cheeks and shining 
 eyes of literary inspiration ( for her pen was beginning 
 to move of itself), he began his attack. 
 
 First, however, he cast some odious glances of com- 
 parison between the two, odious to Alma whom they 
 were intended to flatter, odious to Joan whom they 
 were meant to disparage. By Jove! Jonah seemed 
 to go off more and more each day. Soon she'd be an 
 absolute fright. Her dull air even robbed her supple 
 figure of all grace. A nice thing truly for a man of 
 his taste to find himself tied up to a plain woman! 
 This Miss Wenlith was quite a daisy. He had never 
 suspected that a clever woman could be so attractive.
 
 Saccharin 351 
 
 It would be worth trying to discover if she were as 
 innocent as she looked. Very few women were. And 
 she was Mrs. Beaumont's niece. 
 
 Then he proceeded to the business on hand. 
 
 " I say, Jonah ! " he said, when his wife had taken 
 her place at the tea-table her place at the tea-table 
 exposed her face to the full light and to his gaze 
 " I say, guess who's engaged." 
 
 " Oh, Lady Henson and Major Piper, I suppose," 
 she said tonelessly. " It has been coming these three 
 years." 
 
 She made several guesses and failures. All at once 
 her face became like white paper. A stricken look 
 came to her eyes. She knew. And she writhed in 
 heart beneath the harrow of his mean, triumphant 
 gaze. 
 
 " Who to ? " she demanded in a sharp breath. 
 
 " Why," he said with pretended astonishment, " you 
 haven't guessed the man's name yet." 
 
 A red blotch, like a backwater of bad blood, stood 
 out suddenly on her cheek. Her green eyes showed 
 scored by his harrow. 
 
 After a painful silence she said, dragging a cloak 
 of smoothness over her shivering voice as one covers 
 shameful rags : 
 
 " I thought it might be Mark Hestroyde." 
 
 " It is Hestroyde," Hummerstone said, and 
 chuckled. " Hestroyde the inconsolable. You thought 
 he'd never get over it." 
 
 Her stiff lips framed a question. No sound came. 
 
 " What are you muttering? " he asked. 
 
 Then, as she did not answer, her eyes seeming to 
 be red-flecked with rage or with blood, he added airily : 
 
 " He's going to marry that little red-haired Molly 
 Tempest, the one with the large waist. She's got a 
 deuced good complexion, though." 
 
 Alma sat on tenter-hooks for her friend. Why she 
 had discarded Hestroyde and had married this man
 
 352 The Whips of Time 
 
 was a ceaseless problem to her. But an intuitive 
 knowledge and sympathy told her now that she was 
 in the presence of a tortured soul, of a soul weltering 
 in blood and fire. 
 
 Yet she could say nothing, do nothing, without add- 
 ing the further pain of exposure to her friend's suf- 
 fering. 
 
 She threw Hummerstone some angry glances. She 
 wished she had been a man, that she might have taken 
 him by the shoulders and put him from the room. A 
 lump rose in her throat as two large tears, despite her 
 efforts, forced themselves into Joan's eyes and trickled 
 down her dull face. 
 
 There was no squabble this time about the tabloids. 
 Joan had other occupation for her thoughts. She 
 sweetened his tea from the sugar-basin. 
 
 That evening at dinner, while he was eating a third 
 helping of trifle, a sweet which was made expressly for 
 him, Hummerstone turned white, set down his spoon 
 and violently pushed back his chair from the table. 
 
 " There's that loathsome saccharin in it," he pro- 
 tested, " I can taste the beastly bitter of it. What has 
 that damned cook been up to? " 
 
 Joan glanced over at him with her ugly smile. 
 
 " Oh, has she put too much ? " she said smoothly. 
 " I gave her the bottle of tabloids. Perhaps I ought 
 to have sweetened it myself." 
 
 " Well, I'm going to be sick," he said coarsely, and 
 flung out of the room.
 
 CHAPTER XUI 
 
 ILLNESS 
 
 IN the small hours of the morning 1 Lowood was called 
 up. Mr. Hummerstone was dangerously ill. He 
 begged that his godfather would go at once to him. 
 
 Lowood found him collapsed. He had been suffer- 
 ing all night from violent pains and sickness. His 
 face was green, his voice a mere thread of terror. 
 
 " I'm dying," he said, " I've been poisoned. I 
 haven't an hour to live." 
 
 He raised himself upon an elbow, his face bedewed 
 with moisture. His eyes went round the room, peering 
 frightened into the shadows. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," he entreated, " don't let her 
 come near me. Don't let her touch anything I eat 
 or drink. For weeks she's been poisoning me with 
 her infernal tabloids." 
 
 Lowood supposed his mind to be unhinged by his 
 condition. Hummerstone's medical knowledge was 
 doubtless slight, yet had he been sane he would have 
 known that men were not poisoned by saccharin. Nor 
 did sane men suspect that they were being poisoned. 
 
 " Give me antidotes for arsenic," Hummerstone 
 urged frantically. " One day she took a bottle labelled 
 ' Arsenic ' from her pocket. She thought I didn't see 
 it." 
 
 All this, of course, Lowood regarded as mere ra- 
 ving. He administered the remedies for which the 
 case called, and when these had relieved the symptoms 
 he left, promising to look in later. 
 
 In the evening, to his astonishment, he found the
 
 354 The Whips of Time 
 
 elder Hummerstone there. Cyril had wired for him. 
 Lowood saw that he was strangely agitated. He 
 closed the door of the room in which they were and 
 faced Lowood with an air of gravity. 
 
 " We must get him away at once," he insisted. 
 " She is poisoning him." 
 
 "Who?" Lowood asked, amazed. 
 
 " His wife. He has all the symptoms of arsenical 
 poisoning. He has seen arsenic in her possession. 
 After they left me I missed a bottle of arsenic from 
 the laboratory. The whole time she was with me I 
 could not keep her away from the poisons. She talked 
 of nothing else." 
 
 Lowood scoffed. 
 
 " My dear man," he said, " it's a parcel of rubbish. 
 You're bothered about Cyril and you've let him scare 
 you. I tell you it's only raving on his part. He's in 
 a panic about himself. It's just a bad gastric attack. 
 He eats all sorts of things." 
 
 While he talked Hummerstone stalked up and down 
 the room. At intervals he raised a cold, protesting 
 hand. When Lowood had finished he stepped in front 
 of him. 
 
 " I will tell you the truth," he said. His eyes 
 dropped. A fraction of shame showed in them. 
 
 " She is Sarah Munnings' daughter. You remem- 
 ber the affair of the changed infants. It was she 
 whom I substituted for Lady Kesteven's infant." 
 
 In all his life Lowood had never experienced a blow 
 so levelling as this. He repeated to himself at least 
 five times, as though his consciousness refused ad- 
 mission to it, " Sarah Munnings' daughter ! " Then, 
 when at last his brain reacted, he said feebly : 
 
 " But it was a son." 
 
 " No," Hummerstone said, " science is occasionally 
 wrong. The infant turned out to be a girl. Mrs. 
 Legh's infant was a son. I was compelled therefore 
 to try my experiment upon Lady Kesteven."
 
 Illness 355 
 
 Again Lowood's stunned brain reacted. 
 
 " Did all the ladies of Scrope-Denton then assemble 
 at Thistlewaite's private hospital at the same date 
 for similar events ? " 
 
 "Of what consequence is it?" Hummerstone com- 
 mented impatiently. Then, seeing that to answer 
 would be the readiest way of stopping the questioner's 
 mouth : 
 
 " Mrs. Legh and Mrs. Hestroyde were cousins. 
 They came together. Lady Kesteven was another 
 patient and a stranger to them. I understand that 
 the friendship she and Mrs. Legh formed in the hos- 
 pital caused her to settle here later." 
 
 Lowood laughed from mere foolishness. For there 
 was really nothing to laugh at. Unless he was laugh- 
 ing at himself. For all of his conjectures had been 
 wrong. His house of cards, constructed on a wholly 
 false hypothesis, had tumbled to the ground. 
 
 After all, Hestroyde was not Munnings. Nor was 
 Legh. The changed infants had been girls. And 
 Joan Kesteven was Munnings. Where then was Miss 
 Kesteven? In a moment he saw that she must be as 
 a needle in a hay-rick, irretrievably lost. Twenty-four 
 years of vicissitudes would have submerged her irrev- 
 ocably amid a submerged tenth. 
 
 He forced himself violently out of speculations. 
 For here were facts. Hummerstone had exchanged 
 Sarah Munnings' infant for Lady Kesteven's infant. 
 Hummerstone's son, attracted to Scrope-Denton by 
 Lowood's presence (Lowood's presence being a direct 
 consequence of Hummerstone's act), had discovered 
 the truth about Joan, and himself indifferent about 
 her origin and keen upon her fortune had, by a threat 
 of exposing her to Hestroyde, compelled her to marry 
 him. And here now Sarah Munnings' daughter was 
 repeating history and was turning her inherited in- 
 stincts of the poisoner upon her husband, so getting 
 back in the boomerang of Nemesis upon the elder
 
 856 The Whips of Time 
 
 Hummerstone, who was originally responsible for all 
 the complications. In the rapid mental processes by 
 which he unravelled the tangle all his sympathy was 
 for Joan. He saw how the shock of Hummerstone's 
 revelation and her loss of Hestroyde had changed her 
 whole character, had brought to the surface and into 
 active operation those latent impulses of which all 
 along there had been symptoms, but which the healthy, 
 breezy habits of her happy, outdoor life had kept in 
 an unformed, nebulous state. 
 
 Had she married the man of her choice her nature 
 might have been redeemed. For he was wise enough 
 to know that development comes, not by trying men 
 and women to their utmost, but by keeping their range 
 of action within the compass of their better instincts. 
 So, good habit becomes first nature. 
 
 Again Hummerstone nudged him back to realities. 
 
 " For goodness sake," he said, exasperated, " don't 
 wool-gather. Tell me what you think of Cyril's 
 chances." 
 
 " One moment," Lowood insisted. " How did Cyril 
 discover the truth ? You ? " 
 
 " No. Nothing would have induced me to tell him. 
 He opened an old dispatch-box which contained my 
 notes of the case. He was looking for something quite 
 different." 
 
 Lowood had not thought badly enough of Cyril's 
 state to send for a nurse. The housekeeper at The 
 Folly was a motherly soul, and to her he had entrusted 
 the patient. 
 
 When he and Hummerstone went up to his room 
 they found Joan there. She stood leaning upon the 
 rail at the end of his bed, her green eyes, filled with 
 basilisk evil, fixed upon him, her face as wicked as 
 could be. 
 
 He lay staring at her in a state of collapse, his eyes 
 hypnotised by her basilisk gaze, while he kept all the 
 while screaming in a horrid undertone.
 
 Illness 357 
 
 She seemed to have been taunting and mocking him. 
 Her lids were narrowed to two evil slits, her brows 
 flattened. Her voice had a repulsive silkiness. 
 
 Lowood was appalled at the face she turned upon 
 him. It brightened slowly. She had always liked 
 him. But she did not give him her hand. She turned 
 back to her task of torture. 
 
 She pointed a gibing finger at her husband cower- 
 ing in his bed and still screaming in that awful under- 
 tone as though he were too terrified to cry outright. 
 
 " Do you see what a cur I have married ? " she said. 
 " He is as timid as a rabbit and afraid of straws. He 
 is mad with cowardice. And what do you think he 
 says? He says that I am poisoning him." She 
 laughed contemptuously. " Poisoning him with sac- 
 charin tabloids. You know that saccharin isn't poi- 
 sonous. And all because I will not have a fat husband. 
 I like men lithe and slim and fit, men who are afraid 
 of nothing. Dark men with fire in their eyes, not 
 rag-dolls stuffed with pink sawdust." 
 
 The effect of her words, of her scorn, of her looks, 
 of her pointing finger upon the wretched creature in 
 the bed was appalling. His eyes, glassy and staring, 
 were wholly dominated by her. He could not turn 
 them from her. 
 
 As before, the elder Hummerstone avoided looking 
 at or speaking to her. But even his chill impassive- 
 ness found the situation insupportable. He put up his 
 hands to his ears to shut out the sound of his son's 
 insane, horrid screaming. 
 
 Lowood crossed the room and caught her by an 
 arm. 
 
 " Mrs. Hummerstone," he said, in a tone of au- 
 thority, " I must insist upon your leaving the room. 
 Otherwise I will not answer for your husband's life. 
 He is not in a state to bear such treatment." 
 
 She hesitated. Then she yielded. 
 
 " Oh, I'll go," she said. " It makes me mad to
 
 358 The Whips of Time 
 
 think I have married such a creature when I might " 
 She caught herself up. " It makes me mad to think 
 I have married such a creature," she repeated. 
 
 At the door she turned, her features tense with 
 fury. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she cried in a loud voice, " I accuse 
 these men, this father and son," (she indicated them 
 with a fierce gesture) " of ruining my life, of ruining 
 my nature, of turning me into a devil." 
 
 She closed the door vehemently after her. 
 
 It took Lowood long to quiet and to restore his 
 patient. He assured him that he and his father would 
 remain with him. To his abject reiterated appeals 
 he promised again and again that all his food should 
 be prepared under supervision. Professor Hummer- 
 stone had already telegraphed for two nurses. 
 
 Lowood, for his part, did not know what to make 
 of it. The whole situation might have been created 
 by the man's own terrors, excited by his really serious 
 gastric symptoms. At the same time it was evident 
 that Joan, in the mood in which he had seen her, would 
 have been capable of poisoning half a dozen persons. 
 
 At all events no sick man, nor any man, was to be 
 allowed to take such chances. 
 
 Professor Hummerstone was an expert chemist. 
 Before the day was out, wholly to his astonishment 
 and somewhat to Lowood's, he reported that there 
 was not the faintest trace of any sort of poison to 
 be found about the patient. Again and again he tested 
 for it. Always with the same result. Cyril's attack 
 was idiopathically gastric. His own food excesses 
 were responsible for, although no doubt his fears 
 had aggravated it. 
 
 Cyril confessed that for a month he had suspected 
 Joan of poisoning him. Her words, her looks, her 
 conduct with the tabloids had been damningly sus- 
 picious. Combined with her family history, her forced
 
 Illness 359 
 
 marriage, and her aversion to him, he could not doubt 
 it. 
 
 The chemical tests were confirmed by the fact that 
 from the hour he became convinced that there was no 
 poison his sickness and pain ceased. He lost his ter- 
 rors. He made flesh. Soon he was wholly ashamed 
 of his fears and ready to laugh at them. 
 
 In a few days he was up, swaggering and hector- 
 ing about the house with all his old assurance. With 
 more than that indeed, being anxious to efface the 
 impression of his baseless terrors. 
 
 " I was hugely alarmed," the elder Hummerstone 
 confessed to Lowood. " As you know, I have never 
 put faith in the doctrine of heredity. But I thought 
 this might be an exception, or that the revelation of 
 her origin might have affected my daughter-in-law's 
 mind. One sees now she was only playing on his fears. 
 And I must admit she overdid the part. Poisoners 
 do not parade their doings as did she." 
 
 This, too, was Joan's story. 
 
 " I did it to torture him," she said. " I like to 
 torture him. He and his father have spoilt my life 
 and have turned me into a devil." 
 
 Lowood admitted to himself that a little torturing 
 would do his dutiful godson no great harm, although 
 he wished her retaliation had taken a less ingeniously 
 wicked form. 
 
 He resumed the normal tenor of his days. Even 
 had she harboured an intention of repeating her moth- 
 er's tricks, she would not now dare to do so, seeing 
 that all were on their guard against her.
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 A BOX OF CHOCOLATES 
 
 ALMA'S cup of misery was not yet full, although she 
 had believed that nobody before had suffered as she 
 had done since that disastrous night on which she had 
 learned Burghwallis' treachery. 
 
 The highest places of her nature had seemed to her 
 to be too poor, too mean in which to shrine him. It 
 had been at the same time her anguish and her joy that 
 she had had nothing but herself to give to him, anguish 
 because the gift appeared so humble, joy that he asked 
 nothing else. 
 
 In the exaggerated language of the young, ingenu- 
 ous heart she had told herself that had she been 
 Empress of the world and he a scullion in her palace 
 she would have joyed to set him beside her as her 
 king-consort. 
 
 Her regret had been that all the generosity should 
 be his, that she only should be the recipient. And then 
 the castle had tumbled about her ears in shock and 
 mortification. 
 
 The grocer's boy at the village shop who offered to 
 his sweetheart humble, honourable marriage did the 
 girl more honour than her well-beloved had planned 
 for her. For the grocer's boy offered his best. He 
 did not say, " Give me all in return for a light place 
 in the eyes of the world." He did not shirk his man's 
 responsibility. 
 
 She did not know of course, as Burghwallis did, that 
 there was more than one great lady who would eagerly 
 have accepted his terms. She had no suspicion that
 
 A Box of Chocolates 361 
 
 undeviating virtue is regarded by a number of persons 
 as demode. It would not have affected her views. Her 
 mind was clear and simple, and by the light of its 
 candour she made her own standards of conduct. 
 
 Nor when in answer to her letter acquainting Mrs. 
 Beaumont with her change of dwelling, since, as she 
 told her, she could not be dependent on Lord Anthony, 
 Mrs. Beaumont's reply dealt a last staggering blow to 
 her pride and self-respect, were her views upon conduct 
 affected. 
 
 Perhaps in a measure it condoned Burghwallis' 
 action. For Mrs. Beaumont's letter made it clear that 
 both he and the Duke had known all along that Mrs. 
 Beaumont was sister, and Alma child, of a certain 
 notorious murderess who many years before had been 
 convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Alma 
 felt stunned, turned to stone. Had any miserable being 
 ever known such shame? She realised bitterly that 
 Burghwallis could not of course have married her. 
 But yet, in pity for her shame, might he not have 
 refrained from adding to it? 
 
 But the revelation did not, as Mrs. Beaumont had 
 meant it to do, destroy her last remnant of self-respect. 
 Rather it reinforced it. That she was of criminal 
 origin was surely the more reason for resisting un- 
 flinchingly every inherited bad tendency. 
 
 She fell back upon her work. " Blessed be Drudg- 
 ery," indeed! She was thankful that its compulsions 
 made a refuge from her miseries and strengthened her 
 powers against these overwhelming griefs. 
 
 To add to her troubles, Hummerstone now began to 
 persecute her with underbred attentions. 
 
 One ray of comfort cheered her sombre outlook. 
 
 Her diatribe upon the treachery of man had been 
 accepted by the editor of a popular paper. He offered 
 her two guineas for it poor pay enough, but because 
 it was the way to independence it appeared to her to 
 be munificent. Further, he asked for more such
 
 362 The Whips of Time 
 
 diatribes. There had been " grip " in it, he said. And 
 " grip " was what he wanted. 
 
 Since Hummerstone's illness the saccharin squabbles 
 had ceased. Joan, for some reason, appeared to have 
 lost interest in her husband's gain or diminution of 
 flesh. 
 
 Lowood found himself smiling grimly over the 
 strangest action he remembered having committed 
 during a lifetime of actions as strange as those common 
 to man. 
 
 To anybody who had witnessed it he would have 
 seemed guilty of the meanness of robbing a child of 
 a handsome and highly-prized box of sweets. 
 
 It happened at a bazaar given in aid of some local 
 charity. Joan, among other Scrope-Denton ladies, had 
 undertaken a stall. 
 
 For the first time Hestroyde and his betrothed were 
 seen in public together. She was very young and very 
 crude, very red-haired and milk-and-white complex- 
 ioned. And she did not know what in the world to 
 say to him nor he to her. But he walked her about 
 with an air of flaunting her and his happiness in the 
 face of his neighbours. Lowood, seeing his ill-acted 
 role of devoted lover, and detecting the bored irritation 
 underlying it, knew that his engagement to this simple 
 hoyden had been a mere rash attempt to prove that his 
 jilted affections had quickly found solace. 
 
 During the afternoon, Lowood, burdened with such 
 a heterogeneous assortment of things for which he had 
 no use, as is the lot of men who brave bazaars, came 
 across Molly bearing a great box of bonbons tied up 
 with yellow ribbons. 
 
 She held them to him for inspection. 
 
 " Joan Hummerstone gave them to me without me 
 asking for them or paying anything for them. Wasn't 
 it sweet of her? She just beckoned me to her stall and 
 simply made me take them. She knows I love choco-
 
 A Box of Chocolates 363 
 
 lates. And of course," she added crudely, " it was 
 doubly sweet of her under the circumstances." 
 
 She laughed hoydenishly. 
 
 In view of recent revelations and events Lowood 
 experienced a sense of shock. It was as though every 
 mental and physical process stopped still in him to ask 
 a question. Then he was overwhelmed with shame. 
 Poor wretch! poor wretch! would he ever again do 
 her justice? 
 
 And yet for the life of him he could not let the child 
 go out of his sight to eat her chocolates and take her 
 chances the chances of chocolates Sarah Munnings' 
 girl had pressed upon her successful rival. 
 
 With an intolerable sense of responsibility (and of 
 meanness) he followed her about, dogging her foot- 
 steps, until at last he found his opportunity. She laid 
 down her box upon the corner of a stall, lured into a 
 shooting-gallery to try her skill. 
 
 Then Lowood, with a guilty glance all round, care- 
 lessly threw over the box a child's embroidered pinafore 
 which somebody had forced him to buy. When pres- 
 ently he picked up and carried off the pinafore he 
 picked up the box with it. He congratulated himself 
 upon the adroitness with which he had committed his 
 first theft. But as he escaped from the place with the 
 fruits of it he hoped, in the interests of morality, that 
 all thieves felt as mean as he did. 
 
 He could not bring himself to put his suspicions to 
 the test. Without opening it he thrust the box with 
 its alluring ribbons into the first running ditch he 
 passed. He went home with a sense of being a sus- 
 picious worm. 
 
 Yet he dared not have done less. A night or two 
 before he had been refreshing his memory by a perusal 
 of the Sarah Munnings case.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 NEMESIS 
 
 A SECOND time Burnham requisitioned Lowood's serv- 
 ices. He begged him to see Hummerstone without 
 delay. " He seems mortally ill," he said. " I confess 
 myself wholly at sea." 
 
 Lowood, having seen him, was at sea too. He had 
 never known a case resembling it. The patient lay in 
 a comatose state, from which he was aroused with 
 difficulty. When at last he dimly recognised Lowood 
 he muttered dully : 
 
 " She's got me this time." 
 
 Yet there were no symptoms which pointed to any 
 known poison. 
 
 Going downstairs Lowood's attention was caught by 
 a slight sound as he passed the half -opened door of the 
 music-room. He pushed it open and went in. Joan 
 had been peering through the crack, with the intention, 
 he suspected, of noting his face as he passed. Coming 
 upon her unexpectedly she had no time to drop a guard 
 upon her looks. They sickened him to see. Cyril was 
 right. Somehow or other she had " got " him this 
 time. 
 
 The guilt in her face was replaced by concealment, 
 by fear. She rallied beneath his gaze. 
 
 " I hope my husband is not seriously ill," she said 
 with slow care, as though she were weighing out her 
 tones and words by grains. 
 
 " He is gravely ill," was Lowood's answer. 
 
 "Will he die?" 
 
 She drew in her breath with a slight whistling sound.
 
 Nemesis 365 
 
 " Oh, I hope not," he said. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " That I cannot say at present. I must telegraph 
 for his father." 
 
 She made a gesture of protest. 
 
 " No," she cried under her breath, " I cannot bear 
 the man." 
 
 He insisted. Cyril was the physiologist's only son. 
 Should he die Hummerstone would never forgive him 
 for having failed to summon him. 
 
 Before he could arrive the case had cleared itself up. 
 The terrible " pustule "of anthrax had developed. 
 
 After some hours of grave suffering the patient 
 passed into a state of delirium and collapse. Life 
 became now a question of hours. 
 
 Despite its appalling nature, it must be confessed 
 that this development was a source of great mental 
 relief to Lowood. From the moment he had detected 
 her crouching behind the door he had been impressed 
 with a conviction of Joan's guilt. 
 
 But the case was now clear. Cyril had somehow 
 fallen a victim to this rare and terrible disease, a dis- 
 ease of the lower animals which is occasionally con- 
 tracted by such men as hide-sorters and others who 
 came into contact with diseased animals and with their 
 remains. 
 
 How Hummerstone could have come by it was a 
 puzzle. But that was a light matter compared with 
 Lowood's first fear. 
 
 The elder Hummerstone arrived in time to see his 
 son die, to see the cracked, muttering lips in the face 
 disfigured beyond recognition by the loathsome pustule 
 grow feebler and feebler, to hear the deep, stertorous 
 breathing and senseless moaning grow shallower, until 
 they ceased altogether, to see the big worthless fellow 
 yield up his profitless existence. 
 
 He did not regain consciousness. The words, " She 
 has got me this time," with which he had greeted
 
 366 The Whips of Time 
 
 Lowood were his last coherent ones. And these Lo- 
 wood refrained from repeating to his father. 
 
 All feeling had passed in him save that of pity for 
 the man, worthless though he had been, who had come 
 by this awful death, and sympathy for his old friend 
 who had lost his only human tie. 
 
 Having watched to the end, he turned in silence, 
 intending to leave Hummerstone alone with his dead. 
 
 He had not reached the door before the scientist was 
 standing by him. His face showed no grief nothing 
 but an appalling vindictiveness. 
 
 He went out with him. 
 
 " I have something to say to my son's wife," he said 
 in a voice of iron. " I wish to say it in your presence." 
 
 Lowood had a horrible premonition of trouble. 
 They went downstairs together. 
 
 " Where is your mistress ? " Hummerstone asked of 
 a servant. 
 
 " In the library, sir." 
 
 In the same iron voice Hummerstone resumed: 
 " Send at once to the nearest police-station for two 
 constables." 
 
 The man stared. 
 
 "Did I hear you right, sir? Did you say 'Con- 
 stables,' sir?" 
 
 " I said, ' Send at once to the nearest police-station 
 for two constables,' " Hummerstone repeated harshly. 
 
 As the man shot off with a scared face Lowood 
 stopped. 
 
 " Hummerstone, what are you about? " 
 
 " Come with me," the other said, " and you shall 
 see." 
 
 Joan was sitting impassive by a window, her hands 
 in her lap, her gaze fixed on the garden. Alma stood 
 near, apparently striving to comfort her. 
 
 Seeing the men enter, seeing Hummerstone's face 
 as he made toward her, she half started from her chair. 
 She put up a hand as though to ward him off.
 
 Nemesis 367 
 
 Indeed, Lowood too almost feared, as her father-in- 
 law bore down upon her, that he would be called upon 
 to protect her from violence. 
 
 Hummerstone however stopped short a few paces 
 from her and remained confronting her. Alma took 
 her hand protectively. Joan rose slowly from her 
 chair. 
 
 " My son is dead," Hummerstone said brutally. " I 
 accuse you of murdering him. I have sent for the 
 police. When they arrive I shall give you in charge." 
 
 She showed no surprise. One might have thought 
 she had expected it. Her face became leaden of tint, 
 leaden and criminal and obstinate. The pupils of her 
 green eyes contracted to pin points, giving a singular 
 impression of a sudden tension and protrusion of the 
 green irides. Her brows seemed to flatten with a 
 repulsive, snake-like effect. 
 
 She drew in a breath with a hissing sound. 
 
 Then, " You must be mad," she said slowly. " You 
 will find no trace of poison." 
 
 " My son has died of anthrax," Hummerstone said. 
 " He has been exposed to no ordinary contagion. 
 When you were at my house you questioned me time 
 and again about the micro-organisms of my laboratory. 
 You questioned me about cholera, about sleeping- 
 sickness, about anthrax. After you had gone I missed 
 a tube of anthrax bacilli. I shall charge you with 
 infecting my son with this horrible disease. I shall 
 charge you with causing his death." 
 
 She quailed. She shrank. She stretched her hands 
 to Lowood. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she cried, " I appeal to you for 
 protection. For God's sake save me from this horrible 
 humiliation. If I am Sarah Munnings' daughter I 
 have been brought up a gentlewoman. I cannot bear 
 it. I tell you I cannot bear this horrible shame of being 
 dragged to prison." 
 
 Lowood attempted to comfort her.
 
 368 The Whips of Time 
 
 " Your innocence will shield you," he insisted. " I 
 shall protest against your arrest. And you will be able 
 to prove your innocence." 
 
 Her eyes swept wildly to the window. They showed 
 desperate with fear. 
 
 " Let me speak with you alone," she besought him. 
 " I implore you to come with me and hear what I have 
 to say." 
 
 In a moment Hummerstone was at the door, his 
 back set to it. 
 
 " You shall not stir from here except in custody," 
 he said. 
 
 But Lowood had opened the casement window for 
 her to pass out. 
 
 " You cannot detain her," he told Hummerstone, 
 " without the sanction of the law." 
 
 He followed her swift pacing down the verandah. 
 He half expected her to make for the road. 
 
 But she turned into the house by another window. 
 He followed her upstairs. She went into a bedroom, 
 which he supposed to be hers. She flew to the 
 dressing-table, and unlocking a drawer took out some- 
 thing. 
 
 The panting heaving of her chest, her gasping 
 breath, quieted. Her face grew calmer. 
 
 " Dr. Lowood," she said emotionally, and for the 
 first time there came a gush of tears, " if there is a God 
 I pray to Him to bless you for what you have just done 
 for me. You have my eternal, miserable gratitude." 
 
 A sob choked her. She resumed : 
 
 " What he says is true. I smeared the anthrax 
 stuff on Cyril's razor. He cut himself last week. He 
 was always cutting himself, the wretched creature! 
 His hands shook like leaves. For three mornings I put 
 the stuff on his razor. 
 
 " I couldn't help it. They drove me to it. I am my 
 mother's daughter. They should have let me alone. 
 Mark would have made a good woman of me.
 
 Nemesis 369 
 
 " Ever since I can remember there has been some- 
 thing strange about me. I had feelings and impulses 
 I couldn't understand. I tried to master them. No- 
 body I knew did the things I felt impelled to do. I 
 crushed them down and mastered them. There was 
 Joe Philbey, my groom. I knew it was a low taste and 
 would have disgusted mother " her voice broke 
 again. " Oh, it makes me mad to think dear mother 
 isn't my mother at all. Professor Hummerstone was 
 a fiend to play such a trick, to play with a life as he 
 has done with mine, to put it all wrong. 
 
 " I loathed myself for encouraging Philbey. He 
 smelt of beer. His nails were dirty. Half of me 
 loathed him, and the other half I couldn't help it. 
 
 " And I've done other things. It was I who fired 
 the ricks that night. I wanted old Mark to have the 
 money. I was always fond of Mark. If there's a God 
 he should have let me marry old Mark. I was fond of 
 him. It would have made another woman of me. 
 
 " I shot poor old Belshazzar for snapping at him. 
 And the poor old chap only licked my hand when he 
 was dying. I could have killed myself. Dr. Lowood, 
 you know things. You write books. Tell them that 
 people are only saved by good, by being under good 
 influences and by having persons good and kind to them 
 and fond of them. Preaching and punishment are no 
 use. 
 
 " He threatened to tell Mark. And Mark wouldn't 
 have married Sarah Munnings' girl. He is so proud. 
 And he thought so much of me. I hid all the bad in 
 me from him. He was so surprised when he knew 
 about poor Belshazzar, a sort of cold surprise, as 
 though he never had evil impulses himself. I was 
 ashamed for him to know the bad in me, I was trying 
 to crush it all out. And then that coward came and 
 put everything wrong. I offered him half my fortune. 
 But there was spite in it. Mark had thrashed him for 
 kissing me and he wanted to be revenged. And I
 
 370 The Whips of Time 
 
 would have died rather than old Mark should know I 
 was the Munnings girl." 
 
 There was a sound in the house. She started up and 
 shook in every limb. 
 
 " They are coming," she said in an appalled whisper, 
 " and I have been brought up a lady although I am 
 the Munnings girl." 
 
 She flung herself on her knees at Lowood's feet. 
 She clutched his knees desperately. " Dr. Lowood," 
 she cried, " I implore you to keep it from Mark. I 
 couldn't bear old Mark to know. With my last breath 
 I implore you to keep it from old Mark." 
 
 She put up a hand to her mouth. A smell of bitter 
 almonds floated. Lowood caught away her hand. It 
 was too late. With a half sob, her eyes staring 
 glassily, she dropped in a heap at his feet. 
 
 He lifted and carried her to a couch. She was dead 
 before he could lay her there. She had turned to a final 
 account her interest in poisons. Appalled though he 
 was he realised that it was all there had been left to 
 her to do. 
 
 As the smell of almonds strengthened he flung up all 
 the windows. He seized a bottle of perfume from the 
 dressing-table and dashed it on the floor. Then he 
 hurried downstairs,. As he had flung up the last 
 window he had seen two bulky, uniformed figures enter 
 the drive. He would have time for a word with 
 Hummerstone. He returned to the morning-room to 
 find him watching with vindictive eagerness for the 
 approaching constables. Alma was there too, sitting 
 with an amazed, frightened face. 
 
 Lowood concluded his brief statement to Hummer- 
 stone by saying: 
 
 " You have brought evil enough upon this miserable 
 house. The least you can do is to keep silence now 
 about these deaths. At all events, I swear if you speak 
 I will spread the story of your part in them from the 
 housetops."
 
 Nemesis 371 
 
 He went out and dismissed the constables and the 
 gaping crowd at their heels. 
 
 " Professor Hummerstone was distracted by his 
 son's death," he said. " Of course no constables are 
 needed." 
 
 Every tongue in Scrope-Denton was soon busy with 
 the astounding news. Mr. Hummerstone had died 
 some awful death he had got by touching a farm beast. 
 And Mrs. Hummerstone had died of shock on hearing 
 of her husband's death. Which proved of course that, 
 after all, she had been fond of him, and showed too 
 that she must have had some unsuspected form of her 
 mother's heart disease. 
 
 The Misses Epithite were the only persons who were 
 not convinced. To the end of their days they were 
 assured that in some mysterious fashion their mys- 
 terious tenant had had more hand than their neigh- 
 bours suspected in the strange sequence of events 
 which had followed rapidly upon his tenancy of Homer 
 Cottage. The problem of what this had been would 
 supply them with food for discussion and combat long 
 after the reader has laid down and forgotten this book. 
 
 For I need scarcely point out that the sisters took 
 diametrically opposite views of all but two circum- 
 stances attending the mystery. One circumstance was 
 the exchange of Miss Alma Kesteven in her cradle 
 for Mrs. Beaumont's niece. (That it had happened 
 could not be contested, because the doctor who had 
 attended the lady had himself made an affidavit that 
 it was true. As nobody in Scrope-Denton knew of 
 Sarah Munnings' relation to Mrs. Beaumont, Hes- 
 troyde remained in ignorance of the secret Joan had 
 sacrificed herself to keep from him.) The second point 
 on which the Misses Epithite were agreed was that 
 Lowood was the miscreant who had changed the 
 babies.
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 THE LAST 
 
 WHEN Burghwallis had sufficiently scarified his self- 
 esteem with foretastes of the gossip of the clubs, had 
 sufficiently tortured his soul by living without word or 
 glimpse of Alma, he travelled down one day to Moon- 
 bank and called in the afternoon at The Folly. 
 
 When the servant announced him she rose trembling 
 from her chair. 
 
 He remained at the end of the room. He was angry, 
 mortified, embarrassed, but most of all in love. Other- 
 wise, since man is as he is, he would not perhaps have 
 been there. It is the only motive power which men 
 permit to override every other feeling. 
 
 " Alma," he said, " I stand outside the gates." 
 
 She knew him, despite his love, to be one who would 
 not stand there long. Nor was she the woman to keep 
 him there. He had done against her an unpardonable 
 thing, but were there not years and years before of her 
 kind " Uncle Tony," who had ever been infinitely 
 good to her ? 
 
 She stretched out a hand which was more eloquent 
 than her trembling lips could have been. In a moment 
 he was up the space and on his knee before her. 
 
 Despite the convictions of popular novelists it is not 
 customary for men to propose upon their knees. When 
 men and women are in earnest an act so histrionic 
 would strike a false note. A look, a half-articulate 
 murmur and the thing is done a compact for life, 
 sometimes for eternity, sealed. 
 
 But Burghwallis, fiercely kissing her hand, dropped 
 for a moment on a knee.
 
 The Last 373 
 
 It said that which could not have been said in words 
 without sadly shaming both of them. 
 
 Yet after what had happened the case required to 
 be formulated. 
 
 " Dearest, will you be my wife? " 
 
 She sobbed her consent and her content upon his 
 breast. 
 
 She was rapt into a world of strange dimensions, 
 of fire, of stars, of rain, of dew and roses, of tears and 
 laughter, pain and rapture, of throbbing flesh and 
 mingling souls, of the divine and human mystery 
 which is love, which sets all the potencies of Nature 
 at one moment in a cup to mortal lips. In that 
 moment man and woman ring the changes of the 
 Universe, which has at one end a fond human hand, 
 at the other God. 
 
 Then the vision is gone and they realise only the 
 dear hand. 
 
 And the first thing Alma said on realising this was : 
 
 " Oh ! I am not Sarah Munnings' daughter, Tony." 
 
 To which he protested that this was a mere trifle. 
 Although, of course, he was profoundly relieved. 
 
 THE END.
 
 " Oppenheim's Latest Success " 
 
 THE MISSIONER 
 
 By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM 
 
 Fully Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50 
 
 Action, excitement, and mystery are three ingredients 
 always found in Mr. Oppenheim's novels. His new story, 
 " The Missioner," is the compound of love and adventure 
 which this author so deftly produces, and his characters 
 have more than their usual individuality. 
 
 "The Missioner's " heroine is a beautiful English woman, 
 of the aristocratic class, rich, frivolous, and worldly. The 
 hero is a young man of great personal magnetism, high 
 ideals, and unused to the insincerities of society. Her 
 fashionable amusements and his work in the slums we the 
 antipodes from which they both move to meet on the 
 common ground made possible by their mutual interest and 
 appreciation. But the lady has a mystery, and the suitor 
 has an arduous task in clearing away the complications. 
 
 The book has more the air of verisimilitude than have 
 some of Mr. Oppenheim's previous works, and it gains in 
 strength from the very likelihood of its happenings. It 
 moves at a breathless rate from the country to London, to 
 Paris and back again, and the reader's interest keeps pace. 
 
 Those who read "The Missioner" in serial form pro- 
 nounced it the best story that this master of romance has 
 yet written. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
 
 An exceedingly clever volume. BOSTON GLOBE 
 
 AN 
 ORIGINAL GENTLEMAN 
 
 By ANNE WARNER 
 
 Author of " The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary," the " Susan 
 Clegg " books, etc. 
 
 Frontispiece by Alice Barber Stephens. Cloth. $1.50 
 
 Merry reading indeed. New York Tribune. 
 
 All are humorous. ... In none is dialect used. New 
 York Sun, 
 
 The book brings out new possibilities in the author's 
 work and will add much to her popularity. Springfield 
 Republican. 
 
 Humor and novelty of plot characterize most of the 
 stories, and they are entirely worthy of the creator of 
 "Susan Clegg" and "Aunt Mary." Syracuse Herald. 
 
 Crisply told, quaintly humorous. . . . Only a woman 
 with discernment and tenderness, and only an artist 
 could make characters live and breathe as hers do. 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 Exhibits her cleverness and her sense of humor. . . . 
 Show much of that humor in the conception and that skill 
 in droll delineation of character which first brought Anne 
 "Warner into notice with her "Susan Clegg" stories. New 
 York Times. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
 
 THREE OF A KIND 
 
 By RICHARD BURTON 
 Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill 12mo. Goth. $1.50 
 
 Sweet and wholesome. Duluth Herald. 
 
 Possess a heart interest. Portland (Ore.) Oregonian. 
 
 He has actually invented an original Christmas scene. 
 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 A refreshing exception to the usual run of stories. 
 Wilmington (Del.) News. 
 
 A story that seizes the interest and touches the heart. 
 
 University of Minnesota Daily. 
 
 It has humor and quaintness. " Dun " deserves to line 
 up beside Rab. New York Times. 
 
 Fresh breath of the air of romance and a touch of the 
 realism that cheers. Minneapolis Tribune. 
 
 A tender and affecting narrative, written with sym- 
 pathy and rare touches of humanity. Philadelphia Record. 
 
 A touching story of the love and faith of a man, a waif, 
 and a dog, all through the trials of many unprosperous 
 days. Boston Globe, 
 
 A story that touches the heart by its sound sentiment 
 and its wholesome humor and fine optimism. Minneapolis 
 Journal. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
 
 Unique among novels " 
 
 THE MAN 
 WHO ENDED WAR 
 
 By HOLLIS GODFREY 
 
 Illustrated by Ch. Grunwald. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50 
 
 Only anticipates events a few years. Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Holds the reader's interest relentlessly. Chicago Record- 
 Herald. 
 
 Vigor and imagination lend vitality to the plot. New 
 York Times. 
 
 A reincarnation of an improved Jules Verne. Portland 
 Oregonian. 
 
 A pretty love story adds zest to the narrative. 
 St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
 
 Hollis Godfrey has taken a stupendous theme and 
 written a most amazing story. Boston Globe. 
 
 The handling of the various scenes is most excellent and 
 even masterly. Boston Transcript. 
 
 Those who like their fiction full of mystery will revel in 
 this galloping narrative. New York Evening Sun. 
 
 Shows uncommon skill in utilization of the gigantic 
 possibilities of modern discovery. Boston Advertiser. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
 A 000118601 4