-PR
 
 COLLECTION 
 
 OF 
 
 BRITISH AUTHORS 
 
 TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 
 vol. 3066. 
 
 my lady nobody. by maarten maartens. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I.
 
 TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 By the same Author, 
 
 THE SIN OF JOOST AVELINGH . . I vol. 
 
 AN OLD MAID'S LOVE 2 vols. 
 
 GOD'S FOOL 2 vols. 
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 2 vols.
 
 MY LADY NOBODY 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 MAARTEN MAARTENS,*/ 3 ^^"* °f 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "THE SIN OF JOOST A.VELINGH," " GOD'S FOOK'^ ETC,^- /~ , - il 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITION. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERNHARD TAUCIINITZ 
 
 1895.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 God's Angel of Human Love sat alone in the garden of lilies. 
 Her arms hung listless among the blooms she had gathered into 
 her lap. For her eyes— sole mirrors of the Inapproachable Presence 
 —were gazing steadfastly down upon the darkness, deep down where 
 the black bar of sorrow strikes across the wide radiance of eternity, 
 down on the sin-laden star that still hastens athwart the shadow. 
 A single teardrop stole out upon her cheek, and, falling, crept away 
 into a milk-white chalice. Suddenly, with a movement of ineffable 
 pity, she flung forth all the flowers upon her lap, into the world 
 below. 
 
 Into my bosom , oh Beloved , is fallen the flower with the tear 
 at its heart. Unto thee, oh fair among God's flowers, white among 
 his angels, strong among his saints, unto thee, with the thorn in 
 thy side, and the star on thy forehead, unto thee do I dedicate this 
 ray from a life of which thou art the light.
 
 CONTENTS 
 OF VOLUME I. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER I. Ursula 9 
 
 — II. The Domine 15 
 
 — III. Home 21 
 
 — IV. The van Helmonts 31 
 
 — V. Le premier Pas — qui coute 40 
 
 — VI. Unconscious Rivals 5 l 
 
 — VII. Harriet's Romance 63 
 
 — VIII. The Tryst 75 
 
 — IX. Otto's Wooing 88 
 
 — X. An indelible Stain 103 
 
 — XL One Hour of Happiness 115 
 
 — XII. "An old Maid's Love" 130 
 
 — XIII. For Life or Death 145 
 
 — XIV. A satisfactory Settlement 156
 
 8 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 Pa^e 
 
 CHAPTER XV. Donna e mobile 163 
 
 — XVI. A Fool and his Folly 173 
 
 PART II. 
 
 — XVII. Brotherly Hate 185 
 
 — XVIII. The Duty of the Parent 193 
 
 — XIX. Forfeits all round 204 
 
 — XX. Mynheer Mopius's Party 215 
 
 — XXI. Baron van Helmont 229 
 
 — XXII. Gerard's Share 236 
 
 — XXIII. Topsy Rexelaer 252 
 
 — XXIV. Masks and Faces 263
 
 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 URSULA. 
 
 It was a white-hot July morning. Long ago the im- 
 patient earth had cast aside her thin veil of summer 
 twilight; already she lay, a Danae, in exultant swoon 
 beneath the golden sun. Yet the bridegroom had barely 
 leaped forth to the conquest; his rath kisses were still 
 drinking the pearly freshness from the dawn, while the 
 loud birds filled the resonant heavens with the tumult 
 of their bridal song. 
 
 It was still so early, and already so immovably warm; 
 all wide earth and deep sky agasp in the naked blaze. 
 Ursula drew forward her broad-brimmed straw hat, 
 where she stood picking peas among the tall lines of 
 pale-green, blossom-speckled tangle. 
 
 "Oof!" she said. Not as your burly farmer says it, 
 but with the prettiest little high-pitched echo of the 
 louder note. And she buried her soft brown cheeks in
 
 IO MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 the cool moisture of her half-filled basket. Then she 
 gravely resumed her work, and a great, big, booming 
 humble-bee, which had thought to play hide and seek 
 with Ursula's nose, sailed away in disgust that on such 
 a sun-soaked morning any of God's creatures should 
 bend to toil in His sight. 
 
 Ursula Rovers was not one of those who serve their 
 Maker with dancing and a shout. Yet she sang to her- 
 self, very sedately, as she broke off each bursting pod, 
 amid the fiercer jubilation of the passion-drunk black- 
 birds and finches: 
 
 "Stand then with girded loins, and see your lamps be burning; 
 What though the sun lie fair upon your paths to-day, 
 "Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning? 
 The night comes surely. Watch and pray!" 
 
 The prim vegetable garden, with its ranks of gay 
 salads and pompous cabbages, lay serenely roasting, as 
 vegetable gardens delight to do, in unabated verdure. 
 About Ursula's corner the lattice-work of creepers put 
 forth some faint attempt at a stunted shadow. Domine 
 Rovers came down the walk, his coat-flaps brushing the 
 currant-bushes. 
 
 "Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning?" 
 
 "Ursula!" 
 
 "Yes, Captain." 
 
 "Come in and shell your peas, whilst I recite you 
 my sermon." 
 
 "But I must pick them first, father!" 
 
 "True. What I love best in you, Ursula, is that 
 you are as logical as if you were not a woman." 
 
 The pastor drew nearer to the scaffolding of
 
 URSULA. I I 
 
 greenery, and strove vainly to shelter his tall figure 
 in its shade. He was a spare, soldierly-looking man, 
 with an honest complexion and silvery hair. You knew 
 he had a very gentle countenance until you gave him 
 cause to turn a wrathful look upon you. 
 
 "I might as well begin at once," he said, and, 
 proud though she was of her father's preaching, the 
 girl's soul rose in momentary protest on behalf of the 
 birds and flowers. "I have chosen a text for to- 
 morrow, Ursula, which has troubled my thoughts all 
 through the week. All through the week, I couldn't 
 understand it. And when I came to look it out, it 
 wasn't there at all." 
 
 Ursula's dutiful lips said: "I see." 
 
 "I imagined the verse to be as follows: "Flee from 
 youthful lusts that war against the soul." But I see 
 the word used is 'Abstain.' I could not believe it of 
 St. Peter that he would have instructed any man to run 
 away in battle. You will find the 'flee' in Timothy, 
 my dear, but the conviction is not the same." 
 
 Domine Rovers paused and stood tenderly watch- 
 ing his natty daughter in her cool print dress. Sud- 
 denly he burst out quite impetuously, "Resist! Resist! 
 That is the true Bible language. Resist the devil. 
 Resist temptation. And so I shall tell them to-morrow 
 morning. 'Dearly beloved,' I shall say, 'life is a '" 
 
 "War," cried Ursula, facing round. A bold black- 
 bird had alighted on one of the stakes and sang loudly 
 of peace and goodwill. 
 
 "Don't interrupt me, child" — the Domine's eyes 
 grew vexed — "I know I have said it before; they can- 
 not hear the truth too often. Life is a battle, dearly
 
 12 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 beloved. Against the city of Mansoul all the powers of 
 evil band themselves together. But in the vanguard 
 march ever the lusts of the flesh. You cannot escape 
 the conflict. And therefore" — the speaker lifted an 
 energetic arm — "remember what said the Corinthians — 
 the grandsires of St. Paul's Corinthians — to the Spartans, 
 their allies, 'He that, for love of pleasure, shrinks from 
 battle, will most swiftly be deprived of those very de- 
 lights which caused him to abstain.' My subject divides 
 itself — Ursula, you are not attending — into seven natural 
 parts: the enemy, the weapons, the " 
 
 Nobody listened. All God's creation, busy with its 
 individual loves and pleasures, luxuriously lapped in the 
 sensuous sunlight and rejoicing in universal allurement, 
 was twittering and fluttering and blushing and blooming 
 in clouds of perfume and pollen. The great All-father 
 smiled down upon his manifold children — and shrivelled 
 them up. 
 
 Ursula was not listening. Her father was a dear, 
 dear man, but she had heard it all so often before! 
 And fortune had pity upon her and upon the sleepily 
 staring marigolds, and created a diversion ere the 
 sermon was ten sentences old. 
 
 Shrill shrieks of childish protest under punishment 
 arose from beyond the garden-wall. The pastor of an 
 unruly flock immediately ran to peer over the bushes. 
 And Ursula followed more slowly, flitting into the full 
 morning glow. 
 
 Out on the gleaming high-road a peasant-woman 
 was belabouring an eight-year-old urchin in a whirl- 
 wind of dust. "I'll teach you to use bad words," she
 
 URSULA. 1 3 
 
 was screaming. "Damn me, I can't make out, for the 
 life o' me, what taught the child to swear!" 
 
 Ursula, leaning one round arm on the top of the 
 garden-wall, turned spontaneously to her father, all her 
 serious young face a swift ripple of fun, but the Domine 
 counted not a pennyworth of humour among his many 
 militant virtues. He pressed his thin lips tight, under 
 his Wellington nose. He was not going to reprove a 
 mother in the presence of her son. 
 
 "Discipline first," said the Domine. "One thing I 
 note gratefully, Ursula, that the wretched habit of 
 swearing is now confined to the lower classes in this 
 country. In my time even gentlemen would swear " 
 
 A dog-cart had turned the sharp angle at the back, 
 where the road breaks off to the Manor-House. In the 
 dust and the skirmish it pulled up with a jerk, and a 
 clear voice was heard crying: 
 
 "Confound you! Get out of the way, can't you? 
 Scuffling in the middle of the road!" 
 
 The dogcart was a very smart dog-cart, and the 
 mare was a high-stepping mare. She fretted under the 
 sudden restraint, amid an appetising jingle, and smell, 
 and glitter of harness. There was not so much pro- 
 miscuous dust but that the speaker could instanta- 
 neously perceive the two heads over the low brown wall. 
 
 He lifted his cap. "Good morning, Domine! Good 
 morning, Ursula!" he said, with nonchalance. "Awfully 
 hot already, isn't it?" 
 
 The Domine raised a flashing eye. The woman 
 and boy had slipped away. "Gerard," said the Domine, 
 "why do you swear at our people? How often must I 
 remind you of our joint responsibility? We must lead
 
 14 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 them to what is right; I by my precept, you by your 
 example." 
 
 "Oh, Domine, I'll exchange, if you're agreeable," 
 retorted the young man, with a quick smile. The 
 Domine looked away. 
 
 "You are going to the station to fetch your brother, 
 Gerard?" interposed Ursula, carelessly cracking the pods 
 in her basket. 
 
 "Yes, at your service," replied the young man, as 
 he loosened the reins. 
 
 "How strange it will be for you to meet Mynheer 
 Otto again after all these yeai-s!" 
 
 Gerard turned quickly from his prancing steed. 
 "Are you going to call Otto 'Mynheer'?" he asked. 
 
 She blushed with annoyance, in an overflow of in- 
 nocent confusion. 
 
 "Oh, very well," he went on. "Only, of course, 
 you will have to call me Mynheer Gerard." 
 
 He raced off, laughing. "I knoio you," she stam- 
 mered; but the words were lost in the dog-cart's de- 
 parting rattle. She appealed to her father in dismay. 
 "Why, father," she cried, "I have known Gerard all my 
 life!" 
 
 Together they stood watching the dust-enfolded 
 vehicle disappear into the far blue sunshine. Its oc- 
 cupant was young, light-hearted, and handsome. Evi- 
 dently a cavalry officer: you could see that by the way 
 in which his tweeds and he conjoined without com- 
 bining.
 
 THE D0M1NE. I 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DOM1NE. 
 
 "Let us go in to breakfast," said the Domine. 
 Father and daughter passed up between the stiff stalks 
 of the gooseberry-bushes, among the sallow, swollen 
 fruit. Both of them walked with a straight step, the 
 figure erect, and a little self-reliant. 
 
 The pastor fell back a few paces with meditative 
 gaze. He was wont to rejoice tremulously in Ursula's 
 physical health, in the easy carriage of the head, the 
 light swing of the hips. He rejoiced in the clear brown 
 of her complexion and the calm depth of her brave, 
 brown eyes. No weak woman in blood or brain, this 
 stately, strong-limbed maiden. He thanked God mourn- 
 fully, ever reminiscent of the pervading sorrow of his 
 life, the loss of the frail young creature who had 
 dropped by the roadside well-nigh twenty years ago. 
 
 It was that affliction which had made a cleric of 
 Captain Roderick Rovers. By nature he was a soldier, 
 recklessly brave and almost devil-may-care. A man who 
 thought straight, if not far, and struck straight, in the 
 front. He had escaped from the inertia of our long 
 Batavian peace to the red-hot tumult of Algerian desert 
 war, and had come back, early bronzed and silvered, 
 plus the Legion of Honour and minus an arm. He had 
 married a pure-white, clinging thing, like a lily, that
 
 10 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 twined every tendril round his sturdy support, and then 
 dropped from the stem. She was a good woman. To 
 him she had come as a revelation. "I have fought the 
 good fight," she had whispered in dying. He, with the 
 medals on his breast and the memory of not a few 
 killed and wounded, could he have said as much face 
 to face with death? 
 
 He began to comprehend something of that battle 
 which is not to the strong. On their wedding-day the 
 bride had given her soldier-husband Bunyan's "Holy 
 War" — a Dutch translation — substituting it on his table 
 for the weather-beaten little "Thucydides" which had 
 been his companion in all his campaigns. He had de- 
 manded back the Greek historian. He now took up 
 the spiritual conflict, and fought the powers of darkness, 
 as he had ever met an enemy, at arm's length. 
 
 His mutilation having incapacitated him from active 
 service, he took orders, henceforth to do battle with his 
 country's inmost foes in the heart of every parishioner. 
 The old militant spirit flamed in him still, and he led his 
 slow flock like a regiment under the banner of the 
 great Captain. On the high days of the Church he 
 wore his Cross of the Legion in the pulpit. His clerical 
 superiors had objected; he dared them to object. It 
 was gained, he said, like your reverend titles, in honour- 
 able war. 
 
 He had cherished the solitary treasure of his heart, 
 but his care had been free from coddling; he had even 
 combated the enervating influence of his sister-in-law, 
 who kept house for him. "Coolness and cold water" 
 was one of his maxims in any sudden emergency; late 
 into the autumn you could have seen the gaunt father
 
 TIIE DOMINE. 17 
 
 and the little solemn-featured girl wending their way 
 towards the river for a swim. The bathless villagers 
 watched and wondered. They judged the good man 
 to be a little daft, no doubt, but they loved his cheery 
 helpfulness. Dozing on the battlefield, they caught, 
 between two yawns, the stir of his reveille, and its clarion- 
 note passed like a breeze through the foulness of their 
 sleeping-ditch. 
 
 Then they turned in the trenches and fell asleep 
 again. 
 
 Ursula learned early that life was no dream-garden. 
 "Duty, like a stern preceptor," often pushed himself 
 unpleasantly to the fore in her young existence and 
 extinguished the sunlight, provoking thunderstorms. Not 
 that these were by any means the rule; her father loved 
 her too tenderly for that; he kissed her leisurely upon 
 the forehead. "Be sober," he said, "be vigilant." Her 
 aunt gave her sweets. 
 
 Yet Ursula, from a two-year-old baby, loved her 
 father best. Even when, once, he chastised her because 
 she had told a lie. 
 
 "Gerard will be late for the train," said the pastor. 
 "Headlong, as usual. Either he will get there too late 
 or he will drive too fast." 
 
 "He will drive too fast," replied Ursula quietly. 
 "Tell me, father, about this elder brother of his. How 
 strange it will seem! A new son at the House whom 
 nobody knows. I wish he were not coming." 
 
 "I have told you before, Ursula, but women are so 
 resolutely curious. A man's curiosity is impulse, a 
 woman's is method. Besides, you remember him your- 
 self; he was here twelve years ago." 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 2
 
 I 8 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "I don't remember much, only a quiet, kind-looking 
 gentleman who seemed afraid of children. What had 
 he been doing in Germany, Captain?" 
 
 "Earning his daily bread, no more and no less." 
 
 "And what has he been doing these twelve years 
 in Java?" 
 
 "Earning his daily bread, not less but no more." 
 
 "I know," mused Ursula, with feminine incon- 
 sistency. "It seems so ridiculous, a Van Helmont earn- 
 ing his living." 
 
 But this was a red rag to a bull. "It is never 
 ridiculous ! " cried the pastor. " ' Give us this day our 
 daily bread'; that means: we would accept it, Lord, 
 from no other hands than Thine!" 
 
 "As manna?" queried Ursula. 
 
 "No, child, as the harvest of toil. By-the-by" — the 
 old man stood still on the verandah-steps, his limp 
 sleeve hung against his long black coat — "it is a strange 
 coincidence, my preaching to-morrow's sermon, and 
 Otto coming home to-day. The Sabbath before he 
 first started for Germany I preached on resisting the 
 devil." 
 
 Ursula smiled, a harmless little smile, all to herself. 
 
 "I remember it as if it were yesterday," continued 
 the Domine, thoughtfully watching a wheeling swallow. 
 "Do you know, Ursula, why Otto van Helmont went 
 away?" 
 
 "No," she responded, quickly inquisitive. "Tell 
 me why." 
 
 "I suppose you think it was some love story?" 
 
 "No, she said again. "Why should I think? I 
 don't know."
 
 THE DOMINE. I 9 
 
 "You are not like other girls, Ursula. Most women 
 think eveiy thing is a love story. Come, let us go in." 
 
 "But he is quite old now?" she persisted, with her 
 hand on his arm. 
 
 "He is what children call old. I believe he is 
 seventeen years older than Gerard. I have always 
 liked Otto exceedingly, little as I know of him. He is 
 a true, simple-hearted gentleman, is Otto." 
 
 "I don't doubt it," replied the girl, with a shade of 
 petulance, "but it will be so awkward, a stranger at 
 the House!" 
 
 "I wish you would close the verandah-door, Roderigue," 
 said a querulous voice from inside. "You are letting in 
 all the heat." 
 
 The occupant of the room came forward, a little 
 yellow lady, with red ringlets, in a red wrapper. This 
 was Miss Mopius, the Domine's sister-in-law, and an 
 invalid. 
 
 "I had kept down the temperature so beautifully," 
 she complained, during the performance of the usual 
 perfunctory pecks. "What's the use of my scolding the 
 servant if she sees that you don't care? Look at the 
 thermometer, Ursula; it was under 65 ." 
 
 Ursula obediently reported that it was now near- 
 ing 6 7 . 
 
 "You see," said Miss Mopius. She said nothing 
 else, but the words dragged down upon the little room 
 a fearful weight of guilty silence, from which Ursula 
 fled to wash her hands. 
 
 As the girl was coming downstairs again, she heard 
 the rumble of returning wheels. She could not resist 
 a swift run to the verandah, where she had abandoned
 
 20 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 her basket. As she caught it up, the dog- cart came 
 flying past. The two brothers were in it now. The 
 elder turned sideways, started, hesitated, took off his 
 hat. Ursula remained watching them, a symphony in 
 yellow and brown, with the marigolds at her feet in a 
 lake of golden orange, and the pink-tipped honeysuckle 
 all around her, against the staring sunflowers loud and 
 bold.
 
 HOME. 2 1 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 HOME. 
 
 "Who is that yellow frock among the yellow flowers?" 
 asked Otto van Helmont. "But, of course, I can guess," 
 he added immediately. "That was the parsonage we 
 just passed. The 'nut-brown maid' must be Ursula 
 Rovers." 
 
 "Ursula? Was she there still?" replied Gerard, 
 flicking a fly from the horse's flank. "She seems to 
 live in the garden. Doesn't care tuppence about her 
 complexion." 
 
 "She is very remarkably beautiful." 
 
 "Do you think so? I never noticed. You see, I 
 have known her all my life. She is just the parson's 
 daughter. I suppose she reminds you of your own 
 Javanese." 
 
 Otto flushed, and the two drove on, side by side, 
 in silence. They were very unlike to look at; there 
 must have been, as Dominie Rovers had said, from 
 fifteen to twenty years' interval between them. The 
 young man was spruce and slender, carelessly elegant 
 in appearance and attitude, the elder brother, the 
 planter, sat square and stalwart, with ruddy skin and 
 tawny beard. He was coming home for rest, weary of 
 the jaded splendour of the tropics; as they drove on, 
 he turned right and left, with eager, misty eyes. The
 
 2 2 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 salute of the passing peasants delighted him; he 
 watched, in quiet ecstasy, their long-drawn glances of 
 inquiry or semi-acknowledgment. This was better than 
 the humbly crouching savages under the cocoa-trees. 
 This was recognition: this was home. 
 
 The avenue was home, the white house behind the 
 trees was home, and the clasp of his mother's arms 
 — no, that was home. Never mind, for one moment, 
 the rest. 
 
 "You have gray hairs here and there, Otto," said 
 the Baroness van Helmont fondly. "I never knew I 
 was an old woman before." 
 
 Otto's father bent down quickly and kissed her 
 slender hand. 
 
 "My dear, you will never grow old," he said. "You 
 belong to the things of beauty, and you remember what 
 the English poet said of them." 
 
 The little porcelain lady laughed among the laces 
 of her morning-gown. 
 
 "Yes, but the French poet said just the reverse, 
 and in matters of beauty the Frenchman is the better 
 judge." 
 
 "Well, let Otto be umpire. He is best able to 
 decide. Otto, do you find that your mother has grown 
 a day older since you left?" 
 
 The old Baron looked towards his big son with 
 what, on his easy features, was almost an anxious ex- 
 pression. 
 
 "Yes, she is older," said Otto. 
 
 The Baroness laughed again.
 
 HOME. 23 
 
 "My dear," she said; "he is impossible as ever. 
 Leave him. He, at least, has not changed." 
 
 Mynheer van Helmont dropped his eyelids with a 
 quick movement of vexation, and walked from the room. 
 
 Mother and son were left together. They went into 
 the Baroness's little turret-chamber, a rounded bonbon- 
 niere, all pale flowered silk and Dresden china, with a 
 long window overlooking the park. 
 
 "Sit down, child," said the Baroness. "Are you 
 glad to be home again?" 
 
 A lump in the strong man's throat prevented im- 
 mediate reply. Presently he took his mother's jewelled 
 fingers in his own. "And what have you been doing 
 all this time?" he said. 
 
 "Doing. But, my dear, we have been living. What 
 else should we do? It is you who have shot the tigers. 
 Nothing has happened here." 
 
 "Grandpapa is dead," said Otto meditatively. 
 
 "Ah yes, grandpapa is dead. That is very sad, but 
 he had been childish for years. He lived upstairs in 
 the blue-room and never came out of it. He did not 
 know us. He used to mistake me for some horrid 
 recollection of his youth, and call me Niniche. It was 
 very embarrassing." 
 
 They were both silent. 
 
 "Your father said it was a great compliment," added 
 the Baroness gravely. 
 
 "And his pension? What has become of that? How 
 did you manage? I have often wanted to ask." 
 
 "Well, of course, his pension went. Your father 
 had always said it would make a tremendous difference. 
 I cannot say I find it has."
 
 24 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "But it must," persisted Otto. 
 
 "Of course. My dear boy, have you still your old 
 liking for business? I beg of you, do not begin talking 
 of it just yet." 
 
 Otto smiled. 
 
 "Come, lean your head on my lap as you used to 
 do. Wait a minute; you will spoil my dress." 
 
 She spread out a flimsy bit of cambric which could 
 have protected nothing, and sat softly stroking the dark 
 hair from his face, as he lay on the rug. 
 
 "You have come back heart-whole?" she said pre- 
 sently, but there was not much interrogation in her voice. 
 
 "Yes, mother." The tone excluded doubt; not that 
 anyone ever thought of doubting Otto. 
 
 "Gerard was always prophesying that you would 
 bring back a 'nut-brown' wife." 
 
 The words seemed to strike home strangely to Otto, 
 like an echo. "Gerard appears very lively," he said. 
 "He always had exceedingly high spirits as a boy. But, 
 of course, I hardly know him." 
 
 "He is brightness itself," said the Baroness. "He 
 is like a constant sunbeam. Dear boy, I hope he will 
 make an advantageous settlement. And you too, dear 
 Otto, I wish you would marry and" — her voice grew 
 tremulous — "stay at home." 
 
 "But, mother, I must first find a wife." He spread 
 out his fingers contemplatively on the white plush beneath 
 him, among the gold-embroidered lilies. 
 
 "That is a woman's work, not a man's. It is a 
 mother's, and I could easily manage it. A man should 
 find all his loves for himself, except the one he 
 marries in the end."
 
 HOME. 2 5 
 
 "But would you look for a consort, mother, or 
 merely for a mule with money-bags?" 
 
 "Otto, how rudely you put things! Contact with 
 black people has not improved you. I should look for 
 an angel, worthy of my boy — an angel with golden 
 wings." She paused, and played shyly with the velvet 
 at her wrist. "Indeed, I hope you will marry a little 
 money," she added, looking away. "Your father ex- 
 pects it. And, besides, you must." 
 
 He did not answer. "Gerard is going to," she 
 added, blushing over the pink and white tints of her 
 delicate cheek. "He quite understands it is necessary. 
 He is doing his best." 
 
 "How commendable!" cried Otto, sitting up. "He 
 deserves, indeed, that his gilt-feathered seraph should 
 bear him to a matrimonial heaven." 
 
 The Baroness looked placidly alarmed. "My dear," 
 she said, "don't, I beg of you, go spoiling your brother. 
 He takes a much simpler view of duty than you. You 
 have always complicated existence, poor child. You 
 were a steel-clanging knight, Otto, in search of ogres; 
 he is a troubadour under Fortune's window. And he 
 never plays out of tune." 
 
 And then again there was silence between them 
 while she drew down his head once more. But their 
 thoughts were conversing still. 
 
 "Marrying for money," he continued at last, and his 
 voice was black with scorn. 
 
 "Marrying money and marrying for money are two 
 very different things," rejoined the Baroness patiently. 
 "As you know. I should not like Gerard to marry for
 
 26 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 money. Nor you. You never will. But you can do 
 as your father did." 
 
 The turret-chamber was cool, yet the glowing sun 
 from outside seemed to penetrate to the cheeks of both 
 mother and son. 
 
 "My father is a lucky man," said Otto. "But sup- 
 posing you had not turned out to be you ? " 
 
 "Then there would not have been money enough. 
 As it is, we had a little love and a little money; that 
 is the best blend, on the whole, to commence house- 
 keeping with. Both, I suppose, should go on increas- 
 ing; with us, only one has done that." 
 
 "Nobody has ever missed the money," interposed 
 Otto, smiling pitifully down on the costly rag at his feet. 
 
 "Ah, you say that! But I have often regretted that 
 mamma's fortune was not larger. Papa, you remember, 
 had squandered his share. Your poor father might 
 have got many things he had set his heart upon, and 
 which now he is compelled to go without." 
 
 "Yes," said Otto, "the house would have been twice 
 as full again." 
 
 "Exactly. For instance, he has always longed, 
 passionately, to possess a 'Corot.' He has never been 
 able to procure one. There is a very good 'Daubigny' 
 in the small drawing-room. By-the-bye, it is new; you 
 must go and have a look at it presently. But the poor 
 man has never ventured to buy a 'Corot.' I cannot 
 help feeling it is almost my fault. Certainly grand- 
 papa's. Yet he was always so considerate to grandpapa 
 after we took him to live with us, never reproaching 
 him with a word." 
 
 Otto did not ask: "What is a 'Corot'?" He lay
 
 HOME. 27 
 
 stroking his mother's hand. Presently he started to his 
 feet and walked towards the window. 
 
 "How beautiful it is!" he cried, "how lovely! Oh, 
 mother, the sun-heat across the park!" 
 
 The little lady came dancing after him. "Yes, is 
 it not exquisite?" she cried, standing close beside him. 
 "Look at the patch of yellow colour there, in the break 
 between the beeches. Why, Otto, since when do you 
 notice the merely beautiful? Do you see that far line 
 of white roof with the sun full upon it? That is the 
 gallery round the new Italian garden. Well, not 
 exactly new, only you have been away such a very 
 long time ! " 
 
 She pressed his arm. "Now go down to yonr 
 father," she added, softly. "Ask him to show you the 
 'Daubigny.' And don't talk to him of business. You 
 know he doesn't like it." 
 
 "A fortune for a picture," said Otto to himself as 
 he closed his mother's door, "while I was out in Java 
 growing tea!" 
 
 He passed along a corridor which was hung with 
 arms of all times and nations into the large entrance- 
 hall, a museum of old oak and heraldry among the 
 masses of summer flowers. 
 
 There he found his father pacing impatiently to and 
 fro. The old Baron, whose life motto had been "Tout 
 s'arrange," was only impatient about things of no im- 
 portance. He was now eager to show his son the ac- 
 quisitions of the last twelve years. He knew that the 
 display would be productive of pleasure neither to 
 himself nor to his heir, but he remained eager all the 
 same.
 
 2 8 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 The returned exile — his heart soft with the morn- 
 ing's impressions — resolved at once to take an interest 
 in everything. "Mother was speaking of a new picture," 
 he began, "a daub — daub-something. She said I must 
 be sure and ask to see it." 
 
 The Baron smiled. "The Daubigny," he replied. 
 "I suppose the name has not penetrated to India yet. 
 With us, you know, he has made himself a little reputa- 
 tion." He led the way into a small drawing-room, but 
 stopped before pointing to his treasure. "Do you notice 
 any change here?" he asked. "Anything new in the 
 arrangement of the whole?" 
 
 Otto hesitated. He was horribly ill at ease and 
 afraid of making a fool of himself. It was the old 
 sensation of twelve years ago. He felt like a shy man 
 that doesn't know a cob from a charger, suddenly called 
 upon to judge of a horse. 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing," said the Baron. "Only the ceil- 
 ing's been painted. It was done by Guicciardi, the 
 same who decorated the last Loggia in the Prelli Palace 
 just before the poor prince went smash. That was a 
 magnificent finale, Otto. Poor old Prince Luigi knew 
 that he couldn't possibly hold out much longer, not a 
 hundred thousand francs to the good, I am told. And 
 he gave a commission to Guicciardi to paint the place 
 with that last hundred thousand, just finished the thing 
 and left an immortal whole to his country, and then — 
 pwhit!" The Baron snapped his fingers lightly. "Pooh," 
 he said, "I know you don't care for that kind of thing. 
 I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to give you offence. 
 That is the 'Daubigny.'" 
 
 Olto stood staring at the little golden landscape.
 
 HOME. 2Q 
 
 He was seeking hard for something sensible to say. 
 He could not talk of art as his brother Gerard did, 
 while knowing nothing about it, trustful to Fate to make 
 his talk no greater nonsense than that of those who 
 do know. 
 
 "It did'nt cost me very much," said the Baron, a 
 little shamefacedly. "It is not, of course, a first-rate 
 specimen, though I flatter myself it is by no means 
 bad." 
 
 "It is very pretty," said Otto. "The sky is some- 
 thing like a Javanese sunrise." 
 
 "Really? That reminds me, I have some beautiful 
 ivories in the west room, if you care to see them. 
 Japanese, but they were bought at Batavia. What 
 wonderful opportunities you must have had, had you 
 only known!" He looked wistfully at his son. "Dirt- 
 cheap, I dare say." 
 
 "I don't think anything's dirt-cheap anywhere," replied 
 Otto. "And dirt seems the most expensive of all — in 
 the end." 
 
 He shrank back, with a sudden misgiving of his 
 own meaning; but, if the speech was discourteous, the 
 Baron quite misunderstood it. "I hope you have got 
 into no entanglements," said the Baron, sharply. "Al- 
 though, true, it is not the expensive ones that are the 
 most dangerous. We expect you to marry now, Otto, 
 and settle down. Your mother is very anxious you 
 should marry a little money. I sincerely hope you will." 
 
 "There is time still, father," said Otto; "I'm only 
 just back." 
 
 "Well, I don't know. You are nearly forty. And 
 you have wasted a great many years after all. Here
 
 30 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 have you been toiling in Java, working hard the whole 
 time, and with what result? The same as in Germany 
 before. You might just as well have lived leisurely at 
 home, and better. Your cheeks would have been less 
 brown, and your manners no worse." 
 
 He faced his son; he had been bracing himself 
 for this, and he was astonished to find it came so 
 easily. "After all, I think you must admit, Otto, 
 that we easy-going people understand life better than 
 you." 
 
 "I have no wish to deny it, sir." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well? I have tried to do my duty — the nearest 
 duty." m 
 
 "Java! It seems to me your duty was a very far 
 one. Well, well, we are heartily glad to have you back. 
 Come into the smoking-room, and we will smoke a really 
 good cigar."
 
 THE VAN HELMONTS. 3 I 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE VAN HELMONTS. 
 
 Baron van Helmont could have dug out no better 
 epithet to apply to himself and his race than the word 
 which rose naturally to the top: "easy-going." He knew 
 he was "easy-going." The Van Helmonts had always 
 been that. "Stream with the stream." "Tout s' ar- 
 range": he could hear his grandfather saying these 
 things in a far-away mist of Louis XV. powder and 
 ruffles; he remembered how he had brought home his 
 Watteau-faced bride, and how the old gentleman, bent 
 double over his gold-headed cane, had blessed the 
 pair, with a sceptical grimace, at the top of the moss- 
 grown steps. 
 
 "My children," he had said, "you have launched 
 your boat on the current. However you steer, the river 
 flows to the sea. Take an old man's advice. Let it 
 flow. Laissez couler." 
 
 Said the young wife to her husband, as soon as 
 they were alone: "But 'laissez couler' means Met the 
 boat sink?'" and she laughed the prettiest protest into 
 his face. She had plenty of brains. 
 
 He stopped her mouth with a kiss. "You are too 
 young a married woman," he replied, "to study 'equi- 
 voques,'" He, also, had plenty of brains, but neither 
 had the art of using them,
 
 32 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 The old gentleman, his grandfather, had made a 
 tranquil ending; he had lain on his death-bed unruffled 
 except at the wrists. His was surely a bright civilisa- 
 tion, with its "What does it signify?" Our self-clouded 
 century repeats the words, but with passionate inquiry. 
 And, after all, so many things that torment us signify 
 so exceedingly little. Yet, perhaps, none the less, we 
 are wiser than our grandfathers, for "it," in their case, 
 signified the French Revolution. 
 
 The present Baron van Helmont could not, of 
 course, be "pure Louis XV." None of us can, not 
 even our clocks. You are unable — it is a stale truth — 
 to push back the hand on the dial. The Baron, for 
 instance, could not contemplate dissolution with the 
 composure of his grandsire. He tried hard not to 
 contemplate it at all. "Live and let live" was one of 
 his favourite sayings. One day, long ago, he had used 
 it to close the discussion with regard to a case which 
 had recently occurred, in his village, of what he would 
 have labelled "unavoidable distress." His hobbledehoy 
 of a son — the only one then — had suddenly joined in 
 the conversation. "But that means," the boy Otto had 
 said, "Live well yourself, and let the poor live badly." 
 It was the first symptom. The father shrugged his 
 shoulders. Otto must have been, if we use the scien- 
 tific jargon of our day, a reversion to an anterior type. 
 To judge by the discrepancy of any half a dozen 
 brothers, most families must possess a good many types 
 to revert to. 
 
 The Baron van Helmont was a good man, lovable 
 and universally respected. In his youth he had en- 
 joyed himself and spent freely as a young gentleman
 
 THE VAN IIELMONTS. 33 
 
 should do. He had been gay, but no irretrievable 
 scandal had ever been mixed up with his name. He 
 had married a charming wife who had brought him a 
 little more money. They had spent that together, and 
 had quietly enjoyed the spending; but their friends and 
 connections had been permitted to enjoy it too. The 
 Baron had one of the finest collections of curios in the 
 Netherlands, and also some very good pictures. He 
 was a gentleman to his finger-tips, and thoroughly 
 cultivated. No one could possibly be a better judge 
 of bric-a-brac. 
 
 "Bric-a-brac," said the Baroness to the pastor, "is 
 in itself a vocation; and the best judge of bric-a-brac 
 in Holland is better than a taker of cities." She spoke 
 under strong provocation. At intervals the Domine 
 would make himself superfluous by speaking in the 
 Manor House drawing-room of "righteousness, temper- 
 ance, and judgment to come." "As if we got drunk," 
 said the Baroness. 
 
 Undeniably, the Baron was a gentleman, courteous 
 and comely. There is a story about him which he 
 loved to tell in the privacy of his after-dinner circle. 
 It happened in Paris, at the court of the Citizen-King. 
 The Baron, passing through that promiscuous capital, 
 had received a card for a monster reception. He went, 
 and somehow got astray in the crush at the entrance, 
 so that when he tried to pass in at a side door he 
 found himself stopped by a gentleman-at-arms. 
 
 "Excuse me, monsieur; but this door is reserved 
 for the members of reigning families." 
 
 The Baron hesitated. To withdraw was absurd. 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 3
 
 34 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 He straightened himself, in his small but serene 
 hauteur. 
 
 "And who am I, then?" he said. 
 
 "Entrez, mon prince." 
 
 But that was long ago. Unfortunately. Even while 
 the Baron said "Stream," he regretted that his life 
 could not lie stagnant in a bay, among water-lilies. 
 And yet he hurried on each individual day to its close. 
 He was always wanting to pick other flowers, a little 
 farther down the bank. 
 
 Two sons were left him at the close of his life, and 
 one of these was already annoyingly old. Between the 
 two lay a couple of hillocks in the village churchyard. 
 The Baroness had begged to rescue the small relics 
 therein contained from the musty family vault. "The 
 vault is so cold," she said. Her husband proved quite 
 willing to adopt the suggestion; he availed himself of 
 the opportunity it gave him to put up a charming 
 Italian marble of a cherub gathering flowers. "The 
 Devil's Doll," the Calvinist villagers called it. Occasion- 
 ally, when her husband was not attending, the Baroness 
 would go and weep a few quiet tears upon the hillocks. 
 There was a chamber in her heart which she occasion- 
 ally liked to enter, but she never had much objection 
 to coming out again. 
 
 "I met Ursula this afternoon, Otto," said Gerard 
 at dinner. "I told her she had aroused your en- 
 thusiastic admiration. I fancy she was very much 
 pleased." He laughed; the others laughed. 
 
 Otto's bent face sank lower beneath a sudden
 
 THE VAN HELMONTS. 35 
 
 thunder-cloud. "That was an ungentlemanly thing to 
 do," he said. 
 
 "Ungentlemanly!" The younger brother's voice 
 had entirely changed its key. "What on earth do 
 you mean? How dare you say such a thing as 
 that?" 
 
 A manservant was in the room. The remarks 
 had been made in Dutch. The man would have 
 understood them in French, but that would not have 
 mattered. 
 
 "I mean," responded Otto, rather awkwardly, 
 floundering into the foreign language to which his 
 plantation life had somewhat choked the inlets, "that 
 it is a shabby thing to do, to go and tell a lady what 
 a man has said of her in confidence." 
 
 "My dear, not if it be a compliment," interposed 
 the Baroness, mildly ignoring, as her sex was bound to 
 do, the all-important concluding words. "Every woman 
 likes a harmless compliment." 
 
 "Not sensible women. Sensible women despise 
 them," edged in the Freule* van Borck. Nobody 
 heeded her. 
 
 "Confidence! Confidence!" echoed Gerard hotly. 
 "Who talked of confidence?" He lapsed, purposely, 
 into Dutch. "I decline to be told," he said, "whether 
 at my father's table or anywhere else, that I behave in 
 an 'ungentlemanly' manner." 
 
 The old Baron waved a conciliatory hand. "The 
 
 word was unfortunate," he admitted, "but, Gerard, 
 
 you press too heavily upon it. Glissez, n'appuyez pas. 
 
 Otto meant to say, you had stolen an unfair advantage. 
 
 ■* Title of unmarried ladies of rank. 
 
 3*
 
 36 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 He had doubtless been wanting to tell Ursula himself. 
 Fie, what an ado about nothing. To me it is most 
 remarkable that, after so long an absence, Otto should 
 still speak Dutch so well." 
 
 The obvious retort that Dutch is spoken in Java 
 sprang straight to Gerard's lips, but he bit it down 
 again. 
 
 "I consider Ursula Rovers distinctly plain," remarked 
 the Freule van Borck. The Freule was the Baroness 
 van Helmont's only sister; she had lived at the Manor 
 House for years. She was what humdrum people call 
 "a character," as if all of us were not that when you 
 shift the lights. 
 
 "She is common-looking," said the Baroness, "but 
 I think she is pretty." 
 
 "All women are pretty," smiled the Baron, "even 
 those whom the pretty ones think plain." 
 
 "My dear," his wife nodded across at him, "it is a 
 fallacy, old as Adam, that Eve, in her Paradise, is 
 jealous of all the Liliths outside." 
 
 "Stuff and nonsense," cried the sharp-faced Freule 
 van Borck, "there are women enough yet — thank Heaven 
 — and to spare, that don't care a cent about looks." 
 
 Her sister puckered up a small mouth into a most 
 innocent expression. "If it be so," she said suavely, 
 "it is a merciful dispensation. God tempers the wind 
 to the shorn lamb." 
 
 The two brothers sat in silence, not so much sullen 
 as gate's. Presently the father proposed the health of 
 the one who had that day returned to them. "We 
 celebrate," he said, with good-natured banter, "le re- 
 tour du fils prodigue, trop prodigue — de lui-meme."
 
 THE VAN FIELMONTS. 37 
 
 After the toast had been honoured, he turned to 
 his Benjamin. "You, sir," he said, "prefer the fruits 
 of other people's labours. You take after your father. 
 And, when the time comes, precious little you will find 
 to take." They both laughed heartily enough this 
 time, and the whole family rose from table. 
 
 Otto came out to Gerard on the terrace. "I am 
 sorry I offended you," he said, "I meant to be angry 
 but not to be insulting." 
 
 Gerard's face cleared like a pool when the sun 
 comes out. He gave his brother's hand a hearty grasp. 
 "Don't speak of it again," he said. "I daresay I was 
 wrong, though Heaven knows I didn't mean to annoy 
 you. You will find me, sometimes, a little thoughtless, 
 I fear. You mustn't always take things quite as seri- 
 ously as to-day, though. I wish you would come down 
 to the stables with me, Otto; you haven't even seen my 
 saddle-horses yet." 
 
 Mynheer van Helmont, standing cigar in mouth, 
 before the great bay window, turned and nodded to 
 his wife. 
 
 "They are friends again," he said. "Isn't it dread- 
 ful? That is the worst thing that can happen to 
 brothers." 
 
 "What is?" queried the Freule van Borck. 
 
 "Why, to be friends again." 
 
 "I like Otto very much," said the Freule irrelevantly, 
 not comprehending. 
 
 Mevrouw van Helmont laid down her bit of fluffy 
 fancy work. "Of course you like Otto very much, 
 Louisa," she said. "I should be exceedingly vexed, 
 did you not."
 
 30 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 The Baron walked out into the afterglow. "It is 
 most irritating," he mused, "to have to say all one's 
 good things to an audience one-half of which is deaf 
 to all meanings, and the other half of which is one's 
 wife." 
 
 He stood looking at the white pile which lay softly 
 embosomed in its dark-green half-circle, like a pearl 
 set in emeralds, beneath the amber sky. He was 
 deeply proud of its possession. "These Havannahs," 
 he reflected, "are as excellent as if they were genuine," 
 and he wreathed a faint blue whorl on the tranquil 
 air. Then another thought struck a sudden chill to 
 his heart. "To die and leave it all!" He shivered 
 and returned to the window. "Louisa," he said, "how 
 about our piquet?" 
 
 A couple of hours later Otto stood on the same 
 terrace, also cigar in mouth. He had come out for 
 a last smoke before turning in. He was an inveterate 
 and uninterrupted smoker. It was his one weakness, 
 and he indulged it to the full. 
 
 The night was perfectly still, and translucent. A 
 soft flutter, that was not wind, but the very restlessness 
 of dreaming nature, weighted the balmy air with wan- 
 dering gusts of incense. All creation seemed lapped in 
 luxury, asleep on the breast of love. 
 
 Otto, alone in the dusk, looked up at the silent 
 windows. The rest were gone to their rooms; a light 
 glimmered here and there. The great stable-clock 
 boomed heavily eleven long trembling strokes. "It is 
 home," said Otto, under his breath. But he said it 
 aloud. He rejoiced, with tumultuous delight, for a
 
 THE VAN IIELMONTS. 3Q 
 
 moment, in being able to speak to that home from a 
 spot where the bricks and mortar could hear him. His 
 memory strayed away to the low house with the long 
 verandahs among the spreading palms. How often had 
 he lain back there in his wicker lounge, his cigar a 
 deep red spot of attraction among the insect-whirl of 
 the Indian night, while he said the word out vainly to 
 the bats and moths and butterflies. Home. He stood 
 and looked — looked at the mere walls till his eyes were 
 burning with physical exhaustion. He was back again 
 at last. He loved his mother very faithfully. He loved 
 his father. He felt kindly towards his brother. Yet, 
 somehow, he could not control an impression of lone- 
 liness, as he turned to go upstairs.
 
 40 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LE PREMIER PAS QUI COUTE. 
 
 "Gird up your loins!" cried the Domine, striking 
 his only hand into the pulpit-cushion. The peasant 
 congregation, with bodies huddled awry in wondrously 
 diversified angles of drowsiness, nodded lower under 
 the accustomed storm. One red-faced yawner, opening 
 misty eyes, stared vaguely through the heat-cloud, and 
 with some far perception of the preacher's meaning, 
 hitched up his trousers before sinking back into his 
 seat. 
 
 "For the city of Mansoul is taken, is taken while 
 the garrison slept!" In the Manor House pew, under 
 the glitter of armorial gaudery against sombre oak, sat 
 their Baronial Highnesses, all except Gerard, who, com- 
 ing down too late, had found himself compelled to 
 elect between breakfast and church. Their Highnesses 
 preserved an exemplary attitude of erect attention. It 
 is even quite possible that the Freule Louisa was listen- 
 ing. 
 
 To Otto the little barn-like building, in its while 
 unchangedness, had brought that sudden quietude of 
 soul which comes upon us when the rush of life has 
 briefly cast us back into a long-remembered harbour. 
 It was good to be here. It was good to find nothing 
 altered, neither the gaunt externals of the service, nor
 
 LE PREMIER PAS — QUI COUTE. 4 I 
 
 the inharmonious music, nor even the long discourse. 
 It was good to breathe the atmosphere of dutiful 
 curiosity which played about the heir until at last it 
 also sank, half-sated, beneath the all-oppressive heat. 
 The crimson farm-wives sat perspiring under their great 
 Sunday towers of gold-hung embroidery. There was 
 not a cool spot in the building, except Ursula's muslin 
 frock. 
 
 As his eye rested there, Otto felt that one change 
 at least made itself manifest. Where a little lonely 
 child had formerly faced the Manor House pew, a 
 maiden now sat, calm and self-possessed, her gaze 
 neither seeking nor avoiding his own. And suddenly 
 he realised that he was growing old. 
 
 He realised it all the more when, presently, he 
 found himself walking back by the side of the parson's 
 daughter, through wide stretches of sun-soaked corn. 
 The older people had passed ahead, unconsciously 
 hurried forward by the sweeping stride of the Domine. 
 In that opening search for words which always disturbs 
 the meeting of long-acquainted strangers Otto's soul 
 swelled anew with wrath against the brother whose in- 
 discretion had doubly tied either tongue. 
 
 "Yes, everything is exactly as it used to be," he 
 replied to Ursula's perfunctory question, when it 
 ultimately blossomed forth from the marsh of their 
 mutual embarrassment. "That struck me more especially 
 this morning in church. The people are pretty much 
 the same, of course; at least, they look it. And so is 
 the whole appearance of the place, and the odour of 
 the fustian and the service." 
 
 "And the sermon?" she laughed lamely, thinking
 
 42 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 also of Gerard's banter, and annoyed by her annoy- 
 ance. 
 
 But his face clouded over. She noticed this, and 
 it put her still less at her ease. She hurriedly added 
 something about her father's "coincidence," thereby 
 causing her companion to write her down insincere. 
 
 "Nevertheless," she continued desperately, feeling 
 all the while that she might just as well, and far better, 
 keep silence, "twelve years seems to me a most tre- 
 mendous time." 
 
 "That is because you are young." 
 
 "Young or not, people change in twelve years." 
 
 Gerard would have availed himself of this palpable 
 opportunity to suggest something pretty; clumsy Otto 
 merely made answer: "My grandfather is dead." The 
 most tragic words can somehow sound funny, and Ursula, 
 in her nervousness, very nearly laughed. 
 
 "I miss him," continued Otto quite unconsciously. 
 "He wasn't — childish, you know, when I went away. 
 How the poor old man would have enjoyed some 
 talks about my tiger-hunts. He was such a splendid 
 shot." 
 
 "Have you really shot tigers?" 
 
 "Yes." A man always feels foolish under such a 
 question as that. 
 
 "Many?" 
 
 "That depends on your ideas of proportion. Tigers 
 must not be confounded with rabbits. I have shot 
 enough to be able to beg your father's acceptance of 
 a skin when my boxes come." 
 
 They walked on for some minutes in silence, awk- 
 ward silence, she nicking at the corn-ears with her
 
 LE PREMIER PAS — QUI COUTE. 43 
 
 white parasol. Then she said: "I feel sorry for the 
 tiger." 
 
 He answered drily: "The parents of his final supper 
 did not take that view." 
 
 "But," he added, "I dare say you don't quite under- 
 stand about wild beasts, or heathen countries. I shouldn't 
 wonder, Juffrouw Rovers, if you had never even crossed 
 the frontier." 
 
 "No, I haven't," she answered shortly, much put 
 out by his innocent patronage. "And I am glad I 
 haven't. I should hate to come back as people do, 
 finding all things small at home. And, above all, I 
 should hate to go to India, a horrible place with spiders 
 as big as my sunshade, and a python curled up, per- 
 haps, under one's pillow of nights. You needn't laugh; 
 I may have forgotten the dreadful creatures' name, 
 but I know they're there, for my Uncle Mopius told 
 me." 
 
 "Ah, yes, your Uncle Mopius. He was out in Java, 
 wasn't he?" 
 
 "Yes, he was notary there, and he tells the most 
 awful stories." 
 
 "Then don't believe them. So you would never go 
 to India?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Well, it's a good thing there's no necessity. I 
 had to, you see. People even face pythons, when they 
 must. And there's always the fun of killing them." 
 
 She shuddered. "The fun of killing," she repeated, 
 "I cannot understand at all. We are speaking different 
 languages, Mynheer van Helmont. I hate the idea of 
 killing anything. And do you know what I hate still
 
 44 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 more? It is what you call 'a splendid shot.' Gerard 
 is a splendid shot, like his grandfather, the finest, they 
 say, in the province. Yes, I can't help it; I've often 
 told him" — she plunged headlong — "I dare say you're 
 a splendid shot. But it's just my hobby. To go creep, 
 creeping through God's creation a gun in one's hand, 
 seeking some innocent life you may slay for the pleasure 
 of slaying! Or still worse, to sit in a chair and have 
 the poor fluttering wretches driven in quantities on to 
 one's barrels! It's the one thing that spoils the country 
 for me, and only in the autumn I long to get away 
 from Horstwyk. There's no shooting in town." 
 
 "I was thinking ot real sport," he answered with 
 provoking meekness, "but I dare say you are right." 
 
 "Oh, I know what real sport means!" she cried, 
 and her eyes flashed. "Hallooing after some little 
 palpitating victim with beagles or harriers, or hounds! 
 You may think me very stupid — I dare say you do — 
 but I wouldn't shake hands, if I could help it, with a 
 man whom I knew to have voluntarily 'hunted' any- 
 thing. As for women, I can't believe they do it." She 
 broke off, in that nervous "unstrungness," which only 
 comes to the gentler sex, hardly knowing, after her sud- 
 den burst of eloquence, whether to laugh or to cry. 
 
 "You are quite right, quite right," he said, again, 
 but in his grave regard she only read approval of her 
 callow softness. They had reached a little well-known 
 wicket, and he stopped. The path went twisting away, 
 at this spot, from the yellow fields into the deep recesses 
 of the park. 
 
 "I think we separate here?" he said, and to her 
 amazement she caught a touch of regret in his tone.
 
 LE PREMIER PAS — QUI COUTE. 45 
 
 "Yes, as a rule. But papa has gone on — in honour 
 of you, I suppose." 
 
 "Then you cannot do better than follow." He held 
 open the gate for her to pass. "I think you must for- 
 give me," he said, with downcast eyes. "It was only 
 once. In Ireland. And we didn't kill the fox." 
 
 "Because you couldn't," she answered fiercely. "Or 
 do people keep foxes, like stags, to uncart?" 
 
 Her hand, in its long "Suede" glove, closed almost 
 viciously on the filmy folds of her frock. Not another 
 word was exchanged between them as they threaded 
 the shady mazes of suddenly delicious green, but she 
 felt that he was watching her all the time out of the 
 corners of his eyes. A good man enjoys the arousing 
 a womanly woman's righteous indignation. Her heart 
 beat till he saw it. He liked that. 
 
 "Ah, Domine, there was sense in your sermon!" 
 cried the Freule van Borck, haranguing everybody in a 
 group on the lawn. "What I enjoy in your preaching 
 is the protest against latter-day flabbiness" — the Freule 
 van Borck had read and misunderstood Carlyle — "Where 
 are the heroes of old?" she cried, pointing her "church- 
 book" at the imperturbable Gerard, who had come 
 strolling out, cool in the coolest of flannels, to greet the 
 clergyman. "Where, as you asked them, are Gideon, 
 and Moses, and Joshua the son of Nun, that was never 
 afraid?" 
 
 "We give it up," said Gerard gravely. "Did the 
 congregation know?" 
 
 "Be silent, Gerard. Your conduct is bad enough 
 already. Instead of remaining to scoff, you should have
 
 46 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 gone to pray." It was the Baron who spoke, looking 
 up from his great St. Bernard. 
 
 "I bow to your command, sir, especially on a Sun- 
 day. But Aunt Louisa should not propound conun- 
 drums when the answers appear to have got beyond 
 her control." 
 
 "I was not speaking to you; I was speaking seriously," 
 replied the Freule with lofty scorn. "And I thoroughly 
 agree with the Domine, that the age of troubadours is 
 dead." 
 
 The Domine writhed. "Yes, yes," he said — "un- 
 doubtedly. Though I should hardly, myself, have em- 
 ployed the names you mentioned as examples of fear- 
 lessness " He stopped in despair. The Freule was 
 
 grabbing, with her handkerchief in front of her, at a 
 wasp which serenely buzzed behind. Mevrouw van 
 Helmont, on a garden seat, against a great flare of 
 MacMahons that looked, among their gold-rimmed 
 leaves, like a mayonnaise of lobster — Mevrouw van 
 Helmont seemed entirely engrossed by the interest of 
 sticking her parasol into a fat bundle before her which 
 wriggled and kicked. The Domine sighed. This was 
 "the Family." These were the temporal lords of his 
 spiritual domain. He turned, wistfully, to watch his 
 daughter coming across the sward, by Otto's side, be- 
 tween gay patches of colour. 
 
 "You two have been renewing your acquaintance," 
 he said. "Or was there none left to renew?" 
 
 "Indeed, we are already old friends," replied Otto, 
 "for Juffrouw Rovers has been scolding me vigorously, 
 and ladies, I believe, never scold mere acquaintances?" 
 Ursula bit her underlip. "I understand that Juffrouw
 
 LE PREMIER PAS — QUI C0U1E. 47 
 
 Rovers objects to the killing of animals — all animals?" 
 His heavy moustache hung unmoved as he looked 
 across. 
 
 "Oh, that is a fad of Ursula's/' broke in Gerard. 
 "You should teach her her Bible better, Domine. She 
 admits that Nimrod may have been a mighty hunter, 
 but never 'before the Lord.'" 
 
 "Gerard," said the Domine, with a grave flash of 
 his eyes on the prodigal, "the Bible is a holy book. 
 Some day, perhaps, you will learn, with regard to holi- 
 ness, 'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.'" 
 The rebuke was almost a fierce one, from gentle lips. 
 In the painful silence Gerard, flushing, took it like a 
 man. 
 
 The Baron's mild voice intervened. "The daughter 
 of a hero," said the Baron, smiling and bowing, "can 
 afford to appear soft-hearted. Ursula preaches peace 
 and her father preaches war. But I, were I Otto, 
 should be most afraid of Ursula." 
 
 "Mynheer van Helmont," answered that young lady, 
 goaded almost beyond endurance, "I am going next 
 Wednesday to my Uncle Mopius, to stay with him for 
 a week or two." 
 
 "Coming to Drum!" cried Gerard, whose regiment 
 was quartered in the small provincial town. He checked 
 himself. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "You were 
 about to speak?" 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing!" cried the Baroness across from 
 her seat. "Your father was only going to observe 
 something about eclipses of the sun. You know you 
 were, Theodore. It has done duty a dozen times be- 
 fore."
 
 48 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "My dear, do I deny it?" replied the Baron, sadly. 
 "We have lived too long together. You know all my 
 little jokes, Cecile. You are tired of my compliments. 
 And yet, after more than forty years of marriage, I still 
 address ninety per cent, to yourself." 
 
 "But none of the new ones," replied the Baroness, 
 pouting before the whole circle like a girl. 
 
 "The new ones are an old man's compliments, and, 
 therefore, insincere." He went across to her, followed 
 by the dog, and the gray couple sat laughing and flirt- 
 ing, like any pair of lovers. 
 
 "Ah, Domine, you needn't look sour," said the 
 Freule, her own angular face like skim milk.. "Surely, 
 by this time, you no longer expect sobriety at the Manor 
 House of Horst." 
 
 "I was only thinking," replied the Domine softly, 
 and his eyes seemed to pierce beyond the couple on 
 the seat. 
 
 The Freule gave a smart snap — meant not unkindly 
 — to her "Churchbook" clasp. 
 
 "But your wife is in heaven," she rejoined, "and 
 much better off, unless sermons mean nothing, than, any- 
 body here below." 
 
 The Domine started, and an old scar came out 
 across his cheeks, as if a whiplash had struck him. 
 "Yes, yes," he said hurriedly. "Thank God. Ursula, 
 I think it is time we were going." 
 
 But the spinster laid a detaining hand upon her 
 pastor's arm. "Surely you must admit," she persisted, 
 "that you Christians are strangely illogical. What, to a 
 Christian, is the King of Terrors? We should speak, 
 not of Mors, but of Morphia!"
 
 LE PREMIER PAS — QUI COUTE. 49 
 
 This sentence was taken from the Freule's favourite 
 periodical, the Victory, in which, however, the conclud- 
 ing word had been printed "Morpheus." 
 
 "Yes, yes, exactly," replied the Domine, pulling 
 away. "You remember what Thucydides said, Freule 
 Louisa? I mean, Thucydides says it's no use discussing 
 a subject, unless men are agreed on the meaning of the 
 terms they employ. Ursula, we must really be going. 
 Your aunt has such a dislike to irregular hours." 
 
 "Juffrouw Mopius?" exclaimed Otto. "I didn't see 
 her in church. I hope she is well?" 
 
 Gerard burst out laughing. "Have you been away 
 so long," he said, "that you have forgotten Miss Mopius's 
 Sunday headache?" 
 
 The Domine, who could fight men, looked as if he 
 would have liked to answer something about Gerard's 
 Sunday ailments, but he refrained, evidently feeling that 
 he had already said enough. 
 
 The two young men stood watching father and 
 daughter as they swung away into the woodland 
 shadows. "It will be rather a bore," yawned Gerard. 
 "Ursula's coming to Drum. I shall have to show the 
 poor creature all over the place. I don't think she ever 
 spent a night outside Horstwyk before." He lounged 
 away to the Baroness. "Mother, Otto is very much 
 smitten with Ursula, in spite of her lamentable lack of 
 style. I suppose he doesn't notice that, after India. 
 Has he been making any terrible confessions yet about 
 other brown damsels out there?" 
 
 The Freule van Borck shot a keen glance at her 
 elder nephew's solemn face. "Yes, Otto," she said, "it 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 4
 
 50 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 can't be helped. Gerard's humour is part of your home- 
 coming." 
 
 Meanwhile the Domine went scudding through the 
 corn, as if the very wind of panic were after him. 
 Presently his daughter ventured to hint that the day 
 was rather warm. 
 
 "Ursula." The Domine's cowardice had put him 
 out of temper with all around him. "Ursula, I heard 
 you remark to the Jonkers that you were exceedingly 
 fond of your uncle Mopius. Now, Ursula, surely that 
 was untrue." 
 
 "It was irony, father," the girl made answer rather 
 testily, screening her tormented face. 
 
 "Irony? I do not understand irony. There is no 
 room for irony in the Christian warfare. It is a sort of 
 unchivalric guerilla. I'm afraid you are not always 
 quite honest and straightforward. Always, in every- 
 thing, be quite honest and straightforward, my dear." 
 
 When Ursula was safe in her own room, she sat 
 down to cry. She had never, from her earliest recol- 
 lections upwards, enjoyed the luxury of rational grief; 
 an altogether causeless outpouring, such as this, could, 
 therefore, but increase her irritation against herself. 
 What did it matter, after all, if she made a good im- 
 pression on people? She was self-conscious. With 
 angry energy she dabbed her blazing cheeks and went 
 down to luncheon. 
 
 "Ursula, my dear child, your face is all blotchy," 
 said Miss Mopius, "I make no doubt you are going to 
 have the measles; they are very prevalent in the village. 
 Did you sneeze during service? Roderigue, did you 
 notice if Ursula sneezed during service? No, you are
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 5 I 
 
 no good in Church; you only think of your sermon. 
 Well, Ursula, I must give you some Sympathetico Lob. 
 You may be thankful you have an aunt whose own 
 health is so bad that she doesn't care at all about in- 
 fection." 
 
 The Domine looked up uneasily. His coffee tasted 
 bitter, like remorse. 
 
 "Or is it hay-fever," said Miss Mopius, "that begins 
 with sneezing? I must get my little Manual and see." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 
 
 Three days later Ursula started for Drum. 
 
 Looking down the straight vista of her shaded past, 
 she could not have discovered, within measurable dis- 
 tance, an event to compare with this departure from 
 home. Hitherto her world had been Horstwyk, and 
 mundane greatness had been the Horst. 
 
 In those three days of delicious preparation she 
 had nevertheless seen a good deal of the new arrival. 
 His affection for the Domine was palpable to all men, 
 and he seemed to slip away, almost gladly, down the 
 long road from the Manor to the Parsonage. All Mon- 
 day evening they had sat over their tea-cups, in the 
 green verandah, and the Domine, roused thereto by the 
 guest's brief descriptions of daring, had leisurely re- 
 called his own stories of Algerine lion-hunts. Ursula, 
 looking up from her work at Otto's earnest attention, 
 
 4*
 
 52 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 wondered if twelve years of absence could really suffice 
 to efface the oft-told tale. 
 
 On Tuesday a great dinner at "The House" had 
 feted the return of the first-born. The Domine had 
 made a speech, and enjoyed himself notwithstanding. 
 But Ursula considered the entertainment had been 
 rather a failure, for amid the due honouring of dow- 
 agers and heiresses, nobody but the Baron had found 
 time to say a civil word to herself. Helena van Trossart, 
 the Helmonts' wealthy cousin, had looked lovely, though 
 bored, in the seat next to Otto, assigned her by the 
 Baroness; she had brightened up visibly when the 
 younger son joined her for an endless flirtation in the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 Ursula now stood waiting and mildly reviewing last 
 night's disappointments, on this — to her — eventful 
 Wednesday morning. Gerard, who was returning to his 
 regiment, had promised to call for her on his way to 
 the station. 
 
 "Ten minutes too soon!" she said in surprise, run- 
 ning to the door as the sound of wheels became audible. 
 But it was Otto who called to her from the box. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so sorry," she cried, halfway down the 
 garden path. "But Gerard — I thought you would 
 know?" 
 
 "I know nothing of Gerard's arrangements," an- 
 swered Otto with cold annoyance. "Never mind; I 
 have brought your father's tiger skin. Is there anyone 
 here could hold the horse?" 
 
 "Why, of course," she said, springing forward. 
 
 "You? I fancied you would be afraid of horses." 
 Otto began tugging at a brown-paper parcel wedged
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 53 
 
 tinder the seat. As the carriage swayed forward, the 
 animal, grown restless, plunged. 
 
 "Naturally," replied Ursula, one firm hand at its 
 mouth. She flushed. "Hatred of cruelty stands, with 
 an average man, for cowardice." 
 
 "Don't. You hurt one," cried Otto, turning, with 
 altered voice. She calmed down immediately. 
 
 "As a matter of fact," she said, "Hector knows me 
 longer, and better, than you. Your father often lets 
 me drive him." 
 
 "This is it," replied Otto, tearing back a strip of 
 covering. A tawny mass of fur, broken suddenly loose, 
 poured down into the dusty road. 
 
 "Oh, what a beauty!" exclaimed Josine, who had 
 ventured out, in a wrap, beneath the laughing sky. 
 
 And, "Oh, what a beauty!" echoed Ursula. 
 
 "These are for you," he continued, in the eager 
 delight of giving, as he bundled out two gorgeous 
 Indian shawls. "I thought you would like to wear them 
 to church on Sundays — " he stopped, before the ripple 
 on Ursula's face. "You like them, don't you?" he 
 asked dismayed. "You like them, don't you, Miss 
 Mopius?" 
 
 "They are exquisite," replied the latter lady, af- 
 fectedly, with a scowl at her niece. "My dear Mynheer 
 van Helmont, you have inherited all your father's 
 charming taste." Ursula murmured something about 
 "a beautiful drapery." 
 
 "All modern girls are alike," thought Otto, "every- 
 thing for ornament." He was almost relieved to see 
 Gerard's trap come rattling up. 
 
 "You here!" cried the younger brother, looking
 
 54 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 down from his height. "Oh, I see! What a hurry 
 you're in to bestow your gifts!" 
 
 "I came here to conduct Juffrouw Rovers to the 
 station," answered Otto. "The message I sent appears 
 not to have reached her." 
 
 "Oh, I'm so sorry!" Ursula stood distressful, by 
 the little green gate, in her dust-ulster, the rainbow 
 cloth over one arm. At her feet lay the white-fanged 
 brute with gleaming eyes and distended maw. Otto 
 climbed slowly back into his old-fashioned waggonette. 
 By his side the smart dog-cart jingled and creaked. 
 "Hurry, Ursula!" cried its driver. "We haven't any 
 time to spare!" Otto whipped up Hector almost 
 savagely. "It's of no account," he said, "of no account 
 at all." 
 
 "Gerard, I'm afraid we shall miss the train," said 
 Ursula, as the trees went flying past them. 
 
 "Possibly," answered Gerard. "You don't mind my 
 cigarette?" 
 
 "Gerard, my uncle will never forgive me." 
 
 " Oh, yes he will. Dozens of people have said 
 
 they would never forgive me, but they always did. You 
 would have missed the train with Hector, anyway." 
 
 "But if I had started with your brother, you would 
 have taken me on." 
 
 "No, indeed," replied Gerard, with deep conviction. 
 "Once with Otto, always with Otto." He looked down 
 into her face through half-closed eyelids. "Once with 
 Otto, always with Otto," he repeated, "and so you would 
 have missed your train." 
 
 She laughed. "Well, I'd much rather go with you,"
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 55 
 
 she answered gaily. He made her a mock little bow of 
 acknowledgment. 
 
 "For, you see, you take me all the way to Drum." 
 
 "Thank you. If. Gently, Beauty, gently; it's only 
 a bit of paper in the middle of the road. I like you 
 for not being nervous, Ursula. My mother wouldn't 
 sit behind a horse that shied." 
 
 "I want to catch my train," responded Ursula. 
 
 "Don't be so peevish. Is this all the reward I get 
 for allowing your box to scratch the paint off my dog- 
 cart?" 
 
 "Oh, Gerard, will it do that?" 
 
 "Of course it will. But make yourself easy. I'm 
 going to have the cart repainted, any way. The green 
 spikes were well enough two years ago, but I've seen 
 another shade I like better." 
 
 "Gerard, you are horribly extravagant." 
 
 "So my father says each time he gets himself some 
 new plaything. By George, I believe we really are too 
 late." 
 
 With a shout to the groom he leaped from his seat 
 and was lost in the interior of the station; as Ursula 
 hurriedly followed, a whistle of departure pierced straight 
 through her heart. 
 
 "Quick, you stupid," she heard Gerard's voice say- 
 ing to somebody. The train had stopped again. She 
 was bustled in. They were off! 
 
 "Now that never happened to me before," said 
 Gerard. "The man is an ass. But, in fact, it is all 
 your fault." 
 
 Ursula sat staring at her hero in unmixed awe. Her 
 infrequent railway journeys had always been occasions
 
 56 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 of flurry and alarm. Never had she realised that any 
 son of man could influence a station-master. 
 
 "Yes," she answered meekly. 
 
 "Of course it is. I should just have jumped in. 
 But they had to stop the train for you. And now they 
 will make us pay a monstrous fine for travelling without 
 a ticket." 
 
 "Is that also my fault?" asked Ursula, more meekly 
 still. 
 
 "No, it was 'Beauty's.' I've a great mind to deduct 
 the money from her oats. Only that would make her 
 do it over again." He laughed once more, a jolly, self- 
 satisfied laugh. 
 
 "But, oh, what should we have done," said Ursula 
 presently, "if the station-master hadn't listened to 
 you?" 
 
 "Stopped the train myself, of course; and Santa 
 Claus would have forgotten to send that man cigars." 
 
 "Gerard, you wouldn't have dared!" 
 
 Her innocent amazement drove him on. 
 
 "You have a poor idea of my desire to oblige you," 
 he made answer. "It would have cost me a pair of 
 gloves, I suppose, and a lot of depositions at the end, 
 and a fine. It would have been a great bore: I do not 
 pretend to deny that." 
 
 She relapsed into silence, reflecting. She thought 
 Gerard was youthfully overbearing. But she also saw 
 he was in earnest. To her it had always seemed in the 
 village of Horstwyk that the Powers in Authority — the 
 Beadle, the Squire — were made to be implicitly obeyed. 
 Submission, in the Dominc's system, stood forth as an 
 article of faith. In the great world outside she felt it
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 57 
 
 must be the same, only still more resistlessly. Order 
 and Law, however erroneous, were always ex officio 
 infallible. 
 
 But for great people, evidently, the world was other- 
 wise. The Irrevocable possessed no barriers which rank 
 and insolence could not laughingly push aside. The 
 railways in their courses obeyed these rulers of men. 
 For the first time in her recollection she envied — per- 
 haps with last night's discomfiture rising uppermost — 
 she envied "The Great." 
 
 She sat furtively watching her companion behind his 
 newspaper. He was handsome, with his light moustache 
 and strong complexion, well-dressed, well-groomed, com- 
 pletely at his ease. She felt that the world belonged 
 to him. She felt exceeding small. 
 
 At the little town of Drum she was able to continue 
 her studies. Porters naturally selected Gerard to hover 
 round; every one seemed anxious to please him. What- 
 ever he desired was immediately "Yes, my lord"-ed. He 
 gave double the usual number and double the necessary 
 quantity of tips. He insisted upon personally seeing 
 Ursula to her uncle's door and overpaying the cab- 
 man. "I have a reputation," he said merrily, "to keep 
 up in Drum." He turned back as she stood on the 
 doorstep. 
 
 "And your uncle has a reputation, too," he called, 
 waving his hat. 
 
 Ursula knew her uncle by more than reputation, 
 and her courage began to ooze after Gerard's retreating 
 figure. Immediately she pressed a resolute finger on
 
 58 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 the leak; she was come to enjoy herself, and Gerard 
 had promised to help her. 
 
 Villa Blanda, the residence of Mynheer Jacobus 
 Mopius stood in a good-sized garden, some way back 
 from the street. The garden was very brilliant, very 
 brilliant indeed. The first impression it used to make 
 was that of the hideous conglomeration of colours 
 which children saw in former days through so-called 
 kaleidoscopes; after a time you perceived that its com- 
 plex disharmony was principally produced by a mal- 
 assortment of flowers. These received some assistance, 
 it must be confessed, from a glittering "Magenta" ball, 
 two terra-cotta statuettes of fat children with baskets, 
 and other pleasing trifles of similar origin. 
 
 The whole house had manifestly cost a great deal 
 of money: it was its single duty to proclaim this fact, 
 and it did its duty well. A hundred flourishes of 
 superfluous ornament showed upon the face of it that 
 the terra-cotta man and the gilder, and the encaustic- 
 tile people, and the modeller of stucco monstrosities, 
 had all sent in lengthy bills. The bills had been paid. 
 
 Yes, Mynheer Jacobus Mopius owed no man any- 
 thing — not even courtesy, not even disregard. He 
 button-holed you to inform you how much more im- 
 portant a personage he was than yourself. If you tried 
 to escape him you were lost. 
 
 Inside, the house was, as outside, a record of wealth 
 misspent. Money, they say, buys everything; it is 
 certainly wonderful to consider what hideous things 
 money will buy.
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 5Q 
 
 Ursula was shown into the drawing-room, where her 
 aunt came forward to greet her. "How are you, my 
 dear? " said Mevrouw Mopius, in a tone whose in- 
 difference precluded reply. Mevrouw Mopius was a 
 washed-out-looking lady in a too-stiff black silk. She 
 immediately returned to her low chair and her Berlin 
 woolwork frame. For Mevrouw Mopius still worked on 
 canvas. She preferred figures — Biblical scenes. She 
 was now busy on a meeting between Jacob and Laban, 
 in which none of the gorgeously robed figures were like 
 anything that has ever been seen on earth. 
 
 Ursula seated herself, unasked, on a purple plush 
 settee. The room was large and copiously gilded. From 
 the farther end of it a girl approached — a pale girl in a 
 plain dark gown. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot," said Mevrouw Mopius, pausing with 
 uplifted needle. "My step-niece Harriet. Harriet, this 
 is Ursula Rovers." 
 
 "Will you come and take off your things?" said the 
 dark girl. "Shall I show you your room?" Ursula 
 rose, with a spring of relief, and began hastily to 
 explain about the loss of her luggage as she moved 
 towards the door. Just before she reached it, her aunt 
 spoke again. 
 
 "Harriet has come to live with us, you remember, 
 since her father died." Mevrouw Mopius always con- 
 versed in afterthoughts, when she troubled herself to 
 converse at all. 
 
 "You won't be able to change your clothes," said 
 the pale girl, as the two went upstairs together. 
 
 "No. Does it matter?"
 
 60 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Matter? No. What does matter? Certainly not 
 Uncle Mopius." 
 
 "What a fine house this is, is it not? I was never 
 on the second floor before, though I've sometimes been 
 to lunch." 
 
 "Oh, yes, it is charming, charming in every way," 
 said the pale girl, with a sneer. "This is your room, 
 the second-best guest-chamber. I'm afraid I can't lend 
 you much for the night. I've three nightgowns; one's 
 in the wash and one's torn. Uncle Mopius gave me 
 them." 
 
 She went and stood at the window while Ursula 
 hurriedly washed her hands. "Are you ready?" she 
 asked presently. "Then come downstairs again. Better 
 tell Uncle Mopius you admired your room. The 
 washing-things, for instance, they are English. Cost 
 thirty-six florins. Come along." Ursula shuddered 
 under the continuous sneer of the girl's impassive tones. 
 
 As soon as they opened the drawing-room door 
 Mevrouw Mopius's voice was heard exclaiming, "Harriet, 
 get me my Bible immediately, Harriet." She sat up 
 quite awake and alert, her needle unused beside her. 
 "I've been waiting," she continued. "What a long time 
 you've been. Ursula, I hope you're not vain. It's a 
 very bad thing in a pastor's daughter to be vain of her 
 appearance." After a minute's silence she became aware 
 of the proximity of her other niece, who stood waiting 
 beside her, Bible in hand. "And in all other girls," 
 she added, "for the matter of that;" but Harriet, having 
 missed the discourse, lost the application as well. 
 
 "It was on the table in the next room," said 
 Harriet.
 
 UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS. 6l 
 
 "I know. Did you expect me to get it?" 
 
 The lady took the sacred volume, which immediately 
 fell open at the story of Jacob and Rebecca, much 
 bethumbed. In the midst of her search she paused, 
 to cast a sharp look at Ursula. "And not much to be 
 vain of, anyway," she said. She could not possibly 
 have authenticated this remark; but she chose to con- 
 sider it "judicious." 
 
 "Here is the place," she continued. "You see, it 
 says Leah had "tender eyes." Now, what, I wonder, 
 is the colour of tender eyes?" 
 
 "I always thought it meant 'watery,' " hazarded 
 Ursula. 
 
 "Do you really think so?" Mevrouw Mopius reflected, 
 sitting critically back from her screen, and surveying 
 her cherry-coloured Orientals. "Really, ivatery. Ursula, 
 I wonder if that view, is correct?" 
 
 "Like a perpetual cold in her head," volunteered 
 the dark girl, listlessly. "I know such people." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius sniffed unconsciously. 
 
 "In that case I should have to make them red," 
 she said. "I had just decided on dove-colour." 
 
 "You couldn't make red show against the cheeks," 
 said Harriet. "Hadn't you better send round and ask 
 Mevrouw Pock's opinion?" 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius smiled immediate approval. 
 
 "A very sensible suggestion," she said. Mevrouw 
 Pock was the wife of her favourite parson. "You 
 have plenty of sense if only you were always good- 
 tempered. Get me my escritoire from the table over 
 there. No; writing letters fatigues me" — she couldn't 
 spell — "you must run across after dinner, and get
 
 62 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Mevrouw to consult her husband as to what it says in 
 the Greek." 
 
 "But I shall have to change my dress again," pro- 
 tested Harriet. 
 
 "Well, and what of that? So much the better. 
 There's few things a girl likes more than changing 
 dresses. I'm sure you ought to be thankful you've 
 dresses to change." 
 
 Without further reply the girl dropped away into 
 her corner and resumed her interrupted reading. Ursula 
 sat with her hands in her lap. Mevrouw began sorting 
 wools, but presently remembered the guest. 
 
 "Harriet," she called, "why don't you come and 
 amuse Ursula? You waste all your time over novels. 
 I can't imagine what you find in them. What's this 
 you're reading now?" A novel of course?" 
 
 The girl came forward, lazily. "Yes, aunt," she 
 said. 
 
 "What is it? What's it about?" 
 
 "It's a historical romance called 'Nuraa Pompilius,' 
 translated from the German. Everybody's reading it 
 just now." 
 
 "I can't understand what you find in them. And 
 they're all alike. It always ends in Pompilius marrying 
 Numa." 
 
 Before Ursula had stopped laughing behind Mev- 
 rouw Mopius's back her uncle came in. Harriet did 
 not laugh. 
 
 Mynheer Mopius, though a very secondary person- 
 age in this story of the Van Helmonts, would be 
 mortally offended did we not give him a chapter to 
 himself.
 
 Harriet's romance. 63 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Harriet's romance. 
 
 "Amusing yourselves?" said Mynheer Mopius. "That's 
 right. That's what you're come for, Ursula. I'm glad 
 your aunt's been amusing you." 
 
 Translated, this meant that Mynheer Mopius con- 
 sidered his wife had been taking a liberty. For, although 
 Mynheer Mopius despised wit or humour of any kind, 
 and but rarely condescended to utter what he con- 
 sidered a joke, yet he somehow believed his conver- 
 sation to be a source of constant refreshment to his 
 family. And he felt annoyed at their making merry 
 without him. 
 
 "I'm sure, if Ursula's laughing it's no fault of mine," 
 said Mevrouw. "I was merely telling Harriet — where's 
 Harriet?" 
 
 "Gone up to dress. You had better follow her ex- 
 ample, Ursula. Dinner at 6.30. We dress for it here, 
 at least the women do. So do I when there's com- 
 pany. It's a custom I brought with me fromBatavia. Must 
 show the natives here what's what." 
 
 "I've nothing but this," said Ursula, in some con- 
 fusion. "My box hasn't come, and I haven't got much 
 in the way of evening frocks anyhow." 
 
 "I'll give you one. I gave Harriet hers. That girl's 
 fallen nose foremost into fat* if ever girl did. Hasn't 
 she, wife?" 
 
 * Vulgar Dutch idiom.
 
 64 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "She doesn't know it," replied Mevrouw Mopius, 
 picking at Laban's goggle eyes. 
 
 "Then she's a greater fool than I take her for. She'd 
 have been a nursemaid, sure as fate. And now she's 
 as good as a rich man's daughter." 
 
 "And I'm a mother to her that was motherless," 
 grunted Mevrouw complacently, " and because she's poor 
 and no real relation I allow her to call me 'aunt.'" 
 
 "Besides which, if she behaves herself, who knows 
 what may happen to her!" Mynheer Mopius jingled the 
 loose cash in his trousers pockets and looked askance 
 at Ursula. 
 
 Ursula looked back at him, peacefully unconscious. 
 
 "I might leave her my money," said Mynheer 
 Mopius. 
 
 "Oh, that would be splendid!" cried Ursula. 
 
 Her uncle looked at her again. "Sly little thing!" 
 he thought, but he said nothing. Only Jacobus Mopius 
 could have called Ursula little. His greatness caused 
 him to see all things small. 
 
 He was a stunted, pompous man with a big head 
 and yellow cheeks. He had made his money in the 
 Dutch Indies, as a notary. 
 
 Harriet came back in a fawn-coloured frock with a 
 pink rosebud pattern, made of some kind of nun's 
 veiling, high in the throat. Mynheer Mopius gazed at 
 it in admiration. 
 
 "Looks well, doesn't she?" he said to Ursula in a 
 loud sot to voce. "You shall have just such another, but 
 Harriet's a devilish good-looking girl." 
 
 The subject of this comment did not appear to 
 hear it, but Ursula fancied she saw her aunt wince.
 
 Harriet's romance. 65 
 
 Harriet was helping the faded woman to put things 
 together. In the Hall a gong was sounding, a hideous 
 bellow at the door. 
 
 "Late as usual," remonstrated Mynheer Mopius. 
 "Hurry up, my dear. Gracious goodness, how awk- 
 ward you are getting!" The frail little creature in the 
 stiff silk caught hold of Harriet's arm with one skinny 
 hand, and Ursula, as she watched her movements, 
 understood something of her unwillingness to exert 
 herself. 
 
 For his own use Mynheer Mopius never bought 
 anything cheap, and all the appointments of the dinner- 
 table were excellent. Of course he communicated 
 prices to the new arrival, and Ursula, soon discovering 
 that she was expected constantly to admire, entered 
 into the spirit of the thing and asked the cost of the 
 silver candlesticks. Her uncle ascended into regions 
 of unusual good humour and ordered up a bottle of 
 sweet Spanish wine for her, "such as you ignorant 
 females enjoy," he said. He grew very angry with his 
 wife for refusing to have any. "But the doctor for- 
 bids it." "Oh, d your doctor. Never have a 
 
 doctor till you're dead; that's my advice. Then, he 
 can't do any harm." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius meekly swallowed a little of the 
 liquid, her long nose drooping over the glass. Her 
 husband sat tyrannically watching her. "Drink it all," 
 he said; "you want a tonic. You shall have some every 
 day." And she drank it, although she implicitly be- 
 lieved in the doctor, and the doctor, a teetotaller, had 
 told her it meant death. 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 5
 
 66 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Doctors are all scoundrels," said Mynheer Mopius. 
 "Hey, Harriet?" 
 
 The girl's dead father had been a medical man. 
 
 "Yes, I know," she said. "Only lawyers are honest. 
 That's why doctors die poor." 
 
 Mynheer Mopius laughed heartily. "I like your 
 cheek," he said. "Make hay while your sun shines, 
 Harriet. A man can't stand it from an old woman." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius sniffed. 
 
 "We must have some fun, hey, wife, while Ursula's 
 here? We might give a dinner-party, and show the 
 grandees what's what." 
 
 "But the grandees don't come to our dinner-parties," 
 objected Mevrouw Mopius. 
 
 "No, they don't, hang 'em. But they'd hear from 
 the people who do. Your Domine Pock knows 'em all. 
 We'll have Pock to dinner. He's always asking for 
 money for something or other, but he's a good judge 
 of victuals. Trust a parson to be that, and a poor 
 judge of wine. At least the Evangelicals. And he'll 
 tell everyone I've the best venison in the city. I get 
 my venison from Brussels, Ursula, and it's better, they'll 
 all say, than the Baron van Trossart's, who shoots his 
 himself." 
 
 "The Baron van Trossart!" said Ursula. "That is 
 the guardian of the van Helmonts' cousin, Helen, the 
 heiress. I am to go to a party there. Gerard promised 
 me an invitation." 
 
 Mynheer Mopius's face grew very dark. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "are you staying with me or 
 in barracks? If with me, you must allow me to amuse
 
 Harriet's romance. 67 
 
 you. I won't hear anything about your Barons Gerard. 
 And I won't have nothing to say to them." 
 
 "Gerard isn't the Baron," replied Ursula, hotly. 
 "That's his father. Not that it matters." 
 
 "No, I shouldn't think it did. I won't hear any- 
 thing about them. What did you say the father's name 
 was?" 
 
 "Theodore, Baron van Helmont van Horstwyk en 
 de Horst," rolled forth, proudly. 
 
 "Yes, poor Roderick likes that sort of thing. Is 
 'the Horst' the name of the house? Is it grander than 
 this?" 
 
 Ursula laughed. "It's quite different," she said. 
 
 "Well, I dare say. But I won't hear another word 
 about them. That kind of people are all a mistake." 
 
 Harriet lifted her indolent eyes, and fixed them on 
 Ursula's face. 
 
 "Do you like your wine?" she said. "Mind you 
 deserve it." 
 
 For the rest of the meal Mynheer Mopius talked 
 of the entertainments he would organise for Ursula. 
 He refused to let her accompany Harriet on the theo- 
 logical errand concerning Leah's eyes. 
 
 "No, no," he said, "come into the drawing-room 
 and amuse us. Do you play? Do you sing? Harriet 
 does neither. We do both." 
 
 Ursula played well. She gave them a Concert of 
 Liszt, and Mynheer did not talk till Mevrouw dropped 
 her scissors and asked him, after a wait, to pick them 
 up for her. As soon as he could, he got hold of the 
 piano himself and called out to his wife to join him. 
 He had been possessed of a fine bass twenty years ago,
 
 68 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 and had enjoyed much admiration in Batavian society. 
 It now stopped somewhere down in his stomach, and 
 only a rumble came out. His wife rose wearily to play 
 his accompaniments, and he kept her chained to the 
 piano for the rest of the evening, though Ursula could 
 not help seeing that the playing seemed to cause her 
 physical pain. 
 
 He sang only love-songs of the ultra-sentimental 
 kind, all about broken hearts and lovely death and 
 willing sacrifice. Many of them were of a bygone period 
 when everybody pretended — at least in verse — to be ab- 
 solutely ill with affection. 
 
 Harriet came back and poured out tea. When her 
 uncle said it was bad she shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "It always is," she replied. 
 
 "Yes, Harriet, it is, though I get it direct from 
 the East," he rejoined. His whole attitude betokened 
 reproof. 
 
 "The East," interposed Mevrouw from her tambour- 
 frame. "Quite so. I wonder, when Laban welcomed 
 Jacob, do you think he gave him tea?" 
 
 "Coffee, rather, I should fancy," replied Mopius. 
 
 "Do you really believe they drank coffee, Jacobus?* 
 I wish I was sure" — for the fiftieth time that day (as 
 every day) she fell to contemplating her work with 
 arrested needle. "I could so well fill up this corner 
 with a little table, and put on the rolls and cups and 
 things." 
 
 "And work an 'L' in the napkin corner," suggested 
 Harriet. 
 
 * To "drink coffee" is old-fashioned Dutch for "lunch."
 
 Harriet's romance. 69 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius gazed suspiciously into her niece's 
 face, but Harriet's expression was perfectly serious. 
 
 "And — work — an — 'L' — into — the — napkin — 
 corner," repeated Mevrouw Mopius very slowly. "Well, 
 I think that might be nice." 
 
 Ursula had just extinguished her light, and was 
 dozing off into a dreamland of Mopiuses and Jonkers, 
 when the door opened and Harriet entered hurriedly, 
 candle in hand, a white wrap flung loosely about her. 
 
 "I didn't knock," she said. "Knocks are heard all 
 over a house at night." 
 
 She threw herself into an easy chair by the bed. 
 "Finished already!" she said. "You don't make much 
 work of your beauty." 
 
 "It's so little, I should be afraid of killing it with 
 over-care," replied Ursula, smiling. 
 
 But Harriet frowned. "Don't tell lies," she said. 
 "You must know you're lovely. You are. Am I lovely 
 too?" 
 
 "I think you look very nice," replied Ursula, hesitat- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Thank you. I understand," she tossed back her 
 black locks from her sallow cheeks, and her sad eyes 
 flashed, "but see here, I didn't come to talk about 
 looks" — she pushed forward the candle so that its light 
 fell full on Ursula's sleepy face. "Wake up for a 
 minute, can't you? You and I may as well understand 
 each other at once." She leant back, and folded her 
 bare white arms, from which the loose sleeves fell 
 away. 
 
 "Uncle Mopius is always telling me that you are
 
 70 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 his natural heir," she said. "He tells me whenever he 
 wants to make himself disagreeable, which is not in- 
 frequently. I dare say you know." 
 
 Ursula sat up. "No, indeed I don't," she said, 
 "and I don't want to. Once my Aunt Josine said 
 something about it, a couple of years ago, and father 
 called me into his study and said he didn't think I 
 should ever get a penny of Uncle Jacobus's money, 
 and he earnestly hoped not. I've never thought of it 
 since." 
 
 Harriet jerked up her chin. "Your father must be 
 a peculiar sort of man," she said, "if sincere. Did he 
 mean it." 
 
 Ursula blew out the candle. "I'm going to sleep," 
 she said, "Goodnight. I don't want to be rude to 
 you." 
 
 But Harriet quietly drew a box of matches from 
 her pocket. "I like that," she said leisurely. "I wish 
 I had somebody to stick up for. But I came to say 
 this — Uncle Mopius is sure to bring up the subject con- 
 stantly in your presence. He'll taunt me, as is his 
 habit, especially now you're there, with your good luck 
 in being his own sister's child. Now, I want you fully 
 to understand" — she leaned forward her big dark face, 
 till Ursula struggled not to shrink back — "that I — don't 
 — care. I don't care a bit. I'm not like men. And 
 if you think you're enjoying a cheap triumph, you're 
 mistaken, that's all. And if you imagine it's bravado 
 on my part, because I can't help myself, you're mistaken 
 too. I don't want his dirty money. I'm sick of it. I 
 want something better. I'm not going to hate you for 
 nothing. In fact, I rather like you. So he can go on
 
 Harriet's romance. 71 
 
 as much as ever he chooses, and if you enjoy it, you're 
 free to do so." 
 
 "But I don't," cried Ursula, with hot cheeks. "I 
 don't a bit. You know I don't. And, in fact, uncle 
 talked quite differently this afternoon. I thought 
 you " 
 
 The other girl stopped her with a gesture. 
 
 "Don't," she said, "I won't hear it. I'm sick of the 
 whole business. Be sure that, whatever he said, it was 
 a lie." She got up and began pacing the room, her 
 limbs quivering under the light folds of her gown. 
 Suddenly she stood still, looking down at Ursula. "Shall 
 I tell you what will really happen? Do you care to 
 know? It's easy enough." Ursula did not answer, but 
 Harriet went on, unheeding, "Aunt will die, and he will 
 marry again, as soon as he can. That's all. There." 
 Ursula's continuous silence seemed to goad her com- 
 panion. "You think he may die before aunt? He may; 
 but when a chimney falls down into the street, it usually 
 manages to hit a better man. You watch aunt; good 
 night." She was departing, but again reflected, and 
 came back to the bed. "You poor thing," she said, "I 
 believe you really would have liked me to get the money. 
 Why?" 
 
 "Oh, I should indeed," replied Ursula, earnestly, 
 "though it looks a long way off. You seem so lonely 
 and — will you mind my saying it? — so unhappy, 
 Harriet." To her amazement her visitor fell forward 
 on the bed and hugged her. A moment afterwards, 
 however, Harriet again sat in the big chair. "You are 
 quite mistaken," she said, arranging her draperies with
 
 •J 2 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 downcast eyes, "I am not at all unhappy." There 
 followed a moment's agitated silence, and then: 
 
 "Ursula, I like you. I want to tell you something. 
 You'll listen for a moment, won't you? I've nobody else 
 to tell it to." Without further consideration the girl 
 pushed one hand between the loose folds about her 
 throat and from the snowy recesses of her bosom drew 
 forth a paper which she hurriedly thrust in front of 
 Ursula. "There, read that," she said excitedly. "It 
 never leaves me lest they should find out." Still sitting 
 up, with one elbow on the little table beside her, 
 Ursula read a printed advertisement, a scrap from a 
 newspaper: — 
 
 "H. V. Meet me on Thursday next at eight o'clock 
 in the Long Walk outside the West Gate. Wear a 
 white feather and, if possible, a red shawl. Carry your' 
 parasol open, in any case. Dearest, I am dying to 
 see you, but can't come before then. Your own 
 Romeo." 
 
 "Well?" queried Ursula, but immediately her voice 
 changed. "Harriet, you don't mean to tell me that 
 this is an entanglement of yours?" 
 
 "You choose a strange word," replied Harriet loftily. 
 "There is no entanglement. But I hope there is going 
 to be. As yet there is merely an answer to an ad- 
 vertisement. Yes, the advertisement was mine. Oh, 
 Ursula, isn't it delightful? He says he is dying to see 
 me. Imagine that. And he doesn't even know me 
 yet." 
 
 "That, surely, makes his eagerness less delightful," 
 replied Ursula drily. 
 
 "Oh, but I gave him a very accurate description,
 
 HARRIETS ROMANCE. 73 
 
 tall, luminous eyes, dark locks, ivory skin. I told him 
 I was of distinctly prepossessing appearance. Yes, in 
 spite of your opinion, I ventured to tell him that. 
 Uncle informs me so frequently that I am very good- 
 looking, and aunt repeats so consistently that I am ex- 
 ceedingly plain, I feel I have a double right to be satis- 
 fied with my beauty. Besides, every woman's glass 
 declares to her that her appearance is prepossessing; it 
 is the one reason why I fancy, on the whole, women's 
 lives must be happier than men's." 
 
 "Did you put all that in the advertisement?" asked 
 Ursula, still staring stupidly at the scrap of paper on 
 the bed. 
 
 "I — I wrote him a letter, just one." 
 
 "Addressed to 'Romeo'?" 
 
 "To 'Romeo de Lieven.'* Isn't it a charming 
 name?" 
 
 "It's an assumed name. Imagine a Dutchman called 
 Romeo ! " 
 
 "Of course, it's a pseudonym, like Carmen Sylva. 
 I wasn't clever enough to think of one; besides, I hate 
 subterfuges. So I just put my own name H. V., 
 Harriet Verveen." 
 
 "Harriet, you don't mean to say that you wrote a 
 signed love-letter you don't in the least know to 
 whom?" 
 
 "Love-letter, no. I told him who I was and what 
 I wanted. Besides, I shall know him to-morrow." 
 
 "You're not going." 
 
 Once more Harriet assumed her almost defiant at- 
 titude. 
 
 * To love.
 
 74 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Yes, I am going," she said. "So there!" 
 "What do you think?" she suddenly burst out. 
 "It's all very well for you comfortable, sheltered girls, 
 at home! What's to become of the likes of me, if we 
 don't look out for ourselves? Nobody'll help to find 
 me a husband or a hiding-place. Nobody'll ever do 
 anything for me, except abuse me because I do things 
 for myself." 
 
 "But / haven't had a lover found for me," inter- 
 posed Ursula. "It seems so unwomanly " 
 
 "Womanly! There we have the word — womanly!" 
 Harriet's words came stumbling and tossing; she 
 thrust out her limbs and the muslin fell away from 
 them. "It's womanly to live on day by day in bitter- 
 ness, with every womanly feeling hourly insulted and 
 estranged; after a year more, perhaps, of this, to go to 
 some fresh situation and look after other people's 
 children, and when you are worn out at last, to die, 
 soured and in want. That's honest independence, that's 
 womanly modesty. Well, then, I'm immodest. Do you 
 understand me?" She threw herself wildly forward. 
 "I'm immodest. I want love. I told you just now I 
 didn't want the old scoundrel's money. I don't. But 
 I want love. I want love. And I mean to have it. A 
 woman has a right to love and be loved. I won't be 
 some lazy rich woman's substitute, with brats I don't 
 care for. I want to love children of my own. Children 
 that love me when I kiss them. I love my own body." 
 She fell back again, and her eager voice died into a 
 pensive murmur; while speaking, she softly stroked her 
 rounded arm. "I love it, and I want others to love it 
 also. I want it to belong to someone besides my lonely
 
 THE TRYST. 75 
 
 self. Great Heaven, don't you understand?" — her tone 
 grew shrill again — "one's youth goes — goes. But you 
 don't understand." She stopped abruptly, just in time, 
 and hid her face in her hand. 
 
 Ursula knew not how to speak or act. There was 
 only one thing she wanted to do; so she did it. She 
 put an arm round Harriet's neck and kissed her. But 
 the girl shook herself free, and, without another word, 
 hurried away. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE TRYST. 
 
 The next day passed in an atmosphere of sombre 
 expectation. Ursula and Harriet barely spoke to one 
 another; the latter seemed to be holding aloof. Mynheer 
 Mopius took his niece the round of the house amid a 
 steady flow of self-laudation, and Ursula put in pleasing 
 adjectives as full-stops. He showed her everything, 
 even to the water-supply and the wine-cellar. There 
 was but one exception, his wife's store-cupboard; Mevrouw 
 Mopius, to his annoyance, actually held out in refusing 
 the key. But he found a compensation in unmitigated 
 china and glass. 
 
 After a morning thus profitably spent, the afternoon 
 brought a long drive and a visit to a flower show. The 
 drive was merely an opportunity for parading Mynheer 
 Mopius's equipage amongst the beauties of nature, but 
 that gentleman was made happy, after prolonged anxiety 
 and craning, by meeting the very people he was de-
 
 76 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 sirous should see it. The visit to the exhibition, how- 
 ever, must be regarded as an act of kindness to his 
 guest, for the committee had had the manifest stupidity 
 to award Mynheer Mopius's double dahlias a third 
 prize. 
 
 In the gardens Ursula espied Gerard with his cousin 
 Helen amongst a crowd of stylish-looking people, whom 
 Jacobus described as "swells." She had received, that 
 morning, the promised card for the Baroness van Tros- 
 sart's party, and she would gladly have sought an oc- 
 casion of thanking the sender, but to this proposal her 
 uncle, in a sudden fit of shyness, opposed resolute and 
 almost rampant refusal. 
 
 "I don't want to know the people," he repeated 
 excitedly, his eyes fixed on the distinguished group by 
 the central lake. "I don't want to have anything to 
 say to them. Ursula, you belong to my party. I desire 
 you to stay where you are." 
 
 "Oh, very well," replied Ursula, offended; "though, 
 of course, I should not have gone up to him, as long 
 as he was conversing with that violet-nosed old woman 
 in blue." 
 
 "That lady is the wife of the Governor, and I will 
 thank you to speak of her with more respect." 
 
 Ursula listened in amazement. She was not enough 
 a student of human nature to explain her uncle's change 
 of front. She went and sat down on the bench beside 
 her aunt, with a few kind words about the weather. 
 
 "Oh, beautiful!" gasped Mevrouw Mopius. "Jaco- 
 bus, don't you think it is time we went home?" 
 
 Jacobus assented, and in the midst of plans for to- 
 morrow sought to impress upon Ursula the number and
 
 THE TRYST. 77 
 
 importance of his acquaintances as instanced by frequent 
 salutes. 
 
 Ursula came upon her aunt alone in the drawing- 
 room half an hour before dinner. The vast apartment 
 was darkened to a mellow glow behind its yellow 
 Venetians. Mevrouw Mopius sat with closed eyes and 
 cavernous cheeks before her unused frame. She stirred 
 as the door opened, and beckoned her niece to her side. 
 
 "My dear," she said in a faint voice, "come and sit 
 by me for a minute. I have something to ask you." 
 Ursula obeyed. "Your uncle was speaking of the opera 
 for to-morrow night. I want you to tell him you don't 
 care to go." 
 
 "But I do care," objected the girl. "I think it's 
 simply glorious. I've never been to the opera before." 
 
 "My dear, I can assure you it's not worth seeing. 
 The singers make such a noise you can't hear a word 
 they say. Not that that matters, for they always say 
 the same thing." 
 
 "Oh, but I should like it," repeated Ursula. 
 
 "Say, for my sake, that you don't care to go" — 
 Mevrouw Mopius's manner became very nervous — 
 "Ursula, I can't go out at night. Have you set your 
 heart on this performance?" 
 
 "Yes, aunt," said the girl frankly; "but, even if I 
 hadn't, I shouldn't know of any valid excuse. However, 
 I can very well go with Harriet and uncle. I'll tell him 
 you'd rather not." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius clutched her arm. "Hold your 
 tongue," she said, quite roughly. "I didn't want to 
 have you here. I tell you so honestly. I knew it would 
 be like this. It was Jacobus. Poor fellow, I suppose
 
 70 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 he felt how dull the house was getting." She paused 
 meditatively. "He'd never go without me; he wouldn't 
 enjoy himself." 
 
 "I'm sure I didn't ask to come," protested Ursula, 
 "but now I'm here, I can't begin inventing a parcel of 
 lies. You must tell uncle yourself, aunt, please." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius tightened her grip till the nails 
 dug into the flesh. She turned her dull eyes full on 
 Ursula. "Girl," she gasped, "what are you, with your 
 little pleasures or prejudices to come athwart such a 
 sorrow as mine? I'll tell you my secret, if it must be. 
 Swear, first, that you'll not breathe it to a living soul." 
 
 Ursula was alarmed by her aunt's earnest manner. 
 "I can't swear," she said in a flurry, "but I'll promise. 
 I never swore in my life." 
 
 "Swear," repeated the other woman under her 
 breath; unconsciously she tightened her grasp till Ursula 
 shrieked aloud. "Hush! Are you mad? He'll hear. 
 Oh, is that it?" She relaxed her hold. "Fool, did you 
 never feel pain?" 
 
 "I — I don't know," gasped Ursula, now thoroughly 
 frightened, convinced that her aunt must have mad fits 
 of which no one had spoken. 
 
 "Swear, I tell you. Say: So help me, God Almighty. 
 Louder. Let me hear it. Now, listen. I'm ill, in- 
 curably ill. Never mind what the doctor calls the ill- 
 ness. Enough that he says I can't live beyond two 
 months. Perhaps he's mistaken. They often are. Not 
 that I want to live. Not in this agony, my God! Not 
 except for him. Ursula, your uncle knows nothing. I 
 don't want him to know. I'd bear twice as much— if 
 I could — so that he shouldn't know. Poor fellow, he
 
 THE TRYST. 79 
 
 has his faults, perhaps, but he's so soft-hearted, he can't 
 bear to see suffering, not even to hear of it. There, 
 now, I have told you. I've never told a living soul, as 
 I said. I can hide it from him, Ursula, if things go 
 on as usual. But I can't go taking long drives, or to 
 flower-shows, and oh, Ursula, dear, I can't go out at 
 night." 
 
 Ursula was dumb-struck with horror and pity. Still, 
 she could not help feeling, even at that moment, that 
 her visit to her uncle was becoming hopelessly per- 
 plexed. She had expected a round of gaieties, all the 
 delights of a debut. 
 
 "I'll do whatever you wish me to," she said, help- 
 lessly. "Oh, aunt, I'm so sorry, but I hope you'll get 
 better. Father says doctors never know." 
 
 "Not about curing, they don't," replied her aunt, 
 grimly. "Now, Ursula, remember, not a word. It's 
 a secret between you and me. I don't think it'll be 
 for very long. Move away: I hear some one coming." 
 
 Harriet entered the room with her novel under her 
 arm. Presently she looked up at Mevrouw Mopius's 
 deathly countenance lying back as if asleep, and nodded 
 meaningly to Ursula. Mynheer Mopius came in, and 
 his wife sat up. "Jacobus," she said, "you were laugh- 
 ing at the blueness of my sky yesterday. I saw one in 
 the exhibition aviary that was every bit as blue." 
 
 "But did you look at the real article up above us?" 
 questioned Jacobus. 
 
 "No," admitted Mevrouw Mopius, "I didn't think 
 of that."
 
 SO MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Harriet rose hurriedly from dessert. "Aunt is tired," 
 she said. "You must excuse us, uncle," and she offered 
 Mevrouw her arm. At the door she turned. "You 
 don't want me just now, I suppose?" she continued. "I 
 am going out to get a breath of fresh air." 
 
 "Yes," added Ursula quickly. "Harriet and I are 
 going for a walk." 
 
 A moment later the two girls met on the bedroom- 
 landing. Both were dressed to go out. Harriet had a 
 white feather on her hat and a red shawl over one arm. 
 "Leave me alone, can't you?" said Harriet. She spoke 
 fiercely, and a gesture escaped her which was almost a 
 menace. 
 
 "No, I'm going with you," replied Ursula quietly. 
 
 "Indeed you shan't. What a fool I was to tell you. 
 Women always are fools to ask sympathy from each 
 other." 
 
 "I shall not be in your way," persisted Ursula, with 
 coaxing decision. "Let me wait with you till he comes 
 — if he comes — and then I can step aside." 
 
 "Of course he will come," said Harriet. Perhaps 
 it was the thought of this certain triumph which in- 
 duced her to forbear all further opposition to Ursula's 
 accompanying her. 
 
 "I bought this shawl," began Harriet, as they walked 
 through the shadowed streets. "I had to pawn my 
 only brooch to get it." 
 
 "Does uncle allow you no pocket-money?" asked 
 Ursula. 
 
 "Ten florins a month," replied Harriet bitterly. "I 
 spend most of it in scents and chocolate-creams. They 
 are my one consolation. I adore chocolate-creams. Do
 
 THE TRYST. 6 I 
 
 you? We might get some now. I've got a florin left 
 from the brooch-money." 
 
 "Let me buy them this time," suggested Ursula 
 sympathetically. 
 
 "Very well. I like the pink kind best." 
 
 It was still light, but a veil had already fallen over 
 the low-sinking sun. The hot, sleepy streets were wak- 
 ing up in the red glow of the fading day. People in 
 the town, now that the glare had died from their eyes, 
 were telling each other that the air was cool, and trying 
 to believe it. 
 
 Outside, however, the assertion had more truth in 
 it. A ripple of refreshment was slowly spreading up 
 from the distant river. The shadows of the straight- 
 lined trees lay across the brick-road in great black 
 stripes. The fields looked as if their dusty grass was 
 turning green again beneath the darkening sky; in the 
 dull ditches stood the cattle, dreamily content. 
 
 The girls walked on in silence till they reached a 
 point where the road swerved off into a little thicket. 
 This was the spot which Romeo must have had in his 
 mind. It was very quiet and sequestered. They stood 
 looking at each other, still in silence. Harriet's pale 
 cheeks were flushed. 
 
 Evening was now rapidly closing in; great folds of 
 gray shadow seemed to come broadening over the land- 
 scape; not a sound was heard but the faint whiz of 
 some tiny gnats. 
 
 Suddenly the clear chimes began to play from the 
 slender ball-topped tower, which stood out black, like 
 a monstrous ninepin, against the yellow western sky. 
 The eyes of the watchers met. Eight slow strokes came 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 6
 
 82 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 trembling heavily across the hush of sunset. At the 
 other end of the long, straight road a figure appeared, 
 as yet quite indistinct. They watched. They could 
 hear each other's hearts beat. 
 
 When it drew nearer they saw that it was a woman. 
 Harriet gave a great gasp of relief. A moment later it 
 had come quite close to them. And both saw simul- 
 taneously that the woman wore a white feather and a 
 scarlet shawl. 
 
 She passed them suspiciously; she was an independ- 
 ent-looking, weather-beaten female of some forty wintry 
 winters — all angles and frost. After a moment she 
 halted, and hesitatingly retraced her steps. 
 
 The last glow paled away from the horizon. In the 
 ashen grayness it even seemed to Ursula that the little 
 breeze from the marshes blew cold. The long road lay 
 motionless, gradually shortening into night. 
 
 "A fine evening, young ladies," said the red-shawled 
 female, stopping abruptly near them, and suddenly 
 opening an enormous parasol; "but it's getting late." 
 
 "It's not much beyond eight," replied Ursula, for 
 want of an answer. 
 
 "Nine minutes," said the female, with precision. 
 "Nine full minutes past eight p.m. Perhaps I may 
 remark to you, ladies, that this spot is unhealthy after 
 sunset — very particularly unhealthy. The back-sillies, 
 as modern science calls them, come up from the water 
 and produce injurious smells. If I were you I should 
 be careful — very particularly careful." She turned on 
 one heel, but suddenly bethought herself. 
 
 "I," she said, nodding her head — the white feather 
 waved — "am compelled by the call of duty to remain.
 
 THE TRYST. 83 
 
 I am waiting for someone — an engagement." She spoke 
 the last word with triumphant pomposity. Its double 
 meaning evidently furnished her extreme satisfaction. 
 She repeated it twice and jingled a small reticule de- 
 pending from a cotton-gloved wrist. 
 
 "I know of a case," she went on immediately, seeing 
 that neither girl moved or spake, "when a young person 
 (much of your age) spent an evening out here in this 
 wood. Her reasons for doing so I distinctly decline to 
 enter into. They were not laudable, you may be sure; 
 no young girl's would be. Well, she caught the my- 
 asthma and died. She died." 
 
 All the time she was holding forth the speaker 
 peered anxiously to right and left in the darkness. 
 
 "Duty," she added, "as I told you, compels me to 
 remain. But I do so at the risk of my health." 
 
 "You lying old humbug!" said a deep voice behind 
 her in the darkness. "Then what have you got that 
 red shawl on for, eh?" 
 
 The victim to duty spun round as if shot. 
 
 "Oh, it's you, is it, Maria?" she said. "I know 
 what you're here for: spying, spying; that's your errand, 
 you nasty, envious thing." 
 
 "Then you're wrong, that's all. I'm here on a fool's 
 errand of my own, like yourself." 
 
 A short, fat woman stepped into the faint reflection 
 of a distant lantern, and they saw that she also wore a 
 red shawl! Not even courtesy could describe this lady 
 as of "uncertain age." 
 
 "Seems to me," she continued, "you and I needn't 
 have been so mighty close with each other. Nor you 
 needn't have crowed over me as you did, Isabella. I 
 
 6*
 
 §4 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 don't see that your lover was so much smarter than, 
 mine." 
 
 "Oh, Harriet, come away," whispered Ursula, break- 
 ing a long silence. 
 
 Harriet laughed hoarsely. "No," she said, "I'm 
 going to see this comedy out." 
 
 "And as for those young ladies there," Maria went 
 on, "they've as much right to be here as we have — at 
 least, the one with the red shawl over her arm has. Yes, 
 my dear, you needn't try to smuggle it away behind 
 your neighbour. You're here from a sense of duty, as 
 much as ever my friend Isabella is. I wonder how 
 many more of us have answered this advertisement?" 
 
 "One more has," said a young voice, and a pretty, 
 fair, little creature, looking like a dressmaker's assistant, 
 stole from behind a tree into the ring. 
 
 "That makes five of us," announced the fat woman, 
 with a nod to Ursula. "It was mean of you yonder to 
 be ashamed of your colours. Well, men were deceivers 
 ever, and, girls, we've been once more deceived." 
 
 "It was I advertised first, not he," said the pretty 
 girl, defiantly. 
 
 "So did I," Harriet admitted. "We may as well 
 be fair." 
 
 "Well, so did I, if it comes to that," declared the 
 fat woman. "And so did you, Isabella, we needn't ask 
 you. And so did that featherless girl, I dare say. I 
 don't see that it makes much difference. And it was 
 Romeo de Lieven — was it? — as told you all to come 
 here?" 
 
 "All," said the whole chorus. They had gradually 
 drawn nearer to one of the rare street-lamps, which
 
 THE TRYST. 8 5 
 
 make a dismal haze at far intervals along the dark road. 
 They stood in a circle, with unconsciously up-lifted 
 parasols, and all around them was the soft night, and 
 the little wind, and the damp smell of the water. 
 
 "Then the best thing you can do is to go home 
 again. Come along, Isabella, you can sing me the 
 praises of your lover as we go." 
 
 "I solemnly swear," said the sour spinster in 
 sepulchral tones, "never to trust a man again. Ah, I 
 could tell you a story " 
 
 "There's no time for that now," interrupted her 
 friend, briskly. "As for solemnly swearing, I don't 
 object. Ladies, you see what they are, these men. 
 Imagine what would have happened to you if this 
 Romeo had come, and any of you'd married him. No, 
 Romeo, we will not marry. Let us promise, each one 
 of us, after to-night's experience, to turn our backs on 
 them for ever." 
 
 All of them, except Ursula, lifted their arms on 
 high. In chorus they sang out, "We promise," and 
 even as they did so a vehicle suddenly loomed through 
 the darkness, a high trap, devoid of carriage lights, 
 occupied by three or four officers in uniform. 
 
 "Way there, please," said a voice which Ursula 
 recognised. The women scattered on one side, all look- 
 ing up involuntarily. The dim light of the lantern fell 
 full on their faces, and, for one instant, Gerard saw 
 Ursula's features quite plainly. She shrank back; how 
 she hoped that he had not recognised her! She thought 
 not. 
 
 The dog-cart passed down the road, and presently 
 the young men were heard laughing heartily. This
 
 86 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 masculine hilarity seemed to exasperate the buxom 
 Maria. 
 
 "Let us bind ourselves," she said, "to meet together 
 next year, at this spot and this hour, and to prove to 
 each other that each has kept her word." 
 
 "We promise," said the others, in taking leave. 
 
 But, when the anniversary came round — be it noted 
 here — Maria marched to a solitary vigil. The two 
 younger women had broken their vow, and the weather- 
 beaten spinster much wanted them to believe that she 
 had broken hers. 
 
 Not a word was exchanged between the two girls 
 on their homeward way. Ursula felt heartily relieved, 
 when she found herself once more safe in the drawing- 
 room. Harriet had a headache, and Ursula poured out 
 tea. Mynheer Mopius took an opportunity of praising 
 her concoction as a set off against Harriet's. 
 
 "Of course it's her fault," he argued, "not that of 
 the tea. How could it be? — best Java imported." 
 
 "Uncle Jacobus," began Ursula, emboldened by this 
 approval, "I don't care about the opera to-morrow. I'd 
 as lief stay at home." Her hand trembled, and she 
 blushed crimson. 
 
 Mynheer Mopius set down his teacup cautiously, for 
 it was best Japan. "Well, of all the deceiving minxes!" 
 he said. "And to hear her go on this afternoon in the 
 carriage! Ursula, you are insincere." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius sat quite motionless. Her niece 
 did not venture to glance her way. 
 
 "Well, of course," said Mynheer, in the silence, 
 "you must know. I'm not such a fool as to waste my 
 money, and no thanks for my pains. After I'd sent
 
 THE TRYST. 87 
 
 round to the stationer's, too, for the book of words you 
 said you would like to have. I'm very much dis- 
 appointed in you, Ursula. I can't make it out." 
 
 " Operas aren't really good," piped Mevrouw Mopius's 
 tremulous voice. "They're not a bit like real life. I 
 never had anything happen to me like an opera." 
 
 Mynheer Mopius slapped his knee. "I have it," he 
 cried; "it's some religious nonsense of your father's. 
 Well, if it don't rise to the surface quicker, there can't 
 be much of it. Come along, wife, I can't bear to think 
 of her. Come along; let's play and sing." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius staggered to her feet. Ursula 
 remained in the half light of the front room. Husband 
 and wife spent the rest of the evening at the piano. 
 
 "Dear love, for thee I would lay down my li-i-ife, 
 For without thee what would that life avail? 
 If thy hand but lift the fatal kni-i-ife, 
 
 I smile, I faint, and bid sweet death all hail, 
 
 sang Mynheer Mopius. And Ursula listened. And 
 Mevrouw Mopius played.
 
 88 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 otto's wooing. 
 
 "Plush," said the Baroness van Helmont, addressing 
 her silken favourite, "it is a terrible thing to have an 
 incompatible child." 
 
 Plush made no answer, but, from the other end of 
 the room, came Otto's reply: "I can't help it, mother. 
 I suppose you made me what I am." 
 
 "I? Never in my life. I could not have produced 
 anything so strong. Plush and I, we are in harmony; 
 we take the same view of existence." 
 
 She languidly entangled her fingers in the meshes 
 of her darling's soft white hair. The lapdog, on her 
 crimson cushion, laid two delicate little slender-wristed 
 paws, that looked as if encased in a perfect fit of pcau 
 de Suede, over a bright black button of a nose. The 
 pair of them, lady and lapdog, looked born to undulate. 
 
 "You are resolved, then," continued the Baroness, 
 "to return to Java as soon as you again get tired 
 of us." 
 
 "Tired of you! Mother!" His emotion made him 
 both unable and unwilling to say more. 
 
 "Tired or not, in a few months you will once more 
 leave us. Otto, it will break your father's heart." 
 
 This prophecy Otto considered a decidedly doubt- 
 ful one.
 
 otto's wooing. 89 
 
 "I never understood why you first went," continued 
 the Baroness. "Gerard stays. Everybody I know stays. 
 Fifteen years ago you must suddenly resolve to learn 
 gentleman-farming in Germany. It sounds so silly, 
 'gentleman- farming.' They call it 'economy' over there 
 — I suppose the name pleased you — and after a year 
 or two you came back and said it couldn't be done 
 without plenty of money. A charming economy. It is 
 as good as a farce!" 
 
 "That is true, Otto, is it not?" she added petulantly, 
 after a pause. 
 
 "Quite true," he replied, helplessly, sitting forward 
 on a little boudoir chair, his brown hands hanging joined 
 between his heavy legs. 
 
 "Well, then, after that you must hurry away to plant 
 tea in the Indies, as if there were not enough common 
 people to do that! And doing it, too. I never heard 
 of a breakdown in the tea-supply. And now you have 
 been busied there for a dozen years, and what's the 
 profit to you or to any one? You're no richer, and 
 tea's not even cheaper. So you've benefited neither 
 your neighbour nor yourself." The Baroness sighed. 
 Plush sighed also, her whole little pink-tinted body a 
 sob of lethargic content. 
 
 "But I've been earning an honest living," burst out 
 Otto desperately. It was all so useless; he had said it 
 so often before! "At least I've not been droning through 
 my whole life, spending father's money, and knowing all 
 the time that in fact there was no money to spend. Of 
 course, I'd hoped to come back richer from India, but 
 you can't understand about the crisis in the tea-trade, 
 mother."
 
 QO MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "No, indeed," said the Baroness. 
 
 "At any rate, however, I've paid my way. I've not 
 lived, as Gerard does, in a constant entanglement of 
 bills and loans. I don't depend for my daily bread on 
 the mercy of the Jews." 
 
 "Nor does Gerard — thank Heaven! — though he may 
 for his daily champagne!" cried the Baroness, her 
 irrepressible sprightliness bubbling uppermost. "And 
 the Jews, as your father always says, are a dispensation 
 of Providence for the survival of the fittest. He doesn't 
 mean themselves. They keep the old families above 
 water till smoother times work round again. Look at 
 the van Utrechts, for instance; the only son tried to 
 commit suicide for want of a friendly Jew! And four 
 months later he married a Rotterdam oil-merchant's 
 daughter. That's what Gerard will do; only, in his 
 case, I do hope and pray that the man who made the 
 money will be a generation farther off. And on the 
 mother's side." The Baroness sank back reflectively, 
 and, for the hundredth time, a procession of ticketed 
 young ladies passed before her pale blue eyes. 
 
 "Otto," she said, "you know the desire of our hearts. 
 It is that you marry Helena van Trossart. Then we 
 should say: 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart 
 in peace.'" 
 
 "Catch my father saying that," cried Otto roughly, 
 with holy horror in his honest eyes. 
 
 The Baroness stopped him by an imperious gesture. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean, Otto," she said. 
 "Please don't be profane. Yes, I desire above all things 
 to see this marriage consummated. Gerard will do well 
 in any case. And, after all, it is you who will one day
 
 otto's wooing. 91 
 
 be Baron Helmont of the Horst. You, our first, our 
 eldest." She checked herself, holding out her thin 
 white hand, and her eyes were full of love. 
 
 Otto took the hand in his own, and kissed it. 
 
 "You might try, Otto," continued the Baroness. 
 "You don't know her; she was a child when you went 
 away. There is no sense in your refusing to find out 
 whether you could like her or not. The marriage would 
 end all difficulties for good, and you could remain with us." 
 
 "What do you want me to do?" asked Otto heavily. 
 
 "Supposing you were to go to Drum to-day, and 
 see them. You might stay over their dance, which is 
 to-morrow night. It would be a pretty attention. I feel 
 sure the coast is clear, and she thinks you interesting. 
 She told me so herself, when they dined here; she con- 
 siders your life one long romance." 
 
 "Romance is the word," said Otto. "Well, mother, 
 I'm willing to go." He took up The Graphic from a 
 side-table, and silence brooded over the trio till the 
 Baron came in. 
 
 "My dear," said the Baron eagerly, his eyes alight, 
 "I must just show you this: the carrier brought it. It's 
 Feuillet's 'Jeune Homme Pauvre,' with the original 
 drawings by Mouchot. Isn't it charming? I had it 
 over from Fontaine." 
 
 The Baroness took the volume, disturbing Plush. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, as she turned over the pages. 
 "It's very nice. But I can't help preferring my old 
 friend, Johannot." 
 
 "How unkind!" said the Baron, plaintively, "Johannot 
 couldn't be expected to illustrate everything, especially 
 not the books that were written after he died."
 
 92 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 He turned to his son. 
 
 "I shan't show it to you, Otto, for you'd only ask 
 how much it cost." 
 
 "Oh, don't," interposed the Baroness. 
 
 "And yet this is quite a bargain. Only 625 francs, 
 and the binding by David." 
 
 "My dear, I don't care. Besides, I have forgotten 
 already." 
 
 "Lucky woman!" the Baron laughed. "I, at least, 
 must remember till it's paid. What's the matter, Jan?" 
 — this to a servant who appeared in the open door — 
 "You can clear away the papers on the library floor." 
 
 "There's a poor woman at the kitchen-entrance 
 asking to see you, sir," said the man. "She says you 
 know all about her. Her name is Vrouw Klop, from 
 the cottages by Horstwyk Mill." 
 
 "I never heard of the creature in my life!" cried 
 the Baron. 
 
 "I know her," remarked Mevrouw, quietly. "Her 
 husband drinks." 
 
 "Saving your presence, Mevrouw," said Jan, without 
 moving a muscle; "she says her husband's been dead 
 these seven years." 
 
 "Well, if he had lived, he'd have drunk," replied 
 the Baroness, indifferently. "And, besides, if she's been 
 a widow so long, she must have children earning some- 
 thing." 
 
 Otto got up and walked towards the window. 
 
 "Send her away," exclaimed the Baron. "It's like 
 her insolence, asking for me!" 
 
 "She says she has a letter from the Burgomaster, 
 mynheer," gently persisted the servant. Menials are
 
 otto's wooing. 93 
 
 always pampercdly insolent to mendicants or aggres- 
 sively sympathetic regarding them. They are never in- 
 different. 
 
 "Then why didn't you bring it up? Why doesn't 
 she go to the relieving officer? I can't be bothered. 
 There, give her a twopenny-bit, and let her go." 
 
 Otto stood at the window, looking out. 
 
 "The people are unendurable," said the Baron, as 
 the servant departed. "Always wanting something, and 
 always asking for it. As if it were our duty to supply 
 unlimited gin!" 
 
 "Yes," replied the Baroness, "and the respectable 
 poor never beg. This illustration is charming, Theodore; 
 I think it is the best of all. What a sweet face the 
 girl has!" 
 
 She held up the beautiful blue morocco volume to 
 the light. 
 
 Otto stood at the window looking out. 
 
 Helena van Trossart belonged to one of the most 
 influential families in Holland. Her mother had been 
 a sister of the Baron van Helmont; both mother and 
 father were long since dead. She lived with an uncle 
 and aunt on the other side, Trossarts, like herself, and 
 rich, like herself, with Trossart money. The uncle and 
 aunt were childless, and affectionately interested in their 
 beautiful heiress, of whom they felt proud to think as 
 the greatest 'partie' in the province. The Baroness was 
 portly and comfortable; she had never known any but 
 comfortable people all her life. The Baron, a fine old 
 gentleman with silver-striped hair, was concerned in the 
 government of the country, which means that he occu-
 
 94 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 pied his time in procuring lucrative posts for his wife's 
 poor relations, of whose poverty he lived in monotonous 
 dread. 
 
 The fine old double mansion, which the van Trossarts 
 inhabited, stood on a green canal behind a sombre row 
 of chestnuts. Grass grew between the paving-stones, 
 and iron chains swung heavily from post to post. Not 
 a street-boy passed but pulled those chains. The street- 
 boy of Holland is unparalleled in Europe, a pestilence 
 that walketh in darkness, and a destruction that wasteth 
 at noonday, but here you could hardly take offence at 
 him, for he imparted an element of liveliness to as 
 dead a corner as dull respectability could desire to 
 dwell in. The outside of the house wore that aspect of 
 dignified dilapidation which is characteristic of hereditary 
 wealth. Inside nothing was new — except in Helena's 
 apartments — nor was anything worn out. 
 
 "Mamma," said the Freule Helena — she called her 
 foster-mother "mamma" — "I have a note from Gerard. 
 He asks whether he may bring Otto round to lunch in 
 half an hour's time. Otto, it appears, has turned up 
 for the day. The orderly is waiting. I suppose I had 
 better say yes." 
 
 "Stop a moment while I ring and ask how many 
 pigeons there are," replied the Baroness, who was 
 eminently practical. 
 
 "You wouldn't keep them away because of that!" 
 cried Helen, laughing. 
 
 "Indeed I should. Gerard detests cold meat. And 
 there's nothing a man resents like getting what he 
 doesn't eat in a house where his tastes are known. 
 You've asked people enough unexpectedly already."
 
 otto's wooing. g5 
 
 "Only Georgetta van Troyen and her brother. That 
 was to escape a tete-a-tete with Mechteld van Weylert. 
 We shall be quite a small party." 
 
 "I don't mind large parties, like to-morrow's," 
 replied Mevrouw van Trossart, turning from a con- 
 fabulation with her confidential maid. "Well, tell them 
 to come. Ann, just say to the man: 'My compliments, 
 and the Jonkers* are welcome.' You are terribly gay, 
 child; you can't bear a moment of quiet." 
 
 "Dear mamma, did you want me to sit all the 
 afternoon opposite Maggie van Weylert? Confess though 
 she is your niece, you would not do it yourself. With 
 some women conversation is just contradiction. And 
 there are few people outside this house, except Gerard, 
 I care to be alone with. No guest or a number, that 
 is my view." 
 
 "Gerard would feel flattered," replied the Baroness, 
 smiling over her plump hands. "You had better not 
 tell him, or he will ask you to afford him the oppor- 
 tunity of being alone together for life." 
 
 "How terrible! Mamma, you are perfectly ruth- 
 less. There is not a creature in the world, not even 
 myself, I am fond enough of for that. Besides, surely 
 one should never marry a man one likes to be alone 
 with; it is the most fatal way of dying to society at 
 once." She laughed, and threw back the yellow curls 
 from her blue-veined forehead; she was all pink and 
 gold, like a bunch of wild rose and laburnum. "What 
 I should like to do," she went on, "would be to marry 
 Otto, and flirt with Gerard and other people. But, of 
 
 * Title for unmarried sons of noblemen, pronounced " Yonker."
 
 q6 my lady nobody. 
 
 course, it would be horribly improper, and it couldn't 
 be done." 
 
 "Don't be silly," remonstrated the Baroness van 
 Trossart, trying to frown. "You are getting too old, 
 Nellie, for saying things you ought to be ashamed of. 
 Now go and get ready." 
 
 "I am half Otto's age," replied the girl, rising. 
 
 "That may be. But an ingenue should die at nine- 
 teen. We women, my dear, are inverted butterflies, 
 and marriage is our chrysalis, as your future mother- 
 in-law said the other night. I can't imagine where she 
 gets her sayings from, I suppose she reads them some- 
 where. But neither she nor I would like to see a 
 Baroness van Helmont who was ingenue." 
 
 Helena paused in the doorway. "Would you like 
 me," she asked, "some day, to be Baroness van Hel- 
 mont?" 
 
 "My dear, you might be a worse thing. Personally, 
 if you ask me, I should certainly prefer Otto, little as 
 I know of him, to Gerard. Of Gerard I should say, 
 'Pour le badinage, bon. Pour le manage, non.' And 
 then, Otto is the better match, the future Baron. You 
 two could restore, together, the glories of the Horst." 
 
 Helena had stood listening, thoughtfully. Thought 
 did not suit her soft-featured, facile face. 
 
 "But you must do what you like and decide for 
 yourself," added her aunt, "as, with your character, you 
 certainly will." 
 
 "I thought I was so yielding," protested Helena. 
 
 "You are, my dear, except when you care." 
 
 "Then it's you that have spoilt me," answered 
 Helena, tripping off.
 
 otto's wooing. 97 
 
 The Baroness looked after her. "Dear girl," she 
 said to herself. "It will end in her marrying Gerard, 
 1 fancy. The book-writers may say what they like, but 
 the woman who can, always marries for love." 
 
 A few minutes later her husband came in. "My 
 dear," he said, "some of my papers are missing. I 
 wish you would tell Mary to mind what she's about." 
 
 "Yes, my dear," she replied, without looking up. 
 Some of his papers were always missing. He always 
 grumbled. It had come with his appointment to the 
 high Government post. For the first month or two she 
 had fretted; then she had understood that it was part 
 of his new importance, and she had returned to her 
 old comfortable life. "Both the Helmonts are coming 
 to lunch," she said, "and one or two other people." 
 
 "I don't care who's coming to lunch. I wish you 
 minded more about my papers. They're of very parti- 
 cular moment." 
 
 "I do mind. I shall tell someone to find them at 
 once on your table, for I've no doubt that they're there. 
 Mademoiselle," this in French to a swarthy little lady 
 who came gliding in, "would you mind looking for some 
 papers Monsieur has left on his table — official papers 
 — a dirty yellow, you know." 
 
 "But how on earth " began the State func- 
 tionary. 
 
 "Oh, she'll find them. She knows what your papers 
 are like. How do you do, Georgette? Where is 
 Willie?" 
 
 "On the stairs, I believe," replied the young lady 
 thus addressed, "flirting with the Freule van Weylert." 
 
 "We should all have said 'of course,' Freule," declared 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 7
 
 08 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Gerard's voice behind her, "had you omitted the name 
 of the lady. Even Willie could not teach the Freule 
 van Weylert to .flirt." 
 
 Otto was bowing silently beside his brother, with a 
 specially deep bow for Mademoiselle Papotier, Helena's 
 quondam governess, who had returned, bearing the lost 
 papers, to be welcomed by their owner with a grunt. 
 As a rule, nobody but Helena took any notice of 
 Mademoiselle Papotier. 
 
 They all went in to luncheon, a medley of excep- 
 tionally noisy and exceptionally silent elements. The 
 old Baron took his seat at the head of the table, and 
 immediately fixed his keen eyes on his food. Opposite 
 him sat the French lady, coquettish in movements and 
 apparel, pouring out coffee, of which no one partook. 
 The mistress of the house strove vainly to converse with 
 her niece Van Weylert, an angular and awkward young 
 girl, or to draw out her other neighbour, Otto, who sat 
 with his attention glumly concentrated on the fair ob- 
 ject of his visit. The rest of the company were up- 
 roariously merry, led on by Gerard and his pink brother 
 officer, young Willie van Troyen. 
 
 Otto was wondering whatever had induced him to 
 come. Yet, at the bottom of his heart, he knew very 
 well. It was not so much his mother's affectionate ex- 
 postulation as the thought, ever present within him yet 
 never expressed: What will become of the Horst when 
 my father dies? What, indeed? He had never loved 
 the old home as he loved it since his return. 
 
 "You are coming to my dance to-morrow, I hope, 
 Mynheer van Helmont?" said his hostess. He awoke 
 as from a reverie. "Oh yes," he said, "I hope so. I
 
 otto's wooing. 99 
 
 intend to stay at Drum for a day or two." He was 
 still watching his cousin; the Baroness followed his gaze, 
 and then their eyes met. 
 
 A shout of laughter went up from the opposite side 
 of the table. The old Baron lifted his brows. 
 
 "In my time," he said to the shaking mass of pink 
 muslin beside him, "we weren't half as funny as you 
 young people seem to be." 
 
 "Weren't you?" retorted Georgette van Troyen. 
 "How slow you must have been! Too bad, not even 
 to have had a good time in your youth! But isn't this 
 too amusing, this story that Willie is telling?" 
 
 The Baron returned hastily to his omelet. 
 
 "Isn't it too amusing?" cried the young girl, appeal- 
 ing to Otto. 
 
 "I haven't heard it," said the latter, at which they 
 all roared again. Willie was in high spirits, though 
 Gerard was endeavouring to arrest his narration. 
 
 "Do shut up, Troy; we've had quite enough of it," 
 growled Gerard. 
 
 "No, indeed, I am mistress here!" cried Helen, her 
 eyes sparkling with merriment. "Go on, Mynheer van 
 Troyen; you and the Captain had agreed on the wager. 
 And you answered the advertisements; and what hap- 
 pened then? The advertisements," she called across 
 to Otto in explanation, "were from young ladies in 
 search of a husband." 
 
 "From ladies," corrected the little officer, who looked 
 like a bibulous cherub. "Well, we got replies to our 
 letters, and we wrote again, arranging a meeting. We 
 convened all the aspirants — there were four of them 
 — at the same spot and, of course, the same hour, and 
 
 7*
 
 IOO MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 we bade them dress up in red shawls and white feathers. 
 And when we drove past, taking Gerard and another 
 man as umpires, there they were, the whole four of 
 them; I think there were even more!" 
 
 Renewed shrieks of laughter greeted the final sally. 
 
 "It's too killing!" cried Helen, the tears on her 
 cheeks. "And what were they doing? Tearing each 
 other's eyes out?" 
 
 "I don't know. I didn't wait to see. They were 
 making a great noise, screaming at each other. I had 
 won my champagne, and I went and drank it. I always 
 knew these advertisements were perfectly genuine." 
 
 "But the letters," interposed Georgette. "You must 
 show Helen the letters, Willie." 
 
 "No, no, he mustn't," cried Gerard, energetically. 
 "I'm sick of the whole business. Do let's talk of some- 
 thing else." 
 
 "But I'm not," protested Helen. "It's new to me. 
 How selfish you are, Gerard. Don't you think it's 
 awfully amusing, Otto? I'm sure you want to hear 
 more." 
 
 "I only want to hear one thing," said Otto, gravely, 
 bending forward, "and that is what Mynheer van Troyen 
 is going to do with those letters?" 
 
 "Why, keep them, of course," replied Willie. 
 
 "It is no business of mine, Mynheer; I have not 
 the honour, like my brother, of being your friend. 
 But if I were umpire, I should insist on those letters 
 being given up and burned." 
 
 "I suppose you don't approve of the whole joke?" 
 cried Gerard, hotly, forcing back his own better mis- 
 givings, swift in defence of his chum.
 
 otto's wooing. ioi 
 
 "It is not my province to express an opinion. Cer- 
 tainly not here. It is not a thing I should have done 
 myself." 
 
 "And the girls who advertised?" continued Gerard. 
 "We only answered advertisements. What of them?" 
 
 "Poor things!" said Otto, softly. 
 
 "What nonsense!" exclaimed Helen. "I think it's 
 great fun; and for the girls, too. I should like to try 
 the plan. Some day we must do it, Georgette. It's a 
 capital way of getting a husband. What freedom it 
 leaves in the choice!" 
 
 "Surely you are not restricted, Freule," said Willie. 
 "You have but to fling your handkerchief wheresoever 
 you will." 
 
 "Oh, but I am restricted," she replied; "for instance, 
 I could never marry you." 
 
 "Alas, I am sure of it," he answered: "but why not?" 
 
 "Imagine what a combination! Helen of Troy!* 
 Who could live up to such an appellation?" 
 
 "You could," he replied, fatuously. But she was 
 not listening to him; she was looking across the table 
 at Otto. "What a reputation!" she said. "Who could 
 live up to it? But why was she called Helene de 
 Trois? There was Menelaus" — she counted on her 
 fingers — "and Pans. But I forget who the third lover 
 was." 
 
 That evening Otto appeared again in the drawing- 
 room at the Manor House. His mother gave a cry of 
 surprise. For a moment her heart stood still. 
 
 * Literally, in the Dutch.
 
 102 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "I don't care for Helena Trossart," said Otto. "Her 
 conversation is a perpetual dance on the tight-rope of 
 propriety." 
 
 "My dear boy," replied his father, "how natural! 
 Consider the continuous pleasure of keeping your 
 balance." 
 
 "Well," said Otto, "it seems to me she came some 
 very positive croppers. However, I'm no judge." 
 
 He left the room; his mother ran after him. 
 
 "You haven't asked her, Otto?" she gasped. "She 
 hasn't rejected you?" 
 
 "Oh, no," he said, and shut the door.
 
 AN INDELIBLE STAIN. 103 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 AN INDELIBLE STAIN. 
 
 The next day dawned for Ursula in unclouded 
 brightness. Those few of us who remember a youth 
 no longer ours, will forgive her the excess of an ex- 
 pectancy she was unable to curb by experience. She 
 was going to an entertainment at one of the great 
 houses of Drum. She had never been to anything so 
 magnificent before. And Gerard, whom she had known 
 all her life, was to be there to make things smooth for 
 her. A slight difficulty about a chaperon had been most 
 pleasantly removed. The Freule van Trossart had, on 
 the preceding afternoon, left a card for Juffrouw Rovers, 
 with a note, saying that if she cared to come and dine 
 before the party, she could be present at it afterwards 
 as a house guest, under the Baroness's wing. Ursula 
 had accepted gladly, by no means impervious to so 
 much condescension, and, altogether, she felt very well 
 satisfied indeed. The night before, she had written a 
 glorious letter to her father; she had said nothing of 
 her aunt's ill health. 
 
 At 9 a.m. there was tranquil jubilation, at 10 a.m. 
 there was sudden dismay. "I can't wear it like this," 
 Ursula was saying to Harriet, with whom she had come 
 to terms on a basis of mutual oblivion. She sat on the 
 floor, a brown heap of perplexity. Her simple evening
 
 104 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 dress lay on the bed, with a round stain, as of grease, 
 distressingly displayed upon its breast. It was a frock 
 of crushed strawberry crepon, with ripe-strawberry silk 
 ribbons. 
 
 "No, you can't," asserted Harriet, full of interest 
 and sympathy. Harriet was in her element. "You 
 must manage to get some more of that crimson lace 
 for the front. How can it have happened, Ursula? 
 Something must have oozed out in your trunk." 
 
 "But coloured lace is so difficult to match," wailed 
 Ursula. 
 
 "So it is. Never mind. We must try." And the 
 two girls sallied forth on that most hopeless of errands, 
 the only form of shopping no woman enjoys, "the 
 matching" of colours. In every shop they entered their 
 little scrap was held up against an incongruous variety 
 of tints, and they were informed by the assistant that 
 it was "exactly the shade." One especially truthful 
 person qualified her recommendation of a moderate 
 scarlet by the statement that "really it was as near as 
 you could get." But all, without exception, were pertly 
 offended, when the girls crept hopelessly, though re- 
 solutely, away. 
 
 "It's no use," said Harriet at last, as they re- 
 traced their steps. But even while she spoke a sudden 
 inspiration struck her. "Do you know what you'll have 
 to do, Ursula? It's V-shaped now; well, you'll have to 
 make it into a low-neck." 
 
 "Oh, I don't like that," cried the pastor's daughter, 
 reddening. 
 
 "There's no choice left to you. How stupid of me 
 not to think of it before. It'll look much nicer, too."
 
 AN INDELIBLE STAIN. 105 
 
 "But supposing we matched the ribbons?" sug- 
 gested Ursula, holding out. 
 
 "You never could in this primitive place. They're 
 a very peculiar colour. Besides, if you covered up all 
 that space with ribbon, you'd look like a prize cow. 
 No, the top'll have to come off, and we must see about 
 a dressmaker at once. There's no time to lose." 
 
 They turned down a by-street. 
 
 "Let us cross to the square," said Harriet. "It's 
 no use taking the little woman that works for me; we 
 must get the best help we can." 
 
 A few moments later they entered — not without a 
 feeling of awe, especially on Harriet's part — the largest 
 establishment of its kind in Drum. 
 
 "Call Miss Adeline," said the smart personage who 
 had listened to their piteous tale. "We don't usually 
 alter garments not made by ourselves. Still " 
 
 Both of the girls gave a sudden gasp, for in the 
 person of Miss Adeline, who came forward at this 
 moment from far-back recesses, both simultaneously re- 
 cognised the fair little maiden of the tryst. 
 
 "Mynheer Mopius, Villa Blanda," said the black 
 silk manager. "Very well. Perhaps, Miss Adeline had 
 better accompany you at once. There certainly is no 
 time to be lost." 
 
 With feelings utterly indescribable the three walked 
 off together. 
 
 A few moments later, Harriet having fled, Ursula 
 sat helping the dressmaker in the oppressive silence of 
 the "second-best spare room." The click of the scissors 
 was becoming insupportable. Even the occasional 
 rustle of the pendent frock seemed a relief.
 
 106 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "I think we have met before," said Ursula, at last, 
 very gently. 
 
 "Really, Juffrouw? A great many ladies come to 
 our place," replied the girl, bending over her work. 
 
 For a moment Ursula felt nonplussed, but her pity 
 rose paramount. 
 
 "You know what I mean," she said rather sternly. 
 And then she went on to talk about the folly and 
 wickedness of female initiative in matters matrimonial, 
 and her little lecture broadened into its third well- 
 rounded sentence — 
 
 "And you," burst in the girl fiercely, "a rich young 
 lady in a fine house, well looked after. You!" 
 
 So Ursula had to incriminate her absent friend, 
 lest her moral go awry. She found a politely incre- 
 dulous listener, and began to realise that, with her, it 
 was a case of "caught together, hung together," as the 
 Germans say. If only Gerard had not observed her! 
 
 "I can assure you," she said, continuing her homily, 
 though rather disconcerted by the sudden change of 
 front, "that I should never lift a finger to get married 
 for the sake of being married. Every woman may re- 
 joice if God sends her an honest lover and enables her 
 to love that lover. But merely to be able to say 'I am 
 somebody's wife!' I cannot understand any woman 
 wauling that" — this under the stress of her own in- 
 culpation — "I cannot understand what for?" 
 
 She opened her big dark eyes and looked innocently 
 interrogative. 
 
 "Can't you, Juffrouw?" said the kneeling dress- 
 maker, taking the pins from between her lips. "Well, 
 I can. There's reasons would make a girl willing to be
 
 AN INDELIBLE STAIN. I07 
 
 any man's wife as long as she was only married. And 
 one of them's mine." She spoke bitterly, and shut 
 her lips with a snap, as she rose from fitting on the 
 frock. 
 
 Suddenly Ursula understood. 
 
 She was not given to emotion, still less to showing 
 it; perhaps her nerves had been wrought on by the 
 previous strain; now, quite unexpectedly to herself, she 
 burst into tears. 
 
 The girl quivered, stared, and, sinking on to a cane- 
 bottomed chair, began crying too, but in a soft, self- 
 pitying way, while speaking all the time. 
 
 "Yon think me a bad, wicked creature," she sobbed, 
 "but I'm not, I'm not. I didn't know, and he promised 
 to marry me. There was never any doubt of his marry- 
 ing me. I'm not as bad as you think, and I was cer- 
 tain he loved me. And I was desperate, and I put in 
 the advertisement. I wish I were married or dead." 
 She stopped crying for a moment. "When the time 
 comes," she said earnestly, "I shall be one or the other." 
 And then she fell to sobbing afresh. 
 
 Ursula had dried her eyes. 
 
 "My dear," she said, "if he promised to marry you, 
 perhaps he will." 
 
 "Oh, no, he won't. I know now, and understand 
 things different. He's a gentleman. He'd marry me if 
 he was not." 
 
 "For I'm sure he loved me," she added, softly. 
 
 Ursula was trembling from head to foot. Shielded 
 and sheltered through all her simple girlhood, she had 
 never come into contact — whether by actual experience 
 or in literature — with any such vision of shame as this.
 
 108 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 She compared her own happy, unshadowed life with 
 the struggle of the girl before her. And, full of com- 
 passion, she thanked God for the difference. For, to 
 the very backbone which held her erect, she was 
 womanly and pure. 
 
 She had forgotten all about the pressing needs of 
 her toilet, but the dressmaker had not. Adeline caught 
 up the frock, and began silently, sullenly sewing. 
 
 "If I could but do anything for you," said Ursula, 
 meditatively. 
 
 "You can't. Only don't gibe at me. Gibe at the 
 men of your own class. This one, they tell me, is 
 going to be married. I dare say you'd marry him if 
 you could." 
 
 "Never! never!" said Ursula, with quiet passion. 
 
 "Well, I don't care whom he marries. It won't be 
 me. I'll tell you how I know for certain. You seem 
 to be good, you do, and you mean well. It's not 
 me alone he's ruined. Do you know" — she laid down 
 her work on her lap — "I believe it was he who brought 
 us all together the other night. I believe he is Romeo 
 de Lieven." 
 
 "But why?" asked Ursula, incredulously. "Cer- 
 tainly, the young lady downstairs " 
 
 "Oh, don't tell me, Juffrouw. We all deny. Women 
 always do. But you remember a carriage passing along 
 the road? There were officers in it. It flashed across 
 me at once that they had come to see their handiwork. 
 And he was driving." 
 
 The room swam round before Ursula's eyes. She 
 closed them hastily and leant back in her easy-chair. 
 She could think of nothing distinctly; but she could
 
 AN INDELTDLE STAIN. IOg 
 
 hear the clock ticking solemnly on. She longed for 
 someone to stop it. As for herself, she knew that she 
 was incapable of moving, body or soul. In a lightning 
 flash she had realised two facts undreamed before — the 
 first that she was very fond of Gerard van Helmont; 
 the second that she scorned him forth from her heart 
 for ever. 
 
 When at last she opened her eyes she saw the 
 other girl intently Avatching her. There was a quiet 
 sneer in the dressmaker's gaze before which Ursula 
 shrank affrighted. She understood immediately how 
 her elaborate self-exoneration had crumbled away. 
 This creature had perceived that Gerard was personally 
 known to her. In the wretched girl's estimation she was 
 doubtless one rival out of many. She shuddered. 
 
 "Yes," said Mademoiselle Adeline, "we all deny. I 
 think, Miss, if you left me to myself, I could finish this 
 dress a great deal better." 
 
 Ursula dragged herself together and crept from the 
 room. 
 
 While this uncomfortable interview was in progress 
 the chief subject of its interest was complacently in- 
 stalled among the thousand elegances of his cousin's 
 sitting-room, on a low stool almost at her feet. He 
 looked a little more extensively red than usual, and 
 his blue eyes were restless; but otherwise he shewed 
 no signs of trepidation. Yet he had resolved that this 
 day should decide his fate. His mother's by-play about 
 Otto was becoming a nuisance. 
 
 That morning he had risen, after tranquil sleep, 
 and carelessly studied himself in the glass. Of course,
 
 IIO MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 he was good-looking — very good-looking. Experience 
 had taught him that quite as much as ocular demon- 
 stration. It was the perfect grace of his gracelessness 
 which made, women adore him. 
 
 He had eaten a hearty breakfast as usual, but he 
 had drunk two more cups of tea and a glass of brandy. 
 That is a man's way of realising that the crisis has 
 come. 
 
 "My dear Gerard," said Helen, "you are dull, while 
 the rest of the family are flurried. People talk about 
 the day after the festival; my 'Katzenjammers' come 
 ten hours before. I shall ring for Mademoiselle Papotier: 
 she always amuses me." 
 
 "Do," said Gerard surlily, glad of any postpone- 
 ment. 
 
 "That is charming. You could not have said that 
 'do,' more naturally, had we been husband and wife. 
 'Do I bore you? Then amuse yourself elsewhere. But 
 don't even expect me to ring the bell.' " She jumped 
 up lightly, as she spoke, and ran past him to the bell- 
 pull. 
 
 "I don't like Mademoiselle Papotier," said Gerard. 
 "She has taught you a number of things you needn't 
 have known. If you read books like that" — he pointed 
 to "Une Vie" upon the table — "it's her doing. I wish 
 you wouldn't, Helen. Men don't like it." 
 
 She came back to her seat: "Oh, but that is still 
 more charming," she said, "especially from your lips. 
 You would have me restrict my reading so that I 
 might the belter enjoy your conversation. I won't 
 hear a word against my dear Papotier. She brightened 
 my youth with eighteenth-century romances, and she
 
 AN INDELIBLE STAIN. I I I 
 
 cheers my old age by nineteenth-century novels. She 
 is a dear." 
 
 Undeniably, the heiress's education had been a 
 peculiar one. Her governess's tissue-paper rosette of a 
 soul had never given forth more natural odours than 
 patchouli. The Baroness van Trossart could have 
 told you how, when Helen was an eight-year-old little 
 girl, she had come upon the child slapping her ball up 
 and down in the courtyard, and occasionally muttering 
 the same words over and over again. 
 
 "What on earth are you saying, my dear?" the 
 Baroness had inquired. 
 
 And Helen had looked up with sparkling eyes: 
 "And his beautiful head," she had spouted, without 
 stopping her ball-bumping, "went bounding three times 
 across the marble, while repeating three times the sweet 
 name of 'Zaire!' Isn't it lovely? He was dead, you 
 know: they had just cut it off." And she had run 
 away. 
 
 The Baroness had shaken her head. "It sounds 
 like Scudery," she had said. But she was comfortable. 
 She was not going to object to Mademoiselle Papotier. 
 
 "I shall read what I like," repeated the heiress pro- 
 vokingly. "And when I am married, I shall go to what 
 plays I choose. I like impropriety on paper. Paper or 
 boards. And so do you, Gerard, et plus que (a. You, 
 of all people! I believe you are laughing at me." 
 
 "No, by thunder, I'm not," he cried violently. "I 
 don't pretend to be a saint — far from it; but there's 
 not a lover in the world would like to remember that 
 the girl he's engaged to has read Maupassant." 
 
 She looked at him for a moment, with that sweet
 
 112 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 mixture of mocking tenderness which a man's eyes can 
 never assume; then she said to her maid, who had 
 answered the bell: 
 
 "No, thank you; I want nothing. I rang by mistake." 
 
 "But you are not " she began, and checked 
 
 herself. "So Otto is coming to my party to-night," she 
 said. 
 
 She enjoyed his responsive scowl. 
 
 "No, Otto is not coming," he answered. "His 
 Highness has gone off in a huff. About that hoax of 
 Willie's, I imagine, but his huffs are not easy to classify. 
 Mind you, I don't defend the trick. I think it was 
 rather a low thing to do." 
 
 "To van Troyen it merely represented so much 
 champagne," she replied. "I like Otto; he is eminently 
 estimable and — and worthy. He, at least, would never 
 have told me not to read Maupassant." 
 
 "No," sneered Gerard, "he would never have heard 
 of him." 
 
 "Just so. There is nothing more delightful than a 
 husband who is absolutely ignorant of everything. With 
 him, at least, one runs a chance, even in this age, of 
 unreasoning jealousy. And unreasoning jealousy must 
 be delightful. Like mustard. What is the use of a 
 man who keeps saying: 'The vices are my share; the 
 virtues are yours. And each of us has got what he 
 ought to have'? Gerard, rather than a husband who 
 said to me: 'Of course, I am faithless; let us talk of 
 something else/ I would have a husband who said: 
 'You are faithless. I am going to kill you,' and did it." 
 
 "It could only be done once," replied Gerard lan- 
 guidly. "My dear child, you have been to Verdi's
 
 AN INDELIBLE STAIN. I I 3 
 
 Othello. Evidently you want to be worshipped not 
 wisely but too well. I don't think Otto would tell you 
 that you are faithless. I fancy you'd have to jog him 
 a bit." 
 
 "Otto! I wasn't thinking of Otto. I believe you 
 are jealous of Otto." 
 
 "Yes, I am. I'll tell you why, if you like, imme- 
 diately. I have a note here from my mother, received 
 this morning; shall I read it to you?" 
 
 "If it concerns me," she said, negligently. 
 
 "It concerns you very nearly. My mother tells me 
 to ask whether you would care to come down to the 
 house with me to-morrow, and stay for a few days. 
 You understand what that means, Helen, as well as 
 I do!" 
 
 "Yes, I understand," she answered, and with a 
 sudden impulse she caught up the "Maupassant" at her 
 elbow and flung it into a corner of the room. 
 
 "So that, knowing the comedy you are expected to 
 take part in, you can foresee, and forego, the conclusion. 
 I should say, if it is to be only farce, why act it at all?" 
 
 She popped out the tips of her little feet, and 
 looked down at them. 
 
 "The best way to avoid all complications," he went 
 on, "would be to arrive at the Manor House — engaged." 
 
 She lifted her eyes from the ground and fixed them 
 steadily on his face. 
 
 "Let me telegraph to my mother that you are com- 
 ing — engaged." His voice broke down. 
 
 "But how will you know?" she asked, laughing. 
 
 "Let me "knew first." He bent forward. "Oh, my 
 darling, my beauty." He caught her two hands, and, 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 8
 
 I T 4 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 like the passionate young fool he was, covered them 
 with kisses. "My darling, how happy they will all be 
 at home." 
 
 Even at that moment the naive selfishness of this 
 last exclamation amused her. She said nothing, how- 
 ever, prolonging the sweetest silence a woman ever 
 knows. 
 
 "Gerard," she said, some minutes later, looking up 
 at him as he bent over her. "You have forgotten that 
 the girl you are engaged to has read Maupassant." 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "I have forgotten. I shall 
 never remember." 
 
 He went back to his rooms to dress for dinner, 
 highly delighted. He was very much attached to his 
 cousin. And she was the greatest heiress in the pro- 
 vince.
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. I I 5 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 Ursula descended from a cab in the full light of 
 the early summer evening, and hurried away into the 
 Van Trossarts' gloomy hall. Her shoulders blushed as 
 the footman took her wrap. It felt like undressing. 
 
 "Juffrouw Rovers," said the Baroness, beaming like 
 a crimson sun, "I am glad you have come. My niece 
 is — is occupied. Take off your gloves, my dear, and 
 help me to arrange these flowers." 
 
 Ursula had looked round, in terror, for Gerard. She 
 must dine with him en famille, perhaps sit next to him. 
 There was no help for it. Yet she trembled to think 
 of him. To her simple maidenhood, familiar with ser- 
 mons on sin in the abstract, he was a sudden incarna- 
 tion of infamy. 
 
 The Baroness buzzed and bubbled over her flower- 
 trays, her fat arms all dimples, her fat cheeks all smiles. 
 She chattered about this evening's party, which was 
 Helen's party — "as if anybody in Drum would give a 
 dance in July! — but Helen was so gay she could never 
 sit still for an hour: a nice dance she would lead her 
 husband if only the husband himself was addicted to 
 pleasure. Well, old people were apt to get dull. No 
 wonder Helen fared farther in search of diversion." 
 And she laughed to herself, and winked to herself (a 
 
 3*
 
 1 T 6 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 difficult, but by no means impossible, proceeding) while 
 talking to Ursula in the pragmatical cackle with which 
 hens of all ages surround a new-laid matrimonial egg. 
 
 Ursula, who was barely acquainted with the Freule 
 van Trossart, could only display a perfunctory interest 
 in that young lady's possible prospects. Harriet had 
 told her that, according to rumour, the Freule was "as 
 good as engaged" to a young politician. 
 
 "It is a living romance," the Freule's clear voice 
 was heard saying on the landing, "and a thousand times 
 more amusing, ma vieille, than all your dressed-up dead 
 ones together." 
 
 She came into the room with her arm through that 
 of her shrivelled governess, Gerard bringing up the rear. 
 The little Frenchwoman looked depressed as she slid 
 away into a corner. The fat Baroness rustled across 
 to her in a perfect crackle of crimson. "My dear Pa- 
 potier, is it not delightful?" she said, with tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Mon Dieu, madame, yes," replied the governess, 
 "it is the first chapter." And, to herself, she added: 
 "For me it is the last." 
 
 Ursula shook hands with Gerard, but a thick curtain 
 had fallen between them; she was surprised by the 
 aloofness of his manner, even while she herself stiffened 
 to a cold "good-day." 
 
 How contented and complacent he looked! She 
 watched him as he sat opposite her at table, between 
 the Baroness and the Freule. How prosperous and 
 pleasing! Yes, truly, there was a law for the humble 
 and a licence for the high! It was a gloriously simple 
 thing to be born to impurity, like the old Greek gods.
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. 1 1 7 
 
 What nonsense her good father went preaching about 
 "sin"! The world knew no such thing. It knew only 
 a small hub of pleasure reserved for the rich, and a 
 wide zone all round it of hunger and crime. She felt 
 very bitter; she glanced down with a sensation of physical 
 disgust on the fingers which had touched his, unwilling 
 to break her bread with them. 
 
 Her French was rusty, and out of repair; she did 
 not feel up to much conversation with the prim little 
 portrait of the past on her right; the master of the 
 house, on her other side, was sufficiently, but not 
 amply, polite. There is no human insolence such as 
 that indifferent politeness, which barely fits — like a glove 
 one size too small. 
 
 There were only the six of them, but the fascinat- 
 ing little heiress was a host in herself. Ursula had 
 heard much of her vivacity; she concluded, notwith- 
 standing, that the prospect of the evening's pleasure 
 must be abnormally augmenting it. Lovely the girl un- 
 deniably was, frail, and golden-haired, in a cloud of 
 white over blue, like the sky, and a treble row of pearls. 
 Ursula's grave brown face looked veiy quiet compared 
 with the other's delicate, clear-veined features; you 
 might have said a Madonna of the Annunciation, and 
 an immature Venus Anadyomene. 
 
 "Ursula," thought Gerald, "is just a nice-looking 
 rustic." As for him, she wondered how he dared to sit 
 beside, and speak to, this white-robed virgin. It seemed 
 as if toads must drop from his full red lips. Well, it 
 was no business of hers. And perhaps — perhaps she 
 was wronging him all the time, this good-natured friend 
 of her childhood! Perhaps he intended to marry Made-
 
 Il8 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 moiselle Adeline, if only his parents would let him. He 
 was waiting, perhaps, for an opportunity — who knows? — 
 perhaps 
 
 The thought gave her great comfort. Of the truth 
 of the story she could not harbour a doubt, for the girl, 
 before leaving, had shown her a photograph, worn by a 
 ribbon round the neck. 
 
 She noticed that the atmosphere seemed full of a 
 ripple of merriment: asides, which courtesy only kept 
 just above whispers, innuendos, sudden glances, mots a 
 double entente. She felt even more awkward than she 
 would have done under ordinary circumstances. And 
 soon she felt exceedingly miserable. Perhaps her kind- 
 hearted hostess noticed it. 
 
 "Helen, we must drink your health," cried the 
 Baroness, her ample bosom swelling under its laces, like 
 a crested wave. "Yes, my dear Gerard, you needn't 
 look at me like that; see how your neighbour is laugh- 
 ing. As Juffrouw Rovers does us the favour of dining 
 here to-day, she will increase that favour, I feel certain, 
 by keeping a secret — an absolute secret — for forty-eight 
 hours. I cannot let this meal pass as if nothing had 
 happened. You must know, Juffrouw Rovers, that it is 
 my dear niece's birthday — her first birthday, into a new 
 life. In other words, she is engaged to her cousin, 
 Gerard, who is an old friend of yours, so I need not 
 praise him. And we are going to drink their healths, 
 and wish them long life and prosperity." 
 
 Afterwards Ursula had a faint recollection of having 
 spilled some champagne on the tablecloth. For the 
 moment her whole strength was concentrated in a wild 
 prayer for outward calm. These people would imagine
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. I 1 0, 
 
 she cared for Gerard. It was not that — my God, not 
 that! 
 
 Fortunately the others were busy lifting their glasses; 
 all during dinner Gerard had scarcely looked her way. 
 She stared round the table in a dazed manner. She 
 felt sick. 
 
 "The strawberries are not good this year," she heard 
 Baron Trossart's grumpy voice saying. "I am not sur- 
 prised Miss Rovers doesn't care to eat them." She 
 hastily returned to her dessert. "No, I must beg of 
 you. Joris, bring this lady a clean plate." 
 
 It was the strawberries, then, that interested her? 
 So much the better. 
 
 "How I envy your father, Gerard," continued the 
 Baron. "It is two years now since we have been at 
 Trossartshage. The fruit cannot bear the transport: 
 we have tried both water and rail. But the cares of 
 State, you know, the cares of State! A man sacrifices 
 himself for his country, and his country repays him with 
 ingratitude." 
 
 This last sentence was an allusion to a recent article 
 in a small paper which reproached the authorities — in 
 this case Baron Trossart — with not having cleared out 
 a canal before the warm weather came. Nobody ever 
 complained of the ceaseless flow of nephews and 
 brothers-in-law. That, as we all know, is a part of the 
 constitution. Were it not so, the "eminent politician" 
 would be a thing of the past. 
 
 "Papa," interrupted Helen, wilfully. "Please don't 
 be gloomy. I'm engaged." 
 
 "Well, there's cause enough for gloom in that," he
 
 120 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 replied. "I'm as jealous of Gerard as" — he looked 
 round — "as Mademoiselle Papotier." 
 
 "Ah! do not speak of it to me!" cried the French- 
 woman. "I could slaughter Monsieur Gerard if I met 
 him in war." 
 
 "That's the last place where you'll meet me," ex- 
 claimed Gerard, laughing. Helen had suddenly blanched. 
 
 "War!" she said. "How horrible! No, we will 
 have no fighting. Juffrouw Rovers, would you have the 
 courage to marry a soldier?" 
 
 Across Ursula's brain flashed a vision of a dogcart 
 filled with uproarious malevolence. 
 
 "No; I should not like to marry an officer," she 
 replied. 
 
 Her words — perhaps, still more, her unconscious 
 manner — seemed to sting Gerard. He flushed. 
 
 "Juffrouw Rovers is never particularly brave," he 
 said. "She is too soft-hearted. The last time I saw 
 her, she was shewing the ivhite feather, as now." 
 
 The words were a challenge. And, unconsciously, 
 his manner betrayed as much; it was too significant. 
 
 Helen looked from one to the other: "What is it?" 
 she asked. "What does he mean, Juffrouw Rovers? 
 Gerard, what is the joke?" 
 
 "Joke? none. Ask Juffrouw Rovers." 
 
 "So I have, but she doesn't tell me." 
 
 "Then you may be sure it is a little secret between 
 Ursula and me, which / shall keep. I am not respon- 
 sible for what she may do." 
 
 She had the good taste not to press the subject, 
 but she reverted to it as soon as she found herself alone 
 with her lover.
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. 121 
 
 "Gerard, what is this silly secret between you and 
 Miss Rovers?" 
 
 "My dear child, how inquisitive you are! I thought 
 you liked secrets." 
 
 "Yes, when one is in them. I told you I should 
 be jealous." 
 
 "Of Ursula! How ridiculous! Utterly absurd. Ur- 
 sula!" 
 
 "Well, I daresay I shall often be absurd. At any 
 rate, Gerard, you would please me by not calling her 
 'Ursula.' She is not a relation of yours." 
 
 "But I have known her all my life. I used to drag 
 her in a go-cart." 
 
 "I know. And it seems to me you behave very 
 strangely for people who have always been intimate. You 
 seem suddenly afraid of each other since this afternoon." 
 
 "I am afraid of — that is, bored by — every girl but 
 one since this afternoon. I am exceedingly bored by 
 the prospect before me to-night. Don't let's spoil the 
 one hour of happiness left us." 
 
 "The one hour! How tragic that sounds!" she 
 laughed. 
 
 "To-morrow we will go down to the Manor House, 
 there will be more hours there in the moonlight on the 
 terrace. Say again that you love me, Nellie." 
 
 "Yes, I love you," she replied, and her voice was 
 some soul-voice, quite different from her usual high- 
 pitched tones. "I have loved you for a long time," 
 she added, and then, suddenly with the old, every-day 
 ring: "There, I had made up my mind not to tell you 
 that before our golden wedding. Papotier says a girl 
 should never tell it at all, because the confession is
 
 122 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 ill-advised; and mamma says she certainly shouldn't, 
 because the feeling, if there, was a thing to be 
 ashamed of." 
 
 "Ashamed of love? But my dearest?" 
 
 "No, I should never be ashamed of loving anyone. 
 Not even a footman." 
 
 "Thank you," sot to voce, from Gerard. 
 
 "We must bear the consequences of our virtues. 
 I can't understand anyone's being ashamed of Move.' 
 Can you?" 
 
 "I can't understand any man's keeping quiet his 
 love for you. I want to shout out mine on the house- 
 tops! Now that Ursula knows — I mean Juffrouw Rovers 
 — why not proclaim the engagement to-night?" 
 
 "And your mother?" 
 
 So they whiled away the time on the verandah, look- 
 ing down into the garden, where a large marquee had 
 been put up for the dancers, with a music tent and 
 strings of Chinese lanterns. Meanwhile, the Baroness 
 lay back dozing in little audible gasps, and Ursula sat 
 looking at photographs of Italy with Mademoiselle Pa- 
 potier, who had forgotten all the names. 
 
 "Yes, that is Pavia," said Mademoiselle Papotier. 
 "Or, perhaps, it's Pisa. I think it must be Pisa, be- 
 cause of the crooked tower." 
 
 "Oh, that's only the photograph," replied Ursula, 
 listlessly, "the angle's wrong." 
 
 "Do you think so? Look at the turtle-doves billing 
 and cooing. Isn't it sweet?" 
 
 Mademoiselle nodded towards the verandah, with 
 keen scrutiny of her companion's face. Ursula blushed 
 again, that terrible tell-tale blush.
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. I 23 
 
 "And this place with all the boats," she said, "I 
 suppose is Venice?" 
 
 The guests began to arrive, and Mevrouw van Tros- 
 sart pushed her cap across from the right to the left. 
 It was quite a young people's entertainment, more or 
 less impromptu, and Ursula, already so greatly dis- 
 tressed by her toilet, noticed that many of the girls 
 were more simply dressed than she. The acuteness of 
 annoyance about this deadened, for a time, the sick 
 anxiety at her heart. 
 
 She went out into the garden; she had fancied the 
 fete would mean music and refreshments and fireworks; 
 she now suddenly saw that the marquee was prepared 
 for dancing. There had been no intimation, that she 
 knew, on her card. She had never learnt the art. 
 
 "May I have the first valse?" asked Willie van 
 Troyen, who had just been introduced, for that purpose, 
 by the Baroness. 
 
 "I don't dance," she said, pulling at her gloves. "I 
 didn't know people were going to." 
 
 "They often do," said Willie, "don't they? At a 
 dance." He laughed heartily; he thought that was 
 rather witty. And he betook himself to some one else. 
 
 So Ursula sat in a corner of the tent, or out on a 
 bench, and was a bore. 
 
 The Baroness "made" talk with her from time to 
 time in laborious sentences, and one or two other elderly 
 people tried the same experiment. All the time, as she 
 sat there disconsolate, one question was burning at her 
 brain: How must I act regarding Gerard? Must I 
 save this innocent girl or must I not? Sometimes the girl
 
 124 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 was Adeline, more often Helen, but the question remained 
 the same. 
 
 "And this is your first party?" said a good-natured 
 man. "I don't think you seem to be enjoying yourself." 
 
 "Oh, don't let Mevrouw hear you say that," she 
 cried in alarm. The Baroness happened to be passing. 
 Yes, undoubtedly, Ursula was a drag. 
 
 "Come out into the garden," said Gerard, stopping 
 before her, "it's tremendously hot here. I've kept this 
 dance free for you; we'll sit it out." She rose and 
 obeyed him. 
 
 Helen came out of the room where her uncle and 
 his cronies were playing whist, with closed windows. 
 Her whole figure was a-sparkle with happiness. "Isn't 
 it beautiful?" she asked of her own Papotier. "The 
 weather is perfect, the garden is perfect, the music is 
 perfect. I don't think we ever had such a pleasant 
 party before." 
 
 "It is your own joy, ma che'rie," said the governess, 
 drawing her pupil to the dark staircase window, where 
 she, Mademoiselle, stood watching the dancers. She 
 pointed to a corner, half-hidden by a willow, in which 
 Gerard and Ursula could be dimly descried. "That is 
 the prologue, my child, to your romance," she said. 
 "Make haste to get on to the story." 
 
 "Mademoiselle!" 
 
 "Hush! I watched her at dinner, when Madame 
 the Baroness spoke. I have watched them since. It is 
 nothing, my dear; it is even delightful — a compliment. 
 But your lover must put a full stop to the prologue. 
 Perhaps he is doing it now. Creep behind, if you will, 
 and hear what they say."
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. 125 
 
 "No, indeed," cried the young Freule, with warmth. 
 
 A little later Ursula was again alone on the garden 
 seat. She had exchanged but a few distressful sen- 
 tences with Gerard. He had reproached her with 
 behaviour he hardly cared or dared to analyse, and 
 she had answered hastily, eager to vindicate herself, but 
 still more firmly resolved to screen Harriet's reputation. 
 Even while she was explaining, lamely, she had under- 
 stood the incredulous smile on his face. He had come 
 out of the brief conflict as a champion of female 
 modesty, leaving her helplessly, guiltily crushed. 
 
 A white figure glided through the dusk, and sank 
 down by her side. The evening was gentle as velvet, 
 caressingly warm and soft. Over yonder shone the great 
 yellow glare of the music and the moving shadows: on 
 all sides gay, ghastly paper lanterns went breaking the 
 solemn silence of the trees. This spot of Ursula's 
 choosing was dark and willow-sheltered, alone beneath 
 the calm blue height of heaven. 
 
 "Juffrouw Rovers," said the Freule, "what is this 
 joke between you and Gerard? You see, I am curious. 
 You must forgive a spoilt child. What did he mean 
 about your showing the white feather?" 
 
 "Don't ask me, Freule, please," replied Ursula, 
 shortly. "For I can't tell you." 
 
 "So Gerard says. It must be a very dreadful 
 secret!" This was said laughingly. 
 
 Silence. From the tent came the strains of the 
 "Liebchen Ade" gallop. 
 
 "Great heaven, it must be a very dreadful secret!" 
 The Freule half rose from her seat: her voice trembled. 
 She caught Ursula's arm.
 
 126 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "It can only be," she said, steadying herself, "that 
 Gerard made love to you formerly. That is rather like 
 him. I am sorry. I was wrong. But you have made 
 up your mind to forget him, have you not? He is so 
 charming; no wonder women love him. Poor child, it 
 was cruel of us, in our ignorance, to invite you to 
 behold our happiness." In a sudden impulse of womanly 
 pity she put an arm round Ursula's bare neck. 
 
 "It isn't that," gasped Ursula. "Don't please say I 
 love Gerard. Oh, Freule, it's a great deal worse." 
 
 She hardly knew what she was saying. She covered 
 her face with her hands. 
 
 "A great deal worse!" repeated Helen drawing 
 away. Ursula started at the hardness which had come 
 into the Freule's voice. "That can only mean— - — " 
 Helen got up and stood at the further end of the seat. 
 "I refuse to say it," she continued. "I refuse to believe 
 it. You two are mad." 
 
 The dance-music came faster from the lawn. Ursula, 
 her head bowed low upon her lap, felt that in her cup 
 of unmerited bitterness not a drop was left undrunk. 
 
 "I want to know the truth," Helen went on after a 
 moment. "I have a right to know it to-night. If you 
 still feel any love for Gerard, do him a good turn 
 now. We are girls together. No one will hear you 
 but I. Tell me exactly what there is to tell, and I will 
 forgive him." 
 
 "I have nothing to tell," murmured Ursula. 
 
 The Freule stamped her foot. 
 
 "You are ruining his life," she said. "I will never 
 marry him till I know how much you have been to each 
 other. What happens after marriage must be settled
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. I 2 "] 
 
 after marriage; but what happened before I will know 
 now." 
 
 "We have never been anything to each other," whis- 
 pered Ursula. "Oh, Freule, have pity and let me 
 alone!" But even as she spoke her mood changed. 
 Why should she agonise to save this girl's selfish hap- 
 piness at the cost of her own honour, of an innocent 
 victim's peace? She lifted herself up. "Ask no con- 
 fessions of me," she said. "Ask them of your future 
 husband. He is nothing to me. You have no right to 
 assume that he ever was." 
 
 Even in the shade she saw Helen change colour. 
 A long silence deepened between them. Somebody in 
 another nook not far distant laughed shrilly. There 
 was a clatter of glasses. 
 
 "What happened before I must know," said Helen, 
 at last. "I will never marry him until I do." 
 
 "You do not mean that," said Ursula, but the other 
 took no notice. 
 
 "I understand," she continued, "it is some other 
 woman." She tossed up her head. "I knew I wasn't 
 marrying a saint," she said. "He warned me about 
 that himself. But, of course, all you speak of is past." 
 Then she broke into sudden passion. "How dare you 
 come and talk of such things to me?" she cried, 
 advancing on Ursula. "How dare you do it?" 
 
 "But I have talked of nothing!" exclaimed the 
 pastor's daughter. "It is you who torment me " 
 
 "I know. Never mind," said the Freule, inter- 
 rupting; "tell me one thing. This girl that you and 
 Gerard are thinking of was — was — infamous." 
 
 Ac^m the silence which is dissent. The Freule
 
 128 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 broke into a cry. Fortunately the music drowned it. 
 The "Liebchen Ade" gallop was finishing up fast and 
 furious. 
 
 "Don't tell me she was good like — like you and 
 me! Don't tell me, I don't want to hear it. I don't 
 care. I know how the whole story runs: it's in so many 
 novels. All men do such things. And the girl goes 
 on the stage!" 
 
 The music had stopped. The bright dancers were 
 flowing out into the cooler grounds. 
 
 "You needn't tell me anything," said the Freule, 
 hurriedly but quietly. "I have guessed it all. This girl 
 is good and honest, and she hoped that Gerard would 
 marry her. She hopes so still. You hope it. Of course 
 there is a child— there always is. It is the stalest form 
 of pathetic feuilleton, and, therefore, it comes true in 
 my life. Good-bye, Juffrouw Rovers." 
 
 She sank down on the seat again and waved away 
 her companion, hiding her golden head on her arms 
 against the back. It was very still now in this forgotten 
 corner. Ursula stole off to the house, without taking 
 leave of anyone, and, having recovered her cloak, went 
 out into the desolate street, alone and on foot, amid 
 the stupefied stares of the domestics. 
 
 Several minutes elapsed before Helen lifted her 
 head. She stared from her bench into the night. 
 
 "Why not?" she said, half aloud; "I love him. 
 All women do it. There was that creature at the 
 church gate, with her brats, when Henri van Troyen 
 was married." 
 
 She gathered her white laces about her and shivered, 
 as she rose to walk towards the house. On the stairs,
 
 ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS. 120, 
 
 at the same post, by her dark window, like a spy, still 
 stood the French governess. 
 
 "Ma vieille," began Helen, "will you please tell 
 mamma I have gone to my room with a very bad 
 headache, and want nobody to disturb me — not even 
 her or yourself." 
 
 "But, my dear " 
 
 "The romance is changing to a tragedy," said Helen. 
 "Good-night." 
 
 Jlfy Lady Nobody. /.
 
 I 30 MY LADY NOBODY, 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 "AN old maid's LOVE." 
 
 "Yes, uncle, I should like to go back to Horstwyk 
 to-day," Ursula was saying at breakfast. "I have had 
 a letter from father, and Aunt Josine seems far from 
 well." 
 
 She had found the letter on her return from last 
 night's dissipation. It was a long and affectionate let- 
 ter, full of praises of Otto, who came frequently to the 
 parsonage, enjoying the quiet strength of the minister's 
 talk. The letter certainly stated that Miss Mopius had 
 been laid up with a feverish cold. 
 
 "Nonsense, Ursula," cried Mynheer Mopius loudly. 
 "Of course, Josine has been ill: it's her solitary pastime. 
 Why, your visit has hardly begun." 
 
 "We want to hear all about last night," interposed 
 Harriet in her sleepy tones. "You look quite worn 
 out this morning; you must have enjoyed yourself im- 
 mensely." 
 
 "Oh, bother last night," said Mopius. "We don't 
 care to know about the grandees. Were there many of 
 them there?" 
 
 "Yes, there were a good many people," replied 
 Ursula wearily, "most of them young. I didn't enjoy 
 myself so very much, because, you see, I don't dance." 
 
 "Was the Governor there, or his wife," asked Mo-
 
 "an old maid's love." 131 
 
 pins, "or the Burgomaster? I suppose you saw the Van 
 Troyens?" 
 
 "And the Governor's daughter?" added Harriet. 
 "The pretty girl with the hazel eyes?" 
 
 "I remember a Mr. Van Troyen, an officer," said 
 Ursula vaguely. "Uncle, may I send a telegram for 
 this afternoon. I could always come back again on 
 Monday, you know." 
 
 "Can't you miss one of your father's discourses? 
 I should have thought Sunday was the' one day you'd 
 like to stay away. But I don't see what you go out 
 into society for, Ursula. At Batavia I danced with the 
 Governor-General's lady." 
 
 "Always?" asked Harriet — her invariable question 
 at this stage of the story. 
 
 "No, not always. I remember, just as I led her 
 up, I saw there was a huge snake coiled round her 
 arm." 
 
 "How dreadful!" said Ursula, stolidly. She had 
 heard the denouement on former occasions, but for- 
 gotten it. 
 
 "A gold snake! Ha! — ha! — ha! Somebody snatched 
 it off a few months afterwards. A brave man. Ha! — 
 ha! — ha! And your aunt used to dance too. Do you 
 remember, wife? You were really quite pretty in those 
 days. We'll dance to-night," he added, "and teach 
 Ursula. You dance, Harriet, don't you?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, to any one's pipes," * replied Harriet. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was decided, after some wrangling, 
 that Ursula should return to Horstwyk, as she wished, 
 for the present. Mynheer Mopius chose to be offended. 
 * Idiom. 
 
 9*
 
 132 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 The girl was consumed by a feverish longing to get 
 away out of this hothouse atmosphere into the pure re- 
 pose of her country home. All morning she hid away 
 in her room, afraid to look out on the little town, over 
 which, to her excited fancy, an ominous thunder-cloud 
 seemed to hang. What would happen next? How would 
 Helen act? How Gerard? In her heart she hoped that 
 justice would be done to the injured shop-girl, and yet 
 dared not measure the result. 
 
 Just before luncheon a note was brought her. She 
 sat down before opening it. Harriet laughed. "With 
 due preparation," said Harriet. "What is it? Another 
 invitation to a dance?" 
 
 The letter contained only these words, written by 
 Helen: 
 
 "Keep my secret: I would have kept yours." 
 
 They left her no wiser. 
 
 "My dear, come into my room for a moment," said 
 Mevrouw Mopius, with timid voice. The feeble little 
 creature sniffed nervously. "Forget what I told you, 
 Ursula," she went on, as soon as they were alone. 
 "And remember you are bound by oath. If Mopius 
 ever hears, it must be through you." She peered sternly 
 at her niece. 
 
 "Yes, dear, I will remember," replied Ursula. "But 
 you are feeling better, aunt, are you not? You are not 
 as bad as when I came." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius smiled. "I shall be better soon," 
 she said. Then she went to her particular old-fashioned 
 mahogany "secretary," and, after a good deal of
 
 "AN OLD MAID'S LOVE." 1 33 
 
 fumbling and searching, extracted from one of many- 
 receptacles a small tissue-paper parcel, which she 
 brought back to Ursula. "This is for you," she said, 
 thrusting it into the girl's hand. "I've made it since 
 you came, sitting up in bed these summer mornings." 
 Ursula opened the parcel, her aunt watching meanwhile 
 with a certain pride. 
 
 It contained a small square bit of red woolwork, 
 with the bead-embroidered device: "No cross, no 
 crown," the two substantives being presented pictorially. 
 
 "I could have taken more time to it," pleaded Me- 
 vrouw Mopius, "but I had to wait for the daylight: a 
 candle wakes your uncle; and, once up, I have to work 
 at 'Laban and Jacob.' I am exceedingly anxious to 
 get them ready before " She stopped. "Good- 
 bye, my dear," she said. "I hope you like my work. 
 You might use it under a lamp, or for the fire-irons, 
 unless you disapprove of that on account of the words. 
 I don't think I should." 
 
 So Ursula returned very quietly and humbly. There 
 was no marshalling of porters, and she travelled second 
 class. At the little market-town station her father met 
 her; together they trudged the two miles, side by side, 
 almost silently, for the girl's few answers had soon con- 
 vinced the Domine that conversation had become for 
 the moment, what he most detested, an ambuscade. 
 
 In the half light of the calm, cool study, amid the 
 well-known, stilly sympathetic books, she sat with her 
 two hands in his one, on a footstool by the faded 
 leather armchair, and, lifting those big brown eyes of 
 hers to his steadfast response, she told him how the
 
 134 lrv LADY NOBODY. 
 
 city is full of wickedness incredible, and that Apollyon 
 rules the world. 
 
 He listened to her, very quietly, and yet he was 
 greatly shocked. True, evil had few secrets for him; 
 he had seen more of the world's corruption than most 
 men, in the red glare of the Algerian night, amid the 
 devil's dance of shrieking drunkenness and bare-breasted 
 debauch. He had seen too much. He was one of 
 those happy mortals who always think the world is 
 better than it used to be. "In my day" — he would 
 begin, and sigh cheerfully — "but we have greatly im- 
 proved since then." It was doubly sad, therefore, to 
 hear that Gerard, the warrior, despite the weekly bugle- 
 call to resistance, should have surrendered at discre- 
 tion to so pitiful a cut-throat as Lustings. The Do- 
 mine had an ineradicable weakness for a brave soldier. 
 Havelock and Hedley Vicars hung large against his 
 peaceful wall, and between them a very different hero, 
 Bugeaud. 
 
 "Well, my dear," said the Domine, while Ursula, 
 having finished, sat heavy with sorrowful wrath. "Well, 
 my dear, the farther we go, the more we see of the 
 battlefield. I am not sorry you should have recon- 
 noitred a little. And I rejoice all the more now to think 
 how mistaken I was about you and Gerard. You must 
 know, my dear, that at one time, though I never men- 
 tioned it to you, I fancied you might be setting your 
 affections on the Jonker. I spoke of it unwillingly to 
 your aunt, for I had no other woman to confide in" 
 — the Domine's voice grew reflective — "but she said it 
 was all stuff and nonsense, at once, and you weren't 
 such a piece of vanity as that. Your aunt is not a
 
 "an old maid's love." 135 
 
 woman of exceptional discrimination; still, I am glad 
 to see she was right. It would have been a great 
 mistake on your part, Ursula, and a cause of much 
 useless regret." 
 
 "I shall never love any man but you," said Ursula 
 vehemently. "They're all alike. No woman ought to 
 marry." 
 
 The pastor smiled, and passed his hand over her 
 smooth head. 
 
 "I hope," he said, "that you will never know a 
 worthless love. A hopeless love, even a dead love, 
 these may ennoble man or woman. But a love of the 
 undeserving can only lure into an impasse." 
 
 She smiled confidently. 
 
 "No; the Jonker van Helmont is not for such as us, 
 Ursula," continued the old man. "So much the better. 
 My child, you will marry if God pleases and whom He 
 pleases; but I hope it will be in your own station of life. 
 Not that we must judge any class as such. There is 
 Otto, for instance. He is not a pleasure-seeker. We 
 have seen much of him, my dear, in your absence. 
 He most kindly came to comfort me. He has returned 
 from the Indies as he went, the same pure lover of all 
 that is good. Even in our day the Almighty leads 
 some men untainted through the furnace." And the 
 simple-hearted pastor launched into praises of his 
 favourite, unwittingly digging pit-falls on paths as yet 
 untrod. 
 
 "And as for most men," he said, "human nature is 
 still much what it was in the days of Thucydides. 
 What says Diodorus, the son of Eucrates, the Athenian? 
 'All men are naturally disposed to do wrong; and no
 
 I36 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 law will ever keep them from it.' And that was the 
 historian's own view; he repeats it some chapters later. 
 As for women, you remember what he makes Pericles 
 say of them. It holds true, in spite of emancipation. 
 'Great is the glory of her who is least talked of among 
 the men, either for good or for evil.' You remember 
 that, Ursula?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed, Captain," said Ursula, into whose 
 whole life this maxim had been constantly woven. 
 
 "You might read the history through once more 
 with the greatest advantage. No writer that I know 
 will reveal to you more of the conflict of human pas- 
 sions, excepting, of course, John Bunyan." 
 
 The good pastor did not know many writers. He 
 was not by any means a literary man. 
 
 Miss Mopius sailed into the room, unannounced, 
 and interrupted their quiet conversation. Two little 
 peculiarities of this lady's — trifles, light as air — were 
 a source of unending irritation to her brother-in-law. 
 The one was her tacit refusal to prelude her invasions 
 of his sanctum, the other was her persistent drawl of 
 his soldierly name into a sound which was neither 
 French nor English, nor anything but absurd. The 
 Domine was a brave man; he was exceedingly afraid 
 of his dead wife's sister, not so much on account of 
 himself as on account of the use to which Diabolus put 
 her in the great siege of the Domine's Mansoul. 
 
 By sheer force of will Miss Mopius had taught her- 
 self to admit that she was thirty-two years old, but she 
 would never see forty again. She was endowed with a 
 sallow complexion to which she had added auburn 
 ringlets and rainbow-coloured raiment. To describe
 
 "an old maid's love." 137 
 
 her as an entirely imaginary invalid would have been 
 malevolent; nature had provided her with a tendency 
 to nervous headaches which kindly fostering had de- 
 veloped into a vocation. 
 
 She had come to the widower as a thorn in the flesh. 
 Limp and listless, absolutely unable to "resist" anything 
 that attracted her, she devoted herself day and night 
 to the harassing service of her own caprices. Being 
 not entirely destitute of means, she might easily have 
 enjoyed her nerves to the full in some boarding-house, 
 but she knew her duty to her motherless niece. 
 
 "I should not stay with you, Roderigue," she was 
 wont to say, "though Ursula, of course, will not marry 
 for many years yet. When she does, I shall consider 
 my mission is ended. I should not be wanted then." 
 
 She paused, expectant. But the Domine never an- 
 swered, for he held that, in the spiritual warfare, a false- 
 hood is the easiest and most cowardly method of run- 
 ning away. 
 
 "Ursula, my dear," began Miss Mopius, in a flow 
 of sugared vinegar, "I have been suffering the greatest 
 anxiety. I thought you had not returned. I suppose, 
 however, the train was late." 
 
 Ursula, rising hastily, confessed that the train had 
 been punctual. 
 
 "Really! Well, I'm afraid I interrupted you. This 
 conversation must have been of the greatest importance, 
 or you would hardly have so entirely forgotten your 
 poor old aunt." Miss Mopius constantly used that 
 appellation; of late she had sometimes wondered 
 whether it was becoming unwise. She spoke in almost
 
 130 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 continuous italics; these, however, were mostly in- 
 dependent of sense. 
 
 "I suppose your father informed you," she con- 
 tinued, settling herself in the Domine's chair, "that I 
 have been exceedingly unwell since you left. Day after 
 day I have dragged myself downstairs, so as not to let 
 him sit down to his dinner alone, but my nights were 
 too terrible to speak of." She paused, that Ursula 
 might speak of them. 
 
 "I'm so sorry," said Ursula, without any accent at all. 
 
 "Last night, for instance, I was in agony from 
 twelve to three — in agony. I don't know what I should 
 have done without my vegetable electricity. I took it 
 at three, and the pain vanished immediately." 
 
 "Why didn't you take it at once?" asked Ursula. 
 
 "Ursula, you have not the slightest comprehension 
 of medicines. Fortunate child, it is your lack of ex- 
 perience. Medicines never act if taken at once." 
 
 The Domine had basely deserted his own fortress. 
 
 "Ursula, my dear," said Miss Mopius, sitting up with 
 quite unusual energy. "No wonder my health has 
 suffered. Something very important has happened since 
 you went away." 
 
 "Really?" asked Ursula, wondering what the maid- 
 of-all-work had broken. 
 
 "Yes, but it's no use speaking of it to your father. 
 Ursula, Otto van Helmont comes here every evening. 
 Since you left, mind you. Now, I ask, what can that 
 mean?" 
 
 "He had only four evenings before I left," replied 
 Ursula, with some spirit, "one of them was free and 
 he came."
 
 "an old maid's love." 139 
 
 "One doesn't count. That was a formal call," re- 
 plied Miss Mopius, loftily. "I ask what does it mean? 
 He sits and talks, and talks. Nominally to your father. 
 Ursula, I have watched him; he never speaks to me." 
 She sank back in her chair and began to count on her 
 lanky fingers, without taking further note of her com- 
 panion. "He never speaks to me — one. He never 
 looks at me — two. But he brought me a nosegay — 
 three. He said it was from his mother — four." She 
 roused herself from her reverie. "Ursula, my child," 
 she asked, "why does he bring me a nosegay, and say 
 it is from his mother?" 
 
 "Because it is," replied Ursula. 
 
 Miss Mopius scornfully shook her curls. "Does the 
 Baroness send me roses in midsummer?" she inquired. 
 "Dear girl, you are too young: I should have considered 
 that. But there are moments in a woman's existence 
 when she craves for the sympathy of her sex. If only 
 my dear elder sister were alive — she was so much my 
 elder! — to help me now. Go, dear child, go; at some 
 distant day your own turn will come, and then you will 
 understand." 
 
 "Yes, aunt," said Ursula, gladly moving towards the 
 door. 
 
 "Stay one instant," cried the spinster. "Child, are 
 you so eager to return to your diversions? He is 
 good-looking, Ursula. I have watched him, as I said. 
 His face is careworn and earnest; he is no mere beard- 
 less boy just dipping into life, but a man who has 
 swum against the current. He has experience and 
 judgment, and he knoivs. Ursula, I would not marry a 
 beardless boy."
 
 I40 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Aunt," said Ursula, suddenly coming back into the 
 room, "do you mean to say you want to marry Mynheer 
 Otto van Helmont?" 
 
 "Silly child, does a woman say such things? Of 
 course, I know, Ursula, as well as you do, that he is 
 much older than I am. That is a matter I must 
 seriously consider before I reply." 
 
 "Do you mean to say he has actually asked you?" 
 cried Ursula, clasping her hands in wonderment. 
 
 "Not directly. Child, how raw you are, and how 
 rawly you put things. But I have my reasons for 
 believing that he will do so to-night. That is why I 
 was unwillingly compelled to speak to you on the 
 subject. Be sure that otherwise I should never have 
 done so." 
 
 "But what have I to do with it?" queried Ursula, 
 stupefied. 
 
 "Not to give your consent, you may be sure," re- 
 torted Miss Mopius, snappishly. "When Otto comes 
 to-night, as he certainly will, I want you, during ten 
 minutes, to draw off your father. The poor fellow never 
 gets a chance. He said as much yesterday, in depart- 
 ing. 'The Domine and I have so much to say to each 
 other,' he remarked, 'that I never seem to have an 
 opportunity of chatting with you, Miss Mopius.' And 
 with that he gave me a look. Ursula, I believe you 
 take me for a fool. Do you?" 
 
 "Oh, no, dear aunt," exclaimed Ursula, hastily. 
 
 "One would say so, if you imagine I suck these 
 things out of my thumb.* I assure you I have very 
 good reason to know what I know. I am not a chit, 
 * Idiom.
 
 "an old maid's love." 141 
 
 like you, to fancy a man is in love because he looks 
 at me." 
 
 "There, there, go away," she added. "The whole 
 thing has greatly exhausted me. I am not strong; that 
 is the worst. But so I shall honestly tell him." 
 
 "You will accept him," cried Ursula, preparing to 
 vanish. 
 
 "That will depend upon various considerations," 
 replied Miss Mopius. "What is it, Drika? Ursula, 
 hold your tongue, and let the servant pass." 
 
 Ursula turned hastily in the open doorway. 
 
 "The Jonker Otto is in the drawing-room," said the 
 red-cheeked maid. 
 
 Miss Mopius turned pale, then red. "Go to him, 
 child," she said, pleadingly. "Amuse him till I come. 
 And remember " 
 
 Ursula did not go in to Otto. A sudden shyness 
 was upon her; besides she felt no desire to meet any 
 member just now of the Van Helmont family. So the 
 Jonker paced up and down the little parlour till the 
 Domine was attracted in to him through the windows. 
 
 Juffrouw Josine spent twenty minutes over the secrets 
 of her toilet. Her poor old heart beat wildly. "He 
 cannot even wait till the evening," she thought. "The 
 densest fool would understand." When at last she 
 descended, arrayed in her best Sunday green silk dress 
 with the poppies, she was surrounded by odours of Ess. 
 Bouquet and sal volatile. 
 
 She had to pause before the drawing-room door 
 and steady herself. She entered. There was Otto, a 
 great bunch of apricot-coloured roses in one hand, bend- 
 ing over a map of Java with the Domine. "That is my
 
 142^ MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 part," lie was saying. "One of the healthiest, I assure 
 you, Domine. All the men take their wives out there." 
 
 "Ah!" thought Miss Mopius. She shook hands, and 
 the Jonker rather awkwardly presented his flowers. 
 
 "From my mother," he stammered, "to welcome 
 Miss Rovers." 
 
 "How kind of you to bring them," replied Miss 
 Mopius, sitting down on the sofa and sniffing. "I hope 
 Ursula will be grateful. I consider it most exceedingly 
 kind." 
 
 She squinted across at the Domine, who still bent 
 over the map. There was a long wait, and Otto re- 
 turned to the table. 
 
 "Roderigue," said Miss Mopius, in desperation. 
 "Ursula wants you. She wants you at once!" 
 
 The minister lifted a countenance of mild astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 "Very well," he said, remembering his daughter's 
 painful experiences of the last days, "I'll be back in a 
 moment, Otto. I want to ask you about that mission 
 station you were telling me of." 
 
 Otto seated himself near to the lady. 
 
 "Miss Rovers, I hear," said Otto, "has safely re- 
 turned." 
 
 The lady bowed over her flowers. 
 
 "She came back earlier than she had intended," 
 continued the Jonker. "I suppose that she felt being 
 away from what is doubtless a most happy home." 
 
 "I try to make it happy," murmured Miss Mopius. 
 
 "Could you do otherwise?" said Otto, fervently. 
 And he added, in a tone that was almost sad, "It seems 
 cruel to disturb your trefoil even for a day."
 
 "AN OLD MAID'S LOVE." 1 43 
 
 And he looked at her meditatively. 
 
 Miss Mopius gasped for breath. She muttered some- 
 thing about "leaving and cleaving." 
 
 Otto stared at her. 
 
 "Yes; it's very hot," he hazarded. "Shall I open 
 the window?" 
 
 Miss Mopius somewhat recovered herself. 
 
 "Oh!" she replied, "but not as hot as Java, I sup- 
 pose? Not nearly as hot as Java. I should enjoy Java. 
 I like heat. I'm not strong, Mynheer van Helmont, but 
 the hot weather always does me good. I'm sure I should 
 feel much better in Java." 
 
 "Yes," he said vaguely. "Would you prefer me, 
 then, to shut the window again?" 
 
 "The window? Perhaps it would be better under 
 the circumstances. The question you asked me just 
 now is so momentous, Mynheer van Helmont, I do not 
 know how to answer it. Oh, that my dear elder sister 
 were with me still! She was very much my elder, very 
 much so. I miss her guidance, her motherly advice." 
 
 She hesitated, and her eyelids fluttered. 
 
 "Juffrouw Rovers' mother?" said Otto. "I suppose 
 she was very beautiful?" 
 
 "Well, I hardly know if you would have called her 
 beautiful. She was not at all like me." 
 
 "Just so," said Otto. "I suppose Juffrouw Rovers 
 is like her?" 
 
 "Oh, no; Ursula takes after her father's family. The 
 Mopiuses were always famous for their delicate skins." 
 
 "Ah!" said Otto, shifting on his chair. "Well, 
 I am a plain man; perhaps not of much a judge of 
 beauty "
 
 144 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Oh, don't say that," interposed the lady, smiling. 
 
 "But I know when I like a face, Miss Mopius. I 
 think an honest face is of more importance than mere 
 good looks." 
 
 "Oh, of course," assented the lady, reddening. 
 
 "I mean in a man. I trust, Miss Mopius, -that you 
 have no aversion to my face — or me." 
 
 The lady tittered, and buried her nose in her bouquet. 
 
 "I wish I could natter myself you even liked me. 
 But that's nonsense. I'm a conceited fool." 
 
 "I do," whispered the spinster, with downcast eyes 
 —"a little." 
 
 Otto got up and warmly clasped her disengaged 
 hand. 
 
 "How good it is of you to say that," he cried, 
 heartily. "Then you will, won't you? How awfully 
 good of you." And, with another energetic shake of 
 those skinny fingers, he walked from the room. 
 
 Miss Mopius opened her eyes wide, very wide. 
 Presently, however, she nodded her curls. 
 
 "Of course," she murmured, "he has gone to speak 
 with Rodrigue." 
 
 A soft flush spread over her pale cheeks, and she 
 waited.
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. I45 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 
 
 Ursula sat by herself in the verandah through the 
 sweetly falling silence of the summer Sabbath evening. 
 She had now been back in her tranquil home for more 
 than four-and-twenty hours. It was good for her that 
 her return had heralded the holy calm of that long, 
 sunlight-flooded day of rest. She had slept as young 
 twenty sleeps when worn out, whether from work or 
 weeping; she had risen as young twenty rises, to a 
 world that is bright again. The peace of the familiar 
 village-round was upon her: the drowsy morning service, 
 the droning Sunday school, the empty afternoon 
 "catechism." Had her father's text, she wondered, 
 been inspired by the thought of his absent child at 
 Drum? He had preached on "Keep yourself unspotted 
 from the world." She desired nothing more ardently. 
 Here was she returned in time to point the moral. 
 
 Her hands lay idle in her lap, an emblem of the 
 day's repose. The whole village had folded its hands 
 to watch the lengthening shadows. A few conspicuous 
 white shirt-sleeves lolled against the churchyard wall. 
 And, somewhere, a bullfinch was carolling, breaking the 
 Sabbath in his own divinely appointed way. 
 
 "How hushed it all is," thought Ursula, looking up 
 to the far plumes of the motionless poplars. And the 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 10
 
 I46 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 lull sank around her own soul. Why break our hearts 
 over the scuffling and splashing of one or two swimmers? 
 The river of God's glory flows steadily on. She laid a 
 tired head on its current; for a moment the waters were 
 stilled. 
 
 She did not even care to penetrate the mystery 
 concerning her Aunt Josine. The confidences of the 
 preceding afternoon had been succeeded by an extreme 
 reserve which the lady's two companions almost provok- 
 ingly respected. The pastor knew of nothing. At dinner, 
 on the Saturday, he had been mildly astonished by an 
 atmosphere of constraint, in the midst of which his 
 sister-in-law had suddenly ejaculated: 
 
 "Well, Roderigue?" with the vehemence of a bomb- 
 shell. 
 
 He had answered: 
 
 "Well, Josine? It certainly is much better than the 
 last joint, though she will over- roast it," a reply which 
 did not seem to give full satisfaction to its recipient. 
 
 "He has gone, first of all, to obtain his father's per- 
 mission," thought Miss Mopius. "I might have known. 
 With the aristocracy a father is a very important per- 
 sonage." 
 
 She retired early with a headache which not even 
 the vegetable electricity could combat. It extended 
 over the Sunday, as Miss Mopius's headaches naturally 
 would. She lay on her sofa and sighed at intervals. 
 People would not be surprised at her lying on the sofa. 
 Had she not sighed at intervals, Ursula would have 
 risen to see what was wrong. 
 
 The church-clock had just struck seven; in the en-
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 1 47 
 
 suing pause of expectancy its last note was still trem- 
 bling away into nothing, when Ursula's closed eyes 
 became conscious that somebody was watching them. 
 She started to her feet in confusion, a little ruffled and 
 rumpled, before the admiring gaze of the Jonker Otto 
 van Helmont. 
 
 "I must have been dozing off," she said. 
 
 "You were asleep. I am sorry I woke you," replied 
 honest Otto, "but I came with a message from my 
 mother. She is very anxious to speak to you. She — 
 she wants you to come up to-night. If you would?" 
 
 Ursula hesitated. She saw the dog-cart standing 
 by the gate, a village lad erect at the horse's head. 
 Continental Sabbaths are not like English; still, the 
 Domine's daughter was not accustomed to Sunday- 
 driving. 
 
 "She made me come," continued Otto, apologeti- 
 cally; "but if you'd rather stay " 
 
 "I will ask papa, and be ready in five minutes," she 
 answered, promptly. Her pulse quickened. Doubtless, 
 there was some fresh trouble about Gerard. If so, it 
 was her duty to "go through." 
 
 Presently Otto saw her coming down the garden path 
 with her strong brisk step, in straw hat and woolly wrap, 
 all light and bright, among the thick gaiety of the wall- 
 flowers and the pink flare of the hollyhocks. 
 
 "Why it's Beauty!" she cried, as she drew near, 
 recognising the mare. 
 
 "Yes, none of the other horses were available, and 
 none of the men were about, so I harnessed her myself 
 and came away. I hope Gerard won't object, for once. 
 It couldn't be helped."
 
 148 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 No one but Gerard, and Gerard's particular groom, 
 was allowed to touch Gerard's particular mare. She 
 was his prime favourite, and deservedly so, for neither 
 of the saddle-horses could stand in her shadow. But 
 most horses, unlike men, have, one or two faults, and 
 Beauty's was nervousness. 
 
 "You know we expected Gerard this morning," be- 
 gan Otto, as the dog-cart bowled along. "He was to 
 have brought my cousin with him, you know. But in 
 their stead comes a telegram this afternoon to say that 
 Helen is ill. Mother worries to know what is really the 
 matter, and she has sent for you to give her the latest 
 news of them all." 
 
 Ursula did not answer. She had expected further 
 embroilment. And, somehow, she was growing to feel 
 awkward in Otto's presence despite, or perhaps partly 
 on account of, her father's praise. That morning, dur- 
 ing church, she had been sensible of his quiet admira- 
 tion, and had experienced, for the first time in her 
 existence, not the blush of being stared at, but the glow 
 of being discreetly observed. 
 
 Now, again, as she sat watching the horse's head, 
 she perceived, without seeing them, some long-drawn 
 side-glances. Her nostrils tingled, and she wished there 
 had been a groom on the back-seat. 
 
 "Well, and did you enjoy your uncle's Indian 
 stories?" queried Otto, breaking a silence that was be- 
 coming acute. "Did he tell you anything very dreadful 
 this time? How often did he find a tiger under his 
 pillow at Batavia?" 
 
 She laughed, and they talked lightly of Uncle Jaco- 
 bus, and of the life out yonder, in the Indies, where
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. I 49 
 
 everything is gigantic compared with little Holland, even 
 the money-making, and also the mortality. 
 
 "So your mind is made up more firmly than ever," 
 he concluded. "You would never go out to Java on 
 any account?" 
 
 "No," she answered, flushing. "And, besides, re- 
 member my father! What would become of him if I 
 were to leave him alone with" — she pulled up — "him- 
 self!" she said. 
 
 "True," he replied, exceedingly gravely. Both were 
 occupied with their thoughts for a minute or two, and 
 then they began to talk of something else. 
 
 They had reached a spot along the lonely country 
 road where it suddenly curved among a solitary cluster 
 of cottages. On both sides it stretches away, very nar- 
 row and smooth, and almost treeless, between parallel 
 ditches and far-extending fields. Two landaus could 
 not pass each other with safety, but it is largely used 
 in summer time by over-loaded hay-wains. For those 
 who know Holland it is unnecessary to add that a tram- 
 line occupies two-thirds of it. 
 
 This tram-line, which runs largely through desola- 
 tion, has to twist round the curve of the cottages. 
 Where it does so it has just emerged from a thicket; 
 and the whole is so arranged by nature and science 
 that the locomotive can flatten the cottage-children with- 
 out their being alarmed by seeing its approach. 
 
 On this slumbrous Sunday evening the women were 
 enjoying a brief period of repose. The smaller children 
 were in bed; the bigger ones had gone plum-stealing. 
 Fathers and mothers sat stolidly by the door with slow 
 pipe or slower speech. As the dog-cart came racing
 
 150 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 along, the men raised their caps. One of them, how- 
 ever, shouted something. 
 
 "The tram!" exclaimed Ursula, half-rising. Otto 
 had already set his teeth tight: both knew it was too 
 late. Even as the cry went up, the great engine, silent 
 and deadly, loomed in front of them like a hideous, 
 falling rock. There was just room enough between the 
 rails and the cottage-walls for it to graze their lateral 
 splash-board in rushing by. But a carelessly projecting 
 shutter rendered this escape impossible. As the mare 
 sprang aside, the off-wheel caught the obstacle and sent 
 it clattering back against the wall. For an instant — the 
 hundredth part of a second — the double crash all around 
 seemed to stun her: then up went her ears, down went 
 her neck; she was off. 
 
 The villagers ran round the corner, emptily shout- 
 ing. The tram sailed serenely on. 
 
 "Sit still," said the Jonker between his closed teeth. 
 The advice was superfluous, for the girl had immediately 
 sunk back again, clutching the hand-rail beside and 
 behind her, frozen to calm. She did not answer, and 
 the vehicle went rushing on. 
 
 Forward the naked road stretched, white and thin, 
 between two dark lines of water; forward the horse flew, 
 drinking, as it were, that road before it with pendent 
 head — crashing onward in a cloud of dust and stones 
 and sparks. There was nothing to confront or pass 
 them as they tore through yielding infinity, except here 
 and there a sleepy calf that tried to race them as chil- 
 dren would a train. There was nothing but the wide 
 lilac heaven all around, with the boundlessness of an 
 horizon that ever recedes and a highway that ever
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. I5I 
 
 lengthens out. It was the very delirium and terror of 
 motion, such as few mortals can experience, the irresisted, 
 irresistible forward rush of the whole being — the con- 
 centration of all thought into that one idea of a sweep 
 through immensity. For one moment the laws of time 
 and space were annulled; there was no distance, no 
 limit, no measurement, nothing but an infinite impres- 
 sion of velocity. The high carriage sailed through the 
 summer warmth like a bird. On — on — on! For ever 
 and ever. Why, indeed, should it stop? 
 
 And then the conviction that stoppage is inevitable, 
 is imminent, and that it may well mean — death. 
 
 All that, not in a succession of impressions, but in 
 one long-drawn lightning flash, like the flash of the 
 flying brute, only faster. 
 
 Ursula looked up once at Van Helmont. His face 
 was carved in bronze; his arms were straining back; 
 his feet had bent out the splash-board. In another 
 moment it burst away from them in a wide crash of 
 splinters, and threw him forward, silent still. He righted 
 himself with a jerk, but it seemed as if the horse had 
 received a new impetus from the slackening even of 
 that illusory hold. She swept the ground from under 
 her as the tall wheels appeared to stop revolving, in a 
 constant blaze of starlight. Ursula fancied, from the 
 height where she clung, that their progress carried with 
 it a crimson glow through the swiftly receding dust. 
 But it was all so short, though it seemed eternity, and 
 yet she remembers, this very day, each sensation that 
 rose and sank across her brain. Her hat was gone; 
 her hair was flying. One minute of that wild, mad 
 stress, and then—
 
 152 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "I must save you," said Otto. "Don't mind how." 
 
 Even as he spoke, she suddenly remembered that 
 the canal lay straight athwart their course. The canal, 
 not level with the road, not clear, but fifteen feet lower, 
 at the bottom of a stone embankment and landing-place 
 for barges. The blood grew cold in her veins. During 
 the brief frenzy of her alarm, the thought of the canal 
 had not as much as occurred to her. It had been with 
 Otto from the first. 
 
 And — even as he spoke — the violet line of the 
 horizon deepened upon her eyes, where the white road 
 struck dead against fields on the farther side. It turned 
 at a right angle there, as she knew but too well, along 
 the water. 
 
 "It's as much as I can do to keep her head 
 straight," said Otto almost in a whisper. "Another 
 minute, and it will be too late! Ursula, can you help 
 hold the reins, for a moment, without risk of falling 
 out?" 
 
 "Yes," she cried vehemently, angry that he had not 
 asked her five minutes sooner. For so the time seemed 
 to her. 
 
 "It's only for a moment," he continued, "we've got 
 beyond the side-ditches noivT She saw that he was 
 using the one hand he had freed to draw something 
 from his trousers pocket. Her grasp closed, near his 
 other hand, on the reins: she thought that her arms 
 were being drawn from their sockets, but she bit her 
 white lips and held on. He knelt, as well as he could, 
 on the carriage mat, bending over the broken splash- 
 board, and she saw that he held a heavy revolver in
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 1 53 
 
 his bleeding right hand. The glove was torn to rib- 
 bons. 
 
 "The instant I fire, drop the reins," he said quietly, 
 "and hold on to the cart for dear life. It's our only- 
 chance. God help me; we can't — are you ready?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, with staring eyes. 
 
 He had spoken the last question abruptly. In the 
 still evening the line of the embankment already stood 
 out. They were whirling towards it. 
 
 Again he bent forward, and fired. The shot missed, 
 and as the report thundered around her and the reins 
 fell loose on her sides, the mare seemed to rise into the 
 air with the fierceness of her flight. 
 
 Immediately a second flash followed the first; the 
 horse leaped up with a strain that snapped the shafts 
 like two twigs, then fell, struck behind the right ear, a 
 dead weight in the middle of the road. 
 
 Ursula, in dropping the reins as commanded, had 
 flung her full weight on the back-rest behind her. For 
 a moment the dog-cart, crashing forward, tossed her 
 wildly to and fro. She saw Otto ejected, arms foremost, 
 clean away over the dead mare's head. 
 
 Another moment and she was kneeling beside him. 
 Horse and cart lay a confused mass of harness and 
 broken wood. 
 
 She had nothing at hand to help him. She could 
 do nothing. She looked round wildly, vainly. Not 
 being a hysterical maiden, she did not make up her 
 mind he must be dead. But she knew he was in- 
 sensible, and the extent of his injuries she was quite 
 unable to determine. 
 
 She looked down at his resolute face, bronzed
 
 154 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 beneath its heavy moustache, and realised, quite newly, 
 how good he was, how strong, this silent man who had 
 seen so much of the world, this simple man, whom his 
 noble-hearted father so greatly praised. The thought 
 of Gerard flashed across her, Gerard, the beau-ideal of 
 her girlhood, all glory and glitter, a Stage-Baldur with 
 the footlights out. How she longed for Otto to open 
 those calm, blue eyes. She prayed confusedly, with 
 unmoved stare, looking back along the lonely road 
 for help. 
 
 Then she got up and hurried away to the side of 
 the embankment, shudderingly realising how near it 
 was. She could not help leaving him. She was much 
 shaken, yet she felt quite strong. 
 
 There was a barge moored by the little quay; a 
 woman stood on its deck, startled and staring. She 
 called to the woman, who came running up the stone 
 steps. 
 
 "Is there no man?" cried Ursula. 
 
 "No, the men were gone to the nearest public-house." 
 
 The girl waved off the barge -woman's inquiries. She 
 did not want sympathy but help. 
 
 "You must hurry to the Horst," she said, impatiently. 
 "You know it? The large house behind those trees. 
 They will pay you. You must explain that an accident 
 has occurred, not fatal. And bring back assistance at 
 once." 
 
 She returned hastily to Otto. His eyes were open, 
 and they smiled to welcome her. A terrible anxiety 
 suddenly died out of them. 
 
 "Are you not hurt?" he said faintly. "I'm not. I 
 shall get up presently."
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. I 55 
 
 She could not answer except by a shake of the 
 head. A lump had risen in her throat which she was 
 resolved to keep down. 
 
 "How sorry Gerard will be!" continued Otto. 
 
 She nodded again, and for a few minutes they were 
 both quite silent. Then the Jonker raised himself on 
 one arm. 
 
 "I am only dizzy," he said. "I shall be all right 
 in no time, I assure you. I'm sorry I frightened you. 
 Why, there are some people coming along, are there 
 not?" 
 
 It was true; the men from the cottages could be 
 seen running towards them. Otto hesitated, as he sank 
 back, gazing up into Ursula's bent face. 
 
 "Ursula," he said at last, calling her by her name 
 for the second time in the course of that evening, "we 
 very nearly went to our death together — and you wouldn't 
 even go to Java!" 
 
 There was a ripple in his voice and in his eyes. 
 She held out her hand, and he pressed it to his lips. 
 
 "You have saved my life," she said. 
 
 Presently the foremost runner reached them, breath- 
 ing heavily. Otto staggered to his feet, and, as the 
 others came up, began giving orders about the wreck 
 and the poor dead beast.
 
 I56 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT. 
 
 "Ursula," began the Domine with shaking voice. 
 He went back to the door and pressed his hand against 
 it to make sure that it was properly closed. "My dear 
 child, I have Otto van Helmont with me in the study. 
 I am utterly amazed; I don't know what to say. You 
 will be more astonished even than I am. The Jonker 
 has come to ask my permission — God bless my soul, 
 Ursula, he wants to have you for his wife!" 
 
 Ursula bent over her needlework: she was sewing 
 bnltons on her father's shirts. 
 
 The Domine sat down opposite her and gasped. 
 "It takes my breath away," he explained apologetic- 
 ally. "He calls it love at first sight. I should think 
 so. I should call it love at single sight, and so I told 
 him." 
 
 Ursula looked up quickly. "Oh, no," she said, "we 
 have met quite a number of times." 
 
 "Why, you hussy, do you want me to accept him?" 
 
 "Oh, I did not say that, papa. Please don't say I 
 said anything of the kind. I only meant " 
 
 "I know what you meant. Why, you hussy, do you 
 want me to refuse him?" 
 
 "You know best, papa," said Ursula, demurely. 
 
 "Then, of course, I shall send him about his bust-
 
 A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT. 157 
 
 ness. Imagine the thing. The future Baroness van 
 Helmont, and my child Ursula!" 
 
 "I am not such a child," replied Ursula, blushing 
 and drawing herself up. 
 
 "Consider, my dear, the match would be an ill- 
 assorted one. Personally, I cannot say I look upon it 
 — no, I won't say that, either. But, dear me, dear me; 
 I am quite taken aback. Ursula, my dear, what is your 
 attitude?" 
 
 "Oh, I haven't got an attitude," cried Ursula, 
 strenuously threading her needle. "Oh, don't say an- 
 other word about it, please. Go away, dear Captain, 
 do, and leave me in peace." 
 
 "But, Ursula, this is childish. Otto " 
 
 Suddenly, while he was speaking, the Domine's 
 brow cleared; he thought he understood the situation. 
 It turned upon his selfishness and his daughter's self- 
 denial. 
 
 "Ursula," he said, "you must forgive your poor old 
 father. I am selfish, and of course, there are difficulties. 
 But I see that Otto van Helmont has somehow already 
 succeeded in gaining your heart, so I suppose I must go 
 back and tell him so. Or would you prefer to do it 
 yourself?" 
 
 "Don't, father," cried Ursula. "Nobody has ever 
 possessed my heart but you. I hate all men, as I said 
 the other day. See how I liked and admired Gerard — 
 for years, ever since I could think — and now! I could 
 almost have cut off the fingers his touch had soiled! I 
 don't want to marry anyone." 
 
 "How beautiful," thought the Domine, not without 
 a twinge of self-condolence, "are the unconscious work-
 
 I58 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 ings of a maiden's heart. The dear child lays bare her 
 love and doesn't know she possessed it! It is my duty 
 to prevent a most fatal mistake. Poor motherless one; 
 I must take a mother's place to-day!" Like many old- 
 fashioned people, the Domine believed that when "a 
 good woman" says she doesn't love a man, this always 
 means she does. So he abstained from useless questions. 
 
 "Ursula," he said, heroically, "Otto van Helmont is 
 not one of these men you dread. Dear child, I know 
 him well. He is a good and upright gentleman. I 
 should be glad to think, my dear" — the Domine flung 
 himself headlong upon the altar — "glad to think that 
 when I am gone my daughter will have such a strong 
 defender. The world is evil, dear, and I am old. At 
 any moment I may leave you unprotected." 
 
 She laid down her needlework, and sat looking out 
 of the window. 
 
 "I don't think I quite love him," she said, slowly. 
 "Not like you." Something in her solemn face filled 
 him with sudden misgiving, although the last three words 
 were reassuring. 
 
 "But, my dear," he suggested, gently, "you admire 
 him very much — do you not? You think he is a 
 splendid man?" 
 
 "Yes," she answered, still with that far-away look, 
 "I admire him very much. I think he is a splendid 
 man. I — I like to see him, father, and to hear him 
 talk." 
 
 "Trust me, my dear child, you are very much in 
 love with him," said the Domine, sententiously, "as 
 much as any maiden ought to be. Go in, and tell 
 him so."
 
 A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT. I 5 9 
 
 She was willing to believe him; still, she hesitated. 
 Uppermost in her heart, all these days, was a passion 
 of pure scorn. It cast over Otto's honest figure the 
 glory of an aureole. 
 
 "Father," she began again, "do you — would you 
 really be happy to know I had accepted him?" 
 
 "You could not easily find a better husband," replied 
 the Domine, evasively. 
 
 She knitted her brows, as was her wont in moments 
 such as this. 
 
 "It would not make you sad, but happy," she in- 
 sisted. 
 
 "Sad — no, no," cried the Domine, eagerly. "To 
 think of it — sad!" 
 
 "But — Java?" she said, faintly. 
 
 "My dear, you will not go to Java," exclaimed the 
 Domine, very loud. "That you must tell him at once. 
 You will stay in Holland. I may be very selfish, but I 
 don't care." 
 
 He suddenly felt there were limits. 
 
 Ursula rose. 
 
 "Yes," she said, softly, "I must go to him, myself. 
 It is a very terrible resolve." 
 
 The Domine smiled, with a tear in his eye. 
 
 "'It is ever from the greatest hazards,'" he quoted, 
 '"that the greatest honours are gained.' Pericles said 
 that. It is a good motto for this day." 
 
 Ursula went straight to the study, where Otto was 
 tramping up and down. His face brightened as he 
 saw her enter. 
 
 "Are you bringing me the answer yourself?" he 
 asked, coming forward with outstretched hands.
 
 l6o MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "You saved my life," she replied, simply. "It is 
 yours." 
 
 "Josine," said the Domine, "are you well enough 
 to listen to me for a moment?" He spoke with un- 
 mistakable impatience, eyeing the limp bundle on the 
 sofa. 
 
 "Roderigue, how can you be so unkind?" came the 
 plaintive answer. "After the terrible escape our dear 
 Ursula has had, my weak nerves are still naturally 
 unstrung. I cannot bear to think of it. All night I 
 seemed rushing through space with her and — him. 
 What must he not have suffered?" 
 
 "Well, it's over now," replied the Domine, "and 
 he's thinking of other things. In fact, that's what I 
 came in about. He has just been asking me to consent 
 to his engagement." 
 
 "I knew it," said Miss Mopius, and sank back on 
 the sofa-cushion. 
 
 The Domine started. "What!" he cried. "Did he 
 speak to you first?" 
 
 "Roderigue," replied the lady with spirit, "I am old 
 enough — I mean I am not so young that his speaking 
 to me could be considered improper." 
 
 "No, indeed," began the puzzled Domine. 
 
 "I gave him the answer of my heart, as I doubt 
 not he told you. You will give us your blessing, my 
 brother?" 
 
 The Domine rose to his feet. 
 
 "Hearing you talk," he said, testily, "one might 
 conclude it was you had made the match." 
 
 At this monstrous accusation the poor creature
 
 A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT. l6l 
 
 burst into tears. "To think," she sobbed, "that my 
 poor Mary's husband should say such a thing of me. 
 Roderigue, I wonder that dear saint did not teach you 
 what a woman's feelings are!" 
 
 Of all means by which Josine unconsciously tormented 
 the pastor there was none like her allusions to his de- 
 parted wife. Moments could be produced in the widower's 
 calm day when that brave soldier might have felt it in 
 him to strike a woman. 
 
 Only to slap her. 
 
 "Well, I can't help it," he said, still in the same 
 irritated tone. He was disappointed in his future son- 
 in-law. "Ursula and Otto must just settle it between 
 them." 
 
 "Ursula is a child," replied the spinster. "She will 
 be pleased to get so charming an uncle." 
 
 "Hey?" said the pastor, stopping very short. Then 
 it all dawned upon him as when a curtain is drawn 
 away. 
 
 "Otto has asked Ursula to marry him, and she has 
 consented," he said, gruffly. For some forms of human 
 weakness the man had not an atom of pity. Poor Miss 
 Mopius received the blow straight in her face. She 
 "never forgave" her brother afterwards for striking out. 
 Striking a woman, after all. 
 
 She rose to the occasion, sitting up at once, tremulous 
 but dignified. 
 
 "There is some mistake," she said. "You have 
 misunderstood or I have been duped. In one case 
 the man is a fool; in the other he is a villain. No 
 gentleman makes love to two women at a time. I 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. II
 
 I 62 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 will thank you to leave me alone for the present, 
 Roderigue." 
 
 "So be it, Josine," answered the Domine, "but, re- 
 member, it was Will-be-Will made darkness in the town 
 of Mansoul." Then his heart smote him for too great 
 severity. "My dear," he said, in a kindly voice, "it is 
 the old stoiy with us all. Still Prince Emmanuel an- 
 swers Mr. Loth-to-Stoop : 'I will not grant your master, 
 no, not the least corner to dwell in. I will have all to 
 myself.' " 
 
 When the last uncertainty had faded from Miss 
 Mopius's soul, she merely said to Ursula, "He might be 
 your father. I don't think it's nice for a young girl to 
 marry an old man." 
 
 Ursula did not reply "For an old woman to marry 
 a young man is worse." She only thought it. We can 
 all be magnanimous in victory. But Ursula could even 
 have been so, if required, in defeat. Her faults were 
 never little ones. 
 
 To her confidential spinster friends Miss Mopius 
 remarked, "She is very plain. I can't imagine what he 
 sees in her. So brown! But, then, of course, he is 
 past the heyday of youth, and a little use. Well, some 
 women like to get their lovers secondhand." 
 
 "I shouldn't," remarked one mittened crony. 
 
 "No, indeed," replied Miss Mopius.
 
 DONNA E MOBILE. I 6. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 DONNA E MOBILE. 
 
 On the Saturday following the Van Trossarts' garden- 
 party — two days, therefore, previously to the events just 
 narrated — Gerard van Helmont called, in the early morn- 
 ing, at the house of his betrothed. He could hardly 
 realise, as he impatiently awaited her, that not twenty- 
 four hours had elapsed since this new brightness had 
 come into his life. Already he felt accustomed to the 
 new role of a very wealthy man with a very charming 
 wife. How happy his mother would be after the first 
 shock of the unexpected! They must find another 
 match for Otto. Sprightly, sportive Helen would never 
 have married Otto, anyway. He glanced at the clock. 
 Half-past ten. As long as clocks stood in front of 
 mirrors Gerard never saw only the time. 
 
 The door opened; a servant entered slowly. 
 
 "The Freule was not ready, as yet, to receive him." 
 Had she sent him no message? "No." The fiery lover 
 went off to the barracks and worried everybody. 
 
 In the afternoon he called again. The sounds of a 
 piano came pouring down upon him from upstairs during 
 his brief wait on the steps. How brilliantly she played ! 
 A little too wildly — like a musical tornado. 
 
 He was again shown into the front drawing-room. 
 It was again empty. Again he paced restlessly to and 
 fro, but this time he twisted his moustache.
 
 164 MV LADY NOBODY. 
 
 He heard a footfall in the adjoining apartment; the 
 music, however, had not yet stopped. He was longing 
 for it, now, to do so. 
 
 The Baroness van Trossart came bustling in, hot 
 and flurried. "My dear boy," she began, "my dear 
 boy, sit down." She caught hold of his hand and drew 
 him down on a low settee by her side. "My dear boy, 
 you and Helen have had a quarrel. The worse quarrels 
 always come first. Now tell me what it is all about." 
 
 Gerard opened his light, innocent eyes. "There has 
 been no quarrel that I know of, Mevrouw," he answered. 
 "What does Helen say?" 
 
 The Baroness's substantial chaps fell. "Helen says 
 nothing at all. That is the worst of it. She has locked 
 herself in, and she won't speak to anyone. She has 
 been playing the piano for hours — you hear her now — 
 and her uncle trying all the time to learn his speech 
 for next Monday! I've been screaming to make her 
 stop, but I can't, and I got some dust in my eye, as it 
 is, through the keyhole." She sighed. Gerard, with 
 heightened colour, looked down at his spurs. 
 
 "Then you don't know what's wrong?" the Baroness 
 repeated, helplessly. 
 
 "No, indeed, I don't." 
 
 "The excitement must have got on her nerves; but 
 I wish, at least, she would see Papotier." 
 
 They went out slowly into the hall. "Never mind, 
 Gerard," said the Baroness, still in that ill-used tone, 
 "it'll be all right soon. Come back this evening and 
 settle about going to the Horst to-morrow. Oh, will 
 that music never stop!" 
 
 It followed him down the street in a reckless jingle
 
 DONNA E MOBILE. 1 65 
 
 and crash of feverish discord, as if all the notes of the 
 instrument together were dancing a devil's saraband. 
 
 He went to the club and, from sheer nervous vexa- 
 tion, boisterously got together a game of vingt-et-un. 
 He won nearly a thousand florins in a couple of hours. 
 As a rule, however, gambling was not one of his weak- 
 nesses. He had plenty of others. 
 
 Then he treated the whole mess to champagne, 
 declaring it was his birthday, and when somebody 
 denied that, he turned almost fiercely on the caviller. 
 "My death-day, then!" he said. "It don't make any 
 difference in the wine." 
 
 They were all surprised at his irritability, and con- 
 cluded that the extent of his winnings was vexing him. 
 That would be quite like Van Helmont, who was free- 
 handed and free-hearted to a fault. He was the most 
 popular man in the regiment. 
 
 It was half-past eight when he again rang at the 
 Van Trossarts' door. He was flushed with excitement 
 and champagne. The piano had ceased; the whole 
 house lay steeped in silence. Almost immediately, as 
 he hesitated under the hall-lamp, the Freule's maid 
 came forward with a note. He took it and glanced 
 through it on the spot. It was veiy brief. 
 
 "Yes, I have read Maupassant; all night I sat up 
 reading him. Go back to the housemaid. Thank 
 Heaven, Jeanne is not married yet." 
 
 He went out again into the dusk immdiately. Dutch 
 shops are open late, especially on Saturdays. He walked 
 quickly to the High Street, which was full of movement 
 and yellow gas. At a well-known bookseller's he stopped. 
 
 "Have you Maupassant's 'Une Vie'?" he asked the
 
 1 66 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 shopman. Oh, yes! half a dozen copies lay on the 
 counter. He carried off the blue paper volume, and 
 locked himself up in his rooms. 
 
 Turning the pages hurriedly, he read the painful 
 story. Even as he read, he revolted at the thought of 
 his cousin's having come into contact with such scenes 
 as were there described. He flung the book on to the 
 table. "Filth!" he said angrily. He felt that a woman's 
 soul may pass pure, if such be her terrible fate, through 
 fact, but not through fiction. And surely he was right. 
 A man can judge of purity, in women. 
 
 The work he admiringly despised, was like all those 
 of its great author, though by no means equal, of course, 
 in literary value, to his shorter master-pieces. It was a 
 perfectly polished crystal goblet — a splendour of work- 
 manship — full of asafcetida. Few men care for the 
 taste, which might be healthful, but we all enjoy the 
 useless smell. 
 
 Somebody whistled outside in the street. He went 
 to the window. Two young officers, attracted by the 
 light of his lamp, stood in the dark with upturned faces. 
 His heart leaped with its impulse of relief. 
 
 "Is that you, Troy?" he called back. "Who's with 
 you? Never mind, I'll come down. I say, there's a 
 night-train to Brussels! We've just time to catch it. 
 The chief'll never know, and we'll have such a burst- 
 up as never was before!" 
 
 On the Monday morning, in the small hours, Gerard 
 returned from his escapade into Belgium. The others, 
 who still valued their commissions, had refused to 
 accompany him. He had left a telegram with Willie
 
 DONNA E MOBILE. 1 67 
 
 for the Horst, to the effect that Helen was unable to 
 come. "The Colonel won't be any wiser," he said. 
 And the Colonel never was. 
 
 Whether the excursion had been worth its cost — 
 in every sense — was another matter. Such questions 
 are useless, and Gerard preferred not to decide them. 
 He lay down on his bed for a couple of hours, and 
 then — before breakfast, somewhere near seven o'clock 
 — he paid a visit to a lady of his acquaintance, whom 
 he had not seen for many months. He had a bad 
 headache, and he felt deeply injured, but also dis- 
 tinctly inclined to indignation and virtue. 
 
 "Adeline," he said, pathetically, "I thought you still 
 loved me." 
 
 "What a fool you must be then," said Adeline. She 
 lived in a little out-of-the-way house, with a garden 
 and a back entrance. No one was more accurately 
 acquainted than Gerard with her periods of business or 
 leisure. 
 
 "Better fool than knave," replied Gerard, bitterly. 
 "But don't let's go on like this. What I wanted to tell 
 you is that our secret's out. There." 
 
 "I know," said Adeline, nodding. She sat in her 
 neat little tight-fitting dress in her neat little (tight- 
 fitting) room, with her breakfast in front of her. It 
 was all dainty and attractive. He had seen her sit 
 thus many a time, while he lounged on the little chintz 
 sofa. 
 
 "I told," -added Adeline proudly, biting a stiff crust 
 with her pearly teeth. 
 
 "You!" He sprang upright. "You lie!" 
 
 "Oh, of course," she answered, "I was to sit and
 
 I 68 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 see you enjoy yourself, while I went to my ruin. I 
 was to let you write letters to my advertisements and 
 then bring other men to laugh at me." Her voice grew 
 suddenly fierce. "I hate you for that," she cried, "for 
 that most of all. I could kill you for that. 
 
 "Good heavens, was one of those unlucky advertise- 
 ments yours? I had nothing to do with answering them, 
 I swear to you. I was only umpire. Why, surely, you'd 
 have recognised my hand!" 
 
 "Humph," said Adeline. "Well, I told." 
 
 "It was a woman's trick," retorted Gerard. "But 
 how did you find out, you little devil, about the Freule 
 van Trossart, or about my — my " 
 
 "Your what?" she questioned, sharply. "What's 
 this about the Freule van Trossart? You're going to 
 make her miserable, are you, as you did me?" She 
 started up, clapping her hands. "No, you won't," she 
 cried. "No, you won't. I see. He's gone and told 
 her all about it. Oh, I love him for that!" 
 
 "Who? He!" exclaimed Gerard. "Do you mean to 
 say you've gone noising our shame about to strangers?" 
 
 The words stung her to sudden passion. 
 
 "Our shame?" she cried. "Our shame? My shame 
 you mean. My shame, as Christian laws go in Christian 
 lands. And who are you, of all men, to taunt me with 
 it? I told your brother, if you want to know. And he 
 went and told the girl you were trying to catch, did he? 
 Oh, I'm glad of that; I'm glad of that!" 
 
 Gerard sat for some moments with bent brows and 
 clenched fists. His still stare frightened her. She sank 
 into her seat cowed.
 
 DONNA E MOBILE. I 69 
 
 "How did you meet my brother?" he asked at last. 
 His voice was hoarse. 
 
 "You passed the shop with him one morning," she 
 answered humbly. "I recognised him by your descrip- 
 tion. And when going to my dinner later on, I met 
 him in the Park alone. I told him everything in half a 
 dozen minutes. That day I was desperate. I asked 
 him if he could do nothing to help me to make you 
 marry me. I had some wild idea your family might. 
 I had never come across any of them. I probably 
 never should have such a chance again." 
 
 "And what did my brother say?" asked Gerard. 
 
 "He said he would do what he could. He didn't 
 think he could do much. I don't think he likes you, 
 Gerard." She spoke quite submissively, and, as she 
 finished, her eyes stole across to the looking-glass to 
 arrange a little bow at her neck. 
 
 "Oh, no," replied Gerard furiously. "He's too 
 good to like me. His little peccadilloes are far away, 
 and black." 
 
 "I'm sure I've always liked you, Gerard," she said 
 coquettishly. "You've treated me very badly. You 
 know you have." 
 
 "I have," acquiesced Gerard, in a low voice. "Did 
 you tell Otto, Adeline, of those three thousand florins I 
 gave you?" 
 
 "No," she cried, again reverting to her sudden 
 passion. "Do you fling that fact in my face? Do you 
 call that a compensation?" 
 
 "No, no. God knows I didn't mean anything of the 
 kind. I was only thinking — great heavens I don't know 
 what to think." He buried his face in his hands.
 
 17O MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Poor Gerard," said the girl softly, after an interval. 
 "I didn't think you'd take on so. But you've treated 
 me very badly, Gerard; you know you have; yet, some- 
 how I can't help liking you still. You were very good 
 to me, too, once. And it was very sweet." She bent 
 forward and timidly touched his neck. "Gerard, I'm 
 sorry," she said. 
 
 But he only shook his head. 
 
 "Oh, Gerard, I was so wretched, so fearfully 
 wretched. I couldn't stand the thought of — of the 
 disgrace. I wanted you to marry me. I would have 
 given my life for you to marry me — only to make an 
 honest woman of me first. Gerard, think of it, there 
 was nothing left for me but marriage, exposure or death. 
 I tried death once — with my fingers — but — but the water 
 was so very cold." She began to cry softly, resting her 
 hand on her quondam lover's knee. 
 
 Then Gerard looked up quickly. His face was quite 
 pale and drawn. 
 
 "Adeline," he said wearily, "it's no use, you and I 
 can't be angry with each other. Not seriously, only in 
 flimsy bursts. It's like our love. We can't hate each 
 other, either. Great love turns to hate, they say. Ours 
 is of the kind that one can always take up again as if 
 one had never left off. You've ruined my life, and, 
 somehow, I can't even reproach you with doing so." 
 
 "But you've ruined mine, too, or very nearly," she 
 sobbed. 
 
 "Yes, that's true; I don't want, though, to make you 
 so wretched. You shock me with your horrible talk. 
 Adeline, look here, I don't care; if you feel as bad as 
 that I'll marry you. Yes, I will, so help me God. You're
 
 DONNA E MOBILE. I 7 I 
 
 the only woman that ever loved me, besides my mother, 
 and I've treated you like a brute. We men don't always 
 quite understand, but, Adeline, I can't bear to see you 
 wretched, and to know it's all my fault. It is all my 
 fault; I've behaved like a cad. Adeline, I mean it; I'm 
 awfully sorry and ashamed of myself. I'll tell my father 
 exactly how matters stand, and I'll make him let me 
 marry you. You poor little innocent to think that 
 they'd make me!" 
 
 Adeline, for only answer, laid her head upon his 
 shoulder, softly crying on. 
 
 "Don't cry like that, dear," he continued, in the 
 same dreary tone. "It'll all come right soon. I dare- 
 say we shall be fairly happy. We've made such a mess 
 of our separate lives that the best thing we can do is 
 to try and combine them." 
 
 "Oh, Gerard," sobbed the girl, "if I'd only known 
 a day or two sooner. It's too late now." 
 
 "No, no," he said dully, stroking her hair. "I for- 
 give you the trick you played me. I drove you to it, I 
 suppose. Men are brutes." 
 
 "Oh, Gerard," murmured Adeline again, with closed 
 eyes, "it's not that. I'm engaged." 
 
 "What?" he cried, edging back, so that her head 
 almost slipped. 
 
 She started up then, quite briskly. "Well, and 
 what was I to do?" she said, "with every week bring- 
 ing me nearer. Other people answered my advertise- 
 ment besides you, Gerard. And he's a very nice young 
 man, a lawyer's clerk. I was out in the country with 
 him all yesterday, and we settled it coming home."
 
 172 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Indeed," said Gerard scornfully. "And he — 
 he " 
 
 She blushed crimson. 
 
 "Yes, he knows," she murmured. "He thinks you 
 treated me very badly, Gerard." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 And he consents, thought the young man, to accept 
 the plaster I placed on the bruise. He got up from 
 the little chintz sofa of many memories. 
 
 "I wish you had waited to give Otto the last chapter 
 of the story," he said, very wearily. "Poor little girl, 
 I'm not angry with you. Don't cry. We've had enough 
 of that. Good-bye, Adeline. I suppose we need hardly 
 meet again." 
 
 And he held out his hand. 
 
 "Gerard," she said, taking it, "I'm so glad you're 
 not angry. I like you very much, but, do you know, 
 I fancy I should be happier with him. He isn't as 
 good-looking as you, Gerard — not anything like — but 
 he looks very nice." She raised the young officer's 
 hand to her lips. "Thank you," she said, "for offering 
 to marry me." 
 
 "Oh, no thanks," he replied, taking his hat. 
 
 "Gerard!" she called him back, her eyes reverted 
 swiftly from the mirror to his face. "You never said 
 anything about my new dress which I had to make. 
 Don't you think it suits me?" 
 
 "Oh, everything suits you," he cried, making his 
 escape. There were tears in his eyes as he turned into 
 the street.
 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. I 73 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. 
 
 The dog gave a yelp. 
 
 "Do take care, Otto," cried the Baroness, sharply. 
 Her voice was shrill with irritation. "I wish you would 
 sit down. You have trodden on poor Plush's tail! And 
 there really was no reason for that. Not even if I take 
 in earnest, as I have no intention of doing, the exceed- 
 ingly poor joke you have just concocted." 
 
 "I assure you it is no joke, mother, but very sober 
 earnest." 
 
 "I am to believe that you have this morning asked 
 Ursula Rovers to be your wife, and that she has deigned 
 to accept you?" 
 
 "She has deigned to accept me, mother." 
 
 "Then there are other things you can tread on be- 
 sides little dogs." She was too angry to continue. An 
 embarrassing silence had thickened between them be- 
 fore she added, looking straight in front of her: "But I 
 shall not afford you the satisfaction of a yelp." 
 
 "Mother!" he cried, with a pathetic ring of pain in 
 his virile voice. He held out his arms. The move- 
 ment was an appeal. 
 
 But she waved him back. 
 
 "Between mothers and sons," she said, "there is a 
 union of sympathy, of interest, not only of intercourse.
 
 174 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Dogs have mothers, Otto, and love them and forget 
 them. And when they meet again, after twelve weeks 
 — mother and son walk side by side, but the pup doesn't 
 know." 
 
 She held out her trembling fingers to the little 
 animal beside her. 
 
 "The mother does," she said, tremulously. "The 
 mother does." 
 
 Otto stood by the Dresden gimcracks of the mantel- 
 piece. His head was bent, but across the level eye- 
 brows lay a bar of resolve. 
 
 "If you would only let me explain " he began. 
 
 "Surely I can do that for myself. You are 'in 
 love' with the girl, to use the cant phrase. There is 
 no more beautiful word in the world, and none more 
 insulted. With you it simply means that you have been 
 caught by the charms of a piquante brown face. You, 
 who are nearly forty, whose calf period might surely be 
 past. Faugh! you men are all the same, like dogs 
 again! You talk of piety, affection, ambition, but when 
 the moment comes you run after the nearest cur. Otto, 
 I won't say any more. I have said too much already. 
 In truth, there is nothing to say. There is only a curse 
 to bear. Nowadays, it seems, the children curse the 
 parents. It may be less melodramatic, but the results 
 are far more visible to the naked eye." 
 
 Then he broke down before her hard, her hopeless 
 misery, and knelt by her side. 
 
 "Mother, I love her," he said. "Never mind what 
 the word means to me, it need mean but little to you. 
 I will take her away to some place where you need but 
 rarely see her."
 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. 175 
 
 "And the Horst!" she cried, looking at him for the 
 first time. The despair in her eyes cut straight to his 
 soul. "You have not even thought of that! And you 
 hardly know the girl. The old house — the old home 
 — you have not even thought of that!" 
 
 "I have thought of it," he answered, sternly, return- 
 ing to his place on the hearth. "It is not gone yet. 
 I will work and make money. Father may still live 
 twenty years." 
 
 But she did not heed him. "Only a good-looking 
 face!" she said. "Only half a dozen glimpses of a 
 good-looking face and — pfst!" She snapped her fingers. 
 "Does your father know?" she asked. 
 
 "Not yet," he answered. "I came to you first. I 
 had hoped that you " 
 
 "Would join with the happy pair imploring his 
 blessing. Did I not say rightly, Otto, that a certain 
 amount of mutual understanding is essential to the pre- 
 servation of natural ties! That you should succeed in 
 making a philosopher of such a crack-brained creature 
 as I am! I hear your father's step in the entrance-hall. 
 The poor fellow is whistling! Never mind, it can't be 
 helped. Call him in." Otto obeyed. 
 
 "Well, what is it, my dear?" asked the Baron 
 entering. "Are you still enjoying your new-found 
 son?" 
 
 "Yes, that is it," replied the old lady. "Exactly. 
 My new-found son still prepares me fresh surprises. 
 Otto, tell your father to-day's." 
 
 "I have engaged myself," said Otto, steadying his 
 voice, "to Juffrouw Ursula Rovers." 
 
 The Baron's thin cheek flushed. He resumed the
 
 I76 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 tune he had been whistling and carefully finished it. 
 Then he said, "I suppose that is quite definite?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," interposed the Baroness, "a fool's de- 
 cisions always are." 
 
 "Hush, my dear. I mean, Otto, that you have fully 
 considered and weighed the matter, and have made up 
 your mind to go through with it at all costs?" The 
 Baron spoke very quietly. 
 
 "Yes," said Otto, and their eyes met. 
 
 "So I thought. Your decision will not be altered 
 in any way by my pointing out that, as long as I live 
 (which I hope to do for a quarter of a century longer), 
 you will never receive a penny from me towards sup- 
 porting Ursula Rovers? You probably understood that 
 before?" 
 
 "I did," replied Otto. "I don't want any money. 
 I'm going to work." 
 
 "Quite so. More tea, I suppose? Java?" 
 
 Otto's face fell. 
 
 "No," he said, awkwardly. "Not Java. Ursula 
 doesn't want to go there." 
 
 The Baroness, who had been beating a silent tat- 
 too with her foot, broke into an impatient exclama- 
 tion. 
 
 "Really, Otto," said the Baron, with a thin little 
 smile, "you must admit that you are rather provoking. 
 When everybody wants you here, you insist upon living 
 in the tropics, and when — well, the whole thing, there- 
 fore, is settled, is it, and practically beyond recall? 
 Mistakes, as your mother just now remarked, usually 
 are. This, of course, is a huge mistake — a life mis- 
 take. However, perhaps you are aware of that, too?"
 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. I 77 
 
 "Perhaps it is," replied Otto, "in some respects. 
 But it seems to me worth making." 
 
 "Possibly. There are no bounds to human selfish- 
 ness. Men have thrown away an empire for a night of 
 dalliance. And the heritage of the Helmonts is not an 
 empire by any means. I am sure I wish you a more 
 protracted period of enjoyment. Then, at least, one 
 person will get satisfaction out of this miserable busi- 
 ness. Yes, as there is no help for it, I may as well 
 wish you joy. Wish him joy, Cecile." 
 ' "No," said the Baroness. 
 
 "Anyhow, I suppose it won't make much difference 
 to you, Otto? Nor, alas, to us. And now that all the 
 preliminaries are settled, and you know our mind 
 exactly and we yours — excuse my putting you last — 
 we had better swallow down the rest of the unpleasant- 
 ness as soon as possible. Bring up Ursula at once, 
 and we will give her our blessing. Bring her before 
 dinner if you can. I'm sure I wish you had her wait- 
 ing in the drawing-room. I will say this: she is a 
 good-looking girl, and, I honestly believe, a good one. 
 But what a reason for marrying her!" 
 
 He threw up his hands with his familiar gesture of 
 comical dismay, and turning his back on his son and 
 heir, went and sat down by the Baroness. Otto walked 
 slowly from the room, leaving the old couple together. 
 
 The little turret-chamber, all flowered silk and china 
 shepherds, looked strangely unreal, like a painting on 
 porcelain. The light crept in through its rounded 
 window with a curve that lent to everything a glamour 
 as of glaze. The occupants themselves, bending near 
 to each other, the toy-dog between them, their delicate 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 12
 
 I78 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 features still touched, as it seemed, with eighteenth- 
 century powder, had the appearance of Dresden figures 
 seen under a shiny glass case. But their sorrow was 
 very real, none the less so because the Baron was 
 endeavouring, as it buzzed around them, to catch and 
 kill it in the folds of a cambric handkerchief. 
 
 "Theodore," began the Baroness, twisting her rings, 
 "you are always right. I do not mean to doubt your 
 judgment. But it seems to me that you almost en- 
 couraged him to do what you disapproved. You — you 
 told him how bad it was, how wicked, and then you 
 wished him joy." 
 
 "My dear," replied the Baron, "you cannot push 
 over the precipice a man who has already leaped. His 
 mind was made up, and nothing would have changed 
 it. I know Otto. This is just the kind of idiotic thing 
 he might be expected to do. Some men cannot keep 
 away from any folly which has an appearance of 
 elevation. Their souls positively itch to commit it, 
 whether it be useful or pleasant or not. Otto has 
 always been like that. He is a Don Quixote of foolish- 
 ness. Had Ursula not existed, he would have been 
 bound to invent her." 
 
 "Unfortunately she exists," replied the Baroness, 
 "but you might have argued, protested " 
 
 "My dear, he is thirty-nine. And to argue with 
 Don Quixote is to break a straw against armour. There 
 is no strength like the conviction: 'the thing is so utterly 
 asinine that I'm sure it must be right'; especially when 
 the thing is also pleasant. Modern Quixotes are not 
 above distinguishing that." 
 
 •'Oh, don't reason it out in that quiet way," cried
 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. 179 
 
 the Baroness, passionately. "It's too horrible for that. 
 I can't bear it." 
 
 Her husband took her hand. "Dearest," he asked, 
 "since when have we left off grinning over the things 
 we could not bear?" 
 
 The only answer was Plush's grating bark, which 
 she always started as soon as the Baron grew affectionate 
 to the Baroness. 
 
 "As for quarrels they are always a discomfort, but 
 useless quarrels are a folly as well. And a dispute 
 with Otto would soon develop into a quarrel. He 
 knows what we think without further telling; be sure 
 of that. For Heaven's sake let there not be a row. I 
 have not been present at a row since I was twenty. 
 Gerard ran the thing close the other day. We may 
 just as well treat Ursula civilly. I only hope he will 
 bring her at once. The prospect makes me nervous, 
 and I don't see why my dinner should be spoilt because 
 my eldest son is a fool." 
 
 "But Ursula should be made to feel " 
 
 He interrupted her, a thing he was not in the habit 
 of doing. 
 
 "Be sure that Ursula will be made to feel," he 
 said, "whatever we do. Trust human nature for 
 that." 
 
 "Had it only been Gerard," she moaned. "And 
 just as I had arranged about Helen!" 
 
 "Ah, had it been Gerard, I should have reasoned 
 with him. Gerard can be made to laugh at follies, 
 and the man who laughs can be made to abandon. 
 Folly! Folly! You see, those are the only words I am 
 able to think of. Answer a fool according to his folly. 
 
 X2 *
 
 l80 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 That is excellent advice. Moliere's, is it not? I tried 
 to bring it into practice to-day." 
 
 "Deeds like his," she said, "should still be prevent- 
 able by lettrcs de cachet. They are worse than crimes. 
 A name such as ours may be scotched by the reprobates 
 who bear it, but it takes a fool, such as you laugh at, 
 to kill it outright." 
 
 "Whom would you lock up? Ursula? Do you know, 
 I fancy Ursula is in no way to blame. She is really a 
 good little girl." 
 
 But the Baroness shook her head. The Baron rose. 
 
 "Well, it can't be helped," he said, yawning. "That 
 is the beginning and the end. I wonder what Louisa 
 will say. At any rate, the house is still ours; apres 
 nous le deluge. Otto is such an exemplary Noah; he 
 is sure to be saved when it comes. By the by, I had 
 written to Labary about re-hanging the west bedroom, 
 but such experiences as this take away all one's pleasure 
 in things of that kind. What's the use of working for 
 such a son as Otto?" 
 
 With which momentous, but unanswerable, question, 
 he strolled out into the grounds. 
 
 Louisa, when informed shortly after by her sister of 
 what had happened, took off her spectacles, laid down 
 the book she was reading, and said: 
 
 "Otto is, at least, the only member of this family 
 possessed of marked originality." 
 
 The Freule van Borck's view of the question was 
 not without importance, for she had some money to 
 leave where she liked. She was exceedingly stingy, 
 and her savings were presumed to be large,
 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. l8l 
 
 "Yes," replied the Baroness, tartly, "but all his 
 originality is original sin. However, I am glad, Louisa, 
 if you can find extenuations, which I openly confess 
 myself as yet unable to see." 
 
 The thin Freule rested an angular elbow on her 
 knees. 
 
 "Ah, but that is because you are so entirely con- 
 ventional," she said, gravely. "You are altogether 
 hereditary, my dear; you cannot step out of your 
 groove." 
 
 "Je ne deraille pas," replied the Baroness. "No. 
 Dieu merci. Must Otto, to be happy?" 
 
 The Freule van Borck sighed. 
 
 "My dear, it is no use," she said. "We shall never 
 understand each other. It is of the very essence of 
 man's making that he should not run on rails. Machines 
 run on rails. All the misery of the world has been 
 caused by our doing so, and generally in batches, after 
 one locomotive. When two of our locomotives met, 
 there was a smash, and bloodshed." 
 
 "But that," said the Baroness, evidently bored, "is 
 exactly opposed to your favourite theory of hero- 
 worship." 
 
 "So it is," replied her sister, cheerfully. "We must 
 all be inconsistent at times, except you people on the 
 rails. I was thinking of the hereditary leaders, not the 
 hero-leaders of men. No hero ever •" 
 
 "But, Louisa, don't you understand? I have just 
 told you that Otto — our Otto — is going to marry Ursula 
 Rovers." 
 
 "Yes, my dear, and I reply that he makes a dis-
 
 I 82 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 tinctly new departure. To judge of its expediency, we 
 must know the result." 
 
 "The result can only be misery to all concerned." 
 
 "You think that because your heredity tells you so. 
 Now, I shall be an interested and unprejudiced spec- 
 tator. Everything depends upon Ursula. Is she an 
 entity or a nonentity? That is the question. I agree 
 with Carlyle " 
 
 "Carlyle was a ploughboy!" cried the Baroness, still 
 too impatient to be polite. "Of course, he would rejoice 
 to hear of milkmaids marrying marquises! Nothing is 
 more lamentable in these levelling days than that all 
 the geniuses are born without grandfathers. The odds 
 in the fight are unfair." 
 
 "Just so," replied the Freule, grimly. "Now, who 
 knows what a genius the son of Otto and Ursula may 
 be! My dear, I have been reading a most interesting 
 volume, entitled 'Le Croisement des Races.' I could 
 give you some exceedingly curious details " 
 
 "Spare me even the mention of your horrible read- 
 ing, Louisa!" exclaimed the Baroness. "It is like 
 passing down the streets where they hang out the 
 Police News. Dear me, that is Gerard's voice speaking 
 10 his father. How excited he seems! I suppose 
 Theodore has already told him. He must calm down 
 a little, for the happy pair will be here in a minute. I 
 saw the carriage turn into the avenue from the road." 
 
 Gerard came rushing in, followed more leisurely by 
 his father. 
 
 "Mamma!" he gasped. "Mamma, Otto has shot 
 Beauty! It isn't possible; I can't believe it. Shot
 
 A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY. 1 83 
 
 Beauty! Shot Beauty! Great God, what have I done 
 to him that he should treat me like this?" He clenched 
 his fist to his forehead. "Shot Beauty!" he cried again 
 in a choking voice. "Oh, I hope I shan't see him! I 
 won't see him ! I'll go back to Drum. If I see him I 
 shall kill him!" 
 
 "Gerard!" 
 
 "Don't speak to me, any of you. I hate him. I 
 hate him. I hate him!" 
 
 "My dear boy, don't be so absurd," began the 
 Baron. "It really couldn't be helped. Your aunt has 
 most kindly offered to get you another horse." 
 
 "In recognition of Otto's prompt and spirited action," 
 said the Freule. "It was very dreadful, Gerard, but un- 
 avoidable, and he rose to the occasion. That is what 
 I admire. And though I am not in the habit of 
 giving expensive presents, and haven't the means to 
 do so " 
 
 "I won't have another horse," burst out Gerard. "I 
 mean to say, that's not what I care about. He — he — 
 oh, you don't know what he's done to me. And now 
 he's killed Beauty as well! I hate him! I won't, I 
 daren't meet him at dinner!" 
 
 "There's the hall-bell," cried the Baroness. "Shut 
 the door, Theodore. Gerard, you had better go out 
 by the ante-room. Otto is bringing home his betrothed 
 for us to welcome as such!" 
 
 "His betrothed!" stammered Gerard, looking from 
 one to the other. "What? Helen? Already?" 
 
 "Helen? No, indeed. The young lady is Ursula 
 Rovers."
 
 184 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Otto and Ursula, pausing outside the door, heard 
 Gerard's laugh of malevolent contempt, as well as the 
 words that immediately followed it. 
 
 "Ursula Rovers!" he cried. "The future Baroness 
 van Helmont! My Lady Nobody!"
 
 BROTHERLY HATE. I 85 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 BROTHERLY HATE. 
 
 The two brothers stood face to face by the stables. 
 Otto, running round for Ursula's carriage, after the 
 brief interview with his parents, had almost knocked 
 up against Gerard. He started back. 
 
 "Damn you!" said Gerard. He said the hideous 
 words with deep conviction — almost conscientiously, as 
 if acquitting himself of a painful duty. For the last 
 quarter of an hour, ever since he had fled from the 
 boudoir before the approach of the betrothed pair, 
 Gerard had been striding hither and thither, like one 
 possessed, in the close vicinity of the stables. He was 
 hardly aware what he said or thought. Otto had 
 shot Beauty; Otto had estranged Helen, actuated not 
 even by sneaking jealousy (as had first seemed probable), 
 but by wanton ill-nature. He hated Otto. He would 
 never look upon his hateful face again. He would 
 hurry back to Drum. 
 
 Suddenly his elder brother stood before him, almost 
 jostling him in a hasty recoil. All Gerard's confusion 
 of anger and sorrow cooled into one clear thunder- 
 bolt. 
 
 "Damn you!" he said. There could be no doubt
 
 1 86 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 in his own heart or any other of his concentrated hate 
 of the intruder. What says Tacitus? "With more 
 than brotherly hate." Tacitus read the inner souls of 
 men. 
 
 From the moment when he fired the fatal shot Otto 
 had felt that he owed Gerard most humble and affec- 
 tionate apology. Concerning the episode with Helen 
 he was, of course, serenely ignorant. But his attitude 
 had stiffened just now under the cruelly careless word 
 which had fallen like a shadow across the home-bringing 
 of his betrothed. 
 
 "Silence, Gerard," he replied, haughtily. "No one 
 com be more sorry than myself. If you will listen 
 reasonably, I will try to explain " 
 
 "No one more sorry than yourself!" burst in Gerard, 
 his whole frame trembling with passion. "No one 
 more sorry! You loved Beauty, I suppose? You loved 
 Beauty better than anything else except — except" — he 
 bit back the word "mother" — "You loved Beauty, and 
 first drove her mad by your insane bungling, and then 
 shot her! — shot her! Oh, my God!" The words 
 choked him. Suddenly he grew white and calm. He 
 advanced upon Otto. 
 
 "If only you were not my brother!" he said in a 
 whisper. 
 
 Otto met his anger-troubled gaze, unflinching. 
 
 "You are a first-rate shot," continued Gerard, with 
 bitter meaning. "Oh, a first-rate shot! Ursula was 
 right. But I, too, can shoot straight." 
 
 Then he broke off short, and struck his forehead, 
 bewildered among the madness of his own concep- 
 tions.
 
 BROTHERLY HATE. I 87 
 
 "Leave me to myself," he gasped. "Only leave 
 me. Go back to Helen — or Ursula — which is it? Tell 
 Ursula also. Be sure and tell Ursula everything about 
 me. Go and be happy, you and your charming " 
 
 "Not a word more," interrupted Otto, forewarned 
 by the other's tone. "I am very sorry, Gerard, and 
 willing to make every allowance. But I will not hear 
 a word against my future wife." 
 
 Gerard rushed away. 
 
 "Why not, after all?" he asked himself. Brothers 
 had met before in honourable combat alone beneath 
 the moonlight shadows of Rhenish castle walls. He 
 laughed aloud, and when the coachman's dog ran 
 out, barking, to greet him, he kicked the brute away. 
 
 Ursula could not but notice Otto's silence — nay, 
 more, his depression — as they drove back again to the 
 Parsonage. She explained it by the Baroness's recep- 
 tion of the engagement. For not even the most laborious 
 amiability could make the two women misunderstand 
 each other. 
 
 "Otto, I hope," stammered the girl, with sudden 
 heart-sinking, as they .paused under the little verandah, 
 "oh, I hope you will never repent." 
 
 He hesitated, and, with human inconsistency, she 
 resented the momentary delay in his denial. 
 
 "No, I shall never repent," he replied, "unless " 
 
 He checked himself; he was going to say she must 
 make up her mind to leave Horstwyk, but he realised 
 the unfairness of too precipitate appeal. 
 
 "Unless?" she repeated, looking into his eyes. 
 
 "We will talk about it some other day," he an- 
 swered, hastily. "For the moment you and I are
 
 I 88 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 simply happy, let that suffice us. I am proud of you, 
 my darling, and it seems too good, your caring for an 
 old fellow like me." 
 
 He kissed her, and she blushed, half unwilling, 
 under the unwonted familiarity from a man she barely 
 knew. Love and marriage seemed so strange to her, 
 not unpleasant, but so strange. 
 
 She watched him down the road and her eyes grew 
 misty. "Unless?" she softly repeated to herself. Then 
 she went and found her father in his study. 
 
 "Papa," she said, "you are sure that Otto loves 
 me?" 
 
 "Why else should he ask you to marry him?" re- 
 torted the Domine, turning abruptly in his round desk- 
 chair. 
 
 "Yes, that is true," replied Ursula, humbly. "But 
 they cannot say the same of me." 
 
 "How? What?" queried the Domine, with troubled 
 eyebrows. 
 
 She turned full to the light. 
 
 "Papa," she said, impetuously. "It's not that I 
 want to be Baroness van Helmont. I'm sure, I'm sure 
 it's not." 
 
 The Domine struck his hand on the table before 
 him. 
 
 "No, indeed," he cried in a loud voice. "Who says 
 that? Who dares to say that?" 
 
 Ursula sighed wearily. 
 
 "Oh, no one does," she answered. "Never mind. 
 Life is very complicated. I wish one always knew 
 exactly what was right." 
 
 "One always does," said the simple -thoughted
 
 BROTHERLY HATE. 1 89 
 
 Domine. "Obey marching orders. Forward. Do the 
 nearest duty at once, and with all your might." 
 
 Ursula sighed again, still more wearily, and going 
 out into the passage, happed upon her aunt. Miss 
 Mopius passed on her way to the store-cupboard, her 
 joined hands overweighted with eggs. At sight of her 
 successful rival, she started, and one of the eggs flopped 
 down on the stones, in slimy collapse. 
 
 "I can understand your exultation, Ursula," said 
 Miss Mopius, all a-quiver, "but don't sneer at me like 
 that. I won't stand it. Some day, perhaps, you also 
 will know the curse of Eve." 
 
 Ursula, in the cruelty of her youth and beauty, 
 barely pitied her aunt. 
 
 "What was the curse of Eve?" she inquired. 
 
 "Adam," retorted Miss Mopius, and dropped an- 
 other egg. 
 
 "I'll wipe up the mess," said Ursula, sweetly. 
 
 Miss Mopius beat a hasty retreat. She spent the 
 rest of the afternoon diluting one solitary globule of a 
 patent medicine through a series of thirteen brimming 
 decanters of water. A tumbler from the first decanter 
 was poured into the second, and so on through the lot. 
 The thirteenth solution, said the advertisement, was the 
 most "potent." Miss Mopius believed the advertise- 
 ment. The magnificent name of the small globule had 
 an ever-recurring charm for her. It was called " Sym- 
 pathetic Lob." "Lob" especially struck her as so de- 
 lightfully mysterious. And it cured dizziness, palpitation, 
 bad taste in the mouth, liver complaint, rheumatism, 
 St. Vitus' dance, stitch in the side, and heartburn, be- 
 sides being highly recommended for cases of agitation,
 
 I go MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 nervous depression, sudden bereavement, and disap- 
 pointed love. Miss Mopius found it very helpful. She 
 sat in her darkened room, amid the falling twilight, 
 sipping. 
 
 That evening there was consternation in the big 
 drawing-room at the Horst. It spread itself like a 
 great mist between the occupants of the apartment, 
 and prevented their looking into each other's eyes. 
 The oppression had begun round Gerard's vacant chair 
 at the dinner-table; it now deepened about the Baroness, 
 where she sat apart from the rest, straightened among 
 the soft silks of her causciise. In the lap of her pearl- 
 grey evening dress lay a crumpled white scrap from 
 Gerard: — ■ 
 
 "I'm off to Drum. I sha'n't come back as long 
 as you've got Otto. The house can't hold us both. 
 — G." 
 
 Father and elder son stood with downcast lids 
 watching each other through inner eyes. The Freule 
 laid down her newspaper. 
 
 "He will think twice," she said, sharply. "Gerard 
 is not the kind of man to desert the fleshpots of Egypt 
 because Moses has come with a plague or two." 
 
 The Baron's gloomy face rippled over with sudden 
 sunshine. 
 
 "That's just like you, Louisa," he cried, "to select 
 the most unfortunate simile in a hundred thousand. 
 The worst of all Moses's plagues was the removal of 
 the eldest son!" He laughed, looking for the first time
 
 BROTHERLY HATE. IQI 
 
 at his heir. "I am speaking from Gerard's point of 
 view," he added. " Of course, of course, from Gerard's 
 point of view." And he laughed again, but half-way 
 the laugh died down into a pathetic little murmur. "It 
 is exceedingly annoying," he said, plaintively. "And I 
 who detest unpleasantness! We have never had any 
 unpleasantness before." 
 
 "He means it," interposed the Baroness in a dull 
 tone. "I know he means it, because of the little hook 
 to the 'G.' When Gerard makes that, he is in earnest. 
 It corresponds to a jerk in his voice. None of you 
 understand Gerard. He is so good-natured; you fancy 
 he is all sunshine and no fire." 
 
 "Deplorable!" exclaimed the Baron, stopping, help- 
 less, in the middle of the room. "And incomprehen- 
 sible. All about a horse. We will buy Louisa's present, 
 the sooner the better, and send it to bring him back." 
 
 "Ah! but is it all about a horse?" asked the Freule's 
 high-pitched voice. Once more she emerged from be- 
 hind her newspaper, her own particular newspaper, The 
 Victory! It would be difficult to say what The Victory 
 wanted to conquer; but you received a general impres- 
 sion from its pages that in this world the battle was 
 always to the strong. 
 
 "Ah! but is it all about a horse?" asked the Freule, 
 amid a darkening silence. "Or could Otto tell more if 
 he would? You consider me none too sharp-sighted, 
 my dear brother and sister; but it strikes me you are 
 blind not to perceive that you would have had a daughter- 
 in-law Ursula, any way, whether your eldest had come 
 back or not, eh?" She shot out this last interjection at
 
 192 MY I.ADY NOBODY. 
 
 her nephew, rising, meanwhile, all in one piece, with an 
 abrupt sweep back of her stand-up silk. 
 
 Otto was horrified by the sudden condensation of 
 the amorphous suspicions afloat in his brain. Could it 
 be possible that he had ousted a rival? Certainly, 
 Gerard's fury seemed in excess of the injury to which 
 he owned. For the first time, in the elder brother's 
 heart also, dislike and distrust joined hands. 
 
 "Just so," said the Freule van Borck, across his 
 irritable uncertainty. She nodded to the others provok- 
 ingly, and walked out upon the terrace. Otto fol- 
 lowed her. 
 
 "Aunt Louisa," he began, "I think you are mis- 
 taken." 
 
 "Yes, Otto," she answered. "Of course you do now. 
 But you didn't when I first spoke, you see. Let me 
 give you a bit of advice. Eh?" 
 
 "Well?" The young man's voice was not inviting. 
 
 "Don't go back to Java with your wife, as I dare- 
 say you want to do. Stop here and fight it out. Ur- 
 sula '11 fight it out. I don't give twopence for a married 
 woman who can't live in the same house with her former 
 lover. Of course they were lovers. I've seen it these 
 half a dozen years. Never mind. She was too good 
 for Gerard — there!" She smiled a complimentary smile 
 to her brawny nephew; she liked his brownness and 
 bigness, and straight, square strength. 
 
 Otto crept away. 
 
 "To-morrow I shall speak about going away," he 
 said to himself. "To-morrow, not to-night. The Domine 
 must listen to reason. The shadow of Cain lies between 
 Gerard and me."
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARENT. 193 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARENT. 
 
 Next morning, so it happened, the Domine awoke 
 to a moderately disagreeable task. While dressing, he 
 grumbled over the speck in his tranquil sky, as mortals 
 will do when unaware of the storm-cloud fringing their 
 horizon. 
 
 The Domine had a parishioner who caused him 
 more annoyance than the rest. This sheep of the flock 
 was, however, not a black sheep. It was serenely white. 
 It never wandered, for it never even got up. Its name 
 was Klomp, and its nature was unmitigated indolence. 
 
 This man Klomp inhabited a little cottage of his 
 own, lost among the woods. He shared it with two 
 daughters, aged respectively twelve and eighteen. Like 
 its owner, the cottage lived on, disgraceful but com- 
 fortable. Theoretically, it ought to have been pulled 
 down. 
 
 Klornp knew better. All summer he lazed over a 
 hedge which, mysteriously, bore his weight; all winter 
 he dozed by the stove. If any remnant of useless 
 ornamentation fell away from the cottage, the proprietor 
 never winked an eye, but should a tile drop whose fall 
 let in the rain or wind, Klomp would scramble up on 
 the roof and replace it. He was a philosopher. 
 
 He never ill-treated his daughters unless they let 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 13
 
 194 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 the fire go out in winter. To keep it lighted during 
 seven months of the year was their whole earthly duty, 
 for housekeeping had long been reduced to an almost 
 imperceptible minimum. The entire family lived on 
 next to nothing very cheerfully, and was a disgrace to 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 Vices the father had none. As has already been 
 hinted, he was negatively virtuous. He drowsed at 
 peace with himself and with all the world above and 
 below him, except when the Domine came to make 
 trouble. 
 
 The Domine was making trouble just now. By a 
 stroke of unexpected good fortune an opportunity had 
 occurred of "doing something for those poor girls," 
 whose one desire was that nothing should be done 
 cither for them or by them. Freule van Borck, it must 
 be known, occasionally took a philanthropic interest in 
 the village at her brother's castle-gates, an interest which 
 manifested itself in spasmodic bursts of tidying up 
 neglected corners. She had suddenly disapproved of 
 that long-standing eyesore, the Klomps' cottage, and 
 had made a beginning of improvement by getting an 
 energetic person in the north to accept of Pietje, the 
 elder girl, as a possible servant, wages five pounds per 
 annum, all found. This good news had been com- 
 municated to Pietje by Hephzibah, the Freule's maid. 
 Pietje had merely answered: "Let the Freule go her- 
 self," but that retort got modified on its way to Louisa. 
 
 So now the Domine went to try his hand. He 
 especially disliked all intercourse with Klomp, because, 
 during their interviews, one of the two invariably lost 
 his temper, and that one was never the parishioner.
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARENT. I 95 
 
 That was the worst of Klomp; he had no temper 
 to lose. 
 
 To-day, however, the parson rejoiced in notable 
 compensations; these occupied his thoughts as he swung 
 with large step through the woodlands. After the first 
 shock of abandonment which every parent feels in a 
 daughter's sudden rapture, he had settled down to com- 
 placent contemplation of an eligible son-in-law. For 
 the Domine, as we know, had never made a secret of 
 his attachment to Otto. And he lacked the requisite 
 affectation to convince himself that the secondary con- 
 sideration of the young man's social position was alto- 
 gether beneath the notice of a humble clergyman like 
 himself. 
 
 His darling Ursula would flit from the nest — that is 
 true — but only to another close by, where he still could 
 hear her singing. The Domine smiled gratefully over 
 this linked perfection of prosperity: wife to the heir of 
 the Horst, and wife to Otto van Helmont. 
 
 "Lord God, I thank Thee," said the Domine, out 
 aloud, among the fragrance of the solitary lane. His 
 path wound in sandy whiteness beneath the heat-mist 
 of the fir trees; there was a buzz on all sides of a 
 myriad nothings, invisibly swelling the morning air. 
 
 The cottage lay prone upon the ground, asleep. It 
 had sunk as low as it could, and had pulled the ragged 
 branches of the trees over its ears, comfortably hiding 
 in the cool long shadows, naked and unashamed. 
 
 The owner of the cottage lay prone upon the ground 
 also; he had the advantage of the house in that he was 
 consciously — and conscientiously — drowsing. "I sleep, 
 but my heart waketh." Klomp knew he was not awake. 
 
 13*
 
 I96 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Man has few pleasures here below; has he any to equal 
 that sensation? 
 
 "Good-morning, Klomp," said the parson's bright, 
 brisk voice at his ear. Klomp did not start; he merely 
 half opened one eye and answered, "Domine," which 
 was his abbreviated form of salutation. "Save your 
 breath to spare your life," was one of his axioms. 
 
 "Klomp, I've come about Pietje," continued the 
 Domine with that loudness which, in him, was nervous- 
 ness escaping, "I've heard about the place the Frenle 
 has found for her. What a splendid opportunity! And 
 so kind of the Freule ! " 
 
 Klomp nodded assent. Like most country parsons, 
 the Domine was very sensitive to disrespect. "You 
 might get up, Klomp," he said, sharply. 
 
 "Oh, if you wish it, sir, of course," replied the man, 
 shuffling to his feet, with an air of contempt for the 
 other's stupidity. He immediately lounged up against 
 the wall, sinking both hands in his pockets. "Them's 
 my sentiments to a T," he ejaculated, and jerked his 
 head in the direction of a paper nailed against the 
 dilapidated shutter, white on the dirty green. 
 
 The parson, advancing curiously, read the following 
 sentences in an illiterate scrawl: — 
 
 "Standing is better than walking. 
 Sitting is better than standing, 
 Lying is better than sitting, 
 And sleep is the best of all." 
 
 I Corinthians XIX. 7 • 
 
 Klomp nodded again, as the Domine turned with a 
 jump. "How dare you put a Bible tag under such
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARENT. I 97 
 
 nonsense as this?" cried the Domine, sniffing like a 
 warhorse. 
 
 "Yes, yes, the Bible knows," replied Klomp, imper- 
 turbably. "It's word of Holy Scripture, Domine, so you 
 can't say it isn't true." 
 
 "Word of Holy scribbling!" cried the indignant 
 clergyman. "It's no more in God's Bible, Klomp, than 
 you are in God's fold. And you haven't even got it 
 correct, for it ends 'And death is the best of all.' " 
 
 Suddenly a dark cloud seemed to spread across the 
 sunlit landscape. The surrounding larch trees shivered, 
 with a long-drawn sigh. 
 
 "I wish you would move a little on one side, 
 Domine," said Klomp, querulously, though he had never 
 heard of Diogenes. "Thank you. Well, a pedlar-man 
 that came showed it me in a book, and he said it was 
 in the Bible, and if it isn't, it ought to be. Them's my 
 sentiments. Morning, Domine." 
 
 His feet slipped forward, under the weariness of this 
 long discourse; he recovered himself with a shuffle. 
 Broad as the concluding hint had been, the Domine 
 ignored it. 
 
 "You never do anything, Klomp," he said angrily. 
 
 "Then I never do anything wrong, Domine. I don't 
 drink. I don't even smoke. I'm too poor." 
 
 "Poverty is not disgraceful to confess," replied the 
 Domine, quoting Pericles, "but not to escape it by exer- 
 tion, that is disgraceful." 
 
 Every child in the parish had heard the quota- 
 tion. 
 
 Klomp yawned: "'Peace and potatoes is better than 
 a pother and a cow.' That's in the Bible, at any rate, "
 
 1 g& MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 he replied, and suddenly he collapsed again upon the 
 grass, before the startled parson's backward skip. 
 
 "Could I see Pietje and speak to her? Perhaps she 
 will listen to reason," hazarded the Domine, controlling 
 his wrath. The father pointed to the cottage-door; then, 
 suddenly remembering the vague possibility of future 
 poor-relief, as yet not required, he faintly called his 
 elder daughter's name. 
 
 She crept out, with a half-pared potato in her hand. 
 She was a ruddy-faced girl, not uncomely in her sloven- 
 liness, like an apple that has fallen from the tree. 
 
 "Well, Pietje," began Domine Rovers, patiently. "So 
 you are going to Groningen to a nice home and useful 
 work. It is very kind indeed of the good lady who is 
 willing to teach you." 
 
 "Yes, Domine," said Pietje. 
 
 "Ah, that's right," cried the Domine, with pleased 
 surprise. "I'm glad to see you've come to your senses. 
 So you're going, like a good girl?" 
 
 "No, Domine," said Pietje. 
 
 "What do you mean, you impertinent creature?" 
 exclaimed the minister, exceedingly irate. "Not going 
 when you said you were. Not " 
 
 "No, Domine," repeated Pietje, sitting down on the 
 window-sill. 
 
 Domine Rovers turned upon the recumbent father. 
 Of course he had lost his temper; he had known all 
 along that he would do so; the consciousness of losing 
 hold caused him to let go all the faster: 
 
 "I appeal to you," he cried — "you, the responsible 
 guardian of this child. Her lot is in your hands 
 to-day, for life-long weal or woe. She is incapable
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARENT. I 99 
 
 of choosing, and unfit to do so. It is only your 
 selfishness, Klomp, that is ruining your daughters' lives. 
 You say you want them with you, I hear. A pretly 
 excuse." 
 
 "Yes, I love them," murmured Klomp, senti- 
 mentally. 
 
 "And what would Mietje do?" interposed Pietje, 
 looking up from vague contemplation of the pendent 
 potato-peel. Mietje was the child of twelve. 
 
 This objection not being easy to meet, the Domine 
 ignored it. "Fine love, indeed," he shouted to the 
 father. "When a parent loves his child, he sacrifices 
 any inclinations of his own to that child's real welfare. 
 The parent who doesn't do that doesn't love. Do you 
 understand me?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Klomp. 
 
 "Then take this to heart. If you don't send Pietje 
 to Groningen, and make her go, you don't love her. 
 There!" 
 
 "Would the Domine send Juffrouw Ursula to Gron- 
 ingen?" asked Pietje, askance. 
 
 "Indeed I should," replied the Domine, triumphantly, 
 thinking of the Horst. "Never should I allow my own 
 interests to influence me. Be sensible, Klomp." 
 
 But at this moment a welcome diversion occurred. 
 Mietje, the child, came running round the cottage with 
 pitiful cries. 
 
 "Pussy!" she screamed from afar; "oh, father, pussy! 
 The rope broke, and she's dropped into the well!" 
 
 She was sobbing and shrieking; nobody scolded her 
 for her mischief-making. Pietje started up with eager 
 words of comfort. .
 
 200 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Father would get the ladder. Father would go 
 down into the water. Father would fish out pussy." 
 
 Klornp was already up and away. The two girls 
 hurried after him. The Domine was left alone. 
 
 "Well, I have done my duty," he mused, retracing 
 his steps. "The best of us can do no more." He was 
 a very good man. He had a good man's weakness for 
 consciously doing his duty. 
 
 As he turned into a little brown hollow all chequered 
 with sunlit tracery, he saw Otto van Helmont come 
 vaulting over a stile. 
 
 "Ah Domine, I was looking for you," said Otto. 
 Then they walked on side by side, and gradually an 
 embarrassing silence settled down between them. The 
 Domine broke it. 
 
 "It is a very fine day," said the Domine. 
 
 "Yes," replied Otto. "Domine, when Ursula and I 
 are married, we must go back to Java." 
 
 "Never," said the Domine, and with a sweep of his 
 walking-stick he knocked down a thistle 
 
 "I — I am aware that perhaps I have hardly acted 
 quite fairly," began Otto, speaking with some agitation. 
 "It has all come so suddenly; I have allowed myself to 
 be overwhelmed. Apart from her general condemna- 
 tion of India, which I have never treated quite seriously, 
 the subject has not yet been mooted between us. I 
 wished first to speak of it to you. I feel that I am 
 asking " 
 
 The Domine had stopped in the middle of the 
 narrow path. 
 
 "It was the condition," he interrupted, hoarsely. 
 "She made it the condition. Never."
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARKNT. 201 
 
 "No, indeed, we have not spoken of it," cried Otto, 
 in distress. 
 
 The Domine stamped his foot. "Women always 
 forget everything," he said. 
 
 Otto hurried on. "I want to explain," he continued 
 eagerly. "I hope you will let me explain. It is a most 
 painful thing for all of us. I cannot stay at the Horst, 
 Domine; that is quite out of the question. In fact, the 
 sooner I leave it the better." 
 
 "Why?" broke in the Domine vehemently. "What 
 nonsense! Of course you can stay at the Horst!" 
 
 "I cannot bear the idea of earning my living in 
 this country, you yourself have always discouraged it. 
 Besides, I must earn much more than my living. That 
 is imperative. Especially now." He checked himself; 
 he was not going to speak to the Domine of the 
 Baroness's shattered hopes. But Ursula's father under- 
 stood. 
 
 Involuntarily both men's eyes wandered away across 
 the fields towards the chimneys of the Horst embedded 
 in foliage. Then their glances met. 
 
 "Never. Never. Never," repeated the Domine pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 "In a few years I shall probably want money," 
 declared Otto decisively. I shall want a good deal of 
 money, I expect. I must do what I can to earn it. 
 You will say, perhaps, like my father, that till now I 
 have tried and failed. All the more reason to try 
 again." 
 
 "No, I don't say that," responded the Domine 
 honestly. "You know I don't. But, Otto, I can't let 
 my Ursula go to Java."
 
 202 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Otto did not immediately return to the charge. 
 Presently he began again, in quite a low voice, almost 
 a whisper, under the laughing blue sky: 
 
 "More than fifteen years ago a young man came to 
 you, complaining bitterly that he was sick of his empty, 
 meaningless existence. He was tired of life, he said. 
 And you answered, 'Go and work. The people who 
 work have no time to get tired.' " 
 
 "But I never said, 'Go and amass money,'" inter- 
 rupted the old man, lifting a shaky arm. 
 
 "You said, 'Spend your own money.' How well I 
 remember your saying that the night I came to you! 
 'You are a grown man. Don't spend anyone's money 
 but your own.' It came to me like a revelation. It was 
 so directly opposed to what I had been taught from my 
 youth. In my world they say, 'Only don't earn money. 
 You may do anything except that.' " 
 
 "Well, you have obeyed that precept," replied the 
 Domine, a little bitterly. Then he repented imme- 
 diately. 
 
 "Otto, you're a good fellow. I can't let my Ursula 
 go away to Java." 
 
 "I was wrong, perhaps," said Otto, "to demand so 
 great a sacrifice. I ought to have spoken more plainly 
 of my intentions beforehand " 
 
 "You ought indeed," interjected the Domine, glad 
 of every vent. "You have behaved exceedingly badly." 
 
 "So be it. Well, I leave the matter in your hands. 
 Personally, of course, I consider I ought to return. I 
 have a fresh offer — a really advantageous opening on a 
 sugar plantation, a large distillery " 
 
 The Domine looked at him.
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PARENT. 203 
 
 "That means rough work," said the Domine. 
 
 "But you must decide," continued Otto, evasively. 
 "If you distinctly prefer it, I shall look for occupation in 
 Holland. Only in no case can I remain at the Horst." 
 
 "You can," cried the Domine, quite angrily. 
 
 Otto had stopped. His eyes were following a distant 
 swallow's trackless dips. 
 
 "And even if I could," he said slowly, "my wife 
 could not — Ursula could not." 
 
 The Domine's eyes sought his in long inquiry. 
 
 "With Gerard," said Otto at last. 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 Then the Domine cried, "Stuff and nonsense! stuff 
 and nonsense! I don't believe a word of it. Nor do 
 you." 
 
 "I leave the decision in your hands," repeated Otto. 
 "Some employment of some kind in some Dutch town, 
 if you so wish." 
 
 The Domine leant up against a tree; he closed his 
 eyes; his bronzed face was quite white. The wood 
 seemed to hold its breath under the sneering sky. 
 
 "When a father loves his child," began the Domine; 
 then his voice broke. "My Ursula," he said. "God 
 have mercy on me! The Lord gives and the Lord 
 takes away." He stopped. 
 
 Otto, thoughtfully wending his way homewards, 
 reached a spot where the Manor House burst into view, 
 all at once, through the park. Unconsciously he stood 
 still. The moments passed by; he remained without 
 moving; a yellow butterfly came foolishly hovering 
 among the bushes; he did not see it. 
 
 Suddenly a single tear lay heavy on his cheek.
 
 204 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 FORFEITS ALL ROUND. 
 
 For the next three months Otto worked in a sugar- 
 distillery at Boxlo, a little town among the wilds of 
 Brabant. It was rough work, indeed, as the Domine 
 had foretold. Night after night, the Jonker stood, 
 stripped to the waist, before the blazing furnaces; in 
 the small hours he came home to his lodgings and 
 strove to snatch from the daylight such sleep as he 
 could. Fortunately he was very robust, but that, 
 although an alleviation, can hardly be considered an 
 excuse. Sometimes even he wondered whether such 
 slaving, amid grime and oil-stench and sick throbs, was 
 his natural fate, but his father had truly described him 
 as animated by a passion of self-torture. Out-of-the- 
 way horrors were probably one's duty. Besides, what 
 other career was open to him at the moment? Once 
 in India, with his friend's assistance, he would stand 
 an excellent chance of making a fortune by sugar, 
 as that friend had done before him, in half a dozen 
 years. 
 
 So he worked, night after night, month after month, 
 with set lips and still eyes. Occasionally he spent a 
 Sunday at the Manor House, as if a traveller traversing 
 mountain solitudes had halted from time to time at a 
 Parisian cafe. His father and mother accepted him
 
 FORFEITS ALL ROUND. 205 
 
 without comment, adverse or. otherwise; in the smooth 
 design of their lives he was an arabesque run mad. 
 During his stay the Baroness chiefly regretted Gerard. 
 
 The only person who stuck to him through it all, 
 staunch and true, was Roderick Rovers. Once having 
 accepted the duty of sacrifice, the Domine delighted in 
 its pain. He rejoiced in proving to himself how, like 
 the old soldier he was, he could probe his own wound 
 without wincing. 
 
 "It is a great thing in Otto to go," he said. "It is 
 a great thing in me to let him take Ursula. Great 
 souls do great things gladly." Then he laughed at 
 himself: "Pshaw," he said, "'Men always imagine the 
 struggle of the moment, while they are engaged in it, 
 to be the greatest that ever was.' You will find that in 
 Thucydides, Ursula. Thucydides was a very wise man." 
 
 Ursula acquiesced a little impatiently. She did not 
 want to go to Java. She thought Otto should have 
 made known his intentions in time. Placed between 
 the two, she immediately discarded her brand-new lover 
 for the father on whose affection her whole life had 
 been built up. In the sudden certainty of separation 
 from the Domine, she discovered, with alarming unex- 
 pectedness, that she could very well have continued to 
 exist without Otto. For several days their engagement 
 dangled on a thread. 
 
 Her irritated hesitancy filled her lover with dismay, 
 for it strengthened all his doubts of Gerard. An honest 
 maiden's accepted lover does not ask her if she loves 
 another man. Indignantly Otto wiped the momentary 
 film from the pure reflection he bore in his heart. But
 
 206 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 there are actions we barely commit, yet remember a 
 lifetime. 
 
 It was the Domine, after all, who married Ursula to 
 Otto, with deep commiseration for himself. His dear 
 child's filial loyalty, while it wakened all his pride, 
 showed him his own path the more clearly. "A woman 
 shall leave father and mother and shall cleave unto her 
 husband," he said. "Never shall I allow you to desert 
 Otto for my sake. You do not know your own heart, 
 child. Your magnanimity leads you astray." Ultimately 
 Ursula almost believed this. But she conditioned for a 
 two years' absence only. 
 
 "I, had such been my lofty mission, would have 
 proved myself faithful unto death," said Miss Mopius, 
 to whom came outer echoes of the struggle. "A great 
 love, like blazing sunlight, hides the whole world in its 
 own bright mist. Van Helmont has dropped a diamond 
 to play with a pebble. So like a man." Miss Mopius, 
 since her disappointment, had grown very romantic in 
 her talk. According to the advertisements it was the 
 Sympathetico Lob: according to her own account it was 
 her mighty sorrow. "Ah, my dear, do not let us speak 
 of it. Every woman's heart is a sanctuary with a crypt." 
 
 She snorted at Ursula's heavy eyes. "Every man 
 gets the wife he deserves," she said. "With women that 
 is not the case, their choice being limited." Ursula was 
 incapable of small, spiteful retorts; she made up her 
 mind that she would prove to Aunt Josine and the world 
 how worthily Otto had chosen. 
 
 So she set to work on her trousseau, and was very 
 affectionate to her father. There was something exceed- 
 ingly painful in this latter-day softness between two
 
 FORFEITS ALT, ROUND. 20J 
 
 hitherto undemonstrative characters. When Ursula laid 
 down a neglected needle to look across at the Domine, 
 the old man would jump up with swift repression, and 
 angrily bid her go on. The days shortened: perhaps 
 that made them seem to pass so swiftly, and the ap- 
 pointed wedding-morn drew near. 
 
 Meanwhile another wedding was also announced as 
 imminent, and various members of the Helmont family 
 gnashed their teeth over the prospect. The whole of 
 Drum, however, jabbered fairly good-natured approval, 
 which is surely saying a good deal, and more than most 
 young couples can hope for. 
 
 "Yes, Gerard, it is quite true," said Helena van 
 Trossart, stopping, in a crowded ball-room, a white vision 
 among the glitter and hum. "You could have assured 
 yourself it was true without insulting me by the question." 
 Her clear eyes flashed. "I am going to marry Willie 
 van Troyen." 
 
 Gerard was very hot — the room was hot. "No," 
 he said, thickly, "I should never have believed it, unless 
 I had heard it from your own lips." He drew a little 
 aside, almost secure, yet not quite, among the restless 
 throng. 
 
 "I cannot make you out at all," he went on, in great 
 
 agitation, "I — I don't want to say anything, but " 
 
 He checked himself; his eyebrows twitched; his whole 
 face grew troubled with suppressed meaning. 
 
 She understood him perfectly. For a few moments 
 — perhaps half a minute — she remained quite silent, 
 with eyes downcast, her bosom heaving, her graceful 
 figure a-tremble, like her lips. At last, amid the rhyth- 
 mic flow of gaiety around, she lifted her solemn gaze
 
 2o8 MY LADY NOEODY. 
 
 to his, and spoke with slow distinctness. "I know what 
 you would taunt me with," she said. "You think me 
 inconsistent. But in his case it doesn't matter. I do 
 not love him." 
 
 And then the room swam round in a whirl, and she 
 was gone. 
 
 After that, they were more than ever unwilling to 
 meet. Yet, in a little circle like theirs the thing was 
 unavoidable, and Gerard had constantly to face what 
 was almost more painful, the tacit misery of the fat 
 Baroness, Helen's comfortable aunt, who understood, 
 with a woman's insight in all such matters, that every- 
 thing ought, somehow, to have been different from what 
 it was. 
 
 The Baroness van Trossart complained to her hus- 
 band, but the Baron said that the Van Troyens were as 
 good a family as the Van Helmonts, and he didn't see 
 that it mattered. 
 
 "Personally," he added, "I am unable to perceive 
 much difference between the two young men. They 
 are both fair-complexioned and gentlemanly, and ill- 
 mannered, like their companions. I wonder that Nellie 
 should have thought the exchange worth her while." 
 
 The lady would have protested. 
 
 "My dear, I cannot help it. Had / been consulted 
 I should have requested Helen to marry your three 
 nephews Van Asveld. Their mother is pestering me to 
 find the whole three of them places with a start of two 
 hundred a year. The thing is impossible!" He coughed 
 testily, and before his important eyes he held a blue 
 book upside down.
 
 FORFEITS ALL ROUND. 2O0. 
 
 Equally bootless was the Bai-oness's attempt to seek 
 refuge in the sympathy of Mademoiselle Papotier. That 
 impenetrable Frenchwoman only replied: 
 
 "Mon Dieu, Madame, le manage n'est pas l'amour!" 
 taking the name of three holy things in vain within one 
 short sentence, after the manner of her race. 
 
 But one evening towards dusk, as Gerard was dress- 
 ing for dinner, he heard someone enter his little front 
 sitting-room, to whom he called out, into the heavy twi- 
 light: 
 
 "All right, old chap! Wait a minute till I get my 
 shirt on. There's some gin on the sideboard." 
 
 Alas, that gentlemen should drink gin! 
 
 Presently he went forward with his fingers at his 
 collar-stud. In the shadow stood a shawl-enfolded figure 
 whom he thought he recognised. 
 
 "Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, "I told the landlady 
 to send you up. If you don't do the things better I 
 must get some other woman. I believe you purposely 
 wear holes in my underclothing." 
 
 "Indeed, Monsieur," came the reply in French, "I 
 am most anxious to wash your dirty linen, but, Mon- 
 sieur Gerard, you give your family almost too much 
 of it." 
 
 "By Jove!" replied Gerard. "I say, mademoiselle, 
 wait a minute till I " He disappeared. 
 
 Mademoiselle Papotier smiled a supercilious smile. 
 "Ah, que les hommes sont plaisants," she murmured. 
 "Mauvais plaisants!" she added. But when Gerard 
 returned a few moments later she was boldly agreeable 
 to him, with a smirk round her slightly moustachoed lips. 
 
 "To what am I indebted?" began the young officer. 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. *4
 
 2IO MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 She waved a little deprecatory hand in the neatest 
 of gray gloves. 
 
 "A moment!" she said. "Can you not spare me a 
 moment? I am fatigued. May I not repose myself?" 
 
 Gerard, ashamed and awkward, hurriedly pushed 
 forward an arm-chair. 
 
 "Ah, but sit you down also," she expostulated. 
 "Only the disagreeable says itself standing." Then, as 
 he obeyed, she looked at him with an ogle. "What a 
 handsome man you are!" she said. The words fright- 
 ened Gerard excessively but unnecessarily; it was only 
 part of Mademoiselle Papotier's philosophy that you 
 could put every man on earth into a good humour by 
 broadly praising his looks. If Red Riding Hood had 
 said to the wolf "What fine teeth you have!" instead of 
 "What big ones!" he. would probably have abandoned 
 his intention of eating her. 
 
 "No wonder the poor thing loved you," immediately 
 added the little governess, casting down her eyes. She 
 was hung round with black jet indiscriminately, and she 
 picked at it — now here, now there. 
 
 Gerard, as we know, was not a diplomatist. "Did 
 she ask you to come and tell me that?" he cried with 
 irritable irony. 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur van Helmont," replied the French- 
 woman, softly, and her swarthy face seemed to lose its 
 vigour. "It is always like that; you men, you knock at 
 a woman's heart until it opens, and then you cry out 
 in scorn at the open door!" She hesitated for a mo- 
 ment, still plucking at the jet. "First the beautiful Ur- 
 sula," she said, "and then my own sweet Helen. Ay, 
 monsieur, it is not right!"
 
 FORFEITS ALL ROUND. 2 I I 
 
 "Ursula?" cried Gerard in amazement. 
 
 "Yes, do you think no one knows? Oh, that is 
 like you men again. You can always trust the woman 
 you have wronged to keep your secret. You are safe. 
 Not a word has the noble Helen spoken; but trust Pa- 
 potier to see for herself." 
 
 "It is not true," said Gerard, with real fervour. "I 
 have never wronged a hair of Ursula's head." 
 
 Mademoiselle Papotier blushed, actually blushed. 
 "The word 'wrongs,'" she said, "is not easily defined; 
 it has a masculine and a feminine gender. Ah, there 
 you behold the former governess! One thing, however, 
 I can tell you, Monsieur van Helmont, it is Mademoiselle 
 Ursula and her wrongs that have lost you your bride. 
 I repeat, Helen has told me nothing, but Mademoiselle 
 Rovers, and she alone, has broken off your engagement." 
 Then she went on to tell her astounded listener about 
 the interview on the garden seat which she had watched 
 from her staircase window. 
 
 "And after that," she concluded, "there was an end 
 of it. My Helen would not have the parson's daughter's 
 leavings. And quite right." She shut up her mouth 
 with a snap. 
 
 But she opened it again immediately. 
 
 "Nevertheless," she went on, "I consider she exag- 
 gerates. Especially because she cared for you, and 
 your previous belle evidently did not. It is for that I 
 am come. The step is absurd, perhaps, but what is that 
 to me? I am come to say: The marriage with this 
 little rabbit-eye is a farce. It must be prevented. Go 
 tell my Helen that there is nothing between you and 
 the fiancee of your brother. Women are vain; who 
 
 14*
 
 ill IMY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 knows what this Ursula has lied? You appear sincere. 
 And I say one thing more, though I should not. Mark 
 me. Helen will marry you if she can. She is proud, 
 
 poor little thing, as she has a right to be, but Ah, 
 
 these men, these men! Then you will bid the little 
 comrade go away home. I do not love you, Monsieur 
 Gerard. I do not say these things for love of you. 
 But they are true." 
 
 She had spoken with suppressed vehemence, she 
 now smiled a thin smile, and her lips trembled. 
 
 "I do not know what to say or think," replied 
 Gerard, greatly agitated. "Towards Ursula, at least, 
 I am innocent. What interest can she have had in 
 ruining my chance with Helen? Mademoiselle, you — 
 you must really excuse me. I am going out to dinner. 
 I shall be late as it is!" He started gladly to his feet. 
 
 She also rose, with a great rustle of scorn. 
 
 "Good-night, Monsieur," she said. "A benevolent 
 fairy — remember there are old fairies — has shown you 
 the hole in the hedge: will you have the sense to creep 
 through, unscratched? Ah, be sure that I should rather 
 have barred your path with my body, but that love 
 cannot bear to see the whole life of the beauty be- 
 numbed in the wrong prince's arms. Princes forsooth!" 
 She dropped him a curtsey and hurried away. 
 
 He had not even time to sit down and think it out. 
 His excuse had been as imperative as it was inane. He 
 flew off to his dinner-party and laughed and flirted, 
 wondering all the time whether Ursula could possibly 
 have had "a weakness" for him. That seemed to be 
 the only possible explanation. Evidently it was Made- 
 moiselle Papotier's. Romance, exaggeration, these were
 
 FORFEITS ALL ROUND. 2 13 
 
 probable; but he could hardly believe in intentional 
 spite or untruth. 
 
 And yet — he was very much out of temper with 
 Ursula for her capture of "that fool, Otto." His rage 
 against his brother, softened by time and a capital new 
 horse, melted still more at the thought that he had 
 wronged Otto regarding Helen. Ursula, then, was at 
 the bottom of the mischief. Ursula, the designing in- 
 truder; the nobody who, one day, would rule at the 
 Horst. She had always been a subject to him of kindly 
 indifference. He was angry with himself for the violence 
 of his new passion against her. 
 
 On returning home, he found a note awaiting him. 
 It contained only these two quotations, evidently from 
 Papotier's favourite seventeenth century romances: — 
 
 "Said Marcellino: 'Damaris, my brother is faithless. I can 
 prove it to you. Why, then, should your heart, blinded by use- 
 less smoke, still refuse to perceive the flame that is burning in 
 mine — i.e., heart.' 
 
 "Rodelinda replied: 'Adelgunda, I thank you for warning 
 me. The lover that deserted you shall never have an opportunity 
 of trampling upon Rodelinda's affections.' " 
 
 "Exactly," said Gerard, sighing heavily. He was 
 very miserable. And then he went to sleep. 
 
 Meanwhile, Otto plodded on, unconscious of the 
 sins laid to his charge, and to Ursula's. The story 
 which Adeline had forced upon him in the public 
 gardens at Drum he had folded away on a shelf in 
 his memory. What else could he do? He was not the 
 man to influence Gerard. We know it was not through 
 him that the tale reached Ursula — or Helen. 
 
 His occupations called him away from Boxlo tq
 
 214 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Bois-le-Duc, the capital of Brabant. There he came 
 into frequent contact with a cousin, of whom he had 
 previously known very little — nothing personally — and 
 regarding whom his parents would hardly have cared 
 to enlighten any one. This was a young Van Helmont, 
 who lived with a widowed mother, and supported him- 
 self as a post-office clerk. The Helmonts of the Horst 
 did not object to his poverty, but to his mother. To 
 Otto's enthusiastic eulogies the Baroness listened bored. 
 She was too polite to ask him to change the subject: 
 besides, perhaps she felt that such a measure would 
 have proved quite useless, for, whatever Otto might 
 select to say, he bored her by his way of saying it. 
 She could only love this son, not live with him. She 
 rejoiced with exceeding joy when Gerard, whose char- 
 acter was incapable of vindictiveness, consented once 
 more to sit opposite to Otto at table. Still, the brothers 
 held aloof. 
 
 And the wedding-day drew near, overshadowingly 
 near. One person delighted in that thought. Otto.
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS'S PARTY. 21$ 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS'S PARTY. 
 
 Mynheer Jacobus Mopius stood on the hearth-rug 
 in his wife's bedroom. 
 
 "My dear," he said, "I must admit this — since you 
 have taken to spending the greater part, of your day 
 upstairs, the house has become most insufferably dull." 
 
 For Mevrouw Mopius this remark had long ago lost 
 all its novelty; still, she never grew to like it, even while 
 she meekly answered: — 
 
 "Yes, my dear, yes. I know. I shall be better 
 soon." And she added, as one of her familiar after- 
 thoughts, "Harriet ought to amuse you." 
 
 "Oh, Harriet amuses me fast enough," retorted 
 Mynheer Mopius, with unpleasing alacrity. "But you'd 
 soon be all right if you left off remembering you were 
 ill." 
 
 "Yes, my dear, yes," repeated Mevrouw Mopius, 
 closing her faded eyes. Her cheeks were faded; her 
 hair was faded; her flannel dressing-gown was faded. 
 In the fading light, complacent Mynheer Mopius, look- 
 ing down upon her, thought how excessively faded she 
 was. 
 
 "Only yesterday," Mynheer continued, triumphantly, 
 "I purposely asked your doctor what was wrong with 
 you. And what do you think his answer was? He said
 
 2l6 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 he really couldn't tell. There!" Mynheer Mopius stood 
 out, defiant, protruding his portly prosperity. "He — 
 said — he — really — couldn't — tell." 
 
 It gave Mevrouw Mopius some comfort to learn how 
 literally the physician fulfilled the promise she had ex- 
 tracted from him. 
 
 "And it's absurd to have the whole house made 
 wretched by an illness the doctor don't even put a 
 name to. If you're not down to breakfast to-morrow I 
 shall send for a professor from Amsterdam." 
 
 "Don't, Jacobus," gasped the lady, "I'm feeling 
 better to-day. I really am. I don't want no professors 
 from anywhere." 
 
 "But I do. Sarah, 1 believe you enjoy being ill. 
 Thank goodness I can afford to cure my wife." 
 
 "There's another reason, besides," he added after a 
 moment, "why I want you to hurry up. There's this 
 wedding of Ursula's coming on. They've behaved very 
 badly, I know; but Roderick was never a man to know 
 about manners — never in society, poor fellow. How- 
 ever, I'm not one to take offence. I intend to give a 
 big party here in the 'bride-days.'"* 
 
 "Jacobus!" exclaimed his wife. "Why, we don't 
 even know the van Helmonts. She hasn't even presented 
 him here!" 
 
 "My dear, did I not say that Roderick is a boor? 
 Josine tells me they have paid none of the customary 
 visits, on either side. In one word, they behaved as 
 people who don't know how to behave, and I am going 
 to behave as a person who does know." 
 
 * The fortnight preceding the ceremony.
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS'S PARTY. 21 J 
 
 "But, Jacobus " 
 
 "Ursula is my own sister Mary's child. My own 
 sainted sister Mary's. And I shouldn't even give a 
 wedding-party to my own sister Mary's only child? 
 Sarah, it is all your increasing indolence. You are 
 prematurely making an old woman of yourself. Look 
 at me. I am two years your junior, but it might be 
 twenty. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" As he said 
 this, he arranged the rose in his button-hole, with a 
 great crackle of his blue-spotted white waistcoat. An 
 oily satisfaction played over the yellow smoothness of 
 his cheeks. 
 
 The truth of it was, of course, that the whole man 
 burned with eagerness to leap, at one rush, into the 
 glories of the great world. The opportunity was unique; 
 it offered more than the boldest could have hoped for; 
 we may well forgive his anxiety. 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius lay in utter collapse, a crumpled 
 rag, against one corner of her great chintz chair. 
 
 "I want Harriet!" she said, faintly. Her husband 
 gave a great snort of contempt as he stalked from the 
 room. 
 
 A few minutes later Harriet entered, a novel, as 
 usual, in her dangling hand. 
 
 "Harriet, I must have my drops," exclaimed the in- 
 valid, sharply. "The doctor said I was to have them 
 every two hours. And in freshly drawn water each time. 
 I told him it couldn't be done. Doctor, I said, I've 
 nobody to fetch me the water." 
 
 Harriet busied herself about the side-table, mechanic- 
 ally, and in silence. 
 
 "'And your niece?' said the doctor," Mevrouw
 
 2 I 8 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 I 
 
 Mopius continued. "So I had to tell him you were no 
 good." 
 
 "Oh, he knows that," replied Harriet. "I'm no 
 nurse. I can't look after sick people." 
 
 "There's one person you'll nurse, if ever she's sick," 
 replied Mevrouw with a grunt, swallowing down her me- 
 dicine. "Harriet, do you know the date for which Ur- 
 sula's wedding is fixed?" 
 
 "Thursday month," curtly answered Harriet, who 
 just now hated the fortunate bride with unreasoning 
 envy — an envy that wrung tears from the lonely girl at 
 night. 
 
 "What day of the month?" persisted Mevrouw, 
 wearily. 
 
 "It's the twenty-third." 
 
 "Harriet, you must go across to the doctor's for me. 
 I can't have him here again just yet; his coming vexes 
 your uncle so. You must say to him — listen — word for 
 word: you must say, 'Aunt bids me ask: Will uncle be 
 able to go to the wedding-feast on the sixteenth of next 
 month?' Just that. And you must bring back an 
 answer — yes or no. Go along." 
 
 "But the wedding is on the twenty-third," pro- 
 tested Harriet, sulkily. "And, besides, Uncle Mopius 
 isn't ill." 
 
 "Yes he is," replied the invalid with guilty inci- 
 siveness. "You just go and do as you're told, and come 
 back with the answer immediate. Harriet, if you don't 
 say a word about it downstairs — you'd only make your 
 uncle nervous — I'll give you my Florentine brooch, the 
 mosaic of the two doves drinking. Now hurry away." 
 
 Thus incited, Harriet sulked off through the stolid
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS'S PARTY. 2 I Q 
 
 streets. If Mevrouw Mopius did not send a note to 
 the physician, it was not only that she felt physically 
 and autographically inadequate, but also because she 
 confidently believed that Harriet would in any case have 
 broken the seal. 
 
 The messenger soon reached her destination. A 
 maidservant admitted her into the young doctor's private 
 room. He was at luncheon. 
 
 "My aunt sends me to you on a fool's errand," she 
 began, abruptly. "This is her literal message: 'There's 
 a wedding feast on the sixteenth — which there isn't — 
 will Uncle Mopius be able to go?' " She hung her 
 head with affected accentuation of the indifference she 
 was really feeling. 
 
 The doctor hesitated and looked curiously at her. 
 
 "I'm to bring back an answer— yes or no," she 
 added. 
 
 "Yes or no," repeated the doctor. "Would you 
 mind saying it again, Miss Verveen?" 
 
 "There's a wedding entertainment on the sixteenth," 
 answered Harriet, with almost ill-mannered impatience. 
 "Will Uncle Mopius be able to go?" 
 
 The young doctor studied his boots for a minute. 
 Then he said, slowly: "No; I believe, considering the 
 circumstances, I may safely commit myself to a 'No.' 
 As your aunt so expressly wishes it, you must tell her 
 my opinion is 'No.'" He was much annoyed, but he 
 could not help himself. By this time he had got some- 
 what accustomed to Mevrouw Mopius, the strangest of 
 patients, who treated him like a younger colleague called 
 in for a consultation. 
 
 "Very good," said Harriet. "I'll tell her. And
 
 2 20 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 now, please, a little questioning on my own account. 
 What's the matter with Uncle Mopius?" 
 
 "Nothing, Juffrouw Harriet," replied the young man 
 heartily, with sudden relief. "I am glad to be able 
 to assure you that your excellent uncle enjoys very fair 
 health." 
 
 "Don't tell me untruths, if you please," persisted the 
 girl, greatly in earnest. "I have very particular reasons 
 of my own for desiring to know. What's wrong with 
 him? Why shouldn't he go to a party — if there were 
 a party — on the sixteenth?" 
 
 "Oh, he might be a little out of sorts, you know. 
 You had better give your aunt her message. It must 
 be rather dull for you sometimes, Juffrouw Harriet, eh?" 
 He cast an admiring glance at her; he had quick sym- 
 pathetic eyes, good doctor's eyes. 
 
 "By no means," replied Harriet; but her attitude, 
 grown suddenly listless again, belied her words. "So 
 you see what a fool's errand mine was! As for Aunt 
 Sarah, of course I know she's very ill. I wish she 
 wasn't. It's very hard on me. I can't nurse invalids, 
 and I hate to seem unkind." 
 
 "Oh, I'm sure you couldn't be unkind to anyone," 
 said the young man, sweetly. It struck him that his 
 lunch-table looked very forlorn. "You couldn't be, 
 Miss Harriet." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I could," replied Harriet, quickly. "I am 
 always unkind, for instance, to people who call me Miss 
 Harriet, and forget that my name is Miss Verveen." 
 
 The doctor laughed rather awkwardly as she turned 
 to go. 
 
 "You are quite right," he answered. "Quite right.
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS S PARTY. 221 
 
 Either Juffrouw Verveen or — not Juffrouw at all; I envy 
 the privileged few." 
 
 "So it's 'No'?" she said, with her hand on the door 
 knob. 
 
 "So it's 'No'?" he repeated boldly, looking her 
 straight in the face. But he read his answer there, and 
 sobered suddenly, as the physician crushed down the 
 lover in presence of the great tragedy so quietly en- 
 acting. "Yes, I'm afraid it must be 'No,'" he said. 
 "The sixteenth, you said? Tell your aunt I am awfully 
 sony, but as far as I am able to judge she had better 
 think 'No.' " 
 
 Harriet hurried home through the autumn grayness 
 of the sleepy little town. A peculiar smile hung fixed 
 upon her forbidding features, a mixture of anxiety and 
 content. She went straight up to her aunt's bedroom. 
 
 "The answer is 'No,' " she said. 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius made no reply. She lay back, 
 with closed eyes and sunken jaws, almost as her niece 
 had left her when sent forth upon this hideous errand. 
 Harriet flung herself down on a chair, and resumed her 
 novel. Presently she rose to slip away. 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius opened her eyes. 
 
 "Harriet, give me my tambour- frame," she said. 
 Harriet obediently drew forth Laban from his cupboard, 
 and removed the sheltering tissue paper. "I wonder 
 could I do a stitch or two," said Mevrouw Mopius, dole- 
 fully. She sat trying to thread a big needle with shaky 
 fingers. Harriet waited a moment, watching her. 
 
 "Let me do it," suggested Harriet at last. 
 
 But Aunt Sarah resented this interference. 
 
 "I wasn't attending," she said, angrily, "I was think-
 
 222 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 ing of something else. Surely you don't imagine I 
 couldn't thread a needle?" 
 
 And as she still continued trying, pitifully, trem- 
 blingly, her niece turned impatiently away. 
 
 "Do you know," continued Mevrouw Mopius, con- 
 templating the gaudy flare of patriarchs and camels, "I 
 have been thinking that I should like to give it, if I 
 can finish it, to Ursula Rovers for a wedding present. 
 She admired it very much when she was here. She 
 was the only person that ever admired it." Her voice 
 became quite sorrowful. 
 
 "Domine Pock admired it," said Harriet, sooth- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Yes, after dining here!" exclaimed the invalid, 
 with a flash of grim humour. "He said Jacob must 
 have had just such a face as that. Now, Harriet, that 
 was flattery. For Jacob couldn't have had exactly that 
 sort of face." Indeed, had the countenance of the 
 patriarch blazed in such continuous scarlet, his uncle 
 could never have engaged him to look after cows. 
 
 "Besides, Pock doesn't really know about Jacob's 
 face," continued Mevrouw Mopius, with a sick person's 
 insistence. "For I asked him myself if we had an 
 authentic photograph" — she meant "portrait" — "and he 
 said we hadn't. Though we have of Joseph, he said. 
 It seems a very great pity. I should have liked to do 
 it from the life." 
 
 Mevrouw Mopius sank into aggrieved consideration 
 of the father's remissness about sitting for his likeness 
 as compared with the foresight shown by the son. 
 
 "Yes, I should give it to Ursula for her wedding," 
 she resumed, after another long pause, "unless "
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS's PARTY. 22 3 
 
 She broke off. 
 
 "Unless what?" prompted Harriet. 
 
 "Unless I should like it for a cushion in my coffin. 
 I think that might be rather nice." 
 
 "Aunt!" exclaimed Harriet in real horror, and a 
 sudden film of feeling clouded her passionate eyes. 
 
 "Why, my dear, whatever is the matter?" queried 
 the elder lady, calmly. "All of us die some day, do 
 we not? And when my time has come, I should like 
 to carry away with me my last bit of work." 
 
 "Ah, but this is not going to be your last, you 
 know," comforted Harriet, with the easy infatuation of 
 the survivor. 
 
 "Well, if not, then Ursula shall certainly have it," 
 Mevrouw said, cheerfully. "I wish I were quite sure 
 she would put it, as a firescreen, in her drawing-room. 
 Imagine my work in the drawing-room at the Horst. I 
 should like that." She resumed her tender contempla- 
 tion of the immovably staring figures. "I am very 
 tired," she whispered, "go down now to your uncle and 
 tell him the doctor says he can have his party on the 
 sixteenth or after. Don't say anything about my message; 
 your uncle's got a cold, but he doesn't want people to 
 know it. There can be no objection, however, to his 
 asking people here." 
 
 Poor woman, she prided herself on her clumsy 
 diplomacy. 
 
 "Let him get ready for his party," she reflected. 
 "It will keep him busy — meanwhile." 
 
 In the face of Mynheer Mopius's blindly staring 
 selfishness, the stratagem was completely successful. 
 Plunged up to the eyebrows in preparations for a
 
 2 24 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 gorgeous entertainment, which was, of course, to excel 
 all similar ones, that gentleman forgot to notice his 
 wife's condition. He would run up to her with long 
 descriptions of his arrangements, to which she listened 
 reposefully for hours. When he went downstairs again 
 she smiled. He was happy, and he was letting her die 
 in peace. 
 
 Soon Mynheer Mopius was obliged to slip over to 
 Horstwyk to consult with the relations who had so sud- 
 denly increased in importance. He found the trio 
 gathered in the parsonage drawing-room to receive him, 
 and he patted their heads all round. He even con- 
 descended to chaff Josine about "one wedding beget- 
 ting another," as they say in Dutch, and proposed 
 that she should be bridesmaid and make up to the 
 best man. 
 
 "I should never marry my junior. I disapprove of 
 such matches," replied Josine, hitting out, however un- 
 reasonably, at both Ursula and Mopius. 
 
 "Well, we can't all marry our twin-sisters, like Abra- 
 ham," said Mopius, reddening. "Can we, Roderick?" 
 
 "Sarah was Abraham's half-sister," answered the 
 Domine, wistfully gazing out at the placid sky. 
 
 "Well, at any rate, my Sarah's only six years my 
 senior, and I made it two the day we married. I've 
 done my duty to the old girl. Ursula, I hope that, 
 thirty years hence, you'll be able to say as much." 
 
 "You married for money," retorted Josine. As her 
 niece's wedding day approached, Miss Mopius's growing 
 disagreeableness became a source of great agitation to 
 herself. She smelt at her vinaigrette. 
 
 "Pooh!" replied Mopius. "If so, I quadrupled the
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS's PARTY. 22% 
 
 sum. Don't be more of a nuisance than you can help, 
 Josine, or I shan't invite you to my party." 
 
 "There are the Baron and the Baroness coming 
 down the road," interposed Ursula, watching her father's 
 flushed face. 
 
 "Where? Show me, Ursula," cried Mopius, bound- 
 ing to the window. She laughed. "I do believe they 
 are coming here!" she cried. "You will have to meet 
 them now, Uncle Jacobus." 
 
 "I have no objection to meeting them," replied 
 Jacobus, red and important. "I was going to ask them, 
 of course, to my party. I have no objection to the 
 aristocracy as such." 
 
 A moment later he was bowing and smiling — bow- 
 ing what he considered an eighteenth-century bow. And 
 the Baron was expressing his delight at making the ac- 
 quaintance of Ursula's uncle, "of whom he had heard 
 so much." Furthermore, Mynheer van Helmont spoke 
 with admiration of Mynheer Mopius's villa, upon which 
 Mynheer Mopius replied, in the kindest manner possible, 
 that it was very nice but not as fine as the Horst. He 
 also proffered his invitation on the spot, and the Baro- 
 ness, smiling elaborately, accepted it as in duty bound. 
 It was some time before her courteous husband con- 
 sented to catch her eye, and then she immediately arose. 
 In those few minutes the retired attorney had twice 
 called Mynheer van Helmont "Baron," and several other 
 atrocius things had occurred. "How small she is! She 
 needn't look so bumptious ! " thought Mopius as the little 
 lady shook hands. He was telling her how there would 
 be dancing at his party, and he poked Josine in the 
 ribs. "In my young days out at Batavia," he said, "I 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 1 5
 
 2 26 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 used frequently to dance with the Governor-General's 
 lady. I daresay, Baron, you remember Steelenaar, a 
 good Viceroy in his day?" He hoped for the honour 
 of the opening polonaise with her ladyship. 
 
 "My dancing days are over, Mynheer," said the 
 Baroness, stiffly. "I doubt whether I should be able to 
 acquit myself properly. Things have changed so much 
 in society since my youth." 
 
 "Ah, there you are right, Mevrouw," replied Jacobus 
 Mopius with fervour. "Now, at the Drum Casino, 
 nowadays — I am an old member — you meet people 
 who, in your time, would not have dared to appear at 
 a public performance." 
 
 "I do not doubt it," replied the Baroness, taking 
 leave. 
 
 Husband and wife proceeded leisurely homewards. 
 Presently the Baron said: 
 
 "My dear, I cannot understand your caring so much. 
 Surely Mynheer Mopius is only a continuation of Juffrouw 
 Josine." 
 
 "I had said nothing," replied the Baroness quickly. 
 "But, as you broach the subject, I must confess that I 
 think you might have stayed half the time and showed 
 a quarter the courtesy." 
 
 The Baron laughed. "He is Ursula's single rich 
 relation," said the Baron. "I never forget that. And, 
 besides, I am naturally amiable, Cecile. It is a mas- 
 culine weakness." 
 
 "I hate money," cried the Baroness. "If there 
 were no money in the world there would be no vul- 
 garity." 
 
 "How sad that would be for the non-vulgar," re-
 
 MYNHEER MOPIUS S PARTY. 227 
 
 plied her consort. "Yes, he is Ursula's single 'pros- 
 pect.' I was aware of the fact, but, of course, he stated 
 it. I had very good reason to be amiable." 
 
 "He may live to be a hundred," said the Baroness, 
 petulantly. 
 
 "Not he. His widow might, if she were healthy, 
 but she happens to be very ill. My dear, you put 
 things so roughly, you love money more than I do. But 
 I hope he will live to be a hundred. If only pour nous 
 encourager, nous autres. We all ought to live to be a 
 hundred; a hundred years isn't much. As a rule it's 
 the widows who live on for ever. We men die fast 
 enough." 
 
 "No, no!" cried the Baroness, drawing her arm 
 through his. "Don't talk like that, Theodore; I should 
 never survive you!" 
 
 "My dear, if I can I will give you but little oppor- 
 tunity. Do not forget that, when I depart, I must 
 leave my art treasures to Otto, not to mention the 
 Horst." 
 
 They walked on, arm in arm, each silently busy 
 with grave thoughts. 
 
 "Somehow, I have occasionally imagined of late that 
 it wouldn't be for long." The Baron's voice suddenly 
 changed. "But that's all nonsense," he said briskly. 
 "It seems too cruel to die and leave it all." 
 
 He swept his eyes across his fields and forests. His 
 wife pressed his hand. 
 
 "My dear," he said, "do you object to my lighting 
 a cigar?" 
 
 i5*
 
 2 28 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 When the sixteenth came round there was no dan- 
 cing. Mynheer Mopius sat in a darkened room. 
 
 Yes, Mevrouw Mopius had provokingly died. At 
 the last moment she resolved to take her unfinished 
 patriarchs down into the grave with her, but she left 
 her collection of samples to Ursula, because Ursula had 
 shown some appreciation of her work.
 
 BARON VAN HELMONT. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 BARON VAN HELMONT. 
 
 So Otto and Ursula were married with all the 
 customary paraphernalia of vulgar exposure — para- 
 phernalia which cause a sensible man to resolve, as 
 he runs the gauntlet on his way back from the pillory, 
 that the first time in his case shall certainly be the 
 last. Theirs was as quiet a wedding as unselfish people 
 can get — which means that it was not a quiet wed- 
 ding. 
 
 Their honeymoon trip was but an introduction to 
 the longer journey; at Genoa the big Java steamship 
 would meet them; meanwhile, creeping down the Riviera, 
 they lingered for a fortnight in that Paradise of Snob- 
 bery, Cannes. Cannes is a beautiful garden, planted 
 with princes; what more can be desired by the mil- 
 lionaire, or by the numerous curs to whom the far scent 
 of the millionaire is as sausage on the breeze? Other 
 towns contain elements manifold, paltry and noble; ex- 
 quisite, sun-wrapt Cannes has nothing but the worship 
 of gold by glitter, and the worship of glitter by gold. 
 
 The young couple, therefore, passed through it un- 
 perceived. It was only natural that they should appear 
 in the "Strangers' List" as Monsieur et Madame de 
 Holmani. They held out their hands to nobody, and 
 nobody held out his hands to them, a kind of negative
 
 23O MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Ishmaelism, which has its advantages, even outside a 
 honeymoon. 
 
 To Ursula, crossing, simultaneously, the frontiers of 
 Holland, home and maidenhood, this fortnight never 
 assumed the cool colours of reality. Before it could 
 do that, it was over. She was back at Horstwyk again, 
 like an awakened dreamer, in the dusk of a troubled 
 morn. 
 
 While the trip lasted — on the Paris Boulevards, 
 among the orange-groves of La Croisette — the farewell 
 peep of home hung heavy before her eyes. She seemed 
 to see them all photographed on the steps of the Manor 
 House: the Baroness, firm-set and still, the Baron cough- 
 ing and sneezing, not from emotion, but from the sudden 
 effects of a violent cold which should have kept him 
 away from the ceremony. And her father, his one arm 
 drawn tight across the "Legion" on his breast, his 
 eyes fixed not on his daughter's last appeal for a fare- 
 well benison, but on some far beyond of sunlight after 
 storm. 
 
 The thought of Otto blended with the thought of 
 her father, and over these, which were her thoughts of 
 love, lay ever the thought of separation. Sadness is not 
 a good beginning for a young wife who "respects and 
 admires." The Sabines, under similar circumstances, 
 actually consented to live with their parents-in-law. 
 
 "Yes, it is very beautiful," she said, looking across 
 the bay to the blue-black of the sunset Esterel. They 
 were on the terrace of their hotel at Californie. "Oh 
 yes, it is very beautiful," she said. She spoke with that 
 admission which is a protest. There are times when 
 we think that nature, like some women, would be all
 
 BARON VAN HELMONT. 23 I 
 
 the better for a little less flamboyant beauty, and a little 
 more homeliness. 
 
 "Java is far more beautiful still," said Otto, en- 
 couragingly. "There is nothing in all Europe to com- 
 pare with Batavia." 
 
 And then, for the twentieth time, Ursula resolutely 
 enjoyed these anticipated glories of the Indies, for the 
 soreness and the separation were in her own soul, deep- 
 down. 
 
 Had Otto been more of a Mopius, he would never 
 have guessed at their existence. Hearts like Ursula's 
 understand that a woman weds her husband's life. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that the novelty of the pros- 
 pect, by its very terror, attracted and pleasantly excited 
 her. Still, unfortunately, by nature she was stay-at- 
 home and cat-like. Besides, she had not left her father 
 to himself, but to Aunt Josine. 
 
 So while she was telling herself how unearthly must 
 be a scene that was even more beautiful than this stage- 
 effect of palm-trees and white buildings against the blue 
 Mediterranean flare, even while she was schooling her- 
 self to this idea, her whole life suddenly changed with 
 the fall of a curtain. The play stopped at the very 
 opening, and the audience went home again. All the 
 worry and the expectation and the screwing-up had 
 been superfluous. How many of us discover that, even 
 when the lights go out at the conclusion of the fifth act, 
 instead of in the middle of the first. 
 
 "Poor people are not poor in India; that is one 
 great advantage," Otto was saying. "There is always 
 plenty of space about one, in house and garden, and 
 even the mendicant, if a white, drives a trap. But I
 
 2 $2 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 don't suppose there really are any white beggars. You 
 will see how comfortable we shall be in the great 
 verandah of evenings, with all the pretty things around 
 us, while I sit telling you how sugar-prices are going 
 up. Ursula, it will be delightful to think we are work- 
 ing for the dear old place at home, which is yours too 
 now, and must never belong to any one but a Helmont." 
 His face grew square as he sat staring at the black 
 ridge of distant mountains, and then, suddenly, with a 
 man's embarrassment, "There's the little steamer," he 
 said, lightly, "coining back from the Lerins." 
 
 The hotel concierge was going his round on the 
 terrace, leisurely seeking out an occasional lounger in 
 the still, perfume-laden sunset, and distributing a bundle 
 of letters. They watched him coming towards them, 
 from their seat by the balustrade, between two bowls of 
 geranium. 
 
 "C'est tout," he said, holding out one letter. "It's 
 too bad of them not to write!" exclaimed Ursula, as 
 everybody always does on the useless, idle Riviera. 
 
 Otto was looking at the envelope, holding it across 
 his outstretched palm, between middle finger and thumb. 
 It was addressed in his Aunt Louisa's handwriting, to 
 "Otto, Baron van Helmont." 
 
 "Well?" said Ursula, with the impatience of the 
 non-recipient. 
 
 But Otto, Baron van Helmont sat staring at the 
 superscription. The first bell for the table d'hote broke 
 loose, with a sudden continuous clang. Ursula rose. 
 "I'm going upstairs for a minute," she began. "If it 
 isn't from home, I suppose it's of no importance." 
 
 Otto shook himself.
 
 BARON VAN HELMONT. 2$$ 
 
 "Wait," he said, and broke the seal. 
 
 The note was brief enough. "Dear Otto, — Your 
 father died this morning at half-past five, from pneumonia. 
 You know he was ailing when you left, but the lungs 
 were attacked only two days ago. We are expecting 
 you back. Your mother is very unhappy. Aunt Louise. 
 — P.S. Your mother asked me to telegraph, but I con- 
 sider it better to write." 
 
 Even by the roadside of our selfish daily wander- 
 ings we cannot hear the voice of death calling a stranger 
 from his field-work without mentally crossing ourselves, 
 suddenly shocked and sobered. What, then, if he enter 
 the courtyard of our hearts? Although, perhaps, he 
 pause before the inner door, every chamber, in the 
 horror of his presence, becomes to us as the inner- 
 most. 
 
 Ursula and Otto looked at each other with solemn 
 eyes, speaking little. The Riviera evening fell suddenly, 
 with its wiping-out of warmth, like the transition of a 
 Turkish bath. The whole grey seaboard lay bleak and 
 chill in a shudder of autumnal decay. 
 
 "Aunt Louisa," said Otto presently, "has a prejudice 
 against telegrams, chiefly, I fancy, on account of the 
 expense." 
 
 Ursula was angry with the Freule van Borck. "She 
 might have prepared you a little," said Ursula. 
 
 "Oh, that is her way. 'Simple and strong,' you 
 know. But you are mistaken. She did prepare me." 
 He held out the envelope to his wife. 
 
 Ursula blushed scarlet. There seemed to her in 
 this brutal fact something strangely painful and insult- 
 ing both to them and to the dead. She could not
 
 2 34 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 meet her husband's gaze. She shivered. "Let us go 
 in, Otto," she said softly. 
 
 As they walked across the terrace he murmured 
 aloud, "Your mother is very unhappy." "Ursula," he 
 added, "this alters eveiy thing. We must go back to- 
 morrow as early as we can." 
 
 "Yes," she answered unemotionally, "I understand." 
 
 He did not say anything more till they had reached 
 their own room. Then, as he struck a light in the dark, 
 he began, with averted face, looming large against the 
 shadows— 
 
 "You will like that, at least, among all the sorrow — 
 the going back!" 
 
 She tried to answer him, not knowing what, and 
 unexpectedly burst into tears. 
 
 Well, it's a good thing that women can weep. Their 
 feelings are often too complicated for words. The woman 
 who knows herself incapable of tears is surely one-third 
 inarticulate. But, alas that the act of weeping should 
 be so positively ugly. From a purely aesthetic point of 
 view there is nothing more regrettable in connection 
 with the Fall of Man. 
 
 No further news from home reached the young 
 Baron and Baroness during their hurried flight north- 
 wards. They themselves were quite incapable of fathom- 
 ing, even from the most materialistic point of view, the 
 magnitude of the change which had come over their 
 prospects. Otto trembled to think in what condition he 
 might find his father's affairs. Only, he felt certain that
 
 BARON VAN HELMONT. 235 
 
 the Indian plan would have to be definitely abandoned 
 on account of the estates at home. 
 
 The Domine met the pair at the little Horstwyk 
 station, and as Ursula put her arm round her father's 
 neck, she dimly realised that selfishness is man's sole 
 virtue, as, in fact, it is his only vice. 
 
 She could realise it all the more in the shuttered 
 mansion, which seemed to lie as a waste round that 
 one locked door of the widow's boudoir. In the dining- 
 hall, surrounded by candles, stood the coffin, awaiting 
 the heir. All the house and the village and their sur- 
 roundings seemed full of a subdued eagerness to bury 
 the past and welcome the present. The library table 
 was covered with carefully addressed letters and cards. 
 
 Gerard was absent. Only the Freule van Borck 
 came forward, with hushed step, to greet them in the 
 grey loneliness of the flowerless hall. 
 
 "My dears," she said, sententiously, "you might have 
 spared yourselves the shame of running away."
 
 2.^6 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 Gerard's share. 
 
 So the old Baron slept in the churchyard under the 
 shadow of the "Devil's Doll," which he himself had 
 erected on the grave of his children. Opposite, outside 
 the chancel- wall, shone dully the great slab which 
 marked the entrance to the family vault, heavy with 
 the single name "De Horst." The word suggested a 
 "dependance" of the Manor House; hither came for 
 more permanent residence the successive sojourners at 
 the larger hostel. It was the widow who, waking from 
 her lethargy, had demanded separate sepulture for her 
 dear, dead lord, to Otto's tacitly disapprobatory regret. 
 
 She had summoned her elder son into the dusk of 
 her silenced chamber, and speaking softly from amid 
 the solemn blankness of her loss, "I want your father 
 to lie in the sunshine," she said, "and I wish them to 
 make the — the — in such a manner that every possible 
 sunbeam shall fall straight across it." 
 
 Then, before Otto's unspoken demur — "He always 
 had a horror of the vault; he never would enter it once 
 during his whole lifetime. And, Otto, all his life long 
 he detested cold. In the end it has killed him" — she 
 began to cry. Her children had found her greatly 
 changed, quite broken down and feeble. 
 
 "Cecile cannot even take comfort by contemplating
 
 Gerard's share. 237 
 
 the beauties of adversity," said Freule van Borck, crossly. 
 "Surely she might understand, in the midst of her 
 legitimate tears, that sorrow is a great educator. She 
 perversely persists in eluding the blessings." The Freule 
 did not understand that her sister's soul was a plant of 
 God's conservatory, a blossom which could only drop 
 off before the east wind. 
 
 Work had to be done, however, and some one must 
 do it. Otto soon recognised, with anticipated acquiescence, 
 that his father's affairs had been left in utter confusion. 
 The confusion, however, was of the orderly kind. There 
 had been a certain amount of method in the Baron's 
 madness; only, unfortunately, there had been a good 
 deal more madness in his method. He had evidently 
 entertained to the full an honest gentleman's distrust of 
 all commercial and industrial undertakings, and had 
 added thereto a contempt for all usury and money- 
 lending. To paper-investments he would have nothing 
 to say. Every penny he possessed he had sunk in land 
 or curios. 
 
 Also he had made a will, an unwise thing for any 
 man to do. In that entanglement of spoliation which 
 we have glorified by the beautiful name of "juris- 
 prudence," any personal effort towards equity is only 
 another welcome knot to the lawyer's hand. 
 
 The Baron's will disinherited his younger and 
 favourite son so far as Dutch law permits parents to 
 disinherit, which means that Gerard would be entitled 
 to exactly one-third of the property as against two- 
 thirds for Otto. Furthermore, the testator expressed a 
 hope that his wife would allow all her claims on his
 
 238 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 estate to be met by an equivalent transfer of art 
 treasures, and that she would preserve these unsold. 
 
 The dead man's object was plain enough; while 
 unable to stint himself, he yet desired to achieve the 
 retention, after his decease, of the status quo. That is 
 not an easy thing in Holland, where modern law, follow- 
 ing the Napoleonic precedent, aims at the destruction 
 of hereditary wealth. The Baron openly avowed his 
 intentions in the last sentence of his brief testament; "I 
 hope," he wrote, "that my children will always retain 
 the Horst intact as I leave it. Otto must do this; I 
 believe he has it in him. I have ultimately succeeded, 
 after infinite pains, in restoring the whole property as it 
 was at its largest in 1672. I trust that neither Otto 
 nor Gerard will ever consent to part with a rood of it. 
 They will rather suffer privation, as I have done." 
 
 The Baron's way of "restoring" had been a simple 
 one. Whenever opportunity offered, he had bought 
 such alienated lands as fell open, often paying a fancy 
 price, the money for which he procured by mort- 
 gaging other property. Nominally, therefore, his landed 
 estate was a very large one, much of it being encum- 
 bered, more depreciated. As for "suffering privation" 
 — he had never bought a Corot. 
 
 Evidently he had distrusted Gerard, and felt con- 
 fidence in intractable Otto. The strangest thing about 
 it all was that he, with his fear of death, should ever 
 have summoned up courage to make a will at all. To 
 Otto this fact, more than anything else, revealed how 
 intensely his seemingly shallow father must have loved 
 the home of his race. 
 
 And the discovery brought them nearer now in their
 
 Gerard's share. 239 
 
 separation, the dead lord and the new one. Baron 
 Theodore's ambition was one such as this son could 
 appreciate; the sudden self-reproach of undue con- 
 temptuousness caused Otto to veer round to the other 
 extreme of veneration. He resolved, under this first 
 impulse, that, come what may, his father's decree should 
 be to him a holy trust. 
 
 "Of course," said the Dowager Baroness, relapsing 
 immediately into her continuous mood of mournful in- 
 difference. But Gerard demurred. 
 
 "I must have my share in money," said Gerard, "I 
 can't help myself. Besides, what did father mean? The 
 property can't be said to remain intact, if one man owns 
 two-thirds of it, and another man the remaining third. 
 Enough of the land must be sold to give me my share 
 in cash." 
 
 "None of the land can be sold," replied Otto. He 
 wore his dogged face. The two brothers were together 
 by the library table. In the distant bay-window of the 
 smoking-room Aunt Louisa had fallen asleep over a 
 book. 
 
 "Keep the land, if you like, or know how. I don't 
 mind as long as I get my money. You are executor, 
 Otto; pay me my share." 
 
 "Do you wish," asked the young Baron, just a trifle 
 dramatically, "to ignore our dead father's commands?" 
 
 "No, indeed. No more than you," replied Gerard, 
 with honest disdain. The tinge of melodrama irritated 
 him. The unfairness of his treatment irritated him. But 
 the inherent absurdity of the testamentary instructions 
 was what tormented him most. 
 
 "Father's wish was to let me have as little as
 
 24O MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 possible," he continued. "So be it. But your wish is 
 evidently to let me have nothing at all." Both of them 
 waited a moment, in bitterness. 
 
 "And " Gerard ground his heel energetically. 
 
 "I'm not going to stand that." Then he said, in quite 
 a different tone: "Simply, to begin with, because I 
 can't." 
 
 "Of course you have debts," said Otto, sitting down 
 by the writing-table. 
 
 "Of course," repeated Gerard, with a pardonable 
 sneer at his immaculate brother. "But it's not that, all 
 the same — at least, not so much." 
 
 He paced half-way down the room and back again. 
 Suddenly both brothers heard the ticking of the clock. 
 
 "You wrong me, Otto, as usual," said Gerard in a 
 broken voice. "I am as anxious as you are to do 
 whatever's right. But I can't help myself. I may as 
 well make a clean breast of it. I must have the money. 
 You'll think me an unmitigated fool, but, then, you 
 think that already." 
 
 He hesitated a moment; Otto did not move. 
 
 "Two years ago," Gerard went on, huskily, "I be- 
 came surety for a chum of mine — never mind his name 
 — he's dead, poor chap, and I've got to pay." 
 
 "Surety! Surety!" stammered Otto. "How? What? 
 What kind of surety?" 
 
 "It was a debt of honour, between gentlemen. And 
 I've got to pay." 
 
 "Of course — a card debt. I understood as much," 
 said Otto, self-righteously. 
 
 "It was not my card debt," retorted Gerard, feeling 
 his wrongs more acutely than ever, for, as we are
 
 Gerard's share. 24.1 
 
 aware, he was not a gambler. "It happened playing 
 with strangers, and quite unexpectedly it grew into an 
 enormous sum. For him, next morning, it meant pay 
 or shoot yourself. He wanted it to mean 'Shoot your- 
 self,' but I stopped that just in time and made it mean 
 "pay — someday or other." So pay we must. The re- 
 sponsibility is mine." 
 
 He stopped, staring with solemn eyes, back through 
 the misty past, into what had been, till now, the most 
 dramatic occurrence of his life. He remembered his 
 awakening, the day after the gambling-bout, to the 
 troubled consciousness that he must hurry at once to 
 his friend. He remembered the room as he burst into 
 it: the table with the despondent figure sitting there, 
 the pistol waiting, ready loaded. These things were 
 sacred; he was not going to speak of them to Otto. 
 
 "I cannot understand any human being accepting 
 your security;" the elder brother's tone was sceptical 
 to a degree of provocation. "But, at any rate, the other 
 man and his people must pay." 
 
 "He is dead," repeated Gerard, gently. "Had he 
 lived, he would have been perfectly well able to do so; 
 we both knew that, or I don't think he would ever have 
 allowed me to incur the risk. It wasn't much of a risk, 
 as I told him at the time. He was sole heir to a stingy 
 old aunt; he died before her, and all her money's gone 
 to charities. So you see I'm fully liable. It's exceed- 
 ingly unfortunate, but it can't be helped." 
 
 "Even admitting all this," began Otto, feeling his 
 unwilling way, "you are not really liable. The law does 
 not recognise gambling liabilities. They are not recover- 
 able." He stumbled over his sentences, thinking aloud. 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 1 6
 
 242 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Law!" exclaimed Gerard. "Law! I was thinking 
 of the other extreme — honour!" 
 
 "And you were a minor at the time, besides. Neither 
 legally, nor should I say morally, responsible. It must 
 have been an act of madness." He gazed in front of 
 him, troubled, questioning, full of incertitude. 
 
 "I thought you understood," said Gerard, haughtily, 
 "that it was an affair between gentlemen. It has no- 
 thing to do with moral or legal responsibility." He stood 
 still. "I bound myself to meet this claim, if able, when 
 called upon. The trust is a sacred one. By accept- 
 ing it I saved my dead friend's life." Even amid the 
 deep seriousness of his mood he smiled at the Irishism, 
 just as his father would have done. "I am not going 
 to desert him now." 
 
 "Gerard, God knows I don't want you to do any- 
 thing ungentlemanly," cried Otto, despairingly. "I am 
 only thinking. Let me think. You say the sum is an 
 enormous one. What do you call enormous?" His 
 voice trembled with apprehension. 
 
 "It's ninety thousand florins, if you want to know," 
 replied Gerard, in a moody murmur. The sombre 
 room grew very silent. Outside the window nearest 
 them a sparrow was pecking, pertly, at the sill. 
 
 "I thought so," said Otto, scornfully, "I thought 
 you had ruined yourself; it seemed so natural. I under- 
 stood it at once, and that made me look round for the 
 tiniest loophole of possible escape. Gerard, it seems 
 to me you have but the choice of dishonours. Against 
 the memory of your friend I pit that of your father. 
 You cannot possibly do justice to both." He was 
 desperate, feeling the hopelessness of compromise.
 
 Gerard's share. 243 
 
 "The will is absurd!" burst out Gerard— "absurd! 
 He cannot have meant it absolutely, only as far as was 
 practicable. Do you really want to make out that he 
 intended both of us to starve, in the midst of our acres 
 of corn-fields? I won't believe it, and if he did, why, 
 poor father must have been under some momentary 
 delusion! Wills are always taken to be binding so far 
 as circumstances will allow. Our father meant us not 
 to sell more of the land than was absolutely necessary. 
 He meant us — - — " 
 
 Otto faced round. "I understand perfectly what 
 our father meant," he said, and there was a roll of sup- 
 pressed thunder through his patient words. "To me 
 his aspirations do not seem unreasonable or absurd. 
 They are my own." 
 
 "I dare say," cried Gerard. "You are the lord of 
 the Horst, and the larger the property is, the pleasanter 
 for you!" 
 
 "Gerard, you may accuse me of the most sordid " 
 
 "I accuse you of nothing. Pray let us have no 
 recriminations; we do not understand each other well 
 enough for anything of that kind. All I say is this, 
 and I shall stick to it: I must have my share in ready 
 money. Can't you see I must? If I were to go to the 
 other fellow — the fellow that won — and say: 'My father 
 won't have any of the land sold,' he'd think I was 
 shirking, after all these years. Imagine that! He'd 
 think I was shirking! The time would have come for 
 me to decide between 'paying or shooting.' Otto, if 
 father were alive, he'd understand that better than you 
 do. Oh, I wish I could explain it to him, he'd want 
 only half a word. He'd be the first to say 'Settle the 
 
 16*
 
 244 1IY LAr>v NOBODY. 
 
 matter at once.' " The young man was violently agitated. 
 He tried vainly to steady his features. He had loved 
 his father with ready, easy affection. It was a cruel 
 wound to him to bear the appearance of showing less 
 filial piety than Otto! 
 
 "Ninety thousand florins," repeated the elder brother, 
 as if not heeding the other's passion. "You were mad. 
 You ?iever could have raised the money till father's 
 death. What a speculation!" 
 
 "Who knows?" replied Gerard, stung to the quick. 
 "At this moment, but for you, the sum might have 
 seemed .to me a trifle. Do not you, of all persons, re- 
 proach me with my poverty. I should have been a 
 rich man at this moment but for you." 
 
 "But for me?" exclaimed Otto, in blank amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 "Yes, but for you," Gerard continued wildly. "It 
 was you who told Ursula about Adeline, as if any man 
 ever betrayed another, even his enemy, to a woman! 
 But your ideas about honour and dishonour, which you 
 bring forward so frequently, are certainly not mine." 
 Gerard stopped, eyeing his brother curiously. "Is it 
 possible you don't know," he said, "that Ursula told 
 Helen?" 
 
 "As you allude to the disgraceful story yourself," 
 replied Otto, in a dull voice, "I may as well assure you 
 that I have never spoken of it to any one. Ursula 
 knows nothing about it. Nor am / to blame if Helen 
 does." 
 
 However Gerard might misunderstand his brother, 
 he implicitly believed him. All his anger turned against 
 the woman who had ruined his matrimonial prospects,
 
 Gerard's share. 245 
 
 whilst herself grabbing, by any means, even including 
 advertisement, at the first husband she could catch. 
 
 "Then it was Ursula, and Ursula alone," he said, 
 "who would not let me marry Helen." He forcibly 
 curbed himself on the brink of accusation, true to the 
 chivalry he had just enunciated; but his brow grew dark 
 with meaning. And, seeing sudden relief in permissible 
 insult, "My Lady Nobody!" he cried, with an impudent 
 laugh. 
 
 Otto rose. "Our discussion ends here," he said. 
 "Leave the room. I will get you the money somehow." 
 
 He sank back a moment later, listening to Gerard's 
 retreating footsteps. Gerard, then, had been about to 
 marry Helen, and Ursula had told Helen something 
 which had prevented the match. It must have been 
 something very serious indeed. 
 
 He shook off the thought. How should he meet 
 his brother's claim? It is easy enough to say, "I 
 shall pay." 
 
 Why not sell a large part of the land, which, after 
 all, was Gerard's and not his? Let Gerard do what 
 he liked with his own. Theoretically, that was plain 
 enough. But when it came to deciding what to abandon 
 — and a good deal would have to go — common sense 
 began to look strangely impossible in the new Baron's 
 eyes. He could not cut up the property. He wished 
 his father had not made him executor. 
 
 He judged his young brother not only harshly, but 
 unfairly. He could feel nothing for the generous im- 
 pulse which had brought down upon itself such magni- 
 ficent ruin. Most of us imagine we recognise virtue
 
 246 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 when we see it; in reality we only recognise our own 
 peculiar form. 
 
 "There is no money," said Otto fiercely, and he 
 groaned aloud. 
 
 Aunt Louisa came gliding in through the open 
 smoking-room door. Her features were sharper than 
 ever in her smooth black dress. 
 
 "That is a very bad story indeed, about Adeline," 
 she said, speaking in a series of bites. Otto looked up 
 interrogatively. 
 
 "Oh, of course I know all about it," continued the 
 Freule, who had known nothing up to this hour, 
 "Adeline is an actress, or singer, or something low. 
 Nevertheless, I think Helena von Trossart has behaved 
 like a fool. A strong woman lives down all her hus- 
 band's love-stories." She blinked her eyes. "Any 
 woman can manage any man," she said. "/ never 
 considered the game worth playing" — which was true. 
 
 "But it's best to know about these things before- 
 hand," she went on. "That's why I told you about 
 Ursula and Gerard. Afterwards they come as an un- 
 pleasant surprise, while, before marriage, one simply 
 laughs at them. Helen ought to have thanked Ursula 
 for frankly confessing to a passing flirtation with Gerard. 
 Instead of that, she goes and breaks off her engage- 
 ment. Inane! We can't all marry first affections, as 
 your poor mother thinks she did. But Helena van 
 Trossart was always a poor, weak, fanciful creature." 
 
 "It is not that," thought Otto. "Women never ob- 
 ject to a prior flirtation." He looked up again, dumbly, 
 to see whether his aunt would continue to use her 
 gimlet.
 
 GERARD S SHARE. 247 
 
 "However, there's no help for it now," cried the 
 Freule Louisa, changing her tone. "The marriage 
 would have been the best thing for all parties, and 
 that's why it's not to take place. So don't let's talk of 
 it. But the money must be found at once. So let's 
 talk of that." 
 
 "It can't be found," muttered Otto, wishing his aunt 
 wouldn't interfere, and very angry with her for eaves- 
 dropping. 
 
 "'Can't' is a man's word,' replied the Freule van 
 Borck. "Your poor father used to say it whenever he 
 didn't want to do anything. You say it when you want 
 to do anything very much. The symptoms are different, 
 but the disease is the same — masculine incapacity. A 
 woman says, 'I will.' " 
 
 "Then I wish some woman would say it," retorted 
 Otto. 
 
 His aunt smiled. "You are so literal," she said. 
 "You never can enjoy the plastic beauty of a theory. 
 And, Otto, in one thing I entirely disagree with you. 
 Gerard's action was a great one. However, unfortunately 
 for us, it deserves our abstract admiration. Yes, I know 
 what you are going to say; but you are wrong. Few 
 natures in our little world are capable of such splendid 
 recklessness. I, for one, applaud it — from a distance. 
 Imagine, in this nineteenth century, a man who will 
 sacrifice his all for a friend!" 
 
 "He hasn't ruined you, Aunt Louisa," said Otto. 
 
 "I am not worth ruining," she answered quickly, 
 meekly. "But, Otto, I was coming to that. I am poor, 
 as you know — very poor." She grew suddenly nervous 
 and sat down, trembling, in a big leather chair. "But
 
 248 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 I have this advantage over you rich people, that my 
 money is where I can get at it, in the funds. I'm not 
 going to give it to Gerard," she said, racing off sharp 
 and fast. Her cheeks grew pink. She was exceedingly 
 frightened, as many women are whenever they allude 
 to finance. "I couldn't do that and starve, now could 
 I? But I'll lend it to you on the property, Otto, to pay 
 him off. You'll fasten it on the property and give me 
 a pawn ticket, won't you? And I'll let you have it on 
 easy terms, because I admire Gerard's action and — 
 and yours also. I'm proud of my nephews." She 
 paused, out of breath, and aimlessly stroked her dress. 
 
 "Thank you," said Otto, with his reflective reserve. 
 But the fervour of his tone quite satisfied Aunt Louisa. 
 
 "Yes," she went on, preparing to hurry away. "The 
 estate must be kept together. I insist upon that. For 
 I can't have other people intruding upon my Bilberry 
 Walk, and that would be the first to go. But, 
 Otto, you must let me have some interest, or else I 
 shouldn't be able to pay you my 'keep.' " Thereupon 
 the Freule departed, fluttered with the consciousness of 
 an heroic atmosphere all round and but little discom- 
 fort to herself. She had, indeed, behaved bravely, for 
 scraping was the sole diversion of her life, and she 
 imagined somehow that a mortgage at four per cent, 
 was a very great sacrifice indeed. In common with 
 many people who greatly admire great deeds, she liked 
 to do her own great deeds small. 
 
 At any rate, Otto felt immensely relieved for the 
 moment by the certainty that the money would be 
 forthcoming. He went in search of Ursula, whom he 
 found playing on a sofa with his father's great smooth
 
 gerard's share. 249 
 
 St. Bernard. Ursula's opening days were long in this 
 new home of which she had become the mistress. 
 Everything was as yet in the listless uncertainty of a 
 not-disorganised transition. The Dowager Baroness had 
 nowise resigned the keys, while occupying herself with 
 nothing in the privacy of her bereavement. 
 
 "Dearest," said Otto, "why did you not tell me 
 about Helen and Gerard?" 
 
 Ursula blushed. 
 
 "Because it was a secret," she replied, hotly. "I 
 told nobody, Otto." 
 
 "Nobody?" 
 
 "Nobody but my father. Has Gerard spoken of it? 
 I low much has he told you?" 
 
 She looked at him anxiously, scarlet with the soilure 
 of Gerard's sin. 
 
 He misread her distress. 
 
 "Oh, very little," he said. "Make yourself easy. I 
 don't want to know any more." 
 
 She sprang forward to him, the great dog entangled 
 in her skirts. 
 
 "Otto," she said, pleadingly, "you'll let bygones be 
 bygones, won't you — now?" 
 
 She was thinking of the reconciliation between the 
 brothers for which her whole heart yearned. 
 
 She frightened him. 
 
 "Yes," he cried. "Yes, if Gerard goes away. That 
 is all I demand. You must ask Gerard to go away." 
 
 "I?" She drew herself up. "No, indeed," she 
 said. "You are lord of the Horst. It is you who 
 must forbid your brother the house, if you wish him to 
 leave it."
 
 250 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 As he turned to go she ran after him, and laid her 
 hand on his arm. 
 
 "Only don't let it be for my sake, dear," she pleaded, 
 recalling Gerard's initial insult, and continuous cold 
 hostility, to herself. "Do not, I entreat you, let me be 
 the cause of further discord between you. Gerard will 
 forget the past, and I will ignore it. And even if he 
 do not, I am strong now, in your love, to face the future 
 with confidence. Otto, I implore you, do not send him 
 away for my sake." 
 
 "Oh, no, for my own," exclaimed Otto, and broke 
 away from her. 
 
 She came back to the dog, completely unconscious 
 of all complications except the old quarrel between her 
 husband and his brother. 
 
 It weighed upon her; she regretfully felt that she, 
 in her innocence, was chiefly to blame for it Gerard 
 had deeply resented, and still continued to resent, the 
 marriage of the head of the house to the parson's 
 daughter. Compared to this, the quarrel about the 
 horse was only a passing cloud, and even that would 
 not have arisen but for her. Men of the world, she 
 felt bitterly, could desert Adelines, but they could not 
 marry Ursulas. It is true; more than that — only she 
 did not know it — men of the world can offer to marry 
 Adeline, and never forgive their brother for marrying 
 Ursula. We can do all that, we men. It is our privi- 
 lege, because we are thinking creatures. 
 
 Just now, Ursula felt that her only duty in the 
 great house was to comfort the dog. Monk was an in- 
 stitution at the Manor; he had been that ever since the
 
 Gerard's share. 251 
 
 old Baron had brought him back from the desolate 
 monastery which is all sunshine within, and all snow 
 without. By this time surely he had forgotten his na- 
 tive Alpine frosts — if dogs ever forget — among the mists 
 of Holland. He had basked for years in the master's 
 smile, unassuming, as no man would ever have re- 
 mained, under the dignified repose of his assured posi- 
 tion. All the household had honoured Monk; many 
 with time-service only. This he had understood: he 
 had loved his master alone. He knew that the Baroness 
 endured him; perhaps there was a little jealousy between 
 the two. And on the day of the old man's death he 
 wandered about, disconsolate, gradually beginning to 
 realise a change. Ursula found him a forsaken favourite, 
 not mourning his fall — again, how unhuman! — but his 
 friend. She looked into his big soft eyes, and the 
 hunger died out of them. Immediately the two under- 
 stood each other, for ever. "I accept of you in my 
 empty heart," said Monk. 
 
 In the old Baroness's boudoir the fat ball of white 
 silk on its crimson cushion opened one eye with lazy 
 discontent and scowled across at its mistress. It was 
 disgusted with the selfish irregularity of its meals. The 
 little old woman in the easy chair near the autumn fire 
 did not even notice it, in spite of the oft-repeated sighs 
 by which it strove to attract attention. Occasionally 
 slow tears would now roll down the widow's sunken 
 pink and white cheeks and glitter amid the jewels of 
 her folded hands. She had reached that milder stage 
 when we begin to feel our sorrow. Oh, God, that in 
 this world of agony men should find cause to be thank- 
 ful for consciousness of pain!
 
 252 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "Plush" considered the state of affairs most dis* 
 gracefully disagreeable. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 TOPSY REXELAER. 
 
 Gerard went back to Drum before his leave had 
 expired. 
 
 "Your share shall be paid to you," Otto had said, 
 perusing the carpet-pattern. "Mother and Aunt Louisa 
 will combine to make that possible. I think that is all, 
 Gerard. Good-bye." 
 
 So, dismissed like a footman, the young fellow 
 turned his back on the home of his youth. He little 
 guessed that the stern, middle-aged man, seated at 
 his father's desk, in possession, was, even at that very 
 moment, inwardly tossed by a passion of prayer to 
 keep back the furious inculpations that were beating at 
 his lips. 
 
 So Gerard went back to Drum. He realised, as 
 he drove away, taking Beauty's successor with him, 
 that even though he might visit the Manor House again, 
 henceforth it would be as a stranger. During all the 
 years of his growth into manhood, ever since he could 
 remember, he had been practically the only son, the 
 "young squire" in the eyes of the peasantry. He felt 
 cheated of his birthright. 
 
 The packing-up had been a terrible business. No- 
 thing had been said about retaining his rooms, and his 
 nature was one that shrank back before the shadow of 
 a coming hint. Quietly he had put all his things to-
 
 TOPSY REXELAER. 253 
 
 gether, turning from Ursula's silent, terrified gaze. 
 Silence seemed to have fallen upon them all like a 
 paralysis. The servants looked at each other. 
 
 All his life had been sheltered too warmly in his 
 father's fostering affection. The luxury of his youth 
 hung about him, the easy generosity which had ac- 
 counted money only a thing to spend on himself, or on 
 others, according to requirement. It is a cruel thing, 
 that flow of parental goodnature, while the fingers of 
 Death are playing with the tap. 
 
 And at this supreme moment even his mother's sure 
 preference deserted him. The Baroness, whose faculties 
 seemed to lie dulled beneath the veil of her widow- 
 hood, had understood, clearly enough, without need of 
 any malice on Otto's part, that Gerard objected to the 
 terms of the will. The discovery had galvanised her 
 into feverish activity. She had insisted upon sacrificing 
 whatever her husband's improvidence had left her still 
 unsacrificed. Half a dozen times in the course of one 
 day she rang for Otto, to ascertain whether everything 
 was settled. For the moment, Gerard had become the 
 enemy against whom the forces of the family must 
 unite. She was very angry with him for wishing to 
 destroy his father's life-work. "You won't allow it, 
 Otto," she repeated, excitedly. "You will never allow it." 
 She clung to her strong eldest, in the weakness of 
 abandonment. Her farewell to the traitor was full of 
 reproach. Gerard went back into life from his father's 
 funeral, alone. 
 
 As soon as the money was in his possession he 
 sought an interview with the creditor at the Hague and 
 discharged his debt, or rather his departed friend's.
 
 254 MV LADY NOBODY. 
 
 But he had plenty of liabilities of his own incurring, 
 and these now came tumbling about his ears in the 
 crash of his father's removal. By the time he had 
 effected a settlement there was very little left of his 
 originally curtailed inheritance. This would hardly have 
 disturbed his calm fruition of all things needful but for 
 the brusque discovery that his credit was gone. One 
 afternoon he stepped into a familiar shop to order a 
 new saddle, and the obsequious tradesman asked pre- 
 payment of his standing account. Gerard came away 
 bewildered. It was the turning-point of his life. He 
 was poor. 
 
 Before all this, before the Baron's death, he had 
 made one attempt to act on Mademoiselle Papotier's 
 suggestion. He had written a long letter to Helen. It 
 had been returned to him unopened, and from that 
 moment he felt his case was utterly hopeless. For a 
 woman hardly ever returns a letter unopened. She is 
 quite willing to do so, only she must read it first. 
 Some of them manage to. 
 
 Gerard was in the position of many a modern 
 spendthrift. Steal he could not, to work he was 
 ashamed. Besides, what was he fit for, excepting 
 parade? It is one of the saddest confusions of this 
 muddled society of ours that only the poor can beg 
 and only the rich can steal. Nothing was left, there- 
 fore, to our young soldier but to return to his simplified 
 avocations in the endeavour to make both ends meet 
 on starvation pay. All the colour and cake went out 
 of his existence, which became drab, like rye-bread. 
 
 Adeline was married to her lawyer's clerk; Helen's 
 wedding-dress had been ordered. Under these circum-
 
 TOPSY REXELAER. 255 
 
 stances, in his handsome forlornness, dawdling about 
 dull Drum, Gerard found one motherly bosom on which 
 to rest his curly head. The plump Baroness van Trossart, 
 disgusted by her niece's perversity, but resolved not to 
 fret over anything, immediately set herself to pay the 
 poor boy what she considered a family debt, and, after 
 a little preliminary reconnoitring, backed by an artillery 
 fire of praises and pushes, she successfully manoeuvred 
 the rejected suitor into a fresh flirtation with one of the 
 most charming girls in Holland, Antoinette van Rexelaer. 
 The Freule Antoinette was not an heiress, like Helena, 
 but she had lately, and quite unexpectedly, come into 
 a snug little fortune through her godfather, a relation 
 of her mother's, and former Minister of State — a wind- 
 fall, indeed, to the youngest of five children! "A dis- 
 pensation!" mysteriously ejaculated the young lady's 
 mother, Mevrouw Elizabeth van Rexelaer, ne'e Borck. 
 
 Topsy, as her own circle called her, was a distant 
 connection of Gerard's, but then in Holland we are 
 all that, and it no longer counts. The two mothers 
 were some sort of cousins. 
 
 From the Hague, where the Rexelaers lived, 
 Antoinette came to stay with the Baroness van Trossart, 
 and, under that matchmaker's auspices, she saw a good 
 deal of Gerard. Now, for Gerard to see a nice girl was 
 to be charming to her; he was charming in the most 
 natural, innocent, and infectious way. The Freule 
 Antoinette understood this perfectly, and they lived to- 
 gether in that happy mutual desire to please which may 
 mean everything or nothing, according to Cupid's caprice. 
 When the guest returned home, Mevrouw van Trossart 
 felt convinced it meant everything, and she had easily
 
 256 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 persuaded Gerard to think so too, for Gerard had 
 taken a real liking to the frank-faced, bright-witted 
 girl. 
 
 "My dear boy," said the good-natured Baroness, in- 
 tent on further arrangement, "you are positively too 
 dangerous; I cannot introduce you to any more young 
 ladies. You are irresistible; you have now carried off 
 the heart of my poor little Antoinette!" 
 
 "One young lady did not find me irresistible, 
 Mevrouw," replied Gerard, bitterly. He was angry with 
 Helen, but he had never really cared for her. It was 
 she who now avoided him. 
 
 "Ah, dear boy, do not let us speak of that; it is 
 too dreadful. Be thankful that you, at least, did not 
 love your cousin. No, no." She held up a fat fore- 
 finger. "Of course you protest; but an old woman 
 like me sees what she sees. We all make mistakes. 
 
 As for poor Helen, hers " She stopped. "This 
 
 time, at any rate," she cried gaily, "there must be no 
 blundering. Go at once and propose to Mevrouw 
 Elizabeth. To know you prosperously settled will be a 
 load off my heart." 
 
 "Propose to Mevrouw Elizabeth!" said Gerard, with 
 a grimace. 
 
 "Don't be stupid, Gerard. Yes, considering the 
 undoubted fact that Antoinette Rexelaer is so much 
 richer than you — there's no use in ignoring what every- 
 one knows — I think it would be in better taste for you 
 to speak first to the father. Which means the mother; 
 especially as in this case I feel sure you can safely 
 do so." 
 
 Accordingly Gerard, by no means indifferent as to
 
 TOPSY REXELAER. 257 
 
 the issue, waited upon Mynheer Frederick van Rexelaer, 
 Topsy's papa, a Judge, and also a Fool. That gentle- 
 man received him very affably, and immediately in- 
 vented an excuse for withdrawing to consult with the 
 head of the household. 
 
 "No money and a very desirable connection," said 
 Mevrouw Rexelaer, sitting up. "I wish it were Van 
 Helmont of Horstwyk and the Horst. But he has be- 
 haved like an idiot. This seems a very agreeable young 
 man, and Topsy might do worse. Since her miserable 
 failure with poor deluded Rene I am often quite anxious 
 about what is to become of her." 
 
 "Oh, she'll marry," said the Judge. 
 
 "I'm not so sure, Frederick," replied Mevrouw, who 
 was very impatient, for various reasons, to get this last 
 daughter off her hands. 
 
 "Antoinette is so- strange, so ungirlish; no man, as 
 yet, has ever proposed to her. My cousin Herman's 
 legacy was a merciful dispensation; but, all the same, 
 I should consider it very unwise to let this chance 
 escape." 
 
 So Gerard was instructed to make his proposal that 
 night at the Soiree of the Society of Arts, and Topsy 
 was instructed to accept him. 
 
 "You may thank your stars," said Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth, frankly, to her daughter. "Judging by the past, 
 I should think it's your only opportunity. Money 
 doesn't go for everything, especially if a girl has no 
 'charm.' I thank heaven on my bended knees when I 
 remember what might have been!" 
 
 "Yes, mamma," replied Antoinette, meekly, with 
 flushed cheeks and downcast eyes. In her own family 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. I 7
 
 258 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth's will was law, the immovable in- 
 cubus of many oppressive years. 
 
 "What might have been" — what Mevrouw had once 
 yearned and worked for, in spite of present thanks- 
 giving — was Topsy's marriage with a cousin, who had 
 never understood Mevrouw Elizabeth's plans. This 
 cousin was now dead and mad and altogether forgotten 
 and unmentionable. Hush! 
 
 The evening exhibitions of the Arts Society are very 
 brilliant social events. Some first-rate private collection 
 or portfolio forms the welcome excuse for coming to- 
 gether, and the people who go everywhere and see no- 
 thing insure, by their presence, artistic success. There 
 was such a crowd in the central room — a chattering 
 crowd, unconcernedly self-obstructive with regard to the 
 pictures— that it took Gerard some time to worm his 
 way to Antoinette. His heart fluttered. How sweet she 
 looked with her provokingly clever little face in the 
 turquoise cloud of her evening dress! 
 
 "Let's go into that little side-room, Freule," he 
 stammered. "I should like to show you a picture 
 there." 
 
 "Oh, but I don't want to go into the little side- 
 room, Mynheer van Helmont." Her voice was un- 
 certain, like his. "Please don't," she said, "I'm much 
 happier as I am." 
 
 He looked at her without immediate answer, offer- 
 ing his arm. Suddenly she seemed to grasp at some 
 mighty resolve, and, checking further protest, she 
 allowed him to lead her away. 
 
 The little alcove was empty but for a couple of ex- 
 pectantly staring portraits, forlorn in the gaslight.
 
 TOPSY REXELAER. 259 
 
 "How stupid they look!" exclaimed Gerard, im- 
 patiently; then, rebelling against the still atmosphere of 
 imminence which seemed to thicken upon this sudden 
 solitude, "Freule, I want to say something to you," he 
 murmured, hastily. "I don't quite know how to begin, 
 but, perhaps " 
 
 "Oh, don't," she interrupted him, releasing her arm. 
 "Don't, please, Mynheer van Helmont. I know what 
 you are going to say, and I want you to leave it unsaid. 
 I am so sorry, for I know it must be all my fault. I 
 never thought of anything of the kind. I had under- 
 stood you — I believed your affections were placed else- 
 where. I — I am so sorry." She faltered. "I shall 
 never marry," she said, and plucked at her fan. 
 
 He did not answer, in the silence, with the sense- 
 less hum beyond. Opposite him, in a big gilt frame, 
 a woman sat eternally simpering, a lay figure with black 
 laces and Raglan roses. He hated that woman. 
 
 "Shall I take you back to Mevrouw van Rexelaer?" 
 he said. 
 
 The name seemed to arouse her from her dream of 
 unmerited self-reproach. 
 
 "Just one moment," she began, hurriedly. "There 
 is — I should like — Mynheer van Helmont, I am going 
 to ask you an immense favour! I know I have no right, 
 but I want you to tell my parents that it is you who 
 have changed your mind. You haven't really asked me 
 anything, you know. Well, say you haven't." 
 
 "I don't quite understand." Gerard spoke a little 
 haughtily. 
 
 "Perhaps it isn't so much of a favour," the poor 
 girl went on. "It'll save you the appearance of having 
 
 17*
 
 26o MY LACY NOBODY. 
 
 been refused. Forgive me, Mynheer van Helmont, I 
 don't quite know what I'm saying. But my life will be 
 even more miserable than it is; it will be unbearable, if 
 my mother knows you asked me to be your wife." 
 
 She looked up at him, pleadingly. He was amazed. 
 What had become of the bright creature he knew, with 
 her sparkle of innocent repartee? 
 
 "My word is passed to your father," he said, tremu- 
 lously. "You ask me to disgrace myself in the eyes of 
 every decent man." 
 
 "Oh, no! not that! not that!" She spoke almost 
 wildly. "But, oh, my God! what am I to do! Mynheer 
 van Helmont, don't think me too much of a coward. 
 I believe I could nerve myself to one great sacrifice; it 
 is the daily bickering and nagging which I cannot en- 
 dure. Never mind, I am ashamed of myself." She 
 dashed her hand across her eyes — but too late. " Good- 
 bye, and forget me. It doesn't matter." 
 
 He bent low over her hand. 
 
 "It shall be as you wish," he said, very firm and 
 soldierly. 
 
 Once more she looked up at him, her eyes full of 
 far-away tenderness. 
 
 "I cannot help myself," she whispered. "I shall 
 never love — again." 
 
 Gerard found the Judge in the coffee-room. And 
 with the best face possible— which was a bad one — he 
 confessed that he had reconsidered his proposal of the 
 morning, and must withdraw it. Difficulties had inter- 
 vened. 
 
 "Really?" said the little Judge, coffee-cup in hand. 
 "This is very extraordinary. Of course, if you wish,
 
 TOPSY REXELAER. 26 I 
 
 there is an end of it. But — really, Mynheer van Hel- 
 mont, you must excuse me — for a moment." He sidled 
 to the entrance, in wild yearning for his better half, 
 who fortunately met him there, having gathered that 
 something was wrong. 
 
 "My dear," whispered the Judge, "Mynheer van Hel- 
 mont has changed his mind about marrying Topsy. He 
 isn't going to." 
 
 "Nonsense, Frederick," ejaculated Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth. "Tell him it's all right. Tell him to go and ask 
 her at once." 
 
 The little Judge went back into the desolate re- 
 freshment-room. His substantial consort lingered near 
 the door. 
 
 "Mynheer van Helmont," said Frederick, "it's all 
 right. You had better go and ask her at once." 
 
 "Mynheer van Rexelaer," replied Gerard, scarlet as 
 a poppy. "I thought I had made myself understood. 
 I abandon all further idea of proposing to your daughter." 
 
 Frederick fell back to the door. In her eagerness 
 Mevrouw put through her big heliotrope-crowned head. 
 "My dear, he won't ask her," breathed Frederick. 
 
 "What?" cried the lady, casting furious glances to- 
 wards the young officer, erect and helpless in the middle 
 of the bare, blazing room. "Go to him, Frederick, at 
 once! Tell him he's a coward and no gentleman! 
 Tell him you'll horsewhip him! No, you can't do that, 
 you're a Judge. Tell him one of her brothers will 
 horsewhip him! Guy ought to. I'll make him do it." 
 She pushed forward her small husband, who reluctantly 
 returned to the charge. 
 
 "You have behaved very badly, Mynheer," he began.
 
 262 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "You must permit me to say that." He looked round 
 nervously. Mevrouw Elizabeth, distrusting the atmo- 
 sphere of calm, had come forward into the full light, 
 and was unconsciously straining nearer. "That your 
 conduct is" — he raised his voice — "not such as one 
 has a right to expect from a gentleman. And here the 
 matter must end." He turned hastily; Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth stood close behind him. 
 
 "Say it is blackguardly," she hissed. 
 
 "I won't," replied Frederick van Rexelaer, in a 
 funk. 
 
 "It is blackguardly, Mynheer," cried the matron, 
 pushing past. "You are a coward, Mynheer, and no 
 gentleman." 
 
 Gerard retreated towards the gas-smitten wall, look- 
 ing, in his tight-fitting blue-black hussar-uniform, like an 
 Apollo in utter disgrace. He wondered, for a moment, 
 whether the woman was going to strike him. 
 
 "My son shall speak to you, Mynheer, as you de- 
 serve," shrieked Mevrouw Elizabeth. "My son! I will 
 send you my son, sir, to settle this matter." 
 
 "Oh, do, Mevrouw, do," eagerly exclaimed Gerard, 
 in a sudden rush of relief.
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 263 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 MASKS AND FACES. 
 
 The day after his wife's funeral, Mynheer Mopius 
 sat in the gilded drawing-room of Villa Blanda. His 
 demeanour was properly, pleasantly chastened, for the 
 cud of the pompous exequies lay sweet upon his tongue. 
 
 Harriet, busy with her own thoughts at the evening 
 tea-table, said, "Yes, it had all been very nice." 
 
 "But the tea was cold, Harriet," grumbled Mynheer 
 Mopius, for the dozenth weary time. "It's a very bad 
 thing in a woman when she can't make tea." 
 
 "Of course," replied Harriet, gazing down at her 
 sable garments, and wondering how soon the cheap 
 material would get rusty. 
 
 "My mother could make excellent tea," prosed 
 Mynheer, with a melancholy nod. "She could do every- 
 thing excellently, could my mother." 
 
 "A woman ought to," said Harriet, "and when she's 
 done it, she ought to die." 
 
 "She ought. She ought." While Mynheer Mopius 
 spoke, his thoughts were dwelling on Domine Pock's 
 oration by the grave. How well the reverend gentle- 
 man had alluded to the charities of our dear brother 
 afflicted! "The consolation which a noble heart can 
 always find in wiping other eyes the while its own are 
 streaming!"
 
 264 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 Mynheer blew his nose. 
 
 "This cheap cloth won't last, uncle," said Harriet, 
 briskly. 
 
 He pretended not to hear her. She bored him. She 
 had been all very well while his wife dragged on, but 
 
 now ! And, why, after all, should he be saddled 
 
 with this sharp-tongued girl? She was no relation of 
 his, though she called him "uncle." Mevrouw Mopius's 
 childless sister had been the first wife of Harriet's father, 
 Dr. Verveen. 
 
 "Yes," he repeated mechanically, "everything my 
 mother produced was first-rate of its kind." 
 
 "Especially her son," said Harriet, with a sneer 
 that positively fizzled. 
 
 Mynheer Mopius's yellow face grew a shade healthier 
 in colour. He accepted his third cup in thoughtful 
 silence; then he said, "And now, my dear young lady, 
 what do you mean to do?" 
 
 She looked at him, across the steaming urn. 
 
 "Go to bed," she replied. 
 
 "Quite so. And after?" 
 
 "Why, sleep, of course. What do you mean, uncle?" 
 
 She flushed scarlet. 
 
 "My dear Harriet, I fear you are too fond of sleep- 
 ing. Surely you understand that you can no longer 
 remain an inmate of this house, now that — that I am 
 a lonely widower? Much as I regret — ahem! — you will 
 admit, I feel confident, that you cannot remain under 
 present circumstances." 
 
 "Not under present circumstances," answered Harriet. 
 
 She waited for one long second, her black eyes 
 aflame, full on his face. Then the balance in which
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 265 
 
 her fate hung snapped suddenly. She sat, self-possessed, 
 amid the collapse of all her hopes. 
 
 "I shall always take an interest in you," said Myn- 
 heer Mopius, adjusting his neat white mourning-tie; 
 "and I mean to act very generously, to begin with. I 
 shall take lodgings for you for one month, paying your 
 board. I should have added a little cash for current 
 expenses, but your aunt's legacy has made that super- 
 fluous." 
 
 "Aunt Sarah left me a hundred florins and her 
 Bible," said Harriet. 
 
 "Dear woman, she did! She always thought of 
 others. You are welcome to the money, Harriet, fully, 
 frankly welcome. But the Bible! That is a memento 
 of her I would fain have retained." 
 
 "Buy it of me?" said Harriet. "How much will 
 you give for it? Ten florins?" 
 
 "Harriet, I am shocked," replied Mynheer Mopius, 
 hastily. "The month's board will leave you ample time 
 to look out for a situation." 
 
 "To look out for another situation," said Harriet. 
 
 "Quite so," exclaimed Mynheer Mopius, delighted 
 at her good sense. 
 
 Harriet threw back her arm with a jerk that rattled 
 the tea-equipage. 
 
 "And to think," she cried, "that only last week I 
 rejected the doctor." 
 
 "More fool you!" replied Mynheer Mopius, coolly. 
 "You'll have to be more careful of the Chinese porce- 
 lain in a strange house, Harriet, and it probably won't 
 be anything like as good." 
 
 "I rejected the doctor," continued Harriet, roughly,
 
 266 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 "because I didn't care for him. I couldn't live with 
 a young man I didn't care for. Uncles are different." 
 
 "Harriet, I am not really your uncle, you must re- 
 member, though I am willing to behave as such. If 
 your father " 
 
 "Yes, I know. Well, I shall try to get something in 
 a month's time, and if I can, I'll repay the board and 
 lodging, dear uncle." 
 
 "That is not necessary. You can place an adver- 
 tisement, Harriet, not mentioning names of course. You 
 don't know enough for a governess, and, besides, you 
 are too good-looking. You had better try to become a 
 companion. If your father " 
 
 "Quite so. Yes, I shall try to become a companion 
 — to a gentleman." 
 
 "Harriet! I do not see that it is a laughing matter. 
 To an invalid lady. Not that you have any experience 
 of invalids. For my dear Sarah enjoyed excellent health 
 till almost the last." 
 
 "To a gentleman," persisted Harriet, coolly. "It is 
 no laughing matter, Uncle Jacob. When I leave this 
 house, which at least afforded me some miserable sort 
 of protection, I shall advertise for a husband. I daresay 
 something nice will turn up. I want a husband I can 
 be really fond of. Somehow I have faith in his turn- 
 ing up." 
 
 She spoke to herself, but she rejoiced in scandalising 
 the hateful humbug opposite. 
 
 "Harriet, my dear," said the widower, solemnly, "all 
 this is very much out of place. You should have more 
 respect for the holiness of sorrow, Harriet." 
 
 "Oh, dear, no, you needn't trouble about that," she
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 267 
 
 interrupted him. "I'm in deadly earnest, I assure you. 
 I've printed an advertisement before, but it came to 
 nothing. I mean to look out better this time." 
 
 Her accent belied the outer calm of her attiiude; 
 she began washing the cups. 
 
 "Printed an advertisement from my house? From 
 Villa Blanda? If so, I have nourished a " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I am extremely agitated, Harriet. You are my 
 cherished Sarah's step-niece. I cannot imagine that any 
 member, any step-member, of my dear wife's family 
 would demean herself in the manner you describe." 
 
 He got up and began to walk about, enjoying his 
 brand-new mourning. "For anyone, of however humble 
 origin — and Sarah's sister married beneath her — to enter 
 into relations of — of an amorous description with a 
 stranger! Harriet, I am horrified. We are not in India, 
 Harriet. You are not a black woman, though you may 
 think and act like one. I appeal to you to remember 
 that you are connected, however distantly, with an 
 honourable family. You are not free, Harriet, as you 
 might have been before your father's first marriage." 
 
 He spoke with almost desperate energy, for there 
 were some things he had learned to discriminate in his 
 intercourse with Harriet Verveen. He knew when she 
 meant what she said. 
 
 "Pooh!" replied Harriet. "Good-night, dear uncle. 
 You give me a month's board, without wages, and 
 notice to quit. I am very grateful, dear uncle; but 
 henceforth you must allow me to fashion my own life 
 as I choose." 
 
 They stood facing each other. There was no noise
 
 2 68 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 and no recrimination. Each knew it would be use- 
 less. 
 
 "I have nourished a serpent in my bosom," said 
 Mynheer Mopius, triumphantly getting out his quota- 
 tion after all. "I can't keep you here a day longer, 
 Harriet, though you seem to be annoyed about going. 
 It wouldn't be proper, and, besides, I may have other 
 plans. I treat you generously. Whatever you may 
 elect to do I hope you will repay me by henceforth 
 dropping all pretended relationship to myself. That 
 must be an understood thing. Such conduct as you 
 propose — clandestine love affairs, anonymous love affairs 
 — I consider most scandalous. All the world considers it 
 scandalous. I cannot allow a breath of ill-odour to 
 sully the unspotted name of Mopius. Harriet, I hope 
 you fully agree to that suggestion. If not I should 
 consider myself compelled to retract." 
 
 "Oh, most willingly," again interrupted Harriet. 
 She steadily sought her uncle's shifty glances. "I 
 break all relation between us as completely as — I crush 
 this cup!" The costly porcelain fell to the ground in 
 shell-like fragments. Mynheer Mopius darted forward 
 with a shriek. Meanwhile Harriet slipped from the 
 room, her right hand bleeding, her mood somewhat 
 relieved. 
 
 Next morning she left the house. After the night's 
 consideration of circumstances she was not sorry to go. 
 She believed, with a desperate woman's pertinacity, in 
 the ultimate success of the wide choice she had allowed 
 herself. She would take a husband after her own 
 heart. Already she pictured him to herself, good-look- 
 ing, with a fair moustache.
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 26q 
 
 In the great city close to Drum — a city which may 
 as well remain nameless — a modest variety may be 
 found of those public entertainments which constitute, 
 to the many, a principal criterion of civilisation. In 
 the nineteenth-century march of mind — which, after 
 all, is but the advance of 'Arry — a town with no per- 
 manent music-hall troupe is voted "slow." Drum was 
 distinctly "slow." Its big sister aspired, in spasms, to 
 be reckoned "fast." 
 
 Occasionally, therefore, when the fit was upon her, 
 the big sister clutched, gasping, at some Parisian form 
 of diversion; a river fete with fireworks, horse-races, or 
 in winter, a bal costume' et pare'. The latter was de- 
 cidedly a bad spasm, for northern nations can make 
 nothing of the "Veglione." Still, every season a couple 
 of these picturesque gaieties were organised by inde- 
 fatigable impresarii (in rose-coloured spectacles), the 
 price of admission being fixed at a florin for gentlemen, 
 ladies free. No respectable person over thirty was 
 supposed to attend. 
 
 One of the least unsuccessful costume-balls the 
 city has ever seen came off just before Christmas, in 
 the year we are describing. Willie van Troyen was 
 there as Paris, with another Helen, this being a delicate 
 joke on the part of the woman whose rule was to end 
 next week. As she accurately pointed out, the right 
 Helen was, after all, the wrong love. 
 
 Only Gerard's deep mourning had prevented his 
 presence. Somebody had suggested, behind his back, 
 that he might go as a Mute. The gay band he lived 
 amongst agreed unanimously that "it was high time
 
 27O MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 that Gerard got over his parent's demise." He was 
 not a success in the role of the impecunious orphan. 
 
 Willie van Troyen, on this festal occasion, was 
 drunk, and, from his place in a stage-box, between 
 two sirens, he was roaring with laughter at the antics 
 of a goose in the pit. The whole floor of the small 
 theatre had been cleared for perambulation, while 
 those who meant dancing could retire to the stage. 
 Most of the masks, however, preferred to walk about 
 and make believe they were funny, in a half-annoyed 
 jostle of ungracious familiarity, under the critical con- 
 templation of the humbler amphitheatre side-tables, and 
 of the champagne-sodden boxes up above. Every now 
 and then some ambitious buffoon, excited by the con- 
 tinuous spur of the music, would suddenly leap at facile 
 applause. There would be a sweep of the crowd in his 
 direction and an outburst of meaningless laughter, every- 
 one exclaiming that the joke was good, while thinking 
 it rather tame. 
 
 But even the numerous laughers who were only pre- 
 tending to amuse themselves agreed in recognising the 
 very real drollery of the Goose. He — it was evidently 
 a masculine goose, as distinguished from a gander — he 
 trotted about in the stupidest manner, a great yellow- 
 beaked ball of white and black feathers with unreason- 
 ably protruding quills. Just now he had got hold of a 
 stout and solemn gentleman in red velvet, who evidently 
 represented a potent, grave, and reverend Signor. This 
 dignified personage looked exceedingly out of place — 
 not to speak of a false nose through his mask — in so 
 foolish a company of mummers. 
 
 The Goose had a nasty talent for cackling with the
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 2"] I 
 
 extravagant clatter of his big wooden beak, and he 
 kept up this deafening music incessantly as he ran round 
 and round the fat gentleman in velvet, who turned 
 helplessly hither and thither amid volleys of merriment. 
 Every now and then the cruel bird, as it ran, would 
 draw the pointed quills from under its feathers and 
 therewith prick the reverend signor in unexpected 
 places, causing him to wriggle and twist. Just then 
 there was a pause in the programme; the whole theatre 
 shook with this unexpected fun. 
 
 "Why can't you leave me alone?" hissed the un- 
 fortunate senator, in streaming suspense. But the 
 Goose made no reply. Stopping his mad race for a 
 moment, he actually began chalking up ribaldry with 
 one of his quills on the senator's pendent mantle, 
 chattering all the while. In vain the proud aristocrat 
 wrestled and protested. The Goose, holding the mantle 
 firmly, chalked a huge note of interrogation upon it, 
 and wrote under this sign, amid breathless interest, the 
 question: "What does your Worship here?" A renewed 
 outburst greeted this sally. Willie van Troyen, un- 
 steadily prominent, pelted the witty bird with hothouse 
 grapes. 
 
 "Go along, you hypocrite, I know you," said the 
 Goose in his victim's ear. "I've chalked up your real 
 name behind." 
 
 At this the crimson noble, breaking down, began 
 to cry real tears of shame and spite. "You've ruined 
 me, then," he exclaimed. "And I can't for the life of 
 me imagine why!" 
 
 "Boh," said the Goose, and resumed his clatter 
 more heartily than ever,
 
 272 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 But at this juncture a goose-girl stepped unex- 
 pectedly into the arena. She drove off the goose with 
 some well-directed blows, and, taking the arm of the 
 red-velvet gentleman, led him disconsolate away. 
 
 "It's your own fault for coming," squeaked the 
 goose-girl. "Let's go and talk it over in a private 
 box." 
 
 "No, indeed; private boxes are very expensive. 
 My dear creature, for Heaven's sake, let me sit down 
 
 on this settee. I — I — anxious to obliterate " he 
 
 began, violently rubbing his back against the cushions 
 of the sofa. "I am quite at a loss to understand," he 
 said, "but, tell me, my dear, you didn't — eh?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed," replied the maiden. "Your style 
 and title, Mynheer the Councillor, were written there in 
 full." 
 
 He broke into an oath. "Not my name," he sobbed. 
 "You — you didn't see my name?" 
 
 The goose-girl sat down beside him. She used a 
 small instrument to disguise her voice. "Why did you 
 come here, you horrid old man?" she said. "I saw 
 you flirting with Little Red Ridinghood. I saw you 
 dancing with that atrocious Bacchante. ' Clandestine 
 love-affairs,' 'Anonymous engagements.' And your wife 
 not five weeks dead! Oh, Uncle Jacob — Uncle Jacob ! " 
 Harriet dropped into her natural voice, letting fall both 
 her mask and her manner. 
 
 "Harriet!" exclaimed Mopius, "this exceeds " 
 
 "Indeed it does," she interrupted, coolly. "Don't 
 speak so loud, dear uncle, or the goose will be coming 
 back." 
 
 Mynheer Mopius started to his feet.
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 273 
 
 "This is some conspiracy to ruin me," he said, 
 speaking like one dazed. "I'm ruined already. I'm 
 going " 
 
 "Wait a moment," objected his tormentor. "It 
 isn't true that your name was written up; I prevented 
 that in time. So, you see, you have a good deal to 
 thank me for. But, uncle, that Goose is a writer on 
 the staff of the Dram Independent; he is one of their 
 leading men, and a very great friend of mine. His 
 quills are very real quills. He is anxious to tell — when 
 the by-election comes on next week, which is to render 
 you Right Worshipful — an amusing little story of a 
 highly respectable candidate who, barely a month after 
 his dear wife's death, danced with a charming Bac- 
 chante at a charming masked ball." 
 
 "What do you want of me, Harriet?" shrieked the 
 wretched widower. "Do you want money? I can let 
 you have a little, if you like." 
 
 "Hush. Let's talk it over quietly in this quiet 
 corner, Uncle Jacob. I am pitiless. Understand that 
 at once. No compounding. You must surrender ab- 
 solutely. Better do it with a good grace." 
 
 "I know you want to marry me," answered Mopius, 
 sulkily; "and I don't mind so very much, though it's 
 hard to have it forced on one. I'd rather have had a 
 woman with a softer tongue; but I've been looking 
 about me, and one has this fault and another has that; 
 I always said you were good-looking, Harriet. I'll 
 marry you, if you like, though I'd rather have had a 
 lady-born." 
 
 "Marry you!" she blazed out at him. "No, indeed, 
 I'm going to marry a man whose boots you daren't lick, 
 
 My Lady Nobody. I. 1 8
 
 274 JIY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 unless he let yon. A good man, beautiful as good, and 
 clever as he is beautiful — a man who will some day be 
 great, and I — love — him. He is poor, and the whole 
 world is before him, and I love him. Marry you!" 
 
 "Well, you wanted to a month ago," muttered 
 Mopius. 
 
 "Let me speak. If you want to hush up this dis- 
 graceful story you must give my love" — her voice 
 caressed the delicious word — "two thousand florins. He 
 will be satisfied with that; then he can pay off his debts, 
 and we can start our humble housekeeping." 
 
 "Harriet, it's a mean trick. I should never have 
 thought that you with your pride " 
 
 "Silence, you!" she exclaimed under her breath, 
 crushing down her own misgivings with reckless vehe- 
 mence. "How dare you question his good pleasure, or 
 I? You obey, so do I. Only two thousand florins. He 
 is very moderate. He might have demanded ten. But 
 I told him I didn't want your dirty money. Love can 
 be happy in a garret. Come, let's have done with the 
 whole horrid business. I promised to call him, and 
 then you can go." The goose-girl put a whistle to her 
 lips, and immediately her obedient bird came clucking 
 up from among the motley crowd. As he came his 
 weary din gradually assumed the shape of "Ja-cob! 
 Ja-cob! Ja-cob!" with terrible, reiterated distinctness. 
 
 "Hush, please, darling," pleaded Harriet, her voice 
 full of soft entreaty, "uncle is willing to give the two 
 thousand florins, as I propose." 
 
 "To further his candidature," said the Goose, bow- 
 ing low. "It is clearly understood that the money is
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 275 
 
 paid to further his candidature. I am proud, sir, to make 
 your acquaintance." 
 
 The Goose saluted, with silly flap. 
 
 "And now he had better go," exclaimed Harriet. 
 
 "My dear child, what are you thinking of?" pro- 
 tested the Goose, as Mynheer Mopius hastily rose to 
 render ready obedience. "I have only just had the 
 pleasure of meeting your uncle. I am sure he will do 
 us the favour of being present at a little champagne 
 supper in one of the upstairs boxes — as host." 
 
 "Oh, no," began the Goose-girl, and checked herself, 
 meeting the Goose's eye. 
 
 "I shall be willing," stammered Mopius, "if neces- 
 sary, to pay " 
 
 The Goose interposed. 
 
 "My dear sir, what are you thinking of?" he said, 
 loftily. "Is this the way such matters are managed 
 among men of honour? Harriet, take your uncle's arm!" 
 
 Together the trio ascended to the grand tier. Myn- 
 heer Mopius's supper, as ordered by the Goose, was 
 exquisite; the host finished by enjoying it himself, and 
 drinking too much wine. Willie van Troyen insisted on 
 rolling in from the adjoining box to shake the Goose 
 by the hand. He also drank to the. health of the re- 
 cumbent masked gentleman, in shabby red velvet, who 
 was singing sentimental songs in an undertone, with 
 unpremeditated shrieks. 
 
 "Dear love, for thee I would lay down my li-i-fe: 
 For, without thee, what would that life avail?" 
 
 The Goose informed Willie that the Senator was a 
 retired Indian Viceroy, who had given many such 
 magnificent entertainments in his day. Willie put his 
 
 18*
 
 276 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 finger to his nose and immediately invited His Excel- 
 lency to his wedding six days hence. Upon which His 
 Excellency burst out crying, and said that the word 
 reminded him of the best of departed wives. Harriet 
 sat staring down into the now almost deserted pit. 
 
 The cold December dawn had not yet achieved 
 more than the hope of its forthcoming when the Goose 
 took away Mynheer Mopius in a cab to a quiet hotel. 
 Behind them still echoed the loud talk of the young 
 officers. They passed, in the fearsome streets, a troop 
 of roysterers from a gin-shop. "We won't go home till 
 morning!" rang hideous on the patient night. Here and 
 there a window shone out, fully lighted, with its message 
 of suffering or suspense. 
 
 Up above — far, far above — stood, silent, God's 
 eternal stars, watchful, serenely waiting, in the darkness 
 whence we come and whither we return. 
 
 Three days after the ball Mynheer Mopius paid up 
 like a man, and three days after he had paid up, Myn- 
 heer Mopius was sitting one evening in his accustomed 
 armchair, reflecting on his loneliness and the unexpected 
 rarity of charming claimants for his hand. In fact, 
 during this month, with his indecent precipitancy, he 
 had exposed himself to a couple of very painful rebuffs. 
 Of course, he was exceedingly angry with Harriet. But, 
 really, all that he cared for was himself, his own com- 
 fort, his own glory, an audience, especially for his even- 
 ing songs. 
 
 In the midst of his reflections Harriet walked in. 
 She cast off her wrap, sans gene, upon the nearest sofa.
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 277 
 
 "I've come to marry you, after all," she said, quite 
 collectedly. 
 
 Mynheer Mopius jumped. 
 
 "Harriet," he replied, "this is — go away! After 
 your conduct of last week, go away!" 
 
 "I forgive your conduct," said Harriet, unmoved. 
 
 "And the — the goose you were in love with?" in- 
 quired Mynheer Mopius, not without some satisfaction. 
 
 "He was unworthy," replied Harriet, with level eye- 
 brows. "He has thrown me over." 
 
 "As soon as he had the money," said Mynheer 
 Mopius, rubbing his palms between his knees. 
 
 "Yes, as soon as he had the money," admitted the 
 girl, quite simply. "It appears there is another woman 
 in the business. All that is dead and gone. All my 
 money's gone. I haven't had anything to eat since 
 yesterday morning. Never mind that. But my de- 
 cision's taken. I've come back to marry you. And I 
 mean to." 
 
 "You can't against my will, Harriet," said Mynheer 
 Mopius, beaming. "Go away." 
 
 "Look here, Uncle Jacob, you're going to marry me, 
 or- — don't make me say the alternative. I'd rather 
 think you married me without the alternative. It's not 
 very nice, anyway, but I don't intend to starve. And, 
 as I don't believe in men any more, it really doesn't 
 matter much. Now ring for the servants and tell them 
 you're going to marry me!" 
 
 "Harriet, go away!" 
 
 Harriet crossed to the bell-rope and pulled it. "What 
 does your Worship here?" she said, incoherently. "You 
 asked me a week ago, and I said no. You don't ask
 
 278 MY LADY NOBODY. 
 
 me to-day, and I say yes. Such is woman. Better than 
 man, at his worst." 
 
 The footman answered the bell. For a moment 
 Harriet's courage failed her before his severe expectancy. 
 "Bring some biscuits," she said. 
 
 "Harriet," began Mynheer Mopius, thoroughly cowed, 
 like the bully he was, "you must allow at least another 
 month to intervene before the thing can be even mooted. 
 I always admitted, Harriet, you know, that you were a 
 very good-looking girl. But, before I say another word, 
 I must insist on your going down on your bended knees 
 and humbly begging my pardon for your disgraceful 
 conduct of the other night." 
 
 Harriet Verveen understood the antagonist she had 
 vanquished. The proud girl actually knelt on the carpet 
 and slowly repeated the humiliating words. 
 
 "Very good!" said Mynheer Mopius, in high good 
 humour, "and, Harriet, I won't marry you till you suc- 
 ceed in matching that cup you broke." He smiled to 
 himself in the glass, the future Town Councillor! 
 
 "You are very poor, Harriet," he continued, "and 
 of humble origin. It is a great thing for you to become 
 Madame Mopius. I hope you feel that." 
 
 "Oh, yes," replied Harriet meekly. She had got up 
 from the floor. Meanwhile the footman had brought in 
 a tray of biscuits. She fell on them, ravenously. 
 
 "Well, Harriet, if ever I make you my wife — and I 
 don't say I shall, mind — I hope you will be a good and 
 obedient consort, like the faithful creature I have lost." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Harriet again. Soon after she went 
 back to her lodgings, with a little money in her purse. 
 She turned in the hall-door of Villa Blanda.
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 279 
 
 "Won't I pay you out for this!" she said aloud. 
 Never till the day of her death could she look down at 
 her knees without seeing dust upon them. Mopius had 
 cause to remember his triumph, though she made him 
 a good wife on the whole. 
 
 That evening, far into the night, the miserable woman 
 lay at the open window of her garret, with her forehead 
 knocking the sill. Her neighbour, a poor, blind seam- 
 stress, sat up in bed, trembling, awestruck by the sobs 
 that seemed to shake the flimsy house. It was winter, 
 bitterly, frostily cold. On the window-sill, bent, pressed 
 back again, clammy with kisses, stuck a stupid bit of 
 pasteboard, the smirking photograph of a man. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
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