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The Other House 
 
By the Same Author, 6s. each. 
 
 Terminations 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. "These four stories are so 
 clever, that one can only raise one's hands in 
 admiration." 
 
 Embarrassments 
 
 The Times. " Mr. James's stories are a con- 
 tinued protest against superficial workmanship 
 and slovenly style. He is an enthusiast who has 
 devoted himself to keeping alive the sacred fire 
 of genuine literature ; and he has his reward in a 
 circle of constant admirers, whose sympathy 
 encourages him to persevere." 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
The Other House 
 
 By 
 
 Henry James 
 
 In Two Volumes 
 Vol. i 
 
 London 
 
 William Heinemann 
 1896 
 
All rights reserved 
 
BOOK FIRST 
 
 VOL. 
 
I 
 
 MRS. BEEVER of Eastmead, and of "Beever and 
 Bream/' was a close, though not a cruel observer of 
 what went on, as she always said, at the other 
 house. A great deal more went on there, naturally, 
 than in the great clean, square solitude in which 
 she had practically lived since the death of Mr. 
 Beever, who had predeceased by three years his 
 friend and partner, the late Paul Bream of Bounds, 
 leaving to his only son, the little godson of that 
 trusted associate, the substantial share of the busi- 
 ness in which his wonderful widow she knew and 
 rejoiced that she was wonderful now had a 
 distinct voice. Paul Beever, in the bloom of 
 eighteen, had just achieved a scramble from Win- 
 chester to Oxford : it was his mother's design that 
 he should go into as many things as possible before 
 coming into the Bank. The Bank, the pride of 
 Wilverley, the high clear arch of which the two 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 houses were the solid piers, was worth an expensive 
 education. It was, in the talk of town and county, 
 " hundreds of years " old, and as incalculably 
 "good" as a subject of so much infallible arithmetic 
 could very well be. That it enjoyed the services of 
 Mrs. Beever herself was at present enough for her 
 and an ample contentment to Paul, who inclined so 
 little to the sedentary that she foresaw she should 
 some day be as anxious at putting him into figures 
 as she had in his childhood been easy about putting 
 him into breeches. Half the ground moreover was 
 held by young Anthony Bream, the actual master of 
 Bounds, the son and successor of her husband's 
 colleague. 
 
 She was a woman indeed of many purposes ; 
 another of which was that on leaving Oxford the 
 boy should travel and inform himself: she belonged 
 to the age that regarded a foreign tour not as a hasty 
 dip, but as a deliberate plunge. Still another had 
 for its main feature that on his final return he should 
 marry the nicest girl she knew : that too would be 
 a deliberate plunge, a plunge that would besprinkle 
 his mother. It would do with the question what 
 it was Mrs. Beever's inveterate household practice 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 5 
 
 to do with all loose and unarranged objects it 
 would get it out of the way. There would 
 have been difficulty in saying whether it was a 
 feeling for peace or for war, but her constant habit 
 was to lay the ground bare for complications that 
 as yet at least had never taken place. Her life was 
 like a room prepared for a dance : the furniture was 
 all against the walls. About the young lady in 
 question she was perfectly definite ; the nicest girl 
 she knew was Jean Martle, whom she had just sent 
 for at Brighton to come and perform in that 
 character. The performance was to be for the 
 benefit of Paul, whose midsummer return was at 
 hand and in whom the imagination of alternatives 
 was to be discouraged from the first. It was on the 
 whole a comfort to Mrs. Beever that he had little 
 imagination of anything. 
 
 Jean Martle, condemned to Brighton by a father 
 who was Mrs. Beever's second cousin and whom 
 the doctors, the great men in London, kept there, 
 as this lady opined, because he was too precious 
 wholly to lose and too boring often to see Jean 
 Martle would probably some day have money and 
 would possibly some day have sense : even as 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 regards a favoured candidate this marked the extent 
 of Mrs. Beever's somewhat dry expectations. They 
 were addressed in a subordinate degree to the girl's 
 "playing," which was depended on to become 
 brilliant, and to her hair, which was viewed in the 
 light of a hope that it would with the lapse of years 
 grow darker. Wilverley, in truth, would never 
 know if she played ill ; but it had an old-fashioned 
 prejudice against loud shades in the natural cover- 
 ing of the head. One of the things his cousin had 
 been invited for was that Paul should get used to 
 her eccentric colour a colour of which, on a certain 
 bright Sunday of July, Mrs. Beever noted afresh, 
 with some alarm, the exaggerated pitch. Her 
 young friend had arrived two days before and now 
 during the elastic interval from church to luncheon 
 had been despatched to Bounds with a message 
 and some preliminary warnings. Jean knew that 
 she should find there a house in some confusion, a 
 new-born little girl, the first, a young mother not 
 yet " up," and an odd visitor, somewhat older than 
 herself, in the person of Miss Armiger, a school- 
 friend of Mrs. Bream, who had made her appearance 
 a month before that of the child and had stayed on, 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 as Mrs. Beever with some emphasis put it, " right 
 through everything." 
 
 This picture of the situation had filled, after the 
 first hour or two, much of the time of the two ladies, 
 but it had originally included for Jean no particular 
 portrait of the head of the family an omission in 
 some degree repaired, however, by the chance of 
 Mrs. Beever's having on the Saturday morning 
 taken her for a moment into the Bank. They had 
 had errands in the town, and Mrs. Beever had 
 wished to speak to Mr. Bream, a brilliant, joking 
 gentleman, who, instantly succumbing to their 
 invasion and turning out a confidential clerk, had 
 received them in his beautiful private room. " Shall 
 I like him ? " Jean, with the sense of a widening 
 circle, had, before this, adventurously asked. " Oh, 
 yes, if you notice him ! " Mrs. Beever had replied in 
 obedience to an odd private prompting to mark him 
 as insignificant. Later on, at the Bank, the girl 
 noticed him enough to feel rather afraid of him : 
 that was always with her the foremost result of 
 being noticed herself. If Mrs. Beever passed him 
 over, this was in part to be accounted for by all that 
 at Eastmead was usually taken for granted. The 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 queen-mother, as Anthony Bream kept up the jest 
 of calling her, would not have found it easy to paint 
 off-hand a picture of the allied sovereign whom she 
 was apt to regard as a somewhat restless vassal. 
 Though he was a dozen years older than the happy 
 young prince on whose behalf she exercised her 
 regency, she had known him from his boyhood, and 
 his strong points and his weak were alike an old 
 story to her. 
 
 His house was new he had on his marriage, at a 
 vast expense, made it quite violently so. His wife 
 and his child were new; new also in a marked 
 degree was the young woman who had lately taken 
 up her abode with him and who had the air of 
 intending to remain till she should lose that quality 
 But Tony himself this had always been his name 
 to her was intensely familiar. Never doubting 
 that he was a subject she had mastered, Mrs. 
 Beever had no impulse to clear up her view by 
 distributing her impressions. These impressions 
 were as neatly pigeon-holed as her correspondence 
 and her accounts neatly, at least, save in so far as 
 they were besprinkled with the dust of time. One 
 of them might have been freely rendered into a hint 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 that her young partner was a possible source of 
 danger to her own sex. Not to her personally, of 
 course ; for herself, somehow, Mrs. Beever was not 
 of her own sex. If she had been a woman she 
 never thought of herself so loosely she would, in 
 spite of her age, have doubtless been conscious of 
 peril. She now recognised none in life except that 
 of Paul's marrying wrong, against which she had 
 taken early measures. It would have been a mis- 
 fortune therefore to feel a flaw in a security other- 
 wise so fine. Was not perhaps the fact that she 
 had a vague sense of exposure for Jean Martle^a 
 further motive for her not expatiating to that young 
 lady on Anthony Bream? If any such sense 
 operated, I hasten to add, it operated without Jean's 
 having mentioned that at the Bank he had struck 
 her as formidable. 
 
 Let me not fail equally to declare that Mrs. 
 Beever's general suspicion of him, as our sad want 
 of signs for shades and degrees condemns me to call 
 it, rested on nothing in the nature of evidence. If 
 she had ever really uttered it she might have been 
 brought up rather short on the question of grounds. 
 There were certainly, at any rate, no grounds in 
 
io THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Tony's having, before church, sent a word over to 
 her on the subject of their coming to luncheon. 
 " Dear Julia, this morning, is really grand," he had 
 written. "We've just managed to move to her 
 downstairs room, where they've put up a lovely bed 
 and where the sight of all her things cheers and 
 amuses her, to say nothing of the wide immediate 
 outlook at her garden and her own corner of the 
 terrace. In short the waves are going down and 
 we're beginning to have our meals 'regular.' 
 Luncheon may be rather late, but do bring over 
 your charming little friend. How she lighted up 
 yesterday my musty den ! There will be another 
 little friend, by the way not of mine, but of Rose 
 Armiger's, the young man to whom, as I think you 
 know, she's engaged to be married. He's just back 
 from China and comes down till to-morrow. Our 
 Sunday trains are such a bore that, having wired 
 him to take the other line, I'm sending to meet him 
 at Plumbury." Mrs. Beever had no need to reflect 
 on these few lines to be comfortably conscious that 
 they summarised the nature of her neighbour 
 down to the " dashed sociability," as she had heard 
 the poor fellow, in sharp reactions, himself call it, 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 11 
 
 that had made him scribble them and that always 
 made him talk too much for a man in what, more 
 than he, she held to be a "position." He was 
 there in his premature bustle over his wife's slow 
 recovery ; he was there in his boyish impatience to 
 improvise a feast ; he was there in the simplicity 
 with which he exposed himself to the depredations, 
 to the possible avalanche, of Miss Armiger's belong- 
 ings. He was there moreover in his free-handed 
 way of sending six miles for a young man from 
 China, and he was most of all there in his allusion 
 to the probable lateness of luncheon. Many things 
 in these days were new at the other house, but 
 nothing was so new as the hours of meals. Mrs. 
 Beever had of old repeatedly dined there on the 
 stroke of six. It will be seen that, as I began with 
 declaring, she kept her finger on the pulse of 
 Bounds. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
II 
 
 WHEN Jean Martle, arriving with her message, was 
 ushered into the hall, it struck her at first as empty, 
 and during the moment that she supposed herself in 
 sole possession she perceived it to be showy and 
 indeed rather splendid. Bright, large and high, 
 richly decorated and freely used, full of " corners " 
 and communications, it evidently played equally the 
 part of a place of reunion and of a place of transit. 
 It contained so many large pictures that if they 
 hadn't looked somehow so recent it might have 
 passed for a museum. The shaded summer was in 
 it now, and the odour of many flowers, as well as 
 the tick from the chimney-piece of a huge French 
 clock which Jean recognised as modern. The 
 colour of the air, the frank floridity, amused and 
 charmed her. It was not till the servant had left 
 her that she became aware she was not alone a 
 discovery that soon gave her an embarrassed 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 13 
 
 minute. At the other end of the place appeared 
 a young woman in a posture that, with interposing 
 objects, had made her escape notice, a young woman 
 bent low over a table at which she seemed to have 
 been writing. Her chair was pushed back, her face 
 buried in her extended and supported arms, her 
 whole person relaxed and abandoned. She had 
 heard neither the swing of the muffled door nor any 
 footfall on the deep carpet, and her attitude denoted 
 a state of mind that made the messenger from 
 Eastmead hesitate between quickly retreating on 
 tiptoe or still more quickly letting her know that she 
 was observed. Before Jean could decide her com- 
 panion looked up, then rapidly and confusedly rose 
 She could only be Miss Armiger, and she had been 
 such a figure of woe that it was a surprise not to 
 see her in tears. She was by no means in tears ; 
 but she was for an instant extremely blank, an 
 instant during which Jean remembered, rather to 
 wonder at it, Mrs. Beever's having said of her that 
 one really didn't know whether she was awfully 
 plain or strikingly handsome. Jean felt that one 
 quite did know : she was awfully plain. It may 
 immediately be mentioned that about the charm of 
 
I 4 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 the apparition offered meanwhile to her own eyes 
 Rose Armiger had not a particle of doubt : a slim, 
 fair girl who struck her as a light sketch for some- 
 thing larger, a cluster of happy hints with nothing 
 yet quite " put in " but the splendour of the hair 
 and the grace of the clothes clothes that were not 
 as the clothes of Wilverley. The reflection of these 
 things came back to Jean from a pair of eyes as to 
 which she judged that the extreme lightness of their 
 grey was what made them so strange as to be 
 ugly a reflection that spread into a sudden smile 
 from a wide, full-lipped mouth, whose regular office, 
 obviously, was to produce the second impression. 
 In a flash of small square white teeth this second 
 impression was produced and the ambiguity that 
 Mrs. Beever had spoken of lighted up an ambiguity 
 worth all the dull prettiness in the world. Yes, 
 one quite did know : Miss Armiger was strikingly 
 handsome. It thus took her but a few seconds to 
 repudiate every connection with the sombre image 
 Jean had just encountered. 
 
 " Excuse my jumping out at you," she said. " I 
 heard a sound I was expecting a friend." Jean 
 thought her attitude an odd one for the purpose, but 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 hinted a fear of being in that case in the way ; on 
 which the young lady protested that she was de- 
 lighted to see her, that she had already heard of 
 her, that she guessed who she was. " And I dare- 
 say you've already heard of me" 
 
 Jean shyly confessed to this, and getting away 
 from the subject as quickly as possible, produced on 
 the spot her formal credentials. 
 
 " Mrs. Beever sent me over to ask if it's really 
 quite right we should come to luncheon. We came 
 out of church before the sermon, because of some 
 people who were to go home with us. They're with 
 Mrs. Beever now, but she told me to come straight 
 across the garden the short way." 
 
 Miss Armiger continued to smile. " No way ever 
 seems short enough for Mrs. Beever ! " 
 
 There was an intention in this, as Jean faintly 
 felt, that was lost upon her; but while she was 
 wondering her companion went on : 
 
 " Did Mrs. Beever direct you to inquire of 
 me ? " 
 
 Jean hesitated. " Of any one, I think, who would 
 be here to tell me in case Mrs. Bream shouldn't be 
 quite so well." 
 
16 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " She isn't quite so well." 
 
 The younger girl's face showed the flicker of a 
 fear of losing her entertainment; on perceiving 
 which the elder pursued : 
 
 " But we shan't romp or racket shall we ? We 
 shall be very quiet." 
 
 " Very, very quiet/' Jean eagerly echoed. 
 
 Her new friend's smile became a laugh, which 
 was followed by the abrupt question : " Do you 
 mean to be long with Mrs. Beever ? " 
 
 "Till her son comes home. You know he's at 
 Oxford, and his term soon ends." 
 
 " And yours ends with it you depart as he 
 arrives ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Beever tells me I positively shan't," said 
 Jean. 
 
 " Then you positively won't. Everything is done 
 here exactly as Mrs. Beever tells us. Don't you 
 like her son ? " Rose Armiger asked. 
 
 " I don't know yet ; it's exactly what she wants 
 me to find out." 
 
 " Then you'll have to be very clear." 
 
 " But if I find out I don't ? " Jean risked. 
 
 " I shall be very sorry for you ! " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 17 
 
 " I think then it will be the only thing in this 
 love of an old place that I shan't have liked." 
 
 Rose Armiger for a moment rested her eyes on 
 her visitor, who was more and more conscious that 
 she was strange and yet not, as Jean had always 
 supposed strange people to be, disagreeable. " Do 
 you like me ? " she unexpectedly inquired. 
 
 " How can I tell at the end of three minutes ? " 
 
 " / can tell at the end of one ! You must try 
 to like me you must be very kind to me," Miss 
 Armiger declared. Then she added : " Do you 
 like Mr. Bream ? " 
 
 Jean considered ; she felt that she must rise to 
 the occasion. " Oh, immensely ! " At this her 
 interlocutress laughed again, and it made her con- 
 tinue with more reserve : " Of course I only saw 
 him for five minutes yesterday at the Bank." 
 
 " Oh, we know how long you saw him ! " Miss 
 Armiger exclaimed. " He has told us all about 
 your visit." 
 
 Jean was slightly awe-stricken : this picture seemed 
 to include so many people. " Whom has he told ?" 
 
 Her companion had the air of being amused at 
 everything she said; but for Jean it was an air, 
 
 VOL. I B 
 
i8 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 none the less, with a kind of foreign charm in it. 
 " Why, the very first person was of course his poor 
 little wife." 
 
 " But I'm not to see her, am I ? " Jean rather 
 eagerly asked, puzzled by the manner of the allu- 
 sion and but half suspecting it to be a part of her 
 informant's general ease. 
 
 " You're not to see her, but even if you were she 
 wouldn't hurt you for it," this young lady replied. 
 " She understands his friendly way and likes above 
 all his beautiful frankness." 
 
 Jean's bewilderment began to look as if she too 
 now, as she remembered, understood and liked 
 these things. It might have been in confirmation of 
 what was in her mind that she presently said : "He 
 told me I might see the wonderful baby. He told 
 me he would show it to me himself." 
 
 " I'm sure he'll be delighted to do that. He's 
 awfully proud of the wonderful baby." 
 
 " I suppose it's very lovely," Jean remarked with 
 growing confidence. 
 
 " Lovely! Do you think babies are ever lovely ? " 
 
 Taken aback by this challenge, Jean reflected a 
 little ; she found, however, nothing better to say 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 19 
 
 than, rather timidly: "I like dear little children, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 Miss Armiger in turn considered, " Not a bit ! " 
 she then replied. "It would be very sweet and 
 attractive of me to say I adore them ; but I never 
 pretend to feelings I can't keep up, don't you 
 know ? If you'd like, all the same, to see Effie," 
 she obligingly added, " I'll so far sacrifice myself as 
 to get her for you." 
 
 Jean smiled as if this pleasantry were contagious. 
 " You won't sacrifice her ? " 
 
 Rose Armiger stared. " I won't destroy her." 
 
 "Then do get her." 
 
 " Not yet, not yet ! " cried another voice that of 
 Mrs. Beever, who had just been introduced and 
 who, having heard the last words of the two girls, 
 came, accompanied by the servant, down the hall. 
 " The baby's of no importance. We've come over 
 for the mother. Is it true that Julia has had a bad 
 turn ? " she asked of Rose Armiger. 
 
 Miss Armiger had a peculiar way of looking at a 
 person before speaking, and she now, with this 
 detachment, delayed so long to answer Mrs. Beever 
 that Jean also rested her eyes, as if for a reason, on 
 
20 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 the good lady from Eastmead. She greatly admired 
 her, but in that instant, the first of seeing her at 
 Bounds, she perceived once for all how the differ- 
 ence of the setting made another thing of the gem. 
 Short and solid, with rounded corners and full 
 supports, her hair very black and very flat, her eyes 
 very small for the amount of expression they 
 could show, Mrs. Beever was so " early Victorian " 
 as to be almost prehistoric was constructed to 
 move amid massive mahogany and sit upon banks 
 of Berlin-wool. She was like an odd volume, 
 " sensibly " bound, of some old magazine. Jean 
 knew that the great social event of her younger 
 years had been her going to a fancy-ball in the 
 character of an Andalusian, an incident of which 
 she still carried a memento in the shape of a 
 hideous fan. Jean was so constituted that she also 
 knew, more dimly but at the end of five minutes, 
 that the elegance at Mr. Bream's was slightly 
 provincial. It made none the less a medium in 
 which Mrs. Beever looked superlatively local. That 
 indeed in turn caused Jean to think the old place 
 still more of a " love." 
 
 " 1 believe our poor friend feels rather down," Miss 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 21 
 
 Armiger finally brought out. " But I don't imagine it's 
 of the least consequence," she immediately added. 
 
 The contrary of this was, however, in some 
 degree foreshadowed in a speech directed to Jean 
 by the footman who had admitted her. He re- 
 ported Mr. Bream as having been in his wife's room 
 for nearly an hour, and Dr. Ramage as having 
 arrived some time before and not yet come out. 
 Mrs. Beever decreed, upon this news, that they 
 must drop their idea of lunching and that Jean must 
 go straight back to the friends who had been left 
 at the other house. It was these friends who, on 
 the way from church, had mentioned their having 
 got wind of the rumour the quick circulation of 
 which testified to the compactness of Wilverley 
 that there had been a sudden change in Mrs. 
 Bream since the hour at which her husband's note 
 was written. Mrs. Beever dismissed her companion 
 to Eastmead with a message for her visitors. Jean 
 was to entertain them there in her stead and to 
 understand that she might return to luncheon only 
 in case of L being sent for. At the door the girl 
 paused and exclaimed rather wistfully to Rose 
 Armiger : " Well, then, give her my love ! " 
 
Ill 
 
 "YOUR young friend," Rose commented, "is as 
 affectionate as she's pretty: sending her love to 
 people she has never seen ! " 
 
 " She only meant the little girl. I think it's rather 
 nice of her," said Mrs. Beever. " My interest in 
 these anxieties is always confined to the mamma. 
 I thought we were going so straight." 
 
 " I dare say we are," Miss Armiger replied. 
 "But Nurse told me an hour ago that I'm not to see 
 her at all this morning. It will be the first morning 
 for several days." 
 
 Mrs. Beever was silent a little. " You've enjoyed 
 a privilege altogether denied to me." 
 
 "Ah, you must remember," said Rose, "that I'm 
 Julia's oldest friend. That's always the way she 
 treats me." 
 
 Mrs. Beever assented. " Familiarly, of course. 
 Well, you're not mine ; but that's the way I treat 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 23 
 
 you too," she went on. " You must wait with me 
 here for more news, and be as still as a mouse." 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Beever," the girl protested, " I never 
 made a noise in all my life ! " 
 
 "You will some day you're so clever," Mrs. 
 Beever said. 
 
 "I'm clever enough to be quiet." Then Rose 
 added, less gaily : " I'm the one thing of her own 
 that dear Julia has ever had." 
 
 Mrs. Beever raised her eyebrows. "Don't you 
 count her husband ? " 
 
 " I count Tony immensely ; but in another way." 
 
 Again Mrs. Beever considered : she might have 
 been wondering in what way even so expert a young 
 person as this could count Anthony Bream except 
 as a treasure to his wife. But what she presently 
 articulated was: "Do you call him 'Tony' to 
 himself?" 
 
 Miss Armiger met her question this time promptly. 
 " He has asked me to and to do it even to Julia. 
 Don't be afraid ! " she exclaimed ; " I know my place 
 and I shan't go too far. Of course he's everything 
 to her now," she continued, " and the child is already 
 almost as much ; but what I mean is that if he counts 
 
24 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 for a great deal more, I, at least, go back a good deal 
 further. Though I'm three years older we were 
 brought together as girls by one of the strongest of 
 all ties the tie of a common aversion." 
 
 " Oh, I know your common aversion ! " Mrs. 
 Beever spoke with her air of general competence. 
 
 " Perhaps then you know that her detestable 
 stepmother was, very little to my credit, my aunt. 
 If her father, that is, was Mrs. Grantham's second 
 husband, my uncle, my mother's brother, had been 
 the first. Julia lost her mother; I lost both my 
 mother and my father. Then Mrs. Grantham took 
 me : she had shortly before made her second marriage. 
 She put me at the horrid school at Weymouth at 
 which she had already put her step-daughter." 
 
 "You. ought to be obliged to her," Mrs. Beever 
 suggested, " for having made you acquainted." 
 
 " We are we've never ceased to be. It was as 
 if she had made us sisters, with the delightful 
 position for me of the elder, the protecting one. 
 But it's the only good turn she has ever done us." 
 
 Mrs. Beever weighed this statement with her 
 alternative, her business manner. " Is she really 
 then such a monster ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 25 
 
 Rose Armiger had a melancholy headshake. 
 " Don't ask me about her I dislike her too much, 
 perhaps, to be strictly fair. For me, however, I 
 daresay, it didn't matter so much that she was 
 narrow and hard: I wasn't an easy victim I 
 could take care of myself, I could fight. But Julia 
 bowed her head and suffered. Never was a mar- 
 riage more of a rescue." 
 
 Mrs. Beever took this in with unsuspended 
 criticism. "And yet Mrs. Grantham travelled all 
 the way down from town the other day simply to 
 make her a visit of a couple of hours." 
 
 "That wasn't a kindness," the girl returned; 
 "it was an injury, and I believe certainly Julia 
 believes that it was a calculated one. Mrs. 
 Grantham knew perfectly the effect she would 
 have, and she triumphantly had it. She came, she 
 said, at the particular crisis, to 'make peace.' 
 Why couldn't she let the poor dear alone ? She 
 only stirred up the wretched past and reopened old 
 wounds." 
 
 For answer to this Mrs. Beever remarked with 
 some irrelevancy : "She abused you a good deal, 
 I think." 
 
26 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Her companion smiled frankly. " Shockingly, 
 I believe ; but that's of no importance to me. She 
 doesn't touch me or reach me now." 
 
 " Your description of her," said Mrs. Beever, " is 
 a description of a monstrous bad woman. And yet 
 she appears to have got two honourable men to give 
 her the last proof of confidence." 
 
 " My poor uncle utterly withdrew his confidence 
 when he saw her as she was. She killed him he 
 died of his horror of her. As for Julia's father, he's 
 honourable if you like, but he's a muff. He's afraid 
 of his wife." 
 
 " And her ' taking ' you, as you say, who were no 
 real relation to her her looking after you and put- 
 ting you at school : wasn't that," Mrs. Beever pro- 
 pounded, " a kindness ? " 
 
 " She took me to torment me or at least to make 
 me feel her hand. She has an absolute necessity 
 to do that it was what brought her down here the 
 other day." 
 
 "You make out a wonderful case," said Mrs. 
 Beever, " and if ever I'm put on my trial for a crime 
 say for muddling the affairs of the Bank I hope 
 I shall be defended by some one with your gift and 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 27 
 
 your manner. I don't wonder," she blandly pursued, 
 "that your friends, even the blameless ones, like 
 this dear pair, cling to you as they do." 
 
 " If you mean you don't wonder I stay on here 
 so long," said Rose good-humouredly, " I'm greatly 
 obliged to you for your sympathy. Julia's the one 
 thing I have of my own." 
 
 " You make light of our husbands and lovers ! " 
 laughed Mrs. Beever. " Haven't I had the pleasure 
 of hearing of a gentleman to whom you're soon to 
 be married ? " 
 
 Rose Armiger opened her eyes there was perhaps 
 a slight affectation in it. She looked, at any rate, 
 as if she had to make a certain effort to meet the 
 allusion. " Dennis Vidal ? " she then asked. 
 
 " Lord, are there more than one ? " Mrs. Beever 
 cried ; after which, as the girl, who had coloured a 
 little, hesitated in a way that almost suggested 
 alternatives, she added : " Isn't it a definite engage- 
 ment?" 
 
 Rose Armiger looked round at the clock. " Mr. 
 Vidal will be here this morning. Ask him how he 
 considers it." 
 
 One of the doors of the hall at this moment 
 
28 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 opened, and Mrs. Beever exclaimed with some 
 eagerness : " Here he is, perhaps ! " Her eagerness 
 was characteristic ; it was part of a comprehensive 
 vision in which the pieces had already fallen into 
 sharp adjustment to each other. The young lady 
 she had been talking with had in these few minutes, 
 for some reason, struck her more forcibly than ever 
 before as a possible object of interest to a youth of 
 a candour greater even than any it was incumbent 
 on a respectable mother to cultivate. Miss Armiger 
 had just given her a glimpse of the way she could 
 handle honest gentlemen as "muffs." She was 
 decidedly too unusual to be left out of account. If 
 there was the least danger of Paul's falling in love 
 with her it ought somehow to be arranged that her 
 marriage should encounter no difficulty. 
 
 The person now appearing, however, proved to be 
 only Doctor Ramage, who, having a substantial wife 
 of his own, was peculiarly unfitted to promise relief 
 to Mrs. Beever's anxiety. He was a little man who 
 moved, with a warning air, on tiptoe, as if he were 
 playing some drawing-room game of surprises, and 
 who had a face so candid and circular that it sug- 
 gested a large white pill. Mrs. Beever had once 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 29 
 
 said with regard to sending for him : " It isn't to 
 take his medicine, it's to take him. I take him twice 
 a week in a cup of tea." It was his tone that did 
 her good. He had in his hand a sheet of note-paper, 
 one side of which was covered with writing and with 
 which he immediately addressed himself to Miss 
 Armiger. It was a prescription to be made up, and 
 he begged her to see that it was carried on the spot 
 to the chemist's, mentioning that on leaving Mrs. 
 Bream's room he had gone straight to the library to 
 think it out. Rose, who appeared to recognise at a 
 glance its nature, replied that as she was fidgety 
 and wanted a walk she would perform the errand 
 herself. Her bonnet and jacket were there; she 
 had put them on to go to church, and then, on 
 second thoughts, seeing Mr. Bream give it up, had 
 taken them off. 
 
 "Excellent for you to go yourself," said the 
 Doctor. He had an instruction to add, to which, 
 lucid and prompt, already equipped, she gave full 
 attention. As she took the paper from him he 
 subjoined: "You're a very nice, sharp, obliging 
 person." 
 
 " She knows what she's about ! " said Mrs. Beever 
 
30 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 with much expression. " But what in the world is 
 Julia about ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you when / know, my dear lady." 
 
 " Is there really anything wrong ? " 
 
 " I'm waiting to find out." 
 
 Miss Armiger, before leaving them, was waiting 
 too. She had been checked on the way to the door 
 by Mrs. Beever's question, and she stood there with 
 her intensely clear eyes on Doctor Ramage's face. 
 
 Mrs. Beever continued to study it as earnestly. 
 " Then you're not going yet ? " 
 
 " By no means, though I've another pressing call. 
 I must have that thing from you first," he said to 
 Rose. 
 
 She went to the door, but there again she paused. 
 " Is Mr. Bream still with her ? " 
 
 " Very much with her that's why I'm here. She 
 made a particular request to be left for five minutes 
 alone with him." 
 
 " So Nurse isn't there either ? " Rose asked. 
 
 " Nurse has embraced the occasion to pop down 
 for her lunch. Mrs. Bream has taken it into her 
 head that she has something very important to 
 say." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 31 
 
 Mrs. Beever firmly seated herself. "And pray 
 what may that be ? " 
 
 " She turned me out of the room precisely so that 
 I shouldn't learn." 
 
 " I think / know what it is," their companion, at 
 the door, put in. 
 
 " Then what is it ? " Mrs. Beever demanded. 
 
 " Oh, I wouldn't tell you for the world ! " And 
 with this Rose Armiger departed. 
 
IV 
 
 LEFT alone with the lady of Eastmead, Doctor 
 Ramage studied his watch a little absently. " Our 
 young friend's exceedingly nervous." 
 
 Mrs. Beever glanced in the direction in which 
 Rose had disappeared. " Do you allude to that 
 girl ? " 
 
 " I allude to dear Mrs. Tony." 
 
 " It's equally true of Miss Armiger ; she's as 
 worried as a pea on a pan. Julia, as far as that 
 goes," Mrs. Beever continued, "can never have 
 been a person to hold herself together." 
 
 "Precisely she requires to be held. Well, 
 happily she has Tony to hold her." 
 
 " Then he's not himself in one of his states ? " 
 
 Doctor Ramage hesitated. " I don't quite make 
 him out. He seems to have fifty things at once 
 in his head." 
 
 Mrs. Beever looked at the Doctor hard. " When 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 33 
 
 does he ever not have ? But I had a note from him 
 only this morning in the highest spirits." 
 
 Doctor Ramage's little eyes told nothing but what 
 he wanted. " Well, whatever happens to him, he'll 
 always have them ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beever at this jumped up. " Robert 
 Ramage," she earnestly demanded, " what is to 
 happen to that boy ? " 
 
 Before he had time to reply there rang out a 
 sudden sound which had, oddly, much of the effect 
 of an answer and which caused them both to start. 
 It was the near vibration, from Mrs. Bream's room, 
 of one of the smart, loud electric bells which were 
 for Mrs. Beever the very accent of the newness of 
 Bounds. They waited an instant ; then the Doctor 
 said quietly : " It's for Nurse ! " 
 
 " It's not for you ? " The bell sounded again as 
 she spoke. 
 
 "It's for Nurse," Doctor Ramage repeated, 
 moving nevertheless to the door he had come in 
 by. He paused again to listen, and the door, the 
 next moment thrown open, gave passage to a tall, 
 good-looking young man, dressed as if, with much 
 freshness, for church, and wearing a large orchid 
 
 VOL. i c 
 
34 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 in his buttonhole. " You rang for Nurse ? " the 
 Doctor immediately said. 
 
 The young man stood looking from one of his 
 friends to the other. ''She's there it's all right. 
 
 But ah, my dear people ! " And he passed his 
 
 hand, with the vivid gesture of brushing away an 
 image, over a face of which the essential radiance 
 was visible even through perturbation. 
 
 " How's Julia now ? " Mrs. Beever asked. 
 
 11 Much relieved, she tells me, at having spoken." 
 
 41 Spoken of what, Tony ? " 
 
 " Of everything she can think of that's incon- 
 ceivable that's damnable." 
 
 " If I hadn't known that she wanted to do exactly 
 that," said the Doctor, " I wouldn't have given her 
 the opportunity." 
 
 Mrs. Beever's eyes sounded her colleague of the 
 Bank. " You're upset, my poor boy you're in one 
 of your greatest states. Something painful to you 
 has taken place." 
 
 Tony Bream paid no attention to this remark ; all 
 his attention was for his other visitor, who stood 
 with one hand on the door of the hall and an 
 open watch, on which he still placidly gazed, in 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 35 
 
 the other. "Ramage," the young man suddenly 
 broke out, " are you keeping something back ? 
 Isn't she safe ? " 
 
 The good Doctor's small, neat face seemed to 
 grow more genially globular. "The dear lady is 
 convinced, you mean, that her very last hour is at 
 hand?" 
 
 " So much so," Tony replied, " that if she got 
 you and Nurse away, if she made me kneel down 
 by her bed and take her two hands in mine, what 
 do you suppose it was to say to me ? " 
 
 Doctor Ramage beamed. " Why, of course, that 
 she's going to perish in her flower. I've been 
 through it so often ! " he said to Mrs. Beever. 
 
 " Before, but not after," that lady lucidly rejoined. 
 " She has had her chance of perishing, but now it's 
 too late." 
 
 " Doctor," said Tony Bream, " is my wife going 
 to die ? " 
 
 His friend hesitated a moment. " When a lady's 
 only symptom of that tendency is the charming 
 volubility with which she dilates upon it, that's 
 very well as far as it goes. But it's not quite 
 enough." 
 
36 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " She says she knows it," Tony returned. " But 
 you surely know more than she, don't you ? " 
 
 " I know everything that can be known. I know 
 that when, in certain conditions, pretty young 
 mothers have acquitted themselves of that inevi- 
 table declaration, they turn over and go comfortably 
 to sleep." 
 
 " That's exactly," said Tony, " what Nurse must 
 make her do." 
 
 " It's exactly what she's doing." Doctor Ramage 
 had no sooner spoken than Mrs. Bream's bell 
 sounded for the third time. u Excuse me ! " he im- 
 perturbably added. " Nurse calls me." 
 
 "And doesn't she call me?" cried Tony. 
 
 " Not in the least." The Doctor raised his hand 
 with instant authority. " Stay where you are ! " 
 With this he went off to his patient. 
 
 If Mrs. Beever often produced, with promptitude, 
 her theory that the young banker was subject to 
 " states," this habit, of which he was admirably 
 tolerant, was erected on the sense of something in 
 him of which even a passing observer might have 
 caught a glimpse. A woman of still more wit than 
 Mrs. Beever, whom he had met on the threshold of 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 37 
 
 life, once explained some accident to him by the 
 words : " The reason is, you know, that you're so 
 exaggerated." This had not been a manner of 
 saying that he was inclined to overshoot the truth ; 
 it had been an attempt to express a certain quality 
 of passive excess which was the note of the whole 
 man and which, for an attentive eye, began with 
 his neckties and ended with his intonations. To 
 look at him was immediately to see that he was a 
 collection of gifts, which presented themselves as 
 such precisely by having in each case slightly over- 
 flowed the measure. He could do things this was 
 all he knew about them ; and he was ready-made, 
 as it were he had not had to put himself together. 
 His dress was just too fine, his colour just too high, 
 his moustache just too long, his voice just too loud, 
 his smile just too gay. His movement, his manner, 
 his tone were respectively just too free, too easy and 
 too familiar; his being a very handsome, happy, 
 clever, active, ambitiously local young man was in 
 short just too obvious. But the result of it all was 
 a presence that was in itself a close contact, the air 
 of immediate, unconscious, unstinted life, and of his 
 doing what he liked and liking to please. One of 
 
38 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 his " states," for Mrs. Beever, was the state of his 
 being a boy again, and the sign of it was his talking 
 nonsense. It was not an example of that tendency, 
 but she noted almost as if it were that almost 
 as soon as the Doctor had left them he asked 
 if she had not brought over to him that awfully 
 pretty girl. 
 
 " She has been here, but I sent her home again." 
 Then his visitor added : " Does she strike you as 
 awfully pretty ? " 
 
 "As pretty as a pretty song! I took a tre- 
 mendous notion to her." 
 
 " She's only a child for mercy's sake don't show 
 your notion too much ! " Mrs. Beever ejaculated. 
 
 Tony Bream gave his bright stare ; after which, 
 with his still brighter alacrity, "I see what you 
 mean : of course I won't ! " he declared. Then, as 
 if candidly and conscientiously wondering: "Is it 
 showing it too much to hope she'll come back to 
 luncheon ? " 
 
 " Decidedly if Julia's so down." 
 
 "That's only too much for Julia not for her" 
 Tony said with his flurried smile. "But Julia 
 knows about her, hopes she's coming and wants 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 39 
 
 everything to be natural and pleasant." He passed 
 his hand over his eyes again, and as if at the 
 same time recognising that his tone required 
 explanation, "It's just because Julia's so down, 
 don't you see?" he subjoined. "A fellow can't 
 stand it." 
 
 Mrs. Beever spoke after a pause during which 
 her companion roamed rather jerkily about. " It's a 
 mere accidental fluctuation. You may trust Ramage 
 to know." 
 
 "Yes, thank God, I may trust Ramage to 
 know ! " He had the accent of a man constitu- 
 tionally accessible to suggestion, and could turn 
 the next instant to a quarter more cheering. " Do 
 you happen to have an idea of what has become of 
 Rose?" 
 
 Again Mrs. Beever, making a fresh observation, 
 waited a little before answering. "Do you now 
 call her ' Rose ' ? " 
 
 " Dear, yes talking with Julia. And with her" 
 he went on as if he couldn't quite remember 
 "do I too? Yes," he recollected, "I think I 
 must." 
 
 "What one must one must," said Mrs. Beever 
 
40 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 dryly. " ' Rose/ then, has gone over to the 
 chemist's for the Doctor." 
 
 "How iolly of her!" Tony exclaimed. "She's 
 a tremendous comfort." 
 
 Mrs. Beever committed herself to no opinion on 
 this point, but it was doubtless on account of the 
 continuity of the question that she presently asked : 
 " Who's this person who's coming to-day to marry 
 her?" 
 
 " A very good fellow, I believe and ' rising ' : 
 a clerk in some Eastern house." 
 
 " And why hasn't he come sooner ? " 
 
 " Because he has been at Hong Kong, or some 
 such place, trying hard to pick up an income. 
 " He's ' poor but pushing,' she says. They've no 
 means but her own two hundred." 
 
 "Two hundred a year? That's quite enough for 
 them ! " Mrs. Beever opined. 
 
 " Then you had better tell him so ! " laughed 
 Tony. 
 
 " I hope you'll back me up ! " she returned ; after 
 which, before he had time to speak, she broke out 
 with irrelevance : " How is it she knows what Julia 
 wanted to say to you ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 41 
 
 Tony, surprised, looked vague. " Just now ? 
 Does she know ? I haven't the least idea." Rose 
 appeared at this moment behind the glass doors of 
 the vestibule, and he added : " Here she is." 
 " Then you can ask her." 
 
 " Easily," said Tony. But when the girl came 
 in he greeted her only with a lively word of thanks 
 for the service she had just rendered; so that the 
 lady of Eastmead, after waiting a minute, took the 
 line of assuming with a certain visible rigour that 
 he might have a reason for making his inquiry 
 without an auditor. Taking temporary leave of 
 him, she mentioned the visitors at home whom she 
 must not forget. " Then you won't come back ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Yes, in an hour or two." 
 "And bring Miss What's-her-name ? " 
 As Mrs. Beever failed to respond to this, Rose 
 Armiger added her voice. "Yes do bring Miss 
 What's-her-name." Mrs. Beever, without assent- 
 ing, reached the door, which Tony had opened for 
 her. Here she paused long enough to be over- 
 taken by the rest of their companion's appeal. " I 
 delight so in her clothes." 
 
42 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " I delight so in her hair ! " Tony laughed. 
 
 Mrs. Beever looked from one of them to the 
 other. 
 
 "Don't you think you've delight enough with 
 what your situation here already offers?" She 
 departed with the private determination to return 
 unaccompanied. 
 
THREE minutes later Tony Bream put his question 
 to his other visitor. " Is it true that you know 
 what Julia a while ago had the room cleared in 
 order to say to me ? " 
 
 Rose hesitated. "Mrs. Beever repeated to you 
 that I told her so? Yes, then; I probably do 
 know." She waited again a little. "The poor 
 darling announced to you her conviction that she's 
 dying." Then at the face with which he greeted 
 her exactitude : " I haven't needed to be a monster 
 of cunning to guess ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 He had perceptibly paled: it made a difference, 
 a kind of importance for that absurdity that it 
 was already in other ears. "She has said the 
 same to you ? " 
 
 Rose gave a pitying smile. " She has done me 
 that honour." 
 
 " Do you mean to-day ? " 
 
44 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 "To-day and once before." 
 
 Tony looked simple in his wonder. " Yester- 
 day ? " 
 
 Rose hesitated again. " No ; before your child 
 was born. Soon after I came." 
 
 "She had made up her mind then from the 
 first?" 
 
 "Yes," said Rose, with the serenity of superior 
 sense; "she had laid out for herself that pleasant 
 little prospect. She called it a presentiment, a 
 fixed idea." 
 
 Tony took this in with a frown. "And you 
 never spoke of it ? " 
 
 " To you ? Why in the world should I when 
 she herself didn't ? I took it perfectly for what 
 it was an inevitable but unimportant result of 
 the nervous depression produced by her step- 
 mother's visit." 
 
 Tony had fidgeted away with his hands in the 
 pockets of his trousers. "Damn her stepmother's 
 visit ! " 
 
 " That's exactly what I did ! " Rose laughed. 
 
 "Damn her stepmother too!" the young man 
 angrily pursued. 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 45 
 
 " Hush ! " said the girl soothingly : " we mustn't 
 curse our relations before the Doctor ! " Doctor 
 Ramage had come back from his patient, and she 
 mentioned to him that the medicine for which she 
 had gone out would immediately be delivered. 
 
 "Many thanks," he replied: "Til pick it up 
 myself. I must run out to another case." Then 
 with a friendly hand to Tony and a nod at the 
 room he had quitted : "Things are quiet." 
 
 Tony, gratefully grasping his hand, detained him 
 by it. " And what was that loud ring that called 
 you ? " 
 
 "A stupid flurry of Nurse. I was ashamed of 
 her." 
 
 " Then why did you stay so long ? " 
 
 " To have it out with your wife. She wants you 
 again." 
 
 Tony eagerly dropped his hand. "Then I 
 go!" 
 
 The Doctor raised his liberated member. "In 
 a quarter of an hour not before. I'm most 
 reluctant, but I allow her five minutes." 
 
 " It may make her easier afterwards," Rose 
 observed. 
 
46 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 "That's precisely the ground of my giving in. 
 Take care, you know; Nurse will time you," 
 the Doctor said to Tony. 
 
 " So many thanks. And you'll come back ? " 
 
 "The moment I'm free." 
 
 When he had gone Tony stood there sombre. 
 " She wants to say it again that's what she 
 wants." 
 
 " Well," Rose answered, " the more she says it 
 the less it's true. It's not she who decides it." ] 
 
 "No," Tony brooded; "it's not she. But it's 
 not you and I either," he soon went on. 
 
 " It's not even the Doctor," Rose remarked with 
 her conscious irony. 
 
 Her companion rested his troubled eyes on her. 
 "And yet he's as worried as if it were." She 
 protested against this imputation with a word to 
 which he paid no heed. "If anything should 
 happen " and his eyes seemed to go as far as 
 his thought " what on earth do you suppose would 
 become of me ? " 
 
 The girl looked down, very grave. "Men have 
 borne such things." 
 
 "Very badly the real ones." He seemed to 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 47 
 
 lose himself in the effort to embrace the worst, 
 to think it out. " What should I do ? where 
 should I turn ? " 
 
 She was silent a little. "You ask me too 
 much"! " she helplessly sighed. 
 
 "Don't say that/' replied Tony, "at a moment 
 when I know so little if I mayn't have to ask 
 you still more ! " This exclamation made her 
 meet his eyes with a turn of her own that might 
 have struck him had he not been following another 
 train. "To you I can say it, Rose she's inex- 
 pressibly dear to me." 
 
 She showed him a face intensely receptive. " It's 
 for your affection for her that I've really given you 
 mine." Then she shook her head seemed to 
 shake out, like the overflow of a cup, her generous 
 gaiety. " But be easy. We shan't have loved her 
 so much only to lose her." 
 
 "I'll be hanged if we shall!" Tony responded. 
 "And such talk's a vile false note in the midst 
 of a joy like yours." 
 
 " Like mine ? " Rose exhibited some vague- 
 ness. 
 
 Her companion was already accessible to the 
 
48 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 amusement of it. "I hope that's not the way 
 you mean to look at Mr. Vidal ! " 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Vidal ! " she ambiguously murmured. 
 
 " Shan't you then be glad to see him ? " 
 
 "Intensely glad. But how shall I say it?" 
 She thought a moment and then went on as if 
 she found the answer to her question in Tony's 
 exceptional intelligence and their comfortable in- 
 timacy. "There's gladness and gladness. It isn't 
 love's young dream ; it's rather an old and rather 
 a sad story. We've worried and waited we've 
 been acquainted with grief. We've come together 
 a weary way." 
 
 " I know you've had a horrid grind. But isn't 
 this the end of it ? " 
 
 Rose hesitated. "That's just what he's to 
 settle." 
 
 " Happily, I see ! Just look at him." 
 
 The glass doors, as Tony spoke, had been 
 thrown open by the butler. The young man 
 from China was there a short, meagre young 
 man, with a smooth face and a dark blue double- 
 breasted jacket. "Mr. Vidal!" the butler an- 
 nounced, withdrawing again, while the visitor, 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 49 
 
 whose entrance had been rapid, suddenly and 
 shyly faltered at the sight of his host. His pause, 
 however, lasted but just long enough to enable 
 Rose to bridge it over with the frankest maidenly 
 grace ; and Tony's quick sense of being out of 
 place at this reunion was not a bar to the im- 
 pression of her charming, instant action, her soft 
 " Dennis, Dennis ! " her light, fluttered arms, her 
 tenderly bent head and the short, bright stillness 
 of her clasp of her lover. Tony shone down at 
 them with the pleasure of having helped them, 
 and the warmth of it was in his immediate grasp 
 of the traveller's hand. He cut short his em- 
 barrassed thanks he was too delighted ; and leav- 
 ing him with the remark that he would presently 
 come back to show him his room, he went off again 
 to poor Julia. 
 
 VOL. I 
 
VI 
 
 DENNIS VIDAL, when the door had closed on his 
 host, drew again to his breast the girl to whom he 
 was plighted and pressed her there with silent joy. 
 She softly submitted, then still more softly dis- 
 engaged herself, though in his flushed firmness he 
 but partly released her. The light of admiration 
 was in his hard young face a visible tribute to 
 what she showed again his disaccustomed eyes. 
 Holding her yet, he covered her with a smile that 
 produced two strong but relenting lines on either 
 side of his dry, thin lips. " My own dearest," he 
 murmured, " you're still more so than one remem- 
 bered!" 
 
 She opened her clear eyes wider. "Still more 
 what?" 
 
 " Still more of a fright ! " And he kissed her again. 
 
 " It's you that are wonderful, Dennis," she said ; 
 " you look so absurdly young." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 He felt with his lean, fine brown hand his spare, 
 clean brown chin. " If I looked as old as I feel, 
 dear girl, they'd have my portrait in the illustrated 
 papers." 
 
 He had now drawn her down upon the nearest 
 sofa, and while he sat sideways, grasping the wrist 
 of which he remained in possession after she had 
 liberated her fingers, she leaned back and took him 
 in with a deep air of her own. " And yet it's not 
 that you're exactly childish or so extraordinarily 
 fresh," she went on as if to puzzle out, for her 
 satisfaction, her impression of him. 
 
 " ' Fresh,' my dear girl ! " He gave a little happy 
 jeer; then he raised her wrist to his mouth and 
 held it there as long as she would let him, looking 
 at her hard. " Thafs the freshest thing I've ever 
 been conscious of ! " he exclaimed as she drew away 
 her hand and folded her arms. 
 
 "You're worn, but you're not wasted," she 
 brought out in her kind but considering way. 
 " You're awfully well, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I'm awfully well, I know " he spoke with 
 just the faintest ring of impatience. Then he 
 added : " Your voice, all the while, has been in my 
 
52 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 ears. But there's something you put into it that 
 they out there, stupid things ! couldn't. Don't 
 ' size me up ' so/' he continued smiling ; " you 
 make me nervous about what I may seem to come 
 to!" 
 
 They had both shown shyness, but Rose's was 
 already gone. She kept her inclined position and 
 her folded arms ; supported by the back of the sofa, 
 her head preserved, toward the side on which he 
 sat, its charming contemplative turn. " I'm only 
 thinking," she said, "that you look young just as a 
 steel instrument of the best quality, no matter how 
 much it's handled, often looks new." 
 
 " Ah, if you mean I'm kept bright by use ! " 
 
 the young man laughed. 
 
 "You're polished by life." 
 
 11 ' Polished ' is delightful of you ! " 
 
 " I'm not sure you've come back handsomer than 
 you went," said Rose, " and I don't know if you've 
 come back richer." 
 
 "Then let me immediately tell you I have!" 
 Dennis broke in. 
 
 She received the announcement, for a minute, in 
 silence : a good deal more passed between this pair 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE S3 
 
 than they uttered. " What I was going to say," 
 she then quietly resumed, "is that I'm awfully 
 pleased with myself when I see that at any rate 
 you're what shall I call you ? a made man." 
 
 Dennis frowned a little through his happiness. 
 "With ' yourself? Aren't you a little pleased 
 with' me?" 
 
 She hesitated. "With myself first, because I 
 was sure of you first." 
 
 " Do you mean before I was of you ? I'm 
 somehow not sure of you yet ! " the young man 
 declared. 
 
 Rose coloured slightly ; but she gaily laughed. 
 " Then I'm ahead of you in everything ! " 
 
 Leaning toward her with all his intensified need 
 of her and holding by his extended arm the top 
 of the sofa-back, he worried with his other hand 
 a piece of her dress, which he had begun to finger 
 for want of something more responsive. "You're 
 as far beyond me still as all the distance I've come." 
 He had dropped his eyes upon the crumple he 
 made in her frock, and her own during that 
 moment, from her superior height, descended upon 
 him with a kind of unseen appeal. When he 
 
54 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 looked up again it was gone. "What do you mean 
 by a ' made ' man ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, not the usual thing, but the real thing. A 
 man one needn't worry about." 
 
 " Thank you ! The man not worried about is the 
 man who muffs it." 
 
 " That's a horrid, selfish speech," said Rose 
 Armiger. "You don't deserve I should tell you 
 what a success I now feel that you'll be." 
 
 " Well, darling," Dennis answered, " that matters 
 the less as I know exactly the occasion on which 
 I shall fully feel it for myself." 
 
 Rose manifested no further sense of this occasion 
 than to go straight on with her idea. She placed 
 her arm with frank friendship on his shoulder.. It 
 drew him closer, and he recovered his grasp of her 
 free hand. With his want of stature and presence, 
 his upward look at her, his small, smooth head, his 
 seasoned sallowness and simple eyes, he might at 
 this instant have struck a spectator as a figure 
 actually younger and slighter than the ample, 
 accomplished girl whose gesture protected and even 
 a little patronised him. But in her vision of him 
 she none the less clearly found full warrant for 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 55 
 
 saying, instead of something he expected, something 
 she wished and had her reasons for wishing, even if 
 they represented but the gain of a minute's time. 
 " You're not splendid, my dear old Dennis you're 
 not dazzling, nor dangerous, nor even exactly dis- 
 tinguished. But you've a quiet little something that 
 the tiresome time has made perfect, and that just 
 here where you've come to me at last makes me 
 immensely proud of you ! " 
 
 She had with this so far again surrendered her- 
 self that he could show her in the ways he pre- 
 ferred how such a declaration touched him. The 
 place in which he had come to her at last was of 
 a nature to cause him to look about at it, just as to 
 begin to inquire was to learn from her that he had 
 dropped upon a crisis. He had seen Mrs. Bream, 
 under Rose's wing, in her maiden days ; but in his 
 eagerness to jump at a meeting with the only 
 woman really important to him he had perhaps 
 intruded more than he supposed. Though he ex- 
 pressed again the liveliest sense of the kindness of 
 these good people, he was unable to conceal his 
 disappointment at finding their inmate agitated also 
 by something quite distinct from the joy of his 
 
56 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 arrival. "Do you really think the poor lady will 
 spoil our fun ? " he rather resentfully put it to her. 
 
 " It will depend on what our fun may demand of 
 her/' said Rose. " If you ask me if she's in danger, 
 I think not quite that : in such a case I must cer- 
 tainly have put you off. I dare say to-day will 
 show the contrary. But she's so much to me you 
 know how much that I'm uneasy, quickly upset; 
 and if I seem to you flustered and not myself and 
 not with you, I beg you to attribute it simply to the 
 situation in the house." 
 
 About this situation they had each more to say, 
 and about many matters besides, for they faced 
 each other over the deep waters of the accumulated 
 and the undiscussed. They could keep no order 
 and for five minutes more they rather helplessly 
 played with the flood. Dennis was rueful at first, 
 for what he seemed to have lighted upon was but 
 half his opportunity; then he had an inspiration 
 which made him say to his companion that they 
 should both, after all, be able to make terms with 
 any awkwardness by simply meeting it with a con- 
 sciousness that their happiness had already taken 
 form. 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 57 
 
 " Our happiness ? " Rose was all interest. 
 
 " Why, the end of our delays." 
 
 She smiled with every allowance. "Do you 
 mean we're to go out and be married this minute ? " 
 
 "Well almost; as soon as I've read you a 
 letter." He produced, with the words, his pocket- 
 book. 
 
 She watched him an instant turn over its con- 
 tents. "What letter?" 
 
 " The best one I ever got. What have I done 
 with it ? " On his feet before her, he continued his 
 search. 
 
 " From your people ? " 
 
 " From my people. It met me in town, and it 
 makes everything possible." 
 
 She waited while he fumbled in his pockets; 
 with her hands clasped in her lap she sat looking 
 up at him. "Then it's certainly a thing for me 
 to hear." 
 
 "But what the dickens have I done with it?" 
 Staring at her, embarrassed, he clapped his hands, 
 on coat and waistcoat, to other receptacles ; at the 
 end of a moment of which he had become aware of 
 the proximity of the noiseless butler, upright in the 
 
58 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 high detachment of the superior servant who has 
 embraced the conception of unpacking. 
 
 " Might I ask you for your keys, sir ? " 
 
 Dennis Vidal had a light he smote his forehead. 
 " Stupid it's in my portmanteau ! " 
 
 " Then go and get it ! " said Rose, who perceived 
 as she spoke, by the door that faced her, that Tony 
 Bream was rejoining them. She got up, and Tony, 
 agitated, as she could see, but with complete com- 
 mand of his manners, immediately and sociably said 
 to Dennis that he was ready to guide him upstairs. 
 Rose, at this, interposed. " Do let Walker take him 
 I want to speak to you." 
 
 Tony smiled at the young man. "Will you 
 excuse me then?" Dennis protested against the 
 trouble he was giving, and Walker led him away. 
 Rose meanwhile waited not only till they were out 
 of sight and of earshot, but till the return of Tony, 
 who, his hand on Vidal's shoulder, had gone with 
 them as far as the door. 
 
 " Has he brought you good news ? " said the 
 master of Bounds. 
 
 " Very good. He's very well ; he's all right." 
 
 Tony's flushed face gave to the laugh with which 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 59 
 
 he greeted this almost the effect of that of a man 
 who had been drinking. " Do you mean he's quite 
 faithful ? " 
 
 Rose always met a bold joke. " As faithful as I ! 
 But your news is the thing." 
 
 " Mine? " He closed his eyes a moment, but stood 
 there scratching his head as if to carry off with a 
 touch of comedy his betrayal of emotion. 
 
 " Has Julia repeated her declaration ? " 
 
 Tony looked at her in silence. " She has done 
 something more extraordinary than that," he replied 
 at last. 
 
 " What has she done ? " 
 
 Tony glanced round him, then dropped into a 
 chair. He covered his face with his hands. " I 
 must get over it a little before I tell you ! " 
 
VII 
 
 SHE waited compassionately for his nervousness to 
 pass, dropping again, during the pause, upon the sofa 
 she had just occupied with her visitor. At last as, 
 while she watched him, his silence continued, she 
 put him a question. " Does she at any rate still 
 maintain that she shan't get well ? " 
 
 Tony removed his hands from his face. " With 
 the utmost assurance or rather with the utmost 
 serenity. But she treats that now as a mere 
 detail." 
 
 Rose wondered. "You mean she's really con- 
 vinced that she's sinking ? " 
 
 " So she says." 
 
 " But is she, good heavens ? Such a thing isn't 
 a matter of opinion : it's a fact or it's not a fact." 
 
 " It's not a fact," said Tony Bream. " How can 
 it be when one has only to see that her strength 
 hasn't failed ? She of course says it has, but she 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 61 
 
 has a remarkable deal of it to show. What's the 
 vehemence with which she expresses herself but a 
 sign of increasing life ? It's excitement, of course 
 partly ; but it's also striking energy." 
 
 " Excitement ? " Rose repeated. " I thought you 
 just said she was ' serene.' " 
 
 Tony hesitated, but he was perfectly clear. 
 " She's calm about what she calls leaving me, bless 
 her heart ; she seems to have accepted that prospect 
 with the strangest resignation. What she's uneasy, 
 what she's in fact still more strangely tormented and 
 exalted about, is another matter." 
 
 " I see the thing you just mentioned." 
 
 11 She takes an interest," Tony went on, " she asks 
 questions, she sends messages, she speaks out with 
 all her voice. She's delighted to know that Mr. 
 Vidal has at last come to you, and she told me to tell 
 you so from her, and to tell him so to tell you both, 
 in fact, how she rejoices that what you've so long 
 waited for is now so close at hand." 
 
 Rose took this in with lowered eyes. " How dear 
 of her ! " she murmured. 
 
 "She asked me particularly about Mr. Vidal," 
 Tony continued " how he looks, how he strikes me, 
 
62 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 how you met. She gave me indeed a private message 
 for him." 
 
 Rose faintly smiled. " A private one ? " 
 
 " Oh, only to spare your modesty : a word to the 
 effect that she answers for you." 
 
 " In what way ? " Rose asked. 
 
 " Why, as the charmingest, cleverest, handsomest, 
 in every way most wonderful wife that ever any man 
 will have had." 
 
 " She is wound up ! " Rose laughed. Then she 
 said : " And all the while what does Nurse think ? 
 I don't mean," she added with the same slight 
 irony, "of whether I shall do for Dennis." 
 
 "Of Julia's condition? She wants Ramage to 
 come back." 
 
 Rose thought a moment. " She's rather a goose, 
 I think she loses her head." 
 
 " So I've taken the liberty of telling her." Tony 
 sat forward, his eyes on the floor, his elbows on his 
 knees and his hands nervously rubbing each other. 
 Presently he rose with a jerk. "What do you 
 suppose she wants me to do ?" 
 
 Rose tried to suppose. " Nurse wants you ? " 
 
 " No that ridiculous girl." Nodding back at 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 63 
 
 his wife's room, he came and stood before the 
 sofa. 
 
 Half reclining again, Rose turned it over, raising 
 her eyes to him. " Do you really mean something 
 ridiculous ? " 
 
 " Under the circumstances grotesque." 
 
 "Well," Rose suggested, smiling, "she wants 
 you to allow her to name her successor." 
 
 " Just the contrary ! " Tony seated himself where 
 Dennis Vidal had sat. " She wants me to promise 
 her she shall have no successor." 
 
 His companion looked at him hard; with her 
 surprise at something in his tone she had just visibly 
 coloured. " I see." She was at a momentary loss. 
 " Do you call that grotesque ? " 
 
 Tony, for an instant, was evidently struck by 
 her surprise; then seeing the reason of it and 
 blushing too a little, " Not the idea, my dear Rose 
 God forbid ! " he exclaimed. " What I'm speaking 
 of is the mistake of giving that amount of colour 
 to her insistence meeting her as if one accepted 
 the situation as she represents it and were really 
 taking leave of her." 
 
 Rose appeared to understand and even to be 
 
64 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 impressed. "You think that will make her 
 worse ? " 
 
 "Why, arranging everything as if she's going to 
 die ! " Tony sprang up afresh ; his trouble was 
 obvious and he fell into the restless pacing that 
 had been his resource all the morning. 
 
 His interlocutress watched his agitation. 
 " Mayn't it be that if you do just that she'll, on 
 the contrary, immediately find herself better ? " 
 
 Tony wandered, again scratching his head. 
 " From the spirit of contradiction ? I'll do anything 
 in life that will make her happy, or just simply 
 make her quiet : I'll treat her demand as intensely 
 reasonable even, if it isn't better to treat it as an ado 
 about nothing. But it stuck in my crop to lend 
 myself, that way, to a death-bed solemnity. Heaven 
 deliver us ! " Half irritated and half anxious, suffer- 
 ing from his tenderness a twofold effect, he dropped 
 into another seat with his hands in his pockets and 
 his long legs thrust out. 
 
 " Does she wish it very solemn ? " Rose asked. 
 
 " She's in dead earnest, poor darling. She wants 
 a promise on my sacred honour a vow of the most 
 portentous kind." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 65 
 
 Rose was silent a little. " You didn't give it ? " 
 
 " I turned it off I refused to take any such 
 discussion seriously. I said : ' My own darling, 
 how can I meet you on so hateful a basis ? Wait 
 till you are dying ! ' ' He lost himself an instant ; 
 then he was again on his feet. " How in the world 
 
 can she dream I'm capable ? " He hadn't 
 
 patience even to finish his phrase. 
 
 Rose, however, finished it. " Of taking a second 
 wife ? Ah, that's another affair ! " she sadly 
 exclaimed. " We've nothing to do with that," 
 she added. " Of course you understand poor Julia's 
 feeling." 
 
 " Her feeling ? " Tony once more stood in front 
 of her. 
 
 " Why, what's at the bottom of her dread of your 
 marrying again." 
 
 " Assuredly I do ! Mrs. Grantham naturally 
 she's at the bottom. She has filled Julia with the 
 vision of my perhaps giving our child a step- 
 mother." 
 
 " Precisely," Rose said, " and if you had known, 
 as I knew it, Julia's girlhood, you would do justice 
 to the force of that horror. It possesses her whole 
 
 VOL. E 
 
66 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 being she would prefer that the child should 
 die." 
 
 Tony Bream, musing, shook his head with 
 dark decision. "Well, I would prefer that they 
 neither of them should ! " 
 
 "The simplest thing, then, is to give her your 
 word." 
 
 " My ' word ' isn't enough," Tony said : " she 
 wants mystic rites and spells ! The simplest thing, 
 moreover, was exactly what I desired to do. My 
 objection to the performance she demands was that 
 this was just what it seemed to me not to be." 
 
 " Try it," said Rose, smiling. 
 
 " To bring her round ? " 
 
 " Before the Doctor returns. When he comes, 
 you know, he won't let you go back to her." 
 
 "Then I'll go now," said Tony, already at the 
 door. 
 
 Rose had risen from the sofa. " Be very brief 
 but be very strong." 
 
 " I'll swear by all the gods that or any other 
 nonsense." Rose stood there opposite to him with 
 a fine, rich urgency which operated as a detention. 
 " I see you're right," he declared. " You always 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 67 
 
 are, and I'm always indebted to you." Then as he 
 opened the door : " Is there anything else ? " 
 
 " Anything else?" 
 
 " I mean that you advise." 
 
 She thought a moment. " Nothing but that 
 for you to seem to enter thoroughly into her idea, 
 to show her you understand it as she understands 
 it herself." 
 
 Tony looked vague. " As she does ? " 
 
 " Why, for the lifetime of your daughter." As 
 he appeared still not fully to apprehend, she 
 risked : " If you should lose Effie the reason would 
 fail." 
 
 Tony, at this, jerked back his head with a flush. 
 "My dear Rose, you don't imagine that it's as a 
 needed vow " 
 
 " That you would give it ? " she broke in. " Cer- 
 tainly I don't, any more than I suppose the degree 
 of your fidelity to be the ground on which we're 
 talking. But the thing is to convince Julia, and 
 I said that only because she'll be more convinced 
 if you strike her as really looking at what you 
 subscribe to." 
 
 Tony gave his nervous laugh. " Don't you know 
 
68 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 I always 'put down my name' especially to 
 1 appeals ' in the most reckless way ? " Then 
 abruptly, in a different tone, as if with a pas- 
 sionate need to make it plain, " I shall never, never, 
 never," he protested, " so much as look at another 
 woman ! " 
 
 The girl approved with an eager gesture. 
 " You've got it, my dear Tony. Say it to her that 
 way ! " But he had already gone, and, turning, she 
 found herself face to face with her lover, who had 
 come back as she spoke. 
 
VIII 
 
 WITH his letter in his hand Dennis Vidal stood and 
 smiled at her. " What in the world has your dear 
 Tony ' got/ and what is he to say ? " 
 
 " To say ? Something to his wife, who appears 
 to have lashed herself into an extraordinary state." 
 
 The young man's face fell. "What sort of a 
 state?" 
 
 " A strange discouragement about herself. She's 
 depressed and frightened she thinks she's sinking." 
 
 Dennis looked grave. " Poor little lady what a 
 bore for us ! I remember her perfectly." 
 
 " She of course remembers you," Rose said. " She 
 takes the friendliest interest in your being here." 
 
 " That's most kind of her in her condition." 
 
 " Oh, her condition," Rose returned, " isn't quite 
 so bad as she thinks." 
 
 "I see." Dennis hesitated. "And that's what 
 Mr. Bream's to tell her." 
 
70 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " That's a part of it." Rose glanced at the docu- 
 ment he had brought to her ; it was in its enve- 
 lope, and he tapped it a little impatiently on his 
 left finger-tips. What she said, however, had no 
 reference to it. " She's haunted with a morbid 
 alarm on the subject, of all things, of his marry- 
 ing again." 
 
 " If she should die ? She wants him not to ? " 
 Dennis asked. 
 
 " She wants him not to." Rose paused a 
 moment. "She wants to have been the only 
 one." 
 
 He reflected, slightly embarrassed with this peep 
 into a situation that but remotely concerned him. 
 "Well, I suppose that's the way women often 
 feel." 
 
 " I daresay it is." The girl's gravity gave the 
 gleam of a smile. " I daresay it's the way / 
 should." 
 
 Dennis Vidal, at this, simply seized her and 
 kissed her. " You needn't be afraid you'll be the 
 only one ! " 
 
 His embrace had been the work of a few seconds, 
 and she had made no movement to escape from it ; 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 71 
 
 but she looked at him as if to convey that the 
 extreme high spirits it betrayed were perhaps just a 
 trifle mistimed. "That's what I recommended 
 him," she dropped, " to say to Julia." 
 
 " Why, I should hope so ! " Presently, as if a 
 little struck, Dennis continued : " Doesn't he want 
 to?" 
 
 "Absolutely. They're all in all to each other. 
 But he's naturally much upset and bewildered." 
 
 " And he came to you for advice ? " 
 
 " Oh, he comes to me," Rose said, " as he might 
 come to talk of her with the mother that, poor dar- 
 ling, it's her misfortune never to have known." 
 
 The young man's vivacity again played up. 
 " He treats you, you mean, as his mother-in- 
 law ? " 
 
 "Very much. But I'm thoroughly nice to him. 
 People can do anything to me who are nice to 
 Julia." 
 
 Dennis was silent a moment ; he had slipped 
 his letter out of its cover. " Well, I hope they're 
 grateful to you for such devotion." 
 
 "Grateful to me, Dennis? They quite adore 
 me." Then as if to remind him of something it 
 
72 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 was important he should feel : " Don't you see what 
 it is for a poor girl to have such an anchorage 
 as this such honourable countenance, such a place 
 to fall back upon ? " 
 
 Thus challenged, her visitor, with a moment's 
 thought, did frank justice to her question. " I'm 
 certainly glad you've such jolly friends one sees 
 they're charming people. It has been a great 
 comfort to me lately to know you were with them." 
 He looked round him, conscientiously, at the bright 
 and beautiful hall. " It is a good berth, my dear, and 
 it must be a pleasure to live with such fine things. 
 They've given me a room up there that's full of them 
 an awfully nice room." He glanced at a picture 
 or two he took in the scene. " Do they roll in 
 wealth ? " 
 
 "They're like all bankers, I imagine," said Rose. 
 " Don't bankers always roll ? " 
 
 " Yes, they seem literally to wallow. What a 
 pity we ain't bankers, eh ? " 
 
 " Ah, with my friends here their money's the least 
 part of them," the girl answered. " The great thing's 
 their personal goodness." 
 
 Dennis had stopped before a large photograph, a 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 73 
 
 great picture in a massive frame, supported, on a 
 table, by a small gilded easel. " To say nothing 
 of their personal beauty ! He's tremendously good- 
 looking." 
 
 Rose glanced with an indulgent sigh at a 
 representation of Tony Bream in all his splen- 
 dour, in a fine white waistcoat and a high white 
 hat, with a stick and gloves and a cigar, his 
 orchid, his stature and his smile. " Ah, poor Julia's 
 taste ! " 
 
 " Yes," Dennis exclaimed, " one can see how he 
 must have fetched her ! " 
 
 " I mean the style of the thing," said Rose. 
 
 " It isn't good, eh ? Well, you know." Then 
 turning away from the picture, the young man 
 added : " They'll be after that fellow ! " 
 
 Rose faltered. " The people she fears ? " 
 
 "The women-folk, bless 'em if he should lose 
 her." 
 
 " I daresay," said Rose. " But he'll be proof." 
 
 " Has he told you so ? " Dennis smiled. 
 
 She met his smile with a kind of conscious bravado 
 in her own. " In so many words. But he assures 
 me he'll calm her down." 
 
74 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Dennis was silent a little : he had now unfolded 
 his letter and run his eyes over it. " What a funny 
 subject for him to be talking about ! " 
 
 " With me, do you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes, and with his wife." 
 
 "My dear man," Rose exclaimed, "you can 
 imagine he didn't begin it ! " 
 
 " Did you ? " her companion asked. 
 
 She hesitated again, and then, "Yes idiot!" 
 she replied with a quiet humour that produced, on 
 his part, another demonstration of tenderness. 
 This attempt she arrested, raising her hand, as she 
 appeared to have heard a sound, with a quick 
 injunction to listen. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " 
 
 " She bent her ear. " Wasn't there a cry from 
 Julia's room ? " 
 
 " I heard nothing." 
 
 Rose was relieved. " Then it's only my nervous- 
 ness." 
 
 Dennis Vidal held up his letter. " Is your 
 nervousness too great to prevent your giving a 
 moment's attention to this ? " 
 
 " Ah, your letter ! " Rose's eyes rested on it as 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 75 
 
 if she had become conscious of it for the first 
 time. 
 
 " It very intimately concerns our future," said her 
 visitor. " I went up for it so that you should do 
 me the favour to read it." 
 
 She held out her hand promptly and frankly. 
 " Then give it to me let me keep it a little." 
 
 " Certainly; but kindly remember that I've still 
 to answer it I mean referring to points. I've 
 waited to see you because it's from the ' governor ' 
 himself practically saying what he'll do for me." 
 
 Rose held the letter ; her large light eyes widened 
 with her wonder and her sympathy. " Is it some- 
 thing very good ? " 
 
 Dennis prescribed, with an emphatic but amused 
 nod at the paper, a direction to her curiosity. 
 " Read and you'll see!" 
 
 She dropped her eyes, but after a moment, while 
 her left hand patted her heart, she raised them with 
 an odd, strained expression. " I mean is it really 
 good enough ? " 
 
 " That's exactly what I want you to tell me!" 
 Dennis laughed out. A certain surprise at her 
 manner was in his face. 
 
76 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 While she noted it she heard a sound again, a 
 sound this time explained by the opening of the 
 door of the vestibule. Doctor Ramage had come 
 back ; Rose put down her letter. " I'll tell you as 
 soon as I have spoken to the Doctor." 
 
IX 
 
 THE Doctor, eagerly, spoke to her first. " Our 
 friend has not come back ? " 
 
 " Mine has," said Rose with grace. " Let me 
 introduce Mr. Vidal." Doctor Ramage beamed a 
 greeting, and our young lady, with her discreet 
 gaiety, went on to Dennis : " He too thinks all the 
 world of me." 
 
 " Oh, she's a wonder she knows what to do ! 
 But you'll see that for yourself," said the Doctor. 
 
 " I'm afraid you won't approve of me," Dennis 
 replied with solicitude. " You'll think me rather in 
 your patient's way." 
 
 Doctor Ramage laughed. " No indeed I'm sure 
 Miss Armiger will keep you out of it." Then look- 
 ing at his watch, " Bream's not with her still ? " he 
 inquired of Rose. 
 
 " He came away, but he returned to her." 
 
 " He shouldn't have done that." 
 
78 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " It was by my advice, and I'm sure you'll find 
 it's all right," Rose returned. " But you'll send him 
 back to us." 
 
 " On the spot." The Doctor picked his way out. 
 
 " He's not at all easy," Dennis pronounced when 
 he had gone. 
 
 Rose demurred. " How do you know that ? " 
 
 " By looking at him. I'm not such a fool," her 
 visitor added with some emphasis, "as you strike 
 me as wishing to make of me." 
 
 Rose candidly stared. " As I strike you as wish- 
 ing ? " For a moment this young couple looked 
 
 at each other hard, and they both changed colour. 
 " My dear Dennis, what do you mean ? " 
 
 He evidently felt that he had been almost violently 
 abrupt; but it would have been equally evident 
 to a spectator that he was a man of cool courage. 
 " I mean, Rose, that I don't quite know what's 
 the matter with you. It's as if, unexpectedly, on 
 my eager arrival, I find something or other 
 between us." 
 
 She appeared immensely relieved. "Why, my 
 dear child, of course you do ! Poor Julia's between 
 us much between us." She faltered again; then 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 79 
 
 she broke out with emotion : " I may as well confess 
 it frankly I'm miserably anxious. Good heavens," 
 she added with impatience, " don't you see it for 
 yourself ? " 
 
 " I certainly see that you're agitated and absent 
 as you warned me so promptly you would be. 
 But remember you've quite denied to me the 
 gravity of Mrs. Bream's condition." , 
 
 Rose's impatience overflowed into a gesture. 
 " I've been doing that to deceive my own self ! " 
 
 "I understand," said Dennis kindly. "Still," 
 he went on, considering, "it's either one thing or 
 the other. The poor lady's either dying, you 
 know, or she ain't ! " 
 
 His friend looked at him with a reproach too 
 fine to be uttered. "My dear Dennis you're 
 rough ! " 
 
 He showed a face as conscientious as it was 
 blank. "I'm crude possibly coarse ? Perhaps I 
 am without intention." 
 
 " Think what these people are to me," said Rose. 
 
 He was silent a little. " Is it anything so very 
 extraordinary? Oh, I know," he went on, as if 
 he feared she might again accuse him of a want 
 
8o THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 of feeling ; "I appreciate them perfectly I do 
 them full justice. Enjoying their hospitality here, 
 I'm conscious of all their merits." The letter 
 she had put down was still on the table, and he 
 took it up and fingered it a moment. " All I mean 
 is that I don't want you quite to sink the fact that 
 I'm something to you too." 
 
 She met this appeal with instant indulgence. 
 "Be a little patient with me," she gently said. 
 Before he could make a rejoinder she pursued : 
 "You yourself are impressed with the Doctor's 
 being anxious. I've been trying not to think 
 so, but I daresay you're right. There I've 
 another worry." 
 
 " The greater your worry, then, the more press- 
 ing our business." Dennis spoke with cordial 
 decision, while Rose, moving away from him, 
 reached the door by which the Doctor had gone 
 out. She stood there as if listening, and he con- 
 tinued: "It's me, you know, that you've now to 
 1 fall back 'upon." 
 
 She had already raised a hand with her clear 
 "Hush!" and she kept her eyes on her com- 
 panion while she tried to catch a sound. "The 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 81 
 
 Doctor said he would send him out of the room. 
 But he doesn't." 
 
 " All the better for your reading this." Dennis 
 held out the letter to her. 
 
 She quitted her place. " If he's allowed to stay, 
 there must be something wrong." 
 
 " I'm very sorry for them ; but don't you call 
 that a statement ? " 
 
 "Ah, your letter?" Her attention came back 
 to it, and, taking it from him, she dropped again 
 upon the sofa with it. " Voyons, voyons this great 
 affair!" she had the air of trying to talk herself 
 into calmness. 
 
 Dennis stood a moment before her. " It puts 
 us on a footing that really seems to me sound." 
 
 She had turned over the leaf to take the measure 
 of the document ; there were three, large, close, 
 neat pages. " He's a trifle long-winded, the 
 ' governor ' ! " 
 
 " The longer the better," Dennis laughed, " when 
 it's all in that key ! Read it, my dear, quietly and 
 carefully ; take it in it's really simple enough." 
 He spoke soothingly and tenderly, turning off to 
 give her time and not oppress her. He moved 
 
 VOL. I F 
 
82 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 slowly about the hall, whistling very faintly and 
 looking again at the pictures, and when he had 
 left her she followed him a minute with her eyes. 
 Then she transferred them to the door at which 
 she had just listened; instead of reading she 
 watched as if for a movement of it. If there had 
 been any one at that moment to see her face, such 
 an observer would have found it strangely, tragic- 
 ally convulsed : she had the appearance of holding 
 in with extraordinary force some passionate sob or 
 cry, some smothered impulse of anguish. This 
 appearance vanished miraculously as Dennis turned 
 at the end of the room, and what he saw, while 
 the great showy clock ticked in the scented still- 
 ness, was only his friend's study of what he had put 
 before her. She studied it long, she studied it in 
 silence a silence so unbroken by inquiry or com- 
 ment that, though he clearly wished not to seem 
 to hurry her, he drew nearer again at last and 
 stood as if waiting for some sign. 
 
 " Don't you call that really meeting a fellow ? " 
 "I must read it again," Rose replied without 
 looking up. She turned afresh to the beginning, 
 and he strolled away once more. She went 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 83 
 
 through to the end; after which she said with 
 tranquillity, folding the letter : " Yes ; it shows 
 what they think of you." She put it down where 
 she had put it before, getting up as he came back 
 to her. " It's good not only for what he says, but 
 for the way he says it." 
 
 " It's a jolly bit more than I expected." Dennis 
 picked the letter up and, restoring it to its en- 
 velope, slipped it almost lovingly into a breast- 
 pocket. "It does show, I think, that they don't 
 want to lose me." 
 
 " They're not such fools ! " Rose had in her 
 turn moved off, but now she faced him, so intensely 
 pale that he was visibly startled ; all the more that 
 it marked still more her white grimace. " My dear 
 boy, it's a splendid future." 
 
 " I'm glad it strikes you so ! " he laughed. 
 
 "It's a great joy you're all right. As I said 
 a while ago, you're a made man." 
 
 "Then by the same token, of course, you're 
 a made woman ! " 
 
 " I'm very, very happy about you," she brightly 
 conceded. " The great thing is that there's more 
 to come." 
 
84 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Rather there's more to come ! " said Dennis. 
 He stood meeting her singular smile. " I'm only 
 waiting for it." 
 
 " I mean there's a lot behind a general attitude. 
 Read between the lines ! " 
 
 " Don't you suppose I have, miss ? I didn't 
 venture, myself, to say that to you." 
 
 " Do I have so to be prompted and coached ? " 
 asked Rose. "I don't believe you even see all 
 I mean. There are hints and tacit promises 
 glimpses of what may happen if you'll give them 
 time." 
 
 "Oh, I'll give them time!" Dennis declared. 
 " But he's really awfully cautious. You're sharp 
 to have made out so much." 
 
 " Naturally I'm sharp." Then, after an instant, 
 "Let me have the letter again," the girl said, 
 holding out her hand. Dennis promptly drew it 
 forth, and she took it and went over it in silence 
 once more. He turned away as he had done 
 before, to give her a chance; he hummed slowly, 
 to himself, about the room, and once more, at the 
 end of some minutes, it appeared to strike him 
 that she prolonged her perusal. But when he 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 85 
 
 approached her again she was ready with her 
 clear contentment. She folded the letter and 
 handed it back to him. "Oh, you'll do!" she 
 proclaimed. 
 
 " You're really quite satisfied ? " 
 
 She hesitated a moment. " For the present 
 perfectly." Her eyes were on the precious 
 document as he fingered it, and something in 
 his way of doing so made her break into incon- 
 gruous gaiety. He had opened it delicately and 
 been caught again by a passage. "You handle 
 it as if it were a thousand-pound note ! " 
 
 He looked up at her quickly. " It's much more 
 than that. Capitalise his figure." 
 
 " ' Capitalise ' it ? " 
 
 " Find the invested sum." 
 
 Rose thought a moment. "Oh, I'll do every- 
 thing for you but cipher ! But it's millions." 
 Then as he returned the letter to his pocket she 
 added : " You should have that thing mounted in 
 double glass with a little handle like a hand- 
 screen." 
 
 "There's certainly nothing too good for the 
 charter of our liberties for that's what it really 
 
86 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 is," Dennis said. " But you can face the music ? " 
 he went on. 
 
 " The music ? " Rose was momentarily blank. 
 
 He looked at her hard again. "You have, my 
 dear, the most extraordinary vacancies. The figure 
 we're talking of the poor, dear little figure. The 
 five-hundred-and-forty," he a trifle sharply ex- 
 plained. "That's about what it makes." 
 
 " Why, it seems to me a lovely little figure," said 
 the girl. " To the ' likes ' of me, how can that be 
 anything but a duck of an income ? Then," she 
 exclaimed, " think also of what's to come ! " 
 
 "Yes but I'm not speaking of anything you 
 may bring." 
 
 Rose wavered, judicious, as if trying to be as 
 attentive as he desired. " I see without that. 
 But I wasn't speaking of that either," she added. 
 
 " Oh, you may count it I only mean I don't 
 touch it. And the going out you take that too ? " 
 Dennis asked. 
 
 Rose looked brave. "Why it's only for two 
 years." 
 
 He flushed suddenly, as with a flood of reas- 
 surance, putting his arms round her as round 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 87 
 
 the fulfilment of his dream. "Ah, my own old 
 girl!" 
 
 She let him clasp her again, but when she disen- 
 gaged herself they were somehow nearer to the 
 door that led away to Julia Bream. She stood 
 there as she had stood before, while he still held 
 one of her hands ; then she brought forth some- 
 thing that betrayed an extraordinary disconnection 
 from all that had just preceded. "I can't make 
 out why he doesn't send him back ! " 
 
 Dennis Vidal dropped her hand ; both his own 
 went into his pockets, and he gave a kick to the 
 turned-up corner of a rug. " Mr. Bream the 
 Doctor ? Oh, they know what they're about ! " 
 
 " The doctor doesn't at all want him to be there. 
 Something has happened," Rose declared as she 
 left the door. 
 
 Her companion said nothing for a moment. 
 " Do you mean the poor lady's gone ? " he at last 
 demanded. 
 
 " Gone ? " Rose echoed. 
 
 " Do you mean Mrs. Bream is dead ? " 
 
 His question rang out so that Rose threw herself 
 back in horror. " Dennis God forbid ! " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " God forbid too, I say. But one doesn't know 
 what you mean you're too difficult to follow. 
 One thing, at any rate, you clearly have in your 
 head that we must take it as possibly on the 
 cards. That's enough to make it remarkably to 
 the point to remind you of the great change that 
 would take place in your situation if she should 
 die." 
 
 " What else in the world but that change am I 
 thinking of ? " Rose asked. 
 
 " You're not thinking of it perhaps so much in the 
 connection I refer to. If Mrs. Bream goes, your 
 ' anchorage,' as you call it, goes." 
 
 "I see what you mean." She spoke with the 
 softest assent ; the tears had sprung into her eyes 
 and she looked away to hide them. 
 
 " One may have the highest possible opinion of 
 her husband and yet not quite see you staying on 
 here in the same manner with him" 
 
 Rose was silent, with a certain dignity. "Not 
 quite," she presently said with the same gentle- 
 ness. 
 
 "The way therefore to provide against every- 
 thing is as I remarked to you a while ago to 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 89 
 
 settle with me this minute the day, the nearest one 
 possible, for our union to become a reality." 
 
 She slowly brought back her troubled eyes. 
 " The day to marry you ? " 
 
 " The day to marry me of course ! " He gave a 
 short, uneasy laugh. " What else ? " 
 
 She waited again, and there was a fear deep in her 
 face. " I must settle it this minute ? " 
 
 Dennis stared. " Why, my dear child, when in 
 the world if not now ? " 
 
 " You can't give me a little more time ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " More time ? " His gathered stupefaction broke 
 out. " More time after giving you years ? " 
 
 " Ah, but just at the last, here this news, this 
 rush is sudden." 
 
 "Sudden!" Dennis repeated. "Haven't you 
 known I was coming, and haven't you known for 
 what?" 
 
 She looked at him now with an effort of resolu- 
 tion in which he could see her white face harden ; 
 as if by a play of some inner mechanism some- 
 thing dreadful had taken place in it. Then she 
 said with a painful quaver that no attempt to be 
 
go THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 natural could keep down : " Let me remind you 
 Dennis, that your coming was not at my request. 
 You've come yes; but you've come because you 
 would. You've come in spite of me." 
 
 He gasped, and with the mere touch of her tone 
 his own eyes filled. " You haven't wanted me ? " 
 
 " I'm delighted to see you." 
 
 " Then in God's name what do you mean ? 
 Where are we, and what are you springing on 
 me?" 
 
 " I'm only asking you again, as I've asked you 
 already, to be patient with me to let me, at such 
 a critical hour, turn round. I'm only asking you to 
 bear with me I'm only asking you to wait." 
 
 " To wait for what ? " He snatched the words out 
 of her mouth. " It's because I have waited that I'm 
 here. What I want of you is three simple words 
 that you can utter in three simple seconds." He 
 looked about him, in his helpless dismay, as if to 
 call the absent to witness. " And you look at me 
 like a stone. You open up an abyss. You give me 
 nothing, nothing." He paused, as it were, for a 
 contradiction, but she made none ; she had lowered 
 her eyes and, supported against a table, stood there 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 91 
 
 rigid and passive. Dennis sank into a chair with 
 his vain hands upon his knees. " What do you 
 mean by my coming in spite of you ? You never 
 asked me not to you've treated me well till now. 
 It was my idea yes ; but you perfectly accepted 
 it." He gave her time to assent to this or to deny 
 it, but she took none, and he continued: "Don't 
 you understand the one feeling that has possessed 
 me and sustained me ? Don't you understand that 
 I've thought of nothing else every hour of my way ? 
 I arrived here with a longing for you that words 
 can't utter; and now I see though I couldn't 
 immediately be sure that I found you from the 
 first constrained and unnatural." 
 
 Rose, as he went on, had raised her eyes again ; 
 they seemed to follow his words in sombre sub- 
 mission. " Yes, you must have found me strange 
 enough." 
 
 "And don't again say it's your being anxious 
 
 ! " Dennis sprang up warningly. " It's your 
 
 being anxious that just makes my right." 
 
 His companion shook her head slowly and am- 
 biguously. " I am glad you've come." 
 
 " To have the pleasure of not receiving me ? " 
 
92 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " I have received you/' Rose replied. " Every 
 word I've spoken to you and every satisfaction I've 
 expressed is true, is deep. I do admire you, I do 
 respect you, I'm proud to have been your friend. 
 Haven't I assured you of my pure joy in your pro- 
 motion and your prospects ? " 
 
 "What do you call assuring me? You utterly 
 misled me for some strange moments ; you mysti- 
 fied me; I think I may say you trifled with me. 
 The only assurance I'm open to is that of your 
 putting your hand in mine as my wife. In God's 
 name," the young man panted, " what has happened 
 to you and what has changed you ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you to-morrow," said Rose. 
 
 " Tell me what I insist on ? " 
 
 She cast about her. "Tell you things I can't 
 now." 
 
 He sounded her with visible despair. " You're 
 not sincere you're not straight. You've nothing 
 to tell me, and you're afraid. You're only gaining 
 time, and you've only been doing so from the first. 
 I don't know what it's for you're beyond me ; but 
 if it's to back out I'll be hanged if I give you a 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 93 
 
 Her wan face, at this, showed a faint flush ; it 
 seemed to him five years older than when he came 
 in. " You take, with your cruel accusations, a 
 strange way to keep me ! " the girl exclaimed. " But 
 I won't talk to you in bitterness," she pursued in 
 a different tone. " That will drop if we do allow 
 it a day or two." Then on a sharp motion of his 
 impatience she added : " Whether you allow it or 
 not, you know, I must take the time I need." 
 
 He was angry now, as if she were not only 
 proved evasion, but almost proved insolence ; and 
 his anger deepened at her return to this appeal that 
 offered him no meaning. " No, no, you must 
 choose," he said with passion, "and if you're really 
 honest you will. I'm here for you with all my soul, 
 but I'm here for you now or never." 
 
 " Dennis ! " she weakly murmured. 
 
 "You do back out?" 
 
 She put out her hand. " Good-bye." 
 
 He looked at her as over a flood ; then he thrust 
 his hand behind him and glanced about for his hat. 
 He moved blindly, like a man picking himself up 
 from a violent fall flung indeed suddenly from a 
 smooth, swift vehicle. " Good-bye." 
 
X 
 
 HE quickly remembered that he had not brought in 
 his hat, and also, the next instant, that even to clap 
 it on wouldn't under the circumstances qualify him 
 for immediate departure from Bounds. Just as it 
 came over him that the obligation he had incurred 
 must keep him at least for the day, he found himself 
 in the presence of his host, who, while his back was 
 turned, had precipitately reappeared and whose vision 
 of the place had resulted in an instant question. 
 
 " Mrs. Beever has not come back ? Julia wants 
 her Julia must see her ! " 
 
 Dennis was separated by the width of the hall 
 from the girl with whom he had just enjoyed such 
 an opportunity of reunion, but there was for the 
 moment no indication that Tony Bream, engrossed 
 with a graver accident, found a betrayal in the space 
 between them. He had, however, for Dennis the 
 prompt effect of a reminder to take care : it was a 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 95 
 
 consequence of the very nature of the man that to 
 look at him was to recognise the value of appearances 
 and that he couldn't have dropped upon any scene, 
 however disordered, without, by the simple fact, re- 
 establishing a superficial harmony. His new friend 
 met him with a movement that might have been that 
 of stepping in front of some object to hide it, while 
 Rose, on her side, sounding out like a touched bell, 
 was already alert with her response. "Ah," said 
 Dennis, to himself, " it's for them she cares ! " 
 
 "She has not come back, but if there's a hurry " 
 
 Rose was all there. 
 
 " There is a hurry. Some one must go for her." 
 
 Dennis had a point to make that he must make on 
 the spot. He spoke before Rose's rejoinder. " With 
 your increasing anxieties, Mr. Bream, I'm quite 
 ashamed to be quartered on you. Hadn't I really 
 better be at the inn ? " 
 
 " At the inn to go from here ? My dear fellow, 
 are you mad ? " Tony sociably scoffed ; he wouldn't 
 hear of it. " Don't be afraid ; we've plenty of use for 
 you if only to keep this young woman quiet." 
 
 " He can be of use this instant." Rose looked at 
 her suitor as if there were not the shadow of a cloud 
 
96 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 between them. " The servants are getting luncheon. 
 Will you go over for Mrs. Beever ? " 
 
 "Ah," Tony demurred, laughing, "we mustn't 
 make him fetch and carry ! " 
 
 Dennis showed a momentary blankness and then, 
 in his private discomposure, jumped at the idea of 
 escaping from the house and into the air. " Do 
 employ me," he pleaded. " I want to stretch my 
 legs I'll do anything." 
 
 "Since you're so kind, then, and it's so near," 
 Tony replied. " Mrs. Beever's our best friend, and 
 always the friend of our friends, and she's only across 
 the river." 
 
 " Just six minutes," said Rose, " by the short way. 
 Bring her back with you." 
 
 " The short way," Tony pressingly explained, " is 
 through my garden and out of it by the gate on the 
 river." 
 
 "At the river you turn to the right the little 
 foot-bridge is her bridge," Rose went on. 
 
 " You pass the gatehouse empty and closed at 
 the other side of it, and there you are," said Tony. 
 
 " In her garden it's lovely. Tell her it's for Mrs. 
 Bream and it's important," Rose added. 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 97 
 
 " My wife's calling aloud for her ! " Tony laid his 
 hand, with his flushed laugh, on the young man's 
 shoulder. 
 
 Dennis had listened earnestly, looking at his com- 
 panions in turn. " It doesn't matter if she doesn't 
 know in the least who I am ? " 
 
 "She knows perfectly don't be shy!" Rose 
 familiarly exclaimed. 
 
 Tony gave him a great pat on the back which sent 
 him off. " She has even something particular to 
 say to you ! She takes a great interest in his rela- 
 tions with you," he continued to Rose as the door 
 closed behind their visitor. Then meeting in her 
 face a certain impatience of any supersession of the 
 question of Julia's state, he added, to justify his 
 allusion, a word accompanied by the same excited 
 laugh that had already broken from him. "Mrs. 
 Beever deprecates the idea of any further delay in 
 your marriage and thinks you've got quite enough 
 to ' set up ' on. She pronounces your means remark- 
 ably adequate." 
 
 " What does she know about our means ? " Rose 
 coldly asked. 
 
 " No more, doubtless, than I ! But that needn't 
 
 VOL. I G 
 
98 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 prevent her. It's the wish that's father to the 
 thought. That's the result of her general goodwill 
 to you." 
 
 " She has no goodwill of any sort to me. She 
 doesn't like me." Rose spoke with marked dryness, 
 in which moreover a certain surprise at the direction 
 of her friend's humour was visible. Tony was now 
 completely out of his groove; they indeed both were, 
 though Rose was for the moment more successful 
 in concealing her emotion. Still vibrating with the 
 immense effort of the morning and particularly of 
 the last hour, she could yet hold herself hard and 
 observe what was taking place in her companion. 
 He had been through something that had made his 
 nerves violently active, so that his measure of security, 
 of reality almost, was merged in the mere sense of 
 the unusual. It was precisely this evidence of what 
 he had been through that helped the girl's curiosity 
 to preserve a waiting attitude the firm surface she 
 had triumphantly presented to each of the persons 
 whom, from an early hour, she had had to encounter. 
 But Tony had now the air of not intending to reward 
 her patience by a fresh communication ; it was as if 
 some new delicacy had operated and he had struck 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 99 
 
 himself as too explicit. He had looked astonished 
 at her judgment of the lady of Eastmead. 
 
 " My dear Rose," he said, " I think you're greatly 
 mistaken. Mrs. Beever much appreciates you." 
 
 She was silent at first, showing him a face worn 
 with the ingenuity of all that in her interview with 
 Dennis Vidal she had had to keep out of it and put 
 into it. " My dear Tony," she then blandly replied, 
 " I've never known any one like you for not having 
 two grains of observation. I've known people with 
 only a little; but a little's a poor affair. You've 
 absolutely none at all, and that, for your character, 
 is the right thing : it's magnificent and perfect." 
 
 Tony greeted this with real hilarity. "I like a 
 good square one between the eyes ! " 
 
 " You can't like it as much as I like you for being 
 just as you are. Observation's a second-rate thing ; 
 it's only a precaution the refuge of the small and 
 the timid. It protects our own ridicules and props 
 up our defences. You may have ridicules I don't 
 say so ; but you've no suspicions and no fears and 
 no doubts; you're natural and generous and 
 easy " 
 
 " And beautifully, exquisitely stupid ! " Tony 
 
ioo THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 broke in. "' Natural' thank you! Oh, the 
 horrible people who are natural ! What you mean 
 only you're too charming to say it is that I'm so 
 utterly taken up with my own interests and feelings 
 that I pipe about them like a canary in a cage. Not 
 to have the things you mention, and above all not to 
 have imagination, is simply not to have tact, than 
 which nothing is more unforgivable and more loath- 
 some. What lovelier proof of my selfishness could 
 I be face to face with than the fact which I imme- 
 diately afterwards blushed for that, coming in to 
 you here a while ago, in the midst of something so 
 important to you, I hadn't the manners to ask you 
 so much as a question about it ? " 
 
 " Do you mean about Mr. Vidal after he had 
 gone to his room ? You did ask me a question," 
 Rose said; "but you had a subject much more 
 interesting to speak of." She waited an instant 
 before adding : " You spoke of something I haven't 
 ceased to think of." This gave Tony a chance for 
 reference to his discharge of the injunction she had 
 then laid upon him; as a reminder of which Rose 
 further observed : " There's plenty of time for Mr. 
 Vidal." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 101 
 
 " I hope indeed he's going to stay. I like his 
 looks immensely," Tony responded. "I like his 
 type ; it matches so with what you've told me of 
 him. It's the real thing I wish we had him here." 
 Rose, at this, gave a small, confused cry, and her 
 host went on : " Upon my honour I do I know a 
 man when I see him. He's just the sort of fellow I 
 personally should have liked to be." 
 
 " You mean you're not the real thing ? " Rose 
 asked. 
 
 It was a question of a kind that Tony's good- 
 nature, shining out almost splendidly even through 
 trouble, could always meet with princely extrava- 
 gance. " Not a bit ! I'm bolstered up with all sorts 
 of little appearances and accidents. Your friend 
 there has his feet on the rock." This picture of her 
 friend's position moved Rose to another vague sound 
 the effect of which, in turn, was to make Tony 
 look at her more sharply. But he appeared not to 
 impute to her any doubt of his assertion, and after 
 an instant he reverted, with a jump, to a matter that 
 he evidently wished not to drop. " You must really, 
 you know, do justice to Mrs. Beever. When she 
 dislikes one it's not a question of shades or degrees. 
 
102 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 She's not an underhand enemy she very soon lets 
 one know it." 
 
 " You mean by something she says or does ? " 
 
 Tony considered a moment. " I mean she gives 
 you her reasons she's eminently direct. And I'm 
 sure she has never lifted a finger against you." 
 
 " Perhaps not. But she will," said Rose. " You 
 yourself just gave me the proof." 
 
 Tony wondered. " What proof ? " 
 
 "Why, in telling Dennis that she had told you 
 she has something special to say to him." 
 
 Tony recalled it it had already passed out of his 
 mind. " What she has to say is only what I myself 
 have already said for the rest of us that she hopes 
 with all her heart things are now smooth for his 
 marriage." 
 
 "Well, what could be more horrid than that ? " 
 
 " More horrid ? " Tony stared. 
 
 " What has she to do with his marriage ? Her 
 interference is in execrable taste." 
 
 The girl's tone was startling, and her companion's 
 surprise augmented, showing itself in his lighted 
 eyes and deepened colour. "My dear Rose, isn't 
 that sort of thing, in a little circle like ours, a 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 103 
 
 permitted joke a friendly compliment ? We're all 
 so with you." 
 
 She had turned away from him. She went on, as 
 if she had not heard him, with a sudden tremor in 
 her voice the tremor of a deep upheaval : " Why 
 does she give opinions that nobody wants or asks 
 her for ? What does she know of our relations or 
 of what difficulties and mysteries she touches? 
 Why can't she leave us alone at least for the first 
 hour ? " 
 
 Embarrassment was in Tony's gasp the unex- 
 pected had sprung up before him. He could only 
 stammer after her as she moved away: "Bless my 
 soul, my dear child you don't mean to say there 
 are difficulties ? Of course it's no one's business 
 but one hoped you were in quiet waters." Across 
 her interval, as he spoke, she suddenly faced round, 
 and his view of her, with this, made him smite his 
 forehead in his penitent, expressive way. " What a 
 brute I am not to have seen you're not quite happy, 
 
 and not to have noticed that he ! " Tony caught 
 
 himself up ; the face offered him was the convulsed 
 face that had not been offered Dennis Vidal. Rose 
 literally glared at him ; she stood there with her two 
 
104 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 hands on her heaving breast and something in all 
 her aspect that was like the first shock of a great 
 accident. What he saw, without understanding it, 
 was the final snap of her tremendous tension, the 
 end of her wonderful false calm. He misunderstood 
 it in fact, as he saw it give way before him : he 
 sprang at the idea that the poor girl had received a 
 blow a blow which her self-control up to within a 
 moment only presented as more touchingly borne. 
 Vidal's absence was there as a part of it : the situa- 
 tion flashed into vividness. " His eagerness to leave 
 you surprised me," he exclaimed, "and yours to 
 make him go ! " Tony thought again, and before he 
 spoke his thought her eyes seemed to glitter it back. 
 "He has not brought you bad news he has not 
 failed of what we hoped ? " He went to her with 
 compassion and tenderness : " You don't mean to 
 say, my poor girl, that he doesn't meet you as you 
 supposed he would ? " Rose dropped, as he came, 
 into a chair; she had burst into passionate tears. 
 She threw herself upon a small table, burying her 
 head in her arms, while Tony, all wonder and pity, 
 stood above her and felt helpless as she sobbed 
 She seemed to have sunk under her wrong and to 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 105 
 
 quiver with her pain. Her host, with his own re- 
 current pang, could scarcely bear it : he felt a sharp 
 need of making some one pay. " You don't mean 
 to say Mr. Vidal doesn't keep faith ? " 
 
 "Oh, God! oh, God! oh, God!" Rose Armiger 
 wailed. 
 
XI 
 
 TONY turned away from her with a movement which 
 was a confession of incompetence ; a sense more- 
 over of the awkwardness of being so close to a grief 
 for which he had no direct remedy. He could only 
 assure her, in his confusion, of his deep regret that 
 she had had a distress. The extremity of her 
 collapse, however, was brief, a gust of passion after 
 which she instantly showed the effort to recover. 
 " Don't mind me," she said through her tears ; " I 
 shall pull myself together ; I shall be all right in a 
 moment." He wondered whether he oughtn't to 
 leave her; and yet to leave her was scarcely 
 courteous. She was quickly erect again, with her 
 characteristic thought for others flowering out through 
 her pain. " Only don't let Julia know that's all I 
 ask of you. One's little bothers are one's little 
 bothers they're all in the day's work. Just give 
 me three minutes, and I shan't show a trace." She 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 107 
 
 straightened herself and even smiled, patting her 
 eyes with her crumpled handkerchief, while Tony 
 marvelled at her courage and good humour. 
 
 " Of one thing you must be sure, Rose," he 
 expressively answered, "that whatever happens 
 to you, now or at any time, you've friends here 
 and a home here that are yours for weal and 
 woe." 
 
 " Ah, don't say that," she cried ; " I can scarcely 
 bear it ! Disappointments one can meet ; but how 
 in the world is one adequately to meet generosity ? 
 Of one thing you, on your side, must be sure : that 
 no trouble in life shall ever make me a bore. It was 
 because I was so awfully afraid to be one that I've 
 been keeping myself in and that has led, in this 
 ridiculous way, to my making a fool of myself at the 
 last. I knew a hitch was coming I knew at least 
 something was ; but I hoped it would come and go 
 without tht's!" She had stopped before a mirror, 
 still dealing, like an actress in the wing, with her 
 appearance, her make-up. She dabbed at her cheeks 
 and pressed her companion to leave her to herself. 
 " Don't pity me, don't mind me ; and, above all, 
 don't ask any questions." 
 
io8 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Ah," said Tony in friendly remonstrance, " your 
 bravery makes it too hard to help you ! " 
 
 " Don't try to help me don't even want to. And 
 don't tell any tales. Hush!" she went on in a 
 different tone. " Here's Mrs. Beever ! " 
 
 The lady of Eastmead was preceded by the butler, 
 who, having formally announced her, announced 
 luncheon as invidiously as if it had only been waiting 
 for her. The servants at each house had ways of 
 reminding her they were not the servants at the 
 other. 
 
 " Luncheon's all very well," said Tony, " but who 
 in the world's to eat it ? Before you do," he con- 
 tinued, to Mrs. Beever, "there's something I must 
 ask of you." 
 
 "And something I must ask too," Rose added, 
 while the butler retired like a conscientious Minister 
 retiring from untenable office. She addressed her- 
 self to their neighbour with a face void, to Tony's 
 astonishment, of every vestige of disorder. " Didn't 
 Mr. Vidal come back with you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever looked incorruptible. " Indeed he 
 did!" she sturdily replied. "Mr. Vidal is in the 
 garden of this house." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 109 
 
 "Then I'll call him to luncheon." And Rose 
 floated away, leaving her companions confronted in 
 a silence that ended as Tony was lost in the wonder 
 of her presence of mind only when Mrs. Beever 
 had assured herself that she was out of earshot. 
 
 " She has broken it off! " this lady then responsibly 
 proclaimed. 
 
 Her colleague demurred. " She ? How do you 
 know ? " 
 
 " I know because he has told me so." 
 
 " Already in these few minutes ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever hung fire. " Of course I asked him 
 first. I met him at the bridge I saw he had had a 
 shock." 
 
 "It's Rose who has had the shock!" Tony 
 returned. " It's he who has thrown her over." 
 
 Mrs. Beever stared. " That's her story ? " 
 
 Tony reflected. " Practically yes." 
 
 Again his visitor hesitated, but only for an instant. 
 " Then one of them lies." 
 
 Tony laughed out at her lucidity. " It isn't Rose 
 Armiger ! " 
 
 " It isn't Dennis Vidal, my dear ; I believe in him/' 
 said Mrs. Beever. 
 
no THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Her companion's amusement grew. " Your opera- 
 tions are rapid." 
 
 " Remarkably. I've asked him to come to me." 
 
 Tony raised his eyebrows. " To come to you ? " 
 
 "Till he can get a train to-morrow. He can't 
 stay on here." 
 
 Tony looked at it. " I see what you mean." 
 
 " That's a blessing you don't always ! I like 
 him he's my sort. And something seems to tell 
 me I'm his!" 
 
 " I won't gracefully insult you by saying you're 
 every one's," Tony observed. Then, after an instant, 
 " Is he very much cut up ? " he inquired. 
 
 " He's utterly staggered. He doesn't understand." 
 
 Tony thought again. " No more do I. But you'll 
 console him," he added. 
 
 "I'll feed him first," said his neighbour. "I'll 
 take him back with me to luncheon." 
 
 " Isn't that scarcely civil ? " 
 
 " Civil to you ? " Mrs. Beever interposed. " That's 
 exactly what he asked me. I told him I would 
 arrange it with you." 
 
 " And you're ' arranging ' it, I see. But how can 
 you take him if Rose is bringing him in ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE in 
 
 Mrs. Beever was silent a while. " She isn't. She 
 hasn't gone to him. That was for me" 
 
 Tony looked at her in wonder. " Your operations 
 are rapid," he repeated. " But I found her under 
 the unmistakable effect of a blow." 
 
 " I found her exactly as usual." 
 
 " Well, that also was for you," said Tony. " Her 
 disappointment's a secret." 
 
 "Then I'm much obliged to you for mentioning 
 it." 
 
 " I did so to defend her against your bad account 
 of her. But the whole thing's obscure," the young 
 man added with sudden weariness. " I give it up ! " 
 
 " / don't I shall straighten it out." Mrs. Beever 
 spoke with high decision. " But I must see your 
 wife first." 
 
 " Rather ! she's waiting all this while." He had 
 already opened the door. 
 
 As she reached it she stopped again. " Shall I 
 find the Doctor with her ? " 
 
 " Yes, by her request." 
 
 " Then how is she ? " 
 
 " Maddening ! " Tony exclaimed ; after which, as 
 his visitor echoed the word, he went on : " I mean in 
 
ii2 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 her dreadful obsession, to which poor Ramage has 
 had to give way and which is the direct reason of 
 her calling you." 
 
 Mrs. Beever's little eyes seemed to see more than 
 he told her, to have indeed the vision of something 
 formidable. " What dreadful obsession ? " 
 
 "She'll tell you herself." He turned away to 
 leave her to go, and she disappeared ; but the next 
 moment he heard her again on the threshold. 
 
 " Only a word to say that that child may turn 
 up." 
 
 <r What child ? " He had already forgotten. 
 
 " Oh, if you don't remember ! " Mrs. Beever, 
 
 with feminine inconsequence, almost took it ill. 
 
 Tony recovered the agreeable image. " Oh, your 
 niece ? Certainly I remember her hair." 
 
 "She's not my niece, and her hair's hideous. 
 But if she does come, send her straight home ! " 
 
 " Very good," said Tony. This time his visitor 
 vanished. 
 
XII 
 
 HE moved a minute about the hall ; then he dropped 
 upon a sofa with a sense of exhaustion and a 
 sudden need of rest; he stretched himself, closing 
 his eyes, glad to be alone, glad above all to make 
 sure that he could lie still. He wished to show 
 himself he was not nervous ; he took up a position 
 with the purpose not to budge till Mrs. Beever 
 should come back. His house was in an odd con- 
 dition, with luncheon pompously served and no one 
 able to go to it. Poor Julia was in a predicament, 
 poor Rose in another, and poor Mr. Vidal, fasting 
 in the garden, in a greater one than either. Tony 
 sighed as he thought of this dispersal, but he 
 stiffened himself resolutely on his couch. He 
 wouldn't go in alone, and he couldn't even enjoy 
 Mrs. Beever. It next occurred to him that he could 
 still less enjoy her little friend, the child he had 
 promised to turn away ; on which he gave a sigh 
 
 VOL. I H 
 
ii 4 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 that represented partly privation and partly resig- 
 nation partly also a .depressed perception of the 
 fact that he had never in all his own healthy life 
 been less eager for a meal. Meanwhile, however, 
 the attempt to stop pacing the floor was a success : 
 he felt as if in closing his eyes he destroyed the 
 vision that had scared him. He was cooler, he was 
 easier, and he liked the smell of flowers in the dusk. 
 What was droll, when he gave himself up to it, was 
 the sharp sense of lassitude ; it had dropped on him 
 out of the blue and it showed him how a sudden 
 alarm such as, after all, he had had could drain a 
 fellow in an hour of half his vitality. He wondered 
 whether, if he might be undisturbed a little, the 
 result of this surrender wouldn't be to make him 
 delightfully lose consciousness. 
 
 He never knew afterwards whether it was in 
 the midst of his hope or on the inner edge of a doze 
 just achieved that he became aware of a footfall 
 betraying an uncertain advance. He raised his lids 
 to it and saw before him the pretty girl from the 
 other house, whom, for a moment before he moved, 
 he lay there looking at. He immediately recognised 
 that what had roused him was the fact that, noise- 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 115 
 
 lessly and for a few seconds, her eyes had rested on 
 his face. She uttered a blushing " Oh ! " which 
 deplored this effect of her propinquity and which 
 brought Tony straight to his feet. "Ah, good 
 morning! How d'ye do?" Everything came back 
 to him but her name. " Excuse my attitude I 
 didn't hear you come in." 
 
 " When I saw you asleep I'm afraid I kept the 
 footman from speaking." Jean Martle was much 
 embarrassed, but it contributed in the happiest way 
 to her animation. " I came in because he told me 
 that Cousin Kate's here." 
 
 "Oh yes, she's here she thought you might 
 arrive. Do sit down," Tony added with his prompt 
 instinct of what, in his own house, was due from a 
 man of some confidence to a girl of none at all. It 
 operated before he could check it, and Jean was as 
 passive to it as if he had tossed her a command ; but 
 as soon as she was seated, to obey him, in a high- 
 backed, wide-armed Venetian chair which made a 
 gilded cage for her flutter, and he had again placed 
 himself not in the same position on the sofa 
 opposite, he recalled the request just preferred by 
 Mrs. Beever. He was to send her straight home \ 
 
ii6 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 yes, it was to be invited instantly to retrace her 
 steps that she sat there panting and pink. 
 
 Meanwhile she was very upright and very serious ; 
 she seemed very anxious to explain. " I thought it 
 better to come, since she wasn't there. I had gone 
 off to walk home with the Marshes 1 was gone 
 rather long; and when I came back she had left 
 the house the servants told me she must be 
 here." 
 
 Tony could only meet with the note of hospitality 
 so logical a plea. " Oh, it's all right Mrs. Beever's 
 with Mrs. Bream." It was apparently all wrong 
 he must tell her she couldn't stay ; but there was a 
 prior complication in his memory of having invited 
 her to luncheon. " I wrote to your cousin I hoped 
 you'd come. Unfortunately she's not staying her- 
 self." 
 
 " Ah, then, /mustn't ! " Jean spoke with lucidity, 
 but without quitting her chair. 
 
 Tony hesitated. " She'll be a little while yet 
 my wife has something to say to her." 
 
 The girl had fixed her eyes on the floor; she 
 might have been reading there the fact that for the 
 first time jn her life she was regularly calling on a 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 117 
 
 gentleman. Since this was the singular case she 
 must at least call properly. Her manner revealed 
 an earnest effort to that end, an effort visible even 
 in the fear of a liberty if she should refer too 
 familiarly to Mrs. Bream. She cast about her with 
 intensity for something that would show sympathy 
 without freedom, and, as a result, presently produced : 
 " I came an hour ago, and I saw Miss Armiger. 
 She told me she would bring down the baby." 
 
 " But she didn't?" 
 
 " No, Cousin Kate thought it wouldn't do." 
 
 Tony was happily struck. " It will do it shall 
 do. Should you like to see her ? " 
 
 " I thought I should like it very much. It's very 
 kind of you." 
 
 Tony jumped up. " I'll show her to you myself." 
 He went over to ring a bell ; then, as he came back, 
 he added : " I delight in showing her. I think she's 
 the wonder of the world." 
 
 " That's what babies always seem to me," said 
 Jean. " It's so absorbing to watch them." 
 
 These remarks were exchanged with great gravity, 
 with stiffish pauses, while Tony hung about till his 
 ring should be answered. 
 
n8 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Absorbing ? " he repeated. " Isn't it, preposter- 
 ously ? Wait till you've watched Effie ! " 
 
 His visitor preserved for a while a silence which 
 might have indicated that, with this injunction, her 
 waiting had begun; but at last she said with the 
 same simplicity : " I've a sort of original reason for 
 my interest in her." 
 
 " Do you mean the illness of her poor mother ? " 
 He saw that she meant nothing so patronising, 
 though her countenance fell with the reminder of 
 this misfortune : she heard with awe that the 
 unconscious child was menaced. " That's a very 
 good reason," he declared, to relieve her. " But so 
 much the better if you've got another too. I hope 
 you'll never want for one to be kind to her." 
 
 She looked more assured. "I'm just the person 
 always to be." 
 
 " Just the person ? " Tony felt that he must 
 
 draw her out. She was now arrested, however, by 
 the arrival of the footman, to whom he immediately 
 turned. " Please ask Gorham to be as good as to 
 bring down the child." 
 
 " Perhaps Gorham will think it won't do," Jean 
 suggested as the servant went off. 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 119 
 
 " Oh, she's as proud of her as I am ! But if she 
 doesn't approve I'll take you upstairs. That'll be 
 because, as you say you're just the person. I 
 haven't the least doubt of it but you were going to 
 tell me why." 
 
 Jean treated it as if it were almost a secret. 
 " Because she was born on my day." 
 
 " Your birthday ? " 
 
 " My birthday the twenty-fourth." 
 
 " Oh, I see ; that's charming that's delightful ! " 
 The circumstance had not quite all the subtlety she 
 had beguiled him into looking for, but her amusing 
 belief in it, which halved the date like a succulent 
 pear, mingled oddly, to make him quickly feel that 
 it had enough, with his growing sense that Mrs. 
 Beever's judgment of her hair was a libel. " It's a 
 most extraordinary coincidence it makes a most 
 interesting tie. Do, therefore, I beg you, whenever 
 you keep you anniversary, keep also a little hers." 
 
 " That's just what I was thinking," said Jean. 
 Then she added, still shy, yet suddenly almost 
 radiant : " I shall always send her something! " 
 
 " She shall do the same to you ! " This idea had 
 a charm even for Tony, who determined on the 
 
120 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 spot, quite sincerely, that he would, for the first 
 years at least, make it his own charge. "You're 
 her very first friend," he smiled. 
 
 "Am I?" Jean thought it wonderful news. 
 " Before she has even seen me ! " 
 
 " Oh, those are the first. You're ' handed down,'" 
 said Tony, humouring her. 
 
 She evidently deprecated, however, any abate- 
 ment of her rarity. "Why, I haven't seen her 
 mother, either." 
 
 "No, you haven't seen her mother. But you 
 shall. And you have seen her father." 
 
 " Yes, I have seen her father." Looking at him 
 as if to make sure of it, Jean gave this assertion the 
 assent of a gaze so unrestricted that, feeling herself 
 after an instant caught, as it were, in it, she turned 
 abruptly away. 
 
 It came back to Tony at the same moment with 
 a sort of coarseness that he was to have sent her 
 home; yet now, somehow, as if half through the 
 familiarity it had taken but these minutes to 
 establish, and half through a perception of her 
 extreme juvenility, his reluctance to tell her so had 
 dropped. "Do you know I'm under a sort of 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 121 
 
 dreadful vow to Mrs. Beever ? " Then as she 
 faced him again, wondering : " She told me that if 
 you should turn up I was to pack you off." 
 
 Jean stared with a fresh alarm. " Ah, I shouldn't 
 have stayed ! " 
 
 " You didn't know it, and I couldn't show you the 
 door." 
 
 " Then I must go now." 
 
 " Not a bit. I wouldn't have mentioned it to 
 consent to that. I mention it for just the other 
 reason to keep you here as long as possible. I'll 
 make it right with Cousin Kate," Tony continued. 
 " I'm not afraid of her ! " he laughed. " You pro- 
 duce an effect on me for which I'm particularly 
 grateful." She was acutely sensitive; for a few 
 seconds she looked as if she thought he might be 
 amusing himself at her expense. " I mean you 
 soothe me at a moment when I really want it," he 
 said with a gentleness from which it gave him 
 pleasure to see in her face an immediate impression. 
 " I'm worried, I'm depressed, I've been threshing 
 about in my anxiety. You keep me cool you're 
 just the right thing." He nodded at her in clear 
 kindness. " Stay with me stay with me ! " 
 
122 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Jean had not taken the flight of expressing a 
 concern for his domestic situation, but in the pity 
 that flooded her eyes at this appeal there was an 
 instant surrender to nature. It was the sweetness 
 of her youth that had calmed him, but in the res- 
 ponse his words had evoked she already, on the 
 spot, looked older. " Ah, if I could help you ! " she 
 timidly murmured. 
 
 " Sit down again ; sit down ! " He turned away. 
 " Here's the wonder of the world ! " he exclaimed 
 the next instant, seeing Gorham appear with her 
 charge. His interest in the apparition almost 
 simultaneously dropped, for Mrs. Beever was at the 
 opposite door. She had come back, and Ramage 
 was with her : they stopped short together, and he 
 did the same on catching the direction, as he 
 supposed, of his sharp neighbour's eyes. She had 
 an air of singular intensity ; it was peculiarly 
 embodied in a look which, as she drew herself up, 
 she shot straight past him and under the reprobation 
 of which he glanced round to see Jean Martle turn 
 pale. What he saw, however, was not Jean Martle 
 at all, but that very different person Rose Armiger, 
 who, by an odd chance and with Dennis Vidal at 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 123 
 
 her side, presented herself at this very juncture at 
 the door of the vestibule. It was at Rose Mrs. 
 Beever stared stared with a significance doubtless 
 produced by this young lady's falsification of her 
 denial that Mr. Vidal had been actively pursued. 
 She took no notice of Jean, who, while the rest of 
 them stood about, testified to her prompt compliance 
 with any word of Tony's by being the only member 
 of the company in a chair. The sight of Mrs. 
 Beever's face appeared to have deprived her of the 
 force to rise. Tony observed these things in a flash, 
 and also how far the gaze of the Gorgon was from 
 petrifying Rose Armiger, who, with a bright recovery 
 of zeal by which he himself was wonderstruck, 
 launched without delay a conscientious reminder of 
 luncheon. It was on the table it was spoiling it 
 was spoilt ! Tony felt that he must gallantly 
 support her. " Let us at last go in then," he said 
 to Mrs. Beever. " Let us go in then," he repeated 
 to Jean and to Dennis Vidal. " Doctor, you'll come 
 too?" 
 
 He broke Jean's spell at a touch ; she was on her 
 feet ; but the Doctor raised, as if for general applica- 
 tion, a deterrent, authoritative hand. " If you please, 
 
12 4 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Bream no banquet." He looked at Jean, at Rose, 
 at Vidal, at Gorham. " I take the house in hand. 
 We immediately subside." 
 
 Tony sprang to him. " Julia's worse ? " 
 
 " No she's the same." 
 
 " Then I may go to her ? " 
 
 "Absolutely not." Doctor Ramage grasped his 
 arm, linked his own in it and held him. " If you're 
 not a good boy I lock you up in your room. We 
 immediately subside," he said again, addressing the 
 others; "we go our respective ways and we keep 
 very still. The fact is I require a hushed house. 
 But before the hush descends Mrs. Beever has 
 something to say to you." 
 
 She was on the other side of Tony, who felt, 
 between them there, like their prisoner. She 
 looked at her little audience, which consisted of 
 Jean and Rose, of Mr. Vidal and the matronly 
 Gorham. Gorham carried in her ample arms a 
 large white sacrifice, a muslin-muffled offering 
 which seemed to lead up to a ceremony. " I have 
 something to say to you because Doctor Ramage 
 allows it, and because we are both under pledges to 
 Mrs. Bream. It's a very peculiar announcement for 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 125 
 
 me to have on my hands, but I've just passed her 
 my promise, in the very strictest manner, to make 
 it, before leaving the house, to every one it may 
 concern, and to repeat it in certain other quarters." 
 She paused again, and Tony, from his closeness to 
 her, could feel the tremor of her solid presence. 
 She disliked the awkwardness and the coercion, 
 and he was sorry for her, because by this time he 
 well knew what was coming. He had guessed his 
 wife's extraordinary precaution, which would have 
 been almost grotesque if it hadn't been so infinitely 
 touching. It seemed to him that he gave the 
 measure of his indulgence for it in overlooking the 
 wound to his delicacy conveyed in the publicity she 
 imposed. He could condone this in a tender sigh, 
 because it meant that in consequence of it she'd now 
 pull round. " She wishes it as generally known as 
 possible," Mrs. Beever brought out, "that Mr. 
 Bream, to gratify her at a crisis which I trust she 
 exaggerates, has assured her on his sacred honour 
 that in the event of her death he will not again 
 marry." 
 
 " In the lifetime of her daughter, that is," Doctor 
 Ramage hastened to add. 
 
126 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " In the lifetime of her daughter," Mrs. Beever as 
 clearly echoed. 
 
 " In the lifetime of her daughter ! " Tony himself 
 took up with an extravagance intended to offer the 
 relief of a humorous treatment, if need be, to the 
 bewildered young people whose embarrassed stare 
 was a prompt criticism of Julia's discretion. It 
 might have been in the spirit of a protest still more 
 vehement that, at this instant, a small shrill pipe 
 rose from the animated parcel with which Gorham, 
 participating in the general awkwardness, had 
 possibly taken a liberty. The comical little sound 
 created a happy diversion ; Tony sprang straight to 
 the child. "So it is, my own," he cried, "a 
 scandal to be talking of * lifetimes ! ' " He caught 
 her from the affrighted nurse he put his face down 
 to hers with passion. Her wail ceased and he held 
 her close to him; for a minute, in silence, as if 
 something deep went out from him, he laid his 
 cheek to her little cheek, burying his head under 
 her veil. When he gave her up again, turning 
 round, the hall was empty of every one save the 
 Doctor, who signalled peremptorily to Gorham to 
 withdraw. Tony remained there meeting his eyes, 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 127 
 
 in which, after an instant, the young man saw some- 
 thing that led him to exclaim : " How dreadfully ill 
 she must be, Ramage, to have conceived a stroke in 
 such taste ! " 
 
 His companion drew him down to the sofa, 
 patting, soothing, supporting him. "You must 
 bear it my dear boy you must bear everything." 
 Doctor Ramage faltered. "Your wife's exceed- 
 ingly ill." 
 
 END OF BOOK FIRST 
 
BOOK SECOND 
 
 VOL. I 
 
XIII 
 
 IT continued to be for the lady of Eastmead, as the 
 years went on, a sustaining reflection that if in the 
 matter of upholstery she yielded somewhat stiffly to 
 the other house, so the other house was put out of 
 all countenance by the mere breath of her garden. 
 Tony could beat her indoors at every point, but 
 when she took her stand on her lawn she could defy 
 not only Bounds but Wilverley. Her stand, and 
 still more her seat, in the summer days, was frequent 
 there, as we easily gather from the fortified position 
 in which we next encounter her. From May to 
 October she was out, as she said, at grass, drawing 
 from it most of the time a comfortable sense that on 
 such ground as this her young friend's love of new- 
 ness broke down. He might make his dinner-service 
 as new as he liked ; she triumphed precisely in the fact 
 that her trees and her shrubs were old. He could 
 hang nothing on his walls like her creepers and 
 
132 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 clusters ; there was no velvet in his carpets like the 
 velvet of her turf. She had everything, or almost 
 everything she had space and time and the river. 
 No one at Wilverley had the river as she had it ; 
 people might say of course there was little of it to 
 have, but of whatever there was she was in intimate 
 possession. It skirted her grounds and improved 
 her property and amused her guests; she always 
 held that her free access made up for being, as 
 people said, on the wrong side of it. If she had not 
 been on the wrong side she would not have had the 
 little stone foot-bridge which was her special pride 
 and the very making of her picture, and which she 
 had heard compared she had an off-hand way of 
 bringing it in to a similar feature, at Cambridge, 
 of one of the celebrated " backs." The other side 
 was the side of the other house, the side for the view 
 the view as to which she entertained the merely 
 qualified respect excited in us, after the first creative 
 flush, by mysteries of our own making. Mrs. Beever 
 herself formed the view and the other house was 
 welcome to it, especially to those parts of it enjoyed 
 through the rare gaps in an interposing leafy lane. 
 Tony had a gate which he called his river-gate, but 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 133 
 
 you didn't so much as suspect the stream till you 
 got well out of it. He had on his further quarter a 
 closer contact with the town ; but this was just what 
 on both quarters she had with the country. Her 
 approach to the town was by the " long way " and 
 the big bridge, and by going on, as she liked to do, 
 past the Doctor's square red house. She hated 
 stopping there, hated it as much as she liked his 
 stopping at Eastmead : in the former case she 
 seemed to consult him and in the latter to advise, 
 which was the exercise of her wisdom that she 
 decidedly preferred. Such degrees and dimensions, 
 I hasten to add, had to do altogether with short 
 relations and small things ; but it was just the good 
 lady's reduced scale that held her little world 
 together. So true is it that from strong compres- 
 sion the elements of drama spring and that there 
 are conditions in which they seem to invite not so 
 much the opera-glass as the microscope. 
 
 Never, perhaps, at any rate, had Mrs. Beever been 
 more conscious of her advantages, or at least more 
 surrounded with her conveniences, than on a 
 beautiful afternoon of June on which we are again 
 concerned with her. These blessings were partly 
 
134 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 embodied in the paraphernalia of tea, which had 
 cropped up, with promptness and profusion, in a 
 sheltered corner of the lawn and in the midst of 
 which, waiting for custom, she might have been in 
 charge of a refreshment-stall at a fair. Everything 
 at the other house struck her as later and later, and 
 she only regretted that, as the protest of her own 
 tradition, she couldn't move in the opposite direction 
 without also moving from the hour. She waited for 
 it now, at any rate, in the presence of a large red 
 rug and a large white tablecloth, as well as of sundry 
 basket-chairs and of a hammock that swayed in the 
 soft west wind ; and she had meanwhile been 
 occupied with a collection of parcels and paste- 
 board boxes that were heaped together on a bench. 
 Of one of these parcels, enveloped in several layers 
 of tissue-paper, she had just possessed herself, and, 
 seated near her tea-table, was on the point of 
 uncovering it. She became aware, at this instant, 
 of being approached from behind ; on which, looking 
 over her shoulder and seeing Doctor Ramage, she 
 straightway stayed her hands. These friends, in a 
 long acquaintance, had dropped by the way so many 
 preliminaries that absence, in their intercourse, was 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 135 
 
 a mere parenthesis and conversation in general 
 scarce began with a capital. But on this occasion 
 the Doctor was floated to a seat not, as usual, on the 
 bosom of the immediately previous. 
 
 " Guess whom I've just overtaken on your door- 
 step. The young man you befriended four years 
 ago Mr. Vidal, Miss Armiger's flame ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beever fell back in her surprise ; it was rare 
 for Mrs. Beever to fall back. " He has turned up 
 again ? " Her eyes had already asked more than her 
 friend could tell. " For what in the world ? " 
 
 " For the pleasure of seeing you. He has 
 evidently retained a very grateful sense of what you 
 did for him." 
 
 " I did nothing, my dear man I had to let it 
 alone." 
 
 " Tony's condition of course I remember again 
 required you. But you gave him a shelter," said the 
 Doctor, " that wretched day and that night, and he 
 felt (it was evidently much to him) that, in his 
 rupture with his young woman, you had the right 
 instinct of the matter ^nd were somehow on his 
 side." 
 
 " I put him up for a few hours I saved him, in 
 
136 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 time, the embarrassment of finding himself in a 
 house of death. But he took himself off the next 
 morning early bidding me good-bye only in a quiet 
 little note." 
 
 " A quiet little note which I remember you after- 
 wards showed me and which was a model of 
 discretion and good taste. It seems to me," the 
 Doctor went on, "that he doesn't violate those 
 virtues in considering that you've given him the right 
 to reappear." 
 
 " At the very time, and the only time, in so long a 
 period that his young woman, as you call her, 
 happens also to be again in the field ! " 
 
 " That's a coincidence," the Doctor replied, "far 
 too singular for Mr. Vidal to have had any forecast 
 of it." 
 
 " You didn't then tell him ? " 
 
 " I told him nothing save that you were probably 
 just where I find you, and that, as Manning is busy 
 with her tea-things, I would come straight out for 
 him and announce that he's there." 
 
 Mrs. Beever's sense of complications evidently 
 grew as she thought. " By f there ' do you mean on 
 the doorstep ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 13? 
 
 " Far from it. In the safest place in the world 
 at least when you're not in it." 
 
 " In my own room ? " Mrs. Beever asked. 
 
 " In that austere monument to Domestic Method 
 which you're sometimes pleased to call your boudoir. 
 I took upon myself to show him into it and to close 
 the door on him there. I reflected that you'd 
 perhaps like to see him before any one else." 
 
 Mrs. Beever looked at her visitor with apprecia- 
 tion. " You dear, sharp thing ! " 
 
 " Unless, indeed," the Doctor added, " they have, 
 in so many years, already met." 
 
 " She told me only yesterday they haven't." 
 
 " I see. However, as I believe you consider that 
 she never speaks the truth, that doesn't particularly 
 count." 
 
 " I hold, on the contrary, that a lie counts double," 
 Mrs. Beever replied with decision. 
 
 Doctor Ramage laughed. " Then why have you 
 never in your life told one ? I haven't even yet 
 quite made out," he pursued, " why especially with 
 Miss Jean here you asked Miss Armiger down." 
 
 " I asked her for Tony." 
 
 " Because he suggested it ? Yes, I know that." 
 
138 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " I mean it," said Mrs. Beever, " in a sense I think 
 you don't know." She looked at him a moment ; 
 but either her profundity or his caution were too 
 great, and he waited for her to commit herself 
 further. That was a thing she could always do 
 rapidly without doing it recklessly. " I asked her 
 exactly on account of Jean." 
 
 The Doctor meditated, but this seemed to deepen 
 her depth. " I give it up. You've mostly struck 
 me as so afraid of every other girl Paul looks at." 
 
 Mrs. Beever's face was grave. " Yes, I've 
 always been; but I'm not so afraid of them as of 
 those at whom Tony looks." 
 
 Her interlocutor started. " He's looking at 
 Jean ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever was silent a little. " Not for the first 
 time ! " 
 
 Her visitor also hesitated. " And do you think, 
 Miss Armiger ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever took him up. " Miss Armiger's better 
 for him since he must have somebody ! " 
 
 " You consider she'd marry him ? " 
 
 " She's insanely in love with him." 
 
 The Doctor tilted up his chin; he uttered an 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 139 
 
 expressive " Euh.! She is indeed, poor thing! " he 
 said. " Since you frankly mention it, I as frankly 
 agree with you, that I've never seen anything like it. 
 And there's monstrous little I've not seen. But if 
 Tony isn't crazy too ? " 
 
 " It's a kind of craze that's catching. He must 
 think of that sort of thing." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by ' thinking ! ' 
 Do you imply that the dear man, on what we 
 know ? " The Doctor couldn't phrase it. 
 
 His friend had greater courage. " Would break 
 his vow and marry again ? " She turned it over, 
 but at last she brought out : " Never in the world." 
 
 "Then how does the chance of his thinking of 
 Rose help her ? " 
 
 " I don't say it helps her. I simply say it helps 
 poor me." 
 
 Doctor Ramage was still mystified. " But if they 
 can't marry ? " 
 
 " I don't care whether they marry or not ! " 
 
 She faced him with the bravery of this, and he 
 broke into a happy laugh. " I don't know whether 
 most to admire your imagination or your morality." 
 
 " I protect my girl," she serenely declared. 
 
140 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 Doctor Ramage made his choice. " Oh, your 
 morality ! " 
 
 " In doing so," she went on, " I also protect my 
 boy. That's the highest morality I know. I'll see 
 Mr. Vidal out here," she added. 
 
 " So as to get rid of him easier ? " 
 
 " My getting rid of him will depend on what he 
 wants. He must take, after all," Mrs. Beever 
 continued, " his chance of meeting any embar- 
 rassment. If he plumps in without feeling his 
 way 
 
 " It's his own affair I see," the Doctor said. 
 What he saw was that his friend's diplomacy had 
 suffered a slight disturbance. Mr. Vidal was a new 
 element in her reckoning; for if, of old, she had 
 liked and pitied him, he had since dropped out of 
 her problem. Her companion, who timed his 
 pleasures to the minute, indulged in one of his 
 frequent glances at his watch. " I'll put it then to 
 the young man more gracefully than you do that 
 you'll receive him in this place." 
 
 " I shall be much obliged to you." 
 
 "But before I go," Doctor Ramage inquired, 
 " where are all our friends ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 141 
 
 " I haven't the least idea. The only ones I count 
 on are Effie and Jean." 
 
 The Doctor made a motion of remembrance. " To 
 be sure it's their birthday : that fellow put it out 
 of my head. The child's to come over to you to tea, 
 and just what I stopped for " 
 
 " Was to see if I had got your, doll ? " Mrs. 
 Beever interrupted him by holding up the muffled 
 parcel in her lap. She pulled away the papers. 
 " Allow me to introduce the young lady." 
 
 The young lady was sumptuous and ample ; he 
 took her in his hands with reverence. " She's 
 splendid she's positively human ! I feel like a 
 Turkish pasha investing in a beautiful Circassian. 
 I feel too," the Doctor went on, " how right I was 
 to depend, in the absence of Mrs. Ramage, on 
 your infallible taste." Then restoring the effigy : 
 " Kindly mention how much I owe you." 
 
 "Pay at the shop," said Mrs. Beever. "They 
 ' trusted ' me." 
 
 " With the same sense of security that I had ! " 
 The Doctor got up. "Please then present the 
 object and accompany it with my love and a kiss." 
 
 " You can't come back to give them yourself? " 
 
142 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 "What do I ever give ' myself/ dear lady, but 
 medicine ? " 
 
 "Very good," said Mrs. Beever; "the presenta- 
 tion shall be formal. But I ought to warn you that 
 your beautiful Circassian will have been no less than 
 the fourth." She glanced at the parcels on the bench. 
 " I mean the fourth doll the child's to receive to-day." 
 
 The Doctor followed the direction of her eyes. 
 " It's a regular slave-market a perfect harem ! " 
 
 "We've each of us given her one. Each, that is, 
 except Rose." 
 
 " And what has Rose given her ? " 
 
 " Nothing at all." 
 
 The Doctor thought a moment. " Doesn't she 
 like her ? " 
 
 "She seems to wish it to be marked that she 
 has nothing to do with her." 
 
 Again Doctor Ramage reflected. " I see that's 
 very clever." 
 
 Mrs. Beever, from her chair, looked up at him. 
 " What do you mean by ' clever ' ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you some other time." He still stood 
 before the bench. "There are no gifts for poor 
 Jean?" 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 143 
 
 " Oh, Jean has had most of hers." 
 
 "But nothing from me" The Doctor had but 
 just thought of her ; he turned sadly away. " I'm 
 quite ashamed ! " 
 
 "You needn't be," said Mrs. Beever. "She has 
 also had nothing from Tony." 
 
 He seemed struck. " Indeed ? On Miss Armi- 
 ger's system ? " His friend remained silent, and he 
 went on : " That of wishing it to be marked that he 
 has nothing to do with her ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever, for a minute, continued not to 
 reply ; but at last she exclaimed : " He doesn't 
 calculate ! " 
 
 "That's bad for a banker!" Doctor Ramage 
 laughed. " What then has she had from Paul ? " 
 
 "Nothing either as yet. That's to come this 
 evening." 
 
 "And what's it to be?" 
 
 Mrs. Beever hesitated. " I haven't an idea." 
 
 " Ah, you can fib ! " joked her visitor, taking 
 leave. 
 
XIV 
 
 HE crossed on his way to the house a tall parlour- 
 maid who had just quitted it with a tray which 
 a moment later she deposited on the table near 
 her mistress. Tony Bream was accustomed to say 
 that since Frederick the Great's grenadiers there 
 had never been anything like the queen-mother's 
 parlourmaids, who indeed on field-days might, in 
 stature, uniform and precision of exercise, have 
 affronted comparison with that formidable phalanx. 
 They were at once more athletic and more reserved 
 than Tony liked to see their sex, and he was always 
 sure that the extreme length of their frocks was deter- 
 mined by that of their feet. The young woman, at 
 any rate, who now presented herself, a young woman 
 with a large nose and a straight back, stiff cap- 
 streamers, stiffer petticoats and stiffest manners, 
 was plainly the corporal of her squad. There was 
 a murmur and a twitter all around her; but she 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 145 
 
 rustled about the tea-table to a tune that quenched 
 the voice of summer. It left undisturbed, however, 
 for awhile, Mrs. Beever's meditations; that lady 
 was thoughtfully occupied in wrapping up Doctor 
 Ramage's doll. "Do you know, Manning, what 
 has become of Miss Armiger?" she at last inquired. 
 
 "She went, ma'am, near an hour ago, to the 
 pastrycook's." 
 
 " To the pastrycook's ? " 
 
 "She had heard you wonder, ma'am, she told 
 me, that the young ladies' birthday-cake hadn't 
 yet arrived." 
 
 " And she thought she'd see about it? Uncom- 
 monly good of her ! " Mrs. Beever exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, uncommonly good." 
 
 " Has it arrived, then, now ? " 
 
 " Not yet, ma'am." 
 
 " And Miss Armiger hasn't returned ? " 
 
 " I think not, ma'am." 
 
 Mrs. Beever considered again. " Perhaps she's 
 waiting to bring it." 
 
 Manning indulged in a proportionate pause. 
 " Perhaps, ma'am in a fly. And when it comes, 
 ma'am, shall I fetch it out ? " 
 
 VOL. I K 
 
146 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 "In a fly too? I'm afraid/' said Mrs. Beever, 
 " that with such an incubation it will really require 
 one." After a moment she added : "I'll go in and 
 look at it first." And then, as her attendant was 
 about to rustle away, she further detained her. 
 " Mr. Bream hasn't been over ? " 
 
 " Not yet, ma'am." 
 
 Mrs. Beever consulted her watch. "Then he's 
 still at the Bank." 
 
 " He must be indeed, ma'am." 
 
 Tony's colleague appeared for a little to ponder 
 this prompt concurrence ; after which she said : 
 "You haven't seen Miss Jean ? " 
 
 Manning bethought herself. " I believe, ma'am, 
 Miss Jean is dressing." 
 
 "Oh, in honour " But Mrs. Beever's idea 
 
 dropped before she finished her sentence. 
 
 Manning ventured to take it up. " In honour 
 of her birthday, ma'am." 
 
 " I see of course. And do you happen to have 
 heard if that's what also detains Miss Effte that 
 she's dressing in honour of hers ? " 
 
 Manning hesitated. " I heard, ma'am, this 
 morning that Miss Effie had a slight cold." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 147 
 
 Her mistress looked surprised. " But not such 
 as to keep her at home ? " 
 
 " They were taking extra care of her, ma'am 
 so that she might be all right for coming." 
 
 Mrs. Beever was not pleased. " Extra care ? 
 Then why didn't they send for the Doctor ? " 
 
 Again Manning hesitated. "They sent for Miss 
 Jean, ma'am." 
 
 " To come and look after her ? " 
 
 "They often do, ma'am, you know. This morn- 
 ing I took in the message." 
 
 "And Miss Jean obeyed it ? " 
 
 " She was there an hour, ma'am." 
 
 Mrs. Beever administered a more than approving 
 pat to the final envelope of her doll. "She said 
 nothing about it." 
 
 Again Manning concurred. "Nothing, ma'am." The 
 word sounded six feet high, like the figure she pre- 
 sented. She waited a moment and then, as if to close 
 with as sharp a snap the last open door to the desir- 
 able, "Mr. Paul, ma'am," she observed, "if you were 
 wanting to know, is out in his boat on the river." 
 
 Mrs. Beever pitched her parcel back to the bench. 
 " Mr. Paul is never anywhere else ! " 
 
148 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Never, ma'am," said Manning inexorably. She 
 turned the next instant to challenge the stranger 
 who had come down from the house. " A gentle- 
 man, ma'am," she announced; and, retiring while 
 Mrs. Beever rose to meet the visitor, drew, with 
 the noise of a lawn-mower, a starched tail along 
 the grass. 
 
 Dennis Vidal, with his hat off, showed his hostess 
 a head over which not a year seemed to have 
 passed. He had still his young, sharp, meagre 
 look, and it came to her that the other time as 
 well he had been dressed in double-breasted blue 
 of a cut that made him sailorly. It was only on 
 a longer view that she saw his special signs to be 
 each a trifle intensified. He was browner, leaner, 
 harder, finer ; he even struck her as more wanting 
 in height. These facts, however, didn't prevent 
 another fact from striking her still more : what 
 was most distinct in his face was that he was 
 really glad to take her by the hand. That had 
 an instant effect on her: she could glow with 
 pleasure, modest matron as she was, at such an 
 intimation of her having, so many years before, in 
 a few hours, made on a clever young man she 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 149 
 
 liked an impression that could thus abide with 
 him. In the quick light of it she liked him afresh ; 
 it was as if their friendship put down on the spot 
 a firm foot that was the result of a single stride 
 across the chasm of time. In this indeed, to her 
 clear sense, there was even something more to 
 pity him for : it was such a dreary little picture 
 of his interval, such an implication of what it had 
 lacked, that there had been so much room in it 
 for an ugly old woman at Wilverley. She motioned 
 him to sit down with her, but she immediately re- 
 marked that before she asked him a question she 
 had an important fact to make known. She had 
 delayed too long, while he waited there, to let him 
 understand that Rose Armiger was at Eastmead. 
 She instantly saw at this that he had come 
 in complete ignorance. The range of alarm in 
 his face was narrow, but he coloured, looking 
 grave ; and after a brief debate with himself 
 he inquired as to Miss Armiger's actual where- 
 abouts. 
 
 " She has gone out, but she may reappear at any 
 moment," said Mrs. Beever. 
 
 " And if she does, will she come out here ? " 
 
150 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " I've an impression she'll change her dress first. 
 That may take her a little time." 
 
 " Then I'm free to sit with you ten minutes ? " 
 
 " As long as you like, dear Mr. Vidal. It's for 
 you to choose whether you'll avoid her." 
 
 " I dislike dodging I dislike hiding," Dennis 
 returned ; " but I daresay that if I had known 
 where she was I wouldn't have come." 
 
 " I feel hatefully rude but you took a leap in the 
 dark. The absurd part of it," Mrs. Beever went on, 
 " is that you've stumbled on her very first visit 
 to me." 
 
 The young man showed a surprise which gave 
 her the measure of his need of illumination. " For 
 these four years ? " 
 
 " For these four years. It's the only time she has 
 been at Eastmead." 
 
 Dennis hesitated. " And how often has she been 
 at the other house ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever smiled. "Not even once." Then 
 as her smile broadened to a small, dry laugh, "I 
 can quite say that for her ! " she declared. 
 
 Dennis looked at her hard. "To your certain 
 knowledge ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 151 
 
 " To my certain and absolute knowledge." This 
 mutual candour continued, and presently she said : 
 " But you where do you come from ? " 
 
 " From far away I've been out of England. 
 After my visit here I went back to my post." 
 
 "And now you've returned with your for- 
 tune?" 
 
 He gave her a smile from which the friendliness 
 took something of the bitter quality. " Call it my 
 77z/sfortune ! " There was nothing in this to deprive 
 Mrs. Beever of the pleasant play of a professional 
 sense that he had probably gathered such an inde- 
 pendence as would have made him welcome at the 
 Bank. On the other hand she caught the note of a 
 tired grimness in the way he added : " I've come 
 back with that. It sticks to me ! " 
 
 For a minute she spared him. "You want her 
 as much as ever ? " 
 
 His eyes confessed to a full and indeed to a 
 sore acceptance of that expression of the degree. 
 " I want her as much as ever. It's my constitu- 
 tional obstinacy ! " 
 
 " Which her treatment of you has done nothing 
 to break down ? " 
 
152 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " To break down ? It has done everything in life 
 to build it up." 
 
 " In spite of the particular circumstance ? " 
 
 At this point even Mrs. Beever's directness failed. 
 
 That of her visitor, however, was equal to the 
 occasion. "The particular circumstance of her 
 chucking me because of the sudden glimpse given 
 her, by Mrs. Bream's danger, of the possibility of a 
 far better match ? " He gave a laugh drier than her 
 own had just been, the ring of an irony from which 
 long, hard thought had pressed all the savour. 
 "That 'particular circumstance,' dear madam, is 
 every bit that's the matter with me ! " 
 
 " You regard it with extraordinary coolness, but 
 I presumed to allude to it " 
 
 " Because," Dennis broke in with lucidity, " I 
 myself made no bones of doing so on the only 
 other occasion on which we've met ? " 
 
 " The fact that we both equally saw, that we both 
 equally judged," said Mrs. Beever, "was on that 
 occasion really the only thing that had time to pass 
 between us. It's a tie, but it's a slender one, and 
 I'm all the more flattered that it should have had 
 any force to make you care to see me again." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 153 
 
 " It never ceased to be my purpose to see you, 
 if you would permit it, on the first opportunity. My 
 opportunity," the young man continued, " has been 
 precipitated by an accident. I returned to England 
 only last week, and was obliged two days ago to 
 come on business to Southampton. There I found 
 I should have to go, on the same matter, to Mar- 
 rington. It then appeared that to get to Marrington 
 I must change at Plumbury " 
 
 " And Plumbury," said Mrs. Beever, " reminded 
 you that you changed there, that it was from there 
 you drove, on that horrible Sunday." 
 
 " It brought my opportunity home to me. With- 
 out wiring you or writing you, without sounding the 
 ground or doing anything I ought to have done, I 
 simply embraced it. I reached this place an hour 
 ago and went to the inn." 
 
 She looked at him wofully. " Poor dear young 
 man ! " 
 
 He turned it off. " I do very well. Remember 
 the places I've come from." 
 
 " I don't care in the least where you've come 
 from ! If Rose weren't here I could put you up so 
 beautifully." 
 
154 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Well, now that I know it," said Dennis after a 
 moment, " I think I'm glad she's here. It's a fact 
 the more to reckon with." 
 
 " You mean to see her then ? " 
 
 He sat with his eyes fixed, weighing it well. " You 
 must tell me two or three things first. Then I'll 
 choose I'll decide." 
 
 She waited for him to mention his requirements, 
 turning to her teapot, which had been drawing, so 
 that she could meanwhile hand him a cup. But for 
 some minutes, taking it and stirring it, he only 
 gazed and mused, as if his curiosities were so 
 numerous that he scarcely knew which to pick out. 
 Mrs. Beever at last, with a woman's sense for this, 
 met him exactly at the right point. " I must tell 
 you frankly that if four years ago she was a girl 
 most people admired " 
 
 He caught straight on. " She's still more won- 
 derful now ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever distinguished. " I don't know about 
 f wonderful,' but she wears really well. She carries 
 the years almost as you do, and her head better 
 than any young woman I've ever seen. Life is 
 somehow becoming to her. Every one's immensely 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 155 
 
 struck with her. She only needs to get what she 
 wants. She has in short a charm that I recog- 
 nise." 
 
 Her visitor stared at her words as if they had 
 been a framed picture; the reflected colour of it 
 made a light in his face. " And you speak as one 
 who, I remember, doesn't like her." 
 
 The lady of Eastmead faltered, but there was 
 help in her characteristic courage. " No I don't 
 like her." 
 
 " I see," Dennis considered. " May I ask then 
 why you invited her ? " 
 
 " For the most definite reason in the world. Mr. 
 Bream asked me to." 
 
 Dennis gave his hard smile. " Do you do every- 
 thing Mr. Bream asks ? " 
 
 " He asks so little ! " 
 
 " Yes," Dennis allowed " if that's a specimen ! 
 Does he like her still ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Just as much as. ever." 
 
 The young man was silent a few seconds. " Do 
 you mean he's in love with her ? " 
 
 " He never was in any degree." 
 
 Dennis looked doubtful. " Are you very sure ? " 
 
156 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Well," said his hostess, " I'm sure of the pre- 
 sent. That's quite enough. He's not in love with 
 her now I have the proof." 
 
 " The proof?" 
 
 Mrs. Beever waited a moment. " His request in 
 itself. If he were in love with her he never would 
 have made it." 
 
 There was a momentary appearance on her com- 
 panion's part of thinking this rather too fine ; but he 
 presently said : " You mean because he's completely 
 held by his death-bed vow to his wife ? " 
 
 " Completely held." 
 
 " There's no likelihood of his breaking it ? " 
 
 " Not the slightest." 
 
 Dennis Vidal exhaled a low, long breath which 
 evidently represented a certain sort of relief. 
 " You're very positive ; but I've a great respect for 
 your judgment." He thought an instant, then 
 he pursued abruptly : " Why did he wish her 
 invited ? " 
 
 " For reasons that, as he expressed them to me, 
 struck me as natural enough. For the sake of old 
 acquaintance for the sake of his wife's memory." 
 
 "He doesn't consider, then, that Mrs. Bream's 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 157 
 
 obsession, as you term it, had been in any degree an 
 apprehension of Rose ? " 
 
 " Why should he ? " Mrs. Beever asked. " Rose, 
 for poor Julia, was on the point of becoming your 
 wife." 
 
 " Ah ! for all that was to prevent ! " Dennis rue- 
 fully exclaimed. 
 
 " It was to prevent little enough, but Julia never 
 knew how little. Tony asked me a month ago if I 
 thought he might without awkwardness propose to 
 Miss Armiger a visit to the other house. I said 
 ' No, silly boy ! ' and he dropped the question ; but 
 a week later he came back to it. He confided to 
 me that he was ashamed for so long to have done 
 so little for her ; and she had behaved in a difficult 
 situation with such discretion and delicacy that to 
 have ' shunted ' her, as he said, so completely was a 
 kind of outrage to Julia's affection for her and a 
 slur upon hers for his wife. I said to him that 
 if it would help him a bit I would address her a 
 suggestion that she should honour me with her 
 company. He jumped at that, and I wrote. She 
 jumped, and here she is." 
 
 Poor Dennis, at this, gave a spring, as if the young 
 
158 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 lady had come into sight. Mrs. Beever reassured 
 him, but he was on his feet and he stood before 
 her. " This then is their first meeting ? " 
 
 " Dear, no ! they've met in London. He often 
 goes up." 
 
 " How often ? " 
 
 " Oh, irregularly. Sometimes twice a month." 
 
 " And he sees her every time ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever considered. " Every time ? I should 
 think hardly." 
 
 " Then every other ? " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea." 
 
 Dennis looked round the garden. " You say 
 you're convinced that, in the face of his promise, 
 he has no particular interest in her. You mean, 
 however, of course, but to the extent of marriage." 
 
 " I mean," said Mrs. Beever, " to the extent of 
 anything at all." She also rose ; she brought out her 
 whole story. " He's in love with another person." 
 
 " Ah," Dennis murmured, " that's none of my 
 business!" He nevertheless closed his eyes an 
 instant with the cool balm of it. " But it makes a 
 lot of difference." 
 
 She laid a kind hand on his arm. " Such a lot, I 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 159 
 
 hope, then, that you'll join our little party ? " He 
 looked about him again, irresolute, and his eyes fell 
 on the packages gathered hard by, of which the 
 nature was betrayed by a glimpse of flaxen curls 
 and waxen legs. She immediately enlightened him. 
 " Preparations for a birthday visit from the little 
 girl at the other house. She's coming over to 
 receive them." 
 
 Again he dropped upon a seat ; she stood there 
 and he looked up at her. "At last we've got to 
 business ! It's she I've come to ask about." 
 
 " And what do you wish to ask ? " 
 
 " How she goes on I mean in health." 
 
 " Not very well, I believe, just to-day ! " Mrs. 
 Beever laughed. 
 
 " Just to-day ? " 
 
 " She's reported to have a slight cold. But don't 
 be alarmed. In general she's splendid." 
 
 He hesitated. "Then you call it a good little 
 life ? " 
 
 " 1 call it a beautiful one ! " 
 
 " I mean she won't pop off ? " 
 
 " I can't guarantee that," said Mrs. Beever. 
 " But till she does " 
 
160 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Till she does ? " he asked, as she paused. 
 
 She paused a moment longer. " Well, it's a 
 comfort to see her. You'll do that for yourself." 
 
 "I shall do that for myself," Dennis repeated. 
 After a moment he went on : " To be utterly frank, 
 it was to do it I came." 
 
 " And not to see me ? Thank you ! But I quite 
 understand," said Mrs. Beever ; " you looked to me 
 to introduce you. Sit still where you are, and I 
 will." 
 
 " There's one thing more I must ask you. You 
 see; you know; you can tell me." He complied 
 but a minute with her injunction ; again, nervously, 
 he was on his feet. " Is Miss Armiger in love with 
 Mr. Bream ? " 
 
 His hostess turned away. " That's the one 
 question I can't answer." Then she faced him 
 again. " You must find out for yourself." 
 
 He stood looking at her. " How shall I find 
 out?" 
 
 " By watching her." 
 
 " Oh, I didn't come to do that ! " Dennis, on his 
 side, turned away ; he was visibly dissatisfied. But 
 he checked himself; before him rose a young man in 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 161 
 
 boating flannels, who appeared to have come up 
 from the river, who had advanced noiselessly across 
 the lawn and whom Mrs. Beever introduced with- 
 out ceremony as her " boy." Her boy blinked at 
 Dennis, to whose identity he received no clue ; and 
 her visitor decided on a course. " May I think over 
 what you've said to me and come back ? " 
 
 " I shall be very happy to see you again. But, in 
 this poor place, what will you do ? " 
 
 Dennis glanced at the river; then he appealed 
 to the young man. "Will you lend me your 
 boat ? " 
 
 " It'o mine," said Mrs. Beever, with decision. 
 " You're welcome to it." 
 
 " I'll take a little turn." Raising his hat, Dennis 
 went rapidly down to the stream. t 
 
 Paul Beever looked after him. " Hadn't I better 
 show him ? " he asked of his mother. 
 
 "You had better sit right down there." She 
 pointed with sharpness to the chair Dennis had 
 quitted, and her son submissively took possession 
 of it. 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 
XV 
 
 PAUL BEEVER was tall and fat, and his eyes, like his 
 mother's, were very small ; but more even than to his 
 mother nature had offered him a compensation for 
 this defect in the extension of the rest of the face. 
 He had large, bare, beardless cheeks and a wide, 
 clean, candid mouth, which the length of the smooth 
 upper lip caused to look as exposed as a bald head. 
 He had a deep fold of flesh round his uncovered 
 young neck, and his white flannels showed his legs 
 to be all the way down of the same thickness. He 
 promised to become massive early in life and even 
 to attain a remarkable girth. His great tastes were 
 for cigarettes and silence ; but he was, in spite of 
 his proportions, neither gross nor lazy. If he was 
 indifferent to his figure he was equally so to his 
 food, and he played cricket with his young towns- 
 men and danced hard with their wives and sisters. 
 Wilverley liked him and Tony Bream thought well 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 163 
 
 of him : it was only his mother who had not yet 
 made up her mind. He had done a good deal at 
 Oxford in not doing any harm, and he had subse- 
 quently rolled round the globe in the very groove 
 with which she had belted it. But it was exactly 
 in satisfying that he a little disappointed her : she 
 had provided so against dangers that she found it a 
 trifle dull to be so completely safe. It had become 
 with her a question not of how clever he was, but 
 of how stupid. Tony had expressed the view that 
 he was distinctly deep, but that might only have 
 been, in Tony's florid way, to show that he himself 
 was so. She would not have found it convenient to 
 have to give the boy an account of Mr. Vidal ; but 
 now that, detached from her purposes and respect- 
 ful of her privacies, he sat there without making 
 an inquiry, she was disconcerted enough slightly to 
 miss the opportunity to snub him. On this occa- 
 sion, however, she could steady herself with the 
 possibility that her hour would still come. He 
 began to eat a bun his row justified that; and 
 meanwhile she helped him to his tea, As she 
 handed him the cup she challenged him with some 
 sharpness. " Pray, when are you going to give it ? " 
 
164 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 He slowly masticated while he looked at her. 
 " When do you think I had better ? " 
 
 " Before dinner distinctly. One doesn't know 
 what may happen." 
 
 " Do you think anything at all will ? " he placidly 
 asked. 
 
 His mother waited before answering. " Nothing, 
 certainly, unless you take some trouble for it." 
 His perception of what she meant by this was 
 clearly wanting, so that after a moment she con- 
 tinued : " You don't seem to grasp that I've done 
 for you all I can do, and that the rest now depends 
 on yourself." 
 
 " Oh yes, mother, I grasp it," he said without 
 irritation. He took another bite of his bun and 
 then added : " Miss Armiger has made me quite 
 do that." 
 
 " Miss Armiger ? " Mrs. Beever stared ; she even 
 felt that her opportunity was at hand. " What in 
 the world has she to do with the matter ? " 
 
 " Why I've talked to her a lot about it." 
 
 "You mean she has talked to you a lot, I suppose. 
 It's immensely like her." 
 
 " It's like my dear mamma that's whom it's like," 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 165 
 
 said Paul. " She takes just the same view as yourself. 
 I mean the view that I've a great opening and that 
 I must make a great effort." 
 
 " And don't you see that for yourself? Do you 
 require a pair of women to tell you ? " Mrs. Beever 
 asked. 
 
 Paul, looking grave and impartial, turned her 
 question over while he stirred the tea. "No, not 
 exactly. But Miss Armiger puts everything so 
 well." 
 
 "She puts some things doubtless beautifully. 
 Still, I should like you to be conscious of some 
 better reason for making yourself acceptable to 
 Jean than that another young woman, however 
 brilliant, recommends it." 
 
 The young man continued to ruminate, and it 
 occurred to his mother, as it had occurred before, 
 that his imperturbability was perhaps a strength. 
 " I am," he said at last. " She seems to make clear 
 to me what I feel." 
 
 Mrs. Beever wondered. "You mean of course 
 Jean does." 
 
 " Dear no Miss Armiger ! " 
 
 The lady of Eastmead laughed out in her 
 
166 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 impatience. "I'm delighted to hear you feel any- 
 thing. You haven't often seemed to me to feel." 
 
 " I feel that Jean's very charming." 
 
 She laughed again at the way he made it sound. 
 " Is that the tone in which you think of telling her 
 so?" 
 
 "I think she'll take it from me in any tone," 
 Paul replied. " She has always been most kind to 
 me ; we're very good friends, and she knows what I 
 want." 
 
 " It's more than / do, my dear ! That's exactly 
 what you said to me six months ago when she 
 liked you so much that she asked you to let her 
 alone." 
 
 "She asked me to give her six months for a 
 definite answer, and she likes me the more for 
 having consented to do that," said Paul. "The 
 time I've waited has improved our relations." 
 
 " Well, then, they now must have reached per- 
 fection. You'll get her definite answer, therefore, 
 this very afternoon." 
 
 " When I present the ornament ? " 
 
 "When you present the ornament. You've got 
 it safe, I hope ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 167 
 
 Paul hesitated ; he took another bun. " I imagine 
 it's all right." 
 
 "Do you only ' imagine' with a thing of that 
 value ? What have you done with it ? " 
 
 Again the young man faltered. " I've given it to 
 Miss Armiger. She was afraid I'd lose it." 
 
 "And you were not afraid she would?" his 
 mother cried. 
 
 " Not a bit. She's to give it back to me on this 
 spot. She wants me too much to succeed." 
 
 Mrs. Beever was silent a little. "And how much 
 do you want her to ? " 
 
 Paul looked blank. " In what ? " 
 
 " In making a fool of you." Mrs. Beever 
 gathered herself. "Are you in love with Rose 
 Armiger, Paul ? " 
 
 He judiciously weighed the question. "Not in 
 the least. I talk with her of nobody and nothing 
 but Jean." 
 
 "And do you talk with Jean of nobody and 
 nothing but Rose ? " 
 
 Paul appeared to make an effort to remember. 
 " I scarcely talk with her at all. We're such old 
 friends that there's almost nothing to say." 
 
168 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " There's this to say, my dear that you take too 
 much for granted ! " 
 
 " That's just what Miss Armiger tells me. Give 
 me, please, some more tea." His mother took his 
 cup, but she look at him hard and searchingly. He 
 bore it without meeting her eyes, only turning his 
 own pensively to the different dainties on the table. 
 " If I do take a great deal for granted," he went on, 
 " you must remember that you brought me up to it." 
 
 Mrs. Beever found only after an instant a reply ; 
 then, however, she uttered it with an air of 
 triumph. " I may have brought you up but I 
 didn't bring up Jean ! " 
 
 " Well, it's not of her I'm speaking," the young 
 man good-humouredly rejoined; " though I might 
 remind you that she has been here again and again, 
 and month after month, and has always been taught 
 so far as you could teach her to regard me as 
 her inevitable fate. Have you any real doubt," he 
 went on, " of her recognising in a satisfactory way 
 that the time has come ? " 
 
 Mrs. Beever transferred her scrutiny to the 
 interior of her teapot. " No ! " she said after a 
 moment. 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE . 169 
 
 " Then what's the matter ? " 
 
 " The matter is that I'm nervous, and that your 
 stolidity makes me so. I want you to behave to me 
 as if you cared and I want you still more to behave 
 so to her." Paul made, in his seat, a movement in 
 which his companion caught, as she supposed, the 
 betrayal of a sense of oppression ; and at this her 
 own worst fear broke out. "Oh, don't tell me you 
 don't care for if you do I don't know what I shall 
 do to you ! " He looked at her with an air he some- 
 times had, which always aggravated her impatience, 
 an air of amused surprise, quickened to curiosity, 
 that there should be in the world organisms capable 
 of generating heat. She had thanked God, through 
 life, that she was cold-blooded, but now it seemed 
 to face her as a Nemesis that she was a volcano 
 compared with her son. This transferred to him 
 the advantage she had so long monopolised, that of 
 always seeing, in any relation or discussion, the 
 other party become the spectacle, while, sitting back 
 in her stall, she remained the spectator and even 
 the critic. She hated to perform to Paul as she had 
 made others perform to herself; but she determined 
 on the instant that, since she was condemned to do 
 
170 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 so, she would do it to some purpose. She would 
 have to leap through a hoop, but she would land on 
 her charger's back. The next moment Paul was 
 watching her while she shook her little flags at him. 
 " There's one thing, my dear, that I can give you 
 my word of honour for the fact that if the influence 
 that congeals, that paralyses you, happens by any 
 chance to be a dream of what may be open to you 
 in any other quarter, the sooner you utterly dismiss 
 that dream the better it will be not only for your 
 happiness, but for your dignity. If you entertain 
 with no matter how bad a conscience a vain fancy 
 that you've the smallest real chance of making the 
 smallest real impression on anybody else, all I can 
 say is that you prepare for yourself very nearly as 
 much discomfort as you prepare disgust for your 
 mother." She paused a moment ; she felt, before 
 her son's mild gape, like a trapezist in pink tights. 
 " How much susceptibility, I should like to know, 
 has Miss Armiger at her command for your great 
 charms?" 
 
 Paul showed her a certain respect ; he didn't clap 
 her that is he didn't smile. He felt something, 
 however, which was indicated, as it always was, by 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 171 
 
 the way his eyes grew smaller : they contracted at 
 times, in his big, fair face, to mere little conscious 
 points. These points he now directed to the region 
 of the house. "Well, mother," he quietly replied, 
 " if you would like to know it, hadn't you better ask 
 her directly ? " Rose Armiger had come into view ; 
 Mrs. Beever, turning, saw her approach, bare- 
 headed, in a fresh white dress, under a showy red 
 parasol. Paul, as she drew near, left his seat and 
 strolled to the hammock, into which he immediately 
 dropped. Extended there, while the great net 
 bulged and its attachments cracked with his weight, 
 he spoke with the same plain patience. " She has 
 come to give me up the ornament." 
 
XVI 
 
 " THE great cake has at last arrived, dear lady 1 " 
 Rose gaily announced to Mrs. Beever, who waited, 
 before acknowledging the news, long enough to 
 suggest to her son that she was perhaps about to 
 act on his advice. 
 
 " I'm much obliged to you for having gone to see 
 about it " was, however, what, after a moment, Miss 
 Armiger's hostess instructed herself to reply. 
 
 " It was an irresistible service. I shouldn't 
 have got over on such a day as this," said Rose, 
 "the least little disappointment to dear little 
 Jean." 
 
 " To say nothing, of course, of dear little Effie," 
 Mrs. Beever promptly rejoined. 
 
 " It comes to the same thing the occasion so 
 mixes them up. They're interlaced on the cake 
 with their initials and their candles. There are 
 plenty of candles for each," Rose laughed, " for 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 173 
 
 their years have been added together. It makes a 
 very pretty number ! " 
 
 " It must also make a very big cake," said Mrs. 
 Beever. 
 
 " Colossal." 
 
 " Too big to be brought out ? " 
 
 The girl considered. " Not so big, you know," 
 she archly replied, "as if the candles had to be 
 yours and mine ! " Then holding up the " orna- 
 ment" to Paul, she said: "I surrender you my 
 trust. Catch ! " she added with decision, making a 
 movement to toss him a small case in red morocco, 
 which, the next moment, in its flight through the 
 air, without altering his attitude, he intercepted with 
 one hand. 
 
 Mrs. Beever's excited mistrust dropped at the 
 mere audacity of this : there was something per- 
 ceptibly superior in the girl who could meet half 
 way, so cleverly, a suspicion she was quite con- 
 scious of and much desired to dissipate. The lady 
 of Eastmead looked at her hard, reading her desire 
 in the look she gave back. " Trust me, trust me," 
 her eyes seemed to plead ; " don't at all events 
 think me capable of any self-seeking that's stupid or 
 
174 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 poor. I may be dangerous to myself, but I'm not 
 so to others ; least of all am I so to you." She had 
 a presence that was, in its way, like Tony Bream's : 
 it made, simply and directly, a difference in any 
 personal question exposed to it. Under its action, 
 at all events, Mrs. Beever found herself suddenly 
 feeling that she could after all trust Rose if she 
 could only trust Paul. She glanced at that young 
 man as he lay in the hammock, and saw that in 
 spite of the familiarity of his posture which indeed 
 might have been assumed with a misleading purpose 
 his diminished pupils, fixed upon their visitor, 
 still had the expression imparted to them by her 
 own last address. She hesitated ; but while she 
 did so Rose came straight up to her and kissed her. 
 It was the very first time, and Mrs. Beever blushed 
 as if one of her secrets had been surprised. Rose 
 explained her impulse only with a smile ; but the 
 smile said vividly : " I'll polish him off! " 
 
 This brought a response to his mother's lips. 
 " I'll go and inspect the cake ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beever took her way to the house, and as 
 soon as her back was turned her son got out of the 
 hammock. An observer of the scene would not 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 175 
 
 have failed to divine that, with some profundity of 
 calculation, he had taken refuge there as a mute 
 protest against any frustration of his interview with 
 Rose. This young lady herself laughed out as she 
 saw him rise, and her laugh would have been, for 
 the same observer, a tribute to the natural art that 
 was mingled with his obvious simplicity. Paul 
 himself recognised its bearing and, as he came and 
 stood at the tea-table, acknowledged her criticism by 
 saying quietly : " I was afraid dear mamma would 
 take me away." 
 
 " On the contrary ; she has formally surrendered 
 you." 
 
 " Then you must let me perform her office and 
 help you to some tea." 
 
 He spoke with a rigid courtesy that was not 
 without its grace, and in the rich shade of her 
 umbrella, which she twirled repeatedly on her 
 shoulder, she looked down with detachment at the 
 table. " I'll do it for myself, thank you ; and I 
 should like you to return to your hammock." 
 
 " I left it on purpose," the young man said. 
 "Flat on my back, that way, I'm at a sort of 
 disadvantage in talking with you." 
 
176 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " That's precisely why I made the request. I 
 wish you to be flat on your back and to have 
 nothing whatever to reply." Paul immediately re- 
 traced his steps, but before again extending himself 
 he asked her, with the same grave consideration, 
 where in this case she would be seated. " I sha'n't 
 be seated at all," she answered; "I'll walk about 
 and stand over you and bully you." He tumbled 
 into his net, sitting up rather more than before ; and, 
 coming close to it, she put out her hand. " Let me 
 see that object again." He had in his lap the little 
 box he had received from her, and at this he passed 
 it back. She opened it, pressing on the spring, and, 
 inclining her head to one side, considered afresh the 
 mounted jewel that nestled in the white velvet. 
 Then, closing the case with a loud snap, she 
 restored it to him. " Yes, it's very good ; it's a 
 wonderful stone, and she knows. But that alone, 
 my dear, won't do it." She leaned, facing him, 
 against the tense ropes of the hammock, and he 
 looked up at her. "You take too much for 
 granted." 
 
 For a moment Paul answered nothing, but at last 
 he brought out : " That's just what I said to my 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 177 
 
 mother you had already said when she said just 
 the same." 
 
 Rose stared an instant ; then she smiled again. 
 " It's complicated, but I follow you ! She has been 
 waking you up." 
 
 "She knows," said her companion, "that you 
 advise me in the same sense as herself." 
 
 " She believes it at last her leaving us together 
 was a sign of that. I have at heart perfectly to 
 justify her confidence, for hitherto she has been so 
 blind to her own interest as to suppose that, in 
 these three weeks, you had been so tiresome as to 
 fall in love with me." 
 
 " I particularly told her I haven't at all." 
 
 Paul's tone had at moments of highest gravity 
 the gift of moving almost any interlocutor to mirth. 
 " I hope you'll be more convincing than that if you 
 ever particularly tell any one you have at all ! " the 
 girl exclaimed. She gave a slight push to the 
 hammock, turning away, and he swung there gently 
 a minute. 
 
 " You mustn't ask too much of me, you know," 
 he finally said, watching her as she went to the 
 table and poured out a cup of tea. 
 
 VOL. i M 
 
178 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 She drank a little and then, putting down the cup, 
 came back to him. " I should be asking too much 
 of you only if you were asking too much of her. 
 You're so far from that, and your position's so 
 perfect. It's too beautiful, you know, what you 
 offer." 
 
 " I know what I offer and I know what I don't," 
 Paul returned ; " and the person we speak of knows 
 exactly as well. All the elements are before her, 
 and if my position's so fine it's there for her to see 
 it quite as well as for you. I agree that I'm a 
 decent sort, and that, as things are going, my 
 business, my prospects, my guarantees of one kind 
 and another, are substantial. But just these things, 
 for years, have been made familiar to her, and 
 nothing, without a risk of greatly boring her, can 
 very well be added to the account. You and my 
 mother say I take too much for granted ; but I take 
 only that." This was a long speech for our young 
 man, and his want of accent, his passionless pauses, 
 made it seem a trifle longer. It had a visible effect 
 on Rose Armiger, whom he held there with widen- 
 ing eyes as he talked. There was an intensity in 
 her face, a bright sweetness that, when he stopped, 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 179 
 
 seemed to give itself out to him as if to encourage 
 him to go on. But he went on only to the extent 
 of adding ; " All I mean is that if I'm good enough 
 for her she has only to take me." 
 
 " You're good enough for the best girl in the 
 world," Rose said with the tremor of sincerity. 
 " You're honest and kind ; you're generous and 
 wise." She looked at him with a sort of intelligent 
 pleasure, that of a mind fine enough to be touched 
 by an exhibition of beauty even the most occult. 
 " You're so sound you're so safe that it makes 
 any relation with you a real luxury and a thing to 
 be grateful for." She shed on him her sociable 
 approval, treating him as a happy product, speaking 
 of him as of another person. " I shall always be 
 glad and proud that you've been, if only for an 
 hour, my friend ! " 
 
 Paul's response to this demonstration consisted in 
 getting slowly and heavily to his feet. "Do you 
 think I like what you do to me ? " he abruptly 
 demanded. 
 
 It was a sudden new note, but it found her quite 
 ready. " I don't care whether you like it or not ! 
 It's my duty, and it's yours it's the right thing." 
 
i8o THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 He stood there in his tall awkwardness ; he 
 spoke as if he had not heard her. " It's too 
 strange to have to take it from you." 
 
 " Everything's strange and the truest things are 
 the strangest. Besides, it isn't so extraordinary as 
 that comes to. It isn't as if you had an objection to 
 her ; it isn't as if she weren't beautiful and good 
 really cultivated and altogether charming. It isn't 
 as if, since I first saw her here, she hadn't developed 
 in the most admirable way, and also hadn't, by her 
 father's death, come into three thousand a year and 
 into an opportunity for looking, with the red gold of 
 her hair, in the deepest, daintiest, freshest mourning, 
 lovelier far, my dear boy, than, with all respect, any 
 girl who can ever have strayed before, or ever will 
 again, into any Wilverley bank. It isn't as if, 
 granting you do care for me, there were the smallest 
 chance, should you try to make too much of it, of my 
 ever doing anything but listen to you with a pained 
 * Oh, dear ! ' pat you affectionately on the back and 
 push you promptly out of the room." Paul Beever, 
 when she thus encountered him, quitted his place, 
 moving slowly outside the wide cluster of chairs, 
 while Rose, within it, turned as he turned, pressing 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 181 
 
 him with deeper earnestness. He stopped behind 
 one of the chairs, holding its high back and now 
 meeting her eyes. " If you do care for me," she 
 went on with her warm voice, " there's a magnificent 
 way you can show it. You can show it by putting 
 into your appeal to Miss Martle something that she 
 can't resist." 
 
 " And what may she not be able to resist ? " Paul 
 inquired, keeping his voice steady, but shaking his 
 chair a little. 
 
 " Why, you if you'll only be a bit personal, a bit 
 passionate, have some appearance of really desiring 
 her, some that your happiness really depends on 
 her." Paul looked as if he were taking a lesson, and 
 she gave it with growing assurance. "Show her 
 some tenderness, some eloquence, try some touch of 
 the sort that goes home. Speak to her, for God's 
 sake, the words that women like. We all like them, 
 and we all feel them, and you can do nothing good 
 without them. Keep well in sight that what you 
 must absolutely do is please her." 
 
 Paul seemed to fix his little eyes on this remote 
 aim. " Please her and please you." 
 
 "It sounds odd, yes, lumping us together. But 
 
182 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 that doesn't matter," said Rose. "The effect of 
 your success will be that you'll unspeakably help 
 and comfort me. It's difficult to talk about it my 
 grounds are so deep, deep down." She hesitated, 
 casting about her, asking herself how far she might 
 go. Then she decided, growing a little pale with 
 the effort. " I've an idea that has become a passion 
 with me. There's a right I must see done there's 
 a wrong I must make impossible. There's a loyalty 
 I must cherish there's a memory I must protect. 
 That's all I can say." She stood there in her vivid 
 meaning like the priestess of a threatened altar. " If 
 that girl becomes your wife why then I'm at last 
 at rest!" 
 
 "You get, by my achievement, what you want I 
 see. And, please, what do / get ? " Paul presently 
 asked. 
 
 " You ? " The blood rushed back to her face with 
 the shock of this question. "Why, you get Jean 
 Martle ! " He turned away without a word, and at 
 the same moment, in the distance, she saw the person 
 whose name she had just uttered descend the great 
 square steps. She hereupon slipped through the 
 circle of chairs and rapidly met her companion, who 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 183 
 
 stopped short as she approached. Rose looked him 
 straight in the eyes. "If you give me the peace I 
 pray for, I'll do anything for you in life ! " She left 
 him staring and passed down to the river, where, on 
 the little bridge, Tony Bream was in sight, waving 
 his hat to her as he came from the other house. 
 
XVII 
 
 ROSE ARMIGER, in a few moments, was joined by 
 Tony, and they came up the lawn together to where 
 Jean Martle stood talking with Paul. Here, at the 
 approach of the master of Bounds, this young lady 
 anxiously inquired if Effie had not been well enough 
 to accompany him. She had expected to find her 
 there; then, failing that, had taken for granted he 
 would bring her. 
 
 " I've left the question, my dear Jean, in her nurse's 
 hands," Tony said. " She had been bedizened from 
 top to toe, and then, on some slight appearance of 
 being less well, had been despoiled, denuded and 
 disappointed. She's a poor little lamb of sacrifice. 
 They were at her again, when I came away, with the 
 ribbons and garlands; but there was apparently 
 much more to come, and I couldn't answer for it that 
 a single sneeze wouldn't again lay everything low. 
 It's in the bosom of the gods. I couldn't wait." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 185 
 
 " You were too impatient to be with dear, de- 
 lightful us" Rose suggested. 
 
 Tony, with a successful air of very light comedy, 
 smiled and inclined himself. " I was too impatient 
 to be with you, Miss Armiger." The lapse of four 
 years still presented him in such familiar mourning 
 as might consort with a country nook on a summer 
 afternoon ; but it also allowed undiminished relief to 
 a manner of addressing women which was clearly 
 instinctive and habitual and which, at the same time, 
 by good fortune, had the grace of flattery without 
 phrases and of irony without impertinence. He was 
 a little older, but he was not heavier ; he was a little 
 worn, but he was not worn dull. His presence was, 
 anywhere and at any time, as much as ever the clock 
 at the moment it strikes. Paul Beever's little eyes, 
 after he appeared, rested on Rose with an expression 
 which might have been that of a man counting the 
 waves produced on a sheet of water by the plunge 
 of a large object. For any like ripple on the fine 
 surface of the younger girl he appeared to have no 
 attention. 
 
 "I'm glad that remark's not addressed to me," 
 Jean said gaily; "for I'm afraid I must im- 
 
186 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 mediately withdraw from you the light of my 
 society." 
 
 " On whom then do you mean to bestow it ? " 
 
 " On your daughter, this moment. I must go and 
 judge for myself of her condition." 
 
 Tony looked at her more seriously. " If you're at 
 all really troubled about her I'll go back with you. 
 You're too beautifully kind; they told me of your 
 having been with her this morning." 
 
 " Ah, you were with her this morning ? " Rose 
 asked of Jean in a manner to which there was a clear 
 effort to impart the intonation of the casual, but which 
 had in it something that made the person addressed 
 turn to her with a dim surprise. Jean stood there 
 in her black dress and her fair beauty; but her 
 wonder was not of a sort to cloud the extraordinary 
 radiance of her youth. " For ever so long. Don't 
 you know I've made her my peculiar and exclusive 
 charge ? " 
 
 " Under the pretext," Tony went on, to Rose, " of 
 saving her from perdition. I'm supposed to be in 
 danger of spoiling her, but Jean treats her quite as 
 spoiled; which is much the greater injury of the 
 two." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 187 
 
 " Don't go back, at any rate, please," Rose said to 
 him with soft persuasion. " I never see you, you 
 know, and I want just now particularly to speak to 
 you." Tony instantly expressed submission, and 
 Rose, checking Jean, who, at this, in silence, turned 
 to take her way to the bridge, reminded Paul Beever 
 that she had just heard from him of his having, on 
 his side, some special purpose of an interview with 
 Miss Martle. 
 
 At this Paul grew very red. " Oh yes, I should 
 rather like to speak to you, please," he said to Jean. 
 
 She had paused half way down the little slope ; 
 she looked at him frankly and kindly. "Do you 
 mean immediately ? " 
 
 " As soon as you've time." 
 
 " I shall have time as soon as I've been to Effie," 
 Jean replied. " I want to bring her over. There 
 are four dolls waiting for her." 
 
 " My dear child," Rose familiarly exclaimed, " at 
 home there are about forty! Don't you give her 
 one every day or two ? " she went on to Tony. 
 
 Her question didn't reach him ; he was too much 
 interested in Paul's arrangement with Jean, on 
 whom his eyes were fixed, " Go, then to be the 
 
i88 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 sooner restored to us. And do bring the kid ! " He 
 spoke with jollity. 
 
 " I'm going in to change perhaps I shall presently 
 find you here," Paul put in. 
 
 "You'll certainly find me, dear Paul I shall be 
 quick ! " the girl called back. And she lightly went 
 her way while Paul walked off to the house and the 
 two others, standing together, watched her a minute. 
 In spite of her black dress, of which the thin, 
 voluminous tissue fluttered in the summer breeze, 
 she seemed to shine in the afternoon light. They 
 saw her reach the bridge, where, in the middle, she 
 turned and tossed back at them a wave of her hand- 
 kerchief ; after which she dipped to the other side 
 and disappeared. 
 
 " Mayn't I give you some tea ? " Rose said to her 
 companion. She nodded at the bright display of 
 Mrs. Beever's hospitality ; Tony gratefully accepted 
 her offer and they strolled on side by side. " Why 
 have you ceased to call me ' Rose ' ? " she then 
 suddenly demanded. 
 
 Tony started so that he practically stopped ; on 
 which she promptly halted. "Have I, my dear 
 woman? I didn't know " He looked at her 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 189 
 
 and, looking at her, after a moment flagrantly 
 coloured : he had the air of a man who sees some- 
 thing that operates as a warning. What Tony 
 Bream saw was a circumstance of which he had 
 already had glimpses ; but for some reason or other 
 it was now written with a largeness that made it 
 resemble a printed poster on a wall. It might have 
 been, from the way he took it in, a big yellow 
 advertisement to the publicity of whose message 
 no artifice of type was wanting. This message was 
 simply Rose Armiger's whole face, exquisite and 
 tragic in its appeal, stamped with a sensibility that 
 was almost abject, a tenderness that was more than 
 eager. The appeal was there for an instant with 
 rare intensity, and what Tony felt in response to it 
 he felt without fatuity or vanity. He could meet it 
 only with a compassion as unreserved as itself. He 
 looked confused, but he looked kind, and his com- 
 panion's eyes lighted as with the sense of something 
 that at last even in pure pity had come out to her. 
 It was as if she let him know that since she had 
 been at Eastmead nothing whatever had come 
 out. 
 
 "When I was at Bounds four years ago," she 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 said, "you called me Rose and you called our friend 
 there " she made a movement in the direction Jean 
 had taken " nothing at all. Now you call her by 
 name and you call me nothing at all." 
 
 Tony obligingly turned it over. " Don't I call 
 you Miss Armiger ? " 
 
 " Is that anything at all ? " Rose effectively asked. 
 "You're conscious of some great difference." 
 
 Tony hesitated ; he walked on. " Between you 
 and Jean ? " 
 
 "Oh, the difference between me and Jean goes 
 without saying. What I mean is the difference 
 between my having been at Wilverley then and my 
 being here now." 
 
 They reached the tea-table, and Tony, dropping 
 into a chair, removed his hat. " What have I called 
 you when we've met in London ? " 
 
 She stood before him closing her parasol. " Don't 
 you even know ? You've called me nothing." She 
 proceeded to pour out tea for him, busying herself 
 delicately with Mrs. Beever's wonderful arrangements 
 for keeping things hot. " Have you by any chance 
 been conscious of what I've called you?" she 
 said. 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE igi 
 
 Tony let himself, in his place, be served. " Doesn't 
 every one in the wide world call me the inevitable 
 1 Tony ' ? The name's dreadful for a banker ; it 
 should have been a bar for me to that career. It's 
 fatal to dignity. But then of course I haven't any 
 dignity." 
 
 " I think you haven't much," Rose replied. " But 
 I've never seen any one get on so well without it ; 
 and, after all, you've just enough to make Miss 
 Martle recognise it." 
 
 Tony wondered. " By calling me ' Mr. Bream ' ? 
 Oh, for her I'm a greybeard and I address her as 
 I addressed her as a child. Of course I admit," he 
 added with an intention vaguely pacific, "that she 
 has entirely ceased to be that." 
 
 " She's wonderful," said Rose, handing him some- 
 thing buttered and perversely cold. 
 
 He assented even to the point of submissively 
 helping himself. " She's a charming creature." 
 
 " I mean she's wonderful about your little girl." 
 
 11 Devoted, isn't she ? That dates from long ago. 
 She has a special sentiment about her." 
 
 Rose was silent a moment. " It's a little life to 
 preserve and protect," she then said. " Of course ! " 
 
I 9 2 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " Why, to that degree that she seems scarcely to 
 think the child safe even with its infatuated 
 daddy!" 
 
 Still on her feet beyond the table near which he 
 sat, she had put up her parasol again, and she 
 looked across at him from under it. Their eyes 
 met, and he again felt himself in the presence of 
 what, in them, shortly before, had been so deep, so 
 exquisite. It represented something that no lapse 
 could long quench something that gave out the 
 measureless white ray of a light steadily revolving. 
 She could sometimes turn it away, but it was always 
 somewhere; and now it covered him with a great 
 cold lustre that made everything for the moment 
 look hard and ugly made him also feel the chill of 
 a complication for which he had not allowed. He 
 had had plenty of complications in life, but he had 
 likewise had ways of dealing with them that were in 
 general clever, easy, masterly indeed often really 
 pleasant. He got up nervously: there would be 
 nothing pleasant in any way of dealing with this 
 one. 
 
XVIII 
 
 CONSCIOUS of the importance of not letting his 
 nervousness show, he had no sooner pointlessly 
 risen than he took possession of another chair. He 
 dropped the question of Effie's security, remembering 
 there was a prior one as to which he had still to 
 justify himself. He brought it back with an air of 
 indulgence which scarcely disguised, however, its 
 present air of irrelevance. " I'll gladly call you, my 
 dear Rose, anything you like, but you mustn't think 
 I've been capricious or disloyal. I addressed you 
 of old at the last in the way in which it seemed 
 most natural to address so close a friend of my wife's. 
 But I somehow think of you here now rather as a 
 friend of my own." 
 
 " And that makes me so much more distant ? " 
 Rose asked, twirling her parasol. 
 
 Tony, whose plea had been quite extemporised, felt 
 a slight confusion, which his laugh but inadequately 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
194 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 covered. " I seem to have uttered a betise but I 
 haven't. I only mean that a different title belongs, 
 somehow, to a different character." 
 
 " I don't admit my character to be different," 
 Rose said ; " save perhaps in the sense of its having 
 become a little intensified. If I was here before as 
 Julia's friend, I'm here still more as Julia's friend 
 now." 
 
 Tony meditated, with all his candour; then he 
 gave a highly cordial, even if a slightly illogical 
 assent. " Of course you are from your own point 
 of view." He evidently only wanted to meet her as 
 far on the way to a quiet life as he could manage. 
 " Dear little Julia ! " he exclaimed in a manner which, 
 as soon as he had spoken, he felt to be such a fresh 
 piece of pointlessness that, to carry it off, he got up 
 again. 
 
 "Dear little Julia!" Rose echoed, speaking out 
 loud and clear, but with an expression which, unlike 
 Tony's, would have left on the mind of an ignorant 
 auditor no doubt of its conveying a reference to the 
 unforgotten dead. 
 
 Tony strolled towards the hammock. "May I 
 smoke a cigarette ? " She approved with a gesture 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 195 
 
 that was almost impatient, and while he lighted he 
 pursued with genial gaiety: "I'm not going to 
 allow you to pretend that you doubt of my having 
 dreamed for years of the pleasure of seeing you here 
 again, or of the diabolical ingenuity that I exercised 
 to enable your visit to take place in the way most 
 convenient to both of us. You used to say the 
 queen-mother disliked you. You see to-day how 
 much ! " 
 
 " She has ended by finding me useful," said Rose. 
 " That brings me exactly to what I told you just 
 now I wanted to say to you." 
 
 Tony had gathered the loose net of the hammock 
 into a single strand, and, while he smoked, had 
 lowered himself upon it, sideways, in a posture 
 which made him sit as in a swing. He looked sur- 
 prised and even slightly disconcerted, like a man 
 asked to pay twice. "Oh, it isn't then what you 
 did say ?" 
 
 " About your use of my name ? No, it isn't that 
 it's something quite different." Rose waited; she 
 stood before him as she had stood before her previous 
 interlocutor. "It's to let you know the interest I 
 take in Paul Beever. I take the very greatest." 
 
196 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 " You do ? " said Tony approvingly. " Well, you 
 might go in for something worse ! " 
 
 He spoke with a cheerfulness that covered all 
 the ground; but she repeated the words as if 
 challenging their sense. " I might ' go in ' ? " 
 
 Her accent struck a light from them, put in an 
 idea that had not been Tony's own. Thus pre- 
 sented, the idea seemed happy, and, in his incon- 
 trollable restlessness, his face more vividly bright- 
 ening, he rose to it with a zeal that brought him for 
 a third time to his feet. He smiled ever so kindly 
 and, before he could measure his words or his 
 manner, broke out : " If you only really would, 
 you know, my dear Rose ! " 
 
 In a quicker flash he became aware that, as if 
 he had dealt her a blow in the face, her eyes had 
 filled with tears. It made the taste of his joke too 
 bad. "Are you gracefully suggesting that I shall 
 carry Mr. Beever off?" she demanded. 
 
 " Not from me, my dear never ! " Tony blushed 
 and felt how much there was to rectify in some of 
 his impulses. " I think a lot of him and I want to 
 keep my hand on him. But I speak of him frankly, 
 always, as a prize, and I want something awfully 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 197 
 
 good to happen to him. If you like him," he 
 hastened laughingly to add, "of course it does 
 happen I see ! " 
 
 He attenuated his meaning, but he had already 
 exposed it, and he could perceive that Rose, with 
 a kind of tragic perversity, was determined to get 
 the full benefit, whatever it might be, of her 
 impression or her grievance. She quickly did her 
 best to look collected. " You think he's safe then, 
 and solid, and not so stupid as he strikes one at 
 first ? " 
 
 " Stupid ? not a bit. He's a statue in the block 
 he's a sort of slumbering giant. The right sort 
 of tact will call him to life, the right sort of hand 
 will work him out of the stone." 
 
 "And it escaped you just now, in a moment of 
 unusual expansion, that the right sort are mine ? " 
 
 Tony puffed away at his cigarette, smiling at her 
 resolutely through its light smoke. "You do in- 
 justice to my attitude about you. There isn't an 
 hour of the day that I don't indulge in some tribute 
 or other to your great ability." 
 
 Again there came into the girl's face her strange 
 alternative look the look of being made by her 
 
ig8 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 passion so acquainted with pain that even in the 
 midst of it she could flower into charity. Sadly 
 and gently she shook her head. " Poor Tony ! " 
 Then she added in quite a different tone: "What 
 do you think of the difference of our ages ? " 
 
 "Yours and Paul's ? It isn't worth speaking of!" 
 " That's sweet of you considering that he's only 
 twenty-two. However, I'm not yet thirty," she 
 went on ; " and, of course, to gain time, one 
 might press the thing hard." She hesitated again ; 
 after which she continued : " It's awfully vulgar, 
 this way, to put the dots on the i's, but as it was 
 you, and not I, who began it, I may ask if you 
 really believe that if one should make a bit of an 
 
 effort ?" And she invitingly paused, to leave 
 
 him to complete a question as to which it was 
 natural she should feel a delicacy. 
 
 Tony's face, for an initiated observer, would have 
 shown that he was by this time watching for a 
 trap; but it would also have shown that, after a 
 moment's further reflection, he didn't particularly 
 care if the trap should catch him. " If you take 
 such an interest in Paul," he replied with no 
 visible abatement of his preference for the stand- 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 199 
 
 point of pleasantry, " you can calculate better than 
 I the natural results of drawing him out. But what 
 I can assure you is that nothing would give me 
 greater pleasure than to see you so happily ' estab- 
 lished/ as they say so honourably married, so 
 affectionately surrounded and so thoroughly pro- 
 tected." 
 
 " And all alongside of you here ? " cried Rose. 
 
 Tony faltered, but he went on. " It's precisely 
 your being ' alongside' of one that would enable 
 one to see you." 
 
 " It would enable one to see you it would have 
 that particular merit," said Rose. " But my interest 
 in Mr. Beever hasn't at all been of a kind to prompt 
 me to turn the possibility over for myself. You 
 can readily imagine how far I should have been 
 in that case from speaking of it to you. The 
 defect of your charming picture," she presently 
 added, "is that an important figure is absent 
 from it." 
 
 " An important figure ? " 
 
 "JeanMartle." 
 
 Tony looked at the tip of his cigarette. "You 
 mean because there was at one time so much 
 
200 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 planning and plotting over the idea that she should 
 make a match with Paul ? " 
 
 " At one time, my dear Tony ? " Rose exclaimed. 
 " There's exactly as much as ever, and I'm already 
 in these mere three weeks in the very thick of 
 it ! Did you think the question had been quite 
 dropped ? " she inquired. 
 
 Tony faced her serenely enough in part because 
 he felt the extreme importance of so doing. " I 
 simply haven't heard much about it. Mrs. Beever 
 used to talk about it. But she hasn't talked of late." 
 
 "She talked, my good man, no more than half 
 an hour ago ! " Rose replied. 
 
 Tony winced; but he stood bravely up; his 
 cigarettes were an extreme resource. " Really ? 
 And what did she say to you ? " 
 
 "She said nothing to me but she said every- 
 thing to her son. She said to him, I mean, that 
 she'll never forgive him if she doesn't hear from 
 him an hour or two hence that he has at last 
 successfully availed himself, with Miss Martle, of 
 this auspicious day, as well as of the fact that 
 he's giving her, in honour of it, something remark- 
 ably beautiful." 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 201 
 
 Tony listened with marked attention, but without 
 meeting his companion's eyes. He had again seated 
 himself in the hammock, with his feet on the ground 
 and his head thrown back ; and he smoked freely, 
 holding it with either hand. "What is he giving 
 her ? " he asked after a moment 
 
 Rose turned away; she mechanically did some- 
 thing at the table. " Shouldn't you think she'd 
 show it to you ? " she threw over her shoulder. 
 
 While this shoulder, sensibly cold for the instant, 
 was presented, he watched her. " I daresay if she 
 accepts it." 
 
 The girl faced him again. "And won't she 
 accept it ? " 
 
 " Only I should say if she accepts him." 
 
 " And won't she do that ? " 
 
 Tony made a " ring " with his cigarette. " The 
 thing will be for him to get her to." 
 
 " That's exactly," said Rose, "what I want you 
 to do." 
 
 " Me ? " He now stared at her. " How can I ? " 
 
 "I won't undertake to tell you how I'll leave 
 that to your ingenuity. Wouldn't it be a matter 
 just an easy extension of existing relations ? You 
 
202 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 saw just now that he appealed to her for his chance 
 and that she consented to give it to him. What 
 I wanted you to hear from me is that I feel how 
 much interested you'll be in learning that this 
 chance is of the highest importance for . him 
 and that I know with how good a conscience 
 you'll throw your weight into the scale of his 
 success." 
 
 "My weight with the young lady? Don't you 
 rather exaggerate my weight ? " Tony asked. 
 
 "That question can only be answered by your 
 trying it. It's a situation in which not to take an 
 interest is well, not your duty, you know," said 
 Rose. 
 
 Tony gave a smile which he felt to be a little pale ; 
 but there was still good-humour in the tone in which 
 he protestingly and portentously murmured: "Oh, 
 my < duty' !" 
 
 "Surely; if you see no objection to poor Mrs. 
 Beever's at last gathering the fruit of the tree she 
 long ago so fondly and so carefully planted. Of 
 course if you should frankly tell me you see one 
 
 that I don't know !" She looked ingenuous 
 
 and hard. " Do you, by chance, see one ? " 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE 203 
 
 "None at all. I've never known a tree of 
 Mrs. Beever's of which the fruit hasn't been 
 sweet." 
 
 " Well, in the present case sweet or bitter ! it's 
 ready to fall. This is the hour the years have 
 
 pointed to. You think highly of Paul " 
 
 Tony Bream took her up. " And I think highly 
 of Jean, and therefore I must see them through ? I 
 catch your meaning. But have you in a matter 
 composed, after all, of ticklish elements thought of 
 the danger of one's meddling ? " 
 
 " A great deal." A troubled vision of this danger 
 dawned even now in Rose's face. " But I've thought 
 still more of one's possible prudence one's occa- 
 sional tact." Tony, for a moment, made no reply ; 
 he quitted the hammock and began to stroll about. 
 Her anxious eyes followed him, and presently she 
 brought out : " Have you really been supposing that 
 they've given it up ? " 
 
 Tony remained silent; but at last he stopped 
 short, and there was an effect of returning from an 
 absence in the way he abruptly demanded : " That 
 who have given up what ? " 
 
 " That Mrs. Beever and Paul have given up what 
 
204 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 we're talking about the idea of his union with 
 Jean." 
 
 Tony hesitated. " I haven't been supposing any- 
 thing at all ! " Rose recognised the words for the 
 first he had ever uttered to her that expressed even 
 a shade of irritation, and she was unable to conceal 
 that she felt, on the spot, how memorable this fact 
 was to make them. Tony's immediate glance at her 
 showed equally that he had instantly become aware 
 of their so affecting her. He did, however, nothing 
 to modify the impression : he only stood a moment 
 looking across the river; after which he observed 
 quietly : " Here she is on the bridge." 
 
 He had walked nearer to the stream, and Rose 
 had moved back to the tea-table, from which the view 
 of the bridge was obstructed. " Has she brought 
 the child ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't make out she may have her by the 
 hand." He approached again, and as he came he 
 said : " Your idea is really that I should speak to 
 her now ? " 
 
 "Before she sees Paul?" Rose met his eyes; 
 there was a quick anguish of uncertainty in all her 
 person. " I leave that to you since you cast a 
 
THE OTHER HOUSE . 205 
 
 doubt on the safety of your doing so. I leave it," 
 said Rose, "to your judgment I leave it to your 
 honour." 
 
 " To my honour ? " Tony wondered with a showy 
 jerk of his head what the deuce his honour had to 
 do with it. 
 
 She went on without heeding him. " My idea is 
 only that, whether you speak to her or not, she shall 
 accept him. Gracious heavens, she must!" Rose 
 broke out with passion. 
 
 " You take an immense interest in it ! " Tony 
 laughed. 
 
 "Take the same, then, yourself, and the thing 
 will come off." They stood a minute looking at 
 each other, and more passed between them than had 
 ever passed before. The result of it was that Rose 
 had a drop from her strenuous height to sudden and 
 beautiful gentleness. " Tony Bream, I trust you." 
 
 She had uttered the word in a way that had the 
 power to make him flush. He answered peaceably, 
 however, laughing again : " I hope so, my dear Rose !" 
 Then in a moment he added : ." I will speak." He 
 glanced again at the circuitous path from the bridge, 
 but Jean had not yet emerged from the shrubbery 
 
206 THE OTHER HOUSE 
 
 by which it was screened. "If she brings Effie 
 will you take her ? " 
 
 With her ominous face the girl considered. " I'm 
 afraid I can't do that." 
 
 Tony gave a gesture of impatience. " Good God, 
 how you stand off from the poor little thing ! " 
 
 Jean at this moment came into sight without the 
 child. " I shall never take her from her ! " And 
 Rose Armiger turned away. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 London and Edinburgh 
 


 
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