RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
"Beneath The Passion Flower," Robert M. McBride & Co., New York, 1932
"Beneath The Passion Flower," Robert M. McBride & Co., New York, 1932
"Beneath the Passion Flower "is a psychological, gothic-tinged domestic drama centered on Phenice Campion, the last surviving member of a once-prestigious but now ruined family. The novel blends mystery, emotional tension, and social critique, all framed by the symbolic presence of the passion flower—a motif tied to past scandal and present danger.
THE passion flower overhung the white portico of Campion House and concealed the graceful pillars of the door, and spread, far away, in opulent magnificence, over the old beautifully laid small bricks, purplish pink now in the full September light which was honey sweet and thick and golden as luscious wine.
They all felt a kind of vicarious insult in having to pass under the passion flower; it was a good many years since any of them had been to Campion House, and they were startled to see how this evil-omened plant had grown.
There were four of them, all sleek, elegant people, whose sleek elegant cars waited in the neglected drive, by the overgrown borders of extravagant lurid dahlias, lilies and poppies.
Mrs. Marais, exquisite, reserved, out of humour, sixty, Mr. Folliot, middle-aged, modern, anxious, and Sir Christopher Purchas, older than General Thorpe, worried, fussy, ill at ease; these were severally the aunt and uncle of Phenice Campion (by marriage, not blood relations as they were glad to think), her late father's lawyer, and his oldest friend; they kept together like a phalanx, hostile to the house and the mistress of the house, not friendly with each other, agitated by their mission, outraged, perhaps, by the passion flower.
The manservant who admitted them was grave and shabby; it was a long time since everything had begun to look shabby in Campion House. They were admitted, these people who looked like and really were, a delegation, into the large room on the ground floor that was remote from the sun and seemed cool and silent; here the shabbiness did not show, for everything was old and beautiful and costly.
The three men began mentally to price the tapestries, the vases, the furniture; but Mrs. Marais glanced up at the ceiling.
Just as she had expected, it was unaltered; Tony had never had the good taste, the decency to alter it—all these years!
"Robert," she said acridly, "look at the ceiling."
They all glanced up, alert for offence
On a ground of soft blue some "amorini" in the Italian style, delicately coloured in rose, opal and gold, floated among wisps of orchid hued clouds, and all round them, wreathing the ceiling, were trails and wreaths of passion flowers painted with an exquisite fidelity and a loving finish.
Sir Christopher, who disliked Mrs. Marais, ventured on a faint defence of his friend.
"Tony never used this room," he said, "and Phenice, of course, doesn't know anything about it."
"I wonder," answered Mrs. Marais dryly.
Mr. Folliot, with his trained sense of accuracy, confirmed Sir Christopher:
"I don't think Miss Campion does know anything."
General Thorpe was fingering the arras, lovely mauve, pink and cinnamon tinted, faded to the delicious harmony of an October rose.
"Wonder Tony didn't sell all this stuff," he remarked. "There's some good things here—"
Mrs. Marais shrugged.
"How long are we to be kept waiting ?" she wondered plaintively. "So like Phenice to prolong something disagreeable."
"Well," remarked General Thorpe, running his finger over the patina of a Sheraton table, "I hope we're not here on a fool's errand. I hope she is prepared to sell, and at my price—"
"Oh, certainly, certainly," Mr. Folliot hastened to assure them all. "Miss Campion is now absolutely sensible —she sees that she must sell the place and that your offer, sir, is most generous."
"What is she going to do herself?" asked Mrs. Marais. "I won't have her."
Mr. Folliot was discreetly silent, it was not for him to answer that question; he knew that Anthony Campion and his daughter had been long estranged from their relatives and gone their own reckless way without any reference to any one, and it seemed clear enough that Phenice Campion would continue on this course; the lawyer was used to dramas and enjoyed them; he thought this a peculiarly interesting drama, the girl was so alone, so defiant, so absolutely the last of an old dominant family; Mrs. Marais was the widow of her mother's brother, General Thorpe was the husband of her mother's sister, an ailing ineffective woman; there was no one else; these two people had come to make the final arrangements for buying Campion House and the contents, out of charity, they said, for the wretched girl involved in the débacle of Tony Campion's spendthrift life and sudden death; but Mr. Folliot knew that they were going to drive hard bargains.
Phenice Campion had at first refused the cold offer of her relations, but lately had, by sheer durance of circumstances, accepted, and had asked them and Mr. Folliot and Sir Christopher to come to Campion House, where she had lived during the three months since her father's death, and conclude the bargain.
An atrocious moment for the girl; Mr. Folliot could see that; but she had insisted on doing it; so easily he could have managed everything in his office.
Mrs. Marais had gone to the tall window and, looking out into the vivid garden, she saw something that interested her exceedingly.
A man was standing between the white pillars, under the passion flower, waiting for admission; Mrs. Marais, a society woman who knew, she thought, all the friends of the Campions, did not know this man; yet he did not look at all the kind of person to be a mere local resident of a small place like Earl's Minton, where Campion House was the only residence of the least importance. While she watched the door was opened, and a few seconds afterwards the man turned away; he had been refused admission.
Mrs. Marais pointed him out to General Thorpe, who did not know him either; they gazed after the tall, heavy, yet imposing figure walking away past the beds of flamboyant flowers.
"Not one of her set," said Mrs. Marais. "Who is he? What is he doing here?"
General Thorpe made a grimace.
"I suppose," he answered confidentially, "there isn't the least chance of a good marriage for Phenice?"
"Not the least. Every one knows she never had a decent offer. Tony's affairs were too well known—and then she made herself a little too conspicuous with Miles Fenton."
"Will she marry him?" asked General Thorpe uneasily.
"My dear Robert 1 The man is done for—going to open a catch penny motor shop in Paris **
They moved back into the room; it was really intolerable of the girl to keep them waiting so long, but only what was to be expected of Phenice Campion.
As their irritation increased, their reserves vanished; they came naturally to discuss the family that had come to an end in the girl in whose house they were; Sir Christopher, even, though he had been a friend, the only serious, sober friend of Tony Campion, had never really approved of Phenice.
They found themselves looking, with real curiosity, at the lovely objects in the room; none of them had known Campion House, the dead master of these treasures had lived so little here, and Phenice had only retreated to it as a last stronghold of her devastated fortunes.
There was an entrancing pastel, a hundred and fifty years old, of a "Phenice Campion," and there were paintings and miniatures of Campions who had done great things and moved in great places in their times; all glories sadly over now.
General Thorpe could not resist giving utterance to the question that had been buzzing in his head ever since he saw the passion flower:
"I suppose nothing has ever been heard of—Alicia?"
Mrs. Marais assured him—nothing; she had made it her business to find out.
Mr. Folliot glanced up at the ceiling.
"Queer thing to keep that there."
"Tony was exceedingly queer," murmured Sir Christopher. He addressed the lady. "Do you really think that Phenice knows nothing about it?"
"I shouldn't think so. We'll hope not."
They all thought about what it was that Phenice did not know, the old scandal, the old tragedy which had happened when she was a child at school and in the vortex of which her sister Alicia had disappeared more completely than if she had died.
How many years ago was it? Eight? Ten?
Curious to use passion flowers with their mystic sad symbolism, for a frivolous decoration—curious to let that plant riot over the house—after what had happened —passion of sorrow—passion of suffering.
None of them thought kindly of the lost Alicia; she had been very like Phenice; Mrs. Marais, in her heart, used the words "bad blood," "a wicked strain."
General Thorpe took up two blue velvet books embroidered with seed pearls that lay on a gilt side table, and while affecting to look at them, could not resist asking in a half whisper:
"I suppose nothing was ever heard of the fellow?"
"How could there be? A creature like that!" came the penetrating murmur of her reply. "Remember, Tony picked him up on the roadside—-"
"A nasty business," frowned the old man, "a nasty business."
They moved back to the centre of the room again; she had kept them waiting nearly half an hour; Mrs. Marais would have rung the bell if there had been one; this after they had timed to be so punctual, to arrive so exactly together, Mrs. Marais motoring over the general, and Sir Christopher Mr. Folliot!
At this point in their mutual exasperation the stately door, faded cream and gilt lacquer, opened and Phenice Campion entered.
They were so united in a common opposition to her and all she stood for, that they had merged, as it were, their separate individualities in this one disapproval and hostility.
The girl stood not only physically, but spiritually utterly alone.
She was very young, dressed in plain, severe mourning, close up to her neck, close down to her wrists; the thick waves of her dark hair seemed too heavy for her small head, her clear, exact little face with the vivid, intense eyes, and the wide, firm mouth.
She bent her head to all of them.
"I hope you did not mind waiting," she said. "You see, I thought you would like to talk things over among yourselves."
She did not speak in the least insolently, but they were all angry that she had so perfectly understood that they had been discussing her under what was still her own roof; she seated herself by the window; the autumn sunshine brought out a dense hidden gold in the black knot of her hair.
"Isn't the passion flower wonderful this year I" she said, and it seemed to those four almost impossible that she spoke in innocence; Mr. Folliot managed some commonplace reply.
"I've often wondered," mused Miss Campion, "why there are passion flowers on this ceiling—so strange, don't you think? Do you know, Aunt Janet?"
Thus directly appealed to, Mrs. Marais answered carefully:
"I really don't, Phenice. I always understood that some wandering painter did the work—I suppose he had a fancy—roses are so overdone."
"But we've come on business, haven't we, Miss Campion?" suggested Mr. Folliot.
"Ah yes," replied the girl languidly. "We will do our business and then we'll have tea."
"You know the offers," said the lawyer, "and I think you've agreed to them—General Thorpe's for the house and Mrs. Marais's for the contents."
"I did agree," said Phenice.
And both the rich people who were helping her at such advantage to themselves glanced at each other complacently; it was a relief that the difficult girl was, at last, going to be reasonable; and the lawyer reflected that people, however wild and wilful, are often reasonable when they are pinned against a wall.
Phenice seemed to rouse herself from a reverie, languid, drowsy as the sun without, which was just beginning to creep into the lovely room.
"I want to apologise to you all," she said, "for being so impossible and rude, and rejecting so much good advice—you see, it seemed horrible to sell father's collection, and the house."
Gratified by this unlooked for submission, they murmured approval; it was all being so much easier than they had thought it possibly could be.
"It is a relief you are being sensible, dear," said Mrs. Marais graciously. "You will feel much better when you get away from this place—it isn't fit for you—all alone."
"I haven't felt lonely," returned Phenice.
"Though I suppose you haven't had any visitors?" asked Mrs. Marais, thinking of the handsome man she had seen being refused admission.
"No—not any visitors."
"There was one thing you were all very worried about," said Phenice, "and that was poor Miles Fenton; it made me angry at the time, but you were quite right—"
"Well, I hope—" murmured Mrs. Marais.
"I promise you I won't marry him," replied Phenice. "He's going to Paris to-morrow. I hope you're satisfied."
They were, but this unusual docility alarmed them; was the girl really conquered at last? Not one of them had ever believed she would ever give up that young Fenton.
"I've only got one or two things to say," added Phenice, smiling lazily, "then we'll have tea. I suppose you don't know, Aunt Janet, anything about my sister Alicia?"
To gain time before this unexpected charge Mrs. Marais exclaimed:
"What do you mean, Phenice?"
"I thought she was dead, of course," continued Phenice, "but I can't be sure now—did she run away?"
They were all careful not to glance up at the ceiling; General Thorpe was thinking how he would at /Mice have it painted over, and the passion flower uprooted.
"Really, how ridiculous of you," said Mrs. Marais coolly. "Alicia died abroad when you were a little girl —I wonder your father didn't tell you these things."
"Father told me nothing."
The manservant entered.
"Mr. John Bettine, madam, has come back and would very much like to see you."
The girl's small fingers picked the card off the salver.
"I can't. Tell him—perhaps to-morrow. I'll send a message—"
She put the card on the gilt table and looked at it thoughtfully; Mrs. Marais had at once risen and contrived to glance out of the window; she saw the same man as she had seen before, turning away; she voiced the curiosity of them all.
"John Bettine, Phenice! Not the great financier?"
"Yes."
"You don't know him? He's only been in England a few days."
"I saw him yesterday for the first time. He came to see the house," replied Phenice vaguely. "I think he wanted to buy the house—"
General Thorpe took alarm.
"But it isn't on the market. What does the fellow mean? Of course he has lots of money, but he is an absolute ranker. Came from nothing."
"Whatever brings him here?" wondered Mrs. Marais. "I thought he was in London—come to see the Government about something—"
"I don't know," said Phenice. "He likes Campion House—saw it motoring past, and heard, I suppose, that I was hard up—I don't know."
"These upstarts!" exclaimed Sir Christopher. "What atrocious taste—of course you told him you wouldn't sell?"
"Yes, I told him that."
"Imagine Campion going to that fellow," smiled General Thorpe, "believe he was a boot boy or something —what colossal impertinence"
"He's just a common man," said Phenice languidly, "but very rich and famous, I suppose."
The servant entered again. A telegram.
"Please excuse me," said Phenice; she tore it open.
"From Sylvia Mordaunt—she can't come to stay with me—a bother."
She lied easily, as easily as Mrs. Marais had lied about Alicia.
The wire read: "Must see you. Coming to-night. Miles." A desperate appeal, regardless of all discretion; an answer to her refusal to marry him and join him, two luckless waifs together, in the Paris venture.
Phenice returned the flimsy sheet to the envelope and laid it on top of John Betinne's card; she touched the bell that Mrs. Marais had not been able to find, and tea was brought in immediately.
Phenice looked up from her pale opal cups, from the telegram and the card beside them.
"I've decided not to sell—anything," she said.
Amazement met her blankly.
"I'm engaged to be married," added Phenice in a drowsy tone, "and my future husband wishes to keep the house and—everything."
Mrs. Marais asked sharply:
"Can he afford to do so?"
A thin flame of blood spread over the girl's small, clear face. "Yes," she answered gravely.
"My dear child," said Sir Christopher, who felt vaguely that they all ought to be pleased, but were angry instead, "who is it?"
Phenice looked sleepily from one to another, with no expression save that of rather sad gravity.
"John Bettine," she replied.
PHENICE sat in the long summer dusk; there was no electric light in Campion House, no telephone, nothing comfortable and adequate to modern life; she ought to have been glad, as they had all said, to have got rid of the old, crazy, melancholy house at any price; she wondered with the idleness of fatigue what future they had planned for her; they all disliked her so much.
From the window she had watched her visitors go, an angry, rigid, hostile group; all enemies she felt, even Sir Christopher, who thought that he had meant so kindly in coming.
She wished that she knew the story of Alicia; it was strange that no one told it to her; if it was shameful, surely Mrs. Marais would have been glad to have struck her with it; of course it was shameful, too shameful for even Mrs. Marais to mouth over, or rather, Phenice reflected idly, they thought it shameful, but it could not be anything that people would mind nowadays.
The girl lit a small cigarette.
How silly all this mystery was!
Poor Alicia, even fifteen, ten years ago people
"minded" what you did, just as—Phenice pulled herself up—just as now, she finished bitterly, even I still "mind" that John Bettine is "quite a common man."
Convention, tradition, prejudice—as you were sneering at them they suddenly had you in a stranglehold.
How conventional, for instance, how old-fashioned, to grasp at marriage as the only way out of a tight corner!
Could not she, so free, so "modern," so gifted, so dowered with many kinds of talents and loveliness, have found some other way?
No; she was too idle, too lazy, too proud, too worthless, she told herself cynically; there was nothing but to snatch at a man's money, as her great-grandmother might have done.
No one had yet thought of anything better than marriage from a woman's point of view, a cloak, a shield, a refuge, an investment!
There was only one cleverer thing than marriage, and that was divorce.
Phenice threw down the stump of her cigarette and stamped it deftly out with a satin heel.
She looked with perfect understanding at the oval pastel of that other Phenice Campion that just showed through the dusk; tricked out with "heart-break" curls and powder and floating ribbons and a sly smile; a cat, a "minx"; but she had married a Duke in the end in the days when that was a very notable achievement.
Phenice lit another cigarette; she resisted the idea of going to bed—to-morrow she would lie in bed all day, as she so often did; she anticipated, with ha If-closed eyes, the delight of the long drowsy rest, with the curtains drawn; beyond that she would not think, the future was just that long repose, to-morrow, in the soft shaded bed.
She went out, passing under the passion flower.
In this light the blossoms looked livid with their purple wounds and fantastic crowns, how many there were of them! The plant seemed to clutch the front of the house with a kind of greed, to dominate the building, to compel attention.
Phenice went on into the twilight.
The withdrawal of the sun had scarcely dimmed the masses of scarlet, of crimson, of gold and purple flowers, they flamed through the haze of the dusk.
The sky was clear violet; you could not look at it without feeling a touch of tranquillity; even Phenice in her tight black dress, with her cigarette and her queer worldly allure, was, for a second, so touched.
She paused by the overgrown beds where the fiercely coloured flowers seemed rampant, and looked up.
A man, walking impetuously, came from the direction of the big gates.
Phenice stood alert, ready to fly; she thought that it was John Bettine.
Immediately she saw that it was not.
Miles Fenton; the other man.
She had half expected him, then forgotten him again; she did not want to see him, but it never occurred to her to run away from Miles.
"Hullo, Miles."
"Hullo, Phenice."
He fell into step beside her.
"Got my wire?"
"Of course. People do, don't they?"
"What?" He was obtuse with emotion.
"Get wires that are sent to them."
"Look here, Phenice, if you're going to rag me—"
"Well?" She challenged, in her low tired voice, his broken sentence. "You shouldn't have come. You had better go back, you know."
He ignored this.
"Any one here?"
"No."
"No one staying with you?"
I'm alone."
As she said it this last word sounded frightful.
"They've all cleared out?"
"Yes."
"The outsiders!"
"I'm the outsider, Miles. I was abominably rude. I sent them away. Don't blame them. They are all good people."
"I suppose I ought not to come in," he hesitated.
"Why?"
He shrugged.
"I want to, if I may. I'm dead beat. Motored down from town and left the old 'bus at the 'One Eyed Man.' Jolly old name!" he laughed, faintly.
At the inn; John Bettine was at the inn.
"Come in, of course," said Phenice. "I can give you a drink. Not much else. The place is a barracks. I've no servants, only the caretaker and his wife." She peered at him through the gathering gloom; she pitied his desperate agitation. "You ought not to have come. We'd said good-bye." ,
"We haven't. We're not going to say good-bye—look here, Phenice, do you think—"
She cut him short with sudden energy.
"Don't Miles, I'm tired too."
"You poor child."
Phenice smiled.
They came to the narrow doorway with the classic tympanum, architrave and pillars showing now a bleached white against the dark brick through the dusk, and that wealth of blossoms stark amid the unseen leaves.
"I say, what wonderful flowers!"
A passion flower."
Did Miles know anything of Alicia, of the painted ceiling?
She preceded him into the house which now was faintly lit by lamps and candles.
She took him into that room, the room of the painted ceiling:
A cluster of candles had been lit in two girandoles; they filled the room with wine-coloured shadows and a glow of tawny light.
"Queer old place," said Fenton uneasily.
"Aren't we all—queer?" answered Phenice.
She looked at the young man in that romantic light of the candles that burnt steadily in the air still with the double stillness of silence and motionlessness.
Fenton was too blond, too handsome; he had difficulty in avoiding what the Englishman so detests, conspicuousness; the most normal attire, the most careful grooming still left him slightly flamboyant; so far he had carefully and successfully (perhaps unconsciously) concealed under the manner used by the rest of the world his talents and his individuality, but he was, secretly, a good engineer, and secretly, passionate and determined.
"I suppose," said Phenice, "you've ordered something at the inn? I don't believe there is much in the house."
"I don't want anything, thanks."
"You said you were dead beat. Ill see what we've got."
She rang the bell; the languor of her fatigue increased; she wished that he would go.
Fenton gloomed about the room; he, too, looked tired, almost ravaged; poor Miles! She was sorry for him; he noticed the ceiling.
"That flower again! Funny idea."
"Funny," agreed Phenice
The housekeeper, Mrs. Seaton, answered the bell; the refreshment available proved to be old-fashioned, no cocktails, of course; whisky, brandy, a few liqueurs, Mrs. Seaton thought. Coffee and biscuits, naturally.
Fenton chose brandy and coffee, strong coffee, please.
Phenice said:
"I won't take any now, Mrs. Seaton. I'm coming to bed very soon—will you get my room ready and make me some tea?"
Fenton stopped in front of the pastel portrait.
"Phenice Campion," he read on the frame "Like you, too."
"Is she? I detest her."
"Why? She really is like you."
"Very likely. I often detest myself."
Mrs. Seaton came in with her tray and went out again; her closing of the door left them definitely alone.
Phenice was sunk in a low "bergère" chair beyond the candles; her thin figure looked a black wisp in the thick amber-coloured cushion; her small head that now seemed really burdened with the waving hair, close dressed, but not cropped, drooped a little; she was so tired.
Fenton filled his glass more than once; that strain of flamboyancy had long shown in his drinking; he gulped his coffee.
"Look here, Phenice, I've come to make you change your mind. You've got to come to Paris with me. I can put off the trip for a day or so and I can get a special licence!"
There was a rasping sound in his voice; his nervous tension showed itself in his abrupt movements, the twitching of his brows.
"Don't be a bore, Miles," said Phenice sadly, and sincerely, "I'm really tired."
"I don't care. You've got to listen. You simply can't turn me down like this. I know it sounds a pretty rotten sort of proposition—clearing out to Paris and all that—but you can trust me to make good. I'll see it isn't so bad."
The frail feminine voice came with no affected languor from the low chair.
"I wish you all kinds of luck, Miles. I've nothing more to say."
"But I have. You're absurd. You don't know your own mind. Every one thinks we're going to get married."
"Silly," sighed Phenice; her lids fluttered a little; she was thinking of to-morrow, the long day in bed, the delicious rest, shut away from all of them.
"And what are you going to do?" asked Fenton harshly. "You can't go on living here like this—"
"You speak like Aunt Janet," murmured Phenice. "Don't go on, I can guess the rest."
"Perhaps I'm thinking like Aunt Janet. There are some things one can't stand for—you here, alone, with- out a bean—I've got something, anyway—"
Phenice half sat up.
"Miles, what are you teasing me like this for?"
My God," said Fenton, "don't go on pretending you don't understand." Phenice rose now.
"I suppose you mean that you're in love with me," she answered, "but isn't that rather ridiculous? We've been good friends—but our marriage would be—stupid —two lazy paupers with expensive tastes! How we should hate one another! I always thought you pretty level-headed, Miles."
She did not speak with a sneer or sarcasm, but frankly, almost kindly.
"So being in love seems to you ridiculous ?" he asked bitterly.
"For you and me."
"You're afraid of it, I suppose, the hard' luck, the doing without?"
"Yes," said Phenice wearily. "I don't suppose that I should be any good at doing without."
You don't care enough for me to risk it?"
No."
"You care a little? You jolly well used to make me think you did," he replied savagely.
Phenice, goaded, came up to the table.
"We're irritating each other for nothing—if I cared, of course, I'd come. I suppose nothing would matter then, but then I should be a fool, I don't want to be a fool and suffer—"
"I'm the fool who's suffering. I dare say you never thought about that."
"Of course not," said Phenice gravely. "I was sure that you knew the rules of the game. You'd flirted with lots of other girls, hadn't you?"
Phenice tried to fight her lassitude, her fatigue, her distaste for this scene.
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry!" He flung the word back at her; he was nearing the end of his control; Phenice regarded curiously his passionate agitation.
This overmastering emotion was really strange to her; men were queer.
"I should make the worst wife in the world, Miles," she said.
"Do you suppose that I don't know that? I'm quite aware what you are."
What am I?" she asked.
"Lazy, idle, vain, good at nothing but play, like the rest of us, selfish too, I've no doubt, and greedy. You haven't as much brains as my dog, you're uneducated, a medley of whims, moods, instincts, prejudices, superstitions—but I happen to love you."
"A good portrait," said Phenice thoughtfully, "it's love that's queer."
"Queer. I love you. I thought you loved me. Funny, isn't it? You played up—jolly well."
This accusation, delivered so thickly, so fiercely, was unjust; Phenice had never assumed an emotion stronger than she felt, because she knew of none; in flirting with another reckless idler she did not know that she had been playing with passion.
And now she was too tired to justify herself; and Miles seemed to her rather disagreeable; he had lost the suavity, the ease, the charm that were his chief assets; now she was near the table she could smell the brandy; she turned aside fastidiously.
This movement inflamed Fenton; her very slightness, slenderness, her childish, cold look provoked him to rage; he felt a flick of that fury which, blown on, sometimes ends in murder; he could not keep his hands off her, but took her by the shoulders and turned her round.
Phenice shuddered, suddenly wide awake, alert; it seemed grotesque -that she had ever liked this man.
She knew now something of the feeling that animated him—but the other side of it, not attraction, but repulsion; for a second it seemed they would descend to primitive levels; a struggle, insults, shrieks.
But Phenice kept her head.
"You are a bore, Miles," she said quietly.
The man let her go; the jargon of their set recalled him to the manners of her set.
Phenice walked to the window; her blood was surging; the first time any one had touched her like that; she would always detest Miles.
Without knowing why she thought of Alicia—the passion flower—the painted ceiling; didn't they all mean something that had been in the rude clutch of Miles, pulling her nearly off her feet—close to him?
She heard his voice.
"I had better clear out."
He was gone when she looked round.
PHENICE was past consciousness of fatigue; she was no longer drowsy, longing for repose.
Mrs. Seaton came in to say her room was ready and the tea; she was an elegant, efficient, elderly woman, who had been many years at Campion; she was the daughter of a man who had been butler to the father of the late Tony Campion, and her husband came of a family that had been long in the same service.
Phenice watched her as she cleared the table of the glasses twinkling in the candle fight.
Probably she knew all about Alicia..
A pity you couldn't question a servant—about your own sister.
Then Phenice remembered that Mrs. Seaton had spoken about her "place"; when she had heard that Campion House was to be sold she had asked if a "word" might be spoken for her husband and herself; they did not want to leave Campion, and, Mrs. Seaton had added with quiet confidence, they were good servants and used to the place.
So Phenice said:
"Mrs. Seaton, I'm not going to sell Campion House, so you can stay. Everything will be the same."
"I'm very glad indeed, miss. That is a great relief— to both of us. We never liked the idea of strangers here."
"I'm going to be married, Mrs. Seaton," said Phenice irrelevantly. "That is how I am able to keep Campion. A rich man."
Mrs. Seaton flushed into more animation than was proper to her place at this triumph of femininity; her congratulations were vivid and sincere.
Curiosity edged and sharpened her pleasure, but Phenice flicked away from the subject again.
"Do you know, an hour ago I felt so sleepy, and now I don't think that I could sleep."
"You're over-tired, miss. It's been a long strain. If you'd let me put you to bed with a hot drink it would be so much better."
Phenice went restlessly to the window; the night bloomed like a dark flower beyond the casement, purple, gold spangled, perfumed with countless delights.
"Do you remember the planting of the passion flower?" asked Phenice vaguely.
"No, miss. That was before my time. It must be more than ten years ago. I've never seen so many flowers as this year."
"I suppose this ceiling was painted from these flowers?"
"I don't know, miss, I'm sure. I should think it very likely."
Phenice suddenly disdained this oblique fencing; something was pressing her to get at the truth.
"Mrs. Seaton, do you remember my sister Alicia?"
"No, miss. That was before my time."
"Like the passion flower?" Phenice smiled. "But what quite was before your time?"
The woman carefully set down her loaded tray and rather absently trimmed the candles that were beginning faintly to gutter round the girandoles.
When she spoke her tone was more human, less that of a well-drilled servant.
"Wouldn't Mr. Campion have told you if he had wanted you to know, Miss Phenice?"
"I dare say. It was because of that I never tried to find out. But I'm alone now and I'd like to know. I think that I ought to know."
"Isn't there one of your own people who could tell you, miss?"
Mrs. Seaton's reluctance, in spite of Phenice's training, which inculcated that by doing away with reserve you did away with shame, did make something in the girl that was deeper than any training shrink, just as she had shrunk from that sudden desperate touch of Miles Fenton on her shoulders.
"No. I don't like any of them," she said. "Please tell me, Mrs. Seaton."
"Miss Alicia ran away," was the uneasy reply, "with a common man."
"Who was he?"
"Just some one Mr. Campion picked up, miss. He painted this ceiling. Miss Alicia had a passion flower over her summer house, that by the mausoleum, that's gone now, and they moved it to the door, planted it together, and that year when it flowered he used to copy it for his ceiling here."
"That is nothing very horrible," smiled Phenice faintly.
"He was such a common man, almost a beggar, you might say. He used to eat with the servants."
Did you ever see him?"
No, miss."
And that was all?"
No, miss—not quite all."
Tell me the rest."
Mrs. Seaton, who had been ill at ease since this subject was begun, now became openly restive.
"I don't rightly know indeed. It was one of those things that weren't allowed to get about. Hushed up, miss. All manner of tales said and none of them quite true. No one really dared talk about it."
"That was all stupid," replied Phenice calmly. "Why shouldn't she marry a common man?"
"But I don't think," said Mrs. Seaton uncomfortably, "that she did marry him, miss."
"Oh!" Phenice was startled by a new viewpoint. "Why not?"
"I don't know. But perhaps I'd better tell you, just to prevent you talking about it, or asking any one else. Miss Alicia came home, the year after, and hadn't been back but a few days, miss, before she—killed herself."
Phenice shrank.
"Do you know any more?" she asked in a low voice.
"Not much, miss. No one does. Except that it was under the passion flower that they found her—"
"I don't understand," said Phenice slowly.
"Well," answered the older woman with a touch of tenderness, "I expect he treated her badly, poor young lady. Perhaps he was married and she was in love."
In love!
How people accepted those words as explaining everything; Phenice closed her eyes; it was all so unreal; if Fenton killed himself for her would it make it seem any more real?
She opened her eyes.
Mrs. Seaton was standing uneasily by the table waiting for her dismissal.
"Thank you," said Phenice. "I am glad that I know."
"Won't you come to bed, miss? You are more tired than you know."
Phenice rose.
"I dare say I am."
She went up to bed, slowly.
PHENICE had forgotten that Sylvia Mordaunt was coming to see her, though Sylvia was, perhaps, the person she most regarded among all her many acquaintances; she had used her name to cover the telegram from Fenton, but here Sylvia was, the next morning before Phenice was half awake, seated beside her bed and looking at her gravely—and gravity was an unusual expression for Sylvia.
"Oh, Sylvie!" Phenice stretched and sat up. "How early you have come—or am I lazy?"
"You're lazy, dear—it's nearly twelve o'clock—"
"I know. I had my breakfast and went to sleep again."
Phenice pulled a little silk and swansdown wrap about her shoulders and shivered; slowly the events of yesterday flowed back into her mind after the blank of a long, dreamless sleep.
The room was very pleasant, but outside a still rain was falling, veiling all in grey; when Phenice sat up in bed, she could see, through the big window, the vivid flowers of late summer sodden with wet.
Sylvia had motored down from London; there were raindrops still on her hair and face as she regarded Phenice anxiously.
"Why do you bother about me?" asked Phenice suddenly. "It's dull down here."
"Don't talk like that," replied Sylvia. "There are so many people who would have come—so many who wanted you to come to them; you keep every one at a distance, Phenice."
"I know—I don't want people who were just friends for fun when everything was all right to be dragged into this mess," said Phenice with lazy defiance.
"People aren't like that," remarked Sylvia. "You ought not to have been here so long alone. I wish I could have come before I only got home two days ago."
Phenice ignored the tenderness of this, as if afraid of being drawn into sentiment.
"We had a family conclave yesterday, Aunt Janet, Mr. Folliot, Sir Christopher, General Thorpe—all hateful—"
"I know," interrupted Sylvia gently. "But you have provoked them, dear, you do delight in being difficult—"
"Father loathed them," said the girl with a kind of sparkling coldness, "and so do I—they came to buy the place, and it was delightful to be able to refuse the offer—"
"Could you do that?"
"Yes," answered Phenice defiantly. "I'm going to be married."
"To Miles Fenton?" asked Sylvia at once.
Phenice frowned.
"That's silly of you, Sylvia. He hasn't a penny and I don't care about him—except to play games with."
Who is it, then?"
John Bettine."
Miss Mordaunt was not as amazed at this name as those people had been yesterday, for she knew what they did not know, that Phenice had met Betinne abroad more than once; she was aware that he admired the girl and she suspected that her father had borrowed money from him; she looked at Phenice wistfully and was silent.
"I wired to him," continued Phenice in a hard voice. "He asked me to marry him last year, on the Lido. I've always kept him in reserve. He came at once Of course they were horribly shocked and annoyed yesterday—I sprang it on them as effectively as possible They didn't know that I'd ever met him before. In fact, I told them I'd only seen him once."
"You don't care more about him than you do about Miles Fenton?"
"No," said Phenice clearly, "but he's rich."
"Don't," interrupted Sylvia sharply.
Phenice coloured; her eyes were dark with disdain, of herself perhaps.
"Look here, Sylvia, don't pretend—it was bound to come to this. As long as father was alive he kept things going somehow—I don't know howl We had a jolly good time. Of course we quarreled with any one who was prudent or respectable or solid—and now the crash."
"You can't marry John Bettine," said Sylvia quietly.
"I must." Phenice was yet more chill, more calm, more contemptuous. "There's no one else—and I'm not any good for anything. You should have heard what Miles told me about myself I"
"You've seen him?"
"Yes, he came down here—to make a scene—"
"You've provoked him, too," said Sylvia quickly. "You haven't been fair to him—"
"Oh, I know!" Phenice shrugged her shoulders. "I quite admit everything. But don't preach, Sylvia. I'm so tired."
She leant back on the pillows, closing her heavy-shadowed, dark eyes; she looked very small and feeble in the great and splendid bed, very young and pitiful, too, and the generous heart of the woman who looked at her winced with compassion.
These two had known each other all their short lives; Sylvia was slightly older in years and much older in mind and character; of gentle birth and limited means, she did not belong to the wild set the Campions had adorned, but she had never lost touch with the childish friendship she had formed with the spoilt, wilful girl who was in everything so different from herself.
For Sylvia was accomplished, with at least one considerable talent, that of music, and lived in a cosmopolitan world of clever, eager people who all worked hard at something and whose leisure was filled both gaily and intelligently.
Phenice opened her eyes and looked at her mockingly.
"How solemn you are, Sylvia! Don't you like John Betinne?"
"No," replied Sylvia without hesitation, and Phenice, of course, asked "Why?"
Sylvia refused to discuss the matter. "Where is he now, Phenice?"
"Staying at the inn—hotel, I believe they call it now —Miles is there too." Phenice smiled maliciously.
"You're making trouble," said Sylvia seriously. "Miles Fenton is absolutely uncontrolled and you've let him down—horribly. What do you think would happen if he chanced to find out—about you and Mr. Bettine?"
Phenice shrugged.
"He's going away. To Paris. Oh, I know that he is a nuisance, but I can't help it," she added petulantly.
Sylvia forebore to reply; she thought that the girl did really look overwrought and fatigued to the point of illness and she knew her wild, obstinate temper which could not endure to be either importuned or crossed.
She rose, hesitant and uneasy, and glanced at the faint silver haze of the rain beyond the window which fell so silently and steadily over the rich colours of the garden.
"Do you want me to stay?" she asked. "It seems dreadful for you to be alone, but perhaps I only bother you—"
But Phenice flashed out that she did want Sylvia to stay; there was no doubt about her sincerity in this assertion.
"Do stay, Sylvia—everything is in a muddle still. I can't see my way clear—unless," she added with perfunctory consideration for the other, "Mrs. Mordaunt wants you—"
Sylvia said no, her mother was in the Clarges Street flat, very occupied with her own friends and interests, and herself wished Sylvia to be with Phenice, for whom she had a genuine regard.
"But it's dull for you," said Phenice in vague protest, "with all there is for you to do—"
"There's plenty to do here, surely," smiled Sylvia.
"Yes," said Phenice maliciously. "You can hold Mr. Bettine at bay, he keeps calling, but I won't see him again—for weeks. You can tell him that I really am ill, and in bed."
"I wish I could tell him that it is all a horrid mistake, about your marrying him!" Phenice shook her head.
"I must have the money. I'm not going to face things without money."
Then Sylvia made the remark that Phenice, in her self-absorption, hardly noticed at the time, but which was continually to occur to her afterwards with deep and painful meaning, as a trivial remark will recur in the mind when altered circumstances have made it poignant.
What Sylvia said was:
"You'll have to face worse things than lack of money if you marry John Bettine."
Phenice did not answer this! instead, she said abruptly:
"Have you ever heard anything of my sister Alicia?" Sylvia was startled; never had she and Phenice discussed this subject or mentioned this name.
"I only know that she died suddenly while you were at school—about ten years ago."
Phenice, lounging on her pillows, was silent a moment and then told her friend what Mrs. Seaton had told her, about the planting of the passion flower and the painting of the passion flower on the ceiling of the gracious room below, of the flight and return of Alicia, and her death.
"I shouldn't believe any of it," said Sylvia warmly. "People have to exaggerate these things—I heard something from my mother, but very different. She said that Alicia was fond of a very brilliant young man who was staying here—that your father found out and sent him away—that your sister became ill soon after and they tried to find the man—but couldn't—and so she died without seeing him again. And that was why your father never talked about it, it was such a shock to him—and he felt so sorry."
Sylvia had spoken rapidly and with a certain passionate kindness; her deep grey eyes were full of tenderness, and her fair face crowned by the radiant blonde hair had a definite and earnest beauty impressive even to the angry, wilful heart of Phenice Campion, who answered, more softly than she had yet spoken:
"Well, that is a prettier story than Mrs. Seaton hinted at! But I don't know why father made a mystery of it—"
"That was a mistake," agreed Sylvia. "Mysteries always are, I think. But I can understand it, too. He must have been terribly hurt."
"Who was the man?" asked Phenice.
"I never knew—nor did mother, I'm sure."
"Why did father object to him?"
Sylvia obviously and painfully hesitated and Phenice answered herself, sharply.
"Because he was common, I suppose, a self-made man, like John Bettine—I know what father thought about those things."
"Then," answered Sylvia, "doesn't that affect you now? If your father would have hated this marriage you consider—"
But Phenice interrupted with a flash of arrogant, unbridled temper.
"Well, then, father should have seen that I was not left like this—a defenceless pauper—"
It gave Sylvia a pang to hear the dead man who had been so loving and so lovable, referred to with this bitterness; but the observation had been just enough.
Tony Campion had been reckless and improvident beyond excuse and his daughter had every reason for reproach.
Yet bitterness, in any form, was detestable to Sylvia; the other girl noted her silence and added defiantly:
"I told you not to bother about me—after all, I'm getting myself out of my own mess—"
"But don't you see," protested Sylvia eagerly, "that this mess is nothing to that you'll be in if you marry some one you don't care for?"
But Phenice laughed at that with the self-confidence of pampered, flattered youth.
Sylvia moved to the door.
"You're sure to meet some one you do care for, some day," she added gently.
"Love?" mocked Phenice lightly, hunched into her pillows.
"Just that," replied Sylvia gravely.
Phenice remembered her wonder and curiosity of last night; her distaste for Miles Fenton's display of emotion, her interest in her sister's story; and a sense of pain and humiliation passed over her spirit. This made her angry with the fair girl, so serene and kind, who seemed so much more fortunate, so much more happy than she was, or, it seemed, ever now could be.
"What do you know about it, Sylvia?" she asked indolently. "You'll probably marry for money or convenience yourself—most people do, after all."
Sylvia, to the other girl's surprise, showed considerable agitation at this.
"You're quite wrong," she answered with radiancy in her eyes. "I,"—she paused, then added on a generous impulse—"I've met the man I want to marry, the only man I can marry—"
"So you, too, are engaged!" exclaimed Phenice lightly.
Sylvia shook her head.
"No," she said quietly. "I don't know if he cares for me. At present he is only a friend—an acquaintance even—but," she smiled bravely, "it will be he or no one."
"Well off?" asked Phenice.
"Not very." Sylvia's smile deepened. "That's enough about it, I didn't mean to tell you—but somehow I thought it might help you."
"It accounts for your sentimental attitude, certainly." Phenice smiled also. "Well, each one to his taste."
She closed her eyes again and feigned sleep.
But Sylvia was soon distracted from any thought of herself by a visit from John Bettine.
In rather strident tones the great man refused to be any longer denied, and Sylvia felt that she must placate him even though her whole feeling towards him was that of dislike and hostility.
When he had heard her courteous excuses for Phenice, the handsome, heavy and formidable man scowled unpleasantly.
"I must say, Miss Mordaunt, this seems to me very strange behaviour. Phenice ought to know that I don't like whims."
"I dare say she does," replied Sylvia quietly, "but Phenice has never cared much about what other people like, and I can assure you that she is really overwrought and worn out."
"Her own fault," he retorted. "Why didn't she let me see those people yesterday instead of upsetting herself with them? I happened to hear at the hotel they were up here—and when I came she wouldn't let me in."
"I'm sorry," said Sylvia. "She's wilful and very independent, you know."
"She'll have to drop that," replied John Bettine. "She'll have to drop a lot of tricks and airs."
There was a disagreeable pause; Sylvia did not know what to say and he was afraid of saying too much.
He rose at last, awkwardly; he was clumsy in all his movements.
"Well, tell her that I must see her to-morrow. There's a lot of things to settle and I haven't any time to waste—"
"111 tell Phenice what you say, Mr. Bettine."
Sylvia spoke without friendliness as she rang the bell.
"And please tell her something else," he said heavily. "Young Fenton is at the hotel—hanging about. I'm not going to stand that. He'd better clear out. Quick. Tell her that, Miss Mordaunt. Good-day."
This sounded like a definite and ugly threat; it took Sylvia by complete surprise; before she could answer he had gone.
SYLVIA MORDAUNT was pleased by the gracious atmosphere of the charming house, by the spacious rooms where the colours were faded mellowly, and the exquisite treasures that had been the envy of General Thorpe were disposed with all the taste in which poor Tony Campion had excelled, by the air of grace and peace and light that dwelt over the old mansion and the old garden alike.
But she was not at ease in the situation in which she found herself; she had all the wisdom common to intelligent modern youth, but her experience was limited, and Phenice seemed to her in every way odd, difficult and dangerous, so much so, that she could hardly understand her own affection for the girl, her own sense of loyalty towards her defenceless loneliness.
She had thought it best to tell Phenice of John Bet-tine's message about Miles Fenton; but the wilful girl had only mocked, until Sylvia wished that she had not spoken of the matter.
"Is he going to dictate to me already?" smiled Phenice. "And to give such a message to you I Of course he does not know—anything."
"I think that he is a very disagreeable man," agreed Sylvia, "but Miles Fenton ought not to be staying down here."
"Can I help that? I told him to go away," retorted Phenice. "I don't know why he stays."
"He hopes to induce you to change your mind, I suppose—"
Phenice interrupted impatiently.
"Don't go over it all again, Sylvia."
The other girl tried to turn off this feverish temper with a smile and a light tone.
"Well, the situation is rather queer—these two men —and the one you are to marry you won't see, and both he and the other getting angry—"
"Was John Bettine really angry?" asked Phenice sharply.
"Yes, I think so."
Phenice made a little grimace and then sighed.
"Why don't you come to London with me?" urged Sylvia. "Mother would be very glad to have you, and that is the more reasonable thing to do—then everything can be settled quietly."
But this advice was hateful to Phenice; her wild, impetuous spirit shrank even from the restraint of the Mordaunts' home, from the prospect of having to conform to any conventions—she detested the very words "reasonable" and "quietly."
She made the excuse of the house.
"There is a great deal to be seen to, to be arranged. I must stay here."
"I feel," said Sylvia uneasily, "that something dreadful will happen if you do—"
Phenice did not answer; seated in the brocaded chair, with her black dress and dark locks and hard, clear little face and slim childish figure, she looked both pitiful and arrogant, which indeed she was.
"Don't worry about me," she said in cool defiance. "I'll write to John. And Miles will soon get tired of wasting his time here."
She wanted to hold John Bettine at arms' length and annoy and flout him to the very limit of his endurance. At the same time she was absolutely without means and he was the easiest if not the only way of obtaining the money she must have.
She could not long continue even this cloistered life without money, and now that she had flung off all her friends and relatives, now that she had let her affairs drift so long, there was nothing for her but John Bettine.
Phenice came from her calculations with a frown; she really could hardly tolerate the man, but her hard cold resolve which was not without courage, never faltered. Not for a second did she deviate from her purpose of marrying this wealthy infatuated man.
She looked across the room at Sylvia and her full lip curled in some malice.
"What are you dreaming of, Sylvia?"
The sharp little voice dispelled the gay bubbles of Sylvia's musing fancy; she turned quickly.
"Nothing. I mustn't be so idle Isn't there anything I can do?"
"Here? In this house? Of course not, and I don't believe you want anything to do." Phenice spoke with a queer detached envy. "You're in love, aren't you?"
Sylvia overcame the desire to answer resentfully; Phenice in some moods was difficult to endure and Sylvia had to remind herself how unfortunate the other girl was, how much more unfortunate she was likely to be.
"Don't talk about it," she said swiftly. "I shouldn't have told you—I want you to forget it—"
Phenice shrugged her delicate shoulders.
"Very well, but you must tell me who he is—"
Sylvia shook her head.
"It is no one whom you know. I never met him before this summer in Biarritz—if I were to tell you the little I know about him it would mean nothing to you."
"Well," smiled Phenice, ''I suppose I shall know when you marry him—"
But this gave too sharp an edge to Sylvia's deep and delicate romance, she coloured in vexation and turned the subject abruptly.
"Hasn't Mr. Folliot still got something to do with your affairs?"
Phenice again made her rather attractive little grimace.
"He thinks he has. He is sending some one down to see me about that—I suppose he doesn't like to face me again since I was so—rude."
She rose and looked so forlorn and young despite her bravado of cynic coolness that the other woman's warm and generous heart went out to her with an impulse of affectionate compassion; she did not caress her, she had never done that because Phenice seemed to resent any demonstration of tenderness from any one, but she came close to her and said eagerly:
"Oh, do give all this business up, Phenice. Sell.this place for what you can get—it will be enough to live on till something turns up—"
"I can't," replied Phenice in a hard voice.
"Don't marry this man!"
"Nothing will prevent me from marrying him."
Phenice spoke as if offended; she looked at her friend with hostile eyes.
They were on the verge of a quarrel; for long they were to remember this moment and every word that each had said.
Sylvia moved towards the door; she was resolved not to be provoked further; the low voice of Phenice made her pause, however.
"I wish you'd leave me, Sylvia. There is no sense in staying here when you disapprove of everything I do—"
This was spoken so coldly that Sylvia did not know what to answer; she felt agitated and at fault.
"I'll go if you wish," she said at length brokenly, and hurried out of the room, down the wide pleasant stairs into the beautiful garden that was so packed with sweets beneath the sun that was shining through mists of gold clouds.
When she returned to the house again Phenice met her under the passion flower and told her that she had sent a message to John Betinne and that he was coming that evening.
Late that afternoon John Bettine arrived. Phenice said that she would see him alone, but that Sylvia was to remain in the garden, not far from the house, so that
Phenice could, if she wished, make a sign to her from the window to join them.
This was in case Bettine should stay too long or become what Phenice called "tiresome," which meant, refusing to accede to all her requests and demands with the docility expected of him.
Sylvia was content walking in the garden, so well ordered, old and gracious, and when she had for some time observed Phenice and Bettine in the window-place, both amiable and smiling, she concluded that further vigil was needless and wandered towards the high, light and elegant iron gates.
"Perhaps," she thought, "Phenice really at heart cares for him, and they will be happy after all—"
She looked back at the house which was clear in the golden glow of the setting sun, with the passion flower luxuriating over the elegant porch, and she could still see those two figures at the large ground window, the window of the room with the painted ceiling.
She looked towards the iron gates and saw a man standing there and staring in—Miles Fenton.
Sylvia felt what she told herself was an unwarrantable start of surprise—almost panic surprise, and stood irresolute, struggling with an impulse to turn and run away.
Fenton had come now to the side gate which always stood open, and saluted her coldly; they had only a slight acquaintance, through Phenice, and she had never been interested in Fenton, or he in her; yet his manner was needlessly hostile, she thought, and flushed.
"I knew that you were staying here," he remarked.
"I'm often round about the grounds, but you haven't noticed me."
"I've only been here a few days," said Sylvia. "And how strange for you to come—like this—"
She felt indignant but did not know how to deal with the situation; he looked unkempt and sombre; his brows were contracted in a nervous frown and his mouth was bitter.
"I want to see Phenice," he declared harshly. "You can't now, Mr. Fenton. Really you can't. If you'd like to give me a message—"
He interrupted rudely.
"She's with that man Bettine I want to see her—I want to see both of them."
"It's impossible," protested Sylvia, though she instantly shrank back as he advanced on her—"surely you see that—"
"I've been waiting for him to come up here—to follow him—and have it out," answered Fenton with the same air of harsh indifference he had used from the first "I want to see him—and Phenice—"
He passed Sylvia and strode quickly ahead down the short drive towards the house where Phenice was still seated carelessly in the window-place
SYLVIA hesitated, disquieted and at a loss; the warm peace of the sunny afternoon had become clouded, full of menace. She felt both bewildered and inadequate; it was foolish for her, useless girl as she was, to have so light-heartedly come alone to Campion House; Phenice should have some one of more authority, of more weight with her, to help her to manage the tangled position she had so waywardly got herself into.
Sylvia's impulse was to hasten away from the house and those two men, both of whom she disliked and a little feared; but her loyalty to Phenice at once overcame this shrinking and she turned towards the passion flower spread about the porch.
Miles Fenton had already entered; Phenice must have seen him from the window and given leave, or possibly he had forced his way in, for Sylvia herself had, without thought of the matter, left the door open.
It was still open; she ran up the short flight of pleasant stairs into the charming room with the painted ceiling.
Phenice and the two men were there, all standing and all alert; but the girl was indifferently cool, while the men were sullen and angry, barely retaining an exterior of conventional civility.
Neither of them took any notice of Sylvia, but Phenice said:
"Miles Fenton has come to say good-bye."
The tall young man whose haggard look accorded ill with his flamboyant person brusquely answered this.
"No, that isn't what I came to say at all."
John Bettine picked this up as if answering a challenge; he was scowling and his manner was blunt to offensiveness.
"Isn't it, Mr. Fenton? Then what did you want to say?"
Fenton glanced at him with hatred and contempt. "To you—nothing."
Sylvia went and stood behind Phenice, who was smoking in a leisurely fashion and appeared not in the least discomposed, but Sylvia noticed that she was even paler than her wont and that her frail figure was held rigidly in the black dress.
John Bettine with a heavy and ill grace replied to the younger man's insolence.
"Is that so? Well, anything meant for Miss Campion you can say to me—can't he, Phenice?"
The girl looked at neither of the men as she answered:
"Of course."
"We're going to be married," added Bettine with the same unpleasant awkwardness and half sneer.
"I guessed as much," replied Fenton looking bitterly at Phenice, "that is why I'm here—"
She replied to this before Bettine could, and cried swiftly:
"Miles, you're making fools of both of us! Can't you stop?"
"No," he answered obstinately.
"Say what you came to say," put in Bettine in a tone of authority.
Sylvia could see that he was as angry as the younger man but had himself much more under control.
"I wanted to ask you," said Fenton, with an effort to speak quietly, "if you haven't been here before? If this house and this room isn't familiar to you?"
"As if I should answer any such impertinence," replied Betinne harshly.
"I didn't suppose that you would."
The wrath of Fenton, so ill kept in, was fast mounting and overstepping control.
"You ask him, Phenice—ask him what he knows about the passion flower—about your sister Alicia." Now something had been said that every one must take notice of; the name of the dead girl rang in the air like the echo of something terrible, outrageous; Sylvia gave a quick exclamation, Phenice winced, and both girls looked at Bettine who was standing grimly with his back to the light.
"Ask him," repeated Fenton, triumphant at the effect he had caused, "and if he won't tell you find some other to get the truth."
No one answered him and he appeared satisfied by this silence, for he smiled with rancour and scorn on all of them and went heavily from the room.
Sylvia was the first to speak.
"What does he mean?" she asked, and looked at John Bettine, whose sullen face wore an ugly expression of vindictiveness and amazement.
"Is it worth bothering about?" he replied roughly.
Phenice had been watching her cigarette burn out; she now threw it down on the ash tray and looked out of the window at the figure of Fenton walking rapidly to the gates and never looking back.
"No, I don't think it is," she remarked quietly.
Sylvia was completely bewildered by this.
"But surely Mr. Bettine wants to explain!" she exclaimed.
"No," he answered with what seemed to Sylvia grim relief. "I don't. I think it is too trivial to be taken any notice of—"
"But do you, Phenice?" cried Sylvia swiftly.
The other girl replied deliberately:
"Yes, I do."
Fenton was now out of sight and Phenice moved from the window and seated herself in her favourite low brocade chair with a sigh of fatigue.
"How stupid Miles is!" she said indifferently. "He seems to delight in making scenes or in trying to make scenes. You'd better change your hotel, John, or he'll be annoying you."
Bettine, whose manner was becoming more and more assured, replied that he certainly should do so; he could easily motor over from the next village.
The suggestion was no doubt a very prudent one, but Sylvia wished that Phenice had not made it; hateful and reckless poor Fenton might be, but for Phenice to turn on him seemed like a betrayal.
But she could not say anything; her position was sufficiently ambiguous as it was; Phenice seemed hostile towards her, and in Bettine she felt she had an enemy.
There was a pause, during which each of them, busy with individual thoughts, avoided looking at the other.
Then, after a few commonplaces, Bettine took his leave, Phenice leaving the room with him and being gone some considerable time, thereby showing that she had something to say to him that she did not wish the other girl to hear.
Sylvia could not leave the room because she was afraid of interrupting the other two upon the stairs; she kept glancing from the window to see when Bettine would leave and wandering about the room restlessly.
Presently her glance fell on the little ash tray where Phenice had placed her unfinished cigarette.
She noticed beside it the long slim shape of a new cheque book that had certainly not been there when she left Phenice for her interview with Bettine.
The meaning was plain; he had opened an account for the girl in some bank that had nothing to do with her present confused affairs; he had given her, in fact, a large sum of money.
Sylvia stared at the cheque book with repugnance; it seemed to her to be the price, the sordid, brutal price of her friend. And in a certain revulsion of feeling against the whole affair she almost decided to leave Campion House and return to her own happy fortunes and her own delightful expectations.
This half-decision coloured her manner when Phenice re-entered the room. It was almost coldly that she asked: "Did you get an explanation from him, Phenice?"
Of what?"
"Of what Miles Fenton said, of course—"
"Oh, that," replied Phenice with cool indifference. "I had forgotten it."
She looked fatigued to exhaustion and piteously frail and childish, but her tone was one of cool bravado.
"Did you understand what Miles Fenton meant?" exclaimed Sylvia.
"No. I don't want to understand—Miles is crazy, he doesn't know or care what he says, he came here to make mischief."
Phenice spoke with feverish rapidity and her eyes were glittering with a dry brilliance.
"But," replied the other girl, aghast, "he meant that Mr. Bettine was the man who—planted the passion flower—"
"And ran away with Alicia," finished Phenice with cool hardness. "He made that up—he wants to ruin me because he thinks I have treated him badly—"
"To ruin you ? Where is the ruin, Phenice, even if you don't marry Mr. Bettine?"
Phenice picked up the cheque book and held it defiantly as if it was a symbol of her independence, as it was indeed, both to her and to Sylvia.
"You won't see my point of view," she retorted passionately. "I must have money—it's been penury ever since father died and every one knew we had nothing.
And I can't, I won't," added the wayward girl furiously, "endure penury—I don't want anything but money and that I must have—"
"That is a fearful thing to say," murmured Sylvia.
"I mean it," replied Phenice, more and more defiant, "and I don't see any way of getting money but this. I want money now, shillings and pence—I owe little bills, I owe servants, I can't move from here without money—"
Sylvia was frightened by the intensity of this speech. "But people would lend you money—I have some of my own I could give you—"
Phenice smiled.
"I want more than that. I've been trained to be extravagant. I couldn't go without things."
"But now there is this doubt about Mr. Bettine— Phenice, you must find out if there is anything in what Miles Fenton said—"
"Why should I?" interrupted Phenice impatiently. "John told me just now that once he tried to employ Miles, who is something of an engineer, you know— and there was trouble—"
"Never mind that," broke in Sylvia. "Did you ask him what Miles Fenton begged you to ask him?"
For a second the girl's dark gaze faltered, but she replied proudly:
"No."
"Because you are afraid of the truth?" asked Sylvia desperately.
"Why should I be afraid?" retorted Phenice. "Even if he had been going to marry Alicia there is nothing dreadful in it—"
"But it was worse than that—"
"Was it?" The dark girl took up the broken sentence quickly. "I think that was your version, wasn't it?"
Sylvia was silenced; she had certainly offered the kindest account she knew of Alicia's misfortune, but she was not sure that this was the truth, nor till now had that mattered, but now, to her mind, it mattered terribly.
She really knew nothing definite herself—only a few guarded words spoken here and there, such as a happy girl might be allowed to hear of the fate of an unhappy girl.
Phenice gazed at her with a kind of languid watchfulness and with eyes bare of any emotion. At last Sylvia said:
"It would be easy to find out. A number of people must know. There can't be any mystery, really, it is only that no one has told us—"
"It's over," replied Phenice with a kind of soft violence. "Alicia is dead—years ago. And I'm alive. John Bettine has given me some money and I'm going to marry him at the end of the month."
With this she turned, as if she could not endure any more, yet perfectly controlled, and left the room—the room with the painted ceiling that was beginning to become hateful to Sylvia.
WHEN the two girls met the next morning Sylvia felt an agitated hope that Phenice would be changed, softened, ready to forego this odious marriage and come to London with her; but not only was Phenice completely composed and cold, but she met Sylvia's wistful questioning look with a definite statement of her unchanged mind.
"I can't come with you to town, Sylvia. I must stay here till I get married."
Seaton entered with a card; Phenice took it up; looked at it and kept it between her fingers.
"It's Mr. Folliot's man," she explained to Sylvia, and to Seaton: "Ask him to come up."
Sylvia was glad of this diversion; she did not want to talk any more with Phenice.
"Ill go upstairs and get my things together," she said as naturally and pleasantly as she could. "I think I'll run up to town to-day."
She was gone before Phenice could answer, and missed, by a matter of seconds, the young man who was coming up the stairs.
When he entered the lovely room Phenice was by the open window, languid, discontented and indifferent.
She had nothing to say to Mr. Folliot's partner; she would merely tell him to discuss everything with John Bettine, the man who would take over her affairs and put them in order; she did not care about anything of the details; she had the private bank account Bettine had opened for her, and that was her sole concern to have ready money to her hand and no bother or worry about any of her affairs.
So she turned, with even more than her usual indifference and hauteur of manner to Mr. Folliot's partner, who was, his card had told her—Mr. Noel Barton.
The young man stood in front of her, and as she said "How do you do?" mechanically, she added, "I don't think there is very much to be said, Mr. Barton."
And then she looked at him.
He had a queer personality, at once charming and ironic; he was different from any one she had ever met; he looked at her with a composure equal to her own and a glance that seemed of mockery in his light eyes that were oddly framed in dark lashes.
"I dare say not," he answered. "Mr. Folliot asked me to come. But I shan't keep you long."
Phenice faltered, she did not know why; she felt confused and weak; she asked him to sit down; he smiled and continued to look at her with those clear grey eyes that were rather like the steady eyes of a hawk.
"I have only joined Mr. Folliot the last few days," he said, "and I know nothing of your affairs beyond what he has told me, Miss Campion. All I say is on his instructions."
Yes," said Phenice. "Yes."
She hardly heard what he said; she was certainly paying no attention to the matter of his speech; she had no interest in these dry technical details of her estate or lack of estate, of her father's will and her present position; she had heard it all before with impatient disdain, from Mr. Folliot himself.
The fact that she was penniless with nothing between her and the grudging charity of her relatives but Campion House and the contents of Campion House, had been sufficient, and was sufficient now. But if she was regardless of what the young man said, she was absorbed, all her mind and senses, by the young man himself.
Never had any one affected her so profoundly, never had she believed it possible to be so 'affected; she who had met so many men, been admired by so many men, was amazed by the power of this one man to so greatly disturb her; he was not so showily handsome as Miles Fenton, nor so imposingly and massively impressive as John Bettine, but to Phenice, both these men appeared most insignificant compared to him.
He was slight, neither dark nor fair, with aquiline features that were, however, neither harsh nor gloomy, and an expression and air of reserved power and reserved passion that pervaded all his quiet manner and all his quiet looks.
Phenice heard him use the name of John Bettine; he was talking of settlements, of provisions for her future.
"You are going to marry a very rich man, Miss Campion, and he must wish, as your father would have wished, that these matters should be attended to. Mr. Folliot wanted me to make this point clear to you."
Nothing could have been more formal, even cold, than these sentences, but all the time that he spoke his brilliant, bold and light eyes were gazing at Phenice with that disturbing look that was half mockery, half compassion.
"My marriage," said the girl vaguely. "Yes," she faltered a second. "Of course it has all been very unconventional, or I suppose seemed so to Mr. Folliot—and— and yourself."
"That isn't our business at all," he replied. "As your lawyers, and especially as you are of age and have no near relative or guardian, we felt it our duty to bring up this point—this house and property, for in- stance, is still yours after every debt is paid and should be secured to you—"
"I don't really care about the house," replied Phenice hurriedly. "I've never lived here since I was a child and my father never liked it—"
"Yet I understand from Mr. Folliot that you refused very good offers for it from your relatives—"
"Yes," replied Phenice confusedly. "Yes, I—that was different—"
"Of course," said Noel Barton pleasantly, "your engagement to a rich man would preclude any necessity for selling—"
"Yes," murmured Phenice again, "of course—"
She felt absurdly agitated and overwhelmed as if any moment she would do or say something foolish.
"Do you know Mr. Bettine?" she asked in a dry little voice.
"By reputation only," he smiled. "A very brilliant and very successful man."
And he waited, still smiling, for her to follow up her question with the reason for putting it.
But Phenice, usually so cool and self-assured, could not find words for what she wanted to say; her small clear face, now looking up and now looking down, showed such signs of agitation and even distress that Mr. Barton said gently:
"There is nothing that you want me to do? There is no way that I could help you?"
"No," she replied hurriedly, "no."
"Then I need not bother you any more—perhaps I had better see Mr. Bettine before I go back to town?"
And while he said these commonplace words in a commonplace tone and rose as if to take a formal leave, he was looking at her with that expression, that mingling of ironic humour and ironic pity that she had never seen in any man's eyes before.
She made a desperate and what she feared herself was an obvious effort after her usual careless manner.
"I would rather you waited—I—there are some things I would like to say first—I have to go out now—couldn't you come again this afternoon?"
She felt that she was speaking foolishly, almost at random.
"Certainly," he answered. "But if you could tell me now what you want to—wouldn't it save your time? Then I needn't bother you again."
He was surely looking at her with amusement compassionate amusement, and to her intense annoyance she felt her cheeks grow hot.
"I want a little time to think," she answered almost angrily. "I am in a difficult position—"
"We appreciate that. Mr. Folliot sent me because of that—it is awkward for you, of course. Perhaps General Thorpe would act for you?"
"I don't want to ask him," replied Phenice, conscious that she was speaking childishly, pettishly, but more and more confused and agitated under this man's calm and powerful scrutiny, with herself more and more out of control.
Mr. Barton accepted this with courteous gravity; he said that he would return that afternoon about three o'clock, and told her that he was putting up at the one hotel where Bettine and Fenton were already staying, or had stayed.
Phenice let him go with no more than that.
She left the window and did not watch him pass under the portico with the weight of withering passion flowers, but she listened for the closing of the door and his step on the garden walk which she could clearly hear through the low open window.
Why had she asked him to come back?
What was there to discuss?
Perfectly well did she know the extent of John Bet-tine's infatuation and generosity; he was not, either, a mean man; there was no peed of this prudence and foresight on the part of Mr. Folliot; she could rely on having full value out of Bettine's wealth.
Why, therefore, was she troubling about a second interview with Mr. Folliot's partner?
Phenice did not dare to answer this question, scarcely to ask it of herself in any definite way; she felt excited and confused; her head ached as if from some strain or shock; she wanted to rest and yet she wanted to move about and talk and do something.
She looked at herself in a dim mirror in an old tortoiseshell frame that hung beneath the portrait of that other Phenice Campion, then up at that other fair face of her ancestress.
For the first time in her short life a doubt of that charm and beauty of her own that she had always taken for granted assailed her with a sense of quivering dread.
Was she so delightful? Could she make every man she met in love with her as John Bettine and Miles Fenton were in love?
The girl, hitherto so self-assured, hurried away from the mirror and restlessly upstairs.
A vague need of company sent her to Sylvia's room.
Sylvia was packing her neat valises; the pretty room was full of pretty things in disorder.
"Oh, don't go," cried Phenice suddenly as she entered and saw this. "I can't be alone—"
She broke off in agitation; Sylvia, who thought this a mere caprice, said:
"I'll stay till some one else comes—but I've got to get back soon."
And then she added:
"Has your lawyer person gone?"
Phenice answered quickly:
"Yes, but he is coming again this afternoon."
"I hope he is pleasant," smiled Sylvia carelessly, thinking of some elderly, pompous man of the type of Mr. Folliot. "These kind of people always frighten me."
Phenice did not answer; Sylvia thought she was probably in a sullen or difficult mood, and went on talking lightly to avoid the unpleasantness of silence, while she replaced her frocks in the wardrobe.
"What has he got to worry you about? Can't some one do all that for you? You were never interested in business, were you!"
"I'm not now," replied Phenice suddenly. "But I suppose this has to be put through—as if I cared about settlements." She laughed in a way that caused Sylvia to look round sharply at her, for it was an excited, overwrought laugh.
And an odd thing to say, Sylvia thought, for only that very morning Phenice had coldly and firmly declared that she did care about money and all that money meant.
"I suppose it is the usual thing," said Sylvia, rather at a loss; and then she suggested what the young lawyer had suggested. "Why don't you get General Thorpe to take all this off your shoulders?"
Phenice did not appear to hear this; she had sunk down on a low chair and said her head ached.
"I'd like to go to bed, Sylvia—I feel good for nothing—"
"Can't you put this tiresome man off?" suggested the other girl, instantly full of sympathy.
"No, I want to see him. To get it over."
"Couldn't you settle everything this morning?"
Phenice replied in nervous irritation.
"No. Didn't I tell you that I'd got a horrible headache?"
She sprang up restlessly, left Sylvia and hurried to her own room.
As she reached her door Mrs. Seaton brought her two messages—a wire from Miles Fenton, sent from Dover, saying merely "Good-bye," and a lover-like note from Bettine, begging her to see him again soon.
Phenice closed the door and tore up both wire and letter with unfeigned disgust and anger, then flung herself on her bed and buried her face on her outflung arms.
FOR some reason that she was never able to analyse, but which she felt to be of overwhelming strength, Phenice saw Noel Barton in the room with the painted ceiling; and while they talked together she was conscious of that artificial azure sky above and the twisted coronals of passion flowers, so lightly and so skilfully painted with a hasty yet sure touch.
The day was completely overclouded and a grey light filled the pale room while the rain fell softly in the bright garden.
Phenice did not look at Noel Barton, who was waiting with such courteous disinterest for her to speak; she was sufficiently aware of him without seeing him; indeed she felt his presence so powerful that it was, all the time that they were together, as if he put out his hand and touched her.
Finding that she did not speak but sat looking away from him in this silent agitation, the young man remarked that he had met John Bettine at the hotel and that he had introduced himself and found the other most pleasant.
"But no business was spoken of until I had your permission and instructions, Miss Campion."
Phenice felt that he spoke with irony and she replied to that more than to his words.
"I have no instructions and no permission to give about anything."
This was a change indeed from her manner of this morning, indeed from any manner she had used before; for the first time in her life she spoke simply, almost humbly, in speaking of herself.
"But you wished to see me about something?" he asked kindly.
"Yes," said Phenice with an effort. "I wonder if you knew my sister, Alicia Campion?"
"No," he replied at once, surprised out of his formality. "No—"
Phenice looked at him now; he no longer appeared even pleasantly amused, he was regarding her seriously; it was obvious that if he had never seen Alicia he knew of her—and her story.
It was the sort of thing people did always know, however slightly or vaguely.
"There was some trouble," continued Phenice. "And Alicia died—very young, in this house."
"But it is a long time ago now," said Mr. Barton, as if wondering what Alicia had to do with him or this moment.
"Yes," answered the girl, "but some one said that John Bettine was in that story, that he was part, of the trouble."
As soon as this statement was made, she despised herself for making it; she flushed and only kept her eyes steady by a desperate effort.
But she did contrive to keep them so, and to gaze unflinchingly at Mr. Barton's amazement.
"You can easily find out if that is so or not," he answered.
"From whom?"
"From Mr. Bettine himself, first of all."
I prefer not to ask him."
"Then"—the young man hesitated—"I suppose Mr. Folliot could find out, but it would be a queer request, Miss Campion—"
Phenice replied, with a pathetic valiancy, a mere shadow of her usual defiance:
"But it is all queer. I am so queer myself."
Noel Barton was silent, but he did not appear ill at ease, and his calm encouraged Phenice.
"I don't know what to do," she said desperately.
He answered that, kindly but with a hint of his former mockery.
"But I thought you were so very independent, Miss Campion. I understood from Mr. Folliot that you had taken all your affairs completely in your own hands—"
"So I did, but it has been a long strain," replied Phenice hurriedly. "And now I have lost confidence. I don't feel as if I could go on."
"Go on with what?"
"With this marriage." Phenice spoke these words as if forced, as if the confession was outside her own volition.
Mr. Barton looked at her keenly with his formidable light glance, then said, deliberately:
"If you feel any doubt about that, I certainly should not go on with it."
Phenice was silent, and he added:
"But this is rather outside my sphere of advice. You must have friends, relations who would help you in that."
The girl felt angry, humiliated, past all pretence.
"You know that I stand quite alone," she replied bitterly. "Mr. Folliot has told you everything about me—"
"Believe me," he put in, "only the formal business details—"
"Well, then," said Phenice with a certain desperate relief in sweeping aside all subterfuges, all barriers of pride and vanity, affectations and falsities, "the truth about me is this—I was a very extravagant and useless sort of person indeed—and when my father died and there wasn't a penny I looked round for a rich man to marry—"
"Well," said Mr. Barton quietly, "that is crudely put, but I suppose it is often done—and wisely done."
"I felt I had my back against the wall," continued Phenice almost fiercely. "Every one was against me— they thought I'd had such a bad fall that I shouldn't be able to pick myself up. And I loathed to be pitied—"
"Wasn't there any one who would have helped you?"
I dare say there was, but I was rude to all of them —I came and sulked down here as long as I had a cent left. Mr. Folliot kept urging me to sell the house to General Thorpe, but I wouldn't—and then when everything was really at an end and every one was coming here to settle the sale, I wired to John Bettine to come. I knew he wanted to marry me."
Phenice paused, exhausted at the end of this long speech, and looked at Noel Barton as if expecting a judgment.
"A stranger can hardly help you," he remarked, replying to the appeal in her dark, distressed eyes.
She winced before that and answered:
"You can tell me what you think."
"But what use will that be to you, Miss Campion? And it would be a great responsibility for me."
Phenice smiled bitterly.
"I dare say you feel rather vexed, Mr. Barton. You expected to find a business-like young woman and you met an hysterical girl, for I've no doubt that is what you think of me."
This was so personal that he could hardly preserve his formality.
"I do not think anything of the kind—you are very young for such an odd and difficult position."
"That does not help," said Phenice restlessly. "What am I to do?"
"But hadn't you, before I came, decided what to do?"
"I thought I had—but this story of Alicia—"
Her voice fell and died away.
"You can easily find out about that," said Mr. Bar- ton quietly. "I don't suppose there is anything in it, or you would have heard it before—"
"And if there isn't anything in it?" asked Phenice, looking away.
"Then I should think the wisest thing would be to carry out your engagement with Mr. Bettine.
"I speak as your lawyer," he added, "for I have no authority to speak as anything else."
And he appeared to be moving away, to be ah~.:t to say "good-bye" and take a formal leave..
Phenice seized on her last resource, a direct personal appeal.
She rose and stood in front of him.
"I asked you to help me," she said, and added oddly: "and I believe that it is the first time I ever have asked any one to do that"
Noel Barton paused; she thought that he was arrested, though not moved by what she said; she believed that he was thinking of her as "a queer little thing."
"I've given you my advice," he said gently. "I should marry John Bettine and put all your troubles on his shoulders, he is quite able to bear them, I think."
"You mean," said Phenice steadily, "that I am not worth troubling about. And that you don't care in the least what happens to me. Well, why should you? Goodbye. And thank you for your patience."
She did not penetrate his ironic reserve even with that; he seemed sorry for her, nothing more; his charming face, so attractive and so indifferent, expressed nothing but that—a slight pity.
"I'm sorry to be so useless," he said, "but I do not see what I can do."
"There is nothing."
He glanced round the rich and pleasant room. "You aren't alone here? You've some one staying with you?"
"Oh, yes, a friend. And I have some other people coming. I am not at all lonely."
He had said some more pleasant commonplaces, he had touched her hand lightly and was gone.
And Phenice stood beneath the painted ceiling associated with her sister's tragedy, shaken, overwhelmed, all her pride to pieces, thinking of nothing but how and when she could see this stranger again.
Sylvia Mordaunt, coming downstairs at this moment, again by a few seconds missed seeing the young man who had twice come to Campion House without either being aware of the other; indeed she heard the door close after him as she entered the room with the passion flowers on the ceiling where Phenice was seated with her face in her hands.
Sylvia's first thought was that the lawyer had brought some evil news about John Betinne and Alicia, and she stopped abruptly, in some confusion at the look of overthrown pride and confidence in the huddled figure of Phenice.
"Oh, has anything happened?" she asked impulsively.
Phenice looked up; to Sylvia she seemed a person completely different from the Phenice of yesterday, and this sense of some deep change in the cold and wilful girl confirmed Sylvia in the apprehension that some misfortune had occurred.
"Phenice, won't you tell me?" she asked tenderly.
But Phenice laughed faintly. "What is there to tell?—nothing."
"But something has happened—surely—"
"What makes you say that?" asked Phenice, rising quickly.
"Why, you seem upset—different."
I'm not," retorted the other girl feverishly. "I'm not—"
Sylvia was puzzled; she could not understand why Phenice, usually so coldly frank, should conceal any of her affairs from her, yet that was obviously what she was doing.
It was, of course, impossible to press further, for Sylvia was sensitive and Phenice had never permitted a demonstrative affection between them, so Sylvia turned away, feeling further chilled and estranged and unwanted in Campion House.
But Phenice seemed to be making an effort to master her own mood, her own emotion, whatever that was, and spoke again, more calmly, though with signs of considerable agitation.
"I've changed my mind about things, Sylvia—"
"About?"
"My marriage. I am not going to marry John Bet- tine—"
"Oh — then you've heard something — about Alicia—"
"I've heard nothing. I've merely changed my mind."
"Did the lawyer advise you not to marry Mr. Bettine?" asked Sylvia timidly, bewildered by this change of front.
"No," replied Phenice dryly. "He advised me to do so."
"Then why—"
"There isn't an answer," smiled the other girl. "I just don't mean to do it—I thought you would be glad—"
"I am glad—but it seems so sudden—why, only yesterday, only this morning—"
Phenice interrupted with a kind of wild gaiety:
"Never mind—I've decided now, for ever—and I feel so much happier," she added wistfully.
"I feel happier also," said Sylvia simply. "I'm sure you're right."
"I'm sure I am. And now I want to shut this house up and come to London with you, if you'll have me—"
Sylvia assured her warmly that she was welcome, oh, more than welcome,.but though this generous affection was unfeigned Sylvia was conscious of an inner uneasiness, a sense of something concealed, of some force or emotion at work that was present unknown but would soon be declared, and when declared would overwhelm them both.
She could not avoid connecting the violent change in Phenice with the visit of Mr. Folliot's partner, and she found it difficult to believe that he had not revealed something about Alicia or produced some other powerful argument against the marriage on which Phenice had been so desperately set and which she had so suddenly abandoned.
And, fumbling with this sense of bewilderment and insecurity, she asked, with no direct object, but with a vague idea of finding out by degrees the reason underlying the extraordinary behaviour of Phenice:
"Who is Mr. Folliot's partner?"
Phenice turned her head away and answered briefly:
"Noel Barton."
If she had been looking at Sylvia she could not have failed to see the startling effect these two words produced for Sylvia was unable to conceal her utter amazement.
For Noel Barton was the man she had met abroad that summer, the man she was expecting to hear from, or meet, so soon—the man she completely loved.
She moved to the window and set it open, instinctively seeking some action to cover her profound discomposure, for a premonition, deep as life, had already told her that Phenice was, or would be, also in love with this man and that for one of them there must be pain and sacrifice.
Her first frantic endeavour was to guard her secret, and when she had stood a second or so by the open window she was able to make some casual answer in a casual tone, and quickly leave the room.
PHENICE was pulled up more sharply than she had been even by the death of her father and the downfall of her fortune, for that had been a tangible loss and a definite disaster that could be tangibly and definitely met, one, too, not altogether unexpected, since she had always known the unstable foundation of her reckless life.
She stood in her room, watching the dusk (which was beginning to fall early) gather over the garden, and thinking rapidly.
"Of course, I am not in love," she told herself, "though I suppose that Sylvia would think so—"
What had she said to Sylvia with her usual reckless impulsiveness?
That she would not marry John Betinne, that she would go with her to London?
That was all very well, but when she came to think it over she wondered if she could endure the pleasant family life of the Mordaunts, the little flat, Sylvia and her music, Sylvia and her serious friends—and she herself, penniless!
She glanced at the cheque book lying on her dressing-table, which, since her father's death had been gradually despoiled of glittering treasures and delicate luxuries, and she recalled how she had spoken of the man who had given her that cheque book, spoken of what she had never meant to have spoken of—just to attract the attention of that cold lawyer who had not responded in the least.
Reckless, selfish and undisciplined as she was, the memory of that fault in herself hardened her; she had gone so far that she resolved to go farther.
"And if I don't make haste, he'll be gone," she told herself, and flung on her black hat and black coat and ran downstairs.
Sylvia was in the room with the painted ceiling, writing letters by the orange rose glow of a parchment covered lamp which cast a warm light over her in the midst of the bluish twilight gathering in the large chamber.
"Sylvia," said Phenice excitedly, "I want to go and see Mr. Barton—he's staying at the inn—" She threw a coaxing note into her voice. "Won't you come too?"
The other girl sat still and with her face turned away, answered quietly:
"If you want to see him, wouldn't it be better to send for him?"
"But we've no telephone and by the time I've sent a messenger he may be gone—he's returning to London to-night—"
"I expect he's gone."
"No—there isn't a decent train till seven. Do come, Sylvia."
The other girl turned and looked at her and asked: "Why do you want to see Mr. Barton so much?
You've talked to him twice to-day already." Phenice came nearer the rosy circle of light, she looked so vivid, so radiant, that Sylvia was almost startled.
"I want him to help me," said Phenice with a malicious demureness. "I think he ought to—about my marriage."
"See Mr. Folliot about that when you get to London."
Phenice stamped her foot; the movement expressed all the impatient wilfulness of a high-mettled, thwarted child.
"Are you coming, Sylvia?"
Now was the moment that Sylvia had been fearing ever since Phenice had begun to speak; for one so inexperienced in wordly expedients, and by nature so candid, it was an atrocious moment.
"Mother knows Mr. Barton," she said; her effort at casualness made her speak stiffly. "I've met him too."
"Oh! Why didn't you say so before? That makes it easier."
Phenice, utterly absorbed in herself, had not noticed anything constrained about the other girl's manner. "Is he married?" she added abruptly. "No."
Sylvia, fighting hard to conceal her piteous secret, could add nothing to that; she felt that it would be, above every imagined horror, intolerable if Phenice was to discover that Noel Barton was the object of her impulsive confession.
"Well, are you coming?" urged Phenice.
Sylvia rose.
"No—please don't go, Phenice. It's silly—not dignified."
Phenice took on the mocking manner she often used when opposed. "Don't you think that he would like it?"
"I don't suppose so—"
"Do you know him well?"
Sylvia could answer with truth.
"Not very well."
Phenice laughed.
"All right. I'll send a letter."
Phenice, having silenced her friend's opposition by a facile lie, ran straight out of the house and towards the inn, which stood at the end of the village street, not far from the imposing iron gates of Campion House.
The inn was of some pretensions, it had lately been modernised into a family hotel and provided rooms and meals for motorists and tourists; now the electric lights were bright in the porch which showed a glass door, and beyond, a lounge with cheap cane chairs and imitation oak walls. Phenice entered with her light step and impatient air and asked for Mr. Noel Barton.
She was told that he was just leaving for the station, but she insisted, with an added authority, that she must see him, and she waited, tapping her foot restlessly, in these garish and banal surroundings while her message was taken to Noel Barton.
Fastidiously she thought how frightful the place was, the exterior had always been an offence to her, but this cheap, stuffy, drab comfort of the interior was even more detestable; and she reflected that Miles Fenton, who was so brilliant and haughty, had put up with this for her sake, and so had John Bettine, who was so wealthy and luxurious; this reflection gave her a sense of power, which she needed just now.
Noel Barton came along the empty lounge, wearing his coat, carrying his hat, and greeting her with an indifferent smile, exactly as if he had expected to see her waiting there.
But Phenice was more mistress of herself than she had been when she had seen him last; she possessed greater strength of character than had yet been put to the test and she was able, this time, to control the strange tumult that the presence of this man aroused in her mind and spirit.
She rose and said, clearly:
"I hope you won't mind losing your train—I want to speak to you—"
"Of course," he replied with detached courtesy, "but I could have come up to Campion House."
"I've no telephone," replied Phenice coolly. "Isn't there anywhere here where we can talk?"
He led the way instantly into a small writing room, of formal and depressing aspect, with an empty grate, empty desks and an air of dismal neatness; a single electric lamp gave a hard white light; nothing could have been more ugly; but the girl's vital radiancy dominated this abominable background.
"I want you to help me," she said. "I really don't know what I am going to do."
Noel Barton interrupted suddenly, as if he was weary of the matter.
"I understand that, since your engagement to Mr. Bettine you have had some cause to suspect him of being involved in some mystery concerning your sister—the only person to whom you can take these suspicions is Mr. Bettine himself."
And the young lawyer picked up his hat and gloves from the centre table where he had placed them on the stale curling magazines.
They had been standing till now, but at this Phenice sank into one of the harsh imitation leather chairs as if exhausted.
"I can't do that," she whispered.
"Why not?"
"I was only going to marry John Bettine for his money."
"So I guessed, of course," smiled Mr. Barton.
"I thought money was the only thing that mattered," added Phenice, pale and resolute; she rose and, standing the other side of that sordid, barren hearth, defied him to ignore what she said.
And he did not do so.
"And you have changed your mind?" he asked with a certain gentleness that he had not used to her before.
"I believe," said Phenice steadily, "that I have changed my mind."
THEN," said Mr. Barton with ironic tranquillity, "there is no problem. No need to probe into the past, to bring up the old story of your sister—no need to bother any more about Mr. Bettine."
"Is that your advice?" demanded Phenice.
"No. I give no advice. I said—I do not see a problem. You never cared for Mr. Betinne and now you have ceased to attach importance to his money—well, then, surely it is obvious I"
And again he turned as if to leave, and not without a glance at the cheap clock on the bare mantelpiece.
The girl's bright, ardent emotion suddenly left her, like a flame blown away, then out; she sat down again, took her face in her hands and looked not only tired but ill.
The young lawyer, regarding her, frowned and said with some seriousness:
"You're not alone with servants in Campion House ?"
She answered indifferently, gazing into the harsh, empty grate.
"I've got a friend—Sylvia Mordaunt—you know her, don't you?"
He answered:
"Yes—I met her this year. She used to talk of you. But I did not know she was with you here—that's odd—"
Something in his tone made Phenice glance up. "Why-odd?"
"I meant—a coincidence. I called on the Mordaunts the other day and Mrs. Mordaunt was out and Sylvia in the country—I asked for her address but couldn't get it—strange I didn't see her this afternoon."
He seemed to Phenice to make a great many words of this trivial incident, and some queer unnamable pang further disturbed her already overwrought mood.
"Sylvia did not know that it was you," she replied almost mechanically, her thoughts not following her words. "She didn't associate you with Mr. Folliot—"
"No, I don't suppose that name was ever mentioned between us—"
"It was," said Phenice in the same tone that she had used before, "a mere acquaintance, I suppose—"
"Just that."
"Where," asked Phenice uncertainly, "did you meet?"
Biarritz."
A complete little scene flashed before the girl's mind, evoked by this one word, herself, tired, cynical, huddled in her luxurious bed, shivering fastidiously in satins, and Sylvia with, a golden passion of tenderness, talking of love, of her own love for a man whom she had met that year in Biarritz.
In one flash of time the picture had come and gone, but it had informed Phenice of something of tremendous import to herself, something that she would never be able to put out of her heart, but which now she thrust violently into the background of her emotions which were so violently agitated and fast becoming uncontrollable.
"But this," she smiled unsteadily, "doesn't help me— I'm at a loss—I should think that you would have guessed that I must have been fairly desperate before I came here—"
He said, slightly frowning down at the floor:
"What exactly do you want me to do?"
"Advise me."
"As your lawyer? Mr. Folliot could do that better."
No. Please forget that you are my lawyer. Tell me what I should do." He still parried her insistence.
"Why is it that you, usually I take it, Miss Campion, so resolute and independent, suddenly need this advice?"
"Because I've realised that I don't care enough for John Betinne to marry him—and because I want money -badly."
She paused, the vivid little face flushing in the bleached electric light.
"—And then, there is just that suspicion about my sister."
He looked at her curiously, seriously.
"Didn't your father ever meet Mr. Bettine? He would have known him immediately."
"No," said Phenice, startled by this reflection, "he never did—I met him on the Lido when I was staying with the Bellinghams." She counter-questioned -swiftly: "What do you know of my sister Alicia's story?"
"Absolutely nothing—I've just heard that there was such a person and that she died young."
"One could find out?"
"Yes—if it was necessary. If, for instance, you wished to marry Mr. Bettine—but as you do not, well, it's kinder to leave things alone."
He spoke kindly and yet guardedly, as if soothing a wayward child, but he kept his formidable light eyes on her with keen scrutiny.
His words had ended the argument; there was no gainsaying his cool logic—if she did not wish to marry Bettine what easier than to break off the match?
But Phenice outleaped logic.
"I want the money," she said vehemently.
"I think that you said just now that you found there were other things just as important," he replied.
"That's what I want to know," interrupted the girl eagerly, "that's what I'm not sure about—I want money so much, I've always had it, I don't know what I should do without it—and here's a chance of a great deal of money—and the other thing—the thing for which I might refuse the money is such a will-o'-the-wisp—"
"And what is it," asked Mr. Barton, "your will-o'-the-wisp?"
"I thought perhaps I might some day meet some one that I did care for—that's my problem, Mr. Barton," she replied valiantly. "Do you think that love—the chance of love—is worth waiting for?"
It was she who, despising both his reason and his reserve, had him cornered now; he could hardly, in face of such a question, preserve any pretence of formality.
"Of course," he replied quietly, "if one has the courage."
Phenice drew back; again that flame of passion in her seemed to flicker and fade, leaving her lifeless.
"Yes, I suppose so," she agreed faintly. "Well—that's all. Thank you. Of course you've missed your train."
She looked now at the ugly little clock and, for the first occasion in her life, with a sense of time flowing away, seconds, minutes passing, and all frivolity and all endeavour rushing to a common doom.
"There are plenty of trains," came the men's pleasant voice. "I'll see you back to Campion House. It's dark."
He opened the door of the cheap little room and Phenice went out into the cheap little lounge with the wicker chairs and the varnished palms.
Yes, it was dark; a big car had drawn up outside the hotel; Phenice could see the huge headlights through the glass doors.
A man had come up the steps. Phenice had been idly watching him get out of the huge car; he flung open the glass door and entered the lounge.
It was John Bettine.
"Hullo," said Phenice coolly. Bettine stopped short, bewildered, and unpleasantly bewildered, as he did not trouble to disguise as he glanced from the man to the girl.
"I was coming over to see you," he said both awkwardly and disagreeably. "I came here first for a bag I must have left—"
"This is Mr. Barton," said Phenice. "He came from Mr. Folliot to talk business—but I believe that you have met him—"
Mr. Barton said that they had met, but Mr. Betinne interrupted him to say that he thought Phenice was the last person to be so keen on business as to come to "a place like this to talk about it."
"Of course," replied the lawyer. "I should have been at Campion House, but Miss Campion came to see the people here and met me, so we were exchanging a few final words."
This easy excuse for her conduct surprised Phenice— she had not herself meant to make any excuses, but evidently Noel Barton considered that excuses were necessary, and had proffered them; she was so pleased by his interest that she did not notice the clearing of Bet-tine's moody brow.
"You can drive me home," she said and went out eagerly into the night which was cold and clear and full of a keen, pure breeze; she looked back at Noel Barton standing in front of the yellow blotch of light in the doorway—looked with inscrutable eyes.
"Why don't you turn all this over to me?" asked Bettine as the car started. "You've got nothing to worry about."
"Haven't I?" She turned that dark gaze on him. "Well, have you? If so, what is it. I'll soon put an end to it."
The sumptuous car glided smoothly along the darkling lanes; Phenice, from force of habit, snuggled into the cushions.
Bettine took a case out of his pocket and laid it on her lap; she opened it at once—emeralds, a gorgeous string of fiery emeralds, bright, glittering, resplendent.
"Pearls are too ordinary for you," said Bettine, absorbed in her sparkling pleasure.
Phenice held the stones up in the opal-coloured lights; she was very pale.
"They'd be the price of freedom—to any one, wouldn't they?" she murmured.
I'VE got to return to London," said John Bettine. "I can't stay in this place much longer," he smiled, but it was rather as if he said—"I've wasted enough time on you."
"I suppose not," answered Phenice, slipping the green stones to and fro on her black lap, in the hard light of the motor lamps.
"Why don't you come up too? You could easily find a friend to look after you till the end of the month—"
"A cage and keeper complete," mocked Phenice. "I should loathe it—"
"What are you going to do then?"
"I don't know—stay here, perhaps."
"But don't you want clothes and things?"
"Of course. But I can run up to town for the day."
They eyed each other defiantly and the man's heavy face was grim.
"You've been rather pampered, haven't you?" he remarked dryly, "but I'm a serious sort of person and you mustn't think that because I came as soon as you whistled you can do as you like with me."
"Can't I?" mocked Phenice.
His glance rather discounted this mockery.
"I suppose if you had the value of that string of beads of your own you wouldn't marry me?"
Phenice shut the emeralds in their case.
"I can ask silly questions too," she said. "Supposing I married you and then fell in love with some one else?"
"I thought you were too modern ever to fall in love."
"Well, if I did?"
"I should expect you to behave yourself."
The car turned into the gates of Campion House and along the dark drive. Phenice, looking from the open window, could feel the night air on her face and smell the sodden perfume of the late blooms, and then the car had stopped and she had stepped quickly out, closing the door on John Bettine.
"You can't come in to-night," she said with her clear, indifferent frankness. "Sylvia Mordaunt is here and she doesn't like you. Besides, I'm tired."
John Bettine hesitated a second, then replied with the restraint of one who gives in to a tiresome child who is out of his power.
Phenice looked at him steadily, then turned and passed under the unseen, withering branches of the passion flower which was still heavy over the deep porch.
She waited in the hall till she heard the purr of the car going away down the drive, and then she went into the room with the painted ceiling where there was still a light showing.
Sylvia was there seated on a low chair by the hearth, where a log fire had been lit; the evening was chill, with a first shiver of bleak decay in the air; Phenice was glad to come near the thin, clear flames.
"I suppose you went to the inn after all?" asked Sylvia without looking up.
"Yes. I changed my mind."
Phenice flung off her hat, and her heavy scallops of dark hair showed off the startling vividness of her face.
"I met John Bettine," continued the wilful girl, "and he gave me these—"
She unsnapped the jewel case and held it out.
Sylvia was startled out of her agitation and embarrassment.
"You took those—from Mr. Betinne?"
"Why not? He's never given me an engagement ring." Phenice lifted the string of emeralds and swung them in the firelight.
"But you said that you were not going to marry him!" cried Sylvia.
"Perhaps I've changed my mind about that," said Phenice. "Anyhow, I like the emeralds—"
"Real emeralds?" asked Sylvia bewildered, who knew very little about precious stones, "but they must be very, very valuable—is Mr. Bettine as wealthy as that?"
"I suppose so. I don't know how he makes his money —how do these men? But he's got plenty."
And Phenice continued to swing the sparkling length of green stones.
Sylvia rose, with a sudden change of tone.
"Did you get any advice from Mr. Barton?" she asked almost roughly.
"What I wanted—yes."
"You asked him—about Alicia?"
"Yes, he doesn't know anything."
Upright, delicate and defiant, yet cool and precise, Phenice regarded Sylvia with the same mockery that she had turned on John Bettine.
"What was his advice, then?" asked Sylvia, moving a little farther away.
"Non-committal," smiled Phenice. "I'm afraid that he is rather an ordinary young man."
She trickled the sumptuous stones over her slender black sleeve.
"Then you wasted your time," murmured Sylvia heavily.
"No, I didn't—for I found out something"—Phenice smiled with vivid malice—"about you—"
Sylvia slipped at once into the snare.
"No!" she cried, "not about me—"
"Yes. I found out that you had met Mr. Barton at Biarritz."
The other girl tried to recover herself; a sudden wail of wind shook in the house and the fire spluttered.
"Yes, I met him there. I thought I told you."
"You told me of some one you had met at Biarritz. But you didn't give his name."
Sylvia moved about the room restlessly, as if trying to find somewhere to hide her distress.
"Phenice," she said faintly, "you've no heart—no heart at all—"
"Haven't I?" asked Phenice with an added flash in her already brilliant eyes. "Well I want to be frank. I can't play parts. It's stuffy and out of date pretending."
"Where is the need of pretence?" questioned Sylvia desperately, still moving about as if seeking a way of escape.
"Well," replied Phenice resolutely, "I wanted you to know why I can't come and stay with you."
There was now something more than waywardness and malice in her look, there was courage.
Sylvia would not answer—the words "because of Noel Barton?" were formed instantly in her heart, but she could not utter them; Phenice looked at her keenly and added in a kinder tone:
"If you won't be frank I must be—it's more decent. Mr. Barton interests me very much—I think he interests you. I can't stay with you, don't you see?"
"You talk as if we were rivals—struggling for some one's preference—" protested Sylvia faintly and with deep disgust.
"We may be," said Phenice thoughtfully. "I might fall in love with that man—you warned me, didn't you? —and then I suppose you would detest me."
"No, no," cried Sylvia, shaking her fair head.
"Then you don't think I've a ghost of a chance?" smiled Phenice. "Well, perhaps I haven't. I don't think I have, myself. I don't think that he even liked me. But I had to tell you that I'm going to try to make him."
"Phenice," said Sylvia, pale with pain, "you are much better than you pretend to be—but you have no heart."
The other girl put the emeralds in the luxurious case, and as she did so, gave them a look and a touch of loving absorption. Sylvia saw this, and it was more than she could endure in silence.
"Why," she cried, "you absolutely care about those things—you've taken them from Mr. Bettine, you're thinking about them now, after what you've told me, you say you're so frank," she added sadly, "but did you tell him? Did you say that you wouldn't marry him?"
"No," replied Phenice with provoking tranquillity, "because I don't know if I've changed my mind there or not. But he knows that I don't care a pin about him, so that's fair."
"Docs he know," asked the other girl, "that you are likely to care a pin about some one else?"
"I gave him," said Phenice gravely, "a good hint."
She paused, flicking a vivid glance at Sylvia, who stood still and stricken with averted face.
"I dare say you're different. Had a different bringing up, too, didn't you? I've never cared nor been taught to care for anything that money wouldn't buy—"
Sylvia could not refrain from saying swiftly:
"Do you really mean, can you really mean that you intend to marry Mr. Bettine for his money, just for his money—and—and—to try, as you say, to make some one else care for you?"
"That is as far as I can see at present," answered Phenice. "It only sounds ugly because it's put into words."
Sylvia looked up now and her fair face, faintly distorted by emotion, looked pale, almost drab, almost plain.
"How can you talk like that?" she demanded hoarsely,
"standing under this ceiling in this room—"
Both girls glanced up at the delicate wreaths of passion flowers scattered over the azure clouds and rosy cherubs painted on the ceiling, but Phenice quickly glanced down again and reached for the jade cigarette case on the mantelpiece.
"Alicia came to grief," she retorted, "through being emotional, not mercenary—I don't see how her moral is mine."
Sylvia went to the desk where she had been writing earlier in the evening and took up a slim packet of letters.
"I ought to give you these," she murmured. "I was looking for stamps when I found them in a little drawer —you see what is on them."
She placed the packet on the mantelpiece beside the jade cigarette box and left the room.
Phenice looked alertly at the letters; they were tied with tape which was sealed with her father's seal, and attached to them was a label on which was written in her father's hand—"Letters from Alicia."
PHENICE took the letters upstairs to her room; she put them, with distaste, on the table by her bed.
"Why do people keep letters?" she thought, and wondered why she had not had the courage to cast these into the fire when Sylvia had given them to her, for she did not intend to read them.
Honour and fear combined into this resolution; she was sincere in not wishing to pry into what her father had kept secret from her, and she was afraid of knowing the story of Alicia.
She felt lonely and very tired; she knew that Sylvia would leave Campion House early in the morning, probably without seeing her again, and that in Sylvia her last, indeed her only real friend would go; and she had been fond of Sylvia and glad of her company and sympathy.
She felt tired and hungry; she remembered that she had missed her dinner; no one had bothered about that, not Sylvia or Mrs. Seaton, well, that was natural, she had gone out without a word and they thought she had had some food outside; but there was a little wood fire burning on the old wide hearth and she was glad of that; she looked through several drawers until she found a large box of chocolates, and then took this to the fire and flung herself in the easy chair and began eating the rich sweets with childish greed.
When she came to the end of the eatable chocolates she cast the frivolous box on the fire and watched the quick flare of yellow flame.
Alicia's letters now; should they go on to that blaze?
Alicia was dead and surely, in decency, her story ought to be dead too.
Phenice rose, yawning.
She would not read the letters nor would she burn them; she might perhaps one day want to open them.
Her weary thoughts went to poor Miles and what he had said of her, horrible things, all true, no doubt, "but I happen to love you," he had ended desperately.
Phenice shuddered slightly in the large quiet room that was part of the large quiet house.
Did she "happen to love" that other man?
Certainly she had never met any one who had affected her so much; she recalled his ironic look, his quiet presence, his formal words, and her heart was chilled.
If he should become indispensable to her what was she to do?
How often she had read of women who had had to choose between love and money and had tried to snatch both—and here was her problem, only it was not love in her case, but a mere phantom of possible love.
Her glance fell on the case of emeralds; she took the stones out and tried them against her white throat in front of the large tortoiseshell-framed mirror.
Beautiful the rich stones looked, beautiful, glittering in and out of the soft light, the warm shade; Phenice tried them in her hair, round her wrist—she would be glad to get out of these black clothes, her father would not have wished her to wear mourning so long, and as she fingered the emeralds she began to think of her old life, of how gay and charming it had been, how delightful it was to be flattered and spoilt by luxurious, witty people—how delightful it might be again.
Better forget Noel Barton, better, after all, really marry John Bettine, and better, also, burn that packet of letters that might contain the secret of the unhappy Alicia.
As Bettine s wife she could get back into the world she had lost, that careless, self-absorbed world that didn't bother about her when she was penniless and exiled here, but which would receive her again as soon as she had money to spend.
But, after all, she could not burn the letters, though she had them actually in her hand over the flames.
It is not so easy to destroy what has been long cherished by one recently dead.
The letters were locked in a bottom drawer of the tall dark wardrobe and Phenice went to sleep, exhausted and haunted by lonely dreams.
When the maid came to pull her curtains in the morning she at once asked if Sylvia was still in the house
"No, miss, the young lady took the seven-thirty to London. She said that you were not to be disturbed."
Phenice did not answer; she was utterly careless of appearances before servants; she felt a pang of regret, but not of remorse; she still considered that she had acted fairly towards Sylvia.
Another wet day; everything looked sodden, the humid air was heavy with the scents of decay, flowers, leaves and earth blended in soaking drabness; the sky, overspread by one shapeless cloud, like a pall, seemed to touch the tops of the dripping trees. The place was impossible, she must get away somehow; at every turn she missed Sylvia.
Mrs. Seaton, rather coldly, brought a pile of accounts; most of them were overdue, a great many must be settled at once, there was no small change in the house and often need for it—the wages had not been paid.
Thus the housekeeper, and Phenice felt herself being forced along one distinct way—what was the use of dreams when realities were so grim?
Money was needed, urgently, for a great many things.
Phenice went to her desk and spent the morning writing cheques which she tore from the cheque book that John Bettine had given her; the total of the obligations that had suddenly closed on her was a considerable sum.
The rain continued and the mournful day filled the large rooms with gray light, and in this solitude, this gloom and this silence the soul of Phenice was restless and passionate as a prisoner just deprived of liberty.
She forced herself to think of the future—if she utterly broke with Bettine and in time made Noel Barton love and marry her—could she endure what life with him would mean—the quiet domestic round of the wife of a professional man without much money? For, of course, she guessed that he was not wealthy in the sense that she counted wealth.
And, on the other hand, if she played with John Bettine for his money and Noel Barton because she liked him—well, why not?
That was the easiest way, just to let things drift.
She thought of the cheque book, with half the leaves gone now, of the emeralds that had been such odd, crude things to give her, but which she really valued very much, of the dead monotonous blankness and bleakness (to which she was not used) of this penurious, isolated country life, and she flinched with a shiver from the mere thought of abandoning her only hope of rescue from the death in life that poverty meant to her; of course she must go to London; Bettine with his middle-class austerity had suggested "friends," but Phenice wrote and engaged rooms for herself and a maid at the opulent hotel she knew and liked better than any other.
When she had sent this to the post the gloom of the day seemed a little lightened—exciting to be in London again—with money to spend I
And somehow she could keep Betinne in the background, for a while at least.
So omnipotent did she seem to herself in her confidence in her youth and brilliance, her courage and charm.
For three days she occupied herself in packing and repacking her clothes, in lying about idly in easy chairs, in staring into the fire and taking lonely walks through the wet with a couple of dogs; Bettine was "too busy" to leave London; that angered and hardened her, though she did not want to see him in the least.
On what was her last evening at Campion House, as she sat moody and sullen beneath the painted ceiling, a letter from Sylvia was brought to her; it contained an affectionate and what seemed timid announcement of her engagement to Noel Barton.
PHENICE was in London; she had suddenly left off her mourning, "enjoy yourself, don't look dowdy whatever happens," her father had said.
Her black frocks were shut away in Campion House, which was closed now, the big rooms shuttered against the light of the shortening autumn days, the passion flower drooping and withering above the porch, the painted ceiling obscured by the darkness of the empty room.
It seemed to Phenice that she had suddenly come back to life; people were beginning to return to London, people whom she knew, they met her in the park, in restaurants and tea shops, and hailed her gaily; she was living expensively, mingling in the old crowd, following the old habits, therefore received again without question; her engagement to John Bettine was accepted carelessly, no one bothered where her money came from nor when her wedding would be; she did not bother much herself, she lived extravagantly and put off Betinne as best she could, with the fewest possible caresses and civilities and the greatest number of cold excuses that she could invent.
The big, grim man did not take much notice of her moods; he had said the end of the month and the end of the month was not yet; he was very occupied in his own affairs and only on one point had he been insistent; Phenice had had to leave the luxurious little hotel where she was so deliciously free and partake herself to the formal protection of General and Mrs. Thorpe in their rather gloomy Knightsbridge mansion which was too large and too old-fashioned to be liked by Phenice.
But she could have a town house of her own soon now, as well as one in the country and a coquettish villa on the Riviera, and months of the year in none of these residences but luxuriously travelling.
Bettine seemed one of those men who turned all they touched into money, his speculations were all clever or fortunate, or both, and those who knew him best (and they were not of the world of Phenice Campion) wondered that he should marry a penniless, spoilt young aristocrat who appeared to give him a scant measure even of civility for his money.
Phenice and Mrs. Thorpe were going to Paris to buy clothes—"just for a few days."
"Rather an ancient excuse for a bit of excitement, isn't it?" asked Bettine dryly. "Aren't there clothes enough in London? I seem to see nothing else."
But he let her go and he added something to her shrinking bank account.
Phenice, turning over her things in her rather arid bedroom, found the packet of letters "from Alicia" and felt a horrible chill invade her heart.
"I daren't read them now, I daren't read them—and yet, not reading them—dare I marry John Betinne?"
Mrs. Thorpe was fussing about, directing the packing, bothering the maids, ringing up estate agencies to worry about "sweet quaint little houses," ridiculously costly, that Phenice was supposed to "view," and Phenice sat at her dressing table with those old letters in her lap.
No one knew of their existence save the one person of whom she could not endure to think—Sylvia Mordaunt—why not destroy them? Yet, again, she could not do that—letters of the dead to the dead
She had a sensation that life was hurrying round her, carrying her; sweeping her away to doom; dragging a net over her that enmeshed her beyond escape.
In mid-Channel, on the deck of the steamer, she leant over the rail with the packet in her hand, but could not drop it into the rapid waves.
She had only a moment to herself; Mrs. Thorpe was coming up, and the letters went back into the inner pocket of the brocaded and jewelled bag.
And, on the ocean, where everything always seems a little divorced from actuality, where everyday life is for a little suspended, Phenice, turning away from the railings, heard Mrs. Thorpe say:
"I see Mr. Folliot's partner is to be married—a Mr. Noel Barton—and to a Sylvia Mordaunt too. Didn't you know her?"
Phenice turned back to the railing and leant on it, averting her face.
"Is that in the papers?" she asked.
"Yes, I saw it just now, in those I bought at the station—there's a photo of Sylvia Mordaunt," added Mrs. Thorpe, who was the kind of woman who always sentimentalises a birth, a marriage, or a death. "She looks awfully sweet and pretty."
"She is," replied Phenice, "awfully sweet and pretty" —and the unhappy girl could hardly keep the bitterness from her voice.
Ever since she had received that letter from Sylvia Mordaunt she had fiercely, violently thrust the whole affair into the background of her heart and mind. It had required a good deal of character to do this, because never had she been so humiliated, so enraged and so jealous, but by force of her native courage and constant excitements, amusements and spending of money, she had managed to do this, managed not to think about Noel Barton or Sylvia Mordaunt; they were not either of them really in her world and she had not met them, and this had helped.
But now she knew that what had really sustained her secretly, had been her disbelief in Sylvia's letter, her frantic hope that her statement was a deception.
But now there could be no doubt—it was true, publicly announced, and now Phenice knew, without a shadow of a chance of escape, how much, how terribly she cared.
Those first two days in Paris were like a dull and heavy dream to Phenice, though the sun shone brightly, the trees were golden in the boulevards, the dressmakers' "salons" were full of charming clothes, and pleasant acquaintances were met at every turn; even Mrs. Thorpe, who was rather a stupid woman, absorbed in trifles, began to notice the girl's pallor, her fits of wild excitement, her fits of dark gloom and utter indifference, and, as she belonged to the class that never says—"I'm afraid you're not happy," she said, "I'm afraid you're not well, Phenice," after her niece had displayed an extraordinary burst of temper over the shape of a hat. Phenice, frightened in the midst of her nervous anger, gazed at her aunt.
Yes, she was losing her head, becoming hysterical, that was the last degradation; never before had her self-control been shattered like this, people would begin to pity her, to laugh at her, Sylvia in time would hear of it and guess the cause.
A strong shudder shook her small, frail body and the tears suddenly stung her dark eyes.
"You're overwrought," said Mrs. Thorpe kindly, "too much rushing about, of course. I should rest this afternoon, if I were you."
"I promised to go and see Madame Gerard," said Phenice dully. "I met her yesterday and she would think a great deal of it if I went to see her—"
"Well," smiled Mrs. Thorpe, "that would be a very quiet afternoon, almost as quiet as lying down in your room," and she smiled approvingly at Phenice, for a visit to Madame Gerard was just the sort of action that she liked, and also one that she had hardly thought her wilful niece capable of, for Madame Gerard was an impecunious, rather pathetic old lady who had once taught Phenice some French.
Also, Mrs. Thorpe was quite glad to have an afternoon "all to herself" in which to "rest," for like many very idle people she was quite fond of "resting." So she added quickly:
"Of course it will be a very nice thing for you to do, dear, it isn't very far away, is it? And you'll be back to tea, won't you? Or soon after?"
"It is in the Rue de Sèvres," replied Phenice briefly, "and I shan't be long."
She had not in the least intended to visit Madame Gerard, her courage was not the kind that can face the spectacle of old age and poverty; she had meant to send some present to her one-time governess, something that would be no trouble, just ordered from a shop, and then dismiss the meeting from her mind.
But, after that attack of hysteric anger over a trifle in which she was not really interested she had snatched at this excuse to get away by herself—away from dressmakers, milliners, maids and Mrs. Thorpe.
She even had a wild, half-formed idea of enjoying the luxury of confessing to this worn, serene and wise old woman who, surprisingly, seemed to remember her with such touching pleasure.
As she got into the handsome car that had been hired for their visit, she wondered what arrangement John Betinne had made with her aunt; it was, of course, he who was paying for everything—it was not likely to be the Thorpes, who had never offered her a penny when the crash came, but had tried to drive a hard bargain about Campion House!
The day was sharp and foggy; a bluish mist floated about the massive gray buildings of the city, and the golden leaves on the boulevard trees were falling steadily on to the damp, crowded pavements, the muddy crowded roads; high in the upper air were rifts of azure, veiled now and then by fugitive vapours; Phenice wore her new silver furs and got some pleasure from that fact; only the very smartest women had new furs already.
Her car was held up in a long traffic block near the river; it was stopped next the pavement and Phenice looked idly at the hurrying passers-by, who seemed, she thought, all so much more useful and necessary than herself—and so much happier.
And then one of these passers-by suddenly saw her, stopped, turned back, stopped again.
Miles Fenton.
Phenice felt as if the whole gloom and misery of the afternoon had been lifted; she remembered nothing save that this was a friend, a friend of the old days.
She held out her hand gladly, though, until this moment she had forgotten that he was in Paris.
"Why, Miles, how are you?"
"Fair to rotten, thank you."
He looked hostile, hard, and even bitter.
"Get in," said Phenice. "We can't talk here."
He hesitated.
"Are you alone?"
Phenice was pleased that she could answer: "Shopping with Mrs. Thorpe, my aunt. Got an after- noon off—get in, the traffic is moving on—"
She opened the door and he did get in, but reluctantly.
"Perhaps you've somewhere to go," she suggested. "Nowhere on earth."
He was looking at her silver dress, her bloomy furs, her pearls and brocade coat—Phenice of the old days had not been dressed like this—and she was looking at his shabbiness and thinking how passionately he had loathed shabbiness; she dismissed Madame Gerard from her mind; she would spend the afternoon with him.
"We'll go and have tea in the Bois."
She gave re-directions to the chauffeur.
And then remembered what Miles had said to John Bettine—and that she ought to make him explain all about—Alicia.
I DON'T know why I came," said Fenton sullenly. "And I suppose you don't know why you asked me."
"I didn't at first," replied Phenice, "except that I was glad to see you. But now I know—"
The car was gliding down the Champs Elysees, everywhere gold leaves, white palaces rising through the bluish mist, and a press of people, cars, and through the trees, glimpses of horses and riders.
Phenice stopped at one of the elegant shops near the Arc de Triomphe, gave Fenton Madame Gerard's address, and asked him to order some flowers to be sent there at once.
"Anything will do—something nice, she doesn't get too many flowers, roses perhaps " Phenice scribbled some excuses on a leaf of her pocket book and gave that to Fenton with her purse; he executed this commission reluctantly. Phenice, watching him through the gleaming windows of the shop, standing among the exotic sheaves of flowers, crimson, orange and purple, thought how haggard and discontented he looked, the whole aspect of the man was changed.
He returned and tossed her gold-meshed purse into her lap.
"Seem to have got over your financial difficulties," he remarked dryly. "I suppose you're not married to Bettine, eh?"
"No," said Phenice quickly. "And if you're going to be unpleasant—"
Fenton interrupted:
"Why shouldn't I,be unpleasant?"
The girl looked at him and suddenly her face and manner changed.
"I don't know. I thought we might have had a nice afternoon together, like old times."
"That's like a woman," he mocked bitterly. "Smash a man up and then—kiss and be friends."
"But I couldn't have smashed you up," protested Phenice. "You never thought enough of me—"
But the phrase frightened her; Miles had an odd, a ruined look; she felt near to something powerful that threatened her horribly—suppose she, one day, was "smashed up"? And she remembered Noel Barton, whose image was more and more obsessing her imagination.
And she added, to the gloomy man with averted face who sat so sullenly beside her:
"Oh, Miles, don't! I'm not happy either!"
Her voice was touched with panic and he turned quickly:
"Cut it all, then—if you're not married you can, yet—"
Phenice was silent; if she did break with Bettine it would not be for the sake of Miles Fenton, but for that of a stranger, and the irony of the situation was bitter.
She looked with resentful eyes at the scene which was rich and splendid to the last splendour of richness, in which she, young, luxuriously appointed, companioned by youth, was yet so miserably out of place.
And she shivered though the autumn sun, nearing the west, was breaking through the azure mists in amber fire and casting a glowing warmth over the prospect.
"How are you getting on?" she asked nervously.
"Not at all," he replied briefly. "The other fellow— with the money—hasn't turned up yet, don't know that he ever will—"
"Then the scheme, the motor shop, has—fallen through?"
"Looks like it"
"What are you doing, then?"
"Nothing. Hanging about."
"But you can't—for long."
"Can't I? Seems to be what I'm pretty good at—"
"But, Miles—you can get work—"
"Dancing partner at a cafe? Salesman in a motor shop? Guide for tourists?" Phenice was silent.
"Or, I might marry a rich woman," added Miles with malice. "I suppose there are a few still about."
Phenice ignored this savage thrust.
"But you're a pretty good engineer, aren't you, Miles?"
"So are thousands of other men," he replied grimly, "and lots of 'em looking for jobs. And I'm over thirty —getting on for these days. I played about too long, spent all my capital, wasted my chances, wore out my friends."
And she had helped him; how much time and money had she not allowed him to spend on her without pausing to reflect if he could afford either—into how many extravagances had she not led him, how often had she not, directly and by her example, urged him into recklessness, into disregarding sober advice—how often had she not scornfully told him that work was "stuffy!"
And worse than any of this, she had, partly through indifference, and partly through vanity, allowed him to cherish a passion which she had always known that she must disappoint in the end.
She had thought nothing of this—how crazy she had considered his behaviour when he came, in his desperation, to Campion House.
But now she knew better.
A dreary silence fell between them as they drove through the golden afternoon; there was no enchantment for either in the delicious scenes that had proved so full of magic for so many lovers.
When they reached the elegant tea house near "Bagatelle," where the long line of expensive cars waited, Phenice dismissed her chauffeur and told him to return in a couple of hours.
There was so much that she had to say to Miles— and she dreaded the return to that blatant hotel and blatant Mrs. Thorpe, to whom nothing ever seemed to have happened and who had no real sympathy for any one though she was so full of platitudinous sentimentality.
The agreeable little gardens, that were merely an enclosure in the forest, with the pagoda-like tea house, were full of fashionable folk, the people who were just returning to Paris, or just passing through Paris; and the costly artificiality of this company, their formality which masked license, and their cynic idleness depressed Phenice, without her knowing why.
She was conspicuously dressed and she was unknown to any one there, and therefore many curious glances followed her and she saw that Fenton both despised and resented this indifferent admiration. Yet, a year ago she could have come here and been happy.
They found a table fairly apart from the others.
"But we can't talk here," said Phenice as they seated themselves.
"Is there anything to talk about?" he asked. "Yes, you know that there is."
Their tea was served; neither could eat, though Phenice broke up a cake on her plate, and smiled and spoke lightly because she was trained to show no emotion in a public place.
But Fenton made no such effort; he lounged in his chair, throwing crumbs to the sparrows and making the briefest responses to his companion's remarks.
A slow melancholy crept over Phenice; she had been glad to see Miles Fenton and had really hoped that they might have snatched at one of those jolly hours that they used to enjoy together.
But it had been a failure, as she ought to have known it must be.
Miles was changed; even in those few weeks since she had last seen him, he seemed to have become a different man—careless, shabby in his clothes, gloomy and sullen in his air, with that touch of flamboyancy in his appearance accentuated to a slight bravado.
He looked ill, too, haggard and heavy-eyed, and this did not suit his florid complexion, his heavy build; he was essentially a man who should have looked healthy and gay.
"Let us go and walk in the park," said Phenice restlessly.
She had a pang when she saw him pay for the foolish, extravagant trifle of a meal—but she could not bring herself to offer her purse; she wished now that she had not let him see it, stuffed with notes—John Bettine's money I
Careless and cruel of her not to have thought of that, careless and cruel, too, to send those costly blooms with that flippant excuse when that old woman was expecting her, had probably arranged a little feast, asked in a neighbour—careless and cruel, too, coming to this expensive, stupid place. Miles must have to count his francs.
Never before had Phenice known such a pang of self-contempt; she tried scornfully to overcome it, but it still stung her as she left the frivolous little tea garden with the inquisitive glances behind her; she wished now that she had told the car to wait.
After all, Miles was right, there was nothing to be said between them.
They walked slowly along the pleasant paths, under the noble trees.
There were not many people about, a few children, a few nursemaids, a few couples like themselves.
The whole heavens were pale gold now, faintly tinged with finest silvery blue and all the groups and alleys and avenues of trees were golden too, dusted with a vivid light on every leaf.
"You're going to marry Bettine?" asked Fenton.
"I've said I will."
"I suppose you could get out of it?"
I don't know," her voice faltered. Miles glanced at her and asked brutally: "Is it his money you're spending?"
Yes."
"I might have known!"
"I expect you did know," she replied with a bitterness equal to his own.
"Well, that's the end of it," he muttered as if speaking to himself.
"The end of what?" she asked faintly, foolishly.
He shrugged his shoulders and would not answer.
"The end of caring for me, I.suppose," said Phenice.
"I wish to heaven it were," he replied grimly.
"But why do you? You told me pretty plainly what you thought of me—"
They had turned, half unconsciously, away from the more frequented paths and were wandering slowly down one of the narrow alleys which cut directly through the tall trees.
"Odd, isn't it?" said Miles sarcastically.
There was a long seat with the boughs of a beech, gold with the last leaves, spread over it; they sat down and looked at each other earnestly.
"Look here, Phenice," he said, almost roughly, "you've always had an easy time, you're always going to have an easy time—you've taken care of that, haven't you? With me it's different, my fooling about is over, I can get out of it like you've done."
"You don't make pretty speeches, do you?" replied the girl faintly.
"Don't feel like—anything pretty." He laughed suddenly, cruelly. "A pity you couldn't find any one more presentable than Bettine—after all the heads you turned."
This was brutally put, but Phenice saw the truth of it; after her career of universal admiration and coquetry it was indeed but a sorry triumph to have but these two men who were witling to marry her—Fenton, who had nothing to offer any woman, and Bettine, whom no woman would be likely to trouble about were it not for his money, no woman, at least, of the world that Phenice had adorned.
"Yes," she replied bitterly, "you're right, Miles, I had to grab the money."
"Don't I" he cried fiercely.
"Well?" Her voice shook beneath the defiant note. "You've been talking like that, haven't you?"
"How else am I to talk? You'd laugh at me if I tried to get you away—like you laughed before."
"No," said Phenice gravely, "I shouldn't laugh. I was a little beast. But 1 can't give it up—I've gone too far."
"The money?" The young man's voice was hoarse.
"Yes. I've taken—a lot. There are bills, too—I daren't say how much. I didn't like to tell him. I began spending—to make myself forget"—her eyes were desperate, her voice faint—"things like this," she twitched at her silver furs. "I can't be moderate."
She saw his nervous hand clench and a thick flush distort further his face, and in a quick terror she added:
"But that isn't what I wanted to talk to you about— it's—Alicia, what do you know about Alicia?"
I KNOW nothing about Alicia," said Miles swiftly and sullenly. "And what has Alicia to do with us?"
"But you told me—that was the last thing you said to me—that John Bettine knew something—"
"I told you to ask him about it—did you?" retorted Miles harshly.
"No."
"Because you were afraid?"
"Because I simply—couldn't."
"Well, why are you bothering now?"
It seemed indeed an evidence of feebleness that she was "bothering," since she had just frantically declared that she could not now get free of Betinne.
"I found a packet of letters from Alicia—I haven't opened them."
Again Miles asked grimly:
"Because you were afraid?"
Now she admitted fear.
"Yes, perhaps. They were letters to father, and they are both dead, you know."
She glanced nervously at his hostile and frowning face, and added:
"If you know anything you ought to tell me."
After a pause of struggling reluctance he answered:
"You're right. I behaved atrociously. I shouldn't have cared, though, if I had got you away from him—'all's fair,' you know—" he broke off with a dreary laugh.
Phenice remembered how she had used those words to Noel Barton; the golden light was retreating from the heavens, the bluish mist creeping up again through the trees; these two seemed isolated, cut off from the rest of the world in this straight path that divided the forest.
"I never believed that there was anything in it," said Phenice slowly.
"There wasn't," replied Miles reluctantly, "not what I tried to make you think, anyhow—"
Phenice did not know if she was relieved or disappointed by this; a certain shadow of horror was lifted from her mind; at the same time she felt confusedly, that her own valid excuse for breaking with Betinne had gone.
She had really, though secretly, and almost unconsciously, always relied on this horrible past to help her free from the horrible present, truthfully to accuse Bettine of being the protagonist of Alicia's tale would be to put him fearfully in the wrong and afford an honourable way of escape for herself.
To this depth of meanness had Phenice sunk—she would, in her last extremity, have taken her sister's tragedy to save herself from the consequences of her own greed and folly.
And that excuse had vanished.
She heard Miles saying grudgingly:
"Betinne isn't the man who painted the passion flower, but he knows something about it—quite a lot, I think— he befriended your sister and her husband—"
"She was married, then?" asked Phenice, startled.
"Yes—there was no more in it than that, I think, she ran away with a painter and married him—"
"But she came back—to die?"
"I don't know. Bettine will know. She came back to Campion House and then disappeared. Ask Betinne."
Why?"
"He was with her—he brought her back to see your father—lots of people in the village remember it—they did at the inn."
Again Phenice cried:
"Why?"
"Ask him," replied Miles bitterly. "He was trying to help them, I suppose. I believe he admired her very much, and was sorry for her—probably that's why he looked you up, afterwards."
"How do you know all this?" demanded Phenice, greatly disturbed and startled.
"I was with Bettine once—we didn't get on—I heard some of it then—and then more when I was hanging round Campion House."
"Then you knew in the old days—why did you never mention it?"
"Your father wouldn't hear your sister spoken of— and how was I to guess you would ever meet a man like John Bettine? What was the use?"
"And what is the use now?" asked Phenice with an accent of bitter passion. "Alicia's dead and I've got my- self to think of—"
So, John Betinne, whom she disliked and despised so much, had on the confession of a man who was his enemy, and who had already slandered him, behaved well and even nobly, and not least well and nobly in refusing to take any notice of the wild accusations of Miles Fenton; not through his own baseness could she free herself from John Bettine.
Miles Fenton took advantage of her weak, defeated air, her frightened glance.
"Give it all up," he said eagerly. "Never mind the money—we'll get through somehow, I could work if I had an object He tried to snatch her hands, but Phenice rose.
"I'm terribly sorry, Miles—"
He would not listen; in great agitation he endeavoured to press his appeal.
"We could gradually pay him back, Phenice, and clear off my debts as well—"
"A question of thousands," she interrupted with a feeble, hysterical laugh.
"Never mind," he urged doggedly. "Why shouldn't I make money as well as Betinne—I'm on an invention now, there might he a fortune in it—"
She was silent, regarding him with pity.
"I suppose you've no faith in me at all!" he cried fiercely.
"It isn't that—"
He snatched the sentence, his words blurred in his eagerness.
"You're afraid of being hard up? But I'd see that it wasn't too bad, and I like you better without that finery—"
The vapour stealing through the trees was closing round them; the leaves were falling silently on the long path already ruddy gold with their fellows.
"It isn't that," said Phenice.
"What is it, then?" he asked roughly.
"I told you before," she replied sadly. "I don't care enough."
And she recalled how in her hard defiance of fortune, her impatient boredom with Miles, she had said that, of course, if she had cared she would have gone with him gladly. She reminded him of that.
"Don't you remember, I told you, Miles? That was guesswork then, but now I know if I had cared—"
She broke off with a panic realisation that she was betraying her secret, but Miles was too absorbed by his own passion to notice what she had revealed; he only saw that she was kinder, and this gave him a hope.
"You'll never be happy with that man, Phenice— you'll sicken of the money—"
"I'd never be happy with you, Miles," she broke in desperately, "and I'd sicken of poverty too—"
"We shouldn't be poor"—he flung his defiance at fate —"I'd see to that—"
"But you wouldn't go on caring for me," said Phenice. "There's nothing to care for, you've told me that yourself. I couldn't help any one bear things, do things, go without—I should become shrewish—horrible—"
"No, you wouldn't—I'd love you too well."
The girl, shaken and distracted, said, with melancholy and amazement: "Why do you love me?" Miles laughed.
"It isn't a matter of logic. I don't know why—you just make all the world different—life seems worth while when you're there. It's like having music playing to see you about—I feel that you belong to me, that I'm only half alive when you're not near—that I could do everything with you, nothing without you—that I can't endure any one else to even look at you—it's like being insulted and robbed—any one taking you from me—"
Phenice listened intently; he was expressing in these tumbling broken words her feeling for Noel Barton, the stranger whom she had only known for one day, the man who was going to marry Sylvia Mordaunt.
"Stop, Miles, stop," she broke in. "It's no good, I can't face—everything—unless I feel like that too. And I don't—I don't; I wish I did."
She spoke with emotion and the tears came to her eyes, for she was thinking how gladly she would have broken with John Betinne and faced the whole world, if it had been Noel Barton who was pleading with her as poor Miles was pleading.
"It's no use," she repeated to his bitter silence, and sank on the seat again, shivering, for the air was be- coming cold and the light paling while the mist in- creased. "I must go back—Mrs. Thorpe will be wondering —"
They both looked forlorn in the loneliness of that straight path and those tall trees and the steady increasing mist that was beginning to take on a grayish tinge.
Miles Fenton took two quick turns about on the Utter of dead damp leaves that strewed the path; he was struggling with the desire to do something violent and futile as a vivid protest against the coding misfortunes in which he found himself encircled.
But the pathos of the still, childish figure of the girl in her expensive and foolish finery checked him; he felt that she was even more to be pitied than he was to be pitied, and his spirits ebbed below the full surge of anger and revolt that had possessed him, ebbed in weak misery at the thought of what was before both of them.
"What is going to become of us?" he asked quietly. "We're going to be horribly unhappy—it doesn't seem fair—"
Phenice sprang up.
"No—not you, you'll get over this," she answered quickly. "Of course you will, Miles! There's your work —and other girls!"
"Yes—and you? You'll have money, I suppose."
This sounded like the keenest mockery, but, after all, had she not always, proclaimed that money was the greatest good, and acted upon that, snatching at the first easy money that came, John Bettine's money?
"Yes, I shall have money," she answered. "Let us go now—it is getting quite cold and damp."
They moved slowly away from that solitary path which both of them were always to remember, and out on to the wide walk by the lake.
They had talked for a longer time than they knew; there were no longer children nor nursemaids nor lingering couples about, but a few odd people who appeared to have no definite aim in their wanderings, no definite purpose in their minds, as they drifted and paused, in harmony with the falling leaves, the mist and the twilight round the lake which looked blank and chill beneath the colourless upper sky.
"The man will be tired waiting," said Phenice vaguely. "I suppose he will be outside that tea place."
"I had forgotten," answered Miles Fenton.
They walked side by side, slowly back to the frivolous gardens where they had had that desolate attempt at "tea."
Phenice felt frightened at the thought of parting from Miles; even though he reviled her, she felt the warmth of his great love comfort her; and who else was there who really did love her?
When he left her she would be more lonely than ever she had been; the one friendly face and voice and look would be gone; yet she dare not suggest that she should meet him again.
Again, she would have liked to do something for him—but how could she, save with Bettine's money?
So, troubled by these thoughts, she walked beside him, dreading each step that, after this short interlude, led her back to the life she had chosen for herself.
The car was waiting; all others had gone; the tea gardens were closed.
"I won't come with you," said Miles abruptly. "I'll walk back—"
She could not urge him to come with her, though she dreaded the lonely ride; it was not her car; Bettine's money was paying for it, Bettine's money would pay for "everything" from now on—was that going to spoil "everything" for her?
"Very well," she said, pausing, "good-bye, then."
But now, at the actual moment of parting it was he whose courage failed.
"I must see you again," he said, in a voice quick and dry with panic. "I'll promise to behave—only to say good-bye—"
"Oh, Miles—it's no use—"
"Yes—it is—just another half hour-
"We've only got two more days in Paris."
"To-morrow, then—the Cafe' Dauphine—four o'clock."
Phenice saw that the chauffeur of the solitary car was watching them with a cold curiosity; these farewells must be shortened; she could not endure to make them more painful
"To-morrow, then, I'll try," she answered and hastened away without looking back.
It was late when Phenice arrived at the hotel; Mrs. Thorpe was already dressed for the evening and seemed perturbed.
"How thoughtless of Madame Gerard to keep you so long," she exclaimed. "And did you forget that we were dining out with the Clintons to-night?"
Phenice had forgotten; she chafed against this checking of her comings and goings, she was not used to any supervision.
The dinner party was intolerable to Phenice; the Clintons were dull, pompous friends of Mrs. Thorpe, who had taken an apartment in Paris for the winter; their conventionality, their curiosity, their steady scrutiny and the heavy dullness that enveloped them were all fierce irritations to the distracted girl; she answered sharply and shrugged impatiently in defiance of her aunt's unconcealed disapproval.
I MUST buy Sylvia Mordaunt a wedding present," Phenice remarked to her aunt the following afternoon. "You needn't come—I shan't go farther than the Rue de la Paix."
This was quite true, for in the Rue de la Paix was the Cafe" Dauphine where she meant to meet Miles Fenton.
So for the second time Phenice found herself free for at least several hours and her spirits rose at once.
She dressed more quietly than she had dressed the day before, partly because the remark of Miles about "finery" had stung, and partly because, reckless as she was, she did not wish to be too noticeable when with Miles Fenton.
Of course there was really no "sense" in seeing Miles again; it was only a little relief snatched furtively, this tiny interview. She liked Miles and she was sorry - for him; oddly enough her liking and her pity had increased since she had met Noel Barton.
With bitterness, with malice and with pain she bought a present, a wedding present for Sylvia Mordaunt—an enormous fan of smoke-coloured plumes with ebony sticks set with pearls. This seemed to her a fitting gift to carry her ironic congratulations to Sylvia Mordaunt.
She employed a long while choosing this fan, for she bad nothing to do, and she dared not face complete idleness, her thoughts were too poignant, and, when she left the gay little shop, full of glittering toys and sparkling trifles, it was nearly four o'clock.
By the time she had walked to the Cafe Dauphine, Miles would be there; she turned in that direction and went slowly along the crowded pavements; she bad just reached the brilliant glass doors of the cafe and was stepping across the threshold when some one touched her arm.
Phenice turned with an unpleasant start; John Bettine was just behind her; he smiled down into her frightened face.
"Come in and have some tea," he said.
"You here!" murmured Phenice stupidly. "I never thought—"
"Why shouldn't I be here? I often run across. I called at the hotel but found you were out. Mrs. Thorpe said you would be somewhere in the Rue de la Paix— I'm lucky—"
"I don't like this place for tea," said Phenice, struggling hard for some measure of composure.
"But you were going in?"
"Only to buy some chocolates."
"Come in, then, and buy them—"
She could hesitate no longer; already the horrible scene was touched by the ridiculous, for an ornate page had been expectantly holding the door open ever since she stepped into the porch; John Bettine touched her arm lightly and guided her into the bright interior of the cafe which was all gilt and orange light and perfumed with rich, heavy, sweet smells.
"We'll sit down a moment," said Bettine "I haven't seen you for a long time—"
Phenice could not have refused without a scene, for she could think of no excuse and she was rapidly losing self-control; as Bettine disposed of his hat and stick and leisurely ordered tea, studying the menu with as much heaviness as if he was in a chop house, Phenice dared to glance round.
There, seated at one of the rococo little tables in a quiet little corner, surrounded by other little rococo tables still empty, sat Miles Fenton gazing at her furiously.
Such a wave of misery engulfed the unfortunate girl that she was incapable of any action; Miles would think she had brought Bettine here to mock him, Bettine would think she had come there to meet Miles—nothing could be more degrading, more humiliating than her position.
Bettine glanced round, saw her agitation, saw Miles Fenton.
"That's odd," he remarked dryly, lifting his surly brows.
"I—I must speak to him," stammered Phenice, "he is—an old friend—"
"But not a new one, I hope," replied Bettine grimly. "After our last interview, eh? Take no notice of him—"
"I can't do that," pleaded the girl. "Just let me say one word—"
She made a movement as if to rise, but Bettine flashed a whisper, "sit down I" and she remained where she was, helpless, ashamed, shuddering.
And then the moment was gone; there was no chance to make matters right with Miles, to do the decent thing by claiming him, to signal to him, to smuggle him a look, a word, for the young man pulled a note out, flung it on his plate and walked from the cafe; as he passed Phenice and Bettine he gazed in their direction as if their places were empty.
Bettine gave a short laugh and picked up the menu again.
And Phenice had done nothing; she had been afraid; she had sat there without protest and allowed Miles to go out like that, looking at her with eyes that told her that she no longer existed for him; she did not know where to find, she would probably never see, him again. He would always think of her like that—as some one hateful.
YOU seem upset," remarked John Betinne brusquely. Phenice did not answer.
"Seen him before since you've been in Paris?" asked Bettine in the same tone. "Seen whom?" murmured Phenice in futile evasion. "Miles Fenton."
No."
"Well, I hope you won't see him again—not very pleasant, is it?"
I ought to have spoken to him."
Is that troubling you?"
"He was an old friend," said the girl faintly, "my father's friend.—"
"Yes," remarked John Bettine dryly, "the kind of friend who helped your father and yourself into the mess you got into. He's no good and never will be any good. He's a slacker."
"I'm a slacker too," said Phenice bitterly.
"But you," added her future husband firmly, "are going to learn differently."
The girl's entire being revolted against this; she was tick with wounded pride and self-contempt, but afraid, afraid of offending the man whose money she had taken.
Bettine's keen eyes glanced at her, not without sympathy. "Done your shopping?w
H "Yes."
"Got all you want?"
"Yes—oh, I think so—there are a few more fittings," she answered at random. "Then you'll be able to cross with me on Friday?"
Yes—I suppose so."
She was dunking of Miles walking away, full of rage and hate, stung to the quick by her behaviour; poor Miles, as proud, as impetuous, as undisciplined as she was herself, poor Miles, without money, or hope or friends!
A strong shudder shook her; surely men had committed suicide for less agony than Miles must be enduring now, the agony of black jealousy which she, Phenice, could now understand.
She remembered how, in her pleasure at seeing him yesterday, she had encouraged him, smiled on him, shown him something of her hesitation and trouble, and he, he had been reluctant to come with her; it was she who had persuaded him, lured him on to this disaster.
Nor did she know his address, nor did he know hers —careless, both of them, neither had thought of addresses yesterday I
"You look pale, we'd better go back to the hotel"
Bettine's not unkindly voice penetrated the haze of her miserable thoughts.
Mechanically she walked out of the tea shop into the street, into the taxi he hailed; the streets looked blurred and sombre, she saw no pleasure, no gaiety anywhere.
"You're not worrying over that fellow, are you?"
Phenice dared not answer; when they arrived at the hotel Bettine followed her in and up to the little private sitting-room where Mrs. Thorpe was waiting for them. Phenice noticed on the gaudy side table a slim packet— the fan she had ordered for Sylvia Mordaunt's wedding present.
She sat down and took off her gloves and hat, unable to speak.
Mrs. Thorpe appeared nervous, she began a stream of fussy talk that had neither direction nor object.
"This came while you were out," she said, with a forced smile. "Do let us see what is inside!"
"I only ordered it just now," said Phenice nervously, "how quick they have been—"
"Good shops are—do open it, dear, I've still a childish delight in parcels," cried the silly woman. "Haven't you, Mr. Bettine?"
"I like to see what Phenice has bought," he replied.
"It isn't for myself." Phenice felt more and more trapped. "A present—"
"Oh, yes, Sylvia Mordaunt, of course! I hope you haven't been extravagant—you know that I told you something quite cheap would do—"
She was obliged to unfasten the parcel and to display to these two whose very presence she resented, her mocking present that she meant to send with a malicious letter to Sylvia Mordaunt.
Away from its luxurious fellows and the extravagant atmosphere of the shop, the fan looked grossly costly.
"That," said Betinne, with a heightening of his common accent that came whenever he spoke of money, "cost a pretty penny, I know."
He put the lovely trifle back in the elaborate box and continued to look sharply at Phenice, who remained in a lifeless attitude on the coquettish little yellow silk sofa.
A discreet knock on the door; a discreet entry of a page with a message.
"A lady had called for Miss Campion, a Madame Gerard, she would not disturb her when she heard she had a visitor, but had left a message—"
Phenice endeavoured to interrupt:
"Yes, yes, I understand—"
But the page added:
"The lady was so sorry that Miss Campion could not go yesterday—she hopes another day—and thanks her for the flowers—"
He was gone; Mrs. Thorpe, hopeless in an emergency, cried out:
"Did he say Madame Gérard? But you were there yesterday!"
"No, she must have sent an excuse," said Bettine, who had a very useful if not elegant knowledge of most foreign languages. "The message was quite clear. Phenice sent flowers instead of going, I suppose."
"But you said you had been!" insisted Mrs. Thorpe, irritated beyond kindness or prudence "You said that
Madame Gerard had kept you—that it was a long way—"
She looked helplessly at her niece, who remained dull and motionless, and broke the ugly pause by murmuring something about their return to London.
"Phenice says that you will be ready by Friday," remarked Bettine quietly.
"Oh, yes, quite ready," fluttered Mrs. Thorpe in nervous relief that the crisis seemed to be over. "We shall have bought everything by then, shan't we, Phenice?"
"Yes," replied the girl; she rose and picked up her cigarette case. "Oh yes, quite ready, I suppose."
"How intolerable they both were," thought Mrs. Thorpe angrily, "this out of hand, impossible young woman, and this dull, heavy, common man"; she really couldn't bear another moment of this stupid situation; she made some time-honoured excuse about "writing letters" (it was quite true that she did continually write aimless letters to aimless people like herself), and left them alone together.
Betinne did not even bother to glance after this ineffective lady.
"Will you come out to dinner to-night, Phenice?"
"I'm sorry, I don't feel up to it—really."
"Well, we'll have dinner quietly here, then, and perhaps afterwards we can go into how much money you've been spending."
This seemed to Phenice incredibly vulgar; she shivered with indignation; Bettine, with a smile, noted this fierce resentment.
"I'm a business man," he reminded her dryly. "I like to know where I am—"
"Oh, if you're going to try business methods with me!" flashed Phenice bitterly.
"Seems as if I'll have to," he remarked. "You've none yourself, have you? I don't want to pry into your accounts—but just to know where you are—"
There seemed no answer, at once wrathful and reasonable to this; Phenice sank on to the sofa again and the unlit cigarette dropped from her fingers.
Bettine, after looking at her in silence a second, asked:
"I suppose you didn't meet Fenton yesterday afternoon?"
PHENICE had given what account she could of her financial affairs; how much she had spent, how much she owed, how much she had in the bank.
She only told half the truth; the largest debts she concealed, and half the accounts from the Paris shops she kept back; she was, of course, angry and humiliated and rebellious, but above everything frightened.
At this moment everything, even the shame of her behaviour to Miles, even her secret love for Noel Barton, was overwhelmed by fear, fear of the withdrawal of the money of John Betinne, which would leave her ruined—for Phenice still called lack of money ruin.
She even made an effort over her spirits and endeavoured to be amiable to Betinne, more amiable than she had ever been before.
When he had first asked her if she had seen Miles Fenton yesterday, she had answered brusquely, "No," but she was not sure if he had believed her, and this added to her nervous alarm.
Bettine was kindly in a commonplace sort of way that further irritated the fastidious girl.
"Well," he said, "I never told you to be careful, so it isn't your fault if you've gone ahead, you were brought up in the craziest way. I don't want you to stint, but I don't like foolishness. I'm rich, but not a millionaire, and an extravagant woman can make even a millionaire bankrupt. You'll have your allowance, and I'll expect you to keep within it. And I don't like debts."
Phenice thought of the debts she had not yet confessed to, of the accounts he had not yet seen.
"I'm not used to economising," she murmured.
"I know. I don't want to be harsh. But you're too sensible to put so much store on gewgaws and to order things without asking the price, eh? Learn to get value —for everything."
Phenice thought, drearily, "Aren't I trying to get value for myself?"
She tried to smile, to murmur promises to be more careful, but she felt something near hatred towards this heavy man who dared to advise and rebuke her.
She wore his emeralds, that brilliant and unsuitable ornament, that night at dinner, and endeavoured to be gracious to him, though his heavy, slow talk, his dull look, his commonplace manners irritated her intensely; she saw that Mrs. Thorpe was hostile towards her, and that was hard to bear; she. longed to break away from both of them with fierce defiance, but she controlled herself because she was afraid, afraid of losing John Bettine's money.
They went to a theatre and Phenice found the play intolerable; she was not even pleased by the curious, appreciative glances she received, and panic touched her heart lest the whole of life was going to be like this, dusty, flavourless.
Bettine, sitting close behind her in the box, remarked upon the emeralds.
"I don't like the clasp," he said, "it is too small"
Phenice said that the clasp was well enough, but he insisted and asked Mrs. Thorpe if she did not agree.
That lady nervously acquiesced; yes, she was sure that the clasp was too small, not, even, quite safe I
"Just let me see it," asked Bettine, and Phenice took off the necklace and put it in his hand.
"Yes, I'll have another one put on," he said. "You might lose the thing—and it's valuable."
"Don't take them away," she said. "I look so odd without anything—"
But he did not return the emeralds.
"I'll get them altered in London," he answered. "You shall have them there."
Phenice bit her Up; her heart swelled against being treated as a child, to whom toys are given and taken away carelessly.
"Can't we go home to-morrow?" she asked impetuously. "I'm tired of Paris."
"Certainly we can go home to-morrow," he answered.
But Mrs. Thorpe protested:
"But the shopping!"
"I'm tired of shops," added Phenice.
"But the seats—"
John Bettine stopped Mrs. Thorpe's feeble excuses and protests. "Well go to-morrow."
For the first time since she had known him Phenice felt a faint gratitude towards him—none of his benefits had pleased her so much as this ready agreement with her capricious wish.
It was true that she had felt a desperate desire to get away from Paris, from the possibility of meeting Miles again, from the sight of the Bois where they had walked together, from the sight of the shops where she had spent John Bettine's money, from the sight of the cafe where she had met him so disastrously.
There was a moment or two alone with Betinne for her the next morning, while Mrs. Thorpe was still fussing with the maids and the luggage; everything had been smoothly arranged, but she was doing her best to reduce all to chaos again.
Bettine ignored her; he ordered coffee and took Phenice into one of the empty little drawing-rooms off the busy hall and made her drink it whether she wanted it or no.
"There's a lot of good in coffee," he said kindly. "You don't look well."
I feel tired-that's all—"
"I don't like you to be tired"—he paused, then added abruptly, "What about that Madame Gerard, weren't you to go to see her?"
"Oh, that doesn't matter I" answered Phenice, and she could not help the blood mounting to her face.
"Who is she?"
"An old governess of mine—I met her by chance and she seemed so excited that I promised to go and see her—"
Phenice spoke hurriedly, hardly knowing what she was saying. "Why didn't you go?"
This question held her in a trap; she knew now that he had not believed her denial of yesterday; she made an effort to keep her head; there was nothing for it but more lies.
"I thought it would be so boring—and it was such a relief to get away from my aunt, I just wandered about on my own—"
"Wandered about? But you had the car."
"Oh, yes!" She wondered how he knew. "I took the car—to the Palais de Glace, there is an amusing exhibition there—"
"Well," replied Bettine calmly, "I must look into this man's account. I've got his bill here—and he's charged for taking you to some tea place in the Bois and waiting over two hours."
"It's a mistake!" cried Phenice in terror. "What could I do there—all that time?"
"Of course, a mistake," said Bettine quietly. "These fellows will have one if they can." He looked at her straightly. "That's what I have to be always on my guard against—if you're supposed to have money, there's always some one trying to cheat you."
It seemed to Phenice that these words were directed against herself; to herself, indeed, they applied with terrible truth
But her immediate fear was fear of discovery, this was more powerful than shame.
"You won't make a fuss, will you?" she asked as carelessly as she could contrive to speak. "It doesn't seem worth while," she added with quivering lips. "I hate fusses."
He did not answer, his manner was unchanged, and the girl could only hope that he believed her, or, at least, attached no importance to her subterfuges.
And, oddly, despite everything, her spirits rose as she neared England, for she had made a wild, imprudent but delightful resolve somehow to see Noel Barton again.
She was returning home with that one purpose
PHENICE had reached that point of her fortunes when she dared look neither backwards nor forwards, nor consider any moment except that which actually existed; she was ashamed to think about the past, and afraid to consider the future; many of her actions seemed to her to have been impossible in the past—she could not imagine how she could have done some of the things she had done, and it seemed to her that they would be still more impossible in the future.
The episode with Miles in Paris had proved devastating to Phenice; she had found that she could not rely on herself to do the fine generous action (she who had been so sure of her own innate nobility I) when a crisis had arisen she had behaved meanly, and survived.
She had lied, and patched up her lies, and scarcely cared if she was believed or not, as long as some belief was pretended and she was safe.
She had discovered that it was easy to be cowardly, deceitful and mean, and that she was herself capable of snatching at this dangerous ease, and this discovery made her at once reckless and hopeless, she felt despair and desperation; she saw her whole life ahead a series of lies and intrigues and concealments.
She had lost her cool indifference towards Bettine since she had taken his money, she placated him now, pretended to be fond of him; she was no longer, in any sense of the word, independent.
And yet, in the very secret depths of her heart, she believed that this marriage would never take place, that she could never endure it to take place, though day by day it came nearer and she uttered no word of protest.
She had succeeded in obtaining a postponement the more easily as Bettine was absorbed in his affairs in London and had obstinately decided on the most conventional of fashionable weddings and an orthodox honeymoon in Italy; but this was only a short respite; the date was definitely fixed for the end of October, and Betinne had signed the lease of a house in Knights-bridge.
He spoke to Phenice about Campion House, her one remnant of personal property, and remarked, without hesitation, on the inconveniences and unpleasant associations of the old mansion, which, charming in itself, was not very commendable to modern tastes.
"It's too isolated—and it would cost a good bit to have it done up, why not sell it, and get an up-to-date place near town?"
Phenice was frightened by this suggestion; it seemed to her that if she gave up Campion House she would give up the last shred of her own identity, sever all connection with her independent past and become merely and solely the helpless property of John Bettine.
"I don't want to let that go," she said quickly. "We've had it so long—"
"Those sort of notions are exploded," replied the self-made man quietly. "It is a stupid kind of sentiment. The name comes to an end," he reminded her, not unkindly, but firmly, "so why not the house? It stands for nothing, you know."
This acrid truth held Phenice silent; she considered it, bitterly—the house stood for nothing, she stood for nothing, the name stood for nothing; all over, done with and despised.
"I believe your father never liked the place," added Betinne, "and it has unhappy memories of your sister."
Now was the chance for Phenice to demand: "What do you know of my sister?" but she had not the spirit to do so—what did it matter? Alicia was dead.
"I want to keep Campion House," she said nervously. "It seems like home—more like home than any other place ever will."
"A pity. General Thorpe would buy at a good price. But keep it. Better have telephone and electric fight and a decent garage."
"I like it as it is," said Phenice hurriedly. "I could have that ceiling re-painted—the ceiling with the passion flowers."
"There's no harm in that painting," replied Bettine gravely, "though I dare say you've been taught to think so. Your sister went her own way and paid the price, that's all there is to it—"
"You know all about it?" murmured Phenice.
"No. Some of it—but it's not my secret and I'm under a promise to keep my mouth shut—but don't fancy it's anything disgraceful as far as your poor sister was concerned. Your father behaved badly."
The girl resented this, though it was put with a certain rough tenderness, it seemed to her this man held all the family pride and honour under his heel—he, holding her sister's miserable secret and judging her father!
She averted her face, fearful to offend and unable to control herself to say anything inoffensive.
"Well," said Bettine, watching her, "you can keep Campion House I'll have it touched up. And here are your stones," he added abruptly. "I've had a stronger clasp put on—"
He took a familiar case out of his pocket and slid it ungracefully across the table towards Phenice; her emeralds; she was pleased to see the necklet again, pleased for some vague, undefinable reason, to have those valuable gems in her possession again.
"Ill see Folliot about it," added Bettine in dry business tones. "I suppose you want the stuff too? The furniture and pictures?"
"Yes." Phenice winced, but endeavoured to speak agreeably. "I want everything, please."
When he had gone she went upstairs to the featureless, heavy bedroom that was her one refuge in the commonplace dullness of Mrs. Thorpe's house, and took out the emeralds.
They seemed to sparkle less now, to hold no such glittering lustre as when she had flashed them in the motor lights in the darkling lane.
Certainly they gave her no such thrill of joy; when she locked the case away in one of her drawers she saw the slim packet of letters from Alicia and she closed them quickly into darkness, having neither the courage to destroy or to read those epistles from the dead to the dead.
Betinne had behaved well; he was allowing her to keep Campion House, even against his own wishes, his own common sense; Mr. Folliot, speaking to her of her marriage settlements, had said that "Mr. Bettine had been very generous indeed," she was protected in snug security for the rest of her life.
How little that meant now to Phenice I Though she had been so terrified by the mere shadow of insecurity and poverty she was not roused nor thrilled any longer by the realisation that this shadow was for ever lifted.
All she could clutch at was that wild resolve she had made when leaving Paris—to see Noel Barton again.
"I can't be in love with him, I can't," she told herself feverishly. "It is a dream, a delusion—if I were only to see him once more it would be dispelled."
With her sick head resting against the window frame the unfortunate girl tried to argue with herself that she was captive to a dream, a vision, and that if only she could put this to the test of cold reality it would vanish.
"If I could only see him again—"
There was one easy way to accomplish this—that was to renew her friendship with Sylvia Mordaunt; Sylvia had called at Mrs. Thorpe's; Phenice had been out, but it was still open to her to return the call or to write to Sylvia; and once she began to see something of Sylvia she would, of course, see something of Noel Barton.
But this was precisely how she did not want to see him; it was intolerable to even imagine him as Sylvia's lover; and she did not want to see Sylvia herself at all— no, not ever again.
And so, standing in that bleak light, for the gloom of winter was beginning to fall over London and a faint fog obscured the sky, Phenice was restlessly and impatiently turning over in her mind how she could contrive to see Noel Barton again without seeing Sylvia.
The house was unusually quiet; it was not often that Mrs. Thorpe left the girl so long alone, that there was no one visiting nor to be visited nor some trivial engagement to be fulfilled.
And this loneliness, this sudden pause in the futile occupations of the day, was like a temptation to Phenice.
She went downstairs to the dining-room, that cheerless apartment, furnished years ago in a cold taste and never altered, where the fog was creeping in through the high windows and the long dark table and tall dark sideboard looked-funereal.
Phenice went to the telephone and rang up Mr. Folliot's office
She asked for Mr. Barton.
He was not there.
Then the girl, in a voice unnaturally chill, said that her business with Mr. Barton was most important.
"I'm Phenice Campion," she told the clerk speaking for Mr. Folliot. "Where can I find Mr. Barton, please?"
The clerk suggested that she should speak to Mr. Folliot.
"No," insisted the girl. "It is Mr. Barton who is doing this business for me—where can I find him?"
The clerk gave her an address and a telephone number—there, possibly, she might find Mr. Barton, or, would she leave a message?
There was no message, Phenice said.
Without giving herself time to think, Phenice rang up the number given her—some chambers in Lincoln's Inn; where he lived, no doubt; very likely where Sylvia would live presently.
She heard his voice; knew it at once, that quiet, ironic voice that had seemed to mock her so suavely.
The sound of it inspired her to a wild and malicious courage.
"Phenice Campion speaking—you've forgotten me, of course. Also, of course, congratulations on your engagement."
The answer came back at once:
"No, I've not forgotten. And thank you very much."
"I want to see you—about my affairs. No, Mr. Folliot won't do. Can I see you?"
"Certainly. Shall I call on you—or do you prefer the office?"
"Neither will do. It's a secret. And this is a hideous place. I loathe your office too." She heard him laugh slightly. "Well, then, what do you suggest?"
"I shall be passing Lincoln's Inn to-morrow about six—can you be there, and walk a little way home with me?"
"Yes, I can be there—"
Phenice instantly rang off; she was afraid that she might again hear him faintly laugh.
MRS. THORPE wondered at her niece's gaiety and profoundly distrusted it, as she profoundly distrusted all the moods of Phenice; she was impatiently waiting for the girl's marriage to "get her off her hands," and daily she found the varying moods, extravagances and tempers of Phenice more trying and tiresome.
At six o'clock, then, the wild and impetuous girl, who was, under the pressure of unhappiness, becoming every day more reckless under her apparent apathy, drawing nearer and nearer an abyss which was unsuspected even by those who watched her daily, was in Lincoln's Inn gardens.
Phenice knew that she was beautiful to-day; often she had doubted her own loveliness and thought that the small face gazing at her from her mirror was plain and elfish, but to-day she was assured by every glance into the tiny glass in her handbag, that she was blooming gloriously—a child's face with a woman's eyes, and with a woman's greatest satisfaction glowing in her whole aspect.
She had not completed the circle of the gardens when she saw Noel Barton coming towards her; in a second, and for a second, all her defiant, half-insolent self-confidence vanished; she felt faint and eager for flight, but controlled herself and heard her own voice saying:
"Good-afternoon—I suppose you think this an odd thing to do?"
She regretted having said anything so conventional and self-conscious, but the words had come without her volition.
"I think you are rather an odd person," replied Barton agreeably. "But oddity does not bother me at alL"
They stood looking at each other with vivid curiosity; all the girl's triumphant self-confidence returned when she saw that he was, for all his careless words, looking at her keenly, eagerly.
She laughed excitedly.
"Shall we walk round these gardens?" she asked quickly. "It is delicious to be free, I loathe my aunt and her house"
"Do you? I suppose you will soon have one of your own."
"Yes, I loathe that too. But I am to keep Campion House. I shall go there a great deal."
Side by side they walked along the winding path between the low railings under the trees half bare to the misty skies.
Phenice glanced up at her companion; he was exactly as she remembered him, cool, handsome, slightly hard, slightly mocking with those ironic light eyes, that odd whimsical smile.
Her heart beat thickly with delight and excitement; she forgot Sylvia, as she forgot Bettine.
"Why haven't you been to see me?" she asked gravely. "You know—I was expecting you."
"Why," he counter-questioned, "have not you been to see Sylvia? She has been expecting you."
"Sylvia and I quarrelled," replied Phenice swiftly.
"I should have thought it was very difficult to quarrel with Sylvia."
"It is. All my fault, of course," flashed Phenice.
"Well, then," suggested Mr. Barton, "why not forget it? I'm sure Sylvia has forgotten—is this," he asked carefully, "what you wanted to see me about?"
"No." Phenice looked at him straightly. "Of course not. Do you think I'd come to you about a girls' quarrel?"
"No, I suppose not. But then I can't really think what you could want to see me about, Miss Campion."
Phenice was silent; she did not want to speak at all, but just to walk beside him in the fading light, in the melancholy town gardens and pretend that he belonged to her, that he, and not Miles Fenton, that he, and not John Bettine, was going to marry her at the end of the month.
But this day-dream was not allowed her; she must say something, or he would go away, thinking her a fool, and perhaps never could she see him again.
"Did you want to speak about your sister Alicia?" he asked gently, and Phenice, looking up quickly, saw his light eyes were no longer ironic nor mocking.
Phenice might have clutched at this excuse he offered her; she had often used Alicia's story in her schemes, but now she could not do this; to Miles and to John
Bettine she could lie and play a part, but not to this man; her spirit revolted wearily against the burden of more deception.
"No," she answered at length. "What does it matter about Alicia now? That is all over."
And then she recalled what Miles had said, about Alicia, how he had withdrawn his furious accusation against Bettine, admitting that it was a falsehood.
"I found out enough," she added reluctantly. "Mr. Betinne was in that story, but not in any way I could mind—he behaved well, I heard, and tried to help my sister, and her husband."
"That should be a great weight off your heart"
"Yes. But I don't seem to care at all, one way or another."
Her words died in her throat
"It is another trouble, then?" asked Mr. Barton kindly. "Another trouble."
They had reached an empty seat in a turn of the path behind one of the huge, sombre plane trees.
"Shall we sit down?" added Phenice. "I'm tired."
They sat down, not near to each other; he looked at her intently and anxiously; she noted that he had altered in that he no longer regarded her slightly.
"You must tell me," he insisted, "why you wanted to see me, in what way I can help you who have relations—friends—"
Phenice interrupted:
"I have nothing—I'm frightfully alone—that's just it— frightfully alone."
But why are you so wretched? Why do you dislike every one about you and this marriage which was your own wish? There's something at the bottom of it all, surely, Miss Campion."
The formal use of her name seemed strange to Phenice, as, indeed, the whole episode was strange; their meeting like this, in the public square—the autumn evening.
"Why don't you go to Sylvia?" asked Noel Barton. "Sylvia is a good friend—Sylvia is fond of you, too."
She wondered if he mentioned Sylvia sincerely or with any design; she believed the latter and a look of malice sharpened her glowing face.
"But I do not care for Sylvia," she replied deliberately. "I tried to, but I can't—Sylvia is too good for me. I am not good, I wasn't brought up to be good."
"You're frank, at least," he smiled, but she thought that it was only by an effort that he retained his ease of manner, his cool look.
"Am I?" She remembered her recent deceptions. "No —if I could be frank I shouldn't be in trouble and confusion now."
"I don't believe that you are in either trouble or confusion," he remarked. "I believe that you are playing some joke with me—for some obscure reason, Miss Campion."
Phenice shook her head.
"No, you don't, you know that I am sincere—but it's easier to pretend that it is a joke, isn't it?"
He was silent a second and then said quietly with a flash in those pale clear eyes he did not turn from her face:
"Well, then, I won't pretend. And you mustn't pretend either. What did you want with me?"
"Just to speak to you," she replied gravely. "You know I asked you to help me once, and you wouldn't—but you could have helped me. I have often thought of that."
The words, "if only you could have loved me you would have helped met" trembled on her lips unuttered; she sighed and turned away.
His reply came with a slight halting in the words:
"You cannot do better than marry John Betinne. That is my advice to you. The man is a decent kind of fellow and has a great deal of money."
"But how can I marry Betinne if " Phenice paused; her eyes and Ups narrowed and her cheeks paled. " if I care very much for some one else?"
"Ah!" said Noel Barton sharply, "that is your problem?"
"Exactly that."
"Then, of course," he replied slowly, "you can't marry Bettine."
"Nor the other man," said Phenice, "so what am I to do?"
FOR a long moment he did not speak and it seemed to her that no speech was necessary, that they understood each other completely, that nothing existed, in all the world, but the two of them and their mutual love which could withstand all the universe in arms.
Then he looked away, turning his eyes from her (by an effort, she was sure), and said a most unexpected thing:
"You mean Miles Fenton?"
This was the breaking of the spell for Phenice; he had not understood, then, he had thought she was referring to another man, or was he only pretending, putting her off, testing her?
She played for time.
"What makes you say that? Were we so much talked of?"
"No," he replied quietly. "But I had heard something."
From Mr. Folliot, no doubt, and from Sylvia; the magic of the moment was tarnished, as, no doubt, Noel Barton had intended it should be.
He looked at her again now, and she thought that she read there a mockery of himself, as if he smiled at the barrier he had put up between them—as if he said, "I understand what you mean, but let us pretend it is Miles Fenton."
In her delight she laughed and he laughed after her, a gay and excited laugh.
"Come," he said, "it is getting chilly here, shall we walk on?"
They rose and walked on; the city and the sky was darkling about them; yellow lights leapt up in the windows of the old, talk sombre houses beyond the trees, there was a chill keenness in the air; they walked more rapidly.
"Now," said Noel Barton, "how can I help you—or Miles Fenton?"
And he looked at her with a sharpness that meant more than the words.
"I am sorry for him," replied Phenice, feeling her way. "I can't very well keep in touch with him—"
She paused, not knowing what more to say, excited, breathless, confused.
" But some one could keep in touch with him for you." Noel Barton smoothly completed the sentence.
Phenice frowned; she was startled and bewildered; was he sincere or merely helping her out of an incredible situation?
"Myself, for instance," added Mr. Barton. "It would, of course, be easy for me to find out that Mr. Fenton is, for instance, well and successful, and to let you know—"
He paused, and Phenice thought now that he was neither sincere nor helping her, but merely offering an excuse for them to meet, to write, to have something in common, and her whole being stirred with delight.
"Yes," she said faintly. "I should like to know that Miles is well and successful—"
"That, then, is what you wanted of me?" he asked.
"Yes, it is what I wanted."
This lie covered the truth, she assured herself. She had been tormented by the thoughts of Miles, she did wish him well, she would be relieved to hear good news of him—and yet she would never have thought of him now if Noel Barton had not brought up his name.
"It is an odd commission," remarked the young man. "Don't you think that if you are so interested in Mr. Fenton you might marry him? That is the obvious solution of the whole difficulty."
"It's impossible," answered Phenice hastily. "I can't. But it's true I'm bothered about him—I don't think he's happy, and I didn't behave well to him—and I would like news of him, now and then."
"Well, I can do that for you." He spoke now as if the whole affair was of the slightest possible interest (as, thought Phenice, tormented, perhaps it was to him).
"I don't know where he lives," she said. "Only that he is in Paris—and has one or two London clubs—"
"I dare say I can find out—what are the clubs?"
She told him; they had neared the gates which would soon close now.
"I must go now," said Phenice, to save herself from a possible dismissal from this inscrutable man.
They paused on the pavement outside the gardens.
"Of course it's a secret," she said strongly, "between you and me."
"Of course," he added with that queer gravity she suspected covered so much that was not grave at all.
"Are you taking me seriously?" she asked desperately.
She could not get behind his guard, he assured her that he would do all that was in his power to serve her, but he showed no emotion of any kind.
"Don't laugh at me," implored Phenice with a sudden catch, almost a sob, in her throat.
He seemed moved by that, startled too.
"Laugh at you!"'
Phenice tried to pull herself together.
"It must all seem crazy to you—and I can't explain —one is hurried along—by—something that one can't control—"
"I know—I know ¦;—"
"And when there is no kindness anywhere, every one hostile—"
"Did you think," interrupted Noel Barton, "that I should be kind?"
She wanted to tell him that she did not care if he was kind or not as long as he took some notice of her, saw her sometimes, but answered vaguely:
"Yes, I thought so—"
"Well, I'll try," he smiled. "Perhaps I shall get some good news about Mr. Fenton and that will be some relief to you."
No words could have been more formal, but the look and the tone were not formal at all; again Phenice felt the return of the magic of that moment when she had believed that he knew her secret.
She wanted to leave him while that enchantment lasted; she asked him to call a taxi, just touched his hand, and with no more than that was gone.
Phenice sat back in the corner of the dark, cold car, being driven through lit, crowded streets with which she was unfamiliar, a multitude of eager hopes and fears crowding on her senses, blotting out what had been and what was to be.
Sylvia was forgotten, Betinne was forgotten, the money, the whole situation, so full of aspects that made this love forbidden, impossible, was forgotten.
She knew that she entirely loved Noel Barton and that the sole object of her existence would be for this love to be returned—at any cost, in any fashion.
For the first time in her easy, lazy, selfish life she had something to strive after other than mere comfort or sheltered idleness, and her mind, stimulated by her emotions, was quick, clear and eager as it had never been before.
The first necessity was complete concealment of her secret; no one was likely to suspect her of the least interest in Noel Barton save Sylvia, and Sylvia must be avoided.
She determined also to postpone her marriage again, under the excuse of illness, if need be, but not to offend or estrange John Betinne, whose money was necessary even to her continuance of her acquaintance with Noel Barton.
Mrs. Thorpe was at home, it was past the dinner hour, and some of her long concealed irritation against her niece broke out; she wanted to know where the girl had been, why she was late?
"Mr. Bettine called and waited for you—I didn't know what to tell him—he went away at last, not at all pleased, I could see."
Phenice smiled; she was indifferent to all of this, warmed by a secret glory, fed by a secret hope that made Mrs. Thorpe and all she could say or do unsubstantial as a moonlight cloud.
"It's impossible for me to account for every minute of my time," she replied indifferently. "It's silly of you, really, to bother yourself so much about my comings and goings." And thinking of her future intentions she spoke with sincerity.
But Mrs. Thorpe was not to be appeased; her mistrust and dislike of the girl could hardly be repressed any longer.
"It was the same in Paris," she scolded. "That time with Madame Gerard—it was dreadful! I feel sure now that you were meeting Miles Fenton."
"Then why trouble to talk about it?" said Phenice with dainty insolence. "After all—it can't matter much to you what I do, or what trouble I get into—you never cared anything about me, did you?"
Phenice ran up to her room and, after switching on all the lights, went straight to her mirror.
What did anything matter as long as she was lovely and likely to be loved by the man she so loved herself?
But presently, when she found the long case with Sylvia's wedding present in it lying in her drawer, and her card with the ironic greeting, "To dearest Sylvia" on it, she did blench.
She stood still, frowning, with the case in her hand, until the entrance of the maid startled her; then she thrust the fan away under some clothes with a movement like furtive guilt.
WHAT Phenice forgot in her self-absorption in her own schemes was that other people were equally absorbed in their schemes, which were likely enough to go counter to hers; she saw all the people by whom she was surrounded as more or less passive figures who would perhaps complain of her, but never actively interfere with her; she was confirmed in this confidence by the feeble indifferentism of the Thorpes, by the fact that she never saw Sylvia or Miles, those active and perhaps hostile forces, and by the ease with which she could manage John Bettine.
He had even consented to a postponement of their marriage, giving her another fortnight—to the middle of November; he seemed more interested in his work and his business than in Phenice, and troubled her very little with his presence; it was, as Mrs. Thorpe rather indignantly said, "a queer sort of engagement."
Sometimes it did occur, with a rather chill unpleasantness, to Phenice that Bettine was not so detached as he seemed, that he was purposely giving her a full licence to commit herself and that he was watching her, or even having her watched, with far more diligence than she could guess.
But with her usual recklessness Phenice dismissed any such vague suspicions; she had peace, money, security, and she had gained more time, for the moment at least she need worry about nothing—for the moment only, her house was built on shifting sand, but it was a fairy palace while it lasted.
Noel Barton had written to her; formal enough letters, stating that he had easily traced the whereabouts of Miles, who was still in Paris, but they were enough to carry Phenice joyously through the days.
It was not, of course, possible for the girl to live this dual life long; the inner life of secret emotion and secret excitement and the outer life of mundane interests and commonplace routine; she could not for any considerable period maintain this state of suspension—every event postponed—all her feelings in abeyance, as it were, or repressed.
The inevitable break of this tension came from Noel Barton himself; he wrote that he would like to see her again; he had, he said, some rather important news of Miles Fenton that he would like to give her personally.
Phenice had been expecting this; waiting eagerly for him to propose another interview; she could hardly conceal her triumph when she received the letter, though she had been forced to open it with others in the presence of Mrs. Thorpe, who had handed her the afternoon post.
Mrs. Thorpe, as a matter of fact, had noticed several letters in this masculine hand and had come to the conclusion that they were from Miles Fenton, who must, she deduced from the stamps, have followed Phenice to England.
She said nothing to the girl, well knowing how useless any remonstrance on her part would be, but she debated in her own mind whether or no she should convey her suspicions to John Bettine.
Meanwhile Phenice took the first opportunity of leaving the house and ringing up Noel Barton at a public telephone box.
He had suggested an appointment at his offices—Mr. Folliot's offices, and that did not suit Phenice at all.
When he answered the telephone she told him so.
"I can't endure those depressing hideous places—be- sides, Mr. Folliot might see me—"
"Mr. Folliot is away for a few days," came his cool voice in reply, "but would you rather that I came to see you?"
"No," answered Phenice impatiently, "some one would see you, there'd be talk. Don't you understand?"
"Not quite, I didn't know we were forbidden to see each other."
"I'm forbidden to have any interest in Miles Fenton," retorted Phenice. "Perhaps," she added in daring challenge, "you would rather tell me now, over the telephone, and then we need not meet at all?"
"No. I would much rather tell you personally. Won't you please come down to the office this afternoon, about three o'clock?"
His voice sounded grave and authoritative; Phenice protested no more.
"I'll come," she said, and hung up the receiver.
She was more excited than annoyed by his refusal to meet her in some unconventional fashion; he was afraid of Sylvia or afraid of himself—not so indifferent to her, Phenice, that he didn't require the safeguard of formal surroundings and a dreary atmosphere.
This time Phenice left the house without any excuse or leaving any message, and punctually at three o'clock was shown into the expensive but drab and gloomy offices of Folliot, Folliot and Trant.
It was certainly an atrocious setting for any interview; the lofty dingy room lined by oak cupboards and black deed boxes, the grim shiny chairs, the wide table littered with legal papers, the high blank window looking on to a gray street and other blank windows opposite, and a small spot of fire smouldering resentfully in a grate built in more opulent days.
Phenice shivered with a sense of nervous depression.
Noel Barton was at the other side of that wide table; he rose, shook hands, said "How do you do?" and offered her one of the hideous chairs.
It was exactly as if they had never met before, as if that odd meeting in Lincoln's Inn had never taken place —as if he was a lawyer, she was a client, no more.
Phenice gave a faint, hysterical laugh.
"Why did you make me come to this dreadful place?" she asked nervously; for now that she was actually in his presence all her courage had vanished; she had even forgotten how brilliant and lovely she must look in these dreary surroundings.
"I'm sorry," said Noel Barton simply.."The place doesn't seem so bad to me—I suppose I am used to it."
"Well, here I am." Phenice tried to smile; he was looking at her intently and again she was bewildered by that sense of bitter sweet enchantment, that fading of reality which she had felt before when they walked together in the dingy gardens under the autumn skies.
"I didn't want to write or telephone my news," he added. "I think you'd rather that I told you."
Phenice wanted to say—"Oh, what does it matter? Let us forget every one else, we have just this little time together, you and I," but she was silent, gazing into that sombre glow of fire that looked both dull and hostile.
"Mr. Fenton," continued the young lawyer, "has got a position—quite a good position—in a motor firm in Paris—the branch of an English firm in Paris, to be precise."
He paused and began to draw slow designs on the blotting paper in front of him.
"Well?" urged Phenice with an impatient shiver. "I'm glad, of course."
Oh yes, she was glad that poor Miles was all right, but how distant, how unreal he was to her, how little she cared really what happened to him.
"But I don't think that he is likely to keep that position," remarked Mr. Barton. "He's not doing very well."
"That's like Miles."
And Phenice recalled that John Bettine had said that Miles would go down, down like lead to the bottom
"Yes, I'm afraid so. Brilliant but—well, I suppose you know him. I hate to distress you--"
Phenice smiled ironically. "Tell me, please."
"I'm afraid that he's going to pieces, rather." The young lawyer spoke regretfully and looked much more kind and amiable than Phenice had believed he could look; his very attractive, uncommon face, his queer pale eyes, so clear and vivid between the dark lashes, expressed concern and sympathy.
"Going to pieces!" repeated Phenice bitterly. "That's like Miles too!"
"You—rather expected it?"
"I suppose so," she replied sullenly—what did she care about the fate of Miles?
"And that is why you asked me to find out things about him?"
In the same lifeless tone Phenice repeated again:
"I suppose so."
Mr. Barton continued to draw figures on the blotting paper.
"He seems cut off from his friends, in debt—idling his time " he paused.
"Drinking?" asked Phenice defiantly. "I always thought he would—"
"That too—that's the worst of all. Or nearly the worst."
"Something else, then?"
"Well," said Noel Barton reluctantly, "he's about a good deal with a woman much older than himself, a very stupid, vulgar sort of woman, and it is thought that he may marry her—"
Phenice shrugged her shoulders; that, too, she could have predicted for Miles; she was quite unmoved by the news; what had she to do with the fortunes of this young man? Noel Barton was surely mocking her, and her heart swelled with pain.
"He is working on an invention," continued the lawyer, "a very good invention, but he isn't taking much trouble with it—just letting the thing slide, and his chances with it—"
"He'll never do any good," said Phenice impatiently.
"He might have been all right—that's the tragedy."
"Do you call it a tragedy?"
"Don't you?" he asked gravely.
They looked at each other, Phenice half-frightened.
"Of course—it's sad," she stammered.
"He wants some one to help him," said Mr. Barton.
Phenice did not understand.
"I can do nothing," she said.
"But you can do everything," he replied in what seemed genuine amazement. "Of course you know that."
This misapprehension was intolerable; either he was incredibly cruel or incredibly stupid, in either case her anger against him flamed out; she sprang up, flushed, almost out of control.
"Perhaps," she said in a shaken voice, "you think I ought to marry Miles Fenton—just to keep him from going to pieces."
"Yes," replied the young lawyer at once, "I do think so. That was what I was going to suggest."
The girl turned away, quite unable to answer; a clerk entered and murmured a name.
"Sylvia," said Noel Barton, turning to Phenice. "We are going to some show—I suppose you won't come with us?"
And he asked the clerk to beg Miss Mordaunt to wait a few moments, adding that she was much before her time.
Phenice did not answer nor turn her averted head. "I should like you," insisted the young man, "to meet Sylvia again."
DID you ask me here," demanded Phenice, "that I might meet Sylvia?"
"No," he replied at once. "She has come much sooner than I expected—but I know what great pleasure it would give her to see you again—"
Noel Barton looked at her straightly and she returned his gaze steadily; it seemed to her impossible that he continued so to misunderstand her; she laughed in his face and rose, she could endure no more.
"Sylvia will be waiting," she said maliciously. "I had better go."
"Sylvia will not mind," he answered, too hurriedly for perfect ease. "I'd rather this was—talked out."
But Phenice wanted to go while matters were in abeyance between them so that there would still be excuses for letters and meetings between them; she wanted, too, to leave him while she, and not he, was in command of the moment.
"No, I must go—thank you for your news, and I'll think over what you said—"
She spoke these words smoothly, but her lively dark eyes, her palpitating flush, her dewy quivering lips, her whole aspect, passionate and tender, put her words to nought, and she could see that he was moved and more responsive to her than he dared show. A sense of triumph made her vivid beauty more brilliant: she said, like a challenge: "Good-bye."
And moved towards the door. "You won't come with us?"
No. I must go home—"
He had opened the door and they were in the outer room where Sylvia was sitting. Sylvia, fair, placid, turning over a sale catalogue.
"Good-afternoon, Sylvia," said Phenice, smiling, using her advantage to the utmost. "I'm sorry I haven't had time to come and see you—"
Sylvia rose in a confusion, flushed, stammered, and held out her hand; like many candid, generous natures, she was quite unequal to any situation requiring artifice or diplomacy, and quite incapable of dealing with insolence or courteous malice.
She murmured that she was very surprised to find Phenice here
"Miss Campion is a client of the firm," said Noel Barton.
"Of course—yes, how stupid of me, why shouldn't she be here?"
"I've asked Miss Campion to come with us," he added. "But I can't," smiled Phenice. "I would like a taxi, please."
And she turned with an intimate air of confidence to
Nod Barton and thanked him "for what he had told her," and added that she would "write soon."
Then she glanced again at Sylvia and gave her a cursory "good-bye."
General Thorpe, his wife, and John Bettine were in the dull, precise drawing-room she so disliked when she returned, and she saw at once that they had been discussing her, were hostile to her, and had decided on some united and unpleasant action.
Some dry commonplaces were passed; the atmosphere was frigid; Phenice made no efforts to placate any one; she sat down near the fire and gazed into the bright flames as, a little while before, she had gazed into the dull redness of Noel Barton s gloomy office hearth.
Two acquaintances of the Thorpes came in and a formal tea was served; Phenice became gay and chattered with the strangers. When they had gone she became silent again; she could not try to please these antagonistic people, even her recent prudent policy of endeavouring to ingratiate herself with John Bettine was forgotten; she made no attempt to coax him from his taciturn mood. She hoped that he would go, take his ill-humour with him and leave her to her dreams.
But it was her aunt and uncle who left the room, suddenly, as by a preconcerted signal, and she was alone with John Betinne.
At once she tried to make an escape and sprang up with some careless and futile excuse.
But the heavy man remained seated.
"Please stay," he said, "I've been waiting to talk to you."
"But," replied the girl, sweetly impertinent, "we so often talk, don't we?"
"Not on this matter," he answered grimly. "Won't you please sit down again?"
Phenice obeyed, with a shrug; she was still absorbed by her thoughts of Noel Barton; the man she had promised to marry looked at her with a certain wistfulness —so slight, so brilliant, so exquisite, from head to foot so costly—he checked a sigh.
"I'm afraid you've not been playing fair," he frowned.
"Haven't I?" She was turning about the big half-hoop of brilliants he had recently given her—an odious, ordinary, showy ring which she detested.
"No—and we've got to have it out before it is too late."
"What have I done that you don't consider fair?" she challenged.
"This postponement of our marriage," he answered at once, "for one thing."
"Well, you agreed."
"Only to give you your head, to see how far you'd go —the same with the money, I just wanted to see how far you'd go—"
She had rather suspected that, but it was one of the ugly things that she had pushed into the background; she shivered despite her proud poise, her cool silence.
"I keep on putting money into your bank," he added, "and it's never enough. You're overdrawn now. Your aunt says there is no curbing your extravagances."
"She's been telling tales, I suppose," replied Phenice as lightly as she could contrive to speak, for her heart was beating fast with apprehension now. John Bettine ignored that.
"Mrs. Thorpe thinks you've got debts, too," he added harshly.
"Is that all?" asked Phenice, smiling with quivering lips.
"No—there's this business of Miles Fenton."
"YOU'RE wrong," replied Phenice, "to worry about poor Miles Fenton."
"I'm not worrying," said Bettine dryly. "One would hardly worry about you, my dear, one knows."
He rose and stood near Phenice, thoughtful, gloomy, heavy in voice and aspect.
"Of course," he added, "you met Miles Fenton in Paris. And told rather silly lies about it. And then you hadn't the courage to speak to him when I was with you. Now, you're still in touch with him, I suppose."
"No," said Phenice, "and if you are interested perhaps you'll be glad to know that he's likely to get married himself shortly."
"Well," remarked Bettine, "I don't suppose that would make much difference to you, would it? And if you're not in touch with him how do you know that news?"
"I just chanced to hear it."
"Ah—I could have told you about Miles Fenton if you'd cared to ask me, he's going to the bottom, as I knew he would. A pity."
"Yes, I suppose that I am allowed to be sorry."
"You're asked to be frank," rapped out John Bettine. "It seems to me that you hadn't the grit to marry this young fool because you were afraid of poverty—and haven't the grit to stick to me who gave you the money you wanted so badly—"
"You're speaking very brutally I" cried the girl.
"There's no other way out but by speaking brutally. I want the truth—I'm not going to get tied up in a tissue of lies. I know something," added the big man bitterly, "of what your kind of woman can do in the way of lies. I got you out of a pretty big hole. I thought you'd had your lesson. A bit of a fright. I gave you a long rope, thinking you'd respect trust, but no—I've been nothing but your catspaw and I'm burnt enough."
"I don't know what you mean," said Phenice faintly.
"Oh yes, you do. You just wanted my money, my countenance, and you were determined to give nothing whatever in exchange."
"I never pretended to love you," was wrung from Phenice.
"No—couldn't be at that trouble, could you? But you did pretend that you were going to behave decently."
"I have," protested Phenice angrily. "I've done nothing disgraceful—"
"Don't you think so? I suppose a fine lady doesn't think any harm in cheating a common man, I was fair game, no doubt. But what about that other poor devil, you've ruined him, you know, driven him to drink and idling. You let him get infatuated with you then threw him off, didn't you?"
"No, no." The girl shrank away from these rough accusations, but she knew that they were perfectly true; he had said nothing that she was able to refute, and she was frightened by the cold contempt with which he regarded her while he spoke.
"I'm not infatuated with you," he added. "I never was. That's where you women make your mistake, you don't take enough trouble to make yourselves agreeable to useful men like me—"
Phenice interrupted desperately.
"Why did you come when I sent for you ?"
"Because I was sorry for you—I thought there was something in you going to pieces for lack of a little help. I didn't know you cared for young Fenton, I thought you must have been fond of me to send for me, and I was flattered. I waited for you to grow out of your silly rudeness and tempers and whims, I thought, underneath all that, you were rather fine. I was mistaken."
Phenice had no answer to this, she went white with anger and shuddered.
"I'm sorry for you now," added Betinne in a kinder tone. "You didn't have much of a chance, the way you were brought up. Never taught to play straight, were you? Only to dress up and play about and turn the heads of the men. And how many did you get, after all? Only that young fool who hasn't the grit to stand up alone—and I expect he's cured now. Marrying some one else as you say—some one a bit human, I expect."
"I don't understand why you bothered with me," said Phenice slowly, and she spoke in all sincerity, for she could not understand why any one who had read her so clearly should have "bothered" with her; she had thought the man dazed, dazzled by her beauty, her birth, her charm—and he had not been either dazed nor dazzled.
"I told you," he replied. "And there was another reason. Your sister. I was fond of your sister. And you're very like her, only you haven't the stuff in you that she had. That is where I was wrong."
"Alicia made a pretty good mess of it," flashed Phenice.
"Did she? You don't know her story, do you? Perhaps some day you'll change your opinion of Alicia."
He frowned, looked down at the floor, then up at the rigid figure of the white-faced girl.
"This isn't pleasant for me," he said. "But I'd be crazy to go on at this game"
Phenice turned faint; fear seized her like a nausea; she remembered her debts, her lack of money, of friends, of prospects, of anything, if this man gave her up.
"I don't know what this is all about," she murmured.
"People notice things," replied John Bettine dryly. "Letters—telephone calls—running out—being late— wild spirits one minute, gloom the next—this constant postponement of the marriage—well, you don't think that no one noticed anything?"
"I've been spied upon!" cried Phenice furiously.
"That's always the cry of people who are found out," he retorted scornfully. "Those who behave themselves don't complain about spies—"
Phenice made an effort to shake off the nightmare horror that was hanging over her, suffocating her, the horror of a future without John Bettine and his money.
"I have had nothing to do with Miles Fenton," she said with desperate sincerity, "since I left Paris. I did meet him there, by chance, and I ought to have said so —I don't care for him and never did care for him—I'm quite indifferent to what happens to him, really, he's been nothing but a torment to me."
"You're quite sure of that?" asked Betinne with such meaning that for one atrocious second Phenice thought that Noel Barton must have betrayed her, but she dismissed this as incredible.
"Yes, I'm sure," she replied.
"Then there's another man," said Betinne quietly. "There's some one else."
This, being the complete truth, utterly unnerved Phenice; she did not know how to meet such a charge, and yet the whole desire that she felt was to say or do something that would protect her secret.
"You're being very cruel," she said helplessly; he seemed moved by this, which was indeed a genuine appeal for mercy.
"There is some one else?" he asked.
"No, no, no, who could there be? But you confuse and frighten me so—"
"No need, we're not married yet," he reminded her. "I can set you free at once. And if it's young Fenton or any one else, for heaven's sake play straight and say so."
Phenice gave a low hysterical laugh; she felt her nerve breaking; the situation was both tragic and grotesque; how little Bettine guessed that there really was some one else—the man who was going to marry Sylvia, a man of whom she knew so little, on whose affection she could not count, whose possible love was the wildest dream, the most extravagant hope!
"Come," urged Bettine, "who is it? Or, I don't want to hurt you, don't tell me the name—"
"There's no one," said Phenice wildly, "no one."
"You mean that?"
He came a step nearer to her and looked her full in the face.
Desperation gave her courage to support that glance. "I mean it," she said.
He looked both bewildered, incredulous and distressed, as if he could not credit what she said, nor believe that she would Be.
"You are still willing to marry me?" he asked.
Assent choked in her throat; surely this was the very nadir of humiliation; but she was frightened, frightened of losing him; he saw that fear in her face and hardly dared think what it was fear of; he turned his head away.
"You wouldn't marry me," he asked slowly, "when you were fond of some one else, absorbed by thoughts of some one else—I say you wouldn't marry me—just for the money?"
"No," came hoarsely from the distracted girl. "No— I've been stupid—of course—but I haven't—"
"Don't," he interrupted, "don't—"
She said miserably:
"You can't believe me?"
"It's hard, it's difficult." He took a turn about the room, her scared glance following him, then suddenly stopped in front of her shrinking figure.
"Look here," he said thickly, "leave me out of it— take the money, if that's what you want—I'll see you don't need to worry about money. Call the marriage off—and take what money you want."
These rough, almost incoherent sentences struck to the very heart of the girl's pride.
"What do you mean?" she stammered.
"I'm giving you a chance to play fair, to play straight. Perhaps if you're not worried about money you'd do what you want to do."
"And you'd—you'd give me the money?"
"Yes—I would, I'd rather give it to you than have this sort of thing."
"I couldn't touch a penny 1" cried Phenice; but her protest rang hollow, for had she not touched already a great many pennies of his, more than he knew or guessed at?
But she was going to marry him; that was different— but to take his money and not marry him was unthinkable.
John Betinne smiled bitterly as if he read her thoughts.
"You couldn't do that, eh? You think it more honest to act as you're acting? Well, it looks better, no doubt."
"I would never have taken anything from you," she answered frantically, "had I not intended to marry you."
This was untrue, for she had been all along evading this marriage, never in her inmost heart really intending that it should take place; but now she would not admit this, even to herself. She had, she told herself desperately, always meant to marry this man and be loyal to him—she must have meant that before she could have brought herself to touch his money.
He did not answer her; she thought that he did not believe her and she felt feeble with despair.
"I'm concealing nothing, nothing," she insisted, feeling that she ought to appeal to him, to tell him that she was fond of him, grateful to him, to coax him out of his ill-humour, but this she could not bring herself to do; all warm, lively utterance was choked in her throat, she could only speak these dry, desperate sentences that expressed nothing but fear.
He was looking at her again; with disgust, she thought, in panic terror.
"I think we had better make an end of this," he said at length. "You don't seem to have anything further to say—neither have I."
He left the room with no more than that, and for a while Phenice, incapable of movement, sat huddled by the sinking fire.
Then she dashed from the room, ran upstairs, and began throwing a few clothes, chosen at random, into a handbag.
It was now quite dark, cold, and a chill rain beating against the bleak window panes.
PHENICE was out of the house before any one observed her; it was a headlong flight; she had only a few things in a handbag and the small amount of money in her purse, but she disdained any sensational action and she had left a scribbled note on Mrs. Thorpe's desk, stating that she was going to Campion House.
She reached the quiet, familiar mansion in the dark, having taken a cab from the station; the payment of this took almost the last of the money in her frivolous gilt purse.
Phenice rang the bell and heard the sound echo in the empty hall; it was the housekeeper who answered the summons; she saw and received Phenice with decorous amazement, for she could see at once that the girl was both excited and exhausted.
And also, even in this first second, the shrewd woman saw that the girl who stood under the withered tendrils of the passion flower was changed from the girl who had left Campion House while the white blooms were still heavy over the porch.
"I've come here to rather get away from things," said Phenice. "Just to be quiet for a day or two."
The housekeeper could not forbear saying:
"I hope nothing has gone wrong, miss—that there is no trouble, I mean."
Phenice looked at her strangely.
"I don't know," she answered. "I really don't know."
"I mean—you coming unexpected, miss, there's nothing ready—"
"I know. But you can get my bedroom ready soon, can't you ? I only want a fire and perhaps some tea—"
The housekeeper opened the door of the room with the painted ceiling.
"There is a fire in there, miss. I light one in one or other of the rooms every day—it's been so damp. I was just looking to this when you rang."
Phenice entered the lovely, placid, gracious room and looked round.
The housekeeper regarded her dubiously; "the marriage broken off, I suppose," she said to herself. "Thought as much when I saw it was being put off like that—and what is she going to do now, poor young lady?"
Aloud she said:
"I'll have your room ready in no time, miss, and a nice fire going. Shall I take you a little supper up there or will you have it here?"
"I don't want anything to eat," answered Phenice, still gazing into the fire. "Ill go to bed presently, don't bother, please." .
The housekeeper withdrew quietly and confided below stairs to her husband "that she didn't like the look of it."
Phenice flung off her hat, but remained huddled in her coat; though she was crouching over the fire she still remained cold—cold to the heart.
She recalled what Miles Fenton had said to her in this very room, wasn't it?—"You haven't the brains of my dog," and she thought bitterly that he was right—the mess she had made of things, the mess I
"No more brains than my dog." That was true indeed, and how she had prided herself on her cool composure, her sure grasp of her own destiny, her ready assurance and her steady nerve to handle and defy any and everybody!
All very well while she was heart-whole, but once she had fallen in love she had lost her grasp of it all
"In love." She remembered how she had wondered over that phrase. Miles in love, Alicia in love, all these wild, crazy, desperate actions in the name of love!
How had Miles' reproaches to her ended?—"I happen to love you—"
And now she "happened to love" some one else, and that had sent her and all her plans crashing to the ground, left her ruined, distraught, useless, as Miles, as Alicia had been left.
She sprang up, exasperated by these thoughts, but with no idea of where she was going nor what she wished to do, only with a blind instinct of endeavouring to escape from her fate.
The passion flowers painted on the ceiling seemed in the uncertain light and tremulous shadow to faintly move, as if shaken by a light breeze, and this illusion gave Phenice a sense of almost panic terror.
She felt herself pursued by the flowers—odd that she should have come back here, in her trouble, to blench beneath this painted ceiling!
She saw herself, flung down, cold and lonely, beneath the passion flower, as Alicia, she had been told, had been found flung down, desperate, forsaken, with broken pride—like Alicia again—beneath that mass of fatal blooms.
Only, now there would be no flowers, only the dry, crackling, barren stems that she had touched fearfully in the dark as she entered Campion House to-night.
Such a terror of this possible fate seized her that she walked up and down in anguish, and the housekeeper, entering to tell her that her room was warm and ready, was startled by the expression on her pallid face.
"Is there anything I can do for you, miss?" she asked timidly, but Phenice answered that there was nothing, nothing.
The woman hesitated and then went away; she indeed felt that there was nothing that she could do; but she thought of the vague and ghastly stories she had heard about Alicia, and she glanced at Phenice with a slight shudder of apprehension.
Phenice took no notice of her; she had scarcely noticed that any one had entered the room.
She went to the desk where Sylvia had sat, where the rosy lamp stood, and sat down there and mechanically took up pen and paper.
Her whole being was now centred on the thought of Noel Barton.
She would write to him, appeal to him—why not? She had nothing to lose now.
The words of Miles rang in her mind—"I happen to love you—"
She would have the courage to write that to Noel Barton; she began to write his name on the paper.
PHENICE could not write her letter to Noel Barton; her despair, her appeal could not be put into words; sheet after sheet of paper was torn up and cast aside, and at last Phenice flung away from the desk, from the room with the painted ceiling, and ran upstairs.
The fire in her bedroom had burnt to a mellow brightness, the curtains were drawn across the bleakness of the night, and the pretty lamps beside the bed and on the dressing-table were lit; it all looked so friendly, so safe and charming that even the agonised spirit of the distracted girl was soothed.
She opened the small valise that she had brought with her, and tossing out the few clothes that it contained, took a slim packet of letters from the bottom.
Alicia's letters that she had brought, she knew not on what instinct, with her in her flight; they had lain beside a case containing John Bettine's emeralds, but these Phenice did not now touch, she thrust the case away under the clothes, locked the valise and flung it in a corner of the room.
Then she sat down on the step of the old-fashioned bed and nervously broke the fine cord that secured her sister's letters.
Now she would read them—the letters of the dead to the dead—for she felt that she also was divorced from life, an outcast among shadows, and perhaps here was some clue to the mystery of a woman as unhappy as herself, whose obscure and dreadful fate she might be called upon to share, for it seemed to Phenice that she, too, was being swept away into darkness, that she, too, would be lost—as Alicia had been lost—for ever.
And with the unread letters yet in her hand, she brooded over that with a certain sense of solace.
In the final extremity she would do even as Alicia, fly from the pity, the censure of every one, disappear and leave mystery behind her; that, at least, would be better than remaining a commonplace object of tepid compassion and light laughter—a silly fool who had made a mess of things.
She sorted out the letters, there were not very many of them and all were addressed to her father at Campion House; Phenice opened them, one after another, and read them through with an acute nervous distaste and yet a frantic eagerness.
The letters were short, mostly a few lines, and all dated the same year, March to July, but from different addresses, the "post restante" at small country towns.
There was nothing in any of them that threw any light on the story of Alicia, they were all appeals for forgiveness, for recognition, for help, and it was clear that none of them had been answered.
The letter that was the last in date spoke of a proposed visit—a desperate visit—to Campion House, and Phenice knew that Alicia must have come back to her home in that July of ten years or so ago, and after that there were no more letters.
Alicia had died, or destroyed herself, beneath the passion flower which her lover had painted, and Campion House had been closed until Phenice had fled there in the ruin of her fortunes.
The letters fell from the girl's hand; it was difficult to realise that any one could be so hard as to leave such letters unanswered, almost impossible to believe that her own father, so gay, so charming, so tolerant, could have been guilty of this grim cruelty.
And all Alicia's crime had been love—love of a humble, common man, a man who could give her nothing, not even decent food and lodging.
So much was clear from the letters written on such cheap paper, appealing for small sums of money, talking of illness and privation and loneliness.
Yet there was no note of regret even in these poor distracted pleadings for help and kindness, even in the very last letter Alicia wrote that "it was worth it," and several times she had written, "Can't you understand how I love him?"
Phenice was deeply moved, more moved than she had ever been by another's misfortune; a generous sympathy with another's grief, a warm indignation for another's wrongs roused her from her absorption in her own troubles; she longed to rush out and find this unknown sister, to comfort and console her and be her champion against the whole world.
But Alicia was lost.
Everything was too late now.
Bitterly Phenice took those poor letters, one by one, and threw them into the fire and watched them shrivel, blacken and fall into ash.
It was better that they also should be lost, disappear into oblivion as Alicia had disappeared.
A sudden exhaustion fell over Phenice, she trembled and began to cry with grief and weakness; fatigue fell over her like a veil, blotting out everything.
When the housekeeper came in with the supper she found the girl asleep in the big chair by the fire, traces of tears on her cheeks and her rich, black hair falling on to her shoulders.
Phenice slept almost through the night and when she woke it was only to undress quickly and shiver away from the dead fire into the luxurious bed and sleep again.
When she roused a second time it was well into, the day, the fire was burning again and the room was bright and pretty despite the greyness of the day beyond the window.
Phenice recalled those long lazy days in this very room, when she had idled away hours, eating chocolates and reading novels, and wondering how she was going to get out of the fix she was in.
She dressed at once and hastily; a direct course of action seemed suddenly clear before her; she went downstairs, into the room with the painted ceiling, wrote out a telegram, and, ringing the bell, asked that it might be sent down to the village at once. The telegram was addressed to Noel Barton and read:
"I am in great difficulty and trouble, can you come at once to Campion House. Phenice Campion."
The day passed without any message either from Betinne or the Thorpes; she was relieved to think that she was not to be teased or importuned, but rather frightened at this silence; terrible to be ignored, shut out, lost as Alicia had been ignored, shut out and lost! And Phenice shuddered in the chill of a creeping loneliness.
The day was cold and gloomy; Phenice could not endure the bleak barren garden, the low grey skies, the dark landscape. She remained in the house, bending over the fire, thinking of nothing, waiting for nothing but an answer to her telegram.
It came in the early afternoon.
"Arriving to-day. Noel Barton."
It seemed to Phenice as if the whole of that dreary prospect beyond the window was illuminated by an outburst of brilliant sunshine, for she was suddenly happy, against all reason, all conscience, a dreadful kind of happiness perhaps, but still happiness.
The housekeeper noticed the instant change in her and at once concluded that the telegram had been from Mr. Bettine, that a reconciliation was afoot, and all was well again.
She felt the sense of disaster lift from the old house as she had felt it lift before when the coming of Mr. Betinne had routed the stern band of disapproving relations and friends who were endeavouring to "corner" Miss Phenice; but the shrewd woman longed to be able to whisper a word of warning in the ear of the spoilt, wilful girl and advise her to try no more tricks and provoke no more quarrels until she was safely married to Mr. Bettine.
It was, therefore, with very considerable surprise that the housekeeper, late that afternoon, admitted to Campion House, not Mr. Bettine, but the young lawyer whom she remembered coming once before.
An emissary from Mr. Bettine, no doubt, thought the shrewd and anxious woman, and a successful one, she hoped, but, after a quick appraisal of Mr. Barton's admirable handsomeness and a noting of something perturbed in his manner, the housekeeper began to wonder if she had not been wrong in her surmises.
Phenice was in the room with the painted ceiling; she found a difficulty, almost an impossibility in getting away from that room; the wreath of passion flowers garlanded overhead fascinated her, and melancholy though the associations of this spot might be, yet she was more soothed here than in any other rooms in the house.
She rose as Noel Barton entered. "So soon? I did not know that you could be here so soon."
"I motored all the way," he said. "It isn't far, really."
No," replied Phenice. "I forgot—I seem so far away myself—"
The housekeeper had left them and they were alone. They remained standing, facing each other under the painted ceiling. "I was not sure if you would come,'* said Phenice "Weren't you?"
No—please sit down."
She took the low chair by the fire, but he remained standing.
"I hope nothing very bad has happened?" he asked with a touch of that irony that Phenice dreaded. "You haven't heard?"
No—how could I?"
"I thought my aunt, or Mr. Betinne might have gone to you—"
"To Mr. Folliot, perhaps, but I've heard nothing."
Well, said Phenice slowly, "my marriage has been broken off—by Mr. Bettine"
SO Phenice had come straight to the heart of the matter with no excuse or preamble and her dark eyes turned steadily on the young man as if defying him to take her less than seriously.
"What was the reason?" he asked abruptly.
"He found out about Miles Fenton," she answered.
"Found out? But what was there to find out?"
"That I was still interested in him—that I was worrying about him—"
"That is scarcely possible," interrupted Mr. Barton firmly. "Mr. Bettine could not have discovered that you had asked me about Mr. Fenton, if that is what you mean—"
Phenice was silenced; she had become so used to dissimulation that she had hardly realised that what she had just said was not the truth.
"There's something more," added Mr. Barton, "and if I am to help you, you had better tell me."
"He was jealous about Miles," replied Phenice weakly.
"Then you gave him some cause, the man is not a fool."
"I've been extravagant, too," admitted the girl. "I've spent too much money—got into debt—"
"That's more like the reason."
"But it isn't altogether that—"
"He got irritated by your whole behaviour, your indifference towards himself, your aimless money spending—your absorption in something he knew nothing about—isn't that it?"
This was so exactly the truth and it was so amazing to Phenice that Noel Barton should have this truth, as it were, at the tip of his tongue that she could only stammer out, in baffled accents:
"Yes—something like—like that—I suppose—"
"Exactly that, I think," replied Noel Barton. "Only a very infatuated man would have put up with it— and I don't think that Mr. Bettine is the type to be very infatuated."
Phenice winced before this cruel judgment that was so exactly right; was it not what John Bettine had said himself?
"I've been all sorts of a fool," she murmured in sincere self-contempt. Noel Barton did not deny this. "How can I help you?" he asked briefly. Phenice did not answer. "You sent for me," he reminded her. "Yes, I sent for you."
"And now I'm here. What do you want me to do?"
"I've lost everything," murmured Phenice, as if at random. "I haven't a penny. I'm in that man's debt—"
"I've no doubt that he will be extremely generous —"
"Well, that's a hateful thought—isn't it?"
"When a woman marries for money, she has to get used to that kind of thing," said the young lawyer dryly.
"That's a cruel thing to say!" flashed Phenice.
"The whole business," remarked Noel Barton, "is rather cruel."
"For me," said Phenice. "I don't see that any one else has been hurt—"
"Don't you ? It seems to me that there has been suffering all round," replied the young lawyer with a certain grimness. "But I dare say you have not thought of that."
But she thought of it now—and with a touch of panic terror, for this man, like Miles, like John Bettine, seemed to be showing her to herself as utterly selfish—Miles had suffered, that, yes, and John Bettine himself, he must be feeling angry, fooled, bitter—and then Sylvia, she remembered the frightened look on Sylvia's face—yes, Sylvia was no doubt suffering too
"I can't help that," she cried violently. "I've got to think of myself, haven't I? The way that things have happened isn't my fault—"
He was silent, regarding her curiously. Phenice longed to cry out—"never mind all these people—what about you and me?"—she turned away, crushing her handkerchief to her lips.
"I'm afraid no one can help you," he said sombrely. "What on earth could any one do?" he added in a kind of wonder.
Phenice looked at him again; her whole personality was full of a sparkling intensity, a quivering eagerness that went past the expression of any words or gestures; the passionate attention with which she gazed at his presence so still as to seem withdrawn, so still as to seem hostile, was stronger than any cry or spoken appeal.
"It's difficult to analyse you," said Barton in a voice that was faintly strained. "You're a type that no one is quite equal to—yet."
Still Phenice could not speak; she felt that if she were not mute all that was in her heart would come leaping out—for him to trample on, perhaps.
And so she continued to gaze at his charming face in which the ironic good humour, whimsical and amused, which was his habitual expression, was now changed to a baffling look, moved, perturbed, sombre
"Do you want to patch things up with Bettine?" be asked abruptly.
"No—I don't feel as if I could," muttered Phenice "I hated it—really."
"But you wanted the money?"
"Yes."
"And you want it still, I suppose?"
Money? Yes—I do want it."
"Well, then—Bettine seems the only way—hadn't you better make it up with him?"
The young lawyer spoke dryly, almost roughly, and Phenice felt the chill of a dreary despair touch her wild, reckless, mounting spirits, which had risen in such unthinking joy at this man's entrance.
"Perhaps you couldn't," he added to her silence. "I don't know."
Noel Barton took a sharp turn about the room; he glanced up at the passion flowers on the ceiling with an uneasy look, then swiftly at the delicate and lovely pieces of fine furniture and the portrait of that other Phenice Campion, smiling in pastel.
"These things are yours, aren't they? And the house? It must fetch something."
"But I'm in debt," said Phenice dully. "More than I ever let John Betinne know—I was very extravagant— people are beginning to press, too—"
The young lawyer gave an impatient exclamation.
"I can't understand that—what did you need to run into debt for? It makes everything so impossible—"
"Can't you understand spending money as a distraction, because you're miserable and there's nothing else to do?" asked Phenice.
"No, I can't," he replied, turning and speaking with a rather grim expression. "I should have thought that your type of girl would have gone very carefully till she was quite sure—I shouldn't have thought you would have wasted money and I shouldn't have thought you would have let anything come between you and a rich man."
This was plain speaking—almost as plain as that used by Miles Fenton and John Bettine in their several ways —one passionate, one cold. Did he read her as clearly as those other two men read?
" Not so much brains as my dog." Was that what he really meant when he spoke of "your type of girl"?
"I dare say," she answered bitterly, "I should have been as prudent and successful as might have been expected—but I was distracted—"
"By Miles Fenton?"
Phenice did not answer.
"Well, then—do as I suggested before, go out to Paris and marry him—it will be his salvation. And yours, I dare say."
Phenice rose and faced him.
"It might be—if I loved him."
"// you loved him ?"
"Yes, if I did there'd be no problem, would there?"
"Then why—" frowned the young lawyer, hesitating and faintly flushing.
"I'm sorry for him—interested in him," said Phenice in a steadier voice, "but I don't care about him—that's the mistake that John Betinne makes, I've never cared for Miles."
"But you came to me to make those inquiries for you?"
Yes—I came to you."
"But you did not, perhaps, come to me about Miles Fenton?"
"Listen," said Phenice. "That was an excuse. I thought you knew that—I wanted help. I was rather desperate. You suggested Miles and I thought that would do—as an excuse. To keep in touch with some one who would help me."
Was this plain enough? Did he understand now? He said, as John Betinne had said:
"I suppose there is some one else?"
"Of course," said Phenice, faintly, piteously. "Do you understand now?"
"Hardly. Docs he make it worth while?"
Phenice gripped the arm of the chair.
"That's what I don't know. I don't know if he cares about me—at all."
She tried to face him bravely, but her voice was hoarse and her face distorted.
"If he did," asked the young lawyer quietly, would that make it worth while?"
"Yes," she breathed.
"You'd give up Bettine and his money—gladly?"
"Of course." Phenice sat down, dropped her face into her hands and gave a dry sob.
Noel Barton stopped near her.
"Why don't you let this man know?" he asked gravely.
In no way had he betrayed himself; she was still completely baffled as to whether he understood, whether he wanted to understand; from the first moment that she had known him she had been unable to find out whether he was dense or cruel.
He was here, listening to her, when she had called him he had come at once—there were surely, some signs of some interest in her; but Phenice wanted more than interest.
And she had no justification for expecting more Surely, ah surely, if he guessed only half her feeling he would not allow a single doubt to remain?
A word, a look, a gesture, and he could have ended this torment.
But he remained silent, looking away, and the wild heart of Phenice withered within her as the long heavy pause continued.
She could not answer, and he, it seemed, could not repeat his question.
At last she said, with a sigh, as if she struggled against something that stifled her breath:
"I'm afraid."
He echoed the last word.
"Afraid?"
"Yes."
"Of what?"
"Of the—the man."
"Afraid to tell him?"
"Yes."
"You care as much as that?" he asked in an odd voice
"Yes—that would be the intolerable thing—if I was to be—oh, refused 1"
And again she hid her face in her trembling. hands.
"And you think you might be—refused?" he asked gently.
"Yes—I've nothing to go upon, you see—and there's some one else." A second's pause and then he said: "Another woman?"
Yes."
"He, this man, is bound to that other woman—perhaps?"
"Yes."
Noel Barton laughed faintly.
"Didn't I say there were others suffering in this besides yourself?"
SO you see," said Phenice steadily, "I have given up everything for nothing—for just the shadow of a chance of happiness."
"And who," he answered with equal firmness, "can help you? As you say, it would have been easy if you had cared for Miles Fenton—but since you don't," he smiled suddenly, "well, what is one to say?"
"I'm hideously unhappy," murmured the girl. "I've lost everything—I don't know what will become of me—"
"Well, as I reminded you—others suffer too—it's been a mess from the first—your own fault—"
"No," she protested. "Every one blames me, but I won't take all the blame—"
"Look here," he interrupted earnestly, "just think over your behaviour. You're responsible for the whole thing, you really are—you played about with young Fenton when it was fair weather, then let him down hopelessly when it wasn't—pretty well crazed him by giving him up just at the moment when he was down—then you get hold of this rich man, spend his money, don't trouble to be even civil to him, and then, some one else takes your fancy and you let down Bettine as you let down Fenton and try to entangle this other man in your affairs—though you admit that he is bound to another woman—you've just played the part of a mischief-maker from first to last—and I don't believe there is any sincerity in you at all."
He spoke seriously and yet with a glancing touch of ironic lightness which made his denunciation more deadly than the passionate reproaches of poor Miles, or the heavy anger of John Betinne, for this man was plainly heart-whole while the others had had their affections involved—what he said must be true. Phenice winced and shrank before this picture of herself.
"I'm rather lecturing you," continued the young lawyer, "but I dare say it won't affect you very much —and you've asked me several times to help you and it seems to me that's the only way—for you just to understand—"
Phenice suddenly caught at that word; she was goaded beyond timidity.
"It is you who don't understand," she cried. "How did I know, when I was going about with Miles, that he was taking it seriously? Not many men do. And what had I been brought up for except to marry a rich man? And what was I to do when things went smash but snatch at what I could? There aren't so many rich men willing to marry penniless girls—"
"There were your people," he reminded her, "and there was some little property of your own—"
Phenice replied fiercely; she was free of all fears and affectations now, speaking from her heart, with a deeper sincerity than she had ever used before.
"What were my people? Enemies. We had estranged them all. They were hostile and curious, just wanting an excuse to hurt and pry. And I didn't want to sell this house, it was all that was left of what we used to be " She drew a quick breath and added, "Don't you suppose that any girl would rather marry any decent man than be dependent on people who loathe her?"
Noel Barton was silent; his face was turned towards Phenice, but it was inscrutable
"It's horrible to be loathed," continued Phenice passionately. "Girls like myself have to put up with a lot of that—so many watching you, disliking you, hoping you'll be caught out, criticising you if you dare to go your own way—pitying you if you're overlooked through sucking in the old ruts—it isn't easy to be a girl—single-handed against the lot of them—"
"No," said Noel Barton slowly, "I dare say—but was there any need for you to have estranged every one? People are generally pretty decent if you allow them to be—"
"Are they?" asked Phenice bitterly. "Not to girls, I think, girls who try to enjoy themselves and don't take any pains to be careful—"
"Well, you justify yourself," smiled Noel Barton. "Well say that young Fenton should have had his eyes open—but you secured your good marriage, why not have left it at that?"
"I meant to," replied Phenice stormily. "I was heart-whole and then it was all right—but I began to care for some one else. That," cried the wilful girl, "was my hideous luck—I got absorbed in that, everything went to pieces."
"But," he said mockingly, "that was only another whim of yours, you didn't really care—"
"I did—I do still—if it was a whim I should have it well in hand—but it's got me, I've lost grip of everything, I'm bewildered—done for, and here I am, talking like this to you."
She faced him on that, regardless now of his mockery, his irony, his indifference. She had, under all her trickery, that essential honesty, recklessness of heart that found expression now.
"Yes," he said, "I don't know why you should—it's queer, isn't it—you and I, talking here like this?"
"It's queer," replied Phenice with a brilliant and piteous smile.
A poignant silence fell between them; each moved a little away from the other, as if in an instinctive fear.
Phenice flung herself wearily into the chair from which she had risen with such passionate eagerness; she was exhausted by her own emotion; she felt a dreadful lassitude such as she had felt before in Campion House when she had been keeping her relatives and Miles Fenton at bay.
This man would not understand her, or could not; in either case she was faced by his devastating indifference.
"There is nothing more to be said," she remarked dully.
He answered at once:
"For you, perhaps not—for me, yes. You asked me to help you, and not quite as your lawyer, I think."
"No, not as my lawyer," smiled Phenice faintly.
"It's an odious thing, giving advice," frowned Noel Barton. "You'll think me a prig, or worse, and, after all, I may be wrong—but I'd say to you—give up this idea you've got in your heart that you really care for some one—"
"I can't—unless I cut my heart out—"
"Try—he's not worth it. A very ordinary fellow, I'll be bound—and tied up with another woman, you've got to remember her, you know."
The dark eyes of Phenice gleamed with their old malice.
"I needn't—I warned her—"
Noel Barton appeared so startled by this that she thought he must guess the truth—despite his admirable composure.
"You warned her?"
"Yes, I tried to play fair, though I dare say you'll not believe it of me."
The young lawyer recovered and controlled himself.
"Perhaps he's trying to play fair too—he's bound to the other girL remember—"
"But does he," asked Phenice straightly, "care about her?"
"I don't think that any one could ask him that—I'm supposing that, though ordinary, he's a decent chap, and I don't think that anything you could do would make him give up the other girl"
Phenice was silent, desperately wondering if he was speaking for himself or for some mythical person.
"Leave him alone," continued the young lawyer. "You're a great deal too good to be—turned down—"
She flushed hotly.
"Do you think, then, that I should be—turned down?"
He looked at her queerly and said: "There's the other girl, you know."
Only that?" breathed Phenice.
"Perhaps—only that."
So much he had said and with so much she would have to be content, that much she might seize and keep as hers, that glimmering hope that if—things had been different—he might have cared—that hope that perhaps he cared now, though never, because of Sylvia, would he say so.
"I suppose," she said slowly into the laboured silence, "that is the only help—self-sacrifice, isn't it? And I'm not used to that."
"We most of us have to come to that," he answered, "whether we're used to it or no."
"But tell me," asked Phenice carefully, "what shall 1 do? What do you think that he, this man I care for— would like me to do?"
"How could I tell?" he answered sombrely, looking away from her, and that gloom and that averted glance pleased her through her misery.
"You said," she smiled faintly, "that he was an ordinary, decent sort of person you supposed, I think he is— what, then, do you believe such a man would wish me to do?"
"Do you really care about what he would wish you to do?" asked Noel Barton keenly.
"Yes. Of course. More about that than about anything."
The earnestness in her voice made it beautiful, the sincerity in her face made it lovely, she faced him as a creature of pure unconscious beauty, vivid, vital and graced with a certain tender power—the power of love
"If I knew," she said, "what he would wish me to do, I would try to do it, however difficult it was."
"I think," said Noel Barton slowly, "that it would be difficult."
Her lively, sparkling eyes, so dark and eager, questioned him.
"I'm assuming," he added, "that he really cares about you, you know, I think I can assume that—"
"Can you?" The two words from Phenice were like music in the fire-lit room.
"I'm preaching again," said Barton with a faint smile. "These things are really impossible in words"—he paused, then added abruptly, "I'm sure he would hate you to marry Bettine"
Phenice smiled.
"I shall never marry Mr. Bettine," she declared.
"And probably he'd like you to—get free of every one, all the tangles and hatreds—and start fresh, really on your own."
"That's difficult—"
"I said that it would be difficult, didn't I? But it would be a worth-while sort of thing—to show what you had in you—and any one who—"
He suddenly faltered, then finished the sentence with a passionate accent:
"—any one who loved you would wish you to do
THE saying of that sentence, the tone of it, the look that went with it, seemed to change the whole aspect of life for Phenice; everything seemed suddenly easy, even delightful and radiant.
"I see," she said softly, tenderly, "if he loved her— well, I think, if she were sure of that, she could do anything—"
"It's genuine, then?" asked the young lawyer abruptly.
"Yes," replied Phenice. "Can't you believe that?"
They dared to look at each other, eagerly yet afraid.
"I can believe it," he responded. "And you—believe the same—of him." Then, in another tone, he added, almost harshly: "If you want to get out of this muddle with John Betinne, you'd better put everything in the hands of Mr. Folliot—your debts, liabilities—and your assets, which are just this house and furniture, I suppose?"
Phenice was braced by this cool, practical attitude; she, too, she thought, could conceal her feelings, respond to his wishes.
"Yes, that's all," she replied quietly. "I don't think it's worth what I owe, for I should like to pay back Mr. Bettine every penny."
"I don't suppose that is possible, he'll never tell you, ¦ for one thing, what he's spent. And the house won't fetch much at a forced sale. Might not sell at all. I suppose the Thorpes wouldn't be acceptable purchasers?"
"No," said Phenice. "I want to be quite done with them."
"Well, Mr. Folliot would do his best to settle things for you—I don't really know myself how your affairs stand."
He paused, she could see that his control, perfect as it was, was costing him an effort.
"I must really go now," he added abruptly after a second. "I've bored you long enough. And I've got to get back to town to-night."
Phenice noted that he made no mention of Sylvia, never urged a meeting, a reconciliation with Sylvia; that surely was proof enough that he knew the deep cause of the estrangement.
"Good-bye," said Phenice. "Ill write to Mr. Folliot."
He hesitated, looked at her, looked away, and seemed as if he were leaving without another word, but he finally turned back and said:
"What are you going to do, yourself? When the house is sold you may have nothing."
"I'll have to think," answered Phenice on a deep breath.
"It's going to be difficult."
"Yes—I don't know anything useful, but there must be something I could do."
He looked at her keenly a moment, then exclaimed harshly:
"You won't do it—you'll marry John Bettine after all."
"No," said Phenice firmly. Noel Barton smiled.
"Of course you will. Any woman would. The other way is too difficult. And why should you make sacrifices for a man—some fool of a man—who can't even tell you he knows about it?"
"I shall do it"
"Not if Bettine comes back, as he probably will— and offers you everything that you want—"
"Yes, even then."
Noel Barton seemed about to say something passionate, but controlled himself and only answered:
"Good-bye, again. I must be back in town to-night."
And he was gone with no further word or look.
The effort of checking a desperate impulse to run after him sent Phenice, weak and trembling, into the low chair by the fire.
She heard the heavy outer door close behind him; heard his car start and drive away into the distance until complete silence again fell over Campion House.
He had gone and yet he loved her—surely he had made it plain that he loved her; but he had gone, leaving her in isolation while he went back to Sylvia.
"I can't, I won't give him up," she muttered to herself, and, crouching in the chair, she set her strong white teeth in the cushions under her head until the silk covers tore.
When the housekeeper, who had been waiting for the end of this long, and to her, mysterious interview, ventured into the room with the painted ceiling with inquiries about supper and cheerful remarks about the fire burning brightly now in the bedroom, she found the girl prone and exhausted, huddled in the low chair, with a look on her face that startled the older woman.
"Why, miss—you're not looking well, no bad news, I hope?"
Phenice turned her dark head, on which the rich hair was disarranged, and gazed in silence at the speaker. She was thinking that John Betinne must be paying this woman's wages, indeed the whole upkeep of Campion House, and had been doing so for weeks; she was still for all her proud gesture of flight, living on his charity.
And when she threw that off there would be nothing, nothing left—not even this refuge
The housekeeper, startled by her silence and her stare, added nervously:
"I don't think that you ought to be here alone, miss, I don't really—it's not suitable for a young lady like you, who's used to company and town."
"I shan't be here long," she said quickly in her husky, strained voice, "only a day or so while I get my affairs in order—the house is going to be sold after all, I'm afraid."
"Sold? Oh, miss, I am sorry I"
The dismayed voice recalled Phenice a little out of her self-absorption. "Yes—but perhaps you can stay on—I don't know yet. I don't know anything. I'm very tired. Ill go to bed, I don't want supper." Phenice went slowly upstairs.
Her old home was as lost as her new love, she was stripped of everything.
And again there rose in her tempestuous heart a wild and bitter rebellion, a fierce intention to ignore everything that Noel Barton had said and refuse to be set aside for Sylvia.
To the brooding girl this seemed easy to accomplish; she fell asleep to dream of it and woke the next morning to think of it again.
And, remembering the fan she had bought for Sylvia and that she had taken with her from Mrs. Thorpe's house, Phenice smiled maliciously.
She lay late in bed, well into the morning, considering the exact terms of her letter to Sylvia, but that letter was never to be written, because about noon the housekeeper came in to say that Miss Mordaunt was below and wanted to see her at once.
PHENICE came cautiously and slowly downstairs to meet her rival.
She had taken a long time in dressing so that she might consider what she was to do.
Of course Sylvia's appearance here had altered her plans; evidently Sylvia had found out something or guessed something and had come here to protest, perhaps to make a scene.
This was strange, and quite unlike anything that Phenice would have expected of Sylvia; evidently she had miscalculated on the girl's patience and meekness, for she knew that it must be something very serious to bring Sylvia, after this long estrangement, suddenly to Campion House—how, indeed, did she know that Phenice was at Campion House, if not through Noel Barton?
The wild heart of Phenice leapt at the idea that she had already come between the betrothed lovers.
But she did not yet give up her idea of glossing things over with Sylvia, securing an invitation to the Mordaunts and from that vantage ground securing her hold on Noel Barton.
She had dressed herself carefully in the one frock that she had brought with her, and tried to forget that John Bettine had paid for it; she still wore his large and rather vulgar-looking diamond; it was a useful symbol to flaunt in the face of Sylvia, and she did not mean, in any extremity, to return it, it was, like the emeralds were, a useful asset.
She had ordered luncheon, and she felt after her long rest cool, calm and even triumphant as if she had her own perilous affairs well in hand and was quite able to face a hostile, angry Sylvia.
She entered the room with the painted ceiling, where Sylvia waited, without a pang of trepidation and with her head high and a hard smile on her brilliant face.
No remorse troubled her; she had, from the very first, warned Sylvia.
"Hullo, Sylvia! I wasn't expecting you here."
The other girl rose from beside the fire; she wore a plain suit and had just slipped off a heavy motoring coat; she looked pallid and faded, dull, thought Phenice maliciously; the lovely animation was gone from her face and the fine lines were strained.
She held out her hand.
"No, of course not," she answered quickly. "But I had to see you and this was the only way."
"How did you know that I was here?" asked Phenice with a touch of well-bred insolence.
"From Noel, of course," replied the other girl simply.
"He was here yesterday," remarked Phenice warily.
"I know. I saw him when he came back."
Sylvia said no more, but looked heavily on the ground.
Phenice was not in the least sorry for her; the girl's spiritless air, indeed, farther hardened her, the reckless, impulsive spirit of Phenice had no sympathy for meekness and weakness; she was sure that Sylvia was going to complain faintly and appeal feebly for compassion, and the dark girl's full lip lifted in mockery.
"Well, we'll have some luncheon," she remarked coolly, "and then you can say what you want to—I suppose you motored down?"
"Yes, I came down by myself—I won't stay for luncheon, thank you, Phenice. I have to be back again immediately," answered Sylvia.
"Surely not without any food?"
"Yes, I had a few sandwiches with me."
Phenice's dark eyes narrowed; plainly Sylvia did not want to accept even a shadow of hospitality from her.
"Won't you sit down?" she said formally.
Sylvia took again the chair she had risen from and held out her hands that Phenice had found so cold when she had just touched them in greeting, to the fire.
"I dare say you know what I've come about, Phenice," she said slowly. "Don't you?"
Phenice, hostile, alert, defiant, answered dryly:
"I can guess."
"It's about Noel Barton."
"Yes?"
"You remember, the last time we spoke together, in this very room, it was about him—"
"Of course I remember."
"Well," continued Sylvia slowly, not looking at Phenice, "soon after that we became engaged—I was so happy I might have known that it couldn't be true. And you—you were to marry Mr. Bettine—I thought that everything was all right and that we might be friends again."
She paused, but Phenice did not speak.
"I was mistaken," continued Sylvia faintly. "Noel never really cared for me—once he had seen you."
Phenice's eyes sparkled.
"What makes you say that?" she cried.
"One knows," said Sylvia sadly. "He thought that I was expecting him to ask me to marry him, and he did so—but he no longer cared very much for me, I think—and lately he has been distracted, absorbed, meeting you, hearing from you. And now your engagement is broken off and Noel came down here, it isn't difficult for me to guess the truth, is it?"
Phenice was amazed by this piteous frankness.
"He never told me he cared for me," she said guardedly.
"No, he wouldn't do that. He considers himself bound to me. Noel is very—loyal and kind." She struggled with a sob in her voice. "But, well, there it is, you warned me."
Phenice did not quite know how to take this, she had been armed and prepared for reproaches, but not for this.
"I have been wrong," continued Sylvia. "I ought never to have come between you—but I was never quite sure, you had seen so little of each other, I hoped against hope from the first."
"Do you think that he loves me?" asked Phenice gravely.
"Yes, I do."
"And you don't blame me?"
"No, I'm not so weak as that, Phenice—I believe that you love him too—that's the trouble, we both love him, and he loves only you and I'm bound to him."
She shuddered and made a piteous gesture with her hands, clasping them tightly together, but quickly recovered herself.
"And now I'm not going to stand in your way any more. Last night I couldn't quite do it, but to-day, when I go back I am going to tell him that he mustn't think of me any more."
Phenice was bewildered; Sylvia in retreat, Sylvia putting victory into her rival's hands, Sylvia throwing up her strong position!
An entrancing prospect danced before Phenice's eyes —nothing now between herself and Noel Barton, nothing—nothing!
"I'm going abroad," added Sylvia faintly. "Mother and I will go to Madeira, almost at once."
"Why are you doing this?" demanded Phenice passionately.
"It's the only thing to do—"
"No, it isn't, you could keep him to his promise—"
"Well, the only decent thing to do."
But he hasn't said that he cares for me?"
"No, but he will, when I am not there. When he is free."
Phenice was amazed, bewildered, of all things she had not expected this; she had been prepared for struggle, intrigue, deception, effort to attain her end, and now suddenly, without any of these, her desire was thrust into her hands.
All rivalry was over, all competition withdrawn; the only obstacle that stood between her and Noel Barton had vanished—Sylvia was going away.
"But you do care—don't you?" whispered Phenice.
"Yes, I do," answered Sylvia painfully. "I shall always care. Nothing can take that from me, can it?"
"But why are you giving up?" insisted Phenice curiously. "You've got every advantage—"
"I believe he cares for you," replied Sylvia, rising. "And then—even supposing I could make him happy after all, perhaps I could, I don't know—there is another reason."
"Another reason?"
Sylvia looked at her with tired eyes that were full of tenderness. ,
"It means more to you than to me, dear, I've got mother and my music and some means—I've no temptation to marry for money or because I'm lonely, or in a mess—you have. I've been thinking of that. To marry Noel Barton will change your whole life for you, settle all your difficulties. I'm a staid sort of person, I haven't got any difficulties or temptations. You see," she added with a lovely kindness, "you're so beautiful and brilliant, dear, so admired and so charming—it isn't easy for you to stand alone—but married to a man you love, married to Noel, you'll be safe."
She held out her hand in farewell.
"Stop," said Phenice in a stifled voice, "stop—I've got something to say."
"I'd better go now. There isn't really anything more to say."
"There is!" cried the other girl. "Let me think a moment—you must listen. Sylvia, Sylvia, don't go yet."
Sylvia paused, held by something in that strained voice that she had never heard in the voice of Phenice before; a note of intense sincerity and anguish.
"Why should I stay?" she asked gently. "You must not bother about me, Phenice, I shall be quite happy, indeed," added the brave girl, "I would never allow anything, even this, to make me miserable."
"Wait," pleaded Phenice. "You haven't quite understood—there's something that I must say."
Sylvia lingered, but reluctantly; she had made her sacrifice, done what she had, in such agony, decided to do, and she felt calmer now, even comforted; she wanted to get away from Phenice and from Campion House, it seemed to her that further words were painful and useless, but she hesitated, out of her natural kindness.
And what was it that Phenice wanted to say?
The distracted girl did not herself know; she was in such mental confusion and agitation that she could not bring her mind, usually so acute and clear, to judge this situation.
She stood still, twisting her hands together in a childish gesture, all her courage, her confidence, her insolence gone.
Sylvia had utterly defeated Phenice. Rebellious, hostile, angry and malicious, Phenice had come down to meet Sylvia, prepared to inflict on her the deadliest of injuries, and Sylvia had meekly put everything, for which she was prepared to fight so meanly and so desperately, at her feet.
This had produced a terrible reaction in Phenice, she felt as if her soul was being torn to pieces, a deep nausea invaded her whole being, a nausea produced by herself and her own actions.
She looked, as by some instinct, up at the wreath of passion flowers painted on the ceiling and she thought of Alicia, Alicia whose fate was so mysterious, Alicia whom every one pitied, but whom Bettine had praised
She saw Sylvia moving away and this brought her out of her horrible absorption. She cried out frantically:
"Don't go! It's all a mistake! It's Miles I care about— not Noel Barton!"
PHENICE was amazed at what she had herself said; she impulsively put her hand to her mouth, as if to hold her passionate words back; but they had been said and Sylvia was staring at her wildly.
Phenice did not know why she had spoken like this, uttered this he; she began to laugh hysterically.
"Do you mean that?" asked Sylvia in bewilderment.
"Ask Noel Barton himself!" cried Phenice between her gusts of overwrought, dreadful laughter, "he will tell you—"
What else could he tell Sylvia? Was it not the truth that she had asked him to watch over Miles Fenton?
Sylvia seemed to be making a great effort at coolness, at self-control; her quiet common sense dominated the other girl's hysteria.
"Phenice," she said quickly, "we must get this clear. You said just now it is Miles—why didn't you tell me that before?"
"Because I was fooling," replied Phenice wildly, "because I couldn't resist tormenting, you know how wilful I am—how wicked," added the frantic girl with paling lips. "I tried to flirt with him to annoy you—and because
I had said I would, but I never meant it to come to this—"
"It is really only that?" interrupted Sylvia, and she could not keep the look of unutterable relief from her eyes.
"Well, if that is all," she said slowly, "really all—"
And Phenice was staring at her, wondering why she had done what she had done, so passionately closed the door on the golden chance offered her, lied against her own interests, made it impossible to achieve what, an hour before, she would have gone any length to achieve —she did not know, her whole soul was still in a tempest; but her atrocious suffering of a few minutes past was eased, she no longer felt sick with self-loathing; indeed a certain relief akin to the relief felt by Sylvia was dawning for her too—for her too it was as if a nightmare was lifting—a nightmare of greed and selfishness and hatred.
Something horrible had left the atmosphere, pain there still might be, anguish and grief, but there was no longer malice and evil.
"He cares only for you," said Phenice suddenly, "don't ever believe anything else—I was mischievous, that's all—forgive me, Sylvia."
And she held out her hands, like a child asking for pardon; Sylvia took them instantly, drew the girl to her, with tears in her eyes embraced her, and with that embrace the last spark of bitterness died in the heart of Phenice
"Love me a little, Sylvia," she whispered, "though I'm not worth it—a kind of madness came over me—I hardly knew what I was doing—"
"I know!" cried Sylvia impulsively. "You're not like that really, Phenice—it's only a sort of dare-devilry about you. I half thought of that, then it seemed to me so likely that Noel—would prefer you—"
"I bothered him," said Phenice quickly, "—by asking him to find out about Miles—"
"Was your engagement broken off because of Miles?"
"Yes." Phenice could speak the truth here without discovering her deception. "John Bettine guessed—and then—"
"You won't marry Mr. Bettine now, will you, dear?" asked Sylvia anxiously. "No."
But Phenice felt a chill descend over her as she thought of the future, of the consequences of her own sacrifice, of her half-promise to Noel Barton.
She began to talk feverishly:
"Don't bother about me, I shall be all right—I've got plans—don't ask me yet."
"You're going to Paris, perhaps?" asked Sylvia hopefully.
"I may be going to Paris," answered Phenice, speaking at random.
She turned quickly to the little desk where that pitiful packet of letters from Alicia had been found.
"Wait a moment, Sylvia—I'll send a note to Mr. Barton, that will settle everything."
This was what she wrote:
"Dear Me. Barton,
"Please don't bother any more about the matter I asked you about—the news of Mr. Fenton, V mean. I can now do this myself and would rather there was no one else in the thing—thank you for your good offices, and I hope to be able to take your advice. "Faithfully yours,
"Phenice Campion."
She rose and held out this odd little letter to the other girl.
And Sylvia read, with a blessed confirmation of her blessed relief.
"Well everything is all right now, isn't it?" asked Phenice with a brilliant, queer smile. "Yes—but—"
"Good-bye, then, and good luck—I'd rather be alone—"
"Isn't there anything that I can do—help in? Can't we be friends?"
No, they could not be friends, for that would mean that Phenice must continually meet Noel, and that was the impossible.
"Yes," she answered, "we'll be friends, of course, Sylvia, but I've got a lot to do. We'll talk about it ail-but not now."
"She is going to Paris to marry Miles Fenton," thought Sylvia, "and that is the best thing she could do."
She was sorry not to be taken into the wilful girl's confidence, but she could not press any farther nor intrude her presence any longer.
With great kindness and affection she took her leave and Phenice stood at the window and watched her drive away through the wintry gardens.
And then when she had really gone, back to London, to Noel Barton, with that letter in her pocket, a ghastly reaction came over Phenice, left lonely in the silent old house.
She flung herself on her knees before one of the low gilt chairs beneath the painted ceiling and buried her hot face in the silk cushions.
She had burnt her bridges behind her now, she had lost John Bettine because of Noel Barton, and now she had renounced Noel Barton, put him out of her life in such a way that it would be difficult for them ever to meet again.
Phenice clenched her hands in the silk cushions. "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?"
THE housekeeper at Campion House was delighted when she answered a vigorous peal at the bell the next morning to find Mr. John Betinne standing beneath the brown tendrils of the passion flower that clasped the pleasant porch.
The big, heavy man's personality, which was that of one efficient and successful in all that he undertook, and the knowledge that he had behind him the power given by a great deal of money comforted the agitated woman who had felt herself on the edge of tragedy. And she could not forbear saying:
"Oh, sir, I'm glad that you have come—"
Mr. Betinne frowned; he had strict ideas of decorum and the self-made man's dislike of any presumption on the part of his inferiors.
"I think Miss Campion expected me," he replied. "That was the arrangement,"
And he went into the wide hall and hung up his coat and hat.
The housekeeper respected him for this attempt to put a good appearance on the matter, futile though such an attempt was, and showed him into the room with the painted ceiling while she hurried upstairs to Phenice.
"After all," she thought, "perhaps the young lady sent for him, and it's going to be all right " but the shrewd woman had her doubts about this surmise being correct when she entered Phenice's bedroom.
The girl was on her knees on the floor packing her few clothes into the valise she had brought with her from London, and when the housekeeper, in response to a faint "come in" in answer to her knock, opened the door, the girl looked up with a face so changed that the woman was startled.
It was more than the change due to agitation and sleeplessness, more than the fatigue and pallor of exhaustion, something deeper and more of the spirit than any of these; the girl's features had the refined look that comes sometimes after a long illness, a fading of the colour, a blurring of the lines that gives the effect of something ethereal.
Her hair was drawn sharply and indifferently back, revealing her smooth forehead, and this in itself changed her appearance considerably.
"Mr. Bettine is below, miss—wanting to see you."
"Mr. Betinne?" Phenice spoke slowly, without a smile.
The housekeeper knew now that she had not sent for him.
"Yes, miss."
Phenice rose reluctantly.
"Well, I suppose I had better see him."
Without a glance at the mirror she went downstairs.
John Bettine was startled by her changed face, as the housekeeper had been startled; here was a Phenice without a vestige of artifice or wilful airs and graces, or temper or insolence.
It was as if all these had been stripped away and the real spirit of the girl, so long obscured by these pretences, had been revealed at last.
"You're ill!" exclaimed Bettine, not able to express his impression other than by these commonplace words —"surely you're ill—"
"No," answered Phenice with a faint smile, "I'm all right."
She remained standing and the heavy man felt an odd sensation of uneasiness.
"What's the matter, Phenice?" he asked abruptly— "look here, don't worry about things—I was too harsh, I'll put everything right again."
The girl shook her head.
"No one can do that now."
John Betinne was baffled; he had come to forgive, to be kind, and it seemed as if neither his forgiveness nor kindness were of any consolation to Phenice.
"Forget all about it," he said awkwardly—"I lost my temper—I'll admit that. One shouldn't lose one's temper in dealing with women. That's I sign of weakness. I'm sorry."
"I deserved it," answered the girl quietly.
"Well," Bettine was relieved by this admission, "you shouldn't have tried to deceive me, certainly. That was silly on your part, and people who don't play straight always get me in a temper sooner or later—but we can get over that."
"No," said Phenice gently, "we can't. I'm glad you came, because there are one or two things I ought to settle with you, but—"
He interrupted anxiously:
"Don't be a silly girl—I dare say I went too far. Look here, I've come down to say that I'll overlook the whole thing, if you will. Let's get married at once and clear out of it all—go abroad where there is a bit of life and sun."
Phenice was silent.
"Come," urged John Betinne, "that's a fair offer, isn't it?"
Yes," she said.
She was thinking of the relief, ease and comfort held out to her; if she accepted Bettine's offer there would be no longer any need for her to worry any more about material difficulties.
But what had Noel Barton said—"if he loved you he would rather that you did not marry for money—"
"I dare say you've had your fancies," continued the big man, "but there's genuine stuff in you and you'll settle down all right."
"I can't marry you." Phenice spoke quietly. "I've decided that, you've been most generous and I was a beast to take advantage of that—"
She slipped her hand into the pocket of her plain jumper and brought out his large opulent diamond
«°g- . "—please take that back."
And she placed it on the desk near to where she stood. "Temper, eh?" asked Bettine shortly, "want to be coaxed round a bit? Well, I'm not very good at that tort of thing—"
"I deserve that," replied the girl, "but you're wrong. I'm terribly sorry—but I never really cared enough about you, it was only the money I wanted."
Though he had known this and accused her of this he winced to hear it put into these definite simple words.
"Well," he demanded roughly, "has the money ceased to have any attraction?"
"I'd rather go without it"
"Why?"
Thus challenged, Phenice faltered.
"I couldn't quite explain. But it's like that. Something has changed in me, the money doesn't seem to matter so much now."
"It's that fellow Fenton, after all, eh?"
Again Phenice smiled faintly.
"Poor Miles." She did not deny what John Bettine had said, for it flashed through her weary mind that he might, by some odd chance, meet and speak with Sylvia Mordaunt on this matter, and that to make her sacrifice complete, her story must be consistent.
"I don't know what to make of you," exclaimed John Bettine, exasperated, "whether you are fooling me still—"
This roused Phenice from her weary absorption in her own struggle, she realised that she must convince this man, once and for ever, of her sincerity.
Flushed and suddenly animate with warm feeling she moved nearer Bettine so that they both stood under the painted ceiling, under the wreath of passion flowers.
"Try to be kind and understand," she said earnestly. "I've behaved atrociously, you can't think too badly of me, it was fear did it—fear of losing the money, of being poor, uncomfortable—but now I'm not so afraid—"
Again he asked sharply:
"Why?"
"Because," replied Phenice, "I've found I care about something more than money."
Some man, I suppose?" he asked harshly. Phenice was silent.
"Are you going to marry him?" demanded Bettine.
A bitter denial was on the girl's lips—how could he have imagined that her love story was a happy one and she standing there dull with misery?
But she was mindful not to betray herself and answered:
"You mustn't ask that. I don't know. But I must be quite free."
"Can you be—quite free?" he asked ironically, contemptuously, she thought.
She thought that he referred to her debts to him and the tears came into her eyes.
"I know that I owe you a great deal," she said in a low voice. "I suppose that you wouldn't tell me how much?"
"I didn't keep an account of your pocket-money and fal-lals," he answered harshly.
"No. It was a great deal. And there are other bills. Accounts that I didn't dare tell you of—and I'm living on your charity now. You're running this place, of course."
She sat down, as if exhausted by this humiliating speech.
"Don't," said Bettine sharply.
"But I must. I never gave you anything for all I— grabbed—I want to pay you back, I mean to try—"
"Don't be foolish."
"There is this house. It's worth something. I'm going to sell it, and then there's the furniture—"
"I won't hear of anything of the kind—this is a silly pose, you know. If I'm to have the proceeds of the sale, where are you? Penniless. Of course it's absurd, childish—"
With a sense of weary hopelessness Phenice felt the impossibility of convincing this man of her sincerity; she had played and fooled with him too long; he was over-used to her moods and caprices, whatever she could say he would not believe her now.
He took her silence for an admission of her own foolishness, and said, more cheerfully:
"Come for a run in the car, I've got it outside, and let's get out of this broken down place and find a decent lunch somewhere."
These words and his tone, and look, all conveyed to Phenice the uselessness of endeavouring to convince this heavy, practical man that her talk of renunciation was anything but the foolish babble of an overwrought girl.
He was sorry for her, he wanted to be kind to her, he was, perhaps, really fond of her, but he could not take her seriously.
He would think her heroism hysteria, her self-sacrifice nonsense, to him she would always be the wilful, irresponsible girl, spoilt, foolish, utterly unable to look after herself.
The quick wits of Phenice realised that; she saw that she might spend hours of torment endeavouring to convince him of her sincerity, and to no purpose.
It was by actions, not words, that she must prove to him that she was in earnest.
"Very well," she assented quietly, "perhaps we can talk better away from the house—I'll run up and put my things on."
"There's a good girl," he cried, relieved and delighted. "Don't be long—I'm famished already."
Phenice slipped past him and ran upstairs, flung on a hat and coat, threw the last few garments into the half-packed valise and closed it.
Then she opened the case containing the fan for Sylvia and left this conspicuously on the dressing-table, scribbled a few words on a sheet torn out of her pocket diary and wrapped it round the stem of the fan, addressing it to "John Bettine"; this was the best she could do, as she had no envelopes.
Then she looked desperately in her purse and found that she had sufficient for her fare to London—saw those few shillings with unutterable relief.
She picked up the valise, remembered that she would have to walk to the station and decided that she could not carry it so far, but she opened it again, took out the case of emeralds that she had once called the price of freedom and put them in the pocket of her coat.
With a high-beating heart she crept down the wide stairs, cautiously out of the big door, gave one wild look at the passion flower and hurried, with frantic haste, round the back of the house to the main road which crossed the park.
THE value of the money in her purse was higher to Phenice than the value of any money had been before, for those few shillings represented possible escape from intolerable circumstances, possible redemption from a life-time of mistake and wrong—they were her fare to London those shillings, without them she would not have been able to get away from Bettine, from his tempting money and ease and luxury.
She travelled to London, third class, and walked direct to Mr. Folliot's office; she had now nothing but pence, not shillings in her possession—and the string of emeralds.
Mr. Folliot was able to see her at once, by one of those minor strokes of luck that mean so much, for the girl did not know how she could have endured the torment of a delay in the formal, ugly office.
The lawyer received her kindly enough but with a certain reserve; he had heard something of what he called her "latest escapade" from the Thorpes, and his inner thought was that she was hardly worth all the trouble she was causing to quiet, well-educated people, and that he could not understand how an intelligent, shrewd man like John Betinne should have been so long patient with such a tiresome young woman.
But he, too, was impressed by the change in Phenice; a mature, a serious spirit now looked from those dark eyes that had formerly gleamed with childish malice and wilful insolence.
"Mr. Folliot," she said at once, "I don't know much about my affairs—but I've got to find out."
"Mr. Bettine had it all in hand," replied the lawyer cautiously. "We thought that the most satisfactory of arrangements had been made."
"Yes. But now I am not going to marry Mr. Betinne."
"Ah—that is quite definite?"
"Quite," said Phenice gravely.
"A pity."
Mr. Folliot honestly thought that it was "a pity"; and he would have liked to have said something very severe to the pale girl facing him, over whom so much trouble had been taken in vain, who had set so many people by the ears and caused so much money to be spent for nothing, so he pursed his lips and frowned unpleasantly.
"I suppose," added Phenice slowly, "it is possible to sell Campion House and the furniture—everything—at once?"
"A forced auction?" snapped the lawyer. "Oh, yes, it is possible."
"Well, I want to do that, please. It is all I've got and I want the money."
"A pity," said Mr. Folliot dryly, "that the negotiations with your relations were broken off, Miss Campion. You are not likely to get a better price and about four months have been wasted."
"Wasted," repeated Phenice, "but I can't help that now. How much do you think I shall get?"
"For an immediate sale? Without reserve? Everything?"
"Yes."
"Probably a great deal less than the stuff is worth. And then the house is one of hundreds of that type on the market. Lonely, not up-to-date—too big."
Phenice caught back a little sigh.
"I can't wait. I must have the money—please tell me how much you think it will be."
"The Thorpes offered six thousand pounds—a low figure, but I doubt if you'll get as much—and the furniture, what was it?—two thousand at a rough valuation—then, the timber, the farms—one thing and another, I believe they would have given about ten thousand altogether. You'll be lucky if you get that at a rushed sale."
Phenice sat silent, trying to calculate how far ten thousand pounds would go in paying her debts and John Bettine; he must have spent several thousands on her; for the past few months everything she had had, had been paid for by him—even those last few shillings that had brought her here, even the last few pence in her pocket were really his.
Mr. Folliot saw that she was making calculations, but mistook the nature of them.
"Ten thousand pounds," he said, "safely invested, will bring you in about five hundred or less a year—by the time you've paid the income tax you'll have just enough to live on."
And he could hardly keep a sneer out of his voice at the thought of the extravagance and folly of this girl, who having, for some unaccountable reason, thrown over a rich marriage that she had, in his opinion, made herself unpleasantly conspicuous in achieving, now had the impudence to suggest that she could live on a pittance
"I don't want it invested," answered Phenice. "I want the money. I have a use for it."
"You want to spend it?" demanded the lawyer, outraged by this last craziness.
"Yes."
"But it is your last resort—your entire fortune—"
"I know. But, please, I must have the money."
What ever for?" demanded Mr. Folliot sternly. "Debts for one thing."
"Debts? But Mr. Bettine took over and paid all your debts."
"I know. I want to return that money to him. And then there are other debts that he doesn't know about, Mr. Folliot."
"And what," asked Mr. Folliot grimly, "do you propose to do, may I ask, Miss Campion?"
"I simply don't know what I shall do," she said with a simple earnestness that impressed even Mr. Folliot. "I can't think, I don't want to think for the moment, I want to get that money and be free from John Bettine.
I must be quite free. Will you do that for me, please, sell the house and get what you can?"
"If you wish," replied the lawyer stiffly, who felt that he had been snubbed for his interest. "I will see to it at once; the sale could be next week."
Phenice rose.
"And can you lend me a few pounds till then?" she asked in a queer voice. "I've nothing at all."
Mr. Folliot was genuinely shocked; he had not imagined her as penniless, and it seemed to him very dreadful that she should be, and forced to make this humiliating request.
"Of course, of course," he murmured, reaching for his cheque book, but Phenice said:
"Can I have money? Mr. Betinne opened an account for me, but I can't use that now."
And again Mr. Folliot said:
"Of course, of course," and this time reached for his cash box.
"Where are you staying?" he asked in an odd tone.
"I don't know—"
"Then with us, of course." But Phenice shook her head.
"No, please, I don't want to meet any one, I don't want any one to know where I am—I'll find a room somewhere."
"But, my dear young lady," cried Mr. Folliot, "how are you, without luggage or knowledge of London, going to find a room? I insist that you come with us."
But Phenice had picked up the notes he had pushed across the desk towards her and murmuring that she "could manage," was about to slip away.
Mr. Folliot, intensely alarmed and perceiving that she was in earnest and capable of any folly, fearful that he might lose sight of her, said:
"I can find you a room—and I promise to let no one know where you are Will that do?"
Phenice hesitated, turned and looked at him.
"If you'll really promise, Mr. Folliot."
"Certainly I'll promise. An old housekeeper of mine has a little house in Hampstead and lets rooms. I'll take you there It's comfortable and cheap. And no one will know you are there"
Phenice sighed with immense relief; real gratitude shone in her eyes.
"Will you really?"
"Indeed I will. Can't you trust me?" He tried to speak jovially. "Yes, I will."
"And now come and have some lunch, you must be starving—"
Again Phenice hesitated, though she was indeed faint from lack of food.
"If it could be somewhere where we are sure not to be seen—"
"It shall be, the most out-of-the-way place—"
"Thank you, then. And remember," urged Phenice, "no one is to know where I am staying—"
"No one save myself and perhaps my partner, Mr. Barton."
The unfortunate girl found it difficult to retain her composure before the sudden mention of this name which was the very key to all her actions.
"No," she protested hoarsely, "no one but your- self—"
"But Barton is like myself, and entirely to be trusted—"
Phenice shook her head.
"No one but yourself, Mr. Folliot."
Afraid of what she might do if she were not humoured, the lawyer agreed and changed the subject by asking her where she had left her luggage.
She told him, Campion House.
"Very well, I will ring up the housekeeper and ask her to send it here and then I will have it sent on to you at Hampstead. And now let us go out for our lunch."
He was so much kinder and pleasanter than he had ever been before that Phenice felt soothed and relieved; she did not realise that it was her own sincerity acting on him, and that he was responding to her genuine effort, her genuine trouble, though he did not yet know what these quite were.
Over their quiet meal in the side street restaurant she tried to tell him.
"I'm trying to cut away from all the awful mistakes I've made, from all the people who helped me make them—from the money and the comfort. I want to begin again, somehow, on my own—to see if I can't get a real life of my own—"
Mr. Folliot listened intently as these pathetic and earnest confessions came from a Phenice no longer self-conscious, but absorbed in her dreams—in the realisation of her dreams.
"What made you change so?" asked Mr. Folliot curiously.
Phenice did not answer, did not even hear, she had just seen Noel Barton pass the window of the restaurant.
A SINCERE and strong action, absolutely disinterested, never fails of an instant and powerful effect on some one; and the action of Phenice had so instantly and powerfully impressed Mr. Folliot. Something tremendous must have occurred to the girl to enable her even to contemplate the sacrifices she was proposing, and Mr. Folliot could not imagine what this could have been.
She seemed entirely without plans for the future, only anxious for the sale of Campion House, the payment of her debts and freedom from her obligation to John Bettine; and she lived in the modest lodgings Mr. Folliot had found for her in Hampstead with a patience and abnegation that the lawyer, knowing what she had been, found most astonishing.
He was moved to speak of this to Noel Barton, his partner, when he showed him the printed plans and photographs of Campion House, ready for the sale.
"That's an extraordinary thing that girl is doing," he remarked. "I can't make out what is behind it all."
Noel Barton had not even known that Campion
House was for sale, for Mr. Folliot had mentioned nothing before of Phenice's visit or Phenice's affairs.
"What is she doing?" he asked, keeping his glance on the neat prospectus that set forth the beauties and advantages of the last parcel of Campion property.
"Selling this," replied Mr. Folliot, "as you see. I've instructions to get any price I can."
"I suppose the Bettine marriage is off, then?"
"Yes, definitely. I thought it a whim perhaps—but no, she's quite firm. The money is to pay her debts and pay back Bettine."
Noel Barton did not answer, he bent his head lower over the papers that he appeared to be studying intently.
"It's quite impossible to reason with her," continued Mr. Folliot. "I never saw any one more in earnest."
"What does she mean to do?" asked the younger man without looking up.
"I can't make out..She won't say. I don't think that she knows herself, poor child."
"She will be utterly without means or resources?"
"Yes, she's living now on a few pounds I advanced her on this sale."
Noel Barton put down the plans of Campion House.
"I suppose she is all right?" he asked indifferently.
"Oh yes, she's all right for the present, but leading a very different life to her normal one—she's in rooms I found for her—just getting through the days till she has the money to put her affairs straight."
"What do you suppose has made her suddenly in earnest?"
Mr. Folliot shrugged.
"How do I know? She hasn't taken me into her confidence beyond saying that she wants to make a fresh start, get quite free of everything and begin again."
"What's your own opinion?" asked Noel Barton.
"Well, I should suppose that she's fallen in love with some one."
"Miles Fenton?"
"Possibly. Or some one else. The latter, I rather think," added the shrewd lawyer. "Miles Fenton never seemed to affect her very much, but I think that now she has met some one who has."
"Some one whom she'll marry?"
"I don't think so. There's not been a hint of anything of that. And no one visits her. Besides, she's too sad. No, my theory is that it's some man she can't marry, perhaps some one who scarcely knows her—one of those idealistic love affairs that these high-spirited young women do get and which very often quite changes their character."
Noel Barton frowned.
"Well," he said, "it seems to me a heavy responsibility on you if you're the only one who even knows where she is."
"I shall do my best," replied Mr. Folliot, "but the girl is of age and accountable to no one—/ can't control her, neither can her people. I suppose she will do exactly what she likes whatever any one can say or do."
"She's not fit to look after herself."
"I'm not so sure. She's heaps of character and sense and wits. I think she'll make something of herself. After all, there aren't many girls who could do what she is doing."
Noel Barton did not reply and so the matter ended.
But that evening, after he had listened for a while to Sylvia's light and delicate playing, at once gay and soothing, he mentioned, rather abruptly, what Mr. Folliot had told him about Phenice.
"You saw her the other day, didn't you, Sylvia? What impression did you have of her?"
Sylvia closed the piano and turned round on the stool so that she faced her lover; the evening was wintry, the small room warm and closely curtained.
Sylvia was able to answer truthfully:
"I had the impression that she cared about Miles Fenton."
And then, suddenly, she decided to tell him what Phenice had said; there seemed no need now for any reserves between them.
"Phenice told me that she had asked you to find out things about Miles Fenton for her."
"Ah, she told you that?"
"Yes," smiled Sylvia. "And you might have told me yourself, Noel."
It was her secret."
She looked across at him as he sat opposite to her in the pleasant, homely room, and her happiness expanded and glowed round her so that the whole world seemed full of light, nothing but light.
Soon—a few weeks now and they would be married and she would have forgotten all possible doubts and anguishes.
And then, soon again, probably Phenice would be married too, bravely to her poor lover, and they might meet again and be friends, all of them, and smile at the misunderstandings of the past.
So mused Sylvia in her joy and pleasure, gazing at the dark face of her lover; he, too, was musing, and so deeply that he did not notice her tender scrutiny upon him; so there was a silence between them, a silence of which Sylvia was no longer afraid and which she peopled with all the dear images of love.
TIME went with a curious speed for Phenice, those quiet days at Hampstead so unlike any other days she had ever spent, so empty of material things were yet full of spiritual adventure.
Hour by hour the lonely girl struggled with the temptations of the past and hour by hour these same temptations faded until they ceased to have any power over her; until now she had not known her own character and she was amazed at her own power to do what would have seemed to her, even a short while ago, impossible of accomplishment.
She began even to rejoice in the fact that she could do the thing, make this sacrifice for the sake of a love that she was not even sure was returned, and to feel that out of it would grow a worthy happiness that would ennoble all her days.
She was pleased, too, that she had done what she had done so successfully; Sylvia had been completely deceived, no one guessed her secret, not even, perhaps, the man himself, but of that she dare not think, or the temptation to seek him out and put her love to the test might even now overwhelm her; better for her never to know, never to be sure.
She was so absorbed by these inner struggles that she hardly gave the future a thought, but she had to set her teeth when she chanced to count her dwindling store of money, or glanced over her minute wardrobe, or had to check herself from entering the expensive shops to which she was so accustomed; she began to look at the world from a different angle; the day she began to mend her stockings and take her shoes to be repaired life had a novel flavour for Phenice Campion.
Once, when making this survey of her scanty stock, she came upon John Betinne's emeralds that she had instinctively snatched up and brought with her on her flight, but quite forgotten till now.
The sudden sight of the bright beauty of the glittering stones startled her; she remembered that night that John Bettine had given them to her and how she had held them up in .the light of the motor lamps and laughingly called them "the price of freedom."
The necklace must be worth a very great deal of money, and, of course, she ought to return it to Bettine.
She recalled how he had worried about it and taken it from her to have a new safety catch put on it, and how she had disliked to part with the jewels even for a short time for she had always felt that in the value of these stones lay escape.
A great deal of money.
Enough to keep her, as she was living now, in peace and security for many months, to ward off a long while the horrors of poverty.
Phenice played with the necklace and played with the idea of selling it; surely, when she had returned everything she might keep this one thing!
And then she smiled ironically at the weakness of her own reasoning; what was the use of making the effort to pay the man back all that she owed him and then keeping his most costly gift?
Still, she felt a pang at the idea of parting with the emeralds, partly because they represented the one bit of beauty in her possession and partly because they gave her that sense of some security against the worst.
For if she parted with them she had nothing left—not even the little string of pearls she had tried to sell when she had refused help from her relatives when her father died.
No, there was nothing, absolutely nothing but her few clothes.
She had brought the jewels without the case, which must be still at Campion House, and she did not know how to return them safely; then it occurred to her to take them to the jewellers where her engagement ring had been bought and where Bettine was probably a customer, and ask them to return the necklace and obtain a receipt for it.
Phenice did not like the idea of this errand, but she had the courage that can do disagreeable things, and she knew of no other way of being sure that this valuable property safely reached the hands of John Bettine.
So, for the first time since she had been in Hampstead, Phenice went down to the West End and entered the glittering shop that seemed already to belong to another life than her own.
She was glad that her changed fortunes did not yet show in her appearance as she handed the string of emeralds across the glass counter and briefly gave her instructions.
"I want a case for these please, and then I want them sent to Mr. Bettine," and she gave his city address.
The jeweller took her instructions with grave politeness, and Phenice, seeing the gleam of the green stones in his hand, could not forbear saying:
"I suppose they are worth a great deal of money?"
Quite impersonal, the man answered:
"These are the copies, madam. Cut glass—quite cleverly done."
"They are imitation stones?"
"Yes, madam. We are keeping the real necklace for Mr. Bettine. It is very valuable indeed. He brought it back a few months ago and asked us to make this copy. Safer, really, in the case of these valuable stones, madam."
Phenice had controlled herself during this speech, but her humiliation was very bitter.
"Yes, of course," she said quietly. "I knew, I meant that the original was worth a lot—"
"Oh, yes, madam. The stones are beautifully matched."
"Will you, anyhow, send this to Mr. Bettine, please?"
"Certainly, madam. Any message?"
"No message, thank you."
And Phenice left the shop.
She could have laughed out loud at herself; how obvious now seemed the device by which he had changed the stones!—that excuse about the safety clasp!
He had found her out, discovered that she was foolish, irresponsible, untrustworthy, that she was meeting Miles Fenton behind his back, and he, shrewd man of business as he was, had decided not to trust her with those valuable jewels, worth, no doubt, many thousands of pounds; perhaps he remembered what she had said of them being "the price of liberty" and was resolved that if she meant to elope with the other man she should not do so on the proceeds of his necklace.
Two days later Campion House and the contents were to be sold by auction and Mr. Folliot was hopeful of obtaining a fair price for the property; he had, he told Phenice, interested one or two clients in the property and he believed that she might count on selling, and selling fairly well.
Phenice, influenced by the shock of her discovery about the emeralds, felt more than ever passionately determined to refund Bettine every penny he had spent on her and for her, and her one object in obtaining a good price for Campion House was that she might give it all to him. But she could not, without a pang, contemplate the final loss of Campion House, the last portion of an inheritance that had been so rich and that had endured so long.
The day before the sale Phenice went down to Campion House, without telling any one, to look once more, and for the last time, on the house she had tried so hard to keep.
She travelled third class and she walked from the station; it was a cold, gray winter day and the trees were now quite leafless; the house rose starkly in the bare parkland.
Phenice walked between the empty, neglected gardens and stood in the porch leaning against one of the pillars which supported the dry tendrils of the passion flower.
Here Alicia was found, if the story was true, dead of despair, and here, too, might she very well fling herself, since she also had made a tragedy of her life and had nothing to live for.
. But Phenice meant to have more courage than this; the door was open and presently she passed in and entered the room with the painted ceiling.
EVERYTHING in the house was disarranged and plastered over with numbers, and the room with the painted ceiling had been arranged with an auctioneer's rostrum for the sale of the smaller objects.
Strips of drugget had been laid down over the carpets and these were muddy with the footsteps of strangers; the house had been on view for the last two days.
The housekeeper saw Phenice as she stole into the room with the painted ceiling.
"Oh, miss, you shouldn't be here, this is a sad place for you—"
"I wanted to see it once more," replied the girl quietly. "It looks different—doesn't it?"
"Yes," said the woman uneasily. "But you mustn't think of that, miss—I don't know that any one's been very happy here, lately—"
"It is my house," remarked Phenice. "It seems like the end of everything, parting with it."
"You must begin again, miss."
"Yes," smiled Phenice. "I shall have to begin again." The housekeeper sighed, the whole thing seemed a pity—why did young ladies want to quarrel with rich lovers?
Mr. Betinne wasn't quite a gentleman, but surely that didn't matter nowadays; and the shrewd woman noted that Phenice was wearing the identical clothes in which she had fled from Campion House, and that these had lost their first freshness as if constantly worn.
"I don't believe she has more than she stands up in," thought the housekeeper, and aloud she ventured to say:
"Mr. Bettine was terribly cut up by your running away like that, miss; he just broke up that beautiful fan and threw it on the fire."
Phenice stood silent; so that was the end of her costly present for Sylvia which she had meant to send in such a spirit of malice and mockery.
She answered the housekeeper gently, not as she would have answered such a remark from such a person only a few weeks ago.
"Can I bring you anything, miss?" asked the housekeeper anxiously. "Perhaps you'll come into my room?" There are people prying about the house and that isn't a pleasant sight for you to see, I'm sure."
"No, I don't want anything," said Phenice. "I'm going back to town with the next train—it was only just to have a last look round."
She paused, then added:
"I hope you'll stay."
"I hope so too, miss. Least if nice people buy the place. I shouldn't care to stay here under some." And after a little hesitation the good woman asked: "And you, miss, will you be staying in London?"
"I don't know," said Phenice. "I don't really know."
And then, to get rid of the woman and her kindly curiosity, Phenice said that she thought she would, after all, like a glass of milk if she could have it at once, as she would soon have to start for the station.
When she was alone the girl returned to the centre of the room and looked up at that painted wreath of flowers that had always so fascinated her imagination.
And for the first time she understood the meaning of their symbolism.
Sacrifice
Those pale blossoms, stained with purple-like wounds, meant sacrifice, suffering, abnegation.
Phenice had not thought of that before, but now it was very clear; she believed that Alicia and her lover had chosen those flowers when they realised what their love for each other was going to mean—hard, bitter sacrifice.
She knew from those poor letters she had sadly burnt that Alicia had given up everything, even common comfort, for the sake of the man she loved, that she had come back here, pleading for him and been turned away in anger from her own home.
And from under the passion flower they had picked her up where she had fallen and no one knew any more about her, except John Bettine, and he would not speak.
She had made the sacrifice symbolised in the fair, pale flowers, even it seemed, to her life
"And I," thought Phenice, with a strange feeling of peace, "can do the same."
Without reward.
Alicia had at least been loved and the company of the beloved, but she, Phenice, had nothing.
She must sacrifice everything for nothing—not even the knowledge that Noel Barton secretly loved her would go with her to comfort her in the arid future ahead.
Phenice sat down beneath the painted passion flower and took her face in her cold hands.
Strange that to both sisters should have been meted out the same bitter fate of fatal love and complete sacrifice.
Not for either of them the roses of youth, of joy, of fulfilment, but the austere and sad passion flower.
The housekeeper brought the milk and Phenice drank it; when she looked out of the long windows she could see strangers coming up the drive, pausing to appraise the house with critical eyes.
"I'm going now," said Phenice, rising. "I wish I could do something for you. But I haven't a thing."
And she smiled a little thinking how much more fortunate this woman was than herself; a good housekeeper would never lack a comfortable living, while she, Phenice Campion, was sure of nothing.
Phenice hurried to the station through the gray, wet country drenched in mist, between the bare trees and under the loose chill clouds.
She did not look back.
For her Campion House now meant the past, and the past must be left behind, she must think what to do with the future
When she reached Hampstead she was tired to exhaustion and looked so white and wan that the kindly landlady was alarmed, and began anxiously fussing about her, as the housekeeper at Campion House had fussed.
There was indeed something almost tragic about the pale, silent girl with all her radiancy and brilliancy equipped, struggling in lonely fashion with some burden that was almost more than she could endure.
"A gentleman came to see you, miss—he seemed most disappointed not to find you."
Phenice flushed in agitation—John Bettine, of course!
But who could have betrayed her?
"Did he leave any message?" she asked nervously.
"Only his card, miss, and to say that he'd call again to-morrow about the same time."
Phenice took the card.
The name thereon was not "John Bettine" but "Noel Barton."
The girl stood so long motionless that the landlady was frightened, thinking that the coming of this visitor augured some ill news.
"I can say you're out, miss, if he comes again."
Still looking at his card, Phenice did not speak.
"He was a very agreeable, nice-looking gentleman," said the landlady, "but perhaps I should not have said you were here, should I?"
For she thought that perhaps this was the very man from whom her rather mysterious lodger was hiding, though she had been greatly taken by the visitor's good looks and address and had secretly hoped that he was the favoured lover.
Phenice roused herself.
"No, it doesn't matter. I was thinking of something else. Mr. Barton is my lawyer."
"Oh," the landlady was disappointed, "you'll see him, then?"
"Yes, 111 see him to-morrow."
She escaped up to her shabby room and locked the door, her fingers cold and trembling.
What did he want with her, oh, heavens, what did he want with her?
How had he found out her hiding-place, and why had he pursued her to it?
How could she save her hardly won peace of mind if he was to pursue her—if she was to see him even once again I
Had Sylvia sent him? Did he, still unguessing the truth, come on an errand of pity, of kindness from Sylvia?
That would be intolerable!
And how much more intolerable if he came for himself—to say he knew her secret, had always known, and could not endure the situation.
In her desperation the unfortunate girl decided that she would not see the man for whose sake she was giving up everything, and then decided, that whatever the cost, she must seize this opportunity, this unlooked for, last opportunity of seeing him again.
He had come after her, she had hidden herself and he had found her out—he must have been thinking of her—he must, oh, surely he must care!
As she had all along believed in her heart that he cared
And if he did care, if he loved her as she loved him and told her so, could she resist?
Could she continue on the hard and difficult path of self-sacrifice?
Phenice thought of the small pale buds of the passion flower feebly fronting the winter cold.
CAMPION HOUSE was sold "by private treaty" on the morning o£ the sale, and Phenice was to receive for the house and contents the round sum of fifteen thousand pounds. While this was not large, it was a better price than Mr. Folliot had hoped for a quick, forced sale.
He told Phenice that he did not know the purchaser, as negotiations had taken place through a firm of lawyers who were buying for a client residing abroad who wanted an English residence in a hurry.
"a very lucky chance indeed for us," said Mr. Folliot, "and I am most pleased about it—cash down, too. We ought to be able to have the money to-morrow."
He had called on Phenice at her lodgings with the good news and asked for her further instructions.
Phenice handed him a packet of bills.
"I want these paid, and, of course, all the expenses connected with the sale, and then all the balance, except one hundred pounds, sent to Mr. Bettine."
"Don't you think that rather quixotic?" ventured Mr. Folliot, without much hope of turning the girl's resolution. "Mr. Bettine is a very rich man, he isn't expecting this money and he probably won't take it."
"Then he must give it away," replied Phenice, and she added, thinking of the emeralds, "he is not so careless about, money as you might think. He very much disliked my extravagance and I don't think he will refuse to let me pay for it myself."
"But he will know that it will leave you penniless."
Phenice turned earnestly to the lawyer.
"You must refuse to take it back. Don't you see that it is my only chance to get really straight? I feel free of the past now that I've done all I can to pay back, but if I was to keep this money I should be hampered, always. Besides, I want to get used to being without money, to get another sense of proportion about it, to do without things. And if I have money I shall only spend it, for I have no idea of economy."
"But, my dear young lady," protested Mr. Folliot, "what are you going to do with nothing in the world but one hundred pounds?"
"I shall go to Paris," replied Phenice. "I know a woman there, a Madame Gerard, who was my governess once. I have written to her, asking her to let me stay with her—a hundred pounds," added the resolute girl, "will go a long way living as she lives, and before it is gone I dare say I can find something to do. Teaching English, perhaps."
Mr. Folliot was relieved to find that Phenice had even as much as this planned out ahead, and he felt an increasing respect for the girl's courage and common sense that made him feel less anxiety for her future.
"Well, I won't bother you," he said, "only don't let me lose sight of you, that's all, and turn to me if there's the least bit of difficulty anywhere."
"Yes," said Phenice frankly. "I shall be glad to think I can do that. I've had so many acquaintances and so few friends. Indeed, I can only think of one who really cared about me at all, and that was Sylvia Mordaunt."
"Won't you let her know where you are?" suggested Mr. Folliot.
"No," replied Phenice quietly. "She is very happy and it would be a shame to tease her with my troubles. When can I have the hundred pounds?" she added.
"My dear young lady, whenever you like, of course. I could send it round this afternoon."
"In cash," smiled Phenice. "Well, then, I think I will go to Paris to-morrow, I got a cable from Madame Gerard this morning saying that I might come, and my preparations won't take long."
And she handed Mr. Folliot an envelope on which was the address of her former governess.
"I'll leave all my affairs with you and you'll write to me there, won't you?"
Mr. Folliot promised.
When he had gone Phenice told the landlady that she was leaving the next day, and then went upstairs and packed the valises that held all her worldly possessions.
She did all this eagerly and hurriedly like one escaping—as she was escaping, escaping from Noel Barton. He was coming to see her that afternoon and she must have all her boats burnt behind her by then, there must be no retreat possible.
Precisely to the hour he had named he was shown into the shabby little parlour, and Phenice remembered the hideous little hotel room where they had met before —the dull town gardens where they had walked, the drab offices where they had met—how atrocious their backgrounds had always been!
She saw at once that he looked agitated; he had lost his expression of cool irony, of half mocking composure, and his handsome face had that curious, faint distortion that goes with strong emotion.
Phenice was the cooler of the two.
"How did you find me?" she asked, rising as he entered.
"I got your address from Folliot."
"I asked him to give it to no one"
"He thought I didn't matter—I got it casually."
Phenice could no longer bear to look at him; she felt her courage ebbing already, his dear presence made the world a different place.
"Did Sylvia send you?" she asked valiantly.
"No. Sylvia does not know that I have come"
Phenice leant against the cheap mantelpiece; if Sylvia had not sent him he could have come for one reason only!
"What did you want with me?" she asked faintly. She heard his voice, rough, almost uncontrolled: "Because I can't go on—Folliot told me what you're doing—giving up everything—Bettine—the money—is it because of what I said to you?"
Phenice answered:
"Yes, it is because of that."
"I can't let you do it!"
Phenice glanced at the ticket on the mantelpiece.
"It's done. There's nothing more to do. I'm leaving England to-morrow."
"Don't do it," he said impetuously. "Don't go—I can't let you—I suppose you know that I love you, don't you?"
Phenice turned round, transfigured into a lovely radiancy. "I wasn't sure—"
"Yes, you were. And you love me, Phenice, don't you?"
Yes, I love you."
"Well, then, we can't go on like this, you must stay in England. With me."
Phenice went very pale and smiled, and, seeing that he came round the dingy table and stood beside her and took her hand.
"Darling—you'll marry me—at once?" he asked, almost roughly.
"There's Sylvia," breathed Phenice.
"It's been you—from the first."
"But you were bound to Sylvia before you met me."
"I can't help that—I want you and no one but you— I can't put it through."
"It will break Sylvia's heart—"
"What about yours—and mine?"
"Sylvia was my one friend—"
"But I love you, Phenice—"
She drew her hand tenderly from his.
"Just because of that, we can't spoil it—"
They had spoken rapidly, hoarsely, staring into each other's pale faces, and now Phenice moved away from him and spoke passionately in a way that silenced the passionate man.
"I do love you, I always shall, from the first I tried to make you love me. I meant to come between you and Sylvia, I didn't care about anything. And she guessed."
"Sylvia guessed 1"
"Yes. She came down to Campion House and offered to go away. Offered to leave us free and I couldn't take that. I told her a lie. I said I only cared about Miles Fenton and sent her back to you. And I'm going to stick to that," added the brave girl with tears in her eyes, "even if it kills me."
"But you love me," persisted Noel Barton hotly.
"So does Sylvia—and she's the better woman, you'll be glad you've married her, any one could be happy with Sylvia—"
"I only want you, Phenice."
"I'm worth nothing at all. This little bit of sacrifice is the only thing I've been able to do. Don't take it away from me, don't put me back where I was—"
"But I can't lose you—"
She interrupted, on a yet deeper note of passion.
"Listen—if you were to persuade me, I suppose you could, for I'm wild and weak and I love you so much— I know that I should be terribly unhappy. If you made me betray Sylvia, I know that in time I should come to hate you."
His passion was arrested by her passion; her despairing energy, her blazing sincerity overwhelmed him; with a rough, half-stifled exclamation he turned away.
"And you," added Phenice, "would despise me."
There was silence in the little room for a moment, then Phenice added:
"Please go. For I can't stand much more."
He turned at that and gazed at her intently and with a kind of marvel.
"I shall always love you," he said hoarsely. "Do you really want me to go away?"
"Yes."
"Phenice, darling—"
She thought that he was going to touch her and even to kiss her, and that she did not dare face.
"Good-bye," she cried out wildly. "Good-bye—never try to see me again."
And she slipped past him, shaking in every limb, and ran up to her room and flung herself in the window seat and watched him leave the house and her life for ever.
PHENICE was in Paris and already a deep gulf seemed to separate her from the old life; that decisive, definite action of flight had been like a sword cut, severing the past from the present, and the figures of that other life had begun to assume a dream-like air; for this present existence that Phenice led was unlike any that she had led or even known of before.
This Paris did not seem like the city with which she was familiar, the city of luxurious shops and costly hotels and gay amusements, but a very strange place indeed, sombre and dingy, full of hard-working, anxious people who yet found time for a certain amount of pleasure and fun in their meagre lives.
Phenice had been received by Madame Gerard with the tenderest affection and the most unquestioning trust, an attitude that did much to increase the girl's self-respect and support her in the difficult path she had chosen, and in return she gave the elder woman her full confidence, telling her the history of the last few months that seemed so strange in the telling now.
And Madame Gerard, whose own life had been so fine, so austere, so stinted and yet so happy, approved her, cried over her and comforted her, and with that approval, those tears and that comfort the last hardness and bitterness went out of the girl's heart, she saw herself as one who had been spoilt and pampered, selfish and malicious, one to whom fate had been much too kind—and she saw also that the best thing that had ever happened to her had been the powerful love with which Noel Barton had inspired her, and which had changed her whole character and prevented her from becoming what she was on the way to become, the loveless, soured, idle, bored wife of a rich man, sinking daily to lower depths of meanness and cruelty and unworthiness, as she had begun to sink on the day that she had ignored Miles Fenton for fear of offending her purse-bearer.
Phenice, innately noble, could not but shudder with relief when she thought of the humiliation from which she had been saved, the captivity from which she had escaped, and she blessed the love that had saved her, even though it was a love that she must put out of her life.
She was now fortunate in many little ways that encouraged her very much; to begin with, there was no need for the idleness that she had come to dread so much.
Useless as she had always felt herself, there were really several things that she could do very well, and two of these accomplishments she was able to bring at once into play.
Madame Gerard eked out her living with embroidery and dressmaking, and Phenice, clever at her needle, could help her with this; then, on the next étage was a small dancing school for children, and Phenice, an expert dancer, was lucky enough to find work there as an assistant for a few hours a day.
And presently she had a chance of giving English lessons in the evenings and joining a riding school which took classes of schoolgirls riding in the Bois; her vivid good looks, her quick grace, her cleverness at all she undertook, and the great driving power of her eager desire to work, and the unconsciousness given by a great and absorbing passion—a something that seemed to hold her apart and above all common emotions procured her these chances and much consideration and kindness.
Of course the whole thing together did not provide more than a very few pounds indeed, for Phenice took the humblest of positions in the humblest of surroundings with poor little concerns struggling for a foothold, but these various jobs provided stimulus and interest for the days, gave Phenice no time for brooding or moping, and gave her, more than all precious, the feeling that she was earning her daily bread, for, small as her gains might be, they were sufficient to enable her to pay her full share of Madame Gerard's very modest menage, and leave the little hoard, the bulk of the hundred pounds which she had taken from the sale of Campion House, intact.
Mr. Folliot had written to her several times urging her to accept more money from the proceeds of the sale, but with heartfelt gratitude Phenice had been able to say that she was able to support herself now and had no need to touch what she had put aside for her debts.
So Mr. Folliot gave in and the day came when he was able to send Phenice the receipts for all those foolish extravagant bills and to tell her that the residue of the money had been sent to John Bettine, who had had several interviews with Mr. Folliot and had not behaved quite as either Phenice or the lawyer had expected him to behave.
He had said that now he was convinced that she was in earnest he approved of the girl's action.
"Our marriage," he remarked, "would have only been a compromise—I couldn't have done less for the girl, but I don't suppose that she would have been happy, and there would have been trouble in the end—but now she's struck out for herself and shown there's some self-respect and grit in her, and she'll win through all right. There's good stuff in the Campions."
And he added that he would keep the money, for Phenice's own sake, so as not to undervalue her self-sacrifice and courage.
Mr. Folliot reported the substance of these remarks to Phenice and the girl felt glad that she had gained John Bettine's respect even if she had lost his money.
Mr. Folliot also enclosed an address in Paris, which, he said, John Bettine had asked him to send to Phenice, saying no more of it than this, that he thought the time had come for the girl to find out what was to be found out by going to this place and seeing who lived there.
Phenice's curiosity was roused for a moment; she did not know the name of the street—"Rue du Printemps, No. 9," and she could not guess what was the meaning of John Bettine's message
Then, in the hurry of her now busy day, Phenice forgot the address and the message, and the card on which both were written lay forgotten in her drawer.
The winter passed away, week after week of grayness, and Phenice heard nothing more from any one in the old life; there was no need for Mr. Folliot to write further and no one else knew where she was, nor was it likely that they would have bothered about her if they had.
She hoped that Noel Barton thought of her sometimes; she heard nothing of him, but she supposed that he must be married to Sylvia by now; she never saw an English paper.
And then one day of palest earliest spring, the sky fleecy with tender clouds, an icy sunshine flickering on the old gray houses, and great basketfuls of flowers at every street corner, she saw him.
She had crossed the river to take to a shop near the Louvre some of Madame Gerard's exquisite needlework, for when there was nothing else to do Phenice preferred these errands to idleness.
She was hurrying along the pavement with the cardboard box under her arm and a certain lightness in her spirits because of the fair day and the flowers and the cheerful people and pretty women about when she saw him get out of a cab and cross to a little hotel much frequented by the English.
Sylvia was with him; a glowing, lovely Sylvia in charming clothes, carrying a great bunch of white violets.
Their honeymoon, o£ course, thought Phenice, and stepped aside into the road.
They did not see her and she had only that one glimpse of them; the glass doors closed over them and they were gone, and Phenice, dressed like a work-girl and going the errand of a work-girl, was left staring at the smart little hotel.
For a second a darkness came over her spirits, such loneliness, such regret, such desolation, that she thought that she would fall down where she stood, then her heroic spirit rallied.
"Sylvia looked happy," she said to herself, "that ought to be my reward."
And she went on her errand quietly and delivered the work and received the modest price for it and set out for home, avoiding the hotel where Noel Barton and his wife were staying.
But for all her courage the sense of shock remained, and it was hard to bear the thought of his charming face turned towards another woman with that look of tenderness, hard to think of that voice that had said to her—"I love you—and always shall," uttering perhaps those very same words to another woman.
Sick at heart Phenice wandered about the streets; she did not feel the courage to go at once home and face Madame Gerard's kind questionings about her altered looks, for she knew that she could not keep her pain and distress from her face and that she must be pale and haggard.
As she turned aimlessly down one street after another she found herself in one that was labelled "Rue du
Printemps," and this brought to her distracted mind the address that John Betinne had sent her; she remembered the number—"9," and began to look for it, snatching at the diversion from her sad thoughts.
A short search brought her to Number 9 and also brought disappointment, for it was a small, humble, frame shop such as art students and modest artists patronise, with a tiny window filled with hand-made frames and one or two sketches and designs.
The name above the shop was an English one— "Heathfield," but apart from this there was nothing peculiar whatever about the shop.
Phenice hesitated, at a loss; above the shop was the usual apartment house, let out, of course, in floors or even rooms, and perhaps the person whom John Bettine had meant her to see lived in one of these; how, indeed, was she to find out without the clue of any name?
It seemed useless to make inquiries, since she had nothing really to inquire about unless she went into the shop and asked if they knew the name of John Bettine and that seemed rather a pointless thing to do.
As she lingered, undecided, outside the shop, rather welcoming the problem as a distraction, she noticed, among the gilded, moulded frames, a small water-colour drawing of a spray of passion flowers.
This seemed to her a very curious coincidence and it determined her to enter the shop.
She did so, and as she opened the door a bell tinkled in the parlour beyond; the shop was rather faintly lit by gas and piled with frames, canvases and portfolios, but it had a neat, pleasant air and was redolent of a piquant fragrance of coffee.
A woman came from the parlour beyond, a dark, thin woman in a print overall and a little shawl, French fashion; she asked Phenice, very civilly, what she wanted, speaking French.
Phenice did not quite know what to say, so on the impulse of the moment, she asked the price of the sketch of the passion flower in the window
The woman seemed surprised.
"You're English, aren't you?" she smiled. "So am I— well, that is only a sketch for a moulding on a frame. My husband's work—we don't usually sell those sketches, but if you have taken a fancy to that—"
"I have, rather," said Phenice. "There was a wonderful passion flower at my old home. And a ceiling painted with them, too."
The dark woman said:
"Who are you? What is your name?" and spoke in a tone of such amazement that the girl was startled. "I'm Phenice Campion."
The woman looked at her with passionate intentness. "Are you? Then perhaps you have heard of me—I am your sister Alicia."
THIS must be a great shock to you," said Alicia tenderly. "I ought to have broken it to you more gently. But didn't you know anything at all?"
"I knew nothing," murmured Phenice, dazed and amazed.
"Didn't John Bettine tell you—"
"No, not even that you were alive—"
"He was always odd," smiled Alicia. "He promised that he would tell you in time and he used to give me all your news, so you don't seem a stranger to me, Phenice dear."
Tears came to the young girl's eyes.
"He might have told me before, I've been so horribly alone—I can't grasp it yet—it's really you, my own sister!"
"You thought that I was dead, perhaps?" asked Alicia with her wistful smile that gave a strange beauty to the face that was so like the face of Phenice, but glorified by happiness and refined by suffering.
"They told me so," faltered Phenice.
"I was very ill. And many people thought I was dead. And I have offended every one so much," replied the elder sister simply, "that I allowed them to believe that I was dead."
She looked at Phenice with both affection and doubt in her large, soft, dark eyes.
"Did you come here by chance, Phenice?" she asked.
"No. John Betinne gave me the address—nothing else. That was weeks ago and I forgot all about it—then to-day I was in trouble rather, and, wandering about, I came on the street—I didn't know what to make of it, and then I saw the drawing of the passion flower in the window, and that seemed so odd."
"You never thought of me?"
"No," admitted Phenice.
"John Betinne thinks that we ought to come together," said Alicia gently, "but it rests with you—perhaps you would rather go away—and think that I was dead? You so easily can—"
"Oh, why should I want to?"
"Because I gave up everything to marry a workman —he has a gift for painting, but he was only a workman, employed by father. And I ran away with him, Phenice, and lived his life among his kind of people and I was dead to every one, including father."
Phenice thought of the letters Sylvia had found and that she had burnt in pity.
"It was hard at first," continued Alicia Heathfield quietly, "for I was spoilt and ignorant and did not know how to manage, and Robert fell terribly ill and I was frightened at what I'd done. I wrote to father, and he never answered. And perhaps he was quite right, Phenice—one must not blame him, it had been terrible for him, and there was you to think of—well, Robert had done some work for Mr. Bettine and I went to him to ask if he could help us—I came to that, Phenice, and he was wonderful to us. He brought me to Campion House to see father. But father would not see me. And I fainted under the passion flower and they sent me away to a London hospital that I might be lost sight of—"
"Oh I" shuddered Phenice.
"I'd chosen, you see," said Alicia, "and I ought not to have come back. And I thought that I would let every one think that I was dead, so not to disturb any one's life. And not to spoil your chances of a good marriage. Mr. Betinne was everything to us—he looked after us when we were ill and then set us up in this little shop. We couldn't bear charity, so we paid him back gradually and now we just make our way. Robert never got strong again," she added wistfully, "but he can do this work and I help. And that's my story, Phenice."
One thing now seemed clear to Phenice, a thing on which Alicia had not touched at all, but which was very apparent to the younger sister and explained much; John Betinne had loved not herself, but Alicia, loved her with a deep and chivalrous devotion that had never spoken, and for her sake he had wanted to marry Phenice and save her from herself; this seemed to the girl infinitely touching and made her feel even more humble and unworthy.
Alicia was watching her anxiously, doubtful of her troubled silence.
"You see, we are in quite different worlds, Phenice, and if you would like to go away—"
"Why should I go away?" cried Phenice eagerly. "I'm only a work-girl myself, Alicia," she added between laughing and crying. "I give lessons to poor people for a few francs, I've just been delivering embroidery this afternoon, I live with Madame Gerard, my old governess—oh, Alicia, don't turn me away."
"Turn you away? It was only that our lives had been so different—"
"But you're happy?"
"Yes," said Alicia with great sweetness of look and speech. "I've always been happy."
"Then love me a little, Alicia, for I am not happy!"
And Phenice broke down and wept; the other woman's arms went round her and with tears and kisses the two women embraced.
"You're so lovely, Phenice, and so brave, you ought to be happy—why did you give up everything?"
"For the same reason that you did," smiled Phenice through her tears. "I loved some one—"
Alicia caressed her.
"Is it Miles Fenton?" she asked softly. "He loves you very much, Phenice."
"Do you know him?" asked Phenice, amazed.
"Yes—John Bettine gave me his address, I don't know how he found it out, and I went to see him, for your sake, and he was glad to see me, for your sake. He comes here sometimes."
"Poor Miles!" whispered Phenice.
"It isn't he, dear?"
"No." Phenice shook her head; how easy everything would be if it had been Miles Fenton 1 "No—but the other is over, done with, don't speak of it again, I've not been so fortunate as you, Alicia." And she shuddered, thinking of the anguish she had endured a few hours ago when she had glimpsed Noel Barton smiling at his wife.
"I'm trying to pick things up again," she added gallantly, "to beat out some sort of life of my own. I don't see the way very clearly yet, but work, even easy work like mine, helps. I'm able to earn my living," she smiled bravely, "not much of a living. I suppose I don't earn in a month what used to go for one hat, but then I don't spend it either. I've learnt the value of money, of work and independence, and that's something for a beginning."
"But you aren't happy?" asked Alicia affectionately, stroking her head.
"No. But I don't deserve to be I made a frightful mess of things—I can't expect to put them straight all at once."
"Come into my little room," said Alicia. "Robert is still in the workshop, if you would like to meet him I will fetch him—"
"Of course I would like to meet him," answered Phenice warmly.
She followed Alicia into the little room at the back of the shop and there saw what seemed to the lonely girl the prettiest sight in the world.
It was a plain little room warmed by a white stove and adorned by a few spring flowers, furnished with a delicate taste, one or two pieces of fine furniture, one or two old and notable prints, and a large sketch, like that in the window, but more finished, of a cluster of passion flowers.
At the table was a beautiful dark boy building a tower with wooden bricks, and curled in a chair a beautiful dark girl reading a big book with coloured pictures.
"Yours?" asked Phenice breathlessly.
"Mine," smiled Alicia.
The lovely children looked at Phenice with vivid faces like her own vivid face, and soft dark eyes full of joy and love.
"It's a friend," said the mother. "It's your Aunt Phenice, who's been away a long time and come back—"
The children, both attracted by the girl's beauty, at once came forward with charming frankness and held up their dewy lips for a kiss; as Phenice caught the little bodies to her with trembling emotion she thought wildly:
"Alicia is happy, yes, this is happiness indeed."
The mother had left her alone with the children and Phenice sat down by the table while the boy showed his bricks and the girl her book, in perfect friendliness, and then both combined to drag a white cat from a cushioned retreat and introduce it as a member of the family.
Phenice looked with peculiar tenderness at the little girl who had all her own dark loveliness and quick grace and whose future she could foresee as so much happier than hers, blossoming from love and care and wisdom.
For it was extraordinary the air of happiness there was in this plain room; about Alicia herself was a lovely grace and kindness and eager swift sympathy that was irresistible; Phenice could sense, too, that this felicity had not been easily won nor was it lightly kept; Alicia had suffered almost to the limit of suffering, sacrificed everything that she had been brought up to expect as her right, endured the deepest humiliation and the keenest privation, and had to learn everything over again in the grim school of poverty.
But she had won through all these tests that would have killed or soured so many women, and out of her trouble and pain had blossomed happiness.
She came back half shyly into the room with her husband behind her, and at one glance Phenice saw that the man had been worth Alicia's sacrifice.
Whatever his origin, there was nothing common nor vulgar in his appearance, and though he looked haggard and delicate, his hair greying and his face lined, his features were fine and the beauty of a brave and kind spirit looked out of his keen eyes.
There was dignity and humour about him, too, and the unconscious radiance of his expression when his glance rested on Alicia was beautiful to see.
Phenice clasped his hand.
"I would have come before if I had known where to find you," she said simply.
"Bettine," he answered, "thought we should not bother you."
But Phenice knew that John Bettine had not thought that, but that she had not been fit to meet these people; she knew now that when he had sent her the address— "Rue du Printemps, No. 9"—he had paid her the greatest compliment in his power.
And she thought tenderly and gratefully of the rough, uncouth man, who had so often appeared harsh and grim, but who had acted throughout with such secret kindness and wisdom.
There was nothing more to be said among these three people; their feelings had gone beyond words and were to be demonstrated in actions; Phenice felt herself enveloped by affection and kindness and admiration and that indescribable atmosphere of home which she had never known before.
Even her own pain seemed assuaged, to have lost at least its bitterness; she could think more calmly now of Noel and Sylvia in their happiness, and bid, with more courage, an eternal farewell to that forbidden love, and turn her face more resolutely towards her own destiny.
"I see you still remember the passion flower." She smiled up at the sketch on the wall.
"Yes," said Alicia, "it was a sort of symbol to us— always."
"To me also," replied Phenice.
To Phenice the finding of Alicia meant the finding of a new life; Madame Gerard was dear and kind and affectionate, but Alicia was her own sister and Phenice felt the tie of blood strongly and the joy of a true home, for a true home the modest rooms behind the shop seemed to the girl who had had so many acquaintances and so few friends, who had known so much pleasure and so little happiness.
She quickly came to love the children too, and for their sake felt a pang that she dare not express to Alicia —a pang that they should have been disinherited from all that the name of Campion stood for, pride of birth and of tradition was slow to die with Phenice.
Alicia spoke to her of Miles Fenton, and suggested that Phenice should meet him in her house.
"He is very lonely, Phenice, and struggling against heavy odds—"
"Does he want to meet me?" asked Phenice
Alicia said that he had not mentioned it to her.
"But that is his timidity, dear, he simply doesn't dare"
Phenice shook her head.
"No—it is because he can't forgive me, I was very mean and cruel and he can't forgive—"
"No," said Alicia. "I am sure that it is not that—he loves you very dearly and always will."
"Loves you very dearly." The words sounded sweet in Phenice's ears; she knew now what love meant and could prize any love
But she could not accept what Alicia said, it seemed to her most unlikely that Miles could still cherish any love for her after her cold and cowardly behaviour.
"Tell him I wish him well," she told Alicia, "and that I am ashamed to meet him—"
But Alicia smiled and shook her head very decidedly.
"I'll only tell him the first part of that," she said. "And won't you really just meet him?"
But Phenice said "No," and then asked if it was true that Miles was about to be married.
Alicia had heard something about this but knew nothing definite.
"I'm afraid that he is going down-hill, rather," she admitted regretfully, "but now that he knows that you are in Paris I expect it will make all the difference to him."
But Phenice did not think so, this time it was she who shook her head and they talked no more of Miles Fenton.
Alicia asked who had bought Campion House, but Phenice did not know, she had left that matter in the hands of Mr. Folliot and it was one that she had not been keen to investigate for herself.
"It's gone," she told her sister, "and I don't like to think too much about it, I think that if I had known about you and the children I couldn't have borne to have parted with it, even to pay back John Bettine."
But Alicia replied gravely:
"I'm glad that you did—we have already had enough from him, and it would have been horrible for you to be in his debt for that actual money, wouldn't it, Phenice?"
"That's what I thought, I felt that I couldn't really start clear until I had paid off the actual money that I owed him, as you say. But, of course, there was a great deal I owed him that I never could pay back. He was very good to me, Alicia."
"He was good to me, too," remarked the elder sister,
"and in many ways I wish that you could have married him."
Phenice looked at her curiously. "I don't think that he ever loved me," she remarked. "I think that he was just sorry for me."
Do you?"
Don't you?"
"What do I know about it?" evaded Alicia, faintly colouring.
"I think that he has always loved you," said Phenice tenderly, "and that all he did for me was done because I am your sister."
"What makes you say that?" asked Alicia, startled.
"I don't know, instinct perhaps; as soon as you told me your story it seemed quite clear to me."
"He never told me so."
"No, I don't think he would—you were married, weren't you, when you first met him? And he would be very straight and loyal. But I think he loves you just the same, Alicia. And it won't do you any harm if he does."
"No," returned Alicia Heathfield, "it won't, but I hope he doesn't, he deserves a better fate than a useless love like that, he's been a wonderful friend to me and I hope he'll marry and have a happy life yet—as happy as he has helped to make mine."
"Useless love," Alicia had said, and Phenice pondered those words.
Was love unfulfilled "useless love"?
Perhaps Alicia in her completed happiness might think so, but there might also be cases where thwarted love served a great and noble purpose.
Her love for Noel Barton was what Alicia meant by "useless love," but it had not proved useless to Phenice, it had altered the whole current of her life, changed her character and left her enriched for ever.
And might not the same be said of the love of John Bettine for Alicia, this, unfulfilled, even unexpressed, had yet probably been the strongest influence in the life of that hard man who, otherwise, might have been totally absorbed in the selfish getting of money.
And even with Miles Fenton—there was a glimmering hope there that his passion for Phenice which he had blamed as the cause of all his disasters might yet prove his redemption.
But Phenice did not speak of any of this to Alicia, for she knew that her sister must reason by her own experience and that to her a love that did not mean marriage and home and children would be barren indeed.
Alicia spoke again of Campion House, not with any repining, she was too delicate for that, for she knew that any hint of regret would seem to reproach Phenice, but with a certain wistfulness that she could not altogether keep from her voice.
"I hope that whoever has bought the place will leave the passion flower—and the painted ceiling."
"The passion flower doesn't mean sad thoughts for you, Alicia?"
"Sad thoughts?" asked the elder sister, surprised. "Why, Robert planted it—it was struggling along in a cold, windy corner and I was sorry for it, and asked him to plant it by the door in the sun where every one could see it, and it grew at once, that first year, and when Robert was asked to paint that ceiling he chose the passion flower for his design."
"It means suffering and sacrifice," said Phenice gently.
"Yes, I used to think of that, as I sat there and watched him paint. And how odd it was that I should love just him and no one else, ever or possibly—how odd!"
And Alicia laughed a little, dunking of those long past days.
"The passion flower has grown all over the porch now," said Phenice. "It is very beautiful, but I used to be rather afraid of it and of the painted ceiling. I didn't understand what it all meant, and I thought you had died there beneath the passion flower."
"I did nearly die—but it was my own fault, Phenice. I ought to have been strong enough to forget the old life, to have left father alone, I ought to have realised that I was causing him pain and humiliation, and to have thought of you and what my action might have meant to you—"
"You don't feel any bitterness about poor father?" faltered Phenice. "He behaved terribly to you, but I think he was dreadfully sorry, under all his high spirits he always seemed to me an unhappy man."
"Do you?" asked Alicia wistfully. "I am sorry for that. It seems my fault."
But Phenice replied gravely:
"It was father's fault. He was hard and unkind." She hesitated, then added, "but he kept your letters, Alicia."
My letters?"
"Yes, those you wrote to him—after—after you went away. I like to think that he couldn't bear to destroy them."
"I like to think so too," replied Alicia gently. "Did you find them?"
They were found. And I burnt them, Alicia."
Thank you, dear."
And the two sisters kissed and clasped hands.
When Phenice returned home she found a message from Sylvia—Sylvia Barton.
It was not without a start that Phenice received this message, written on a card and left, Madame Gerard said, a few hours earlier by a lady whose beauty and grace she was lavish in extolling.
"One of your English friends, my dear mademoiselle, she seemed very fond of you and so sorry to miss you, but I, I did not know where you were—"
"I was with my sister," said Phenice to gain time, "I had tea there on the way from the Bois."
"I thought so, but I was not sure enough to send your friend—Mrs. Barton is it not?—round there. But she has left her address and wants you to go and see her to-morrow morning, as in the afternoon she returns to England, and that will be very pleasant for you, will it not?"
And kind Madame Gerard smiled, delighted at the thought of this pleasure for the girl who, to her ideas, had so little pleasure.
But Phenice was silent, gazing at the card on which
Sylvia had scribbled in pencil the address of her hotel, and added:
"Dear Phenice, do come and see me, please— Sylvia."
With a flicker of her old sense of revolt Phenice thought of Sylvia coming to this poor quarter, mounting these dark stairs, and entering this mean apartment which was her secret retreat.
She had not wanted Sylvia to know where she was, she did not desire to meet Sylvia, and it was with a pang that she recalled her as she had last seen her, crossing the pavement with Noel by her side and her hands full of violets, while she, Phenice, in her shabby clothes, on her humble errand, had stepped into the mud of the road to avoid being seen.
And then she was ashamed of these bitter thoughts.
Sylvia did not know her secret; Sylvia thought that she loved Miles Fenton, as she had told her; Sylvia had accepted that heroic lie and how was she to guess that it would be terrible to Phenice to meet her as Noel Barton's wife?
No, Phenice knew that there was nothing but affection and kindness behind the action of Sylvia and that she was innocent of any knowledge of the pain that seeing her and Noel would inflict on her friend.
"I ought to go," said Phenice aloud, and Madame Gerard was puzzled by the pallor of her face and the faltering of her voice.
"But of course you ought to go," she answered. "You must not lose your friends, and this one loves you, I am sure."
Yes, if she did not go Sylvia would be surprised, wounded, perhaps even suspicious—she would either take the refusal of her friendly gesture as rude sullenness, or she would guess the truth.
And either supposition was intolerable to Phenice.
So she took her courage in both hands and set out the next morning to the hotel she had seen Sylvia entering a few weeks before.
It was a horrible moment for the girl to walk through the glass doors where she had last seen Noel and ask for his wife—for Mrs. Barton.
But she felt more courage than she had believed it possible for her to feel during this ordeal, and she experienced a strange calm as she was shown into Sylvia's pretty little sitting-room.
After all, the fight was won, the struggle was over, and not even Noel himself could now shake her hardly gained peace of mind.
Sylvia was in the room and greeted her with a warmth of affection that swept away all traces of possible embarrassment from the meeting.
"How did you find me?" asked Phenice with a faint smile.
"Mr. Folliot gave us your address, I begged him for it, I told him that I was sure you would not mind—"
Why should Mr. Folliot think that she wanted to be hidden from the Bartons? Phenice reminded herself, he knew nothing of her secret and would only suppose that he was putting her in touch with an old friend.
"No, I don't mind," replied the girl bravely, "and it's really kind of you to think of me again, Sylvia. But things are so different with us—"
"How, different?"
"Well, I have to earn my living now and I don't earn much. And that means being here, very quietly."
"But why don't you come back to London, there are heaps of things that you could do there—"
"I don't care about London," replied Phenice. "I've had to start fresh—away from every one—"
"But that's hard, and lonely," protested Sylvia warmly.
"I'm not lonely," said Phenice. "I've got my work, which keeps me occupied, and I've found Alicia."
"Found Alicia!"
"Yes. John Bettine gave me her address and it's been the greatest pleasure possible to me She is very happily married and has two dear children."
And briefly Phenice told Sylvia the story of Alicia.
She spoke hurriedly with a certain breathlessness, for she was afraid that, any moment, Noel might enter the room, and she felt that it would be cruel to have to meet him under the eyes of Sylvia when one word or glance might betray them; and she could hardly control these nervous apprehensions so as to preserve her composure.
When she had finished the story of Alicia, Sylvia, after expressing her delight and wonder, wanted to know something about Phenice herself.
"Need you lead this rough, hard life, dear? So shut off from every one and all that you are used to?"
"That is just why I prefer it," smiled Phenice.
"But it seems terrible—"
"It isn't terrible."
"You're happy, then?"
Phenice could answer steadily:
"Yes, I'm happy."
Sylvia thought of Miles Fenton and what Phenice had told her of her love for him. She was rather surprised that Phenice was not already married to him, or had not, at least, said that she was going to be married to him, but though she was too delicate to hint of this matter when Phenice herself did not do so, she believed that when the girl said she was happy she meant she was happy in her love affair and that this was the probable reason for her refusal to return to England.
So Sylvia said no more of this, but what she did say, with the greatest candour and good will was:
"Can't we be friends again, Phenice? Like in the old days?"
And with the same candour Phenice was able to reply: "Yes, Sylvia, of course we can be friends, but I don't suppose that we shall very often meet--"
"Why, Phenice?"
"It makes a difference, as I said, the different ways in which we live. Sylvia, you've got your life mapped out clearly for you, and mine," her voice faltered slightly, "mine isn't so clear for the moment—I've just got to stay here and work and try to carry my own weight as best I can."
There was an air of finality in the girl's firm tones that made Sylvia forbear to press her further.
"Well, I hope we shall see a great deal of each other yet," was all she could say, "and that you'll be really and truly happy, Phenice."
"As you are," smiled the brave girl steadfastly, "aren't you, Sylvia?"
And Sylvia said yes, she was "really and truly happy."
"He loves her by now," thought Phenice. "He has forgotten me—"
And she rose, saying that she had an appointment for one of her lessons, which was true enough; but Sylvia was disconcerted by this brief visit, this hasty departure, and asked Phenice if she would not stay till Noel returned.
And she mentioned her husband without the least difficulty or embarrassment
"He did not know what time you would come, he had to see about some business as we are passing through Paris, but he will be back any moment now—"
Phenice knew that this was not true, though she was sure that Sylvia believed that it was; Noel had invented that business she was sure, that took him out this morning, and would not be likely to return while there was any possibility of her being with Sylvia, for, no doubt he had guessed that her good feeling would make her visit short.
She was grateful to him for that and she could not help a deep sense of joy to think that he still cared enough to wish to avoid her; better this than if he had willingly met her with casual courtesy!
She could kiss Sylvia "good-bye" without bitterness, even with a feeling of genuine affection, and left the hotel to go about her business with a lighter heart than that with which she had entered the presence of Noel Barton's wife.
IT was on a day of full spring that Phenice received a letter from John Bettine forwarded by Mr. Folliot, a few words written dryly enough, but with an intention behind them that brought the tears to the eyes of the girl who read them.
"Of course I bought Campion House, I suppose you guessed that. It's for you and Alicia whenever you care to have it—her children will like to have the place if you don't. Your own servants are looking after it for you both. I'm glad you've found each other. I dare say you've found something else, too, and that's peace of mind. Mr. Folliot has a parcel for you—when I changed them I thought you'd get into mischief with the price of them—now I can trust you. They're a remembrance of a difficult time which hasn't, however, left you or me any the worse. I'm going abroad again and I dare say we shan't meet for a long while. But my good wishes and admiration are with you always."
Phenice sat for a long time by the open window of Madame Gerard's flat, with the letter in her hand, looking at the tender spring flowers in the little window box, flowers that she had loved and cherished more than all the costly and prodigal blooms of Campion House.
She had not guessed that Betinne had bought Campion House, stupid of her, no doubt, but it had not occurred to her, though perhaps it was an obvious thing for him to have done—she thought, wistfully, that it rather nullified her payment to him of the money which was his own money back again, but she had made the sacrifice just the same, and he had respected her just the same, and it was useless to quarrel now with what he had done and refuse to accept Campion House, which, after all, he had not given to her, but to her and Alicia and Alicia's children.
And that reflection brought her out of her musing and sent her to her feet with a sensation of delight.
She must take the news to Alicia, the good news, for however sad the recollections of Campion House might be, surely Alicia would be glad to fill it now with happiness and the joys and hopes of a new generation.
Certainly they would not have the means to live at Campion House, but they could let it, and the estate brought in enough for its own upkeep, and perhaps, if they were careful, it might be a valuable inheritance by the time that Alicia's children were grown up.
With these happy thoughts in her mind Phenice hastened along the crowded pavements which did not now seem drab and sordid as they had seemed at first, for they were the scene of her daily journeys to and fro her work and to and fro Alicia, and she was like most of the other busy passers-by, too occupied to notice any dullness in her surroundings.
She thought now with regret of Betinne; he was a good man and she wished that she could have cared for him; she wished that he had not thought of sending her the emeralds—for surely that was what he referred to— for what was she, earning a pound or two a week, to do with such valuable jewels?
But she was touched by this tribute which meant more than he could ever, the rough, taciturn man, have put into words—and she read his meaning clearly enough.
Before she had been only worth the sham stones, now he valued her at the level of the genuine costly gems.
Alicia received the news with even greater pleasure than Phenice had anticipated; it meant much to her, so long exiled from her old home and her own class, to be thus restored to it, and her fair face flushed with happiness; she could never have taken money from John Bettine, but she could take this.
"I am thinking of the children," she said.
"So am I," smiled Phenice simply, and it flashed into her mind that here, too, was a use for the emeralds— she could keep them for the little girl, that other Phenice who had been so lovingly named after her, and one day in the future she could clasp the lovely string round the neck of the little child who already loved her with a peculiar intensity of ingenuous affection that had been like dew from heaven on the parched soul and lonely heart of Phenice.
Alicia was looking at her with a curious, anxious wistfulness, and Alicia was not thinking of her little daughter and knew nothing about the emeralds; when she spoke her words startled Phenice considerably. She said:
"Phenice, dear, don't you think that you could meet Miles Fenton now everything seems so happy?"
The younger sister was silent; she was still ashamed to meet Miles Fenton, and she thought that he had avoided her; though he sometimes came to the Heath-fields she had never seen him, nor chanced upon him in the streets, nor did Alicia often speak of him.
"Won't you?" she urged.
Phenice hesitated; meet Miles! She was sure that he had forgotten her, or remembered her only with contempt.
"It's no use," she said. "That is over, better leave it alone—"
"It isn't over," answered Alicia. "As far as Miles is concerned, you don't know what a difference your being in Paris has made to him—he was rather going to pieces and just on the verge of an awful marriage—"
Phenice remembered what Noel Barton had said and which this confirmed, and Bettine's remark that Miles Fenton would sink "like lead to the bottom."
"I hope he's all right," she faltered.
"He's changed a great deal since you came to Paris —since your engagement was broken off. I don't see very much of him, but I can see that you have helped him tremendously."
"How can I have helped him?" asked Phenice wistfully.
"Just by being here. He's lived on news of you,
Phenice. And he's pulled himself together, too. He's in quite a good job now."
Phenice was silent again, she was moved and touched by what her sister said; she knew now the value of real love since she had experienced it herself—Miles loved her as she had loved Noel Barton, loyally, deeply, truly, and he had done what she had done, changed the whole course of his life under the influence of a lasting affection.
"You've saved him," Alicia said. "Just by being there."
And she could have said the same of Noel Barton, he had saved her—just by being there.
"I behaved very badly to Miles," she answered. "I didn't understand what I was doing, but that is no excuse. I hope he has forgiven me."
"Forgiven you I He loves you better than anything on earth I"
"But he has been avoiding me, surely?" asked Phenice.
"For a good reason. He wanted to make good, and he has been working on his invention."
But Phenice still felt ashamed to meet Miles Fenton, though her heart went out to her old play-fellow who had been so bitterly tried and who had struggled through difficulties and temptations as she had struggled herself.
And she thought of their last terrible meeting in the little gilt tea shop and the dreadful reproach in those unseeing eyes he had turned on her where she sat cowering by John Bettine.
It seemed to her that she ought to ask Miles to forgive her for that, and so she said gently:
"Some day I might meet him, if he really wishes it and doesn't feel bitter any more."
And Alicia seemed satisfied with that and told her, no, she was sure that Miles felt no bitterness any longer towards any one.
Phenice went back to her work and the days went on as before, busy, eager, full of little home things and small pleasures and efforts and labours, and Phenice thought a good deal of Miles Fenton working out his destiny as she was working out hers and encouraged by her mere presence in the same city and the news of her that Alicia gave him.
And soon this faithful lover, living so near to her, but whom she never saw, became the focus of her musings, almost of her dreams; she had been very fond of Miles and she owed him much, and she was moved and won by the thought of his long loyalty that had forgiven so much and asked nothing.
It was June, and Alicia talked of going to Campion House and seeing the passion flower in bloom again and letting the children run and laugh in the room with the ceiling that their father had painted.
They could afford a short holiday and Phenice wanted to see Mr. Folliot and leave in his care the emeralds that seemed such a responsibility in her humble surroundings, though, indeed, they were safe enough, as no one would have guessed that valuable jewels were hidden in Madame Gerard's modest apartments.
Phenice came round, on her sister's invitation, to arrange about the visit to England, and she had her arms full of pink roses that she had bought from the prodigal, overflowing baskets of the street vendors.
As she entered the little parlour behind the shop that had become such a dear place to her, she saw that there was only one person there and that person was Miles Fenton.
Phenice dropped the roses on the table and stood still.
"Do you mind?" asked Miles. "Alicia thought that you wouldn't."
He was much changed since she had last seen him, more like the Miles of the old careless days, but more serious, more alert, with a greater air of power and authority, the air of one who stands on his own feet and knows his own value.
"I've got so much to ask you to forgive me for," said Phenice faintly. "I've been horribly ashamed—"
"Don't," he interrupted, "don't—I was a fool and a waster. You were quite right—"
But Phenice struggled on with her confession.
"That last time—I hadn't planned it—I met John Bettine by chance, and I was too cowardly to tell him about you, but I never planned it—"
"I never thought you had," he answered, looking as if nothing mattered but the joy of seeing her again— "it was pretty bad at the time, but, of course, I really understood."
A burden, the last burden was lifted from the heart of Phenice; tears came to her eyes and her hands moved unsteadily among the heaped up roses in front of her on the table.
"Can't we be friends again?" asked Miles ardently.
Phenice smiled and sighed at the same time.
"If it's any use to you! I'm rather different now, Miles, rather tamed—"
"But I don't want you different, I don't want you tamed—"
"You said I hadn't the brains of your dog—"
"But what else did I say? I remember quite well— I happen to love you."
"I've got more sense now, I value that a great deal, Miles—"
"Well, then—"
She interrupted:
"But you've been avoiding me?"
"I wanted to have something to offer—my invention has come off," he said with sparkling pride. "Of course it won't be very much* at first—"
But now it was Phenice who cried:
"Don't—don't," bending her head low over the roses, and then she was crying, delighted tears, in his arms.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.