"And if he fell in love with _me_," she told herself as the maid clasped

her pearls round her neck, "there would be no hope for any of us."

It is remarkable that the possibility of Joyselle's loving her only
added to her misery, for most women in like cases would have clutched at
the bare chance of such a contingency in rapturous disregard of all
consequences.

She, however, who had been the object of more strong passions than many
women ever even hear of, knew although, or possibly because, she had
never before cared a jot for any man, that her time had come, and that
for her love must be a perilous thing. She had once been called a stormy
petrel, and now as, racked with the agony of her resolve, she sat
through the interminable dinner, she recalled the name, and smiled
bitterly to herself. Yes, she was a stormy petrel, and she had no right
to ruin Victor Joyselle and his family. She would break her engagement
and go to Italy for the winter. The Lenskys were going, and she would go
with them.

Joyselle was in high spirits that evening. He had had a letter from
La-bas, as he always called Normandy, and his mother was better, and
greatly looking forward to his visit. "She is old, my mother," he told
the party, "eighty years old, but her cheeks are still rosy! They live
in Falaise, in a small little house near the parish church, and in her
garden she grows vegetables--ah, such vegetables!"

"It is a great age," observed someone, and he laughed aloud. "Yes--for
here. La-bas with us, she is not so old as she would be here. I am an
old man here, but there, I am still _jeune_ Joyselle! And my big boy, my
betrothed boy, is still _le petit du jeune_ Joyselle."

It was not particularly interesting, but nevertheless everyone at the
table listened with delight. The man's vividness, his simple certainty
of their sympathy, were irresistible.

"Next September," he went on, draining his champagne glass and wiping
his moustache upward, in a martial way, "is their golden wedding, _mes
vieux_! It will be very fine. Very fine indeed, for all the children and
grandchildren," he glanced slily at Brigit, who clasped her hands
lightly on her lap, "will be there, and we shall eat until we can eat no
more, and tell each other old tales, and boast about our successes in
life--ah, it will be very pleasant!"

"You will come too, my Brigit," whispered Theo under his breath. "I can
show them my wonderful--wife?"

She could not answer, and he took her distress for girlish confusion,
and, manlike, rejoiced in it.

After dinner Joyselle came straight to her. "May I talk to you about
Tommy?" he began, "I love Tommy very much."

"He--adores you."

"Yes. Let us go into the library, Most Beautiful, where we can talk
quietly." Before she could protest he had turned to her mother and
announced his intention. "I leave to-morrow, before she will be up," he
declared, "and there are things I must say. You allow me, Lady
Kingsmead?"

Then he put his arm round the girl's waist and marched her down the hall
and up the stairs leading to the library.

"Isn't he quaint?" giggled Lady Kingsmead to the Duchess, and the old
woman assented with a laugh. "He is an amazing mixture of the boyish and
the paternal. I thoroughly like him."

Meantime Brigit had sat down in a tall-backed carved chair, and, her
hands on its arms, waited for Joyselle to speak. He walked about the
room for a few moments, looking up at the book-covered walls, opening
one of the windows, examining an ivory dragon that grinned on the
chimney-piece. Then he burst out, "_Eh, bien_, my dearest, and when is
it to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"The wedding."

A hot blush crept over her, leaving her cold.

"Theo wants his wife, and I want my daughter," he continued, sitting
down by her and taking her hand affectionately, "why waste time!"

She looked at him in hopeless dismay. He was so big, so strong, so
overpowering, she felt that her strength to resist his will was as
nothing.

"You think I ask too soon?" He looked at her, an anxious pucker in his
eyelids, "But no. There is never too much time in which to be happy, ma
Brigitte----"

For the first time in her recollection she was glad to see Gerald
Carron, as he came up the stairs, and approached them slowly.

"Does mother want me?" she asked, rising.

"No. I--just wondered what you were doing."

"I brought Lady Brigit here because I wanted to talk to her," explained
Joyselle, mildly. Carron laughed.

"So do I want to talk to her!"

Brigit gave a nervous laugh. "Let's all go downstairs and talk there. My
conversation isn't usually so appreciated."

The two men followed her in silence, and to her immense relief were both
promptly accosted by someone of the party, and she could escape to her
window seat.

What would have happened if Carron had not come, she asked herself with
a shudder. Would her strength have come back, and would she have been
able to tell Joyselle that he must make no plans for her wedding?

Until she had known his father, Theo had never seemed to her to lack
personality; he was young, but his very boyishness was individual. Yet
now with Joyselle clamouring for her to fix her wedding-day, Theo seemed
to fade into insignificance, and her task to become that of breaking the
news of her intended rupture with the son, to the father.

And as she sat there in the background watching the members of the
little party as they smoked and chatted to each other, she gave up and
resolved on flight. "If I told Theo he would rush to his father," she
thought, "and then Joyselle would come to me. And we'd quarrel, and then
anything might happen." His utter unconsciousness was at once a
safeguard and a menace.

"I'll say nothing until he is safe in Normandy," she decided.




PART II




CHAPTER ONE


There is on an olive-covered slope near the Mediterranean a certain
shabby pink villa which is remarkable for one thing. In it, years ago,
dwelt for a long time a man and a woman who, having no legal right to
love, yet not only loved, but were perfectly happy. They lived almost
alone, they had little money, the house was shabby even then, they had
few servants and but indifferent Italian food, and nothing but
old-fashioned tin baths to wash in. Yet they were English, and they were
happy because they loved each other so much that nothing else mattered.
Now this phrase about nothing else mattering is as common in love
affairs as the pathetic abuse of the poor old word eternity; but in the
case I instance, it fitted. Nothing else did matter. Not even, to any
extent, the presence of the one child that had come to them. Contrary to
all ethical and reasonable law, these two sinners were happy in their
pink house by the sea, and years after they had left it there seemed to
hang about the old place a kind of atmosphere of romance, as if the sun
and the moon, that have seen so much changeableness, loved still to look
down at the place where two human beings had been faithful to each
other.

These two people were Pamela Lensky's father and mother, and hither
came, early in the November that followed her meeting with Victor
Joyselle, Lady Brigit Mead as the guest of the Lenskys. And here she
stayed, while the mild, sunny winter days drifted by unmarked, a silent,
ungenial guest.

The Lenskys were happy people and enjoyed life as it came. He, a slim,
blond, exceedingly well-dressed little man, was attached to the Russian
Embassy in London, in some more or less permanent quality, having given
up his secretaryship after a miserable sojourn in a Continental city
that he and his wife both hated.

They had money enough to live comfortably, in the quiet way they both
liked, in England, and a year before that November his mother had died,
leaving them the richer by a few hundred pounds a year. So they were
well-off in the sense that they had plenty of money to spend, and the
certainty that their children would one day be in still better
circumstances.

One day in January Mrs. de Lensky was sitting on the floor in the
brick-floored nursery, building a Moorish palace for her son, aged
eighteen months.

She was a thin woman of thirty-six or seven, with large dark eyes,
somewhat hollow now, and a brown vivid face on which life had put
several deep lines--all of which, though unbeautiful in themselves, were
good lines, and made for character.

"And here's the tower in which the little boy lived," she said to the
baby, who, very fat and peculiarly blond, regarded her rapturously,
"and here's the dungeon where they put him when he was naughty. If
Thaddeus bites Elvira again," she added gravely, "what will happen to
him?"

But Thaddeus, who was possessed of the courage incidental to a sound
digestion and dormant nerves, only laughed and showed the wicked fangs
that had bitten the nurse.

It was a pleasant, bare, sunny room, the rug covered with shabby toys,
the walls nearly hidden by pictures from illustrated papers. Through an
open door one saw a table at which sat a little girl of six, bending
over a book with the unmistakable air of a child learning something
uninteresting.

"Eliza!"

"Yes, mother?" Eliza looked up. She too was blonde, but her eyes were
dark.

"Where is Pammy, dear?"

"I don't know, mother. Perhaps she's eating plaster again," suggested
Eliza, with the alertness that even charming children sometimes show
when face to face with the crime of some contemporary.

Pam did not laugh. Plaster-eating may be funny in other people's
children, but seven-year-old Pammy, her adopted daughter, was too old to
persist in the habit, and punishment seemed to have no effect on it. The
house was old, and the walls defective in many places, and Pammy's joy
was to dig out bits of ancient plaster and consume it on the sly. It was
presumably bad for her stomach and indubitably bad for her character, as
the child persisted in it with a quiet effrontery that baulked
discipline. So Mrs. de Lensky rose, and bidding Eliza look after the
baby, started in search of the wicked one.

January was spring at the Villa Arcadie, and as she went downstairs a
strong scent of heliotrope and narcissi was wafted towards her. A boy
stood in the hall carrying a basket.

"_Buon giorno_, Beppino. Oh, what lovely flowers! Tell Giovanni to bring
them to me in the _salone_, will you?" Crossing the hall she went into
the dining-room, and there, as she had expected, sat Pammy.

Years before, when she had, half out of kindness, half out of
loneliness, adopted the little new-born girl, she had never meant to
marry. And when she did marry, neither she nor her husband wished to get
rid of the child. But the result had not been particularly satisfactory,
for Pammy had grown to be a very fat, very stolid person, with no nose
to speak of and no sense of humour at all, and every day that passed
seemed to leave her a little more unattractive than she had been the day
before.

Now, at seven, she was as tall as most children of ten, immensely fat,
with pendulous red cheeks that in spite of cold cream and soft water
always looked as though they had just been rubbed with a grater. Her
hair, long and fair, was dank, hanging in two emaciated pig-tails nearly
to her waist, and her nails--another ineradicable trick--bitten to the
deepest depths possible.

"Pammy, dear, what have you been doing?" inquired Pam, gently.

"Looking out the window--and I ate some more plaster." Stolidly, with
lack-lustre eyes, the culprit gazed at her benefactor.

Pam sighed, but her mouth twitched. "I asked you not to."

"I know. I didn't mean to, but--it looked so good."

"'_Tous les gouts sont dans la nature_,' my dear," quoted Lensky, coming
in at the open window, "there are even people who like German bands!"
Looking down at Pammy through his eyeglass, the sun fell full on his
head, betraying an incipient bald patch. Otherwise Lensky had aged not
at all since his marriage.

"I saw Lady Brigit just now," he said, suddenly, "down in the olive
grove. I think something has happened. She looked--queer."

Pam started. "Poor dear--I'll go and speak to her--only, you know, she
never says a word to me about her trouble, whatever it is. I wonder----"

"Love story, of course," returned Lensky, briefly. "When a woman looks
like that it always _is_ a love story."

"Yes, but--Theo is such a dear! And I know he writes to her."

"Then it isn't Theo. He's not the only man she knows."

Pam frowned thoughtfully. "That's true, but--she _is_ so beautiful."

Lensky smiled at her, and on his strangely white, shrewd, worldly-wise
face the smile looked like a sudden flash of sunlight. "Yes, she _is_
without a doubt very beautiful, but----"

"'But'?"

"I think she is taking her trouble the wrong way. She is bearing it
without grinning, and the grinning is to my mind the greater half."

"But remember what her surroundings at home are, Jack. She had had no
discipline whatever; her mother is horrid----"

Lensky did not answer. Somehow he never cared to hold forth on the
subject of mothers to his wife.

And then, thin, erect, light-footed, Pam went out from the house in
which her strange childhood had been lived, and turning to her left
passed down the dangerously mossy marble steps, and into the olive
grove.




CHAPTER TWO


Lady Brigit Mead was sitting on the hummocky sparse grass under an
ancient olive-tree, looking seawards. She wore a blue frock without any
collar, and her face and long, round neck were very sunburnt. Her face
had hardened in the last four months, and there was a tense look about
her upper lip, yet an artist would have preferred her face as it now was
to what it was before she had become engaged. For now the nervous strain
she was living under had told on her more material beauties, leaving
more room for expression, as it seemed, to the others.

It was not that her face was better, but the suffering in it was less
petty than the resentment that had formerly stamped it.

The dominant characteristic in it had hitherto been disdainful bearing
of small annoyances; now it showed a grim endurance of a great
suffering.

"Bicky, dear," Pam asked suddenly, coming up unheard, "what is it?"

She started. "What is what?"

"Your trouble. Oh, don't tell me if you don't want to, but I can see you
are suffering, and--I used to tell the Duchess, long ago, and it always
did me good."

"Did you tell the Duchess about--Mr. Peele, Pam?"

The elder woman smiled and sighed. "No, my dear, I didn't. But--he was
her son-in-law."

"That wasn't why." Brigit had not moved, and Pam had seen no more than
her profile as she sat down.

"No, it wasn't. But then I was particularly lonely, and literally had no
one to tell. Whereas," she added with brisk good sense, "you have _me_."

For several minutes there was unbroken silence, and then Brigit said
slowly, "I believe you're right. And I'll tell you. It's about--myself,
of course; nothing else could upset me to this extent! You know I'm
engaged to Theo Joyselle. Well--I love his father."

Her voice was defiant, as if deprecating in advance any cut-and-dried
disapproval.

Pam did not answer for a moment. Then "Is his mother--I mean Theo's
mother--alive?" she then asked, drawing up her knees and clasping them
comfortably.

"Yes."

"That--is a pity."

"A pity! Aren't you shocked and frightened?"

"I'm sure I'm not shocked, and I don't think I am frightened. Brigit,
does Theo know?"

Then Brigit turned, her face white under the sunburnt skin. "No. I
am--afraid to tell him."

"Afraid?"

"Yes, afraid. If I broke the engagement, Joyselle would be furious, and
come and scold me."

"Surely you aren't afraid of being scolded?"

"By him, yes. If we had a row--the whole thing would come out."

"I don't see why."

The girl frowned. "You are you, and I am I. When I lose my temper I lose
my head and behave like a lunatic. I'd--let it all out as sure as we
both live. And then----" She broke off with a shrug.

"But, Brigit dear, I don't quite understand. What does Theo think of
your being here all the winter? And the father, doesn't he think it
strange?"

"No. You see, Joyselle went away from England in November, and was
detained for two months; his mother was ill. When I left, I told Theo
I'd write to him once a week, but that I wanted a long rest
before--before I saw him again. I lied, and said I wasn't well.

"Then when Joyselle came back he wrote to me, saying I must come home. I
wrote him a disagreeable note, practically telling him to mind his own
business. He was angry--and besides, he was working hard, and didn't
write again until this morning."

"Oh, I see."

"Theo has been--fairly contented--and I have been trying to tide things
over--no, I haven't, I've just funked it, Pam. I don't know what I'm to
do. I've loved being here, for you and M. de Lensky are so good to
me--but I'm afraid he might come----"

"Theo?"

"_No_," sharply, "Joyselle. He adores Theo and would hack me to pieces
if it would do him any good. And--well, I'm afraid of him."

Pam, in like case, would have faced the whole family, successfully
broken her engagement, protected her own secret, and done her hiding
afterwards, but she was too wise to say so.

"I am sorry for Theo," she remarked presently.

"So am I. And for Tommy, too. Tommy has been staying in Golden Square
ever since Joyselle came home, and he is so happy, poor child. It's--all
hideous. Will you read his letter?"

There was no need for Pam to ask whose letter, as she took it, and felt
Brigit's hot, dry fingers tremble against her own.


"My dear Daughter," she read, "you must come back to us. We
want you. Theo says nothing, but I can see how he misses you, and surely
it is but natural? And _petite mere_ and I want you. Surely you have had
enough of the South? It is unfitted for you, my beautiful one. You are
too strong to like warm air in the winter. Come back and go out into the
fog with me, and let the chill rain dampen your hair. Come back to your
lover who sighs for you, to your old adoring Beau-papa who longs to see
again the face of his beautiful child.           "Joyselle."


"Brigit--you must go."

Brigit poked at a clump of moss among the tangled roots of the tree
under which they sat, and sulked.

"You must, dear. And--you must buck up and break the engagement. It
isn't fair," continued Pam, energetically, "to go on stealing their
love."

"I stealing their love!--_I!_ And what has he done to me, pray? Do you
know that I haven't slept more than an hour at a time, for months? Do
you know that I cannot get away from the horrible, haunting thought of
him? That a flower, a book, a snatch of music--anything that reminds me
of him, turns me cold all over and takes my breath away, so that I
simply cannot speak? You are an idiot, an utter fool, to talk that way.
He has ruined my life, and you say I have stolen his love!" She gasped
in very truth as she ceased, and stood with one hand on her heaving
breast, her face white with anger.

"You have, my dear. The man seems really to love you as a father. And
you certainly have no right to that kind of affection from him! You
_must_ break your engagement."

Suddenly, after a long pause, during which she gazed blindly at the
brilliant sea, Brigit sat down, and turning, buried her face in her arms
and burst out crying.

It was nervous, irregular sobbing, cut by moans and muttered words,
broken by the convulsive movement of her shoulders. Pam was appalled,
much as a man might have been, for she herself had never been
hysterical, and this mixture of anguish and anger, given vent to so
openly, was a strange and horrible thing to her.

However, she knew enough to let the storm pass without interruption,
although it took nearly ten minutes for it to subside, and then, while
Brigit, her face red and disfigured, sat up and smoothed back her hair
and wiped her eyes, Pam spoke.

"It must be lunch-time," she said with great wisdom, and Brigit rose,
with a nod.

"I'll go for a walk. Don't want any lunch."

"All right. Good-bye."

Then they separated, Pam going up the sunny slope to her husband and
children, Brigit, down through the deserted garden of a long uninhabited
house, to the lonely sea.




CHAPTER THREE


Brigit left the villa the next morning and went straight to London. And
the nearer she got to the old town which contained, for her, the very
kernel of life, her spirits mounted and mounted in spite of herself. She
had for so long been "down among the dead men," as Tommy called
depression, that her sudden change of mood affected her strangely.

"If I must never see him again," she repeated over and over again aloud
to herself, in the solitude of her compartment, "I shall at least see
him once, and--hear him speak. I'll make him play to me, too; and I
shall see his big unseeing eyes, and his wonderful hands!" The very
wheels of the train seemed to be saying, "I'll see him, I'll see him,
I'll see him," and when she landed at Dover, in a pouring rain, she
could have laughed aloud for sheer joy.

Her mother was living in town, in the tiny house in Pont Street, but had
gone to the country for the week-end, so the girl, to her great delight,
was alone with the servants.

Putting on a dressing-gown she sat down by her fire and closed her eyes.

"Three months, a fortnight, and six days," she thought. "It seems years.
I wonder what he will say to me? Will he be glad to see me? And--how am
I to do? Shall I tell Theo, and make him tell? Or shall I be brave--as
Pam would--and tell him myself!"

Then, realising her absurdity in forgetting that after all it was more
Theo's affair than his father's, she laughed aloud.

It was easy to laugh, for whatever happened she would see Victor
Joyselle that evening, and beyond that she could not, would not, look.
The world might end to-morrow, and it mattered nothing to her. That
night he and she would be face to face.

She shuddered, for he would call her his daughter and kiss her forehead.
Then the smile came back to her lips, and she rose. It didn't matter;
nothing mattered but the great, primary fact that in--how many
hours?--four, she would see him. Let his mood be what it
would--fatherly, aloof, impish--he would be himself, she would see him,
and she loved him.

The Duchess of Wight had written to her, and going to her dressing-table
she re-read the note.

It was short, simply telling her that her mother had told of her
arrival, and asking her to dine at 8.30 in Charles Street. Not she, she
would not lose one second of the glorious anticipations that were hers
now. She would sit here close to her fire and gloat over her joy.
Sitting down, she took a sheet of paper and began to write----


"Dear Duchess,--Thanks so much for asking me to dine, but----"


She broke off and sat staring at the wall. To-morrow at this time what
would have become of her? The world would have run its course, come to
its end, and yet she would be still alive! Could she bear it?

She would have told her story; made these people understand that she
could never be one of them; broken (for the time) Theo's young heart,
and been reviled and cast out by Joyselle.

And she would have to return here, alone, broken with grief, hopeless.
Drearily she looked round the room. It would all be the same; nothing
would change; the very roses on her dressing-table would still be fresh
and sweet, and--she?

Raising her head, she met her own eyes in a glass, and started. Her own
beauty amazed her. "If he could see me now," she said aloud, "he
couldn't call me '_petite fille_.' He doesn't know I _am_ a woman; he
has seen me--as if through spectacles. If I had never known Theo, and
then met him somewhere by chance----"

She recalled his frank, wondering amazement as she raised her veil that
evening in the train.

"He sees me always with Theo's shadow between us. It is--unfair--and----"

She took a fresh sheet of paper and began her letter again:


"Dear Duchess.--Thanks so much for asking me to dine to-night.
I shall be delighted to come.
Yours sincerely.                                    "Brigit Mead."


Then she rang for the housemaid, who would in the absence of her half
of Amelie have to help her dress, and gave her certain directions.

To-morrow might bring what it would. That one evening was hers, and she
would use it. Joyselle should see her with his own eyes, as a man sees a
woman, not as a father sees a daughter. And he should see her as a man
sees a marvellously beautiful woman!

Satisfied with the conclusion to which she had come, she lay down and
slept for an hour, after which, the enigmatic smile on her lips bringing
into predominance the resemblance to the portrait in the Luxembourg, she
dressed, with more care than she had ever devoted to that process in all
her five-and-twenty years of life.

When she arrived at Charles Street and had shaken hands with the
Duchess, who had had influenza and looked very old, the first person she
saw was Gerald Carron.

"Will you speak to me, Brigit?" he said diffidently, "please do."

He, too, looked ill, and moistened his lips nervously as he spoke. She
shook hands with him without answering, and he hurried on, "Haven't I
been good? I knew where you were, and--I might easily have come----"

"You would not have had a flattering reception," she suggested drily.

"Or written. And I did neither. I was glad you went, though God knows----"

"How do you do, Mrs. Talboys," she cut him short ruthlessly, "when are
we to have another book?"

It was a very large dinner, and Brigit, placed between two men who dined
out for reasons dietetic and economic, and did not talk, was free to
pursue her own thoughts at leisure. She had wired Theo before leaving
the de Lenskys', that she was leaving for home, and before starting for
the dinner she had sent another wire, addressed simply "Joyselle," to
say that she was dining out, but would come to Golden Square after
dinner.

She knew that Joyselle, recognising her prompt appearance as an answer
to his letter, would be at home late in the evening, no matter where he
might have dined. "He has such strong family feelings," she reflected,
with a menacing curve of her upper lip.

So deeply was she buried in her thoughts that she was amazed to find
suddenly that the Duchess was trying to gather her flock's eye,
preparatory to herding it upstairs. Both her hungry neighbours made
spasmodic attempts to eradicate from her mind the memory of their
fanatical devotion to the rites of the table, and she smiled absently at
them, wondering what they would have thought if she had politely thanked
them for their silence!

"My dear," said the Duchess, a few minutes later, sitting down in her
favourite corner by the fire, "come and tell me about Pam."

"She is well, Duchess."

"Didn't she send me any messages?"