The Lady Of The Pool

Front matter

THE LADY OF THE POOL

[ By ANTHONY HOPE ]

Chapter 1

Chapter I

A Firm Believer

“I SEE Mr. Vansittart Merceron’s at the Court again, mamma.”

“Yes, dear. Lady Merceron told me he was coming. She wanted to consult him about Charlie.”

“She’s always consulting him about Charlie, and it never makes any difference.”

Mrs. Bushell looked up from her needlework; her hands were full with needle and stuff, and a couple of pins protruded from her lips. She glanced at her daughter, who stood by the window in the bright blaze of a brilliant sunset, listlessly hitting the blind-cord and its tassel to and fro.

“The poor boy’s very young still,” mumbled Mrs. Bushell through her pins.

“He’s twenty-five last month,” returned Millicent. “I know, because there’s exactly three years between him and me.”

The sinking rays defined Miss Bushell’s form with wonderful clearness. She was very tall, and the severe well-cut cloth gown she wore set off the stately lines of her figure. She had a great quantity of fair hair and a handsome face, spoilt somewhat by a slightly excessive breadth across the cheeks; as her height demanded or excused, her hands and feet were not small, though well shaped. Would Time have arrested his march for ever, there would have been small fault to find with Nature’s gifts to Miss Bushell; but, as her mother said, Millie was just what she had been at twenty-one; and Mrs. Bushell was now extremely stout. Millie escaped the inference by discrediting her mother’s recollection.

The young lady wore her hat, and presently she turned away from the window, remarking:

“I think I shall go for a stroll. I’ve had no exercise to-day.”

Either inclination, or perhaps that threatening possibility from which she strove to avert her eyes, made Millie a devotee of active pursuits. She hunted, she rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange coincidence she seemed to suit the house she lived in—one of those large white square dwelling’s, devoid of ornament, yet possessing every substantial merit, and attaining, by virtue of their dimensions and simplicity, an effect of handsomeness denied to many more tricked-out building’s. The house satisfied; so did Millie, unless the judge were very critical.

“I shall just walk round by the Pool and back,” she added as she opened the door.

“My dear, it’s four miles!”

“Well, it’s only a little after six, and we don’t dine till eight.”

Encountering no further opposition than a sigh of admiration—three hundred yards was the limit of pleasure in a walk to her mother—Millie Bushell started on her way, dangling a neat ebony stick in her hand, and setting her feet down with a firm decisive tread. It did not take her long to cover the two miles between her and her destination. Leaving the road, she entered the grounds of the Court and, following a little path which ran steeply down hill, she found herself by the willows and reeds fringing the edge of the Pool. Opposite to her, on the higher bank, some seven or eight feet above the water, rose the temple, a small classical erection, used now, when at all, as a summer-house, but built to commemorate the sad fate of Agatha Merceron. The sun had just sunk, and the Pool looked chill and gloomy; the deep water under the temple was black and still. Millie’s robust mind was not prone to superstition, yet she was rather relieved to think that, with the sun only just gone, there was a clear hour before Agatha Merceron would come out of the temple, slowly and fearfully descend the shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to die. That happened every evening, according to the legend, an hour after sunset—every evening, for the last two hundred years, since poor Agatha, bereft and betrayed, had found the Pool kinder than the world, and sunk her sorrow and her shame and her beauty there—such shame and such beauty as had never been before or after in all the generations of the Mercerons.

“What nonsense it all is!” said Millie aloud. “But I’m afraid Charlie is silly enough to believe it.”

As she spoke her eye fell on a Canadian canoe, which lay at the foot of the steps. She recognized it as Charlie Merceron’s, and, knowing that approach to the temple from the other side was to be gained only by a difficult path through a tangled wood, and that the canoe usually lay under a little shed a few yards from where she stood, she concluded that Charlie was in the temple. There was nothing surprising in that: it was a favorite haunt of his. She raised her voice; and called to him. At first no answer came, and she repeated:

“Charlie! Charlie!”

After a moment of waiting a head was thrust out of a window in the side of the temple—a head in a straw hat.

“Hullo!” said Charlie Merceron in tones of startled surprise. Then, seeing the visitor, he added: “Oh, it’s you, Millie! How did you know I was here?”

“By the canoe, of course.”

“Hang the canoe!” muttered Charlie, and his head disappeared. A second later he came out of the doorway and down the steps. Standing on the lowest, he shouted—the Pool was about sixty feet across—“What do you want?”

“How rude you are!” shouted Miss Bushell in reply.

Charlie got into the canoe and began to paddle across. He had just reached the other side, when Millie screamed:

“Look, look, Charlie!” she cried. “The temple!”

“What?”

“I—I saw something white at the window.”

Charlie got out of the canoe hastily.

“What?” he asked again, walking up to Miss Bushell.

“I declare I saw something white at the window. Oh, Charlie! But it’s all2”

“Bosh? Of course it is. There’s nothing in the temple.”

“Well, I thought—I wonder you like to be there.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

The mysterious appearance not being repeated, Millie’s courage returned.

“I thought you believed in the ghost,” she said, smiling.

“So I do, but I don’t mind it.”

“You’ve never seen it?”

“Supposing I haven’t? That doesn’t prove it’s not true.”

“But you’re often here at the time?”

“Never,” answered Charlie with emphasis. “I always go away before the time.”

“Then you’d better come now. Put the canoe to bed and walk with me.”

Charlie Merceron thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled at his companion. He was tall also, and just able to look down on her.

“No,” he said, “I’m not going yet.”

“How rude—oh, there it is again, Charlie! I saw it! I’m—I’m frightened,” and her healthy color paled a trifle, as she laid a hand on Charlie’s arm.

“I tell you what,” observed Charlie. “If you have fancies of this kind you’d better not come here any more—not in the evening, at all events. You know people who think they’re going to see things always do see ’em.”

“My heart is positively beating,” said Miss Bushell. “I—I don’t quite like walking back alone.”

“I’ll see you as far as the road,” Charlie conceded, and with remarkable promptitude he led the way, turning his head over his shoulder to remark:

“Really, if you’re so nervous, you oughtn’t to come here.”

“I never will again—not alone, I mean.”

Charlie had breasted the hill with such goodwill that they were already at the road.

“And you’re really going back?” she asked.

“Oh, just for a few minutes. I left my book in the temple—I was reading there. She’s not due for half an hour yet, you know.”

“What—what happens if you see her?”

“Oh, you die,” answered Charlie. “Good-night;” and with a smile and a nod he ran down the hill towards the Pool.

Miss Bushell, cavalierly deserted, made her way home at something more than her usual rate of speed. She had never believed in that nonsense, but there was certainly something white at that window—something white that moved. Under the circumstances, Charlie really might have seen her home, she thought, for the wood-fringed road was gloomy, and dusk coming on apace. Besides, where was the hardship in being her escort?

Doubtless none, Charlie would have answered, unless a man happened to have other fish to fry. The pace at which the canoe crossed the Pool and brought up at its old moorings witnessed that he had no leisure to spend on Miss Bushell. Leaping out, he ran up the stops into the temple, crying in a loud whisper:

“She’s gone!”

The temple was empty, and Charlie, looking round in vexation, added:

“So has she, by Jingo!”

He sat down disconsolately on the low marble seat that ran round the little shrine. There were no signs of the book of which he had spoken to Millie Bushell. There were no signs of anybody whom he could have meant to address. Stay! One sign there was: a long hat-pin lay on the floor. Charlie picked it up with a sad smile.

“Agatha’s,” he said to himself.

And yet, as everyone in the neighborhood knew, poor Agatha Merceron went nightly to her phantom death bareheaded and with golden locks tossed by the wind. Moreover, the pin was of modern manufacture; moreover, ghosts do not wear—but there is no need to enter on debatable ground; the pin was utterly modern.

“Now, if uncle Van,” mused Charlie, “came here and saw this2!” He carefully put the pin in his breast-pocket, and looked at his watch. It was exactly Agatha Merceron’s time; yet Charlie leant back on his cold marble seat, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed up at the ceiling with the happiest possible smile on his face. For one steeped in family legends, worshipping the hapless lady’s memory with warm devotion, and reputed a sincere believer in her ghostly wanderings, he awaited her coming with marvellous composure. In point of fact he had forgotten all about her, and there was nothing to prevent her coming, slipping down the steps, and noiselessly into the water, all unnoticed by him. His eyes were glued to the ceiling, the smile played on his lips, his ears were filled with sweet echoes, and his thoughts were far away. Perhaps the dead lady came and passed unseen. That Charlie did not see her was ridiculously slight evidence whereon to damn so ancient and picturesque a legend. He thought the same himself, for that night at dinner—he came in late for dinner—he maintained the credit of the story with fierce conviction against Mr. Vansittart Merceron’s scepticism.

Chapter 2

Chapter II

In old days the Mercerons had been great folk. They had held the earldom of Langbury and the barony of Warmley. A failure of direct descent in the male line extinguished the earldom; the Lady Agatha was the daughter of the last earl, and would have been Baroness Warmley had she lived. On her death that title passed to her cousin, and continued in that branch till the early days of the present century. Then came another break. The Lord Warmley of that day, a Regency dandy, had a son, but not one who could inherit his honors, and away went the barony to a yet younger branch, where, falling a few years later into female hands, it was merged in a brand-new viscounty, and was now waiting till chance again should restore it to an independent existence. From the Mercerons of the Court it was gone for ever, and the blot on their escutcheon which lost it them was a sore point, from which it behooved visitors and friends to refrain their tongues. The Regent had, indeed, with his well-known good nature, offered a baronetcy to hide the stain; but pride forbade, and the Mercerons now held no titles, save the modest dignity which Charlie’s father, made a K.C.B. for services in the North-West Provinces, had left behind him to his widow. But the old house was theirs, and a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in the dining room. She had purposed a like banishment for Lady Agatha; but here Charlie had interceded, and the unhappy beauty hung still behind his mother’s chair and opposite his own. It was just to remember that but for poor Agatha’s fault and fate the present branch might never have enjoyed the honors at all; so Charlie urged to Lady Merceron, catching at any excuse for keeping Lady Agatha. Lady Merceron’s way of judging pictures may seem peculiar, but the fact is that she lacked what is called the sense of historical perspective: she did not see why our ancestors should be treated so tenderly and allowed, with a charitable reference to the change in manners, forgiveness for what no one to-day could hope to win a pardon. Mr. Vansittart Merceron smiled at his sister-in-law and shrugged his shoulders; but in vain. To the smoking-room went the wicked Lord Warmley, and Lady Agatha was remarkably lucky in that she did not follow him.

Mr. Vansittart, half-brother to the late Sir Victor, and twenty years younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied much on his advice, especially in what concerned her son; she was hazy about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement and satisfactory settlement of Charlie’s future.

Mr. Vansittart approached the future through the present and the past. “You wasted your time at school, you wasted your time at Oxford, you’re wasting your time now,” he remarked, when Charlie and he were left alone after dinner.

Charlie was looking at Lady Agatha’s picture. “With a sigh he turned to his uncle.

“That’s all very well,” he said tolerantly, “but what is there for me to do?”

“If you took more interest in country pursuits it might be different. But you don’t hunt, you shoot very seldom2”

“And very badly.”

“And not at all well, as you admit. You say you won’t become a magistrate, you show no interest in politics or—er—social questions. You simply moon about.”

Charlie was vividly reminded of a learned judge whom he had once heard pronouncing sentence of death. His uncle’s denunciation seemed to lack its appropriate conclusion—that he should be hanged by the neck till he was dead. He was roused to defend himself.

“You’re quite wrong, uncle,” he said. “I’m working hard. I’m writing a history of the family.”

“A history of the family!” groaned Mr. Vansittart. “Who wants one? Who’ll read one?”

“From an antiquarian point of view2” began Charlie stoutly.

“Of all ways of wasting time, antiquarianism is perhaps the most futile;” and Mr. Vansittart wiped his mouth with an air of finality.

“Now the Agatha Merceron story,” continued Charlie, “is in itself2”

“Perhaps we’d better finish our talk tomorrow. The ladies will, expect us in the garden.”

“All right,” said Charlie, with much content. He enjoyed himself more in the garden, for, while Lady Merceron and her brother-in-law took counsel, he strolled through the moonlit shrubberies with Mrs. Marland, and Mrs. Marland was very sympathetically interested in him and his pursuits. She was a little eager woman, the very antithesis in body and mind to Millie Bushell; she had plenty of brains but very little sense, a good deal of charm but no beauty, and, without any counterbalancing defect at all, a hearty liking for handsome young men. She had also a husband in the City.

“Ghost-hunting again to-night, Mr. Merceron?” she asked, glancing up at Charlie, who was puffing happily at a cigar.

“Yes,” he answered, “I’m very regular.”

“And did you see anyone?”

“I saw Millie Bushell.”

“Miss Bushell’s hardly ghost-like, is she?”

“Well,” said Charlie meditatively, “I suppose if one was fat oneself one’s ghost would be fat, wouldn’t it?”

Mrs. Marland, letting the problem alone, laughed softly.

“Poor Miss Bushell! If she heard you say that! Or if Lady Merceron heard you!”

“It would hardly surprise my mother to hear that I thought Millie Bushell plump. She is plump, you know;” and Charlie’s eyes expressed a candid homage to truth.

“Oh, I know what’s being arranged for you.”

“So do I.”

“And you’ll do it. Oh, you think you won’t, but you will. Men always end by doing what they’re told.”

“Does Mr. Marland?”

“He begins by it,” laughed his wife.

“Is that why he’s not coming till Saturday week?”

“Mr. Merceron! But what was Miss Bushell doing at the Pool? Did she come to find you?”

“Oh, no; just for a walk.”

“Poor girl!”

“Why?—it’s good for her.”

“I didn’t mean the walk.”

“I’d blush if there was light enough to make it any use, Mrs. Marland.”

“Oh, but I know there’s something. You don’t go there every evening to look for a dead lady, Mr. Merceron.”

Charlie stopped short, and took his cigar from his mouth.

“What?” he asked, a little abruptly.

“Well, I shall follow you some day, and I shouldn’t be surprised if I met—not Agatha—but2”

“Well?” asked Charlie, with an uncertain smile.

“Why, poor Miss Bushell!”

Charlie laughed and replaced his cigar.

“What are we standing still for?” he said.

“I don’t know. You stopped. She’d be such an ideal match for you.”

“Then I should never have done for you, Mrs. Marland.”

“My dear boy, I was married when you were still in Eton collars.”

They had completed the circuit of the garden, and now approached where Lady Merceron sat, enveloped in a shawl.

“Charlie!” she called. “Here’s a letter from Victor Sutton. He’s coming to-morrow.”

“I didn’t know you’d asked him,” said Charlie, with no sign of pleasure at the news. Victor had been at school and college with Charlie, and often, in his holidays, at the Court, for he was Sir Victor’s godson. Yet Charlie did not love him. For the rest, he was very rich, and was understood to cut something of a figure in London society.

“Mr. Sutton? Oh, I know him,” exclaimed Mrs. Marland. “He’s charming!”

“Then you shall entertain him,” said Charlie. “I resign him.”

“I can’t think why you’re not more pleased to have him here, Charlie,” remarked Lady Merceron. “He’s very popular in London, isn’t he, Vansittart?”

“I’ve met him at some very good houses,” answered Mr. Vansittart. And that, he seemed to imply, is better than mere popularity.

“The Bushells were delighted with him last time he was here,” continued Lady Merceron.

“There! A rival for you!” Mrs. Marland whispered.

Charlie laughed cheerfully. Sutton would be no rival of his, he thought; and if he and Millie liked one another, by all means let them take one another. A month before he would hardly have dismissed the question in so summary a fashion, for the habit of regarding Millie as a possibility and her readiness as a fact had grown strong by the custom of years, and, far as he was from a passion, he might not have enjoyed seeing her allegiance transferred to Victor Sutton. Certainly he would have suffered defeat from that hand with very bad grace. Now, however, everything was changed.

“Vansittart,” said Lady Merceron, “Charlie and I want to consult you (she often coupled Charlie’s hypothetical desire for advice with her own actual one in appeals to Mr. Vansittart) about Mr. Prime’s rent.”

“Oh, at the old farm?”

“Yes. He wants another reduction.”

“He’ll want to be paid for staying there next.”

“Well, poor man, he’s had to take lodgers this summer—a thing he’s never done before. Charlie, did you know that?”

“Yes,” said Charlie, interrupting an animated conversation which he had started with Mrs. Marland.

“Do you know who they are?” pursued his mother, wandering from Mr. Prime’s rent to the more interesting subject of his lodgers.

“Ladies from London,” answered Charlie.

“Rather vague,” commented Mr. Vansittart. “Young ladies or old ladies, Charlie?”

“Why does he want to know?” asked Mrs. Marland; but chaff had about as much effect on Mr. Vansittart as it would have on an ironclad. He seemed not to hear, and awaited an answer with a bland smile. In truth, he thought Mrs. Marland a silly woman.

“Young, I believe,” answered Charlie, in a careless tone.

“It’s curious I’ve not seen them about,” said Lady Merceron. “I pass the farm almost every day. Who are they, Charlie?”

“One’s a Miss Wallace. She’s engaged to Willie Prime.”

“To Willie? Fancy!”

“H’m! I think,” remarked Mr. Vansittart, “that, from the point of view of a reduction of rent, these lodgers are a delusion. Of course she stays with Prime if she’s going to many his son.”

“Fancy Willie!” reiterated Lady Merceron. “Surely he can’t afford to marry? He’s in a bank, you know, Vansittart, and he only gets a hundred and twenty pounds a year.”

“One blessing of the country is that everybody knows his neighbor’s income,” observed Mr. Vansittart.

“Perhaps the lady has money,” suggested Mrs. Marland. “But, Mr. Merceron, who’s the other lady?”

“A friend of Miss Wallace’s, I believe. I don’t know her name.”

“Oh, they’re merely friends of Prime’s?” Mr. Vansittart concluded. “If that’s all he bases his claim for a reduction on2”

“Hang it! He might as well have it,” interrupted Charlie. “He talks to me about it for half an hour every time we meet.”

“But, my dear Charlie, you have more time than money to waste—at least, so it seems.”

His uncle’s sarcasm never affected Charlie’s temper.

“I’ll turn him on to you, uncle,” he replied, “and you can see how you like it.”

“I’ll go and call on him to-morrow. You’d better come too, Charlie.”

“And then you can see the ladies from London,” added Mrs. Marland. “Perhaps the one who isn’t young Mr. Prime’s will be interesting.”

“Or,” said Charlie, “as mostly happens in this woeful world, the one who is.”

“I think the less we see of that sort of person at all, the better,” observed Lady Merceron, with gentle decision. “They can hardly be quite what we’re accustomed to.”

“That sort of person!”

Charlie went to bed with the phrase ringing in his horror-struck ears. If to be the most beautiful, the most charming, and the most refined, the daintiest, the wittiest and prettiest, the kindest and the sweetest, the merriest and most provoking creature in the whole world—if to be all this were yet not to weigh against being ‘that sort of person’—if it were not, indeed, to outweigh, banish, and obliterate everything else why, the world was not fit to live in, and he no true Merceron! For the Merceron men had always pleased themselves.

Chapter 3

Chapter III

All Nonsense

On the evening of the next day, while the sun was still on the Pool, and its waters, forgetful of darker moods and bygone tragedies, smiled under the tickling of darting golden gleams, a girl sat on the broad lowest step of the temple. She had rolled the sleeves of her white gown above her elbow, up well-nigh to her shoulder, and, the afternoon being sultry, from time to time dipped her arms in the water and, taking them out again, amused herself by watching the bright drops race down to her rosy fingertips. The sport was good, apparently, for she laughed and flung back her head so that the stray locks of hair might not spoil her sight of it. On either side of this lowest step there was a margin of smooth level grass, and, being unable as she sat to bathe both arms at once, presently she moved on to the grass and lay down, sinking her elbows in the pond and leaning her face over the edge of it. The posture had another advantage she had not thought of, and she laughed again when she saw her own eyes twinkling at her from the depths. As she lay there a longing came upon her.

“If I could be sure he wouldn’t come I’d dip my feet,” she murmured.

As, however, he had come every evening for a fortnight past the fancy was not to be indulged, and she consoled herself by a deeper dive yet of her arms and by drooping her head till her nose and the extreme fringe of her eyelashes were wetted, and the stray locks floated on either side.

Presently, as she still looked, she saw another shadow on the water, and exchanged with her image a confidential glance.

“You again?” she asked.

The other shadow nodded.

“Why didn’t you come in the canoe?”

“Because people see it.”

It struck her that her attitude was unconventional, and by a lithe complicated movement, whereof Charlie noticed only the elegance and not the details, she swept round and, sitting, looked up at him.

“I know who she was,” she observed.

“She very nearly knew who you were. You oughtn’t to have come to the window.”

“She thought I was the ghost.”

“You shouldn’t reckon on people being foolish.”

“Shouldn’t I? Yet I reckoned on your coming—or there’d have been some more of me in the water.”

“I wish I were an irregular man,” said Charlie.

She was slowly turning down her sleeves, and, ignoring his remark, said, with a question in her tones:

“Nettie Wallace says that Willie Prime says that everybody says that you’re going to marry that girl.”

“I believe it’s quite true.”

“Oh!” and she looked across the Pool.

“True that everybody says so,” added Charlie. “Why do you turn down your sleeves?”

“How funny I must have looked, sprawling on the bank like that!” she remarked.

“Awful!” said Charlie, sitting down.

She looked at him with uneasiness in her eye.

“Nothing but an ankle, I swear,” he answered.

She blushed and smiled.

“I think you should whistle, or something, as you come.”

“Not I,” said Charlie, with decision.

Suddenly she turned to him with a serious face, or one that tried to be serious.

“Why do you come?” she asked.

“Why do I eat?” he returned.

“And yet you were angry the first time.”

“Nobody likes to be caught ranting out poetry—especially his own.”

“I believe you were frightened—you thought I was Agatha. The poetry was about her, wasn’t it?”

“It’s not at all a bad poem,” observed Charlie.

“You remember I liked it so much that I clapped my hands.”

“And I jumped!”

The girl laughed.

“Ah, well,” she said, “it’s time to go home.”

“Oh, dear, no,” said Charlie!

“But I’ve promised to be early, because Willie Prime’s coming, and I’m to be introduced to him.”

“Willie Prime can wait. He’s got Miss Wallace to comfort him, and I’ve got nobody to comfort me.”

“Oh, yes. Miss Bushell.”

“You know her name?”

“Yes—and yours—your surname, I mean; you told me the other.”

“That’s more than you’ve done for me.”

“I told you my name was Agatha.”

“Ah, but that was a joke. I’d been talking about Agatha Merceron.”

“Very well. I’m sorry it doesn’t satisfy you. If you won’t believe me2!”

“But your surname?”

“Oh, mine? Why, mine’s Brown.”

“Brown!” re-echoed Charlie, with a tinge of disappointment in his tone.

“Don’t you like it?” asked Miss Agatha Brown with a smile.

“Oh, it will do for the present,” laughed Charlie.

“Well, I don’t mean to keep it all my life. I’ve spent to-day, Mr. Merceron, in spying out your house. Nettie Wallace and I ventured quite near. It’s very pretty.”

“Rather dilapidated, I’m afraid.”

“What’s the time, Mr. Merceron?”

“Half-past six. Oh, by Jove!”

“Well? Afraid of seeing poor Agatha?”

“I should see nobody but you, if you were here. No. I forgot that. I’ve got to meet someone at the station at a quarter-past seven.”

“Oh, do tell me who?”

“You’d be none the wiser. It’s a Mr. Victor Sutton.”

“Victor Sutton!” she exclaimed, with a glance at Charlie which passed unnoticed by him. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“I suppose so. Of my family’s, anyhow.”

“Good-by. I’m going,” she announced.

“You’ll be here to-morrow?”

“Yes. For the last time.”

She dropped this astounding thunderbolt on Charlie’s head as though it had been the most ordinary remark in the world.

“The last time! Oh, Miss2” No: somehow he could not lay his tongue to that “Miss Brown.”

“I can’t spend all my life in Lang Marsh,” said she.

“Agatha,” he burst out.

“No, no. This is not the last time. Sha’n’t we keep that?” she asked, with a provokingly light-hearted smile.

“You promise to be here to-morrow?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I shall have something to say to you then,” Charlie announced with a significant air.